Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[cherdano]

Police in Minneapolis slashed tires of many cars belonging to protesters or press just because. No, that's not the claim of some wild antifa terrorist organisers, that's what their own spokesman says.

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/09/873110812/police-officers-slashed-car-tires-during-minneapolis-protests-police-agencies-sa

 

They have lost all sense of accountability. And I don't think that's something you can change with a little bit of reform here and there. (Google about their union president if you can stomach it.)

 

Dissolve the police. Build a new "Protect your community" agency. You might even rehire a few of the previous police officers if you vet them very carefully. Basically what Camden, NJ did. Except Camden did it to break union contract and half the salary of police officers; Minneapolis instead would do it to get rid of all officers who have gone insane in their attitude to the job, and to rebuild the department from the ground up.

[Winstonm]

I guess it is no longer paranoia with these people are just as concerned:

 

 

Col. Larry Wilkerson: “I immediately thought about two organizations that I'm a member of right now. And let me just put a little different complexion on this, perhaps. One is the National Task Force [on] Election Crises and the other is the Transition Integrity Project. As the names imply, the former is looking at everything up to the November 3rd presidential elections, and has been doing so since early or late 2019. And the latter is looking at the transition, November 3rd to the inauguration on January [20th].

 

"And what struck me immediately was some of the conversations that we've had in both of these groups. That this sitting president might — if things turn against him in a very decisive way, or even turn against him in a indeterminate way — might use the U.S. military with regard to these elections. And that's a very dangerous situation and very disconcerting thing.

 

 

 

[y66]

A thought experiment.

 

Imagine yourself as 20 years old. Ok, tough already. But if you get past that hurdle then imagine yourself as from a middle class family, sound mind and body, normal intelligence, considering a career. Your father says, as mine didn't but could have, "The guy across the street is a cop, have you considered that?" Do you think the chance of a positive response has increased, decreased or stayed the same over the past couple of weeks? I went off to college to study math and physics because I was interested in math and physics. For a brief period I got interested in philosophy and considered that, but I figured math was a better career choice. And, ultimately, a lot more interesting. If there was a movement to de-fund mathematics I would probably, again, have re-thought that choice. I had no plans to get rich, but I don't think I would have wanted to prepare for a profession that the public thought should be de-funded. So how about the guy who had been thinking of being a cop? He might re-think this?

 

I have been mulling this over for a bit. I expect the answer is yes, he might very well re-think it. Nobody is suggesting we de-fund plumbers. So maybe be a plumber.

 

Just asking.

Kid, if your heart is set on being a cop, go for it. We need good cops. There are plenty of communities whose citizens understand this as well as the importance of hiring well-educated young men and women, giving them the training and support they need to succeed and paying them well. Do your homework and you won't have to worry about defunding.

 

Just saying.

[y66]

Alan Feur at NYT: https://nyti.ms/2YoSMtF

 

The New York mob boss John J. Gotti rose in court one day in 1991 as he was nearing trial and jabbed his finger at the baby-faced Brooklyn prosecutor handling his case.

 

Dismissing his opponent — a young government lawyer named John Gleeson — as “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” Mr. Gotti claimed that Mr. Gleeson was in over his head. “He can’t handle a good fight,” Mr. Gotti snarled, “and he can’t win a fair trial.”

 

Within eight months, Mr. Gotti had lost the trial, and Mr. Gleeson, then 38, rode the victory into a long career as a prosecutor, judge and private lawyer.

 

That career took an unexpected turn this week when Mr. Gleeson, now 66, was called back into government service to take part in a case that could easily prove as bruising as his brush with the famous don.

 

On Wednesday, the federal judge overseeing the case of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn appointed Mr. Gleeson to oppose the Justice Department’s plan to drop the charge. The position, as a kind of legal adviser to the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, was both unusual and slightly ill-defined, and was certain to thrust Mr. Gleeson into an open confrontation with Mr. Trump and his army of supporters.

 

Mr. Gleeson was well positioned to handle the job, a half-dozen of his colleagues said in interviews.

 

“If Judge Sullivan was looking for a straight arrow, he got one,” said Judge Raymond J. Dearie, who hired Mr. Gleeson as a prosecutor in the early 1980s and later served with him on the Brooklyn federal bench. “John is an extremely talented lawyer who calls them as he sees them.”

 

Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to investigators as part of a larger inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. But he later sought to fight those charges, asking Judge Sullivan to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea.

 

The Justice Department stepped into the fray last week and abruptly moved to drop the case after a long campaign by Mr. Trump and his supporters. The reversal prompted accusations that Attorney General William P. Barr had undermined the rule of law and further politicized the department.

 

While many of the details of Mr. Gleeson’s post remain unclear, Judge Sullivan has tapped him to represent the viewpoint of the original prosecutors who believed that Mr. Flynn had committed a crime.

 

At this point, both the government and defense agree that the charge against Mr. Flynn should be dismissed. Judge Sullivan has asked Mr. Gleeson to be something like a shadow prosecution, marshaling arguments — discarded by Mr. Barr — as to why the charge should remain. Judge Sullivan has also asked Mr. Gleeson to determine whether Mr. Flynn should face an additional charge of perjury.

 

Raised in Westchester County by an Irish immigrant family, Mr. Gleeson worked as a caddy at a local golf course before attending Georgetown University. As he prepared himself for a law career, he made his living painting houses.

 

He joined the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn in 1985 and was quickly assigned to the case of Mr. Gotti, the era’s most renowned and ruthless gangster. Mr. Gleeson was a junior member of the prosecution team in 1986 when Mr. Gotti was tried for the first time. He was acquitted the following year.

 

After a second acquittal in a state case, Mr. Gleeson oversaw a third trial of Mr. Gotti and in 1992 he prevailed, largely by winning the cooperation of Mr. Gotti’s right-hand man, the assassin Salvatore Gravano.

 

“There was a feeling among our generation of prosecutors that John was a rock star,” said Gordon Mehler, who worked with Mr. Gleeson at the time. “He was super smart, but also incredibly hardworking. And he could take a punch.”

 

As a prosecutor, Mr. Gleeson had a reputation for being aggressive — perhaps, some said, overly so — and for taking a humorless, even cold, approach to lawyering. With his tight-lipped manner and wire-rimmed glasses, he was known around the office by a goody-two-shoes nickname: Clark Kent.

 

As a judge, however, his vision of the criminal justice system, and his sense of empathy, seemed to broaden.

 

“He began to see many of the inequities that people face — especially the poor and minorities,” Mr. Mehler said. “He became more liberal on criminal matters and a kind of champion for the down and out.”

 

Mr. Gleeson was an early advocate of federal sentencing overhauls and was a driving force behind bringing special drug courts to Brooklyn, working with an agency known as Pretrial Services to start a program that allowed drug-addicted defendants to avoid prison time by achieving sobriety. In more than two decades as a judge, he regularly visited prisons to ask inmates about the experience of being in custody.

 

In the financial sphere, Mr. Gleeson oversaw the government’s decision to defer the prosecution of the banking giant HSBC, which was accused of an array of money-laundering violations. While critics attacked the deal, which allowed HSBC to avoid criminal charges, as a slap on the wrist, Mr. Gleeson monitored it regularly to ensure the bank’s compliance, warning prosecutors that such agreements were still subject to judicial oversight.

 

When Mr. Gleeson left the bench in 2016 and went into private practice, he continued his work on sentencing changes in between more white-collar cases. In the past few years, he has helped free inmates whose prison terms were found to be egregious.

 

He may have caught Judge Sullivan’s eye this week when he co-wrote an opinion article for The Washington Post, noting that the judge could reject the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the charges against Mr. Flynn if he wanted. The headline said it all: “The Flynn Case Isn’t Over Until the Judge Says It’s Over.”

 

According to Kelly T. Currie, the former acting U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, Mr. Gleeson’s experience as a prosecutor, a defense lawyer and a federal judge made him well suited to help Judge Sullivan sort through the case.

 

“He’s meticulous and listens carefully to all the arguments before reaching a decision,” Mr. Currie said. “He’s somebody who takes the law very seriously.”

Love this part: “There was a feeling among our generation of prosecutors that John was a rock star,” said Gordon Mehler, who worked with Mr. Gleeson at the time. “He was super smart, but also incredibly hardworking. And he could take a punch.”

[kenberg]

Kid, if your heart is set on being a cop, go for it. We need good cops. There are plenty of communities whose citizens understand this as well as the importance of hiring well-educated young men and women, giving them the training and support they need to succeed and paying them well. Do your homework and you won't have to worry about defunding.

 

Just saying.

 

Perhaps that's good advice to a young person, perhaps. I am not so sure it's advice I would give. And, perhaps more to the point, I was wondering what the young person himself would be thinking. I doubt he would ask my advice and I am not sure I would want the responsibility of giving advice and not sure this is the advice I would give if I did give advice.

 

I think of my own young years and how I made decisions. Advice from others played very little role. When I switched my major from physics to math I did ask one faculty person, but I choice a math prof to ask so really I had made up my mind. At another point I considered dropping out college. I had a decent job with decent wages that I was enjoying. i discussed this with no one. There were many other such choices, surely this is pretty much the usual. People make their own choices.

 

 

So my earlier challenge was to imagine yourself as 20, imagine that you might well have been thinking of becoming a cop, and then try to imagine if whether you would now be re-thinking that choice. I suppose, as in most cases, some would, some wouldn't. I think a fair number would indeed be re-thinking it.

 

Maybe van Gogh, or maybe Mozart, were on an unshakable path. But most of us, when young, consider various career options. Recent events presumably will have an effect on this.

[Winstonm]

“For all intents and purposes, Donald Trump today became the Confederacy’s second president,” the Lincoln Project said in a statement:

 

I hate to have to burn Atlanta to the ground again, but if you got to, you've got to.

[y66]

Ds' constant harumphing & moral outrage has the effect of elevating Rs to grand historical players. They really need to learn the power of mockery & condescension. Make Rs look silly & small. Trump's Achilles heel is looking & feeling *ridiculous*.

Make Trump look and feel "ridiculous"? Nobody does it better than the guys at the Lincoln Project (who are not Ds):

[kenberg]

A little more on de-funding. The Minneapolis Mayor David Frey was interviewed on NPR about his thoughts.

 

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/10/874210961/minneapolis-mayor-wants-full-structural-revamp-not-abolition-of-police-departmen

 

Frey, whether you agree with him or not, does not sound stupid and his history does not at all suggest indifference. True, he is a lawyer, but he seems to have used that training intending to help. And since he is a mayor, he has to be at least a bit of a politician. Still, his Wik entry suggests credibility.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Frey

 

It seems clear enough to me that he wishes to do good. .Of course wishes and results are different. I don't bet on these things but if I did I think my money would be on Frey, working with others, bringing this through to something that will be broadly viewed as good. Ok, I wouldn't bet the house. But I can hope.

 

 

 

[hrothgar]

Maybe van Gogh, or maybe Mozart, were on an unshakable path. But most of us, when young, consider various career options. Recent events presumably will have an effect on this.

 

My impression is that most graduates these days should be expecting to have 4-5 different types of jobs over the course of their professional life.

 

(I certainly have)

[kenberg]

My impression is that most graduates these days should be expecting to have 4-5 different types of jobs over the course of their professional life.

 

(I certainly have)

 

I have probably exhausted the interest in the topic but I have looked around a bit. Apparently it is much more difficult to find takers for open police inspection than it once was. Maybe due to more options in the improved economy but on an NPR discussion they figured not just that. I do think the current hoopla will make this worse.

 

Looking at it differently, this could be seen as strong motivation to get things right. A person likes to be proud of the organization s/he is working for.

 

Just as a side note, while doing this browsing I found that the median salary for St. Paul cops is about 9K a year higher than that for Minneapolis cops. Hard to understand why. Maybe they are better. Could be. But I dunno.

 

Anyway, I can't say much more about this without either making it up or repeating myself.

[cherdano]

I have probably exhausted the interest in the topic but I have looked around a bit. Apparently it is much more difficult to find takers for open police inspection than it once was. Maybe due to more options in the improved economy but on an NPR discussion they figured not just that. I do think the current hoopla will make this worse.

Yup, but that has more to do with lots of videos of cops beating up protesters than some "defund the police [and what we mean by that is ....]"-cries.

Or rather, if someone likes joining what they see they probably shouldn't become police...

[Chas_P]

 

I hate to have to burn Atlanta to the ground again, but if you got to, you've got to.

 

You may find this interesting in your quest for "justice".

[PassedOut]

When I moved to Atlanta in late 1978 (the company I worked for was setting up a new IT office there), I rented an apartment for a year while I looked for a home to buy. It turned out that the mayor, Maynard Jackson, had an apartment in that same building -- and lived there until Atlanta obtained an official mayor's residence. He was bright and personable and got a lot done for the city. One particular thing I found amusing: Mayor Jackson was often surrounded by an entourage, and when I'd wave from a distance, he'd be the one to wave back; the assumption seemed to be that I couldn't ever be waving at someone else in his crowd. :)

 

When Andrew Young ran for mayor, he scheduled small get-togethers in homes all over Atlanta, and Constance and I were invited to one in our neighborhood. Andrew Young too was very interesting to talk with, especially about his work as the first African-American UN ambassador, appointed by Carter. Young also did well as mayor, becoming very popular all over Atlanta. He won his second term by a huge margin -- maybe 80% of the vote.

 

After living in Atlanta for twenty years, over twenty years ago now, I've still got good friends there. And BBO has been a big help!

[akwoo]

First of all, I think when all is said and done, what's happening in Minneapolis will end up being no more than a clever piece of union busting.

 

Second, if anything is going to change, we will need an alternative network of police academies, one that teaches recruits that it's part of their job to accept significant risks to their own lives in order to avoid harming those that turn out to be no threat. Big cities have sufficient needs for a diverse array of public safety responses. Smaller places will still need generalists.

[johnu]

The end of an error (sic) :P

 

The crumbling casino and hotel of Trump Plaza in Atlantic City is getting torn down after sitting vacant for years

 

A symbol of "America's Entrepreneur" is flushed down the toilet.

 

Trump sued to have his name removed from the building a month after it shuttered. The complex, which opened in 1984, is one of three casinos Trump built. The other two have since changed names and ownership, according to The Hill.

I thought any publicity was good publicity???

 

"It's an embarrassment, it's a blight on our skyline, and that's the biggest eyesore in town," Small said in January according to NJ.com.

Maybe the Manchurian President can build a wall around the crumbling ex-casino. Build that wall, build that wall... It won't cost Atlantic City any money at all because Mexico will pay for the wall.

[Winstonm]

Now we know why Trump picked Tulsa for his coming out party:

 

Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum on Wednesday blasted one of his police department's top commanders after the officer denied there's systemic racism in law enforcement, then said African Americans "probably ought to be" shot more.

[y66]

I guess one thing that really stands out here is that it doesn't take that much to go from a massive Biden Electoral College landslide (if he wins everywhere on the list below, that's 413 EV) to a narrow Biden loss (he's only ahead 3.7 points in the tipping-point state).

National: Biden +7.6

 

CO: Biden +15.6

ME: Biden +12.4

VA: Biden +9.5

MI: Biden +8.2

NE-2: Biden +7.4

NH: Biden +6.6

WI: Biden +5.9

NV: Biden +5.7

MN: Biden +5.5

PA: Biden +3.7

AZ: Biden +3.6

FL: Biden +3.5

NC: Biden +2.0

OH: Biden +1.6

GA: TIE

TX: Trump +1.4

IA: Trump +1.6

The tipping-point state here would be PA, where there's been a real lack of high-quality polling for the past couple months. I doubt that Biden is actually ahead by 8 in MI and 6 in WI but only 3-4 in PA. But, that's what the polls show if you don't blend them with priors.

[PassedOut]

Lindsey Graham weighs in:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Xpwyd4aMM

[kenberg]

Lindsey Graham weighs in:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Xpwyd4aMM

 

I gather these are recorded remarks from circa 2015. They might or might not be effective as a campaign ad but for me they shout the question: How, how, just how did we ever get to where we now are?

 

"You know how to MAGA? Tell Donald Trump to go to Hell".

 

Exactly. This was obvious in 2015 and most unfortunately it has become a great deal more obvious now. Every country consists of imperfect people sometimes doing some questionable things. But Donald Trump? As LG might have said, give me an effin break. Maybe that should be the 2020 campaign slogan. It pretty well sums up the situation.

[y66]

In 1804, the Corsican upstart Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself as France’s emperor. His mother, born Letizia Ramolino, did not attend the coronation. Informed of her son’s self-elevation, she is said to have remarked coolly: “Let’s hope it lasts.”

 

In conversations with conservative friends about the Trump presidency these last three years, I often found myself thinking about Mother Bonaparte. Before Donald Trump’s election I made a lot of dire predictions about how his mix of demagogy and incompetence would interact with real world threats: I envisioned economic turmoil, foreign policy crises, sustained domestic unrest. Having lived through the failed end of the last Republican presidency, I assumed Trump’s administration would be a second, swifter failure, with dire consequences for both the country and the right.

 

In 2017, 2018, 2019, those predictions didn’t come to pass. Trump was bad in many ways, but the consequences weren’t what I anticipated. The economy surged; the world was relatively stable; the country was mad online but otherwise relatively calm. And as the Democrats shifted leftward and Trump delivered on his promised judicial appointments, many conservatives who had shared my apprehensions would tell me that, simply as a shield against the left, the president was doing enough to merit their support in 2020.

 

To which I often murmured something like, “let’s hope it lasts.”

 

It hasn’t. Now we are in the retreat-from-Moscow phase of the Trump presidency, with crises arriving all together — pandemic, recession, mass protests — and the president incapable of coping. If the election were held today, the result could easily resemble 2008, the closest thing to a landslide our divided system has recently produced. Meanwhile across corporate and journalistic and academic America, a 1968-ish spirit is pulling liberalism toward an uncertain destination, with what remains of conservatism turtled for safety or extinct.

 

In this environment, few conservatives outside the MAGA core would declare Trump’s presidency a ringing success. But many will stand by him out of a sense of self-protection, hoping a miracle keeps him in the White House as a firewall against whatever post-2020 liberalism might become.

 

This is a natural impulse, but they should consider another possibility: That so long as he remains in office, Trump will be an accelerant of the right’s erasure, an agent of its marginalization and defeat, no matter how many of his appointees occupy the federal bench.

 

In situations of crisis or grave difficulty, Trump displays three qualities, three spirits, that all redound against the movement that he leads. His spirit of authoritarianism creates a sense of perpetual crisis among his opponents, uniting left-wingers and liberals despite their differences. His spirit of chaos, the sense that nothing is planned or under control, turns moderates and normies against him. And finally his spirit of incompetence means that conservatives get far less out of his administration than they would from a genuine imperial president, a man of iron rather than of pasteboard.

 

You can see the convergence of these spirits in the disaster at Lafayette Park, where an authoritarian instinct led to a chaotic and violent police intervention, a massive media freakout, blowback from the military — and left the president with an impious photo op and control of six blocks around the White House to show for it.

 

That last image, the president as a dictator of an island and impotent beyond it, seems like a foretaste of what would await conservatives if Trump somehow slipped through to a second term. Maybe he would get to replace another Supreme Court justice — maybe. (In a Democratic Senate, not.) But everything else the right needs would slip further out of reach.

 

Conservatism needs a response to the current movement for social justice that answers just claims and rejects destructive ones. Trump delivers a conservatism of Confederate war memorials that vindicates the left.

 

Conservatism needs new ideas about how to use power, a better theory of the relationship between state, economy and culture than the decadent Reaganism that Trump half-overthrew. Trump offers only a daily lesson in how to let power go to waste.

 

Conservatism needs a way to either claim more space in America’s existing elite institutions, or else a path to building new ones. Trump offers a retreat to the fortresses of OANN, TPUSA, QAnon.

 

Above all, conservatism, now a worldview for old people and contrarians in a country trending leftward, needs a mix of converts and sympathizers to be something other than a rump. Trump did win some converts in 2016, but he has spent four years making far more enemies, and their numbers are growing every day.

 

What we are seeing right now in America, an accelerated leftward shift, probably won’t continue at this pace through 2024. But it’s likely to continue in some form so long as Trump is conservatism, and conservatism is Trump — and four more years of trying to use him as a defensive salient is not a strategy of survival, but defeat.

[johnu]

Why would anybody think the US needs the Affordable Care Act? Our health care system is perfect!

 

Seattle Man Gets $1.1 Million Coronavirus Hospital Bill: Report

 

Michael Flor, a Seattle resident, surprised doctors and family members when he recovered from a life-threatening coronavirus infection this spring.

 

Then he got his own surprise ― a hospital bill for $1,122,501.04.

Just the charge for his room in the intensive care unit was billed at $9,736 per day. Due to the contagious nature of the virus, the room was sealed and could only be entered by medical workers wearing plastic suits and headgear. For 42 days he was in this isolation chamber, for a total charged cost of $408,912.

 

He also was on a mechanical ventilator for 29 days, with the use of the machine billed at $2,835 per day, for a total of $82,215. About a quarter of the bill is drug costs.

I personally don't see the big deal about a hospital bill of a million plus dollars B-) Mr. Flor could easily pay for this bill if he used coupons when shopping and used regular instead of premium gasoline in his car. WTP?

[johnu]

Trump Tries To Explain Awkward West Point Walk That Lit Up Twitter Critics

 

The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery. The last thing I was going to do is “fall” for the Fake News to have fun with. Final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!

Earlier, during his address to cadets, Trump took an awkward sip of water: He used his right hand to lift a glass, then used his left hand to push the glass, still clutched in his right hand, all the way to his mouth.

Enough of the Manchurian President bashing. Everybody knows West Point was directly in the path of Hurricane Dorian. If there isn't a map with sharpie markings that shows this to be true, just wait a couple of minutes. There is a lot of rain and dangerous high winds during a hurricane. This also explains why the Grifter in Chief had trouble drinking water. I have to commend the Grifter in Chief for risking his life to attend graduation ceremonies in the middle of a hurricane. MAGA, MAGA, MAGA

[Winstonm]

Devin Nunes and the Republicans all harp about free speech, but when it comes to critics of Nunes, his feelings are not Moo-tual.

 

“They’re doing more than allowing Liz Mair, the cow and the mom to post a tweet,” Biss said. “They’re censoring, they’re promoting an anti-Nunes agenda, they’re banning conservative accounts and they’re knowingly encouraging it.”

 

Nunes sued to stop the cow from posting on Twitter - and how did that work out, Devin?:

 

The anonymous accounts have grown massive audiences since Nunes filed a lawsuit against them. The cow account, @devincow, has more than 700,000 people following messages that mock the congressman as “treasonous cowpoke.” It had about 1,000 before the lawsuit.

[PeterAlan]

On possibly a lighter note, I have a twin brother, but we have different birthdays. His is today, and he shares it with Donald Trump. Mine is tomorrow, and I share it with Xi Jinping. Sometimes you just can't win.

[Winstonm]

On possibly a lighter note, I have a twin brother, but we have different birthdays. His is today, and he shares it with Donald Trump. Mine is tomorrow, and I share it with Xi Jinping. Sometimes you just can't win.

 

You already won by having a brother.