Thursday, March 4, 2021
Redux
It was déjà vue all over again.
— Attributed to Yogi Berra
They’re still with us-the Prince family that is. It’s hard not to marvel at their staying power. Those with long memories will recall the great trump friend and cabinet member of the trump administration-Betsy Dee Prince. By the time we got her, of course, she was married, and was known as Betsy De Vos. She was especially distinguished since she was one of the few trump appointed cabinet secretaries who managed to hang on to her position for the four years the trump was living in the White House.
Throughout the trump White House years, she was the Secretary of Education. In that capacity she did so many great things for the education of wealthy children that it is hard to recall them all. A couple of her more recent ones, however, serve as good examples of her efforts on their behalf. During the second month of the COVID 19-pandemic in 2020, she demanded that public schools reopen in the fall. She said that if they didn’t she’d send their money to private and religious schools. In May she used federal coronavirus relief funds to create a $180 million voucher program for private and religious schools.
The good works of Betsy and her family were not limited to helping private and religious schools. In May 2020 it was disclosed that Betsy and other family members had funded the Honest Election Project. Its goal was to fight efforts to expand vote-by-mail options in the 2020 elections. Betsy’s brother, Erik Prince, was also involved in assorted companies that were engaged in non-education ventures. One of them was Blackwater USA.
In its early incarnation, Blackwater USA was a training facility for special operations personnel. In its later years its operations were expanded to protect U.S. personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among services rendered, a Congressional Report found, Mr. Prince’s employees at Blackwater Worldwide were involved in almost 200 shootings between 2005 and 2007 in Iraq. Not all of the shootings were directed at enemy combatants. Among the non-enemy shootings was a December 24, 2006 shooting of one of the men guarding Iraqi Vice President, Adel Abdul Mahdi. He was killed by a drunk Blackwater employee.. On February 4, 2007, an Iraqi journalist was killed by another Blackwater employee. On September 9 five people near a government building were killed by one of the Blackwater employees; three days later five people were wounded by Blackwater employees, and four days after that seventeen Iraqis were killed by Blackwater employees in Nisour Square. As a result of that last shooting, four of the men involved were tried in the United States. One of them was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted of murder and three of the men were convicted of manslaughter and weapons charges. All were pardoned by the trump in the blissful waning days of his White House tenure.
Prince sold Blackwater in 2010 after he settled federal investigations into its activities in Iraq by paying $42 million in fines. Notwithstanding the hefty fines it paid for the conduct of its employees during their years in Iraq, the overall operation was profitable for Erik. Over the course of its operations Blackwater billed the United States Government more than $1 billion for services it had rendered. Ridding himself of Blackwater has not, however, removed Erik from having an interest in military matters in that part of the world. On February 26, 2021 it was reported that Erik is once again under investigation for his military activities although no longer in Iraq or Afghanistan. According a recently released United Nations report, he has selected a new venue. It is Libya.
A United Nations panel of experts began investigating Erik’s activities in connection with his possible participation in activities that were violations of an extant arms embargo on Libya. As a result of that investigation, the panel prepared a report that has been viewed by assorted sources that are now disclosing the report’s conclusions. Among other things the report concludes that Erik helped arms suppliers evade an arms embargo that was imposed on Libya by the United Nations. The New York Times reported that Erik had, among other things, furnished weapons and a force of armed mercenaries to a militia commander whose goal was to overthrow the extant government in Syria. According to the New York Times the forces were exceptionally well equipped. They were armed with gunboats, attack aircraft and cyberwarfare capabilities. The operation provided by Erik reportedly cost $80 million which seems like a lot until you recall that when he disbanded Blackwater he had paid $42 million in fines which, in the Prince scheme of things, suggests those large numbers may be large but they’re not intolerable.
It is not now known whether Erik will suffer any adverse consequences as a result of the report. His reaction to the report was not surprising. He denied all its conclusions. As he said to one reporter: “My name has become click bait for people who like to weave conspiracy theories together. And if they throw my name in, it always attracts attention. And it’s pretty damn sickening.” Some might conclude that comment by suggesting to Erik: “So is your conduct.”
Thursday, February 18, 2021
Profiles in Courage
— Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Whitney vs. California (1927)They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
For profiles in courage, two of the 43 Republican senators who opposed impeachment stood out-Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. One other Senator stood out for his apparent ignorance of how jurors are supposed to behave. His behavior belied his impeccable legal credentials of which he is justly proud-Harvard law school and a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship. That ignoramus was none other than Ted Cruz.
During one of the breaks in the second impeachment trial of the trump, Ted Cruz, was seen entering the room in which the trump defense counsel was gathered. He was apparently unaware of the fact that during trials, jurors do not interact with the prosecution or the defense, the idea being that the jurors are to keep open minds until all the evidence has been heard. In ordinary circumstances the Cruz behavior would have been inappropriate but in the impeachment proceedings it was simply frosting on the cake of non-impartiality. That is because before the trial even began, Juror Cruz met with the trump defense team and told its members that they’d already won their case. In his weekly podcast that aired on the Friday before the Senate voted, Cruz told listeners that he met with the defense team and: “I said, look, you’ve gotta remember you’ve already won.” Since he’d already let them know how he intended to vote there was, of course, nothing inappropriate in his going into their conference room during the trial itself.
Cruz’s confessed lack of impartiality was nothing compared to two profiles in courage that were in full display during, and following the conclusion of the trial. The first was presented by Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader.
During the attack on the Capitol that precipitated the second impeachment trial, Kevin was in his office as the marauders were about to break in. According to CNN, as that was happening McCarthy was on the phone with the trump begging him to call off the rioters. The trump ignored the peril facing McCarthy, and said the mob was more upset about the election than McCarthy, to which McCarthy asked the trump to whom the trump thought he was speaking, using an expletive for emphasis. The conversation ended abruptly as McCarthy fled.
Before the end of January McCarthy showed of what stuff he is made. He went to Florida, ostensibly as part of a fund-raising trip. He showed his courage by finding time to meet with the trump to assure him there were no hard feelings for the trump having taken no steps to protect him from the howling mob. He further showed the stuff of which he’s made by not disclosing, during the impeachment trial, his conversation with the trump during the break-in lest he once again offend the trump. He left that to Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler, a member of Congress from Washington State, who was, of course, only able to report what she’d been told by him. Her information was entered into the record in the form of a written statement. A description of the verbal encounter between McCarthy and the trump would have been more forceful had it come from one of the participants instead of from hearsay reported by one of McCarthy’s colleagues. It would have even more meaningful had it not been preceded by a sycophantic visit from McCarthy to the trump following the verbal encounter.
The other profile in courage was forcefully presented by former Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. Throughout the trump presidency, Mitch has shown his obsequious loyalty to the trump irrespective of what the trump has done. At the second impeachment trial, however, he outdid himself. The democrats wanted the trial to begin while the trump still lived in the White House and, was, therefore, still the president. That would have gotten the impeachment over with before the change in administration, and would have eliminated the argument that the proceedings were unconstitutional since the trump was no longer in office. Exercising the prerogatives he enjoyed as Majority Leader in the Senate, however, Mitch made sure the impeachment proceedings would not begin until the trump was out of office. At the conclusion of the hearing Mitch said the trump could not be convicted because, thanks to Mitch’s own actions, the proceedings took place after the trump had left office and the purpose of impeachment was to remove someone from office. Since the trump no longer held office, a vote for impeachment was improper.
Following his explanation of why he voted against conviction of the trump, Mitch went into an expansive description of the trump’s obnoxious behavior while enjoying the position that permitted him to live in the White House. . Had the trial taken place while the trump was still entitled to live there, those acts would have been ample reason to impeach the trump.
The foregoing is not meant to suggest that Mitch And Kevin were the only profiles in courage that day. They were joined by 41 of their Republican colleagues whose profiles in courage will be an inspiration to those who love trump long after the trial is nothing but a dismal footnote in the history of the country.
Wednesday, February 3, 2021
The trump and Suu Kyi
If wishes were horses,
Beggars might ride.
—John Ray,- English Proverbs-
They have a lot in common-the offices they once held, and their treatment of people. There is only one thing they do not have in common and it’s what he wanted more than almost anything in the world. Here is what they have in common.
She will be out of office for at least a year, having been removed from office by a military coup. He was removed from office as a result of an election in which votes were stolen from him and given to President Biden by poll workers and other corrupt officials. Those people, he and his advisors would tell you, were the equivalent of the Myanmar military removing Aung San Suu Kyi from office for one year.
Unlike the trump, Suu Kyi enjoyed a distinguished career before events of 2017 took place. When she returned to Myanmar from England in 1988, she was placed under house arrest and kept there for 15 years becoming a global symbol for democracy. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Following her release from house arrest in 2010, she became an internationally recognized symbol of the coming of democracy to Myanmar. In 2012 she was awarded the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal. During a visit to Myanmar in 2012, President Obama described her as: “an icon of democracy who has inspired so many people, not just in this country but all around the world.” In 2015 such accolades clearly distinguished her from the trump upon whom no one would shower such accolades.
In the 2015 election in Myanmar, the National League for Democracy of which Suu Kyi was a member, gained a parliamentary majority and Suu Kyi became the state counsellor, the equivalent of prime minister. The Rohingya and other observers thought that with her ascendance into power they would be treated as rightful citizens. They were to be disappointed.
Suu Kyi and the trump have more in common than their removal from office. They both, to the dismay of the world and their own citizens, treated the unwanted in similar fashion. In the case of Suu Kyi, it was approving the military’s treatment of the Rohingya Muslims who have lived in Myanmar for generations. In the case of the trump it was the treatment of immigrants seeking to enter the United States and establish lives here.
In the case of the trump, families seeking asylum in the United States without permission were forcibly rendered asunder. Undocumented asylum seekers were imprisoned. Accompanying children under the age of 18 were given to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where they were shipped to assorted venues for eventual resettlement. As of this writing the parents of 628 migrant children separated from their families due to Trump administration policies at the US-Mexico border between 2017 and 2018 have still not been located. Things were even worse in Suu Kyi’s Myanmar.
In a government sponsored military action in 2017, more than a thousand Rohingyans were killed or raped, or burned to death by the military. More than a million Rohingya were driven from their homes and now live in refugee camps in Bangladesh. U.N. investigators said the military operations had “genocidal intent.” Nonetheless, as those atrocities were taking place, Suu Kyi defended the actions of the military saying: “the military’s actions were an appropriate response to a Rohingya militia uprising” and describing the generals who were accused of genocide as “quite sweet.”
Both the trump and Suu Kyi will always be remembered for their treatment of their fellow human beings during their time in power. There is, however, one significant difference between Suu Kyi and the trump, and it is a difference that will forever trouble the trump.
Whenever people think of Suu Kyi, they will also remember that Suu Kyi is the recipient of something the trump wanted more than almost anything else in the world-the Nobel Peace Prize. The trump made no secret of his desire for that.
In a self-aggrandizing moment at a campaign rally in January of the last year of his presidency, he complained about the fact that Abiy Ahmed, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, was the winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. As the trump explained in his typically succinct style: “I’m going to tell you about the Nobel Peace Prize. I’ll tell you about that. I made a deal. I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of the country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country. I said: ‘What, did I have something to do with it? ‘Yeah, but you know, that’s the way it is. . . . I saved a big war, I’ve saved a couple of them.”
Mr.Abiy was awarded the prize on October 11, 2019 and gave his acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway on December 10, 2019. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and presidential daughter, Ivanka Trump, both congratulated Mr. Abiy on receiving the award. As we were to learn after the 2020 presidential election, when the trump loses, he does not congratulate the winner. Mr. Abiy never heard from the trump.
As noted at the outset. The trump and Suu Kyi will be remembered for some of the same reasons. But to his ever-lasting distress, the trump will never be remembered for having received the Nobel Peace Prize. Pity that.