David Dayen covers the daily news, usually related to the coronavirus crisis. This post is about political corruption, or the giant swamp surrounding Trump. As usual, open the post to read the links.
Dayen writes:
Straw Postman
Let’s check in on our favorite Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. When we last left our hero, he was implementing policy changes at the post office that were demonstrably slowing down the mail. It was just as clear that this was a political influence operation to seek long-desired privatization goals, which just happened to align with a presidential election dependent on mail-in voting amid the pandemic.
Donald Trump has shut up about the post office now that his plot was discovered, but the House is continuing to investigate. And they were fed a gem about DeJoy’s origins as a postmaster fixer. According to the Washington Post, DeJoy engaged in a straw donor operation. He would force employees to give to Republicans and then reimburse them with bonuses later. This led to his rise in standing within the party as a donor, and his appointment to USPS to degrade its functions. Straw donor schemes are a felony; the former head of the school board in Los Angeles [Ref Rodriguez] had to step down over something similar, and pleaded out to avoid jail time.
The denouement of this saga comes with Trump saying he’d support an investigation into DeJoy’s actions. Loyalty is a one-way street for Trump, so no surprise there. The speed with which DeJoy went from unassuming appointee, to architect of one of the fulcrum points of the election, to persona non grata, however, is bracing.
I love GregB’s favored term for Trump, “the idiot.” From the Greek idios, meaning “one’s own”–being unable to see beyond one’s own nose.
Why does anyone serve such a man? (I am using the term “man” quite loosely here. Child-man in the promised land?)
He should be served, certainly–with warrants for his arrest.
Trump calls himself “the law and order president.” Perhaps this is because of the number of former staffers he has who are under investigation or under indictment or in prison. He has done a lot to keep prosecutors employed. Gotta give him that.
Are you sure that DT sees his real nose or something he imagines his nose to be or not to be?
All that snorting of Adderall can’t have been good for Trump’s trumpet!
But yes,
All things, as they are,
are changed upon the Trump guitar,
become distorted and bizarre.
With words pulled straight from out his rump,
he rates things as they relate to Trump,
speaking on the stump to chumps.
With crazy music, noise that cloys,
he spins out a con man’s innumerable ploys.
Some become men, and others stay boys.
There’s a moral here: if you serve Jabba the Trump, it is quite likely that at some point he will turn and eat you.
I think someone wrote a book with the title, “Everything that Trump Touches Dies.” Anyone who served in his maladministration lost their reputation.
Yes. Look what happened to Ghouliani! The 9/11 hero mayor has become a laughing stock.
Rudolph, Don’s Brown-Nosed Reign Dear
by Bob Shepherd
(to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”)
Rudolph the Ghouliani
had a very brown, brown nose,
squandered his former goodwill,
stroking Trump on TV shows.
All of the other Trumpties
used to laugh and call him names.
Even those abject toadies
thought him crooked and insane.
Then one Foggy Bottom eve,
Trumpty called to say,
“Rude one with your nose so brown,
won’t you take Joe Biden down?”
What happened then’s sheer folly:
thanks to lows the two men reached,
history will most remember that
Trumpty Dumpty was impeached.
DeJoy is going nowhere. He’ll be questioned, embarrassed, roasted, and cornered, but in the end, he will get a slap on the wrist at most if he does not lose his job. And if he loses his job, there will be no jail time and continuation of his private enterprises, speaking fees, a book, a commentator spot on Foxx, and a lobbying firm dying to hire him. No, he is not going anywhere. He’s too much of a commodity to jail.
Yes, perhaps it wasn’t self deprecating when he said “anyone who would say that is an animal”
Yes, Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist write it, & it came out in 2018. Although Wilson had no way of knowing this, that title is
certainly true for all Americans who have died/will die from covid-19.
Democrats need to keep on digging, not only on DeJoy, but also Trump who was allegedly engaged in money laundering with Russian mobsters. Maybe the Democrats should keep an protective eye on Michael Cohen. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2020/08/20/trumps-business-partners-allegedly-involved-in-human-trafficking-mafia-matters-probable-money-laundering/#42778e9a610d
The level of greed is horrifying. DeJoy was already a government contractor. He’s been buying politicians to get government contracts for 15 years. He was already wealthy off public funds. But that wasn’t enough. He had to take a government position and steer ALL the business his own way.
The DeJoys also purchased their son a slot at an expensive college in America’s “meritocratic” higher ed system, so that child is already ethically compromised. The whole thing is a scam which the kid must KNOW- unless he’s a fool he doesn’t think he got that slot through hard work and merit. His parents bought it for him. The whole next generation will be even more corrupt than the parents. They start training them in corruption and cheating at 18.
It is clear that DeJoy lied to Congress, and he also illegally paid or forced employees to front donations for the Trump campaign. These are felonies. Lock him up!
Once Biden wins and the Whiter House is made less white and the place is fumigated, prosecutors are going to be very, very busy just cleaning up after the slime trail Jabba the Trump has left.
Imagine being Donald Trump and having had the opportunity, the breathtaking honor, of being elected President of the United States and then having so utterly, so completely, squandered it, trashed it–having ensured that forever after, he will be remembered as a liar, a traitor, a con man, a divisive, bungling, racist, sexist, ignorant fool. Trump often says that he is “the greatest.” In this, yes. Surely, he is the greatest failure in history.
The young man who sings this is freaking awesome. A wonderful, wonderful performance!
Great voice, but he didn’ say nuttin bout a possum. What kinda singin iszat?
While all the postal crap is going on, the path the census is taking will, according to Native American activists, undercount the reservations, robbing them of a billion dollars over the next decade. Health care, already woeful in places like Browning, MT, will just have to get by on less. The Trumpists shall sound.
The Trump administration wants to under count everyone, particularly in communities of color. Trump had ordered the enumerators to wrap up the census early in order to deliberately under count some communities, but this move has been overturned in court. The census is important for planning services. It also is used to help draw up congressional districts.
Taxpayers are supposed to pay for the defense of Trump’s raping a woman? What garbage!! Remember Obama got slammed for wearing a tan suit. How LOW this country has come. There is NO decency in the WH.
……………………………………………….
Justice Dept. Intervenes to Help Trump in E. Jean Carroll Rape Lawsuit
Sept. 8, 2020, 7:11 p.m. ET
Government lawyers made the unusual move of seeking to take over President Trump’s defense in a defamation suit brought by Ms. Carroll, who has claimed Mr. Trump raped her in the 1990s.
In a highly unusual legal maneuver, the Department of Justice moved on Tuesday to replace President Trump’s private lawyers and defend him against a defamation lawsuit brought in state court by the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
Lawyers for the Justice Department said in court papers that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he denied ever knowing Ms. Carroll.
Citing a law called the Federal Tort Claims Act, the lawyers asserted the right to take the case from Mr. Trump’s private lawyers and move the matter from state court to federal court. The tort claims act gives employees of the federal government immunity from lawsuits, though legal experts say that it has rarely, if ever, been used to protect a president.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyer said in a statement issued Tuesday evening that the move by the Justice Department to intervene in the case was a “shocking” attempt to bring the power of the United States government to bear on a private legal matter.
“Trump’s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent,” the lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, said in the statement, “and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out.”
The Justice Department’s motion came only a month after a state judge in New York issued a ruling that potentially opened the door to Mr. Trump being deposed in the case before the election.
I’m surprised Fed Ex and Amazon aren’t recruiting this guy. Get rid of the automated sorting machines, brilliant idea.
Louis DeJoy, airline CEO. Let’s get rid of the jetways and baggage carts. Short of putting his own shoe in a piece of machinery, this guy literally sabotaged what he was supposed to be running.
Trump is a Russian agent even if he’s too arrogant to realize it. His modus operandi was always to put people in charge of agencies that wanted to dismantle them for their own profit.