Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

Ah yes, one must consider the totality of circumstances.

[y66]

 

"decision regarding the financial financial statements"=they are false because you lied

 

"totality of the circumstances"=the D.A. is serious

 

"non-waivable conflict of interest"=we are now on team D.A.

 

"not able to provide new work product"=sorry we're not going to jail for you

[kenberg]

I decided to Google "non-waivable conflict of interest". I came up with

https://calawyers.or...ts-of-interest/

The George Conway version is probably adequate, but also probably not literal.

Here is from WaPo

https://www.washingt...ial-statements/

Since at least 2002, accountant Donald Bender, a Mazars executive, has helped prepare Trump's financial statements. In many instances, his firm attached a cover letter to the front of the documents explaining the firm's role in assessing the value of his assets.

 

But in its letter last week, the accounting firm also cut off its relationship with the former president's company, joining other banks, law firms and consulting firms that have vowed to no longer do business with the Trump Organization. In the letter, Kelly said a "non-waivable conflict of interest" prevented the firm from continuing to work for Trump.

As in "My goodness, after representing DT for 20 years I am now thinking that maybe he does not always tell the truth. Who would have imagined such a thing?"

 

His non-waivable conflict of interest is his interest in keeping his license.

[pilowsky]

I guess this is what happens when the writing is on the wall and you decide to stop surfing the waive.

[y66]

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220217&instance_id=53470&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=59211987&segment_id=83041&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F262c18f8-f6a4-5c48-8ac9-b30c43a8365a&user_id=2d8b72dd84a9ff194896ed87b2d9c72a

 

Elections to the San Francisco Board of Education are not normally national bellwethers. The city is a proud symbol of liberalism, not a swing district, and school-board elections — as Thomas Fuller, The Times’s San Francisco bureau chief, notes — “have for decades been obscure sideshows to the more high-profile political contests.”

 

But the recall election this week that ousted three board members wasn’t about only local politics. It also reflected a trend: Many Americans, even in liberal places, seem frustrated by what they consider a leftward lurch from parts of the Democratic Party and its allies. This frustration spans several issues, including education, crime and Covid-19.

 

Consider these election results from last year, all in politically blue places:

• 
   
  
  
• In Minneapolis, voters rejected a ballot measure to replace the city’s Police Department with an agency that would have focused less on law enforcement.
  
• In Seattle, voters elected Ann Davison — a lawyer who had recently quit the Democratic Party because she thought it had moved “so far left” — as the city’s top prosecutor. Davison beat a candidate who wanted to abolish the police.
  
• In New York, voters elected as their mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who revels in defying liberal orthodoxy. As a candidate, Adams promised to crack down on crime. Since taking office, he has signaled his frustration with Covid restrictions.
  
• In the Democratic-leaning suburbs of both New Jersey and Virginia, Republican candidates for governor did surprisingly well. Several postelection analyses — including one by aides to Phil Murphy, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, who narrowly survived — concluded that anger over Covid policies played a central role.
  

Three reasons for change

The San Francisco school-board recall joins this list. There, three separate issues drove the campaign.

 

First, the school board had attempted to rename 44 schools, so that they no longer honored anybody deemed reactionary. Among the apparent reactionaries were Paul Revere, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Senator Dianne Feinstein and John Muir, the environmentalist.

 

Second, the board tried to scrap an admissions system, based on grades and test scores, for Lowell High School, which Mark Barabak of The Los Angeles Times calls “one of the city’s most sacred institutions.” A lottery would have replaced it.

 

Third, the board kept schools closed for months during the pandemic and showed little concern for the damage. One of the since-recalled board members waved away the ineffectiveness of remote classes, saying that children were “just having different learning experiences.”

 

To many parents, board members have seemed overly focused on projecting symbols of virtuousness while ignoring the needs of families. “We are not getting the basics right,” Siva Raj, a father who helped organize the recall effort, said.

 

Another recall organizer, Autumn Looijen, used an analogy to explain the anger. Covid was akin to an earthquake that forced people to move into tents on the sidewalk, she suggested. “Finally, your elected leaders show up and you’re like, ‘Thank God, here’s some help,’” Looijen told Politico. “And they say, ‘We are here to help. We’re going to change the street signs for you.’”

 

What’s striking about this situation is that the Republican Party is also out of step with public opinion on many of the same issues. Republicans have defended the Confederate flag, nominated candidates who make racist comments and launched an exaggerated campaign against critical race theory. Republicans have opposed popular measures to improve police accountability and gun regulations. Republicans have made false statements about Covid vaccines and claimed that masks are a tool of government oppression.

 

Rather than responding with positions that are both more liberal and more popular, some Democrats and progressive activists have responded by overreaching public opinion in the other direction.

 

They have opposed the resumption of normal operations in schools. They have said they would no longer honor popular former presidents, like Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. They have called for defunding the police.

 

They have also called for abolishing the agency that enforces immigration laws; eliminating private health insurance, maintaining the current system of affirmative action and forbidding almost all abortion restrictions.

 

Dividing lines

On some of these issues, public opinion splits along racial lines, with Democrats taking the positions favored by voters of color and Republicans aligning with white voters. Many Democrats believe that it would be immoral to do otherwise, whatever the political price.

 

On other issues, though, the racial dynamics are messier. Many Asian and Latino voters oppose the current version of affirmative action, which helps explain why the changes to Lowell High School resonated in San Francisco. Many Black and Latino voters are to the right of Democratic politicians on abortion and crime.

 

Class seems to be at least as big a dividing line as race. College-educated Democrats — who dominate the ranks of politicians, campaign staffs and activist organizations — tend to be well to the left of working-class Democrats. By catering to its well-off base, the party creates electoral problems for itself, because there are more working-class Americans than college graduates.

 

You could see this dividing line in the New York mayor’s race. Adams won the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island with a multiracial coalition, while losing affluent white neighborhoods. (Adams’s heterodox politics are common among Black Americans, the political scientist Christina Greer has written.)

 

You can also see the dividing line in San Francisco, where the city’s mayor, London Breed, who is Black, endorsed the recall. In an interview with Yahoo News this week, Breed said, “It breaks my heart that kids in our public school system still have to wear masks.”

 

Her comments are a reminder that many elected Democrats, including President Biden, tend to disagree with the party’s left flank on several of these issues and to be more in tune with public opinion. But that flank nonetheless influences voters’ image of the party. In the most recent national elections, in 2020, Democrats fared worse than they expected, despite the highest voter turnout in decades.

[kenberg]

The San Francisco recall for the board of education was reported on PBS Newshour last night.

Two of the high schools, Lowell and Lincoln, discussed have a personal, although long ago, connection to my wife Becky.

Becky was born in Missouri, they moved to Oregon, and then to San Francisco, They lived near an area that she refers to as "The Avenues".

At any rate, she was in junior high and the high school that she was scheduled to go to was not very good. She and her younger sister addressed this in different ways.

Becky, with encouragement from her mother and from her teachers, set out to get into Lowell She succeeded. The trip, at least an hour, to and from was lengthy but worth it.

Her younger sister was less into schoolwork. Lincoln High was for those living in The Avenues, but they were only near The Avenues. Lincoln was the goal for the younger sister. At that time, in the 60s, you could study Russian at Lincoln High School. Becky's sister, and many others as they reached high school age, decided that they really wanted to study Russian and so they applied for and got permission to go to Lincoln.

 

 

Of course, there are many ways of going at these things, but Becky and her parents all thought that getting admission into a good school by studying hard was a wonderful idea.

[y66]

Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump must all comply with this court order and testify before my office within 21 days.

 

No one is above the law.

And please stop whining.

[barmar]

Does anyone really think that being "under oath" means anything to Trump? He's so narcisistic might even believe some of his own BS.

 

And he's lied under oath in the past, about things that were easy for others to check. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-lies/

[Winstonm]

And please stop whining.

Don’t say please - Trump interprets please as a sign of weakness.

[Chas_P]

Don’t say please - Trump interprets please as a sign of weakness.

Who cares what Trump thinks? Joltin' Joe is at the helm now and life is good.

[kenberg]

Does anyone really think that being "under oath" means anything to Trump? He's so narcisistic might even believe some of his own BS.

 

And he's lied under oath in the past, about things that were easy for others to check. https://www.washingt...ion/trump-lies/

 

I read part of the cited article. Here is the first part (I got further):

The lawyer gave Donald Trump a note, written in Trump's own handwriting. He asked Trump to read it aloud.

 

Trump may not have realized it yet, but he had walked into a trap.

 

"Peter, you're a real loser," Trump began reading.

 

The mogul had sent the note to a reporter, objecting to a story that said Trump owned a "small minority stake" in a Manhattan real estate project. Trump insisted that the word "small" was incorrect. Trump continued reading: "I wrote, 'Is 50 percent small?' "

 

"This [note] was intended to indicate that you had a 50 percent stake in the project, correct?" said the lawyer.

 

"That's correct," Trump said.

 

 

 

Notice that Trump did not lie! He agreed that this was intended to suggest he had more than a 50% stake. On the stand, he agreed as to what he had written and he agreed as to his intention in writing it. I suppose that he didn't actually own more than 50% Well, he did not, strictly speaking, say that he did. He asked if Peter, whoever Peter is, thought 50% was small.

 

My plan is to go through life dealing with lawyers only if truly necessary, and then with great caution. I do not ever want to explain "I didn't say I had more than 50%, I just asked if he thought 50% was small, I am not responsible for what someone infers from that". I prefer to be with people who, when they say something, I don't need to submit it to analysis to see what it actually means. I mentioned before that when I was young I testified for a friend in a divorce case. His lawyer explained "You have to tell the truth but there are many ways to tell the truth'" Yuk. He was correct I suppose but I prefer to think otherwise.

[Winstonm]

I read part of the cited article. Here is the first part (I got further):

 

 

Notice that Trump did not lie! He agreed that this was intended to suggest he had more than a 50% stake. On the stand, he agreed as to what he had written and he agreed as to his intention in writing it. I suppose that he didn't actually own more than 50% Well, he did not, strictly speaking, say that he did. He asked if Peter, whoever Peter is, thought 50% was small.

 

My plan is to go through life dealing with lawyers only if truly necessary, and then with great caution. I do not ever want to explain "I didn't say I had more than 50%, I just asked if he thought 50% was small, I am not responsible for what someone infers from that". I prefer to be with people who, when they say something, I don't need to submit it to analysis to see what it actually means. I mentioned before that when I was young I testified for a friend in a divorce case. His lawyer explained "You have to tell the truth but there are many ways to tell the truth'" Yuk. He was correct I suppose but I prefer to think otherwise.

 

If you keep reading you find the actual stake was 30%, which is not 50%, even if suggested that it is or should be considered as such.

 

Somewhere else in his deposition Trump stated he earned over a million dollars for a talk he did but when pressed admitted the cash he received was $400,000, the rest of the earning were in his mind from intangibles, the benefit of the advertising done by the company that hire him to speak.

 

That raises my question: how much of that $600.,000 of intangible value did you claim as income on your tax returns?

[y66]

I mentioned before that when I was young I testified for a friend in a divorce case. His lawyer explained "You have to tell the truth but there are many ways to tell the truth'" Yuk. He was correct I suppose but I prefer to think otherwise.

Are there really many ways to "tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth"?

[kenberg]

Are there really many ways to "tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth"?

 

That's right, there aren't. Actually I think they decided against calling me as a witness, maybe they just worked out an agreement, I don't remember it all that well. But I do recall the lawyer's advice about telling the truth.

 

Bottom line: Truth can be distorted without anyone going to jail for perjury.

[Chas_P]

"It depends on what the meaning of the word is is. If the...if he...if is means is and never has been, that is not - that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement"

[pilowsky]

As usual Trump replied with words to the effect of "Would you say 50% was a lot?" not exactly 50%.

His phrasing is so anodyne it's like wrestling with a column of smoke (Keating P.).

In the debate with Biden when challenged about his assertion that he had done more for ... since Lincoln he quickly replied "since".

Still a debatable point but this left Biden rolling his eyes.

 

To me this shows that far from babbling he knows exactly what he is saying, he isn't mad and should be held to account.

 

This approach ought to be very familiar to Bridge players that have to deal with alerts like "could be strong" etc.

[y66]

From Fringe Scheme to Reverse 2020 Election Splits Wisconsin G.O.P. at NYT:

 

We don’t wear tinfoil hats. We’re not fringe.

You know you're in the twilight zone when someone suggests that only fringe R's wear tinfoil hats.

[y66]

Putin just put Kafka & Orwell to shame: no limits to dictator's imagination, no lows too low, no lies too blatant, no red lines too red to cross.

 

What we witnessed tonight might seem surreal for democratic world. But the way we respond will define us for the generations to come.

[y66]

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220222&instance_id=53920&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=59211987&segment_id=83524&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fa86796ff-0e5a-5a9f-8858-7dcad6430e0f&user_id=2d8b72dd84a9ff194896ed87b2d9c72a

 

Early in the Reagan administration, several Christian conservative leaders founded a group called the Council for National Policy. It soon turned into what my colleague David Kirkpatrick has described as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.” One of its main functions was introducing political activists to wealthy donors who could finance their work.

 

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, the group’s political arm, known as C.N.P. Action, sprang into action. It encouraged its members to spread stories about “election irregularities and issues” in five swing states that Joe Biden had won narrowly. The goal was to persuade Republican state legislators to adopt Trump’s false claims about election fraud — and then award their states’ electoral votes to him, overturning Biden’s victory.

 

One vocal proponent of the effort was a C.N.P. board member who had spent decades in conservative politics. In the lead-up to the Jan. 6 rally at the Capitol, she reportedly mediated between feuding factions so that they would work together to plan it. On the day of the rally, she posted a message on Facebook: “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”

 

This board member’s name is Ginni Thomas, and she is married to Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice on the Supreme Court. Today, The Times Magazine has published an investigation of Ginni Thomas’s work and its connections to her husband, written by Danny Hakim and Jo Becker.

 

I recognize that conflict-of-interest questions involving the work of spouses can be difficult to resolve. On the one hand, people generally deserve the right to have their own careers, separate from their spouses’. On the other hand, the privilege of being a top government official seems to call for a higher standard of neutrality than most jobs would.

 

But I don’t think you need to resolve that debate to be concerned about the Thomases’ recent actions. You simply need to acknowledge this: The spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice played an active role in an effort to overturn the result of a presidential election, hand victory to the loser and unravel American democracy.

 

That Supreme Court justice, in turn, seemed to endorse the effort. When Trump’s attempt to undo the election’s outcome came before the Supreme Court, six of the nine justices ruled against him. But Thomas was one of three justices who sided with Trump and, his dissent echoed the arguments of C.N.P. Action, as Danny and Jo explain. Thomas effectively argued for giving partisan state legislators more control over elections and their outcomes.

 

Roberts vs. Thomas

 

The Times Magazine story has more details, including:

 

After the Jan. 6 rally turned into a violent attack on the Capitol, C.N.P. advised its members to defend the rioters. And Thomas herself signed a letter criticizing the House committee investigating the attack. The investigation, the letter said, “brings disrespect to our country’s rule of law” and “legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong.” (Ginni Thomas also made baseless accusations of election fraud in 2018, The Washington Post has reported.)

The Thomases have used his position as a justice to advance her causes as an operative. During the Trump presidency, White House aides were surprised when Justice Thomas brought an uninvited guest — his wife — to a scheduled lunch with the president.

I also recommend a recent New Yorker article on the couple, by Jane Mayer. It notes that the Supreme Court has exempted itself from some conflict-of-interest rules that apply to all other judges. In reporting the story, Mayer uncovered previously unknown payments to Ginni Thomas from conservative activists — including a group involved in a case before the Supreme Court.

 

The result, Mayer told NPR, is “the appearance of a conflict of interest that undermines the public confidence that the court is ruling in favor of justice rather than in favor of a justice’s pocketbook.”

 

I’m especially struck that the Thomases have been willing to mix Supreme Court cases with both their own finances and partisan politics at a time when the justices seem so worried about the court’s image.

 

Several justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, have recently given speeches insisting that the justices are neutral arbiters of the law rather than partisan figures. Justice Stephen Breyer has argued that the court’s authority depends on “a trust that the court is guided by legal principle, not politics,” and Justice Amy Coney Barrett has said, “This court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”

 

Justice Thomas has made a version of this argument himself, saying that a justice is not “like a politician” who makes a decision based on “personal preference.” His actions send a different message, though. They seem to acknowledge that the court is indeed a political body.

[y66]

Is this supposed to be another data point that Putin feared Trump? Trump calling aggression “savvy?”

 

[Chas_P]

You boys really are amusing. Rather than continuing to flog an inanimate equine please tell us just ONE thing that your boy Joe has done to improve the lives of we plebeians. Please. Just one.

[pilowsky]

You boys really are amusing. Rather than continuing to flog an inanimate equine please tell us just ONE thing that your boy Joe has done to improve the lives of we plebeians. Please. Just one.

 

Joe's job is to make you personally happy?

The proximate reason that Joe and Bernie are unable to implement (even more) measures that will cause material improvements to peoples lives is that people like you vote for people like Gaetz, Greene, Graham and others of similarly grotty moral persuasion.

 

If you want a government that cares about people don't vote for the Ben Shapiro 'personal responsibility' parties.

 

You are literally hoist on your own petard.

 

 

 

 

[Gilithin]

You boys really are amusing. Rather than continuing to flog an inanimate equine please tell us just ONE thing that your boy Joe has done to improve the lives of we plebeians. Please. Just one.

Most people seem to be able to find something here they like. For those that don't, just getting an extra holiday a year after surviving the pandemic has got to be worth something. Considering the current state of Congress and the Gerrymandering Obstruction Party, that's really not too bad. If you want more, vote for candidates that care more about legislating than making headlines and raising cash.

[PassedOut]

You boys really are amusing. Rather than continuing to flog an inanimate equine please tell us just ONE thing that your boy Joe has done to improve the lives of we plebeians. Please. Just one.

Biden definitely improved my life by kicking a con man out of the White House so decisively that no honest person can contest it. I am heartened that the good folks in the three states where I've spent most of my life -- Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan -- participated by helping Biden accomplish that.

 

When I travel abroad, I no longer have to deal with questions from relatives and friends about what has gone so wrong with America. And at this particular moment I'm especially thankful that Putin's lackey does not occupy the oval office.

 

Yes, Trump still runs his con games -- suckering folks out of millions of dollars by peddling his latest big lie -- and I do feel sorry for those suckers. But the good news is that the vast majority of Americans rejected Trump and are certainly not sending him their money.

[kenberg]

You boys really are amusing. Rather than continuing to flog an inanimate equine please tell us just ONE thing that your boy Joe has done to improve the lives of we plebeians. Please. Just one.

 

I think that my day-to-day life is now close to the same as it was four years ago and about the same as it was eight years ago. So if we judge a presidency by looking at Ken's day-to-day life we might see no difference between Trump and Obama. Still, somehow, just somehow, I believe there is a difference.

 

I am not thinking that JB will be regarded as one of our great presidents. But the previous guy was a lying scumbag that was and is an embarrassment to the nation. So I take Improvement where I can find it. If the Rs want to put forward someone who doesn't think that Jan 6 (I am not speaking of last month) was just an ordinary day of tourism in the Capitol that would be nice.