Success of a presidency is determined largely by the competence and quality of the appointees. The fitness and performance of those appointees reflect back on the president who appointed them. President Trump has selected the most incompetent and corrupt collection of appointees in modern history.
It’s a tossup whether former Environmental Protection Administrator Scott Pruitt, or former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke were the most corrupt of Trump’s appointees. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price can’t be far behind.
Some Trump appointees don’t even believe in the mission of the department they head. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos favors private education over public education. Energy Secretary Rick Perry was surprised that his department’s mission was not to promote oil and gas. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson doesn’t believe in his department’s mission and competes for the dubious title of most unqualified and incompetent. Expertise in neurosurgery does not translate to competency to administer a huge federal department.
National Security Advisor John Bolton never met a war that he didn’t like, as long as he could view it from safe distance.
This motley collection of incompetent, corrupt and unqualified appointees is the product of a president who does not approve of, nor even understand, the purpose of separation of powers designed to check the tendency of those in power to abuse it for selfish ends. He makes that clear by his envy and cozy relationship with dictators. Trump’s sole evaluation of humans is their successful accumulation of wealth, power and the degree to which they either adore and/or obey him.
So where is the Congress? The branch of government responsible for making laws, appropriating money and checking executive branch power. Instead of asserting their power, Republicans are acting as Trump’s enablers. Conventional wisdom, correct in this case, is that they are so afraid of Trump that if they stand up to him, Trump will arrange for an opponent to oppose them in the next primary election.
Where are the Democrats? Forget it — they are up to their usual tactics of defending themselves in a knife fight by throwing marshmallows. As one comedian put it, “They are so angry at Republican refusal to show up at subpoenas that they have extended the deadlines.” Even the media nitwits see that Trump, with the aid of Attorney General William Barr, has successfully tied the Democrats in knots.
What about the third branch of government, the court system? Recent court decisions have apparently ruled against Trump’s refusal to comply with lawful Congressional mandates. But we have seen nothing of consequence as a result. Besides, the big enchilada, the Supreme Court, is controlled by conservatives.
The most recent appointee to the court should have been the moderate Merrick Garland, nominated by President Obama. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even hold hearings on the grounds that a president should not appoint a Supreme Court member during the fourth year of his term, right before an election. That’s against normal protocol, but McConnell did it because he could.
A recent shenanigan by the Trump Administration involves Trump’s Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and the 2020 decennial census. At the request of the Department of Justice, the Commerce Department is proposing a question on the census not used for decades, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” Respondents would have five options; that they were born in the U.S., born in a U.S. territory, born abroad to U.S. citizen parents, naturalized as a citizen and date of naturalization or not a citizen.
The citizenship question sounds innocuous enough and data on individuals is not to be revealed and used in any way against an individual respondent. But consider that many people, not trusting the federal government, or for various reasons not wanting to divulge what they consider private information, are reluctant to answer questions on the census form. Add to this Trump’s opposition to immigration and his campaign to deport noncitizens, and you have a lot of people who don’t want anything to do with the census. Many will especially fear to divulge information regarding citizenship. The net result will be that many people will be uncounted.
When asked why the citizenship question is necessary, the most ludicrous and disingenuous explanation was that “it is necessary to help enforce the Voting Rights Act.”
What? This, from an administration and the Republican Party that has made every effort to gut the Voting Rights Act, successfully convincing the conservative Supreme Court to eliminate Section 8 that required states with a history of minority voter suppression to submit proposed changes to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department?
Lower courts in New York, California and Maryland have ruled against using the citizenship question. In recent hearings before the U.S. Supreme Court, justices appeared to be leaning toward approving the question.
The contention of its usefulness to “enforce the voting rights act” is clearly ludicrous. Evidence of its real motive has recently surfaced.
In 2015, a study by Republican operative and redistricting strategist, Thomas Hofeller, concluded that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census would clearly be disadvantageous to Democrats. Files of the now deceased Hofeller reveal that in August 2017 he helped ghostwrite a draft Justice Department letter to the Commerce Department requesting a citizenship question on the census, and the rationale of “enforcing the Voting Rights Act.”
Commerce Secretary Ross testified that the request was by the Justice Department. Administration documents released later indicated that the Justice Department request initially came from Ross’s urging.
The Supreme Court decision on including this question is expected in July. Census data is used to allocate federal funding and determine congressional representation. Inclusion of the citizenship question will clearly suppress response to the survey and deny communities of color health care, education and other needed services; and be disadvantageous to Democrats.
That’s exactly what it was intended to do.
— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.
