It’s always a good thing when you wake up from a nap and find yourself immediately searching for a metaphor. Today we’re looking for a metaphor to describe the first witness in a case against Defendant Trump to flip: Trump Employee 4 in the classified documents case in Florida has fired the lawyer supplied to him by his boss, one Stanley Woodward, who also represents defendant Walt Nauta, and signed up a public defender. The witness, Mar-a-Lago IT director, Yuscil Taveras, has withdrawn his previous testimony to prosecutors and has decided to tell the truth.
But when reality bites them in the ass, will they still protect the Orange Menace to Society? Time in a real prison has a tendency to focus the mind...
Heehee! Hard not to laugh about this. Trump must be shaking in his Depends! There will be other flippers, mark my words. The co-conspirators have no money and Trump aren’t helping them out. I just saw where Jenna Ellis is being hung out to dry. It makes me happy that Fani Willis is so steadfast and that scares all 30 codefendants. Yay!🎉
Yeah, yeah "The Boss" will take care of you! Don't worry about what happened to Michael Cohen and RudeE and Good Lord who knows how many other stiffs. You're SPECIAL! So trust "The Boss" to give you the perfect defense and hey what's 5 or so years in prison any way?
Like you,I am expecting a trove of testimony to Ms Willis when defendants realize the cost of counsel and the high expectation they'll be found guilty. No one in their right mind will go to prison for the grifter and conman. I can't wait to see the line outside Ms Willis' door!
Alas, there are a lot of people who are NOT "in their right mind." I suspect we will always remain baffled by the hold that t-Rump has over a certain number of people in his inner circle. Do they live in a fantasy world where the Dumpster will actually save them, reward them handsomely, pay their legal fees with a show of gratitude, and allow them to live happily ever after in a suite at Merd-a Laggo? Or is it the erotic pull of power? What else on this earth could possibly persuade anyone, and especially a woman, to swear undying loyalty to t-Rump, other than the belief that he's POWERFUL? Once he's no longer perceived as powerful.... hmmmm.....a lot may change.
I don't think even a defendant 1 exit stage left will deter the MAGAt faithful. I posted about brain studies a while back that show physical difference in brain anatomy between cons and libs. The brain structures that show differences create a greater sense of fear in the right leaners and more stable, rational thought in liberals. These changes also influence cons to accept conspiracy theories and cult-like patterns of belief and behavior. It's difficult to change minds when the tendency to accept authoritarian leanings is 'built in'.
WOW! That's a theory I had never heard of before. Personally, I've always considered liberals mentally superior to reactionary ultra-conservatives, and dismissed the t-Rump faithful as simply stupid-- some inferior grade of human being. So, in a way, that's confirmed-- their brains are different! AND inferior in intellectual capacity.
We need to STOP calling these people deplorable or an inferior grade of human being as a way of explaining what they believe/do. They have joined a "cult" or what I would call a "deviant religious system". They are not "stupid" in a blanket statement way. They are "true believers". It is a belief system and changing it requires conversion. That change is a momentous one and will not be accomplished easily.
I know many ultra-conservativex. They are white-collar professionals with college degrees, masters degrees, law degrees. So, no, it's certainly not confirmed to me that they are inferior intellectually.
Yup, all it requires is being a consistent sociopath, then you can find enough support among similarly situated persons with no discernably functioning moral compasses, and voila, the Freedom Caucus, the Federalist Society, right-wing foundations and authoritarian cults emerge, as extremely skilled ultra-reactionaries seize their opportunity to undermine democracy, and repeal as much of the social safety net funded by taxes as possible.
After all, it's the richest of the rich who deserve to be even richer, and gaming the system to evade taxes proves they are smart, as Trump summed it up.
I wonder how many Trumpistas had bullying, emotionally absent, negligent fathers? Do they all yearn for his love and approval because of their own abusive social circumstances? Lemming-like mass PTSD?
Yesterday you could hear the bleating and pissing and moaning all over Atlanta. A vigorous defense is going to be very expensive, and the only one with any money, the kind of money needed for a vigorous defense, is the guy at the top, the reason in fact they are all there, and he could care less about any of them. Even if some of them had the means to fight the government, which we the people are funding, chances of winning could be a long shot, and if you loose...... No one in their right mind wants to go to prison here in GA. All of the co-defendants will be getting a first hand look at what our jails are like this week, when they are booked, most of them have probably never seen the inside of a real jail, it's going to be very sobering. This might be a very good time to have invested in cellular service companies because they are going to be burning up the airwaves trying to figure out how to stay out of prison, meanwhile the billing clock will be running overtime. Plea deals are going to be harder to come by as this progresses, and in fact they may not be possible in a month or so, I can't think of a nicer bunch to face this dilemma, after all of the shit they have put us through karma is our friend. It was almost pathetic yesterday hearing them crying about their comeuppance. Made my day! Bleating indeed!
Lucian, I detect enthusiasm in your writing, which means you must be feeling much better. I hope that's so. I also really hope there's an avalanche of co-conspirators who come to their senses and realize their misguided loyalty to *Rump is a big mistake. Protecting them has to be a major priority, and helping them with life 'after *Rump' also wherever possible. I look forward to reading about 'flippers' and wish I could do something to encourage it.
It apparently took only a few moments of contemplation for Employee 4, the IT guy, to come to the conclusion that the lawyer his boss, Donald Trump, was agreeing to pay for, was actually a Trojan horse. Fortunately, the federal government maintains a staff of highly competent defense attorneys in their various Public Defender offices to provide representation to material witnesses whose testimony is essential to the prosecution of federal criminal cases. And so it happened, as so often it does, that Donald Trump got himself burned again.
Any lawyer who allows Donald Trump to hire him will immediately discover that his representation agreement with Trump Implicitly, or explicitly, requires him to allow Trump to control the defense. A lawyer would need to be absolutely destitute and have creditors pounding on his door in order to be willing to take that kind of the bargain. The sad part of it is that the lawyer knows, or ought to know, that this is the kind of arrangement that Donald Trump insists on having. Most law clients might not be expected to understand that the lawyer that someone else is providing at no cost to themselves will not be truly independent. This rule applies to any form of representation in which the lawyer reported to their superior in terms of the breadth and quality of the representation that the lawyer is prepared to provide, but also to fend off potential conflicts of interest where a law firm IP representing several clients in similar cases. All clients are not created equal nor are they treated as such. And it's not always what the lawyer does that can become the 'tell' that manipulation and control over the direction and scope of litigation will become manifest. More often than not, and the client might not notice this, will be when the lawyer fails to take reasonable actions that circumstances would dictate that they ought to take in order to protect the client's interest, even if it requires more investment of time and money by the firm the client supposedly hired to do the job. Since the client''s case is at its most valuable to the firm he hires on the day he signs the fee agreement, the more the firm has to invest in the case, the less the case is worth as a practical matter. If these law firms could enter into settlement negotiations 15 minutes after the fee agreement is signed and come up with a reasonable settlement 30 minutes later, their day would be made. No pretrial discovery, minimal law and motion practice, and certainly not going to trial. A good many law firms plan their representation to clients basically on the same model, do as little as possible, and hope for the best. Pretrial practice involves conning the client into believing that work is actually being done when in fact the attorneys time is spent in marketing and building up the practice. Properly done, pretrial is mindbending, onerous work in which a beehive of junior lawyers goes over discovery, witness accounts, expert opinion memos, and so on, all of which are billed on an hourly rate sufficiently large to stun the client into a sullen silence. This is how the big law firms work. Young associates are chained to their desks, virtually speaking, on 12-15 hour days, churning through paper, or developing evidentiary databases on which particular information can be found readily. It's a form of involuntary servitude that young associates promise themselves they'll only endure long enough to be able to attract clients on their own. If they are lucky they may actually find an area of practice that they like; more often than not, they get pigeonholed into law firm slots that are impossible to escape. If they are smart, and finances permit, once the neophyte lawyer obtains his bar license, he, and nowadays mostly she, needs to figure out what they actually want to do in their lives. The law itself is actually only a small part of the business of lawyering. Smart young lawyers quickly figure out that they need to know the client's business as well or better than the client does themselves, because the stock in trade of a really good, high-powered lawyer is in the advice that they give before litigation starts.
The people with the best prospects for succeeding in the law are those that have strong backgrounds in the STEM science and technology areas that cannot be learned on the fly. Physics, mathematics, engineering, all of which require years of practice and dedication and learning before going to law school cannot be shoehorned into a law practice that typically requires 14-15 hour days chained to a desk drafting legal documents. Frustration levels of lawyers are high, and burnout is common. So is alcoholism, and substance abuse, broken family relationships, things that money can never compensate for. That, some people say, is live in the big city, and it sucks.
I liked the lede a lot! “It’s always a good thing when you wake up from a nap and find yourself immediately searching for a metaphor.”
Because who amongst us, after napping, doesn’t immediately start searching for a metaphor? I’m not sure if Mr. T. found one ... or if I missed it. Or if he didn’t tell us what it was on porpoise (sic).
One can’t live in NY and not be aware of these figures woven into even the most mundane experiences. My grandmother lived in Bay Ridge. The corners of her block had unobtrusive flagpoles with the Italian flag hanging. We knew it signified a safe/protected space. When she died, the Italian owned funeral parlor was just streets away and tradition dictated the hearse travel down her street on the way to the cemetery followed by the cars with the family. Old men stood in the porches of the brownstones in the cold, their hats over their hearts. It was a very cold January. My mom told me one of those old men caught pneumonia that day paying respects to the widow that had lived with her family on that block since 1939. Another neighbor’s son who she’d known as a baby and who had become a catholic priest participated in her funeral service.
After it was sold the bill of sale for that house was in a box of papers my mother gave me. It was not only signed by my uncles as the buyers, but by Fred Trump, the Seller.
When we lived in Astoria our landlord told us we could leave our door unlocked because no one would ever think of coming into the building uninvited. Down the street on my way to the RR Train two very large men sat outside a modest doorway and called me ‘sweetheart’. I was young and just waved to them after a while.
Once just before the subway entrance there was a car parked with a blasted drivers side window with blood splatter on it.
Everyone could see it, everyone just kept walking. It was another day in New York.
Yes! Even in the far smaller Minneapolis, through canvassing multiple timers around the city and surrounding inner ring and some outer ring cities, suburbs, and especially working in downtown and near the university, it was possible to observe all sorts of things people who nearly always traverse via vehicles and DO NOT WALK longer than 4-5 blocks, routinely, or bike back and forth to work (and in winter, too! in all but the most devastating ice storms or blizzards, which is just plain nutso!) for 5-6-7 miles or more each way, simply cannot possibly observe, learn, experience (for better or worse, mind you) the things you see, oh, the places you'll go...Channeling Dr. Suess while listening to this?!
Looking forward to his testimony. May he stay safely away from the nut brigade of dementor’s followers. I feel like this is a mob trial. (Probably because it is)
He’s been indicted on rico charges, but how does the former President stack up against actual dons?
By David Remnick
August 22, 2023
Donald Trump and Roy Cohn sitting side by side behind microphones at a press conference in October 1984
Although he has long enjoyed the sleazy glamour and cynical counsel supplied by Mob-adjacent figures like Roy Cohn, Trump has no code and shows no loyalty.Photograph by Marilynn K. Yee / NYT / Redux
Murray Kempton, the greatest newspaper columnist New York has ever known, was both a moralist and an ironist, particularly as he chronicled the lives, the crimes, and the decline of the Cosa Nostra in the pages of Newsday and the Post. Dressed in a black suit and listening to Verdi on his headphones, Kempton would bicycle to arraignments at Foley Square and interviews at the Ravenite Social Club, on Mulberry Street. He had no illusions about the mafiosi. But, in describing their ordinariness, their codes of behavior and self-delusions, their modest houses in Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge, he seemed to say that the Five Families were merely a more lurid reflection of the rest of us.
“You know, most of these guys, when you meet them, are just as bad as respectable people,” he once told me. As John Gotti, the “Dapper Don” of the Gambinos, headed off to federal prison—doomed, in part, by his prideful indiscretions and by the bugs planted amid the espresso cups at the Ravenite—Kempton saw him as the end of something. “Do you remember that moment in Henry Adams’s ‘Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres’ when Adams speaks of the Virgin and Child looking down on a dead faith? Well, John Gotti believed in all of it. He believed in a dead faith.”
I once asked Kempton if he ever really liked any of the mobsters of his acquaintance. He told me that he had “tremendous admiration for Carmine Persico,” the longtime boss of the Colombo crime family. He was a killer, of course, but the wiretaps brought out an appealing side to his character. Kempton recalled an episode in which Persico, Carmine Galante, and others were playing cards, and Galante, a widely loathed capo of the Bonanno crime family, kept insulting a player of Irish extraction. “Galante just kept it up with all manner of obscene anti-Irish comments,” Kempton said. “Finally, Persico said, ‘Get out of the game!’ and Galante did, slinking off for home. The next day, Galante came back to the card game, begging, ‘Please! I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again!’ It was wonderful. Persico said about Galante, ‘He’s not such a bad guy. He was just brung up wrong.’ ”
Yet even Kempton, who died in 1997, might have struggled to find a shred of virtue in another fallen Don—Donald J. Trump—who is finally confronting a judicial system that he cannot bully into submission. This week, the forty-fifth President, who built his early fortune on casinos and construction, and Rudolph Giuliani, the former “hero mayor” of New York, whose early legal reputation came from locking up mobsters and bankers on racketeering statutes, will turn themselves in with a gaggle of co-conspirators on forty-one felony charges in Fulton County, Georgia. Fani Willis, the county’s district attorney, is employing a state version of rico, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, to make her case. Easy ironies are blooming like dandelions.
I wish I could discuss those ironies with Kempton, who always had time for a struggling colleague on deadline. As a connoisseur of Mob wiretaps, he would have relished Trump’s long telephone call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, on January 2nd, 2021, in which the sitting President adopts a mob-boss tone as he asks Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” which were needed to steal the state from Joe Biden.
******* Excerpt from a very lengthy article, might or might not encounter a paywall,
sometimes they let people read a few sample articles before that does up, though.
Murray Kempton! I just finished rereading his collection of columns from 1950-62, "America Comes of Middle Age" and yes, he had a brilliant and not at all corrosive way with mobsters.
Whatever else most of them had in the line of terrible crimes and brutality, the insular nature of the sub-culture generated some truly colorful characters - and so many had deep roots in much smaller towns in Sicily, where everything from blood feuds that went back several generations, to bonding with each other to outwit a corrupt state, evading taxes as more or less an obligatory form of resistance, and marriages that helped smooth over clan rivalries reminds me of what I know about Greece, too.
Still, the level of "violent revenge killings for betraying La Cosa Nostra's code of omerta, silence even under threat of prison time, no sharing of Mob secrets in any way with police" and so on, remains appalling no matter how amusing the nicknames and jokes are, no doubt.
If a nap can produce a nap mare, then it follows awakening from a nap can lead one to search for a napaphor.
Trump's strategy of delay, delay, delay, is a double-edged sword. For it to be successful (1) no single case can end with a guilty verdict on any of the charges before the 2024 election, (2) No trial can proceed deep into the government's case in chief which tilts the balance against the defendant (3) Needs most pre-trial motions to go his, not the government's way.
That also means those involved, whether currently charged or not, in any of the conspiracies, obstruction of justice, and the criminal enterprise don't flip or plead guilty while agreeing to testify against Trump and others.
So, it isn't enough for Trump's legal team to slow the start of trials. They need to have them all delayed and rescheduled until after the election or in the alternative prevail in any and all that finish prior to any election cutoff.
While Lucian captured the most important Monday event mainstream media was wasting hours on the Fulton County jail scene and hyping the Republican Primary Debate. Fox News Channel and Fox Corp. must be laughing watching all the free publicity broadcast and cable networks are doling out for their event.
At 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, they are shaking their heads at the lack of coverage of the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual progress and achievements of the Biden administration. So much for the decades old lie of the media has a liberal bias.
What the Biden-Harris administration brain trust NEEDS to do, {He said in amazement that it wasn't already a constant theme} is to hammer on that with regular press conferences where that is the central theme: "We are calling out the media as persistent aiders and abettors of a sinister, quasi-fascist movement in American politics, aka "The Trump candidacy."
They're evidently so used to being on the back foot this kind of feisty in-your-face politicking seems outrageously unorthodox, because what they're already doing is good enough, because good enough.
O faced a similar environment from both the GOP and the media. When the GOP and media seem unfair the voters have been known to reject them both. Not all the time, just in time.
Currently US is in the political silly season which the media tries to make relevant when it ain't. Caught a good deal of the 23August GOP debate and both silly and irrelevant would lead my word cloud.
I didn't watch or listen (in real time), only heard an NPR snippet of Pence's crackpot double-think. Will always put Constitution above loyalty to Trump, will support Trump if Trump is the nominee, OK now back into your robotic routine as it implodes and becomes even more irrelevant, "Silly Season" indeed, and it's not even a "debate" at all, either, not in any recognized form, that's for sure.
Yes, the tell of Rs/cons remains conflict in thought and contradiction in words and deeds.
Yes, to Pence's doublethink and to his everyday self as a droid in training to a local mortician.
Yes, to not debate at all. Adults in body lacking the discipline, manners and minds of most junior high children.
-Media needs to stop selling another in a long line of Republican free-for-alls (includes the audience) as a debate. Is offensive and insulting to good people of all ages.
-The biggest loser was Chris Crisco. Came in with biggest hype from #nevertrumpers and the media as the ultimate stage assassin. Suffered body blow after body blow and left as the smallest of the small. Second in line, Ron DeSantis. Only Pence is more inauthentic. Haley minded me of a Mother struggling to get control over insolent children in public including the 1 who wouldn't stop talking. Yes, she is Pence's stage Mother. The remainder were invisible no matter what level noise they made.
It boggles the mind how many people are happy to go to,prison for tangeranus.
Tangeranus...Love it!
But when reality bites them in the ass, will they still protect the Orange Menace to Society? Time in a real prison has a tendency to focus the mind...
He's a mob boss...one could wake up dead!
I hope the man who "flipped" has protection. He'll need it with the Trump mobsters at loose.
Sometimes that happens to the mob boss, too!
I’m guessing there won’t be as many as you think.
Some may soon decide they do NOT want to do that. There is still time…..
Maybe this is what martyrdom looks like in the 21st century?
Heehee! Hard not to laugh about this. Trump must be shaking in his Depends! There will be other flippers, mark my words. The co-conspirators have no money and Trump aren’t helping them out. I just saw where Jenna Ellis is being hung out to dry. It makes me happy that Fani Willis is so steadfast and that scares all 30 codefendants. Yay!🎉
Rudy is out there on the clothesline, too. Haven't they heard about that? Should be a red flag!
I believe they are way ahead of us.
Yeah, yeah "The Boss" will take care of you! Don't worry about what happened to Michael Cohen and RudeE and Good Lord who knows how many other stiffs. You're SPECIAL! So trust "The Boss" to give you the perfect defense and hey what's 5 or so years in prison any way?
Fuggedaboutit!
that's ghouliani
Yeah him too! 😆
Like you,I am expecting a trove of testimony to Ms Willis when defendants realize the cost of counsel and the high expectation they'll be found guilty. No one in their right mind will go to prison for the grifter and conman. I can't wait to see the line outside Ms Willis' door!
Alas, there are a lot of people who are NOT "in their right mind." I suspect we will always remain baffled by the hold that t-Rump has over a certain number of people in his inner circle. Do they live in a fantasy world where the Dumpster will actually save them, reward them handsomely, pay their legal fees with a show of gratitude, and allow them to live happily ever after in a suite at Merd-a Laggo? Or is it the erotic pull of power? What else on this earth could possibly persuade anyone, and especially a woman, to swear undying loyalty to t-Rump, other than the belief that he's POWERFUL? Once he's no longer perceived as powerful.... hmmmm.....a lot may change.
I don't think even a defendant 1 exit stage left will deter the MAGAt faithful. I posted about brain studies a while back that show physical difference in brain anatomy between cons and libs. The brain structures that show differences create a greater sense of fear in the right leaners and more stable, rational thought in liberals. These changes also influence cons to accept conspiracy theories and cult-like patterns of belief and behavior. It's difficult to change minds when the tendency to accept authoritarian leanings is 'built in'.
WOW! That's a theory I had never heard of before. Personally, I've always considered liberals mentally superior to reactionary ultra-conservatives, and dismissed the t-Rump faithful as simply stupid-- some inferior grade of human being. So, in a way, that's confirmed-- their brains are different! AND inferior in intellectual capacity.
We need to STOP calling these people deplorable or an inferior grade of human being as a way of explaining what they believe/do. They have joined a "cult" or what I would call a "deviant religious system". They are not "stupid" in a blanket statement way. They are "true believers". It is a belief system and changing it requires conversion. That change is a momentous one and will not be accomplished easily.
I know many ultra-conservativex. They are white-collar professionals with college degrees, masters degrees, law degrees. So, no, it's certainly not confirmed to me that they are inferior intellectually.
Yup, all it requires is being a consistent sociopath, then you can find enough support among similarly situated persons with no discernably functioning moral compasses, and voila, the Freedom Caucus, the Federalist Society, right-wing foundations and authoritarian cults emerge, as extremely skilled ultra-reactionaries seize their opportunity to undermine democracy, and repeal as much of the social safety net funded by taxes as possible.
After all, it's the richest of the rich who deserve to be even richer, and gaming the system to evade taxes proves they are smart, as Trump summed it up.
True— there are such people. I consider them even worse than the t-Rump-worshiping simpletons. They are greedy, amoral, perverted sociopaths.
I wonder how many Trumpistas had bullying, emotionally absent, negligent fathers? Do they all yearn for his love and approval because of their own abusive social circumstances? Lemming-like mass PTSD?
And I'll bet a lot of the trumpster men are themselves "bullying, emotionally absent, negligent fathers!"
Here's a link to one of the brain studies from NIH.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/
Thanks for the reference!
Yesterday you could hear the bleating and pissing and moaning all over Atlanta. A vigorous defense is going to be very expensive, and the only one with any money, the kind of money needed for a vigorous defense, is the guy at the top, the reason in fact they are all there, and he could care less about any of them. Even if some of them had the means to fight the government, which we the people are funding, chances of winning could be a long shot, and if you loose...... No one in their right mind wants to go to prison here in GA. All of the co-defendants will be getting a first hand look at what our jails are like this week, when they are booked, most of them have probably never seen the inside of a real jail, it's going to be very sobering. This might be a very good time to have invested in cellular service companies because they are going to be burning up the airwaves trying to figure out how to stay out of prison, meanwhile the billing clock will be running overtime. Plea deals are going to be harder to come by as this progresses, and in fact they may not be possible in a month or so, I can't think of a nicer bunch to face this dilemma, after all of the shit they have put us through karma is our friend. It was almost pathetic yesterday hearing them crying about their comeuppance. Made my day! Bleating indeed!
they are not in their right mind and will never ever come close
L P, they all know how effing guilty they are! 😂 😂 😂
I have spent time in the Fulton County Jail, a few DUI's ago.
The last place a loud mouthed white racist needs to spend time is in that place.
One of the most impressive credentials I've ever read here, Leigh!
I can't "weight" for this arraignment!
Lucian, I detect enthusiasm in your writing, which means you must be feeling much better. I hope that's so. I also really hope there's an avalanche of co-conspirators who come to their senses and realize their misguided loyalty to *Rump is a big mistake. Protecting them has to be a major priority, and helping them with life 'after *Rump' also wherever possible. I look forward to reading about 'flippers' and wish I could do something to encourage it.
I keep coming back to the word lunacy!! I hope it’s a waterfall of people willing to testify to save their own arse.
It apparently took only a few moments of contemplation for Employee 4, the IT guy, to come to the conclusion that the lawyer his boss, Donald Trump, was agreeing to pay for, was actually a Trojan horse. Fortunately, the federal government maintains a staff of highly competent defense attorneys in their various Public Defender offices to provide representation to material witnesses whose testimony is essential to the prosecution of federal criminal cases. And so it happened, as so often it does, that Donald Trump got himself burned again.
Any lawyer who allows Donald Trump to hire him will immediately discover that his representation agreement with Trump Implicitly, or explicitly, requires him to allow Trump to control the defense. A lawyer would need to be absolutely destitute and have creditors pounding on his door in order to be willing to take that kind of the bargain. The sad part of it is that the lawyer knows, or ought to know, that this is the kind of arrangement that Donald Trump insists on having. Most law clients might not be expected to understand that the lawyer that someone else is providing at no cost to themselves will not be truly independent. This rule applies to any form of representation in which the lawyer reported to their superior in terms of the breadth and quality of the representation that the lawyer is prepared to provide, but also to fend off potential conflicts of interest where a law firm IP representing several clients in similar cases. All clients are not created equal nor are they treated as such. And it's not always what the lawyer does that can become the 'tell' that manipulation and control over the direction and scope of litigation will become manifest. More often than not, and the client might not notice this, will be when the lawyer fails to take reasonable actions that circumstances would dictate that they ought to take in order to protect the client's interest, even if it requires more investment of time and money by the firm the client supposedly hired to do the job. Since the client''s case is at its most valuable to the firm he hires on the day he signs the fee agreement, the more the firm has to invest in the case, the less the case is worth as a practical matter. If these law firms could enter into settlement negotiations 15 minutes after the fee agreement is signed and come up with a reasonable settlement 30 minutes later, their day would be made. No pretrial discovery, minimal law and motion practice, and certainly not going to trial. A good many law firms plan their representation to clients basically on the same model, do as little as possible, and hope for the best. Pretrial practice involves conning the client into believing that work is actually being done when in fact the attorneys time is spent in marketing and building up the practice. Properly done, pretrial is mindbending, onerous work in which a beehive of junior lawyers goes over discovery, witness accounts, expert opinion memos, and so on, all of which are billed on an hourly rate sufficiently large to stun the client into a sullen silence. This is how the big law firms work. Young associates are chained to their desks, virtually speaking, on 12-15 hour days, churning through paper, or developing evidentiary databases on which particular information can be found readily. It's a form of involuntary servitude that young associates promise themselves they'll only endure long enough to be able to attract clients on their own. If they are lucky they may actually find an area of practice that they like; more often than not, they get pigeonholed into law firm slots that are impossible to escape. If they are smart, and finances permit, once the neophyte lawyer obtains his bar license, he, and nowadays mostly she, needs to figure out what they actually want to do in their lives. The law itself is actually only a small part of the business of lawyering. Smart young lawyers quickly figure out that they need to know the client's business as well or better than the client does themselves, because the stock in trade of a really good, high-powered lawyer is in the advice that they give before litigation starts.
The people with the best prospects for succeeding in the law are those that have strong backgrounds in the STEM science and technology areas that cannot be learned on the fly. Physics, mathematics, engineering, all of which require years of practice and dedication and learning before going to law school cannot be shoehorned into a law practice that typically requires 14-15 hour days chained to a desk drafting legal documents. Frustration levels of lawyers are high, and burnout is common. So is alcoholism, and substance abuse, broken family relationships, things that money can never compensate for. That, some people say, is live in the big city, and it sucks.
Isn’t this going to complicate Judge Aileen “Boom Boom” Cannon’s job of obstructing the prosecution? I’m not sure she’s qualified for the task.
I liked the lede a lot! “It’s always a good thing when you wake up from a nap and find yourself immediately searching for a metaphor.”
Because who amongst us, after napping, doesn’t immediately start searching for a metaphor? I’m not sure if Mr. T. found one ... or if I missed it. Or if he didn’t tell us what it was on porpoise (sic).
LOL
One can’t live in NY and not be aware of these figures woven into even the most mundane experiences. My grandmother lived in Bay Ridge. The corners of her block had unobtrusive flagpoles with the Italian flag hanging. We knew it signified a safe/protected space. When she died, the Italian owned funeral parlor was just streets away and tradition dictated the hearse travel down her street on the way to the cemetery followed by the cars with the family. Old men stood in the porches of the brownstones in the cold, their hats over their hearts. It was a very cold January. My mom told me one of those old men caught pneumonia that day paying respects to the widow that had lived with her family on that block since 1939. Another neighbor’s son who she’d known as a baby and who had become a catholic priest participated in her funeral service.
After it was sold the bill of sale for that house was in a box of papers my mother gave me. It was not only signed by my uncles as the buyers, but by Fred Trump, the Seller.
When we lived in Astoria our landlord told us we could leave our door unlocked because no one would ever think of coming into the building uninvited. Down the street on my way to the RR Train two very large men sat outside a modest doorway and called me ‘sweetheart’. I was young and just waved to them after a while.
Once just before the subway entrance there was a car parked with a blasted drivers side window with blood splatter on it.
Everyone could see it, everyone just kept walking. It was another day in New York.
Wow, and of course as you say, just another day in NYC.
A lot of people who live in NYC have no sense of the street. Luckily, enough writers do to make it familiar to everyone. Nice slice, Patris.
Yes! Even in the far smaller Minneapolis, through canvassing multiple timers around the city and surrounding inner ring and some outer ring cities, suburbs, and especially working in downtown and near the university, it was possible to observe all sorts of things people who nearly always traverse via vehicles and DO NOT WALK longer than 4-5 blocks, routinely, or bike back and forth to work (and in winter, too! in all but the most devastating ice storms or blizzards, which is just plain nutso!) for 5-6-7 miles or more each way, simply cannot possibly observe, learn, experience (for better or worse, mind you) the things you see, oh, the places you'll go...Channeling Dr. Suess while listening to this?!
youtube.com/watch?v=EaH-44IxNH4&ab_channel=CoreJunkie
Ramones - US Festival 1982 -{ 21 Minutes of frenetic thrash rock energy }
CoreJunkie
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Ramones - US Festival 1982
you know what i really really like about this essay, "this is the first of many many columns......."!
First Olive out of the bottle…
Nice image. I'm watching for the cascade of subsequent "olives."
Looking forward to his testimony. May he stay safely away from the nut brigade of dementor’s followers. I feel like this is a mob trial. (Probably because it is)
I'd bet my last trihemitartemorion you speak as wisely as an owl on that, Patris!
Wannabe mobster, yikes.
www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-mobster-cosplay-of-donald-trump
He’s been indicted on rico charges, but how does the former President stack up against actual dons?
By David Remnick
August 22, 2023
Donald Trump and Roy Cohn sitting side by side behind microphones at a press conference in October 1984
Although he has long enjoyed the sleazy glamour and cynical counsel supplied by Mob-adjacent figures like Roy Cohn, Trump has no code and shows no loyalty.Photograph by Marilynn K. Yee / NYT / Redux
Murray Kempton, the greatest newspaper columnist New York has ever known, was both a moralist and an ironist, particularly as he chronicled the lives, the crimes, and the decline of the Cosa Nostra in the pages of Newsday and the Post. Dressed in a black suit and listening to Verdi on his headphones, Kempton would bicycle to arraignments at Foley Square and interviews at the Ravenite Social Club, on Mulberry Street. He had no illusions about the mafiosi. But, in describing their ordinariness, their codes of behavior and self-delusions, their modest houses in Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge, he seemed to say that the Five Families were merely a more lurid reflection of the rest of us.
“You know, most of these guys, when you meet them, are just as bad as respectable people,” he once told me. As John Gotti, the “Dapper Don” of the Gambinos, headed off to federal prison—doomed, in part, by his prideful indiscretions and by the bugs planted amid the espresso cups at the Ravenite—Kempton saw him as the end of something. “Do you remember that moment in Henry Adams’s ‘Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres’ when Adams speaks of the Virgin and Child looking down on a dead faith? Well, John Gotti believed in all of it. He believed in a dead faith.”
I once asked Kempton if he ever really liked any of the mobsters of his acquaintance. He told me that he had “tremendous admiration for Carmine Persico,” the longtime boss of the Colombo crime family. He was a killer, of course, but the wiretaps brought out an appealing side to his character. Kempton recalled an episode in which Persico, Carmine Galante, and others were playing cards, and Galante, a widely loathed capo of the Bonanno crime family, kept insulting a player of Irish extraction. “Galante just kept it up with all manner of obscene anti-Irish comments,” Kempton said. “Finally, Persico said, ‘Get out of the game!’ and Galante did, slinking off for home. The next day, Galante came back to the card game, begging, ‘Please! I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again!’ It was wonderful. Persico said about Galante, ‘He’s not such a bad guy. He was just brung up wrong.’ ”
Yet even Kempton, who died in 1997, might have struggled to find a shred of virtue in another fallen Don—Donald J. Trump—who is finally confronting a judicial system that he cannot bully into submission. This week, the forty-fifth President, who built his early fortune on casinos and construction, and Rudolph Giuliani, the former “hero mayor” of New York, whose early legal reputation came from locking up mobsters and bankers on racketeering statutes, will turn themselves in with a gaggle of co-conspirators on forty-one felony charges in Fulton County, Georgia. Fani Willis, the county’s district attorney, is employing a state version of rico, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, to make her case. Easy ironies are blooming like dandelions.
I wish I could discuss those ironies with Kempton, who always had time for a struggling colleague on deadline. As a connoisseur of Mob wiretaps, he would have relished Trump’s long telephone call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, on January 2nd, 2021, in which the sitting President adopts a mob-boss tone as he asks Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” which were needed to steal the state from Joe Biden.
******* Excerpt from a very lengthy article, might or might not encounter a paywall,
sometimes they let people read a few sample articles before that does up, though.
Murray Kempton! I just finished rereading his collection of columns from 1950-62, "America Comes of Middle Age" and yes, he had a brilliant and not at all corrosive way with mobsters.
Just read that one also...Yup! Not a wise wise guy!
This is fascinating, Richard! Amazing stuff.
Whatever else most of them had in the line of terrible crimes and brutality, the insular nature of the sub-culture generated some truly colorful characters - and so many had deep roots in much smaller towns in Sicily, where everything from blood feuds that went back several generations, to bonding with each other to outwit a corrupt state, evading taxes as more or less an obligatory form of resistance, and marriages that helped smooth over clan rivalries reminds me of what I know about Greece, too.
Still, the level of "violent revenge killings for betraying La Cosa Nostra's code of omerta, silence even under threat of prison time, no sharing of Mob secrets in any way with police" and so on, remains appalling no matter how amusing the nicknames and jokes are, no doubt.
So glad you are well enough to report. Keeping up with all of this will make our heads spin...if all our prayers are answered!
Re: A flipper in Florida.
If a nap can produce a nap mare, then it follows awakening from a nap can lead one to search for a napaphor.
Trump's strategy of delay, delay, delay, is a double-edged sword. For it to be successful (1) no single case can end with a guilty verdict on any of the charges before the 2024 election, (2) No trial can proceed deep into the government's case in chief which tilts the balance against the defendant (3) Needs most pre-trial motions to go his, not the government's way.
That also means those involved, whether currently charged or not, in any of the conspiracies, obstruction of justice, and the criminal enterprise don't flip or plead guilty while agreeing to testify against Trump and others.
So, it isn't enough for Trump's legal team to slow the start of trials. They need to have them all delayed and rescheduled until after the election or in the alternative prevail in any and all that finish prior to any election cutoff.
While Lucian captured the most important Monday event mainstream media was wasting hours on the Fulton County jail scene and hyping the Republican Primary Debate. Fox News Channel and Fox Corp. must be laughing watching all the free publicity broadcast and cable networks are doling out for their event.
At 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, they are shaking their heads at the lack of coverage of the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual progress and achievements of the Biden administration. So much for the decades old lie of the media has a liberal bias.
What the Biden-Harris administration brain trust NEEDS to do, {He said in amazement that it wasn't already a constant theme} is to hammer on that with regular press conferences where that is the central theme: "We are calling out the media as persistent aiders and abettors of a sinister, quasi-fascist movement in American politics, aka "The Trump candidacy."
They're evidently so used to being on the back foot this kind of feisty in-your-face politicking seems outrageously unorthodox, because what they're already doing is good enough, because good enough.
O faced a similar environment from both the GOP and the media. When the GOP and media seem unfair the voters have been known to reject them both. Not all the time, just in time.
Currently US is in the political silly season which the media tries to make relevant when it ain't. Caught a good deal of the 23August GOP debate and both silly and irrelevant would lead my word cloud.
I didn't watch or listen (in real time), only heard an NPR snippet of Pence's crackpot double-think. Will always put Constitution above loyalty to Trump, will support Trump if Trump is the nominee, OK now back into your robotic routine as it implodes and becomes even more irrelevant, "Silly Season" indeed, and it's not even a "debate" at all, either, not in any recognized form, that's for sure.
Yes, the tell of Rs/cons remains conflict in thought and contradiction in words and deeds.
Yes, to Pence's doublethink and to his everyday self as a droid in training to a local mortician.
Yes, to not debate at all. Adults in body lacking the discipline, manners and minds of most junior high children.
-Media needs to stop selling another in a long line of Republican free-for-alls (includes the audience) as a debate. Is offensive and insulting to good people of all ages.
-The biggest loser was Chris Crisco. Came in with biggest hype from #nevertrumpers and the media as the ultimate stage assassin. Suffered body blow after body blow and left as the smallest of the small. Second in line, Ron DeSantis. Only Pence is more inauthentic. Haley minded me of a Mother struggling to get control over insolent children in public including the 1 who wouldn't stop talking. Yes, she is Pence's stage Mother. The remainder were invisible no matter what level noise they made.
That's truly hilarious and on the mark, thanks!
OH: should add if I steal any of that, I will absolutely credit "Shadowcloud" on the LKTIV Substack blog in accompanying text of the theft!