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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 4923093" data-attributes="member: 56035">But just think of all the other impeachable offenses, some of them, per se, that are “kitchen table” offenses. He has destroyed, shredded, disabled the lifesaving injury prevention and disease reduction programs of the federal government — Environment Protection Agency, the OSHA protecting worker safety, the Product Safety Commission. He’s basically closed down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, protection from Wall Street and other financial crimes against ordinary people, consumers, investors, small savers. That is a critical impeachable offense, according to the framers of our Constitution, the defiant refusal to faithfully execute the laws. She didn’t go with that. The enrichment of his family, with foreign governments using his hotels — the so-called Emoluments Clause, slam dunk, per se, she didn’t go with that. The seizure of the power of the purse, the appropriations power of the Congress, exclusively reserved to the Congress by the Constitution, she didn’t go with that. He took $3.7 billion from the Defense Department to build the wall. That’s a clear impeachable offense.It even gets worse, Amy. A month ago or so, Speaker Pelosi came to a press conference and said decisively that he committed bribery, said “well documented.” And she dropped the bribery impeachable clause. The whole obstruction of Congress is restricted largely to the Ukraine investigation, when he has the broadest contempt of Congress of any president, including, by the way, armed force in nine countries overseas without any congressional declaration of war. And there’s more, as well.So, the question is why the Democrats didn’t take a stronger stand and go with a strong hand that would have sharply increased public opinion, because of the “kitchen table” issues, the health and safety and economic situations that he has fostered. Just look. Average life expectancy is down. Productivity of labor is down. Manufacturing employment is down under Trump. These are not impeachable offenses, but the point is that he’s vulnerable on these points.And he’s a lying machine. I always thought that Alexander Hamilton’s definition — one of his definitions of high crimes and misdemeanors was the abuse of the public trust. Consider this: He is a sexual predator. Where is Congress on that? They got rid of Franken and John Conyers for 1% of what Trump has done. He’s embroiled in all kinds of lawsuits by women who have sworn under oath that he’s assaulted them and harassed them, etc. Then you have the bigotry and the racism, which he follows up with. I mean, his policies come down very hard on minority and the poor. And then you have his incitement to violence: If he’s impeached, civil war; there will be riots in the street. And then you cluster those under serial lying. He lies by the hour, lies by the day. He’s averaging 22 lies, over 14,000 since he came into office. And you have an abuse to the public trust. People understand that. They don’t want to have neighbors, they don’t want to raise their children, with this kind of model in the White House — lying, misogyny, racism, incitement to violence.So, she has forfeited a huge opportunity not just to impeach Trump, but to remove him. What’s the point of just impeaching him if you don’t use the full arsenal of impeachable offenses? And what a lot of people don’t know, I’ve been down on Capitol Hill, and most of the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee opposed her narrow approach, but they were overruled. They were even backed by the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Engel, by the chair of Financial Committee, Congresswoman Maxine Waters. The obstruction of justice in the Mueller report, where he had about 10 documented obstruction of justices, that was even supported by her deputy, the number two person, Steny Hoyer from Maryland. So she overruled them all.[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/16/ralph_nader_trump_impeachment_trial_senate[/URL]</blockquote>

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