Trump’s Scorn for America and Americans

I argued on this station that Trump should have been impeached for disloyalty. The American people understand disloyalty. They didn’t understand the significance of the articles of impeachment.

The House impeached him for trying to get a foreign government’s help for his campaign and for defying House subpoenas. The people agreed that Trump did what he was charged with, but apparently thought those actions were trivial.

Democrats didn’t bear down on the bigger issue – Trump’s disloyalty. Not only did he take money and assistance from foreign countries, itself unconstitutional, he strengthened their positions and weakened our own. He undermined institutions that kept Russia in check; isolated America from its real friends; and deluded his followers about an international pandemic. No president should be allowed to sell the welfare of this country to foreigners or rich friends. That’s disloyal.

Trump’s disloyalty goes way beyond the payoffs he accepted. Trump despises America and Americans unless they are very very rich.

• He despises American workers, providing lavish tax breaks that help his rich supporters pay peanuts to their workers, outsource and off-shore their jobs.
• He despises the American people, authorizing his rich friends to poison our air, water and climate so his rich friends can make a little more money and give him some too.
• I should add his despicable attitude toward women.
• And so great is his compassion for the American people that he’s been trying to deprive us of our health care in the middle of a health crisis.
• So great is his compassion for older Americans, for our parents and grandparents, that despite Americans’ support for Social Security, he’s trying to eliminate it with an Executive Order to defund and bankrupt it so he can say there’s no money left. His order is unconstitutional and may be overturned, but it’s disloyal to the people of America.
• He grandstands about policies that are supposed to help workers and farmers, but disrupts their lives instead.
• Trump told us he wanted to defund the Post Office to prevent us from mailing in absentee ballots, but when it became clear that the American people didn’t want their Post Offices defunded, he blamed it on Democrats. His war on the Post Office is not only a war on absentee ballots, it’s a war on the Christmas cards we send every December; it’s a war on our mail carriers, whom many of us know and like; it’s a war on voting safely without crowds that spread the virus; and it’s a war to force us to pay private carriers much more money than what we pay the Post Office to carry our mail, medicines, and bring us our Social Security checks. In other words, it’s another attempt to rip us off.
• And to cap it off, he hates our democratic system, threatening to stay on in spite of the election, so he can be dictator, and the rest of us merely subjects.

In other words, everything for Trump and nothing for America. That’s the real issue. We know he’s a fraud, claiming fake news so often it’s an obvious effort to avoid defending his behavior.

Trump is running a Ponzi scheme, trying to cover his debts and increase his own wealth by bilking the rest of us. His misbehavior is criminal. But don’t lock him up. It would be better to string him up, or at least deport him and take his passport away. Let him shine Putin’s shoes in the Kremlin.

— An edited version of this commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on August 18, 2020.

 

Our Human Constitution

Recently I spoke with a class of high school girls. They asked me to talk about the Constitution and we agreed I’d talk about how we interpret it. I wasn’t advocating any particular method. In fact, I referred to the late Justice John Paul Stevens, adopting an observation by the then sitting president of the Israeli Supreme Court, that a judge does best who “’seek[s] guidance from every reliable source.’”[1]

While talking with the girls, I finally realized how to encapsulate what I wanted to say: The Constitution is a human document, written by human beings for use by human beings. It is not self-executing. There’s nothing automatic about checks and balances. They work when people believe in and use them. They don’t work when people in power care only about favoring themselves and their friends.

That’s not a flaw in the document. There are flaws in the document. It still bears the marks of slavery  ̶  numerous clauses were designed to protect slave-owners even though the word slave does not appear. And it was written by men for men in 1787. But the men who wrote the Constitution referred to its prohibitions as “parchment barriers.” Parchment was an older form of fine paper, often used for formal documents. The Founders clearly understood that the document they wrote and ratified would prove as good as the people running it.

I didn’t draw conclusions for the girls, but I want to spell out some implications for you:

• When the president thinks he is an elected king and should control all the levers of government without being questioned or restrained and when a majority of Senators believe they should protect him, they’re simply making the Constitution irrelevant. The Constitution doesn’t protect the president or the senators; they do it for themselves.
• When the president is more intent on encouraging us to fight among ourselves over the color of our states and our skins than to work together for the good of the country, the Constitution hasn’t failed us. We’ve failed it.
• When the president turns us from leader of the free world to its laughing stock, the Constitution hasn’t failed us. He has.
• When the president encourages the most selfish among us to sacrifice the air, land, water and climate that sustain us, the Constitution hasn’t failed us. He has.
• When the president dithers for months after being warned of a coming health catastrophe, the Constitution hasn’t failed us. He has.
• In the days before we had antibiotics and other drugs, quarantines were the principle way that our governments tried to protect us from infectious diseases. When people carry weapons into the state Capital and threaten state governors over quarantines,[2] the Constitution hasn’t failed us. They have.

The Constitution is a parchment barrier. We have to do more than protect the document. We have to use it wisely.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on July 14, 2020.

[1] Judicial Discretion 62 (Y. Kaufmann transl. 1989).@ BedRoc Ltd., LLC v. United States, 541 U.S. 176, 192 (2004) (Stevens, J., dissenting).

[2] See https://www.businessinsider.com/michigan-open-carry-laws-legal-protesters-guns-at-state-capitol-2020-5 and https://www.newsweek.com/michigan-closes-down-capitol-face-death-threats-armed-protesters-against-gov-whitmer-1504241.

Testing Republican Loyalty on the Route to Dictatorship

My heart wants to talk about the momentous things happening in our country but the disloyalty of this president is too frightening to talk about anything else.

He keeps firing people who’re trying to follow the law. He’s stripping government of the people who protected us from disease, poison and catastrophe, from dangerous workplaces and frauds, leaving most of us with little ability to protect ourselves. We’re out of work, out of money and have lost control of many boards of elections. When does it become too much?

He’s allied himself with the most extreme racists, people who’ve little compunction at brandishing, intimidating, threatening the rest of us with their weapons. Who’s safe then?

FBI records have made it clear that the – I refuse to use the name they call themselves – but the alt-sickos he praises and incites are the same ones who have been responsible for the vast majority of domestic terrorism in this country. Some of you may be too young to remember Timothy McVeigh who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing that killed and injured nearly a thousand people including 19 children in a day care center. He came from the same sewer of hate. The alt-screwed up wing that Trump insists on encouraging has been the source of the mass shooters that have caused so much grief. They’ve united law-breakers with political enmity. The combination is deadly. Do we need more proof?

Encouraging violence, creating chaos and then posing as the savior is a path tyrants have followed all over the world to take power, and, gaining power, turned their followers loose on the population until everyone bows in feigned allegiance to avoid their own and their family’s arrest, rape and murder.

The other major path is to gain control of the military. Trump has been firing everyone inquiring into his misbehavior. He’s fired much of the top brass of the military for daring to say that the military must stay out of politics or otherwise stand up to him.

How far is Dangerous Donald trying to go? And what will happen to us if he gets what he wants?

If this president attempts to take over by force, who will stand in his way? Will the Senate be loyal to Trump or to America and the rule of law and democracy? Will the Army be loyal to Trump or to America, the rule of law and democracy now that he has been stripping responsible military leaders of their stripes? Will there be anyone left to say no and lead the troops against a presidential putsch? Is it too late for the Court now that they have authorized massive stripping of voters from the records? Will we stop this slide into tyranny before it’s too late?

To allow this President to take over the reins of power he believes are his, will erase all efforts to make this a more decent country. This is a real test of the loyalty of Republican Senators – to Mr. Trump, or to the Constitution that so many Republicans have so loudly proclaimed as if they alone obey it. Are they loyal to the law and its superiority over everyone, high and low, or are they devoted instead to the notion of impunity, that some people can do any damage they choose to other people, to our government and to America itself without facing justice. Frankly, I am guessing that we are going to see immense disloyalty to America and failure to insist that the president has an obligation to our country and not just to his own ambitions. If you could read the records of the Founders of our country, you would quickly discover that Trump is the man they were afraid of.

There is no second chance. Republicans must show their courage now or survive only in infamy.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on June 23, 2020.

Trump Misuse of the Pandemic

I wanted to talk about something else; the health crisis is so serious and depressing. But it’s so serious because Trump has been unwilling to be part of the solution. He tries to double down, deny the science, ignore the tragedy and let everyone who’s not a Trump supporter sink into bankruptcy or perish, while Trump and his buddies play golf, and the people he put in charge of federal agencies use the pandemic as a smokescreen behind which to destroy all the agencies and the states and the services they provide – from schools to fire, police, safety regulation and health services.

What kind of people we are is reflected in how we handle a crisis. Do we let those most in need perish while funneling everything to those least in need? Or do we protect those who need it most?

Do we protect public schools for everyone or do we make them a pay-as-you-go enterprise that only the wealthy can afford?

I’m sick of watching the Trump Administration use this crisis to double down on paying the rich and starving the public, supporting private schools and starving public ones, paying large corporations and starving mom and pop businesses.

This has been the Republican playbook – first empty public coffers with tax breaks for their friends so it looks like the federal government has to starve all the programs that serve the people – from Social Security to public health and public education.

The Trump Administration was asleep at the wheel and let the virus explode until they could claim the only way to save American workers from economic disaster is by opening up, further fanning the virus and watching workers die from the epidemic, without Trump’s loudly proclaimed but non-existent health care.

Every Senator who voted to acquit the Thief-in-Chief should be thrown out of office as traitors to America. And yes, the House should do it again, tie up this corrupt Administration on charges of:

• Lying to the American people about the seriousness of the virus
• Incompetence in stopping the pandemic while it was still manageable
• Incompetence in leaving the states to deal with it while parading around like Vladimir Putin showing off his golf game even as people died on ventilators
• Stealing from the people and letting schools, states and cities go bankrupt while profiting his rich friends

Yes, lying, stealing and incompetence are impeachable offenses, were intended to be impeachable offenses and Trump is clearly guilty.

It’s time to expose Trump and his buddies as crooks stealing the people’s money for themselves and their friends.

It’s time for Democrats to play the Tea Party’s game – no holds barred refusal to compromise until this guy is outta there. Two can play the Tea Party game and we need to do it for the people.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on May 26, 2020.

The System Subverts Our Values

This virus has been bringing out how much we depend on each other, rich and poor, black and white, men and women, immigrant and native. We used to talk about brotherhood and I’ve never found a good substitute for the vision of mutual concern and respect that people in my generation meant by brotherhood. Now two people who shouldn’t be named claim that Blue states don’t deserve help though we do a lot for the rest of the country, through our taxes, the business we generate and by repeatedly jumping to the aid of people all over this country when they suffer from natural disasters. What they’re really saying is that they feel no responsibility for those among us who need help, especially if they don’t have the skin color and ancestry that they honor.

I want to expand on how bad that is. When Mayor Sheehan was campaigning for her first term, I asked her about what the City could do for its poor. She pointed out that the City’s tax base was largely from property taxes. That meant that mayors inevitably had to focus on property values. She didn’t use the term but the implication was that Albany had to gentrify regardless of need and regardless of our values as human beings. Property taxes fund the schools and just about everything else the city does. So mayors have to function like developers.

It goes further. Suburbia contributes to the problems. Separately incorporated suburbs have no legal responsibility for city services. People there still work in the City, benefit from it, hire its workers, use all of the goods and services that are attracted to the area because of the City population. But they don’t share the legal responsibility.

The way this country has organized its laws is that only the federal government has responsibility for everyone in every part of the country and in communities at every level of the income scale and regardless of where its residents came from. When the federal government caters to the selfish instincts of those who are unwilling to help anyone else or who are only willing to help people who look like them and come from the same parts of the world, disaster is the result. You know the song:

Once I built a railroad, I made it run

Made it race against time

Once I built a railroad, now it’s done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Just about everyone recorded it. But apparently America still has trouble sparing a dime for the people who built it and make it run. We’ve built that into the tax system and still it isn’t good enough for people who don’t want to accept responsibility for fellow Americans. On top of all the advantages they’ve given themselves they still cry about the crumbs that might fall off their tables because they might go to Blue states.

The unnamable man in the White House, the Majority Leader of the Senate and their enablers are doubling down on all the bastions of indecency they’ve already built into American law. But though they don’t understand it – and they don’t understand much – they will be bitten by the snake they’ve let loose because when the virus is free in any of the states, the people they cherish in Red states will end up in the hospital, the morgue and the graveyard. Pandemics don’t stop at political borders. We all suffer when we refuse to take care of each other.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on May 5, 2020.

Trump’s Malfeasance Goes Viral

I read the Times’ description of the Administration’s snafus through my tears because every snafu meant a large number of unnecessary deaths.

Warnings reached America in early January from Trump’s appointees, but he didn’t trust them. Warnings came from people who dedicated their lives to protecting the rest of us, who’d become experts and never gave a fig for what they could earn in private industry, because they were dedicated to protecting us, dedicated to the God’s honest truth, not to anyone’s political fortunes. So Trump labeled them the “deep state” and ignored them too.

Public health works by moving fast to contain and avoid disasters. It took a month for him to stop some travel from China. Then he took a victory lap while the virus spread. People kept trying to alert him, but he waited because it wouldn’t make his economic messaging look good. How many people had to lay down their lives for his political messaging?

National security, medical and public health experts, people in contact with doctors in China and elsewhere, watched the virus explode and kept urging action. But still he dallied, telling everyone this would blow over. God must have decided America needed some humility, so he sent us an idiot for a president.

Delay made everything harder and costlier. Sheltering in place got harder and longer because of how far the virus had been allowed to spread. Many have already died. Many couldn’t shelter in place – doctors, nurses and everyone who makes hospitals function; and others who do critically important jobs, as aides in nursing homes, people stocking grocery shelves, making deliveries or picking up garbage – all take risks daily. The poor are not in position to survive lengthy periods of unemployment. And they’ll be the first to die when his majesty decides we should go back to our places of work and play. He’s eliminated any good choices for the great mass of Americans. Working or staying home, many will die or lose their jobs and starve. Time and delay matter. Late steps don’t erase earlier failures – they leave us chasing an ever bigger problem.

The people most at risk are the very people he doesn’t want to help. Billions for corporate welfare but pennies for the poor. He’s turning on the mass of Americans, including many who thought he’d change things in their favor. Apparently, we’re all socialists now – Trump and Republicans are socialists for the rich, doing everything government can do for them, while Biden, Sanders, Warren and the Democrats are trying to provide for the rest of us, for those who need the help.

After 9/11, I explained to a Republican congressman that his rural constituents also suffered from the attack because friends and family had found jobs in the big city. The congressman’s response to me was “I didn’t think of that.” Pandemics are different. They spread; they don’t stop at state or community lines.

The Constitution doesn’t stop us from electing fools and misanthropes. It will always be up to us. I could say “God help us,” but God, for whatever reason, leaves it to us to help ourselves. This has been hard to write. It may have been hard to hear. But the best thing Trump could do for America is to resign.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast by WAMC Northeast Report, on April 21, 2020.