Joe Fahey

This past week, the trial of Joseph Percoco and two others, in New York City continued with jury deliberations after almost seven weeks of testimony.

The trial revealed the all too common pay to play system that has come to embody Albany involving bribes and extortion that play an integral role in the awarding of lucrative contracts for economic development projects and public improvements.

It opened a window into the way contractors and developers obtain access to the public officials and their appointees who have the power to reward contributors to their political campaigns.

In this case, the two developers that are charged with Percoco, during the past decade, contributed over five hundred thousand dollars to the Governor, state legislators and local public officials that are influential and instrumental in awarding these contracts.

While the contributions were apparently legal and don’t constitute the bribes charged in the indictment, the way in which they were made should draw some scrutiny and reforms to eliminate the mechanism that allowed them to go unscrutinized.

At the heart of the case is a disgraced lobbyist named Todd Howe.

Howe pled guilty to eight felonies in connection with the charges in the indictment and agreed to cooperate with the government and testify about the acts charged in the indictment in exchange for leniency.

It hasn’t helped his credibility that he got arrested in the middle of his trial testimony, after it was revealed that he broke the terms of his plea agreement, which required him to commit no further crimes. He attempting to defraud his credit card company during a trip to New York City to meet with government prosecutors to prepare for trial.

Howe advised the developers to make their contributions through a Limited Liability Corporation (LLCs) that did not contain the company name so that no connection would be apparent between the developers’ contributions and the contracts awarded to them by virtue of their “preferred developer” status.

In the midst of all of this testimony, it was disclosed that Cuomo, who has always claimed to champion closing the LLC loophole, that allows contributors to skirt the limits on individual contributions, additionally accepted $ 2.2 million dollars from state appointees in violation of an executive order barring this practice.

The order was first promulgated by Eliot Spitzer at the beginning of his Administration and was renewed by Governor David Paterson and Cuomo, himself, at the start of his first term as Governor.

When this issue was raised with the Cuomo Administration, they tried to re-interpret the order by saying that it only prohibited donations from state employees that could be fired by the governor.

When that explanation didn’t “play in Peoria” as John Ehrlichman like to say, they offered a new interpretation, claiming that it only applied to employees who had to file disclosure forms with the Joint Commission on Public Ethics.

Observers and critics have pointed out that this requirement is not mentioned anywhere in the executive order.

Cuomo is sitting on a re-election campaign fund that exceeds $ 30 million dollars.

Cuomo’s determination to retain these contributions is tone deaf at best and arrogant at worst, since this disclosure comes during the first of two trials of a bribery and extortion scheme that reaches to the highest level of his Administration.

Joseph Percoco, the lead defendant in the current corruption trial is Cuomo’s closest confidant, whom he described as “Mario Cuomo’s third son.”

Testimony in the trial also revealed that Percoco retained and utilized his state office adjacent to Cuomo’s despite having left state service to run Cuomo’s 2014 re-election campaign.

Both of them apparently ignored a prohibition on utilizing state government resources for political purposes.

The New York Times, The Daily News and other newspapers have been highly critical of Cuomo’s shifting two-step as he tries to justify his questionable fundraising practices against the back drop of the first of the corruption trials.

When it was revealed that Howe had pled guilty to multiple felonies and was cooperating with the government, Cuomo tried to distance himself from him, claiming they weren’t friends and did not have a close relationship.

Like his tortured accounting of the executive order, history belied these claims too.

In e-mails introduced during the trial, Howe was included in the “brotherhood” of the Cuomo clan activated by Percoco as Cuomo began his 2010 campaign for Governor. He had worked for Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, when he was Governor, worked for Andrew Cuomo when he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration where he hired Percoco.

Despite his self-styled persona as a “reformer,” Cuomo surrounds himself with the Howes and Percocos of the world where everything is measured by what it does to advance Cuomo’s career, whether it is legal or not.

I don’t know how the trial will conclude.

It could end in a conviction, an acquittal or a mistrial.

If it ends in a mistrial, it is likely to be rescheduled late this year, after the bid rigging trial scheduled for June.

If that happens, it may overlap this year’s primary and general election campaign for Governor, putting the issue of this Administration’s corruption front and center before the voters as they go to the polls.

One can only hope.

Tomorrow, the deadline that Trump imposed for Congress to enact “Dreamer” protection for those previously protected under the Deferred Action for Children, expires.

Deportations of these people, who were brought to this country as children and know no other home, are not expected to proceed until two federal lawsuits enjoining them are concluded.

Congress took no action because the U.S. Senate requires sixty voted to move the measure and three separate bills which would resolve this and other immigration issues have failed to pass.

Trump has been all over the landscape on these issues.

He proclaims his love for the “Dreamers,” yet abolished DACA by executive order.

He promised to sign any “beautiful” bill sent to him but then larded any proposal with so many demands and restrictions that its enactment was doomed.

He invited Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Durbin to the White House to discuss their proposal, only to ambush them with a number of anti-immigrant supporters that culminated in his calling certain nations “shitholes.”

Trump’s xenophobic beliefs are never far from the surface.

His followers spring from that element that fell behind him when he championed the “birther” movement and his racist insistence that President Obama wasn’t born in this country and was an illegitimate president.

He insists that the country abandon its current immigration policy that allows citizens to sponsor family members from other countries, which he calls “chain migration.”

His record on allowing refugees from war-torn countries, many of which are in wars that we are a part of, who fear persecution and genocide is hard hearted and abysmal.

Then there is his signature promise, “The Wall.”

His entire campaign was built around a promise that he would build a “big beautiful wall” and make Mexico pay for it.

Mexico, which was never consulted, understandably, has no intention of paying for it.

Interestingly, one of the demands he and his anti-immigrant coterie made during their session with Senators Graham and Durbin was funding for The Wall.

Since that demand undercuts his promise that he would make Mexico pay for the Wall, it seems like that would be any easy response for Senators Schumer, Durbin and others to justify the refusal to commit to it.

Trump’s myopic insistence that this fantasy would come true has now poisoned relations with Mexico and led to the cancellation of a visit by that country’s president this spring.

Never mind that they are one of our oldest and closest allies.

Never mind that they are one of our largest trading partners.

Trump’s own actions when it comes to immigrant labor are, to say the least, inconsistent with his expressed views.

Despite his “buy American, hire Americans” pledge, last October, Trump obtained visas to hire 70 foreign workers for the 2017-2018 season for his business at Mar-a-Lago.
This was an increase from the 64 he obtained for the 2016-2017 season there.

Trump’s antipathy for undocumented immigrants has never stood in the way of his willingness to use and abuse them when it is to his advantage.

Indeed, as far back as 1980, Trump employed 200 undocumented Polish workers to perform demolition on one of his work sites in Manhattan.

The workers were paid four dollars per hour, half the union scale, to work twelve hour shifts without gloves, hardhats or masks to protect them from the asbestos in the building.

Ultimately, Trump stopped paying them and when they complained, threatened to report them to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The workers sued and eighteen years later Trump settled the class-action lawsuit for 1.375 million dollars.

But there is something to celebrate.

This past week, the Washington Post, reported that the country has two new permanent residents.

Viktor and Amalija Knavs received their green cards.

It is probably a mere coincidence that they happen to be Melania Trump’s parents.

Melania Trump became a citizen in 2006.

Trump and his anti-immigrant supporters would call this “chain migration” which needs to be outlawed.

Under Trump’s proposal sponsoring family members would be limited to spouses and children.

I guess there are situations when “chain migration” would be acceptable.

Like if you are married to a Trump.

Last week a former student brought an assault rifle to his school in Parkland Florida and murdered seventeen people.

In 2012, a gunman, using an assault rifle, killed twenty children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

In 1999, two students murdered twelve students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado armed with an assault rifle and a sawed off shotgun.

Last year a gunman opened fire at a concert in Las Vegas from a hotel room high above the concert venue. He used an assault rifle that had been converted to fully automatic, by using a “bump stock.”

He killed fifty-eight people and injured eight hundred fifty-one more.

In 2016, a gunman massacred forty-nine people and injured fifty-eight more at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, Florida using an assault rifle and a semi-automatic pistol.

I could go on and on chronicling these episodes and totaling up the dead and injured.

In the wake of these massacres, Congress has taken no action to place any restrictions on these deadly weapons.

Indeed, it was unable to muster the courage to outlaw “bump stocks,” the device that allows a shooter to convert a semi-automatic rifle to fully automatic, as the shooter in Las Vegas did.

In the days following this latest carnage in Parkland, Florida, the best the politicians have been able to offer is their” thoughts and prayers.”

Trump’s weasel, Paul Ryan, thinks the best remedy to prevent a reoccurrence is “mental health treatment.”

The students who survived the attack at Parkland have vowed to confront the lack of action both by the Congress and the Florida State government.

I hope they are successful but I’m not optimistic.

The National Rifle Association, which is silent for the moment, owns both, lock, stock and barrel.

The NRA has spent over twenty-seven million dollars in support of U.S. Senators who opposed background checks for firearm purchasers.

Nine Senators, alone, received over twenty-two million of those funds.

Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, received $ 1,262 189.00.

Roy Blunt, Republican from Missouri, received $ 1, 433,952.00.

Pat Roberts, Republican from Kansas, received $ 1, 584, and 453.00.

Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas, received $ 1, 968,714.00.

David Perdue, Republican from Georgia, received $ 1,997,512.00.

Bill Cassidy, Republican from Louisiana, received $ 2,687,074.00.

Joni Earnst, Republican from Iowa, received $ 3, 124,773.00.

Cory Gardner, Republican from Colorado, received $ 3, 939,199.00.

Tom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, $ 4, 418.033.00.

The NRA also spent over fourteen million dollars more to defeat candidates who favor background checks.

Then there is the thirty million dollars it spent to elect Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton.

By the end of the week, Trump’s proposed solution wasn’t to re-enact the assault rifle ban but rather to arm teachers.

Never mind the fact that teachers have declared that they don’t want to be armed.

Never mind the fact that trained police officers only hit their targets eighteen percent of the time.

It also didn’t take long for the leader of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, to come out from under his rock and join the conversation.

Wayne travels with his own security is apparently not the mythical “good guy with a gun” that would stop “bad guy with a gun.”

LaPierre accused the media of profiting from the school shootings. In his warped mind, they may have even staged them too.

His solution was, of course, more guns.

Guns for teachers, guns for armed guards, no matter what the situation, more guns is the solution.

My guess, is that if he were anywhere near a school shooting he’d be hiding in the nearest hidey hole too.

Neither Trump nor LaPierre offered any proposal about how armed guards in schools would be funded.

It would be interesting to see how they and their supporters would feel about funding it with a tax levied on assault rifle owners and assault rifle manufacturers.

` After all, why should the rest of us have to bear this cost, when the simple solution is to ban the weapon?

Florida’s Governor, Rick Scott and the State legislature are clearly under the thumb of the NRA.

Scott has signed more pro-gun legislation into law in one term than any other Governor in Florida history.

In Florida, you must be twenty-one to purchase a handgun, for which no permit is necessary, but you can purchase an assault rifle at age eighteen, like the Parkland high school shooter did.

See if you can understand the logic of that legislative scheme.

At this writing, the Florida state legislature has shelved legislation that would allow gun owners to carry their firearms into school buildings.

Don’t be surprised if that passes later this year.

Following the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year, Pew Research reported that 68% of Americans favor a ban on assault rifles and 64% favor a ban of magazines which hold more than ten rounds.

The students that survived the Parkland high school shooting last week have made it very clear where politicians can stick their “thoughts and prayers.”

I’m with them on that one.

Former Georgia Congressman, Jack Kingston, a Trump shill who appears on CNN has sunk to a new low by accusing the surviving students of the massacre of being pawns of George Soros.

The talk about more mental illness programs rings a bit hollow since Trump repealed an Obama era regulation that would have authorized background checks for people receiving mental health benefits seeking to purchase a firearm.

If these politicians are such Second Amendment purists, then why don’t they repeal the laws that prevent people from bringing firearms into the halls of congress and the state legislatures?

The primary reason I am not optimistic about any prospect of an assault ban being enacted is this.

This past June, a gunman opened fire on a group of republican congressmen practicing for a charity softball game in Alexandria, Virginia.

Republican House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise, was seriously injured.

In the wake of that attack the Republican Congress still would not enact any gun measures.

Maybe that suggests that Paul Ryan is right.

It is about mental illness.

It’s about insanity.

In this case, the insanity is the failure to do anything over and over again and expecting a different result.

During my first year of law school, one of the required courses was Constitutional Law.

We spent a lot of the semester learning the protections and guarantees of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Religion.

We spent no time studying the Second Amendment since, at that time, the right of the government to impose reasonable restriction on firearms had been well settled for over half a century.

Of course, that was long before the rise of Antonin Scalia and the death of common sense on the United States Supreme Court.

One of the more controversial First Amendment cases that arose at that time was one involving the American Nazi Party’s seeking a permit to march through Skokie, Illinois.

When the City of Skokie denied the permit, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the City on behalf of the Nazis and Skokie was ordered to issue the permit and allow the march based on the Nazis right to freedom of Speech.

` The Nazis didn’t pick Skokie as the sight of their march because it was scenic or a media magnet.

They picked Skokie because it had the highest concentration of holocaust survivors as residents anywhere in the United States.

The Nazis intent wasn’t to parade, it was to provoke and traumatize.

We have seen this repeatedly since then.

The Westover Baptist Church whose membership is composed of the Phelps Family insist on demonstrating at the funerals of military veterans killed in combat proclaiming these dead heroes were punished by God for America’s sins.

They also attempted to protest at the funerals of the victims massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

There is nothing “Christian” about inflicting pain on people during their worst moment in life.

As these pests persisted in there cruelty, the Hells Angels motorcycle gang volunteered to act as a security buffer to keep them away from the mourners.

Most recently, we saw this in Charlottesville, Virginia this past summer, when a collection of Nazis, white supremacists and other reprobates, that we euphemistically call “the alt-right,” marched through the streets of the University of Virginia Campus, carrying torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” “Blood and soil” and other racist and Nazi chants.

In the ensuing clash with counter demonstrators, one of the Nazis drove his car into a crowd, killing an innocent young woman.

Unlike Trump, I don’t believe that there were “many good people” among that group or that their motives in marching through Charlottesville carrying torches and chanting those slogans were pure.

We are about to find out much more about that.

This past October a civil conspiracy lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, on behalf of nine people who were hurt in the violence, against the organizers of the demonstration seeking to hold them responsible for the injuries they sustained.

The name of the case is Sines v. Kessler.

The lawsuit contends that the violence that erupted was no accident.

Pre-trial discovery has revealed numerous postings on various social media web sites in which participants in the march proclaimed their readiness to “crack skulls” and bring firearms that ”could shoot clean through a crowd at least four deep.”

Others proclaimed their intent to bring “wrenches, pipes and wooden sticks.”

Among the defendants named in the lawsuit is Richard Spencer, who rose to fame by leading a room full of supporters in the chant “Heil Trump,” at a gathering in Washington, D.C. close to Trump’s inauguration.

Fittingly, Spencer can’t find a lawyer who will represent him in this lawsuit, so he is representing himself.

I suspect he will inject new vitality into Clarence Darrow’s observation that “A man who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

In normal times, one would expect the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department would have investigated and sued the defendants that organized the March and violence.

Regrettably, there is nothing normal about having Jeff Sessions in charge of the Justice Department.

My older brother Jim is fond of saying that “the right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.”

The wisdom in that observation is self-evident.

As I thought about the Nazi march in Skokie and Phelps family harassing the bereaved at military funerals, it dawned on me that while there might be a constitutional right to free speech, there is no constitutional right to police protection.

So, if you insist on marching through Skokie or harassing people at funerals, you might discover that there are consequences that you haven’t thought about.

At this writing the white supremacists that are being sued in Charlottesville, are whining that the purpose of the lawsuit, is to “silence them and destroy them financially.”

I’ll settle for that.

When John Kelly was appointed White House Chief of Staff this past July, most people in Washington breathed a sigh of relief.

Kelly, who was serving as Secretary of Homeland Security had impressively served this country in the United States Marine Corp. for most of his adult life.

He rose through the ranks to General having served in a variety of positions both at home and abroad and along the way saw combat during the Iraq war.

Kelly knows the sacrifices of war on the most personal level. In 2010, his oldest son, a First –Lieutenant in the Marine Corp was killed in Iraq when he stepped on a land mine.

Kelly became the highest ranking officer to lose a child in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His other son, John Jr. Is a Major in the Marine Corp.

When Kelly arrived at the White House his earliest personnel changes were impressive.

He showed Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci the newly appointed Director of Communications and a bully, the door.

He ended the chaotic access that everyone had to Trump by requiring everyone to get his consent before seeing him.

He ultimately cashiered Steve Bannon, Trump’s Chief Strategist and personal Rasputin.

When Trump found moral equivalence between protesters and alt-right white supremacists in Charlottesville, Kelly was seen standing by staring awkwardly at the floor. The impression he left was that he shared the embarrassment of the others surrounding Trump.

So, it came as a surprise to me the way in which he dealt with the dispute that erupted over Trump’s callous treatment of the widow of a soldier killed in Niger.

When Trump disputed the account of his conversation given by Congresswoman, Fredrica Wilson, who was in the car with the widow, the White House, sent Kelly into the press room to vouch for Trump’s version of the telephone call.

Trump’s defense also encompassed a claim that President Obama had not made calls to the families of fallen soldiers and cited Kelly as an example.

Thus, when Kelly was forced to defend Trump, he also had to address the loss of his own son.

As it turned out, Trump’s claim about Obama’s failure to call the families of casualties and also express his sorrow to Kelly about his loss turned out to be a lie.

I fully expected that Kelly would refuse to be used in this manner again.

That turned out to be wrong.

Kelly attacked Congresswoman Wilson as a grandstander, who falsely claimed that she had obtained the funding for the construction of the FBI building in Tampa, Florida at its dedication.

When an audiotape of her remarks revealed that his accusation was untrue, Kelly refused to apologize.

Kelly, it has turned out, seems to hold many of the same alt-right views that Trump’s domestic adviser, Stephen Miller and Miller’s mentor, Steve Bannon hold.

On the subject of the Civil War, he praised Robert E. Lee and attributed the cause of the war to “a failure to compromise” apparently on the issue of slavery.

Recently, when Senators Richard Durbin and Lindsey Graham brought an immigration proposal to the White House that would resolve the DACA issue and protect the “Dreamers,” Kelly, along with Miller scuttled the deal, which Trump had signaled he would accept.

In the aftermath, Kelly has made it clear that DACA would not be extended beyond Trump’s March 5, deadline and has said the fault lies with “Dreamers” who didn’t “get off their ass” and register under it.

Mark my words.

McConnell may hold a vote on the issue and if anything passes, Ryan and his House members will not pass it and if anything does pass, Trump will veto it.

We are going to see deportations.

This past week, it was disclosed that Kelly’s deputy, Robert Porter, was a domestic abuser.

Porter beat and abused both of his ex-wives and the photographic proof of that is undeniable.

Kelly, Huckabee-Sanders and others in the White House came to Porter’s defense and urged him not to resign.

Their defense of Porter was reminiscent of Trump’s defense of Roy Moore, the pedophile that they endorsed and campaigned for in Alabama last fall.

“He denies it,” they proclaimed.

Since Porter had not been able to obtain a security clearance following an FBI investigation, it is inconceivable that Kelly didn’t know about Porter’s history.

Nevertheless, he described Porter as “a man of integrity and honor, and I can’t say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidante and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him.”

John Kelly spent most of his life in honorable service to this country. His sacrifices are undeniable.

The tragedy is that his legacy will be his role as another of Trump’s apologists and enablers.

Trump inevitably tarnishes everyone who serves him.

In February, 1950, Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, brandishing what he claimed was a list, gave a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia in which he declared that there were over two-hundred communists working in the United states State Department.

McCarthy would repeat this canard over the next few years changing the number of subversives to whatever captured his imagination.

He held numerous U.S. Senate hearings while he was chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations during which he summoned targets of his suspicions to be grilled before the public about their suspected disloyalty.

He was a complete and total narcissist who was drawn to the publicity and media attention like a moth to a flame.

In 1953 he began an inquiry into suspected communists in the United States Army and singled out Irving Peress. Peress, a New York dentist, had been drafted into the Army in 1952 and promoted to Major the following year under the Doctor Draft law, which McCarthy had voted for. When questioned about his membership in the left-wing American labor Party, Peress invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and McCarthy demanded he be court-martialed.

Instead of court-martialing the dentist, his commanding officer, General Ralph Zwicker, granted him an honorable discharge. McCarthy told Zwicker that he was “not fit to wear his uniform.”

The following year, the Army charged that McCarthy had sought to pressure it into giving favorable treatment to one of his former aides.

Thus began the Army-McCarthy hearings in which the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations began public and televised hearings which transfixed the nation. An estimated twenty-million viewers followed the proceedings over the next thirty-six days.

On the thirtieth day the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, from Boston, demanded McCarthy produce the list of 130 “subversives or communists” that McCarthy had claimed were employed in defense plants. In reply McCarthy suggested that Welch investigate a young lawyer in his Boston law firm, Fred Fisher, who was a member of the National Lawyers Guild, a left-wing bar association.

Incensed, Welch replied, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness….Let us not assassinate this lad, further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?”

When Welch finished, the gallery in the hearing room erupted with applause. It was the beginning of the end of McCarthy’s tyranny.

This past week, we saw the departure of the Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe.

McCabe was a twenty-two year veteran of the nation’s pre-eminent law enforcement agency with an unblemished reputation until he drew the attention of Donald Trump.

Trump, who is as narcissistic as McCarthy, has been casting about for reasons to discredit the Mueller probe into his campaign’s collusion with the Russians during the 2016 Presidential campaign.

McCabe, who was appointed Deputy Director by James Comey, became Acting Director following Trump’s firing of Comey.

In his desperation to find a reason to question the impartiality and integrity of the FBI’s investigation into both the Russian meddling and the Clinton e-mail investigation, Trump seized on the fact that McCabe’s wife had been an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for a state legislative office in Virginia during 2015.

Jill McCabe accepted substantial contributions from the Virginia Democratic Party and Governor Terry McAuliffe’s super PAC called Common Good Virginia. (Full disclosure, Terry McAuliffe is my cousin.)

Trump now contends that because McAuliffe is a close friend and supporter of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, the investigations headed by McCabe are politically tainted and that the leadership of the FBI is corrupt.

A close examination of the facts underlying this claim reveal, that like most Trump claims, it has no merit.

At the outset, it should be noted that by the time McCabe became the Associate Director of the FBI in 2016, his wife’s campaign in 2015 had ended in defeat.

While the news outlets have been characterized the contributions coming from a close friend and supporter of the Clintons they have glossed over the fact that the contributions did not come from either Bill or Hillary Clintons PACs but from a PAC that McAuliffe established to try and elect a majority of Democrats to the Virginia Legislature. Hence, the name Common Good Virginia PAC.

Also under-reported is the fact that McCabe had the facts of his wife’s candidacy and the contributions vetted by the FBI, which saw no impropriety in the situation.

None of this matters to Trump or his supporters in the media on Fox News, Breitbart, Limbaugh and others who have ginned up his base with claims of corruption on the part of McCabe.

The end result of all this is that a good public servant had his career ended when Trump’s newly appointed Director, Christopher Wray asked McCabe to step down to end what he termed a “distraction.”

That Wray bowed to this pressure does not bode well for the independence of the FBI’s future investigation of Russian meddling or other matters that might arise from Trump and his various activities.

Not long ago, when events were not breaking Trump’s way, he lamented the absence of his long departed mentor, Roy Cohn.

Cohn was McCarthy’s chief counsel and right hand man.

He was instrumental in ruining all of the lives that he and McCarthy destroyed during their investigations.

Unlike McCarthy, it is not necessary to ask Trump the question “Have you no decency?”

We know the answer to that question.

It is evident from all that he says and does.

When I was growing up in the 1950’s Onondaga County was represented in Congress by R. Walter Reihlman, a Republican.

Reihlman represented the district for nine terms from 1946 to 1964.

During those terms, Congress met for no more than three and a half to four months per year in Washington D.C.

The salary went up from $ 10,000 to $ 30,000 during that period.

Clearly, it was not envisioned as a full-time position.

Since 1965, the salary has risen to 174,000 per year and Congress is almost continuously in session.

The position has turned into a full time position and we are now represented by career politicians.

The New York State Legislature has evolved in the same way with the same result.

Proponents of full-time legislators will contend that it is essential because the issues that they deal with are more complex and require the acquisition of expertise.

In my view, this has resulted in a number of developments in the way Congress operates, none of them helpful.

I have observed many times that politics and public office attract people who couldn’t be successful at anything else.

Without naming names, over the course of my lifetimes I’ve seen people rise to the highest levels of power, who have had repeated failures in the private sector.

I’m not talking about the isolated business failure occasioned by an unexpected economic downturn but a track record of failures that defy expectation.

Nonetheless, when these people are elected to office and are repeatedly re-elected, they rise in seniority to genuine positions of power to which they cling desperately to.

The other failing that a full-time legislature has, is that it can result in officeholders who have never had a career doing anything else.

Two examples of this come right to mind and one is a Democrat and the other a Republican.

U.S. Senator and Democratic Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, has been in public office from the moment he graduated from law school. Indeed, Schumer was so anxious to run for office that he never bothered to take the New York State Bar exam.

He went from the New York State Assembly to Congress to the United States Senate without ever having had a career outside of public office.

Another example of this trajectory is Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

Ryan went from being a congressional staffer to Republican campaign speech writer to another staff position until he was elected to Congress.

Unlike Schumer, he spent one year in the private sector where he worked as the marketing consultant at his family’s construction company as he ran for office.

Both of these politicians are what I call “doing life in public office.”

Neither of them can be said to have had the day to day experiences that people who build businesses or professional practices have.

They don’t know what it means to have to lay employees off or obtain a loan with payment obligations in difficult economic times.

They don’t know what it means to have to lay awake at night wondering if losses will turn to profits so that they can meet payroll, fund retirement accounts, or be able to meet medical expenses, children’s tuition or perhaps put food on the table.

“Doing life in public office” permits them to live in a cocoon where all their needs are met by salaries, staff, and all the other perks that comes with public office.

That leads us to the government shutdown.

I don’t think it is wise to ever shut the government down, no matter how noble the reason.

I am second to know one when I think the government should come up with a solution to DACA that allows those children who were brought to this country at an early age to obtain protected legal status and a path to citizenship.

Trump’s threat to deport these kids, if Congress does not enact a legislative solution, is one of the most callous and cruel threats I’ve ever seen.

Schumer’s decision to shut the government down and then to retreat from it after one day was simply stupid.

I’m not optimistic that, come March 5, we will not start to see deportations.

The only concession that Schumer obtained for his retreat was a promise from Senate Leader Mitch McConnell that he would allow “open debate” on the issue of the “Dreamers.”
”
There was no commitment that a legislative solution would be had.

Complicating this problem is that Ryan will not allow any measure to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives unless it is supported by a majority of the House Republican members.

That position forecloses the possibility that a bi-partisan measure, agreed to by moderate Republican members and Democrats, could ever be enacted.

That is the price that Ryan makes Americans pay so that he can hold on to the power of the Speaker’s position.

Schumer ended the shutdown after one day simply because he feared that it would hurt the re-election chances of some of his caucus members.

In sum, the nobility of the “Dreamers” cause was and is sacrificed for the political expediency and preservation of those who will not take a principled stand because they want to cling to their elected positions.

And that, is the problem of being governed by those who sre “doing life in public office.”

In 1855 my great-grandfather, James McGuire, arrived in New York from Ireland.

It was in the waning years of what has been euphemistically called the “Potato Famine.”

The “Famine” was, in reality, an exercise in what would be known today as ethnic cleansing.

Although the potatoes rotted in the ground year after year, there was more than enough other crops to feed the population.

Nevertheless, the British Government and their estate landlords in Ireland exported the produce and left the Irish population to starve.

Approximately one million Irish starved to death.

As an inducement to get the Irish tenant farmers off the land and out of the country, the landlords paid the ship passage for the tenants to emigrate to the United States and Canada.

Another million joined in this Irish diaspora.

The ships became known as “coffin” ships because the health and sanitary conditions were so deplorable that almost half of the passengers died enroute.

Donald Trump would have categorized Ireland, at that time, as a “shithole.”

After his arrival in New York, my great grandfather, a shoemaker, married, started a family and relocated to Syracuse in 1870 with my great-grandmother and their first born son.

It was here that my grandfather and the remainder of his siblings were born.

In 1881 tragedy struck the family.

My great-uncle, John Francis McGuire drowned in the canal.

My great-grandfather sank into an alcohol fueled depression and was never able to work again.

My grandfather, Charles McGuire, and his older brother, James K., were forced to leave school and work to support the family.

Charles, at the age of nineteen, opened his own insurance agency which did business in Syracuse for almost seventy-five years.

His older brother, James K., would be elected Mayor of Syracuse three times beginning in 1895 at the age of twenty-six.

He remains the youngest Mayor of Syracuse to this day.

James K. McGuire would, during his lifetime, establish and publish a newspaper, be a candidate for Governor of New York, author two books, Chair the New York State Democratic Party, become an influential leader in national politics and the Irish independence movement.

Together, my grandfather and great-uncle were able to send their younger brother and sister to college at Notre Dame and St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana.

In today’s world and in Trump’s prevailing view, it is likely that they would have not been Americans because they came from a country that he would view as a “shithole.”

Fifty years after this ethnic cleansing, what remained was still “a shithole.”

James K. McGuire traveled to Ireland many times during his life to aid the forces seeking independence from England.

One of the leaders in that cause, John Redmond, described Ireland at that time, writing,

“Dublin desperately needed prosperity. Ireland’s largest city and former capital ranked as the greatest urban disgrace in the United Kingdom. The census in 1911 listed Dublin’s population as slightly more than 300,000. The working class made up more than two-thirds of this number. A government report on Dublin housing conditions showed that 45 percent of the working class lived in tenement housing. Dwellings built for one family often housed several, usually with one family to a room. Dublin has more than twenty-thousand one- room tenement buildings the highest percentage of any city in Britain or Ireland. A large number of these places held as many as seven or eight people to a room. The most egregious example of overcrowding showed ninety-eight people living in a single house.”

My great-uncle visiting a few years later wrote,

“The writer has visited all the cities of America and many foreign cities. Of the large town seen, beyond a doubt the capital of Ireland is the poorest, the most squalid and miserable. The only interesting thing about Dublin are the ruins of its former greatness, the cemeteries, parks and decaying structures. There is scarcely a ripple in the Liffey aside from some boats from a brewery…”

He went on to describe Sligo as having,
“10,000 inhabitants old and poor the remnants of a stricken race. Sligo has nothing to show at the end of 900 years but the melancholy ruins of a once flourishing town, her aged men and women and their rags. Long since most of the stalwart youth have departed for foreign shores.”

Out of this British bred horror came immigrants to America who would become bankers, educators, clergy, writers, artists, musicians, captains’ of industry, public officials and even a President of the United States.

In Donald Trump’s world, my grandfather, great-uncle and those leaders and contributors might never have added to the culture, history or richness of what is America because they came from a “Shithole.”

Last month, I thought I had seen it all with the U.S. Senate candidacy of Roy Moore in Alabama.

Despite the multiple accusations of sexual misconduct bordering on pedophilia, the groper-in-chief currently ensconced in the White House endorsed Moore, dismissing the allegations by multiple women with the trite observation that “He denies them.”

Alabama is one of the most thoroughly red states and hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in over four decades.

Nevertheless the stench surrounding Roy Moore’s life story was even too much for the State’s reliable Republican voters, who elected the Democrat, Doug Jones, a thoroughly dedicated former prosecutor who is above reproach.

My last memory of Roy Moore was him riding a horse to the polls on Election Day to cast his vote.

How often do you get to see a horse’s ass sitting on a horse’s ass?

Moore was a creature of the Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who had vowed to recruit candidates to carry the alt-right banner into Republican primaries in 2018, topple incumbent Republican members who were loyal to Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and oust him from that position.

Instead, Democrats have a real chance to take control of the Senate as the Republican majority has now dwindled to a two vote margin.

Moore was not Bannon’s only warrior in this inter- Nicene affair.

In Arizona, Senator Jeff Flake, a conventional Republican conservative could no longer stomach serving under Donald Trump and ended his own career in public service.

Having drawn Trump’s ire, Flake had become a target of Bannon, who had recruited a primary opponent for him in the person of Kelli Ward.

Ward, an osteopathic physician and former Arizona State Senator, had unsuccessfully challenged John McCain in a 2016 Republican primary.

When McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer this past year, she publicly called on him to resign from the Senate so that she could be appointed to his seat.

Her rationale for this position was that, as a physician, she was certain that he would die from the brain tumor.

Now, there is a real bed side manner for you.

Ward had been the frontrunner in the upcoming primary against Congresswoman Martha McSalley, a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and the first woman to fly in combat once the restriction was lifted during the Gulf War.

Ward’s candidacy has now been upended by the entry of a new candidate in the race.

The new candidate is formerly convicted and newly pardoned Joe Arpaio.

Arpaio served multiple terms as Sheriff of Maricopa County surrounding Phoenix from 1993 until 2016 when the voters turned him out.

Like Roy Moore, who was removed from office twice for defying federal court orders, Arpaio has a disdain for the federal courts.

In 2011, Arpaio was enjoined by a federal court judge from engaging in racial profiling, ordered to stop detaining Mexican and other Latino people and unconstitutionally inquiring about their citizenship or immigrant status.

Three years later, after many court appearances and warnings from the Court which Arpaio ignored, he was convicted of criminal contempt by another Federal judge following a trial.

Arpaio’s tenure in office was marked by numerous civil rights suits involving conditions in the Maricopa County Jail.

Arpaio made inmates appear publicly in pink underwear, fed them a starvation diet while requiring them to watch the Food Channel, deprived inmates of essential medical care resulting in a number of deaths and incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits filed against Maricopa County for these practices.

In his spare time, Arpaio became a committed member of the “Birther” movement that questioned President Obama’s birth in this country.

He even sent deputies from his office to Hawaii, at tax payer expense, to prove that the country’s first African-American President was illegitimate.

It was in that endeavor that he bonded with Trump.

Last year, Trump issued his first and only pardon.

He pardoned Arpaio before he was sentenced for the criminal contempt conviction.

In announcing his candidacy for the United States senate, the eighty-five year old candidate said he would like to bring “new Ideas” to Washington and support Trump’s agenda.

This past week, Trump voiced his opinion about Haitians and the nations on the continent of Africa.

We know what he thinks about Mexicans and others from Latin countries.

It will be a disappointment to Arpaio, but someone should tell him that his “new ideas” already reside in the White House.

I sometimes wonder whether Trump and Bannon found these candidates in the bar depicted in the movie “Star Wars.”

Ten I wonder whether they all met in that bar together.

During the past three months, there has been a steady drumbeat of criticism of Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election from forces all across the right wing spectrum.

Republican members of Congress have tried to cast doubt on Mueller’s impartiality and integrity.

Devin Nunez, the Republican Chair of the House Intelligence Committee has repeatedly tried to frustrate the committee from issuing subpoenas and interviewing witnesses, when he hasn’t been funneling information obtained by the Committee to the White House.

This is the same Nunez who was supposed to recuse himself from the investigation earlier this year after being caught slipping Trump information.

On the Senate side, Judiciary Chairman, Charles Grassley, has declined to advance legislation that would insulate Mueller from being fired.

Congressman Francis Rooney of Florida has called for a purge of the senior officials at the FBI.

Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, the Freedom Caucus chair, have called on Attorney-General Sessions to resign so that Trump can appoint a new Attorney-general who could fire Mueller.

Both seem oblivious to the fact that any replacement of Sessions would require Senate confirmation during which this issue would be fully explored.

The Rupert Murdoch Empire has been united in seeking Mueller’s dismissal.

The Wall Street Journal has called for Mueller to be replaced, despite Mueller having removed a senior FBI agent he determined was biased against Trump as soon as he learned it.

The Journal further contends that because Mueller led the FBI for twelve years, he can’t be impartial when it comes to investigating the firing of James Comey.

That may be the first time that leading the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency is a disqualifier from public service.

The Fox News commentators have been particularly rabid in the pursuit of Mueller.

Sean Hannity, who concedes that he is no reporter, has railed nightly against Mueller, Deputy Attorney-General, Rod Rosenstein and anyone else remotely connected to the probe.

Perhaps the most vitriolic has been Jeanine Pirro, star of the “Judge Jeanine” Show.

Watching her, one would never realize that in addition to being the former district attorney of Westchester County, she was an actual judge in the New York Court System.

Bug eyed, she has ranted that FBI officials should be “taken out in cuffs” and the FBI “needs to be cleansed.”

It’s hard not to wish that someone from the network would come up behind her and lace up the back of her jacket during her broadcast.

Mueller has thus far secured guilty pleas from two individuals from the Trump campaign add indicted two more.

This week, however, there was a development that sheds new light on the substance of the probe.

The founders and owners of GPS Fusion, the organization that hired Christopher Steele to prepare a dossier on Trump’s Russian business activities published an op-ed piece in the New York Times demanding that their testimony before three congressional committees be made public.

They recounted how they were initially hired by a Republican donor and the Washington Free Beacon to pursue this line of investigation. Ultimately the expense of the investigation was picked up by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

They denied demanding a pre-ordained conclusion from Steele and have disclosed thatTrump had extensive business relations in Russia and that there was collusion between the Russian Government and the Trump campaign to secure his election.

They laid out that the Steele dossier was not what triggered claims of collusion but rather corroborated allegations of collusion that came from within the Trump Campaign.

Interestingly, they urged the committees to examine Trump’s banking records from Deutsche Bank.

While none of the committees have taken this step, reportedly Mueller has, which may explain why the drumbeat for his dismissal has suddenly gotten so loud.

They decried the selective leaking of portions of their testimony by Republican members of these committees, which is why they demanded their full testimony be released.

This would seem to support disclosure of something that should have been made public a long time ago.

I am referring to Trump’s tax returns.

Clearly, they would reveal what business relationships he has with Russia and whether his previous denials are truthful.

They would also reveal to the American people whether his claims that he would be hurt by the tax overhaul are true.

The continued canard that he can’t disclose them because “he is under audit” is one that only Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders believe.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis once said “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

There is another saying that is also timely.

“Put up or shut up.”

That time has finally come.