Donald Trump's Conflicts with the Constitution

The looming inauguration of Donald J. Trump Dump has American stupidity scraping the abyss. Look no further for evidence of this than our future leader's command of the English language and his own attention span. Indeed, these deficits alone may be all people need to fear the next four years. 

But another reason to dread Dump has as much to do with ignorance as it does good old-fashioned greed and hubris. 

The U.S. Constitution, a document which binds the Republic together, is about to be violated in more ways than a pedophile in prison. Dump's presidency, in particular, is poised to wreak havoc on both the First Amendment and the Emoluments Clause. For those still trying to pronounce it, the Emoluments Clause shields federal officials from the financial influence of foreign powers, while the First Amendment shields citizens from the dictates of demagogues like Dump.

More on the First Amendment later. 

As of this blog post, Dump has shown zero signs of shedding his business entanglements at home and abroad. As a result, government officials from Saudi Arabia to Stormville will soon be inclined to fellate the most powerful man in the world, waving fees and expediting permits. Likewise, it will be in Dump's best interest to forge federal policies that boost his brand around the globe. Because of these conflicts, Dump's most precious commodity will be his businesses instead of the American people. It seems we've elected yet another politician who puts money before morals, power before principles.   

And what if World War III breaks out in Turkey, for instance? Will Dump send in ground troops to fight Russians, or to protect his skyscrapers? Unless this actually happens, we may never know for sure, since Dump dumped most members of the media after he was elected president.

         Trump has dumped around the world,
      and he's not even president yet.      

The closest Dump has come to a press conference in recent days was a brief and bizarre appearance at his Mar-a-Lago resort with boxing promoter and former murderer Don King. If and when Dump does give his next real press conference - one in which more than three questions are allowed - expect it to be filled with sentence fragments, superlatives, and abrupt non-sequiturs. Dump knows no other way, after all, and each press conference and speech he gives sounds a lot like the previous one played backwards.    
                               

Trump with Don "Only in the Idiocracy" King

Though we should not expect a 70-year-old man to suddenly discover lucidity, a free press is among the ways we ensure that the president is neither incompetent nor corrupt, something Dump has unfortunately yet to demonstrate to the majority of the country. His inane Tweets, if anything, have proven the opposite - stained by ignorance, greed, and hubris. Nevertheless, Dump's Tweets are preserved for posterity, and will make for a fine display in his presidential library, right next to an oil painting called Nuclear Winter is Coming. 

Hubris, as the Greeks remind us, is often the most destructive flaw of all. And if the Greeks know anything, Dump's unpresidential pride may soon wrap itself around the First Amendment, cracking its spine before consuming it.

For example, Dump prefers to tell us what to think rather than how to think, and filters his demands through his ego, otherwise known as his Twitter account:

"I will take my message directly to the American people and bypass the unethical press that wants to see their candidate elected."                                                           -Donald J. Trump    

Even if Dump's messages made sense, the leader of the free world cannot be held to a standard of 140 characters or less; never mind hurling barbs at Hollywood actors and Gold Star fathers, among the many others who pay his salary.    

Further, will Dump's rants on Twitter replace White House press briefings?

Or if he does keep his businesses, who will stop him from using all of that Commander-in-Chief ca$h to say, start his own disinformation news network?

Who will stop him from buying Twitter? Dump's critics should prepare to have their accounts suspended, at the very least, and bloggers should have their high-priced lawyers on standby.

A world which bullshit circles before the truth gets out of bed does not need someone like Dump as an arbiter of truth, or nuclear weapons, for that matter.

It will be up to the ignorant and informed to save this world before it swallows itself.     

Donald Trump Sics his Children on Public Education

Ivanka Trump with Eva "I'm not a Republican" Moskowitz

President Donald Trump's arrival on January 20 brings with it, among other toxins, an unprecedented threat to middle-class workers across the nation. For one, Trump supports a national right-to-work law, meant to strip unions of funding and give them less political clout than a Cub Scout. Even if an anti-worker bill somehow dies in a Republican-controlled congress, Trump's appointee to the Supreme Court will take care of those cases meant to crown corporatists and crush unions. They're coming for your pension and there's nothing you can do about it.    

Topping the target are public school teachers, whose union was an early and adamant endorser of Hillary Clinton. Like his Queens cousin Governor Andy Cuomo, Trump traces the ills of the inner cities to the infamous and elusive "education bureaucracy", otherwise known as the people who dedicate their lives to children (see public school teachers). While what Trump utters about education has about as much nuance as an orangutan's ass, Trump's trust fund children are primed for a pet project, and both Ivanka and Don Jr. have demonstrated a desire to drive our schools into a ditch.

Take Don Jr.'s recent ramblings at the Republican National Convention, for instance, where he compared schools to department stores that somehow only benefit adults:

Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they are stalled on the ground floor. They're like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students.                                                                                                                    -Donald Trump Jr.

Tortured metaphors aside, everyone knows that students must take the stairs in order to truly benefit from public education, as we get back only what we put in.  

On the other hand, Don Jr.'s been riding his daddy's gold-plated elevators since birth, which he believes justifies the sanctimony he spews at schools, and can claim the moral high ground only because he lives in a taller building than the rest of us. 

When she's not entertaining the Japanese prime minister, Don Jr.'s little sister Ivanka is visiting with the likes of Eva Moskowitz, the New York City charter school profiteer who'd like to go national. Though Moskowitz refused to become Trump's Secretary of Education because she's a Democrat, after all, Trump's plans to privatize education evidently have nothing to do with party affiliation so Eva's all-in. Nevermind that Moskowitz's schools would make a segregationist blush and treat teachers and kids like cogs in the college and career machine. It seems Ivanka saw into Eva's soul during their first meeting at Trump Tower and vowed to wield all the power of her gold throne to undermine public schools.

And it's precisely the prospect of Donald Trump's unelected offspring pulling the strings on issues like education while simultaneously building his business which threatens the Republic.

How long, for instance, before the grand opening of Trump Charter School, or the grand re-opening of Trump University, fully-funded by the feds? It's probably sooner than we think.  If anything, Eva Moskowitz will make a lot of money in the next few years.

Those voters hopeful that Trump would "get rid of Common Core" and "restore local control" should realize that Donald Trump knows as much about education as, yes, an orangutan's ass. What Trump does know however is that there's money to be made, and public education seems a safer bet than his casinos. Trump has therefore summoned his kids, northeastern neoliberal asstards in search of something bigger than themselves.

The oligarchs have landed and it won't be pretty, for public education or anything else. It will be up to the enlightened to push truth in a post-truth world, to denounce and destroy the graft and greed. The whole world is waiting and watching. 

Weingarten Threatens Nurses for Backing Bernie

Rhonda "Randi" Weingarten 

It was only a matter of time before Wikileaks uprooted more evidence of Democrats eating their own. 

The latest is an email from Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), sent to Hillary Clinton hatchet man John Podesta. The email reveals Weingarten's antipathy toward the National Nurses Union (NNU) in the months following their endorsement of Bernie Sanders for president:

From:rweingar@aft.org To: john.podesta@gmail.com  Date: 2016-01-30 19:18 Subject: Re: D Taylor

On Saturday, January 30, 2016, Randi Weingarten, Office of the President <rweingar@aft.org<mailto:rweingar@aft.org>> wrote: He is psst-but I don't believe it moves him to action. Congrats on the NYT And we will go after NNU and there high and mighty sanctimonious conduct...  R  Sent from my iPhone

Though it's unclear exactly how the AFT slapped the NNU for there their support of Sanders--the implication of the email is clear--an attack on Hillary is an attack on the AFT. And Weingarten's royal "we" sadly implicates all educators in her threat, even the Donald Trump supporters. Members of each union will have to battle it out while Weingarten and Clinton take as many pantsuit selfies as possible. Bernie can go back to Vermont and eat some ice cream. 

The questions surrounding Wikileaks ask themselves, and could easily fill three more debates (save for Trump's sniffling, of course). For example, will we soon find out exactly how pissed Clinton was about the NNU's "sanctimonious" support of Sanders? Pissed enough, apparently, to make Weingarten "go after" nurses? While there's no evidence that either Podesta or Clinton compelled Weingarten's threat, a union leader's loyalty must always default to the workers and not elite politicians. Congratulations to the nurses and their sanctimony for Sanders; Weingarten should realize that we are stronger together only when dissident voices are embraced and not assailed.  

Ultimately, as Sanders said, nobody cares about Hillary's damn emails. Not with Trump in the race. Unless Wikileaks releases an email with a video that shows Clinton chopping off a puppy's head, the boorish and bumbling Trump makes Hillary seem infallible. Trump has been the perfect foil to accentuate and elevate the first woman into the White House, regardless of her serious flaws and failings.    

However, democracy demands the vetting of leaders both during and especially before their terms. As fellow blogger Norm Scott recently wrote, "Let's not throw away democracy in the rush to trash everything Trump and excuse everything Clinton." Indeed, there's almost as much to excuse about Clinton as there is to trash about Trump.    

Weingarten's Wikileaks email is a glimpse of a game most will never get a ticket for. Unfortunately, in this case, the game is most dangerous for union members, since it's using them as prey for a political career.

Will President Hillary continue playing this game in the White House?

Maybe someone should ask her.