And in this case, “Green” is NOT good, if you know what I mean.
I agree very much with Jeremy. This whole post of his (also copied and pasted below) is a sweeping condemnation of not only Trump’s conflicts of interest and illegal profit-driven scheme of his to cash in on the Presidency at the expense of the American people, but also the long neo-liberal alliances that have made our democracy into an oligarchy for the past 50 years or more.
From the moment FDR convinced the elites to accept a higher tax burden, the oligarchical forces have been at work to take back what they consider their right by inheritance as the self-apponted guidance counselors of our democracy (the “Democracy” as THEY prefer to define it (more accurately, REdefine it).
The Trump administration has put the work of those forces into overdrive to further cement the hegemony of the oligarchy. And now that oligarchy ‘s fossil fuel power has been given a green light. This must not stand, for it cannot if we are to survive this planet’s processes to stabilize.
This process does not privilege the human species, a virtual speck in cosmological time. But if we hope to extend our stay, we have to awaken. These oligarchs are insane with riches. Their evil, their “love of money”, has blinded them to this evil they perpetuate. And the blindness is put on the channels of communications as narratives to deceive those who fall for the enticements of their Orwellian promises.
Read this. It says it so much better than I just did.
Liturgy of Resistance: Corruption
I believe it probable that Trump will be impeached and removed from office before the end of his four-year term. Why do I believe this?
Corruption. Corruption is the chink in Trump’s armor. But it is also the place where, if we gather momentum and people force to push as hard as we can, we can push until we topple not only Trump, but Citizen’s United. Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, and seriously so. He is receiving or has recieved large sums of money from foreign governments, and the trust which he set up does not satisfy the barest requirements of the ethics lawyers of Bush and Obama, who have appeared publicly in many venues to denounce this arrangement. (Source: http://www.npr.org/…/510596329/fresh-air-for-january-19-2017 ).
In addition, Trump is currently profiting massively from the office of the President of the United States. Visiting diplomats are scrambling all over themselves to use Trump Hotels, and foreign governments will prove exceedingly pliable to Trump business real estate agendas. Will this color his policy decisions as the President? Of course it will. Many argue that it already has. After all, he left Saudi Arabia off the list of the seven banned travel countries, he registered eight companies there after announcing his presidential bid.
‘During a rally on August 21, the day Trump created four of those companies, he said he gets along well with Saudi Arabia.
“They buy apartments from me,” Trump said during the Alabama rally. “They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.â€â€™
(Source: http://thehill.com/…/306990-trump-appeared-to-register-eigh… )Or consider the (lack of) justification for his cozy relationship with Russia, a dangerous state that violates human rights, whose financial market is largely run by crime syndicates. He has multiple financial ties to Russia, notably loans and involvement with Bayrock, a company alleged to be run by the Russian mafia (Source: [1]).
But what does this amount to? The most directly corrupt government that the U.S. has ever had. Which doesn’t even address appointments that include the former CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson who is Secretary of State, or Steven Mnuchin, former Goldman Sachs trader, as treasurer. The list goes on. Trump is set to gut regulation on the financial sector that were put in place to protect us from another global financial crisis.
This is not just corruption, this is kleptocracy. Donald Trump and Wall Street are set to loot our government by fundamentally changing our institutions so they are privileged forever. As if our government wasn’t corrupt enough.
And so, many might say, “So what? Hillary Clinton was corrupt.†Yes. Yes she was. She definitely corrupted by **domestic** companies. And she may have even been corrupted by foreign moneys as well: the Clinton Foundation was extensively funded by foreign money. And in fact, all Congressmen who benefit extensively from superPACs are corrupted by domestic money. We need to create legislation that overturns Citizen’s United, which “…gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools, calling for the election or defeat of individual candidates.†(Source: https://www.publicintegrity.org/…/citizens-united-decision-… ).
But this is domestic corruption. Domestic corruption should not serve as a justification for Trump’s domestic **and** foreign corruption!
Trump is over the line and we have the momentum. Republicans hold the Senate by just four votes, but among them, Trump has many, many detractors. Remember how the Republicans, just months ago, claimed to be the party of state’s rights? Or free trade? Or were funded by the Koch brothers? Yeah, Trump is ending those things.
If anti-corruption is our rallying cry, we can not just oust Trump, we can transform the entire Congress.
The time will come, as Trump’s assets are revealed during the discovery process of lawsuits (and they will be), that we will have the proof we need to be able to impeach him.
In the meantime, let’s call and block the appointment of Jeff Sessions, a noted racist and police state advocate, from appointment as Attorney General, shall we? https://5calls.org/#issue/recDDVHo6JXv9KYC6
