Ralph Nader's Blog, page 32

The Struggle Inside Senator Mitch McConnell’s Brain

By Ralph Nader
February 3, 2021

Since 2015, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell has ruled the Senate with an iron hand, describing himself as “the Guardian of Gridlock.” He was Senator “NO,” except for confirming over 200 mostly corporatist federal judges.

Now comes a new challenge for Mitch McConnell as he leads 49 other Republican Senators, twenty of whom are up for re-election in 2022. Earlier this month, McConnell broke with Trump publicly in a Senate speech holding the wannabe American Fuhrer responsible for the January 6th storming of the Congress. On that day, Trump had just spoken to a crowd on the Mall and incited his followers to rush the Capitol and “stop the steal.” In the aftermath of this insurrection, the Kentucky Senator said he was keeping an open mind about his vote during the coming impeachment trial of Trump.

Predictably, McConnell received a flood of criticism from the Trump supporters for daring to distance himself from the dangerous, unstable, Liar-in-Chief.  Senate insurrectionists Senators Cruz and Hawley stood firm with Trump, even after the Trumpsters’ violent riot in their hallowed workplace.

Then came Senator Rand Paul, a crypto-libertarian opportunist and Trump toady (a scheming shadow of his father, ex-Rep. Ron Paul) to propose a vote on whether a president who is impeached while in office could be tried after his term was up. In a January 21, 2021 letter, an overwhelming number of liberal and conservative constitutional law experts said, “In sum, the Constitution’s text and structure, history, and precedent make clear that Congress’s impeachment power permits it to impeach, try, convict, and disqualify former officers, including former presidents.” (The full text of the letter is available online at Medium.Com) Not to do so, as Republican constitutional law specialist Bruce Fein said, “would fail to a set a precedent to deter future presidents from committing all kinds of impeachable offenses during the last days of their presidency and would undermine the  additional sanction, by majority Senate vote, of banning Presidents who have committed ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ from ever running for federal office again.”

McConnell, reverting to form, voted with Rand Paul and all but five courageous Republicans for the nonsense assertion that the Constitution prohibits a trial of an impeached president after departure from office. Since it would take seventeen Republicans to join with fifty Democrats to convict Trump, the media pundits quickly prejudged the outcome as an acquittal.

Inside McConnell’s brain, however, the path ahead is not preordained. McConnell still insists, as one of 100 Senate jurors, he is keeping an open mind as he weighs the evidence at the open televised trial starting on Tuesday, February 9th in the Senate. This might be true.  Allowing the Trumpian half of his brain to overpower his judgment and vote to acquit Dangerous Donald would spell disaster for the Republican Party (assuming the Democratic Party doesn’t go to sleep as it did after Obama’s win in 2008).

Here is what the “survival” part of McConnell’s mind may be thinking:

“My GOP is a minority Party. We’ve only won the popular vote for President once since 1988, having been saved by the Electoral College in 2000 and 2016. Our majorities in the House have been due to gerrymandering designed to produce safe Republican districts in key states. We can’t assume that the cowardly Democrats will continue to give us seats in the Senate that they should have won, apart from giving up contesting many seats altogether.”

“We should break completely with Trump and his uncontrollable, delusional, hardcore extremists dedicated to “civil war,” that the Department of Homeland Security has deemed the “leading domestic terrorist” threat. Conviction of Trump is the way forward. He wouldn’t be able to run again. We won’t be bullied, intimated, and lied about every day in order to push us toward these political militias and their crude, violent talk and actions by acquitting Trump.   We can’t be the “law and order” Party if we don’t accept that “no one is above the law.”

“Also, the media would demand answers for out-of-control Republican outlaws and their Trumpian grip on state Republican Party committees. We will be so relentlessly distracted daily by Trumpian chaos and Trump’s 2024 candidacy that we won’t be able to reset the traditional stable GOP and advance our conservative agenda. Trump is causing us to lose our campaign contributions from frightened corporate CEOs who cannot tolerate daily political disruptions and overtly divisive rancor that rankles the workplace.”

“Some of our own legislators already are being investigated by the FBI for their involvement with these extremist groups.” (See the New York Times article: Republican Ties to Extremist Group Are Under Scrutiny).

“Furthermore, letting Trump go triumphantly into the electoral arena would increase the risk of internally splitting the Party with Trump either saying “his way” or creating a new “Patriot Party”. For many reasons, that would end our electoral chances for a generation.  It will be worse than what FDR did to our Party.”

“I make these arguments to my Senate Republicans, having just been re-elected. The Senators up for election in 2022 are fearful of being primaried. They cannot stand the burst of hate mail they would receive.”

“To them, I would say: “relax, look at the huge margins most of you won by in 2016. You’re just too cozy and not used to a primary challenge, which should make you an even better campaigner. Besides, you’ll raise much more campaign money by standing tall against the tyrant who attacked America, who will turn on you at a tweet’s notice if you’re not 100% with him.”

“Given the super-safe seats – no one is going to beat Thune, Moran, Lankford, Kennedy, Crapo, Boozman, and Shelby in any primary. Besides, any ultra-extremist candidates who win primaries are sure to lose in the general election. That’s what happened in Delaware in 2000. The great majority of sane GOP voters know a suicide drive when they hear and see it.”

Such is the swirling mind of Mitch McConnell these days. With more incriminating evidence coming out about Trump’s attempted election coup, and the expected alarming under oath testimony at the Senate trial, the sheer political self-interest and regard for the GOP’s future should result in the Senate voting for conviction.

See: Wrecking America Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All by Mark Green and Ralph Nader, for a detailed exposé of Donald Trump, Liar-in-Chief.

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New Auto Safety Report Demands Biden Strengthen Federal Programs Now

By Ralph Nader
January 22, 2021

Today the New York Times rediscovered its previous auto safety news beat that blossomed in the 1960s after my book, Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) caused an uproar in Detroit. Reporter Christopher Jensen told New York Times readers about a new report by a coalition of six automotive safety groups demanding that the new Biden Administration recharge the moribund, industry-dominated National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) with strong leadership, adequate budget, and long-overdue, proven vehicle safety standards.

Since its creation by Congress in 1966, NHTSA has had some bright moments which made motor vehicles more crash-worthy and operationally safer, with less pollution and more fuel efficiency. Since then, over four million lives have been saved and many more injuries prevented. Property damage was diminished and insurance premiums were lower than they would have been had the “wild west” non-regulation, “style over safety” manias been allowed to continue. Laissez-faire runs amok.

In recent decades, however, under both Democratic and Republican Administrations, NHTSA was degraded into more of a sporadic, meek consultant to the auto giants, instead of a strong law enforcement agency. Its Administrators wafted sleepily in their few years at the helm and then retired to lucrative positions in the industry they failed to regulate.

To the extent that NHTSA did anything significant, it was due to a small band of gritty citizen safety advocates such as Joan Claybrook, the prime author of this report, Clarence Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety, and the insurance-industry-funded Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety led until recently by Jackie Gillan and now Cathy Chase. These advocates used the tools of litigation and lobbying to protect all of us, receiving little recognition for their unsung and life-saving endeavors.

Alas for the most part, at NHTSA, the routine was official inaction, not considered “news” by the mass media. Standards not issued nor strengthened, recalls not ordered, penalties not applied, data not compiled by make and model, safety research vehicles not funded and chronic secrecy by the auto companies and government not qualifying as “newsworthy.” A few high-profile auto defect scandals, often exposed when manufacturers were sued by tort lawyers, were widely reported, but the news coverage rarely included NHTSA’s inaction and institutional abandonment by Congress and the White House.

The revival of the federal government’s motor vehicle safety/pollution/fuel efficiency missions must start with Congressional hearings for updated, stronger laws, including criminal penalties for refusal by auto companies to recall defective or noncompliant vehicles, legislatively mandated safety advances, and more capacity and funding for NHTSA’s tiny budget, now far less than what is spent on military bands!

With distracted driving and ever more vehicles on more crowded highways, fatalities (including pedestrian casualties) started to increase pre-Covid.

The media, on its part, should not be distracted by the hype around a premature autonomous vehicle and super smart highways. Every day, people are dying in the old-fashioned ways that could be prevented by long-ready, better-handling and crash-protective vehicles.

Imagine the benefits of safer vehicles with far more environmentally benign engines and adequate funding for cost-effective public investment in new forms of public transit and upgrading existing mass transit. Getting around on the ground should include many diverse forms of arriving at one’s destination in a timely, safe, and environmentally preferable manner.

The Claybrook report titled, Safer Vehicles and Highways: 4.2 million U.S. Lives Spared Since 1966, is very specific about what needs to be done. New technical talent is needed at NHTSA in this era of electric cars, autonomous safety assists, and the computerization of motor vehicles vulnerable to hacking.

A tougher position on recalls is essential. “Automakers continue efforts to minimize expensive recall costs by delaying the recall, narrowing the scope of a recall, or denying the defect,” declares the report.

Moreover, many of the safety features and performance levels in your vehicle have not been updated for years in practical, cost-effective ways long urged by the more innovative automotive suppliers. These include child safety safeguards.

It is time for the Biden people, under the new Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, to catch up and end the soporific record of their predecessors, including that of those from the Obama/Biden Administration. (See: Jerry Cox Steven Bradbury and Why 30 Million Takata Airbags Are Not being Recalled).

The French have a saying “the more things change the more they remain the same.” That applies to the auto company executive-suite culture. In their comfortable atriums, they arrange for deniability while they press for immunity from criminal and tort laws. They still preside over obscure financing and advertising deceptions. They still dangle before buyers of their less expensive vehicles, over-priced options for long-amortized safety improvements that are standard equipment on higher-priced vehicles so as to pressure them to upgrade.

They still instruct their lobbyists to go to Congress with one message “NO, NO, NO” to long-delayed improvements for motorists to reduce the casualty toll on the highway and the various economic costs associated with such stagnant corporate stubbornness.

Biden promises a New Day from Trumpism. Let’s see if he and his team can provide America with a New Day of Public Safety from callous corporatism on the nation’s roadways.

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Trump’s Finale from Impeachment to Conviction

By Ralph Nader
January 15, 2021

Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, a graduate of Harvard Law School, asked his colleagues: “If inciting a deadly insurrection is not enough to get a president impeached, then what is?” Ten Republicans voted for Impeachment, but 197 House Republicans disagreed. Trump incited the crowd in person on the Mall. He lied to his supporters saying, “I’ll be with you” on the march to the Capitol. Trump then refused to call the crowd back when it turned into a mob that violently stormed into the Capitol. Trump scurried back to the White House to gleefully watch on TV his “special people” rampage through the Congress with destructive intent.

Why should the GOP obeisance to Trump, the Mobster in Chief, this recidivist criminal, a violator of many provisions of the Constitution, obstructor of justice “as a daily way of life” according to his former national security advisor John Bolton, and hourly lying sociopath, surprise anyone?

Congressional Republicans have aided and abetted, for four years, Trump’s assertion that “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as president.” Dangerous Donald did just that. He finally incited a massive, homicidal street crime against the very Congress that let him get away with everything, day after day, as if there were no laws and no Constitution to be observed whatsoever.

The GOP speakers who defended Trump in the House Impeachment debate will go down in history as unsurpassed political cowards and lying bloviators, led by Trump clone, belligerent Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. Trump’s Congressional protectors, however, failed. The House of Representatives voted for Articles of Impeachment that are on their way to the Senate for a certain trial. The Senate should convict treacherous unrepentant Trump and ban him from ever seeking federal office again.

In the days before the trial, more incriminating evidence will emerge.

Already, a GAO investigation is underway into Republican lawmakers suspected of being complicit in aiding the mob’s objective of physically overturning the results of the presidential election. Evidence of early facilitation both before and during the armed invasion is reaching investigators, including the involvement by some Capitol Police and other police officers in plain clothes.

Trump’s business allies and supporters are not waiting for any verdicts. Major corporations such as Disney, Coca-Cola, and J.P. Morgan Chase have suspended campaign contributions to the GOP. Last week, the powerful National Association of Manufacturers demanded that Trump be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. Trump’s banks, to whom he owes hundreds of millions of dollars, are distancing themselves from their insatiable borrower. New York City has canceled its contract with the Trump corporation. More cancellations of deals with TRUMP, Inc. will come.

Though verbally defiant, admitting no mistakes, and as usual taking no responsibility, Trump is a broken man, assailing his most loyal subjects including total toady Vice President Mike Pence. Deprived of his Twitter machine and other Internet platforms, Trump will soon be a besieged debtor, a manyfold investigated and sued defendant abandoned by the likes of Mitch McConnell.

The calculus of political survival for the just re-elected McConnell’s Congressional Republicans has changed. In the minority, no longer will Republicans be able to confirm corporatist judges or pass Trump-like corporate tax cuts for the super-rich, or dismantle health and safety regulations.

But out on the MAGA hustings, Trump may be a huge tormentor, raising money and wanting to run again. Such a prospect is intolerable to McConnell. That is why he is turning against Trump by declining to oppose Impeachment and signaling that he may unleash his Republican Senators to convict Trump, if only for their own political survival. The GOP polls are slipping and will slip more as the toxic stench of what occurred before and during the January 6th attack increases.

McConnell does not want Trump either to run or threaten to run again in 2024. The only way that yoke can be lifted is to free 17 or more Republican Senators to vote for conviction followed by a simple majority vote banning Trump from future federal office.

Out of office and prohibited from regaining office, Trump will be increasingly defined by his more violent, hardcore Trumpsters. Trump being Trump, will not oppose their street actions. He will want to continue to address and exhort his followers to remain a political force.

This entanglement is already underway. While Washington, D.C. is brimming with thousands of soldiers, police, and surveillance technology, the Trump militants are unfazed. They are planning more protests.

According to Pentagon officials, reported in the New York Times, “Some 16 groups – some of them saying they will be armed and most of them made up of hardline supporters of Mr. Trump – have registered to stage protests.” This cannot be good political news for the Congressional Republicans left behind after the Trump family departs the White House.

What are the probabilities that a conviction in the Senate will be achieved? Better than 50/50, given the survival instincts of the politicians wanting the felonious Trump off their backs.

As for Trump, what he has left until noon on January 20th, barring some last-gasp grotesque eruption, is the pardon power for his closest allies like Rudy Giuliani, his family, and himself. He could enlarge the range of pardons by declaring a Day of Forgiveness on January 19th with general pardons of deserving, elderly prisoners, political prisoners, and nonviolent drug offenders in the federal prisons.

However, such a vision is inconsistent with narcissism. We’ll see.

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Can Justice Finally Overtake Trump, Its Most Defiant Fugitive?

By Ralph Nader

January 8, 2021

Despite the many crimes Donald Trump regularly committed over four years, it took his blatant incitement of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to put him on the road to prison. (See: Letter to vice President Mike Pence Re: Invocation of Amendment 25). What transpired on Wednesday in the shadows of the Washington Monument was a pure violent street crime that resulted in five fatalities, property smashed and damaged, and many assaults by hundreds of rioters who broke into or were allowed into the Capitol.

The current prosecutor is Acting United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Michael R. Sherwin. USA TODAY reported that Mr. Sherwin said: “‘We’re looking at all actors here and anyone that had a role and, if the evidence fits the elements of the crime, they’re going to be charged,’ Sherwin said these words after he was asked by a reporter if investigators are looking at the role the president played.”

From Day One in 2017, several people foresaw the signs of an emerging sociopath, using violent rhetoric to encourage illegal behavior. It wasn’t only professional psychologists who declared Trump to be severely unstable. Each day he created and disseminated dangerous fantasies. This egomaniacal wannabee monarch could not stop lying in a dangerous manner, making false accusations or delusionally bragging.

Reporters, commentators, litigants, and elected representatives who were documenting Trump’s trail of political and public insanity were overwhelmed by his doubling down on his flailing and wrongdoing in plain sight. But they mostly declined to draw the enforcement conclusions arising from their convictions, further enabling Trump’s use of the power of the bully pulpit to intimidate or threaten his critics.

Remember, Trump, said, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” He recklessly kept doing just that. The Republicans supported him and covered for him, while the Democrats huffed and puffed in place. The Democrats refused to file eleven well-documented articles of impeachment and instead only went with the Ukraine matter. (See: December 18, 2019, Congressional Record, H-12197)

Meanwhile, in dozens of ways, Trump emboldened the most extreme of his supporters. Recall his outcry “liberate Wisconsin.” Trump’s support for the armed invasion of the Michigan state capitol with impunity, and his many signals, and inactions showed the white supremacists in the streets that the President and William Barr’s Justice Department would overlook hateful racist mischief and mayhem. He even encouraged one of these groups by repeating their militant mantra verbatim.

Published warnings about Trump’s interest in insurrection were largely unheeded by the mass media and even by the independent progressive media. They were too satisfied with reporting on his outrageous behavior and tweets, and too pleased with how easy a subject Trump was for derision. We and others would invoke specific criminal statutes he violated frequently, such as the Hatch Act (using federal property and personnel for political campaign objectives) or the Anti-Deficiency Acts (spending much money strictly not appropriated by Congress) and other grave flouting of statutory and regulatory, mandates, scores of congressional subpoenas and major constitutional provisions. The news media did not regard Trump’s deep lawlessness as worthy of much reporting or editorializing. The excuse was “Trump is just being Trump.” Both the media and members of Congress, without paying attention to legal penalties, allowed Trump to keep pushing the envelope on lawbreaking until his invasion of the very Congress that let him get away with so much. It took lawmakers scrambling for their lives through Congressional tunnels to wake them up beyond their rhetoric or perfidy. There are severe consequences for ignoring the law’s non-enforcement and when the media and elected officials become too jaded to challenge a president who doesn’t respect the rule of law or constitutional restraints.

This assault may not be Trump’s last act before January 20th. For sure he will increase the presidential pardons for his friends, family, and quite possibly the rioters and himself. Nobody knows what this “Mad Dog” Trump will try to do on his way out. However, it is reassuring that neither the courts nor the military have met his expectations of supporting and shielding him from his adversaries. These two institutions affirmatively refused to sanction dictatorial rule.

The mounting calls for Trump’s resignation, or prosecution, or removal by impeachment conviction or the exercise of the 25th Amendment are coming from all sides – Democrats, Republicans, bi-partisan declarations of retired military and civilian officials from past Administrations, and even business groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers. Their immediate urging would be to stop further mayhem and upheavals by a cornered, rampaging commander-in-chief who knows that, in one of his favorite phrases, “this is our last chance.”

Maybe merely advancing these acts of enforcement and evictions, rooted in our constitution and law, will be a deterrence and persuade Trump to quietly go right away to Mar-a-Largo, as suggested today on NPR by Jeh Johnson, former Secretary of Homeland Security.

That kind of finale has not been his MO, whether as a failed gambling czar, choosing corporate bankruptcy as an exit strategy, or as a president who doesn’t show remorse, admit mistakes, or that he ever “did anything wrong.”

If there is anything Trump dislikes more than being a loser (the election), it is being a two-time loser. Perhaps he will back down, play the victim again, and with the help of a stable of defense attorneys, hope that he can wear a pin-striped suit instead of an orange jumpsuit while wistfully watching Fox News behind bars.

(See our new book, Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All)

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Letter to Vice President Mike Pence Re: Invocation of Amendment 25

January 7, 2021

Honorable Mike Pence

Vice President of the United States

The White House

Office of the Vice President

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. Vice President:

We strongly urge you and your Cabinet colleagues to invoke paragraph 3 of Amendment 25 to have you immediately assume the powers and duties of President Donald Trump because of the latter’s mental or psychological inability to discharge the powers and duties of his office: namely, his inability to take care that the laws be faithfully executed under Article II, section 3, and his inability to honor his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States under Article II, section 1.

Among other transgressions, on January 6, 2021, Mr. Trump committed the crimes of seditious conspiracy and incitement to commit seditious conspiracy, 18 U.S.C. 2384, and incitement to assault government officials and destroy government property, 18 U.S.C. 111, 1361, by employing incendiary lies, subversions of the 2020 presidential election, and provoking, inciting, and emboldening a fevered mob to storm the Capitol to prevent the proper and lawful counting of presidential electoral votes certified by the various States and the District of Columbia. In so doing, President Trump took a wrecking ball to the Constitution and the rule of law, and the legitimacy of the government itself, the nation’s crown jewels.

Time is of the essence. Every 24 hours Mr. Trump remains in office is a roll of the dice with the Constitution and the American people, for example, military attacks against Iran, China, or Venezuela; anticipatory pardons for his latest mob, business cronies, his family, and himself; the imposition of martial law; brandishing the Insurrection Act; or renewed incitements against the Georgia Governor and Secretary of State or new incitements against Members of the House or Senate who voted to count the certified electoral votes of the 50 States and the District of Columbia or the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Vice President, history has summoned you to courage and constitutional integrity. We urge you not to neglect the call to patriotic duty.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader

Lou Fisher

Bruce Fein

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Georgians – Go Vote for a Long Overdue Raise!

By Ralph Nader

December 31, 2020

Lots of people have Georgia and its crucial two Senate runoff elections next Tuesday on their minds.

Some people are pouring money into what will easily be the most expensive Senate races in history. Between the Democrats and Republicans, about half a billion dollars will enrich TV stations and their monetized media consultants, who take 15% of the ad budget. Others are working on getting out the vote.

The stakes are high due to who will ultimately control the U.S. Senate – either evil Mitch McConnell, who calls himself the “Grim Reaper” or Chuck Schumer with two new Georgia Senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

Some observers are trying to convince the Georgia Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee, and Senator Schumer not to repeat the mistakes of the general election. Too much money is spent on too few issues, repeated ad infinitum on unimaginative TV ads and social media. The repetition and volume of ads are irritating viewers. Unfortunately, the political operatives are clueless about how to talk about the pain of white, blue-collar workers to go along with their identity politics.

There are campaigners in Georgia urging workers “to go vote for a raise.” The House of Representatives led by the Democrats even passed a bill to raise the frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to $15 per hour (in stages).

Corporate tool McConnell is bragging about blocking this bill (and 400 others) passed by the House. His hapless Kentucky voters sent the anti-labor Senate leader back for another term of big business service. He calls himself “the Guardian of Gridlock,” except, that is when it comes to giving goodies and more power to Wall Street and corporate supremacists.

The Democratic Party is focusing its attention on Atlanta and its suburbs, but there are a great number of Georgians outside that region. The voters in other parts of the state are not being given the attention needed, says Emory University Professor Drew Westen, an expert on Southern politics and why the Democrats keep losing there.

Tellingly Donald Trump, when he visited Georgia this month, went to Valdosta and Rome, while Joe Biden chose only to visit Atlanta. A highly regarded psychologist and author, Westen believes that the appeal of “go vote for a raise” – “you’ve earned this long-overdue adjusted minimum wage,” is a deep imprint issue that will reach people where they live, work, and raise their families.

Maybe it’s because the campaign coffers, so overflowing for the Georgia Democratic Party and groups led by Stacey Abrams, that Westen’s message skills are not being tapped. Many others, with ideas for reaching the decisive white, blue-collar voters, are also outside the golden cocoon that makes politicians so smug.

Greatly outspending the GOP, the Democratic Party barely elected Joe Biden. A switch of under 100,000 votes in 4 swing states (Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin) would have given corrupt, unstable, ego-obsessed Donald another four years. The Democratic Party did not win the Senate, squeaked through the House, losing seats, and did not reclaim one state legislature. Imagine all that money chasing the closed-minded Democrats and their so-called political strategists.

Just to test Westen and other’s complaints, I called more than once the offices of Stacey Abrams, Senator Chuck Schumer, and Senate candidates Raphael Warnock, and Jon Ossoff. I couldn’t get past the robotic voice-mail recordings.

It should be easy to defeat the two pathetic, super-rich, stock market-crazed incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. All they do is ditto the GOP’s attacks against “socialism” and calls to “defund the police” – neither of which reflect the positions of their cautious challengers. Once again, however, the Democrats failed to colloquially blow those accusations away and, in return, failed to charge Loeffler and Perdue with supporting gigantic “corporate welfare socialism” and Trump defunding the federal police fighting corporate crime and violence.

Sure, the Democrats are talking about health care, but not single-payer, and some general economic issues. To win, however, they need to cut into the GOP betrayed voters.

The GOP controlled state government has closed voting locations and is up to its usual chicanery and voter suppression. That means the Democrats have to win by more votes for a margin of safety. Against delusionary Donald – busy trying to steal the national election and the fevered, cold-blooded corporatist McConnell – this should be a piece of cake with obvious compelling messaging.

The problem is that Democratic messaging is the “same old, same old.” Tired themes that almost lost the Presidential election on November 3rd to the worst, most corrupt, anti-worker, anti-consumer, and anti-environment GOP in the Party’s corporate indentured history. Such limited pledges will not motivate new votes for Democrats in Georgia on January 5, 2021.

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Immediate Impeachment and Removal of President Donald Trump

December 27, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

H-232 The Capitol

Washington, D.C. 20515

Mitch McConnell

Majority Leader

United States Senate

317 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

RE: Immediate Impeachment and Removal of President Donald Trump

Dear Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader McConnell:

As we warned last year, the narrow and anemic impeachment articles filed against President Donald Trump and his rapid acquittals have emboldened him to more appalling continuing lawbreaking and worsening violations of the public trust, both impeachable offenses according to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65.

As during the Watergate crisis, the Constitution summons both Republicans and Democrats to transcend partisanship to defend our constitutional Republic from Mr. Trump’s escalating aggressions. In this landmark instance, the nation is deeply indebted to Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, and House Minority Leader John Rhodes for speaking unvarnished truths about impeachment to President Richard Nixon in the White House. Resignation soon followed.

President Trump has issued scores of pardons for corrupt motives: to reward die-hard political supporters or colleagues who refrained from incriminating him or his 2016 presidential campaign with Special Counsel Mueller; and, to retaliate against the military and its discipline for insufficient obsequiousness to his person. Mr. Trump’s pardons have sent a signal that persons who commit crimes to shield him from the law or to assist his endeavors will be protected against criminal punishment, a promise morally indistinguishable from bribery and witness tampering.

With the fury of King Lear on the heath, President Trump is breaking all the china in the Oval Office as he exits the White House. After engaging in unprecedented voter suppression and inciting violence among his supporters, he entertained martial law, seizure of voting machines, and contemplated new balloting in battleground states to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Mr. Trump is escalating military tensions with China over Taiwan and the South China Sea and Iran. In the remaining weeks of his administration, Mr. Trump seems eager to issue blanket pardons to himself, his family, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and cronies or future business partners, casting further disrepute on the rule of law and evenhanded justice.

It is difficult to conceive of more flagrant self-serving presidential violations of the public trust in plain view during an interregnum. The Constitution’s framers envisioned impeachment as prophylactic, i.e., removing a president from office who has demonstrated by words and deeds a clear and present danger to our liberties and the rule of law. Each additional day President Trump remains in office is a roll of the dice with the nation’s immediate present and future. The alarming, unchecked powers of the White House that have spiked in past decades are a constant temptation to the mentally unstable and volatile President to manufacture any number of crises to shred our constitutional order and to devastate the general welfare.

This emergency makes time of the essence. Notwithstanding uniform rejection of electoral fraud allegations by scores of courts, Mr. Trump refuses to concede defeat or acknowledge his constitutional obligation to depart office on January 20, 2021. Facts and corrupt presidential motives are not in dispute. The House should quickly vote to impeach President Trump and the Senate to convict him of the “high crimes and misdemeanors,” of serial lawbreaking, and of grave violations of the public trust. Otherwise, Mr. Trump’s irreparable vandalizing of the Republic’s constitutional edifice and subjecting the American people to avoidable cruel privations will continue.

Sincerely,

Bruce Fein, Esq.

Ralph Nader, Esq.

Lou Fisher

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Statement by Ralph Nader on the 50th Anniversary of OSHA

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). President Richard Nixon signed the bill into law at a White House ceremony on December 29, 1970. Our citizen advocacies were central to its passage over the opposition of the business lobbies, but were not invited to the White House signing. We worked on this legislation meticulously, obtained media coverage and labor support during its difficult path through the Senate and the House. Unsung heroes were Tony Mazzocchi, Secretary-Treasurer of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), and our lawyer Gary Sellers, who worked closely with the great Congressional champion for OSHA, Rep. Philip Burton (Dem. California).

OSHA, whose mission is the saving of workers’ lives and protecting their health and safety, has come under fierce and unjust attack by industries with unsafe workplaces such as coal mines, chemical plants, agribusiness and the construction industry. OSHA’s funding has been tiny, its inspectors small in number and its authority undermined by corporate-indentured members of Congress and White House pressures.

Given the terrible hazards that millions of frontline workers are experiencing during the Covid-19 pandemic, the mission of OSHA has never been more important and timely. Yet, Donald Trump and his Trumpsters have refused to issue mandatory safety standards and protection for these workers and have virtually shut down OSHA’s overall enforcement duties.

President-elect Joe Biden must revive OSHA’s life-saving mission with a strong nominee to head this agency and assure it is adequately funded. Presently its annual budget of about $500 million a year is what the Department of Defense spends each year on military bands. Almost 60,000 workers lose their lives from workplace diseases and traumas every year.

The post Statement by Ralph Nader on the 50th Anniversary of OSHA first appeared on Ralph Nader.

Recommended Civic Groups for Year End Charitable Giving

For those of you who make last minute charitable contributions to “good works,” here is my recommended list of really stalwart, result-oriented, no-nonsense civic advocacy groups.

You can find out yourself all they are doing with modest budgets by going to their websites. They are the lighthouses of a democratic society.

Appalachia-Science in the Public Interest: appalachia-spi.org
Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest: aclpi.org
Beyond Nuclear: beyondnuclear.org
Beyond Pesticides: beyondpesticides.org
Center for Health, Environment & Justice: chej.org
Center for Race, Poverty, and the Environment: crpe-ej.org
Children’s Advocacy Institute: sandiego.edu/cai
Doctors Without Borders USA: doctorswithoutborders.org
Earth Island Institute: earthisland.org
Flyers Rights: flyersrights.org
Honor the Earth: honorearth.org
Indian Law Resource Center: indianlaw.org
Solitary Watch: solitarywatch.org
Nuclear Information and Resources Service: nirs.org
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: peer.org
Western Organization of Resource Councils Education Project: worc.org/ep
Whirlwind Wheelchair: whirlwindwheelchair.org
Veterans For Peace: veteransforpeace.org
The post Recommended Civic Groups for Year End Charitable Giving first appeared on Ralph Nader.

Recidivist Criminal and Constitutional Outlaw Trump Rushes to Pardon Criminal Lawbreakers

By Ralph Nader

December 24, 2020

Serial lawbreaker Donald J. Trump is embarking on the most sordid presidential pardon spree in American history. He has already pardoned convicted crooks, thieves, and violent outlaws. Trump’s pardon lawyers are frantically assembling more MAGA besotted individuals and groups to be pardoned wholesale. The number may climb into the hundreds. The queue is long. Trump corruptly doles out pardons to spite his list of archenemies and to reward his sycophants as many people are pleading with Trump for pardons. (For a partial list of Trump pardons see: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-donald-trump)

Trump thrills at what he considers his absolute power to pardon, including family members and himself. He is wrong. No constitutional right or power is pursued at all costs. All have limits. The power to pardon is limited at least by prohibitions on bribery, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and the 400-year honored maxim that “no man can be a judge in his own case.” Further, the Constitution’s framers specifically described corruptly motivated pardons as impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors and specifically authorized criminal prosecution of the President after impeachment and removal from office. The latter would become an overthrow of lawful orders with presidential self-pardons.

No president has displayed the audacity or depravity to self-pardon. In 1974, the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department concluded that the president cannot self-pardon.

Legal scholars differ on whether pardons must specifically describe the crimes and persons to be pardoned and whether the beneficiary must confess guilt. Trump’s cynical pardons could provoke Congress and the courts to set procedural and substantive limits.

President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon in the aftermath of his resignation to avoid impeachment and conviction for defying a congressional subpoena, obstruction of justice, and misuse of government agencies. On September 8, 1974, in broad and sweeping language, Ford declared that pursuant to Article II Section 2 of the Constitution “I … do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974.” Nixon’s pardon was never challenged for non-specific descriptions of the pardoned offenses.

President Jimmy Carter, on January 21, 1977, pardoned violators of the draft laws, known as draft resisters, many of whom fled to Canada. He granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon” to “all persons who may have committed any offense between August 4, 1964, and March 28, 1973, in violation of the Military Selective Service Act or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder.” He included in this pardon “all persons heretofore convicted,” of any such offense, “restoring to them full political, civil and other rights.” Excluded, however, were all persons “convicted of or who may have committed any offense involving force or violence.”

President Carter specified the offense but did not name the thousands of Americans pardoned. He simply established a Justice Department procedure for the beneficiaries to obtain a certificate of pardon.

With four weeks of Trump’s tenure remaining, rumors of what he could or should do are multiplying. Will he pardon all inmates in federal prisons convicted of nonviolent marijuana or other drug offenses? Will he pardon a wide network of people who could otherwise be compelled to testify against him? Will he pardon former business associates or future business partners of all federal offenses? (He cannot pardon for state offenses.)

Trump can issue anticipatory pardons before an individual is formally charged with a crime.

Thus far, of the over 60 pardons or commutations issued by Trump, the vast majority of recipients have featured a personal connection or political affinity. Speculation has centered on pardons for Edward Snowden or Julian Assange to leaven Trump’s overt favoritism.

Trump’s corruptly motivated pardons will continue until President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. He will probably refrain from resigning in favor of Vice President Pence in exchange for a pardon for himself and family members. The stench of bribery would be too great.

In the final days of his four-year chronicle of statutory criminal and constitutional violations (See: December 18, 2019, Congressional Record, H-12197 and many past articles by writers on Trump’s lawbreaking), Trump will give both the Congress and the courts great incentive to set specific limits on the pardon power.

Trump and future presidents cannot be allowed to brazenly dishonor justice and undermine the rule of law.

Congressional abdication and public indifference will pave the way for the kind of monarchical power so resolutely dreaded by our Constitution’s framers who fought to defeat King George III and repudiate tyranny. Unless resisted by a resolute, aroused citizenry.

The post Recidivist Criminal and Constitutional Outlaw Trump Rushes to Pardon Criminal Lawbreakers first appeared on Ralph Nader.