Impeach Barr Too

Today the United States House of Representatives will vote on the Articles of Impeachment against Donald Trump and will almost certainly approve them by a party line vote with a couple of dissenting Democrats, one of whom has announced he’s switching parties. There’s discussion of making Justin Amash (Independent – MI), who was a Republican until he announced support for impeachment, one of the managers of the Senate trial, if this was a Law & Order episode he’d be an assistant District Attorney. Members of the Senate will be jurors, the judge will be Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Jury member Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) has publicly stated that he is coordinating with the Donald Trump as to how the Senate trial will be handled even though doing so violates his oath as a juror in the trial held in the Senate. If you made such a statement after being selected as a juror member you’d be booted off the jury and possibly jailed for contempt of court. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has made similar statements. Both men would recuse themselves of if they had any integrity. Trump has been complaining about fairness since the impeachment inquiry began yet he seems uninterested in a fair trial as he’s quite happily been sending campaign donations to Senate Republicans who commit to supporting him in the impeachment trial. In any other trial that would be seen as bribing a juror.

Now that the House is about done with its part of impeaching Trump it’s time to address other serious matters. No, it’s not that the House hasn’t gotten anything else done as there are over 270 bills passed by the House that Mitch McConnell hasn’t allowed to see the light of day in the Senate. The next important job is to impeach Attorney General William Barr for obstruction of Congress, abuse of power and failing to faithfully execute his office.

Barr has held the office for 10 months and during that time he has made it clear that he serves the interests of Donald Trump rather than those of the United States. He misled Congress and the people of the United States through his words and deeds when the Mueller report was made public. He is implicated in the Ukraine scandal over Trump trading military aid and a White House visit for an investigation into a possible 2020 election opponent due to having withheld the whistleblower complaint from Congress. Barr criticized the conclusion of his own department's inspector general who reported that the FBI had a legitimate basis for launching an investigation into Russian interference in our 2016 election and the possibility that the Trump campaign was involved. In addition, Barr has defied congressional subpoenas regarding the 2020 census and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's claims that a citizenship status question was added at the request of the Department of Justice. The Supreme Court has determined that the justifications for the question offered by the DOJ were contrived and made up after the fact in order to conceal the real reason.

Through his actions Attorney General Barr has politicized the Department of Justice and undermined trust in the law by acting in the interests of a president who has committed impeachable offenses instead of upholding his oath of office and the Constitution of the United States, therefore he should be impeached and removed from office.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 18, 2019

Trump Administration Most Corrupt in a Century

Even putting aside the numerous corrupt and criminal actions by the current occupant of the White House such as obstruction of justice as documented in the Mueller report and violations of the emoluments clause by receiving large amounts of money from various foreign countries and businesses through his hotels the Trump administration is without a doubt the most thoroughly corrupt since at least Warren G. Harding was president from 1921-1923.

Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price was run out of the administration for using tax payer funds to pay for charter flights to various speaking engagements but wasn’t prosecuted. Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin got a slap on the wrist for doing the same thing to the tune of over $800,000 and is still a Cabinet member. Former Texas governor and now Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, has been investigated for using $56,000 in taxpayer money to pay for charter flights that could have been made on scheduled airlines for far less.

Before resigning in December, Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke was being investigated for possible self-dealing involving a developer working on a project near land in Montana owned by Zinke and his wife, Lola. The question is whether Zinke used his office for financial benefit; the Interior Department’s inspector general referred the matter to the Justice Department. He also spent thousands of dollars of public money on charter flights that he could have made on regularly scheduled airlines for a few hundred dollars. In addition friends and campaign contributors of Zinke were awarded a $300 million dollar contract to rebuild the power grid in Puerto Rico even though their company consists of only two people and the company has no experience with such a large scale project.

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt was under investigation by the inspector general of his agency prior to his resignation. The inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency said that former Administrator Scott Pruitt wasted nearly $124,000 of taxpayer money on excessive travel, including first-class airline tickets. Pruitt had EPA staff help his wife, Marilyn, seek employment with an annual salary of more than $200,000. Just three months after Pruitt was sworn in as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Pruitt used agency staff to contact Chick-Fil-A about his wife becoming a franchisee. Pruitt paid just $50 a night to stay in a Capitol Hill condominium linked to a prominent Washington lobbyist whose firm represents a long list of fossil fuel companies like Exxon.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson spent about $45,000 refitting his office, including $4,000 for new blinds, more than $8,000 for a dishwasher, and nearly $32,000 for a dining-room table. In March 2018, Congress asked the GAO to investigate the spending. While the blinds were found to be acceptable the table and dishwasher broke the law.

In February, the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) refused to certify Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s financial disclosure statement because he hadn’t sold a stock that he claimed he had. Ross insisted the error was simply a mistake. His claim might have been more believable if the OGE hadn’t already had to warn Ross about inaccuracies in previous disclosures, and if he hadn’t also been caught lying to the press about his finances.

Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump began using the slogan “Drain the swamp” to represent his purported intention to stamp out corruption and self-dealing in Washington. From the examples above its pretty clear he didn’t mean what he said.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 14, 2019

Truth Lost On Trump Voters

When will the American public recognize that we have not only been lied to on a few of Trump’s campaign promises as is generally expected of any candidate but we’ve been lied to about the kind of man that Trump really is. He claimed to have wonderful, super, incredible plans for healthcare reform, so good you won’t believe it. It turns out he had no plan at all as shown by the fact that Paul Ryan is the one pitching an Obamacare replacement plan that doesn’t do any of the things that Trump promised during the campaign. Trump said his plan would cover more people at a lower price and continue to cover pre-existing conditions. The current iteration of the Republican Repeal and Replace does none of those things.

Trump said “I'm a really smart guy.” He also said “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. . . . My primary consultant is myself, and I have, you know, I have a good instinct for this stuff.” If those statements had a shred of truth he’d have known that President Andrew Jackson was long dead by the time of the Civil War which Trump recently claimed Jackson would have avoided. He’d also have know that Frederick Douglass, a celebrated historical figure, was a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln and therefore dead for over a century so he wouldn’t have said “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.”

That “big, beautiful wall” Trump promised Mexico would pay for and so many voted for him over isn’t happening either. At least he’s backing off that one slowly, now it will only be in “certain areas” because “you don't need” it where “you have these massive physical structures” or “you have certain big rivers.” Of course Texas Republicans are strong proponents of property rights so the use of eminent domain to acquire the land necessary to build and support such a wall is anathema not to mention the landowners along the border wanting none of it. The budget deal that will keep the federal government’s lights on until September doesn’t include a dime for the wall so it’s looking more like it will never be built.

According to Trump during the campaign, China is a currency manipulator and would be treated as such once he was in office. He quickly changed that tune, probably while eating the “most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen” with Chinese President Xi Jinping and ordering 59 Tomahawk missiles to strike Syria. Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, considered the missile strike “after dinner entertainment” which “didn’t cost the president anything.” Of course the fact that those missiles cost taxpayers between $480,000 and $1,000,000 each and didn’t do enough damage to stop Syrian pilots from launching aircraft from the very same facility just hours later meant nothing to Trump. On the positive side the president did make a killing on the stock market as his shares of Raytheon, which makes the Tomahawk missile, went up 1.45% on news of the strike.

It isn’t just campaign promises and lies though, the Washington Post has been tracking his statements since he took office and during the first 100 days there have only been 10 for which they haven’t recorded at least one lie. Most days there are several lies. Sadly 93% of Trump voters still support him. How much damage will he have to do before they turn against him?

Published in the Seguin Gazette May 5, 2017