Say Good-bye Ms. Pelosi

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is on the hot seat for sexual harassment of least two former staffers. The surprising thing is that the allegations of sexual harassment are getting more air time than the pending allegations regarding his responsibility for the deaths of between 10,000 and 15,000 elderly patients who die of COVID 19 because Mr. Cuomo forced nursing homes to accept patients already diagnosed with the virus thus exposing other residents to the deadly disease.

Leaving Mr. Cuomo’s death toll behind momentarily, it should be noted that Mr. Cuomo is just the latest in a long list of Democrat politicians, Hollywood phonies, and mainstream media morons who have demonstrated that misogyny is alive and well on the left. (Before Republicans wring their hands in glee, their skirts are not particularly clean either, although they are not the party who spends their time lecturing the rest of us on life’s vicissitudes.) Enough about Mr. Cuomo; he is a creep and a first class jerk and richly deserves more misfortune than he will ever suffer.

There are two elements of harm to these charges. First, there is the harm to the victim. There is no standard reaction. It can range from “Buzz off creep” to a deeper emotional anxiety, with the damage being even greater if the harassment is either physical or even the threat of being physical. Unless you have been there, you have no idea how you would react.

The second is the harm to the public. And in this instance I want to focus on the harm caused by those holding public office. Those in public office are given an enormous amount of power, whether real or perceived. As one moves higher in public office that power becomes greater and greater. It is not just the prominence or fame of an office; it includes real power to utilize the resources of the government itself to attract, reward, manipulate, intimidate and punish. Whether it is threatened or not is irrelevant because the power is always there – always available to those in public office. It is made worse when you realize that the cost of resisting is yours and yours alone, while the public officer has the resources of the government to persist at no personal cost, financial and otherwise, to them.

Leaving aside the damage to the victim, just focus on the harm caused to the purpose of government:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

(For those of you forced to endure a teachers union led education in the Portland Public Schools, those words come from our Declaration of Independence – a document that was neither read nor discussed in your classrooms.) The use of public office to gain financially, to increase power to be used for personal purposes, or to punish those with whom you disagree is an anathema to that Declaration, to our Constitution, and to the very purpose of a legitimate democracy.

Which brings us to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Ms. Pelosi is the Speaker of the House of Representative and as such is the second most powerful person in the federal government. In can be argued that Ms. Pelosi is, in fact, the most powerful person in government because she not only retains her power as Speaker but she has the ear of the President of the United States who is proving to be what we feared most – a man of diminished capacity bending to the will of those around him.

Ms. Pelosi is an historic figure. She is the first and only woman to become the Speaker of the House and, in fact, has achieved that position twice. Of course as a Democrat, her party and its supporters in the mainstream media find it necessary to inflate her abilities to near God-like status and thus she is declared to be a legendary legislative strategist and tactician – she is neither.

Ms. Pelosi is ruthless – an art she learned from her father, Thomas d’Alesandro, the fomer mayor of the corrupt city of Baltimore, and an associate of members of organized crime. A February 9,2018, report in The Federalist Papers noted:

“Grandparents.com describes House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a ‘Power Nana’ who refers to herself in her family as ‘Grandma Mimi.’ But Pelosi isn’t exactly an average grandma figure, considering her current corruption dates back to her upbringing in a politically charged environment heavily tied to the mafia.

“Pelosi’s father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., was a close associate of the notorious mobster Benjamin ‘Benny Trotta’ Magliono, as well as several other criminals.

“Secret deals are nothing new for Pelosi.

* * *

“Despite excuses from Hoover, allegations continued to pile up and President John F. Kennedy finally requested in 1961 that ‘D’Alesandro’s involvement with Baltimore hoodlums; with favoritism in awarding city contracts; [and] protection for political contributors and the prosecution of local cases’ be investigated.”

The Speaker of the House has virtually unlimited powers within the House of Representative. The Speaker controls the appointment of members to committees, the assignment of legislation to those committees, the budgets of those committees, the authority of those committees (including subpoena power) and finally the actual consideration of legislation by the House. Nothing moves in the House of Representatives without the Speaker’s permission. In addition she actually controls the buildings which house the members of both the Senate and the House, the Capitol Police, and the ministerial functions of Congress. And amongst the Democrat members of the House of Representatives, Ms. Pelosi has absolute authority. (You may question that assertion given the antics of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez D-NY) and the members of her Squad but they, in fact, operate under the tolerance of Ms. Pelosi and she could silence them in a nanosecond.)

And while Ms. Pelosi may prefer to be identified as “Grandma Mimi” amongst members of her own party, she more closely resembles Queen Mary (Bloody Mary) of England. Cross Ms. Pelosi and you will suffer the consequences. So when President Donald Trump referred to Ms. Pelosi as “a third rate politician” he attacked her historical, actual and storied persona. It wasn’t just a conflict between politicians – it was an existential attack. It was the equivalent of a husband not only cheating on this wife, but justifying it by saying the wounded spouse was an inept sexual partner.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

While this saying is widely attributed to William Shakespeare, it is in fact more appropriately attributed to William Congreve in his play The Mourning Bride (1697).

And so Ms. Pelosi has wreaked her vengeance against Mr. Trump. She fanned the flames of the bogus Russian Conspiracy charade even though she knew from the beginning that it was bogus and that it originated through her friend Hillary Clinton. She encouraged the use of it to incite impeachment of Mr. Trump and when it fell apart after the Mueller Report she quickly shifted gears to claim that Mr. Trump engaged in abuse of power by threatening to withhold foreign aid to the Ukraine unless it investigated Mr. Biden and his son – that despite the recorded conversation of Mr. Trump that clearly showed that he did not. (An interesting element is that Ms. Pelosi engineered the impeachment of Mr. Trump for something he did not do but that Mr. Biden actually did do while he was Vice-President.) And when that failed Ms. Pelosi withheld legislation and financial assistance designed to assist the American public struggling with the COVID –19 pandemic in order to deprive Mr. Trump of a victory leading up to the 2020 presidential election. But it wasn’t enough that Mr. Trump was defeated at that election, Mr. Pelosi engineered another impeachment attempt claiming that Mr. Trump attempted an insurrection despite the lack of proof of any such attempt by Mr. Trump – it had less to do with Mr. Trump’s actions than it did with an attempt to deny him the ability to seek re-election in 2024. And even after Mr. Trump left office, Ms. Pelosi was not done. She has encouraged legislation that would deny Mr. Trump burial at Arlington National Cemetery – an historic right of all presidents/. And on and on it goes.

As a result the legitimate business of Congress has been suspended while Ms. Pelosi exorcises her demons. COVID economic relief has been delayed. Election reform has been delayed. Tax relief has been delayed and the list goes on. Millions have been spent on these bogus investigations. The focus of a number of committee assignments have been deferred to give Ms. Pelosi’s vendetta priority. The abuse of power is overwhelming and yet the media remain largely silent.

Ms. Pelosi has promised that this will be her last term as Speaker of the House. A January 3, 2021 article in Roll Call noted:

“The House on Sunday elected Nancy Pelosi as speaker for the 117th Congress, which is expected to be her last term with the gavel.

“All but five Democrats voted for Pelosi, the 80-year-old Californian who has led the House Democratic Caucus since 2003. Two years ago, Pelosi committed to her caucus that she would not serve as speaker beyond 2022, and after the November election, she publicly affirmed she would adhere to that promise.”

Fulfillment of that promise cannot come any time too soon.