Category: Politics

Bernie Sanders Nails It

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Writing in the New York Times, Bernie Sanders talks about the elephant in the room, that the Federal Reserve has been completely captured by the financial industry:

Wall Street is still out of control. Seven years ago, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department bailed out the largest financial institutions in this country because they were considered too big to fail. But almost every one is bigger today than it was before the bailout. If any were to fail again, taxpayers could be on the hook for another bailout, perhaps a larger one this time.

To rein in Wall Street, we should begin by reforming the Federal Reserve, which oversees financial institutions and which uses monetary policy to maintain price stability and full employment. Unfortunately, an institution that was created to serve all Americans has been hijacked by the very bankers it regulates.

The recent decision by the Fed to raise interest rates is the latest example of the rigged economic system. Big bankers and their supporters in Congress have been telling us for years that runaway inflation is just around the corner. They have been dead wrong each time. Raising interest rates now is a disaster for small business owners who need loans to hire more workers and Americans who need more jobs and higher wages. As a rule, the Fed should not raise interest rates until unemployment is lower than 4 percent. Raising rates must be done only as a last resort — not to fight phantom inflation.

What went wrong at the Fed? The chief executives of some of the largest banks in America are allowed to serve on its boards. During the Wall Street crisis of 2007, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, served on the New York Fed’s board of directors while his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Next year, four of the 12 presidents at the regional Federal Reserve Banks will be former executives from one firm: Goldman Sachs.

Just read it.

Here is an Interesting Bit of Politicking………

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Joe Steffen, a former aide to former Maryland Governor Robert “Badhair” Ehrlich was forcibly retired from his position when he got caught planting false stories about Martin O’Malley. (Someone caught him bragging)

Because of his reputation as Ehrlich’s hatchet man, and the glee with which he did his work got him the nickname, “Prince of Darkness”.

He blogs occasionally, and muses on Maryland politics with a focus on the Republican party, which can frequently be rather illuminating.

Case in point:

You know, I can remember when former Governor, Bob Ehrlich, was running for Governor the first time, the time that he won, the time I was still in his employ, that he and a few others from the campaign were in contact with the National Rifle Association (NRA) – in an effort to get the NRA to LOWER its rating of Ehrlich’s time in Congress from an “A” to a “B.”

I don’t recall who it was that Bob and his chosen spoke with at the time, but I do know that the NRA obliged Ehrlich’s request. The reason that the soon-to-be one term Governor made the request is because Bob didn’t want to be going after that office against liberal firebrand and dumbass, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend as an “A” rated NRA supporter. The reason he didn’t want THAT was because at that time the NRA was viewed none too favorably in Maryland, and Ehrlich figured that an “A” rating from them would likely sink his chances at attaining the Governorship.

First, I find it interesting, though not surprising, that the NRA gamed its own rating system to benefit a Republican candidate.

It’s also interesting just how a good NRA rating is poison in Maryland, or at least that it was in 2002.

Given that Steffen is complaining about Governor Larry Hogan’s tepid moves regarding expanded carry of firearms in Maryland (thank you, Governor), it appears that the politics have not changed much in the state.

It also is another bit of evidence that the NRA has become a blatantly partisan organization.

It’s why you read stuff from people that you disagree. You learn stuff.

As to his categorizing Kathleen Kennedy Townsend,(KKT) Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter as a, “liberal firebrand and dumbass,” I disagree with the former, not because she wasn’t a liberal, but because the term, “Firebrand,” implies the ability to generate political heat, and KKT could not generate enough heat to light a match.

As to dumbass bit, I have repeatedly noted that KKT was the worst candidate in the history of the Kennedy clan, and arguably the history of history. (She kicked Ehrlich’s ass in the debate, and still got beaten like a rug in the election.)

Live Blogging the Democratic Debates

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Note:  If you are seeing this of Facebook, it will not update as I update.

10:50 pm
Hillary ended her closing statement with, “May the force be with you.”
That is f%$#ing awesome.

10:49 pm
Closing statements:
Bernie Sanders: Talked about his background, growing up poor, and how it shaped is opinions on the economy, education, etc.
Martin O’Malley: Republicans will do nothing the make the country, endorses path to citizenship for undocumented, we must act on climate change.
Hillary Clinton: Republicans are scary and evil assholes.  I just became a grandmother, and think about her future.

10:37 pm
Martin O’Malley just talked about his wife Katie in glowing terms when he got to talk about the first spouse thing, extolling her lawyering, judging, and advocacy against domestic violence.
He is so getting laid tonight.

10:36 pm
What the F%$#?
A question about the role of the first spouse, and talked about Bill Clinton not supervising flower arrangements?
What the F%$#ing F%$#?

10:33 pm
Radditz just asked about the mess that is Libya, and how much blame she bears for that.Clinton’s reply was not particularly meaningful, and Radditz basically repeated her question.
Neither Sanders or O’Malley are saying that they need to talk, because they recognize that she is digging herself a hole.
Sanders finally gets to talk, and notes, once again, that the unintended consequences of regime change are tend to be disastrous.
O’Malley, says that we let our, “Lust for regime change,” to override our ability manage the situation.

10:26 pm
A Union-Leader editor just asked Sanders how to handle the recent Heroine epidemic.
Sanders response is that we need to look at doctors and pharmaceutical companies and the over prescription of opiates, and that addiction is a disease, not a a crime, and that it is immoral for addicts to wait months for treatment.
Hillary talks about how this was brought up to her at her talks in New Hampshire (good move), and largely agrees with Sanders.
O’Malley talks about the loss of a daughter and a mother of his friends to addiction.  It is a human and touching moment.
He also specifically talked about how we need to have interventions from the first time that someone hits a hospital with addiction problems.

10:20 pm
They ask Hillary Clinton about racism and law enforcement misconduct.
Clinton talked primarily about rebuilding trust between the police and the populace.
O’Malley talked about how he worked to fix Baltimore when he was mayor (IMNSHO, too aggressive policing) and that he reduced incarceration as governor.
O’Malley went there, saying that police forces need to be more open and accountable.
Sanders notes that we are a prison society, with the highest incarceration in the history of history.  He said that racism is real.
He then said that cops should not shoot unarmed civilians, and that we should legalize pot, and end the war on drugs, “Spend more on jobs and education, not incarceration.”

10:10 pm
Another break, and the talking heads come on (Stephanopoulos and Karl, not David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison, the band Talking Heads make a comment would be cool)
I screamed, “SHUT UP GEORGE!”

10:08 pm
Clinton is trying to say that people earning a $¼ million a year are middle class who must not pay a few bucks more a week for health care and family leave.
Sanders again notes that his proposals would be a net saver for the middle class.
O’Malley noted that he balanced all his budgets (a bit of a fib, it’s required in the state constitution, not a choice) and that he made taxes more progressive (true)

10:05 pm
Quote of the night.  When Sanders and Clinton get into it on taxes, Bernie says, “Oh, now this is getting fun.”

10:04 pm
They switch to education, and call out an educators ask Sanders how free tuition won’t just load up the taxpayers.
Sanders goes back to his Tobin tax.
O’Malley says, “I have actually done this,” as Governor.  Point, O’Malley.
Clinton talks about her educational compact, and then says that Sanders single payer is unaffordable.
Sanders replied how the costs of healthcare are born by the ordinary people, and that single payer will save them money,

9:57 pm
We move to healthcare, Hillary is asked about increases in healthcare prices.
She talks about needing new regulations, and calls out governors who opted out of Medicaid expansion.
Sanders still calls for single payer.  He says that everyone should have the right to health coverage.  Martha Radditz demands to know the exact amount of tax increases, and Sanders replied that ordinary family will save thousands of dollars a year.

9:52 pm
Sanders calls out Bill Clinton’s role in repealing Glass-Steagall and deregulating the financial industry.

9:50 pm
Clinton just  made a little fib:  She said that she had more donations from teachers and students than she has from Wall Street.  There may be more $20 dollar checks from teachers, but the banksters cut bigger checks, and gave her more money.

9:48 pm
Hillary is asked about what she would do, and who should like her.  Her response, “Everyone.”
Sanders explicitly says that big business will not like him.  He wants the big banks up, and says that the greed of the billionaire class are destroying the economy and people’s lives.
O’Malley just called out Hillary Clinton for invoking 911 to excuse her support for the big banks.
Charlie just said, “I want O’Malley to be Bernie Sanders’ running mate.”

9:43 pm
Clinton was a little late coming back from the break.  She apologized, and Charlie, my son, said, “This is the most entertaining she has been all night.”
Sanders is asked about middle class stagnation, and he listed them off quickly:

  • Increase to minimum wage
  • A Tobin tax on speculation to make public college free.

O’Malley noted how he has walked the walk, raising Maryland’s minimum wage, and having the highest median wage in the nation.
Clinton basically calls out the Republicans, doing the front runner again.

9:33 pm
I’m watching a break, and the f%$#ing talking heads have taken advantage of the beak to have George Stephanopoulos and Jonathan Karl bloviating.
Please, run ads instead.

9:27 pm
Clinton just said that we have to remove Assad first.   (Gawd, her foreign policy sucks)
Sanders notes that her priorities are wrong, and that we need to focus on ISIS, and that Assad is a distraction.
O’Malley notes that Clinton is engaging in cold war thinking, where we pick and choose who we want to overthrow.  Has a great quote, “It is not our role to roam the world looking for monsters to destroy.

9:21 pm
Sanders is asked about ISIS, and he says that the US should not be the policemen of the world.
He called out Saudi Arabia and Qatar for not dealing with ISIS.  He specifically called out the war in Yemen, and Qatar’s profligate spending on the world cup.
Clinton was asked whether we are already on the ground, as we lost a special forces member there, and there are more special forces on the ground.
She denied that this is an escalation, and Martha Radditz suggested that our current actions will lead to an escalation.
Radditz asked O’Malley about his accusations of lack of adequate human intelligence in the region.
O’Malley makes note that we are under resourcing foreign policy, and sustainable development.
Clinton replies that she is still arguing for a no-fly zone.  Again, stupid.  A no-fly zone is declare war against Syria.
Gawd, she is stupidly bellicose in her foreign policy.
Sanders noted that Clinton is too eager for regime change, and does not consider the blowback.
He notes that we have created vacuums have created safe havens for terrorists.

9:10 pm
Clinton is asked about a Syrian refugee ban, and goes full weasel, and says nothing of note.
O’Malley calls the talk of a Refugee ban a betrayal of American values.

9:07 pm
Clinton is asked about banning encryption, and suggests a “Manhattan like Project for Tech.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
If law enforcement has access, then the companies have access, then the crooks have access.
O’Malley was asked, and said that we should not asked to give up our rights for security.

9:03 pm
Clinton is asked of Trump supporters are wrong.
She just called him ISIS’s best recruiter directly.
Sanders comes back with the fact that Trump is using hatred and bigotry to rip off ordinary people.
O’Malley objects to being ignored again.

8:59 pm
Clinton claims that O’Malley mischaracterized her positions.
I would note that Clinton is clearly playing the front-runner in her debate strategey.

8:56 pm
Clinton is asked why she supports gun control when many Americans want more guns.
Clinton shot this down, noted that she does not feel that this is helpful.
She also went after Trump, essentially calling him an ISIS recruiting tool.
Sanders was then asked about guns, and he said that wants better background checks and an end tyo the gun show loophole.  More significantly, he came out for an assault weapons ban, which is a big deal.
Martin O’Malley had to break in to note that he actually passed gun control laws, and noted that Sanders voted against the Brady bill, and that Clinton has flip flopped on this issue.
He scored a good point when he said that ISIS propaganda videos suggest buying from gun shows.
Sanders got pissed off, and noted his record.

8:48 pm
The moderators bring up the San Bernardino attack, asking Hillary Clinton.
She calls for an American led air campaign with Arab and Kurd boots on the ground.  (Hasn’t work so far)
She also talks about working with the tech companies, which sounds a lot like carrots and sticks to get them to look through our personal statements.
O’Malley brings up that we have failed to invest in intelligence, and brought up his close ties to first responders, and increase data sharing.
Sanders told by the moderators that 78% of the population believes the government cannot defend against lone wolf terrorists.  Sanders agreed, and noted that it was a fruit our our ill considered Iraq invasion.

8:43 pm
The moderators started with a question on the data breach issues (FYI).
Bernie Sanders was very forthcoming, noted that there have been repeated problems with the way that the data is (mishandled) the data.
He admitted that his staff did the wrong thing, and that he would fire anyone involved in this breach.
When he asked, he apologized immediately to Clinton.
Clinton was reasonably gracious in reply.
O’Malley condemned the whole thing as a distraction from the issues, and brought up terrorism again.

8:38 pm
Clinton, then O’Malley, and then Sanders.
Clinton did a fairly generic opening that leaned on her inevitabiliuty, and claimed that she had a plan to defeat ISIS.
O’Malley went big on national security and terrorism.  Oh, snap!  O’Malley called Trump out as a fascist, though not by name.
Sanders opened with his fairly standard positions: Changing the economy to benefit us all, moving away from fossil fuels, and he said that our foreign policy needs to change

8:32 pm
Skipped the 30 minutes of talking heads, they walked on the stage and are about to start the opening statements.

Poland is Being Poland Again

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Most of the Jews of Poland died in the Holocaust.

Many of the rest fled following antisemitic incidents post WW II.

But Poland is Poland, and they won’t let an absence of Jews get in the way of blaming them for everything:

When some 50,000 people turned out in Warsaw recently to protest a plan by Poland’s ruling party to pack the nation’s constitutional court, the hard right-wing political faction responded quickly with a counter-demonstration of its own. Its counter-protest featured, among other things, a placard that mocked those claiming to defend democracy as “the committee to defend Jewish-Communist wealth.”

At around the same time in Wroclaw, Poland’s fourth largest city, crowds at a parallel demonstration to support the recently elected Law and Justice party shouted, “Wroclaw is being de-Polanized as the Jews are buying up homes in the city.”

At another Wroclaw demonstration, held November 18 to protest a European Union plan that would see Poland admit some 7,000 Syrian refugees, demonstrators denounced the proposed immigrants as Islamists — and to somehow add to this point, they set fire to a previously prepared effigy of a Hasidic Jew holding the E.U. flag.

God, Honor and Fatherland,” the crowd then chanted.

Some things never change.

H/t the inner walls

*Google the Kielce Pogrom.

The Bernie Sanders Campaign Just Sued the DNC

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After repeated failures by the DNC’s politically connected vendor to properly secure candidate databases, a techie at the Sanders campaign did something wicked stupid, and the DNC cut off the campaign form their own data:

A fight between the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders and the Democratic leadership went public on Friday as the party punished the campaign over a data breach and the Sanders camp sued the party and accused it of actively trying to help Hillary Clinton.

The dispute came after members of Mr. Sanders’ data team were found to have gotten access to, searched and stored proprietary information from Hillary Clinton’s team during a software glitch with an important voter database. The Democratic National Committee acted swiftly to deny the Sanders campaign future access to the party’s 50-state voter file, which contains information about millions of Democrats and is invaluable to campaigns on a daily basis.

Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, accused the party committee of stacking the scales to help Mrs. Clinton, claiming that it was being unfairly penalized for the data breach. At a news conference, Mr. Weaver insisted that the campaign had dealt with the situation by firing its national data director. Later Friday, the campaign filed a federal lawsuit seeking to have its access to the file restored.

The Democratic committee is “actively” working to “undermine” the Sanders campaign, Mr. Weaver said, reflecting its longstanding frustration that the party apparatus, which is supposed to be neutral, is lining up behind Mrs. Clinton.

………

At issue is a database of voter information, with millions of records, that the party makes available to campaigns for a fee, and is “heart and soul” of modern presidential campaigns, as the Sanders campaign put it. State parties feed the list with information including names, addresses, ethnicity if available, and voting history. Usually, public election records show which elections a person has voted in, though who they voted for is secret.

The Democratic Party then adds data from commercially available lists that track such information as television habits and magazine subscriptions. They match voter names to donor lists created by both political and nonpolitical organizations.

Each campaign then inputs data gathered by its own staff, gleaned from door knocks, phone calls, emails and other sources. With the data, they can assign each voter their own “score” signifying how likely they are to vote for a candidate. The scores advise everything from decisions about whose doors to knock on to which voters might donate.

It is this use of the massive combination of data that drives modern campaigns, mastered by the Obama operations in 2008 and 2012, which had a team of more than 50 people poring over the information to best target their fund-raising, persuasion and voter turnout efforts.

The breach occurred Wednesday when the firm that handles the list, NGP VAN, was making a tweak to its system and inadvertently dropped the firewall between the campaigns for approximately four hours, according to the court filing by the Sanders campaign. That meant that the campaigns could see each other’s information. But only the Sanders campaign gained access to data that was proprietary.

………

In its lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, the Sanders campaign argued that the party had no right to terminate the licensing agreement that allowed the campaign access to the voter file. The campaign estimated that the loss of access would cost it $600,000 in contributions, a serious blow because it has “been financed primarily with contributions from individual donors rather than Political Action Committees.”

“However, the damage to the campaign’s political viability, as a result of being unable to communicate with constituents and voters, is far more severe, and incapable of measurement,” the suit said. Party representatives said they had not seen the suit and thus could not comment.

One show of support for Mr. Sanders’s case came from David Axelrod, a senior adviser for President Obama’s campaigns. He called the penalty “harsh,” saying on Twitter that, without evidence that the campaign hierarchy knew about data poaching, it appear that the “DNC is putting finger on scale.”

Josh Uretsky, the fired national data director from the Sanders campaign, also called the punishment “an overreaction” and insisted that he had merely been trying to verify the data breach, adding: “We did so in a way that we know would create a record that the D.N.C. and NGP VAN would have access to. We deliberately did not download or take custodianship of the records.” Mr. Utresky and Mr. Sanders’ aides did not address why multiple users from the campaign searched the Clinton data.

Mr. Uretsky acknowledged that Clinton data was being looked at, but said his intent was to see whether the Sanders campaign’s data might also be vulnerable.

Utretsky did something classically stupid, and he deserved to be fired.

This is kind of the problematic “IT Bro” bullsh%$ that plagues the computer professions.

The fact that this is all over the news, when repeated failures by this vendor, NGP VAN, over the past few months got buried and ignored does seem to indicate that the always thuggish and incompetent Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is seizing on this incident to once again to put her thumb on the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton.

After all, the stupid sh%$ that the Sanders hapless IT dweeb pulled over a short time, “Over a period of more than 40 minutes,” so the action taken appears to be excessive.

The fact the DNC aggressively leaked of the whole affair to the press, further reinforces the perception that DWS is deliberately f%$#ing the Sanders campaign.

So we have a lawsuit against the DNC to the tune of $600,000.00 a day.

Can we please fire Debbie Wasserman-Schultz now?  She is hopeless and hapless.

The official statement by the Sanders campaign comes after the break:

Statement by Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders 2016 Campaign Manager
December 18, 2015

 Two months ago, shortly after our digital vendor who conducts modeling for our campaign told us that there was failure in the firewall that prevents campaigns from seeing one another’s data, we contacted the DNC and told them about the failure. We were concerned that our data could be compromised and we were assured at the time the firewall would be restored.

 Instead, we found out two days ago that once again, this sensitive and important data was compromised because the DNC and its vendor failed to protect it.

 We have invested enormous campaign resources in acquiring the rights to use this proprietary information. But the DNC, in an inappropriate overreaction, has denied us access to our own data.

 Let me briefly discuss the three issues involved here.

 First, this is not the first time that the vendor hired by the DNC to run the voter file program, NGP VAN, has allowed serious failures to occur. On more than one occasion, they have dropped the firewall between the data of competing Democratic campaigns. That is dangerous incompetence. It was our campaign months ago that alerted the DNC to the fact that campaign data was being made available to other campaigns. At that time our campaign did not run to the media, relying instead on assurances from the vendor that the problem would be resolved. Unfortunately, the other day, the vendor once again dropped the firewall between the campaigns for some data.

 Secondly, after discussion with the DNC it became clear that some of our staffers irresponsibly accessed some of the data from another campaign. That behavior is unacceptable to the Sanders campaign and we fired the staffer immediately and made certain that any information obtained was not utilized. We are now speaking to other staffers who might have been involved and further disciplinary action may be taken. Clearly, while that information was made available to our campaign because of the incompetence of the vendor, it should not have been looked at. Period.

 Thirdly, rather incredibly, the leadership of the DNC has used this incident to shut down our ability to access our own information, information which is the lifeblood of any campaign. This is the information about our supporters, our volunteers, the lists of people we intend to contact in Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere. This is information that we have worked hard to obtain. It is our information, not the DNCs.

 In other words, by their action, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee is now actively attempting to undermine our campaign. This is unacceptable. Individual leaders of the DNC can support Hillary Clinton in any way they want, but they are not going to sabotage our campaign – one of the strongest grassroots campaigns in modern history.

 We are announcing today that if the DNC continues to hold our data hostage, and continues to try to attack the heart and soul of our campaign, we will be in federal court this afternoon seeking an immediate injunction.

 What is required here is a full and independent audit of the DNC’s handling of this data and its security from the beginning of this campaign to the present, including the incident in October that we alerted them to.

Putin Wins Troll of the Day Award

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Vladimir Putin handed out a couple of ringing—if not entirely official—endorsements to two of this year’s most notorious men: Donald Trump and suspended FIFA President Sepp Blatter. During his annual press conference on Thursday, the Russian president praised Donald Trump, calling the frontrunner in the Republican primary race a “bright and talented person,” according to the Associated Press. He also welcomed Trump’s calls for improved U.S-Russia relations.

A recurring theme among GOP presidential candidates is whether they possess the negotiating chops to deal with the Russian strongman. It appears Trump and Putin would be bosom buddies. (Trump has previously said he thinks he’d get along with Putin “very well.”)

Putin also handed out praise to Sepp Blatter, who’s facing a criminal investigation in Switzerland for allegations of corruption. Blatter, Putin said, is “a very well respected person.”

“He has always tried to treat football not as a sport but as an element of cooperation between countries and peoples,” Putin added. “He is the one who must be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

 Seriously, he is just poking us with a stick for his personal amusement.

Nice Work if You Can Get It

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The lobbying operation Purple Strategies is lobbying for the NRA and for the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety:

The growing frequency of mass shootings has done little to change the political stalemate over guns in Washington, with gun rights and gun control groups each declaring that the latest massacre — for now, the one in San Bernardino — supports their diametrically opposed arguments.

In this environment, no one can predict the future of gun policy in America. But at least one thing is certain: The team of political consultants at Purple Strategies will get paid.

The partners at Purple Strategies — a bipartisan lobbying firm and consulting agency formed in 2008 through a merger of Issue & Image, a Democratic-led company, and National Media, a Republican campaign firm — have developed business relationships on both sides of the gun control debate, working with both the National Rifle Association and Everytown for Gun Safety, the umbrella organization for pro-gun control advocacy groups.

Everytown did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Officials from the NRA declined to provide a comment for this article — although they did ask us for more information about Everytown’s ties to Purple Strategies.

A spokesperson for Purple Strategies denied that the firm has relationships on both sides of the gun policy debate.

………

We had asked Morgante to describe what appeared to be a close relationship between Purple and National Media, Red Eagle Media Group, and the American Media & Advocacy Group, all of which had done work for the NRA.

“The founding partners of Issue & Image and National Media Public Affairs founded Purple, however, Purple Strategies operates independently and does not share clients or employees with any other company that you referenced,” Morgante wrote.

Notwithstanding Morgante’s claims, however, documents and business filings reviewed by The Intercept show considerable overlap between National Media and Purple Strategies when it comes to clients, staff, office space, and leadership.

Consider how this works for gun-related clients:

Everytown and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, two groups heavily funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg to enact gun restrictions, have relied on Purple Strategies’ Margie Omera and her firm, Momentum Analysis, for multiple polling services in 2014 and this year. Momentum Analysis was acquired by Purple Strategies in 2013. In a memo to Everytown, Omera identified herself as working for Purple Insights, “the in-house opinion research group at Purple Strategies.”

The NRA’s relationship with Purple and National Media is obscured through a network of affiliate companies. But documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission show that the NRA regularly buys political advertising through American Media & Advocacy Group and Red Eagle Media, two firms that share an address in Alexandria, Virginia, with Purple Strategies and National Media.

Records maintained by the Alexandria Circuit Court reveal that Red Eagle Media is an “assumed or fictitious” business created and owned by National Media. Robin Roberts, a co-founding partner of Purple Strategies and the president of National Media, registered the name.

They are laughing their way to the bank.

Good News, at Least in the Short Term

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The right wing National Front, after scoring a stunning win in the initial round of regional elections in France, struck out in the 2nd, and final, round of elections:

France’s far-right Front National has failed to win control of any regions in the final round of local elections despite a historically high score in the first-round when it was ranked as the most popular party in France.

The defeat of FN was down to mass tactical voting, an increase in turnout and warnings by the left that what it called the “antisemitic and racist” party would bring France to its knees. All this combined to stop FN translating its huge first-round score of nearly 28% into the overall control of any region.

After big gains by the Front National in regional elections, leftwing voters in some areas are being asked to vote for the rightwing Les Républicains party

But the far-right party still won a record number of votes in the final round: at least 6.6m, handing a significant boost to the party leader Marine Le Pen’s bid to run for president in 2017.

………

Exit polls on Sunday night showed that, with less than 18 months to go until the next French presidential election, the nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-European FN still gained hundreds of regional councillors across France — tripling its presence on regional councils and extending its nationwide reach, cementing its grassroots powerbase and boosting its quest for power nationwide.  

 ………

 Addressing her supporters, Le Pen presented her party as the victim of “calumny and defamation” by the government who she said had “intimidated and infantilised” voters by teaming up with its rivals on the right to keep FN out of power. She said her party’s rise was inexorable.

She said the tactical voting by leftwingers who chose Nicolas Sarkozy’s rightwing Les Républicains party in order to put up a “barricade” against FN had already played into her claim that she and her voters were the victims of an elitist system that persecuted them. She vowed during the campaign that her voters would take their revenge by turning out in even greater numbers during the presidential campaign.

Le Pen herself failed to capitalise on her high first-round score in the vast northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, after the Socialist party pulled out of the race and made an extraordinary plea for its voters to choose Sarkozy’s candidate Xavier Bertrand just to stop Le Pen. First estimations showed that Bertrand, Sarkozy’s former employment minister, won with a resounding 57% of the vote, with Le Pen taking 42.8%.

Right wing populist parties, like the FN, live off feelings of betrayal by the “elites”, and this election, where Socialist candidates withdrew from the elections to provide a firewall against the FN, plays into this narrative.

I expect for Marine Le Pen to make it into the 2nd round of the Presidential elections next time around as a result of this.

Considering that both current President Holland and former President Sarkozy are both about as popular as as a case of the Clap, we are going to see a lot more nose holding of voters in upcoming elections.

Nope, No Appearance of Corruption Here

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The New York Times has revealed the connections between Joe Biden’s lobbyist son, Hunter, and a Ukrainian oligarch:

When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. traveled to Kiev , Ukraine, on Sunday for a series of meetings with the country’s leaders, one of the issues on his agenda was to encourage a more aggressive fight against Ukraine’s rampant corruption and stronger efforts to rein in the power of its oligarchs.

But the credibility of the vice president’s anticorruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor F. Yanukovych before he was forced into exile.

Hunter Biden, 45, a former Washington lobbyist, joined the Burisma board in April 2014. That month, as part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, specifically forbade Mr. Zlochevksy, as well as Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer and another company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky, to have any access to the accounts.

But after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets. The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September.

………

But Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the involvement of the vice president’s son with Mr. Zlochevsky’s firm undermined the Obama administration’s anticorruption message in Ukraine.

“Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,” Mr. Chow said. “But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.”

………

Ms. Bedingfield said Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine with his father. She also said that Ukrainian officials had never mentioned Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma to the vice president during any of his visits.

“I’ve got to believe that somebody in the vice president’s office has done some due diligence on this,” said Steven Pifer, who was the American ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000. “I should say that I hope that has happened. I would hope that they have done some kind of check, because I think the vice president has done a very good job of sending the anticorruption message in Ukraine, and you would hate to see something like this undercut that message.”

And people wonder why our heartfelt appeals to end corruption in foreign governments are not well received.

Drip, Drip, Drip………

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And now the second of Albany’s “3 Men in a Room” has been convicted of corruption:

Dean G. Skelos, the former majority leader of the New York Senate, and his son were found guilty of federal corruption charges on Friday, a quick and devastating follow-up punch to the State Capitol, which has seen two entrenched leaders convicted and removed from office in less than two weeks.

The jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan took roughly eight hours over two days to reach its verdict against Senator Skelos, 67, and his son, Adam B. Skelos, 33, finding them guilty of all eight bribery, extortion and conspiracy counts.

The Skeloses were undone by the perversion of a simple fatherly impulse: There was little that the elder Skelos would not do, or ask, for his son. They used the father’s position as majority leader to pressure a Manhattan developer, an environmental technology company and a medical malpractice insurer to provide Adam Skelos with roughly $300,000 via consulting work, a no-show job and a direct payment of $20,000.

Dean Skelos, a Republican from Long Island, had been one of the most powerful men in state government until his arrest this year, and his conviction — along with the conviction of his former colleague, the longtime Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat — is sure to have repercussions beyond the courtroom. As in Mr. Silver’s case, which ended on Nov. 30, the verdict resulted in Mr. Skelos’s expulsion from the State Legislature, where both men had served for more than three decades.

I cannot imagine that UU Attorney Preet Bharara does not his sights on the Governor’s office after all of this.

F%$# Donald Trump for Making Boris Johnson Look Wise

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The fact that Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, who can best be described as little more than a life support system for his hair, can appear wise when talking about Donald Trump is an indication of just how wrong and disturbing the whole phenomenon of Trump’s political ascendance is:

London’s mayor, the conservative politician Boris Johnson, also chimed in.

“As a city where more than 300 languages are spoken, London has a proud history of tolerance and diversity and to suggest there are areas where police officers cannot go because of radicalization is simply ridiculous,” he said.

“The only reason I wouldn’t go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump,” Johnson quipped.

We live in Bizarro World.

Politics Got a Bit Less Entertaining………

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Jimmy “The Rent Is Too Damn High” McMillan has announced that he is retiring from politics:

Jimmy McMillan, the whiskered political showman who became a viral Internet star when he ran for governor of New York in 2010 as a candidate of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, has announced his retirement from the political arena, citing a lack of public support for his agenda.

In a news release infused with misspellings and other errors that was dated Tuesday, Mr. McMillan said voters had been “totally brainwashed” and criticized Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, for not securing “a rent reduction for the people in the cities of Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan and Queens.”

“Rent is too damn high is an international crisis,” he wrote. “There are many questions the people should ask themselves. I which them the best — I’m out.”

The news release said the Rent Is Too Damn High Party was “for sale, trademark and all,” and listed a Manhattan lawyer, Vincent Imbesi, as a point of contact.

He will be missed from the political scene.

Well, This Is One F%$# of a Campaign Slogan………

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Too Evil for Dick Cheney.

Seriously, it is a complete mindf%$# that the Donald has plumbed depths that Dick Cheney recoils from in horror:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is joining a chorus of voices slamming GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s proposal to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.

“I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in,” Cheney told radio host Hugh Hewitt.

“I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from,” Cheney added during Monday’s interview.

This is so wrong, and so weird, that I am at a complete loss for words.

Rahm Throws Another Evil Minion™ under the Bus

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The head of the (supposedly) Independent Police Review Authority, Scott Ando, has been fired by hizzonner:

A former federal prosecutor will head the agency charged with investigating police shootings in Chicago after the immediate resignation of its chief administrator, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office announced Sunday.

Sharon Fairley will take over for Scott Ando as the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, according to a statement from the mayor’s office. Fairley declined to comment when reached Sunday by the Chicago Sun-Times. Ando could not be reached.

“Scott has taken important steps to move IPRA forward and reduce its backlog of cases,” Emanuel said in a statement. “Yet it has become clear that new leadership is required as we rededicate ourselves to dramatically improving our system of police accountability and rebuilding trust in that process.”

Emanuel made his announcement hours after hundreds of protesters led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson marched through the Loop on Sunday, demanding accountability after the release of video footage of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014.

………

A former federal prosecutor will head the agency charged with investigating police shootings in Chicago after the immediate resignation of its chief administrator, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office announced Sunday.

Sharon Fairley will take over for Scott Ando as the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, according to a statement from the mayor’s office. Fairley declined to comment when reached Sunday by the Chicago Sun-Times. Ando could not be reached.

“Scott has taken important steps to move IPRA forward and reduce its backlog of cases,” Emanuel said in a statement. “Yet it has become clear that new leadership is required as we rededicate ourselves to dramatically improving our system of police accountability and rebuilding trust in that process.”

Emanuel made his announcement hours after hundreds of protesters led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson marched through the Loop on Sunday, demanding accountability after the release of video footage of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014.

It is gratifying seeing the bully and coward that is Rahm Emanuel scrambling for his political career.

I think that he will serve out his term, even with all this, but it’s going to be as a very lame duck.

It will be fun to see the knives coming out.

Sucks to be Rahm Now

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First, it now appears that the DoJ will start an investigation of the Chicago Police Department:

The Justice Department plans to launch an investigation into the patterns and practices of the Chicago Police Department, a wide-ranging review similar to those that scrutinized the police departments in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, according to several law enforcement officials.

 The civil probe, which the officials say could be announced early this week, comes as Chicago continues to grapple with protests after the release of a video showing the police shooting of Laquan McDonald, which prompted murder charges for the officer involved and the resignation of the city’s police chief. The Justice Department is already investigating the McDonald shooting, but this new investigation by the department’s civil rights division would focus on the police department’s practices broadly to determine whether any of them contribute to civil rights violations.

 ………

 Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), a former top aide to President Obama, called the possibility of a civil rights investigation “misguided” last week. But, a day later, he reversed course and said he would welcome such an investigation.

 Emanuel has come under fire for his administration’s handling of the McDonald video, specifically for fighting its release for more than a year, which some have suggested was a politically motivated decision meant to insulate the mayor from political backlash while he was locked in a tight reelection effort. One week after the McDonald video was released, Emanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy.

 ………

 On the same day that McCarthy was fired, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wrote a letter to the DOJ urging them to open an investigation into the police department.

 “The McDonald shooting is shocking, and it highlights serious questions about the historic, systemic use of unlawful and excessive force by Chicago police officers and the lack of accountability for such abuse by CPD,” Madigan (D) wrote.

 Under Obama, Attorneys General Loretta Lynch and her predecessor, Eric Holder, have used patterns-and-practices investigations to aggressively probe police departments for potential constitutional violations, investigating dozens of departments since 2009. Those probes have found patterns of excessive force by police in Cleveland; Albuquerque; the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department; Portland; New Orleans; Seattle; Puerto Rico; and Warren, Ohio.

And on the civil/press end, a federal judge just forbade the CPD from destroying old misconduct investigations:

Chicago authorities must notify journalists and activists before they destroy decades of records related to police misconduct, Illinois Circuit Court Judge Peter Flynn ruled in an emergency order Thursday.

The order comes after journalist and activist Jamie Kalven petitioned the court after police officials said they would destroy hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence, investigative files and computer records related to Chicago police officer misconduct reports older than four years.

The documents are among a trove of data requested by Kalven and other media organizations, including the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, dating back to 1967. Last year, city officials agreed to release all of the police misconduct information, but the city’s police unions sued to prevent the documents from becoming public and the issue remains in limbo. The case will eventually be decided by an Illinois appeals court.

The emergency order comes in the wake of a large public outcry following the release of the video that shows police officer James Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in October 2014. Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder hours before the video’s release.

Kalven and his attorney, Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor, played a critical role in the release of the dash-cam footage by reporting on the video’s existence and demanding that officials release it. Kalven expressed relief at the judge’s order, saying it would give him time to go back to court before authorities could set a “bonfire” to decades’ worth of key information about police misconduct in Chicago. “Ministers, civic groups … are all calling for a full examination of the systems of accountability in the city.”

………

“So while we’re having this conversation about openness, honesty, transparency, distrust and lack of accountability, the destruction of these records would ensure impunity for officers who have engaged in abuse,” Futterman said. “I can’t imagine a worse time than this.”

I rather expect to see a whole lot of Freedom of Information Act requests to follow.

It also just blows my mind that the CPD unions have the right to demand the destruction of records. I would think that this decision would be exclusively the purview of management, and in any case, state and federal law would render that portion of the contract unforceable.

In either case, I expect to see a constant drip ……… drip ……… drip, of revelations, and even if they predate Rahm Emanuel’s tenure as mayor, he will take the heat.

I’m hoping that he is frog marched out the mayor’s offices in handcuffs, but if it merely leads to his being toxic in the context of Democratic politics, Dayenu.

I’m Wondering if Andrew Cuomo is Next on Preet Bharara’s Hit Parade

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The New York Post Has Great Headlines

The former speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, has been convicted on all corruption counts:

Sheldon Silver, who held a seemingly intractable grip on power for decades as one of the most feared politicians in New York State, was found guilty on Monday of federal corruption charges, ending a trial that was the capstone of the government’s efforts to expose the seamy culture of influence-peddling in Albany.

 The verdict was a quick and unceremonious end for Mr. Silver, who, during his more than two decades as the State Assembly speaker, displayed a Teflon-like quality in deflecting questions about his outside income as well as calls for his ouster.

 Mr. Silver, 71, a Manhattan Democrat, was convicted on all seven counts against him. The charges of honest services fraud, extortion and money laundering stemmed from schemes by which he obtained nearly $4 million in exchange for using his position to help benefit a cancer researcher and two real estate developers.

 The son of a hardware store owner on the Lower East Side, Mr. Silver was known as a poker-faced negotiator who often got his way during budget negotiations, sometimes by simply holding out the longest. At the same time, he was also a fierce defender of New York City in the state Capitol.

 As a result of the conviction, he must automatically forfeit the Assembly seat to which he was first elected nearly 40 years ago.

 The verdict came on the jury’s third day of deliberations, after a five-week trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan. When word came that a verdict had been reached, Mr. Silver fidgeted in his chair, clenched his jaw, shook his head, sighed and glanced toward Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, who had taken a seat at the rear of the courtroom just before the verdict was read.

 ………

 Mr. Silver is the most prominent in a parade of state lawmakers who have been convicted by Mr. Bharara’s office. Mr. Silver’s former counterpart, State Senator Dean G. Skelos, a Republican from Long Island who served as Senate majority leader, is also being tried on federal corruption charges; his case, which also includes Mr. Skelos’s son, Adam, entered its third week on Monday.

In response to this, Andrew Cuomo has dismissed any idea of a special session to address ethics in New York State government:

Governor Cuomo, spoke publicly for the first time since the former leader of the Assembly was convicted on seven counts of corruption, for abusing his powers to earn outside income. But Cuomo says he does not think it’s the right time now for a special session on ethics reform.

 Reform groups have called for a special session to fix corruption at the Capitol, but Governor Cuomo says it’s too close to Hanukkah and Christmas now to hold one.

 “I don’t think a special session is practical, we’re coming into the holiday season,” said Cuomo, who said reform will be “on the agenda” in Januarys, when the new session begins.

 December sessions have been held several times in the past, as recently as 2011, when Cuomo and the legislature met to extend extra  income taxes on the wealthy.

This is not surprising, Silver, Skelos, and Cuomo were the infamous, “Three Men in a Room,” who would sit down and hash out pretty much everything in state politics.

I don’t think that Cuomo is particularly interested in ethics reform right now.

First, he has a new set of leaders in the State House and Senate to learn how to deal with.

Second, he still wants the money from the firm implicated in both the Silver and Skelos trials, Glenwood Management:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo isn’t ready to turn away donations from his most generous political donor simply because the firm plays a prominent role in the corruption trials of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Leader Dean Skelos.

 During a Q&A at the Javits Center on Monday, Cuomo was asked specifically if he would continue taking campaign contributions from the real estate giant Glenwood Management after the trials’ revelation about its political giving and the personal income that ended up in the pockets of Skelos’ son, Adam, and Silver.

 Cuomo gave a curious answer: “Let’s see what happens with the trial,” he said. “Let’s see what the outcome is. If someone is convicted of a crime, then obviously not.”

 If Cuomo was referring to Glenwood, his campaign has nothing to worry about so far: While the verdicts on Silver and Skelos are up to their respective juries, Glenwood and its employees and lobbyists have not been charged with any crimes. However, several people in its employ or professional orbit — including its Senior Vice President Charles Dorego and its lobbyist Brian Meara — have received non-prosecution agreements in exchange for their cooperation with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

And finally, we have reports that Bharara has Cuomo firmly in his sights, and a such, I am sure that he does not want to spend political capital on ethics reform right now:

United States Attorney Preet Bharara feels emboldened, sources say, following the conviction of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — on all of seven corruption charges. Despite lacking a “smoking gun” to constitute an explicit quid pro quo, the jury handed Bharara a sweeping win. Such is the public’s appetite for corrupt politicians, observers say.

Three sources are confirming that Bharara intends to indict Governor Andrew Cuomo on January 2nd — along with a half dozen associates and former staffers — on public corruption, racketeering, conspiracy, and honest services fraud.

If this is true, I will be very amused, but my guess is that while some of Cuomo’s aides may end up in the dock, that he has created enough space between himself and their acts to avoid legal liability.

The New York Daily News Gets It

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Calling out Wayne LaPierre

The New York Daily News continues its naming and shaming of the reptilian National Rifle Association:

………

 Murder here is easy to commit — because weapons and ammunition that tear at human flesh are easily obtainable. And once murder is committed, it is far harder to solve than it should be — because the devices that are repositories for incriminating evidence are increasingly beyond the reach of law enforcement.

 Police on Thursday reported that all four weapons used by killer Syed Farook and his wife-accomplice, Tashfeen Malik — two assault rifles and two handguns — were bought legally.

 The two had a guerrilla-sized stockpile at home: a staggering 2,000 rounds of 9-mm. bullets and 2,500 rounds of .223-caliber rifle ammunition.

 Also in the home: 12 pipe bombs and hundreds of tools that could be used to build IEDs or pipe bombs.

 In what country is it legal to collect enough weaponry to go to war? In ours, thanks to gun laws crafted and protected by lawmakers obedient to the National Rifle Association.

(emphasis mine)

On their cover, they call Wayne LaPierre a terrorist.

I agree.

What’s more, the News understands that the apocalyptic language and policies of the NRA are not effectively opposed by the standard civil and polite hand wring that we see on the editorial pages of other papers.

H/t David Harris Gershon at Daily Kos.