"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, March 6, 2024
First, she quit the Democratic Party — just like Sarah Palin quit Alaska.
Now, she quit Arizona… and America.
Bad Little Doggie — this one’s for you, babe.
Come in with the sunrise, who knows where you go Smellin’ like something, I don’t want to know
Your sister can’t save you, she don’t know what to do Your bad behavior has finally caught up to you Bad little doggie
Soul all tweeked out, life line thin Loose little school girl, what a shape you’re in
Blue violence, red rosaries Roots of evil growing into trees I’m through messin’, time to learn your lesson Bad little doggie
I’m through messin’, time to learn your lesson Bad little doggie
Goodbye, and good riddance. Perhaps somebody on K Street will take you in. After all, that’s where politicians go after Congressional stints, isn’t it — to become lobbyists.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 26, 2024
For the answer to that question — Who would God kill? — let’s turn to Genesis chapter 38.
We’ll use the New International Version (NIV).
Genesis 38:
8Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” 9But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. 10What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
Those krazee Jews!
Let’s put a modern touch to that passage.
GOD: Go fuck your widowed sister-in-law, and impregnate her.
Man: Okay.
(fucks widowed sister-in-law)
God: You didn’t cum inside her!
Man: How’d you know?
God: I’m a voyeur. And now, I’m gonna’ kill you.
Don’t you long for the good old days?
For those who claim to be Xian, or otherwise religious, such “modernizing” of that passage may rile them up. Although, I don’t know why. It’s the Bible. It’s just simply put into modern terms.
Let’s examine that passage line by line.
Verse 8 states: Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.”
We all know that the term “sleep with” is a euphemism for “have sex with.” So, in other words, to fuck.
And when, in the modern rephrasing, it says God, as indicating the one whom was speaking, that is actually a command found in Deuteronomy 25:5, which states:
If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.
A little bit of background almost always aids our understanding, so we’ll turn to an expert for some background in this instance.
Deuteronomy is the “new and improved second edition” of God’s law, the 5th book of the Torah, which is the holy writ for Jews and is collectively called the “Books of Moses,” which in Christendom, in their holy writ called the “Bible,” are called the Pentateuch, the Greek prefix “penta” meaning 5, and “teukhos,” meaning to implement, a vessel, or scroll case; in other words, a book. The Greek translation of the Torah/Pentateuch, is called the Septuagint, hence the use of the Greek prefix and name Pentateuch. The books, in order, are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Dr. Thomas B. Dozeman, PhD, Professor of Old Testament, United Theological Seminary, writing in Oxford Research Encyclopedia and Oxford Bibliographies, stated that the book of Deuteronomy “repeats the revelation of law to the second generation [of Israelites] on the plains of Moab (Deuteronomy). The authorship of the Pentateuch is central to its interpretation in Jewish and Christian tradition. The Mosaic authorship characterized the interpretation of the Pentateuch Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, November 26, 2023
Gaslighting & Psychological Projection: Pot Calls Kettle Black
Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear some news about the former, 45th POTUS and the myriad legal troubles in which he has mired himself, Federal and State, and his numerous co-conspirators. Naturally, he denies all culpability, and continues telling “THE BIG LIE” — spinning a hypothetical yarn, hoping the too-tall tale of fantastical fiction grousing his 2020 electoral loss to Joe Biden will knit some kind of loosely-fitting garment… albeit one with numerous irreparable holes. It’s a modern version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
“If you say it enough and keep saying it, they’ll start to believe you.” — Donald Trump, July 3, 2021 speech in Sarasota, FL
“I play to people’s fantasies. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole.”
— Donald Trump, as written in his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal”
“Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. … What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
— Donald Trump, speech to VFW annual convention in Kansas City, Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Faced with the very real possibility of incarceration in a Federal prison, or State prison, loss of reputation, loss of business license, professional censure, fines, and numerous other penalties, the hard, cold, stark reality has begun to set in for the bad-dream-weaver, and his minions. One by one, the dominoes are falling.
The 45th and immediately former President, a known pathological liar, cheat, and narcissist, recently wrote on his social media website, on Saturday, 25 November 2023, that,“Bob Vander Plaats, the former High School Accountant from Iowa, will do anything to win, something which he hasn’t done in many years. He’s more known for scamming Candidates than he is for Victory, but now he’s going around using Disinformation from the Champions of that Art, the Democrats. I don’t believe anything Bob Vander Plaats says. Anyone who would take $95,000, and then endorse a Candidate who is going nowhere, is not what Elections are all about!”
As others and I continue maintaining, the formerly-Grand Old Party has perfected psychological projection, a manipulative distraction technique designed to draw attention away from themselves (the accuser as guilty party), and place it upon an innocent party (an opponent), by accusing the innocent party of doing the very thing which the accuser/guilty party is doing.
When he tells the “snake story” — the Aesop’s Fable aka “The Farmer and the Snake,” an allegorical tale about a freezing-cold viper that begged to be picked up and warmed inside a coat, the gullible “rescuer,” against better judgement, picked it up, whereupon when sufficiently warmed, the viper bit the rescuer, who loudly exclaimed, asking, “Why did you do that!?!” The viper replied, “You knew what I was before you picked me up.” — he’s talking about himself. And he is the snake. The general public long knew what kind of man he was before he ever campaigned for President. We saw how utterly unscrupulous he was. We saw how grotesquely crass, how utterly without morals, how absent all semblance of good bearing, and wholly devoid of ethics, that he was, and remains. We knew full well who he was before we voted for him.
Psychological Projection (aka “projection”) is somewhat akin to “gaslighting,” insofar as it too, is designed & purposed by the claimant to manipulate & persuade malleable others that something is true, when it is false. Singer-songwriter Phil Collins sang about that in his 1999 hit “That’s All”:
“Just as I thought it was goin’ alright, “I found out I’m wrong when I thought I was right; “It’s always the same it’s just a shame that’s all. “I could say day, and you’d say night; “Tell me it’s black when I know thats it’s white; “It’s always the same it’s just a shame that’s all.”
Analogously, to illustrate Psychological Projection, imagine if Charles Manson accused the Los Angeles County California Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi of masterminding murder by virtue of the fact that he would be facing the death penalty for his crimes.
How perversely bizarre is that?
A SPECIAL NOTE is particularly applicable here:
In this greater ordeal & situation, that being the indictment of the 45th and immediately former POTUS upon numerous Federal -and- State charges, most particularly and especially the whole schema of events leading to the insurrection of January 6, 2021, including its precursors, it should be borne in mind that, just as Charles Manson exercised control over his “family” members (adherents), primarily obliquely, so too does Donald Trump exercise control over his followers (adherents) primarily obliquely. And just as Charles Manson did NOT directly commit the Tate-LaBianca murders, nor order them, his influence upon his “family” of followers was so great and significantly influential, to the extent that he was found guilty of the murders. Donald Trump did the exact same thing with the Proud Boys and other white supremacist militant radicals directly leading to the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!”
— POTUS Donald Trump, during the first Presidential Debate with Democratic Presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden on September 29, 2020, at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, OH.
In response, Proud Boys leader-organizer Joe Biggs (a now-6-times convicted Federal felon) wrote on the now-defunct far-right-wing social media platform Parler, “Trump basically said to go fuck them up! This makes me so happy!”
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
— POTUS Donald Trump, tweet December 19, 2020, 1:42AM
Just as Charles Manson preyed upon weak, young abused women to coerce them into his fold and further manipulate them as a means to his end, so too does Trump prey upon the weak, the marginalized, and unsuspecting, and warmly embraces them into his feign flock in order to manipulate them for his own self interests.
“I love the poorly educated!”
— Donald Trump, after victory in the February 2016 Nevada Republican caucuses
In response, respected political observer and polling analyst Nate Silver on his website FiveThirtyEight dot com noted that Trump’s victory in the November General Election was primarily innervated and predicted by “education, not income,” and noted that “educational levels are the critical factor in predicting shifts in the vote between 2012 and 2016. You can come to that conclusion with a relatively simple analysis, like the one I’ve conducted above, or by using fancier methods.”
A Texas House panel adopted 20 articles of impeachment against Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday.
The decision by the House General Investigating Committee comes a day after the panel heard from investigators who shared a long list of Paxton’s alleged illegal acts aimed at protecting a political donor.
“After a period of time for your review and reflections, I intend to call up the resolution adopting the articles of impeachment,” Chairman Andrew Murr, R-Junction, told House members Thursday evening.
It’s unclear when the full House might vote on the impeachment resolution. The final day of the legislative session is Monday.
If the House votes to impeach, the Republican attorney general would be suspended from his role pending action from the Texas Senate.
The articles of impeachment include disregard of official duty, misapplication of public resources, constitutional bribery and obstruction of justice.
The panel’s decision to move to impeach comes after four House-hired investigators revealed on Wednesday they uncovered evidence of multiple violations of the law and Paxton’s oath of office, including abuse of official capacity, misuse of official information, and retaliation and official oppression.
Many of the allegations were previously known, but Wednesday was the first time they were discussed publicly and in such detail.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, April 6, 2023
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been on the bench of the nation’s highest court since 1991, has been found, for the past 20 years, to have been receiving gifts worth several millions of dollars from a Texas real estate billionarie, and has failed to report any of them, as required by law.
THIS is an item which, I think, is BIGGER news than the troubles the former, 45th President, finds himself mired in, all of which are messes of his own making. We’ll see how those cakes cook up.
However, with this matter — which I think is a far more serious one for the integrity of our republic — which is the impartiality of equal justice under law — I smell an imminent impeachment of a SCOTUS Justice on the horizon, perhaps even calls to vacate orders in which his vote was a deciding factor. The ties and the links are present which more than lend themselves to the idea that his rulings demonstrated partiality in favor of certain parties with business before the court.
The quick-n-easy answer is “most likely not,” but a more detailed response, which increases ones understanding of the matter, follows. Published 04/05/23 at 8:00 AM ET, author Steven Lubet — the Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and coauthor of “Judicial Conduct and Ethics” (5th edition) and many other books — quoted another legal authority on the matter of Justice Thomas’ deliberate failure to report gifts for 20 years, and wrote in part that when asked to whom the Judicial Conference Committee on Financial Disclosures applies, replied by writing that, “the “Ethics in Government Act is the ultimate source of these reporting requirements,” and that it applies to “all judicial officers” including “the Chief Justice of the United States” [and] the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court.””
However, Chief Justice John Roberts has consistently rejected that idea, i.e., the law, including the authority of the Judicial Conference, by writing in his 2011 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary that its “committees have no mandate to prescribe rules or standards” for the Supreme Court. In other words, he wrote that he, and other Supreme Court Justices are above the law, that the law does NOT apply to them.
There are numerous instances in which SCOTUS Justices have flouted the law with regard to gifts, and Justice Clarence Thomas is by no means the only one, though he may be the most egregious example, who also, for a period of 6 consecutive years failed to list his wife “Ginny,” Virginia’s employment on his disclosure forms, and explained it away by claiming that it was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.” For a Supreme Court Justice, a individual well-versed in numerous intricacies of law, to make such a claim is so incredulous, that it borders on preposterous absurdity.
During his last 10 years on the SCOTUS, late Justice Antonin Scalia took over 250 subsidized trips, some of which were related to speeches he made, while others were vacations, and included frequent private jet travel, numerous luxury resorts and lodges stays, many of which he exempted from disclosure under previous, less explicit disclosure and reporting rules. The former Justice Stephen Breyer was similarly a recipient of such largess, and disclosed 185 subsidized trips during the same time period — although both figures may be significantly under-reported.
This problem is directly related to the impartiality that ALL judges, again, as impartial arbiters, are supposed to have, because not only is the lackadaisical attitude toward money and gifts from wealthy donors demonstrative of corruption, so too is the lack of any standard for recusal. The Supreme Court is, quite literally, another example of “the fox watching the hen house,” i.e., that they make up their own rules as they go, all in the name of either autonomy, or self-governance, and essentially think themselves exempt from the law, by refusing to submit to the law’s authority.
There are other observers of the SCOTUS who are also hawks, or watchdogs, on the subject of ethics and accountability on the nation’s highest court, among them, Fix the Court, a website that advocates for reforms to be made to the court to improve integrity and demonstrate unquestionable impartiality, and has a page linking to each Justice’s financial disclosures, for several years back. Sadly, it is painfully obvious, and exceedingly clear that the SCOTUS will not fix their own problems, so external measures must be taken, i.e., laws must be enacted mandating full financial disclosure and compliance, and establishing recusal standards.
This matter, however, is a subset of an even greater national problem, from which both political parties suffer, and that matter is best analogized by acknowledging that football teams don’t get to write their own game play rules, no matter which team is national champion, or not. The Alabama Crimson Tide has not, by virtue of their numerous National Championships, been able to change game rules to suit them, nor has any NFL team ever been able to do so, regardless of how many Super Bowl wins they’ve had, or which team is current champion. So, when politicians select their voters by gerrymandering, they do so in order to give themselves an unfair advantage, and it’s not merely “politics,” per se, it is a matter of corruption, by pretending to be impartial, or just, but instead are openly partisan and denying people of someone who would represent their interests. Politics and law are indeed about being just and impartial, every bit as much as any court should be, including the Supreme Court. Voters are supposed to elect their politicians, not politicians select their voters.
To further aid a direct, grass-roots process, there should be recall and direct petition laws which empower voters to recall politicians who are not representing their constituents’ wishes, as well as establishing a viable legal pathway for citizens to introduce legislation independently of the legislature, when legislators refuse to heed their constituents’ wishes to introduce legislation.
Money in politics is another obviously corrupting influence and power, and the best way to manage it, is to put all donors’ money into one common pot for each office, and divvy it up equally among the candidates, thereby enabling all candidates to campaign on their ability to persuade voters of their ideas, and the value of their candidacy, instead of seeming to purchase the office by the amount of money raised. Such a law which would enable “common pool contributions” AND be equally divided among the candidates for a particular office, would also satisfy the so-called “money is free speech” Supreme Court ruling, and conceivably, could allow more money to be put into the electoral PROCESS, NOT the candidate, i.e., contribution limits could be increased. Conceivably also, because such donations to the PROCESS would be impartial in effect, they could perhaps also be made fully tax deductible.
Ranked Choice Voting would further empower citizen voters to select among numerous candidates for any office, would immediately end costly primary elections paid for by the state, and perhaps even — in conjunction with “common pool contributions” — contribute to a broadening of political parties representing the peoples’ interests, instead of the “either/or” 2-party system which has dominated for so long. Voters should not be forced to choose from a bad or worse candidate.
And when a citizen registers to vote, that individual should immediately, i.e., on-the-spot, be issued a photographic Voter ID. By so doing, it would put to rest the ridiculously asinine and outrageously false claims made primarily by one political party which asserts that voter fraud is rampant. As well, each voter would be issued a number, much like a driver license number, or U.S. passport number, which would then be required to be affixed to, or included with, any absentee, or mail-in ballot, and so done to further reduce any possibility of voter fraud. It would also eliminate the discrimination inherent with, and absurdity of, so-called “exact match” signature laws, because signatures do change over time. As well, by requiring the government to issue a photographic Voter ID -and- a corresponding number, mail-in balloting could be expanded, relatively risk-free, and trouble-free.
Election Day should be made a National Holiday, and employees should get paid for that time off, and Early In-Person Voting should be at least two weeks duration.
To know of SCOTUS Justice Thomas’ corruption is an EXCEEDINGLY stronger, wretch-inducing effluvium — worse even, than the infected, rotting stench of hypocrisy cooking.
Clarence Thomas Secretly Accepted Luxury Trips From GOP Donor
— ProPublica
by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski
ProPublica.org
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
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Official Supreme Court group photo — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, October 2022
Texas billionaire, GOP super-donor, Harlan Crow in October 201
In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.
Clarence Thomas (tan vest & camera) and his wife, Ginni (in red), front left, with Harlan Crow, back right, and others in Flores, Indonesia, in July 2019. Credit: via Instagram
If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.
For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.
The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.
These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 25, 2023
When examined in context, over the long term, it all begins to make sense (at least to anyone who’s studied the matter at all);
Nixon’s “War on Drugs” was purely a manipulative election ploy designed to obliquely instill fear in the American public, by creating in their imagination the false perception of a massive national crisis (substance use, primarily cannabis, and predominately, if not almost exclusively, among/by college/university students), and to portray them as depraved, and anti-American, because they opposed the Vietnam War, then…
Well, just read what John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s Domestic Affairs Policy Advisor, and convicted Watergate co-conspirator, said to Dan Baum when interviewed by him, for a book he was writing at the time:
“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: The antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
On November 17, 1973, then-POTUS Richard Nixon spoke at Disney’s Contemporary Resort in Bay Lake, FL, to the Associated Press Managing Editors annual conference. During the Question and Answer portion after his address, a New York Times reporter asked him about his role in the Watergate burglary scandal and efforts to cover up that members of his Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) had funded the break-in. In response, he said in part, that, “I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service — I earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.”
When Nixon ignored the recommendation to decriminalize cannabis made by his hand-picked Commissioner Raymond P. Shafer in the report commonly known as the “Shafer Commission,” properly as the First Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, March 1972, and then Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Anonymity.
Make ALL applications anonymous.
It’s just… that… simple.
And, it’s EASILY facilitated!
Simply ID the applicant/prospective student by the first letter initials of their name, e.g., ABC, their birth date, e.g., 01022023, and the last four digits of their Social Security Number, or Alien Registration Number, e.g., 1234.
Thus, candidate “Iwannabe Funkybean Gobbledygook” would be IFG01022023-1234, or IFG010220231234, or IFG-01022023-1234, or similarly — even with last name first, GIF01022023-1234, or GIF010220231234, etc. Candidate “Al-Shaz Baraz el Hominy Jones-Smith” would be ASBHJS, ABHJS, or JSASBH, JSABH, or similarly.
It’s just ENTIRELY TOO EASY!
Our brethren in the UK have done so –and– they’ve also made job applications anonymous.
“At the Conservative party conference two weeks ago, I spoke about a young black woman who had to put a more white-sounding name on her CV before she started getting called for interviews. Such racism in 21st-century Britain, I said, was a disgrace, and I committed our party to ending discrimination and finishing the fight for real equality. The audience rose to their feet. It was a significant moment. And it provoked three reactions.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Mitt Romney’s remark made at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines in 2011, that ‟Corporations are people, my friend,” was then, and remains even now, painfully accurate.
His explanation, however was an abysmal failure, and came nowhere close to explaining why ‟Corporations are people, my friend.”
Essentially, ‟Corporations are people, my friend,〞because their articles of incorporation state something to the effect that they can “… to wit, to do any thing a natural person could do…” That is known as “artificial personhood.”
Cornell University writes the following about artificial personhood, which may sometimes also be referred to as legal personhood, though the two are not always interchangeable — a Natural Person is also always Legal Person, but a Legal Person is not always a Natural Person — which is why there is a differentiation made with Natural Person, and the term “Artificial Person” is much more simple, and descriptive:
“An artificial person is also known as a juridical person; it has a legal name and has certain rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and liabilities in law, similar to those of a natural person. In other words, an artificial person is a non-human legal entity that is not a single natural person but an organization recognized by law as a fictitious person. In the United States, an artificial person usually refers to “any entities established under the law of the United States, any foreign country, or a state, province, territory, possession, commonwealth, or dependency of the United States or any foreign country, and as to which the government, state, province, territory, possession, commonwealth or dependency must maintain a record showing the entity to have been established.” Specifically, in a business sense, an artificial person is any form of business association and any other non-governmental legal organization, including a profitable or non-profitable corporation, partnership, limited liability company, association, trust, or unincorporated organization.”
The United States Supreme Court has reinforced that sense of personhood by and through their decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission which was issued January 2010, which supported the notion of artificial personhood, and granted additional rights to corporations, but few, if any, of the responsibilities.
Some rightfully call it the “money is free speech” ruling, and the primary problem with such a belief, ruling, or ideology, is that, if it is true that money is free speech (it is not), then the poor man has none, and the Constitution was written for all, equally, and so, in that sense, at the very least, the ruling violates the Equal Protection Clause, and the First Amendment.
Holding: Political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections. While corporations or unions may not give money directly to campaigns, they may seek to persuade the voting public through other means, including ads, especially where these ads were not broadcast.
Judgment: Reversed, 5-4, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy on January 21, 2010. in a 5-4 decision with an opinion written by Justice Kennedy. Justice Stevens dissented, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor.
There are other cases, of course, and this one didn’t just suddenly appear out of nowhere. There were other precedents which prepared the way for it, among which were:
But, to be absolutely certain, the problem can be traced back even further, to the Civil War era, when before that time, corporations were held to account by focusing upon the Chief Executive who was responsible, and accountable for all aspects of operations, and any failures fell squarely on their shoulders alone. Power and responsibility were natural complements of each other. After changes in laws were made, power and responsibility were separated, and power was concentrated at the top, but responsibility was diffused throughout the organization, so that no one person could be held to account — all the power, and all the perks that came along for the ride, but all the responsibilities were left at the train station.
That all came to a metaphorical head with the collapse of Enron, a once-high-flying Ponzi scheme bankruptcy of an energy company based in Houston, Texas which was founded and headed by the now-late Ken Lay (1942-2005). That firm’s collapse and subsequent bankruptcy was one of the largest instances of corporate fraud then to have occurred in America, and illustrated how the divorcement of power from responsibility was a formula for disaster. Healthsouth, another firm caught up in such a scheme, in which “cooking the books,” i.e., purposely, deceptively, and fraudulently making falsified entries in the firm’s accounting, most often for the purpose of driving up (artificially inflating) the company’s stock prices, which in turn benefited the executives, primarily, but others who may, or may not, have been somewhat privy to the acts… which, at that time, were not in and of themselves illegal, per se, though they were most certainly frowned upon by reputable accounting firms, Wall Street, and others.
Congress put a screeching halt to such abuses by writing legislation requiring the CEO to personally sign for the authenticity and accuracy of all corporate accounting and reports. And that was just a scratch up upon the surface of corporate greed and corruption, which remains prevalent today, more so now in the form of avarice (greed gone wild), than anything else.
Corporate avarice is also the single greatest problem in our nation’s economy, with one very minor example being the difference between the CEO’s pay, and their average employee’s pay — who, on average, made over 350 times the average employee’s pay. In 1989, the average differential was 61 to 1.
In fact, research performed by the Economic Policy Institute found that from 1978 to 2020, increases in CEO compensation far outstripped growth of either the Standard & Poor’s stock market index – 817%, exceeded by 6 times the increases in top income earners’ gains, and grew, on average, 1322%.
Meanwhile, in that same period, the typical employee’s annual compensation only grew a paltry 18%.
When it comes to Wall Street and BIG BUSINESS, it’s more for them, less for you.
‟Corporations are people, my friend.〞
by Mark LeVine, Director of the Program in Global Middle East Studies at UC Irvine
12 August 2011
Mitt Romney’s friendliness to corporations excuses them from bearing the responsibilities endowed upon them by the rights they are given as ‘persons’ under US law [AFP]
Thank God for Mitt Romney.
In a moment of candour he likely thought would win him much needed support from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, the presidential candidate explained his thinking to a heckler – who asked why Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, December 8, 2022
Re: Supreme Court of the United States
“Does this institution need to change in some way to regain the public trust?”
The short answer is a resounding “YES!”
Now, read on to learn at least one stunning reason why.
There’s PLENTY of brouhaha and he-said-she-said nonsense reported as “journalism” these days, and the same is absolutely true with this most recent matter concerning allegations that a previous decision from the SCOTUS, specifically referring to news that a “leak” about how a decision would be rendered in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., would be rendered.
In short, the 2014 case revolved around birth control, that the defendant, Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. wanted to deny birth control to Burwell the plaintiff, and asserted that they had a legal right to do so.
In essence the ruling “permits a closely held for-profit corporation [meaning one that is privately held by an individual, family, or family trust] to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.”
Hobby Lobby is a multi-billion dollar, for-profit, privately held corporation owned by the Green family of Oklahoma City, OK, which has just under 1000 stores nationwide, over 43,000 employees, and describes itself as an “arts & crafts store,” which imports most, if not all, of their merchandise from China, India, Vietnam, and other developing nations. Very little, if any, of the merchandise they sell is American made.
With a net worth of $15.1 BILLION estimated by Forbes, the Green family members are Evangelical Christians, and the company was founded in 1972. In the company’s 50-year history, it, and/or its owners have been criticized for numerous deceptive and questionable activities, and have been found guilty in Federal court in 2017 of smuggling ancient middle eastern antiquities — 5,500 artifacts purchased for $1.6 billion — which were later learned to have been looted from archeological sites, and shipped in boxes deliberately deceptively labeled as “tile samples,” to their Oklahoma City corporate headquarters. For that crime, they were ordered to pay a $3 million fine, forced to return the booty, and forfeited the money which they spent to illegally purchase the loot. From 2018-2020, they also later confessed that fragments of a document which they claimed were portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, were forgeries, though they presented them as authentic in their Washington, DC-based “Museum of the Bible.” And in March 2020, the Greens announced that they would be repatriating 11,500 additional ancient artifacts to Iraq and Egypt.
As the COVID pandemic began to rage and claim lives, dropping humans like so many flies, the company refused to close its stores in numerous locations because Deborah Green, the founder’s spouse, claimed to have “heard a message from God” to keep them open, and further falsely claimed that they were an “essential” service employer which exempted them from compliance with various states’ and local laws ordering businesses closed for public health preservation, to prevent spread of the disease. Later, under pressure from employees concerned for their own safety and welfare, the corporation acquiesced to their employees’ pressure, closed all stores, and furloughed every employee, which led at least two employees to remark, “This has all been so stressful and exhausting. I don’t want to stay home because I’m too lazy to work. I want to stay home to do my part to stop the spread of the virus.” -and- “The line our manager gave us [from corporate] was, ‘The employees got what the employees wanted; the stores were closed.’ My question was, ‘Did God tell them they needed to close the stores and not pay us?'”
In the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. ruling, the SCOTUS held that not only can corporations have, practice, and espouse a religion, but that they can also deny healthcare treatment to anyone in the organization who may need a medication which the corporation finds onerous, or objectionable, based upon ostensibly religious grounds.
It’s not about “rights” as the plaintiffs allege, it’s about CONTROL — specifically, control over others in an effort to manipulate them, to force them to abide by manipulator’s beliefs — NOT about individual liberty, or freedom.
This most recent revelation of a much-earlier leak comes on the heels of another similarly related, though much more blatant, and publicly observed leak: A decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a ruling from 6 so-called “conservative,” Republican-appointed Justices — 3 questionable appointments who were nominees by The Federalist Society via then-POTUS Donald Trump — whose combined opinions effectively overturned Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision allowing abortion, and the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey which affirmed Roe. A copy of a draft in the Dobbs ruling was “leaked” to POLITICO, and was later authenticated by CJ Roberts.
see: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21835435/scotus-initial-draft.pdf
The 6 GOP-nominated right-wing radicals all attested, under oath, during their confirmation hearings, that Roe was well-established and settled legal precedent of very nearly 50 years, that its rendering was unimpeachable, and unquestionable. Of course, lawyers that they are, they artfully dodged giving a straight-forward and direct answer when asked their opinions of the Roe decision — stare decisis be damned. Naturally, it has led to justifiable moral outrage from many who contend that such deception under oath is an impeachable offense. And, it very well may be.
Naturally, Justice Alito, and others, have denied that any such thing occurred, and further denied that he “leaked” information on how the Hobby Lobby ruling would be made.
HOWEVER…
Rob Schenck, the longtime vehemently radicalized Evangelical protagonist in this matter, goes into GREAT DETAIL describing how he was the one whose idea to duplicitously train of a group of spies to infiltrate the SCOTUS with well-heeled, wealthy couples, to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Why is Herschel Walker surprised?
Seriously…WHY?
The GOP (Grand Old Party, a Republican moniker which emerged c.1854) is no more, and is not even a mere shadow of its former self. It is LITERALLY the FGOP — Formerly Grand Old Party, or OGOP, Once Grand Old Party.
Today, it’s the POT (Party Of Trump) — a natural-born liar, swindler, cheater, chiseler, defrauder, narcissistic, racist, xenophobic, duplicitous, unpatriotic, treasonously treacherous traitor who will LITERALLY DO ANYTHING to get what he wants, everyone and everything else be damned — and his servile sycophantic boot-licking, pablum-puking puerile punks.
They’re ALL ass-kissers — as POS45 (Piece Of Shit 45) described his subservient anointed Ohio Senate candidate J.D.Vance while campaigning with him September 17, 2022 saying, “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad“ — and mendaciously monolithic morons.
The last genuine Republican may have very well been the now-late Arizona Senator John McCain who so despised POS45 that, while in his last days on Earth, still in office and dying from glioblastoma, a brain cancer that typically kills its victims within 16 months +/-, that he gave specific orders FORBIDDING PO45 from attending his funeral.
So, for Herschel Walker, that poor fool-as-a-tool used by POS45 and the OGOP — a Black man, at that — it’s just another example of how the worthless scum who fly that elephantine banner treat Americans.
The “I love the poorly-educated” voters who cast their ballots for anything with the letter “R” beside their name (which instead ought to be a “T”), are unthinking “Concrete Block Republicans” who would literally vote for a concrete block instead of anyone in any other party, demonstrating that they’re vacuous prattling imbeciles who neither think, nor attempt to think, and very much vote for anything that flies that modern political jolly roger.
Moreover, it’s ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that PO45 will be VERY MUCH trying to buy his way back into the White House, and continues demonstrating his deliberately deceptive, swindling, chiseling, cheating ways.
It’s just pure putrid MAGA effluvium on the Trump Dump garbage scow.
Herschel Walker’s campaign to Republicans:
Stop〝deceptive fundraising〞in Georgia U.S. Senate runoff
Republican politicians and associated committees are sending out desperate fundraising emails begging the GOP faithful to help save America by getting behind Herschel Walker in his Dec. 6 runoff against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia.
But what’s not immediately clear to recipients is how little of that money is going to Walker’s campaign: just a dime for every dollar given by small donors.
Walker’s campaign, which has trailed Warnock’s in fundraising throughout the election, is asking fellow Republicans to stop their fundraising practices — or at least to start sharing more with the candidate.
Herschel Walker during his Unite Georgia Bus Stop campaign rally in Norcross, GA, September 9, 2022. Photo by Demetrius Freeman / The WaPo
“We need everyone focused onwinning the Georgia Senate race, and deceptive fundraising tactics by teams that just won their races are siphoning money away from Georgia,” said Walker’s campaign manager Scott Paradise on Monday.
“This is the last fight of 2022, and every dollar will help,” Paradise said. “The companies and consultants raising money off this need to cut it out.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, October 3, 2022
Partisan politics makes enemies of men & women who would otherwise be friends.
Matt Gaetz is a prime example of that, as is Marjorie Taylor Green, and Colorado High School dropout Lauren Boebert, as is Ted “Canun” Cruz, as are several others. Those individuals exist to serve themselves, and their interests, personally, without respect for their constituency’s wishes, or expressed desires. It is the most egregious example and type of self-seeking, and a callous disregard for the well-being and lives of others.
During Texas’ statewide energy crisis (electrical & NatGas) Ted “Cancun” Cruz and his family fled to Cancun, Mexico, where they partied and vacationed for several days. Then, presumably struck by pangs of conscience, Ted departed earlier than his family — but only by a few days. Of course, the best part was hearing Ted try and justify his actions by saying something about “work,” which for him is warming a seat in the Senate.
That is, if one doesn’t count him as being a constantly-generating bag of hot noxious gas on Capitol Hill whom is known for its enormous volume of putrid output… which, of course, he is.
But Matt Gaetz… don’t you wonder what ever became of the investigation into his behavior with now-plead-guilty sex trafficking pal Joel Greenberg? Seems Federal Prosecutors found that the 2 most central and most important witnesses were “unreliable” — Joel Greenberg, and the then-17-year-old young woman —
Federal Prosecutors were examining whether Greenberg paid women to have sex with Gaetz,
and whether the two shared sexual partners,
including the 17-year-old girl at issue in Greenberg’s case.
— which would hamper any prosecution attempt — and so for that primary reason, declined to prosecute.
KEY BACKGROUND, via Forbes: “Greenberg, who was elected as tax collector in 2016, was arrested last summer on charges of stalking and using social media to impersonate an opponent. An ensuing investigation — including a raid of Greenberg’s home — resulted in him being accused of soliciting a girl between the ages of 14 and 17 for sex, wire fraud, conspiracy to bribe a public official and theft of government property. That probe reportedly found evidence linking him to Gaetz, prompting a Justice Department investigation into whether Greenberg procured women for Gaetz and whether the Florida Republican had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl whom he paid to travel with him.”
Given Greenberg’s case history, Jurors would most likely NOT be inclined to believe sworn testimony from him, who as a politician, fabricated a false story against a schoolteacher who was campaigning against him as Tax Collector. Greenberg anonymously sent letters to the school where the teacher worked, and falsely claimed that the teacher had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student — an allegation similar to the Gaetz case — which was but 1 charge of 6 to which Greenberg plead guilty. The other charges to which Greenberg plead guilty were identity theft, stalking, wire fraud, conspiracy to bribe a public official, and sex trafficking of a minor.
“Nobody’s going to believe anything that Joel Greenberg says by itself. His statements would need to be corroborated by testimony or evidence,” said David Bear, a lawyer for the schoolteacher.
What a lucky strike for Gaetz, eh?
Gaetz Maintains Innocence As Associate Admits Introducing ‘Other Adult Men’ To Minor For Paid Sex In Guilty Plea Deal
— Introduced her to “other adult men” who “engaged in commercial sex acts” with her.
Exactly what are “commercial sex acts”? Is that anything like cattle insemination? What about its collection? Is that also a sex act? And, to the extent that humans are involved with animal sex acts, that makes for a good headline.
Gotta’ sell those papers, don’cha know?
But, what kind of human being would CONTINUOUSLYvoteAGAINST helping their own fellowman, especially during time of natural disaster?
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, September 12, 2022
The reader should bear in mind that, in Alabama, there are: 399 TOTAL Law Enforcement Organizations 297 Municipal PDs 67 Sheriff’s Departments 25 Community College/University PDs 7 Judicial/Drug Task Force 2 Airport PDs 1 Special Investigations (fire/explosion)
CRIME IN ALABAMA
Alabama, like many, or even most, states, likes to crow about how much they appreciate, or even revere, their Law Enforcement Officials (LEOs). And, under a Republican ultra-majority dominated legislature, executive branch, and judiciary, for well over a decade, one would imagine that by now, the controlling party, since 2011, would have gotten a firm grip on problems facing residents — to either resolve, ameliorate, or eliminate them.
They have not.
Consider crime. Often touted as a Republican talking point, e.g. being “tough on crime,” one would imagine that not only the Corrections system would have corrected and reformed those entrusted to its “corrections,” but that Law Enforcement agencies statewide would be supported, strengthened, and improved by the Republicans to protect the public, and uphold the laws, as is their charge. The state’s prison system, like the ignored metaphorical “elephant in the room,” has long teetered on a Federal takeover for overcrowding, violence, inhumane conditions, and corruption, while Alabama’s LEOs and their agencies continue failing their charge of public protection by not arresting offenders, solving crimes, and bringing swift justice for the offended victims.
And that proverbial “three-legged stool” has at least one woefully short leg. And that, is solving crimes.
In law enforcement jargon, crimes are considered “cleared,” or solved, when a suspect is arrested, and sometimes, several crimes can be cleared with one arrest. But not always. That terminology is used nation-wide at all levels of law enforcement, Local, State, and Federal.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, July 10, 2022
Joker in Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. has presided over THE MOST radicalized Supreme Court in well over 100 years.
Since his nomination by then-POTUS George W. Bush, and Senate confirmation by a 78-22 margin, Roberts has demonstrated, time, and time, and time again, that he, and other radicalized SCOTUS GOPers, have no respect for the legal concept of stare decisis, precedent, or other staid legal matters, the purpose of which is to provide stability to civil society.
What do Robert Bork, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts have in common? To find out more, read on.
If, in the law, nothing is TRULY ever settled, and any court now, or in the future, can simply overturn any law or decision with which they disagree — regardless of how long it’s been in effect, and regardless of what their confirmation testimony was — then our nation’s foundation is insecure.
And like subterranean termites tunneling into a well-built house, practically undetected, it is showing signs that it has been undermined. And just as with termite damage, exactly how extensive it is, how severe it has become, and what repair costs will be, remains to be seen.
Since becoming Joker in Chief Justice in September 2005, he has presided over 20 reversals of opinion, some dating as far back as 1911.
What do Robert Bork, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts have in common? To find out more, read on.
In the Leegin case, the matter brought before the SCOTUS was one of violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act through price-fixing by Leegin, which, as the court’s decision stated in the beginning, that, “in Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co., 220 U. S. 373 (1911), the Court established the rule that it is per se illegal under § 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U. S. C. § 1, for a manufacturer to agree with its distributor to set the minimum price the distributor can charge for the manufacturer’s goods.”
Further, the court noted that, “on appeal Leegin did not dispute that it had entered into vertical price-fixing agreements with its retailers.”
A “vertical agreement” is the integration of two or more businesses in a supply chain. A “horizontal” merger would be the combining of two or more companies that did essentially the same thing.
Vertical agreements are generally illegal because they tend to eliminate competition, create a monopoly, artificially increase prices and otherwise adversely affect a free market.
And yet, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Leegin.
Why?
This is where matters begin to show the influence of relationship and affiliation.
What is fascinating, and disturbingly telling, is that the Roberts-led radical court quoted a book on anti-trust law authored by Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, October 30, 2021
FACEBOOK is now Dead.
Long live Facebook!
The company formerly known as “Facebook,” whose CEO/Chairman of the Board is Mark Zuckerberg – whom is Jewish – amidst increasingly withering criticism of longstanding unscrupulous, unAmerican, and unethical activity by the company, has recently announced that he has unilaterally decided to change the company’s name to “Meta.”
The perverse irony of that matter, is that the English word “meta,” as spoken, is the Hebrew word for “dead.”
The Hebrew word מֵ֣ת (mêṯ) is a verb, in the perfect, third person tense, and is the singular of מוּת (muth) meaning “to die,” or “to kill.”
That’s entirely appropriate, of course, considering that the company has conducted internal research which has conclusively proven that Facebook’s secret algorithms have caused suicides in pre-teens, especially little girls.
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook executive and data scientist for the social media behemoth, testified October 5, 2021 before the United States Senate Commerce Committee’s Sub-Committee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, and stated in part that, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr departs his home September 10, 1998, in McLean, VA. The 445-page Starr report on the investigation into the affair between President Clinton and former White House Intern Monica Lewinsky was delivered to Congress Wednesday afternoon. KHUE BUI/AP
Here’s your QAnon pedophile network boss.
Would you be surprised to know that it’s Kenneth Starr?
Remember: The [radical right-wing] QAnon conspiracy theory [falsely] claims that Democrats are involved in a global cannibalistic pedophile network, and that anti-Trumpers were directly involved in an attempt to destroy the 45th President’s efforts in office because he was onto their game and was rooting them out of “deep state” government bureaucracies and big business. The never-Trump movement began as intra-party opposition by prominent conservative Republicans to prevent him from being nominated, and later morphed.
And it is worth noting, that the pernicious QAnon conspiracy theory has long been discredited by numerous independent individuals, none of whom worked together, and that like many other conspiracy theories – and viruses – continually evolves, ever changing various elements of itself to potentially become as damaging as possible.
There’s always at least one element of truth in every lie, no matter how far-fetched the lie is, for without it, the entire house of cards falls apart. That’s just how fragile conspiracy theories are. They CANNOT survive independently, and like all parasites, need hosts in order to perpetuate.
Great Saint James (top center) and Little Saint James (lower center) islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands were owned by Jeffrey Epstein.
And in this instance, pedophilia is the solitary bit of truth.
From that single germ, the conspiracy begins to grow. Assertions of the existence of international cartels or networks are built upon the fact that Epstein was known to frequently fly abroad to various nations, and between 1995 and 2013 logged at least 730 flights to and from Teterboro Airport, NJ – a small, general aviation reliever “corporate” airport, just 12 miles from midtown Manhattan, where he maintained a seven-story, including basement, 18,814 square foot residence at 9 East 71st Street, on the posh Upper East Side of Manhattan. The pilots’ flight logs of his travel to and from Teterboro Airport represent only about a third of his total air travel between 1995 and 2013, and consist of thousands of flights. He was arrested at Teterboro Airport July 6, 2019 returning from Paris.
His international travel was facilitated by ownership of several jet aircraft and helicopters, including a Cessna Citation jet, a Gulf Stream jet, and a Boeing 727 jet airliner nicknamed “Lolita Express,” along with two Caribbean islands — the 78-acre Little Saint James, and the larger adjacent 165-acre Great Saint James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands — and was known to host notable guests on the them, among whom are known to have been former U.S. President Bill Clinton, accompanied by his Secret Service agents, because flight itineraries, manifests and passenger lists detail that he flew there as Epstein’s guest at least 26 times.
Jeffrey Epstein, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department booking photo, 27 July 2006, following his indictment for soliciting prostitution.
Other notable personalities who Epstein hosted regularly included such high-profile individuals as Donald Trump, renown Harvard University Professor of Law, emeritus, Alan Dershowitz, the UK’s Prince Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, June 4, 2021
Make no mistake, I openly advocate for the wholesale legalization, taxation, and regulation of cannabis similarly as is done for beverage alcohol — though I have not always. And yet, as a licensed healthcare professional, I am under no misguided notion that there are genuine scientific considerations to be had.
Like many others, this is not a simple matter, per se — it is as complex as we human beings, with myriad matters which “Just Say ‘NO!’” has never, nor will ever, satisfy. Science and understanding is not advanced by the word “NO!”
Similarly as well, there is practically no disagreement that historic American jurisprudence on the matter not only had its genesis with deep roots in racism – which remains to this day – but has almost single-handedly created the global criminal cabal of narcotrafficking enterprises that have now become international terrorist organizations. It has now become a matter of national security, and not just for the United States. Global security is predicated upon addressing these concerns.
Jesus Malverde is a mythical figure, allegedly born as Jesús Juárez Mazo on December 24, 1870, just outside Culiacán, the state capital of Sinaloa, whom is said to be the “patron saint” of “narcotraficantes” (drug traffickers), and is known by his devotees as “el ángel de los pobres” (the angel of the poor). According to legend, he was a lifetime resident of Sinaloa, an historically poverty-stricken area which is now recognized as the de facto headquarters location for a bloodthirsty global narcotrafficking cartel bearing the state’s name, which is infamous for their nefarious misdeeds, cold-blooded murders, and other heinous acts. The legends, which vary widely, typically assert that Malverde was a “Robinhood” type character, who stole from the wealthy and distributed to the poor. In reality, narco-money has significantly revitalized Sinaloa, and to a large extent, reinforced ancient customs, including the veneration of folk saints as Jesus Malverde.
It is, in fact, fueling the civil sociopolitical upheaval in Central American nations such as Read the rest of this entry »
“In a bid to make prosecutors more accountable for their actions, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler has proposed that the state scrap the grand jury system of bringing criminal indictments.
“Wachtler, who became the state’s top judge earlier this month, said district attorneys now have so much influence on grand juries that “by and large” they could get them to “indict a ham sandwich.”
A month later, the New York Times noted that Judge Wachtler believed that Grand Juries “operate more often as the prosecutor’s pawn than the citizen’s shield.”
That belief – that Prosecutors can get Grand Juries to do whatever they want them to do – may sound familiar to anyone who has read, or heard, news items of the criticisms of almost any Grand Jury in the United States.
But, of course, the adage doesn’t always true.
At least not in this instance, when the Feds have the goods on their will-plead-guilty-Monday-morning 17 May 2021 suspect – such as DNA and fingerprints – and as an unexpected by-product of the investigation are – more than likely – working on another very closely-related suspect, who – as of yet – remains unnamed, and unindicted.
That as-yet unnamed, and unindicted suspect would be Florida’s Republican Representative for the 1st Congressional District, Matt Gaetz.
Gatez and Greenberg are each quintessential examples of a Florida Manchild. They’re each multi-millionaires from daddy’s money – Greenberg from his father’s dental clinics, and Gaetz from his father’s pharmaceutical interests – and are, as such, spoiled brats and children of privilege who think the world is their oyster.
One “Florida Man” in the headline, of course, is Joel Greenberg, who was formerly a Tax Collector for Seminole County, Florida, and a very good buddy to the other Florida Man, the Banana Republican Florida Representative Matt Gaetz of the state’s 1st Congressional District in Fort Walton.
After his election to public office, Greenberg immediately began ingratiating himself to Trump supporters, and spoke at a rally in Sanford, FL in late 2016. Investigative reporting by the New York Times found that Greenberg and Gaetz had initially met one another through their support of Trump some time in 2017 and in June that year, Gaetz suggested to Greenberg that he consider campaigning for U.S. Congress. And on July 8 that year, Greenberg posted on Twitter a picture himself, along with convicted Federal felon, Nixon aficionado and political dirty-trickster Roger Stone, and Gaetz.
In this September 30, 2019, file photo, Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg talks to the Orlando Sentinel during an interview at his office in Lake Mary, Florida. As a key figure in the federal investigation of Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, Greenberg is expected to plead guilty to criminal charges next week. Joel Greenberg will appear Monday, 17 May 2021 in Federal court in Orlando, Florida for a change of plea hearing, according to court documents. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP, File)
Investigation into Greenberg’s dealings was first initiated by the Secret Service, in response to complaints that he improperly used county resources to mine Bitcoin… after cryptocurrency mining computers he’d purchased with taxpayer dollars for his private personal use caused an electrical system overload, resulting in a fire, which altogether caused over $7000 worth of uninsured damage to Seminole County property.
When the Feds wrapped up their investigation into Greenberg and his activities, they had leveled a 33 count indictment of violating several Federal laws – on charges ranging from stalking to sex trafficking, and conspiracy to fraud – so a plea deal down to 6 is a significant reduction – a very nearly 82% reduction.
David Weinstein, a former Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida said of Greenberg’s plea deal that, “His cooperation requires him to be providing truthful testimony and to provide it at the government’s request.”
As part of his plea agreement, on Monday, 17 May 2021 in Orlando at the George C. Young Federal Annex Courthouse in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Joel Greenberg will admit to recruiting women for commercial sexual exploitation, paying them over $70K from 2016 to 2018, including at least one underage girl then-aged 17, whom he paid to have sex with him, and with others, including Matt Gaetz.
Count One: Sex Trafficking of a Child – 18 USC § 1591
Count Eight: Producing a False ID – 18 US § 1028(a)(1)
Count Nine: Aggravated Identity Theft – 18 USA § 1028A
Count Fourteen: Wire Fraud – 18 USC § 1343
Count Twenty-Four: Stalking – 18 USC § 2261A
County Twenty-Six: Conspiracy – 18 USC § 371
Minimum & Maximum Penalties
Count One: Mandatory Minimum 10 years, up to life, $250,000 fine, supervised release not less than 5 years up to life, special assessment $100
Count Eight: Maximum sentence 15 years, $250,000 fine, 3 years supervised release, special assessment $100
Count Nine: Mandatory Minimum 2 years (consecutive to any other conviction), $250,000 fine, 1 year supervised release, special assessment $100
Count Fourteen: Maximum 20 years, $250,000 fine or 2x gross loss caused by offense – whichever is greater, 3 years supervised release, special assessment $100
Count Twenty-Four: 5 years maximum $250,000 fine, 3 years supervised release, special assessment $100
Count Twenty-Six: Maximum 15 years, $250,000 fine or twice gross gain or loss caused by offense – whichever is greater, 3 years supervised release, special assessment $100 – because offense was committed while on pre-trial release, and was warned about it
Federal prosecutors say that Greenberg abused his public office as Tax Collector for Seminole County, Florida not only by embezzling $400,000, but also by improperly using a statewide driver license database to “investigate” information about sexual partners, including a then-17-year old girl with whom he, and others had paid to have sex with.
He was also charged with numerous violations of the Federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, on multiple counts of producing a fraudulent identification document and creating false identification documents, along with aggravated identity theft.
Specifically, Greenberg also abused his elected office by using “his access to the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office to take surrendered driver licenses before they were shredded,” and then he “used the surrendered driver licenses that he had taken to cause fake driver licenses to be produced that had his photograph but the personal information of the victims whose driver licenses he had taken.”
Prosecutors also say that Greenberg’s corrupt house of cards began to crumble with a series of falsified letters which Greenberg had crafted and mailed [fraudulent use of U.S. Mail] which purported to be from a non-existent “very concerned student” enrolled at a private prep school where Brian Beute – a Republican candidate for Tax Collector and political opponent – taught music, and falsely alleged that the music teacher (Greenberg’s political opponent) had engaged in sexual misconduct with another student.
As part of that Roger-Stone-initiated ruse, he also created fake social media accounts in order to pose as Beute, or others, in an attempt to discredit him.
Republicans excel, are expert in, and frequent users of, the tactic of psychological projection – falsely claiming that an opponent is engaging in the very activities which they (the accuser) are/have engaged in.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg III testified in court that investigators found Greenberg’s fingerprints and DNA on the letters, and traced the fake social media accounts to his computer’s IP address.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, May 1, 2021
Donna Brazile, publicity photo
There are probably plenty of reasons to dislike Donna Brazile, the twice-former interim DNC Chair – not the least of which was the discovery that, following a WikiLeaks email dump, she’d been sharing debate questions with Hillary, and subsequent to a second release of the tranche, she resigned in shame from her position at CNN as a political commentator/pundit.
Perhaps she was trying to redeem herself, or, maybe she was trying to hold a light illuminating the damning evidence of HRC’s unethical behavior and corruption (though not illegal), or maybe she was hoping to drive another nail into Hillary’s political coffin, or “throw some others under the bus,” and even if it was a cathartic political “kiss and tell,” her motivation for what she wrote is not the question.
It is ~what~ she wrote in her book “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House” that tells the story.
She discovered that because of the party’s fiscal indebtedness, a backroom deal had been struck with Hillary and the DNC in August 2015, just Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, April 8, 2021
Looks like John let the little head do the thinking for the big head.
He also likes anal sex – something his wife apparently doesn’t give him.
Yes… it’s true:
Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has been caught red-handed in an extra-marital relationship, much to the chagrin of his cult-like followers who were hoping he would campaign for the soon-to-be-vacated U.S. Senate seat held by almost-nonagenarian Democrat-turned-Republican-since-1994 Richard Shelby (b.1934), who has occupied the office since 1986, which is up for grabs in 2022.
“He was such an idiot. And he would talk, just… I don’t know if you ever met him outside of looking like he’s a professional, he’s a total [sic] different person. He’s sometimes funny, and he’s charismatic, and he has a sense of humor… but then, when the real John Merrill stands up, then you’re kinda’ like ‘uggh.'”
– Cesaire McPherson, 44-year old Legal Assistant, and lover to Alabama Republican Secretary of State John Merrill in phone interview with National File about their extramarital sexual relationship
Of note, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service on December 17, 2020 updated their report “Membership of the 116th Congress: A Profile” which found that the average age of the average Senator was 62.9 years, while the average age of the Members of the House of Representatives was 57.6. At the time of the report, there were only 3 African American Senators – Kamala Harris, D-CA Corey Booker, D-NJ, and Tim Scott, R-SC. Since Kamala Harris is now Vice President, there are now only 2 African American Senators. And, the oldest Senator in the 116th Congress was Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, born June 22, 1933, who was then aged 85.
Merrill’s official statement said that, “With the end of my term coming up in January of 2023, I have been presented with a variety of options for where my path in public service could lead. I have decided that I will not be a candidate for any office in 2022.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, March 31, 2021
He’s a “Florida Man” to be certain, and his Twitter bio states as much. He’s the moral equivalent of Jeffrey Epstein. His “NAY” vote was the EXCLUSIVE – the SOLITARY – the ONLY vote against a human sex trafficking bill. And his flimsy “excuse” or rationale why, is as weak as water. He’ll be out soon as just another worthless, hypocritical, flash-in-the-pan piece of GOP garbage.
Matt Gaetz, On The Ropes From Juvenile Sex Trafficking Investigation, Finds Few Friends In The GOP
by Juliegrace Brufke & Mike Lillis
03/31/21 05:33 PM EDT
In four years on Capitol Hill, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has experienced a meteoric rise to national prominence — one fueled by a close alliance with former President Trump, a penchant for political theatrics and a no-apologies brand of conservatism that’s made him a darling of the right-wing cable outlets.
Matt Gaetz now – with a slicked-back pompadour, and snazzy suit.
Yet this week, facing a federal investigation into allegations of a sexual relationship with an underage girl, Gaetz is finding himself in an unusual spot: On the ropes and virtually alone.
Few of Gaetz’s GOP colleagues are coming to the defense of the third-term Floridian following a New York Times report that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating allegations of sexual misconduct with — and interstate trafficking of — a minor roughly two years ago. And a number of Republicans, while warning against jumping to premature conclusions about Gaetz’s conduct, also suggested they wouldn’t miss him if he were gone.
“I don’t know anything about this situation other than to say he has certainly made enemies and painted a bull’s-eye on his back,” said one Republican lawmaker, who requested anonymity to speak freely on a sensitive topic. “This appears to be a self-inflicted wound.”
Gaetz has vehemently denied that he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old-girl — the central allegation of the Justice Department probe, which was launched under the Trump administration. Gaetz contends that he and his family have been targeted by a former DOJ official in an extortion scheme seeking millions of dollars to have the allegations vanish.
In a series of tweets, statements and media interviews Tuesday evening, he maintained that Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
The transcript of then-President Trump’s hour-long call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is too lengthy to duplicate here, per se, but suffice it to say, it all boiled down to this oft-repeated remark by Trump during the call:
“The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new, and they don’t have seals, and there’s a 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.
“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.”
The call, which occurred on a Saturday afternoon, January 2, 2021, is a classic example of a shakedown.
In common parlance, the term “shakedown” refers to a criminal activity, describing extortion of money, as by blackmail. It is the preferred and primary definition in most reputable, and modern dictionaries.
Even the “Urban Dictionary,” a repository of modern colloquial use acknowledges similarly, but takes it at least one step further, by also acknowledging context of usage by writing that shakedown is,
“Another word for extortion/blackmail, or the obtaining of a good or service through means of force, threats/intimidation, or abuse of power.
Only one other dictionary acknowledges that capacity by writing that shakedown refers to “extortion, as by blackmail or threats of violence.”
Merriam-Webster defines it as “to rob by the use of trickery or threats.”
The Online Slang Dictionary finds similarly, by writing that it means “to extort. That is, to obtain something via force, threats, intimidation, abuse of power, etc.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, February 2, 2021
As a treasonously wicked, son of perdition and Manipulator in Chief, Trump’s planned corruption played out in public, in print and broadcast news reports (he’s a media whore), on Twitter (he’s a narcissist), on other social media, like FaceBook, and Parler, the favorite of White Supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other right-wing extremists.
His followers are rightly called the “Cult of Trump.”
WALLACE: In general, not talking about November, are you a good loser?
TRUMP: I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose. I don’t lose too often. I don’t like to lose.
WALLACE: But are you gracious?
TRUMP: You don’t know until you see. It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election. I really do.
WALLACE: Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?
TRUMP: No. I have to see. Look, Hillary Clinton asked me the same thing.
WALLACE: No, I asked you the same thing at the debate.
77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election
Within a few hours after the United States voted, the President declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.
By Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg and Michael S. Schmidt
January 31, 2021
By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts.
Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over.
Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews.
The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge.
As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media — that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes.
Mr. Clark warned that the suit Mr. Giuliani had in mind would be dismissed on procedural grounds. And a state audit was barreling toward a conclusion that the Dominion machines had operated without interference or foul play.
Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Clark a liar, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Clark called Mr. Giuliani something much worse. And with that, the election-law experts were sidelined in favor of the former New York City mayor, the man who once again was telling the president what he wanted to hear.
Thursday the 12th was the day Mr. Trump’s flimsy, long-shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something else entirely — an extralegal campaign to subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of his most devoted followers that it made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.
Weeks later, Mr. Trump is the former President Trump. In coming days, a presidential transition like no other will be dissected when he stands trial in the Senate on an impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection.” Yet his lie of an election stolen by corrupt and evil forces lives on in a divided America.
A New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media.
In the aftermath of that broken afternoon at the Capitol, a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump’s behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial.
But interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign.
Across those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency.
Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far.
In the Senate, he got early room to maneuver from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell. As he sought the president’s help in Georgia Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 1, 2021
Unless you’ve been in a cave in Tora Bora for the past week, or so, by now, you’ve probably heard of the Reddit/GameStop/Robinhood ordeal.
Here are the “players”:
• Vlad Tenev, CEO of the trading app Robinhood
• National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC)
• Day traders using the Robinhood app who also were participants in a Reddit group Wall Street Bets (properly as “r/wallstreetbets” – a forum called a “subreddit” on the popular website Reddit, which is a social platform and discussion group that also rates web content.)
• GameStop, a electronics/video game retailer
The long and short of it (a most befitting pun, wouldn’t you say?) is that a no-fees stock brokrage company named Robinhood, which uses an app for a mobile device to effectuate trades, had ceased processing orders on a company named GameStop, which raised the hackles of some observers, including Elon Musk, and other news reporting groups.
The reason why Robinhood ceased activity on trades for GameStop, and other companies was because a loose-knit group of day trader investors in the subReddit forum WallStreetBets – which totals over 4 million strong, and describe themselves as “degenerates” – decided to take on the abuses of Wall Street power players, most typically as hedge funds.
Hedge funds are alternative investments using pooled funds that employ different strategies to earn active returns, or alpha, for their investors. Hedge funds may be aggressively managed or make use of derivatives and leverage in both domestic and international markets with the goal of generating high returns (either in an absolute sense or over a specified market benchmark).
It is important to note that hedge funds are generally only accessible to accredited investors as they require less SEC regulations than other funds. One aspect that has set the hedge fund industry apart is the fact that hedge funds face less regulation than mutual funds and other investment vehicles.
Each hedge fund is constructed to take advantage of certain identifiable market opportunities. Hedge funds use different investment strategies and thus are often classified according to investment style. There is substantial diversity in risk attributes and investments among styles.
Legally, hedge funds are most often set up as private investment limited partnerships that are open to a limited number of accredited investors and require a large initial minimum investment. Investments in hedge funds are illiquid as they often require investors to keep their money in the fund for at least one year, a time known as the lock-up period. Withdrawals may also only happen at certain intervals such as quarterly or bi-annually.
A former writer and sociologist Alfred Winslow Jones’s company, A.W. Jones & Co. launched the first hedge fund in 1949. It was while writing an article about current investment trends for Fortune in 1948 that Jones was inspired to try his hand at managing money. He raised $100,000 (including $40,000 out of his own pocket) and set forth to try to minimize the risk in holding long-term stock positions by short selling other stocks. This investing innovation is now referred to as the classic long/short equities model. Jones also employed leverage to enhance returns.
In 1952, Jones altered the structure of his investment vehicle, converting it from a general partnership to a limited partnership and adding a 20% incentive fee as compensation for the managing partner. As the first money manager to combine short selling, the use of leverage shared risk through a partnership with other investors and a compensation system based on investment performance, Jones earned his place in investing history as the father of the hedge fund.
Hedge funds went on to dramatically outperform most mutual funds in the 1960s and gained further popularity when a 1966 article in Fortune highlighted an obscure investment that outperformed every mutual fund on the market by double-digit figures over the previous year and by high double-digits over the previous five years.
High-profile money managers deserted the traditional mutual fund industry in droves in the early 1990s, seeking fame and fortune as hedge fund managers. Unfortunately, history repeated itself in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s as a number of high-profile hedge funds, including Robertson’s, failed in spectacular fashion.
Since that era, the hedge fund industry has grown substantially. Today the hedge fund industry is massive—total assets under management in the industry are valued at more than $3.2 trillion according to the 2018 Preqin Global Hedge Fund Report. Based on statistics from research firm Barclays hedge, the total number of assets under management for hedge funds jumped by 2335% between 1997 and 2018.
The hedge funds had all “shorted” GameStop, which is well-known tactic to make money by the failure of a stock – “failure,” defined as a reduced price. In this case, Wall Street hedge fund managers had all “shorted” GameStop, and others, waiting for the price to drop before they sold the shares they were holding.
In a “short” sale (as it pertains to Wall Street trading), an entity “borrows” a stock from its owner, and holds it for a period of time, in anticipation that its price will drop enough so that they can then sell it (return its purchase price to the owner), and pocket the difference. It’s not illegal, and has been done for quite some time.
As you might imagine, by so doing (shorting), a stock can significantly, and adversely be affected.
But… a short sale can “go bad,” and that’s what the 4 million+ members of the subReddit group WallStreetBets did – ruin the day (or even longer) of many vulture capitalists hedge fund managers by driving up the price per share of GameStop.
GameStop, which has the ticker symbol GME, and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), has faced a decline in sales, 7 brokerages have issued twelve-month price objectives for GameStop’s shares which range from $3.50 to $33.00 per share. And on average, they expect GameStop’s per share stock price to be $11.93 in the next twelve months. That suggests that the stock has a possible downside of 96.3%.
For the last 5 years, GameStop stock price has been relatively stable, and only minimally changed, and has ranged from the lower $30 range to slightly over $4 per share. Their last dividend payment was March 14, 2019, which was $0.38 per share, which represented an increase from 2012 when it was $0.12 per share. Aside from the most recent price fluctuations, over its lifespan, GameStop’s price per share has ranged from $3.91 to $63.68 from February 2002 though August 2020.
At its highest, GameStop was valued at $483 per share on January 25, 2021. That’s where the Wall Street Bets Redditors (participants in Reddit) come into play. Their trading of the stock – specifically as purchases – drove up the stock to terrific heights, which in turn, caused problems with the hedge funds that held a short position on the stock – SIGNIFICANT problems.
In effect, the Redditors caused what’s called a “short squeeze” which is a market condition that occurs when investors who are betting against the stock (thinking it will fall in price) are forced to close out their position by buying the stock, which in turn, adds fuel to the fire.
So far this year, the Redditors have cost short-sellers over $19 billion in losses on GameStop alone. Much of Wall Street’s trades are now done by computer algorithm, which almost completely eliminates human involvement. So day traders, and others who may use apps to trade, are an anomaly in an otherwise almost-wholly automated market.
Melvin Capital, a roughly $12 billion hedge fund has suffered a more than 30% decline largely due to its short position in GameStop.
Payment For Order Flow (PFOF) is a practice in which brokerage firms are compensated to route their customers’ trading orders to certain market makers to execute the trades rather than directly to an exchange, which creates a potential conflict of interest between the brokerage and the customer.
The PFOF practice has enabled $0 commission trading, which was jump started by Robinhood’s launch in 2015, and was considered groundbreaking at the time when most investors had to pay upwards of $10 for every buy or sell order.
According to a SEC filing by Robinhood, they make a bulk of their money from the PFOF practice, and generated upwards of $100 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2020 from a number of market makers, including Citadel Securities.
Now, another free-trading brokerage firm is bucking the PFOF practice and shifting its business model to tipping.
In a blog post on Monday, Public.com said it would end the practice of selling its customers’ order flow to market makers, and would instead route them directly to exchanges like the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange.
The company issued a press release which stated in part that they would remove that inherent conflict of interest from their business model, “To align our incentives with those of our members, we will stop participating in the practice of PFOF and instead introduce a tipping feature on trades. Trades will remain commission-free and tipping is entirely optional.”
APEX, which is Public.com’s clearinghouse firm, was notified on January 30 of their intent to be taken off the “PFOF rails,” according to a blog post by the company, noting that all trade orders at the brokerage firm will be directly routed to exchanges for execution. The company said that transition away from PFOF and towards tipping could take a few weeks, but that “Transparency is a core pillar of building trust, and we think it’s important that we live up to our name. Direct routing to the exchanges is more expensive, and therefore we’re turning what used to be a revenue stream (PFOF) into a cost center and we’re optimistic that the difference will be offset by the optional tipping feature.”
Now, nearly every brokerage firm offers $0 commission trading.
But the PFOF practice is facing backlash from many, including venture capital investor Bill Gurley, who tweeted on Sunday, “If the SEC/government wants to ‘fix the plumbing’ the number one thing they should do is ban Payment for Order Flow.”
Gurley said that the practice “smells bad” and is already outlawed in the United Kingdom, and in Canada.
We’ve Seen This Before: The Current GameStop Drama Has Grassroots In The 2008 Housing Crash
by Liam O’Hara
• Main Street played by the rules, but Wall Street changed them mid-game.
• Retail traders on Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets had a simple buy-and-hold strategy for an overleveraged short position on GameStop held by Melvin Capital — until Wall Street shut it down.
• The game has been rigged all along and now it’s out in the open for all to see.
It’s been only a few days since news about the feud between Main Street and Wall Street entered the public’s awareness and the internet is already filled with more articles and stories about it than one could realistically hope to keep up with.
As a retail investor who bought a long position in GameStop (I am not a financial advisor, I just like the stock) only hours before its historic ascent, I only have my limited perspective and experience to offer. But, as a millennial who came of age during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 — and decided to study finance and accounting specifically because of it — I believe I have a somewhat unique, but relatable viewpoint.
For many retail traders, GameStop was a chance to get in on the ground floor of an arguably undervalued stock with the added benefit of watching the high and mighty of Wall Street squirm after being caught in an embarrassing position.
We’ve been through this type of thing before.
It is impossible to escape the fact that many of these small-time traders have vivid memories of the financial equivalent of an atomic bomb that Wall Street and government regulators dropped on the world in 2008. In the fallout of the housing crisis, hundreds of millions of people’s lives were upended.
Save for a few, like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, many Wall Street banks came out ahead because of obscure and convoluted financial derivatives that left regular people holding the bag.
Unemployment skyrocketed, families’ houses were foreclosed on, pensions were decimated, and the middle class was suddenly forced to scrape by just to feed their families. To add insult to injury, the federal government awarded these same banks $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money because they were “too big to fail.”
I was only 18 years old then and didn’t understand much about what was happening, but seeing my family suffer motivated me to learn more, and I’ve learned much since then. In many ways I’ve been waiting 13 years to write about it.
I was raised in a working class family in the suburbs of middle America.
My parents both worked hard to provide the best upbringing and educationavailable to us. Both are college educated and have worked in a variety of jobs, with my mother eventually settling into a role working for the county, and my father working in mortgage lending until the subprime mortgage crisis when he was forced to look for work elsewhere which he found at a large manufacturing company.
As the dust of the crisis settled and the recession loomed on the horizon, my dad was eventually let go during one of the multiple rounds of layoffs by his employer. We were fortunate enough to keep our house, but had little more to spend since most of the jobs available at that point were minimum wage. Between meager wages, intermittent unemployment benefits, and trips to the food banks, we managed to make it through one of the deepest recessions in decades.
In October 2008, two months after I began my freshman year at university (only made possible by generous scholarships), the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, was Read the rest of this entry »
Publix Gave $100K to DeSantis’ Re-Election Campaign Last Month
by Jessica Lipscomb<
January 12, 2021 – 10:26am
If you’ve been paying attention, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that Publix — Florida’s cult-favorite grocery store — made a six-figure contribution to the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, last month.
For years, the Lakeland-based company and members of its founding family have supported conservative causes and backed efforts to oppose progressive legislation, including the legalization of medical marijuana and the regulation of polystyrene, better known by the brand name Styrofoam. In 2018, Publix leaders gave $670,000 to a campaign for Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam. The next year, heirs to the Publix fortune donated $28,000 to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and $25,000 to a PAC supporting DeSantis’ re-election bid.
Last month, Publix doubled down on its support for the business-friendly governor. In December, the grocery chain made four $25,000 contributions to the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC, which has raised more than $50 million to date. Publix previously donated $25,000 to the committee in January 2020 and another $25,000 in November 2019, according to state records.
A spokesperson for Publix’s Florida stores did not respond to an email from New Times asking why the company supports DeSantis’ re-election.
The grocery chain has previously come under fire for its political donations. After survivors of the Parkland shooting reamed Publix for its support of Putnam, who described himself as a “proud NRA sellout,” the company in 2018 said it would re-evaluate its corporate processes for political advocacy. But the controversy died down weeks later, and Publix continued to make campaign contributions.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a Publix COVID vaccine announcement.
While many businesses have suffered because of the COVID-19 pandemic, grocery stores like Publix have enjoyed record sales as more people shifted to eating at home. The Lakeland Ledger reported that Publix’s profits rose 41 percent for the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, January 28, 2021
If you cant win honestly, the next step is using dishonesty.
And that’s EXACTLY what Georgia Banana Republicans are doing – changing the rules in the middle of the game when it becomes apparent that they’re starting to lose favor with The People.
Lying, corrupt, sons of bitches, and bastards… every god-damned one of ’em.
A Georgia Republican is introducing a bill requiring voters to send copies of their photo ID to election officials two times before being permitted to cast an absentee ballot.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 25, 2021
WashingtonMonthly.com
Can Trump’s Pardons Be Reversed?
by Holly Brewer and Timothy Noah
President Ulysses S. Grant did it, and George W. Bush, and the Constitution would seem to encourage it.
January 22, 2021
2:07 PM
We’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing about President Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour marathon of glaringly unethical pardons, but only a little consideration (see 1-here, 2-here, 3-here, 4-here, and 5-here) about whether the Constitution permits them. A decent case can be made that it does not—and that at least some of these pardons can be reversed.
The relevant passage is Article II, Section 2, in the so-called “Commander-in-chief clause.” The president, it says, “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Nobody knows precisely what that means, but Trump has been under impeachment and awaiting Senate trial — for the second time — since January 13, 2021.
The most interesting real-life precedent for restricting a president’s right to issue pardons concerns President Andrew Johnson, who in March 1868 became the first of three presidents to be impeached by Congress, and two months later became the first to win Senate acquittal.
In March 1869, Johnson, on his last full day in office, pardoned Jacob and Moses Dupuy, who’d been convicted of defrauding the Internal Revenue Department, and Richard C. Enright, who’d been convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government. On assuming office, Johnson’s successor, President Ulysses Grant, reversed all three by calling back the U.S. marshals out delivering the pardons. A fourth pardon that Grant meant to reverse, to one James F. Martin, was permitted to stand because Martin had it already in hand, according to the late P.S. Ruckman, Jr., a political scientist at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois. Grant’s reversal of Moses Dupuy’s pardon was challenged in court and upheld on the technical grounds that Dupuy never received it. (Ruckman, an expert on presidential pardons, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 18, 2021
Dear President Lincoln,
You and George Washington had something in common, aside from Presidency – you were both honest men.
There’s a story told, that as we understand it now, is but a mythical fable of someone’s vivid imagination, although every lie has an element of truth. That fable was first apparently crafted by the Reverend Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825), the first person ordained by the Anglican Church for the Episcopal Church in America after the American Revolution.
Though he first studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and in London, his calling was apparently to the Christian ministry, and he never practiced medicine.
His 1784 ordination – first as deacon, as customary, September 5, and then as priest on September 12 – was remarkable in part, because he was the first beneficiary of the English Parliament’s passage of the Enabling Act on August 13, 1784, which thereby enabled English bishops to ordain clergy for the American Church without requiring them to swear a loyalty oath to the English sovereign.
He later served as rector in two Maryland parishes – All Hallows’ Parish in Anne Arundel County, 1784-1789, and then from 1790-1792 of Westminster Parish in the same county.
For about 20 years, he was also an itinerant preacher at various Virginia parishes, most notably among them the Pohick Church, where George Washington (1732-1799) attended, before the Revolution. That enabled him to refer to himself as “formerly rector of Mt. Vernon Parish.”
From around 1791 until his death, he became an author, and book peddler for publisher Matthew Carey. Though he wrote and had published various moralizing tracts and biographies of individuals of renown in that era, such as Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, and General Francis Marion (a Continental Army General nicknamed the “Swamp Fox” for his elusive tactics), his most famous biography was of George Washington – “The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington, General and Commander of the Armies of America” – and first published in 1800. It proved to be quite a success, especially with school-aged children, and in its fifth edition in 1806 – albeit with a slightly different title, “The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen” – for the first time, there appeared the anecdote of Washington and the cherry tree.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 10, 2021
Thank goodness for citizens with integrity who help see to it that our nation’s governance continues without problems, despite the will of those who would otherwise thwart the will of the people, and the rule of law. THOSE people ARE patriots, though they garner little attention, and make no boast about their often-thankless work.
Many, if not most, of their postulates, warnings, and conclusions, were entirely spot-on.
Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition
August 3, 2020
Executive Summary
In June 2020 the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) convened a bipartisan group of over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts in a series of 2020 election crisis scenario planning exercises. The results of all four table-top exercises were alarming. We assess with a high degree of likelihood that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape.We also assess that the President Trump is likely to contest the result by both legal and extra-legal means, in an attempt to hold onto power. Recent events, including the President’s own unwillingness to commit to abiding by the results of the election, the Attorney General’s embrace of the President’s groundless electoral fraud claims,and the unprecedented deployment of federal agents to put down leftwing protests, underscore the extreme lengths to which President Trump may be willing to go in order to stay in office.
In this report, TIP explains the basis for our assessment. Our findings are bolstered by the historical experience of Bush v. Gore (2000) and other U.S. electoral dysfunctions. The closest analogy may be the election of 1876, a time of extreme partisanship and rampant disenfranchisement, where multiple states proffered competing slates of electors, and the election was only resolved through a grand political bargain days before Inauguration — one that traded an end to Reconstruction for electoral peace and resulted in a century of Jim Crow, leaving deep wounds that are far from healed today.
Among the findings we highlight in the report:
• The concept of “election night,” is no longer accurate and indeed is dangerous. We face a period of contestation stretching from the first day a ballot is cast in mid-September until January 20. The winner may not, and we assess likely will not, be known on “election night” as officials count mail-in ballots. This period of uncertainty provides opportunities for an unscrupulous candidate to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the process and to set up an unprecedented assault on the outcome. Campaigns, parties, the press and the public must be educated to adjust expectations starting immediately.
• A determined campaign has opportunity to contest the election into January 2021. We anticipate lawsuits, divergent media narratives, attempts to stop the counting of ballots, and protests drawing people from both sides. President Trump, the incumbent, will very likely use the executive branch to aid his campaign strategy, including through the Department of Justice. We assess that there is a chance the president will attempt to convince legislatures and/or governors to take actions – including illegal actions – to defy the popular vote. Federal laws provide little guidance for how Congress should resolve irregularities when they convene in a Joint Session on January 6, 2021. Of particular concern is how the military would respond in the context of uncertain election results. Here recent evidence offers some reassurance, but it is inconclusive.
• The administrative transition process itself may be highly disrupted. Participants in our exercises of all backgrounds and ideologies believed that Trump would prioritize personal gain and self-protection over ensuring an orderly administrative handoff to his successor. Trump may use pardons to thwart future criminal prosecution, arrange business deals with foreign governments that benefit him financially, attempt to bribe and silence associates, declassify sensitive documents, and attempt to divert federal funds to his own businesses.
These risks can be mitigated; the worst outcomes of the exercises are far from a certainty. The purpose of this report is not to frighten, but to spur all stake holders to action. Our legal rules and political norms don’t work unless people are prepared to defend them and to speak out when others violate them. It is incumbent upon elected officials, civil society leaders, and the press to challenge authoritarian actions in the courts, in the media, and in the streets through peaceful protest. Specific recommendations include:
• Plan for a contested election.If there is a crisis, events will unfold quickly, and sleep-deprived leaders will be asked to make consequential decisions quickly. Thinking through options now will help to ensure better decisions. Approach this as a political battle, not just a legal battle.In the event of electoral contestation, sustained political mobilization will likely be crucial for ensuring transition integrity. Dedicated staff and resources need to be in place at least through the end of January.
• Focus on readiness in the states, providing political support for a complete and accurate count. Governors, Secretaries of State, Attorneys General and Legislatures can communicate and rein-force laws and norms and be ready to confront irregularities. Election officials will need political and public support to see the process through to completion.
• Address the two biggest threats head on: Lies about “voter fraud” and escalating violence.Voting fraud is virtually non-existent, but Trump lies about it to create a narrative designed to politically mobilize his base and to create the basis for contesting the results should he lose. The potential for violent conflict is high, particularly since Trump encourages his supporters to take up arms.
• Anticipate a rocky administrative transition. Transition teams will likely need to do two things simultaneously: defend against Trump’s reckless actions on his way out of office; and find creative solutions to ensure landing teams are able to access the information and resources they need to begin to prepare for governing.
2
About the Transition Integrity Project
The Transition Integrity Project (TIP)¹ was launched in late 2019 out of concern that the Trump Administration may seek to manipulate, ignore, undermine or disrupt the 2020 presidential election and transition process. TIP takes no position on how Americans should cast their votes, or on the likely winner of the upcoming election; either major party candidate could prevail at the polls in November without resorting to “dirty tricks.” However, the administration of President Donald Trump has steadily undermined core norms of democracy and the rule of law and embraced numerous corrupt and authoritarian practices. This presents a profound challenge for those – from either party – who are committed to ensuring free and fair elections, peaceful transitions of power, and stable administrative continuity in the United States.
The American people have the right to choose their next president without intimidation or interference in the normal electoral process. Believers in democracy and the rule of law should therefore be prepared to take action to ensure that the results of the 2020 presidential election reflect the will of the American people. Like many authoritarian leaders, President Trump has begun to lay the groundwork for potentially ignoring or disrupting the voting process, by claiming, for instance, that any mail-in ballots will be fraudulent and that his opponents will seek to have non-citizens vote through fraud. Similarly, he has frequently expressed the view that he is entitled to additional time in office and that his opponents are seeking to steal the election. If President Trump’s future actions violate long-standing legal and ethical norms relating to presidential elections, there is also a risk that they will push other actors, including, potentially, some in the Democratic Party, to similarly engage in practices that depart from traditional rule of law norms,out of perceived self-defense.
The goal of TIP is to highlight these various electoral and transition-related risks and make recommendations to all actors, individual and institutional, who share a commitment to democracy and the rule of law.² The recommendations shared here reflect input from both Republicans and Democrats committed to these values. However, because the primary threat to the integrity of the election and transition appears to come from the Trump Administration, most of the recommendations in this memo focus on how actors committed to the rule of law can restrain or counter anti-democratic actions the Trump Administration and its supporters may take in connection with the 2020 election.
That TIP’s concerns are widely shared is reflected in the media attention which this project has already begun to garner. (For a list of articles as of late July 2020, see Appendix A.)
About the Scenario Exercises
In June 2020, TIP organized four scenario exercises to identify risks to the rule of law or to the integrity of the democratic process in the period between Election Day (November 3, 2020) and Inauguration Day (January 20, 2021), with an eye toward mitigation and/or prevention of worst-case outcomes.
At this point it seems possible that either candidate may achieve a decisive electoral victory, but the goal of TIP’s scenario exercises was to gain a better understanding of the tests our democratic institutions
——————————————————
¹ Rosa Brooks and Nils Gilman launched the Transition Integrity Project in December 2019 to focus on identifying and mitigating threats to democracy and administrative continuity in the period between Election Day and Inauguration. TIP has received advice and input from dozens of experts representing both major political parties. TIP is directed by Zoe Hudson. Inquires can be sent toinfo@transitionintegrityproject.org.
² TIP recognizes and shares the view that the Electoral College is profoundly anti-democratic, and that numerous long-standing practices also function to create structural biases in our voting system. For present purposes, however, these constraints are treated as givens.
3
could face in the event that candidates defy the norms that have underpinned American political practice for decades.Specifically, TIP wanted to examine some of the unknowns: How far might candidates go in contesting negative electoral outcomes or disrupting the normal transition process? How well would American institutions hold up if one or both candidates refused to “play by the rules”?
The four scenarios were developed after a consultative process involving outreach to experts on elections and transitions, political violence and instability, governance, and scenario planning and game design. Each of the four scenarios developed was different. (See Appendix B for a summary of the scenarios and key actions.) In one scenario, the exercise posited that the winner of the election was not known as of the morning after the election and the outcome of the race was too close to predict with certainty; in another, the exercise began with the premise that Democratic party candidate Joe Biden won the popular vote and the Electoral College by a healthy margin; and in a third, the exercise assumed that President Trump won the Electoral College vote but again lost the popular vote by a healthy margin. The fourth exercise began with the premise that Biden won both the popular vote and the Electoral College by a narrow margin.
Sixty-seven people participated as active “players” in one or more of the scenario exercises, while dozens more participated in the exercises as observers and offered feedback during debriefing sessions. Participants included members of both major political parties, former high-ranking government officials (including, for example, two former governors), senior political campaigners, nationally prominent journalists and communications professionals, social movement leaders, and experts on politics, national security, democratic reform, election law, and media.
Each simulation exercise involved seven teams, each composed of 2-3 people.The teams were constructed to allow players considerable flexibility to adopt different identities at different points in the game. Using a “matrix game”³ format, the teams were: (1) The Trump Campaign [“Team Trump”]; (2) The Biden Campaign [“Team Biden”]; (3) Republican Elected Officials; (4) Democratic Elected Officials; (5) Career Federal Government employees (civilian and military) and political appointees; (6) Media (right wing, left wing and mainstream); and (7) the Public (this team consisted of polling experts). Teams were made up of participants with “real life” experience in the types of roles they were asked to play. Under the rules of the matrix game, teams presented with the initial scenario could take any action they wanted. The chances of success of each team action were determined based on robust argumentation among all teams and the adjudication of a White Cell, as well as a randomizing factor based on dice rolls. It is important to note that the exercises were not designed to model or simulate legal strategy, but rather to better understand the potential political mobilization and media dynamics surrounding potential electoral contestation, and how candidates might exercise political power to achieve a win.
Key Insights from the Scenario Exercises
The scenario planning exercises were conducted in June 2020. Developments since then have only confirmed that there is every reason to be concerned that our electoral rules and norms are under threat. In an interview with Chris Wallace, President Trump suggested that he might not abide by the results of the election if he loses. The President deployed agents from Homeland Security to Portland to suppress racial
——————————————————
³ A “matrix game” approach emphasizes and facilitates creativity and dynamic interaction between teams representing major stakeholder groups. Participants make multifaceted, competitive arguments about not only their own in-tended actions, but also the actions of each of their allies, partners, and competitors. The iterative “contest of ideas” design forces players to interrogate and critique actions in real-time – which provides insight not only into what could happen, but also the reactions those actions may elicit. The game play focuses on players’ intentions, which makes this modality useful for analyzing competing strategies.
4
justice protestors, a move that outraged many, including the Republican former head of Homeland Security, and indicates President Trump’s appetite to deploy federal agents even against the will of local elected officials. He has announced plans to expand this deployment to blue cities in swing states, raising the specter of electoral intimidation. President Trump has speculated about whether the election should be postponed and Attorney General Bill Barr expressed confusion about whether the date of the election could be moved. (As a legal matter, only Congress can move the day of the Presidential election.) Trump also demanded that the election results be called immediately on Election Day, e.g. before all mail-in ballots can be counted. And the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement warning that foreign countries are again trying to interfere in the US election.
Two words of caution about the findings from the exercises. First, TIP intentionally did not Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Good-for-nothing bastard.
The late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had something to say about such abuse:
Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.”
The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our White brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent.
Everybody is on welfare in this country.
The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem.”
From a sermon entitled “The Minister to the Valley,” February 23, 1968, from the archives of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Scores Of Private Charitable Foundations Got Paycheck Protection Program Money
Scores of private charitable foundations, set up by some of the nation’s wealthiest people, received money from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, which was created last spring to save jobs at small businesses as the coronavirus tanked the economy.
NPR has identified at least 120 foundations that collectively received more than $7.5 million in PPP funding. That’s a small slice of the overall program, which disbursed about a half-trillion dollars, but some of the foundations are linked to individuals of considerable means: An oil magnate, a cable television tycoon, a dermatologist called the father of modern hair transplantation, and an aviation entrepreneur who founded companies with annual sales of more than a billion dollars.
President Trump speaks as Jovita Carranza, Administrator of the Small Business Administration; Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; and Ivanka Trump, advisor to the president, listen during a Paycheck Protection Program event in the East Room of the White House on April 28, 2020.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, December 4, 2020
In the business world, the acronym “OPM” stands for “Other Peoples’ Money.” But at the Federal level of the United States Government, it stands for “Office of Personnel Management.”
Although Amway multi-millionairess Betsy DeVoss is an employee of the United States Government as the Secretary of Education – an ironic, even hypocritical position for her, since she’s never attended, even as much as set foot in, a Public School in her lifetime, even as Secretary – it’s painfully obvious that she continues to operate by the OPM business principle.
She continues to be resoundingly criticized by many, not all of whom are her political compatriots. If there could be said to be a “guiding light” to her first-ever tenure as a public servant in the capacity which she’s occupied for the past 4 years, it’s more for us, less for you. And in this case, the “us” refers to her wealthy pals, and anyone with a harebrained idea parading under the banner of “choice” and “education.”
As an aside, it’s ironic that Banana Republicans oppose choice in so many areas, especially healthcare; they don’t want a Federal Option for health insurance, they don’t want a woman to have autonomy over her own body to choose to carry or not, etc.
But as “choice” pertains to DeVos and Company, it refers to so-called “charter” schools – the educational “Flavor of the Day” among Banana Republicans. Simply put, charter schools are private, often for-profit and Wall Street-traded entities that compete for limited public tax dollars against Public Schools. Think of them as leeches, mosquitos, and other blood-suckers that little-by-little siphon off the lifeblood from the host upon which they feast. Not quite the scenario of pigs at a trough, but very close enough, because if you attempt to get in between them and their food source, they’ll kill you.
Again, choice is good for them, but bad for you.
And that’s but one example where the hypocrisy of the Banana Republican party comes in.
What you would think if I were to tell you that an entity with no experience in education, was denied local approval, applied for, and was granted well over a million tax dollars to open a charter school, but it never opened, and they kept all the money?
Would you be okay with that?
What about this?
From the 2006/7 through the 2013/14 school year, over 537 prospective charter schools that NEVER EDUCATED EVEN ONE STUDENT, NEVER OPENED, yet received well over $45 million tax dollars?
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos speaks October 15, 2020 at Phoenix International Academy in Arizona.
Would you be okay with that?
What about a charter “school” that never opened even for one day in Pennsylvania, yet was granted well over $30 million by Secretary Betsy DeVos?
Would you be cool with that?
It all happened under Betsy DeVos’s oversight.
Enormous fraud, waste, and abuse is being perpetuated before our very eyes, and yet, we’re told bad is good, sweet is sour, abuse is good, taxes are bad, and government is corrupt by the very ones corrupting it, and lying to our faces about it all.
by Valerie Strauss
December 3, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EST
Here’s a new, rather remarkable story about charter school grants recently awarded by the Education Department — including one for more than $1 million that went to a soccer club in Pennsylvania that had no experience running a school.
This is one of a number of pieces I have run in recent years about the Federal Charter School Program, which has invested close to $4 billion in these schools since it began giving grants in 1995.
Charter schools, a key feature of the “school choice” movement, are financed by the public but privately operated. About 6 percent of U.S. schoolchildren attend charter schools, with California having the most charter schools and the most charter students.
Charters had bipartisan support for years, but a growing number of Democrats have pulled back from the movement, citing the fiscal impact on school districts and repeated scandals in the sector.
Charter supporters say the 30-year-old movement offers important alternatives to traditional public schools, which educate the vast majority of U.S. students, and that the movement is still learning. Opponents say there is little public accountability over many charters and that they drain resources from traditional districts.
Research shows student outcomes are, overall, largely the same in charter and traditional public schools, although there are failures and exemplars in both.
Burris, who opposes charter schools, was named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, and in 2013, the National Association of Secondary School Principals named her the New York State High School Principal of the Year.
I asked the Education Department to comment on the grant to the soccer club, about which Burris writes, but did not get an immediate response. I will add it if I do.
By Carol Burris
In late September 2020, amid the covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education awarded nearly $6 million to five organizations to open new charter schools. One of the five awardees was “The All Football Club, Lancaster Lions Corporation,” located in Lancaster, Pa. The club had no experience running either a private school or a charter school, yet nevertheless pitched the AFCLL Academy Charter School for a grant from the federal Charter School Program (CSP).
The CSP awarded the football club $1,260,750 to be spent within its first five years, even though their submitted application only received 70 of 115 possible points by reviewers — a failing grade of 61 percent. And the club did not have permission from the local school board to actually open the school.
That award of tax dollars to an unauthorized charter school shines a light on how the federal CSP is driven by an ideology with only one aim — to push taxpayer dollars into the hands of would-be private charter operators, even if the school appears doomed to fail from the start.
“A separate conservative group also wants the Michigan Supreme Court to invalidate the results that show President-elect Joe Biden won the state.
“The latest lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Michigan and before the state’s highest court, rely on unfounded allegations of widespread fraud and misconduct that judges in the state and across the country have previously rejected. Neither has a high likelihood of success.
“There is no evidence of mass fraud or wrongdoing that affected election operations in Michigan or elsewhere. Biden earned roughly 154,000 more votes than Trump in Michigan.”
Of course, the only other alternative is this alt-headline:
Trump Supporters Ask Judge To Turn A Democratic Republic Into Banana Republic
Sadly, that is the essence of what the deranged – yes, mentally deranged and deluded – Trump supporters are asking.
Think that’s a stretch?
Let’s examine some additional information – which outgoing loser POS45 prefers to call “fake news.” Remember, though: “Fake news” is superior to (better than, for the POS45 goons reading this) alt-reality.
“In banana republics, high government officials (who are sometimes lieutenant colonels) pressure other officials to carry out vendettas against political enemies and to defend their friends against harsh treatment by judicial institutions.
“President Trump has also repeatedly invoked the idea of the “deep state” to explain his troubles. The “deep state” is a notion that emerged from the days of pre-Erdoğan Turkey. It referred to networks of high officials in the government and military who were prepared to intervene if any group ever threatened the then-dominant politics of Kemalism—the secular, modernizing legacy of Mustapha Kemal, better known as Ataturk. The notion of a deep state, in other words, was a critique of forces who were prepared to use extra-legal and military means to protect the Turkish state against perceived enemies.
“What Trump calls the “deep state” in the contemporary United States, by contrast, the rest of us think of as the institutions of constitutional government. He seeks and expects from government officials one thing only: loyalty. Not to the Constitution, as their oath requires, but to him.
“What Trump calls the “deep state” in the contemporary United States, by contrast, the rest of us think of as the institutions of constitutional government. He seeks and expects from government officials one thing only: loyalty. Not to the Constitution, as their oath requires, but to him. Despite the fact that Jeff Sessions was the first senator to endorse his campaign, by recusing himself from the Russia investigation he showed that he was insufficiently loyal to the president; he therefore had to go. Trump wanted an Attorney General who would see his job as protecting the president from damaging investigations. He may have found his man in Bill Barr, who has advanced a theory of the chief executive that sees its occupant as having virtually limitless power—very much as Trump sees the office. Trump once asked, “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” He now seems to have found one.
“The term Trump invariably invokes when he is accused of serious wrongdoing in the exercise of his official duties is “hoax.” Until he came into office, a hoax was a scam perpetrated by someone trying to persuade people that some far-fetched claim was true, often to the claimer’s financial benefit. Trump tries to destroy our faith in institutions—and in the very idea of the truth–by insisting that elected and career officials who are loyal to the Constitution rather than to the occupant of the Oval Office are engaged in a “hoax” when they call him out for malfeasance. If one constantly insists they are engaged in a “hoax,” people may come to doubt that these officials are non-partisan. Invocation of the term is essential to Trump’s ability to survive the many scandals in which he is constantly involved.”
The history and development of the term “banana republic” has come to mean or refer to governments and their leaders that are: authoritarian; oligarchic, often at a local level; exert great power; corrupt; exploitative, often economically; politically unstable; function poorly for citizens and disproportionately benefit an elitist, often corrupt individual or group; conspiratorial, often with local government officials.
As we can already see, this President and his maladministration fit every one of those characteristics. But it is the last characteristic – “conspiratorial, often with local government officials” – which I wish to focus upon at it relates to this entry in particular.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, December 1, 2020
The more we progressed into this utterly incompetent and anti-American administration, the more I became convinced that the true extent of the damages done by the actions of this President and his maladministration will not be evident until at least a year, or two – or perhaps more – into the successive administration.
And, it just goes to prove my long-held point, that GOPers, now known as “the Party of Trump,” and formerly known as “Republics” (if those assholes can call Democrats “Democrat” instead of “Democratic” when referring to the party, then Republicans can be called “Republic,” or “Republics.” After all, turn about’s fair play) are hell-bent upon tearing down and destroying practically every vestige of government, all in the name of “efficiency,” or whatever they want to call it.
And remember: It was originally Ronald Reagan, who in his first Inaugural Address flatly stated that “government is the problem.” Of course, one needn’t be a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist to figure out that, if X is the problem, then the elimination of X is the solution to the problem. And in this case, “government” was the problem.
And so, Robin Hood and his band of merry men set of to rob and steal, to tear down and destroy as much of the system as they possibly could, all in the name of “liberty,” and “efficiency.” Passing tax cuts along to the wealthy, and doing little-to-nothing for the poor.
Destroy the monetary distribution system associated with funding various government programs – not all of which were social programs – and turn them all into “block grants” (blocks of money) and allow the states to play with them as they will to their hearts’ desire, all in the name of “efficiency.” And then, allow them to set up whatever freaky-deaky program and arcane asinine rules they want to associate with it. In other words, pervert it to the extent that it no longer looks like it once did, and is only a mere spectre of a program, and a mockery of the law that made it.
The Republic Party and its members haven’t done a goddamn thing to BUILD UP this country, and have ONLY worked like hell to tear it down, bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece.
They’re still straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, and still champing at the bit to privatize Social Security. They almost privatized the U.S. Postal Service under the maladministration of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was actively aiding and abetting the destruction of the mail delivery system specifically in order to thwart the election, and throw it to the POS45 campaign. Fortunately, his treasonously corrupt efforts were caught in time, and stopped.
America was brought to the brink of destruction by this malignant misleader.
Fortunately, our Constitution works! And come January, we will have an entirely new administration and President – one of whom we can be proud!
And a parting thought: Since when did inexperience become a valued quality in regard to governmental service – as if someone with LITERALLY NO EXPERIENCE whatsoever is somehow qualified to be the Chief Executive? NO ONE in their right mind would imagine even for a moment that some moron picked up from off the street could run Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple Computer, Ford Motor Company, or any other multi-million dollar business. So why would anyone think for a moment that someone with LITERALLY NO EXPERIENCE OF ANY KIND at any level in public service, either appointed, or elected, would have any ability to govern? Seriously! Why?
And that, my friends, is what we have had for the past 4 years – an utterly incompetent, and clueless boob.
A government watchdog says the Labor Department has been releasing flawed data — and finds that most states underpaid jobless Americans
Ben Winck
Monday, 30 November 2020
The Labor Department reported false counts of week-to-week jobless-benefits claims, and several states underpaid unemployed Americans through a key economic relief program, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.
Inconsistent state data, claims backlogs, and potential fraud in the benefits system resulted in “flawed week-to-week comparisons” of jobless-claims data, the government watchdog said.
Average weekly payments through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program fell below the poverty line in 29 of the 41 states reporting data, the agency added. While some states made minimum payments first and plan to back pay remaining totals, it’s unclear when the process can be completed.
The GAO’s report signals the virus’ economic fallout may be greater than first thought and that most states aren’t paying out the immediate relief allocated by Congress.
The Labor Department’s weekly tally of unemployment-insurance filings has reflected inaccurate data throughout the pandemic, and jobless Americans are being underpaid through the benefits program, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.
The historic number of unemployed Americans applying for benefits has skewed weekly claims figures for months, the government watchdog said in its report. Inconsistent state data, claims backlogs, and potential fraud in the benefits system has resulted in “flawed week-to-week comparisons of total claims numbers,” the GAO added.
Additionally, a program meant to provide benefits to workers who lost their jobs because of the pandemic has been underpaying recipients in most states, the GAO said. Some states paid minimum amounts first and Read the rest of this entry »
While it’s unclear exactly how much she paid for the jet, which seats 8 passengers and can travel 3000 nautical miles, essentially coast-to-coast on one fill-up, an online listing of other such jets for the same year, make, and model, in an online listing shows $9.7 million to be an average asking price.
Kelly Loeffler’s Bombardier jet N830EC
Trump’s tax cuts essentially made private jets flying tax shelters for the wealthy. Under his changes, the entire purchase price of a new or used aircraft bought by a company can be a 100% tax deductible write-off against its earnings.
What the multi-millionairess did, was to create an “ownership trust” which is a company that owns the plane, rather than herself personally. By so doing, it offers some degree of anonymity by giving it the appearance of isolation from the individuals whom actually control it. Essentially, it’s a type of “shell company” set up exclusively for the purpose of ownership, and nothing else. It’s greatest single benefit? It helps avoid taxes.
Shell companies, while not illegal, per se, and can have legitimate uses, often deliberately “fly under the radar” to avoid payment of taxes, or for money laundering purposes, and are registered in the names of the attorneys or accountants who manage them, thus avoiding any readily identifiable connection with the person who truly owns it or benefits from it. Most often, shell companies are incorporated in nations with tax laws favorable to them, aka “tax havens,” which by law do not have to report income such as in Cayman Islands, Seychelles, Panama, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Belize, or other island or “offshore” nations.
The so-called “Panama Papers,” also sometimes called the “Mossack Fonseca papers” for the name of the obscure Panamanian law firm from which they were obtained, is a collection of well over 11.5 million documents identifying 214,488 entities and shell corporations, their owners, lawyers, and the often-illegal network established to manage them, which were made public in 2016.
Each aircraft has a registration number, often called a “tail number,” which is like an automobile license plate, or VIN, because it identifies an aircraft uniquely from among all other aircraft, under a system managed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and used in other nations. But unlike cars’ license plates which require regular periodic renewal (license plates essentially prove a tax has been paid), the tail number stays with the aircraft permanently, and is never reassigned to any other aircraft. So when a plane is sold, retired, or crashes, the number always accompanies the craft to identify it, regardless of its disposition.
N830EC, Kelly Loeffler’s Bombardier model BD-100-1A10 jet
There are some limitations on registration of aircraft in the United States to foreign individuals and/or corporations, however, which is to say, that unlike ocean-going vessels such as cruise ships, or cargo ships, under United States law, aircraft which are either majority or fully owned by foreign individuals or interests cannot be registered in the United States to be assigned a “N number,” aka “tail number.” An overview of the requirements and limitations can be found on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website here: https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/aircraft_certification/aircraft_registry/register_aircraft/.
By Ryan J. Reilly, Senior Justice Reporter, HuffPost
Monday, November 2, 2020, 4:45 AM CST
The Justice Department can’t take four more years of President Donald Trump.
Scores of former department officials from both political parties said that the severe damage inflicted by the president on the department and its components over the past four years will become permanent and irreversible if Trump wins a second term. The result, they said, would be a fundamental subjugation of the rule of law and the transformation of the department into an overtly political operation.
No president since Richard Nixon has had as much of a negative effect on the Justice Department as Trump. He fired one FBI director and is considering firing another. He pushed out his first attorney general and is engaging in a public campaign to pressure current Attorney General William Barr to investigate his chief political rival, Joe Biden, hinting that he might dismiss Barr if he doesn’t.
“As bad as that has been over the past four years, it would be obviously even worse over the next four years,” Greg Brower, the FBI’s former congressional liaison and a Republican appointed by President George W. Bush as Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, told HuffPost.
“I worry a great deal about what they would do with another four years in power,” former Attorney General Eric Holder told HuffPost. “People need to understand that there’s no doubt that the Department of Justice is on the ballot this year.”
A number of former U.S. attorneys who were appointed by Republican presidents ― including a man who served as both FBI and CIA director under President Ronald Reagan ― agreed. They condemned Trump, whom they called “a threat to the rule of law in our country,” and endorsed former Vice President Biden, who they said would “refocus the Justice Department on the cause of impartial justice” and help address the country’s “deep-seated societal issues.”
“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have hammered home that justice is on the ballot in 2020,” said Julie Zebrak, a former Justice Department official turned political consultant. “Four more years of manipulating DOJ to serve the president’s personal agenda — and personal vendettas — could very well bring the department to the point of no return.”
Indeed, for many Justice Department employees who endured four years of the Trump administration, the outcome of the election will determine the future of their careers. Significant brain drain is a near certainty if Trump wins another term.
A White House spokesman did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Holder said that four years of Trump had done “substantial” but recoverable harm to the Justice Department. He’s not so sure if Trump wins reelection.
“After eight years you would have such structural damage done to the department that I really worry about the ability of a new administration [in 2024] to actually repair the damage that would’ve been done after eight years under Donald Trump,” Holder said.
Uncharted Waters
A few days before the 2016 election, a journalist shot off an email to his fellow reporters on the Justice Department beat, proposing Election Day drinks. It had been an unusual few months on a beat that was usually calm in the run-up to a presidential election, in part because of policies meant to prevent the department from affecting elections.
“Once every four years, it is certain that DOJ/FBI reporters will have a quiet few weeks before Election Day,” the reporter wrote. “That promise was stolen from us.”
There was FBI Director James Comey’s highly unusual press conference on Hillary Clinton’s emails in July, followed by the discovery of emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which threw the whole campaign into chaos just days before the election. Ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election had mostly faded into the background. The focus was on Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, October 28, 2020
“He’s left a ballooning debt, and deficit.
He’s left a hollowed-out government
with
positions unfilled,
a diplomatic corps that’s
lost morale,
an intelligence agency that
has been torn apart
with
how it can advise the President.
He’s left a wake of destruction behind him.
That is his legacy.”
–– V. Kim Hoggard, high-level official, Reagan & GHW Bush administrations, on POTUS Donald John Trump
If the GOP suffers – and they will – blame Trump.
This is your President, America. Revel in the moment when you elected an incompetent idiot.
If the GOP suffers – and they will – blame the GOP.
There’s plenty of blame to go around.
The GOP could have decertified him, and thereby could have prevented him from advancing… but, they did not.
The GOP really doesn’t care for you, or for America.
They only care for their BIG BUSINESS interests and BIG MONEY donors.
And to be certain, there are some Democrats like that – Hillary among them. But those old dinosaurs are dying off politically – thank goodness – and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Today, A.C. Barrett was administered the Constitutional oath as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court by SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas.
She must still be administered the oath of office.
It’s only her SECOND job as a judge.
And she hasn’t even been a judge a total of 3 years yet!
Not even!!
Can you say “GREENHORN”? “Wet behind the ears”?
Recall that she came from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – her first job as a jurist, which Trump also gave her. No doubt, he’ll expect something in return.
Yesterday, the Senate confirmed her nomination along a party line vote, 52R-48D.
It only took 31 days from nomination to confirmation for the Republican Senate Majority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell of Kentucky to ramrod her through the process – a record time. She must like being Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, August 20, 2020
“Ambushed” is how Alabama’s GOP Attorney General Steve Marshall characterized the Department of Justice’s findings of the State of Alabama’s Department of Corrections unconstitutionally inhumane treatment of prisoners.
That came from the weakling former District Attorney whom corrupt GOP former Governor Bentley appointed February 2017 to avoid prosecution.
But perhaps Marshall is correct – that he was ambushed – and for that reason is so utterly inept and incompetent that Read the rest of this entry »
U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Robert Wood “Woody” Johnson IV told embassy staff in 2018 that his friend, President Trump, asked him to help get the British Open golf tournament held at one of the Trump family’s golf resorts in Scotland.
U.S. Embassy staff have separately complained that Johnson made racist and sexist comments on the job.
The State Department’s Inspector General has been looking at these claims as part of a routine review of the embassy, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry was first reported by theNew York TimesandCNN.
Lewis Lukens, the embassy’s former second-in-command, confirmed in a text to NPR that Johnson told him about the president’s request.
“I advised him that doing so would violate federal ethics rules and be generally inappropriate,” Lukens wrote.
But Johnson apparently went ahead and raised the matter with David Mundell, then secretary of state for Scotland, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, July 16, 2020
UPDATE 21 July 2020: In a July 20 interview with Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief for USA TODAY, George F. Will stated that he will be voting for the Democratic Party’s presumptive Presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, for President in the 2020 November General Election.
In the interview conducted virtually via Zoom, Ms. Page asked Mr. Will, “Who do you plan to vote for in November?”
Without hesitation, Mr. Will stated, “Biden.”
She quickly followed up with the question, “Have you voted for a Democrat before?”
Mr. Will replied, “Never. I’ve nothing against Democrats. But I’ve never had the opportunity to vote for one.”
Rarely has Right Wing Conservative Columnist George F. Will ever agreed with any other political perspective.
However, this time, he has.
Though he has long written an OpEd column for the revered “Gray Lady,” aka The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and others, the magazine with which he may best remain known, National Review, has never had soft feelings for “The Donald” as a political candidate.
And in fact, from 1972-78, Will served as an Editor for National Review, right alongside its founder, William F. Buckley, Jr. – himself no shrinking violet to conservatism, and outspoken critic of progressivism (although, some liberals considered his positions almost identical to theirs, and enjoyed debate with him for that reason).
Those in the GOP with a conscience, and the ones with a spine have spoken out against him, and his malignant ways.
On numerous occasions, David Duke has plainly said that Trump is “by far the best candidate,” that he “is really treason to your heritage,” and that “I’m overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I’ve championed for years.”
For White Supremacists, “heritage” is “dog whistle” language meaning White Supremacy.
And though Trump’s caustically racist remarks are every bit as inflammatory as David Duke’s – a high-ranking Ku Klux Klansman whose brief political career as a GOP Representative in Louisiana’s State House ran from 1989-92 – the Republican Party merely tolerates him.
But back to the point – George F. Will’s agreement.
In his most recent column in The Washington Post, Mr. Will found not only significant areas of agreement with those whom decry Trump, within and without the Republican Party, but forewarned of worse things to come because of his Presidency.
Writing that “The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime,” Mr. Will took direct aim at Trump’s commutation of long-time GOP political operative Roger Stone’s Federal conviction of 7 felony charges, which included witness tampering, lying under oath to investigators, and obstructing a Congressional investigation – which carried combined sentences of 40 years. Stone was significantly influential in Trump’s campaign, as he has been in every election since Nixon.
Citing also numerous incidents of incompetence and voter suppression efforts in primarily GOP-dominated States, along with self-evident malfeasance in the Federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Will concluded simply,
“This is what national decline looks like.”
The nation is in a downward spiral. Worse is still to come.
Because of his incontinent use of it, the rhetorical mustard that the president slathers on every subject has lost its tang. The entertainer has become a bore, and foretelling his defeat no longer involves peering into a distant future: Early voting begins in two states (South Dakota and Minnesota) 61 days from Sunday, which is 107 days before Election Day.
Never has a U.S. election come at such a moment of national mortification. In April 1970, President Richard M. Nixon told a national television audience that futility in Vietnam would make the United States appear to the world as “a pitiful, helpless giant.” Half a century later, America, for the first time in its history, is pitied.Not even during the Civil War, when the country was blood-soaked by a conflict involving enormous issues, was it viewed with disdainful condescension as it now is, and not without reason: Last Sunday, Germany (population 80.2 million) had 159 new cases of covid-19; Florida (population 21.5 million) had 15,300.Under the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office, this nation is in a downward spiral. This spiral has not reached its nadir, but at least it has reached a point where worse is helpful, and worse can be confidently expected.The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime. It is helpful to have this made obvious as voters contemplate renewing the regime’s lease on the executive branch. Roger Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not “roll on” Donald Trump. By commuting Stone’s sentence, Stone’s beneficiary played his part in this down-market drama, showing gratitude for Stone’s version of omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which involved lots of speaking but much lying. Because pandemic prevents both presidential candidates from bouncing around the continent like popcorn in a skillet, the electorate can concentrate on other things, including Trump’s selection of friends such as Stone and Paul Manafort, dregs from the bottom of the Republican barrel.“Longing on a large scale is what makes history,” wrote Don DeLillo in his sprawling 1997 novel “Underworld” about America in the second half of the 20th century. Today, there is a vast longing for respite from the 21st century, which — before the pandemic, two inconclusive wars and the Great Recession — began with a presidential election that turned on 537 Florida votes and was not decided until a Dec. 12, 2000, Supreme Court decision. Given Trump’s reckless lying and the supine nature of most Republican officeholders, it is imperative that the Nov. 3 result be obvious that evening.This year, the pandemic will be an accelerant of preexisting trends: There will be a surge of early and mail voting. So, an unambiguous decision by midnight Eastern time Nov. 3 will require (in addition to state requirements that mailed ballots be postmarked, say, no later than Oct. 31) a popular-vote tsunami so large against the president that there will be a continentwide guffaw when he makes charges, as surely he will, akin to those he made in 2016. Then, he said he lost the popular vote by 2.9 million because “millions” of undocumented immigrants voted against him. Making a preemptive strike against civic confidence, Trump has announced that the 2020 election will be the “most corrupt” in U.S. history.The 2020 presidential selection process began with Iowa’s shambolic Democratic caucuses, a result not of corruption but incompetence, an abundant commodity nowadays. It is scandalous that in many places casting a ballot requires hours of standing in line. Larry Diamond of the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford discerns another scandal:“The hard truth is that there has been a rising tide of voter suppression in recent U.S. elections. These actions — such as overeager purging of electoral registers and reducing early voting — have the appearance of enforcing abstract principles of electoral integrity but the clear effect (and apparent intent) of disproportionately disenfranchising racial minorities. One example was the decision of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State (now Governor) Brian Kemp to suspend 53,000 predominantly African-American voter registration applications in 2018 because the names did not produce an ‘exact match’ with other records.”This nation built the Empire State Building, groundbreaking to official opening, in 410 days during the Depression, and the Pentagon in 16 months during wartime. Today’s less serious nation is unable to competently combat a pandemic, or even reliably conduct elections. This is what national decline looks like.
Kelly Loeffler was appointed by narrow-margin-of-victory Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp to fill the unexpired term of three-term Georgia Republican US Senator Johnny Isakson who resigned from office at the end of 2019 due to Parkinson’s disease.
The gubernatorially-appointed temporary fill-in “Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler told Politico she is not dropping out of the Georgia Senate special election despite facing scrutiny over $20 million in stock sales she made following a closed-door Senate briefing in January about the coronavirus.
““Not only am I not dropping out, but I’m gonna win,” Loeffler told the news outlet Thursday.
“Loeffler, who is married to New York Stock Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher, has said she does not control her own stock portfolio and that she was unaware of the exchanges. She has submitted documents to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, both of which are investigating trading action among senators around the coronavirus pandemic.”
Loeffloer’s net worth is reportedly well over $500,000,000, and is being investigted by the FBI and the Senate for suspicious stock sales timing in response to insider knowledge of the coronavirus obtained in the Senate.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, April 20, 2020
Appointed Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, R
The United States Senate is controlled by a corrupt cabal of Republicans, none of whom are racial/ethnic minority. It’s LITERALLY (at least on the GOP side) an all-White enclave – with one extraordinary exception: Tim Scott of South Carolina – the Senate’s only Black Republican.
Yesterday at his incessant bully pulpit coronavirus harping press conference, the Liar in Chief claimed to not have known about her insider trades. That, strangely coming from a man who prides himself in, and publicly boasts about having all sorts of knowledge, and whom is known to be well-attuned to media (especially television, and Twitter) of all kinds.
Here’s the pertinent excerpt from the “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing” (linked above) held in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, April 19, 2020, 6:28 P.M. EDT:
Q: Mr. President, why on that task force did you include Senator Kelly Loeffler? There’s some questions about whether she may have —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, because she’s the senator from a great state, a state that I love: Georgia.
Q: But there’s some insider trading issues with her.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I — that, I don’t know. I really don’t know about that. But she’s a senator from Georgia, and she was included in the list, absolutely.
Go ahead. A couple of more. Go ahead, please. Yeah.
Most folks want to talk about Richard Burr, the first known case of Insider Trading on coronavirus information in the Senate..
But, let’s take a look at who’s shafting the American public by NOT playing fair and square and abusing their insider knowledge:
• Richard Burr, Republican North Carolina Senator – Net Worth $3M+
• Kelly Loeffler, Republican Georgia Senator – Net Worth $500M+
• James M. Inhofe, Republican Oklahoma Senator – Net Worth $9M+
• Ron Johnson, Republican Wisconsin Senator – Net Worth $30M+
Senator Richard Burr, R-NC
• Diane Feinstein, Democrat, California Senator – Net Worth $90M+
Nope, no trend or common denominators at all. Totally random. /sarcasm
All Senators,
80% Republican,
60% Male,
97% White,
100% Multi-Millionaires
• When he retires from the Senate in 2022, Burr will have been in Congress (House & Senate) a TOTAL of 27 years
• Loeffler is married to the CEO of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, and numerous other fims, is a political “newbie” appointed by Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp to temporarily fill the unexpired 2016 term of Johnny Isakson who resigned 31 December 2019 to care for his Parkinson’s disease. Loeffler intends to campaign for the office during a Special Election.
• Inhofe has been in Congress 33 years, and 17 years in Oklahoma State & Local politics TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=50 years
• Johnson is a political newcomer, and was first elected in 2010 to the US Senate
TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=10 years
• Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992, before that she was 18 years in California Local politics
TOTAL POLITICAL TIME=46 years
Here’s a very simple solution:
Require all such financial assets (stocks, bonds, securities, including real estate, etc.) to be placed into a Blind Trust for the duration of their term of office.
Insider trading by Congress? It’s time to fix the law
By Patrick Augustin, Francis Cong and Marti G. Subrahmanyam, Opinion Contributors — 04/19/20 01:30 PM EDT
Is trading by Congress illegal? Should members of Congress be allowed to trade financial securities that are sensitive to private information? The “coronavirus trades” made by Sen.Richard Burr(R-N.C.) and his wife just prior to the March ’20 market crash raise these questions and signal the need for changes to the law. Some proposals go as far as banning stocktrading by members of congressoutright. The other extreme is to allow full discretion. The right solution is in between: Only allowing public officials to trade securities based on broad market indices.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, March 21, 2020
Lawmakers’ Stock Trades and Other Virus Outrages
Some lawmakers have a lot of explaining to do. Plus, punishing poor people and shaping up the cruise-ship industry.
By Joe Nocera 3/20/2020, 10:47:09 AM
Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast “The Shrink Next Door.”
————
Of the many things taking place in Washington that make your blood boil, the — how should I put this? — timely stock trades by senators during the coronavirus outbreak has to go right to the top of the list. Two of them have tried to explain them away, but the details are just so… suspicious.
At least three Republicans and one Democrat 1 sold stock before the country got serious about Covid-19, but let’s focus on one: Kelly Loeffler.
A Republican from Georgia, Loeffler has been in the Senate for less than three months; she was appointed to fill the seat of Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired early for health reasons. She has a Wall Street background — she was in investor relations at the New York Stock Exchange, where she married the boss, Jeffrey Sprecher, the Chief Executive Cfficer of Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which owns NYSE
On Jan. 24, Loeffler attended a Senate briefing on the coronavirus, which she tweeted about. That same day, she and her husband began selling stock. By the time they were finished, they had dumped 27 companies, including Exxon Mobil and AutoZone, saving millions of dollars when the market later tanked. (Senate financial disclosure forms don’t give exact numbers.)
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, March 3, 2020
It could have been written by Bernie Sanders.
But it wasn’t.
Meet your Russian interference.
“Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.
From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a …
… concerted campaign to destroy my reputation.
We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and …
… powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.
It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.”
– Tweet by Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-2) (who remains in the race) 1:20 PM, 18 October 2019, in response to Hillary’s accusation of her that “…they [Russians] got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary, and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. She’s a favorite of the Russians; they have a bunch of sites and bots, and other ways of supporting her so far, and… that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up – which she might not, because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah! She’s a Russian asset! I mean, totally! And so, they know they can’t win without without a third party candidate. And so, I don’t know who it’s gonna’ be, but I will guarantee they’ll be a vigorous third party challenge in the key states that most need it.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 28, 2020
Crooked Hillary…
Everyone who pays attention to the news – especially political news – has heard the phrase uttered by the Current White House Occupant, sometimes also known as POS45. There’s even a Wikipedia page of the nicknames he gives folks.
Que sera, sera… eh?
Nevertheless, recall the 2016 General Election?
Why, of course you do!
Who could forget it, right?
I mean, it was a choice between “the devil you know, and the devil you don’t know.” Either way, it was a devil. But at least with one, you could half-way predict what that devil might, could, or possibly would do.
Not so with the other devil.
Or, put another way, a known quantity versus an unknown quantity.
And, time has proven it to be the case.
But for all the investigations which have been launched against her, or about her, and her dealings, nothing has stuck. So maybe she’s the “Teflon Don,” rather than her husband “Blowjob Bill,” eh?
And, perhaps you may recall how she later revealed in her book, an excerpt of which was made into a Politico article, what she’d found when she was briefly DNC chair, specifically, how a back-room deal was struck between Hillary and the DNC a year before the 2016 election campaign season began.
“I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.
“So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.”
Focus upon that last sentence – “It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.”
“…for which she expected to wield control of its operations.”
That, my friends, is a classic example of a quid pro quo – giving one thing of value in exchange for another thing of value. Legally defined as a type of valid contract, the quid pro quo is not an illegal act in and of itself, per se, and must be considered within context to determine if it was an illegal act, or not.
There’s little-to-no question that it was unethical, at the very least, and certainly hasn’t reflected positively on the party, nor upon Hillary.
But how did it get to that point?
After the convention, Ms Brazile called Gary Gensler, Chief Financial Officer of Hillary’s campaign, who told her that the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.
Stewardship of the party’s finances was in shambles, to say the least, and it was due in significant part, or so she claims, from her predecessor Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Representative from Florida’s 20th Congressional District.
Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, as you may recall, also later resigned as DNC Chair after a tranche of WikiLeaks emails showed she had given significant help to Hillary during her Presidential campaign, rather than remain a supportive, yet independent observer. So perhaps it was for the best, anyway.
Not everyone in the party had been happy with her at the helm, either. Lis Smith, a longtime campaign operative, former Communications Director, and former Deputy Campaign Director for candidates like Martin O’Malley, Bill de Blasio, Claire McCaskill, and Barack Obama, said of Wasserman-Schultz’ resignation that, “Her resignation is good news for Democrats, and great news for anyone who believes the DNC needs wholesale reform. Hopefully we can all learn from her little experiment this past primary season and never repeat it as a party.”
Senator Sanders was more diplomatically circumspect in his remarks, saying that, “While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race.”
But, back to the story at hand.
Ms. Brazile wrote that while she was interim DNC Chair that, “I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him.” But in her search for the “smoking gun,” after diligent efforts, speaking with numerous party lawyers and officials who feigned knowledge or responsibility, she continually came up empty-handed… until later. She wrote:
“When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook [Hillary’s Campaign Manager] with a copy to Marc Elias [General Counsel for Hillary’s campaign]—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”
She wrote that while she was the interim DNC Chair, she experienced some unusual events, which at the time, seemed nothing more than purely odd, if not curious, but certainly not suspicious, nor even eyebrow-raising. One of those trifling matters was that, as chair of the party, she was hamstrung from doing anything the party chair would have normally done, such as write press releases, unless Read the rest of this entry »
Those adjectives, and more, characterize not only the POTUS, but his entire administration.
“Political interference in the conduct of a criminal prosecution is anathema to the Department’s core mission
and to its sacred obligation
to ensure equal justice under the law.”
Recently, in contravention of ethical protocol, Attorney General William “Bill” Barr intervened following the Federal conviction of Roger Stone, a corrupt Republican political operative known for his “dirty tricks” – whom has a bizarre adoration of Richard Nixon to the extent he has a tattoo of Nixon’s face on his upper back – who was found guilty on all counts with which he was charged, which included:
1 count – Obstruction of an Official Proceeding;
5 counts – False statements, and;
1 count – Witness Tampering.
In an official memorandum written by the DOJ last week, Barr’s office wrote in part, that,
“The government respectfully submits that a sentence of incarceration far less than 87 to 108 months’ imprisonment would be reasonable under the circumstances.”
“While it remains the position of the United States that a sentence of incarceration is warranted here, the government respectfully submits that the range of 87 to 108 months presented as the applicable advisory Guidelines range would not be appropriate or serve the interests of justice in this case.”
United States Attorney General William “Bill” Barr
Following Barr’s interference, all FOUR career Federal Prosecutors in the Roger Stone case resigned following the Attorney General’s recommendation that the Prosecuting Attorneys recommendation of 7-9 years as Stone’s punishment be significantly reduced.
The four whom resigned are:
• Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney (lead prosecutor), and U.S. Attorney in Maryland;
• Jonathan Kravis, Assistant U.S. Attorney, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (whom also resigned from the DOJ entirely);
• Adam C. Jed, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney;
• Michael J. Marando, Assistant U.S. Attorney, also Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
To say that there’s little confidence left in the Department of Justice (DOJ), would be a diplomatically generous characterization.
“Mr. Barr’s actions
in doing the President’s personal bidding
unfortunately
speak louder than his words.”
Most recently, in response to his meddling, over 1100 former DOJ employees have publicly called upon Barr to resign.
Writing in part, they identified that “The Justice Manual — the DOJ’s rulebook for its lawyers — states that “the rule of law depends on the evenhanded administration of justice”; that the Department’s legal decisions “must be impartial and insulated from political influence”; and that the Department’s prosecutorial powers, in particular, must be “exercised free from partisan consideration.””
They further stated wholehearted support for the four now-resigned prosecutors in the Stone case, by writing that, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, February 13, 2020
I think there’s little question that this administration is very likely the MOST corrupt administration in the history of our nation. Not even the Nixon administration could hold a candle to it.
And, to be certain, corruption needn’t be blatant, nor does it require violation of law. There is such a thing as “legal corruption,” and this POTUS and his administration are living, breathing, examples of such legal corruption.
Roger Stone, center, pictured in 1985 with fellow Republican operatives Paul Manafort, left, and Lee Atwater. (Photo By Harry Naltchayan/The Washington Post).
So, exactly what IS corruption?
While words usage and meaning often changes over a period of time, one can discern what words meant by examining their origin and derivation, which is called “etymology.”
The etymology of the word “corrupt” shows that, as an adjective, it emerged in the early 14c., and meant “corrupted, debased in character,” and was derived from the Old French word “corropt,” meaning “unhealthy, corrupt; uncouth” (of language), and came directly from the Latin word “corruptus,” which is the past participle of “corrumpere” meaning “to destroy; spoil,” while figuratively it means to “corrupt, seduce, bribe.”
The Latin word itself was an from assimilated form of the Proto-Indo-European past participle stem of “rumpere” meaning “to break,” and a Sanskrit source states that a portion of the word from that language meant “to suffer from a stomach-ache.” It was also used a verb and meant to “deprave morally, pervert from good to bad.” Around that same time, it included, and incorporated a use and meaning to be “guilty of dishonesty involving bribery.”
“Corruption” implies deviation from some ideal state, and so defining corruption usually involves an implicit or explicit selection of a baseline standard of “correct” behavior. The three most common possibilities – none entirely satisfactory – are:
1. Law (“corruption” entails violation of specific legal prohibitions on, say, bribery, nepotism, embezzlement, etc.)
2. Public opinion (“corruption” involves acts, or patterns of behavior, that would be viewed by most citizens as wrongful abuses of power, whether or not they are illegal)
3. Public interest (“corruption” involves acts, or patterns of behavior, that contravene the public interest—whether or not the actions in question are illegal and/or the subject of widespread disapproval).
The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University writes that there are “…two specific forms of corruption across American states: illegal and legal.
We define illegal corruption as the private gains in the form of cash or gifts by a government official, in exchange for providing specific benefits to private individuals or groups.
“It is the form of corruption that attracts a great deal of public attention. A second form of corruption, however, is becoming more and more common in the U.S.: legal corruption.
We define legal corruption as the political gains in the form of campaign contributions or endorsements by a government official, in exchange for providing specific benefits to private individuals or groups, be it by explicit or implicit understanding.
“Such dealings are, in turn, one aspect of the broader issue of Institutional Corruption which, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, December 30, 2019
Where in America can you, I, or anyone, go to be immune from the law?
It’s a “trick question,” or… is it?
And yes, it’s a VERY serious question; in fact, it is an argument of which – believe it, or not – Federal Appeals Court Judges are considering the merits.
POTUS John Adams (1735-1826) c.1800-1815, painting by Gilbert Stuart (175-1828)
One simply can’t imagine the notion – that in our nation, a nation of laws, and not of men, that anyone could be above the law – and yet… here we are.
In February 1775, John Adams published a collection of essays entitled “Novanglus” – popularly known as the Novanglus Essays – where the idea that foundling nation which became “The United States of America” was a nation of laws, and not of men – was first known to be expressed.
James Harrington, oil on canvas, feigned oval, circa 1635, on display at Gawthorpe Hall, Burnley
Historians argue that the idea, or thought, was almost certainly derived from James Harrington (1611-1677), an English political philosopher, whose most renown work, “The Commonwealth of Oceana” (1656) was owned by Adams (3rd edition-1747), contains his signature on the title page, and is found in The John Adams Library of Boston Public Library, and may found online here: https://archive.org/details/oceanaotherworks00harr/page/n5
On page 38 of the work, in the essay entitled “Oceana,” Harrington wrote in part that,
“Government, according to the Ancients, and their learned Disciple Machiavelli, the only Politician of later Ages is of three kinds: The Government of One Man, or of the Better Sort, or of the Whole People: which by their more learned names are called Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy. These they hold, though their proponents to degenerate, to be all evil. For whereas they that govern, should govern according to Reason, if they govern according to Passion, they do that which they should not do. Wherefore as Reason and Passion are two things, so Government by Reason is one thing, and the corruption of Government by Passion is another thing, but not always another Government: as a Body that is alive is one thing, and a Body that is dead is another thing, but not always another Creature, though the corruption of one comes at length to be the Generation of another. The Corruption then of Monarchy is called Tyranny; that of Aristocracy, Oligarchy; and that of Democracy, Anarchy. But Legislators having found these three Governments at the best to be naught, have invented another consisting of a mixture of them all, which only is good. This is the Doctrine of the Ancients.”
So it seems almost certain that Adams derived that idea from James Harrington, but it was Adams’s use of the phrase which popularized it. Of note, Adams also wrote the clause “government of laws, and not of men” in the Declaration of Rights drafted for the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780.
“If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was,
the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire.
They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. [emphasis added]
If this definition be just,
the British constitution is nothing more nor less than a republic,
in which the king is first magistrate.
This office being hereditary,
and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives,
is no objection to the government’s being a republic,
as long as it is bound by fixed laws,
which the people have a voice in making,
and a right to defend.
An empire is a despotism,
and an emperor a despot,
bound by no law or limitation but his own will;
it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy.
For,
although the will of an absolute monarch is law,
yet his edicts must be registered by parliaments.
Even this formality is not necessary in an empire.
There the maxim is quod principi placuit legis habet rigorem,
even without having that will and pleasure recorded.
There are but three empires now in Europe,
the German or Holy Roman,
the Russian,
and the Ottoman.”
George Santayana
The aphorism written in 1905 by philosopher/author George Santayana in The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense, seems apropos here:
“Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.”
And so, that begs the question…
How could we have possibly gotten to this so very corrupted point?
Samuel Johnson
Again, let the words of the wise guide us, because when ideas or thoughts are repeated, it re-emphasizes their importance.
Renown lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709–84) expressed that idea as much in Rambler No. 2 (24 March 1750) when he wrote in part that,
“Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”
It is of unimaginable necessity that it is incumbent upon us to recollect this saying made by a GOP Presidential nominee candidate upon the campaign trail heading toward the Republican national convention:
“I could
stand in the middle of 5th Avenue
and shoot somebody,
and wouldn’t lose any voters…
okay?
It’s, like, incredible.”
POS45
–– Donald J. Trump, then-candidate for the Republican nomination as President, at a campaign rally 23 January 2016 at Dordt College, in Sioux Center, Iowa
On October 23, 2019, WilliamS.Consovoy, an attorney defending Trump against a suit filed by the House of Representatives seeking his tax returns, told the three-judge panel (en banc) of the Second United States Circuit Court of Appeals that Trump was LITERALLY immune from ANY type of prosecution.
Judge Denny Chin asked Mr. Consovoy, “What’s your view on the Fifth Avenue example? Local authorities couldn’t investigate, they couldn’t do anything about it?”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, December 13, 2019
Thus read Friday the 13th’s headline in the December 2019 edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal in Kentucky.
Why such a votriolic headline?
Shitbag former KY GOP Governor Matt Bevin did this on his way out the door following his re-re-election loss, as reported by NPR:
“Bevin, a Republican who narrowly lost a bid for a second term last month, issued pardons to hundreds of people, including convicted rapists, murderers and drug offenders.
“In one case, Bevin pardoned a man convicted of homicide. That man’s family raised more than $20,000 at a political fundraiser to help Bevin pay off a debt owed from his 2015 gubernatorial campaign.
“In all, the former governor signed off on 428 pardons and commutations since his loss to Democrat Andy Beshear, according to The Courier-Journal. The paper notes, “The beneficiaries include one offender convicted of raping a child, another who hired a hit man to kill his business partner and a third who killed his parents.””
“The Republican pardoned a convicted child rapist as well as a convicted murderer whose brother raised money for Mr Bevin’s election campaign.
“Mr Bevin was defeated by Democrat Andy Beshear in November after a contentious election.
“The flurry of pardons sent shockwaves through the state’s legal system. State prosecutors told local media they had not been consulted on Mr Bevin’s decision, and families of the victims were not notified in advance.
“”I’m a big believer in second chances,” Mr Bevin said in a statement to the Washington Post newspaper. “I think this is a nation that was founded on the concept of redemption and second chances and new pages in life.””
Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) on Friday night defendedhis controversial pardonsas reflections of America’s foundational “support for redemption,” a statement that followed a Republican state leader’s call for a federal investigation into Bevin’s actions.
The former governor, who lost his bid for reelection in November, made national headlines this week after he pardoned hundreds of people during his final days in office, including a man convicted of reckless homicide,a child rapistand a woman who threw her newborn in the trash. In one case, Bevin pardoned a man convicted of homicide who wasthe brother of one of the former governor’s campaign donors.
The pardonsoutraged local attorneys and prosecutors, who said they were not consulted during the process. As the backlash continued to build Friday, Republicans in the Kentucky state Senate issued a statement blasting Bevin.
And, as reported by the Courier-Journal, “.”
Kentuckians are outraged, and even his most ardent former supporters are shocked. “Nonplussed” is far too diplomatic a word to describe their thoughts of his actions.
“Bevin was known to issue pardons on July Fourth and Christmas Day during his time in office as a way to mark the country’s independence and holiday season. The individuals who were pardoned in those situations typically were Kentuckians who committed minor crimes and had demonstrated good behavior while incarcerated.
“But before leaving office, Bevin’s pardons included many violent and sexual offenders such as a man convicted of raping a 9-year-old, another who hired a hit man to kill his business partner, a man who killed his parents and a man who beheaded a woman before stuffing her in a barrel.”
While pardons, sentence commutations, and other types of clemency are within executive privilege, they should be righteously and judiciously wielded with wisdom, rather than wantonly abused as returned favors, or reckless examples of personal vendetta, and should be targeted to include resolution of actual or possible miscarriages of justice, such as restoration of voting rights following conviction, or other realistic social/civic benefits.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, November 16, 2019
“Oh! What a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!”
– from the play “Marmion,” Canto VI Stanza 17, by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Scottish author & novelist
Rudy Giuliani (RIGHT) at the James J. Fox cigar bar in London, with Lev Parnas (lower LEFT) and, Igor Fruman (speaking on the phone), and a third, unnamed associate. (Obtained by ProPublica)
Yesterday, Friday, 15 November 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported around noon Eastern Time, that Federal prosecutors in Manhattan were investigating whether Rudy Giuliani – a former Federal Prosecutor who is Trump’s personal lawyer – stood to profit personally from a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) venture in Ukraine, which has been linked to corrupt oligarchs, and other corrupt officials, some of whom may have been, or may be yet, associated with the Ukrainian government – including two Naturalized American Citizens, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman.
Lev Parnas was born in Ukraine to Jewish parents who emigrated with him to the United States when he was aged three, while Igor Fruman was born in Belarus to Jewish parents, and later moved to Detroit.
Federal authorities arrested the two men October 9, 2019 at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C. as they both sought to leave the United States with one-way flight tickets on Lufthansa Airlines flight to Frankfurt, and charged them with illegally contributing to Trump’s election campaign. Deeming them flight risks, a Federal Judge in Northern Virginia set bail at $1 million each, and the pair are still in custody.
Lev Parnas (left) and Igor Fruman are shown after their arrest on Oct. 9 at Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, D.C.
The Federal indictment said Parnas acted “at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials,” and though none were named, it was well known that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s primary critic in the Ukrainian government was Yuriy Lutsenko, who at the time was the Ukraine’s Prosecutor General and well-known to use the law as a weapon for his own personal political fights.
Federal Prosecutors indicted two other men, David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin, along with Parnas and Fruman, and accused them of funneling money to state and federal candidates in exchange for potential influence, noting that the four men wanted to set up recreational marijuana businesses in Nevada and other states, and sought political help to obtain the necessary licenses.
NPR reported 23 October 2019 that, “a company called Global Energy Producers (GEP) gave $325,000 to America First Action, the superPAC supporting Trump.” GEP is a shell company created by Parnas and Fruman.
According to Trevor Potter, a Republican former Commissioner and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), General Counsel to the now-late Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain in his 2000, and 2008 presidential campaigns, who is now an investigator and founder of Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a non-partisan, non-profit legal advocacy group which monitors money and political campaigns, CLC found that the campaign contribution came from GEP which appeared to be a shell company, and as he described, was “a blank slate.”
As Potter recalled, “The company hadn’t existed. It had been formed literally a couple weeks before the contribution. It had no website, no history of political activity, so you’re thinking this is most likely a company created to make this contribution. You have to disclose on the FEC reports the true source of the money, who the contributor actually is.”
Establishing a shell company to donate political contributions is an illegal act under Federal law.
As CLC further investigated, they found that GEP – through Parnas and Fruman – had donated to then-Representative Pete Sessions, a Republican who represented Texas’ 32nd Congressional District. Sessions was defeated by Colin Allred, his Democratic challenger in the November 2018 election.
In his official capacity, then-Representative Sessions, who was Chairman of the House Rules Committee, wrote a letter in 2018 to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stating that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch should be fired, and accused her of expressing “disdain” for the President and administration.
In July 2018, CLC notified the FEC of possible campaign finance violations by Parnas and Fruman.
Interestingly, in a totally separate, and seemingly unrelated turn of events, Dale W. Perry, the American owner of a large energy company doing business in Ukraine, first got wind of Parnas and Fruman after they’d met with one of his former business partners in March 2019, and described an unusual plan.
Perry characterized Parnas and Fruman’s scheme saying, “What was so troubling was, it was basically the presentation of the intent to take the gas sector back to where it was during the Yanukovych regime.”
Viktor Yanukovych is the former Ukrainian President, who, as Perry said, was “a heck of a lot more corrupt,” was friendly with Russian president Vladimir Putin, in office 2010-2014, was removed from office by the Ukrainian parliament February 2014, went into self-imposed exile in southern Russia that same month, and in January 2019 was tried and convicted in absentia of treason by Ukrainian court after it was discovered he had written a letter to Putin March 1, 2014 asking him to use Russian army and police forces to restore order in Ukraine, which in turn, led to the Russian invasion of Crimea. He has been in exile since 2014.
Petro Poroshenko, considered a Ukrainian oligarch, succeeded Yanukovych, who in turn was defeated May 2019 by Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, and won with 73.22% of votes cast.
In May, as part of the celebration and acknowledgement of Zelenskiy’s election victory, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry traveled to Kiev, Ukraine to serve as the senior U.S. government representative at his inauguration. While there, in a private meeting with Zelenskiy, Perry pressed him to fire members of the Naftogaz advisory board. Those in attendance left with the impression that Perry wanted to replace the American representative, Amos Hochstein, a former Diplomat and Energy Representative who served in the Obama administration, with someone “reputable in Republican circles.”
Rick Perry, Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy – official portrait
During that same trip, a second meeting occurred at a Kyiv hotel, which included Ukrainian government officials and energy sector business individuals. At that meeting, Secretary Perry was explicitly clear that Trump wanted to Read the rest of this entry »
ALEA, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, was a creation of 
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a Publix COVID vaccine announcement.
Warm Southern Breeze 