Today, one of our readers reminded us of this post from October 7, 2017 about how Rex Tillerson was then opposing Trump’s support for doing away with US bribery laws.  In view of what we’re going through right now, we thought it would be timely to repost.  Here it is:

Moral Bankruptcy – October 7, 2017

One of the rising stories in the war between Trump and Tillerson has underlined the actual issue at the core of this administration – moral bankruptcy.  We all know that Trump is a complete waste of oxygen, a Grade A Shitbag, and every other pejorative one can conjure.  What is he, though, at his essence?  At his center, Trump is totally devoid of any decency or empathy and worse (if that’s even possible), he is morally bankrupt.  The case in point is the disagreement that has been simmering between Trump and Tillerson since the beginning of this train wreck; Trump’s desire to legalize bribery.

One of Trump’s core issues is a law that he wants reversed: the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  The FCPA was passed in 1977 in an attempt for the United States to lead the world in reducing what was then blatant corruption and bribery in international business.  The law is enforced by the SEC and DOJ and has greatly reduced corruption because, under the law, business leaders are personally liable should their companies get caught paying bribes.  For years, Trump has railed against the law, calling it a “horrible law and it should be changed.” Trump says that not being able to pay bribes to foreign officials makes us uncompetitive.

Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Tillerson, Rex disagrees with Trump.  In a White House meeting in February, Tillerson dared to do just that with Trump after he complained about the act, saying that bribery was key to success.  Tillerson stood his ground and even related a story to him about how he refused to bribe a Yemeni state official when he was CEO of Exxon.  The deal got done anyway.

What this story reveals is not only the importance of actual adults like Tillerson, Kelly, Mattis, and others to keep Trump in check, but the critical need that they do so.  Trump is the very definition of corruption.  He is so self absorbed and completely saturated by his corruption that he actually wants to weaken US policy so HE’LL make more money.  Just thinking about having this cretin at the levers of power sends cold chills down my spine.  This man is not only evil; his corruption is a cancer on our society.

This disaster can’t end soon enough; in the meantime, as much as I disagree with Tillerson on any number of policy issues, I also see his value as the last defense against Trump burning down what’s left of our republic.  He, and those like him owe it to the rest of us to stay in place until we can excise this disease from office by either criminal charges and/or resignation.

One of the lies Trump and his sycophants repeat ad nauseam is that simply because of him, the economy is “booming” and growing like “never before in US history”.  That’s complete bullshit of course, and NO economic performance number supports Trump’s boasting.   Trump’s greatest accomplishment has been fortunate to have followed Barack Obama who bucked huge political obstruction to kick start the economy by pumping billions into rebuilding industries and extending unemployment benefits to out of work Americans.  Anyone who has studied Economics 101 knows that a key tool for bringing an economy out of a downturn is INCREASING government spending to get people back to work.  Obama fought the Repubs tooth and nail, and succeeded.  Trump is the beneficiary of that courage, as our economy is simply on the same trend line established by Obama policy.  In fact, Trump is trailing behind some measures established by Obama because of his idiotic trade war.

Here are a few examples:

US GDP Growth

S&P 500

Job Growth

Remember when Trump promised 6% GDP growth?  To bring coal back? To increase manufacturing jobs?  None of those promises have been kept.  None.  Essentially, the economy has continued its up and to the right trend more in spite of Trump rather that because of Trump.

Even though it’s denied by Trumpists, truth does matter.  And the truth is that the economy left by Obama is strong enough to so far resist Trump’s destructive infestation of the White House.

A disgruntled former Breitbart employee came to her senses and leaked hundreds of Stephen Miller’s emails.  You won’t be surprised to learn that he’s a racist pig privately just as much as he is publicly.

Trump says dreamers are “hardened criminals” as SCOTUS hearing begins.

Rick Gates testified today that Trump lied to Mueller about him “not recalling” talking to Stone about WikiLeaks when he in fact did multiple times.

Trump ordered to pay $290,000 in legal expenses to the Scottish Government after losing battle to stop a wind farm.

Trump claims that Ivanka created 14 million US jobs by herself.

There are too many lies to even keep up.

Yesterday a friend of mine got caught in a huge traffic jam on a local street.  The cause of the jam? The line of cars trying to get into a Popeye’s Fried Chicken drive thru to buy their chicken sandwich.  Also yesterday, there was a fatal stabbing outside of a Popeye’s fried chicken in Maryland during an argument over…wait for it…a goddam chicken sandwich.

If you’re around a Chick-fil-A around lunchtime in Texas, you will be caught in a traffic jam with hundreds of people sitting in dozens of cars willing to wait for almost an hour to buy THEIR goddam chicken sandwich.  This willingness, though, is in large part owed to conservatives  making some kind of statement in support of Chick-fil-A for their anti-diversity politics and support of Trump.

In the meantime, we’re only a few weeks away from the madness of Black Friday (which now starts on Thanksgiving morning) as millions of Americans stupidly storm into big box stores to do battle with one another to buy a cheap made in China flat panel television which they can neither afford or fit on a wall in their home.

Insanity has now become normalized.  More Americans are engaged in Dancing with the Stars and The Voice than they are in participation in their own government.  They go nuts over shit they read on Facebook and Twitter, while ignoring the real world of what’s going on around them.  AND, our system of consumer protections has been decimated.  Lying about products, politics, people, and policy is now OK and our courts have been packed with ideologies who believe that is just fine.  The President of the United States has amplified this cancer by lying himself over 14,000 times in 3 years.  He’s tweeted over 11,000 times, most of those tweets either lies, attacks against his enemies, wild conspiracy theories, or promotion of his own businesses.  His education department is making it worse by destroying decades of progress in public education and assuring that millions of Americans swim in debt created by a system designed to entrap them for profit.

We are living in the age of lies.  The masses, whose wages have been stagnated for 0ver 30 years and whose education system is broken, now live in a distopian television fantasy world, reduced to fighting over goddam chicken sandwiches, flat panel televisions, and casting meaningless votes for people who have no business dancing on national television.

We are lost, and with few viable government protections left, Trump has accelerated the downward spiral to an outright freefall.  I don’t have a solution for it, and don’t even know where to start.

A three judge panel in the Federal Appeals Court in Manhattan just ruled that Trump must turn over 8 years of tax returns to the Manhattan DA, which is investigating Michael Cohen paying bribes to Stormy Daniels and others.  Trump, who lied for 2 years that he would release his tax returns after they were “audited” is fighting tooth and nail to keep them secret, and we can all guess as to why – they’ll likely add to the mountain of criminal evidence piling up on his doorstep.  I continue to believe, and Trumpists continue to deny, that Trump, once out of office (one way or the other) will spend the rest of his life trying to stay out of jail.  The closer we get to that, the more dangerous he will become until we get him out.

Last night, Jimmy Kimmel compared Barack Obama’s announcement of the killing of Osama Bin Ladin with Trump’s announcement of the killing of Al Baghdadi.  Obama took 9 minutes.  Trump took 48.  As you can imagine, the comparison is jaw dropping.