Tag Archives: Impeachment

One Week and Floundering

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Eight days ago, before the inauguration, we already knew a couple of things (roughly quoting Richard Yeselson of Dissent):

  1. Our new President is an authoritarian, mentally-ill ignoramus, uniquely unfit and dangerous.
  2. The Republican Party is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Given (1) and (2), I can’t think of anything since the inauguration that’s been more than a mild surprise. Given who he is and who his fellow Republicans are, what did we expect?

I’ll mention a few things anyway:

He gave an interview to a TV network other than Fox. Many observers thought he came across like a crazy person. One said it was the scariest thing he’d ever seen. Although many of his supporters probably enjoyed it. There’s a transcript of the interview here.

He’s still using Twitter and his outdated, easy-to-hack phone. He still spends a lot of time watching television and occasionally tweets in response to what he just heard, sometimes repeating exact phrases. One reporter said the tsunami of leaks from the White House make the President sound like a “clueless child”. I think he sounds more like an angry old fool with a severely damaged ego.

He has signed some executive orders, as new Presidents always do. For the most part, these have been aimed at impressing his supporters and may never amount to anything (he can’t get billions of dollars to build a wall by issuing an executive order). An exception is the one that will limit funding for overseas healthcare providers (the abortion “gag-rule”). It’s even worse than similar orders issued by other Republican Presidents. (Vice President Pence, who is an extreme foe of abortion rights, probably had a lot to do with it.)

Of course, that terrific replacement for the Affordable Care Act that he promised to announce in a day or two hasn’t been announced yet. But someone in the administration did take a concrete step regarding the ACA: they canceled an advertisement intended to get people to sign up for health insurance by the January 31st deadline. 

Meanwhile, The Washington Post obtained a secret recording of Congressional Republicans talking about the Affordable Care Act. It demonstrates what we already knew: they don’t know what parts of the ACA to repeal or what to replace those parts with. It’s great to hear them speak honestly for a change, so I’ve attached some choice excerpts at the bottom of this post. 

On the impeachment front, the President isn’t bothering to hide his eagerness to cash in on his new position. He doubled the membership fee at his Florida resort from $100,000 to $200,000; announced plans to build several more hotels in the US; and only plans to stop immigration from Middle Eastern countries where he doesn’t do business or doesn’t plan to (Iran bad; Saudi Arabia – where the 9/11 hijackers came from – good). A lawsuit has already been filed against the President regarding his foreign business dealings. You can read an explanation by one of the lawyers involved here and can see the formal complaint here.

Finally, the President’s spokesman announced that Mexico would reimburse us for the Wall sometime in the future, but in the meantime, companies that import stuff from Mexico (like fruits and vegetables, beer and cars) would pay for the wall through a new 20% import tariff. After it was pointed out that the tariff would be passed along to American consumers in the form of higher prices, the proposal was discounted as merely one of several ways we, not Mexico, could pay for the Wall, which, by the way, Republican politicians in Texas aren’t crazy about anyway.

As a result, and maybe in recognition of the fact that the Executive Branch of our government is now in the hands of knavish fools and foolish knaves, the President of Mexico canceled his visit to Washington.

Oh, and the President wants an investigation of the 3 million people, all of whom he knows voted for his opponent, because that’s how many more people voted for Hillary. Buenas noches, amigos.

As promised, excerpts from the Washington Post article based on that secret recording:

[A Representative] worried that one idea floated by Republicans — a refundable tax credit — would not work for middle-class families that cannot afford to prepay their premiums and wait for a tax refund…

[Another said] “It sounds like we are going to be raising taxes on the middle class in order to pay for these new credits.”

 … A freshman congressman … warned strongly against using the repeal of the ACA to also defund Planned Parenthood…

Of particular concern to some Republican lawmakers was the plan to use the budget reconciliation process — which requires only a simple majority vote — to repeal the existing law, while still needing a filibuster-proof vote of 60 in the Senate to enact a replacement….

… They did not have a clear plan on how to keep markets viable while also requiring insurers to cover everyone who seeks insurance.

[A Senator asked:] Will states have the ability to maintain the expanded Medicaid rolls provided for under the ACA, which now provide coverage for more than 10 million Americans, and can other states do similar expansions?

[A Representative] worried that the plans under GOP consideration could eviscerate coverage for the roughly 20 million Americans now covered through state and federal marketplaces and the law’s Medicaid expansion: “We’re telling those people that we’re not going to pull the rug out from under them, and if we do this too fast, we are in fact going to pull the rug out from under them.”

They are also still wrestling with whether Obamacare’s taxes can be immediately repealed, a priority for many conservatives, or whether that revenue will be needed to fund a transition period.

And there seems to be little consensus on whether to pursue a major overhaul of Medicaid — converting it from an open-ended entitlement that costs federal and state governments $500 billion a year to a fixed block grant…. doing so would mean that some low-income Americans would not be automatically covered by a program that currently covers 70 million Americans.

New Developments in the Mother Russia/Motherf****r Scandal

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I already had a title for a post called “The Big Picture on Health Insurance”, but that topic can wait. The T__p/Putin scandal seems to be growing. The British newspaper The Independent just made the story even more interesting:

(1) The ex-spy Christopher Steele who investigated Trump’s Russian connection eventually concluded that the FBI intentionally ignored solid evidence on the matter. In fact, Mr. Steele decided that there was a cabal in the FBI willing to cover up damaging information about T__p while the Bureau pursed a vendetta against Hillary Clinton;

(2) Back in the summer, when T__p downplayed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and simultaneously called for the Russians to hack Clinton’s emails, and when the Trump campaign later removed a plank from the Republican platform condemning the invasion, it was all done in response to a recent request from Russia. 

If any of this is true, then T__p, people close to him and members of the FBI committed treason. Ideally, they would all end up in prison. There would also be a constitutional amendment allowing for a new election. 

Even if these charges are true, however, it’s unlikely we’ll get a new election. That would require amending the Constitution, which would require cooperation from too many self-serving Republican politicians. T__p’s impeachment, however, followed by a stretch in a Federal prison, could easily happen. When they can’t avoid the truth anymore, the Republican sleazes in Congress will rush to get rid of the bastard.

An Open Letter to the Leading Democrat in the House

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As foreign diplomats and business people begin funneling cash to the President-Elect by taking rooms and scheduling events at T—p’s new Washington hotel (see “kleptocracy”), someone shared the following letter with me. It’s addressed to Nancy Pelosi, the current leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives.

I am writing to you on the assumption that you will continue to be leader of the Democratic members of the House of Representatives, and am urging you and the Democratic Caucus to immediately start drafting Articles of Impeachment for our presumptive President, Vice President, and other executive positions subject to impeachment.

Like many Americans, I am deeply troubled by the results of the November election. Assuming the lobbying of the Electoral College comes to naught and we do end up with this amazingly unqualified individual as President, my feeling is that everyone should do whatever they can to minimize damage to the country during his tenure.

Impeachment of executive branch officials, both elected and appointed, is the domain of the House of Representatives. There is surely zero chance that Articles of Impeachment drafted by the Democratic Caucus would pass the Judiciary Committee. But I do believe a steady stream of draft impeachment documents presented to the committee would help keep the incompetence of the Executive Branch and its appointments in the public eye. Even if the majority party does not allow draft Articles of Impeachment to come under committee consideration, their existence and content can still be publicized.

When considering the President and Vice President, and the people who are being named for other positions subject to impeachment, there is no doubt in my mind that it would be no trouble to create a steadily growing list of impeachable offenses for several years to come.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Meanwhile, a few Republicans in the Electoral College can still interfere with the monster’s journey to the White House. 

Selected Thoughts on Recent Events

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Once upon a time, it was common to see billboards and bumper stickers calling for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to be impeached. Right-wing organizations like the John Birch Society had two principal complaints against him, as set forth in a “wanted” poster from 1958:

Warren is a rabid agitator for compulsory racial mongrelization and has handed down various decisions compelling whites to mix with Negroes in the schools, public housing, in restaurants and in public bathing facilities. He is known to work closely with the N.A.A.C.P. [the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] and favors the use of force and coercian [sic] to compel white school children to mingle intimately with Negroes.

Warren has been accused of giving aid and comfort to the Communist Party on frequent occasions. He is guilty of inciting riot, disorder and anarchy in Little Rock and elsewhere in his attempts to impose judicial tyranny upon white Southerners. He has illegally transformed the Supreme Court into a Soviet-type politburo with power over the Congress and over the various state governments.

Fortunately, Chief Justice Warren was never in danger of being impeached (although he may have been in danger of being shot). In fact, only one Supreme Court Justice has ever been impeached. That was Samuel Chase back in 1804. The Wikipedia summary says he was impeached for “political bias and arbitrary rulings, promoting a partisan political agenda on the bench”. Sound familiar? The Senate acquitted Justice Chase and since then making ridiculous decisions based on one’s political ideology hasn’t been considered grounds for impeachment. Federal officials generally need to be accused of criminal activity before the House of Representatives will impeach them.

Nevertheless, if “political bias and arbitrary rulings” and “promoting a partisan political on the bench” were ever grounds for impeachment, Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas would be prime candidates. The three of them were willing to cripple the Affordable Care Act in 34 states because of a single poorly-written phrase, even though it’s standard procedure for the Court to interpret the language in complex laws based on context and legislative intent. Sensible people understood all along that Congress meant to offer subsidies to low-income people in all fifty states. It was only right-wing ideologues like Scalia, Alito and Thomas who thought or claimed to think otherwise.They saw a way to weaken the law and were willing to disgrace themselves in order to purposefully misinterpret it.

If you want to understand the Court’s decision in the Affordable Care Act case, there is a helpful summary on the Court’s website. They call it a “syllabus” and it’s only five pages long. The majority opinion begins at page 6 of the same PDF document and Scalia’s bizarre dissent begins at page 27.

If Scalia were really as angry as his overheated language implies, he would have dropped dead a few pages into his opinion. Maybe next time.

Moving on to other recent events, I’m trying to understand why some people are opposed to gay marriage because they think it will infringe on their own religious liberties. That may be a future topic. Meanwhile, here are two excellent paragraphs from an article by Andrew O’Hehir called “America Is Changing, and Marriage Equality Is a Huge Victory — But We Need To Go So Much Further”:

An entire strain of right-wing commentators, exemplified by Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly, have built careers on casting the left as treasonous America-haters who piss on the flag at every opportunity. This is a moment for people who believe in social justice to accentuate the positive, for damn sure. Beyond that, it’s also a moment that makes clear who really hates America – who hates the democratic and egalitarian potential of America, the America that does not quite exist but is struggling to become real. The America that the Coulter-O’Reilly caste claims to love does not exist either, but it never did and never will; it’s not just 1954 but a thoroughly fictional version of 1954, in which women and African-Americans were content to live in subjugation and Latinos, Muslims and LGBT people were invisible….

It’s essentially tragic that so many people feel themselves under attack from the expanded application of basic principles of fairness and justice. It cannot be a good thing that millions of Americans are so imprisoned by toxic ideology that they are unable to share in this collective celebration of hope and happiness, that they seem so determined to wall themselves up in mental ghettoes of intolerance, and that they seem devoted to waging endless rearguard combat in defense of “traditional values” rooted in a constricted understanding of God and the Christian faith and America. As the congregants of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church told us a week ago in such moving and memorable fashion, love is stronger than hate. Many people in our country who call themselves Christians would do well to reflect on that.

More, but not a lot more, here.

How Obama Could Protect the Economy and Get Rid of Boehner at the Same Time

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The 14th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War. It deals with issues resulting from that conflict. Its most famous language is the so-called “equal protection” clause: no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”.

The rebellious Southern states were required to ratify the 14th Amendment in order to regain representation in Congress. Of course, since they were traitors (a.k.a. “rebels”), Southern politicians bitterly opposed the 14th Amendment. How dare the Federal government require that all persons, including former slaves, receive “equal protection of the laws”!

Now, 152 years after the Southern rebellion, we are facing a new crisis, primarily instigated by politicians from the same Southern states. This time it would be a financial and economic crisis, brought about by America’s failure to pay its debts. Nobody knows how the crisis would play out, but since bonds issued by the Treasury Department are the foundation of our nation’s banking system and play a vital role in the banking systems of other countries, it’s likely that America’s failure to honor its debts would do more damage to the global economy than the horrendous financial crisis of 2008.

The Constitution makes no mention of a debt ceiling. That limitation on the Treasury Department’s ability to take on new debt (i.e. to borrow money by selling government bonds) was foolishly imposed by Congress in the Liberty Bond Act of 1917. With that law, Congress gave itself the authority to set a maximum dollar amount for the federal debt, despite the fact that it’s Congress that tells the President how much money to spend when it approves the Federal budget.

Since the members of Congress are relatively sensible for the most part, they periodically raise the debt limit so the Federal government has enough money to do the various things the law requires it to do (make Medicare payments, buy cruise missiles, etc.).

If Congress refuses to raise the debt limit, therefore, the President is caught in a dilemma. He either has to borrow more money without Congressional approval or not pay what the government owes to bondholders, employees, government contractors, retirees and so on — thereby doing untold damage to the world’s economy and our own national security.

Fortunately, the 14th Amendment includes a clause devoted to the national debt. Section 4 of the amendment states:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Legal scholars are now arguing about which law the President should obey. I’m not a legal scholar, but I have no doubt that the appropriate thing for the President (any President) to do if Congress fails to raise the debt limit, thereby “questioning the validity” of the public debt, is to obey the Constitution and borrow whatever funds are necessary to pay the government’s bills.

The Constitution, after all, is the “supreme law of the land”. Even crazy Tea Party people claim to honor the Constitution. The Constitution, which requires the President to “preserve, protect and defend” it, should take precedence over the Liberty Bond Act of 1917.

The last time there was a Republican-generated debt ceiling crisis, the President ruled out the 14th Amendment as a solution. At yesterday’s press conference, however, he mentioned the 14th Amendment but didn’t rule it out. He did say it isn’t a “magic bullet” and made the valid point that bonds issued without clear Congressional approval might be of questionable value. For example, buyers would probably demand higher interest rates before purchasing such government securities.

Nevertheless, it still seems that the most prudent course would be for the President to ignore the debt ceiling and continue to issue government bonds. In fact, it might be a wonderful strategy.

One likely outcome is that the Republican majority in the House of Representatives would impeach the President, just like they impeached President Clinton. But the Democrats in the Senate would never convict Obama of “high crimes and misdemeanors” for using his emergency powers to protect our national security. In fact, it’s very likely that the House Republicans would become even less popular than they are now, leading to gains for Democrats in the 2014 mid-term election.

Some recent polling suggests the Democrats might pick up as many as 30 seats in the House if the election were held today. Since they only need 18 more seats to become the majority party in the House, Obama needs to do whatever he can to maintain the Republicans’ unpopularity. Goading them into a misguided impeachment vote could do the trick, giving the Democrats control of both houses of Congress for the last two years of his Presidency. No more Speaker of the House John Boehner!

The Republicans would still have the filibuster in the Senate, of course, but that’s a topic for another day.