Tag Archives: Robert Hubbell

Committee Flops Like A Dead Fish

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

Robert Hubbell’s newsletter this morning covered a few important and encouraging topics, for those of us who are feeling a bit overwhelmed by the right-wing drama of late, both in the House of Representatives and in the State of Florida!  Here is just one of the topics he covered …

Democrats Fight Back!

Robert B. Hubbell

7 March 2023

Democrats have been frustrated by the asymmetry between GOP disinformation and bad-faith political tactics on the one hand and Democratic messaging and political responses on the other. The feelings of unfairness are aggravated by the complicity of the news media, which defaults to a worldview in which all political disagreements are mere “squabbles,” a view that does not apply when one of the parties to the “squabble” seeks nothing less than the end of democracy. But with a few moments of reflection and a dollop of perspective, we can see that Democrats are doing a credible job of fighting back. The J6 hearings were a triumph, as was Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

In this edition, I want to highlight two instances in which Democrats are pushing back hard—and not getting the publicity they deserve. You can help with that. But first, let’s look at two instances where Democrats are doing exactly what you want and expect.

Democrats offer devastating “prebuttal” to Jim Jordan’s “Weaponization” Committee.

Representative Jim Jordan promised to “blow the roof off the deep state” with hearings before his “Weaponization of Government” Subcommittee. For months, Jordan broadly hinted about devastating testimony from “dozens and dozens of whistleblowers.” But after the first depositions of those alleged whistleblowers, Jordan produced only three witnesses—all of whom have ties to Trump and are known for pushing deep-state conspiracy theories.

Jordan’s failure to deliver the goods is bad. See Axios, Jim Jordan scrambles amid assertions that “weaponization” probe is a dud. He overpromised and undelivered because he was unprepared. Not so for the Democratic staffers on the Weaponization Committee who delivered a jaw-dropping, gob-smacking “prebuttal” report on the testimony of Jordan’s faux whistleblowers. The report is devastating for Jordan and will make it difficult for him to recover his momentum in the hearings. Republican critics are already pleading with Jordan to “deliver the goods.” Jesse Waters said on Fox News, “Make me feel better, guys. Tell me this is going somewhere.”

The 315-page report by the Democratic staffers is here: GOP Witnesses: What Their Disclosures Indicate About the  State of the Republican Investigations. While it is unreasonable to expect that you will read the 315 pages, the two-page “Executive Summary” lays out the substance of the report as follows (in part):

First, the three individuals we have met are not, in fact, “whistleblowers.” These individuals, who put forward a wide range of conspiracy theories, did not present actual evidence of any wrongdoing at the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Second, the transcribed interviews we have held thus far refute House Republican narrative about “bias” at the Department of Justice. We urge Chairman Jordan to schedule the public testimony of these individuals without delay. The American public should be able to judge for themselves whether these witnesses or their allegations are remotely credible.

Third, these interviews also reveal the active engagement and orchestration of disturbing outside influence on the witnesses and, potentially, the Republican members of the Select Subcommittee. A network of organizations, led by former Trump administration officials like Kash Patel and Russell Vought, appears to have identified these witnesses, provided them with financial compensation, and found them employment after they left the FBI. . . .

Fourth, . . . the witnesses. . . are tied together by the attacks of January 6, 2021. The [FBI “whistleblower”] witnesses whom we have met objected to the arrest of individuals suspected to have laid siege to the United States Capitol. Others of the “dozens and dozens,” we suspect, participated directly in the riot.

What follows in the next 313 pages is a systematic dismantling of the first three witnesses who were identified, compensated, and promised employment by Kash Patel—a bottom-feeder in Trumpworld. Here is an example of the Democratic staffers’ analysis of the credibility of one former FBI witness:

George Hill claimed, among other things, that the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “a set up,” that it was “a larger #Democrat plan using their enforcement arm, the #FBI,” and that rioter Ashli Babbit was “murdered” by a Capitol Police officer. He also described the FBI as “the Brown Shirt enforcers of the @DNC,” an apparent reference to Nazi Storm Troopers. He has publicly stated that “there needs to take place a reeducation” and that Americans should embrace the risk of dying by terrorism rather than accept the domestic intelligence programs that keep them safe.

Humiliated, Jordan’s response is to claim that he needs a $15 million “reserve fund” to run his investigation with a $2 million annual retainer for staff. In other words, “he’s got nothing” and is scrambling to cover his asinine statement in which he promised “dozens and dozens of whistleblowers” who evidently do not exist.

We should not underestimate the ability of Republicans to cause mischief with bad-faith hearings. However, in the first round, the Democratic staffers dominated the narrative by producing a prodigious and compelling report. In the process, they made Jordan look like the fool he is. Tell a friend!

So, Where Do We Go From Here?

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2022, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

As he so often does, Robert Hubbell has done an excellent job of summarizing the events of last week in the U.S. House of Representatives and what the coming weeks/months might bring.

The loyal opposition!

January 9, 2023

By Robert Hubbell

After the painful spectacle of Kevin McCarthy’s election as Speaker late Friday, I opened the Comments section to all readers to allow them to express their feelings about the confluence of the January 6th anniversary and McCarthy’s corrupt bargain to become Speaker. Several hundred readers took the opportunity to express themselves. Understandably, feelings of upset, anger, disappointment, and dejection were more common than usual from readers of this newsletter. While there is much to discuss regarding what McCarthy’s election as Speaker portends for America, those details will unfold over time (and may shift in the coming days). I want to start my discussion with the emotional reaction to McCarthy’s pathetic victory and our mission as “the loyal opposition” over the next two years.

It is reasonable for people to feel upset and angry over McCarthy’s victory. He is unfit to serve in Congress, let alone serve as its leader. Indeed, he is peculiarly unfit to be Speaker because he participated in the assault on Congress on January 6th by spreading the Big Lie and voting in favor of baseless objections to electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania. (McCarthy has since lied about his votes to overturn the election. See Talking Points Memo, McCarthy Falsely Denies Voting To Overturn Election Results.) And, of course, he was the first major politician to make a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to begin the rehabilitation of Trump only a week after those killed in Trump’s insurrection were buried.

But all of this we already knew. McCarthy’s late-night victory felt like a slap in the face, even though it was based on humiliating groveling before the bottom feeders in Congress and a betrayal of the American people. After fifteen rounds of votes, McCarthy should have slithered out of the House. Instead, he acted like a conquering hero as GOP members chanted “USA, USA!” only moments after saying he could not be trusted to be Speaker. That moment of celebration by a grotesque caricature of a corrupt politician harkens back to the accidental election of singularly unfit Donald Trump to be president.

For some, McCarthy’s election was a replay of election night 2016. One reader (CC), wrote the following in the Comments section:

“Now many of us have PTSD from the first act of Kevin’s Circus, The Clown Show, that just ended in the House of Representatives. It is reminiscent of The Trump Show. But we’ve been through this situation before, and we know how to handle it. We need to stop inundating our nervous systems by listening to constant reporting about the same problems from different sources every day.

I’m not minimizing what we are facing. We’re all sick of having to fight the ugly underbelly of our country. But we don’t need to tackle the next few years all at once. And we really have no idea what tremendous things we will be able to achieve to counter this current set of dangers. We need to take it one day at a time.

We also need to protect our nervous systems from the overwhelming barrage of dung that will be flung from the monkeys in Kevin’s Circus. They will lie constantly. They always do. Expect it.

We fought back against them once. I would have felt a lot better during the four years of the “Trump administration” if I’d known how successfully Americans would fight back against these unimaginable horrors to “right the ship of state.” We have no guarantee, but we need to believe we can do it again instead of sinking into despair, which is easy to do.”

I agree with CC on all counts. We have every reason to be concerned about what McCarthy and the GOP will attempt to do over the next two years—but we are in a position of strength and should act accordingly. (More on that in a moment.) Even so, I acknowledge that it is almost as painful to watch McCarthy thumping his chest after a historic humiliation as it is to listen to Trump bloviate and lie with apparent immunity from Mar-a-Lago.

I am confident we will contain, outmaneuver, and defeat McCarthy over the next two years. But we can’t control the toxic mixture of gratuitous meanness, pomposity, and ignorance that passes for “politics” in the GOP. In the last forty-eight hours, McCarthy has failed to condemn any of the following: (a) George Santos’s use of a “white supremacist” hand gesture from the House floor, (b) a crude and offensive tweet by a freshman GOP member from Florida who tried to connect the Speaker’s gavel to the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, (c) Trump’s claim over the weekend that Ashli Babbitt is a “true patriot”, and (d) the attack on the Brazilian Senate and presidential palace by supporters of defeated former President Bolsonaro.

As reader CC said, we must “expect it” from McCarthy and his gang, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept it. Indeed, our task as members of the loyal opposition is to make McCarthy et al. own every debased, depraved, selfish, corrupt, and ignorant statement made by the reprobates to whom McCarthy has surrendered his manhood. And they are about to start an endless stream of such statements without a moment of reflection on the fact that Americans rejected MAGA extremism in 2022.

With all of that as background, let’s take a moment to put Friday’s events in perspective.

They have McCarthy. We have Jeffries. We win—every time.

The Speaker’s election defined two men: Kevin McCarthy and Hakeem Jeffries. McCarthy is exposed as weak, corrupt, and desperate. He was humiliated on the House floor, begging for votes from Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert. It simply doesn’t get more pathetic than that. Conversely, the Democratic caucus unanimously supported Hakeem Jeffries through fifteen rounds of votes. And then the two men spoke—and the differences could not be more pronounced. McCarthy read his speech like the uncomfortable politician whose skill is in the back room, not the podium. Hakeem Jeffries gave an inspiring, lyrical, passionate speech that worth is watching in its entirety: Watch House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ historic first speech (Start at 4:15 mark).

When it comes time to communicate competing visions of our future to anxious Americans, Hakeem Jeffries will win every time. We should feel great about that fact.

Hubbell continues to talk about the promised/threatened ‘investigations’ and the debt ceiling threat, but the entire newsletter is too long for this post, so I hope that you’ll take a couple of minutes to pop over there and read the rest!

The Next Two Years …

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2024, Free Press Issues, History, Political commentary, Social commentary, voting rights

Looking ahead to the next two years in the United States Congress, I think we all foresee chaos.  I don’t anticipate that the work of government, the work of We the People will be done, since the Republican-led House of Representatives has already told us they have no intention of doing their jobs.  They have made it clear they plan to obfuscate and obstruct the will of the people by impeaching not only the president (not for any crimes, real or imagined, but simply in retaliation for the twice-impeached former guy), and then they plan to defund the FBI, but only after a lengthy, costly investigation led by the likes of Gym … er, Jim Jordan, himself a criminal.  So, it would be easy to slip into despair, wondering why we are even bothering to pay taxes to keep the government running if they aren’t planning to do a damn thing about such important issues as the environment, guns, healthcare, education, voting rights, women’s rights, and the multitude of things that we hired them to address.  But Robert Hubbell has a slightly different take, one which I think deserves some pondering.  Here is a portion of his post …

The next two years.

Robert Hubbell

02 January 2023

As we enter 2023, there is no escaping the fact that we are beginning the long march toward the presidential election of 2024. As we start that journey, we have every reason to be confident about our ability to rise to the occasion. We did so in 2022, as we did in 2020 and 2018. The lesson of each of those campaigns is that our biggest challenge is overcoming the persistent media narrative that the Democratic Party is in disarray while the MAGA wing of the Republican Party is ascendant. That has not been an accurate description of the political dynamic in America since 2016, but the media has been like a dog with a bone—it won’t give up the negative narrative about the Democratic Party despite all objective evidence to the contrary.

          On the Democratic side of the scale are the results of the last three elections (or four if you consider the popular vote in 2016). On the Republican side are four losing elections and truly daunting challenges entering 2023. While we should never count on Republicans to defeat themselves, the narrative is misleading if we focus exclusively on the challenges facing Democrats—a favorite journalistic technique whenever a story is needed to predict doom for the Democratic Party.

          The stories circulating at the top of the news cycle this week highlight the challenges the Republican Party will face as it begins to awake from a six-year binge with a strange bedfellow whose appearance in the harsh morning light of 2023 should give the GOP a sinking feeling of regret and panic. Let’s see what the GOP sees in the mirror at the dawn of a new year.

The impossibility of breaking up with Trump.

          A sizable portion of the Republican Party is done with Trump—but it will be impossible for the GOP to break up with Trump. He will either be the 2024 GOP nominee, or he will destroy the party in the process of losing the nomination. Worse, just as MAGA extremism appears to have crested at the polls, Trump is forcing contenders for the nomination to “out-Trump Trump” in their quest for the 2024 nomination. See, e.g., Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Kari Lake.

          Trump began the new year by sending a warning shot across the bow of the Republican Party. Last week, Trump posted an article titled The Coming Split on his vanity social media platform, Truth Social. The article urged Trump to run as a third-party candidate if the GOP does not nominate him for president in 2024. See Huff Post, Trump Appears To Float Third-Party Threat If GOP Won’t Back Him | HuffPost Latest News.

          The author of the article, right-wing journalist Dan Gelernter, wrote the following:

Do I think Trump can win as a third-party candidate? No. Would I vote for him as a third-party candidate? Yes. Because I’m not interested in propping up this corrupt [GOP] gravy-train any longer. . . . What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can’t have him? Do we knuckle under and vote for Ron DeSantis because he would be vastly better than any Democrat? I say no, we don’t knuckle under.

          As noted in the HuffPo article, current RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told Trump that if he runs as a third party, “We [the GOP] will lose forever.” McDaniel is right. If Trump leaves the GOP, it will be nearly impossible for another GOP candidate to win in a general election. And the result will be the same if Trump mounts a third-party challenge or merely sulks at Mar-a-Lago, hurling insults and raising money for Trump-affiliated PACs that he spends on legal defense and tacky parties.

          Despite Trump’s weakened state from the midterms and mounting legal problems, Kevin McCarthy’s inability to secure the votes to become Speaker is directly related to Trump’s continuing gravitational pull on the GOP. The Freedom Caucus and assorted crazies in the GOP are demanding that McCarthy veer to the extreme edges of MAGA extremism to garner their support. For example, McCarthy has floated the idea of Jim Jordan leading a Judiciary Committee investigation into FBI Director Christopher Wray because . . . . well, you know. In MAGA-world, “FBI bad, Oath Keepers good.” Trump appointed Wray as FBI Director but has been highly critical of Wray’s unwillingness to pursue Trump’s revenge agenda against Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, etc.

          Likewise, Ronna McDaniel is trying to keep her job as the Chair of the Republican Committee by saying that the top priority of Republicans in the new congressional term is “getting to the bottom of Hunter Biden’s laptop.”  That should be a pretty easy task since Rudy Giuliani has had a copy of the hard drive from Hunter Biden’s laptop since October 2020. If there is anything on the laptop worth getting to the bottom of, it should have emerged by now. More importantly, the obsession with Hunter Biden’s laptop illustrates that the Trump revenge agenda is eclipsing the ability of the GOP to pursue a substantive agenda.

          So, there you have it. Trump won’t let the GOP walk out the door without starting an internecine war that may destroy the party. And even without Trump actively trying to destroy the party, he has unleashed reactionary forces that even he cannot restrain. Over the weekend, McCarthy reportedly offered a concession to the radical wing of the Freedom Caucus that would allow a handful of Representative to call for a “no confidence” vote on the Speaker—something McCarthy previously said he would “never” do. As a result, the extremists in the GOP, like Matt Gaetz, will be controlling the GOP agenda in Congress. See Newsweek,  Steve Bannon says Matt Gaetz Will Be ‘De Facto’ Speaker After McCarthy Concessions.

          [Update: McCarthy’s humiliating offer to allow a “motion to vacate” by five members was rejected in a letter by nine Republican members sent on New Year’s Day.]

          Whatever challenges Democrats face as they move toward 2024, those challenges do not include an inevitable struggle for control of the party that will inflict grievous injury no matter the outcome. Democrats face challenges, too, and we will be reminded of them early and often by the media. So, keep in mind that the next two years will be extraordinarily difficult for the GOP, even if the media fails to mention that fact.

Dealing with the polls over the next two years.

          It was not your imagination. Polling regarding the 2022 midterms was not only wrong, it was so wrong that it may have negatively affected Democratic prospects in some contests. The NYTimes published a lengthy analysis of the polling errors in 2022. See NYTimes, The ‘Red Wave’ Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed a False Election Narrative. Kudos to the Times for engaging in introspection about how the media amplified misleading polls. The Times does not mention its own prominent role in distorting the narrative to the detriment of Democrats.

          The lengthy analysis in the Times can be distilled to the following:

  • Polls are not elections.
  • In a closely divided electorate, polls communicate virtually no useful information.
  • Republicans have figured out how to manipulate polls.
  • Polling aggregators like Fivethirtyeight.com and the media amplify the misleading polls generated by partisan affiliates of the GOP.
  • Misinformation from junk polls depressed Democratic turnout in certain instances.

          The ability of Republican pollsters to distort the media narrative had real-life consequences on the outcomes in 2022. Democratic funders abandoned Mandela Barnes in his race against Ron Johnson when garbage Republican polls began to suggest that Johnson was pulling ahead of Barnes by five points (or more). In the end, Barnes lost by one percentage point. But the “negative narrative” resulted in a fundraising edge by Ron Johnson of $26 million.

          What if Democratic funders had not abandoned Barnes based on misleading polling? Would Barnes have fared better if the Democrats had not ceded the fundraising advantage to Ron Johnson? We will never know the answers to those questions for certain. But we can stop falling for the same stupid Republican games in the future.

          So, here’s the point: Don’t stress out over polls during the next two years. We must go about our business as if every vote might be the deciding vote in every election.

Making History … As We Speak

Posted on by under Election 2020, Free Press Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

Today is the final televised hearing of the January 6th committee.  What happens next?  Time will tell.  I like to think the Department of Justice will act on the recommendations of the committee, as well as their own investigations, and that those who participated in attempting to overthrow our voices, our government, will pay a steep price.  I’m not holding my breath, however.  Robert Hubbell’s newsletter today echoes my own thoughts, only he says it much better than I could …

The Judgement of History

Robert B. Hubbell

19 December 2022

On Monday, December 19, 2022, Americans will witness history in the making. A congressional committee will recommend that the DOJ pursue criminal proceedings against a former president for engaging in insurrection to stop the peaceful transfer of power. The recommendation will be based on an exhaustive, transparent, bipartisan investigation that unfolded in public. Republicans boycotted the committee after GOP leadership unsuccessfully attempted to appoint participants in the insurrection to the body investigating their crimes.

The criminal referrals should not be cause for celebration or feelings of vindication. Rather, they should be a cause for hope and increased resolve that our experiment in democracy will endure despite the actions of faithless servants and aspiring tyrants. The United States of America is bigger than Trump and his skulk of cowards. It will outlast them, hold them to account, and subject them to the judgment of history.

The criminal referrals and findings of the January 6th Committee are critical steps in setting the record straight for future generations. The names of the insurrectionists will be memorized by schoolchildren learning about dark passages in our nation’s history: Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Jefferson Davis, Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, . . . .

Sadly, the insurrection continues to this day as the GOP seeks to shield members of its party who remain in Congress after they betrayed the Constitution. No Republican member of Congress agreed to appear before the Committee to provide crucial evidence in one of the most important investigations in our history. The recalcitrant members of Congress continue to violate their oaths every minute they obfuscate, impede, and distort the work of the Committee. They deserve to be expelled from Congress. Indeed, the Committee may recommend discipline or criminal referrals for members who failed to comply with lawful subpoenas issued by the Committee, The Week, Schiff says Jan. 6 committee deciding ‘appropriate remedy’ for uncooperative GOP lawmakers.

 In a depraved act of supreme disrespect and partisanship, a “shadow” committee of Republicans will issue a “counter-report” to the official report of the January 6th Committee. That report will seek to lay blame for security lapses at the Capitol for the insurrection. See Axios, Scoop: GOP shadow committee re-emerges for Jan. 6 report. The response by law enforcement and intelligence agencies is a legitimate area of investigation—and will be covered in the January 6th Committee’s report. But the point of the “shadow committee’s” separate report is to confuse and dilute media coverage of the findings in the J6 Report. Sadly, many members of the media will give “equal time” to a “PR stunt” by insurrectionists and the serious and sober effort by the J6 Committee to understand the root cause of the insurrection.

Trump is acting like a wounded and cornered animal. He is lashing out on his vanity media platform, resorting to the language of incitement that ignited the insurrection. See HuffPo, Donald Trump Evokes Jan. 6 Insurrection, Tells Backers It’s Time To ‘Deal With’ FBI, DOJ “Thugs”. It is doubtful that any other president in American history will ever be credibly accused of insurrection by a congressional committee. Trump is entering a league of one.

The political backlash against the Committee and its members will be savage. Kevin McCarthy has vowed to remove Adam Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee in retribution. Republican leaders of all stripes will lie, distort, and deflect. The tired refrain of “What about Hillary’s emails?” pales in comparison to charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, and conspiracy to defraud the United States (i.e., the fake electors scheme).

For those who care about defending democracy, the vote of the Committee on December 19, 2022, will be momentous. To the extent you can, ignore the noise and focus on the rare achievement that is the sign of a functioning democracy—an effort to hold a former leader to account for his crimes in office. Whatever happens, the judgment of the January 6th Committee will be inscribed in stone as the official history of the unsuccessful insurrection that culminated in the events of January 6th, 2021.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Posted on by under Economic issues, Election 2022, Environmental Issues, Global Issues, Political commentary, Rants, Social commentary

A short one this morning, an excerpt from Robert Hubbell’s latest newsletter regarding the news that both OPEC and Russia intend to reduce oil production.  We all know that means higher prices at the pump, and while this should not be the highest priority on people’s minds as we head into the November mid-term elections, it probably will be.  People ought to be more concerned with the environment, the state of democracy, and human rights, but nope … they are more focused on how much it costs them to drive their gas-guzzling SUVs all over the place because, as one ‘friend’ told me, “it’s my happiness that matters most.”  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Putin’s War Tax on Americans

Robert B. Hubbell
6 October 2022

Saudi Arabia gave Russia a huge gift on Wednesday by coordinating a two million barrel per day reduction in oil production among OPEC oil producers. The effect of Saudi Arabia’s decision is to thwart the efforts by the Group of 7 nations to place a cap on the market price of Russian oil. Saudi Arabia’s decision will drive up oil prices, which Russia will use to fund its war against Ukraine. See NYTimes, The E.U.’s plan faces a new hurdle, as oil producers led by Saudi Arabia aim to keep global prices high.

          To state the obvious, neither Saudi Arabia nor Russia is a friend of the US or western democracy. Indeed, both are dictatorial, murderous regimes that ruthlessly suppress their people and seek to destabilize global peace and security. And both are darlings of the GOP and Fox “News.” Tucker Carlson claimed on Tuesday that Joe Biden blew up Nord Stream gas pipelines—an act of sabotage that occurred as Russian submarines and warships were spotted lurking near the points of attack on the pipelines.

          And, of course, the GOP’s mob boss welcomed Saudi Arabia’s blood money at his Bedminster golf course only weeks before the twenty-first remembrance of the victims of the Saudi-assisted terrorist attacks on 9/11. Trump provided a feeble excuse for “sports-washing” the Saudi involvement, saying, “Nobody’s gotten to the bottom” of responsibility for the terror attacks—a blatant lie.

          The effort also seems intended to meddle in US and European politics. It is only a matter of time before Republicans begin blaming Joe Biden and Democrats for the increase in gas prices—rather than acknowledging that the increases are directly attributable to Saudi Arabia’s efforts to prop up Vladimir Putin. Don’t let Republicans peddle that lie without challenge. Saudi Arabia has just imposed a “Putin war tax” on all Americans.

A Horrendous Ruling …

Posted on by under Election 2022, Election 2024, Law and justice, Political commentary, Rants

Are we getting tired yet?  Are we sickened by all we see coming out of the extreme right, the former guy & his minions, and the exaggerated evangelicals?  Would we like to just go somewhere ‘far away from the madding crowd’ and live out our days in peace?  Yeah … me too.  But guess what?  That’s what they’re counting on … the right-wingers who would replace our Constitution with their bible, and replace our democracy with their theocracy are hoping we’ll get so exhausted by it that we’ll tuck our tails between our legs and slink off, leaving them to do as they will.  But NO!!! We’re gonna all take a few nice deep breaths and remind ourselves what’s at stake here, then get back in the saddle and do whatever we can to stamp “PAID” on the lunacy that resides in the U.S. today.

I was enraged and incensed by the news that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled to appoint a special master to review the Mar-a-Lago search, possibly delaying the Justice Department’s work that is certain to result in charges against Trump.  The first thing I said was to call her a not-very-nice word meaning prostitute, for in my book she has prostituted herself … she indebted herself to Trump in exchange for a prestigious judicial appointment.  And this week, he called in the debt.  And she paid it, even though her decision goes against the people of this nation, goes against the rule of law, goes against everything she learned in her tenure at University of Michigan Law School.

I share here Robert Hubbell’s views of the horrendous decision …

Judge Cannon did everyone a favor.

Robert Hubbell

7 September 2022

In one respect, Judge Aileen Cannon did everyone a favor in her decision to appoint a special master to review the Mar-a-Lago search. She wrote an opinion so awful and bereft of legal reasoning that commentators on all sides of the political spectrum are panning the opinion as an abomination. Indeed, they are falling over themselves to find adjectives, comparisons, and metaphors that adequately describe the havoc of her decision. Here is a fair sampling:

          And then there is Bill Barr, a man who destroyed his legacy to support Trump. Here is what Bill Barr told Trump’s supporters during an appearance on Fox News:

  • The opinion, I think, was wrong, and I think the government should appeal it. It’s deeply flawed in a number of ways.
  • [T]he government has very strong evidence of what it really needs to determine whether charges are appropriate . . . there’s some evidence to suggest that they were deceived.
  • [N]one of [the government’s case] really relates to the content of documents. It relates to the fact that there were documents [at Mar-a-Lago] and the fact that they were classified and the fact that they were subpoenaed and never delivered.

My point is not to trash Judge Cannon’s integrity, intelligence, or fairness. She has already done so beyond my meager ability to add to the opprobrium already heaped upon her. Rather, the point is that Judge Cannon now understands she is universally regarded as the most incompetent, biased, and clueless federal district judge in the nation—and that is saying something!

          How Judge Cannon responds to that stomach-churning realization is what matters. Will Judge Cannon attempt to undo her grotesque error by revising her order? Will she reject efforts by Trump’s team to exploit the legal gruel disguised as analysis in her opinion? Or will she redouble her efforts to serve as Trump’s surrogate defense counsel from her position on the bench in the Southern District of Florida?

          The next few days will provide much more information about Judge Cannon’s intentions. I infer (read: speculate) that she is in legal waters way above her head and tried to kludge a remedy unsupported by the law. The result is a Frankenstein’s monster that will haunt her for the remainder of her career. Her decision is already being cited as “The Loose Cannon Rule,” under which criminal defendants can seek a stay of federal criminal proceedings whenever evidence is seized under a search warrant.

          The DOJ has many paths forward, most of which are legally complicated and equally unsatisfactory. But as Bill Barr also noted in his comments to Fox News, the decision is more like a “rain delay.” One of the most likely steps is for Merrick Garland to proceed with the special master process and appeal the order staying the investigation—which is a constitutional insult of the highest order.

          In her order, Judge Cannon has told the Article II branch of the government that it may not perform the duties granted to it by the Constitution. As Neal Katyal noted yesterday on MSNBC, none of his first-year law students at Georgetown would suggest such an outlandish and unsupported violation of separation of powers. Although the University of Michigan Law School is not the guarantor of the future performance of its graduates, the faculty at the U.Mich.Law should be revising their syllabi to add a few extra sessions on separation of powers—not to mention a deep dive into US v. Nixon. And judicial ethics. And legal research. And common sense.

          In the end, Judge Cannon’s decision is so bad it cannot stand. The DOJ will find a way to circumvent the worst parts of her ruling. Trump stole classified documents, concealed them, lied about it, and refused to return them after being served with a grand jury subpoena. He is in deep trouble. If past is prologue, Trump will make his predicament worse by uttering new lies and issuing new admissions.

A Promise Made … And Kept

Posted on by under education, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

This week, President Biden announced his student loan forgiveness program … a long-awaited program to help those lower-and-middle income people who are struggling under a mound of student debt.  Since this is a program that helps real people, not wealthy corporate executives, it was to be expected that the Republicans would be up in arms, and they did not disappoint. It is reminiscent of the hue-and-cry when President Obama announced the Affordable Care Act, aka ‘Obamacare’.  I’ve read a number of editorials, both pro and con, but I think Robert Hubbell sums it up best …

Promises Kept.

Robert B. Hubbell

25 August 2022

       President Biden kept another campaign promise on Wednesday by announcing a student loan forgiveness program that will cancel up to $20,000 for certain borrowers. Importantly, the plan also provides relief to future borrowers by cutting in half the amount that borrowers have to pay each month from 10% to 5% of discretionary income and forgives loan balances after ten years of payments. The White House Fact Sheet for Student Loan Relief contains the details of the plan. Per the Fact Sheet, the plan will

  • Provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education and up to $10,000 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients
  • Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 or $250,000 for married couples.
  • Extend the pause on federal student loan repayment will be extended one final time through December 31, 2022

          The Department of Education estimates that 43 million borrowers will receive some form of relief and about 20 million borrowers will receive complete forgiveness. The DOE estimates that 90% of all relief will go to borrowers earning less than $75,000.

          Biden’s proposal will improve the lives of tens of millions of Americans. For reasons difficult to understand, the backlash against Biden’s plan has been fast and furious. For Republicans, the hypocrisy writes itself. The GOP has described Biden’s loan forgiveness as “socialism” and a “moral hazard.” And yet, fifteen Republicans in Congress (or their business affiliates) received forgiveness of $16,193,000 in loans they received from the federal government under the Paycheck Protection Plan [emphasis added]—an average debt cancellation of more than $1 million, compared to a maximum forgiveness of $20,000 under Biden’s Plan. And then there is Donald Trump, who has petitioned for bankruptcy on six occasions to avoid paying the debts of his businesses . . . .

          The Editorial Board of the Washington Post seemed to take personal offense over the plan in an editorial entitled, Biden’s student loan forgiveness is an expensive, regressive mistake. The Board wrote:

          The loan-forgiveness decision is even worse [than the four month extension of the moratorium on loan repayments]. Widely canceling student loan debt is regressive. It takes money from the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college, to subsidize the education debt of people with valuable degrees.

          While the Post’s objection is technically true, it is also true for the following subsidies and credits: Trump’s 2017 tax cut for millionaires, oil company subsidies, export subsidies for US manufacturers, auto industry subsidies, lower tax rates for hedge fund managers (“carried interest deduction”), 100% deductibility for yachts purchased for “business purposes,” and deduction for 100% of the future depreciation for private jets in their first year of service.

          All of the above subsidies, credits, and deductions are regressive because—as the Post notes—“the broader tax base is mostly made up of workers” who are not millionaires, who do not manage hedge funds, who do not own oil wells, and who do not purchase yachts or private jets. And yet, the Post and others reserve peevish indignation for a program that helps middle- and lower-income earners who took a chance by investing in their futures and themselves.

         And there were complaints about “unfairness” by those who paid their loans or who do not qualify for loan forgiveness. Biden did what he could given the limits on the Department of Education’s ability to modify its loan programs. The fact that Biden crafted a plan that targets middle- to low-income earners was a reasonable compromise. Was it perfect? Of course not. But when that becomes the standard for achieving progress, all forward movement will cease. We should celebrate another promise kept by Biden.

“Right” To Dine???

Posted on by under Law and justice, Social commentary

You may have heard that a crowd of peaceful protesters gathered outside a restaurant where Justice Kavanaugh was dining one evening recently.  Now, I don’t approve of threats of violence under any circumstances, but from what I can gather, there were none … this was a peaceful protest.  Actions have consequences, and when you make a decision that is life-altering (not in any good way) for more than half the population, I think you have to expect that people will make their displeasure known in whatever way they can.  In fact, one section of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads …

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In his July 9th newsletter, Robert Hubbell summed it up well, I think …

These two things are not alike.

A troubling aspect of the Dobbs decision is that many people view it as an abstraction rather than a significant change in the status of women under the Constitution. A small example of that occurred in a protest at Morton’s Steakhouse in Washington, D.C. Justice Kavanaugh was eating dinner at Morton’s yesterday. Word quickly spread, protesters gathered outside the restaurant, and someone called Morton’s to express their displeasure at Kavanaugh’s presence in the restaurant. Kavanaugh later left the restaurant through the back entrance to avoid the protesters.

Morton’s (read: a male manager at Morton’s who didn’t have the sense to consult a woman) issued an offensive statement that read, in part:

“Politics . . . should not trample the freedom of the right to congregate and eat dinner. Disturbing the dinner of all of our customers was an act of selfishness and void of decency.”

Wow! Strong words! Let’s take a look at Morton’s statement and consider the competing injuries of being subjected to free speech and being stalked by bounty hunters seeking a reward for reporting a woman who just had a miscarriage. Spoiler alert: Those two things are not alike.

First, Morton’s asserts there is a “right to eat dinner.” Well, let’s apply the Dobbs analytical framework to that right. The “right to eat dinner” does not appear in the text of the Constitution, nor is there an implied “right to eat dinner” that is a “deeply rooted tradition in our nation’s history.” As explained in Merriam-Webster’s usage note on “dinner” …

“The use of dinner to refer to the main meal of the day, eaten as the last meal of the day, is a relatively recent phenomenon.”

So, sorry, Morton’s, there is no express or implied constitutional “right to eat dinner” under Dobbs.

Second, Morton’s (like Kavanaugh) might be shocked to learn that the Constitution expressly protects “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Justice Kavanaugh might not like hearing the grievances of the people injured by his decision in Dobbs, but he has no constitutional right to prevent the protesters from expressing those opinions peacefully.

Finally, Kavanaugh knew when he joined the majority in Dobbs that women suffering miscarriages would be reported by bounty hunters to law enforcement in the hope of earning a $10,000 reward. Between 10% to 15% of pregnancies spontaneously miscarry. In Texas, women who suffer miscarriages and seek medical treatment presumptively expose their doctors to criminal prosecution and a $100,000 fine. Thus, the 10% – 15% of women who suffer miscarriages in Texas will likely be denied medical treatment because their doctors fear they will be charged with a felony. Compare that injury to being forced to eat a $75 steak while drinking a $200 bottle of wine as protesters gather peacefully on the street.

Kavanaugh lied his way onto the Court and has engaged in the bad-faith reversal of settled precedents in multiple cases. He should not be surprised that Americans are unhappy with his use of the Court as a raw political weapon. Let’s hope that the peaceful protests cause him to reflect on the fact that his actions have made the lives of American women immensely worse. Perhaps a bit of humility about the real-world consequences of his decisions will temper his thinking in future matters.

As for Morton’s, telling women that protesting their demotion to second-class citizenship is “selfish and void of decency” demonstrates that it is out of touch with what just happened in America. Someone who is not angry at women should take over the PR function at Morton’s.