How Much Better Off Would America Be If Trump Becomes Infected A Goes To Meet Satan?

Die For Me by Nancy Ohanian

In 1969 I bought a VW van in Wiesbaden, Germany and drove to India. When I drove back to Europe a couple of years later, I was sick and penniless and stranded. I made my way to Amsterdam and lived in my van and ate rice and vegetables everyday for a dollar at a macrobiotic restaurant in the city's meditation center, the Kosmos. Eventually the chef there liked me and told me she could cure what was wrong with me-- without the operation doctors said I needed. She gave name a job washing dishes, taught me how to work in a restaurant and how to cook. And cured me. I had some good years there and wound up as the manager but my favorite days were always the days I cooked; there were several of who took turns.

In January, when I caught on to Chris Martsenon's warnings about what the pandemic was bringing to America, I went out and started stocking up on the kinds of beans, grains and root vegetables I used to cook with in Holland-- common ones like carrots, onions, cabbage, potatoes and less common ones like daikon, turnips, rutabaga, celery roots... I hadn't been cooking regularly for decades. But it's like riding a bike; you don't forget, especially microbiotic cooking, which is also very reasonable and based on simple principles and techniques. So every day-- except Sundays when I fast, a hold-over from my Kosmos days-- I make healthy, delicious food for Roland and I.

I've also been able to buy perishables easily-- fresh fruits and vegetables. Today I noticed for the first time there were no roma tomatoes , no string beans and no leeks at the organic store. Maybe they'll have them tomorrow. Or, maybe not, I thought, after speaking with a friend in New York, where the shelves are far emptier than in California and after reading the latest piece from David Cay Johnston at the DCReport.org, Another Trump Screw-Up: Food May 'Rot In The Fields'. Johnston's point? Trump's obsessive "anti-Mexican racism is barring legal workers from picking fruits and vegetables; food production, distribution system could collapse."

Early signs show that the systems that get fresh fruit and vegetables to American homes is strained and may experience major failures. The Trump administration is only making matters worse, allowing his racism against Mexicans to inflict damage on American farms that depend on legal labor from south of the border.

...“Nearly all of our fruits and vegetables are not automated and you need a strong labor force to handpick those crops,” John Walt Boatright of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation told the Palm Beach Post.  “We are hearing a lot of concerns from the blueberry industry and other labor-intensive crops, and working to find a solution.”

U.S. farmers depend on more than 200,000 Mexicans who get visas each year to pick apples, pears and other crops.

Yet Mother Jones magazine reports that the American consulate in Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city, and other consulates have closed. That means most Mexican farmworkers have no way to get annual work visas. Unless the visas are issued much of this year’s American fruit and vegetable crops will not be harvested, barring some other unexpected development.

Each year as president, Donald Trump has gotten such visas for Mar-a-Lago while assiduously avoiding the many qualified workers in Palm Beach County, many of whom are African American. Federal law allows such visas for chambermaids, cooks and waitstaff only when no Americans are available.

...Representative Austin Scott (R-GA) says that delays in issuing visas to farm laborers are a serious threat to vegetable and fruit growers who, unlike grain farmers, don’t have federal crop insurance. “If delays continue” in issuing visas to Mexican farmworkers “we’re going to see crops rotting in the field,” Scott said.

The number of these Mexican farm labor visas has grown more than six-fold since 2000, a revealing indicator of how much America depends on Mexican labor to supply fresh fruits and vegetables in grocery stores.

Of course, Trump is hostile to all Mexicans and his administration has shown no signs it wants to resume the issuance of visas for Mexican farm laborers who take most of their money home with them. Trump thinks like a 16th Century mercantilist, believing any dollar that leaves us makes America worse off. It’s discredited and downright crazy economic thinking that hurts America more than Mexico, not that Trump understands this.

A lack of imported farm labor means not just the loss of those foodstuffs, but of income for farmers and those in the related packing, processing and shopping businesses, worsening the cascade of economic damage.

Labor intensive crops such as strawberries and crops that require placing beehives for pollination will be most affected by a shortage of labor.

Tree fruits require intensive labor not just to harvest, but also to cut away diseased limbs and plant replacement trees. Not minding the trees each year means reduced production in future years... Trump’s de facto policy: Crops be dammed, just keep Mexicans out.

You can always count on Trump to make everything and anything worse. As Jennifer Rubin noted in yesterday's Washington Post, "No one could make up a character as narcissistic and lacking in human empathy as President Trump... More than 2,400 Americans had died by Sunday. Governors around the country are screaming for more assistance from the federal government. Trump? He obsesses over ratings. It is hard to comprehend how indifferent he is to human suffering."

Increasingly, the country seems to operate on two tracks. On one, groveling courtiers flatter Trump, try to soften his impulsive pronouncements and scramble to catch up after months of delay. As they cater to the president, exploring patently absurd ideas, they have less attention to devote to real issues that only the federal government can address. On the other track, governors have no time for bowing and scraping; they are dealing hands-on with hundreds of logistical challenges, made worse by the absence of coordinated purchasing and by lack of a comprehensive testing program. Thank goodness governors are actually doing their jobs, which increasingly entail navigating around Trump.

Then there's the way grocery chains-- lookin' at you, Whole Foods-- treat their workers. In fact Whole Foods workers are going out on strike today nationwide to protest unsafe work conditions. They plan to "call in sick to demand paid leave for all workers who stay home or self-quarantine during the crisis, free coronavirus testing for all employees, and hazard pay of double the current hourly wage for employees who show up to work during the pandemic. 'COVID-19 is a very real threat to the safety of our workforce and customers,' Whole Worker, the national worker group that is organizing the 'sick out' wrote in a statement. 'We cannot wait for politicians, institutions, or our own management to step in to protect us.' The sick-out follows reports that Whole Foods workers at numerous stores across the country, including locations in New York City, Chicago, Louisiana, and California have tested positive for Covid-19. In each of these locations, the stores have remained open, leading some employees to charge that Whole Foods has failed to prioritize their safety during a period of record sales for the company."

While Trump was accusing NYC hospitals of illegally selling masks and respirators "out the back door"-- an excruciating and typical Trump lie-- the city's health care providers have been getting infected and dying. Many people question if Trump is human. "The coronavirus pandemic," wrote Michael Schwirtz, "which has infected more than 30,000 people in New York City, is beginning to take a toll on those who are most needed to combat it: the doctors, nurses and other workers at hospitals and clinics. In emergency rooms and intensive care units, typically dispassionate medical professionals are feeling panicked as increasing numbers of colleagues get sick... Medical workers are still showing up day after day to face overflowing emergency rooms, earning them praise as heroes. Thousands of volunteers have signed up to join their colleagues. But doctors and nurses said they can look overseas for a dark glimpse of the risk they are facing, especially when protective gear has been in short supply. In China, more than 3,000 doctors were infected, nearly half of them in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, according to Chinese government statistics."

And it isn't only Americans' physical health he's threatening. Americans' fiscal well-being is in great jeopardy because of his mental debilities, incompetence and self-absorption. Wall Street on Parade noted yesterday that in 2015 Carl Icahn called BlackRock "an extremely dangerous company." And the Fed picked them to manage their corporate bond bailout programs.

Icahn was specifically talking about BlackRock’s packaging of junk bonds into Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and calling them “High Yield,” which the average American doesn’t understand is a junk-rated bond. The ETFs trade during market hours on the New York Stock Exchange, giving them the aura of liquidity when one needs it. Icahn said: “I used to laugh with some of these guys…I used to say, you know, the mafia has a better code of ethics than you guys. You know you’re selling this crap.” Icahn warned that “if and when there’s a real problem in the economy, there’s going to be a rush for the exits like in a movie theatre, and people want to sell those bonds, and think they can sell them, there is no market for them.”

BlackRock not only sells junk-rated bond ETFs under the brand name iShares, but it has some of the largest investment grade corporate bond ETFs, including one that trades under the stock symbol LQD, which was experiencing serious losses and seeing major outflows of money until the Federal Reserve announced recently that it was creating three facilities to buy investment grade corporate debt from the primary and secondary markets, as well as investment grade corporate bond ETFs, along with agency commercial mortgage-backed securities.

And just who is going to be running these facilities for the Federal Reserve? None other than BlackRock-- posing an enormous conflict of interest which was readily observable in the market as BlackRock’s investment grade ETFs rallied dramatically on the news.

...Picking a highly conflicted Wall Street firm to manage a taxpayer-subsidized bailout of the highly reckless and irresponsible securitization practices of Wall Street is nothing new for the Federal Reserve and its unlimited money spigot, the New York Fed. The Fed did the same thing during the financial crisis of 2008. (See The New York Fed Has Contracted JPMorgan to Hold Over $1.7 Trillion of its QE Bonds Despite Two Felony Counts and Serial Charges of Crimes.)

Who Wants To See Trump's Dumb Old Taxes Anyway?

John Kennedy is a Republican senator from Louisiana. He used to be a Democrat and served as Secretary of the state Department of Revenue and was then elected State Treasurer, as a Democrat, twice before going over to the Dark Side in 2007. Kennedy knows how to read a tax return and figure out where the fraud and corruption lies. And he told a CNN audience the other day that he "would like to see" Señor Trumpanzee's taxes. "I would like to see the President’s taxes, I wouldn’t be adverse to turning over my taxes, I don’t have anything to hide." Almost 70% of Americans agree with Senator Kennedy and would like to take a look at Trump's tax returns.

Richard Neal, Pelosi's sketchy House Ways and Means Committee chair has finally told the IRS to send them over-- something you could have should have done in January. The law is clear: House Ways and Means Committee chair tells IRS to send over taxes; IRS sends over taxes. But this Trump Regime isn't about laws. And they're refusing. Charles Rettig was a Beverly Hills attorney specializing in helping rich people avoid paying taxes. Trump appointed him IRS commissioner in February of 2018 for one reason-- to have a patsy at the IRS would would never turn over his taxes. Rettig has until Wednesday to comply.

Aside from Trump's personal returns, Neal has told the IRS to send over the returns from crooked organizations Trump has used to corruptly enrich himself: Bedminster golf course LLC, the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, DJT Holdings LLC, DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC, DTTM Operations LLC, DTTM Operations Managing Member Cor, LFB Acquisition Member Corp, and LFB Acquisition LLC.

Yesterday Bloomberg ran an OpEd by it's executive editor Timothy O'Brien, who is also author of the 2005 best-seller, TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, the book that claimed Trump's true net worth was $250 million, not the billions he was claiming. Trump sued and the judge threw the suit out of court. Trump appealed and the appeals court judge and the appeals court told Trump to stop wasting everyone's time with his publicity-seeking frivolous lawsuits. Since being installed by Putin, Trump has had to bear O'Brien frequently been invited on TV to make fun of him. Yesterday's column, I’ve Seen Trump’s Tax Returns and You Still Haven’t, is sure to enrage Trump, whose mental health is already fragile. O'Brien begins by asking his readers if they "remember back in early 2016 when Donald Trump, who was still regarded as something of a long shot for the presidency, promised he would disclose his tax returns publicly-- just like every other candidate had done voluntarily since 1973. Trump told Meet the Press at the time, "I have big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we'll be working that over in the next period of time." O'Brien noted, as any serious Trump-watcher would that the "next period of time" turned out to mean "never."

Once Trump became skittish about releasing his returns he landed on one recurring reason for why he couldn’t put them out there, as forever memorialized when he was asked about his taxes during a presidential debate.

“As far as my return, I want to file it, except for many years, I've been audited every year,” he said in Houston on Feb. 25, 2016. “Twelve years or something like that. Every year, they audit me, audit me, audit me.”

An audit doesn’t prevent anyone from releasing their tax returns. If they really want to, they can go right ahead. Richard Nixon-- RICHARD NIXON-- released his tax returns when he was being audited. And it is extremely rare, also bordering on never, for someone to be audited several years in a row, much less twelve. So maybe Trump hasn’t been entirely forthright about his audits. But who knows? When asked during one interview why he thought he had been targeted, he gave a faith-based response. “Well, maybe because of the fact that I'm a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it, maybe there’s a bias,” he once offered.

In the end, Trump, who regards disclosure of his tax returns as a financial form of open-heart surgery, decided that people should just stop bothering him. “I'm worth more than $10 billion by any stretch of the imagination. Has tremendous cash. Tremendous cash flow. You don’t learn much from tax returns,” he told Meet the Press several months before Election Day in 2016. “But I would love to give the tax returns. But I can't do it until I'm finished with the audit.”

All that talk of an audit may have put Trump in a corner. On Wednesday night, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee asked the Internal Revenue Service to release six years of the president’s personal and business tax returns, attributing their request to Congress’s oversight role. Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the committee, said he was making the request precisely because he wanted to make sure that the IRS was properly auditing Trump.

Trump has already said he isn’t inclined to release his tax returns in accordance with Neal’s request, so this is certain to ignite a legal battle. In the interests of good government and the avoidance of financial conflicts of interest in the Oval Office, I hope Congress wins this one. And I know, for a fact, that it’s not true that you don’t learn much from a tax return. As I noted back in early 2016, I have seen Trump’s tax returns, and I think you should too.

Trump unsuccessfully sued me in 2006 for libel over a biography I wrote called TrumpNation, citing unflattering sections of the book that examined his business record and wealth. He lost the suit in 2011, and during the litigation he was forced to turn over his tax returns to my lawyers.

As I noted in 2016, I think there are five broad categories of disclosure related to his returns that should matter to voters, politicians, and anyone else interested in making sure the White House is conflicts-of-interest free.



1) Income: The returns would offer a gauge of how financially robust the president’s businesses actually are and how much of that money flows to him.

2) Business Activities: Trump has always said that the Trump Organization employs thousands and that U.S. companies shouldn’t relocate overseas and take jobs away from U.S. workers. Tax returns would offer a view of Trump’s global footprint and provide a clearer sense of the size and scope of his company.

3) Charitable Giving: Trump has often bragged about being a dedicated philanthropist. If that’s true, his returns would prove it.

4) Tax Planning: The president uses a lot of shell companies, or LLCs, as part of his business and personal dealings. Some wealthy people have also used shell companies overseas to mask their fortunes and hide the money from authorities. Trump’s returns would show how actively he has used tax havens, if at all.

5) Transparency and Accountability: This may be the most important category of all. Trump is now, arguably, the most powerful and influential man in the world. His tax returns would provide a much clearer picture of potential financial conflicts or pressures that would come to bear on him in the White House. They would also provide a way of monitoring whether the president is more interested in his financial self-interest and deal-making than policy-making.

Neal has only requested six years of Trump’s returns, which is, I think, regrettable. Some of the transactions that may interest investigators the most took place around 15 years ago, when Trump, suddenly flush with cash, went on a shopping spree. He bought and developed golf courses, launched a new hotel and condominium in Chicago, and deepened his involvement with the Trump SoHo Hotel in lower Manhattan.

It is still curious to me how Trump, who always used to finance his transactions with debt, raised the funds to do all that in the mid-2000s and pay cash. To find out, Neal will have to dig deeper than six years ago.

A Cure for the Mueller Hangover

Robert Mueller: Into the Swamp by Nancy Ohanian

by Skip Kaltenheuser

If you haven’t seen it, the long version of Matt Taibbi’s critique of journalism over Russia-gate, LOADED with supportive sub-links, is worth your time as an exercise in grappling with media herd instinct and the folly of putting our grand papers of record at the head of the herd. It’s also a great contemplation of the journalistic ethics and cautions that have been cut adrift, the sort the Columbia Journalism Review and journalism schools across the country might take note of. Matt Taibbi: It’s Official – Russiagate is This Generation’s WMD.

For this slow reader, it was worth hanging-in, as it’s much more richly detailed than this still worthwhile summation Taibbi recently published in Rolling Stone. The one encouraging item is that the median age for CNN viewers is 60 and the median for MSNBC is 65, so I feel more youthful just for not having cable.

Coming after his piece on unaccountable media that enabled the WMD con that waltzed us into invading Iraq, I think Taibbi ought to earn a Pulitzer or some such for media criticism.

If you didn’t catch the Democracy Now! debate between Glenn Greenwald and David Cay Johnston, it’s also sobering. It does come with the guilty pleasure of sideswiping MSNBC and Rachel Maddow who’ve used their hot pursuits of Russia collusion to challenge FOX in taking up the task of proving Orwell’s enduring wisdom on propaganda.

I’m now bracing under forty lashes administered by this Intercept podcast which includes Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, Taibbi and Naomi Klein, a good wrap-up perspective with a transcript option, if the unseen voices of a Beckett play are unsettling.

I’ve certainly had my fun with Trump, such as Inauguration Day Weather Forecast: 54 Degrees, Cloudy, Light Wind, Chance of Golden Showers. But like many who’ve dipped into journalism, I know the comforts of having it both ways, so I also took such occasions to work in skepticism over the Russian election collusion narrative. I’ve always been of the mindset that even if true, I didn’t care what snake hands me an apple off the Tree of Knowledge as long as it gives me the straight poop. Other than interesting intrigues, I don’t much care if truth comes via a hack or a walkaway thumb drive. After all, which more greatly damaged our Eden’s already fractured democracy, the DNC’s anti-democratic thumb on the scales during the 2016 presidential primaries, or providing the public with proof confirming the weight of the thumb? I’m picking door number one. If media had been doing its job, no such choice need apply. Instead we were left to wonder at mainstream media’s devotion to the Divine Right of Queens, and if it went so far as to grease the skids for the ratings-meister who was conveniently also the opponent Hillary most desired.

If something later comes along regarding explorations I’ve long thought had greater potential, such as if there were violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or, as Howie has often underscored, potential money laundering via real estate portals and other foreign players, etc…, then great, to the ramparts. But should they occur, most enlightenments would be better left to the remedy of elections, not coveting President Mike “End of Days” Pence.

American Gothic Revisited 2 by Nancy Ohanian

Meanwhile, I hope the Democrats can now fully focus on explaining the dangers of galloping venality in this godforsaken presidency, of which Howie has supplied a cornucopia. Topping the list is the risk that the financial sector is again exposing the country to after those trusted with oversight again willfully take their eyes off the ball. Catch up on that queasy feeling by perusing the topics at Wall Street on Parade, I’m pleased to note that after a brief absence that site has fired up again. It is not a cure for insomnia.

Revolving Door by Nancy Ohanian

After the invasion of Iraq, the current drumbeat on Iran by the usual suspects and the weird alliances with Saudi Arabia (which 60 Minutes alleged uses Israeli spy technology to monitor dissidents like murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi), I’ve always thought Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s influence more of a fright than Russia’s. But we’ll not likely see either party’s leadership seriously push investigations of those actors. The bipartisan piling on Rep. IIhan Omar at the AIPAC conference was as disgusting and as disheartening a political spectacle as I’ve ever seen. Stop it. Apart from the injustice of it, it looked like a parade of frightened fools.

Who Murdered Jamal Khashoggi? by Nancy Ohanian

By the way, last Friday there was a uniquely contrarian conference, on the Israeli lobby’s influence on American policy, for which video and audio are now available, with transcripts coming along. Which is a great thing, because you won’t hear a peep out of mainstream media. I scribbled on it here. Take a breath and consider that in adjusted dollars we’ve spent far more on foreign aid to Israel than we spent under the Marshall Plan rebuilding Europe after WWII . Now tell me it’s not all about Benjamins flowing freely.

Beyond her undeniable cat-wrangling skills, one of the big selling points for Rep. Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker was her fundraising ability with big donors. For me her fundraising prowess was a red flag about whom she might be quietly mortgaging worthy Democratic Party values to, from Big Money to Big Tech to those looking to gloss over America’s soul-numbing complicity in the plight of the Palestinians. And what can one say about Chuck Schumer, Wall Street’s Manchurian Senator? For too many Democratic politicians, and for those in the growing military-industrial-fundraising-consulting complex that enables them, Russia was a great distraction from attending to issues on which those politicians and enablers are as for-sale as Trump. Trump is not Washington’s only distraction artist.

The silver lining is that maybe Russia’s creaky ship and the poisoner/kleptocrat at its helm will now stop sucking the air out of the room. That will enable Bernie and the like-minded to better spotlight their critical issues and keep coaxing the party to sail on better currents. And as important, they can now step out of the background noise to make their case to the independent voters they will have to win over to succeed at the ballot box. That goes hand in hand with beating back America’s worst impulses as embodied by Trump and the Republicans, now busy about the game of whittling down health care and all aspects of government that diminish inequality and the wealth gap. Highlighting the contrast has always been the best route to take Trumpster to the dumpster. It’s the cure for the Mueller hangover.

So bon voyage, Russia, and for now, good riddance.

King of Diamonds by Nancy Ohanian

Ice Pick Donald's Budget Proposal, "Designed By Robber Barons"

Narcissistic Psychopath by Nancy Ohanian

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

Attending as press, alas, not as a member, I first crossed paths with the Patriotic Millionaires several years ago at one of their events in Washington. At a dinner they hosted afterwards, I had the added treat of Alan Grayson at my table, and was mighty impressed with both the group and with Grayson’s witty comments about naked influence-peddling on the Hill and Congressional hypocrisy. I can’t speak on the whole roster of the group, but those I met were not better-heeled because they started out as trust-funders. They’d combined their abilities with hard work and the businesses they ran represented a wide cross-section of the economy. Many started out as small business entrepreneurs. Usually not glamorous businesses, but clever ideas that bed-rocked well-run operations that after considerable effort had turned out decently well for them. Perhaps that fires their alarm at a deck stacked evermore against the little guy by the big money and complicit politicians taking in what in any sane society would be labeled as bribes. The group knows that as the playing field tilts, the opportunities they enjoyed diminish for others, and that bodes ill for America's economic future.

The group relishes the label “traitors to their class.” The three-legged stool on which the group sits is formed of equal political representation, a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens and a fair tax system.

Trump’s outrageous budget proposal motivated this essay by Morris Pearl, a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc. and chair of the Patriotic Millionaires.

Budget for a Nightmare America
-By Morris Pearl

On Monday, President Trump released his 2019 budget proposal, a plan that outlines a series of massive cuts to vital public programs in the ludicrously titled “A Budget for a Better America.”

While this is just a list of funding ideas that mean nothing without Congressional approval, it outlines Trump’s vision for our economic future-- one that allows us already wealthy people to get even richer, at the expense of everyone else. The chief targets of the budget are a proposed $845 billion cut from Medicare over the next decade, reductions to welfare programs and Social Security, and sharp cuts to agencies that keep us safe like the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department.

Strangely, while the President can’t seem to find the money to fund these programs, he thinks the government coffers have more than enough to fund $8.6 billion in border wall funding and a nearly 5 percent increase to the Pentagon’s budget.

It’s no secret that Republicans have been trying to gut public services for years, so what makes this new plan particularly heinous? It’s not just the immediate spikes in healthcare costs or the loss of crucial welfare assistance. It’s not even the fact that slashing those vital public services that will leave the majority of our most vulnerable citizens in an even more precarious position long-term.

It’s the shameless hypocrisy that comes from the President claiming we don’t have the money to fund all these services when he just gave his friends (and himself) a massive $1.5 trillion tax cut barely over a year ago. You would be hard pressed to find anyone outside of the White House who believes that the country is better off with more tax cuts for millionaires and less funding for Medicare.

To add further insult to injury, Trump’s budget proposal is the largest in federal history, at a total budget of $4.75 trillion. There was clearly no real attempt to limit federal spending, and this budget is going to be dead on arrival in Congress, which leads to the question: what’s the point?

With no chance of this budget becoming law anytime soon, it’s likely, then, that this serves as a blueprint for Trump’s re-election promises. That future is the true danger of Trump’s budget. Even if this is just a posturing plan right now, one that’s completely unrooted in reality, it serves as the economic vision that Republicans will propose to voters in 2020, and one they will try to deliver if elected.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them. If Trump and his Republican counterparts in Congress say they want to cut Medicare, believe them. If they tell you that they want to continue giving tax breaks to the wealthy while that happens, believe them. And you should believe me when I say this vision is bad economics – bad for business, bad for workers, and even bad for us millionaire investors and business people, who depend on healthy and happy consumers and workers to drive growth.

Conservatives rely on the constant refrain that spending is out of control and that cuts are needed to rein it in and balance the budget. But as this budget shows, the cuts come from everywhere except the people and corporations that have the most to give back to the system that allowed us to rise in the first place. It exacerbates our existing inequality by slashing these services and giving us millionaires even more opportunity to avoid paying our fair share. A better America is one that invests its dollars in its own citizens and ensures an equality of opportunity that benefits us all. A budget designed by robber barons to benefit the few, at the expense of everyone else, will not deliver that dream.

Revolving Door by Nancy Ohanian

While I can’t imagine Trump’s budget flying much faster than a lead balloon, it’s a gift to opponents seeking Exhibit A on the hypocrisy of Trump’s campaign claims of helping those in the country who are hurting. How rotten the proposal is was underscored by Pulitzer-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, editor of DCReport.org. Interviewed on Democracy Now!

…this budget is budget lessons I learned, as Donald Trump learned, from dictator Kim. So, the first thing you do is you take care of your military. You pour every dollar you can into a military that is bigger than you need. And that’s your number one goal, to make sure that you have loyalty and stay in power.

Then what you do is you take the disabled and the poor on Medicare, and you cut close to a trillion dollars over the next 10 years out of care for them. You take SNAP, which provides nutrition to pregnant women, children and elderly people and the disabled. “Hey, let’s slash that!”

Education. There were all these students who were ripped off by for-profit colleges that cost four or five times what a community college did, and gave you a lousy education, and some of them went broke. “Make them pay every penny!” They, in fact, say it isn’t fair unless these students pay it back. So they’re taking the side of the bankers against the students.

Housing. Let’s cut money for housing, people who are disabled, people who are on aids, people who are poor. We’re going to cut that. And to New York and New Jersey, by saying, “We are not going to fund the replacement of the 110-year-old tunnel,” through which thousands of commuters and people traveling up and down the East Coast travel every day, tunnels owned by the federal government’s Amtrak—

…what’s important here…is a budget is a statement of values. And Donald Trump has revealed his values. He has the values of a dictator. That’s why I said budget lessons from dictator Kim. And all of his claims about “I love the cops,” and then he took away their ability to take as a tax deduction buying uniforms and guns and dry cleaning and paying union dues; “I love the students,” and he wants to take away the subsidized loans and make people who got for-profit college educations that failed—colleges that failed—to make them pay. Donald Trump has no regard for anyone but himself. And so long as we treat him as if he’s a serious person who has real policies, we’re going to get nowhere. What we need to do is mock him and make fun of him. He’s not very smart, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

The Emperor by Nancy Ohanian

Johnston also mentioned some of the disturbing reality of Trump’s tax cut:

"…the economy is already slowing down. And 10 years into this market, which began under President Obama, you would expect it, at this point, to begin to slow down. So, we only saw 20,000 jobs last month. You know, Trump goes around talking about “I have the biggest employment in American history.” That’s not the measure. Job growth is a good measure. Job growth has been about 20 percent lower under Trump than under Obama since the economy turned around. Tax revenues in the last 90-day period were 2 percent lower, which goes right to the heart of how this tax cut for the rich is not paying for itself. And, you know, little-known fact: Donald Trump’s tax law gave 8-year loans at zero interest to all the multinational companies that had siphoned profits out of the country, and it also gave them a discount. So, I’ve written about how Apple alone-- just Apple-- will turn a $120 billion profit off the Trump tax law, $120 billion."

If the Democrats play their cards right, they can use Ice Pick Donald’s budget to help sink him in 2020, and to take the Republican Senate down with him. Consider how this budget will play in the critical counties in the states Trump flipped, where exasperated voters who voted for Obama twice, hardly racist deplorables, stood Trump up as their default middle finger to the Washington establishment. These are voters in areas where, in the immortal words of Wall Street’s Manchurian Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, people “foamed the runway for the banks.” These are areas where good jobs rusted out, leaving people scrambling in futile efforts to stay even, where affordable educational opportunities for their children faded away. These are communities where families shoulder disproportionate tragedies from America’s endless wars, and from the pharmaceutical assaults of opioids.

In many of these communities Bernie outperformed both Hillary and Trump in the 2016 primaries. For these citizens, Bernie’s well-articulated and steady message will continue to resonate.

Can Anyone Stop Him From His #1 Agenda Item— Monetizing The White House?

The kind of media that misses the irony of referring to Señor Trumpanzee as “president,” is upset the the new issue of New York depicts the fake and utterly illegitimate president as a pig. And because of that, they’re missing Jonathan Chait’s important reasoning: It’s The Corruption, Stupid. The Hill frets that “The April 2 issue of the magazine features a close-up photo of Trump with a pig's snout replacing his nose.” The full title is important: "Not Collusion... Not Incompetence... Not Cruelty... It's the Corruption, Stupid-- Why His Self-Dealing is His Biggest Political Liability."

Trump’s emulation of Putin isn’t necessarily as much about the authoritarianism as it is about kleptocracy. Putin, the world’s richest man, has ripped off the pathetic imbeciles in Russia. Historically, the Russian people are used to it, even expect it. Trump may find America slightly different… at least some of America.

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” declared Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.” To the extent that Trump’s candidacy offered any positive appeal, as opposed to simple loathing for his opponent, this was it. He was a brilliant businessman, or at least starred in a television show as one, and he would set aside his lifelong pursuit of wealth to selflessly serve the greater good. This was the promise that pried just enough Obama voters away from Hillary Clinton in just enough upper-Midwest states to clinch the Electoral College.

Since Trump took office, his pledge to ignore his own interests has been almost forgotten, lost in a disorienting hurricane of endless news. It is not just a morbid joke but a legitimate problem for the opposition that all the bad news about Trump keeps getting obscured by other bad news about Trump. Perhaps the extraordinary civic unrest his presidency has provoked will be enough to give Democrats a historic win in the midterms this fall, but it is easy to be worried.

Trump’s approval rating hovers in the low 40s: lower than the average of any other president, yes, but seemingly impervious to an onslaught of scandals that would have sunk any other president, and within spitting range of reelectability.

As the races pick up in earnest, some kind of narrative focus is going to be necessary to frame the case against Trump. Here, what appears to be an embarrassment of riches for Democrats may in fact be a collection of distractions. It is depressingly likely that several of Trump’s most outrageous characteristics will fail to move the needle in the states and districts where the needle needs moving. His racism and misogyny motivate the Democratic base, but both were perfectly apparent in 2016 and did not dissuade enough voters to abandon him.

The Russia scandal is substantively important, but it is also convoluted and abstract and removed from any immediate impact on voters’ lived experience. The reports of Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels, even the possibility of hired goons to keep her quiet, is not exactly a disillusioning experience for voters who harbored few illusions to begin with.

But they did harbor one. Trump’s core proposition to the public was a business deal: If he became president, he would work to make them rich. Of course, the fact that Trump was able to reduce the presidency to such a crass exchange, forsaking such niceties as simple decency and respect for the rule of law, exposed terrifying weaknesses in the fabric of American democracy. But the shortest path to resolving this crisis is first to remove Trump’s party-- and it is Trump’s party-- from full control of the government in 2018, and then to remove Trump from the White House in 2020. The clearest way to do that is to demonstrate that Trump is failing to uphold his end of the deal. After all, the students at Trump University once constituted some of the biggest Trump fans in America. Until they realized Trump had conned them. Then they sued to get their money back.

Historically, corruption-- specifically, the use of power for personal gain-- has played a central and even dominant role in American political discourse. In the 1870s, revelations that public officials were caught lining their pockets with millions of dollars from alcohol taxes (the Whiskey Ring) and inflated railroad costs (Crédit Mobilier) exploded into spectacular scandals. One of the triumphs of the Progressive Era was establishing rules and norms of professionalism in government so that public officials would not be tempted to sell their favors. The far more petty corruption cases of the 20th century still roused public rage. Harry Truman was famously scorned in his time, owing to penny-ante scandals, one of which involved an aide’s acceptance of some freezers. Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff had to resign after he accepted a vicuña coat; George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu, resigned in disgrace after using military aircraft for personal and political trips. There is a reason Trump labeled his opponent “Crooked Hillary,” and it stems from a law of American politics Democrats would be wise to remember: To be out for yourself is probably the single most disqualifying flaw a politician can have.

“Why shouldn’t the president surround himself with successful people?” argued Larry Kudlow, now Trump’s primary economic adviser, in 2016. “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.” The administration seems to have set out to refute this generous assumption. The sheer breadth of direct self-enrichment Trump has unleashed in office defies the most cynical predictions. It may not be a surprise that he continues to hold on to his business empire and uses his power in office to direct profits its way, from overseas building deals down to printing the presidential seal on golf markers at the course near Mar-a-Lago. It is certainly not a surprise that Trump has refused to disclose his tax returns. What’s truly shocking is how much petty graft has sprung up across his administration. Trump’s Cabinet members and other senior officials have been living in style at taxpayer expense, indulging in lavish travel for personal reasons (including a trip to Fort Knox to witness the solar eclipse) and designing their offices with $31,000 dining sets and $139,000 doors. Not since the Harding administration, and probably the Gilded Age, has the presidency conducted itself in so venal a fashion.

It is hardly a coincidence that so many greedy people have filled the administration’s ranks. Trump’s ostentatious crudeness and misogyny are a kind of human-resources strategy. Radiating personal and professional sleaze lets him quickly and easily identify individuals who have any kind of public ethics and to sort them out. (James Comey’s accounts of his interactions with the president depict Trump probing for some vein of corruptibility in the FBI director; when he came up empty, he fired him.) Trump is legitimately excellent at cultivating an inner circle unburdened by legal or moral scruples. These are the only kind of people who want to work for Trump, and the only kind Trump wants to work for him.

It should take very little work-- and be a very big priority-- for Democratic candidates to stitch all the administration’s misdeeds together into a tale of unchecked greed. For all the mystery still surrounding the Russia investigation, for instance, it is already clear that the narrative revolves around a lust (and desperation) for money. Having burned enough American banks throughout his career that he could not obtain capital through conventional, legitimate channels, Trump turned to Russian sources, who typically have an ulterior political motive. Just what these various sources got in return for their investment in Trump is a matter for Robert Mueller’s investigators to determine. But Trump’s interest in them is perfectly obvious.

Trump’s campaign followed his patented human-resources strategy, filling its ranks with other rapacious and financially precarious men. Paul Manafort was deeply in debt to a Russian oligarch when he popped up on Trump’s doorstep. Michael Flynn was selling his credentials to Russian and Turkish dictators while advising Trump. Jared Kushner was flailing about in an effort to make good on a massive loan he took out on a white-elephant Manhattan building and seems to have used his access to Trump to leverage potential investors who might bail him out. Even as he has wielded enormous influence, Kushner has been unable to obtain a top-secret security clearance, because he may be vulnerable to foreign influence.

The virtue of bribery is a subject of genuine conviction for Trump, whose entrée to politics came via transactional relationships with New York politicians as well as Mafia figures. Trump once called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American corporations from engaging in bribery, a “ridiculous” and “horrible” law. Enforcement of this law has plummeted under his administration.

Trump’s vision of an economy run by tight circles of politically connected oligarchs has reshaped America’s standing in the world. The same effect that applies at the personal level with Trump has appeared at the level of the nation-state. Small-d democratic leaders have recoiled from the Trump administration, while autocrats have embraced him. Similarly, the president and his inner circle feel most comfortable in the company of the wealthy and corrupt. They have built closer ties to Russia, the Gulf States, and China, all of which are ruled by oligarchs who recognize in Trump a like-minded soul. They share the belief that-- to revise a favorite Trump saying-- if you don’t steal, you don’t have a country.

An easy fatalism about all this corruption has gained wide circulation. It was known about Trump all along and his voters signed up for it anyway, so nothing matters, right? In fact, Trump’s behavior runs directly contrary to his most important promises. “Draining the swamp” was not supposed to mean simply kicking out Democrats and competent public officials. He made speeches promising good-government reforms: a ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and stricter rules on what lobbying meant; campaign-finance reform to prevent foreign companies from raising money for American candidates; a ban on lobbying by former senior government officials on behalf of foreign governments.

Not only has Trump made no effort to raise ethical standards but he and his administration have flamboyantly violated the existing guidelines. Lobbyists are seeded in every agency, “regulating” their former employers and designing rules that favor bosses over employees and business owners over consumers. The problem of former government officials’ being paid by foreign governments has been superseded by the far larger problem of current government officials’ being paid by foreign governments.

Small episodes of corruption can play an outsize role in American politics, since the human scale of petty self-dealing is often easy to understand. And in Trump’s case, the smaller and larger scandals reinforce each other. Why is Trump giving rich people and corporations a huge tax cut? Why has he been threatening to take away your health insurance? Why is he letting Wall Street and Big Oil write their own rules? Above all, if Trump supposedly believed that “if I become president, I couldn’t care less about my company-- it’s peanuts,” why are his children still running it? For the same reason he has let his Cabinet secretaries run up large travel expenses, and why his son-in-law met with oligarchs in China and the Gulf States whose money he was trying to get his hands on.

Even the strong economy does not mean Democrats have no way to attack Trump’s economic management. After all, the reason public opinion about the economy improved almost immediately after his election is that the Republican message machine stopped bad-mouthing the recovery and instead rebranded the same conditions as a fabulous new era of prosperity. Rather than sit back and allow Trump to take credit for a recovery he inherited, Democrats can press the point that he and his allies are doing little more than skimming off the top of it.

Somebody persuaded corporations, fattened by a trillion-dollar tax windfall, to publicize the same raises and bonuses they had been handing out for years as a special dividend of the Trump tax cuts. If Democrats win control of a chamber of Congress and thus the ability to hold hearings, they should investigate whatever coordination yielded this nexus of self-interest. A Democratic House or Senate could also compel disclosure of Trump’s tax returns, and both the documents themselves and any drama surrounding them would attract more attention to the administration’s commitment to self-enrichment.

But that can happen only if the Democrats win the midterms, and the best way to do that is to tell a very simple story. Trump represented himself as a rich man feared by the business elite. He had spent much of his life buying off politicians and exploiting the system, so he knew how the system worked and could exploit that knowledge on behalf of the people. In fact, his experiences with bribery opened his eyes to what further extortion might be possible. Trump was never looking to blow up the system. He was simply casing the joint.

In the same issue Joy Crane and Nick Tabor have a companion piece with an introduction by David Cay Johnston, 501 Days In Swampland. “On the day he took the oath of office,” wrote Johnston, “Donald Trump delivered two messages about what to expect from his administration. First came the lofty promise of his inaugural address. ‘The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,’ he vowed. ‘For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished-- but the people did not share in its wealth.’ The second message, which Trump delivered without speaking a word, was aimed at a much smaller, but very rich, audience. As the new president’s motorcade left the Capitol, rolling past knots of supporters and protesters, it suddenly stopped three blocks short of the White House. Trump, the First Lady, and the rest of his family got out of their limos and took a three-minute turn in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. This was no random spot. The very first place Trump headed after being sworn in-- his true destination all along, in a sense-- was the Old Post Office and Clock Tower, which only 12 days before the election had been repurposed as the Trump International Hotel Washington. The elegant granite structure, whose architectural character Trump had promised to preserve, was now besmirched by a gaudy, faux-gold sign bearing his name. The carefully choreographed stop sent a clear signal to the foreign governments, lobbyists, and corporate interests keen on currying favor in Washington: The rewards of government would now be reaped by a single man-- and the people would bear the cost.”

More than at any time in history, the president of the United States is actively using the power and prestige of his office to line his own pockets: landing loans for his businesses, steering wealthy buyers to his condos, securing cheap foreign labor for his resorts, preserving federal subsidies for his housing projects, easing regulations on his golf courses, licensing his name to overseas projects, even peddling coffee mugs and shot glasses bearing the presidential seal. For Trump, whose business revolves around the marketability of his name, there has proved to be no public policy too big, and no private opportunity too crass, to exploit for personal profit.

Nowhere has the self-enrichment been more evident than at his Washington hotel, which quickly filled up with the very lobbyists and swamp creatures Trump had railed against during his campaign. Oil companies, mining interests, insurance executives, foreign diplomats, and defense contractors all rushed to book their annual conferences at Trump’s hotels and resorts, where Cabinet members graciously addressed them. After hiking the nightly rate to $653-- 32 percent higher than other local luxury hotels-- Trump collected $2 million in profits from the property during his first three months in office. By last August, the hotel’s bar and restaurant had hauled in another $8 million in revenue. And although Trump has pledged to give away any money his hotels earn from foreign governments, the plan contains a lucrative loophole: Employees at his hotels admit that they make no effort to identify guests who represent other countries, meaning that much of the foreign money spent at Trump’s properties flows directly into his own pockets. On March 28, a federal judge allowed a lawsuit to go forward that charges Trump with violating the Constitution by accepting money from foreign governments at his D.C. hotel.

In fact, although Trump refuses to disclose the details of his myriad business operations, he continues to enjoy access to every dime he makes as president. Instead of setting up a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest, as other presidents have done, Trump put his two grown sons in charge of his more than 500 business entities. His sons regularly brief Trump about how the enterprises are doing, enabling him to personally monitor how his decisions in office affect his bottom line. What’s more, only 15 days after this “eyes wide open” trust was set up, Trump amended the fine print to allow him to take money out of the operation any time he pleases. The loophole, buried on page 161 of the 166-page form, stipulates that any “net income or principal” can be distributed to Trump “at his request.” Far from putting his wealth in a blind trust, Trump asked the public for its blind trust, effectively sticking his money in a piggy bank in Don Jr.’s room that he is free to raid at any hour of the day or night.

Trump’s children are working hard to cash in on his time in office-- especially with foreign investors. At taxpayer expense, they have flown to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Dubai, and India in search of licensing and real-estate deals, trading on the president’s influence in exchange for investments. But the biggest complication of Trump’s presidency-- and the one he works hardest to keep secret-- is the way his entire business operation is mired in massive debt. Rather than being independently wealthy, public records show, Trump and the business partnerships in which he is a leading investor owe big banks and foreign governments at least $2.3 billion-- far more than his disclosure reports indicate. His largest single loan-- for nearly $1 billion-- is from a syndicate assembled by Goldman Sachs that includes the state-owned Bank of China. If either Trump or Jared Kushner, who tried to shake down Qatar’s finance minister for a loan, winds up needing to negotiate new terms on his ballooning debt, America could find itself being dictated to by a foreign government-- all because the White House, thanks to Trump’s business model, has become a true House of Cards.

What follows is 501 days of official corruption, from small-time graft and brazen influence peddling to full-blown raids on the federal Treasury. Given how little Trump has disclosed about his finances, this timeline of self-dealing is undoubtedly only a fraction of the corruption that will eventually come to light. But as even this initial glimpse makes clear, Trump isn’t draining the swamp-- he’s monetizing it.

The Conservative L.A. Times Hits The Bullseye With Today's Trump Editorial

L.A. County is not a Republican-free zone, even though areas of L.A. are. Hillary won the county 1,893,770 (71.4%) to just 620,285 (23.4%) for Trump. Steve Knight (CA-25) is the only Republican member of Congress with a substantial piece of L.A. County in his district-- and he's only still in Congress because of massive and repeated DCCC incompetence. Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) and Ed Royce (CA-39) each has a small slice of L.A. in their districts too. But there are congressional districts in L.A. where the Republicans have ceased even running candidates-- CA-29 (Tony Cardenas), CA-32 (Grace Napolitano), CA-34 (Becerra's open seat), CA-37 (Karen Bass), CA-40 (Lucile Roybal-Allard), and CA-44 (Nanette Barragan)-- and in half a dozen L.A. districts Trump took less than 20% of the vote-- less than 10% in Karen Bass' district.

That's the population base the L.A. Times is selling newspapers to. But the L.A. Times is nowhere near as left-leaning as are the people who live in Los Angeles. The paper is published by Tronc (formerly Tribune Publishing of Chicago, a largely conservative outfit with some pretty right-wing papers in its portfolio, including the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and 3 in Orange County). It's neoliberal/neoconservative editorial stance has been hostile to progressive politics since before columnist Bob Scheer was fired over a decade ago. Today, though, the editorial, Our Dishonest President, is the most talked about piece in the paper in years. Their indictment of Trump was meant to be sobering and chilling. For anyone who hasn't followed Trump as closely as we do, it is both. Right from the outset, no words are minced: "It was," they began, "no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a 'catastrophe.' Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. Like millions of other Americans, we clung to a slim hope that the new president would turn out to be all noise and bluster, or that the people around him in the White House would act as a check on his worst instincts, or that he would be sobered and transformed by the awesome responsibilities of office." As we all know, quite the opposite is how this mess has been playing out.

Instead, seventy-some days in-- and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed-- it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced.

In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.

His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government’s regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.

These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country’s moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.

What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation-- these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but Trump’s cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.

In the days ahead, The Times editorial board will look more closely at the new president, with a special attention to three troubling traits:

1- Trump’s shocking lack of respect for those fundamental rules and institutions on which our government is based. Since Jan. 20, he has repeatedly disparaged and challenged those entities that have threatened his agenda, stoking public distrust of essential institutions in a way that undermines faith in American democracy. He has questioned the qualifications of judges and the integrity of their decisions, rather than acknowledging that even the president must submit to the rule of law. He has clashed with his own intelligence agencies, demeaned government workers and questioned the credibility of the electoral system and the Federal Reserve. He has lashed out at journalists, declaring them “enemies of the people,” rather than defending the importance of a critical, independent free press. His contempt for the rule of law and the norms of government are palpable.

2- His utter lack of regard for truth. Whether it is the easily disprovable boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd or his unsubstantiated assertion that Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, the new president regularly muddies the waters of fact and fiction. It’s difficult to know whether he actually can’t distinguish the real from the unreal-- or whether he intentionally conflates the two to befuddle voters, deflect criticism and undermine the very idea of objective truth. Whatever the explanation, he is encouraging Americans to reject facts, to disrespect science, documents, nonpartisanship and the mainstream media-- and instead to simply take positions on the basis of ideology and preconceived notions. This is a recipe for a divided country in which differences grow deeper and rational compromise becomes impossible.

3- His scary willingness to repeat alt-right conspiracy theories, racist memes and crackpot, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Again, it is not clear whether he believes them or merely uses them. But to cling to disproven “alternative” facts; to retweet racists; to make unverifiable or false statements about rigged elections and fraudulent voters; to buy into discredited conspiracy theories first floated on fringe websites and in supermarket tabloids-- these are all of a piece with the Barack Obama birther claptrap that Trump was peddling years ago and which brought him to political prominence. It is deeply alarming that a president would lend the credibility of his office to ideas that have been rightly rejected by politicians from both major political parties.

Where will this end? Will Trump moderate his crazier campaign positions as time passes? Or will he provoke confrontation with Iran, North Korea or China, or disobey a judge’s order or order a soldier to violate the Constitution? Or, alternately, will the system itself-- the Constitution, the courts, the permanent bureaucracy, the Congress, the Democrats, the marchers in the streets-- protect us from him as he alienates more and more allies at home and abroad, steps on his own message and creates chaos at the expense of his ability to accomplish his goals? Already, Trump’s job approval rating has been hovering in the mid-30s, according to Gallup, a shockingly low level of support for a new president. And that was before his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, offered to cooperate last week with congressional investigators looking into the connection between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this page that it was not yet time to declare a state of “wholesale panic” or to call for blanket “non-cooperation” with the Trump administration. Despite plenty of dispiriting signals, that is still our view. The role of the rational opposition is to stand up for the rule of law, the electoral process, the peaceful transfer of power and the role of institutions; we should not underestimate the resiliency of a system in which laws are greater than individuals and voters are as powerful as presidents. This nation survived Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon. It survived slavery. It survived devastating wars. Most likely, it will survive again.

But if it is to do so, those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard. Protesters must raise their banners. Voters must turn out for elections. Members of Congress-- including and especially Republicans-- must find the political courage to stand up to Trump. Courts must safeguard the Constitution. State legislators must pass laws to protect their citizens and their policies from federal meddling. All of us who are in the business of holding leaders accountable must redouble our efforts to defend the truth from his cynical assaults.

The United States is not a perfect country, and it has a great distance to go before it fully achieves its goals of liberty and equality. But preserving what works and defending the rules and values on which democracy depends are a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play in this drama.

This is the first in a series.

The page included a blown up pull-out quote-- "Those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard"-- which is a powerful endorsement of the voices of principled resistance inside Congress, resistance an L.A. area congressman, Ted Lieu, has been in the forefront of. It is a resistance Ted has asked voters in CA-34, who will go to the polls Tuesday, to help him with by sending Jimmy Gomez to Congress. "During these extraordinarily dangerous times," he told voters in Highland Park, Boyle Heights, Chinatown, Eagle Rock, El Sereno, Downtown and Koreatown, we need fighters like Jimmy Gomez in Congress. I served with Jimmy in the California Legislature and I know he will always and relentlessly fight for progressive values. More importantly, I need Jimmy with me as soon as possible so that we can keep punching back against the failing Donald Trump." True to form, the L.A. Times endorsed some also-ran who's unlikely to appeal to even 5% of the voters Tuesday. But CA-34 voters looking for more smart, principled and unflinching resistance to Trumpism would do well to listen to what Ted Lieu asked them to do and vote for Gomez. The thermometer on the right, by the way, isn't for contributions to Gomez-- you can do that here if you want to; there will be a runoff in June-- but for Ted Lieu and the other loudest, strongest and most strategic voices of congressional resistance. We have to support them as part of our own resistance to tyranny and kakistocracy.

One more thing about CA-34. Los Angeles was Clinton country in the general, obviously, but, less obviously, it was in the primary as well. Los Angeles County voted for Hillary over Bernie 590,502 (57.0%) to 434,656 (42.0%). She swept every congressional district in the county except one-- the fightin' 34th. That's right, my friends, Bernie took that district in the primary... all the more reason the voters there should elect the most Bernie-like of all the candidates running for Congress there in 2 days: Jimmy Gomez, the only candidate with a record of accomplishment very much like Bernie's. (Polls show that the second place is held by Robert Lee Ahn, a big-spending, very conservative and very wealthy Republican who recently switched to the Democratic Party and whose only appeal is based on ethnic solidarity.)