Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

OPEN LETTER #1 TO PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP

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Dear Mr. President-elect,

Congratulations.

This is the first in a series of open letters that you’re not likely to read. The ultimate goal is simple: accountability. As you speak and act, these letters will try to set the factual record straight in our post-factual world that you now dominate. Your words and deeds will determine the scope and duration of this exercise.

The Responsibility of Attorneys and the Press

I didn’t vote for you, but this isn’t a partisan crusade. Lawyers across the political spectrum are concerned about what you might do as President. We listened with concern to your campaign rhetoric. Repeatedly, you professed disrespect for the rule of law. (Along the way, I wrote about your transgressions here, here, here, here, and here.)

Now we watch and wait for any sign of disquieting conduct matching the words that helped propel you into office. When you err, we will speak. You may say that such vigilance is un-American. It’s not. Holding elected officials accountable to the law and the truth is the essence of democracy.

You’ll start with functional control over two branches of government. Senate confirmation of your Supreme Court nominee will deliver the third. So it becomes the task of those outside your orbit to identify and spotlight your missteps. More than at any time in our nation’s history, attorneys and the press have a special responsibility to remain on high alert.

Open letters like this one will arrive whenever the circumstances require it. Two have already arisen: the false claim that you have a mandate and your early post-election tweets.

The Illusory Mandate

Contrary to the narrative that you and your supporters are pushing, Republicans do not have a mandate to pursue whatever the Trump agenda turns out to be. You benefitted from a disquieting confluence of events and circumstances. And even at that, you lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by the widest margin of any elected President in history.

Start with the FBI. As voters were casting more than 46 million early ballots, FBI Director James Comey’s profound misstep on October 28 compounded his July 5 press conference error in handling the Clinton email investigation. Stated simply, he pushed votes your way.

Four days later, the Bureau used a twitter account that had been dormant for more than a year to release documents relating to the Clinton Foundation. On November 2, Fox News’ Bret Baier aired a false report from FBI sources that there would likely be indictments involving the Clinton Foundation. Two days after that, Baier apologized for that “mistake” and retracted his story.

But as your campaign manager Kellyanne Conway acknowledged to MSNBC’s Brian Williams shortly after Baier’s retraction, “The damage has been done to Hillary Clinton.”

Responding to a post-election report that Clinton thought the FBI’s unprecedented actions had affected the election, Conway did a slick about-face on November 13: “I just can’t believe it’s always somebody else’s fault. Sometimes you just have to take a look in the mirror and reflect on what went wrong.”

The Russian Vote

Likewise, you alone benefitted from Russian hackers and Wikileaks. They put their thumbs on the Trump side of the election scale. The fact that the Russian parliament burst into applause when Vladimir Putin announced your victory should not please you. It should cause you and all American citizens grave concern.

Yet even with all of that help, as well as Republican-sponsored state voter suppression laws in North Carolina, Wisconsin and elsewhere, your opponent beat you by more than 2.5 million votes.

About That Republican Congress

Some voters split their tickets. They were heeding the call of leading Republicans in Congress and elsewhere who shunned you. Outraged at your behavior, concerned about your lack of knowledge and intellectual depth, and fearful of your erratic temperament, they made the case that a Republican Senate was essential to check President Hillary Clinton. Unwittingly, they have now empowered you beyond their wildest fears.

From the standpoint of popular support, you begin your first term from a position of unprecedented weakness. Ironically, you entered politics with a frivolous “birther” claim that questioned the legitimacy of your predecessor’s right to the Oval Office. Yet real shadows hover over yours.

Dubious Tweets

A second circumstance that already requires voices of accountability to speak involves your post-election tweets. Less than 48 hours after your subdued acceptance speech, you responded to nationwide street protests with a two-pronged attack against the dissenters and the media.

“Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!”

No facts supported your claims. As always, your response to any hint of criticism was to find a scapegoat or a distraction. We’ll be watching for that tendency, too. When you fail to fulfill your most unrealistic campaign promises, the anger of those who voted for you will intensify. In Ohio, when the steel mills don’t fire up again in Youngstown and your border wall doesn’t solve the opioid epidemic in Columbus, will you follow your lifelong impulse to blame someone else?

Continuing Attacks on the Press

On Sunday morning, November 13, you renewed your pre-election attack on The New York Times:

“Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the ‘Trump phenomena’.”

That wasn’t true, either. The Times reported a post-election surge in new subscriptions — four times the pre-election rate.

A few hours later, you went after the Times again: “The @nytimes states today that DJT believes “more countries should acquire nuclear weapons.” How dishonest are they. I never said this!”

But you did say it. When Mike Pence denied in his vice-presidential debate that you’d taken such a position, nonpartisan Politifact rated his statement as “Mostly false” and listed all of the instances that you’d said what the Times reported — the first of which was in March 2016 to reporters for The New York Times.

On April 3, 2016, you had this exchange with Fox News’ Chris Wallace:

Trump: “It’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them. So, North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean, they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea.”

Wallace: “With nukes?”

Trump: “Including with nukes, yes, including with nukes.”

Most people are too busy with life’s daily demands to scrutinize your torrent of sometimes conflicting words. But many of us will make the time necessary to stand guard against your demonstrated capacity to take advantage of the post-factual world in which we live. No President possesses a mandate to lie without getting caught.

ONE LAWYER’S DILEMMA

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Paul Manafort is campaign chairman and chief strategist for Donald Trump. He also has a law degree from Georgetown. That combination has landed him in a tough spot.

The J.D. from Georgetown means Manafort can’t plead ignorance about the significance of Trump’s escalating attack on the rule of law. As The New York Times reported recently, reliably conservative legal scholars express deep concern over Trump’s failure to acknowledge the limits of presidential power. Uniformly, every high-level Republican has repudiated Trump’s criticisms of Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the Indiana-born federal judge presiding over the cases against Trump University:

Senator Mitch McConnell: “I couldn’t disagree more with what he had to say.”

Representative Paul Ryan: “I completely disagree with the reasoning behind that.”

Former majority leader Newt Gingrich, who has made no secret of his vice-presidential ambitions on a Trump ticket: “This is one of the worst mistakes Trump has made. I think it’s inexcusable,”

And that backlash came before June 5, when Trump added all Muslims to his growing list of “possibly” biased judges who can’t give him a fair shake in a courtroom because their ethnicity collides with his most vile public policy pronouncements.

Manafort Knows Better, Even If His Client Doesn’t

Trump is no stranger to litigation. According to USA Today, his personal and business interests have been involved in more than 3,500 state and federal legal actions — 70 of them filed after announcing his presidential bid. Playing a game that’s worse than identity politics, he’s now engaged in a full frontal assault on the integrity of the judiciary for obvious personal gain in a private lawsuit. At best, it’s unseemly. At worst, it’s could be an unlawful attempt “to influence, intimidate or impede” a judge “in the discharge of his duty” (18 U.S.C. Section 1803) and/or “obstruct the administration of justice” (18 U.S.C. Section 401).

At Georgetown, Paul Manafort learned the legal rules governing every litigant’s right to challenge a judge’s fairness. Prevailing on a motion to recuse requires a factual showing, not a racist rant. The law is well settled that ethnicity or national origin is not a valid basis for disqualification. In fact, a recusal motion on those grounds would be on the receiving end of sanctions for frivolous pleading. It’s no accident that Trump’s outside lawyers — led by the widely respected Daniel Petrocelli at O’Melveny & Myers — haven’t pursued that path.

Enter Manafort

When Trump hired Manafort in April, Senator Ted Cruz was collecting more than his share of delegates from states where Trump had won the popular vote. Trump complained that the system was “rigged,” “corrupt” and “crooked.” Manafort’s assignment was to corral Trump delegates and keep them in line to avoid a contested convention.

In 1976, Manafort was involved in a similar task. Only two years out of law school, he was was President Gerald Ford successful “delegate-hunt coordinator” for eight states during Ronald Reagan’s attempt to wrest the nomination. After Ford lost the general election, Manafort spent three years working for a private law firm in Washington, D.C.

When Reagan prevailed in 1980, the president nominated him to the board of directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation — the government’s development finance institution. At that point, what would become Manafort’s lucrative career began. Since 1981, he’s been a lobbyist and consultant, sometimes for notorious international clients.

Master of Extreme Makeovers

In 2005, Manafort became an adviser to Viktor Yanukovych, whose political career seemed over after losing the Ukranian election for prime minister. With the help of Manafort, Yanukovych won in 2010 by exploiting popular frustration with government, exacerbating cultural divisions within the Ukranian electorate, and railing against NATO.

Sound familiar? History may not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. Cue the Trump assignment.

His Latest Client Makeover

On April 21, 2016, newly appointed Manafort assured members of the Republican National Committee that Trump’s rhetorical antics were just an act for the crowd.

“That’s what’s important for you to understand – that he gets it, and that the part he’s been playing is evolving now into the part you’ve been expecting…”

A month later, Manafort had accomplished his delegate mission and received a new title: campaign chairman and chief strategist. Since then, Trump’s attacks on the rule of law have intensified. It now appears that, in contrast to Manafort’s April 21 prediction, the only thing that Trump has “played” is Manafort as he dutifully lined up establishment Republicans who fell in line.

As uncomfortable as Trump’s statements have made those establishment Republicans, none has stepped forward to defend their candidate’s recent outbursts. None has repudiated his or her endorsement, either. Even as they decry Trump’s comments as deplorable, they implicitly suggest that his problem is speaking vile thoughts, not that he has them.

What Could Be Worse?

The same supporters rationalize their continuing support of Trump by assuring themselves that Hillary Clinton as president would be worse. They can’t possibly know that. Senator Bob Corker said that Trump — who turns 70 this month — “is going to have to change.” But change to what? Has anyone ever tried to change a 70-year-old billionaire’s fundamental beliefs, character, or behavior? Besides, Trump has made it clear that he has no desire to change. His approach has worked.

Corker’s position is a triumph of hope over reality. As for Trump’s positions, beyond divisive and destructive rants and branding tag lines –“We’ll make America great again” and “We’ll build a wall” — no one can state with confidence what they will be in five minutes, much less what they would become if he won the presidency.

Which takes us back to Paul Manafort, who assured RNC members in April that Trump was evolving. He went on to say, “Fixing personality negatives is a lot easier than fixing character negatives. You can’t change somebody’s character, but you can change the way a person presents himself.”

Either Manafort shares responsibility for encouraging Trump’s subsequent evolution, or he has an uncontrollable client. If it’s the former, he has put his candidate and his country on a treacherous course; he knows that from his legal training at Georgetown. If it’s the latter, his Trump-tarnished reputation will continue to deteriorate as he remains the campaign’s top strategist. Either way, he’s already lost. And so has the country.

THE STRANGE CASE OF STUDENT LOAN DEBT

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The Obama administration has a multifaceted approach to the student debt crisis. It’s time for a policy consistency checkup.

— The President says he wants all young people to pursue higher education and he hopes parents will encourage their kids to do so.

— The President says he wants to hold colleges and vocational schools accountable financially for graduates’ poor outcomes. At many schools, those outcomes include stunning rates of attrition and dismal employment results for graduates.

— The President says he wants to end soaring tuition that creates enormous student debt.

— And the President says students should avail themselves of income-based repayment (IBR) and loan forgiveness, even though those programs will produce large long-term hits to the federal treasury.

— But when students and their parents find themselves swamped in educational debt because graduates can’t find jobs offering a realistic shot at repaying their loans, the President’s Department of Education jumps to the schools’ defense. In its vigorous resistance to discharging school loans in bankruptcy, the administration provides another layer of protection to marginal schools that remain unaccountable for their students’ poor outcomes.

A Case in Point

In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested famously that, if necessary, students should borrow from their parents to attend college. It’s not Mitt’s fault, but two years before he become governor of Massachusetts and continuing through 2007, one of his constituents, Robert Murphy, took out a loans totaling $221,000 to do exactly that for his three kids.

Unfortunately, when Murphy’s manufacturing company closed and moved overseas in 2002, he lost his job as its president. Since then, he hasn’t found work. He’s now 65 years old.

To cover living expenses, Murphy’s IRA retirement account valued at $250,000 in 2002 is now gone. He and his wife live on $13,000 a year that she earns as a teacher’s aide. In 2014, their $500,000 home was worth $200,000 less than the mortgage on it — and was in foreclosure.

As interest accrued, the balance due on Murphy’s educational loans for his kids increased to more than $240,000 by 2014. He now represents himself in a bankruptcy case that has reached the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The issue is how the court should interpret and apply the “undue hardship” requirement for discharging educational debt. The statute doesn’t define the phrase and the federal appeals courts have adopted differing standards. All are difficult for debtors.

Enter the Department of Education

In this and other cases, the government’s primary educational debt servicing contractor, Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC), has urged courts to apply the toughest possible rule in deciding whether to grant relief to student loan debtors. At the request of the court hearing Murphy’s appeal, the U.S. Department of Education intervened on October 12.

Murphy calculates that if he found a job paying $50,000 a year and worked until he was 77, the student debt he owes would actually increase — to $500,000. His government doesn’t care. The Department of Education spares no adjective in describing the parade of horribles that would follow upon discharging Murphy’s debt.

For example, allowing him off the hook would “impair the fiscal stability of the loan program…” Repaying the loans may require “that he remain employed at or past normal retirement age,” it argues, even though “his income may top out or decrease” and “further employment opportunities may be limited.” The government regards retirement account contributions, fast-food dinners, cell-phone plans, and nutritional supplements as “luxury expenses.”

Absent showing a “certainty of hopelessness,” the government urges, no debtor should get relief from student loans: “[A] debtor must specifically prove a total incapacity in the future to repay the debt for reasons not within his control.”

Welcome to America’s 21st century version of debtors’ prison.

Confused Priorities

What matters most, the government urges, is “protecting the solvency of the student loan program.” But if solvency is a function of how much the United States receives in return for the money it lends, aren’t income-based repayment and loan forgiveness greater long-run threats to the solvency of the program? Oh, I forgot. The long run is always someone else’s problem.

Even more to the point, debtors in Robert Murphy’s position will never be able to repay their loans anyway. Simply put, the government’s failure to write off Murphy’s bad loan — and others like his — just means that its accounting methods haven’t caught up with reality.

When that reality hits, some may look back and ask why today’s policymakers ignored the bad behavior of marginal schools at the front end. In fact, government policies encourage misbehavior. As the President delivers his “get more education” message to students and parents, marginal schools beat the bushes for enrollees who represent revenue streams of federally insured loans. Why isn’t the ability of those students to repay their loans the focus of efforts aimed at preserving the student loan program’s solvency?

Ask the Right Questions

Currently, schools have no financial stake in student outcomes and marginal schools have exploited the resulting market dysfunction. Did students complete degrees? Did graduates find decent jobs?

Anyone looking for a true picture of the “solvency of the student loan program” might consider those questions, along with this one: How many students are repaying their loans? Last month, the Obama administration released a new report providing some troubling answers to that one.

Three years after their loans had become due, more than one-third of all student loan borrowers had made no progress toward repaying their educational debt. None. And the bar for “progress” was as low as it could be: one dollar.

Profiting from Market Failure

At 347 colleges, more than half of borrowers had failed to pay down a single dollar of their principal loan balance after seven years. Of that group, almost 300 are for-profit schools. Through the federally insured student loan program that relieves them of any debt collection responsibility, some for-profit schools and their investors are making a lot of money off the rest of us.

Many of those same investors decry government intervention in anything. Like Mitt Romney — a vocal supporter of for-profit colleges during his 2012 campaign — they embrace competitive markets as the only proper way to produce correct decisions. But they’re delighted to exploit a student loan market that doesn’t work at all. Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, divided the country into “takers” and “makers.” A lot of those for-profit college investors feeding off government student loan largesse sure look like “takers” — albeit in nicely tailored clothing.

So much for the probative value of divisive partisan labels.