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racingtoaredlight · 5 years

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Opening Bell: March 29, 2019

One week ago, the Office of the Special Counsel suddenly concluded its two year-long investigation into allegations that the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump conspired with Russian government officials to sway the result of the 2016 presidential election. The abruptness of the submission of the so-called Mueller Report was caused in large part because the OSC was so tight-lipped for almost the entirety of the investigation; considering the length and weight of the investigation, and that Washington D.C. is a company town where secrets are difficult to keep. On Friday, Attorney General William Barr acknowledged receipt of the report and notified Congress of his intent to present the principle conclusions of the report before the weekend was over. On Sunday, Barr submitted a four-page summary of the Mueller Report—the length and complexity of which was unknown to everyone else at the time—which presented Mueller’s conclusions as follows: the Russian government did interfere with the 2016 election, there is insufficient evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with any Russian government officials in the process of this interference, and Mueller did not exonerate—but did not reach any conclusions—as to the question of obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump or any of his administration or campaign officials. This was immediately seized upon as complete vindication by the GOP and supporters of Trump. However, one week later, after hundreds of reports and editorials drawing conclusions about Trump’s potential culpability, or that of anyone in his administration or campaign organization, virtually no details of the contents of the Mueller Report have actually come out from the Justice Department. Attorney General Barr has promised to work with Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who is scheduled to leave office himself very shortly—what parts of the report can be released to Congress and the general public, and which parts should remain classified. The apparent disinclination, particularly among Republican members of Congress, to allow the report to be released amplified the actions of Barr. Then yesterday, the New York Times reported that Mueller’s report—originally rumored to be short and to the point, nothing like the 446 page treatise that Ken Starr authored about his investigation into Bill Clinton in the 1990s—the report is actually at least 300 pages long. This instantly reignited speculation as to Barr’s intentions in so quickly producing a very short summary of such a long report. Questions have been posed as to how the Attorney General could have possibly read a complex 300-page report, filled with hundreds of footnotes—according to a DoJ source—and turn it into a short, cogent summary. Personally I find this line of thinking to be somewhat insulting to Barr, an intelligent man and very-well credentialed lawyer. At the end of it all, very little of it matters for one simple reason: no one outside of Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller, know what is in his report. We would all do well to remember that.

As mentioned above, Trump and his supporters and most of the GOP were exultant and championed AG Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report. The following day, Michael Avenatti, an attorney who had been a near perpetual thorn in Trump’s side ever since allegations that Trump had paid hush money—through his own attorney Michael Cohen—to porn star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election, was charged by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in New York and Los Angeles on a slew of charges, including fraud. At the start of this week, Trump was having his best 48 hours since he was first elected in November 2016. Moreover, the amount of migrants attempting to cross the Texas-Mexico border had skyrocketed, and so subsequently did detainments. The El Paso sector of Customs and Border Patrol was so overloaded, it was forced to shut down its checkpoints for 24 hours. The situation was actually starting to look like the desperate situation which had prompted the president to declare a National Emergency that would allow him to redirect money towards building a border wall with Mexico; perhaps his signature campaign promise and one so important to the president that he endured a lengthy shutdown of the federal government when congress would not include appropriations for a wall in any spending resolution. So naturally this week, the White House—instead of grandstanding about Barr’s summary and the increasingly desperate situation at the border—decided it was a good time to announce that it would attempt to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, once and for all. Notwithstanding the questionable political strategy of this move at this time, the White House has no alternate policy, is not currently working on one, and could not gain approval of a previous version of a replacement bill in 2017, when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. Instead this week, Trump met with senior Republicans of the House and the Senate and exhorted them to put something together and attempt to pass it before the 2020 election season is fully underway. Again, whatever one thinks of Trump, the Mueller Report, Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels, or the Affordable Care Act, this seems like an incredibly poor time to launch such a political strategic shift.

One of the more low-key beats of the Trump presidency has been the handful of reporters who have continued to investigate the president’s personal wealth and financial exposure. During the 2016 campaign, on business reporter used available information—Trump has not released any of his tax returns, and so data on his year-to-year income is sparse and difficult to find—to estimate that Trump is actually only worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million; a not insignificant amount, but far less than the multi-billion net worth Trump has asserted time and time again. One of the interesting, but, again, less-covered, investigations into Donald Trump and the Trump Organization, is into allegations that Trump and the Trump Organization misstated both his personal wealth and the financial health of the Trump Organization in order to gain financing from banks on a series of building projects around the country. Over time, some of the ‘Statements of Financial Condition’ which the Trump Organization or accountants working on behalf of the Trump family business, have become public. Here, the Washington Post has put in one piece a series of statements from the early 2000s and another series from the early 2010s, which were provided to congress by Michael Cohen. These statements contain a series of near-comical errors or misstatements, including the total height of Trump Tower—it is actually 58 floors and not the 68 floors one financial statements asserted—and the number and value of home sites at various Trump properties in Virginia, among other locations. The comical nature of some of these statements stems from the fact that information directly controverting it is publicly available or easily ascertained. What is most interesting about this is that these statements, according to some accounting experts, are so plainly incorrect, that Trump or his sons could defend themselves by blaming the accountants who actually prepared the statements—or Michael Cohen—and say that any reputable financial institution would know the statements are not accurate or correct. I encourage you to let all of the above wash over you a few times, as someone walking on a beach during a rising tide would let the water run over their feet might.

An ongoing feature of the Trump administration has been its open—gleeful, even—hostility towards the media in general, reserving media praise only for those outlets and those individuals who are report on Trump and his administration in the best light (though, even this aspect of Trump’s relations with the media are complicated and his professed intense dislike for and yet childlike need for approval from the New York Times could be a 10,000 word essay in its own right). While the largest national media outlets not named Fox News or the One American News Network have made clear their avowed distaste for Trump and how he and his administration deal with members of the media, local media outlets have been caught in the crossfire. Local media, largely in the form of community and city newspapers, the traditional backbone of local and regional journalism which is ignored by the national media 99% of the time, have faced economic issues for years. The internet has both provided a new digital platform for local news outlets, but also undermined the traditional advertising and subscriber base which support print media. Local news outlets are often those which do mostly unheralded and yet vital reporting of issues with local government, economy, and society which inform a populace; the media is often referred to as the Fourth Estate because a strong press making for an informed public is a cornerstone of functional democratic governance. GQ looks at what happens when an aggressive local newspaper, in this case the Fresno Bee, suddenly was targeted by local and national politicians for doing its job; investigating and reporting on the comings and goings of local officials. This story was reported around the same time as both the shooting at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland and the climactic confirmation hearings for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, which add another layer to the anguish some of the Bee’s reporters experience.

Time is an artificial construct. This is not to say that the rising and setting of the sun does not represent the passage of time, but marking that time—keeping track of the rising and setting of the sun—is a creation of man and in no way connected to nature. For evidence of this artificiality, one need only look at the very concept of Daylight Savings Time or the concept of local time in the 19th century, before nationally recognized time zones existed. Twice a year, every year—except for Arizona and a handful of western counties in Indiana—the entire country changes the time at 2am, which then either becomes 1am again or quickly vanishes and turns into 3am. We complain about this, write letters to our legislators asking them to get rid of it, and seek out studies which cast doubt on the benefits of this advancement or reversal of a single hour. But, and this is important, we go along with it. Time is a construct of man, but it is an organizing construct and that gives it power. Time may have become vital in large continental nations like Russia or the United States in order to accurately create a train schedule, but other large nations—notably China—have shown that time zones are not necessary; the majority of the nation has been on Beijing time, a city in the northeastern part of the nation, since 1949. This would be similar to the entire United States being on Washington D.C. or New York City time. This article examines time and, even more, how people and governments use it to make statements about themselves, their beliefs, and their aspirations.

In 2010, John Franzese, Jr. sat in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn, New York and endured three days of testimony and cross-examination, during which he had pointed the finger at the defendant for a series of crimes. The defendant was John “Sonny” Franzese Sr., John Jr.’s father. Sonny Franzese was one of the most feared capos of the Colombo crime family of New York for decades, and had spent much of the previous 50 years in and out of prison for convictions and parole violations. Sonny Franzese was feared because he was known to be a merciless killer, once being recorded as saying that he’d killed “more than 4, 5, 6, or 10 people.” While the mafia, including the Colombo family, had endured several turncoats in the past, none had ever violated the omerta, or code of silence, to the point where they had stood as witness against their own family. For doing so, John Jr. fully expected, and partly still does, to be murdered by other members of the Colombo family. After the trial, Franzese Jr. entered the witness protection program and moved first to South Carolina and then to Indianapolis where he ultimately settled and remains to this day. John Jr. endured a lot in his path from New York City wise-guy in the 1980s to sober, religious federal witness in the 2010s. I won’t spoil it or the climax of this story, but it is worth reading in its entirety.

Finally, instead of delving into politics one more at the end like I normally do, I’m going to end this week’s post in two ways that are different: first it’s a short article accompanied by a long-form podcast, and second it is about whiskey. And not just any whiskey, but one of the most iconic brands of whiskey in American history. Whatever one personally thinks of Jack Daniels’ Whiskey, the black label with white script writing is as much a part of American iconography as Harley Davidson, Coca Cola, and Ford Motors. It is a brand that is recognized as uniquely American and representative of American culture around the globe. Jack Daniels’ remains one of the bestselling whiskeys of any type in the world. As the podcast points out, for many Americans their first taste of whiskey, is Jack Daniel’s. Jack Daniel himself was the descendant of Welsh immigrants to the United States in the early 19th century. The story of Jack Daniel’s whiskey is that the young Jack learned the craft of distilling from a local preacher on his farm. However, the truth is far more fascinating and recent investigative work has shown that Jack Daniel actually learned distilling whiskey from a slave named Nearest Green and that, following the end of the Civil War and passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, Green and Daniel formed a company in which Green served as Master Distiller until 1884. For those missing the point: Jack Daniel’s Distillery employed the first—and to date, only—black Master Distiller in the American whiskey industry. My description barely scrapes the surface and I strongly recommend everyone listen to the full 44 minute podcast.

Welcome to the weekend.

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