Thursday, June 21, 2018

Sentiment of the Day: R.I.P. AMERICA [Part 3 of 6]

If you know even a little bit about politics or follow it regularly, you will know one of the biggest complaints people have about politicians (and you may have this complaint yourself) is that they lie a lot.  Leave it to other politicians, news reporters, and commentators to use such terms as "untrue", "deceptive", and "incorrectly characterizing", among others, but most people will say They lie so much! or They lie all the time!

The truth is, yes, they do lie.  Lies and politics have never been distant relatives.  (One of many reasons that voting turnouts are so low.)  One of the forms of this lying is "serving the American people".  Those in power are also American citizens, so they clearly fall under the banner of "the American people", but they try to make their use of that phrase appear to mean "all of you American people".  Do some of their actions truly fall under the banner of "serving all the American people"?  Of course they do.  You cannot say those in power do nothing for the masses when, in fact, they do.  However, a legitimate argument can be made in saying those in power do little for the masses or they do things against the masses.

Look at the "tax bill" passed and signed into law by Republicans last December, for just one example.  Talk about a handout and benefits package for the rich!  Now, in addition to the heat building up on the president as of late, who they nearly unanimously supported in 2016, there are dozens of them getting out of town, by not running for re-election.  (I guess they do not want to be associated with Trump if everything falls apart and now that they got their tax break in December, it's time to go.)  Clearly there are many more examples than this, but it seems more and more true as time goes on that "the American people" they are really serving are themselves.

This country's founders had the idea that those who serve via politics would do so and then, at the end of their term(s), go back to being a private citizen.  Many of them do, even if they get to enjoy the financial benefits of paid speaking gigs, book deals, etc., afterward.  One of the things our founders did not want was, for one example, the president to financially gain for the office while in office.  (The same is true for members of Congress as well.)  All U.S. presidents have divested themselves from any and all business ventures they were currently involved in, whether it was a business they became involved in their adult life or a family business that has been in existence for generations.  The idea is that you serve the people, not that office serves you.

That all ended with our current president.

He lied about what a blind trust is, feigning ignorance.  Letting his adult children, who were already involved in the business, run the business, is not a blind trust, and not a divestment of himself from the business.  His Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., which stands less than a mile from the White House, earned him a whopping forty million dollars last year.  That figure includes $350,000 in campaign funds (sixty percent of which came from the Republican National Committee for hosting various events there).  Much of that profit also came from foreign entities and dignitaries staying there when they are in Washington.

His children are doing quite well since he took office.  It was recently released that his daughter and son-in-law (and alleged advisers) Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made around eighty million dollars last year.  Recently, Ivanka received some good news: seven new trademarks were awarded to her by China.  That means financial gain.  (After bad mouthing China for years, Trump then did an about-face after the trademarks were awarded and decided to help save China's failing telecommunications company ZTE, even calling the move a favor to China's autocratic president Xi Jinping.)

For this very consideration, the founders placed the Title of Nobility Clause (more commonly known as the Emoluments Clause) in the U.S. Constitution, found in Article I.  In addition to not allowing the president to receive any titles of nobility, office, or gifts for any foreign entities, to ensure no undue outside influence on the president, it also prohibits the president receiving that which its more common name is known, emoluments.  An emolument is defined as a salary, a fee, or a profit from any employment or held office.  Let us take that definition and insert it into the actual wording of the clause:
        "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding
        any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the
        Congress, accept any Present, salary, fee, or profit, Office, or Title, of any kind
        whatsoever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."
Clearly, the monies he is receiving from foreign entities (from enterprises mentioned above and many others), since he has never divested from his companies, is a violation of the Emoluments Clause.

If silence is consent, then Congress' relative overall silence about this must be its consent.

Even though it is not law, every president, beginning with Jimmy Carter, has released his past tax returns.  In modern history, Richard Nixon did it first; Gerald Ford released a financial summary; and then Jimmy Carter started the current string of presidents doing so.  Trump is the first president in roughly four decades to not release his tax returns.  Why not is a question with much speculation, but clearly, even with his excuse of his lawyers telling him not to do so while his returns are being audited (which he seems to characterize as a never-ending process), he does not want whatever they include to see the light of day.

If it was a case of not releasing them because they are so complicated and thus hard to understand, which I do not doubt they are, there are plenty of people who could "translate" them for the common citizen.  To me, that would not be a reasonable reason to keep from releasing them.  If other presidents before him released theirs, and I am sure theirs were complicated as well, he can also.  So, what exactly does he not want to get out?  What income and expenditures does he feel need to be kept secret?  Would they, perhaps, show he is not as financially well-off as he has claimed?  Again, he is not required legally to release them, but neither were his predecessors.

Since this is on the general topic of lying, Trump's list is a whopper.  From why immigrant kids are being separated from their parents at the border -- more on that further on in this post -- to North Korea agreeing to denuclearize, the list just keeps on growing.  Some of the lies he had told include:
>  The Pulse nightclub massacre two years ago would not have happened if someone there also had a gun.  (There was an armed guard on site the night of the shooting.)
>  There was mass voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election.  (No evidence supports that claim.)
>  He and the Republicans have signed the most amount of legislation.  (So far, they're last place, actually.)
>  The "tax bill" passed last December repealed Obamacare.  (It did no such thing.)
>  Former President Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped during the 2016 election.  (No, he did not.)
>  He never mocked a disabled reporter during his campaign.  (Oh, yes, he did.)
>  "Beautiful, clean coal"  (Self-explanatory)
>  Repeatedly saying he had "nothing to do with Russia".  (The 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow, and Donald Trump, Jr., ten years ago, saying, "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia", for just two examples, disprove that claim.)
>  He received the most Electoral College votes since Ronald Reagan.  (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all had more than Trump.)

And that is far from an exhaustive list.  In fact, on May 31 of this year, on the 466th day of Trump's presidency, The Washington Post published a story that showed Trump had lied a whopping 3,001 times!  Today marks 517 days in office for this president, with another 944 days remaining.  How many more lies has he added since May 31?  How many more will he tell?

One of the lies added since May 31 is his ongoing string of lies regarding the current fiasco down in Texas with immigrants coming to the U.S.   Immigrants have been crossing our southern border for generations.  To be clear, yes, families were, indeed, separated for short periods of time, if necessary, during previous administrations.  However, there was never a policy in place where border officials were told to take children from their families and to keep the children here if the parents are deported back.  NEVER!  And yet, the president, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said time and time again that there was no such policy in place.

Then, the lie became it was being done because of a law, not a policy, which the Democrats put in place, and that Congress had to "negotiate"to end it.  Next (last Friday to be exact), the president's lie was that, even though an Executive Order was not necessary to end the separation of families -- it never is to end a policy -- he couldn't issue one, anyway.  Yesterday, he announced he would be signing an Executive Order after all.  In the midst of all this, Trump tweeted two days ago that the Democrats want immigrants to "infest our Country", while saying "anybody with a heart would feel strongly about it" when he signed the Executive Order yesterday.  He cannot have it both ways, so which one of the two was a lie?

In 2016, an article appeared on the website A Conscious Rethink titled '8 Ways Lying Is Poisonous to Relationships'.  Since there is a kind of relationship between a president and the citizens, I thought the bullet points in the article highlight how what Trump has been doing, and continues to do, is affecting the country.

>  Erodes Trust -- There is already enough mistrust about politicians.  His lies exacerbate the situation, at the peril of his own party and the country.
>  Lack of Respect -- Any lie shows a lack of respect for those being told the lie, and the president has shown an even greater lack of respect for the American people at large.
>  Creates an Expectation of The Next Lie -- Expecting the worst erodes hope.
>  Act of Selfishness -- What I want is more important than what you want ... or need.
>  Sets Up Others for Feeling Like a Fool -- Once realization of the lies sinks in, believers feel like fools for believing in them in the first place, which, in the long term, also erodes trust.
>  Self-Deception -- This is the necessity of the liar having to believe his own lies, unable to recognize his own disingenuous nature.
>  Imbalance -- Every lie is "tilting the scale" in favor of the liar, forgoing seeking a balance.
>  One Good Lie Deserves Another -- (Maybe your parents taught you this...)  Once you lie, you need to lie to cover up that lie, another lie to cover up those lies, and so on.

All of the above is happening in this country.

Terry


TOMORROW
THE TONE OF THE COUNTRY

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