Monday
Apr042016
The Commentariat -- April 5, 2016
Many thanks to the "super-contributors" who have been posting entries on the Commentariat since Saturday. -- Constant Weader
Evening Update! (6:45pm EDT): According to The Huffingon Post all three Republican candidates are running neck-and-neck in the Wisconsin primary. With 0% of the precincts reporting Cruz, Kasich and Trump are each reporting 0% of the vote so far. -- unwashed
Afternoon Update:
Renae Merle of the Washington Post: "President Obama made a forceful case Tuesday for stopping corporations from moving their headquarters overseas in order to avoid U.S. taxes, saying they are taking advantage of the American economic system and saddling the middle class with the bill.... Obama praised regulations issued the day before by the Treasury Department aimed at making more difficult these so-called inversions, in which U.S. companies combine with foreign firms to reduce U.S. taxes. Tax avoidance is a global problem, Obama said, pointing to an enormous leak of documents from a Panamanian law firm that allegedly detail the offshore shell companies and tax shelters used by rich leaders around the world."
Wow! Steve Erlanger of the New York Times: "The prime minister of Iceland resigned on Tuesday after an enormous leak of documents from a secretive Panamanian law firm about offshore shell companies and tax shelters. The resignation of the prime minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, was the first prominent political fallout from the document leaks, which have shed unflattering light on the private financial activities of many rich and powerful people around the world." -- CW ...
... Liam Stack of the New York Times provides a primer on the Panama Papers. -- CW
Liz Robbins of the New York Times: "In 2012, the Department of Homeland Security set up the fake University of Northern New Jersey "as part of a sting operation to ensnare criminals involved in student visa fraud. On Tuesday, that operation resulted in the issuing of arrest warrants for 21 people in the New York metropolitan area, the United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, and Sarah Saldaña, the director of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, announced at a news conference in Newark. The people arrested were brokers who knowingly recruited foreign students, mainly from China and India, to an institution that would not have real classes in order to obtain student visas." CW: Rather than setting up a whole new fake university, DHS could have just borrowed Trump University. Either way, Chris Christie would be the right choice for chairman of the board of trustees.
Reed Abelson of the New York Times: "There were widespread predictions that [with the advent of the ACA,] employers would leap at the chance to drop coverage and send workers to fend for themselves. But those predictions were largely wrong. Most companies, and particularly large employers, that offered coverage before the law have stayed committed to providing health insurance."
Bob Woodward & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump says he will force Mexico to pay for a border wall as president by threatening to cut off the flow of billions of dollars in payments that immigrants send home to the country, an idea that could decimate the Mexican economy and set up an unprecedented showdown between the United States and a key diplomatic ally. In a two-page memo to The Washington Post, Trump outlined for the first time how he would seek to force Mexico to pay for his 1,000-mile border fence, which Trump has made a cornerstone of his presidential campaign and which has been repeatedly scoffed at by current and former Mexican leaders." ...
... CW: In the realm of self-defeating, this is a real winner. What do you suppose the starving Mexican people would do if they could no longer get cash from their relatives in the U.S.? Oh, I know, they'd come to the U.S. in hopes of getting a job working for Ivana Trump. Trump may have a very good brain, but it's the kind that can't think of consequences.
Getting off the airplane ... Seeing all the green and gold and the green and gold until I'm dead and cold paraphernalia everywhere.... This awesome awakening, the shifting and sifting and the exposing of this rabid bite for them to hang on to any kind of relevancy and to hang on to their gravy train.... Inducing and seducing them with gift baskets ... 'Come on over the border and he's a gift basket of teddy bears and soccer balls.' -- Words, in the order delivered this weekend in Wisconsin, in a campaign speech by a prominent supporter of Donald Trump
Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "The backlash against a North Carolina law that bars local governments from extending civil rights protections to gay and transgender people continued Tuesday, with PayPal saying it is abandoning plans to expand into Charlotte in response to the legislation. This decision came just weeks after PayPal, the California-based online payments firm spun off from eBay, said it would open a global operations center in Charlotte, a move that state officials said would bring millions to the local economy and employ 400 people.... North Carolina's law was introduced to override a civil rights ordinance passed in Charlotte this year that said transgender people in the state's largest city could use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity."
*****
** Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously ruled that states may count all residents, whether or not they are eligible to vote, in drawing election districts. The decision was a major statement on the meaning of a fundamental principle of the American political system, that of 'one person one vote.' As a practical matter, the ruling mostly helped Democrats.... The court did not decide whether other ways of counting were permissible." The decision, written by Justice Ginsburg, is here. -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Ian Millhiser: "Justice Ginsburg just shut down one of America's most notorious white rights activists." -- CW (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "These days, conservatives don’t suffer too many unanimous defeats at the Supreme Court.... But that's what happened [Monday], when the Court handed down an 8-0 ruling in a case called Evenwel v. Abbott, which had the potential to upend an understanding of democratic representation that has existed for two centuries, and give Republicans a way to tilt elections significantly in their favor before anyone even casts a vote.... But losing cases like this one is part of the way they do business. With a (usually) friendly Supreme Court, in recent years they've employed a strategy of maximal legal audacity, one that has yielded tremendous benefits to their cause.... This case was a real long shot from the beginning.... But this case leaves an open question, which is whether a state can switch to an eligible-voter count in order to draw its districts if it chooses." -- CW ...
... Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog: "... the main opinion bore many signs that its warm embrace of the theory of equality of representation had to be qualified by leaving the states with at least the appearance of the power of choice, to hold together six solid votes." (Alito & Thomas each wrote concurring opinions.) -- CW
... ** BUT (and this is good news). Rick Hasen: "A long section of Justice Ginsburg's opinion recounts constitutional history, and relies on the fact that for purposes of apportioning Congressional seats among states, total population, not total voters, must be used.... Perhaps the most important aspect of Justice Ginsburg's opinion, and especially notable because it attracted the votes of not just the liberals but also Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy, is the Court's refusal to give Texas the green light to use total voters if it wants in the next round of [state] redistricting." -- CW
... New York Times Editors: "Voting is a fundamental constitutional right.... The problem, as [federal] Judge [Lynn] Adelman and others have documented again and again and again, is that voter-ID laws are a destructive solution to a nonexistent problem.... a federal appeals court inexplicably reversed [Adelman's] decision and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case last year, allowing the law to go into effect.... If there were any doubts about the bad faith of these laws, consider this: The Wisconsin law requires the state to educate voters about acceptable forms of ID and how to secure them -- a particularly important public service for the roughly 300,000 state residents estimated not to have the proper ID. But despite requests from the state's nonpartisan Government Accountability Board for $300,000 to $500,000 for that effort, the Legislature provided no funding. Instead, Governor [Scott] Walker [R-Koch] signed a bill in December to dismantle the board." -- CW
...And this is the bad news. The Washington Post piece (linked above) reminds readers of the modus operandi wingnuttia when attempting to drag the country off the cliff to the far right, via SCOTUS decisions: send up a long shot bill which, even if it fails as this one did, opens a new round of questioning that could lead to incremental wins for the knuckledraggers. Tierney Sneed in a Talking Points Memo piece points out that although the Supremes may have spoken unanimously on Evenwel, that does not mean wingers will pay the slightest bit of attention. Edward Blum "...the conservative legal activist who brought the lawsuit is claiming he has found a silver lining and is hinting at a coming crusade to take another swing at one person, one vote." Blum has a long history of attacking voting rights. The Meet Ed Blum page on the American Enterprise Institute website, for which Blum is a visiting fellow (what, not a "scholar" like everyone else?), lists him as the director of the Project on Fair Representation and says that he "...studies civil rights policy issues such as voting rights, affirmative action, and multiculturalism." Makes it sound like he's a microbiologist studying infectious diseases. He certainly has been working to cure the "diseases" of voting rights and civil rights and like any chronic infection, he will be back. -- Akhilleus
... That Nice Chuck Grassley. Michael Shear of the New York Times: Senator Charles E. Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, on Monday invited President Obama's Supreme Court nominee to breakfast to explain, face to face, why Republicans have no intention of holding hearings on his appointment." CW: Yeah, come on by so I can punch you in the face. Grassley's spokeswoman claims Grassley's agreeing to serve Judge Garland poisoned pancakes for breakfast is evidence of the Senator's being "a nice person." Bull. It's evidence he is likely to have a formidable Democratic challenger who already is accusing him of refusing to do his job.
Angela Keane of Bloomberg: "President Barack Obama sat side-by-side with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Oval Office on Monday, offering a symbolic rebuke to ... Donald Trump, who has questioned whether there's still a need for the defense alliance." -- CW
Seung Min Kim of Politico: "Senate Republicans are wading into the contentious court fight over President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration by filing a legal brief with the Supreme Court that declares Obama's controversial moves a 'stark contravention to federal law.' The amicus brief is a significant assertion from most members of the Senate GOP conference that Obama's executive actions -- whose future depends on the eight justices now sitting on the Supreme Court -- should be ruled unconstitutional." -- CW
Digby in Salon on the never-ending "American war for democracy": "When Paul Ryan talks about 'makers and takers,' National Review denigrates minorities and poor whites, and Republican legislatures suppress the vote, they are echoing the ideas, the language, and the actions of Civil War-era slave owners." -- CW ...
... ** Ryan Cooper of the Week: "The [Republican] party's intellectual apparatus (distinct from the Trumpist insurgency) has more-or-less fully regressed to an economic libertarianism straight out of the 1920s. They view basically all government programs outside of the military and the courts as illegitimate, to be slashed or eliminated wherever possible. The only problem with this is that when you try it, the results are immediate disaster.... It took many years for Republicans to talk themselves out of the fact that Herbert Hoover's presidency was a disastrous failure, but with the exception of Trump, Hooverism is where they stand." Read the whole post. -- CW
Tim Johnson & Marisa Taylor of McClatchy News: "From the White House to the Kremlin, and on to Panama City, Vienna and London, governments reacted to the disclosure of the so-called Panama Papers, a law firm's once-secret database that details the offshore interests of 12 current or former world leaders, as well as 128 other politicians and public officials. No U.S. politicians of note were found in the archives of the Mossack Fonseca law firm, a global leader in setting up offshore corporations. The U.S. Justice Department signaled that it could focus its gaze more intently on political corruption even when it occurs outside of U.S. borders." -- CW ...
Once the IRS becomes aware of the identities of these people, I almost can guarantee you that they will do some kind of triaging of the data to see if there are U.S. people in there and based on the results of that, they may elect to go after people. -- Daniel Reeves, who helped create the [U.S.'s] IRS offshore compliance unit ...
... Julia Edwards & Julia Harte of Reuters: "The U.S. Justice Department is reviewing reports about the offshore financial arrangements of global politicians and public figures based on 11.5 million leaked files from a Panamanian law firm, a department spokesman said on Monday. The department is determining whether the findings point to evidence of corruption and other violations of U.S. law." -- CW ...
... Matt Yglesias of Vox on the Panama Papers: "Even as the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations have engaged in increasingly complex and intensive efforts at international cooperation to smooth the wheels of global commerce, they have willfully chosen to allow the wealthiest members of Western society to shield their financial assets from taxation (and in many cases divorce or bankruptcy settlement) by taking advantage of shell companies and tax havens." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Sometimes Capitalism Is Awesome. Brian Fung & Matt McFarland of the Washington Post: "Most of the best selling cars in America ... generally hit around 300,000 in sales every year. Tesla saw 276,000 people sign-up to buy its newest all-electric Model 3 sedan -- in two days .... even though Model 3 is not expected to be delivered until the end of next year.... That massive number, which far exceeded optimistic forecasts, upends traditional thinking about how to sell cars and is expected to spur the auto industry to shift more dramatically to market electric technology to consumers, analysts said." -- CW
Doc Whitey Don't Feel Your Pain: Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "African Americans are routinely under-treated for their pain compared with whites, according to research. A study released Monday sheds some disturbing light on why that might be the case." CW: Looks as if many young medicos are both stoopid and racist. ...
... AND this will come as no surprise. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "Racial prejudice could play a significant role in white Americans' opposition to gun control, according to new research from political scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In their paper, published in the journal Political Behavior in November, Alexandra Filindra and Noah J. Kaplan found that whites were significantly less likely to support gun control measures when they had recently looked at pictures of black people, than when they had looked at pictures of white people." CW: Remember, the gun control movement that began in the late 1960s was largely fueled by white fears of blacks with guns.
Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "A 'foreign fighter surge team' of experts from the F.B.I., State Department and Department of Homeland Security met with their Belgian counterparts a month before the Brussels terrorist attacks to try to correct gaps in Belgium's widely criticized ability to track terrorist plots, American officials said. The half-dozen experts focused on long-term structural fixes to the Belgians' failure to share intelligence effectively and to tighten porous borders, but not on providing information about suspected Islamic State operatives. The recommendations, even if accepted, would not have prevented the deadly attacks at the Brussels Airport and in the city's subway last month, the officials said." -- CW
Presidential Race
Both parties hold presidential primaries in Wisconsin today. See also NYT editorial, linked above.
Alec Loftus in US News: "While [Bernie] Sanders holds a modest lead over ... Hillary Clinton in the Badger State, everything could be thrown into disarray Tuesday with mass confusion about [Gov. Scott] Walker's [R-Koch] convoluted ID requirements.... Under Walker's arcane rules, student IDs at most of Wisconsin's 60-plus colleges and universities are no good, because they don't have the requisite signature or expiration date." CW: Pretty much what I said the other day, tho in much more detail. Loftus notes that the Clinton campaign is doing a bang-up job of exploiting its own base of "urban voters." And there's nothing wrong with that.
Paul Krugman on why black voters lean toward Clinton over Sanders: "One reason I haven't seen laid out, but which I suspect is important, is that they are more sensitized than most whites to how the disinformation machine works, to how fake scandals get promoted and become part of what 'everyone knows.' Not least, they've seen the torrent of lies directed at our first African-American president, and have a sense that not everything you hear should be believed." -- CW
Michelle Lee of the Washington Post: No, Sen. Sanders, you have not released your tax returns "for the last many years." CW: Bernie's excuse is that his wife does the family's tax returns & she's been busy campaigning. I'm not sure about the law, but I think Bernie's campaign could pay an accountant to prepare their returns for public release.
Leading from Behind? Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "Although [Hillary Clinton] heaped praise on New York for passing the higher wage [ultimately to $15/hour] and called it a national model, she did not endorse the idea of a $15 wage across the board.... That sets her apart from much of the organized labor movement, which has largely united behind a goal of a $15 national wage. It also marks a difference with rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, who calls the current level 'starvation pay' that should be raised to $15 everywhere." -- CW
Jimmy Vielkind of Politico: "Hillary Clinton ratcheted up her attacks on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' gun control record Monday, telling a private gathering of state legislators near the State Capitol [in Albany, New York,] that many of the guns used by New York criminals come [from Vermont]." -- CW
Jim Tankersley & Jeff Guo of the Washington Post: Donald Trump "would need to at least double the size of the U.S. economy in eight years, and possibly to quadruple it [to keep his promise of simultaneously paying off the national debt & cutting taxes]. Such growth is, to put it mildly, inconceivable." CW: Nice try, guys, but as Trump advisor Barry Bennett will be happy to tell you, you're just a couple of bullshitting media tools. ...
... Robert Costa of the Washington Post publishes a Trump campaign internal memo. It seems Trump & Co. are very upset with the loyal opposition: "When asked whether his ire was directed more at the national media or the GOP's establishment wing, [the memo's author, Trump senior advisor Barry] Bennett, said, 'Both.... 'The press is printing the narrative that the Republican establishment is setting.'" -- CW
Trump's Goon Squad. Ken Vogel & Brianna Gurciullo of Politico: "... Trump has assembled a privately funded security and intelligence force with a far wider reach than other campaigns' private security operations: tracking and rooting out protesters, patrolling campaign events and supplementing the Secret Service's protection.... [A Politico] investigation ... found that the tactics of Trump's team at times inflamed the already high tensions around his divisive campaign, rather than defusing them.... Among Trump critics who’ve had run-ins with his security, complaints include unnecessary force, discriminatory profiling, and removing people from events based on little more than their appearance." -- CW
Jennifer Rubin, the WashPo's official winger-blogger, writes a good takedown on Trump the Ignoramus & traveler on the long whining road. And kudos to Chris Wallace of Fox "News" (really!) for challenging Donald the Dunce. -- CW (Also linked yesterday.)
Gary Legum of Salon cries some crocodile tears for Scottie: "Pity Scott Walker and the Republicans of Wisconsin. Here they have taken the time and energy to gain power partly by using racial dog whistles, and along comes a group of white nationalists to make the once-implicit coded language suddenly explicit."
In the Media
Jason Easley of Politicsusa offers hope for the future: "Last Friday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show attracted more younger viewers than every Fox News program that aired from 4 PM-11 PM. Maddow drew 315,000 younger viewers for a Friday night broadcast. Maddow's audience with viewers age 25-54 was bigger that both The O'Reilly Factor (301,000) and The Kelly File (280,000) on Fox News. Maddow's show had the largest 25-54 audience of any of the programs on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. Even though MSNBC is not on basic cable and appears in fewer homes, Maddow came within 500,000 total viewers of beating Fox News in her 9 PM timeslot."
Given the apparent rightward leaning of many younger Americans over the course of the last decade or so, it's refreshing to read that an increasing number are opting for fact-based reporting in lieu of lies. Nice, in'it? Now if only we can get them to the polls! -- Akhilleus
...And hopefully the public is learning about real conservative extremism through fact-based journalism, like this piece from Rachel Maddow. --safari
More In the (ahem) Media
Trump's comments about making sure women who had abortions were properly punished elicited genuine approbation from the left and plenty of the faux kind from the right. Anti-abortioneers, clued in to how bad it sounds to advocate punishing a woman for making a personal life choice (a goal they've actually espoused for years, by the way, just not in such a clear and unobfuscated manner), lined up to wag their fingers at Herr Donald. But not all. Tom Wurtz, writing in The Blaze, wonders what's the big deal. He dispenses with the nice and lays into fellow abortion foes for not supporting Trump's declaration of punishment wholeheartedly: "A woman wishes to kill her unborn child. A premeditated murder plot is hatched in her mind. She must seek an assassin (doctor) to execute the hit. A contract-for-hire arrangement is reached. A mother then drives herself to a pre-determined scene of the crime and willingly participates in the act. She is clearly an accomplice to murder. Isn't she?" Therefore, she should also be punished and perhaps executed. Wurtz includes a helpful list of accomplices to murder who have all been executed. This is what they believe and make no mistake, winger pols who don't question such thinking believe the exact same thing. Elections DO matter. -- Akhilleus
Beyond the Beltway
David Siders of the Sacramento Bee: California "Gov. Jerry Brown [D], casting a living wage as a moral imperative while questioning its economic rationale, signed legislation Monday raising California's mandatory minimum to $15 an hour by 2022, acting within hours of a similar bill signing in New York.... Brown, a fiscal moderate, had previously expressed reservations about a wage increase. But amid growing concern about income inequality in California and the national thrust of the labor-backed 'Fight for 15' campaign, his hand was forced." -- CW (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Barbara Goldberg of Reuters: "Princeton University will keep former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's name on campus buildings despite student complaints about his segregationist beliefs, the Ivy League school said on Monday, while also announcing new diversity efforts. While recommending that Wilson's name and image not be removed from Princeton's public spaces and from its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, a trustees report said it needs to be honest in 'recognizing Wilson's failings and shortcomings as well as the visions and achievements that led to the naming of the school and the college in the first place.'" ...
... CW: This is a disappointment & a mistake. When this issue came to the fore some months back, I initially wrote that the Princeton students were overreacting inasmuch as most white people of the day were racists by our standards. Then, when I read what a horrible racist Wilson was, even by the standards of his day, I had to wipe the egg off my face & reverse my ignorant position. It's worth remembering that Wilson was an anti-feminist, too, tho less virulently than he was anti-black.
Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "Winston Moseley, who stalked, raped and killed Kitty Genovese in a prolonged knife attack in New York in 1964 while neighbors failed to act on her desperate cries for help -- a nightmarish tableau that came to symbolize urban apathy in America -- died on March 28, in prison. He was 81." -- CW ...
Way Beyond
ABC Online [Australia]: "Iceland's Prime Minister is refusing to resign after leaked tax documents known as the Panama Papers revealed accusations he and his wife used an offshore firm to allegedly hide million-dollar investments.... [Thousand of people demonstrated] outside Iceland's parliament in Reykjavik calling for [PM Sigmundur] Gunnlaugsson's resignation was then kicked off on Monday evening." See links to related stories in the main news above. -- CW
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Reader Comments (25)
NY Times
"How Jeb Bush Spent $130 Million Running for President With Nothing to Show for It"
Some odd spending: valets $15,800
clubbing: $94,100
Anyone know exactly what clubbing is?
mae finch
@mae finch: What most people mean by "clubbing" is going out to or making the rounds of night clubs, bars & other night spots. What the Times writers mean here is holding events or wining & dining potential contributors at posh private venues like country clubs & the Yale Club:
"Over the entire campaign, Mr. Bush’s team racked up tens of thousands of dollars in dinner and event tabs at the Yale Club, the Union League Club of Chicago, Nantucket’s Westmoor Club, and more than two dozen other haunts of the well heeled and racquetball-inclined."
Marie
Thank you, CW, for your "Lady Liberty" post. Yes, indeed: Ivana feels for humanity, along with understanding its place - and purpose - in our world.
I'd worked for several years alongside a chef as his "sous". We had the supreme pleasure one afternoon of having "I, Trump" as a luncheon guest.
Short by one wait-staffer, I donned my blacks & whites and silk bow tie (a genuinely classy - yet zero-snobbish - operation) and was asked to, singularly, attend to Mademoiselle/Madam (?): I don't recall if she'd yet split from The Drumpf.
The stunning powder-blue Chanel ensemble, matching Louboutin pumps, perfect make-up & hair could not camouflage her class-less-ness: a loud, brash, ill-mannered shrew who treated the waitstaff (except me, for reasons I cannot explain) like trash.
She must have assumed that the others we'd hired for this event - all, as it happened that day (*not* prerequisite), with US passports and university degrees who, yet, needed to supplement their slim salaries (or had been laid-off) - were illegal riff-raff, sucking the life-blood out of the U.S. economy (and from her Dolce Gabbana purse).
I am wondering how she treats her "Hired Help": the "legals" (or not!) who clean her (solid gold?) toilets, prepare & serve her domicile's (plural?) meals, meticulously iron her bed-linens, napkins & undergarments and - possibly? / likely? - do not receive Social Security or Health benefits with their wages.
And yet. . .
I am deeply touched to learn that she is not a hater of Mexicans.
"Welcome To Leith"
Our local (NYC) PBS station just aired this Frontline / Independent Lens documentary.
While the subject matter may not be unfamiliar, the wide-ranging - and shameless blatancy - of today's hate groups, captured in this filming, was exposed in high relief.
Full Disclosure: I elected to stop watching before the halfway mark. It was too close to bedtime & I deemed daylight-viewing a healthier choice for my idiosyncratic sleep-cycling. Nevertheless, worthy - if uneasy - viewing.
<< "Welcome to Leith" chronicles the attempted takeover of a small North Dakota town by notorious white supremacist Craig Cobb. As Cobb and his cohorts become more threatening, tensions soar and residents desperately look for ways to expel the unwanted neighbors." >>
http://www.thirteen.org/programs/independent-lens/coming-to-independent-lens-welcome-to-leith/
Congratulations to Marie, Safari, Unwashed, Capt. Russ, PD Pepe, Victoria D (and perhaps a few I have forgotten) for stepping up to the plate! I am grateful--and admiring. Just tried my hand at embedding again, and was a pathetic failure. Just know that I appreciate all you are doing--and, Marie, for being willing to pick up the slack.
Now for my little story: "Voting is a fundamental constitutional right.... The problem, as [federal] Judge [Lynn] Adelman and others have documented again and again and again, is that voter-ID laws are a destructive solution to a nonexistent problem.... a federal appeals court inexplicably reversed [Adelman's] decision and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case last year, allowing the law to go into effect...
This is, as you all know, about Wisconsin, home of Scotty Walkster, voter thief. He is a major goofus, to say the least. After reading Jane Mayer's book, "Dark Money," about the Kochsters and their billionaire "fiends," I learned more about Scotty than I ever hoped to know. This guy is just about on the same level as The Trumpster. What I am saying' is that he is quite a few ants short of a picnic. The Kochs have dumped so much money into him--and into Republican politics in Wisconsin--that nobody else has had a chance to prevail. Add to that, voter ID "issues" and bought off judges everywhere you look. No wonder my home state is so completely fucked up!
I am happy to report that Federal Judge Lynn Adelman is not one of those corrupt judges. He is a liberal Democrat and has worked his ass off to make things right--without a lot of success, as you can see by Marie's post. BTW, he was my high school boyfriend, senior year. I wish I could say he was a sweetheart, but he was rather a narcissistic, callous fella. (We called him "Ollie".) No matter: he was smart and effective. I last saw him at our 50th reunion, and he was same old, same old. We had a waltz for old times, and talked about the hopeless condition of our sad little state. Of course, we both went to high school on the North Shore of Milwaukee--full of sons and daughters of rich industrialists. Sigh....
I am hoping, obviously that Trump loses tomorrow in the Republican primary--but that Ted Crude does too. He gives me the creeps! John Kaisch is no angel, but he's better than those two pieces of pond scum! Bernie should do well, although Hillary, of course, has the support of the liberal "elite." I am peeved at Bernie because he has not yet come up with his 2015 tax return. I am thinking he may still be in the mindset of running for Mayor of Burlington. Yikes! He says that Jane does their tax returns, and she has been "very busy." Get with it, Bernie! And stop blaming Jane!
Bye for now.....
@Ophelia M.: The Googles are replete with stories of Ivana's mistreating the help. In one instance she let out a "profanity-laced tirade" against a Trump casino housekeeper in front of 100s of customers because of a discarded drink cup that hadn't been picked up off the casino floor. She didn't want to see pregnant women in the casinos & told a manager to "Fire this girl," when she saw a pregnant female employee working on the casino floor.
As for vacuuming, which Ivana cited as an excellent argument for immigration, there's a way to do it. I recall reading years ago that she required the maids to vacuum their way out the door of the rooms of the yacht they owned then, so there would be no evidence of their footprints in the carpet. Apparently, she did have favorites & would be kind of the toadiest of them, tho.
PD Pepe wrote yesterday, "I thought the statement by Ivana Trump––' … we need immigrants. Who’s going to vacuum our living rooms and clean up after us? Americans don't like to do that," should be plastered on huge billboards throughout the country with a picture of Ivana in a silken gown standing next to Donald, fingers pointing like the old Uncle Sam posters––'WE NEED YOU!'"
A brilliant idea.
Marie
Ivana - example of immigrants taking jobs that Americans won't do.
After a quick morning perusal of nytimes.com I didn't see anything about the Panamanian shell corporation/money laundering scandal. How is that not news? One reason why RC is important is the lack of recognition of that story elsewhere.
To Marie Re Ivana -
Thank you for the additional background on "I, Trump".
We, clearly, lucked-out back then - having spent only a few hours in her presence.
To PD Pepe -
I'm afraid I overlooked your post:
Great billboard suggestion!
@Citizen: Here you go––from the NYT this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/world/europe/panama-papers-leaks-put-iceland-leader-under-pressure-to-quit.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
@Kate: Please don't thank me––except maybe for trying. I haven't done a bloody thing because as I explained I didn't like the process––was too anxiety ridden. It probably has to do with a control issue since all these technological wonders ––computers–-VCR's––etc. have given me one big pain in the backside until I master them and then if something goes awry I freak out. But I'm trying to curb my impatience and I might give it another go.
In many instances the "nouveaux rich" are royal pains. The wealth that is suddenly theirs is overwhelming and since they have come from a life of slender means they flaunt this abundance, ignorant of how best to assimilate. You see people like Ivana whose tacky treatment of what she considers "the under class" deplorable. Ivana Trump is the one without class.
P.S. I have always thought that the way one treats people who are servicing you reflects greatly on character. Once I went out to dinner with a person I thought I knew pretty well, but his poor treatment of our waitress changed my mind. His true colors did not in any way match mine. I never saw him again.
Rethinking things as CW came to do about Woordrow Wilson upon learning more about the man; so, too in my early morning sleepless hours around 4 a.m.... I came upon this feature in the new issue of Vanity Fair.
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, 1941: Fighting the Shadow War, Marc Wortman explores the architect’s fascination with Nazism. As in famed architect, Philip Johnson's hidden Nazi past " ...or from Hitler to Huey with Father Coughlin in between!
For any student of art and design and architecture one of the prennial stars is Philip Johnson. Over the years my image of him included that of a bookish, balding man given to saying prickly, dismissive things—albeit, a man of talent in the world of architecture. How little I knew.
Here's a teaser from the article: "How did Johnson, virtually alone among his Fascist associates, manage to avoid indictment? The answer may lie in the influence of powerful friends. One man in particular could well have been influential: Washington’s powerful Latin-American intelligence-and-propaganda czar Nelson Rockefeller,..."
Or as we say around these heah parts, le plus ça change, etc....
@PD & Citizen: Yes, the NYTimes does have the story, but they bury it. Nothing except small sub-headers on the 'front page,' which makes one wonder why they are playing this down--or so it seems? Why isn't the Steve Erlanger's article on the face page?
It is with a rueful smirk (if smirks can be full of rue) that I've been noticing how quickly wingers have discovered facts now that their grotesque creation, the Drumpfenstein Monster, is stumbling around their expensive lab-OR-atory, overturning the smoking beakers and short-circuiting their Van de Graff generators of venality and venom.
Yesterday I spied a piece by Confederate apologist extraordinaire, Jen Rubin, in the WaPo, replete with examples of factual inconsistencies and simply DREADFUL elisions of Truth on the part of Drumpfenstein (dreadful, I tells ya). Jen Rubin referencing facts?? What in the wide, wide, world of sports is a-goin' on here?
Who knew that wingers even recognized facts? Or could spell the word? The usually spell it f-a-r-t. This is like those B-movies where the bad guys acknowledge the existence of a bomb only when they're locked in a room just above it and can't get out. "Curses! Foiled again."
Just one of many examples (the Garland nomination abortion is another) of how Confederates' only real concern is a continuation of their own power, no matter what it takes (lies, gerrymandering, election fraud, character assassination, vote suppression, congressional intransigence, shutting down the government, magical asterisk economics, institutional racism, wars of choice, the list is loooong). Facts are inconvenient and unrecognized if they contest winger control, but all important if they support it.
This goes way beyond hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty. We passed those markers the day St. Ronnie was inaugurated. This shit is criminal.
The problem with young and first time voters will always be getting them to the polls. By mail voting helps but how long will it be before the specter of voter fraud is raised over this method? Early voting including weekends also helps, which makes it a prime target for limitation.
@BobbyLee-
In Oregon we have automatic voter registration (when one reaches age 18) and all voting is done by mail (or at special drop off places) on paper ballot. There is a system in place in which voter fraud would be next to impossible. As far as I know, we have never had any. Of course, the Kochsters would HATE this system, because it is clean, and it works. Also, very efficient. No broken voting machines or long lines. And party operatives cannot interfere in the process. I think this is what democracy is supposed to look like. How did we go so far astray?
@Akhilleus, re: Evenwel v. Abbott: We could always become originalists in the true spirit of the founders (& in memory of Nino) & treat every non-voting resident as 3/5ths of a person. I'll bet this is a compromise Edward Blum could swallow, even tho at this point he's going for treating those non-voters as big fat zeroes.
Marie
I drove from Boston to upstate New York yesterday through our belated winter. Two parts of the drive were infuriating for separate reasons.
WBUR's On Point radio call-in show was on the topic of the frailty and melting of the Antarctic ice shelves, linked here yesterday. One "expert" said he agreed with Senator Cruz's statement that climate change is too politicized, and then laid down a slick Zamboni trail of both-sides-are-to-blame. Someone may have called to swat him, but I didn't hear because I turned off the radio.
The other thing that drove me nuts was that the Mass Pike authority reduced the speed limit from I-495 outside Boston to the NY line to 40 mph, using flashing LED signs in the median every 20 miles or so. In the eastern 2/3 of the road, where the pavement was just wet, people completely ignored the posting and traffic cruised along at 70 or so. By the time I got to the Berkshires, where the snow was sticking and visibility was sometimes bad, it looks as if people had continued to ignore the regulation and, as a result, there were two semis off the road in different places. Given the newfangled infrastructure, it really seems as if they could have tailored the advisories to suit the actual conditions rather than imposing a completely unbelievable limit, seemingly designed to be ignored. I am sure some drivers still would have disregarded the warnings, but realistic limits would have given drivers the courage to do what they knew was right.
Marie,
C'mon, c'mon. Guys like Ed Blum don't strike me as the kind who will go along with 2/5ths of a win when nothing less than complete victory will do. The attackers and haters of voting rights and representative government who pushed Evenwel are looking for a new metric by which to determine who gets counted as a citizen. What they're hoping for is the clean and tidy White Person Metric. A 3/5ths slave/black person/Hispanic thingy will just fuck that up.
Right Wing World is not supposed to have loose ends. Geez. Get with it, willya?
@Nisky Guy: I don't think employees know how to utilize those signs. When I was traveling south on I-95 through South Carolina, there were electronic signs for 50 miles along the way that said the same thing -- something like, "Possible heavy rains & flooding ahead, Turn on your lights".
It would have been way more useful if somebody at the state's DOT knew how to type in "I-95 closed ahead. To re-open in 3 days." Because that was the actual situation. Not that I didn't enjoy spending three days in the heart of the Old Confederacy. (My hotel was right off the Strom Thurmond Highway. Perfect.)
Marie
@Marie: Perhaps they should have said "Here there be monsters." It's no more informative, but it may have brought a smile...
Maybe Bernie hasn't put out his tax returns yet because "...why bother, if I don't get the nomination?" On the other hand, I seem to recall a year or so back I had looked at some of the financial statements that members of Congress are required to file...and (my faulty memory) remembers that Bernie was probably the poorest of the lot! so, maybe his tax returns will ultimately contain nothing much to worry about.
As for Trump, can't help but consider Richard Zombeck's HuffPost article (linked by CaptRuss yesterday) that suggests Trump really doesn't want to be President...and hadn't expected to get as far as he has. If that was his thinking, then likely he never figured he'd ever have to show his. Perhaps, his eventual escape plan as a candidate will avoid his having to do so. Don't know what excuse Trump will come up with, but bet it'll be a beaut!
Well, well, the NYTimes finally put the Panama Papers out in front.
The Panama Papers reminded me of a 60 Minutes segment I saw a couple of months ago about some other shady lawyers.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/anonymous-inc-60-minutes-steve-kroft-investigation/
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/group_goes_undercover_at_13_law_firms_to_show_how_us_laws_facilitate
An undercover investigation of money laundering in the US. Only 1 out of the 16 lawyers flat out refused. The others were somewhere between cautious and enthusiastic to help a corrupt african offical move his money some place safer.
"In many states across America, you need less identification to set up and open up an anonymous company than you do to get a library card."
Now I understand how DT thinks he is going to get Mexico to pay for (a portion, 5-10$bn) the wall. He says he's going to cut off the funds people here are sending back to relatives unless Mexico ponies up the dough.
Translated into New Yorkese, he's sayin': "Nice little country you got there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to it."
RAS quoted the following: "In many states across America, you need less identification to set up and open up an anonymous company than you do to get a library card."
Or to vote.
Nice how Confederates have made the central, fundamental, indispensable component of our democracy more difficult--and more legally suspect--than arranging illegal money laundering for the purpose of avoiding paying US taxes. Capitalism is awesome, baby!
Right Wing World. Get used to it. It ain't getting any better.
Thanks for the reminder of how bad it really is.
RAS is absolutely right. I started my company by having my
accountant send an e-mail to the county with name and address,
plus $10 filing fee. To vote here a driver's license is required
with that shiny code thingy which is then scanned thru a scanner
which puts it up on their computer so they can match it to your
name, address, birthdate (and probably shoe size). Voting is quick
and easy in this small town, but in more populous areas of the state
it takes a while to fill out the forms and then scanning and double
checking on the computer.