“It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersection, no fish, and no ducks.”
--Molly Ivins
 
1935 – President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Federal Power Act, directing the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities can ignore the federal law. Freedom from federal regulation was and is holy writ in Texas. For the next 40 years, the Texas electricity industry is completely unregulated.
 
Meanwhile – each of the lower 48 states are members of one of two electricity grids: the Eastern Interconnection or the Western Interconnection.

When one state or region suffers an electricity crisis, the Interconnection allows it to get electricity from other states that are members of its Interconnection. This is true for every state except Texas, with a few exceptions: El Paso and small portions of the Panhandle and East Texas are members of one of the Interconnections. They experienced no problems during the recent deep freeze that buried the 90 percent of the state reliant on ERCOT.
 
2011 – A severe winter storm blankets Texas, causing the state’s electricity grid to break down. The legislature orders a study of what went wrong. The study recommends weatherizing the vulnerable components of the system. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation issue a report concluding that Texas power and natural gas companies are unprepared for cold weather and recommend installing extra insulation, heaters and wind breaks. Governor Rick Perry, the legislature and the oversight agencies do nothing.
 
2014 – Frigid temperatures cause Texas power plants to freeze up, bringing the state’s grid to the brink of collapse. The state utility commission urges energy companies to identify weak points and take action. They resist. The commission backs off. The feds revive their 2011 recommendations. Governor Rick Perry, the legislature and the oversight agencies again take no action.
 
2021 – History repeats itself the third time in a decade. A major storm bashes Texas, fuel sources buckle and the grid collapses, putting 9 million homes into a deep freeze, killing at least 80 people and leaving four million Texans without water.
 
Current Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Railroad Commission Chair George P. Bush, who oversees the oil and gas industry, have a consistent history of ignoring, dismissing and watering down every effort to tackle the state electric grid’s shortcomings. Taking his cue from his Republican cult leader, toasty warm in his Palm Beach citadel, Governor Abbott, a very vocal climate change denier, blamed the grid problems on renewable energy sources (wind and solar) that provide only 10 percent of the power that fuels ERCOT. It is no coincidence that Abbott, Bush and AWOL Senator Ted “La Cucaracha” Cruz (R-Cancun) are deeply embedded in the pockets of the Texas oil and gas industry.  
 
Former Governor Perry, most recently Trump’s Secretary of Energy (and by every expert assessment the worst Energy Secretary in the department’s 45-year history) said: "Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business." In other words, freezing to death is a small price to pay for no federal regulation, which every other “red” state accepts as essential to keep its citizens warm and watered. Instead, Texans were left to burn their furniture and belongings for heat and melt snow to flush their toilets.
 
The nation should learn from Donald Trump’s politicization of a pandemic, resulting in hundreds of thousands of needless deaths, that Mother Nature does not care what your politics are or where you live. She will do what she does without any thought to how this will affect you.
 
Solutions--There are steps that need to be taken immediately to avoid a repeat when the next inevitable storm hits:
 

1. Sens. Cruz and Cornyn and their House counterparts from Texas should introduce legislation to hook ERCOT into the national grid Interconnections.
2. The Texas legislature should enact legislation and provide appropriations to weatherize the grid and its power suppliers.
3. The Texas debacle should also be a wake-up call for the nation to invest the necessary resources to modernize the national grid system, much of which is 70-plus years old, and turn it into the “smart grid” that energy experts have been advocating for years.

​Dick Hermann
February 26, 2021

​These are, in today's Republican Party, spineless politicians rotten to the core without virtue. Without any level of human integrity, devoid of self-respect, self-reflection, without courage, and without the moral compass to recognize their own malevolence.
--David Jolly (R-FL), former member of the U.S. House of Representatives
 
It strains credulity that, following the events of the past several months and the masterful prosecution of the House Managers’ case against Donald Trump, any honest juror could have voted to acquit the Perpetrator-in-Chief. In stark contrast, the Trump defense team was bumbling and inept. Sadly, Trump could have sent stadium cardboard cutouts to represent him and the result would have been the same.
 
QOP (“QAnon Old Party”) cowardice and contempt for their country once again trumped decency and concern for constitutional democracy. The Reichstag rubber-stamp Republicans who were too terrified of their cult leader’s wrath to hold him accountable for attempting to overthrow the government and threatening their very lives, signified their complicity with Trump’s attempted coup in which five people died. In so doing, they abandoned any right to participate in governing.
 
It is clear after that shameful Republican performance that Democrats must go it mostly alone in order to pull America out of the depths to which it was allowed to sink during the Trump travesty. That means, as step one, moving rapidly to enact the American Rescue Plan. Step two should be getting rid of the filibuster that gives Mitch McConnell’s malignant minority unwarranted power to stymie any legislation Democrats pursue to rehabilitate the nation.  Absent that, you can bet the mortgage that McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and their 242 colleagues whose votes against impeachment and conviction demonstrate that they have no intention of cooperating across the aisle. They have blood on their chicken feathers.
 
The QOP is now nothing more than a modern re-creation of twentieth century fascist parties. They embrace the same themes, the same beliefs, the same drive for domination, and the same blind and slavish devotion to a malevolent madman. Any urge on the part of President Biden, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer toward bipartisanship must be abandoned now if they want to get anything constructive done. At best there are only a handful of true Republicans worthy of their attention. For example, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), actually appears interested in being constructive. His proposed Family Security Act is something Democrats can enthusiastically endorse. But that is probably where any cooperation should end. Otherwise, Democrats will be whistling against the wind and become sorely frustrated in their sincere efforts to move the country forward.
 
The QOP’s latest display of gutless groveling is all Democrats need to realize that trying to make nice with these Quislings is a fool’s errand. Any lingering doubts about their sincerity and decency were blown up immediately after their latest shameful spectacle of spinelessness. The moment of awareness came when McConnell, the Janus-faced leader of the see-no-evil crowd, stood up in the well of the Senate and blasted Trump, expressing the hope that the criminal justice system will bring him to account. Has there ever been a greater demonstration of hypocrisy?
 
The proto-fascist wing of the Republican Party, led by “despicable he’s” such as “Cancun” Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham, prevailed. No publisher would take on a Profiles in Cowardice book because there are simply too many QOP candidates for its pages. It’s time to stop expecting “Republicans” to finally do the right thing despite all evidence to the contrary. No Democrat should succumb to the fantasy that these aiders and abettors of Trump’s criminality are people with whom they can do business. Go it alone, Democrats. Reserve bipartisanship for a future Congress peopled by individuals with integrity who value decency, honor and the preservation of the republic.
 
Dick Hermann
February 19, 2021

​The Biden administration’s attention to climate change and the technological revolution that boosts climate policy will have a tremendous side benefit: forcing one of our top-level enemies—Russia—to its knees.
 
Russia and Vladimir Putin are overly dependent on fossil fuels for economic and political survival to a greater extent than any other nation outside of the Middle East. Russians not only need oil, gas and coal to light and heat their homes and fuel factories and transportation; they also rely heavily on oil and gas exports for revenue. If these go south because the rest of the developed world is moving beyond fossil fuels, Russia will suffer greatly and may not survive in its present authoritarian guise.
 
Russia’s export revenues from fossil fuels account for half of its annual budget. As Europe, the U.S., China and rapidly expanding Asian economies such as Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan embrace climate change policies, this essential funding source will dry up. Plummeting demand during the pandemic has already devastated the country’s export revenues. It is unlikely that global demand for energy resources will return to pre-pandemic levels anytime soon due to the large number of employees who will continue to work from home and a predicted decline in commuting and business travel, among other factors. Russian GDP will have a difficult struggle to move back into positive territory.
 
Oil and natural gas sales account for approximately two-thirds of Russia’s total export revenues. They contribute more than 30% to the country's gross domestic product (GDP). At the same time, the Russian ruble is falling in value, making it more expensive for Russians to buy the goods and services they need. The ruble is currently approaching a level at which Russia will experience the lowest purchasing power parity (PPP) relative to the U.S. of any country in the world. Declining PPP will lower living standards.
 
A falling ruble also means a sharp increase in import prices, which adds to inflation. To combat this, Russia must raise interest rates to levels that are going to precipitate an even deeper recession than Russians are currently experiencing.
 
Russia is already struggling. Low oil prices in effect since 2014 have set back the country’s economy and all attempts at achieving healthy economic growth. Brent crude oil, the global benchmark for Russia's main export, is now $15 below the level envisaged by Russia's current budget plan. Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has driven Russian inflation to levels that would be unacceptable in the West. Inflation has more than doubled since the pandemic began.
 
Taken together, a sustained period of anemic and even negative GDP combined with high inflation portends poorly for Russia’s political stability. Add in excessive dependence on fossil fuels, the absence of any climate change policy, and dwindling oil and gas export revenues, and the result will be a diminution of Russia’s ability to be a player, much less a mischief-maker, on the world stage. This is all good for the United States.
 
Vladimir Putin has been propped up by oil and gas export revenues for years. Without them, he will be in trouble. Popular unrest protesting the jailing of dissident leader, Alexei Navalny, and the severe economic disruptions caused by a declining standard of living, has erupted in more than 140 Russian cities. Expect civic discontent to escalate as oil and gas revenues continue to decline.
 
The opportunity to severely weaken one of the West’s principal enemies is an additional incentive for the U.S. and Europe to opt for robust climate policies already justified by science and reality.
 
Dick Hermann
February 12, 2021

​Democrats and the few Republicans still committed to preserving American democracy have proposed two solutions to the challenge posed by the millions of our countrymen and women who have succumbed to the grievances, hate, anger, fear and delusional fantasy world nurtured by the disgraced former president (DFP):

1. Get the congressional Republican leadership to “tell the truth,” i.e., that President Biden won the election fair and square. Good luck with that. With the dust barely settled from the January 6 assault on the Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the DFP’s “ring” and lick his “boots.” Mitch McConnell, who in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol insurrection, blamed the DFP for inciting it, has since retreated into the Republican fold and folderol that we have come to know so well over the last four years. Like McCarthy’s, his spine and other vital body parts are also in a lockbox. The “Party of Lincoln” has morphed into the “Party of a Different Lincoln”—George Lincoln Rockwell, the late Führer of the American Nazi Party.
2. Enact legislation that speaks to the discontents of the DFP’s base. The argument goes that if tangible benefits and opportunities flow to them from the federal government, they will change their tune and mend their ways. They won’t. To believe otherwise is optimistic, but naïve in the extreme.

 
Neither solution will work. Like the white supremacists that overwhelmed Germany and much of Europe in the interwar years, we cannot reason with our own domestic version of these hostiles. That makes them a lost cause. Aside from picking off a handful of these deluded folk, the vast majority will remain credulous and in thrall to their cult leader, the DFP. Once a fascist leader has been elevated to cult status, his worshippers will follow him through the gates of Hell.
 
Twentieth century history teaches us that constant vigilance and, when appropriate, swift recourse to the criminal code is the only way to keep these people from further assaults on the Constitution and renewed attempts to overthrow our democracy and replace it with authoritarian rule. The Weimar Republic governed Germany for 15 years following World War I, until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and quickly snuffed out the nation’s failing attempt at democracy. Weimar collapsed in large part because it allowed anti-democratic forces to run riot in the streets without fear of punishment for their violent acts. We cannot allow the same thing to happen. We must not falter in our monitoring of white supremacist groups and individuals. When they are identified, any indication that they intend to commit acts of violence must be addressed immediately.
 
The fact that so many of their conspiratorial plans are shared on social media puts them squarely within the language of the federal criminal code’s section on interstate communication of “a threat to injure the person of another” (18 U.S.C. §875). In addition, they would also be subject to punishment under 18 U.S.C. §2383, “Rebellion or Insurrection.” These tools must be applied vigorously. Appealing to their grievances won’t work. They are far past listening to or even understanding such appeals.
 
At the same time, we must address the decline and, in an increasing number of schools, the absence of both history and civics education. While the adults who have fallen for the hate-filled rhetoric and contempt for democratic values of the DFP are a lost cause, their children are not. There is still time to raise a generation of Americans who can comprehend and appreciate fact-based reality and the values that really make America great. A grounding in civics and history is the only path at our disposal if we want to counter the alternate universe in which their parents reside.
 
If we do not do this, they too will be fodder for the same perverted untruths that have consumed their parents and taken them to the dark realms of lies and fakery in which the DFP wallows, waiting in the wings to once again incite them to violent assaults on the fragile norms that successfully governed us and maintained order for almost two-and-a-half centuries.
 
Dick Hermann
February 5, 2021

​President Biden is quite rightly focusing attention on the growing threat of domestic terrorism. It’s about time. The Trump administration spent four years downplaying and largely ignoring what the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had identified as the greatest national security menace this nation faces.
 
However, Biden’s approach does not go far enough. He is asking a multitude of federal agencies to assess the threat, a worthwhile first step, but one that is only a half-measure. The lead agencies with respect to this project—the FBI, Homeland Security and the National Security Council—are ill-equipped to carry out this new responsibility. They do not have the resources required to give it the attention it deserves. They are not intelligence collection agencies in the same sophisticated sense as the CIA. Moreover, they have spent the last two decades focusing on external threats. To a great extent, their orientation has been framed and delimited by 9/11, improving intelligence coordination and warnings to prevent another mass terrorist attack by foreign non-state actors. Along the way, they have largely been blind to planning by domestic terrorists, as the events of January 6 demonstrated. The attack on the Capitol was a glaring manifestation of an intelligence failure.
 
David Manuel, who spent 15 years in CIA counterintelligence analysis studying other countries’ domestic intelligence agencies, proposes a solution to this intelligence gap that merits serious consideration: a U.S. domestic intelligence agency that can alert both policymakers and law enforcement to impending threats in the hope of averting catastrophic attacks.
 
Manuel says: “We cannot expect law enforcement agencies to be effective at intelligence gathering. Critics of previous efforts to establish a domestic intelligence agency correctly expressed concern that a law enforcement agency empowered to monitor communications of domestic groups would approach creating a ‘secret police,’ something antithetical to our values. A domestic intelligence agency charged simply with collecting information and providing warning to policy-makers and law enforcement for planning purposes, would allow enhanced capabilities to protect our form of government while still respecting the rights of American citizens.”
 
Manuel argues that “collecting this type of intelligence need not be controversial. A great deal of it is posted by actors of concern on social media. Monitoring chat groups, social media platforms, and message forums like Reddit can provide a wealth of intelligence. Organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League and Vice News already do this. But these outside groups are not created to provide warnings within the U.S. government. A domestic intelligence agency could actually draw on and enhance work done by these private, non-governmental organizations. But they do not obviate the need for an organized intelligence agency with a cadre of analysts collating and assessing such information.”
 
A domestic intelligence agency would require significant professional independence coupled with strong legislative oversight. Independence is necessary to prevent corruption of intelligence analysis that some members of government may find objectionable: sadly, we have learned that government officials may occasionally see seditionist groups as their “constituents.” A domestic intelligence agency must be able to “speak truth to power.” Simultaneously, such an agency, which will almost certainly be housed in the executive branch, must be strictly answerable to Congress to avoid any appearance of being an authoritarian enforcement agency. Care establishing such an agency can prevent problems encountered in the creation of many of our intelligence agencies in the past.
 
Setting up a domestic intelligence capability will be neither easy nor quick. This is all the more reason our country needs to get started on this endeavor immediately. Fortunately, there are a large number of dedicated Americans with the expertise to guide such an endeavor, including former intelligence officers like Manuel, currently serving intelligence and law enforcement officers, and members of the academic community and private sector who have been studying domestic terrorism for decades.
 
Collection of this kind of intelligence is critical in an environment where the FBI has warned for years that right-wing groups have leap-frogged Islamic terrorism as our gravest threat.
 
Dick Hermann
January 29, 2021

​“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred; fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
--Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times (April 25, 2020)
 
It began in June 2015 with a racist screed about Mexican rapists and criminals and a vow to upend an immigration policy that made America great and prosperous. It ended with a return to his anti-immigration comfort zone, a trip to tout his obscenely expensive and pointless border wall for which he had falsely promised Mexico would write us a multi-billion dollar check.
 
It began at the U.S. Capitol with the darkest inaugural address in American history, referencing a mythical “American carnage” he vowed to end. It ended at the U.S. Capitol with actual horrific American carnage he caused.
 
It began on January 21, 2017 with the first Big Lie, a relatively harmless one that elicited universal ridicule—that the modest-size crowd at his inauguration the day before was the largest ever. It ended after more than 30,000 additional lies, many of them no laughing matter.
 
It began with a meeting in the Oval Office in which he shared top secret classified intelligence with senior Russian officials, an unprecedented national security breach that no prior president would have dared do. It ended with Russians (per the FBI) as part of the mob he incited to attack the Capitol trying to execute his attempt at a coup d’état.
 
It began with a barrage of tweets designed to arouse and incite his supporters to anger and hate. It ended with his way-too-late ban from social media, long after he transformed his supporters into domestic terrorists intent on destroying America.
 
It began with him exploiting the fears of white Americans that they are going to be left behind by demography. It ended with many of them morphing into a white supremacist cult.
 
It began with a president inheriting a booming economy. It ended with an economy devastated by his inattention to the pandemic.
 
It began with a functioning federal government with strong employee morale. It ended with a dysfunctional government and employee morale so low as to defy measurement.
 
It began with the pardon of a racist sheriff who was criminally convicted after herding Latinos into concentration camps. It ended with pardons for criminals who did not flip on him in return for promised clemency.
 
It began with a cruel family separation policy that ripped children from their mothers’ arms and confined them in cages. It ended with more than 500 children unable to reunite with their parents.
 
It began with 784 right-wing hate groups (per the Southern Poverty Law Center) when he announced his hate-inspired—and hate-inspiring—presidential campaign in 2015. It ended with an estimated 1,200 such organizations upon his departure.
 
It began with a legacy of 228 years of constitutional democracy strong enough to survive Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, a Civil War, Andrew Johnson, Warren G. Harding, a Great Depression and Richard Nixon.  It ended with serious questions whether this democracy can survive Donald Trump and the fascist forces his evil has unleashed.
 
It began with Trump’s eliminating three offices designed to combat a pandemic. It ended with more than 400,000 Americans dead, the vast majority dying due to the absence of these safeguards, presidential ineptitude and disinterest.
 
It began in 2017 with presidential praise for “fine people” who just happened to be neo-Nazis. It ended in 2021 with white supremacists carrying out a president-prompted insurrection intent on overthrowing our democratic republic.
 
It began with mayhem. It ended with chaos, destruction and death.
 
We survived, but barely.
 
Dick Hermann
January 22, 2021

​Congress has the power to bar the president and its members who supported the insurrection from continuing in public office and ever holding office again.
 
While Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution outlines the steps to expel a member of Congress, it requires a two-thirds vote, which is a pretty high bar and unrealistic in the current environment. But there is another Constitutional provision that clearly provides an alternative:
 
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment states in pertinent part: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States,…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
 
Section 3 was originally directed at those who supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. It provides an alternative expulsion mechanism for ridding the federal government of seditionists and insurrectionists. It can be invoked to dump Trump immediately and forever. It can also bar Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, their Senate colleagues and the 137 Representatives who joined in the attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate election, from serving in Congress now and in the future. All it takes for each chamber to rid itself of these traitors is a House or Senate resolution passed by a simple majority vote.
 
Allowing these anti-Americans to continue in office is an unacceptable stain on America. They need to be removed from the privileged positions and institutions they have irretrievably tarnished. Moving forward requires that their treasonous behavior is officially denounced as being beyond the pale, and that a clear precedent be established that such conduct will not be tolerated.
 
Losing their positions is a necessary first step to cleanse America of these political pariahs. They violated their oaths to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, whereby they swore to "…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;…” They not only failed to do that; they actively thumbed their noses at it.
 
Some members of this loathsome crew are asserting that they were merely exercising their first amendment rights. No. They incited and abetted an attempt to take down the U.S. government. As Justice Brandeis stated in delivering the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court in Sugarman v. United States (1919): “…`freedom of speech' does not mean that a man may say whatever he pleases without the possibility of being called to account for it.” it is not only the right, but the constitutional duty of the Congress to banish them.
 
But their punishment should not end with expulsion. Along the way, their nefarious doings also violated numerous federal criminal laws. It can begin with 23 U.S. Code §2384, “Seditious Conspiracy,” that explicitly covers their illegal conduct. The wheels of justice need to grind them all into the political and judicial dust.
 
Dick Hermann
January 12, 2021

​Sedition
 
I never contemplated that “checks and balances” would take the form of the President of the United States inciting a fascist mob to storm the legislative branch. That’s quite a “check” on Congress. However, not a whole lot of “balance.”
 
The tyrant-president did not do this alone. He had plenty of co-conspirators whose words, like those of aspiring autocrat Trump, mattered: Rudy Giuliani, who urged the fanatic rabble to initiate “trial by combat;” Donald Trump, Jr. who revved up the barbarian hordes, warning members of Congress inclined to follow the Constitution and not object to Joe Biden’s electoral vote count that “we’re coming for you;” Rep. Mo Brooks telling the mob it was time to “kick ass;” Sen. Josh Hawley, whose fist pumping on his way into the Capitol was intended to get Trump supporters’ pulses racing; and Sen. Ted Cruz, the oleaginous Trump bootlicker whose lies leading up to the attempted coup aroused the passions of the great unwashed. More on these two craven congressional Quislings below.
 
All of these democracy destroyers merit the full punishments that the law allows. They must be held to account. For the conspirators who fomented insurrection—Trump, Giuliani and Junior, that means indictments and ultimately prison for the many U.S. criminal code provisions they transgressed: seditious conspiracy, insurrection, knowingly and willfully advocating and abetting overthrowing the government by force or violence, inciting a riot, treason and perhaps felony murder. For their congressional colleagues, it should mean expulsion from office under Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution.
 
Shakedown
 
Another “perfect” phone call? Reprising his attempted telephone shakedown of Ukraine’s president in which he threatened to withhold desperately needed military equipment unless the foreign leader manufactured evidence against Joe Biden, Donald Trump attempted the same strong-arm tactic on Georgia election officials. This brazen attempt to commit election theft was accompanied by threats of prosecution if the Georgia officials did not illegally flip the Georgia results to Trump. Fortunately for American democracy, they refused.
 
Trump’s Kool-Aid-besotted base probably has not listened to the president’s 62-minute, feverish phone call or read the shocking transcript. Consequently, they will continue to believe that their cult leader is not the criminal mob boss that the rest of America and the world know all too well.
 
Trump must also be held accountable for this seditious act. While the Biden Justice Department will hopefully have its hands full bringing him to justice for inciting his followers to storm Congress, the Georgia Attorney General has no such distraction. Georgia Criminal Code §21-2-604(a)(1) states: “A person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.” The penalty is 1-3 years in prison. Another section of the Georgia Criminal Code makes it a felony to conspire to commit election fraud. Our resident despot can’t self-pardon himself out of a state crime.
 
Sherman
 
It’s been 157 years since General William Tecumseh Sherman left Atlanta a charred ruin while burning his way to the sea. Donald Trump left Atlanta intact but charbroiled the Republican Party, losing it both the two Georgia runoffs and the U.S. Senate by his scorched earth demolition trek through Georgia. His lies and bombast about rigged elections and attacks on state Republicans for doing their constitutional duty confused and deterred thousands of Republicans from voting. At the same time, as in 2018, he once again energized Democrats disgusted with his boorish behavior and wicked ways to come out and vote in droves. Malevolence, self-absorption, villainy and ineptitude are never a great combination.
 
Shame
 
The 150 or so congressional Republicans who, even after the Capitol insurrection, continued to deny the will of the American people and opted for fascist autocracy over republican democracy deserve to have their treachery and cowardice memorialized in a Hall of Shame. Come the next several election cycles, these seditious traitors should be marked for a pull-out-all-the-stops effort to defeat them and send them back to the ignominious futures they so richly deserve. Deterring the next autocrat wannabe—Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy (a worthy heir of his 1950s namesake), Stephen Scalise and their disgraceful ilk—from attempting a similar coup d’état in the extremely unfortunate event that one of them comes to power down the road, is crucial. Sadly, we will likely have to wait at least two years to begin the process of cleansing Congress and America of these execrable proto-Fascists.
 
Dick Hermann
January 8, 2021

​Many respectable law firms and individual attorneys declined to represent Donald Trump and his allies in their futile quest to reverse the results of the 2020 election. That left more dubious members of the profession as the only lawyers willing to take on not only a lost cause, but also one reeking of falsehoods. While lost causes are perfectly within the parameters of legitimate legal representation, knowingly advocating lies is not. Doing so prompts sanctions that can, and in this case absolutely should, be applied to the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and the rest.
 
One of the first things drummed into a budding attorney’s head is that s/he is an “officer of the court.” What that means, among other things, is that the attorney has an obligation to promote justice, including an absolute ethical duty to tell judges the truth. As an officer of the court, a lawyer’s duty is to serve the interests of justice, not just those of the client. In the 60-plus Trump attempts to deny the will of the people, truth was not high on these attorneys’ lists.
 
In addition, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, mandates that an attorney represents to the court that the action s/he is bringing is not frivolous and is supported by evidence. These standards were knowingly and serially abused by Trump’s lawyers. The federal courts may impose “an appropriate sanction” on Rule 11 violators. Here’s hoping that they will and that it will be harsh.
 
Most states have similar rules in place for ridiculous lawsuits filed in their courts.
 
Finally, there are the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which have been adopted or adapted by all fifty states and the District of Columbia. A number of the Model Rules apply to the Trump legal team’s attempt to subvert the electoral decision and make a mockery of the judicial process:
 
Rule 3.1: Meritorious Claims & Contentions. A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous,….
 
Rule 3.3: Candor Toward the Tribunal. (a) A lawyer shall not knowingly: (1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer; or…(3) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false.
 
Rule 4.1: Truthfulness in Statements to Others (such as the media and public). In the course of representing a client a lawyer shall not knowingly: (a) make a false statement of material fact or law to a third person;
 
Rule 8.4: Misconduct: Maintaining The Integrity Of The Profession. It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to: (a) violate or attempt to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct,…(c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation; (d) engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice;
 
Either Rudy et al. never read the Model Rules or thought they could get away with ignoring them. They cannot, nor should they. At this writing, complaints have been filed with at least five state bar disciplinary agencies – in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania – accusing as many as 23 different Trump attorneys of either filing “frivolous” lawsuits or engaging in other professional misconduct. Discipline can range up to disbarment, which any Trump attorney who participated in this contemptible attempt at a coup d’etat richly deserves.
 
The vast majority of lawyers are principled individuals who take their responsibilities to society seriously. Unfortunately, a few bad apples like the Trump legal team give the profession a black eye. The way to redemption is to excise them permanently from the ranks of practitioners.
 
Dick Hermann
January 1, 2021

​Donald Trump’s countless times’ siding with Russia and Vladimir Putin against the United States during his four-year demolition of the presidency raises the question of where his loyalty lies. Even in his waning, democracy-decimating days in office, he continues to line up with Russia. His latest kowtow to the Kremlin: his denial of the unanimous conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies, endorsed by his own Secretary of State and Attorney General, that Russia is behind the most intrusive, successful and dangerous hack ever of the U.S. government’s computer systems. Instead, he lays the blame on China absent any evidence whatsoever.
 
This follows his silence when Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was recently poisoned during an attempted murder by Putin’s thugs, and before that by his silent assent to Russia putting bounties on the heads of American troops fighting in Afghanistan.
 
These disturbing incidents only scratch the surface of Trump’s bizarre enthusiasm for Russian interests over those of his own country. He also encouraged and welcomed Russia’s 2016 assistance to his election campaign. He sided with Putin’s denial of U.S. election interference over the unanimous conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies. He consistently undermined NATO, Putin’s highest foreign policy priority. He revealed classified information to Russia’s ambassador and foreign minister in an Oval Office meeting. He has been a super-spreader of Russian disinformation, the most egregious example being the fiction that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered with the 2016 election. In the eyes of our president, Vladimir Putin can do no wrong.
 
It needs to be asked whether Trump’s love affair with the Kremlin is mere autocrat-envy, or is there a more sinister explanation? The evidence points to the Russians having some information about him that he is desperate to keep hidden.
 
It’s likely not something sexual. We have seen time and again that Trump has no shame when it comes to partying with and paying off porn stars and centerfolds or cavorting with the late Jeffrey Epstein’s stable of underage Lolitas, not to mention dissing and dismissing the two dozen women who claim he sexually harassed them or worse.
 
More likely, it has to do with Trump’s nefarious business activities. Within that context, there is no evidence that Trump’s behavior as eager Putin doormat and chief bootlicker is connected to any Moscow business deals. Trump tried and failed three times (1983, 1987 and 1996) to conclude Russian real estate deals. Money laundering for Kremlin criminals, however, is another matter.
 
Money laundering is something for which Trump has already been outed and slapped on the wrist, but its extent may go much farther than civil punishment and open him up to serious criminal liability as well.
 
On March 6, 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) imposed a $10 million civil penalty against the bankrupt Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort for willful and repeated violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) for its lax anti-money laundering controls. Trump’s Atlantic City casino admitted to several BSA violations. FinCEN said that the Trump Taj Mahal “has a long history of prior, repeated BSA violations cited by examiners dating back to 2003.” Earlier, FinCEN assessed a $477,700 civil money penalty against the casino for currency transaction reporting violations.
 
Trump Taj Mahal admitted that it failed to: report suspicious transactions, file required currency transaction reports, and keep appropriate records. The fine resulted from IRS and Justice Department investigations.
 
A large number of the alleged casino money launderers were Russians. The Taj Mahal was a magnet for Russian money, including Russian mafia money, says Seth Hettena, an investigative journalist and author of Trump/Russia: A Definitive History.
 
But this is only one aspect of Trump’s money laundering on behalf of Russians. According to the McClatchy newspapers, people connected to Russia or former Soviet republics paid $109 million in cash for 86 Trump-branded properties, with many of them using shell companies. Some buyers appeared to spend above market value for their properties, a classic money laundering practice. All-cash real estate deals are also a money-laundering red flag. Trump also sold a $41 million Palm Beach estate to a Russian oligarch and close Putin associate for $95 million, much higher than its market value, only four years after buying it. The transaction’s timing came only months after Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for bankruptcy and when Trump was having trouble finding any banks that would lend to him.
 
Someday we will probably find out just what it was that caused Trump to spend four years advocating for a U.S. adversary intent on subverting our democracy. That could reveal how and why Trump became a Russian asset.
 
Dick Hermann
December 28, 2020