Everything's for sale in Trump Nation, especially access to The Man Himself.
Came out that Don Jr. and Eric Trump "dangled a rare opportunity for donors willing to pony up $500,000 and more" to hang out with the new president on the day after his inauguration (photo-op included at no additional charge!) and go on a hunting or fishing trip with one of the brothers. Donors willing to go up to $1 million might get to kiss The Donald's naked ass.
"In the weeks since Mr. Trump’s election, three of his four adult children, who are serving on his transition committee, have been a near-constant presence. One or more of them have participated in a meeting with the prime minister of Japan, joined in on a phone call with the president of Argentina, and sat at the conference table where Mr. Trump met with leaders of major technology companies."
Ivanka has a big hand in promoting Trump properties world-wide, and she owns Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry. She wore a $10,800 gold bangle bracelet when she participated in an interview her family did with “60 Minutes,” and, like, 30 minutes later, her jewelry company sent out a notice to reporters with a photograph of her wearing the bracelet, trying to use the appearance as an opportunity to sell more items. “Please find attached a style alert of Ivanka wearing her favorite bangle from the Metropolis Collection over the weekend on 60 Minutes,” Monica Marder, the vice president for sales at Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, said in the email.
The Eric Trump Foundation famously offered "coffee with Ivanka Trump" for a measly $77,888 -- that is, they offered that inducement until the press got wind of it, and then the offer evaporated like Donald Trump's hairspray. Same goes for that $500,000 to $1 million offer of access to the new president on the day after his inauguration -- withdrawn quickly after it became public.
Don't trust for a moment that supposedly non-profits and Trump foundations are raising this money, presumably for charitable reasons. The people willing to buy access sure as hell aren't doing it for charitable reasons.
The "kleptocrats" are about to move in, and they obviously can't wait. Literally can't wait.
The Charlotte City Council suddenly repealed their anti-discrimination ordinance on Monday (under pressure, apparently, from Governor-Elect Roy Cooper). They did it to seal a deal with the General Assembly that it would also repeal HB2. But last night the deal seemed to unravel a bit.
Why? Although the city council repealed the major parts of its February ordinance – including all the clauses related to bathrooms and locker rooms that were the main source of Republican opposition -- the council apparently missed some minor "linked" provisions.
So last night at 1 a.m., Dallas Woodhouse, Executive Director of the NCGOP, who likes to take a drink once in a while, tweeted this: “The HB2 blood is now stain soaked on their hands and theirs alone. What a dishonest, disgraceful shame by Roy Cooper and Charlotte Democrats.”
No one ever accused Woodhouse of sober thoughtfulness.
Charlotte City Attorney Bob Hagemann said there had been some misunderstanding about council’s actions on Monday, but denied that there was any attempt to confuse or mislead state lawmakers.
“You [city council] did repeal all of the public accommodation ordinance” Monday, he said. “No attempt was made to hide anything or deceive anybody...I was certain the council acted in good faith.”
“I don’t know that we’re smart enough to actually do that,” he said of tricking the legislature. “But we’re not dumb enough to try.”
So this morning as the General Assembly convened, presumably to perform their half of the "repeal deal," various Republican members of the House began denouncing the whole (5th) special session of the General Assembly as unconstitutional (like that has ever slowed them down!), announcing they would never vote for repeal. The three loudest grandstanders were Larry Pittman (Cabarrus), Jeff Collins (Franklin, Nash), and Michael Speciale (Beaufort, Craven, Pamlico).
With only 105 of 120 members of the House showing up this morning, if there are many defections among the Republicans, it will take all the Democrats and at least 15 sane Republicans to repeal HB2.
Back to Woodhouse: He's a Liar
The last special session of the General Assembly -- gosh! was it just last week? -- was characterized by a preemptive, warning outcry among Democrats that the Republicans were planning to pack the NC Supreme Court to nullify the election of Democratic Judge Michael Morgan. You remember everyone's case of nerves about that, don't you? What the GA did was bad enough, but they didn't pack the court.
Dallas Woodhouse issued a blistering, blood-on-their-hands type statement attacking the news media for reporting the rumor: “I am embarrassed by how the press fell hook, line and sinker for a court expansion crisis that was speculated by Democrats, rumored by Democrats, and fed by Democrats.” Blah, blah, blah. The Woodhouse denunciation went on and on.
But ... really? Woodhouse embarrassed? And we thought he was un-embarrassable!
But who comes out Monday and exposes Woodhouse as a liar? None other than lame-duck Pat McCrory who issued a statement in which he confirmed that indeed the General Assembly was planning to pack the court and that he, heroic Pat McCrory, had stopped them:
“During the past week as the legislature called themselves back into session, I was actively working as your governor to protect the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government .... I also successfully worked to deter any efforts to expand the composition of our Supreme Court."
D'oh! Governor Squishy, you become useful once in a great while!
Red more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article122156609.html#storylink=cpy
TRUMP TOWER, Manhattan
-- The transition team for President-Elect Donald Trump has announced that it
intends to find administration jobs for all 540 American billionaires.
"We're well on our
way to that goal," said top Trump advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner,
"but Mr. Trump has decided that it will make American especially great
again if we can get every last one of the billionaires listed by Forbes into our
government."
Several billionaires
have already signed on to top Cabinet posts. The Commerce, Education, Small
Business Administration, and Treasury departments will all be headed by
billionaires, as will the Department of the Army and the Council of Economic
Advisors, among others.
"I've found in my
dealings with the 'one percent' that billionaires like to hang out with other
billionaires," said Kushner, "and we certainly intend to make our
billionaires feel comfortable in their new surroundings in Washington."
There was some doubt
expressed by journalists on last night's Trump Transition Team conference call
whether there were enough high-level jobs to attract over 500 billionaires into
the Trump administration.
"Oh, we'll have to
dip down into the assistant and deputy and assistant-to-the-deputy-assistant
levels of government to accommodate everyone," the transition team briefer
said on the conference call, "but I think with the extra amenities we're
willing to throw in, we'll get billionaires at many levels of government where
we haven't seen them before."
"Extra
amenities"? The transition team is thinking of adding butlers and personal
masseuses at many levels of government service, and apparently the Office of
Personnel Management has signed off on that plan. There is also talk of
installing "champagne fountains" in many previously spartan offices.
"We do what we can
to attract the fattest cats," said the transition team spokesman. The
champagne fountains are portable and will not require new wiring or extra
plumbing.
"We want our
billionaires to feel good about themselves and enjoy their new
surroundings," said Donald Trump, reached via Twitter. "In the past,
super rich people didn't feel welcome in some offices. Sad."
What we've been through in North Carolina with power-hungry, overreaching Republican lawmakers ... that's what we're about to go through in the nation, with a president and his locker room boys who cannot, will not moderate. They are going to overreach. They are going to live up to their advance billing: arrogant fools who think they're somehow divinely sanctioned.
Trump has continued to tell The Big Lie, that his victory was an unprecedented landslide. Only he spelled it "unpresidented," and when he puts it that way, I'll have to agree.
Franklin Graham underscored the divine thing at the last Trump "thank you" rally in Mobile when he introduced the president-elect: Trump was elected by a spiritual force, Franklin said. “I believe it was God.”
God's taste in billionaire trash is mighty surprising.
Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you ... O, forget it! Trump's victory tour has been more of the same hateful scorn directed at his perceived enemies -- the media, CNN in particular, John Kasich, people who didn't vote for him. "Lock her up! Lock her up!" his acid-washed adorers have continued to chant.
Once -- maybe just once -- Trump actually said something factually true at one of those rallies:
“You people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall?’ ‘We want the wall!’ Screaming, ‘Prison!’ ‘Prison!’ ‘Lock her up!’ I mean, you were going crazy. You were nasty and mean and vicious.”
Then he immediately reverted to what was demonstrably not true, which is his usual rut:
No, they're not any of those things. They've taken their seats in the Colosseum and want to see some blood in the sand. They want to see their Sampson slay a thousand Philistines, and he's certainly got the ass's jawbone for it.
He's too vain and petty not to perform for them. He'll go too far. He'll overreach. He'll follow the path of rich-man folly. And suffer the consequences, because that screaming crowd in the Colosseum has no brain and is preternaturally fickle.
"Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."
Legal challenges to the ugliness wrought by the Republicans in the NC General Assembly this past week are coming. Look for multiple petitions to begin to move in the courts after New Year's.
They know they cannot hold their absolute power without absolute bully tactics. They need secrecy and sudden moves so they can get what they want before the public wakes up. They need to monkey with voting rights -- always! -- because ballot access is where they are most vulnerable. They are dishonest by nature and now by long habit. They scream about the unfairness of what was done to them by Democrats decades ago while doing worse to Democrats. They have no moral compass other than power.
Let's be clear, since there's buffalo dust in the air: The Republican rewrite of boards of elections is all about crippling ballot access. It has nothing to do with "bipartisanship," though that's the dust the Republicans have kicked up. The equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans on all boards of elections are engineered to produce many deadlocks in voting, particularly the selection of Early Voting plans. If no agreement is reached, Early Voting will revert to boards of elections offices only. That's putting the squeeze on ballot access, and it's yet another attempt to tilt Early Voting away from Democrats.
They cannot win without these sorts of shenanigans. They are poltroons, and their multiple treacheries are crystal clear. They depend on the ignorance of the voting public -- or its complacency -- to get them through, and sometimes it does. As obvious as Republican malfeasance in North Carolina has been, it still takes the public a while to catch on.
We're coming for you, NCGOP. You will be exposed. You will lose.
One final thing: Senator Deanna Ballard ... Representative Jonathan Jordan ... can't wait for you two participants to show your faces in Boone!
Thomas Mills has
written a good piece on what the NCGOP is currently undertaking in the North
Carolina General Assembly (GA) -- another case of "overreach," of
which the GA has a long and unhappy history -- unhappy for citizens subjected to unconstitutional measures but
also unhappy for the NCGOP, because
those measures attrack the disapproval of various judges. Sanctions, economic
harm, loss of prestige -- all follow.
"Overreach."
Historically, that same habit used to be called just plain "folly."
folly,
noun -- criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct, often repeated despite known negative
consequences and the presence of a less foolish alternative.
Thomas Mills: Back in
2013, instead of passing a sensible voter I.D. law that would
have protected people’s right to vote while adding scrutiny, the NCGOP
passed a sweeping bill that clamped down on access to voting while deliberately
targeting African-American voters. The whole bill got tossed by the courts.
Folly is known for its inability to stop repeating a critical
error. For the boys in Raleigh, it's always overreach, followed by a good slapping down by
the third branch of government.
Mills: They could have easily drawn redistricting maps
that would have given them healthy majorities in the legislature and Congress
while including a few more competitive districts. Instead, they drew some of the
most gerrymandered maps in the country. [Tossed out
by the courts. Twice.]
With House Bill 2, they should have let
Charlotte handle its own affairs, since the GOP at one time was the party
of limited government. Once they called the special session, though, they
loaded up the bill with clearly discriminatory measures that affected every
county and city in the state. [Not yet tossed by the courts, but challenged.]
With the current special session, the GOP legislature is
trying to restrict Cooper’s ability to govern while grabbing as much power as
possible. [Will be in the courts as soon as it's passed. Roy Cooper has vowed
to sue. And well he should!]
What causes such folly?
Short answer: An
excess of power. That's historical fact, actually. Historically, when a
ruler has had too much power -- like, say, one of those popes around the time
of Michelangelo -- he believes he can do anything, damn the consequences! But consequences are usually unforeseen and rarely prepared for, and they always come.
Too much power is like too large a sail on too light a boat.
The folly of the corrupt popes of Michelangelo's age
brought on the Protestant Reformation. In France, the follies of Louis XIV
provoked the French Revolution and the dissolution of the monarchy. The follies
of Lyndon Johnson forced him out of running for reelection. You might say the follies of "Four" Eggers led to the recent overthrow of the Watauga County Commission.
There are many such examples.
The NCGOP's current legislative folly is an unprecedented
and cynical power grab intended to kneecap the duly elected governor, Roy
Cooper. A coup d'etat, it's being
called. Will the NCGOP pay for this folly? How?
We hear that the scene in Raleigh at the General Assembly
-- hundreds of citizens of all ages expressing their protests and beginning to
be arrested in acts of civil disobedience -- has actually rattled at least some
Republicans. The level of anger is singeing the paint. Individual members of the
GA are feeling a vibe like they've never felt before.
Many of them will presumably be up for reelection in 2017
in the court-mandated special elections in NC House and Senate seats that were
ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered for racial disadvantage. At least 28
House and Senate seats have to be redrawn, meaning abutting districts will also
have to be redrawn, and the dominoes will fall from there. May be twice that
many seats up for election in 2017. All
the seats will be up for election again immediately in 2018.
The stripping of powers from the new governor, the favors
done the defeated governor, the monkeying with the courts and the state's boards of elections
-- all of them -- all of this overreach is being seen for what it is. The
people I know are angrier than I've ever seen them. I'm angry. I want to picket
someone's house.
Historically, comeuppance always catches up with the fool eventually.
After kicking the watching public and the press out of its gallery, the NC Senate passed Senate Bill 4 which completely rewrites boards of elections, makes Supreme Court races partisan, slows down the process of challenging this General Assembly for passing unconstitutional legislation, and does several other things. Republicans are bragging that the changes to the boards of elections is "bipartisan," by which they mean "done in secret with no Democratic input." Under S4, the Republican leaders in the General Assembly get to appoint half of a new State Board of Elections. Etc.
S4 went to a House committee last night, where it was quickly approved, and is in another House committee this morning, where ... ditto -- you can bet on it.
The House also cleared the galleries last night and locked the doors and had 17 protesters arrested, including reporter Joe Killian, who refused to leave as a working member of the press.
What's the basic attitude of these Republican lawmakers toward the people thronging the General Assembly in protest? Vicki Boyer, who was standing in a hallway trying to get into a too-small Education Committee room to hear discussion of a completely different bill, got brushed by an arriving lawmaker who snarled, "If you had jobs, you wouldn't have to stand around here."
If we didn't have a coup d'etat under way, we wouldn't have to be standing in a hallway trying to get access to what you people are doing to us in the people's house.
In debate on the floors of the House and the Senate, various Republicans made whining speeches about what Democrats did to them 40 years back. Seriously. That's their excuse for their behavior and for the unprecedented usurpation of power.
After the public and reporters were locked out of the House gallery, that body passed House Bill 17 with 70-36 votes along party lines. The bill strips Governor-elect Roy Cooper’s power, slashing the number of state job positions he can hire or fire from 1,500 to 300, making his cabinet choices subject to NC Senate confirmation, and eliminating his ability to make appointments to university boards of trustees.
Rep. Jeff Collins, Republican from Rocky Mount, said something really funny. He said that he and his fellow GOP had to treat Roy Cooper like an illegal immigrant because the current power balance in state government is “way out of kilter.” BWAhahaha.
“It has all the appearance of a vendetta against a newly elected governor,” commented Rep. Philip Lehman, a Durham Democrat.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article121222618.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article121222618.html#storylink=cpy
They're not just taking power away from Roy Cooper. They're also messing with public education: "The House is expected to take up House Bill 13 on Friday, which would modify the maximum average class size requirements for kindergarten through third grade." Another law would transfer administration of public schools and the state Department of Public Instruction from the State Board of Education to the state schools superintendent, newly elected Republican Mark Johnson.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article121222618.html#storylink=cpy
There are another 20 bills in the hopper, another 20 possibilities for real and lasting mischief. Stand by.
J.W. Williamson was the founding editor in 1972 of the Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, which he edited until July of 2000. He has taught college classes in Appalachian history, cultural politics, and literature, and he has lectured widely on the pop-culture history of "Appalachia" in the American consciousness. His books include Interviewing Appalachia, Southern Mountaineers in Silent Films, and Hillbillyland: What the Mountains Did to the Movies and What the Movies Did to the Mountains. He has won the Thomas Wolfe Award given by the Western North Carolina Historical Society, the Laurel Leaves Award given by the Appalachian Consortium, a special Weatherford Award given by Berea College, and the Cratis Williams-James Brown Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association.
The views expressed on WataugaWatch are solely those of J.W. Williamson or individual contributors and are not necessarily shared nor endorsed by the Watauga County Democratic Party nor by any other adults of sound mind in this or any other universe.
