May 3, 2019--Contempt For Congress

Because he refused to turn up for a hearing Thursday before the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Barr will for certain be subpoenaed to appear and if he still refuses to do so will likely be cited for contempt of Congress. 

What this ultimately means, how it will play out is uncertain.

Following Trump's lead, the president's latest flunky (how he attracts a stream of them is unfathomable), Barr, will not be fined nor tried in court, nor will he be sent to jail.

The way these matters are traditionally worked out is by the various parties making a deal. I'll agree to appear if you, the committee, agree to certain ground rules such as which lines of questions are permitted and which others will be overlooked. And apparently in the current case, who will do the questioning.

Deals are ultimately necessary because there is nothing in the Constitution that requires anyone to appear before Congress. Including members of the country's administration (read the president his staff, and his appointees). And there are no real consequences for not participating. The worst that happens is that those who refuse to cooperate go down in history as having been held in contempt by Congress.

Two things--

In spite of all the claims that Congress has an "oversight" role, that Congress is a coequal part of the government--with the federal courts and the administration being the other two branches-- there is also nothing in the Constitution about oversight nor is there anything about coequalness. The way the government functions in this regard is codified in various rules and precedents. Not in the Constitution.

If this sounds incorrect you can check me by reading the first three Articles of the Constitution. 

Someone like Trump or Barr, both of whom have contempt for Congress, being cited by Congress for contempt would likely be viewed as having earned a badge of honor. Therefore, such citings have little persuasive power.

With Congress having approval ratings in the low teens and more than half the population not supporting impeachment (the one intra-governmental constitutional power the Congress does in fact have), Trump and his enablers are not concerned about the public demanding they be brought to justice.

Things have come to this.

When reviewing Barr's equivocating and lying to Congress, political analysts have been worrying about how this is contributing to the further erosion of our democracy, noting that as a result we are experiencing a "constitutional crisis."

One thing overlooked by most is that though we may very well be facing a crisis it is not strictly speaking constitutional.

Recall, our Founders did not favor democracy. In fact, they worried that a democratic government, government of and by the people, would quickly deteriorate to anarchy as the unwashed would dominate and bring us down. And so they adopted a representative republic with whatever votes that were allowed granted only to property owners. And of course, white people.

Current day conservatives, including Barr do not believe in the rights of "ordinary" people. Voter suppression legislation, for example, is not just about helping Republicans control the government and political process but is also to limit the voting power of "the people," the same kinds of people Jefferson and Madison did not want to grant voting rights to.

These are some of the powerful forces and traditions we are confronting. On an intuitive level Trump has figured out much of this. To prevail we have to be even smarter.

March 25, 2019--Barr Report: Blessing In Disguise?

To say I am disappointment is an understatement. 

I was hoping that the Mueller Report massaged and published by Attorney General William Barr would find that Trump and his gang conspired with Russians to undermine the 2016 election and that Trump like Nixon before him would be found to have directly led the effort to cover up that collusion, which in turn would mean that they obstructed justice. And thus the denouement would be history.

For Mueller and Barr to conclude there was no such conspiracy made it effectively moot that there was obstruction of justice because if there is no crime to obstruct there can be no justice to obstruct.

I say this in spite of the fact that it appears that Mueller, in fact, concluded that it's 50/50 that Trump was involved in obstruction. That it was Barr himself who disagreed with that assessment and "determined," after barely 48 hours, that Mueller was wrong and that there was no obstruction crime. Thus, the Mueller Report morphed into the Barr Report.

Out of this disappointment, what I next have to say may be more spin and wishful thinking than the truth.

And so on. 

As many have said and I have asserted here for well over a year, politically Trump in 2020 would be best dealt with by the voting public. He would not, perhaps should not be driven out of office by the press or even by the impeachment process. Yes, with Democrats controlling the House there was and still is the possibility that Trump could be impeached, but with the sycophantic Senate there is no way he would be voted out of office. To round up 67 votes for that is more than impossible.

So the focus has to be on nominating someone who can beat Trump in the Electoral College (he will again lose the popular vote) and for voters to work hard starting today to defeat him at the polls.

All polls show that voters do not care about collusion with Russia. A majority do not want to see the country obsessed with impeachment. Indeed, realizing this, Nancy Pelosi had her caucus back off from talking about impeachment 24/7. She knows from having lived through the Clinton impeachment how that is a losing strategy. It's likely that Trump, as with Clinton, would see his approval rating rise as he, victim-like, gets dragged through the process.

Voters are concerned about health care, the economic future of their families, the larger economy and how it is being permanently affected by artificial intelligence. They want to see the end of endless wars, the changing climate confronted, and of course education.

The media hates covering these issues because they are boring compared to the soap opera that Trump engenders. Would most people rather talk about Stormy Daniels or how much debt their college-age children are amassing? 

But with investigations and congressional hearings likely to slip back a notch or two in importance and entertainment value after a couple of weeks of us collectively exhausting ourselves with March Madness and Barr v. Mueller, with Democratic presidential candidates shifting focus to the issues that voters actually care about, that will present opportunities for them to scrutinize Trump's policy failures. How, for example, his tax cuts not only mainly benefitted the very wealthy but that they contributed to record budget deficits and the national debt reached an all time high on Trump's watch. Also, and related, that we recently saw the largest trade deficit in history.

We'll have the chance in the public eye to debate expanding heath care coverage and how to confront climate change. Potentially all good issues for Dems who, with less Mueller on the air, might be able to break through and actually talk about their ideas for how to deal with them.

Again, spin? Wishful thinking? Perhaps but this is what I'm thinking.