You guys, the UAW — you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. You made a lot of sacrifices. You gave up a lot. And the companies were in trouble. But now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too. It’s a simple proposition.
- President Joe Biden,
on a picket line in Belleville, Michigan on Tuesday
This week's featured posts are "MAGA and the Swifties" and "When should public officials resign?"
This week everybody was talking about the close call on a government shutdown
The government did not shut down Sunday morning, and will not shut down until at least November 17.
The shutdown, which had appeared nearly inevitable, was avoided when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy changed his position Saturday morning: He allowed a vote on a short-term continuing resolution. Once the resolution came to the House floor, it passed easily, 335-91. It then went to the Senate, where it passed 88-9. The bill was signed by President Biden Saturday evening with an hour to spare.
The resolution was opposed almost entirely by Republicans: 90 representatives and nine senators. Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois was the lone Democrat in opposition. Two House Democrats, Rep. Katie Porter of California and Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska, did not vote. The Republican opposition came mostly from the party's right wing, the likes of Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
The resolution continues funding government departments at the same levels as fiscal 2023, which ended on September 30. It also added $16 billion for disaster relief, but included no additional aid to Ukraine. (A similar bill in the Senate had $6 billion for Ukraine, but the House bill got through first.)
President Biden believes he has a promise from Speaker McCarthy to allow a separate vote on Ukraine aid soon. However, Biden also believed McCarthy had committed himself to funding the government back when the debt-ceiling deal was reached in June. McCarthy ultimately came through, but not without considerable drama.
It also remains to be seen if McCarthy will continue as speaker. Gaetz and his right-wing allies in the "Freedom" Caucus had threatened to withdraw their support from McCarthy if he made a deal to get Democratic votes, as he did Saturday.
McCarthy has clearly been frustrated by the nihilism of his party's right wing, which never proposed a government-funding deal it could support. McCarthy told reporters after the vote:
If you have members in your conference that won’t let you vote for appropriation bills, [don’t] want an omnibus and won’t vote for a stopgap measure, so the only answer is to shut down and not pay our troops: I don’t want to be a part of that team.
The next question is whether Gaetz and his allies will carry out their threat to submit a motion to vacate the chair, which would remove McCarthy from the speakership unless Democrats decided to save him. (They say they won't without getting something in return.) Over the weekend he said he would submit the motion sometime this week. McCarthy responded with bravado: "Bring it on. Let's get this over with."
Also: Will anything be different as we approach November 17? McCarthy bought himself (or his successor) some time, but if he has some plan for achieving a less chaotic outcome, he hasn't revealed it yet.
One final point: The fact that McCarthy's change-of-mind resolved the issue so quickly is pretty convincing evidence that Republicans were causing the problem.
and the Trump trials
The New York Attorney General's lawsuit against the Trump Organization won a big victory Tuesday: Judge Arthur F. Engoron issued a partial summary judgment on the case, declaring that Trump had committed fraud by inflating his net worth when applying for bank loans. Because Trump Organization's fraud is ongoing, the judge
cancelled all of the business licenses for the Trump Organization and its 500 or so subsidiary companies and partnerships after finding that Trump used them to, along with his older two sons, commit fraud.
His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much more than his pensions as a one term president and a television performer.
Under the New York General Business Law you can only do business in your own name as a sole proprietor or with a business license, which the state calls a “business certificate.” All of Trump’s businesses were corporations or partnerships that require business certificates.
The judge's ruling found that a trial was unnecessary to determine fraud, because all the arguments Trump's lawyers presented in his defense were beside the point.
[The Office of the Attorney General] need only prove: (1) the [statements of financial condition] were false and misleading; and (2) the defendant repeatedly or persistently used the SFCs to transact business.
The instant action is essentially a "documents case". As detailed [elsewhere in this ruling], the documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business, clearly satisfying OAG's burden.
Trump's attorneys instead argued a number of legally irrelevant points, like that the banks in fact did not lose money, or that the SFCs contained a clause warning the banks to do their own valuations, or that property valuations are subjective. Their stubbornness in repeating arguments the judge had already rejected as frivolous led the judge to sanction the attorneys $7500 each. (David Cay Johnston notes that this ruling could be cited in some future disbarment hearing.) University of Michigan business law professor Thomas elaborates:
What we've seen with Donald Trump over and over again is that often arguments that gain traction with his supporters are flatly inconsistent with the law.
Underlining that point, Trump has continued making the irrelevant arguments rather than addressing the actual ruling.
I've heard a number of analogies capturing why the nobody-lost-money argument fails. Here's my favorite: What if as you were closing up at your job, you stole $100 from the till, then went to the racetrack and bet it on a horse that won? In the morning you could replace the $100, so your employer didn't lose money. But you're still a thief.
Probably the most egregious overvaluation was of Trump's apartment in Trump Tower, which he claimed was three times its actual size and valued accordingly. The judge comments:
In opposition, defendants absurdly suggest that "the calculation of square footage is a subjective process" ... A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.
Of course Trump will appeal, but an appeal is not just a do-over. He'll have to support an argument that the judge did something wrong. The judge's reasoning is simple and doesn't seem to rely on esoteric points of law, so an appeal doesn't seem to have much to work with.
Meanwhile, a trial on the rest of the state's charges, including insurance fraud, will begin today. Thursday, the appeals court refused to delay that trial pending a ruling on Trump's appeal. The trial will also determine the fines Trump will have to pay. The state is asking for $250 million.
Trump has said he's going to appear in court today, though it's not clear what he plans to do there, since it's not time for him to testify, if he intends to do that at all (which I doubt). Trump says a lot of things, so I'll believe he's coming when I see him.
In political terms, one consequence of this decision isn't getting the attention it deserves: Like sexual assault, Trump's involvement in fraud is no longer just an accusation: It is a finding of a court of law. Trump is no longer just "alleged" to have committed fraud. He committed fraud.
Fani Willis got the first guilty plea from one of her 18 RICO defendants. (It's kind of amazing this isn't even the lead story under "Trump trials".) Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanors and was sentenced to five years of probation. He is also committed to testify in future proceedings, and if he doesn't testify truthfully, the deal is revocable.
Hall's role in the Georgia election-stealing scheme is both low-level and easily established: When Trump allies were trying to assemble (or invent) evidence of voter fraud in Georgia, they illegally accessed voting machines in Coffee County.
The security breach in the county about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta is among the first known attempts by Trump allies to access voting systems as they sought evidence to back up their unsubstantiated claims that such equipment had been used to manipulate the presidential vote. It was followed a short time later by breaches in three Michigan counties involving some of the same people and again in a western Colorado county that Trump won handily.
... Authorities say Hall and co-defendants conspired to allow others to "unlawfully access secure voting equipment and voter data." This included ballot images, voting equipment software and personal vote information that was later made available to people in other states, according to the indictment.
In a RICO case, specific crimes like these are used to establish the existence of a corrupt organization that other defendants belong to. Hall's guilty plea raises the question of whether it will start a stampede to make a deal with Willis before the other defendants do. A defendant's only leverage in such a deal is if s/he can testify to something Willis can't already prove.
In other Georgia-election-case news, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and three of Trump's fake electors lost their bid to move their cases to federal court. Mark Meadows' similar motion had already been denied, and Trump surprisingly announced he will not try to shift his case to federal court.
Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro are the first of the 18 (now 17) RICO defendants facing trial. They requested a speedy trial, which will begin October 23. CNN has speculated that they will be offered plea deals to avoid this trial, which would preview the state's evidence to the other defendants.
and the sham impeachment hearing
Like the rest of the House Republican investigations of Joe Biden, the opening session of their impeachment inquiry did not live up to its billing. None of the witnesses called were "fact" witnesses, i.e., none of them saw or heard President Biden doing anything impeachable. The witnesses also made much weaker claims than the Republican congressmen did.
Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky: "I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing. More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment."
Law professor Jonathan Turley: "I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish."
That's a far cry from the claim House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer made, that the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain.”
A rule of thumb: Investigations that are going somewhere get more and more specific. For example, the Manhattan case about Trump's Stormy Daniels payoff -- widely considered the weakest of the four Trump indictments -- has come down to this: 34 Trump Organization documents are fraudulent business records.
The longer the Republican investigation of Biden stays at the level of "Hunter did shady things and Joe must have been involved somehow", the more likely it is to go nowhere.
A tip on interpreting headlines: When a headline attributes some wrong-doing to "the Biden family", that means the article contains no new information about President Biden himself. If they had anything on Joe, that would be the headline.
and the rain
Climate Change Summer has turned into Climate Change Fall. Friday, as much as 8 inches of rain fell on parts of New York City, shutting down the subways and producing flash floods. The storm was not due to a hurricane or tropical storm. Instead, seemingly innocuous systems came together unexpectedly to produce a hurricane-like rainfall. The NYT explains:
It has been raining a lot in New York, which hasn’t seen a September this wet in over a century. Climate change is very likely stoking more ominous and lengthy downpours because as the atmosphere heats up, it can hold more moisture, said Andrew J. Kruczkiewicz, a senior researcher who specializes in flash floods at Columbia Climate School at Columbia University.
Scientific American gives the larger context:
The 2018 National Climate Assessment (a new version of which is due sometime this year) found that the amount of rain that fell during the heaviest 1 percent of rain events had increased by 55 percent across the Northeast since 1958, with most of the increase happening since 1996. That trend will only get worse as global temperature rise, causing more evaporation from oceans and lakes and giving storms more water to fuel deluges.
and Taylor Swift
The right-wing attacks against Swift are the subject of one of the features posts.
and two speeches aimed at workers
Biden and Trump each talked to auto workers, but in very different ways. Biden went out on the picket line with UAW strikers and addressed them with a bullhorn. In addition to the quote at the top of this post, he said:
Wall Street didn’t build the country. The middle class built the country, and unions built the middle class.
Biden handed the bullhorn to UAW President Shawn Fein, who said:
These CEOs sit in their offices, they sit in meetings, and they make decisions. But we make the product. They think they own the world, but we make it run.
Whether we’re building cars or trucks or running parts distribution centers; whether we’re writing movies or performing TV shows; whether we’re making coffee at Starbucks; whether it’s nursing people back to health; whether it’s educating students, from preschool to college — we do the heavy lifting. We do the real work. Not the CEOs, not the executives.
The next day, Trump was invited by management to speak at a non-union auto parts shop.
About 400 to 500 Trump supporters were inside a Drake Enterprises facility for the speech. Drake Enterprises employs about 150 people, and the UAW doesn't represent its workforce. It wasn't clear how many auto workers were in the crowd for the speech, which was targeted at them.
One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said "union members for Trump," acknowledged that she wasn't a union member when approached by a Detroit News reporter after the event. Another person with a sign that read "auto workers for Trump" said he wasn't an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn't provide their names.
In other words, Biden lent his support to an event workers started on their own, while Trump staged a event for the cameras, complete with extras playing phony roles. His support for working people is about as authentic as his property valuations or his marriage vows.
and Cassidy Hutchinson's book
I read Cassidy Hutchinson's new book Enough. A lot of what's in it is stuff you already know if you watched her testimony and followed the news about her.
But it does make it easier to understand how she could fall under Trump's spell: She had a psychologically abusive father whose approval she valued but could never secure. He was a head-of-the-household type who had big plans, but was never wrong. It was up to Cassidy's mother to make the details of those plans work, and to take the blame if things fell apart. So that role was already in Cassidy's head, waiting for Trump to slide into it.
Her description of the Trump White House resembles an abusive family in a lot of ways. Hutchinson and her boss Mark Meadows lived in fear of Trump's temper. And if he did erupt, the explanation that he's an over-coddled asshole wasn't available to them. Instead, they believed they should have foreseen and prevented whatever set him off.
The book also underlines a problem in our justice system: It's expensive, even if you did nothing wrong. When Hutchinson got her first subpoena from the January 6 Committee, everyone told her she needed a lawyer. She was driven to use a TrumpWorld lawyer when an independent lawyer quoted her a six-figure price. Only after she got disgusted with herself and wanted to change her testimony did she ask Liz Cheney for help. Cheney gave her a lead on a firm that took her case for free.
This raised a question in my mind: If you're a witness and not a target of an investigation, and if you intend to answer all questions truthfully, why do you need a lawyer? All the coverage I've seen takes the necessity of counsel for granted, so I asked a lawyer I know to spell it out.
He made three points:
- You don't always know for sure that you won't eventually be a target, even if you're innocent.
- A lawyer can negotiate about how you'll testify, to minimize how much the investigation will disrupt your life.
- If you're not familiar with all the relevant laws, you may not realize that you violated one. If you did, you may need to negotiate a plea deal or a cooperation agreement.
With Trump and his allies threatening retribution if they ever get back in power, both sides need to think about this problem. Merely witnessing a suspected crime shouldn't bankrupt you.
and you also might be interested in ...
Senator Dianne Feinstein died at the age of 90. Politico looks back at her career.
Governor Newsom is wasting no time in naming her successor: Laphonza Butler, the president of Emily's List. The official announcement is expected later today.
Newsom had made two pledges, both of which this appointment fulfills: He said he would appoint a Black woman, and that he would not give any of the candidates already running for this seat in 2024 an advantage by naming them as the interim.
I didn't watch the second Republican presidential debate. In reading accounts of it, nothing made me feel like I missed out.
Ron DeSantis is a terrible strategist. He was riding high immediately after last fall's midterm elections for a simple reason: He won his race handily, while Trump's favorite candidates almost all lost. His potentially winning message against Trump was obvious: I can win and Trump will lose again. (If Trump wanted to respond by claiming he didn't lose, let him. It makes him sound like a whiner. Ask: "So are you living in the White House now or not?" When that sets off another rant, respond with an eye roll and "Whatever.")
DeSantis' policy positions should have sounded conservative while remaining vague, giving a wide range of Republicans room to fantasize about the wonderful things he might do after he won.
Instead, he committed to very specific and not very popular policies, like a six-week abortion ban, taking books out of libraries, and seizing control of universities. It's been all downhill from there.
and let's close with something out of this world
In 2024, NASA is planning to launch a probe to study Europa, a moon of Jupiter where scientists hope to find an ocean of salty water under a thick crust of ice. The presence of water, kept in a liquid state by friction-producing tides powered by Jupiter's gravity, opens up the possibility of finding extra-terrestrial life for the first time.
The probe, which NASA is calling the Europa Clipper, would go into orbit around Jupiter in 2030.
Over several years, it will conduct dozens of flybys of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, gathering detailed measurements to determine if the moon has conditions suitable for life.
"OK," I imagine you thinking, "but what's that got to do with me?"
NASA is offering a variety of ways for you to engage with the mission. Inspired by the thought of Europan life, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón has written a poem for the mission "In Praise of Mystery: a Poem for Europa". NASA's "Message in a Bottle" campaign invites you to cosign Limón's message.
The poem will be engraved on the Clipper, along with participants' names that will be etched onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and participant’s names will travel 1.8 billion miles on Europa Clipper’s voyage to the Jupiter system.
Other suggested activities have a more educational flavor: NASA provides material that might nudge you to write your own space poetry. Or you can download a line-drawing of the Clipper and Europa suitable for coloring. The coloring can get even more interesting if you put textured surfaces under the paper.
No comments:
Post a Comment