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Fascism

Law Students Call For Hawley and Cruz To Be Barred From Practicing Law

11 January 2021

The fallout from the white supremacist terrorist attack on the Senate continues.  By now unless you have been living on Mars for a week you’ve seen the shocking images, watched the news and/or read on line about the assault on our nation’s capital  on 1/6/21.

All major news sources have chronicled the events that resulted in the deaths of five people including two Capitol Police officers who would still be alive were it not for this insurrection.  There is enough blame to go around and too many people deserving of it.  At the top, of course is the inciter-in-chief Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States.  But next in line (ignore for the moment McConnell, Graham, Fox News and other day-one Trump enablers) are two Senators:  Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX).  Read about the role these fascists played in the attack on Democracy here and here.

Hawley and Cruz have defiantly withstood public condemnation, the outrage (some of it fake) by their peers, and the censure of supporters, mentors and donors.  Their luck may have run out though.  A group of law school students collected 4,000 signatures within 48 hours of students, faculty and alumni to bar Hawley and Cruz from practicing law.  Forever.  Read about the petition here,and here.

I agree.

Hawley and Cruz took this Oath of Office for the Senate:

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Another One Bites The Dust

2 January 2021

Depending on who you talk to this is number 90 in a long string of legal defeats for Trump and his desperate attempt to overturn the election.  As legal arguments go, this has to be the most spurious and is, without a doubt, the most dangerous.

The yahoo from Texas, Louis Gohmert (pronounced “Gomer” as in Gomer Pyle but with a “t” on the end) filed a suit alleging Pence has extraordinary powers to shred votes for President.   According to Gohmert. Pence has the power to pick the next President!

Now I am not a constitutional scholar but I can read.  The 12th Amendment to the Constitution says:

“The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;—The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President…”

The “votes” to be counted are those of the 538 electors in the Electoral College not the popular vote.  The “President of the Senate” is the Vice President, in this case Pence.  Nothing in the language above suggests that counting the electoral votes certified by each State includes the right to not count, reject or alter electoral votes.  And yet this is exactly what Trump through his proxy Gohmert argues in the suit.

To underscore the lunacy of this argument lets reduce it to its basest terms.  Under this argument, Pence could declare himself (and Trump as the President) the winner of the 2020 election.  This would be so even if all 538 electoral votes had been cast for Biden.  The Oscar’s letter opener for best picture could substitute the picture he favors for the Academy’s choice.

I am in jaw-dropped awe at the audacity of these desperadoes.  Gohmert will be paid in cash or in kind for his role as proxy.  He’s from Texas so he’ll be hailed as another hero of the Confederacy.  Pence is between a rock and a hard place.  He can read his lines in this sh*t show as written for him by Trump and sacrifice his political ambitions to a failed coup attempt.  Or he can open the envelope and announce Biden as the winner and incur the wrath of Trump and his base.  A wrath that given Trump’s hold over the GOP and its finances could also sink his career.   And there’s the threat oof violence  and intimidation tactics of the far right and conspiracy lunatics that will surely follow if he deviates from Trump’s script.  Trump has nothing to lose.  He sacrifice’s nothing for a chance, however remote, to stay in office.

It is clear that these miscreants don’t give a hoot about the Constitution, democratic norms like the peaceful transition of power or the stability of our country. In fact they are actively engaged in the destabilization of America.  What I cannot understand though is the fact that lawyers are allowed to file endless motions based on the flimsiest of legal arguments with zero consequences.  Without so much as a shrug from the American Bar Association whose mission is to maintain and enforce standards and protect the rule of law.  If there were any real consequences like suspension or sanction for filing these beyond frivolous lawsuits, the courts would not be flooded with them.   Is there no end to the failures of the institutions and organizations that should be bulwarks against  fascism but are instead allies?

 

OSHA Fines Meat Plants $29,000 For Violating CoVID Safety Measures

14 September 2020

OSHA fined two meat packing companies  $29,000 total for three violations of  CoVID-19 safety measures as reported here and here.  There are more than 494 meat packing plants in the US.  Only 2 were fined.  OSHA has received more than 10,000 CoVID related complaints from workers, unions and whistle blowers across industries in 6 months but has found only three violations.  203 meat plant workers have died since March.  Last year’s combined revenue  for the two companies OSHA fined exceeded $65 billion dollars.

This is both shameful and ridiculous.  A $29,000 fine for 203 dead Americans deemed essential workers because you and I must have a hamburger instead of  a PPJ sandwich for lunch while we work from home.  203 essential workers for whom essential measures were not taken to provide a safe work environment.

If ever we needed an example of how little regard America has for the lives and well being of its most vulnerable citizens, here it is.

We are witnessing in real time the weaponization of the entire Federal bureaucracy to keep Trump in power.  The intelligence community, the postal service, the CDC, Justice, the military, NOAA,  DHS,  DOE, EPA, FDA, the Federal Reserve, now OSHA an so on down to the smallest agency.  There is no end to it.  In only 3 1/2 years Trump has exploited  with great success the hypocrisy, greed, fanaticism, pseudo-religiousness and hate in many bosoms.  How else do you explain the rapidity with which so many have abandoned every tenet of the democracy they professed to cherish and took an oath to serve?  Far from Making America Great Again Trump has shown us and the world that America was Not So Great After All.  We are now just one more country ruled by a corrupt despot  propped up by the state apparatus.

White House Silent on Khashoggi’s Murder by Saudi’s

20 October 2018

This is not the deepest stain on our character as a nation.  Nor is it the greatest blow to our moral authority on the world stage. After all, as of August 30, 2020 Trump remains silent on reports that Putin paid the Taliban bounties for dead American and coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.   But what it is is instructive.  It is not just an indication of how far we’ve fallen as a nation under Trump.  It is a sign post on the road to fascism and a blue print for things to come if Trump is re-elected.  The story of Khashoggi’s murder and our (lackluster) response to it unfolded over several months.  To paint a clear picture of how sordid a chapter this is in America’s history I collected all my comments and thoughts on the killing of a resident journalist by the Saudi regime here.