A CRUEL POLITICAL STUNT

 

While watching Ken Burns's recent documentary "The US and the Holocaust", I was struck by an excerpt from a  poem written by American poet Thomas Bailey Aldrich that went like this:  "Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, and through them presses a wild, motley throng.  In street and alley what strange tongues are these?  Accents of menace, alien to our air, voices that once the Tower of Babel knew.  Oh liberty, white Goddess, is it well to leave the gates unguarded?"  Take away the flowery language, and you basically have the same anti immigrant sentiment stated by so many Republicans today.  What's even more striking is that that excerpt came from a poem Aldrich published in 1892.  Of course, his point of view was nothing new; ten years earlier congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to limit the number of Chinese people immigrating to the US during the gold rush.

Yes, the hatred and fear of immigrants, based on our shared human tribal instinct, has been in America almost from the beginning.  But that doesn't make the recent usage of Venezuelan refugees as pawns by Florida Ron DeSantis any less repulsive.  As everyone now knows, DeSantis recently took around 50 refugees from Texas and flew them to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts to "send a message" about immigration to the mostly liberal people that live there.  It should be pointed out that these refugees (which included several children) were lied to about where they were going and that there was no warning given to the authorities of Martha's Vineyard about what was about to happen.  It's obvious that was just a cruel political stunt pulled by a Republican governor who wants to be president and knows that the road to the White House for his party lies in being as xenophobic as humanly possible.  It's also telling how the different media outlets reacted to it, with the right wing media hailing DeSantis's move as smart politics and the rest of the media pointing out that the essential premise of the stunt failed when the people of Martha's Vineyard welcomed the refugees.  There is a chance that Desantis could face some legal charges for what happened, given the level of deception involved, but as with all the charges facing former president Donald Trump, there's little chance of him ever paying a serious price, and it clearly is helping him in conservative circles.

Lost in all this is the fact that Venezuela, the country the refugees were from, is a Socialist dictatorship not unlike the one run by Fidel Castro in Cuba, and in Florida Cuban refugees are often warmly embraced by Republicans like DeSantis.  The depressing reality is that Venezuela is run by a corrupt dictator, Nicolás Maduro', who's reign has lead to a crackdown on human rights triggering economic sanctions from countries like America.   Those sanctions wind up hurting the average Venezuelan more than the leaders, which causes widespread poverty and crime, leading to people fleeing the country.  In other words, there's no easy answer here, although putting people on planes is no solution. 

Also ignored in this controversy is the fact that the US needs immigrants.  According to US Census Bureau, the nation's population growth in 2021 was 0.1%, the lowest in our nation's history.  Sure, part of that was due to the pandemic, but the trend was already heading downward before Covid hit. And the country needs young workers paying into our retirement system to keep it funded, and that means we need more workers coming into our country.  Workers like these refugees that Republican leaders dehumanize.  

I'll finish this post with another quote from that Ken Burns documentary: "What has happened to this country?  We have always been ready to receive the unfortunates from other countries, and though this may seem a  generous gesture on our part, we have profited a thousandfold from what they have brought us."-Elenor Roosevelt, 1939.

TRUMP'S 10 LAWSUITS

 Former President Donald Trump's current legal woes are unusual, to say the least,  for an ex president.  Even the disgraced Richard Nixon was allowed to fade away for a few years and then eventually return as an elder statesmen and political author.   But then there's nothing usual about Trump, who, in the past 30 years, has been involved in over 4,000 lawsuits.  ("Who knows litigation better than Trump?" He once asked a crowd.)  This pile of lawsuits has allowed Trump to skate away from his troubles under a blizzard of litigation, many of them fading from memory.  For example, how many people remember how the class action lawsuit against Trump University went?  He had to pay out a 25 million dollar settlement in the kind of scandal that would sink most political careers, but was just a blip in Trump's.

Here's a roundup of his 10 latest,  yet to be resolved legal battles:

1.  The FBI is investigating his storing of classified documents in Mar-o-Lago.  Ok, we've all heard about this.  But it's a potentially a very big deal: documents that could endanger the lives of American agents in the field (and may have nuclear weapon secrets) were stored in Trump's closet at his not so secure resort.  Add that he held on to these documents even after formal requests were made to return them, and that he's never given any real explanation as to why he hung on to them after he left the White House in the first place, and we have the makings of a potentially large, criminal scandal.  Unfortunately, a Trump appointed judge has approved his legal team's asking for a special master to view the documents and sift out ones that fall into attorney client privilege or personal, which will delay the process.  

2.  The findings of the January 6th. hearings. While this has been overshadowed by the FBI raid on Mar-o-Lago, it should be remembered that Trump still may face formal criminal charges from Attorney General Merrick Garland for his behavior on and before the January 6th riot.  Really, if the fact that Trump did nothing to stop the riot for hours while it was happening, and even sent out a tweet criticizing then Vice President Mike Pence, which inflamed the mob even further, isn't considered a crime, then there's really nothing any president could ever do that would be labelled as such.

3.  In Georgia he's being investigated for criminal election disruption.  In one of the more chilling moments in Trump's failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Trump tried to verbally coerce   Georgia's Secretary of State  Brett Raffensperger into "finding" him enough votes to overturn the election in that state.  (This in a state which, it should be mentioned, had already counted the votes three times at that point and found no change in the outcome.)  Once again, this sure seems like a crime to me, but we'll see how the investigation goes.

4.  In New York he's being investigated for misleading tax authorities about his wealth.  Recently, Trump's former CFO Allen Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 felony counts of illegal tax avoidance stretching back decades.  Part of his plea bargain was that he would not testify against Trump or other members of his family directly, but he can be made to testify against the Trump organization itself, which should aid the ongoing lawsuit against that organization.

5.  The New York Attorney General has her own civil case against him.  This is a separate and similar case to the one above being brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.  Trump has described the African American James as “a racist attorney general” and recently pled the 5th repeatedly after being compelled to testify in the case.

6.  Capitol police officers and some Congressional Democrats are suing him for inciting violence on January 6th.  Even if Trump never faces criminal charges for his riling up of protestors and aiming them at the capitol building on January 6th., this civil lawsuit brought against him by the DC police (so much for backing the blue!) could hit him financially.

7.  Author E Jean Carroll is suing him for defamation.  Lost in the constant swirl of controversy around Trump during his presidency was the accusation that EG Carroll made against him, in a 2019 article, that he raped her back in the 1990's.  (Which brought the number of women who have accused him of sexual assault or rape up to a whopping 26.)  He has, of course, publicly denied it, and she is suing him for defamation.   A judge dismissed Trump's attempt to countersue, and the trial will begin in February. 

8.  His niece, Mary, is suing him.  After a 2018 New York Times article (which won a Pulitzer) bore the headline "Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father", Trump's niece, Mary began a lawsuit against him, alleging that Donald and other members of the Trump family "designed and carried out a complex scheme to siphon funds away from her interests, conceal their grift, and deceive her about the true value of what she had inherited."

9.  His former lawyer Micheal Cohen is suing him.  Cohen, Trump's lawyer and right hand man for over a decade, went to jail for tax invasion and paying hush money payments to women who claimed that they had had affairs with Trump.  Cohen claims that, while he was given home incarceration privileges during the pandemic, he was pushed back into jail by the Trump administration for wanting to write an anti Trump book, in violation of his first amendment rights.

10.  A Federal Grand Jury is investigating his fund raising.  Most recently, a federal grand jury has started investigating the Save America political action committee, which was formed after the 2020 election by Trump.  Much of the committee's funding came from donations made by voters who may have been misled into thinking that they were donating to legal funds to fight against the election results, when Trump was really spending the money on other things.

Whew!  Not enough for you?  Why not add the fact that along with admitted criminals Weisselberg and Cohen, criminal charges were also  filed  against his campaign advisors Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, George Nader, Elliott Broidy, Roger Stone,  Steve Bannon and former National Security Advisor Micheal Flynn, (Trump pardoned those last four). Is it a surprise that so many people around Trump are criminals? No, this is clearly a man who has always lived his life on the edge of legality, always being lucky enough to have enough money (and lawyers!) to avoid any criminal charges.  

Now while I'm hoping that this time will be different, and that finally one of those first three criminal charges will stick to him, I'm not getting too excited.  From the first moment he entered politics, Trump's rise has exhibited everything that's wrong with America, not just our bigotry and xenophobia, but also the fact that the rich have a different justice system than the rest of us, one in which wealthy white men can get away with almost anything.   In a perfect world, Trump would have gone to jail on any number of criminal charges years ago, instead he's poised to be the Republican candidate for president in 2024.