The unravelling of Trump's America
ROGER FITCH ESQ • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2017
Tax cuts ... Russia's election in America ... Unqualified judicial appointments ... Contempt at Guantánamo ... Degenerate art ... Our Man in Washington reports
BANKING on Americans' well-known aversion to paying taxes, congressional Republicans are pushing their misleadingly-named Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a Bill full of party fetishes, including ending the Obamacare mandate and recognising fetal tissue as a human being, even punishing California and graduate students, but mainly having as its purpose, comforting the rich while afflicting everyone else.
To this end, the House Republicans defended their Bill as a tax cut for the middle class, by redefining low-and-middle income as up to $450,000 a year.
This Bill passed the House, but it may face a far different fate in the Senate.
Some members of congress would benefit from the repeal of the estate tax, which already generously excludes the first $10.98 million for married decedents.
Extensive benefits are envisioned for Donald J Trump, and not just the estate and inheritance taxes saved.
* * *
Mueller: in pursuit
Americans are still mulling how a mendacious, sub-literate cipher became their president.
Vote suppression was crucial, and there's emerging evidence that Russian-based Facebook advertising in working class states helped round up support by those who did manage to vote. New reports reveal massive funds transfers to Russian embassies during the election, purportedly for media buys, while WikiLeaks suspiciously plied the Jared Kushner-owned New York Observer with "Clinton dirt".
Nevertheless, former FBI director James Comey remains the chief reason a deadbeat is president, and Trump's team concedes as much.
In her new book about the 2016 election, "What Happened", Hillary Clinton says she now regrets not striking back at Comey's meddling.
Various proposals have been put forward meanwhile for dislodging Trump through such legal stratagems as the unindicted co-conspirator, bringing pardon-proof state charges, or a grand jury presentment.
Internal Revenue law seems like another good bet, and in a possible demarcation of a crime scene, the IRS is building a special safe at the tax agency's headquarters to hold Mr Trump's income tax returns.
It won't stop Special Counsel Robert Mueller perusing them.
Beyond the president, the gormless Donald Trump Jnr is said to be a leading target for indictment. More here and here.
The Justice Department reportedly has ten lawyers and paralegals working on lawsuits related to the president's businesses; unlike Trump's private sector lawyers, they can count on being paid.
Less helpfully, the DoJ says Trump's tweets - presently being considered by the Special Counsel as possible evidence of witness-tampering - are official presidential statements, and interestingly, the International Criminal Court just issued its first arrest warrant gleaned from social media.
Mr Trump may yet be "deposed": aggrieved female plaintiffs are suing him for defamatory responses to their accusations of sexual assault and harassment. He'll be encouraged by a leaked DOJ memorandum: it recommends reinstating the discredited practice of grilling rape victims about their sexual history.
Had these women not been manhandled before?
* * *
Clovis: caught up in Russian scandals
Even without tax cuts, soon-to-be-deregulated miners, manufacturers, financial institutions and big polluters dream of a return to some Pre-Roosevelt paradise, and Trump is doing his best to oblige them.
At the Interior Department, needy coal entrepreneurs are being assisted as the National Academy of Sciences halts its profit-endangering coal-mining health studies, while at the Labor Department, the new chief of the Mine Health and Safety Administration is the former CEO of a coal company with a poor safety record.
One of Trump's worst anti-science nominees, Sam Clovis, has withdrawn, after being caught up in the Russian scandals. Clovis, a non-scientist with a public administration degree, had been appointed to the Agriculture Department's top science position, causing outrage.
At the "dysfunctional" Environmental Protection Agency, administrator Scott Pruitt found an ingenious way to replace the respected academics advising his agency with more reliable industry "scientists", and to make matters worse, he did so quoting the bible.
Banking regulation is meanwhile going backward in a gratifying manner.
Finally, after a thorough search - or perhaps a Big Pharma auction - Mr Trump found a new Health and Human Services secretary who is arguably worse than his predecessor, the disgraced (Dr) Tom Price.
* * *
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recently attacked the federal courts (more here), even as the Trump administration rapidly reshapes the judiciary in Trump's image through nominees so mediocre - or ideological - that the American Bar Association rates them "not qualified".
More on Trump's extremist judges here, including Thomas Farr, for whom the Republicans kept a seat open 12 years, and some with hardly any experience at all, e.g. the 36-year-old Brett Talley.
* * *
General Baker: released from confinement at Camp Justice
At Guantánamo, the Pentagon has completed the bizarre trial of Ahmed al-Darbi. He was convicted by guilty plea - the only sure way - in a military court, for what is essentially civilian piracy.
The acts giving rise to the prosecution had nothing to do with war, or even the US, and they occurred in international waters far from the US. No American ships or citizens were involved.
Mr Darbi will now be a witness against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in yet another, equally impossible, non-war case (so recognised since it began).
Al-Nashiri's case was recently derailed by the resignation - for ethical reasons - of the defence team, just as the supreme court evaded Nashiri's very sound appeal.
At that point, the Nashiri commission experiment blew up, with the Nashiri judge sensationally holding Chief Defence Counsel John Baker - a Brigadier General and the second ranking lawyer in the Marine Corps - in contempt, sentencing him to 21 days and a fine.
Next, the general filed his own habeas action, but before DC judge Royce Lamberth could rule, the Pentagon's "Convening Authority" suspended the contempt order pending appeal, and Gen. Baker was released from confinement in his modest trailer behind "Camp Justice".
* * *
Entartete Kunst
The Bush administration showed its affection for Third Reich national security Kultur by adopting the unsettling Gestapo expression, Verschärfte Vernehmung: "Enhanced Interrogation".
While the Wehrmacht might have scrupled at the Plünderung of a prisoner, Obama's armed forces had no problem pillaging the life savings of Djamel Ameziane, a forcibly-repatriatedGuantanamero: he couldn't be trusted to use his funds responsibly.
Under Trump, the Pentagon has extended this principle to confiscate art by Guantánamo inmates, on the same theory: that money - e.g. proceeds from a New York exhibit of their art - could be put to nefarious purposes; tellingly, Ameziane is among the artists in the show.
Clearly, it's Entartete Kunst.
ROGER FITCH ESQ • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2017
Tax cuts ... Russia's election in America ... Unqualified judicial appointments ... Contempt at Guantánamo ... Degenerate art ... Our Man in Washington reports
BANKING on Americans' well-known aversion to paying taxes, congressional Republicans are pushing their misleadingly-named Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a Bill full of party fetishes, including ending the Obamacare mandate and recognising fetal tissue as a human being, even punishing California and graduate students, but mainly having as its purpose, comforting the rich while afflicting everyone else.
To this end, the House Republicans defended their Bill as a tax cut for the middle class, by redefining low-and-middle income as up to $450,000 a year.
This Bill passed the House, but it may face a far different fate in the Senate.
Some members of congress would benefit from the repeal of the estate tax, which already generously excludes the first $10.98 million for married decedents.
Extensive benefits are envisioned for Donald J Trump, and not just the estate and inheritance taxes saved.
* * *
Mueller: in pursuit
Americans are still mulling how a mendacious, sub-literate cipher became their president.
Vote suppression was crucial, and there's emerging evidence that Russian-based Facebook advertising in working class states helped round up support by those who did manage to vote. New reports reveal massive funds transfers to Russian embassies during the election, purportedly for media buys, while WikiLeaks suspiciously plied the Jared Kushner-owned New York Observer with "Clinton dirt".
Nevertheless, former FBI director James Comey remains the chief reason a deadbeat is president, and Trump's team concedes as much.
In her new book about the 2016 election, "What Happened", Hillary Clinton says she now regrets not striking back at Comey's meddling.
Various proposals have been put forward meanwhile for dislodging Trump through such legal stratagems as the unindicted co-conspirator, bringing pardon-proof state charges, or a grand jury presentment.
Internal Revenue law seems like another good bet, and in a possible demarcation of a crime scene, the IRS is building a special safe at the tax agency's headquarters to hold Mr Trump's income tax returns.
It won't stop Special Counsel Robert Mueller perusing them.
Beyond the president, the gormless Donald Trump Jnr is said to be a leading target for indictment. More here and here.
The Justice Department reportedly has ten lawyers and paralegals working on lawsuits related to the president's businesses; unlike Trump's private sector lawyers, they can count on being paid.
Less helpfully, the DoJ says Trump's tweets - presently being considered by the Special Counsel as possible evidence of witness-tampering - are official presidential statements, and interestingly, the International Criminal Court just issued its first arrest warrant gleaned from social media.
Mr Trump may yet be "deposed": aggrieved female plaintiffs are suing him for defamatory responses to their accusations of sexual assault and harassment. He'll be encouraged by a leaked DOJ memorandum: it recommends reinstating the discredited practice of grilling rape victims about their sexual history.
Had these women not been manhandled before?
* * *
Clovis: caught up in Russian scandals
Even without tax cuts, soon-to-be-deregulated miners, manufacturers, financial institutions and big polluters dream of a return to some Pre-Roosevelt paradise, and Trump is doing his best to oblige them.
At the Interior Department, needy coal entrepreneurs are being assisted as the National Academy of Sciences halts its profit-endangering coal-mining health studies, while at the Labor Department, the new chief of the Mine Health and Safety Administration is the former CEO of a coal company with a poor safety record.
One of Trump's worst anti-science nominees, Sam Clovis, has withdrawn, after being caught up in the Russian scandals. Clovis, a non-scientist with a public administration degree, had been appointed to the Agriculture Department's top science position, causing outrage.
At the "dysfunctional" Environmental Protection Agency, administrator Scott Pruitt found an ingenious way to replace the respected academics advising his agency with more reliable industry "scientists", and to make matters worse, he did so quoting the bible.
Banking regulation is meanwhile going backward in a gratifying manner.
Finally, after a thorough search - or perhaps a Big Pharma auction - Mr Trump found a new Health and Human Services secretary who is arguably worse than his predecessor, the disgraced (Dr) Tom Price.
* * *
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recently attacked the federal courts (more here), even as the Trump administration rapidly reshapes the judiciary in Trump's image through nominees so mediocre - or ideological - that the American Bar Association rates them "not qualified".
More on Trump's extremist judges here, including Thomas Farr, for whom the Republicans kept a seat open 12 years, and some with hardly any experience at all, e.g. the 36-year-old Brett Talley.
* * *
General Baker: released from confinement at Camp Justice
At Guantánamo, the Pentagon has completed the bizarre trial of Ahmed al-Darbi. He was convicted by guilty plea - the only sure way - in a military court, for what is essentially civilian piracy.
The acts giving rise to the prosecution had nothing to do with war, or even the US, and they occurred in international waters far from the US. No American ships or citizens were involved.
Mr Darbi will now be a witness against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in yet another, equally impossible, non-war case (so recognised since it began).
Al-Nashiri's case was recently derailed by the resignation - for ethical reasons - of the defence team, just as the supreme court evaded Nashiri's very sound appeal.
At that point, the Nashiri commission experiment blew up, with the Nashiri judge sensationally holding Chief Defence Counsel John Baker - a Brigadier General and the second ranking lawyer in the Marine Corps - in contempt, sentencing him to 21 days and a fine.
Next, the general filed his own habeas action, but before DC judge Royce Lamberth could rule, the Pentagon's "Convening Authority" suspended the contempt order pending appeal, and Gen. Baker was released from confinement in his modest trailer behind "Camp Justice".
* * *
Entartete Kunst
The Bush administration showed its affection for Third Reich national security Kultur by adopting the unsettling Gestapo expression, Verschärfte Vernehmung: "Enhanced Interrogation".
While the Wehrmacht might have scrupled at the Plünderung of a prisoner, Obama's armed forces had no problem pillaging the life savings of Djamel Ameziane, a forcibly-repatriatedGuantanamero: he couldn't be trusted to use his funds responsibly.
Under Trump, the Pentagon has extended this principle to confiscate art by Guantánamo inmates, on the same theory: that money - e.g. proceeds from a New York exhibit of their art - could be put to nefarious purposes; tellingly, Ameziane is among the artists in the show.
Clearly, it's Entartete Kunst.
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