Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

Weaponization

Trump is trying to fire Lisa Cook. Ironies and questions abound. And chutzpah.

Lisa Cook was confirmed by the Senate as a Governor of the Federal Reserve in 2022. The Fed is supposed to be independent of the President, and Governors can only be removed “for cause.” The provision does not define “cause” or who determines it or how.

Trump’s claimed cause? According to allegations from the Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, Cook committed mortgage fraud by claiming two different homes as her primary residence in 2021. Trump claims these allegations as the cause for firing. Questions abound. Can allegations be “cause”? Even if true, does this constitute cause if it is unrelated to Cook’s performance on the Fed? Is it cause, even if true, if the conduct occurred before her confirmation and was not considered disqualifying by the Senate? Many Senators surely were looking for reasons to prevent her from getting the position. Her confirmation vote was at first deadlocked at 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.

Some of the ironies. Or chutzpah. Trump claims the allegations by themselves constitute cause. This is from a man who has been convicted of fraud for falsifying business records to hide payments made to Stormy Daniels. She got hush money payments to keep her tryst with Trump out of the news during his first campaign. Moreover, Trump was found to have committed something closely akin to mortgage fraud in a separate civil suit. He set high values on properties when seeking loans and lower values on the same properties for tax purposes. These adjudications, not mere allegations, have not disqualified him from the presidency.

A different irony: Many Trumpistas labeled these New York legal actions as dangerous political persecutions. For example, a conservative pundit on a “news” channel said that it is dangerous when prosecutors target individuals, and New York prosecutors had campaigned on the promise to “get” Donald Trump. They had a point, but they are notably quiet about targeting now. Cook, of course, is being targeted by federal officials. Their concern is not mortgage fraud. Instead, Trump wants to control the Fed. In other settings–the Labor Statistics Bureau comes to mind–Trump has simply fired those who promulgate data that he dislikes. If he were able to fire Cook as easily, he would, but with the Fed he must find “cause,” but any cause will do.

There are several ways in which prosecutions occur. Most take place because a crime is committed, and law enforcement sets out to find the bad guys. If the purported criminals are caught, they are prosecuted. A convenience store is robbed; a person is murdered; or someone is assaulted. If there is an arrest, a prosecution follows.

What might be called investigatory prosecutions are different. The authorities have reasons to believe that a person has committed a crime which is not publicly evident—stock fraud or loan sharking, for example. The authorities investigate to see if indeed the crime was committed and to collect evidence for the prosecution of the stock fraud or loan sharking.

Targeted prosecutions are different. In a small number of instances, authorities determine that a person is “bad.” They investigate to find a crime that he has committed and prosecute him for that even though the crimes are not the ones the authorities were truly concerned about. In this setting a crime is not targeted; a person is. This happened to Al Capone a century ago. Prosecutors knew that Capone was a bootlegger who used unprecedented violence to protect and extend his operations. However, apparently because witnesses could not be found to testify to these activities, they could not prosecute him for those crimes. Instead, after an extensive investigation, Capone was prosecuted for income tax offenses. Prosecutors convinced a jury that Capone lived well beyond the means possible on the income he reported. Therefore, he must not be paying all the tax he owed. Thus, Capone went to prison not for murder or other violent crimes, but for income tax evasion.

Trump and his supporters claimed that legal actions in New York had targeted Trump. That seems to have been true. New York prosecutors, who are elected, had made campaign pledges to “get” Trump. The Trumpistas maintained that such targeting is dangerous. Is it? Trump in fact committed the illegal actions he was charged with, or so the adjudications showed. How, then, can the commentator claim that targeting an individual is dangerous?

A certain kind of moralist may simply say, “If he did the deed, punish indeed… let him bleed.” But let’s combine some theology with the law. If you are of the Original Sin disposition, we all do things that are wrong. And even if you don’t subscribe to Genesis, you might know that we have many, many laws with blurry boundaries. (Almost) all of us have committed illegal acts, but stealing a pencil from work, overstating a charitable deduction, or slapping an acquaintance is almost never prosecuted. Our justice system would be overwhelmed if it had to handle every violation of the law. However, if the authorities want to “get” someone, and they have enough resources to investigate that person thoroughly, they will almost always be able to bring some sort of criminal or civil prosecution. And, yes, that is a scary power.

The Trumpistas, however, no longer proclaim prosecutorial targeting as dangerous because they would then have to denounce Trump’s actions. Lisa Cook’s criminal referral is not an attempt to enforce mortgage fraud. It is an attempt to find a reason, any reason, to remove her as a Fed governor. The problem is not that she is a criminal. Her problem is that she has not bent to Trump’s will. Letitia James, NY State’s Attorney General, and Senator Adam Schiff are being investigated for mortgage fraud not as a deterrent for loan shenanigans, but because they have opposed Trump. This is clear when news reports tell us that right-wing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has listed three homes as primary residences. Yet he is not being investigated for mortgage fraud.

Prosecutors targeted Capone for his horrendous crimes. Trump and his supporters are now targeting people not for crimes they may have committed, but simply because they don’t kowtow to Trump and his demands.

And yes, that is scary.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

That other woman . . . no, not that other woman . . . no, no, not that other woman . . . no, no, no, not that other woman. I am referring to that other woman known as Stormy Daniels. She is sometimes described as an adult film actress. That has made me think about the term “adult film.” It is used for movies with graphic depictions of sex, but, of course, we know that teens and pre-teens are so interested in that subject that they spend much time finding pornography on the internet. And, of course, the adults fascinated by adult films all seem to have an arrested development. On the other hand, there are many films, with or without sex, where the young and immature do not have the experience, knowledge, or empathy to be drawn into the movie. They are just bored if they go. These are films for adults, which, of course, are quite different from adult films.

I never feel more American than when I cannot speak a foreign language.

I like going into food stores in a foreign country. I wonder what the many products are that I don’t recognize and whether I would like them. Even the familiar products often come in packaging different from what I know, and it often seems amusing. I did notice warning statements on familiar and unfamiliar packages on a recent trip to Mexico that I had not seen elsewhere proclaiming Exceso Calorías, Exceso Azúcar, or Exceso Sal. One or more of those phrases seemed to be on an inordinate percentage of my purchases.

I enjoyed watching John Wick 2. The most obvious question is how can I enjoy a movie with a body count higher than a World War I film? Of course, the violence is choreographed and does not attempt verisimilitude. It’s a kung fu movie and reminds me of professional wrestling except that the wrestling scripts provide for more character development. Or how can I enjoy a movie with Keanu Reeves? I concede that he is a good action figure and luckily the movie does not require much dialog from him. But whenever he does deliver a line, I feel as if I am watching a high school play. How can I enjoy a movie with so many implausibilities? But I did, except I was left with one other question. Part of the movie is set in New York City, and like any city resident I enjoy the New York scenes and try to figure out where they are. In John Wick there were impossibilities. So, for example, you can’t walk out of a door in lower Manhattan and immediately overlook St. Patrick’s cathedral. That should have bothered me, but I gave the moviemakers license to show as many photogenic pictures as possible. I felt something similar when John Wick and one of the many people who is trying to kill him are in a subway station. That station was so clean and new, I thought it could not be a real New York City scene. The characters get on the train announced as a C train. The C is a real train. I know it well because it is the closest subway to my home and one that I have ridden thousands of time. The announcement says that the C train is going to Broad Street and that Rector Street is the next stop. The C train, however, does not go to Broad and does not stop at Rector. I saw no reason why if they were going to say it was a C train, they did not announce its real itinerary. On the other hand, I can’t say why of all the things in the movie that could have bothered me and did not, this did.

A Texas legislator has introduced a bill that would require the posting in all school classrooms of copies of the Ten Commandments in a version mandated by the legislator. I am wondering if he will also mandate how teachers should inform second graders about the meaning of adultery. Or what it means not to covet your neighbor’s ass.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

          After I came out of Pedro Almodóvar’s latest movie, Pain and Glory, I thought about the term “adult film.” It is used for movies with graphic depictions of sex even though teens and pre-teens and not particularly mature adults are interested in the subject matter. On the other hand, there are many films where the young and immature do not have the experience, knowledge, or empathy to be drawn into the movie. They are just bored if they go. These are films for adults, which, of course, is quite different from adult films.

          I wonder how many adults knew who Stormy Daniels was before her connection with Donald Trump hit the news. Yet she was identified frequently as an “adult movie star.”

          The first Almodóvar film I saw was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. How many of you thought that the title was redundant? Hold up your hand if you think that question is offensive? How many of you have nail polish on that hand?

Overheard at a Feminist Conference

Sisters, this may sound ominous,

But we all have a touch of the mom in us.

                   Richard Moore

          As I passed two young men on the sidewalk, I heard one demand, “Well, who then brought the urine?” If there was a reply, I was out of earshot.

       I ran into the postal carrier in front of my house. I said that I would take the mail up the stoop and save her some steps. She thanked me, and I asked her how many steps she did during her work. She tapped her watch and said, “According to this, about 16,000.” (Just in case you ever wondered.) I asked her how many flights of steps.  (It is twelve steps up from the sidewalk to my mail slot. Sometimes my Fitbit registers this as a flight of stairs but sometimes, aggravatingly, not.) She said her device did not have flights of stairs.

          I read the handout that I was handed, and parts of it gave me concern about the performance I was about to see. The bio of the playwright said, “He’s been honored to receive commissions and developmental support from institutions like [emphasis added] The Kennedy Center/New Voices New Visions, The Eugene O’Neill Conference, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, and Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor Residency.” I assumed that the playwright had written this. He probably meant that he got support from the listed institutions, but he wrote that he got aid from institutions that were akin to the ones mentioned. My concerns about the production further increased because the artistic director for the theater company wrote, “It is a pleasure to produce a playwright who creates well-defined and complexed [emphasis added] characters.” Is there such a word as “complexed”? Does it mean something different from “complex”? These are people whose careers involve good writing. But in spite of my concerns, the play was quite good.