#DoYourJob

This letter is cross-posted to Daily Kos.

I have three words for Republicans in Congress and the White House: Do Your Job.

In the past year, the line defining what is out of bounds for the president has been crossed so many times it has practically faded from memory.  To reinforce and brighten it, let's recall when recent presidents have crossed that line, and compare their transgressions with Trump's.

In 1998, Bill Clinton was impeached for obstruction of justice, for attempting to cover up an extramarital affair.  Trump's obstruction of justice is far more obvious and more serious.  Trump openly admitted that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of 'the Russia thing', and he and his supporters attack the integrity of Robert Mueller, the FBI and Justice Department almost daily.  Trump's obstruction of an investigation into foreign influence at the highest levels of government is far more damaging to our country than concealing a personal infidelity.

Congress, do your job.

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Richard Nixon for abuse of power, claiming he "repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purpose of these agencies".

Trump's abuses of power are as numerous as they are brazen, including (but not limited to):

1. Publicly calling a group of Americans who peacefully protest "sons of bitches" who should be fired.
2. Lying with unprecedented regularity and volume, including the thoroughly debunked claim that his predecessor illegally surveilled him.
3. Daily attacks on the credibility of the media, and suggesting to the FBI Director that journalists who publish leaked information should be jailed.
4. Encouraging police officers to abuse their power.
5. Claiming the 'absolute right' to use the Department of Justice as he sees fit, including politically-motivated investigations of his opponents.
6. Flagrant and repeated violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause, using the presidency to enrich himself and his family.

Congress, do your job.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan's newly-appointed Chief of Staff Howard Baker considered invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Reagan from office, because early-onset Alzheimer's had left him unfit for the presidency.  Aides said "He was lazy; he wasn't interested in the job" and that he was "inattentive" and "inept".  Trump's recent, rambling interview with Michael Schmidt reveals that he cannot focus or articulate ideas.  There have been numerous reports that those around him call him "idiot," "moron" and worse, even before the book Fire and Fury was released.  And he clearly doesn't understand his own supposed policy positions.

Mr. Kelly and Mr. Pence, do your job.

The Congresses that decided to impeach Clinton or Nixon would certainly impeach Trump, and would have done so months ago.  Reports from inside Trump's White House paint a picture of a president far more inattentive and inept than Reagan.  Trump has traveled further across the line, and done so more often and more flagrantly than any president before him.

And this is before one considers that Trump's former campaign manager accused Trump's campaign of treason, or the fact that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper considers Trump to be a Russian asset.

Mr. Ryan, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Pence: All of you, along with every other member of Congress, swore an oath to protect the Constitution.  This is far more important than partisan loyalty.

Do your job.

This letter has been sent via the Post Office to Vice President Mike Pence and Chief of Staff John F. Kelly.  I need your help to make sure it gets to all 538 members of Congress.  If you agree with this letter, please link to this post, and send this letter (verbatim, please) to your representative and senators.

Politicizing the Law

Senators Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham have done something which I believe they should resign for:

A pair of GOP senators sent a letter to the Justice Department on Friday urging an investigation into Christopher Steele, the intelligence agent behind that famous dossier from the Russia investigation.

And the whole thing is rather strange.

. . .

As Devlin Barrett and Tom Hamburger note in their piece, that rubs some legal experts the wrong way. One former federal prosecutor, Peter Zeidenberg, called it “nonsense.” He suggested it was a political effort intended to impact the Russia investigation — in which Steele's dossier has become the focus of GOP allegations of improper conduct by federal law enforcement — rather than a serious letter. He said that he had never heard of such a letter being released.

This is a clear attempt to misuse the Justice Department's legal authority to punish and discredit Trump's political opponents.  Of course, Trump himself is doing this, just adding to the running total of his impeachable offenses.  But this is the first malfeasance of this sort to come oozing out of either Grassley or Graham.

The Republican party as a whole has pretty pushed in all of its chips on defending Donald Trump from the rising tide of revelations of indefensible acts.  But 'when you politicize the law, you're putting the country at risk'.

Before clicking the link, can you guess who said that, and the context?

Why, it was none other than former House impeachment manager, and current Senator Lindsey Graham, speaking on the need to impeach president Bill Clinton.

How times have changed.

Working Class Whites Watch: Day 341

It's a good thing for Trump that the election was last year.  The razor-thin victory he claimed in Pennsylvania is not likely to come again:

Despite President Donald Trump’s promises to bring back steel manufacturing, many steel mill workers are facing layoffs.

For example, ArcelorMittal-owned mill in Conshohocken, Penn. announced in September that it would cut 150 of 207 jobs based on seniority. Many steel workers who voted for Trump because they believed he’d be a boon for the industry are feeling abandoned by the president, New York Times reported on Friday.

(Apply the usual caveats that policies which adversely affect working class whites ALSO affect ALL working-class Americans)

Making Nursing Home Great!

I can't say it any better than Kevin Drum does.

I just want to add one observation to the following quote from the New York Times:

The shift in the Medicare program’s penalty protocols was requested by the nursing home industry. The American Health Care Association, the industry’s main trade group, has complained that under President Barack Obama, federal inspectors focused excessively on catching wrongdoing rather than helping nursing homes improve.

The idea that we should ignore wrongdoing in the name of 'helping nursing homes improve' falls right in line with Trump's strategy of 'making America great' by openly supporting white supremacists, denying people health care, and raiding the federal treasury to give even more tax breaks to the wealthiest 1%.

Please people.  Stop voting for Republicans.

Minnesota is Suing in Support of Net Neutrality

I received the following email today from Minnesota's Attorney General, Lori Swanson:

I will be filing a lawsuit with some of my colleagues from other states asking the court to overturn the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of the “net neutrality” rules that guarantee a free and open internet.  Net neutrality is essential for consumers and an informed electorate.

Background.  The internet is an important part of daily life.  Each day, tens of millions of Americans go online to shop, communicate, work, and stay informed.

For years, we have counted on a free and open internet—where service providers don’t get to dictate the online content that reaches our homes and workplaces.  In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reinforced these expectations with “net neutrality” regulations.

The net neutrality rules say that all internet traffic should be treated equally by internet companies.  The rules prohibited internet companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon from blocking or slowing down online content or creating “fast lanes” for companies that pay them money.  In 2016, the courts upheld the legality of these rules.

Earlier this month, the FCC—led by a former Verizon attorney—voted 3-2 to repeal the net neutrality rules for internet providers. Public reports indicate that as many as 2 million comments filed with the FCC ostensibly in support of net neutrality repeal may have been submitted using stolen identities, with as many as 500,000 fake comments reportedly linked to Russian addresses.  The Pew Research Center found that 94 percent of these comments were submitted multiple times and that the name of the commentator was “The Internet” 7,400 times.

Net neutrality matters.  Without net neutrality, broadband companies are free to block content they don’t want you to see, to slow it down and make it harder to access, or to prioritize content based on who pays them money.  Mega corporations can dominate the content people see online by paying money to obtain faster speeds.  This will make it more difficult and more expensive for consumers to access the content they want.  Many commentators predict that internet companies will adopt the business model of the cable companies, which charge consumers more to access popular programs.

But this isn’t just a consumer protection issue—it’s a democracy protection issue too.  Tens of millions of Americans now get at least some of their news online.  We see corporate conglomerates buy up media companies.  AT&T has announced plans to Time Warner, which operates CNN, and the Koch Brothers are bankrolling an acquisition of Time Magazine.  Without net neutrality, internet companies can control what content to make prominent or to obscure, including by promoting sites they own or favor.  This will influence the information to which voters and the public have access and will impact elections.  Think of the role the internet played in the Arab Spring.

Next Steps.  Senator Al Franken deserves enormous credit for his bulldog defense of equal access to the internet.  In the face of lawsuits like ours to stop the repeal of net neutrality, many people believe that Congress might try to pass a law next year to cement the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality.  If you share my concerns, I hope you will consider contacting your members of Congress to let them know that you support an internet that is free, fair, open, and accessible by everyone.

Working Class Whites Watch: Day 334

Many political experts believe that Trump's victory last November was due mainly to his appeal to working class white voters.  We have made numerous observations about the ways in which Trump is screwing them sideways (not just working class whites, of course; the entire working class).  This may be the most egregious example yet:

The rule doesn’t actually require that employers share those tips with untipped staff. Under the proposal, employers can pocket those tips as long as workers earn the minimum wage. In fact, the Department of Labor all but openly acknowledges that the change could lead to this scenario: “The proposed rule rescinds those portions of the 2011 regulations that restrict employer use of customer tips when the employer pays at least the full Federal minimum wage.”

Yep.  Trump wants to make it perfectly legal for employers to scoop up their employees' tips and keep them for themselves, so long as the employees earn at least the minimum wage.  So that great waitressing job you have that only pays a base wage of $6.00/hr, but you get between $50-$100 tips each shift?  Well, now it's suddenly a minimum wage job.  Doesn't that seem like it will make America great?

And it gets better.  Many states have regulations preventing this kind of wage theft, so the only people who would really be affected would be those who work in states without this kind of burdensome regulation.  And so which states would get hit the hardest?  Kevin Drum has prepared a convenient map:

It sure looks like Trump is doing his damnedest to turn absolutely every state in the union blue in 2020, doesn't it?

Update: The full text of the proposed rule is available here, and it's a long, hard slog.  But this is the key paragraph:

Much of that litigation involves the application of the Department's 2011 tip credit regulations providing that an employer's ability to utilize tips received by its employees is restricted even when it has not taken a tip credit. In several cases, employees alleged that their employers, who had paid their tipped employees a direct cash wage of at least the Federal minimum wage, improperly retained some or all of the tips received by employees or mandated that they participate in a tip pool that included non-tipped employees. The proposed rule rescinds those portions of the 2011 regulations that restrict employer use of customer tips when the employer pays at least the full Federal minimum wage and does not claim a section 3(m) tip credit, likely reducing litigation in this area.

So you see, it's not really about screwing workers out of the tips they earned; it's about eliminating workers' ability to sue their employers when they get screwed out of the tips they earned.  What a laudable goal.

Fortunately, the government is accepting comments from the public on the proposed rule change.  You can leave your comments here.

Update: Okay, this isn't an accident.  The Trump administration knows damn well what it's doing, it knows that the rule change allows owners to take tip money out of workers' pockets, and it doesn't care.  More than that, it's doing everything it can to cover up what they're doing, as Kevin Drum reports.

Mueller

Concerned that Trump plans to fire Mueller soon, MoveOn is pre-emptively planning mass protests to occur quickly after the firing happens.  Some people believe Trump will fire Mueller on Friday, December 22, in the hopes that the long Christmas weekend will mute the response.

We can't let that happen.  When Mueller is fired (if he is fired), we must response in large numbers, and in person.  Please find an event in your area, commit to attend, and pass it on.