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corruption
The View From Mount Trump
Looking over his gigantic domain astride the country and soon the world, Trump can recount the pillars of his elected dictatorship.
Nov 23, 2024
Let’s look at the political scene from Trump’s viewpoint.
Sitting in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago palace receiving the daily obeisant supplicants eager to heed his every word and praise exuberantly his megalomania, Donald J. Trump can hardly believe his good fortune.
Starting in the 2015 presidential race against 16 GOP primary opponents, Trump’s vituperative attacks were unleashed. Never in American history have words from a politician’s mouth ever metastasized into such unchallenged electoral victory and domination. His daily, hourly bullying verbal abuses flooded THE MASS MEDIA, which faithfully transmitted to tens of millions of people like clockwork—lying or false statements and tweets in the tens of thousands.
Looking over his gigantic domain astride the country and soon the world, Trump can recount the pillars of his elected dictatorship.
The Supreme Court in their impeachable June 2024 unconstitutional decision (Trump v. United States) has decreed that the president’s “official conduct” (undefined) is immune from criminal prosecution for whatever they do. This 6-3 decision already fortifies Trump’s previous determination notoriously declared in July 2019 when he exclaimed, “Then, I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” And he did just that, violating with impunity federal criminal statutes (See the December 18, 2019, Congressional Record, H-12197), violating the Constitution, defying over 125 congressional subpoenas, and according to John Bolton, his national security adviser, making “obstruction of justice a daily practice in the White House.”
Who is going to challenge him? He believes correctly that it will not be the Supreme Court or Congress.
Second, Trump has control of Congress with the Republican majority in the House and Senate, however narrow. Congress is thus far showing no sign of resisting his demands for utter submission. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has already signaled this abdication of his constitutional duty for checks and balances. Senate Majority Leader Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) is more circumspect. However mindful he is of the Senate’s constitutional duty of “advice and consent” regarding Trump’s nominees, Thune has to worry about being overthrown and replaced at any time as Senate majority leader by hovering Trump loyalists.
Trump wants the Senate to declare a recess for more than 10 days to get his team of Cabinet and agency nominees appointed without the usual confirmation hearings. This is an extreme demand. As constitutional law specialist, Bruce Fein asserts: “Such contrived recesses serve no legitimate constitutional purpose. That would make such official acts voidable,” i.e., unenforceable.
This illegal escape hatch for Trump is unlikely to materialize for some of his nominees whom the Senate majority will want to reject. Why? Because, for example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for secretary of health and human services will be vigorously opposed by Big Pharma, the Big Food processors, the health insurance giants, and the Big Global Warming Polluters (fossil fuels) industries whom he has long criticized and sued when he was an effective environmental lawyer. He doesn’t have much support from Democratic senators due to his statements about vaccines and their side effects. Guessing, I expect the Senate will turn him down following a conventional nomination hearing.
The military-industrial giants will oppose Tulsi Gabbard as Trump’s director of national intelligence. She is seen as too extreme a critic, too inexperienced, and likely not to “get along by going along” with the entrenched national intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA.
Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, a veteran, with no managerial experience, has made harsh statements about military leadership, women, and Muslims. He evinces wanting to go on a vengeance kick and not on a mission to do what Trump has campaigned for, which is ending “endless wars.” The 47 Democratic senators are likely to be joined by enough Republican senators to block his nomination.
Trump’s choice of Chris Wright, head of a fracking company and a climate-denier, as secretary of energy, will get the full backing of the oil, gas, and coal industries leading to an affirmative vote in the Senate.
None of these problems bother Trump. Just as was the case with former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who was forced by disclosures, regarding his sexual aggressions and other negatives, to take himself out of the running nomination for attorney general, Trump will find plenty of replacements willing to run a Justice Department which lets him do whatever he wants with impunity.
At the end of the day, what matters to Trump is getting what he wants. He is warranted in such confidence. Who is going to challenge him? He believes correctly that it will not be the Supreme Court or Congress. The state legislatures will be on the defensive due to his willingness to cut grants and federal contracts to the states, including critical Medicaid services for millions of needy Americans, along with other traditional social safety net programs.
The labor unions, worrying about a third of their membership being Trumpsters, among other inhibitions (See, Election Day Delirium by Chris Townsend), are not much of a factor, as they have tethered themselves (with few exceptions) to the Democratic Party bureaucracy. The citizen groups will file their lawsuits and wait for the expected court delays that spell “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
As for the mainstream media CEOs, Trump knows they want higher ratings and more readers so he has given them daily fodder for outrageous epithets, falsehoods, braggadocios, and empty promises. In return, media outlets have faithfully published his crazed bloviations. The media has also reported his many corruptions, lies, ignorance of facts, bigotry, sexual escapades, and indictments —to no avail. The MAGA crowd just gets bigger. All the exposés, helped by blunders of prosecutors and partisan Trump judges, have fallen off Teflon Trump like water off a duck’s back.
He has procrastinated releasing his full medical history, contrary to his promises in 2016, 2020, and 2024. He has also resisted releasing his tax returns. He now has not complied with ethical reports during the transition from President Joe Biden’s regime to his regime. Der Fuhrer Trump believes the rules that his presidential peers have followed do not apply to him.
There is a little light at the end of the tunnel. Democratic state attorneys general will sue and block some of Trump’s violative decisions. Some state prosecutors will go after the burgeoning corruption of Trump’s nominees and their corporate collaborators eager to raid the honey pots of Uncle Sam.
The biggest risk to Trump’s domination will be Trump himself and what damage he will be unleashing that workers, consumers, and communities, even those who voted for him, will feel intensely.
But the biggest risk to Trump’s domination will be Trump himself and what damage he will be unleashing that workers, consumers, and communities, even those who voted for him, will feel intensely. The assault on their health, safety, and economic well-being may weaken Trump’s support. Once people start thinking that MAGA is really MABA (Make America Betrayed Again), the polls should start sliding propitiously from the sky-high expectations of the Paradise that Trump promised every campaign day.
At his core, Trump is not all that much different than his worst predecessors. He continued several Bush/Obama wars overseas in his first term, intensifying his backing of war criminal Bibi Netanyahu. He later swallowed his campaign criticism of price-gouging drug companies. And of course, he loves Wall Street, Houston, (the fossil fuel giants), the corporate welfarists, tax escapes of corporate crooks, those who cheat consumers and crush workers’ rights. Remember that is the way he behaved during his former failed business exploits. Nobody stopped him then and he believes the stars of his destiny will not let anyone stop him now.
Trump is at his core a corporatist and a corporate statist, who pushes bloated military budgets, lawlessness, and police powers, all of which are the frameworks of American fascism.
Buckle your seat belts people, and start the civic resurgence. (See my piece, Rise Up: Congress is Yours for the Taking in the new issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen).
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Trump's New Attorney General Pick: A Corporate Lobbyist Who Did Wall Street's Bidding
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to let corporate wrongdoers off the hook," said one consumer advocate.
Nov 22, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump's choice to succeed Matt Gaetz as his nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Justice is a registered lobbyist who has worked on behalf of Amazon, Uber, and other corporate giants.
Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, has lobbied for the same firm as Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff pick, according to Senate filings. Bondi also reportedly has ties to the lawyer who represented Trump confidant Elon Musk and Tesla in a federal securities fraud case.
Bondi, who helped represent Trump during his first impeachment trial and took part in the effort to reverse the results of the 2020 election, currently serves as chair of the Center for Litigation at the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank that's playing a central role in the presidential transition and in crafting Trump's agenda.
Trump's selection of Bondi to lead the Justice Department prompted renewed scrutiny of her record as Florida's top prosecutor, particularly her favorable treatment of big banks and other firms implicated in the foreclosure crisis.
The American Prospect's David Dayen, the author of an acclaimed book on Wall Street foreclosure fraud, noted Friday that Bondi's victory in Florida's 2010 attorney general election was aided in part by donations from Lender Processing Services and other firms that were facing investigations launched by the office of Bondi's predecessor.
In 2011, Dayen recounted, Bondi fired two attorneys in Florida's Economic Crimes division, June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards, after freezing them out of a national probe of foreclosure fraud despite their extensive knowledge of the issue.
"There's a lot out there about Bondi, including her soliciting a $25,000 contribution from Trump and subsequently scotching an investigation into his fake university, while lying about how many complaints from former students at the university she received," Dayen wrote. "She also became a lobbyist with Trump-whisperer Brian Ballard after her stint as attorney general of Florida ended, seeking sweetheart treatment for clients like Amazon, GM, and Uber."
"But the firing of Clarkson and Edwards, which is detailed further in my 2016 book Chain of Title, is the most emblematic example of Bondi's extreme willingness to do the bidding of anyone who pays her," Dayen added. "The conversion of corporate donations into protection for that corporation, even if it meant firing her own staff, was done without so much as the bat of an eyelash."
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to serve as a Trump loyalist and attack dog at the expense of the department's independence and integrity."
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, pointed to Bondi's failed legal push to overturn the Affordable Care Act as further evidence that she is "a manifestly unqualified candidate for attorney general."
"Not being Matt Gaetz does not qualify you to be attorney general of the United States," said Weissman. "We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to let corporate wrongdoers off the hook. As Florida attorney general, Pam Bondi sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act, sued to block the ACA ban on health insurance companies price gouging people with preexisting conditions, and opposed efforts to reduce homeowners' mortgage loans in negotiations with financial institutions that had engaged in fraud and misconduct."
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to spread false claims about voter fraud and to undermine the Department of Justice's historic commitment to protecting voting rights," he added. "Bondi echoed Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election and has brought lawsuits to restrict voting access.
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to serve as a Trump loyalist and attack dog at the expense of the department's independence and integrity," Weissman continued. "In short, we should expect an Attorney General Bondi to lead a Department of Injustice. Americans deserve better."
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Musk and Ramaswamy Outline Plan for Mass Firings, Cuts to Antipoverty Programs
"The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is poised to make far-reaching recommendations that could have a devastating impact on Americans and enormously benefit insiders, starting with Musk himself."
Nov 21, 2024
The two right-wing billionaires President-elect Donald Trump has tasked with spearheading a new "government efficiency" commission outlined their vision Wednesday for the mass firing of federal employees, large-scale deregulation, and major spending cuts that could impact antipoverty programs, drug research and development, and more.
For the first time since Trump announced plans to create the Department on Government Efficiency (DOGE)—which, despite its name, would be an advisory commission rather than an actual federal department—Tesla CEO Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy offered a detailed look at how they plan to achieve their stated objective of taking a "chainsaw" to federal operations.
"We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America," the pair wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. "The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws."
Decrying rules crafted by "unelected bureaucrats," Musk and Ramaswamy—unelected outside advisers—wrote that they intend to present to Trump "a list of regulations" they believe should be eliminated. The culling of regulations would, they argued, provide the justification for "mass headcount reductions"—corporate-speak for sweeping firings—across federal agencies, a plan the two wrote would not be deterred by civil service protections.
Watchdogs have noted that the regulatory cuts envisioned by the commission's co-leaders would likely benefit Musk's companies, at least three of which are currently under scrutiny from nine federal agencies.
"Based on Elon Musk's comments, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is poised to make far-reaching recommendations that could have a devastating impact on Americans and enormously benefit insiders, starting with Musk himself," Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said Wednesday.
"A second Trump term will undoubtedly see a multipronged attack on any institution that seeks to constrain big business, and DOGE will lead the charge."
Musk and Ramaswamy also laid out a plan under which Trump would evade existing federal statutes such as the Impoundment Control Act to cut spending already allocated by Congress.
"DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion-plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood," they wrote.
As The Washington Post's Jacob Bogage recently observed, the federal programs "without separate spending authorization" that Musk and Ramaswamy are targeting "represent more than $516 billion" and encompass key areas including veterans' healthcare, education spending, housing assistance, childcare aid, student loan programs, Head Start, opioid addiction treatment, and NASA.
Musk, a megadonor to Trump's 2024 presidential bid, claimed on the campaign trail that he would be able to identify "at least $2 trillion" in possible cuts to federal spending.
Casey Wetherbee, an Argentina-based writer, warned Wednesday that "Musk and Ramaswamy's admiration of Argentine president Javier Milei offers us a glimpse into their ideal end state."
"Ramaswamy tweeted on November 18: 'A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government: Milei-style cuts, on steroids,'" Wetherbee wrote for Jacobin. "When Milei assumed office last year, he declared that conditions would worsen before things would get better; Musk similarly warned that DOGE’s recommendations may cause 'temporary hardship.' Meanwhile, in Argentina, Milei's austerity measures have targeted the country's social safety net, causing the poverty rate to skyrocket while only lowering taxes for the country's wealthiest citizens, a troubling outlook for a second Trump administration if DOGE's advice is ever implemented."
"A second Trump term will undoubtedly see a multipronged attack on any institution that seeks to constrain big business, and DOGE will lead the charge," Wetherbee added. "After all, in DOGE's public call for collaborators, it seeks 'super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries'; that's how they see themselves. We can only hope that, by virtue of how evidently insufferable they are, DOGE's relationship with the Trump administration flames out spectacularly."
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