Category: Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr

Stories of injustice and justice

Chemical Weapons Redux: Taking the World to the Brink of Annihilation

MintPress News

Chemical Weapons Redux: Taking the World to the Brink of Annihilation

Years of chemical weapons allegations, saber rattling and a desperate search for a casus belli have culminated in a situation which risks a serious conflict of world powers.

By Rick Sterling       April 10th, 2018

Top Photo | National security adviser John Bolton listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, April 9, 2018, in Washington. (AP/Evan Vucci)

Western neoconservatives and hawks are driving the international situation to increase tension and danger. Not content with the destruction of Iraq and Libya based on false claims, they are now pressing for a direct U.S. attack on Syria.

As a dangerous prelude, Israeli jets flying over Lebanese airspace fired missiles against the T4/Tiyas Airbase west of Palmyra.

This was Predicted

As reported at Tass, the Chief of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, predicted the current events almost a month ago. The report from March 13 says:

“Russia has hard facts about preparations for staging the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the government forces. After the provocation, the U.S. plans to accuse Syria’s government forces of using chemical weapons … furnish the so-called ‘evidence’ … and Washington plans to deliver a missile and bomb strike against Damascus’ government districts.”

Gerasimov noted that Russian military advisors are staying in the Syrian Defense Ministry’s facilities in Damascus and “in the event of a threat to our military servicemen’s lives, Russia’s Armed Forces will take retaliatory measures to target both the missiles and their delivery vehicles.”

Read more by Rick Sterling

WMD Claims in Syria Raise Concerns over U.S. Escalation

Miko Peled: A Silenced Critic Of Israeli Policy

The Escalating War On Syria And Need For International Law

Amnesty International’s Kangaroo Report On Syria

The situation is clearly dangerous with risk of sliding into international conflict and even WW3. If that happens, it would mean the demise of civilization. All of this so that the West can continue supporting the sectarian armed groups seeking to overthrow the Assad government … in violation of international law and the UN Charter.

The most powerful country in the world is now led by a real estate, hotel and entertainment mogul without political experience. Behind the scenes, there is a powerful foreign policy establishment determined to maintain and reclaim U.S. unilateral “leadership” of the world. They don’t like the fact that the U.S. is losing influence, prestige and power around the world. Israel and Saudi Arabia are especially upset that their plans for regional domination are failing.

East Ghouta, Damascus

East Ghouta is a district of farms and towns on the north-east outskirts of Damascus. For the past six years, various armed factions controlled the area. On a nearly daily basis, they launched mortar and hell cannon missile attacks into Damascus, killing many thousands. This author personally witnessed two such mortar attacks in April 2014.

By the end of March, most of East Ghouta had been retaken by the government. With the peaceful evacuation of armed militants, civilians flooded into the humanitarian corridors and then government camps for the displaced. The campaign was proceeding quickly with minimal loss of life as the Russian Reconciliation officers negotiated agreements which allowed the militants to keep small weapons and be transported to Idlib in the north. Vanessa Beeley documented the situation including the happiness and relief of many civilians as they finally made it to safety. One described the feeling as “like being reborn”. Robert Fisk was on site and reported what he saw firsthand in stories titled Watching on as Islamist fighters are evacuated from war-torn Eastern Ghouta and Western howls of outrage over the Ghouta siege ring hollow.

Watch | Emotional Footage From East Ghouta Evacuation

As reported at the Russian Reconciliation Centre, by the end of March, 105,857 civilians had moved into government-controlled areas while 13,793 militants plus 23,433 family members had been transported north. Those who wanted to stay, including former fighters, were welcomed. They could rejoin Syrian society with the same rights and obligations as other Syrians.

The last remaining opposition stronghold was the town of Douma, controlled by the Saudi funded Jaish al Islam. Negotiations were prolonged because Jaish al Islam did not want to go to Idlib which is dominated by another militant opposition group, Jabhat al Nusra also known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

The Chemical Incident

On Saturday, April 7 video and stories claiming a chemical weapons attack in Douma were broadcast. The video showed dozens of dead children. On Sunday the story grabbed western mainstream media headlines.  U.S. President Trump quickly came to a conclusion, President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay.”

There has been no objective investigation. The media claims are based on statements and videos from members of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and White Helmets. Both organizations receive significant funding from the U.S. government and call for Western intervention in Syria.

Chemical weapons have emerged as the quick and easy justification for aggression.  One year ago, in April 2017, it was the incident at Khan Shaykoun. That resulted in a U.S. attack on a Syrian air base just days later. The subsequent investigationdiscovered that dozens of victims had shown up in hospitals in diverse locations and up to 100 kms away from the scene of crime BEFORE the event happened. Strangely, and indicating the investigation team’s bias, this red flag pointing to fraud was not investigated further. If it was just a few victims or just one location, it might be a mistake in time record-keeping. However, in this case, there were dozens of discrepancies in multiple locations, clearly raising the possibility of fraud.

Now we have the incident in Douma, a town on the outskirts of Damascus. The armed opposition is in retreat. They have tried to pressure the US and NATO to intervene directly since 2012. They have access to chemical weapons in East Ghouta and a motive. They also have thousands of prisoners. This is the group which put hundreds of prisoners, primarily women, and children, in cages on the streets of Douma.

Who Benefits?

The timing of the chemical weapons incidents is also noteworthy. As documented here, one year ago on 30 March 2017 Ambassador Haley said the U.S. policy was no longer focused on getting Assad out. Five days later the chemical incident at Khan Sheikhoun happened, quickly followed by blaming the Syrian government, a U.S. attack and a restoration of the demand that “Assad must go”. On March 29 Trump said that U.S. forces will withdraw from Syria “very soon”. This was followed by outcries from the media and political establishment. Now, following the Saturday chemical weapons incident, the U.S. is again threatening to intervene directly. The chemical weapons incidents have consistently resulted in the reversal of a proposed change in hostility toward Syria.

Neoconservatives and the supporters of ‘regime change’ foreign policy have various theories why the Assad government would perpetrate a chemical weapons attack. Senator John McCain says the Syrian President was “emboldened” by the previous Trump statement.

Juan Cole, an academic who promoted the assaults on Libya in 2011, has a different theory. He says:,“Chemical weapons are used by desperate regimes that are either outnumbered by the enemy or are reluctant to take casualties in their militaries. Barrel-bombing Douma with chem seems to have appealed to the regime as a tactic for this reason. It had potential of frightening the Douma population into deserting the Army of Islam.” In contrast with his theory, chemical weapons were used extensively by the U.S. in Vietnam and Iraq when they were far from desperate. As evidenced in the flow of civilians into government-held areas, most of the civilian population are happy to get away from the sectarian and violent Army of Islam (“Jaish al Islam”). Cole seems to be basing his theories on inaccurate western media coverage just as he did regarding Libya where sensational claims about a looming massacre in Benghazi were later shown to be fraudulent.

It’s clear who benefits from sensational media coverage about a chemical weapons incident: those who seek to demonize the Syrian government and President and want the U.S. government to intervene militarily. Every time there is an incident, it is quickly accepted and used by the governments and organizations who have been seeking ‘regime change’ in Syria for many years.

Manipulating Public Opinion

Nikki Haley, United States’ Ambassador United Nations, shows pictures of Syrian victims of alleged chemical weapons attacks as she addresses a meeting of the Security Council on Syria at U.N. headquarters, April 5, 2017. (AP/Bebeto Matthews)

The manipulation of western opinion about the Syrian conflict using fake events is not theory; it has been proven.  A good example is the fake kidnapping of NBC reporter Richard Engel in December 2012.  Engel and his media team were reportedly kidnapped and threatened with death by “Shabiha” supporters of the Syrian president. After days in captivity, the American team was supposedly rescued by Free Syrian Army “rebels” after a shootout. In 2015 it was confirmed this was a hoax perpetrated by the FSA and their American supporters. The entire charade was carried out by the “rebels”. The goal was to demonize the Assad government and its supporters and to romanticize and increase support for the armed opposition. Neither Engel nor NBC confessed to the reality until it was about to be exposed years later, pointing to duplicity and collusion in the deception.

Four and half years ago, on 21 August 2013, the most famous chemical weapons incident occurred. The Syrian government was immediately accused of launching a sarin attack which killed hundreds of children and civilians. Over the next six months, investigations were carried out. The conclusions of Seymour Hersh, Robert Parry and the research site whoghouta.com concluded that the attack was almost certainly NOT from the government but actually from one of the ‘rebel’ factions with support from Turkish intelligence services. Two Turkish parliamentary deputies held a press conference and publicly revealed some of the evidence. The intent then, as now, was to provide justification and provocation for the U.S. and NATO to intervene directly.

An Imminent Attack

Today there is the imminent possibility of a major attack based on the allegations of a clearly biased source. Whatever happened to international law and legal due process? Why is violence being threatened before there is a serious objective investigation of the chemical incident? If the accusations against Syria are true, why not have a serious investigation, especially now that the area has been liberated today (9 April) and safe access can be provided?

The drums of war are pounding. After over one year of incessant Russia bashing and disinformation, is the public ready to go to war with Russia over Syria? Neoconservative hawks and their Israeli and Saudi allies seem to want this. Their plans and predictions for Iraq, Libya and Yemen were delusional fantasies with the price paid in blood by the people of those countries and in treasure by Americans as well. Sadly, there has not been any accountability for the media and political establishment that promoted and launched these wars. Now they want to escalate the aggression by attacking Syria, causing vastly more blood to flow and risking a confrontation with a country which can fight back.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at rsterling1@gm

A $76,000 monthly pension: Why States and Cities Are Short On Cash

The New York Times

A $76,000 monthly pension: Why States and Cities Are Short On Cash

Governments are struggling as mounting pension obligations crowd out the rest of their budgets. Oregon faces a severe, self-inflicted crisis.

By Mary Williams Walsh     April 14, 2018

A public university president in Oregon gives new meaning to the idea of a pensioner. Joseph Robertson, an eye surgeon who retired as head of the Oregon Health & Science University last fall, receives the state’s largest government pension.

It is $76,111.               Per month.

That is considerably more than the average Oregon family earns in a year.

Oregon — like many other states and cities, including New Jersey, Kentucky and Connecticut — is caught in a fiscal squeeze of its own making. Its economy is growing, but the cost of its state-run pension system is growing faster. More government workers are retiring, including more than 2,000, like Dr. Robertson, who get pensions exceeding $100,000 a year.

The state is not the most profligate pension payer in America, but its spiraling costs are notable in part because Oregon enjoys a reputation for fiscal discipline. Its experience shows how faulty financial decisions by states can eventually swamp local communities.

Oregon’s costs are inflated by the way in which it calculates pension benefits for public employees. Some of the pensions include income that employees earned on the side. Other retirees benefit from long-ago stock market rallies that inflated the current value of their payouts.

For example, the pension for Mike Bellotti, the University of Oregon’s head football coach from 1995 to 2008, includes not just his salary but also money from licensing deals and endorsements that the Ducks’ athletic program generated. Mr. Bellotti’s pension is more than $46,000 a month.

“You get to the point where you can no longer do more with less — you just have to do less with less,” Nathan Cherpeski, the manager of Klamath Falls, said. Credit: Leah Nash for The New York Times

The bill is borne by taxpayers. Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System has told cities, counties, school districts and other local entities to contribute more to keep the system afloat. They can neither negotiate nor raise local taxes fast enough to keep up. As a result, pensions are crowding out other spending. Essential services are slashed.

“You get to the point where you can no longer do more with less — you just have to do less with less,” said Nathan Cherpeski, the manager of Klamath Falls, a city of about 21,000 in south-central Oregon.

Klamath Falls’s most recent biennial bill from the pension system, known as PERS, was $600,000 more than the one before. PERS has warned that the bills will keep rising. Mr. Cherpeski has had to cut back on repairing streets and bridges.

Even as the American economy is humming, many states and cities are still hurting from the 2008 financial meltdown. The crash hammered their pension funds and tax revenues, but didn’t reduce the amounts they owe retirees.

It wasn’t until 2016 that average state tax collections returned to pre-2008 levels. In the meantime, states and cities have had to rebuild pension funds to cover the rising numbers of retirees drawing benefits. That has left less money for the police, school sports programs and everything else. Local residents might not know why, but they are paying more taxes and getting scantier services in return.

Kate Dwyer, a board leader in the Three Rivers School District in southwestern Oregon, worries that because of the drain on funding, a generation is growing up without theater, wood shop, orchestra and other school programs that were offered in the past. Credit: Leah Nash for The New York Times

Costs are rising even in places that previously acted to defuse the problem. Colorado trimmed pensions in 2010, but a new $32 billion shortfall means more pension cuts and tax increases are likely. Detroit sliced its pension obligations in bankruptcy and persuaded philanthropists to chip in, but it is not clear that the city has an affordable plan.

In San Francisco, the school board wants voters to approve a $298 “parcel tax” on real estate, ostensibly to raise $50 million to pay teachers a living wage.

“That’s a worthy objective, but it’s not the real reason,” said David Crane, a former trustee of the California teachers’ pension system. He said the school district’s retirement costs had grown by $50 million over the last five years, devouring resources that would have gone to teachers.

Obligatory Contributions

Oregon is a blue state, but in its restive red hinterlands, tax increases are politically off limits and financial distress has been severe since 1994, when logging was curtailed to save an endangered owl. Lately, things have been getting even worse.

When a man was reported yelling and firing his gun on the property of a school in rural Josephine County, it took two hours for a sheriff’s deputy to arrive, said Kate Dwyer, chairwoman of the board for the Three Rivers School District.

Evergreen Elementary School, part of the Three Rivers district, operates without a physical education teacher. Credit: Leah Nash for The New York Times

The county has cut sheriff patrols, closed its mental health department and kept its jail at less than half capacity because of a lack of guards.

Dave Valenzuela, the Three Rivers school superintendent, traces the latest woes directly to PERS. The system is run at the state level, but it is bankrolled in large part by obligatory contributions from local governments.

This year, Three Rivers was poised to receive its first increase in state education funding in years, a reflection of growing enrollment. But Oregon raised by more than 50 percent the amount that Three Rivers had to contribute to PERS. So Mr. Valenzuela had to lop five days off the school year, ask each school to cut its budget by 10 percent and lay off the district librarian and English specialist.

PERS sets the pension bill for each entity — local government, university system and the like — based on the pay and demographics of its workers. Just about everyone’s bills are getting bigger.

That includes the state, by far the system’s biggest contributor.

Oregon now has fewer police officers than in 1970, is losing foster-care workers at an alarming rate and has allowed earthquake and tsunami preparations to lapse. A 2016 survey turned up “a large number of bridges with critical and near-critical conditions” because of “longstanding inadequate funding.”

Because Evergreen cannot afford a physical education teacher, Tiffany Bonney’s first-grade class uses a video program called GoNoodle to exercise. Credit: Leah Nash for The New York Times

Even prosperous communities are being pinched. The Beaverton School District, outside Portland, had to get rid of 75 teachers last year when its mandatory pension contribution rose by $14 million. That was after shedding 340 teachers in 2012.

“I have town hall meetings, and the parents are just confounded by this,” said Mark Hass, a Democratic state senator from Beaverton.

A Golden Touch

Oregon’s unusual method for calculating pensions tends to generate lavish payouts.

For decades, PERS calculated pensions two different ways, and retirees could choose whichever produced the bigger numbers.

The first way was similar to what most states do, basing pensions on each worker’s final salary and years of service. But Oregon’s lawmakers included a golden touch, redefining “salary” to include remuneration from any source.

That was how Mr. Bellotti, the former football coach, came to be the state’s third-highest-paid pensioner, at roughly $559,000 a year.

                                                                  Mike Bellotti in 2007, when he was the University of Oregon’s head football coach. After retiring as the university’s athletic director in 2010, he started drawing the biggest government pension in the state. Since then, two other retirees have surpassed him. Credit: Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard, via Associated Press

When he retired in 2010 as the university’s athletic director, the standard pension formula was applied to his salary, plus a share of the outside licensing fees and product endorsements the football program brings in. (His pension details, along with those of other retirees in the system, were first obtained in 2011 from PERS by two newspapers, The Oregonian and The Statesman Journal.)

Mr. Bellotti said he never asked for a supersize pension. In 1995, he said, the university started to include a percentage of all endorsement and licensing fees in coaches’ salaries.

“It was basically to augment the university’s ability to pay a competitive salary to its coaching staff,” he said.

When Mr. Bellotti retired, he was partway through a five-year, $1.9 million-a-year contract, which he said was still below the league average of about $3 million.

PERS made up for it with a big pension. “It was pay later as opposed to paying now,” he said.

Dr. Robertson, the former Oregon Health & Science University president, said he had retired and started drawing his pension last fall, after learning he had multiple sclerosis. He said he agreed to stay on through the end of the academic year, without pay, “for the sake of continuity.”

A building at the Dome School, a private alternative school in Josephine County, Ore. The county cannot afford 24-hour sheriff patrols, and during one emergency at the school, two hours passed before a deputy could respond. Credit: Leah Nash for The New York Times

A spokeswoman for the medical center said Dr. Robertson’s pension was based on his salary, incentive payments, clinical pay and unused sick or vacation time.

Oregon’s second way of calculating pensions dates back to 1946: For decades, every public worker got a simulated tracking account. It was credited with 6 percent of each paycheck, then left to compound at a predetermined rate.

In the early years, a low rate was used because the pension system invested in bonds that didn’t yield much.

But in the 1970s, lawmakers started nudging the rate up, eventually to 8 percent. Then, the system’s trustees decided 8 percent should be a guaranteed minimum. In years when markets produced higher returns, the accounts compounded at those rates, after money-management fees. During the 1990s bull market, accounts compounded by up to 21 percent a year.

When workers retired, their employers were required to “match” the account balances, doubling them. Then PERS would base the pensions on the total.

Children at the Dome School. Across Oregon, local officials have been told to brace for 15 to 20 more years of rising pension bills. Credit: Leah Nash for The New York Times

‘Planet Tiffany’

Randall Pozdena, an economist who supervised the pension system’s investments in the 1990s, gave speeches warning that the situation was unsustainable.

“The only way you’re going to get out of this is if the state is hit by a golden asteroid from Planet Tiffany,” he recalled saying.

But efforts to change the system, including a 1994 ballot initiative, were blocked by the State Supreme Court, which ruled that accruals could not be reduced during any public worker’s career.

So, when lawmakers required government retirees to pay Oregon’s 9 percent income tax, as everybody else did, they also increased pensions by 9.89 percent, giving retirees extra money to pay the tax with.

“It’s an affront to everybody who pays taxes,” said Bruce Dennis, a retired carpenter from outside Portland who earned a $54,000-a-year pension by swinging a hammer for 45 years. No one gives him extra money to cover his taxes.

Students at Evergreen and other schools in the Three Rivers district, which covers a thinly populated area larger than Rhode Island, spend hours on buses every day. The district has asked Oregon officials to help cover its transportation costs, so far in vain. Credit: Leah Nash for The New York Times

“At every step of the way, they’ve made decisions that went against the interests of the public,” he said.

Starting in 2003, the tracking accounts were phased out. But workers who already had the accounts were allowed to keep them. New hires got a more modest retirement plan.

“The cost of this pension system is not caused by the people we are hiring today,” said Steven Rodeman, executive director of the Public Employees Retirement System. “This is a legacy problem from the 1980s and 1990s.”

For workers with the tracking accounts, PERS dialed back the annual returns to 8 percent, then to 7.5 percent in 2016. That is still more than what PERS’s investments have generated over the last decade. And so the pension fund’s financial hole continues to deepen.

Across Oregon, local officials have been told to brace for 15 to 20 more years of rising pension bills. That’s when the current generation of retirees will start dying out.

“All we can do is wait,” said Jay Meredith, finance director of Grants Pass, the seat of Josephine County.

In the meantime, mounting pension costs mean that a generation of schoolchildren is growing up in the area with no theater program, no orchestra, no wood shop and minimal sports, chorus and art.

That’s if they can get to school.

A county road recently washed out, stranding 300 people. Ms. Dwyer, of the Three Rivers School District, reported the problem to a public-works official.

She recalled his response: “I have trucks, but I can’t put gas in them to come to you and dig it out.”

Kentucky teachers march on state capitol

Yahoo News

Kentucky teachers march on state capitol

Yahoo News Photo Staff        April 14, 2018

Kentucky teachers march on state Capitol

Teachers from across Kentucky gather inside the state Capitol to rally for increased funding for education, Friday, April 13, 2018, in Frankfort, Ky. (Photo: Bryan Woolston/AP)

As Kentucky teachers declare victory after the Republican-dominated legislature overrode vetoes from the state’s GOP governor on a spending plan that included new money for education, the question going forward is whether teachers will be able to sustain their momentum into the fall elections, when Republicans will try to defend their supermajority.

Teacher Karen Schwartz brought a sign to Kentucky’s state capitol on Friday declaring “Support our Schools.” But it was her shoes, a comfortable pair of Crocs, that had a bigger message for state lawmakers. “They think we are going to get tired and go home,” she said. “We’re not going to get tired.”

Teachers had been booing Republicans for months after they passed changes to the teachers’ pension system. But Friday, teachers cheered as Republicans voted to override Gov. Matt Bevin’s vetoes.

Those cheers were dampened later when Bevin decried teachers for leaving work to protest at the Capitol, causing more than 30 school districts in the state to close for the day.

Thousands of teachers rallied inside and outside the Capitol on Friday. The rally took on a festival-like atmosphere as some teachers sat in lawn chairs or sprawled out on blankets. The Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young hit “Teach Your Children” bellowed from the loudspeakers. (AP)

Sen. Gary Peters calls for shutdown of Line 5 oil pipeline because of damage

Detroit Free Press

Sen. Gary Peters calls for shutdown of Line 5 oil pipeline because of damage

Todd Spangler, DFP         April 13, 2018

(Photo: National Wildlife Federation)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., on Friday called on state and federal officials to at least temporarily shut down an oil and natural gas pipeline at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac after reports that it was damaged by an apparent anchor strike.

Peters talked with Coast Guard officials regarding the situation with Line 5 and said the pipeline should be shut until a visual inspection of the damage can be made.

“Based on the limited information currently available, two segments of the pipeline will require repairs in the short-term, but a visual inspection is still needed to assess the full extent of the damage,” Peters said.

“Upcoming blizzard conditions and high winds pose a threat to the already-damaged pipeline and, even worse, would render on-site cleanup equipment ineffective in the event of an oil spill. We simply cannot afford that kind of risk to Michigan’s most precious natural resource.”

Related: 

Line 5 oil pipeline in Straits dented by ship

Much of Michigan is expected to be hit by a snow and ice storm this weekend.

The Free Press reported this week that “vessel activity” believed to have damaged submerged electric cables running through the straits where lakes Michigan and Huron meet last week may also have caused three dents in Line 5.

Enbridge, a Canadian oil transport company that owns and operates the twin oil pipelines through the Straits of Mackinac, let the state know about the dents early this week and characterized them as “very small” and posing “no threat to the pipeline,” according to Gov. Rick Snyder’s office.

Peters sent his request to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said after Peters’ remarks that she agreed that Line 5 should be taken out of service “until we know it’s safe.”

Officials with PHMSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Free Press. An official with Michigan DEQ, Scott Schaefer, said his agency was focused on the leaking fluid from the power lines that were damaged and referred calls regarding the condition of Line 5 to the governor’s office.

Anna Heaton, a spokeswoman for the governor, noted that Lt. Gov. Brian Calley has visited the site this week and was briefed by Coast Guard officials who “reported no immediate threat from Line 5.”

“The Coast Guard is in charge of the investigation and in command of the scene at this time. If we receive any information that indicates an immediate health or safety threat from this source of heat for the Upper Peninsula during the approaching winter storm, we will act accordingly,” Heaton said.

In a statement, Enbridge said it is aware of “the sensitive environment in which Line 5 operates.” The company said it is “closely monitoring weather conditions and forecasts in and around the Straits” and will temporarily shut down the pipeline “should the weather deteriorate to a point where we are concerned about the ability for our personnel to respond to an incident.”

Contact Todd Spangler at 703-854-8947 or at tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler.

Great Lakes pipeline bill proposed by Bishop

The Law Is Coming, Mr. Trump

New York Times – Editorial

The Law Is Coming, Mr. Trump

By The Editorial Board          April 10, 2018

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

Credit: Jon Han

Why don’t we take a step back and contemplate what Americans, and the world, are witnessing?

Early Monday morning, F.B.I. agents raided the New York office, home and hotel room of the personal lawyer for the president of the United States. They seized evidence of possible federal crimes — including bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations related to payoffs made to women, including a porn actress, who say they had affairs with the president before he took office and were paid off and intimidated into silence.

That evening the president surrounded himself with the top American military officials and launched unbidden into a tirade against the top American law enforcement officials — officials of his own government — accusing them of “an attack on our country.”

Oh, also: The Times reported Monday evening that investigators were examining a $150,000 donation to the president’s personal foundation from a Ukrainian steel magnate, given during the American presidential campaign in exchange for a 20-minute video appearance.

Meanwhile, the president’s former campaign chairman is under indictment, and his former national security adviser has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators. His son-in-law and other associates are also under investigation.

This is your president, ladies and gentlemen. This is how Donald Trump does business, and these are the kinds of people he surrounds himself with.

Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office. Though Republican leaders in Congress still keep a cowardly silence, Mr. Trump now has real reason to be afraid. A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials, and a federal judge, had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a crime there and that they didn’t trust the lawyer not to destroy that evidence.

 On Monday, when he appeared with his national security team, Mr. Trump, whose motto could be, “The buck stops anywhere but here,” angrily blamed everyone he could think of for the “unfairness” of an investigation that has already consumed the first year of his presidency, yet is only now starting to heat up. He said Attorney General Jeff Sessions made “a very terrible mistake” by recusing himself from overseeing the investigation — the implication being that a more loyal attorney general would have obstructed justice and blocked the investigation. He complained about the “horrible things” that Hillary Clinton did “and all of the crimes that were committed.” He called the A-team of investigators from the office of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, “the most biased group of people.” As for Mr. Mueller himself, “we’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said. “Many people have said, ‘You should fire him.’”

In fact, the raids on the premises used by Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, were conducted by the public corruption unit of the federal attorney’s office in Manhattan, and at the request not of the special counsel’s team, but under a search warrant that investigators in New York obtained following a referral by Mr. Mueller, who first consulted with the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. To sum up, a Republican-appointed former F.B.I. director consulted with a Republican-appointed deputy attorney general, who then authorized a referral to an F.B.I. field office not known for its anti-Trump bias. Deep state, indeed.

Mr. Trump also railed against the authorities who, he said, “broke into” Mr. Cohen’s office. “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” the president tweeted early Tuesday morning, during what was presumably his executive time. He was wrong. The privilege is one of the most sacrosanct in the American legal system, but it does not protect communications in furtherance of a crime. Anyway, one might ask, if this is all a big witch hunt and Mr. Trump has nothing illegal or untoward to hide, why does he care about the privilege in the first place?

The answer, of course, is that he has a lot to hide.

This wasn’t even the first early-morning raid of a close Trump associate. That distinction goes to Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman and Russian oligarch-whisperer, who now faces a slate of federal charges long enough to land him in prison for the rest of his life. And what of Mr. Cohen? He’s already been cut loose by his law firm, and when the charges start rolling in, he’ll likely get the same treatment from Mr. Trump.

Among the grotesqueries that faded into the background of Mr. Trump’s carnival of misgovernment during the past 24 hours was that Monday’s meeting was ostensibly called to discuss a matter of global significance: a reported chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians. Mr. Trump instead made it about him, with his narcissistic and self-pitying claim that the investigation represented an attack on the country “in a true sense.”

No, Mr. Trump — a true attack on America is what happened on, say, Sept. 11, 2001. Remember that one? Thousands of people lost their lives. Your response was to point out that the fall of the twin towers meant your building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan. Of course, that also wasn’t true.

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Fire the special counsel. Please.

Yahoo News

Matt Bai’s Political World

Fire the special counsel. Please.

Matt Bai         April 12, 2018 

Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, Getty

Let me put it to you this way, Mr. President. Who are you going to listen to — the voice of the stable genius inside your head, or the timid voices of experience, the ones that said you’d never win?

You know what you want to do. Just do it already.

Oh sure, all the sour-faced pundits are warning of a national crisis if you follow through. All those bed-wetting Republicans on the Hill are counseling patience and caution. Your senior staff is glued to their Twitter feeds, praying you won’t hit Send on something you can’t take back.

But they’re not the ones who sit in that swivel chair, are they. They never in their lives registered so much as a blip in the Nielsen ratings. Paul Ryan’s so smart that you gave him the biggest tax cut in the history of civilization and he still can’t hold his seat in Podunk, Wis.

Go on, Mr. President. Fire Bob Mueller. Please.

Don’t stop there, either — fire the rest of them, too. Sessions will be useless. That Boy Scout Rosenstein won’t have your back, either. There must be something in the halls of the Justice Department that causes people to suddenly grow a conscience, like some goiter sprouting on the soul.

Burn it down, Mr. President. Do what you really came here to do. Let’s see how those Ivy League lawyers like taking orders from Attorney General Laura Ingraham and her new deputy, Michael Cohen.

You said it yourself: This latest raid on Cohen, your most trusted personal lackey, was an attack on America. I couldn’t agree more. The first image that jumped into my mind when I heard the news was Pearl Harbor.

Many years from now, our grandchildren will mark the day of the Stormy Daniels Raid with little shoebox dioramas of federal prosecutors marching into Rockefeller Center.

What were they really after, anyway? Payoffs to paramours? Campaign finance violations? No, Mueller’s aiming higher than that.

Prosecutors sometimes talk about “tickling the wire,” by which they mean purposely freaking out witnesses who might be under electronic surveillance. You rattle the dumpster a little, and then you sit back and listen as the rats inside panic.

My guess is that Mueller is onto the real stuff now: loans from Moscow laundered through European banks, clumsy backchannel connections to your meathead son-in-law, bullying from the Oval Office that might cross the line into outright obstruction.

He’s crossed the moat and breached the castle now. He’s rummaging through the Hall of Armor.

And what he’s doing now is goading you. Tickling the wire. Pushing your buttons to see just how reckless your cronies can get.

You and I know who Mueller is, Mr. President. Born in Manhattan, schooled at St. Paul’s and Princeton. He played high school hockey with John Kerry. He even looks like John Kerry. He might be John Kerry, for all we know.

The newspaper profiles never fail to mention that Mueller joined the Marines, fought in Vietnam, got himself covered head to toe with medals for valor. Meanwhile, you described your own version of combat, after all those deferments, as having dodged venereal diseases while hopping from one bed to the next.

Can’t anyone around here take a joke?

No, Mueller isn’t just a prosecutor; he’s the stand-in for all the bluebloods and public service types who never respected you, who never thought you belonged, who always thought you too coarse and outer-borough, too much of a carnival barker, to join their clubs or sit on their boards.

He’s trying to destroy you, Mr. President. He thinks you’re beneath the office.

And if you’re going to stop him, what better time to do it than now, just as Jim Comey’s big memoir hits the virtual shelves? You don’t need me to tell you what getting rid of Mueller would do to the Comey Sanctification Tour. This is what you’re better at than anyone alive — commandeering the news cycle.

This isn’t hard. Look at all the people you’ve already fired. Priebus, Flynn, Tillerson, Price, McMaster — the list goes on.

Of course, you didn’t actually fire them, eye to eye. That’s something you only do on TV, when people are watching and you get to humiliate some wannabe TV star. Your style is more to let them know on Twitter, or in the fake news.

Which is why I’ve theorized that you’re a man of show business, not of action. I’ve said that other world leaders sense your insecurity and walk all over you. I’ve never bought the storyline about you as an aspiring tyrant because, when you get down to it, I don’t think you really have the steel.

So prove me wrong. Reprise Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre. Find your Robert Bork.

Because here’s the thing, Mr. President: All these responsible people frantically warning of a constitutional crisis if you do this — they’re afraid. They don’t think the institutions of American democracy and jurisprudence are strong enough now to withstand the assault. They think the Republican Party you’ve annexed will prostrate itself in your presence, as it has for the entire last year.

Even more than that, they don’t believe in the voters. Their faith is shaken. They fear that Americans are so angry at the system, so dimwitted and disillusioned, that we’ll accept anything that comes disguised as anti-elitism.

They worry that you’ll win, and America’s claim to being a nation of laws will be lost.

I don’t. If I’m being straight with you, I think firing Mueller is your Waterloo. And this kind of clear-cut crisis may be exactly what we need.

I think there are more than enough Republicans who genuinely believe in the bedrock principles of American government (and, not for nothing, who can see what your leadership is about to do to them in the midterm elections), and a solid majority of patriotic voters who won’t stand by and watch another president try to strong-arm the judicial system.

I think trying to shut down the special counsel and seize control of the Justice Department will be the thing that brings this entire Legoland of an administration crashing down on itself.

So enough bluster, Mr. President. It’s time to walk the walk.

Because I’m pretty sure that all you’ll have left, when Mueller and Rosenstein and Sessions are all back at law firms basking in the public’s admiration, are enough unshakable, reactionary supporters to just about fill a park in Charlottesville.

Everyone else in your party will have moved on to President Pence.

 

Juz whaa kine ah Merica da yah wann pepul?

John Hanno, www.tarbabys.com      April 10, 2018    

Juz whaa kine ah Merica da yah wann pepul?

trump’s bait n switch, 3 card monte, pig in a poke, catfishing presidency, and his cabal of Republi-con enablers, have reneged on every boast he used to scam his desperate supporters. Hood, meet Wink! “I know and will hire the best and brightest people.”  “I’ll repeal and replace Obamacare with something much, much better and cheaper on my first day in office.” “I’ll build the best wall and have Mexico pay for it.” “Nobody knows infrastructure better than me.” “I’m the best deal maker; I wrote the best book on the subject.” “I know more than the generals.” “We passed the biggest tax cut in history and it’ll pay for itself.” “I will protect your Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, unlike all the other Republicans running against me.” “I will bring back all the jobs.” “Manufacturer’s will no longer take their jobs off shore.” “I’m really an environmentalist.” “I’ll probably never see any of my golf clubs while I’m in office; I’ll never leave the White House because I’ll be working too hard,” “… draining the swamp.”

I could go on and on and on but I just don’t have the time or energy. I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag here; most of us have been on to this flim flamery even before trump’s “greatest” inauguration

It took more than 14 months of catastrophic overreaching, obsessive repeals of necessary environmental and consumer regulations and Obama era achievements, unchecked self enrichment and gross malfeasance, but the donald’s entrenched voters are finally starting to peal off. Unfortunately we can’t say the same for the Republi-con leadership in congress. They never fail to wear their American flag pins on their lapels and champion their constitutional fealty, especially the 2nd Amendment, but then show their true patriotic stripes by ignoring their duty to reign in their party’s morally and ethically bankrupt commander in chief.

No far right political donor wish or demand has gone unfulfilled. Potential administration employees, no matter how unqualified or flawed, were ever rejected as long as they pledged allegiance to the leader. Every undaunted loyalist was rewarded in spades.

trump’s world view is “flat” again. Beware progressive libtards, his idea of new and improved is to return Merica to it’s white Christian roots. The good old Robber Baron era was just fine by the rich and powerful, and black folks were “really happier and better-off during slavery.” No need for civil rights, workers rights, women rights or voters rights. And forget the “Great American Melting Pot;” immigration is passé, especially for black and brown folks. trump knows what’s best for us and will “Make America Great Again.” Believe him!

Forget public education and science and climate change and global warming and facts and figures and by the way, the “truth” is in the eye of the beholder. Evolution is just another unproven theory, no better than Creationism. Just ask his Secretary of Education, Betsy Devos.

The new Evangelicals associated with trumpism have embraced a new paradigm. They’re no longer tethered to a moral compass. They’ve found a new Jesus Christ, one who shuns the poor and downtrodden. They forget the teachings of Jesus and the Bible when its convenient. Women are just another commodity to be used and abused. And greed is actually Godly.

Move over renewable, sustainable energy, there’s a “new” more toxic agenda oozing from the American landscape and environment; like more expensive and unclean – clean coal, and with it a financial boost to black-lung health care professionals, but not to miners pensions. Un-stranding stranded fossil fuel assets held by trump and republican corporate and billionaire donors is job one.

gas2.org

Move aside blossoming and cheaper wind and solar energy, unreliable and toxic tar-sand oil is pulsing through 100’s of thousands of miles of risky pipelines again, Obama and Native American’s be damned. Never mind that America’s precious lakes, rivers and aquifers are necessary for drinking water and vital for our survival. Yes, “Water is Life” Mni Winconi, but their greedy benefactors must be repaid.

   

Our National Parks and public lands will finally be exploited yall; we will leave no stone or pristine, pastoral vista unturned, undrilled or unplundered. ANWR is just a bunch of letters.

Gunsmoke is not just a legacy rerun on WeTV, Dodge City is back pardner. The wild west is back pilgrim. Step aside Matt Dillon, the new sheriff in town is gunnin for you and your namby pamby gun control rules and ‘regalations’ and he’s packing an AR-15 with high capacity magazines and a bump stock. Snowflake Barack Husain Obama is old school gentlemen, our teachers and preachers are armed and dangerous. Our bartenders will settle all drunken disputes.

This new GOP is also all in favor of Putin and his thievin oligarchs, because well, they’re really just like them. trump and most of his administration is deferential to Putin and the Russians because they all seem to have had previous contacts or business dealings. trump’s advisers admonished him: “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” Putin on his sham of an election win during a recent phone call. trump ignored them and congratulated him anyway. Sure, he’s an autocratic tyrant and leader of the largest criminal enterprise in the world, one who thinks nothing of murdering opponents and members of the press but trump says we do bad things too. During the call, trump refused to discuss Putin’s interference in our election and their poisoning of the father and daughter in the UK. Apparently just collateral damage.

In this new trump world order, you can have all the guns you want, if it gives you a false sense of security or makes you feel safe in a sanctuary city Republi-cons tout as overrun with dangerous Muslims and immigrants….But that won’t protect your children and grandchildren from the young white terrorists bent on reaping as much carnage as their readily available military weapons will afford.

You can support trump’s and his conflicted Climate Denier in Charge Scott Pruitt’s war on our environment and the Obama administration’s clean water and clean air legislation…But that will only increase America’s health care costs and your own health insurance premiums.

You can ignore the corruption and self dealing, rampant in trump’s white house and cabinet…But that won’t give you a living wage or protect your hard earned Social Security and Medicare entitlements.

trump admires and praises profiteering dictators around the world, because he’s on the same wavelength with these tyrants and his goals and ethics are diametrically opposed to democratic principles and our democratic institutions. Will you support a kleptocratic despot or American Democracy?

You can ignore trump’s unabashed self dealing campaign to enrich himself, his family, his wealthy friends, his billionaire donors and his cabinet’s fortunes…but that won’t trickle down to your substandard wages and benefits; we’ve been there done that, time and again. Never worked and never will.

USA Today

trump said he’s “unbelievably” rich, and if you hired him, he would work to make America rich again, make you rich again. But you should have doubted when he refused to show you his audited income taxes; he was probably on the verge of his seventh bankruptcy. You wouldn’t believe Mr. “Government Should Be Run As a Business” has mucked up every business enterprise he’s ever floated. You refused to see through the BS.

But Robert Mueller and his steadfast team of investigators are tightening the noose, having focused the bright lights on trump’s favorite and impolite personal attorney Michael Cohen.

The donald has impulsively fired most of the moral and sensible checks and balances to his presidential derangement. You may be witnessing the end of America’s constitutional nightmare. I’m sure the Vegas line on his impending demise no longer favors the (White) house.

You can still prefer to sate your implied moral and ideological indignation’s, with the diversionary atonement emanating from the trump / Fox News State Press every day…but America’s calamities grow intransigent. You can choose to believe trump and Fox when they call the outraged and determined free press, critical thinkers and skeptics fake news, but the real truth may just set you free.    John Hanno, www.tarbabys.com

Trump’s tax cuts didn’t benefit U.S. workers and made rich companies richer, analysis finds

Newsweek

Trump’s tax cuts didn’t benefit U.S. workers and made rich companies richer, analysis finds

By Nicole Goodkind          April 10, 2018

President Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts might not have trickled down to American workers in the way that he suggested they would.

Trump and Republican leadership have long touted their tax cuts as a massive boon to America’s working class, if not through direct tax reductions or refunds, then through the trickle-down effect of bonuses and wage increases from their employers who receive massive corporate cuts. “Tax reform is working,” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said in January, mentioning Apple’s decision to reward a bonus of $2,500 in stock grants to some Apple employees. “Workers are coming home and telling their families they got a bonus, or they got a raise or they got better benefits.”

President Donald Trump flanked by daughter Ivanka Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks during a tour of the H&K Equipment Company in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, on January 18. President Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts might not have trickled down to American workers in the way that he suggested they would. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

But a new analysis of all Fortune 500 companies found only 4.3 percent of workers will receive a one-time bonus or wage increase tied to the business tax cuts, while businesses received nine times more in cuts than what they passed on to their workers, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, a political advocacy group devoted to tax reform. The analysis also found that companies spent 37 times as much on stock buybacks than they did on bonuses and increased wages for workers.

The study looked at corporate data, news reports and independent analyses of the top companies in the United States, which represent more than two-thirds of the gross domestic product, and analyzed changes in wages and share buybacks since the announcement of the Republican tax plan in December.

“There are too many disingenuous claims that the Trump and Republican tax cuts for corporations will trickle down to the middle class,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “President Trump and Republicans gave huge tax cuts to big drug companies, big oil and other corporations, but corporations are giving back little—if anything—to working families,” said Clemente. “In fact, this [analysis shows] that 433 corporations out of the Fortune 500 have announced no plans to share their tax cuts with employees.”

The newest projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the Republican tax plan led to, in part, a 2018 deficit $242 billion higher than previously estimated.

Roughly 36 percent of Americans approve of the Republican tax cuts, according to a March Quinnipiac University Poll and a CNBC poll found that 52 percent of working adults said they had not seen a change to their paychecks since the cuts were passed.

In January, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said 90 percent of all working adults would see increases in their paychecks because of the cuts.

Judge finalizes $25 million settlement for ‘victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university’

ABC Good Morning America

Judge finalizes $25 million settlement for ‘victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university’

Aaron Katersky and M.L. Nestel, GMA    April 10, 2018

Trump University attendees are getting paid back.

A federal judge in the Southern District of California on Monday finalized a $25 million settlement to be paid to attendees of the now-defunct real estate seminar called Trump University.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel’s decision came after an appeals court rejected arguments from a Florida woman who attended Trump University and said she wanted to pursue a separate lawsuit.

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman called the settlement a victory for Trump U. “victims.”

“Judge Curiel’s order finalizing the $25 million Trump University settlement means that victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve,” he said in a statement, adding that the amount surpassed the initial number the class-action suit initially negotiated.

“This settlement marked a stunning reversal by President Trump, who for years refused to compensate the victims of his sham university,” the statement added. “My office won’t hesitate to hold those who commit fraud accountable, no matter how rich or powerful they may be.”

Trump University was a for-profit series of courses about real estate and entrepreneurship that also pushed people to buy Trump’s books.

The courses themselves claimed to teach attendees Donald Trump’s secrets to success in real estate. Plaintiffs accused Trump University of false advertising.

Within weeks of Trump’s ascending to the presidency, Trump University agreed to settle the claims for $21 million, plus another $4 million for the New York Attorney General’s office.

Schneiderman first sued Trump in 2013 for allegedly defrauding thousands of Trump University attendees out of millions of dollars.

The $25 million settlement will recover about 90 percent of the costs of those who attended Trump University, which, as part of the settlement, did not admit to wrongdoing.

The Trump Organization spokesman said when the lawsuit was filed that he had “no doubt” Trump University would prevail if the case went to trial, but a “resolution of these matters” was a priority so Trump could focus on the running the country.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell Aren’t Going to Protect Robert Mueller

GQ – Politics

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell Aren’t Going to Protect Robert Mueller

Jay Willis, GQ            April 10, 2018

The revelation that the FBI raided the New York offices of longtime Trump lawyer and noted hush money dispensary Michael Cohen on Monday has sent our president into another one of his trademark spells that leave White House reporters scrambling to identify previously-unused synonyms for “angry.” And despite hints that the searches were conducted at the direction of the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York, Trump, surrounded by grim-faced members of his Cabinet, directed his ire elsewhere. “Why don’t I just fire Mueller?” he mused. “Well, I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on. We’ll see what happens.” He added: “Many people have said you should fire him.”

This morning, in the aftermath of the president’s most serious threat to fire the special counsel since that time he tried to fire the special counsel, Paul Ryan woke up and tweeted about bridges.

The speaker has adopted a strategy of willful ignorance for dealing with whatever unhinged nonsense Donald Trump said the night before. “As the Speaker has always said, Mr. Mueller and his team should be able to do their job,” explained a Ryan spokesperson after the president’s weekend fusillade against Mueller in March. When pressed, Mitch McConnell praised Mueller’s integrity but declined to protect the investigation from presidential interference on the grounds that McConnell doesn’t believe that the president will fire him. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” he said after Trump smeared the Russia probe as a partisan witch hunt. “I don’t think Bob Mueller is going anywhere.” On Tuesday, he trotted out more of the same.

This is nice, if Mitch McConnell’s hunch is right. But he seems to suggest that the only appropriate catalyst for taking action to prevent Trump from firing the special counsel would be… Trump firing the special counsel. This is not how prospective legislation works. And if he is wrong—if, hypothetically speaking, his trust in Donald Trump’s patience and good temperament is misplaced, and if the president ignores the advice of his lawyers and moves to oust Mueller anyway—Congress’ failure to act will be solvable only with a time machine. I do not believe that Mitch McConnell has invented a time machine.

Watch:  What if Trump Actually Fires Mueller? See the video.

For Ryan and McConnell, their approach to the Mueller investigation has always been the product of a complex risk calculus. When it was in its early stages, they paid lip service to its importance because they understood that firing the special counsel would have been a de facto admission of wrongdoing in the court of public opinion, which, in turn, would have hampered their efforts to take health care away from poor people and give tax cuts to rich people. At last, they had the scenario they always dreamed of: a unified Republican government, and an empty vessel of a president who would obediently sign whatever bills they put in front of him. All they cared about was ensuring that Trump’s impetuousness didn’t hasten its end.

As Mueller reaches the president’s inner circle, though, the investigation, not Trump’s urge to obstruct it, emerges as the most significant obstacle to the implementation of the Republican agenda. Ryan and McConnell are about to spend the summer trying to convince the American people that the GOP has earned itself another two-year legislative majority. An ongoing investigation that yields a growing collection of guilty pleas from the party’s scandal-ridden presidential administration will not be a helpful element of that sales pitch. And while they can’t openly call for Trump to fire Mueller, they can remain conspicuously quiet whenever the president floats the possibility of doing so in public.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have never been mistaken for paradigms of moral courage. But their persistent failure to denounce the president’s attacks on an investigation they claim to support is as much a product of ideologically-motivated pragmatism as it is one of inveterate spinelessness.

If Mueller’s work proceeds at its current pace, there may come a point at which Republican leadership decides that for the sake of their policy goals, they’d rather take their chances with a constitutional crisis than face whatever damning facts the investigation might uncover if it were to continue unabated. To Ryan and McConnell, Mueller has gone from inconvenient irritant to existential threat, and they need him gone. Their silence demonstrates that as clearly as their words ever could.