Texans Tell Puerto Rico "Money For Me, But Not For Thee"

A few days ago the Washington Post had a classic article about how some of those Texans who had received government help in the aftermath by Hurricane Harvey were not all that keen about sending help to their fellow American citizens in Puerto Rico. The article was full of shockingly soft and, at times, even hard racism.

Said one Texan whose house flooded, "It’s [Hurricane Maria] a problem, but they need to handle it. It shouldn’t be up to us, really. I don’t think so. They’re sitting back, they’re taking the money, they’re taking a little under the table. He’s [Trump] trying to wake them up: Do your job. Be responsible." Of course, that never happened in Texas. And this came from a man who had just received a $14,000 check from FEMA. He sat back and took the money.

Another Texas woman who thought she had purchased flood insurance when she bought her house just a year ago but found out that she was not covered said, "Do other people think that other people should pay for me to fix my house? Because it’s not their fault that I flooded." Of course, she too will receive some FEMA money and will gladly take it. When asked about the response in Puerto Rico, she said that she worried that the when the government hands out money to help people rebuild, it just encourages corruption and people take more than they need. But what about simply restoring power and the availability of clean drinking water? She replied, "Guess what? There’s a big chunk of the population that lives without electricity all the time...They don’t live deprived, because it’s a beautiful environment. The weather is nice, the climate is good most of the time, so it’s different from here . . . It works there because of the climate. It wouldn’t work here." Yes, there's no reason to have power or water when the climate is so nice.

She ended by saying that the government should encourage people to leave the island because it is in the path of hurricanes. The lack of self-awareness is striking. Her neighbor objected to the relocation idea saying, "They should stay where they are and fix their own country up", pretty much summing up his ignorance and bias in one short phrase. He added the Puerto Ricans' "lack of responsibility is not an emergency on my part."

Perhaps someone should point out to these Texans, who are of course all Trumpsters, that the city of Houston authorized developments INSIDE A RESERVOIR! Of course, that's not a lack of responsibility; that's called progress in Texas. In addition, Houston, along with New Orleans, are the two cities with the most repetitive flooding disasters requiring government help over the last two decades. Much of that has to do with specific land-use policies and the global warming that their party denies.

And now, those same leaders who are far more responsible than their counterparts in Puerto Rico, are proposing to approve the development of 800 new homes ENTIRELY WITHIN A FLOODPLAIN. According to the developer, it will be a "a community that provides a unique sense of arrival and lifestyle not currently available in Houston." That is until it floods.

White (Collar) Justice

David Dayen has a great review of Jesse Eisneberg's new book, "The Chickenshit Club", which describes the nexus of the incestuous world of white-shoe law firms and the erosion of the tools with which to fight has led to the explosion in unchecked white collar crime.

The title of the book comes from an address by James Comey of all people, who described those prosecutors who had never lost a case as being members of "the chickenshit club" because they obviously never risked taking a case they actually might lose.

As I have written, the turning point for (not) prosecuting white collar crime came with the conviction of Enron's top executives and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, for engaging in a massive fraud and compounding that criminality with an almost as massive obstruction of justice. Unfortunately, the conviction of Arthur Andersen forced the company to surrender its accounting license, throwing thousands of employees around the world out of work and creating a backlash against that type of prosecution. According to Eisinger, "Andersen had to die so that all other big corporations might live."

In the wake of that scandal, in the decade after Enron, prosecutions for white collar crime dropped by nearly 30% at the same time that the country saw the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression, largely driven by massive fraud in the housing and banking industries. Yet not one senior executive at any of the major banks or mortgage companies ever did any jail time and virtually all of them were never even indicted. Prosecutors basically never tried.

Dayen writes, "If it’s easier to get a corporate plea bargain than to win a conviction against a top executive, that’s the path prosecutors will favor. If it’s easier to design a deferred prosecution agreement than to take down a company abusing its investors or customers, that’s the path. If it’s easier to make headlines with seven-figure fines than to undertake the painstaking work of obtaining justice, that’s the path. If there isn’t 100 percent certainty of a conviction, then discretion—some would say spinelessness—argues for settlement. Every prosecutor knows that, in the end, those who take the easier path will enjoy rewards, and those who challenge power won’t. Eric Holder got a corner office and a lucrative partnership. James Kidney, who pushed for aggressive prosecution at the SEC, got a small retirement party, where he said, in a speech that leaked, 'For the powerful, we are at most a toll booth on the bankster turnpike.'"

The most devastating example of this failure might be the story of Purdue Pharma, the maker and marketer of OxyContin. Purdue falsely marketed the drug as effective for 12 hours, a claim that had no basis in science but was simply devised by Purdue's marketing department. The result was a surge in people addicted to the drug and increasing overdoses. In 2006, a suit essentially proved that Purdue's claim about the drug were false and the company settled the suit for a paltry $75 million. Subsequently, federal prosecutors convicted the company of criminal misbranding and an "intent to defraud and mislead". The result of the conviction was to have three senior executives at Purdue plead guilty to a criminal misdemeanor. The CEO of Purdue was never charged. And Purdue just kept right on selling OxyContin, in large part creating the opioid and heroin epidemic that is killing 175 people a day. As Republican Senator Arlen Specter noted at the time, the case amounted to "expensive licenses for criminal misconduct".

Prosecutorial cowardice is not just related to financial or political matters. For far too long, prosecutors have been unwilling to tackle sexual assault cases, especially where powerful, usually white, men are involved. The #MeToo movement has exposed just how widespread and how long the abuse has been going on. But the fact that people like Cosby, Ailes, O'Reilly Weinstein, Wieseltier, Trump, and so many others have gotten away with their abuse for so long shows just how badly the criminal justice system has failed. Obviously, there is real difficulty in proving some of these cases when it is one person's word against another as does the fact that the cases always involve witness intimidation in one form and/or forum or another. But often, prosecutors won't even try. That leaves the abused with the only option of pursuing civil cases where they receive compensation in return for having that agreement remain sealed and a gag order which usually only applies to the victim. That is not justice but just another license for criminality as the litany of constant abuse shows.

The chickenshit club is in many ways a real club, a place where genteel discussions take place between lawyers who move from prosecutor to defender with ease. Says Dayen, "Today, federal prosecutors rarely question the targets of their own investigations, instead trading evidence and queries with defense attorneys. Findings in cases are negotiated, not discovered; frontal assaults on high-powered law firms are eschewed. To launch one, Eisinger writes, would create 'social discomfort.' Prosecutors would have to take on their mentors, their friends, and their future bosses". It is primarily a male club still but women are certainly welcome. In the financial world, you can look at Mary Jo White's virtually non-existent enforcement efforts at the SEC. Even in the world of sexual assault, you see lawyers like Lisa Bloom have surprisingly become a member..

Beyond prosecutorial cowardice, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court has also stripped prosecutors of some of the necessary tools to actually convict white collar criminals. The case against Arthur Andersen was overturned on a technicality, but too late to save the firm. The Court overturned the conviction of Enron's CEO and restricted "honest-service" fraud to just bribery and kickbacks. The Court recently made it almost impossible to obtain political bribery convictions with the overturning of the case against Virginia governor Bob McDonnell. Insider trading cases and other types of white collar crime are one of the few areas of the law where it is required to show intent, again making it virtually impossible to convict except for the most brazen lawbreaker.

One could make a pretty strong argument that Donald Trump's success is in large part due to the chickenshit club. As Vox reports, "Trump has been repeatedly fined for breaking federal money laundering rules, paid millions in hush money to settle civil fraud claims, been caught breaking New Jersey casino law, been caught violating the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, been caught violating federal securities law, been caught violating New York nonprofit law, and — of course — been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault. Yet throughout this storied history of lawbreaking, Trump has never faced a major criminal charge. He gets caught, he pays a civil penalty, and he keeps on being a rich guy who enjoys rich-guy impunity". Trump, like the current opioid epidemic, is the awful and devastating legacy of the chickenshit club.

Georgia Officials Seem To Be Sabotaging Investigations Into Potential Voting Irregularities

As those of you who read me regularly would know, I have been raging against the quickening erosion of our democracy for quite a while. The anachronistic voting procedures that give lie to principle of "one man, one vote", the extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression and the attack on voting rights, and more all erode faith in our democratic processes and our democracy itself.

If those concerns weren't enough, we now have to also worry about the safety, security, and accuracy of our actual voting systems. It does not help when states refuse to take action to defend their systems from being hacked. That is the situation that has existed in the state of Georgia, where the state relies on purely electronic voting without a paper trail, for at least the last decade.

In 2007, a computer expert showed that malware could be introduced into the state's touch screen voting machines that could effect the vote tally. An investigation into that problem notably and oddly exempted the groups actually responsible for programming and testing those machines from that inquiry. Then, last August, a cybersecurity expert found security holes that left the state's central election database, the poll books that are used to verify registrations, and the databases that are used to create ballots and actually tabulate the votes all vulnerable to hackers.

The fact that the state refused to address these issues before the 2016 election was even more curious when it was revealed that Georgia had been notified by the Obama administration that its election systems had been targeted for attack by the Russians and that the state had rejected help from the federal government in securing its electoral processes. And, in fact, there were reports of many voters in Fulton County being told they had reported to the wrong precinct because of a "glitch" in those very poll books that verified registrations, exactly the systems that the Russians had reportedly targeted. Even worse, these same vulnerabilities still existed when the hotly contested special election to replace Tom Price was held earlier this year.

On July 3rd of this year, a group of election reform advocates filed a lawsuit in an attempt to force the state of Georgia to finally address the problems with its voting systems. As part of that suit, the plaintiffs wanted access to a critical computer server that possibly could have revealed if last November's general and this spring's special elections had been compromised by hackers.

Interestingly and inexplicably, however, in the immediate aftermath of that suit, the computer system was wiped clean. According to the AP, "The server's data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state's election system. The data wipe was revealed in an email sent last week from an assistant state attorney general to plaintiffs in the case." In addition, just one month later, two backup servers that held similar data were also wiped clean.

As one expert noted, wiping the server clean "forestalls any forensic investigation at all. People who have nothing to hide don't behave this way." One of the plaintiffs added, "I don't think you could find a voting systems expert who would think the deletion of the server data was anything less than insidious and highly suspicious."

The person ultimately responsible for the data is the Georgia Secretary of State who claimed he did not authorize the destruction of the data and blamed it on the "the undeniable ineptitude" of the Kennesaw State University group that runs these systems. The university group said that wiping these servers was part of their "standard operating procedure." I'm pretty sure that a judge will find destroying evidence in an ongoing legal case is not standard procedure.

Whatever the case, this probably means that it will now be impossible to discover whether there were any irregularities in the last two important elections in Georgia, although there is some hope that the data may have been captured by a prior FBI investigation of the state's security problems back in March.

Faith in the efficacy of our democratic processes are already at an all-time low. The inability to actually physically count the ballots adds to that mistrust. That is compounded exponentially when it appears there are deliberate efforts to sabotage any investigations into the voting processes. And it is made even worse when that sabotage directly impedes an investigation into not so much whether but how deeply a foreign power attacked our elections and subverted our democracy.

The Beginning Of The End

While it is true that there is nothing in today's indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates that connects directly to the Trump campaign's collusion with the Russians, only in today's climate of acceptance of the absolute lowest standard of behavior is the fact that the campaign manager of the Trump election effort and his right hand man have been indicted for a engaging in conspiracy against the United States, both before, during, and after their work for the campaign, not an almost existential problem for the President.

Of course, the evidence of Manafort's collusion with the Russians is already pretty convincing. There is the offer of personal briefings on the Trump campaign to the Russian oligarch that Manafort was apparently deeply in debt to. There was the inexplicable change to the Republican platform regarding support for the Ukrainians fighting the Russian invasion of their country. We now know that this came after Papadopolous emails saying the Russians had dirt on Hillary. There was the Trump Tower meeting to get dirt on Clinton. As David Atkins points out, in retrospect the only seemingly conceivable reason that Trump would hire Manafort, besides the odd fact that he would work for free, was to engage help from the Russians. There was nothing in his recent background, no familiarity with recent Republican politics, no political reasons to satisfy the establishment GOP, to select Manafort to run the campaign.

A more interesting side note, however, involves Rick Gates. Gates was Manafort's right hand man in his dealings in Ukraine and Russia and in the money laundering scheme they were both involved in. Manafort brought Gates into the campaign and Gates remained an important part of the campaign even after Manafort was forced out. The interesting note is that after the campaign, Gates apparently began working with Tom Barrack. If that name sounds familiar, it is because he is one of Trump's closest outside advisers and the man who introduced Manafort to Trump and the campaign. The fact that Barrack would continue to work with Gates after knowing his involvement in these illegal payments in Ukraine and the fact that Barrack was the primary reason Manafort got hired in the first place will now make Barrack an even more interesting man to Mueller.

As opposed to the Manafort and Gates indictments, the Papadopolous admission that he lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians is a direct tie to the Trump campaign. Papadopolous was clearly targeted by a Russian he knew was connected with the government within days of being announced as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. The Russian agent used Papadopolous as a conduit to tell senior people in the campaign that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary in the form of thousands of emails, as well as trying to set up a meeting between the Russians and Trump. It appears that Jeff Sessions may have been at least one recipient of those emails. And, as we all know from Don Jr.'s Trump Tower meeting as well as from Trump's own words, the Trump campaign was ready, willing, and able to play ball with the Russians.

This is just the opening salvo from Mueller. The pressure on all these three is now enormous. And Mueller hasn't even charged Flynn yet. The fact that Trump's campaign manager has been charged with conspiracy against the United States should be damning enough. But it's only the beginning. As one legal analyst said today, prosecutors never lead with their best case.

Media Needs To Take Mueller Firing And 2018 Russian Interference Far More Seriously

While we all wait with baited breath to find out just who exactly Robert Mueller has indicted, I don't think the media is as focused on how close we are to a real inflection point and constitutional crisis. And that does not bode well for when our constitutional restraints are stretched to the max by President Trump.

It is important to understand that the Republican propaganda machines are almost monolithic. By that I mean that it may contain multiple elements but those elements are always working in concert. Often, the nexus of these elements is described as the right wing propaganda machine pushing a story that gets echoed by Republicans in Congress which then forces the mainstream media to cover the story. And it is true that is sometimes how the process works. But sometimes, it is clearly a more organized and pre-planned process.

It is no coincidence that Republicans in Congress began investigations into the faux scandals of Uranium One, Hillary's emails yet again, and now the Clinton/DNC funding of the Russian dossier almost concurrently with what was coming from the right wing propaganda machine of Fox News, Drudge, and others. Nor was it a coincidence that the White House joined right in. This was a highly coordinated effort that was apparently prepared in advance.

You can see how effective this strategy is when Susan Collins goes on Face the Nation today and says that John Podesta and Debbie Wasserman Schultz should come back and testify again before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Said Collins, " They absolutely need to be recalled. It's difficult to imagine that a campaign chairman, that the head of the DNC would not know of an expenditure of this magnitude and significance. But perhaps there's something more going on here. But certainly it's worth additional questioning of those two witnesses." This is supposedly one of the Senators who is standing up to Trump but at the same time is willing to participate in the cover-up his crimes. Another example was Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report on Meet the Press who responded to a question about whether Trump could turn the Russian investigation into a Clinton scandal by saying, "It already is. It's already so muddled and so clouded and everybody's already taken their side." Actually no, Amy, it isn't. And it is your responsibility to explain to the country why it isn't.

In the more traditional path of the right wing propaganda machine, Fox News and others for months have been calling for Mueller to either be fired or to recuse himself for a variety of reasons including simply having too many Democrats working for him or being tangentially involved in the Uranium One story. Other now say that Mueller's probe is inherently flawed because it relied on the Russian dossier to begin with, which is of course patently false. In addition, there have been calls for Mueller's funding to be cut by Congress when it comes up for review next month. All these calls have gotten significantly louder of the past week as it obviously became clear Mueller was close to an indictment, with former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka demanding that Trump fire Mueller and the Wall Street Journal editorial board demanding Mueller's resignation.

The possibility of that action came up only once today on either Meet the Press or Face the Nation and it was improbably raised by the former head of the American Conservative Union but current anti-Trumper, Al Cardenas, who said, "there are even those who are murmuring does he have the gumption to fire the special counsel. That would be a monumental event." That prompted no further discussion as the segment ended.

In the right wing media environment, the possibility of Trump firing Mueller is a very real thing. In the mainstream media, the question barely registers at all. And that will make things very difficult for the mainstream media if, in fact, Trump does fire Mueller. It was interesting to note just how little interest the apparently forced retirement of Dana Boente as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia provoked in the mainstream media. But that jurisdiction covers the Russia investigation and it is one of the jurisdictions where Trump is apparently personally interviewing the replacement for Boente.

As Susan Hennessy at Lawfare tweets today, "Reporters should really get GOP members of Congress on the record now about what they'd do if Trump fires Mueller." Let them hide behind not addressing a hypothetical but at least reporters could still press for an answer. When or if it actually happens, I can guarantee that Republicans in Congress will do what they've done for the last two years, simply disappear and put out some press release saying they are "troubled" but the need right now is to focus on tax cuts or whatever. Which is why it is critical to press for a real answer now.

Look, right now there are senior members of the GOP leadership in the Senate who are actively participating in the cover-up for Trump. Devin Nunes is still a committee chairman, as is Trey Gowdy. So is the supposedly respected Chuck Grassley in the Senate (though I've never understood why). The leadership itself is therefore corrupted and it might be important to find out if any Republicans will actually draw a line in the sand and say that firing Mueller would be unacceptable. If not, those members need to be asked why not.

In addition, the GOP-led Congress is also complicit in the continued Russian attempts to interfere in our election. There has been no legislative action to restrict any of the actions that the Russians took in 2016 for 2018. Jeff Sessions testified the other week that he knew of no legislative recommendations to deal with anticipated interference in 2018. Any actions that have been taken are voluntary efforts by the tech companies to avoid any kind of oversight. And if you follow Wall Street at all, you know how ineffective "voluntary efforts" are if there is money to be made.

Moreover, the fact that Russia has not paid a price for their interference and that the US is doing nothing to stop them from doing it again is just a green light for Putin. If you thing the interference in 2016 was bad, just wait until he gets going in 2018. And it is important to note that the main beneficiary of Russian interference was not just Donald Trump. It was also a significant number of down-ballot Republicans who also benefited.

For the media, the time has come to put Republicans on the spot about what they will do if Trump fires Mueller, about why they are doing nothing to prevent more hacking in 2018, to ask why they seem to be protecting the President and why some are seemingly engaged in potential obstruction of justice, and perhaps bluntly be asked if they believe Russian interference will help them in the 2018 election. If they don't ask those questions now, it may be too late to ask them later.

The Big 12 - The Rodney Dangerfield Conference Of College Football

It looks like it's the same old story for the Big 12. With TCU's loss to Iowa State today, it seems like it will be virtually impossible for the Big 12 champion to even make it into the college football playoff. Again. The fact that Oklahoma beat Ohio State like a drum at the Horseshoe will mean nothing because that was early in the season. The fact that Iowa State is obviously a good team will mean nothing because they had two early season losses. And therefore the fact that Oklahoma and TCU both lost to Iowa State means that they're no good either. In addition, the conference still has huge games between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, Oklahoma State and Iowa State, TCU and Oklahoma, and then a Big 12 championship game. That means that it is almost unimaginable that a team could come out of that conference with just one loss.

Meanwhile, once again, it looks like the Big 10 may be overrated as usual. Penn State's vaunted defense disappeared in the second half. Wisconsin will probably go undefeated into Big 10 championship game without playing anyone of significance except for a middling Michigan team. Ohio State played a particularly sloppy game today and still won. When a team in the Big 12 does that, everyone says that the league can't play defense. (We'll just note that Iowa State's win yesterday against #4 TCU was 14-7). In the Big 10, it shows that it's a great team because it can overcome its mistakes.

Today, Ohio State was getting votes from the ESPN panel to be either ranked #3 or #4 this week. Paul Feinbaum said, "Yes, Oklahoma beat Ohio State but that was a long time ago. Ohio State's win yesterday was the top win in college football so far this season." Just like I said, Oklahoma's win counts for nothing.

And don't get me started on Notre Dame. Yes, they lost a close game to Georgia. But they were at home and they lost. That same ESPN panel talked about their wins against USC and NC State, "which are two pretty good teams". Please. USC is no longer in the top 25 and NC State probably won't be in the top 20 after this week.

Now, it may be true that the Big 12 can't play defense or isn't comparable with other conferences. However, it is clearly a pretty well-balanced conference with some top flight teams. And despite being continually trashed by the football intelligentsia as a mediocre conference, they still manage to have four teams in the top 25, and possibly after yesterday, four teams in the top 15. But they still won't get any real respect. Or into the playoffs.

And one other thing about the absurdity of college football. The Big 12 has only ten teams and the Big 10 has twelve teams. I guarantee the Big 12 would get a lot better press if the names were simply changed to actually match the conferences.

Natural Weekends - Ospreys

It's dinner time!!

Astrophotography Adventure - Two Fall Globular Clusters

Messier 2 is a globular cluster in Aquarius. Under good seeing conditions, it is barely visible with the naked eye.

Messier 30 is a globular cluster in Capricorn. Under dark skies, this is an easy binocular object. This cluster's orbit indicates that it originally formed in a satellite galaxy that was absorbed into our Milky Way.

Congressional GOP Chooses Donor Class Over Trump Base

Mainstream Republicans in Congress are caught between the rock of Trump's rabid nationalist base and the hard place of the incessant greed of their already deep-pocketed donors. So far, under Trump, they have chosen their donors every time.

I never understood the widespread popularity of "repeal and replace" among the Republican base. Maybe it was like one of those advertising jingles that sticks in you head and became a catchy slogan that stood for something else. Even in the red states, Medicaid expansion was pretty popular, but perhaps those people did not understand those programs were Obamacare, instead thinking, Kynect, for example, was something entirely separate. Perhaps it was the ACA forcing them into high deductible, high co-pay policies. But that would probably mean they only had junk insurance before. Perhaps it was driven by that group of people who did not qualify for subsidies and were paying through the nose for insurance, although not as much as they would have paid pre-ACA for real insurance. But that group is a pretty small sliver of the electorate, certainly not enough in numbers and in monetary power, to drive Republican policy. Or perhaps it was just the usual GOP envy that "those people" were getting "something for nothing".

But for the Congressional Republicans, "repeal and replace" offered the opportunity to feed their donor class even more money. Essentially gutting Medicaid in order to pay for an even more massive tax cut for the rich was not what even the Trump base was asking for. And, predictably, the popularity of the ACA increased as more and more people understood what they would lose.

Now Congressional Republicans are virtually trying the same trick again with their tax bill. That same Trump base is not looking to again cut Medicaid, and now even Medicare, to help offset the tax cuts that will largely not even accrue to their benefit. But that seems to be the Republican plan, again, simply to satisfy the donor class.

This disconnect is what the Bannon/Mercer faction is trying to exploit on behalf of Trump. When talking about Mike Pence and his benefactors, the Kochs, Bannon said, "They’re aligned on tax reform. The Kochs are a hundred per cent with you, so long as it means cutting taxes for the Kochs. Anything that will help the middle-class people? Forget it." Sheldon Whitehouse perceptively noted, "One by one, all the things that Trump campaigned on that annoyed the Koch brothers are being thrown overboard. And one by one the Koch brothers’ priorities are moving up the list." The corporate wing of the party is ascendant, even with Trump as President.

In some areas, Bannon's nationalist agenda almost matches up far better with the Sanders' wing of the Democratic party, especially when talking about taxes and infrastructure, than it does with the corporate wing of the Republican party, which is obviously why so many thought Sanders would have been a more effective candidate.

Trump may have been largely a creation of Bannon and the Mercers, but he is such an incompetent and ignorant man that he could not even control his own agenda and appointments. As Whitehouse also noted, the Kochs could "stick one hundred of their own people into the government—and Trump will never notice." That is pretty much what has happened. The only way Bannon could move his own nationalist agenda forward was to leave the White House and attack the corporate Republicans from the outside. The fact that the Republicans in Congress continue to adhere to the agenda of the corporate right makes his job that much easier.

More importantly, Republicans in Congress seem to have convinced themselves that tax cuts are the only thing that will save them in 2018. Now maybe the GOP can pass some kind of tax cut that will satisfy their donor class. However, that still looks like a heavy lift. Yes, it will keep the donors giving big money, but it certainly won't appease the Trump base. In fact, it might anger them even more. Perhaps they believe they can fend off challenges from the right with all that money but annoying your already disgusted base does not seem like a winning strategy. But passing a tax cut before the end of the year, at least, would give them a few months to appease their Trumpist base before the primary season begins.

What form that appeasement might take is the big question. The border wall would be the obvious choice as would deporting the Dreamers. But both of those would be nearly impossible with Democratic opposition and Trump himself seems largely ambivalent about the Dreamers. Perhaps the Republicans could move on to infrastructure, but that has so little immediate impact that it's hard to see it being a game changer. Pulling out of NAFTA would also be possible but that would just annoy the donor class once again.

Whatever the case, the corporate wing of the Republican party is under serious attack and the Republicans in Congress are the ones in the direct line of fire. But the battle lines have been clear for well over a year now and those same Republicans chose their side. Unlike in the past, I think it will be difficult for them to finesse their way out of it this time.

Natural Weekends - Ospreys

The Potemkin Presidency

Yesterday, the President finally acted on his promise to deal with the corporate-created opioid crisis by holding what was essentially a photo-op event and announcing a "really tough, really big, really great" advertising campaign that essentially says "just say no". Because that worked so well when we tried it in the 1980s. The President did not announce a public health emergency and did not allocate any new funds to alleviate the crisis.

This non-event is pretty much typical of the Donald Trump presidency. It is a wonderful TV show without any substance, a Potemkin village as pretense for governance.

Yesterday was also the day that the long-awaited JFK files were supposed to be released. Congress passed a law demanding their release by this date 25 years ago so the government certainly had plenty of time to prepare for this day. Apparently not. Eventually, some time last evening a portion of the documents were released. The reason for the delay was that the Trump White House had not signed off on the portions of the documents that the intelligence agencies felt either need to be redacted or not released at all.

Yesterday was also the day that the prototypes for Trump's beloved border wall were officially revealed. Trump has vowed to hold an "Apprentice"-like made-for-TV moment where he will come down to Texas and pick the design that he has chosen. Of course, he will be picking a prototype for a wall that will probably never be built. As one academic who has studied border walls says, "A wall symbolizes action whether or not it actually does anything." Pretty much the definition of Trump as President.

Don't get me wrong, there are more than plenty of terrible things going on in Trump's agencies. ICE is engaged in mass deportation. The EPA is gutting environmental regulations, endangering lives and lining corporations' pockets. The Interior Department is apparently just a vehicle for Ryan Zinke's corruption. And Congress is engaged in a class war, desperately trying to strip healthcare from millions and give that money and more to rich people and its corporate benefactors.

But Trump himself is basically running a Potemkin presidency, all show and no substance. His indifference and inability to understand policy basics, much less policy nuance, ensure his empty suit status. Beyond the horrible policies being implemented by his government, that might not pose an existential problem. But the fact is that every other leader in the world, ally and enemy, knows the same thing and that makes Trump and the world more dangerous.

Collusion And Coordination

A couple of days ago I wrote that these new GOP-led investigations of Hillary's email and the seven year old uranium deal, plus the revolt by Corker and Flake, might indicate that the evidence of Trump's collusion and coordination as well as his obstruction of justice is not only growing but has become overwhelming and indefensible. The revelations of the past two days does seem to bear that speculation out.

The news that Alexander Nix, the head of Cambridge Analytica, a key supplier of data analytics for the Trump campaign, actively solicited Julian Assange in distributing Hillary Clinton's over 30,000 deleted emails is just the latest revelation of contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Assange actually confirmed the story saying, "I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks." Of course, the reason Assange rejected the approach is because WikiLeaks did not have those emails, nor did anyone else. But Assange's answer begs the next question of whether WikiLeaks agreed to provide other information to Nix that it might be able to get its hands on. The Trump campaign also did not deny the story but tried to say that Cambridge was not key to their campaign, despite the fact that they paid Cambridge millions of dollars and had Cambridge employees embedded in the campaign.

Cambridge Analytica is owned by the Mercers and it was active, potentially illegally, in the Brexit vote. It was my belief that Nix never would have taken this action without approval from the Mercers and tonight a report from the Daily Beast confirms that. It should be noted that Rebekah Mercer was the person largely responsible for funding Trump's presidential campaign and in installing her hand-picked man, Steve Bannon, as Trump's campaign manager.

This almost completes the circle of senior Trump advisers who have not only been shown to have interest in coordination actions with the Russians and/or their surrogates but have also acted on that interest. Manafort, Kushner, and Don Jr. met with the Russians in Trump Tower with the explicit expectation of receiving dirt that they could use against Hillary Clinton. Now we have Trump's biggest backer, Rebekah Mercer, and the head of Mercer's data analytics team, that was embedded with the Trump campaign, soliciting WikiLeaks. A prior report indicated that another GOP operative, Peter Smith, was also trying to work with the Russians to find those same deleted Clinton emails and deliver them to Mike Flynn. Apparently Bannon and KellyAnn Conway had also been briefed on that effort. Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, was trying to make a deal to build a Trump tower in Moscow during the campaign. Roger Stone has admitted to indirect contacts with WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. Is there anyone close to Trump who wasn't talking to the Russians? Melania, perhaps.

Of course, this just adds to the other numerous contacts that Trump and Republican surrogates had with the Russians during and after the campaign. These include a Republican operative in Florida who coordinated with Guccifer 2.0 to distribute the strategies and vulnerabilities of Democratic candidates in contested elections around the country, data that was stolen from the DNC. Manafort and Flynn had been paid by the Russians or their surrogates either before or during the campaign. Jared Kushner attempted to set up a secret back channel to the Russians. And so many others.

Basically, every person close to Trump during the campaign either had direct contact with the Russians, or was interested in receiving potentially illegally stolen material from the Russians, or was actively pursuing the Russians to receive potentially illegally stolen material.

And of course, there is Trump himself. He openly solicited the Russians' help in finding those Hillary emails. And, as Ari Melber reported last night, Trump made over 130 references to WikiLeaks during the actual presidential campaign that lasted only 110 days. That may not be as many lies as he told in that time, but it is still an impressive number.

Under American law, the words "collusion" and "coordination" have no real meaning. According to John Dean, the underlying crimes that those words convey "cover many potential illegal actions by the Trump campaign, which could range from aiding and abetting (18 USC 2) to conspiracy per se (18 USC 371) to conspiring to violate several potentially applicable laws like: 18 USC 1030—fraud and related activity in connection with computers; 18 USC 1343—wire fraud; or 52 USC 30121—contributions and donations by foreign nationals. Also, 18 USC 2381—for, contrary to a widespread belief that there must be a declared war, the Justice Department as recently as 2006 indicted for “aid and comfort” to our enemies, the form of collusion better known as treason."

More importantly, Trump is continuing his collusion with the Russians by taking absolutely no actions to prevent the Russians from interfering in the 2018 and subsequent elections. Last week, Jeff Sessions admitted that the DOJ has done nothing to prepare for Russian interference in the 2018 election. Trump is apparently openly defying the Congress by intentionally delaying implementing the legally mandate sanctions on Russia which were suppose to go into effect weeks ago. John McCain declared that the administration is acting "as if they are unilateral".

As Josh Marshall notes, "Russia may not be an enemy but it is an adversary state which has defined a strategic priority of destabilizing the US and the European Union. That includes information operations and likely actual vote tally tampering as well. This is all happening. It’s a direct attack on the country. It’s not something we need to overreact about. It’s not something we cannot combat through counter-intelligence operations and societal awareness. But it is a serious and on-going attack. If the President is out there publicly saying it’s not happening, saying it’s a hoax, he is actively and directly assisting the attack. There’s no other way to put it. He is charged by his oath with preserving the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. He pledged to defend against all attacks but he’s actively assisting one. That is just as much the case as it would be if he repeatedly denied an adversary power were moving conventional arms into positions which threatened the United States."

"Collusion" and "obstruction" may have no legal meaning but that are proxies for real criminal acts. But remember impeachment is a purely political act and it actually requires no underlying illegality for conviction. The evidence to at least begin impeachment proceedings is clear and convincing, although we all know that it won't happen with this Congress. And we haven't even mentioned the even more overwhelming case for obstruction of justice.

Trump's Eroding Support And The Tyranny Of The Minority

There seems to be a real disconnect between Trump's approval rating as a whole, which is abysmal and seems to still be dropping slowly, and the assurances that Trump's base is still solidly behind him. Even if we assume that is true, it still doesn't seem to explain the media narrative that Trump is ascendant.

Fox News's latest poll shows Trump at his lowest approval rating yet, 38%. In Indiana, Trump is underwater, with his approval/disapproval numbers at 41/45. That's Indiana!! Over at the 538 poll averages, Trump's approval rating has dropped over 10 points since February. Back in May, Nate Silver pointed out that the level of strong support for Trump had fallen by nearly 10 points. It's hard to think that anything has happened since then that would change that trajectory.

Yet we keep on seeing polls that show Trump's support among Republicans is holding steady at around 80%. The aforementioned Fox Poll shows 83% of Republicans still approve of Trump. Yet that same poll shows that support among evangelical Christians has fallen to 66%, a drop of 8 points in one month. More strikingly, Trump's support among white men without a college degree dropped a whopping 12 points and is now in the mid-50s. Other polls show that Trump's support is slipping with Republicans who are younger than 50 or who have obtained at least a four-year college degree.

So how can Trump's support keep slipping both in general and with specific GOP constituencies but his level of Republican support remain constant.  It is certainly possible that self-described independents are responsible for most of Trump's loss in in his generic approval polls. However, Nate Silver surmises that the reason that Trump's approval with Republicans stays high is because more and more respondents who disapprove of Trump are no longer willing to self-identify as Republican.

What that means is that the Republican party is actually shrinking. As one GOP pollster pointed out, the party's base is increasingly older and white, bemoaning "The problem for the party is they have handcuffed themselves to an anchor that is on the wrong side of history."

But, as Alexander Panetta points out, the problem is that the nominal Republican party controls Congress and the White House. And it is clear that Republicans in Congress are especially fearful of its own base. But that base may, in fact, be shrinking. He cites a Pew poll that breaks the electorate down in to eight groups and among what's defined as the "Core Conservatives" Trump's support is an amazing 93%. That group represents just 43% of politically active Republican voters, but a large enough bloc to seemingly intimidate every GOP member of Congress. This is the group that I described as being the slim minority that believes it's a majority.

All these data points certainly raise the possibility that the current Republican party may be disintegrating. There is certainly an opening for a Republican version of the "Third Way". In fact, I am surprised that we haven't seen certain of our favorite pundits (hello David Brooks) talking up the current opening for their long-dreamed of centrist third party. GOP control now largely rests on extreme gerrymandering and, as Ron Reagan aptly described it the other night on Hardball, the fact that "not the American people, the Electoral College vomited this thing up and it landed in the Oval Office".

Of course, the party will not truly collapse until they lose their Congressional majorities. At that point, the party will really split with establishment types being forced to form a party of their own and a rump Trump party. It will get ugly. But it will require a significant electoral defeat first.

But Panetta makes an even more important point. The 43% of active Republicans only represents 13% of the public. Yet this 13% is responsible for currently controlling virtually the entire government. That 13% is driving the entire policy discussion and therefore the media narrative. What's even more distressing is that much of that 13% is being continually fed propaganda driven by just three plutocratic billionaires - Robert Mercer and the Koch brothers. And that is a total failure of democracy and truly the tyranny of the minority.

NY Times Continues The Hit Piece On Clinton, Democrats As "Clinton Rules" Rule

Ken Vogel of the NY Times continues with the hit piece on Clinton and the Democrats today, following up on his previous hit piece, with assistance from Maggie Haberman, yesterday. And once again, the piece is notable for the facts that it chooses to leave out.

The article is laid out as a kind of Q and A primer titled "What to Know About the Dossier of Trump Research and Who Paid for It". The third question in the piece is "Does it matter who paid for it" and here is the first sentence of the response, "That depends on your politics". Actually no. It would matter if the creators of the document were pressured to come to some sort of conclusion and there is no evidence to indicate they were.

Then, Vogel backs away from accusation that Marc Elias, the Democratic operative working for the law firm Perkins Coie who actually was contracting the work on the dossier on behalf of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, had continually lied about his connection to the dossier. Today, Vogel writes, "some of the Democrats who funded the dossier have been leery about being associated with it. The lead Perkins Coie lawyer representing both the campaign and the D.N.C., Marc Elias, pushed back earlier this year when asked whether his firm was the client for the dossier, whether he possessed it before the election and whether he was involved in efforts to encourage media outlets to write about its contents."

Of course, yesterday, Haberman tweeted "Folks involved in this funding lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year". In fact, Elias specifically denied having seen the document, having possession of the document, or even pitching the document to reporters. The Times has produced no evidence to contradict those denials. What Elias did mislead the reporters on was whether Perkins Coie was the client for the dossier. That was clearly misleading the reporters but was a typical slimy, lawyerly response since the actual client was the DNC and/or the Clinton campaign.

But we have to remember to put this in context to the question supposedly being asked. In response to whether it mattered who paid for the dossier, Vogel manages to imply that Elias and the Democrats had something to hide. That is not an answer to the question. Moreover, although earlier in the piece Vogel does make clear that a Republican opponent initially paid for the research until Trump became the nominee, there is a notable lack of interest in exploring whether that "mattered".

The next question up is "Is this sort of research common or legal?" The Times gives the proper answer here, saying, "Campaigns and party committees frequently pay companies to assemble what’s known in politics as opposition research — essentially damaging information about their opponents — and nothing is illegal about the practice." But then it continues, implying once again that what the Democrats did was illegal, citing the fact that the DNC and Clinton FEC disclosure forms do not list any payments to Fusion GPS or line items in the payments to Perkins Coie for "opposition research". Of course, the DNC and the Clinton campaign were not paying Fusion GPS directly so it is hardly surprising there would be no disclosure. Regarding Perkins Coie payments, a campaign watchdog group has filed a complaint over this lack of detail, saying that not providing the line item detail for the opposition research "undermined the vital public information role that reporting is intended to serve." Note that they cite no specific legal wrongdoing. Perkins Coie responded to the complaint, saying it was "patently baseless" and that the research was done "to support the provision of legal services, and payments made by vendors to sub-vendors are not required to be disclosed in circumstances like this."

Once again, in answering the question of whether this kind of research is legal, Vogel manages to imply wrongdoing on the part of the DNC and the Clinton campaign without producing a shred of evidence to support any kind illegal activity. It is more than reminiscent of the Times numerous breathless stories about the Clinton Foundation that would end with a paragraph stating that none of what had just been reported was illegal or unethical, after spending the entire article implying that it was.

But Vogel save the best for last, with his answer to the question, "How much of the dossier has been substantiated?"  This is his entire answer, "There has been no public corroboration of the salacious allegations against Mr. Trump, nor of the specific claims about coordination between his associates and the Russians. In fact, some of those claims have been challenged with supporting evidence. For instance, Mr. Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, produced his passport to rebut the dossier’s claim that he had secret meetings in Prague with a Russian official last year."

Of course, Vogel's response does not answer the question. More egregiously, it's pretty hard not to notice what is missing from his answer. Perhaps the fact that certain portions of the dossier HAVE actually been corroborated. For instance, Vogel might want to take a look at this CNN report from way back in February that "intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier." The dossier revealed a meeting between Carter Page and Igor Divyekin in Moscow in July, 2016, That meeting has been confirmed. The dossier claims that the very same Michael Cohen was telling the Russians that sanctions could be lifted if Donald Trump won and we know that Flynn was working on exactly that. The dossier claims that the Russians had compromising material on Hillary Clinton and were willing to give it to the Trump campaign. That was specifically the point of the June, 2016 meeting between the Russians and Don Jr, Manafort, and Kushner. I could go on and please read this detailed analysis in Slate that details all the corroborating evidence we already have.

You get the point. If you had just read Vogel's answer to the question, you would be under the impression that the dossier contains some salacious gossip about Trump and the rest has been refuted. In fact, the whole article is almost a gift to the right-wing propaganda machine that is intent on turning simple opposition research, which has been proven to have some elements of truth, into another Clinton scandal.

Will the Times obsession with the Clintons ever end? Will "Clinton Rules" always be the norm? Apparently so.

NY Times Does Yet Another Hit Piece On Hillary, Democrats

Once again, the New York Times has written another hit piece on Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. In this case, the story involves what everyone already knew, namely that the Democrats paid Fusion GPS for the Russian dossier information after Trump won the Republican nomination. The original funder of the dossier was actually a Republican opponent of Trump during the Republican primary, rumored to be Jeb Bush. The Times story was a follow up to a Washington Post story that only made news by identifying the specific Democratic operative associated with the DNC and the Clinton campaign that paid for the dossier

Maggie Haberman, who also contributed to the Times story bylined by Ken Vogel, tweeted that "Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year". Vogel said that Elias responded to his inquiries by saying "you (or your) sources are wrong", although what the sources were saying is not made clear. In fact, there is nothing in either the Post or the Times reports that support this allegation. The Times article only says that Elias denied having possession of the dossier and the Times article actually quotes a spokesman for Marc Elias, the Democratic operative, saying he "didn’t have and hadn’t seen the full document, nor was he involved in pitching it to reporters."

Needless to say, Donald Trump immediately jumped on Haberman's tweets today, accusing the DNC and Clinton of continually lying about finding what he calls the "fake" dossier. And the right wing propaganda machine is going into overdrive trying to turn the Russian collusion story into one about Hillary and the Democrats.

In addition, the Times article implies that Democrats paid over $12 million for work on the dossier. That is also misleading. In fact, according to the Washington Post, during the period they were funding the dossier, Democrats paid over $5 million to the firm doing the research, but that included activities beyond just the dossier.

But, as Josh Marshall, points out, the most damning part of the Times story is the important details it apparently purposely left out. There was no mention of the fact that the Democrats funding the dossier was not really news, that it had already been reported nearly a year ago. The only "news" was that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were definitively involved, as if that would be a surprise. Nor is it a surprise that politicians do opposition research.

More egregiously, the Times article leaves the impression that the Democrats were the only one to pay for the dossier. The articles specifically omits the fact that Republicans originally funded the dossier and only stopped when Trump won the nomination, for obvious reasons.

The article also fails to report something even more relevant, namely that the Democrats stopped paying for the dossier the day before the election. But by that time, the author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, had become so alarmed that he notified the FBI, which felt the information was credible enough to continue to pay for his research. Moreover, subsequent investigations have revealed that many of the points in the dossier have been confirmed and none of the document has been definitively refuted.

While leaving these important details out, the Times had no problems laying out the Republican propaganda on this issue, writing, "The revelation...is likely to fuel new partisan attacks over federal and congressional investigations into Russia’s attempts to disrupt last year’s election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates assisted in the effort. The president and his allies have argued for months that the investigations are politically motivated."

Of course, this article leaves the impression that the President might have a point when in fact all the evidence points otherwise. But, when it comes to the Times, we all know the "Clinton rules". After all, they invented them.

The Putinization Of America Continues Apace

With the outbreak of a Republican civil war, it is easy to lose sight of how Donald Trump's Putinization of American government  and civic institutions is continuing apace. Whether it is continuing attacks on the media, suppressing scientific analysis that conflicts with its political goals, neutering the judicial independence, or just the general corruption that rewards himself and his supporters, the Trump administration, in complicity with the Republican party, continues to subvert our democracy.

Under Scott Pruitt, the EPA is paying off his corporate benefactors at an alarming rate. Having installed an executive from the American Chemical Council, the main lobbying group for the chemical industry, as a senior deputy in the EPA's toxic chemical unit, the agency is now relaxing regulations and oversight of dozens of potentially dangerous and hazardous chemicals, including those linked to kidney cancer, birth defects, immune system disorder, and other health issues.

At almost the same time, the EPA blocked agency scientists from addressing a conference on climate change in Rhode Island and discussing a report that they had helped prepare. "It’s definitely a blatant example of the scientific censorship we all suspected was going to start being enforced at E.P.A." said John King, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.

These actions follow the Treasury Department pulling down an earlier study that showed that most of the corporate savings from a cut in the corporate tax rate will get passed on to shareholders and would not go into higher worker wages, in direct contradiction of claims from Steve Mnuchin and other administration officials.

At the Interior Department, a financial review order by Trump has prevented a scientific study that would "examine a series of published scientific papers that outlined how residents living near mountaintop removal coal-mining operations faced increased risks of birth defects, cancer, other illnesses and premature death" from continuing. One of Trump's first official acts was to remove the prohibition against mountaintop removal by executive order.

The Interior Department's Ryan Zinke is also apparently a one man corruption machine. Besides charging the government for the unnecessary use of private jets to make a political speech for a large donor and hobnob with Koch-funded lobbyists while doing a few minutes of government work, Zinke has also seemingly managed to get a major contract for a close friend and donor to help rebuild Puerto Rico's electric grid.  Whitefish Energy Holdings, a two-year-old company with just two employees managed to get $300 million dollar contract to help restore and rebuild the territory's high-voltage power lines. Whitefish Energy "is based in Zinke’s hometown and that its CEO, Andy Techmanski, is friendly with the Interior secretary, while the Daily Beast reported that Whitefish’s general partner maxed out donations to the Trump primary and general election campaigns, as well as a Trump super PAC, in 2016." It should also be noted that this no-bid contract is over 200 times larger than any other contract the company has ever received.

In the same week that John Kelly refused to answer questions from reporters who did not know a Gold Star family and Sarah Sanders told reporters that a general should never be questioned, Liz Bowman, the spokesman for the EPA, responded to NY Times requests for information as the paper researched the above-mentioned chemicals story by saying, "No matter how much information we give you, you would never write a fair piece. The only thing inappropriate and biased is your continued fixation on writing elitist clickbait trying to attack qualified professionals committed to serving their country."

And this is not the first time that Bowman has attacked reporters for doing their job. Responding to an accurate report from an AP reporter about flooded Superfund sites in Houston in August, Bowman wrote, "Yesterday, the Associated Press’ Michael Biesecker wrote an incredibly misleading story about toxic land sites that are under water. Despite reporting from the comfort of Washington, Biesecker had the audacity to imply that agencies aren’t being responsive to the devastating effects of Hurricane Harvey. Not only is this inaccurate, but it creates panic and politicizes the hard work of first responders who are actually in the affected area...Unfortunately, the Associated Press’ Michael Biesecker has a history of not letting the facts get in the way of his story. Earlier this summer, he made-up a meeting that Administrator Pruitt had, and then deliberately discarded information that refuted his inaccurate story – ultimately prompting a nation-wide correction." As you might suspect, Bowman's additional charge about the "made-up" meeting that required a "nation-wide" correction is also completely bogus.

It's not like Trump and his administration need much help in the defenestration of the media. Fox News has stopped even pretending to be anything other than a propaganda outfit for the Trump wing of the Republican party. And there are always reliable allies in other media outlets who can be the mouthpiece for that propaganda, as we see with John Solomon's misleading recapitulation of the 2009 uranium deal which is now being used by House Committees to proactively provide a defense for Trump in the Russia investigation.

The actions in the House also indicate how much the cult of Trumpism has taken over the Republican party. With most of party in safely gerrymandered seats, the only thing they really have to fear is an attack from the Trump wing, creating the forced loyalty and hostage-like visuals that have become far too common. As Flake and Corker have illustrated, there is no room in the party for those who want to stand up against the dear leader.

On Monday, there was also a remarkable exchange between Representative Al Green and HUD Secretary Ben Carson. Green pressed Carson on the budget cuts on specific areas of the HUD budget, such as housing vouchers and community development grants. Besides saying that virtually half of the $6 billion cuts in the entire HUD budget would come out of public housing programs, Carson refused to answer Green's questions and give specific numbers for specific programs. It was unclear whether the reason Carson would not answer was because he did not know or simply would not respond to Green's questions. Carson response was "Let's just move on and say that I don't want to offer a number...because we've already talked about the total amount of the cuts...I don't want to open the book and look at the numbers...I'm not going to go though the list this much, this much, and this much."

Last, but not least, we also discovered in the last week that Jeff Sessions believes the DOJ is there to protect the President, rather than the rule of law and the Constitution. Beyond that, the President himself is interviewing the US Attorneys who would be responsible for investigating himself and his businesses.

Almost all these events happened in the last week and are indicative of the slow but steady Putinization of American politics - the suppression of information that does not align with government policies; blatant corruption on behalf of the regime and its supporters; attempts to intimidate the press and force self-censorship; the neutering of judicial independence; a supine and cowed legislature; and the outright rejection of oversight on no basis at all other than the prerogative of the executive. Vladimir Putin did not become the dictator he is overnight. It was a slow but steady erosion of the very limited democratic and institutional protections that had been erected after the fall of communism.

Thankfully, the democratic and institutional protections are far more robust here in the US, but they are being whittled away nonetheless. The question today is when and if they will break. Like Putin, Trump, with complicity from the Republican party, is steadily attacking and eroding those boundaries and the result is an increasing authoritarianism.

GOP Will Always Take Care Of The Plutocrats - Wall Street Edition

The present Republican party may be in the process of disintegrating but its current and continual raison d'etre is simply to make sure it takes care of its plutocratic class of donors. That is what is prompting the current Republican claims that passing a massive tax cut for the rich and an enormous corporate giveaway is an essentially existential requirement for the party. It is also what is driving the deconstruction of the regulatory state.

That effort took another giant step yesterday when the Senate voted to roll back the new CFPB regulation that would have allowed consumers to band together in class action suits against banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions. That rules was supposed to go into effect in the beginning of 2019. The tiebreaking vote was cast by Mike Pence and it should be noted that both Flake and McCain voted for the roll back.

The end result is that consumers will now still be forced into arbitration when they have disputes with these financial institutions. As the Times notes, "By forcing people into private arbitration, the clauses effectively take away one of the few tools that individuals have to fight predatory and deceptive business practices. Arbitration clauses have derailed claims of financial gouging, discrimination in car sales and unfair fees."

The most recent egregious examples of this predatory behavior comes from Wells Fargo and Equifax. Wells Fargo criminally opened millions of fraudulent accounts in the name of its customers, simply to generate more fees and commissions for its salespeople. But, even thought those accounts were opened by fraud, the bank still insisted that individuals go through arbitration in order to recoup the money that was stolen from them.

Equifax insisted that those people who wanted to sign up for its "free" credit monitoring (that turned out not to be free at all) in the wake of its massive data breach also had to sign a clause that would force arbitration for claims against the firm prompted by that breach.

The beauty of forced arbitration for these companies, besides the fact that the process is already stacked against the consumer where the firms are sometimes even allowed to pick the arbitrator, is that it encourages small theft across a broad range of customers. When you are getting ripped off for $20 or $30 dollars, who has the time or sometimes the money to fight the company the get it back. But extend that across 100,000 consumers and lo and behold it is a $2 to $3 million windfall for the company. Do that over time, and the money really starts to add up.

Of course, the whole effort to sustain forced arbitration has been abetted by the Supreme Court that basically enshrined these clauses into law with decisions in 2011 and 2013. The ruling in 2011 was exceptional (but perhaps not for the Roberts Court) in that it ignored the existing law and precedent and decided mandatory arbitration could not be prevented by the states because, according to Scalia, "defendants [i.e. corporations] will be pressured into settling questionable claims." As if corporations ever settle anything without extracting as much time and money from the claimants as possible in the hopes that they will run out of money or simply tire of the fight.

I'm not sure that the Trump voters pulled the lever to protect Wall Street firms and allow them to continue to rip off consumers with impunity. Nor am I sure they voted for tax cuts for the rich and multinational corporations. But that's what they are getting.

It might be worth noting that Tim Kaine never would have cast the tiebreaking vote to roll back this rule. Nor would Hillary Clinton have signed it. But that doesn't matter because she gave a few speeches to Wall Street...