The power of the Justice Department, FBI, IRS, and CIA

My weekend movie came Saturday afternoon in a showing of Hugo at the Detroit Film Theater. When the film first came out in 2011 it didn’t sound interesting. When I encountered it again a few months ago it sounded intriguing. And when I saw it on the DFT calendar I had to see it. This is one of Martin Scorsese’s films and is set in 1931. The title character is Hugo Cabret, twelve years old. He learned how to fix mechanical things from his father, who also showed him an automaton, a mechanical person, created to write. But his father died before they got it working. Hugo’s uncle takes him to the train station where the uncle lives and tends the clocks. After teaching Hugo how to do it the uncle disappears. So the boy now tends the clocks while living in the maintenance spaces of the station and swiping food from the various vendors. His nemesis is the station inspector, who has sent orphan boys to the orphanage. He also gets on the wrong side of the toy vendor, whose mechanical toys enchant him. Even so, he manages to befriend Isabelle, the toy vendor’s ward, who is ready for adventure. Hugo gets the automaton working, hoping it would write out a message from his father. Instead it draws an image of the Man in the Moon with a spaceship hitting one eye. This is a famous image (one I had seen before) from the movie A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès who made fantastical movies before World War I. Of course, that sets Isabelle and Hugo on that adventure to discover how all this ties together. Along the way there is a flashback to watching Méliès make his films. So part of the story is an homage to that early filmmaker and early films in general. Since this story mostly takes place in a train station there are frequently crowds. Hugo and Isabelle of course get caught in them at critical moments. I became impressed at how well the crowd scenes were done. I quite enjoyed this film and recommend it. This was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Actor Asa Butterfield, who played Hugo, did a marvelous job. I may have to see the mini Georges Méliès festival the DFT will host at the end of March. The IMDb trivia page for this movie says it is based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick that came out in 2007. Another bit of trivia is the movie was filmed in 3D, though the version I saw was not. IMDb also has a page on Butterfield, who has maintained his acting career and is now 27. Kos of Daily Kos wonders if the nasty guy’s infatuation with Greenland and his desire to invade it is based on how huge Greenland looks on a typical Mercator Projection map. A Mercator map was great for 18th century navigation. But there are big problems when it is used in modern life. Yeah, it makes Google Maps easier. But the farther from the equator a country is the larger it appears. And since much of the world’s land is significantly north of the equator countries in the global south looks much smaller in comparison. @neilrkaye created a Mercator map that also shows the true size of countries. In a Mercator map Russia looks huge (which is why Putin love Mercator maps). But Russia is actually smaller than Africa. Canada looks much bigger than the US, but they’re actually almost the same size. I found the site MapPorn, which, is one I may have visit frequently. Posted in the last couple days is one the compares the size of Greenland to other areas of earth. The US is 4.5 times bigger than Greenland, South America is 8 times bigger, Africa is 14 times bigger (though a Mercator projection shows them about the same size), India is 1.5 times bigger. When trying to represent a sphere with a rectangle something is going to be distorted, usually shape or size or both. Another Greenlander has responded to the nasty guy’s claim on the country. Emily Singer of Kos reported Pipaluk Lynge-Rasmussen, a member of the Greenland Parliament, talked to Politico Europe in response to nasty junior flying there and posing with locals to show they were in favor of the nasty guy taking over. She said the event was staged and a sham. She also said their natives are similar to Alaska’s Inuits and the Greenlanders have seen how America treats the Inuits. So no thanks. The nasty guy’s hush money case was in the news this past week. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported the Supreme Court narrowly decided the nasty guy could be sentenced on Friday. The case went to the Supremes because his team said the appeals should be allowed to play out during the transition, meaning he wouldn’t be sentenced before getting presidential immunity. So, on Friday the sentence was handed down. Singer reported the details. The case is from New York and is about the 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money. There could have been jail time, a hefty fine, or simple probation. But Judge Juan Merchan said there was only one lawful sentence, that of “unconditional discharge.” Singer wrote:

The fact that Trump is escaping pretty much unscathed from the legal jeopardy he found himself in is a miscarriage of justice. He was able to escape accountability both because of an unprecedented decision by the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court, which dragged its feet before ultimately ruling in July that Trump was immune from anything deemed an “official act” in office.

There was also foot-dragging by other judges in other courts and by the nasty guy team delaying other cases long enough that he was able to avoid them by being voted back to the White House. This post includes a cartoon by Clay Bennett that shows the nasty guy in prison clothes digging himself out and surfacing in the Oval Office. The way I understand the situation is that a judge or jury may convict a person of a crime, but that conviction isn’t official until the sentencing. So while there was no jail time, fine, or even probation the sentencing says yes, the nasty guy is a felon. He is officially the first felon in the Oval Office. Last week I had lunch with my friend and debate partner. He said surely the judge could have ordered probation. He was hoping for the prospect of the nasty guy having to check in with a parole officer once a month, even if it was through Zoom from the Oval Office. I like his idea. Scott Detrow and Domenico Montanaro of NPR talked to Law Professor Kim Wehle of the University of Baltimore on issues related to the case. First, the Constitution does give immunity to members of Congress. So it’s authors knew about immunity. The Constitution does not give immunity to the president. So when the Supremes said he does have immunity they invented it out of nothing and rewrote a portion of the Constitution. And that essentially turns the president into a king. Of a second issue Wehle said:

Well, law, at the end of the day, is about incentives and disincentives. We have laws and constraints to disincentivize bad behavior, but those constraints don't mean anything if there's no consequences. So the Supreme Court, through this process, has removed any consequences for committing crimes using official power. That's the scary stuff, right? It's not the unofficial private power that is going to lead to some real abuses against individuals. It's the power of the Justice Department. It's the power of the FBI, the IRS, the CIA, the military. It's the stuff that Donald Trump will have at his fingertips that no one else on the planet has. That's the power that needs to be disincentivized to abuse, and that's gone. So we really are moving into a new era of American history and American law.

A third issue: Special prosecutor Jack Smith has been working to get some or all of his report on the nasty guy’s classified document’s case made public. From the effort the nasty guy’s lawyers are putting into blocking release means there is more information and it is likely highly damaging. The big question in that case is about the empty folders that supposedly had contained classified data. “Who got it? Is there a threat to national security that was created in that scenario?” After that discussion was recorded Jack Smith resigned. Singer reported House Republicans have posted a list of federal programs they want to trim or cut. Some of what’s in the list: Letting current subsidies for Obamacare expire. Require work requirement to receive Medicaid, even though many who are cut because of the rule are working. Cut food stamps by redefining what a healthy diet is and how much it costs. Yes, the cuts will make life harder for low income workers and people in poverty. The purpose of the cuts is tax breaks for billionaires. Republicans want to use the budget reconciliation process, which can’t be filibustered and thus cuts Democrats out of the process. However, using that process means the legislation must be budget neutral – tax cuts must be matched by spending cuts. And, on their own, these tax cuts would explode the national debt.

Meanwhile, the document Republicans are circulating that outlines the possible budget cuts is Orwellian as heck, labeling cuts to food stamps as "ending cradle-to-grave dependence;" cuts to Medicaid as "making Medicaid work for the most vulnerable;" and cuts to Obamacare as "reimagining the Affordable Care Act." Apparently to Republicans, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

All that reminds me that the rich don’t measure the greatness by the size of their net worth, but by the difference between that and the (perhaps negative) net worth of those low in the social hierarchy. It isn’t enough to have over $400 billion (as Musk does). They also need to take away the scant resources of those in poverty. Oliver Willis of Kos reported a coalition of over 17,000 doctors sent a letter to the Senate, asking them to not approve Robert Kennedy’s nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The Committee to Protect Health Care said in its letter that Kennedy is “not only unqualified to lead this essential agency—he is actively dangerous.” The group describes Trump’s decision to nominate him as “an affront to the principles of public health, the tireless dedication of medical professionals, and the trust that millions of Americans place in the health care system.” Chief among the group’s concerns about Kennedy are his years promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines and his activism against vaccination. The letter describes Kennedy’s support for these unscientific notions as “direct threat to the safety of our patients and the public at large.”