A Comment.

If you know who should be credited, please let me know.

If you know who should be credited, please let me know.

I wrote a comment on another blog yesterday, because I just could not take one more supposedly reasonable person making excuses for those poor, misunderstood people who voted for Trump. It’s making me queasy sick, and possibly leading to a genuine head ‘splosion. I know what the fuck is wrong with all those Trumpoids, but those busy doing nothing but bleating excuses? I’d like an answer, what in the fuck is wrong with you? If you are making excuses, you need to shut the fuck up, stat. Or, you know, you could grow a fucking spine and stand up to all your Trumpoid families and friends. Go ahead, be brave. I’ll wait.  Anyroad, here’s the comment:

The bottom line is that people, for whatever reasons, who perceive they were being done wrong, were promised they would have that metaphorical dog to kick to pieces: “you’ll be able to kick those brown people in the teeth! You’ll be able to knock immigrants on their ass!”

That’s what white people, who are always looking to blame someone else, wanted, and that’s what Trump promised them. It’s all ism: racism and sexism. White people are getting bolder by the second, proclaiming their need to preserve their race, by which they mean, “we need to be on top of the people pile again, with everything in it’s right and natural order, white is right!”*

Trump also promised white Christians the path to what they want the most: the ability to stomp on people, grind them to dust and blood, to offer up to their psychopathic god. “No more queers!” “No more abortion!” “No more contraception!” If you haven’t already read about all the legislation on these matters, paint yourself as a willfully ignorant dumbfuck. It’s happening, and it’s happening because that is what these people wanted. No way out of that.

It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if you don’t think your relatives are horrible bigots, or your friend who voted for Trump really isn’t a bad sort, or whatthefuck ever excuse you have cooked up. Unless you’re going to argue they are brain damaged, and couldn’t really understand all the blatantly bigoted shit which spewed from Trump’s mouth non-stop, there are no excuses. NONE.

By attempting to excuse people, you’re just another witless cog in the normalisation machine, helping to normalise fascism and unspeakable crimes against people, all people. STOP DOING THAT.

WAKE THE FUCK UP.

P.S. Fuck every single one of you whiny, mealy-mouthed fuckers who just can’t stop whinging about how hard their “thanksgiving” is going to be: fuck your squeamish privilege, your entitlement, and your godsdamned arrogance.

Caveat: I am not talking about those who have already gone 100 rounds with family or friends; nor am I talking about those who are dependent on family, and have to make the tactical decision to be quiet in order to stay alive. I am talking about all the assholes who must defend all Trump voters because their family members or friends voted for him; I am talking about all the fucking assholes who have been whinging and wringing their hands over how awful their holiday is going to be, sitting at a table over laden with food, and having the unbearable task of stuffing their fucking faces and watching television.

We will be spending thankstealing at Standing Rock, with the other protectors, against an army of vicious thugs. A friend will celebrate unthanksgiving on Alcatraz. I know other people who will be busy helping others, the homeless, or refugees. If your only fucking problem is having to refrain from noisily sighing whilst dining with family, shut up and stop defending the indefensible.

* Why yes, I do know that Trump voters were not %100 percent white. Don’t even think of using that as an excuse. Don’t. The majority voters were white, and they drove that vote.

Meet An Electoral College Voter.

Montana elector Dennis Scranton, center, poses with Rep. Ryan Zinke, left, Harrison Fagg and Sen. Steve Daines.

Montana elector Dennis Scranton, center, poses with Rep. Ryan Zinke, left, Harrison Fagg and Sen. Steve Daines.

BILLINGS — A 92-year-old Miles City man, who will be casting one of Montana’s three electoral college votes, has come under fire for his Facebook comments against gay Montanans.

Dennis Scranton was outed Sunday by the online news site Last Best News for suggesting in a 2010 Facebook conversation that gay people should be hanged. The conversation about gay marriage was reported in The Billings Gazette seven years ago when it cost former Big Sky Tea Party Association leader Tim Ravndal his chairmanship.

Ravndal was commenting on a Billings Gazette article concerning an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit about same-sex couples. In the post, Ravendal wrote “marriage between a man and a woman period!”

Scranton responded to the Tea Party leader’s remark, saying, “I think fruits are decorative. Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated. Call Wyoming for display instructions.” The Wyoming mention was an apparent reference to Matthew Shepard, a gay university student who as beaten, bound to a fence post and left for dead outside Laramie in 1998.

[…]

But, Scranton didn’t back away from his opinion about gay Montanans.

“Don’t forget, I’m 93 years old. I come from a different era. I hadn’t heard of anyone being homosexual until I joined the Navy, and then I encountered them,” Scranton said. “We were raised with good morals.”

You can read the rest here. I’m going to go be sick.

Well, that didn’t help. Here are a couple more wonderful Trump fans:

[Read more…]

PLEASE: Help Veterans Get to Standing Rock.

Police confront protesters with a rubber bullet gun during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S. November 20, 2016. Stephanie Keith/REUTERS

Police confront protesters with a rubber bullet gun during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S. November 20, 2016. Stephanie Keith/REUTERS.

The cops out at Standing Rock have now managed to blow apart most of a young woman’s arm. That’s just the grisliest of the very high list of injuries. Naturally, cops are denying responsibility, which won’t surprise anyone at all. They are doing what all cops do – lie.

Our veterans want to help, and to do that, they need some help from all of you. If you can help, please, do so. If you are unable to donate, please spread the word. What is happening here is damn wrong. It’s fucking wrong, and everyone knows that, and still, there’s nothing but silence. Please help. Lila wopila.

https://www.gofundme.com/veterans-for-standing-rock-nodapl

Worse. It Keeps Getting Worse.

Credit: Shutterstock.

Credit: Shutterstock.

It looks like we can indeed kiss net neutrality goodbye. I posted about this earlier, but there’s more confirmation now. It’s been a long fight, and yes, mostly won, but no more.

President-elect Donald Trump has selected two anti-net neutrality advisers to shape the future administration’s telecom policy strategy at the Federal Communications Commission, Recode reported.

[…]

Trump has previously favored deregulation and criticized the FCC’s net neutrality rules, calling them a “Fairness Doctrine” and an “attack on the internet” that will “target conservative media.”

To help advance his agenda, Trump has brought on Jeff Eisenach, who worked on campaign telecom policy for the Reagan administration, and Mark Jamison, a former Sprint lobbyist.

Eisenach was part of former President Ronald Reagan’s Federal Trade Commission and FCC transition teams. The resulting FCC agency repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which required media to portray contrasting perspectives in news coverage of public issues. Jamison, who also teaches at the University of Florida, has staunchly opposed the FCC’s policies to improve internet access and options in low-income and rural areas.

Low income and rural, that’s me. I have to wonder how all those internet shitlords and proud deplorables are going to take this news, are they going to twist themselves into torturous positions in order to justify this one? Full story at Think Progress.

[Read more…]

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

ict_editoon_110916

Willing to oppose Trump, some US Senate Republicans gain leverage. Source. I wouldn’t class this as solidly good news, because republicans and libertarians, but some of them appear to be developing a spine, which I’ll take as good news right now.

Indian-American congresswoman-elect plans to fight Trump on immigration. Source.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel struggles to find anyone in Silicon Valley to serve in Trump brain trust. Source. Trump and brain trust do not belong in the same sentence.

Argentine President Macri: Ivanka Trump sat in on my call with her father. Source.

Trump Foundation admits to violating ban on ‘self-dealing,’ new filing to IRS shows. Source.

Trump recommends Farage for UK ambassador to US. Source. This speaks so many volumes, it’s a set of encyclopedias.

White supremacist ‘Christian Identity’ pastor begs Trump to crack down on Jews. Source. “All those comparisons to nazis, they are over the top!” Yeah, right.

Speaking of, we all need to be vigilant about the ongoing normalisation, it’s happening everywhere, and not enough people are speaking out about it:

RealClearPolitics writer Rebecca Berg noted that this is absolutely an important conversation to be having, however, that this is just a small share of Trump’s support base. “That’s an important point to make,” she said.

“We haven’t expected Barack Obama to come out as president every time one of his supporters says something hateful and address that,” Berg continued. “I’m not sure we can expect that of President-Elect Trump every time a room of a few dozen people says something hateful like this.”

Gergen, angered by the matter added, “Listen, I respect what Rebecca said — most of what she said. But the fact is, that Mr. Bannon represents and has sent out a lot of signals to people, as someone you should be scared of, as someone who supports policies that are going to represent this administration.”

“When the alt-right is taken as seriously as it is, and we begin to normalize this conversation, to say, ‘it’s all right to do Neo-Nazi kind of rhetoric and we’re just going to accept it, it’s part of who we are as Americans.’ No, it is not all right to be Neo-Nazi in this country.”

Gergen cautioned, “If we’re going to raise those spectres, just remember when people didn’t rise up against the Nazis.”

Source.

No, Absolutely Fucking Not.

Two young Donald Trump fans wait to get inside the Trump rally in Manchester, N.H., Nov. 7, 2016 (Andrew Cline/Shutterstock).

Two young Donald Trump fans wait to get inside the Trump rally in Manchester, N.H., Nov. 7, 2016 (Andrew Cline/Shutterstock).

A week after Donald Trump won the presidency, many students on the University of Delaware campus were still devastated. Professors at the blue-state public school where Vice President Joe Biden is an alumnus canceled classes, helped organize marches, and held discussions so that students could process their feelings and fears.

But the UD students who voted for Trump were thrilled. It’s not just that their candidate won, but that the Democrats’ reliance on “identity politics” failed. Hillary Clinton’s campaign bet on the votes of women, minorities, the LGBT community, and other groups whose political positions are often shaped by the way they identify. But the Clinton campaign didn’t just fail to get out the vote — it also alienated white people who don’t like being told they’re bigots.

Trump didn’t win the election thanks to college graduates. The majority of them backed Clinton — except for white college-educated voters, who went for Trump by a narrow four-point margin. Nevertheless, Trump voters on campuses across the country view themselves as underground rebels fighting a corrosive epidemic of political correctness. Just don’t expect them to wear their “Make America Great Again” caps to the dining hall.

“It’s the new counterculture,” said Jared, an undergraduate who wore a suit and tie to a recent meeting of the UD College Republicans. “It’s the equivalent of being a hippie protesting at Kent State,” he said, apparently referring to the 1970 Vietnam War protest that ended with National Guard troops shooting four unarmed students to death.

“Or being grunge in the ’90s,” another student chimed in.

:Massive Facepalm: I was part of the counterculture. Bonafide hippie, right here. These ignorant twerps wouldn’t know a counterculture if it fucking bit their arses off. People died at Kent State, murdered, as they ran away. A silence swept the land when that happened, and then a wave of screaming took place, it was past time to make things change. These stupid, whiny, overprivileged, entitlement minded gits have absolutely no fucking business talking about Kent State, let alone comparing themselves to those who were there. Especially in light of the special idiot who compares Kent State to being grunge in the ’90s. Yeah, wow, talk about hard times, dude, that was just awful, wasn’t it? I’m stunned. Just stunned by the depth of this willfully ignorant entitlement. These idiots would run away from an actual protest, afraid they might mess up their hair, or possibly get those oh so cool conservativeculture clothes dirty. This is a good illustration of the dumbing down though, of the idiocy being embraced in this lost country, and newspeak is firmly entrenched. Counterculture? No. Concult, yes. These little asswipes aren’t counter anything. They are the boot stomp of conformative fascism.

In the 1960s, the University of California, Berkeley, was known for free-speech protests, said Andrew Lipman, a UD senior and the chairman of the Delaware Federation of College Republicans. Now, in Lipman’s view, the university is known for “silencing conservative speech, because it’s considered hateful.”

Gee, that would be because a great deal of conservative speech is hateful, you dumbfuck. It would be so nice if vacuum headed idiots like Lipman would bother to think about why so many people do not have the slightest interest in hearing “conservative speech”. Any minority person could tell him why, but I doubt Lipman and his dudebros much care to listen to minority people. Probably aren’t too keen on listening to women, either. At least not women who aren’t bound up in the conservativeculture.

Trump’s win is a boon for every college student frustrated by progressive campus activists’ concepts that have gone mainstream, such as “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces” and “microaggressions.” Lipman wasn’t a big Trump supporter, but he’s concerned by reports from UD students who say they don’t feel comfortable voicing pro-Trump sentiments in class, in their dorms, and around campus. He’s such an advocate for free speech that he helped bring Breitbart News writer and alt-right celebrity Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Dangerous Faggot” college tour to UD two weeks before the election.

Oh, they don’t feel safe expressing themselves. Why, persons of colour and women and queer folk wouldn’t know a fucking thing about that one, no. So, I guess, Mr. Lipman, what you want, is what Pres-elect Pussy Grabber wants, a safe space. Oops, how did you get yourself into that box?

There’s much more at BuzzFeed, but I’m ending this post now, it’s too early in the morning for me, it’s barely light out. I have always taken great care to avoid falling into the “oh, young people today…” garbage, because it is garbage. It’s really difficult to stay away from that right now, so I’ll go have tea.

Full article at BuzzFeed.

Native What Month 2.

thanksgiving-thankstealing-marty-two-bulls

© Marty Two Bulls.

And it continues. If you don’t know about the latest atrocities, learn. All that because fucking white people want their cake and to eat it, too. Yeah, yeah, I know, lotsa good white people out there. I know. Lots of them on the front lines, I know. And it really is appreciated, know that. It’s just that it’s not helping right now, because even all the white people who signed on, who woke up, who joined the fight, you’re in the minority with us, against all the racist, greedy white people who simply do not give a fuck. They’ll be busy with their holiday, and pretending to be thankful for fuck knows what, perhaps the fact that oppressing minorities just got a whole lot easier. I can see them thanking their idiotic, bloodthirsty god for that one.

Every year, the irony of November being named “National American Indian Heritage Month” kills me a bit more (First instituted in 1990, by Bush). This year more than most, with the criminal atrocities being committed at Standing Rock. There was a demented, malign genius to choosing November, what with most people being occupied with that grand holiday, “thanksgiving”, and preoccupied with Xmas. The majority of Americans don’t have the slightest idea of there even being an NDN heritage month, and if they do, there’s a bit of lip service perhaps, but not much more. As for learning, dive into the Standing Rock Syllabus.

High Cost of Human Rights Corrodes DAPL Financing:

Government scientists have just identified the largest deposit of oil in the United States. Newsflash: It is nowhere near the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). On November 15, the U.S. Geological Survey released the largest estimate of continuous (unconventional) oil that USGS has ever assessed in the United States. The site is the Wolfcamp Shale formation in the Permian Basin of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. USGS estimates the Wolfcamp play at 20 billion barrels.

There are two bits of significance for the fight against DAPL, the Black Snake, rooted in two theories of what the DAPL might be able to move if and when it is finished. The investment banks funding the Black Snake bought into the project based the state of the oil market at the time and expert projections for production over the life of the pipeline.

The oil market has shifted in many ways since the first round of DAPL financing was anticipating rising demand and more expensive supplies.

Hey America, I’m Taking Back Thanksgiving.

Standing Rock: Native What Month?

https://www.facebook.com/john.bravebullbaker/posts/10211164522099066

I don’t have much to say. Too fucking sick at heart. What have we ever done to merit this ongoing treatment from colonial america? In John BraveBull’s account above, he mentions Charlie Plenty Wolf. It was Charlie who welcomed us to the camp our first time there. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. FUCK. It’s just a grand Native American Heritage Month, with all the people who just don’t give a shit, the continued efforts at genocide, and everyone else being all chucklefuck happy over thankstealing and good shopping deals!

Elder in Critical Condition after Going into Cardiac Arrest at Scene of DAPL Barricade Clash.

https://www.facebook.com/josuefoto/videos/1395596380452239/

I was privileged to meet Josué at the Oceti Sakowin camp, he gave me my first press pass.

header

Water Cannons Fired at Water Protectors in Freezing Temperatures Injure Hundreds.

#nodapl, Simon-Moya Smith, Ruth Hopkins.

Yes, the cops are yelling “riot!” and claiming the protectors set fires. That is not true. It was another peaceful prayer circle, and some of the protectors went to move one of the burned out vehicles out of the way, when they were hit with gas grenades, batons, and water cannons.

Mainstream Media MIA as DAPL Action Is Met With Water Cannons and Mace.

“They want to kill people for clearing a road,” questioned Tara Houska, referencing police spraying people with water cannons in 26-degree weather. The national campaigns director of Honor the Earth reminded her friends and followers that November is Native American Heritage Month.

“When will our cries be heard?”

 

George Takei: We Can’t Go Back.

1-aneepxqjrjtc9f3plz1lig

My mother was born in Sacramento, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, and my father grew up in San Francisco. They met and married in Los Angeles, where I was born in 1937, and where we lived happily until December 7, 1941.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, life changed for our family and thousands of other families like us. Suddenly we were presumed to be the enemy. We were questioned, followed, suspected, and accused of being spies or saboteurs simply because of our ancestry. The government that was supposed to protect us against mob rule suddenly had become the mob. It is hard to describe a more gripping, more pervasive sense of terror.

Just a few weeks after my 5th birthday, the military forcibly removed us from our home. Two soldiers with bayonets marched upon our driveway on Garnet Street, pounded on the front door, and demanded we vacate immediately. We took only what we could carry. My younger brother and I both held a suitcase; my mother, tears streaming down her face, held my baby sister with one arm and a duffle bag with another. We lost our home, our car, my father’s book collection.

I will never forget that day.

George Takei’s full article is here, and it’s one everyone should take to heart.

Standing Rock Syllabus: Learn, Teach.

Credit: C. Ford.

Credit: C. Ford.

The New York City Stands with Standing Rock Collective then met again and we talked at length about the syllabus and how to curate emergent sections. We want our readers and future teachers to understand that we take Sioux notions of history seriously but came to impasses with certain materials that we wanted to include, but felt inadequate to interpret. So we direct educators and students to the crucial archives of Lakota Winter Counts. One of the founders of the resistance camps at Standing Rock, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, has devoted her life to the interpretation of these counts and any responsible curriculum will point to them and invite students to think about and with them. Recognizing then, our limitations, we volunteered to work with our strengths and to curate specific sections of the syllabus, to take charge of, so to speak, the content and the form. Matthew Chrisler managed the group and ordered the text with Jaskiran Dhillon, New School Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Anthropology who stepped in at certain points to read over entries. Along with Matthew Chrisler, Sheehan Moore, a doctoral student in anthropology at CUNY, organized all of the PDFs to attach to our website for syllabus readers to view and download. In this way, there were multiple eyes on each section as it took shape. We also asked curators to narrow their selections to book chapters and specific articles to further focus the syllabus and keep it accessible for people who would read and download it in short amounts of time. We wanted people to read the syllabus and teach the material, but also to have access to the readings for themselves and their students and/or community members.

Although a “work in progress,” the current #StandingRockSyllabus places what is happening now in a broader historical, political, economic, and social context going back over 500 years to the first expeditions of Columbus, the founding of the United States on institutionalized slavery, private property, and dispossession, and the rise of global carbon supply and demand. Indigenous peoples around the world have been on the frontlines of conflicts like Standing Rock for centuries. The syllabus foregrounds the work of Indigenous and allied activists and scholars: anthropologists, historians, environmental scientists, and legal scholars, all of whom contribute important insights into the conflicts between Indigenous sovereignty and resource extraction. It can be taught in its entirety, or in sections depending on the pedagogic needs. We hope that it will be used in K-12 school settings, community centers, social justice agencies training organizers, university classrooms, legal defense campaigns, social movement and political education workshops, and in the resistance camps at Standing Rock and other similar standoffs across the globe. As we move forward, we anticipate posting lesson plans on our website that will be derived from individuals and communities using the syllabus in their respective locales.

While our primary goal is to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, we recognize that Standing Rock is one frontline of many around the world. This syllabus can be a tool to access research usually kept behind paywalls, or a resource package for those unfamiliar with Indigenous histories and politics. Please share, add, and discuss using the hashtag #StandingRockSyllabus on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media. Like those on the frontlines, we are here for as long as it takes.

The #StandingRockSyllabus and accompanying PDFs can be found here.

The full story on the syllabus is here.  #StandingRockSyllabus. As Peter D’Errico says:

True to the purpose of digging to the roots of events, “#StandingRockSyllabus places what is happening now in a broader historical, political, economic, and social context going back over 500 years to the first expeditions of Columbus, the founding of the United States on institutionalized slavery, private property, and dispossession, and the rise of global carbon supply and demand. Indigenous peoples around the world have been on the frontlines of conflicts like Standing Rock for centuries.”

Importantly, #StandingRockSyllabus aims for audiences beyond the standard academic world: The authors built it for use “in K-12 school settings, community centers, social justice agencies training organizers, university classrooms, legal defense campaigns, social movement and political education workshops, and in the resistance camps at Standing Rock and other similar standoffs across the globe.”

This is an invaluable opportunity for teachers, please take advantage of it. This is also an invaluable resource and opportunity for those who wish to understand. As this is supposedly Native American Heritage Month (more on that later), spreading this everywhere would be be a great gesture. Lila wopila to all who do. (Many Thanks).

Pence: “Who Cares?”

An Indian man reads news of Trump’s election. CREDIT: AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.

An Indian man reads news of Trump’s election. CREDIT: AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.

Donald Trump may not be taking his $400,000 presidential salary, but his business meeting this week with Indian real estate developers suggests his company will profit far more just because he’s the president. Asked about this unprecedented conflict of interest Sunday morning on Fox News Sunday, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence shrugged it off, quoting Trump, “Who cares?”

Pence insisted that there would be a “legal” separation between the presidency and the Trump business, but host Chris Wallace pressed that it was more than a legal question. There was no response regarding that conflict. “The President-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, is completely focused on the people’s business,” Pence said, “and I promise you and I can assure the public that they’ll have the proper separation from their business enterprise.”

The exact opposite seems to be true. Trump’s meeting with three Indian executives to discuss their partnership with the Trump Organization had nothing to do with the transition. It was not about advancing the American people, but advancing Trump’s profits.

According to interviews some of those execs gave in Indian papers, it had to do with how much more the Trump name is worth now that he’s been elected president. Many of the buildings that bear Trump’s name internationally are not actually owned by his businesses. Generally, his name is licensed by others to inflate their property value. As president, his name is worth more, so Trump stands to make more money from these licensing deals.

[…]

The line between his business and his duties as president is further blurred by the prospect that foreign diplomats might stay at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. They could brag to Trump that they stayed there and fed into his profits in an attempt to literally buy his favor and the ability to influence him.

There have been many promises that there will be a separation between Trump’s presidency and his business holdings, but it’s essentially too late for any such promises to be reassuring. He’s continuing to hold meetings related to his business, and his kids, who were supposedly going to run the business without his involvement, are already participating in meetings related to his administration. Given the people in these business meetings already know he’s about to be president, the conflict of interest is already playing out. Trump is leveraging his election to make his company money across the world, and his administration literally doesn’t care.

Full story at Think Progress.

The Trump Investigative Fund.

Resist.

Resist.

There are journalists who are determined to report facts and make a constant effort to disclose the truth. That’s very important right now. Think Progress has started a fund, and if you are able to drop a few pennies, this is a good place to do so.

[Read more…]

Double Plus Ungood News.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

If you are young, you might not know what “double plus ungood” means. It’s Newspeak, from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It means terrible; very bad. I first read Orwell’s novel when I was in my early teens (I think, it’s all a bit fuzzy these days), and by the time the actual 1984 rolled around, I was 26 years old, and everyone was having fun with jokes about Big Brother and all the rest. Magazine covers all did plays on the novel. People were still optimistic then, and relieved, I think, that Orwell’s novel hadn’t come true. It hadn’t come true in 1984, but it rather looks like we’re heading that way in 2016. Today, I’m 59 years old, and the gift I’d like the most is to have that optimism back.

Friday evening, the Washington Post reported that about 100 foreign diplomats gathered at President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC to “to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.” The tour included a look at the hotel’s $20,000 a night “town house” suite. The Post also quoted some of the diplomats saying they intended to stay at the hotel in order to ingratiate themselves to the incoming president.

[…]

The incoming president, in other words, is actively soliciting business from agents of foreign governments. Many of these agents, in turn, said that they will accept the president-elect’s offer to do business because they want to win favor with the new leader of the United States.

In an exclusive exchange with ThinkProgress, Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who previously served as chief ethics counsel to President George W. Bush, says that Trump’s efforts to do business with these diplomats is at odds with a provision of the Constitution intended to prevent foreign states from effectively buying influence with federal officials.

The Constitution’s “Emoluments Clause,” provides that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under” the United States “shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

The diplomats’ efforts in seek Trump’s favor by staying in his hotel “looks like a gift,” Painter told ThinkProgress in an email, and thus is the very kind of favor the Constitution seeks to prevent.

Emolument. There’s a new one for the vocabulary.

…Assuming that Trump does not divest from his hotel, however, it may prove difficult to enforce the Constitution against him. There are few court cases dealing with the Emoluments Clause. Typically, the country has relied on internal safeguards within the executive branch and fear of political embarrassment to prevent violations by the president. […] There is, however, at least one remedy under the Constitution for such a violation of the public trust by the president: impeachment.

I think we can rule out any fear of political embarrassment on the part of Trump or his appointees. They don’t seem to be capable of such a sense. The possibility of impeachment might get through to one of them, but whether or not it gets through to Trump is a different story, as right now it appears as though he doesn’t understand the slightest thing about politics or government. As I noted in a previous post, It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump does not plan to work as a president, or to treat the presidency as an actual political office. The full story is at Think Progress, well worth reading. Also see: Government watchdogs demand Trump put business holdings in ‘blind trust’.

[Read more…]