Category Archives: After the 2016 election
Following a greedy elite over a cliff
The Iowa caucus system is similar to the Electoral College in its lack of one-person-one-vote democracy, and the way it was conducted on Monday, using a faulty phone app (purposely created by Hillary supporters, Michael Moore says in his latest Rumble podcast), makes me think 2020 will be just like 2016 for Bernie. The establishment, which includes Clinton, Tom Steyer, Pete Buddigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and the DNC, would rather lose again to Trump — and maintain their privilege — than win with Bernie and the popularly supported, real, democratic change he represents. This is the road to full-blown fascism, since people want change in whatever form they can get it, and can obviously be manipulated by Trump-like hater demagogues. I’m avoiding a peaceful protest against the way the Republican Senate prevented Trump’s impeachment today as a waste of energy, as is, apparently, voting. Only revolution, beginning with something like a mass strike and ending with, at the very least, a new constitution, will create the kind of change we need. Otherwise, we’re headed for increasing dystopia, thanks to a greedy, mostly white, mostly male elite — just like the one that wrote our vaunted Constitution, fearful of the type of “mob rule” (democracy) they saw in Shay’s Rebellion (look it up).
Constitutional crisis
In a web-only In These Times article published 11-27-19, Chris Edelson says that Republican intransigence against impeaching Donald Trump constitutes a “constitutional crisis,” one we can only resolve by reforming or replacing our current constitution. His evidence: even though recent House Intelligence Committee hearings clearly showed that Trump had tried to extort a foreign country into sabotaging the upcoming US presidential election to his benefit, few (if any) Republicans in Congress will vote to impeach or remove him – “a corrupt president who rejects the very idea of legal limits on his power from office.
Our constitutional democracy is based on free and fair elections, individual rights, independent courts, and the rule of law – the idea that no one is above the law. Trump rejects all of these bedrock principles. He’s tried to undermine free and fair elections (most recently demonstrated in the Ukraine scandal); he threatens his critics with prosecution and lawsuits, disdaining the notion of First Amendment speech and press protections; he seeks to delegitimize judges who rule against his policies; and he rejects the idea that ordinary rules and laws apply to him and his allies, declaring (erroneously) that under Article II of the Constitution, ‘I have the right to do whatever I want as president.’
Trump thus poses an existential threat to our system of government. In a functioning system, Republicans would have already joined Democrats in taking action to remove Trump from office, just as they stood against Nixon in 1974.” In our failed system, however, Trump is likely to be able to run for a second term in 2020, and, given how many Americans still believe in his unfulfilled promises and take his lies as “facts,” he may continue on his disruptive and dictatorial merry way for four more years.
“The system is failing,” Edelson believes, “because Republicans are placing partisan concerns – their loyalty to Trump or fear of the political costs of defying him – ahead of their constitutional responsibilities. We need a new constitution, designed to strengthen our democracy against this type of threat. (No system is guaranteed to succeed, but a failed one demands replacement.)
Today’s Republican Party is an anti-democratic, authoritarian party that seeks to gain – and has gained – power without winning a majority of votes. To this end, it pushes voter suppression measures and takes advantage of structural defects in our system. Gerrymandered districts can allow the GOP to win a minority of the votes and still control the House. The Electoral College gave Trump the presidency 2016, even though he lost the popular vote, a feat he stands a realistic chance of repeating in 2020. And he enjoys majority support in a Senate that doesn’t reflect the political preferences of the majority of Americans, but instead allows a minority in sparsely populated states to wield power.
Making the electoral system more majoritarian could force the Republican Party to abandon its anti-democratic approach if it wishes to win. There’s no guaranteed way to prevent would-be authoritarians from gaining power – a popular authoritarian, for example, could win the popular vote. But Trump’s authoritarianism isn’t popular with Americans: his approval ratings are consistently in the low 40s.
A new constitution could address some of the anti-democratic features of our current system, including:
- abolishing the Electoral College;
- reforming or replacing a Senate that gives the 435,000 voters in Wyoming as many votes as the 17,524,000 in Texas;
- eliminating partisan gerrymandering;
- protecting the right to vote against voter suppression efforts; and
- dealing with the corrupting influence of our current campaign finance system.
A new constitution could also be aimed at shoring up the rule of law, including protecting the independence of the Department of Justice and replacing the current impeachment process with something capable of holding a lawless president to account. One idea to explore would be expressly giving the DOJ independent prosecutorial authority over the president. Another would be providing a process for triggering new presidential elections – say, based on a three-fifths vote in the House and Senate.
These kinds of changes aren’t politically plausible at the moment, but they need to be on our agenda, unless we’re willing to risk another attack on the system from a future president, assuming we survive the one mounted by Trump.”
My “quibble” with these kinds of liberal, “progressive” articles is that they never present a clear, realistic solution to the problems they uncover. Our political system isn’t going to someday magically become one in which constitutional reform, which has to be approved state by state, is possible. For most Americans the Constitution is sacred writ, and the idea of changing or replacing it would be met with horror. The idea that the sainted 18th-century “founders” of our system were part of an elite just like the one that rules our country today, and that they designed our political system precisely to avoid the democratic safeguards suggested above is what first needs to be brought out. (The founders equated democracy with “mob rule,” like that soon to be seen in the French Revolution.)
Avoiding dictatorship is hard, because there are always people or groups of people who want to take on that role, as well as people anxious to avoid the adult responsibility of thinking and acting for themselves and their groups’ interests. But we need to start somewhere – or multiple somewheres. In the long run, I think we’re going to need a strong global people’s movement for real and complete economic, political, and social democracy, already started in various places, or recent and lying dormant, like the Occupy Movement. In the short run, we could work to elect Bernie Sanders, the only current candidate for president really challenging the current anti-democratic system. It isn’t going to happen by magical, wishful thinking, like the weak conclusions of articles like the one quoted above, much as I appreciate its bringing the problem into such clear focus.
Entitled white men making our world a surrealistic hell
Powerful, entitled white men have been making the world hell for the majority of people for thousands of years. It got surrealistic when Trump was “elected” president, and now, with another apparent misogynistic abuser of women about to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, the insanity’s even more obvious. Come on, people! Kavanaugh doesn’t need to be found guilty of attempted rape in a court of law to be rejected as a candidate for this key lifelong office. I’m sure there are plenty of other less tainted and controversial candidates. But, no — it always has to boil down to maintaining the power and egos of these ridiculous (and dangerous) strutting cocks-of-the-walk: Donald Trump, the all-male senators on the Senate Judicial Committee, Kavanaugh himself, and who knows who else. I don’t know how they look at themselves in the mirror — not to mention the women who enable them.
If this isn’t enough proof that the system isn’t working, I don’t know what would be. We need to admit that the Supreme Court is highly political, institute some form of recall for Supreme Court justices, make it impossible for Congress to do what it did to Obama (refuse to let him fill the Supreme Court vacancy with Merrick Garland), etc., etc. Democracy? Don’t make me laugh.
In the meanwhile, refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Court, this presidency, Congress, and whatever else is functioning in this completely ass-backwards, male chauvinistic manner. I know I am.
Looking into the Iranian and North Korean nuclear threats
Want to know whether the US should withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran or what’s involved in the upcoming negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear weapons? Check out “War Games,” the latest episode of Jeremy Scahill’s “Intercepted” podcast, available on in the iTunes store or wherever you get your podcasts. You’ll learn a ton — all critical information in understanding today’s (and yesterday’s) world…Like which country or countries are currently the biggest threats to world peace?
It’s time to press harder for impeachment
This past Wednesday, December 6th, the House voted 364 to 58 to table a resolution, authored by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, that would have initiated impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. Of Washington’s 10 U.S. House members, only Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Seattle voted for the measure; none of Oregon’s representatives did. Green said Trump had associated his presidency with efforts rooted in bigotry and racism, citing the president’s blaming both sides for violence at white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville in August, and his recent retweets of videos that purported to show violence being committed by Muslims. “Whether we like it or not, we have a bigot in the White House who incites hatred and hostility,” Green wrote in a letter to colleagues Tuesday. “What are we going to do about it?”
In an emailed statement after Wednesday’s vote, Jayapal said Trump has committed violations of the Constitution, including the Foreign Emoluments clause that prohibits presidents from receiving payments from foreign governments. “His administration is reckless and dangerous, and we owe it to the American people to at least begin a discussion about how to hold him accountable for the many ways in which he is undermining our democracy and engaging in violations of our Constitution. Our focus in Congress should be on fulfilling our duty to conduct strong oversight over this administration, and it’s past time for Republicans to join this effort and put country over party.”
I’ve ignored the various movements calling for impeachment so far, thinking they had little chance of success. Then I listened to an interview on “Democracy Now” in which, on December 1st, Amy Goodman spoke with constitutional attorney John Bonifaz, co-founder and director of Free Speech for People. Bonifaz convinced me that, whatever its chances of success, we need, as citizens, to push for impeachment. And, despite the vote in Congress 12-7, the movement is growing at the grassroots level, with 17 communities on record across the country calling for impeachment proceedings to begin, and millions of Americans signing petitions at ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org and action.needtoimpeach.com. We don’t have to wait for the Mueller investigation into whether the president and/or his allies have committed criminal offenses, since, as Bonifaz notes, impeachment can be non-criminal – a matter of “whether the president has abused his power and the public trust.”
Bonifaz’s group, RootsAction, launched its impeachment campaign on the day of the inauguration “because the president had refused to divest from his business holdings all across the world in defiance of the anti-corruption provisions of the Constitution.” These are the Foreign Emoluments Clause and the Domestic Emoluments Clause. “The Foreign Emoluments Clause makes clear that no federally elected official, including the president, shall receive any payments or financial benefits of any kind from any foreign governments. The Domestic Emoluments Clause applies only to the president and says he shall not receive any financial benefits or payments of any kind from the federal government or the state government other than his federal salary. This is a president who has 111-plus business interests all over the world, many of which involve illegal foreign government benefits to him personally, through his company, the Trump Organization, as well as having properties all over the United States that involve state government benefits and the federal government, through the leasing of the Post Office Square in Washington, D.C., the place where the Trump International Hotel resides. So, what we’re dealing with here is a president who was warned by constitutional scholars, prior to taking the Oval Office, that he needed to divest from his business interests in order to comply with those anti-corruption provisions. He refused to, and is now engaged in treating the Oval Office as a profit-making enterprise at the public expense.”
Bonifaz added that since January the list of impeachable offenses “that require an impeachment investigation in the U.S. Congress parallel to the Mueller investigation” has grown. “This isn’t a question of having to wait and see whether or not the federal criminal investigation that’s proceeding turns up violations of federal criminal law by the president or any of his associates. That’s a separate question. The question here involves crimes against the state. That’s what impeachment is about – abuse of power, abuse of the public trust, and not only through the violations of the anti-corruption provisions. There is now, of course, evidence of obstruction of justice. There’s evidence of potential conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 elections and violate federal campaign finance laws, among others. There is now evidence of abuse of the pardon power in the pardoning of former Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. There’s recklessly threatening nuclear war against a foreign nation. There’s misuse of the Justice Department to try to prosecute political adversaries. And there’s the giving aid and comfort to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. All of this deserves an impeachment investigation in the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Goodman said that “in response to some Democratic leaders warning against calls for impeachment before Robert Mueller’s investigation has been completed, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer defended his $20 million ad campaign to impeach President Trump, saying in a TV ad that ‘he’s brought us to the brink of nuclear war, obstructed justice at the FBI, in direct violation of the Constitution taken money from foreign governments, and threatened to shut down news organizations reporting the truth. If that isn’t a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become?’ Can you talk about what Steyer is attempting to do in the Need to Impeach campaign and whether you’re working with him, John Bonifaz?”
Bonifaz: “We’re in communication with Tom Steyer and his team about collaborating, since he’s helping to elevate the national conversation and we agree with what he’s saying about the need for an impeachment process to move forward in the House of Representatives. The more voices that come forward from the American people all over the country to help push that forward in Congress, the better. Six members of Congress introduced five articles of impeachment on November 15th. Prior to that, two members of Congress, Al Green from Houston, and Brad Sherman from Los Angeles, had introduced articles of impeachment around obstruction of justice. The newer articles include that, as well as the violations of the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses and the president’s continued attacks on freedom of the press and the independence of the judiciary. What’s significant here is that these articles have been introduced by members of Congress despite continued opposition by their own party’s leadership. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made clear that she doesn’t think impeachment should move forward at this time, and yet they’re going ahead and asking other members of Congress to join them. Americans, all across the country, should also push for an impeachment investigation and urge their members of Congress to take the same kind of action.”
Goodman: “What Democrats like Pelosi are saying is that this isn’t the way to retake the House in 2018, that if you disagree with the president, the way to deal with that is through elections. Explain why you see impeachment as key.”
Bonifaz: “We’re a nonpartisan organization – not involved in the political strategy of any party. We’re focused on defending the Constitution and our democracy, and don’t think it’s acceptable to kick the can down the road and wait until after an election cycle to lay the groundwork for impeachment proceedings. They may not happen tomorrow or next month. But we need to be laying the groundwork and making this call now. Members of Congress, whether they’re Democratic, Republican, independent, or what have you, need to be stepping up to protect and defend the Constitution. That’s the oath they and the president took – to protect, defend and preserve the Constitution. And the other point on this, Amy, is that Nancy Pelosi has been saying that we don’t have the facts out, we don’t have the Mueller investigation completed. But we already have the facts about what this president has done with respect to the emoluments clauses, with respect to obstruction of justice and many other impeachable offenses.”
At this point in the discussion, Goodman mentioned the warning issued by Roger Stone, one of President Trump’s oldest advisers, in August that any politician who voted to impeach President Trump would face a violent response. She played a clip in which Stone said, ‘Just try and impeach him. You’ll have a spasm of violence in this country like you’ve never seen. This isn’t 1974. The people won’t stand for impeachment. A politician who votes for it would be endangering their life. I’m not advocating violence, but I am predicting it.” Bonifaz called Stone’s words “outrageous,” and added that “we can’t allow fear to dictate our response to this lawless president. We can’t say that we’re going to stay on the sidelines while the Constitution is being shredded, because of claims that Roger Stone or anyone else might make.”
Asked how the impeachment process would work, Bonifaz said, “the House of Representatives would need to pass a resolution that would advance to the House Judiciary Committee the question of an impeachment investigation or articles of impeachment. The Committee would then have subpoena power and hear witnesses. People say, ‘Well, the Republicans control the House Judiciary Committee. They control the House of Representatives. They control the Senate. Where do we think this process could actually go?’ But there were plenty of people who argued on the day that we launched this campaign, on Inauguration Day, that there was no way people would be standing up to demand this, and now we see millions of Americans doing just that, along with 17 communities, and seven [now 58] members of Congress. And the facts continue to build that this president is defying the rule of law.”
Asked how he would “lay out the articles of impeachment,” Bonifaz said, “We’d start with the violations of the two anti-corruption provisions of the Constitution: the Foreign Emoluments Clause and the Domestic Emoluments Clause. Then you have obstruction of justice in the firing of FBI Director James Comey for not letting go of the Flynn investigation and seeking to stop similar investigations in the Senate. The potential conspiracy with the Russian government, potential collusion, to violate federal campaign finance laws and other federal laws and to interfere with our elections, is an impeachment as well as a criminal question, and the House Judiciary Committee should take it up. Then we have the abuse of the pardon power, a presidential power that isn’t unlimited. What the president has done with the pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, has undermined the due process rights of the thousands of people in Arizona impacted by Arpaio’s illegal actions. This is the sheriff who was found in criminal contempt of court for refusing to stop his illegal practices of detaining people based on the color of their skin, and the president used the pardon power in a wrongful way to pardon him. Then we have the giving aid and comfort to neo-Nazis and white supremacists – not just what the president said after the Charlottesville tragedy, but also his most recent retweets of inflammatory anti-Muslim videos. Then there’s recklessly threatening nuclear war. He may be commander-in-chief, but the president doesn’t have the power to initiate a war. That’s established under the War Powers Clause, despite the fact that we’ve seen violations of it in the past. But Trump is taking it to a whole new scale by recklessly threatening nuclear war against a foreign nation. That reckless and wanton disregard for the established norms, putting millions of lives at stake, is an impeachable offense. Finally, most recently, the president has talked about how he’d like to see the Justice Department prosecute Hillary Clinton and other political adversaries. This attempted misuse of the Justice Department to prosecute political adversaries would be another impeachable offense worthy of investigation.”
When Goodman asked Bonifaz how much support he has around the country, he said that “over 1.3 million have signed our petition, and over 3 million so far have signed Steyer’s. And some members of Congress have said that they’ve been responsive to what they’re hearing from their constituents. So I think people are ready to stand up, and they need to, because this is an urgent matter. This isn’t something we can wait till 2019 or 2020 to deal with. We need to lay the groundwork now for the call for impeachment proceedings against this president.”
I’m going to sign all the petitions urging impeachment and contact my senators and representatives. There’s too much at stake to wait.
We got the numbers 