20,000 Cases to be Reversed in Massachusetts

Annie Dookhan, a chemist at Massachusetts’ Hinton State Laboratory Institute, routinely falsified information for years, which means that something like 20,000 cases are likely to be dismissed:

More than 20,000 drug cases tied to a disgraced former state chemist appear headed for dismissal, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and public defenders said Tuesday as they combed through legal filings from local prosecutors in Massachusetts.

“We’re all overjoyed today at having what is, we think, the largest dismissal of criminal cases as a result of one case in the history of the United States of America,” said Carl Williams, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts, which has pressed for the dismissal of tainted cases.

It was the latest development in the yearslong story of Annie Dookhan, a chemist whose co-workers called her Superwoman because she worked so fast. But she was found to have mishandled drug samples, forged signatures and returned positive results on drugs she never bothered to test, and in 2013, she pleaded guilty to 27 counts, including obstruction of justice, perjury and tampering with evidence.

By then, the damage was done. Prosecutors and defenders around the state had already begun the imposing task of figuring out which convictions had been tainted by the failings. Early estimates rose above 40,000. Hundreds of people were released from prison.

In January, the state’s highest court ordered district attorneys to produce the lists of people they believe they could reprosecute, were a new trial permitted, and those whose cases they will dismiss. Those decisions were due on Tuesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, lawyers combed through spreadsheets inside an ornate courthouse here, and counted 21,587 likely dismissals. They had estimated that prosecutors would not vacate the convictions of 500 to 700 people.

Of course, people like racist Attorney General Jeff Session think that this is some sort of technicality that demoralizes law enforcement.

This is corruption, and the people around her knew that something was wrong, but because it favored prosecutors, law enforcement never paid attention.

This is why we need things like the exclusionary rule and meaningful and independent investigations of law enforcement misconduct.

Just When I Think That Reality Has Jaded Me………

I am once more horrified in the latest Republican adventure in blatant corruption:

Congressional Republicans are baldly enticing donors with the promise of meetings with senior legislative staff, effectively placing access to congressional employees up for sale to professional influence peddlers and other well-heeled interests.

 Documents obtained by The Intercept and the Center for Media and Democracy show that the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are both telling donors that in exchange for campaign contributions, they will receive invitations to special events to meet with congressional staff including chiefs of staff, leadership staffers, and committee staffers.

 While selling donors access to senators and representatives and their campaign staff is nothing new, the open effort to sell access to their legislative staff — the taxpayer-funded government employees who work behind the scenes to write legislation, handle investigations, and organize committee hearings — appears to be in violation of ethics rules that prohibit campaigns from using House and Senate resources in any way.

 Congressional ethics rules flatly forbid Capitol Hill employees from engaging in fundraising activities as part of their official duties. Any explicit fundraising work must be done strictly as a volunteer, and there must be a clear firewall separating government work from campaign work.

………

But a document obtained by The Intercept and the Center for Media and Democracy from the NRSC, the Senate GOP campaign arm, lists the benefits of “D.C. Personal Giving Memberships,” which costs as little as $1,500 a year. Among them: “Invitation to attend events with Republican Chiefs of Staff, Leadership Staff, and Committee Staff.”

………

It’s not the first time a major Capitol Hill funding outfit has raised campaign cash using congressional employees. In 2013, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee advertised a “Women on the Hill Dinner” with chiefs of staff to Democratic senators. The event was asked for a suggested donation of $1,000.

But the new Republican effort is more structured, making the exchange of money for meetings with a variety of congressional staffers an official element of the party’s fundraising apparatus, with regular events and tiered levels of access.

This makes Newt Gingrich’s peccadilloes seem almost quaint.

Why Do I Even Bother?

Yesterday, I wrote a lengthy post explaining the profoundly dysfunctional Presidential campaign in France.

Today, I came across John Oliver’s summary of the campaign on his show, and I am feeling profoundly inadequate.

It covers the issue and entertains at the same time, though I think that there could be a little less focus on the laughs and more on the humor.

The only thing that I object to is his characterization of Le Pen’s position on the wearing of religious regalia in public.

It’s not outrageous by the standards of France:  French republics have been thoroughly and militantly secular since Charles de Gaulle was a teen,* to the degree that religious wedding ceremonies are not recognized by the state, and couples have to be married in a civil ceremony to have their union recognized.

The policy is called Laïcité, and while Le Pen’s absolutism regarding this policy is a minority position, it is well within the bounds of what is considered mainstream French political thought.

Still, I feel really inadequate right now.

*Specifically, since the passage of the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, though secularism was a significant portion of French political discourse since at least the French revolution.

A Well Deserved Beat Down

Katie Halper looks at Susan Bordo’s paean to Hillary Clinton, The Destruction of Hillary Clinton, and her related OP/ED in the Guardian, and observes that she gets the facts wrong, contradicts herself, and removes any agency from women who disagree with her:

……… Your piece sets out to blame millennial feminists and show us what we did wrong in supporting Sanders, but it winds up illuminating your own failings, sadly not uncommon among certain Clinton supporters, especially those who chose to blame everyone and everything but Clinton for her loss:

  • An over-identification with Clinton and her biography that eclipses appreciation of young women’s lives and hardships and the political differences

  • Basing an argument solely on personal impressions, vague remembrances, mental and emotional associations

  • A condescending tone with occasional unconvincing gestures of respect and understanding for your younger sisters

  • Misleading statements, omissions, falsehoods or indisputable error, here related to Clinton’s statements on superpredators and warranting an immediate editorial correction

This is just a brief excerpt of what is a point by point “Fisking” of what is a self-absorbed, incoherent, and deeply dishonest screed.

It is well worth the read.

Risking a Schadenfreude Overdose Here

I just heard that, after millions of dollars of sexual harrassment settlements over the past 2 decades, Fox News has finally fired Bill O’Reilly:

Bill O’Reilly’s reign as the top-rated host in cable news came to an abrupt and embarrassing end on Wednesday as Fox News forced him out after the disclosure of a series of sexual harassment allegations against him and an internal investigation that turned up even more.

Mr. O’Reilly and his employers came under intense pressure after an article by The New York Times on April 1 revealed how Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, had repeatedly stood by him even as he and the company reached settlements with five women who had complained about sexual harassment or other inappropriate behavior by him. The agreements totaled about $13 million.

Since then, more than 50 advertisers had abandoned his show, and women’s rights groups had called for him to be fired. Inside the company, women expressed outrage and questioned whether top executives were serious about maintaining a culture based on “trust and respect,” as they had promised last summer when another sexual harassment scandal led to the ouster of Roger E. Ailes as chairman of Fox News.

There are a number of reports that a contributing factor in “Billo’s”  firing was the fact he was a complete asshole to those around him, and so when he his behavior finally caught up with him, he had no support within the network.
I’m wondering when he will replace Sean Spicer as press secretary in the Trump administration.

I Hate F%$#ing Plants

Note the syntax here.

The “F%$#” is an adjective that modifies “plants”, not an adverb that modifies “hate”.

When I come out in the morning, the windshield of my car has a thin layer of dust on it.

When I clean it off with the wipers, it turns out to be a yellow powder.

It’s a thin layer of pollen, i.e. plant sperm, and it is making my life a living hell right now.

Thankfully Fexofenadine HCl (generic Allegra®) takes a bit of the edge off.

It’s a Runoff in GA-6 is Close

It looks like he fell 1-2% short of an absolute majority:

Democrat Jon Ossoff is headed for a runoff in June against a Republican contender after failing Tuesday to score an upset victory to represent a suburban Atlanta district in Congress.

CNN called the race just after midnight.

The 30-year-old investigative filmmaker aimed for an outright win in the 6th District race, but a furious Republican counterattack joined by President Donald Trump appears to have kept him under 50 percent.

I would give him no more than a 1 in 4 chance of winning the runoff.

Political Panic in France

L’évolution de l’ensemble des sondages, avec le dernier @opinionway :#Macron 22,4%#LePen 21,7%#Fillon 20,8%#Mélenchon 19,1% pic.twitter.com/J9XXVMa7WD

— mathieu gallard (@mathieugallard) April 17, 2017

Fasten Your Seat Belts

The French Presidential elections were predicted to be pretty ordinary.

François Holland, being about as popular as proverbial turd in the punch bowl, decided not to stand for reelection, and did so fairly late in the process, which left the “Socialists” in a lurch, and so it was expected that the right wing Gaullists would field a candidate which would face a runoff against the racist-nativist National Front, (FN) which has made it to the runoff election with alarming regularity in French Presidential elections in the past few decades.

Unfortunately for the Gaullists, they nominated François Fillon, who in addition to being fairly far right by the standards of French politics turns out to have made a habit of employing his wife and children in no show jobs, for which he is under formal criminal investigation.

As a result,  Emmanuel Macron, a former Economic Minister under the Socialist government, who was instrumental in implementing the anti-worker Neoliberal reforms for Holland, effectively sealing the current President’s political fate, and is running under what is best described as a self-founded vanity party,  En Marche !, (with the space before the “!”) became the favorite for contesting the runoff against Marine Le Pen of the FN.

So far, it’s pretty normal:  You’ve swapped one stooge of the banksters for another, and they are virtually assured of beating Le Pen in the runoff.

Then something funny happened:  A former Socialist who left the party because he felt that they had sold out their principles, Jean-Luc Mélenchon made a charge in the polls, and HE is closely associated with the movement known as the “Left Front” in Europe.

As you can see from the polling numbers, we now have all 4 of the candidates within the margin of error, and Mélenchon appears to significant momentum.

The prospect of having a Euroskeptic racist facing a Euroskeptic leftist facing each other in the Presidential runoff is freaking out the establishment throughout the EU:

A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

In the latest plot twist in France’s highly contentious presidential election, Mélenchon — an outspoken 65-year-old leftist who often appears on the campaign trail via hologram and who has pitched his proposal to nationalize France’s biggest banks and renegotiate its relationship with the European Union via free Internet games and YouTube videos — is now soaring in the polls. With less than two weeks before the election, his meteoric and unexpected rise is already sending jitters through financial markets and shock waves through an increasingly anxious electorate.

For months, analysts have likened the upcoming French election to “Europe’s Stalingrad,” a crucial turning point that will determine the future of a country and a continent. But while commentators worldwide have focused on the steady rise of the far-right, fiercely anti-immigrant National Front of Marine Le Pen, few have paid any attention to the leftist fringe of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has vaulted into the picture in the past week and who shares with Le Pen the desire to drastically alter France’s relationship with the E.U., the 28-state bloc it once designed.

Mélenchon is running as the candidate of the Unbowed France political movement, in an alliance with the French Communist Party. The latest polls show him narrowly trailing Emmanuel Macron, long seen as the favorite, and Le Pen, expected to qualify for the final round of the two-round vote but to lose to Macron in the end. In the final days of a truly unprecedented campaign, Mélenchon’s unexpected surge is a reminder that radical change is in the air and that its extremist apostles — on the right or the left — may soon hold power.

Some have reacted with panic: Investors have begun frantically selling off French bonds, while the head of France’s largest trade union has decried what he described as Mélenchon’s “rather totalitarian vision.”

………

Perhaps more than any of the other candidates, it is Mélenchon who best represents 2017’s potential rupture with history, or at least the status quo. Central to his platform is the promise to abolish France’s Fifth Republic, the system of government established by Charles de Gaulle in 1958.

What Mélenchon detests in this style of government is its monarchical presidency — designed for de Gaulle himself — which can dissolve parliament at will and is subject to few checks and balances. Mélenchon has pledged to found what he calls the “Sixth Republic,” a vision that would “take us out of this presidential regime, notably with proportionality in all elections.”

It is an idea that resonates widely — even among those who do not necessarily support Mélenchon’s other more radical proposals, including taking France out of NATO and imposing a 100 percent tax on all income earned over 400,000 euros ($425,000).

Just how freaked out is the establishment?

They are so freaked out that the nominal front runner, Emmanuel Macron, has been forced to tell the truth about the EU and the Germans.

He is explicitly saying that Berlin is gaming the system as a predatory exporter:

Centrist French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron called for a “rebalancing” of Germany’s trade surplus in an interview with French and German media published Monday.

Even as he touted strong relationships with the German political leaders, Macron used the interview with Ouest-France newspaper and Germany’s Funke newspapers to call out German trade policy for hurting the Continent’s economy.

“Germany benefits from the imbalances within the eurozone and achieves very high trade surpluses,” he said. “Those aren’t a good thing either for Germany or for the economy of the eurozone. There should be a rebalancing.”

Macron, an independent, is facing fresh pressure from anti-EU candidates in the final week before the presidential election’s first-round vote. He has been running neck-and-neck with nationalist Marine Le Pen, ahead of three other candidates. However, recent polls suggest a surge for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who rails against Europe from the left.

This is true, of course, but it is also as close to heresy as you can get from the any EU supporter.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is to inflict austerity on the ordinary folk, and then wait for the confidence fairy to make growth magically appear, all while capital and finance f%$# the bottom 90% of society.

If it ends up a race between Le Pen and Mélenchon, I fully expect the powers that be to pull for Le Pen, because for them, racism is preferable to economic justice.

This is a No Lose Situation

A special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional district is a no lose for the Democrats.

It’s clear that John Ossof, the only serious Democratic candidate, is going to get the most votes, there are 11 votes in the so called “Jungle”primary, in which the top two vote getters to on to the runoff.

The only question is whether he breaks 50%, which would obviate the need for a runoff.

If he breaks 50%, then he is elected, and the seat has a Democrat for the first time since Gingrich was elected in 1978.

If he does not break 50%, then it is almost certain that he would lose the runoff, and the Obama/Clinton establishment playbook, recruit a Neoliberal carpetbagger, shower them with money ($8.3 million more than the rest of the other candidates combined) would get a black eye.*

Remember that the Democratic National Committee could not be bothered to fund a real liberal James Thompson to the tune of one direct mailing in Kansas, because it’s more important to them that Bernie and his supporters lose than that Democrats win. (It was a 7% loss in a district that Trump carried by 40%.)

Once again, it’s the Iron Law of Institutions in action. 

I am so glad that I am not in GA-6:  I would have to choose between voting to make Republicans panicked, or slapping down the Democratic establishment, because it’s clear that in 2018, when it matters, Ossoff will lose.

Polls close at 7pm, and I’ll post an update around midnight.

*Which, of course, they would blame on Bernie Sanders.

More of This

Well, it looks like one Trump administration disaster, Education Secretary Betsy Devos, is actually producing a positive response in the Democratic party, with pro education privatization Democrats being linked to the Amway Heiress:

It’s rare that Democrats are cast as puppets of the Trump administration. But on the issue of education, many Democrats who have long supported school choice are newly on the defensive within their party, forced to distance themselves from President Donald Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

The unusual dynamic started soon after Trump’s inauguration, when a teachers union in Los Angeles sent voters mail depicting two charter-school-friendly school board contenders, both Democrats, as “the candidates who will implement the Trump/DeVos education agenda in LA.”

The message was repeated in New York, where the Alliance for Quality Education, an advocacy group partially funded by teachers unions, likened Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education policies to Trump’s. The group urged online audiences to “stop Cuomo from doing Betsy DeVos’s dirty work.” In New Jersey, Sen. Cory Booker opposed DeVos’ appointment but came in for criticism for working with DeVos on school choice initiatives when he was mayor of Newark.

………

But with Trump and DeVos ascendant, defenders of traditional public education policies have a foil in Washington to bludgeon their reform opponents.

“DeVos and Trump have been explicit about a message of privatizing education and defunding public education in a way that I think reflects us saying, ‘We need to push back on that. We need to protect and strengthen education,’” said Tony Thurmond, a California state assemblyman running against Tuck for the open schools chief post next year. “I’m being really intentional about speaking out against those things.”

While education in recent years has rarely risen to the top of voters’ minds in statewide elections, the effort to yoke reform Democrats to DeVos could prove effective, especially in heavily Democratic states.

I would note that until this January, the most powerful advocate of school privatization and the attack on teachers was one Barack Obama, and his Education Secretaries, Arne Duncan, and John King, Jr.

Now that a Republican is in control of the federal burocracy, and endorsing marginally worse policies, Democrats are suddenly against it.

Support for labor unions, and the dignity of workers should be a core Democratic Party value.

It wasn’t under Barack Obama, (he abandoned card check) it wasn’t under Bill Clinton, (NAFTA, etc.) and it certainly would not have been under Hillary Clinton.

We need better Democrats.

Quote of the Day

The politics of compensation is always subject to a problem that economists call “time inconsistency.” Before a new policy – say, a trade agreement – is adopted, beneficiaries have an incentive to promise compensation. Once the policy is in place, they have little interest in following through, either because reversal is costly all around or because the underlying balance of power shifts toward them.

—Dani Rodrik

It is a point that I have made many times: Promises to help people hurt by free trade deals are never fulfilled, because along with a loss of jobs and money, there is a loss of political power, and political losers almost never get the spoils.

On the Other Hand, Something Good is Happening in New York Too

Rather unsurprisingly, it does not come from the Governor, it comes from the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, which is going to require that Uber allow tipping:

New Yorkers have for years been able to tip a taxi driver by adding a few dollars to their bill before swiping a credit card. But they cannot add a tip when they use the popular ride-hailing app Uber.

Now officials in New York City are moving to require Uber to provide a tipping option in the app.

The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission announced a proposal on Monday requiring car services that accept only credit cards to allow passengers to tip the driver using their card.

“This rule proposal will be an important first step to improve earning potential in the for-hire vehicle industry, but it is just one piece of a more comprehensive effort to improve the economic well-being of drivers,” Meera Joshi, the city’s taxi commissioner, said in a statement.

The decision was prompted by a petition from the Independent Drivers Guild, a group representing Uber drivers in New York. The petition, which collected more than 11,000 signatures, argued that drivers were losing thousands of dollars without an easy tipping option. Passengers can tip an Uber driver using cash, but many do not carry cash or know whether they should feel obligated to provide a tip.

The lack of a tipping option in Uber’s app has been a sore point for drivers. If new rules are approved in New York, it would be a major change in how Uber runs its business in its largest United States market. Other cities could demand to have the same choice.

Uber has fought tipping tooth and nail, and I think that there are a number of reasons:

  • Tipping makes the drivers seem more like employees, and Uber is all about extracting revenue while leaving the liabilities on the customers and drivers.
  • It servers to disintermediate Uber, because passengers can simply provide a tip as a way to rate drivers, and drivers can consider tips when they rate passengers, which removes a level of control from Travis Cordell Kalanick and his Evil Minions.™
  • It is against the law for Uber to take a cut.
  • It provides an alternative to Uber’s policy of price gouging surge pricing.
  • It’s just dickish, and wherever possible, Uber chooses the dickish move.

In any case, I am amused.

Conservadem Policies in a Nutshell

Andrew Cuomo unveiled a “free” tuition program recently, and rather unsurprisingly, on closer examination, it turns out to be mindlessly punitive and difficult to use:

………

 The Fine Print
Interestingly, coverage of Cuomo’s plan was by no means uncritical, suggesting that he may not get the tailwind for 2020 that he expects. (For early negative reactions, see here and here.) From my perspective, Cuomo’s plan has one critical flaw:

Cuomo’s “Tuition-Free College” Plan is not a universal benefit

That is, Excelsior is not a left program providing universal concrete material benefits to everyone, especially the working class. So it’s not a program from the left. Rather, it’s a typical liberal program, directed only at the “deserving,” hedged about with complexity, and targeting the (so-called) middle class, and not the working class. More specifically, Cuomo’s plan:

  1. Is means-tested
  2. Does not cover fees
  3. Covers full-time students only
  4. Has a residency requirement
  5. Has clawbacks
  6. Has a “crapshoot” clause

Let’s consider each of these points in turn.

Let’s go through these one at a time:

  1. Means testing creates a situation where popular support is limited, and allows for a the program to be killed by gradually tightening the clause.   Additionally, as Lamberth Strether notes, “Third, means-testing and gatekeeping generally are in essence a jobs guarantee for the professional class, and one can’t help but think that’s a key consideration for the Democrat establishment, since that’s their base.”
  2. Fees, not just room and board, and constitute as much as ⅔ of the cost of school, and as shown by a number of state schools, most notably my alma mater UMass, it drives schools to move costs from tuition and fees.  Additionally, this program applies to the last dollar, so a dollar in something like Pell grants must be applied to tuition, and not to fees or living expenses, or text books. (If you get a $1000 grant or scholarship, the amount that you get under the New York program is cut by $1000).
  3. The full time requirement means that it’s impossible for poor students to take advantage of the the program, since they need to pay something north of 20 grand in fees.
  4. While handling tens of thousands of dollars in fees, you have to earn 15 credits a semester or pay the grant back, which makes it impossible to work your way through school.
  5. The residency requirement is not one that people normally think of, which requires that you be a state resident to benefit (thought it does that too), but rather that if you live or work outside of the state for Five Years After Graduation you have to pay back the grant.
  6. The crapshoot function says that the program shall be terminated if  the lotto under performs in any given year year, and schools are allowed to arbitrarily redefine the conditions to qualify.

This is a classic Blue Dog/DLC/New Dem program:  It adds complexity, it does not provide the benefits promised, it contains an unneeded bureaucracy, adds a dose of humiliation, and sets up conditions that convince people who want the benefit that government does not work.

If it were any more half assed, you would think that it came from Bill Clinton’s White House.

The primary purpose of this grant is to boost Andrew Cuomo’s prospects for a 2020 Presidential run.

Linkage

Monty Python revealed the 2016 Republican Party platform in 1974:

Pass the Popcorn

A week after President Donald Trump began to publicly distance himself from White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, alt-right ringleader Mike Cernovich threatened to release a “motherlode” of stories that could “destroy marriages” if Bannon is formally let go from the administration.

Cernovich made the claims that he’d release a series of “scoops” if Bannon is officially pushed out of the White House on an eleven-minute, self-recorded Periscope Thursday night.


What would be uncovered?

“If they get rid of Bannon, you know what’s gonna happen? The motherlode. If Bannon is removed, there are gonna be divorces, because I know about the mistresses, the sugar babies, the drugs, the pill popping, the orgies. I know everything,” said Cernovich.

“If they go after Bannon, the mother of all stories is gonna drop, and we’re just gonna destroy marriages, relationships—it’s gonna get personal.”I so hope that there is an actual dossier, and that it sees the light of day.

I am so looking forward to a blowup.

Linkage

I’ve always wondered about this: