No. You’ll note in the previous post that his former lawyer says that a president has two years to decide what to return to the National Archives. Even if that were true it doesn’t mean that he gets to hold on to classified nuclear secrets and war plans and show them to people. Come on.
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Trump is going to get new lawyers so we don’t know what kind of defense they will put up. But one of his former lawyers, who quit last month, says they will claim prosecutorial misconduct and complain that the Presidential Records Act gives a former president two years to give back highly classified documents that he’s storing in a bathroom at his beach club. Seriously. Here’s Watergate prosecutor Michael Conway: Timothy Parlatore, an attorney who represented Trump until he resigned in May, recently predicted that Trump’s lawyers will file a motion to dismiss any indictment in the documents case based upon claims of prosecutorial misconduct. When defense lawyers level claims of illegal conduct by law enforcement to shift the focus away from their clients’ behavior, it can suggest the clients’ actions are increasingly indefensible. (The special counsel’s office declined to comment on Parlatore’s allegations.) That’s a sign of desperation. The alleged misconduct seemingly has at least two themes, at least according to Parlatore.
The judgement on Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case delivered a heavily damning summary of conduct. That would have come as little surprise to many; rumour abounded for a decade or more. Not only has Roberts-Smith been severely impacted. The ordure is spread widely but not thinly. It will stick perniciously to individuals (Roberts-Smith being just one), Continue reading »
Documents publicly available make it clear that Saudi Arabian government officials assisted the two 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar, who crashed an airliner into the Pentagon. Newly released testimonies further reveal that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was aware of the activities of the two hijackers before the 9/11 attacks and suggest that Continue reading »
As a Hong Kong based columnist for much of his writing career Nury Vittachi was known for his persistent anti-Beijing slant. But no longer. What changed his mind was the mainstream media – the BBC in particular – coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong riots. Praised as democracy seekers, these riots for the most part Continue reading »
There is rising wrath, out there in Elderland. The Elders, it seems, are no longer happy to look on as a bunch of corporates and their political stooges pillage the planet and lay waste their grandchildren’s future. With growing resolve, resources and organisation, older people are fighting back. Rather than sitting meekly in their retirement Continue reading »
Australia is fast approaching a reckoning with its past, its present and the state of the nation’s soul. And if the last month is any indication to go by, we will be found wanting. A hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud wrote a paper called, Mourning and Melancholia. In it he mapped the divergent paths of Continue reading »
A TAFE system built around ideas for running 1950s American car-making factories is pretty much an anachronism in Australia in 2023, particularly when our future depends on innovation and rising productivity. But before New TAFE starts, Old TAFE must have a long, hard look at itself. In the New TAFE, people will be able to Continue reading »
Even without Chat-bot assistance, it is fun to look up quotations and their origins online and then discover, for example, this quote reportedly from Winston Churchill: “The only statistics you can trust are the ones you have falsified yourself.” And an earlier British prime minister from the 19th century, Benjamin Disraeli, allegedly said there were Continue reading »
Today the global trade system faces three systemic challenges. None are new, but strategic competition between China and the United States has brought a dangerous edge to each of them. The first is the dramatic shift in the composition of international economic interaction. When the Bretton Woods system was first set up, global trade was Continue reading »
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 11, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
What Happens When Corporations are Taxed at 50% – Like Before the Reagan Revolution?
Thom Hartmann, June 5, 2023 [DailyKos]
The main benefit of raising the top personal income tax bracket back up to nosebleed levels is that it causes CEOs and business owners (people who can essentially determine their own pay) to restrain themselves from draining the corporate coffers just to buy a new super-yacht, jet, private island, or a fourth 70-room mansion in the Swiss Alps.
He had a reason for keeping those classified documents and it wasn’t for “show and tell” It’s true, as always, that Trump is such a psychological train wreck that it’s not hard to imagine that he stuffed classified documents into boxes on the regular without thinking about it because he’s a disorganized mess. But that’s just too easy. There are other aspects of Trump’s personality that make it much more likely that he was thinking about making some deals. This piece by Fintan O’Toole in the NYRB (subc. only) says it all: Secrets are a kind of currency. They can be hoarded, but if kept for too long they lose their value. Like all currencies, they must, sooner or later, be used in a transaction—sold to the highest bidder or bartered as a favor for which another favor will be returned. To see the full scale of Donald Trump’s betrayal of his country, it is necessary to start with this reality. He kept intelligence documents because, at some point, those secrets could be used in a transaction. What he was stockpiling were the materials of treason.
You all have a nice day now,
Stochastic terrorism and plausible deniability Once upon a time, Republicans wanted to learn to “speak like Newt.” Gingrich. These days, they might aspire to speak like Trump. Many have learned without a lot of trouble how to stoke stochastic terrorism with plausible deniability. Bill Kristol points to a Joe Klein article on how Trump’s close-up magic is done: He has a preternatural ability to bend the law to the point of breaking, but he never cracks it in two. He never says to the January 6 crowd: Go on down to the Capitol and overthrow the government. He says to the Proud Boys: “Stand back and stand by.” Stand Back absolves him of a truckload of evil intent. Stand By means: ignore the first part. He is a genius at the micro-laser-slicing of baloney, tip-toeing the rhetorical tightrope. And if you want to charge him with something that isn’t a flat-out doozy: advantage Trump. Don’t get cocky. Remember when they called Bill Clinton “Slick Willy”? He’s got nothin’ on Trump. He’s a master. And his followers will just brush off whatever he’s done. Because the facts don’t matter.
Remember January 6th! True to form, the former president set out to rally his foot soldiers by branding Thursday’s 37-count federal indictment against him, for his actions, as an attack on them. That is, to personalize it. “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,” Donald Trump told the convention of Georgia Republicans in Columbus, Ga. on Saturday. Right. And I’m still waiting for Barack Obama’s jack-booted thugs to kick in my door and confiscate my guns, as I was promised over a decade ago. The indictment is “ridiculous and baseless,” the most “horrific” abuse of power “in the history of our country,” so “many people have said,” Trump droned. “The Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice” has engaged in “vicious persecution,” a “travesty of justice.” Blah, blah, blah. “I will prevent World War III. … Without me, it will happen,” Trump told them.
As wildfire smoke hit the East Coast, Fox News claimed it was “perfectly healthy” to breathe.
The post The Right-Wing War on Clean Air appeared first on The Intercept.
I was on a one year sabbatical leave at Cambridge University, King’s College by invitation of Professor Wynne Godley in the year 1988/89. Seriously speaking I was surprised, because except for Godley there were only few economists left at the Faculty, who called him-/herself Keynesian. The old guard of Keynes’ disciples had disappeared: Joan Robinson […]
MARK Hughes, the founder of the Mark Hughes Foundation (MHF), paid a recent visit to the North Coast Cancer Institute. Hughes, a former Newcastle Knights and NSW Origin rugby league player, visited the local Cancer Institute with Professor Mike Fay, MHF Chair and Centre Director, meeting MHF Brain Cancer Care Coordinator (BCCC) Nicole Allen, patients...
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LIPMAN, the NSW-based construction company with a long and proud history of working in the Mid North Coast, has won three awards at the 2023 Master Builders Association (MBA) Northern Region Building Awards. “We are thrilled to have been considered for three awards this year,” Darren Ferguson, Region Manager, North Coast (Lipman) told News Of...
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FUNDS raised at the LifeWalk 2023 sponsored walk on Saturday 3 June have put the SleepBus for Coffs Harbour project’s goal of raising $100,000 within sight. The SleepBus project was founded by advocate for the homeless Doris Rake (Cowan) and is enthusiastically supported by LifeHouse Care, who run LIfeWalk. Advertise with News of The Area...
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THE Legacy Centenary Torch Relay 2023, the flagship event for the organisation’s anniversary marking 100 years of service to those who have sacrificed, arrives in Coffs Harbour on Friday 30 June and Coffs Coast Legacy has been planning a suitably celebratory occasion. Beginning in Pozieres, France in the lead up to ANZAC Day in 2023,...
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TWO Coffs Coast students received scholarships at the ‘2023 Proudly Public!’ Awards night at Sydney Town Hall on Monday, May 29. They were among over 700 public school students and educators from across Australia to receive scholarships administered by the Public Education Foundation (PEF) in 2023. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth...
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LOGGING in native forest in Orara East State Forest was halted by protesters on Wednesday morning, June 6. A 55-year-old ‘forest defender’ suspended herself 30 metres high in a tree-sit from ropes strung across the only entrance to the forest, blocking all trucks, vehicles and workers from logging the forest. Advertise with News of The...
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The reviews for HBM are coming in and, so far, have been enormously positive ...