It’s hard out here for a Trumpie. Doug Collins has a problem. He’s a hero to the far right. But Georgia’s going purple and he’s running for the Senate.
Via NMMB, take a look:
Uh oh:
Better be careful Dougie. You have competition for the seat from the right and from the left.
Let’s not forget who worked with Suleimani’s IRGC
Before signing a deal with a foreign partner, American companies, including major hotel chains, conduct risk assessments and background checks that take a close look at the country, the prospective partner, and the people involved. Countless accounting and law firms perform this service, as do many specialized investigation companies; a baseline report normally costs between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand dollars. A senior executive at one of the largest American hotel chains, who asked for anonymity because he feared reprisal from the Trump Administration, said, “We wouldn’t look at due diligence as a burden. There certainly is a cost to doing it, especially in higher-risk places. But it’s as much an investment in the protection of that brand. It’s money well spent.”
Alan Garten told me that the Trump Organization had commissioned a risk assessment for the Baku deal, but declined to name the company that had performed it. The Washington Post article on the Baku project reported that, according to Garten, the Trump Organization had undertaken “extensive due diligence” before making the hotel deal and had not discovered “any red flags.” But the Mammadov family, in addition to its reputation for corruption, has a troubling connection that any proper risk assessment should have unearthed: for years, it has been financially entangled with an Iranian family tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideologically driven military force. In 2008, the year that the tower was announced, Ziya Mammadov, in his role as Transportation Minister, awarded a series of multimillion-dollar contracts to Azarpassillo, an Iranian construction company. Keyumars Darvishi, its chairman, fought in the Iran-Iraq War. After the war, he became the head of Raman, an Iranian construction firm that is controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. government has regularly accused the Guard of criminal activity, including drug trafficking, sponsoring terrorism abroad, and money laundering. Reuters recently reported that the Trump Administration was poised to officially condemn the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. I asked Garten how deeply the Trump Organization had looked into the Mammadov family’s political connections. Had it been concerned that Elton Mammadov, as a sitting member of parliament, might exploit his power to benefit the project? How much money had Ziya Mammadov invested in Elton’s company?
Garten noted that he didn’t oversee the due-diligence process. “The people who did are no longer at the company,” he said. “I can’t tell you what was done in this situation.” He would not identify the former employees. When I asked him to provide documentation of due diligence, he said that he couldn’t share it with me, because “it’s confidential and privileged.”
I think it’s pretty clear they did not do it, don’t you? Also, they wouldn’t have cared if they did.
Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump took part in a fraudulent scheme to sell units in a luxury New York condominium-hotel and “knew they were lying”, according to a new book that explores how the current US president built his business empire. Questions have long surrounded a criminal investigation into the Trump family’s dealings around the Trump SoHo that was dropped in 2011. Public disclosure of email correspondence revealed that Don Jr and Ivanka knowingly used figures that exaggerated how well the condos were selling in a ploy to lure more buyers. The episode is re-examined with fresh reporting by the journalist Andrea Bernstein in her book American Oligarchs: The Kushners, The Trumps And The Marriage Of Money And Power, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian.
I’ve written about this before although the new details sound like they are even more devastating. It was first reported in the Pro-Publica WNYC series called Trump Inc, which I’ve been pimping on this blog since it first started. Ivanka routinely, knowingly committed fraud as the top saleswoman for all their fake condo developments. (they were just licensing deals although she didn’t reveal that to buyers.)
Now they may actually be in trouble. After all, if we’re lucky they only have another year of the protection of he White House:
The de Blasio administration has referred findings from a review of the Trump Organization’s property tax filings to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday morning. In October, WNYC and ProPublica reported that President Donald Trump’s business portfolio cited lower income from one of its properties — 40 Wall Street — in an appeal of its property tax assessment, but reported higher values on a loan document for the same building. In October, WNYC reported that President Donald Trump’s business portfolio would cite lower income from its properties when reporting to the Department of Finance, which is in charge of levying property taxes, but would report higher values when speaking with investors.
Moving to Florida isn’t going to save them either.
You can’t win if you don’t show up to play
by Tom Sullivan
Troublesome Gap is not just a place uphill from our farmhouse. It’s the hole in Democrats’ grassroots training. Candidates and campaign staff? There are multi-day seminars for them. At the precinct-level? State parties each year run new recruits through basic training: precinct organizing, canvassing, pulling lists from the voter file.
Fine. But now you’ve volunteered to run the county committee. My county is 660 sq. mi., 193,000 registered voters, with 2-1/2 weeks of early voting at 20 sites, 80 precincts on Election Day this fall, and maybe three dozen Democrats on the ballot. As chair, what is your job? Ask precincts to organize harder?
After For The Win rolled out in 2018, a woman emailed to say she’d never gotten off her couch before Donald Trump’s election. A year later, she was party chair in a red county in a purple state and faced with organizing her first get-out-the-vote effort … ever. The people she replaced left her with nothing. Her district chair was incommunicado. The state party wouldn’t return her calls. I was the first person from the Democratic Party to offer her help to do her job.
That fall, I asked the former mayor of a major American city why so many Democratic committees across his state could not muster so much as a free Facebook page. Oh, they have them, the mayor said, brushing away the question. The aide standing off his shoulder lowered his eyes and shook his head, no.
There’s that troublesome gap. Democrats out there have no “game.” Other than learning by the seat of your pants over multiple election cycles, there is no training on how to coordinate GOTV efforts across an entire county. Well, almost none.
Gov. Howard Dean hoped to address that gap with his 50-state plan.
“We’re going to be in places where the Democratic Party hasn’t been in 25 years. If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win, and that’s not going to happen anymore,” Dean, then DNC chair, told the New York Times. He meant to grow the party out of the boom-and-bust adolescence of presidential years and maybe build some enduring infrastructure. His plan did not survive Barack Obama’s election.
Democrats lose in places they haven’t been in (now well over) 25 years because training county leadership how to elect a full slate of local officials … who become state officials … who become federal officials … is in no one’s mission statement and no one’s budget. National Democrats put money behind federal candidates. Candidates put theirs behind themselves. For state parties with limited bandwidth and budget, it’s all they can do to manage precinct training.
County activists outside major cities must fend for themselves with minimal resources. They don’t know what they don’t know, and it’s not their fault. “You can’t be it if you don’t see it,” a community organizer told Netroots Nation last summer in Philadelphia. Out where the big campaigns don’t go, locals never see how it’s done. So, I’m showing them.
For The Win (3rd Ed.) is now on its way to as many county committees as have any digital footprint. There are roughly 3,200 counties or county equivalents in the 50 states, the territories, and the District. It’s not a large market, and an under-resourced one. That’s why For The Win is free. (I accept donations.) From planning to poll greeting, sample ballots to rides to the polls, the primer is field-tested to help even the smallest counties assemble a high-energy GOTV program with little money and limited computer skills. Because that’s where most county committees are. No strategy, no messaging, no targeting. This is not a manual. It’s a cookbook.
After them, I contact district and statewide candidates in key states. They have a vested interest in getting themselves elected. They need ground support and have leverage I don’t with county committees. This is a census year. State legislatures are at stake and U.S. Senate seats. Texas and Wisconsin will get special attention.
Activists in Idaho wrote after 2018 to say they won two state legislative seats Democrats had never held. “Your book inspired us to get started in 2018 … best Dem turnout in a decade,” said someone on my digital tools webinar on Sunday. An activist in southeast Alaska wrote to ask about the update. There are many more users in Florida. It’s enough to keep going.
For recipients reluctant to click a download link from someone they don’t know (I wouldn’t), this cycle I’ve launched a website where they can request the guide.
You can’t win if you don’t show up to play. You can’t compete if you don’t have game.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
I know that the animal lovers who enjoy the Friday Night Soother are already heartsick over what’s happening in Australia. I’m not going to feature any of the video because I know you’ve all seen it and it’s horrifying. They are estimating that one billion animals have perished and untold numbers will be on the endangered species list if not actually extinct.
It is a nightmare.
Obviously, the most important thing all humans can do is work to ensure that this planet confronts the climate crisis immediately. We all have to vote for leaders that take the crisis seriously and are willing to put it at the very top of the agenda. Australia’s Prime Minister is a coal fanatic who believes in the Rapture. He’s certainly not going to do anything to mitigate this kind of disaster. You already know our own president is so daft that he incoherently claims that he doesn’t think climate change is a hoax because he likes clean air and water — as he’s curtailing regulations that have been in place for more than 50 years to clean up our air and water.
There are some small direct ways to help the Australian wildlife:
In order to help injured and displaced animals, organizations need monetary support to meet new demands. WIRES, an emergency fund for wildlife, has seen a spike in rescues since the bushfires started: “In December alone there were over 20,000 calls to WIRES 1300 line, a 14 percent increase on last year, and volunteers attended over 3,300 rescues,” WIRES wrote on their website. You can make a donation to WIRES on their Facebook page or via PayPal.
The RSPCA is also accepting donations to help with their efforts of gathering and evacuating threatened animals, as well as assisting at evacuation centers. Their staff will also be entering affected areas to treat injured animals and pets. You can make a donation to the RSPCA NSW here.
To help koalas displaced by the fires, you can give to the World Wildlife Fund, who will be using donations to help restore the “Koala Triangle,” a portion of Australia’s east coast hit hardest by the fires. In addition, Port Macquarie Koala Hospital is installing koala water stations in burnt areas, as well as establishing the world’s first wild koala breeding program. You can donate to their GoFundMe here.
The gift of food and supplies can go a long way for rescue groups and shelters in need. If you prefer to donate items rather than cash, The Rescue Collective, a group based in Brisbane, is gathering food, medical supplies, bedding and more — you can check out their current wish list on Facebook.
Those who enjoy crafting, sewing or knitting can contribute to the efforts of the Animal Rescue Collective Craft Guild by making bedding, bandages, joey pouches and more for injured or orphaned animals. Find out how on the guild’s Facebook page.
I got those links from the Dodo. I’m sure there are others. And if you are a praying person, spare one for those critters.
Via TPM, here’s one you won’t believe:
The U.S. government is investigating whether Russia is targeting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in the run-up to the 2020 elections, Bloomberg reports.The probe reportedly focuses on whether Russia’s continuing U.S. disinformation efforts are aimed at damaging Biden’s candidacy. That investigation at least partly focuses on whether the allegations against Biden regarding his work on the Ukraine crisis as vice president were spawned by Russian intelligence.
Many of those allegations have been spurred by President Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who traveled to Kyiv in December to speak with Ukrainians who were propagating the accusations. Bloomberg’s report suggests that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are looking into whether the allegations were created and propagated by the Russian government.
I don’t know what to say. Of course the government should look into this. But how in the world is this going to work out in light of the fact that Donald Trump himself is largely responsible for spreading the Russian disinformation?
The mind boggles.
Stay tuned. This is going to get weird.
It’s not hard to understand why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were able to persuade President Trump to dramatically escalate tensions with Iran by assassinating Gen. Qassem Soleimani. All you had to do was read Trump’s Twitter feed over his long holiday break at Mar-a-Lago to see that he was nearly hysterical over the impeachment, stressed beyond his limits and clearly vulnerable to any suggestion that would give him a sense of control over his destiny. There’s nothing like military action to make a leader feel strong and in charge.
Unfortunately for the president, the turbocharged news cycle of this era offered him only a short respite from his troubles. Pulled back from the brink of war, mostly due to the restrained response of the Iranians, impeachment headlines returned the minute former national security adviser John Bolton made the surprising announcement that he would be willing to testify if the Senate subpoenaed him. (Before the Trump era, responding to subpoenas was not considered optional, but now we know that presidential VIPs can tell the Congress to go pound sand and basically that’s that.)
The stand-off between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the conduct of the trial has been an epic contest of wills between two of the most formidable congressional leaders in American history. Of the two, Pelosi was dealt the weaker hand since she only has half of Congress while the Republicans have both the Senate and the presidency. But she’s kept her caucus together, which is no mean feat in itself, and has managed to squeeze quite a bit out of her delay in sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
Since the impeachment vote, we’ve had Rudy Giuliani running back and forth to Ukraine, demonstrating for all the world that this scheme to smear Joe Biden and the Democrats with corruption charges and an alternate 2016 election interference scandal is ongoing. He attended parties at Mar-a-Lago over the holidays and bizarrely told the press that he would like to “try the case” in the Senate when the press asked if he would testify.
Since that momentous vote, there have also been revelations about Giuliani and Trump’s indicted “associates” Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, with reporting about hidden Russian money and hints that it might have been paying Giuliani’s fees. (He says he works for Trump pro bono.) Parnas is desperate to talk to the House Intelligence Committee and wants to make a deal. It turns out Parnas and Fruman were involved in potentially lucrative side deals to sell large quantities of liquefied natural gas from Texas to Ukraine in exchange for the firing of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.
In a mind-boggling interview with New York Magazine, Giuliani said in one breath that he has no business in Ukraine and then admits “I’ve done two business deals in Ukraine. I’ve sought four or five others.” So perhaps this was one of them.
Right before Christmas, new emails were revealed under Freedom of Information Act requests that showed Trump political appointee Mike Duffey, the White House official in the Office of Management and Budget responsible for overseeing national security money, telling people that the hold on military aid to Ukraine was at the personal direction of the president.
And just before the New Year, the New York Times published a deep dive into what was happening in the White House last summer when Trump and Giuliani were pushing their plot. We learned for the first time that the Pentagon pushed hard for the money and that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Bolton met privately with Trump in August to try to persuade him that withholding the aid was not in America’s national interest. Trump was unmoved.
Just this week, as I mentioned above, Bolton sent a letter saying that he would testify if the Senate subpoenaed him. (He also mentioned that he’d talked it over with McConnell, which suggests to me that he is not on the up and up.) Nonetheless, if his intention is to cover for Trump he would have to call a whole bunch of people liars, since they all testified that he was extremely agitated about the “drug deal” that Giuliani and Trump were cooking up.
All of this has happened since the impeachment vote and every one of the vulnerable Republican senators up for re-election this year has to wonder what other crimes they’ll be defending next fall if they vote to acquit now without even a semblance of a real trial. At least if they have witnesses, they can say they did their duty as they saw it.
Trump himself insists that he wants witnesses — but then, he also insisted that he wanted to talk to Robert Mueller and wanted to release his tax returns. One remaining question is whether or not the president will insist on sending in his henchmen from the House, like Jim Jordan of Ohio, John Ratcliffe of Texas and Doug Collins of Georgia, as part of his defense team in a Senate trial. According to the Washington Post, the senators are not enthusiastic about the House riffraff making a scene. McConnell has supposedly told the White House that their histrionics might offend the moderates. But Trump still wants some kind of a show, so who knows?
On Thursday a number of news organizations reported that Pelosi is preparing to send over the articles as early as Friday, which suggests the trial will probably commence next week. McConnell has at least capitulated to the request that there will be a vote to call witnesses after the House presents its case, and there appears to be some openness to that among the so-called moderates. That was not a given in the beginning. Putting some distance between the hearings and the trial will make the evidence seem fresher and gives Democrats as opportunity to reframe the question around what the White House is hiding by refusing to allow Bolton, Duffey, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others to testify.
As for the public, the latest Morning Consult/Economist poll shows that 57 percent of registered voters think there should be witnesses. Even Republicans are split.
Still, according to this article in Politico, Trump’s base simply doesn’t care what he’s done. They see him as an authentic man of the people who is being unfairly harassed by his enemies. One man is even quoted saying, “It feels like he is our O.J.” That sounds about right.
Fine. We’ll do it ourselves.
by Tom Sullivan
Why don’t Democrats create their own group health plan? my spouse has asked for years. Party members constitute over 30 percent of registered voters, after all — close to 50 million people. California Gov. Gavin Newsome today will propose something similar for 12 percent of the nation’s population and the world’s fifth largest economy:
SACRAMENTO — California would become the first state to sell its own brand of generic prescription drugs in an effort to drive down rising healthcare costs under a proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to unveil in his new state budget Friday.
A broad overview of the ambitious but still conceptual plan provided by Newsom’s office says the state could contract with one or more generic drugmakers to manufacture certain prescriptions under the state’s own label. Those drugs would be available to all Californians for purchase, presumably at a lower cost. The governor’s office said the proposal would increase competition in the generic drug market, which in turn would lower prices for everyone.
[…]
“A trip to the doctor’s office, pharmacy or hospital shouldn’t cost a month’s pay,” Newsom said in a statement. “The cost of healthcare is just too damn high, and California is fighting back.”
Newsome may have borrowed that line.
The California proposal could lower drug costs for non-Californians the way having unions raises pay for nonmembers.
Stay in your lane
Spokespersons for the pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA and the California Association of Health Plans are withholding comment until they see more details:
Assemblyman Devon Mathis, R-Visalia, called Newsom’s prescription drug plans “unrealistic,” and criticized the governor for not saying how he would pay for them. Pharmaceutical policy at the scale Newsom is proposing should be tackled by the federal government, not California, Mathis said.
“The governor needs to stay in his lane and focus on the crises at hand,” Mathis said.
A potential game changer
CalMatters reports the proposal nevertheless could help contain California’s annual $100 billion in health care spending:
Drug costs have become a persistent and increasing worry, both nationally and in California. Six in 10 Americans take a prescription and 79% say the cost is unreasonable, according to a recent survey by Kaiser Family Foundation.
And prices can affect whether people take their pills. The same Kaiser survey found three in 10 Americans reported not taking their medicine as prescribed due to the cost of the prescription.
Governmentally, health care also consumes a sizable portion of the state budget. California’s Medicaid program for the poor, known as Medi-Cal, now tops $100 billion a year in state and federal spending.
[…]
In 2016, drug companies spent more than $100 million to stop a ballot measure that would have barred the state from paying more for prescription drugs than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which pays the nation’s lowest prices.
“This is a potential game changer,” consumer advocate Anthony Wright told CalMatters. Wright, executive director of Health Access California, added, “California has the capacity and the smarts and the scale to actually do it.”
Allowing government to manufacture prescription drugs at the federal level is an idea Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed in December 2018 and included in her presidential platform: an Office of Drug Manufacturing. The agency’s goal: “to increase competition, lower prices, and address shortages in the market for prescription drugs, including insulin” as well as “reduce the cost of prescription drugs to Federal and State health programs, taxpayers, and consumers.”
Under “Personnel,” the Warren bill bans former registered drug company lobbyists and former senior executives of “law breaking companies” from serving as Director. But the bill has gone nowhere in “Grim Reaper” Mitch McConnell’s U.S. Senate.
Newsome isn’t waiting.
Nixon’s the one
Wow. According to Mother Jones, Trump’s former national security adviser K.T. McFarland cited Nixon to justify Michael Flynn’s back-channel shenanigans with Russia:
To justify potentially illegal secret contacts between the Trump team and Russia [to the FBI], McFarland, who herself worked on Nixon’s National Security Council, cited perhaps the most notorious example in US history of a White House candidate undermining the diplomacy of a siting president. (McFarland’s comparison is also flawed because Nixon’s interference, and the Reagan team’s alleged actions, occurred prior to Election Day, not during the transition.)
While allegations that Reagan aides meddled in hostage negotiations in Iran remain disputed, Nixon’s secret disruption of Vietnam peace talks is well-documented. Recently revealed notes show that in October 1968, Nixon asked H.R. Haldeman, who became his chief of staff, to “monkey wrench” talks between the United States, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam and to instruct an emissary, Anna Chennault—a prominent Republican and socialite in touch with South Vietnamese negotiators—to urge them to “hold on” and refuse to agree to a deal in hopes of getting better terms under Nixon. Nixon feared that progress in talks would help his Democratic opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who surged late in the race as he amped up his criticism of the war.
Nixon’s skullduggery worked for Nixon. Encouraged by him, the South Vietnamese stalled the talks, and Nixon narrowly beat Humphrey. But the consequences were bad for everyone else. Nixon had suggested he had a plan for exiting Vietnam. Instead he expanded the war. Roughly 22,000 more Americans, along with far more Vietnamese, would die before the US finally withdrew from the country at the start of Nixon’s second term in 1973. Nixon’s initially secret bombing of sites in Cambodia in 1969 may have helped spur the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who went on to kill an estimated 2 million Cambodians.
Nixon’s predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, knew of Nixon’s actions and privately called them “treason.” John Farrell, who discovered Haldeman’s notes while researching a 2017 Nixon biography, told Mother Jones that Nixon’s interference was potentially “worse than anything he did in Watergate, because more lives were at stake.”
The GOP is Nixon’s party. It always has been.
.
One of Trump’s war criminals wants the Distinguished Service Cross
Will Trump intervene in this one? Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, who had been accused of murder and was awaiting trial and was pardoned in advance by President Trump, had his request to reinstate his Special Forces tab denied by the commander of the U.S. Army Special operations Command. But the Army has now asked for an administrative board review. They are also considering to expunging a letter of reprimand and they may even give him the Distinguished Service Cross, which is one step below the Medal of Honor.
President Donald Trump’s took part in a Saturday night rally in South Florida, bringing two accused war criminals on to the stage as honored guests.
According to the Miami Herald, during his speech at Florida Republicans’ annual Statesman’s Dinner, Trump brought Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Matt Golsteyn in front of the crowd. Trump controversially pardoned the two—along with former Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher—last month against the recommendations of senior military leaders. Lorance was serving a 19-year prison sentence for murder after ordering soldiers to open fire on three unarmed Afghan men in 2012, killing two.
Golsteyn had been charged with premeditated murder after admitting to shooting a detained, unarmed Afghan man in 2010. Golsteyn killed the prisoner off-base and buried his body, only to dig it up later, bring it back to the base, and burn it in a pit used to dispose of trash, according to the Washington Post.
That’s the man our president thinks is a great hero. Which makes sense when you think of Trump’s own lack or morals. Will he give this war criminal the Distinguished Service Cross? Why not the Medal of Honor?
.
Dear Leader dispatch
U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2020
The report said that cancer deaths have been trending downward for more than 30 years. But sure, Trump’s curing cancer. With his bare hands.
He also wrote this:
STOCK MARKET AT ALL-TIME HIGH! HOW ARE YOUR 401K’S DOING? 70%, 80%, 90% up? Only 50% up! What are you doing wrong?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2020
The stock market is not up 50% since 2017, much less 90%. There are going to be whole lot of disappointed Trumpies when they see their 401k statements.
And here’s the court jester:
“The joint is hoppin’. There is sunshine on almost every face and our president is at the top of his game.” You simply HAVE TO WATCH this edition of Dear Leader Watch. pic.twitter.com/LZm8h1vnA4— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 13, 2019
That was from a few months ago but it’s indicative of his daily output.His followers believe this. And there are tens of millions of them. They are allowed to drive cars, perform surgery and use heavy equipment. It’s amazing any of us are alive.
Oh and here’s what your president is retweeting to his millions of followers today:
Update: Oy
Mike Lee is full MAGA pic.twitter.com/Zae8g66lnj— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2020
Dear Leader can do no wrong. It’s the Deep State that’s failing him.