Thursday, June 16, 2016
The Corruption Olympic Games
I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption. . . .
— Francis Bacon, On being charged by Parliament with corruption in office.
Brazil to the rescue! I am not referring to the Olympics which will, if successful, serve as a distraction from other world events that are singularly depressing. Brazil is riding to the rescue by reminding us that as corrupt as some leaders in our political system may be, Brazil beats us hands down. For being made aware of the difference, we are indebted to the year 2016 and three separate but equal, at least in some respects, events. The events described are not exclusive but merely representative. The first, and most recent, is brought to us by an old favorite, Wayne G. Hubbard of Alabama.
On June 9, 2016, Mr. Hubbard was the Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives. He attained that post when, in 2010, the Republicans took control of the Alabama House for the first time since Reconstruction. Following that triumph, Mr. Hubbard wrote a book entitled “Storming the Statehouse” in which he explained the Republican victory. That happened, he said, because: “Ethics was a subject that set Republicans apart from the Democrats.” The “setting apart” to which he was referring came about because prior to the election there had been a number of indictments and scandals involving Democrats. There had not, apparently, been similar events involving Republicans. Mr. Hubbard would eventually correct that. On June 10, 2016, Mr. Hubbard’s tenure as Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives came to an end. That was because on that day he was convicted of 12 felony ethics charges, a conviction that automatically caused his tenure as Speaker to come to an end. Instead of serving as Speaker of the House, he faces the possibility that he will serve up to 20 years in prison on each of the 12 criminal counts of which he was convicted. There is a bit of poetic justice in all this. The law that led to Mr. Hubbard’s conviction was passed by the Republicans when they took control of the House in 2010.
Mr. Hubbard is not the only state legislator who will look back on May 2016 as a particularly bad month. In New York State, Dean Skelos and Sheldon Silver both former New York legislators, found that to be a particularly bad month. Dean Skelos was the Republican majority leader of the New York State Senate. In December 2015 he was convicted of Federal corruption charges and on May 12, 2015, he was sentenced to five years in prison. He is no longer the Republican majority leader of the New York State Senate. Sheldon Silver was the Democratic Speaker of the New York State Assembly, and was convicted of, among other things, money laundering and extortion. Like Mr. Hubbard, the conviction cost him his seat in the Assembly. On May 3, 2016, Mr. Silver was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The good news to emerge from those examples is that there are good people available to replace the two former leaders who are not corrupt. For that, our friends in Brazil may well be envious.
On April 17, 2016, the Brazilian lower house of the Brazilian Congress overwhelmingly voted to impeach the president of the country, Dilma Rousseff. The impeachment proceedings were led by the President of the House, Eduardo Cunha. As he cast his vote in favor of impeaching President Rousseff, Mr. Cunha said: “God have pity on this nation.” God fell down on the job as far as Mr. Cunha was concerned. In early May, Mr. Cunha was ordered to step down from his post because he is charged with, among other things, having taken $40 million in bribes.
Following her impeachment, Ms. Roussseff stepped aside as president and was replaced by Michel Timer. On June 15, 2016, Brazil’s Supreme Court released testimony from a plea bargain that implicated Mr. Timer in a graft scandal that involved, among others, Petrobras, Brazil’s state oil company.
The lower house of the parliament has 513 deputies of which 367 voted for impeachment. According to a watchdog group in Brasilia, Congresso em Foco, more than 300 of the members of the lower house are under investigation for such things as corruption, fraud, or electoral crimes.
Mr. Cunha has been replaced as President of the lower house of Congress by Waldir Maranhão. Mr. Maranhão is also involved in the graft scheme pertaining to Petrobras. The president of the senate is Renan Calheiros. Tax evasion and receiving bribes are among the matters for which he is being investigated.
Brazil’s troubles help the United States in that it shows how things could be worse in Alabama and New York. There could be no one to replace the corrupt politicians who are heading off to jail. There is, of course, something positive that Brazil can look forward to. It can look forward to hosting the Olympics in August assuming construction of the needed facilities is completed and there is not too much adverse publicity from the polluted water in which some of the events will take place. Its political problems will not spoil the games for those in attendance-only for those who are citizens of that country.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Two Macs and a Trump-Hold the Principles
A precedent embalms a principle.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1848 Speech
The rock has cooled. It happened on May 30, 2016, when Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, said it would be “disrespectful” not to support the presumptive nominee of the Republican party whom a majority of Republican voters had selected. That surprised voters who recalled that the New York Times reported that, at a February 19th luncheon of Republican governors and donors, Mr. McConnell said that if Mr. Trump were the party’s nominee, it would “be catastrophic, dooming the party in November.” In the event of his nomination, Mr. McConnell said: “We’ll drop him like a hot rock” in the general election. He went on to say that if candidates felt their own elections were threatened by a top of the ticket Trump, they could run negative ads about him. That was then. This is now and it all shows that a lot can happen in four months if you are Mitch McConnell. A lot less if you are Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is still saying the sorts of things he was saying at the end of February that so offended Mr. McConnell but Mr. McConnell had forgotten all about them until Mr. Trump began making racist comments about the judge who is presiding over the Trump University lawsuit in California. Those comments did not, however, cause Mr. McConnell to withdraw his support. It caused him to express the hope that Mr. Trump would apologize and “get on script” whatever that script may be. Seeking an apology from Mr. Trump is probably a fool’s errand but nonetheless, another senator has embarked on that same errand. He is one-time presidential candidate and and long time senator, John McCain.
Mr. McCain is in a tough fight in Arizona to retain his seat in the U.S. Senate. Because ambition trumps principle in Mr. McCain’s case, the Senator has endorsed Mr. Trump, although he coupled his endorsement with a request for an apology. The request made because of comments Mr. Trump had earlier made about service personnel who were captured in Viet Nam. Although Mr. Trump was deprived of the opportunity to serve his country during the Viet Nam war years because of student deferments and a medical deferment he received because of a bone spur on one of his feet, (although he could not recall which foot it was when asked) he attended the New York Military Academy in high school and knows what it takes to be a good soldier and knows what traits define war heroes. And it is that knowledge that enabled him to comment on Mr. McCain’s military service. In an interview that took place in June 2015, Mr. Trump said of Mr. McCain that: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Later in the interview he moderated his comments by saying: “If a person is captured, they’re a hero as far as I’m concerned. . . But you have to do other things also. . . .” (Mr. Trump did not limit his attack on Mr. McCain to his status as a POW. Mr. Trump said that not only was Mr. McCain a loser for having gotten captured, he was also a loser for not having defeated Barak Obama for the presidency. As Mr. Trump explained: “He lost and let us down. I’ve never liked losers.” It is impossible to know whether Mr. Trump’s self esteem will be affected should he lose the election in November.
Mr. McCain is a generous man, not one to withhold support from a candidate just because the candidate has insulted him. On May 8, 2016, he announced his support of Mr. Trump’s candidacy saying it would be “foolish to ignore the will of voters.” Nonetheless, Mr. McCain’s endorsement came with a wish for an apology. As he explained: What he said about me . . .that’s fine. I don’t require any repair of that. But when he said, ‘I don’t like people who were captured’ then there’s a body of American heroes and I’d like to see him retract that statement.” Not that Mr. McCain’s support of Mr. Trump depends on a retraction. He’s just indulging in wishful thinking.
There’s a lot of wishful thinking going around in Republican circles. It’s expressed differently depending on who’s talking. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has said she will support the Republican nominee. That does not mean she is not concerned about Mr. Trump’s racist remarks about the judge in the Trump University lawsuit. Her concern has not, however, caused her to withdraw her support. As she explained, she believes in redemption.
Call it belief in redemption or wishful thinking, there’s a lot of both going on in Republican circles these days. For good reason.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Alabama Redux
— Dixie’s Land, — A song from 1859Old times there are not forgotten. . . .
In early April this space was devoted to a discussion of the assorted political adversities that were being inflicted on those seeking to govern the state of Alabama, going from the Governor of the state, to the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and finally to the Alabama Speaker of the House. It has, however, been more than two months since those events were described and it is time for an update, if for no other reason than to reassure my readers that Donald Trump is not the only clown in town. The following events occurred within days of each other during the merry month of May.
Starting at the top, readers will recall that Governor Robert Bentley admitted making what were described as “inappropriate and sexually charged remarks” to one of his female aides. It was hinted that the behavior might have included more than just sexually charged remarks. In Alabama, where perceived sexual misbehavior is taken seriously, news of the Governor’s behavior shocked his constituents and their elected representatives, even though the governor insisted there had been no sexual improprieties between him and his aide. Following the revelations there was talk of impeaching the Governor. As of this writing those proceedings have not been initiated. However, at the end of March, the state auditor of Alabama filed an ethics violations report against the Governor. In that report he said he was investigating the “misuse of state property” by the Governor, an allegation that may have been, in part, the result of a recording in which the Governor is heard to say, presumably to his paramour, that “If we’re gonna do what we did the other day, we’re gonna have to start locking the door.” If what they did the other day is what it sounds like, and if it took place in the Governor’s office it would, of course, clearly be a misuse of state property. In his report the auditor said: “The Governor continues to disgrace the state of Alabama. . . .” (The auditor is also concerned with whether the paramour is a public official or a lobbyist, although that would probably not affect the propriety of using the Governor’s office for what they may have been doing in it.) The auditor issued an order to the Governor that he appear in the auditor’s office on May 2, 2016 to produce documents. The Governor did not appear and the auditor said that, as a result of the failure, he would file proceedings with the state court ordering the Governor to appear or face contempt charges. There is no word on whether or not the proceedings have been filed.
From the Governor we go to Roy Moore, the now-suspended Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Chief Justice Moore is, in all likelihood, the first Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court to have been removed from office for refusing to follow a federal judge’s order. That occurred in 2003 when a federal judge ordered him to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments that he had commissioned and had installed in the Alabama Judicial Building. He refused to remove the monument and, as a result, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary removed him from his position as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. In 2012 he ran for the same position, was once again elected Chief Justice and, once again engaged in conduct that has caused him to be suspended. On May 27, 2016, the Judicial Inquiry Commission suspended him for, among other things, not respecting a federal court order authorizing gay marriage by telling the state’s probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Since the Chief Justice does not want to be remembered as the only Alabama Chief Justice to be removed from office two times, on May 27, 2016, he filed suit alleging that the state law that authorizes his suspension is unconstitutional. The entire state eagerly awaits the outcome of those proceedings. From the Chief Justice we go to the Speaker of the House.
Mike Hubbard is the Speaker of the House. It was he who led the Republicans in their takeover of the Alabama legislature in 2010, the first time they had had control since Reconstruction. Following that success, Mr. Hubbard wrote a book entitled: “Storming the Statehouse” in which he said that “Ethics was a subject that set Republicans apart from the Democrats,” the setting apart being a result of pre-election indictments and scandals involving Democrats. On June 1, 2016, Mr. Hubbard’s criminal trial began. He faces trial on 23 felony ethics charges as a result of his conduct while Speaker of the House.
For the casual observer it is intriguing to speculate on what will happen next in Alabama. Will the governor be impeached? Will the Chief Justice be removed from the Alabama Supreme Court? Will Mike Hubbard go to prison? Stay tuned!