Month: November 2021

The team reviewing the election in a single Arizona county dropped more than $500k on travel.

Also, there's at least $1m in outside funding unaccounted for, paid directly to subcontractors.

Can confirm. The operation expense doc was in the latest public records drop for the #azaudit.

total operating expenses: $8,875,060 pic.twitter.com/LdT05gINVx

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 1, 2021

Originally tweeted by Brad Heath (@bradheath) on November 1, 2021.

Nearly $10 million! For that drivel.

Blow me over with a feather. Ar they saying that these people are raking in big bucks from the rubes with this?

My only hope is that they go some of the money from Donald Trump’s vast cache of ill-gotten campaign cash.

By the way, Maricopa County has to replace a bunch of the voting machines because these clowns destroyed the chain of custody and now they can’t be trusted. Right wingers are what they accuse others of being. Always.

*Sigh*

Eutopia Hall didn’t realize she had neglected to sign the bottom of her mail-in ballot for governor until the county board of elections returned the document to her, asking her to complete it. But as she sat looking at the paper, she wondered if it was even worth a second trip to the mailbox.2021 Election: Complete coverage and analysis

So little had changed since she cast a ballot for Joe Biden in 2020 that “I started to not even press the issue.” Her job and community were still mired in pandemic restrictions. An increase in the child tax credit had brought a few more dollars into her home, but it was eaten up by costlier prices for gas and food and seemingly everything else, and a year after high hopes of significant change in her family’s situation, things seemed stagnant.

“I don’t think a lot of people have a lot of faith in Biden, like they were expecting at first,” said Hall, a 42-year-old nursing assistant. “I think it’s more of a bigger division than it was before. I thought it was gonna get better once the vaccines came out because there was so many people complaining about covid and wanting a cure, but then they came out with a vaccine nobody wants to take. Nothing has changed and we’re just stuck in the same place.”

Joe Biden has been president for 9 months. The vast majority of the public has taken the vaccines. But Biden is held responsible for the failure of a bunch of nincompoops to refuse for political reasons (and hestancy that should have been allayed by now.)

This is what happens when someone runs on the “I’ll bring the country together” platform. All it takes is for the other side to just it on the sidelines and do nothing and their promise goes up in flames. This keeps happening over and over again.

And yes, we are dealing with millions of people who just don’t have a clue about how government and politics works. It is a fundamental problem.

Sadly, Sinemanchin is single-handedly proving this ridiculous narrative. By refusing to go along with the president’s program they are making him look like a loser. Which he will be if they fail to pass his agenda.

Insurrectionists just trying to make a living over here:

When then-President Donald Trump held his “Stop the Steal” protest on Jan. 6, he turned to a firm called Event Strategies to set up the rally. And while the violent results of that protest may give other politicians pause about using that firm again, Event Strategies has instead become Trump’s preferred staging group—as well as a new go-to for other GOP committees in the months after the riot.

A review of public financial disclosures shows that multiple entities involved in the Jan. 6 rallies have continued to rake it in after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, with various Republicans and GOP groups continuing to give these entities business even as investigators look into their roles with the insurrection.

Public records also show a number of curious payments on and around Jan. 6—including more than $25,000 in advertising that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) paid to right-wing social media platform Parler, with one transaction on the day of the riot.

In total, Trump’s fundraising apparatus has paid Event Strategies roughly $800,000 since Jan. 6, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, with the latest payment coming on Aug. 13. That $31,358 expense was for “event staging,” and footed by Make America Great Again Action—the Trump-endorsed super PAC run by former top aide Corey Lewandowski which was shuttered earlier this month amid allegations that Lewandowski had sexually assaulted a donor.

None of the other top event management firms on Trump’s payroll between October 2020 and the riot have worked for him since Jan. 6.

But Trump is hardly the only Republican to pay Event Strategies this year.

In April, the National Republican Congressional Committee—the official national committee for House Republicans—reported spending about $3,675 with the firm for “facility rental,” and dropped another $6,000 for “audio visual/staging” expenses on June 29. And in late August, the Alabama Republican Party and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), a key player in efforts to overturn the election, shelled out $200,000 and $7,038 to the company, respectively, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

In the 2020 cycle, Trump’s groups paid more than $4.3 million to people and companies involved in organizing the Jan. 6 rally, OpenSecrets reported this week. Of that amount, about $2.8 million went to Event Strategies, records show. But the only 2020 payments other committees made to the firm came after the election, in connection to the Georgia Senate runoffs.

There’s more. But of course there is. I just hope they don’t make too much money;. Dear Leader doesn’t like that one bit.

There’s just one day to go before the much anticipated Virginia gubernatorial race will be decided, and since the polls say it’s close, I think we can expect some MAGA fireworks whether their candidate, Glenn Youngkin, wins or loses.

If they lose, we know that they will say the vote was rigged. If Youngkin wins, Donald Trump’s Big Lie will be equally well-served. They will say it’s because of the vigilance of the hordes of Republican poll watchers who are set to descend upon polling places on Election Day. Trump made clear what he wanted last year at the presidential debate and they will not let him down this time:

“I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that’s what has to happen. I am urging them to do it. Today there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went in to watch. They’re called poll watchers, a very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren’t allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia.”

He was lying, however, as usual.

One woman who claimed she was working for the Trump campaign had complained that she was not allowed in a satellite early voting location. However, she did not have an official certificate because, by law, no poll watchers were authorized at such locations. Trump was likely under the assumption that he could just send his MAGA mob to storm the polling places, no questions asked. And a spate of new election laws being enacted by Republican state legislatures are essentially making that reality now.

Trump’s comments during that debate set off election officials’ alarm bells all over the country. What Trump was describing is better known as voter intimidation. Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford tweeted the next day, “Voter intimidation is illegal in Nevada. Believe me when I say it: You do it, and you will be prosecuted.” Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said that the president’s loose talk was dangerous, adding:

“The President is blatantly urging his supporters to congregate at polling places, go inside, and ostensibly harass and intimidate voters.While there are authorized ‘poll watchers’ who monitor polls on Election Day, their duties are clearly laid out, and they do not include what President Trump has suggested.”

There were some poll watching shenanigans on election day in 2020, but the Big Lie launched the GOP into action.

Last May, The New York Times reported a national program to train tens of thousands of MAGA faithful to “watch.” The report highlighted one recruitment seminar in which a precinct chair in a white suburb of Houston exhorted volunteers to go into the Black, Asian and Latino areas on election day because “that’s where the fraud is occuring.” That is not true, of course. But it illustrates what they actually have in mind: suppression and intimidation of racial and ethnic minority voters, particularly in urban areas.

That is nothing new. Partisans used such tactics for centuries. I wrote about this years ago here on Salon, including the stunning tale of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist who, as a young lawyer in Arizona, personally applied some ugly racist intimidation against Latino and Black voters in the 1964 presidential campaign. The GOP ran the program in which he participated called “Operation Eagle Eye” throughout the nation.

While researching his book on the Goldwater campaign, called “Before the Storm,” historian Rick Perlstein unearthed a memo written by a Lyndon Johnson staffer outlining the scheme:

“Let’s get this straight, the Democratic Party is just as much opposed to vote frauds as is the Republican party. We will settle for giving all legally registered voters an opportunity to make their choice on November 3rd. We have enough faith in our Party to be confident that the outcome will be a vote of confidence in President Johnson and a mandate for the President and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, to continue the programs of the Johnson-Kennedy Administration.

But we have evidence that the Republican program is not really what it purports to be. It is an organized effort to prevent the foreign born, to prevent Negroes, to prevent members of ethnic minorities from casting their votes by frightening and intimidating them at the polling place.”

I bring this up again because it’s important to remember that Trump didn’t invent this stuff. He’s never done anything original in his life. People have been at this for a very long time. Trump’s just supercharged it.

Over the past half century, the nation had made great strides in controlling the threat of poll watcher intimidation. The majority of states put laws in place to ensure that people felt safe at their polling places. The problem was pretty much snuffed out for several decades. But now it’s back.

The Washington Post reports that Virginia has poll watchers by the hundreds ready to go Tuesday. In fact, they have already been on the job during the early voting. In Democratic counties, the poll watchers are 2-1 Republican, many of them trained and organized by the Youngkin campaign. The candidate, who insists he’s not a MAGA kind of guy, has been pushing the voter fraud myth like crazy and his voters are out in force. One of the Virginia groups doing training was created by a Republican candidate who lost his election by 23 points in 2020 and refused to concede. According to the Post, other groups involved in similar activities throughout the country are Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Limited Government, No Left Turn in Education and Alliance for Free Citizens, led by former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, a vote fraud zealot who Trump once enlisted to prove that Hillary Clinton didn’t win the popular vote in 2016. (Needless to say, he failed.) Another group called The Virginia Project, a purveyor of the Big Lie, has been subtly intimidating election officials. At one of its meetings, Joe Flynn, the brother of General Michael Flynn, asked the crowd if they believe Joe Biden won the state of Virginia in 2020. The crowd roared, “No!” Biden won the state by 10 points.

Glenn Youngkin may very well win the election tomorrow. The polls are neck and neck. And if he does, the pundits and analysts will immediately construct a narrative that tells us the national implications of the GOP victory. But the right’s narrative will be that they were able to keep the Democrats from stealing the election the way they stole 2020 and they’ll double their efforts around the country. The Big Lie will be validated one way or the other. 

Trump set it up last night:

On the eve of the closely-contested race for governor in Virginia — where Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe are locked in an extremely tight battle — former President Donald Trump is casting doubt on the entire electoral process in the Commonwealth.

In a statement, the former president baselessly smeared the legitimacy of Virginia elections.

“I am not a believer in the integrity of Virginia’s elections,” Trump wrote. “Lots of bad things went on, and are going on.”

See? If Youngkin loses it will be because it was rigged. If he wins it will be because the MAGA wingnuts made sure it wasn’t. The Big Lie will live, either way.

Salon

“Repetition is really important. And so is repetition,” a friend with more authority on the subject said last spring.

And so while we talked about this here on Saturday, E.J. Dionne repeats my advice again in the Washington Post:

Celebrate victory. Explain what you’ve achieved. Defend it from attack. Change the public conversation in your favor. Build on success to make more progress.

And for God’s sake, don’t moan about what might have been.

President Biden and Democrats in Congress are on the cusp of ending their long journey through legislative hell by enacting a remarkable list of practical, progressive programs.

This will confront them with a choice. They can follow the well-tested rules for champions of social change. Or they can repeat past mistakes by letting their opponents define what they have done and complain about the things left undone.

Nothing is signed yet. And what may or may not happen in tomorrow’s election in Virginia will affect how easy it is to sell the message Dionne recommends, but….

Democrats must grab control of the national conversation away from “manufactured issues that promote moral panic among conservatives,” and from caravans and paranoid narratives designed by the right to “sharpen divisions around race, immigration and culture,” and onto how competent government can inprove people’s lives.

There’s already enough grievance politics on the right. The left needn’t add its own grievances about what gets left out of the two large bills before Congress because of you-know-who.

Trump turned “infrastructure week” into a four-year joke. Biden and the Democrats will (fingers crossed) deliver with bipartisan support, including broadband expansion to parts of the country that saw little tangible return on their heavy emotional investment in Trumpism.

The Build Back Better bill includes a record investment to fight climate change, new programs for affordable housing and increased assistance to make postsecondary education more affordable. But it may have its most important social impact by turning talk about “family values” from a slogan used to tear us apart into support for families and kids. This could bring us together.

For families earning up to $150,000 annually, it extends the child tax credit of $300 a month for each child for parents of kids under 6, and $250 a month for each child aged 6 to 17. It’s a policy many conservatives have endorsed.

The bill caps child-care spending for most families at 7 percent of their income, and in what is a really big deal, it creates a universal pre-K program for all 3- and 4-year-olds. At the other end of life, the bill expands home care services for the elderly and provides for a new hearing benefit under Medicare. It also brings health coverage to up to 4 million Americans, many of them locked out of the benefits of Obamacare in Republican states.

None of this is financed by debt, and the measure underscores that the concentration of gains in income and wealth at the top mean that all of the bill’s benefits can be paid for with higher taxes on corporations and the very well-off. This may be the most underappreciated part of the deal: After years of rising inequality, those doing the best are being asked to kick in a little for those who are struggling.

Progressives wanted more. I wanted more. Indications are that Democrats in the Senate are still trying to get their apostate colleagues to agree to more. But if we end up with “70-80% of the cake,” as Oliver Willis wrote in 2015, it’s not 100% failure because we didn’t get the rest. (And it may be only 50%.)

Press Republicans on why they oppose helping families with child care costs, Medicare expansion and more.

Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) argues the program is designed to reduce anxieties about “the things that keep families up at night.” It’s a good formulation. Which side proposes to increase insomnia levels?

We know too well that the GOP’s counter-argument will be that Democrats mean to pick the pockets of Real Americans™ to provide more for, you know, those people. The unwashed Irresponsibles. The fact that Biden’s packages won’t do that is no obstacle to Republicans lying. Are we as smart as we think we are? If so, we can defeat their narrative. That is, if we can be as disciplined and relentless in our own messaging as is the right.

Because repetition is really important. And so is repetition.

If end-times prophesy is still marketable, CNN’s Brian Stelter could top eschatologist Hal Lindsey book receipts. Lindsey’s “The Late, Great Planet Earth” (1970) was one of that decade’s top best-sellers. Lindsey mined events of the day for echoes in The Book of Revelations (and Daniel and Ezekiel) and predicted the rise of the Antichrist, the Rapture, and that other biblical catastrophes would occur perhaps in the 1980s. This stuff wouldn’t capture the public imagination again until Ghostbusters (1984):

Dr. Raymond Stantz : Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!

Dr. Egon Spengler : Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…

Winston Zeddemore : The dead rising from the grave!

Dr. Peter Venkman : Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… MASS HYSTERIA!

Drawing on what we have already seen from Trumpism, right-wing media, and the Trumpified Republican Party, Stelter on Sunday presented a case for how Trumpism might overtake the United States between now and 2024. To compete with OAN, Fox News quadruples down on feeding red meat to viewers rather than news. Paranoia deepens. Donald Trump’s Big Lie becomes gospel in his party. External reality dissolves.

“There’s a clear difference between the people who pay for news … and want to know what is true, versus people who pay for views, incendiary views, of what they want to be true,” says Stelter. “There’s a market for this. It’s a giant grift.”

Trumpists at conferences begin dreaming publicly of violence. By 2024, “Neighbors turn on neighbors,” Stelter continues. “Normally easygoing local elections turn into existential battles.” Threats of violence become real violence by cosplaytriots, while MAGA-media apps, broadcasters, and commentators “justify stomping all over the Constitution as an attempt to save it.”

During Stelter’s 11-minute essay, headlines from the recent past flash behind him to reinforce that what he’s suggesting is not wild fantasy.

“I’m not saying that all this will happen. But I’m saying it could,” Stelter continues. “We know it could happen because it has all happened before. Almost everything I have described has already happened in one form or another.”

The evidence is out there in multiple books. The peaceful transfer of power in January 2020 was something of a miracle, Jonathan Karl writes in his upcoming book, “Betrayal.”

“We know what Trump will do,” Stelter says. “So what will the rest of us do?”

“Raising awareness isn’t a theory of change,” messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio tweeted on Sunday. Neither is finding a dark cloud in every silver lining. Clicktivism and sending political donations will not be enough to stop Stelter’s “prophesy” from coming true.

One of Donald Trump’s only true talents is for survival. Trumpism reflects that. Only his followers don’t mean to save themselves by staving off political apocalypse, but by bringing it about. What happens to this country in the next few years may not be as much a matter of laws but of whose wills — and survival instincts — are stronger.