Month: May 2021

Dan Pfeiffer’s newsletter discusses the right wing trolling strategy being deployed by various GOP luminaries like Cruz and Green to gain attention from appalled liberals and make the Trump cult love them and send them money. He suggests that we try not to help them and offers this advice:

“Don’t feed the trolls” is an easy thing to say and a hard thing to do (just look at my Twitter feed). It’s easy to get mad online and react without thinking. But it’s always important to remember that your attention is your greatest weapon. Think strategically about how you want to allocate your attention. Many of the worst people on the Internet wake up every morning to hijack your attention. They want to use your outrage to build their brand and amass political power. Denying them the engagement they so desperately crave is how we fight back against the politics of “owning the libs.”

Anil Dash, a very thoughtful leader in the Tech community, shared very good advice on how to think about online engagement in a Twitter thread last year:

A reminder that may not be obvious: amplification on social networks has monetary value. Twitter’s algorithm counts it as engagement even if you shared a tweet to criticize it or mock it and uses that signal to amplify the tweet further. Only RT what you would pay to promote … Do not reply to, retweet, or quote a tweet from a fascist unless you would give them your money. Apparently, some people would rather make that gift than change their behavior online, and I don’t know what to do about that.

In other words, quote-tweeting or hate-sharing Cruz’s content is the same as contributing to his campaign. If you wouldn’t do the latter, don’t do the former.

Whenever I talk, tweet, or write about ignoring the trolls, people respond with some version of the Washington Post’s pretentious marketing slogan — “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” The gist of this argument is that the only way to stem the rising Republican tide of racism, authoritarianism, and conspiracy is to shine a light on it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The point is not wrong. We cannot ignore these dangerous trends in Republican politics. But how we shine that light matters:

Quote tweet your friends, screenshot your enemies: This is an online engagement rule from Dash: If you need/want to push back on disinformation or highlight a dishonest or dangerous statement, using a photo of the statement allows you to make your point without giving the troll the information they need.

Don’t spread disinformation: If you respond to disinformation for the purposes of debunking it, you are inadvertently instructing the algorithm to show the offending disinformation to more people. You can either use the screenshot trick above or separately share a fact check or article that debunks the conspiracy theory.

He points out that many people believe (and I am one of them) that you have to expose this stuff because it grows uncontrollably anyway and the only thing that’s accomplished by ignoring it is to let it go unchecked. But his advice about social media practices is correct. I will make a concerted effort to follow those rules from now on. It’s important to inform people of what they’re up to but it’s also important to do it in a way that doesn’t boost their engagement on social media.

Oh look. Guess what helps get people back to work?

States like Georgia have used a stick: cutting unemployment benefits to push workers off the sideline. A growing number of local companies are using a carrot: raising wages to lure people back to jobs.

The reasons for worker-hesitancy are varied — lack of childcare, COVID fears, unpleasant work conditions — but money is part of the equation: Federal jobless subsidies combine with Georgia’s program to pay up to $665 a week, the equivalent of $16.63 an hour.

That is more than a lot of people make. Georgia’s Department of Labor says 80% receiving jobless benefits previously made $20,000 a year or less, or just under $10 an hour.

A 2019 Brookings study calculated that median earnings in metro Atlanta were $18.12 an hour. But about one-fifth of workers made $10.09 an hour or less, below the roughly $12.74-an-hour wage that sets the poverty line for a family of four.

“It does give people a little wiggle room not to take a job that has really low wages and is not safe,” said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, and now senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

No wonder Republicans are horrified. Imagine poeple being able to turn down low-paid unsafe work. Whatever is this world coming to?

Apparently, a bunch of large retailers like Target and Costco are raising wages and fast food places are following suit. It’s about time. The health care sector is seeing a lot of shortages and are paying bonuses and offering other incentives to nurses and respiratory therapists, many of of whom are probably suffering extreme burnout from the past year.

And how about these workers?

Most intense is the demand for certified nursing assistants who work in nursing homes, home health care and COVID testing, she said. “Pre-pandemic, a CNA was making $10 or $11 an hour. Now a CNA won’t even talk to you unless it’s $16.”

They were making below poverty wages before. That is a crime against them as vital workers and a crime against the elderly who we clearly don’t value either.

And keep in mind that $16 an hour doesn’t even bring them 35k a year. It’s not as if even then it’s a job that can support a family. And yet we have millions of people dependent on these workers. It’s an immoral situation all around.

Never-Trumper Jennifer Rubin today:

If 53 percent or 56 percent of Republicans actually believe something that is patently false, one party suffers from delusional thinking. There is no way to “understand” MAGA voters, nor is there is any possibility of reaching political agreement with them. They are beyond the bounds of rational political debate. Those who comprehend how dangerous such delusions are in a democracy must break away from them, not enable them to win elections.

And it goes on in that way for graf after graf. And yes, it’s true, and yes, it needs to be said. So what’s my problem? Simple:

You figured this out just now, Ms. Rubin? The dysfunction has been obvious for years as Digby reminded us recently, even to establishment figures like Norman Ornstein.

But it took aTrump, someone who merely re-packaged the Republicans’ pre-existent authoritarianism without the raised Beltway pinkies, for her to finally figure out that the GOP suffers from “delusional thinking” that is “beyond the bounds of rational political debate” and that the only sensible response is to “break away from them.”

Too late. When it may have still actually made a difference, say in 2003, clear-eyed commentators who could actually see the Republican party for what it was were locked out of mainstream gigs. The observations Rubin now proffers in the WaPo were branded “unhinged” back then, not fit to print. But they were very, very true. And it’s waaaay too late now to make much of a difference.

Don’t get me wrong. Rubin’s a pretty good writer. But I’m sorry, “better late than never” doesn’t cut it when the stakes are serious threats to democratic governance in the world’s most powerful country. Now, we will have to live with the awful consequences of the mainstream’s obliviousness to the beginnings of the GOP’s descent into fascism. And there is no way to avoid them.

Sure, Rubin should continue to play catch up. Good for her, but let’s look for contemporary insight as to what to do now to those who always saw the modern GOP for what it was.

The latest polling showing that the veil has not lifted:

Former President Donald Trump’s stronghold over the Republican party remains. His refusal to concede the 2020 election and calls of widespread fraud have raised doubts about the integrity of its results among his Republican base. Consequently, 56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden. Only 30% of Republicans feel confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted, compared to 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents. As a result, 87% of Republicans believe it is important that the government place new limits on voting to protect elections from fraud. Finally, 63% percent of Republicans think Donald Trump should run for President again in 2024, compared to only 8% of Democrats and 23% of independents.

Elected Republicans keep saying they need to restrict the vote all over the country in order to restore faith in the electoral system for their voters. But let’s not kid ourselves. The only way their faith will be restored is if they “win.”

That’s what Dear Leader has taught them:

Maybe not:

Just weeks after he took office as governor, Ron DeSantis held a press conference with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) that left Florida’s political class befuddled.

Standing with Republicans DeSantis and Gaetz was a major Democratic donor, John Morgan, who bankrolled Florida’s medical marijuana ballot measure.

The trio were there to convince the GOP-led Florida Legislature to lift a state ban on smokable medical marijuana, a surprising move for a conservative governor.Yet, it was even more unusual for the Republican governor to stand with a key financial booster for the left.

The scene underscored how close a relationship Gaetz, a supporter of the cannabis industry, had built with the new governor.

“It was all initiated by Matt,” Morgan said in an interview. “Matt had to assure Ron that I would behave. Ron trusted Matt. I behaved.”

DeSantis standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a Democratic donor in one of his first public events as governor also caught early DeSantis administration staff by surprise.

“The… press conference with John f—ing Morgan? Yeah, that was all Matt,” said a staffer who worked for DeSantis at the time and spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss his former boss.

Before federal investigators were looking into Gaetz in an ongoing sex scandal, he was a top campaign adviser to DeSantis, who he met while both served in Congress. DeSantis at the time was a little-known GOP congressman in 2018 and needed help navigating Florida’s political landscape as he weighed whether to run for governor. Gaetz, 39, had deep connections to Florida’s political class because of his father, Don Gaetz, a powerful former state senator. Gaetz went on to play roles in DeSantis’ campaign and his early administration.

DeSantis’ ties to Gaetz could pressure the governor to answer difficult questions about whether he was aware of any alleged wrongdoing as he seeks a second term as governor and possibly the White House. As an adviser, Gaetz urged the governor to appoint several people who are also now ensnared in the federal investigation. Gaetz was also close friends with Joel Greenberg, the man at the center of a federal investigation into sex trafficking.

The eight former campaign advisers and staffers spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss DeSantis.

No charges have been filed against Gaetz, who has denied any wrongdoing. But the three-term congressman’s legal troubles appear to be increasing after Greenberg pleaded guilty to multiple federal crimes, including sex trafficking a 17-year-old. Greenberg has also agreed to cooperate with federal authorities as part of his plea.

DeSantis’ spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment, and the governor has so far refused to comment about Gaetz. The 42-year-old governor previously told reporters that “I don’t have anything to say about that,” when asked about the Gaetz probe.

Gaetz also declined to comment for this story. But during a recent May 7 event at the Villages with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), he touted his relationship with DeSantis, saying he remembered “campaigning with Ron DeSantis when we could fit the whole campaign in an elevator and still have room for social distancing.”

Former advisers say Gaetz was an integral part of DeSantis’ gubernatorial campaign, including playing DeSantis’ primary opponent during a debate prep session. He also chose Republican Rep. Byron Donalds to play DeSantis’ Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum during general election debate preparation.

One former campaign adviser said Gaetz was on every conference call with advance teams “and generally was often just a key voice in directing the campaign what to do.”

“Man, I can’t tell you how much by the end of the election he was the campaign,” said another former DeSantis adviser who worked on the race. “By the time we were in heavy general election mode, DeSantis was not doing anything without Gaetz being in on it.”

Gaetz once brought Greenberg, then the tax collector of Seminole County, to a campaign office for a visit, said a former campaign aide for the governor.

“I obviously knew who Matt was, but I was like ‘who the f— is this guy?’” said one former DeSantis aide, recalling the mid-morning visit to the campaign’s Orlando office. “It was the first time I saw him [Joel]. They were in like shorts and sunglasses, and just came in trying to give us advice and tell us what to do. It was very bizarre for like an hour or so.”

Gaetz continued to advise DeSantis after he won the gubernatorial election in Nov. 2018. Gaetz drafted early administration organizational charts, helped steer early policy decisions and played a huge role in DeSantis’ appointments, including pushing to get key appointments for friends now tied to the federal sex trafficking probe.

“When they started the transition, the governor let Gaetz appoint the transition team,” said one early DeSantis administration adviser. “He picked the transition chairs… they were all picked by Gaetz. And he worked hard, and to some degree of success, putting all his people he wanted in the administration.”

Do read on to see some of the jobs Gaetz managed to place his various “wingmen” in the DeSantis administration.

I had wondered about this from the beginning. DeSantis and Gaetz were both Trump loving Florida Men I always sort of associated with each other. I’m not surprised that Gaetz was an early insider.

There has been no insinuation that I’m aware of in which DeSantis is implicated in Gaetz’s sexual shenanigans. But it’s clear that part of the Gaetz case is about political shenanigans as well. And it appears that DeSantis and Gaetz have quite a bit of history there.

As a postscript to “Next stop Belarus,” it seems someone at the Department of Commerce has “watched too many ‘Mission Impossible’ movies” and took to surveilling hundreds of persons inside and outside the department (Washington Post):

The Investigations and Threat Management Service(ITMS) covertly searched employees’ offices at night, ran broad keyword searches of their emails trying to surface signs of foreign influence and scoured Americans’ social media for critical comments about the census, according to documents and interviews with five former investigators.

In one instance, the unit opened a case on a 68-year-old retiree in Florida who tweeted that the census, which is run by the Commerce Department, would be manipulated “to benefit the Trump Party!” records show.

In another example, the unit searched Commerce servers for particular Chinese words, documents show. The search resulted in the monitoring of many Asian American employees over benign correspondence, according to two former investigators.

The office “has been allowed to operate far outside the bounds of federal law enforcement norms and has created an environment of paranoia and retaliation at the Department,” John Costello, a former deputy assistant secretary of intelligence and security at Commerce in the Trump administration, said in a statement for this story.

Costello believes the unit’s efforts rest on “questionable legal authority” that displays “poor management and lack of sufficient legal and managerial oversight.”

It’s as if “someone watched too many ‘Mission Impossible’ movies,” said Bruce Ridlen, a former supervisor. Hired in March 2020, Ridlen resigned in October over concerns of violations of free speech.

Biden officials ordered a pause in all criminal investigations on March 10 and suspended all activities on March 13, pending an ongoing review. Career supervisor George D. Lee led the group for over a decade. According to sources, keyword searches flagged emails across the political spectrum, but particularly targeted “ethnic Chinese foreign guests/visitors and employees as well as other ethnic personnel.”

Multiple former investigators said Lee would rarely close cases, even if evidence of wrongdoing did not materialize.

As of Oct. 23, the office had 1,183 open cases, nearly half dating to 2018 or earlier and the large majority still in preliminary stages, an internal document shows.

This story adds to the Washington Post report by Devlin Barrett from May 10 that the Trump Department of Justice obtained its reporters’ phone records and attempted to their email records during the period the paper was reporting on Russia’s role in his 2016 election:

In three separate letters dated May 3 and addressed to Post reporters Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, and former Post reporter Adam Entous, the Justice Department wrote they were “hereby notified that pursuant to legal process the United States Department of Justice received toll records associated with the following telephone numbers for the period from April 15, 2017 to July 31, 2017.” The letters listed work, home or cellphone numbers covering that three-and-a-half-month period.

Cameron Barr, The Post’s acting executive editor, said: “We are deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access to the communications of journalists. The Department of Justice should immediately make clear its reasons for this intrusion into the activities of reporters doing their jobs, an activity protected under the First Amendment.”

Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, released a statement saying, in part, “the Justice Department has guidelines in place that require, with only narrow exceptions, notification to an affected news organization before federal prosecutors can seize a journalist’s toll records.” Not years later.

“This is a thing that happens regardless of who is in power,” reporter Devlin Barrett told CNN’s Brian Stelter. “Obviously there are some Trump-specific things to this example, but this broader institutional push—this desire for control—has existed within the Department of Justice for a while now. And it’s been growing.”

There are reasons for concern. They are growing, too.

Is it so different? On this one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, the country has still to come to grips with how fine the line is between popular sovereignty and authoritarian crackdown.

Europe’s last dictator, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, on Sunday sent a fighter jet to intercept and force down a commercial airliner carrying a prominent opposition journalist he wished to arrest and who knows what else. But that is another story.

One year after Floyd’s murder that sparked mass protests from coast to coast, former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted of the crime. But little else has changed the overall rot of American democracy and a slide towards authoritarianism.

The now-former president claimed last year that the entire city of Portland was ablaze from ongoing protests. (It was not.) His fellow Republicans and right-wing media alleged entire cities had been destroyed (they had not) along with “our institutions, our civil society.” The now-former president had riot police deploy tear gas and flash bangs to clear peaceful civil rights protesters from Lafayette Park last June so he could stage a photo-op with a bible. (It’s little comfort that he did not wrap himself in a flag that time and carry a cross.) Sen. Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas afterwards published a New York Times editorial recommending the president invoke the Insurrection Act to put down the protests.

The election of Joe Biden as president last November seemed to offer a reprieve. Then came the drumbeat of “Stop the Steal” from the outgoing president. Then the storming of the Capitol by his cult of personality. Both reject democracy except as decoration. Then came the burst of election suppression legislation in state after Republican-controlled state. And never-ending, nonsensical and unprofessional election audits designed to do nothing more than create the public perception that democracy cannot be trusted. Oh, and threats against lawmakers.

At ground level, little change is evident one year later. The New York Times last weekend published a series reflecting on the impacts of Floyd’s killing and the deaths of other Black Americans at the hands of police for seemingly minor legal infractions or none at all. “Accountability for Mr. Floyd’s murder is not justice,” wrote Dr. William Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

Zak Cheney-Rice at New York magazine recounts the September 19, 2019 arrest of 6-year-old Kaia Rolle. Kaia and her mother Meralyn Kirkland are immigrants from the Bahamas. Kaia suffers from pediatric obstructive sleep apnea that leaves her prone to falling asleep anywhere, and to irritability and tantrums. Kaia was placed in zip-ties and hauled to Orlando’s Juvenile Assessment Center after a tantrum, mug-shotted and charged with simple battery for kicking a teacher during an outburst. Six years old and terrified.

“They have ruined her life over something that was 100% preventable,” Kirkland said recently. “She’s still a loving child, but she’s not as fun and loving the way she once was. Before, she saw some good in everything, and nothing used to bring her down, but now she has to bring herself out of despair.” The Kaia Rolle Act is working its way through Florida’s legislature. It would prevent the arrest of children 10 and younger.

It should never have happened. We should be better and smarter, but we are not. Charges were dropped, the arresting officer fired, and her record cleared. Meralyn says Kaia experiences night terrors and is in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder:

The real concern is not Kaia’s reintegration into schools. It’s how her fear of the police manifests “15 years from now — she could have an encounter with a police officer that triggers her.” Kirkland has seen the videos of police slayings flooding social media in recent years. “The police could pull her over for running a STOP sign. And it could cause her to speed off or something that could cause her to be shot.”

Since then there has been a year-plus of pandemic, economic dislocation, political instability, and still more police incidents. Some deadly even after all the publicity surrounding the Floyd killing.

Cheney-Rice observes:

Last year’s outcry, in all its dizzying complexity, marked an American rebellion of unusual scope and intensity that coincided with a confluence of social factors that might never be replicated again. But one year later, even early signs of progress have begun to acquire a sour taste — a federal police-reform bill, now stalled amid partisan disagreement; a wave of cities whose commitment to slashing police budgets fell far short of their rhetoric. Minneapolis public schools severed their relationship with the city’s police department the month after Floyd’s murder — only to replace it with a cadre of “public safety support specialists,” more than half of whom are former police, security, or correction officers.

What, if anything, it will change about everyday policing in the United States is far from apparent. Last year’s fire, and the sense of catastrophe that fed it, was not isolated to that uniquely combustible moment — the pandemic that fueled it, the economic crisis that shaped it, the reviled president who oversaw it — but a constant state of emergency. In recent months, some officials have become more enthusiastic about denouncing death at the hands of law enforcement. We will be tempted, as time passes, to relent and embrace the seeming wisdom of reflexive moderation — even though the reforms they’ve offered will stop neither the killings nor the quieter forms of violence the police inflict. Even what is arguably the farthest-reaching provision of the federal George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — which would end qualified immunity and its protection of officers from civil liability for wrongdoing — is akin to a fire-insurance payout after one’s house has already been burned to ashes.

I wish I had better news.

I’m just going to leave that here for you to ponder. It’s interesting, no? Perhaps a little surprising in some respects.

I love the fact that a majority of white Republicans admit that America is a racist country but many of them also believe we’ve already made the changes necessary for Black equality. The only thing I can surmise from that is that the crossovers believe the country is racist against white people.

That post from a Trump cultist on Parler would be just another loon if it weren’t for the fact that he’s running to be the Secretary of State of Arizona. There are a bunch of wackos like him hoping to be put in charge of elections:

Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, “ends justify the means” candidates taking big roles in running the vote.

The candidates include Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the top proponents of the conspiracy-tinged vote audit in Arizona’s largest county; Nevada’s Jim Marchant, who sued to have his 5-point congressional loss last year overturned; and Michigan’s Kristina Karamo, who made dozens of appearances in conservative media to claim fraud in the election.

Now, they are running for secretary of state in key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — and who wins the White House in 2024. Their candidacies come with former President Donald Trump still fixated on spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, insisting he won and lying about widespread and systemic fraud. Each of their states has swung between the two parties over the last decade, though it is too early to tell how competitive their elections will be.

The campaigns set up the possibility that politicians who have taken steps to undermine faith in the American democratic system could soon be the ones running it.

“Someone who is running for an election administration position, whose focus is not the rule of law but instead ‘the ends justifies the means,’ that’s very dangerous in a democracy,” said Bill Gates, the Republican vice chair of the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County, Ariz. “This is someone who is trying to tear at the foundations of democracy.”

The secretary of state campaigns will also be tests of how deeply rooted Trump’s lies about the election are in the Republican base. Sixty-four percent of Republican-leaning voters in a recent CNN poll said they did not believe Biden won enough votes legitimately to win the presidency.

Hice and Marchant are running to replace sitting Republican secretaries of state, while Finchem and Karamo are seeking the GOP nomination in states with Democratic incumbents. None of the four campaigns responded to interview requests.

The article goes on to detail just how looney tunes these people are. It’s always possible that they’ll go down in flames as people like Todd “legitimate rape” Akin did in the past. But this party is so radicalized that I suspect it will all be about turnout. And since the GOP primary voters are just as batshit, they will no doubt vote for these guys.

It is pointed out that Secretaries of State often have less power to affect elections than is commonly understood. But they have a big megaphone and the GOP state legislatures are working hard to remove all power from other elections officials and the state courts so they may end up being more powerful than we think.

Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg should take a good hard look at this and recognize that they won’t stand by him:

IVANKA Trump’s Deposition under SWORN TESTIMONY
Q:”Who is Allen Weisselberg?A:”I don’t know what his exact title is.” CORRECT ANSWER: Allen Weisselberg has been the Trump Organizations CFO and the Trump Family’s BOOKKEEPER since the 1970s. @MichaelCohen212 pic.twitter.com/gXFM6eAE1P

— Stephanie Winston Wolkoff (@SWinstonWolkoff) May 22, 2021

I’m sure Weisselberg also made note of this cute move:

He’s on his own. I have to assume that he knows that.