Journal of the Plague Years

December 7, 2017

 

Many of us decried the chorus of calls for Al Franken’s resignation that came from Democratic senators yesterday.  Despite the fact that seven women reported that Franken groped or kissed them without their consent, we lamented the potential loss of a well-liked, consistently progressive champion, particularly as we endure the presence of an admitted sexual predator in The White House and watch Alabama poised to elect a serial pederast to the United States Senate.

Our ambivalence is understandable.  We are battle worn from the Right wing’s ceaseless assault on our economic stability, physical safety and fundamental rights and are loath to surrender any soldiers, let alone one as effective and intelligent as Al Franken.  We fear winning the battle and losing the war and we don’t want to forfeit anyone until Trump is held accountable for his far worse behavior.  Such a viewpoint suffers from a myopia that assumes that there are no other Minnesota Democrats who could be as progressive, intelligent and effective as Al Franken.  It tells women [AGAIN], that sexual harassment is the price we have to pay to fight the Right Wing assault on our democracy.  It assumes that women can’t take center stage in that fight.  It has no answer to the question of how a progressive party that countenances serial sexual harassment can call itself progressive.

The reality is that we need moral clarity, not moral relativism.  Our panic over Franken is the consequence of the continued tendency on the left to avidly court the leadership of white men at the expense of women and people of color.  There is an ugly tendency to silence women, by whatever means necessary.  Victims of sexual harassment were supposed to swallow their pain, for the “greater good.”  Although women of color saw the danger posed by Trump more clearly than anyone, we were bullied and attacked on social media, in an effort to silence us.  Progressive men need to understand, we are done being silent.  Our Republican opponents are marked by cupidity, criminality and hatred for every American who isn’t white, Christian, male and straight.  We can’t win by being more like them.

December 5, 2017

 

After last few days we have the clearest picture imaginable of the future that Republicans are working assiduously to create.  From the travel ban, to their tax bill, to the elimination of public land, to the candidates they support, it is evident that, from Trump down to the lowliest Congressional backbencher, they all endorse a predatory plutocracy, where the wealthy are free to increase their wealth by exploiting the poor and middle class, unfettered by any regulation ensuring basic fairness and honesty.  They seek to deport or imprison their way to a homogeneous society that has never previously existed in the history of this country.  They have abandoned any pretext of morality, other than to use their twisted interpretation of Christianity as a cudgel to deprive LGBT people of their rights. Most consequentially, they signal on a daily basis that they do not believe in the Rule of Law, an article of faith that underpins our democracy. Continue reading “People Get Ready”

December 3, 2017

 

News of Michael Flynn’s Friday plea deal has us salivating in anticipation of what new revelations will emerge. Numerous significant disclosures have already rapidly followed. We have learned that, contrary to White House assertions that Flynn acted alone, he was directed by a “very senior member” of the Trump transition team to reach out to the Russian ambassador and undercut President Obama’s imposition of sanctions as a penalty for Russian interference in our elections (Source: “A Onetime Senior Official Will Cooperate,” by Michael D. Shear and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 12/2/17). An e-mail from Flynn’s deputy, K.T. McFarland, stated that sanctions, “could make it harder to ease tensions with Russia, ‘which has just thrown the election to him,’” (Source: “E-Mails Dispute White House Claims That Flynn Acted Independently on Russia,” by Michael Schmidt, Sharon LaFraniere and Scott Shane, The New York Times, 12/2/17).   As more and more of those in the Trump orbit nervously assess their legal jeopardy, we can expect a greater flow of damning revelations confirming our worst fears about the treasonous criminal enterprise currently running our country. Continue reading “For love of country”

November 30, 2017

 

Every day, the flow of corrosive poison from this White House continues unabated. From insulting the heroic Navajo code talkers, to barring Black White House correspondent, April Ryan from the White House Christmas Party for the first time in twenty years, to retweeting vile, Islamophobic garbage so extreme it earned a rebuke from Teresa May, there is no off switch to Trump’s splenetic attacks on every marginalized group of Americans.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress stand by, not uttering a whisper of reproach, as Trump ceaselessly stokes irrational fear and hatred in order to turn Americans against one another.  Of course, we know why.  With the constant drip of damning news coming from Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, Republicans are racing to pass their tax cut before Trump is frog marched out of The White House in handcuffs. Continue reading “Destruction of democracy”

November 28, 2017

While we were understandably disgusted by the vulgar disrespect Trump displayed towards the Navajo code talkers at the White House ceremony yesterday, we should be accustomed by now to the fact that a walking, unbridled, racist id is President of the United States.  Our real focus should be on the drama unfolding at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Monday morning, Bureau staff were met with dueling bosses, each of whom claimed the authority of Acting Director.  Mick Mulvaney, current head of the Office of Management and Budget, assumed a second role at Trump’s behest, showing up with donuts, in an effort to sugarcoat his plan to kneecap the consumer watchdog agency.  Leandra English asserted the authority to serve as Acting Director after her appointment by outgoing founding director, Richard Cordray.  Mulvaney and English each claimed statutory authority for their position.  Mulvaney under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, and English under the Dodd Frank Act, which established the CFPB and contains a specific procedure for handling vacancies.  By the end of the day, English had gone into federal court seeking a temporary restraining order preventing Mulvaney from assuming control.  Continue reading “Grab your wallet”

11/23/17

Unlike that ingrate Benjamin Wittes, I’m feeling very thankful this Thanksgiving.

Suddenly, complacency is replaced with activism.

Prominent conservative attorneys and legal scholars are having a mind-meld with their political opposite numbers about the importance of the Constitution’s basic features: separation of powers, an independent judiciary, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and due process of law.

Card-carrying members of the #resist movement follow and even retweet Bill Kristol with glee.

Some of us have gotten better at distinguishing mountains from molehills, notwithstanding that eerie Maya Angelou quote about believing someone the first time when they show you who they are.

We recite the Constitution to one another and know all about the two flavors of the once-obscure Emoluments Clause.

Although norms about the reach and limits of executive power used to be buried some boring old White House Counsel memo passed down through 40 years of bipartisan administrations, suddenly everyone knows it’s not cool for the White House to be in direct contact with the DOJ about a pending matter.

Even young’uns born after 1973 now know that the Saturday Night Massacre isn’t just the name of a deathcore band.

The people have discovered their Office of Government Ethics and have rallied to save it.

Ditto the independent Congressional Budget Office and its apolitical scoring of pending legislation.

People have learned their Congressmembers’ names, memorized their phone numbers, and figured out where and when to show up at thingies called Town Halls.

They’ve discovered the notice-and-comment period for proposed federal regulations under the Administrative Procedures Act.

After decades of fratricidal fighting, Blacks and Jews have finally reunited against their common enemy.

People have begun to love lawyers!

And millennials!

We’ve begun to study regimes with authoritarian tendencies! in actual foreign countries with real-live foreigners living in them, like #Hungary, #Poland, #Turkey, and #Venezuela! As if they actually mattered, as if we had something to learn from them!

State Attorney Generals are cool.  Hell, State AG’s exist!  50 of ‘em!  One of them even has a nickname from Trump!

The states provide a vertical form of checks and balances under our federalist system.  Who knew?

There’s no such thing as an “off-year” election anymore. People show up in droves.  People realize that odd-year local races for governor, mayor, state and local legislators have more impact on their day-to-day lives than that thing that happens every 4 years and gets hyped by the media for 3 years and 364 days beforehand.

If they live in cities or states with an overwhelming majority of registered voters of one party, and that state’s system requires registration in a party to vote in a primary, they now know they need to vote in a primary to have any impact on who’s actually going to run their state and local government.

People stick up for – and even pay for – real journalism. They can detect both fake news and “fake news.”  They know what to do about trolls, they know what doxing is, and if they’re really good, they can spot the difference between bots and #MAGAbots.

Yes, I am very thankful this year. I hope to be half as thankful again next year!

 

Lesley Rosenthal practices law in NYC and teaches it in Cambridge. Follow her @GoodCounselBook and @LetUSROL.

November 26, 2017

In the recurring nightmare that is current life in these United States, we awaken each day to new proof that our government is in the grip of a corrupt, narcissistic, small minded bigot, whose only consistent goal is to insult, offend and punish people of color. Although Black people are long used to government that is at best, indifferent, and at worst, actively hostile, to our interests, America has not had a president this dedicated to reversing progress for African Americans since Woodrow Wilson screened “Birth of a Nation” at The White House. Continue reading “The fight of our lives”

November 24, 2017

This week, we were disheartened to learn that Congressman John Conyers, who has represented part of the Detroit metropolitan area since 1965, entered into a 2015 confidential settlement of a wrongful termination claim from a female staffer. The staffer asserted that she was fired for rebuffing Conyers’ repeated sexual advances (Source: “She Said a Powerful Congressman Harassed Her. Here’s Why You Didn’t Hear Her Story,” by Paul McLeod, and Lissandra Villa, Buzzfeed News, 11/20/17). Buzzfeed further reported that, in early 2017, a second staffer had withdrawn a complaint that Conyers had engaged in a similar pattern of behavior with her and that the Congressman’s senior staff members retaliated against her for asserting the complaint (Source: “Another Woman Accused Rep. John Conyers of Sexual Harassment in Court Filings This Year,” by Paul McLeod and Lissandra Villa, Buzzfeed News, 11/21/17). These twin revelations were followed up by attorney, Melanie Sloan, going on the record to accuse Conyers of abuse during her tenure on his staff. Sloan alleged that Conyers berated her and criticized her appearance and that when she attempted to raise the issue with Congressional leadership, she was dismissed as “mentally unstable” (Source: “Ethics lawyer says Conyers mistreated her during her years on Capitol Hill,” by Kimberly Kindy, Steve Hendrix and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, The Washington Post, 11/22/17).

Continue reading “This is going to leave a mark”

November 21, 2017

As every day vomits up new evidence of men who are serial harassers, leaving a trail of dashed ambitions in their wake, the poisonous policies of the Trump administration continue apace.  Yesterday Charlie Rose and Glenn Thrush were the latest to be revealed to have exercised droit de seigneur in their personal fiefdoms.  As riveting as these tales of the powerful brought low by their uncontrolled lechery may be, we must not lose sight of the devastating impact of the Trump administration’s continued commitment to white supremacy as government policy.

Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was ending the protection afforded to Haitian refugees under the 1990 Temporary Protected Status Law.  59,000 Haitian refugees, who came to the U.S. after the 2010 earthquake, have been given 18 months to leave the country.  This is despite the fact that Haiti continues to be crippled by extreme poverty (the legacy of revenge exacted by France for having successfully freed itself from colonialism and slavery).  Since their arrival in the United States, these Haitian immigrants have had 30,000 children who are American citizens.  They are part of the diaspora of Haitian refugees who send remittances back to Haiti that account for more than 25% of the country’s income (Source:  “59,000 Haitians Must Leave U.S. As White House Ends Protections,” by Miriam Jordan, The New York Times, 11/21/17). Continue reading “Droit de seigneur”

November 18, 2017    

 

     Our entire society has been buffeted by a blizzard of revelations of men who have sexually harassed and assaulted women with impunity.  We have simultaneously been buried in an avalanche of lies; victims of a President and an entire executive branch unable and unwilling to tell the truth about any issue, large or small.  Trump lies even when recordings, other people or his own words offer easy refutation.  The result is that we live our lives in a state of vertigo, profoundly disoriented by the fact that so many in government lack any moral compass and that so many we revere have been revealed to be incapable of resisting  the temptation to abuse the power we have given them. Continue reading “Vertigo”