The Swamp Effect

Chief of staff John Kelly (left) grimaces and looks away
as Trump makes baseless accusations against Germany 

Ah, remember the lofty aspirations of "Drain the swamp" ?

As you know, Donald Trump repeated those words like some kind of mantra or magical right-wing incantation during his campaign.

But the term was actually one of a number of simple catchphrases (including "Build the wall") coined by the technology firm Cambridge Analytica prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

They weren't intended to be accurate or complicated, nor did they have to be - kind of like Trump's buffoonish, uninformed tirade Wednesday morning at a breakfast in front of America's NATO allies.

As Rebecca Tan observed in a Washington Post article, Trump opened the breakfast meeting by loudly making the baseless accusation that Germany is "captive to Russia because it's getting so much of it's energy from Russia." - causing White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to grimace in frustration and look away from the table (pictured above) as NATO reps stared at His Orangeness with a mixture of disbelief and disgust.

Trump relies on sewing chaos and "blowing things up" in situations where he's the most uninformed politician in the room (which he always is) in an effort to shift attention from his weaknesses.

So constantly falling back on his signature Cambridge Analytica-created catchphrases like "We have to build the wall" are easy things for him to remember, and quick ways to cultivate the anger of his voter base - who connect emotionally to Trump's keywords for bigotry, xenophobia and authoritarian tough-guy talk.

If Trump seems oblivious to the effect that his words have on those around him, it's because he is - his catchphrases are like handy flashcards he can use to connect with his base anywhere, and coveting their approval is about all he does now.

Again, those words sound deceptively simplistic, but they're actually the result of complex computer algorithms that sift through mountains of data to determine keywords that conservative voters are most likely to react and connect to.

Right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer and his equally
fringe-conservative activist daughter Rebekah

Words designed as easy-to-digest verbal / mental red-meat slogans for the white, working class, (mostly) non-college-educated, conservative-leaning voter base that Cambridge Analytica was helping the Trump team to target in the 2016 presidential race.

Cambridge Analytica faced widespread criticism for illegally hoovering up the personal profile data of an estimated 86 million Facebook users in an effort to rally support for Trump.

That kind of flagrant rat-fucking, a term for underhanded political trickery used to win elections made famous by former Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their account of their exposure of the Watergate scandal, "All the President's Men", doesn't come cheap.

Fortunately for the notoriously-cheap Trump, it was funded by right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer.

Mercer and his daughter Rebekah (pictured above), are cut from the same cloth as Charles and David Koch or Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos - billionaires obsessed with spending millions of dollars of their own money to erode responsible government in order to try and replace it with a fringe, right-wing cultural-political ideology that functions as a mask for their true mission.

Which is paying no taxes on their billions and having a small cadre of like-minded wealthy conservative elite run the country's courts and political system so they can enrich themselves.

Check out Chris Daly's March 26th blog post, "Congress Is Questioning the Wrong Guy"
 if you want to get a more detailed understanding of the Mercer's murky role in funding not only Cambridge Analytica, but also Trump campaign strategist / white supremacist Steve Bannon and fake-news / misinformation factory Brietbart News.

It's an excellent tutorial on the kind of right-wing nut-baggery that helped get Trump elected president by (in part) appearing at rallies repeating words like "Drain the swamp" over and over and over.

San Bernardino County prosecutor Michael Selyem
and Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters 

By now, that grandiose and non-specific campaign promise seems borne of a distant past far removed from the actions, behavior and rhetoric of the Trump administration.

In recent weeks there's been a disturbing
spike in incidents of white people calling the police on African-Americans for doing stuff like using a pool, barbecuing or mowing a lawn etc.

But over the past few days there've been some troubling examples of members of law enforcement getting their Trump on.

Last week a San Bernardino County (California) prosecutor named Michael Selyem was disciplined and placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation of racist, sexist comments that he posted publicly on social media about the outspoken Democratic California Congresswoman Maxine Waters.

Lately a number of conservatives in the U.S. have gotten their panties in a twist after Waters publicly called on people to peacefully and non-violently confront members of the Trump administration on their roles in the heinous policy of incarcerating asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants - and worse, separating them from their children.

In response to one conservative post criticizing Waters for encouraging Americans to exercise their right to free speech and public assembly protected by the First Amendment, Michal Selyem wrote:

"Being a loud-mouthed cunt in the ghetto, you would think someone would have shot this bitch by now..."

(Being a county prosecutor who graduated from law school, you would think Selyem had the presence of mind to realize that venting his bigotry on social media publicly might not be the best career move.)

Now obviously Selyem has a right to free speech.

On-duty Officer Patrick Connor looks
away as Mia Irizarry pleads for help

But he's a county prosecutor whose views on race could cloud his ability to prosecute people of color based on the law.

Or put into serious jeopardy other cases that he's prosecuted in the past on the grounds that his views demonstrate the kind of racial bias that could get a case overturned in court.

People who work in the court system or law enforcement are clearly entitled to their own political views - but not when it clouds their ability to serve as public servants on behalf of all people; regardless of race or ethnicity.

Earlier today, the Forest Preserves of Cook County (Chicago) announced that Officer Patrick Connor resigned in the wake of national outrage over a video showing him ignoring a Hispanic woman's pleas for help as an enraged white man verbally harassed and followed her because she was wearing a t-shirt with a Puerto Rican flag on it.


As CBS News reported, Mia Irizarry was waiting for family members at a picnic area in a park that she had rented for her birthday when she was accosted by an intoxicated 62-year-old white man named Timothy Trybus who was apparently upset that she had a Puerto Rican flag on her shirt.

Not only did he question her status as a U.S. citizen (as if a drunk guy in a park has the right to do so), he told her she didn't have a right to be wearing the shirt in the United States.

Irizarry remained calm and filmed the incident on her cell phone.

"Why is she wearing that shit?" he asks aloud at one point, evidently unaware that Puerto Rico has been a U.S. territory since 1952...

When Trybus begins to approach her and get more combative, Irizarry calls out to Officer Connor who is standing nearby with his uniform on - clearly on duty.

He simply looks away and begins to casually wander off - clearly sending the signal that he condones Trybus' behavior and words - but what if Trybus had punched or assaulted Irizarry, or worse?

When you have a county prosecutor publicly writing racist, misogynist things about a female member of Congress, or an on-duty police officer ignoring a woman's plea for help, the swamp isn't drained.

It's getting deeper, and the toxic catchphrases constantly repeated by Donald Trump have clearly affected the ability of some individuals in this country to draw a line between their personal views and their humanity.

Like the shocked representatives of NATO member nations Wednesday morning, many Americans recognize that the swamp is in full effect in some parts of this country - let's just hope those folks are registered to vote in November.

So we can really start the process of draining that swamp.

Oklahoma & Kentucky: Teaching Democracy

Tulsa, Oklahoma elementary school teacher Janie
Mitchell at an April 2nd rally at the state capital 

On the 50th anniversary of his assassination, it's difficult to know exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. might think about the current state of America.

Particularly given the polarized nature of our politics, a two-tier justice system rife with racial and economic bias and the growing socioeconomic inequality between American citizens exacerbated by legislative policies passed by Republican-majority state legislatures and the GOP-majority House and Senate. 


But if Dr. King were still alive today (he'd have turned 88 in January), it's fair to speculate that he'd be among those fighting for the causes that he believed in and fought so hard to achieve in the 1950's and 60's - including the right to a good education and fair pay.

The essence of Dr. King's spirit, including his embrace of Mahatma Ghandi's belief in the power of peaceful non-violent resistance and civil disobedience, and the courage to speak truth to power, can  arguably be seen amongst the striking public school teachers across the nation.

Inspired by West Virginia teachers, whose nine-day walkout in early March captured global attention and forced state lawmakers to grant them a 5% pay increase, thousands of Oklahoma public school teachers, administrators and other supporters descended upon the state capital in Oklahoma City on Monday morning.

They rallied in front of the state capitol building, then broke into groups to confront state lawmakers in hallways and offices to demand significant increases to Oklahoma's education funding. 

Since the Oklahoma state legislature slashed public school spending by more than $200 million in the wake of the Great Recession in 2008, the number of students in Oklahoma public schools has increased by more than 40,000 - placing huge demands on public school administrators and teachers and forcing some schools to eliminate funding for programs like art, music and athletics.

Thousands of Kentucky public school teachers
packed the state capital in Frankfurt on Monday

As the sign (pictured above) held by Tulsa elementary school teacher Janie Mitchell demonstrates, Oklahoma public school teachers are fed up with being ranked 49th out of 50 states in terms of salary.

And at the same time, the draconian education cuts have led to some 1,500 teachers being removed from the ranks of Oklahoma public schools.

Those cost are impacting the lives and futures of both students and teachers.

Some public schools in Oklahoma have four day school weeks due to a lack of teachers and money - a situation that plays out in Kentucky as well where thousands of teachers closed schools to fill the halls of the state capitol building on Monday morning to protest under-funded public schools and a sneaky legislative maneuver by state lawmakers to pass cuts in teacher pension benefits on the sly.

Part of what would rankle Dr. King is that the reality is that there's money in the Oklahoma state budget to fully and properly fund public schools and pay teachers a competitive salary.

But as in other states controlled by Republican state legislatures (like Kansas), lawmakers have used anti-union rhetoric and irrational ALEC-driven vilification of public schools to justify shifting money from education in order to fund (drum roll please...) tax breaks for corporations and the 1%.

For example, consider the $300 million tax break for new oil and natural gas drilling Republican Oklahoma legislators and Republican Governor Mary Fallin tucked into the fiscal 2018 state budget.

Republican Oklahoma Gov. Mary Falin

Oklahoma is one of the biggest producers of oil and natural gas in the nation, and U.S. petroleum companies already benefit from a host of federal subsidies for oil and natural gas exploration and drilling.

Yet Oklahoma Republican lawmakers authorized moving $300 million in taxpayer funds to oil and gas companies as many public school classrooms go without sufficient teachers, books and other basic school supplies - it literally borders on criminal.

Conservative Republican Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who many already considered something of a ideologically right-wing nitwit, epitomized the simplistic, condescending, uninformed Republican contempt for public education on Tuesday when she told CBS News that:

"Teachers want more, but it's kind of like having a teenage kid that wants a better car."  

Now when you read a dismissive, idiotic, Trump-like statement like that, just remember that the public school teachers Fallin is talking about have gone without pay raises for a decade, rank 49th out of all 50 states in salary, and are teaching more students with less funding in an era when education is as critical for global competitiveness as it's ever been.

Who sounds more like the teenage kid?

Fallin and other state legislators moved to sign an education funding and teacher salary increase, but it's way below what teachers are looking for - and her Betsy DeVos-ish "teenage kid" statement only gives teachers more fuel to keep pressuring Republican lawmakers to cough up the money.

Dr. King with other leaders of the 1963 March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 

Unfortunately for Fallin, she's too politically one-dimensional to realize that her statement only validates the striking teacher's demands, and paints Republicans as even more tone deaf than most Americans already think they are.

And it only increases the chances of a Democratic Blue Wave this fall when these thousands of voters head for the polls in November for the mid-term elections.

These grassroots protests are demonstrating growing widespread support for public education.

Teachers, administrators, parents and educational professionals are building political momentum across the country - including way out in Arizona where teachers, fired up by the strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, are moving closer to a strike in one of the most reliably politically Red States in the nation - one with an open Senate seat in the fall too.

This despite years of Republican legislators working to curb collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public sector employees, and trying to shift public education funding to private and charter schools with the help of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

But thousands of teachers across the country (and thousands of students protesting gun violence) are showing that real voices matter - and that there is real power in numbers.

This is what Democracy looks like, and Dr. King would be proud to see civil disobedience and organized protest making a difference and moving the needle in the 21st century.

7 Minutes and a Photo Op: Were HBCU Leaders Misled?

HBCU leaders stand with Trump as Kellyanne Conway
looks up etiquette on her cell phone
 

Like many people who don't consider themselves fans of the Trump administration, I must confess that I had mixed feelings about the decision by the leaders of America's Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU's) to visit the White House on Monday.

My initial reaction was shaped by the divisive nature of 45's toxic campaign rhetoric and the numerous culturally insensitive comments he's made in person and online.

And his overt pandering to racists.

After all, Trump is the same guy who famously spent well over a year aggressively promoting the bogus (and overtly racist) disproved right-wing nut-job conspiracy propaganda that President Obama was not born in the United States.

Remember back in September 2012 when Trump made a complete ass of himself with his videotaped recording of his offer to donate $5 million to charity if Obama proved he was born in Hawaii like some kind of cheap carny huckster?

So when I heard the news earlier this week that the HBCU leaders had accepted an invitation to attend a special sit-down "listening session" with the controversial new secretary of education Betsy DeVos, I was pretty skeptical.

The resident White House bungler adviser Kellyanne Conway fulfilled my low expectations for this meet-and-greet when she was photographed in the Oval Office casually seated on the couch with her legs exposed and her feet curled up under her tapping away on her cell phone as a roomful of formerly-dressed African-American college presidents and leaders posed with Trump while he signed yet another executive order.  

Given the formal setting in the Oval Office, the fact that the meeting took place during Black History Month, the larger historical context of HBCU leaders collectively paying a visit to the White House and the Trump administration's historically low approval ratings with African-Americans, Conway's puzzling decision to sit on the couch like she was at home in her living room was a remarkable display of lack of basic manners and etiquette.

Howard president Wayne Frederick (right) poses with
with Betsy DeVos at a Feb 22nd meeting at Howard

The optics of the widely-circulated image only served to reinforce the reputation of the Trump administration as being totally out of touch with, and contemptuous of, African-Americans.

Oh and that listening session with education secretary Betsy DeVos that was supposedly the entire focus of the White House visit?

It never actually happened.

Which really isn't all that surprising.


As an article posted on the NPR Website this morning reported, the actual listening session was interrupted when a White House staff member entered the room and invited the gathered HBCU leaders to step into the Oval Office for an unscheduled meeting with Trump.

NPR quoted a Medium article in which the president of Dillard University Walter Kimbrough said:

"There was very little listening to HBCU presidents today - we were only given about two minutes each, and that was cut short to one minute, so only seven of maybe fifteen or so speakers were given an opportunity today."

A minute each? Was that the Oscars?

Clearly fifteen people could not speak for thirty minutes each, but come on man, one minute is barely enough time for someone to introduce themselves.

Now obviously I cannot speak for everyone, but my sense is that the average reasonable person would agree that a White House event billed as a "listening session" with fifteen or so college and university leaders and the secretary of education should last a lot longer than ten or fifteen minutes.

U.S. Marshals escort James Meredith, the first
black student at Ole Miss, to classes in 1962
 

Particularly given the historical context of systematic discrimination in access to education in the U.S.

To top that off, DeVos, a billionaire who has spent decades and millions of dollars promoting charter schools and private religious schools in an effort to undermine American public schools, made yet another embarrassing cultural faux pas when she used her remarks after the meeting to promote her personal school choice agenda.



DeVos, who also took flak back on February 12th when the Dept. of Education misspelled the name of the famed African-American author and sociologist W.E.B Du Bois in a Twitter message then sent out an apology with another spelling error, demonstrated an alarming lack of knowledge of history by suggesting that HBCU's were an example of the success of school choice when she said:

"HBCU's are real pioneers of school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater equality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish."

Actually Betsy, the 107 HBCU's that still exist today are not "pioneers of school choice."

They are an important historical legacy of the institutionalized racism that systematically blocked African-Americans from attending many colleges and universities in the 18th and 19th centuries.

They were first formed back in 1837 starting with Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, but most were formed starting after the Civil War ended in 1865.

HBCU's were formed 27 years after Congress passed the Morrill Act of 1862 (which mandated federal funds to create land grant colleges for each state) in response to the Agricultural College Act of 1890 which, according to Wikipedia, required "states to establish a separate land grant college for blacks if blacks were being excluded from the existing land grant colleges." 

Which, in most parts of America, they were.

Graffiti on a Howard University sidewalk

Until HBCU's were formed, black students were completely excluded from attending colleges in the southern U.S.

My father graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in the 1950's, the first HBCU to open in the south in 1865 - it was founded by an Amherst graduate who fought for the Union during the Civil War named Henry Martin Tupper.

My father's experiences as a student at Shaw were absolutely central to his development as a man and later success as a professional.

So my guess is that he would have supported the decision by the HBCU leaders to visit the White House.

But reaction from other HBCU alumni and current students has been mixed.

This morning the New York Times reported about some of the backlash from HBCU students and alumni - including graffiti scrawled on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C. criticizing president Wayne Frederick as the "overseer" of "the Trump plantation."

Students from various HBCU's have expressed criticism on social media of their respective leaders meeting with a president who has surrounded himself with advisers like Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller.

Men who now shape White House domestic policy and have also openly espoused racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant beliefs and who are also personally linked with known white supremacists.      

But not all HBCU students and alumni were critical of the HBCU leader's White House visit.

Morgan State University in Baltimore

This morning I spoke with a woman who graduated from Morgan State University in Baltimore, which was founded by Methodists in 1867.

She has her masters in education and worked as a public school administrator for years, and her view was that it was important for the HBCU leaders to attend that meeting, regardless of what happened or the reactions on social media.

Or the media's coverage of it.


This HBCU alumnus was adamant that federal funding for HBCU's is absolutely critical, and that given the challenges that HBCU's face in raising money, those leaders had a responsibility to take advantage of any opportunity to convey the importance of those institutions directly to the secretary of education or the president - whoever that might be.

She also shrewdly noted that HBCU's need to be directly involved with the upcoming midterm Congressional elections - as the battle for federal funding for higher education is really fought in the trenches of Congressional appropriations.

So I find my initial skepticism of the visit tempered somewhat by the bigger picture.

When viewed in the historical and political context, my sense is that it took courage for the leaders of those schools to collectively show up to the White House to represent the interests of HBCU's and their students, faculty, employees and alumni.

They know who Trump is, and they knew they would catch heat for going to the White House, but they were able to put aside their personal political views or opinions, be professionals first and show up.

And in my view that took courage.

So we'll soon see if Congress backs up Trump's show of support for HBCU's with funding for Pell Grants for lower income students and other federal support.

Even if that listening session with the secretary of education was intentionally cut short to get a photo op of those HBCU leaders in the Oval Office with the president, to be fair to Trump, there isn't a president I know of who wouldn't make sure to get that photo op.

So after thinking about it, my sense is that it was important for those HBCU leaders to be photographed in that room - especially with this particular president.

In this case I think the optics were important for both sides.

It's just a shame that Kellyanne Conway couldn't muster the decency and respect to stand up for what those leaders represent.

From Romans to Republicans - Has the GOP Downfall Begun?

English politician Sir John Dalberg-Acton

In a now-famous letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, the English historian, writer and moralist Lord Acton famously observed:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

He was essentially paraphrasing an idea previously expressed by other thinkers and writers for centuries, reflecting on the Roman Empire, the Papacy and countless monarchies.


But his oft-quoted observation, written 130 years ago, could well have been a prescient warning about the state of the Republican Party in 21st century America.

In the wake of the November 8th elections, a number of elated Republicans, from spine-challenged House Speaker Paul Ryan to average conservative Joe's calling into NPR to share their thoughts on the shocking presidential election results, publicly expressed concerns that the GOP, with both houses of Congress, the presidency and a majority of state legislatures in their hands, would end up going too far.

But as we've seen time and again, the collective memory of the Republican establishment is shockingly short when it comes to learning from their past political mistakes.

Ever since 45's shaky first day in office a little over two weeks ago, the new leaders of the executive branch and their reluctant Republican allies in Congress seem almost obsessed with dismantling America's imperfect Democracy and reshaping it to reflect some kind of twisted conservative-Utopian worldview.

By doing so, they are ironically sewing the seeds of an unprecedented nationwide backlash movement that poses a direct threat to their Congressional majority with all 435 seats in the House and 33 seats in the Senate up for reelection in 2018.  

Protestors outside Rep. Chaffetz's town hall in Utah

If this past week is any indicator, the Republican establishment seems almost catastrophically tone deaf to the values and priorities of the vast majority of the American people.

Take Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz's town hall on Thursday evening for example.

Like other Republican members of the House, Chaffetz was home taking the post-election political temperature directly from his constituents.

It was not a warm reception, and Chaffetz is probably itching to scurry back to the safety of the isolated political bubble in Washington where he and other Republicans are content to dwell in a distorted ideological reality.

The House Oversight Committee Chairman, whose continuing obsession with Hillary Clinton's emails borders on partisan political lunacy, was greeted with a chorus of boos and jeers in Brighton High School in a Salt Lake City suburb as he faced an onslaught of questions from angry members of his Congressional district.  

It was pretty brutal.

A young girl asked him if he believed in science.

In response to expressions of outrage over Republican efforts to allow the extraction of fossil fuels from the nation's National Parks, Chaffetz actually told the crowd that solar energy can harm animals and wildlife.

Between the boos and chants of "Do your job!", others demanded to know why the House Oversight Committee he chairs isn't investigating 45's ties to Russia and the role Putin played in manipulating the November 8th election results - or why the American people haven't yet seen the beleaguered POTUS's tax returns.

A woman questions Tennesse Rep Diane Black at a
packed town hall on Thursday

And this wasn't an isolated incident either, other Republican House members in traditionally conservative-leaning "red" states faced similar questions from their constituents.

Take a couple minutes to watch a woman from Tennessee ask Republican Congresswoman Diane Black about Republican efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.




Things didn't fare much better for the Republican-majority Senate this week either.

Republican Senators had the gall to dredge up the obscure Senate 'Rule 19' to block Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren from reading a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

As Politifact.com reported, Rule 19 was added by the Senate on February 28, 1902 after the junior senator from South Carolina John McLaurin rushed into the Senate chamber, denounced the senior South Carolina senator Ben Tillman as being guilty of a "willful, malicious, and deliberate lie" before getting punched in the jaw by Tillman.

If Republican senators thought that invoking a rule historians suggest has only been invoked twice since 1902 would somehow shield the American public from hearing the truth about newly-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions' legacy of opposing voting rights for African-Americans in the south and civil rights, they were way off base.

The recording of Warren reading King's nine-page letter (originally sent to former Republican North Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, a notorious opponent of civil rights) went viral and was listened to millions of times by people around the globe.

Senator Ted Cruz reads 'Green Eggs & Ham'
on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2013

As TheHill.com reported, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders took the floor on Wednesday and angrily announced, "The idea that a letter and a statement by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr...could not be presented and spoken about here on the floor of the Senate, is to me, incomprehensible." 

He then defiantly read the letter in it's entirety as Democratic Senators Tom Udall and Sherrod Brown had done earlier that day.

The episode didn't just reinforce the perception of the Republican Party as contemptuous of women.

This is the same party that cheered as a self-righteous hypocrite like Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz spent 21 straight hours on the floor of the Senate in opposition of enacting healthcare reform (during which he also read from Dr. Seuss' 'Green Eggs and Ham' and talked about poker) but silenced Senator Warren while she was reading a letter that was sent to the Senate in 1986 by the deceased wife of a civil rights icon.

During Black History Month no less.

With each day, it seems as if the Republican party puts itself further and further out of touch with mainstream American citizens and the values they uphold.

Just days into this new Republican-dominated government, Congress has already moved quickly to eradicate legislation that protects consumers from banks being allowed to charge predatory overdraft fees, permit mining companies to dump toxic coal sludge into rivers and streams, and further curb the right to vote for people of color, the poor, students and legal immigrants.

Protesters block Betsy DeVoss from entering a
Washington, D.C. school on Friday morning

To say nothing of approving a known bigot and opponent of civil rights like Jeff Sessions as the attorney general.

Or  billionaire Betsy DeVos, (who donated money to every Senator who approved her) with no experience working in education, as Secretary of Education.

These kinds of actions have sparked a nationwide grassroots protest movement.

One that began with millions of people around the globe coming out to protest 45 the day after his inauguration, and has since grown exponentially.

Both online and in person.

As CommonDreams.com reported earlier today, protestors chanting "Shame! Shame!" briefly blocked Betsy DeVos from entering Jefferson Academy in Washington, D.C, this morning as protestors hounded her for buying her way into 45's cabinet and chided her for having no experience as an educator.

The other night protesters stood outside the home of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell protesting his invoking the aforementioned rarely used Senate 'Rule 19' to block Elizabeth Warren from reading Coretta Scott King's letter on the floor of the Senate.

For example, the March for Science scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C. on April 22nd (Earth Day) is already sparking regional marches in cities and communities all over the world in what looks to be a truly global backlash to Republicans who dismiss scientific research on issues like climate change, fuel efficiency standards and the effects of pollution, toxic waste and pesticides on the environment.

These aren't flash-in-the-pan protests as some conservatives have dismissively suggested.

They are parts of a much larger and sustained organized campaign built on a broad coalition that opposes 45 and the current manifestation of the Republican party.

As the nation reacts to the news that 45's national security adviser Michael Flynn had private conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at least a month before the compulsive authoritarian liar 45 took office - violations of ethics and the law which both Flynn and VP Mike Pence have lied about in front of the press - the protest movement grows.

A movement that could culminate with the 2018 Congressional elections when 468 members of Congress and the Senate will be forced to face the reality of exactly what American voters think about them and the job they've done.

Remarkably, and perhaps predictably, Republican politician's stubborn inability to reach across the aisle, listen to the overwhelming majority of voters who did not vote for 45, or govern outside of a narrow-minded extremist ideology could very well mark the beginning of the downfall of the GOP.

After all, we're not even a month into 45's administration, and as Lord Acton observed, absolute power has already corrupted absolutely.  

DeVos & Mnuchin: A Peek Inside the (Republican) Cabinet

Trump's exclusive Bild interview [Photo - Getty Images]

With the uninformed and divisive rhetoric of the soon-to-be inaugurated PEOTUS now inspiring ripples of uncertainty and fear across the European continent in the wake of his Sunday interview published in the Times of London and Germany's Bild in which he described the 67 year-old NATO alliance of 28 countries as "obsolete", the world is finally grasping the sense of unease felt by millions of Americans.

Welcome to our world Europe.


Much of the political amd media establishment's attention was justifiably focused on the contentious confirmation hearings of Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos, a politically conservative billionaire with no actual education experience who has given large political donations to five of the same Republican Senators sitting on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee tasked with approving her nomination. (Drain that swamp!)

That's a pretty scary thought for advocates of public education as well as the bedrock Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state.

According to an extensively researched and well written article posted today on Mother Jones.com by Kristina Rizga, in a 2001 interview, when asked if Christian schools should continue to rely on the kinds of philanthropic donations ($50 million between 1999 - 2104) she and her husband give to Christian schools and organizations, DeVos famously said:

"Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's kingdom."

As Forbes reported earlier this evening, during questioning Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders reminded DeVos that millions of Americans are troubled by the idea of a small handful of conservative billionaires forming an oligarchy that ostensibly controls the country.

He then asked DeVos how much her family has contributed to the Republican party.

She said it's "possible" her family has donated $200 million to various Republican politicians.

"Advance God's kingdom" indeed...

For those who may shudder at the idea of a crusading charter school advocate and Republican rainmaker whose father-in-law (Amway founder Richard DeVos) is worth over $5 billion being given the keys to the Department of Education, today the federal government only contributes about 10% of the funds for American public schools.

So the reality is that there is really only so much damage that she can actually do if she is nominated to the post.

More worrisome was her testimony that she wants to see more control over schools established at the local level.


I'm not an expert on education by any means, but I do believe strongly in the need for federal standards and guidelines for schools, curriculums, teachers, administrators and students.

Should administrators, teachers and parents have influence on the local level?

Absolutely, but when DeVos uses language like shifting control of schools to the local level, it reflects the growing disparity and segregation (both socio-economic and racial) in American schools that stems largely from the steady decline of federal funding for public schools that has taken place since the 1960's.

Back in June I touched on this subject in a blog post after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie advocated for a "Fairness Formula" that would cap per-pupil spending in New Jersey public schools regardless of the school district.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie

Like DeVos, Christie was in essence arguing for the kind of public school funding that we have here in NJ - for the most part wealthier school districts with higher tax bases are able to fund higher quality public school education than urban areas coping with trickier fiscal challenges, less concentration of higher paying jobs, less tax revenue and the steady drain of human capital to the suburbs.



I don't think DeVos is a bad person or anything.

I just don't think it's a good idea to put someone in charge of the Department of Education who never attended public schools, didn't educate her kids in public schools, has money invested in for-profit education and has no degree in education - or ever worked in education in a professional capacity.

Did I mention that she thinks that teachers are overpaid?

Yes, she whose family has given $200 million to the Republican party.

Speaking of controversial cabinet picks by the embattled PEOTUS, the nominee for Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin has certainly raised eyebrows.

Remember during the presidential campaign when Trump berated both Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton for their ties to Goldman-Sachs?

Steven Mnuchin

In addition to Mnuchin, Trump now has no less than four key advisors and cabinet picks who are former Goldman-Sachs employees; including his pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, Manhattan attorney Jay Clayton.

As has been widely reported, it's not just the fact that the 53-year-old Mnuchin is a former partner at Goldman-Sachs.

His fitness to be placed in charge of the U.S. Treasury has been called into question over his role as part of the management team that purchased the notoriously troubled lender IndyMac during the housing crisis in 2009.

As Kim Masters reported in an excellent article on Mnuchin's rise from Goldman-Sachs to film financier in a recent issue of the Hollywood Reporter, Mnuchin and his investors paid $1.5 billion for IndyMac, renamed it OneWest, then pocketed a tidy $1.9 billion profit after selling it to the CIT Group in 2014 for $3.4 billion.

As Max Kutner reported in an article for Newsweek back in December, some critics and former homeowners charge that Mnuchin ran OneWest when it was a "foreclosure machine" that systematically (and heartlessly) kicked thousands of California homeowners out of their homes in an effort to squeeze profits for investors via the mortgage crisis that almost wrecked the economy.

Mnuchin later became Trump's campaign finance chairman - and presto, is now possibly the man who will take over the Treasury Department.

Take a few minutes to click the link above and read Kim Master's THR article on Mnuchin and his move to Los Angeles, very interesting read.

Is he fit to be Secretary of the Treasury?

By the standards of the political and financial establishment, Yale graduate, Goldman-Sachs partner, he is - he's clearly a smart guy.

But his personal choices and his role in the sale of OneWest call into question what his priorities will be as head of the U.S. Treasury - like Betsy DeVos, I'm highly skeptical that it will be the interests of the American people who are not members of the 1%.

GOP Ethics & The Enigma of the Manigault Syndrome

Swamp Thing? Republican Congressman and
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte 

It's overcast, rainy and chilly on this first Tuesday of 2017 here in New Jersey.

In some ways, the weather reflects the gloomy mood of many Americans who are coping with an uneasy sense of impending dread as the inauguration of the most unpopular presidential candidate in U.S. history edges closer.

If nothing else, the importance of voting has been made painfully clear to Democrats and progressives who decided to stay home on Nov. 8th.



Well we certainly got a taste of what the new Republican super-majority has in mind for the American people yesterday when Republicans, secretly meeting Monday evening on a federal holiday, backed a proposal drafted by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that would have placed oversight of the non-partisan independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) under the oversight of the Republican-majority House Ethics Committee.

As TheHill.com reported, the jaw-dropping Republican proposal actually called for blocking the OCE from considering anonymous tips about corrupt congressmen, or from hiring a communications director, in a remarkably sleazy effort to make it harder for the media to learn about ethics violations and charges.

Swift backlash from members of both parties (including the president-elect), the media and outraged citizens prompted Republicans to pull the proposal from the rules package for the 115th Congress today, but don't be surprised to see them take another crack at it within weeks.

But the fact that Republicans tried to do that on the very first day of the new Congressional session should raise serious concerns; so much for "draining the swamp".

One can only hope the thousands of Democrats, progressives and independents who decided not to vote on November 8th, or cast their presidential ballot for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or a write-in candidate as a symbolic but essentially meaningless "protest vote" are happy - and I like Stein but let's be frank, a vote for her was in essence a vote for the con man being sworn in two weeks from now.

But I don't think it's fair to "blame" any one demographic segment for the results of this election.

Donald Trump and Omaraosa Manigault

Meddling on the part of foreign nations, Republican efforts to suppress non-white voter turnout across the nation, conservative media's incessant misogynist slandering of Hillary Clinton's record and apathetic (dare I say pathetic) Democratic voter turnout all played a factor in the 2016 presidential election results.

Don't get me wrong, each of us has the right to choose whom we want in an election, but the highly public and remarkably enthusiastic support of Trump by some women of color in this nation still leaves me scratching my head.


"I am black, female, and Donald Trump is my friend." 

No folks, that's not a line from a Saturday Night Live skit, or the punchline of a joke.

Those were the opening words of a short op-ed piece by Omarosa Manigault that was published in a December issue of The Hollywood Reporter - actually her words as told to writer Seth Abramovitch.

Manigault is the reality show contestant who gained notoriety after appearing on various incarnations of Trump's reality television series The Apprentice, and later went on to appear in a variety of other reality shows including Fear Factor and The Surreal Life.

While her Wikipedia page notes that she held a position in the office of former Vice-President Al Gore and teaches at Howard University, she's basically "famous" for being liked by Trump before becoming his political surrogate.

In the THR article she basically tried to use her own experiences being on a reality TV show to make the case that Trump is not the bigot and misogynist that his own actions and words make him out to be.

From her appearances on topical news discussions about Trump's candidacy that I saw, Manigault, who served as Trump's "director of African-American outreach", always seemed to strike me as someone whose over-the-top enthusiasm was not rooted in any kind of specific policy analysis.

Her reasoning for supporting his candidacy seemed based more on a cult-like adoration and her comments reflective of Trump's intentionally vague style of political "non-speak" - like the debates where he talked as if trying to toss out disconnected sound-bites to earn applause or laughter without really saying anything of substance, relevance or meaning.

To me her support for Trump kinda borders on creepy.

For example, remember back in November the day after the election when Manigault hinted in an interview that Trump was calculating revenge against people who hadn't supported him?

"Mr. Trump has a long memory and we're keeping a list." 

That's what she told a journalist from the Independent Journal Review, partially in reference to Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham's statement that he'd supported Evan McMullin rather than Trump.

Note her use of the term "we're" too.

In the same interview she went on to say: 

"It's so great that our enemies are making themselves clear so that when we get in to the White House we know where we stand."

"Our enemies" sounds like decidedly Nixonian group-think - I mean what's next?

Bugging the private communications and correspondence of members of the Democratic Party?

Oh, wait, sorry they actually already did that.

Again, Manigault, or any other woman of color can vote for whomever they please, but the handful of black women I saw interviewed on local or national television who voted for Trump never seemed to articulate what I (as an African-American) considered to be an informed reasoning that outweighed the flagrant racism that the Republican Party actively cultivated during the 2015 - 2016 presidential campaign season.

Let alone the reprehensible ways in which Trump spoke about women and ethnic and religious minorities.

In the Hollywood Reporter article, Maingault said that Trump "does not judge people on their gender or race. He judges them on their ability to do the job."

Trump's Sec. of Education pick Betsy DeVos

Yet back in August, as his campaign made efforts to try and draw support from black voters, Trump stood in front of an audience in the overwhelmingly white Lansing, Michigan suburb of Dimondale and reduced black Americans to a narrow stereotype, famously telling the crowd:

"You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed - what the hell do you have to loose?"

While high unemployment amongst young African-Americans is at critical levels, and that needs to be addressed on the federal, state and local level, not all African-Americans attend schools that are "no good" - does Manigault think that Trump tapping right-wing billionaire Betsy DeVos, a person with no experience as a school administrator, as Secretary of Education is a good thing for those students (of all races and ethnicities) who live in poverty?

DeVos is part of a group of billionaires and wealthy financiers around the nation who actively lobby for shifting billions in tax dollars from public schools to charter schools and private schools - maybe Manigault (who attended Howard University) thinks that will be a good thing for those public schools serving at-risk communities that struggle to attract quality teachers and administrators.

And while her orange-haired benefactor is correct that poverty levels in the U.S. are highest for blacks, according to statistics, 72.6% of black Americans do not live in poverty.

Donald Trump and his father Fred were sued by the
federal govt. in 1973 for housing discrimination 

So contrary to Manigault's statements, Trump's sweeping generalizations demonstrate a man who sees black Americans almost exclusively from the perspective of the narrow generalizations based on race that he grew up with.

And reinforced when he helped his father exclude blacks from renting at apartment complexes owned by the Trump family in New York and Virginia.


Maingault's access to affordable health care or the kinds of preventative cancer screenings provided by Planned Parenthood is never going to be jeopardized by Trump's promise to work with House Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

Thanks to her BA from Central State in Ohio and grad degrees from Howard University she doesn't have to work in the fast food industry, or a large retailer to make ends meet - so her income isn't going to be affected by Trump's pledge to oppose minimum wage increases.

So Omarosa Manigault can afford to support Trump, in fact as a reality television personality now serving on Trump's White House transition team who's angling for a job at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she has a vested interest in continuing to do so.

As far as her assertion in the Hollywood Reporter article that "It's very difficult to make the argument that Donald Trump doesn't like black people and black women.", I must respectfully disagree.

His actions, personal history and words suggest quite the opposite.