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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 14, 2023 at 12:56 am
In 1992, Republicans wanted to re-elect President George H.W. Bush, who had succeeded Ronald Reagan in 1989.
But they had a problem: Whipping up voter enthusiasm for him.
Bush wasn’t charismatic like Reagan, so he didn’t inspire the intense loyalty Reagan had. He was seen as drab, even wimpy.
George H.W. Bush
Ironically, Bush had performed heroically during World War II.
On August 1, 1944, Bush piloted one of four aircraft that attacked the Japanese installations on Chichijima.
Bush’s aircraft was hit by flak and his engine caught on fire. Despite this, Bush completed his attack and released bombs over his target, scoring several damaging hits.
Reagan, by contrast, spent World War II on a Hollywood sound stage as part of the First Motion Picture Unit, turning out propaganda films to boost civilian morale.
Yet he was seen by millions as a genuine war hero.
Then there was the stalled economy.
Early in his term, Bush faced leftover deficits spawned by the Reagan years. Reagan had given tax-cuts to the rich, bloated the military budget and cut government programs to aid the poor and middle class.
As a result, the deficit had grown by 1990 to $220 billion, three times its size since 1980. In 1991, many corporations, claiming the need to reorganize, laid off hundreds of thousands of workers, who had believed that their jobs were secure.
By mid-year, the unemployment rate reached 7.8%, the highest since 1984. In September 1992, the Census Bureau reported that 14.2% of all Americans lived in poverty.
Bush’s Democratic challenger in 1992 was Bill Clinton, who had been the Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992. At 45, Clinton was young, vigorous, and for many evoked memories of an equally young and vigorous John F. Kennedy.
To overcome these disadvantages, Republicans needed a way to generate enthusiasm among their base.
The answer: “Family values.”
Supposedly this meant support for values traditionally learned or reinforced within a family, such as those of high moral standards and discipline.
In reality, it was a Right-wing excuse for the failed economic policies of the Reagan-Bush years.
By citing “a decline in family values,” Bush’s re-election team could blame jobless Americans for their own misery: “If only you had lived up to the high standards set by your Republican superiors, you wouldn’t now be in this position.”
“Family values” carried a sexual subtext as well. Since abortion had became legal in 1973, Republicans had appropriated re-criminalizing it as their pet sex-related issue.
During the Reagan years, Attorney General Edwin Meese had launched a crackdown on pornography. And much of Reagan’s support had come from sexually-obsessed Christian Right evangelists such as Jerry Falwell of the “Moral Majority.”
Thus, a Bush supporter held up a sign reading, “Woody Allen is Clinton’s Adviser on Family Values,” at the 1992 Republican Presidential convention.
Allen had recently become notorious for an affair with the adopted stepdaughter of his lover, actress Mia Farrow. The slogan wasn’t enough to get Bush re-elected. Bill Clinton was elected President.
But “family values” lived on for decades as Republican code language for: “Only Republicans are sexually upright.”
Throughout the eight-year Clinton Presidency, Republicans focused on his longtime reputation as a sex-crazed Rasputin. When the news broke that Clinton had been diddling a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, Republicans demanded his resignation.
When Clinton refused to resign, they unsuccessfully tried to impeach him. Meanwhile, they ignored the extramarital affairs of their own members–such as then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich had been boffing a mistress while demanding Clinton’s impeachment for similar adultery. After Gingrich resigned from the House of Representatives in 1999, his would-be successor, Bob Livingston, was forced to resign from Congress.
He had been outed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt as a serial philanderer. In 1996, Republicans pushed through Congress the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman. It allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages allowed in other states.
DOMA was advertised as a necessary defense against “predatory homosexuals” who, like vampires, were thought to be preying on innocent heterosexuals.
A major backer of anti-gay legislation was Dennis Hastert, Republican Speaker of the House from 1999 to 1007.
Dennis Hastert
In 2006, Hastert spearheaded a bill to toughen punishments for sex crimes against children.
“We’ve all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children,” said Hastert. “Protecting our children from Internet predators and child exploitation enterprises are just as high a priority as securing our border from terrorists.”
On April 29, 2016, a federal judge repeatedly damned Hastert as a “serial child molester” for sexually abusing several boys he coached on the Yorkville High School wrestling team in the 1960s and 1970s.Having targeted the poor, blacks, Hispanics, women and gays, Republicans are now training their sights on transgenders.
And Target Corporation’s April 19 announcement that its customers could pick the bathroom that “matched their gender identity” gave Republicans a new venue for their attacks on sex-related issues.
There is no known epidemic of transgender attacks on heterosexuals in bathrooms. But Republicans will ride this issue so long as there are citizens willing to believe it.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 13, 2023 at 12:10 am
City agencies need to see landlords for what they truly are—as, at best, potential predators, if not actual ones. And to act aggressively on that knowledge.
As Niccolo Machiavelli warned:
“All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
“If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
The power of slumlords calls to mind the scene in 1987’s The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s veteran cop tells Eliot Ness: “Everybody knows where the liquor is. It’s just a question of: Who wants to cross Capone?”
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
This holds true across the United States. But it also holds true in San Francisco—the “renters’ paradise” where the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t prosecuted a slumlord in decades.
Part Two of this series presented a series of badly-needed, long-overdue reforms for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI). This is the agency charged to ensuring safe housing conditions for San Francisco residents.
Renters across the country should demand similar protections.
This concluding part will cover the remainder of those needed reforms.
- Landlords should be required to bring all the units in a building up to existing building codes, and not just those in need of immediate repair.
- Landlords should be legally required to hire a certified-expert contractor to perform building repairs. To save money—that they can well afford to spend—-many landlords insist on making such repairs despite their not being trained or experienced in doing so. They thereby risk the health and/or safety of their tenants.
- DBI should not view itself as a “mediation” agency between landlords and tenants. Most landlords hate DBI and will always do so. They believe they should be allowed to treat their tenants like serfs, if not slaves, raise extortionate rents anytime they desire, and maintain their buildings in whatever state they wish.
- Above all, DBI must stop viewing itself as a regulatory agency and start seeing itself as a law enforcement one. The FBI doesn’t ask criminals to comply with the law. It applies whatever amount of pressure is needed to force their compliance. William Tecumseh Sherman, speaking of the rebellious Southern states, said it best: “They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.”
- The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office should create a special unit to investigate and prosecute slumlords. Prosecutors should offer rewards to citizens who provide tips on major outrages by the city’s slumlords.
- Install Rent Control protections for tenants on fixed incomes. San Francisco is notorious for having the highest rents in the nation. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment runs $3,000 a month. Even those in the vaunted high-tech industry spend most of their income on rent.
- For tenants on fixed incomes—seniors, disabled, students—the predatory greed of landlords amounts to a staged-in eviction notice. Social Security recipients often don’t get a cost-of-living increase if there hasn’t been a rise in gasoline prices. But many of them don’t own cars—while the price of everything else—such as groceries—has sharply risen.
- Allowing landlords to jack up rents to the fullest extent possible every year will eventually drive out all tenants who are not multimillionaires. In fact, an unknown portion of this City’s homeless population doubtless stems from the ability of landlords to gradually raise rents above tenants’ ability to afford them.
- In 1979, San Franciscans passed a Rent Control law to protect tenants against predatory rent hikes and unfair evictions. As a result, a landlord can only raise a tenant’s rent a certain percentage every year. This is set by the set by the Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board, more popularly known as the “Rent Board.”
- But there is a gaping hole in the law: Once a tenant moves out, the landlord can jack up the rent as high as he wants. This is why the average rent in San Francisco is priced beyond most middle-class wage-earners.
- In addition, landlords are allowed to charge tenants yearly fees to maintain the existence of the Rent Board. This is both unfair and insulting, since the Board was created to protect tenants from predatory landlords. Most tenants have far less money to pay such fees than do landlords, who are free to raise rents every year. And landlords—unlike tenants—can and do write off Rent Board fees on their taxes every year.
As Robert F. Kennedy wrote: “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 12, 2023 at 12:10 am
“We investigate complaints of building code violations and compel building owners to fix the violations.”
So boasts the website for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI).
Yet DBI has long been outmaneuvered by predatory, law-breaking landlords.
And San Francisco renters—many of them elderly, poor and/or disabled—have been the victims of landlord greed, neglect and/or harassment.
Among the reforms that DBI should immediately enact:
- Hit slumlord violators with a fine—payable immediately—for at least $2,000 to $5,000 for each health/safety-code violation. The slumlord would be told he could reclaim 75-80% of the money only if he fully corrected the violation within 30 days. The remaining portion of the levied fine would go into the City coffers, to be shared among DBI and other City agencies.
- This would put the onus on the slumlord, not DBI. Appealing to his greed would ensure his willingness to comply with the ordered actions. As matters now stand, it is DBI who must repeatedly check with the slumlord to find out if its orders have been complied with.
- If the landlord failed to comply with the actions ordered within 30 days, the entire fine would go into the City’s coffers-–to be divided among DBI and other agencies charged with protecting San Francisco residents.
- In addition. he would be hit again with a fine at least twice the amount of the first one.
- Inspectors for DBI should be allowed to cite landlords for violations that fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Health (DPH). They could then pass the information to DPH for its own investigation.
- If the DBI inspector later discovered that the landlord had not corrected the DPH violation within a designated time-period, DBI should be allowed to levy its own fine for his failure to do so.
- If DPH objects to this, DBI should propose that DPH’s own inspectors be armed with similar cross-jurisdictional authority. Each agency would thus have increased motivation for spotting and correcting health/safety violations that threaten the lives of San Francisco residents.
- This would instantly turn DBI and DPH into allies, not competitors. And it would mean that whether a citizen called DBI or DPH, s/he could be assured of getting the necessary assistance. As matters now stand, many residents are confused by the conflicting jurisdictions of both agencies.
- DBI should insist that its Inspectors Division be greatly expanded.DBI can attain this by arguing that reducing the number of Inspectors cuts (1) protection for San Francisco renters–and (2) monies that could go to the general City welfare.
- The Inspection Division should operate independently of DBI.Currently, too many high-ranking DBI officials tilt toward landlords because they are landlords themselves.
- DBI should create a Special Research Unit to compile records on the worst slumlord offenders. Thus, a slumlord with a repeat history of defying DBI Notices of Violation could be treated more harshly than a landlord who was a first-time offender.
- Turning DBI into a revenue-producing agency would enable the City to raise desperately-needed revenues—in a highly popular way. Fining delinquent slumlords would be as popular as raising taxes on tobacco companies. Only slumlords and their hired lackey allies would object.
- DBI should legally require landlords to rehabilitate a unit every time a new tenant moves in, or have it examined by a DBI inspector every two years. A tenant can occupy a unit for ten or more years, then die or move out, and the landlord immediately rents the unit to the first person who comes along, without making any repairs or upgrades whatsoever.
- Slumlords, unlike drug-dealers, can’t move their buildings from one street or city to another. If they want to make money in San Francisco, they will have to submit to the jurisdiction of landlord-regulating agencies.
- DBI should require landlords to post their Notices of Violation in public areas of their buildings—and levy severe fines for failing to do so. When DBI orders a slumlord to take corrective action, s/he is the only one who is notified. If that slumlord refuses to comply with that directive, s/he is the only one who knows it. Given the pressing demands on DBI, weeks or months will pass before the agency learns about this violation of its orders. Tenants have a right to know if their landlord is complying with the law—so they can promptly notify inform DBI if a violation is occurring.
- Landlords should be legally required to give each tenant a list of the major city agencies (such as DBI, the Rent Board and the Department of Public Health) that exist to help tenants solve problems with their housing.
- DBI should launch—and maintain—a citywide advertising campaign to alert residents about its services. Everyone knows the FBI pursues bank robbers. But too many San Franciscans don’t even know that DBI exists, let alone what laws it enforces. This should be an in-your-face campaign: “Do you have bedbugs in your apartment? Has your stove stopped working? Are you afraid to ride in your building elevator because it’s always malfunctioning? Have you complained to your landlord and gotten the runaround? Then call DBI at—- Or drop us an email at_____.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 11, 2023 at 12:11 am
As of 2022, seven states—California, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and the District of Columbia—offer tenant protections via residential rent control.
Only 34 out of 482 cities in California have strong tenant protections.
And only 15 cities in California have rent controls on landlords’ greed: Alameda, Berkeley, Beverly Hills, East Palo Alto, Hayward, Los Angeles, Los Gatos, Mountain View, Oakland, Palm Springs, Richmond. San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood.
To hear slumlords tell it, San Francisco is a “renters’ paradise,” where obnoxious, lazy, rent-evading tenants constantly take advantage of hard-working, put-upon landlords.
Don’t believe it.
Kip and Nicole Macy are two former San Francisco slumlords who pled guilty to felony charges of residential burglary, stalking and attempted grand theft.
Nicole and Kip Macy
Determined to evict rent control-protected tenants from their apartment building in the South of Market district, they unleashed a reign of terror in 2006:
- Cut holes in the floor of one tenant’s living room with a power saw—while he was inside his unit.
- Cut out sections of the floor joists to make the building collapse.
- Created fictitious email accounts to appear as a tenant who had filed a civil suit against the Macys—and used these to fire the tenant’s attorney.
- Cut the tenants’ telephone lines and shut off their electricity, gas and water.
- Changed the locks on all the apartments without warning.
- Mailed death threats.
- Kicked one of their tenants in the ribs.
- Hired workers to board up a tenant’s windows from the outside while he still lived there.
- Falsely reported trespassers in a tenant’s apartment, leading police to hold him and a friend at gunpoint.
- Broke into the units of three tenants and removed all their belongings.
- Again broke into the units of the same three victims and soaked their beds, clothes and electronics with ammonia.
The Macys were arrested in April, 2008, posted a combined total of $500,000 bail and then fled the country after being indicted in early 2009.
In May, 2012, Italian police arrested and deported them back to America a year later.
Having pled guilty, they were sentenced in September, 2013, to a prison term of four years and four months.
How could such a campaign of terror go on for two years against law-abiding San Francisco tenants?
Simple.
Even in the city misnamed as a “renter’s paradise,” slumlords are treated like gods by the very agencies that are supposed to protect tenants against their abuses.
The power of slumlords calls to mind the scene in 1987’s The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s veteran cop tells Eliot Ness: “Everybody knows where the liquor is. It’s just a question of: Who wants to cross Capone?”
Everybody in San Francisco knows who the slumlords are. But the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t criminally prosecuted a slumlord in decades.
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
Consider the situation at the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI), which is charged with ensuring that apartment buildings are in habitable condition.
Under San Francisco law:
- A landlord is automatically given 30 days to correct a health/safety violation. If he drags his feet on the matter, the tenant must live with that problem until it’s resolved.
- If the landlord claims for any reason that he can’t fix the problem within one month, DBI doesn’t demand that he prove this. Instead, it automatically gives him another month.
- A slumlord has to work at being hit with a fine—by letting a problem go uncorrected for three to six months.
- And even then, repeat slumlord offenders often avoid the fine by pleading for leniency.
- That’s because many DBI officials are themselves landlords.
But the situation doesn’t have to remain this way.
How could it be changed?
By learning some valuable lessons from the “war on drugs” and applying them to regulating slumlords.
Consider:
- In 2022, at least 25,000 untested rape kits sat in law enforcement agencies and crime labs across the country.
- But illegal drug kits are automatically rushed to the had of the line.
It isn’t simply because local/state/Federal lawmen universally believe that illicit drugs pose a deadly threat to the Nation’s security.
It’s because:
- Federal asset forfeiture laws allow the Justice Department to seize properties used to “facilitate” violations of Federal anti-drug laws.
- Local and State law enforcement agencies are allowed to keep some of the proceeds once the property has been sold.
- Thus, financially-strapped police agencies have found that pursuing drug-law crimes is a great way to fill their own coffers.
- Prosecutors and lawmen view the seizing of drug-related properties as crucial to eliminating the financial clout of drug-dealing operations.
It’s long past time for San Francisco agencies to apply the same attitude–and methods–toward slumlords. 
DBI should become not merely a law enforcing agency but a revenue-creating one. And those revenues should come from predatory slumlords who routinely violate the City’s laws protecting tenants.
By doing so, DBI could vastly:
- Enhance its own prestige and authority;
- Improve living conditions for thousands of San Francisco renters; and
- Bring millions of desperately-needed dollars into the City’s cash-strapped coffers.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on July 10, 2023 at 12:29 am
Years ago, Michael Martin, a Los Angeles-based computer repair expert, offered me some advice I have found absolutely essential.
“When you call Technical Support,” he said, “they’re accessing the same information you can get via the computer.
“Most of the time they’re going to have you put the Restore Disk back into the computer and restore it back to default. It wipes out everything on your computer. Technical support costs a lot of money for a company—to hell with your data.
“Be very cautious when you get on the phone with any computer company and they advise you to run the Restore Disk.”
Michael Martin
What Martin said about the unwillingness of computer companies to provide technical support applies just as much to social media websites.
Consider the case of Facebook, the largest social media and networking service. By 2023, it had more than two billion daily active users.
Such a huge audience attracts advertisers. And this, in turn, has armed Facebook with total assets of $184.49 billion as of March 2023. These revenues have given its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, an estimated net worth of $104.4 billion.
Yet, for all the billions pouring into Facebook’s coffers, the company refuses to provide a way for its users to directly contact Facebook headquarters.
This may not seem important. But the following case will demonstrate why it is.
A short while ago, a friend of mine (whom I’ll call Janet) sent Zuckerberg a letter, which opened:
“Today while chatting with someone on Facebook I found myself bounced from the page. I was instructed to log in again. When I did so, I got the following message:
| |
Secure Your Account
Hi Janet, we think your computer is infected with malware, and it’s spreading spam through your Facebook account. We’ll walk you through a few steps to explain more and scan your computer for malware.
|
“Naturally, my first reaction was to contact Facebook to find out what, exactly, was meant by Spam. I quickly found, however, that although Facebook’s customers like me have made you a billionaire, they aren’t considered important enough to be provided with direct support for resolving problems like this.
“All that I could do was put a message on file with your ‘Report a Login Issue’ page. I received no response, so I sent another. This, too, has gone unanswered.
“At the bottom of the ‘Report a Login Issue’ page is this: “Thanks for taking the time to submit a report. While we don’t reply to every report, we’ll let you know if we need more details.”
“In short, even after a customer puts a help-request on file with Facebook, s/he has no guarantee that s/he will even receive the courtesy of a reply, let alone the help needed to resolve the problem.
“Is this really what you are proud to call customer service?
“I think it’s entirely appropriate to ask people I don’t know—and who want to roam freely through my computer—exactly what it is they believe is Spam. Because if it isn’t Spam, there’s no reason for them to be roaming freely through my computer.”
Mark Zuckerberg
Janet never received a reply from Zuckerberg—nor from anyone subordinate to him.
Facebook is still the most popular social platform on the Internet. Yet its future is far from certain.
The 2021 Apple iOS privacy update, App Tracking Transparency, limited the tracking capabilities of digital advertisers and enabled iPhone users to opt-out of data sharing. This has cost Facebook an estimated $10 billion.
And younger audiences are more comfortable telling stories and sharing updates by creating image and video content.
No doubt another major reason for their discontent is the arrogance of Facebook’s censors.
Another friend of mine—Jim—recently landed in “Facebook Jail” after getting this notice:
The offending post was a news story about Texas Congressman Joe Barton. It described how he had sent a series of smarmy emails to numerous women—while, of course, posing as a paragon of “family values.”
Jim sent a letter to Facebook’s headquarters at 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, California 94025:
“If Facebook is going to hold its users to a set of standards, those standards should be clearly and specifically posted. Certainly a legitimate news story—no matter on what the subject—should fall within allowable posting guidelines. But apparently Facebook’s anonymous censors do not agree.
“Facebook functions the way the gods of the ancient Greeks were believed to act: In a totally arbitrary manner, whose decisions, however unwarranted, are beyond appeal.”
One user offended censors by his too-frequent use of the “Like” option. How this violated Facebook’s terms of service was never explained.
During the 2016 Presidential election, Russian trolls used Facebook, Twitter and Google to post misleading articles and comments. These helped put Donald Trump, a would-be protégé of Vladimir Putin, in office.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook and Twitter were flooded with posts denying the reality of the virus and offering whackjob “cures” or “preventatives.” Untold numbers of Americans died as a result.
The moral: Social media companies have your wallet at heart, not you.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2023 at 12:18 am
“A lawyer who pleads his own case has a fool for his client.”
It’s a long-known legal maxim—and a time-tested one.
When you’re facing a major life stress—such as a criminal indictment—you can’t be objective on your own behalf.
That’s why even brilliant lawyers hire other lawyers to represent them when they’re facing civil or criminal charges.
Of course, if you’re Donald Trump, all bets are off.
On June 13, he became the first ex-President to be formally booked by the Justice Department on federal charges.
Seal of the Department of Justice
He’s now facing 37 felony charges based on his retaining and hiding classified government documents from authorities.
These charges include:
- Willfully retaining national defense information: Storing 31 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
- Conspiring to obstruct justice: Conspiring to keep those documents from the grand jury.
- Withholding a document or a record: Misleading one of his attorneys by moving boxes of classified documents so the attorney could not find or introduce them to the grand jury.
- Concealing a document in a federal investigation: Hiding Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago from the FBI and causing a false certificate to be submitted to the FBI.
- Scheme to conceal: Trump hid his continued possession of documents from the FBI and the grand jury.
- False statements and representations: Trump caused another of his attorneys to make false statements to the FBI and grand jury about the search at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump has long bragged that he is an expert on virtually everything.
Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he consulted about foreign policy, Trump replied; “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
Donald Trump
Among the professions Trump has claimed to be an expert on
TV ratings: “I know more about people who get ratings than anyone.”
ISIS: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.”
Social media: “I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody, based on my results, right?”
Courts: “I know more about courts than any human being on Earth.”
Lawsuits: “[W]ho knows more about lawsuits than I do? I’m the king.”
Politicians: “I understand politicians better than anybody.”
Trade: “Nobody knows more about trade than me.”
Nor is that by any means the end of his claimed expertise. If you believe him, he’s also an expert on:
- Drones
- Technology
- The economy
- Construction
- Democrats
- Infrastructure
- Debt
- Money
- Taxes.
So it’s inevitable that, when you believe you’re the smartest person on earth, you aren’t going to pay attention to a mere criminal attorney—even when you’re facing the most serious crisis of your life.
Not only did he reject the advice of one attorney—he rejected the advice of several.
According to The Washington Post, Trump was extremely stubborn about negotiating with government officials. When one of his attorneys, Christopher Kise, suggested meeting with the Justice Department to negotiate a settlement that could avoid charges, Trump rejected that plan.
Instead, he listened to the advice of Tom Fitton, the president of the Right-wing group Judicial Watch. Fitton, who is not an attorney, told him he could keep the documents and that he should fight the Justice Department.
Tom Fitton
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Trump regularly cited Fitton to his advisers as he continued to fight the Justice Department. Several of those advisers blame Fitton for convincing Trump he had the right to keep the classified files.
Fitton told the Post he didn’t understand “any” of the indictment, saying he believed the charges levelled against the former president were a “trap.”
This, of course, did not persuade Trump that he should listen to attorneys who did understand the legal dangers he was facing.
Fitton blamed Trump’s lawyers for not being more aggressive in fighting the subpoenas issued by the government.
“They had no business asking for the records….and they’ve manufactured an obstruction charge out of that,” Fitton told the Post. “There are core constitutional issues that the indictment avoids, and the obstruction charge seems weak to me.”
But it won’t be Fitton who discovers whether the Justice Department has a weak case. It will be Trump.
Trump has had serious difficulties in finding attorneys to represent him in this case—and in the ones almost certain to arise before the year is out.
According to a June 14 story in Forbes: Trump was represented by two of his existing attorneys at his arraignment. They were not, however, specialists in national security and lacked a security clearance.
This last is a mandatory requirement, owing to the Espionage Act charges that involve classified national defense information.
Many attorneys have refused to represent Trump—including David O. Markus, who recently defended former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum against corruption charges. Another, Howard Srebnick, was not allowed to represent Trump after talking to his legal partners.
Among the reasons lawyers don’t want to work for Trump:
- His difficult reputation;
- Using attorneys as attack dogs or political aides;
- Refusing to heed legal advice and
- Not paying his legal bills.
Donald Trump faces two major enemies: The Justice Department—and the private legal community.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 28, 2023 at 12:12 am
Vladimir Putin believes himself to be a serious student of history. But he has drawn the wrong lessons from the past.
During the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the War of 1812 (1812-1815) Great Britain encouraged Indian attacks on American settlers.
One of the worst of these attacks occurred on August 30, 1813, when over 700 Creek Indians destroyed Fort Mims, near Mobile, Alabama. About 500 militiamen, settlers, slaves and Creeks loyal to the Americans were slaughtered or captured.
Fort Mims massacre
Inflaming the Indians against settlers didn’t help the British on the battlefield—in the American Revolution or the War of 1812. But it did incite long-lasting hatred by the vast majority of Americans against the British—and even greater hatred of the Indians.
To cite one example: The Fort Mims massacre inspired General Andrew Jackson to take the field, eventually destroying the Creeks as a nation and wresting Florida from Spain for the United States.
The British lost their American colony. And the Indians were gradually driven from their dominance of the continent.
Similarly, Vladimir Putin has turned to Chechen mercenaries for help in conquering Ukraine. They are known as “Kadyrovtsy” or “Kadyrovites” after their leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin strongman.
Human rights groups, witnesses and survivors have for decades accused them of murders, kidnappings and the torture of Kadyrov’s rivals and critics.
Just as the Indians hoped to use their alliance with the British to defeat their Anglo-American enemies, so, too, do Chechen mercenaries hope to ingratiate themselves with the Kremlin.
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Yet that alliance has not advanced Russia’s fortunes on the battlefield, just as the British-Indian alliance did not gain victory for the British.
As Niccolo Machiavelli, writing more than 500 years ago in The Prince, warned: “[Mercenaries] have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to man, and destruction is deferred only as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”
Moreover, the atrocities committed by Indians and Chechens only inflamed their enemies to seek revenge.
In his masterwork, The Discourses, Machiavelli offered a lesson on the power of mercy even in the midst of war.
“Marcus Furius Camillus, a Roman general, was besieging the city of the Faliscians, and had surrounded it. A teacher charged with the education of the children of some of the noblest families of that city decided to ingratiate himself with Camillus by leading those children into the Roman camp.
“Presenting them to Camillus the teacher said to him, ‘By means of these children as hostages, you will be able to compel the city to surrender.’
“Camillus not only declined the offer but had the teacher stripped and his hands tied behind his back. Then he had a rod put into the hands of each of the children and directed them to whip the teacher all the way back to the city.
“Upon learning this, the citizens of Faliscia were so much touched by the humanity and integrity of Camillus, that they surrendered the place to him without any further defense.”
Summing up the meaning of this, Machiavelli writes: “This example shows that an act of humanity and benevolence will at all times have more influence over the minds of men than violence and ferocity. It also proves that provinces and cities which no armies…could conquer, have yielded to an act of humanity, benevolence, chastity or generosity.
“…History also shows us how much the people desire to find such virtues in great men, and how much they are extolled by historians and biographers of princes….Amongst these, Xenophon takes great pains to show how many victories, how much honor and fame, Cyrus gained by his humanity and affability, and by his not having exhibited a single instance of pride, cruelty or luxuriousness, nor of any of the other vices that are apt to stain the lives of men.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Then there has been Putin’s use of terror-attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Using bombers and long-range artillery, Putin has tried to compensate for losses on the battlefield by terrorizing Ukrainians into surrender.
Adolf Hitler applied the same tactic against an equally stubborn Great Britain during the Second World War. in 1940-41.
Unable to invade England because the British Navy controlled the sea, Hitler turned to terror-bombing.
He believed he could terrorize Britons into demanding that their government yield to German surrender demands.
From September 7, 1940 to May 21, 1941, the Luftwaffe subjected England—and especially London—to a ruthless bombing campaign that became known as The Blitz.
The undamaged St. Paul’s Cathredal, December, 1940
During 267 days—almost 37 weeks—between 40,000 and 43,000 British civilians were killed. About 139,000 others were wounded.
But the terror-bombing only inflamed Britons to fight Germany even more stubbornly.
Vladimir Putin has learned nothing from these historical lessons.
He has employed mercenaries and terror-bombing against patriotic Ukrainians—who continue to sweep Russian forces from their country.
If he employs even “small” tactical weapons, he risks triggering a fullscale NATO response—thus destroying the Russian empire he hopes to re-create.
Finally: Even if he conquers Ukraine, he will inherit a hate-filled population thirsting for revenge at every opportunity.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 27, 2023 at 12:36 am
In May, 2014, Yevgeny Prigozhin founded the Kremlin-affiliated mercenary army Wagner Group.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a “special military operation” against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Wagner has played a major role in the fighting.
Prigozhin has repeatedly clashed with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, blaming him for a lack of ammunition to his embattled fighters—resulting in thousands of casualties.
Yevgeney Prigozhin
Government of the Russian Federation, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On June 23, 2023, Prigozhin claimed that regular Russian armed forces had launched missile strikes against Wagner forces, killing a “huge” number.
He announced: “The council of commanders of PMC Wagner has made a decision—the evil that the military leadership of the country brings must be stopped.”
In response, criminal charges were filed against Prigozhin by the Russian Federal Security Service —the renamed KGB—for inciting an armed rebellion.
Wagner withdrew from Ukraine, occupied the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and headed for Moscow. While doing so, Wagner shot down a Russian fighter plane and several military helicopters.
Putin decried the action as treason, and vowed to quash the uprising.
Talks between Prigozhin and Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko resulted in charges being dropped. Wagner ceased its march on Moscow. Prigozhin will move to Belarus but remain under investigation for treason. Wagner troops will return to Ukraine.
The danger of relying on mercenaries forms the plot of The Profession, a 2011 novel by bestselling author Steven Pressfield.
Pressfield made his literary reputation with a series of classic novels about ancient Greece.
In Gates of Fire (1998) he explored the rigors and heroism of Spartan society—and the famous last stand of its 300 picked warriors at Thermopylae.
In The Virtues of War (2004) he entered the mind of Alexander the Great, whose armies swept across the known world, destroying all who dared oppose them.
But in The Profession, Pressfield created a plausible world set into the future of 2032. The book’s own dust jacket offers the best summary of its plot-line:
“Everywhere military force is for hire. Oil companies, multi-national corporations and banks employ powerful, cutting-edge mercenary armies to control global chaos and protect their riches.
“Force Insertion is the world’s merc monopoly. Its leader is the disgraced former United States Marine General James Salter, stripped of his command by the president for nuclear saber-rattling with the Chinese and banished to the Far East.’
Steven Pressfield
Salter appears as a hybrid of World War II General Douglas MacArthur and Iraqi War General Stanley McCrystal.
Like MacArthur, Salter has butted heads with his President—and paid dearly for it. Now his ambition is no less than to become President himself—by popular acclaim. And like McCrystal, he is a pure warrior who leads from the front and is revered by his men.
Salter seizes Saudi Arabian oil fields, then offers them as a gift to America. By doing so, he makes himself the most popular man in the country—and a guaranteed occupant of the White House.
And in 2032 the United States is a far different nation from the one its Founding Fathers created in 1776.
Douglas MacArthur (left), Stanley McCrystal (right)
“The United States is an empire…but the American people lack the imperial temperament,” asserts Salter. “We’re not legionaries, we’re mechanics. In the end the American Dream boils down to what? ‘I’m getting mine and the hell with you.’”
Americans, says Salter, have come to like mercenaries: “They’ve had enough of sacrificing their sons and daughters in the name of some illusory world order. They want someone else’s sons and daughters to bear the burden….
“They want their problems to go away. They want me to to make them go away.”
And so Salter will “accept whatever crown, of paper or gold, that my country wants to press upon me.”
Returning to the United States, he is acclaimed as a hero—and the next President.
He is under no delusion that his country is on a downward spiral toward oblivion: “Any time that you have the rise of mercenaries…society has entered a twilight era, a time past the zenith of its arc.”
Nor does he believe that his Presidency will arrest that decline: “But maybe in the short run, it’s better that my hand be on the wheel…rather than some other self-aggrandizing sonofabitch whose motives might not be as well intentioned….”
More than 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli warned of the dangers of relying on mercenaries:
“Mercenaries…are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure; for they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, disloyal; they are brave among friends; among enemies they are cowards.
Niccolo Machiavelli
“They have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”
Centuries ago, Niccolo Machiavelli issued a warning against relying on men whose first love is their own enrichment.
Steven Pressfield, in a work of fiction, has given us a nightmarish vision of a not-so-distant America where “Name your price” has become the byward for an age.
Both warnings are well worth heeding.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 19, 2023 at 12:10 am
No shortage of pundits have sized up Donald Trump—first as a Presidential candidate, and now as the nation’s 45th President.
But how does Trump measure up in the estimate of Niccolo Machiavelli, the 16th-century Florentine statesman?
It is Machiavelli whose two great works on politics—The Prince and The Discourses—remain textbooks for successful politicians more than 500 years later.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Let’s start with Trump’s notoriety for hurling insults at virtually everyone, including:
- Latinos
- Asians
- Muslims
- Blacks
- The Disabled
- Women
- Prisoners-of-War
These insults delight his white, under-educated followers. But they have alienated millions of other Americans who might be willing to support him.
Not only has Trump insulted those who cannot harm him, he has attacked those who can.
Among these: Special Counsel Jack Smith, responsible for his indictment on 37 counts.
On June 8, Trump was charged with not only mishandling sensitive material, but also trying to hide records and impede investigators.
Trump’s response:
“The prosecutor in the case, I will call our case, is a thug. I have named him ‘Deranged Jack Smith. He’s a behind-the-scenes guy, but his record is absolutely atrocious. He does political hit jobs. He’s a raging and uncontrolled Trump hater, as is his wife, who happened to be the producer of that Michelle Obama puff piece. This is the guy I’ve got.”
Now consider Machiavelli’s advice on gratuitously handing out insults and threats:
-
“I hold it to be a proof of great prudence for men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards any one.
-
“For neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy—but the one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.”
Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he consulted about foreign policy, Trump replied; “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”
Donald Trump
This totally contrasts with the advice given by Machiavelli:
-
“A prudent prince must [choose] for his counsel wise men, and [give] them alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else.
-
“But he must be a great asker about everything and hear their opinions, and afterwards deliberate by himself in his own way, and in these counsels…comport himself so that every one may see that the more freely he speaks, the more he will be acceptable.”
Consider Trump’s approach to the greatest legal crisis of his life: Facing indictment for illegally taking dozens of boxes of highly classified materials from the White House and storing them in his private club in Florida.
His attorneys repeatedly advised him to return the materials after the Justice Department requested that he do so—and Trump repeatedly rejected that advice. Instead, he listened to the advice of Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who told him he could keep the documents and that he should fight Justice Department efforts to see them returned.
The upshot of this was a 37-count indictment including:
- Willfully retaining national defense information;
- Conspiring to keep those documents from the grand jury;
- Scheming to conceal the possession of Top Secret documents from the FBI and grand jury;
- Ordering his attorneys to make false statements to the FBI.
A major reason Trump is now facing difficulties in finding talented legal counsel to represent him lies in his notorious unwillingness to listen to his attorneys. He believes himself an expert in virtually every field—including law.
(Another reason for his unpopularity among attorneys is that he is also notorious for stiffing those who work for him.
(Rudy Giuliani spearheaded Trump’s illegal effort to overturn the 2020 Presidential election from November 4 to February, 2021. He has repeatedly asked that Trump pay him for his efforts–and has been frozen out of Trump’s orbit.)
Now consider Machiavelli’s advice on the selection of advisers:
- “The first impression that one gets of a ruler and his brains is from seeing the men that he has about him.
- “When they are competent and loyal one can always consider him wise, as he has been able to recognize their ability and keep them faithful.
- “But when they are the reverse, one can always form an unfavorable opinion of him, because the first mistake that he makes is in making this choice.”
Finally, Machiavelli offers a related warning that especially applies to Trump: Unwise princes cannot be wisely advised.
-
“It is an infallible rule that a prince who is not wise himself cannot be well advised, unless by chance he leaves himself entirely in the hands of one man who rules him in everything, and happens to be a very prudent man. In this case, he may doubtless be well governed, but it would not last long, for the governor would in a short time deprive him of the state.”
All of which would lead Niccolo Machiavelli to warn, if he could witness American politics today: “This bodes ill for your Republic.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 15, 2023 at 12:10 am
Once Presidents leave office, they usually lead quiet—and highly prosperous—lives.
It’s become commonplace for Presidents to write—or ghostwrite—their memoirs. These usually fetch them a hefty advance, even if sales prove disappointing.
Then there’s the speaker’s circuit, where fees per speech usually run into tens of thousands of dollars.
These are activities that leave the average ex-President an extremely wealthy man—but don’t impact the public purse.
But there are other perks—such as lifetime Secret Service protection for themselves and their spouses, as well as taxpayer-funded office expenses—that put a serious strain on the national budget.
George W. Bush, unlike his father, got two full terms (2001 – 2009).
Bush made money in the oil industry and owned the Texas Rangers professional baseball team before he became Governor of Texas and then President. He’s made tens of millions through a book deal and speaking fees.
His net worth has been estimated at $40 million.
Barack Hussein Obama served two terms (2009 – 2017).
Obama has greatly profited from paid speeches and a production deal with Netflix worth an estimated $50 million. He also gets a government pension of $161,000 a year. Michelle Obama got a reported $65 million advance for her memoir “Becoming.”
The Obamas’ net worth has been estimated from $40 to $135 million.
Donald Trump served one term (2017 – 2021).
Before he entered politics, Trump reportedly got $200 million from his father to enter the real estate business. He made millions as a New York City real estate mogul. Many of his other businesses have failed, but Trump’s vast property holdings make him by far the wealthiest president of all time. He has also profited from his show “The Apprentice,” which ran from 2004 to 2017.
His net worth is estimated at $3.2 billion.
* * * * * * * * * *
It’s long past time for the re-evaluation of Presidential welfare.
By all means, Presidents deserve a pension, but it should be on a par with the time they served in office. This currently amounts to $226,300 per year for life.
Most police officers must serve 20 years before they can collect their full pension. And they are required to put their lives on the line almost every day. No police officer is allowed to retire on a fulltime pension after serving eight—or even just four—years.
Then there’s the matter of funding by the General Service Administration (GSA) to staff, set up and furnish an official office anywhere in the country. Ex-Presidents and their staffers can receive up to $1 million annually in reimbursements for costs.
Ex-Presidents use these monies to propagandize their accomplishments—or what they claim were their accomplishments—while in office. This usually takes the form of self-serving autobiographies—which, in many cases, are ghostwritten efforts.
Former Presidents certainly have the right to publish their memoirs. But they should not receive public monies for doing so.
Moreover: Presidents aren’t required to submit their manuscripts to what amounts to a censorship committee to guarantee they don’t spill national security secrets.
Agents of the CIA are—and can have royalties from their books seized if they don’t allow their manuscripts to be so screened.
As for lifetime Secret Service protection: In 1965, Congress authorized the Secret Service (Public Law 89-186) to protect a former president and his/her spouse during their lifetime, unless they decline protection.
Secret Service agents guarding Barack Obama
In 1994, as a cost-saving measure, Congress acted to limit protection for future former presidents and spouses to ten years after they left office.
But on January 12, 2013, President Barack Obama signed a new law authorizing lifetime protection of all former Presidents and First Ladies. In addition, children of former Presidents will receive protection until they are 16 years old.
This was clearly in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center—and America’s entry into a global war on terrorism.
Still, this is hardly necessary. There has not been one recorded case of an attack on a former President since the Secret Service began protecting the Chief Executive in 1901.
From a national security viewpoint, it is also unnecessary. Once a President leaves office, he is essentially out of the loop of daily government business.
The protection of organized crime witnesses by the Justice Department’s Witness Security Program offers a useful remedy.
While awaiting trial, witnesses are given 24-hour protection by deputy U.S. marshals. But once the trials are over and they have received their new identities and relocation to a safe area, that protection is withdrawn. If they are once again threatened, they can request it from the Marshals Service.
And if such protection is deemed necessary for a former President, then a financial means test should be applied.
Every living ex-President is a millionaire—including even Jimmy Carter, whose wealth is estimated by USA Today at $8.2 million.
Millionaires are not considered eligible for local, state or Federal welfare programs—unless they are former Presidents.
Thus, millionaire ex-Presidents who believe they need/deserve lifetime Secret Service protection should be required to pay for it out of pocket—or hire private security.
Treating former Presidents as gods is not only an outrageous waste of taxpayers’ monies. It is an affront to the ideals of a democratic nation.
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THE ORIGINS OF REPUBLICAN “FAMILY VALUES”
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 14, 2023 at 12:56 amIn 1992, Republicans wanted to re-elect President George H.W. Bush, who had succeeded Ronald Reagan in 1989.
But they had a problem: Whipping up voter enthusiasm for him.
Bush wasn’t charismatic like Reagan, so he didn’t inspire the intense loyalty Reagan had. He was seen as drab, even wimpy.
George H.W. Bush
Ironically, Bush had performed heroically during World War II.
On August 1, 1944, Bush piloted one of four aircraft that attacked the Japanese installations on Chichijima.
Bush’s aircraft was hit by flak and his engine caught on fire. Despite this, Bush completed his attack and released bombs over his target, scoring several damaging hits.
Reagan, by contrast, spent World War II on a Hollywood sound stage as part of the First Motion Picture Unit, turning out propaganda films to boost civilian morale.
Yet he was seen by millions as a genuine war hero.
Then there was the stalled economy.
Early in his term, Bush faced leftover deficits spawned by the Reagan years. Reagan had given tax-cuts to the rich, bloated the military budget and cut government programs to aid the poor and middle class.
As a result, the deficit had grown by 1990 to $220 billion, three times its size since 1980. In 1991, many corporations, claiming the need to reorganize, laid off hundreds of thousands of workers, who had believed that their jobs were secure.
By mid-year, the unemployment rate reached 7.8%, the highest since 1984. In September 1992, the Census Bureau reported that 14.2% of all Americans lived in poverty.
Bush’s Democratic challenger in 1992 was Bill Clinton, who had been the Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992. At 45, Clinton was young, vigorous, and for many evoked memories of an equally young and vigorous John F. Kennedy.
To overcome these disadvantages, Republicans needed a way to generate enthusiasm among their base.
The answer: “Family values.”
Supposedly this meant support for values traditionally learned or reinforced within a family, such as those of high moral standards and discipline.
In reality, it was a Right-wing excuse for the failed economic policies of the Reagan-Bush years.
By citing “a decline in family values,” Bush’s re-election team could blame jobless Americans for their own misery: “If only you had lived up to the high standards set by your Republican superiors, you wouldn’t now be in this position.”
“Family values” carried a sexual subtext as well. Since abortion had became legal in 1973, Republicans had appropriated re-criminalizing it as their pet sex-related issue.
During the Reagan years, Attorney General Edwin Meese had launched a crackdown on pornography. And much of Reagan’s support had come from sexually-obsessed Christian Right evangelists such as Jerry Falwell of the “Moral Majority.”
Thus, a Bush supporter held up a sign reading, “Woody Allen is Clinton’s Adviser on Family Values,” at the 1992 Republican Presidential convention.
Allen had recently become notorious for an affair with the adopted stepdaughter of his lover, actress Mia Farrow. The slogan wasn’t enough to get Bush re-elected. Bill Clinton was elected President.
But “family values” lived on for decades as Republican code language for: “Only Republicans are sexually upright.”
Throughout the eight-year Clinton Presidency, Republicans focused on his longtime reputation as a sex-crazed Rasputin. When the news broke that Clinton had been diddling a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, Republicans demanded his resignation.
When Clinton refused to resign, they unsuccessfully tried to impeach him. Meanwhile, they ignored the extramarital affairs of their own members–such as then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich had been boffing a mistress while demanding Clinton’s impeachment for similar adultery. After Gingrich resigned from the House of Representatives in 1999, his would-be successor, Bob Livingston, was forced to resign from Congress.
He had been outed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt as a serial philanderer. In 1996, Republicans pushed through Congress the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman. It allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages allowed in other states.
DOMA was advertised as a necessary defense against “predatory homosexuals” who, like vampires, were thought to be preying on innocent heterosexuals.
A major backer of anti-gay legislation was Dennis Hastert, Republican Speaker of the House from 1999 to 1007.
Dennis Hastert
In 2006, Hastert spearheaded a bill to toughen punishments for sex crimes against children.
“We’ve all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children,” said Hastert. “Protecting our children from Internet predators and child exploitation enterprises are just as high a priority as securing our border from terrorists.”
On April 29, 2016, a federal judge repeatedly damned Hastert as a “serial child molester” for sexually abusing several boys he coached on the Yorkville High School wrestling team in the 1960s and 1970s.Having targeted the poor, blacks, Hispanics, women and gays, Republicans are now training their sights on transgenders.
And Target Corporation’s April 19 announcement that its customers could pick the bathroom that “matched their gender identity” gave Republicans a new venue for their attacks on sex-related issues.
There is no known epidemic of transgender attacks on heterosexuals in bathrooms. But Republicans will ride this issue so long as there are citizens willing to believe it.
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