BETTER AND BETTER ALL THE TIME 19 FOR 19

 

UPDATING DEFENDANT TRUMP'S PRESIDENTIAL PORTRAIT

 

THE FIRST WAVE OF CROOKED SCUMBAGS...CONGRESSIONAL CROOKS AND ENABLERS SHOULD BE INDICTED NEXT

 

REMEMBER GRASSLEY AND THE OTHER CRIMINALS AS WELL

The best picture ever.

 

HOWARD TULLMAN OPINION IN CRAIN'S CHICAGO

 

Opinion: It's time for Illinois to turn the tables on Trump

By Howard Tullman

Credit: Bloomberg

August 24, 2023 10:01 AM AN HOUR AGO

 

Illinois has a rare opportunity to be one of the first states to adopt the position of many conservative legal scholars and foil the ex-president's ambitions, writes Chicago tech leader Howard Tullman.

One of the saddest of former President Donald Trump’s legacies is how he has so often made a mockery of the courts and the law. He understands better than anyone that the courts move painfully slow — even when they aren’t acting corruptly in his interests — and that delay is always in the criminal’s favor.

Trump — as indicated by the actual memos and written proposals of his co-conspirators — also understands that the current U.S. Supreme Court is more than willing to promote his schemes and plans by hiding behind bogus formulations about the need for the court not to interfere with political actions in order to let MAGA supporters do as they please in terms of election interference.

One of the greatest exposures we have as a country in the upcoming 2024 election cycle is that Trumpists will suppress votes, illegally bar voters, and otherwise interfere with and intimidate election officials and voters, and that the bureaucracy of the courts at every level and their hidebound protocols won’t be able to quickly address and respond in a timely manner to prevent these criminal acts before the elections in question are completed. Trump is an absolute master at using every right and process which we hold dear to further his corrupt plans and attacks on our democracy. We could be looking at Bush v. Gore all over again.

But Illinois has a rare opportunity to be one of the first states to turn the tables and use Trump’s typical tricks and his mastery of delay against him by adopting the position of many highly-regarded conservative legal scholars and other academics that Trump is automatically disqualified from running for president again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution by virtue, at a minimum, of his giving aid and comfort to the mob of insurrectionists trying to prevent Congress from confirming President Biden’s election. Illinois should announce that it has determined that Trump's name cannot be included in the 2024 presidential ballots.

Taking such a position shortly before the ballots are printed presents a rare opportunity for Illinois to hoist Trump and the rest of the MAGA crowd on their own petards. There’s no need to await the outcome of the current trials, which allege a massively more substantial and long-term plan by Trump and his corrupt cronies to steal the election when he lost, because we all have seen and heard with our own eyes and ears direct evidence of Trump’s own actions and attempts to illegally interfere with the election. The trick is to shift the burden from the good guys to the crooks.

Instead of falling into the morass of suits, appeals, delays, and the likely and unfortunate outcome that no court action will confirm Trump’s disqualification in time to remove him from the ballots, the states should instead take the affirmative action of preventing his inclusion relying on the self-executing provisions of Section 3 which require no enforcement any more than the age or other stated limitations and put the burden of the Trumpists to petition and demand that the courts (up to and including the Supreme Court) interfere with and interrupt the deliberate actions of the states to determine and proscribe their own individual voting rules and requirements.

The obvious karmic charm of this approach is twofold: Trump will run out of time in seeking relief, and even this ludicrously slanted and corrupt Supreme Court has repeatedly and consistently stated that these kinds of political matters (along with abortion issues) must be left to the individual states. As the oracles say: What comes around, goes around.

Howard Tullman is former CEO of 1871 in Chicago, former executive director of the Kaplan Institute at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and past president of Kendall College and Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy.

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS BRAND ISSUES

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

You Need to Reimagine How You Market Your Brand

Some of the big names in consumer products are losing share because they can no longer demonstrate that they deserve a price premium. Make sure you're doing the right things to communicate your product's value.

 

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1

 

Brands just aren't bringing it and getting the job done any longer. They used to represent a shorthand promise based on the simple premise that you could have basic confidence that you were getting more value for your spend even if you paid a premium for the privilege. That could be in the form of quality, durability, safety, ingredients or efficacy -- but we all believed for decades that something made a brand worth the additional investment. Brands were also an efficient way to address decision fatigue given the virtually unlimited shopping and product choices on the web today.

But now it seems that only those people (entertainers, influencers, gangbangers) who are utterly indifferent to price are still spending and sporting the top few big-name brands for reasons having much more to do with reputation, endorsement payouts and bragging rights than with any connection to reality. The world's wearing Apple watches these days while the jocks and party people are still sporting their diamond-encrusted Rolexes. We're never going to entirely eliminate the ancillary messaging and emotional considerations that accompany upscale brands that have little or nothing to do with function or features, but the days of blindly buying a premium brand for practical, prudent, and economic reasons are long gone for most products.

When you read investigative articles that suggest the private label brands at Costco or Walmart are being manufactured on the sly by the same makers of the branded goods, it's more than unsettling - it's a wake-up call. People aren't panting any more to pay up for products that are functionally indistinguishable from the private labels and even generics, which are being increasingly pushed by the large retail chains. We're seeing this all over the place, but especially with respect to the multi-billion-dollar marketplace for over-the-counter medications. 

Millions of consumers don't believe in much of anything these days, and the MAGAts only believe Trump, largely due to his eight-year assault on the truth. Brand names are just one important casualty. The Trumpist war on truth and medicine throughout the pandemic--which cost them tens of thousands of dead Red voters -- has really diminished consumer confidence in doctors and drugs in general. Drugs aren't the whole story, but they're a great early indicator of consumer brand behavior. As more and more products become confusingly similar and make identical claims regarding effectiveness, price rather than brand drives the decision bus.

There are several explanations for these new customer attitudes toward OTC medications that will eventually impact the future viability of every major brand. The players who react and adapt to the new environment and change their brand messaging, product offerings and customer interactions will survive and grow; those who choose to rest on their laurels and past performance will ride their brands right into the ground. Kraft Heinz's lousy results, even with higher prices, meant a newly-announced CEO. There's still time now - although Big Pharma doesn't seem to get the picture - and soon there will be plenty of blame for the losers and also-rans to spread around.

You could put part of the blame on the pharma companies themselves for clear and repeated price gouging, which the side-by-side comparative displays at Walgreens or CVS make abundantly clear to even the most obtuse observer. Wanna spend three bucks more for a bottle of Bayer aspirin or a tube of Neosporin for absolutely no good reason? Be my guest.

Of course, now that Walgreens has decided in its newest urban stores to hide virtually everything in closed cages or back-of-house, and to use kiosks and clerks to fill orders, maybe these awkward comparisons, which actually helped to educate the consumer, will disappear. That would be unfortunate but at least it won't kill the instant, internet-enabled, comparison pricing for virtually anything that's going on in every store. This smartphone-based smart shopping certainly hasn't made life any easier for the big brands.

Whatever your budget constraints may be, no one wants to look foolish or feel that they're being gouged. Mark Cuban's amazing new initiative - Cost Plus Drugs continues to gain traction and Amazon is jumping aggressively into the pharmacy business as well, which will clearly help drive drug prices down. It's no accident that Blue Shield California has announced plans to work with Amazon, Cuban and CVS on a new distribution system. President Biden's action in locking down the price of insulin for millions of patients is another amazing step forward.

You could say that the panache of pharma brands has been hard to polish and promote when there's so much noise in traditional broadcast channels, where every other ad is for some disease like TED, RVS or AMD that no one's ever heard of. These voluminous ads are clearly targeted to the few ancient and infirm people still watching the tube.  Ever since the success of the "purple pill" promotion, you no longer see the long-recognizable corporate names in their TV ads. The message is all about some made-up catchy name extracted by an overpaid ad agency from the drug's technical designation. Doctors now constantly complain that their patients no longer want diagnoses, they just want the pill with the cute name or the one that makes the fat go away.

And while cable subscriptions are largely a function of consumer inertia, the streamers are spending millions to try to move subscribers upstream to more expensive, ad-free tiers. They're telling the whole world that ads are worthless interruptions and an utter waste of time. In many ways, the bipolar ad industry is eating its own lunch and making its future prospects even more uncertain.

The clear implication in all this anti-ad messaging is that only morons and the poor have to suffer through dozens of ads every day in order to watch reruns, repetitive ad flights, and pitches for old people. Someone recently said that - given the average age of its audience - CBS now stands for "Could Be Sleeping."  And that it's really no harm, no foul if you should happen to nod off because in the online, all the time, connected world there's really nothing new about the nightly news. 

The message being sent to new generations of prospective viewers (and, obviously, consumers) is that all of the ads on traditional broadcast channels, cable stations, and even on much of the new and inexpensive offerings by the streamers are worthless wastes of their time and attention. As we enter the 2024 election ad cycle and suffer through the noise and clutter and the indiscriminate spray-and-pray ugliness, the situation will only worsen for the next 14 months, along with the ability of even the biggest brands to break through.

The bottom line for every business is that - while building and sustaining your brand will be important and challenging - it's even more critical to give your customers (past, present, and prospective) concrete reasons to continue to purchase, use and support your products and services.

Two key things to keep in mind:

(1)    Your team members will be essential to this process because people increasingly will be more likely to trust your employees, their interactions with them, and their suggestions and recommendations than anything else. Successful sales will always be a people business.  

(2)    Businesses and their brands in the future are going to have to have and successfully communicate to the world a purpose beyond profit in order to connect to tomorrow's consumers.

PANEL WITH HOWARD TULLMAN AND DENNIS CHOOKASZIAN AT SNAPSHEET SUMMER SUMMIT

A Suggestion to Dump Trump

 My reply to David French

David. It seems like the solution to the Sup CT’s reluctance to intervene may be quite simple. If various of the states (as California has already suggested) which are absolutely responsible for all the voting requirements and logistics decide to not include Trump on their ballots, then Trump would have to appeal to the Sup Ct for immediate action which would likely suffer the same impediments and time constraints. Instead of the court removing him from the ballots in key states, they would have to take affirmative action to add him in a very rapid fashion which would be far more invasive and interfering. Interestingly time was what ended up screwing Al Gore out of his presidency when the Court refused to act and it could happen to Trump and what wonderful Justice that would be. 



Appeasing Donald Trump Won’t Work

Aug. 20, 2023, 6:00 a.m. ET

 

By David French

Opinion Columnist

I’m going to begin this column with a rather unusual reading recommendation. If you’ve got an afternoon to kill and want to read 126 pages of heavily footnoted legal argument and historical analysis, I strongly recommend a law review article entitled “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.” It’s a rather dull headline for a highly provocative argument: that Donald Trump is constitutionally disqualified from holding the office of president.

In the article, two respected conservative law professors, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, make the case that the text, history and tradition of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — a post-Civil War amendment that prohibited former public officials from holding office again if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort” to those who did — all strongly point to the conclusion that Trump is ineligible for the presidency based on his actions on and related to Jan. 6, 2021. Barring a two-thirds congressional amnesty vote, Trump’s ineligibility, Baude and Paulsen argue, is as absolute as if he were too young to be president or were not a natural-born citizen of the United States.

It’s a fascinating and compelling argument that only grows more compelling with each painstakingly researched page. But as I was reading it, a single, depressing thought came to my mind. Baude and Paulsen’s argument may well represent the single most rigorous and definitive explanation of Section 3 ever put to paper, yet it’s difficult to imagine, at this late date, the Supreme Court ultimately either striking Trump from the ballot or permitting state officials to do so.

As powerful as Baude and Paulsen’s substantive argument is, the late date means that by the time any challenge to Trump’s eligibility might reach the Supreme Court, voters may have already started voting in the Republican primaries. Millions of votes could have been cast. The Supreme Court is already reluctant to change election procedures on the eve of an election. How eager would it be to remove a candidate from the ballot after he’s perhaps even clinched a primary?

While I believe the court should intervene even if the hour is late, it’s worth remembering that it would face this decision only because of the comprehensive failure of congressional Republicans. Let me be specific. There was never any way to remove Trump from American politics through the Democratic Party alone. Ending Trump’s political career required Republican cooperation, and Republicans have shirked their constitutional duties, sometimes through sheer cowardice. They have punted their responsibilities to other branches of government or simply shrunk back in fear of the consequences.

In hindsight, for example, Republican inaction after Jan. 6 boggles the mind. Rather than remove Trump from American politics by convicting him in the Senate after his second impeachment, Republicans punted their responsibilities to the American legal system. As Mitch McConnell said when he voted to acquit Trump, “We have a criminal justice system in this country.” Yet not even a successful prosecution and felony conviction — on any of the charges against him, in any of the multiple venues — can disqualify Trump from serving as president. Because of G.O.P. cowardice, our nation is genuinely facing the possibility of a president’s taking the oath of office while also appealing one or more substantial prison sentences.

Republicans have also punted to the American voters, suggesting that any outstanding questions of Trump’s fitness be decided at the ballot box.

It’s a recommendation with some real appeal. (In his most recent newsletter, my colleague Ross Douthat makes a powerful case that only politics can solve the problem of Donald Trump.) “Give the people what they want” is a core element of democratic politics, and if enough people “want” Trump, then who are American politicians or judges to deprive them? Yet the American founders (and the drafters of the 14th Amendment) also knew the necessity of occasionally checking the popular will, and the Constitution thus contains a host of safeguards designed to protect American democracy from majorities run amok. After all, if voting alone were sufficient to protect America from insurrectionist leaders, there would have been no need to draft or ratify Section 3.

Why are Republicans in Congress punting to voters and the legal system? For many of them, the answer lies in raw fear. First, there is the simple political fear of losing a House or Senate seat. In polarized, gerrymandered America, all too many Republican politicians face political risk only from their right, and that “right” appears to be overwhelmingly populated by Trumpists.

But there’s another fear as well, that imposing accountability will only escalate American political division, leading to a tit-for-tat of prosecuted or disqualified politicians. This fear is sometimes difficult to take seriously. For example, conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro raised it, arguing that “running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail — on all sides.” Yet he had himself written an entire book calling for racketeering charges against Barack Obama.

That said, the idea that vengeful MAGA Republicans might prosecute Democrats out of spite is credible enough to raise concerns outside the infotainment right. Michael McConnell, a conservative professor I admire a great deal (and one who is no fan of Donald Trump), expressed concern about the Section 3 approach to disqualifying Trump. “I worry that this approach could empower partisans to seek disqualification every time a politician supports or speaks in support of the objectives of a political riot,” he wrote, adding, “Imagine how bad actors will use this theory.”

In other words, Trump abused America once, and the fear is that if we hold him accountable, he or his allies will abuse our nation again. I think Professor McConnell’s warnings are correct. Trump and his allies are already advertising their plans for revenge. But if past practice is any guide, Trump and his allies will abuse our nation whether we hold him accountable or not. The abuse is the constant reality of Trump and the movement he leads. Accountability is the variable — dependent on the courage and will of key American leaders — and only accountability has any real hope of stopping the abuse.

A fundamental reality of human existence is that vice often leaves virtue with few good options. Evil men can attach catastrophic risks to virtually any course of action, however admirable. But we can and should learn lessons from history. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, two of our greatest presidents, both faced insurrectionary movements, and their example should teach us today. When Washington faced an open revolt during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, he didn’t appease the rebels, instead mobilizing overwhelming force to meet the moment and end the threat.

In 1861, Lincoln rejected advice to abandon Fort Sumter in South Carolina in the hope of avoiding direct confrontation with the nascent Confederate Army. Instead, he ordered the Navy to resupply the fort. The Confederates bombarded Sumter and launched the deadliest war in American history, but there was no point at which Lincoln was going to permit rebels to blackmail the United States into extinction.

If you think the comparisons to the Whiskey Rebellion or the Civil War are overwrought, just consider the consequences had Trump’s plan succeeded. I have previously described Jan. 6 as “America’s near-death day” for good reason. If Mike Pence had declared Trump the victor — or even if the certification of the election had been delayed — one shudders to consider what would have happened next. We would have faced the possibility of two presidents’ being sworn in at once, with the Supreme Court (and ultimately federal law enforcement, or perhaps even the Army) being tasked with deciding which one was truly legitimate.

Thankfully, the American legal system has worked well enough to knock the MAGA movement on its heels. Hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters face criminal justice. The movement’s corrupt lawyers face their own days in court. Trump is indicted in four jurisdictions. Yet all of that work can be undone — and every triumph will turn to defeat — if a disqualified president reclaims power in large part through the fear of his foes.

But the story of Washington and Lincoln doesn’t stop with their decisive victories. While 10 members of the Whiskey Rebellion were tried for treason, only two were convicted, and Washington ultimately pardoned them both. On the eve of final victory, Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address contained words of grace that echo through history, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”

Victory is not incompatible with mercy, and mercy can be indispensable after victory. But while the threat remains, so must the resolve, even if it means asking the Supreme Court to intervene at the worst possible time. Let me end where I began. Read Baude and Paulsen — and not just for their compelling legal argument. Read and remember what it was like when people of character and conviction inhabited the American political class. They have given us the tools to defend the American experiment. All we need is the will.