Thursday, April 15, 2021
Voter Fraud Revisited
— William Whitehead, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742)Alas, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond today.
From time to time it is good to be reminded that the consequences of trump’s verbal attack on the election could have been even worse than it was. As it is, his most notable verbal legacy is his repeated use of the words “voter fraud” to describe the reason he lost the 2020 election. After he lost the election, the trump did all he could do to preserve the country’s cherished political system. Not only did he endlessly (and selflessly) shout “voter fraud,” but he went to extraordinary lengths to prove its existence so that the country could be spared the prospect of living under a president who had not been duly elected by its citizens, but had, instead, been elected and installed as the result of an election marred by voter fraud.
The trump’s efforts to demonstrate voter fraud were first shown in the state of Georgia. Believing that massive voter fraud had occurred in that state, the trump had repeated phone calls with its election officials in which he urged them to acknowledge what he already knew-the election in that state had been stolen from him by extensive voter fraud. At one point in an hour-long conversation with the Georgia Secretary of State he made a very modest request. He did not request that the entire election be overturned. Since he lost the state by 11,779 votes, he simply asked the Secretary of State to find 11,780 votes, enough to make him the winner. The Secretary of State declined to go on a stolen vote search and, accordingly, the results in Georgia remained as recorded by its officialdom, and to his dismay and annoyance, the trump remained the loser in that election.
Thanks to the trump’s unsuccessful importuning of the Georgia Secretary of State, Republicans in the state legislature acted quickly to enact legislation to insure that in the future, voting by minorities would be more difficult, thus, apparently, eliminating the possibility of voter fraud. (One of the newly enacted provisions in the Georgia law prohibits offering food or drink to those standing in line to vote. Governor Bryan Kemp quite properly pointed out that is not as harsh as it seems. He explained that people standing in line can get food or drink by ordering from Grubhub or Uber.)
Georgia was, of course, not the trump’s only voter fraud discovery. He also found voter fraud in, among other places, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, to name just a few. In the lawsuit in Michigan to overturn the results of the election there, Rudy Giuliani, one of the trump’s many distinguished lawyers, told the federal court hearing the case, that he had viewed hundreds of affidavits that proved voter fraud, but he couldn’t disclose them since the accusers wanted to remain anonymous. The federal judge who threw out the lawsuit described the Giuliani allegations of voter fraud as “generalized speculation.”
More than 40 lawsuits were filed around the country in Republican attempts to prove that the trump assertions of widespread voter fraud were true. None of them was successful. That does not mean that the trump cries of voter fraud went unheeded by Republicans. Republican legislators responded in force. Republican dominated legislatures throughout the country have introduced legislation intended to make voting more difficult and, they believe, protected from voter fraud.
The American website, FiveThirtyEight, has examined states where legislative efforts to restrict voting have occurred. In its examination. it reports that The Brennan Center for Justice has compiled a list of bills that have been introduced around the country that are designed to curb voting rights. The Brennan center reports that 253 bills that would restrict voting rights have been introduced in 43 state legislatures as of February 19, 2021. FiveThirtyEight reports that it has found another 53 bills introduced since then making a total of 306 bills that have been introduced to restrict voting rights. According to FivethirtyEight’s report, the bill tracking service, LegiScan, found that 89% of the bills that had been introduced “were sponsored entirely or primarily by Republicans.
Obviously all of this legislation was a Republican response to the trump’s unending cry of “voter fraud” that, he asserted, cost him the election. But his cries were fervently believed by his ardent followers and motivated them to respond by taking all steps in their power to protect their citizens from the dreaded “voter fraud.”
Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the purpose of this column is not to lament the politicization of the voting process because of the trump’s rants, nor to bring the return of vestiges of the Jim Crow days to the readers’ attention since that has been adequately done by others. It is to remind us how much worse consequences of a trump proclamation would have been, had Republican legislators in their different states been responding to a different trump description of a peril facing the country. I challenge my readers to imagine, what enormous and unbelievably expensive construction projects Republican legislators around the country would already have funded had they been responding not to trump’s endlessly repeated cry of “voter fraud” but instead an endlessly repeated cry from trump that “THE SKY IS FALLING.’
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Mitch and Elaine
Birds of a feather will flock together.
— Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
The marvelous thing about Mitch McConnell is that he’s unaffected by juxtaposition. Of course it was just a coincidence-his comments about the Biden stimulus package that, he said, uses taxpayer dollars that encourage people not to work, and the Inspector General’s report about the activities of McConnell’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who used taxpayer dollars to help her family in a way that could be said to encourage them not to work. Some people would be embarrassed by the timing of the report. Not Mitch. Consider his comments on the floor of the United States Senate and in interviews with Fox News on the effect the Biden stimulus package would have on the country.
On March 3, 2021, Mitch explained to Martha MacCallum on Fox News, that as a result of the Biden package: “There is a concern about making it more advantageous to stay home rather than going back to work. If we could do it all over again, we-meaning Republicans-may offer an alternative that we think fits the situation. And it’s considerably less than $1.9 trillion. . . .” At a press briefing before it was voted on, he described the bill as “wildly expensive” and “largely unrelated to the problem.”
Led by Mitch, the Republicans in the Senate, to a man and woman, ever mindful of their taxpaying constituents and the need to protect the taxpayers’ dollars and make sure they are appropriately used, on March 6, 2021, voted against the stimulus package sent to them by the House. It was hardly Mitch’s fault that three days before the vote took place, and on the same day he was being interviewed on Fox News, we learned of Elaine’s lack of concern for the very same taxpayers that Mitch was so interested in protecting from Biden’s profligacy.
On March 3, 2021, a report was released by the Transportation Department’s inspector general. The report disclosed that during Elaine’s tenure as transportation secretary under the trump administration, she used her office staff who were paid by taxpayers, to help her family. Her family has a shipping business that has extensive China ties.
The report that was released on March 3 was preceded by an investigation by the Transportation Department’s inspector general into Elaine’s conduct while acting as Secretary. Following completion of that investigation in December 2020 the inspector general referred the report to the trump justice department for possible criminal investigation. To no one’s surprise, the trump justice department did nothing. Nonetheless, the report was not ignored.
On March 3, 2021, a 44-page report that detailed the results of the investigation into Elaine’s conduct as Secretary was delivered to the House. In delivering the report, Mike Behm, the Transportation Department’s deputy inspector general said in the letter that accompanied the report that: “A formal investigation into potential misuses of position was warranted.”
No formal finding that Elaine violated ethical rules was made but, according to the New York Times that reported the story, the investigators “detailed more than a dozen instances where her office, supported by the taxpayers took steps to handle matters related to her father, who built up a New York-based shipping company . . . .” Elaine did not take the adverse publicity that accompanied the delivery of the report lying down.
When the Inspector General’s report was delivered to the House, Elaine’s public relations firm issued a statement that said in part: “This report exonerates the secretary from baseless accusations and closes the book on an election-year effort to impugn her history-making career as the first Asian American woman appointed to a president’s cabinet and her outstanding record as the longest tenured cabinet member since World War II.” (Elaine served as Secretary of Labor under the George W. Bush administration for the full eight years of his presidency.)
Among what the public relations firm described as baseless accusations, were the use of Elaine’s staff to arrange details for her father’s trip to China in October 2017, using her staff to do chores for her father such as promoting his Chinese-language biography and editing his Wikipedia page for him. The report further observes that in 2018 Elaine had her staff promote her father’s appearance “at events at Columbia University, SUNY Maritime College, Lloyd’s List, and the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.”
Elaine did not respond to questions from the Inspector General. Instead she issued a statement that explained why she had helped her father. She said: “Anyone familiar with Asian culture knows it is a core value in Asian communities to express honor and filial respect toward one’s parents. Asian audiences welcome and respond positively to action by the secretary that include her father in activities when appropriate.” Readers may decide for themselves whether her filial devotion expiates what many would have considered an abuse of her position and misuse of the taxpayers’ dollars.
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
The Golden trump
We shouldn’t maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.
— Gustave Flaubert,Madame Bovary
It was such a huge hit at CPAC in Miami that it’s hard to know where to begin describing it. I refer, of course, to the six-foot-tall golden sculpture of the trump that was on display at the gathering. The upper part of the sculpture wears a jacket and tie, and the lower half somewhat incongruously, at least to this observer, is wearing a pair of shorts that are a likeness of the American flag. To complete the sculpture, the sculpture is wearing slip flops. The sculpture itself is made of fiberglass and weighs about 200 pounds. Its genesis and its creation are of almost as much interest as the finished product.
According to reports, the model for the sculpture was not the trump himself but a likeness of him that can be found online in what is known as a “Trump Bobblehead.” The trump bobbleheads have various incarnations but are amazing replicas of the trump himself. They are called bobbleheads because the head of the figure is loosely attached to the model itself so that it can move in almost any direction when the figure is moved, movement that is described as “boggling.” That could easily have been the word used to described the trump’s actions during the time he lived in the White House.
When the sculpture first entered our consciousness we were told it had been created by Tommy Zegan. Tommy describes himself as a long-time trump fan and told reporters that he began working on the sculpture in 2018. He said that the actual sculpture was made in Rosarito, Mexico. Notwithstanding Tommy’s statement that the sculpture was made in Mexico, we soon learned that it had in fact not been made in Mexico, but had been made in China. Zegan resisted initially disclosing that fact because of the trump’s dislike of China and his attribution to China of the Corona virus.
Although Tommy initially took all the credit for the creation of the sculpture, it turns out he had a collaborator. The collaborator was Mexican artist José Mauricio Mendoza. José explained that his participation in the creation of the sculpture was not disclosed because it was thought that trump supporters would not be interested in admiring or buying a sculpture made by a Mexican. In one video describing the project, however, José is described as “art director and co-founder” thus giving credit where credit was due.
The sculpture was the hit of the conference to no one’s great surprise. Throughout the conference, attendees were seen standing by the sculpture having their pictures taken. In response to those who said that the sculpture was an idol, however, Mr. Zegan said the sculpture was definitely not an idol. As he explained, “An idol is something somebody worships and bows down to. This is a sculpture. It’s two different things.” He may have been prompted to make that explanation because of a widely circulated photo of the sculpture that had been doctored to show a group of evangelical leaders praying over the sculpture. Such a gathering had not in fact taken place. The picture was altered to create that impression. That does not mean that there was no prayerful adoration of the trump at the CPAC gathering-just not of his statue. There were unlimited speeches by the likes of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley that consisted of prayerful adoration of the trump and all his many accomplishments.
The sculpture on display at the CPAC conference has now been retired. It is being auctioned on e-bay. As of this writing the highest bid is $50,200. Given the great success of the work, it is a virtual certainty additional bids will come in when an adoring public discovers that the sculpture is for sale. Tommy hopes that the sale of the sculpture to a private investor will not mark the end of the sculpture’s life as a public memorial to the trump. That is because Tommy’s creative skills were not limited to the fiberglass version on display at the conference and now being sold on eBay. Tommy also created a stainless-steel version of the sculpture. And his hopes for where that sculpture may reside has suggested an answer to one question that has been on many lips since the trump left the White House. The question is, what should be put in a trump presidential library.
The trump presidential library should house the many different kinds of television sets that were in use during the trump’s years in the White House. They should be tuned to different channels playing recordings of the trump visiting with commentators on Fox news and similar news outlets, as well as reruns of the trump’s most exciting public appearances before adoring crowds. Other sets should display the thousands of presidential tweets created by him during his tenure. Tommy’s suggestion of adding a stainless-steel sculpture of the trump wearing a coat, tie, American flag shorts and flip flops, would not only lend dignity to what might otherwise seem an informal display, but would add a touch of class to the trump presidential library that it may otherwise be lacking. Thanks to the inclusion of their sculpture in the library, Tommy and José would, like trump, be forever remembered for their great accomplishment.