McConnell’s Rejection of Aid for States Risks Causing a Depression

McConnell: worse person in Washington?

There are few individuals in Washington, D.C., more evil than Mitch McConnell - Trump is perhaps the only one worse.  McConnell had no problem giving a $1.5 trillion tax break to the wealthy and large corporations, most of which used the funds to buy back stock and further enrich their senior officers. Likewise, McConnell and his wife have used their positions to secure all kinds of sweetheart deals and enrich themselves.  Now, with the nation in the grip of a pandemic, McConnell says he would prefer states go bankrupt - cutting all kinds of essential services upon which citizens depend - rather than provide federal aid to states.   When it comes to helping states and average Americans, McConnell's response is "f*ck you" and/or "go die." The man is despicable and has done extreme damage to the nation.  If anyone needs to be stricken by the virus, I'd nominate McConnell.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at McConnell's reckless insanity.  Here are excerpts:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would rather see states declare bankruptcy than give them federal aid to deal with the economic collapse triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s a recipe for turning a potentially short recession into a prolonged depression, according to officials and analysts.

The question of whether Congress and the White House should provide relief funding to state and local governments — as the feds have done already for private business — is about to reach a showdown in Washington.

The stakes are high in our region, where state and local officials say that without federal action they will have to make even deeper cuts than feared in core services such as education, housing and health programs (apart from those required to fight the virus).
Governors, mayors and county leaders of both parties are clamoring for help in the next federal rescue package after McConnell and President Trump blocked such assistance in the $484 billion bill approved last week.

Maryland says the shutdown could cost it as much as $2.8 billion in lost tax revenue in just four months — from March through June.

“I would describe this as worse than the 2008-2009 recession,” Franchot said. “That was a huge fiscal and monetary catastrophe, but we didn’t see 340,000 Marylanders file for unemployment in three weeks.”

In an earlier relief package passed last month, Congress approved $150 billion for state and local governments — but with an important condition. It said the money could be spent only to cover new costs of fighting the virus, and not to replace revenue lost because of the economic slump. State and local leaders are calling for the next bill to eliminate that restriction.

“We’re not going to get out of this pandemic and this budget mess unless the people on the ground instead of people in Washington, D.C., are given flexibility to use the money as they know how to help the economy recover,” Fairfax County Board Chairman Jeff C. McKay (D-At Large) said.

Fairfax is projected to lose at least $165 million over 12 months because of plunging sales tax receipts and other effects of the shutdown. It already has dropped plans to increase spending on affordable housing, early-childhood education and police body cameras.

They [Republicans] said they feared that states and localities would move more slowly to reopen their economies if they received federal assistance. State and local leaders retorted that they will open their economies as soon as public health authorities say it’s safe to do so.

The other argument against federal aid, voiced by McConnell, is that it would bail out states that he said have mismanaged their finances in the past, such as by incurring large pension obligations for teachers and other public employees. In a radio interview Wednesday, McConnell suggested instead that states declare bankruptcy.

The comment drew widespread backlash.

“This is grossly irresponsible with a naive sense of what state and local governments do,” tweeted Amy Liu, director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. “Without emergency relief as their revenues crater, state and local governments will not be able to run key programs like unemployment insurance, social services, housing assistance and small business outreach needed to protect people and businesses in this crisis.

“If you want to send the country into an extended depression, sending state and local governments into bankruptcy is a great way to do it,” said a local government budget expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Our region’s state and local governments are bracing for severe spending cuts, with the burden expected to fall heavily on two areas that make up a large part of their budgets — education and health care.

Virginia has already suspended plans to increase spending on K-12 education by $540 million over two years, higher education by $356 million and Medicaid by $207 million.

The District is projected to lose $1.5 billion in revenue over the next 17 months. Barring substantial federal aid or tax increases, cuts are expected to fall heavily on affordable housing, education and services that help low-income residents, according to Tazra Mitchell, policy director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.

McConnell’s attacks on states’ fiscal management drew sharp rebukes from area officials. They noted that Virginia, Maryland and the District also have Triple-A bond ratings. Additionally, states, unlike Congress, are required to balance their budgets.

McKay noted: “Fairfax has a Triple-A bond rating and a balanced budget. Compare that to Mitch McConnell’s record on deficits. It’s laughable.”

Corruption Is Trump’s Greatest Political Liability

While all eyes remain on the Russiagate investigation, a lengthy piece in New York Magazine lays out why Trump's corruption and monetizing of his position in the White House may end up being what takes him down politically.  It also proposes a road map for Democrats to build a strong anti-Trump, anti-Republican narrative that looks at the rapaciousness of the Trump/Pence regime and the Republican majorities in Congress that have either looked the other way when corruption appears or who have outright enabled and abetted the corruption and transfers of wealth to the wealthiest Americans or huge corporations which are not reinvesting in America as Trump/the GOP promised.  Here are opening highlights (read the entire piece):

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” declared Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.” To the extent that Trump’s candidacy offered any positive appeal, as opposed to simple loathing for his opponent, this was it.

Since Trump took office, his pledge to ignore his own interests has been almost forgotten, lost in a disorienting hurricane of endless news. It is not just a morbid joke but a legitimate problem for the opposition that all the bad news about Trump keeps getting obscured by other bad news about Trump. Perhaps the extraordinary civic unrest his presidency has provoked will be enough to give Democrats a historic win in the midterms this fall, but it is easy to be worried.

As the races pick up in earnest, some kind of narrative focus is going to be necessary to frame the case against Trump. Here, what appears to be an embarrassment of riches for Democrats may in fact be a collection of distractions. It is depressingly likely that several of Trump’s most outrageous characteristics will fail to move the needle in the states and districts where the needle needs moving. His racism and misogyny motivate the Democratic base, but both were perfectly apparent in 2016 and did not dissuade enough voters to abandon him.

Trump’s core proposition to the public was a business deal: If he became president, he would work to make them rich. Of course, the fact that Trump was able to reduce the presidency to such a crass exchange, forsaking such niceties as simple decency and respect for the rule of law, exposed terrifying weaknesses in the fabric of American democracy. But the shortest path to resolving this crisis is first to remove Trump’s party — and it is Trump’s party — from full control of the government in 2018, and then to remove Trump from the White House in 2020.

The clearest way to do that is to demonstrate that Trump is failing to uphold his end of the deal. After all, the students at Trump University once constituted some of the biggest Trump fans in America. Until they realized Trump had conned them. Then they sued to get their money back.

Historically, corruption — specifically, the use of power for personal gain — has played a central and even dominant role in American political discourse. In the 1870s, revelations that public officials were caught lining their pockets with millions of dollars from alcohol taxes (the Whiskey Ring) and inflated railroad costs (Crédit Mobilier) exploded into spectacular scandals. One of the triumphs of the Progressive Era was establishing rules and norms of professionalism in government so that public officials would not be tempted to sell their favors.

There is a reason Trump labeled his opponent “Crooked Hillary,” and it stems from a law of American politics Democrats would be wise to remember: To be out for yourself is probably the single most disqualifying flaw a politician can have.

The sheer breadth of direct self-enrichment Trump has unleashed in office defies the most cynical predictions. It may not be a surprise that he continues to hold on to his business empire and uses his power in office to direct profits its way, from overseas building deals down to printing the presidential seal on golf markers at the course near Mar-a-Lago. It is certainly not a surprise that Trump has refused to disclose his tax returns. What’s truly shocking is how much petty graft has sprung up across his administration. Trump’s Cabinet members and other senior officials have been living in style at taxpayer expense, . . . Not since the Harding administration, and probably the Gilded Age, has the presidency conducted itself in so venal a fashion.

It is hardly a coincidence that so many greedy people have filled the administration’s ranks. Trump’s ostentatious crudeness and misogyny are a kind of human-resources strategy. Radiating personal and professional sleaze lets him quickly and easily identify individuals who have any kind of public ethics and to sort them out. . . . . Trump is legitimately excellent at cultivating an inner circle unburdened by legal or moral scruples. These are the only kind of people who want to work for Trump, and the only kind Trump wants to work for him.

It should take very little work — and be a very big priority — for Democratic candidates to stitch all the administration’s misdeeds together into a tale of unchecked greed. . . . . Having burned enough American banks throughout his career that he could not obtain capital through conventional, legitimate channels, Trump turned to Russian sources, who typically have an ulterior political motive. Just what these various sources got in return for their investment in Trump is a matter for Robert Mueller’s investigators to determine. But Trump’s interest in them is perfectly obvious.

Trump’s campaign followed his patented human-resources strategy, filling its ranks with other rapacious and financially precarious men. Paul Manafort was deeply in debt to a Russian oligarch when he popped up on Trump’s doorstep. Michael Flynn was selling his credentials to Russian and Turkish dictators while advising Trump. Jared Kushner was flailing about in an effort to make good on a massive loan he took out on a white-elephant Manhattan building . . .

The virtue of bribery is a subject of genuine conviction for Trump, whose entrée to politics came via transactional relationships with New York politicians as well as Mafia figures. Trump once called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American corporations from engaging in bribery, a “ridiculous” and “horrible” law. Enforcement of this law has plummeted under his administration.

[Trump] and his inner circle feel most comfortable in the company of the wealthy and corrupt. They have built closer ties to Russia, the Gulf States, and China, all of which are ruled by oligarchs who recognize in Trump a like-minded soul. They share the belief that — to revise a favorite Trump saying — if you don’t steal, you don’t have a country.

Trump’s behavior runs directly contrary to his most important promises. “Draining the swamp” was not supposed to mean simply kicking out Democrats and competent public officials. He made speeches promising good-government reforms: a ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and stricter rules on what lobbying meant; campaign-finance reform to prevent foreign companies from raising money for American candidates; a ban on lobbying by former senior government officials on behalf of foreign governments.

Not only has Trump made no effort to raise ethical standards but he and his administration have flamboyantly violated the existing guidelines. Lobbyists are seeded in every agency, “regulating” their former employers and designing rules that favor bosses over employees and business owners over consumers.

[I]n Trump’s case, the smaller and larger scandals reinforce each other. Why is Trump giving rich people and corporations a huge tax cut? Why has he been threatening to take away your health insurance? Why is he letting Wall Street and Big Oil write their own rules? Above all, if Trump supposedly believed that “if I become president, I couldn’t care less about my company — it’s peanuts,” why are his children still running it? For the same reason he has let his Cabinet secretaries run up large travel expenses, and why his son-in-law met with oligarchs in China and the Gulf States whose money he was trying to get his hands on.

Rather than sit back and allow Trump to take credit for a recovery he inherited, Democrats can press the point that he and his allies are doing little more than skimming off the top of it.

Somebody persuaded corporations, fattened by a trillion-dollar tax windfall, to publicize the same raises and bonuses they had been handing out for years as a special dividend of the Trump tax cuts. If Democrats win control of a chamber of Congress and thus the ability to hold hearings, they should investigate whatever coordination yielded this nexus of self-interest.

A Democratic House or Senate could also compel disclosure of Trump’s tax returns, and both the documents themselves and any drama surrounding them would attract more attention to the administration’s commitment to self-enrichment.

But that can happen only if the Democrats win the midterms, and the best way to do that is to tell a very simple story. Trump represented himself as a rich man feared by the business elite. He had spent much of his life buying off politicians and exploiting the system, so he knew how the system worked and could exploit that knowledge on behalf of the people. In fact, his experiences with bribery opened his eyes to what further extortion might be possible. Trump was never looking to blow up the system. He was simply casing the joint.

Scamvangelists Like Joel Osteen Are Why Americans Are Leaving Religion

Scamvangelist Joel Osteen

As noted in numerous posts, a growing number of Americans are simply walking away from religion, particularly Christianity.  Various pools and studies have shown that for the Millennials, a main motivation is the anti-LGBT animus that is a hallmark of so-called "conservative" denominations. Another principal motivation has been shown to be revulsion to the hypocrisy and Pharisee-like behavior of the Christofascist.  Now, with Hurricane Harvey having wrought heretofore unimaginable damage to Houston and  the Texas coastline, we are once again seeing who the real Christians are so to speck and who are the they equivalent of the money changers in the temple as described in the Bible.  While many small local churches are mobilizing to help (a number of churches in my former neighborhood in Houston), the obscenely wealthy televangelists - I call them scamvangelists - have been slow to help and seemingly put their own wealth ahead of aiding those in need.  A case in point is Joel Osteen whose mega church only stepped up to assisting Hurricane Harvey victims after scathing condemnation on social media. A piece in Salon looks at how Osteen and those of his ilk are accelerating the exodus from organized Christianity.  Here are excerpts:

[A]s American Protestantism has moved from focusing on humble public service to greed and naked political ambition. Some, like Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, . . . . . In 2013, he finished construction on a $130 million church campus in Dallas, a project which he claimed was about glorifying God, instead of mammon.

“In these tough economic times, we wanted to use our gifts to build a church that provides spiritual growth and healing while seeking to reflect the splendor and majesty of God,” he said at the time. A year earlier, he had claimed that then-president Barack Obama was “paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”

Jeffress made those comments during the 2012 election campaign, in the context of his support of that year’s Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. Just four years prior, the Baptist minister had claimed that Romney’s Mormon faith was a “cult” whose members were going to hell. In a 2016 move that surprised no one, Jeffress was one of Donald Trump’s earliest endorsers.

Osteen is different from some of his evangelical colleagues in that he has generally shied away from political involvement. Despite having called Trump “a friend of our ministry” and “a good man,” he has not endorsed political candidates. What Osteen has endorsed, however, is what many critics have called the “prosperity gospel,” the idea that God not only wants to bless believers spiritually but wants to bless them financially as well.

Osteen does not draw a salary from his Lakewood Church nor does he directly ask his fans for money, unlike many other ostensibly religious organizations. Last year, a Canadian religious group called Gospel for Asia was accused of absconding with more than $90 million in donations. Nonetheless, Osteen’s followers have certainly ponied up bigly. His organization reportedly has an annual budget of more than $70 million, and the church facility he originally declined to open up to flood refugees was previously the home arena of the NBA’s Houston Rockets.

Osteen’s views on wealth and his ostentatious style (he lives in a $10.5 million mansion and is estimated to be worth about $40 million) are a pronounced departure from traditional Christian teachings about “the love of money” being the root of all evil, how difficult it is for a rich person to live a life worthy of God and how the materially disadvantaged are regarded more favorably by the divine.

Osteen’s theological indifference seems to be reflected not just in his initial refusal to follow Jesus Christ’s directive to care for “the least of these my brethren” but also in his apparent lack of preaching interest in Christ himself.

A search through Osteen’s Twitter feed reveals that he almost never mentions Jesus to his digital flock. Generally speaking, he only mentions the name of his alleged savior around Easter, never around Christmas. In fact, within the past three years, he has mentioned “Jesus” or “Christ” only 14 times amid hundreds of tweets.

Rafts of political science research have demonstrated that American churches’ doctrinal views have driven away people who want their faith to be more receptive to scientific evidence on issues like homosexuality or evolution. The Religious Right’s vociferous attempts to merge evangelical Christianity with far-right political opinions have also made those with moderate or liberal views look elsewhere for moral discussion.

It’s also clearly true that some religious leaders’ attempts to cash in on their followers’ need for validation and their displays of callous indifference to suffering — both of which are exemplified by Osteen — are part of the reason why nearly 24 percent of Americans now say they have no religious affiliation, compared to just 3 percent in the 1950s.

“Hypocrisies and conflicts in church, when they (inevitably) erupt, don’t just drive people to other churches, as in the past, but sometimes take them out of Christianity altogether,” Georgia pastor David Gushee wrote last year. He’s exactly right.

As the Pew Research Center’s Michael Lipka noted in 2015, this process is only accelerating as people who say they’re not a part of any religious tradition are not only becoming more numerous, they’re also becoming even more skeptical of religion itself.

Presumably, these trends ought to bother people like Joel Osteen and Robert Jeffress. Apparently they have other things on their minds.

Sadly, what these con-artists have on their minds is money and self-enrichment. In nearby Virginia Beach we have a case study in self-enrichment combined with marketing hate and intolerance: Pat Robertson.  The Gospel message means nothing to these people. They are a case study in why one would not want to label themselves as "Christian."

Donald Trump Is a Crook

A piece in New York Magazine cuts to the chase and addresses what his racist, white supremacist, knuckle dragging supporters - and the Vichy Republicans - simply want to ignore: the man is a crook and has been for years.  Indeed, Trump is a profiteer who is openly abusing his office to enrich himself and his family much in the style of third world despots and Vladimir Putin if on a much lesser scale.  The fact that none of Trump's profiteering bothers the Congressional Republicans underscores just how morally bankrupt the GOP has become. Stealing from the poor to give the very rich now stands side by side with turning a blind eye to Trump's violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution and business practices that only a few years ago would have driven a president from office.  Here are column highlights:

On November 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon delivered a speech that became famous for his self-defeating boast, “I am not a crook.” The windup to the infamous phrase consisted of Nixon defending his aggressive, but legal, tax-avoidance strategies. “I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service — I have earned every cent,” he insisted. (This was perhaps half-true.) “And in all of my years of public life,” he continued, “I have never obstructed justice.” (This was not true — the year before, Nixon had tried to get the CIA to quash the FBI investigation into Watergate.)

Like Nixon, Donald Trump denies having engaged in obstruction of justice, even though he plainly has (both by asking intelligence agencies to push back against the FBI, according to reports, and by firing the FBI director over the Russia investigation, by Trump’s own admission). Unlike Nixon, Trump does not deny profiting from public service. He does it brazenly and flamboyantly.

If he were a normal president, rather than one who produced calamities at an unprecedented pace, Trump’s open profiteering would receive five-alarm media coverage and threats of impeachment. The Washington Post recently reported that Trump’s budget slashes funding for a wide array of low-income housing programs, the one notable exception being a program that his own firm benefits from. The story connects this shady decision to an even shadier one: Trump’s appointment of Lynne Patton — a wedding planner close to the Trump family who possesses zero relevant experience and who has falsified her résumé — to oversee the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s programs in New York City. That is, Trump is using his budget to suspiciously single out for favoritism a program from which his firm benefits, and then installing a wildly unqualified personal loyalist in a position where she could protect his funding stream. This scandal alone could shake a non-Trump presidency to its foundations.

That it has caused barely a ripple helps to explain why Trump feels emboldened to locate the first fundraiser for his reelection campaign at his hotel in Washington. Trump’s Washington hotel has already raked in cash from lobbyists and government officials, foreign and domestic, seeking to curry favor with the First Family. Trump has gotten away with it because his party has evinced zero interest in restraining him. The GOP Congress has quashed investigations of his profiteering or demands that he produce his tax returns. Now the party elite will literally be suborned at an event conjoining his public duties and the fattening of his own wallet.

History has mostly forgotten what Nixon said after his famous line: “I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.” The premise of that statement was that a president who enriches himself through office is a crook. So, what does that make Donald Trump?

What the Russian Protests Mean for Putin

Vladimir Putin seemingly ran a successful operation that attacked American's 2016 presidential election and threw the election to Donald Trump, a cross between a carnival barker and a would be fascist dictator on the style of Mussolini (even though he likely sees himself as Hitler, not Mussolini). Now, however, with FBI, Congressional and other investigations underway of Trump's Russia ties and possible collusion, Putin may have received far less than he had hoped for.  Meanwhile, on the home front, Putin is facing protests at home.  While not sufficient for now to topple Putin's dictatorship, the protests nonetheless suggest that all is not well in Russia.  A piece in the New Yorker looks at what these protests mean for Russia's would be tsar.  Here are highlights:

Sunday in Moscow was a bright spring day, chilly but clear, and by the time I made my way to Tverskaya Street, Moscow’s main thoroughfare, the sidewalks were full of people strolling up, toward Pushkin Square, and down, toward Red Square and the red-brick towers of the Kremlin. They had come out for a march led by Alexey Navalny, Russia’s savviest and most popular opposition politician, who had declared a nationwide day of anti-corruption action. The protest was one of mere presence, rather than any specific activity: a few people held signs, and every now and then a chant broke out, but the main political statement of the day was simply showing up.

The nominal cause for the march, and for similar gatherings in dozens of cities across the country, was alleged corruption that Navalny and his researchers had unearthed about Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s largely enfeebled Prime Minister. Earlier this month, Navalny had published a report detailing various far-flung properties, luxury yachts, and other high-end goods that Medvedev has allegedly acquired over the years, in part funded by contributions that Russian oligarchs made to fake charity foundations. But Sunday’s demonstrations were also about a creeping mood of public dissatisfaction and fatigue, a sense that, after seventeen years, Vladimir Putin’s political system was running out of arguments to justify its continued monopoly hold on power. Official corruption proved to be a more compelling rallying cry than civil rights or voting irregularities: less about abstract political freedoms and more about the insult of learning that your country’s Prime Minister had acquired a vineyard in Tuscany while disposable incomes dropped an average of twelve per cent since 2014.

The Moscow mayor’s office had not authorized the march route—it had instead offered organizers the use of a park outside the city center—and had cautioned that it could not “bear responsibility for any possible negative consequences” of the unsanctioned demonstration. The warning didn’t seem to keep people away. 

Navalny himself was grabbed and thrown into a police van a few minutes after he arrived, with a pair of Nike sneakers hanging from his neck—a riff on one of the charges that he had levelled against Medvedev, who he said used a front company led by a loyal crony to buy himself running shoes.

Near the Central Telegraph building, where I stood, the flow of people passed unbothered, but by Pushkin Square riot police, wearing black body armor and helmets, arrested dozens of people, clubbing and beating them before dragging them away. By the end of the day, as many as a thousand people in Moscow had been detained, far more than in 2011 and 2012, the last time the capital saw demonstrations of this size.

I was struck by how many young people had joined the protest march. During the previous wave of large-scale demonstrations in Moscow, the crowds were largely drawn from the capital’s middle class—educated, professional people in their twenties, thirties, and forties. On Sunday, the presence of high schoolers and college students was immediately noticeable. “Never before have schoolchildren and students participated on such a massive scale in opposition protests,” Meduza, an independent news site that is home to some of Russia’s best journalism, declared.

Younger Russians, though, are less likely to pay attention to state-controlled TV, and it seems that the Kremlin has less certain tools for reaching this demographic, let alone shaping its political attitudes. Even LifeNews, a usually servile, pro-Kremlin tabloid site, has admitted this new reality.

Sunday’s protests, in the columnist’s view, represented an “extremely disturbing and serious warning sign” for Kremlin officials. “Television has failed, and its inefficiency as a mass ‘agitator and organizer’ will only intensify.”

Russia’s young people can truly be called “Putin’s” generation: those under twenty-five have no significant memories of any other Russian leader. Yet, as was the case during perestroika, in the nineteen-eighties, the authorities appear to have lost a certain sway over the country’s youth, and no longer speak their language.

For the Kremlin, the geographic diversity of Sunday’s protests was just as unsettling as their demographics. Gatherings of various sizes were held in nearly a hundred Russian cities, including places where demonstrations hadn’t occurred five years ago, during the previous wave of anti-Kremlin protests.

It was clear that the Kremlin hadn’t anticipated anti-government activity in such regions, and that it had failed to give clear instructions to local authorities. As a result, in some places, the protests went on unmolested; in others, they were broken up roughly, as in Omsk, where authorities had snowplows drive out the crowd in the city’s central square.

With elections a year away, it’s unclear what argument or bargain Putin wants to make with the Russian people in his fourth, and presumably last, term. The patriotic boost that the annexation of Crimea provided is starting to fade. Russia’s military operation in Syria is an even less potent propaganda tool. Putin and his political advisers don’t have a coherent answer to the populist and non-ideological anti-corruption message offered by Navalny.

[E]ven if he figures out how to deal with Navalny, Putin will still face a trickier dilemma: How much longer will the cocktail of inertia, stability, and fear of the unknown keep him generally popular? And, if that political tincture loses its potency, what will his next offer to the Russian people entail? He may be able to delay answering those ques tions for some time, but not forever.

Putin needs to be driven from power.  He is but the latest of Russia's failed leaders who have betrayed the Russian people and their best interests - all to maintain Putin's power and to enrich himself. Perhaps the younger generations ae=re waking to the fact that Putin has betrayed them and Russia itself.

Is Vladimir Putin playing Trump?

Many in America's foreign policy and national security agencies have expressed alarm over the apparent bromance between Donald Trump.  Many fear that either Putin is playing Trump for a fool - one hears constant concern over his ignorance in foreign affairs and disinclination to educate himself, always claiming to know everything.  Now, a piece in Politico looks at parallels between the Trump-Putin relationship and that of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi who ultimately left office amidst numerous scandals.  As the piece noted, many believed that Berlusconi had personal financial benefit from his ties to Putin.  With rumored Russian money propping up Trump's business empire, one needs to wonder whether Trump would sell out America and its allies to further enrich himself.  Here are article excerpts:

In January 2009, the U.S. ambassador in Rome cabled Washington to raise an alarm. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the diplomat wrote, had cultivated a troubling relationship with the country’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

“Berlusconi admires Putin’s macho, decisive, and authoritarian governing style, which the Italian PM believes matches his own,” wrote the ambassador, Ronald P. Spogli. “From the Russian side, it appears that Putin has devoted much energy to developing Berlusconi’s trust.“

The ambassador noted with concern that the brash Italian billionaire, who was driven from office by scandal in 2011, was openly challenging U.S. policy toward Russia and echoing Putin’s views on issues from NATO expansion to Kosovo to missile defense.

And he shared reports from opposition party contacts of a more “nefarious” factor: talk that “Berlusconi and his cronies are profiting personally and handsomely” from business ties to Russia.

Seven years after that cable, disclosed by WikiLeaks, the Berlusconi-Putin bromance has acquired a new resonance, as foreign policy analysts and even some U.S. officials see unsettling echoes in the recent long-distance kinship between the Russian leader and Donald J. Trump.

It may even suggest that Putin is applying a specific method to the GOP nominee. In recent years Putin has befriended several major Western European politicians, including former leaders of France and Germany, who openly challenge U.S. and European policies toward Russia, including NATO’s buildup in Eastern Europe and economic sanctions punishing Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

But Trump is most frequently compared to the 79-year-old Berlusconi. Both men are wealthy populists known for their expensive tastes, outrageous rhetoric, relationships with women and all-around showmanship. Like Berlusconi, Trump has demonstrated an unusual affinity for Putin — along with notable dissent from confrontational U.S. and Western European policies toward Russia.

To some, however, it hints at something more.

“The parallels with Trump are a little too disturbing,” says a U.S. government analyst who closely tracked Russia’s relationship with Europe when Berlusconi was in office. “Putin is very strategic. He would focus on people’s vulnerabilities — whether their vanity or greed or financial needs.”

That view echoes the analysis of former deputy CIA director Michael Morell, who recently wrote in The New York Times that Putin, drawing from his background as an intelligence officer, had made a “calculated” overture to Trump early in the presidential campaign, “playing upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him,” and turning Trump into an “unwitting agent” of Russia.

Though Trump, in recent interviews, has downplayed his affinity for Putin, the Republican nominee has also taken several policy positions that echo the Kremlin line. He has questioned the relevance of the 67-year-old NATO alliance, called for U.S.-Russian cooperation against the Islamic State, and questioned U.S. and European sanctions imposed on Moscow after Putin’s forcible March 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

Trump’s relationship with Putin — whom Trump says he’s never even met — remains embryonic compared to the extraordinary kinship between the Russian leader and his Italian chum.

As the January 2009 cable noted, the officials also suspected that illicit money might be fueling the friendship. One October 2008 U.S. cable from Rome noted that “many (including his own party officials) suspect [Berlusconi] has a personally and financially enriching relationship” with Putin’s oligarch allies.

In recent weeks, allies of Hillary Clinton have fanned rumors and speculative press reports suggesting that Russian investments in Trump business ventures have influenced his views. Trump and his son Donald Jr. have made numerous trips to Russia exploring business deals there, and in 2008 Donald Jr. told an audience that Russian money makes up a “disproportionate share” of the family company’s assets. Trump has denied having financial ties to Russia, though his refusal to release his tax returns makes that impossible to verify.

Trump’s Lies and Trump’s Authoritarianism Are the Same Thing

By all reports, today Donald Trump secured enough delegates to win the Republican Party 2016 presidential nomination.  This event confirms that the debasement and decline of the GOP into moral bankruptcy is now complete.  What is equally disturbing is the manner in which far too many Republicans are rallying to Trump, motivated, of course out of self-promotion rather than a shred of concern about the good of the nation.  Disgustingly, Marco Rubio today joined the ranks of those prostituting themselves to Trump.  Tawdry whore have more integrity and virtue than  those in the Republican Party pledging allegiance to Trump.  Again, the parallels to what happened in 1930's Germany are chilling. The good of the citizenry and the good of the nation means nothing compared to self-promotion.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at both the lies and hypocrisy of Trump and, by extension, those seeling their souls to him.  Here are highlights:

On February 7, Donald Trump told an audience of supporters in New Hampshire that he would represent their interests, but Jeb Bush would not, because Bush was in the pocket of special interests. Trump singled out Woody Johnson, the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, owner of the New York Jets, and contributor to Bush. Trump suggested, not unreasonably, that Johnson’s support would ensure that Bush would never allow the federal government to negotiate for lower prescription-drug prices. I don't get any money from any of these special interests, and I know the special interests — I know them better than anybody. But I don't want their money,” he said. “So tell me, let me ask you: Do you think Jeb Bush is going to make drug prices competitive?” he asked. The crowd shouted, “No!”

This week Trump announced that Johnson would serve as vice-chair of the Trump Victory Fund. “He’s a terrific guy, he’s been a friend of mine a long time,” Trump announced. It was a head-spinning move — the very man Trump had held up as the embodiment of corruption, and whose funds he pledged never to accept, would now take a prominent role as a Trump fund-raiser. Donald Trump is a wildly promiscuous liar. He also has disturbing authoritarian tendencies. Trump’s many critics have seized upon both traits as his two major disqualifications for the presidency, yet both of them frustratingly defy easy quantification. All politicians lie some, and many of them lie a lot, and most presidents also push the limits of their authority in ways that can frighten their opponents. So what is so uniquely dangerous about Trump? Perhaps the answer is that both of these qualities are, in a sense, the same thing. His contempt for objective truth is the rejection of democratic accountability, an implicit demand that his supporters place undying faith in him. Because the only measure of truth he accepts is what he claims at any given moment, the power his supporters vest in him is unlimited.

The normal rules of political lying hold that when the lie has been exposed, or certainly when it has been confessed, the jig is up. You have to stop lying about it and tell the truth, or at least retreat to a different lie. Trump bends the rules of the universe to his own will, at no apparent cost. His brazenness is another utterly unique characteristic. His confidence that he can make the truth whatever he wishes at any moment, and toggle back and forth between incompatible realities at will, without any cost to himself, is a display of dominance. Possibly Trump’s most important statement of the campaign was his idle boast that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue without losing any votes. Finally, there is Trump’s habit of settling all disputes with his own peculiar form of ad hominem. He dismisses all criticisms of his statements and his record with an array of put-downs, and likewise confirms all endorsements with praise. Anybody who disagrees with Trump is ugly, short, corrupt, a loser, a habitual liar, a total joke, and so forth.

Truth and reason are weapons of the powerless against the powerful. There is no external doctrine he can be measured against, not even conservative dogma, which he embraces or discards at will and with no recognition of having done so. Trump’s version of truth is multiple truths, the only consistent element of which is Trump himself is always, by definition, correct. Trump’s mind is so difficult to grapple with because it is an authoritarian epistemology that lies outside the democratic norms that have shaped all of our collective experiences.

Quotes of the Day - Religious Flim-Flam Men (and Women)

I do not deny that I am very hard on religion and the professional Christian class in particular which is comprised by far to many charlatans and con artists who prey on the ignorant and vulnerable.  A fellow critic of the falsely self-labeled "godly folk_ is Bob Felton, a North Carolina blogger who almost daily confronts the the bashitery of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Among other things, Bob routinely debunks the Christofascists' claims to upholding "family values" as their self-styled leaders call on followers to put God - and, of course, their guidance, ahead of spouse and children. He summed up the con game they play well this way:

[T]ake away their permission to debase you, and Albert the Pious, Russell Moore, Robert Jeffress, Pat Robertson, on and on ad nauseum, are just a bunch of plaid-suited flim-flam men.

A reader also pointed out the corruption and self-dealing that permeates much of the professional Christian class and a source to learn more about their innate corruption and love of money in a comment:

I encourage your readers to check out the Freedom From Religion Foundation, FFRF.org, whose monthly paper, Freethought Today, prints a report on religious misleaders who have been accused/confessed to/convicted of various crimes, from inappropriate touching to putting their hands in the till to attempted or accomplished murder.

And Franklin Graham has been doing well -- quite well -- for purportedly doing good. Strolls through Charity Navigator can be illuminating. The president of the Thomas More Law Society, for example, Richard Thompson, gets $216,428 for his efforts to deprive LGBT Americans of the same rights that other Americans have and to inflict Catholic sharia onto health care for American women.  

To see the prevalence of church leader crimes, here's but one link from  last year to a roster of crimes.  I am not a member of FFRE, but may join so as to have another source that helps expose the lies, corruption and hypocrisy of those who pretend to be "men of god" as they prey on others and enrich themselves.   

Money and Self-Enrichment - The Real Motivation of "Family Values" Groups

There's more behind the agenda of "family values" groups and organizations besides bashing gays and disenfranchising blacks and other minorities so as to maintain white privilege.  And, yes, they want to maintain a pre-modern world and society in many other ways as well.  But the real motivation for many of the leaders of such groups is money.  Cold hard cash.  They live the good life while duping the gullible and ignorant like slick con artists and peddling hate and bigotry.  What's even more disgusting is that many of these groups purport to be "educational" in their efforts and shockingly hold tax-exempt status which significantly ups the gravy train for their leaders.  Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher have made out like bandits at the National Organization for Marriage, locally, Pat Robertson has made many millions of dollars, Catholic League blow hard Bill Donohue reportedly makes between $350,000 and a cool half million a year.  The list goes on and on.  To show how the system is milked, Think Progress has done a review of how the Joseph Goebbels like Gary Bauer (pictured above) has lived well while peddling "family values" hate.  Here are highlights:

Gary Bauer has been one of the nation’s most visible and outspoken social conservatives since his work in the Reagan Administration — fighting against LGBT equality, pushing to restrict women’s reproductive rights, and promoting Islamophobia. But while the former Republican presidential hopeful’s myriad political organizations and tax-exempt groups claim to support conservative values, a ThinkProgress analysis suggests that of late he uses them primarily to funnel money into his own pockets.

As president of American Values, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) “charitable” organization focused on “defending life, traditional marriage and equipping our children with the values necessary to stand against liberal education and cultural forces,” Bauer received an annual salary of about $120,000 in 2011 — and another $30,000 in other benefits. His wife Carol, who worked 10 hours a week as secretary/treasurer for the organization, received an additional $60,000 in annual compensation for her efforts.

But Bauer augmented this . . . .  by hiring himself as a “consultant” for the various political committees he controlled.   . . . . With hundreds of thousands left in the bank, Bauer hired a campaign strategy and communications consultant: Gary Bauer. In the 2005-2006 cycle, he took $40,000 in fees; in recent years his figure has risen to $3,000 a month. So far, Americans United to Preserve Marriage has paid Bauer more than $260,000 — and between 2009 and 2012, Bauer received more than half of the committee’s total spending.

Finally, Bauer turned to his oldest available account for his most lucrative work.  . . . . starting in March, Bauer began paying himself $13,750 a month for “political and admin” consulting — $68,750 over the past five months, and several times more than the $8,250 the committee has given, total, to federal political candidates so far this year. At these rates, his annual consulting fees for these committees would project to more than $200,000. This would be in addition to his full-time American Values job . . .

As I said, spreading hate, lies and bigotry can be very, very lucrative as financially stretched widows and ignorant individuals are fleeced of money that cannot afford to be giving away to charlatans like Bauer et al.  The IRS truly needs to revoke the tax exempt status of these scam operations.

NOM's Tax Return: Two Major Anonymous Donors and a Self-Enriching Leadership

The National organization for Marriage ("NOM") continues to falsely describes itself as a broad based grass roots organization.  It's 2011 tax return - conveniently file with the IRS just AFTER the 2012 election - shows that two anonymous donors provided 75% of NOM's income in 2011 which was down overall from the year before.  It also reveals that in 20011 NOM's four salaried employees collectively took home a whopping $625,663.00, with Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher drawing the largest amounts of money.  Who says that there isn't money to be made peddling hatred and lies.  Brian and Maggie have a gig that pays them more than most working class families can only dream of and yet they act constantly as if they are martyrs.  Paid whores and hat merchants might be a more apt description.  

As for the identities of the mystery donors, I know that many of us suspect that NOM is a Vatican/Catholic bishops front organization so it is an interesting question as to whether or not NOM may be using foreign funds to try to influence elections in America.  Personally, I believe that it is far past time that NOM be forced to reveal its donors.  Obviously, as was the case with Mitt Romney's tax returns, you do not hide things - in this case, the identity of donors - unless you know the blow back from full disclosure would be extremely negative.

Here are highlights from HRC's anaylsis of the NOM tax return:

Washington – The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) saw a steep decline in the amount of money it raised in 2011 – dropping to $6.2 million from the $9.1 million it raised the previous year. Just two donors were responsible for funding 75 percent of the anti-gay group – the organization reported two donations of approximately $2.4 million each. The information is available in NOM’s 2011 990, which NOM made available this evening after HRC requested the documents in-person at their Washington, D.C. office earlier this morning.

“The National Organization for Marriage continues to push the notion that there is some sort of grassroots support for their discriminatory anti-gay agenda,” said HRC Vice President of Communications Fred Sainz. “Last week, that notion was soundly rejected by voters in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington State. Now, NOM’s own financial records are serving as the latest proof that support for LGBT equality is common-sense and mainstream. NOM is nothing more than a conduit channeling the anti-gay agenda of a few secretive, wealthy donors.”

 In addition to illustrating that more than $4.7 million of NOM’s total $6.2 million reported came from just two mysterious mega-donors, the documents also reveal some interesting information about NOM’s closest affiliates. For example, NOM paid $870,000 to CC Advertising – a group HRC recently filed an FCC complaint against for spamming unsuspecting cell phone users with anti-gay, anti-Obama text messages. The organization also paid nearly $375,000 to Frank Schubert, their ad guru who makes his living largely off of promoting anti-LGBT propaganda.

More background on NOM, including information on the organization’s leadership and details on its close financial ties to religious institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church, the Knights of Columbus and the Church of Latter Day Saints, is available via HRC’s NOM Exposed project at www.nomexposed.org.