Would You Put Trump In Charge Of Guarding Your Money?

Most Americans-- including some who voted for him and even some who plan to vote for him again-- do not find Trump honest and trustworthy. Pollsters never ask if respondents would put their pretty under-age daughters in a room alone with Trump or if they would agree to let Trump hold on to their savings for a few months. I think we've all know from the beginning-- albeit New Yorkers more than anyone is Alabama or Wyoming-- that Trump is a crook from head to toe and always has been. And I think more Americans are waking up to that now.

When Congress passed their big bailout bills, they were smart enough to make sure the bailouts would be subject to oversight by a team of honest brokers. But they somehow weren't smart enough to anticipate that Trump would fire the head of the team and replace him with a lackey. It should have brought chills to every Americans' spine when Trump said he himself would be in charge of making sure all the money was spent properly.




Yesterday Washington Post reporters Peter Whoriskey and Heather Long asked the question we'll be hearing a lot between now and November: Who's Getting These Hundreds Of Billions In The Government Aid?. They know the answer; we won't be finding out any time soon and, obviously, "if the names of the beneficiaries of the aid are withheld, it will be difficult to gauge how much of the relief money is being wasted, fraudulently obtained or reaching places it was intended to go, experts and watchdog groups say... The names of businesses that collectively will receive hundreds of billions of dollars in coronavirus relief from the federal government," they wrote, "may not be disclosed publicly, an omission that critics say could make the massive spending program vulnerable to fraud and favoritism. The $2.2 trillion Cares Act approved by President Trump last month requires that the names of recipients of some forms of federal aid be published, but those requirements do not extend to significant portions of the relief. Chief among the omissions is the $349 billion expected to be doled out to small companies in chunks as large as $10 million. The rescue legislation does not compel the Small Business Administration to disclose the identity of the recipients. So far, the agency has said it received about 487,000 applications totaling $125 billion in requests. A potentially even larger gap involves the trillions going out to businesses under the auspices of the Federal Reserve."

The legislation requires that the Fed disclose the loan recipients and the amounts they receive, "but there is a significant exemption: the Fed chairman, Jerome H. Powell, may request that the information be kept confidential, meaning only congressional leaders would be given access." Powell is petrified of Trump and rarely stands up to his outrageous demands.

Though most of the $2.2 trillion in spending has yet to begin, disputes already have arisen about who will be responsible for making sure it is done ethically.

The Cares Act requires several layers of oversight: It calls for a special inspector general, a congressional review commission and a “Pandemic Response Accountability Committee,” a group that will be composed of inspectors general armed with enhanced powers to subpoena documents and testimony.

But President Trump already has taken steps that undermine these reviewers. In signing the Cares Act into law, Trump angered some Democrats, who had insisted on oversight measures, by declaring that the special inspector general cannot issue reports to Congress without “presidential supervision,” a constraint that could compromise the watchdog’s independence.

Then on Monday, Trump removed the chairman of the federal panel Congress created to oversee his administration’s handling of the Cares Act. Glenn Fine, who had been the acting Pentagon inspector general, was informed he was being replaced at the Defense Department by Sean W. O’Donnell, currently the inspector general at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Regardless of what happens to the oversight panels, the public disclosure of who receives the trillions in emergency money could play a critical role in the public debate over the programs.

Publishing the recipient information would enable outside groups-- not just government-appointed bodies-- to check into the spending, said Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog group.

“We are always going to be in favor of as much transparency as possible in government spending,” he said.

But under the $2.2 trillion spending bill, the requirements for disclosure vary by the type of spending.

For example, one of the best known elements in the bill, which allows the Treasury Department to spend $46 billion to help airlines, air cargo companies and “businesses critical to national security,” requires the Treasury to promptly publish the name of the company getting money, the amount of the loan and the contract.

The Cares Act similarly sets out requirements for the Federal Reserve to disclose information about the loans it offers.

The Fed is required to turn over to Congress-- and ultimately put up on the Fed’s website-- the basic items of loans issued: the identity of the business, how much money was lent and the interest rate. Later it will disclose how much of the loan has been repaid.

Powell has stressed repeatedly in recent months that he believes the Fed must be transparent and accountable to the public in all its actions. In a speech Thursday, he also emphasized that the Fed is making loans that it expects will be repaid, not outright financial grants.

“I would stress that these are lending powers, not spending powers,” Powell said. The Fed’s expectation is “the loans will be fully repaid."

As the Fed chair, Powell has the discretion to keep the company name and amount borrowed confidential, sharing it only with certain congressional leaders who oversee Fed activities.

During the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve refused to turn over to reporters the records of some of its emergency bank lending. Bloomberg, the media company, sued for their release and, in a case that went to the Supreme Court, won three years later.

...There are no such requirements, for example, for the $100 billion destined for health care providers, or the $3.5 billion for companies developing diagnostics, medications and vaccines, or the $10 billion supposed to go to airports.

Those agencies could still release the information, however, and some are planning to do so.

...One of the most divisive of the disclosure debates could arise over the $349 billion promised to small businesses, a figure that could rise to almost $600 billion if a follow up relief bill is approved. The Small Business Administration hasn’t yet said how much has been disbursed.

Keep in mind, Trump absconded with millions of dollars he illegally misappropriated from his Inaugural Fund which was widely padded by crooked businessmen and even other countries to bribe him. Yesterday, Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for TARP, penned an OpEd for the Times, Why We Desperately Need Oversight of the Coronavirus Stimulus Spending. He went out of his way to take the high-road and not assert that Trump is a crook, a road that at this point in time is just patently absurd. But he did make note that "More than $2 trillion is about to head out the door, committed in a single news release last week by the Federal Reserve Board. In that release, the Federal Reserve announced how it and the Treasury Department intend to leverage just a portion of the $454 billion that Congress gave the department in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, known as the CARES Act, with the potential of trillions more in lending to come."

He asked the key question: "Who will conduct oversight of this staggering amount of taxpayer money? We need to ensure that this government aid is not being stolen, wasted or given to political cronies"-- all of the things Trump is best known for. "And we need to make sure that the public is aware of how and to whom those trillions are distributed. In short, we need watchdogs. As it prepares for more relief in the wake of vast economic ruin caused by Covid-19, Congress has leverage-- and must use it."

During TARP, the compliance officials at the Federal Reserve were often careful and thoughtful. But within the Treasury Department, where many of the key decisions were made, officials often had a far less rigorous approach-- and given the rushed nature of their actions so far, I fear this may apply even more so today.

For the CARES Act, Congress demanded the same watchdog function within Treasury-- but so far, that dog is still in the pound. The legislation promised a brand-new agency headed by a special inspector general for pandemic recovery who would keep the programs on the right policy track and protected from fraud. The new agency would also provide the necessary transparency to make sure that when decision makers fall short, as they inevitably do in the haste of an emergency, it could make quick recommendations to correct course and share both the flaws and the proposed solutions with Congress and the American people.

Perhaps most important, it would shine a bright light on the decision-making process within the Treasury Department, deterring policymakers from making decisions-- which are likely to determine which companies survive and which fail-- based on personal connections or cronyism rather than the merits. Unfortunately, President Trump included a signing statement to the CARES Act that suggested he would limit the ability of the new inspector general to reveal to Congress efforts by his administration to obstruct or impede his inquiries.

Some are also raising questions about the president’s intended nominee for the job, Brian Miller. Even in the absence of what the signing statement may portend about the president’s intentions, the job of special inspector general for pandemic recovery would require fierce independence and the steeliest of spines. Mr. Miller demonstrated those qualities when he was the inspector general of the General Services Administration for nearly 10 years. But he is now on the president’s legal team at the White House and apparently played a role in fending off oversight requests during impeachment.

This raises important questions, but Mr. Miller deserves the opportunity to demonstrate at a confirmation hearing that he is prepared to repel any efforts to muzzle his ability to provide unvarnished reports to Congress. That won’t be possible until he is formally nominated and a confirmation hearing scheduled. Until then, the critically important role of the special inspector general remains unfilled.

The money is already flowing. Critics of the CARES Act pointed out that there could be a delay in the appointment of the special inspector general, but we were told not to worry, there would be a Pandemic Recovery Accountability Committee immediately organized that consisted of sitting inspectors general. Even better, the widely respected acting inspector general of the Defense Department, Glenn Fine, was named as its chairman. But that didn’t last long: He was quickly sacked by Mr. Trump with no explanation, leaving the committee leaderless, dormant and very possibly housebroken.

Because Mr. Fine’s dismissal came after attacks on other inspectors general (including another Pandemic Recovery Accountability Committee member, Christi Grimm, the acting inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services), a chilling message was sent and received by the watchdogs who are expected to play a crucial role in overseeing the trillions of dollars spread throughout the government as part of CARES: Criticize the programs at your peril, and think twice before even raising your hand for the task of overseeing them.

Until there is a new chairperson of this commission who can operate without the fear of being fired merely for taking the position, this watchdog has been effectively neutered.

And then there was a Congressional Oversight Commission, patterned on the Congressional Oversight Panel from the TARP legislation, which a then little-known Harvard professor named Elizabeth Warren turned into a beacon of transparency and accountability. But the commission, like Congress itself, is dependent on cooperation by the administration to provide access necessary to analyze and report on the programs. The recent assertions by the White House that it can ignore congressional subpoenas provide little comfort that the commission will be able to fulfill its role.

Only one of its five commissioners has been named, and we are waiting for the critical chairman to be named by congressional leaders. Keep in mind that, as we wait, trillions are committed and will begin to be spent.

What is the best use of Congress’s leverage? It is already apparent that additional relief will be necessary. Before parting with another trillion dollars, Congress must condition any further funding on the inclusion of protections to ensure that the inspectors general overseeing the Treasury Department’s actions can be removed only for cause shown, the nomination and hearing for Mr. Miller must proceed as soon as possible, provisions must be enacted ensuring that oversight bodies will have unimpeded access to the information that they need to carry out their tasks, and the seats of the Congressional Oversight Commission must be filled.

Otherwise, buckle up for what oversight helped limit in TARP-- vast amounts of taxpayer money lost to fraud, policy decisions made in the dark with little chance of success and scandals that may make us yearn for the relative quiet of impeachment.

We're All In This Together, Right? Surviving This Crisis With Dignity

According to the latest YouGov poll for The Economist, just 20% of Americans think the pandemic is not a national emergency and 15% are unsure. And 22% say they are either not very concerned or not concerned at all about the pandemic. Forget those people they're probably going to die anyway--or vote for conservatives.

One question in the poll was "Do you approve or disapprove of Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak?"

• Strongly approve- 25%
• Somewhat approve- 20%
• Somewhat disapprove- 15%
• Strongly disapprove- 31%
• Not sure- 8%

The poll also asked some questions about the election to, like the one above, to all registered voters regardless of party. Pay attention:

If the election for president were held today with Donald Trump as the Republican running against a Demo- cratic Party candidate, who would you vote for?

• The Democratic Party candidate- 48%
• Trump- 40%
• It depends- 11%
• I would not vote- 1%

If an election for president were going to be held now and the Democratic nominee was Joe Biden and the Republican nominee was Donald Trump, would you vote for?

• Biden-48%
• Trump- 41%
• other- 4%
• not sure- 5%
• I would not vote- 2%

If an election for president were going to be held now and the Democratic nominee was Bernie Sanders and the Republican nominee was Donald Trump, would you vote for?

• Bernie-48%
• Trump- 41%
• other- 3%
• not sure- 6%
• I would not vote- 2%

Another thing-- voters were asked which issues were important to them. Here are the 5 issues for which respondents over half answered "Very Important" as opposed to "somewhat important" or "unimportant" in one version or another:

• Healthcare- 72%
• Jobs and economy- 66%
• Taxes and government spending- 57%
• Terrorism- 54%
• Education- 53%

Asked which issue is flat-out the most important, numero uno is health care (29%), followed by job and the economy (18%) and climate change and the environment (13%), No other missed were rated #1 by 10%. or more.

This is an important question asking if each of these candidates is honest and trustworthy:

Trump

• yes- 32%
• no- 55%
• not sure- 13%

Biden

• yes- 35%
• no- 41%
• not sure- 24%

Bernie

• yes- 43%
• no- 33%
• not sure- 25%

Yeah, Bernie is seen as the most trustworthy and honest. And he's also as likely to beat Trump as Biden is. Democrats who don't vote for him in the next batch of primaries are out of their minds. And about that honest and trustworthy thing, Frank Rich highlighted why we need a unifying and trustworthy person at the helm for... well, catastrophes like the one we're going through now: Trump Lies His Way Through a Pandemic. "The president who is leading this country into battle cares about no one but himself, continues to lie to Americans daily about the most basic imperatives of a public-health catastrophe, and presides over an administration staffed with incompetent, third-tier bootlickers and grifters. And I am not just talking about Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, and Wilbur Ross. There are now three college seniors serving in White House positions, thanks to a new purge of ostensibly disloyal staffers being conducted by Trump’s former body man, the 29-year-old John McEntee, recently installed as director of the Presidential Personnel Office. Trump calls himself a “wartime president,” but his only previous wartime experience was partying during Vietnam, when he was spared military service because of “bone spurs.” Those bone spurs long ago migrated to his brain. If America rises to the occasion, it will be despite him, not because of him. We’re at the point where even if Trump were to start telling the truth, no one except the most mad-dog MAGA-ites would believe him."

Right now the country is waiting for a bomb to drop: that much-predicted turning point when the metastasis of illness and mass death in the U.S. could match the curve we’ve seen in Italy. Trump’s nonstop lies-- and those of toadies like Pence-- are not just intended to cover up the many failures to prepare for the looming apocalypse (“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”), or to blame those failures on China and Obama, or to luxuriate in unearned self-congratulation (“I’d rate it a 10”). What the lies are doing now is throwing gasoline on the gathering fire. Why in heaven’s name would Trump, having previously lied about the fast arrival of a vaccine, now tell anxious and desperate Americans two days in a row that unproven and unapproved drugs for malaria and arthritis might rapidly be a “game changer” for treating the coronavirus? Why would Pence, having previously made up fictitious numbers for the amount of tests available, now promise millions of hospital masks even as hospitals from Washington to Washington, D.C., say they will have to reuse masks because of the shortage and the government’s own Centers for Disease Control is suggesting that under-equipped hospitals use bandanas instead? Why does a president cite the Defense Protection Act, which allows him to commandeer industry to produce emergency supplies, while simultaneously telling the states to find much-needed ventilators on their own?

Trump’s answer to that last question was that the federal government is “not a shipping clerk.” He seemed not to understand that it’s ventilators that the nation’s hospitals urgently need, not the postal service. Such is his minimal comprehension of the urgent tasks at hand that Trump’s level of competence doesn’t rise to that of the skipper of the Titanic. The Titanic’s captain may have hit an iceberg, but at least he recognized the scientific reality that icebergs exist.

Up until now Trump’s motives for lying have been to (1) cover up what may prove the most catastrophic failure in the history of the American presidency; (2) to distract the country from the continuing failure in the effort to keep his reelection campaign afloat; (3) to boost the stock market. But another motive is emerging that’s entirely in keeping with the history to date of Trump’s kleptocratic White House: rewarding his family and cronies financially.

A couple of days ago NY Times writers Mark Lander and Stephen Castle, reporting from London looked at what jarred Boris Johnson and Señor Trumpanzee out of their lethargy and indifference about the pandemic and spurred them both-- too late-- into action. They point to "a startling new report on the virus from a team at Imperial College in London. The report, which warned that an uncontrolled spread of the disease could cause as many as 510,000 deaths in Britain, triggered a sudden shift in the government’s comparatively relaxed response to the virus. American officials said the report, which projected up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States from such a spread, also influenced the White House to strengthen its measures to isolate members of the public."'

The project at Imperial College is led by epidemiologist Neil Ferguson, who said that his country "has struggled in the past few weeks in thinking about how to handle this outbreak long term. Based on our estimates and other teams’, there’s really no option but follow in China’s footsteps and suppress." That means shut down everything which no one has done in the U.S. yet-- not even the governors of California, Illinois and New York, who are pretending to do that, while there are so many exemptions that it's just a joke.

[O]ther experts said the burden on hospitals was clear as far back as the original outbreak in Wuhan, China. Lancet, the British medical journal, published an article in January, based on studying a small group of patients, which found that a third of people had to be admitted to intensive care units.

“I can’t help but feel angry that it has taken almost two months for politicians and even ‘experts’ to understand the scale of the danger from SARS-CoV-2,” said Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of Lancet, on Twitter. “Those dangers were clear from the very beginning.”

Some said governments should treat the report’s projections about suppression policies with the same caution. It says social distancing measures might have to be imposed for 18 months or more, at least intermittently, until a vaccine is developed and tested. But the report acknowledges this is uncertain, given the possibility of drug treatments and the mystery of how the virus is transmitted.

“We’re all using the 1918 pandemic flu handbook,” Dr. Sridhar said. “But we’re in a different position than in 1918. We’re in 2020.”

After days of confusion about the wisdom of encouraging “herd immunity,” the government sought to play down the dispute, arguing that this was not a deliberate part of its strategy but a byproduct of it. But it shifted to a policy of urging people not to go to pubs, restaurants, theaters or museums.

On Tuesday, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said he expected these new, more stringent restrictions to last for months-- and that the authorities would have to monitor very carefully what would happen when they are eventually lifted.

British officials recognize that their health service faces a moment of truth. All non-urgent operations in England will be postponed for at least three months, starting April 15, to free up 30,000 beds to help tackle the coronavirus.

Britain lags behind other European nations in its supply of ventilators. Plans are underway to ramp up their numbers from over 8,000 to 12,000, though officials are reluctant to promise that even this is sufficient.

Underscoring the change in tone, Britain’s finance chief, Rishi Sunak, announced a gargantuan fiscal stimulus to salvage reeling British businesses and to try to stem job losses. The package, worth £330 billion, or $422 billion, will include government-backed loans and tax breaks for companies and a three-month break in mortgage repayments for strapped homeowners.

“We have never in peacetime faced an economic fight like this,” said Mr. Sunak, who also promised support for airports and airlines in the coming days, after Britons were advised against all non-essential travel.

Mr. Johnson hinted on Tuesday that schools could be closed soon. But he still faces criticism for a lack of clarity, including his decision to urge people to avoid pubs and restaurants but not to order their closing. In fact, the government now intends to relax laws to allow pubs to stay open and produce takeout food.

To Mr. Johnson’s embarrassment, one of those promising to visit his local pub was his own father, Stanley Johnson.

How Much Do Voters Care About Honesty And Trustworthiness? We'll Soon Find Out

Me The People by Nancy Ohanian

In his Washington Post column yesterday, Greg Sargent explained why evidence that Trump knew of the whistleblower complaint when he unfroze military aid to Ukraine is devastating evidence against him, reducing his absurd "I want nothing-- no quid pro quo" defense to smoking ruins. No doubt the Judiciary Committee members-- think Ted Lieu, Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, David Cicilline, Joe Neguse...-- were thinking about this yesterday as they prepared for next week's impeachment hearings. Those are some of the sharpest mind's in Congress. Will the eyes of the country be focused on the hearings? Yesterday, the L.A. Times reported that "more than 70 million viewers watched some portion of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry."

Trump likes screeching at his bund rallies that no one was watching. He wishes! "Both Fox News Channel and MSNBC saw significant year-over-year increases in audience levels for November. MSNBC’s daytime viewing levels for November were the highest in its 23-year history."

Viewing of live gavel-to-gavel coverage that aired on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the three major broadcast networks peaked on its opening day, Nov. 13, when it reached an average of 13.1 million viewers. By the fifth session on Nov. 21, the audience leveled off to 11.3 million, comparable to what a top-rated non-sports entertainment program draws in prime time. Fox News was the most-watched network each day.

Gym Jordan by Nancy Ohanian

The figures reflect the average number of people who watched the coverage at any time. The total number of viewers who tuned in-- determined by Nielsen as those who watched at least six minutes of coverage over five days-- came in at 70.8 million. The number does not include C-SPAN or PBS stations that carried the coverage.

The daytime impeachment hearings also gave a boost to cable news opinion shows in prime time. Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight averaged 3.4 million viewers in November, a record high for the program. Hannity also reached an all-time high with 3.6 million viewers. Fox News averaged 2.7 million viewers in prime time, up 15% from November 2018, a high-rated month that included coverage of the midterm elections. MSNBC was up 12% to 2.06 million viewers as The Rachel Maddow Show had its best month since January with an average of 3.3 million viewers. CNN was down 11% to 999,000 viewers.

Many more people also watched some portion of the impeachment hearings online, with all the networks citing a lift in traffic. NBC News counted 9.6 million video “starts” for impeachment coverage across its streaming platforms, which include Twitter and Facebook. CNN said digital viewing boosted its November audience by 3.4%, the largest lift the network has ever seen.

The new SSRS poll released yesterday by CNN asked voted how important the impeachment inquiry be in their vote for president:

• extremely important- 27%
• very important- 19%
• moderately important- 12%
• not that important- 39%

Along with the 2% who have no opinion, that 39% is the pool from which concentration camp guards could be drawn were Trump to win a second term.

That same poll asked all voters regardless of party if Trump is honest and trustworthy. 36% said he is, 62% say he isn't. On top of that, Pro-Publica just published a devastating exposé on Trump's tax swindling. "Documents," wrote Heather Vogell, "show the president’s company reported different numbers-- higher ones to lenders, lower ones to tax officials-- for Trump’s signature building," part of a pattern Trump has long engaged in.

Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.

In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.

For example, as of December 2011 and June 2012, respectively, Trump’s business told the lender that 99% and 98.7% of the tower’s commercial space was occupied, according to a prospectus for the loan. The figures were taken from “borrower financials,” the prospectus stated.

In tax filings, however, Trump’s business said the building’s occupancy was 83% in January 2012 and the same a year later. The 16 percentage point gap between the loan and tax filings is a “very significant difference,” said Susan Mancuso, an attorney who specializes in New York property tax.

...Trump had much to gain by showing a high occupancy rate to lenders in 2012: He refinanced his share of Trump Tower that year and obtained a $100 million loan on favorable terms.

...Those discrepancies were “versions of fraud,” according to Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. The penalties for false filings can include fines or criminal charges.

The diverging numbers match a pattern described by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, in congressional testimony this year. Cohen said Trump at times inflated assets’ value in documents submitted to lenders in an effort to secure loans. In reports to tax officials, Cohen testified, Trump would lower the value to reduce what he owed.

The focus on Trump’s business and personal financial records has been particularly intense of late. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has subpoenaed a wide array of Trump financial records to investigate claims that the Trump Organization falsified records of hush-money payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she and Trump had a sexual encounter. (He has denied the affair.)

Congressional lawmakers are seeking Trump’s personal tax returns, as well as other financial information, as part of their investigation into potential foreign influence on the presidency. Two federal courts have affirmed lawmakers’ right to enforce the subpoenas, and Trump has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jail to the chief? What do you think? So far, no former American president has ever been thrown in prison. Of course, we've never had one as crooked as Trump, have we? I think it's time, primarily because he deserves it-- but also as a warning to future presidents. We don't elect kings... and we won't accept candidates conspiring with foreign powers to meddle in our elections.

The University Of Pennsylvania's Dirty Little Secret: Donald Trump's Wharton Degree

Graduation Day (May 20) 1968: Donald J Trump poses with his father shortly before or after receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Fiannce and Commerce. He has said that day was "the beginning" of his transformation from just another rich kid to the bold-faced real estate mogul and Lothario he would become:
a.k.a.
The Donald J Trump

-by Charles Krause

HIS TWEETS TELL THE TALE

The University's silence is "a disgrace"

As my 50th college reunion approaches, this weekend, I will return to Philadelphia ashamed, saddened and angry that my Alma mater has chosen to remain silent in the face of what's become painfully obvious: the University of Pennsylvania failed to educate its most famous alumnus, Donald J Trump, Wharton '68.

Simply put, what the world has seen since the day he became President is a Penn grad with a 6th grade vocabulary; less than a passing acquaintance with proper English grammar and spelling; no apparent interest in, or knowledge of, history, literature, the arts, science or, most dangerously, Constitutional law. (Had he taken Dr. Henry Abraham's Constitutional Law course, things might have been different. But he probably wouldn't have passed.)

Without any doubt, Donald Trump's degree from the Wharton School is a disgrace to the University; an insult to Penn alumni, especially those of us who graduated in the 60's and early 70s; and one of the alternative facts Candidate Trump used, shamelessly, to persuade those who voted for him that he was qualified to be President.

One explanation for Our Leader's having both the educational level of a high school drop-out and an undergraduate degree from what is supposed to be one of the world's great universities, is that, 50 years ago, the University of Pennsylvania was a diploma mill, willing to admit, and grant degrees to, anyone who could pay tuition.

It just so happens I was the editor-in-chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn's student newspaper, in 1968, the year young Donnie Trump, as he was known then, received his under-graduate degree from Penn's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. Believe me when I tell you, the explanation that Penn was a diploma mill with the standards of a second-rate community college, is simply not true.

There is another explanation, however, that I asked the University's current president, Amy Gutmann, to investigate in a letter I sent her this past January. That she never acknowledged receipt of my letter, much less ordered the investigation I suggested, coupled with Michael Cohen's testimony about the threatening letters he was ordered to send to Fordham and Penn, strongly suggests to me that what I asked Gutmann to investigate, is true.

And if it is true, then the University's official silence about The Donald's relationship to the University-- a policy Gutmann adopted soon after he announced he was running for President in 2015-- suggests she is engaged in covering up a scandal that Trump himself was worried might derail his candidacy had it become known during the primaries, when he used his Wharton degree as a prop to prove he was the brilliant genius he claimed to be.

by Nancy Ohanian

His fixer, Michael Cohen, knew better. He thought the way he used his "academic credentials" proved something else. "When I say con man, I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores," Cohen said when he testified before Congress.

Fordham, where The Donald spent his freshman and sophomore years, before transferring to Wharton in 1966 for his junior and senior years, at least confirmed receipt of Cohen's letter.

Penn would not.

"Sorry, but we do not comment on students' records," the University's spokesman told The Daily Pennsylvanian, when its editor tried to confirm that Penn had also received Cohen's threatening letter. What the DP got, instead, was a near-perfect nonresponse response (used most often in Washington when an agency spokesperson is forced to respond to questions about a front page story in The Timesor The Post that he/she knows is so explosive that even a "no comment" could resultin getting his or her principal not only fired, but indicted).

Cohen obviously thought-- or knew-- his bosses' grades and test scores would not support Candidate Trump's claim that he is brilliant and a genius-- the reason Cohen seemed to think he had been ordered to write the letters.

But what if it was something much worse, something that would reveal the way Donald Trump had used money all his life to buy what he wanted-- or, to get rid of what stood in his way?

What if his grades at Fordham were so bad-- and his test scores so low-- that if they, like his tax returns, were made public, eyebrows would be raised and questions would be asked: "How did The Donald ever get accepted to Wharton with grades and board scores like that?"

And what if, omg, what if it turned out that somebody had to bribe somebody to get him in? Even Jeb Bush might have roused himself long enough to make something out of that, especially if the University correctly decided it would have to withdraw his precious degree because it wouldn't be fair to Penn's thousands of other undergrad alums if bribing admis-sions officers were recognized as one perfectly acceptable and customary way students were admitted to Penn during the years Donnie Trump was there.

THE BAD: Pillage Practice by Jim Boden

What I asked Gutmann to do was quite simple: compare Trump's grades from his freshman and sophomore years at Fordham, and his board scores, with those of the other applicants who wished to transfer to Wharton as juniors in 1966. If his measured up, case closed. If they didn't, then what I had been told 40 years ago, would bear further investigation.

And what that was, was this: that Donald Trump's older brother, Freddy, who graduated from Lehigh, paid someone he knew in the admissions office at Penn to admit his young Donnie Trump into Wharton, despite his failing grades at Fordham and low board scores-- the very same grades ands board scores he was worried about 50 years later.

The other half of the rumor has been, for years, that The Donald spent very little time in class and paid other students to take his exams, which would account for the degree he received in 1968 without his having learned much of anything during his two years at Penn.

After the tough guy role he played firing people week after week on NBC, which we now know was a con job because he apparently hates to fire the crooks he's hired to run the government, it should come as no surprise that he managed to con the University into giving him a degree he didn't earn honestly. It should also come as no surprise he's not very good in his current role as President, playing on the world stage to sophisticated audiences who can tell the difference between a pro and an amateur.

What is surprising, and deeply troubling, is President Gutmann's disinterest in defending the rest of the University's alumni, whose degrees are degraded as long as the world assumes that the educational achievement of hte University's most famous alumnus is no different than ours.

Or, put another way, that ours is as poor as his.

The letter I wrote to her is below.

I'll leave it to those who care to read it to decide if Penn's dirty little secret should be exposed.

by Tim Atseff from the series, Seven Deadly Sins: Trump's Dystopian Hepatology

Dear President Gutmann,

I write to you now as a member of the Class of 1969, former University Trustee, former editor-in-chief of the Daily Pennsylvanian and former member of the Benjamin Franklin Society. Over the past two years, I have waited in vain for the University to defend the integrity of the degree which I, and my classmates, earned just a year after Donald Trump (W ’68) graduated from Wharton without the basic language skills and knowledge of science, history, literature and the arts one would expect of a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

Sadly, the degree my classmates and I were once so proud of, and that we are being urged to return to campus to celebrate in May, 50 years after receiving it, has, for me, at least, become an embarrassment. Every day, it is further degraded by the President’s tweets and interviews; poor grammar; inability to spell; sixth grade vocabulary; lack of intellectual curiosity; disrespect for fact-based research and information; and policy choices which reflect obvious ignorance of our Constitution and American history.

While it would be unfair to hold the current academic leaders and Trustees of the University responsible for the failures of past administrations, the University’s silence, in response to the President’s repeated use of his Wharton degree as proof of his intelligence and educational achievement, has done nothing to dispel the impression that, in the 1960s, the University’s standards were so low it was possible to graduate from the Wharton School with no apparent knowledge of business law or ethics and from the University of Pennsylvania having learned nothing at all.

I believe it was my dear friend, the late Claudia Cohen, who first told me the rumors about Mr. Trump’s older brother having “arranged” Donald Trump’s transfer into the Wharton School’s undergraduate program---after flunking out of Fordham. Our conversation would have taken place in the spring of 1979, when Claudia’s training at the Daily Pennsylvanian had taken her to Page Six at the New York Post and mine had brought me to New York to collect an Overseas Press Club award for my reporting from Jonestown, where I was shot and wounded the previous November while on assignment for the Washington Post.

Donald Trump graduated the year I was editor-in-chief of the DP. Yet, I never knew, or knew of, him. Nor did many other undergraduates I’ve talked to since, apparently because he didn’t spend much time in Philadelphia. By 1979, however, he was a bold-faced name in New York, someone Claudia would have known. I remember, we laughed; it seemed so inconsequential. I mean, who could have imagined Donald Trump would become President of the United States?

If the rumors are true, however, they’re no longer inconsequential or a laughing matter.

His admission to an Ivy League school, one he may have been unqualified to attend, might well have contributed to his apparent belief that the norms and laws of the country don’t apply to him. The circumstances of his admission might also help explain how he managed to get into and out of Penn without anything to show for it except his degree and perhaps some of the finance and accounting tricks he would later use to make money when his companies went bankrupt.

I believe it is incumbent upon the University to undertake a thorough forensic investigation of Donald Trump’s admission to the University, with special reference to the transcript of his two years at Fordham and his SAT scores, to determine whether he was academically qualified to transfer into the Wharton undergraduate program; and his undergraduate record to determine whether any evidence exists of another rumor, that he paid other students to write his papers and take his exams.

Even if the latter cannot be conclusively proven half a century later, his Fordham transcript and SAT scores should be enough to determine if he was eligible for admission to the University in the first place-- and whether his degree should be invalidated, if he was not.

When the University revoked Steve Wynn’s honorary degree, you issued a statement which said, in part, “As a university, we have always been, and will always continue to be, looked to by our alumni and neighbors, our faculty, and most of all by our students, for moral leadership. We must not-- we cannot-- fail to provide it,” you said.

by Jim Boden

I think many alumni applauded your no-nonsense approach to the allegations made against Mr. Wynn, then a University Trustee, but wonder why similar behavior by Mr. Trump hasn’t resulted in a similar response by the University. Yes, we know Mr. Trump is President of the United States. And would argue, all the more reason for the University to demonstrate its moral leadership.

And finally, I wish to register my disappointment at the 50th Reunion program recently sent to members of the Class of ’69. It is devoid of relevant intellectual content.

Quite frankly, if the University does nothing else, I believe it should offer the Class of ’69 morally and intellectually defensible and relevant seminars that would include Constitutional scholars, historians and others from the University capable of continuing our education about the rights and duties of U.S. citizenship and the crisis of governance we face as a result of our fellow alum’s presidency.

If the University is unable to provide a Reunion program relevant to our lives today, it would be unfortunate-- but I think entirely appropriate-- if some of us were to organize a parallel set of Reunion seminars and social activities-- or boycott the Reunion altogether. If nothing else, our response would demonstrate that at least some of us learned something as a result of the excellent education most of us received while we were at Penn.

I look forward to your response. I should add that I shall consider this letter a private correspondence for a month. At that time, absent a substantive reply, I shall feel free to release the letter publicly, hoping to initiate a discussion I feel is necessary and long overdue. Most sincerely,


Charles A Krause
Founder and board chair
The Center For Contemporary Political Art, Washington DC

Silence is not the answer

for the Trustees and President of
the University of Pennsylvania
or for its alumni.

The Trustees and President can't pretend
Donald Trump doesn't exist,
airbrushing him out of the University's history
the way Walter Annenberg at one time
airbrushed Gaylord Harnwell out of
the Philadelphia Inquirer.

There may have been reasons
to remain silent and neutral during the primaries
and general election campaign in 2016.
But our whole system of government
is now at risk
and the University cannot,
and should not,
forsake its lineage by remaining
silent as his prejudice, narcicism and ignorance
(for which the University is at least partly responsible)
destroy the fabric that made this
country vibrant and strong.

I actually thought the letter I sent
Amy Gutmann
offered an honorable
way out for the University.
If Donald Trump should
never have been admitted, then the
University can legitimately
take back is degree
and cut its ties to him,
and his ties to the University.

Not even those of us who were
at Penn when Donald Trump was a student,
can be held accountable
for the mistakes that were made
50 years ago.

But we can and will be
held accountable
for what we do now.
If the University that begat Donald Trump
doesn't disassociate itself from Donald Trump,
then we, the alumni,
need to register our disapproval
and take action.

For the Class of '69,
our 50th reunion
may be a good time and place to start.

THE UGLY: Sin #1 by Tim Atseff

2019 Will Be More Palatable With Alan Grayson In Congress Denouncing Trump's Lies Daily

The polls Morning Consult has been doing for Politico have been relatively benign for Trump. A couple of weeks ago, while almost every other poll showed Trump struggling to keep his job approval from slipping out of the low 30s and into the 20s-- which is widely believed will trigger impeachment hearings--  Morning Consult had him at 45% approval (and 51% disapproval). That’s about the best Trump has had from any legitimate polling firm-- "the best," that is, until you look more closely and realize that most Americans now realize Trump is a liar.

Alan Grayson did a different kind of poll this week, one that he isn’t attempting to pretend is "scientific." He asked his own followers what the biggest political  lie of the last 100 years was. The results were fairly predictable:

• Trump: "Trump and Russia is a made-up story" - 55%
• Bush: "Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" - 35%
• Nixon: "I am not a crook" - 10%

More than half of us think that Lying Trump's lie about the Russians is bigger than the lying lies of both Lying Nixon AND Lying Bush. Let that sink in for a minute (or for a минут, as Trump might say to his good friend Vladimir).

…Trump beat Nixon in this World Series of Lying.  And even my kids-- none of whom was alive when Nixon was alive-- know that Nixon was a liar’s liar. They know this from Futurama, which featured Richard Nixon’s severed head in 11 different episodes. Here is my favorite Futurama Nixon line:

Bailiff: “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

Nixon’s Head: Um... am I under oath when I take the oath?

And Bush?  Bush suffered a momentary spasm of honesty when he gave Karl Rove the nickname “Turd Blossom.”  But that moment passed quickly, like a kidney stone, and then it was back to the uninterrupted BS.

But by our vote, Trump is the capo dei capi (boss of all bosses) of lies.  Trump is the Denier-in-Chief. He is the Barry Bonds of BS.  He is a six-foot-tall colostomy bag of crap. He is the preening, peacock Pinocchio of politics.

And Trump’s biggest lie of all? The lie that he was legitimately elected.

I think Grayson is going to run for Congress again. There are 3 dead-weight, utterly useless conservative Democratic congresmembers representing the Orlando area-- Blue Dog Stephanie Murphy and New Dems Darren Soto and Val Demings. Three wasted seats in Congress. I wish Grayson could run for all three simultaneously and have three votes and three times as much floor time. He'd certainly use it more effectively than Murphy, Soto and Demings do-- combined.

By the way, Grayson hasn’t declared he’s running for a congressional district yet but he seems to have an informal campaign. “Team Grayson” sent out a fund-raising letter today:

"Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est," said Julius Caesar.  And, similarly, Congress is divided in three parts:

1 The glad-handers.
2 The empty suits.
3 The sacks of hooey.

Help establish a fourth category: (4) LEADER.  Support Alan Grayson’s campaign for Congress, right here and right now.

The glad-handers are the ones with that permanent smile affixed to their faces. They are the survivors of the Joker’s laughing-gas attack. They seem to be listening to some elevator music that no one else can hear. Sometimes, they hum quietly to themselves. Whenever they see you, they look you in the eye, offer a firm handshake, and compliment you on your excellent appearance. They’re the ones who suggest that you look like you’ve lost some weight, even though you know that your belt is buckled on the last hole. And every time they open their mouths, it’s to thank some distinguished gentlemen or esteemed lady with whom it has been an honor to serve. They are very fond of each and every large donor.

Alan Grayson is not a glad-hander.

The empty suits are the ones who originally ran for office because they could obtain no other form of gainful employment. First the city council, then the county commission, then the tax assessor, then state senator, then Member of Congress. They have mastered the art of falling upward. They always have a confused look in their eyes, and they don’t even feign competence. They end each week with a sign of relief-- nothing bad has happened. They live in fear that some enterprising reporter will ask about their greatest accomplishments. On the other hand, they have no fear that anyone will ever identify them on the street. They come, they go, and it’s as if they were never there.

Alan Grayson is not an empty suit.

The sacks of hooey ask the same question, all day long: “what’s in it for me?” They’re the ones who enjoy the surf-and-turf with lobbyists, night after night. They’re the ones who treat every vote series as an imposition. If it’s your amendment, they’ll turn to you and complain, “I was right in the middle of lunch!” They lease a new Lexus each year, at taxpayer expense. They schedule campaign fundraisers in California and Florida during Winter Break, and they bring the whole family. They insist on an assignment on one of the “money committees” (that’s what they’re actually called-- money committees) in order to pad their campaign accounts. For $20,000, they’ll be your BFF. Some of them will even tell you that.

Alan Grayson is not a sack of hooey.

In his last two congressional races, Alan Grayson was the ONLY Member of Congress who raised most of his campaign funds from small donors like you. PLEASE make it happen again-- sign up to give $20.18 each month. Because Congress does NOT need another glad-hander, empty suit or sack of hooey. Congress needs Alan Grayson, just as WE DO.

I’m happy to get this confirmation Grayson is going to run. Hopefully, he’ll feel that there are a number-- not a great number-- of congressmembers already taking leadership roles in pushing the agenda he stands for as well-- men and women like Ted Lieu (D-CA), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and other I know Grayson admires like Jose Serrano (D-NY), Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and John Lewis (D-GA). Not to mention all the candidates who will be coming into Congress in 2019. Long before people had ever heard of “IronStache,” outside of Wisconsin, Grayson was the first (former) congressman to endorse Randy Bryce for Paul Ryan’s seat. A few weeks Grayson asked his own supporters to contribute money to Illinois progressive David Gill. Grayson as parti of a team is what I’d love to see playing a dominating role in Congress starting in 2019-- a team that includes some of Grayson’s old friends and some of the new generation of candidates he’s going to love, especially the idea-machines like Kaniela Ing (HI), Austin Frerick (IA), Jess King (PA), Derrick Crowe (TX), Lillian Salerno (TX) and Dan Canon (IN).

And by the way, for all of Trump’s absurd bragging about accomplishing more than any other president in history, this is the list of what he has actually accomplished in his first miserable year in office (courtesy of presidential scholar Dan Molina):

• Most days vacationing*
• Most games of golf played
• Least amount of bills signed
• Lowest approval ratings
• Most provable lies
• Most cabinet firings
• Most criminal indictments

* Trumpanzee delusional fantasy world built on lies: "I would rarely leave the White House because there's so much work to be done. I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off." In reality Trump has spent more time on vacation in his first year than Obama, Clinton, Reagan and Carter combined.