Politics Plus

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

So, we have midterm elections coming up. And our last big election two years ago was hacked big time, ncluding by foreign influence. And, ever since Citizens United, we’ve been seeing the huge influence of money, and particularly “dark money,” in our elections, much of it taking the form of donations through and from PACs. Now, even though states are responsible for handling their own elections, we do have a Federal Election Commission. an agency that enforces the regulations brought into being by legislation, court decisions, and executive order – an agency which was already overwhelmed during the Obama administration, and I hope no one thinks that ANY agency is going to fare any better under the present regime than it did before it.

In fact, PACs are making new loopholes, exploiting old ones, and just flat ignoring some regulatory requirements, notably deadlines. And lest anyone think it is just right-leaning PACs doing this, I’m sorry to have to say that left-leaning PACs can be just as sneaky.

Mere days after it sprang to life in a burst of paperwork, the new super PAC Red and Gold spent nearly $1 million attacking Rep. Martha McSally, a battleground GOP Senate candidate favored by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But first, Red and Gold took a step to hide its tracks.

Red and Gold sent a brief note to the Federal Election Commission informing regulators that it would file monthly reports showing who financed the group. Its first disclosure “will be due on September 20,” the super PAC wrote — more than three weeks after McSally’s Arizona Republican primary is over.

It wasn’t the first super PAC to pull that trick: The scheme is part of a sharp escalation in super PACs avoiding reporting requirements and keeping voters in the dark about their funding until after key elections. Two other groups aired more than $3 million in attack ads in West Virginia’s GOP Senate primary this year and used the same method to dodge the FEC until after the May 8 vote. Overall, at least two dozen super PACs that spent millions of dollars in recent elections used loopholes to get out of revealing their donors, according to information compiled by the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog organization.  [emphasis mine]

I must point out that most of these groups ended up making their filings and revealing their donors, but – and this is the point – not until after the elections they were spending in were over. One of the ways to do this is to spend money only very close to the election, so that by the time the filings are done, the election will be over. and then, some actually didn’t file, at all. Once a super PAC has found a loophole, others tend to say “Oh, that’s cool – let’s do that.”

That’s what happened with Highway 31, the super PAC that spent more than $4 million supporting Democrat Doug Jones during the contentious Alabama special election in 2017. In an unprecedented move, Highway 31 reported debts to its vendors but no donors on its pre-election FEC report — essentially, the super PAC’s ad-makers loaned the group the funds to spotlight allegations that Republican Roy Moore had been banned from a shopping mall because he made advances toward a 14-year-old girl. It wasn’t until after Jones won that Highway 31 revealed it was largely funded by Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC run by allies of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The entities which on paper “loaned” money to Highway 31 could wind up in a bind under Federal law – or not – it might be very difficult to prosecute, and the PACs themselves are in the clear. They followed their reporting schedules. You might think that Republicans would be eager to prosecute Democrats if they could; but now a Republican PAC, Ohio First, which is pushing Jim Renacci for Senate (against Sherrod Brown), is doing the same thing. It has reported debts but no spending, and therefore, also no donors.

Both these PACs actually copycatted two competing PACs in West Virginia, one of which was funded by Democratic donors, and the other by the Senate Leadership Fund, Mitch McConnell’s super PAC. Oops.

Ohio First is one of the PACs which actually went so far as to disregard a key filing deadline, so the FEC could conceivably slap it with a $17,000 fine for that. However, as Campaign Legal Center, a group which is watching these PACs and filing complaints, points out, if such fines are imposed, the PACs will likely consider them “a small fee for keeping their donors secret.” In other words, a cost of doing business.

Alecto and Tisiphone, perhaps you could look into this. I need Megaera to address a different problem – to wit, the way that SOME white women use tears as a weapon, and how, these days, some of the most affected victims are women of color.

So, here’s Lisa Benton Cooper, a reporter (now an ex-reporter) at KSHB-TV 41 Action News. She already has a discrimination complaint against the station going, but is still employed there. She also has a Facebook page, which is set to private, viewable only by herself and friends. A couple of those friends are women colleagues at the station. On that page, she shared an article from The Guardian about a diversity conference in Sydney, Australia, written by Ruby Hamad, who is a journalist and a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales.

The article is an opinion piece, but it’s solidly backed with citations; apparently Ms. Hamad grasps the concept of research. It’s not a blanket condemnation of all whites, or all white women, or whatever. But “two white females” who saw the post and who worked at the station complained to human resources (no word on whether they were in tears at the time). Thereafter, Cooper was suspended for making “broad, unfair characterizations of white women as a group based on their race and gender.”

Learning of this, Ruby Hamad took to Twitter. Well, you can hardly blame her – by the action they took in criticizing her article, the “two females” in fact proved its point. But in the process, it was Lisa Benson Cooper who was hurt. Megaera, I don’t know what you’ll have to do to get the point across – but you Erinyes are very good at doing that. If you have to get the point across to every white woman in the world – well, every one who – weaponizes tears; some of us don’t – you will certainly need reinforcements. We’ve seen a lot of it lately – Barbeque Becky comes to mind, but she’s far from the only one. Good luck.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Everyone who reads PP on a regular basis, or even on a strong occasional basis, has, I’m sure, seen a comment from me saying that Republicans kill – it’s what they do. Their tax policies kill. Their immigration policies kill. Their health policies kill. Their infrastructure policies kill. Their environmental policies kill. If they succeed in destroying Social Security, that will kill. Their gun policies most assuredly kill, as does their policy on capital punishment – those are almost too obvious to mention. They simply don’t care if people get hurt even unto death. It’s who they are. It’s what they do.

But the fact is that people who are not Republicans, who are actually trying their best to produce legislation which will not kill, which will actually help the neediest, which will keep everyone safe, can also come up with legislation which can hardly be said to be people-friendly. In fairness, when legislators are trying to do better, that usually happens when two or more pieces of unrelated legislation which were not considered together when passed create a conflict.

That appears to me to be what has happened in California, and has only come into prominence in the news due to the devastating fires they are having and fighting. Under their licensing laws, they have a provision that an ex-convict cannot become certified as EMTs. That actually makes sense when one considers that actions which send people to prison, especially serious ones, have a tendency to demonstrate a lack of empathy. No one wants to be “helped” by an EMT who lacks empathy.

But now they are having these fires, and they are simply beyond the capacity of existing firefighters to handle. So they have turned to prisons, because there are programs under which prisoners who meet certain conditions can work on fighting fires (I know that’s not just California; in fact, I believe it’s true in many states, including mine, with slight differences, but it’s the ones who are incarcerated in California and serving under California rules, and will presumably stay in California after release, who are running into the conflict.)

Inmates with a pretty clean rap sheet are allowed to participate in the fire program inside of the prison. However, prisoners with the backgrounds of arson, kidnapping, sexual crimes, escape attempts, those in gangs and those who are facing a life sentence are disqualified. Those who are selected are required to undergo fire safety training and a physical exam. 

According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the program has attracted over 2,000 California prisoners, men and women, including 58 juveniles (17 or close, I’m sure – they have to pass a physical, remember). I say “attracted” because the program is attractive for those who can qualify. They can get paid – a nominal amount to be sure, currently $1.00 per hour – and probably more importantly to them, they get multiples of normal good-behavior time off of their sentences for doing this work. They also get to do something which cannot be called boring, and to interact with non-incarcerated professionals, which has to be a plus.

What they cannot do is ever be a professional firefighter after release, at least not in California, because California requires every professional firefighter to be a certified EMT. And, as ex-convicts, they are disqualified from getting that certification.

Setting aside the issue of whether the pay is fair when it’s so low – an issue which is addressed in my linked article but is such a different can of worms that I don’t want to go there here – it appears to me that a fair solution would be to address the licensing provisions to provide some kind of waiver for former convicts who have fought fires while incarcerated to get EMT certification. It could be contingent on having a firefighting job or job offer. It could require the convict to have spent a minimum number of hours on firefighting while incarcerated. I can see setting some restrictions. But a total denial doesn’t seem to me to be in anyone’s best interests. Alecto, perhaps you could discuss this with some state legislators in California? And I believe California will be getting a new Governor in January also, Governor Brown being term-limited out. Perhaps you could also talk with him (the two who survived the jungle primary are both “him”s).

A situation I want to briefly touch on on North Carolina is, alas, very different. In 2016, a couple of things happened in North Carolina: for one, Roy Cooper (D) defeated Pat McCrory (R) [and a good thing – McCrory is a real piece of work]. For another, the North Carolina Supreme Court, whose justices are elected, became majority left. This caused Republican heads in the State Legislature to explode, and they have been acting like a greatly augmented version of the Three Stooges ever since. You may have seen some of the twists and turns; I have, but my linked article is the first time I have seen the latest, and seen them together.

This year, conservative Justice Barbara Jackson is running for re-election, and the GOP supermajority in the North Carolina General Assembly did everything they could to stack the deck in her favor. Overriding the veto of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, Republicans passed a law making judicial elections partisan, out of the belief voters get confused into voting for liberals by the lack of party labels. They then eliminated partisan primaries, forcing all candidates to run on the same ballot, believing multiple Democrats would run against Jackson and split the vote. 

I think we all know Republicans are not good with facts. It did not go as they expected. Former Clinton Justice Department and civil rights attorney Anita Earls is running as a Democrat, against two Republicans, Jackson and Raleigh attorney Chris Anglin. Now, remember, party affiliations are on the ballot only because the Republicans made it so. Now that it’s working against them, they quickly passed a law to strip Anglin of his party affiliation on the ballot. (Anglin sued, resulting in ballot delays – it’s still in the courts.)

Not content with one law for just one person, they also wrote a law to require anyone whose last name begins with an “E” to appear last on the ballot. You just can’t make this stuff up – I know I couldn’t.

The irony of all this is that, as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern has noted, “If Republicans hadn’t intervened, Jackson might have coasted to reelection on incumbency advantage alone.” But all of their attempts to tip the electoral scales are blowing up in their face. 

Megaera and Tisiphone, it sounds like you have already been really, really busy in the State Assembly (“Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad,” as Euripides didn’t say.) Do keep it up.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I received an email from Everytown for Gun Safety (with a petition link) which read, in part,

[W]e may be down to the wire, but we’re putting everything we have into this fight to stop downloadable guns from becoming a reality — and they’re feeling the pressure.

Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo stated that he will look at the State Department’s decision to allow a company to post its gun blueprints online. This decision would enable anyone, including terrorists, convicted felons, and domestic abusers, to download plans to print functional, untraceable guns out of plastic — and all they would need is a 3D printer. Plus, many of these guns would be undetected by metal detectors, putting our planes, our music festivals, and our government buildings in danger.

BUT — they’re feeling the heat, so we can’t let up just yet! … 

Wondering why I hadn’t heard a whole lot more about this than I have, I went to Snopes to find out more. Well, actually, I went to Google, but from Google I went to Snopes because I trust them to do the homework. The craziness in the world and on the internet has become too much for a Mom-and-Pop site to handle, so there are many new names there since the time when most articles were written by Barbara Mikkelsen, but I still trust the site to have standards, now in their hiring as well as in the actual writing. Here’s what I found out.

What has been going on – and going on since 2013 – is basically one lawsuit by one company which in 2013 developed both software and schematic files which, printed on a 3D printer, allowed anyone who might download these to create a fully functional plastic gun, designed to fire handgun rounds, with interchangeable barrels for different calibers. Besides tha ammunition iitself, the only metal part in the whole thing is a nail which serves as the firing pin.

On May 5, 2013, the company – Defense Distributed – uploaded these files to the internet. Days later, the State Department demanded the files be removed, on the basis that these files were in violation of both the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in arms Regulations (ITAR for short).

The files came down, and the founder of Defense Distributed, Cody Wilson, filed a federal lawsuit in the Western District of Te

Photo courtesy of Cody Wilson

xas seeking an injunction to permit the specs to stay on line while he and the State Department were working this out. The request was denied, appealed, denied again, and appealed again, this time to the Supreme Court, which, this last January, declined to hear the appeal.

By July 10, Defense Distributed and the State Department, partly under Rex Tillerson and latterly under Mike Pompeo, had reached a settlement, including that the State Department would issue a public statement specifically excluding 3D printed designs from the ITAR. It also included the provision that “designs for any non-automatic firearms up to .50-caliber, including the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, could be distributed online.”

If this sounds to you like not so much a settlement as a giveaway, you are not alone.

The administration “capitulated in a case it had won at every step of the way,” said J. Adam Skaggs, the chief counsel for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “This isn’t a case where the underlying facts of the law changed. The only thing that changed was the administration.”

Alex Kasprak, who completed the article for Snopes, went to a UCLA Law Professor, Eugene Volokh, an expert on the First and Second Amendments to clarify the implications of this case.  Volokh explained that, while a settlement agreement is not technically a legal precedent, this settlement agreement is likely to embolden others to design and publish similar content.

What sets a precedent? A published opinion from a court, preferably an appellate court. But that’s in the narrow sense, the way lawyers would talk about this precedent. If you’re asking whether this settlement will have broader effect on other companies, the answer is absolutely.

This is the federal government, and the federal government usually tries to be fairly consistent in its actions, and it can be easily called on by people if it’s being inconsistent. So the settlement, I think, will have substantial practical effect. Not just in Defense Distributed, but on other companies that are doing similar enough things.

Volokh also stated that he feels the case has not been primarily a Second Amendment case but rather a First Amendment case.

You can, of course, print it in any color.

[I]t’s quite a plausible argument about Defense Distributed’s own rights. It says we want to put up information … and you are stopping us from doing that and stopping us from communicating to other Americans about this sort of thing. So that’s a pretty serious argument.

Where does – where can – the government draw a line on dangerous information? Well, it’s not certain. A case in the late 70’s went to the courts when The Progressive wanted to publish an article titled “The H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It, Why We’re Telling It.” Using zero classified information, but relying only on publicly available data. However, that case was never decided on its merits. It was rendered moot when another publication published the information first.

The court was the Western District of Wisconsin; as I say, they never decided the case, but they did issue a prelimiary injunction against publication, stating

A mistake in ruling against The Progressive will seriously infringe cherished First Amendment rights. If a preliminary injunction is issued, it will constitute the first instance of prior restraint against a publication in this fashion in the history of this country, to this Court’s knowledge.

A mistake in ruling against the United States could pave the way for thermonuclear annihilation for us all. In that event, our right to life is extinguished and the right to publish becomes moot.

So, as of this moment,

As of 1 August 2018, Defense Distributed will start publishing detailed steps on how to create a variety of guns that require no registration or background check to manufacture. While the broader issue may well be litigated further, the current stance of the U.S. State Department is that Defense Distributed will not be violating any export control laws when they do so.

Well, Tisiphone, you represent Vengeful Destruction, but I like to think that what you in fact represent is OPPOSITION to the same. Far more easily than in the 1970’s I see a great potential for proliferation of vengeful destruction in the way this situation is unrolling. Mike Pompeo, according to the email, has promised to “look at it.” Maybe you, or all three of you, can twist his arm, or any other body parts which may occur to you, to get him to look at it in a rational manner and see it rightly. But maybe even that would not help – under the current regime.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

Cairo, Illinois is the southernmost town in Illinois. It sits in a little pocket formed by the Missouri and Ohio Rivers as they flow into each other to become the Mississippi River. On the other side of the Missouri River is Missouri; on the other side of the Ohio River is Kentucky.

Google map of Cairo, Illinois

Cairo has a history, starting in the first half of the nineteenth century when multiple attempts were made to establish it (chartered 1818, settled 1836-37, collapsed 1840, re-chartered 1857, and this time it took off.) Not all of the history is pretty. In 1842, after the first collapse, Charles Dickens visited it. He used it as the prototype for the City of Eden in Martin Chuzzlewit. I haven’t read all of Dickens, and Martin Chuzzlewit is one I have missed, but apparently, for City of Eden, read Republic of Gilead.

After the re-chartering in 1857, Cairo enjoyed a period of prosperity through trade. In 1862, General Grant made it a headquarters, and had Fort Defiance built there, but this diverted much of its trade commerce to Chicago (where the railroads went), and it never really recovered. Instead, its economy devolved into agriculture, lumber, and sawmills.

Being, as it was, at an important confluence of important rivers, and with steamboat transportation increasing, it couldn’t be kept totally down, and the railroads returned, and the ferry industry took off, since there were no bridges. By the early 1900s, it had seen a number of mansions and public buildings erected, many of which still exist and are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Race relations were abysmal, and lynchings were sufficiently prevalent that even some whites were lynched (by other whites). Bridges constructed in 1929 and 1937 ended the ferry industry, and we all know what the airlines did to the railroads everywhere, so the 20th century was one of economic decline for Cairo. Not that they would have anyway, but with many jobs lost by the 1960s, the white population of Cairo did not take kindly to the Civil Rights Act, nor to any persons of color attempting to exercise their civil rights.

The Interstate being built in 1978 to bypass Cairo was its economic death knell. From its highest population of 15,203 in 1920, it had fallen to 2,831. Why am I going through all of this? Because, already a ghost town, it has become a target for Ben Carson’s HUD.

In April 2017, Demarion Duncan learned he’d have to move. That in itself would not be the end of the world; the McBride public housing project in Cairo, Illinois, where the 12-year-old Duncan lived with his mom, dad, and two younger siblings, was falling apart…. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development had been debating what to do with public housing in Cairo for seven years and two presidential administrations, since federal inspections first uncovered grift, decay, and racial discrimination at the Alexander County Housing Authority. The mostly black residents of McBride and Elmwood, a sister project nearly two dozen blocks north that housed about 80 families, lived in squalor, while the white housing authority brass, under Executive Director James Wilson, blew public funds on boozy Vegas getaways and prioritized maintenance of the predominantly white high-rise across town. In the final year of the Obama administration, HUD placed the housing authority under receivership, but it left the future of Cairo’s public housing unresolved.

Ben Carson resolved public housing in Cairo by destroying it. Well, except the white part. He condemned McBride and Elmwood and gave residents a year to move out, on the grounds that Cairo was a dying town. (One suggestion was that a few tenants of McBride – there would not be room for all – could move into the white project. In a town with a history like Cairo’s, if I were a person of color, I would not be happy about that prospect, even though it might be the only way not to have to leave town.) Demarion Duncan and his classmates were facing the prospect of being scattered all over the midwest. Now in sixth grade, they had mostly been classmates forever. With the help of their teacher, Mary Beth Goff, they wrote letters to Ben Carson.

Magnolia Manor, a post-bellum Victorian mansion, now being operated as a museum in Cairo, Illinois

I won’t go into detail on the letters’ content. Some are cited and quoted in Mother Jones. They were mailed in April 2017.

Carson found himself on the defensive. The students made CNN. The president watches CNN. Carson wrote back promptly. In a warm but brief letter, he thanked the students for their messages. “You are living proof of the old saying, ‘Home is where the heart is,’” he wrote. In a separate letter to the superintendent, he got to the point. “I’ve had teams of experts searching for any viable solution to preserve affordable housing opportunities in Cairo, from rebuilding to utilizing manufactured housing,” he wrote. “Sadly there are very limited viable financial options for a nearly bankrupt housing authority.”…

“The kids said, ‘We don’t even think he read our letters,’” Goff told me. “There’s no way he could have read what we wrote” and written what he did.”

A lot has been said about Ben Carson not knowing what he is doing. Well, “Carson may not know what he’s doing, but he knows what he wants. He once told an interviewer that poverty is ‘more of a choice than anything else’; by proposing to raise rents in subsidized buildings, slash budgets, and tear down homes, Carson and the Trump administration are forcing the working poor to choose something else.”

The infamous Ben Carson

I worry about everyone living in subsidized housing. The minimum rent has been $50 per month for some time. Carson has proposed tripling that. I am not in subsidized housing, I have a mortgage, but I can certainly tell you I could not afford to triple my mortgage payment. I could not afford to triple just the principal payment, leaving the interest and escrow constant. Heck, I could not afford to increase it by the $100 that tripling the minimum would impose on the poorest of the poor. Of course, states have some say in how these things are administered. The Mother Jones article will tell you plainly, if not using my words, that Illinois is not there for these people of Cairo.

Dear Furies, this story, which I have really just skimmed over, is as convoluted as – well, as a federal witch hunt would be if there were such a thing. You will have to call up every unnamed Fury to begin to deal with it (I hope some are trained as accountants.) We have to try.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.