Year: 2016

This is Not a Surprise………

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Sacramento Mayor, former NBA star, and spouse of School privatization bunco artist Michelle Rhee, has left an amazing trail of corruption in his post basketball career:

Back in the fall of 2014, Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson was unstoppable. He’d pushed through a $300 million city subsidy for a new downtown arena for the Sacramento Kings. He’d helped elbow out racist Los Angeles Clippers team owner Donald Sterling, and grabbed a little of the spotlight for himself in the process. He’d been named president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

He and his wife, Michelle Rhee—once the brightest star in the corporate-backed “education reform” movement—showed up at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. An adviser told Johnson’s hometown newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, that the couple was a “modern-day version of Bill and Hillary Clinton.” There was talk about a run for California governor or U.S. Senate.

At his peak, KJ was a figure to behold, an urban policy entrepreneur and brander-in-chief selling #Sacramento 3.0, a “world-class” city where kids would take Uber vehicles instead of buses to their charter schools, “never check out a library book,” and have “more smart devices than toothbrushes.”

………

By the fall of 2015, Johnson’s political career was effectively over. He was under scrutiny, again, for allegedly molesting a sixteen-year-old girl two decades before. And he was facing a new allegation of sexual misconduct; a city employee had filed a sexual harassment complaint. The City of Sacramento’s legal advisers warned Johnson not to hug or touch anyone at city events. So Johnson, deciding two terms in office were enough, announced that he will not seek reelection this November. His exit will coincide with the opening of the new arena, easily his most significant mayoral achievement.

Meanwhile, debt service on the bond-financed arena will reach about $18 million a year, draining money from the city treasury. Sacramento’s city finance department is warning that the city’s spending is already “unsustainable” and budget deficits are imminent. For now, however, Johnson is being credited with a dramatic makeover of the new arena district—where a decaying shopping mall had been before.

It goes on and on, and it gets more petty and sordid.

It’s not surprising.  At the core of his political success has always been the Hope Academy charter school, which much like most of the charter school empires, is built on a foundation of broken promises and dubious statistics.

H/t Atrios

The Night of the NCAA Finals? Seriously?

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The Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns are negotiating a time for their New York debate, and Hillary wants it tomorrow night, while the NCAA basketball finals are on the air:

The Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns are still negotiating over the timing of a debate before the New York primary on April 19th, with no resolution in sight.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign released a statement Saturday saying they had offered the Sanders campaign three possible dates for what would be the ninth debate between the Democratic presidential hopefuls.

All were rejected, Clinton press spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement.

“The Sanders campaign needs to stop with the games,” Mr. Fallon said.

In a statement issued later, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said the dates and locations proposed by the Clinton campaign “don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

“We have proposed other dates which they have rejected,” he added.

“We hope we can reach agreement in the near future,” Mr Briggs continued. “The people of New York and America deserve to see and hear a debate on the important issues facing the state and country.”

In his statement, Mr. Fallon said the Clinton campaign agreed to debate on April 4th, April 14th or April 15th.

The Clinton campaign’s 15th suggestion is in the morning.

They really don’t want to debate.

Corruption is as Corruption Does

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It appears that Brian Newby, the Executive Director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, got his job there because his patron,Kansas Secretary of State Chris Korbach, pulled strings to insert him at the agency, where he later made transparently illegal moves to further Korbach’s goal of suppressing minority votes:

A Kansas county elections official used close ties to one of the nation’s leading advocates of voting restrictions to help secure the top job at a government agency entrusted with making voting more accessible, and then used the federal position to implement an obstacle to voter registration in three states.

An email provided to The Associated Press through open records requests offers a glimpse into the mindset of Brian Newby, executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, who decided — without public comment or approval from bosses — that residents of Alabama, Kansas and Georgia can no longer register to vote using a national form without providing proof of U.S. citizenship.

As a finalist for the job of executive director, Newby said in a June email to his benefactor, Kansas’ Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach, that he was friends with two of the commissioners at the federal agency, and told Kobach: “I think I would enter the job empowered to lead the way I want to.”

Voting rights advocates were stunned by Newby’s action once he got the job and have sued to overturn it. Activists say it flies in the face of the commission’s mission to provide a simple, easy form to encourage voter registration.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that states must accept and use the federal voter registration form, and an appeals court ruled in 2014 in a lawsuit filed by Kobach that states could not force the commission to require residents to provide proof-of-citizenship documents on the national form.

………

Documents obtained by AP show Newby’s ties to Kobach, the architect of voter ID and other restrictive voter registration laws around the nation that he says are needed to prevent voter fraud. Critics say there is very little voter fraud and Kobach’s measures hurt voter registration and deprive eligible voters of the right to vote.

Kobach had appointed Newby to be a county elections commissioner in Kansas, and helped him get the federal job that he took in November.

“I wanted you in the loop, in part because of other issues in the past with the EAC,” Newby emailed Kobach. “I also don’t want you thinking that you can’t count on me in an upcoming period that will tax our resources.”

………

Kobach said Wednesday that he spoke to one, and possibly two of the Republican commissioners, about Newby prior to his hiring.

………

But documents from open records requests and interviews by AP show that as early as April 2015 and continuing in the months leading to Newby’s hiring by the commission, Kobach and his staff met with county officials to discuss concerns about Newby’s job performance in Kansas. Those concerns led officials to call for an audit of the Johnson County election office Newby led.

Kobach told AP he never informed the federal commissioners about those problems, and insisted they would not have affected Newby’s performance at his federal job.

The audit released earlier this month found Newby intentionally skirted oversight of government credit card expenses, wasted taxpayer funds and improperly claimed mileage and travel expenses while at his former job in Kansas. Newby has called the audit inaccurate and misleading.

………

Newby told Kobach that he never would have been considered for such a high-profile position if it weren’t for Kobach’s support, adding that he would be saying “repeated prayers of thanksgiving for that.”

You can find more about the audit here, and it appears that this guy was stealing the taxpayer’s money, on pretty chickensh%$ stuff, like getting reimbursements for limo service to the airport despite having a car allowance.

As Yael T. Abouhalkah of he Kansas City Star so pithily states, “Kris Kobach’s voter fraud slime now stretches from Johnson County to Washington.”

H/t Charlie Pierce.

A Real Estate Developer Does the Right Thing

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In response to larcenous demands from the incumbent (monopoly) connectivity providers, the developer of Jasper Highlands built and wired up his own gigibit ISP to serve his new development:

Tennessee is at the center of a nationwide battle over whether cities and towns should be allowed to build broadband networks without facing restrictions that help private ISPs avoid competition from the public sector.

But with a lawsuit and legislative battle over a Tennessee state law still pending, one home developer decided to build his own ISP. John “Thunder” Thornton of Chattanooga needed to install high-speed Internet for “his mountaintop residential development in Marion County,” but was unable to get affordable service from AT&T or Charter Communications, a Chattanooga Times Free Press article said yesterday. He also couldn’t get service from a Chattanooga electric utility that also provides Internet because the state law prevents it from expanding to nearby areas that lack fast, affordable service.

To solve the problem, Thornton “spent more than $400,000 to build his own fiber network and link it with a power cooperative in Stevenson, Ala., where fast broadband is available,” the article said. He announced yesterday that his Jasper Highlands community in Jasper, Tennessee, “is now able to offer high-speed, gigabit-per-second Internet service for all home sites in his 3,000-acre complex.”

Thornton’s ISP is called Hi-Tech Data. It sells 100Mbps fiber service for $70 a month and gigabit service for $80 a month. Phone service is available for another $30 a month. Since the existing fiber didn’t go all the way to the Jasper Highlands development, Hi-Tech Data deployed its own fiber to cover the final 2,000 feet.

This is a natural consequence of the rent seeking behaviors engaged in by the baby Bells, cable companies, and the rest of the incumbent providers.

It’s yet another case where we have actors whose primary business model is to sit athwart the productive work of others, and extract rents, which they use to pay off politicians so that they maintain their privileged position.

Not Enough Bullets

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A Russian Oligarch just spent $1 Billion on his son’s wedding:

Russian energy tycoon Mikhail Gutseriev’s son Said married his girlfriend Khadija Uzhakhovs during the weekend in a lavish ceremony that reportedly cost $1bn (£700m). The wedding, at Moscow’s upscale Safisa restaurant, was attended by around 600 guests and saw Sting, Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias among others perform.

The bride reportedly wore a $374,000 gown, which was bedecked with precious stones, imported from Paris and weighed in at 25kg. Her pricey wedding gown was matched with a handbag, diamond tiara and pendant.

Gutseriev, who was ranked the 38th richest person in Russia by Forbes in 2015, flew in the who’s who of the music world to perform at his son’s wedding. Gutseriev is estimated to be worth $6.2bn, and his assets include oil company Russneft besides K Neftisa, OAO Russian Coal and others.

This is simply obscene.

It is Called Ticket Punching

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With about 5000 US troops in Iraq, there are 21 generals leading the troops there.

Typically, a full bird colonel would command a unit with 5000 soldiers, but there are 21 Generals:

In the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the U.S. military is notably short on soldiers, but apparently not on generals.

There are at least 12 U.S. generals in Iraq, a stunningly high number for a war that, if you believe the White House talking points, doesn’t involve American troops in combat. And that number is, if anything, a conservative estimate, not taking into account the flag officers running the U.S. air war, the admirals helping wage the war from the sea, or their superiors back at the Pentagon.

At U.S. headquarters inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, even majors and colonels frequently find themselves saluting superiors at a pace that outranks the Pentagon and certainly any normal military installation. With about 5,000 troops deployed to Iraq and Syria ISIS war, that means there’s a general for every 416 troops, give or take. To compare, there are some captains in the U.S. Army in charge of that many people.

Moreover, many of those generals come with staffs and bureaucracy that some argue slows decision-making against an agile terror group.

The Obama administration has frequently argued that the U.S. maintains a so-called light footprint in Iraq to reassure the American public that its military is not back in Iraq. Indeed, at times, the United States has not acknowledged where it has deployed troops until one of them died.

There are this many generals in Iraq because of the career needs of the general officer corps, not out of military need.

Getting a combat posting, even a useless one, paves the way to further promotions.

We saw something similar in the cruise missile attacks against Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, when the navy held off launching missiles for hours, so that more ships could get into position so that their captains could get it into their service records.

The missiles missed bin Laden by minutes as a result.

Between the military-industrial complex revolving door and up or out, our military is seriously, and deeply broken.

Notice a Pattern?

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A site unaffiliated with the Clinton Campaign details her, and her campaign’s speaking engagememts:

Date
Location
Event Type
Speaker(s)
April 1, 2016 Newtown, Pennsylvania Fundraiser John Podesta
April 1, 2016 Syracuse, New York Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 1, 2016 Syracuse, New York Organizing Event Hillary Clinton
April 1, 2016 Appleton, Wisconsin Organizing Event Bill Clinton
April 1, 2016 State College, Pennsylvania Fundraiser Laura Rosenberger
April 1, 2016 Tenafly, New Jersey Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 2, 2016 Madison, Wisconsin Organizing Event Cecile Richards
April 2, 2016 Washington, Connecticut Fundraiser Daniel Kurtz-Phelan
April 2, 2016 Boston, Massachusetts Fundraiser Michelle Kwan
April 3, 2016 Los Angeles, California Fundraiser Bill Clinton
April 3, 2016 Los Angeles, California Organizing Event Bill Clinton
April 6, 2016 Washington, DC Fundraiser Gary Gensler
April 6, 2016 Tulsa, Oklahoma Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 6, 2016 Little Rock, Arkansas Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 7, 2016 Denver, Colorado Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 7, 2016 Bexley, Ohio Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 7, 2016 El Paso, Texas Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 7, 2016 San Antonio, Texas Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 7, 2016 Dallas, Texas Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 7, 2016 New York City, New York Fundraiser De’Ara Balenger
April 8, 2016 Forth Smith, Arkansas Fundraiser Bill Clinton
April 10, 2016 McLean, Virginia Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 10, 2016 Washington, DC Fundraiser John Podesta
April 10, 2016 Villanova, Pennsylvania Fundraiser Valerie Plame
April 11, 2016 Glen Cove, New York Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 11, 2016 Mount Kisco, New York Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 11, 2016 Washington, DC Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 11, 2016 Washington, DC Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 11, 2016 Washington, DC Fundraiser John Podesta
April 12, 2016 Miami, Florida Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 12, 2016 Miami Beach, Florida Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 12, 2016 Manalapan, Florida Fundraiser Hillary Clinton
April 12, 2016 Brooklyn, New York Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 12, 2016 New York City, New York Fundraiser Entrpreneurs for Hillary
April 13, 2016 Princeton, New Jersey Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 13, 2016 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 13, 2016 Erie, Pennsylvania Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 13, 2016 Washington, DC Fundraiser Bill Clinton
April 13, 2016 Washington, DC Fundraiser Bill Clinton
April 14, 2016 Brooklyn, New York Fundraiser John Podesta
April 14, 2016 Newton, Massachusetts Fundraiser Bill Clinton
April 17, 2016 London, England Fundraiser Jake Sullivan
April 17, 2016 London, England Fundraiser Jake Sullivan
April 21, 2016 Westport, Connecticut Fundraiser Bill Clinton
April 25, 2016 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 25, 2016 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Fundraiser Chelsea Clinton
April 28, 2016 Polanco, Mexico City, Mexico Fundraiser Melanne Verveer
April 28, 2016 New York City, New York Fundraiser John Podesta
May 2, 2016 Washington, DC Fundraiser John Podesta

Notwithstanding the campaign’s claims, I don’t think that they have managed to harness the power of the small donors.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Some Sanity on Asset Forfeiture

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The government may not freeze assets needed to pay criminal defense lawyers if the assets are not linked to a crime, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a 5-to-3 decision that scrambled the usual alliances.

The case arose from the prosecution of Sila Luis, a Florida woman, on charges of Medicare fraud that, according to the government, involved $45 million in charges for unneeded or nonexistent services. Almost all of Ms. Luis’s profits from the fraud, prosecutors said, had been spent by the time charges were filed.

Prosecutors instead asked a judge to freeze $2 million of Ms. Luis’s funds that were not connected to the suspected fraud, saying the money would be used to pay fines and provide restitution should she be convicted. Ms. Luis said she needed the money to pay her lawyers.

The judge issued an order freezing her assets. That order, the Supreme Court ruled, violated her Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in a plurality opinion also signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, said the case was simple.

One would think it would be simple.

Asset forfeiture is two things at its core:  A cudgel to extract guilty pleas, and theft without due process.

It is deeply corrupting, and needs to end.

Bad Bosses Strike Back!

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In Oregon Maine, where they are proposing raising the minimum wage, along with eliminating the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, the worst boss in the world wrote an editorial saying that her workers hated the idea of being paid fairly.

Her workers responded by resigning en masse and described their dysfunctional workplace, and their dysfunctional boss, in exquisite detail:

Oh hey, it’s a Maine story (about the minimum wage, no less) that doesn’t directly involve Gov. Paul LePage!

Five servers at a restaurant in Portland called Five Fifty-Five have quit in one hell of a mic drop, giving their notice in a Portland Press Herald op-ed. The inciting incident was when their boss, Michelle Corry, wrote an op-ed that claimed to speak for her employees about the citizen-initiated ballot referendum in the state to both increase the minimum wage to $12 and eliminate the tip credit (also known as the “sub-minimum wage”). It’s the latter point that had Corry in such a huff.

………

Opponents of eliminating the tip credit say that doing so would bring about a restaurant industry apocalypse and there would be much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Restaurant owners in states like California, Washington, Oregon, and Minnesota, which pay their servers a guaranteed living wage and, at last check, had not devolved into a Road Warrior-esque hellscape, say “Um, not so much?”

Right, back to Maine and Michelle Corry’s op-ed. So, Corry argued strongly for a counter-proposal to the ballot initiative that would raise the minimum wage to only $10 and keep the tip credit intact. Since at last blush 75 percent of the state is in favor of raising the minimum wage, anti-minimum wage douchebuckets (even LePage — dammit, he showed up in this post despite our best efforts) know they’re going to have to compromise at least a little bit here, and the counter-proposal is that compromise. But in arguing for it, Corry tried to speak for those it would directly affect:

Ask any tipped employee at a restaurant near you if they would prefer to make a set wage or hustle and create their own destiny. The employees at my restaurant would always choose their own initiative.

Putting words in her servers’ mouths turned out to be a less-than-ideal move on her part.

There have been many issues at the restaurant, from capricious schedule changes to questionable practices on wages and tips. This latest insult of our boss falsely claiming to speak publicly on our behalf on an issue we care deeply about is just the final straw. We are submitting our notice and will be leaving her employment.

Translation: whatever the incredibly white Maine equivalent is of “oh HELL naw.”

The kicker to all of this is that Michelle Corry is the vice chair of the Maine Restaurant Association.

It is highly unlikely that I am going to be in Portland, Maine in the near future, but if I do, I won’t be going to Five Fifty-Five.

H/t Atrios.

How Utterly Proper

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George Mason University, a welfare program for reactionary economists and lawyers, has, with significant funding from the Brothers Koch, Decided to rename the George Mason University Law School to ASSoL, the Antonin Scalia School of Law:

George Mason was a founding father. He was one of the men who was responsible for the Bill of Rights — he wouldn’t sign the constitution without it (or at all, ultimately). Now, the law school at the university that bears his name is changing its name to the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University.

 ………

 Good lord. You are deemphasizing the name of a founding father to honor a man who fetishisized the beliefs held at the founding? A guy who didn’t go there, or have any connection to the school, who wouldn’t have hired a George Mason law student as a bathroom attendant, much less a Supreme Court clerk? That’s the guy you are renaming your law school after? Your Twitter hashtag is now #ASSLaw (Antonin Scalia School of Law). Who was in second place, Donald Trump?

 ………

 We talk a lot about the law school application crunch, and how that crunch disproportionately dings middling law schools like George Mason. There is a flight to quality, there is a flight to “free,” and schools that are neither are having a heck of a time filling their seats.

 But branding themselves as “Antonin Scalia,” who most people even lightly interested in law have heard of before, versus “George Mason,” who you should have learned about in AP History but probably didn’t because he’s not a Kardashian, might help them.

Even if Scalia Law generates some push in application and matriculation revenue, especially from right-of-center students, would it be enough to offset the negatives? Changing the school’s name in this way is sure to piss off some alumni.

Reports are that this was in response to, “$30 million in donations, $10 million of which came from the Charles Koch Foundation.”

This may very well be beyond parody, even ignoring the irony of naming a law school after a justice is on a fast track to be considered among the caliber of Roger Taney, James Clark McReynolds, Clarence Thomas, Henry Billings Brown, etc.

#ASSLaw #ASSoL

So Not a Surprise

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It appears that the University of California was preferentially admitting out of state students because they wanted the higher out of state tuition:

The University of California has been admitting thousands of students from out of state with lower grades and test scores than state residents as a way to raise cash, a state audit released Tuesday reveals.

In the last three years, nearly 16,000 nonresident undergraduates — about 29 percent of those admitted — have won spots at the coveted public university with grade-point averages and scores below the median of admitted Californians, according to the 116-page audit. The report criticizes university practices it says undermine state residents’ access to UC in favor of nonresidents, who pay about three times the basic tuition and fees of in-state students: $38,108 versus $13,400.

The state’s Master Plan for Higher Education says UC should admit only nonresidents who are at least as qualified as the “upper half of residents who are eligible for admission,” according to the report from State Auditor Elaine Howle.

But in 2011, UC changed that threshold so that nonresidents only had to “compare favorably” with residents, the audit notes.

This is what you get when you chronically underfund public higher education.

I am Seriously Considering Changing My Name

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A man has changed his last name to “Null” and as a result, has scored lots of free stuff:

A man who changed his surname to ‘Null’ claims he’s bagged numerous freebies because the word isn’t compatible with computer databases.

Raven Felix Null, 24, says he changed his name when he became an adult and claims it’s resulted in seven free nights at seven different hotels and free-of-charge car rental.

It’s all because the word ‘Null’ doesn’t register with the computer’s programming, so computer systems assume he’s not a person.

The glitch means that when receptionists enter “Null” in the surname box the system automatically recognises the word as “an absence of data”.

Which then results in the computer refusing to validate the request and Raven isn’t billed for any of the items he’s purchased.

The IT manager shared his knowledge on Reddit, where he goes by the username koalahumper, saying: “I have gotten a lot of free stuff because [a] code gives an error to the effect of “last name can’t be left blank” and the person helping me will “just put my info in later” but they never do (or can’t).”

If someone decides to challenge him about the issue, Raven threatens to sue the company for discrimination and the problem is often left until later in the day.

………

And Raven insists he didn’t change his surname to “Null” to try and gain freebies, instead he chose it so he could disassociate himself from everything.

He explained: “it means nothing, meaning I am not connected to my “family” in any way any”.

Me, I would change my name to, “Matthew’); DROP TABLE NSA;”.

Quote of the Day

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The luck has come due to the ability of the Conservative party to fill the void in our lives left until the new season of Game of Thrones starts by providing an ongoing referendum-induced saga involving regal intrigue (Queen Elizabeth II, rumoured Brexiter), ambition (Chancellor George Osbourne), betrayal (former welfare minister Iain Duncan Smith) bizarre-o religious weirdness (Stephen “Pray Away the Gay” Crabb, his replacement), tits (Home Secretary Theresa May) and bestiality (London Mayor Boris Johnson). They’ve given us everything but the dragons. That said, there’s still a few months to go yet so we don’t want to be premature.

—“Clive” at Naked Capitalism

The post is titled, “Brexit: This is What We Call a Muppet Show,” and it is quite amusing.

More Ratf%$#ing?

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The Arizona Secretary of State has affirmed in testimony before the state elections committee that someone was screwing around the the voting in the Arizona primary:

Monday’s hearing on voter suppression and election fraud in Arizona’s Presidential Preference Election revealed a slew of failures, which took place at virtually every level of government, all of which contributed to the state’s May 22 election fiasco .

………

A poll worker testified that the system in her district attempted to force her to give Republican ballots to Democratic voters throughout the day. To her credit, she gave those voters paper ballots and recorded every person that was impacted by the supposed system failure.

Secretary of State Michele Reagan testified about what she claims were multiple unintended failures which occurred on the Secretary of State’s website.

Those ‘mishaps’ ranged from the system’s failure to identify registered voters when the information was entered in lower-case letters, to the system ‘accidentally’ showing 100 percent reporting, along with patently false election results, at least six hours before the last vote was cast.

One of the most important things to come out of the hearing, however, was Secretary of State Reagan’s acknowledgement that voter registration information was tampered with.

When asked if there was any truth to the widespread allegations that the party affiliation of voters was changed ahead of the election, Reagan immediately responded by saying “Yes.”

She then told the election committee,

“This is something that I know happened, and I know it happened to people in this room. It is not hearsay. It happened to someone in my own office.”

Watch this video clip from her testimony below.



On Monday, Anonymous released the preliminary results of their own investigation into Arizona election fraud.

So far the group has confirmed 151 voters whose party affiliation was altered ahead of the Arizona primary. Of those, Anonymous has verified that 12 republicans, 139 Democrats and one voter of unidentified party affiliation were impacted.

The group further confirms that of the 139 Democrats they have identified thus far, two were Hillary Clinton supporters, 113 were Bernie Sanders supporters and 24 were of unknown preference.

I’m getting myself fitted with a custom tinfoil hat.

H/t PP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

This is a Good Old Fashioned Rat F%$#ing

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Some how or other, the Washington, DC Democratic Party managed to be a day late with filing Sanders’ name to get him on the DC Democratic primary:

As a result of a registration error committed by the District of Columbia Democratic Party, Sen. Bernie Sanders won’t appear on the Washington D.C. ballot.

The Vermont senator’s name won’t appear on the ballot because the party submitted the requisite paperwork one day too late, according to NBC’s Washington affiliate, News4.

Both the Sanders’ campaign and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid the $2,500 fee to appear on the June 14 Democratic primary ballot on time but the district’s Democratic Party failed to inform the Washington D.C. Board of Elections until March 17, one day after the deadline.

Yes, a “registration error”.

I call yet another rat f%$#ing by the Democratic Party establishment.

Labor Dodges a Bullet

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The Supreme Court was poised to make it impossible for labor unions to collect fees from freeloaders, and then Antonin Scalia died, making it a 4-4 non-decision.

It proves, once again, that the best thing that Scalia has done for the world is leaving it:

The most important labor union controversy to reach the Supreme Court in years sputtered to an end on Tuesday, with a four-to-four split, no explanation, and nothing settled definitely. The one-sentence result in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association will leave intact, but on an uncertain legal foundation, a system of “agency fees” for non-union teachers in California — with the legal doubts for public workers’ unions across the nation probably lingering until a ninth Justice joins the Court at some point in the future.

The practical effect was to leave undisturbed a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had simply found itself bound by a prior Supreme Court precedent upholding such fees against constitutional challenge. The Ninth Circuit had before it a case specifically filed as a test of that precedent, and only the Supreme Court could revisit that prior ruling, binding on all lower courts.

The Court had heard the Friedrichs case on January 11 and, from all appearances then, it seemed to be on its way toward a five-to-four decision to declare that it would be unconstitutional for unions representing government employees to charge fees to workers they represent but who are not among its members, even when the fees cover the costs of normal union bargaining over working conditions, not lobbying or outright political advocacy.

But the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last month left the Court to either find a way still to decide the case, or to end it with an even split. If it had actually tried since Scalia’s death to find a way around a split, that effort clearly came up short. The result set no precedent, and thus left the constitutional issue dangling.

Shortly after Justice Scalia died, the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative legal advocacy group involved in the Friedrichs case, announced that it would ask the Justices to schedule a rehearing on the case if it were to split four to four. The Center said at the time that it expected such a request would put the case off until the Court’s new Term, which is slated to begin on October 3. (UPDATE: Lawyers involved said Tuesday that a rehearing petition will, in fact, be filed.)

Under the Court’s rules, a rehearing request in the Friedrichs case would have to be filed within twenty-five days following Tuesday’s ruling. It would require the votes of five Justices to order such a reconsideration, and one of the five must have been one who had joined in the decision. It is unclear how that rule would work when the judgment had been reached by an evenly divided Court.

The right wing of the court has been attempting to destroy the American labor movement for decades, and for today at least, they have been thwarted.

What a Surprise. The FBI and the DoJ Lied

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After attempting to invoke the All Writs Act, the FBI just unlocked the San Bernardino shooter’s phone all by themselves:

The Justice Department is abandoning its bid to force Apple to help it unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack because investigators have found a way in without the tech giant’s assistance, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Monday.

In a three-sentence filing, prosecutors wrote that they had “now successfully accessed the data” stored on Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone and that they consequently no longer needed Apple’s court-ordered help getting in. The stunning move averts a courtroom showdown pitting Apple against the government — and privacy interests against security concerns — that many in the tech community had warned might set dangerous precedents.

I am going to put my tinfoil hat on here, and suggest that the FBI always knew that they could hack the phone.  It was probably only a call to Fort Meade away.

It took them just a few days once they realized that the court was not receptive to their demands and they were getting excoriated in the press.

 They were sandbagging the court and abusing legal process.

Yeah, He Endorsed Joe Lieberman Too.

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Barack Obama just endorsed Debbie Wasserman Schultz, because while he killed Osama bin Laden, he really hates liberals:

While President Barack Obama won’t tell us who he will be supporting in the general election, one candidate he has fully endorsed is Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Wasserman Schultz is currently running for her life in Florida against the first Democratic congressional opponent she has faced during her time in the House. Opponent Tim Canova is running on the idea that Wasserman Schultz is far too corrupt and indebted to Wall Street to effectively represent the people of her district. Canova has endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders and has been backed by some of the same groups that Sanders is.

President Obama does not often endorse candidates in House primaries, so his support for Wasserman Schultz is telling.

Interestingly enough, this came shortly after the Florida Democratic Party was shamed into providing voter lists to Mr. Canova:

Last week, the Florida Democratic Party — and Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz — took some serious heat after it banned upstart congressional candidate Tim Canova from using the party’s voter data files, which help candidates research and contact supporters. But the Florida Democratic Party reversed its decision yesterday, party spokesperson Max Steele has confirmed to New Times.

Improbably, this was the second voter-data scandal to ensnare Wasserman Schultz this election cycle. In December, Wasserman Schultz, acting as chair of the Democratic National Committee, temporarily banned Bernie Sanders from accessing the DNC’s voter data files after his campaign staffer was caught hacking into Hillary Clinton’s campaign data. (The information allows candidates to research and contact potential supporters in their area.) But the move backfired, and Wasserman Schultz has since been accused of intentionally trying to sink Sanders’ chances at the presidency. Sanders sued, the move was overturned, and critics across the country have called for her ouster. She’s had a bad few months.

In something of a twist, Canova, who once advised Sanders on Wall Street reform, then said he had also been denied access to that very same data. This was due to a Florida Democratic Party rule, instituted in 2010, which bans candidates running against incumbents from using the information. In an interview, Canova called the rule “undemocratic” and said the party was acting to protect Wasserman Schultz.

The party did not offer data access “to candidates challenging incumbent members of Florida’s Democratic congressional delegation,” Steele told New Times earlier this month. “This policy has been applied uniformly across the board since 2010. We stand with our incumbent members of Congress, and we’re proud of the job they do representing the people of Florida. The Voter File is proprietary software created and owned by the Democratic National Committee that is maintained and operated by the Florida Democratic Party here in state.”

………

After Canova put up a fight, the Florida Democratic Party reconsidered how Canova’s case looked to the outside world, Steele says. The party made the choice today to give Canova, and only Canova, access to the file.

“Given the unique circumstances of having an incumbent member of Congress who is also the DNC chair who is being challenged by a Democrat (a situation that as you can imagine has never arisen), the FDP has decided to grant Mr. Canova access to the Voter File,” Steele said via email. The file will cost $3,500 to access.

Steele reiterated that this will be a one-time policy change: “Given the dual nature of an incumbent who is also a national party chair, we’ve decided to grant Mr. Canova access to avoid any appearance of favoritism,” he said. Other candidates who run against incumbents will be out of luck.

As an aside, they would not have done this, or at least not have done this so soon, unless there was a significant amount of loathing directed towards Wasserman Schultz in the state party.

Considering her refusal to support challenges to reactionary Cuban-American Republicans in competitive districts, I rather expect that there is no small amount of loathing among the locals there.

This is a New Level of Low

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The Clinton campaign is saying that they won’t debate Sanders unless he stops criticizing her:

A top aide to Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Monday dodged questions about setting up a debate with Bernie Sanders in New York, saying it depends on the senator’s “tone.”

“This is a man who said he’d never run a negative ad ever. He’s now running them. They’re planning to run more,” Joel Benenson, Clinton’s chief strategist, said on CNN. “Let’s see the tone of the campaign he wants to run before we get to any other questions.”

After winning a trio of states over the weekend, Sanders on Sunday called for a debate in New York ahead of that state’s April 19 primary. The Vermont senator is looking to cut into Clinton’s delegate lead and says he has the “momentum” heading into the latter half of the race.

The pair faced off in a Miami debate earlier this month, and a Sanders campaign letter on Sunday said the two campaigns had agreed to a California debate in May but had not agreed to terms on a debate in April, according to The New York Times.

How long before someone says, “If she can’t debate Bernie Sanders, how can she stand up to Vladimir Putin?”

Never mind, I just did.

Erdoğan Is Now Owned by the House of Saud

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It turns out that, following his indictment for money laundering, Bilal Erdoğan was smuggled out of Italy with aid from the Saudi Embassy, which included hiring the Mafia and using a Saudi diplomatic passport:

According to Rai News 24, Italian police spokesman Lt. Colonel Domenico Grimaldi accused the Saudi legation in Rome of facilitating the escape of Bilal Erdoğan who was detained for money laundering allegations. Bilal Erdoğan’s short detention in Rome and later escape are the latest in a series of scandals hitting President Erdoğan’s family.

“Mafia activities continue to plague our judicial system and the Polizia di Stato is blamed for this humiliating security lapse in Rome airport. We also found that a notorious mafia gang active in Calabria and Sicily was hired by members in the Saudi embassy and they managed to release Mr. Erdoğan from Regina Coeli Prison,” police spokesman Lt. Colonel Grimaldi told AFP.

They moved Bilal Erdoğan to Excelsior Hotel, added Lt. Colonel Grimaldi, and Erdoğan was caught on cameras leaving the Hotel, donned traditional Arab dress and adroitly disguised as a Saudi diplomat; Bilal passed the security check holding a fake Saudi diplomatic passport and we believe, he couldn’t have escaped without the connivance of a number of police officers in Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

Turkey is a US ally like Pakistan is a US ally, which is to say, “Not at all.”

H/t Naked Capitalism.