Donald J. Trump May Be Enshrined in American History as The Tarriest of Political Tarbabys

John Hanno October 31, 2017

The list of folks who probably wished they never associated with Trump, his campaign, or his administration grows daily. The latest I’m sure, are Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos. Trump’s entire administration and campaign team have had to hire personal legal defense. During the entire 8-year Obama Administration, not one single person was embroiled in scandal or had to hire defense lawyers.

During a news conference on July 22, 2016, Trump said Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and assistant chairman Rick Gates “were doing a fantastic job” and had earlier called Papadopoulos an “oil and gas consultant and an excellent guy.”

These first indictments appear just the beginning. The allegations against Manafort and Gates look iron clad and serious enough to induce their full cooperation in the possible implication and prosecution of others. And Papadopoulos’s guilty plea, in the works since July, ratted out other campaign operatives.

What implores these people to sell their souls to a devil like Trump? Is it the money; most of them are already wealthy beyond reason? Is no amount of wealth enough for them? Or are they attracted to the absolute power of the American presidency?

Trump’s stated goal is to “Make America Great Again” but everything he’s done, every executive order he’s signed has done just the opposite. He and the Republi-cons in congress have tried to make American’s sicker again by attacking the ACA and taking health care away from the 10’s of millions of poor Americans who finally acquired health insurance under Obama.

Its attack on the Consumer Protection Agency and its handouts to Wall Street will make most Americans poorer. They’ve made America’s air and water dirtier and more detrimental to its citizens. It works day and night proposing ways to plunder America’s natural resources and national treasures and turn them over to profit seeking fossil fuel and mining interests.

It’s proposed tax bill, will attempt to make incredibly rich people and corporations even richer. And it will starve the federal governments ability to fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. It’s policies will take power and resources away from workers, organized labor, consumers and anyone who supports the Democrats and their progressive agenda to rebuild our middle class.

Its obvious their main goal is to reverse every progressive accomplishment of the Obama Administration. And at the same time, to “Make Trump Inc. Great Again.”

Most of us, including progressive Democrats, critical thinkers, cheated business acquaintances of Trump, folks who bought into the bogus Trump University, women subjected to Trump’s sexual abuse, unrepentant Never Trumpers, and most of the rest of the entire world, saw the tar right from the start. Trump clearly showed us “who he really was”; and the dubious types he admired, praised and brought into his campaign and administration emphasized his flawed morality and character.

The swamp he promised to drain was obviously just another blatant Trump campaign lie. And the conflicts and mingling of his questionable business empire with his Executive Branch responsibilities, which he quite publicly promised to separate, was never perfected.

The Republican’s wholly tainted by Trumpism, are for the most part hanging on for dear life, hoping to rehabilitate their damaged reputations with their mythical tax reform legislation. They’re looking for a brier patch to escape into but the options are limited at this late date. A very few of the Republicans in Congress have managed to extricate themselves from the dirty tarbaby. Sen. John McCain, never a Trump fan, finally stood up and decided to make peace with his conscience before he meets his maker. Sen. Bob Corker, a principled conservative, decided that two 6-year senate terms were enough, and is attempting to clean his moral slate during the balance of his term. Sen. Jeff Flake, another principled conservative and very popular in his caucus, decided one term is all he could stomach when someone like Trump was steering the party into the abyss.

As the chips continue to fall, maybe others in congress will come to Jesus. There’s a good chance the promised monumental tax reform Trump and the Republi-cons promise will be as successful as their 7 year campaign to repeal President Obama and the Democrats efforts to heal our sick health care system.

Many of us, soon after Trump was elected but long before he took office, realized these Republi-cons would get drunk on their newfound power trifecta and couldn’t help but overreach. The insane promises this radical right cabal trumpeted during and since the campaign sealed their legislative fate long before the first vote was cast. The promises were so far removed from reality that even Trump’s bamboozled base supporters are even now beginning to drift back to Earth.

The Putinistic propaganda being spewed from the White House, from spokes-person Sarah Huckabee Sanders and from the ult-right media, rings more incredulous every day. Attempting to shift the focus from Trump’s Russia thing to Hillary’s Russia thing will fail on the facts Mr. Mueller and his team are uncovering by the hour.

Still, I can’t understand, that in spite of Trump’s historically low approval ratings, why are more than 80 percent of Republicans still solidly behind him. What will it take to finally turn his supporters from co-indicted treasonous co-conspirators into the courageous American patriots they pretend to be.

I can’t even imagine the hue and cry from the Republi-cons in congress if an Obama or Clinton Administration were implicated in 1/10th the scandals and conspiracies as Trump World. Articles of Impeachment would have already issued from every Republi-con controlled congressional committee.

When all is said and done, the list of criminal conduct and conspiracy will be impressive and substantial. But Robert Mueller may have a legal tight rope to walk, so that all the work his investigative team undertakes getting to the bottom of Putin’s attack on our Democracy, and the Trump campaign’s collusion, couldn’t be undone by pardons from Trump. Mr. Mueller may have to somehow slow-walk some of the prosecutions until after Trump is impeached, in order to bring all these criminals to justice.

John Hanno

The Old, Hidden Pipeline at the Bottom of the Great Lakes

EcoWatch

By Sierra Club October 12, 2017

The Old, Hidden Pipeline at the Bottom of the Great Lakes

By Conor Mihell

At dawn, I launch my kayak and paddle into a velvety expanse of turquoise water. Here, in northern Michigan’s Straits of Mackinac, Great Lakes Michigan and Huron meet like the middle of an hourglass. To the east, the rounded form of Mackinac Island is the centerpiece of an archipelago in Lake Huron.

According to an Ojibwe creation story, this is Mishee Makinakong, the Great Turtle, whose surfacing shell became a refuge for plants and animals as floodwaters surged in the days before time. Today, droves of ferries buzz to and from the island, a bustling summer tourist destination replete with kitschy fudge shops and horse-drawn carriages.

I’m paddling south, dwarfed by the Mackinac Bridge, a monolithic five-mile-long ribbon of green steel and gray concrete that connects Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. Lake Michigan sprawls westward. Its watery horizon shows the telltale dance of rising winds just as a wave splashes over my deck, reminding me to put away my camera. This isn’t a place to multitask.

Currents deflect my course as I approach a towering bridge support. It’s like paddling on the ocean, with steep waves and a strengthening tidelike flow. I angle my bow to compensate. Whitewater reflects from the concrete pillar, and eddies swirl in its wake. Even on this sunny June morning, the conditions hint at a destructive violence that makes me nervous.

Almost directly beneath my kayak runs Enbridge Line 5, twin 64-year-old pipelines at the bottom of the lakebed. Line 5 transports 23 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids daily for 645 miles through Wisconsin and Michigan to Canada. Enbridge, the Canadian oil transportation giant, operated Line 5 inconspicuously until 2010; that’s when its sister pipeline, Line 6B, ruptured, pouring a million gallons of tar sands bitumen into the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. It was the largest land-based oil spill in U.S. history. Suddenly, the peril posed by vintage infrastructure carrying petrochemicals through the heart of North America’s greatest supply of freshwater loomed very large.

University of Michigan hydrologist Dave Schwab has concluded that the Straits of Mackinac is “the worst possible place for an oil spill in the Great Lakes.” At any given time, one million gallons of petroleum products are contained in the 20-inch pipes that run along the lakebed. If one ruptured, oil would disperse with the currents that slosh back and forth through the straits. In Schwab’s worst-case scenario, 720 miles of lakeshore would be devastated.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicts that in the event of a spill, no more than 40 percent of the oil could be recovered by deploying booms and “in-situ burning”—lighting surface slicks on fire, a technique used in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The success rate would plummet in the winter, when the Straits of Mackinac are sheathed in feet of ice. This apocalyptic vision was enough to convince more than 60 municipalities and all 12 of Michigan’s Native American tribes that Line 5 should be decommissioned. Even Republican state attorney general Bill Schuette called for a timeline to shut down the pipeline.

“We know that Line 5 will ultimately be decommissioned,” said David Holtz, the Sierra Club’s Michigan Chapter chair and the coordinator of Oil and Water Don’t Mix, a grassroots coalition of pipeline opponents with 30,000 supporters. “The only question is, will it be decommissioned before or after it ruptures?”

Line 5 is a product of the post–World War II construction boom, when oil companies installed pipelines across the country to fuel an increasingly global economy. “Michigan was the shortest path to get oil to market,” Holtz explained. “We get all the risk; Enbridge gets the reward.”

For Enbridge’s part, spokesperson Michael Barnes said that Line 5 is “vital to the people of Michigan, who need energy to heat their homes and power their industries.” (Holtz contends that the company has never documented this claim.) In the five years following the Marshall disaster, Barnes said, the company spent nearly $5 billion on maintenance, inspection, and leak detection: “This is the largest, most comprehensive and sophisticated maintenance and inspection program of any pipeline system in the world.”

As for the underwater pipelines at the Straits of Mackinac, Barnes said, “Recent inspection reports show that Line 5, from an engineering and integrity perspective, is like new and in excellent condition.”

Retired Dow chemical engineer Ed Timm has taken it upon himself to debunk such rosy claims. Timm, a resident of nearby Harbor Springs whose dark ponytail and youthful swagger belie his 72 years, started studying the pipeline and checking out Enbridge’s claims out of curiosity. He dug up early construction journals documenting the hasty process whereby pipelines were “pulled,” as the engineers called it, across the straits. He plotted modern imagery alongside original blueprints to show how lakebed sediments have shifted drastically over time, placing stress on sections of pipe. And he tabulated modern-water-current data to prove that the Straits of Mackinac are capable of producing double the 2.25-mile-per-hour currents envisioned by the original plans.

Timm also discovered a 2016 technical report that he calls a “smoking gun.” The operating-easement agreement for Line 5 between Enbridge and the state of Michigan mandates that there be no unsupported spans longer than 75 feet. According to engineer Mario Salvadori, who reviewed the design, “The pipe must not be allowed to span a valley of more than 140 feet.” But the 2016 report, conducted by the Ohio-based engineering firm Kiefner and Associates, mentions unsupported spans of up to 286 feet, indicating that over time the pipeline has shifted from its moorings. Timm showed me a graph of how the pipeline’s resiliency diminishes across increasing lengths of unsupported spans. Just like a bent paper clip, he said, a pipeline with inadequate support will become fatigued as it flexes back and forth in moving water. “At that distance a steel pipeline basically turns into a noodle.”

For Native Americans in the Great Lakes region, Line 5 touches a cultural nerve. The area a spill might affect coincides with tribal fishing areas and encompasses the watery heart of the indigenous creation story.

On Lake Michigan’s east shore, the Grand Traverse Band operates a couple dozen boats, whose captains and crews make their livelihoods fishing year-round, said Desmond Berry, the band’s natural resources manager. Fish is a staple of the indigenous diet and is recognized in the tribe’s traditional clan system. “We are a fish nation,” Berry said.

The Grand Traverse Band is one of five Chippewa and Ottawa tribes with commercial operations in the Mackinac Straits area. They harvest more than three million pounds of whitefish and lake trout annually. Commercial and recreational fishing on the Great Lakes contribute $2.5 billion to Michigan’s economy, with tourists spending $660 million annually in the counties straddling the Straits of Mackinac, supporting 7,500 local jobs. “If there were a spill,” Berry said, referring to the slogan on the state’s license plate, “‘Pure Michigan’ would cease to exist.”

Safeguarding freshwater was at the core of efforts to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock and is also at the root of Native American opposition to Line 5. Little Traverse Bay Bands member Jannan Cornstalk takes her responsibility as a water protector seriously. “Women have the ability to bring life into the world through our bodies,” she said. “An embryo is held in a sack of water inside of us. That’s our connection to the water.”

Cornstalk was shocked when she learned about the sunken pipelines at Mackinac Straits. Since 2015, she’s organized Labor Day demonstrations to coincide with a popular Mackinac Bridge walk, which includes canoe and kayak flotillas and, this year, an arts and culture festival. “I believe our water is in crisis,” she said, pointing to the contaminated drinking water in Flint, which led to a federal state of emergency in 2016. “Clean water is a basic human right. Without it we are nothing.”

The water calms and my mind wanders as I paddle back to shore. After the flood in the Ojibwe creation story, Sky Woman, the mother of humanity, settled on the Great Turtle’s back and summoned the animals to help rebuild the earth. One at a time, the strongest swimmers—Beaver, Fisher, Marten, and Loon—plunged into the water, diving deep in search of soil. Each returned to the surface empty-handed and ashamed.

Then diminutive Muskrat volunteered. The other animals snickered, but Muskrat dove in anyway and stayed underwater an exceedingly long time. “The Muskrat floated to the surface more dead than alive, but he clutched in his paws a small morsel of soil,” recounted the late Ojibwe historian Basil Johnston. “Where the great had failed, the small succeeded.”

Sky Woman spread the modicum of soil on the turtle’s back and infused the new world with the breath of life. Turtle Island grew, teeming with grasses, flowers and trees. Finally, Sky Woman gave birth to the first Anishnabeg—the people—whom she instructed to live in harmony with all of creation, living and yet unborn.

The Mackinac area exerts an energy that pulls at the conscience of indigenous people and newcomers alike. A 2016 poll revealed that nearly two-thirds of Michigan voters do not support oil pipelines in the Great Lakes. Holtz hopes the state government will soon have a moment of reckoning like he did five years ago, when he represented the Sierra Club in an initial meeting to discuss Line 5 with other environmentalists. Holtz had recently retired from a career in media and “wasn’t looking for a fight.” Then he spent an autumn weekend alone at the straits. “I drove across the bridge and looked over the water,” he recalled. “I decided I didn’t want to be responsible for not stopping an oil spill in a beautiful, wonderful place that I love. I don’t want that to be my legacy.”

Reposted with permission from our media associate SIERRA magazine.

Harvey spells it out: markets alone won’t protect you

The Guardian

Harvey spells it out: markets alone won’t protect you

Joseph Stiglitz September 8, 2017

We should have learned the lessons of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy – we need political action to help prevent disasters

US CBP Air and Marine Operations aircrew evacuate stranded residents trapped by flood waters in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Photograph: Donna Burton/Zuma/Avalon.red

Tropical Storm Harvey has left in its wake upended lives and enormous property damage, estimated by some at $150 to $180 billion. But the storm that pummeled the Texas coast for the better part of a week also raises deep questions about the United States’ economic system and politics.

It is ironic, of course, that an event so related to climate change would occur in a state that is home to so many climate-change deniers – and where the economy depends so heavily on the fossil fuels that drive global warming. Of course, no particular climate event can be directly related to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But scientists have long predicted that such increases would boost not only average temperatures, but also weather variability – and especially the occurrence of extreme events such as Harvey. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded several years ago, “There is evidence that some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic influences, including increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.” Astrophysicist Adam Frank succinctly explained: “Greater warmth means more moisture in the air which means stronger precipitation.”

To be sure, Houston and Texas could not have done much by themselves about the increase in greenhouse gases, though they could have taken a more active role in pushing for strong climate policies. But local and state authorities could have done a far better job preparing for such events, which hit the area with some frequency.

In responding to the hurricane – and in funding some of the repair – everyone turns to government, just as they did in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. Again, it is ironic that this is now occurring in a part of the country where government and collective action are so frequently rebuked. It was no less ironic when the titans of US banking, having preached the neo-liberal gospel of downsizing government and eliminating regulations that proscribed some of their most dangerous and antisocial activities, turned to government in their moment of need.

There is an obvious lesson to be learned from such episodes: markets on their own are incapable of providing the protection that societies need. When markets fail, as they often do, collective action becomes imperative.

And, as with financial crises, there is a need for preventive collective action to mitigate the impact of climate change. That means ensuring that buildings and infrastructure are constructed to withstand extreme events, and are not located in areas that are most vulnerable to severe damage. It also means protecting environmental systems, particularly wetlands, which can play an important role in absorbing the impact of storms. It means eliminating the risk that a natural disaster could lead to the discharge of dangerous chemicals, as happened in Houston. And it means having in place adequate response plans, including for evacuation.

Effective government investments and strong regulations are needed to ensure each of these outcomes, regardless of the prevailing political culture in Texas and elsewhere. Without adequate regulations, individuals and firms have no incentive to take adequate precautions, because they know that much of the cost of extreme events will be borne by others. Without adequate public planning and regulation, including of the environment, flooding will be worse. Without disaster planning and adequate funding, any city can be caught in the dilemma in which Houston found itself: if it does not order an evacuation, many will die; but if it does order an evacuation, people will die in the ensuing chaos, and snarled traffic will prevent people from getting out.

America and the world are paying a high price for devotion to the extreme anti-government ideology embraced by Donald Trump and his Republican party. The world is paying, because cumulative US greenhouse-gas emissions are greater than those from any other country; even today, the US is one of the world’s leaders in per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. But America is paying a high price as well: other countries, even poor developing countries, such as Haiti and Ecuador, seem to have learned (often at great expense and only after some huge calamities) how to manage natural disasters better.

After the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the shutdown of much of New York City by Sandy in 2012, and now the devastation wrought on Texas by Harvey, the US can and should do better. It has the resources and skills to analyze these complex events and their consequences, and to formulate and implement regulations and investment programs that mitigate the adverse effects on lives and property.

What America doesn’t have is a coherent view of government by those on the right, who, working with special interests that benefit from their extreme policies, continue to speak out of both sides of their mouth. Before a crisis, they resist regulations and oppose government investment and planning; afterwards, they demand – and receive – billions of dollars to compensate them for their losses, even those that could easily have been prevented.

One can only hope that America, and other countries, will not need more natural persuasion before taking to heart the lessons of Hurricane Harvey.

Joseph E Stiglitz is a Nobel prizewinner in economics, professor at Columbia University, a former senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank, and one-time chair of the US president’s council of economic advisers under Bill Clinton

Since you’re here …

… we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organizations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. I’m happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information. Thomasine F-R.

If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to support it, our future would be much more secure.

Become a supporter

Make a contribution

Agriculture a culprit in global warming, says U.S. research

Thomson Reuters Foundation

Agriculture a culprit in global warming, says U.S. research

by Ellen Wulfhorst Thomson Reuters Foundation August 22, 2017

While soil absorbs carbon in organic matter from plants and trees as they decompose, agriculture has helped deplete that carbon accumulation in the ground

NEW YORK, Aug 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Agriculture has contributed nearly as much to climate change as deforestation by intensifying global warming, according to U.S. research that has quantified the amount of carbon taken from the soil by farming.

Some 133 billion tons of carbon have been removed from the top two meters of the earth’s soil over the last two centuries by agriculture at a rate that is increasing, said the study in PNAS, a journal published by the National Academy of Sciences.

Global warming is largely due to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from such activities as burning fossil fuels and cutting down trees that otherwise would absorb greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

But this research showed the significance of agriculture as a contributing factor as well, said Jonathan Sanderman, a soil scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts and one of the authors of the research.

While soil absorbs carbon in organic matter from plants and trees as they decompose, agriculture has helped deplete that carbon accumulation in the ground, he said.

Widespread harvesting removes carbon from the soil as do tilling methods that can accelerate erosion and decomposition.

“It’s alarming how much carbon has been lost from the soil,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Small changes to the amount of carbon in the soil can have really big consequences for how much carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere.”

Sanderman said the research marked the first time the amount of carbon pulled out of the soil has been spatially quantified.

The 133 billion tons of carbon lost from soil compares to about 140 billion tons lost due to deforestation, he said, mostly since the mid-1800s and the Industrial Revolution.

But the findings show potential for the earth’s soil to mitigate global warming by absorbing more carbon through such practices as better land stewardship, more extensive ground cover to minimize erosion, better diversity of crop rotation and no-till farming, he said.

The world’s nations agreed in Paris in 2015 to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases generated by burning fossil fuels that are blamed by scientists for warming the planet.

President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris accord in May, saying it would undermine the U.S. economy and weaken national sovereignty.

Supporters of the accord, including some leading U.S. business figures, said Trump’s move was a blow to international efforts to tackle global warming that would isolate the United States.

Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org

It’s more obvious than ever: Trump doesn’t care about the national interest. He’s in it for himself.

Chicago Tribune Commentary:

It’s more obvious than ever: Trump doesn’t care about the national interest. He’s in it for himself.

Max Boot, For the Los Angeles Times July 11, 2017

For a president who lies more than any of his predecessors — even Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon! — Donald Trump can also be candid to a fault. Recall how, after firing FBI Director James Comey, he blew apart the administration spin that this had nothing to do with any investigation of the Trump campaign by openly admitting that he acted because of the “Russia thing.” Now he’s done it again.

Trump’s aides claimed that he was tough on Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Hamburg, Germany. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump “pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement.” Anonymous U.S. officials denied Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s assertions that Trump had “accepted” Putin’s false assurances that Russia was not behind the hacking and leaking of Democratic Party documents last year.

And then on Sunday morning Trump took to Twitter to essentially confirm what Lavrov said: “I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion…..”

Yes, he did: In Warsaw, the day before his meeting with Putin, Trump opined, as he has many times before, “I think it could very well have been Russia, but I think it could well have been other countries…. Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure.”

This is, as the British say, bollocks. We do know for sure: the FBI, CIA, NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a unanimous “high confidence” assessment in January that Russia was behind the hacking last year, and that its intent was to hurt Hillary Clinton and to help Donald Trump. Trump’s misleading assertions that it was “three or four” intelligence agencies, not all 17, are meaningless, because there was no dissent from the other intelligence agencies. And, as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said, “We saw no evidence whatsoever that it was anyone involved in this other than the Russians.”

Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump refuses to accept reality. In Hamburg, he even discussed with Putin an Alice-in-Wonderland proposal of forming a joint American-Russian “Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.” As Sen. John McCain noted sarcastically on Sunday, “I am sure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort since he’s doing the hacking.” The idea is so inane that by the end of the day even Trump had disowned it, leaving his Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who had loyally called the cyber-security partnership “a very significant accomplishment for the president,” twisting in the wind.

Trump’s denial of Russian election-meddling is all the more startling when contrasted with his reckless promulgation of baseless claims that millions of illegal ballots were cast in the presidential election. There is not an iota of evidence to support this assertion. It is an entirely imaginary scandal manufactured by Trump because his fragile psyche can’t handle the fact that Hillary Clinton won more popular votes than he did.

Yet Trump is pursuing nonexistent evidence of wrongdoing with all the powers at his disposal, setting up a voter fraud commission, headed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, that is itself fraudulent. Pretty much every state has declined to share voter information with this politically motivated commission because doing so would violate voters’ privacy and could open the way to genuine large-scale fraud — imagine if hackers could break into a single database containing all of the nation’s voter information.

How to explain the discrepancy, with Trump ignoring a real scandal and doggedly pursuing a phony one? The answer is pretty simple: Trump doesn’t care a whit about the national interest. All he cares about is his self-interest.

He is hardly ignorant of Russian machinations. Even before receiving the full intelligence briefings on what the Russians did —and it appears that the intelligence community has proof that Putin personally ordered the election meddling — he showed his awareness of the Russian role in July 2016 when he called on the Kremlin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. This is what the lawyers call “guilty knowledge.”

But Trump isn’t mad about this assault on American democracy because he was its beneficiary. He is only mad that the “fake news” media, his political opponents and special counsel Robert Mueller continue to probe the Russian role. The most benign explanation is that Trump is worried that such investigations undermine his political legitimacy. The more sinister explanation is that he is worried that collusion between his campaign and the Kremlin will be exposed — something that appears more likely after the new revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer to seek dirt on Hillary Clinton. Either way, the president is not treating this with the seriousness that an attack on our democracy deserves.

Trump is effectively giving the Russians a pass, refusing to impose any sanctions beyond the inadequate steps taken by President Obama — namely kicking out a few Russian diplomats and confiscating a couple of Russian diplomatic compounds. His administration is even lobbying to water down in the House a sanctions bill passed 97-2 by the Senate.

The result of Trump’s passivity is likely to encourage more such Russian assaults. James Clapper warns that the Russians are already “prepping the battlefield” for the 2018 election — and beyond. That may be just what Trump is counting on. Given current opinion polls, Republicans are facing a tough election next year and Trump will have trouble getting reelected in 2020. Maybe he’s counting on winning, to mash up two Beatles titles, “with a little help from my friends … back in the USSR.”

Los Angeles Times, Max Boot is a contributing writer to Opinion and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Trump administration isn’t a farce. It’s a tragedy.

Vox: The Trump administration isn’t a farce. It’s a tragedy.

Like Watergate, this is an era of low comedy and high fear.

by Ezra Klein July 11, 2017

This must be what it was like to live through Watergate.

The disorientation, the confusion, the half-truth, the shock, the dark humor. I think of something Elizabeth Drew, the author of one of my favorite books on the era, wrote — “Watergate was a time of low comedy and high fear.” The farce of the story distracts from its horror, and so we take refuge. Twitter is never funnier than when a new Trump-Russia story breaks.

And yet.

This isn’t a scandal as we are used to thinking about it. This isn’t an embarrassment, or a gaffe. This is a security breach. It calls into question whether America’s foreign policy is being driven by the favors President Donald Trump owes Vladimir Putin for his political help or, perhaps worse, whether it’s being driven by the fear that Putin will release far more damning material if Trump crosses him.

This is a story that makes clear nothing the current White House says can be trusted. Donald Trump Jr., who enthusiastically tried to work with Russians to upend the election, called allegations that the Trump campaign would work with the Russians “disgusting” and “phony.” His father tweeted, as recently as May 12, that “the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems.”

These are acts that cast doubt on the basic patriotism of the current White House — a White House that takes, as its slogan, “America First.”

This is a story that reminds us that the last election was often dominated, and perhaps decided, by a crime — Russia’s theft of Democratic emails, which may or may not have happened with the Trump campaign’s support. And it refocuses our attention on the fact that Trump fired the director of the FBI in an attempt to end the investigation into that crime.

The generous interpretation, until now, was that this was all bumbling and idiocy and coincidence. Yes, the Trump campaign had a lot of strange meetings with Russians, and sure, it seemed to routinely forget them during congressional testimony and security checks, and of course, Russia intervened in the election to harm Hillary Clinton. But incompetence, we were assured, was the likelier explanation than conspiracy.

Not anymore.

Donald Trump Jr. knew exactly what he was being offered. The email he got was crystal clear. His source is referred to as a “Russian government attorney.” The invitation for the meeting explains that she will “provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information.” The intermediary assures Trump Jr. that “this is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

His reply, it cannot be said often enough, was “if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer” — and late in the summer is exactly when the hacked Democratic emails actually began to be released.

It wasn’t just Trump Jr. Campaign manager Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner knew, too. They were forwarded the emails. They knew exactly what this meeting was. And they were there. They wanted the documents. They wanted to work with the Russians.

They seem to have known about more than just this meeting. As my colleague Matt Yglesias observes, there is no surprised response on these emails. Neither Trump Jr. nor Manafort nor Kushner react with confusion or interest when informed that Russia wants to help Trump win. The alliance is already credible enough, and already serious enough, that they take the email without further vetting or discussion. No one suggests running it by the foreign policy team or even the FBI.

Did Donald Trump himself know? It would be remarkable if he didn’t. It would mean his son and his son-in-law and his campaign manager had tried to collude with the Russians — endangering his campaign and giving a foreign government blackmail material over his presidency — without telling him. This seems unlikely. But if Donald Trump knew, then it means he knew what he was firing James Comey to hide. Then it is clearly obstruction of justice.

Even if Trump himself did not know, consider all the damning evidence here: We know that his son, son-in-law, and campaign manager at least tried to work with a semi-hostile foreign power to win the election. We know that foreign power conducted a large-scale and successful cyber-espionage effort against the Democratic Party. We know that Trump continues to treat Russia unusually gently — palling around with Vladimir Putin even as he undercuts NATO and weakens the Western alliance.

And so we are faced with a crisis that leaves vast swaths of American politics stained. The election is tainted. The White House is tainted. Our foreign policy is tainted. If impeachment seems impossible, it is only because we believe that Republicans in Congress would sooner protect a criminal administration than risk their legislative agenda to uphold the rule of law — which is all to say, Congress is tainted, too.

The actors in this drama are often comic, pathetic, and incompetent. But the damage they have done, and are doing, is almost beyond imagining. As often as this looks like farce, we should not forget it’s a tragedy.

Donald Trump Jr.’s Love for Russian Dirt

The New Yorker

Donald Trump Jr.’s Love for Russian Dirt

By Amy Davidson July 11, 2017

The President’s son revealed, in his own words, no hesitation to accept information that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

On July 19, 2016, a little more than a month after he met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who he thought might help to damage Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign, Donald Trump, Jr., spoke in support of his father at the Republican National Convention. He had been a visible part of the campaign for months, appearing on television to complain about the elder Trump’s critics or, often enough, firing guns with local politicians—Trump had offered his sons’ record as avid hunters as evidence that he was eager to loosen gun laws. (Donald Jr., who was photographed triumphing over a dead elephant, has decried restrictions on silencers as a restraint on sportsmen.) There was talk, in some quarters, that he might be a more serious politician than his father—whatever that might mean—and a possible future mayor of New York. And his speech included what passed, at the Convention, for classic conservative tropes, such as this:

Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they’re stalled on the ground floor. They’re like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers.

There was a brief contretemps after “The Daily Show” pointed out that this was similar to a line in an essay by Frank Buckley, published in The American Conservative, but it turned out that Buckley had also been a writer on the speech, and so the line, if not something earned, was a gift—or, rather, a purchase, not a misappropriation. All of those things can be hard to tell apart in the world of the Trumps—as is the difference between an unqualified dilettante and a political operative working on behalf of a Presidential candidate. But one aspect of the line that Donald Jr., probably came by on his own was his disdain for “Soviet-era department stores.” Shopping malls like the one in Moscow owned by Aras Agalarov, the billionaire who, with his son, a family-subsidized Russian pop star named Emin, were so much better. Whether or not they benefitted the customers, the Agalarovs helped to fund the 2013 run of the Miss Universe pageant, an operation partly owned by Trump, which was held outside of Moscow—and so, if nothing else, they seem to have benefitted the Trumps. Emin had been at the pageant; a Politico piece from last year, looking back at the proceedings, links to a music video that features him in various T-shirts, alongside several contestants in bathing suits and sequined dresses, and Trump, Sr., himself, in business attire.

“Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting,” Rob Goldstone, an “entertainment publicist,” as he was identified by the Times, which broke the story of Donald Juniors meeting with the Russian lawyer, wrote in an e-mail to Donald, Jr., on June 3, 2016. (After the Times said that it had obtained a copy, Trump Jr., tweeted out the exchange.) The e-mail continued, “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”

The Times noted that Russia doesn’t have a “Crown prosecutor”—mostly because it does not, or does not exactly, have someone who wears a crown. But Trump Jr., seems to have had no hesitation about the presumption of oligarchical access. It seems to have made sense to everyone involved that a shopping-mall developer should have access to judicial files—just as it made sense, to the Trumps and their circle, that a real-estate billionaire should have access to the White House.

More important, from the perspective of the various investigations currently looking at Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential election—which a number of senators have already said they would like to discuss with Trump, Jr.—is what the Trump team thought the Russians’ interest was. Goldstone’s explanation for why the Agalarovs had been given the information was direct and, one would have thought, troubling: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” he wrote. According to the Times, Trump Jr., replied, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Later in the summer was the time of the Convention and the nomination, followed by the debates and the heart of the Presidential race. The direct result of this outreach from Emin was a meeting with a lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, whom Goldstone identified in another e-mail as a “Russian government attorney.” That took place on June 9th, at Trump Tower; Trump Jr., was joined by Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and now a White House adviser, and Paul Manafort, who was then the Trump campaign’s manager. Trump Jr., has said in various statements that the meeting yielded nothing useful, which he presented as a disappointment. His father’s representatives have portrayed the whole transaction as entirely normal. Veselnitskaya, for her part, has said that her real interest was never the campaign but her clients’ concerns about the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions alleged Russian human-rights abusers. When NBC asked her how Trump associates got the impression that she did have damaging material, she said it was possible that “they wanted it so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted.”

And what if Veselnitskaya had come laden with real dirt, obtained in some illegal way—like, say, the hacked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, that soon emerged? Donald Trump Jr., might have finally felt that the clerks in some post-Soviet intelligence shop were working for him, the customer. Would he have noticed, or cared, how Vladimir Putin, the proprietor of the emporium, was profiting?

Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.

AP FACT CHECK: Trump and missions unaccomplished

Associated Press

AP FACT CHECK: Trump and missions unaccomplished

Jim Drinkard and Calvin Woodward, Associated Press June 24, 2017

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has a way of presenting missions as accomplished even when they’re not.

So it was when he told Iowans he’s put farmers back at their plows, secured a historic increase in military spending and empowered home-builders to swing their hammers again. Those all remain aspirations, not achievements.

Trump is also known to propose something already in effect, as when he declared “the time has come” for a welfare moratorium for immigrants. President Bill Clinton signed such a moratorium into law in 1996.

A look at a variety of Trump’s statements from the public square over the past week:

TRUMP: “We’re thinking about building the wall as a solar wall so it creates energy and pays for itself. And this way, Mexico will have to pay much less money. And that’s good right? … Pretty good imagination, right? Good? My idea.” — in Iowa on Wednesday.

THE FACTS: His idea? Others came forward with such proposals back when he was criticizing solar power as too expensive.

The notion of adding solar panels to the wall he wants to build along the Mexico border was explored in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in March. Vasilis Fthenakis, director of the Center for Life Cycle Analysis at Columbia University, and Ken Zweibel, former director of the Solar Institute at George Washington University, concluded it was “not only technically and economically feasible, it might even be more practical than a traditional wall.”

They said a 2,000-mile solar wall could cost less than $1 billion, instead of tens of billions for a traditional border wall, and possibly become “wildly profitable.” The writers were studying a concept laid out by Homero Aridjis and James Ramey in the online World Post in December.

The idea also was proposed by one of the companies that submitted its design to the government as a border wall prototype. Las Vegas-based Gleason Partners proposed covering some sections of the wall with solar panels and said that selling electricity from it could eventually cover the cost of construction.

Trump repeatedly described solar power in the campaign as “very, very expensive” and “not working so good.”

TRUMP: “So, we’ve achieved a historic increase in defense spending.” — Iowa speech.

THE FACTS: He hasn’t. He is proposing a large increase but Congress is still debating — and is nowhere near deciding on — more money for defense for 2018.

All that’s been achieved is a $25 billion increase for this year and there’s nothing remotely historic about that. The Pentagon has received annual budget increases equal to or greater than $25 billion seven times in the past 15 years alone.

TRUMP: “The time has come for new immigration rules which say that those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years. And we’ll be putting in legislation to that effect very shortly.” — Iowa speech.

THE FACTS: A federal law passed in 1996 already has that effect. It bars most foreigners who enter the country on immigrant visas from being eligible for federal benefits like Social Security and food stamps for the first five years. States typically have the authority to determine eligibility for local programs. As for people in the country illegally, they are generally prohibited from those benefits altogether. Same with foreigners who are in the U.S. on non-immigrant visas.

TRUMP: Addressing why he raised the possibility that his Oval Office conversation with fired FBI Director James Comey might have been recorded: “When he found out that I, you know, that there may be tapes out there, whether it’s governmental tapes or anything else, and who knows, I think his story may have changed.” — Fox News interview aired Friday.

THE FACTS: There’s no evidence of any change in what Comey testified on June 8 before the Senate Intelligence committee. In that appearance — the only time Comey has publicly addressed the subject — his story was consistent. He said that on three occasions beginning in January he’d told the president that he was not then the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation on him as part of its work to probe Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election.

Since then, it has been reported that Trump is under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller over his May 9 firing of Comey and whether that or other actions by the president constitute obstruction of justice.

TRUMP: “You see what we’ve already done. Home-builders are starting to build again. We’re not confiscating their land with ridiculous rules and regulations that don’t make sense.” — Iowa speech.

THE FACTS: Housing starts as tracked by the Census Bureau have actually fallen over the past three months. Trump seems a bit mixed up on deregulation. Some of the biggest constraints on home-builders come from local governments, rather than federal rules.

TRUMP: On cutting regulations to help farmers: “Farmers are able to plow their field. If they have a puddle in the middle of their field, a little puddle the size of this, it’s considered a lake and you can’t touch it. And if you touch it, bad, bad things happen to you and your family. We got rid of that one, too, OK?” — Iowa speech

THE FACTS: He didn’t get rid of the regulations he’s talking about. He signed an executive order in February directing the Environmental Protection Agency to review a rule protecting clean water. The rule can stop some farmers from using pesticides and herbicides. It’s still in place, pending the review.

TRUMP: “Former Homeland Security Advisor Jeh Johnson is latest top intelligence official to state there was no grand scheme between Trump & Russia.” — tweet Thursday.

THE FACTS: Johnson did not state that conclusion. He was homeland security secretary (not adviser) from December 2013 to January 2017. He was asked at a House Intelligence committee hearing Wednesday whether he knew of any evidence of collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign.

Johnson said he was not aware of any information beyond what’s been reported publicly and what the U.S. intelligence community has gathered. That is not a statement of belief that no collusion took place. Pressed on the matter, he said Comey probably had some information to go on when the FBI opened an investigation into possible collusion.

TRUMP: “Unemployment is at a 16-year low.” — Iowa speech.

THE FACTS: Unemployment is indeed that low, at 4.3 percent.

TRUMP: “We are 5 and 0, as you know, in these special elections. And I think the Democrats thought it would be a lot different than that. 5-0 is a big — that’s a big margin.” — Fox News interview aired Friday.

THE FACTS: Wrong score. Right score: 4-1. Republicans won open House seats in Kansas, Georgia, Montana and South Carolina. Democrats held onto a seat in California.

Trump’s miscount wasn’t a one-time gaffe. It was also a line that roused supporters in his Iowa speech. “So, we’re 5 and 0. We’re 5 and 0,” he said to applause Wednesday night. “Five and 0. Five and 0,” he said at another point.

TRUMP: “Since I was elected, illegal border crossings — and this is without the wall, before the wall — have decreased by more than 75 percent, a historic and unprecedented achievement.” — Iowa speech.

THE FACTS: That’s overblown, according to government figures about the Mexico border. The decrease in his first four full months in office is about 59 percent, still substantial but not more than 75 percent.

More than 56,600 foreigners have been caught crossing from Mexico illegally between February and May, down from 137,800 people in the same period during President Barack Obama’s last year in office.

The number of illegal crossings is not known because some people slip in undetected. Officials consider the number arrested to be representative of the broader trend of attempts to cross illegally.

In bragging that the numbers are down “without the wall,” Trump omits the fact that there already are roughly 650 miles of fencing along the nearly 2,000-mile long Mexican border.

TRUMP: “We’re working really hard on massive tax cuts. It would be, if I get it the way I want it, the largest tax cut in the history of the United States of America. Because right now, we are one of the highest-taxed nations in the world. Really on a large-scale basis, we are the highest tax nation in the world. … And I think it’s going to happen.” — Iowa speech.

THE FACTS: The overall U.S. tax burden is actually one of the lowest among the 32 developed and large emerging-market economies tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Taxes made up 26.4 percent of the total U.S. economy in 2015, according to the OECD. That’s far below Denmark’s tax burden of 46.6 percent, Britain’s 32.5 percent or Germany’s 36.9 percent. Just four OECD countries had a lower tax bite than the U.S.: South Korea, Ireland, Chile and Mexico.

It’s not clear Trump will sign the largest tax cut in U.S. history. His administration has yet to settle on enough details of any planned overhaul to make that claim. To put the claim in context, President Ronald Reagan essentially cut taxes during his first term by slightly more than 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. For Trump to surpass that, his tax cut would essentially have to be more than $400 billion a year.

TRUMP: “We have Gary Cohn, who’s the president of Goldman Sachs. That’s somebody. He’s the president of Goldman Sachs. He had to pay over $200 million in taxes to take the job, right? … This is the president of Goldman Sachs, smart. Having him represent us. He went from massive paydays to peanuts. … But these are people that are great, brilliant business minds. And that’s what we need.” — Iowa speech.

THE FACTS: Trump appears to be confusing taxes paid with stocks sold. Cohn and his family members held about $220 million in Goldman stock, which he had to divest in order to resolve possible conflicts of interest before becoming White House economic adviser. He would have had to pay taxes on any capital gains from the sale, but that sum would only be a fraction of the figure cited by Trump. Moreover, Cohn had to divest the stock in pieces, so the final tally from his sales is unclear, as the stock has declined from highs in March.

It’s also worth noting the president’s about-face praise for Wall Street. His campaign routinely criticized Goldman Sachs and its ties to Hillary Clinton, even using it as a villain in a political ad that included video of the bank’s chairman and CEO.

TRUMP: “You have a gang called MS-13. … They do things that nobody can believe. These are true animals. We are moving them out of the country by the thousands, by the thousands. … We’re getting them out, MS-13.” — Iowa speech.

THE FACTS: There is no publicly available evidence to support this claim about the violent gang. In recent weeks, federal authorities have arrested hundreds of suspected MS-13 gang members. Many of those arrested have been identified by the government as immigrants, but it is unclear if they have yet been deported. Any suspected gang members who are U.S. citizens cannot be kicked out of the country. The gang was formed decades ago in Los Angeles and has spread.

Overall arrests of immigrants in the country illegally have increased in recent months, but deportations have declined slightly, according to the most recently available government data.

SENATE DEMOCRATIC LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER, on Republican health care legislation: “They want to bring the bill to the floor, rush it in the dark of night, for a simple reason — they are ashamed of their bill. They don’t want anybody to see it, least of all the public. … They can’t even whisper what it’s about they are so, so ashamed of it.” — Senate speech Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Both parties resort to secrecy in Congress at times, especially when hard-fought legislation is at stake. When Democrats grappled with a conservative uproar over President Barack Obama’s health care bill, they held private meetings to iron out details and reach agreements to clinch the legislation’s approval. That said, they also held scores of hearings and staged many days of debate in 2009 and 1010. The Senate’s Republican leadership has held no hearings on its legislation, the contents of which are unknown. It’s unusual for such a major bill to be written from scratch behind closed doors then rushed through Congress in a few days.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: “I like that line that says, you know, the Internal Revenue Code is twice as long as the Bible, with none of the good news.” — speech Tuesday to manufacturers.

HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN: “You know, there’s this old line about the tax code. Our tax code is about five times as long as the Bible but with none of the good news.” — speech to the same group Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Ryan has the ratio about right: The tax code runs nearly 4 million words, according to a 2013 government report, while the Bible has 700,000 to about 800,000, depending on the version and variations in translation. Pence understated the difference. Both got laughs.

A number of Republicans over the years have compared the size of the texts to make the point that Americans are under an unholy burden from the IRS.

Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Alicia A. Caldwell, Jill Colvin and Catherine Lucey contributed to this report.

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

EDITOR’S NOTE: A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

This Trump Tarbaby Will Leave a Permanent Stain on the GOP

John Hanno June 16, 2017

The best all of Trump’s apologists, just like Sen. Marco Rubio, can muster in defense of the Trump administration’s run-away train wreck, is that he’s not a typical politician. All the stumbling and bumbling is only because he doesn’t do things like Presidents have always done in the past; in spite of the hundreds of times Trump had denigrated “all” politicians because they really needed to conduct themselves more like successful businessmen like Trump.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says of Trump, after it was discovered Trump tried to get FBI Director Comey to shut down the Russia investigation: “The President is new at this….he’s new to government….he probably wasn’t steeped in the long running protocols that established the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses….he’s just new to this….”

But did Ryan and these Republican apologists in Congress and in the far right media give President Obama the same consideration and latitude? Would they have afforded the same courtesy to Hillary, if she had been elected but were conducting herself like Trump is now? The answer is a resounding no. These highpocrits would be conducting dozens of congressional hearings, 6 days a week and on Sundays and holidays.

No one first elected as President of The United States, has previous experience for the job; but they typically hire consultants and cabinet members who do have previous experience. And they council with experts and rely on career government employees to get them up to speed.

The Republicans handed Barack Obama an economy in free fall. Banks, the housing industry and businesses were collapsing and we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. Obama put his nose to the grindstone, hired capable experts and with the help of a Democratic controlled Congress, eventually dug us out of the Great Recession, all in spite of the Republican conspiracy to oppose him at every turn. He worked hard (and actually studied and read books) and based his corrective policies on facts, not the flawed alternative reality and conspiracy theories or conflicted and disproved dogma Trump and the Republicans rely on.

But Trump has so denigrated, and has such a low opinion of, politicians and career federal employees, that he’s clearly shot himself in the foot by hiring sycophants and family members to run the most complex organization on earth. He thinks he knows more than anyone, more than the intelligence community, more than the generals, more than budget experts in the Congressional Budget Office, more than the scientists, more than legislators and their staffs, more than the judiciary, more than leaders throughout the world, especially our historical democratic allies. His self promotion and aggrandizement is boundless.

But when have you ever heard of an American President’s spokesperson (Sarah Huckabee Sanders) actually deem it necessary to come out and say: “I can definitively say the president is not a liar and I think it’s frankly insulting that question would be asked;” probably because a vast majority of Americans and folks around the world are convinced Trump has lost any shred of credibility and believe he’s the most dishonest person they have ever encountered. Its not surprising his approval ratings are in the mid 30’s and disapproval ratings are more than 60%.

It’s becoming more and more apparent that Trump’s business acumen and aura is as symbolic and unsubstantial, as the TRUMP brand displayed on properties around the world. He’s obviously not as rich nor as savvy as he claims and was probably on the verge of another business bankruptcy, until the Russian devils bailed him out and sunk their fangs into his business empire and soul. This Russian/Trump saga could be the next Coen Brothers sequel to the current Season 3 Fargo series on FX.

His campaign boasts and promises as a great builder, is as credible as the real estate properties that someone else actually builds and then pays Trump to put his name on. He’s spent the first half year of his first and only term tearing down President Obama’s programs and accomplishments. Trump Inc. should be more appropriately, in the demolition business. He’s not a builder; he’s a destroyer. What has he actually built or accomplished?

Trump fired United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, because he was investigating Russian money laundering in the New York real estate business. He fired FBI director James Comey because he was stepping up the Russian hacking and collusion investigation of Trump’s campaign and administration. Trump obviously has a lot to hide. All he’s clearly building is a classic case of obstruction of justice that closely resembles the Watergate cover-up.

Everyone seems to agree that the most remarkable and telling theme, is that Trump hasn’t once asked or tasked anyone in his cabinet or the intelligence departments to get to the bottom of the Russian interference in our election. Its seems he couldn’t care less.

Trump said he would be “100% willing to testify under oath” about his meetings with James Comey. I guess I’ll believe it when I see him in front of the cameras, taking the pledge to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

As in the past, and in spite of the Trump brand accruing a patina of tarnish and scandal, Trump personally, will probably survive America’s national disgrace financially in tact, as he did from his six bankruptcies and the Trump university scandal (minus the $25 million). Trump’s conflicts of interests, and entanglement with the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, are already paying dividends to his failing empire.

Unless all these investigations are able to prove Trump and his family engaged in Russian money laundering schemes or shady real estate deals, Trump will end up bloodied, bruised and thoroughly defrocked, but probably not broke or in prison. That probably can’t be said for all the Trump administration folks caught up in the scandals and cover-up shenanigans. They’re already hiring defense attorneys. Even their defense attorneys are hiring defense attorneys. Trump voters didn’t know the jobs Trump promised were all going to Washington lawyers. Historical note: Nixon was able to resign but dozens (I think 59) of the conspirators in his administration went to jail. And all those millions in legal fees are probably still not paid off. I’m guessing the plea deals are already in the planning stages.

Trump will call it all fake news and blame the media. He and his apologists will stonewall and obfuscate, they’re even attempting to somehow implicate Hillary Clinton in the Russia Thing; and Trump may even try to fire Special prosecutor Robert Mueller. But sooner or later, we just might get the whole truth.

In the mean time, the folks who went all in on Trump will suffer. Obamacare will get worse and may ultimately fail because of Republican tactics to defund the Affordable Care Act. Trump and the Republican controlled congress will go to any extreme to give the super rich their tax cuts by cutting Medicaid and health care subsidies for the poor, elderly and disabled. Workers and the middle class, even those with employer subsidized health insurance, will get the same crappy substandard health insurance they had before the ACA was passed, with double digit increases, skyrocketing deductibles and cancellations because of pre-existing conditions. And the insurance industry will be back to skimming 30% off the top of America’s health care costs instead of the 15% mandated under Obamacare. And good luck with any legitimate type of tax reform or infrastructure plan. And I wouldn’t count on those coal jobs coming back. Hillary and Bernie at lease had a plan to replace those lost jobs.

These pretenders and evil doers will try to reverse the progress the Obama administration made towards sustainable energy and slowing climate change and global warming. They’ll embarrass America in the eyes of the world by exiting the Paris Agreement, they will bend over backwards for fossil fuel and corporate polluters, they will try to turn back the clock on progress made in the Cuba accord and try to overturn Dodd-Frank, but the 2018 elections are right around the corner. Hopefully they will be so bottled up with the criminal investigations, the amount of damage they do will be limited.

And the loyal Trump supporters may be very slowly coming to their senses. Its reported that the super die hard Trumpers have gone from 30% down to close to 20%.

Unfortunately we can’t say the same for the Republicans in congress. What will it take before they find the courage displayed by Republicans during the Watergate and Iran Contra scandals? It could be the damage done to the Republican party by this Trump Tarbaby will be far worse than Watergate. John Hanno

Newsweek

Neil Buchanan: Is Trump Naive? Stupid? Evil? Or All of the Above?

Neil H. Buchanan, Newsweek June 18, 2017

This article first appeared on the Dorf on Law sire.

Donald Trump is wrong almost all of the time about almost everything.

He lies constantly, and even though he is constantly being caught in his transparent lies, he never admits error, pressing ever forward on his destructive path.

Does he do this because he knows nothing about the world? (That is, is he naive ?)

Alternatively, maybe it is because he is incapable of logical thinking. (Is he stupid ?)

Or is it instead because he has horrible policy goals? (Is he evil ?)

All three of those explanations fit, and then some. As Michael Dorf argued in a recent column, normal human beings can be “evil, stupid, or ignorant,” but “Trump is not a normal human being. He is not even a normal but evil, stupid, or ignorant human being. Trump is Trump.”

In order to understand how Trump is different, we first need to understand what it means to be normal yet wrong in one of those three ways —naive, stupid, or evil. Because those three categories should be sufficient to explain every bad decision, it is important to understand how Trump is a category unto himself.

When Professor Dorf and I were much younger men, we frequently discussed the many ways in which the nation’s then-new president, Ronald Reagan, was wrong. It was a frustrating experience to watch a touchingly naive fool lead the nation in harmful directions, but it certainly created a need to understand exactly what was going wrong.

For me, the issue that helped to clarify how to think about all of this was Reagan’s opposition to imposing economic sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime. Led by protests and boycotts on college campuses, politicians on the left at that time were beginning to pressure our reactionary president to force the Botha regime to change its shockingly racist legal and social system.

Reagan resisted, arguing at one point that South Africa was simply in the process of evolving into a civil rights-friendly nation, just as the United States had evolved in the fifties and sixties. This was jaw-droppingly wrong, so much so that it took a great deal of effort to tease out Reagan’s many errors.

One possibility was that Reagan simply did not have the facts necessary to see the situation clearly. As bad as the Jim Crow era had been in the United States, it was obvious that South Africa was not “merely” going through what the U.S. had experienced.

Moreover, Reagan seemed not to know how bad things had been here, even though he had lived through those decades. Saying, “They’ll be fine, just like we figured it out,” could have been explained by complete ignorance about one or both countries. The problem was that, even if Reagan himself believed these fantasies, he surely had access to advisors who should have known otherwise.

If ignorance about the facts was not at work, it was possible instead that Reagan knew the facts but was not smart enough to draw logical conclusions from them. Was there something like 2 + 2 = 5 error at work in Reagan’s head, a reasoning error along the lines of “All men are mortal, Socrates was mortal, therefore all men are Socrates”?

Reagan argued that sanctions would do no good, even though it was clear that South Africa’s government (notwithstanding its claims to the contrary) was being forced to respond to world pressure. The civil rights leaders in South Africa also rejected Reagan’s argument, saying that outside pressure was key to reaching the goal of ending apartheid.

In any case, Reagan’s policy errors did not seem to fit into the category of mere logical folly. What seemed much more likely was that Reagan, who had been supported by American racists and who had perfected Richard Nixon’s ” southern strategy ” to scare white voters away from Democrats, was simply not particularly concerned about the evils of white supremacy (and maybe actually supported racist goals).

In short, Reagan’s bad policy views could be explained by one of three possibilities. He was naive, or he was stupid, or he was evil. He might also have been some combination of the three.

Being a young man, I thought that maybe I was onto something with the naive/stupid/evil framing of policy debates. Admittedly, there was nothing genuinely new in my taxonomy. People have often said things like, “He’s either a fool or a liar,” when trying to explain their opponents’ errors.

Moreover, one has to decide how to treat things like willful ignorance. Is that a fourth category? It turns out, however, that it is easy to explain this as a version of evil, because a person who decides not to gather facts must be doing so in order to avoid facing the consequences of that knowledge. (This is currently seen, for example, in Republicans’ blocking government statisticians from gathering facts about gun violence.)

The naive/stupid/evil taxonomy can also be expressed with different synonyms—ignorant/illogical/malevolent, uninformed/irrational/malicious, and so on—and the order can be changed. Hence, Professor Dorf’s “evil, stupid, or ignorant” rendering of the taxonomy.

In any case, I have noticed over the years the many ways in which people who are unaware of this taxonomy struggle to identify and understand what they are seeing. Sometimes a shorthand is valuable simply for being a shorthand. And the Trump era has left many people struggling to understand what in many cases boils down to that simple triad.

For example, the conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post recently offered an excellent critique of Trump’s ill considered Muslim ban, concluding with this:

One might conclude that the administration is too incompetent or lazy to make [its case in court]. We prefer a different theory: These orders have no national security or other justification, but rather are blatant appeals to prejudice that have no factual, rational basis. No lawyer in the world can defend that in court.

In short, Rubin first considers whether the administration is incompetent or lazy, which are somewhat fuzzy concepts because incompetence can refer either to stupidity or ignorance, and laziness is most likely (at least in Trump’s case) a version of willful ignorance, that is, evil.

By saying that Trump has “no national security justification,” Rubin means that Trump’s argument is not actually “stupid.” That is, there is no logical argument from Trump’s people that says that A (the ban) causes B (less terrorism). They simply assert their conclusion, as opposed to offering a logically fallacious if-then argument.

Why do they do that? Rubin reasonably concludes that Trump is evil because he is appealing to prejudice. He is so focused on getting to an evil outcome—discriminating against people on the basis of religion and national origin—that he will deny reality and not even bother with logical arguments.

An interesting variation on this method of framing the Trump problem was recently offered by the editorial board of The New York Times : “Stupidity, paranoia, malevolence—it’s hard to distinguish among competing explanations for the behavior of people in this administration.”

Paranoia is a particular form of ignorance, because it means that Trump’s people are living in a different reality from the rest of us. (Using “naive” here would sound too much like an excuse, which is why I am calling it ignorance, with all of its connotations.)

As I wrote above, however, I agree with Professor Dorf that Trump is not simply the unique case of a normal person who is somehow always dealing with an incomplete or incorrect set of facts, or who makes logical errors, or who is always acting in bad faith —naive, stupid, or evil. He is his own category.

The reason Trump is different is that there is always the sense (or hope) that the normal people who have supported Trump are making one of more of those three errors—and, most importantly, that they might be open to fixing those errors.

A person who thinks that there was a “war on coal,” for example, might be persuadable if she exited the Fox New alternative fact zone and saw that it is the simple economics of cheap natural gas and other non-conspiratorial factors that explain the decline of coal.

Also, a person who thinks that Trump will bring back manufacturing jobs might, if prompted, notice that Trump has no actual logical argument regarding how he will make that happen.

Even people who are acting on what I am calling evil motivations are not always beyond reach. Many people are able to confront their demons and say, “Wow, I didn’t realize that I was motivated by hatred.”

That is one of the reasons that same-sex marriage has gained such wide acceptance so quickly. Many people thought, “What was I so scared or angry about?” And the world became a meaningfully better place.

It is impossible to imagine anything like that happening with Trump.

Many of us do hold out some hope every day that even some of Trump’s closest advisors will say, “I can’t do this anymore. I tried to deny to myself what was happening, but this is too much.” It is safe to say that that will not happen with Steve Bannon or some others, but some people have said that even hard-core Trumpists like Kellyanne Conway might harbor doubts.

But Trump? Not a chance. He is ignorant, both as a matter of never having learned anything and because he likes it that way. He is stupid, usually not even bothering to make an argument, but making incoherent arguments when he tries. (We will, he says, just start winning again, somehow.) His goals are racist, sexist, and in other ways bigoted, and he is corrupt to boot.

What are we to think when we learn that Trump does not care about whether the Russian government is undermining American democracy? He only cares about whether he will look bad and lose power if the truth comes out.

“Trump is naive, stupid, and evil” simply does not cover it. Trump is Trump, and heaven help us all.

Neil H. Buchanan is an economist and legal scholar and a professor of law at George Washington University. He teaches tax law, tax policy, contracts, and law and economics. His research addresses the long-term tax and spending patterns of the federal government, focusing on budget deficits, the national debt, health care costs and Social Security.

HuffPost

Donald Trump’s Attorney Marc Kasowitz Hit With Ethics Complaints

Mary Papenfuss, HuffPost June 17, 2017

Complaints have been lodged with the District of Columbia and New York City Bar Associations against President Donald Trump’s personal defense attorney Marc Kasowitz, calling for an investigation to determine if he has breached rules of professional conduct.

Separate complaints were filed over the week against Kasowitz by the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit government watchdog organization, and by attorney Neil Goldfarb, a former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union. They both allege that Kasowitz may have inappropriately counseled other White House staffers while representing the president, raising conflict-of-interest concerns.

In addition, the CAF complaint alleges that Kasowitz is not currently authorized to practice law in Washington, D.C.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Kasowitz, dismissed the complaints in a statement to Law.com, calling them “obviously politically motivated” and “based on press reports, which were based on anonymous sources.”

Trump has called on his longtime personal attorney to represent him as investigations heat up into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump acknowledged Friday that he is now a target of a probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible obstruction of justice linked to the president’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Last week, Kasowitz issued a statement characterizing Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee as very positive for the president (which he spelled “predisent”). He threatened to file legal complaints against Comey because of Comey’s admission that he had given a memo about a meeting with Trump to a friend and asked the friend to give it to a reporter.

Kasowitz, a member of the New York bar, has been advising Trump and reportedly other members of the president’s staff, even though he is not currently authorized to practice law in the District of Columbia, according to the CAF complaint. He told White House aides it was not yet necessary to hire their own private attorneys, The New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources. Such behavior could be construed as a conflict of interest.

“By meeting with White House staff within the White House complex and offering the legal opinion that those staffers need not hire counsel, [Kasowitz] may have engaged in the unauthorized practice of law,” the CAF complaint states. “In addition, by advising White House staff members, who are not represented by counsel and who have a reasonable possibility of having interests that conflict with those of Mr. Kasowitz’s client, President Trump, Mr. Kasowitz appears to have violated” a rule of professional conduct concerning conflicts of interest.

Goldfarb similarly pointed out in his complaint that “there is obviously a very reasonable possibility that [aides’] personal interests are in conflict with those of President Trump’s.”

The complaints from CAF and Goldfarb come as another of Trump’s private attorneys, Mark Cohen, confirmed to The Washington Post that he has hired his own lawyer to represent his interests during federal investigations into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign team.

International Business Times

Trump’s Lawyer Broke Ethics Rules, Complaint Claims

Josh Keefe, International Business Times June 17, 2017

President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney is the subject of a complaint filed by a watchdog group Thursday with the disciplinary body in charge of Washington attorneys, allegedly for dispensing legal advice to unrepresented White House staffers, a violation of bar rules and legal ethics.

Campaign for Accountability, a government ethics group, filed the complaint with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals’ Office of Disciplinary Counsel in response to a story in Sunday’s New York Times that said Marc Kasowitz, who has represented Trump for 15 years, told presidential aides they did not yet need to hire lawyers in response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

By telling White House aides they did not need to hire lawyers, Kasowitz dispensed legal advice to people who not only weren’t his clients, but whose interests in the coming legal storm might be contrary to the president’s, the complaint alleges. The complaint, which asks the office to open an investigation, comes as Mueller’s investigation reportedly has expanded to examine whether the president attempted to obstruct justice.

“It was really concerning to read he was providing legal advice to White House staffers,” Daniel Stevens, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, told International Business Times. Stevens is an alumnus of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics In Washington, the watchdog group that filed suit against the president just days after his inauguration over his foreign business dealings.

“They weren’t his clients and they might take heed of that advice and it might not be in their best interest. [Kasowitz] needs to be held accountable for giving that advice,” Stevens said.

The D.C. bar, as well as the American Bar Association’s model rules, which have been adopted by all 50 states and the District of Columbia, forbid attorneys from giving legal advice to people who don’t have lawyers, other than recommending they retain counsel, if the “interests of such person are or have a reasonable possibility of being in conflict with the interests of the lawyer’s client.”

Kasowitz’s discussions with White House staff reportedly bypassed White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II, a departure from previous protocol that worried former attorneys who have held that position.

“The president’s private lawyer is representing only his interests, not the interests of the United States government or the individual interests of the White House staff,” Robert F. Bauer, who was White House counsel under President Barack Obama, told the Times.

The White House declined to comment and directed IBT to send questions to Kasowitz, who did not respond to IBT’s inquiries. A spokesperson for Kasowitz previously said the Times’ categorization of the meeting was “inaccurate,” but, according to the Times, “would not specify how.”

Campaign for Accountability copied the complaint to the New York State Bar. Bar. Court records indicate Kasowitz is not a member of the D.C. Bar but is a member of the New York Bar. The committees in D.C. and New York that evaluate complaints would not confirm they received the complaint, as complaints against attorneys are confidential unless a complaint ends in disciplinary action, which can run the gamut from requiring attorneys take continuing education classes to disbarment.

The Committee on Character and Fitness for Manhattan and the Bronx, which has jurisdiction over Kasowitz’s law practice, told IBT that Kasowitz has never been disciplined by the courts for misconduct since becoming a member of the New York Bar in 1978.

Trump hired Kasowitz to represent him in all matters connected to the Russian investigation at the end of May, shortly after the Justice Department tapped Mueller as special counsel.

After FBI Director James Comey testified to a Senate panel June 7th about his interactions with Trump, Kasowitz attacked Comey and defended Trump at the press.

“From before this president took office to this day, it is overwhelmingly clear that there have been and continue to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications,” Kasowitz said. “Mr. Comey has now admitted that he is one of these leakers.”

Trump’s legal team has said it is planning on filing a complaint against Comey for leaking conversations with the president. The team initially planned to file the complaint this week, but the legal team’s spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday the complaint would most likely be filed next week. It’s unclear with which office in the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, the legal team will file the complaint.

Kasowitz has represented Trump in a variety of matters since the turn of the century, including defending the president in the Trump University lawsuit, keeping the president’s divorce records sealed, restructuring Trump casino bondholder debt and suing a Trump biographer in 2009 for citing unnamed sources claiming the real estate mogul wasn’t actually a billionaire.

ProPublica has reported Kasowitz bragged to friends about convincing Trump to fire Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Brahara, who was investigating Tom Price, Trump’s secretary of health and human services, at the time of his firing.

Kasowitz’s firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, employs former Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, whom Trump briefly considered for FBI director after he fired Comey. Trump tapped Kasowitz’s partner, David Friedman, to serve as ambassador to Israel prompting the firm to change its name (until late March, Kasowitz’s firm’s name was Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman). In addition to Trump, Kasowitz also represents Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, which counts the Russian government as a majority shareholder.

Vice President Mike Pence has also retained counsel to represent him in the Russia inquiry, the Washington Post reported Thursday. Pence hired Richard Cullen, a former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, a Pence spokesman confirmed to the Post.

Another Day, Another Pipeline Spill

EcoWatch

Another Day, Another Pipeline Spill

By Joshua Axelrod May 12, 2017

After months of protests and passionate pleas for the government to recognize and analyze the threats Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) could pose to fresh water resources and numerous others, news came this week that before even fully opening, the pipeline had already leaked.

A few states away, in Ohio, the same company’s effort to build a natural gas pipeline has been put on hold after 18 leaks and a massive spill of drilling fluids into a pristine wetland convinced state and federal regulators to largely shut down the company’s construction of the project. And even as this happens, we’re facing similar threats as the Trump administration and TransCanada try to ram Keystone XL through America’s heartland.

All of this feels like déjà vu. Back when Keystone 1 opened, for example, it experienced its first leak within months. A few years later, it experienced a major rupture in South Dakota, spilling at least 17,000 gallons of oil into a farmer’s field. At the time, it was revealed that TransCanada, Keystone’s owner and operator, had been warned about potential problems with the steel pipe it had used to build the line, as well as the welds holding the line together.

And DAPL isn’t the only new oil pipeline rearing its ugly head and threatening our precious resources with the risk of an oil spill. Keystone XL has come back from the grave under President Trump and the State Department’s rubber stamp cross-border permit. Enbridge is trying to expand its Alberta Clipper (Line 67) and Line 3 pipelines in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And the list goes on and on.

So why does this keep happening? The easy answer is: oil pipelines leak. They always have and they always will. They are complex projects that span thousands of miles and are held together by welds that commonly fail. They use materials sourced from manufacturers around the world that are almost always found to have anomalies. They carry substances that create conditions that can accelerate corrosion. They are impacted by external conditions like moisture and freezing and thawing and intense summer heat. All the technology in the world will not stop an oil pipeline from leaking. And what’s worse, the best technology available today to detect a leak almost always fails to do so.

This week’s leak is another example in a growing list that proves the concerns of Native Americans, farmers, ranchers and the public about the impacts these projects can have on water resources are real and pressing. For months, leaders from Standing Rock and elsewhere raised serious concerns about DAPL, its threat to water resources and the likelihood it would spill only to see those concerns not addressed by the current administration. Now, those same concerns are being ignored in the case of Keystone XL—which would cross one of the most important aquifers in the U.S.

America doesn’t need new pipeline capacity to meet today’s oil demand. And that underlying fact will only become more established as energy efficiency rises, vehicle electrification increases and renewable energy production grows.

Joshua Axelrod is a policy analyst for the Canada Project at Natural Resources Defense Council.