Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Under Section 6103 of our tax code, Treasury officials “shall” turn over the tax returns “upon written request” of the chair of either congressional tax committee or the federal employee who runs Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. No request has ever been refused, a host of former congressional tax aides tell me.

There is, however, a law requiring every federal “employee” who touches the tax system to do their duty or be removed from office.

The crystal-clear language of this law applies to Trump, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Mnuchin and Rettig, federal employees all.

The law says all of them "shall" be removed from office if they fail to comply with the request from Representative Richard Neal, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.

There are no qualifiers in Section 6103 that shield Trump from delivering, in confidence, his tax returns to Congress. No wiggle room at all.

Another provision in our tax code, Section 7214(a), provides that “Any officer or employee of the United States acting in connection with any revenue law of the United States… who with intent to defeat the application of any provision of this title fails to perform any of the duties of his office or employment… shall be dismissed from office or discharged from employment and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years or both.”

All that Neal must do is make a request in writing that falls within the committee’s tax law and IRS oversight duties. Neal’s carefully articulated reasoning and requests for specific tax returns and related tax information in his April 3 letter easily meets that standard.

Congress earlier applied this law to Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace after a second audit of his returns showed he was a major league tax cheat. Nixon fabricated deductions worth more than $3.4 million in today’s money. Nixon got off with a pardon, while his tax lawyer went to prison.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

See:

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

See:

On April 27, 2019, at around 11:30 a.m. local time, a young man with a semi-automatic rifle walked into the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California. He opened fire, killing one worshipper and wounding three others. In the hours since the shooting, a manifesto, believed to be written by the shooter, began circulating online. Evidence has also surfaced that, like the Christchurch Mosque shooter, this killer began his rampage with a post on 8chan’s /pol/ board.

Although both of these attacks may seem different, since they targeted worshippers of different faiths, both shooters were united by the same fascist ideology. They were also both radicalized in the same place: 8chan’s /pol/ board.

This has been corroborated by posts on the board itself, where “anons,” as the posters call themselves, recirculated the shooter’s since-deleted post. In it, the alleged shooter claims to have been “lurking” on the site for a year and a half. He includes a link to a livestream of his rampage — which thankfully does not appear to have worked — and he also includes a pastebin link to his manifesto.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Violent white nationalism had a horrible, horrible moment in America on Saturday.

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Experts say, to some extent, prosecutors are hamstrung by a criminal code that despite a so-called war on terror created no statutes to specifically address the specific terror threat posed by Hasson – motivated by white supremacy and stockpiling the kind of conventional weapons blessed by the National Rifle Association.

That may be true, but let’s be honest: The failure of AG Bill Barr’s Justice Department to move heaven and earth to keep Hasson in custody or even issue a press release alerting the public is symbolic of a giant blind spot in our nation’s capital when it comes to the deadly threat posed by white supremacy. And that giant buck stops at the desk of President Trump. Although U.S. policy on white homegrown terror has been abysmal since the turn of this century, this president – with his vainglorious refusal to admit that an immoral strain of white nationalism helped elect him in 2016 – and his administration are https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/11/01/trump-played-down-domestic-terrorism-now-we-pay-the-price/ (making the problem much, much worse).

Trump has repeatedly made clear his opinion that violent white extremism is not a problem in his America. When an Australian man poisoned by the same kind of internet extremism that’s fueled the U.S. synagogue shootings murdered 50 worshipers in a New Zealand mosque, with words of praise for Trump in his manifesto, reporters asked the president about the wider threat.

“I don’t think it’s a problem,” insisted the man who also still stands by his claim that 2017′s violence-sparking, white-supremacist march in Charlottesville had “very fine people on both sides." Trump added: " I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems."

Except that terror attacks by far-right extremists more than quadrupled in the year that Trump became president, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That dramatized the fact that after spending billions on a vast infrastructure that primarily targeted Islamic extremism, the much greater threat in this country has a white face. Some of 71 percent of murders by political extremists in America from 2008 through 2017 were by right-wingers, according to the Anti-Defamation League (and 26 percent by Islamists) – and that imbalance seems to be increasing.

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It’s hard to imagine a greater threat to American democracy and freedom than foreign election interference and computer crimes – until you start pondering the growing white-nationalist movement in this country, and the diminished ability of people to buy a book or get on their knees and pray without fear of harassment or deadly violence.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

As deal-making goes, Donald Trump’s approach to negotiating with North Korea has resembled nothing so much as his purchase, in 1988, of New York’s Plaza Hotel: Rely on personal chemistry, ignore the advice of experts, neglect due diligence and then overpay for an investment that delivers no returns.

As with the Plaza, the result is about the same: a fiasco. Trump only avoided personal bankruptcy over the hotel thanks to the indulgence of his creditors. Who will bail out the United States — and at what price — for a bankrupt policy on the Korean Peninsula?

Vladimir Putin, maybe?

The Russian strongman certainly seemed to be angling for the role when he hosted Kim Jong-un at a summit in Vladivostok this week. “Kim himself asked me that I inform the U.S. side of his position about questions he has regarding what’s happening on the Korean Peninsula,” Putin said after the meeting, with about as much sincerity — and the same serpentine intent— as Kaa the python from “The Jungle Book.”

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And another crisis seems to be coming. Satellites have found secret North Korean missile bases, and there are new indications of reprocessing activities at a nuclear site. Pyongyang has also test-fired a new weapon, started rebuilding a missile test site it had previously begun dismantling, demanded Mike Pompeo’s removal from nuclear talks and issued a year-end deadline for the U.S. to meet its terms.

This is not the behavior of a regime that thinks it has much to fear from the American president. It’s the behavior of a regime that has his number.

Meanwhile, the dictator that Trump can’t stop praising is the same man who had his half-brother murdered in plain sight and https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korea-issued-2-million-bill-for-comatose-otto-warmbiers-care/2019/04/25/0e8022a0-66ad-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html?utm_term=.523673023c2e (demanded a $2 million) payment for the “medical care” of the late Otto Warmbier, the young American who was released from North Korea in a vegetative state. The right word for such behavior is evil. The right response is intensified economic pressure, military readiness and moral denunciation — the formula under which South Koreans prospered, peace was maintained, and the North largely contained for decades.

There may be no good answer to the challenge of North Korea, but there are plenty of bad ones. Trump seems eager to grasp them all. And unlike the bomb that was the Plaza deal, these ones could detonate.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]