This is big, really big folks. McGahn used all of the same arguments that every other Administration Official made and he had a much better case than most for Lawyer/Client Privilege.

All shot down.

As Burt Gummer says to Earl Bass in Tremors 2–

Why are you hiding behind that?

You said it was going to be big.

Bigger than that!

Olly Oll Oxen Free! You get to Testify, and you get to Testify! Everybody Gets To Test-ify! Yes brothers and sisters you get right up here in front of the Committee and Testify! And you have to do it whether we immunize you or not because otherwise the Court Bailiff and the U.S. Marshals will throw you in Jail until you rot or you do.

Hallelujah and Amen!

And have a nice day.

Former White House counsel Donald McGahn must comply with House subpoena, judge rules
By Spencer S. Hsu and Ann E. Marimow, Washington Post
November 25, 2019

Former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn must comply with a House subpoena, a federal court ruled Monday, finding that “no one is above the law” and that top presidential advisers cannot ignore congressional demands for information. The ruling raises the possibility that McGahn could be forced to testify as part of the impeachment inquiry.

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of Washington, found no basis for a White House claim that the former counsel is “absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony,” likely setting the stage for a historic separation-of-powers confrontation between the government’s executive and legislative branches.

The House Judiciary Committee went to court in August to enforce its subpoena for McGahn, whom lawmakers consider the “most important” witness in whether Trump obstructed justice in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

President Trump blocked McGahn’s appearance, saying McGahn had cooperated with Mueller’s probe, was a key presidential adviser and could not be forced to answer questions or turn over documents. Jackson disagreed, ruling that if McGahn wants to refuse to testify, such as by invoking executive privilege, he must do so in person and question by question.

The Justice Department’s claim to “unreviewable absolute testimonial immunity,” Jackson wrote, “is baseless, and as such, cannot be sustained.”

Jackson ordered McGahn to appear before the House committee said the conclusion she reached was “inescapable” because a subpoena demand is part of the legal system — not the political process — and “per the Constitution, no one is above the law.”

“However busy or essential a presidential aide might be, and whatever their proximity to sensitive domestic and national-security projects, the President does not have the power to excuse him or her from taking an action that the law requires,” Jackson wrote in a 118-page opinion. “Fifty years of say so within the Executive branch does not change that fundamental truth.”
…
Jackson’s decision had been highly anticipated, with major implications for other high-value witnesses in the Democrats’ ongoing impeachment investigation, including former national security adviser John R. Bolton and Bolton’s deputy Charles Kupperman.
…
In a letter to colleagues, Schiff underscored that stonewalling by the White House could form the basis for a separate article of impeachment.

“Given that the House’s impeachment inquiry is proceeding rapidly, the Committee has a finite window of time to effectively obtain and consider McGahn’s testimony,” House General Counsel Douglas Letter had written last week in asking the judge to move quickly.

“The Judiciary Committee anticipates holding hearings after [the] public hearings have concluded and would aim to obtain Mr. McGahn’s testimony at that time,” Letter wrote.

The House Judiciary Committee is continuing to investigate obstruction of justice allegations detailed in Mueller’s 448-page report, which mentioned McGahn’s statements more than 160 times.

For instance, on June 17, 2017, three days after The Washington Post reported the special counsel was investigating whether the president had obstructed justice and a month after Mueller was appointed, Trump called McGahn at home twice and directed him to fire Mueller over alleged conflicts of interest, the House’s lawsuit stated, citing Mueller’s report.

Mueller’s report ultimately concluded that it was not the special counsel’s role to determine whether the president broke the law.

Trump’s July call to Ukraine came one day after Mueller testified to Congress about his probe’s conclusions.

Jackson’s ruling dealt a blow to the Trump administration’s assertion of executive branch power against inquiries by the legislative branch. The position was stated by current White House counsel Pat Cipollone in an Oct. 9 letter in which he said the administration will not cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry.

William A. Burck, McGahn’s attorney, said, “Don McGahn will comply with Judge Jackson’s decision unless it is stayed pending appeal. DOJ is handling this case, so you will need to ask them whether they intend to seek a stay.”

Burck has said McGahn does not believe he witnessed any violation of law, and that the president instructed him to cooperate fully with Mueller but not to testify without agreement between the White House and committee.

On Capitol Hill, the ruling vindicated months of arguments from House Democratic leaders blasting the Trump administration’s blanket refusals to cooperate with their investigations — including from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has repeatedly said her majority would “legislate, investigate and litigate” as they seek to hold Trump to account.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who issued the subpoena under dispute, said in a prepared statement that he was pleased by Jackson’s ruling.

“Don McGahn is a central witness to allegations that President Trump obstructed Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, and the Administration’s claim that officials can claim ‘absolute immunity’ from Congressional subpoenas has no basis in law, as the court recognized today,” he said. ““Now that the court has ruled, I expect him to follow his legal obligations and promptly appear before the Committee.”
…
The ruling does not mean that McGahn will have to immediately appear before Congress under his April 22 subpoena. The Justice Department can ask the judge to put her ruling on hold, and if she declines, ask the appeals court to temporarily stay the opinion.

However, Jonathan Shaub, a former attorney in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, said a ruling against McGahn will “provide cover for other witnesses, especially former employees who are inclined to testify but feel compelled by the White House’s direction not to.”

Even if Congress prevails in the courts, McGahn could appear before the committee but still decline to answer certain questions. McGahn could assert a separate claim of executive privilege and refuse to respond to specific questions about conversations with the president, for instance, unless he is authorized to do so by the White House.

An appeal and binding circuit court ruling could set up a historic Supreme Court test over the constitution’s checks-and-balances, pitting Congress’s impeachment and oversight authority against the powers of the presidency.
…
House Democrats were closely watching the outcome of McGahn’s case because of how it might affect other impeachment-related witnesses. The House intelligence committee-led inquiry seeks testimony from Bolton and had issued — but then withdrew — a subpoena to Kupperman, Bolton’s deputy, while courts addressed the White House’s blanket immunity claim.

Charles J. Cooper, the lawyer who represents Bolton and Kupperman, has said the two will not participate in the House impeachment inquiry until a federal judge resolves the dispute.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also rebuffed a House subpoena for department records in the Ukraine probe.

In McGahn’s case, at a hearing Oct. 31 before Jackson, Assistant Attorney General James Burnham argued that the House “as a general proposition” can never sue the executive branch, nor compel top White House aides to appear.

House general counsel Douglas N. Letter told the court that “the Judiciary Committee cannot fulfill its constitutional investigative, oversight and legislative responsibilities — including its consideration of whether to recommend articles of impeachment — without hearing from [McGahn].”

What do you do Nancy when the rest of the Subpoenas come in and incontrovertible evidence is found the entire Administration is criminally corrupt from top to bottom, Putin used Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s multi-Billion Dollar debt to blackmail him into becoming an active Russian Agent of Influence, he subverted the Department of Justice to Obstruct Justice and attack his Political and Personal Enemies and has been Blackmailing weaker Nations right and left.

Oh, and the Pee Tape is real!

What do you do after you’ve shut down the Investigations and given this traitor a pass and his Criminal Henchmen too?

Re-open or simply slink away in defeat like a loser?

Don’t. Rush. Your. Pitch.

Republicans are a useless bunch of Racist, Misogynist, Greedheads. You will never be able to work with them because they are EVIL! You may lose but you should do as much damage as you can until, eventually, you crush them, all of them, like bugs.

So the early stories on Navy Secretary Richard Spencer’s firing by Defense Secretary Mark Esper painted the situation as Spencer courageously standing on principle to strip a convicted and confessed (that’s what a pardon is folks, a confession and clemency) War Criminal of the honor of belonging, or ever claiming to have belonged to, an elite and highly respected Military Force- the SEALs (that’s what stripping your Trident means). Think Branded, torn epaulets, broken sword, and all- only Edward Gallagher is not a secretly honorable man on an undercover mission…

He’s a War Criminal.

At least that was Richard Spencer’s public position, he was down the line behind the actual Navy brass in their disciplinary actions and would resign rather than let Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio interfere. The implication from the initial reaction was his sudden and forced resignation a dastardly attempt by the Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio through Mark Esper to preempt Spencer (various theories about how and in what Universe that would be a good idea, none of them very convincing but… covfefe).

Well, maybe not so much.

Mark Esper’s position is that while Spencer was making his public commitments and, just incidentally, assuring him the same thing privately and officially, instead Spencer went to Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio and offered him no removal from the force (Branded) and that he would be allowed to retire (which is immanent) as a SEAL. Compare and contrast with McCabe.

Esper says that since Spencer flat out lied to him he had no choice but to ask for his resignation.

Which version do you choose and why? Five hundred words on my desk tomorrow.

Navy secretary forced out by Pentagon chief over handling of Navy SEAL’s war crimes case
By Ashley Parker and Dan Lamothe, Washington Post
November 24, 2019

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper asked for the resignation of Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer on Sunday after losing confidence in him over his handling of the case of a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes in Iraq, the Pentagon said.

Spencer’s ouster was another dramatic turn in the story of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was accused of committing war crimes during a 2017 deployment. Gallagher was acquitted of murder but convicted in July of posing with the corpse of an Islamic State prisoner.
…
Esper said that Spencer privately proposed to White House officials that he would ensure that Gallagher retired as a Navy SEAL, with his Trident insignia, if they did not interfere with a review board convened to determine his fitness to stay in the elite force.

Spencer’s proposal to the White House — which he did not share with Esper during several conversations about the matter — contradicted his own public position on the case, chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.

Esper said in the statement that he was “deeply troubled by this conduct.”

“Unfortunately, as a result I have determined that Secretary Spencer no longer has my confidence to continue in his position,” Esper said. “I wish Richard well.”

A senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the Pentagon verified with several sources that Spencer made the private offer to the White House.
…
Esper and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, learned of Spencer’s private offer to the White House when they spoke with Trump on Friday, Hoffman said.

Spencer’s proposal came after Trump intervened in the cases of Gallagher and two soldiers on Nov. 15. Countering Pentagon recommendations, the president issued pardons to Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who faced a murder trial next year, and former 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, who was convicted in 2013 in the murder of two unarmed men in Afghanistan.

Trump also reinstated Gallagher’s rank after the SEAL was demoted as punishment for posing for the photograph with the corpse.

After Trump’s intervention in the case, Rear Adm. Collin Green, the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, moved to convene review boards for him and three other Navy SEALs to determine whether they should be ejected from the force.

That prompted speculation that Spencer might resign or be fired for standing up to Trump, and angry reactions from Gallagher and advocates for him.

I have other talents for summarizing than Proust.

War, Racism, Genocide, and Football

Absolutely as true as it was in 2017. It’s uncanny.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

President John F. Kennedy laid to rest at Arlington; New details emerge about Iran-Contra affair; British forces leave New York; Elian Gonzalez rescued off Florida coast; Baseball’s Joe DiMaggio born.

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

Andrew Carnegie

Continue reading

With my best girl by my side I would sing, Sing, SING!

Can’t be a Yooper without knowing about Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox Babe.

Don’t worry, I promise to spare you the rest.

Everything is Fine

I got Mom hosting Thanksgiving Energy

Thanksgiving with the In-Laws

As it turns out, Pocahontas dumped John Smith, was captured, forced to adpot Christianity, and taken as a Slave Bride to England where she died.

Funny, huh?

What a World! What a World.

Doesn’t anyone use Hunts’s

I can’t believe they put that piece of crap up and cut these for time.

But first a word from our sponsor

Awkward Vacations

Bye Bye Birdie

We now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast.

High School Antics Continue

Who’s the dummy?

Yeah. Well. Will Ferrell.

Stay Tuned DuringOur Final Break

And now Weekend Update

Beautiful World – Devo

Channel Z – The B-52’s

Harder Better Faster – Daft Punk

I don’t often talk about it, but every writer has their influences. It is frequently said, “If you want to be a Great Author, read them,” and it’s true enough. Among my most notorious pieces are my ‘Homage to Catalonia’, oops I mean ‘Hills Like White Elephants’, and ‘The Sound and the Fury’ which I consider spot on and have won me awards and 6 A+es (my mandatory class in American Literature 202, my brother, and an acquaintance who really, really liked them. When I say spot on what I mean is I feel like I captured the stylistic quirks of the presentation in that they were instantly recognizable, the equivalent of a comedic impression.

One can hardly avoid it after prolonged exposure. If I find I need to reset my compass I read some Twain. Among other things he was a Journalist and when people question my credentials I respond that I’m every bit as well qualified as he was.

Among Web Authors who have influenced my current style are Atrios and digby. As I set up as an independent featured contributor and Admin I found that certain types of presentation were much less effective than they were in another context.

Because my goals were volume and regularity I found myself writing much shorter than I was accustomed to, some of my early work is nearly 5,000 words long. Well, that takes a month of research and 2 or 3 days just putting it on paper. Don’t get me wrong, they were masterpieces, just not the masterpieces I needed.

Reading Atrios has taught me not to be afraid of brevity and wit, as well as making me more comfortable with sucking (he has admirable modesty and sometimes Meatspace intrudes).

Reading digby has taught me not to be afraid of putting it all out there.

Part One

This is actually a bone of some Meta contention between myself and others. digby adheres to the convention of no page breaks. Unless the piece is exceptionally long all you have to do is scroll to read it, no extra clicks unless you want to view the links.

The controversy is that this reduces your number of page hits, which reduces your ad revenue… you get the picture. Fortunately writing on the Internet is not my primary source of income otherwise I would have staved to death long ago. It’s the Carny Barker Technique- “See the mystical miracles inside including the fabulous Egress.”

Now you might rightly accuse me of being obsessed with metrics in the past and it’s true enough but with the transition to WordPress I completely lost my ability to do it. Well, I could pay but screw it- I don’t need to know that badly. Instead I get satisfaction out of being professional and consistent (at sucking) and the kind words of strangers, TMC assures me we tweet above our weight.

Part Two

Fair Use. What I want from people who quote me is recognition (I never said I didn’t have an Ego, just that it’s self sufficient), and a link back for context and to avoid misquotes. That’s it. Quote it all. I’ve given several other Site Admins access so they can lift it straight from the code, they don’t even have to tell me.

I consider The Stars Hollow Gazette and DocuDharma as a whole a work of Art, a Banksey painting in words, a collage like Matisse and Braque each piece a small part of the greater mural. How great? As of deadline 45,123 posts on DocuDharma for whom I have wr1tten 8,375 and 19,905 on The Stars Hollow Gazette of which I contributed 6,746.

Until I advanced my thinking I was concerned that extensive quotation might be considered less than original work. I came to realize that 90% or more of it is just processing the Firehose (and remember, I don’t even use Twitter) and the added value (besides any wrapper content) is that I brought it to your attention when it might be easily missed or I consider it a pivotal part of the Historic record.

Anyway, I should use her more often because while she’s sometimes wrong headed she’s usually insightful, the problem is that like me she often uses others voices to speak for her which makes it hard to format.

Keep the pressure on Dems. Ukraine is the tip of the iceberg.
by digby, Hullabaloo
11/22/19

It was even worse than we thought. The president wasn’t just conspiring with his lawyer and a couple of obscure factotums. He had many high-level members of his Cabinet and staff involved as well, including the vice president, the secretary of state, the White House chief of staff, the energy secretary and the national security adviser. If the whistleblower hadn’t come forward, there is every reason to believe the plot would have succeeded and we would never have known what happened. After all, half a dozen staffers went through the normal channels and reported their concerns to the National Security Council’s legal counsel, and the result was to hide the record of the president’s call in a top-secret vault to keep it from being leaked.

If the president had put people other than the far too garrulous Sondland and the out-of-control Rudy Giuliani in charge, it’s likely this would have been handled much more discreetly. One cannot help but wonder how many other such “irregular” activities have been successfully covered up. Jared Kushner, for instance, has an expansive portfolio and has been involved with some of the most important foreign policy issues, many of which have had serious consequences in the Middle East and Turkey. Attorney General Bill Barr’s single-minded mission to hamstring the FBI and the intelligence community appears even more sinister in this light. Trump’s own inexplicable behavior with Russia comes to mind as well.

The fact that they almost got away with this crude and badly executed plot argues for the idea that it was not a one-off.

It is a given at this point that the president will be impeached. The talk among analysts and pundits in the wake of all this naturally turns to whether or not any of this has changed the underlying political dynamic that governs whether or not Trump will actually be convicted in the Senate and removed from office. The consensus is that it will not. Judging by the defiant, unhinged performance by the Republicans during the House Intelligence Committee hearings, in which they used their time to spread bogus conspiracy theories and insult the witnesses, that consensus is probably correct.

There was some hope for a time that a few of the Republicans who have already decided to retire might wish to preserve some shred of integrity on their way out the door, but that does not appear to be something they care about. The one considered most likely to break from the pack, Rep. Will Hurd of Texas — who is now the only black Republican in the House — lugubriously declared at the end of Thursday’s hearing that he had not been convinced: “An impeachable offense should be compelling, overwhelmingly clear and unambiguous. And it’s not something to be rushed or taken lightly. I have not heard evidence proving the president committed bribery or extortion.”

Hurd also said that he would like to hear from Hunter Biden, so any notion that Hurd has been acting in good faith must be taken with a grain of salt. But he does raise a good question. If Democrats believe that there’s no serious prospect of Republicans changing their minds in the face of such clear evidence — and it appears they are correct — why are they so intent upon rushing through this process? Why not take their time and try to get as much as possible before the public and into the record?

The Mueller investigation took two years and uncovered massive evidence of obstruction of justice. The Republicans had 10 investigations into the Benghazi attack over the course of three years. The Republican National Convention even featured a Benghazi night! House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy admitted they had done it all for political purposes to damage Hillary Clinton in the election — and it worked. In the course of one of those investigations, it was discovered that Clinton had used a personal email server for non-classified State Department business. I don’t think I need to tell you how that affected the campaign in 2016.

So it seems counterproductive for the Democrats to be so anxious to close this impeachment inquiry when we now know that the highest levels of the administration were involved. Without hearing from Giuliani, John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who reportedly wants to resign because this scandal is damaging his reputation) — all of whom have been heavily implicated, and all of whom appear to have further political ambitions — this case doesn’t accurately convey what happened and continues to happen in this White House. You’d think they’d at least want to hear from Rudy Giuliani’s accomplice Lev Parnas, who has signaled a willingness to talk. Who knows what he might have to say?

I realize that Democrats like the idea of having this staid, formal, very tight case, with unimpeachable experts and patriotic public servants as the only witnesses. It leaves less room for them to be called partisan. But in this polarized environment, the whole thing is partisan whether they like it or not. That doesn’t make it unethical, dishonest or biased. It’s just a function of how politics is organized at the moment.

Since the Republicans are acting as Trump’s accomplices, oversight of this corrupt administration requires that the House keeps the pressure on to prevent them from continuing to engage in criminal behavior and abusing their power. An early Senate acquittal is likely to have the opposite effect. If the Democrats aren’t doing all this to stop Trump’s outrageous criminality and expose the massive corruption of this White House, why are they doing it at all?

why are they doing it at all?

Good question. One of my minor beefs with digby is she is entirely too credulous about the Institutional Democratic Party. They are not fundamentally distinct from Republicans in their desire to maintain the status quo, they’re simply marginally more interested in bribing voters with Social Programs and still, on rare occasions, demonstrate a sense of shame.

If we did not have overwhelming grassroots pressure for it Impeachment would not be happening. Principles? Show me or shut up.

I find sometimes when I talk to people about my Economic positions they look at me like some kind of three eyed monster. I am totally mainstream. Keynes, Samuelson (well, to the extent he steals from Keynes) it’s all in there.

I have my modern influencers and one of them is Robert Reich.

Why Billionaires Don’t Really Like Capitalism
by Robert Reich
Monday, November 11, 2019

Billionaires are wailing that Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’s wealth tax proposals are attacks on free market capitalism.

Warren “vilifies successful people,” says Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

Rubbish. There are basically only five ways to accumulate a billion dollars, and none of them has to do with being successful in free market capitalism.

The first way is to exploit a monopoly.

Jamie Dimon is worth $1.6 billion. That’s not because he succeeded in the free market. In 2008 the government bailed out JPMorgan and four other giant Wall Street banks because it considered them “too big to fail.”

That bailout is a hidden insurance policy, still in effect, with an estimated value to the big banks of $83 billion a year. If JPMorgan weren’t so big and was therefore allowed to fail, Dimon would be worth far less than $1.6 billion.

What about America’s much-vaulted entrepreneurs, such as Jeff Bezos, now worth $110 billion? You might say Bezos deserves this because he founded and built Amazon.

But Amazon is a monopolist with nearly 50 percent of all e-commerce retail sales in America, and e-commerce is one of the biggest sectors of retail sales. In addition, Amazon’s business is protected by a slew of patents granted by the U.S. government.

If the government enforced anti-monopoly laws, and didn’t give Amazon such broad patents,Bezos would be worth far less than $110 billion.

A second way to make a billion is to get insider information unavailable to other investors.

Hedge-fund maven Steven A. Cohen, worth $12.8 billion, headed up a hedge fund firm in which, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department, insider trading was “substantial, pervasive, and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry.” Nine of Cohen’s present or former employees pleaded guilty or were convicted. Cohen got off with a fine, changed the name of his firm, and apparently is back at the game.

Insider trading is endemic in C-suites, too. SEC researchers have found that corporate executives are twice as likely to sell their stock on the days following their own stock buyback announcements as they are in the days leading up to the announcements.

If government cracked down on insider-trading, hedge-fund mavens and top corporate executives wouldn’t be raking in so much money.

A third way to make a billion is to buy off politicians.

The Trump tax cut is estimated to save Charles and the late David Koch and their Koch Industries an estimated $1 to $1.4 billion a year, not even counting their tax savings on profits stored offshore and a shrunken estate tax. The Kochs and their affiliated groups spent some $20 million lobbying for the Trump tax cut, including political donations. Not a bad return on investment.

If we had tough anti-corruption laws preventing political payoffs, the Kochs and other high-rollers wouldn’t get the special tax breaks and other subsidies that have enlarged their fortunes.

The fourth way to make a billion is to extort big investors.

Adam Neumann conned JP Morgan, SoftBank, and other investors to sink hundreds of millions into WeWork, an office-sharing startup. Neumann used some of the money to buy buildings he leased back to WeWork and to enjoy a lifestyle that included a $60 million private jet. WeWork never made a nickel of profit.

A few months ago, after Neumann was forced to disclose his personal conflicts of interest, WeWork’s initial public offering fell apart and the company’s estimated value plummeted. To salvage what they could, investors paid him over $1 billion to exit the board and give up his voting rights. Most other WeWork employees were left holdingnear-worthless stock options. Thousands were set to be laid off.

If we had tougher anti-fraud laws, Neumann and others like him wouldn’t be billionaires.

The fifth way to be a billionaire is to get the money from rich parents or relatives.

About 60 percent of all the wealth in America today is inherited, according to estimates by economist Thomas Piketty and his colleagues. That’s because, under U.S. tax law – which is itself largely a product of lobbying by the wealthy – the capital gains of one generation are wiped out when those assets are transferred to the next, and the estate tax is so tiny that fewer than 0.2 percent of estates were subject to it last year.

If unearned income were treated the same as earned income under the tax code, America’s non-working rich wouldn’t be billionaires. And if capital gains weren’t eliminated at death, many heirs wouldn’t be, either.

Capitalism doesn’t work well with monopolies, insider-trading, political payoffs, fraud, and large amounts of inherited wealth. Billionaires who don’t like Sanders’s and Warren’s wealth tax should at least support reforms that end these anti-capitalist advantages.

C’mon, this is a self-help pep talk. Bootstraps.

Head Like A Hole – Nine Inch Nails

In Bloom – Nirvana

Enter Sandman – Metallica