JUST TAKE THE DAMN PLANE!

You've shown us what you are Mr. President, your grifting is beyond compare. . . Just take the plane for your private use. Hanger it at Mar a Lago though, don't make us pay for it.

May 18, 2025

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It seems lately that we keep reverting to the same response: a shrug, a sigh, “The damage is done America, just bend over and take your medicine.”

We are barely beyond the first one hundred days of a presidency that will haunt us for a century, if we can ever hope to restore our democracy.

What can we do? Even if you could impeach the criminal and grifter masquerading as Commander in Chief, what would we get? JD Vance? The man who has already taken the position that we should ignore the Supreme Court if we don’t like their decisions? The man who believes that we made a cultural blunder when we allowed women to vote or take their rightful place in the workforce? The only US politician more reviled than Donald Trump in the democratic world?

Even next in line, Speaker Johnson, is an intellectual lightweight, seemingly born to lick Donald Trump’s boots, to say nothing about the dictators that Trump has proven he’ll fellate publicly if only they will meet his price.

The extent of the grift in which the Trump Crime family is engaged is breathtaking. Never again will we be able to point to Presidents so far back in history that their corruption seems quaint, to reference President’s who used their office to line their pockets.

The firing of Inspectors General across the federal system undoubtedly served to mask the crimes of hundreds of suspects across the MAGA family, as well as the loutish behavior of the DOGE team - who surely have found and exposed less “waste, fraud and abuse” in the course of their ongoing reign of terror so far than the Inspectors General themselves did in their normal course of work.

Trump’s dissolution of all enforcement of nascient Crypto-Currency scams has opened the field wide to all the budding Sam Bankman-Frieds hiding in the bushes, now free to pursue their own version of snake oil sales.

All that America has accomplished over the last 50 years to level the playing field of the International economic system and establish and uphold the rule of law, to provide an example to the world has been lost in 100 days. Including the hundreds of bilge rats that went scurrying after the resignation of America’s last “most corrupt” president Richard Nixon, a piker by Trump standards. exposing a veritable feast of corruption operating under the radar at the time, leading to the most feared tool in the utility belt of anti-corruption The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 was created and enforced for the purpose of combating worldwide corruption. In its most basic terms, the FPCA makes it illegal for a US citizen or company to exchange anything of value with a foreign official for the express purpose of obtaining or maintaining business.

According to the US government’s 2020 Resource Guide to the FCPA, “Congress enacted the FCPA in 1977 after revelations of widespread global corruption in the wake of the Watergate political scandal. SEC discovered that more than 400 U.S. companies had paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to foreign government officials to secure business overseas.”

When our “Electronic Community” team was helping to introduce the Internet to West Africa in the 1990s, we endured arrest and questioning at the hands of military and civilian authorities, while being held at gunpoint for hours. Yet, we watched with pride as the nexus of the Internet and the FCPA helped steel the spine of several interim leaders and then Nigeria’s legendary President, Olusegun Obasanjo, as he strived to eliminate corruption in Nigeria’s civil service.

In the course of just two years, we saw a miraculous change. Where, initially, we had been shaken down by nearly everyone in a uniform of any sort, within two years, all that had changed. Our rule of thumb became: If you are asked for a bribe, ask the corrupt official to speak louder, to be sure that they would risk being exposed. The result was that, without exception, they would scurry away and not mention it again. Thus began in Nigeria a ten-year rise in wealth, prosperity and, most importantly, national pride.

One member of our team, Nigerian-born and naturalized American citizen Chidi Nwachukwu, who we lost to leukemia in 2003, called The EC the most important thing he ever did in his life, largely because of the impact he felt within his beloved Nigeria from this work.

All that ended in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump, when dictatorship became fashionable again. Since then Nigeria has sadly regressed.

Donald Trumps grift tour of the Middle East is a shameless display of corruption with a 400 million jet directly benefiting the Trump family - with a brief proposed loan to the US Department of Defence as a replacement for Airforce One.

According to reliable sources, just retrofitting the Katar jet and making it secure for Presidential use will cost more than the new Airforce One already on order with Boeing.

Let’s end the charade Mr. President, TAKE THE DAMN PLANE, for your private use. Its time to formalize the grift while you are still President. Isn’t that why the Supreme Court gave you immunity? Hanger it at Mar a Lago though, don't make us pay for it.

The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: What it Means for Your Business

https://www.lexisnexis.com/blogs/int/b/risk-and-compliance/posts/the-us-foreign-corrupt-practices-act-what-it-means-for-your-business

Olusegun Obasanjo - President of Nigeria 1999-2007

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olusegun_Obasanjo#:~:text=He%20withdrew%20Nigeria's%20military%20from,chair%20from%202004%20to%202006.

About Wayne King and Anamaki Chronicles Substack

Wayne is a North American "mutt" with a family heritage that winds through his Native American, Canadian and US Colonial roots. His love for the philosophical founding documents and sacred stories and dreams of the Iroquois Confederacy, the US Revolutionary Founders, and the sacred artist, musicans, writers and poets whose works and images are a celebration of the circle of life are the source of his inspiration. His images blend the real and the surreal to achieve a sense of place or time that reaches beyond the moment into what he calls "a dreamlike quintessentialism" designed to spark an emotional response. Using digital enhancement, handcrafting, painting, and sometimes even straight photography, King seeks to take the viewer to a place that is beyond simple truth to where truth meets passion, hope and dreams. Join the mailing list and be first to see new images and to receive special offers on cards, prints, limited editions and more.

Wayne lives on the “Narrows” in Bath, NH at the confluence of the Connecticut and Ammonoosuc Rivers and proudly flies the American, Iroquois and Abenaki Flags, attesting to both his ancestry and his spiritual ties. Anamaki is a derivative of an Algonquin word meaning “abiding hope”.

Art, Columns and Podcasts are produced at Anamaki Productions, Winter Warrior Studios in Bath, NH.

Author, podcaster, artist, activist, social entrepreneur and recovering politician. A three-term State Senator, 1994 Democratic nominee for Governor. His art (WayneDKing.com) is exhibited nationally in galleries and he has published five books of his images, most recently, "New Hampshire - a Love Story”. His novel "Sacred Trust" - a vicarious, high-voltage adventure to stop a private power line - as well as the photographic books are available at most local bookstores or on Amazon.

Anamaki Chronicles Substack has no paywall, we exist through the generosity of subscribers and the purchase of art , books and merch from the Anamaki.com website and from Wayne’s gallery of images.

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