Tag Archives: McCain

An Open Letter to Some Senators from Robert Frost

1 Reply

Warning: Naiveté will be on display here.

This “letter” is directed primarily at U.S. Senators McCain, Collins and Murkowski although there are a few others who should be paying close attention to the implications for their states, and their constituents, of the Graham-Cassidy legislation that would replace the Affordable Care Act with a temporary set of block grants and the individual discretion to limit covered services, including pre-existing conditions and many basic regular services now covered by the ACA.

For you three Senators in particular, you have arrived yet again at one of those moments when history is going to judge you. It will not judge you for all the other things you may have accomplished, or even for your other failures. No, history is going to judge you for the action you are preparing to take – to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on Graham-Cassidy.

Senator McCain, all of your well-known heroism and sacrifice will be dashed into dust if you vote to take away meaningful and affordable health insurance from the more than 32 million people now estimated to be impacted by Graham-Cassidy. You will be remembered instead for this one vote. Your choice – still hero or goat.

The same for the two female Senators from Maine and Alaska. You have come a long way, accomplished much for women in politics, served as an example of positive achievement for young women. I say that even though I disagree with much of your Republican politics. You too must face the judgment of history, and that of your constituents when they realize that you have, if you vote ‘yes,’ stripped them of the fair opportunity to secure health insurance for themselves and their children.

There is no escaping this crossroads for each of you. The President and the leadership of your party in Congress are so determined to remove the Affordable Care Act that they will sacrifice themselves and you as well on the ideological altar of state empowerment. Just look at the state-by-state consequences of Graham-Cassidy. Center for American Progress at http://ampr.gs/2fbzykY; Commonwealth Fund at http://bit.ly/2hhZpIE; The Atlantic at http://theatln.tc/2hjTsLw.

The Congressional Budget Office final score for Graham-Cassidy will likely not be ready by the time the vote, with no meaningful hearings or formal input process, occurs. Why the rush? It’s solely so that the Republicans can pass the bill with a bare majority of one under the “50 votes wins” rule that expires September 30. You thus can go along to get along, or you can do something else.

You are at the point of Robert Frost’s famous poem, the one that ends with

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Can you truthfully say that, in your considered judgment and based on your experience with state and federal government and after a careful evaluation of the impacts, that Graham-Cassidy is good for the American people, a substantial majority of who favor retention of an improved Affordable Care Act approach? Will you be able to explain your vote to the parents of a disabled child who is denied health care because the family can no longer afford the costs? Is it clear to you, beyond reasonable doubt, that Graham-Cassidy is the best way to address the health insurance problem that plagues this country and which many other civilized nations seem to have solved without draconian denials of medical care to their citizens?

Time is short. Why don’t you just bring this insane charade to a close right now, by telling the Congressional leadership and the President that “the answer is ‘NO,’ I will not lend my name, my reputation and my honor to this disgraceful legislation that will harm tens of millions of Americans”? Take the road less traveled. The only honorable thing to do.

Once More into the Breach, Dear Friends

Leave a reply

Unchastened by multiple past failures of leadership and intellect, the Republicans in Congress have signaled their intention to bring one more piece of “repeal Obamacare” legislation to a vote before the month is out, so as to secure the benefit of a 50-votes-wins procedure. This time it’s the Graham-Cassidy version that would replace the Affordable Care Act with block grants to the states which would then be free, individually, to permit insurers to effectively price out of existence the coverage for pre-existing conditions that is now mandated by federal law. They will do this even without scoring of the impact by the Congressional Budget Office.

Thus, each state that chooses to support the Republican goal of undermining access to health insurance for Americans in order to secure some vague idea of “fiscal responsibility” and, more truthfully, to stamp out perceived federal support for such practices as abortion, can do whatever it wants with access to health insurance. This, notwithstanding that all polling shows a substantial majority of Americans favor key elements of Obamacare protections, including coverage for pre-existing conditions.

This effort is urged on the Republican Party by its putative leader, Donald Trump, who hates everything associated with Barack Obama and is determined to remove all vestiges of Obama’s presidency from the face of the earth. Trump thinks he can’t lose here because he promised his so-called political “base” that he would get rid of Obamacare. If he succeeds, and the base delusionally concludes it’s a victory for them, Trump is a hero. If Congress cannot deliver the bill to him for signature, Trump still sees himself as the winner because it is Congress’s failure, yet again, that has denied him fulfillment.

And nothing is more important to Trump than winning. So far, his presidency has failed in almost every significant initiative it has attempted, so Trump is desperate to accomplish something, anything, regardless of the consequences.

It is time, once again, for the people to rise up and reject this outrage by demanding in the clearest way possible that every member of the Republican Party in Congress vote against this monstrosity. Almost all of them will disrespect the will of the people, of course, because in the end they don’t give a damn about the people. But there are a few, literally only a few, Republicans who have previously shown the courage and humanity to stand apart from the rest of the drones.

Here we have Senators McCain (Arizona), Collins (Maine) and Murkowski (Alaska). It comes down to the same three people to demonstrate the moral fiber and independence of thought and action that history now demands of them. Senator Paul of Kentucky has already said he is opposed to the bill, but you can’t count on him to stay that course. He hates the Affordable Care Act almost as much as Trump does.

Everyone who cares about this should lay down a barrage of calls, emails, tweets and posts calling on those three to stand, once more, as the bulwark against the depravity of the Republican Party and its attempt to deny tens of millions of Americans any modicum of real access to health insurance.

Sessions’ Testimony Evaluated – Part 4 (Last)

Leave a reply

Readers will likely be glad this is the final installment on the Sessions testimony. We concluded the last post with the exchange in which Sessions claimed that after his recusal he simply stopped being interested in the Trump-Russia issue and received no briefings and read little or nothing substantive about it.

Under questioning by Senator Harris, Sessions repeated his fan dance regarding disclosure of his notes and other relevant documents by saying,

I will commit to reviewing the rules of the department and as and when that issue is raised to respond appropriately.

“When that issue is raised?” It had just been raised by Sen. Harris’ request for the documents. Sessions yet again gets away with saying, in effect, “when, as and if you ask for documents after the hearing, I will consider whether to provide them.” We can only hope that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has reviewed the testimony and is demanding those documents.

In one of the highlights of the hearing, Senator Reed asked Sessions this:

… on July 7th when Mr. Comey made his first announcement about the case, you were on Fox News, and you said, first of all, director Comey is a skilled former prosecutor and then you concluded by saying essentially that it’s not his problem. It’s Hillary Clinton’s problem. Then in November, on November 6th, after Mr. Comey again made news in late October by reopening, if you will, the investigation, you said, again, on Fox News, you know, FBI director Comey did the right thing when he found new evidence. He had no choice but to report it to the American Congress where he had under oath testified the investigation was over. He had to correct that and say this investigation ongoing now. I’m sure it’s significant, or else he wouldn’t have announced that.

So, in July and November director Comey was doing exactly the right thing. You had no criticism of him. You felt that in fact he was a skilled professional prosecutor. You felt that his last statement in October was fully justified so how can you go from those statements to agreeing with Mr. Rosenstein and then asking the president or recommending that he be fired?

Once again, perhaps due to the way the hearing was structured, Sessions escaped with a statement that the problem was that Comey was obligated to advise that he had reopened the Clinton email investigation because he had, in error, gone public about the investigation initially. That may be true, at least arguably, but it doesn’t answer the question of why Sessions thought he had license to address Comey’s firing, having previously blessed both the initial disclosures by Comey as well as the follow-up announcement about reopening the investigation and recused himself from the investigation. Sessions’ inconsistency was laid bare for all to see, but he skated away without much notice with some double-talk. Here, again, the Democrats, and the country, certainly could have been helped by a more rigorous approach to the questioning.

I apologize again for this, but the following exchange between Senator McCain and Sessions bears extensive quotation because it is so revealing of the selective memory of the Attorney General:

MCCAIN: Over the last few weeks the administration has characterized your previously undisclosed meetings with Russia ambassador Kislyac as meetings you took in your official capacity as a U.S. Senator and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. As chairman of the that committee, let me ask you a few questions about that. At these meetings did you raise concerns about Russia invasion of Ukraine or annexation of Crimea?

SESSIONS: I did, Senator McCain, and I would like to follow up a little bit on that. That’s one of the meetings — that’s one of the issues that I recall explicitly. The day before my meeting with the Russian ambassador, I’d met with the Ukrainian ambassador, and I heard his concerns about Russia, and so I raised those with Mr. Kislyak, and he gave, as you can imagine, not one inch. Everything they did, the Russians had done, according to him was correct, and I remember pushing back on it, and it was a bit testy on that subject.

MCCAIN: …. Did you raise concerns about Russia’s support for President Bashar Al Assad and his campaign of indiscriminate violence against his own citizens including his use of chemical weapons?

SESSIONS: I don’t recall whether that was discussed or not.

MCCAIN: Did you raise concerns about Russia’s interference in our electoral process or interferences of the electoral processes cause of our allies?

SESSIONS: I don’t recall that being discussed….

MCCAIN: Yeah. In other words, Russia-related security issues, in your capacity as the chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, what Russia-related security issues did you hold hearings on or otherwise demonstrate a keen interest in?

SESSIONS: We may have discussed that. I just don’t have a real recall of the meeting. I may, I was not making a report about it to anyone. I just was basically willing to meet and see what he discussed.

MCCAIN: And his response was?

SESSIONS: I don’t recall. [all emphases added]

I will just leave that one there.

Chairman Burr ended the hearing with the usual fawning all over the witness for his years of sacrificial service to the country. He then asked Sessions to “work with the White House” to “see if there are any areas of questions that they feel comfortable with you answering and if they do, that you provide those answers in writing to the committee.”

The hearing was held June 13, almost a month ago. There has been no follow-up indication that Sessions has acted on that request and no indication that the Intelligence Committee has pursued him about it.

My overall conclusion about Sessions’ testimony is that he was repeatedly allowed to escape answering hard questions, due largely to ineffective examination by senators who seem either ill-equipped or poorly prepared to go toe-to-toe with a skilled attorney intent upon avoiding political or personal damage arising from his potential complicity in the Trump-Russia collusion scandal. The hearing may yet provide some fodder for Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation but nonetheless a real missed opportunity.

Voice from the Past Trying to Tip the Scale?

Leave a reply

Call me paranoid if you like, but the publication of a think-piece by Kenneth Starr leaves me more than a little disturbed. The article is entitled “Believe in the process” in the published Washington Post of June 16, 2017 and as “Firing Mueller would be an insult to the Founding Fathers” in the online version of the Post. http://wapo.st/2rDNAja

Starr, you may recall, was U.S. Solicitor General for President Bush (41) and served as independent counsel investigating various aspects of the Clinton presidency. His story can be seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Starr.

Starr’s observations in the Post start off well enough, arguing that “the process, untidy and rancorous as ever, is actually working well” and that we need to “step back” and let the government finish its work. Referring to the present special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, Starr states the obvious: “the president would be singularly ill-advised to threaten, much less order, Mueller’s firing.” Starr adds that “Wisdom counsels strongly against unleashing a 21st-century version of the Saturday Night Massacre of Watergate-era infamy.”

Then, a funny thing happens. In what looks to me like a subtle attempt at gas-lighting. Starr writes:

Certainly, if Mueller wanders outside the bounds of professionalism and basic integrity, he can and should be fired. Concerns are already being raised – including about Mueller’s friendship with Comey and his staff-packing with anti-Trump partisans. He will be closely watched.

Maybe I missed it, but I haven’t noticed any “concerns” being raised about Mueller’s approach to the investigation of Trump-Russia or other possible criminal conduct by Trump and his administration. Virtually everyone who has addressed the subject has praised Mueller as a paragon of integrity and professionalism, someone beyond reproach.

Starr goes further, addressing Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions’ refusal, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, to discuss any aspect of conversations with the president related to anything. Sessions asserted that the president should be given the questions and what amounts to an indefinite period of time to decide whether and how the questions can be answered. Starr flatly declares that Sessions “was on entirely solid ground in safeguarding the president’s right to invoke executive privilege.”

However, when Senator Kamala Harris tried to examine Sessions about why Sessions did not prepare for the inevitable questions about contacts with Trump, she was interrupted by Senator McCain waiving a verbal flag at Chairman Burr to stop Harris’ effort to get at that important question. Burr responded by effectively preventing further examination on that point. The question I have raised in other forums was, of course, not reached: why the previous intelligence leaders and Sessions’ appearance did not include White House counsel who could have advised on the spot about the assertion of executive privilege and the basis for it.

Then the Starr article gets even crazier and more troublesome. Starr goes on to say that “the early returns also suggest the absence of any Oval Office criminality.” He sells out on whether Trump’s “hope” that Comey would drop the Michael Flynn investigation was reasonably construed by Comey as a statement of presidential intention rather than a wistful wishing upon a star (no pun intended, but I do like it). Starr claims that “to hope that the director would abandon a line of inquiry is most naturally read as pleading and cajoling, but not as an order” and “in any event, at the time, Comey didn’t treat the president’s words as a directive.”

These declarations are astonishing in multiple ways that reflect an attempt by Starr to put his foot on the scale and add gravitas to Trump’s defense against obstruction of justice. There is no indication, other than Fox News and its like, that “early returns … suggest the absence of any Oval Office criminality.”

There are, I suggest, millions of Americans who believe just the opposite based on what has been disclosed thus far. Moreover, what Starr claims is the most “naturally read” thrust of the president’s stated “hope” is, in fact, downright silly, since Starr was not present to observe the president’s demeanor or fully evaluate the context. The notion that the president of the United States, known globally for his always-aggressive style, was effectively on bended knee before a man whose employment was in the president’s hands is facially absurd. And, of course, Starr ignores the most inconvenient fact, confirmed by Sessions, that Trump cleared the room before addressing his “hope” to Comey. Trump can’t begin to remember the last time he pleaded and cajoled to get his way.

Finally, there is Starr’s claim that since Comey at the time didn’t treat Trump’s words as a “directive,” the “pleading and cajoling” must not have been a directive. What would Comey have had to do to show that he took the words as a statement of what the president wanted and expected of him? Salute? Bow down? In fact, Comey went to his car and promptly wrote down what had transpired. And he asked the Attorney General to not leave him alone with the president in the future. That memorandum is now in the hands of Special Prosecutor Mueller. Starr would have us believe that Comey made the whole thing up, an act that even most of Comey’s principal adversaries seem to believe is inconsistent with both his character and long-time behavior.

I suspect we have not seen the last of Trump’s shadow team stepping forward to try to shore up the sinking ship that Trump has captained to near disaster. Newt Gingrich is another voice from the Republican past who is going to extraordinary lengths to sustain the president in his self-imposed hour of ever-deepening crisis. Gingrich for example, has stated that a president cannot, as a matter of law, commit obstruction of justice. http://bit.ly/2rFgD5N

Last time I looked, the United States was still a constitutional democracy. We do not have a king. We have not had a king since 1776 when we declared our independence and officially ended any allegiance to the King of England. Gingrich should refresh his memory regarding the U.S. Constitution.

It would not be surprising if more people like Starr and Gingrich join the proverbial circle of wagons around the White House. Even Vice President Pence is lawyering up. Give it your best shot, gentlemen. The cavalry is coming. But this is not a Western movie and the cavalry is not coming to save you.

A TRIPLE THREAT TO DEMOCRACY

2 Replies

The Washington Post ran three editorials today that should have the rapt attention of all thinking Americans.

The first editorial observes that Donald Trump represents an existential threat to American democracy by his raising the specter that his victory will lead to criminal prosecution of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, because, as President, Trump will be able to order the government to prosecute and jail any enemies of his choosing. I am confident that Ms. Clinton is not intimidated by these threats. She is well-schooled in the tripartite legal system that divides power among three branches of government and thereby restrains the unlimited use of power by any one branch, including the Executive.

These threats should nevertheless give pause to anyone who remains undecided at this late stage of the campaign. As the Post notes, this type of threat conflicts with the peaceful transition of power in a democratic society governed by a Constitution and not by a dictator. I suspect that Trump made these extreme statements mainly to pander to his core constituency who seem to be obsessed with thoroughly examined but unproven claims of email malfeasance while Clinton was Secretary of State, enhanced now by Trump’s repeated claims that the only way he can lose the election is if the voting is rigged. There are, of course, many other reasons that Trump could, and should, lose the election but from his “rat in the corner” position, striking out at the “rigged system” is probably the only strategy left to him.

I suspect that his defeat, which seems more likely every day, will lead to the vast majority of his core supporters just going home unhappy but equipped with new “evil forces” and conspiracies to complain about. They can take some solace in their moral certainty, removed from any connection to reality, that the “system” was against them and they never had a chance.

On the other hand, if Trump loses, will he, as the Post editorial implies, call on his “movement” to rise up against the United States in rejection of the outcome? This group of Americans appears to be impervious to facts, motivated by anger and fear and heavily armed. Mr. Trump should be very careful how he proceeds, lest he trigger events that will escalate beyond his control. ­­­By his own admission, he is not much interested in book learning, but he should at least scan Title 18, section 2381, wherein the definition of Treason is set out. Then he can start a new “reality” TV show, as some have speculated is his real objective.

The second editorial addresses the issues that the Post thinks should be covered in the final debate Wednesday night. It’s a really good list that includes many of the hugely important issues that will face the next president. It includes the nuclear threat from North Korea, Pacific Rim expansion by China, the failure of democratic movements around the world, cyber warfare, the endless dispute between India and Pakistan and others of similar gravity. It would be refreshing, though perhaps too much to expect even from a veteran like moderator Chris Wallace, that the debate will stay on track on the issues. For once, just once, the moderator should, I suggest, act aggressively to stop the personal attacks, evasions and mis-directions that have characterized the prior “debates.” Wallace should absolutely demand that the candidates not talk over each other, not interrupt and respond to the questions asked. Unless he does that, we likely will get just another harangue by Trump of his campaign talking points, which to date have precious little to do with substantive issues.

Finally, and equally disturbing, the Post editorial board has called out Sen. John McCain for his recent statement that “I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up.” This promise, from a man who claims his word is his bond, is essentially a reprise of the Republican congressional leadership’s oath that during Barack Obama’s first term in office, the main Republican goal was to defeat his agenda and to prevent him from gaining a second term. The Republican Party thus became the “party of no” and resisted almost all efforts to achieve bipartisan compromises on anything of substance, thereby, among other things, shutting down the federal government for a period of time.

­­­It appears that for the Republican Party, ideology trumps (forgive me) all other considerations. Sen. McCain is sending the message that more congressional deadlock lies ahead if a majority of the American people elect a president not of that Party’s choosing. This is a different form of political blackmail than Donald Trump’s normal fare, but it is blackmail nonetheless and Sen. McCain’s legendary deeds on behalf of his country cannot excuse it.

Time grows short. The army of Trump supporters has consistently shown that it not only has no objection to Trump’s constant lies, misogyny and other crimes against human dignity, but they in fact approve of them. They don’t care what the facts are – they just want to bring the house down. If we are not careful, they may succeed. This is the most important national election in modern times. If you agree with me, urge everyone you know to vote for Hillary Clinton. If some of them have to hold their noses, so be it. That will be the least of their worries if Trump succeeds.