Trump is a crook, any way you think about it

It's hard to avoid thinking about "corruption" these days. Every pundit who isn't a MAGA stooge agrees that Donald Trump is the most corrupt leader/office holder the nation has ever empowered. Some might wonder whether Andrew Jackson, or Ulysses Grant, or even Warren G. Harding might give Trump a run for the title. But even a little digging says no. The barons of the Jim Crow system like Huey Long might give Trump competition, but their state level corruption is a different league. In the corruption games, Trump is a legitimate winner.

And yet discussions of Trump -- and his sons' and MAGA acolytes' -- corruption often bemuse me. Let me try to pick this apart ...

For about ten years back in the '70s and '80's I was a small scale construction contractor. That meant that jobs that I worked on were sometimes subject to inspection by the San Francisco Building Department. In that era, the inspectors were mostly old Irish guys who had worked the trades when younger; I think it is possible that my boss passed along a bottle of Irish whiskey to the inspector when we passed the final, but this was closer to solidarity than bribery. I don't think anyone thought you paid the inspector to get a sign off. These inspectors liked good work when they saw it: one of my happy memories of that era was having a white haired, retired, inspector, a Glen Park neighbor of the job, come over to where I was building an entry staircase and announce that I'd engineered the thing as well as any boy he'd trained. He cared that no one would stumble because of my errors. That was the ethos, at least most of the time. 

In subsequent years, the San Francisco Building Department became a sinkhole of corruption facilitated by payoffs to "expediters" and sometimes allowing complete neglect of inspections, all for a price. It took a federal investigation to clean up some of this.  I was glad I was out of the business.

That's what first comes to mind when I hear "corruption" -- bribes and payoffs to authorities for favors. And there certainly is plenty of that in Trump's various pay-to-play schemes.

But a great deal of commentary on Trump and the Supreme Court describes what we're seeing as "corrupt" -- and these writers don't just mean that Thomas and Alioto seem to float happily along on gifts from their rich benefactors, some of whom have cases on the docket.

What we are up against isn't just run-of-the-mill bribery, quid pro quos.  It's rot that lives and grows embedded in the system: the "moth and rust [that] doth corrupt," to be exploited by the thieves.

David Kurtz, via Henry Farrell, makes the point that we are up against this systemic meaning of "corruption."

"To understand corruption properly, we shouldn’t think of it as an individual level phenomenon. Classical thinkers, like Machiavelli, understood corruption as a condition that could afflict governments and indeed societies. But if we value democracy as the best way to order our affairs, we should understand corruption as not a moral phenomenon but a political one, which involves the corruption of democratic processes."

… and applies it to the Roberts Court:

"Across an apparently unrelated range of issues – campaign finance, executive immunity, political corruption and gerrymandering – the Roberts Court’s decisions have persistently corrupted the workings of democracy, so as to undermine equality in decision making and voice in favor of processes that are both duplicitous and exclusive." 

Our Constitutional state has rotted from within at the encouragement and for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Such rot overrides citizen democracy. Yet citizen resistance remains and in our history has again and again overcome robber barons, against both sorts of corruption. 

Note that this broader meaning of "corruption" was well understood in Shakespeare's English: Hamlet's friend, contemplating the drunken revels of the usurpers, summarizes: "there's something rotten" here. 

We are forced to reclaim this usage. 

Donald Trump's travel posters

I thought you might be interested in one of the things the Trump Department of Homeland Security is doing with the $170 billion of our taxes a moribund Republican Congress has forked over to Trump's immigration thugs.

 

DHS wants their prey -- undocumented migrants but really anyone who has not jumped all the hoops to achieve citizenship -- to know that, if they come in voluntarily, they can get shipped away and get $2600.

 

I don't know if they actually pay what they promise. Nor do I suspect these tourist scenes are much like where folks come from, but what do I know?

On corruption

Corruption is a descriptor that commentators throw up endlessly in relation to the Trump shit show -- but what do they mean?

As I read around the news, I've realized I'm often confused by how the word is being used.

I know instinctively what corruption means: it's what is going on when a powerful person's favor can be bought, when the recipient of a gift is bribed, is "for sale." Certainly we see plenty of that from the regime, from immigration enforcer Tom Homan's taking a fifty thousand dollar bribe in a paper bag, to the Trump spawn hitting up oil sheiks for billions, to the Orange Toddler demanding tribute from corporations, ostensibly for his ballroom. 

But the word "corruption" carries a lot of connotations less instinctive to me that are even more applicable to the Trump regime. I see the Justice Department prosecution of James Comey for seashells called "corrupt", for example and wonder how that is meant.

So -- on to the dictionary. To my surprise, in an online dictionary, the equation of "corruption" with bribery doesn't emerge until fifth definition. The first few meanings cited are "corrupt" instances of impurity whether in metals or other objects, or of sexual morals, or of integrity and honesty. 

I guess I need to revamp my internal definition. "Corruption" means first and foremost "rot on the inside," which the Donald displays extravagantly and encourages in the people who surround him. 

Democratic politicians denouncing Donald Trump use the label "corruption" -- meaning rotten at the core -- constantly. For example, I got this today in a fund appeal from Gavin Newsom: "the Trump administration is a corruption story."

• 8 or 9 countries he's done major golf course or development deals with.
• Meme coins and stablecoins.
• The Peace Board is about getting a piece for Witkoff and Kushner.
• Donald Trump Jr. with the drone and mineral companies.
• This isn't about bibles, sneakers and watches on the Trump store ...It's the greatest grift we've seen in our lifetime.

Gavin is not my guy, but he knows where GOP rot is and calls it out.

The deepest example I've seen of using the label "corruption" to describe expansively what decent citizens are up against comes from James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas. 

"We are living in an era of corruption. When I say corruption, I don't just mean illegal activity. I mean corruption in the deeper sense -- the rotting of something from the inside. 

Politicians serving billionaire mega donors instead of their constituents. That's political corruption. the top one percent owning more wealth than the entire middle class -- that's economic corruption. For profit social media algorithms sowing division in our communities and turning neighbor against neighbor -- that's social corruption. Our systems are rotting from the inside out. The ties that bind us together are unraveling. 

The most powerful people in this country are profiting off our pain. Profiting off our division. Profiting off our disconnection from one another. This is, at its root, a spiritual crisis. And it will require a spiritual solution." 

Clip by way of Simon Rosenberg. Talarico sees rot and claims to want to help us do better; maybe he will, though his electoral challenge is great.

Nobody sane or decent wants this war

War, huh (good God y'all)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing

This lyric, performed by Edwin Starr and later The Temptations, hit the top of the charts in 1970. After eight years of the American war in Vietnam, almost 60,000 US killed and perhaps a million Vietnamese, most of us knew what we thought of wars.

Donald Trump's idiotic Persian adventure isn't yet causing carnage on that scale, but the longer it goes on, the more death and destruction that results, the more vehement the opposition will likely grow.

 

Dozens of veterans and military family members protesting the Iran war were arrested by U.S. Capitol Police on Monday after they occupied the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. 

U.S. Capitol Police said 66 people were arrested during the demonstration, which was organized by several veterans groups including About Face, the Center on Conscience and War (CCW), Veterans For Peace, Common Defense, the Fayetteville Resistance Coalition, Military Families Speak Out and 50501 Veterans. (The Hill) 

Military historian Phillips P. O'Brien is frankly aghast at what he is seeing of Trump's war:

The Most Corrupt War In US History

All wars are horrible and this is no exception. However the US-Iran War of 2026 will never be the most horrible war in US history, the longest, the most destructive, etc. That is a good thing. However, something pretty horrible is unfolding in front of us. The US government is being used as a tool to corruptly enrich certain people, to a tune of billions of $’s. And that means US service personnel and Iranian civilians (the people who are suffering the most in this war) are being sacrificed so that others who have enriched themselves through their loss can enrich themselves further. 

For the US military, this has to be a devastating situation. Soldiers sign up to defend the Constitution of the USA, on the assumption that when they are put in harms way, it is being done for the greater good of the country. To understand that they are now tools for corruption of their masters, not for the country at large, has to destroy the whole idea of serving the country. 

For the Iranian people, whom Trump encouraged to rise up for their freedom, with no intention of actually helping them, the effect is something similar. They might have had hope for a while, even with Trump’s track record, that the USA would help them. Now they know the US cares not at all for them, used them for what Trump had hoped to be his political advantage, and has now abandoned them to a worse version of their original government. 

 So those who serve or want freedom get nothing. However, the corrupt at the top seem to be using every opportunity, even manipulating the course of the war, to cash in wherever and however they can. ...

O'Brien goes on to recount how Trump's gyrations, whether intentionally or not, seem to encourage gambling on the price of oil by traders with inside information. Perhaps these are some of his inner circle? This is a leaky bunch; we'll eventually find out who benefited.

Though the Israel's attacks on Iran and concurrent invasion of Lebanon, are popular with many on the home front, Israelis sure know how to denounce the motives of politicians. Israeli journalist Alon Pinkas is scathing.

Trump and Netanyahu Have Royally Screwed Each Other Over

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu share a lot of traits. They are both solipsistic, mendacious, narcissistic, and paranoid megalomaniacs who perceive themselves as victims of a cabal of elites. Now they share something else: They have lost a war together. Driven by vanity and hubris, the U.S. president and Israeli prime minister miscalculated Iran’s mettle, and now their mutually inflicted failure is causing them considerable political harm at home. What started as a Smith & Wesson partnership has degenerated into a Thelma & Louise ending.... 

... [There will be no conqueror's statues for these two.] Trump and Netanyahu, in their infinite delusions of grandeur, expected this to be a quick win that would buoy their respective political fortunes. They probably envisioned being showered with praise by their countrymen and the media, and relished the thought of rubbing the victory in their opponents’ faces. The exact opposite has happened instead, and they have no one to blame but themselves—and each other.

So ... here we are. President Barack Obama's national security aide Ben Rhodes [gift link] is trying to figure out how the idealistic country he thought he worked for came to spread stupid, unnecessary carnage around the world. He shares some insights from listening to thar very damaged, but very thoughtful, veteran of our Wars on Terror, Graham Platner, an aspiring Democratic Senate candidate in Maine. 

... “We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians,” Mr. Platner told me. “If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.” 

We like to frame our wars as virtuous, but they are not. Instead, they resemble a declining empire sowing chaos along its periphery as a matter of strategy: Economic and political elites profit while the Americans who fight suffer along with the places they attack. 

“The only way we change that is by talking about it publicly,” Mr. Platner told me. “If we start to revisit the morality of military conflict and how we use violence, that’s going to have a direct correlation to what is good for America.” 

With the decline of American empire which is certainly underway, proven every day by the ascendancy of the Orange Toddler, maybe yet another generation can teach us that war is not the answer.

Trump encourages us all to release our inner crook

What Trump's exuberant corruption seeks to make us: a nation of envious cheats who yearn to emulate his delight in breaking the common good for personal gain. He's a pathetic specimen of a human; we sometimes do better.

This is a test. Paul Waldman laments: 

[The] norm of honesty is what Trump attacks so directly. Just as he encourages his followers to be sexist and cruel, he encourages everyone to grab what they can, laws and rules and basic ethical standards be damned. The president really is a role model, and unlike just about every corrupt official our country has ever produced, he isn’t even trying to hide how corrupt he is. It’s right out in the open for all to see. His message isn’t that he’s clean, it’s that everyone is dirty, so grab what you can.

That’s what makes it so dangerous. By the time these four years are over, domestic and foreign interests who want some policy favor — a tariff waiver, a change in regulation, an arms sale — will probably have deposited billions of dollars directly into Trump’s pockets. “I could be a stupid person and say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want a free plane,’” he said by way of explaining why he’ll take the Qatari jet. As far as he’s concerned, if you don’t cash in on public office, you’re just a sucker. After two terms of graft, to too many people it will just seem like common sense.

G. Elliot Morris is insightful about why the mainstream media is so inept and inadequate when it comes to calling out Trump's criminality. He introduces an English word coinage (highlighted below) which I think may come in handy in our current circumstances.

... today, when one is factual about Trump, one comes off as a partisan. In his second term, the president is breaking so many laws and political norms that when you cover them each on their own, you come off as an anti-Trump Democratic pundit with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” ...

This is all just a series of business decisions for most media institutions. Thirty years ago, I imagine network news would have done a whole show about how our politics was being corrupted by foreign influence, or some such. But given that factfulness has been polarized, we live in a media environment where news companies have business incentives to “moderate” their language on norm violations — else they risk alienating half of the country. With declining media ad rates, it becomes matter of paying the bills whether pissing off viewers is worth telling the story (or, in this case, “being ‘factful.’”)

... when you say the president shouldn’t accept a $400 million plane because the Emoluments Clause exists, and this seems kinda nasty and not something elected leaders should be doing, you are coded as pro-Democrat/center left/whatever.

I guess that perception is just the price one pays for covering the world as it is. I am happy to be writing for an audience that values the facts above everything else.

Morris, having been let go by ABC News, has launched his own polling interpretation site, Strength in Numbers.

Good news that's been crowded out ....

Almost two weeks ago, voters in Poland unexpectedly used democratic means to stymie, at least temporarily, an illiberal populist turn in that European Union country. For at least a minute, democracy won.

Since this was an election, I'll outsource the story to DailyKos:

Opposition parties won a stunning victory amid record turnout in parliamentary elections on Sunday, ending eight years of authoritarian rule by the radical-right Law and Justice Party and its allies.

Law and Justice, known by the Polish acronym PiS, has for years undermined democracy, media freedom, and judicial independence in the European Union's fifth-largest member state. But despite its efforts to entrench itself in power, PiS lost to an alliance led by the centrist Civic Coalition that also includes two smaller blocs of parties—one to its left and another on the center-right.

Final results for the all-important lower chamber released on Tuesday showed this opposition alliance winning a 54-43 majority of votes over PiS and the far-right Confederation alliance, which could have kept PiS in power had the two won the most seats, but the opposition instead secured a 248-212 majority.

While Sunday's historic result pulls Poland's democracy back from the brink, there's still a long way to go before the winners can fully reverse the damage PiS has inflicted. President Andrzej Duda, who was elected as a PiS ally, still has two years left in his final term, and the incoming government will lack the three-fifths supermajority needed to override his vetoes. It will also have to contend with courts packed by the right.

However, the new government will have the chance to dismantle PiS' control over the media, prosecute political corruption, and strengthen Poland's support for its embattled neighbor, Ukraine.

People who actually know anything about Polish politics were more than a little thrilled. Anne Applebaum, the Atlantic journalist who is married to a democratic (small "d") Polish politician, has happily surprised. 

After democratic coalitions failed to defeat nationalist-conservative ruling parties in Hungary last year and in Turkey last May, and after elections in Israel brought a coalition of extremists to power, plenty of people feared that democratic change in Poland, too, was impossible. Against the odds, yesterday’s election has proved them wrong. Even if you don’t live in Poland, don’t care about Poland, and can’t find Poland on a map, take note: The victory of the Polish opposition proves that autocratic populism can be defeated, even after an unfair election. Nothing is inevitable about the rise of autocracy or the decline of democracy. Invest your time in political and civic organization if you want to create change, because sometimes it works.

That cheerleader for Central Europe, Timothy Garton Ash, also drew happy conclusions.

It seems young Poles finally understood that their future was at stake. Whatever happens next, this was a great democratic moment. The people spoke and said they wanted a different government.

Click to enlarge.

An insightful analysis of how this Polish turn came about comes from Anna Piela in Religion News Service: 

... Law and Justice’s tenure dovetails neatly with rapidly falling support for the Catholic Church, described in “Church in Poland 2023,” a report recently published by the Catholic Information Agency. The strong relationship between Law and Justice and the Catholic hierarchy is reflected by enormous financial support that the Polish state has given to the church, including $48 million to the Church Fund that pays for clergy’s social security contributions, in 2022 alone. The recent tightening of abortion restrictions instituted by Law and Justice was received with satisfaction by the Catholic clergy who had campaigned for it for years.

The party’s leadership openly embraced most of the church’s agenda in its public comments. “Christianity is a part of our national identity,” said Law and Justice’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczyński, in 2019, conflating as usual Christianity and Catholicism. “The church wields the only system of values commonly known in Poland.”

... But Law and Justice’s identification with the church, which for years locked in rural and elderly urban voters, looks to have backfired. In recent polls, two groups — young adults and those living in larger cities — appear to have turned away from the church in overwhelming numbers. In 1992, 52% of those living in the large cities regularly practiced the Roman Catholic faith; in 2022 this share fell to 28%. Those who called themselves nonpracticing constituted 19% of the inhabitants of large cities 30 years ago; in 2022, they represent 38%.

It’s not hard to see the reason for these findings: Young Poles have abandoned the church in huge numbers. Adults aged 18-24 who participate regularly in religious services dropped from 43% to 22% in the eight years Law and Justice was in power, while the share of those who told pollsters they do not participate doubled from 18% to 41%.

Young adults said they dislike organized religion, citing pedophilia and sex scandals among the Catholic clergy. Said Lidia, 33, from Poznan in central Poland: “I voted for Civic Coalition. I am disgusted about everything about the Catholic Church. It is morally repugnant. Recently, a group of priests organized a party and hired a male sex worker. He passed out because they abused him so much. And then they refused to let the paramedics in after someone called the ambulance. … This kind of stuff. And then of course, the new ban on abortion.”

The right wing alliance with a corrupted church served it well -- until it proved a mill stone around its neck.

The people can take it to the pols

This is likely to be a nasty week framed by upcoming Supreme Court decisions, most likely killing the remnants of affirmative action, affirming that religious bigotry deserves protection from the claims of gay rights in public accommodations, and denying the government's effort to forgive student loans which are made and administered by the government. Not pretty.

With a 6-3 -- mostly wingnut -- Supreme Court majority, we're on track for a lot of Junes when the hits to equality, progress, and freedom keep on coming.

What's particularly difficult about these blows coming from the Court is that we are not used to visualizing what our democratic actions can do now that the right wing project to pack the court has succeeded. 

When the political actors are elected officials, either legislative or executive, we know what to do. Here progressive community organizations in San Francisco pressure the Board and Mayor not to dump the burden of the city's economic woes on neighborhood services.

June 26, 2023

But what to do when the offenders are robed and reserved judicial priests in a marble palace in DC?

We are NOT helpless:

• We can attend to the amazing history lessons in democratic Constitutional interpretation delivered by new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson; she's charting a course for a better judicial direction.

• We can keep calling out the blatant corruption of the worst of them. This palling with wealthy litigants stuff has been a long time practice (gift link) of conservative judges. They need to be shamed.

• We can goose our elected officials to take Court corruption seriously. It's not clear what electeds can do -- but we can make it clear we elect them to figure that out. This sometimes works.

• And though we'll be told direct agitation is useless, it doesn't hurt. I have friends who still have their t-shirts from marches on the Court for civil rights and gay marriage. Folks got arrested; sometimes a useful tactic. The justices will say they've closed their ears, but direct action keeps them listening. A majority of them still think they should be respected and liked. They aren't and won't be so long as the only rights they recognize are those of white Christian billionaires.

Demand Justice seems a good advocacy group making concrete proposals for court reform. 

The Court has already crashed in public esteem since it allowed states to outlaw reproductive health care. It can fall further. This matters.

A warning of civil violence

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has described a pattern of developing civil violence that should worry us all. She contends that in societies where political terrorism takes root, there's a pattern.

Violent groups that get involved in politics in other countries follow a common path ... 

At first, politicians recruit experts in violence and intimidation to use those tools as a campaign tactic.  

Later, those violent leaders run for office or take political roles directly, cutting out the political middleman. Usually, what they want is power and impunity, so that they can make money from more lucrative criminal activities, though sometimes they simply want power for its own sake.  

To understand where this can lead: 11 of India’s current national legislators face open cases for murder, 30 have attempted murder charges and 10 serving legislators have been convicted of such serious crimes – a doubling from ten years ago.

In India, with its long history of violent religious sectarian violence, this may not seem so surprising -- though sadly, India once proclaimed itself the world's largest democracy before the current Hindu nationalist government came to power.

In the U.S., we're seeing all too much of Kleinfeld's pattern. In Pennsylvania, the Republican candidate for governor paid for buses to Washington for supporters of Donald Trump's January 6 attempted coup. Doug Mastriano has been subpoenaed to testify about what he did that day.

Here in Nevada, Republican candidates for both U.S. Senate and state governor are adherents to the Big Lie. The GOP candidate for secretary of state (the official who runs elections) insists the vote in 2020 was rigged and that he wouldn't hesitate to overturn a majority vote of Nevadans if he were in office.

Kleinfeld has taken note of ominous developments in the state where we're working on the midterms:

In Nevada, it appears more clear that the Proud Boys are still at the first stage, being recruited by unscrupulous political actors who are using their violence to amass more power for themselves. ... Why would a faction of Republicans still in power or running for office at the federal, state, and local level make common cause with violent criminals? Because violence and intimidation are already bolstering their power. ...

We sometimes look away, but violence from the right has been escalating ever since Barack Obama broke the rule that a Black man could not be elected President.

... Americans may feel that these incidents of political violence are “high politics” that they can avoid if they steer clear of the political arena. That feeling is widespread in countries I have studied where political violence grows to dangerous levels. It Is always a false hope.  

In the United States, it is already far more dangerous to exercise freedom of speech than in the recent past. Driving cars into civilians used to be a tactic favored by overseas terrorists. It had been recorded just twice in the United States before James Alex Fields Jr. murdered Heather Heyer by driving into a crowd of counter-protestors at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Yet from George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020 through September 30, 2021, at least 139 drivers drove their cars into protests across America, injuring 100 – sometimes severely – and killing four. ... 

... Violence begets violence – once its use mainstreams, moderates who espouse non-violence appear anemic and unable to offer protection to their side. The middle weakens, while violence eventually takes on a rhythm of reprisal far removed from the original causes. ... Even if Trump passes from the scene, the embrace of violence and intimidation as a political tactic by a faction of the GOP will cause violence of all types to rise – against all Americans.

No one is exempt. And our civil society could become a nightmare.

Women's work

Perhaps not in history yet to be written, but certainly in this moment, it's the women who are deep-sixing the Donald. Not women I can identify with. Too many thought they could get something by going along with this misogynist, patriarchal boor -- until they couldn't stomach his selfishness and moral cowardice any longer. 

If they are like most women, they had long been willing to give guys they like a little slack about some patriarchal habits -- we live in a society which doesn't make it easy for even good men to be good.

One might have thought Donald Trump exceeded the allowance women make for men a long time ago, but these women determined to follow their own agendas -- until Trump violated not only their own dignity, but the patriotic Constitutionalism in which they found a different loyalty.

Exhibit A is Liz Cheney. That's challenging for anyone who has been paying attention. Her wily political operator dad Dick was the central figure in making the United States a country that tortures its perceived enemies. If that's not a betrayal of any positive vision for this country, I don't know what is.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Liz Cheney was willing to diss her own sister's lesbian family to stay in tune with the homophobic Republican voters who elect her. Only a year ago, she loudly recanted her past position on NPR:

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., expressed regret over her earlier opposition to same-sex marriage, a position she took eight years ago that led to a public falling out with her sister, Mary, who is gay and married with children. 

"I was wrong. I was wrong. I love my sister very much. I love her family very much," the lawmaker said in an interview on CBS' 60 Minutes.

I have to wonder: did that moral realization perhaps prepare Cheney to recognize that in the case of the Donald, the only way forward was to do the thing she knows is right. And that she has a lot of women with her.

Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman report:

In the course of exposing Mr. Trump’s elaborate effort to overturn the 2020 election, the House committee has relied on the accounts of several women who came forward to publicly tell their stories. Their statements, and the attacks that ensued, laid bare how women often still pay a higher price than men for speaking up. ...

 The result has been that as the committee unfurls the story of the Jan. 6 attack — playing footage of a mostly male crowd laying waste to the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name, with the president looking on supportively from the West Wing — many of the witnesses who have emerged most prominently have been women, with Ms. Cheney as their defender. ... Yet while male witnesses have received some criticism from the right — in Mr. Cipollone’s case, Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted that he should “grow a spine & go on record” — the attacks have not been at the same volume or intensity, or of the same degree of personal nastiness, as those against Ms. Hutchinson in particular.

Laura Miller comments with insight at Slate:

Cheney isn’t mad. She’s disappointed. Her demeanor is exactly that of a mom who has been called out of her office in the middle of a work day because her teenage kid is in the principal’s office for pulling some idiotic, illegal, and dangerous prank. She knows that he knows exactly how badly he’s fucked up, that the consequences will be serious and they are inevitable. She will entertain no excuses or evasions or any other form of trifling objection. She mostly wants him to acknowledge what he’s have done, and promise not to do it again. 

But you can only be disappointed in someone who’s capable of better behavior, and that gives Cheney’s reproaches a sting that’s been missing in the often much louder denunciations from Democrats who routinely dismiss Republicans as hopeless deplorables.

I'll give a last word on Cheney (for now) to Marcy Wheeler, never someone who is conned by the ethical shenanigans of opportunists and politicians:

... minutes after saluting the bravery of women like Cassidy Hutchinson, Cheney pivoted to the historical moment of women’s suffrage. 

"In this room, in 1918, the committee on women’s suffrage convened, to discuss and debate whether women should be granted the right to vote. This room is full of history and we on this committee know we have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many Americans have fought and died for. ..." 

... as Cheney attempts to convince Republicans that Donald Trump made them betray their patriotism, she is pitching the alternative in distinctly female form. 

Just before she goes home to lose her primary, badly, this woman is committing to coming back in September to continue the work of trying to persuade her fellow conservatives to believe in the truth again.

If I were a Wyoming voter with my convictions, would I switch parties briefly to vote for Liz? Not sure I would. A Cheney is a Cheney. But if I were a person who lived in Wyoming, I might be a Democrat who would make the temporary switch.

Exposing who is paying to undermine our freedoms

Judd Legum has the story of how big mainstream corporations talk a good game about adopting feminist and anti-racist values -- and then keep shoveling cash to GOP legislators who vote for restrictions on rights. And their friends in the media play along.

Last week, a Democratic Super PAC, American Bridge 21st Century, attempted to place a television ad in three Florida markets highlighting donations from Comcast, Disney, and AT&T to anti-abortion legislators.

But the ad was rejected by local cable providers. ...

Comcast claimed the ad violated its policy on "personal attacks." The ad, of course, was not personal but reflected an important policy concern. Spectrum said the ad violated its policies without elaborating. 

Earlier this month, the same Super PAC was blocked from running digital ads on the Dallas Morning News that criticized AT&T for supporting sponsors of Texas' abortion ban. 

It appears there are two sets of rules. Corporations are able to spend unlimited sums on TV and online to burnish their image. But critics of corporate power are not given access to the same platforms.

Two-faced corporations have a lot to hide.

And speaking of corruption ...

It's break out the popcorn time in San Francisco. Another round of City Hall crooks are being dragged into the light by a diligent U.S. Attorney. 

Heather Knight at the Chron asks a reasonable question: Why were lavishly paid public servants allegedly bribed for so little?

Leaders of mammoth city agencies -- agencies we depend on for garbage disposal, for our electricity, for public housing -- make in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars in salaries annually but dispense favors for petty payments of expensive wine and trips to China. They seem to be cheap dates for the hustlers and developers who make the real money in this rich and sometimes cruel city.

Every few years it's a similar story -- some bigwig is revealed to be on the take. Some stories are more baroque than others -- remember when, just a few years back, we had a state senator charged with gun trafficking. Or there was the cop son of a police chief who beat up a citizen over a fajita. 

Corruption in the city by the bay is often entertaining to watch. 

The Chronicle hints at the background of so much of it, attaching a picture of former California state assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. (Yes, he writes a column for the newspaper.)

So many of these people are out of his lineage ... remember when he stuck the city with a head of waste management whose qualification for the job was betraying his Republican colleagues in the state assembly to vote with Willie?

The current mayor is out of Willie's tree, as was the previous one, and the one before that, who is now our governor. Maybe they weren't in on the petty crimes. Maybe they weren't in on the small time con stuff; maybe they are/were devoted to good government. But it's hard not to suspect one might find a bit of stench about them -- they've run in suspicious company.

Taxing questions

So now we know what he was hiding. Some of it, anyway. The missing piece remains who Trump owes all that money to. 

Some Russian gangster and dependent of Putin, perhaps? Or some oil monarch? No one who wasn't also a crook would have lent him money. Those people play rough sometimes. Just look at Navalny or Khashoggi.

Will once "respectable" administration flunkies want to go along for the plunge with this guy, who not only is personally immoral and cruel, but also a monumental failure at the game they think is reality? Looking at you, Bill Barr. This isn't about your beloved vision of a monarchical executive -- the man you work for is just a bankrupt swindler.

As Paul Krugman points out, when failure cascades on failure, the incentive for bankrupt businessmen is to strip their companies of anything of value to give themselves a personal cushy landing. There's no doubt that Trump's play. He was willing to kill hundreds of thousands of us by ignoring a pandemic in a bad bet on re-election. What more lies ahead?

And then, should we believe that we are seeing the flailing of a frightened man who, accurately, fears prosecution when he no longer has the protection of the office of the Presidency? So it seems.

Trump seems such a small man to have been able to wreak such havoc on a powerful, reasonably functional -- if habitually unjust -- country. It's on us if we let him continue.

Flavors of corruption

In the Trump era, one of the most common terms in political writing is some variation of "corrupt" or "corruption." I've been jarred by a sense that there are multiple meanings behind this powerful word and concept and that we're not necessarily aware that every usage is not quite the same as the last one. Maybe this doesn't bother others as it does me, but I decided to explore it here.

Some examples, some thoughts, and some recourse to very basic dictionary definitions of "corrupt" and "corruption" follow:

Mike Pompeo, still implicated in Trump's impeachable acts, doesn't care if you know he's corrupt
"Prior to ex-House Republican Mike Pompeo becoming Trump's secretary of state, it was generally understood that U.S. secretaries of state were not allowed to use the tools of their office for rank partisan politicking. Using government resources to campaign is illegal; turning the top diplomatic job in the country into a tool of partisanship damages U.S. credibility abroad by signaling, to world counterparts, that the U.S. diplomat is In This For Themselves." This usage conforms to the very first, common, definition: "to destroy the integrity of; cause to be dishonest, disloyal, etc., especially by bribery."

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne: "... corruption is a dagger aimed at republican government. It turns what is supposed to be an institution devoted to the common good into an instrument of private gain." This usage goes to corruption of wider scale than individual crimes, pointing to systemic institutional harm such as "dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked."

Reporter Josh Kovensky describing a legal argument: "The Justice Department’s move to drop charges against Michael Flynn 'reflects a corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system,' the court-appointed attorney arguing against the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss stated in a Friday filing." I don't know if "corrupt" has a precise meaning in law, but here the word seems to indicate "debased in character; depraved; perverted."

7 ways Trump and his cabal are using government to corrupt the election
"Trump isn’t trying to persuade a majority of U.S. voters to support him. Instead, he’s trying to get within what you might call cheating distance of pulling another electoral college inside straight even while losing the popular vote, just like last time. He’s not there yet. But many top Trump officials and congressional allies have placed their official duties and the levers of your government at the disposal of Trump’s reelection effort, which depends on closing that gap." This usage comes nearest to "mar; spoil."

Peter Wehner at the Atlantic: "But what’s different in this case is that Trump, because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of 'negative partisanship,' the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent." Here the writer is telling us there is something broken about Trump, something about him that amounts to "debasement or alteration."

Former National Security aide Alexander Vindman: "So Trump was putting the squeeze on this leader [the Ukrainian president] to conduct a corrupt investigation." This is a usage I find confusing. There is self evidently, to me if not to Republicans, something very wrong with a president using the powers of the country to extort a political favor from a foreign leader. But the closest I can come to applying any of the definitions of corruption to this act is simply "dishonest" because, in truth, there was not an honest predicate for what he was asking. And Trump either has no moral compass or he knew that.

Peter Beinart writing about the Republican base: "This isn’t because they don’t care about corruption. It’s because of the way they define the term: less as the violation of America’s laws than as the violation of America’s traditional hierarchies. Thus, so long as Trump promotes “Republican values,” he can’t be corrupt. ...  etymologically, [corruption] is also linked to contamination, debasement, and impurity. And throughout American history, Americans have often labeled as “corrupt” people who undermined not the rule of law but the preexisting racial or gender order. ... That racialized definition of corruption remains very much alive today. Consider the presidency of Barack Obama. Obama’s supporters look back on his presidency as admirably scandal-free. But to many Republicans, Obama personified corruption. After all, a majority of Republicans, as late as 2017, told pollsters they believed that Obama had been born outside the United States." We're getting into deep human psychic strata here. When our species was more intimate with the reality of death than we are in modern societies, "corruption" was above all what happened to our bodies when we died. (See also Psalm 16:10 per the King James Bible: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.) Corruption evoked worms and maggots. This lingers in modern dictionary definitions as "putrefactive decay; rottenness."

"In a 2018 White House planning meeting ..., Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. 'Nobody wants to see that,' he said." Though he doesn't use the word, Trump seems to be moved by a revulsion at the presence of defiling impurity. In the dictionary's terms, this is the corruption that is "putrefactive decay; rottenness." Most of us might call wounded vets something like those who gave their best -- but to Trump's psyche, their bodies are corrupt.

ProPublica reporter Dara Lind on the Weeds offered her understanding of how Trump's corruption set the parameters of his disastrous coronavirus response, prioritizing the needs of red states. She contended (with plenty of evidence) that for Trump and the Republican Party. "it is a function of government to provide favors to people who put it in office." Here we're back to the deep corruption by which particular corrupt decisions pollute a society. As the dictionary puts it: this is "perverted; wicked; evil: a corrupt society."

• • •

Some of the deepest, most subtle insights about corruption I've encountered anywhere are in Sarah Chayes' Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security. My write up here. Her observations derive from unhappy experience with Afghanistan's kleptocracy. We aren't quite in that condition yet, though a second Trump term might get us there.

An appointment

No, not Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's V.P. I'll get to that I'm sure.

Rather, it's seems worth noting that the Trump regime has moved that nasty old cold warrior Elliott Abrams from its project of overthrowing Venezuela's government to its project of overthrowing Iran's government. 

Abrams should feel right at home working with and against Iran. In the late 1980's he was knee deep in the Reagan Administration's illegal plot to trade arms to Iran in return for cash to pay a right wing force to attack Nicaragua's then-leftist elected government. (Confusingly, Nicaragua now has an oppressive regime headed by the same tinpot caudillo, but that was then and this is now and Nicaragua remains on the USA's enemy list.) Abrams was convicted for lying to Congress; this country used to penalize its crooks. The crackpot Iran-Contra scheme was a foreshadowing of the private dealing and grifting that Republicans substitute for government when they get the power to do so.

Jason Rezaian of the Washington Post who knows more than a thing or two about Iran, having been held hostage in Iranian prisons for a couple of years during the Obama administration. He has a conclusion about U.S. policy toward Iran under Trump -- and also some suggestions should the world be so fortunate as to win a Biden administration. 

After decades of punitive measures directed at Iran under the still unfulfilled promise of defanging the Islamic Republic, the Iranian people deserve better from the U.S. government. And so do Americans. ... [Trump's last envoy] managed to play a role in worsening the lives of average Iranians, in part by promoting measures such as indiscriminate economic sanctions and travel bans. ...

If former vice president Joe Biden wins in November, he will have a chance to alter our current collision course with Iran. Biden would inherit a situation in which the United States enjoys significant leverage over Tehran, and he will have foreign policy advisers with years of experience working on these issues. He should take advantage of both, conditioning any concessions on real change that improves the lots of average Iranians. After all the harm we have caused them with nothing positive to show for it, the United States owes that to the Iranian people. ...

Not surprisingly, Rezaian also thinks a better U.S. government could do better at aiding any of our citizens so unfortunate as to be imprisoned in Iran.

Prosecute them!

This strikes me as bold. Elizabeth Warren proposed Tuesday that, as soon as she is inaugurated as President, she'll set up a task force to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute corruption and crimes by the outgoing Trump administration.

Establish a Justice Department Task Force to investigate corruption during the Trump administration and to hold government officials accountable for illegal activity. Donald Trump has run the most corrupt administration in history. He was impeached for withholding foreign aid in an effort to try to benefit his re-election campaign. He has enriched himself and his business through the power of his office. And there are public reports of potentially illegal corruption in every corner of his administration.

If we are to move forward to restore public confidence in government and deter future wrongdoing, we cannot simply sweep this corruption under the rug in a new administration. That’s why I will direct the Justice Department to establish a task force to investigate violations by Trump administration officials of federal bribery laws, insider trading laws, and other anti-corruption and public integrity laws, and give that task force independent authority to pursue any substantiated criminal and civil violations. I have also committed to establishing a task force to investigate accusations of serious violations by immigration officials during the Trump era. 

Wow! If she were to be able to make this happen, the GOPers would charge political revenge. But, after all, they do seem to commit all sorts of crimes, casually and habitually. So prosecute 'em!

This is what the Obama administration failed to do after Wall Street hot shots crashed the global economy in 2008. No one went to jail for peddling phony paper investments that trashed the whole system. We are still living with the fall out of that dumb, and possibly corrupt, administration decision. Nothing ensures cynicism and indifference toward democratic government more than watching crooks walk free while ordinary people suffer. ... And then the crooks got even richer.

Warren is saying no to this very concretely and we can assume the billionaire boys will fight her even harder. Will other Dem aspirants make the same pledge?

TPM pushed her on possible limits to her approach:

... a Warren campaign aide emphasized to TPM the limits in scope of the task force.

“The plan calls for a DOJ task force with independent authority and a limited scope to look at specific current laws that were broken: Federal bribery laws, insider trading laws, and other anti-corruption and public integrity laws,” the aide said. “It will investigate independently and prosecute or not prosecute as they see fit.”

The aide added that the proposal is not about “political rivals” but “restoring the rule of law.

“The best way to turn the page on Trump-era corruption is for people who broke the law to be held accountable so that future officials — including in a Warren Administration — will know that violating the public trust and breaking anti-corruption and public integrity laws will come with consequences.”

I couldn't agree more, but she's going to take a lot of shit for this one.

Why is Nancy Pelosi talking about bribery?

The House Speaker does not always use the most precise language. But I think she's on to something here, although the lawyers will definitely quibble. (That's what lawyers are for.)

In case you missed it, here's how Pelosi explained the President's offense in a press conference about the impeachment inquiry this week:

The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections. That's bribery.

I am saying that what is — the president has admitted to and says it's perfect, I say it's perfectly wrong. It's bribery.

Pelosi is up against the fact that we tend to look at this through the wrong end of the telescope. We instinctively think what a corrupt politician wants is for someone to pay him off for using his power on behalf of the one paying.

But Trump's interaction with President Zelensky works the other way round. He's the one offering a bribe. He's offering to pay the literally embattled Ukrainian president for phony smears of Joe Biden and Democrats' 2016 campaign with our money. So what we've got here is both attempted bribery and theft from the taxpayers. It would still be bribery if Trump had offered Zelensky money from his own pocket. (Fat chance of that; he'd weasel on paying up as his foundation did with the vets.) But it's no less bribery because the money that Congress duly appropriated isn't Trump's to play with.

None of this is in the interest of United States foreign policy in support of democratic Ukraine or of the United States at all. It's in the personal interest of Donald Trump. No surprise, since the guy never discernibly has ever done anything in anyone's interest but his own.

Pelosi gets this guy. Can the rest of us?...For a less colloquial take on the "bribery" accusation, here's Charlie Savage. In particular, he explores what the men who designed the Constitution might have meant by "bribery." But for impeachment, I don't think we need to be that historically grounded and fair minded. The Orange Cheeto hopes he can use our money for his own re-election. 'Nuff said.

New Yorkers know that Rudy Giuliani is a corrupt, self-seeking crook

Rudy's "business" in Ukraine seems to have included trading access to a corrupt U.S. president for profit. In addition to trying to extort campaign dirt, he was involved an effort to steer Ukrainian gas contracts to Republican bigwigs. And now federal prosecutors and counter-intelligence investigators are looking into security aspects of Rudy Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine. Amazing that Attorney General Bill Barr who seems to be a Trump sycophant hasn't been able to shut this probe down -- but so far, it continues.

But corruption is nothing new for this preening TV lawyer who was once a federal prosecutor and then New York's mayor. In fact, there are plenty of New York City firefighters and other first responders who believe that many of the deaths in the collapse of the Trade Towers on 9/11 should be laid to Giuliani's account -- because as mayor he was more interested in money and looking good than emergency preparedness.

This 2015 documentary from Brave New Films gave these critics a chance to tell their stories. It's free; it's only 18 minutes; it's a painful story of greed and betrayal of people trying to do their jobs. The bitterness left by Rudy's wake is deep.
Some snippets:

First responders
John Sferazo -- iron worker
"We're the kind of people that rush into an emergency while others flee. ... I've lost a great deal of my breathing capacity. ..."

Marianne Pizzitola -- FDNY - EMS Officers Union, Pension & Benefits coordinator
"The only times we saw him down there [Ground Zero] was for press conferences ... it really wasn't to help us. ... We haven't seen Mayor Giuliani help anybody."

Command center
Jim Riches - Deputy Chief, FDNY
"Why was Giuliani running around that day? Because he didn't have a command post, because he put it in the wrong place [the 23rd floor of Number Seven World Trade Center.] ... He abandoned ship; he was a coward that day."

[The city rented the location from the lease holder, Larry Silverstein, for 1.4 million dollars a year for 20 years. Silverstein returned Rudy's favor by holding a $100,000 fundraiser for the mayor on his yacht.]

Andy Ansbro -- New York City firefighter, former police officer
"It cost the lives of first responders that day because the command center was located at the World Trade Center. There were 60 firefighters killed in the Marriott; there was 121 killed in the North Tower ... if that command center had been operational, the death toll would probably have been cut in half. ... Before, during, and after there's not much you can find that Rudy did right except a really good television appearance."

[FWIW, the 9/11 Commission Report agreed with the assessment of these first responders.]

Motorola Radios carried by the firefighters
Jim Riches - Deputy Chief, FDNY
"Giuliani became mayor in 1994. He knew there was something wrong with those radios; they did not work for communication in the World Trade Center the 1993 bombing."

[In 2001, the Giuliani administration finally ordered new radios in 2001. They bought units that were never field tested from Motorola with a no-bid contract. Somehow the price jumped from 1.4 million to 14 million over a weekend.]

"... When new radios were put in service, they lasted one week."

[The new radios had to be recalled. Firefighters were reissued the old, malfunctioning radios. Cops evacuated the Towers because they could communicate. Firefighters, who never heard the order, remained in the Towers and died.]

For Rudy's misdeeds then, those harmed saw no accountability. Sound familiar?

The Constitutional crisis we have feared has come

Way back, it seems like forever ago, in the first days of the Trump regime, those of us watching our country's degradation would sometimes respond to the latest violation of democratic norms by asking "Is this the Constitutional crisis?" And cooler legal heads would say "No, not this."

Well, now we're there, with Trump-toady William Barr using the former "Department of Justice" to cover for a criminal president. And apparently the entire Republican party is ready go along for the ride on the wrecking ball, treating lawful investigations and Congressional oversight as an attempted coup.

We should note that this attempt to consummate the coup is the product of the success of resistance. Until we elected a Democratic House of Representatives last November, Republicans could pretend to adhere to norms of law while packing the courts and turning the apparatus of government against much of the people. No longer -- we kicked back and they have to knock over yet more of the remaining facade of Constitutional government to protect what they are making, a corrupt enterprise they hope to make permanent.

I'll turn further description the Constitutional crisis over to an unrolled Twitter thread from David Rothkopf, one of the more enlightened permanent Washington swamp creatures who cares deeply about the country.

I don't think we fully realize the profundity of Barr's assertions yesterday. The idea that a president can determine whether or not he ought to be investigated or that a president is incapable of committing obstruction are not just outrageous assaults on Constitutional values.

Taken in the context of this administration's systematic rejection of the oversight role of Congress and of the law--whether it is the emoluments clause of Constitution or the obligation of the IRS to hand over tax returns to the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- what we are seeing is nothing less than a coup, to use a word the president has grown fond of. Trump and Barr are seeking to eliminate the checks and balances that are a hallmark of our system and to effectively render the Congress subservient to the presidency.

Combine this with the efforts of the Senate to load the courts with judicial candidates loyal to the president and the implication of McConnell, Graham & Co. that they will not fulfill their own Constitutional obligations, and you see a devastating picture.

The GOP, in order to achieve narrow political objectives which translate into the further empowerment of a tiny minority who represent America's richest and most powerful individuals, corporations and financial institutions, are seeking changes that will forever change us.

That they are doing this in complicity with foreign enemies, themselves captive to oligarchies whose interests are commingled with those of our ever, rapaciously ascendant ruling class, makes this all the more pernicious. Not only is the power of the few being raised above that of the many who once were the supreme source of authority in our democracy, but our national interests are being compromised to serve those of foreign rulers who wish us ill, or who are actively seeking to destroy us as a nation.

Should Trump, Barr, McConnell and Graham succeed, then those foreign enemies, notably Vladimir Putin, will succeed as well. Our democracy will lay in ruins. Our Constitution will be gutted. The idea that no man is above the law in America will be murdered before our eyes.

That is the effort we saw afoot yesterday... and that we see today as Barr refuses the House's request that he testify...and that we are seeing daily in serial rejections of the authority of the Congress or of the laws, regulations and standards that have governed past presidents.

It may have appeared that Barr was just an incompetent, a bad liar lying badly. But look at his words--from his assertions of presidential authority to his refusal to condemn the most obvious forms of collaboration with a foreign enemy -- and you will recognize the depth, severity and urgency of the crisis we face. Don't discount this as politics as usual. Don't shrug this off as more partisanship in Washington. Read or watch what was said...what is said and done daily.

And then recognize that impeachment of Trump and of Barr, potent challenges to their efforts to grab power and systematic efforts to remove them from office by the ballot box, must be our collective highest priority. The alternative is the final step in the empowerment of an American aristocracy and the cold blooded murder of the ideas and ideals that our founders and every subsequent generation of Americans fought for.

What are we doing about it? It's on us.

Criminal drug pushing

From the New York Times. Evidently the GOPers are willing to kill off the communities that support their diseased party to nudge up the profits of the drug companies. Vote these sickos out on Tuesday!

Just a smart business move

Visiting my mother-in-law in New York City in 2010, I heard frequent complaints about a new condo building that cut off her view of the river. "And they named it after Donald Trump!" I took a picture:
Today I read that the building's residents have freed themselves from the Trump branding.

The push to remove the Trump branding from 200 Riverside Boulevard began in 2017. In response to concerns raised by some of the 377 condo owners, the condo board began discussions of possibly removing the Trump name from the building’s facade.

... The prospect of expensive litigation with the Trump Organization scared many residents, and a small group vigorously opposed excising the Trump name.

An internal message board for residents showed that division.

“I am adamant that the sign should remain on the building,” a resident wrote. “We bought in the building with it. There is no reason to take it down.”

Another wrote: “Arguably, at one time the Trump name may have contributed something to the value of our apartments. That is clearly not the case today.”

Eventually a majority took their case for removing the name to court and this month they won the right to take down the Trump name.

They apparently had a good economic argument that getting rid of the Trump name was to their benefit, raising the value of the their units.

... Trump apartments in 2017 sold for an average of $1,741 per square foot in Manhattan, or 6.6 percent less than the average Manhattan condominium, according to CityRealty, an online apartment broker. At Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, average prices per square foot declined from $3,000 in 2013 to about $2,000 last year.

Trump may be making out like the bandit he is on his Saudi and Russian friends, but even for affluent condo buyers, he's a dud.