American Kakistocracy

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 12:20 PM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] American Kakistocracy
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


American Kakistocracy
From cabinet officials jetting around on the public dime, to Trump's
shattering of ethical norms, to disregard for congressional
procedure—there’s a case to be made that the United States is governed by
the least scrupulous of its citizens.
By Norm Ornstein
Oct 9 2017
<
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/american-kakistocracy/542391/
>

Kakistocracy is a term that was first used in the 17th century; derived
from a Greek word, it means, literally, government by the worst and most
unscrupulous people among us. More broadly, it can mean the most inept and
cringeworthy kind of government. The term fell into disuse over the past
century or more, and most highly informed people have never heard it before
(but to kids familiar with the word “kaka” it might resonate).

As I wrote my new book with E.J. Dionne and Tom Mann, One Nation Under
Trump, I kept returning to the term. Kakistocracy is back, and we are
experiencing it firsthand in America. The unscrupulous element has come
into sharp focus in recent weeks as a string of Trump Cabinet members and
White House staffers have been caught spending staggering sums of taxpayer
dollars to charter jets, at times to go small distances where cheap
commercial transportation was readily available, at times to conveniently
visit home areas or have lunch with family members. While Health and Human
Services Secretary Tom Price was forced to resign after his serial abuse,
others—including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Interior Secretary Ryan
Zinke, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, and Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway,
remain in place.

With Pruitt and Price, the problems were evident before they were
confirmed. Pruitt told the Senate he had done no official business on a
personal email account while serving as Oklahoma attorney general. When a
judge ordered Pruitt’s emails to be made public, Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell rushed through his confirmation before they appeared—and,
too late, they showed he had misled the Senate. Tom Price had engaged in a
string of stock transactions while in Congress that led to accusations of
manipulation and insider trading; McConnell and his Republican Senate
colleagues brushed the evidence aside. Similarly, Attorney General Jeff
Sessions’s misleading claims in his confirmation hearing about his own
relationships with Russians during the campaign met with no pushback or
interest from Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.

The Constitution prohibits anything of value other than a salary going to a
president from the federal government or the states. (Trump had also been
pushing the District of Columbia for more favorable property taxes.) The
failure of GSA top officials to act on Trump’s apparent violation is under
investigation by the agency’s inspector general. Foreign-government
entities falling over themselves to stay in the hotel and schedule meetings
and events there at premium prices may have violated the Foreign Emoluments
Clause, just one of a string of in-your-face elements of a president
enriching himself via his office. Doubling the initiation fee at Mar-A-Lago
to $250,000, and advertising that those putting on weddings there or at his
Bedminster, New Jersey, country club might get a photo-op with the
president of the United States, are equally outrageous examples.

News that the president’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner had
used a private server and private email accounts for official
business—multiplying to several accounts, then hurriedly transferred to the
Trump business server after the revelations—showed a remarkable
indifference to the rules; Kushner’s repeated failure to disclose his
foreign contacts on security-clearance forms represented clear violations
that underlined that cavalier attitude. And the efforts of Ivanka’s
business and the Kushner family business to leverage their White House
status parallel the ethical violations of the president. A competent and
honest Congress would be all over these issues, with hearings and efforts
to clean up the system. The number of hearings on any of these issues of
absence of ethics, abuse of power, and misuse of taxpayer money: zero.

[snip]

Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/18849915-ae8fa580
Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-aa268125
Unsubscribe Now: 
https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-32545cb4&post_id=20171011172206:38FE7A64-AECA-11E7-9389-EDAFC4B62B70
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com