Virginia GOP Congressman Used Staff as Servants

Tom Garrett (R-Va) - treats staff like servants.

If one wants an example  of the self-centered arrogance of elected officials, look no farther than Virginia 5th District Congressman, Tom Garrett.   Not surprisingly, Garrett is a Republican.  A major story in Politico reports on how Garrett and his wife treated Garrett's congressional staffers as virtual servants during business hours when they should have been performing governmental duties.  While mostly rural, Garrett's district - the largest territorially in Virginia - includes the cities of Charlottesville and Danville.  It goes without saying that sane voters would not reelect someone like Garrett, but never underestimate the idiocy of Virginia's rural Republican voters.  Here are highlights from Politico:

Virginia Rep. Tom Garrett and his wife turned the congressman’s staff into personal servants, multiple former employees to the freshman Republican told POLITICO — assigning them tasks from grocery shopping to fetching the congressman’s clothes to caring for their pet dog, all during work hours.

POLITICO has spoken with four former staffers who detailed a deeply dysfunctional office in which the congressman and his wife, Flanna, often demanded that staff run personal errands outside their typical congressional duties. The couple called on staff to pick up groceries, chauffeur Garrett’s daughters to and from his Virginia district, and fetch clothes that the congressman forgot at his Washington apartment. They were even expected to watch and clean up after Sophie, their Jack Russell-Pomeranian mix, the aides said.

The staffers said they feared that if they refused Garrett‘s or his wife’s orders — both were known for explosive tempers — they would struggle to advance in their careers. It wasn't just full-time staff: many of the allegedly inappropriate requests were made of interns, the former aides said.

“I didn’t know who I was working for: Was I working for him? Was I working for her?” said one of those staffers who, like others interviewed for this story, asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “We became their gofers.”

The behind-the-scenes turmoil boiled over Tuesday evening, when Garrett’s chief of staff, Jimmy Keady, abruptly parted ways with the congressman. His exit, multiple sources say, came amid a dispute with Garrett over the couple’s alleged misuse of official resources. Multiple sources raised the issue with the congressman, and senior staffers tried to rectify the situation repeatedly.

On Wednesday, Garrett, a 46-year-old Army veteran and former state senator, began telling associates that he was considering not running for reelection — stunning Republicans in Virginia and Washington.  But a day later, he reversed course, saying during a rambling 30-minute news conference that he would in fact seek another term.

Aides also grew acquainted with the couple’s dog, who often came to the office with the Garretts. Staffers were expected to watch the dog during office hours, and one aide did so over a weekend. Several aides said the couple would sometimes seem to forget the dog was in the office. When that happened, at the end of the day, aides were responsible for transporting it back to Garrett’s Washington apartment.  One source said the dog occasionally defecated on the floor and aides had to clean up the mess.

Aides also served as drivers for the congressman’s older daughters from a previous marriage, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

Garrett’s conduct could raise ethics concerns. The House Ethics manual prohibits lawmakers from using staff for anything other than official congressional duties. Members are explicitly barred from instructing aides to do personal errands in the manual, which also recounts situations in which staff were wrongly told to fetch personal mail, clean a member’s home and pay a member’s bills.

Staffer say the atmosphere in the office was toxic, however, and the demands were far outside what should reasonably be expected of congressional aides. Flanna would reach out to aides at all hours of the night, according to two former staffers. One person recalled an incident in which Flanna lashed out at a staffer for not picking up the congressman from his apartment after he overslept.

Since taking office in January 2017, Garrett has had among the highest levels of turnover in the House, according to records compiled by legislative data company LegiStorm. More than 60 percent of his staff left in 2017, compared with the House’s typical 25 percent turnover rate that year, making the office fourth out of more than 400 legislative shops.

Obviously, Garrett must be using Der Trumpenfuhrer as his role model.

Have Trump and GOP Caused the Forces of Decency to Awaken?

Donald Trump is perhaps the most vile and corrupt individual to ever occupy the White House.  Meanwhile, the Republican Party has become the party of constant lies which may have finally over played its hand with the Trump tax cut that voters are discovering - albeit it a bit belatedly - was a scam and a massive give away to the very wealthy and ruthless large corporation.  Seemingly, other than the 36-37% of the population made up of rabid Christian extremists, gun fanatics and white supremacists who continue to support Trump as their "dear leader," the rest of the country is increasingly recognizing Trump and the GOP for what they are: corrupt and bad people.  The NRA's near full ownership of Republicans in the wake of the Parkland, Florida mass shooting has perhaps been the straw that will break the GOP's back, especially if it cause young anti-GOP voters to surge to the polls come November.  What's powering the surge of opposition to Trump and the GOP?  A column in the New York Times argues that it is people's realization that many share their revulsion toward Trump and Republicans and this is causing them to mobilize to push for a return of decency and some semblance of honesty and an end to politicians bought by special interest such as the NRA.  Here are column highlights:

A funny thing is happening on the American scene: a powerful upwelling of decency. Suddenly, it seems as if the worst lack all conviction, while the best are filled with a passionate intensity. We don’t yet know whether this will translate into political change. But we may be in the midst of a transformative moment.

You can see the abrupt turn toward decency in the rise of the #MeToo movement; . . . You can see it in the reactions to the Parkland school massacre. For now, at least, the usual reaction to mass killings — a day or two of headlines, then a sort of collective shrug by the political class and a return to its normal obeisance to the gun lobby — isn’t playing out. Instead, the story is staying at the top of the news, and associating with the N.R.A. is starting to look like the political and business poison it should have been all along.

And I’d argue that you can see it at the ballot box, where hard-right politicians in usually reliable Republican districts keep being defeated thanks to surging activism by ordinary citizens.

This isn’t what anyone, certainly not the political commentariat, expected.

After the 2016 election many in the news media seemed all too ready to assume that Trumpism represented the real America, even though Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote and — Russian intervention and the Comey letter aside — would surely have won the electoral vote, too, but for the Big Sneer, the derisive tone adopted by countless reporters and pundits. There have been hundreds if not thousands of stories about grizzled Trump supporters sitting in diners, purportedly showing the out-of-touchness of our cultural elite.

[T]hose pink pussy hats [at the Women's March] may have represented the beginning of real social and political change.

Political scientists have a term and a theory for what we’re seeing on #MeToo, guns and perhaps more: “regime change cascades.” . . . . When people see the status quo as immovable, they tend to be passive even if they are themselves dissatisfied. . . . . but once they see others visibly taking a stand, they both gain more confidence in their dissent and become more willing to act on it — and by their actions they may induce the same response in others, causing a kind of chain reaction.

Such cascades explain how huge political upheavals can quickly emerge, seemingly out of nowhere.

[N]othing says that such cascades have to be positive either in their motivations or in their results. The period 2016-17 clearly represented a sort of Alt-Right Spring — springtime for fascists? — in which white supremacists and anti-Semites were emboldened not just by Donald Trump’s election but by the evidence that there were more like-minded people than anyone realized, both in the U.S. and Europe

I nevertheless find the surge of indignation now building in America hugely encouraging. And yes, I think it’s all one surge. The #MeToo movement, the refusal to shrug off the Parkland massacre, the new political activism of outraged citizens (many of them women) all stem from a common perception: namely, that it’s not just about ideology, but that far too much power rests in the hands of men who are simply bad people. . . . Exhibit A for that proposition is, of course, the tweeter in chief himself.

At the same time, what strikes me about the reaction to this growing backlash is not just its vileness, but its lameness.  Trump’s response to Parkland — let’s arm teachers! — wasn’t just stupid, it was cowardly, an attempt to duck the issue, and I think many people realized that.

Or consider the growing wildness of speeches by right-wing luminaries like Wayne LaPierre of the N.R.A. They’ve pretty much given up on making any substantive case for their ideas in favor of rants about socialists trying to take away your freedom. It’s scary stuff, but it’s also kind of whiny; it’s what people sound like when they know they’re losing the argument.

Again, there’s no guarantee that the forces of decency will win. In particular, the U.S. electoral system is in effect rigged in favor of Republicans, so Democrats will need to win the popular vote by something like seven percentage points to take the House. But we’re seeing a real uprising here, and there’s every reason to hope that change is coming.

Personally, I have been surprised to discover some who I never viewed as "liberal" or "progressive" are disgusted by what they are seeing flow daily from the White House and the GOP controlled Congress.  Here in Virginia, the last election cycle underscored that if people get angry and mobilize, they can over come the toxicity of the right and vote the bad guys out of office.  This resolve and motivation needs to go nationwide in 2018 and the GOP needs to become the minority party.  Hand in hand with this is a growing knowledge - which has yet to dawn on much of the media - that evangelical Christians are numbered among the bad guys. They have supported a totally immoral regime and deserve no deference or respect. 

Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking

The New York Times is carrying a piece that ought to concern truly patriotic Americans.  It concerns the issue of Russian efforts to throw the 2016 presidential election to Der Trumpenführer and the steps taken by the Obama administration to protect information on possible treason so that it would not be destroyed by Der Trumpenführer's henchmen once they took over control of the executive branch.  The risk remains, of course, that Republicans in Congress will kill any meaningful investigation to get to the truth about Trump/Putin ties.  To far too many Republicans, political party now takes precedence over the good of the nation.  As often noted, I have little doubt that Trump would have rejected Russian assistance.  The man is a dangerous narcissist who throughout his career has deemed himself above the law and willing to engage in corrupt and illegal practices to further his interests. Why anyone would expect him to change is dumbfounding.  Here are article highlights:

In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Mr. Trump’s associates.

Then and now, Mr. Trump has denied that his campaign had any contact with Russian officials,  . . . .Mr. Trump’s statements stoked fears among some that intelligence could be covered up or destroyed — or its sources exposed — once power changed hands. What followed was a push to preserve the intelligence that underscored the deep anxiety with which the White House and American intelligence agencies had come to view the threat from Moscow.

As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew convinced that the intelligence was damning and that they needed to ensure that as many people as possible inside government could see it, even if people without security clearances could not. Some officials began asking specific questions at intelligence briefings, knowing the answers would be archived and could be easily unearthed by investigators — including the Senate Intelligence Committee, which in early January announced an inquiry into Russian efforts to influence the election.

At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low level of classification to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government — and, in some cases, among European allies. This allowed the upload of as much intelligence as possible to Intellipedia, a secret wiki used by American intelligence analysts to share information.

More than a half-dozen current and former officials described various aspects of the effort to preserve and distribute the intelligence, and some said they were speaking to draw attention to the material and ensure proper investigation by Congress.

Some Obama White House officials had little faith that a Trump administration would make good on such pledges, and the efforts to preserve the intelligence continued until the administration’s final hours. This was partly because intelligence was still being collected and analyzed, but it also reflected the sentiment among many administration officials that they had not recognized the scale of the Russian campaign until it was too late.

But it wasn’t until after the election, and after more intelligence had come in, that the administration began to grasp the scope of the suspected tampering and concluded that one goal of the campaign was to help tip the election in Mr. Trump’s favor. In early December, Mr. Obama ordered the intelligence community to conduct a full assessment of the Russian campaign.

Beyond leaving a trail for investigators, the Obama administration also wanted to help European allies combat a threat that had caught the United States off guard. American intelligence agencies made it clear in the declassified version of the intelligence assessment released in January that they believed Russia intended to use its attacks on the United States as a template for more meddling.

“We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned,” the report said, “to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies.”

#NotMyPresident

The GOP and the Alabamafication of America

Likely soon to be removed Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore

As noted before, I once lived in Alabama many years ago - George Wallace, who I once met - was still governor at the time - and in the years since I moved away, first to Texas and then back to Virginia where my family had settled, things have gone steadily downhill on the political front in Alabama.  Not coincidental, in my view, the decline in Alabama has directly correlated to the rise in the power of the Christofascists and Republican Party in that state.  Now, an editorial at Al.com looks at how the Republican Party and its demented "conservative Christian" base are poised to take the nation down a similar road if they are not stopped.  Here are op-ed highlights:

Dear America,

Here's where Alabama currently stands: Our governor is under investigation. Our House speaker is under indictment. Our chief justice is suspended from duty and awaiting trial, again. We're one of the poorest states in the country, living off the federal dole, and we sit at or near the bottom of most empirical rankings of quality of life. Our leadership is non-existent and our government is on the brink of collapse.

But don't think for a minute that you're better than us. Donald Trump is the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, and you put him there. You're closer to Alabama than you care to think. 

Maybe you still think this Trump thing is a joke. I am here to assure you it is not.Perhaps you think voters cannot be so politically masochistic. You are wrong.

Don't hope for a minute that those behind the scenes — you know, the Establishment — can fix this game. It is beyond their control.  The Worst Case Scenario is not a possibility. It is a probability.

I have seen it. The saying "stuck on stupid" does not begin to explain our predicament. This is more like doing a handstand in a tar pit.

And this Thing that has corrupted my state, robbed us of common sense, poisoned our decency, and made us loathe our neighbors — it is contagious and you are at risk. Call it the Alabamafication of America.

Let me share with you what it has done to us.  Six years ago we elected Robert Bentley governor because most voters were under the impression that, despite lacking other qualifications for the job, he might be a good man. He was so gracious that he promised not to draw a paycheck unless Alabamians reached virtual full employment. Also, he had once been Bear Bryant's dermatologist.  Since then he has abandoned all sense — and his wife of 50 years.

There were lots of warning signs, first of which was, on inauguration day, he told a congregation in Montgomery that if you aren't Christian you couldn't be his spiritual brother or sister. During six years in office, that piety did not prevent him from groping a senior political advisor and later talking dirty to her on the phone while his soon-to-be-ex-wife recorded the conversation.

Before Bentley, there was Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, who stormed the Alabama Statehouse, deposing more than a century of Democratic control there. He pushed through what was, at the time, toughest-in-the-nation ethics laws and, according to prosecutors, broke them.  Not only is he accused of breaking the laws he passed, but since then he has argued in court that the laws he passed don't apply to him because the laws he passed are unconstitutional.

On Friday, the Judicial Inquiry Commission charged [Alabama Chief Justice Roy] Moore with abusing his authority by directing Alabama probate judges to disregard the United States Supreme Court's decision that same-sex marriage is a right under the Constitution. That action means Moore is suspended from the bench and will face a trial before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary and possible removal from office.  For the second time. . . . Moore doesn't only believe God's coming back, but he thinks until then, the Almighty given him power of attorney over his affairs.  

The saddest thing is, this state has so much potential. In person — one-on-one — our people are decent and selfless. We make great music. We cook good food. We tell funny jokes. We love our children and would sacrifice everything for their futures.

But growing up in Alabama is like growing up in a broken home. We expect better of others instead of demanding better of ourselves. Rather than holding our elected officials to higher standards, we lower our expectations. We can't get over our insecurities, and we're suckers for anyone who comes along saying we're better than somebody else.

Maybe you think Alabama is a joke. I'm here to assure it's not.  If you're not careful, America, this could happen to you.

Alabama truly did not use to be this dysfunctional and corrupt.  The decline of the state directly tracts the increased influence of the godly folk and the GOP's willingness to pander to them and engage in shameless self-prostitution to them.  Now, it is happening nationwide.

Grand Jury Indicts Anti-Gay GOP Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton

Anti-gay bigot indicted

I lived in Texas many years ago and, like Alabama where I also once lived, the state seems to have gone insane finds itself under the heel of anti-gay (and anti-minority) extremists in the Republican Party. And not only are these Republicans crazy anti-gay and virulently, they are also corrupt.  Take Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton who has been indicted on multiple counts of securities fraud.  One has to wonder when the modern cities in Texas will have the ability to out vote the lunatics in the rural areas as is now beginning to occur regularly in Virginia.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on Paxton's indictment:

Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and a former state legislator, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of securities fraud and of failing to register with the state securities board, officials said.

The grand jury in the northern Dallas suburb of McKinney handed up a three-count indictment against Mr. Paxton on Tuesday, the officials said. The indictment is to be unsealed on Monday, when Mr. Paxton is expected to turn himself in to the authorities at the Collin County Jail.

The charges — two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register — are tied to Mr. Paxton’s work soliciting clients and investors for two companies while he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives, before he was elected attorney general in November.

In the most serious charges, first-degree securities fraud, Mr. Paxton is accused of misleading investors in a technology company, Servergy Inc., which is based in McKinney, his hometown. He is accused of encouraging the investors in 2011 to put more than $600,000 into Servergy while failing to tell them he was making a commission on their investment, and misrepresenting himself as an investor in the company, said Kent A. Schaffer, one of the two special prosecutors handling the case.

Mr. Schaffer said politics had played no part in the indictment.  “I have nothing personal against Mr. Paxton based on his politics,” he said. “Even if you found fault with Brian Wice or myself, how do you find it with the Texas Rangers? These are the most honest, straightforward, incorruptible police officers you’re ever going to find. They don’t have political motivations, and they certainly wouldn’t have any against the sitting attorney general.”

A conviction for a first-degree felony in Texas can carry a punishment of life in prison or a sentence of five to 99 years. A third-degree felony is punishable with a sentence of two to 10 years. Mr. Paxton helped create the possibility of such severe punishment: As a freshman representative in the Texas House in May 2003, he voted to amend the state securities law to make it a felony to act as an investment adviser representative without being registered, the very crime the grand jury accuses him of committing.

As the state’s top lawyer and law enforcement officer, Mr. Paxton has made headlines for challenging the Obama administration on its immigration and environmental policies and for encouraging county clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples on religious grounds after the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding same-sex marriage.

Servergy has also been the subject of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The investigation centered on whether Servergy and its founder, Bill Mapp, who has since resigned as chief executive, made misleading statements about the company to induce investors to buy Servergy stock, according to court documents the S.E.C. filed. Mr. Paxton’s name and email address appeared in documents Servergy filed to comply with S.E.C. subpoenas.

Anti-Gay Texas Attorney General Faces Possible Felony Indictment

With Texas Republicans there seems to be a contest as to who can be the most anti-gay - - and the most corrupt.  Former Governor Rick Perry is already facing serious allegations and now Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who has encouraged rogue clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same couples is facing possible  felony charges for securities fraud.  Not surprisingly, Paxton is a darling of the lunatic Tea Party and Christofascists who hold sway in the Texas GOP.  The Raw Story looks at yet another possible corrupt Republican in Texas.  Here are highlights:

Special prosecutors will ask a Texas grand jury as early as this month to indict the state’s attorney general on first-degree felony charges for suspected securities laws violations, one of the prosecutors said on Thursday.

A spokesman for Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who came to office earlier this year with strong Tea Party support, was not immediately available for comment.

“There is evidence that needs to be presented to the grand jury about a couple of different violations. One of which that they will have to determine is if securities fraud was present,” said attorney Kent Schaffer, appointed to investigate the suspected violations.

Paxton drew national attention recently when he said county clerks in Texas who object to gay marriage on religious grounds can refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite last week’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring states to allow same-sex marriage.

When Paxton was in the legislature, he was hired to seek clients by an investment firm called Mowery Capital Management, which is facing allegations from the State Securities Board of defrauding investors.

The Texas State Securities Board in May 2014 found that Paxton was not properly registered as an investment advisor in his work with the firm. It reprimanded him and fined him $1,000.

The special prosecutors, appointed earlier this year, have been looking into possible criminal violations stemming from Paxton’s role with the firm and his failure to properly register as an advisor.

A first-degree felony conviction in Texas can result in 5 to 99 years in prison.