Kamala Harris Would Make a Hell of a Chief Executive

I've been impressed by Sen. Kamala Harris since I watched her dismantle Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- "You're making me nervous," he whined at her on June 13, 2017. Mr. Chicken who couldn't remember scratch is gone, but Senator Harris has risen as a possible presidential contender.





She's obviously a skilled prosecutor and has the history of study and public office to prove it. She got her law degree from the University of California's Hastings College of Law and got her feet wet as an attorney for the City of San Francisco, then ran successfully for district attorney of the city and county of San Francisco in 2003. In 2009, Harris wrote Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer in which (according to Wikipedia) "she looked at criminal justice from an economic perspective and attempted to reduce temptation and access for criminals" (the love of filthy lucre being the root of all evil, yes and amen!).

She ain't no bleeding heart: "While Harris was the San Francisco District Attorney, the overall felony conviction rate rose from 52% in 2003 to 67% in 2006, the highest in a decade .... convictions of drug dealers increased from 56% in 2003 to 74% in 2006." Conviction rate for homicides went up too, though Harris is strong against the death penalty. Life in prison for cold-blooded murderers is adequate for her.

In 2010, Harris ran for and was elected Attorney General of California, winning the Democratic primary in a crowded field. She got more than twice the votes as her nearest competitor. She was reelected attorney general in 2014. After Senator Barbara Boxer announced her retirement, Harris ran for her Senate seat and won in 2016. She's in her first term.

She is in every way imaginable the very image of the new America. Child of immigrants from Jamaica and India, well educated and instinctually smart, she's a crusader. She participated in a suit against five big California banks over the sub-prime mortgage crisis and secured over $12 billion in debt reduction for bamboozled homeowners.

She has an interesting history with DJT's Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin: In 2013, she did not prosecute his bank OneWest despite evidence "suggestive of widespread misconduct," according to a leaked memo from the Department of Justice. In 2017, Harris said that her office's decision to not prosecute Mnuchin was based on "following the facts and the evidence ... like any other case." Here's where eyebrows really started going north: In 2016, Mnuchin donated $2,000 to Harris's senate campaign. Then this inexplicably happened: as senator, Harris voted against the confirmation of Mnuchin to become Twitterman's Secretary of the Treasury.

If she runs for president, that curious history will be mined. Anyone as involved in public policy implementation as Kamala Harris will have loads of decisions subject to investigation and opposition research ... if she runs for president. (She's supposed to announce her decision early in 2019.)

Here's more of Harris as a senator on the Judiciary Committee, questioning Rod Rosenstein about protecting the independence of special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation -- all more than relevant now in light of the temporary head of the Department of Justice that Twitterman put in Sessions' place and in light of the dude Twitterman has nominated as his permanent replacement for Attorney General of the United States.





I'd pay money to see her in a debate with the biggest damned ignorant fool on the planet (and you know who I'm talking about!).

Those Masters of "Branding"

That stain on the South Dakota landscape is the Keystone Pipeline
spill of over 200,000 gallons of oil

Thank you, Secretary Mnuchin, for your service, and
Mrs Mnuchin, for your duck face 

Our all-time favorite self-branding moment
from the first year of The End of Decency

"Suffer little children to come unto me"

Trump's Sycophants

sycophant, noun: a person who acts obsequiously toward someone important in order to gain advantage. Synonyms: yes-man, bootlicker, brown-noser, toady, lickspittle, flatterer, flunky, lackey, spaniel, doormat, stooge, cringer, suck, suck-up

“[Trump Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin may be the greatest sycophant in Cabinet history.”
--Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers

What earned Mnuchin that title? He went out of his way recently to praise Trump's equivocation about race-haters in Charlottesville and also said he totally agreed with Trump that football players shouldn't take the knee (unless they were bowing to Trump). Neither issue has anything to do with Mnuchin's business at Treasury, but Trump needs constant praise and Mnuchin knows how to dish it.

In the famous June 12th Cabinet meeting, a landmark in lickspittle scrambling, Trump insisted on hearing praise of himself from every single official sitting at that large table. Only Defense Secretary Jim Mattis refused to play, praising the men and women of the armed forces instead. From all the others, Trump heard "thank you soooo much for the opportunity and blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda" and “It’s an honor to be able to serve you” and “I am privileged to be here -- deeply honored” and “What an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership,” said the now disappeared Tom Price.

Trump listens to praise
on June 12th

The photograph of Trump's face while that fawning festival proceeded perfectly captures his needy babyhood. Tell me more about how great I am, because I am just that seriously damaged as a human being and insecure because my mother never loved me and my father never hugged me.

The "adult day-care workers" in the Trump White House, the lowly staffers who don't own a cabinet rank and don't get to travel on chartered jets, know who they're working for. They praise and fawn and lick that spittle while the country goes to hell on impulse.

According to Ashley Parker, "when his advisers hope to prevent Trump from making what they think is an unwise decision, they frequently try to delay his final verdict — hoping he may reconsider after having time to calm down."

Put the baby in "time out." And always -- always -- tell him what a good boy he is.

"One defining feature of managing Trump is frequent praise, which can leave his team in what seems to be a state of perpetual compliments. The White House pushes out news releases overflowing with top officials heaping flattery on Trump .... Especially in the early days of his presidency, aides delivered the president daily packages of news stories filled with positive coverage and Trump began meetings by boasting about his performance, either as president or in winning the White House...."

A boasting man, surrounded by sycophants, does not ground this country in any useful reality.

Trump: Full Frontal with the Democrats

Photo by Al Drago for the NYTimes

House Speaker Paul Ryan had earlier in the day yesterday called "the deal" that Trump struck with Congressional Democrats "ridiculous" and "disgraceful." Yet Trump jumped at the offer from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to tie Hurricane Harvey relief to a three-month extension of government funding and increase in the debt ceiling.

In other words -- and the short version -- Schumer and Pelosi ate Republican lunch.

Besides Schumer and Pelosi, representing the Democrats, who else was there? Trump, yes, but also House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. All those Republicans opposed the Schumer-Pelosi plan -- one might say, opposed it bitterly -- but Trump ignored them. In fact, later on Air Force One, on his way to North Dakota, Trump deliberately praised Schumer and Pelosi for striking a deal with him while not even mentioning the Republicans who were also in the meeting.

Schumer and Pelosi now have more than just leverage. Their three-month deal on the debt ceiling will force another painful vote for Republicans around Christmas time, with every chance of political disaster. Paul Ryan had wanted a debt ceiling extension of 18 months, which would have put another vote beyond the 2018 mid-term elections. Trump in effect shat in Ryan's hat.

Trump also later talked up the mutual willingness among the Trump-Schumer-Pelosi triumvirate to make the "Dream Act" (DACA) into solid law. Trump now wants the Democrats in Congress to save him from the blowback over his tromping on DACA on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Ryan and McConnell fumed in the corner like jilted spouses in a nasty divorce.

The deal struck between the Democrats and Trump still has to go for votes in both House and Senate, and many Republicans are steaming mad about it. “The Pelosi-Schumer-Trump deal is bad,” Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska tweeted. Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina, chair of the Republican Study Committee, said, “I’m still processing this, but my first instinct is I’m not very happy about it." But can Republicans afford to vote against it?

Score one for Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

No Hiding Trump's Hostility Toward Government

Okay, we get it, Mr. Trump. You're expressing your perfect contempt for the various departments of government to which you're appointing people with either (a) no qualifications for managing those departments or (b) open hostility toward the departments they are being appointed to manage.

Like this fool.

That's really a funny joke. Hahahahaha. Can't wait to see how it all turns out, if the good people who voted for you will be laughing too.

The scorecard, so far:

Steven Mnuchin at Treasury wants to do away with Dodd-Frank

Andrew Puzder at Labor is a vocal critic of increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay

Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency is a primary architect of legal challenges on President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations

Tom Price at the Department of Health and Human Services wants to phase out Medicare

Ben Carson at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who believes that the pyramids were grain storage bins

Jeff Sessions at Justice is no friend of either civil rights or voting rights

Betsy DeVos at the Education Department who intends to cut "the public" out of public education

This bunch has tilted radically to the 1% and decidedly away from "those forgotten people" Trump said he wanted to help. Yeah, these guys are really gonna help!

Trump's Team of Oligarchs

Trump promised to remember "the forgotten men and women."

He vowed to "drain the swamp."

Trump's closing campaign ad prior to the election blasted "the global power elite" and singled out Goldman Sachs as a pillar of the corrupt establishment ... which, Trump claimed, was rigging the election against him.

Presto change-o!

Trump's inaugural is shaping up to set a new standard for "pay-to-play" politics:

⭑ Those giving $1 million or more toward the inaugural party weekend will get perks including an “intimate dinner” with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and his wife and a candlelight dinner with an appearance by Trump, Pence, and their wives. 

⭑ Those who can only afford $250,000 get an “intimate policy discussion and dinner with select Cabinet officials.”

Global elite?

✤ Would-be Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos -- family worth is $5.1 billion. 

✤ Commerce secretary pick Wilbur Ross -- he's worth $2.9 billion.

✤ Deputy commerce secretary choice Todd Ricketts -- his family fortune is also in the billions.

✤ Harold Hamm, paraded at Trump Tower as a possible energy secretary -- worth $15 billion.

✤ Former Goldman Sachs partner (and Hollywood executive) Steven Mnuchin has been named as Trump's treasury secretary. (Mnuchin is worth only about $40 million.)

✤ Trump's reportedly in talks to hire Goldman Sach’s No. 2 executive, Gary Cohn, to be his budget director.

Trump to "The Common Man": More Goldman Sachs For You!

Steven Mnuchin

We're about to have the third Goldman Sachs executive in as many decades as the top financial officer of the United States:

Robert Rubin, 1995-1999

Henry "Hank" Paulson, 2006-2009

Steven Mnuchin, 2017 - infinity?

“We think by cutting corporate taxes we’ll create huge economic growth and we’ll have huge personal income,” the man who lost a vowel told CNBC. ("Mnuchin" is pronounced mi-NEW-chin.) Mnuchin is going to fit right in with the Trump Locker Room because he uses huge so often. Plus he's rich and a hedge-fund operative. And he thinks that cutting taxes on the rich and powerful is gonna help Mr. Common Man, as though we haven't tried that route before.

Trump barked at the delegates to the Republican National Convention: “The forgotten men and women of our country — people who work hard but no longer have a voice: I am your voice” ... though I intend to hang out exclusively with billionaires in my cabinet, he did not add out loud.

"I am your voice" as long as that voice is spouting lies about "millions" of people voting illegally. "I am your voice" as long as that voice is spouting racist or prejudicial attacks on groups of citizens. "I am your voice" as long as you stay glued to Dancing With the Stars and Fox News and refrain from skepticism.

Meanwhile, Steven Mnuchin, our new Secretary of the Treasury To Be, is criticized for cashing in on the country’s financial collapse in 2008. “He purchased a bailed-out bank for pennies on the dollar and then aggressively foreclosed on tens of thousands of families,” Jon Green, a spokesman for the Take on Wall Street campaign, said following the announcement of Mnuchin's appointment.

16 Ways of Looking at a Mugwump

Mugwump, noun: 1. a Republican who refused to support the party nominee, James G. Blaine, in the presidential campaign of 1884. 2. a person who is unable to make up his or her mind on an issue, especially in politics; a person who is neutral on a controversial issue.
 

Kushner

1. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, has conducted a "purge" of certain members of Trump's transition team, starting with Gov. Chris Christie who was fired as head of the transition last Friday. Former Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan and Matthew Freedman, a lobbyist who consults with corporations and foreign governments, were also fired. Both had ties to Christie.

2. The President-elect sent a tweet very late last night insisting that everything was going smoothly. “Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions. I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!”

3. Rebekah Mercer, a major donor to Trump’s presidential campaign and member of his executive transition team, told Republican operatives that she was having difficulty finding people interested in rank-and-file administration posts.

4. Trump took his first conversations with foreign leaders without reviewing official State Department briefing materials, and he broke from diplomatic practice by delaying conversations with close U.S. allies. Trump’s first call was with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, followed by Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu. British Prime Minister Theresa May didn’t get through to Trump until almost a day later.

5. As of yesterday, officials at both the Pentagon and State Department said they have heard nothing from Trump’s transition team.

Bannon

6. Trump’s newly-named chief strategist, Steve Bannon, helped turn Breitbart News into a platform for the white nationalist alt-right. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a possible choice for attorney general, was once turned down for a federal judgeship after several U.S. attorneys testified that he made racist comments in court. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani’s extensive business ties to Qatar and Venezuela complicate reports that he could be chosen as secretary of state.

7. Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official who had criticized Trump during the campaign but said after his election that he would keep an open mind about advising him, said yesterday on Twitter that he had changed his opinion. After speaking to the transition team, he wrote, "stay away!” adding, “They’re angry, arrogant, screaming ‘you LOST!’ Will be ugly.”

8. Donald Trump and some of his family went to dinner last night at the super-expensive 21 Club in Manhattan (where you can get a ribeye for $68) and said to the well-heeled diners, "We'll get your taxes down -- don't worry about it."

9. Vice President-elect Mike Pence -- who now heads the transition after the firing of Christie -- did his own purge, reportedly dismissing the several registered lobbyists who had moved in, leaving the transition "short-staffed" but closer to Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp.”

Mnuchin

10. Former Goldman Sachs partner and Trump loyalist Steven Mnuchin is the frontrunner for treasury secretary. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions is now favored to serve as attorney general. Seen arriving at Trump Tower yesterday was one-time campaign rival Ted Cruz. Joining the national security transition team is Frank Gaffney Jr. -- labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes,” and who last year defended Trump’s proposed Muslim ban as “common sense.”

11. Rudy Giuliani let his freak flag fly and admitted in public that he's pretty sure he'll be picked as Secretary of State. John Bolton’s name also surfaced for that job. Republican Sen. Rand Paul immediately objected, calling Bolton “unfit” for the job. “You want to have a diplomat in charge of diplomacy. You don’t want a bomb thrower,” Paul told CNN. Then Paul lumped the former mayor of New York City in with Bolton: “I think Giuliani and Bolton are very similar. Bolton just has a more extensive cheerleading background with regard to war in the Middle East.”

12. Republicans will have a one-seat majority in the Senate, meaning any defection -- by a senator like Rand Paul -- could pose a serious roadblock to confirming Trump’s top Cabinet picks. 

13. One source with knowledge of the Trump transition described it as a "knife fight."

14. A particular challenge for the Trump transition is lack of clarity about the division of power among Reince Priebus, named Chief of Staff of the Trump White House; Steve Bannon, the Harvard-educated white supremacist and campaign Svengali; and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has Trump's ear like no one else. Another source tied to the transition described the resulting confusion as "buffoonery."

Flynn

15. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has emerged as a leading candidate for national security adviser. Flynn was a vocal and sometimes inflamatory advocate for Trump during the campaign. At the Republican National Convention he delivered a fiery speech attacking Clinton (as being in the enemy camp, along with Barack Hussein Obama) and waving the bloody flag of "American exceptionalism." He echoed Trump's rhetoric of crushing terrorism, cozying up to Russia, and dissing NATO.

16. Trump on the campaign trail promised repeatedly not to change Medicare. Now his official website says: “modernize Medicare, so that it will be ready for the challenges with the coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation – and beyond.” "Modernize"? House Speaker Paul Ryan has a different term: "Medicare is going to have price controls.”

A nation and its Constitution are one. A nation and its Constitution and Donald Trump are one. (Apologies, Wallace Stevens!)