Tag Archives: Trump

Law Versus Power

There’s a tendency to confuse the rule of law with obedience to the rules of a regime.

Within that confusion lies one of the multiple, dangerous threats posed by our current administration–a threat that became manifestly clear when Trump pardoned the January 6th insurrectionists. Autocrats can devise rules; the rule of law, however, is defined as a durable system characterized by four universal principles: accountability, just law, open government, and accessible and impartial justice.

Those elements are entirely foreign to MAGA and Trump. (Let’s face it–Trump wouldn’t even be able to define those terms…)

The chaos of the Trump administration, and the breadth of its attacks on democratic governance, have operated to distract public attention from its ongoing assault on the rule of law, and its persistent substitution of rules benefitting plutocrats and autocrats for laws benefiting society.

A recent issue of the American Prospect addressed that under-appreciated assault.

A functioning economy depends on a basic principle: cheaters shouldn’t win. But Donald Trump has tossed aside that principle, and that has real consequences. When the rules disappear, the worst actors thrive and everyone else pays the price.

In our new print issue, we examine how the collapse of financial enforcement and consumer protection is opening the floodgates to a golden age of scams. Under Trump, the referees have left the field. Civil penalties go unenforced. White-collar fraudsters are rewarded with pardons. Entire arms of the government designed to prevent theft, abuse, and discrimination are being dismantled.

It’s an intentional choice to let exploitation run wild. If there’s a way to game the system, someone’s doing it—and now they’re doing it with the government’s blessing.

The issue documented a variety of scams that have gained new security against government enforcement. One article reported on the multiple ways in which the gutting of the CFPB–the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau–has facilitated a wide variety of rackets and frauds. Another article delved into the failures of the Department of Education under Trump to protect student loan recipients from predatory lenders.

An article titled “Three Coin Monte” described what the magazine calls “the greatest and most brazen tale of corruption in history”– Trump’s crypto project. That article outlined “how Trump is using his ‘shitcoin’ to monetize the presidency and create new avenues for influence peddling.”

There’s also an explanation of a scam involving merchant cash advances. These are transactions in which tycoons sell what are effectively payday loans to small businesses and ruin their livelihoods. (We are told that one of those “tycoons” was on Trump’s pardon list in 2020; he’s back in jail, for now.)

These investigative articles are just a few examples of what happens when government fails in what has always been considered a foundational task: to prevent some citizens from taking advantage of others, to prevent the strong (or unscrupulous) from harming the weak and/or naive.

Donald Trump’s government has corrupted the very concept of law. The evidence is overwhelming: the gutting of the Department of Justice, the indiscriminate labeling of immigrants as “criminals” as justification for masked ICE agents’ thuggish behaviors, the appalling arrests of elected lawmakers on transparently false premises, orders from the administration to the EPA directing the agency not to enforce environmental rules against fossil fuel companies, the Trump family’s failure to even try to mask its monetization of the Presidency…the list goes on.

When the rule of law is replaced with rules favoring the predatory, when people in positions of authority sneer at the very notion of ethics and ethical behavior, when elected members of Congress fail to exercise their constitutional oversight responsibilities, ordinary citizens lose respect for the very concept of law. Corrupt regimes encourage lawbreaking by people who wouldn’t otherwise be scofflaws. Cynicism explodes. The trust on which societies rely evaporates.

The central goal of Project 2025 was to replace the rule of law with rules allowing selected people to exercise unrestrained and arbitrary power–power to give their sycophants and fellow-travelers free reign to plunder, but–more fundamentally– to facilitate the remaking of America into the Lily-White “Christian” nation of Project 2025’s fantasies.

In Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote “First you kill all the lawyers.” The authors of Project 2025 understood why that’s wrong. First you kill the rule of law.

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Why Government By Idiots Is A Bad Idea

Well, our Mad would-be King has bombed Iran and–by any definition–taken us to war. Another unconstitutional and profoundly dangerous act.

Charlie Sykes recently considered what was then an Israeli-Iran conflict, and enumerated “things that can all be true at the same time.”

Here’s his list, with my commentary in italics:

  • America ought to stand with Israel, while recognizing that Benjamin Netanyahu (1) does not always deserve the benefit of the doubt, and (2) is an unreliable narrator. In this, Sykes echoes the opinion of a majority of American Jews. We support the right of Israel to exist, but we detest Netanyahu, who is a smarter version of Trump (granted, a low bar) and whose corrupt governance has done incalculable damage to Israel’s international support.
  • The world would be a vastly better and safer place if Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. Ditto for dismantling the terrorist regime. This week, the G7 nations reiterated that, “Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” and “We have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” Hard to argue with this.
  • Achieving these goals through war will not be easy or achieved without great cost.
    War with Iran could unleash chaos throughout the region. And what comes afterward could be worse.
    The most dangerous scenarios involve miscalculations, misjudgments, and misinterpretations. (See World War I.) The truth of this is what keeps rational people up at night, and what should have concerned the ignoramus in the Oval Office. Understanding the risks involved in any decisions made by those in a position to make those decisions should have been a critical element of America’s response to this very significant threat to world peace.
  •  Moments like these requires the highest degree of skill and prudence — the most sober, strategic, and sagacious diplomatic and military minds we can muster. Instead, we have a reality tv host and a dipsomaniacal chode in charge of the world’s greatest military on the brink of war. Ok, I had to look up “chode,” which evidently refers either to a male organ or a stupid or contemptible man. Either way, seems appropriate. At a time when the country needs thoughtful, informed and adult leadership, power is being exercised by a group of immature, self-important ignoramuses who haven’t a clue and who display no willingness to heed the advice of people who do.
  • Instead of assembling a “coalition of the willing,” Trump and Israel were intent on going it alone, isolated and without the active support of allies. See “chode.”
  • As has become its wont, Congress remains a potted plant throughout this whole crisis. This is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of all of the threats we face today. The Republicans who hold a majority in the House and Senate repeatedly block efforts to assert the constitutional duties of those bodies. In the House, they evidently feel protected by gerrymandering and fear only challenges from the Right; the Senate is home to morons like Indiana’s Christian Nationalist Jim Banks and cowards like Todd Young. The fault ultimately lies with We the People, who have elected these pathetic excuses for public servants.

Bottom line, as Sykes notes, is that there are no adults in the situation room.

Because nothing ever really disappears from the Internet, social media sites have been flooded with former tweets by our embarrassing excuse for a President, a child-man who evidently thinks that posting grammatically-incorrect vulgarities and threats in ALL CAPS, like a five-year-old, is leadership. In 2013, he posted “Be prepared. There is a chance that our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into WWIII.” (This post, at least, was grammatical…and potentially, frighteningly accurate.) Pundits have also reminded readers of Trump’s statement–made when he was still a reality television personality– that “Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly—not skilled!”

“Not skilled” is an apt–albeit massively understated–description of the unserious, unqualified cranks and clowns that We the People have installed in positions of authority.

Those totally unqualified clowns and cranks may just have triggered WWIII. Even if the consequences aren’t that horrific, they are likely to be incredibly damaging, both to the stability of the  world at large and–thanks to the mentally-ill buffoon in the White House– to America’s rapidly-diminishing role in that world.

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Discarding Medical Ethics

There really is no way to ignore the White supremacist and patriarchal roots of MAGA and the Trump administration. The behavior of ICE in conflating Brown skin with “illegal” status is one aspect; the bigoted nature of so many Trump’s insane Executive Orders is another. A recent federal court decision–handed down by a judge appointed by Ronald Reagan–expressed astonishment at the obvious discriminatory motive behind the administration’s NIH cuts. Etc.

Now, the administration is encouraging the VA to be “selective” in providing medical care to veterans. According to a recent report from The Guardian,

Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.

The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.

Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.

Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.

I sent this article to my cousin, a long-time cardiologist whose medical knowledge I sometime share on this site; he responded that this “goes against all the rules that guide the medical profession, not to mention against the guiding principles of this entire nation! It’s simply additional confirmation of Trump’s insanity, not that we needed it! “

According to the report, this permission of discrimination isn’t limited to patient care. “Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity.” The changes even apply to chiropractors, nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.

The administration claims that these changes were intended to support the president’s executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. That executive order purported to eliminate existing government protections from transgender people, and since it was issued, the VA has stopped  providing most gender-affirming care.

The administration has also forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.

The article quoted a former VA administrator who said the changes would allow doctors to refuse to treat veterans based on the reason they were seeking care, including allegations of rape and sexual assault. Refusal could also be based upon current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and on personal behaviors like alcohol or marijuana use.

Most Americans fail to recognize just how extensive the VA is. The Department of Veterans Affairs operates the nation’s largest integrated hospital system; it has more than 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics, employs 26,000 doctors and serves 9 million patients annually. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that rule changes of this sort are likely to have profound consequences.

In an emailed response to questions, the VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, did not dispute that the new rules allowed doctors to refuse to treat veteran patients based on their beliefs or that physicians could be dismissed based on their marital status or political affiliation.

Dr. Arthur Caplan, a prominent medical ethics expert, called the new rules “extremely disturbing and unethical.”

The changes are part of a larger attack on the independence of medicine and science by the Trump administration, Caplan said, which has included restrictions and cuts at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, last week fired every member of a key panel that advises the government on vaccines. The Guardian has earlier reported on a VA edict forbidding agency researchers from publishing in scientific journals without clearance from the agency’s political appointees.

Just one more drop in the ocean of ignorance and “othering” that characterizes MAGA and Trumpism. From the “very fine” people Trump insisted were among the bigoted rioters at Charlottesville, to his description of (majority Black) “shithole countries,” to his efforts to bar entry into America from Muslim countries, to his constant manifestations of racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, Trump has represented and ingratiated himself with the White “Christian” supremacists who form the base of his support.

America’s divisions aren’t political. They’re moral and ethical. And MAGA is on the wrong side of that divide.

 
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Things That Make Me Crazy

Can those who read this blog indulge me for three very personal rants?

We face so many major problems in this country right now (can we spell LA?) that it seems terribly self-indulgent to focus on a few annoying aspects of civic debate. On the other hand, I think at least a couple of the behaviors I find so exasperating are symptoms of the inability of We the People to productively address the bigger issues. (Anyway, that’s my justification and I’m sticking to it!)

#1. I recently posted about an emerging argument over regulation. Proponents of taking a closer look at our regulatory processes aren’t the knee-jerk GOP scolds who define “free market” as “free” from any government rules; the concern (as I said in that post) is to guard against over-kill. But I immediately got an email from an acquaintance saying, essentially, “finally, people are realizing that we need to get government out of the way!”

Now, I’ve known this particular correspondent for a long time, and he’s not stupid. But he drank the Kool-Aid back when the GOP’s plutocrats were insisting that government just needed to get out of the way and let good-hearted business-people run their enterprises as they see fit.

We’re beginning to see what that would look like, as planes fall from the sky.  Do we really want to get rid of FDA inspections to ensure that supermarket chickens are safe to eat?  Do we want to turn a blind eye to that factory discharging toxic waste into the local river? Stop requiring clinical trials before approving the sale of medications and vaccines?

Bottom line:  We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto! We don’t grow our own fruits and vegetables and go into the backyard to kill one of our own chickens for dinner. In a modern society, government regulations are essential.  As I said in my post, it isn’t an “either/or” proposition; policymakers need to determine what regulations are needed, and how much is too much. That’s a lot harder, of course, than spouting ideological idiocies.

#2. This platform, like so many others, is a place where people with different perspectives but generally similar civic goals come to argue about THE question: what should we do? What actions can citizens take in the face of an existential threat to the America we thought we inhabited? 

Those discussions may or may not be experienced as valuable, but one (probably inevitable) response drives me up the wall. It is the comment–in a lecturing tone–to the effect that such-and-such will clearly be ineffective, that it is simply “virtue-signaling” and unlikely to make any difference. It would be one thing if the person pouring cold water on a proposed activity ever followed up with a helpful, do-able suggestion–if the put-down was ever followed by a thoughtful “here’s what we should be doing instead,” but it never is.

One of the defects of Internet conversations is the absence of tone and body-language. Perhaps if we could see and hear the individuals who post these put-downs, they wouldn’t seem so sneering and self-important–but that is certainly what these “I know better than you and what you propose is stupid” comments convey.

#3.  I am OVER the Democrats who keep wallowing in “what went wrong” and “who was to blame” and “why the approach of those of you on the (insert ideological position) is dooming our chances in the future.” I am especially over the focus on Joe Biden, and the utterly stupid accusations of a “cover up”–as Robert Hubbell has pointed out, a “cover up” of the cognitive state of a man who was appearing daily at campaign events, delivering addresses to Congress where he outwitted the entire Republican caucus, providing interviews to major media outlets, and guiding America through a period of stable foreign relations and successful domestic policy. Biden aged in office –and we all saw that–but he was a transformational and incredibly effective President. Should he have withdrawn sooner? Probably. But for goodness sake, GIVE IT A REST. 

Meanwhile, we have a President whose election was at least partially due to the refusal of the mainstream press to give anything close to equal time to his embarrassing stupidity, his obvious mental illness (not to mention his age-related decline from what wasn’t a high bar to begin with). Even the aspects of his “character” (note quotation marks) that do receive coverage–his racism, his felonies, his rapes, his constant lies (are his lips moving?), his “out and proud” corruption –are still being normalized and sane-washed. WHY?

Okay. I’m done. Thanks for indulging me. I think I feel better.

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The Would-Be King

Phil Gulley is a Quaker pastor in Indiana and a clear-eyed observer of the human condition. Quakers value peace, integrity, community, and stewardship of the Earth–values that our mad would-be king disdains and desecrates. Phil recently shared an essay in which he described the multiple ways in which Trump and his MAGA base offend Quaker, American and human values, and he graciously allowed me to share it. It’s below. (He also has a Substack, for those of us who follow him.)

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A Criminal Syndicate

         Have you ever met someone who reminded you of someone else? When I first heard Pete Buttigieg, I was reminded of Richard Lugar, another well-spoken, intelligent Hoosier. When I met my wife, she reminded me of Katharine Hepburn, with whom she shared a classy, no-nonsense manner. I’m sure my rugged good looks reminded her of Spencer Tracy. When Donald Trump emerged on the political scene, I felt a spark of recognition. I know that man from somewhere else, I told myself. Then I remembered. Donald Trump reminds me of Tony Soprano. Both are swaggering bullies. Both are vicious, violent, and rapacious criminals, heading up criminal syndicates. Except one is fictional and one is not.

         There is no such thing as a Trump Administration. There is a Trump Syndicate, a crime family, a consortium of thugs, underlings, felons, and grifters, purporting to be public servants while carrying out a global campaign of theft, pilfering America’s treasury, peddling access to the Mobster-in-Chief, Donald Trump, while gutting the very agencies that would hold them accountable to the rule of law.

         Theirs is a master class in fraud, unparalleled in American history. The foxes are guarding the henhouse, which by the end of his term will be gutted. A democracy almost 250 years in the making has been stripped bare in one bleak and wintry season. The collective effort of twelve generations of Americans has been decimated by Hair Hitler and his Brownshirts. This is what I grieve the most, that tens of millions of Americans voted for a man who’d made no secret of his disdain for decency and duty. All his life, he has been the poster child of decadence—greedy, grasping, uncaring, and corrupt. He has never had a friend, only servile bootlickers collecting the crumbs that slip through his tiny hands, selling their souls for thirty pieces of silver. They, like he, merit a Judas death—abandoned and ashamed—their names a curse on the lips of history.

         He ventures from the White House only long enough to plunder, gathering jet planes and sweetheart deals from the sponsors of global terrorism, peddling his cryptocoins, favoring those who purchase them, tyrannizing those who don’t. Like all crime bosses, it is himself he is serving and no one else, so he will leave the presidency far richer than he entered it. His is a transactional presidency, our shared public treasure rummaged at fire-sale prices to his cronies.

         Anyone who dares protest is called out on middle-of-the-night tweets—Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, colleges, professors, foreign presidents with the audacity to stand against tyranny, Mexico, Canada, and liberals. What an honor it would be to be singled out for attack by Donald Trump, to be labeled an enemy of his brutish ignorance. If we are known by the company we keep, we are also known by the company we find so repulsive we would dedicate our lives to resisting it. If he is naming his enemies, number me among them. I detest everything about him and all he represents−fascism, meanness, ignorance, and cruelty.

         Like all mob bosses, to remain in his good favor requires an envelope of cash slipped into his silken pocket. His goons rise each morning and go forth, strong-arming America, threatening, intimidating, collecting the daily take, promising safety to those who comply and ruination to those who refuse.  Now we are separating the men from the boys, and shame on the boys, shame on those who buckle under, the law firms and tech bros, whose donations fund this Thief-of-State. With billions of dollars at their disposal, with teams of lawyers at their beck and call, they tremble in fear of this strutting bully and what he might tweet about them. Their spinelessness is not only appalling, but traitorous. A pox upon them all.

         Washington and Lincoln have their memorials, but there will be no such marker for Trump. Should one be erected, it will be torn down by those who cannot bear to see such a man saluted. There won’t be enough tomatoes in the world to register history’s disgust, nor enough guards to safekeep his marker. He should enjoy the braying accolades he is receiving now, since his future will lack the faintest note of praise.

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