TBR News April 8, 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. April  8, 2019: “Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.

When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.

I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.

He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.

He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.

His latest business is to re-institute a universal draft in America.

He wants to do this to remove tens of thousands of unemployed young Americans from the streets so they won’t come together and fight him.

The Pentagon people do not want a universal draft because they do not want house or feed mobs of useless Millennials but instead want to construct a small but very technical Army.

But computer specialists and other technical-minded young Americans do not want to go into an Army that cannot pay them a fraction of what the private sector can.

They don’t volunteer and the Army and other units end up with former gang members, dope addicts, sadists, thieves and illiterates.

I am attaching some interesting material that supports my basis thesis:

 

116th CONGRESS

1st Session

1. 76

To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

• March 31, 2019

Mr. INHOFE introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Armed Services

A BILL

To provide for the common defense by requiring that all young persons in the United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

• SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.

(a) SHORT TITLE- This Act may be cited as the `Universal National Service Act of 2003′.

(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS- The table of contents for this Act is as follows:

Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents.

Sec. 2. National service obligation.

Sec. 3. Two-year period of national service.

Sec. 4. Implementation by the President.

Sec. 5. Induction.

Sec. 6. Deferments and postponements.

Sec. 7. Induction exemptions.

Sec. 8. Conscientious objection.

Sec. 9. Discharge following national service.

Sec. 10. Registration of females under the Military Selective Service Act.

Sec. 11. Relation of Act to registration and induction authority of Military Selective Service Act.

Sec. 12. Definitions.

• 2. NATIONAL SERVICE OBLIGATION.

(a) OBLIGATION FOR YOUNG PERSONS- It is the obligation of every citizen of the United States, and every other person residing in the United States, who is between the ages of 18 and 26 to perform a period of national service as prescribed in this Act unless exempted under the provisions of this Act.

(b) FORM OF NATIONAL SERVICE- National service under this Act shall be performed either–

(1) as a member of an active or reserve component of the uniformed services; or

(2) in a civilian capacity that, as determined by the President, promotes the national defense, including national or community service and homeland security.

(c) INDUCTION REQUIREMENTS- The President shall provide for the induction of persons covered by subsection (a) to perform national service under this Act.

(d) SELECTION FOR MILITARY SERVICE- Based upon the needs of the uniformed services, the President shall–

(1) determine the number of persons covered by subsection (a) whose service is to be performed as a member of an active or reserve component of the uniformed services; and

(2) select the individuals among those persons who are to be inducted for military service under this Act.

(e) CIVILIAN SERVICE- Persons covered by subsection (a) who are not selected for military service under subsection (d) shall perform their national service obligation under this Act in a civilian capacity pursuant to subsection (b)(2).

• 3. TWO-YEAR PERIOD OF NATIONAL SERVICE.

(a) GENERAL RULE- Except as otherwise provided in this section, the period of national service performed by a person under this Act shall be two years.

(b) GROUNDS FOR EXTENSION- At the discretion of the President, the period of military service for a member of the uniformed services under this Act may be extended–

(1) with the consent of the member, for the purpose of furnishing hospitalization, medical, or surgical care for injury or illness incurred in line of duty; or

(2) for the purpose of requiring the member to compensate for any time lost to training for any cause.

(c) EARLY TERMINATION- The period of national service for a person under this Act shall be terminated before the end of such period under the following circumstances:

(1) The voluntary enlistment and active service of the person in an active or reserve component of the uniformed services for a period of at least two years, in which case the period of basic military training and education actually served by the person shall be counted toward the term of enlistment.

(2) The admission and service of the person as a cadet or midshipman at the United States Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, or the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

(3) The enrollment and service of the person in an officer candidate program, if the person has signed an agreement to accept a Reserve commission in the appropriate service with an obligation to serve on active duty if such a commission is offered upon completion of the program.

(4) Such other grounds as the President may establish.

• 4. IMPLEMENTATION BY THE PRESIDENT.

(a) IN GENERAL- The President shall prescribe such regulations as are necessary to carry out this Act.

(b) MATTER TO BE COVERED BY REGULATIONS- Such regulations shall include specification of the following:

(1) The types of civilian service that may be performed for a person’s national service obligation under this Act.

(2) Standards for satisfactory performance of civilian service and of penalties for failure to perform civilian service satisfactorily.

(3) The manner in which persons shall be selected for induction under this Act, including the manner in which those selected will be notified of such selection.

(4) All other administrative matters in connection with the induction of persons under this Act and the registration, examination, and classification of such persons.

(5) A means to determine questions or claims with respect to inclusion for, or exemption or deferment from induction under this Act, including questions of conscientious objection.

(6) Standards for compensation and benefits for persons performing their national service obligation under this Act through civilian service.

(7) Such other matters as the President determines necessary to carry out this Act.

(c) USE OF PRIOR ACT- To the extent determined appropriate by the President, the President may use for purposes of this Act the procedures provided in the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 451 et seq.), including procedures for registration, selection, and induction.

• 5. INDUCTION.

(a) IN GENERAL- Every person subject to induction for national service under this Act, except those whose training is deferred or postponed in accordance with this Act, shall be called and inducted by the President for such service at the time and place specified by the President.

(b) AGE LIMITS- A person may be inducted under this Act only if the person has attained the age of 18 and has not attained the age of 26.

(c) VOLUNTARY INDUCTION- A person subject to induction under this Act may volunteer for induction at a time other than the time at which the person is otherwise called for induction.

(d) EXAMINATION; CLASSIFICATION- Every person subject to induction under this Act shall, before induction, be physically and mentally examined and shall be classified as to fitness to perform national service. The President may apply different classification standards for fitness for military service and fitness for civilian service.

• 6. DEFERMENTS AND POSTPONEMENTS.

(a) HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS- A person who is pursuing a standard course of study, on a full-time basis, in a secondary school or similar institution of learning shall be entitled to have induction under this Act postponed until the person–

(1) obtains a high school diploma;

(2) ceases to pursue satisfactorily such course of study; or

(3) attains the age of 20.

(b) HARDSHIP AND DISABILITY- Deferments from national service under this Act may be made for–

(1) extreme hardship; or

(2) physical or mental disability.

(c) TRAINING CAPACITY- The President may postpone or suspend the induction of persons for military service under this Act as necessary to limit the number of persons receiving basic military training and education to the maximum number that can be adequately trained.

(d) TERMINATION- No deferment or postponement of induction under this Act shall continue after the cause of such deferment or postponement ceases.

• 7. INDUCTION EXEMPTIONS.

(a) QUALIFICATIONS- No person may be inducted for military service under this Act unless the person is acceptable to the Secretary concerned for training and meets the same health and physical qualifications applicable under section 505 of title 10, United States Code, to persons seeking original enlistment in a regular component of the Armed Forces.

(b) OTHER MILITARY SERVICE- No person shall be liable for induction under this Act who–

(1) is serving, or has served honorably for at least six months, in any component of the uniformed services on active duty; or

(2) is or becomes a cadet or midshipman at the United States Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, the United States

Merchant Marine Academy, a midshipman of a Navy accredited State maritime academy, a member of the Senior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or the naval aviation college program, so long as that person satisfactorily continues in and completes two years training therein.

• 8. CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION.

(a) CLAIMS AS CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR- Any person selected under this Act for induction into the uniformed services who claims, because of religious training and belief (as defined in section 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. 456(j))), exemption from combatant training included as part of that military service and whose claim is sustained under such procedures as the President may prescribe, shall, when inducted, participate in military service that does not include any combatant training component.

(b) TRANSFER TO CIVILIAN SERVICE- Any such person whose claim is sustained may, at the discretion of the President, be transferred to a national service program for performance of such person’s national service obligation under this Act.

• 9. DISCHARGE FOLLOWING NATIONAL SERVICE.

(a) DISCHARGE- Upon completion or termination of the obligation to perform national service under this Act, a person shall be discharged from the uniformed services or from civilian service, as the case may be, and shall not be subject to any further service under this Act.

(b) COORDINATION WITH OTHER AUTHORITIES- Nothing in this section shall limit or prohibit the call to active service in the uniformed services of any person who is a member of a regular or reserve component of the uniformed services.

• 10. REGISTRATION OF FEMALES UNDER THE MILITARY SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT.

(a) REGISTRATION REQUIRED- Section 3(a) of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. 453(a)) is amended–

(1) by striking `male’ both places it appears;

(2) by inserting `or herself’ after `himself’; and

(3) by striking `he’ and inserting `the person’.

(b) CONFORMING AMENDMENT- Section 16(a) of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 466(a)) is amended by striking `men’ and inserting `persons’.

• 11. RELATION OF ACT TO REGISTRATION AND INDUCTION AUTHORITY OF MILITARY SELECTIVE SERVICE ACT.

(a) REGISTRATION- Section 4 of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 454) is amended by inserting after subsection (g) the following new subsection:

`(h) This section does not apply with respect to the induction of persons into the Armed Forces pursuant to the Universal National Service Act of 2003.’.

(b) INDUCTION- Section 17(c) of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 467(c)) is amended by striking `now or hereafter’ and all that follows through the period at the end and inserting `inducted pursuant to the Universal National Service Act of 2003.’.

• 12. DEFINITIONS.

In this Act:

(1) The term `military service’ means service performed as a member of an active or reserve component of the uniformed services.

(2) The term `Secretary concerned’ means the Secretary of Defense with respect to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard, the Secretary of Commerce, with respect to matters concerning the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with respect to matters concerning the Public Health Service.

(3) The term `United States’, when used in a geographical sense, means the several States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam.

(4) The term `uniformed services’ means the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, commissioned corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and commissioned corps of the Public Health Service.

END

Department of Defense commentary on projected universal draft

April 3, 2019

……….

SKILLS DRAFT AND NEW COMBAT DRAFT TIMELINE

DoD announces serious critical skills shortages in linguists, computer experts and engineers.

The SKILLS DRAFT procedures, the reg card and the massive database needed to track every young American under 35 and their skills.

TOPICAL AGENDA

The Department of Defense (Personnel & Readiness) And the Selective Service System

With known shortages of military personnel with certain critical skills, and with the need for the nation to be capable of responding to domestic emergencies as part of Homeland Security planning, changes should be made in the Selective Service System’s registration program and primary mission.

Situation:

Currently, and in accordance with the Military Selective Service Act (MSSA) <50 U.S.C., App. 451 et seq.>, the Selective Service System (SSS) collects and maintains Personal information from all U.S. male citizens and resident aliens. Under this process, each man is required to “present himself for and submit to registration” upon reaching age 18.

The methods by which a man can register with Selective Service include the internet, mail-back postcard, checking a box on the other government forms, and through the driver’s license applications process in many states. The collected data is retained in an active computer file until the man reaches the age 26 and is no longer draft eligible. It consists of the man’s name, address, Social Security number, and date of birth. Currently, 91 percent of all men, ages 18 through 25, are registered, enabling the SSS to conduct a timely, fair, and equitable draft in the event the Congress and the President decide to reinstate conscription during a crisis.

Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc. The costs of attracting and retaining such personnel for military-service could be prohibitive, leading some officials to conclude that while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis, if too few volunteer.

Proposal:

In line with today’s needs, the SSS structure, programs and activities should be re-engineered towards maintaining a national inventory of American men and (for the first time) women, ages 18 through 34, with an added focus on identifying individuals with critical skills.

In addition to the basic identifying information collected in the current program, the expanded and revised program would require all registrants to indicate whether they have been trained in, possess, and professionally practice, one [U]or more skills critical to national security or community health and safety. This could take the form of an initial “self-declaration” as a part of the registration process. Men and women would enter on the SSS registration form a multi-digit number representing their specific critical skill (e.g., similar to military occupational specialty or Armed Forces Specialty Code with Skill Identifier), taken from a lengthy list of skills to be compiled and published by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Individuals proficient in more than one critical skill would list the practiced skill in which they have the greatest degree of experience and competency. They would also be required to update reported information as necessary until they reach the age 35. This unique data base would provide the military (and national, state, and municipal government agencies) with immediately available links to vital human resources…in effect, a single, most accurate and complete, national inventory of young Americans with special skills.

While the data base’s “worst-case” use might be to draft such personnel into military or homeland security assignments during a national mobilization, its very practical peacetime use could be to support recruiting and direct marketing campaigns aimed at encouraging skilled personnel to volunteer for community or military service opportunities, and to consider applying for hard-to-fill public sector jobs. Local government agencies could also tap this data base to locate nearby specialists for help with domestic crises and emergency situations.

With the changes described above, SSS programs would be modified to serve the contemporary needs of several customers: Department of Defense Department of Homeland Security (FEMA, U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, INS), Corporation for National Service, Public Health Service, and other federal and state agencies seeking personnel with critical skills for national security or community service assignments. The SSS would thus play a more vital, relevant, and immediate role in shoring up America’s strength and readiness in peace and war.

Explore the feasibility of developing a single-point data base of virtually all young Americans, 18 through 34 years old, immediately identifiable by critical skills possessed and practiced. Data base could be used for a draft in war and for recruiting in peacetime.

1 Would require modification of SSS mission and changes to authorizing law.

2 Cost considerations

Next steps – Statement of Administration Policy needed

1. DoD decides what services it needs and wants from SSS: Three options for consideration:

1 SSS status quo; however, redefine the DoD mission guidance and time lines to make the SSS more relevant to DoD’s needs and the SECDEF’s policy. The current guidance of providing untrained inductees at M+193 runs counter to the SECDEF’s views and is out-of-sync with possible wartime scenarios.

2 Return the SSS to “Deep Standby” status. If a draft of any kind is highly unlikely and undesirable, eliminate peacetime registration and dismiss the 10,000 trained volunteer Board Members. However, should a draft be needed, it would take more than a year to get the system capable of conducting a fair and equitable draft from Deep Standby status.

3 Restructure the SSS and shift its peacetime focus to accommodate DoD’s most likely requirements in a crisis. Plan for conducting a more likely draft of individual with special and critical skills.

1. Minimum requirement: SSS mission guidance and time lines must be redefined promptly by DoD to allow more relevant pre-mobilization planning and funding for the possibility of a critical skills draft at M+90 or sooner. Peacetime registration of men 18 through 25 would continue, but consideration would also be given to identifying men with certain critical skills among these year-of-birth groupings.

A post-mobilization plan would also be devised and computer programming accomplished for a full-blown critical skills draft. The HCPDS program is completed, brought to the forefront of SSS readiness planning, and tested through exercises. Without a reaffirmation of relevance and adjustment of mission, the SSS will be an easy target for reduction or elimination by detractors in the Congress and the Administration.

1. Expanded pre-mobilization requirement. SSS peacetime registration expanded to include women and men, 18 through 34 years old, and collects information on critical skills within these year-of-birth groupings. Requires change of law and additional funding (see Issue Paper dated 11 Feb 2003).

It will be be necessary to market the concept for approval by the Armed Services Committees and Appropriations Committees and draft implementing legislation for congressional consideration. The changes will be implemented after the amended law is signed and funding is identified.”

 

The Table of Contents

 

• Kirstjen Nielsen: US Homeland Security chief resigns
• Trump orders firing of Secret Service chief: CNN
• President Donald Trump
• Atlantic City: ‘Trump turned this place into a ghost town’
• Midwest floods hammer U.S. ethanol industry, push some gasoline prices toward five-year high
• Encyclopedia of American Loons
• David Roberts
• Doug Phillipd
• The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

 

Kirstjen Nielsen: US Homeland Security chief resigns

April 8, 2019

BBC News

The US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, who enforced some of President Donald Trump’s controversial border policies, has resigned.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan will replace her temporarily, Mr Trump said.

Ms Nielsen was responsible for the proposed border wall with Mexico and the separation of migrant families.

Her resignation came after the president indicated he wanted to follow a “tougher” immigration policy.

He has often accused Ms Nielsen of not being tough enough.

In recent months, illegal crossings from Central America have surged and Mr Trump has threatened to close the Mexico border.

He has since backtracked and promised to give Mexico a year to stop drugs and migrants crossing into the US.

The New York Times reported that Ms Nielsen went into a meeting with Mr Trump on Sunday to plan “a way forward” with the border situation.

Instead, she was put under pressure to resign from her job, US media say, citing unnamed sources.

She gave no reason for her departure in her resignation letter, although she said this was “the right time for me to step aside” and said the US “is safer today than when I joined the Administration.”Who is Kirstjen Nielsen?

Ms Nielsen first joined Mr Trump’s administration in January 2017 as an assistant to the former Homeland Security chief John Kelly.

She became Mr Kelly’s deputy when he moved to become White House chief of staff, but returned to lead her former department later that year.

Ms Nielsen defended border policies such as holding children in wire enclosures in the face of strong condemnation and intense questioning by Democrats in Congress.

In June 2018 protesters booed Ms Nielsen as she ate at a Mexican restaurant in Washington DC.

But she brushed off the demonstration, tweeting that she would “work tirelessly” to fix the “broken immigration system”.

Her relationship with Mr Trump is said to have been difficult, although in public she has been loyal to the administration.

A sign of tougher border policy?

By Anthony Zurcher, BBC senior North America reporter

Kirstjen Nielsen reportedly had been on thin ice in the Trump administration for more than a year. Her closest ally, former Chief of Staff John Kelly, exited the White House in December. Now, along the annual spring thaw, the ice beneath her has finally cracked.

Or perhaps the homeland security secretary simply reached her limit. The real story will have to wait for the inevitable leaks and insider accounts that spread every time this president makes a staffing change.

What seems clear, however, is that there are conflicts taking place behind the scenes in the White House – conflicts accompanying the president’s increasingly belligerent rhetoric on immigration.

Just two days ago, Mr Trump rescinded his nomination of Ronald Vitiello to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement because, he said, he wanted to go in a “tougher direction”.

Now his homeland security secretary – whom he had in the past viewed as not aggressive enough – is out.

Ms Nielsen’s name will forever be associated with the Trump administration’s family separation border policy that led to massive bipartisan outcry last year. The president eventually backed down from that fight, but these latest moves suggest a more confrontational approach to border security is all but assured.

What’s the reaction?

Members of the Democratic party have already commented on her departure.

Bennie Thompson, Mississippi congressman and Chair of the Committee on Homeland Security, said Ms Nielsen’s tenure was “a disaster from the start”, while Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey calling the move “long overdue”.

However, he said the fight is “far from over to ensure Trump’s assault on our immigrant community comes to an end”.

But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham praised Ms Nielsen, saying she “did her best to deal with a broken immigration system and broken Congress”.

And Texas congressman Michael McCaul said she was “a principled voice” who “wholly understands the threats we face”.

President Trump insists the situation on the southern border is a crisis and has declared a national emergency, bypassing Congress to secure funds for his border wall plan.

Democrats have protested against the move, and declared the emergency unconstitutional.

Who is Kevin McAleenan?

Mr McAleenan, 47, was confirmed as the nation’s top border protection officer in 2018 with bipartisan support. He previously served as Customs and Border Protection (CBP)’s deputy commissioner under the Obama administration.

In 2015, Mr McAleenan received the highest civil service award from then-President Barack Obama.

Last year, he faced criticism in the media for carrying out Mr Trump’s zero tolerance policy that led to the family separation crisis, but he has maintained his agency’s duty is to carry out the laws, not create them.

Mr McAleenan is married to Corina McAleenan, an El Salvadoran immigrant, according to the Times, who worked for several years with the US Secret Service.

He is a graduate of Amherst College – where his honours thesis was on marriage equality, the New York Times reported – and he helped develop antiterrorism border security strategies after the 9/11 attacks.

Mr McAleenan received a law degree from the University of Chicago and worked in California before CBP.

 

Trump orders firing of Secret Service chief: CNN

April 8, 2019

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the firing of the U.S. Secret Service director, CNN reported on Monday, one day after the resignation of another top national security official, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Trump instructed his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to fire Secret Service Director Randolph Alles, CNN reported, citing multiple administration officials. One official described the firings as “a near-systematic purge” at the Department of Homeland Security.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reporting by Makini Brice and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

 

 

President Donald Trump

Psychology Today

Since the campaign that led to his 2016 election, Donald J. Trump has defiantly flipped the presidential script, with chaos and deliberate combativeness a new mark of White House operations, manifest in hostile briefings, high rates of staff turnover, and in cultural exchanges that appear aimed at dividing the nation. The U.S. is even divided about the degree to which Trump is directly or indirectly accountable for changes in civil discourse, with some citing his rhetoric and policies as a spur to hate crimes and others claiming he is being unfairly demonized by the press. Millions of people around the globe (not to mention many Americans) express bafflement at the nature of the personality at the center of it all, and many are alarmed by tactics and policies that are not only erratic and often retrogressive but that undermine democratic practices. A large segment of the population seeks to quell emotional reactivity to the chaos of the presidency and to navigate the civic, legal and ideological battles that play out daily, from Twitter to the federal courts.

Shrinks Battle Over Diagnosing Donald Trump 

A President’s Personality

Trump’s manifest grandiosity and disregard for facts, beginning with failure to accept clear evidence about the size of the crowd attending his inauguration, put mental health professionals in the spotlight from Day One of his presidency. Mental health professionals and commentators from all ideological camps early converged on a label of narcissistic personality disorder as the condition that clearly “explains” Trump’s behavior. Many mental health professionals have came forward to make this assertion, including more than 70,000 who signed a petition warning of Trump’s potential dangerousness, despite longstanding professional injunctions against “diagnosing”  public figures whom experts have not personally examined. Americans remain divided as to how authoritarian or grandiose Trump may or may not be, and who has the authority to make clinical pronouncements or draw historical parallels.

What Psychological Terms Characterize This Presidency?

Trump’s presidency has given rise to heated discussion about a range of psychological phenomena, well beyond the debate about his own personality. The term “gaslighting” refers to the manipulative attempt to make people question their own perceptions or memory, and it is now often invoked to describe Trump’s behavior, especially his statements about “fake news.” The question of whether or not Trump’s style should be characterized as authoritarian has also led to an analysis of world leaders past and present.

Whatever one’s position on Trump and his policies, a narrow area of agreement for most Americans is that the political climate has never been more corrosive and it reflects, to more or less degree, Trump’s contrarian approach to leadership

 

Atlantic City: ‘Trump turned this place into a ghost town’

When Trump won the election, photographer Brian Rose made straight for the gambling town – to show the reality behind his billionaire boasts. The broken city he captured speaks volumes about today’s America

April 8, 2019

by Thomas Hobbs

The Guardian

When Donald Trump opened the towering Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City in March 1990, he declared it “the eighth wonder of the world” and joined in the celebrations at a launch ceremony filled with portly actors dressed as genies brandishing tacky golden lamps. Even though it was purchased with almost $700m worth of junk bonds – which meant the Taj had to come up with $94m a year just to pay off its debts, and $1m a day to be profitable – Trump insisted the casino would make Atlantic City great again, returning the area to its prohibition-era glory days.

When photographer Brian Rose arrived in the city in 2016, the bankrupt Taj was practically empty. His images of the building’s exterior look eerily quiet, as if all its workers had left in a sudden hurry, with what was once a thriving casino now unkempt and surrounded by damaged sand dunes. He photographed a family of stray cats nesting in a spot where gamblers might once have collapsed in a drunken stupor.

Rose found a similarly bleak picture nearby, at the abandoned human resources offices of Trump Entertainment Resorts. His grim shot of a pigeon lying dead on the ground outside, beneath large pictures of strenuously grinning Trump employees, perfectly captures an area that now seems bereft of opportunity.

“I actually went back two weeks ago and they still haven’t closed off that HR entrance,” says Rose. “The smiling employees are still there, but Trump’s name has been scraped off, which I guess is telling. He’s tried to have his name removed from all his abandoned buildings here, but it’s still there if you look hard enough.”

One such place is the grounds of the Taj, where an elephant has the Trump name emblazoned below its feet. This flashy monument was created by sculptor Michael MacLeod, who was never paid for his work. Rose believes the elephant, which remained at the site when he visited in 2016 because it was too heavy to move, is a great metaphor for Trump’s own legacy in Atlantic City: “Making a lot of noise and stomping his weight around, but ultimately only leaving a trail of destruction.”

At one point, Trump had three casinos in Atlantic City, employing 8,000 people and accounting for nearly a third of the area’s gambling revenues. But they eventually became unsustainable thanks to a mixture of enormous debts, rival venues, weak local demand and negative press, which suggested Trump’s businesses were facilitating money laundering – something later given credence when the Taj was fined $10m for failing to report suspicious transactions. Two, the Trump Castle and the Taj, now have new owners, but the famous Trump Plaza, which once hosted Wrestlemania and Mike Tyson fights, stands derelict and is set to be demolished.

The failure of the now president’s five Atlantic City businesses resulted in thousands of job losses and put dozens of local contractors out of business because they were, much like the elephant sculptor, unpaid. Yet, during his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump boasted of how he took “incredible” amounts of money out of Atlantic City, borrowing cash from third parties so his own wealth wasn’t affected by his various businesses going under. According to Rose, his legacy is best reflected by Atlantic City’s 7.4% unemployment rate – nearly double the national average. “When Trump failed with his casinos,” says Rose, “he turned Atlantic City into a ghost town. His legacy still haunts the boardwalk.”

Rose’s photographs have always focused on a society looking to rebuild, with bold buildings at their core. Previous work captured the collapse of the Berlin Wall as well as Manhattan’s lower east side in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In these photographs, the buildings almost feel like characters in their own right: it’s as if they’re more reliable witnesses, since they’re unable to lie or hide behind a mask.

“Never take anything for granted,” says Rose. “It is all going to change. The Berlin Wall was seen as permanent. People couldn’t believe the Twin Towers would ever come down. As a photographer, that means you have to pay attention to what is out there now. It may seem like it isn’t worth photographing, but it might be gone tomorrow.”

When Trump was elected in 2016, Rose knew instantly that he had to go to Atlantic City: “Trump is the ultimate portrayal of this successful American billionaire. People get taken in, but the failure of Atlantic City shows the reality behind the boasts.”

The resulting book, Atlantic City, contains a foreword by Pulitzer prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger. “Bleakness,” he says, “forms the constant theme of these images, a sense of emptiness and an utter lack of urbanity.” The book is full of dystopian imagery, with Trump’s failed casinos looking as if they could be part of a Blade Runner movie. But Rose insists this work goes beyond the “aesthetic of an abandoned amusement park”, believing it says just as much about America in 2019. He believes there are Atlantic Citys all across the country.

“Tourists,” he says, “go to Atlantic City, go straight into their hotel and the casino, and then they don’t leave, which means the town outside is very isolated and dangerous, with the casinos cannibalising all the local businesses. Drug use and crime is so high, and this is something we see in other American cities, too, like Baltimore and Cleveland, where a commercial centre dwarfs the rest of the society.”

Rose recalls seeing one highly unexpected sight in Atlantic City: “When I was taking photos of the casinos, I saw two women in Maga hats. They live in a place that Trump helped ruin, yet still believe in him. I found that extraordinary.”

It would be unfair, however, to put the blame solely on the 45th president of the United States. One of the reasons Atlantic City’s gambling industry started to fail was because the New Jersey town was no longer the only major draw on the eastern seaboard, with Pennsylvania and Connecticut offering attractive alternatives. The fact that the coast is freezing cold for at least two thirds of the year also makes it a grey and isolated place.

Nor were Trump’s the only casinos to close. The gigantic Revel, now known as the Ocean Resort Casino, was another expensive failure. One of the book’s best photographs shows two wooden houses dwarfed by the Revel’s flank as an American flag flaps off to the side. The building feels monstrous, uncaring or unaware of its tiny neighbours, a symbol of capitalism’s empty conscience. “It looks like the end of the world to me,” says Rose. “It looks like the death of the American dream. The Revel is this surreal modernist glass world. When you go inside it, it’s like you’re in a utopia, but a totally empty utopia, bar a few old people on the slot machines. It reminds me of that Talking Heads lyric, ‘Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.’”

In the roaring 20s, Atlantic City was the place to be. With prohibition largely unenforced, the city’s famous boardwalk was teeming with hedonists on a weekend away, ordinary Joes, politicians and the mafia all hitting the casinos and brothels together. There has been plenty of talk about revitalising the area and helping it regain its nickname of “the world’s playground”. Officials are even hopeful the Hard Rock Cafe’s $500m makeover of Trump’s Taj casino can bring in more tourists. Rose, however, finds it difficult to imagine a time when the area won’t be in decay, forever chasing the shadows of its past.

They want to revitalise the area by building more casinos,” says the photographer, “which shows there’s no real lesson being learned. There is only so much money to be made in Atlantic City – and the pie isn’t going to get any bigger.” He sighs. “Atlantic City is a sand bar projecting into the ocean that just happens to have this huge commercial infrastructure built on it. One day it will all be washed away. Perhaps only then will Atlantic City be cleansed.”

• Brian Rose’s Atlantic City is published by Circa

Midwest floods hammer U.S. ethanol industry, push some gasoline prices toward five-year high

April 8, 2019

by Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly

Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The March floods that punished the U.S. Midwest have trapped barrels of ethanol in the country’s interior, causing shortages of the biofuel and helping to boost gasoline prices in the western United States.

The historic floods have dealt a series of blows to large swaths of an ethanol industry that was already struggling with high inventories and sluggish domestic demand growth.

The ethanol shortages are one factor pushing gasoline prices in Southern California, including Los Angeles, to the highest in the country, and they could top $4 a gallon for the first time since 2014, according to tracking firm GasBuddy.

Benchmark price for ethanol used in most supply contracts initially jumped on news of the floods but has been hobbled by rising waters around the Chicago hub that have halted barges and sales. That stands in contrast to prices on the coasts, which rose dramatically – drawing in heavy imports from Brazil, the main U.S. ethanol competitor.

The floods inflicted billions of dollars in damage to crops and homes in the U.S. Midwest, and knocked out roughly 13 percent of ethanol capacity.

U.S. ethanol is made from corn and required by the government to be blended into the country’s fuel supply to reduce emissions.

While some ethanol plants were flooded, the primary effect of the rising waters was to shut rail lines that serve as the main arteries for corn and ethanol deliveries.

Ethanol prices on the coasts spiked due to shortages, but Midwest producers have been unable to take advantage because of washed-out rail lines, market sources told Reuters.

“Unfortunately for anyone who was impacted by logistics issues it was a double whammy. You couldn’t capture the rally,” said one trader.

At Chicago’s Argo terminal, the nation’s main ethanol pricing hub, the cash price for ethanol fell for an eighth straight session last week to $1.29 a gallon, the longest downward skid since April of last year, according to Oil Price Information Service, which does daily assessments.

Initially, fears of widespread plant outages boosted that benchmark, but plants proved more resilient than expected, continuing to produce despite logistical challenges.

U.S. ethanol inventories were at 24 million barrels for the week ended March 29, just off a record hit a week earlier, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

Chicago’s price acts as the benchmark for millions of barrels bought and sold via longer-term supply contracts each day. While that price faltered, ethanol prices at the coast have surged, helping plants owned by Pacific Ethanol Inc and White Energy in California and Texas to take advantage of higher prices.

Ethanol delivered into Los Angeles typically trades at 20 cents a gallon higher than Chicago, but that premium rose to as high as 50 cents a gallon, traders said. The price in New York Harbor was at roughly double normal levels, traders said.

The tight ethanol supplies, along with refinery outages, boosted retail gasoline prices and led to some gas station shutdowns in the West as blenders there lacked the ethanol needed to blend with gasoline to make fuel that meets government regulations.

Gas prices in Arizona averaged $2.89 per gallon on Monday, 17 percent higher than last month, according to the American Automobile Association. Prices were even steeper in California at $3.80 a gallon, well above the national average of $2.74 a gallon.

Cash prices in the state’s physical market suggest further increases. In Los Angeles, spot gasoline on Monday was offered 10 cents a gallon higher from where it traded on Friday, putting it at a premium of 69 cents a gallon above the NYMEX futures benchmark.

“Ultimately, Los Angeles could get close to seeing that average at $4 a gallon,” Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at tracking firm GasBuddy, said, adding that much of that increase will come because of refinery outages in the state.

At least one county in California has already surpassed $4 a gallon. The highest recorded average price for the state was $4.67 a gallon, in October 2012, according to AAA.

The high coastal prices attracted barrels from the biggest U.S. competitor: Brazil. Overall ethanol imports to the United States totaled 558,279 barrels in March, the most seasonally since 2013, according to Refinitiv Eikon ship tracking data. Most of the imports during the month came from Brazil, according to the tracking data.

Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly; additional reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and David Gregorio

Encyclopedia of American Loons

• David Roberts

David Roberts is an Ohio-based new age crackpot and woo merchant. His impressive repertoire of pseudoscience and nonsense can be viewed on his website The Game of Time. According to the website Roberts is also a Pleiadian starseed upon whom is bestowed the task of sharing the infinite wisdom of the stars with us mere mortals. We’ve had the opportunity to encounter a number of Pleiadian starseeds before.

Roberts’s website is sometimes a bit challenging to make sense of, but there are at least plenty of New Age ramblings, weird color schemes and 1990s-style clip art (rainbows shooting out of things is a recurring theme). Topics include: the law of attraction, pseudopsychology, subtle energies, quantum woo, pseudoexistentialism, time travel, parallel dimensions, and a variety of impressively misunderstood concepts and ideas from something resembling science, complete with stream-of-consciousness associations and equivocations (“remember that another way say Light is Energy, and another is Matter,” says Roberts, channeling Humpty-Dumpty). Apparently everything is ultimately magic; light is magic, energy is magic, leverage force and gravity are magic (“[o]f its many magical qualities, none are as impressive as the infinite reach of gravity”), magnetism is magic (“[a]nother form of invisible attractive force we don’t understand is magnetism” – yes, f***ing magnets, how do they work; and “[m]agnetism is also related to another form of magic – electricity”), sound is magic (“[s]ound turns out to be a gravitational phenomenon, so by these definitions is already a form of magic” – dare anyone suggest that there might be something off with Roberts’s definitions, then?), as is fire, chemistry, desire, thought, choice, reinterpretation, cooperation, genius, visualization, subconsciousness, fear, love, deception and – not the least – money (“a form of stored magic”).

There are also miracles. “To anyone who is grounded in science and logic like myself, the idea of a miracle can discredit one’s theories,” Roberts admits, but … well, we’ll let him explain it himself: “We find ourselves here in the third dimension, with corresponding rules. Another way to say fourth dimension would be our subconscious world [pretty sure those two expressions are not semantically equivalent]. Yet another would be the universe itself [ditto], thus it seems that our three-dimensional experience extends into the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension is also the realm of possibility. Beyond that lies the fifth dimension and what we might call the beginning of the “spirit world”, where it seems the rules change and new possibilities open up. Beyond the spirit world, rules change once again and eventually, in the tenth dimension, impossible things become possible.” It’s admittedly more of a “claim” than an “explanation”. Here is Roberts’s time theory. Which is more of an incoherent stream of associations than a theory.

If you have money to offload, you can purchase Roberts’s Pleiadian Healing Tarot Cards, which are produced with clip art and allow up to seven people to share their energy – they don’t divine the future, but will rather heal the soul and open your mind up to the different dimensions of existence in the multiverse. Falsify that, you science worshippers! You can also order his pdf books Heal Yourself in Time and 12 Dimensions of Consciousness and Beyond.

Diagnosis: Mostly harmless. But according to his website, he has “worked on this project for eighteen years,” which is profoundly sad.

• Doug Phillips

We’ve covered some deranged fundies over the years, but Doug Phillips has something of a special position among them. Phillips is the kind of guy that conjures up the image of someone shedding tears of elation over the sheer beauty in the justice in seeing heretics tortured and people in general suffer for the glory of God, the kind who views the Republic of Gilead as inspirational and the 11thcentury as already dangerously mired in wayward progressive enlightenment ideas about science, liberty and autonomy. Phillips main concern is women– the fairer and weaker and less rational sex – and how to save women from unbiblical horrors like independence, freedom and having to make decisions for themselves.

Phillips used promoted his views through the Vision Forum until he admitted to having an extramarital affair (though not the abusive details of that affair, more here), which turned out to be somewhat awkward given Vision Forum’s, well, vision, and the Forum was closed down. There is a splendid resource on the Vision Forum and its work here. Before closing, however, the Forum was pretty influential in Christian homeschooling circles, and used to have booths and speakers at every major convention, as well as networks across the Christian homeschooling scene (it’s probably notable that the other proponent of the Biblical Patriarchy model for homeschooling, Bill Gothard, suffered the same fate as Phillips). Phillips was also a central figure in the quiverfull movement.

A vehemently theocratic group, the central pillar of Vision Forum’s mission was Biblical Patriarchy – complementarianism with an emphasis on the fact that man was created first and woman’s creation was secondary. Patriarchy is accordingly the divine family order ordained by God, where the husband and father is the head of the household and the wife and mother created to be his helper and bearer of children. Moreover, children are to marry through a process of courtship guided at every step by their parents, and unmarried adult daughters are to remain under their fathers’ authority and in their fathers’ homes; illuminating detail here). (Choice Phillips quote: “Daughters aren’t to be independent. They’re not to act outside the scopeof their father. As long as they’re under the authority of their fathers, fathers have the ability to nullify or not the oaths and the vows. Daughters can’t just go out 
independently and say, ‘I’m going to marry whoever I want.’ No. The father has 
the ability to say, ‘No, I’m sorry, that has to be approved by me.’”) You know the deal (and note: the movement is actively encouraging people to deny their daughters contact with the outside world – this is not just some abstract ideal), though we suspect the Forum associates would be quick to try to explain how the idea is different from the ideas imposed by … well, people they wouldn’t otherwise want to be associated with in other parts of the world. In any case, this organization of society is apparently crucial to bringing about the coming kingdom of God on Earth.

So yes, the Vision Forum subscribes to dominionism, the idea that God has called Christians to take over society, mass culture, and government, bringing them into line with God’s law to establish a theocratic, hierarchical and ordered society – and the explicit goal of homeschooling, then, is to groom children to be soldiers for spiritual warfare. Even Michael Farris has distanced himself from the Vision Forum ideology. The Duggars, however, are apparently fans.

An illustrative example of their work was their Beautiful Girlhood Collection, built on what is ostensibly a Biblical vision of femininity and promoting a vision of girls’ childhoods centered on the idea that servility is beauty: girls play with dolls and cook and clean. There is a brief but apt description here. They even have a “science” section. We’ll pass that one over in silence. The Vision Forum is also opposed to women’s suffrage, having produced an alleged civics study guide “Law and Government: An Introductory Study Course” where it is argued that women should not be allowed to run for office or vote. The “study guide” included contributions from e.g. Roy Moore.

At the 100-year anniversary of the Titanic disaster, Phillips took the opportunity to declare that Titanic was evidence of the goodness of Christianity while the sinking of a French ship La Bourgogne a few years before demonstrates the evils of evolution: “People that were on board the deck of the Titanic at that time were individuals that grew up in a culture which was distinctively Christian in its perspective of the role of men and women; [by comparison, when the La Bourgogne] sunk the sailors and the officers literally threw women and children into the water, beat them over the head, and the men lived and the women died. [,,, ] And in trying to understand why that happened, the commentary was, they grew up in a culture that embraced evolution, it was the struggle of the survival of the fittest, they grew up in the culture of the French Revolution which had rejected biblical Christianity and embraced paganism and the consequences were that men treat women horrifically.” Needless to say, Phillips didn’t quite get the historical details about the two events quite correct (mild criticism here), but of course, his point was not accuracy: “flash forward to the year 2012 and this year our president has finally taken us over the abyss and we have full-fledged commitment to women in the frontlines of combat in overseas battles.” As for evolution, Phillips elaborated: “Evolution says the struggle of the survival of the fittest, there are no differences between men and women, there is no charity, there is no deference, and in an evolutionary world feminism reaches its height and we see no distinctions. The result is babies are killed en masse, women are treated like chattel and men no longer take on their masculine role as defenders.” It is little surprise that a fundie creationist fail to grasp the rather basic and easy distinction between a descriptive, scientific claim about biological reality (not that Phillips is remotely on track here either) and a value system, but it is equally facepalm-inducing every time.

It is certainly not Phillips’s only forays into anti-evolution rants. The Vision Forum even produced a “documentary” (promoted by the WND) called “Mysterious Islands: A Surprising Journey to Darwin’s Eden,” which “debunks the conclusions Charles Darwin reached during his storied trip to the Galapagos Islands.” Apparently they took a group of Christian “scientists” to the Galapagos Islands to determine whether the islands “are a laboratory for evolution as Darwin believed – or a truly magnificent showcase of God’s creation,” which suggests some rather basic (but predictable) lack of understanding of how data and evidence work in hypothesis testing. Phillips, however, have more arguments: Darwin “said we would see fossil examples of animals going from one kind to another,” said Phillips (this is not quite what Darwin said), but it is “our contention that not one transitional form has ever been found.” Yes, we are aware that this is your contention, and that the fact that you are demonstrably wrong is not going to change your mind. “Today people look to the Galapagos, and evolutionists and Darwinists see it in the same way that Christians look to Jerusalem and Muslims look to Mecca,” Phillips said, which is not only a ridiculous thing to say but tells you quite a bit about Phillips’s somewhat cursory understanding of science, scientists and scientific practice. But given this false assumption, it is a short step to Phillips’s conclusion: “They [evolutionists] really embrace the evolutionary faith. In our film, we insist that evolution is, in fact, a faith. It’s a worldview based on unprovable assumptions that are accepted by faith.” We don’t for a second doubt that Phillips is confounded by the lack of impact his contributions have on science, but we are fairly confident that he’ll blame it on heretics and demons.

Phillips is also the founder of the Christian Filmmakers’ Academy and a close associate of Kirk Cameron. He was also featured in Colin Gunn’s “IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America”, which explicitly advocated that the Bible should be the model and core of all public education.

Diagnosis: One of the most disgusting, vile pieces of evil, hateful garbage to ever walk the face of the Earth, and as delusionally insane as he is morally corrupt. Hopefully somewhat neutralized, but his ideology certainly lives on.

 

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

April 8, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”

Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.

 

Conversation No. 65

Date: Tuesday, February 11, 1997

Commenced: 9:05 AM CST

Concluded: 9:42 AM CST

 

RTC: Why, Gregory, so soon after our last conversation? We’ll have to be careful or Emily might get jealous. Do you have something new for me to chew on?

GD: No, I’ve been working on the latest Mueller book and I’m about worked out for the rest of the day. Writing is not hard, Robert, but the research is a killer. Still, if you don’t want the rat-faced gits in your old agency or Wolfe’s decaying Hebrews braying at you like a barn full of donkeys in a fire, you have to dot every “i” and cross every “t”. Not that these chinless wonders are capable of finding errors, but eventually someone might and then the jackass chorus begins. No, Corson told me my strong suit was my research and my stronger one was taking the results of it and making it readable without being a pompous, opinionated university pedant. When I worked for Army Intelligence years ago, I was well-known for my research. Of course, the whole office hated me.

RTC: And why so?

GD: Actually, because I worked on my material until I had finished, even if I had to spend the night in the office. I was known to have slept on my desk and subsisted on coffee. But the work got done and, most important, it got done right. And I never tried to shove my own views down anyone’s throat. I liked then, as I like now, to present both sides of an issue, clearly and without passion, letting the reader make up its own mind.

RTC: Very, very rare, talent, Gregory. Bill commented on this once and I would have to agree. Well, who do you work for now? This seems to be in your blood.

GD: Myself. I am a wonderful boss, Robert, really inspired and so kind to myself.

RTC: Do you treat yourself well at Christmas?

GD: Oh yes, Christmas. I haven’t had a Christmas card for years and not a present from anyone. It’s just another day for me and quieter than most.

RTC: I would invite you to have Christmas with us, but my son would be unhappy.

GD: Well, thank you for the thought.

RTC: And how is the Mueller book coming?

GD: Fine, and the blow-flies from your former agency are starting to buzz around again. Let’s see how much I can clip them for this time.

RTC: Well, I suppose if they can’t be more creative, they have to pay the price.

GD: No, they would never come right out and try to communicate with me. Why, the Gods do not deign to descend to earth to speak with mere mortals. And they pay the price, too. After all, they don’t care how much of the taxpayer’s money ends up in my pocket. What about the fool returning to his own folly? Or the dog to his own vomit? At least they don’t descend to the petty and sadistic harassments that we find in the local police.

RTC: I would hope not.

GD: That puts me in mind of a sordid but highly entertaining incident in my earlier life. Most people remember Thanksgivings with the grandparents or their first experience in the cramped backseat of the family car but I recall more entertaining things.

RTC: Are you planning to enlighten me? This has nothing to do with the Company, has it? You’re rather negative today, Gregory.

GD: I’m negative all the time. No, nothing to do with your people. Just an example of how to deal with illegally intrusive agencies. I was living in a rural area once and in a nearby town was a friend of mine. He was a gun collector. He actually collected Swiss Lugers.

RTC: German?

GD: No, Swiss. Beautifully made pieces.

RTC: I can well imagine. Go on.

GD: Anyway, he collected these and people knew about this. I want to stress that they were quite legal. The local sheriff’s people somehow got wind of this and began to harass him. I think they just wanted to frighten him and steal his collection. The police love to do things like that. When I was younger, I knew one cop who liked to take war relics like Japanese swords away from kids because he said they were illegal, which they were not. I fixed his wagon good but this is not the forum for that one. So he had vague and sinister threats like, ‘You could go to prison for years…’ and so on. He told me about this harassment. He had no money and it was a rural area where there are no real lawyers to intervene, so I gave the matter a lot of thought and finally hit on a plan to rid himself of the swine. Not nice but it worked.

RTC: Yes. What did you do? Shoot someone?

GD: Oh God, no. Someone else did.

RTC: This is beginning to sound rather ugly.

GD: It does get that way. First off, I told him to hide the guns, the Lugers, away from his home and I gave him some suggestions. He did, but he hated to lose physical control of them. Now you know, in the rural area in his county was a junkyard that was run by an old nut. He was convinced that the Communists were taking over the local schools and kept getting up at local governmental meetings and bitching about this. And, of course, sent long misspelled letters to the local paper. I didn’t know him personally, but I knew, or found out, a lot about him. He shot the neighborhood dogs and cats and was, in my estimation at least, a perfect foil. My friend now had no weapons, legal or otherwise, in his physical possession. So I got the name of the chief of detectives that was hoping to add some nice pieces to his personal gun collection and I called him at home. They wouldn’t have a trace on his line then. I told him a good deal of really accurate information to establish my bona fides and then said that he also had two German machine pistols, which I went into some detail on and that he had hidden them with the owner of the junkyard, who, I knew, was also a gun collector. This one was not very smart and he bought the whole cake. I waited a few days and then called the junk dealer. I told him I was on the local sheriff’s staff and we knew a gang of armed Communists were going to come out to his place and kill him.

RTC: Oh, sweet Jesus, you didn’t? No, you did. Go on, but I know the ending.

GD: Naturally. One dark night, two cars full of deputies, all heavily armed with guns and shovels, drove down his lane, lights out. The junkyard dogs started barking and the old man was ready. The one I talked to, kicked down his door and the old man let fly with a 12 gauge shotgun, full choke, pointblank range, both barrels, right in the face. Down went the greedy one with no head left. Reload and the one behind got both barrels in the tum-tum. Another one got it in the leg and they later had to cut if off above the knee. Screaming, shouting, guns going off all over the place, screams from the junkyard as the vicious dogs munched on deputies. My God, Robert, the neighbors said it sounded like the Battle of Cold Harbor. Some deputy had a Truflight 37 millimeter flare gun and he got winged and let fly up in the air. That’s the sort of tear gas gun that is really designed to set fire to buildings. A little tear gas for effect and a lot of incendiary material. The Feds used that in LA to nail the SLA. ‘Oh, gosh,’ they say after they burned down a house with fifteen people in it,’ someone must have knocked over a candle in there.’ So one of these shells went up and came down on a neighbor’s house. Set it on fire and by the time the rural fire boys managed to get out there, it had burnt to the ground with a wheel-chair bound granny inside. Of course, they finally killed the old man and all of his dogs and his place burnt down with two of the law roasted along with the old man. You could see the flames for miles. The next day, the remaining law-breakers were out there, picking through the smoking rubble and digging in the junkyard in a frantic search for the guns. Of course, there weren’t any guns. And as a precaution, I had told my friend to absent himself from the area and visit friends. Of course they came after him but he was 500 miles away and had been there before, during and after the carnage. And now the really nice part. The old man’s son was a prominent lawyer in another state and I called him up, telling him I was a horrified local policeman. He had no idea what had happened, so I said they had killed his father and burned his house down because he was making trouble for them. That lawyer went ballistic, as they say, and believed every word I said. And when he descended on the town, along with the FBI, I would like to have been in the civic offices. Of course I wasn’t, because I am not stupid but there were copious newspaper accounts and local gossip. I know there were several closed coffins at various funerals in the weeks to come. And huge lawsuits, Federal charges and so on followed. The local law could give no reason why they raided the place other than to claim some informant had phoned in a tip. Who was this informant? No idea. The lawyer got big money in the end, people were arrested and many new faces were seen in the much-subdued sheriff’s office. And I had my friend contact the son and tell him a story and tell him he was terrified for his life. The lawyer used his testimony and, good for him, paid for my friend’s exit from the area and his comfortable establishment under a new name elsewhere.

RTC: Probably got him under Witness Protection. That’s quite a story, Gregory, but I believe it. Your friend kept his guns?

GD: That was the drill, Robert, he kept his guns. There never were any machine guns, of course. I moved away out of prudence about this time so I can’t tell you any more.

RTC: Take care of your friends, Gregory, don’t you?

GD: Always, Robert. And I take care of the bad people as well. Does this turn you off?

RTC: Not really. I see a typical abuse of power there, Gregory, and I’m really so happy we seem to get on with each other.

GD: Now he could just have moved away, but why should he have to do that? They were wrong and that’s the end of the matter.

RTC: I told Bill once that you should have worked for us.

GD: No, I would not have. I am happy when I work by myself and I would not do well in a bureaucracy. They aren’t overly bright and they love to tell you why you can’t do this or that. The point is, Robert, that you win the real battle, not the paper one.

 

(Concluded at 9:42 AM CST)

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