Month: September 2017

Spicey Butterfield?

by digby

Axios reports that Spicer has a treasure trove of notes:

The Watergate resonance of the Bob Mueller probe rose this week with a CNN report that the special counsel has details of wiretaps of “former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election.”

Now we can tell you about another potential honey pot for Mueller. Former colleagues of Sean Spicer tell Axios that he filled “notebook after notebook” during meetings at the Republican National Committee, later at the Trump campaign, and then at the White House.

When Spicer worked at the RNC, he was said to have filled black books emblazoned with the party’s seal. Spicer was so well-known for his copious notes that underlings joked about him writing a tell-all.

One source familiar with the matter said that the records were just to help him do his job.

“Sean documented everything,” the source said.

That surprised some officials of previous White Houses, who said that because of past investigations, they intentionally took as few notes as possible when they worked in the West Wing.

When we texted Spicer for comment on his note-taking practices, he replied: “Mike, please stop texting/emailing me unsolicited anymore.”

When I replied with a “?” (I have known Spicer and his wife for more than a dozen years), he answered: “Not sure what that means. From a legal standpoint I want to be clear: Do not email or text me again. Should you do again I will report to the appropriate authorities.”

The WashPost reported Sept. 8 that Mueller “has alerted the White House that his team will probably seek to interview” Spicer and five other top current and former Trump advisers.

One White House official told me: “People are going to wish they’d been nicer to Sean. … He was in a lot of meetings.”

About an hour after Spicer’s texts, he replied to a polite email I had sent earlier, seeking comment:

Per my text:

Please refrain from sending me unsolicited texts and emails

Should you not do so I will contact the appropriate legal authorities to address your harassment

Thanks

Sean M Spicer

Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning …

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Please, just go golfing

by digby

So, so embarrassing:

Trump, at a lunch with African leaders, refers to the non-existent country of “Nambia.” pic.twitter.com/N8megnC1Xi

— David Mack (@davidmackau) September 20, 2017

And then he did this:

"Nambia? … they've got a bumper crop of covfefe this year" President Trump makes Anderson's #TheRidiculist tonight https://t.co/XHIk3gxPWF— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) September 21, 2017

Rube Goldberg. Now with more rubes.
by Tom Sullivan

Jimmy Kimmell last night, responding to criticism over his on-air criticism of the Graham-Cassidy health care bill:

There’s no way President Trump read this bill that he says is ‘great.’ He just wants to get rid of it because Obama’s name is on it. The Democrats should just rename it ‘Ivankacare.’ Guaranteed he gets on board. Can you imagine President Trump sitting down to read a health care bill? It’s like trying to imagine a dog doing your taxes. It just doesn’t compute.

I read that as “Ivancare” and the joke still works for some reason.

The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein has his own criticisms of the Graham-Cassidy bill. It keeps too much of Obamacare’s taxing and spending in place than previous GOP plans, he complains.

But Klein argues in the New York Times that turning health care over to the states as block grants (the GOP loves them some block grants) will unleash innovation, potentially 50 different flavors of it. Ask your doctor which state is right for you.

Besides, Klein writes, some states are younger. Others are older. Some are richer. Some are poorer. Some more urban. Others more rural. Heart disease and obesity are bigger problems in Mississippi than in Colorado. Pro tip: Don’t move to Mississippi.

Klein concludes:

A more flexible system would give states latitude to pursue health care programs that are a better fit for their populations’ ideological sensibilities.

Forget all the column inches just devoted to demographic and geographic diversity. Because what’s vital when treating your child’s cancer, what’s really important in a national health care plan, is having the proper ideology.

Hey, maybe Republicans should call it “Ivancare.”

That Americans might have to pay the price for all that flexibility is less relevant to Klein than “genuine federalism in health care.”

Kimmell got it all wrong on Tuesday, Cassidy complained to reporters, “I’m sorry [Kimmel] does not understand.” Kimmell fired back:

“Oh, I get it. I don’t understand because I’m a talk-show host, right? Well then, help me out. Which part don’t I understand? Is it the part where you cut $243 billion from federal health-care assistance? Am I not understanding the part where states would be allowed to let insurance companies price you out of coverage for having pre-existing conditions? Maybe I’m not understanding the part of your bill in which federal funding disappears completely after 2026? Or maybe it was the part where the plans are no longer required to pay for essential health benefits, like maternity care or pediatric visits?”

Not to mention (as Kimmell did) the dozen-plus national health care groups opposed to the plan.

But more people would be covered under his plan than under the present system, Cassidy insisted. The Washington Post fact checker tried to find support for that statement and found it lacking:

The block grants would grow according to an index lower than general inflation — not according to how many people are covered or what diseases they have — so the total pot would grow more slowly than under current law. All funding would be terminated by 2027, unless Congress acted at the time to continue it.

But of course with no time for the CBO to score the bill before the September 30 deadline for passing it with a simple GOP majority, it is hard to know how more people would get coverage with less money. And “innovation” is just vaporware.

Spokesman Ty Bofferding said the United States spends more than twice as much per person than countries in Western Europe – all of which have universal health-care systems – so it was reasonable to believe better outcomes were possible with fewer dollars.

Trust us. Those other countries use economies of scale, uniformity and predictability to keep down their costs. Surely, 50 different for-profit systems could be just as frugal, right?

Rather than improving on Obamacare, what Republicans are offering is to replace our private insurance-based system with something even more Rube Goldberg.

Now with more rubes.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

There is absolutely nothing to see here

by digby

The Daily Beast had a big scoop today that got lost in all the news:

Suspected Russia propagandists on Facebook tried to organize more than a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during last year’s election, The Daily Beast has learned.

The demonstrations—at least one of which was promoted online by local pro-Trump activists— brought dozens of supporters together in real life. They appear to be the first case of Russian provocateurs successfully mobilizing Americans over Facebook in direct support of Donald Trump.
The Aug. 20, 2016, events were collectively called “Florida Goes Trump!” and they were billed as a “patriotic state-wide flash mob,” unfolding simultaneously in 17 different cities and towns in the battleground state. It’s difficult to determine how many of those locations actually witnessed any turnout, in part because Facebook’s recent deletion of hundreds of Russian accounts hid much of the evidence. But videos and photos from two of the locations—Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs—were reposted to a Facebook page run by the local Trump campaign chair, where they remain to this day.

“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” read the Facebook event page for the demonstrations. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”

The Florida flash mob was one of at least four pro-Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton demonstrations conceived and organized over a Facebook page called “Being Patriotic,” and a related Twitter account called “march_for_trump.” (The Daily Beast identified the accounts in a software-assisted review of politically themed social-media profiles.)

Being Patriotic had 200,000 followers and the strongest activist bent of any of the suspected Russian Facebook election pages that have so far emerged. Events promoted by the page last year included a July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in October, and a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower last November, after his election victory.

[…]

Watts, the former FBI agent and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted that “plausible deniability is built into any Russian active-measures strategy,” such as using troll farms in St. Petersburg or Macedonia to conceal influence campaigns. But compelling unsuspecting Americans to gather in the streets on behalf of Trump shows the reach and efficacy of those efforts.

The page earned such a large following, a known Macedonian fake news distributor, Nikola Tanevski, purchased BeingPatriotic.com this year, but the page is currently dormant. Tanevski runs popular, pro-Trump fake news factories USATwentyFour.com and TheAmericanBacon.com. Attempts to reach Tanevski did not receive a response.

The layers of deception went beyond Facebook posts and manufactured rallies. When it wasn’t organizing events, Being Patriotic encouraged violence against minorities in incendiary posts. “Arrest and shoot every sh*thead taking part in burning our flag! #BLM vs #USA,” Being Patriotic’s Twitter account posted in April 2016, using the hashtag for the Black Lives Matter protest movement.

The account also advertised a toll-free “Being Patriotic Hotline” to report instances of voter fraud on Election Day.
“Detected a voter fraud? Tell us about it! Call 888-486-8102 or take photo/video and send it to us,” the account wrote on Nov. 8. Being Patriotic’s sister account, @March_for_Trump, plugged the same phone number, as well as a hotline for the “Trump Lawyer Team.” The number is now disconnected.

When asked for comment, the White House referred The Daily Beast to the Trump campaign, which, in turn, did not respond to emailed questions. But Susie Wiles, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in Florida, told The Daily Beast that the Broward County portion of the flash mob “was not an official campaign event.”

That’s despite the fact that the event was promoted on “Official Donald J. Trump for President Campaign Facebook Page for Broward County, Florida.” Photos and videos of the demonstration were posted there afterward.

When emailed the link to the Facebook posting, Wiles told The Daily Beast: “There are groups such as this across the state—and maybe other places, too. Groups of people get together and establish a presence such as this but it is unaffiliated with the campaign, per se. The photos ring no bells with me.”

Wiles also said that the Trump campaign’s purported Broward County Facebook page, which markets itself as being “official,” was not set up by the campaign.

“The Donald Trump campaign did not set these Facebook pages up,” she told The Daily Beast. “Rather, supporters (like the lady registered as the contact) set them up to support the campaign and subsequently the president.”

The “lady” registered as the contact is Dolly Trevino Rump, the Trump campaign’s chairwoman for Broward County who, until this April, was also the secretary of the local Republican Party. The Miami Herald described her as “perhaps Broward’s most famous Donald Trump fan.” Rump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast. Neither did the chairman of the Broward County Republican Party.

The Being Patriotic event listings for its Florida flashmobs included the names and phone numbers of people listed as local volunteer coordinators. When contacted by The Daily Beast, two of those coordinators vaguely recalled the events taking place, but not much else.
Betty Triguera, who was listed as a coordinator for a gathering in Sarasota, Florida, told The Daily Beast that she recalled but didn’t attend the event.

“We got the information from it on Twitter but I didn’t go,” Triguera said unable to remember other details.
Jim Frische, who was listed as a coordinator for an event in Clearwater, Florida, told The Daily Beast that he was called about organizing an event and put one together.

He said he was unsure if it was organized by the campaign.

“I don’t recall the group’s name,” Frische said. “I know somebody called and said would you organize something so I put together a group. “I remember doing it and I think we had a dozen or so people out on the street corner. I remember afterward hearing it had happened all over the state.”

I don’t suppose his cult will ever admit they were manipulated by a foreign government’s propaganda. But it’s clear they were. And I’m going to guess it won’t be too hard to do it again. Whether they decide it shoud be on Trump’s behalf or someone else is the big question. Right now, the Republicans seem to be very sure that this will continue to benefit them in the future. I wonder why?

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In Fox Bizarroworld, the real scandal is still her emails

by digby

Now they want to lock up Susan Rice in an adjoining cell. Jim Comey too.

This is from Greg Jarret, Fox news anchor:

Jeff Sessions should never have accepted the position of Attorney General of the United States.  His leadership has proven unproductive and ineffectual.

There are two reasons for this.

First, he deceived President Trump by concealing his intent to recuse himself from the federal investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.  Hours after he was sworn in, Sessions began setting his recusal in motion by meeting with Department of Justice officials to discuss stepping aside from the probe.  Failing to disclose such a material matter to the president was an egregious betrayal.

Trump was reportedly disgusted and angry with Sessions when he learned of the recusal – rightly so.  “If he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me prior to taking office, and I would have picked someone else,” said Trump at a news conference.  The president was entitled to know the truth, but Sessions actively hid it from him.  Sessions’ deception deprived him of Trump’s confidence and trust which are essential to the job of Attorney General.  This ethical impropriety renders him unfit to serve.

Second, Sessions appears either incapable or incompetent.  He has resisted producing the documents relevant to the anti-Trump dossier which were subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee.  He has failed to appoint a special counsel to reopen the case against Hillary Clinton for likely violations of the Espionage Act in the use of her email server, obstruction of justice for destroying 33,000 emails under congressional subpoena, and potential self-dealing for profit through her foundation.  The evidence is compelling.

Moreover, Sessions has taken no action to investigate the unmasking of Trump aides during intelligence surveillance by the Obama Administration.  Evidence continues to mount that the incoming president was spied upon for political reasons.  Transition officials were unmasked, perhaps illegally.  And in one case, the unmasking was leaked to the media which is a crime.  Yet Sessions is twiddling his thumbs.

And why hasn’t Sessions investigated the possible criminal conduct of James Comey?  The fired FBI Director appears to have falsely testified before Congress, stolen government documents, and leaked them to the media.

Jeff Sessions may have been a fine Senator, but he has proven to be a feckless Attorney General.  He should resign.  But before he does, he can attempt to rectify the wreckage he has wrought by initiating several necessary criminal investigations and/or appointing a special counsel to do so.

He goes on to lay out the current “cases” against all three. 

If you tune in to Fox these days, this is a huge story. They are talking about it 24/7. Perhaps there’s nothing to worry about but I can’t help but recall the study about Fox News being so influential that it accounts for several GOP victories over the past 20 years.

And e know that there’s one 71 year old white Republican who tunes in every single day.

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Graham-Cassidy is the worst of all of them

by digby

Sarah Kliff of Vox:

I have spent the bulk of 2017 writing about the different Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Graham-Cassidy, in my view, is the most radical of them all.

While other Republican plans essentially create a poorly funded version of the Affordable Care Act, Graham-Cassidy blows it up. The bill offered by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy takes money from states that did a good job getting residents covered under Obamacare and gives it to states that did not. It eliminates an expansion of the Medicaid program that covers millions of Americans in favor of block grants. States aren’t required to use the money to get people covered or to help subsidize low- and middle-income earners, as Obamacare does now.

Plus, the bill includes other drastic changes that appeared in some previous bills. Insurers in the private marketplace would be allowed to discriminate against people with preexisting conditions, for example. And it would eliminate the individual mandate as other bills would have, but this time there is no replacement. Most analysts agree that would inject chaos into the individual market.

Taken together, these components add up to a sweeping proposal sure to upend the American health care system. Because the Senate hasn’t seen an independent analysis yet from the Congressional Budget Office, I can’t even say for sure how sweeping, and neither can any of the Republicans who have come out in support of it.

’m not the only one drawing this conclusion. The credit agency Fitch Ratings recently described Graham-Cassidy as “more disruptive” than the other Republican repeal bills. Edwin Park, a policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says that Graham-Cassidy is “more radical in the sense that you’re eliminating wholesale the marketplace subsidies and the Medicaid expansion.”

Robert Laszewski, a health consultant who is generally critical of the Affordable Care Act, says that “passage of this bill would create enormous market uncertainty.”

The Graham-Cassidy bill has, so far, received far less attention than the last bill the Senate considered in July or the one the House took up in May. But the reality is that this quiet bill would be far more disruptive.

They don’t just want to repeal Obamacare. Apparently, they now want to take down the entire health care system.

Here’s just one example of how they are going to throw the entire health care system into chaos. They plan to specifically punish people in states that have worked hard to get people covered:

Graham-Cassidy introduces an entirely novel funding mechanism for distributing this funding: moving money from states that have worked aggressively to expand coverage to those that have made little effort at all. It creates a funding formula that is meant to give states “more equal” health care funding, tethered to the size of their population.

Perversely, this punishes the states that have expanded coverage the most, either by expanding Medicaid or by getting a lot of people signed up for the marketplace (and thus have higher marketplace subsidies flowing into their state).

This, again, is something we do not see in the other Republican bills. No other bills contemplated simply taking money from Ohio, which expanded Medicaid, and sending it to Virginia, which didn’t.

Look, for example, at what happens in Florida, a state that hasn’t expanded Medicaid but has worked diligently to get its residents enrolled in marketplace coverage. Florida has signed up more of its Obamacare-eligible residents for coverage than any other state. It has the biggest marketplace in the country, and its residents received $5.8 billion in Obamacare tax credits in 2016.

What reward does Florida get in Graham-Cassidy for expanding coverage so dramatically? A $2.6 billion budget cut. And again, this happens specifically because Florida has signed up so many people for Obamacare coverage and thus its residents receive a generous amount of health law tax credits.

The idea of expressly cutting funding for states that have done the best at getting their residents coverage doesn’t show up in any other health care plan except Graham-Cassidy.

They want to ram this through with no hearings, no expert testimony (not even the health care lobbyists) and no CBO score to show how it will effect actual people and how much it will end up costing.

And there’s a fairly good chance it will pass. They are only a handful of votes short — the same people as last time except Dean Heller of Nevada who has apparently been convinced that killing his own constituents is the only way for him to get re-elected.

This proposal isn’t dead until 12:01 October 1st.

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Headline o’ the day, UN edition

by digby

You cannot make this stuff up.

Yesterday her husband blandly threatened to kill millions of people in front of he whole world. He is the biggest bully on the planet. A total thug.

It’s hard to believe anyone could be this tone deaf. I have to assume they aren’t and they thought it would be a good idea to troll the UN with this nonsensical speech.

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The Trump doctrine: Only I can fix the world


by digby

The wrecking crew even trying to loosen regs on Equifax

by digby

Seriously:

Even as millions of consumers grapple with fallout from the Equifax data breach, Republican lawmakers are quietly backing legislation to deregulate credit agencies and make them even less accountable for wrongdoing.

Bills are pending in Congress to limit class-action damages for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and to give credit agencies more latitude in profiting from identity theft protection products.

The legislation is part of sweeping efforts by Republican lawmakers to reduce oversight of banks and other financial-services firms, and to cripple or eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has notched a successful track record of holding industry players accountable for unfair and illegal practices.

Democrats, for their part, introduced a bill Friday — the Freedom from Equifax Exploitation Act — that would require credit agencies to allow people to freeze and unfreeze their files at no cost, and that calls upon the CFPB to play a greater role in overseeing the companies.

Consumer advocates say the Equifax breach should serve as a wake-up call for Americans that the three leading credit agencies — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — are focused primarily on earning cash from people’s personal information, not keeping such information under lock and key.

“Consumers are not customers of these companies — they’re commodities,” said Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “We have no say over what they do with our data.”

Ironically, the Republicans’ credit agency bills came up for a hearing this month by the House Financial Services Committee on the same day Equifax revealed that hackers may have gained access to the credit files of 143 million people.

Equifax’s shocking announcement was followed by reports that senior execs sold off shares in the company before the breach was made public and that consumers might not be able to sue because of an arbitration clause in Equifax’s terms of service.

The company subsequently clarified that the arbitration provision applied only to its credit monitoring, not the security breach. It then waived the arbitration clause in its entirety. Meanwhile, it was reported Monday that federal authorities are investigating the stock sales as possible insider trading.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.), who chaired the recent hearing by the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit subcommittee, said the bills would “streamline regulatory requirements and eliminate inefficiencies” for credit agencies.

“The legislation discussed in the subcommittee today will better allow financial companies to serve their customers,” he declared.

Not really. What the legislation would do is reward credit agencies with greater regulatory elbow room and diminished accountability for screw-ups.

The FCRA Liability Harmonization Act is particularly noxious. Authored by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), the bill would cap actual and statutory damages for class actions involving credit agencies at $500,000, and completely eliminate punitive damages.

Loudermilk said Friday that his bill “is aimed at curbing frivolous class action lawsuits against businesses under the Fair Credit Reporting Act,” which contains many of the rules for credit agencies.

When he introduced the legislation in May, he said that “a small technical error, turned into a lawsuit, can affect everyone in a business, including employees, customers and vendors.”

What Loudermilk ignores, however, is that a “small technical error” by a credit agency can have disastrous consequences for consumers — particularly if the agency, as is so often the case, shows little interest in fixing things.

Take the case of Oregon resident Julie Miller, who said she repeatedly reached out to Equifax from 2009 to 2011 to correct errors in her credit report. They included accounts she never opened, uncollected debts she never ran up and even a Social Security number that wasn’t hers.

Atlanta-based Equifax apparently had merged Miller’s file with that of another woman with the same name and a similar Social Security number. Yet the company shrugged off Miller’s complaints.

In 2013, a jury awarded Miller $180,000 in compensatory damages and a whopping $18.4 million in punitive damages, reflecting a sense among outraged jurors that Equifax just couldn’t be bothered to help a distressed consumer.

A federal judge subsequently reduced the amount of punitive damages to $1.62 million, citing the precedent of earlier cases. Nevertheless, U.S. District Court Judge Anna J. Brown ruled that Equifax “engaged in reprehensible conduct.”

Under Loudermilk’s bill, Miller’s compensation would have been limited to the $180,000 in compensatory damages, with no punitive damages possible.

The second bill under consideration by the House is the Credit Services Protection Act, introduced by California’s Ed Royce (R-Fullerton). This one isn’t as shameless as Loudermilk’s legislation but nevertheless contains pitfalls for consumers.

The bill would undercut an existing law known as the Credit Repair Organizations Act, intended to prevent so-called credit repair firms from fleecing consumers with exaggerated promises of being able to boost a sagging credit score.

Among other things, the Credit Repair Organizations Act prevents such firms from demanding advance payments before rendering a service.

Royce’s legislation would exempt credit agencies from the act and allow them to demand payment upfront. They’d also be able to keep “reasonable value for services” even if the consumer cancels within three days.

In other words, a credit agency could still pocket a consumer’s cash just for having opened a file in that person’s name.

There’s more. It’s unbelievable.

Perhaps they will be too embarrassed to push this thing through after the Equifax breach. But I wouldn’t count on it. They live in an alternate universe with alternate facts and they will simply tel their voters that they fixed the problem and if they have a problem it’s Obama’s fault. And their voters will believe it.

The Kimmel Test

by digby

Kimmel went deep. I hope it makes a difference:

Earlier this year, Kimmel talked about the wrenching experience of seeing his son go through open heart surgery, and he talked of the importance of lower and middle class families having such coverage in the event of such an emergency. After seeing the monologue and using the term “Jimmy Kimmel test,” Cassidy appeared on his show.
But Kimmel said that Cassidy “just lied right to my face” when he was on the show, noting that he had said that his plan would not allow insurance companies to impose annual or lifetime caps on coverage. 

On Tuesday, Kimmel said that “this new bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel test, but a different Jimmy Kimmel test. With this one, your child with a preexisting condition will get the care he needs — if, and only if, his father is Jimmy Kimmel. Otherwise, you might be screwed.” 

He called for Cassidy to stop using his name “cause I don’t want my name on it.” 

Then he addressed Cassidy directly. “There’s a new Jimmy Kimmel test for you, it’s called the lie detector test. You’re welcome to stop by the studio and take it anytime,” he said. 

Kimmel then posted his monologue on Twitter with the number for the Capitol Hill switchboard.

Call.

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