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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2020 at 1:26 am
On March 18, 1968, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, speaking at the University of Kansas, called on his fellow citizens to show compassion for those less fortunate and in need of relief through the Federal Government.
“If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.”
Finally, Kennedy did something almost no other politician—in his time or since—has ever done: He dared to attack that holy-of-holies, the Gross Domestic Product (then called the Gross National Product).
“If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product….counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.
“It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
“It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans….
Senator Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
“George Bernard Shaw once wrote, ‘Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?’
“So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help. In the difficult five months ahead, before the convention in Chicago. I ask for your help and for your assistance.
“If you believe that the United States can do better. If you believe that we should change our course of action. If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.
“And when we win in November….and we begin a new period of time for the United States of America, I want the next generation of Americans to look back upon this period and say as they said of Plato: ‘Joy was in those days, but to live.’ Thank you very much.”
At the end of Kennedy’s wildly popular speech at Kansas State University, photographer Stanley Tretick, of Look magazine, shouted, “This is Kansas, fucking Kansas! He’s going all the fucking way!”
But he didn’t go all the way. On June 5, 1968—82 days after announcing his Presidential candidacy—an assassin’s bullet suddenly halted his short-lived campaign—and his life.
Robert Kennedy’s funeral train
Historian William L. O’Neil delivered a poignant summary of Robert Kennedy’s legacy in his 1971 book, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and through error and tragic accident, failed at…..He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That, too, must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death, something precious vanished from public life.”
As United States Attorney General (1961-1964) Robert F. Kennedy had the courage to wage all-out war on the Mafia. As a United States Senator (1964-1968) he had the compassion to champion aid to impoverished Americans.
Even in his own era—a half-century ago—Robert Kennedy stood out as the only major Presidential candidate who could legitimately make both claims.
Today, most Democrats—battered by decades of Republican charges that they’re “big spenders”—fear supporting big-ticket items to help the poor.
And the Black Lives Matter movement has made any connection to law enforcement a disqualification for higher office—as former California Attorney General Kamala Harris found out as a 2020 Presidential candidate.
America may never again see a Presidential candidate who can combine a strong stand against crime with an equally strong commitment to helping the poor and disadvantaged.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2020 at 12:07 am
On March 18, 1968, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy did what few politicians have ever done: He accepted public responsibility for a war that had since become a national disaster—the Vietnam war.
Addressing a packed audience of students and faculty at Kansas State University, he said:
“Let me begin this discussion with a note both personal and public. I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions that helped set us on our present path.
“It may be that the effort was doomed from the start; that it was never really possible to bring all the people of South Vietnam under the rule of the successive governments we supported—governments, one after another, riddled with corruption, inefficiency, and greed; governments which did not and could not successfully capture and energize the national feeling of their people.
“If that is the case, as it well may be, then I am willing to bear my share of the responsibility, before history and before my fellow citizens. But past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.
“Now as ever, we do ourselves best justice when we measure ourselves against ancient tests, as in the Antigone of Sophocles: ‘All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.’
Sophocles
And he dared to attack the war as more than a military and political disaster: He saw it as a stain on America’s moral fiber:
“Can we ordain to ourselves the awful majesty of God—to decide what cities and villages are to be destroyed, who will live and who will die, and who will join the refugees wandering in a desert of our own creation?
“If it is true that we have a commitment to the South Vietnamese people, we must ask, are they being consulted—in Hue, or Ben Tre, or in the villages from which the three million refugees have fled?
“If they believe all the death and destruction are a lesser evil than the Wet Cong, why did they not warn us when the Viet Cong came into Hue, and the dozens of other cities, before the Tet Offensive? Why did they not join the fight?
“Will it be said of us, as Tacitus said of Rome: ‘They made a desert and called it peace?'”
Robert F. Kennedy
The students gave him an ovation worthy of a rock star.
Time correspondent Hays Gorey said the electricity between Kennedy and the K.S.U. students was “real and rare.” “A good part of it is John F. Kennedy’s, of course, but John Kennedy …himself couldn’t be so passionate, and couldn’t set off such sparks.”
Jim Slattery, who would later be elected to Congress from Kansas, reread the K.S.U. speech during the second Iraq war and decided it was so powerful “because Kennedy was talking about what was right!”
As Kennedy started to leave, students rushed the platform where he stood, knocking over chairs and grabbing at him. They stroked his hair and ripped his shirtsleeves.
Later that day, Kennedy addressed another wildly enthusiastic audience—at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas.
Then he addressed the glaring disparities between rich and poor Americans—a topic now generally ignored by Democrats and turned into an attack line by Republicans:
“All around us, all around us….men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other. It is confidence which has sustained us so much in the past. Rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair….hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, to force and repression and private gun stocks— so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust.
Robert F. Kennedy talking with black children
“And again, I don’t believe that we have to accept that. I don’t believe that it’s necessary in the United States of America. I think that we can work together. I don’t think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country. And that is why I run for President of the United States….
“I have seen children in Mississippi starving, their bodies so crippled from hunger and their minds have been so destroyed for their whole life that they will have no future. I have seen children in Mississippi—here in the United States—with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars.
“I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven’t developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don’t think that’s acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on August 10, 2020 at 1:37 am
He remains forever frozen in time—young, vigorous, with tousled hair and a high-pitched voice calling on Americans to do better for those less fortunate.
It’s been 52 years since his life was brutally cut short—yet he remains forever the age at which he died: 42. Born in 1925, he would turn 95 on November 20 if he were alive today.
And he exuded an idealism which seems totally out of place with today’s “I’ve-got-mine-so-screw-you” politics.
On March 16, 1968, from the Caucus Room of the Old Senate Office building, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy declared his candidacy for President of the United States.
Eight years earlier, on January 2, 1960, his brother, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy had announced his own candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination from the same place.
Ten months later, on November 8, that campaign had ended in victory with his election. And that victory, in turn, ended in bitter sorrow with his assassination two years, 10 months and two days later on November 22, 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign would not last as long as his late brother’s. Nor would it end in the victory he and his supporters yearned for.
Robert F. Kennedy
Eighty-two days later, he was dead—shot in the back of the head by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab furious at Kennedy’s avowed support for Israel.
For Kennedy, making up his mind to run for the Presidency was no easy task.
Since the assassination of his brother, millions of Americans had assumed—as his admirers or detractors—that he would one day become President.
For his admirers, there was an element of “the once and future king” about this young, intense man with tousled hair and a high-pitched voice.He—they believed—was the man who would somehow avenge his martyred brother by restoring “Camelot” and returning youth, energy and idealism to the White House.
A playwright—Barbara Garson—had even written a 1967 satire depicting then-President Lyndon B. Johnson as the MacBeth-like murderer of John Ken O-Dunc. In the end, he was confronted and killed by Robert Ken O’Dunc.
His detractors saw him as a ruthless upstart who wanted to foist too-liberal policies on the United States. They distrusted his sympathy for the downtrodden—especially blacks and Hispanics. Worse, they saw the Kennedy family as trying to found a dynasty of Presidents that could last until the mid-1980s.
But the real Robert Kennedy was long torn between running against Johnson—whom he had long personally loathed—and letting someone else do so.
Kennedy’s hatred of Johnson—and his irrational belief that LBJ was somehow responsible for his brother’s death—was well-known. And Kennedy feared that if he ran against Johnson, his many enemies would charge he was doing so out of personal animosity.
And there was another reason: Johnson, who had won the Presidency in a landslide in 1964, was certain to seek re-election in 1968. If Kennedy challenged him for the nomination, it might well split the party and result in the election of a Republican that November. And he—Kennedy—would be blamed for it.
Throughout 1966-7, Kennedy was urged to run against Johnson. Still, he dithered.
Then, on March 12, Minnesota United States Senator Eugene McCarthy entered the New Hampshire Democratic primary against Johnson—and won a surprising 42.2% of the vote to Johnson’s 49.4%. Four days later, Robert Kennedy announced his own candidacy.
McCarthy’s supporters were outraged: Their candidate had dared to do what Kennedy had not—directly take on Johnson. And now that he had shown it could be done, the opportunistic Kennedy had jumped in.
On March 18—two days after announcing his candidacy—Kennedy gave his first campaign speech at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. This was the heart of conservative country, and Kennedy didn’t know how his audience would accept many of his decidedly liberal proposals.
“Do you think they’ll boo him?” his wife, Ethel, asked a friend before the speech. “Will they hate him?”
Arriving at the university, Kennedy ate breakfast at the student union—and told a group of university officials and student leaders: “Some of you may not like what you’re going to hear in a few minutes, but it’s what I believe; and if I’m elected President, it’s what I’m going to do.”
Kansas State University
As events unfolded, he—and Ethel—had no reason to worry.
Kennedy had served as United States Attorney General from 1961 to 1964. Yet he had not limited himself to simply fighting organized crime and enforcing civil rights. He had aggressively urged his brother, the President, to take a hard line on fighting the Communist forces in Vietnam.
But now he did something almost no other politician had—or has—ever done: He publicly accepted responsibly for the disaster the war had become since 1965:
“Let me begin this discussion with a note both personal and public. I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions that helped set us on our present path.
“It may be that the effort was doomed from the start; that it was never really possible to bring all the people of South Vietnam under the rule of the successive governments we supported.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 7, 2020 at 12:10 am
More than 500 years ago, the Florentine statesman, Niccolo Machiavelli, warned: A prince…must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to avoid traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. Those who wish to be only lions do not realize this.
And never is the need greater to imitate the fox than when dealing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Several years ago, a private investigative agency found itself in serious trouble with that agency.
One of its employees had suddenly quit the company—leaving behind a major financial disaster.
That employee—whom I’ll call Pete—had been tasked with sending payroll tax records to the IRS. The company’s owner, Bill, assumed he had carried out his assignment.
Until he learned from the IRS that they had never received the records.
Consider the potential consequences:
- Failing to timely and properly pay federal payroll taxes results in an automatic penalty of 2% to 10%.
- Similar state and local penalties apply.
- Failing to properly file monthly or quarterly returns may result in additional penalties.
- Failing to file W-2 Forms results in an automatic penalty of up to $50 per form not timely filed.
- A particularly severe penalty applies where federal income tax withholding and Social Security taxes are not paid to the IRS.
- The penalty of up to 100% of the amount not paid can be assessed against the employer entity as well as any person (such as a corporate officer) having control or custody of the funds from which payment should have been made.
About 70% of the annual revenue collected by the IRS comes from payroll taxes. Under-reported and unpaid employment taxes account for about $72 billion of the United States tax gap. So the IRS makes the collection of payroll taxes a high priority.
No doubt about it—Bill was facing serious trouble.
What to do?
Fortunately, Steve, one of Bill’s employees, had a B.A. in Communications and had worked as a newspaper reporter.
When Bill told him of the calamity he was facing, Steve offered his best advice: Immediately contest the charge that he had been delinquent in providing the records. And explain to the IRS—in writing—what had happened.
Bill agreed.
First, Steve interviewed him at length to make certain he fully understood the circumstances leading up to his present crisis.
Then Steve sat down and typed up a letter—on office letterhead stationery—-to the IRS. Letterhead would give it an official appearance—and Steve wanted every advantage he could get.
Steve offered a straightforward presentation of what had happened: Pete, the number-two man in the company, had been entrusted with submitting payroll tax records to the IRS. But, nursing a grudge against his employer, he had dumped the records in a box and stashed this in a locked filing cabinet.
Then he had given notice and left the company. Later, an investigation of the office turned up the records—as well as the revelation that Pete had often used his office computer to access pornography.
In his letter, Steve emphasized that Bill’s company had previously had an unblemished record for meeting its payroll tax obligations on time. And he stated that the newly-found records had been sent to the IRS by registered mail.
Finally, Steve wrote that Bill was prepared to fully meet his financial obligations to the IRS. But he asked that Bill not be penalized for the irresponsible actions of a single, disgruntled employee.
The result?
Bill ended up paying only those monies that he legally owed. He was not forced to pay a penalty.
So what are the lessons to be learned from this episode?
- In dealing with an agency as powerful as the IRS, don’t ignore its letters.
- You have nothing to gain by pretending it will go away. It won’t.
- If you owe money, don’t deny it.
- Remain calm, even if you feel angry or afraid.
- Don’t use profanity or insults.
- Don’t try to play tough-guy with the IRS. Even the Mafia fears this agency.
- And with good reason: Al Capone didn’t go to prison for murder or bootlegging. He went away for income tax evasion.
- If you have a legitimate reason for having missed a payment, say so.
- Remember that everything you say to the IRS—verbally or in writing—is considered evidence given under oath.
- If you lie and get caught, you can face perjury charges as well as those for failing to comply with tax laws.
- Offer to fully pay any monies that you legally owe.
- If these amount to more than you can meet in a single payment, say so. Ask the agency to set up a plan by which you can pay it off in installments.
- If the agency balks at cooperating with you, contact a veteran tax accountant or attorney.
- The best accountants or attorneys for dealing with the IRS are former agents now working in private practice. They not only know the tax laws; they know the best ways to short-circuit an IRS audit and/or penalties.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 6, 2020 at 12:39 am
In the 1993 movie, Stalingrad, a platoon of young German Army soldiers leaves behind the beaches and beauties of Italy and find themselves fighting desperately to stay alive in Russia.
Early in the film, there is an exchange that has its real-life counterpart almost 75 years later.
A young, idealistic German lieutenant, newly transferred to the Russian front, is horrified when he sees a fellow soldier from another unit sadistically beat a Russian prisoner to death.
He seeks out the man’s superior, a captain, and says: “Captain, I must protest about the behavior of your men.”
“You want to protest?” asks the captain, grinning sardonically. “Tell the Fuhrer.”
Fast forward to January 28, 2017, the day after President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order which:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely;, and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The new rules—and the efforts of security personnel at major international airports to enforce them—triggered a tsunami of chaos and fear among travelers.
“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”
Refugees on flights when the order was signed on January 27 were detained upon arrival.
Many students attending American universities were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad.
Donald Trump
According to Homeland Security officials:
- 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access;
- 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America;
- 81 who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States.
Internationally, travelers were seized by panic when they were not allowed to board flights to the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates. At least one family was removed from a flight it had boarded.
Earlier on January 28, Trump, isolated in the White House from all the chaos he had unleashed in airports across the nation and throughout the world, said:
“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Then the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.
Two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the ACLU, accused Trump of legal and constitutional overreach.
The Iraqis had been detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. One had served as an interpreter for American forces in Iraq for a decade. The other was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas.
The interpreter, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released after nearly 19 hours of detention. So was the other traveler, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Before the two men were released, one of their lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the official, who refused to identify himself.
He might just as well have said: “You want to protest? Tell the Fuhrer.”
The ACLU action secured at least a temporary blocking of part of Trump’s order. A Brooklyn judge barred the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the Presidential order.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly, of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
But she didn’t force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by the executive order who had not yet traveled to the United States. Nor did she issue a broader ruling on the constitutionality of the order.
* * * * *
On November 8, 2016, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.
Summing up Trump’s character in a March 25, 2016 broadcast of The PBS Newshour, conservative political columnist David Brooks warned: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love….
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality.”
There were countless warning signs available for Trump’s supporters to see—if they had wanted to see them:
- His threats of violence and/or imprisonment against his political opponents;
- His rampant egomania;
- His attacks on everyone who dared to disagree with him;
- His refusal to release his tax returns;
- His history of bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him;
- His bragging about sexually abusing women (“Grab them by the pussy”).
Those who voted against Trump are now learning the meaning of the Nazi slogan: “The Fuhrer proposes and disposes for all.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on August 5, 2020 at 12:04 am
Sometimes your worst enemies aid you in ways you could never help yourself.
From July 10 to October 31, 1940, hundreds of badly-outnumbered pilots of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) fought off relentless attacks by Germany’s feared Luftwaffe—since known as the Battle of Britain.
But Adolf Hitler wasn’t prepared to give up. He believed he could so terrorize Britons that they would insist that their government submit 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
More than 100 tons of high explosives were dropped on 16 British cities.
During 267 days—almost 37 weeks—between 40,000 and 43,000 British civilians were killed. About 139,000 others were wounded.
Clearly, what Great Britain desperately needed most was a miracle.
Exactly that happened on June 22, 1941.
With 134 Divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union.
German tanks invading Russia
Joseph Stalin, the longtime Soviet dictator, was stunned. The invasion had come less than two years after Germany had signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.
Now they were locked in a fight to the death.
People in England were suddenly hopeful. Britain now had an ally whose resources might tip the balance against Hitler.
Fast forward to 2020.
After Donald Trump became President of the United States in 2017, he seemed invincible: Over the next three years, he:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacked the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Publicly sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, National Security Agency) which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election,
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
- Allowed predatory corporations to subvert Federal regulatory protections for consumers and the environment.
- Shut down the Federal Government for more than a month on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay.
- Attempted to extort a “favor” from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: Threatening to withhold military aid unless Zelensky agreed to slander Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic Presidential candidate Joseph Biden.
- Threatened members of Congress with treason charges for daring to challenge him.
- Since being acquitted of impeachable offenses by the Senate, Trump fired the Inspectors General (IG) of five cabinet departments in six weeks.
Donald Trump
And through all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.
Democrats seemed unable to cope with Trump’s legislative agenda and his personal attacks on Twitter and in press conferences.
Even when the press unearthed his latest corruptions, the public didn’t care.
Then, in January, 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic struck the United States.
On February 29, the first American died from the disease.
Donald Trump’s first reaction was to minimize the threat: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
Then he turned to outright lying: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus….They tried the impeachment hoax….It’s all turning, they lost….And this is their new hoax.”
When many of the nation’s mayors and governors urged citizens to wear face masks and socially distance themselves from others, Trump urged his supporters to defy both. And they did as he ordered—marching down streets shoulder-to-shoulder, most of them not wearing masks, and with many of them carrying automatic rifles.
Coronavirus
In March, when much of the country’s businesses shut down, Trump demanded their immediate reopening—although there was no vaccine nor even adequate testing and contact-tracing facilities. This would allow him to claim he had “restored” the American economy.
Many states—especially in the South and Midwest—reopened prematurely. As a result, American COVID-19 cases now number 4.7 million—and deaths number at least 157,302.
Now Trump demands that Americans put their children at risk by sending them back to school in the fall—so their parents can return to work. Then he can claim he’s “saved” the American economy—and be re-elected.
Meanwhile, countless Stormtrumpers in Texas, Florida and other Red states have died because they refused to wear masks and/or social distance. His most high profile supporter to die so far: Herman Cain, the 2012 Republican Presidential candidate.
Significantly, Cain died one month after attending Trump’s Tulsa rally on June 20.
Thus, Trump, through his arrogance and ignorance, has inflicted far greater casualties on his core supporters and poll numbers than the Democrats ever could—or would.
His lies have been exposed. His followers are succumbing to a disease he called a Democratic hoax. He has nothing to offer in a way of a cure for the economy—or the pandemic. And his polls are tanking.
Seventy-nine years ago, events turned around for England when all seemed lost. The same may be about to happen for the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 4, 2020 at 12:10 am
In September, 1938, as Adolf Hitler threatened to go to war against France and England over Czechoslovakia, most Germans feared he would. They knew that Germany was not ready for war, despite all of their Fuhrer’s boasts about how invincible the Third Reich was.
A group of high-ranking German army officers was prepared to overthrow Hitler—provided that England and France held firm and handed him a major diplomatic reverse.
But then England and France—though more powerful than Germany—surrendered to Hitler’s demands for the “Sudetenland”—the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
Hitler’s popularity among Germans soared.
The plotters in the German high command, realizing that public opinion stood overwhelmingly against them, abandoned their plans for a coup. They decided to wait for a more favorable time.
It never came.
Adolf Hitler and his generals
Less than one year after the infamous “Munich conference,” World War II erupted.
Most Germans blindly followed their Fuhrer right to the end—believing his lies (or at least wanting to believe them), serving in his legions, defending his rampant criminality.
Germans paid the price for their loyalty to a murderous dictator—not just on the battlefield, but through countless rapes, murders and the wholesale destruction of their cities. And from 1945 to 1989, Germans living in the eastern part of their country paid the price as slaves to the Soviet Union.
Americans have learned nothing from this warning from history about subservience to a madman.
In 2016, almost 63 million Americans elected Donald Trump—a racist, serial adulterer and longtime fraudster—as President.
Upon taking office in January, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another. Among his outrages:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacked the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Publicly sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, National Security Agency) which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election,
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
- Allowed predatory corporations to subvert Federal regulatory protections for consumers and the environment.
- Shut down the Federal Government for more than a month on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay.
- Threatened members of Congress with treason charges for daring to challenge him.
- Since being acquitted of impeachable offenses by the Senate, fired the Inspectors General (IG) of five cabinet departments in six weeks.
Donald Trump
Through all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.
Democrats seemed unable to cope with Trump’s legislative agenda and his personal attacks on Twitter and in press conferences.
Even when the press unearthed his latest corruptions, the public didn’t care.
And now, with the 2020 Presidential election fast approaching, Trump has unleashed his latest outrage—while Americans who could stand against it do nothing: Trump now is laying the groundwork to discredit the outcome if he loses.
And it’s increasingly looking as if he will.
His tactics: Make it difficult to vote, guarantee voting is slow and complicated and raise questions about the outcome.
He wants to claim that if former Vice President Joe Biden wins, he was elected through a fraudulent mail-in vote.
Republicans have not protested any of this. Nor would they likely protest if Trump illegally occupied the White House in the face of massive vote fraud—on his part.
(His Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote in 2016—but lost in the Electoral College. But that didn’t prevent Trump from claiming that he would have won the popular vote except for massive fraud—which never happened.)
Whatever happens, Trump will claim he won.
In 2012, after President Barack Obama defeated his endorsed candidate, Mitt Romney, Trump tweeted:
- Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice!
- The world is laughing at us. We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.
- Our nation is totally divided!
- The loser one! [Trump’s spelling]
- He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!
And even if he’s forced to leave office, he will undercut the ability of his successor to govern.
During World War II, scores of high-ranking German army officers risked their lives to plot the overthrow—and even assassination—of Adolf Hitler. Their efforts culminated in the ill-fated July 20, 1944 bomb plot that left Hitler badly injured but still in total command of Germany.
It would take only Vice President Mike Pence and eight Cabinet officers to courageously invoke the 25th Amendment and find Donald Trump “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,”
Yet even that small a number of honorable men cannot be found within the Trump administration.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 3, 2020 at 12:08 am
The ancient Greeks defined hubris as overweening pride. For them, acting as if you were equal to or more powerful than the gods—or trying to defy them—was the most serious crime you could commit. And it came with a divine punishment.
Donald Trump has acted with hubris his entire life—but never more so than once he declared himself a Presidential candidate in 2015.
He savagely insulted his opponents. From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, he fired nearly 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions—including his fellow Republicans, journalists, news organizations, countries and even celebrities unconnected with politics.
During debates, he belittled his Republican and Democratic opponents with insulting nicknames.
Political pundits expected that voters would reject Trump for violating long-held niceties of political discourse. But they never did.
He openly called for the subversion of the American political system.
On July 22, 2016, during his Presidential campaign, Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing [from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s computer]. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts.
He fired FBI Director James Comey.
On May 9, 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating Russia’s subversion of he 2016 Presidential race. Comey had refused to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump during a private dinner at the White House in January.
He gave CIA secrets to Russia, which had intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win.
On May 10, 2017—the day after he fired Comey—Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office—and gave them highly classified Israeli Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
He has repeatedly violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which forbids Presidents to profit from office.
On January 27, 2017, Trump signed an executive order that blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
But four other Middle East countries were not covered by Trump’s travel ban: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Why? Because they are all countries where Trump has close business ties.
He hypocritically claimed “I am your President of law and order” after a lifetime of law-breaking.
He has been forced to shut down a fraudulent university and a fraudulent charity. He has bragged about buying politicians. He has been impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He ordered police and military forces to attack peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park so he could film a photo op there.
* * * * *
Donald Trump’s rise to power has been fueled by bribery and intimidation. These methods served him well—until the advent of Coronavirus. The pandemic remains impervious to bribes or intimidation.
He has repeatedly lied about it:
- It’s a Democratic hoax.
- “One day, it will disappear.”
- There is no need for wearing masks or social distancing.
- There is a cure for COVID-19—the malaria drug hyroxychloroquine.
When the nation partially shut down in March and April, he offered one “solution”: It must immediately reopen. Those states which did so—mostly Red ones in the South and Midwest—are now flooded with COVID-19 cases and deaths.
By July 30, COVID-19 cases in the United States stood at 4.6 million—and COVID-19 deaths stood at 155,333.
Trump planned to win re-election as the President who had created a booming economy and high employment. But businesses across the country remain shuttered—or likely soon will be. Nearly half of all Americans are unemployed.
To force frightened Americans back to unsafe working conditions, Trump demands they send their children back to COVID-19-threatened schools.
Meanwhile, there is no vaccine to prevent COVID-19—and no treatment to cure it.
Trump can only falsely accuse his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, of being a socialist—even as he regularly praises Vladimir Putin, the Communist dictator of Russia.
In his book, The World of Herodotus, Aubrey de Selincourt writes that the Greek historian filled his book, The Histories, with “stories of the perils of pride—pride of wealth, pride of power, pride of success, and, deadliest of all, the pride which leads a man to forget that he is nothing in the sight of the gods.”
And, in the pages of The Histories lies this warning: “Look to the end, no matter what it is you are considering. Often enough, God gives a man a glimpse of happiness, and then utterly ruins him.”
Donald Trump has spent a lifetime committing crimes. Holding the Presidency is his only defense against prosecution—since a sitting President cannot be indicted. If he is turned out of office, state-level prosecution awaits him in New York and possibly at the federal level as well.
Trump’s lifelong glimpse of happiness may be about to end.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 31, 2020 at 12:06 am
And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
—Plutarch, “Life of Alexander”
In a closed-door speech to Republican donors on March 3, 2018, President Donald Trump proved the accuracy of Plutarch’s observation.
He praised China’s President, Xi Jinping, for recently assuming full dictatorial powers: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
The statement was greeted with cheers and laughter by Republican donors.
And, in making that unguarded statement, Trump revealed his ultimate intention: To overthrow America’s constitutional government.
Donald Trump
Since then, Trump has continued to “joke” about serving more than the legal limit of eight years.
In April, 2019, at a White House event, he said he might remain in the Oval Office “at least for 10 or 14 years.”
In May, 2019, Trump retweeted Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.’s suggestion that he’s owed “2 yrs added to his 1st term” due to distractions caused by the Robert Mueller investigation.
Anyone who thought he was simply joking got a rude awakening on July 30, 2020, when Trump tweeted: “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Leaders of both Republican and Democratic parties quickly attacked Trump for suggesting that the election might be delayed.
With COVID-19 ravaging the nation and many economists predicting a coming Depression, Trump is desperate to reverse his falling poll numbers. But the election is now less than 100 days away and, short of a miracle—or indefinitely postponing the vote—he looks increasingly like a one-term President.
Coronavirus
Since taking office as the Nation’s 45th President, Donald Trump has attacked or undermined one public or private institution after another.
Among these:
- American Intelligence: Even before taking office, Trump refused to accept the findings of the FBI, CIA and NSA that Russian Intelligence agents had intervened in the 2016 election to ensure his victory.
- And when FBI Director James Comey dared to pursue a probe into “the Russia thing,” Trump fired him without warning.
- American law enforcement agencies: Trump repeatedly attacked—and later fired—his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for not “protecting” him from agents pursuing the Russia investigation.
- He repeatedly attacked the integrity of Deputy FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe until the latter resigned.
- He threatened to fire Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who oversaw Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
- The press: On February 17, 2017, Trump tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
- Seven days later, appearing before the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 24, Trump said: “I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake….I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources. They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there.”
- The judiciary: Trump repeatedly attacked Seattle U.S/ District Judge James Robart, who halted Trump’s first travel ban.
- At Trump’s bidding, White House aide Stephen Miller attacked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: “We have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government.”
- President Barack Obama: For five years, Trump, more than anyone else, popularized the slander that Barack Obama was born in Kenya—and was therefore not an American citizen.
- Even after Obama released the long-form version of his birth certificate—on April 27, 2011—Trump tweeted, on August 6, 2012: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama‘s birth certificate is a fraud.”
Barack Obama
- On March 4, 2017, in a series of unhinged tweets, Trump accused Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Trump was later forced to admit he had no evidence to back up his slanderous claims.
* * * * *
Donald Trump isn’t crazy, as many of his critics charge. He knows what he’s doing—and why.
He has tried to strip every potential challenger to his authority–and version of reality—of legitimacy. He intends there will be:
- No independent press to reveal his failures and crimes.
- No independent law enforcement agencies to investigate his abuses of office.
- No independent judiciary to hold him accountable.
- No independent military to dissent as he recklessly hurtles toward a nuclear disaster.
- No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge him for re-election in 2020.
In short: No one—ever—to challenge his remaining in office as “President-for-Life.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on July 30, 2020 at 12:08 am
“He’s got a very good approval rating,” President Donald Trump said of Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top expert on infectious disease, during a July 28 White House press briefing on the Coronavirus pandemic.
“And I like that, it’s good, because remember, he’s working for this administration. And he’s got this high approval rating,.
“So why don’t I have a high approval rating with respect—and the administration, with respect to the virus? Nobody likes me. It can only be my personality, that’s all.”
He made the remark on the same day that Coronavirus deaths in America reached 150,000.
The previous day, Trump had retweeted Twitter posts that accused Fauci, a member of the White House Coronavirus task force, of misleading Americans.
For months, Trump has been trying to sell the nation on the COVID-curing wonders of hyroxychloroquine, the malaria drug. He seems to be sold on the drug’s effectiveness by such members of his inner circle as trade adviser Peter Navarro and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani—neither of whom has ever practiced medicine.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has pointed out there have been no scientific trials of the drug for its effectiveness against Coronavirus. Given the medical condition of some patients, it could even prove fatal.
Anthony Fauci
He has also subscribed to theories stemming from medical quackery—such as his belief that injecting disinfectant could prevent or cure the virus.
During his July 28 press conference, Trump refused to answer a question from CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins about a video Trump had shared on Twitter—and which Twitter subsequently removed.
In the video, Stella Immanuel, a Houston doctor, praised hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19 and maligned the wearing of face masks to prevent the spread of the pandemic. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.
“Mr. President, the woman that you said was a ‘great doctor’ in that video that you retweeted last night said that ‘masks don’t work’ and there is a cure for COVID-19, both of which health experts say is not true,” said Collins.
“She’s also made videos saying that doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens and that they are trying to create a vaccine to make you immune from becoming religious—”
Donald Trump
Trump cut her off: “I don’t know which country she comes from, but she said that she’s had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients. And I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her.”
He then stalked out of the briefing room.
This has been one of his routine responses when confronted with unpleasant truths that contradict his lies or crackpot theories. The other one is to label such truths as “fake news.”
Since COVID-19 struck the United States in January, Fauci has dared to speak the hard truth about the pandemic—and the Federal Government’s failure to combat it.
Trump, on the other hand, has offered a cascade of lies, ignorance and rosy predictions that “one day it will be gone.”
The result: Fauci enjoys high approval ratings from public polls on his efforts against the pandemic. Nearly two-thirds of the country has faith in Fauci, said a July Quinnipac poll.
Just over one-third of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the virus, that poll showed.
A reason for Trump’s unpopularity: He has shown no sympathy for those who have died or lost loved ones to COVID-19.
Leaders with a high Emotional Quotient:
- Understand their own emotions, strengths and weaknesses;
- Control their emotions and consistently act with honesty and integrity;
- Have empathy for others;. and
- Inspire enthusiasm and solve disagreements, often with kindness and humor.
In responding to the Coronavirus pandemic, Trump has shown none of these traits.
Contrast Trump’s egotistical, deceptive, anti-scientific and often dictatorial behavior with that of Fauci—and it’s clear why Fauci is far more trusted.
In 1946, Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s architect and minister of armaments, was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for war crimes.
Albert Speer
In Albert Speer: His Batle With Truth, Gitty Sereny wrote: “This was an erudite and solitary man who, recognizing his deficiencies in human relations, had read 5,000 books in prison to try to understand the universe and human beings….Empathy is finally a gift, and cannot be learned. So, essentially returning into the world after 20 years, he remained alone.”
Sereny’s words apply equally to Donald Trump: Empathy is finally a gift, and cannot be learned.
One day during his Presidency, Lyndon Johnson—notorious for bullying others—was forced to confront his own repulsiveness as a human being.
“I’ve passed far more legislation than [President John F.] Kennedy ever did,” he complained to former Secretary of State Dean Acheson. “But people still love him, and they don’t love me. Why is that?”
“You are not a very likable man,” said Acheson.
Approaching four years into his own Presidency, there is no evidence that anyone has dared speak that truth to Trump.
It’s a truth that he deserves to hear—and in as public a forum as possible.
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IDEALISM DIED WITH RFK: PART THREE (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2020 at 1:26 amOn March 18, 1968, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, speaking at the University of Kansas, called on his fellow citizens to show compassion for those less fortunate and in need of relief through the Federal Government.
“If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.”
Finally, Kennedy did something almost no other politician—in his time or since—has ever done: He dared to attack that holy-of-holies, the Gross Domestic Product (then called the Gross National Product).
“If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product….counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.
“It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
“It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans….
Senator Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
“George Bernard Shaw once wrote, ‘Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?’
“So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help. In the difficult five months ahead, before the convention in Chicago. I ask for your help and for your assistance.
“If you believe that the United States can do better. If you believe that we should change our course of action. If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.
“And when we win in November….and we begin a new period of time for the United States of America, I want the next generation of Americans to look back upon this period and say as they said of Plato: ‘Joy was in those days, but to live.’ Thank you very much.”
At the end of Kennedy’s wildly popular speech at Kansas State University, photographer Stanley Tretick, of Look magazine, shouted, “This is Kansas, fucking Kansas! He’s going all the fucking way!”
But he didn’t go all the way. On June 5, 1968—82 days after announcing his Presidential candidacy—an assassin’s bullet suddenly halted his short-lived campaign—and his life.
Robert Kennedy’s funeral train
Historian William L. O’Neil delivered a poignant summary of Robert Kennedy’s legacy in his 1971 book, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and through error and tragic accident, failed at…..He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That, too, must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death, something precious vanished from public life.”
As United States Attorney General (1961-1964) Robert F. Kennedy had the courage to wage all-out war on the Mafia. As a United States Senator (1964-1968) he had the compassion to champion aid to impoverished Americans.
Even in his own era—a half-century ago—Robert Kennedy stood out as the only major Presidential candidate who could legitimately make both claims.
Today, most Democrats—battered by decades of Republican charges that they’re “big spenders”—fear supporting big-ticket items to help the poor.
And the Black Lives Matter movement has made any connection to law enforcement a disqualification for higher office—as former California Attorney General Kamala Harris found out as a 2020 Presidential candidate.
America may never again see a Presidential candidate who can combine a strong stand against crime with an equally strong commitment to helping the poor and disadvantaged.
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