Some Much Needed Civil Service History

From the August 31, 2024 LA Times: [Note the digital and facsimile editions have different titles.]

 

As someone who taught public administration at the graduate level, I'm well aware of the lack of knowledge of what 'the civil service' is.  So let me give you some background.  

Before the civil service was created in local, state, and federal governments, we had what is often called "the spoils system."

Briefly, 'to the victor, go the spoils.'  Winning candidates gave jobs to the campaign supporters.  This was the payoff for working on a campaign.  Qualifications were not nearly as important as loyalty.  This included positions as low as garbage collector and as high was head of the budget.  

Aside from the incompetence and corruption this led to, it also meant that whenever someone from a different party won, the whole government was thrown out and new people were put in place.  And had to learn from scratch, generally without any help from the fired former workers.

Political machines, like Tammany Hall in New York, would recruit new immigrants coming off the ships to work on their campaigns with the promise of a job if they won.  [US citizenship was not required to vote back then.  That changed later.  The Constitution gave the states the power to run elections and decide qualifications to vote.  The Constitution didn't ban women from voting, the states did.]

At the national level, this came to a head when Andrew Jackson was elected president and invited 'the riffraff' that elected him to the White House in 1830.  But it wasn't until a disgruntled office seeker assassinated President Garfield in 1881 because he didn't get the position he sought, that Congress got serious. 

In 1883 they passed the Pendleton Act that set up a civil service system based on merit.  

Merit, as in the 'merit system' means that positions are filled based on merit, or on one's qualifications for the job, not who you know.  

Local governments in New York and Boston didn't move to merit systems until the early 20th Century.  

Those merit systems weren't perfect.  The inherent biases of the day meant that women and Blacks weren't qualified except for what Trump would call 'women's jobs' and 'Black jobs.'  

And even today, the top level jobs in most governments are still filled with people who are loyal to the head of the government - whether that's a mayor, governor, or president.   Not only does that include cabinet officials but a top layer of 'exempt' positions.  Exempt meaning they are not covered by the merit system.  They can be hired and fired at will.  Usually the newly elected official picks people based on their loyalty to his policy as well as his professional qualifications to do the job.  But clearly that second part doesn't always happen.  The only check on this, is a required vote of approval by a legislative body - the US or state Senate, a City Council.  But if the newly elected executive  has a majority in the legislative branch too, that approval is often pro forma.

People hired through a merit system process also have job protections.  They cannot be fired except for cause - for violating the law, the policies or procedures, for gross incompetence etc.  Whereas the appointed (exempt) positions don't have such protections.  

After his 2016 election, Trump was frequently frustrated by career civil servants, who didn't jump to follow his often illegal instructions. The media have dubbed these people (who included many appointed positions as well) 'the guardrails' that kept Trump somewhat in line. He wanted the Justice Department to punish people who opposed him.  He did battle with the civil servants in various regulatory agencies who followed the law rather than Trump's illegal bidding.  

So, when we hear that Trump wants to destroy the civil service, as stated in the LA Times headline above, this is what we're talking about.  

He doesn't want a system that hires qualified people who cannot be fired except for cause.  (Again, for cause, means they have to do something that violates the laws, the rules, or is grossly incompetent or corrupt.)  He wants government workers that do his bidding without any resistance, without them telling him 'it's against the law.'

He wants to fire all those people who were hired based on merit (their qualifications to perform the job).  These include Democrats, Republicans, and non-partisan employees, and replace them with people whose main qualification is undying loyalty to Trump.  

That's pretty much all I want to say.

One of the very best books on this subject is Robert Caro's The Power Broker.  It's a biography of Robert Moses who played a major role in getting a merit system in place in New York.  It's a massive [1168 pages] book.  But it is also riveting as it goes into detail on how the idealist young Moses evolved into the powerful and corrupt power broker of New York. And in doing so tells the story of the civil service. Not only did the book win the Pulitzer Prize, it was also selected on most lists of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th Century. I challenge you to read the first hundred pages and not want to turn the page.

It's NOT Better To Ask Forgiveness . . . Why The Assembly Shouldn't Settle With Roger Hickel

Roger Hickel's construction company filed suit against the Municipality of Anchorage.

"In its lawsuit, Hickel says it wants to be paid for the nearly $2.5 million of work it did last year, plus damages to be determined."  (From Alaska Public Media)

He claims he had a contract with the Municipality to do the work and now he's not getting paid.  

The problem is that his contract wasn't valid because it had never been approved by the Assembly.

"It started last year when the administration authorized Hickel to begin construction without Assembly authorization. That came to light last fall, and the Anchorage Assembly suspended the project." (same APM article.)

Last September, the Mayor brought a contract amendment to the Assembly.  

"On March 21, 2022, MOA Purchasing approved a Contract with RHC for Pre-

11 Construction Management (CM) services for the MOA Navigation Center as the

12 result of Request for Proposal 2022P007. Of the two proposals received,

13 reviewed, and evaluated, RHC received the highest score. The contract amount

14 was $50,000.00 and the period of performance was through December 31, 2022.

15 M&O is now requesting approval of the addition of General Contractor (GC)

16 construction services at a Not to Exceed (NTE) cost of $4,900,000.00 and a

17 contract extension through June 30, 2023. This will increase the contract amount

18 from $50,000.00 to $4,950,000.00."

But the Assembly rejected the extension of the contract:

"In a 9-3 vote, members rejected the administration’s request for $4.9 million so the city could proceed with the project. Assembly members Randy Sulte, Jamie Allard and Kevin Cross voted to approve it."

Why?  Because the Mayor had earlier secretly approved the contract without getting the Assembly's approval for the contract extension, which is required.  

"The vote came weeks after the revelation that, against city code, Bronson officials authorized millions in construction work over the summer without first getting the required Assembly approval to increase the contract with Roger Hickel Contracting by the $4.9 million. Work had begun weeks before Bronson officials in early September sent a request to the Assembly to change the contract."

“The municipality and the contractor have both been operating in good faith based on no less than three Assembly actions that appropriated to the tune of $9 million towards this project,” Municipal Manager Amy Demboski said. “It was our intent — we thought we were collaboratively working with the Assembly.” 

 About that 'good faith.'  Amy Demboski is the City Manager who a short time later, after she was fired by the Mayor, published a 'scathing letter' with a long list of things the Mayor had done very much in bad faith.

"It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" is a phrase often uttered in large bureaucracies when someone is proposing to skip over the rules.  The most positive spin would be that the complication of such organizations often frustrates folks to the point that they think it's easier to just plow ahead, without jumping through all the hoops to get permission.  But on the negative side, it's interpreted to mean 'since we aren't likely to get permission, let's just do it and it will be too late for them to do anything about it.'

The latter would seem to be what happened here.  There weren't that many hoops at the Municipality.  They just had to get the Assembly's approval.  But the Assembly had serious misgivings about the Mayor's project and there was a good chance they wouldn't approve it.  

We know the Mayor's office had to know they needed the Assembly's approval.  Contract approval is a very important and frequent part of running the Municipality.  The requirements for contract approval are one of the first things a Mayor needs to know.   There were still some pre-Bronson era employees who knew the rules and would have mentioned this.  At the very least, the Municipal Manager, Amy Demboski, a former Assembly member, knew well that the Assembly's approval was required.   

And Hickel?

Roger Hickel's LinkedIn Page says he's been doing construction in Anchorage for 28 years.

His construction company's website identifies over a dozen civil projects done for the MOA and the State of Alaska.  (I couldn't fit them all in one screen shot) And over 28 years he's done many, many such projects.

He also has the MOA and State of Alaska on his list of repeat customers among other government entities like the School District and the University of Alaska Anchorage. 

A FEW OF OUR REPEAT CLIENTS

Walmart

Nordstrom

Home Depot

Lowe’s

United Parcel Service

Federal Express

Army and Air Force Exchange Services

Food Services of America, NC Machinery

Providence Alaska Medical Center

Anchorage School District

Alaska Pacific University

University of Alaska

State of Alaska

the Municipality of Anchorage

Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium

Alaska Regional Hospital

As an Anchorage contractor for over 28 years with numerous contracts with the MOA of various sized projects, there is no way that Hickel didn't know that the contract extensions over a certain amount required the Assembly's approval.  You don't do this many government construction projects without knowing the rules of the Muni and the State, without knowing the cost limits that require additional approval, without experts in your office who do this routinely.  

And he knew the project was controversial.  That it might not get the approval.  He and the mayor may have convinced themselves the project was critical to solve the Anchorage homelessness situation, but they still knew it required the Assembly's permission.  

The Assembly should call their bluff.  Let them go to court.  Let them explain why they went ahead without the Assembly's approval before a judge and a jury.  My guess is that the judge and jury will understand they were taking a calculated risk.  That the project was controversial and not likely to get the Assembly's approval.  That they were betting that moving the project ahead would force the Assembly to approve a project that they had serious questions about.  

I'm not a betting man, but I take the rule of law seriously.  I urge the Assembly to be firm.  To hold the Mayor and the contractor accountable for breaking the Municipal ordinance.  To let a jury decide.  I'm fairly confident that going to court will cause Hickel to settle for a much lower sum from the Muni.  And that a jury would side with the Assembly.  

My Indonesian Yacht Cruise Was A Raft Trip On The Yentna With Ted Turner

[For those who are used to Twitter and need the this to read this in 20 seconds, skip down to the bolded question, What does this have to do with yachts cruising Indonesian islands? For those that want some context (and a little history on how the Anchorage Assembly first got onto cable, start at the beginning.]

 

Michael Shamberg's Guerilla Television had put video literacy into my life goals.  It pointed out that we are taught to read and write at school and given some skills in recognizing when written language is being used to manipulate us. (This was the 70s when schools still did that.  I think many still do, but I'm guessing a lot don't.)  

Shamberg's premise was that we were getting so much news via television that we needed that same sort of training in videography.  The book was a treatise on what was wrong with how news was created and a citizens handbook for how to make people's videos and how citizen created videos would change the world.  This was at a time when video cameras were pretty bulky and pricey, and there weren't any outlets for citizens to show their videos. There weren't even any Blockbusters yet.

I'd say Shamberg was pretty visionary. Eventually cameras on phones gave everyone a pocket video recorder and YouTube offered everyone a people's theater where anyone could show their videos and anyone could watch them.  Social media have extended the audience even further.  

And so when cable television was beginning to show up I was paying attention.  I was reading cable industry journals and even went to a few conferences on cable public access.  I was especially excited about the contracts around the country that required the cable companies to set up public access video studios with cameras and editing equipment so people could make their own videos. They also required public access channels to play those citizen made videos on. Sure, the audience was limited to cable viewers, but it was a step in the right direction. 

Multivision had bid for the contract in Anchorage.  This was 1982 or 83.  I was working on loan from the University to the Municipality of Anchorage for a couple of years.  I read the Multivision proposal and was dismayed that there was no provision for a public access video studio or a channel for people's video.  I kept telling Cathy Allen, Mayor Knowles' chief of staff (I think that was her title) that the Municipality should be demanding that such provisions - modeled from Outside cable agreements - be included in Multivisions' contract.  She kept treating me like I was crazy.  I kept sending her memos (yeah, email was not available yet)  about the Alaska Public Utility  Commission's meetings on cable.  One was coming up soon where there would be public testimony. On the day of the meeting I got a call to come up to Allen's office right away.  She'd just come back from a national conference and a city manager from a big city had sat her down and told her how important it was to have public access in cable contracts. Nothing I hadn't been telling her, but he was more credible to her than I had been.  So yes, I could go to the meeting and represent the Muni that afternoon.  

Fortunately, I'd been reading the proposal and comparing the prices they were proposing for monthly subscriptions and had lots of information about public access in other cities.  

So there I was, at the last minute, running down the street to the meeting.  There weren't a lot of people there and they all seemed to be Multivisions boosters.  Then my turn to talk came.  I nervously compared Multivisions prices to Outside prices and said something like, "I understand it is more expensive to operate in Alaska than it is Outside, but it's NOT three times as expensive!"  I also talked about how most cities were requiring cable companies to have public access studies and a public access channel.  And I sat down.

At the next break, I was mobbed by six or seven people asking me, essentially, "who the hell are you?" did  I really represented the Muni.  

As time went by I was back arguing that Multivisions should be televising the Assembly meetings live.  Not possible they said.  At that time they were meeting in the Muni's Tudor Road buildings and they said it wasn't wired for cable.  It would have to wait until the new Loussac Library opened.  

But for some reason the Assembly  had to move out of the Tudor building and temporarily went to the new Convention Center on 5th Avenue.  And I knew that building was wired.  By that time I'd gotten some others to join me and we had set up a non-profit for this project - something like Anchorage Media Access Group.  I lobbied the Assembly members and they agreed to a six month trial and allotted a paltry sum - maybe $3000 for that.  Our non-profit sent out an RFP to every third video business in the Anchorage media resources book.  We got two bids.  One was way beyond the money the Assembly offered.  The other was a budding videographer who agreed to do it at a ridiculously low price with the help of volunteers (ourselves and a few others) who would staff the cameras for him.  

At first, he balked. He couldn't trust his expensive cameras to volunteers.   But he relented when we pointed out that he couldn't afford to do it any other way.  And so the Assembly began its six months experiment being broadcast live on Anchorage cable.  

While Assembly members had had a number of doubts - it would lead to grandstanding, those without cable wouldn't have access, etc. - after several weeks they were all won over.  They had so many people say they saw them on cable and they had people showing up saying they were watching at home and had to come down to testify.  At the end of the six months they approved a much larger budget and our videographer got the contract and we stopped having to supply volunteers.  We disbanded our non-profit and gave the Assembly back the $500 we still had left and asked them to use it to support televising the Assembly. 

 

What does this have to do with yachts cruising Indonesian islands? 

Somewhere along this cable path, I got an invitation from Multivision to go on a float trip on the Yentna River with Ted Turner whom they were bringing up to Alaska.  That sounded very cool, but unlike a certain US Supreme Court justice, I didn't consider accepting for a second.  

I understood that I hadn't been randomly selected for this honor, but that it had to do with my advocacy for a better deal for Anchorage citizens and my advocacy for getting the Anchorage Assembly live on cable. And that this might be their way to get me to tone it down or who knows?.  I thanked them and said I couldn't accept their offer. 

Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, seems to have had no qualms about accepting annual half-a-million dollar vacations and didn't see it necessary to report these on his annual financial disclosure forms.  

The wealthy Republicans have been smart and have taken a long range planning approach to maintain power. When Bork got turned down for the Court, they apparently realized democracy was no longer enough.  

Lobbying has been a traditional way to get legislators to vote against the interests of their constituents.  This relationship is strengthened by campaign contributions. And secrecy. But even better would be owning a Supreme Court that decided their way if the legislature wouldn't.  

The Democrats have not been as Machiavellian and were not very good as spotting the stealth takeover  of the Supreme Court the Republicans, through the Federalist Society, had worked on for so many years.  

And with Trump as president, they succeeded in taking over the Court.  Justice Kennedy abruptly resigned to make room for Kavanaugh.  I'm still certain there's a cloak and dagger story about how Kennedy was convinced to step down, that would include his son's work for Deutsche Bank, the last major bank still willing to lend money to Trump for his projects. And Justin Kennedy was the man who made those loans happen. 

But since Trump essentially turned the job of picking his court nominees over to the Federalist Society, it's pretty clear that they had something to do with Kennedy's resignation as well.  The first link is to a speech by Sen. Whitehouse - the Senate's most active and vocal observer of how the Federalist Society has managed the sharp lurch to the right of the Supreme Court.  But for those of you who need a different source, here's a report from The Hill.  Speculation?  Sure.  But a lot of clues point in the right direction. And like Thomas' vacations with the Crows, I'm pretty certain there's lots we don't yet know.  At least there are facts and motives pointing in this direction, which is way more than the Republicans have for every major scandal they scream about daily.  

Breakdown of Norms

From Oxford Bibliographies:

"[Norms] are most commonly defined as rules or expectations that are socially enforced. Norms may be prescriptive (encouraging positive behavior; for example, “be honest”) or proscriptive (discouraging negative behavior; for example, “do not cheat”)."

Basically, norms are the rules that are socially, rather than legally, enforced.  When people break the norms, public opinion is the force that 'rules' the consequences.  Politicians lose elections, officials resign their posts.  

But we're in a period where Republicans, particularly, are no longer constrained by norms.  They're no longer constrained by laws. (Sure, politicians on both sides have fudged the law forever, but they did it clandestinely, not flagrantly out in the open.)  While Trump is by far the most egregious example, his Republican colleagues in the House and Senate have gone along.  The Senate had the power to remove him from office after the House voted for impeachment.  Twice.  

They didn't.  Instead, they rammed through the nominations of Kavanaugh and Barrett.  

Not all the Republicans are completely craven, but they are all much more interested in their reelections than they are in maintaining traditional norms of appearing to support the public interest, 

And Fox News, particularly, has worked closely with Trump to make sure their viewers are fed the stories they (the viewers) want to hear, no matter how much they deviate from truth.  Those Republicans who stood up to Trump, even slightly, have either retired (rather than face Trump's cult in the primaries) or they were defeated in the primaries.  Alaska's Senator Murkowski is the only exception I know of.  She used a write-in campaign to overcome a primary defeat in 2012.  In 2022, Alaska's new Ranked ChoiceVoting went into effect, which eliminated closed party primaries and put all candidates for each office into one primary. 

The wealthy Right Wingers know that their ideas are not popular with the voters.  Ending abortion, no restrictions on guns, racial discrimination, election manipulation are all opposed by healthy majorities of the general population. 

To win, Republicans have to rig the game.  Pack the Supreme Court with judges who rule in favor of business most of the time.  Gerrymander state voting districts to get far more Republicans elected even when the actual numbers of both parties are much more even.  Suppress the votes of minorities and the young in as many ways as they can think of.  Oppose all bills to help overcome the disparities in wealth, access to food, housing, education, and health care. In fact oppose all legislation that might be good for the country that Biden could take credit for.  And now we're seeing the truly power obsessed trying to control women's rights to decide their own health care, even banning out of state travel for those seeking abortions.  

With a strong Supreme Court majority, Republican governors are writing laws so far out of the bounds of US social norms and violate decades old Supreme Court precedents.  They are doing this in anticipation of the new Federalist Society judges overturning all those precedents as just as they overturned Roe v. Wade.  Voting rights?  We're back to a post Civil War Supreme Court that used States' Rights to allow disenfranchisement of blacks and lynchings among other terrible practices.  

And when Clarence Thomas says in his brief official statement that he read the rules and consulted with others and they said he didn't have to report transportation, he's telling me that he has NO business being a US Supreme Court Justice.  

• First, this is so extreme an example - half a million dollar vacations for 20 years!  Any reasonable person knows this sort of 'gift' needs to be reported  (I didn't have to go to law school to know accepting a pricey trip with a celebrity was the wrong thing to do.)
• Second, if Thomas has trouble interpreting such obvious and simple disclosure rules for judicial gifts, then he is hardly qualified to interpret the US Constitution. 
• Third, if he is capable of such interpretation, then he's intentionally flouting the rules and the norms for his own advantage.  In this case his perceived best interest was non-disclosure. One would assume that is also how he often interprets the law and the Constitution in his Supreme Court decisions.  
• Fourth, hanging out with the Crows and their yachting friends helps to shape his ideas of his own best interests and appropriate interpretations of the Constitution.

CONCLUSIONS

Like most such issues, this one is entangled in many overlapping contexts of law, of history, of politics, of economics, of ethics, that it is difficult to discuss it without either leaving important points out or without getting so long and complicated people won't finish.  

A key issue I'm leaving out is accountability of career and elected public officials.  Of course Trump and Fox have so violated societal norms of behavior and of truth telling that we seem to be in a completely different place than we were five or six years ago.  Though another part of me believes that the craziness we hear these days has always existed.  But today's technology enables much more of it to be seen and heard by the public.  

If that's true, the good news is that all this ugliness is being exposed - from police brutality to overt racism (OK, those two are probably intertwined), to sexual abuse, etc.  The bad news is those with norm-violating behavior and thoughts have found support for their anti-democracy desires.  

Before the Republicans get ultimate control of the courts and can manipulate all elections, we need to get all the folks who are still within traditional norms, but have given up on voting, to go vote.  There are still tens of millions of people who have come up with excuses not to vote.  (And this is also in part due to the Right's propaganda about how terrible government is, Democrats are, and how corrupt elections are.)  

Those who want Democracy to carry on have an obligation to get everyone who doesn't normally vote, to vote in the next few elections.  And the Republicans' extreme power grabbing - abortions bans, LGBTQ+ baiting, anti-Semitism, book banning, expulsion of duly elected legislators are all helping to get those voters to the polls in the next elections.   

We need enough Democrats in state legislatures and in Congress to overcome Republican attempts to turn the US into an authoritarian regime favoring wealthy white males who distort the Bible to further their interests.  

Bill Allen - My Respect For Him As A Pre-Modern Man In A Modern World

When I heard last week that Bill Allen had died, I immediately wanted to write a bit of a remembrance.  I sat through three different political corruption trials in 2007 and 2008 where he was a key witness for the prosecution.  He had already pleaded guilty and would explain each time how he had given money to different Alaskan GOP politicians so they would vote favorably for the oil industry, for his company VECO in particular.

I thought I had a post that spoke to the part I wanted to say.  But I couldn't find it.  

I just read Michael Carey's Anchorage Daily News opinion piece remembering Bill Allen, so I'll refer you to that.  I met Michael on the first or second day of the first of the trials.  He'd heard that the defendant had been a former student of mine and invited me to lunch.  I told him I couldn't talk about what I knew about Tom from my teacher-student relationship, but he still took me to lunch that day.  Michael's a good man and I appreciate his view on things.

Michael's article got me to look again back into the archives of this blog and I found what I was looking for.  It's in a post talking about the stories imbedded in the trail, in this case, cultural stories. I'd note my use of the term "pre-modern man."  This doesn't mean cave man.  It refers to the value systems prior to the Scientific Revolution and the application of science and rationality to agriculture, the production of goods, to medicine, and to government and law.  It was a time when family and power were the key things that mattered. 

From Pete Kott's Trial: The Underlying Stories September 15, 2007

"First, I would note that the main character in the trial so far has been Bill Allen. Pete Kott has said very little since the first day when the jury pool assembled and Kott stood up with the attorneys and introduced himself as "Pete Kott, the defendant." Since then he's been a quiet shadow sitting between his attorneys. Witness Rick Smith has a supporting role to Bill Allen. So let me try on this story as an interpretation of some of what is happening here in court.

We have a clash of two different cultures - a pre-modern, tribal world and a modern, legal world. In Bill Allen's world, as I tease it out of his words and behaviors, power and family are the main values. Loyalty is a second, but lower value. The law, the government, the legislature in particular are seen as either obstacles to be overcome or tools to get what you want. Allen is clearly an intelligent man. Coming from a poor family, as he told the story, where he and his family survived as 'pickers' of fruit and vegetables in Oregon, he often missed school to pick. He finally dropped out at 15 to earn money as an assistant welder. He has used his wits, his ability to work hard, and his ability to size up people, to create a business that earned between $750 million and $1 billion last year, according to his testimony. 

In the world he described, good and bad referred to how something would affect his business. Good legislation was legislation that would benefit - directly or indirectly - Veco's prospects. Good people were those who supported Allen and Veco. Money was a sign of power. And with money, this high school drop-out could show his power over the better educated. He could buy legislators. He paid Tom Anderson to be a consultant who did, apparently, very little for his monthly check. He paid for political polls for state legislative candidates. He handed out checks to legislators. They had audiences with Allen in the Baranof Hotel's Suite 604. But symbolically, he could really show his power by building the addition to Ted Stevens' house and by hiring Ted Stevens' son for $4000 a month to do "not a lot." The most senior Republican U.S. Senator was beholden to him. Surely, that's a sign of power. He even bought a newspaper - The Anchorage Times.  So all these educated people worked for him - a high school drop out who'd picked fruit as a child. 

Earlier in the trial, I'd thought perhaps loyalty was the main virtue in this world - the loyalty of the Pete Kotts. The loyalty of his Veco employees. He said he trusted Kott as a friend who would do whatever it took to support him. He told the court he'd put aside $10 million when Veco was sold, to support the loyal employees who'd worked for the company and made it what it was - not the executives, but the workers. 

But then I looked at the situation before me. Allen was the government's witness against his most loyal servant, Pete Kott. We've watched this tribal culture on HBO - in the Sopranos and in Rome. We see it in the car bombs of Baghdad. We even see it in the White House where the rule of law is trumped by the raw use of power, and the redacting of significant parts of the Constitution. If the rule of law has any meaning in this culture, it is might makes right. And when the FBI confronted Allen with hundreds of hours of secretly recorded audio and video tapes, he saw that their army of investigators and attorneys had more juice than Veco. In this conflict of power, the FBI had him by the balls, a graphic image that would say it all in Allen's world.   And to protect the ultimate core of a tribal culture, his family, he abandoned Kott and the others, to keep his family out of prison.  

This is not an immoral man. Rather this is a man who lives by a different code of right and wrong from the one that now judges him. Family and power come first. Loyalty to underlings comes next. He told the court he didn't expect anything from the Government for his testimony. He recognized their power, and in their place he would not treat his vanquished with 'fairness'. But he also had his own pride - in the powerful company he built by his own hands and wit, in his own hard work - and as he told Kott's attorney, "I won't beg" the government to lower his sentence. He'll take what comes as a man. He's protected his family, whatever else happens, happens.

This man who ruled by the pre-modern values of power and personal loyalty is put on trial by the rules of a modern state, where rationality, not personality count. Where merit, not loyalty and personal connections, is the standard. (A merit system generally prefers college degrees to dirty fingernails.) His behaviors are judged, not by power, but by laws. The kind of laws he paid legislators to write in his favor and that he ignored when they were in the way.  

I think it is important to recognize the good qualities in Allen. This is a man who, it would appear, was raised in a culture where poverty was bad and thus money was good. No one was there to help him, he had to help himself. The modern, civilized world failed him. It forced him to work as a child. The school system didn't work for him. The idea of rule of law wasn't, apparently, one he learned from his family and he wasn't in school enough to get it there. With what he had, he built a large corporation which gave him the power to take care of his family. He played well by the rules of tribal culture. 

And lest those of us who believe in the rule of law get too smug, tribal instincts are alive and well under the veneer of civilization we wear. We see it flare up in divorce courts, at football stadiums and boxing matches, among hunters and fishers. It's part of our humanity. We're still learning how to balance the tension between protecting our own and helping others, between the freedom of the individual and the good of the larger community.

 

The Amount Of Oppression And Hate In The World Is Overwhelming - Makes It Hard To Blog Because There Is Too Much To Protest

When I was a grad student I wrote, in my head, what I called at the time, a 'social science fiction' novel.  That was back in the mid 1970s.  I should have written it - it was prescient in a number of things.  A basic part of the social structure in the book was a set of television connections that allowed people to connect with others all around the world.  I was back in LA after three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand.  Lots of ideas swirling in my head.  I was reading all sorts of social science and writing papers and substitute teaching elementary school to help pay for tuition.  There were a couple of days where I taught a Kindergarten class in the morning and a graduate class in the evening.  So my novel still only exists in my head. 

One of the key moments in the history of humanity in my book, was when a group of Tibetan monks, in an isolated monastery, through intensive years of meditation, discovered that forces far out in space were using earth as a 'farm.'  The product they were harvesting every 30 to 60 years, was 'goodness.' It turned out to be a rare commodity found in few places in the universe.  After such a harvest, people fought each other, more people became criminals, wars broke out.  It took 30 to 60 years for 'goodness' to gain a foothold among humanity again.  And then the aliens would return to harvest their crop.  The monks in my story teamed with scientist to block the space powers from harvesting the earth's 'goodness.'  

I've been thinking about this metaphor a lot during the Trump administration.  It seems like there was a massive harvest of goodness prior to his administration.  And now we have to nurture a new crop.  

That's prelude to a couple of things I've been reading and/or watching.

Here's a Tweet video from Al Jazeera on Uighurs incarcerated in China (not far from that fictional Tibetan monastery.)

Last year, Merdan Ghappar posted video from inside one of China's internment camps, where over 1 million Uighur Muslims have been held. He was handcuffed to his bed.

China calls them "re-education" camps.pic.twitter.com/LnufUxFg1i

— AJ+ (@ajplus) February 23, 2021

I Care A Lot

We watched this Netflix film last night in mild horror.  Marla Grayson (character) is a Guardian for seniors who can't take care of their affairs.  She works with a doctor who refers patients to her, then goes to a friendly judge who, because it's an "emergency," gives her guardianship of the patients.  Then she goes to the patient's house - in this case Jennifer Peterson, who is wealthy and living a great independent life in an upscale neighborhood.  Grayson shows her the court order, and gets the incredulous victim to the Berkshire Oaks facility.  I haven't givien much away - because Jennifer Peterson in essentially imprisoned within the first 20 minutes of the movie.  How it happens is what's so scary.  Grayson is truly evil. 

"Writer/director J Blakeson was partially inspired by real-life news stories about shady guardians like Marla Grayson. In an interview for the film’s press notes, Blakeson said, “It started when I saw news stories about real-life predatory guardians who game the system and exploit their wards. And I was horrified. Imagine opening your door one day and there is a person standing there holding a piece of paper that gives them total legal power over you. That idea terrified me—and seemed very relevant right now. It plugged into themes that I am interested in exploring —themes about the power of authority, about people vs profit, control vs freedom, humanity vs bureaucracy. It reminded me of Kafka’s The Trial​. I knew I had to explore it.”

If you want to go down a similar rabbit hole that Blakeson did, check out New Yorker reporter Rachel Aviv’s excellent 2017 essay on the guardianship phenomenon, “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights.” It’s a great read, and no doubt inspired many elements of Blakeson’s script. "  (From  Decider.)

I'm so glad I was able to let my mom stay in her own house.  In hindsight hiring a full time caregiver wasn't necessarily more expensive than a nursing home would have been, and far less disruptive.  But Jennifer Peterson never even had a choice.  The legal work was done behind her back by a series of corrupt transactions.  

I also think about a similar phenomenon in Alaska - payees.  These are people hired to take care of the money of people who are mentally or otherwise deemed unfit to take care of their own finances.  I have a mentee who has been scammed by a couple of payees.  There's really almost no oversight for these people who manage the money of people seen as unfit.  How can they possibly keep their payee accountable?  

One last story - Police Violence, Race-Based Trauma, and Mental Health among Filipina/x/o Americans.  This one is all too familiar, but it's is about a Filipino-American, not an African-American. It's co-authored by University of Alaska Anchorage's faculty member Dr. EJR David.  Here's an excerpt:

. . . Mr. Quinto experienced what seems like a mental health-related episode. Not knowing how to handle the situation, his sister and mother called 911 for help.

Police officers and emergency medical technicians were dispatched to the scene, but police officers arrived first. His mother and sister reported that Mr. Quinto had already calmed down when the police arrived and that he laid on the floor in his mother’s embrace. Nevertheless, the police still grabbed him off his mother, pinned him face down to the floor, and handcuffed him. One of the officers kneeled on his neck and back, while another officer held down his legs. Mr. Quinto’s sister and mother said he was not resisting or fighting back, but instead twice uttered: “Please don’t kill me”. After several minutes, he spat up blood from his mouth and lost consciousness. A cell phone video taken by his sister captured his limp body being taken away. Mr. Quinto died 3 days later. . .

The article goes on to put this into a larger context of the lack of mental health treatment, race, and police in the United States.   

"The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States" Smartmatic v. Fox

Smartmatic, a maker of election technology is suing For News for knowingly broadcasting lies about their company for financial gain.  

Fake news is not new. In a post about Misleading Headlines I wrote about serious problems rife in the US from 1898 when there was a circulation feud between the Hearst's and the Pulitzers.  

But Fox News goes well beyond headlines.  The  whole story is often totally made up.  The First Amendment has been interpreted to give a lot of leeway for legitimate news media to make honest, even sloppy  mistakes.  

However, as you read the allegations in this case (and based on everyone's personal experience either with Fox News directly or on the ever-present clips on different social media) it's clear that Fox has often pushed the protections of the First Amendment to the point that they are actually causing harm to people and companies and endangering democracy, by labeling fiction as non-fiction.

Distinguishing Free Speech from Slander and Libel

So how do we balance free speech and slander and libel?  There have always been laws against slander and libel.  Smartmatic is claiming that Fox and its on air spokespersons not only made patently false claims, but they knew that they were doing it, and in doing it they did Smartmatic irreparable harm, for Fox's financial gain and to help reelect Trump.  

Findlaw outlines the key elements of libel (written) and slander (spoken).

To prove either type of a defamation lawsuit, plaintiffs must prove the following elements:

• The defendant made a false and defamatory statement concerning the plaintiff;
• The defendant made the defamatory statement to a third party knowing it was false (or they should have known it was false); and
• The publisher acted at least negligently in publishing the communication.

It's clear Smartmatic's lawyers know these basic principles of the law and there charges go well beyond claiming damage to Smartmatic and intended gain for Fox.  I'd note I had some personal education on this topic when an attorney sent me an email threatening to sue me if I didn't take down a post the speculated about whether his client was a scam.  Fortunately I had access to a great Alaskan First Amendment attorney who wrote a letter in response.  

Here's a link to the suit Smarmatic filed.  And excerpts below are taken from the documents filed today.

 

 SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF NEW YORK

--------------------------------------

SMARTMATIC USA CORP., SMARTMATIC INTERNATIONAL HOLDING B.V., and SGO CORPORATION LIMITED,

Plaintiffs, -against-

FOX CORPORATION, FOX NEWS NETWORK LLC, LOU DOBBS, MARIA BARTIROMO, JEANINE PIRRO, RUDOLPH GIULIANI, and SIDNEY POWELL,

Defendants.

The basic narrative of the case is that Fox knowingly made up facts defaming their company for Fox to gain a bigger audience and it did great damage to the company. 

INTRODUCTION1

1. The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable. [emphasis added]

2. Defendants have always known these facts. They knew Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 U.S. election. They knew the election was not stolen. They knew the election was not rigged or fixed. They knew these truths just as they knew the Earth is round and two plus two equals four.

3. Defendants did not want Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to win the election. They wanted President Donald Trump and Vice President Michael Pence to win re-election. Defendants were disappointed. But they also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story. Defendants decided to tell people that the election was stolen from President Trump and Vice President Pence.

The Table of Contents gives you the general narrative of their case.  I'll give you just a taste of what's there.  Again, the link his here.

 

FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS ....................................................................................................... 12

1. Smartmatic’s Role as an Election Technology Company ..................................................... 13

   1. Smartmatic grew from a small start-up into a successful multi-billion-dollar
      enterprise. ....................................................................................................................... 14

   2. Smartmatic’s success was built on its reputation for secure, reliable, and auditable election technology and software. .................................................................................. 18

   3. Smartmatic had a relatively small, non-controversial role in the 2020 U.S. election. ... 19

      1. Los Angeles County introduced a new Voting Solutions for All People initiative for the 2020 U.S. election................................................................................................ 19

      2. Los Angeles County selected Smartmatic to contribute election technology and software to the Voting Solutions for All People initiative. ....................................... 22

      3. Smartmatic’s involvement with Los Angeles County was a success. ....................... 23

   4. Smartmatic quietly celebrated its success in Los Angeles without knowing what was coming from Defendants. ............................................................................................... 25

2. Defendants’ Disinformation Campaign Against Smartmatic ................................................ 27

   1. Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell created a story about Smartmatic. ................................... 30

   2. Fox Defendants joined the conspiracy to defame and disparage Smartmatic and its election technology and software. .................................................................................. 32

   3. Defendants engaged in a widespread disinformation campaign against Smartmatic and its election technology and software. ............................................................................. 34

   4. Defendants used multiple platforms to spread disinformation....................................... 57

   5. Defendants presented their statements about Smartmatic as facts, not opinions ........... 67

3. Defendants’FalseStatementsandImplicationsAboutSmartmatic......................................78

   A.  Defendants falsely stated and implied that Smartmatic’s election technology and software were widely used in the 2020 U.S. election..................................................... 79

   B.  Defendants falsely stated and implied that Dominion used Smartmatic’s election technology and software during the 2020 U.S. election................................................. 84

   C.  Defendants falsely stated and implied that Smartmatic fixed, rigged, and stole the 2020 U.S. election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.............................................................. 92

   D.  Defendants falsely stated and implied that Smartmatic sent votes to foreign countries for tabulation during the 2020 U.S. election. ............................................................... 102

   E.  Defendants falsely stated and implied that Smartmatic’s election technology and software were compromised or hacked during the 2020 U.S. election. ....................... 106

   F.  Defendants falsely stated and implied that Smartmatic was previously banned from providing election technology and software in the United States. ............................... 112

   G.  Defendants falsely stated and implied that Smartmatic is a Venezuelan company founded and funded by corrupt dictators from socialist and communist countries...... 115

   H.  Defendants falsely stated and implied that Smartmatic’s election technology and software were designed to fix, rig, and steal elections. ................................................ 122

IV. Defendants Acted with Actual Malice and Ill Will Towards Smartmatic........................... 132
    A.    Defendants had no support for their statements and implications regarding
Smartmatic. ................................................................................................................... 133
Defendants did not have sources to prove something that did not happen.............. 134
Fox Defendants eventually admitted they had no basis for their statements and implications about Smartmatic. ............................................................................... 135
Fox News knew its anchors and guests lacked a basis for their statements and implications about Smartmatic. ............................................................................... 143
Defendants purposefully avoided learning the truth about Smartmatic and its election technology and software. ......................................................................................... 147
B.  Defendants had access to information showing their statements and implications about Smartmatic and its technology and software were factually inaccurate....................... 148
Defendants knew Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not widely used in the 2020 U.S. election (and were not used in contested states). ................. 149
Defendants knew Smartmatic’s election technology and software were not used to fix, rig, or steal the 2020 U.S. election. ................................................................... 160

That's enough to get you started.  The Roberts court has given a lot of deference to the First Amendment, but it seems this case is going to help the draw some lines.  And if the Plaintiffs are successful, there will be a new weapon against fake news.   This could be an important step in the fight against fake news.  

“There's only one way that my party, the Republican Party could be mortally wounded with certainty and that would be for the public to think that we Republicans don’t have the courage, the stamina, the determination to clean our own house."

The Watergate Hearings in 1973 were conducted by the with three Republicans and four Democrats. Below in the MacNeil/Lehrer coverage of the first day of the hearings.  It starts with an introduction to the key players and some context.  There never was an impeachment decision because Republicans told Nixon that it was clear he would be impeached and convicted.  Nixon resigned first.  

There's a striking difference from what we're seeing in the Senate these days.  I think it's very instructive to watch these hearing now as we prepare for the Senate trial of former president Trump.

Republican Sen. Howard Baker, Vice Chairman of the Hearings, talking to Robert MacNeil:

“There's only one way that my party, the Republican Party could be mortally wounded with certainty and that would be for the public to think that we Republicans don’t have the courage, the stamina, the determination to clean our own house.  So, it is not only not embarrassing, it’s an absolute requirement that we pursue every fact, wherever it leads us and that every phase that may emerge from that mosaic of fact emerge.  That we do it with enthusiasm but that we do it even handedly and that we have a fair and impartial exposition of the facts but that we establish absolute credibility as Republicans that we are going to take care of it ourselves.”

The introduction is useful, but if you want to skip it, Sen. Sam Ervin (the senior Democratic Senator from Georgia) calls the meeting to order about 9:27 on the tape.

From what I can tell, all the hearings are available from the National Archives here. 

"And remember in the United States there are no secrets, only delayed disclosures."

 In his book The Black Banners: How Torture Derailed the War on Terror after 9/11, former FBI interrogator, Ali Soufan,  writes in great detail about the interrogation techniques he’d been using since he’d joined the FBI in 1997.  As a native Arabic speaker from Lebanon who’d gone to school in the US, he started tracking al Qaeda already in graduate school and was put on the anti-terrorist unit after the initial rotation period in the FBI.  He gained a lot more knowledge of al Qaeda - their members, their funding, their training techniques, their communication networks, etc. - while interrogating suspects in the USS Cole bombing in Yemen.  When he interrogated detainees he got their cooperation quickly by letting them see how much he already knew about them and that lying was useless.  He also treated them with respect.  These techniques got the US volumes of intelligence.  

But after 9/11, the CIA was given control over interviewing detainees.  The CIA had very little interrogation expertise.  That wasn’t how they got information before this, so they hired a psychology professor as a contractor who introduced what came to be known as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT).  Coercive techniques and torture.  A few times Soufan got to interrogate detainees after 9/11 and was able to get useful information, but the high-value detainees were reserved for the CIA interrogators.  They basically got compliance, not cooperation.  Detainees told the CIA what they wanted to hear.  Often lies that fit the CIA narrative.  Not  useful information.  There were attempts by the FBI and inside the CIA and the military to block the EIT program, but it was supported in the White House.

Soufan writes:

“Mark Fallon, a New Jersey native from a family of law enforcement officials, found himself in a position he had warned his staff members about during their orientation. ‘Even if I give you an illegal order,’ he told them, ‘you can’t follow it.  You are bound by the Constitution.  Remember that at Nuremberg we prosecuted Nazis who claimed just to be following orders.  And remember in the United States there are no secrets, only delayed disclosures.  One day, whether one year away or ten years away, people will be looking at what we did, so make sure you act with the utmost integrity.’”

In the book, Soufan argues persuasively, backed up by Senate reports,  that the insistence on EIT to interrogate al Qaeda meant that the kind of intelligence the FBI interrogators had been collecting was lost and attacks that could have been foiled were not foiled, and finding Bin Laden was delayed by years.  

I think this same lesson applies to Senate Republicans. Their refusal to keep Trump accountable allows him to continue to damage our government, our position in the world, and is endangering our democracy by eroding trust in government.  

I cannot comprehend their reasons for  staying silent in the face of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election and to defy the advice of scientists on COVID.  

But I do know that like the decision to supplant traditional interrogation techniques with EIT, the Senate’s refusal to do its Constitutional duty to be a check on the presidency is tearing this country apart.  Allowing President Trump to do further damage to our government and our country in the final 60 days will cause unnecessary additional harm.  

Early on I proposed a statue to honor the first six Republican Senators willing to join the Democrats to force Trump to follow the law and the Constitution.  But despite separating immigrant  children, infants even, from their parents; despite encouraging white supremacists, despite the lies and lack of any kind of plan on COVID, and now despite Trump's attempt to overthrow the election, there still aren't six Republican Senators with courage and integrity.  

Even Trump underestimated what he could get away with.  He just said he could could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose his supporters.  At least 150,000 to 200,000 Americans are dead because of Trump's lies and inaction on COVID 19.  Those deaths belong to the Republican Senators too, who did not perform their constitutional duty to be a check on the presidency.  

I repeat Mark Fallon’s words:

And remember in the United States there are no secrets, only delayed disclosures.  One day, whether one year away or ten years away, people will be looking at what we did, so make sure you act with the utmost integrity.’”

The children and grandchildren of the Republican Senators will one day  know that their once powerful parents and grandparents  did not show integrity or courage in one of America’s darkest periods.  

Trump Administration Will Boost US Economy For Years: A Guide To The Many Jobs For Attorneys To Prosecute The Corruption

 The American Prospect has mapped out, federal agency by federal agency, the corruption of the Trump administration.  Mapping Corruption: The Interactive Exhibit   

This is one of those overview articles that are useful to save as a future reference .  I can't do it justice.  You need to look at it yourself. 

The article starts with an interactive map of the Mall in Washington DC and you can click on any of the federal agency buildings and jump to get the details of that agency. 

The original interactive image is from The American Prospect

 But here are a few snippets.  It starts with the Department of Agriculture.  The subheadings are adjusted to each agency, but Quick and Dirty and What am I Doing Here? seem to be part of each agency.

"Agriculture Department

QUICK AND DIRTY

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue was the subject of multiple ethics complaints and investigations during two terms as governor of Georgia. In one headline-making case, he approved a tax bill with a little-noticed provision that retroactively saved him $100,000 on a land sale.

Perdue has filled the department’s top ranks with former agribusiness executives and lobbyists, along with an unusual number of Trump campaign workers without other obvious qualifications.

The Agriculture Department has OK’d sharply higher line speeds for hog and poultry slaughterhouses and cut back on USDA meat-safety inspections, letting some big employers hand that responsibility off to low-wage workers.

While in Wisconsin for a conference of dairy farmers at a time of widespread distress and a surge in farmer suicides, Perdue implied that they should just get used to it, telling reporters, “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out.”

The department has proposed taking three million people off food stamps.

The department has loosened many environmental and health and safety regulations and dismissed concerns over climate change."

And here's another from the Department of Education:

"WHAT AM I DOING HERE?

Secretary Betsy DeVos inherited money and married money. She has had almost no personal experience with the public schools.

Her brother, Erik Prince, founded the private military company originally known as Blackwater but renamed Xe Services after its involvement in a notorious 2007 mass killing of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

Her father-in-law, Richard M. DeVos, founded the multilevel marketing giant Amway and used Republican Party connections to throttle a federal investigation depicting his company as a pyramid scheme.

DeVos has been a leading bundler of campaign money for Republican candidates in her native Michigan and across the country.

Her family has poured millions of dollars into private Christian schools and campaigns for “school choice.” The goal of her educational activism, she has said, is to “advance God’s kingdom.”

She refers to education as an “industry” and has called public education “a closed market,” “a monopoly,” and 'a dead end.'”

Why DNC Rightfully Warned Us About Four More Years

And it seems the RNC is trying to turn it around and scare the Trump base into thinking Biden will be even worse.  Here are two examples.

1.  Truly scary Trump nomination.  The guy is a Harvard Law professor who believe the US should be a Catholic based authoritarian theocracy:

Trump Nominates Adrian Vermeule to ACUS

" . . .in an essay for The Atlantic, Vermeule proposed a new legal ideology that would disregard the Constitution altogether. According to Vermeule:

Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being…. The Court’s jurisprudence on free speech, abortion, sexual liberties, and related matters will prove vulnerable under a regime of common-good constitutionalism…. So too should the libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology—that government is forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech, that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,”  and so on—fall under the ax. Libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources."

 Vermeule's Wikipedia page gives more details about his very unAmerican philosophy.  If you're wonder ing about his connections with William Barr, you're asking the right questions.  Here's a piece linking Barr's ideas with Vermeule's.

The ACUS, by the way,  is the Administrative Council for the United States.  What does the ACUS do?  Here's what their webpage says:

"ACUS is an independent federal agency charged with convening expert representatives from the public and private sectors to recommend improvements to administrative process and procedure. ACUS initiatives promote efficiency, participation, and fairness in the promulgation of federal regulations and in the administration of federal programs."

2. Who is Miles Taylor and why did he resign from the Trump administration?  

First, who he is courtesy of Wikipedia:

"Miles Taylor is an American former government official who specialises in security and international relations. He was formerly a Trump administration appointee who served in the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, including as Chief of Staff to former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Acting Secretary Chad Wolf."

Second, why he resigned.  This high level Trump official resigned when Trump told him and others to keep all immigrants out of the US.  When Trump was told it was illegal, Miles Taylor says that Trump replied, "I don't care.  I'll pardon you all."

💣s away https://t.co/Tdb7LOnp6Z

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) August 25, 2020

Before you get too depressed, here's the Economist's forecast for the election as of yesterday.  

They give Biden a 90% chance of winning the electoral college vote and 98% chance of winning the popular vote.  We're still over two months from the election.  But these kind of numbers mean that if Trump wins it will be like the vote in Belarus.  And it make me think the pollsters in the election in 2016 were only wrong because they didn't consider voter suppression and tampering with voting machines.  

"I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania" Forward From Michael Cohen's Book

The Mueller Report, Bolton's book, and countless other books haven't had the political impact such revelations would have had on any other presidency.   Part of this can be blamed on the Republicans in the US Senate who have abdicated the obligation to keep the president accountable. 

So, why should we expect this book to be any different?  Well, this book was written by a man who participated in and witnessed the president's regular violations of the law as well as moral norms that have been important to this nation.  

Second, I think that although the various books that have been published haven't had the impacts of Nixon's tapes, they each caused a little more erosion in Trump's support.  

The link below takes you to the book's site.  Not the publisher's site.  The publisher isn't mentioned.  You can order an autographed copy for $40.  You can order a plain hardback addition for $32.  It says a portion of the price will go to an unnamed non-profit organization.  Nor is there information on  when it is due to come out, though other reports say, "soon."  I assume that means before the election.  I also assume that the Southern District of New York already has most if not all the allegations that will be in the book, plus evidence that Trump's lawyer had.  

Here are some experts from the Forward of Michael Cohen's forthcoming book Disloyal:

 "To half of Americans, it seemed like Trump was effectively a Russian-controlled fraud who had lied and cheated his way to the White House; to the other half of Americans, to Trump’s supporters, the entire Russian scandal was a witch hunt invented by Democrats still unable to accept the fact that Hillary Clinton had lost fair and square in the most surprising upset in the history of American presidential elections.

Both sides were wrong. I knew that the reality was much more complicated and dangerous. Trump had colluded with the Russians, but not in the sophisticated ways imagined by his detractors. I also knew that the Mueller investigation was not a witch-hunt. Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything—and I mean anything—to “win” has always been his business model and way of life. Trump had also continued to pursue a major real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign. He attempted to insinuate himself into the world of President Vladimir Putin and his coterie of corrupt billionaire oligarchs. I know because I personally ran that deal and kept Trump and his children closely informed of all updates, even as the candidate blatantly lied to the American people saying, “there’s no Russian collusion, I have no dealings with Russia…there’s no Russia.” 

He doesn't mince words or downplay his own corrupt role in the Trump empire - though Trump would argue, I'm sure, that Cohen overestimates his role.  

"When Trump wanted to reach Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a secret back channel, I was tasked with making the connection in my Keystone Kop fashion. I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump’s path to power. From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise—I was an active and eager participant.

To underscore that last crucial point, let me say now that I had agency in my relationship with Trump. I made choices along the way—terrible, heartless, stupid, cruel, dishonest, destructive choices, but they were mine and constituted my reality and life. During my years with Trump, to give one example, I fell out of touch with my sisters and younger brother, as I imagined myself becoming a big shot. I’d made my fortune out of taxi medallions, a business viewed as sketchy if not lower class. On Park Avenue, where I lived, I was definitely nouveau riche, but I had big plans that didn’t include being excluded from the elite. I had a narrative: I wanted to climb the highest mountains of Manhattan’s skyscraping ambition, to inhabit the world from the vantage point of private jets and billion-dollar deals, and I was willing to do whatever it took to get there. Then there was my own considerable ego, short temper, and willingness to deceive to get ahead, regardless of the consequences."

And a warning to us all.  A warning I wish my Republican representatives in the Senate and the House would take more seriously than they do.

"Now, sitting alone in an upstate New York prison, wearing my green government-issued uniform, I’ve begun writing this story longhand on a yellow legal pad. I often wrote before dawn so not to be disturbed in my thoughts when my fellow inmates awoke. I had to report to the sewage treatment plant where some of us worked for a wage of $8 a month. As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully. The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. If Trump wins another four years, these scandals will prove to only be the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Trump I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes- will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything."

None of this is surprising to me or even new.  Anyone who paid attention over the last four years understands this about Trump.  It's why we are so alarmed.  It's really hard for me to understand how a person can act like Trump.  I can talk about it, but I can't really feel it, can't put myself into his head.  When I read, as a younger man, stories about the Gulag, about the Holocaust, and about other instances of torture, what I always wanted to know more about was the mind of the torturers.  I couldn't understand their behavior.  What Cohen offers me in this book is a peek into the mind of a monster.  

"As you read my story, you will no doubt ask yourself if you like me, or if you would act as I did, and the answer will frequently be no to both of those questions. But permit me to make a point: If you only read stories written by people you like, you will never be able to understand Donald Trump or the current state of the American soul. More than that, it’s only by actually understanding my decisions and actions that you can get inside Trump’s mind and understand his worldview. As anyone in law enforcement will tell you, it’s only gangsters who can reveal the secrets of organized crime. If you want to know how the mob really works, you’ve got to talk to the bad guys. I was one of Trump’s bad guys. In his world, I was one hundred percent a made man."