Linkage

Now, let’s cast a bronze cannon:

Remember the Times When I Said That It Was the Crime, Not the Coverup?

More than 450 former federal prosecutors who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations have signed on to a statement asserting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings would have produced obstruction charges against President Trump — if not for the office he holds.

The statement — signed by myriad former career government employees as well as high-profile political appointees — offers a rebuttal to Attorney General William P. Barr’s determination that the evidence Mueller uncovered was “not sufficient” to establish that Trump committed a crime.

………

“Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice,” the former federal prosecutors wrote.

“We emphasize that these are not matters of close professional judgment,” they added. “Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe here. . . . But, to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience.”

The statement is notable for the number of people who signed it — 375 as of early Monday afternoon, growing to 459 in the hours after it published — and the positions and political affiliations of some on the list. It was posted online Monday afternoon; those signing it did not explicitly address what, if anything, they hope might happen next.

Among the high-profile signers are Bill Weld, a former U.S. attorney and Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who is running against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination; Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration; John S. Martin, a former U.S. attorney and federal judge appointed to his posts by Republican presidents; Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr; and Jeffrey Harris, who worked as the principal assistant to Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration.

The list also includes more than 20 former U.S. attorneys and more than 100 people with at least 20 years of service at the Justice Department — most of them former career officials. The signers worked in every presidential administration since that of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a former federal prosecutor, joined the letter after news of it broke, and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted his support for its premise .

The signatures were collected by the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, which counts Justice Department alumni among its staff and was contacted about the statement last week by a group of former federal prosecutors, said Justin Vail, an attorney at Protect Democracy.

The fact is that conspiring to interfere with a federal investigation is a crime, even if it is later determined that no crime happened, and even if your co-conspirators refuse your instructions.

I am looking forward to Mueller’s testimony on this, which has tentatively been scheduled for next Wednesday.

The Secret Weapon of White Supremacists

The fact that they have the active support of a significant proportion of law enforcement personnel.

Case in point is the Portland Oregon Police department.

If you know Oregon’s history, it once banned black people, and in the 1920s, it was the most Klan dominated state ever, so this is no surprise for anyone who is lived in the area: (I went to high school in Portland Oregon)

On August 4th, 2018, the far-right “free speech” group Patriot Prayer organized a rally in Portland, Oregon alongside alt-right “fraternity” the Proud Boys, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group. A coalition of counter-protesters, including local unions, immigrant rights advocates, and Rose City Antifa were also in attendance. It was the third such rally in the city last summer, and led to multiple arrests and injuries.

MuckRock user Brian Waters obtained communication logs from the Portland Police Bureau from the day of the rally. The logs show police frequently overlooking armed and violent demonstrators with Patriot Prayer or the Proud Boys, while explicitly targeting counter-protesters with anti-riot measures like flash grenades and pepper spray, injuring many.

The PPB has been under scrutiny for its handling of white supremacist and right-wing rallies in the city, with accusations of excessive force on left-wing protesters and overt friendliness toward right-wing ones, including those with known histories of violence.

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson reportedly switched the location of the rally from a federal plaza near the district court to a public park near Naito Parkway, so that his group could carry concealed weapons.

Days before the rally, the PPB issued a statement saying attendees carrying firearms must have an Oregon Concealed Handgun License and must keep their weapons concealed at all times. But the logs show that PPB repeatedly noted demonstrators with Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys carrying visible firearms without apprehending them, putting other attendees – especially counter-protesters – at risk.

………

A group of white men, presumably associated with the Patriot Prayer and Proud Boy coalition, was noted to have taken a position on the roof of a parking garage, where PPB noted they had a rifle and binoculars. No follow-up action was apparently taken to confront or apprehend these men. (Editor’s Note: Waters request was specifically related to records related to that incident.)

The Portland Police are actively supporting white supremacists, racists, and Nazis.

They let a sniper team on the roof, because ……… freedum!!

Support your local police, huh?

Bye Felicia Catherine

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has resigned following multiple criminal investigations of the sales of her self-published children’s book series:

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh (D) resigned in disgrace through her attorney Thursday after weeks of temporary leave coinciding with the unfurling scandal of her self-dealing children’s book scheme.

 “I am sorry for the harm that I have caused to the image of the city of Baltimore and the credibility of the office of the mayor,” Pugh’s attorney, Steven Silverman, read from a statement. “Baltimore deserves a mayor that can move our great city forward.”

 Pugh’s resignation is effective immediately

Using her children’s series “Healthy Holly,” Pugh cut multiple book deals with organizations that do business with the city and other organizations she oversaw.

In the first break in the case, the Baltimore Sun revealed that she did not disclose that she’d received $500,000 from the University of Maryland medical system since 2011, while she sat on its board.

It really is remarkable just how petty and small time this all is.

I Suppose That This Was Inevitable

Now that Tumblr has imploded after banning sexually explicit content, Pornhub has expressed an interest in acquiring the smouldering remains:

Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said in an email to BuzzFeed News that the porn-streaming giant is extremely interested in buying Tumblr, the once uniquely horny hub for young women and queer people that banned adult content last December to the disappointment of many of its users.

Price said that restoring Tumblr’s NSFW edge would be central to their acquisition of it, were it to actually happen.

Tumblr owner Verizon is reportedly currently seeking a buyer for the blogging platform, which according to the Wall Street Journal has struggled to meet revenue targets.”Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included,” Price told BuzzFeed News. “We’ve long been dismayed that such measures were taken to eradicate erotic communities on the platform, leaving many individuals without an asylum through which they could comfortably peruse adult content.”

This development is profoundly ironic.

Bad Day at the Office

A Sukhoi Superjet-100 just crash landed and caught fire at a Moscow airport.

Death toll exceeds 40:

Seventy three passengers and five crew members were on board the plane when it made the emergency landing on Sunday afternoon at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Elena Markovskaya told the journalist, saying that “41 people” have died.

At least six of the 37 people rescued were rushed to a hospital. Three are now in intensive care after suffering burns and smoke inhalation injuries, health minister Veronika Skvortsova said, in a brief press statement.

The Aeroflot flight SU 1492, en route from Moscow to the Russian northern city of Murmansk, had to turn back to Sheremetyevo after reporting an emergency on board less than half an hour after takeoff.

Leaked CCTV footage appears to show the Sukhoi Superjet-100 aircraft attempting to land. The plane is seen bouncing off the runway and hitting it with full force, as the engines burst into flames.

Notwithstanding the rather spectacular video, I will wait for the investigation to drawing any conclusions.

Hopefully, This is the Start of a Trend

Senior executives at the pharmaceutical company Insys have been convicted of racketeering for their sales tactics, which included bribing doctors, defrauding insurance companies.

Holding senior executives liable for corporate misdeeds should be the rule, not the exception:

A federal jury on Thursday found the top executives of Insys Therapeutics, a company that sold a fentanyl-based painkiller, guilty of racketeering charges in a rare criminal prosecution that blamed corporate officials for contributing to the nation’s opioid epidemic.

The jury, after deliberating for 15 days, issued guilty verdicts against the company’s founder, the onetime billionaire John Kapoor, and four former executives, finding they had conspired to fuel sales of its highly potent drug, Subsys, by not only bribing doctors to prescribe their product but also by misleading insurers about patients’ need for the drug.

The verdict against Insys executives is a sign of the accelerating effort to hold pharmaceutical and drug distribution companies and their executives and owners accountable in ways commensurate with the devastation wrought by the prescription opioid crisis. More than 200,000 people have overdosed on such drugs in the past two decades.

Federal authorities last month for the first time filed felony drug trafficking charges against a major pharmaceutical distributor, Rochester Drug Cooperative, and two former executives, accusing them of shipping tens of millions of oxycodone pills and fentanyl products to pharmacies that were distributing drugs illegally.

And the state attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York have recently sued not just Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, but also members of the Sackler family who own the company — and who have largely escaped personal legal penalties for the company’s role in the epidemic, culpability they deny.

Also on Thursday, the state of West Virginia reached a $37 million settlement in a lawsuit against the McKesson Corporation, one of the nation’s leading drug distributors, which was accused of shipping nearly 100 million doses of opioids to residents over a six-year period.

Experts said the Insys verdict could encourage other corporate prosecutions and said it demonstrated that the public was willing to mete out penalties for high-level executives at companies profiting from the sales of highly addictive painkillers.

Your mouth to God’s ears.

Weird Echoes of My Dad in a Crust

I was at an SCA event today, Crown Tournament. (One of the interchangeable royalty won)
At feast they served a cheese tart, and I had a slice, and liked it.
The thing is, it was basically a quiche, and I liked it.
One of the adolescent battles with my dad was over eggs in general and quiche in particular for breakfast.
He thought that I should have them for breakfast, and I wanted the additional sack time.
Over the years, I have come to appreciate eggs, but my stance had been unwavering ………. Until now.
I guess that my tastes have changed.

Posted via mobile.

Florida: No Voting, Because, F%$# You

The Florida legislature has passed, and the governor is certain to sign, a bill prohibiting the ex-cons recently given the right to vote from actually casting a ballot.

The bill says that they have to make full restitution for all fines and court costs, but the judiciary is so screwed up in the state, much like everything else in that Gid-forsaken sh%$ hole, that most of the now freed prisoners will have no way of knowing if they continue to owe money to the courts:

In November, Florida voters approved a groundbreaking ballot measure that would restore voting rights for up to 1.5 million people with felony convictions. But the Republican-led Legislature voted on Friday to impose a series of sharp restrictions that could prevent tens of thousands of them from ever reaching the ballot box.

In a move that critics say undermines the spirit of what voters intended, thousands of people with serious criminal histories will be required to fully pay back fines and fees to the courts before they could vote. The new limits would require potential new voters to settle what may be tens of thousands of dollars in financial obligations to the courts, effectively pricing some people out of the ballot box.

“Basically, they’re telling you, ‘If you have money, you can vote. If you don’t have money, you can’t,’” said Patrick Penn, 42, who spent 15 years in prison for strong-arm robbery and a violent burglary. He said he does not know whether he owes money to the court, but worries it could now prove a complication when he gets ready to cast a ballot. “That’s not what the people voted for.”

With the House voting 67-42 along party lines on Friday to endorse the new restrictions, the legislation goes next to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had called on the Legislature to set additional standards for registering ex-felons to vote.

The vast majority of criminal defendants are poor when they are arrested and even poorer after they are released from prison.

The new restrictions have been attacked by civil rights groups and some of the initiative’s backers as an exercise in Republican power politics, driven by fears that people with felony convictions are mostly liberals who could reshape the electorate ahead of presidential elections in 2020 and beyond. Republicans have dominated Florida’s state government for more than two decades, but elections are often decided by a fraction of a percentage point.

It’s a poll tax, and hopefully the courts will invalidate it, at least until the Supreme Court enforces, in a 5-4 decision the constitutional principle that n*****s don’t get to vote.

To quote JFK,* “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

*For once, I am not quoting “Not really Tallyrand, but attributed to him.”

Germany has the Military Industrial Complex Completely Losing Its Sh%$

Germany has decided not to procure the F-35, and Lockheed Martin is not happy.

I do think that the apocalyptic terms used are a bit over the top:

Germany’s decision not to buy the F-35 stealth fighter jet is a “retrograde step” that could hamper the country’s ability to operate at the same level as its Nato partners, according to the European head of Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the aircraft.

 Jonathan Hoyle, vice-president for Europe at the US defence group, said the German decision in January to exclude the F-35 from further consideration as a replacement for its ageing Tornado fleet had caught a lot of governments “on the hop”. The German defence ministry said at the time it had decided to acquire either more Eurofighters from Airbus, the European group, or Boeing-made F-18s.

 With the German rhetoric in the past three years having been about stepping up its defence capabilities, the decision not to consider the F-35 had prompted questions among other European governments over “Germany’s position going forward, and therefore what does it mean for Nato”, Mr Hoyle told the Financial Times in an interview.

 ………
 The German decision was seen by many defence observers as a signal by Berlin that it remained committed to pursuing a next-generation Franco-German “future combat air system” (FCAS). Paris had previously voiced fears that a German order to buy the F-35, widely seen as the most advanced aircraft on the shortlist, could have made the FCAS project — due to form the backbone of both countries’ air forces after 2040 — redundant.

It’s also a signal that Germany finds the F-35 too expensive to own and operate, as well as being too inflexible (limited weapons loadout and payload) for its needs.

Even ignoring Eisenhower’s characterization of the Military Industrial complex, this decision makes sense.

And the Dems Draw a Target on Their Shoes and Take Careful Aim

Across the country, College Democrat chapters are boycotting the DCCC over the blacklist of consultants who work for primary challengers:

DCCC to meet with progressives over controversial ‘blacklist’ policy:

Young Democrats at more than 30 colleges nationwide plan to boycott the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in protest of a new policy critics say is intended to freeze out challengers to incumbent representatives.

 The policy, launched in late March, would require consultants and strategists to pledge not to work for candidates challenging a sitting Democratic member of Congress or be left off a list of vendors approved to work with the DCCC.

 The Harvard College Democrats are leading the coalition, which initially featured 26 chapters nationwide but which Harvard Democrats President Hank Sparks confirmed to The Hill currently stands at 42. Participants include groups based at Arizona State University, Dartmouth College, Michigan State University, Rutgers University-Newark, University of Virginia and Spelman College.

 “Primary challengers are essential to ensure that the Democratic Party is continually held accountable to the needs of our constituents. This blacklist policy is undemocratic and antithetical to our values of inclusion and diversity,” the Harvard Democrats said in a letter Wednesday. “Challengers to incumbents have been essential to making the Democratic Party an institution that truly reflects the progressive values and diverse identities of the people it claims to represent.”

The DCCC’s policy is stupid and counter-productive, but the goal is not to create success, it is designed to ensure that those who control the party remain in control, even if it harms the party.

It is the Iron Law of Institutions writ small and petty:

The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

HOnestly, these groups should not be calling for a reversal of the policy, they should be calling for DCCC head Cheri Bustos.

Otherwise, the policy will continue on the down low.

This is a Declaration of Unconditional Surrender

The US military has stopped issuing assessments on who is in control of various parts of Afghanistan.

This cannot be construed as anything but an admission of abject defeat, but anyone with the vaguest sense of history knew that this would be the case 18 years ago:

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan has stopped assessing which districts in the country’s 34 provinces are controlled by the government or by insurgents, meaning nearly every metric to measure success of America’s longest war is now either classified or no longer tracked.

For about three years, NATO’s Resolute Support mission had produced quarterly district-level stability assessments that counted the districts, total estimated population and total estimated land area that Kabul controlled or influenced, as well as those under the sway of insurgents and those contested by both sides.

Officials have stopped the assessments because they were “of limited decision-making value” to Army Gen. Scott Miller, commander of the Resolute Support mission, the coalition told the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, according to a quarterly report published late Tuesday.

………

Taliban insurgents have been expanding their influence in rural areas, and while they’ve yet to seize a major city, they’re believed to be stronger than at any point since the war began over 17 years ago — a major boon for the group as it continues direct negotiations with the U.S. aimed partly at an American troop withdrawal.

The numbers are bad, so stop collecting the numbers.

The culture of the PowerPoint warriors.

Horrifying

I guess that they want to ensure that the folks that they put in jail for nickel bags won’t be released early if we as a society decide to change the drug laws.

This is just evil:

The San Diego County District Attorney has a new tactic aimed at locking in prison terms in plea-bargained cases, by requiring defendants to give up any rights they may have in the future to seek a lower sentence if the Legislature or the courts change the law under which they were sent to prison.

The move comes after years of criminal justice reform measures, passed both by voters through statewide propositions and by lawmakers in Sacramento, that have lessened potential sentences for some crimes, downgraded other crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and opened a way for people in prison to go to court and get lower sentences based on newly-adopted changes to the law.

Now, in some cases, prosecutors in San Diego will require defendants to agree that a sentence imposed as part of a plea bargain will remain forever. Under the terms of the waiver, defendants will be barred from pursuing any new benefits that may be available to them in the future.

………

But word of the waiver even in limited use raised protests from defense lawyers and criminal justice reform advocates. They said that prosecutors were making an end-run around the Legislature and voters, largely out of frustration at the wave of changes the state has made to the criminal justice system.

“The ground is shifting underneath them,” said Kate Chatfield, the co-founder and former policy director of the reform group Re:store Justice. “They don’t like it. And that’s shameful.”

Chatfield’s group was instrumental in the Legislature passing a bill this year that changed the felony-murder rule so that accomplices who did not do the actual killing would no longer face murder charges, as they had in the past. The law was retroactive — meaning hundreds of inmates serving prison sentences have now gone back to courts, seeking a lower sentence. That is just one of several measures — including Three Strikes reform, a measure that reduced felonies to misdemeanors and is also retroactive — that have remade the face of criminal courts in California.

This is fascist bullsh%$.

I hope that the ACLU gets involved, because prosecutorial butt-hurt is no excuse for this sort of crap.

The Definitive Statement on Venezuela

When a CIA-backed military coup is attempted by a long term CIA puppet, roared on by John Bolton and backed with the offer of Blackwater mercenaries, in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, I have no difficulty whatsoever in knowing which side I am on.

—Craig Murray

Even ignoring the catastrophic human toll of such efforts, CIA backed regime change operations have ended up making the United States less secure in the long term.

If He Were White, and She Was Black, He Would Have Walked

Minneapolis Policeman Mohamed Noor has been convicted of manslaughter and 3rd degree murder:

Mohamed Noor became the first former Minnesota police officer found guilty of an on-duty murder Tuesday as a Hennepin County jury convicted him for the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond in 2017.

Jurors reached their verdict after about 10 hours of sequestered deliberations in a case that was closely watched nationwide and in Damond’s native Australia. They convicted Noor of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter but acquitted him of the most serious count — second-degree murder.

………

Noor, who was fired from the department after the shooting, is the second officer in recent Minnesota history to be charged with an on-duty fatal shooting. St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted in 2017 in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile during a 2016 traffic stop.

The prosecution’s sprawling case against Noor raised alarming questions about Minneapolis police conduct and the BCA. Assistant Hennepin County attorneys Amy Sweasy and Patrick Lofton crafted a picture of police secrecy from the shooting’s immediate aftermath to trial, showing that several officers turned off their body cameras at the scene, accusing a key supervisor of inventing the story that Noor and Harrity heard a loud noise on their squad before the shooting, and calling out dozens of officers for refusing to speak with investigators until compelled by a grand jury.

Despite his office’s attack on the credibility of several Minneapolis police officers and the BCA [Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension], [Hennepin County Attorney Mike] Freeman defended every previous police shooting investigation his office has reviewed — and cleared of criminal wrongdoing — as “superb.” Freeman said “initially” there were mistakes, but his office raised concerns that were rectified. “I’m pleased to report that both [Minneapolis police] and BCA have done an exemplary job” in other cases, he said.

Mandy Reese Davies Applies, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

The county attorney has to work the cops, and he cannot deal with the equivalent of a police sit down strike.

If the races had been reversed, the defense would have gone after the character of the victim, the defense did in but Philando Castile case, they couldn’t for Noor because of the racial dynamics.

Correlation? Causation? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Scientists have identified what they claim is a biomarker for chronic fatigue syndrome.

I am not so sure.

What they are describing is a marker for a stressed immune system, and there are any number of conditions that stress the immune system.

What they need to do is look at how this test works for people with other related conditions: Depression, mitochondrial disorders, McArdle’s disorder, etc.

Then again, I’m an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!*

People suffering from a debilitating and often discounted disease known as chronic fatigue syndrome may soon have something they’ve been seeking for decades: scientific proof of their ailment.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have created a blood test that can flag the disease, which currently lacks a standard, reliable diagnostic test.

“Too often, this disease is categorized as imaginary,” said Ron Davis, PhD, professor of biochemistry and of genetics. When individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome seek help from a doctor, they may undergo a series of tests that check liver, kidney and heart function, as well as blood and immune cell counts, Davis said. “All these different tests would normally guide the doctor toward one illness or another, but for chronic fatigue syndrome patients, the results all come back normal,” he said.

The problem, he said, is that they’re not looking deep enough. Now, Davis; Rahim Esfandyarpour, PhD, a former Stanford research associate; and their colleagues have devised a blood-based test that successfully identified participants in a study with chronic fatigue syndrome. The test, which is still in a pilot phase, is based on how a person’s immune cells respond to stress. With blood samples from 40 people — 20 with chronic fatigue syndrome and 20 without — the test yielded precise results, accurately flagging all chronic fatigue syndrome patients and none of the healthy individuals.

The diagnostic platform could even help identify possible drugs to treat chronic fatigue syndrome. By exposing the participants’ blood samples to drug candidates and rerunning the diagnostic test, the scientists could potentially see whether the drug improved the immune cells’ response. Already, the team is using the platform to screen for potential drugs they hope can help people with chronic fatigue syndrome down the line.

They have shown a test for immune response to various stressors, but this does not make it a reliable test for CFS, nor for that matter, does it prove the existence of CFS.

Absent a mechanism, or a more extensive study and comparison to other conditions that resemble, it’s very preliminary to claim proof of anything.

*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

A Real Life Wile E. Coyote


Yeah, pretty much

I am referring, of course to Jacob Wohl, who at the young age of 21 years old, has been banned for life as a future’s trader and from twitter, been caught trying to create a bogus accusation against Robert Mueller, and now, caught on tape trying to fabricate a sexual assault claim against Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg:

A pair of right-wing provocateurs are being accused of attempting to recruit young Republican men to level false allegations of sexual assault against Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

The details of the operatives’ attempt emerged as one man suddenly surfaced with a vague and uncorroborated allegation that Buttigieg had assaulted him. The claim was retracted hours later on a Facebook page appearing to belong to the man.

A Republican source told The Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent.

The source who spoke to The Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg’s momentum in the 2020 presidential race. The man asked to remain anonymous out of a concern that the resulting publicity might imperil his employment, and because he said Wohl and Burkman have a reputation for vindictiveness.
“The source who spoke to The Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg’s momentum in the 2020 presidential race.”

But the source provided The Daily Beast with a surreptitious audio recording of the meeting, which corroborates his account. In it, Wohl appears to refer to Buttigieg as a “terminal threat” to President Donald Trump’s reelection next year.

Seriously, if someone finds the time, could they beat the crap out of these guys?

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

It raises the obvious question: If they had a need to keep these records all these years, why do they have a burning need to destroy them now? (It’s a rhetorical question)

More details are coming to light about California’s opacity activists. Faced with impending transparency, a handful of law enforcement agencies decided to fire up the shredders rather than risk turning over police conduct records to the public under the new public records law.

Inglewood’s police department was given the go-ahead to shred years of responsive documents last December in a council meeting that produced no record of discussion on the matter or the council’s determination.

Public records requests filed after the new law went into effect in January uncovered moves made by the Fremont city council to help local police rid themselves of records the public might try to request. The city lowered the retention period for officer-involved shooting records from 25 years to ten and allowed the department to destroy 45 years of police misconduct records it had decided to hold onto until it became inconvenient for it to do so.

………

Departments are willing to hold onto misconduct/shooting records for decades, but only start destroying them when it looks like they might have to share. Agencies can point to mandated retention periods all they want, but the argument doesn’t wash if they’re only sticklers about it when transparency is being forced on them.

Why you cannot allow the police to police the police.

Mandy Reese Davies Applies

Bill Gates hates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tax plan, to which the obvious rejoinder is, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

Bill Gates says he’s fine with the idea of higher taxes for the rich, but plans like the one being championed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which target the top income brackets, are too extreme—and could encourage the wealthy to hide their money in offshore accounts.

Gates, in an interview with The Verge, didn’t mention Ocasio-Cortez or her well-publicized tax proposal directly by name, but his focus was clear. While the Microsoft co-founder and world’s second richest man agreed the U.S. could be “more progressive,” he downplayed “extreme” proposals, such as the freshman representative’s plan to raise the top tax rate from 37% to 70%.

“I believe U.S. tax rates can be more progressive. Now, you finally have some politicians who are so extreme that I’d say, ‘No, that’s even beyond,’” Gates said. “You do start to create tax dodging and disincentives, and an incentive to have the income show up in other countries and things. But we can be more progressive without really threatening income generation—what you have left to decide how to spread around.”

Bill Gates made his money in one of the most heavily subsidized industries on earth (copyright and patents are subsidies), and somehow any meaningful tax reform needs to be opposed, because some rich pig will find a way to avoid the taxes, so we have to try something else ……… And the next thing, that won’t work either ……… Rinse, lather, repeat.