Politics Plus

Sean Patrick Maloney is a Congressman from New York’s 18th District. But he is running in November to be the Attorney General of the State. I received an email from him which caused me to drop my jaw – not that I didn’t know that certain feminine products are taxed by many states on the grounds thay they are luxuries; I was aware of that. (Sean may have had to look it up for this, but he knows now.) The whole thing is just so petty that I think it needs to be shared as necessary, up to November and likely beyond.

Bustle dot com picked up the story, as did a couple of other outlets, but I wouldn’t call it wide exposure at this point. I am furnishing the link, though I’ll mostly quote the email – which is a trifle less organized, because he is PISSED OFF.

The Republican leadership in Congress just PUNISHED my office for buying tampons for our staff and visiting constituents, Joanne.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Last week, I made the “mistake” of including feminine hygiene products in my office’s purchases — along with tissues, hand sanitizer, and first-aid supplies.

And now, the GOP is DEMANDING that I personally write a check to reimburse the $37.16 we spent on feminine hygiene products, because in their own words, “tampons are NOT office supplies”. They think they’re a luxury.

Joanne, this incident says everything you need to know about how the Republican Party views women.

I’m running to be New York’s next Democratic Attorney General because we must fight back against this type of discrimination our mothers, sisters, and daughters continue to face everyday.

In 2016, the State of New York stopped taxing women’s periods by ending its discriminatory ‘tampon tax.’

Because Joanne, women shouldn’t be punished for simply being women.

Women’s rights aren’t a matter of convenience — they’re a matter of equal justice under the law.

But the GOP is hanging on to their aging, sexist policies that are clearly discriminatory towards women.

At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court could be shaped in Donald Trump’s image for a lifetime, we need to elect leaders who won’t hesitate to take down these blatantly sexist policies.

Let’s put an end to these ludicrous, sexist policies, Joanne.

Sean Maloney for New York

-Sean Patrick Maloney
Candidate for New York Attorney General

SMDH.

I don’t put links to donation sites in these posts; though of course they are not hard to find, I want to be reportorial raather than pushy.

Bustle did point out a couple of things Sean left out, such as the roughly $5.9 BILLION that women in the US need to spend each year on sanitary supplies. (Now you know why many women do the happy dance when they reach the age of menopause. But I assure you, and our younger sisters, that we haven’t forgotten what it was like.) Oh, and the fact that the House Administration Committee claims he is lying. (I know who I would and wouldn’t believe, and I’ll bet you do too.) And the fact that Sean wrote his personal check to the committee – while making the Twitter video he posted to publicize the insanity – sorry, that’s insanitea.

I’m sure I don’t need to point out that the next Attorney General of New York will inherit any and all cases regarding Donald J. Trump, his family, and his staff, and the breach by any of them by any laws of the State of New York. Not living in New York, I can’t vote for him, but I certainly encourage anyone who can to do so.

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 admit that I sat on this story for a few days after running it by TC. That was because I consider it so important, that I wanted to make sure it got the maximum possible attention that I can bring to it. I don’t have a lot of power that way, but at least making it a Furies article will make it expected, and will get it some degree of email promotion. I do hope everyone who sees it will promote it too, particularly ayone who is volunteering with a campaign. The campaign you are working may already be aware, but if not, they need to be. Bring it to the campaign manager.

Robert L. Borosage is a leading progressive writer and activist. He created a range of progressive organizations including most recently the Campaign for America’s Future, ProgressiveMajority, and ProgressiveCongress.org. He guided the Institute for Policy Studies for nearly a decade. He served as issues director for the Jesse Jackson 1988 presidential campaign, and consulted on many progressive campaigns, including Senator Paul Wellstone and most recently, Representative Jamie Raskin. A contributing editor of The Nation, Borosage’s articles have been published by Reuters, the Huffington Post, Progressive Breakfast, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Borosage is not just some guy who blogs, and he didn’t just fall off the turnip truck either. He has the experience and he has the credentials to know what he is talking about. And he is talking about what may well turn into one of the ugliest elections in history – and will, if Trump and Steve Bannon – currently running around Europe – have anything to say about it. He is talking about 2016 on steroids. He is talking about the Trump campaign relentlessly framing every House and Senate election as Trump versus Pelosi. Can Trump do that? Maybe. Last Tuesday’s primaries were noteworthy for the progressives who won their primaries. But they were also noteworthy, some of them, on the Republican side, with what passes for Republican moderates, including incumbents, being defeated by mouth-frothing Trump candidates.

Trump will reprise the themes of 2016: Trump against the failed political class, America First against the feckless elite globalists, and, of course, the politics of racial fear and division.

Trump will take credit for the economy, touting the benefits of his top-end tax cuts. But, Bannon warns Republicans, “ads on tax cuts alone [are] not going to resonate.”

The key is Trump’s right-wing nationalist populism. Trump will posture on trade, take on the Chinese, stand up for the American worker, and claim that companies are coming back home.

“The wall,” Bannon argued, is central to this. It is more than “totemic.” Immigration “is about not just sovereignty. It’s about jobs,” Bannon said. Trump has limited the flow of “massive illegal immigration,” Bannon claimed (incorrectly), and “that’s why we have the lowest black unemployment in history…and wages starting to rise particularly in agriculture.”

So, Bannon predicted, when the fiscal year ends in September, if the Congress doesn’t include “full funding” of the wall in the continuing resolution, Trump will shut down the government.

Borosage is leaning heavily here on an interview Fareed Zakaria did with Steve Bannon from Italy. But he also points out that Bannon’s predictions sound very much like the things that are coming out of Trump’s mouth. Of course, Trump as a right-wing populist is a yooge lie. But it is also a lie we will have to respond to. How, then, should we respond?

Well, not by praising globalism. Globalism sucks, and pretty much everyone in the bottom 90%, Republican and Democrat, can see that. And not by arguing that America IS already great, either. “Forty percent of the country can’t afford the price of basic goods, and those costs are still rising faster than wages. The soaring rate of suicides and decline in life expectancy for two years running might sober the cheerleaders a bit.”

Instead, we need to take him on directly. “Race-baiting politics can’t be ducked; they must be confronted. And Trump’s fake populism has to be exposed and contrasted with the real thing.”

The strongest response, as research by Demos has suggested, is to expose the truth. Trump and the Republican Congress are hurting most Americans with kickbacks for the rich, cuts in education, and attempts to roll back health care, Medicare, and Social Security. Then they try to put the blame on the poor, blacks, and recent immigrants, using racial appeals to divide us and distract us from the heist they are running on working people.

I’m going to go all Star Wars for a minute here – and I’m not even a real fan. But even I could get a chuckle out of the elaborate “Trumppa the Hutt” cartoon I show above. However, that was a chuckle. Trump voters have NO sense of humor. No matter how telling a cartoon or a cartoon-like image is, you might just as well show a Trump voter an egg timer. It would probably get more attention.

They are, however, susceptible to fear – that is obvious, and has been demonstrated over and over. Can we turn the fear that led them to Trump into fear of Trump? The photo of Darth Trump with the blue wash does that for me! But I am not the one who needs to be convinced. My personal opinion, as distinct from what Borosage says, is that images and words along that line may have some effect where humor will not.

A normal person would think that, with so many claiming to be Christian, they might be able to be reached through their religion. Most of us who can have tried that without much result. However, if anyone attends a church where hymns are sung (and Christ is honored), a new one has been written to call attention to the evils of our immigration policies. Its author, Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, has copyrighted it, but at the same time gives permission at the link to churches seeking to support immigrant families to use it freely. She set it to the tune of “Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded” – most people who sing hymns at all know that tune, sometimes with different words. There are a few additional details at the site, including the specific scripture it is based on. Please share it where it will do some good. Here it is:

When Jesus went to Egypt,
Safe on his mother’s arm,
His parents stayed beside him
To keep him safe from harm.
And when they crossed the border,
They were allowed to be
Together – seeking refuge –
A Holy Family.

O God, we pray for children
And families coming here
Now facing separation,
And filled with grief and fear.
For children, loved and treasured,
Are ripped from loving kin.
This deed, by any measure,
Is torture. It’s a sin!

O God, you’re like a mother
Who won’t forsake her own.
You’re like a loving father
Who welcomes his son home.
Now give us, by your Spirit,
The strength to challenge wrong,
To seek the best for children,
And keep all families strong.

Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone, we will have need of your ferocity, of your – dare I say it – fury to make it through this election cycle. Please help us, and anyone standing up for truth, to be strong.

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.”

Right after I put up a post last Tuesday about an injustice in one of the 57, give or take, main criminal justice systems in the United States, the Huffington Post (not, certainly, as a response to me, but possibly as a response to the publicity the case was getting,) posted its own article about criminal justice reform.

One way criminal justice can be addressed, of course, is through legislation. It was through legislation on Sentencing Reform that Matthew Charles was able to be released before his original sentence was up, ans was able to become a model citizen. But, because legislation itself must be very specific, particularly with definitions, just in order to be enforced, thre was an exception in that law under which Charles fell on a technicality, and when prosecutors appealed his release, the evidence was clear that under that law he should not have been released.

Another way that reform can be felt in criminal justice is through prosecutorial discretion. Unfortunately, some prosecutors just don’t have any discretion. The new judge in the Charles case practically begged the prosecution to review the case again and exercise some discretion, and the prosecution declined. She felt compelled to read into the records in her disposition that the resulting resentencing might be law, but it was certainly not justice.

One reason so many prosecutors just don’t have any discretion is due to the metrics on which prosecutors are traditionally elected (and, possibly, to the fact that they are elected at all. At the Federal level, they aren’t. Below that level, they mostly are.)

For decades, the process by which America chose its district attorneys was simple: Top prosecutors piled up convictions and issued harsh sentences, built reputations as “tough on crime,” and, most of the time, won re-election. When they retired, their assistants often replaced them. And prosecutors almost always ran for re-election unopposed.

Now all that is changing: Voters fed up with a system that has made the U.S. the world’s leading prison state have swept a wave of reform-minded district attorneys into office.

As good as that sounds, the wave is not a huge one. Furthermore, to continue the water metaphor, to make any large and lasting effects, the wave has to be strong enough to override Niagara Falls. The little drops scattered throughout the system won’t have much permanent impact unless they get together.

That is where the organization Fair and Just Prosecution comes in. Founded after the 2016 elections by Miriam Krinsky, herself a former federal prosecutor who left disillusioned after fifteen years, is a bipartisan nonprofit which

trains and connects prosecutors who want to move past an incarceration-based model of justice to one that is more equitable, humane and accountable.

The connecting is particularly important. When you are trying to swim up Niagara Falls, you need support. When you are trying to do something that has never been done before, you need to share with and learn from others trying to do the same thing. The phrase “best practices” is meaningless if there aren’t at least a few people practicing those practices who can show that they in fact work.

Now – here’s how bad it is. There are roughly 2,400 prosecuting attorneys in the United States. Twenty-four of them – just about one per cent – is the base number currectly affiliated with FJP. (There are a few more, but not enough more for the author of the article to rephrase that to “more than thirty.”) But that number can potentially grow every time a reform-minded DA is elected, and more are running this year.

On the other hand, those affiliated include some very high profile prosecutors. Larry Krasner (D) of Philadelphia. Dan Satterberg (R) of Seattle. Beth McCann (D) of Denver. Aramis Ayala (D) of Orlando. Please be sitting down and with no coffee in the mouth when you read the next sentence – Satterberg helped launch a program in 2011 which handles low-level drug and prostitution crimes outside the traditional system which has been successful enough to inspire McCann to investigate bringing it to her city.

Although the prosecutors involved in the organization don’t agree on every issue, they all agree that the criminal justice system is too large, that alternatives to incarceration can be effective and that it’s critical to address the racial disparities of the criminal justice system.

Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, you may be wondering why I am bringing up such a positive program for you. Well, it’s because I want you to put on your Eumenides hats and support the good people trying to swim up the Falls – heaven knows they need all the help they can get. And you can also hope in spreading knowledge of the FJP and specifically of the good work it is accomplishing. And that, as Krinsky says, “We can’t incarcerate our way out of poverty, mental illness and drug addiction.”

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.”

We spoke last week about language, and its use to communicate – and, more importantly, NOT to communicate or to miscommunicate and deceive. Also, to send messages that are implicit but not spoken; such messages are usually emotional rather than rational in nature, and received by the amygdala rather than the rational brain. For this reason, though they are transmitted by language, it’s not easy to counter them with language. Anyone who is sufficiently competent to recognize them as the deceptions they are is going to be competent – and inclined – to use language rationally, and that is just what does not work against these messages.

I think it may represent a recognition of that truth which leads Chauncey DeVega to write in the tone he uses addressing Trump’s comments on football, football players, the flag, and protests. I suspect he is going to get labeled “hysterical.” He isn’t. He is trying to reach sane people by communicating at least some of the raw emotion with which Trump fills his followers.

Here’s part of what Trump said this week:

You have to stand — proudly — for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there, maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.

Here’s a hint from DeVega on what this implies:

Patriotism is compulsory. Freedom of speech is undermined if not wholly overturned — especially for those who dare to criticize or otherwise oppose Donald Trump, his allies or his public. In a version of “blood and soil” racism, those who protest or otherwise dissent are to be expelled from the country — especially if they happen not to be white.

I am aware that there is no way in law that an American who has birthright citizenship can be stripped of it, and no way that a citizen can be legally deported. But – so what? We have laws against profiting from public office. We have laws against accepting any form of aid from any non-Americans in election campaigns. We have these and other laws which are being broken in plain sight every day. Why should we think this person who sits in the White House will not strip people of birthright citizenship by executive order? There is no guarantee of that.

DeVega quotes from Talia Levin on dissent, and also from Masha Gessen – actually from the same article I refer to (almost) every week in the first paragraph of this series – the section he quotes here is “Believe the autocrat.” And he raises – or attempts to raise – the alarm that Trump – and the Trump followers – are not just going to go away somehow. Authoritarian doe not JUST mean the person in power. It is a known personality type which also has follower sub-types, and it always has been and always will be with us. And in groups, it can wreak immense havoc unless it is stopped first.

Meanwhile, over at Mother Jones, there’s an interview with former FBI Special Agent Clint Watts, who, along with colleagues JM Berger and Andrew Weisburd, was among the first to notice what was going on with Russia and the Internet.

Watching this troll army inundate social media into 2015 and 2016—including rising attacks on Hillary Clinton and promotion of Donald Trump for president—Watts realized a new information war was underway. As he tracked false news stories from Russian state media that were repeated by the Trump campaign, he was surprised to see that Kremlin-linked disinformation was sometimes even driving the campaign’s own narrative. Two days before Election Day, Watts and his fellow cybersecurity analysts JM Berger and Andrew Weisburd warned that the Kremlin wasn’t just backing Trump but was seeking “to produce a divided electorate and a president with no clear mandate to govern. The ultimate objective is to diminish and tarnish American democracy.”

Mr. Watts has a book out now, Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News. And possibly the most important thrust of what he has to say is – don’t get too hung up on the Russians. Yes, they started it. But what they started was a tidal wave in which every authoritarian in the world is now getting involved.

[W]e are incredibly stuck on 2016. Russia is not going to be the biggest player in this space. Russia kicked off the tidal wave, but now they just ride it. There have been a lot of authoritarians who’ve adopted their approach, with more devastating effect on their domestic populations. Cambodia, the Philippines, and Myanmar are three great examples.

And then there’s what I call “trolling as a service.” If our politics take on this information annihilation approach, we are in real trouble…. That’s the real fear everyone should look at: not Russian active measures, but American active measures through the hiring of cutouts, contractors, and tech companies.

It’s been a bumpy ride for the last year and a half – three and a half if you count the 2016 campaigns. And it’s only going to get bumpier. I can’t ask the Furies to do for us what we need to be doing ourselves – but Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone – I can ask you to work through journalists to alert us to the dangers we are facing as they come up (or maybe just a little before they come up). And what we need to know even more is, how we should meet these dangers. Because what we are doing now is not working very well.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.