Month: August 2018

The scheme is a scam
by Tom Sullivan

Matt Taibbi wrote in Griftopia, “There are really two Americas.” For the grifter class, government is “a tool for making money,” while “in everybody-else land, the government is something to be avoided.”

A tweet by education writer Jeff Bryant (Education Opportunity Network) alerted me to another education grift that sounded quite familiar.

Illinois is handing out coupons for well-off parents who already enroll their kids in private schools. Taxpayers may never know how many vouchers go to students already attending private schools because no one is required to report that information. @carolburris @DianeRavitch https://t.co/PkivFvyZ3M— Jeff Bryant (@jeffbcdm) August 23, 2018

WBEZ Chicago recently dug into the new Illinois tax credit scholarship program it calls “groundbreaking” in size:

Last August, with almost no public vetting or debate, Illinois passed a massive school choice program, making it the 18th state to add a “tax credit scholarship” program. Now, at least 5,600 Illinois students are headed to private school with taxpayer help, according to data compiled by WBEZ. Tens of thousands of kids tried for the scholarships, which can pay up to $12,793.

Tax credit scholarships aren’t technically vouchers, but for families and schools, there’s little difference. Opponents call them “neo-vouchers.”

This is money laundering for the masses and back-door state funding for religious schools. WBEZ explains:

With vouchers, states pay private schools directly from taxpayer funds. But with tax credit scholarships, the state never actually takes control of tax money. Instead,

1. Taxpayers donate to a nonprofit “scholarship granting organization.”
2. Those groups award scholarships and distribute the money to schools.
3. The state then issues taxpayers a “credit” toward their tax bill.

In Illinois, taxpayers get a 75-cent credit for every dollar they donate. Because it’s all voluntary, state supreme courts have repeatedly upheld tax credit scholarship programs. Declining to hear a challenge in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a 5-4 decision that when “taxpayers choose to contribute to [scholarship organizations], they spend their own money, not money the State has collected.”

Advocates sell the scholarship programs as “school choice” that will help the underprivileged leave public schools. In reality, they are often tax breaks for parents who have already made that choice.

At St. Mary Star of the Sea School on the Southwest Side, 30 kids are getting tax credit scholarships. According to Principal Candice Usauskas, two-thirds were already students there. All seven kids who will attend Frances Xavier Warde with taxpayer help were already students at the school, according to the group that awarded their scholarships.

We may never know how many scholarship winners were already attending private schools because scholarship groups aren’t required to report that information.

Over a quarter of students with the scholarships (28%) are not those who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Kids from low-performing school districts are supposed to get priority, but that is not always the case, WBEZ’s Linda Lutton found. The maximum scholarship available is the largest in the country at $12,973. An Illinois taxpayer can donate up to $1 million to the funds. (Joint filers are considered a single taxpayer.)

Parents already sending their kids to the private school donate their taxable money to a scholarship fund, get a massive tax credit, apply for a scholarship, then get back state-tax-free tuition from the fund to send their kids to the schools they were already attending, some of them religious schools. Why didn’t Donald “That Makes Me Smart” Trump think of this?

In Georgia, the program was only available to kids already enrolled in public schools. The bill’s author told Gwinnett Christian Academy he had a workaround for that. His scheme was a scam worthy of the payday loan industry. The New York Times reported on the plan in 2012 and I wrote about it at Scrutiny Hooligans:

Once the scholarship bill passed, the Times continues, “parents of children in private schools began flooding public school offices to officially ‘enroll’ their children.” To enroll, but not to attend. Rep. David Casas, one of the bill’s sponsors, explained why in a YouTube video (the video has been taken down; transcript by the Southern Education Foundation):

“Some people felt a little bit weird about that; felt it was a little dishonest that they would take their child, enroll them in a public school and not have them actually attend, but all of a sudden they actually qualify for a scholarship. I’m telling you, we deliberately put the wording in there for that.”

Education Secretary Betsy “Ten Yachts” DeVos must love this kind of education reform. From my 2012 post:

Reagan taught that government is the problem. In post-financial meltdown America and in the absence of Wall Street prosecutions, with presidential candidates and major corporations hiding profits offshore to avoid taxes, with tech billionaires renouncing their U.S. citizenship rather than pay theirs (and being hailed as heroes in the financial press for doing it), scamming the taxpayers to subsidize your child’s private education seems like pretty acceptable behavior, even for churches. But it is not arising from dogmatic anti-governmentism. Small-time players have simply discovered what the big-time grifters already knew — that government is the enemy only so long as public tax dollars are going into someone else’s pockets. Thus, conservatives, fundamentalists and others have gotten behind the movement to “reform” public education by diverting public tax dollars into their own pockets in the name of providing more choices for the underprivileged.

Illinois is the 18th state with a tax credit scholarship program.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Trump’s blue dress

by digby

Oh my:

The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press.

The detail came as several media outlets reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors had granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker, potentially laying bare his efforts to protect his longtime friend Trump.

Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations alleging he, Trump and the tabloid were involved in buying the silence of a porn actress and a Playboy model who alleged affairs with Trump.

Several people familiar with the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements, said the safe was a great source of power for Pecker, the company’s CEO.

The Trump records were stored alongside similar documents pertaining to other celebrities’ catch-and-kill deals, in which exclusive rights to people’s stories were bought with no intention of publishing to keep them out of the news. By keeping celebrities’ embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return.

But after The Wall Street Journal initially published the first details of Playboy model Karen McDougal’s catch-and-kill deal shortly before the 2016 election, those assets became a liability. Fearful that the documents might be used against American Media, Pecker and the company’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, removed them from the safe in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, according to one person directly familiar with the events.

The AP cannot say whether the documents were destroyed or simply were moved to a location known to fewer people.

I’m going to guess he still has them. They never destroy this kind of evidence.

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Trump got by with a little help from his friends

by digby

Those are all covers of the National Enquirer during the 2016 campaign. They appeared on every grocery check stand in America.

I wrote about this for Salon during the campaign. I suspect nobody thought it mattered at thetime. I think it probably did. Trump’s “strength and stamina” line was all about this — the frail old lady couldn’t take the stress:

Medical mudslinging: Right wingers reach a new low with their smears about Hillary’s health.The right-wing smear machine is working at warp speed to convince the nation that Hillary Clinton has brain damage

How do we know it’s the dog days of August in a presidential election year? Swimmers and swiftboats, that’s how. Actually until August of 2004, we used to call swiftboating by other names: whisper campaigns and smear jobs. But after the success of the slick, pre-packaged set of lies about Senator John Kerry’s war record this tactic will always be known for the boat that first made Kerry a hero and later destroyed his reputation.

This year, we’re treated to an especially ugly form of swiftboating. The right-wing smear machine is working at warp speed to convince the nation that Hillary Clinton has brain damage. That is not hyperbole or some kind of a joke. They are literally claiming that she is hiding a physical and mental disability that renders her unfit for office. And they are, as usual, being helped by members of the mainstream media who are simply unable to resist “reporting” such a juicy tale even knowing that it is absurd. And so it becomes part of the narrative, true or not, that will color the rest of the campaign and Clinton’s presidency should she win.

Karl Rove first crudely suggested that Clinton had a serious brain disorder when she fell and suffered a concussion a few years ago which required her to wear her thick prism glasses instead of contacts to correct temporary double vision. Nobody took him seriously at the time, but the rumor has been percolating in the fever swamps and Trump and company were obviously aware of it. Trump himself has been saying from the beginning that Clinton doesn’t have the “strength or the stamina” to be president. He also claims that she can’t campaign more than a couple of days a week and then she has to go hide and recover. (This is one of those lies so blatant that it renders people mute — Clinton is clearly campaigning constantly, indeed she’s out there more than he is.)

This attack was echoed by Matt Drudge as far back as October when he appeared on conspiracy monger Alex Jones’ show and said “she’s old and she’s sick, she is not a viable, vibrant leader for this country.” It’s no surprise then that this latest full blown swiftboat offensive began on Drudge’s web site. It’s one of his specialties.

On Aug. 7 he linked to an obscure right wing website that had posted a picture of Clinton tripping on some porch steps and being steadied by a couple of aides under the title “2016: Hillary Conquers the Stairs.” He neglected to mention that the picture was taken in February.

The next salvo came from Trump’s friends at the National Enquirer which published a screaming headline “Hillary Clinton’s Secret Health Crisis.” And according to Ben Collins at the Daily Beast, “by the middle of the day the No. 2 trending Google search about Hillary Clinton was: “Is Hillary having health problems?”

That night Trump surrogate Sean Hannity devoted his show to fanning the rumors, even bringing in the Fox Medical A-Team who appear regularly on the network to diagnose her from afar and demand to see a complete neurological workup and all of Clinton’s medical records. He continued the rumor mongering throughout the week.

By this time the fall was old news. Now she was said to be having seizures and speaking oddly and having weird expressions on her face and exhibiting muddled thinking. When a protester tried to rush the stage at one of her rallies and a secret service agent stepped to the podium and said they had things under control, people said he had a diazepam pen in his hand at the ready, apparently in case she had a seizure right there on the spot. (It’s all rubbish, of course.)

Meanwhile, the “Alt-right” has gone completely over the edge with this craziness. Collins writes that the conspiracy site Info Wars has turned over its entire site to these rumors:

Hillary Clinton supposedly has Parkinson’s disease, syphilis, brain damage, a brain tumor, autism, a degenerative disease that is giving her seizures and/or strokes, and a blood clot, according to InfoWars writer Paul Joseph Watson. Oh, and he says she has a drug problem. All of these diagnoses — save for Parkinson’s, which commanded a separate full-length article—came in a single one of Watson’s YouTube videos released on Thursday. It now has over 1.6 million views at press time.

And yes the mainstream media has joined in the fun. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews has devoted several segments to the issue, apparently convinced that where Republicans blow smoke there must be fire saying, “what are the Republicans up to on this health issue? Why are they on to this? What do they know? Is there something we don’t know in the health records? Something that could change this election around?”

Newspapers are running stories pointing out that she uses a stool on stage when someone else is giving a speech as evidence that she’s too weak to stand. Web sites are posting picture arrays of Clinton using a pillow behind her back as if that’s a sign that she “needs propping up.” Dr Drew Pinsky of Celebrity Rehab weighed in saying that he’s concerned that Clinton isn’t getting the proper medical care for “her condition.” (Even Newt Gingrich called that “junk medicine.“) And fake medical records appeared out of nowhere and started making the rounds prompting Clinton’s physician to reiterate her earlier declaration that Clinton was a healthy woman capable of handling the duties of president.

Last night Trump surrogate Katrina Pierson took it to a new level by offering up a full diagnosis on MSNBC, saying there are “reports of observations of Hillary Clinton’s behavior and mannerisms,” that Clinton suffers from “dysphasia” — a neurological condition that limits a person’s ability to communicate or understand speech. I’m going to take a guess that Pierson didn’t come up with those talking points herself.

This confluence of activity didn’t happen by chance. It was planned and executed from InfoWars to Youtube to Drudge to Hannity to The Daily Mail to MSNBC and finally the NBC Nightly News and The New York Times. And regardless of what the fact checks say, a whole lot of people in this country now believe that Hillary Clinton, a woman of great intelligence and impressive endurance, is a brain-damaged invalid. Swiftboat mission accomplished.

You’ll recall that when she stumbled in September the mainstream media went completely bonkers. They had prepared the ground well…

Now that we know money was exchanged, and Pecker got immunity in the Cohen matter, it’s fair to ask how much of this was coordinated with Trump.

By the way, Daily Beast noted the blackout on Trump on the cover of the Enquirer the last couple of months a few weeks ago which suggests Pecker has been talking to the SDNY for a while.

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A+ Delusion

by digby

In case you didn’t get a chance to hear Trump’s interview with Fox and Friends today (and get triggered by the sound of his voice as I do and can’t stand to watch the above video) here’s a nice summary by Briat Stelter at CNN which is headlined “let’s play softball”:

1: “Mr. President thank you so much for sitting down with me. How are you doing?”

He said he is doing great.

2: “How is our country’s first lady doing? And how are your children?”

He didn’t answer about his children, but he said the first lady is doing great. “She goes through a lot with all this publicity,” Trump said.

3: “How do you handle all of that?”

Trump says “I’ve always had controversy in my life and I’ve always succeeded. I’ve always won. I’ve always won.” Then he wrongly says the media “never covers” the low unemployment rate.

4. Earhardt turned to Tuesday’s “huge news day” and said “there’s a lot breaking today as well. Michael Cohen, tell me about your relationship with him.”

Trump downplays his relationship with Cohen, saying he “didn’t do big deals, did small deals,” adding, “Not somebody that was with me that much.”

5. “He said — one story said you didn’t know anything about the payments and now he’s saying that you directed him to make these payments. Did you direct him to make these payments?”

Trump says Cohen “made the deal” and pleaded guilty to “two counts that aren’t a crime,” a reference to two campaign finance violations. Trump says he “watched a number of shows” and heard that “those two counts aren’t even a crime.”

6. “Did you know about the payments?”

Trump says he knew “later on,” a claim that is contradicted by Cohen’s September 2016 audio tape of a conversation with Trump about the pending payments. Earhardt did not ask about that.

Trump reiterated that two of Cohen’s guilty counts “weren’t crimes.”

7: “Why is he doing this? He’s your attorney?”

Trump says it’s because Cohen “made a great deal.” He points out that Cohen had “other clients.” One of those other clients was Earhardt’s colleague Sean Hannity. Earhardt did not mention that.

8: “If it’s not illegal — if you’re saying the payments, if they’re not illegal, then why would he even — why would he use that information for a plea deal?”

Trump says people sometimes make up stories. “It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal.” He then goes on a long rant and complains about Democrats being treated differently.

9: “Double standard?”

Trump, at Earhardt’s invitation, continues to complain. He claims that his choice for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, “never took control of the Justice Department.” Then he pivots to say the country is “going so well.”

10: “Are you considering pardoning Paul Manafort?”

Trump does not answer. (After the interview was taped on Wednesday, Earhardt went on Hannity’s show and said Trump told her that he is, in fact, considering pardoning Manafort. Then she backtracked, saying he never answered the question.)

In another long answer, Trump says “they got him,” meaning Manafort, “on things totally unrelated to the campaign. And by the way, they got Cohen on totally unrelated to the campaign.” Actually, two of the counts directly related to Trump’s campaign, but Earhardt lets that go.

11: “Mr. President, a lot of people are frustrated. A lot of your supporters are frustrated with the DOJ with Jeff Sessions. There are rumors that you’re going to fire him after the mid-terms and Rosenstein. They also want these documents. They’re wondering if you will use your power to get these documents released?”

“Yes,” he says. “At the right time I think I’m going to have to do the documents,” he said, in reference to GOP lawmakers’ pursuit of documents related to the Russia probe. He claims “there’s such corruption” in the administration he oversees.

12: “Rosenstein signed the last FISA report.”

Trump says it bothers him.

13: “Will you fire him? Will you fire Sessions?”

He doesn’t answer.

14: “Let’s talk about immigration. Mollie Tibbetts, another American killed by an illegal alien. It’s just adding fuel to this already controversial immigration subject that you’ve been outspoken about. What do you say to those who disagree with your immigration plans?”

He defends ICE, attacks Democrats, and says “we’re building the wall.”

15: “The Nazi prison guard living here in New York, living in Queens. ICE officials deported him. Why was that so important for you? Because I know that was on your agenda, has been since the beginning.”

Trump says “I have a lot of Jewish friends who said to me about this man living in Queens.” He says the Bush and Obama administrations were “unable to pull it off,” meaning deport the man, “and I was able to pull it off.”

16: “76 days away from the midterms. Hard to believe. If the Democrats take back power, do you believe they will try to impeach you?”

Trump says “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job” and predicts that the market would crash if he’s impeached. Then he pivots to trade deals.

17: “The press. Is the press the enemy of the people?”

Trump responds by trying to drive a wedge between “good,” approved outlets and “bad” ones. He says the “fake news” is the enemy, and “it’s a big chunk, OK? Somebody said what’s the chunk. I said 80%. It’s a lot. It’s a lot.” But the other 20% are real.

Then he pivots to a long monologue about North Korea and how he isn’t treated well by the press.

18: “What grade do you give yourself so far?”

He gives himself “an A plus.”

Of course he does. He also said that everyone will be poor if he is impeached. Because we won’t have his “kind of thinking” in the White House.

Here’s another dotard:

“I think impeachment would be totally horrible. There’s no reason. He didn’t collude with the Russians, he didn’t obstruct justice. Everything Cohen says has been disproved. You’d only impeach him for political reasons. And the American people would revolt against that.”

He also says he thinks this has all “turned in the president’s favor.”

It must be nice on their planet.

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It looks like the Senate Republicans have a plan to help Trump get away with it

by digby

And Lindsey Graham is now officially Trump’s top henchman:

Two key Republican senators signaled to President Donald Trump that he could replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the midterm elections in November, a move that would open the way for firing Robert Mueller or constraining his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

“The president’s entitled to an attorney general he has faith in, somebody that’s qualified for the job, and I think there will come a time, sooner rather than later, where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who may be in line to head the Judiciary Committee next year, told reporters Thursday. “Clearly, Attorney General Sessions doesn’t have the confidence of the president.”

Sessions defended his performance in a statement Thursday, saying “we have had unprecedented success at effectuating the President’s agenda.” He added, “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

Graham warned against acting against Sessions before the election, calling that possibility “a nonstarter.” That “would create havoc” with Senate efforts to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and with the midterm elections in November, he said.

That represents a significant shift from Graham’s stance a year ago, when he warned Trump publicly that if he fired Sessions “there will be holy hell to pay.”

Senator Chuck Grassley, the current Judiciary chairman, also changed his position on Thursday, saying in an interview that he’d be able to make time for hearings for a new attorney general after saying in the past that the panel was too busy to tackle that explosive possibility.

They are going all in. It is no longer reasonable to think they will ever “see the light.” Republicans in congress are all accomplices in Trump’s myriad crimes and they have no intention of “flipping.”

It’s done.

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The Tragic Genius of the Democrats 

by tristero

Democrats are geniuses at reverse alchemy. They can transmute the purest political gold into lead sludge:

To date, Democrats have urged their candidates to conduct their own races and avoid a national campaign against Mr. Trump or the Republican Congress, except on carefully targeted issues like health care costs. Mr. Trump’s scandals, they argued, will play like background music that they do not need to accentuate.

I really can’t think of a dumber strategy for this political moment.  While the article provides some hope that Democrats are beginning to wake up, there is also this:

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, distributed a public letter to her colleagues arguing that the Trump-era capital had “become a cesspool of self-enrichment, secret money and ethical blindness” and that House Republicans were offering only a “blind eye to the corruption and criminality at the heart of President Trump’s inner circle.”

But in the same letter, Ms. Pelosi also said that Democrats “must also stay focused on delivering our strong economic message.”

Exactly backwards, Nancy.

People are afraid that democracy will fail and that nukes will be falling. That’s the focus. And what exactly is a “strong economic message?” That sounds like vacuous last-century political doublespeak.

Democratic strategists overseeing the midterm elections said they would use corruption against those Republicans tarred by any wrongdoing, but they were not yet convinced that focusing on what some in the electorate view as unending Washington drama would be more effective than highlighting policy differences.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, on Tuesday in Washington. “Campaign finance violations — I don’t know what will come from that, but the thing that will hurt the president the most is if, in fact, his campaign did coordinate with a foreign government like Russia,” he said.

“For a lot of voters, the Donald Trump circus is not enough to get them to vote Democratic in the midterms,” said Alixandria Lapp, who runs the main House Democratic “super PAC.”

Bullshit. People don’t view Donald Trump as a “circus” but as a threat to their very existence. And that —the totally legitimate fear that Trump and the GOP are so incompetent, malicious, and corrupt that they will get us all killed — is about the most effective argument Democrats could imagine to get folks off their collective arses and vote the GOP into oblivion.

The lie

by digby

There are a thousand of them. But this one is easy to trace:

The first denial that Donald Trump knew about hush-money payments to silence women came four days before he was elected president, when his spokeswoman Hope Hicks said, without hedging, “we have no knowledge of any of this.”

The second came in January of this year, when his attorney Michael Cohen said the allegations were “outlandish.” By March, two of the president’s spokesmen — Raj Shah and Sarah Huckabee Sanders — said publicly that Trump denied all the allegations and any payments. Even Cohen’s attorney, David Schwartz, got in on the action, saying the president “was not aware of any of it.”

In April, Trump finally weighed in, answering a question about whether he knew about a payment to porn star Stephanie Clifford, who uses the stage name Stormy Daniels, with a flat “no.”

It’s now clear that the president’s statement was a lie — and that the people speaking for him repeated it.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Donald Trump’s presidency has been his loose relationship with facts. As of the beginning of this month, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker had documented 4,229 false or misleading claims from the president — an average of nearly 7.6 a day.

Trump’s allies have defended the president by suggesting that facts are debatable. Early into his presidency, one aide famously said he was operating with “alternative facts.” On Sunday, Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani declared: “Truth isn’t truth.”

How to characterize Trump’s statements has become its own pitched political battle, with many of the president’s critics demanding that they be called “lies.” The Fact Checker has been hesitant to go that far, as it is difficult to document whether the president knows he is not telling the truth.

On Wednesday, Sanders said during a White House briefing that it was “a ridiculous accusation” to say the president has lied to the American people.

But this week’s guilty plea by Cohen, offers indisputable evidence that Trump and his allies have been deliberately dishonest at every turn in their statements regarding payments to Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Here is the definitive story of a Trump lie

Click the link to see the whole timeline.

It’s an easy one. He has been lying about paying a porn actress and a Playboy playmate hush money from the beginning.

He also lied about assaulting nearly 20 women who have come forward.

But he is a criminal in a dozen different ways so…

Update: Oh look. His good pal David Pecker flipped on him. It looks like they have more than just Cohen and his 3 million documents to corroborate the scheme which, by the way, was quite different than what was originally described. Pecker never used his company’s money to pay off his Trump’s sex partners. It was always a pass-through scheme. I wonder how many others there are?

Yes, he is the “elite”

by digby

He keeps telling his foolish cult followers that he (and they) are the real “elites”:

“We’re the elite. You’re smarter than they are, you have more money than they are, you have better jobs than they do, you’re the elite,” he told his audience. “So let them have the word ‘elite’, you’re the super elite, that’s what it is. I always hate when they say ‘Well the elite decided to not to go to something I’m doing’. Right the elite?

“I say, ‘Well, I have a lot more money than they do, I have a much better education than they have, I’m smarter than they are, I have many much more beautiful homes than they do, I have a better apartment at the top of Fifth Avenue’. Why the hell are they the elite, tell me? Because you’re the elite, just remember that.

Sure, he can say that his followers are just like him. But let’s faec facts. Only very wealthy playboy heirs to greatfortunes are able to do things like this

The federal campaign finance and tax evasion case that is embroiling the White House began in the unlikeliest of places: the world of supermarket tabloids.

It is populated by porn stars and Playboy models, shadowy “story brokers” and the ultra rich and powerful, who can buy back their secrets on an underground exchange run by gossip scribes who set the rules, the prices and, frequently, the reputational toll.

That world has now come to life on the stark pages of federal court documents that detail violations of campaign finance and tax laws, implicating President Trump and reprising Watergate-era talk of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and possible impeachment.

In laying out the charges to which Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, the documents filed in New York also entangle several unidentified people in Mr. Trump’s business and from his campaign.

The anatomy of the crime the court papers describe — stemming from hush money payments to two women who claimed they had sexual encounters with Mr. Trump — has a reality-television twist that has come to typify the Trump presidency. One of the women, the pornographic film star Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, went public with her story earlier this year in a media blitz, and she was represented by a brash lawyer who says he now is considering running for president.

“You have to go back to Watergate-era scandals to find similarly colorful and outrageous events,” said Daniel A. Petalas, a former head of enforcement at the Federal Election Commission and a former Justice Department public corruption prosecutor. “When political figures are engaged in conduct that might be tawdry or salacious, it’s not unusual that the other participants have colorful histories and backgrounds themselves.”

Like so many political scandals before it, this one began with a typical worry for some candidates: that their history of extramarital affairs and other sexual behavior could undermine a bid for office.

The trouble for Mr. Trump, some of which was first disclosed just before the 2016 election, began a decade earlier, shortly after the birth of his son with Melania Trump. Mr. Trump allegedly began affairs with Ms. Clifford, whom he met at a celebrity golf tournament; and Karen McDougal, then a Playboy model he met at the Playboy Mansion while filming an episode of his NBC hit “The Apprentice.”

Mr. Trump had an ally in the nation’s biggest tabloid news publisher, American Media Inc., which controls nearly every gossip magazine on checkout counter racks throughout the country, and is a magnet for people with embarrassing tales to sell about the rich and the famous.

The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley (and Won)
Its flagship, The National Enquirer, proved in 2008 that it could be as threatening to a politician as to a Hollywood star, when it uncovered an affair that John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate, had with a campaign worker that resulted in the birth of a child. Political supporters of Mr. Edwards helped finance the cover-up, leading to an unsuccessful yet groundbreaking campaign finance case that created a template for the charges against Mr. Cohen.

These elites don’t have those kinds of problems:

D.C. insiders rush to cover their punch bowls
by Tom Sullivan

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has introduced two major bills in the same week. (“Too-o-o-o-o-o-o freaking MUCH!” said a New York Times reviewer when Tom Wolfe published two books on the same day in 1968.)

Warren’s first, the Accountable Capitalism Act, we discussed here on Saturday. It is nothing less than an attempt to save capitalism from its worst excesses.

A sign Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act has hit its mark are the squeals from the right. A hyperventilating Kevin Williamson claims in the National Review the Accountable Capitalism Act calls for “the wholesale expropriation of private enterprise in the United States, and nothing less.” Adding, “utterly bonkers.” A blog headline at Reason blasts, “Elizabeth Warren Plans To Destroy Capitalism By Pretending To ‘Save’ It”.

As wonky as progressives can be, pundits from the right easily match them. Both miss what normal people know — normal people don’t do what I’m doing now — but the former law professor from Oklahoma does not.

Employees who start hearing “shareholder value” know they had better start looking for new jobs. Theirs are going bye-bye. The newly unemployed shrug, shed tears, pack their belongings, and go looking for their next opportunity to be treated as chattel. That’s just the way things are, they’ll hear. But deep down they know something is wrong with the way things are. They might not be able to put a name to it, but they sense it. They feel it. They work for an economy that doesn’t work for them. Warren thinks it’s time we did something about it.

Here is what else normal people know. “Americans know that they have a government that isn’t working for them,” Warren said in a speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday.

Warren’s followup punch, a nearly 300-page Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act dropped on Tuesday and must have sent D.C. insiders rushing to cover their punch bowls. Except with #TrumpfellasTuesday news alerts booming like a trailer voiced by Don LaFontaine, Warren’s roll-out may have been lost among the headlines announcing convictions of Trump’s known associates. More the shame. This second bill is an attempt to save Washington from its worst excesses.

Lobbyists will not be happy, nor a lot of so-called “public servants.” Neither bill has co-sponsors.

The @realDonaldTrump era has given our country its most nakedly corrupt leadership of our lifetimes. But they didn't cause the rot – they’re just the biggest, stinkiest example of it. Join the fight for my new bill to #EndCorruptionNow: https://t.co/FaK9rJT0PI pic.twitter.com/dxHtovgcGL— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) August 22, 2018

Warren’s bill proposes a strong set of reforms:

1. Padlock the Revolving Door and Increase Public Integrity by eliminating both the appearance and the potential for financial conflicts of interest; banning Members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, federal judges, and other senior government officials from owning and trading individual stock; locking the government-to-lobbying revolving door; and eliminating “golden parachutes”.

2. End Lobbying as We Know It by exposing all influence-peddling in Washington; banning foreign lobbying; banning lobbyists from donating to candidates and Members of Congress; strengthening congressional independence from lobbyists; and instituting a lifetime ban on lobbying by former Members of Congress, Presidents, and agency heads.

3. End Corporate Capture of Public Interest Rules by requiring disclosure of funding or editorial conflicts of interest in rulemaking comments and studies; closing loopholes corporations exploit to tilt the rules in their favor and against the public interest; protecting agencies from corporate capture; establishing a new Office of Public Advocate to advocate for the public interest in the rulemaking process; and giving agencies the tools to implement strong rules that protect the public.

4. Improve Judicial Integrity and Defend Access to Justice for All Americans by enhancing the integrity of the judicial branch; requiring the Supreme Court follow the ethics rules for all other federal judges; boosting the transparency of federal appellate courts through livestreaming audio of proceedings; and encouraging diversity on the federal bench.

5. Strengthen Enforcement of Anti-Corruption, Ethics, and Public Integrity Laws by creating a new, independent anti-corruption agency dedicated to enforcing federal ethics laws and by expanding an independent and empowered Congressional ethics office insulated from Congressional politics.

6. Boost Transparency in Government and Fix Federal Open Records Laws by requiring elected officials and candidates for federal office to disclose more financial and tax information; increasing disclosure of corporate money behind Washington lobbying; closing loopholes in federal open records laws; making federal contractors – including private prisons and immigration detention centers – comply with federal open records laws; and making Congress more transparent.

“These reforms have a simple aim,” Warren says in her press release, “to take power in Washington away from the wealthy, the powerful, and the well-connected who have corrupted our government and put power back in the hands of the American people.”

“Let’s face it: there’s no real question that the Trump era has given us the most nakedly corrupt leadership this nation has seen in our lifetimes,” Warren told the National Press Club. “But they are not the cause of the rot – they’re just the biggest, stinkiest example of it. Corruption is a form of public cancer, and Washington’s got it bad.”

Trumpers really want to drain the swamp? Warren has brought industrial-sized pumps. If you want to serve the public interest, serve the public interest and not your own, Warren insists, or else get a different job.

I’m sure the people who make big money off the current system will yell and scream and spend millions of dollars trying to stop these changes. And the all-day-long pundits and Washington insiders who live in the same neighborhoods and eat at the same sushi bars and go to the same book parties will say ‘this will never pass’ and try to color me naïve for even trying. But it’s that kind of self-serving group-think that’s allowed corruption to spread through this town for decades.

Warren better than anyone knows a hostile administration can neuter and even dismantle a new oversight office and refuse to enforce its rules. Even assuming she could actually get these bills passed — a huge if, and impossible under the current regime — keeping the teeth in them will be an ongoing challenge.

But the first will be getting them passed in the first place. The upside of introducing these hot entrees without co-sponsors is Warren did not back off on the spice to suit colleagues with sensitive palates. Other caucus members will be in the position of explaining why they are not for better corporate citizenship and not for cleaner government.

These are not new fights for Warren, writes Ella Nilsen at Vox:

Taken together, the Accountable Capitalism Act and the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act are a return to Warren’s bread-and-butter issues, ones that she’s been hammering home since she was a Harvard Law School professor who helped establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the 2008 financial crisis.

Warren was instrumental in helping police the big banks and corporations after 2008, and she has plenty of big ideas to transform the current system. Of course, there’s no way this bill will pass the current Republican Congress — it would probably also have a steep path in a Congress filled with Democrats. This bill is more of a mission statement as Warren explores a 2020 presidential run, and a gauntlet thrown for other 2020 Democrats.

That last is perhaps the pair of bills’ maximum present value, now, and not just for 2020. Cynics (progressives among them) will argue these proposals are a publicity stunt. Since there is little chance of them passing anytime soon, or ever, why get behind them? Um, because Democrats fancy themselves the champions of the little guy? Because working people in red states and blue are tired of getting screwed? Because 99 percent of us want elected representatives who will fight for someone besides the 1 percent? Because otherwise what’s the point?

“What do Democrats stand for?” critics on both the left and right ask. Fellow Bay State resident Charlie Pierce wrote last week, “It is not often that you see a politician put a stake in the ground, run a big bright flag up it, and declare that this is where I stand, dammit.” Elizabeth Warren has. Stand for that.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

The first crack?

by digby

Huh. Well at least one Republican who isn’t retiring is seeing things a little differently and considering his legacy and reputation — not to mention the country — in a different light:

The legal bombshells that exploded around President Donald Trump on Tuesday sent most congressional Republicans diving for cover. Rep. Tom Cole isn’t one of them.

The Oklahoma conservative, in a Wednesday interview, didn’t hide his alarm over the eight felony convictions of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and eight felony guilty pleas by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. He warned his party against retreating into “a fantasy world” that assumes Trump’s predicament is not both disturbing and hazardous for the GOP.

The allegation that Trump ordered crimes to which Cohen has pleaded guilty is “potentially very dangerous,” the eight-term lawmaker said. Taken together, he added, the Manafort and Cohen cases weaken the Republican campaign to keep control of Congress so long as Democrats don’t overplay their hand with a rush toward impeachment.

And as Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation continues, Cole didn’t rule out even a GOP Congress acting to cut Trump’s presidency short.

“If something comes out that is clear and convincing and impeachable, I think members will act,” Cole said. He called it “too soon” for a congressional impeachment inquiry, though “I’ll leave that to the Judiciary Committee.”

Cole’s words represent a red flag for fellow Republicans. A former chair of the Oklahoma GOP, chief of staff for the national party and head of the House campaign committee, he is among the most politically savvy members of the Republican caucus.

The most immediate consequence of Tuesday’s legal developments, he said, is provide Mueller with additional insulation from Trump allies seeking to shut down his investigation. Though the Manafort charges didn’t concern Russian meddling, he explained, the guilty verdicts mean “you can’t dismiss it as a witch hunt.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Cole said of the special counsel probe. “Yesterday was a pretty sobering day. The Mueller probe needs to be allowed to proceed.”

That may be the most dangerous thing that’s happened to Trump this week…

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