We Can't Ignore the Latest Lawsuit Against Trump's Kangaroo Voting Commission

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

13 November 17

The assault on voting rights is getting messy.

he Presidential Commission on Voter Integrity, headed by noted friend of the franchise—and the immigrant—Kris Kobach of Kansas, has fallen rather clamorously off the radar since its disastrous open hearing in New Hampshire back in September. Not that the commission hasn’t been busy. So far 15 lawsuits of one kind or another have been filed against the Commission, and that will keep your staff pretty damn occupied. The whole puppet show has fallen into disarray, largely because it was founded in deeply bad faith, and because Kris Kobach is the Midwest distributor of Bad Faith on behalf of James Crow, Esq. LLC.

But the latest lawsuit is one we can’t ignore. The commission is being sued by one of its own members, as we learn from the invaluable Ari Berman at Mother Jones.

Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat whom Trump appointed to the commission in May, sued the commission in federal court on Thursday, alleging violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972, which requires presidential advisory committees to operate in a bipartisan and transparent manner. The lawsuit says Dunlap is being deliberately kept in the dark about the commission’s work. “The law and good conscience require Secretary Dunlap to participate meaningfully in the work of the Commission; however, despite diligent efforts to gain access, Secretary Dunlap has been, and continues to be, blocked from receiving Commission documents necessary to carry out his responsibilities,” the lawsuit states. “By obstructing certain commissioners’ access to information and failing to allow substantive participation of commissioners with balance in terms of points of view, the Commission and its staff have compromised the legitimacy of any findings that may emerge from this process.”

Dunlap’s cause of action can probably best be explained by the brothers of the Faber College chapter of Delta Tau Chi.

Though a few Democrats, including Dunlap, were eventually appointed, “the Commission’s superficial bipartisanship has been a façade,” the lawsuit states.

The suit cites a number of examples of how Dunlap and others have been excluded from the commission’s work. Kobach consulted with von Spakovsky and another hardline conservative commission member prior to requesting extensive voter data from all 50 states, but did not inform the full commission of the action. Dunlap alleges he was not consulted beforehand about the agenda of commission meetings or documents introduced at them. He also claims he’s been told that the commission’s work is “on hold” pending the outcome of litigation against the commission, but a right-wing group in Minnesota said it had been invited to speak at a commission meeting in December, which Dunlap is unaware of. When he asked commission staffer Andrew Kossack for “copies of any and all correspondence between Commission members,” Dunlap said “Kossack did not provide any documents or agree to provide any documents.”

The assaults on the franchise are going to intensify, especially if Tuesday night’s results prove to be the precursor to the 2018 midterms that a lot of people believe them to be. Perhaps the last best hope that defenders of voting rights have against this kangaroo confab is that interested parties can sue the commission to tatters, leaving what’s left to public scorn and mockery. After all, remember, it wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.

Patriotism, Taxes, and Trump

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Website

13 November 17

elling the Trump-Republican tax plan should be awkward for an administration that has made patriotism its central theme.

That’s because patriotism isn’t mostly about saluting the flag and standing during the national anthem. 

It’s about taking a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

But the tax plan gives American corporations a $2 trillion tax break, at a time when they’re enjoying record profits and stashing unprecedented amounts of cash in offshore tax shelters.

And it gives America’s wealthiest citizens trillions more, when the richest 1 percent now hold a record 38.6 percent of the nation’s total wealth, up from 33.7 percent a decade ago.

The reason Republicans give for enacting the plan is “supply-side” trickle-down nonsense. The real reason is payback to the GOP’s mega-donors.

A few Republicans are starting to admit this. Last week, Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead economic advisor, conceded in an interview that “the most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”

Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted that “my donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans failed to pass tax reform, “the financial contributions will stop.”

Republican mega-donors view the tax payback as they do any other investment. When they bankrolled Trump and the GOP, they expected a good return.

The biggest likely beneficiaries are busily investing an additional $43 million to pressure specific members of Congress to pass it, according to The Wall Street Journal.

They include the 45Committee, founded by billionaire casino oligarch Sheldon Adelson and Joe Ricketts, owner of the Chicago Cubs; and the Koch Brothers’ groups, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners.

They’re not doing this out of love of America. They’re doing it out of love of money.

How do you think they got so wealthy in the first place? 

As more of the nation’s wealth has shifted to the top over the past three decades, major recipients have poured some of it into politics – buying themselves tax cuts, special subsidies, bailouts, lenient antitrust enforcement, favorable bankruptcy rules, extended intellectual property protection, and other laws that add to their wealth.

All of which have given them more clout to get additional legal changes that enlarge their wealth even more.

Forty years ago, the estate tax was paid by 139,000 estates, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. By 2000, it was paid by 52,000. This year it will be paid by just 5,500 estates. Under the House tax plan, it will be eliminated altogether.

Why do Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than the citizens of every other advanced economy? Because Big Pharma has altered the laws in its favor. Why do we pay more for internet service than most other nations? Big cable’s political clout. Why can payday lenders get away with payday robbery? The political heft of big banks.

Multiply these examples across the economy and you get a huge hidden upward redistribution from the paychecks of average working people and the poor to top executives and investors. (I explain this in detail in the documentary “Saving Capitalism,” airing next week on Netflix.)

All this is terrible for the American economy.  

More and better jobs depend on increasing demand for goods and services. This must come from the middle class and poor because the rich spend a far smaller share of their after-tax income.

Yet the middle class and poor have steadily lost purchasing power. Partly as a result, a relatively low share of the nation’s working-age population is employed today and the wages of the typical worker have been stuck in the mud.

The Republican tax plan will make all this worse by burdening the middle class and the poor even more.

A slew of analyses, including Congress’s own Joint Committee on Taxation, show that the GOP plan will raise taxes on many middle-class families.

It will also require cuts in government programs that middle and lower-income Americans depend on, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

And the plan will almost certainly explode the national debt, eventually causing many middle class and poor families to pay higher interest on their auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards.

I don’t care whether the top executives of big corporations, Wall Street moguls, and heirs to vast fortunes salute the flag and stand for the national anthem.

But they enjoy all the advantages of being American. Most couldn’t have got to where they are in any other country. 

They have a patriotic duty to take on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going. And Trump and his enablers in Congress have a patriotic responsibility to make them.