Month: July 2017

It is becoming increasingly apparent that loyalty in the Trump Administration is a one-way street.

Indeed, it appears that unless your name is Trump or you’re married to someone named Trump, you’re expendable.
That lesson is being played out in prime time this week, as we watch Trump engage in daily criticism of his Attorney-General, Jeff Sessions.

I have never been a fan of Sessions who has a history of being a racist dingbat and is anxious to move forward the worst of the Trump Administration’s goals and objectives.

But, say what you might about him, he was the first member of the Senate to endorse Trump and gave his candidacy legitimacy in the Republican Party.

He served as a campaign surrogate for Trump and was the magnet that attracted Breitbart News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and all of the other alt-right nut cases to the Trump campaign. His mission thus far has been to reverse every advancement that has been made in the judicial process.

If Trump fires him or succeeds in provoking his resignation, I will not shed a tear at his departure.

In fact, I’m more likely to shed a tear at his replacement because anyone who takes the position will likely lack any brains at all.

Nevertheless there are lessons to this little morality play.

Trump’s major criticism of Sessions springs from Sessions recusing himself from overseeing the probe of Russian meddling in the Presidential election and collusion with his campaign.

Trump contends that Sessions should have told him that he would recuse himself before he was selected as Attorney-General and, if he had, someone else would have been appointed.

This, of course, overlooks the fact that Sessions recusal didn’t come until March 2017, almost two months after his confirmation, after Sessions was revealed to have concealed meetings during the campaign with Russian officials and after the ethics officials at the Justice Department informed Sessions that it would constitute a conflict of interest for him to oversee the probe.

Trump has already demonstrated over and over that he doesn’t recognize a conflict of interest when he has one, so why should anyone be surprised that he doesn’t recognize Session’s.

The timing of this campaign to drive Sessions from his job is important in understanding it.

In the four months since Sessions recused himself Trump has expressed mild and sporadic disapproval of that decision.

That changed after the revelation of the June 2016 meeting attended by Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and the Russian Government attorney offering dirt on Hillary Clinton and support for Trump’s candidacy was disclosed.

That seemed to pique the interest of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller and the need for criminal lawyers to be hired.

Now, Trump’s son and son-in-law have had to hire criminal defense attorneys because they may find themselves under indictment, depending on what more is learned.

Given the closeness of Trump to his son and son-in-law, it strains credulity to believe that Trump didn’t know about the meeting until this past month as he claims.
Indeed, his public call for “Russia, if you’re listening, find Hillary Clinton’s e-mails,” appears to be less and less serendipitous.

As Congress gets closer and closer to an August recess, Trump’s attacks on Sessions have become more vicious, strident and frequent.

There is little doubt that Trump has been trying to shame him into resigning.

Thus far, Sessions has declared that he will not quit.

No less than Rudy Giuliani and Kenneth Starr, among other Trump supporters, have opined that Sessions decision to recuse himself was the only proper one to make.

Starr went so far as to rebuke Trump’s new Communications flack, Anthony Scaramuccci, for his claim that Sessions should be Trump’s “hockey goalie.”

This kind of bizarre thinking leads one to wonder whether Scaramucci really did graduate from Harvard Law School and, if he did, what Harvard Law is teaching their students.

That, however, has not placated Trump.

Clearly his strategy is to get Sessions to quit during Congress’s August recess so that he can appoint an attorney-General who could serve, without requiring confirmation hearings, until the end of his first term.

Or it might be possible that Mitch McConnell could use the confirmation hearings that he didn’t give Merrick Garland when he was nominated for the Supreme Court by President Obama, to scrutinize Session’s replacement.

Whoever he might select would be free to fire Mueller and end the probe sparing Trump, Trump Jr. Kushner, Manafort and anyone else from being held accountable for whatever collusion may have occurred with the Russians during the campaign.

Even more important to Trump, it would curtail the kind of scrutiny that his tax returns, business dealings and other matters might come under that could lead to prosecution once exposed.

If that scenario unfolds, it will be interesting to see what the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives and the Senate will do.

We will learn, once and for all, whether the price of their loyalty will be greater to Trump or the rule of law and the American people.

In 1928, United states Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote In Olmstead v. United States, which authorized the government to engage in wiretapping telephone calls, that;

“…the makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred as against the Government, the right to be let alone-the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men…”

Almost a century has passed since Brandeis offered that observation and very little of it is taken to heart today.

During his campaign for the presidency, John F. Kennedy was required to defend the right of a Roman Catholic to seek that office. It was generally viewed as the most eloquent defense against religious intolerance up to that time.

Since Kennedy’s appearance before the Houston Ministerial Alliance, religious intolerance has not only grown but has crept into the body politic to an alarming degree.

So-called “evangelical Christians” have all but taken over the Republican Party and have tried to legislate their own “moral “code into law.

Last year, Planned Parenthood was the subject of a heavily doctored video in which it was alleged to be selling dead fetuses.

Despite the fact that investigations demonstrated that the video was bogus and its creators were prosecuted, defunding Planned Parenthood became a campaign issue in the 2016 elections.

Provisions to defund it were written into the legislation designed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

While the legislation wasn’t enacted, its failure had nothing to do with this provision. Indeed, it was in the bill which passed in the House of Representatives but died in the Senate.

Defunding Planned Parenthood isn’t about opposition to abortion. The Hyde Amendment passed in 1977 prohibited Medicaid funding for abortions even if the life of the mother is at risk.

Defunding Planned Parenthood curtails funds which underwrite family planning, contraception and even services such as mammograms and other cancer screening tests.

Perhaps one of the most unconsidered factors in all of this, is that Planned Parenthood provides services for men too.

This fact never comes up in Congress or on the campaign trail when the issue of defunding the organization comes up.

Congress evidently believes that the right to privacy is reserved for only one gender.

During the last two winters, we spent a month in Asheville, North Carolina.

North Carolina, it will be remembered, had passed legislation that forbade transgendered people from using public bathrooms that didn’t correspond with their gender at birth.

It also forbade cities and towns from enacting local anti-discrimination ordinances.

The state was subject to numerous boycotts. Concerts, conventions and sporting events were cancelled. Those inflicted widespread damage to the tourist and convention industry amounting to 3.7 billion dollars.

Ultimately the Governor, Pat McCrory, who sponsored the legislation was defeated and the law was repealed.

Vice-President Pence was similarly burned on this issue when, as Governor of Indiana, he signed into law a measure that would allow service providers to refuse service to the LGBT community on “religious grounds.”

He too repealed the law when the NCAA threatened to leave Indianapolis and not schedule any sporting events in the State and other boycotts loomed.

One would think that any state government contemplating wading into this morass would learn from these experiences.

Texas has not.

Texas is led by Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.

The only two people I can think of that are as intolerant as these two, are Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and ISIS leader Abu Bakar Al Baghdadi.

Patrick, who controls the legislative process, has proposed defunding Planned Parenthood, imposing requirements on hospitals and health clinics that would force those offering comparable health care services to Planned Parenthood to close and a law that would forbid transgendered people to use restrooms that correspond to their gender identity at birth.

Proponents of these laws always justify them as measures which protect women and girls from being sexually assaulted by rapists masquerading as transgendered people despite the fact there has never been a reported incident of such a crime.

When the National Football League reacted to the “bathroom bill,” cautioning Texas that it could cost the state a future Super Bowl and other problems if enacted, Governor Abbott retorted that the League should “concentrate on football and stay the hell out of politics.”

He might better consider “staying the hell” out of matters as private as someone’s birth gender and the restroom they need to use.

If he and Patrick persist in this discriminatory enactment, they will almost certainly cost Texas billions in lost tourism.

That would be a very costly way to learn that you have to honor the right of people to be left alone.

Stay tuned.

As a self-confessed political junkie who follows politics and campaigns year round, I’ve learned that every time you think you’ve seen it all, the best is yet to come.

That is particularly true when a new administration comes to Washington.

At the outset, there is jockeying for positions of power and sharp elbows thrown by everyone involved.

It happens in every administration and this one is no different. Those who occupy the coveted offices in the west wing of the White House are fueled by varying combinations of megalomania and narcissism.

This administration however seems to be afflicted by a rare disease.

It manifested itself early on.

First, Attorney-General, Jeff Sessions, repeatedly forgot that he had met with the Russian ambassador, Sergei kislyak, and other Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance upon being nominated for his cabinet position.

The penalties for this can range from being denied the security clearance, a denial of future security clearances, and a prohibition on being employed by the agency or department that it is sought for, up to a felony prosecution in the most serious cases.

In Sessions case, it appears the only sanction is his voluntary recusal from the Russian election meddling probe.

Kislyak must be an eminently forgettable person, because Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn met with him in December 2015, after President Obama had imposed sanctions on the Russians for meddling in the election.

When the meeting was disclosed, Flynn apparently told Vice-President Pence that lifting the sanctions had not been discussed, only to discover that Kislyak had been heard on an eavesdropping device confirming to the Russians that they had discussed them.

Later it was discovered that Flynn had forgotten to register as a lobbyist for the Turkish Government despite having been paid over half a million dollars for services after the election.

Trump’s son-in-law and West Wing senior Adviser, Jared Kushner, is perhaps the most forgetful.

When he was applying for his security clearance, he forgot that he too met with Ambassador Kislyak.

He also forgot that he mat with Sergey Gorkov, the head of the Russian state owned bank.

This past week, we learned that Kushner, his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort met with Natalia Veselinitskaya, a Russian lawyer, during the campaign after Trump had clinched the nomination.

The purpose of the meeting was set out in an e-mail that read, “The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with [his father] this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”

It went on to explicitly state “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump….”

The disclosure of this meeting was apparently the result of Jared Kushner having to, again, amend his disclosure forms for his security clearance because he forgot to include this particular meeting.

Once the meeting had been reported in the New York Times. Donald Trump Jr. posted the e-mail thread leading up to the meeting in the interest of “transparency.”

The fact that the Times had told him it was about to publish the e-mails apparently had nothing to do with his zeal to be “transparent.”

He then went on Fox News and told Sean Hannity that he had now disclosed everything about the meeting.

On Friday the Times reported that there was a Russian counter-intelligence operative in the meeting that had ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

Trump Jr. apparently “forgot” this detail.

Each time one of these forgotten meetings comes to light, I can’t help but recall Steve Martin’s famous line from a Saturday Night Live skit from 1978, “I forgot armed robbery is illegal.”

It’s hard to imagine that anyone could “forget” a meeting with a Russian government official, let alone, one that was about providing dirt about Hilllary Clinton and took place in Trump Tower.

Last September 19, I posted a blog piece entitled “The Manchurian Candidate 2016https://joefahey.com/2016/09/19/the-manchurian-candidate-2016

The post dealt with the Russian e-mail hacking and other meddling in the campaign that seemed to commence with the arrival of Paul Manafort as Trump’s campaign chief.

To no one’s surprise, Manafort was a participant in this latest meeting that Jared Kushner allegedly forgot.
I felt back then, as I do now, that a blind man could see what is going on here.

All of these “forgotten” meetings with the Russians has made me wonder whether we are witnessing an outbreak of contagious dementia among the Trump officials and team members.

We are now told that Trump Sr. never knew about the meeting that took place one floor below him involving his namesake, his campaign chief, his son-in-law and a Russian government official offering to provide campaign dirt on his opponent courtesy of the Russian government.
He claims he only learned about it a few days ago.

Yeah, sure he did.

Or maybe he just forgot about it.

Last Tuesday we celebrated the 241st commemoration of Independence Day.

After, what seemed to be an endless wet spring and summer, the day was beautiful.

Two days before we had been invited to the annual barbecue, bonfire and fireworks display at a neighbor’s home. To my four-year-old granddaughter’s dismay it got rained out as central New York was pounded with rain storms all day.

She attended her first one the year before and fell in love with the fireworks. She and her mother have now made it an annual event.

The inclusion of bonfires and fireworks dates back the second celebration of Independence Day in 1777. Bonfires in the various New England towns were a central feature of the celebrations and fireworks were first reported in the State of Rhode Island.

One of the most beautiful fireworks display takes place over Boldt Castle in the middle of the Saint Lawrence River across from Alexandria Bay. Taking grandchildren to see that is high on my bucket list.

The other essential ingredient in our Independence Day celebration is the picnic we are invited to at another close friends’ farm that includes a hay ride throughout the countryside for everyone who want to go.

That more than made up for my granddaughter’s disappointment at missing the fireworks.

Approximately ten to twelve of us mounted the open hay wagon that my friend pulled with his tractor and settled in with a cooler of adult and children beverages to enjoy on the ride.

We rolled up and down the hills of our area, enjoying the respite from the chronic rain and thunderstorms that had been plaguing us all summer.

The sun was shining and the temperature was in the high 70’s. The hills and valleys were the lushest of greens.

The roads in the area had been hit hard by the thunder storms and several were washed out and nearly impassable. It was a reminder that there were forces far more powerful and destructive than mere human creations. It was going to be awhile before the residents living on it would find life back to normal.

My four-year-old granddaughter, dressed in 4th of July colors, sunglasses and a sunhat, dutifully waved to everyone that we passed.

For better or for worse, she appears to have inherited the political gene that runs through the Fahey-McGuire line.

Only later did we learn that she had a better 4th of July than Governor Christie, who was caught sunning himself on a New Jersey beach that was closed to the public because of a state government shut down.

I couldn’t help but reflect upon the fact that all of the adults riding in the hay wagon belonged to different political parties and held political philosophical views that ran completely across the spectrum.

Notwithstanding this, not a word was uttered about politics even on this most important of holidays.

I learned a long time ago that if you pick your friends based upon their political beliefs, you will miss out on some very genuine friendships with some very special people.

Much has been written and said about whether we will survive the Age of Trump.

As the hay wagon pulled back into our host’s yard and this most American experience was coming to an end, I couldn’t help but conclude, that short of a nuclear attack, Americans can survive anything.

After all, we always have.

Duriing the past Presidential election campaign, we heard a lot from Trump about putting America first.

He took credit for saving jobs in Indiana, even though after an infusion of public money, the company moved them to Mexico anyway,

During the Republican Party primary campaign he repeatedly promised not to cut Medicare or Medicaid, a position that he claimed put him at odds with all the other contenders.

The statute of limitations on that promise ran out on May 4, 2017 when he wholly embraced the repeal and replace plan that the House Republicans passed that would result in twenty-three million American losing their health care coverage by 2026.

In a rose garden celebration on the date the house passed it, Trump proclaimed that the bill was “very incredibly well -crafted” while all of the Republican representatives that voted for it looked on.

Like all things Trump, that opinion changed a month later, when during a lunch with Republican Senators, he described the bill as “mean, mean, mean” and a “son of a bitch” imploring them to make their bill “more generous, kind and with heart.”

This past week, the Senate released its proposed bill and it didn’t even resemble a Jarvik heart.

It was less mean to the extent that only twenty-two million Americans would lose their coverage instead of twenty-three.

Like most measures proposed by this Administration, it includes a half a trillion dollar tax cut for the insurance companies and the wealthiest of us.

I never quite understand how “deficit hawks” inveigh against entitlement programs only to advocate that whatever is saved by their elimination be used for a tax cut to the wealthy rather than being applied to the deficit.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for a coherent answer.

If there is any doubt about what course they intend to pursue, one can only stop and consider that they have repeatedly said that they cannot tackle tax code reform until after they repeal and replace the Affordable health Care Act.

The speed of the train towards this wreck has slowed this week as a number of Republican senators have balked at voting for the bill.

Rand Paul, a physician, and Mike Lee and Ted Cruz don’t believe that the Senate bill is mean enough.

Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski are concerned that the Medicaid cuts and the defunding of Planned Parenthood are too Draconian.

Senator Dean Heller of Nevada, generally viewed as the most vulnerable incumbent up for re-election in 2018, is concerned about the voter backlash that could come from his constituents after Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, expanded that state’s coverage through the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable care Act.

Heller’s discomfort is particularly entertaining to watch since he won election to the Senate on a platform vowing repeal and replacement.

Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelly Moore-Capito of West Virginia and Bill Cassidy, another doctor who represents Louisiana, find themselves in a similar position as Heller, representing states whose economically deprived citizens have been protected by thee Medicaid expansion.

Whether this last group of conflicted senators will have fidelity to their constituents rather than Trump, Ryan and McConnell remains to be seen.

As we watch this massive shift of one-sixth of the nation’s economy and the wholesale rendering of an important component of the safety net that was woven at the start of the New Deal, we might consider that we have spent two trillion dollars on the Iraq War, a war that Vice-President Cheney said would be financed by oil revenues from that country.

We have spent 2.4 million more on the war in Afghanistan for which there is still no end in sight.

The combination of these expenditures, in addition to more money spent on regimes like Pakistan and other dictators, is more than enough to guarantee health care to all who are currently served by the Affordable Care Act as well as the remainder of our “baby boom” population that is rapidly aging and headed into their sunset years.

In July, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson established Medicare as part of his Great Society program. The following year he established Medicaid.

At the same time, he was escalating the Vietnam War which would cost one-hundred ninety-five billion dollars (nine-hundred fifty billion in today’s dollars).

The Vietnam War has long been over and the wisdom of that war remains a subject of debate.

What is not open to debate is that President Johnson knew that despite what he had to spend in pursuit of that war, American still came first.

That is something that Trump, Ryan and McConnell are blind to.

Happy Fourth of July.