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USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 17-12-2016
IS THERE ANYTHING TO AN ELECTORAL COLLEGE MUTINY? - Not really!
![[Image: a-700x467.jpg]](http://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/a-700x467.jpg)
Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from (National Maritime Museum / Wikimedia)Democrats and Republicans desperate to stop Donald Trump have embraced various strategies to somehow snag the presidency away from the GOP nominee but all of them have proven to be pipe dreams. The latest and last of these longshot schemes is an improbable Electoral College upset.
Until Tuesday there appeared to be virtually no chance that the "Never Trump" movement would succeed in convincing Republican electors to desert the president-elect. Only one GOP elector, Chris Suprun of Texas, had publicly declared that he would oppose Trump.
That changed a little, however, when Harvard University constitutional law professor Larry Lessig tweeted: "We believe there are now at least 20 GOP electors considering a vote of conscience."
Trump needs 270 votes to be elected when the Electoral College convenes on December 19. On Election Day, Trump won 306 electors. If Lessig's count is correct and 20 of them are ready to abandon their party's nominee, then that would mean that more than half of the electors needed to flip the election have been found. It must be stressed, however, that Lessig provided no evidence to back up his numbers.
Furthermore, just because an elector does not vote for Trump does not mean he or she would vote for Hillary Clinton. That is why the initial plan was that all of Clinton's 232 electors would vote for Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich and that Trump defectors would do the same.
This scenario illustrates why, in addition to convincing so many electors to jump off the Trump bandwagon, the plan is such a longshot. Kasich last week urged electors not to vote for him.
There is also little evidence that all Democrats would be on board with the plan, although two of Colorado's electors had sued to be "unbound" from voting for Clinton. A judge ruled Tuesday that they must vote for the Democratic nominee because she had won the state's popular vote.
That brings up the next major obstacle to this Hail Mary attempt to stop Trump: Delegates in 29 states and the District of Columbia are bound in some form to vote for the person who won the popular vote in that state.
That does not preclude them from voting for somebody else but doing so comes with a potential penalty. In Colorado, for example, "faithless" electors face a fine of $1,000 and jail time of up to one year.
That is why Lessig has set up a group called "Electors Trust" that provides "free and strictly confidential legal support to any Elector who wishes to vote their conscience."
In a last-ditch effort to make a case against Trump, nearly a quarter of Clinton's electors have signed on to an open letter to Director of National Intelligence Jake Clapper asking that electors be given an intelligence briefing.
"The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations," the letter states. Fifty-four Democrats and Suprun, the Republican elector from Texas, have signed. "We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States."
However, even if Trump does not get the required number of votes next week, it would likely only delay things unless all Democrats and faithless GOP electors can agree on another candidate.
If no candidate garners the required 270 votes, the president would be selected by the House of Representatives in a vote in which the delegation from each state gets one vote. With Republicans controlling a majority of state delegations, it seems likely that Trump would ultimately prevail.
Lessig's (unsupported) claim that a sizeable number of GOP electors are willing to dump Trump adds intrigue to the Electoral College vote Monday, but chances are this will be the final pipe dream of this election.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 17-12-2016
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 19-12-2016
Fake News': Homegrown, and Far From New
Posted on Dec 18, 2016
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig
The media landscape in America is dominated by "fake news." It has been for decades. This fake news does not emanate from the Kremlin. It is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry that is skillfully designed and managed by public relations agencies, publicists and communications departments on behalf of individuals, government and corporations to manipulate public opinion. This propaganda industry stages pseudo-events to shape our perception of reality. The public is so awash in these lies, delivered 24 hours a day through electronic devices and print, that viewers and readers can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction.
Donald Trump and the racist-conspiracy theorists, generals and billionaires around him inherited and exploited this condition, just as they have inherited and will exploit the destruction of civil liberties and collapse of democratic institutions. Trump did not create this political, moral and intellectual vacuum. It created him. It created a world where fact is interchangeable with opinion, where celebrities have huge megaphones simply because they are celebrities, where information must be entertaining and where we can all believe what we want to believe regardless of truth. A demagogue like Trump is what you get when you turn culture and the press into burlesque.
Journalists long ago gave up trying to describe an objective world or give a voice to ordinary men and women. They became conditioned to cater to corporate demands. News personalities, who often make millions of dollars a year, became courtiers. They peddle gossip. They promote consumerism and imperialism. They chatter endlessly about polls, strategies, presentation and tactics or play guessing games about upcoming presidential appointments. They fill news holes with trivial, emotionally driven stories that make us feel good about ourselves. They are incapable of genuine reporting. They rely on professional propagandists to frame all discussion and debate.
There are established journalists who have spent their entire careers repackaging press releases or attending official briefings or press conferencesI knew several when I was with The New York Times. They work as stenographers to the powerful. Many such reporters are highly esteemed in the profession.
The corporations that own media outlets, unlike the old newspaper empires, view news as simply another revenue stream. Revenue streams compete inside a corporation. When the news division does not make what is seen as enough profit, the ax comes down. Content is irrelevant. The courtiers in the press, beholden to their corporate overlords, cling ferociously to their privileged and well-compensated perches. Because they slavishly serve the interests of corporate power, they are hated by America's workers, whom they have rendered invisible. They deserve the hate they get.
Most of the sections of a newspaper"life style," travel, real estate and fashion, among othersare designed to appeal to the "1 percent." They are bait for advertising. Only about 15 percent of any newspaper is devoted to news. If you were to remove from that 15 percent the content provided by the public relations industry inside and outside government, news falls to single digits. For broadcast and cable news, the figure for real, independently reported news would hover close to zero.
The object of fake news is to shape public opinion by creating fictional personalities and emotional responses that overwhelm reality. Hillary Clinton, contrary to how she often was portrayed during the recent presidential campaign, never fought on behalf of women and childrenshe was an advocate for the destruction of a welfare system in which 70 percent of the recipients were children. She is a tool of the big banks, Wall Street and the war industry. Pseudo-events were created to maintain the fiction of her concern for women and children, her compassion and her connections to ordinary people. Trump never has been a great businessman. He has a long history of bankruptcies and shady business practices. But he played the fictional role of a titan of finance on his reality television show, "The Apprentice."
"The pseudo-events which flood our consciousness are neither true nor false in the old familiar senses," Daniel Boorstin writes in his book "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America." "The very same advances which have made them possible have also made the imageshowever planned, contrived, or distortedmore vivid, more attractive, more impressive, and more persuasive than reality itself."
Reality is consciously deformed to easily digestible sound bites and narratives. Those involved in public relations, political campaigns and government stay relentlessly on message. They do not deviate from the simple sound bite or cliché they are instructed to repeat. It is a species of continuous baby talk. And it dominates the news and talk shows on the airwaves.
"The refinements of reason and shading of emotion cannot reach a considerable public," Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations, noted cynically.
The rapid-fire, abbreviated format of television precludes complexities and nuance. Television is about good and evil, black and white, hero and villain. It makes us confuse induced emotions with knowledge. It reinforces the mythic narrative of American virtue and goodness. It pays homage through carefully selected "experts" and "specialists" to the power elites and the reigning ideology. It shuts out, discredits or ridicules all who dissent.
Is the Democratic Party establishment so clueless it believes it lost the presidential election because of the leaked John Podesta emails and FBI Director James Comey's decision shortly before the vote to send a letter to Congress related to Clinton's private email server? Can't the Democratic leadership see that the root cause of the defeat was the abandonment of workers as the party promoted corporate interests? Doesn't it understand that although its lies and propaganda worked for three decades, the party eventually lost credibility among those it had betrayed?
The Democratic establishment's outrage over the email leak to the website WikiLeaks ignores the fact that such disclosure of damaging information is a tactic routinely used by the U.S. government and other governments, including Russia's, to discredit individuals and entities. It is a staple of press coverage. No one, even within the Democratic Party, has made a convincing case that the Podesta emails were fabricated. These emails are real. They cannot be labeled fake news.
As a foreign correspondent, I was routinely given leaked, sometimes classified, information by various groups or governments seeking to damage certain targets. The national intelligence agency of Israel, the Mossad, told me about a small airport owned by the Iranian government outside of Hamburg, Germany. I went to the airport and wrote an investigative piecethat found that, as the Israelis had correctly informed me, Iran was using it to break down nuclear equipment, ship it to Poland, reassemble it and send it on transport planes to Iran. The airport was shut down after my exposé.
In another instance, the U.S. government gave me documents showing that an important member of the Cypriot parliament and his law firm were laundering money for the Russian mafia. My story crippled the law firm's legitimate business and prompted the politician to sue The New York Times and me. Times lawyers chose not to challenge the suit in a Cypriot court, saying they could not get a fair trial there. They told me that, to avoid arrest, I should not visit Cyprus again.
I could fill several columns with examples like these.
Governments do not leak because they care about democracy or a free press; they leak because it is in their interest to bring down someone or something. In most cases, because the reporter verifies the leaked information, the news is not fake. It is when the reporter does not verify the informationas was the case when The New York Times uncritically reported the Bush administration's false charge that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraqthat he or she becomes part of the vast fake news industry.
Fake news is now being used in an attempt to paint independent news sites, including Truthdig, and independent journalists as witting or unwitting agents of Russia. Elites of the Republican and Democratic parties are using fake news in an attempt to paint Trump as a stooge of the Kremlin and invalidate the election. No persuasive evidence for such accusations has been made public. But the fake news has become the battering ram in the latest round of Red baiting.
In a Dec. 7 letter to Truthdig, a lawyer for The Washington Post, which printed an article Nov. 24 about allegations that Truthdig and some 200 other websites had been tools of Russian propaganda, said that the article's author, Craig Timberg, knows the identity of the anonymous accusers at PropOrNot, a group that made the charges. [Editor's note: The lawyer wrote, in part, concerning the Nov. 24 story and PropOrNot, "The description in the Article was based on substantial reporting by Mr. Timberg, including numerous interviews, background checks of specific individuals involved in the group (whose identities were known to Timberg, contrary to your speculation). …"]
The Post says it has to protect PropOrNot's anonymity. It passed along a false accusation without evidence. The victims in this case cannot respond adequately because the accusers are anonymous. Those who are smeared are told, in effect, that they should appeal to PropOrNot to get their names removed from the group's "blacklist." The circular reasoning gives credibility to anonymous groups that draw up blacklists and fake news as well as to the lies they disseminate.
The 20th century's cultural and social transformation, E.P. Thompson wrote in his essay "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism," has turned out to be much more than the embrace of an economic system or the celebration of patriotism. It is, he pointed out, part of a revolutionary reinterpretation of reality. It marks the ascendancy of mass culture and the destruction of genuine culture and genuine intellectual life.
Richard Sennett, in his book "The Fall of the Public Man," identified the rise of mass culture as one of the prime forces behind what he termed a new "collective personality … generated by a common fantasy." And the century's great propagandists would not only agree but would add that those who can manipulate and shape those fantasies determine the directions taken by the "collective personality."
This huge internal pressure, hidden from public view, makes the production of good journalism and good scholarship very, very difficult. Those reporters and academics who care about the truth and don't back down are subjected to subtle and at times overt coercion and often are purged from institutions.
Images, which are how most people now ingest information, are especially prone to being made into fake news. Language, as the cultural critic Neil Postman wrote, "makes sense only when it is presented as a sequence of propositions. Meaning is distorted when a word or sentence is, as we say, taken out of context; when a reader or a listener is deprived of what was said before and after." Images do not have a context. They are "visible in a different way." Images, especially when they are delivered in long, rapid-fire segments, dismember and distort reality. The condition "recreates the world in a series of idiosyncratic events."
Michael Herr, who covered the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, observed that the images of the war presented in photographs and on television, unlike the printed word, obscured the brutality of the conflict. "Television and news were always said to have ended the war," Herr said. "I thought the opposite. These images were always seen in another contextsandwiched in between commercials, so that they became a blancmange in the public mind. I think if anything, the blancmange coverage prolonged the war."
A populace divorced from print and bombarded by discordant and random images is robbed of the vocabulary as well as the historical and cultural context to articulate reality. Context is obliterated. Illusion is truth. A whirlwind of emotionally driven cant feeds our historical amnesia.
The internet has accelerated this process. It, along with cable news shows, has divided the country into antagonistic clans. Members of a clan watch the same images and listen to the same narratives, creating a collective "reality." Fake news abounds in these virtual slums. Dialogue is shut down. Hatred of opposing clans fosters a herd mentality. Those who express empathy for "the enemy" are denounced by their fellow travelers for their supposed impurity. This is as true on the left as it is on the right. These clans and herds, fed a steady diet of emotionally driven fake news, gave rise to Trump.
Trump is adept at communicating through image, sound bites and spectacle. Fake news, which already dominates print and television reporting, will define the media under his administration. Those who call out the mendacity of fake news will be vilified and banished. The corporate state created this monstrous propaganda machine and bequeathed it to Trump. He will use it.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - David Guyatt - 19-12-2016
An excellent article from Hedges.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 19-12-2016
The Internet Archive has announced that it is moving its servers to Canada because of fear that a Trumpf Administration would outlaw and confiscate the U.S. Government documents it contains. Other similar sites [Government's Attic] are considering the same. People, entities, and documents are fleeing a sinking ship of state!.....
If that was not enough, the Obama Administration, the EPA, other agencies having done climate and/or Environmental research work {NOAA and others}, as well as many Private/Academic Environmental Research groups/scientists having done work on government contracts [and not] are backing-up their research data and reports/records etc., and MOVING THE BACKUPS OUT OF THE USA out of FEAR that Trumpf will destroy or disappear them!
We are really in uncharted territory now!:
:::captain::
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Magda Hassan - 20-12-2016
Peter Lemkin Wrote:The Internet Archive has announced that it is moving its servers to Canada because of fear that a Trumpf Administration would outlaw and confiscate the U.S. Government documents it contains. Other similar sites [Government's Attic] are considering the same. People, entities, and documents are fleeing a sinking ship of state!.....Definitely a wise move.
If that was not enough, the Obama Administration, the EPA, other agencies having done climate and/or Environmental research work {NOAA and others}, as well as many Private/Academic Environmental Research groups/scientists having done work on government contracts [and not] are backing-up their research data and reports/records etc., and MOVING THE BACKUPS OUT OF THE USA out of FEAR that Trumpf will destroy or disappear them!
We are really in uncharted territory now!:
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 20-12-2016
Peter Lemkin Wrote:IS THERE ANYTHING TO AN ELECTORAL COLLEGE MUTINY? - Not really!
Democrats and Republicans desperate to stop Donald Trump have embraced various strategies to somehow snag the presidency away from the GOP nominee but all of them have proven to be pipe dreams. The latest and last of these longshot schemes is an improbable Electoral College upset.
Until Tuesday there appeared to be virtually no chance that the "Never Trump" movement would succeed in convincing Republican electors to desert the president-elect. Only one GOP elector, Chris Suprun of Texas, had publicly declared that he would oppose Trump.
That changed a little, however, when Harvard University constitutional law professor Larry Lessig tweeted: "We believe there are now at least 20 GOP electors considering a vote of conscience."
Trump needs 270 votes to be elected when the Electoral College convenes on December 19. On Election Day, Trump won 306 electors. If Lessig's count is correct and 20 of them are ready to abandon their party's nominee, then that would mean that more than half of the electors needed to flip the election have been found. It must be stressed, however, that Lessig provided no evidence to back up his numbers.
Furthermore, just because an elector does not vote for Trump does not mean he or she would vote for Hillary Clinton. That is why the initial plan was that all of Clinton's 232 electors would vote for Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich and that Trump defectors would do the same.
This scenario illustrates why, in addition to convincing so many electors to jump off the Trump bandwagon, the plan is such a longshot. Kasich last weekurged electors not to vote for him.
There is also little evidence that all Democrats would be on board with the plan, although two of Colorado's electors had sued to be "unbound" from voting for Clinton.A judge ruled Tuesday that they must vote for the Democratic nominee because she had won the state's popular vote.
That brings up the next major obstacle to this Hail Mary attempt to stop Trump:Delegates in 29 states and the District of Columbia are bound in some form to vote for the person who won the popular vote in that state.
That does not preclude them from voting for somebody else but doing so comes with a potential penalty. In Colorado, for example, "faithless" electors face a fine of $1,000 and jail time of up to one year.
That is why Lessig has set up a group called "Electors Trust" that provides "free and strictly confidential legal support to any Elector who wishes to vote their conscience."
In a last-ditch effort to make a case against Trump, nearly a quarter of Clinton's electors have signed on to an open letter to Director of National Intelligence Jake Clapper asking that electors be given an intelligence briefing.
"The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations," the letter states.Fifty-four Democrats and Suprun, the Republican elector from Texas, have signed. "We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States."
However, even if Trump does not get the required number of votes next week, it would likely only delay things unless all Democrats and faithless GOP electors can agree on another candidate.
If no candidate garners the required 270 votes, the president would be selected by the House of Representatives in a vote in which the delegation from each state gets one vote. With Republicans controlling a majority of state delegations, it seems likely that Trump would ultimately prevail.
Lessig's (unsupported) claim that a sizeable number of GOP electors are willing to dump Trump adds intrigue to the Electoral College vote Monday, but chances are this will be the final pipe dream of this election.
Despite a lot of effort on the part of some Electors, it appears Trumpf is Trumpfiant...
Electoral college vote
DEC. 19, 2016, 2:35 P.M.REPORTING FROM OLYMPIA, WASH.
Three Washington state Democratic electors vote for Gen. Colin Powell, one for Faith Spotted Eagle
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Despite a statute binding the 12 members of the electoral college to vote for the winner of the state's 2016 presidential election popular vote, four Washington electors made history and risked a $1,000 fine by voting for someone else Monday. But it wasn't Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton, supported by 57% of the state's voters, wound up with eight of the 12 electoral votes at a session held in the State Capitol building here.
Gen. Colin Powell received three votes. And Faith Spotted Eagle, an elder of the Yankton Sioux, received one.
READ MORE
Electoral college vote
DEC. 19, 2016, 2:33 P.M.REPORTING FROM DENVER
Colorado elector says he was 'oppressed' by state law into voting for Clinton
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In Denver, all nine electors voted for Hillary Clinton, after one was replaced for casting his ballot for Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich instead.
A boisterous crowd packed the state Capitol and booed when elector Michael Baca was dismissed and another sworn in to take his place.
"Vote your conscience!" someone cried.
The new elector voted for Clinton.
Hecklers screamed "Resign! Resign!" at Secretary of State Wayne Williams after he shooed Baca's lawyer off the podium.
Suspense had been building for weeks over how the electors would vote. Two courts blocked their attempts to vote for someone other than Clinton. State law here says electors must support the candidate who won the popular vote.
On Sunday night they went to court again, this time asking a judge to reject a new oath drawn up by the secretary of state requiring electors to pledge to support the winner of the popular vote. Their motion was denied.
As they waited, the crowd sang "This Land is Your Land" and "America the Beautiful."
But once the electors filed in, it was over quickly.
Elector Robert Nemanich said he was "oppressed" by state law into voting for Clinton and would go to the U.S. Supreme Court. He did not elaborate.
Lance Armstrong, 68, stood outside with an American flag.
"I'm glad some of the electors made a point today," he said. "Any point is better than none."
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 20-12-2016
Magda Hassan Wrote:Peter Lemkin Wrote:The Internet Archive has announced that it is moving its servers to Canada because of fear that a Trumpf Administration would outlaw and confiscate the U.S. Government documents it contains. Other similar sites [Government's Attic] are considering the same. People, entities, and documents are fleeing a sinking ship of state!.....Definitely a wise move.
If that was not enough, the Obama Administration, the EPA, other agencies having done climate and/or Environmental research work {NOAA and others}, as well as many Private/Academic Environmental Research groups/scientists having done work on government contracts [and not] are backing-up their research data and reports/records etc., and MOVING THE BACKUPS OUT OF THE USA out of FEAR that Trumpf will destroy or disappear them!
We are really in uncharted territory now!:
Yes, but to say this is unprecedented is not stating it in strong enough terms! Many [over half] in America are just plain in deep fear of a Trumpf Administration....with good reason, I believe.
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 21-12-2016
Goldman Sachs' Stock, Influence in Trump Administration, Both on the Rise
Published on December 20, 2016 by Sam SacksPresident-elect Donald Trump has yet to provide tangible assurances that he won't use the presidency to boost his personal profits. Meanwhile, one major American bank, which doesn't' have to provide such assurances, is already cashing in "big league" on Trump's win last monthan event followed by high-profile government appointments for executives of the firm.
Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs has seen its stock prices ascend by 33 percent since Election Day, and is responsible for the lion's share of the gains on the Dow Jones Industrial Average over that time.
As The Hill noted on Tuesday, Goldman alone accounted for nearly a quarter of the 1,700 points the Dow has climbed since Trump's election. The Dow is an index of stock prices from 30 major American companies.
Markets have reacted favorably to the ascendance of a billionaire real estate mogul and businessman to the White House. And Trump's appointments of notable bankers, businessmen, and billionaires lent credence to the hopeful thinking coming from corporate Americaparticularly at Goldman.
Three former members of the investment bank have been tapped to join the Trump administration. Goldman's president and chief operating officer Gary Cohn was picked to lead the incoming president's National Economic Council.
Steve Mnuchin, who worked at Goldman for almost two decades, was nominated to be Treasury Secretary. Trump's closest White House adviser, meanwhile, will be Steve Bannonanother Goldman alumnus.
Goldman's rising profitability could provide political fodder to Democrats that have, so far, been unable to tie the President-elect to the extremely unpopular banking class.
According to a June survey by Edison Research, and released on the National Public Radio show Marketplace, a majority of Americans think Wall Street is harmful. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said the big banks do more to hurt the lives of citizens than help. Those negative views held across party affiliations with 61 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of Republicans accusing Wall Street of doing more harm than good.
A separate Gallup poll in June found that only 27 percent of Americans have confidence in banks.
Donald Trump made use of this distrust throughout the Presidential campaignduring both the primary and the general. Amid the Republican contest, for example, he made much of the ties of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to Goldmanvia Cruz's wife, Heidi, and a senatorial campaign loan from the bank that Cruz forgot to disclose.
"Was there another loan that Ted Cruz FORGOT to file," Trump tweeted in January. "Goldman Sachs owns him, he will do anything they demand."
And after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed Hillary Clinton, Trump tweeted that it was "like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs."
USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - Peter Lemkin - 21-12-2016
Talk of Impeaching Trump May Be Premature, but Its Time Will Come
Posted on Dec 6, 2016
By Bill Blum
![[Image: trumpfly_590.jpg]](http://www.truthdig.com/images/reportuploads/trumpfly_590.jpg)
Evan Vucci / AP
Donald Trump has yet to be inaugurated, but talk of impeachment has been in the air since the day after the election. It's been promoted by an array of influential commentators, both progressive and conservativefrom filmmaker Michael Moore on the left to New York Times columnist David Brooks on the right.Even American University political historian Allan Lichtman, who defied the polls and confidently predicted that Trump would triumph on Nov. 8, has gotten in on the act, forecasting that Trump won't finish his first term in the Oval Office.
As much as I'd like to agree with Moore, Brooks and Lichtmanthe names, after all, have the collective ring of an authoritative blue-chip law firmI have to demur. Talk of impeachment is premature, born of the proverbial first stage of griefdenialover the improbable election of a narcissistic, ill-prepared neofascist as our 45th head of state.
I'm skeptical about a quick Trump exit, not because he hasn't committed or won't soon commit acts that could meet the constitutional standard of "high crimes and misdemeanors" as grounds for impeachment. To the contrary, I think a convincing list of such infractions could be drafted in an hour. (More on that below.)
I'm skeptical because the impeachment process isn't a legal proceeding in the ordinary sense. It's not something that injured partiessay, for example, victims of police abusecan initiate with the filing of a well-reasoned complaint lodged at the downtown courthouse. Rather, it's a hybrid of law and politics that operates only at the highest levels of government pursuant to a unique set of procedures.
In Trump's case, the political conditions for impeachment just aren't present, and aren't likely to be any time soon. The Republican Party establishment, its public pre-election misgivings and hand-wringing to the contrary, has fallen in love with Trump. The GOP leadership will overlook any transgressions to keep him in office for one simple reasonhe's their ticket to power, and power is all that matters.
Of course, Republican leaders won't openly admit to such cravenness. Instead, you're hearing people like House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California admonishing Democrats to "chill" about the conflict of interests between Trump's private business holdings and his responsibilities as the incoming president. And we're also told, by serious analysts such as Forbes magazine contributor Robert Anello, that it's "unclear" whether presidents can be impeached for conduct that occurred before they took office.
I explored exactly that question in this column back in February, ironically, addressing Republican threats to impeach Hillary Clinton, then the odds-on favorite to win the presidency, over her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
One of my purposes in writing the earlier columnwhich now has direct relevance to Trumpwas to respond to the claim put forward by Clinton backers, such as reporter Philip Bump of The Washington Post's The Fix blog, that federal officials can't be impeached for past acts.
Bump expressed his views in a widely cited October 2015 post, in which he invoked the House's 1873 impeachment investigation of Vice President Schuyler Colfax, who was accused of taking kickbacks in cash and discounted stock from the Union Pacific Railroad's Crédit Mobilier subsidiary in exchange for votes while serving in the House during the 1860s. As Bump noted, the House Judiciary Committee dropped its impeachment probe mainly because Colfax's improprieties occurred before his ascendancy to the executive branch.
The Colfax case, however, is but one episode in the tangled and often contradictory history of impeachment in America. It by no means stands as a binding precedent.
Historically, impeachment proceedings have not been limited to offenses committed after accused officials have been elected or appointed to their current offices. To cite just two examples, both of which are discussed in the 2015 study "Impeachment and Removal," prepared by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS):
- In 1912, Judge Robert Archbald was impeached and convicted while serving on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals and the short-lived United States Commerce Court (which was disbanded in 1913) in part because he had accepted gifts from litigants and lawyers and committed other corrupt practices while working previously as a federal district court judge.
- More recently and even more on point, federal Judge G. Thomas Porteous was convicted in 2010 by a Senate vote of 96-0 on four articles of impeachment, two of which concerned financial corruption that began while he was a state court judge in Louisiana in the 1980s, and a third that alleged he had made false statements to the Senate and the FBI in connection with his appointment to the federal bench.
Thus, when contemplating a potential Trump impeachment, there would be no legal bar to removing the new president based on his vast canvas of pre-existing malfeasance. Setting politics aside for the moment, Trump would be fair game from day one at the White House.
As the CRS study explains, "The Constitution gives Congress the authority to impeach and remove the President, Vice President, and other federal civil officers' upon a determination that such officers have engaged in treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
To quote the study further: "First, a simple majority of the House impeachesor formally approves allegations of wrongdoing amounting to an impeachable offense, known as articles of impeachment. The articles of impeachment are then forwarded to the Senate where the second proceeding takes place: an impeachment trial. If the Senate, by vote of a two-thirds majority, convicts the official of the alleged offenses, the result is removalfrom office. …"
Scores of federal officials have been the subject of impeachment deliberations since the nation's founding, and the House has referred 19 individuals to the Senate for impeachment trials15 federal judges (including Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in 1805), one senator, one Cabinet member and two presidentsAndrew Johnson and Clinton. The Senate has conducted 16 full impeachment trials (the other three referrals were dropped), convicting eight lower-court judges. All the restChase, Johnson and Clinton among themwere acquitted.
Because of the plenary powers given to Congress, the impeachment process is largely insulated from judicial review. Past impeachment investigations aren't binding on subsequent sessions of Congress in the way that past judicial rulings and precedents are binding on judges. In the words of Gerald Ford, who as House minority leader spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to remove Supreme Court Justice William Douglas in 1970, "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."
Although the CRS study doesn't contain Ford's quip about Justice Douglas, it nonetheless supports Ford's view that over the years the phrase has been given a broad and robust reading, suggesting that it pertains to conduct that results in serious violations of the "public trust." Such conduct usually is criminal in nature, but need not be.
So what might become Trump's impeachable offenses? Here are three significant categories, and they are by no means exhaustive:
Pending Civil Litigation: Trump was elected to serve as commander in chief, not litigator in chief. Yet even with the $25 million he paid to settle the three Trump University civil fraud and racketeering lawsuits filed in California and New York, he will take office with an estimated 75 additional legal actions pending against him.
These include a $4 million libel claim brought by a former associate in New York; a class-action consumer protection case in Chicago related to his campaign's distribution of unsolicited cellphone text messages; an action brought by two celebrity chefs who allege nonpayment of fees related to their work at the newly opened Trump hotel in Washington, D.C.; a sexual harassment suit filed by a former employee of Trump's golf course in Jupiter, Fla; and investigations opened by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into the Trump Foundation's practices of seeking donations without proper approval. In addition, Trump has threatened to take the offensive and sue a dozen women who accused him during the campaign of making unwanted sexual advances in the past, and he's sworn to take The New York Times to court for running stories about their claims.
As the Supreme Court held in Paula Jones' lawsuit against Clinton, sitting presidents are not immune from civil litigation arising out of events that transpired before they took office. The prospect of having the "leader of the free world" attend to dozens of private legal matters, sitting for lengthy and embarrassing depositions and answering interrogatories, should be enough to raise questions about Trump's fitness for office. The prospect of a jury or judge rendering a verdict against him in any one of the pending cases only compounds the problem.
Conflicts of Interest and the Emoluments Clause: Although the president and vice president are exempt from some conflict of interest laws that apply to other executive branch officials, they are subject to the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, as well as Article I, section 9, of the Constitution, often referred to as the Emoluments Clause.
The ethics act requires annual disclosures of financial assets, and is aimed at ensuring federal officials maintain undivided loyalty to the public interest. The Emoluments Clause provides that "no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without the Consent of Congress, accept of [sic] any present, emolument, Office or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." In other words, the clause prohibits federal officials from receiving gifts or other financial benefits from foreign governments.
According to the financial disclosure form Trump filed in May with the Federal Election Commission, he has an ownership share in more than 500 closely held corporations. These include hotel, golf and real estate development projects across the United States, as well as resort and hotel properties in Dubai, Qatar, China, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Egypt, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Israel, the Philippines, South Africa and Turkey.
Trump is also deeply in hock, to the tune of nearly $1 billion, to various foreign banks, according to Mother Jones and The New York Times.
Given Trump's international business network, there are genuine concerns under the Emoluments Clause that he may tailor American foreign policy to bolster his own profit margins, or that foreign governments might offer to approve Trump ventures, thereby enriching Trump and his family, in exchange for increased U.S. aid or other benefits.
Similar concerns abound regarding the president-elect's domestic holdings. For example, his Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., which is housed in the Old Post Office Pavilion and leased from the General Services Administration (GSA), has come under close scrutiny because the contract on the property contains a provision barring elected federal officials (of whom Trump tops the list) from benefiting from the lease. Dozens of foreign diplomats have already booked rooms at the hotel, prompting some government ethics specialists to recommendvoiding the GSA contract altogether.
The only sure way for Trump to resolve the conflict issues consistent with his responsibilities as president would be to place his entire financial empire into a qualified blind trust administered by an independent third party. Yet despite his recent promise to come up with an acceptable plan to divorce himself from his businesses, the sole proposal he's floated to date involves turning the Trump brand over to his children.
Make no mistake: The conflict questions are huge. Failure to resolve them quickly and decisively threatens to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis, and turn the federal treasury into one big kleptocracy.
Assaults on Constitutional Rights: The highest responsibility of any president is to uphold the Constitution. Since the outset of his campaign, however, Trump has all but declared war on the seminal text.
He began by targeting Mexican immigrants, threatening to construct a wall along our southern border, institute mass deportations of the undocumented, end birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment, ban the immigration of Muslims, and create a database of Muslims already living here. Shortly afterward, he pledged to work, if elected, to "open up" the nation's libel laws to make it easier for public figures to sue the media for unfavorable news coverage. He also vowed to revive the most extreme forms of counterterrorist interrogations, including waterboarding, and said he would appoint Supreme Court justices committed to overturningRoe v. Wade.
More recently, he typed out a late-night tweet, calling for jail time or loss of citizenship for those caught burning the American flag. He has also sparked anxiety among privacy advocates that once in office, he will take measures to expand the surveillance powersof the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency.
In a press release issued Nov. 9, the American Civil Liberties Union described Trump's verbal assaults on the Constitution as "not simply un-American and wrong-headed," [but also as] "unlawful and unconstitutional. They violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments."
ACLU executive director Anthony Romero declared in the release that if Trump "endeavored to make his campaign promises a reality," he would face court challenges without end.
***Normally, an incoming president, especially one with no prior government experience, might be expected to heed the ACLU's warnings. But these are not normal times. Trump and the GOP have contempt for constitutional values and the prohibitions against self-dealing. That being so, even if some House Democrat with half a backbone were to introduce an impeachment resolution, the effort likely would go nowhere, at least in the short run.
Still, the effort would be worth it. As the Trump era unfolds and the mad tea party he's assembled to staff his Cabinet grabs the reins of policy, his administration is certain to unleash a groundswell of opposition and resistance.
In the meantime, calls for Trump's impeachment can serve as a rallying cry for the resistance and, as part of a larger struggle for democracy, an umbrella to bring together disparate groups, institutions and organizations his presidency will harm. Unless I'm very much mistaken, the long process is already underway.
ACLU STATEMENT ON DONALD TRUMP'S ELECTION
November 9, 2016
NEW YORK In response to Donald Trump's election as president of the United States, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, had the following statement:
"For nearly 100 years, the American Civil Liberties Union has been the nation's premier defender of freedom and justice for all, no matter who is president. Our role is no different today.
"President-elect Trump, as you assume the nation's highest office, we urge you to reconsider and change course on certain campaign promises you have made. These include your plan to amass a deportation force to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants; ban the entry of Muslims into our country and aggressively surveil them; punish women for accessing abortion; reauthorize waterboarding and other forms of torture; and change our nation's libel laws and restrict freedom of expression.
"These proposals are not simply un-American and wrong-headed, they are unlawful and unconstitutional. They violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. If you do not reverse course and instead endeavor to make these campaign promises a reality, you will have to contend with the full firepower of the ACLU at every step. Our staff of litigators and activists in every state, thousands of volunteers, and millions of card-carrying supporters are ready to fight against any encroachment on our cherished freedoms and rights.
"One thing is certain: we will be eternally vigilant every single day of your presidency and when you leave the Oval Office, we will do the same with your successor.
The ACLU released its analysis of candidate Trump's policy proposals in July, which can be found at: https://www.aclu.org/feature/donald-trump-one-man-constitutional-crisis