Month: December 2018

A New Low

by digby

Karen Tumulty in the Washington Post wrote about Trump’s most disguting tweets of the week. And that’s saying something:

With President Trump, there is no bottom. Every time you think you have seen it, he manages to sink even lower.

It is not news that the president is indifferent to human suffering. His limp response to the devastation of the 2017 hurricane in Puerto Rico — which he claimed to have been a “fantastic job” on the part of his administration — stands out in that regard. But on Saturday, we saw yet another level of depravity when Trump made his first comments regarding the deaths in recent days of two migrant Guatemalan children after they were apprehended by federal authorities. It revealed not only callousness but also opportunism, as he sought to turn this tragedy into a partisan advantage in his current standoff with Democrats over the government shutdown.

His statements came, not unexpectedly, over Twitter. First this:

And then, minutes later, this:

Not a word of sympathy here — much less remorse on the part of the government over the deaths of a 7-year-old girl and 8-year-old boy while in its custody. Nor does Trump address questions that are being raised about whether the administration’s new policy seeking to limit the ability of immigrants to seek asylum protection might be a factor in putting more at risk. Under recent changes, migrants must remain in Mexico as their asylum cases are processed, possibly increasing their willingness to do something reckless to come across the border.
[…]
Even if Trump were to get funding for the wall — and even if the wall were the deterrent he promises it would be, a more dubious proposition — that would be many months if not years in the future. This is an immediate crisis, for which the president seems to have no concern. Nor does Trump address the fact that what he claims are Democratic immigration policies have been in place for decades, and yet, until this month, it had been more than a decade since a child had died while in Customs and Border Protection custody.

It is true that greater numbers of vulnerable Central American children are being put into treacherous situations. My colleagues Joshua Partlow and Nick Miroff have done excellent reporting on how smugglers are gaming a dysfunctional immigration system:

This is happening because Central Americans know they will have a better chance of avoiding deportation, at least temporarily, if they are processed along with children.

The economics of the journey reinforces the decision to bring a child: Smugglers in Central America charge less than half the price if a minor is part of the cargo because less work is required of them.

Unlike single adult migrants, who would need to be guided on a dangerous march through the deserts of Texas or Arizona, smugglers deliver families only to the U.S. border crossing and the waiting arms of U.S. immigration authorities. The smuggler does not have to enter the United States and risk arrest.

The Trump administration tried to deter parents this spring when it imposed a “zero tolerance” family-separation policy at the border. But the controversy it generated and the president’s decision to halt the practice six weeks later cemented the widely held impression that parents who bring children can avoid deportation.

As Trump fulminates about the wall, he rarely brings up the idea of doing anything about the source of the problem: the desperation of people who are being driven from their native countries by poverty and violence. Until those forces are addressed, migrants will keep coming, even if it means taking greater risks to do so.

He has no empathy for anyone, and certainly not kids from shithole countries who he believes had it coming. And he does. The man is a heartless cretin.

And keep in mind that he is planning to withdraw the meager aid that we send to these countries from which these people hail because they are failing to “keep them in.” He is going out of his way to make conditions there even worse for these children and their parents, making their claims for asylum impossible to obtain and blaming the Democrats and the children themselves for their own deaths.

It is a new low. But it won’t be the last one.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …

cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.

What is homo corporatus made of?
by Tom Sullivan

How we think is in ways more important than what we think. Fundamentalism, for example, is not a set of beliefs but a way of believing: rigid, dogmatic, unforgiving, especially of nonconformity. It applies not just to religious believers across faiths, but to radical political movements as well.

A New Yorker profile of Emily Martin examines her studies as a founder of the anthropology of science of the ways in which clinical psychology researchers think about the examination of thinking. Her research is a process of “observing observers observing,” says colleague Paul Rainbow.

Ceridwen Dovey explains her approach:

While she’s in field-work mode, Martin is always alert to what she calls these “ethnographic moments.” Even the smallest action or fragment of speech, she believes, can be a useful clue to the mostly invisible wider cultural assumptions that shape how research is done in any specialized field. She observes and collects these fragments, hoping that, later on, she’ll be able to find connections between them and make better sense of a scientific world view that is fascinatingly foreign to her.

“Anthropology allows me to see things that might be obvious but usually remain hidden, in a variety of settings, and put them into words,” Martin said, reflecting on the unspoken traumas of a childhood in the household of a father “profoundly disturbed” by his experiences in the Second World War.

One of her “ethnographic moments” captured the commercial framework used for viewing basic human biology:

At childbirth classes, Martin tentatively interviewed other pregnant women; she scoured textbooks on obstetrics and gynecology. She began to see that women giving birth “were being held to standards of production, time management, efficiency” analogous to criteria in manufacturing. The language used about menstrual discharge in textbooks was that of the “ruined debris of failure”; the post-menopausal body was described like an “outmoded factory.”

Martin’s observation reinforces how much not just the language of business but its impulses frame how we perceive the world and our places in it. Look at the screen on which you read this, at the chair in which you sit, and at the walls and furnishings around you and the clothes you wear. Almost nothing not the product of a corporation. Business is not just the “elephant in the room,” as Martin said of her father’s behavior. Business is the room.

It is a “person” who perceives a woman’s body as a factory, workers’ labor as product inputs, and their very lives as “human resources” to mine.

Case in point: the Marsh Supermarkets chain. Founded in 1931, the business filed for bankruptcy after first selling off 100 convenience stores, plus pharmacies, and 115 grocery stores after auctioning off the real estate they sat on:

“It was a long, slow decline,” said Amy Gerken, formerly an assistant office manager at one of the stores. Sun Capital Partners, the private-equity firm that owned Marsh, “didn’t really know how grocery stores work. We’d joke about them being on a yacht without even knowing what a UPC code is. But they didn’t treat employees right, and since the bankruptcy, everyone is out for their blood.”

The anger arises because although the sell-off allowed Sun Capital and its investors to recover their money and then some, the company entered bankruptcy leaving unpaid more than $80 million in debts to workers’ severance and pensions.

For Sun Capital, this process of buying companies, seeking profits and leaving pensions unpaid is a familiar one. Over the past 10 years, it has taken five companies into bankruptcy while leaving behind debts of about $280 million owed to employee pensions.

One might say investors strip-mined employees’ lives. I just did.

The Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey writes:

When a company fails, it is sometimes impossible to pay everyone who is owed money. The trouble, according to some critics, is that financial firms often extract money from losing bets to reward themselves and then, through bankruptcy, leave obligations to workers unpaid. Companies owned by private-equity firms have used bankruptcy to leave behind hundreds of millions of dollars in pension debts, according to a government estimate.

“These private-equity firms buy a company, plunder it of any assets, and then send it into bankruptcy without paying employees,” said Eileen Appelbaum, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research who studies private-equity transactions. “To anyone but a bankruptcy court, this looks like a swindle.”

Having unconsciously absorbed the mindset of the the bottom line, the balance sheet, and return on investment, we blithely dismiss how such an arrangement treats employees who have put their lives into businesses owned by absentee landlords. “It’s not personal … It’s strictly business.” What’s decency got to do with it?

For those left with their pensions shorted and their lives upended, it is very personal. When it was Social Security taxes Pres. George W. Bush wanted to turn over to Wall Street or tax withholdings he wanted to send out in refunds, it was “your money.” Except when it is negotiated pensions and benefits, it’s investors’. Tough luck.

This mindset is what it means to go from being homo sapiens to homo corporatus. And because business has been so very successful at what it does, and so ubiquitous, its framing slowly becomes our own without our realizing it. This implicit bias is what Emily Martin studies in how clinical psychology researchers do their work. It seeps in the way after visiting a foreign culture we sometimes pick up a bit of the local accent.

I am reminded again of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” from the first year of the original Star Trek. Unknown to the Enterprise crew, exobiologist Dr. Roger Korby has had his consciousness transferred into the body of a look-alike android. When the switch is revealed, “Korby” argues there is nothing essentially different about him. In fact, he has been made better:

KORBY: I’m the same! A direct transfer. All of me, human, rational, and without a flaw.

[…]

KORBY: I’m not a computer. Test me. Ask me to solve any, equate, transmit. Christine, Christine, let me prove myself. Does this make such a difference?
CHAPEL: Don’t you see, Roger? Everything you’ve done has proved it isn’t you.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

Saturday Night at the Movies

If you really must pry: Top 10 films of 2018

By Dennis Hartley

As 2018 closes, it’s time to share my picks for the top 10 feature films out of the 50 or so I reviewed this year. As per usual my list is presented alphabetically, not in ranking order.

Big Sonia – There is a scene in Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday’s documentary where you witness something just short of a miracle: a group of junior high students sitting in wide-eyed attentiveness; clearly riveted by a personal story emitting not from a cell phone or a laptop, but rather from a diminutive octogenarian woman. By the end of the talk, many of the students are brought to tears (as is the viewer). But this is no pity party; in fact, many of them now seem genuinely inspired to go make a difference in the world. Her name is Sonia, and her story is much larger and more impactful than her 4 foot, 8-inch frame might suggest. You think you’ve had problems in your life? Let me put it this way…I’ll be thinking twice before I kvetch about my “issues” from here on in. (Full review).

Black KkKlansman – So what do you get if you cross Cyrano de Bergerac with Blazing Saddles? You might get Spike Lee’s Black KkKlansman. That is not to say that Lee’s film is a knee-slapping comedy; far from it. Lee takes the true story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an African-American undercover cop who managed to infiltrate the KKK in Colorado in the early 70s and runs with it, in his inimitable fashion. I think this is Lee’s most affecting and hard-hitting film since Do the Right Thing (1989). The screenplay (adapted by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Lee from Stallworth’s eponymous memoir) is equal parts biopic, docudrama, police procedural and social commentary, finding a nice balance of drama, humor and suspense. (Full review).

Fahrenheit 11/9 – Let’s dispense with this first. Yes, Michael Moore goes “there” in his latest documentary Fahrenheit 11/9…at one point in the film, he deigns to compare Trump’s America to Nazi Germany. However, he’s not engaging in merit-less trolling. Following a brief (and painful to relive) recap of what “happened” on 11/9/16, Moore’s film accordingly speeds off in multiple directions As he has always managed to do in the past, he connects the dots and pulls it together by the end. In a nutshell, Moore’s central thesis is that Trump is a symptom, not the cause. And the “cause” here is complacency-which Moore equates with complicity. If you’re a Moore fan, you won’t be disappointed (though you may be a bit depressed). If you’re a Moore hater, you won’t be disappointed. (Full review).

The Guilty –Considering that nearly all of the “action” in Gustav Möller’s low-budget gem is limited to the confines of a police station and largely dependent on a leading man who must find 101 interesting ways to emote while yakking on a phone for 80 minutes, Möller and his star Jakob Cedergren perform nothing short of a minor miracle turning this scenario into anything but another dull night at the movies. Packed with nail-biting tension, Rashomon-style twists, and completely bereft of explosions, CGI effects or elaborate stunts, this terrific thriller renews your faith in the power of a story well-told. (Full review).

Let the Sunshine In – The best actors are…nothing; a blank canvas. But give them a character and some proper lighting-and they’ll give back something that becomes part of us, and does us good: a reflection of our own shared humanity. Nature that looks like nature. Consider Julilette Binoche, an actor of such subtlety and depth that she could infuse a cold reading of McDonald’s $1 $2 $3 menu with the existential ennui of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 123. She isn’t required to recite any sonnets in this film (co-written by director Claire Denis and Christine Angot), but her character speaks copiously about love…in all of its guises. And you may think you know how this tale of a divorcee on the rebound will play out, but Denis’ film, like love itself, is at once seductive and flighty. (Full review).

Little Tito and the Aliens – I avoid using phrases like “heartwarming family dramedy”, but in the case of Paola Randi’s, erm, heartwarming family dramedy…it can’t be helped. An eccentric Italian scientist, a widower living alone in a shipping container near Area 51 (long story), suddenly finds himself guardian to his teenage niece and young nephew after his brother dies. Blending family melodrama with a touch of magical realism, it’s a sweet and gentle tale about second chances-and following your bliss. (Full review).

Outside In – The rain-washed town of Granite Falls, Washington (population 3400) is a palpable character in Lynn Shelton’s drama about a newly-released felon named Chris (Jay Duplass) struggling to keep heart and soul together after serving 20 years for a wrongful conviction. Only 18 when he got sent up, he has a textbook case of arrested development to overcome. Complicating his re-entry into society is his long-time platonic relationship with the only person who gave him moral support over the years. Her name is Carol (Edie Falco), his high school teacher. Shelton has a knack for creating characters that you really care about, helped in no small part here by Falco, who can say more with a glance, a furrow of the brow, or a purse of the lips than many actors convey with a page of dialog. Duplass (who co-scripted) also delivers a sensitive and nuanced performance. (Full review).

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda – There’s a moment of Zen in Stephen Nomura Schible’s documentary where Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, after much experimentation with “found” sounds, finally gets the “perfect” tonality for one note of a work in progress. “It’s strangely bright,” he observes, with the delighted face of a child on Christmas morning, “but also…melancholic.” One could say the same about Schible’s film; it’s strangely bright, but also melancholic. You could call it a series of Zen moments; a reflective and meditative glimpse at the intimate workings of the creative process. It also documents Sakamoto’s quiet fortitude, as he returns to the studio after a hiatus to engage in anti-nuke activism and to battle his cancer. A truly remarkable film. (Full review).

Wild, Wild Country – On one level, co-directors Chapman and Maclain Way’s binge-worthy Netflix documentary series is a two-character study about a leader and a follower; namely the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and his head disciple/chief of staff/lieutenant Ma Anand Sheela. In this case, the one-on-one relationship is not a metaphor; because the India-born philosophy professor-turned-guru did (and still does) have scores of faithful followers from all over the world. This tale is so multi-layered crazy pants as to boggle the mind. It’s like Dostoevsky meets Carl Hiaasen by way of Thomas McGuane and Ken Kesey…except none of it is made up. It’s almost shocking that no one thought to tackle this juicy subject as fodder for an epic documentary until now (eat your genteel heart out, Ken Burns). The Ways mix in present-day recollections from various participants with a wealth of archival news footage. Oddly, with its proliferation of jumpy videotape, big hair and skinny ties, the series serves double duty as a wistful wallow in 1980s nostalgia. (Full review).

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? – In his affable portrait of the publicly sweet, gentle, and compassionate TV host Fred Rogers, director Morgan Neville serves up a mélange of archival footage and present-day comments by friends, family, and colleagues to reveal (wait for it) a privately sweet, gentle, compassionate man. In other words, don’t expect revelations about drunken rages, aberrant behavior, or rap sheets (sorry to disappoint anyone who feels life’s greatest pleasure is speaking ill of the dead). That is not to deny that Rogers did have a few…eccentricities; some are mentioned, and others are implied. The bulk of the film focuses on the long-running PBS children’s show, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, which debuted in 1968. With apologies to Howard Beale, I don’t have to tell you things are bad. I think this documentary may be what the doctor ordered, just as a reminder people like Fred Rogers once strode the Earth (and hopefully still do). I wasn’t one of your kids, Mr. Rogers, but (pardon my French) we sure as shit could use you now. (Full review).

Happy New Year!

Previous posts with related themes:

Top 10 Films of 2017
Top 100 Films of 2007-2016

More reviews at Den of Cinema
On Facebook
On Twitter

–Dennis Hartley

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

He doesn’t follow the rules because he’s smart

by digby

There was a time when people’s political careers were ruined when news like this was revealed:

New Jersey prosecutors have collected evidence that supervisors at President Trump’s Garden State golf club may have committed federal immigration crimes — and the FBI as well as special counsel Robert Mueller have played part in the inquiry, the Daily News has learned.

Anibal Romero, a Newark attorney who represents several undocumented immigrants who used to work at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, said Friday he recently met with investigators from the state attorney general’s office and handed over fraudulent green cards and Social Security numbers that management at the club allegedly procured and gave his clients, Victorina Morales and Sandra Diaz.

Before he met with the state prosecutors, Romero said he reached out to Mueller’s office because, while he wanted to contact federal authorities, he was concerned about looping in the Justice Department, which was headed by Jeff Sessions at the time.

“I wasn’t sure, one, if they’d take me seriously and, two, if this could backfire on my clients,” Romero told The News, referencing the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration agenda.

Mueller’s office, which is separately investigating Trump’s campaign for possible collusion with Russians during the 2016 election, made contact and informed Romero the matter was not within their jurisdiction.

A few weeks later, an FBI agent in New Jersey called Romero.

“He said to me that he had received a referral from Robert Mueller’s office and that he already knew the specifics and that he wanted to meet with me in person,” Romero said.

Romero then met with two agents at a federal office in Branchburg, N.J., and outlined the same evidence he had already given the AG prosecutors. The agents said they would “coordinate” with the AG’s office, according to Romero.

Romero said he’s stayed in touch with the FBI and the attorney general’s office but declined to confirm whether either of the agencies have formally opened investigations.

“I’m confident that federal and state authorities will conduct a complete and thorough investigation,” Romero said.

Trump has a very long history of employing undocumented workers. Trump Tower was built by them and Trump paid a million dollars to settle one lawsuit:

In 1980, under pressure to begin construction on what would become his signature project, Donald J. Trump employed a crew of 200 undocumented Polish workers who worked in 12-hour shifts, without gloves, hard hats or masks, to demolish the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue, where the 58-story, golden-hued Trump Tower now stands.

The workers were paid as little as $4 an hour for their dangerous labor, less than half the union wage, if they got paid at all.

Their treatment led to years of litigation over Mr. Trump’s labor practices, and in 1998, despite frequent claims that he never settles lawsuits, Mr. Trump quietly reached an agreement to end a class-action suit over the Bonwit Teller demolition in which he was a defendant.

For almost 20 years, the terms of that settlement have remained a secret. But last week, the settlement documents were unsealed by Loretta A. Preska, a United States District Court judge for the Southern District, in response to a 2016 motion filed by Time Inc. and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Judge Preska found that the public’s right to know of court proceedings in a class-action case was strengthened by the involvement of the “now-president of the United States.”

In a 21-page finding, Judge Preska wrote that “the Trump Parties have failed to identify any interests that can overcome the common law and First Amendment presumptions of access to the four documents at issue.”

On the campaign trail and as president, Mr. Trump has made curbing immigration one of his top priorities, seeking to close the borders to people from certain Muslim-majority countries and to deport immigrants who are here illegally. The settlement serves as a reminder that as an employer he relied on illegal immigrants to get a dangerous and dirty job done.

Katie Townsend, litigation director of the Reporters Committee, called the decision a major victory that goes beyond this one case. “It makes clear that both the First Amendment and common law rights of public access apply to settlement-related documents in class actions,” she said.

Lawyers for Mr. Trump were not immediately available for comment.

The documents show that Mr. Trump paid a total of $1.375 million to settle the case, known as Hardy v. Kaszycki, with $500,000 of it going to a union benefits fund and the rest to pay lawyers’ fees and expenses. According to the documents, one of the union lawyers involved asked the judge to ensure “prompt payment” from Mr. Trump, suggesting “within two weeks after the settlement date.”

Mr. Trump jumped in to object. “Thirty days is normal,” he said.

At the time of the settlement, the court papers note, “this case has been litigated for 15 years and has already required three rounds of discovery, extensive motion practice, a 16-day trial and two appeals.”

He employs undocumented workers and foreign workers on visas at all of his properties. I suspect if anyone ever really =grilled him on that he’d says it’s because he’s a very stable genius who hires the cheapest labor he can — and that his followers would all nod their heads and agree that makes good sense.

And then they’d all chant “build that wall” and cheer the horror of little children being held in cages as a good “deterrent.”

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.

If they aren’t on Fox, do they exist?

by digby

After all, that’s where Trump gets his briefings. This exchange on Morning Joe with Mick Mulvaney about the departure of Brett McGurk, the ISIS envoy, is another sign of how out of touch they all are:

HOST: “His title is the special presidential envoy to the global coalition to counter ISIS. How is it that the president doesn’t know his — the point person in the battle against ISIS?”

MULVANEY: “You know the answer to that, the administration is thousand — the executive branch of government is millions of people. I have no idea who that person is.”

HOST: “You don’t know Brett McGurk.”

MULVANEY: “Never heard of him until yesterday. There is an Obama appointee who saw an opportunity.”

HOST: “He was a Rehnquist clerk, he served throughout the Bush administration, he was a lifelong Republican, he is not an Obama appointee.”

MULVANEY: “Did he take that position under the Obama administration?”

HOST: “He was held over from the Bush administration. This is not a Democrat, sir.”

MULVANEY: “I’m certain he is well known in the folks who follow this topic. The fact that the president of the United States doesn’t know him I don’t think should cause anybody any concern.”

It looks like the new chief of staff, a Freedom Caucus hack, is just as ill-informed as his boss. If he really thought that McGurk was some left wing partisan then he’s getting his news from Fox too.

This is not a good sign. Mulvaney said their point man on ISIS is known to “folks who follow this topic” — and it’s clear that neither the president or the chief of staff are among those folks.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.

Nice little America you have here

by digby

The president of the United States vows to hold his breath until he turns blue unless he gets his wall:

We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with. Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2018

….The United States looses soooo much money on Trade with Mexico under NAFTA, over 75 Billion Dollars a year (not including Drug Money which would be many times that amount), that I would consider closing the Southern Border a “profit making operation.” We build a Wall or…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2018

…..close the Southern Border. Bring our car industry back into the United States where it belongs. Go back to pre-NAFTA, before so many of our companies and jobs were so foolishly sent to Mexico. Either we build (finish) the Wall or we close the Border……— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2018

…..Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are doing nothing for the United States but taking our money. Word is that a new Caravan is forming in Honduras and they are doing nothing about it. We will be cutting off all aid to these 3 countries – taking advantage of U.S. for years!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2018

He’s suggeting cutting off the nose to spite the face in both instances. “Closing the border” will cost billions and demanding that central American nations “keep their people” from emigrating by cutting off aid will makes the situation that much worse — and more people will be forced to leave in order to survive.

This “border crisis” is not a crisis. People have been migrating back and forth over that land for centuries. There are actually many fewer today than there have been in the past. It’s just a racist scapegoating ploy to keep his ignorant voting base riled up.

He’s holding the federal workforce, border businesses and all of Central America hostage to his silly wall, all because Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have grabbed him by the presidency.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

Federal peasants

by digby

Feds, here are sample letters you may use as a guide when working with your creditors during this furlough. If you need legal advice please consult with your personal attorney. https://t.co/t6h6OzALsS— OPM (@USOPM) December 27, 2018

The Trump administration is advising people who work for the federal government, who are not getting paid due to Trump’s stupid government shutdown tantrum, to literally *barter with their landlords* and offer to paint or do labor in exchange for partial rent.

Here’s an example:

I will keep in touch with you to keep you informed about my income status and I would like to discuss with you the possibility of trading my services to perform maintenance (e.g. painting, carpentry work) in exchange for partial rent payments.

That’s not a joke. They are actually suggesting that federal workers perform manual labor to pay their rent — all because Trump and Ann Coulter want that stupid, idiotic wall for no good reason.

Trump says they all want it and anyway they’re Democrats so who cares. Seriously:

Have the Democrats finally realized that we desperately need Border Security and a Wall on the Southern Border. Need to stop Drugs, Human Trafficking,Gang Members & Criminals from coming into our Country. Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2018

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

NC-9’s hot mess
by Tom Sullivan

North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District stretches from Charlotte to Fayetteville along the SC border (via Wikipedia)

The chaos in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District race may seem small potatoes compared to the maelstrom in Washington. But as of Friday noon, the state elections board dissolved with its investigation into election fraud allegations incomplete and the race uncertified, effectively leaving the district “home alone.” Complicating resolving whether there will be a new election in NC-9 is the ongoing dispute over the makeup of the State Board of Elections between Democratic Governor Roy Cooper and a Republican-controlled legislature set to lose its veto-proof majority next week.

In another of those now-infamous Republican lame-duck sessions, the legislature in the wake of Gov. Pat McCrory’s 2016 reelection loss re-structured the Board to dilute the incoming Democrat’s powers. That matter has been in courts since Cooper took office. Nevertheless, the Board of Elections will decide whether or not to hold a new election. But the existing board, already granted an extension beyond its post-election expiration date, dissolved on December 28. A three-judge panel overseeing the board lawsuit ruled Thursday it would not extend the existing panel yet again:

In issuing its ruling, the panel made reference to the fact that the NCSBE scheduled its hearing into the 9th Congressional District on January 11, 2019, instead of by its original self-imposed deadline of December 21, 2018.

“The parties have not given even a cursory explanation as to why the hearing was continued from December 28, 2018 until January 11, 2019, let alone one demonstrating compelling reasons and substantial and reasonable justification, for not only the additional time needed, but the total disregard of the previous Order of the Court in extending the stay,” the order reads.

The Board might already have resolved prior to the new congressional session whether voters in NC-9 would have a representative seated or face a new election, the judges scolded, but it failed to act with appropriate urgency.

I have been putting off writing about this all week, gathering links along the way. Thankfully, Michael Bitzer gave a synopsis in a series of tweets on Thursday. Scroll through it if you have a notion, but Dramamine might come in handy. Bitzer explores the prehistory of the State Board of Elections dispute in a blog post concluding with this:

So, as of Friday, December 28, at noon, the 9-member State Board of Elections ceased operations, with Governor Cooper announcing that he would appoint a temporary Board of Elections to continue the operations and investigation for the Ninth Congressional District, while a leading NC State House Republican calling that the governor has “no authority” for such an interim board action.

All that drama is tangential to but also key to resolving the election fraud investigation in NC-9 and settling the last congressional election of 2018.

As things stand (if I haven’t missed anything), the State Board of Elections refused to certify the results of the NC-9 election after seeing abnormalities in absentee ballot quantities, vote totals, and non-returns in Bladen County. Then in Robeson County. Finally, Columbus County in the adjacent 7th District, seemed to be involved in absentee ballot fraud. At the center of it all, a political operative named McCrae Dowless, 62, hired by Republican Mark Harris’s campaign and other candidates to assist voters with absentee ballot requests. Convicted of insurance fraud in 1992, Dowless is now a person of interest in the state’s investigation into an alleged absentee ballot “harvesting” operation.

On Election night, Harris led Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes.

NC Policy Watch summarizes what raised eyebrows:

In the GOP primary, Harris won 96 percent of Bladen County’s mail-in ballots – an extraordinary showing against the Republican incumbent.

In the general election Harris took 61 percent of the county’s mail-in absentee vote in a race where only 19 percent of the mail-in ballots came from registered Republicans.

In order for that to happen, Harris would have to have gotten all of the mail-in absentee votes of the 19 percent of registered Republicans, nearly all of the unaffiliated voters who used that method and some of the Democrats who voted that way as well.

Reports suggest Dowless’s team illegally gathered absentee ballots from voters door-to-door. Then Dowless either disposed of those from Democratic voters or filled in the ballots for them if incomplete and unsealed, and selectively returned ballots from registered Republicans for the Harris race and sheriffs’ contests that hired him.

Only a direct family member may legally turn in someone else’s absentee ballot in North Carolina. An attorney representing Dowless claims he has violated no laws, state or federal.

Incoming U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has confirmed the House will not seat Harris next week.

Sworn affidavits filed as part of the election fraud investigation reveal the tactics were part of Dowless’s “new trick” for winning, one he mentioned to Bladen County Board of Elections board members, claims Ben Snyder, Chairman of the Bladen County Democratic Party. Dowless told them he was throwing ballots in the trash.

Several voters reported receiving absentee ballots they did not request. Jens Lutz, a former member of the Bladen County Board of Elections who had operated a political consulting firm with Dowless, affirmed:

It is my understanding that during prior election years, Board staff allowed Mr. Dowless to take and copy unredacted absentee ballot request forms, which include social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, state ID numbers, and signatures. Upon information and belief, this information gave Mr. Dowless the ability to request absentee ballots for anyone who has ever voted by absentee ballot by mail in the recent past.

[…]

It is my understanding that Open Records Laws allow citizens to receive information from County Boards of Election regarding when absentee ballots would be sent to specific voters. Mr. Dowless abused this provision in the law by regularly receiving such information (contained in a report titled “Absentee Ballot Voter Correspondence Report”) from Board staff, allowing Mr. Dowless to send his workers to those voters right after the ballots arrived.

Yes, of course, there is more:

In his affidavit, Lutz describes the Bladen elections board’s security as “lax” and claims there were “multiple instances” in which the actual absentee ballot totals didn’t match what the staff reported.

The allegations of lax security are similar to those of Agnes Willis, a Bladen County precinct worker who wrote in a Nov. 29 affidavit that early-voting election results were “viewed by officials at the one-stop site who were not judges.”

This had the potential for advantaging Harris’s Election Day get-out-the-vote targeting. Lutz explained:

I know of one person who claims to have overheard Mr. Dowless bragging about preelection candidate vote totals to multiple people after one-stop in-person, early voting ended, indicating that he was aware of the one-stop early voting totals, and that the candidate or candidates he supported were in the lead.

The State Board of Elections alerted state and federal prosecutors of irregularities in Bladen County in 2016. Nothing happened.

Allison Riggs, a senior attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, told NC Policy Watch, “Since 2016 they have had information about criminal activity affecting thousands of votes and instead the U.S. Attorney’s office has concentrated on 19 non-citizens who made a mistake in voting and gotten one plea where he said, ‘I made a mistake. I thought I was good to go.’”

So here we are. Gov. Roy Cooper announced Thursday night that under his executive authority he would appoint an interim board to carry on the inquiry until the new permanent board takes over on January 31, 2019.

NCGOP Chair Robin Hayes called Cooper’s plan an “illegal sham.” MSNBC’s Joy Reid last night called the situation in North Carolina a hot mess. The Daily Haymaker, a T-party blog published from the golf communities surrounding Pinehurst, NC, hopes state Republicans will nominate Jay DeLancy to the reconstituted Board of Elections. DeLancy runs the North Carolina Voter Integrity Project (VIP-NC) dedicated to promoting photo IDs and exposing voter fraud.

The U.S. House of Representatives has the ultimate say on whom it admits to its ranks. The voters of North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District may not have a representative in Congress until late spring or early summer.

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

Friday Night Soother

by digby

Babies and puppies. That is what we need today. And a drink. 🙂

.

Drill, baby, drill

by digby

Though no explosive Donald Trump tapes have yet emerged from “The Apprentice,” editors are sharing what they remember of cutting together the show and its former host, now of course the Republican presidential nominee.

CineMontage, a journal for the Motion Picture Editors Guild, talked to editors who worked on the NBC reality show, who say that the image of Donald Trump “was carefully crafted and manufactured in postproduction to feature a persona of success, leadership, and glamour, despite the raw footage of the reality star that was often ‘a disaster.'”

“We were told to not show anything that was considered too much of a ‘peek behind the curtain,'” one editor, Jonathon Braun, told CineMontage.

The editors say one of their biggest challenges was in the boardroom, making Trump’s often whimsical decisions about who was fired instead look “legitimate.”

“Trump would often make arbitrary decisions which had nothing to do with people’s merit,” an anonymous editor said. “He’d make decisions based on whom he liked or disliked personally, whether it be for looks or lifestyle, or he’d keep someone that ‘would make good TV’ [according to Trump].”

This required creative editing to set up the firings in a way that would make them seem logical, according to the sources, and while manipulative editing is standard in reality TV, this was apparently on another level.

Trump also reportedly had issues with facts — changing the amount of his net worth from scene to scene or misstating the number of show applicants — and the editors had to fix the mistakes.

All of it was part of an overall mission to make Trump looks as good as possible and keep his brand of success intact.

As for the kind of vulgar comments heard in the leaked “Access Hollywood” video from 2005, Braun recalls one particular refrain.

“Trump’s favorite word was ‘drill,'” Braun said. “He was always saying between takes, ‘I’d like to drill her,’ lewdly referring to female crew members working on set. He couldn’t help himself making comments about women and the way they looked. He also had comments about women he found less attractive. There was no question he took the men a lot more seriously than the women.”

He grabs ’em by the pussy and wants to drill ’em. He paid off porn stars and playmates on the sly to avoid campaign finance laws.

No biggie. All those conservative evangelicals love him to death.

h/t to Perlstein

If you value what we write here, I hope you’ll consider supporting the blog with a couple of bucks. If you’ve already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

Buckle up everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy New Year …


cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

.