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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 13, 2018 at 12:07 am
Have you noticed how every American employer has suddenly become a “job creator”?
At least, that’s the official Republican line.
But if that’s true:
- Why are so many employers not hiring at all?
- Or, if they are hiring, why aren’t they hiring American workers?
- Why are they hiring mostly part-time employees on a no-benefits basis?
- Why are so many employers shutting down American plants but starting new ones in China, Mexico or the Philippines?
According to an August, 2018 news release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor:
- The unemployment rate stood at 3.9 percent in August, 2018, and the number of unemployed persons stood at 6.2 million.
- The unemployment rates stood at the following for:
- Adult men: (3.5 percent)
- Adult women (3.6 percent)
- Teenagers (12.8 percent
- Whites (3.4 percent
- Blacks (6.3 percent)
- Asians (3.0 percent)
- Hispanics (4.7 percent)
- The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed in August at 1.3 million and accounted for 21.5 percent of the unemployed. Over the year, the number of long-term unemployed has declined by 403,000.
- The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers), at 4.4 million.
-
Among the marginally attached, there were 1.4 million discouraged workers. These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months.
-
Among the marginally attached, there were 434,000 discouraged workers in August, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.
At the same time, U.S. corporations sit on at least $2 trillion in cash.
Besides lying beyond the reach of the IRS, those monies could be used to hire those millions of qualified, willing-to-work Americans who can’t find fulltime, permanent employment.
An article in the March, 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest gives the lie to the excuses so many employers use for refusing to hire.
Entitled “22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting a Job,” it lays bare many of the reasons why America needs to legally force employers to demonstrate as much responsibility for hiring as job-seekers are expected to show toward searching for work.
Among the truths it reveals:
TRUTH NO: 1: After you’re unemployed more than six months, employers consider you unemployable.
TRUTH NO. 2: It’s not what but who you know that counts.
TRUTH NO. 3: Try to avoid HR. Find someone in the company you know. If you don’t know anyone, contact the hiring manager.
TRUTH NO. 4: Cover letters are often ignored, going directly into “the round file.”
TRUTH NO. 5: Employers judge you on the basis of your email address. Avoid the type that reads: “Igetdrunkand party.”
TRUTH NO. 6: You’re not protected against age discrimination. Many employers regularly ignore the law. Are you in your 50s or 60s? Leave your year of graduation off your resume.
TRUTH NO: 7: Just because it’s illegal to discriminate against applicants who have children does not mean you’re safe. Many employers try to screen out parents–such as by checking cars for child safety seats.
TRUTH NO. 8: It’s harder to get a job if you’re fat, since fat people are usually assumed to be lazy.
TRUTH NO. 9: Make sure you give the interviewer a firm handshake. Or he might assume you’re a loser for giving him a weak one.
TRUTH NO. 10: The more you can get the interviewer to talk–especially about himself–the more likely you are to be hired. Ego-driven interviewers love hearing the sound of their own voices and will assume you’re better-qualified than someone who doesn’t want to listen to them prattle.
Millions of Americans blamed President Barack Obama for the nation’s high unemployment rate during his administration. And millions more believe that President Donald Trump has created an economic miracle—despite those millions of Americans still desperately searching for work.
The brutal truth is that no President can hope to turn unemployment around until employers are forced to start living up to their responsibilities.
And those responsibilities should encompass more than simply fattening their own pocketbooks and/or egos at the expense of their fellow Americans. Such behavior used to be called treason.
Americans need to recognize that a country can be betrayed for other than political reasons. It can be sold out for economic ones, too.
Trea$on
Employers who enrich themselves by weakening their country—by throwing millions of qualified workers into the street and moving their plants to other countries—are traitors.
Employers who set up offshore accounts to claim their American companies are foreign-owned—and thus exempt from taxes—are traitors.
Employers who systematically violate Federal immigration laws—to hire illegal aliens instead of willing-to-work Americans—are traitors.
And with a new definition of treason should go new penalties—heavy fines and/or prison terms–for those who sell out their country to enrich themselves.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 11, 2018 at 12:08 am
Donald Trump is on the prowl. He’s looking for a traitor—or at least his version of one.
On September 5, Trump was rocked by an unprecedented scandal: The New York Times published an anonymous Op-Ed essay by “a senior official in the Trump administration.”
The writer called himself as a member of “The Resistance.” And he claimed that “many of the senior officials” in the Trump administration “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations.”
Among his revelations:
- “From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.”
- “Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”
- “Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until—one way or another—it’s over.”
- Trump had opposed expelling “so many of Mr. [Vladimir] Putin’s spies” in retaliation for the poisoning of a former Russian spy living in Britain. He also opposed putting further sanctions on Russia “for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better—such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.”
The Op-Ed ignited a furious guessing game among Washington reporters and ordinary citizens. Not since Watergate and Deep Throat had so many reporters and high-level government officials tried to identify a news source.
Donald Trump
For many, it’s simply an enjoyable mystery.
For Trump, it’s a personal affront. Someone has dared reveal that he is not in total command of the government that he heads. And, even worse, that a shadow government exists to thwart his often reckless and even dangerous ambitions.
Two days after the editorial appeared, on September 7, Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “Yeah, I would say [Attorney General] Jeff [Sessions] should be investigating who the author of this piece was because I really believe it’s national security,”
This despite the fact that:
- No State secrets had been revealed, and
- “Leaking” is a routine occurrence among officials at every government agency.
So will the Justice Department investigate a case under such circumstances?
No one knows.
Jeff Sessions
Trump has locked himself into a no-win contest—to which there can be only two outcomes. And both of them will prove destructive to him.
Outcome #1: Trump doesn’t find the writer. Trump has always believed in conspiracy theories. and seen disagreement as betrayal. He will become increasingly paranoid and self-destructive, and the White House will become increasingly a place where few want to work.
Even under the best circumstances, any job at the Executive Mansion is tremendously stressful—filled with constant deadlines, turf battles between egotistical staffers, the threat of embarrassing exposure in the national media.
If Trump insists that everyone now working for him be strapped into lie detectors, at least some people will refuse and leave. And getting well-screened and experienced replacements for such positions won’t be easy.
Outcome #2: Trump does find the writer. In that case, Trump’s Mount Rushmore-sized ego will demand the writer’s prosecution and imprisonment—if not execution.
Since the writer didn’t leak State secrets, there won’t be any legal basis for such a prosecution. So this will be seen as a vendetta driven by an authoritarian man’s ego.
Moreover, Trump will run headlong into the danger of unleashing a Constitutional crisis.
His hatred of the “fake news” has long been known. The only media he watches and considers reliable is Right-wing Fox News Network, which acts as his personal cheering squad.
The rest of the media will see this—correctly—as an outright attack on their Constitutionally-protected freedom to discover the news and report it. And they will depict it as such.
Picking a fight with the national news media is a no-win situation for Presidents: The media have the resources to “dig up the dirt” on their enemies—and a unique megaphone to give voice to it.
Donald Trump has earned the hatred of many of the reporters covering him. And they will relish doing all they can to bring him down.
And while Republicans have marched in lockstep with Trump from Day One, even they may well hesitate to support him in an all-out war on the press. After all, they have to run for office every two years (for the House of Representatives) or six (for the Senate).
And they know how dangerous it is to antagonize the reporters and editors who cover them.
For Trump, there will be the very real danger that, this time, they won’t back him.
Richard Nixon learned the hard way how dangerous it is to go to war against a free press.
Donald Trump may be about to do the same.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 10, 2018 at 12:03 am
Labor Day week was a bad one for the Donald Trump administration.
On September 4, the PBS Newshour carried the following story: “Woodward’s White House Book Portrays Officials Trying to Rein in Trump.”
Specifically: Bob Woodward, the two-time Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter and associate editor for The Washington Post, had written a new book about the Trump White House. Its title gave away the contents: Fear: Trump in the White House.
The book will hit bookstores on September 11. But advance copies had clearly been leaked to reviewers.
Among the revelations:
- Former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn believed that Trump would sign a letter canceling a free-trade agreement with South Korea. So he stole the letter from Trump’s desk. Trump “did not notice it was missing.”
- Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described Trump as “a fucking moron.”
- After failing to explain to Trump the importance of American defenses in South Korea, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that Trump “acted like—and had the understanding of—‘a fifth or sixth-grader.'”
- White House Chief of Staff John Kelly privately vented his contempt for Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
- Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow tried to argue to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that Trump could not be asked to give an interview because he is a compulsive liar.
Woodward’s book is the third to attack Trump this year.
In January, Michael Wolff’s scathing volume, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, sent the Trump and his lackeys into a frenzy.
Then, in August, came Omarosa Manigault-Newman’s Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House. Unlike Wolff, Manigault-Newman had been a longtime Trump follower privy to some of his darkest secrets. Now she chose to reveal them.
Trump predictably slandered Woodward: “It’s just another bad book. He’s had a lot of credibility problems.” And: “The book means nothing, it’s a work of fiction … He had the same problem with other presidents.”
Actually, it’s Trump who has a credibility problem—with The Washington Post finding that, by August 1, he had told 4,229 lies since taking office on January 20, 2017.
Bob Woodward
And Trump had undercut himself during a recorded interview with Woodward. On August 14, he called Woodward after hearing reports about the upcoming book.
Woodward said he was sorry that Trump refused to give him an interview for the book, despite his making several requests.
“It’s really too bad, because nobody told me about it,” said Trump. “You know I’m very open to you. I think you’ve always been fair.”
And then, on September 5, Trump was rocked by another scandal: The New York Times published an anonymous Op-Ed essay.
The Op-Ed confirmed much of what reviewers had said appeared in Woodward’s book. And what made it devastating was that the author was identified as “a senior official in the Trump administration.”
The writer called himself a member of “The Resistance.” And he claimed that “many of the senior officials in [Trump’s] own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
Among his revelations:
- “The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”
- “From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.”
- “Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”
- Trump had opposed expelling “so many of Mr. [Vladimir] Putin’s spies” in retaliation for the poisoning of a former Russian spy living in Britain. He also opposed putting further sanctions on Russia “for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better—such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.”
The publishing of the Op-Ed by an anonymous writer touched off a furious guessing game among Washington reporters and ordinary citizens.
Donald Trump
It also triggered a volcanic rage in Trump, who told reporters: “If the failing New York Times has an anonymous anonymous can you believe it, meaning gutless! A gutless editorial.”
Trump labeled the editorial an act of treason—although no State secrets had been revealed, and “leaking” is a routine occurrence among officials at every government agency.
Two days after the editorial appeared, on September 7, Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “Yeah, I would say [Attorney General] Jeff [Sessions] should be investigating who the author of this piece was because I really believe it’s national security,”
Asked if the Justice Department would investigate a case where no national security secrets had been leaked, Sarah Flores, the agency’s spokeswoman, said only: “We do not confirm or deny investigations.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on September 6, 2018 at 12:25 am
President John F. Kennedy was securely fastened in his grave before he became the subject of a flood of bestselling biographies.
Among these:
- With Kennedy, by Pierre Salinger;
- A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.;
- Kennedy, by Theodore C. Sorensen;
- The Pleasure of His Company, by Paul B. Fay;
- My Twelve Years With John F. Kennedy, by Elvelyn Lincoln;
- Conversations With Kennedy, by Benjamin C. Bradlee.
Many of these appeared shortly after his death. Some—such as A Thousand Days and Kennedy—were massive—totaling 1,087 pages for the first and 758 pages for the second.
John F. Kennedy
Most were embarrassingly admiring, almost worshipful. Many of these books were written by those who had worked closely with Kennedy and knew his most intimate secrets. Yet the worst of those secrets did not emerge until the early 1970s.
Among those:
- Kennedy’s compulsive womanizing.
- His poor health and reckless use of drugs (licit and illicit) to control it.
- His waging a no-quarter war on Fidel Castro (including using the Mafia to try to assassinate the Cuban dictator).
Kennedy inspired loyalty by somehow making those around him feel they were valued—and partners in a great historical moment.
Donald Trump, by contrast, has held office less than two years—and two books highly critical of him have already emerged, with a third to appear on September 11th.
The first, Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff, appeared in January. The second, Unhinged, by Omarosa Manigault-Newman, came out in August.
Among the reviews of Fire and Fury:
“What makes the book significant is its sly, hilarious portrait of a hollow man, into the black hole of whose needy, greedy ego the whole world has virtually vanished.”―The Guardian
“An undeniably juicy chronicle of a presidential administration that in just one year has been beset by numerous scandals and crises….” ―The San Francisco Chronicle
Wollf is an author, essayist, journalist, and columnist. He was never a member of Trump’s inner circle—yet he was given extraordinary access to those who worked in the West Wing of the White House.
Donald Trump
Manigault-Newman, on the other hand, had known Trump intimately since 2003, when she first appeared on his NBC “reality” series, The Apprentice. She campaigned for him in 2016 and followed him into the White House as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison—until she was fired in December, 2017.
After her firing, she abruptly underwent a conversion from worshiper to heretic. As a reviewer on Amazon.com put it:
“It’s a story that starts with a starry eyed younger Omarosa, and ends with her freedom from the ‘TrumpWorld cult’. Along the way she becomes increasingly aware that her former mentor, friend, and idol, has no empathy for others, is narcissistic to an extreme, does not read or intake new information unless it’s on a favored cable TV channel, and she also sees signs of dementia-like behavior leaving her wondering what, if anything, she can do as an insider.”
And on September 11th, the most devastating book yet to appear on Trump will make its debut: Fear: Trump in the White House.
Its author is Bob Woodward, legendary investigative reporter and Washington Post associate editor.
Woodward “made his bones” as a journalist with Carl Bernstein from 1972 to 1974. Their reporting made “Watergate” a household word—and helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon.
Perhaps the most startling secret to be found within Woodward’s book: Nearly every member of Trump’s handpicked staff considers him an idiot.
- His former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson: “He’s a fucking idiot.”
- John Kelly, his chief of staff: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown,”
- Secretary of Defense James Mattis: Trump acted like—and had the understanding of—“a fifth- or sixth-grader. ”
- Trump’s former lawyer John Dowd warned the President not to testify before Special Counsel Robert Mueller: “It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit” for perjury.
Niccolo Machiavelli raised the question of “whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved.”
And he answered it: “The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.”
But Machiavelli warned about relying primarily on fear: “Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred, for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together.
Niccolo Machiavelli
By repeatedly showing himself ignorant of—and even indifferent to—the realities of Presidential statecraft, Trump quickly forfeited the respect of his top staffers and Cabinet officials.
As a result, Trump has produced a dysfunctional administration constantly teetering on the edge of meltdown.
And by regularly humiliating those staffers and Cabinet officials, he destroyed their ties of loyalty to him as a man and President.
This has produced legions of angry, disillusioned members seeking revenge—and they will eagerly leak Trump’s latest embarrassing secrets to the first reporter who comes asking.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 5, 2018 at 12:03 am
“This November 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me,” President Donald J. Trump told Right-wing Christian leaders at the State Dining Room of the White House.
“There is violence,” Trump said on August 27. “When you look at Antifa—these are violent people. You have tremendous power. You were saying, in this room, you have people who preach to almost 200 million people. Depending on which Sunday we’re talking about.”
Antifa is short for “Anti-Fascist.” It’s an amalgam of anti-Fascist groups which counter-protest white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Republicans and Right-wing organizations have long dredged up bogeymen to frighten voters—and convince them that only Republicans can be trusted to protect them.
Donald Trump
Yet it is Trump who, during the 2016 Presidential campaign, threatened his opponents—Republican and Democrat—with violence if he didn’t get his way.
- On March 16, 2016, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
- An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear on [March 16]: ‘Nice convention you got there, shame if something happened to it.'”
- That Republicans clearly saw this as a threat is undeniable. Paul Ryan, their Speaker of the House, said on March 17: “Nobody should say such things in my opinion because to even address or hint to violence is unacceptable.”
- And Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich chinned in. “Leaders don’t imply violence,” Kasich told “Face the Nation” on March 20. “When he says that there could be riots, that’s inappropriate. I think you understand that, okay? Secondly, while we have our differences and disagreements, we’re Americans. Americans don’t say, ‘Let’s take to the streets and have violence.'”
- Philip Klein, the managing editor of the Washington Examiner, wrote on the eve of the Republican National Convention in July: “Political commentators now routinely talk about the riots that would break out in Cleveland if Trump were denied the nomination, about how his supporters have guns and all hell could break loose, that they would burn everything to the ground. It works to Trump’s advantage to not try too hard to dispel these notions.”
- On August 9, Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
- “Don’t treat this as a political misstep,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, who has called for stiffer gun laws, wrote on Twitter. “It’s an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy & crisis.”
- “Well, let me say if someone else said that outside of the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now, with the Secret Service questioning him,” said Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA).
Threats of this type continued to be made by Trump supporters right up to the day of the election.
- On July 29, 2016, Roger Stone, a notorious Right-wing political consultant acting as a Trump strategist, told Breitbart News: “The first thing Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
- In Cincinnati, a Trump supporter threatened to forcibly remove Clinton from the White House if she won the race: “If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take….I would do whatever I can for my country.”
“That’s really scary,” said Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP. recounting the violence at Trump rallies around the country leading up to the Republican National Convention. “There’s no telling what his supporters would be willing to do at the slightest encouragement from their candidate,” he said.
Fergus Cullen
Trump even began encouraging his supporters to act as poll watchers in “other” [non-white] communities to ensure that things are “on the up and up.”
Many of his supporters promised to do so.
“Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.
“I’ll look for…well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American. I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”
So when Trump warns about violence, look for it—from Republicans.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 4, 2018 at 12:06 am
It’s universally known that Donald J. Trump is a lifelong narcissist and egomaniac. And it’s also no secret that those around him do their utmost to cater to his rampant narcissism and egomania.
This includes those officials he has appointed to his White House cabinet.
On June 12, 2017, polls showed that only 36% of Americans approved of his conduct. But from his Cabinet members, Trump got praise traditionally lavished on dictators like Joseph Stalin and Kim Jong On.
While the Cabinet members sat around a mahogany table in the West Wing of the White House, Trump instructed each one to say a few words about the good work his administration was doing.
“Start with Mike,” ordered Trump, referring to Vice President Mike Pence.
“It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve as the vice president to a president who is keeping his word to the American people,” Pence dutifully said.
Mike Pence
Then the rest of the Cabinet joined in:
- Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “It’s an honor to be able to serve you.”
- Tom Price: “What an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership.”
- Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta: “I can’t thank you enough for the privilege that you’ve given me, and the leadership you’ve shown.”
- Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao: “Thank you for coming over to the Department of Transportation.”
- Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget: “At your direction, we were able to also focus on the forgotten men and women who are paying taxes, so I appreciate your support on pulling that budget together.”
To this sycophantic chorus must now be added the name of Ron DeSantis, the 2018 Republican nominee for governor of Florida.
Ron DeSantis
DeSantis’ accomplishments are truly impressive:
- 2001 – Graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in History.
- 2004 – Sworn into the Judge Advocate General Corps of the U.S. Navy while still attending Harvard Law School (from which he graduated with a J.D. in 2005).
- 2008 – Appointed by the U.S. Justice Department as a prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida.
- 2012 – Elected to the House of Representatives for Florida’s Sixth Congressional district.
- 2018 – Announced his candidacy for Governor of Florida to succeed termed out Republican incumbent Rick Scott.
Instead of highlighting his series of impressive accomplishments, he chose to create an ad that was virtually a love-hymn to Donald Trump:
“Everyone knows my husband Ron DeSantis is endorsed by President Trump, but he’s also an amazing dad,” says DeSantis’ wife, Casey.
“Build the wall,” says DeSantis, as his daughter, Madison, creates a wall out of building blocks.
“He reads stories—” says Casey. Then the ad cuts to DeSantis reading The Art of the Deal to his son, Mason: “Then Mr. Trump said, ‘You’re fired.’ I love that part.”
“He’s teaching Madison to talk,” says Casey. The ad cuts to DeSantis showing Madison a “Trump: Make America Great Again” sign and pointing out each word: “Make America Great Again.”
Casey: “People say Ron’s all Trump, but he is so much more.” This is followed by a shot of Mason lying in a crib, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” T-shirt.
Then the camera pulls back to show DeSantis standing over the crib, saying: “Bigly. So good.”
Finally, Casey says: “I just thought you should know.”
What voters should know is that Donald Trump has an insatiable appetite for flattery. And that Ron DeSantis is a sycophant eager to trade his dignity for Trump’s support.
And Trump, in return, has offered it.
For almost 30 years, through purges and starvation caused by enforced collections of farmers’ crops, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin slaughtered 20 to 60 million people.
On Stalin’s 70th birthday—December 21, 1949—Russians furiously competed with each other to lavish praise on him:
Joseph Stalin
- Novelist Leonid Lenov predicted that all the peoples of the earth would one day celebrate his birthday. The new calendar would begin with the birth of Stalin rather than with the birth of Christ.
- Lavrenti P. Beria, Stalin’s sinister and feared secret police chief: “Millions of fighters for peace and democracy in all countries of the world are closing their ranks still firmer around Comrade Stalin.”
- Defense Commissar Kliment Voroshilov: “The mighty voice of the Great Stalin, defending the peace of the world, has penetrated into all corners of the globe.”
- Central Committee Secretary Georgi Malenkov: “With a feeling of great gratitude, turning their eyes to Stalin, the peoples of the Soviet Union, and hundreds of millions of peoples in all countries of the world, and all progressive mankind, see in Comrade Stalin their beloved leader and teacher….”
In 1962, the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko condemned those who had abjectly served as yes-men to such a madman.
Entitled, “Conversation With an American Writer,” the opening lines of Yevtushenko’s poem stand as a burning indictment to the yes-men who sycophantically saluted Stalin:
“You have courage,’ they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.”
Yevtushenko’s words equally indict those who now sycophantically salute Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 3, 2018 at 12:10 am
Republicans and Christian Rightists have something in common: Fear of losing their power to dominate the lives of their fellow Americans.
The most recent proof of this came on August 27, when President Donald J. Trump met with Right-wing Christian leaders at the State Dining Room of the White House.
“This November 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me,” said Trump. “It’s a referendum on your religion, it’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment. It’s a referendum on so much.
“It’s not a question of like or dislike, it’s a question that they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently.
“There is violence. When you look at Antifa—these are violent people. You have tremendous power. You were saying, in this room, you have people who preach to almost 200 million people. Depending on which Sunday we’re talking about.”
Donald Trump
Antifa is actually short for “Anti-Fascist.” It’s an amalgam of anti-Fascist groups which counter-protest white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Republicans and Right-wing organizations have long dredged up bogeymen to frighten voters—and convince them that only Republicans can be trusted to protect them.
Antifa has emerged as the most recent of these bogeymen.
“You have to hopefully get out and get people to support us,” Trump told the evangelicals. “If you don’t, that will be the beginning of ending everything that you’ve gotten.”
Evangelicals have solidly supported Trump—despite:
- His being twice divorced;
- His multiple affairs (including one with porn star Stormy Daniels);
- His documented ties to Russian oligarchs and Mafia chieftains;
- His viciousness, greed, lying and egomania.
Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell, Jr., at Liberty University
Yet evangelicals blasted President Bill Clinton for his extramarital dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. And they greedily accepted the fiction that President Barack Obama was a Muslim born in Kenya, even though his birth certificate says Hawaii and he has always attended a Christian church.
So why do evangelicals fervently support Trump?
First, they see their influence eroding.
“Prior to 2008, white evangelical Protestants seemed to be exempt from the waves of demographic change and disaffiliation that were eroding the membership bases of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and author of “The End of White Christian America.”
“We now see that these waves simply crested later for white evangelical Protestants.”
According to a study by PRRI:
- White Christians comprised 81% of the population in 1976. Today only 43% of Americans identify as white Christians, and 30% as white Protestants.
- White Christians are aging. About 1 in 10 white Catholics, evangelicals and mainline Protestants are under 30, compared with one-third of all Hindus and Buddhists.
- Muslims and Mormons are the youngest faith groups in America. Forty-two percent of all Muslims are under 30. So are nearly one-fourth of all Mormons.
“The young are much less likely to believe this is a ‘Christian nation’ or to give preference to Christian identity,” said Jones. “Young people and seniors are basically inhabiting different religious worlds.”
And Trump plays into that sense of victimhood:
“You’re one election away from losing everything that you’ve gotten,” Trump said during his meeting with evangelicals. “Little thing: Merry Christmas, right? You couldn’t say ‘Merry Christmas.'”
Evangelicals lust to control the lives of those they have long hated and despised.
Among these:
- Atheists
- Jews
- Women
- Homosexuals
- Lesbians
- Non-Christians
- Liberals
They expect Trump to sponsor legislation that will—by force of law—make their brand of Christianity supreme above all other religions. And this will give them the status of the Official Religion of the United States.
Such legislation as The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
This was signed into law on March 26, 2015, by Mike Pence, then Governor of Indiana.
This allows any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party.
Officially, its intent is to prevent the government from forcing business owners to violate their religious beliefs.
Unofficially, its intent is to appease the hatred of gays and lesbians by the religious Right, a key constituency of the Republican party.
Thus, a bakery that doesn’t want to make a cake for a gay wedding or a restaurant that doesn’t want to serve lesbian patrons now has the legal right to refuse to do so.
And a hospital can legally turn away a gay patient if it wants to.
The bill passed overwhelmingly by both chambers of the Republican-controlled state legislature. And was signed into law by the governor who is now Vice President.
Indiana Governor Mike Pence
Both the leaders of the Republican party and those of evangelical congregations agree:
- Women should have fewer rights than men.
- Abortion should be illegal.
- There should be no separation between church and state.
- Religion should be taught in school.
- Religious doctrine trumps science.
- Government should be based on religious doctrine.
- Homosexuality should be outlawed.
Evangelicals fear they are swiftly losing their once privileged place among American religious groups.
And Republicans fear they might lose control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and, ultimately, the White House to a “blue wave” this fall.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 29, 2018 at 12:04 am
On February 26, 2016, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump made an astonishing admission: “I’m not like other people.”
He did so while revealing that, as President, he would “open up those libel laws” so that when the New York Times or the Washington Post “write a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.
“With me, they’re not protected, because I’m not like other people, but I’m not taking money, I’m not taking their money.”
On August 23, 2018, Trump, as President, offered additional evidence that he’s “not like other people.” He did so by giving an unprecedented reason why he shouldn’t be impeached.
Appearing on “Fox and Friends,” he said:
- “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job.”
- “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
- Pointing to his head, he said: “Because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”
He didn’t say: “I shouldn’t be impeached because I’m innocent. I didn’t collude with Russian Intelligence to subvert the 2016 Presidential election.”
Instead, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
An official White House statement entitled “American Greatness,” issued on June 4 stated:
“Nearly 3 million jobs have been created since President Trump took office. The unemployment rate has dropped to 3.8, the lowest rate since April 2000, and job openings have reached 6.6 million, the highest level recorded. President Trump has restored confidence in the American economy, with confidence among both consumers and businesses reaching historic highs.”
Much of this jobs growth, however, was already underway during the closing years of the Obama administration. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from taking credit for it.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubtless spoke for millions of Trump supporters when she said, on June 4:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.
“The American people do not believe this strong economy is fantasy or unrealistic.”
Many Congressional Republicans have echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
For eight years, Nazi Germany underwent such an epoch. Germans called it “The Happy Time.”
It began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor—and lasted until June 22, 1941. Germans knew about the Nazis’ cruelty to the Jews, the mass arrests and concentration camps. They didn’t care.
Frenzied Germans greet Adolf Hitler
The Gestapo didn’t have to watch everyone: German “patriots” gladly reported their fellow citizens—especially Jews—to the secret police.
As far as everyday Germans were concerned:
- The streets were clean and peaceful.
- Employment was high.
- The trouble-making unions were gone.
- Germany was once again “taking its rightful place” among ruling nations, after its catastrophic defeat in World War 1.
The height of “The Happy Time” came in June, 1940. In just six weeks, the Wehrmacht accomplished what the German army hadn’t in four years during World War 1: The total defeat of its longtime enemy, France.
Suddenly, French clothes, perfumes, delicacies, paintings and other “fortunes of war” came pouring into the Fatherland. (Reichsmarshall Herman Goring, head of the Luftwaffe—air force—amassed his own private air collection from French museums.)
Most Germans believed der Krieg—“the war”—was over, and only good times lay ahead.
Then, on June 22, 1941, three million Wehrmacht soldiers slashed their way into the Soviet Union. The Third Reich was now locked in a death-struggle with a nation even more powerful than itself.
German soldiers in the Soviet Union
And then, on December 11, 1941—four days after Germany’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor—Hitler declared war on the United States.
“The Happy Time” for Germans was over. Only prolonged disaster lay ahead.
Donald Trump has spent his life appealing to the greed or fear of those around him. For example:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case against Trump, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign.
- In 1999, Fred Trump, Donald’s father died. His deceased brother’s family sued Donald, arguing they were originally in the will, but Donald took advantage of his father’s dementia to cut them out of it. He withdrew medical benefits critical to his nephew’s infant son: “I was angry because they sued,” Trump later said in an interview.
The Germans made a devil’s-bargain with Adolf Hitler—and paid dearly for it.
Millions of greedy Americans have embraced Donald Trump, another would-be tyrant, as America’s economic savior.
By supporting Trump—or at least not opposing him—they have made a devil’s-bargain.
And such bargains always end with the devil winning.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 28, 2018 at 12:24 am
James Comey has had a long and distinguished career in American law enforcement:
- 2002 – 2003: United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York
- 2003 – 2005: United States Deputy Attorney General
- 2013 – 2017: Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
As a result, Comey has firsthand experience in attacking organized crime—and in spotting its leaders.
In his bestselling memoir, A Higher Loyalty, he writes:
“As I found myself thrust into the Trump orbit, I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and the truth.”
On May 9, 2017, President Donald Trump fired Comey as FBI director. There were five reasons for this:
- Comey had refused to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump. Trump had made the “request” during a private dinner at the White House in January.
- Comey told Trump that he would always be honest with him. But that didn’t satisfy Trump’s demand that the head of the FBI act as his personal secret police chief—as was the case in the former Soviet Union.
- Trump had tried to coerce Comey into dropping the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, for his secret ties to Russia and Turkey. Comey had similarly resisted that demand.
- Comey had recently asked the Justice Department to fund an expanded FBI investigation into well-documented contacts between Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.
- The goal of that collaboration: To elect Trump over Hillary Clinton, a longtime foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
James Comey
Trump and his shills have adamantly denied that he demanded that Comey serve as his private police chief.
But now Trump has proved that he—and not Comey—was the liar. And more like a mobster than a President.
On August 21, his former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight counts of campaign finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud. And, more worrisome for Trump, Cohen said he had made illegal campaign contributions “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office”—Donald Trump.
On August 23, on the Fox News program, “Fox and Friends,” Trump attacked Cohen for “flipping” on him:
“For 30, 40 years I’ve been watching flippers. Everything’s wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they—they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go. It—it almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair.
“You know, campaign violations are considered not a big deal, frankly. But if somebody defrauded a bank and he’s going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail but if you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you’ll go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made.”
Making “flipping” illegal would undo decades of organized crime prosecutions—and make future ones almost impossible.
“It takes a small bum to catch a big bum,” as one deputy U.S. marshal once stated.
Boy Scouts simply won’t hang out with career criminals. To penetrate the secrets of criminal organizations, investigators and prosecutors need the testimony of those who are parties to those secrets.
The Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 gave Justice Department prosecutors unprecedented weapons for attacking crime syndicates across the country. One of these was the authority to give witnesses immunity from prosecution on the basis of their own testimony.
Thus, a witness to a criminal conspiracy could be forced to tell all he knew—and thus implicate his accomplices—and bosses. In turn, he wouldn’t be prosecuted on the basis of his testimony. (He could, however, be prosecuted if someone else accused him of criminal acts.)
Organized crime members aggressively damn such “rats.” There is no more obscene word in a mobster’s vocabulary.
But no President—until Trump—has ever attacked those who make possible a war on organized crime.
On August 19, he tweeted:
“The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type “RAT.” But I allowed him and all others to testify – I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide……”
In 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean testified before the United States Senate on a litany of crimes committed by President Richard M. Nixon. Dean didn’t lie about Nixon—who ultimately resigned in disgrace.
For Trump, Dean’s sin is that he “flipped” on his former boss, violating the Mafia’s code of omerta, or silence.
Trump knows better than most how dangerous a “flipper” can be. His former lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, represented some of the most notorious Mafiosi in the country—such as John Gotti and Carmine Galante.
And both Gotti and Galante went to prison owing to “flippers.”
For Donald Trump, there is no greater nightmare than becoming the victim of those who know—and are willing to share—his criminal secrets.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 24, 2018 at 12:48 am
Omarosa Manigault-Newman has struck a chord of fear in President Donald Trump that rivals the fear he has struck in others.
She has done so by using many of his own tactics against him: Deceit, intimidation, media manipulation.
Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields noted on the August 17 edition of The PBS Newshour: “In a White House where most of the people are recent acquaintances of the president, she goes back longer than anybody, except the president’s daughter. She goes back 15 years. She is a Donald Trump protege and product….
“But what she does, obviously, like Elizabeth Warren, she gets under Donald Trump’s skin. And she has said things that, you know, may be subject to fact-check, but the reality is, she has tape.
“She has tape of Donald Trump groveling before her, pretending that he didn’t know that John Kelly had the day before brought her to the Situation Room…which therefore confirms the suspicion widely held that Donald Trump doesn’t have the stomach for confronting people who work for him, that he lies.
“And you can see that he obviously is absolutely upset by her, and she’s got everybody in the White House, every male, quaking in his Guccis about those tapes. I can tell you that.”
David Brooks and Mark Shields
New York Times Columnist David Brooks, speaking on the same episode of The Newshour, outlined why her attacks on Trump have been so effective.
“Well, what’s interesting about her is, she plays by reality show rules. She plays by Trump rules. And most people who go against Trump don’t quite play by his rules. And she plays by his rules, which is no rules, that do whatever you can, it doesn’t matter what the norms and standards are.
“And taping somebody in the Situation Room is a rather serious offense and, to me, a pretty great betrayal of any—how any White House should work. I mean, if we’re walking around each other in the hallway taping each other, just think about doing that.
“That’s just a betrayal of how normal life should happen….And so she said, they’re going to lie about me, they’re going to screw me, so I’m ready.”
In perhaps the most-quoted passage of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote:
“From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
“For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain. As long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours: they offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children, when the necessity is remote, but when it approaches, they revolt.
“And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined. For the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Donald Trump has always used fear to instill and maintain loyalty among his closest associates—and to intimidate his many enemies.
But Machiavelli offers a warning on the uses of fear:
“Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred, for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together.
“Cruelties ill committed are those which, although at first few, increase rather than diminish with time….In taking a state, the conqueror must arrange to commit all his cruelties at once, so as not to have to recur to them very day, and so as to be able, by not making fresh changes, to reassure people and win them over by benefiting them.
“Whoever acts otherwise, either through timidity or bad counsels,” warns Machiavelli, “is always obliged to stand with knife in hand, and can never depend on his subjects, because they, owing to continually fresh injuries, are unable to depend upon him.”
From the onset of his Presidency, Trump has violated this warning with a vengeance. And now he is “obliged to stand with knife in hand.”
Omarosa is the first former Trump loyalist to emerge as a fervent Trump critic. And she may have even worse in store for him.
Warns David Brooks:
“All sorts of signs are pointing in this direction, that we’re going to wind up with an election where….people are basically going to be voting, when race is a hot button issue, with a man who has a history of bigoted comments, and then voting along those lines.”
With Democratic voters—many of them blacks and Hispanics—energized, Trump’s obvious racism could sweep Republicans from the House of Representatives.
Omarosa seems determined to make that happen.
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LIE CREATORS: PART ONE (OF SEVEN)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on September 13, 2018 at 12:07 amHave you noticed how every American employer has suddenly become a “job creator”?
At least, that’s the official Republican line.
But if that’s true:
According to an August, 2018 news release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor:
At the same time, U.S. corporations sit on at least $2 trillion in cash.
Besides lying beyond the reach of the IRS, those monies could be used to hire those millions of qualified, willing-to-work Americans who can’t find fulltime, permanent employment.
An article in the March, 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest gives the lie to the excuses so many employers use for refusing to hire.
Entitled “22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting a Job,” it lays bare many of the reasons why America needs to legally force employers to demonstrate as much responsibility for hiring as job-seekers are expected to show toward searching for work.
Among the truths it reveals:
TRUTH NO: 1: After you’re unemployed more than six months, employers consider you unemployable.
TRUTH NO. 2: It’s not what but who you know that counts.
TRUTH NO. 3: Try to avoid HR. Find someone in the company you know. If you don’t know anyone, contact the hiring manager.
TRUTH NO. 4: Cover letters are often ignored, going directly into “the round file.”
TRUTH NO. 5: Employers judge you on the basis of your email address. Avoid the type that reads: “Igetdrunkand party.”
TRUTH NO. 6: You’re not protected against age discrimination. Many employers regularly ignore the law. Are you in your 50s or 60s? Leave your year of graduation off your resume.
TRUTH NO: 7: Just because it’s illegal to discriminate against applicants who have children does not mean you’re safe. Many employers try to screen out parents–such as by checking cars for child safety seats.
TRUTH NO. 8: It’s harder to get a job if you’re fat, since fat people are usually assumed to be lazy.
TRUTH NO. 9: Make sure you give the interviewer a firm handshake. Or he might assume you’re a loser for giving him a weak one.
TRUTH NO. 10: The more you can get the interviewer to talk–especially about himself–the more likely you are to be hired. Ego-driven interviewers love hearing the sound of their own voices and will assume you’re better-qualified than someone who doesn’t want to listen to them prattle.
Millions of Americans blamed President Barack Obama for the nation’s high unemployment rate during his administration. And millions more believe that President Donald Trump has created an economic miracle—despite those millions of Americans still desperately searching for work.
The brutal truth is that no President can hope to turn unemployment around until employers are forced to start living up to their responsibilities.
And those responsibilities should encompass more than simply fattening their own pocketbooks and/or egos at the expense of their fellow Americans. Such behavior used to be called treason.
Americans need to recognize that a country can be betrayed for other than political reasons. It can be sold out for economic ones, too.
Trea$on
Employers who enrich themselves by weakening their country—by throwing millions of qualified workers into the street and moving their plants to other countries—are traitors.
Employers who set up offshore accounts to claim their American companies are foreign-owned—and thus exempt from taxes—are traitors.
Employers who systematically violate Federal immigration laws—to hire illegal aliens instead of willing-to-work Americans—are traitors.
And with a new definition of treason should go new penalties—heavy fines and/or prison terms–for those who sell out their country to enrich themselves.
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