Now We Know How Hitler Did It

The Raw Story
Thom Hartmann
April 6, 2024

The Nazis in America are now “out.”

This morning, former Republican Joe Scarborough explicitly compared Trump and his followers to Hitler and his Brownshirts on national television. They’re here.

At the same time, America’s richest man is retweeting antisemitism, rightwing influencers and radio/TV hosts are blaming “Jews and liberals” for the “invasion” of “illegals” to “replace white people,” and the entire GOP is embracing candidates and legislators who encourage hate and call for violence.

Are there parallels between the MAGA takeover of the GOP and the Nazi takeover of the German right in the 1930s?

It began with a national humiliation: defeat in war. For Germany, it was WWI; for America it was two wars George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied us into as part of their 2004 “wartime president” re-election strategy (which had worked so well for Nixon with Vietnam in 1972 and Reagan with Grenada in 1984).

Hitler fought in WWI but later blamed Germany’s defeat on the nation being “stabbed in the back” by liberal Jews, their fellow travelers, and incompetent German military leadership.

Trump cheered on Bush’s invasion of Iraq, but later lied and claimed he’d opposed the war. Both blamed the nation’s humiliation on the incompetence or evil of their political enemies.

The economic crisis caused by America’s Republican Great Depression had gone worldwide and Hitler used the gutting of the German middle class (made worse by the punishing Treaty of Versailles) as a campaign issue, promising to restore economic good times.

Trump pointed to the damage forty years of neoliberalism had done to the American middle class and promised to restore blue-collar prosperity. Hitler promised he would “make Germany great again”; Trump campaigned on the slogan: “Make America Great Again.”

Both tried to overthrow their governments by violence and failed, Hitler in a Bavarian beer hall and Trump on January 6th. Both then turned to legal means to seize control of their nations.

Hitler’s scapegoats were Jews, gays, and liberals. “There are only two possibilities,” he told a Munich crowd in 1922. “Either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.”

He promised “I will get rid of the ‘communist vermin’,” “I will take care of the ‘enemy within’,” “Jews and migrants are poisoning Aryan blood,” and “One people, one nation, one leader.”

Trump’s scapegoats were Blacks, Muslims, immigrants, and liberals.

He said he will “root out” “communists … and radical left thugs that live like vermin”; he would destroy “the threat from within”; migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”; and that under Trump’s leadership America will become “One people, one family, one glorious nation.”

Hitler called the press the Lügenpresse or “lying press.” Trump quoted Stalin, calling our news agencies and reporters “the enemy of the people.”

Both exploited religion and religious believers. Hitler proclaimed a “New Christianity” for Germany and encouraged fundamentalist factions within both the Catholic and Protestant faiths.

Every member of the Germany army got a belt-buckle inscribed with Gott Mit Uns (God is with us).

Trump embraced rightwing Catholics and evangelical Protestants and, like the German churches in 1933, has been lionized by their leaders.

Hitler made alliances with other autocrats (Mussolini, Franco, and Tojo) and conspired with them to take over much of the planet. Trump disrespected our NATO and European allies and embraced the murderous dictator of Saudi Arabia, the psychopathic leader of Russia, and the absolute tyrant who runs North Korea.

Both Hitler and Trump had an “inciting incident” that became the touchstone for their rise to illegitimate levels of power.

For Hitler it was the burning of the German parliament building, the Reichstag, by a mentally ill Dutchman. For Trump it is his claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him and the martyrdom of his supporters after their attempted coup on January 6th.

Hitler embraced rightwing Bavarian street gangs and brawlers, organizing them into a volunteer militia who called themselves the Brownshirts (Hitler called them the Sturmabteilung or Storm Division).

Trump embraces rightwing militia groups and motorcycle gangs, and implicitly praises his followers when they attack people like Paul Pelosi, election workers, and prosecutors and judges who are attempting to hold him accountable for his criminal behavior.

While Trump has mostly focused his public hate campaigns against racial and religious minorities, behind the scenes he and his administration had worked hand-in-glove with anti-gay fanatics like Mike Johnson to limit the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.

His administration opposed the Equality Act, saying it would “undermine parental and conscience rights.” More than a third (36%) of his judicial nominees had previously expressed “bias and bigotry towards queer people.” His administration filed briefs in the landmark Bostock case before the Supreme Court, claiming that civil rights laws don’t protect LGBTQ+ people.

His Department of Health and Human Services ended Obama-era medical protections for queer people. His Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, took apart regulations protecting transgender kids in public schools. His HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, proposed new rules allowing shelters to turn away homeless queer people at a time when one-in-five homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+.

German Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem begins with, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.” But, in fact, first Hitler came for queer people.

A year before Nazis began attacking union leaders and socialists, a full five years before attacking Jewish-owned stores on Kristallnacht, the Nazis came for the trans people at the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin.

In 1930, the Institute had pioneered the first gender-affirming surgery in modern Europe. It’s director, Magnus Hirschfeld, had compiled the largest library of books and scientific papers on the LGBTQ+ spectrum in the world and was internationally recognized in the field of sexual and gender studies.

Being gay, lesbian, or trans was widely tolerated in Germany, at least in the big cities, when Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, and the German queer community was his first explicit target. Within weeks, the Nazis began a campaign to demonize queer people — with especially vitriolic attacks on trans people — across German media.

German states put into law bans on gender-affirming care, drag shows, and any sort of “public display of deviance,” enforcing a long-moribund German law, Paragraph 175, first put into the nation’s penal code in 1871, that outlawed homosexuality. Books and magazines telling stories of gay men and lesbians were removed from schools and libraries.

Thus, a mere five months after Hitler came to power, on May 6, 1933, Nazis showed up at the Institute and hauled over 20,000 books and manuscripts about gender and sexuality out in the street to burn, creating a massive bonfire. It was the first major Nazi book-burning and was celebrated with newsreels played in theaters across the nation. It wouldn’t be the last: soon it spread to the libraries and public high schools.

The conservative elite of Germany, particularly Fritz Thyssen, Hjalmar Schacht, and Gustav Krupp were early supporters of Hitler, as he promised to crush the German labor movement and cut their taxes.

Without the support of rightwing billionaires funding Cambridge Analytica and Trump’s campaign he never would have won the electoral college in 2016.

Hitler couldn’t have risen to power without the support of the largest outlets in German media. Some treated him as “just another politician,” normalizing his fascist rhetoric. Others openly supported him.

After his failed beer hall putsch, he was legally banned from public speaking and mass rallies but, in 1930, German media mogul Alfred Hugenberg — a rightwing billionaire who owned two of the largest national newspapers and had considerable influence over radio — joined forces with Hitler and relentlessly promoted him, much like the Murdoch media empire and 1,500 billionaire-owned rightwing radio stations across the country helped bring Trump to power in 2016 and still promote him every day.

Hitler’s first major seizure of dictatorial power was his use of the Weimar law Article 48 which, during a time of crisis, empowered the nation’s leader to suspend due process and habeas corpus, turn the army’s guns on people deemed insurrectionists, and arrest people without charges or trial.

Its American equivalents are the State of Emergency Declaration and the Insurrection Act, both of which Trump has promised to invoke in his first days in office if he’s re-elected in 2024.

Once Hitler had seized full control of the German government, he set about changing the nation’s laws to replace democracy with autocracy. His enablers in the German Parliament passed the “Enabling Act” that gave Hitler’s cabinet the power to write and implement their own laws.

Trump promises to use the theoretical “unitary executive” powers rightwing groups claim the president holds, but has never used in our history, to have his new cabinet rewrite many of our nation’s laws.

Hitler followed the Enabling Act, six months later, with the Act for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service which authorized him to gut the German Civil Service and replace career bureaucrats with toadies loyal exclusively to him. It was the end of any semblance of resistance to the Nazis or preservation of democracy within the new German government.

In his last three weeks in office, Trump issued an executive order called Schedule F that ended Civil Service protections for around 50,000 of America’s top government officials, including the senior levels of every federal agency, so he could replace them all with political appointees (Biden reversed it). The Heritage Foundation is reportedly now vetting over 50,000 people to fill these ranks if Trump is reelected and, as promised, reinstates Schedule F.

The last bastion of resistance to Hitler within the German government was the judiciary, and Hitler altered the German Civil Service Code in January 1937, giving his cabinet the power to remove any judges from office who were deemed “non-compliant” with “Nazi laws or principles.”

When Judge Jon Tigar of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Trump’s new rules barring people from receiving asylum in 2018, Trump attacked Tigar as “a disgrace” and “an Obama judge.” He added that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is “really something we have to take a look at because it’s not fair,” adding, “That’s not law. Every case that gets filed in the Ninth Circuit we get beaten.”

Because the German Supreme Court was still, from time to time, ruling against Hitler’s Gleichschaltung or Nazification of the German government and legal code, and he had no easy legal mechanism to pack the court or term-limit the justices, in 1934 he created an entirely new court to replace it, which he called the People’s Court.

Trump packed the US Supreme Court with rightwing ideologues, many of whom are heavily beholden to oligarchs and industries aligned with Trump and the GOP. If they continue to go along with him — and there’s little to indicate they won’t — he won’t need to create a new court.

When Hitler took over the country in 1933, the military leadership was wary of him and his plans. While they shared many of his conservative views about social issues, most still held a strong loyalty to the German constitution.

It took him the better part of two years, with heavy support from his Brownshirts (who he’d by then integrated into the military) to purge the senior levels of the Army and replace them with Nazi loyalists.

The night before January 6th, newly-elected Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville joined Trump’s sons to help organize the coup planned for the next day. As the Alabama Political Reporter newspaper reported at the time:

“The night before the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville and the then-director of the Republican Attorneys General Association met with then-President Donald Trump’s sons and close advisers, according to a social media post by a Nebraska Republican who at the time was a Trump administration appointee.

“Charles W. Herbster, who was then the national chairman of the Agriculture and Rural Advisory Committee in Trump’s administration, in a Facebook post at 8:33 p.m. on Jan. 5 said that he was standing ‘in the private residence of the President at Trump International with the following patriots who are joining me in a battle for justice and truth.’ …

“Among the attendees, according to Herbster’s post, were Tuberville, former RAGA director Adam Piper, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, adviser Peter Navarro, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and 2016 deputy campaign manager David Bossie.”

Tuberville is now holding open the top ranks of the US military, presumably so if Trump is reelected he can pack our armed forces with people who won’t defy his orders when he demands they seize voting machines and fire live ammunition at the inevitable protestors.

When Hitler took power in 1933, he quickly began mass arrests of illegal immigrants, gypsies, union activists, liberal commentators and reporters, and (as noted earlier) queer people. To house this exploding prison population, he first took over a defunct munitions factory in Dachau; within a few years there were over a hundred of these camps where “criminals” were “concentrated and separated from society.” He called them concentration camps.

The New York Times reports that Trump is planning to “build huge camps to detain people,” and “to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget.”

How many people? “Millions” writes the Times. And not just immigrants: Trump is planning to send his enemies to them, too.

Will he succeed in getting around Congress? He did the last time, with money to build his wall taken from military housing.

So far, that’s as bad as it gets: what he has already promised. But these are early days.

Hitler was unbothered by the deaths of German citizens, and was enthusiastic about the deaths of those he considered his enemies.

On April 7, 2020 all three TV networks, The New York Times and The Washington Post lead with the breaking story that Black people were dying at about twice the rate of white people from Covid. The Times headline, for example, read: “Black Americans Bear the Brunt as Deaths Climb.”

A month earlier Trump had shut down the country, but when this report came out he and Kushner did an immediate turnabout, demanding that mostly minority “essential workers” get back to work.

As an “expert” member of Jared Kushner’s team of young, unqualified volunteers supervising the administration’s PPE response noted to Vanity Fair’s Katherine Eban:

“The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”

It was, after all, exclusively Blue States that were then hit hard by the virus: Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And there was an election coming in just a few months.

Trump even invoked the Defense Production Act and issued an Executive Order requiring mostly minority slaughterhouse and meatpacking employees go back to work. It led to a half-million unnecessary American deaths and to this day neither Trump nor Kushner has ever apologized.

In the final years of the Third Reich, Hitler authorized his “final solution to the Jewish problem” that included building death camps in countries outside Germany to methodically exterminate millions of people. These were different from the hundreds of prisons and concentration camps he’d built within Germany for “criminals and undesirables,” although at those camps people were often worked to death or slaughtered when the war started going south.

So far, Trump and his people haven’t suggested the need for death camps in America, although Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott seem particularly eager to see immigrants die either from razor wire or gunshot.

But, then, the Nazis never officially announced their external death camps either; like Bush’s criminal “black sites” overseas where hundreds of innocent Afghans and Iraqis were tortured, often to death, they figured they’d never be found out.

There are few Americans alive today who remember Hitler, and for most of us the details of his rise to power are lost to the mists of time. But Donald Trump is bringing it all back to us with a fresh, stark splash of reality.

When I lived in Germany I worked with several Germans who had been in the Hitler Youth. One met Hitler. Another, Armin Lehmann, became a dear friend over the years and wrote a book about his experience as the 16-year-old courier who handed Hitler the news the war was lost and stood outside Hitler’s bunker room as he committed suicide.

They were good people, children at the time really, and were (they’ve all died within the last two decades) haunted by their experience.

It can happen here.

We’ve been sliding down this slippery slope toward unaccountable fascism for several decades, and this coming year will stand at the threshold of an entirely new form of American government that could mean the end of the American experiment.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice for our democracy to rise or fall will be in our hands.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Fighting to Defund Right-wing Influencers

Meet the woman working to stop the far-right creator money machine

Nandini Jammi is fighting to defund right-wing influencers like Alex Jones

By Taylor Lorenz, Washington Post, December 13, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

Nandini Jammi, co-founder of Check My Ads, a nonprofit advertising watchdog organization that works to cut off the revenue streams of large, far-right content creators and publishers. (Micah E. Wood for The Washington Post; assisted by Raúl Fernando)

When Elon Musk reinstated far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s account on X on Sunday night, digital marketer and activist Nandini Jammi sprang into action. She posted on X to alert her followers to his return and began monitoring his posts.

“We’ve been working on alerting advertisers to the two platforms where Alex Jones primarily lives, Rumble and Twitter,” Jammi said, using X’s former name. “Alex Jones has proven to be a dangerous conspiracy theorist, and Twitter is reopening a channel for him to earn ad revenue.”

Jammi was part of the effort that successfully de-platformed Jones in 2018 and led to his banning from major social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify. She waged a widespread social media campaign imploring the public to contact the platforms directly and pressure them to remove him. That same year, Jammi helped get Jones removed from PayPal by writing directly to the company, asking it to review his use of the platform. Shortly after, he was banned there too.

Far-right content creators such as Jones, who commingle conservative commentary and conspiracy theories with advertising, have become common on social media. While traditional news outlets have been slow to adopt the personality-driven model that now dominates the internet, conservative media have embraced it for years, delivering news with a partisan slant that generates outrage, attracts large audiences — and turns a profit.

Jones did not reply to a request for comment.

Jones arrives at a “Stop the Steal” rally against the results of the U.S. presidential election outside the Georgia Capitol on Nov. 18, 2020, in Atlanta. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

This model helps explain why random people and events — a first-grade teacher in Milwaukee, a county election worker in Georgia, Bud Light’s advertising with an LGBTQ+ influencer — regularly rocket to online prominence.

“Any kind of news event that can be politicized to create outrage is an opportunity for right-wing influencers to make money,” said Emily Dreyfuss, director of the Shorenstein Center News Lab at Harvard University, a research center that focuses on the impact of social media. “They scour the news for something they think will upset their audience, then they make a very big deal out of it in order to make it go viral and lead to more content, all of which enriches them.”

Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that researches online harms, said this practice transforms the news, allowing influencers to “not only position themselves as a source of info to their audience but also a source of entertainment.”

This model appeals to advertisers who either agree with the political agenda or simply want their ads in front of as many eyeballs as possible. But other advertisers are unaware of the content they’re sponsoring because of the complex nature of online advertising, where automated systems often place ads directly on websites according to availability without any human contact between the site and the advertiser. This is known as programmatic advertising.

The online advertising ecosystem has created an opening for activists looking to disrupt this cycle.

In 2016, Jammi noticed that advertising on the conservative news site Breitbart relied heavily on programmatic advertising. So she began alerting advertisers when their marketing appeared next to hate speech and disinformation. Jammi soon partnered with Matt Rivitz, a copywriter and marketer in San Francisco who was doing similar work, to launch Sleeping Giants, an activist organization dedicated to demonetizing right-wing extremist news sites.

In 2020, she decided to lean into these efforts full time. Working with Claire Atkin, a fellow marketer who was worried about how online advertising enabled disinformation, Jammi co-founded Check My Ads, a nonprofit focused on accountability in ad tech. She also has become an influencer herself, building audiences on Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn, where she catalogues her demonetization campaigns.

https://www.instagram.com/checkmyads/

Far-right influencers have become incredibly adept at manipulating news cycles for audience growth and profit, people who study the internet say.

“What happens is these influencers find whatever’s hot in the news, whatever’s garnering a lot of attention, and they manipulate it to their agenda so they can monetize the results to their followers,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, an Alabama-based nonprofit that seeks to counter extremism.

Traditional media often play a key role in this cycle by amplifying these campaigns, Holt said. “When [these outrage cycles] get big enough, national media and big newsrooms look at that snowball, and there’s a tendency to report on it as if that represents a sincere belief of however many hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans, rather than a media pile-on, which is what it really is.”

@checkmyads

Jammi uses social media to draw attention to advertisers whose marketing appears on sites controlled by far-right creators. She also files complaints with industry accountability boards, including the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), an organization that targets fraudulent and criminal digital advertising and whose membership includes Facebook, Google and other major brands.

In September, she filed a complaint against X, arguing that TAG should not have renewed X’s certification, which affirms that the platform has taken steps to ensure that advertising does not appear next to extremist or abusive material.

While X maintains its TAG certification, Jammi has found success on other fronts. In 2021, she worked to get home security company SimpliSafe to stop advertising on social channels belonging to Andy Ngo, a far-right content creator known for spreading disinformation surrounding progressive demonstrations such as Black Lives Matter protests. And she persuaded SoundCloud, an audio platform, and Mailchimp, a newsletter service, to demonetize podcaster Stefan Molyneux, who is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a libertarian who “amplifies ‘scientific racism,’ eugenics and white supremacism.”

Jammi said she has successfully persuaded advertisers to pull marketing dollars from former Fox News celebrities Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck and Dan Bongino; Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk; and YouTuber Tim Pool. And because the right-wing ecosystem is so interconnected — creators collaborate on videos and podcasts and boost each other’s news coverage — cutting off advertising to one influencer can have a ripple effect, she said.

This work has made Jammi a villain on the right, where Bongino has derided her as “a Soros-backed cancel-culture activist.” (Jammi does not receive funding from George Soros).

The far-right influencers Jammi seeks to dismantle often combine pop culture with more serious topics, which leads smaller content creators into reacting to or covering the stories they’re promoting, which amplifies the reach of these campaigns, Holt said.

“A lot of material they put out there,” Holt said, “ends up regurgitated by smaller voices that might not have big nefarious intentions, but through the incentives of social media or in their best efforts to cover what they think is current online pop culture news, they end up giving these folks an even larger platform than they’d be able to build themselves.”

“It’s so important to focus on their revenue streams because it hits at the heart of their business model,” Jammi said. “These bad actors have made a business out of publishing increasingly extreme and hateful content because it makes them money. With that money, they’re able to expand their operations. They can hire new influencers and writers to scale the production of content around these narratives that they’ve built.”

Ariba Jahan, vice president of product experience and innovation at the Ad Council, applauded Jammi’s efforts. The Ad Council, a nonprofit founded in 1942 to address social issues through creative marketing, has helped organize public service campaigns to promote the American Red Cross, the Salk polio vaccine, the Peace Corps and anti-littering efforts.

Jammi “comes with evidence, she comes with all the receipts, she brings the community with her, she raises awareness so everyone is aware of what’s happening and why,” Jahan said. “She is relentless in the most industry-catalyzing way possible.”

In addition to defunding disinformation and hate speech, Jammi hopes to educate people about the complicated revenue models that muddy accountability for the tenor of the influencer ecosystem.

“What sets me and my organization apart,” she said, “is that we deeply understand how these business models work. And we have the time and patience to dismantle them, one piece at a time.”

“It’s so important to focus on their revenue streams because it hits at the heart of their business model,” Jammi said. “These bad actors have made a business out of publishing increasingly extreme and hateful content because it makes them money.” (Micah E. Wood for The Washington Post; assisted by Raúl Fernando)

Dear Mr. Corrigan

Dear Mr. Corrigan:

Sometimes anger causes people to use foul language and make threats. This will contain neither, though a level of anger underlies this message.

We saw very early on how you were going to try to set up the SEC safeguard. What we didn’t appreciate at the time was the complicity of the ACC that would allow you to do it. The clownish announcement show on ESPN revealed that you or someone associated with the committee tipped off ESPN well before Reece’s dishonest statement that they were learning who the 4 teams were at the same time as the viewers. You knew that statement was false when he said it. By not immediately saying it was false you joined in the deception which was intended to mislead the viewers. Now we know his statement was false as was all the phony talk by Herbstreit who “predicted” Alabama would replace FSU when he knew before the announcement that they had been selected. That was the culmination of the committee’s intellectually dishonest justification for doing what you and others wanted done to FSU.

It may take years, but we will be working on it every day until we exhaust every possible way we can find to get to the bottom of how you and others working with you managed to pull this off. I conclude with some appeal to your humanity to understand that what you did to FSU you also did to the team’s 2^nd and 3^rd string quarterbacks. The message to the other FSU players was your two quarterbacks’ incompetence cost you a chance to play for a national championship. For God’s sake issue an apology at least for that.

CLIMATE CHANGE: All Out Emergency

Why many scientists are now saying climate change is an all-out ‘emergency’

Escalating rhetoric comes as new study shows there’s just six years left to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius at current CO2 emissions rate.

By Shannon Osaka — Published October 30, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

More than 15,000 scientists around the world signed on to an academic paper warning of a climate emergency. (Noah Berger/AP)

Bill Ripple had never been an activist.

The Oregon State University ecologist had spent his career wandering through the hills and canyons of Yellowstone National Park, tracking the health of wolves and other large carnivores. Nor was he particularly outspoken: As a college student, he was so concerned about taking a debate class that he considered dropping out and returning to his family farm.

Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter and get advice for life on our changing planet, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

But then, in 2018, Ripple saw pictures of a town called Paradise, Calif., completely destroyed by wildfire. Houses had disappeared in the blaze; all that remained were twisted hunks of metal and glass. Ripple started writing a new academic paper. He called it: “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency.” He sent it to colleagues to see if anyone wanted to sign on. By the time the paper was published in the journal Bioscience in 2019, it had 11,000 signatures from scientists around the world — it now has more than 15,000.

“My life completely changed,” Ripple said. He is the subject of a 30-minute Oregon State University documentary; he gets constant media requests and calls to collaborate from scientists around the world. Last week, he published a new paper on the state of the climate system.

It was called “Entering Uncharted Territory.”

“Scientists are more willing to speak out,” Ripple said. “As a group, we’ve been pretty hesitant, historically.” But, he added, “I feel like scientists have a moral obligation to warn humanity.”

Debris lays on a road after Hurricane Otis ripped through Acapulco, Mexico, on Oct. 26. The storm killed at least 27 people as it devastated Mexico’s resort city of Acapulco. (Felix Marquez/AP)

After a few years of record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather events, Ripple’s experience is a sign of how climate scientists — who once refrained from entering the public fray — are now using strident language to describe the warming planet. References to “climate emergency” and “climate crisis,” once used primarily by activist groups like the U.K.-based Extinction Rebellion or the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement, are spiking in theacademic literature. Meanwhile, scientists’ communication to the media and the public has gotten more exasperated — and more desperate.

On Monday, scientists released a paper showing that the world’s “carbon budget” — the amount of greenhouse gas emissions the world can still emit without boosting global temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius — has shrunk by a third. The world only has 6 years left at current emissions levels before racing past that temperature limit.

“There are no technical scenarios globally available in the scientific literature that would support that that is actually possible, or can even describe how that would be possible,” Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, told reporters in a call.

Tim Lenton, one of the co-authors on Ripple’s most recent paper and a professor of earth system science at the University of Exeter, said that 2023 has been filled with temperatures so far beyond the norm that “they’re very hard to rationalize.” “This isn’t fitting a simple statistical model,” he said.

Lenton said he isn’t afraid to use terms like “emergency” or “climate and ecological crisis.” “If you say ‘urgent’ to a politician … that isn’t really enough,” he said.

The language has spilled into academic publications as well. As recently as 2015, only 32 papers in the Web of Science research database included the term “climate emergency.” In 2022, 862 papers contained the phrase.

It wasn’t always this way. In the 2000s and even early 2010s, most scientists shied away making any statements that could be seen as “political” in nature. Jacquelyn Gill, a professor of climate science and paleoecology at the University of Maine, said that when she was doing her PhD in the late 2000s, senior academics warned her against deviating at all from the science when interacting with the media or the public.

“We were actively told if we start to talk about solutions, if we start to talk about the policy implications of our work, we will have abandoned our supposed ‘scientific neutrality,’” Gill said. “And then people will not trust us anymore on the science.”

Susan Joy Hassol, a science communication expert who has worked with climate researchers for years, says that even a decade ago, climate scientists were uncertain what their role was in communicating the dangers of rising temperatures. “I think at least some of them felt that scientists communicate through IPCC reports,” Hassol said, referring to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “‘We do our science, we publish, we put together these reports, and it’s kind of up to other people to listen.’”

Now, she said that has changed. “We have reached this stage of crisis,” she said.

The John E. Amos coal-fired power plant in Poca, W.Va., in February 2022. (Dane Rhys/Bloomberg)

It isn’t just the fact that emissions still aren’t going down — or that policy hasn’t responded quickly enough to the challenge. (Carbon dioxide emissions related to energy use have continued to climb, even following the brief downturn of the covid-19 pandemic.) As the impacts of climate change escalate, scientists say that their language has changed to meet the moment.

When it comes to terms like “climate emergency,” Gill says, “it’s a little bit of strategy and a lot of honesty.” While climate scientists are still discussing whether warming is accelerating, she added, “it’s clear the impacts are becoming more noticeable and in-your-face.”

Hassol said that the shift is simple. In the 2000s, she said, climate change wasn’tyet at the level of an emergency. She recalls a 2009 report called the Copenhagen Diagnosis, which analyzed climate science to date and made suggestions for how to reach net-zero carbon emissions. If world governments had acted swiftly, the world would have only had to cut emissions by a bit over 3 percent per year. “We called that the bunny slope,” Hassol recalled.

If, on the other hand, governments didn’t start the transition until 2020, cuts would have to be much steeper — up to 9 percent per year. “We called that the double-black diamond,” she said. Despite the brief respite in CO2 emissions during the pandemic, humanity’strajectory has veered closer to the double-black diamond path.

At the same time, many scientists realize that even the best communication in the world isn’t enough to overcome the inertia of a fossil-fuel based system — and the resistance of various oil and gas companies.

“The problem is not that scientists haven’t been communicating clearly enough,” Hassol said. “We communicated pretty darn clearly. Anyone who wanted to hear the message — it was there.”

A Punitive, Religious Finance Book in Florida Schools?

Washington Post Opinion
Florida schools are no place for this punitive, religious finance book.

By Helaine Olen
Columnist, Washington Post
October 17, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EDT

Dave Ramsey, SiriusXM Nashville studios on 08/22/17.
(Anna Webber/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

The past year has seen an acceleration of news reports about books banned in Florida public schools. They range from picture books such as “And Tango Makes Three,” about two male penguins who raise a young chick together, to classic novels by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, including “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye.”

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But there’s a flip side to the Florida book bans under Ron DeSantis’s governorship. It’s the curriculum the state approves for public school classrooms.

Last week, Pasco County Schools in suburban Tampa held a public reconsideration hearing on its use of right-wing, evangelical personal finance pundit Dave Ramsey’s religiously inspired and sometimes factually challenged textbook in the school’s financial literacy classes. Florida high school students are required to take such a course before graduating. The district moved to use the book earlier this year, after Florida’s Board of Education put it on its list of approved materials.

“As soon as it was on my radar, I was concerned,” Jessica Wright, a social studies teacher and Pasco County parent who serves on the Florida Freedom to Read Project’s board, told me. “I’m aware of how political Ramsey is and that in some ways he’s a right-wing pundit, and I didn’t think that type of controversy would be appropriate in our classrooms.”

Ramsey is a popular radio show and internet podcast host, a male counterpart of sorts to Suze Orman. His goal is to help change people’s lives for the better by getting and keeping people out of debt and doling out common-sense financial advice in the spirit, as he puts it, of “God and grandma.”

But there’s a nastier side. Ramsey, who did not respond to requests for comment, preaches a radical self-help philosophy and routinely blames individuals for their financial woes. He makes frequent appearances on Fox News, where he bashes people who need government help. He calls the actions of debtors “stupid” on a regular basis.

This attitude leads to less-than-optimal financial advice — some of which is presented as common-sense guidance in his textbook, “Foundations in Personal Finance.”

Ramsey so hates credit cards, he tells teenagers they “don’t need a credit score” because “debt-free people don’t need a credit score!” (Good luck getting your own lease on an apartment without one.)

He advises against student loans, telling teens and their parents to save up money and apply for scholarships. (Reality check: More than half of 2023 college graduates took out a student loan.)

Car leases and loans are a no-no for Ramsey, too — which sounds good till you remember how poor public transit is in much of the United States, and that in many places people can’t work if they don’t own a car.

Ramsey tells students if they have debt they should pay it down by tackling the smallest debt first — something known as the “snowball method” — so they can score a motivational win. But this strategy can cost them significant money in the long run if they have a larger debt with a higher interest rate.

Then there is the religious angle. Ramsey’s budgeting advice begins with telling students “giving is your first priority in your budget” and instructing them to give away 10 percent of their income — which sounds suspiciously like tithing. Proverbs from the Bible are sprinkled throughout the text.

Taken altogether, this isn’t a solid financial education. It’s indoctrination — in Ramsey’s brand, religious beliefs and sometimes not-financially-sound worldview.

Not surprisingly, some Pasco County parents are saying the district’s decision to use Ramsey’s book doesn’t make for a good education.

In complaints filed with the district and obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, several dozen parents made their dismay known. “This advice is literally removing people from the possibility of entrepreneurship and home ownership. Students should learn about managing credit and compounding interest rather than Ramsey’s misguided theories,” parent Lisa Moretti wrote. “Children would be absolutely set up for failure,” added Land O Lakes parent Amy Hays. “You’d be hard pressed to find someone that can buy a home today without ever having a line of credit, a loan, or debt at some point.”

At last week’s hearing, district officials defended their decision, saying they considered the biblical quotes on par with others in the book, from notables such as Albert Einstein. When I wrote to the district and asked about Ramsey’s advice, they said the curriculum outlined in his book met the standards set by Florida’s Board of Education, which they suggested I contact.

The board, in turn, did not reply to requests for comment.

I’ve written in the past about my issues with the widely popular financial literacy movement. Though it sounds like common sense, it is anything but. One study found that almost no one can recall much of their financial education within a few years. Then there is the bigger, overarching failure: It is a movement that preaches an individual solution to broad economic and political problems that affect people in diverse circumstances in different ways.

Still, there’s nothing wrong with offering students a financial literacy class — provided the advice in it is accurate and useful. That’s not what’s happening in Pasco County, or in districts in other red states, including Wyoming and Utah, where Ramsey’s curriculum is approved for use by local schools.

Ramsey has no education credentials and no significant professional financial training. He is simply someone who merged evangelical teachings with his own personal finance and political beliefs and became a star.

If an adult wants to seek financial guidance from Ramsey, that’s their business. But his agenda does not belong in the nation’s public schools. Here’s hoping that this time Pasco County Schools, which is expected to announce its decision on Ramsey’s book by the end of the month, gets the answer right.

THE MEDICARE ADVANTAGE RIP-OFF

The Medicare Advantage ripoff every American should know about…

Thom Hartmann — October 7, 2023 6:54AM ET — RAWSTORY

President George W. Bush and Republicans (and a handful of on-the-take Democrats) in Congress created the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies.

President “W” Bush

Those companies, and their executives, then recycle some of that profit back into politicians’ pockets via the Citizens United legalized bribery loophole created by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court.

Just the overcharges happening right now in that scam are costing Americans over $140 billion a year: more than the entire budget for the Medicare Part B or Part D programs. These ripoffs — that our federal government seems to have no interest in stopping — are draining the Medicare trust fund while ensnaring gullible seniors in private insurance programs where they’re often denied life-saving care.

Real Medicare pays bills when they’re presented. Medicare Advantage insurance companies, on the other hand, get a fixed dollar amount every year for each of the people enrolled in their programs, regardless of how much they spent on each customer.

As a result, Medicare Advantage programs make the greatest profits for their CEOs and shareholders when they actively refuse to pay for care, something that happens frequently. It’s a safe bet that nearly 100 percent of the people who sign up for Advantage programs don’t know this and don’t have any idea how badly screwed they could be if they get seriously ill.

Not only that, when people do figure out they’ve been duped and try to get back on real Medicare, the same insurance companies often punish them by refusing to write Medigap plans (that fill in the 20% hole in real Medicare). They can’t do that when you first sign up when you turn 65, but if you “leave” real Medicare for privatized Medicare Advantage, it can be damn hard to get back on it.

The doctors’ group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) just published a shocking report on the extent of the Medicare Advantage ripoffs — both to individual customers and to Medicare itself — that every American should know about.

The report, titled Our Payments, Their Profits, opens with this shocking exposé:

“By our estimate, and based on 2022 spending, Medicare Advantage overcharges taxpayers by a minimum of 22% or $88 billion per year, and potentially by up to 35% or $140 billion. By comparison, Part B premiums in 2022 totaled approximately $131 billion, and overall federal spending on Part D drug benefits cost approximately $126 billion. Either of these — or other crucial aspects of Medicare and Medicaid — could be funded entirely by eliminating overcharges in the Medicare Advantage program.

“Medicare Advantage, also known as MA or Medicare Part C, is a privately administered insurance program that uses a capitated payment structure, as opposed to the fee-for-service (FFS) structure of Traditional Medicare or TM. Instead of paying directly for the health care of beneficiaries, the federal government gives a lump sum of money to a third party (generally a commercial insurer) to ‘manage’ patient care.”

With real Medicare and a Medigap plan, you talk with your physician or hospital and decide on your treatment, they bill Medicare, and you never see or hear about the bill. There is nobody between you and your physician or hospital and Medicare only goes after the payment they’ve made if they sniff out a fraud.

With Medicare Advantage, on the other hand, your insurance company gets a lump-sum payment from Medicare every year and keeps the difference between what they get and what they pay out. They then insert themselves between you and your doctor or hospital to avoid paying for whatever they can.

Whatever you decide on regarding treatment, many Advantage insurance companies will regularly second-guess and do everything they can to intimidate you into paying yourself out-of-pocket. Often, they simply refuse payment and wait for you to file a complaint against them; for people seriously ill the cumbersome “appeals” process is often more than they can handle.

As a result, hospitals and doctor groups across the nation are beginning to refuse to take Medicare Advantage patients. California-based Scripps Health, for example, cares for around 30,000 people on Medicare Advantage and recently notified all of them that Scripps will no longer offer medical services to them unless they pay out-of-pocket or revert back to real Medicare.

They made this decision because over $75 million worth of services and procedures their physicians had recommended to their patients were turned down by Medicare Advantage insurance companies. In many cases, Scripps had already provided the care and is now stuck with the bills that the Advantage companies refuse to pay.

Scripps CEO Chris Van Gorder told MedPage Today:

“We are a patient care organization and not a patient denial organization and, in many ways, the model of managed care has always been about denying or delaying care – at least economically. That is why denials, [prior] authorizations and administrative processes have become a very big issue for physicians and hospitals…”

Similarly, the Mayo Clinic has warned its customers in Florida and Arizona that they won’t accept Medicare Advantage any more, either. Increasing numbers of physician groups and hospitals are simply over being ripped off by Advantage insurance companies.

Not only is the Medicare Advantage scam a screw job for healthcare providers and people who are on the programs and are unfortunate enough to get sick, it’s also preventing Americans from getting expanded benefits from real Medicare.

As the PNHP report notes, for real Medicare to provide comprehensive vision, dental, and hearing benefits to all Medicare recipients would cost the system around $84 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Instead, though, the Medicare system is burdened with at least that amount of money in over-payments to Medicare Advantage providers — over-payments that have no health benefit whatsoever and merely inflate the companies’ profits.

A hundred billion dollars in excess profits can be put to a lot of uses, and the health insurance industry is quite good at it. The former CEO of UnitedHealth, “Dollar” Bill McGuire, for example, made off with over $1.5 billion dollars for his efforts.

And, because five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision, some of these companies allocate millions every year (a mere drop in the bucket) to pay off loyal members of Congress and to dangle high-paying future jobs to high-level employees of CMS who have the power to keep the gravy train going and thwart prosecutions.

As PNHP noted:

“Medicare Advantage is just another example of the endless greed of the insurance industry poisoning American health care, siphoning money from vulnerable patients while delaying and denying necessary and often life-saving treatment. While there is obvious reason to fix these issues in MA and to expand Traditional Medicare for the sake of all beneficiaries, the deep structural problems with our health care system will only be fixed when we achieve improved Medicare for All.”

We’re on the edge of the open enrollment period for Medicare, and the Advantage scammers will be carpet-bombing America with advertisements over the next few months. Representatives Pocan, Khanna, and Schakowsky have introduced the “Save Medicare Act” that would ban Advantage companies from using the word Medicare in their advertising.

They made a video about it that’s well worth sharing with friends and family:

As Schakowsky, Khanna, and Pocan note, “Only Medicare is Medicare.” Don’t be fooled by the Medicare Advantage scam.

And now that you know, pass it on and save somebody else’s health!

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE:
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/medicare-advantage-2665824037/

Matt Gaetz: Monster of Republicans’ Own Making

Matt Gaetz, Republican, the U.S. representative for Florida’s 1st congressional district since 2017.

By Dana Milbank
Opinion Columnist, Washington Post
October 6, 2023 at 7:30 a.m. EDT

U.S. House Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) on Capitol Hill on Oct. 4. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

After Republican dissidents ousted Kevin McCarthy from the speakership this week, Patrick McHenry, the acting speaker, declared a recess by slamming the gavel so hard it looked as though he were trying to ring the bell in a carnival strongman game.

Perhaps McHenry (R-N.C.) hoped to hammer some sense into his feuding Republican colleagues? If so, he did not win the prize.

The same lethal combination of vindictiveness, name calling, vulgarity, sabotage and paralysis that caused the meltdown on the House floor continued to consume the party off the floor.

Republican lawmakers, on the verge of fisticuffs in their caucus meeting in the Capitol basement Tuesday night, burst out of the room complaining to reporters about the “bull—-” and “horse—-” decision by McHenry to have a week-long adjournment to cool down.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said he would lead an effort to expel Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) from the House Republican caucus — part of the payback for the “eight selfish a–holes” (as Lawler put it to Axios’s Andrew Solender) who ousted McCarthy (R-Calif.).

Though House rules gave McHenry the temporary speakership “for the sole purpose of electing a new speaker,” McHenry promptly abused his power by evicting former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) from offices they’d been given in the Capitol; Pelosi, in California for the funeral of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was told she must vacate immediately and the office locks would be re-keyed.

Republican lawmakers threatened to quit the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. The moderate Republican Governance Group threatened to expel Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.) because she had voted to oust McCarthy.

Former House Republican Markwayne Mullin (Okla.), now in the Senate, attacked Gaetz by giving an interview to CNN’s Manu Raju about his former colleague’s sexual exploits. Another Senate Republican, John Cornyn (Tex.), said “the next speaker is going to be subjected to the same terrorist attacks” that bedeviled McCarthy.

Three members of the House GOP leadership team that failed so spectacularly over the past nine months — Majority Leader Steve Scalise (La.), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) and conference chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) — all signaled plans to move up the leadership ladder.

Then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) stands with Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) during a news conference at the Capitol on Dec. 14. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Now the election of a new speaker, scheduled for next Wednesday, is in serious doubt. Neither of the announced candidates, Scalise and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), has a clear path. Others threaten not to elect any speaker without rules changes to prevent a repeat of what happened to McCarthy. And Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tex.) helpfully announced that he would “nominate Donald J. Trump for Speaker of the House.”

On Wednesday, a casually dressed Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a top McCarthy lieutenant, worked his way through the Capitol, warning journalists to settle in for a long slog. “This is potentially a setback of weeks and, I hate to even say this, but potentially even longer,” he told CBS’s Nikole Killion.

Perfect. Just six weeks from the next government-shutdown deadline, and with the United States unable to send weapons to Ukraine to hold off Russia’s invasion, the House majority has ceased to function at all.

“My fear is the institution fell today,” McCarthy said in his farewell-to-the-speakership news conference Tuesday night. Going down to defeat, he kept claiming that his ouster wasn’t “good for the institution” because “I believe in the institution” and “the institution was too important” to be so assaulted by Gaetz (and Democrats) who weren’t “looking out for the country or the institution.”

This was rich coming from a man who: voted to overturn the 2020 election results; bowed and scraped at Mar-a-Lago after Jan. 6, 2021; destroyed a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission his own designee negotiated and then trashed the Jan. 6 committee; released Jan. 6 security footage to Tucker Carlson; undermined the rule of law by attacking the prosecutions of former president Donald Trump; and launched the impeachment of President Biden without a shred of evidence of wrongdoing.

I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks McCarthy is a defender of “the institution” ought to be institutionalized.

The former speaker is correct that the House had failed. But he has the causation backward. It didn’t fail because he was ousted; he was ousted because the House had already failed. And the ones who caused it to fail were McCarthy and his colleagues.

For years, they have taken every opportunity to trash the institutions of government — the FBI, the Justice Department, the IRS, the “woke” military, the CDC, NIH, the courts, the election system, the presidency. After laying waste to all other institutions, it was inevitable that House Republicans would also trash the one institution they controlled.

McCarthy’s allies cast Gaetz as aberrant. But the same demagogic techniques that Gaetz used against McCarthy — dishonesty, conspiracy, vengeance — have been deployed routinely by House Republicans in recent years, and particularly for the past nine months, against the Biden administration and congressional Democrats. Gaetz was merely doing as his Republican colleagues taught him.

When you govern on lies, you can’t be surprised when one of your own lies about you. When you govern on personal vendettas, you can’t be shocked that one of your own acts on a vendetta against you. When you govern with contempt for democratic norms, you can’t be sanctimonious when one of your own trashes the norms that protected you.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) walks away from the Capitol on Tuesday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Moments before he called up the resolution that would topple McCarthy this week, Gaetz, carrying a folder with his speech notes, walked up to use one of the tables designated for Republican speakers during debates.

But Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.), the Republican chief deputy whip, turned him back. John Leganski, a senior McCarthy adviser, added a contemptuous flourish, shooing Gaetz away with the back of his hand. Ultimately, Gaetz wandered across the aisle and parked himself at an empty lectern typically used by Democrats.

Then, in their closing argument in the debate that followed, McCarthy’s allies had the chutzpah to attack Gaetz — for speaking from the Democratic side. “You need to look no further than where the opponents are sitting today in this chamber!” proclaimed Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), making the false insinuation that Gaetz was a Democratic tool. “They’re not over here — they’re over there!”

Republicans applauded Armstrong. “Yeah!” cheered a Republican lawmaker.

Gaetz, speaking truthfully for once, protested that “you sent me over here.”

It was fitting that the McCarthy forces’ closing argument against Gaetz — a man who in McCarthy’s telling had never uttered “one true thing” — would itself be grounded in deceit.

In perhaps the most revealing moment of the debate, Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.) rose to plead for McCarthy. “This motion to vacate is a terrible idea,” he said. He warned that “if you vote to vacate the speaker … this institution will fail. Please do not vacate the speaker.”

But Massie himself began the ruinous cycle of right-wingers purging speakers for being impure. As he acknowledged, he was a co-sponsor of the motion to vacate Speaker John Boehner, and he was one of the prime antagonists who hounded both Boehner and Speaker Paul Ryan into retirement. Those ousting McCarthy were using the very technique Massie pioneered — and now, too late, he wants to recork that bottle. But the poison has already escaped.

McCarthy and his defenders claimed Gaetz was acting out of personal retribution toward the speaker. “You know it was personal,” McCarthy said, insinuating that Gaetz’s real motive was pique over McCarthy’s refusal to quash an ethics probe into sexual and other misconduct by Gaetz. (“I’ve seen the texts,” McCarthy teased.)

Right, and McCarthy knows something about retribution, having led the eviction of Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar from committees (and the censure of Schiff) over what Republicans explicitly acknowledged was revenge for things Democratic leaders had done.

McCarthy ally Graves, during the debate, piously denounced Gaetz for sending out fundraising solicitations that cited his motion to vacate. “Using official actions, official actions to raise money: It is disgusting,” he said. Yet Gaetz was only doing precisely what two top lieutenants of McCarthy had done in the past couple of weeks: Both Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (Ky.) and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (Mo.) had sent out fundraising appeals that cited their work on Biden’s impeachment.

Armstrong, another McCarthy ally, was entirely correct when he said during the debate that instead of valuing loyalty, integrity and competence, “we have descended to a place where clicks, TV hits and the never-ending quest for … celebrity drives decisions and encourages juvenile behavior that is so far beneath this esteemed body.” Yet then he claimed McCarthy “has done more in nine months to restore the people’s house than any speaker in decades.” Er, by elevating Marjorie Taylor “Jewish Space Lasers” Greene (Ga.) to power and influence in the Republican caucus? Or by restoring the stature of Rep. Paul Gosar (Ariz.), a white-nationalist icon, or by blocking attempts to expel indicted Rep. George Santos (N.Y.), a serial liar?

McCarthy’s defenders were furious about Gaetz’s allegation that McCarthy struck a “secret side deal” with Biden to send billions to Ukraine. But they were perfectly content to place Gaetz in a conspiracy theory of their own. “Is Gaetz secretly an agent for the Democratic Party?” former speaker Newt Gingrich, a McCarthy ally, posted on social media. McCarthy repeatedly alleged that Gaetz was working with Democrats to oust him.

In reality, plenty of Democrats would have voted to save McCarthy — but his own toxic partisanship prevented him from offering even small concessions in exchange for their support. Instead, he went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday and claimed that Democrats “tried to do everything” to stop a short-term spending bill from passing the House on Saturday and “were willing to let government shutdown.” (Fully 209 of 210 Democrats voted for the bill.) Hours before Tuesday’s vote, McCarthy explained why he wouldn’t offer Democrats even a crumb for their votes to save his speakership: “I win by Republicans, and I lose by Republicans.” And so he did.

The new speaker could easily pull back from this destructive madness by abandoning McCarthy’s insistence on drafting and passing legislation with Republicans only. “The only way to defeat this,” moderate Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said of the extremists in his caucus, “is to have more bipartisan spirit.” Otherwise, no matter who succeeds McCarthy, “within a month they’ll be having the speakership held over their head and the vacate-the-chair threats.”

That’s the one course that could salvage the House as an “institution.” It’s also the one course his fellow Republicans absolutely refuse to take.

In a Leaderless House, the ‘Clowns’ Stumble Toward a Shutdown

By Dana Milbank, Washington Post
September 22, 2023 at 7:30 a.m. EDT

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) talks to reporters as he leaves a House Republican caucus meeting.

Martin Luther nailed his theses to a church door. Matt Gaetz displayed his in the men’s room.

Specifically, the congressman (or somebody) left a draft of his “Motion to Vacate” on a baby changing table in a restroom downstairs from the House chamber, where it was found by journalist Matt Laslo. “H. Res. __,” it began. “Resolved, that the Office of Speaker of the House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant.”

But Gaetz (R-Fla.) doesn’t need a resolution to “vacate the chair,” as a motion to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker is called. For all practical purposes, the chair is already vacant.
It should have been obvious to all this week, if it wasn’t already, that McCarthy (R-Calif.) is speaker in name only, as his leaderless Republican caucus stumbles toward a government shutdown. Review some of the labels House Republicans hurled at each other over the last few days:

“Clown show.” “Clowns.” “Foolishness.” “Weak.” “Terribly misguided.” “Selective amnesia.” “Stupidity.” “Failure to lead.” “Lunatics.” “Disgraceful.” “New low.” “Enabling Chairman Xi.” “People that have serious issues.” “Pathetic.”

Amid the epithets, Republicans brought the House to another standstill. For the second time in as many weeks, hard-liners blocked the House from even considering a bill to fund the troops. Two days later, they blocked it for a third time. They also forced party leaders to pull from the floor their plan to avert a shutdown — a plan that would do nothing to avert a shutdown even if it passed.

Walking into yet another grievance-airing session among House Republicans this week in the House basement, first-term Rep. Richard McCormick (Ga.) remarked to a colleague: “I think we should call this the Dance of the Dragons.” That was a “Game of Thrones” reference to a civil war in which (spoiler alert) both of the aspirants to the Targaryen throne died, along with several of their children and most of the dragons. McCormick later developed the metaphor for me: “We have a lot of powerful people in one room who are ferocious,” he explained in part, and “it’s going to get even uglier.”

McCarthy allies put their best gloss on the chaos in their caucus. “It’s a bottom-up approach,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (N.C.) explained to a group of reporters. “It’s messy from time to time, out in the public a lot. That’s what this Congress has shown us.”

The speaker tried to resolve the latest standoff with another of his trademark surrenders to the far right’s demands — accepting spending levels that renege on the deal he negotiated with President Biden just months ago while also blocking disaster relief funds and military aid to Ukraine. Even if this somehow clears the House, the Senate would, on a bipartisan basis, restore spending to the previously agreed levels while adding the disaster and Ukraine funds.

House Republicans would then again be deadlocked, just days before an Oct. 1 shutdown. At that point, McCarthy would face a choice: Cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government running — and thereby risk a motion to vacate the chair. Or give the far-right saboteurs the shutdown they desire — and thereby prove beyond a doubt that the speakership is already vacant.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) spoke of McCarthy with pity: “We’re pulling for the speaker and hoping we can move forward.”

The week began with hopes that a compromise brokered by far-right and moderate Republicans (McCarthy, with his “bottom-up” leadership style, sat out the negotiations). But that deal, announced on Sunday night, was dead by Tuesday morning, after several hard-liners rejected it.

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) took direct aim at the “weak speaker,” posting on social media:

“Unfortunately, real leadership takes courage and willingness to fight for the country, not for power and a picture on the wall.”

McCarthy offered a petty response, criticizing Spartz for “quitting” and not seeking reelection.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to go personal like that,” Spartz told a few of us, joking that she might change her mind about retiring to spite McCarthy.

Gaetz condemned McCarthy’s “disgraceful” remark about Spartz, saying, “Kevin would never understand subjugating ambition for anything, or anyone.”

Asked by reporters about Gaetz’s attacks, McCarthy responded with ridicule: “Oh my God, I’m going to lose the speakership because somebody tweeted about me.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) with members of the media at the Capitol.

Outside the Republican caucus meeting on Tuesday, right-wingers were squabbling with one another.

Gaetz said he was building “a large enough coalition to defeat the Donalds continuing resolution,” a bid by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) to keep the government open at a reduced spending level — but not reduced enough for Gaetz.

Donalds, who like Gaetz is considering a 2026 run for Florida governor, responded, “I don’t care about that foolishness.”

Gaetz said his “friend” Donalds was “terribly misguided” and called the Donalds plan a “surrender” to Biden.

After one of Gaetz’s (many) hallway news conferences, reporters asked Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), from a competitive district, to say a few words. “You want me to follow that clown show?” he said of Gaetz.

“These folks don’t have a plan,” Lawler told us. “They don’t know how to take ‘yes’ for an answer. They don’t know what it is to work as a team. They don’t know how to define a win.”

In a separate interview with CNN’s Manu Raju, Lawler said of his “clown show” colleagues: “This is stupidity. … You keep running lunatics, you’re going to be in this position.”
Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), for his part, accused the holdouts of “holding disaster victims hostage.”

And McCarthy bumbled on. “We’re going to try to put the CR on the floor,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a moderate ally of the speaker, told us. Within two hours, they had pulled the continuing resolution from the floor.

Asked about pulling the ballyhooed compromise bill, McCarthy replied, “No, no. I’m just re-circling it.”

Re-circling?

Republican lawmakers crowded into the office of Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) to try to redraw the legislation. Holdouts enumerated their ransom demands. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) showed up with a printout of six amendments she was insisting on.

“It feels like Festivus, the airing of the grievances, in there,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) told NBC News.

“There’s yelling, there’s screaming, there’s crying, there’s venting,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) told The Post.

On the House floor, meanwhile, a rebellion by five far-right lawmakers blocked the House from taking up the annual Defense Department appropriations bill, a measure that normally passes with large bipartisan majorities. McCarthy’s team seemed caught off guard by the revolt, even though a similar rebellion had blocked the same spending bill a week earlier. For 14 extra minutes, Republican leaders held open the vote on the rule that would allow the debate to begin as they tried to strong-arm the holdouts on the floor. Yet as soon as they got Spartz to switch her vote to an “aye,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) switched his vote to a “no.”

“The dysfunction caucus at work,” Bacon said to reporters.

As though to illustrate that point, former GOP congressman Madison Cawthorn (the one who accused his then-colleagues of having cocaine-fueled orgies) returned to the House floor for a visit — where he was warmly received by serial liar George Santos (R-N.Y.).

“They just handed a win to the Chinese Communist Party,” Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) said of the rebels.

House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) told Politico that “we’ve got five clowns that don’t know what they want except attention.”

To Raju, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.) said the failed vote “showed just how broken we are.”
Besieged by reporters after the vote, McCarthy was asked by Fox News’s Chad Pergram whether this was “another blow” to his leadership.

McCarthy snapped at the genial newsman. “I assume when something hard happens in your life, you quit,” he said. “I don’t quit.”

He wasn’t quitting, but neither was he leading. On Wednesday, with the legislative agenda snarled, the House took up minor matters such as increasing the number of judges on the Court of Appeals for Veterans’ Claims. (It passed, 423-0.) During the vote, McCarthy, rather than buttonholing lawmakers, sat for much of the time with Greene and Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.), yukking it up.

Later, Republicans again retired to the Capitol basement for another caucus meeting. This one stretched to 2½ hours as they haggled. About 100 journalists crowded the hallway outside. “Holy crap!” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said when he saw the throng. (The journalists had no interest in Van Orden, however, who described himself to a Capitol maintenance worker as “chairman of the not-important-enough-to-talk-to committee.”)
Midway through the caucus meeting, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) emerged. How was it going? “Greeaaat!” he said with sarcasm. Then: “I’m going to the men’s room. I’m going to do something productive.”

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) tried to be optimistic. “That’s how the democratic process is supposed to work,” he said. “It’s not pretty.”

Republican leaders thought McCarthy’s latest capitulation to the far right had, at the very least, flipped the two votes he needed to end the blockade of the Pentagon spending bill.
On the floor on Thursday, two of the holdouts — Buck and Ralph Norman (S.C.) — did switch their votes to yes. But two other hard-liners, Greene and Elijah Crane (Ariz.), switched their votes to no — and the vote failed again. Defeating “the rule,” as this is called, had been unheard of for years; in McCarthy’s House, it’s becoming routine. “Obviously, they can’t count,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said of GOP leadership as he acknowledged the obvious: “We are very dysfunctional right now.”

McCarthy, defeated again, said as he left the chamber: “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down.”

Now that he has had this belated realization, maybe the speaker will finally stop appeasing them.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is seen on a video screen as he testifies during a hearing.

Though the federal government might be about to turn off the lights, certain vital functions of government must continue — particularly the investigations into Hunter Biden.

The House Judiciary Committee this week held a hearing, featuring testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland titled “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice.” It would have been more accurately titled “Oversight of the President’s Son.”

A transcript of the proceedings reveals that the name “Hunter” was invoked 78 times. By comparison, there were three total mentions of foreign terrorists. “So, Hunter Biden is selling art to pay for his $15,000 a month rent in Malibu,” Gaetz informed the attorney general. “How can you guarantee that the people buying that aren’t doing so to gain favor with the president?”

Things were off from the start. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) began with a chaotic Pledge of Allegiance when he told people in the room full of flags to “please face whichever flag is most appropriate for your direction.”

It only got more confusing from there. “The fix is in!” Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio) yelled at the beginning of his opening statement, and he didn’t stop shouting for the rest of the hearing. Among the complaints from Republicans on the panel:

They were mad at Garland because he “slow-walked” the investigation of Hunter Biden — even though it has been handled by a Trump-appointed prosecutor, David Weiss. They were mad at him for the “sweetheart deal” offered to Biden — even though the Trump-appointed prosecutor had full charging authority. And they were mad that, at Weiss’s request, Garland granted him special-counsel status last month — even though Republicans had long clamored for Garland to appoint a special counsel.

Buck, who is skeptical of his fellow Republicans’ rush to impeach Biden over the behavior of his son, pointed out to his colleagues that Garland was in a no-win situation. They would have accused Garland of “obstructing the Hunter Biden investigation,” Buck said, if Garland had fired Weiss when he became attorney general, or when Weiss seemed to be moving too slowly, or when Weiss asked for special-counsel status.

“Far from slow-walking, really once the Trump administration decided that [Weiss] was the person leading the investigation, your hands were tied,” Buck told Garland.

Luckily, Republicans on the panel had other things to blame Garland for.

Spartz treated him to a rambling speech about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which she said involved police “throwing the smoke bombs into the crowd with strollers with kids.”

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) condemned Garland “because you didn’t file those charges” against people “who were involved in the 2020 summer riots.”

It didn’t seem to matter to either lawmaker that both of those events happened during the Trump administration.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) suggested that Garland viewed “Catholics that go to church” as “violent extremists.”

Garland, who had family members killed during the Holocaust, responded, “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous, so absurd.”

But not as absurd as Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), who demanded answers from the attorney general on … naked bicycling. “There was a World Naked Bike Ride in Madison, Wis., just a couple of months ago,” Tiffany said, “and I sent you a letter two months ago asking if you had a problem with that because it exposed a 10-year-old girl, by the race organizer, the bike organizers, to pedaling around Madison, Wis., naked. Do you think that’s a problem?”
“It sounds like you’re asking about a question about state and local law enforcement,” Garland observed.

Not so fast, Mr. Attorney General. Can you prove that Hunter Biden hasn’t gone on a naked bike ride?

Past 2 Elections: Trump-loving Attorney Guilty of Double Voting

Trump-loving attorney guilty of double voting in past 2 elections

BY: Travis Gettys — August 22, 2023

An Ohio attorney who donated to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was convicted of election fraud for voting twice in the past two general elections.

James Saunders cast ballots in both Ohio and Florida in the 2020 presidential election lost by Trump and the 2022 midterm election, according to a ruling by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judge Andrew Santoli, who ordered sheriff’s deputies to take the lawyer straight to jail, reported Cleveland.com.

“It appears [Saunders] felt he was smarter than the system,” said Cuyahoga County prosecutor Michael O’Malley. “He was wrong.”

The judge found the 56-year-old Saunders guilty of two counts of illegal voting, a fourth-degree felony and set a sentencing hearing for Aug. 26.

Trump blamed his 2020 election loss on widespread fraud, but federal and state election officials, as well as multiple courts across the nation, have found no evidence to support those claims and the former president has been charged in federal court and in Georgia with crimes related to his efforts to overturn the results.

Saunders, who made multiple donations to Trump and Republican campaign entities, claims he accidentally cast two ballots, but witnesses recall seeing him vote in person Oct. 21, 2020, in Cuyahoga County, while cellphone data shows he drove from his Virginia address on Nov. 1, 2020, and drove to Broward County and cast a ballot two days later on Election Day in Florida.

He voted by mail in Florida on Nov. 2, 2022, by mail and then voted in person Nov. 8, 2022, at his precinct in Shaker Heights.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE: https://www.rawstory.com/attorney-james-saunders/

Georgia D. A. Fani Willis Puts Violence Front & Center

Fani Willis Puts Violence Front and Center

Opinion By Jennifer Rubin
Columnist, Washington Post
August 17, 2023

PHOTO: Former Georgia election worker Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, foreground, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, at a House Jan. 6 hearing last year. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Special counsel Jack Smith, for practical and legal reasons, chose not to indict defeated former president Donald Trump on charges of instigating the violence on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith wants a solid, slimmed-down case without First Amendment complications, which could arise in focusing on Trump’s “Stop the Steal” speech on the Ellipse.

Instead, Smith’s indictment portrays Trump as opportunistically taking advantage of the angry mob. That left many democracy defenders unsettled. Hasn’t violence always been part of Trump’s playbook, and wasn’t Trump egging on the violent mob?

Fortunately, Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis puts the question of Trump’s responsibility for mob violence front and center.

Right up front, the indictment handed down Monday by a grand jury in Atlanta alleges:

Members of the enterprise, including several of the Defendants, falsely accused Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman of committing election crimes in Fulton County, Georgia. These false accusations were repeated to Georgia legislators and other Georgia officials in an effort to persuade them to unlawfully change the outcome of the November 3, 2020, presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. In furtherance of this scheme, members of the enterprise traveled from out of state to harass Freeman, intimidate her, and solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit.

The indictment describes defendants traveling to election worker Ruby Freeman’s home to mislead and intimidate her. Willis alleged Trump defamed Freeman to Georgia officials (claiming she was a “a professional vote scammer and a known political operative” and saying that “Ruby Freeman, her daughter, and others were responsible for fraudulently awarding at least 18,000 ballots to Joseph R. Biden at State Farm Arena in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia.”) Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that Freeman had stuffed ballot boxes.

Trump tweeted references to a conspiracy about Freeman to his followers, which we know included those who were menacing election workers, making threats and endangering the lives of Freeman and others.

Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani is also accused of bantering about lies concerning Freeman (who he falsely stated had been “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine”). These lies reverberated through social media, putting a target on Freeman’s back and helping escalate threats against Georgia officials.

The indictment works to refocus our attention on the mob Trump and Giuliani allegedly tried to incite, to the threats the MAGA horde lobbed toward election officials and others, and to the gripping testimony from Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, at the House Jan. 6 hearings. From everything we’ve seen, these Georgians’ lives were made a living hell.

Without the Georgia case and without Trump identified as the head of the alleged criminal enterprise, there would be no justice for those victims, no accounting for the use of mob violence to corrupt the democratic process.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” and an expert on fascism, told Insider that Trump resorted to inciting the crowd to violence when his other schemes failed “because he truly believes that violence is a way you can change history.” She added, “The thing about autocrats today is that they’re all corrupt, but they’re also violent. They use all of these tools at the same time. So, we can’t isolate one and say that Jan. 6 was just about this or just about that. It was everything. It was a process of months and it culminated in violence.”

The element of thuggishness reflective of authoritarians throughout time and around the globe should not be whitewashed in Trump’s prosecution. It’s easy to make Trump’s alleged attempted coup, run mostly by lawyers and focused on memos distorting and misrepresenting constitutional principles, seem sophisticated, legalistic and without human victims. But, at bottom, the alleged plot rested on the threat of violence both in D.C. and in Georgia.

And let’s not forget this is all part of Trump’s playbook. As Ben-Ghiat recalled in a recent interview, “Since 2015, he [has] used his rallies … as radicalization sites. And over and over, he told his supporters at these rallies that violence was a good way to solve conflict.” She reminded us, “How many times did he say, ‘Oh, you know, in the good old days, we used to be able to punch people, and nothing happened’? So, that discourse of violence, which encouraged Jan. 6, is part of this.”

In December 2020, Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling held an emotional news conference, at which he said: “Mr. President, it looks like you likely lost the state of Georgia. We’re investigating. … What you don’t have the ability to do — and you need to step up and say this — is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.” He added, “Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed. And it’s not right.” But the purported criminal enterprise did not stop, either in Georgia or in D.C.

In some legal venue, Trump and his cohorts need to be held accountable for infusing our politics with violence and the threat of violence, for the damage done to Freeman, for the police officers wounded on Capitol Hill, and for the trauma inflicted by the mob they stand accused of orchestrating. That might be a courtroom in Fulton County, Georgia.

Indeed, that would be a service to our democracy and a historical lesson cementing Trump’s legacy as a fascist strongman.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/17/willis-georgia-indictment-violence/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_jennifer_rubin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-jenniferrubin

Watching Trump Play Golf!

Watching Trump Play Golf: Decent Drives, Skipped Putts, Lots of Sweat

By Bill Pennington. The New York Times

July 28, 2022

The former president’s barge-ahead style and whim for scooping up shots too hard to make wouldn’t fly on the LIV Golf series, which his Bedminster club is hosting this weekend.

Photo Credit – Doug Mills/The New York Times

BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Walking alongside Donald Trump as he plays golf is a lot like watching his presidency: He tells you how well he’s doing, mistakes are disregarded and the one constant is an endless stream of group photos with Trump blithely flashing a toothy grin and a thumbs up.

It was as entertaining, revealing and inexplicable as it sounds.

On Thursday, Trump was a contestant in the pro-am tournament on the eve of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf event he is hosting this weekend at the lavish golf course he built in northwestern New Jersey. The intent of the outing was to team some celebrities and everyday golfers with the professionals, and Trump was, naturally, in the featured first grouping of the day.

While Trump played a plethora of golf rounds as president, other than his guests, few were able to witness his golf game during his four years in the White House. The news media was kept at a removed distance. But on Thursday, nearly 50 media members credentialed for the tournament — as well as some event officials — would accompany Trump on foot for 18 holes.

Trump’s golfing party, which included security, drove in a dozen golf carts, generally two to a cart. But there was one cart predominantly occupied by a single person, and it was the only ex-president on the property at the wheel.

Trump: Grouped with Dustin Johnson & Bryson DeChambeau in the pro-am.
Photo Credit – Doug Mills/The New York Times

For the pro-am, Trump was grouped with two of the best players to defect to the rival LIV Golf circuit from the PGA Tour: Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau, who have won three major championships between them.

About 15 minutes late for his 10 a.m. tee time, Trump stepped onto the first tee dressed in a white shirt and black pants and sweating profusely under his signature MAGA hat. He looked pale. To be fair, at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, which has little shade, no one walking the grounds on a humid day with temperatures in the mid-90s was comfortable.

Stepping onto the tee, Trump quickly became the focal point of more than a handful of photos. He would organize the lineup of the people in the picture, often giving instructions on who should stand where, like a concierge of photo ops.

Finally, it was time to start the round, and Trump’s opening drive bounded into the left rough. But it was a respectable distance from the tee for a 76-year-old, roughly 220 yards.

The format for the pro-am was that each group would select the best tee shot and then play their second shots from that spot. For the rest of the hole, they were expected to play their own ball, wherever it came to rest. It often made it impossible to assign exact scores for any player, but on the par-4 first hole, Trump needed five strokes to get his ball in the hole for a bogey.

Trump with the LIV golfer Dustin Johnson during the pro-am tournament.
Photo Credit – Doug Mills/The New York Times

But on the second hole, a telling rhythm for the day’s journey was set by Trump, and it defied the polite golf protocol of waiting your turn.

After hitting his second shot to the green, Trump ignored other players in his group who had yet to hit and jumped into his cart and roared ahead. He parked within a few feet of the putting surface (also a no-no since it can damage the delicate short grass in that area). Standing in the fairway half a hole behind Trump, Johnson yelled ahead since he had yet to play his second shot and could have beaned the former president near the green.

Trump put his cart in reverse and moved out of range. But his barge-ahead style of play continued for much of the round. Often, Trump had putted out on a hole while his playing companions were still 125 yards away in the fairway.

A few holes later, Trump stopped to talk with a gaggle of reporters. He was asked how much he could earn by hosting the LIV Golf tournament at his course.

“I don’t do it for that. I do it because I think it’s good for golf,” he said.

Trump smiled.

“The important thing is that we’re all playing well,” he said.

Photo Credit – Doug Mills/The New York Times

On one hole, when a birdie putt rolled nearly six feet past the hole, Trump casually scooped the ball up to end the hole, apparently conceding himself a par.

By that point, Trump had registered, at best, one par. He had also not finished a hole after his blast from a bunker had failed to reach the green and was nestled in some nasty rough. Instead, he had his caddie pick up the ball and march to the next tee. On another hole, when a birdie putt rolled nearly six feet past the hole, he casually scooped the ball up to end the hole, apparently conceding himself a par. Try that this weekend in your match with your usual foursome. Or any foursome.

At other times, a Trump mis-hit would simply be ignored. As if understanding the drill, his caddie would retrieve the golf ball from the sand or deep rough and walk forward.

Trump, however, did exhibit a sunny countenance throughout. That included a scene that he could not have expected. As he stepped onto the tee of a par-3, 176-yard hole over a large pond, he was approached by three comedians who, in concert with LIV Golf, were conducting what they called the “Back Off Challenge” during the pro-am. The idea was that the comedians, whose project is called Country Club Adjacent, would try to insult, mock or harass each golfer on the tee to see if they would back off from the shot before hitting it. The scenes were being videotaped for the group’s various social media networks.

Trump agreed to play along.

Photo Credit – Doug Mills/The New York Times

“The important thing is that we’re all playing well,” Trump said.

As he stood over the ball, one of the comedians, Blake Webber, said: “What would your following say if you hit this one left?”

Said Jake Adams: “You built a golf course just to miss the green?”

And finally, from Griff Pippin: “Your swing looks broken. Was it made in China?”

Trump did not flinch. But he did slice his shot into the water.

Then, Trump posed with the comedians for a group picture. He paused a beat and smiled while simultaneously raising his right thumb.

Trump-commissioned Report Undercut his Claims…

Trump-commissioned report: Trump’s claims of
dead and double voters undercut…

A report commissioned by the former president’s campaign and obtained by The Post did not back up his claims of fraud and did not provide evidence to overturn the 2020 election

By Josh Dawsey, March 17, 2023 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

When Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in a now-infamous bid to overturn the 2020 election, he alleged that thousands of dead people had voted in the state.

“So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters,” he said, without citing his study.

But a report commissioned by his own campaign dated one day prior told a different story: Researchers paid by Trump’s team had “high confidence” of only nine dead voters in Fulton County, defined as ballots that may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. They believed there was a “potential statewide exposure” of 23 such votes across the Peach State — or 4,977 fewer than the “minimum” Trump claimed.

In a separate failed bid to overturn the results in Nevada, Trump’s lawyers said in a court filing that 1,506 ballots were cast in the names of dead people and 42,284 voted twice. Trump lost the Silver State by about 33,000 votes.

The researchers paid by Trump’s team had “high confidence” that 12 ballots were cast in the names of deceased people in Clark County, Nev., and believed the “high end potential exposure” was 20 voters statewide — some 1,486 fewer than Trump’s lawyers said.

According to their research, the “low end potential exposure” of double voters was 45, while the “high end potential exposure” was 9,063. The judge tossed the Nevada case even as Trump continued to claim he won the state.

The “Project 2020” report conducted by the Berkeley Research Group has now been obtained by prosecutors investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. A copy was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it shows that Trump’s own campaign paid more than $600,000 for research that undercut many of his most explosive claims. The research was never made public.

The Justice Department has sought and obtained multiple reports, emails and interviews from witnesses that show campaign officials analyzing, and often discrediting, claims that Trump was making publicly, according to several people involved in the investigation, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal details. The Berkeley report was provided to the Justice Department earlier this month, one of the people said, after some people involved in its crafting received a subpoena.

Another person who has received a subpoena said prosecutors have asked for all evidence that would disprove, or substantiate, fraud claims. This person said the questioning from the department was focused on exactly what Trump — and others around him — were told about the election not being stolen, and when, in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The Berkeley report, which is written in technical jargon, was handled through an intermediary: It was commissioned by Kasowitz Benson Torres, a Trump-associated law firm, and conducted by East Bay Advisory, a subsidiary of the Berkeley Research Group, according to the copy reviewed by The Post. But the report, labeled “privileged and confidential,” states on its third page that the “client” was the campaign of Donald J. Trump For President. The draft obtained by The Post was labeled a “summary report” and dated Jan. 1.

A lawyer for Berkeley Research Group declined to comment on its report or interactions with law enforcement about the report. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment, and a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Despite Trump’s claims of rampant election fraud, most election officials around the country have maintained that such malfeasance is exceedingly rare. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, officials brought only a handful of fraud prosecutions. Even the conservative Heritage Foundation has found fewer than 1,500 instances of “proven voter fraud” — over a 40-year time frame.

Even the small number of potentially ineligible ballots that the Trump report claims were cast by dead people may be an overestimation. It is not uncommon for a small number of voters to cast ballots early or by mail and then die before Election Day. Those ballots are typically counted, and considered legally cast, because of the difficulty of tracking and retrieving the votes in such a short time frame.

The Berkeley report was an object of frustration to some of Trump’s advisers, who were looking for evidence of widespread fraud — and an object of validation for others, who wanted him to stop spreading lies about the election. A meeting between the Berkeley team, Trump and Trump’s team grew tense in December, people familiar with the meeting said.

The Berkeley report never explicitly says who won the election, but it goes through a series of allegations from Trump’s team and either disputes them or does not provide enough evidence to overturn the election.

Election Night 2020 → Capitol Riots January 6, 2021

Trump has repeatedly said there was no way he lost the 2020 election, saying there were illegal vote “dumps” after the election — and that election workers committed a range of misdeeds. He grew angry as mail-in ballots were counted in the days after the election, alleging fraud, urging states to stop counting ballots and railing against mail-in ballots.

But the researchers said there was no reason to believe the final vote totals in five key states were fraudulent. The team cites the expectation from the pandemic that more people would vote by mail — along with changed rules in many states. “This result was not unexpected,” the team writes.

“Our analysis of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada concluded that in each state the final tabulated result was mathematically possible given absentee request rates,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers also sought to study whether there were periods of time that more absentee ballots flooded the system. “That is to say, to detect periods of high intensity absentee ballot application submissions over a short period of time,” the report says.

But the results were not helpful for Trump’s team. “There were 54 counties won by Trump (“Trump Counties”) and 13 counties won by Biden (“Biden Counties”). Accordingly, 162 burst periods were identified for Trump Counties and 39 identified for Biden Counties,” the report said.

Other tests were also performed. “Counsel instructed EBDA to investigate potentially anomalous distribution of birth dates in the Pennsylvania mail-in voting population,” the report says. “The rationale for this test was that if fictional voters had been artificially created during the voter registration process, that activity could create detectable discrepancies between characteristics of the 2020 voter population versus those found in the general population. In this case, dates of birth were the most quantitatively testable element of the voting population.” But the report did not substantiate anything that showed fraud to overturn the results in Pennsylvania.

The researchers also studied absentee ballot rates and said Trump might have won Georgia if absentee ballots were rejected at the same rate they were during the 2016 election — and if the ballots rejected were primarily Biden voters. But there was no reason to say those ballots should have been rejected, or that those precise ballots would have been the ones rejected.

In many cases, the team said they found small irregularities or anomalies, but they often said they could not determine whether fraud had actually occurred — or if there was a less nefarious explanation.

The firm studied a range of other baseless claims and theories, such as alleged ballot harvesting in nursing homes. They offered, for example, a list of about 50 nursing homes and adult-care facilities in Pennsylvania where there were at least 25 Democratic voters. But, the report concluded, the researchers could not prove there was anything necessarily fraudulent about that. Trump has claimed falsely that people in nursing homes voted illegally in Wisconsin, a claim the researchers did not appear to study.

Jacqueline Alemany and Amy Gardner contributed to this report.

Original article from the Washington Post, March 17, 2023, 5:00 PM.

I Have Been There

We recently posted a story about an inmate in the Guantanamo prison.

This prison was the brainchild of George “W” Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard “Dick” Cheney — “The Iraq War Committee.” This is one of the most disgraceful things they did — and they did many.

Guantanamo prison is an awful place. It will for generations breed a hatred for our country that will come back to harm many of our citizens in unimaginable ways. A prison built for political purposes that featured endless torture of the inmates, prolonged incarceration with no trial allowed, and separation from the world with no visitation. And after all of that, most of the prisoners were later found to have done nothing to justify their imprisonment.

“W” claimed that since they [those held in Guantanamo] were not prisoners of war and since they were not on the soil of a country (Guantanamo Base is leased from Cuba), that the Geneva Convention did not apply and neither did any other related laws. That was later modified to an extent, but if afforded very little legal redress for innocent people held for decades. The regular torture routine of prisoners renders any admission obtained inadmissible. For the few prisoners who may be guilty there will never be a trial.

Think this is all an exaggeration and it can’t be that bad?

It is, I know.

I have been there to see it.

First Released from CIA Secret Guantánamo Detention

February 7, 2023 at 3:07:25 PM EST

Thanks to you, Center for Constitutional Rights longtime client Majid Khan was released from Guantánamo last week to begin a new life in Belize! At long last, Majid is the first of the prisoners transferred from secret CIA detention to Guantánamo in September 2006 to be released. This day simply would not have come if it weren’t for your unwavering commitment to justice! We are so grateful to you!

The Center for Constitutional Rights also thanks our partners here and around the world who for so many years have joined us in the streets and the courts – protesting, speaking out against torture, sharing Majid’s story and words, and demanding justice and accountability for Guantánamo.
Your unrelenting support of the Center for Constitutional Rights has made it possible for our fierce team to bring justice to Majid! After decades-long litigation and advocacy to challenge the worst abuses of the ‘war on terror’ and close the Guantánamo Bay prison, this day is an enormous victory! Thank you!

“I have been given a second chance in life and I intend to make the most of it,” said Majid in a statement issued through his legal team. “The world has changed a lot in twenty years, and I have changed a lot as well. I promise all of you, especially the people of Belize, that I will be a productive, law-abiding member of society. Thank you for believing in me, and I will not let you down.”

There are 34 men still held at Guantánamo. Majid is the sixth detainee transferred by the Biden administration and the first resettled in a third country. But, there are 34 men still held at Guantánamo; there is still much more work to be done. Please give today. Thank you!

In gratitude and solidarity,

Vince Warren
Executive Director
Center for Constitutional Rights
666 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10012

‘End the scam’: Democrats unveil bill to change name of ‘Medicare Advantage’

From Raw Story, FEB 1, 2023
Reported by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

In an effort to crack down on the misleading practices of Medicare Advantage providers, Democratic Reps. Mark Pocan WI, Ro Khanna CA, and Jan Schakowsky IL, reintroduced legislation Tuesday that would ban private insurers from using the “Medicare” label in the names of their health plans.

The legislation, titled the Save Medicare Act, would formally change the name of the Medicare Advantage program to the Alternative Private Health Plan, an attempt to make clear to seniors that the plans are run by private entities such as Anthem, Humana, Cigna, and United Healthcare.

“Only Medicare is Medicare,” Pocan (D-Wis.) said in a statement. “It is one of the most popular and important services the government provides. These non-Medicare plans run by private insurers undermine traditional Medicare. They often leave patients without the benefits they need while overcharging the federal government for corporate profit.”

Khanna (D-Calif.) declared that “it’s time to call out ‘Medicare Advantage’ for what it is: private insurance that profits by denying coverage and the name is being used to trick seniors into enrolling.”

“That’s not right,” he added. “This bill will end the scam by preventing private insurers from profiting off the Medicare brand. Our focus should be on strengthening and expanding real Medicare.”

The bill, which faces long odds in the Republican-controlled House, was introduced as GOP lawmakers push for cuts to traditional Medicare as part of their broader austerity campaign.

It also comes as the Biden administration is moving ahead with a Medicare privatization scheme known as ACO REACH, a pilot program that critics warn could fully engulf traditional Medicare in a matter of years.

The Democratic trio’s legislation does not specifically address ACO REACH, opting to zero in on Medicare Advantage plans that are notorious for denying necessary care to vulnerable seniors and overbilling the federal government.

The measure would impose a $100,000 penalty each time a private insurer uses the Medicare name in the title of one of their plans.

“So-called Medicare Advantage is neither Medicare nor an advantage. It is simply another scheme by the insurance companies to line their pockets.”

Earlier this week, the Biden administration proposed a new rule that would strengthen audits of Medicare Advantage plans, which are paid an annual per-person rate by the federal government. Recent investigations have exposed how Medicare Advantage plans frequently overcharge the government by making patients appear sicker than they are, resulting in a higher payment.

The federal government currently expects to pay Medicare Advantage providers more than $6 trillion over the next eight years.

“Medicare reimburses Medicare Advantage plans using a complex formula called a risk score that computes higher rates for sicker patients and lower ones for healthier people,” Kaiser Health News reported in December. “But federal officials rarely demand documentation to verify that patients have these conditions, or that they are as serious as claimed. Only about 5% of Medicare Advantage plans are audited yearly.”

Medicare Advantage has grown rapidly over the past decade, with more than 28 million people in the U.S. enrolled in such plans as of 2022. MA plans often provide coverage for hearing, vision, and dental—benefits not offered by traditional Medicare, despite the efforts of progressive lawmakers to expand the program.

Some Democratic lawmakers have warned that part of the massive growth rate of Medicare Advantage plans could be due to their deceptive advertising practices.

In November, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released an investigative report laying out evidence of a range of “predatory actions” by private insurance companies that offer Medicare Advantage plans.

“Agents were found to sign up beneficiaries for plans under false pretenses, such as telling a beneficiary that coverage networks include preferred providers even when they do not,” the investigation found. “Of particular concern to the committee were reports across states of agents changing vulnerable seniors’ and people with disabilities’ health plans without their consent.”

Wendell Potter, president of the Center for Health and Democracy, said Tuesday that “so-called Medicare Advantage is neither Medicare nor an advantage.” “It is simply another scheme by the insurance companies to line their pockets at the expense of consumers,” said Potter, a former health insurance executive with first-hand experience of the industry’s misleading practices. “I applaud Congressman Pocan and Congressman Khanna for introducing this vital legislation. The healthcare market is confusing for consumers and misleading branding like so-called Medicare Advantage just makes it worse.”

Read the article on Raw Story here:
https://www.rawstory.com/end-the-scam-democrats-unveil-bill-to-change-name-of-medicare-advantage/

U.S. Coughs Up 9/11 Report

U.S. coughs up 9/11 Commission report on 2004 private meeting with Bush/Cheney; Bush saw no reason to pursue accountability for failures.

By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org, NOVEMBER 13, 2022, 4:38 AM

World Trade Center, September 11, 2001

Nearly two decades after President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney answered questions for the 9/11 Commission in a closed gathering in the Oval Office, a 31-page “summary” of what they had to say finally has been made public.

Neither Bush nor Cheney was under oath during the three-hour meeting on April 29, 2004. And the summary shows it was a generally relaxed, non-adversarial and largely superficial get-together during which no significant new insights were gleaned.

Yet the summary does yield Bush’s forceful, nonpublic opinion that he “didn’t see much point in assigning personal blame for 9/11.”

Kristen Breitweiser (L) and Sharon Premoli (R)

The president’s admonition, uttered as he was running for re-election, would not have played well with thousands of 9/11 survivors and the families of the murdered – who were then near top of mind with many American voters, Republicans and Democrats alike.

“It would have been pure outrage,” 9/11 widow and activist Kristen Breitweiser told Florida Bulldog. “We felt that in the face of nearly 3,000 dead bodies in lower Manhattan that people would have been held accountable.”

“This document makes my blood boil,” said Sharon Premoli, who was in her office on the 80^th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the first plane struck on September 11, 2001 and was later pulled from the wreckage. “That our lives were in the hands of these incompetents is chilling and [explains] why 3,000 were murdered, 6,000 injured.”

A LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY

The lack of accountability, Breitweiser said, is exemplified by Bush’s decision to retain then-CIA boss George Tenet amid significant public criticism. “Why leave the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in place when he had utterly failed to synthesize information in the pipeline about the attacks? Is anyone surprised there was [later] bad intelligence in the war on Iraq?”

Tenet retired in July 2004. Five months later, Bush awarded Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian honor.

President Bush after bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on retired CIA Director George Tenet in December 2004.

Said Breitweiser, “Tenet is a very good example of why it was important to hold people accountable, not for political reasons, but to make the nation safe. You can’t fix problems and make sure it doesn’t happen again if you don’t have accountability. That was the families’ mandate to the commission.”

Breitweiser was a leader of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, an organization that had pushed a reluctant Bush to create the 9/11 Commission. The steering committee urged 9/11 Commission Chair Thomas Kean and Vice Chair Lee Hamilton to ask Bush, alone and in sworn public testimony, a list of tough, probing questions, including: “Why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack on our own soil?” and “Why no one in any level of our government has yet been held accountable for the countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?”

TOWING TO BUSH’S LINE

Those suggested questions, and many others, were not asked, according to the summary prepared by 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow.

The summary, titled a “Memorandum for the Record” (MFR), does offer glimpses that might explain the ostensibly independent 9/11 Commission’s decision to tow the president’s line regarding the central question of accountability, as it declared in the preface to the 9/11 Commission report: “Our aim has not been to assign individual blame.”

For example, the summary says commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, who gained fame in the 1970s as a leading Watergate prosecutor, declared reassuringly during the Oval Office meeting that “the President and the Commission were on the same team.”

An enlightening compilation of film clips of President Bush’s less-than-illuminating remarks to reporters immediately after the meeting, interspersed with C-SPAN coverage of the contemporary reaction to the meeting, can be viewed here. It was compiled by longtime Philadelphia-based 9/11 activist Jon Gold, and includes several of Gold’s opinions at the end.

9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean (L) and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton (R) on NBC’s Sunday news program, “Meet the Press” in 2006

The summary discloses that Bush’s public slipperiness followed a meeting of the minds at the conclusion of the Oval Office gathering.

“The President quickly reviewed what he intended to say about the meeting to the press. Chairman Kean described the similar, and equally non-substantive, plan for Commission comments. The meeting then concluded,” Zelikow wrote.

The meeting summary, classified as “secret/sensitive,” was released Wednesday by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), an obscure body comprised of various government entities that – like the Freedom of Information process – can be used by the public to obtain a review of national security-classified records.

Except for 16 small portions, the summary was declassified after ISCAP’s slow-motion Mandatory Declassification Review. The MDR was sought by Erik Larson, a Washington, D.C. area 9/11 researcher. Larson made the request 10 years ago, in 2012.

OTHER KEY COMMISSION RECORDS STILL HIDDEN

Thousands of additional 9/11 Commission records stored at the National Archives, including interviews with FBI and CIA agents, remain classified in whole or in part. The Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory committee established by Congress to promote public access, last year urged President Joe Biden to prioritize the release of certain Commission records, including the Bush/Cheney Oval Office interview:

• A 7,000-word report created by Zelikow and Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, “which provides a summary and analysis of information contained in the President’s Daily Briefs from the Clinton and Bush administrations pertaining to al Qaida’s efforts to conduct terrorist attacks leading up to 9/11.”
• Interviews with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
• Interviews with various National Security Advisors and government terrorism experts, Condoleezza Rice, Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke and former CIA officer Michael Scheuer.

Zelikow’s drafting of the summary of the Bush/Cheney interview included several literary flourishes to set the scene.

President George W. Bush with Vice President Dick Cheney

“The President and Vice President were seated in chairs in front of the fireplace. The President’s demeanor throughout was relaxed. He answered questions without notes,” Zelikow wrote. “The portrait of Washington was over the fireplace, which was flanked by busts of Lincoln and Churchill. Paintings of southwestern landscapes are on the wall. It was a beautiful spring day.”

The commissioners and the president’s counsel, future Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, were on sofas and chairs. Zelikow and a couple of White House underlings sat against a wall.

Kean began the questioning with an inquiry about how Bush viewed his role as he was receiving ominous threat reports in the spring and summer of 2001. Bush explained his White House routine: meeting every day with Tenet, Cheney, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and staff chief Andrew Card. “They talked about the threats of the day. They assessed them … then (took) up what was being done,” the summary says.

BUSH: I WAS TOLD THREAT WAS OVERSEAS

Kean asked about the now-notorious Aug. 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”  Bush said the briefing followed his request to an analyst for information about Bin Laden and al Qaeda.

“There was only one reference to threats in America during my presidency to that point – and he had asked for it! Not one arrived at his desk,” the summary says awkwardly. Bush added that he and his national security staff saw no “actionable intelligence” in the PDB, which among other things discussed FBI information about “suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”

Several times during the meeting, Bush insisted he was never otherwise warned about any domestic threats. “The threat was overseas – that was what George said,” the summary says the president stated.

Bush’s assertion that he wasn’t given any advance information to act upon is galling to 9/11 family members.

“’No actionable intelligence’? Probably because Bush can’t read and refused to heed any of the flashing lights about Saudi officials’ funding of Islamic extremists plotting to murder us,” said survivor Premoli. “The interviewees alternate between the disingenuous, utter incompetence and profound dereliction of duty, Kean and Hamilton included. Notwithstanding the Commission’s investigation into Saudi Arabia’s complicity in 9/11, the report avoided assigning any responsibility to them. And the Bush administration wanted it just that way by time-constraining [the commission’s tenure]. Failure was written into the Commission’s outcome before it began.”

Said Breitweiser, “Bush clearly didn’t pay attention to the warning signs. There’s no plausible reason that people [like future hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar] weren’t arrested and deported.”

BUSH’S KILL ‘EM ALL STRATEGY

Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, also asked the president why he stayed at a Sarasota elementary school he was visiting on the morning of Sept. 11^th after getting word of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center.

“He was collecting his thoughts,” the summary says. “The country was under attack. He was trying to understand what that means.”

Bush apparently hit on a simple approach to protect the country. In response to a question from Vice Chair Hamilton, a former Democratic Indiana congressman, he said, “Killing the terrorists was the best strategy. It was the only way to do it. Kill them before they kill us,” the summary says. “There would be no negotiations, no peace treaty with these people.”

Osama bin Laden

No commissioner sought to explore the ramifications of Bush’s kill-’em-all approach.

Prior to 9/11 there clearly was no urgency to take out Osama bin Laden – despite a string of terrorist attacks including: the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1996 Khobar Towers truck bomb attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American soldiers and wounded hundreds of others; the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224, including 12 Americans; the Oct. 12, 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S. guided missile cruiser USS Cole in Aden, Yemen that killed 17 sailors and injured dozens more.

POOR COMMUNICATIONS, CONFUSION, RUMORS

In response to a question from 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick about whether the CIA had the authority to kill bin Laden, Bush replied that he’d asked Tenet about that during the transition.  “When he asked George…can you kill him, his answer was that killing bin Laden wouldn’t disrupt al Qaeda. It was not that he didn’t have the authority to do it,” the summary says.

None of the commission members asked Bush whether bin Laden’s death would have disrupted the 9/11 plot.

Bin Laden lived on until May 2, 2011 when Navy Seals tracked him down and shot him at his hideout in Pakistan. Between 9/11 and that date, al Qaeda or its affiliates carried out more than a dozen terrorist attacks overseas that left hundreds dead.

9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow

In the Oval Office meeting, Bush and Cheney both talked about what they saw and heard on Sept. 11, 2001 – the poor communications aboard Air Force One, the confusion and false rumors, including alleged terrorist threats to Bush’s ranch in Crawford, TX and to Air Force One.

From Zelikow’s summary: “The President remembered the confusion when he arrived that afternoon in Nebraska [at Offutt Air Force Base]. He remembered coming into a room full of officers. He spoke briefly to them, that this was a tough day for America. Next, they told him about a flight coming from Madrid and asked for authorization to shoot it down. This was about two minutes after he arrived there. He told them to follow their rules of engagement. Then a few minutes later they told him the plane had landed in Madrid! A lot of confusion. It was troubling to him. It dawned on him – there was an alert, a shoot down order, then the plane is landing in Spain? Had to look into this, a communications problem.”

BUSH ON SAUDI ARABIA

At one point, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman told Bush the “big issue was the role of the Saudis.”

“The President replied that a fundamental political question for any President was how to deal with the Saudis. There was a sort of split personality there. Some found favor with al Qaeda and the extremists, supporting their radical policies. The U.S. had to have a process to push them to change their ways,” the summary says. But “The last [to change] will be Saudi Arabia.”

Little else was said about Saudi Arabia, which is today the principal defendant in a federal multi-billion-dollar lawsuit filed by the 9/11 families who have accused the kingdom of aiding and abetting al Qaeda terrorists. Commissioners never asked Bush and Cheney about their discussions with Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan just days after the attacks in a meeting at the White House on the Truman Balcony.

Bush sought to portray himself as being in full command, with a deferential Cheney at his side. His answers, however, often suggested he was not. On a number of occasions, he was unable to provide answers to direct questions, like when he was asked by Kean if he was aware that on 9/11 the Secret Service instructed Andrews Air Force Base to scramble jets outside of the chain of command of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command).

“The President, surprised, asked the chairman to repeat ‘ordered by the Secret Service?’ The chairman affirmed that. The President said he did not know about that,” the summary says.

BUSH TOUTS IMPROVEMENTS SINCE 9/11

In discussing his administration’s approach to protecting the homeland, he said things had improved since 9/11. “The FBI and CIA were communicating regularly. He met constantly with [FBI] Director [Robert] Mueller. Why didn’t this happen before? There was a fear of looking like they were politicizing the FBI through such meetings. This was a ‘Hoover hangover.’ Presidents and the FBI also feared that they might jeopardize cases through such discussions. After 9/11, he just put that aside,” the summary says.

Yet Bush’s more measurable assessment of his Department of Homeland Security – that it was “doing a good job” – seems negligently naïve. “The response mechanisms were pretty darn good,” the summary says, again citing Bush. “FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] was a good indicator, looking at their responses to storms, where they have displayed good communications. This had become much better.”

One year later, Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, killing more than 1,800 people. FEMA was roundly criticized for its slow response and lack of coordination with other relief agencies.

Bush is long gone from the White House. But the national emergency he invoked drags on. In September, President Biden formally notified Congress he was extending it for another year.

“The terrorist threat that led to the declaration on September 14, 2001 of a national emergency continues,” Biden wrote in his notification letter. He did not elaborate.

READ THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION OF THIS ARTICLE AT THIS LINK: https://www.floridabulldog.org/2022/11/us-coughs-up-9-11-commission-report-2004-meet-bush-cheney/

STUDY: More Republicans than Democrats Likely Died of COVID

From RawStory, October 4, 2022

It’s already known that hundreds of thousands of Americans would still be alive if every eligible person had gotten vaccinated against COVID-19. Now new research strongly suggests that many more of those “excess deaths” in Ohio and Florida were among people with Republican voter registrations.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that Republicans were more reluctant to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, which has so far killed more than 1 million in the United States and more than 6.5 million worldwide. A Cornell University study found that former President Donald Trump was the “single largest driver” of misinformation about the disease and research by European economists indicated that watching a lot of Fox News correlated with vaccine hesitancy.

A paper published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research puts some numbers to the relationship between voting Republican and dying of COVID — most likely because lower rates of Republicans got vaccines once they became widely available.

In it, three Yale University researchers selected Ohio and Florida and took a look at “excess deaths” — the number of deaths in a given time period that is in excess of the number that was expected. While no single death in that measure can be attributed to a given cause, it’s safe to assume that in a deadly global pandemic, a spike in the number of excess deaths is largely attributable to the disease.

That’s what the Yale researchers found in this case.

“In 2018 and the early parts of 2020, excess death rates for Republicans and Democrats are similar, and centered around zero,” wrote the researchers, Jacob Wallace, Jason L. Schwartz and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham. “Both groups experienced a similar large spike in excess deaths in the winter of 2020-2021. However, in the summer of 2021 — after vaccines were widely available — the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021.”

The excess death rate for people of both parties was about 37% greater in late 2020 than it was a year earlier, according to a chart accompanying the report. But after vaccines became widely available in the spring of 2020, big disparities began to emerge.

Excess deaths among Democrats at the end of last year were just above 10% compared to 2019. Among Republicans, they were about 35%, the chart said.

The researchers didn’t have data regarding vaccination rates among the excess deaths. But other research shows that the unvaccinated and the unboosted are much more likely to be made seriously ill by the coronavirus.

A paper published last month in JAMA Internal Medicine said that the unvaccinated are 10.5 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID. The unboosted are 2.5 times more likely, it said.

The Yale researchers said the partisan divergence in excess deaths after vaccines became available is likely attributable vaccination rates.

“This sharp contrast in the excess death rate gap before and after vaccines were available suggests that vaccine take-up likely played an important role,” they wrote. “Data on vaccine take-up by party is limited and unavailable in our dataset, but there is evidence of differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake based on political party affiliation.”

The research comes after researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health in May estimated that 318,000 — or about a third — of the COVID deaths in the United States were preventable.

Florida had the second-most vaccine-preventable deaths, 29,200, and the 13th-highest rate, 1,694 per million residents, that analysis said. Ohio had the fourth-most, 15,875, and the ninth-highest rate, 1,742 per million people, it said.

The paper published Monday by the Yale researchers didn’t contrast excess mortality in Ohio to that in Florida, but such a contrast would have been interesting. Both states have Republican governors but particularly early in the pandemic, they took starkly different approaches.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said he would listen to public health experts and he was quick to close schools and impose other health orders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by contrast, signed laws prohibiting school mask mandates and blocking private employers from requiring employees to get vaccinated.

BY: Marty Schladen, Ohio Capital Journal

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE: https://www.rawstory.com/study-more-republicans-than-democrats-likely-died-of/

The Country Needs More Liz Cheneys

OPINION PIECE BY THE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD

“If the cost of standing up for the Constitution is losing the House seat,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) recently told the New York Times, “then that’s a price I’m willing to pay.” On Tuesday, her state’s voters came to collect.

Ms. Cheney’s defeat in Wyoming’s GOP congressional primary was predictable — and yet no less dispiriting. Polls had her trailing the eventual victor, Harriet Hageman, by a substantial margin. But no numerical analysis was necessary to see how far out of step Ms. Cheney had become with a Republican Party over which former President Donald Trump still holds so much power, even after his role in one of the nation’s darkest days: Jan. 6, 2021.

Where many Republicans (including her opponent) say the 2020 presidential election was rigged, Ms. Cheney refuses to participate in election denialism. Where nearly all of her House colleagues refused to join Democrats in their efforts to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection, Ms. Cheney has played a central role on the select committee seeking to hold to account those responsible. Her participation lent bipartisan legitimacy to the undertaking; her knowledge of her own party’s politics proved invaluable to understanding how that day’s horrible events came about.

And now, while candidates willing to spread the “big lie” are winning GOP primary races across the country, such as gubernatorial candidates Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Kari Lake in Arizona, Ms. Cheney has lost.

This outcome says as much about the GOP as it does about Ms. Cheney’s mettle. She did not lose because she surrendered her status as a card-carrying conservative. She’s an antiabortion foreign policy hawk with a career score of 74 percent from Heritage Action, a conservative advocacy group, and a 79 percent score this session. She voted with Mr. Trump 93 percent of the time during his tenure. She lost because she refused to bow to Mr. Trump — or, at least, to remain silent about his campaign to undermine U.S. democracy, as do many Republicans who understand that Mr. Trump is a grave threat. The difference between her and the House Republican leadership from which she was ousted is that she recognizes that ideology and party loyalty should not matter when facing a fundamental threat to democracy.

Now, as politicians seed doubt in the outcome of votes before they even happen and spew reckless rhetoric that endangers elected officials and everyday government employees, the nation needs a broad coalition united in defense of bedrock values such as free-and-fair elections and the peaceful transition of power. The country needs, regardless of their positions on tax hikes or deregulation or free trade, more Liz Cheneys in government. Now, it will have one less.

Article from The Washington Post, August 17, 2022

Arrest Made in Rape

Arrest Made in Rape of Ohio 10-Year-Old Who Had to Travel Out of State for Abortion

THE FACTS

Gerson Fuentes appeared in court Wednesday after the girl’s plight received widespread attention, including from many conservative officials and pundits who claimed it was a hoax.

Josh Fiallo, Breaking News Reporter
Published Jul. 13, 2022 2:00PM ET
Updated Jul. 13, 2022 6:47PM ET

Franklin County Sheriff

An Ohio man was arrested Tuesday for raping a 10-year-old girl who became a central figure in the debate over abortion rights after she reportedly traveled to Indiana to have an abortion when Ohio outlawed the procedure last month.

Arrest records and court records viewed by The Daily Beast confirm that Gerson Fuentes, 27, was arrested Tuesday in Franklin County on a felony charge of raping a person under 13. The Columbus Dispatch, who first reported on his arrest, attended Fuentes’ arraignment in Columbus on Wednesday.

The unidentified girl’s plight became national news when the Indianapolis Star quoted a doctor who said a 10-year-old rape victim, who was six weeks and three days pregnant, had been forced to travel from her home in Columbus to Indiana for an abortion. Her home state had a trigger law that immediately outlawed abortions after six weeks once the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

A Columbus Police detective, identified by the Dispatch as Jeffrey Huhn, testified in court Wednesday that the 10-year-old victim was impregnated and had an abortion in Indianapolis.

“The victim went out of state to have a medically terminated abortion,” he said, according to video of the arraignment.

Gerson Fuentes, 27, arrested

Fuentes, a Guatemalan national, is in the country illegally, a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. He was being held in Ohio on Wednesday on an ICE detainer.

Video from the arraignment showed Fuentes staring blankly during the arraignment and standing with a slouch as a translator relayed the proceedings to him in Spanish.

Court records say the alleged rape occurred on May 12. Detectives said in court that police were made aware of the girl’s pregnancy through a referral filed with the local child services’ branch by her mother on June 22. Eight days later, the girl had the abortion in Indianapolis.

The aborted fetus has since been tested for DNA and entered into evidence, Huhn said, and officials say Fuentes confessed to the rape when he was questioned.

His arrest comes after conservative media claimed the girl’s story was made up for political theater, something parroted by Fox News presenters as recently as Tuesday night—while Fuentes was already in custody.

But those also with egg on their face in light of the horrific crime: the top law-enforcement official in Ohio.

Indeed, state Attorney General Dave Yost spent much of the past week effectively dubbing the story a hoax, suggesting he had heard nothing about any such crime being reported.

“We have a decentralized law enforcement system in Ohio, but we have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriffs,” Yost said in a Fox News segment Monday. “Not a whisper anywhere.”

Yost released a statement Wednesday afternoon that did not address his previous comments.

“My heart aches for the pain suffered by this young child,” he said. “I am grateful for the diligent work of the Columbus Police Department in securing a confession and getting a rapist off the street.”

Yost’s Democrat challenger in this fall’s election, Jeff Crossman, blasted his 65-year-old opponent in a statement to The Daily Beast on Wednesday.

“After implementing a six-week abortion ban without exemptions for rape or incest, Dave Yost rushed to get himself on national TV to criticize the story of a 10-year-old rape victim, calling the story a ‘fabrication,’” said Crossman, currently a state representative.

“… Yost must immediately apologize to this young girl, her family and all Ohioans and start working to roll back this harmful policy that helped make a terrible tragedy even worse,” Crossman added.

While Yost and others declared the story was fabricated, those directly involved foreshadowed Wednesday’s arrest announcement.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist who first described the rape and its aftermath to the Indy Star, previously told The Daily Beast she expected vindication.

“It will all come out in time,” she said via text message on Tuesday.

Court records show Fuentes is being held on a bond of $2 million. The judge said he was considered a flight risk and, given the brutality of the crime, a high bail was necessary to protect the child involved.

—with reporting by Pilar Melendez

Original story appeared here:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/columbus-police-arrest-gerson-fuentes-for-rape-of-ohio-10-year-old-who-traveled-to-indiana-for-abortion

LATEST UPDATE (JULY 22, 2022) HERE:
https://www.wthitv.com/news/man-indicted-in-rape-of-a-child-who-traveled-from-ohio-to-indiana-for-an/article_fca1c1da-4e96-597b-9414-9c086ffa4633.html?fbclid=IwAR2MVl6L6hcRssOZCkzDUzY0nFLA8E-PApBnRdGrzQxT54Tug1p9VVnTkAU

SCOTUS Needs a Code of Ethics

Codes of ethics for judges fortify the administration of justice, the authors write.

By CHARLES GEYH and STEPHEN GILLERS

08/08/2013 05:20 AM EDT

A code of ethics binds nearly every judge in America. The sole exceptions are the justices of the Supreme Court. Today, for example, no ethics rule prevents a justice from engaging in political activity, speaking at the fundraising event of a partisan organization, or joining a club that discriminates based on race, sex, religion, or national origin. Ethics rules for all other federal judges forbid these activities. This vacuum is unacceptable.

Last Thursday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) introduced the Supreme Court Ethics Act of 2013 to close the gap. It directs the justices to adopt a code of ethics. In a perfect world, the court would have done this without prompting. But Chief Justice John Roberts has resisted doing so. Murphy’s bill calls the question in the most deferential way possible. It does not write an ethics code for the court. It merely asks the court to write its own.

Codes of ethics for judges fortify the administration of justice. They tell judges their ethical responsibilities and articulate high standards of conduct to which they should aspire. They assure litigants that a judge before whom they appear is committed to fairness and impartiality. They require judges to conduct their personal and professional lives in a manner that fosters respect for the courts.

In his 2011 year-end report on the federal judiciary, Roberts said the Supreme Court did not have to adopt a code of ethics because the justices already “consult” the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which governs other federal judges. But there is an obvious difference between committing to abide by a code of ethics and consulting a code that a justice is free to disregard.

Skeptics have argued that it would be an empty gesture for the Supreme Court to adopt a code because there is no workable way to enforce compliance. But the pledge itself has great value. Just as the public rightly expects judges to follow their oaths of office, it will also assume that a justice who vows to abide by ethics rules that the court itself adopted will do so.

The chief justice has said that constitutional limits on congressional power to regulate the Supreme Court are largely untested. But the U.S. Constitution delegates to Congress the powers to regulate the court’s appellate jurisdiction and to make laws necessary and proper for “carrying into execution” all powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States. Advocates of original intent might note that the founding generation interpreted those powers broadly to permit Congress to regulate the size of the Supreme Court, where, when and how often the court meets, how many justices constitute a quorum, and the duties of the justices themselves — including a duty to “ride circuit” and hear cases as trial judges. Legislation requiring the court to write its own code of ethics falls well within this congressional power.

In any event, it would be a mistake for the court to view the Murphy bill as a challenge to its power. It is rather an invitation. No rule is thrust on the justices. Under the Murphy bill, the justices are asked to start with the code governing other federal judges, but are then free to make “any amendments or modifications” they deem “appropriate.” A response that says, in effect, “We won’t do it because you can’t make us” will hurt the court and the rule of law. So will ignoring the mandate.

This is not a partisan issue. Judges appointed by presidents of both parties confront ethical dilemmas. Codes of judicial conduct proliferated in the Watergate era amid pervasive suspicion of government, which has not dissipated in the ensuing 40 years. It would be unfortunate if the only judges in the United States who see no need for a code of ethics were those on the nation’s most powerful tribunal. It is time for the Supreme Court to take the need for an ethics code seriously.

Charles Geyh is John F. Kimberling professor of law at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law. Stephen Gillers is Elihu Root professor of law at New York University School of Law.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE AT THIS LINK:
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/the-supreme-court-needs-a-code-of-ethics-095301

The Modern GOP

We should be happy that the modern GOP has left behind the terrible loss of life caused by the warmongers of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. It has left in its demise though the pompous pseudo-intellectualism typified with the staged rimless glasses of little brother Jeb. It was never a decent political party; it was an economic club of white businessmen who could have cared less for the needs of working people. It has always had at its core a racist common denominator.

After Trump, these old club members had nothing to offer. He upstaged them with his frank racist white supremacy appeal which they had always used but without the disguise that had proved so effective since Reagan. They were always Trump and he was them, but without the phony trappings of people like Mitch McConnell. The little wannabees like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene were freed up to say what they wanted to say without concern for needing to only hint at the core of the hate of non-white citizens’ message. The charade is over and we should thank Donald Trump for the unmasking.

The modern GOP is a white supremacy club that neither advocates for democracy nor believes in the central premise of equality for all with equal rights and privileges for every citizen. In so many ways they are just like Justice Scalia longed for; wealthy white men in control and everybody else relegated to a lesser status. It was these white men that history has established have ruined the lives of millions while profiteering and pilfering the wealth of their nations they have conquered. These are most of the Republican politicians of today, cut from the same cloth of this disgraceful heritage.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Cadillac

Cadillac recalled the airbags on the Escalade model. When notified I called to make an appointment to have the repair done. The day before the scheduled appointment someone from the dealership called to remind me of the appointment.

I had made the appointment for 8:45 am. I had been told by the scheduler that it would take 2 hours. I arrived early and checked in with the service advisor. I went back to the dealership 3.5 hours later and asked if my car was ready. My designated service advisor said it was not and explained what they had to do and that he estimated it would be done by 2:00 pm. I couldn’t take a chance on the car not being ready by then because I had to pick up my granddaughter from school and needed the car seat in the car

I explained to my service advisor I was told by the scheduler it would take 2 hours and made the appointment so it would be done by noon or so. He explained that the appointment I made was an appointment with a service advisor not with a technician who would do the work. I asked why I was told it would take 2 hours and he explained the people making the appointment are not involved in keeping the appointment or in knowing how long it would actually take. When he explained what they had to do it was exactly what they were supposed to do when the two-hour estimate was given. They had apparently either just started or hadn’t started at all.

At Dale Earnhardt Jr Cadillac in Tallahassee, I make the following Seinfeldeske observations:

• The people scheduling the appointments are excellent.

• The people following up to make sure you don’t miss the appointment are excellent.

• The people in charge of keeping the appointment are excellent in starting the appointment process on time.

• The people who actually do the work though are completely independent of and not obligated to honor any representation made by any of the foregoing.

Duke and Coach K

After Duke lost to North Carolina Saturday night, Coach K wasn’t the only classless act with his post-game comment.

Two assistant coaches snubbed UNC Coach Hubert Davis during the post-game handshakes. Later when the Duke University administration was honoring retiring Coach K, he went to the podium and said what he was about to say was not part of the program. Seething with anger he announced the game result was unacceptable. He didn’t say it was coaching mistakes, so the only other people to be blamed were the players. Great coaches never blame their players in public. These several acts of classless, poor sportsmanship were led by him.

The criticism coming from Duke was that UNC didn’t do enough to honor Coach K. OMG! These year-long retirements honoring are a little much. Anyway, this was a Duke home game and UNC was probably a little more concerned about winning, which they did.

I feel sure Duke Fans will miss him and his relentless working of the officials throughout the game. I won’t. Great memory of this year’s FSU game in Tallahassee, Duke went down despite their bench full of 5-star recruits. Maybe if they had the Duke Tripper back they might have done better this year.

UF Researchers Felt Pressure to Destroy COVID Data

Faculty Senate panel alleges more violations of academic freedom. Says staff was told not to contradict state on pandemic issues.

PUBLISHED: 12/05/2021 WRITTEN BY: Divya Kumar, Tampa Bay Times

Fear of upsetting state officials is pervasive among faculty at the University of Florida, to the point that race-related references have been edited out of course materials and researchers felt pressure to destroy COVID-19 data, according to a report released Monday by a Faculty Senate committee.

The six-person panel was convened three weeks ago to investigate academic freedom issues after the university decided to bar three political science professors from testifying in a lawsuit against the state. But its findings go well beyond that episode and were so disturbing — especially regarding COVID-19 research — that the group decided to speed up its work, said Danaya Wright, a constitutional law professor and former Faculty Senate chairperson who served on the committee.

“We knew it was much more widespread,” Wright said in an interview Monday. “We knew there was more silencing and pressure coming from above. The Big Above.”

The committee received a flood of input from faculty, from stories about attempts to serve as expert witnesses to instances that dealt with race and COVID-19 research across disciplines.

The report discusses several “challenges” faced by UF researchers who were working on COVID-19 with an unidentified state entity. It describes “external pressure to destroy” data as well as “barriers” to accessing, analyzing and publishing the numbers. Taken together, the report said, those problems “inhibited the ability of faculty to contribute scientific findings during a world-wide pandemic.”

The report further states that UF employees were told “not to criticize the Governor of Florida or UF policies related to COVID-19 in media interactions.” It says they were told not to use their UF titles or affiliation in written commentary or to give oral presentations. And faculty at UF Health expressed concerns over funding being in jeopardy if they did not adopt the state’s stance on pandemic regulations in opinion articles, the report says.

The allegations related to data destruction added a sense of urgency to the committee’s work, Wright said.

 “COVID research, it is life and death to not be able to do your job,” Wright said. “To have your research that you’ve trained for so many years to be able to do, to have that research tabled, put on the shelf and ignored and not get it out there to the academic community to get it out there and see if it’s going to do any good.”

The report also details other allegations, including that “websites were required to be changed, that course syllabi had to be restructured, and that use of the terms “critical” and “race” could not appear together in the same sentence or document.”

All allegations were kept confidential due to fear of retaliation.

“More problematic than the individual examples of pressure to stifle unpopular viewpoints or restrict research was the palpable reticence and even fear on the part of faculty to speak up on these issues,” the report states. “There was grave concern about retaliation and a sense that anyone who objected to the state of affairs might lose his or her job or be punished in some way.”

As a tenured faculty member, Wright said she feels a duty to speak up, though she said she wishes the issue was not perceived as faculty versus administration.

“We’ve reached a point where many faculty feel that wherever this pressure is coming from, it is interfering with our duty and loyalty and commitment and responsibility to seek the truth and make that knowledge available,” she said. “Faculty desperately want to do our jobs.”

The source of the pressure remains unclear, she said.

UF professor Danaya Wright

Just before the Thanksgiving break, a task force convened by the university reached a different conclusion on the issue of academic freedom, saying in its own report that “the University of Florida Board of Trustees ensures that the institution is free from undue influence by external persons or bodies through clear and consistently enforced policies and procedures.”

Asked on Monday to comment on the Faculty Senate report, the university declined.

The faculty report states that “the lack of documented rules and procedures” make understanding denials of participation in outside activity difficult. It said the committee contacted members of the administration, but that outreach “did not yield much new information.”

One administrator said he was advised by the university’s general counsel not to comment because of pending litigation, the report said. Six professors, including the three involved in the initial controversy over not being allowed to testify, have filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging a violation of their First Amendment rights.

Wright said she herself was told she could contact any lawmakers as long as they were not from Florida regarding potential legislation she is drafting pertaining to wills and trusts — an issue she contends should be noncontroversial. She said deans tend to be the bearers of the bad news, but that most faculty believe the orders come from above.

“We don’t know how many people it’s filtered through,” she said.

The report also contains talks with faculty who imposed self-censorship on their work, unsure how to proceed or if they may face consequences.

Wright, who has been at UF for 24 years, said the university has always had a culture of “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” But while she’s appreciative to the Legislature for its support, she said the faculty is working for the taxpayers, who are funding their jobs.

“Ultimately our loyalty is to the people of Florida and to the search for knowledge,” she said. “If things above that are interfering with that, regardless of where that’s coming from, we can’t do our jobs. … We have one job as faculty and that is to discover, create truth, knowledge and push the boundaries of human understanding and then to promulgate that information to the public.”

The committee’s report also referred to remarks on Friday by Mori Hosseini, chairperson of UF’s board of trustees, who blasted faculty members who have spoken out in recent weeks about academic freedom. He called others disrespectful, and said that some had abused their positions. He said their behavior “will not stand.”

The school’s response, including “hasty and limited” efforts to review policies, have not addressed larger issues, the report said. Among them, it said, are“the serious reports of efforts to stifle the scientific and medical community’s research into and professional duty to report the developing scientific information on Covid-19.” The report said the committee hopes the university will “ultimately address these concerns and contribute to enhancing the integrity and mission of UF as a respected institution of higher learning so that the people of Florida will benefit from a world-class institution that they have paid so much to create and support and to which they are so deserving.”

Final Report Faculty Senate AdHoc Committee on AF

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Alarm Over DeSantis Move to Form his own Militia

‘What wannabe totalitarian, fascist dictators do’: Alarm over DeSantis move to form his own ‘personal militia’

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

December 03, 2021 

Critics are responding with alarm to news Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis is asking for millions of taxpayer funds to create his own militia force, separate from the existing National Guard.

CNN calls it “a World War II-era civilian military force that he, not the Pentagon, would control.” And while the law allows for the move, it was created “as a temporary force to fill the void left behind” when the state’s National Guard was deployed overseas, and “disbanded after the war ended.”

But the highly-controversial Florida Republican, seen as one of the top 2024 GOP presidential candidates, is also making clear his motives are a further escalation in his war of words against the Biden administration.

“DeSantis also said this unit, called the Florida State Guard, would be ‘not encumbered by the federal government.’ He said this force would give him ‘the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible.'”

The proposed Florida state guard would be under DeSantis’ sole power without any interference.

It’s also being seen as one more potential attack on science during the coronavirus pandemic era. All National Guard members must be vaccinated. DeSantis opposes all vaccine and mask mandates and has invited unvaccinated, fired police officers from others states to move to Florida – and offering them a $5000 payment.

Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, now a U.S. Congressman but running to unseat DeSantis, called DeSantis’ militia a “handpicked secret police” force.

Perhaps one of the strongest warnings comes from SiriusXM Progress host Dean Obeidallah, who calls it “the beginning of a ‘Red Army’ as the GOP prepares for war.”

“The same Republicans who claim Jan 6 was not a terrorist attack but just a ‘tourist visit’ now tell us not to be concerned with Ron DeSantis forming a personal militia that he says will ‘not encumbered by the federal government,'” Obeidallah adds. “This is a Red Army!!!”

MSNBC’s Joy Reid likened the move to fascism, asking: “So… y’all know this is fascisty bananas, right…?”

Attorney and DeSantis critic Daniel Uhlfelder noted the governor’s “classic authoritarian move” on bringing his son to the announcement.

“More setting up for 2024 coup!” tweeted Amy Siskind, The New Agenda founder and author of The Weekly List.

Research and strategic communication CEO Fernand Amandi describes DeSantis’ move as “What wannabe totalitarian, fascist, authoritarian dictators do.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

How the Media Missed Racist Social Media Posts Until After the Election

By Paul Farhi, Washington Post, November 10, 2021

Edward Durr was such a long-shot candidate in his New Jersey state Senate race that no one seemed to notice something rather striking about him: He had a history of posting bigoted, misogynistic and derogatory comments on social media.

Edward Durr speaks to near his home in Swedesboro, N.J, on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021

“Mohammed was a pedophile!” he wrote in 2019 in a tweet that also described Islam as “a false religion” and “a cult of hate.” In other online posts since last year, he has called the coronavirus “the China virus,” blamed an “influx of #illegalAliens” for spreading disease, used the motto of the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement and compared vaccination mandates to the Holocaust. He also denigrated Vice President Harris on Facebook, writing that she had earned her position only as a result of her race and gender.

Yet none of it rated news coverage, even after Durr, a commercial truck driver who had never held office, became the Republican nominee for New Jersey’s 3rd Legislative District in April. According to a search of the Nexis database, which catalogues thousands of news sources, there were no published or broadcast reports about Durr’s posts in the six months leading up to Election Day.

Durr’s comments made plenty of news after last week’s election, when reporters finally caught up to his social media history. But by then he had already scored a stunning upset over Democrat Steve Sweeney, one of the state’s most powerful officials. Durr, 58, won the Senate seat by roughly 2,200 votes out of 65,000 cast.

One of the media’s basic functions is to serve as a watchdog, particularly in scrutinizing candidates for public office. But in Durr’s case, the watchdogs failed to bark for years.

His incendiary posts date back to at least 2017, when he called U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) a “pedophile” — one of two times he did so, according to NJ.com. According to Nexis, however, Durr’s online history got no media coverage when he ran unsuccessfully for a state Assembly seat in 2017 nor when he ran and lost again two years later.

Political observers in New Jersey say the inattention this time around partially reflected low expectations for Durr’s candidacy against Sweeney, a six-time incumbent who is president of the state Senate. “This race wasn’t just off the media’s radar, it was off everyone’s radar,” said Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science and law at Montclair State. “No one even considered that [Durr] was a real threat, and that includes me.”

But the lack of media scrutiny may tell a larger tale about the state of local news reporting.

Years of cutbacks and consolidation among news organizations have left many communities without vigorous local coverage. Hundreds of newspapers have folded during the past two decades amid technological and economic turmoil — mostly small weeklies that focused on local issues. They have left behind “ghost” newspapers that try to report on broad territories with hollowed-out staffs or news deserts where there is no local reporting at all.

The southern New Jersey region once had four daily newspapers. But in 2012, Advance Publications merged three that it owned — the Gloucester County Times, Today’s Sunbeam in Salem County and the News of Cumberland County — into a single paper, the South Jersey Times. Salem, Gloucester and Cumberland counties form the heart of the district won by Durr.

The Times’s major competitors include the Courier Post in Cherry Hill and its sister paper, the Daily Journal in Vineland, both owned by Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper owner and a vigorous cost cutter. The Philadelphia Inquirer is the region’s leading metropolitan paper.

The reporting staffs of the surviving local newspapers “have been decimated” and “barely cover local news anymore,” said David Wildstein, who runs the New Jersey Globe, a digital news site focused on state issues and politics. “It’s a shame.”

Collectively, the South Jersey Times, Courier Post and Daily Journal list a total of 13 news reporters on their mastheads, covering a four-county region that has a population of just over 1 million. Editors of the papers didn’t reply to multiple requests for comment.

Harrison said the broader news ecosystem is similarly grim. She estimates that the number of reporters covering the New Jersey State House in Trenton has fallen by about 75 percent over the past two decades. TV stations in nearby Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., reach parts of the third district as well, but regional TV stations rarely cover local politics, especially those in a nearby state.

The nonreporting is a “sad illustration” of a larger crisis in the news media, said Tim Franklin, the former editor of the Baltimore Sun and Orlando Sentinel who now heads a local-news initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

“The voters in South Jersey’s 3rd Legislative District should have known about Durr’s posts long before Election Day,” Franklin said. “Local news and information is the oxygen of a functioning, self-governed democracy. And our system is choking from expanding news deserts and ghost newspapers. . . . We have many fewer journalists covering the very state officials who have a profound effect on people’s everyday lives.”

Some of the nonreporting might arguably be laid at Sweeney’s feet, suggests Wildstein. Reporters often rely on leaks of damaging information about a candidate supplied by an opponent. But in this instance, it’s unclear whether Sweeney’s campaign possessed such “opposition research” or tried to disseminate it during the campaign. (Sweeney’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.)

For his part, Durr tacitly admitted his social media posts could have proved an embarrassment during the campaign. After his comments were reported last week, he deleted his Twitter account and released a statement. “I’m a passionate guy and I sometimes say things in the heat of the moment,” he said. “If I said things in the past that hurt anybody’s feelings, I sincerely apologize.” He added, “I support everybody’s right to worship in any manner they choose and to worship the God of their choice. I support all people and I support everybody’s rights. That’s what I am here to do, work for the people and support their rights.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Republicans Trying to Discredit Another Free & Fair Election

In NJ, Republicans are trying to discredit another free and fair election
By Dana Milbank, Columnist
November 5, 2021 at 12:55 p.m. EDT

It has been exactly a year since Donald Trump birthed the “big lie” that he won the 2020 election. Now, the “big lie” has itself given birth to a new generation of election vandalism.

On Tuesday night, gubernatorial votes took place in Virginia and New Jersey. In Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe by a margin of 50.9 percent to 48.4 percent as of midday Friday. In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli by a nearly identical margin, 50.8 percent to 48.5 percent.

In Virginia, McAuliffe conceded defeat the morning after the election. “Congratulations to Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin on his victory,” he said in a statement. “I hope Virginians will join me in wishing the best to him and his family.”

In New Jersey, Ciattarelli refused to concede, and staff called media outlets “irresponsible” for projecting that his opponent won. He issued a video appeal Thursday evening for people to come forward with allegations of fraud. “You can report any perceived or real irregularity to the voter integrity hotline set up by the NJGOP,” he said.

Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli (L) should concede in the race for New Jersey governor says Incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy (R)

He said he wouldn’t concede for another week or two “until every legal vote is counted” (that’s a way of insinuating there are illegal votes), at which point he would decide about “a recount or audit.”

Or maybe he can save us the wait and just skip to the part where his followers storm the state capitol.

It’s another sad reminder that the Republican Party isn’t just campaigning against Democrats. It’s campaigning against democracy. Reckless, irresponsible GOP leaders and candidates have convinced their voters that there are two possible outcomes in any election:

A. The Republican wins.

B. The Democrat stole the election.

Heads I win, tails you cheated. A free society cannot function this way.

Nobody should be surprised Ciattarelli is doing this. Three weeks after President Biden won the election last year, Ciattarelli spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally dedicated to overturning Biden’s win.

Before his video statement in which he refused to concede, his campaign sent out a fundraising appeal saying “this race is far from over” and asking for contributions “to make our path to victory as smooth as possible.”

And it’s not just Ciattarelli.

The New Jersey Republican Party tweeted that the Republican National Committee had deployed 20 lawyers to New Jersey as part of “our election integrity team (the largest such team ever assembled).”

A website funded in part by Koch money, SaveJersey.com, reported that the RNC’s “election integrity” group sent more than 200,000 texts and emails to voters — another way of trawling for fraud allegations. The website cited “widespread technical difficulties,” the “possibility of legal challenges” and a “potentially protracted battle.”

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie told Guy Benson of the right-wing TownHall outlet that “there’s a very legitimate chance Jack could win this” and that Christie is concerned about “data discrepancies.”

And Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post published an article claiming there were “vote-counting debacles plaguing several counties.”

Ciattarelli said he welcomed “any and all credible reports” of fraud. He said his delay would assure that the “outcome … will be legal and fair,” but his actions will convince his supporters of the opposite. He told people not to believe “wild conspiracy theories,” but that’s exactly what he is encouraging. Social media was full of zany claims: Foreigners voting! Tallies manipulated! Ballots mysteriously found!

Republicans were planning to do the same in Virginia if Youngkin lost. Trump on Monday declared: “I am not a believer in the integrity of Virginia’s elections; lots of bad things went on, and are going on.” In the closing days of the campaign, Youngkin allies, surrogates and right-wing media personalities prepared Republican voters to suspect fraud if Youngkin were to lose, as David Corn noted in Mother Jones. Former chief Trump strategist Steve Bannon, on a Virginia-based talk show on Oct. 29, said: “They’re Democrats. They’re going to try to steal it. They can’t win elections they don’t steal, right?” Youngkin had raised doubts about voting machines.

In exit polls, 3 in 10 Youngkin voters said they lacked confidence the election would be fair.

Youngkin didn’t have to claim fraud, because he won. But Ciattarelli lost, so he’s now asking for any “perceived or real irregularity” he can use to raise doubts about the outcome. There were technical problems with some of New Jersey’s new voting devices Tuesday night — just as there are problems in virtually every election. And though there are still mail and provisional ballots to be counted, even the New York Post reported “the ballots that have yet to be counted are expected to sway toward Murphy, given the districts they’ll be coming from and typical trends for mail-ins.”

But then it isn’t about Ciattarelli winning the governorship. It’s about delegitimizing the victor — and discrediting another free and fair election.

Original article appeared in The Washington Post.

MATTHEW SELOVER EXONERATED

DEPOSITION: MATTHEW SELOVER 11-11-2020

FINAL ORDER: MATTHEW SELOVER

Florida Board of Education Chair Tom Grady Federally Indicted

October 20, 2021

Board of Education chair Tom Grady federally indicted, faces up to one year in prison for water dispute…

Grady is disputing the charges.

Florida Board of Education Chair Tom Grady faces a federal misdemeanor charge for excavating property in waters around the Florida Keys, a violation punishable by up to one year in prison.

Grady, a financial attorney and a former Republican state lawmaker, insurance executive and state financial regulator, has been accused in a federal indictment of “obstruction of navigable water” in April 2017 off the coast of Islamorada.

He did so “without the authorization of the Secretary of the Army acting through the (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers),” a violation of federal law, an indictment from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida said.

Grady surrendered on the charges Oct. 8 and was arraigned the same day, according to Key West Citizen, which first reported the news. He received a $50,000 bond on the conditions that he report to probation officials as directed, notify probation officials within 24 hours if he plans to travel within the continental U.S. and does not try to get a passport or travel documents.

Grady, who is being represented by lawyers David Oscar Markus and Margot Moss of Miami-based criminal defense firm Markus/Moss, pleaded not guilty.

Trial is set for Nov. 22 in Key West.

Tom Grady

As Education Board chair, Grady has led the sanctioning of several school districts over local mask mandates, stripping pay from several members and prompting President Joe Biden’s administration to step in and provide compensation.

In August, as a showdown heated up with school districts that imposed mask rules without parental opt-out options, Grady suggested removing local school board members who defy a recently passed law called the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which gives parents final say on their children’s education and health care.

“Rules matter,” he said.

Grady also helped to impose changes to Florida civics education standards banning “fiction or theory masquerading as facts,” such as critical race theory, a hot-button issue for DeSantis and the GOP.

Grady remains chair of the state board, a position U.S. Sen. Rick Scott appointed him to in 2015 while Governor.

Markus and Moss told the Key West Citizen Grady had obtained local, state and federal approvals for an excavation project he undertook April 4-21, 2017, near his former Islamorada property at 87429 Old Highway. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection was among the approving agencies, they said.

The waterway in question is managed by the Army Corps. As such, it falls under federal jurisdiction.

“Unfortunately, the federal government’s position is that any existing federal permits were insufficient,” they wrote in a statement. “This case should never have been brought, let alone four years after the fact. Mr. Grady has always acted in good faith and believes he had the appropriate approvals.”

This isn’t the first time Grady’s actions came under scrutiny. In late 2011, while serving as head of Florida’s Office of Financial Regulation, Grady closed half the state’s regional offices charged with investigating the mortgage business, the Tampa Bay Times reported. The move, part of a $3.5 million budget slash, eliminated 81 positions in the agency at a time when Florida led the nation in mortgage fraud.

He did not apply a similar cost-cutting approach to his own spending while running OFR, which included more than $6,000 for in-state travel, taking car services instead of taxis and seeking reimbursement for more than $10,000 in office furniture, including a $2,482 leather couch and a $563 floor lamp.

When he resigned from the role after just six months to become interim president of Citizens Property Insurance, the Times said, he took the furniture with him.

By Jesse Scheckner who has covered South Florida with a focus on Miami-Dade County since 2012.

Read the original article here.

Prevent Office-Holders from being Disbarred?

Rules should not prevent office holders such as Ashley Moody from being disbarred | Editorial

By SUN SENTINEL EDITORIAL BOARD

SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL |

OCT 05, 2021 AT 12:13 PM

Attorney General Ashley Moody recognizes a reporter for a question at a news conference, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019 in Tallahassee. A new rule proposed by the Florida Bar would prevent Moody from being disbarred while she holds office. (AP)

In George Orwell’s classic novel “Animal Farm,” a parody on communism, a dictatorial pig named Napoleon corrupts the revolutionary slogan “all animals are equal” with the caveat “but some animals are more equal than others.”

That can happen in a democracy also.

Establishing a policy with no basis in the statutes or the Constitution, the Justice Department has held since 1973 that a U.S. president can’t be charged with a federal crime while he remains in office. No citizen is ever supposed to be above the law, yet somehow there is always one who is, at least temporarily.

(That seems to be stretching into a rather long time for Donald J. Trump.)

In Florida, some animals are definitely more equal than others.

There’s a loophole for constitutional officers who must be members of the Bar. That’s all judges, state attorneys, public defenders and the attorney general.

Like every other lawyer, they’re supposedly bound by an elaborate code of ethics that, among other things, prohibits them from burdening the courts with frivolous litigation or false claims. A disobedient lawyer can be suspended or disbarred.

To the public’s puzzlement and alarm, the Bar is now proposing a rule to clarify publicly that those who hold certain public office can’t be disciplined for code violations before they leave office. A serious flaw in the proposal precludes even beginning an investigation before that point, which could be many years after witnesses’ memories have faded.

Although no official rule is in place, these elected officials have enjoyed similar protections since the 1970s, when the Florida Supreme Court secretly halted an ethics probe against a state attorney over alleged misconduct in a civil matter he had handled before his election. The court held that because the constitution requires state attorneys to be members of the Bar, the potential penalty of disbarment would effectively remove one from office, usurping the governor’s suspension power.

The court kept that opinion out of the public record but the St. Petersburg Times sniffed it out. There was a similar unpublished outcome in 1980, according to the Bar, which is governed by the Florida Supreme Court. The court undoubtedly will approve the new rule. But it shouldn’t. Unethical lawyers should be expelled from any offices that require them to be lawyers, and the court should find a way to make that happen.

Why now?

The Bar isn’t saying, but the timing seems more than coincidental. The Bar’s Board of Governors took action to develop the new rule not long after the Bar had fended off a petition calling on it to investigate Attorney General Ashley Moody over her attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s election. The petition was posted online by Pam Keith, a lawyer licensed in the District of Columbia who lives in Florida, and she said that it picked up 1,700 signatures.

Moody was one of the Republican attorneys general who joined Ken Paxton of Texas in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out Biden’s victories in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. They claimed, without evidence, that there had been fraud, echoing Trump’s unfounded claims that had already been rejected by judges in those states. The court tossed the suit on a 7-2 vote, holding that Moody and the others had no standing to file it.

Retired Florida Supreme Court Justice Charles T. Wells sent Moody a letter saying her role in that “patently meritless case” was a discredit to the state and “a grave mark against your service as attorney general.”

He was 110% right. The attorney general is supposed to represent the people of Florida rather than act as a partisan hack for the benefit of Donald Trump or any other politician. The Paxton lawsuit, for which Paxton’s own state’s Bar is attempting to discipline him, fed the Big Lie that Trump continues to spout like an overflowing sewer. It is subversive in every sense of that word; it is a relentless effort to undermine the public’s faith that our elections are honest and fair. Moody contributed her name and her office to that subversion. She should be ashamed.

In that tawdry partisanship, she followed the sorry example of her predecessor, Pam Bondi, who blew off consumer complaints about the fraudulent Trump University right after soliciting and getting a campaign contribution from him. Bondi is now running Trump’s super PAC, polishing her claim to a Supreme Court seat if Trump returns to the White House.

The attorney general’s office is by far the most important of the Cabinet positions. In a sense, it is more critical than even the governor’s. For the “people’s lawyer,” as Florida used to call its attorney general, to be on the same wrong side of history as Trump hacks Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell is as much of a betrayal as Bondi’s and Moody’s earlier attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act through which more than 2.1 million Floridians receive health insurance.

As for Moody and Florida’s version of “Animal Farm,” the pass that the Bar is giving her is put to shame by what has been happening to Daniel Uhlfelder, a lawyer who doesn’t have the transitory immunity of being a constitutional officer.

A three-judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal, which is becoming almost indistinguishable from the governor’s office, called on the Bar to discipline and possibly disbar Uhlfelder for appealing a trial judge’s decision to dismiss his suit that attempted to force the governor to close North Florida beaches during the coronavirus pandemic. The trial judge had encouraged Uhlfelder to appeal. The court also ordered a state attorney to pursue sanctions against Uhlfelder for remarks he made criticizing the court.

Those cases have yet to play out. He could cut them short by winning election as a judge.

Or as attorney general.

Now there’s a thought.

Briefing Materials Presented in March 2021 to the Commission on Ethics in Behalf of Commissioner Barry

File 2773 — March 5, 2021

Voting Conflict of Interest; Misuse of Public Position; Abuse of Public Position
County Commission Member Voting on Public Officer Retirement Compensation

Download the PDF file to read.

ethics-mar-2021Download

Barry’s Ethics Commission Request

CRUISE LINE FILES LAWSUIT

Plaintiffs Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.; NCL (Bahamas) Ltd., d/b/a Norwegian
Cruise Line; Seven Seas Cruises S. De R.L., d/b/a Regent Seven Seas Cruises; and Oceania Cruises S. De R.L., d/b/a Oceania Cruises (together, “NCLH”) are filing this complaint and respectfully seeking appropriate declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of themselves and their relevant operators and agents against the Defendant Surgeon General, the responsible state official.

NCLH is doing so as a last resort after the State of Florida has indicated that it is otherwise preventing NCLH from safely and soundly resuming passenger cruise operations from Miami, Florida, starting August 15, 2021, in the way that this cruise line has determined will be best for all concerned—with the benefit of documentation confirming that all of its passengers and crew have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

DOWNLOAD & READ THE ENTIRE COMPLAINT BELOW:

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June 10 1942 —The Lidice Massacre

Posted on June 3, 2021 by Jenny Ashcraft

The village of Lidice was located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (present-day Czech Republic) during WWII. In reprisal for the assassination of a Nazi official in the Spring of 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered the assassination of all men in Lidice, aged 16 and older. The women and children were taken to concentration camps or gassed, and the village of Lidice was destroyed.

The Age – June 15, 1942

In 1939, the area around Lidice came under Nazi control. Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German official, was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the area. Heydrich was one of the principal architects of the Holocaust. He was known for brutality, murder, and efforts to destroy any Nazi resistance. On May 27, 1942, Heydrich was being driven to his headquarters at Prague Castle when his car was attacked by two Czechoslovak resistance operatives. The operatives were trained in Great Britain and operated under the approval of the Czechoslovak government. Heydrich was wounded and died less than a week later.

The Shreveport Journal – June 6, 1942

German officials declared a state of emergency and established a curfew in Prague. They began a massive search for the attackers, promising that anyone involved, and their families, would be executed. Days later, when they failed to locate any conspirators, they decided to destroy the village of Lidice in reprisal. They chose Lidice because its residents were suspected of harboring members of the local resistance.

On June 10, 1942, German police and SS officials surrounded Lidice to block off any escape route. They rounded up 192 boys and men from Lidice and marched them to a farm on the edge of town, where they lined them up and shot them in groups.

Class picture taken before the massacre.

Nazi officials separated the women and children and loaded the women onto rails cars for transport to concentration camps. Most went to Ravensbrück, where 60 died. A few of the children considered racially pure were handed over to SS families. The rest were likely killed in late June when Nazi official Adolph Eichman ordered the children to be gassed to death at Chelmno extermination camp.

In all, some 340 people from Lidice died and the town was destroyed. Nazi officials shelled the village, set it on fire, and plowed over the remains. To further erase the memory of Lidice, the name of the village was removed from all local municipal records. The massacre in Lidice angered people from around the world and garnered Allied support for the war. In the years following the war, those found complicit in the Lidice massacre were prosecuted. If you would like to learn more about the tragic story of Lidice, search Newspapers.com™ today.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE.

Truth About ‘Dirty Money’ — It’s Everywhere

She Exposed the Truth About ‘Dirty Money’: It’s Everywhere

June 10, 2021

By Mark Schoofs

Last Thursday, President Biden vowed to make global financial systems more transparent so that individuals and organizations engaged in corruption would find it harder to “shield their activities.”

On the same day, a federal judge imposed prison time on Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a former Treasury Department official who, by providing secret government documents to an investigative reporter, did more to bring transparency to the global financial system than almost anyone else in recent memory.

If Mr. Biden really wants to fight corruption and bring transparency to global finance, he should pardon Ms. Edwards. He should also demand that the Justice Department, when deciding whether to prosecute someone who provides journalists with sensitive information, take into account the public importance of what the disclosures reveal.

In Ms. Edwards’s case, the public importance of the information she provided was enormous. Starting in 2017, she passed thousands of government documents to the investigative reporter Jason Leopold at BuzzFeed News (where I was the investigations editor at the time). She said repeatedly that her goal was to expose wrongdoing after she had tried, without success, to draw attention to it through the proper channels.

Her goal was realized. The documents she provided ended up serving as the basis for hundreds of important news articles, including ones that exposed suspicious financial transactions made by companies linked to President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort as well as those involving Russian embassy employees. Most significantly, the documents Ms. Edwards provided lay at the heart of a collaborative investigation last year called the FinCEN Files, involving BuzzFeed News, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 108 other news organizations that revealed financial corruption on a global scale.

Taken together, the articles exposed a dark truth: “Dirty money” — terrorist financing, drug cartel funds, fortunes embezzled from developing nations, the profits from organized crime — flows so freely through the world’s most powerful financial institutions that it has become inextricable from the so-called legitimate economy.

The prosecution in Ms. Edwards’s case, however, didn’t see her disclosures as a valuable public service. It told the court that she had committed a crime of “colossal” magnitude. After she pleaded guilty to conspiring to unlawfully disclose financial documents, the judge sentenced her to six months in prison — the maximum under sentencing guidelines — and three years of supervised release.

This is hardly the first time that the government has treated journalistic sources aggressively. Ms. Edwards’s sentence comes on the heels of revelations that during the Trump administration the Justice Department, in an effort to uncover confidential sources, secretly obtained phone records from reporters at The Washington Post, CNN and The New York Times.

Such actions reveal a fundamental contradiction in how the United States — home of the First Amendment and laws to protect whistle-blowers — treats the sources that make a robust press possible. The government has generally avoided prosecuting journalists. But it seems to feel no compunction about going after the people who give journalists their information.

In Ms. Edwards’s case, the prosecution derided her “grandiose platitudes about protecting the American people” and dismissed her description of herself as a whistle-blower. Yes, it conceded, she had started out by alerting the proper authorities about narrowly defined issues. But then, the prosecution argued, she went rogue, “indiscriminately” sending Mr. Leopold thousands of documents that “weren’t targeted to expose some particular wrongdoing.”

On that last point, the prosecution was right: The documents didn’t reveal just one particular wrongdoing. They offered a sweeping view of global financial corruption.

Perhaps the most important documents Ms. Edwards turned over were more than 2,000 “suspicious activity reports,” which banks file to the U.S. government to warn of possible financial misconduct. Never before had journalists been able to see so many of the financial transactions that the world’s banks themselves thought were suspicious but too often carried out anyway.

A Treasury Department agency is supposed to sift through suspicious activity reports and alert law enforcement agencies if the transactions seem likely to be crimes. But sources told BuzzFeed News that officials didn’t even read most of the reports and rarely took action on them. Worse, filing the reports all but immunizes banks and their executives from criminal prosecution. Far from being a tool to root out financial misconduct, the reports effectively give banks a free pass to keep moving money and collecting fees.

When the government does crack down on banks, it frequently relies on deferred prosecution agreements — sweetheart deals that include fines but no immediate high-level arrests. But the suspicious activity reports that we reviewed at BuzzFeed News showed that even when some banks were subject to such agreements, they still carried out dubious transactions.

When the series of articles based on the information provided by Ms. Edwards was published, it spurred meaningful action by authorities around the world. British lawmakers began a formal inquiry into Britain’s oversight of banks. Members of the European Parliament pushed for a stronger and unified strategy to fight money laundering. And in Washington, senior lawmakers credited the FinCEN Files investigation with helping to push through the most important anti-money-laundering legislation in a generation. In his memorandum last week, Mr. Biden specifically said that putting that law into effect would be a cornerstone of his administration’s anti-corruption effort.

But Ms. Edwards, whose disclosures helped bring about these reforms, has been ordered to report to prison in August. This is unjust and unfair. Our criminal justice system must recognize that much of what we know about financial corruption, government surveillance and corporate crime comes not from reporters working in isolation but from journalists working with people who risk their liberty and livelihood to ensure that the truth comes out.

Of course the government can and should censure some disclosures, such as those that are meant to harm the United States or aid its adversaries. But that is not the case here. In public filings, prosecutors claimed that Ms. Edwards’s revelations “put at risk countless investigations,” but they offered no proof of actual harm. Even if investigations were compromised, the reforms enacted in the wake of her disclosures might well prevent more misconduct.

The prosecution also argued that because suspicious activity reports are not hard evidence of a crime, their release violated the privacy of innocent people. But BuzzFeed News and other organizations involved in reporting on Ms. Edwards’s revelations went to great lengths to determine the factual basis of any suspicions to ensure that only verified information was published. The value of Ms. Edwards’s disclosures, like those of so many people prosecuted for divulging documents of urgent public interest, far outweighs any harm they did. The Biden administration should acknowledge — in word and in deed — that individuals who reveal information of vital public importance are not criminals. They are patriots who deserve our gratitude.

Mark Schoofs (@SchoofsFeed) is the editor in chief of BuzzFeed News and a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE.

The Secret IRS Files: How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Taxes

The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax

by Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel
June 8, 5 a.m. EDT

ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing                 

REPUBLISH Series:The Secret IRS FilesInside the Tax Records of the .001%

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. The Secret IRS Files is an ongoing reporting project. Sign up to be notified when the next installment publishes.

In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.

The Secret IRS Files

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ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.

Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.

Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300.

The confidential tax records obtained by ProPublica show that the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.You May Be Paying a Higher Tax Rate Than a Billionaire

America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.

To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.

We’re going to call this their true tax rate.

The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.

No one among the 25 wealthiest avoided as much tax as Buffett, the grandfatherly centibillionaire. That’s perhaps surprising, given his public stance as an advocate of higher taxes for the rich. According to Forbes, his riches rose $24.3 billion between 2014 and 2018. Over those years, the data shows, Buffett reported paying $23.7 million in taxes.

That works out to a true tax rate of 0.1%, or less than 10 cents for every $100 he added to his wealth.

In the coming months, ProPublica will use the IRS data we have obtained to explore in detail how the ultrawealthy avoid taxes, exploit loopholes and escape scrutiny from federal auditors.

Experts have long understood the broad outlines of how little the wealthy are taxed in the United States, and many lay people have long suspected the same thing.

But few specifics about individuals ever emerge in public. Tax information is among the most zealously guarded secrets in the federal government. ProPublica has decided to reveal individual tax information of some of the wealthiest Americans because it is only by seeing specifics that the public can understand the realities of the country’s tax system.

Consider Bezos’ 2007, one of the years he paid zero in federal income taxes. Amazon’s stock more than doubled. Bezos’ fortune leapt $3.8 billion, according to Forbes, whose wealth estimates are widely cited. How did a person enjoying that sort of wealth explosion end up paying no income tax?

In that year, Bezos, who filed his taxes jointly with his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, reported a paltry (for him) $46 million in income, largely from interest and dividend payments on outside investments. He was able to offset every penny he earned with losses from side investments and various deductions, like interest expenses on debts and the vague catchall category of “other expenses.”

In 2011, a year in which his wealth held roughly steady at $18 billion, Bezos filed a tax return reporting he lost money — his income that year was more than offset by investment losses. What’s more, because, according to the tax law, he made so little, he even claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.

His tax avoidance is even more striking if you examine 2006 to 2018, a period for which ProPublica has complete data. Bezos’ wealth increased by $127 billion, according to Forbes, but he reported a total of $6.5 billion in income. The $1.4 billion he paid in personal federal taxes is a massive number — yet it amounts to a 1.1% true tax rate on the rise in his fortune.

Compare Bezos’ Financial Picture to a Typical American Household

While Bezos’ wealth has grown astronomically over the last decade and he’s paid a minuscule fraction of it in taxes, a typical American household paid more in taxes than it accumulated in wealth.

Jeff Bezoshttps://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/6b1BM/13/

Typical American Householdhttps://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/atQaY/13/Read our full methodology. Credit:Agnes Chang/ProPublica

The revelations provided by the IRS data come at a crucial moment. Wealth inequality has become one of the defining issues of our age. The president and Congress are considering the most ambitious tax increases in decades on those with high incomes. But the American tax conversation has been dominated by debate over incremental changes, such as whether the top tax rate should be 39.6% rather than 37%.

ProPublica’s data shows that while some wealthy Americans, such as hedge fund managers, would pay more taxes under the current Biden administration proposals, the vast majority of the top 25 would see little change.

The tax data was provided to ProPublica after we published a series of articles scrutinizing the IRS. The articles exposed how years of budget cuts have hobbled the agency’s ability to enforce the law and how the largest corporations and the rich have benefited from the IRS’ weakness. They also showed how people in poor regions are now more likely to be audited than those in affluent areas.Why We Are Publishing the Tax Secrets of the .001%The Secret IRS Files Short Form: A Quick Guide to What We UncoveredHow We Calculated the True Tax Rates of the Wealthiest

ProPublica is not disclosing how it obtained the data, which was given to us in raw form, with no conditions or conclusions. ProPublica reporters spent months processing and analyzing the material to transform it into a usable database.

We then verified the information by comparing elements of it with dozens of already public tax details (in court documents, politicians’ financial disclosures and news stories) as well as by vetting it with individuals whose tax information is contained in the trove. Every person whose tax information is described in this story was asked to comment. Those who responded, including Buffett, Bloomberg and Icahn, all said they had paid the taxes they owed.

A spokesman for Soros said in a statement: “Between 2016 and 2018 George Soros lost money on his investments, therefore he did not owe federal income taxes in those years. Mr. Soros has long supported higher taxes for wealthy Americans.” Personal and corporate representatives of Bezos declined to receive detailed questions about the matter. ProPublica attempted to reach Scott through her divorce attorney, a personal representative and family members; she did not respond. Musk responded to an initial query with a lone punctuation mark: “?” After we sent detailed questions to him, he did not reply.

One of the billionaires mentioned in this article objected, arguing that publishing personal tax information is a violation of privacy. We have concluded that the public interest in knowing this information at this pivotal moment outweighs that legitimate concern.

The consequences of allowing the most prosperous to game the tax system have been profound. Federal budgets, apart from military spending, have been constrained for decades. Roads and bridges have crumbled, social services have withered and the solvency of Social Security and Medicare is perpetually in question.

There is an even more fundamental issue than which programs get funded or not: Taxes are a kind of collective sacrifice. No one loves giving their hard-earned money to the government. But the system works only as long as it’s perceived to be fair.

Our analysis of tax data for the 25 richest Americans quantifies just how unfair the system has become.

By the end of 2018, the 25 were worth $1.1 trillion.

For comparison, it would take 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners put together to equal that same amount of wealth.

The personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018: $1.9 billion.

The bill for the wage earners: $143 billion.

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The idea of a regular tax on income, much less on wealth, does not appear in the country’s founding documents. In fact, Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits “direct” taxes on citizens under most circumstances. This meant that for decades, the U.S. government mainly funded itself through “indirect” taxes: tariffs and levies on consumer goods like tobacco and alcohol.

With the costs of the Civil War looming, Congress imposed a national income tax in 1861. The wealthy helped force its repeal soon after the war ended. (Their pique could only have been exacerbated by the fact that the law required public disclosure. The annual income of the moguls of the day — $1.3 million for William Astor; $576,000 for Cornelius Vanderbilt — was listed in the pages of The New York Times in 1865.)

By the late 19th and early 20th century, wealth inequality was acute and the political climate was changing. The federal government began expanding, creating agencies to protect food, workers and more. It needed funding, but tariffs were pinching regular Americans more than the rich. The Supreme Court had rejected an 1894 law that would have created an income tax. So Congress moved to amend the Constitution. The 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913 and gave the government power “to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.”

In the early years, the personal income tax worked as Congress intended, falling squarely on the richest. In 1918, only 15% of American families owed any tax. The top 1% paid 80% of the revenue raised, according to historian W. Elliot Brownlee.

But a question remained: What would count as income and what wouldn’t? In 1916, a woman named Myrtle Macomber received a dividend for her Standard Oil of California shares. She owed taxes, thanks to the new law. The dividend had not come in cash, however. It came in the form of an additional share for every two shares she already held. She paid the taxes and then brought a court challenge: Yes, she’d gotten a bit richer, but she hadn’t received any money. Therefore, she argued, she’d received no “income.”

Four years later, the Supreme Court agreed. In Eisner v. Macomber, the high court ruled that income derived only from proceeds. A person needed to sell an asset — stock, bond or building — and reap some money before it could be taxed.

Since then, the concept that income comes only from proceeds — when gains are “realized” — has been the bedrock of the U.S. tax system. Wages are taxed. Cash dividends are taxed. Gains from selling assets are taxed. But if a taxpayer hasn’t sold anything, there is no income and therefore no tax.

Contemporary critics of Macomber were plentiful and prescient. Cordell Hull, the congressman known as the “father” of the income tax, assailed the decision, according to scholar Marjorie Kornhauser. Hull predicted that tax avoidance would become common. The ruling opened a gaping loophole, Hull warned, allowing industrialists to build a company and borrow against the stock to pay living expenses. Anyone could “live upon the value” of their company stock “without selling it, and of course, without ever paying” tax, he said.

Hull’s prediction would reach full flower only decades later, spurred by a series of epochal economic, legal and cultural changes that began to gather momentum in the 1970s. Antitrust enforcers increasingly accepted mergers and stopped trying to break up huge corporations. For their part, companies came to obsess over the value of their stock to the exclusion of nearly everything else. That helped give rise in the last 40 years to a series of corporate monoliths — beginning with Microsoft and Oracle in the 1980s and 1990s and continuing to Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple today — that often have concentrated ownership, high profit margins and rich share prices. The winner-take-all economy has created modern fortunes that by some measures eclipse those of John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie.

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In the here and now, the ultrawealthy use an array of techniques that aren’t available to those of lesser means to get around the tax system.

Certainly, there are illegal tax evaders among them, but it turns out billionaires don’t have to evade taxes exotically and illicitly — they can avoid them routinely and legally.

Most Americans have to work to live. When they do, they get paid — and they get taxed. The federal government considers almost every dollar workers earn to be “income,” and employers take taxes directly out of their paychecks.

The Bezoses of the world have no need to be paid a salary. Bezos’ Amazon wages have long been set at the middle-class level of around $80,000 a year.

For years, there’s been something of a competition among elite founder-CEOs to go even lower. Steve Jobs took $1 in salary when he returned to Apple in the 1990s. Facebook’s Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Google’s Larry Page have all done the same.

Yet this is not the self-effacing gesture it appears to be: Wages are taxed at a high rate. The top 25 wealthiest Americans reported $158 million in wages in 2018, according to the IRS data. That’s a mere 1.1% of what they listed on their tax forms as their total reported income. The rest mostly came from dividends and the sale of stock, bonds or other investments, which are taxed at lower rates than wages.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE (AND MORE) HERE

New Mask Guidance: What Was CDC Thinking?

The agency has lurched from over-caution to abandoning all caution

by Lawrence O. Gostin, JD May 14, 2021

This opinion piece will be sharply critical of the new CDC guidance on masking for individuals who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, so I want to begin by saying the agency has been, and remains, the envy of the world. There’s good reason why China, Korea, Europe, and Africa all named their public health agencies after the CDC. When CDC speaks, scientists fall behind in lockstep, and the public trusts and follows its advice.

But not this time. Its mask guidance has been greeted by scientists and the public alike as confusing, inconsistent, and frankly, unsupported by scientific evidence. I’ll explain why.

The CDC has lurched from over-caution to abandoning all caution. Just over 2 weeks ago, the CDC recommended universal masking in indoor spaces. The nation’s top health officials pleaded with the public to wear masks or face dire consequences. Now CDC states that the fully vaccinated “can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic” without wearing a mask or distancing. In other words, CDC gave a bright green light to return to normal — indoor dining, shopping, and resumption of schools, colleges, and workplaces. It seems a bit premature to declare victory.

You might think there were new, important scientific findings justifying such a dramatic shift — there weren’t. Vaccines are almost flawless at preventing serious disease and death, and they do significantly reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission. But we knew that weeks ago. The U.S. has vaccinated more people in the last several weeks, but we’ve been on track to do that for quite some time. And remember, CDC guidance doesn’t just apply to affluent zip codes with high vaccination rates. It applies equally to areas that have very low coverage. And in such a mobile society as ours, there will be lots of travel to all areas of the country.

My supposition is that CDC prematurely recommended “back to normal” because it wanted to give hesitant people an incentive to get vaccinated. But there is no behavioral evidence that giving more freedom to vaccinated people will encourage more to be vaccinated. Why? First of all, most Americans won’t even perceive CDC’s new advice as “vaccine” guidance, but rather as “mask” guidance. We see that in all the headlines, and many states are now dismantling, or considering removing, their mask mandates. But there’s more: Individuals opposed to vaccines are just as likely (maybe even more likely) to just take off their masks as they are to get a jab.

There is a galling disconnect in federal policy on COVID-19. CDC is telling states, the private sector, and the public that it is vital to differentiate between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. But at the same time, the Biden administration has made that all but impossible. The administration stubbornly refuses to offer any way to demonstrate proof of vaccination. Other places like the European Union and Israel have successfully used digital health passes (so-called “vaccine passports”) as a way to ensure a safe return to normal. Will anyone have confidence being in a restaurant, mall, church, or gym if they’re not sure that all of the maskless people crowding around are fully vaccinated?

So, what will be the outcome of the CDC’s new guidance? It’s highly likely that both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals will throw away their masks. This poses a significant risk of a surge of cases and hospitalizations. Over 60% of Americans are still not fully vaccinated. Many immunocompromised people are vulnerable even if fully vaccinated because they can’t mount a full — or often any — immune response. Children under 12 years old aren’t eligible for vaccination. All these groups remain at risk. If even one unvaccinated person is in an indoor crowded space without a mask, it poses a risk of spread.

And just look at the CDC website. It actually contains joyful images of unmasked people happily living their lives. But the images are deeply troubling. One is a group of unmasked adults and children playing. But wait, the children can’t get a vaccine. Another is a gym class, but these have caused major super-spreader events. Yet another photo shows a person shopping without a mask, but what about the supermarket worker who may not be vaccinated or has undergone cancer therapy?

This is why a public health agency like the CDC has to take a population approach. The impact of their new guidance on the public is predictable. But what I foresee isn’t a surge in hesitant people now eager to get the jab. I see unvaccinated people feeling they have a license to throw away the masks they have always disliked. What behavioral scientists understand is that culture and peers have major influences on how we behave. If everyone around you is wearing a mask and distancing, it is likely you will. But if many, or even most people, are maskless, you will remove your mask as well. People won’t be making “nice” distinctions based on the CDC guidelines.

And speaking of confusing distinctions. Under the new guidance, vaccinated people must wear masks in an airport or bus station, and in a homeless shelter or prison. But they can remove their masks in a crowded restaurant or mall. And they can go to church and sing, or join a gym class with heavy breathing and shouting. How does the epidemiological evidence support all those distinctions?

I’ve worked with the CDC for decades, from the AIDS pandemic through to SARS, influenza, Ebola, and Zika. I know the staff are world class scientists and they work tirelessly for the public good. They are our modern-day heroes. It is therefore agonizing to see the erosion of public trust, first with the truly unconscionable undermining of the agency by the Trump administration. And now, feeling tugged in opposite directions by Congress and the public. We need an independent CDC with a steady hand. CDC must be guided by the science, but it also has to become a talented health communicator that gains public trust and shapes public behavior. The latter has been sadly absent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lawrence O. Gostin, JD, serves as faculty director and founding chair of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, where he holds the school’s highest academic rank, “University Professor.” Gostin is also a professor of medicine at Georgetown, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University, and directs the World Health Organization Center on National and Global Health Law.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Pot and Suicide: A Link?

Op-Ed: Are Marijuana Use and Suicide Linked?

— A review of the data show there’s cause for alarm

by Libby Stuyt, MD April 23, 2021

Correlation does not mean causation, but that is why we do research — to follow correlations in an effort to determine causation. Data linking marijuana use to people with suicidal ideation, attempts, and completed suicides are steadily increasing.

Many states, including Colorado, have made post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) an approved condition for medical marijuana. As a psychiatrist having treated many people with PTSD, I know that marijuana is not the answer, similarly to why benzodiazepines or alcohol are not the answer to treat PTSD.

Sure, these addictive substances work in terms of numbing the person so that they do not experience the symptoms. However, to keep the symptoms at bay, the person must use every day, sometimes all day long. This sets them up for developing cannabis or other substance use disorder and the possibility of psychotic symptoms or worsening psychotic symptoms from their PTSD.

A Review of the Data

A study of 3,233 veterans in a cross-sectional, multi-site study by the VA found that cannabis use disorder (CUD) was significantly associated with both current suicidal ideation and lifetime suicide attempts compared to veterans with no lifetime history of CUD. The significance persisted even after adjusting for sex, PTSD, depression, alcohol use disorder, non-cannabis drug use disorder, history of childhood sexual abuse, and combat exposure.

An observational study of 2,276 veterans treated in VA PTSD treatment programs around the country found that those who never used marijuana had significantly lower symptom severity 4 months after treatment, those who stopped using marijuana had even lower levels of PTSD symptoms, and those who started using marijuana had the highest levels of violent behavior and PTSD symptoms 4 months after treatment.

The 2020 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Report indicated that Colorado’s rate for veteran suicides is significantly higher than the national rate. There were 217 veteran suicide deaths in Colorado in 2019 — an all-time high and a 25% increase over 2018.

The general population in Colorado has also seen a gradual increase in suicides over the years:

• 795 people in 2004
• 919 people in 2009
• 1,021 people in 2012
• 1,063 people in 2014
• 1,242 people in 2018

This trend seems to mirror the increased commercialization of marijuana in Colorado. Toxicology available for suicide deaths demonstrate that in 2004, marijuana was present in 5.5% of the cases. In 2009 it was 7.1%, 11.8% in 2012, and 14.9% in 2014. By 2015, marijuana was present in 19.1% of cases, second only to alcohol, and this trend has continued each year. By 2018, marijuana was present in 22.8% of cases.

Another concerning trend is that not all suicides have toxicology reported. In 2004, 92% of suicide cases had toxicology reports, while by 2018, that number fell to 70.6%.

Even more alarming is the correlation with marijuana and suicide found among young people, especially adolescents. A large systematic review and meta-analysis of 11 studies and 23,317 adolescents found that suicidal ideation and suicide attempts were significantly higher in adolescent cannabis users than in non-users, with an OR of 3.5 (95% CI 1.53-7.84) for suicide attempts in those using cannabis.

The 2019 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a cross-sectional, school-based national survey of 13,677 high-school age students found that 50% of those who used marijuana (ever or currently) reported feeling sad or hopeless. It also found that using marijuana (ever) could increase the risk of mental health challenges or suicidal behavior, and trying marijuana before the age of 13 could increase the risk of attempting suicide.

In Colorado, marijuana is the most common drug found in toxicology of teens who die by suicide — even greater than alcohol. In 2018, there were 69 teens ages 15 to 19 who died by suicide. Marijuana was present in 36.7% of the cases, but only 49 of the 69 had toxicology information available. There has been a significant increase in the number of teen suicides in Colorado in the last 5 years, up to 80 in 2019, along with a significant increase in the number with marijuana found in their system. The fact that marijuana is the number one drug found when toxicology is reported correlates with the increased THC potency and availability, and use of concentrates and increase in vaping of marijuana by teens in Colorado.

A recent analysis of 204,780 youths (ages 10 to 24) with the diagnosis of mood disorders, based on Ohio Medicaid claims data linked with death certificate data from 2010 to 2017, found that 10.3% received the diagnosis of CUD. This rate is significantly higher than that reported in the general population. In addition, those with CUD were significantly more likely to engage in non-fatal self-harm and to die. Unintentional overdoses, suicide, and homicide were the three most frequent causes of death.

A much larger recent study looked at commercial and Medicare Advantage claims for 75,395,344 individuals throughout the country from 2003 to 2017. It found recreational cannabis laws permitting dispensaries and lacking dose-related restrictions were associated with significant increases in assaults among people younger than 21 years and increases in self-harm for men ages 21 to 39 years, compared with states with no medical or recreational cannabis laws.

Causation or Correlation?

While marijuana does not cause overdose deaths, this association with violence needs to be investigated thoroughly. There is increasing research demonstrating that regular use of marijuana with THC greater than 10% can result in development of psychotic symptoms. Cannabis-induced psychosis can become permanent, even after cessation of use. A study demonstrated that the highest conversion rate (47.4%) to diagnoses of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia occurs with cannabis-induced psychosis, compared to that from amphetamines, hallucinogens, opioids, or alcohol. Younger age is associated with higher risk of conversion.

There have been multiple studies documenting the association of cannabis use by persons with psychotic disorders and an increasing risk of violence. This can include violence toward one’s self as well as others. A study of 1,136 patients recently discharged from acute psychiatric facilities examined the relationship between continued use of cannabis and violence and found that continuing to use cannabis is a moderate predictor of subsequent violent behavior — even more so than alcohol or cocaine. A recent large, longitudinal study of 2,994 people with a psychotic disorder found 11.4% were using cannabis. Cannabis users were found to report a lower quality of life, being less satisfied with their family relations and financial situation, and to show more aggressive and disruptive behavior and self-harm than non-users.

What’s Driving the Correlation?

There are multiple theories as to why there is such a strong correlation between marijuana use and violence, including suicide. Dellazizzo et al. found a moderate association between cannabis use and physical violence in youths and emerging adults, with a potential dose-response association. They offer an excellent overview of potential mechanisms explaining violent behavior, which could help explain suicidal behavior. These include the fact that cannabis use can cause or exacerbate psychotic symptoms such as delusions; alter a person’s sense of reality by causing perceptual distortions; cause a person to feel anxious, panicky, and paranoid about their surroundings and others; impair executive functioning, creating problems with impulse control and decision-making; and cannabis withdrawal can cause people to feel irritable, restless, and anxious. It is logical that any of these could contribute to suicidal thoughts in someone whose mood is dysregulated by cannabis.

We need more people to be aware of this strong association between cannabis use and suicide, and to conduct more research to determine its cause.

Libby Stuyt, MD, is an addiction psychiatrist in Colorado.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Medical Misinformation on Display

Op-Ed: Medical Misinfo on Display During Derek Chauvin Trial

— As the trial for George Floyd’s death wraps up, questions about certain testimonies linger

Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin (left) & George Floyd (right)

by W. Robert Graham, MD April 19, 2021

Former police officer Derek Chauvin is accused of killing George Floyd by restraining him in a way that led to his death. The prosecution says that Chauvin’s restraint caused Floyd to be unable to breathe, which resulted in a lack of oxygen and death. The defense argues that Floyd’s underlying health problems — primarily coronary artery disease, hypertension, and drug abuse — led to his death.

Both sides seem to have overlooked an important medical aspect of this case. They are missing the importance of Floyd’s initial cardiac rhythm, determined by the paramedics who arrived on the scene. It was pulseless electrical activity (PEA).

What Caused Floyd’s PEA?

PEA is characterized by a heart that has normal or near-normal QRS complexes on an electrocardiogram, but has no effective contraction, no effective heartbeat.

There are specific causes of PEA. One is a massive pericardial effusion surrounding the heart that squeezes the heart so tightly that it can’t move or contract. But that fluid does not damage the electrical system of the heart, so the electrical system will continue to generate QRS complexes. Another cause is severe blood loss. If very little or no blood gets into the heart then it will not contract, but the electrical system may continue to work, causing PEA. And another cause is severely low oxygen levels. Severely low oxygen levels can cause the heart to not contract in an effective manner, but the electrical system may still function and produce QRS complexes, hence PEA.

A cardiologist who testified in the Chauvin trial said that Floyd was in a PEA rhythm. The emergency department physician who cared for Floyd said the same thing. The forensic pathologist who testified for the defense said the same thing. Hence, there seemed to be agreement that Floyd was in PEA.

The dispute arose over the mechanism of that PEA. The prosecution said it was caused by Chauvin restraining Floyd in such a way that he could not breathe. This led to falling oxygen levels, which led to PEA. The doctor for the defense said that Floyd had 90% blockage of his right coronary artery and that a branch from the right coronary artery feeds the sinus node. He said the stress of the situation along with Floyd’s other health problems and the blocked right coronary led to lack of blood flow to the sinus node, which triggered a fatal arrhythmia. It was this fatal arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop and his oxygen levels to fall.

There are several problems with the scenario put forward by the defense. If the primary problem was an electrical one, which began with damage to the sinus node, then why would Floyd go into PEA? If his electrical system was so badly damaged that it caused a cardiac rhythm, such as ventricular fibrillation (Vfib), that caused his heart to stop, then how could it have recovered to the point that it would make normal or near normal QRS complexes, which are seen in PEA? With PEA, the electrical system of the heart is not as severely damaged. Rather, the heart is not beating for reasons other than a primary electrical problem. It would be very odd for a patient to go from Vfib to PEA, unless there were medical interventions such as CPR, medications, and/or defibrillation via shocks to the heart. Floyd had none of these, not even CPR, before the paramedics arrived. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Floyd went from a Vfib arrest that was not addressed for at least 10 minutes to a PEA rhythm — such a situation may even be unheard of. I was surprised that this was not brought up during the trial. One explanation might be because the PEA diagnosis was not definitive, yet several authorities claimed that was the case.

Something else that was not brought up was that the sinus node is not supplied by the right coronary artery 100% of the time. About 40% of the time it comes off the circumflex artery. Also, when it does come off the right coronary, it comes off at a proximal point. If it came off above the blockage, that would be relevant. But, surprisingly, this was not discussed or investigated.

Overlooking Medical Fact Missteps

I’m also surprised at some things that were brought up. The doctor for the defense said that adrenaline release probably contributed to Floyd’s death. He said that adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) is a vasoconstrictor, implying that it would cause coronary vasoconstriction and thereby put Floyd’s heart in further danger of a fatal arrhythmia. However, adrenaline is not a vasoconstrictor of the coronary arteries. This has been shown in many studies, such as one in the American Heart Association journal Circulation Research. A quote from this study: “epinephrine resulted in a 37% increase in coronary blood flow.” Hence, the doctor for the defense did not know this basic medical information. Or, he did not tell the truth as part of a strategy. No one pointed out this mistake.

This doctor made a similar mistake about carbon monoxide. He saw a picture of Floyd lying on the ground near an exhaust pipe. This led him to speculate that Floyd may have inhaled fumes, resulting in high levels of carbon monoxide in his blood. However, he did not know whether the car was running. Also, the carboxyhemoglobin level in Floyd was measured — and determined not elevated. This measurement was discovered after this doctor had left, so when the prosecution tried to bring it up, the defense objected. The judge agreed with the defense and said that if the prosecution referred to this result there would be a mistrial. To approach the carboxyhemoglobin level with a threat of a mistrial speaks to fundamental problems with our legal system: it is more interested in protocol and its rules than the truth. Also, it lacks a scientific approach.

To approach this scientifically and medically would be to formulate a hypothesis such as: If George Floyd had a high level of carbon monoxide in his body, then this, in part, led to his death. A measured carboxyhemoglobin measurement would support or refute that hypothesis. There was such a measurement. Therefore, a scientific — and reasonable — approach would be to simply look at the level. But instead, the court said the jury could not see that level. It was off limits. This kind of stuff is an inherent part of our legal system. We would be better off to take a more scientific approach.

Focus on the Truth

The testimony of the doctor for the defense demonstrates problems with both our legal system and the medical profession. He presented medical information that was false, yet he was never challenged in the trial. His testimony also demonstrates problems with the profession of medicine. As a professor of pathology and residency director during his career, the doctor was very involved in the teaching of residents. What did he teach them? Did he teach them how to twist the truth for the sake of gain? Or, did he just teach them incorrect information, such as what he said about adrenaline, because he didn’t know any better?

An important lesson from the Chauvin trial is this: we need to reform both our legal and medical systems. We need to place more emphasis on truth and knowledge, and less emphasis on twisting the truth.

W. Robert Graham, MD, completed medical school and residency at UTHSC-Dallas (Parkland Hospital) and served as chief resident. Graham received an NIH fellowship at the Salk Institute for oncogene research in 1985. He was a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine from 1998 to 2016. In retirement, he enjoys writing and ranching.

Last Updated April 19, 2021

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Can We Put Fox News on Trial With Trump?

By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
The New York Times
February 11, 2021

Even if we can’t impeach media companies, we can do more to hold them accountable for sowing sedition.

As America debates whether to hold former President Donald Trump accountable for inciting insurrection, what about his co-conspirator Fox News?

Fox helped sell Trump’s lie about a stolen election, propelling true believers like Ashli Babbitt — a fan of Fox personalities like Tucker Carlson — to storm the Capitol. Babbitt died in the attack, while this week Fox Corporation merrily reported a 17 percent jump in quarterly earnings.

“The Fox News Channel finished the quarter with its highest average ratings,” Lachlan Murdoch, Fox’s C.E.O., boasted in a call with financial analysts.

We can’t impeach Fox or put Carlson or Sean Hannity on trial in the Senate, but there are steps we can take — imperfect, inadequate ones, resting on slippery slopes — to create accountability not only for Trump but also for fellow travelers at Fox, OANN, Newsmax and so on.

That can mean pressure on advertisers to avoid underwriting extremists (of any political bent), but the Fox News business model depends not so much on advertising as on cable subscription fees. So a second step is to call on cable companies to drop Fox News from basic cable TV packages.

The issue here is that if you’re like many Americans, you: A) don’t watch Fox News, and A) still subsidize Fox News.

If you buy a basic cable package, you’re forced to pay about $20 a year for Fox News. You may deplore bigots and promoters of insurrection, but you help pay their salaries.

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, says that Fox News relies on unusually generous cable fees — more than twice what CNN receives and five times what MSNBC commands. So Media Matters started a campaign, at unfoxmycablebox.com, for people to ask cable carriers to drop Fox News from their packages.

“Given all the damage that Fox News has caused and the threat that it remains, they absolutely should unbundle Fox News,” Carusone told me. “It’s not a news channel. It’s a propaganda operation mixed with political smut. If people want that, they should be forced to pay for it the way that they pay for Cinemax.”

Frankly, my argument leaves even me a bit queasy. I deeply believe in the “marketplace of ideas,” and I do think that there is a danger of a liberal monoculture in some universities, nonprofits and news organizations. I’ve railed against “liberal intolerance,” and I don’t think the “cancel culture” that conservatives decry is entirely a mirage.

Defamation lawsuits by election technology companies may have led Fox to cancel “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on Fox Business Network and may have reined in Newsmax and OANN a bit. But before we start applauding too enthusiastically, let’s remember that fear of such defamation lawsuits may also have allowed Harvey Weinstein and other #MeToo predators to escape accountability for years.

Conservatives are likewise right that The New York Times, CNN and other mainstream news organizations make mistakes all the time, and surely right-wingers are unhappy that their cable fees subsidize Rachel Maddow.

But there’s no symmetry. Fox News and Fox Business didn’t make an honest mistake about election outcomes but deliberately spun nonsense into ratings gold.

“During 2020, Fox News’s caldron of lies and extremism boiled over,” Carusone said. “They made us sicker and put up obstacles to the pandemic response by flooding the airwaves with over 13,150 instances of Covid misinformation. They fomented racial animus and promoted white supremacy as a response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. And, in the first two weeks after the election was called for Joe Biden, Fox News laid the groundwork for the attack on the Capitol by challenging the results on 774 individual instances with wild conspiracies and flat-out fabrications.”

In other words, the problem with Fox isn’t that it’s conservative but that it monetizes conspiracy theories and disinformation in ways that are sometimes lethal. Researchers have found, for example, that places where Fox News is randomly assigned a lower channel number (and thus gets more viewers) had riskier behavior during the pandemic, and that media markets where Hannity is particularly popular had higher Covid-19 death rates early in the pandemic.

Suppose Discovery Channel went haywire and encouraged viewers to drink arsenic to lose weight? Or Cartoon Network was bought by a tobacco company and encouraged children to try smoking? Or MSNBC pundits called on viewers to burn down police stations?

We would agree that advertisers should not support their programs and that cable channels should not force Americans to subsidize them. In other words, we accept that there must be red lines even if we don’t always agree where to draw them — and I believe that Fox crossed those lines in 2020.

I hope Fox returns from the Land of Make Believe to its conservative roots, for America would benefit from a reliable right-wing TV news source. As Tucker Carlson said at CPAC in 2009: “The New York Times is a liberal paper, … but it’s also a paper that actually cares about accuracy. … Conservatives need to mimic that in their own news organizations.”

He was right … then.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Rep. Matt Gaetz Staffer Cheered On Capitol Rioters

Rep. Matt Gaetz Staffer Cheered On Capitol Rioters Via Parler as They Overran Police

From: GIZMODO
Author: Dell Cameron
Date: Feb 01, 2021

As police struggled futilely to fend off a wave of rioters outside the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, Joel Valdez, an aide to Congressman Matt Gaetz, made his way to the rooftop of his boss’s office building across the street on Independence Ave. Surveying the mob as it surrounded the complex, he captured a five-second video with his phone and posted it to Parler—the now-defunct social network where some supporters of President Trump are reported to have openly planned an insurrection for weeks.

“From the top of the Capitol office buildings, WE HEAR YOU LOUD AND CLEAR!” Valdez posted, adding the hashtag “#StopTheSteal”.

Metadata from Valdez’s video, which Pro Publica published last week but did not connect to Gaetz’s press assistant, reveals it was taken at roughly 1:14 p.m. ET that day. The rioters had by that time already breached at least three police barricades and forced officers back onto the Capitol steps where they were violently engaged, according to a timeline of events reported by the New York Times.

Gaetz’s chief of staff, Jillian Lane Wyant, disputed that Valdez’s video depicted him cheering on the mob. Valdez could not have known, she said, that the rioters would break inside the Capitol building.

“A staff member in our office posted on his personal Parlor [sic] account about the President’s rally before the Capitol had been breached or anyone was harmed,” Wyant said in an email. “He also immediately amplified President Trump’s call on social media for those in attendance to go home. He regrets that the post has been misinterpreted as support for violence by some. It was not.”

Valdez’s Parler account can still be viewed via the Wayback Machine and does not appear to show that he amplified Trump’s call for the rioters to disperse. His Twitter account is currently protected and cannot be reviewed. His post cheering on the Capitol mob was seen by Parler users more 58,500 times as of January 10. It’s unclear how many users saw it the day of the attack.

Valdez did not respond directly to a request for comment. According to his LinkedIn page, he began working for Gaetz in January 2020 and previously worked for the Trump re-election campaign as a “War Room Analyst.” He was also once a member of the right-wing group Turning Point USA.

As Gizmodo previously reported, some of Parler’s users were among the mob of rioters who made their way deep inside the Capitol building the day of the deadly siege. While the social network was taken offline by Amazon days after, nearly all of its posts and videos were downloaded by the hacker @donk_enby prior to the takedown.

Amazon said it terminated its hosting contract with Parler because the company was unable to identify and remove posts by users that called for the “rape, torture, and assassination” of elected officials, police officers, and others, according to a court filing last month.

Last month, Gizmodo was able to map out the locations of nearly 70,000 Parler videos, including 618 taken in and around the Capitol the day of the attack. Others contain GPS coordinates linked to police stations and military bases. Unlike most of its competitors, the social network failed to automatically remove location data from its users’ video posts.

Original Article Here

IT’S OVER

Today marks the end of the reign of the most corrupt president in history. His assignment from Putin was to undermined our faith in our elections and sew racial discord. He succeeded at both. In time a lot will come out about how Putin was able to control him, but for now the U.S. Senate can end Trump and all the hatred he fostered by convicting him. One day he will be judged the traitor to the nation that he was. Romney was right early on when he said Trump was a con man. But he was far worse because he conned decent and trusting people for the benefit of a foreign power that sought to destroy our country.

CNN • MSNBC • NPR • FOX

The other night CNN reporter Jim Acosta reported that President Trump was “hiding in the Whitehouse.” Acosta is purportedly a news reporter not an editorialist.

No matter how many times Trump is quoted as saying the election is rigged, reports for CNN and MSNBC always add that the charge is not true. The statement that it is not true however is an opinion, not a fact. True, Trump has never offered any proof of the charge the election was rigged or that dead people voted, but that does not establish as fact those things never happened.

You cannot watch PBS or listen to NPR without immediately seeing or hearing the opinions of those reporting clearly slanted left.

Trump was right about the media reporting slant; it is pervasive. If all you ever watched was Fox News you would likely believe the election was a fraud. That’s because all their editorial/news slants to support Trump’s accusations. When Leslie Stahl of CBS News started the interview she had with Trump shown on 60 Minutes, she asked him if he “was ready for some tough questions.”  This to the President of the United States was as disrespectful as anyone could imagine questioning the President. It was also a meaningless statement and only done to make him mad – which it did. It is almost impossible to find even handed reporting and on that point Trump has established that fact true without doubt.

The Republican Whisperer

I’ve heard it from otherwise rational intelligent people.

The whisper is Joe Biden is not quite 100% mentally okay. They say they worry about his health and the possibility that someday Kamala Harris will be president. They were of course quite happy to have the reworked “My Fair Lady” treatment of trailer trash mom Sarah Palin on stand-by for John McCain, knowing at the time his health was truly poor. Kamala Harris, a United State Senator and former attorney general of California is too scary for them. I guess being a former prosecutor makes her not quite law and order enough or way too law and order, either one a serious problem.

So, the whisper continues in spite of one inspiring speech after another by Mr. Biden. The latest speech was 25 minutes long. His speeches are coherent, internally consistent, and conveying a logical sequence of plans and goals. Mr. Biden will be good for the country though the whispers will continue however baseless the claims of his compromised mental health. The whispers about Mr. Biden are ironic given the reign of the current unstable genius president who daily evidences unquestionable signs of mental illness.

Vote on Trump’s Removal and Be Done with It

We must wash our hands of the Trump presidency — the sooner the better.

Impeachment proceedings should not be hanging over the first weeks of the Biden Administration — and the enormous task of cleaning up the disasters Trump leaves in his wake.

Let’s hold a vote and be done with it.

Here’s my op-ed about the necessity of holding a Senate impeachment trial as soon as possible:

https://bloom.bg/2XC4tx4

It’s time to move forward, together.

Mike Bloomberg

Republican Attorneys General Dark Money Group Organized Protest

REPUBLICAN ATTORNEYS GENERAL DARK MONEY GROUP ORGANIZED PROTEST PRECEDING CAPITOL MOB ATTACK

JANUARY 7, 2021

JAMIE COREY
jamie@documented.net
@JamieMCorey

This report has been updated on January 11, 2021 to include a new statement issued to reporters by RAGA and new information about RAGA appearing on MarchtoSaveAmerica.com.

The Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), a 501(c)(4) arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), helped organize the protest preceding the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol that took place on January 6, 2021. 

As a 501(c)(4), RLDF is not required to reveal its donors. RLDF has received at least $175,000 from the Koch-backed Freedom Partners. Other RLDF donors include Judicial Crisis Network, the Rule of Law Project, and the Edison Electric Institute.

RAGA is a 527 political organization that helps elect Republican attorneys general and can accept unlimited contributions from wealthy individuals and corporations. As previously reported by Documented, RAGA received significant funding from numerous corporations in 2020, including Koch Industries ($375k), Comcast Corporation ($200k), Walmart ($140k), Home Depot ($125k), Amazon ($100k), TikTok ($75k), 1-800 Contacts ($51k), Chevron ($50k), The National Rifle Association ($50k), Monsanto ($50k), Facebook ($50k), Fox Corporation ($50k), Uber ($50k), Coca Cola ($50k), Exxon ($50k), and Google ($25k). 

RLDF appeared in a list of groups “Participating in the March to Save America” on the March to Save America website alongside entities including Stop the Steal, Turning Point Action, Tea Party Patriots and others. (MarchtoSaveAmerica.com has been taken down but an archived version of the website can be accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.)

RLDF also sent out a robocall detailing where and when the protest would take place. 

 “I’m calling for the Rule of Law Defense Fund with an important message,” the robocall stated. “The march to save America is tomorrow in Washington D.C. at the Ellipse in President’s Park between E St. and Constitution Avenue on the south side of the White House, with doors opening at 7:00 a.m. At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on congress to stop the steal. We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections. For more information, visit MarchtoSaveAmerica.com. This call is paid for and authorized by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, 202-796-5838.” 

RLDF’s role in organizing the protests, which turned into a violent mob attack inside the Capitol, is ironic given its 2020 election campaign warning of “lawless liberal mobs” burning down buildings and committing violence. The campaign, dubbed “Lawless Liberals”, came in the aftermath of the largely peaceful protests following the murder of George Floyd by police and the shooting of Jacob Blake. 

“The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA)’s five-month Lawless Liberals video campaign repeatedly warned Americans about the dangerous reality of lawless liberals run amok in cities across the country,” RAGA said in a statement. 

Republican attorneys general have been heavily involved in efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. Shortly after Joe Biden was declared the winner, Republican attorneys general filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court that sought to reject some mailed ballots in the state of Pennsylvania. Republican attorney general Ken Paxton–who has been embroiled in bribery, abuse of office and other criminal allegations–filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court regarding four battleground states and alleging unconstitutional changes to their voting laws before the 2020 election. Prior to the protests, Paxton appeared on Fox News and said he hoped to be at both rallies. 

RAGA and Republican attorneys general issued statements denouncing the violence. “The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) and the Republican attorneys general (AGs) stand together to condemn the violence, destruction, and rampant lawlessness occurring at the U.S. Capitol today. These actions are an affront to the rule of law, our Constitution, and our American political discourse.”

After Documented published the robocall, RAGA issued a statement to reporters: “Republican Attorneys General Association and Rule of Law Defense Fund had no involvement in the planning, sponsoring, or the organization of Wednesday’s event.”

The Democratic Attorneys General Association revealed in a tweet RAGA originally appeared on the March to Save America website under “Coalition Partners”. The website later took out RAGA and put in the Rule of Law Defense Fund under “Participating in the March to Save America”.

Original Article Here — https://documented.net/2021/01/republican-attorneys-general-dark-money-group-organized-protest-preceding-capitol-mob-attack/

Invoke the 25th Amendment and Remove Trump

OPINION BY THE MIAMI HERALD EDITORIAL BOARD
JANUARY 06, 2021 08:44 PM, UPDATED JANUARY 07, 2021 10:10 PM

Trump is Deranged, Dangerous and ‘Incapacitated.’ Invoke the 25th Amendment and Remove him from Office

It is time to invoke the 25th Amendment. It is time for President Trump — as he told the violent, radical thugs who support him no matter what; who crawled over the U.S. Capitol like spiders; who breached House and Senate chambers; who brazenly confronted overwhelmed, ill-prepared law-enforcement officers; who forced lawmakers to take shelter — to “go home.”

But here’s what the president said first: “I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side.”

Then this: “This was a fraudulent election. But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”

His comments were no mere dog whistle to his marauding posse. This was a full-throated war cry.

With his un-American words and his anti-democratic acts, Trump led this insurrection every bit as much as if he were storming the Capitol himself.

HE WILL BLOW UP DEMOCRACY

This indecent man was unfit to serve when he was elected president, and he is unfit to serve for even the final 13 days of his presidency. We have seen what he is capable of: the disgusting call to Georgia’s secretary of state trolling for votes he did not get; pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to throw the whole election in the garbage.

There can be no doubt that the president is prepared to have his minions scorch the Earth and blow up democracy itself in order to stay in power. He is that determined, that desperate and that indifferent to anything other than staying in the Oval Office.

America cannot wait, with fear and bated breath, to see what abomination comes during the next 13 days

What was to be a historic day in Congress — a vote of a joint session of Congress to affirm the election of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris — turned into political insurrection and the first storming of the Capitol since the War of 1812.

To his credit, Pence, Trump’s good soldier for four years, had earlier refused to reject the election results as Trump ordered, something the vice president cannot do anyway. Now Pence must take another, bolder step. He, along with the Cabinet must invoke the 25th Amendment.

We say this with not one shred of reluctance. We say this knowing it is not a simple process.

DANGEROUS MAN

To preserve our democracy for even the next two weeks, we are calling for Trump to be removed from office. He has lost all sense of reality — and is reveling in it. He put Americans in danger. Four people died in the chaos, three from medical emergencies. One woman among the mob inside the Capitol was shot and later died. We think this will only heighten the president’s taste for blood.

The 25th amendment empowers the vice president and Cabinet to declare a president “incapacitated”: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

This president is incapacitated.

This president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office — and since losing the November election has been disinclined to do so.

This president is a deranged and dangerous man.

He must be removed.

Original Article:
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article248326160.html

Trump’s Mistake

Trump thought that conservative was equated to corruptible. Understandable because Trump was never a conservative; he was an opportunist who could be whatever it took to get what he wanted.

In the end, the integrity of those he appointed caused his legal defeat because the judges he appointed were not corruptible. Nor are the many Republican elected officials who refuse to be his criminal accomplices. His latest Georgia election stealing stunt may finally be too much for even the most ardent congressional fans to overlook.

What follows is President Donald Trump’s hour long audio call on January 2, 2021 to Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger.

Also on the call: White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and several lawyers.

One name is redacted due to unsubstantiated claims made by President Trump.

—————-

Meadows: Ok. Alright. Mr. President, everyone is on the line. This is Mark Meadows, the chief of staff. Just so we all are aware. On the line is secretary of state, and two other individuals. Jordan and Mr. Germany with him. You also have the attorneys that represent the president, Kurt and Alex and Cleta Mitchell — who is not the attorney of record but has been involved — myself and then the president. So Mr. President, I’ll turn it over to you.

Trump: OK, thank you very much. Hello Brad and Ryan and everybody. We appreciate the time and the call. So we’ve spent a lot of time on this and if we could just go over some of the numbers, I think it’s pretty clear that we won. We won very substantially in Georgia. You even see it by rally size, frankly. We’d be getting 25-30,000 people a rally and the competition would get less than 100 people. And it never made sense.

But we have a number of things. We have at least 2 or 3 — anywhere from 250-300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls. Much of that had to do with Fulton County, which hasn’t been checked. We think that if you check the signatures — a real check of the signatures going back in Fulton County you’ll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged. And we are quite sure that’s going to happen.

Another tremendous number. We’re going to have an accurate number over the next two days with certified accountants. But an accurate number but its in the 50s of thousands— and that’s people that went to vote and they were told they can’t vote because they’ve already been voted for. And it’s a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number’s large. We’ll have it for you. But it’s much more than the number of 11,779 that’s — The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right? That’s something I think everyone — at least that’s’ a number that everyone agrees on.

But that’s the difference in the votes. But we’ve had hundreds of thousands of ballots that we’re able to actually — we’ll get you a pretty accurate number. You don’t need much of a number because the number that in theory I lost by, the margin would be 11,779. But you also have a substantial numbers of people, thousands and thousands who went to the voting place on November 3, were told they couldn’t vote, were told they couldn’t vote because a ballot had been put on their name. And you know that’s very, very, very, very sad.

We had, I believe it’s about 4,502 voters who voted but who weren’t on the voter registration list, so it’s 4,502 who voted but they weren’t on the voter registration roll which they had to be. You had 18,325 vacant address voters. The address was vacant and they’re not allowed to be counted. That’s 18,325.

Smaller number — you had 904 who only voted where they had just a P.O. — a post office box number — and they had a post office box number and that’s not allowed. We had at least 18,000 — that’s on tape we had them counted very painstakingly — 18,000 voters having to do with [name]. She’s a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and hustler [name]. That was the tape that’s been shown all over the world that makes everybody look bad, you me and everybody else.

Where they got — number one they said very clearly and it’s been reported they said there was a major water main break. Everybody fled the area. And then they came back, [name] and her daughter and a few people. There were no Republican poll watchers. Actually, there were no Democrat poll watchers, I guess they were them. But there were no Democrats, either and there was no law enforcement. Late in the morning, they went early in the morning they went to the table with the black robe, the black shield and they pulled out the votes. Those votes were put there a number of hours before the table was put there. I think it was, Brad you would know, it was probably eight hours or seven hours before and then it was stuffed with votes.

They weren’t in an official voter box, but they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases but they weren’t in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it but slow motion and it was magnified many times over and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.

You had out-of-state voters. They voted in Georgia but they were from out of state, of 4,925. You had absentee ballots sent to vacant, they were absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses. They had nothing on them about addresses, that’s 2,326.

And you had drop boxes, which is very bad. You had drop boxes that were picked up. We have photographs and we have affidavits from many people.

I don’t know if you saw the hearings, but you have drop boxes where the box was picked up but not delivered for three days. So all sorts of things could have happened to that box including, you know, putting in the votes that you wanted. So there were many infractions and the bottom line is, many, many times the 11,779 margin that they said we lost by — we had vast I mean the state is in turmoil over this.

And I know you would like to get to the bottom of it, although I saw you on television today and you said that you found nothing wrong. I mean, you know, And I didn’t lose the state, Brad. People have been saying that it was the highest vote ever. There was no way. A lot of the political people said that there’s no way they beat me. And they beat me. They beat me in the … As you know, every single state … we won every state. we one every statehouse in the country. We held the Senate which is shocking to people, although we’ll see what happens tomorrow or in a few days.

And we won the House, but we won every single statehouse and we won Congress, which was supposed to lose 15 seats, and they gained, I think 16 or 17 or something. I think there’s a now difference of five. There was supposed to be a difference substantially more. But politicians in every state, but politicians in Georgia have given affidavits or are going to that, that there was no way that they beat me in the election that the people came out, in fact, they were expecting to lose and then they ended up winning by a lot because of the coattails. And they said there’s no way that they’ve done many polls prior to the election. There was no way that they won.

Ballots were dropped in massive numbers. And we’re trying to get to those numbers and we will have them.

They’ll take a period of time. Certified. But but they’re massive numbers. And far greater than the 11,779.

The other thing, dead people. So dead people voted and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.

The bottom line is when you add it all up and then you start adding, you know, 300,000 fake ballots. Then the other thing they said is in Fulton County and other areas. And this may or may not … because this just came up this morning that they are burning their ballots, that they are shredding, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They’re changing the equipment on the Dominion machines and, you know, that’s not legal.

And they supposedly shredded I think they said 300 pounds of, 3,000 pounds of ballots. And that just came to us as a report today. And it is a very sad situation.

But Brad, if you took the minimum numbers where many, many times above the 11,779 and many of those numbers are certified, or they will be certified but they are certified. And those are numbers that are there that exist. And that beat the margin of loss, they beat it, I mean by a lot and people should be happy to have an accurate count instead of an election where there’s turmoil.

I mean there’s turmoil in Georgia and other places. You’re not the only one I mean we have other states that I believe will be flipping to us very shortly. And this is something that — You know, as an example, I think it in Detroit, I think there’s a section a good section of your state actually, which we’re not sure so we’re not going to report it yet. But in Detroit, we had, I think it was, 139% of the people voted. That’s not too good.

In Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people voting. And uh that doesn’t play too well, and the legislature there is, which is Republican, is extremely activist and angry. I mean, there were other things also that were almost as bad as that. But, uh, they had as an example, in Michigan, a tremendous number of dead people that voted. I think it was I think, Mark, it was 18,000. Some unbelievably high number, much higher than yours, you were in the 4-5,000 category.

And that was checked out laboriously by going through, by going through the obituary columns in the newspapers.

So I guess with all of it being said, Brad, the bottom line and provisional ballots, again, you know, you’ll have to tell me about the provisional ballots, but we have a lot of people that were complaining that they weren’t able to vote because they were already voted for. These are great people.

And, you know, they were shellshocked. I don’t know if you call that provisional ballots. In some states we had a lot of provisional ballot situations where people were given a provisional ballot because when they walked in on November 3 and they were already voted for.

So that’s it. I mean, we have many many times the number of votes necessary to win the state. And we won the state and we won it very substantially and easily and we’re getting, we have, much of this is a very, you know they’re certified, far more certified than we need. But we’re getting additional numbers certified, too. And we’re getting pictures of dropboxes being delivered and delivered late. Delivered three days later, in some cases, plus we have many affidavits to that effect.

Meadows: So Mr. President, if I might be able to jump in and I’ll give Brad a chance. Mr. Secretary, obviously there is, there are allegations where we believe that not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted and that’s at odds with the representation from the secretary of state’s office.

What I’m hopeful for is there some way that we can we can find some kind of agreement to look at this a little bit more fully. You know the president mentioned Fulton County.

But in some of these areas where there seems to be a difference of where the facts seem to lead, and so Mr. Secretary, I was hopeful that, you know, in the spirit of cooperation and compromise is there something that we can at least have a discussion to look at some of these allegations to find a path forward that’s less litigious?

Raffensperger: Well, I listened to what the President has just said. President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. Um, we don’t agree that you have won. And we don’t — I didn’t agree about the 200,000 number that you’d mentioned. And I can go through that point by point.

What we have done is we gave our state Senate about one and a half hours of our time going through the election issue by issue and then on the state House, the government affairs committee, we gave them about two and a half hours of our time, going back point by point on all the issues of contention. And then just a few days ago we met with our U.S. congressmen, Republican congressmen, and we gave them about two hours of our time talking about this past election. Going back, primarily what you’ve talked about here focused in on primarily, I believe, is the absentee ballot process. I don’t believe that you’re really questioning the Dominion machines. Because we did a hand retally, a 100% retally of all the ballots and compared them to what the machines said and came up with virtually the same result. Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the same result. So I guess we can probably take that off the table.

I don’t think there’s an issue about that. What you–

Trump: Well, Brad. Not that there’s not an issue, because we have a big issue with Dominion in other states and perhaps in yours. But we haven’t felt we needed to go there. And just to, you know, maybe put a little different spin on what Mark is saying, Mark Meadows, uh, yeah we’d like to go further, but we don’t really need to. We have all the votes we need.

You know, we won the state. If you took, these are the most minimal numbers, the numbers that I gave you, those are numbers that are certified, your absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses, your out of state voters 4,925. You know when you add them up, it’s many more times, it’s many times the 11,779 number. So we could go through, we have not gone through your Dominion. So we can’t give them blessing. I mean, in other states, we think we found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines but we’ll have to see.

But we only lost the state by that number, 11,000 votes, and 779. So with that being said, with just what we have, with just what we have we’re giving you minimal, minimal numbers. We’re doing the most conservative numbers possible, we’re many times, many, many times above the margin. And so we don’t really have to, Mark, I don’t think we have to go through …

Meadows: Right

Trump: Because, what’s the difference between winning the election by two votes and winning it by half a million votes. I think I probably did win it by half a million. You know, one of the things that happened Brad, is we have other people coming in now from Alabama and from South Carolina and from other states, and they’re saying it’s impossible for you to have lost Georgia. We won. You know in Alabama, we set a record, got the highest vote ever. In Georgia, we set a record with a massive amount of votes. And they say it’s not possible to have lost Georgia.

And I could tell you by our rallies. I could tell you by the rally I’m having on Monday night, the place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It’s not possible. When I heard it was close I said there’s no way. But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night. You know that, Brad. And that’s what we are working on very, very stringently. But regardless of those votes, with all of it being said, we lost by essentially 11,000 votes and we have many more votes already calculated and certified, too.

And so I just don’t know, you know, Mark, I don’t know what’s the purpose. I won’t give Dominion a pass because we found too many bad things. But we don’t need Dominion or anything else. We have won this election in Georgia based on all of this. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, Brad. You know I mean, having the correct — the people of Georgia are angry. And these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night. Along with others that we’re going to have by that time which are much more substantial even. And the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated. Because the 2,236 in absentee ballots. I mean, they’re all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms law firms, etc. and even if you cut ’em in half, cut ’em in half and cut ’em in half, again, it’s more votes than we need.

Raffensperger: Well Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong. We talked to the congressmen and they were surprised.

But they — I guess there was a person Mr. Braynard who came to these meetings and presented data and he said that there was dead people, I believe it was upward of 5,000. The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong. There were two.

Trump: Well Cleta, how do you respond to that? Maybe you tell me?

Mitchell: Well, I would say Mr. Secretary, one of the things that we have requested and what we said was, if you look, if you read our petition, it said that we took the names and birth years and we had certain information available to us. We have asked from your office for records that only you have and so we said there is a universe of people who have the same name and same birth year and died.

But we don’t have the records that you have. And one of the things that we have been suggesting formally and informally for weeks now is for you to make available to us the records that would be necessary —

Trump: But Cleta, even before you do that, and not even including that, that’s why hardly even included that number, although in one state we have a tremendous amount of dead people. So I don’t know — I’m sure we do in Georgia, too. I’m sure we do in Georgia too.

But, um, we’re so far ahead. We’re so far ahead of these numbers, even the phony ballots of [name], known scammer. You know the Internet? You know what was trending on the Internet? “Where’s [name]?” Because they thought she’d be in jail. “Where’s [name]?” It’s crazy, it’s crazy. That was. The minimum number is 18,000 for [name], but they think it’s probably about 56,000, but the minimum number is 18,000 on the [name] night where she ran back in there when everybody was gone and stuffed, she stuffed the ballot boxes. Let’s face it, Brad, I mean. They did it in slow motion replay magnified, right? She stuffed the ballot boxes. They were stuffed like nobody had ever seen them stuffed before.

So there’s a term for it when it’s a machine instead of a ballot box, but she stuffed the machine. She stuffed the ballot — each ballot went three times they were showing: Here’s ballot No 1. Here it is second time, third time, next ballot.

I mean, look. Brad. We have a new tape that we’re going to release. It’s devastating. And by the way, that one event, that one event is much more than the 11,000 votes that we’re talking about. It’s uh, you know. That one event was a disaster. And it’s just, you know, but it was, it was something, it can’t be disputed. And again we have a version that you haven’t seen but it’s magnified. It’s magnified and you can see everything. For some reason they put it in three times, each ballot, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why three times. Why not five times, right? Go ahead.

Raffensperger: You’re talking about the State Farm video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context. The next day we brought in WSB-TV and we let them show, see the full run of tape and what you’ll see, the events that transpired are nowhere near what was projected by, you know —

Trump: But where were the poll watchers, Brad? There were no poll watchers there. There were no Democrats or Republicans. There was no security there.

It was late in the evening, late in the, early in the morning, and there was nobody else in the room. Where were the poll watchers and why did they say a water main broke, which they did and which was reported in the newspapers? They said they left. They ran out because of a water main break, and there was no water main. There was nothing. There was no break. There was no water main break. But we’re, if you take out everything, where were the Republican poll watchers, even where were the Democrat poll watchers, because there were none.

And then you say, well, they left their station, you know, if you look at the tape, and this was, this was reviewed by professional police and detectives and other people, when they left in a rush, everybody left in a rush because of the water main, but everybody left in a rush. These people left their station.

When they came back, they didn’t go to their station. They went to the apron, wrapped around the table, under which were thousands and thousands of ballots in a box that was not an official or a sealed box. And then they took those. They went back to a different station. So if they would have come back, they would have walked to their station and they would have continued to work. But they couldn’t do even that because that’s illegal, because they had no Republican poll watchers. And remember, her reputation is deva — she’s known all over the Internet, Brad. She’s known all over.

I’m telling you, “Where’s [name]” was one of the hot items …[name] They knew her. “Where’s [name]?” So Brad, there can be no justification for that. And I you know, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. But that was — and Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, they did not put that. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.

Trump: Where was everybody else at that late time in the morning? Where was everybody? Where were the Republicans? Where were the security guards? Where were the people that were there just a little while before when everyone ran out of the room. How come we had no security in the room? Why did they run to the bottom of the table? Why do they run there and just open the skirt and rip out the votes? I mean, Brad. And they were sitting there, I think for five hours or something like that, the votes. But they just all happened to run back and go, you know, Brad…

Raffensperger: Mr. President, we’ll send you the link from WSB.

Trump: I don’t care about the link. I don’t need it. Brad, I have a much better link —

Mitchell: I will tell you. I’ve seen the tape. The full tape. So has Alex. We’ve watched it. And what we saw and what we’ve confirmed in the timing is that. They made everybody leave, we have sworn affidavits saying that. And then they began to process ballots. And our estimate is that there were roughly 18,000 ballots. We don’t know that. If you know that …

Trump: It was 18,000 ballots but they used each one three times.

Mitchell: Well, I don’t know about that.

Trump: I do think because we had ours magnified out. Each one magnified out is 18 times three

Mitchell: I’ve watched the entire tape.

Trump: Nobody can make a case for that, Brad. Nobody. I mean, look, you’d have to be a child to think anything other than that. Just a child. I mean you have your never Trumper…

Mitchell: How many ballots, Mr. Secretary, are you saying were processed then?

Raffensperger: We had GBI … investigate that.

Germany: We had our — this is Ryan Germany. We had our law enforcement officers talk to everyone who was who was there after that event came to light. GBI was with them as well as FBI agents.

Trump: Well, there’s no way they could — then they’re incompetent. They’re either dishonest or incompetent, okay?

Mitchell: Well, what did they find?

Trump: There’s only two answers, dishonesty or incompetence. There’s just no way. Look. There’s no way. And on the other thing, I said too, there is no way. I mean, there’s no way that these things could have been you know, you have all these different people that voted but they don’t live in Georgia anymore. What was that number, Cleta? That was a pretty good number too.

Mitchell: The number who have registered out of state after they moved from Georgia. And so they had a date when they moved from Georgia, they registered to vote out of state. And then it’s like 4,500, I don’t have that number right in front of me.

Trump: And then they came back in and they voted.

Mitchell: And voted. Yeah.

Trump: I thought that was a large number, though. It was in the 20s. The point is…

Germany: We’ve been going through each of those as well and those numbers that we got that Ms. Mitchell was just saying, they’re not accurate. Every one we’ve been through, are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately. And in many cases

Trump: How many people do that? They moved out and then they said, “Ah, to hell with it I’ll move back.” You know, it doesn’t sound like a very normal … you mean, they moved out, and what, they missed it so much that they wanted to move back in? It’s crazy.

Germany: This is they moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.

Trump: Well, I don’t know, all I know is that it is certified. And they moved out of Georgia and they voted. It didn’t say they moved back in Cleta, did it?

Mitchell: No, but I mean, we’re looking at the voter registration. Again, if you have additional records, we’ve been asking for that, but you haven’t shared any of that with us. You just keep saying you investigated the allegations.

Trump: But, Cleta, a lot of it you don’t need to be shared. I mean, to be honest, they should share it. They should share it because you want to get to an honest election.

I won this election by hundreds of thousands of votes. There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes. I’m just going by small numbers when you add them up they’re many times the 11,000. But I won that state by hundreds of thousands of votes.

Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? Because that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery.

Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal, right?

Germany: This is Ryan Germany. No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.

Trump: But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?

Germany: No.

Trump: Are you sure, Ryan?

Germany: I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.

Trump: What about, what about the ballots. The shredding of the ballots. Have they been shredding ballots?

Germany: The only investigation that we have into that — they have not been shredding any ballots. There was an issue in Cobb County where they were doing normal office shredding, getting rid of old stuff, and we investigated that. But this is stuff from, you know, from you know past elections.

Trump: I don’t know. It doesn’t pass the smell test because we hear they’re shredding thousands and thousands of ballots and now what they’re saying, “Oh, we’re just cleaning up the office.” So I don’t think they’re cleaning.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything.

Trump: Oh this isn’t social media. This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not it’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less. Social media is Big Tech. Big Tech is on your side. I don’t even know why you have a side, because you should want to have an accurate election. And you’re a Republican.

Raffensperger: We believe that we do have an accurate election.

Trump: No, no you don’t. No, no you don’t. You don’t have. Not even close. You’re off by hundreds of thousands of votes. And just on the small numbers, you’re off on these numbers and these numbers can’t be just — well, why wont? — Okay. So you sent us into Cobb County for signature verification, right? You sent us into Cobb County, which we didn’t want to go into. And you said it would be open to the public. And we could have our – So we had our experts there they weren’t allowed into the room. But we didn’t want Cobb County. We wanted Fulton County. And you wouldn’t give it to us. Now, why aren’t we doing signature — and why can’t it be open to the public?

And why can’t we have professionals do it instead of rank amateurs who will never find anything and don’t want to find anything? They don’t want to find, you know, they don’t want to find anything. Someday you’ll tell me the reason why, because I don’t understand your reasoning, but someday you’ll tell me the reason why. But why don’t you want to find?

Germany: Mr. President, we chose Cobb County —

Trump: Why don’t you want to find … What?

Germany: Sorry, go ahead.

Trump: So why did you do Cobb County? We didn’t even request — we requested Fulton County, not Cobb County. Go ahead, please. Go ahead.

Germany: We chose Cobb County because that was the only county where there’s been any evidence submitted that the signature verification was not properly done.

Trump: No, but I told you. We’re not, we’re not saying that.

Mitchell: We did say that.

Trump: Fulton County. Look. Stacey, in my opinion, Stacey is as dishonest as they come. She has outplayed you … at everything. She got you to sign a totally unconstitutional agreement, which is a disastrous agreement. You can’t check signatures. I can’t imagine you’re allowed to do harvesting, I guess, in that agreement. That agreement is a disaster for this country. But she got you somehow to sign that thing and she has outsmarted you at every step.

And I hate to imagine what’s going to happen on Monday or Tuesday, but it’s very scary to people. You know, where the ballots flow in out of nowhere. It’s very scary to people. That consent decree is a disaster. It’s a disaster. A very good lawyer who examined it said they’ve never seen anything like it.

Raffensperger: Harvesting is still illegal in the state of Georgia. And that settlement agreement did not change that one iota.

Trump: It’s not a settlement agreement, it’s a consent decree. It even says consent decree on it, doesn’t it? It uses the term consent decree. It doesn’t say settlement agree. It’s a consent decree. It’s a disaster.

Raffensperger: It’s a settlement agreement.

Trump: What’s written on top of it?

Raffensperger: Ryan?

Germany: I don’t have it in front of me, but it was not entered by the court, it’s not a court order.

Trump: But Ryan, it’s called a consent decree, is that right? On the paper. Is that right?

Germany: I don’t. I don’t. I don’t believe so, but I don’t have it in front of me.

Trump: OK, whatever, it’s a disaster. It’s a disaster. Look. Here’s the problem. We can go through signature verification and we’ll find hundreds of thousands of signatures, if you let us do it. And the only way you can do it, as you know, is to go to the past. But you didn’t do that in Cobb County. You just looked at one page compared to another. The only way you can do a signature verification is go from the one that signed it on November whatever. Recently. And compare it to two years ago, four years ago, six years ago, you know, or even one. And you’ll find that you have many different signatures. But in Fulton, where they dumped ballots, you will find that you have many that aren’t even signed and you have many that are forgeries.

OK, you know that. You know that. You have no doubt about that. And you will find you will be at 11,779 within minutes, because Fulton County is totally corrupt and so is she, totally corrupt.

And they’re going around playing you and laughing at you behind your back, Brad, whether you know it or not, they’re laughing at you and you’ve taken a state that’s a Republican state, and you’ve made it almost impossible for a Republican to win because of cheating, because they cheated like nobody’s ever cheated before. And I don’t care how long it takes me, you know, we’re going to have other states coming forward — pretty good.

But I won’t … this is never … this is … We have some incredible talent said they’ve never seen anything … Now the problem is they need more time for the big numbers. But they’re very substantial numbers. But I think you’re going to find that they — by the way, a little information, I think you’re going to find that they are shredding ballots because they have to get rid of the ballots because the ballots are unsigned. The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new and they don’t have a seal and there’s the whole thing with the ballots. But the ballots are corrupt.

And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk. But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I’ve heard. And they are removing machinery and they’re moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal finds. And you can’t let it happen and you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.

And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, cause you know, this is — it’s a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it. If it was a mistake, I don’t know. A lot of people think it wasn’t a mistake. It was much more criminal than that. But it’s a big problem in Georgia and it’s not a problem that’s going away. I mean, you know, it’s not a problem that’s going away.

Germany: Mr President, this is Ryan. We’re looking into every one of those things that you mentioned.

Trump: Good. But if you find it you’ve got to say it, Ryan.

Germany: … Let me tell you what we are seeing. What we’re seeing is not at all what you’re describing, these are investigators from our office, these are investigators from

GBI, and they’re looking and they’re good. And that’s not what they’re seeing. And we’ll keep looking, at all these things.

Trump: Well, you better check the ballots because they are shredding ballots, Ryan. I’m just telling you, Ryan. They’re shredding ballots. And you should look at that very carefully. Because that’s so illegal. You know, you may not even believe it because it’s so bad. But they’re shredding ballots because they think we’re going to eventually get … because we’ll eventually get into Fulton. In my opinion it’s never too late. … So, that’s the story. Look, we need only 11,000 votes. We have are far more than that as it stands now. We’ll have more and more. And. Do you have provisional ballots at all, Brad? Provisional ballots?

Raffensperger: Provisional ballots are allowed by state law.

Trump: Sure, but I mean, are they counted or did you just hold them back because they, you know, in other words, how many provisional ballots do you have in the state?

Raffensperger: We’ll get you that number.

Trump: Because most of them are made out to the name Trump. Because these are people that were scammed when they came in. And we have thousands of people that have testified or that want to testify when they came in they were probably going to vote on November 3. And they were told I’m sorry, you’ve already been voted for, you’ve already voted. The women, men started screaming, No. I proudly voted til November 3. They said, I’m sorry, but you’ve already been voted for and you have a ballot and these people are beside themselves. So they went out and they filled in a provisional ballot, putting the name Trump on it.

And what about that batch of military ballots that came in. And even though I won the military by a lot, it was 100 percent Trump. I mean 100 percent Biden. Do you know about that? A large group of ballots came in. I think it was to Fulton County and they just happened to be 100 percent for Trump — for Biden, even though Trump won the military by a lot, you know, a tremendous amount. But these ballots were 100 percent for Biden. And, do you know about that? A very substantial number came in, all for Biden. Does anybody know about it?

Mitchell: I know about it, but —

Trump: OK, Cleta, I’m not asking you Cleta, honestly. I’m asking Brad. Do you know about the military ballots that we have confirmed now. Do you know about the military ballots that came in that were 100 percent, I mean 100 percent for Biden. Do you know about that?

Germany: I don’t know about that, I do know that we have when military ballots come in, it’s not just military, it’s also military and overseas citizens. The military part of that does generally go Republican. The overseas citizen part of it generally goes very Democrat. This was a mix of ’em.

Trump: No, but this was. That’s OK. But I got like 78 percent in the military. These ballots were all for … They didn’t tell me overseas. Could be overseas too, but I get votes overseas too, Ryan, you know in all fairness. No they came in, a large batch came in and it was, quote, 100 percent for Biden. And that is criminal. You know, that’s criminal. OK. That’s another criminal, that’s another of the many criminal events, many criminal events here.

Oh, I don’t know, look Brad. I got to get … I have to find 12,000 votes and I have them times a lot. And therefore, I won the state. That’s before we go to the next step, which is in the process of right now. You know, and I watched you this morning and you said, uh, well, there was no criminality.

But I mean, all of this stuff is very dangerous stuff. When you talk about no criminality, I think it’s very dangerous for you to say that.

I just, I just don’t know why you don’t want to have the votes counted as they are. Like even you when you went and did that check. And I was surprised because, you know …the check… And we found a few thousand votes that were against me. I was actually surprised because the way that check was done, all you’re doing is you know, recertifying existing votes and, you know, and you were given votes and you just counted them up and you still found 3,000 that were bad. So that was sort of surprising that it came down to three or five I don’t know. still a lot of votes. But you have to go back to check from past years with respect to signatures. And if you check with Fulton County, you’ll have hundreds of thousands because they dumped ballots into Fulton County and the other county next to it.

So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already. Or we can keep it going but that’s not fair to the voters of Georgia because they’re going to see what happened and they’re going to see what happened. I mean, I’ll, I’ll take on to anybody you want with regard to [name] and her lovely daughter, a very lovely young lady, I’m sure. But, but [name] … I will take on anybody you want. And the minimum, there were 18,000 ballots but they used them three times. So that’s, you know, a lot of votes. …and that one event… And they were all to Biden, by the way, that’s the other thing we didn’t say. You know, [name] , the one thing I forgot to say which was the most important. You know that every single ballot she did went to Biden. You know that, right? Do you know that, by the way, Brad?

Every single ballot that she did through the machines at early, early in the morning, went to Biden. Did you know that, Ryan?

Germany: That’s not accurate, Mr. President.

Trump: Huh. What is accurate?

Germany: The numbers that we are showing are accurate.

Trump: No, about [name] . About early in the morning, Ryan. When the woman took, you know, when the whole gang took the stuff from under the table, right? Do you know, do you know who those ballots, who they were made out to, do you know who they were voting for?

Germany: No, not specifically.

Trump: Did you ever check?

Germany: We did what I described to you earlier —

Trump: No no no — did you ever check the ballots that were scanned by [name] , a known political operative and balloteer. Did ever check who those votes were for?

Germany: We looked into that situation that you described.

Trump: No, they were 100 percent for Biden. 100 percent. There wasn’t a Trump vote in the whole group. Why don’t you want to find this, Ryan? What’s wrong with you? I heard your lawyer is very difficult, actually, but I’m sure you’re a good lawyer. You have a nice last name.

But, but I’m just curious why wouldn’t, why do you keep fighting this thing? It just doesn’t make sense. We’re way over the 17,779, right? We’re way over that number and just if you took just [name] , we’re over that number by five, five or six times when you multiply that times three.

And every single ballot went to Biden, and you didn’t know that, but, now you know it. So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this. And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people that don’t want to find answers. For instance, I’m hearing Ryan that he’s probably, I’m sure a great lawyer and everything. But he’s making statements about those ballots that he doesn’t know. But he’s making them with such — he did make them with surety. But now I think he’s less sure because the answer is they all went to Biden and that alone wins us the election by a lot. You know, so.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, you have people that submit information and we have our people that submit information. And then it comes before the court and the court then has to make a determination. We have to stand by our numbers. We believe our numbers are right.

Trump: Why do you say that? I don’t know. I mean, sure, we can play this game with the courts, but why do you say that? First of all they don’t even assign us a judge. They don’t even assign us a judge. But why wouldn’t you — Hey Brad, why wouldn’t you want to check out [name] ? And why wouldn’t you want to say, hey, if in fact, President Trump is right about that, then he wins the state of Georgia, just that one incident alone without going through hundreds of thousands of dropped ballots. You just say, you stick by, I mean I’ve been watching you, you know, you don’t care about anything. “Your numbers are right.” But your numbers aren’t right. They’re really wrong and they’re really wrong, Brad. And I know this phone call is going nowhere other than, other than ultimately, you know — Look ultimately, I win, okay?

Mitchell: Mr. Secretary…

Trump: Because you guys are so wrong. And you treated this. You treated the population of Georgia so badly. You, between you and your governor, who was down at 21, he was down 21 points. And like a schmuck, I endorsed him and he got elected, but I will tell you, he is a disaster.

And he knows, I can’t imagine that people are so angry in Georgia, I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again I’ll tell you that much right now. But why wouldn’t you want to find the right answer, Brad, instead of keep saying that the numbers are right? Cause those numbers are so wrong?

Mitchell: Mr. Secretary, Mr. President, one of the things that we have been, Alex can talk about this, we talked about it, and I don’t know whether the information has been conveyed to your office, but I think what the president is saying, and what we’ve been trying to do is to say, look, the court is not acting on our petition. They haven’t even assigned a judge. But the people of Georgia and the people of America have a right to know the answers. And you have data and records that we don’t have access to. And you keep telling us and making public statements that you investigated this and nothing to see here. But we don’t know about that. All we know is what you tell us. What I don’t understand is why wouldn’t it be in everyone’s best interest to try to get to the bottom, compare the numbers, you know, if you say, because – to try to be able to get to the truth because we don’t have any way of confirming what you’re telling us. You tell us that you had an investigation at the State Farm Arena. I don’t have any report. I’ve never seen a report of investigation. I don’t know that is. I’ve been pretty involved in this and I don’t know. And that’s just one of like , 25 categories. And it doesn’t even, and as I, as the president said, we haven’t even gotten into the Dominion issue. That’s not part of our case. It’s not part of our, we just didn’t feel as though we had any way to be able to develop —

Trump: No, we do have a way but I don’t want to get into it. We found a way in other states excuse me, but we don’t need it because we’re only down 11,000 votes so we don’t even need it. I personally think they’re corrupt as hell. But we don’t need that. Because all we have to do Cleta is find 11,000-plus votes. So we don’t need that. I’m not looking to shake up the whole world. We won Georgia easily. We won it by hundreds of thousands of votes. But if you go by basic simple numbers, we won it easily, easily. So we’re not giving Dominion a pass on the record. We just, we don’t need Dominion, because we have so many other votes that we don’t need to prove it any more than we already have.

Hilbert: Mr. President and Cleta, this is Kurt Hilbert, if I might interject for a moment. Um Ryan, I would like to suggest just four categories that have already been mentioned by the president that have actually hard numbers of 24,149 votes that were counted illegally. That in and of itself is sufficient to change the results or place the outcome in doubt. We would like to sit down with your office and we can do it through purposes of compromise and just like this phone call, just to deal with that limited category of votes. And if you are able to establish that our numbers are not accurate, then fine. However, we believe that they are accurate. We’ve had now three to four separate experts looking at these numbers.

Trump: Certified accountants looked at them.

Hilbert: Correct. And this is just based on USPS data and your own secretary of state’s data. So that’s what we would entreat and ask you to do, to sit down with us in a compromise and settlements proceeding and actually go through the registered voter IDs and registrations. And if you can convince us that that 24,149 is inaccurate, then fine. But we tend to believe that is, you know, obviously more than 11,779. That’s sufficient to change the results entirely in of itself. So what would you say to that, Mr. Germany?

Germany: Kurt, um I’m happy to get with our lawyers and we’ll set that up. That number is not accurate. And I think we can show you, for all the ones we’ve looked at, why it’s not. And so if that would be helpful, I’m happy to get with our lawyers and set that up with you guys.

Trump: Well, let me ask you, Kurt, you think that is an accurate number. That was based on the information given to you by the secretary of state’s department, right?

Hilbert: That is correct. That information is the minimum most conservative data based upon the USPS data and the secretary of state’s office data that has been made publicly available. We do not have the internal numbers from the secretary of state. Yet, we have asked for it six times. I sent a letter over to Mr… several times requesting this information, and it’s been rebuffed every single time. So it stands to reason that if the information is not forthcoming, there’s something to hide. That’s the problem that we have.

Germany: Well, that’s not the case sir. There are things that you guys are entitled to get. And there’s things that under the law, we are not allowed to give out.

Trump: Well, you have to. Well, under the law you’re not allowed to give faulty election results, OK? You’re not allowed to do that. And that’s what you done. This is a faulty election result. And honestly, this should go very fast. You should meet tomorrow because you have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam. And because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected. Really respected, if this thing could be straightened out before the election. You have a big election coming up on Tuesday. And therefore I think that it is really important that you meet tomorrow and work out on these numbers. Because I know Brad that if you think we’re right, I think you’re going to say, and I’m not looking to blame anybody. I’m just saying you know, and, you know, under new counts, and under uh, new views, of the election results, we won the election. You know? It’s very simple. We won the election. As the governors of major states and the surrounding states said, there is no way you lost Georgia, as the Georgia politicians say, there is no way, you lost Georgia. Nobody. Everyone knows I won it by hundreds of thousands of votes. But I’ll tell you it’s going to have a big impact on Tuesday if you guys don’t get this thing straightened out fast.

Meadows: Mr. President. This is Mark. It sounds like we’ve got two different sides agreeing that we can look at these areas ands I assume that we can do that within the next 24 to 48 hours to go ahead and get that reconciled so that we can look at the two claims and making sure that we get the access to the secretary of state’s data to either validate or invalidate the claims that have been made. Is that correct?

Germany: No, that’s not what I said. I’m happy to have our lawyers sit down with Kurt and the lawyers on that side and explain to my him, here’s, based on what we’ve looked at so far, here’s how we know this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong.

Meadows: So what you’re saying, Ryan, let me let me make sure … so what you’re saying is you really don’t want to give access to the data. You just want to make another case on why the lawsuit is wrong?

Germany: I don’t think we can give access to data that’s protected by law. But we can sit down with them and say —

Trump: But you’re allowed to have a phony election? You’re allowed to have a phony election right?

Germany: No sir.

Trump: When are you going to do signature counts, when are you going to do signature verification on Fulton County, which you said you were going to do, and now all of a sudden you’re not doing it. When are you doing that?

Germany: We are going to do that. We’ve announced —

Hilbert: To get to this issue of the personal information and privacy issue, is it possible that the secretary of state could deputize the lawyers for the president so that we could access that information and private information without you having any kind of violation?

Trump: Well, I don’t want to know who it is. You guys can do it very confidentially. You can sign a confidentiality agreement. That’s OK. I don’t need to know names. But we go the information on this stuff that we’re talking about. We got all that information from the secretary of state.

Meadows: Yeah. So let me let me recommend, Ryan, if you and Kurt would get together, you know, when we get off of this phone call, if you could get together and work out a plan to address some of what we’ve got with your attorneys where we can we can actually look at the data. For example, Mr. Secretary, I can tell you say they were only two dead people who would vote. I can promise you there were more than that. And that may be what your investigation shows, but I can promise you there were more than that. But at the same time, I think it’s important that we go ahead and move expeditiously to try to do this and resolve it as quickly as we possibly can. And if that’s the good next step. Hopefully we can, uh we can finish this phone call and go ahead and agree that the two of you will get together immediately.

Trump: Well why don’t my lawyers show you where you got the information. It will show the secretary of state, and you don’t even have to look at any names. We don’t want names. We don’t care. But we got that information from you. And Stacey Abrams is laughing about you know she’s going around saying these guys are dumber than a rock. What she’s done to this party is unbelievable, I tell ya. And I only ran against her once. And that was with a guy named Brian Kemp and I beat her. And if I didn’t run, Brian wouldn’t have had even a shot, either in the general or in the primary. He was dead, dead as a doornail. He never thought he had a shot at either one of them. What a schmuck I was. But that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is. I would like you … for the attorneys … I’d like you to perhaps meet with Ryan ideally tomorrow, because I think we should come to a resolution of this before the election. Otherwise you’re going to have people just not voting. They don’t want to vote. They hate the state, they hate the governor and they hate the secretary of state. I will tell you that right now. The only people like you are people that will never vote for you. You know that Brad, right? They like you know, they like you. They can’t believe what they found. They want people like you. So, look, can you get together tomorrow? And Brad. We just want the truth. It’s simple. And everyone’s going to look very good if the truth comes out. It’s OK. It takes a little while but let the truth come out. And the real truth is I won by 400,000 votes. At least. That’s the real truth. But we don’t need 400,000. We need less than 2,000 votes. And are you guys able to meet tomorrow Ryan?

Germany: Um, I’ll get with Chris, the lawyer representing us and the case, and see when he can get together with Kurt.

Raffensperger: Ryan will be in touch with the other attorney on this call, Mr. Meadows. Thank you President Trump for your time.

Trump: OK, thank you, Brad. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. Bye.

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO AT THIS LINK (WASHINGTON POST):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/3f9426f4-7937-4718-8a8e-9d6052001991

Coronavirus Vaccine: Make it Available for Everyone

There was more potential good news on a coronavirus vaccine yesterday.

1. A vaccine developed in part by pharmaceutical giant Moderna has shown “promising interim results.”
   
2. But Moderna did not develop this vaccine by itself.
   
3. At every step of the way, this vaccine has been developed in partnership with the federal government’s National Institutes of Health.
   
4. Federal scientists helped invent it and taxpayers funded its development.
   
5. If it proves safe and effective, it should belong to all of humanity.
   
6. But limited supply could keep this vaccine out of reach for billions of people worldwide, extending their suffering for years.

Tell Joe Biden:

The coronavirus vaccine being developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health is a public good. If it proves safe and effective, it must be made available to everyone, everywhere. And the U.S. must help scale up global manufacturing to avoid medical rationing that could become a form of global vaccine apartheid.

Add your name.

Thanks for taking action.

Stay safe.

– Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen

P.S. — For half a century, Public Citizen has been advancing policies that put the needs of everyday Americans before the greed of billionaires and Big Business. That legacy of progress and that ongoing work could not matter more right now, as our nation transitions to a Joe Biden presidency that will be as progressive as we — you and Public Citizen, together — make it.

Of course, we’re also busy undoing damage the Trump administration has already done and watching out for whatever shenanigans a lame-duck Donald Trump tries to get away with. And — like so many nonprofits and small businesses — we continue to experience financial strain related to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Tallahassee Republican Politician

I was at a meeting where a local Republican leader was wearing a mask because it was mandated. In the otherwise meaningless exchange while referring to Covid-19, he said that “the science is all over the place.”

That is the new Republican mantra for denying science. It is like saying science is all over the place on global warming, or evolution or anything else where science is unequivocal and as certain as scientific inquiry can make it. What is all over the place is junk science, phony experts on TV and politically determined truth.

This is the new Trump Party. Not the fiscally conservative, efficient smaller government of William Buckley’s Republican Party. Maybe the Republican Party can be restored, but maybe not.