I will skip the details only because I have written about them before, but a request I had made of  a school district administration to address a problem that should have been something easy to consider and do as it involved student welfare was not the no brainer it should have been. It ended up involving years of advocacy and educating those who should have known better.

At one point I had turned to some national advocacy groups for whatever help they could give, more in the form of advice, guidance, and, perhaps, the involvement of advocates more experienced than I as opposed to money. Email help and the evaluating of documents and advice on further steps would have not needed money anyway.

The three most relevant groups to whom I turned told me that they had to be careful and selective about which advocacy they actively supported, first because they had to be careful with their funding and second, as mine was not taking place in a community with a big enough name, they saw no general benefit from a win but a bad result with a loss..

I was on my own.

With persistence and local moral support, my advocacy began to pay off, and with that, the heavy work having been done and with success rising over the horizon, these same groups took an interest, but the best they could offer was advice on what was no longer relevant as the advocacy was beyond that point.

When with a personal price having been paid, and the advocacy having finally succeeded, along with the congratulations for a job well done, these same groups expressed their satisfaction with having been a part of the process. A local person with a connection to one of these groups, on the night of the school board’s vote to amend the relevant school policies, wrote a press release that along with congratulating me for the persistence and success expressed her gratitude for having been able to have played a part, regardless how small it might have been.

It put me in mind of the story of the Little Red Hen who, after finding some wheat and asking the other farmyard animals for help planting it, harvesting it, milling it into flour, and baking it into bread, was refused their help at each step when asked while these same animals agreed to help her eat the finished product when all the work had been done.

After claiming any attention to COVID- 19 was just a political attack against him, claiming that over a month ago that the number of those having it would soon be at zero, saying at that same time that we would be able to be tested upon request as we would have enough tests, and pushing  hydroxochloroquine and injecting disinfectant was the cure, Trump now has announced, after Dr, Fauci said that trials on certain vaccines were moving along, that the United States plans to accelerate the development of a coronavirus vaccine in an effort dubbed “Operation Warp Speed.”

After announcing ,

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“Whatever you can humanly do, we’re going to have. I hope we’re going to have a vaccine and we’re going to fast-track it like you’ve never seen,”

When Trump was asked who would be in charge of the operation, Trump informed us that,

“You know who’s in charge of it? I am.”

He went on to say,

“I’m the one who gets blamed.”

But up until now he has said he is responsible for nothing but good ratings for his now defunct daily press conferences, and before that, as we headed toward a government shut-down in December 2019,  because of an impasse over his demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for his border wall, Trump told Senator Schumer in the Oval Office,

” I am proud to shut down the government for border security … I will be the one to shut [the government] down. I’m not going to blame you for it … I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down If we don’t get what we want, one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government,” 

 only later to lay the blame for the shut-down on Nancy Pelosi.

So while he is the only one who can fix it and knows if things go bard (worse) he will be blamed, there obviously is a question as to whether he will take the praise of others do come up with a vaccine at warp speed, or blame them if they do not.

Thos who know about such thing, scientists and pharmaceutical companies, have previously suggested that clinical trials that guarantee a vaccine is safe and effective could take up 12 to 18 months.

So if all goes well, be assured that Trump will tell us that he is proud to have been such an effective leader with Mike Pence praising him repeatedly in any remarks, but if things do not happen at warp speed there will be a series of tweets condemning those who failed.

But either way, he will tell us how good his ratings were when he appears on television to tell us the results of the vaccine trials.

Remember these quotes from a few months ago?

 “There was no quid pro quo, you’d have to have that if there was going to be anything wrong.” Senator Charles Grassley September 25.

When it was pointed out that in defense of Trump Mick Mulvaney had described a quid pro quo, he replied,

 “We do that all the time. I have news for everybody: Get over it.”

For those needing a memory jog these two defenses of Trump were related to the offer of a White House meeting with the new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump’s promise to stop blocking hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid if Ukraine pursued the investigation of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter and some speculations about the Democratic National Committee server having been used to influence the 2016 elections as opposed Russia and which is supposedly hidden somewhere in the Ukraine that he wanted.

This played a role in Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.

Trump did acknowledge that he held up the military aid, saying he wanted to encourage the country to tackle corruption in a broad sense, but in the summary of his July phone call to Zelensky, there is no mention of his having addressed that or made any mention of corruption, nor did he in the first call to Zelenskiy in April when he was first elected to the Ukraine presidency.

Coincidentally, when the quid pro quo was first mentioned at the end of last summer, Trump released the money on September 11.

Trump insisted that there was no quid pro quo, which is defined as something that is given or taken in return for something else, and he could be correct because obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority is called extortion.  

After he was acquitted by the Republican majority in the senate, Senator Susan Collins, in justifying her vote for acquittal in spite of previous comments, claimed,

“He was impeached. And there has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call. I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.” 

When asked what he had learned from the impeachment, Trump said,

“That the Democrats are crooked. They’ve got a lot of crooked things going, that they’re vicious, that they shouldn’t have brought impeachment and that my poll numbers are 10 points higher because of fake news like NBC.”

So it is no surprise that, as Mulvaney said, “We do that all the time,” Trump is at it again, but this time domestically.

So what did Trump learn?

Because of COVID-19 and the quarantine to help reduce its spread with stores, and restaurants, except for essential ones, and entertainment and sports venues closed, people are not spending money, and that means sales taxes are not going into the coffers of the states that rely on them. These local taxes support the police and fire departments, as well as hospitals and other essential municipal and state services.

Since state money goes into the federal coffers, it would stand to reason that in these tough times some of that money would be used to help the states. After all, states are not amorphous entities, but the people who populate them.

In spite of this reality, this week Trump said that he could withhold federal aid from states that do not totally comply with Stephen Miller’s, excuse me, I meant the Trump administration’s, immigration policies. 

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At a White House meeting to discuss aid to businesses, he said,

“If it’s COVID-related, I guess we can talk about [aid], but we’d want certain things also, including sanctuary city adjustments.”

“It is one of the things we think about. If we are going to do something for states, they will want something having to do with sanctuary cities and other different points that we can discuss a little later on.”

You give me what I want, and I will give you what you need, or at least talk about doing that. So he is strong arming businesses to get what he wants so they can get what they need.

And, it must be noted, Trump did not say they would be paid for their cooperation by getting the aid, only that he might talk about and discuss it.

Quid pro Quo?

Extortion?

For those not sure, and for those who buy into the misrepresentations of what Sanctuary states and cities are, also referred to as Safe Communities, Sanctuary cities and states a have policies to refuse cooperation with the federal government’s immigration enforcement laws. Local money should go to local law enforcement not to an arm of the federal government. The feds should pay for that ICE agents who are federal not state or local, otherwise money to do federal work is taken away from what is needed for local work.

They do not have policies allowing undocumented immigrants to freely commit crimes and terrorize communities,

Trump doesn’t like this and, of course, claims that they shield migrant criminals from prosecution and deportation. 

What makes Massachusetts a ”Sanctuary State” is a ruling on the Lunn v. Commonwealth case where the Supreme Judicial Court concluded that state law “provides no authority for Massachusetts court officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a Federal civil immigration detainer, beyond the time that the individual would otherwise be entitled to be released from State custody.”

Local Law enforcement does not look for undocumented people, but if they find during an arrest for violating local law that the person is undocumented, ICE is notified to come get them, but they need to do so within a reasonable set time or the person is treated like any person according to law, If they meet bail, they are released, and if the person is found not guilty of the alleged crime in a court of law, they are released accordingly.

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington are also “Sanctuary States”, but within the rest of the states, there may be cities and towns that are Sanctuary Cities on their own within those states that don’t have this policy.

Of these states, all but Oregon pay more into the federal coffers annually than they get back which means they basically support those states that get more money from the federal government than they pay in, and all except for Vermont and Massachusetts have Democratic governors. In the case of Massachusetts, although he is a Republican, the governor is not a Trump fan, its state legislature is heavily Democrat, and in the 2016 presidential election the people voted overwhelmingly for Clinton, Trump only getting 33.5% of the overall votes,  as did the people of Vermont where he got only 32.6%.

So while both Democratic and Republican governors have called for federal aid to help states cover massive budget shortfalls because of the corona virus crisis, Trump is willing to play petty politics and use a quid pro quo, or extortion if you prefer, to get what he wants and to punish those he sees as political enemies. 

Adam Schiff was correct when, in a back handed agreement with Susan Collins, he admitted Trump had, indeed, learned something from this impeachment. 

“it’s very clear the president has learned nothing except that he can get away with anything.”