Month: February 2022

Their gambit keep from testifying failed:

The New York attorney general can question Donald J. Trump and two of his adult children under oath as part of a civil inquiry into his business practices, a judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting the former president’s effort to block the interviews.

The inquiry by the attorney general, Letitia James, and a parallel criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney are examining whether Mr. Trump improperly inflated the value of his assets to receive favorable loans.

Lawyers for the Trump family had sought to prohibit Ms. James, a Democrat, from interviewing Mr. Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. They had argued that she was politically biased against Mr. Trump and was inappropriately using her civil inquiry to aid the district attorney’s criminal investigation, which she is also participating in.

But the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, wrote that “this argument completely misses the mark.”

He ruled in favor of Ms. James’s lawyers, who had asked that the former president and the two adult children be interviewed in the next three weeks. The order also requires that the former president provide the attorney general with documents she sought in her subpoena.

They can all take the 5th, of course, just like Eric Trump did in this case more than 500 times. But taking the 5th can be used against you in a civil case so if they go to trial a jury may very well find that to be suspicious when they are told that and are shown specifically which questions for which they claimed their right against self-incrimination. Yikes.

The judge’s decision followed a fiery virtual hearing in State Supreme Court on Thursday, during which lawyers for Mr. Trump and the attorney general made their cases. Several times, Mr. Trump’s lawyers became so heated that Judge Engoron and his law clerk had to call for a timeout — raising their hands in the shape of a “T,” a gesture more often seen at a sporting event than in a courtroom.

The hearing was by all accounts a three ring circus. Here is a tweet thread from @nycsouthpaw who followed the hearing:

Trump Sr. is represented at the hearing by Alina Habba, a litigator with offices in Bedminster, NJ. Alan Futerfas is representing the adult Trump children; he previously repped Don Jr. before the Mueller investigation, as well as (a long time ago) a number of NY mafia figures.

Futerfas is monopolizing the beginning of the hearing to push the idea that the NYAG’s investigation should be treated as a criminal matter, even though the AG’s office has no criminal jurisdiction, because (he says) they’re openly working hand-in-glove with the Manhattan DA.

Futerfas admits the Trump children could take the Fifth even in a civil investigation, but he’s arguing it remains unfair to civilly depose them, expose them to adverse inferences, etc rather than follow the criminal procedure under NY law of taking testimony before a grand jury. Futerfas doesn’t seem to be getting very far with Judge Arthur Engeron, who keeps asking why the Trumps can’t just refuse to answer questions and reminding him that adverse inferences in a civil context are what the law allows.

Alina Habba, the former president’s lawyer, finally gets a chance to speak and says–for the first time today–that they’re actually here seeking a stay of the civil investigation during the pendency of the criminal matter. Habba is asked whether the civil investigation is “solely” seeking evidence for a criminal case–the legal standard for a stay–and she responds with a bunch of (as far as I can tell) unconnected invective against AG Tish James for being biased against Trump.

You can argue with some sincerity that Tish James is biased, imo, but that doesn’t do anything to show that she’s not interested in imposing potential civil consequences like, e.g., civil fines or court-ordered dissolution of Trump entities that engaged in illegal conduct.

Another Trump lawyer, the former president’s criminal attorney Ron Fischetti, is also banging his fist on the table rather than saying anything new. Fischetti outlines a pithy rule for Trump testifying: “He gets immunity for what he says, or he says nothing!”

In response to Engeron’s inquiry, Futerfas and Fischetti both say their arguments don’t rely on Trump’s status as a former president, even though they previously called it a special case because of his old job.

As @rgrikard said, Habba’s presentation before Judge Engeron is fairly indistinguishable in cadence and logical coherence from a Fox News hit. “I’m not the attorney disciplinary committee,” the judge repeats, after she does another five minutes on AG James’ public statements.

Habba says Trump is a member of a “protected class.” “What protected class is he a member of?” the judge asks. She does not name one.

Given the first opportunity to respond at length, Kevin Wallace, the attorney from the NYAG’s office, quotes Robert Morgenthau talking about Roy Cohn:

“A man is not immune from prosecution simply because the U.S. Attorney doesn’t like him.”

“The evidence is irrelevant,” Habba says emphatically, underlining her argument about selective prosecution in perhaps not the most effective way.

Originally tweeted by southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) on February 17, 2022.

Update — You have to love this:

Former President Donald Trump said in a court filing Monday that he “denies knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth” about his company’s finances. A day later, he issued a blistering 1,100-word statement in response to his longtime accounting firm Mazars USA dropping the Trump Organization as a client and claiming it could no longer stand by a decade’s worth of tax documents. Trump waxed lyrical about his company’s “fantastic assets” and said prosecutors should give consider giving Hillary Clinton the death penalty instead of investigating the Trump Organization’s finances.

“My company has among the best real estate and other assets anywhere in the world, has significant amounts of cash, and has relatively very little debt, which is totally current,” Trump said in the statement Tuesday.

[…]

“It is not unusual for parties to a legal proceeding to disagree about the facts,” wrote Austin Thompson, a lawyer for James’s office. “But it is truly rare for a party to publicly disagree with statements submitted by his own attorneys in a signed pleading — let alone one day after the pleading was filed. That is what Mr. Trump has done here.”

Josh Hawley is a real piece of work:

It’s been less than a week, but the inaccurate summary of a court filing by special counsel John Durham promulgated on the right has become canon. Here, for example, is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) articulating it on Fox News on Wednesday night (shortly before taking a moment to plug campaign merchandise glamorizing his encouragement of protesters on Jan. 6).

“It’s clear now there was collusion, after all, in the 2016 campaign,” Hawley said, before flipping the script: “and the collusion was between Hillary Clinton and some tech executives who did in fact spy on Donald Trump, who did access his email servers. And worse than that, who went on, according to special counsel, went on to try and infiltrate that is spy on the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”

Naturally he concluded that someone should “go to jail for this.”

Except, of course, that the “this” to which he refers didn’t happen. As rapidly as Fox News and Hawley and the gang have arrived at this wildly misleading distillation, I’ve grown fatigued with having to explain that it’s wrong. The line from Clinton’s campaign to research looking at a limited set of data about Internet domain names is not brightly drawn by Durham or elsewhere. There was no accessing of email servers alleged anywhere. And while Durham is careful to point out that 1) the research evaluating possible connections to Russia included (legally acquired) data from the executive office and that 2) this led to a February 2017 meeting about the research, he does not allege that the data included in that research was collected from the Trump White House.

In fact, lawyers for the research team itself told the New York Times that, to the best of their knowledge, it considered only executive-office data from 2016, before Trump was president. Even looking just at Durham’s timeline, it’s clear that even if it had included post-2016 data, it couldn’t have included much. The meeting at issue was on Feb. 9, 2017, less than three weeks into Trump’s presidency.

But, precisely because it lets people like Hawley make wild claims about Clinton and about how Trump was so oppressed by his opponents, the Hawley narrative is the default one on the right.

It is important to continue to point out how inaccurate and unfounded this is for a few reasons. One is that it is generally preferable to spend one’s time promulgating accurate information rather than inaccurate information. Another is that establishing a false assertion as widely believed is the rhetorical equivalent of dividing-by-zero: base a claim on something false and you can extend it outward in any direction you wish.

Here it is extended in the predictable direction:

Yes, you read that right. He brought the Big Lie into it. Now Hillary Clinton is responsible for the stolen election. Bump explains:

What is very clear is that none of this had anything to do with the 2020 election. Trump’s ploy here is so clumsy and so ham-handed that it seems like kicking him while he’s down to point it out, but he’s simply trying to extend “I was spied on” to “as part of a broad effort to steal the election from me.” This latter point is of far more interest to him than anything else; he will rail against the reality of his 2020 loss until his last breath, given what it says about his long-standing insistences about his popularity and invincibility.

This Durham story, molded and shaped in a way sure to have curried his favor in 2019 — Clinton bad! Trump treated unfairly! — simply no longer addresses his most urgent needs. He still cares about those perceptions, sure, but any contrived narrative that isn’t singularly focused on proving that he wuz robbed is not a narrative he’s interested in at the moment.

And why not? Why not take an untrue assertion about the Durham filing and claim that it goes even further? What are Fox News and Hawley going to do, interject to say that, no, we’re only pretending it continued until early in your administration? Trump gets away with this stuff anyway because it’s easier and less politically risky to agree with him than it is to disagree. (Hence the Houston Chronicle’s determination that only 13 of Texas’s 143 Republican House candidates were willing to say that President Biden was legitimately elected.) So who’s going to pop up on Sean Hannity’s show and say, actually, Trump has it wrong. Certainly not Sean Hannity.

Trump’s favorite foil continues to be Hillary Clinton. He just can’t quit her. And this lame attempt to bring her into the Big Lie makes perfect sense to him. After all, a US Senator,Josh Hawley, is already calling for her to be jailed. It’s halfway there.

This is insane, even by Trump standards. But he’s rolling with it. And I think Bump is right — 2020 is Trump’s holy grail and Hillary Clinton remains the right’s most loathed enemy. Of course he would try to combine those two things.

Lol. There’s just something kinky about Missouri Republicans. (Remember Todd “legitimate rape” Akin”?)

INSIDE THE GOP’S MISSOURI CLOWN SHOW — For months, many Republican operatives across the political spectrum — from MAGA world and the RNC to the NRSC and Team Mitch — have privately whispered agreement on one thing when it comes to Missouri’s crowded Senate GOP primary: They’d welcome any nominee except ERIC GREITENS.

The disgraced former governor of the Show-Me State resigned in 2018 after a woman testified under oath that Greitens tied her up in his basement, stripped her naked and took photos of her to use as blackmail in their extramarital affair — before forcing her to have oral sex with him. Greitens maintains that the exchange was consensual.

Despite that history — and despite a number of other prominent Republicans in the race —Greitens leads the pack in Missouri’s GOP primary. Party operatives know that if they want to stop him, they need to clear the field so that the anti-Greitens vote isn’t fragmented. But they’re at a loss over how to do that. None of the prominent candidates shows any sign of dropping out anytime soon.

— Over the weekend, Sen. JOSH HAWLEY (R-Mo.) took a first stab, backing Rep. VICKY HARTZLER with an endorsement that many believe could make a difference.

— But just as he did, another candidate, Rep. BILLY LONG, started attacking Hawley personally, going on a rant against him and having what some Republicans called a “public meltdown on Twitter” (see here and here).

— On Tuesday, state A.G. ERIC SCHMITT locked down Sen. TED CRUZ’s (R-Texas) endorsement, a sign that he’s in the race for the foreseeable future.

THERE’S ONE MAN WHO THEY ALL AGREE COULD CLEAR THE FIELD. Trump won the state by 16 points, and if he backed Hartzler alongside Hawley, many think this primary would be over. But Trump feels burned by some of his previously endorsed candidates who’ve fizzled out, and has been reluctant to wade in unless he’s sure he’s backing a winner.

Trump is also hearing opposing perspectives from prominent figures in the MAGA world orbit. Former adviser KELLYANNE CONWAY is working for Long, while KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, who is engaged to DONALD TRUMP JR. and helps lead a pro-Trump super PAC, is national chair of Greitens’ campaign.

A few things to know about Trump and this race:

— The former president, we’re told, doesn’t like Greitens. While Trump often sides with men accused of sexual misconduct over the women who accuse them — and has asked some associates if they thought Greitens’ past sexual exploits could have been consensual — he’s also shown contempt for him. “What kind of guy ties a woman up in the basement against her will?” Trump recently asked one confidant.

Right. The way to deal with these things is to have your lawyer pay them off, everyone knows that.

— Even so, Trump has seen Greitens’ internal poll numbers and asked those close to him if he should just endorse him and take the victory. And Greitens is certainly trying his best to get Trump’s blessing: He’s vowed to vote against MITCH MCCONNELL for GOP leader, regularly spouts the president’s election conspiracies to earn points and, according to one source, even spent several days hanging around Mar-a-Lago last week.

— People close to Trump and senior Republicans across the party have encouraged the former president not to back the former governor, arguing both that they can’t have an alleged sexual predator in the Senate and that if he wins the primary he could lose a seat for Republicans in the general — a prediction backed by recent polling. (Greitens’ campaign has pushed back on this conclusion, arguing that Trump’s 2020 pollster, TONY FABRIZIO, has numbers showing otherwise.)

IN FAIRNESS, IT’S NOT AS THOUGH TRUMP HAS DONE NOTHING SO FAR. In 2021, Trump and Conway told Long — an early Trump 2016 supporter — that he needed to boost his poll and fundraising numbers if he wanted Trump’s endorsement. In December, after Long failed to do that, multiple sources tell us that Trump called Long and asked him to seek reelection to the House, gently suggesting he bow out of the Senate race. “We really need you in the House,” Trump said, according to someone familiar with the call.

Long didn’t take kindly to the idea, ignored the advice and is still trying to gain traction — though even his adviser Conway has told him to lay off the Twitter rants and that he needs to do more. Indeed, when asked about whether GOP leaders have asked him to drop out, Long told our Alex Isenstadt in a text “they know that will NEVER HAPPEN.” His campaign spokesperson told us last night that “Billy is working hard not only to get the endorsement of President Trump, but also the endorsement from the voters of Missouri on August 2nd.”

SO WHAT ABOUT OTHER REPUBLICAN LEADERS?

— In the past, the NRSC has waded into these sorts of fights to try to ensure the candidate who wins the nomination can win the general. But NRSC Chair RICK SCOTT (R-Fla.) has made clear he’s not getting involved in any — any — internal GOP races.

— Some have wondered why McConnell world or the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund haven’t done more. But around Washington, other anti-Greitens Republicans say that McConnell’s involvement could actually backfire and help the former governor, which is why they’re hoping he stays out of this for now.

— Instead, many seem to be looking to Hawley, who is influential within the state GOP, hoping that his endorsement will help narrow the field.

These Republicans are crossing their fingers that Trump will follow the senator’s momentum and lean in for Hartzler, whom the former president has met but doesn’t know well. A double Hawley-Trump Hartzler endorsement, these Republicans say, may be the only thing that puts Greitens away for good, though one person told us Trump has called Hartzler “a nice lady, but not a fighter.”

Still, we’re told Trump considers Hawley’s counsel, often asking people “what does Hawley think?” when it comes to anything Missouri-related.

While Hawley hasn’t flat-out asked Trump to back Hartzler, after endorsing the congresswoman, Hawley called Trump to make the case why she would be the strongest candidate. Sources also said that Hawley — who investigated Greitens as state A.G., and was one of the first Republicans to ask for him to resign — has made the case to Trump in the past that having Greitens as the nominee would be a serious problem for the party.

Meanwhile, Trump isn’t weighing in. Greitens feels like he’s sitting pretty, and has a good chance at becoming Missouri’s next senator. “Missouri political consultants and establishment swamp creatures are terrified that a Trump candidate like Governor Greitens will flip the trough over,” Greitens’ campaign manager, DYLAN JOHNSON, told us Wednesday night.

I think the most interesting thing about this is that Greitans is polling the best in the state. They know what he did. And apparently, they like it.

I predict Trump will endorse him. The only thing holding him back, I’m sure, is the knowledge that he got burned with Judge Roy Moore. But if Greitans looks like he’s winning the nomination, Trump will get on board.

More evidence that if people say something often enough people will believe it. This bullshit is coming directly from the right wing smear machine which is relentless with this, even to the point of having Trumper congressional reps. demand that Biden take a cognitive test.. That’s how ridiculous this has become:

Most voters believe that President Joe Biden’s mental abilities have declined since he took office, and two-thirds agree with GOP members of Congress who have urged the president to take a cognitive test and release the results.

A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 42% of Likely U.S. voters are confident Biden is physically and mentally up to the job of being President of the United States, including 27% who are Very Confident in Biden’s ability. Fifty-six percent (56%) are not confident that Biden is up to the job, including 45% who are Not At All Confident in his ability. Those findings are unchanged from our October survey.

But this guy is a very stable genius:

Of course he’s probably always been that mentally incompetent.

Did anyone think he wouldn’t grift small donors and take all all the money? Please. He’s never hidden who he is:

Donald Trump’s spamming of Republican donors could kneecap party efforts to build a steady funding stream for future elections and compete with Democratic fundraising, top GOP officials are privately warning.

Why it matters: The former president’s decision to bombard donors with numerous daily emails and texts is sucking up record sums. Four top GOP digital strategists tell Axios it’s also imperiling efforts to build a sustainable, grassroots base of financial support for anyone not named Trump.

The big picture: Trump is raking in donations.

His political vehicles, led by the group Save America, raised more than $51 million during the second half of 2021.

They also ended the year with more than $122 million in the bank, according to FEC reports.

Trump’s small-dollar fundraising operation is the vanguard, driven by ceaseless emails and text messages hitting up his supporters for cash.

One veteran Republican digital strategist told Axios the effect, compared with the potency or engagement of other ex-presidents, is “something we’ve never had in the history of digital fundraising.”

22 cents of every dollar that GOP payment processor WinRed brought in last year went not to GOP midterm candidates but to two Trump committees: Save America and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, an Axios analysis of campaign finance records shows.

The two groups brought in more WinRed money than the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee — combined.

By comparison, top recipients of money raised through ActBlue, Democrats’ WinRed counterpart, were the Democratic National Committee and the party’s House and Senate campaign arms.

What we’re hearing: Some of the strategists contacted by Axios credit the Trump team, especially digital director Gary Coby, for the intense focus on data and analytics.

Yet they identify three big risks:

-Donor burnout, and diminishing returns from a flood of frantic emails and texts — not just from Trump, but also other candidates invoking his name.

-There’s also a scenario in which Trump squats on hundreds of millions of dollars, rather than spending it on other Republicans.

-The “quadrupling-down” approach that’s proved effective for Trump may actually make it harder — and more expensive — for other Republicans to raise money online.

Trump’s approach is spurring other campaigns to lean heavily on his brand in their own fundraising appeals. That keeps Trump essential not just to the Republican political brand but to its ability to raise money online.

He’s going to keep the money. Of course he is.

Between the lines: These complaints are frequently discussed privately in GOP fundraising circles.

Nobody of stature wants to talk publicly, for fear of retribution — because Trump remains the most powerful man in Republican politics.

The four strategists spoke on condition of anonymity.

The other side: Trump’s team and allies write off the criticism as jealous griping by less successful competitors.

They say he’s bringing in millions of new donors, and that’s a financial boon for the party.

“No one in the history of the Republican Party has done more to grow the donor pool at every level than President Donald J. Trump, something that pays untold dividends to Republican candidates and causes across the nation,” Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich told Axios in a statement.

Budowich dismissed criticism from “the cowardly consultant-class” and “frauds who just can’t deliver for their clients.”

He also credited Trump’s “brand, his leadership and his vision for America” for driving “historic fundraising hauls.” His analysis: “Absent of President Trump, those dollars wouldn’t be raised.”

By the numbers: The Defending Democracy Together Institute, which tracks political email traffic, shows a spike since last July in daily Trump fundraising emails.

It counted an average of at least 10 Trump fundraising emails a day since October — Christmas was an exception, with just two that day — and more than 14 per day since the start of this year.

The data was culled from outreach to just one email inbox, a sampling that may not reflect the full array of Trump emails to all recipients.

As problematic as the volume, Republican critics say, is the tone.

The appeals frequently rely on hard-sell tactics, such as questionable pledges that donations will be matched up to some multiple — tactics that have drawn the scrutiny of the Justice Department.

“It’s a massive issue. … The tactics and strategies they use are not sustainable,” one strategist said.

The immense volume and frantic tone of Trump fundraising appeals are making it extremely difficult for other candidates seeking GOP small-dollar support to break through, operatives said.

“Conservative donors are getting six, 12, maybe even two dozen fundraising emails or text messages every single day. And the chances of them opening yours, let alone reading, clicking and donating, is pretty small to begin with,” one said.

“If you include Trump in that, … your competition for the inboxes of donors just goes through the roof. It’s just it makes it so much more difficult to convert any of these people.”

The imbalance is evident in data for WinRed, which handles Trump’s online donations and the vast majority of the party’s small-dollar fundraising.

It reported handling about $477 million in 2021 contributions — nearly one-fourth of which Axios’ analysis found went to two Trump committees.

Operatives who spoke with Axios fretted that little of that money has yet made it back into the GOP political ecosystem.

An eye-catching detail from a recent New York Times story has been making the rounds among Republican consultants.

“The roughly $375,000 the PAC paid in Trump Tower rent was more than the total of $350,000 that Mr. Trump’s group donated to the scores of federal and state-level political candidates he endorsed in 2021,” it read.

The intrigue: Trump’s fundraising operation also is making it more expensive for other Republicans to raise money online.

That’s because campaigns routinely prospect for new donors and make up for recipient unsubscribes by renting third-party email lists.

But Trump’s fundraising operation drives such huge revenue for the owners of the lists it rents that other campaigns are forced to pay higher premiums for access.

What they’re saying: “If you’re asking a list owner to take your copy rather than Donald Trump’s copy,” one GOP operative explained, “… you have to be willing to cut some sort of deal and take less money back in return in order for them to say, ‘Alright, I won’t send the Trump copy today, I’ll send your copy.'”

“These are all business decisions, and I can’t blame anybody for doing what’s in their best interests. It’s just — there is obviously a party interest here that is hurt by this.”

Hikes in prospecting prices are coming as new and existing GOP groups pour money and resources into efforts to build a more sustainable base of grassroots financial support, potentially making those efforts more difficult.

Trump’s immense popularity with the party’s most committed donors has spurred other campaigns to lean heavily on his brand in their own fundraising appeals.

The NRSC and NRCC are constantly pegging their own fundraising appeals to Trump’s name, pleading for donations to “save Trump’s majority” and the like.

Individual candidates are following suit. The joint fundraising committee for Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has sent numerous emails barely mentioning Blackburn herself but asking recipients to pledge they’ll join Trump’s new social media site.

Candidates’ own lists may include GOP donors who aren’t Trump die-hards, but the incentives to lean into the Trump-centric approach are there because those die-hards are the most motivated and responsive.

What’s next: All of this is building a Republican fundraising machine and ecosystem that’s heavily reliant on one person: Donald Trump.

A potential 2024 Trump White House run could force the issue.

Republican party committees, which have already pledged neutrality in a potential 2024 GOP primary, would be severely limited in their use of Trump’s name to raise money.

Trump will almost surely crack down on and publicly call out any candidate who uses his name in fundraising appeals without supporting his candidacy.

The bottom line: Republican candidates may be left with a choice: align with Trump or leave millions in small-dollar donations on the table.

These tactics are used by both parties and I guess they work on enough people to make them worthwhile. But it appears that Trump has taken it to new levels. That’s what he does. When it comes to conning people out of their money there is no politician in America more experienced and naturally talented.

Johann Hari explains in “Stolen Focus” a phenomenon readers likely know, that sleep is not wasted time. Sleep is when the brain files short-term memories into long-term memory. It is when cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF, washes out waste products, including the toxins associated with Alzheimer’s. Not getting enough quality sleep more immediately reduces our ability to focus. But our capitalist system incentivizes staying awake and “productive” longer so we can consume more, Hari suggests. A lot of us walk around sleep-deprived.

I imagined dystopian spas where enthusiatic capitalists with ports installed in their skulls might, dialysis-like, have their brains flushed. The goal? To extend without sleep their ability to make more money and buy more stuff.

Because the Midas cult sees humans primarily as raw material for the creation and accumulation of wealth. Just as The Market intended, praised be Its name.

David Dayen offers a fresh example this morning.

“As I have said before, the most soul-crushing, exploitative, and just plain sleaziest industries in America today will invariably have private equity firms lurking behind them,” he begins, offering several examples before turning to a new one (The American Prospect):

So the revelations in a new report from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, provided exclusively to the Prospect, should come as no surprise. In youth behavioral services like “troubled teen” centers, for-profit foster care, and services for young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (in particular services for people with autism), private equity has increased its investments, capitalizing on government health care dollars and a steady stream of at-risk youth.

Private equity’s goal isn’t to provide a safe and comfortable environment for those in its care, it’s to make outsized returns. And while private equity firms have pulled hundreds of billions of dollars in dividend and management payments out of these facilities, reports of inadequate staffing and training, substandard living conditions, physical and sexual abuse, and the use of restraints and solitary confinement have proliferated. They’re a by-product of the private equity business model.

The usual, noirish suspects are here, seeking profit wherever human need is predictable and government funding is reliable. Money has no morals.

It’s worth stopping here and asking why these facilities were privatized and pushed out to for-profit companies at all. The state has an interest in ensuring a safe environment for troubled, orphaned, or developmentally disabled youth. Anyone on the street hearing that these children were being exploited as a profit center for wealthy financiers would recoil. Yet foster care and other services have been almost entirely privatized, as a way to lighten strained government budgets. The horror show of private equity bottom-feeding is the result.

It’s who they are. It’s what they do. Probably on too little sleep.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Democrats need a new voter registration “Freedom Summer,” argues Daniel Judt at The Atlantic, if they expect to offset the raft of new voting restrictions enacted by Republican legislatures in state after state. They should field “tens of thousands of paid canvassers employed full-time by Democratic groups, people who will pound the pavement for eight hours a day in every swing state, training with veteran organizers as they go.” The kind of mobilization not seen since 1964.

There are no shortcuts, Judt argues, “No TV spot can walk a voter through their voter-registration form. No digital advertisement can wait for a voter to go find their mail-in ballot. No phone-banker can drive a voter to the polls. We have to knock.”

In many places Democrats have all but conceded, door-knocking is problematic. Homes and farms are too far apart. One does not walk up to the front door and knock. In such places around here, you honk the horn to announce your presence first if you know what’s good for you. This face-to-face work cannot get done in a summer. It takes more time and patience than that, and money statewide campaigns won’t spend on redder, low-density rural areas. Nonetheless, Democrats have to show up. If for no other reason than to prove they don’t have horns and tails. Local and state legislative races depend on it. Statewide races Democrats win in the cities are lost there.

In places such as rural Pennsylvania where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is campaigning for U.S. Senate, for example (AP):

The party’s brand is so toxic in the small towns 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh that some liberals have removed bumper stickers and yard signs and refuse to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly. These Democrats are used to being outnumbered by the local Republican majority, but as their numbers continue to dwindle, the few that remain are feeling increasingly isolated and unwelcome in their own communities.

“The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,” said Tim Holohan, an accountant based in rural McKean County who recently encouraged his daughter to get rid of a pro-Joe Biden bumper sticker. “I feel like we’re on the run.”

The climate across rural Pennsylvania is symptomatic of a larger political problem threatening the Democratic Party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized from many parts of rural America, leaving party leaders with few options to reverse a cultural trend that is redefining the nation’s political landscape.

The lieutenant governor gets it.

Fetterman, wearing his signature hooded sweatshirt and gym shorts despite the freezing temperatures, described himself as a champion for “the forgotten, the marginalized and the left-behind places” as he addressed roughly 100 people inside a bingo hall in McKean County, a place Trump carried with 72% of the vote in 2020.

“These are the kind of places that matter just as much as any other place,” Fetterman said as the crowd cheered.

People out there know they’ve been neglected. More conservative by nature, when higher-profile Democrats fail even to acknowledge their existence by going there, people vote their more conservative leanings. Even if they are not as propagandized by right-wing media as the left believes.

But the Democratic Party has to get its act together.

Movement Labs has a pilot program in several red and purple states (I am an adviser) to create Democratic infrastructure in smaller counties of 100,000 or less in population. But Movement Labs is not the Democratic Party. Stacey Abrams is due all the credit she gets for her voter registration and turnout efforts in Georgia. But Stacey Abrams is not the Democratic Party. Barely 100 of Georgia’s 159 counties have oganized Democratic committees.

State by state, I’ve been emailing the 4th edition of my get-out-the-vote planning guide to county chairs where they can be found. Tennessee went out on Monday. The list compiled in December was no good by mid-February. Half or more of the state’s county committees saw leadership turnover. Of 95 counties, 85 had contact information. While the open rate could be better, only one (1) county in Tennessee opened the email, and that was a blank auto-reply.

God help Democrats running for Congress in Tennessee. They’ll be lucky to get much help from local committees.

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

There’s a big story today in Politico about polling done on behalf of the DCCC that shows if Democrats don’t confront the culture war issues they are going to lose badly in November. I can’t say that I agree with the entire premise — it seems to suggest that Dems need to agree with Republicans. (They call it “correcting the record.”) But the idea that Democrats can ignore the culture war and run on kitchen table issues alone is ridiculous, in my view. The country is in a collective snit over any number of things and the Democrats have plenty to work with to attack their opposition if they’ll use it.

Like this, for instance:

A group of Republican senators is pushing back against efforts to create a federal “no-fly” list for unruly passengers, arguing that doing so would essentially draw an equivalence between terrorists and opponents of mask mandates.

The eight Republican senators voiced their concerns in a letter Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland. They noted that, according to Federal Aviation Administration data, the vast majority of reports of unruly passengers have been related to the mandated use of face masks amid the pandemic.

“While we strongly condemn any violence towards airline workers, there is significant uncertainty around the efficacy of this mandate, as highlighted by the CEO of Southwest Airlines during a recent Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing,” the senators wrote. “Creating a federal ‘no-fly’ list for unruly passengers who are skeptical of this mandate would seemingly equate them to terrorists who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland.”

The senators argued that the Transportation Security Administration “was created in the wake of 9/11 to protect Americans from future horrific attacks, not to regulate human behavior onboard flights.”

The eight Republicans signing the letter are Sens. Cynthia M. Lummis (Wyo.), Mike Lee (Utah), James Lankford (Okla.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Kevin Cramer (N.D.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), John Hoeven (N.D.) and Rick Scott (Fla.).

Earlier this month, Delta Air Lines chief executive Ed Bastian sent a letter to Garland urging him to support industry efforts to create a national list that would bar those convicted of onboard incidents from travel. Airlines maintain their own lists of passengers who are barred from traveling but don’t share information with other carriers. Bastian said Delta has 1,900 people on its no-fly list.

As recently as last weekend, two American Airlines flights were forced to divert from their destinations because of unruly passengers. In one case, a passenger attempted to open the main passenger door while the aircraft was in flight.

In a separate incident, a Delta Air Lines passenger allegedly tried to open an emergency door in flight last week in the hope that other passengers would record him sharing his views on coronavirus vaccines. The passenger is now facing federal charges.

Unions representing airline workers have argued that a centralized list is necessary because a passenger banned from one airline can simply book a flight on another carrier.

In a statement Tuesday, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA called the eight senators’ letter “irresponsible and political brinkmanship that puts our economic security at risk right along with our lives.”

“Homeland security is homeland security,” said the union’s president, Sara Nelson. “Our flights are under attack by a small number of people and it has to stop. … This is not about ‘masks,’ and the worst attacks have nothing to do with masks. You’re either for protecting crew and passengers from these attacks or you’re against.”

I can’t think of anything that annoys people more than these disruptive jackass airplane passengers. I feel quite sure that includes nearly all Independent voters and many Republicans as well. It’s ridiculous. That GOP Senators would defend them is an unbelievable free shot and the Democrats should make sure everyone knows about it.

These are little things but they symbolize bigger issues. The Republicans have prolonged this pandemic by pandering to anti-vaxxers and crackpots and it’s made all of us more miserable. Yes, if Democrats use those issues they will no doubt offend right wing Republicans. So what? They aren’t going to vote for them anyway. These people deserve to be criticized. This nihilistic behavior has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, lots of long term illness and a society that’s coming apart at the seams because they refuse to do what’s necessary. You want a culture war weapon? THIS is a culture war weapon. They should deploy it.

This piece at Slate discusses the failed lawsuit by Sarah Palin against the New York Times. The good news is that both the judge and the jury agreed that Palin did not prove that the Times acted with malice when they made a mistake, quickly corrected, back in 2012.

But this is not the end of it, unfortunately:

Sitting in the observer section at the trial—along with Sarah Palin’s boyfriend, James Bennet’s wife, a bunch of journalists, and a few curious members of the public—there was one especially intriguing figure. Charles Harder was the lead attorney when Hulk Hogan sued Gawker out of existence. And Harder watched every minute of the testimony in this trial, taking copious notes on a legal pad. He wasn’t working with Palin’s legal team (though he’d worked with them before, in that Gawker case). He was just watching.

During breaks in the proceedings, I peppered Harder with questions. How much did he think this trial was costing Palin? Answer: More than $1 million. How much would it cost to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court? Answer: $5 million, give or take. Was it possible Palin’s attorneys were working on a contingency basis, or maybe doing this just for the publicity? Answer: Basically, no.

Hulk Hogan didn’t pay his own legal costs (meaning, in part, Harder’s invoices) when he took Gawker to court. Silicon Valley grotesquerie Peter Thiel famously footed Hogan’s bill—secretly at first, until he was outed as Hogan’s backer. When it comes to this trial, I just can’t bring myself to believe that Palin paid for it out of pocket. If indeed she didn’t, and someone else was funding this, I wondered where that money was coming from. I asked Harder if he knew. He said he didn’t.

Then I asked Harder one last thing: Why exactly was he here? He was taking all those notes—was it for an article he’s writing, or a book? No, he said, “I’m just here to observe and learn.”

That was the most chilling thing I heard in that courtroom. What exactly did he learn from Sarah Palin’s (so far) failed effort to sink the Times? How exactly is he planning to apply those lessons? My fear is that, before long, we’ll all find out.

He even threatened this poor blog once for posting something that was shown on MSNBC that he claimed wasn’t true. He’s done it to others as well, on behalf of Donald Trump. He is formidable.

What I can’t figure out is why the right wing media would be in favor of this sort of thing. Do they think they will be immune?

I agree with conservative Matt Lewis on this:

I’m calling for a full and complete shutdown of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD), just until we can figure out what the hell is going on.

The dinner, which has been given the green light for the first time since 2019, will occur on April 30 with Daily Show host and standup comic Trevor Noah headlining.

Let’s start with the obvious reasons that this dinner is a mistake.

The ostensibly objective news media and the people who hold the levers of power in this country shouldn’t be schmoozing at a lavish event, filled with a weekend of before and after-parties in its orbit. But if the falsely modest “nerd prom” weren’t already distastefully tone-deaf, the regular addition of Hollywood celebrities into the mix only screams “elitist” a little louder.

This is especially true at a time when many working-class Americans are struggling. It just solidifies the perception that the elites are all in bed together, and that the “politics” they see on TV is just cynical cosplay.

Ok, fine, the WHCA dinner is for charity. But do journalism scholarships really erase the stink of this pageant of hypocrisy? Journalism degrees are often worthless, and leave lots of wide-eyed kids in debt.

One defense of this indefensible dinner is that this is the one night to encourage comity and civility between professionals (journalists and politicians) who normally face off in an adversarial relationship.

The real reason for this night is more self-indulgent: The media dresses up and celebrates itself. Ironically “nerd prom” is for the “cool kids” of media.

Unfortunately, he then goes on to whine that the comedians are mean to Republicans and the liberal media treats them with disdain. He also blames Obama for making fun of Trump at the 2012 event which made Trump seek revenge by becoming president. It’s lame.

Nonetheless, his first critique is correct. It’s a very stupid event that should be scrapped. I would say that I’m surprised they are reviving it but I’m not. They love to cosplay being stars on the red carpet.