Oversight Congress checks bal

420 general category on covid bill fail

see older checks and balance, even more general on 3 branches

see hse select comm on jan 6

bannon on contempt misdemeanor 1 yr jail?

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Although some of President Donald Trump's nominees enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Senate confirmation votes — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio — others were confirmed along bipartisan lines.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth didn't receive a single Democratic vote, and three GOP senators joined Democrats in voting against him. But a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance got Hegseth, controversy and all, confirmed by a U.S. Senate consisting of 53 Republicans and 47 senators who are either Democrats or independents who caucus with Democrats (including Vermont's Bernie Sanders and Maine's Angus King).

If all senators on the Democratic side vote against a Trump nominee, four GOP defections are needed. And three of Trump's most controversial nominees — Kash Patel for FBI director, Tulsi Gabbard for national intelligence director, and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for director of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — appear to be on track for confirmation.

According to The Hill's Alexander Bolton, GOP senators are facing intense pressure to confirm Trump's nominees — not only from Trump himself, but also, from Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X.com (formerly Twitter) and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

"GOP senators are terrified over the prospect of facing primary challengers funded by Elon Musk if they stick their necks out by opposing President Trump's agenda," Bolton reports. "The White House has signaled that Republicans who thwart Trump's agenda by voting against his controversial nominees or opposing efforts by Musk to freeze government funding and slash federal agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, will pay a political price. And that's a threat that carries a lot more weight when Musk, the world's richest person, could easily pour tens of millions of dollars into a Senate Republican primary."

GOP senators, according to Bolton, "have taken Musk's warning to heart."

A GOP senator, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told The Hill that Senate Republicans "who are close to an election" are "voting for certain nominees" because they fear primary challenges.

The senator told The Hill, "The White House hasn't been too subtle about that. I think they've been fairly threatening."

A Democratic senator, also quoted anonymously, said of Musk, "They're all terrified of the power he's wielding right now."

===

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Infamous "dirty trickster" political operative and decades-long Trump ally Roger Stone, along with far right wing extremist Alex Jones are two of the latest five people subpoenaed by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

CNN describes the five being subpoenaed as "former President Donald Trump's allies directly involved in planning 'Stop the Steal' rallies."

Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich, along with Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, "key players in the Stop the Steal' movement after the election," were also subpoenaed.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) in a statement said: "The Select Committee is seeking information about the rallies and subsequent march to the Capitol that escalated into a violent mob attacking the Capitol and threatening our democracy. We need to know who organized, planned, paid for, and received funds related to those events, as well as what communications organizers had with officials in the White House and Congress. We believe the witnesses we subpoenaed today have relevant information and we expect them to cooperate fully with our effort to get answers for the American people about the violence of January 6th."

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/experts-who-warned-trumpism-could-destroy-us-democracy-in-2018-are-even-more-worried-now-we-werent-alarmist-enough/

alex h

When Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book, “How Democracies Die,” was released in January 2018, critics of the Harvard University political science professors described them as alarmists. The book had a dire warning: the United States’ liberal democracy was in danger because of Trumpism. But two years later, Levitsky and Ziblatt have not backed down from that message — in fact, they are now saying that they should have been more worried in 2018.

Levitsky told HuffPost, “Joe Scarborough ridiculed it on TV, saying, ‘These guys are alarmists.’ It turns out we weren’t alarmist enough.”

Scarborough, the Never Trump conservative who hosts MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” is no fan of President Donald Trump — who he bashes consistently. But when “How Democracies Die” came out, Scarborough argued that the United States’ democracy was robust enough to withstand Trump’s train wreck of a presidency. Scarborough, in a March 15, 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post, argued that American democracy was much stronger than Trump’s chaotic administration.

Journalist Travis Waldron, in HuffPost, notes that Levitsky and Ziblatt aren’t the only “political scholars” or “political leaders” who are “warning that 2020 is a referendum not just on Trump, but on the nation’s democratic experiment as a whole.” But Levitsky fears that too many Americans aren’t as worried as they need to be.

"People are getting killed over politics,” Levitsky told HuffPost. “There’s questions about whether the election will be free. Law enforcement bodies are being manipulated to protect allies of the president and go after rivals of the president. Things are happening on various fronts, and we’re not putting it all together and realizing that our democracy is on the line.”

Liberal democracies don’t necessarily come to power because of an armed coup d’etat or golpe de estado: in some cases, authoritarians are voted into office and gradually undermine a country’s checks and balances. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an obvious example. And Waldron cites Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as an example of a far-right authoritarian who was elected in a liberal democracy, warning that democracy in the U.S. is also in danger.

“Republicans in Congress have done whatever they can to protect Trump,” Waldron explains. “They blocked his removal from office after House Democrats impeached him and have kept administration officials from facing consequences for shirking their oversight duties.Without those checks, Trump has proceeded to do whatever he wants: fire inspectors general, attack the judiciary, violate laws and profit off his own office.”

Levitsky told HuffPost, “U.S. democracy has proven weaker and more vulnerable than I thought.”

Amy Erica Smith, a political science professor at Iowa State University, warns that some countries pretend to be democratic and have elections but are actually authoritarian states — or as she calls them, “hybrid regimes.”

“The number one defining feature of a hybrid regime is that the incumbent is using ― and I’ll say ‘his’ because almost always ‘his’ ― all of the benefits that come from office to get himself reelected in an unfair way,” Smith told HuffPost.

Waldron points to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian President Viktor Orbán as examples of authoritarians who pretend to hold fair elections and argues that Trump is trying to do the same type of thing in the U.S. “through his efforts to undermine the U.S. Postal Service and discredit the election as fraudulent before it even takes place — an admittedly odd tactic for a leader already in power…. Trump’s attacks on democracy are in effect thefinal shattering of the idea of American exceptionalism.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/democrats-slam-shocking-abdication-of-responsibility-as-intelligence-officials-scale-back-election-security-briefings

no lnx twt

Julia Conley / Common Dreams August 31, 2020

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) indicated on Sunday that his committee may subpoena intelligence officials, following Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s announcement that regular election security briefings will be scaled back ahead of the general election.

“This intelligence paid for by taxpayers doesn’t belong to Donald Trump, it doesn’t belong to the intelligence agencies, it belongs to the American people,” Schiff told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Democrats expressed outrage over the weekend after Ratcliffe announced that lawmakers will no longer be receiving in-person briefings on election security, even amid concerns that foreign powers are attempting to interfere with the 2020 general election.

In what Democratic leaders called a “shocking abdication” of responsibility, Ratcliffe sent letters to members of the Senate and House Saturday evening, indicating that only written briefings will be provided until the November election and blaming leaks from Congress for the decision.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Schiff (D-Calif.) accused Ratcliffe of betraying “the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy.”

“This intelligence belongs to the American people, not the agencies which are its custodian. And the American people have both the right and the need to know that another nation, Russia, is trying to help decide who their president should be,” said Pelosi and Schiff, referring to intelligence shared in a briefing last month.

On Twitter, Schiff accused President Donald Trump of “lying and projecting” after Trump spoke about the decision in a press conference.

“They leaked the information,” Trump said of Ratcliffe’s decision. “And what’s even worse, they leaked the wrong information. And he got tired of it. So he wants to do it in a different forum, because you have leakers on the committee.”

The scaling-back of briefings comes a month after Politico reported on a classified security briefing given to all members of Congress by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. At the meeting, Evanina acknowledged that “Russia is again trying to boost President Donald Trump’s reelection and denigrate his opponent.”

Democrats in the briefing urged Evanina to acknowledge the information publicly and denounced an earlier public statement he made in which he warned of potential election interference by Russia, China, and Iran.

The vague statement was “almost meaningless” and not helpful to voters, Democrats said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of using Ratcliffe, a loyalist to the president who was elevated to his current position after serving in the House, “to hide the ugly truth from the American people—that the president is again receiving the help of the Kremlin.”

“DNI Ratcliffe has made clear he’s in the job only to protect Trump from democracy, not democracy from Trump,” said Schumer.

Previously, Trump and his postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, have overseen what critics call the sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service. Ahead of a general election in which millions of Americans will rely on voting-by-mail due to the coronavirus pandemic, DeJoy ordered cuts to overtime, the removal of mailboxes and mail-sorting machines, and changes to post office hours. The president has also baselessly claimed that the use of mail-in ballots will invite fraud, despite the fact that he himself has voted by mail, and openly admitted that undermining the USPS will ensure universal voting-by-mail is not possible.

In 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations including a government-supported “troll farm” with conspiring to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. Trump had long accused Mueller of leading a “witch hunt” and a “hoax” about Russia’s involvement. The Mueller Report, released in 2019, found that Trump campaign officials had extensive contacts with Russians and that many lied about those communications, but stopped short of accusing the president and his advisors of conspiring with Russia in 2016.

This year, former Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub tweeted, “if America has a legitimate election, it’ll be in spite of Trump’s best efforts to prevent one.”

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who was at the center of Trump’s impeachment trial last year regarding the president’s attempt to bribe Ukraine to open a public investigation into Biden’s son, accused Ratcliffe and Trump of violating the country’s “national security and sovereignty.”

“For the DNI to curtail one of the most basic duties of our nonpartisan Intelligence Community—to keep the United States Congress fully informed about threats to our nation, in this case, about the real and rising threat of foreign election interference—is nothing less than a shameless partisan manipulation to protect the personal interests of President Trump,” said Biden. “And it is a betrayal of the oath sworn to the American people and our Constitution.”

mixed record/ scotus says turn over tax records (eventually?)

Earth-shattering’ decision: Court rules House cannot enforce subpoena against former White House counsel

Travis Gettys / Raw Story August 31, 2020

An appeals court ruled the House of Representatives cannot enforce a subpoena against former White House counsel Donald McGahn. The District of Columbia Circuit Court ruled 2-1 the House cannot…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/i-cant-speak-negatively-about-the-president-trumps-watchdog-purge-is-on-the-mind-of-the-official-charged-with-stimulus-oversight/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/the-cares-act-sent-you-a-1200-check-but-it-gave-millionaires-and-billionaires-so-much-more

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

Do you want to see how legislation that was supposed to be a bailout for our economy ended up committing almost as much taxpayer money to help a relative handful of the non-needy as it spent to help tens of millions of people in need? Then let’s step back and revisit parts of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act and look at some of the numbers involved.

The best-known feature of the CARES Act, as it’s known, is the cash grant of up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per child for households whose income was less than $99,000 for single taxpayers and $198,000 for couples. These grants are nontaxable, which makes them even more valuable. Some 159 million stimulus payments have gone out, according to the IRS.

The income limits suggested that the plan benefits the people most in need, those most likely to spend their stimulus payments and thus help the economy. The rhetoric conveyed the same: “The CARES Act Provides Assistance to Workers And Their Families” is how the Treasury’s website puts it. There were no grants to more-fortunate people, who for the most part aren’t in financial distress and are less likely than the less-fortunate to spend any money that Uncle Sam sent them.

but when I began looking at details of the legislation, I realized that several of its provisions quietly provided benefits that were worth much more than $1,200 to some upper-middle-class people who didn’t qualify for stimulus payments. Some other provisions provided vastly bigger benefits to the rich, to corporations and to a relative handful of ultra-rich folks.

So let me show you five provisions of the legislation that benefited the upper middle class (including yours truly); the families of Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; high-income people who make large charitable donations; and Boeing and other corporations that are showing losses; as well as indirectly benefited people who have substantial investments in U.S. stocks.

These five provisions that help the well-heeled will cost the Treasury — which is to say, U.S. taxpayers — an estimated $257.95 billion for the 2020 calendar year. That’s nearly as much as the estimated $292.37 billion price tag for the stimulus grants to regular folks. The numbers are from Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeeper of the financial impact that legislation has on the Treasury. (I used those figures to calculate the spending for the 2020 calendar year rather than for 10 federal fiscal years because I’m interested in today’s impact, not the projected long-term impact.)

I’m writing this now, more than two months after the CARES Act took effect, as a cautionary tale. That’s because with massive unemployment upon us and the fall elections drawing near, there’s a temptation for Congress and Trump to produce legislation that will help needy people a bit but help the non-needy a lot more by doing things like reducing capital gains taxes.

Now, let me take you through the provisions, only one of which — the break for the Trumps, the Kushners and their ilk — has attracted meaningful public attention.

Eliminating Required Distributions From Retirement Accounts: $11.72 billion

People ages 72 and up who have IRAs or 401(k)s or other “defined contribution” retirement accounts must take federally taxable required minimum distributions from them every year. (Some states also tax these distributions.) People who inherit such accounts are also required to take annual distributions, regardless of their age.

The required distribution amount is based on year-end age and account balances. For example, if you were 75 at year-end — as I was — your RMD for this year is 4.37% of your year-end 2019 retirement account balances. If you were 76, it’s 4.55%.

But this year, thanks to the CARES Act, I don’t have to take any retirement distributions at all.

Not having to take distributions matters a lot to some people. For instance, if I took my full RMD this year, which I don’t plan to do, it would be one of my larger income sources. And I would have to pay federal and state income tax on it, regardless of whether I spent the money or saved it.

I’d like to tell you how many people the JCT expects to benefit from this year’s RMD waiver; how much their distributions would have totaled and what the tax rate on them would have been; and how many people the JCT expects to take distributions this year even though they’re not required to take them. Alas, the JCT doesn’t disclose this information and declined to share it with me.

But even though I don’t have specific numbers, it’s clear that most of the benefit from this year’s RMD waiver goes to well-off people. Why? Because people who need retirement account money to live on are going to take distributions, and people who don’t need the money are unlikely to take distributions.

The reason for the no-RMD provision is that the stock market was sinking rapidly in March, when the CARES Act was being discussed. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, for example, fell by 30.8% from the end of 2019 through its low for 2020 (at least so far) on March 23, a few days before Trump signed the CARES Act legislation. Congress didn’t want to penalize retirees by forcing them to sell stock during a market crash.

So if someone with a 4.37% required distribution had money in an S&P 500 index fund, our investor would have had to withdraw 6.32% of the fund’s balance (4.37 divided by 69.2) rather than 4.37% of it if the investor took the distribution on March 23. That would have hurt our investor’s future financial security.

If the market fell by 50% through year-end, which in the scary days of March seemed to be a distinct possibility and could still happen, our theoretical investor would have to cash out 8.74% of the account if RMDs were still required.

There were other ways to deal with this problem, such as letting people take a pass on their first $15,000 of RMDs, rather than giving a big break to the likes of me and a far bigger break to people with far larger retirement accounts than mine. But Congress and Trump didn’t do that.

Charitable Deductions: $4.83 billion

Normally, people who itemize deductions on their federal tax return can deduct no more than 60% of their adjusted gross income for charitable contributions. But for this year, the limit is 100% of AGI.

The Tax Policy Center, whose research helped inform this article, estimates that about two-thirds of the people who donated more than 60% of their AGI in past years had incomes of less than $100,000. But although such people accounted for the bulk of those making such large contributions relative to their income, the TPC says, “Most of the value of the deduction goes to just a small number of the very wealthy.”

The theory behind raising the limit this year is that it will encourage people to make larger donations than they otherwise would. But I can’t imagine how this provision — like the provision allowing people who take the standard deduction to subtract $300 from their taxable income for charitable contributions — is going to significantly increase donations to charities trying to help people cope with COVID-19.

The $4.83 billion JCT number for this provision’s cost to the Treasury includes tax savings for both individuals and corporations.

Pass-Through Entities: $140.61 billion

Now, we come to the huge item that benefits the likes of Trump and Kushner, their families, other wealthy real estate types, hedge fund investors and all sorts of ultra-high-income people, who derive large amounts of money from partnerships, LLCs and other so-called pass-through entities.

As you’ll see in a bit, this big-time break provides a big-time benefit to a relative handful of people.

Now that it’s a fait accompli, this provision is belatedly getting a lot of media attention. So I’ll spare you most of the details about how it allows the ultra-wealthy to use paper losses to offset income that was taxed in previous years, when tax rates were higher than they are now, and get refunds based on those old, higher rates.

Suffice it to say that the JCT estimates that about 82% of these benefits — let’s call it $115 billion — will go to about 43,000 taxpayers with $1 million or more in annual income. That’s an average of about $2.68 million each.

The new proposed stimulus package passed by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives — the HEROES (for Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions) Act — would repeal this provision. However, its prospects for passage in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has called the HEROES Act a “totally unserious effort,” seem remote. He and other Senate Republicans insisted on making the break for pass-through entities part of the CARES legislation. It’s hard to imagine them allowing any new bailout legislation to reverse that benefit. I’m sure Democrats realized this but wanted to go on record as opposing the pass-through break.

The HEROES Act would also repeal the $10,000 limit on deductions for state and local income and real estate taxes, which Republicans included in the 2017 tax cut legislation to reduce the cost to the Treasury of the big cuts they gave to corporations and ultra-high-income people. (Not coincidentally, the cap hurt people in high-income, high-tax blue states.) It’s hard to imagine this provision becoming law, either.

Now, let’s look at two corporate tax breaks inserted in the CARES Act. One lets corporations increase their interest deductions; the second lets them use tax losses from 2018, 2019 and this year to get immediate, substantial refunds rather than having to wait until they show future profits that offset those losses.

The people who benefit most from these corporate tax breaks, of course, are the corporations’ owners. (Workers, in theory, benefit to some extent, as well.)

By increasing companies’ cash flows and reported earnings, these breaks help the share prices of corporations whose stock is publicly traded and help increase the value of privately held corporations.

Stock ownership by individuals is concentrated among higher-income people.

Corporate Interest Deductions: $12.09 billion

One of the reforms of the 2017 tax act was reducing the amount of interest that corporations could deduct on their federal tax returns. The idea was to reduce the attractiveness of debt, which is subsidized by taxpayers and carries big risks to corporate owners as well as employees. (For examples, see the recent bankruptcies of Neiman Marcus and J. Crew, which were burdened with debt, part of it incurred to pay fees and distributions to the buyout firms that had taken them over.)

The CARES Act undid part of the 2017 act by increasing the deductible level to 50% of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization from the previous 30%.

Like some of the other provisions that we’ve looked at, this doesn’t involve a lot of money relative to the numbers that we’re dealing with. But it’s symbolic. And the people benefiting the most from it because they have major investments in stocks aren’t likely to be worrying about how to pay for food or avoid losing their homes.

Corporate Loss Treatment: $88.70 billion

This does the same kind of thing for corporations that the pass-through provision we discussed earlier does for LLCs and partnerships and such. But it hasn’t attracted anything like the same attention that the pass-through giveaway has gotten because it doesn’t involve names like Trump and Kushner.

Until now, corporations that had losses last year and this year could carry them forward to offset taxes for future years, but they couldn’t apply them to get refunds of taxes paid in previous years.

Corporations can now apply losses from this year, last year and 2018 to income from the previous five years. That’s going to be a big deal for companies — can you say Boeing? — that are likely to show losses.

What’s more, these companies can get refunds of up to 35% of the losses they carry back to 2017 and earlier years, even though the corporate tax rate is now only 21%. The rationale is that because the corporate tax rate was 35% before 2018, companies should be able to get refunds today based on what they paid then, not on what they’d be paying now.

So this pays off on multiple levels: The beneficiaries not only benefit today from current and recent losses rather than having to wait until they have profits in the future, but they get a much bigger bang for the buck.

Our country is suffering through major, major problems. We’ve got more than 100,000 people dead from COVID-19, unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, and protests and civil unrest in cities and towns across the country. We’re appropriately adding trillions of dollars to our national debt to try to forestall an economic meltdown. Let’s just hope that further federal aid goes to those who really need it. And doesn’t go to those who don’t.

Filed under:

Trump Administration

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/jim-cramer-coronavirus-pandemic-triggered-one-of-the-greatest-wealth-transfers-in-history/

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Jim Cramer: Coronavirus pandemic triggered ‘one of the greatest wealth transfers in history’

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams June 5, 2020

CNBC‘s Jim Cramer said Thursday that that coronavirus pandemic has triggered “one of the greatest wealth transfers in history.”

an 5/28/20

purged watchdog who found ‘severe’ medical supply shortages persists with 14 ongoing investigations

Kerry Eleveld / Daily KosMay 28, 2020

As Donald Trump tries to replace the independent watchdog at the Health and Human Services Department post-haste, she has continued doggedly investigating his endlessly inept handling of the coronavirus. Christi…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-white-house-ignores-bipartisan-group-of-senators-demanding-explanation-for-firing-of-former-intelligence-ig/

no lnx

Trump White House ignores bipartisan group of senators demanding explanation for firing of former intelligence IG

Image via Gage Skidmore / Flickr.

Written by Alex Henderson April 15, 2020

Monday, April 13 was the deadline that a bipartisan group of eight senators set for an explanation of President Donald Trump’s firing of Michael Atkinson, who served as inspector general for the United States’ intelligence community. That deadline has passed, and journalist Jenna McLaughlin — in an article published in Yahoo News — explains that as of Tuesday, April 14, the Trump White House had yet to provide that explanation.

The eight senators, who included Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, sent Trump a letter on April 8 and asked him to explain, in detail, why he decided to fire Atkinson. And the senators, McLaughlin notes, wanted to make sure it was “not for reasons unrelated to (Atkinson’s) performance” as intelligence inspector IG.

McLaughlin reports that according to a spokesperson for Grassley’s office, a follow-up request was sent to the Trump White House on April 14 — and it also went unanswered.

In addition to Grassley, the letter was signed by two other Republicans (Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah) and five Democrats (Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Jon Tester of Montana).

Trump’s detractors, from liberals and progressives to Never Trump conservatives, have been highly critical of his decision to fire Atkinson — often pointing out the role that the former intelligence inspector general played in the Ukraine scandal.

In 2019, a whistleblower in the federal government complained about Trump’s now-infamous July 25 phone conservation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — who Trump tried to pressure into investigating a political rival (former Vice President Joe Biden) and his son, Hunter Biden. Atkinson brought that complaint to the attention of Congress, and House Democrats voted to indict Trump on two articles of impeachment — asserting that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for political dirt on the Bidens. But Trump was later acquitted in an impeachment trial in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Trump fired Atkinson on April 3 — a firing that the president’s critics have been denouncing as an act of revenge.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-is-working-behind-the-scenes-to-cripple-any-investigations-before-the-november-election-columnist

no lnx

Trump is working behind the scenes to cripple any investigations before the November election: columnist

President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a "Keep America Great" rally at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona.

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story April 11, 2020

According to columnist David Lurie, writing for the Daily Beast, Donald Trump’s purge of inspector generals in the government is an attempt to make sure that he is not be subjected to any embarrassing reports or investigations before the November election.

As Lurie notes, the president has enlisted former bodyman John McEntee, who was previously booted from the White House by former Chief of Staff John Kelly, to purge critics and those considered not loyal to Trump from their posts, and that inspector generals are at the top of the list.

“In the midst of a deadly pandemic, Donald Trump has expanded his war on oversight by attacking the governments’ inspectors general, compounding the damage already done by his unprecedented stonewalling of congressional oversight investigations,” Lurie wrote, before adding that Trump and McEntee are dead set on “targeting IGs as part of a broader effort to purge officials who aren’t sufficiently personally loyal to Trump.”

“That effort might help Trump delay any formal reviews of his failed leadership during the pandemic, or of his administrations’ disbursement of trillions in coronavirus-related spending, until after the November election,” he continued before highlighting the firing of Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general for turning over to Congress the whistleblower report on Trump’s attempts to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

Adding that Trump’s “attacks on the government’s IG infrastructure have been so audacious that they have raised questions among at least some GOP legislators,” Lurie reports, “Additionally, Trump has taken a uniquely recalcitrant approach to congressional investigations. In the Ukraine matter, Trump defied long-standing precedent by refusing to voluntarily comply with nearly all congressional requests for information, and instructed current and former government officials to do the same.”

“In sum, it seems increasingly likely that Trump’s effort to stonewall and otherwise undermine institutional oversight of his own conduct, as well as that of the government officials that report to him, may well largely succeed, at least until after the election,”Lurie warned. ” Even without the ability to force the president’s loyal soldiers to comply with congressional subpoenas, a small number of courageous truth tellers were willing to come forward to tell the truth about Trump’s Ukraine misconduct.”

“Similarly, Trump’s efforts to fully obfuscate and deny the catastrophic nature of his response to the pandemic do appear to be failing,” he added. “Journalists, health-care workers, and state and local officials are seeking to ensure that many of the critical facts come to light. Hopefully, their efforts to inform the public will continue to bear fruit, and Trump will not succeed in hiding the truth. It is crucial that, when voters go to the ballot box (or mailbox) in November, the scope of Trump’s catastrophic failure is known, even if all of the relevant information has yet to be exposed.”

You can read more here (subscription required).

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/bill-moyers-and-former-chief-inspector-general-of-tarp-break-down-the-unquestionable-scandal-brewing-in-governments-massive-corporate-bailout/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/grifter-trump-plans-nomination-of-white-house-lawyer-to-oversee-4-5-trillion-coronavirus-relief-bill-a-mockery-of-independence

no lnx

‘Grifter’ Trump plans nomination of White House lawyer to oversee $4.5 trillion coronavirus relief bill: ‘A mockery of independence’

Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams April 5, 2020

A late Friday announcement regarding President Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee the implementation of the recently-passed $4.5 trillion coronavirus relief bill was regarded by government watchdogs as the president’s latest attempt to protect the interests of powerful corporations while Americans are focused on the coronavirus pandemic.

The White House announced that Trump would nominate Brian D. Miller, a special assistant to the president and senior associate counsel in the White House Special Counsel office, to oversee the prevention of fraud and abuse in the relief program. The law includes minimal relief for the public and what progressives have derided as a $500 billion “slush fund” for corporations, allowing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “bail out any corporation he pleases, with almost no conditions,” as Patriotic Millionaires chair Morris Pearl wrote last month.

Late last year, Miller informed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the White House would not participate in its investigation of the Trump administration’s decision to hold Ukrainian military aid, in connection with the president’s impeachment inquiry.

The potential appointment of a White House lawyer with close ties to the president to the position of Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery heightened critics’ concerns that there will be little meaningful oversight of the relief package.

The nomination amounted to “a mockery of independence,” tweeted Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “Trump clearly wants a lapdog, not a watchdog.”

Fox in charge of the henhouse. A mockery of independence, putting a Trump lawyer in charge of oversight, with $500 billion in taxpayer money at stake. Trump clearly wants a lapdog, not a watchdog. https://t.co/apXsi0j84r

— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) April 4, 2020

A grifter’s move. https://t.co/XKk4r1SdOv

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) April 4, 2020

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), noted that the White House announced Miller’s nomination on the same night Trump said he was firing Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general who alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint last year regarding Trump’s discussions with Ukraine.

On the same night the President said he’s firing the inspector general who exposed the Ukraine scandal, he also said he’s nominating a White House lawyer to be inspector general for the bailout, a position that must be independent. It’s really really bad.https://t.co/tlTnYzeQwb

— Noah Bookbinder (@NoahBookbinder) April 4, 2020

“People need to be paying attention to the anti-democratic steps the President is taking while people are appropriately preoccupied with the current pandemic,” Bookbinder wrote. “Some of the most outrageous steps were on a Friday night.”

mnu took lead on covid bill negot?

Trump and GOP cast doubt on new stimulus after securing $4.5 trillion corporate bailout: ‘No more spending’Common Dreams

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/market-patriotism-returns-and-asks-workers-for-a-blood-sacrifice/

no lnx many

Market patriotism returns — and asks workers for a blood sacrifice

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