Tag: White House

Worst Attorney General Ever

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Despite 2 guilty pleas, the Department of Justice has dropped its case against Michael Flynn, in what is likely the single most egregious case of an Attorney General malfeasance in the history of the Republic.

Legal experts are dumbfounded at the decision, which they see as unprecedented.

After an extraordinary public campaign by President Trump and his allies, the Justice Department dropped its criminal case on Thursday against Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser.

Mr. Flynn had previously pleaded guilty twice to lying to F.B.I. agents about his conversations with a Russian diplomat during the presidential transition in late 2016.

The move was the latest example of Attorney General William P. Barr’s efforts to chisel away at the results of the Russia investigation. Documents that Mr. Flynn’s lawyers cited as evidence of prosecutorial misconduct were turned over as part of a review by an outside prosecutor whom Mr. Barr assigned to re-examine the case. Mr. Barr has cast doubt not only on some of the prosecutions in the investigation but also on its premise, assigning another independent prosecutor to scrutinize its origins.

The decision for the government to throw out a case after a defendant had already pleaded guilty was also highly unusual. Former prosecutors struggled to point to any precedent and portrayed the Justice Department’s justification as dubious.

By abandoning the case, the department undid what had been one of the first significant acts of the special counsel investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia’s 2016 election interference — the prosecution of a retired top Army general turned national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.

This is why the first priority of the next President of the United States must be to fully investigate and prosecute every single member of the Trump administration to the fullest extant of the law, ESPECIALLY Robert Barr.

If he has his law license a year after Trump is out of office, then this is a defeat for a rule of law.

The Denials of White House Interference Ring False

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The Trump administration has removed captain Brett Crozier as commanding officer of the Theodore Roosevelt after a memo of the dire straits of the crew as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak on board leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle.

They are claiming that there was no White House involvement, which is 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag:

Navy leaders have relieved the captain of a U.S. aircraft carrier after a memo to military officials in which he pleaded for help with a coronavirus outbreak at sea was leaked to a newspaper.

Capt. Brett Crozier, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, now at port in Guam, was relieved Thursday after superiors said they lost confidence in his ability to lead. The decision to remove him drew outrage from lawmakers and some relatives of crew members who backed the commander’s call for attention to the crisis.

Capt. Crozier had written a four-page memorandum recently demanding that superiors allow him to take the carrier to the port in Guam to offload sailors stricken with Covid-19. At least 114 of the vessel’s crew have tested positive for the new coronavirus.

“We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die,” Capt. Crozier wrote in his March 30 memo, which was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. “If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our sailors.”


………

The decision to remove the Roosevelt commander came as a surprise to some Navy leaders, who said their focus had been getting resources to the ship, defense officials said.

………

Mr. Trump briefly addressed Capt. Crozier’s dismissal during a White House briefing on the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday, denying the move was punishment for calling attention to the plight of the crew.

“I don’t agree with that at all,” Mr. Trump said. “Not even a little bit.”

Bullsh%$.

Of course this was a political move, and it came straight from the White House.

Now We Know Who the House Oversight Committee Needs to Call as Witnesses

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It looks like Donald Trump is using his position as President to coerce forbearance out of Deutsche Bank and Palm Beach County for the Trump Organization.

Time for Congress to call senior leadership of both the bank and the county to ensure that Trump is not abusing his position for personal benefit: (Spoiler, he IS abusing his position for personal benefit)

All over the country, businesses large and small are seeking breathing room from their lenders, landlords and business partners as they face the financial fallout from the coronavirus crisis.

President Trump’s family company is among those looking for help.

………

Representatives of Mr. Trump’s company have recently spoken with Deutsche Bank, the president’s largest creditor, about the possibility of postponing payments on at least some of its loans from the bank.

And in Florida, the Trump Organization sought guidance last week from Palm Beach County about whether it expected the company to continue making monthly payments on county land that it leases for a 27-hole golf club.

………

The Trump Organization’s requests put lenders and landlords in the awkward position of having to accede or risk alienating Mr. Trump.

………

Other companies may be able to tap into a $500 billion rescue fund that will be administered by the Treasury Department. But the economic bailout package, which Mr. Trump signed into law last week, specifically barred the president and his family from access to that money.

Late last month, Mr. Trump’s representatives contacted their relationship managers in Deutsche Bank’s New York private-banking division, which caters to wealthy customers. They wanted to discuss the possibility of delaying payments on some of the hundreds of millions of dollars of outstanding loans that the Trump Organization has from the bank, according to a person briefed on the talks. The discussions are continuing.

………

Deutsche Bank has lent Mr. Trump and his companies about $2 billion since 1998, the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with Mr. Trump and his companies. At the time he became president, Mr. Trump owed the bank about $350 million, including on loans to buy and renovate the Doral golf resort near Miami and to develop a luxury hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington.

Both properties are suffering in the economic shutdown. In response to Miami-Dade County’s rules, the Doral resort has ceased all operations, while the Washington hotel continues to operate, albeit with few guests and with its restaurant and bar closed. The Trump Organization rents the Washington property from the federal government, and the company had been soliciting bids from potential buyers for the lease, a process that is now on hold, The Washington Post reported.

Mr. Trump received the loans for those properties, as well as another related to his Chicago skyscraper, from 2012 to 2015. Because of his history of defaults and bankruptcies, Deutsche Bank insisted that Mr. Trump provide personal guarantees on those loans, meaning that the bank has recourse to his personal assets if he were to stop paying back the money.

Ever since Mr. Trump’s election, Deutsche Bank executives have been fretting about what would happen if he were to default, according to bank officials. Seizing the president’s personal assets would be an unattractive proposition. But opting not to collect on the loans would be the equivalent of an enormous financial gift to Mr. Trump, whose administration wields enormous power over the bank. Deutsche Bank’s operations in the United States are supervised by federal regulators, and the Justice Department has been conducting a criminal investigation of the bank.

………

The Trump Organization reached out on multiple occasions last week to Palm Beach County to ask whether it expected the company to continue making the monthly payments of tens of thousands of dollars due under its long-term lease, according to people briefed on the discussions.

(emphasis mine)

It’s already clear that Trump is going to ignore any attempt at Congressional oversight of the bailout, and he’s already doing things like diverting ventilators to states with “friendly” governors.

Since he’s already issued a signing statement that he will not cooperate with Congressional oversight, subpoenaing Trump’s creditors is a way to get some leverage over him (remember, Trump is personally liable for the Deutsche Bank loan) to get compliance on oversight.

You grill folks from the bank and the county, and suddenly they will be disinclined to cut Trump slack.

Politics ain’t beanbag.

And Trump Gets His Slush Fund

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At least in the Senate, where they passed a $2 trillion stimulus package which includes a $500 Billion slush fund for Donald Trump, and no conditions on things like stock buybacks and executive pay.

It is set to pass by unanimous consent in the House, so that they will not have to come back into session.

I am hoping that someone objects, and puts the brakes on what is a looting of the taxpayer:

Early Wednesday morning, Republicans and Democrats agreed on a financial rescue package for the U.S. economy. While the full text has not yet been released as of this writing, we do know the basics of what it contains. Here are some of the key provisions:

  • Immediate payments of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child for most families.
  • A $500 billion fund for large businesses to keep workers on payroll (this is what Democrats previously called a “slush fund” — see below).
  • $367 billion in loan guarantees for small businesses.
  • $150 billion for states and localities to help them deal with the crisis.
  • $130 billion for hospitals and health centers.
  • Expanded unemployment benefits including $600 a week for four months on top of what states are providing.

Those unemployment benefits may be the most urgent need of all. New unemployment claims have skyrocketed, as millions of people laid off from their jobs amid the virtual shutdown of our economy seek help. Some are predicting that as many as 14 million people could lose their jobs by summer.

………

Now let’s talk about that “slush fund.” At $500 billion, it’s the single largest component of the package.

………

So Democrats forced Republicans to accept the appointment of an inspector general within the Treasury Department solely devoted to monitoring the distribution of this money, as well as a five-member bipartisan oversight board appointed by Congress. There will also be “real-time public reporting of Treasury transactions under the Act, including terms of loans, investments or other assistance to corporations,” according to Schumer’s letter.

These supervisory provisions are largely identical to those of TARP, which is to say that they are toothless, particularly given the Trump administration that Congress has no right to demand evidence from the White House.

It’s going to be an orgy of corruption, and a massive bailout for the already obscenely wealthy.

This is a Shocker (Not)

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Donald Trump is talking about relaxing the Covid-19 restrictions for to boost the economy.

It turns out that he started talking about this when his most lucrative properties started getting shut down:

President Trump’s private business has shut down six of its top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels because of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially depriving Trump’s company of millions of dollars in revenue.

Those closures come as Trump is considering easing restrictions on movement sooner than federal public health experts recommend, in the name of reducing the virus’s economic damage.

In a tweet late Sunday, Trump said the measures could be lifted as soon as March 30. “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” he wrote on Twitter.

………

The company, which Trump says is run day-to-day by his sons Eric and Don Jr., has not said whether it would apply for a bailout of the hotel industry, if Congress created one.

Trump has not, either. On Sunday, he was asked if his business would abstain from any federal bailout. He did not give a clear answer. “Everything’s changing, just so you understand, it’s all changing,” he said. “But I have no idea.”

Trump’s business includes some commercial office buildings, which have long-term leases and should not be hurt as immediately by the virus. But he is also heavily invested in the hotel business, with 11 hotels around the world.

………

So far, the Trump Organization has closed hotels in Las Vegas; Doral, Fla.; Ireland; and Turnberry, Scotland — as well as the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida and a golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Many of the clubs closed because they had to, under local orders. Others closed on their own, following strong guidance or recommendations from local officials.

Those are six of Trump’s top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels, bringing in about $174 million total per year, according to Trump’s most recent financial disclosures. That works out to $478,000 per day — revenue that is likely to be sharply reduced with the clubs shuttered. The disclosures provide self-reported revenue figures but not profits.

Another of Trump’s golf clubs, in Aberdeen, Scotland, appeared likely to shut down soon, after an order from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that “nonessential” shops should close and that people should leave home only to buy food, buy medicine or exercise alone.

Even the Trump properties that remain open have been sharply affected: In Chicago, New York and Washington, the restaurants have closed, cutting off a key source of revenue.

………

If Trump did loosen restrictions on movement in the name of restarting the U.S. economy, that would probably increase the number of people staying in hotels, said Freitag, the hotel industry analyst from STR.

Donald Trump raises self-dealing to heretofore undreamt levels in the United States.
This man is literally going to infect millions of people in order to protect his bottom line.

A Noun, a Verb, and a Travel Ban

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The centerpiece Donald Trump’s announced measures to deal with COVID-19 is a travel ban from Europe.
This is the administration’s default response to any situation:  Build a wall.

In this case, the wall is the Maginot Line:

Donald Trump announced that the US would temporarily suspend all travel from the European Union, as the country reckons with the spread of coronavirus and the White House grapples with the severity of the situation.

The restrictions, which would begin on Friday and last for 30 days, would not apply to the UK, he said. He also encouraged older Americans to avoid all travel if possible.

Trump made the announcement in an Oval Office speech on Wednesday evening on the federal response to what the World Health Organization has declared a global pandemic.

During the speech, Trump defended his administration’s response while laying blame on the European Union for not acting quickly enough to address the “foreign virus”, saying US clusters had been “seeded” by European travelers.

Seriously, this is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

Of Course He Does

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It appears that Donald Trump’s plan for dealing with economic disruption from the Covid-19 outbreak is a waiver of the payroll tax, but only through the election.

Why am I not surprised that he is viewing this entire crisis as a nothing more than an opportunity to score political points?

Donald Trump told Republican senators on Tuesday that he wants a payroll tax holiday through the November election so that taxes don’t go back up before voters decide whether to return him to office, according to three people familiar with the president’s remarks.

 Trump spoke to the Republicans at their weekly conference lunch at the Capitol as his administration prepares a package of economic measures to combat the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak. But the administration does not have a particularly detailed plan, several Republicans said including John Thune of South Dakota.

Other Republicans are suggesting a bailout of the fracking industry, because that never profitable industry faces a more immediate reckoning* over collapsing oil prices.

*The investments have not passed from the Vampire Squid and its Evil Minions™ down the financial food chain to ordinary investors, and the Republicans must prevent that.

Another White House Reshuffle

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I’m not sure if it means much, though obviously the upcoming election probably has something to do with this.

Practicing Kremlinology on the Trump administration is well outside of my areas of competence:

President Trump on Friday pushed out Mick Mulvaney, his acting White House chief of staff, and replaced him with Representative Mark Meadows, a stalwart conservative ally, shaking up his team in the middle of one of the biggest crises of his presidency.

Mr. Trump announced the change on Twitter after arriving in Florida for a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate, choosing to make one of the most significant switches he can make in his White House on a Friday night when most of the country had tuned out news for the weekend. As a consolation prize, the president named Mr. Mulvaney a special envoy for Northern Ireland.

………

In taking over the White House, Mr. Meadows, 60, a retiring Republican from North Carolina, becomes Mr. Trump’s fourth chief of staff in 38 months, the most that any president has had in such a short time. His arrival almost surely signals more changes to follow, as most of Mr. Mulvaney’s deputies and others on his team are expected to leave, too, possibly including Emma Doyle, his top lieutenant, and Joe Grogan, the domestic policy adviser.

………

Mr. Mulvaney, 52, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, served as chief of staff for more than 14 months in an “acting” capacity without ever formally being given the title. Mr. Mulvaney brushed off the snub by telling people that everyone in Mr. Trump’s White House was effectively in the job on an acting basis, but the seeming lack of faith or respect invariably made it harder for him to impose authority.

Witnesses placed Mr. Mulvaney at the heart of the events that led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to incriminate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats. Mr. Mulvaney carried out Mr. Trump’s order to suspend $391 million in aid to Ukraine, an action declared illegal by the Government Accountability Office. Some advisers later told the president that Mr. Mulvaney had helped ensnare him in impeachment, even though he was following Mr. Trump’s wishes.

At a news briefing in October, Mr. Mulvaney contradicted the president’s denial that he had imposed a quid pro quo on the assistance to benefit his own political fortunes. Mr. Mulvaney told reporters that the White House had withheld aid to Ukraine in part to force Kyiv to commit to investigating a widely debunked theory that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of the Democrats, a story that American intelligence agencies have called Russian disinformation.

“Absolutely. No question about that,” Mr. Mulvaney said. He added, “That’s why we held up the money. ”

It would be nice if Mulvaney were to roll on Trump now, but that is not going to happen.

Why We Love The New Yorker

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Brilliant

The New Yorker has this illustration for their cover story on Trump’s incoherent response to CoViD-19.

It’s beautiful, man.

Given the level of disruption now, I rather hope this to be a Katrina moment for the Trump administration.

However, given the general deterioration of the news media since 2005, I rather expect that the ongoing cluster-f%$# of the Corona Virus crisis will be abandoned in for in depth coverage some outrageous tweet.

We are living in interesting times, and not in a good way.

Because it Worked SO Well for President Garfield

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Someone seems to forget that the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was passed in response to the assassination of James A. Garfield by a disgruntled office seeker.

This is not a good precedent:

The White House this week confirmed it is combing through federal agencies to identify employees not sufficiently loyal to President Trump to facilitate their ouster, sparking concerns the administration could run afoul of long-established civil service laws.

The administration is examining employees throughout the government to find anyone taking action officials decide represents an effort to undermine Trump, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Fox News Monday. Gidley did not specifically mention career employees, who are statutorily protected against political retaliation, but did note the “millions” of individuals agencies employ. By contrast, there are only about 4,000 political appointees in government.

“It’s not a secret that we want people in positions that work with this president, not against him, and too often we have people in this government—I mean the federal government is massive, with millions of people—and there are a lot people out there taking action against this president and when we find them we will take appropriate action,” Gidley said.

His comments followed reports in Axios that the administration maintains “deep state” hit lists of employees to fire and the president has tasked the head of the Presidential Personnel Office, Johnny McEntee, to purge “bad people” who are not loyal to him. The latter report mentioned only political appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the president and can be dismissed at will, but Gidley’s comments this week appeared to go further.

“Time and time again we see in the media reports from people in the bowels of the federal government working against this president,” he said.

This is not going to end well.

Mixed Emotions

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These Are All Hideous Dehumanizing Crap


Boston City Hall


Royal Ontario Museum


Vitra Design Museum


J.Edgar Hoover Building

Donald Trump has issued new architectural guidelines for government buildings, specifically calling for new buildings to be designed in a “Classical” style.

I have mixed emotions about this.

The first, and most obvious area of concern is that this should not be a decision made by the President.   Standards on buildings and the like should be driven at the staff level by technical issues.

Additionally this decision has clear echoes to Adolph Hitler’s (and Albert Speer’s) edicts on buildings during Germany’s Nazi era.

On the other side, every single, “Innovative,” public building that I have seen has been complete sh%$ from an aesthetic perspective, and the functionality has frequently been complete pants as well.

Ever since improvements in architectural materials have removed many constraints from buildings, high end architecture has increasingly been an exercise in mental masturbation:

In 1962, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary at the Labor Department, prepared a memo on the use of federal office space for President John F. Kennedy. Into this document he tucked a succinct yet deeply considered set of recommendations for the design of U.S. government buildings. These “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture” were adopted as official policy shortly thereafter and are seen as axiomatic by American architects and planners.

Moynihan wrote that federal buildings must testify to “the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American government.” But he was silent about which styles would best express those qualities—deliberately so. “An official style must be avoided,” he cautioned. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the government and not vice versa.”

That flow may soon be reversed. As first reported by Architectural Record and confirmed by The New York Times, the Trump administration is considering an executive order that will direct that U.S. government buildings with budgets greater than $50 million be designed in classical and other traditional styles. A draft document retains Moynihan’s ringing phrase about “dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability,” but stipulates that “the classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style.” All federal courthouses and federal buildings in and around Washington, D.C., would have to follow the work of Greek and Roman architects and their emulators in subsequent centuries. The late-20th-century Brutalist and Deconstructivist styles, meanwhile, would essentially be banned from the federal projects covered by the order. The restriction would apply to renovation and expansion projects as well as new buildings.

Brutalism’s monumental concrete forms and the fractured geometries of Deconstructivism have attracted many other detractors, of course. But for the federal government to categorically discourage any architectural style is startling—and an utter misunderstanding of how architecture works.

The American Institute of Architects issued a statement saying it “strongly opposes” the move. Most architects today support using a range of styles for new buildings, as Moynihan did. But the AIA doesn’t speak for the cadre of die-hard classicists with whom the document originated. The National Civic Art Society (NCAS), a small Washington nonprofit, prioritizes the classical tradition in design and argues that contemporary architecture “has created a built environment that is degraded and dehumanizing.”

Contemporary architecture is crap, and even when it works functionally, it is corrosive to the very soul.

They Are Completely Losing Their Sh%$

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo completely lost his sh%$ with NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly.
I’m beginning to think that Trump’s minions are coming to realize that they are going down with the ship:

In his brief interview Friday with NPR host Mary Louise Kelly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about a couple of pressing issues. On the State Department’s inexcusable failure to stand up for ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch — victim of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s Ukraine pressure campaign — Pompeo told Kelly, “I’ve defended every single person on this team.”

On Iran, Pompeo said, “This is a regime that has been working to develop its nuclear program for years and years and years. And the nuclear deal guaranteed them a pathway to having a nuclear program.”

The most telling part of the interview, however, was nonverbal: “Immediately after the questions on Ukraine, the interview concluded. Pompeo stood, leaned in and silently glared at Kelly for several seconds before leaving the room,” notes the NPR account of the interview.

The secretary of state, a man entrusted with spreading and maintaining the good will of the United States throughout the world, is now on record as menacing an NPR co-host of “All Things Considered.”

Then the proceedings moved to insults. An aide invited Kelly into Pompeo’s private living room at the State Department. “Inside the room, Pompeo shouted his displeasure at being questioned about Ukraine. He used repeated expletives, according to Kelly, and asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He then said, ‘People will hear about this.’”

Kelly provided a more thorough account in a chat with colleague Ari Shapiro:

Moments later the same staffer who had stopped the interview reappeared, asked me to come with her, just me — no recorder, though she did not say we were off the record, nor would I have agreed. I was taken to the secretary’s private living room, where he was waiting and where he shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the interview itself had lasted. He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine. He asked ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He used the ‘f’ word in that sentence and many others. He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map. I said yes. He called out for his aides to bring out a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. I pointed to Ukraine, he put the map away. He said, ‘People will hear about this.’

I’m beginning to think that Donald Trump’s state of the Union is going to resemble Captain Queeg’s meltdown in The Caine Mutiny.

The Republicans, of course, will ignore this, and pretend that everything is normal, just like they are pretending that Pompeo’s meltdown is somehow the fault of a biased media.

Well, He Would Say That, Wouldn’t He?*

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Now that the DoJ’s inspector general has found no wrongdoing about the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, Attorney General William Barr is looking to subvert the report:

Attorney General William P. Barr has told associates he disagrees with the Justice Department’s inspector general on one of the key findings in an upcoming report — that the FBI had enough information in July 2016 to justify launching an investigation into members of the Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horo­witz, is due to release his long-awaited findings in a week, but behind the scenes at the Justice Department, disagreement has surfaced about one of Horowitz’s central conclusions on the origins of the Russia investigation. The discord could be the prelude to a major fissure within federal law enforcement on the controversial question of investigating a presidential campaign.

Barr has not been swayed by Horowitz’s rationale for concluding that the FBI had sufficient basis to open an investigation on July 31, 2016, these people said.

Barr’s public defenses of President Trump, including his assertion that intelligence agents spied on the Trump campaign, have led Democrats to accuse him of acting like the president’s personal attorney and eroding the independence of the Justice Department. But Trump and his Republican allies have cheered Barr’s skepticism of the Russia investigation.

It’s not yet clear how Barr plans to make his objection to Horowitz’s conclusion known. The inspector general report, currently in draft form, is being finalized after input from various witnesses and offices that were scrutinized by the inspector general. Barr or a senior Justice Department official could submit a formal letter as part of that process, which would then be included in the final report. It is standard practice for every inspector general report to include a written response from the department. Barr could forgo a written rebuttal on that specific point and just publicly state his concerns.

Barr is not Attorney General, he is Trump’s consigliere. 
This man is arguably guiltier than John Mitchell was during the Nixon administration.

*Mandy Rice-Davies Applies?  Seriously, learn your history.

The Most Evil Bureaucracy in Government

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Matt Stoller is on this.

He is talking, of course about one of the (many) misbegotten spawn of the Clinton administration, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) which among other things, literally assigned a price to raping children in prison. (adults too)

This is just one of the abominations, coal ash comes to mind, that these people have been hip deep in:

Today I have a treat for you, an issue of BIG written by an anonymous government lawyer buried deep in the bowels of American bureaucracy. One of the reasons Americans are losing faith in our political institutions is because laws passed by democratically elected officials increasingly don’t matter. One of my favorite regulators, Rohit Chopra at the Federal Trade Commission, said explicitly, as a sort of challenge to the commission, that “FTC orders are not suggestions.”

Of course, laws and regulators that affect the powerful are increasingly suggestions, and that’s why we’re in a political crisis. This anonymous lawyer is going to lay out one of the key institutional mechanisms by which economists and corporate interests wreck our ability to actually have laws take effect once they’ve been passed.

His explanation of how bureaucracy works will show that we should be paying attention this Wednesday to an obscure nomination of a corporate lawyer, Paul J. Ray, to be head of an agency of economists, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA. Because OIRA is where power really lives in Washington. It’ll be interesting to see if any Senators show up; Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris is on the relevant Senate committee.

Why Congress Couldn’t Outlaw Prison Rape

Prison rape is one of the most horrifying and abhorrent practices in American culture. Prison rape is pervasive, a form of soft torture so extensive it is the butt of endless jokes in popular culture (as John Oliver noted in a long segment on how Hollywood jokes about the practice). In 2003, Congress unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a bill directing the Attorney General to issue regulations detecting and eliminating prison rape in Federal jails. In 2012, Erich Holder finally did so.

Congress gave discretion to the Attorney General, but because of an obscure regulatory agency, Holder didn’t have the final word. Instead, the Department of Justice was required to conduct an extensive cost-benefit analysis of its proposed rule and submit it to a small group of economists in the White House for their thumbs up on whether the Attorney General would be allowed to finalize the rule.

This group of economists is located in an obscure agency called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA, staffed at the time by a close friend of Obama, legal legend Cass Sunstein. Most agencies wishing to put out a must draft an extensive Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) detailing the costs and benefits of the rule, justify the need for the rule to OIRA, and make any changes OIRA economists demand. In this instance, technocrats issued a 168-page RIA questioning how much money the rape victims would be willing to pay to avoid rape, or how much they would be willing to accept in exchange for being raped. (The estimates were $310k to $480k for an adult victim, and $675k for a juvenile victim, for the ‘highest’ form of sexual assault.)

In the end, the regulations put forward were cruel and weak, exempting immigration facilities and putting “tight restrictions on inmates who report rape.” It also removed the requirement that prisons actually *do* anything except have a plan to reduce prison rape. Failure to execute on the plan meant they’ll need another plan.

………

The Regulatory Impact Assessment is here, if you want to to go through the cost/benefit analysis of prison-based sexual assault. Or you can just read a key paragraph, which details the amount it is ‘worth’ per victim.-

They also did their best to stop Congressionally mandated regulations for backup cameras (backing over your own kids), coal ash, favored vapes, etc.

OIRA has the authority to do all of this because of Executive Order 12,866, which was signed by President Clinton in 1993 “to reform and make more efficient the regulatory process.” Every president since Clinton has reaffirmed E.O. 12,866, often with their own “twist;” Obama emphasized that agencies should “consider…values that are difficult or impossible to quantify,” and Trump has put in place a regulatory budget. Regardless (especially since OIRA never took consideration of values impossible to quantify seriously), E.O. 12,866 has the end result of elevating economists above scientists and public health experts and giving economists a veto over all health, safety, and environmental regulations.

This may be worse than Clinton’s crime bill, devastation of the social safety net through “Welfare Reform”, and the repeal of Glass Steagall.

The good news is that OIRA is established by executive order, and so can be shut down by executive order.

Unfortunately, the only candidate likely to do this is Bernie Sanders.

Read the whole article for more horror stories about how OIRA has monetized the public good.

Shooting Someone at Noon on 5th Avenue

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Donald Trump was right about his supporters, because the Republican response to the impeachment hearings indicates that Donald Trump could literally shoot someone on camera, and the ‘Phants would say, “No impeachable offense,” or, “Everyone does it,” or just, “F%$# you.”

Impeachment is, of course an inherently political process, but this is insane.

William Barr Needs to Go to Jail, and His Law License Needs to be Revoked

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Even if he were just White House Counsel, William Barr’s active participation in covering up scandals would be criminal.

As Attorney General, his behavior is a disgrace that makes John Mitchell look like Clarence Darrow:

Attorney General Bill Barr is keeping busy. He previously announced in May that he had appointed John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to review the origins of the Russia investigation during the 2016 campaign. This week, multiple news outlets reported that Barr is putting the full weight of American diplomacy behind the probe. The attorney reportedly asked President Donald Trump to ask the Australian and British governments to aid his inquiry. He also personally traveled to Italy to meet with that country’s intelligence officials and gather evidence himself.

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It’s hard to think about Barr’s role in all of this without thinking about his predecessor. Jeff Sessions had been one of President Donald Trump’s earliest political allies and an unstinting champion of his policies in office. When his departure became public last November, I wrote that the former Alabama senator had “spent the last two years reshaping federal law enforcement into a blunter and more punitive instrument, squeezing legal and undocumented immigrants alike, and tilting the scales of justice away from disadvantaged communities.”

Sessions deserved the lion’s share of criticism he received, especially for his role in separating migrant children from their families at the border. The only exception was the criticism that came from Trump. Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation in early 2017 out of ethical and legal obligations, and the president never forgave him for doing so. The Mueller report is essentially a catalogue of Trump’s campaign to pressure Sessions into shutting down the inquiry. When Sessions refused to un-recuse himself or sabotage Mueller, Trump unceremoniously ousted him last November.

Barr, by comparison, seems to have no such scruples about carrying out Trump’s whims. He hasn’t really deviated from Sessions’s overall policy agenda since taking over DOJ. In some aspects of immigration and criminal-justice matters, he’s even gone further than Sessions ever did. But his greatest achievement so far is doing what his predecessor spent almost two years resisting: transforming the Justice Department from a semi-independent actor into an instrument of Trump’s political interests.

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The irony is that Barr, more than any of his predecessors since the Watergate era, seems to think that his job is to help discredit his boss’ political opponents. He prefaced the Mueller report’s public release with an unabashed defense of Trump’s misdeeds, saying the president was “frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks.” (Being mad is not a statutory exemption to obstruction of justice.) While testifying before Congress in April, he also asserted that U.S. intelligence agencies had spied on the Trump campaign, validating one of the president’s favorite complaints. FBI Director Christopher Wray and other U.S. intelligence officials have strenuously denied that any spying took place.

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It’s worth noting that Jeff Sessions was no Elliot Richardson. It took a combination of public pressure and damaging revelations to force his eventual recusal from the Russia investigation in the spring of 2017. The trauma experienced by migrant families at the border during his tenure should also haunt Sessions for the rest of his life. If it does, he can at least take a small modicum of comfort in knowing that he was only the second-worst attorney general to ever serve under President Donald Trump.

I look forward to seeing Barr frog marched out of the Department of Justice in handcuffs.

Another CIA Officer is Lawyering Up

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Someone else in the US state security apparatus has contacted the IG in preparation of making a whistle-blower complaint:

A second intelligence official who was alarmed by President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine is weighing whether to file his own formal whistle-blower complaint and testify to Congress, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The official has more direct information about the events than the first whistle-blower, whose complaint that Mr. Trump was using his power to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals touched off an impeachment inquiry. The second official is among those interviewed by the intelligence community inspector general to corroborate the allegations of the original whistle-blower, one of the people said.

The inspector general, Michael Atkinson, briefed lawmakers privately on Friday about how he substantiated the whistle-blower’s account. It was not clear whether he told lawmakers that the second official was considering filing a complaint.

A new complaint, particularly from someone closer to the events, would potentially add further credibility to the account of the first whistle-blower, a C.I.A. officer who was detailed to the National Security Council at one point. He said that he relied on information from more than a half-dozen American officials to compile his allegations about Mr. Trump’s campaign to solicit foreign election interference that could benefit him politically.

I still think that Congress should have a broad impeachment investigation, because the complete lawlessness of this administration needs to be made public, but this does make things for Trump and his Evil Minions™.

As an aside, excluding Trump’s rather incendiary tweets,  the reception that these whistle-blowers have received from the establishment and the intelligence agencies have been far more supportive than (for example) Binney, Drake, and Kiriakou.

The only logical explanation for this is that this (relatively) benign behavior is a result of their being more supportive of the whistle-blowing regarding the Ukraine than they are of whistle-blowing regarding torture, spying on American citizens, and going to war under false pretense.

Whistle-blowers are generally treated like sh%$, and this needs to change.