WHEN IS AN OLIGARCH JUST A CROOK?

Click here to read the NYT expose of Trump Family tax and investment maneuvers.

The Russia probe by Robert Mueller has just been pushed out of the center of concern for that ruling kakistocracy in Washington.  Even Kava-naught or Kava-yes now moves off into a far, dark corner of the Trump Regime’s survival game room.  Now federal prosecutors in Washington and New York City know that the public knows that decades of high-handed financial shenanigans put The Donald on the throne in the Oval Office. And one report says the questionable maneuvers continued at least until 2016.

The usual statute of limitations on federal tax fraud is six years.  Yet courts have ruled that is six years AFTER the most recent tax fraud is perpetrated.  Can’t wait to hear the White House prevarications now on why they won’t released Trumpian tax forms.  And each state, like New York, has its own tax regulations.  As soon as the Times’ report came out, the state of New York began its own tax investigation of the Trumpian money games.

Perhaps coincidental, perhaps the leaks in Donald’s ship of state are getting worse…but the WaPo has an expose on a 2016 real estate deal between the two Donald and Eric…and it, too, looks suspicious.  That is less than six years ago, for anybody who’s counting on small fingers.

If there is to be a Democratic House majority next year and the tax forms are subpoenaed, we may look back on recent months as the boring pre-game show before the true political gladitorial combat began…

Somebody deep within Trumptopia has spilled documents to the NYT.  Or else a lot of this stuff was sitting in plain sight in county clerk’s offices where all property transactions have to be registered.  Was it some lawyer?  Accountant?  Ex-wife?  Pissed-off sibling?  Some person who may need personal immunity or asylum?  A clever hacker from some nation that Trump has tweeted into fury?  The President, more than ever, needs that dependable corrupt majority on the Supreme Court so he won’t have to flee to Russia.  I can reassure him they have changed the hotel bed sheets since his last visit…

KAKISTROCRACY WANTS TO ALSO BE KLEPTOCRACY WITHOUT RISK

Trump has now attacked his Attorney General and our U.S. Department of Justice because he wants members of his supporting criminal syndicate to be left unpunished.
It is election season so President Trump has enunciated a new DACA policy for Republicans in Congress or elsewhere that support President Trump.  It is clear only a Putin-style kleptocracy would please this regime.  Friends and family are to remain blameless regardless of what they do or say.  Laws are not to be enforced if it is unpleasant for current regime. Justice for Republican white men is freedom to do whatever they want.  This is the former candidate who said not paying taxes made him smart.  Borrowing money from Russian oligarchs (after bankruptcies made him too risky for norma banks) just made him smarter.  Not paying vendors, debts, et al.–smart, smart, smart.

Does he even cheat at golf, one indly wonders?  Pity the caddy who tells…

New DACA?  Don’t Accuse Criminals Atall.  Democrats Are Curse of America.

Can a new attorney general be found to replace Sessions, one who will adhere to the new DACA?

LITTLE TOLERANCE FOR ZERO TOLERANCE

Yesterday Kate and I were among about 100 people who eventually showed up for the anti-zero tolerance rally in downtown McMinnville:This guy crouched behind us in the city park, stolidly watching:Most drivers ignored us.  About one-fourth waved or gave us thumbs up or honked in agreement.   A few gave us thumbs down.  One cyclist mumbled “It’s the law” as he passed by.  Thus revealing himself to be either a Fox New or Rush Limbaugh addict.  There is no law against families seeking asylum nor is there any law requiring children to be taken away from their parents if they do seek asylum in the US.  One mega-truck driver went by flashing a sign saying “Patriots for zero tolerance.”  That is more to the point.  It has become a measure of right wing patriotism the degree to which you oppose anybody emigrating to this country.  Trump knows the racist anger behind the “keep ’em out” emotions, which he  may actually share.  He certainly knowsd how to cater to that strain of white-wing American politics.

For the first time in decades we now have a merger between a propaganda media empire and the government.  With the move of a former Fox News executive to be the new White House propaganda chief–let’s stop pretending there is a normal press office, ok?–we have an almost seamless melding of Trump Administration and Murdoch’s Fox propaganda Network.  There is no Trump lie, accusation, conspiracy fantasy or innuendo that the network cannot back, magnify and propagate.  Propaganda propagation is the entire focus of the Fox/Trump Network.

As we watch the pathetic, bathetic spectacle of another Trump Supreme Court appointment, shepherded through the U.S. Senate by Dr. McConnell, we will see if there is any chance that Trump and his minions will not completely reverse fifty years of court rulings that have infuriated the most socially conservative, anti-feminist, racist portion of our American population.  I can easily forsee a revisitation to Brown vs. Board of Education, not to mention state-by-state outlawing of abortions in the gerrymandered red states, very stringent laws on who can vote, disallowing of unions, ending of even the weakest state  or local laws on gun ownership, etc. etc.  You can easily imagine court rulings that would disallow the EPA, or SEC, or FDA or any other government agency from regulating corporations which are, after all, now legally humans.  Get ready for a nastier, dirtier, more violent America as the bully in the bully pulpit tries to make America in his own image: doing international deals that enrich his family, finding himself surrounded by conspiracies, victimizing the weak, breaking the laws he doesn’t like.  His obvious jealousy of Putin’s power may be a major factor driving everything he does and feels.  Remember, he believes Putin over the FBI, CIA and NSA…or at least says he does.  Nothing Trump says can be taken at face value yet everything he says portends the end of a once partially civil U.S.

Of course, Trump is making the immigration and refugee situation as bad as possible while he lies about how it is destroying his imaginary America.  He refuses to even admit to global warming.  At the same time the shifts in climate and the heedless over-population in many nations is creating a global refugee disaster.  Millions of people are trying to escape poor, drought-riven, violent, failing “nations.”  The failed or violent national governments from Somalia to Syria, from North Korea to Russia are a legacy from failed empires and artificial establishment of borders that make no sense ethnically, historically or economically.  What idiot decided Yemen could be a self-sustaining nation?  Around the world the wealthier nations are becoming gated communities from Japan to Hungary.  We got ours, stay away.  Classic Trumpian view of a dark, violent, dangerous world where fellow beings are enemies or loyalists.  To read about why so many people are leaving some Central American nations, click here.

I have to admit I find it hard to be about in this Fourth of July season.  The flying American flags now make me cringe.  I am afraid the mistake of making “Star Spangled Banner” our national anthem has led to foolish flag worship.  It now symbolizes whites only, hate the other, carry lots of guns with unlimited ammo, don’t tread on me individualism.  We should have gone for “America the Beautiful,” making love of our glorious planet a hope.  Or Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty.”  No, we went for military might and phoney flag worship.
The flag now just makes me see how mindless the America First and Last idiocy is.  We are a big, rich, dangerous nation among many nations.  We have a long, bloody, inglorious history: genocide of Native Americans, 250 years of human slavery and a civil war we fought as part of the nation tried to keep slavery going, extermination of competing predators from most of their original range (Grizzlies, wolves, wolverines), locking up Japanese-Americans during WW2 while German and Italian-Americans were white enough to walk freely.  We have not yet reached the moral depths of Hitler’s Germany, Stalin or Putin’s Russia, Genghis Khan or Idi Amin.  But I do not relish finding out how far that direction the current crime syndicate in charge of the US government can push us.  Manafort borrowed ten million from a Russian mafioso.  How much does the Trump organization owe similar men?  We now know that Russian oligarchs played major roles in the Brexit campaign. Russian meddling in our 2016 election was serious yet we have a President who clearly wants to be the American Putin. Putin in turn wants to see shambolic western nations so he can behave anyway he wishes, maybe take more of Ukraine or annihilate any ethnic group causing him border woes.

The longest-lasting disaster Trump is helping promulgate is the destruction of our planet and environment.  Our American legacy is not a proud one.  Chemical engineering has long run amuck: DDT, thalidomide, PCBs, lead paint, neo-nicotinoids, opioids, red dye #2, plastic beads in your toothpaste and hand cream, cigarettes, Roundup, leaded gasoline, D-con, agent orange, our list is nauseatingly long, nearly endless. Now the governments of states and the nation seem far more concerned that corporations have fat profits and low taxes than that there is clean water poor people in places like Flint.  I just hope we don’t infect another planet until we learn how to co-operate on making this one sustain life.  If we do not shed our current kakistocracy we will become just another failed empire victimizing its own population for the glory and greed of the powerful.