Life under the White House big top

Life can be at once exciting and exhausting, but too much of either is numbing.

Certainly, that’s the case with our national politics. Ah, for the days of Lyndon Johnson coming on TV to address his “fellow Americans with a ‘heavy heart’” or Ronald Reagan demanding Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down this wall” or even George W. Bush declaring, “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.”

Now ... now we have Mr. Bigly, a man who has mocked the disabled, accused Mexican border jumpers of being rapists, demeaned — and bragged about — groping women, made patently false wiretapping, voter fraud and even crowd size claims and dismissed as fake any news account that fails to support his position, and, and, and, and ...

It’s been an exhausting four-month traipse through a parallel universe where facts are alternate, history is ignored (or worse, manipulated), personal loyalty trumps public integrity and blame is passed.

This past week we had the specter of a U.S. president (who had spent much of his campaign maligning the nation’s intelligence community) passing sensitive intelligence information to a known Russian spymaster.

When the news leaked out, the White House immediately dispatched National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster to briefly deny The Washington Post story was true (“at no time, were intelligence sources or methods discussed”) then, overnight, the president tweeted: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do ....”

In the game of spy vs. spy, sensitive information sometimes is selectively and purposely leaked, sometimes among allies and sometimes in a carefully coordinated disinformation effort targeting adversaries.

Trump leaked the secret intel when he, as he often does, went off script. He wanted to brag about what intel he knows (and how he is legally free to blab all he wants: “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day.”)

Not that he’s the first bragger to occupy the White House and share what until then was highly classified information. In a 1964 press conference, Lyndon Johnson disclosed some of the secret capacities of the just-developed SR-71 spy plane. No doubt that was a pucker moment for the CIA.

This guy, however, takes haughtiness to new heights. Consider the mixed stories of the firing of the FBI director James Comey. First, it was the Justice Department’s idea, then it wasn’t, then the president said he had long planned to can Comey, and then he mixed that thought with his claim that the whole Russian-Trump campaign investigation is fake news and/or a witch-hunt cooked up by Democrats upset about losing the White House.

Within hours, the president tweeted what amounts to a threat aimed at Comey implying there might be tapes of their private White House dinner during which Comey claims the president wanted a pledge of loyalty but received only a pledge of truthfulness.

The day after the firing, the Russians (a Russian news crew in tow but with U.S. media excluded) showed up in the Oval Office during which the president bragged about his intel, then offered a tasty morsel to prove it.

Exhausting, huh?

It wasn’t over. The next day came a New York Times report that Comey had extensive notes about the Trump dinner and two phone calls they had.

There are notes, too, in which Comey claims the president asked him — but did not order him — to drop the probe of fired national security adviser Michael T. Flynn and his ties to Russia. That request came in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting. “I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

Comey had shared the notes with associates immediately after they were written as an if-questions-arise insurance policy should his integrity be impugned, say, for political reasons.

Every day it’s something. The drip, drip, drip is wearing. Like Watergate four decades ago, much of the nation’s attention and energy is being sapped as this Greek tragedy plays out. Unlike Watergate, which went on for about two years, the current torture of the body politic is playing out in tweet-storms and the 24-hour news cycle. There is no letup.

Watergate ended when a group of Republican leaders went to the White House and told Richard Nixon it was over.

It remains to be seen if the critical mass of right-minded Republicans can put a choke chain on this president to control his behavior or, failing that, make clear that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the people’s house and not a mansion surrounded by a moat.

— Contact Eric Grunder, former opinion page editor of The Record, at elgrunder@msn.com. Follow him at oncruisecontrolafter65.blogspot.com and on Twitter @elgrunder.
#White House #ethics #intel #CIA #NSA #specialcounsel #Trump #Russians #FBI #Comey

For Trump it's always tax return evasion season

Now that tax season is over – but of course, it’s never over – the only tax issue left is the release of Donald Trump’s tax returns. But since the election is over, as the president is quick to remind, his tax returns are a non-issue. Except to the IRS, which seems to have The Donald under perpetual audit; it’s an issue to most Americans, too, according to a recent poll. Of course, most American voters favored Hillary Clinton but the Electoral College made that fact a non-issue too.

A Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll released earlier this month found 53 percent of voters surveyed think Trump should be forced to release his tax returns. A majority of one, Donald Trump, thinks otherwise.

However, those voters who disagree with the president may soon get their wish. Kind of. Here in California. If Trump’s name ever again appears on the presidential ballot.

California is one of 24 states to have introduced bills (in California it’s Senate Bill 149) requiring Trump — and all other future presidential candidates — to release their tax returns in order to be listed on the state's ballots.

Candidate Trump, the self-proclaimed billionaire, said repeatedly he would release his returns. He chided other politicians for their lack of transparency. At one point, as point-man for birthers, he declared if President Obama released his birth certificate he would release his tax returns.

Obama did and Trump didn’t. It’s sort of a pattern with him.

As time went on, Trump changed his tax return line to I will release them after the audit is complete. Of course, there is no IRS rule against releasing returns mid-audit. Mitt Romney, Trump’s immediate predecessor as the Republican standard bearer, released his returns while under audit. In fact, every major presidential candidate, both Republican and Democrat, since Jimmy Carter has released his or her returns. Every president since Carter, both Republican and Democrat, has released his tax return every year he was in office.

Why is this an issue with voters? Well, there’s the nosey factor. People like to know about how much money other people earn, what they own and what they’re worth. Most of us don’t like to give out that information. Most of us are more likely to share information about our sex lives than our financial lives (certainly that’s the case with Donald Trump).

But personal financial transparency goes well beyond voyeurism when it comes to the presidency. As Richard Nixon once said about another issue, “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook.”

Last weekend, an estimated 100,000 people took to the streets across some 200 cities to demand that Trump release his tax returns. Since being elected he’s made it clear he’s not releasing anything, saying only reporters are interested. But in a tweet-storm covering a number of subject last weekend, Trump dismissed the protestors in two tweets:

“Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!” and

“I did what was an almost an impossible thing to do for a Republican-easily won the Electoral College! Now Tax Returns are brought up again?”

That prompted Evan McMullin, former independent presidential candidate and CIA operative, to ask via a tweet: “For what purpose would a president attack Americans demanding transparency of those who lead them?”

If only more Americans had asked that question before marking their presidential ballots.

Trump always finds a way to make it about him. From bragging about the “most beautiful” chocolate cake he was enjoying when he told Chinese President Xi Jinping the U.S. at that moment had let fly 59 cruise missiles into Syria, to standing on the White House balcony on Monday and telling a crowd of children gathered for the annual Easter egg roll, “We will be stronger and bigger as a nation than ever before,” he seems genetically predisposed to self-aggrandization (his other genetically predisposition is being tone deaf).

But the tax return issue is bigger than Trump’s fragile ego or his flip-flop promises. It’s about Americans’ need to know whether their president is a crook. The issue looms large given the ongoing FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the fact that the Trump organization has business links across the globe, and that since becoming president he and his family have inventively scored profitable business deals (to name but two such deals: trademark protection sought for a decade and suddenly granted by China a month after Trump took office; and first daughter and unpaid government employee Ivanka’s Mar-a-Lago dinner with the Chinese president shortly after which a provisional approval was granted for three new trademarks giving her company monopoly rights to sell Ivanka brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world's second-largest economy. Of course, she’s no longer running her company. Wink. Wink.).

Then came the Democrats, smelling blood in the water and vowing non-cooperation with any GOP tax reform effort absent the release of Trump’s returns. They want to know how he and his kin might profit from any tax proposal. Politics? Of course. But also, a reasonable thing to wonder.

A tax return may not provide all evidence, but a tax return is a road map. By withholding this president creates an atmosphere of disbelief, as in what’s he hiding?

Apparently, more and more Americans are growing suspicious about Trump’s various pronouncements (think: “armada” headed toward North Korea). A Gallup poll out Monday, the Washington Post reported, “strongly suggests that an increasing number of Americans just don’t believe Trump’s spin about his presidency anymore. It finds that only 45 percent of Americans think Trump keeps his promises, down from 62 percent in February, an astonishing slide of 17 points.” Trump’s believability fell across every gender, age and political group, down 9 points among conservatives and 11 points among Republicans, Gallup reported.

Nixon discovered he couldn’t remain in office with a growing majority of American thinking he was a liar. He was in his second term. Trump is only about 100 days into his first term and the number of Trump doubters is growing.

Trump says only the press and paid protestors want to get at his returns. So far, he hasn’t said much about the 24 states where must-see legislation is pending. It will be interesting to see what kind of tweet-storm he unleashes against those two dozen states when he can no longer ignore them. More interesting still would be his behavior if his own party’s disgust reaches critical mass and party leaders demand the returns.

You know, a guy can dream.

Contact Eric Grunder, former opinion page editor of The Record, at elgrunder@msn.com. Follow him at oncruisecontrolafter65.blogspot.com and on Twitter @elgrunder.

#trump #taxreturns #evasion #president #WhiteHouse

  

A chance for a little public service

An envelope arrived the other day inviting the lady of the house to the San Joaquin County (CA) courthouse for possible jury duty. OK, such letters are not invitations. They're commands, as in "we can send the sheriff out, you know."

Nobody likes jury duty. Nobody sits by the mailbox in eager anticipation of a summons. But people need to show up. A jury of your peers requires peers.
I've served on two juries over the years: a criminal jury and two year-long terms on the civil grand jury. Great experiences both.

The criminal case was a pretty straight forward DUI case, but it was remarkable in my mind for the work the jurors put in. I cynically expected jurors to march into the jury room, take a quick vote and hit the door for lunch. Two days later we still were going over evidence and arguing. It may have been only a DUI case but to a person jurors understood a conviction would unpleasantly alter the defendant's life. Jurors also understood the seriousness of someone climbing behind the wheel while intoxicated.

Likewise, serving on the civil grand jury wasn't easy. The pay was crummy, the hours often long and disagreements among jurors sometimes sharp. But the work was important, what I learned was intoxicating and the experience was immensely satisfying.

Just to be clear, this county's civil grand jury does not investigate crime. It does not indict people. The civil grand jury is not a gotcha outfit. Jurors try to find ways to make government agencies more efficient, productive and responsive. Jurors do work closely with the county prosecutor's office — the assistant district attorney is the jury's liaison to that office — but if the jury does stumble across possible criminal activity, the matter is referred to prosecutors. Likewise, jurors also work with the county counsel and with the advice of the superior court judge who oversees the jury. And this county's jury also enjoys the considerable expertise and experience of a judicial clerk who literally sits beside the jury foreperson.

There are only two basic requirements the civil grand jury must fulfill: each prison and jail in the county must be inspected and a report must be issued on at least one public agency within the county. That's it.

Of course, that's not it at all. Every civil grand jury does much more. During the terms I served reports were issued on Manteca Unified, Stockton's utilities department, homelessness, south Stockton, private donation bins, Stockton Unified bus purchases, public defender fees, the registrar of voters and rural fire district consolidation.

The jury also followed up on the work of previous grand juries to see if agencies that were the subject of earlier reports responded as required to the findings and recommendations.

We toured prisons and jails, sewer and water plants, and the port. Some members rode along with police officers and firefighters. Members attended countless meetings of boards and commissions. Dozens and dozens of witnesses were called to help jurors understand how things work and what was going on when they didn't.

All of the report work was done in secret. You can't go out and blab about what witness X said about subject Y (witnesses are under the same requirement, but, well, people are people). Secrecy protects witnesses, but it also obligates the jury to verify information with multiple sources.

The learning curve was steep, but also exhilarating. It's fun to know stuff, to learn things. I can't think of a day I attended to jury business that I didn't learn something interesting.

There is a saying in newspapers that sunshine is a great disinfectant. That's an acknowledgment that a newspaper can't force anyone to do anything. It can only shine a light on a problem and hope someone takes action. It's the same with a civil grand jury. Jurors can't force an agency to do anything. They can only point things out — through findings — and suggest possible remedies — through recommendations. The real power of the grand jury (and the media) is focusing attention and sometimes in framing the public conversation.

None of this can happen without citizens willing to do the work, to serve. Consider this column a plea for county residents to get involved. Applications for the 2017-2018 civil grand jury are due by March 31. To apply, complete the application questionnaire on line at http://www.sjcourts.org/general-info/civil-grand-jury or call (209) 992-5290.

The process is pretty simple. Applicants usually are interviewed by the superior court judge who oversees the jury. The names of successful applicants chosen are randomly drawn from the pool during an open court session. Those picked are sworn in. The jury consists of 19 members and perhaps four to six alternates who serve if a regular member drops out during the July-to-June term.

Jurors receive an ID badge — no more removing your belt to clear courthouse security — a parking pass — no more paying for downtown parking — and the code that unlocks the door to the jury room where the magic occurs. Oh, and, of course, there's the $15 a day each juror gets for his or her efforts.

Early on there are two days of training, a tsunami of information and early organizational jury meetings to form committees and name officers (the foreperson is named by the judge and generally is a holdover juror). There also is an optional but helpful day-long report writing session given each fall in Sacramento by the state grand jury association and optional training offered by the local grand jury association made up of former jurors. All this is a way of saying you're not in this alone.

The grand jury — like a trial jury or a criminal grand jury — should reflect the population it serves, in our case a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-generational county. Such diversity brings a rich chest of ideas to the effort. But it takes peers willing to do the work. So apply. You won't regret it.

Contact Eric Grunder, former opinion page editor of The Record, at elgrunder@msn.com. Follow him at oncruisecontrolafter65.blogspot.com and on Twitter @elgrunder.

Trump all over map with denials and stilted bravado

It is hard, given the months-long history of political gibberish Americans have endured, to figure out what to believe. Many of us probably have simply given up trying, dismissing the utterances out of the nation's capital as cherry-picked facts at best and out and out lies at worst. We no longer can believe what someone says. Or shouldn't.

Oddly, that very point was driven home last week by Kellyanne Conway, the president-elect's chief mouthpiece, when she went on television to defend one of her boss's latest rewrites of his own history.

Donald Trump had just denied that he ever mocked a disabled New York Times reporter even though the blatant ridicule was taped and televised repeatedly. Trump, flailing his arm in the air, told his 2015 South Carolina audience, "You ought to see this guy."

This guy is Serge Kovaleski. He has arthrogryposis, a condition that leaves his right arm and hand bent and rigid. Trump had issues with Kovaleski's reporting and this is how the then-candidate got even. It was red meat to Trump's audience. He enjoys ginning up supporters with anti-media barbs, and this rally was no exception.

About 10 days ago, the nation's Tweeter-in-chief took to the internet to boast that Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Apprentice" ratings weren't what "the ratings machine, DJT" had put up. Some supporters said Trump was simply teasing the former California governor. Given Trump's rather pronounced need to always be seen as the best, his utter lack of a sense of humor about DJT, and how he has used his Twitter account to bash those who've crossed him, teasing Schwarzenegger didn't seem to be Trump's point. Think Vanity Fair. Think Alec Baldwin/SNL. And, of course, think Meryl Streep.

Three days after Trump chided Schwarzenegger, Streep, the most acclaimed actress of our time, had the unmitigated gall to allude to Trump's attack on Kovaleski — without mentioning either man by name — the president-elect struck back with a middle-of-the-night Twitter attack. Streep is an overrated, Hillary flunky, he said.

So, what are we to make of all this? Apparently, we're supposed to ignore what the president-elect says, at least according to Conway.

"Why is everything taken at face value?" Conway said in defense of her boss' obvious mockery of Kovaleski. "You can't give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he's telling you what was in his heart? You always want to go by what's come out of his mouth rather than look at what's in his heart."

Wow! Kellyanne, how is that possible? How are we to plumb his heart without listening to what he says?

Are we also to ignore what he does? Such as: Not releasing his tax returns as promised? Praising Putin? Publicly castigating the entire American intelligence apparatus? Specifying how he'll regulate the the150 Wall Street firms and other financial institutions that, according to the Wall Street Journal, he owes $1.85 billion? Pushing un-vetted candidates into cabinet positions (a public school hater at Education, a climate change denier at EPA, an Exxon exec with deep ties to Russia and questionable ties to Iran at State, a Goldman Sachs exec at Treasury, an anti-gay at Justice, a fast food exec at Labor, a World Wrestling Entertainment exec at the SBA)? Insisting on an immediate repeal of Obamacare without one single replacement idea on the table? (And he didn't outline one during his circus-like (news conference Wednesday.)

Actions, as practically everybody's mommy told us growing up, speak louder than words. So far his words, Conway's urgings notwithstanding, tell us Trump's heart is easily bruised and he has an uncontrollable need to strike back at any slight. This is not reassuring, knowing as we do that the officer with the nuclear football soon will sit in the corridor outside Trump's bedroom door.

Contact Eric Grunder, former opinion page editor of The Record, at elgrunder@msn.com. Follow him at oncruisecontrolafter65.blogspot.com and on Twitter @elgrunder.

#media #trump #Conway #whitehouse

 

 

    

 

      

 

 

 

Media are your enemies? Far from it

The first thing I did on my first day at the Sonora Union Democrat was make the fire calls. It was the summer of 1969 and I was interning between my junior and senior years in college. Great summer, the best summer of my youth, although those first-day fire calls were an inauspicious start. I didn't have a clue.

There were only a half dozen or so fire departments in Tuolumne County and that day there were only a couple grass fires and one or two traffic accidents. Not a daunting task for a real reporter. It took me all morning to make the calls and serve up a few paragraphs of poorly written, information-deficient prose. I knew Harvey C. McGee, editor and publisher, was knitting his brow in his corner office.

But McGee was patient, and the next day I had my Curtis MacDougall reporting text opened to the page listing the basic elements of the fire story. You know, things like where it happened, when it happened, what happened, if there were injuries, the damage, the cause, the fire units dispatched, how long where firefighters on the scene and so on.

It still took me all morning, but the end product was better — and each day my work got better still. Practice doesn't always make perfect, but usually it at least makes for a better result. One afternoon covering a small forest fire just outside Sonora I got knocked over by fire retardant dropped by a CDF aircraft when I failed to notice the firefighters, who knew the drop was coming, had scampered off the hill. A reporter's learning curve can be steep.

By summer's end, I'd covered a variety of stories: Boise Cascade literally painting a town to pretty it up for buyers at its nearby development; university archeologists scrambling to recover artifacts in an area that would be inundated a few years later by the New Melones Lake; the final work on the new Columbia College campus. Also in my notebooks: cops; traffic accidents; countless planning commission, school board, county supervisors and city council meetings.

McGee made sure I earned my $100 a week, and I knew better than to even think about asking for overtime. The money didn't matter. I would have done it for free. It didn't bother me at all to live in a $60 a month dump with walls so thin that when the neighbor brought a lady friend home, ah ....well, you understand. That summer I lived off Cheerios, PB&J, fried cube steaks and Coke. I was in heaven.

Just as my J-school professors had promised, I learned more about reporting that summer than from all the textbooks and journalism classes I ever took. If you want to know how to report and write, you've got to report and write. And then do it over and over and over again.

I did it over and over again for more than four decades, some days better than others. I doubt there was a day I didn't learn something about writing, editing and gathering information — but especially about the subjects I covered. You just don't walk into a county supervisors meeting and know how to cover county government. It takes time, practice and lots of questions. It also takes making mistakes. In reporting, like with most things in life, it's your mistakes, not your successes, that teach.

When reporters make mistakes, they are in public and usually with a byline atop the offending copy. That kind of potential public embarrassment tends to focus the mind. It's no fun to take reader calls when you screw up. I've taken more than my share, but not once was it because of a purposeful mistake. I never met a reporter who went to work with the idea of screwing up a story.

And that brings me to my point: most of the public hasn't a clue how the media operate. Oh, there's a vague recognition of the First Amendment, press, speech and religious freedom and such. But too often the acceptance of those freedoms is only generously applied when they line up with one's biases.

It's bothered me for years that the general education component of a college degree only rarely requires any media studies. When you consider how much of what we know about the world comes to us through the media, it is frightening how little people generally know about the various channels of communications.

People, the saying goes, are born with only two talents, to practice medicine and to edit the newspaper. Call me an elitist, but I don't want some schmuck off the streets doing my knee replacement surgery. And 40-plus years of hanging around newspapers tells me not everybody is equipped by knowledge, skills or temperament to gather and report the news.

That's the reality. It's not fake news about news. And here's another reality: just as no doctor worthy of being called doc shows up at the clinic hoping to get a patient's diagnosis wrong, no reporter worth a damn slides in front of a computer and tries to write a story full of errors or bias.

Do doctors sometimes misdiagnose and reporters sometimes get it wrong? Yep. Everybody has bad days. Human physiology and human events are complex beasts. This is not to excuse errors but to explain them.
From time to time when I'd give a talk to a service club, as an experiment I'd ask members of the audience to write a one- or two-sentence description of me. Not once did I have any two descriptions come out the same. I used it as a way of illustrating how we all see the world differently.

Mine was a pretty low-stakes game with my audiences. When you start talking about coverage of the City Council or the White House, the stakes are considerably higher. This is the argument for not — not ever — relying on just one information source, no matter how it might feed your viewpoint.

Good reporters don't rely on one source, or shouldn't, and anonymous sources should be last resorts, known to both reporter and editor. When you're reporting, you need to quickly figure out the biases of your sources so you can convey that information to readers.

I would humbly argue that reporters are trained as much as humanly possible to set aside their biases and report their subjects as fairly and accurately as they can. And strong, sometimes even multi-layered editing, adds another layer of protection.

Go into any newsroom and you'll hear arguments over the emphasis of one fact over another in a story. There are arguments about the relative importance of one story versus another. There are arguments about story play, as in front page above the fold or buried on Page 8.

But about one thing there is no argument: the press is not the enemy of the people. Ask the people of Flint, Michigan. Or Oroville. Or, for that matter, Stockton. To suggest otherwise is poppycock.

Contact Eric Grunder, former opinion page editor of The Record, at elgrunder@msn.com. Follow him at oncruisecontrolafter65.blogspot.com and on Twitter @elgrunder.

#media #trump #press #republicans #whitehouse