Powell-ing Through Inflation

The markets believe Fed Chair Jerome Powell will announce a 75-basis point hike in interest rates on Wednesday instead of 50 as the reality of trying to stop runaway corporate greed and price hikes falls on his shoulders.

 

Just one month ago, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said that the central bank was not "actively considering" raising interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point to fight inflation. But after Friday's consumer price index report showed inflation is rising faster than expected, Wall Street is worried that Powell may have to change his tune. 

Stocks plunged Friday and were down sharply again Monday across the globe. The yield on the benchmark US 10-year Treasury bond rose to 3.27%, the highest level since November 2018. 

Investors are nervous because the Fed could be heading into uncharted territory. A three-quarter point rate increase would certainly show that the Fed is really worried about inflation. 

But a move of that magnitude, although not unprecedented, is exceedingly rare. The last time the Fed hiked rates by 75 basis points was in the Alan Greenspan era: November 1994.  

To be sure, the market still has some doubts that the Fed will be that aggressive at this Wednesday's meeting. According to fed funds futures listed on the CME, traders are pricing in a 60% chance that the central bank will raise rates by only a half point. But expectations for a three-quarters-of-a-point increase have gone up from just 3% a week ago to 40% now. 

Economists at Barclays think the Fed will announce a three-quarter-point hike Wednesday "to reinforce credibility and get ahead of inflationary pressures. The broader game plan will likely be to raise rates as expeditiously as possible." 

Jefferies economists have also now joined the 75 basis point camp, saying in a report over the weekend that "inflation isn't peaking, it isn't even plateauing. It is still accelerating, and it will likely do so again in June." 

The Jefferies economists added that even though "the Fed hates surprising the market ... the sharp increase in inflation expectations" is "an escape clause and gives Powell an out."

 

I would bet on the 75-point hike, and more in the future, and since the real cause of "inflation" is record profiteering by corporations, the rate hikes are going to stop the Biden Boom in its tracks.

 

Things are going to get bad in the months ahead.  

Abrams, Elementary

In Georgia, the race for Governor between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams is suddenly all about who will for paying teachers more.

Democrat Stacey Abrams proposed raising the minimum salary for Georgia public school teachers to $50,000 a year if she’s elected governor, part of a four-year plan that would hike the pay of K-12 educators by $11,000.

Abrams said Sunday she would finance the estimated $412 million annual cost over each of the next four years by relying upon revenue from Georgia’s budget without increasing taxes or imposing new fees. She framed the $1.65 billion plan as essential to retain teachers and improve the state’s education system.

“When our pipeline is thinning and our exodus is increasing, we are losing the fight for our children’s future,” said Abrams. “We need a governor who does not see education as an election-year gimmick but sees our responsibility as a guarantee for the strongest future for our people.”

The Democrat’s proposal would more than double Gov. Brian Kemp’s pledge in 2018 to hike annual teacher pay by $5,000, a promise he made weeks before the election that became a central part of his appeal to a broader set of voters after a bruising primary.

At the time, Abrams derided the Republican’s proposal as a “gimmick” and said he couldn’t be trusted to carry it out. Kemp signed a record $30.2 billion budget earlier this year that included the final installment of the promised pay hike.

In a scathing response, Kemp’s campaign predicted that Abrams was understating the price tag of her proposal and asserted that she would have to levy new taxes to pay for it.

“Following the lead of her pals in the Biden administration, Stacey Abrams’ latest Hail Mary proposal for over $2 billion in new state spending annually joins an ever-growing pile of pie-in-the-sky plans that would make inflation worse and require higher taxes on Georgia families to pay for it all,” said Kemp spokesman Tate Mitchell.

Abrams rolled out her proposal in tandem with the endorsement from the Georgia Association of Educators, an influential advocacy group that represents roughly 23,000 teachers. Lisa Morgan, the association’s president, assailed a Republican-backed school policy overhaul that Kemp engineered.

“Adjusted for inflation, our educators are making less now than they did in 1999,” Morgan said outside the group’s headquarters, adding: “It’s not just about salaries. It’s about educators being treated as the professionals they are.”

 

So if I'm reading this right, Kemp used COVID relief money that Republicans voted against to raise minimum teacher salaries from $34k to $39k, and he wants a gold medal for it.

I can't imagine why Georgia, like just about every other red state who refuses to pay teachers more money because they don't want public education at all, continues to have a critical teacher shortage.

Please note Kemp's response is not that teachers shouldn't earn more than $39k, it's that somebody has to pay for it.

Here's an idea. Maybe move around some of those billions thrown at policing every year to buy surplus military gear to use against Georgians, particularly Black Georgians.

Again, just an idea.

Last Call For Brazil Nuts, Con't

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is going down the Trump "stolen election"route as he faces a vote later this year, but unlike Trump, it looks like Bolsonaro may actually get his military coup plan should he lose.

President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has for months consistently trailed in the polls ahead of the country’s crucial presidential race. And for months, he has consistently questioned its voting systems, warning that if he loses October’s election, it will most likely be thanks to a stolen vote.

Those claims were largely regarded as talk. But now, Mr. Bolsonaro has enlisted a new ally in his fight against the electoral process: the nation’s military.

The leaders of Brazil’s armed forces have suddenly begun raising similar doubts about the integrity of the elections, despite little evidence of past fraud, ratcheting up already high tensions over the stability of Latin America’s largest democracy and rattling a nation that suffered under a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.

Military leaders have identified for election officials what they say are a number of vulnerabilities in the voting systems. They were given a spot on a transparency committee that election officials created to ease fears that Mr. Bolsonaro had stirred up about the vote. And Mr. Bolsonaro, a former army captain who filled his cabinet with generals, has suggested that on Election Day, the military should conduct its own parallel count.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who has spoken fondly about the dictatorship, has also sought to make clear that the military answers to him.

Election officials “invited the armed forces to participate in the electoral process,” Mr. Bolsonaro said recently, referring to the transparency committee. “Did they forget that the supreme chief of the armed forces is named Jair Messias Bolsonaro?”

Almir Garnier Santos, the commander of the Brazilian Navy, told reporters last month that he backed Mr. Bolsonaro’s view. “The president of the republic is my boss, he is my commander, he has the right to say whatever he wants,” Mr. Garnier Santos said.

With just over four months until one of the most consequential votes in Latin America in years, a high-stakes clash is forming. On one side, the president, some military leaders and many right-wing voters argue that the election is open to fraud. On the other, politicians, judges, foreign diplomats and journalists are ringing the alarm that Mr. Bolsonaro is setting the stage for an attempted coup.

Mr. Bolsonaro has added to the tension, saying that his concerns about the election’s integrity may lead him to dispute the outcome. “A new class of thieves has emerged who want to steal our freedom,” he said in a speech this month. “If necessary, we will go to war.”

 

Unlike America, Brazil has been under a military dictatorship before for a couple of decades, and seems to be heading right back for another round. 

Republicans are absolutely paying attention here.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

Senate GOP Minority Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's plan to maneuver Democrats into taking 100% of the blame for the failure of any meaningful gun safety legislation in the wake of multiple mass shootings in the last month is working as intended.

The emerging package is anchored around extra scrutiny for gun buyers under the age of 21, grants to states to enact so-called red flag laws and new spending on mental health treatment and school security. While translating the agreement into legislation will take time, the group of senators is expected to announce that a significant number of lawmakers in both parties are behind their proposal responding to rising gun violence.

Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) are the lead negotiators on the proposal, which would need 60 votes to reach the Senate floor once legislative text is completed.

More senators are poised to back the bill to demonstrate its breadth of support — to that end, a broader bipartisan group has held its own regular meetings on guns over the past three weeks since the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Those talks have included Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).

The most significant piece of the proposal would subject gun buyers 21 and younger to scrutiny of their criminal records as juveniles. It’s proved tricky to write because each state has different laws governing juvenile records. The package is also expected to close the so-called boyfriend loophole, broadening firearms restrictions on those who have abused their romantic partners.

The emerging framework comes nearly three weeks after 19 children and two teachers died in the Uvalde shooting. The killings in Texas occurred roughly a week after a racist mass shooter killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y. March for Our Lives, a gun safety group founded after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., held nationwide demonstrations on Saturday urging Congress to address gun violence.

While Sunday’s announcement is a major breakthrough, translating a framework into an actual bill often proves challenging. During last year’s bipartisan infrastructure negotiations, for example, more than six weeks passed between negotiators’ announcement of a framework and Senate passage of the resulting bill.

While the nascent framework is modest compared to Democrats’ long-running push for expanded background checks, it could result in a high-water mark for GOP support for any level of gun restrictions. And at the moment, it’s the closest the chamber’s been to a broader gun safety deal since 2013, when Manchin and Toomey wrote bipartisan legislation in response to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Most Republicans and a handful of Democrats blocked the Manchin-Toomey legislation. And while the Senate tried again in 2019 to reach a deal after mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, then-President Donald Trump disengaged amid the House impeachment inquiry. The most significant recent new gun law came from Murphy and Cornyn, which strengthened the background check system.

Democrats would have preferred to expand background checks to more prospective gun buyers and ban assault rifles, though those moves lack the necessary support among Republicans. A handful of Republicans are supportive of raising the age to purchase assault rifles to 21, something Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has expressed personal openness to, but neither McConnell nor Cornyn have pushed that as part of the package, and the idea may not get the 60 votes needed to survive a GOP filibuster.

Given those challenging dynamics, Senate Democratic leaders are willing to take a more modest deal than the sweeping restrictions most in President Joe Biden’s party support.

 

Observations, as usual: first, there's nowhere in the article that mentions the ostensible leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer.  The fact that he's not listed as being involved in talks (when he absolutely is) is a HUGE clue that Politico here knows this is all window dressing and that McConnell is running the show.

Again.

Second, there are so many outs here that Mitch can take that you'd think this was a Joe Manchin project. For now, the framework has 60 senators and that means any single one can scuttle the entire deal and blame the other side.

We've been here before, at the "agreed upon framework" stage, and it's all gone to hell.  See: Build Back Better.

Just another day in Gunmerica.

Sunday Long Read: The Man Next Door

Another solid true crime story this week from The Atavist, as Greg Donahue takes us through the story of Tim Brown, just another non-descript pilot enthusiast in the plane-crazy town of Love's Landing, Florida in late 2020 whose dark secret was about to come to light.

On the morning of December 2, 2020, Tim Brown got up early to start a fire. The night before, an unseasonable cold front had descended on Love’s Landing, Florida, where Brown lived with his wife, Duc Hanh Thi Vu. By 8 a.m., the mercury in the thermometer had yet to reach 40 degrees. At the bottom of the cul-de-sac where the couple lived, a thin layer of frost glistened on the long grass runways that extended through the quiet neighborhood: Love’s Landing is a private aviation community, home to pilots, plane engineers, and flying enthusiasts.

As heat from the fireplace warmed the house, Brown headed to the small hangar he’d built right outside. Nearly everyone in Love’s Landing owned a plane, and Brown was no exception. He’d just had the engine of his gleaming Tecnam P2008 replaced, and despite the chill in the air, the morning was shaping up to be calm and clear. Perfect weather to take the plane up.

A carpenter by trade, Brown had spent much of his life enjoying the outdoors. In his younger days, he was an expert scuba diver and deep-sea fisherman. But now, at 66, his age had finally caught up with him. His close-cropped hair had gone gray, and health issues had him in and out of the hospital. During the past year alone, he’d suffered two heart attacks. Flying offered the chance, as Brown put it, “to continue the fun.” He’d fallen in love with aviation years earlier, after taking a charter trip with friends in Alaska. Flying sure beat staring at the trees on either side of the road, he said. This was the kind of enthusiastic attitude that made Brown popular in Love’s Landing. Soon after moving there in 2017, he and Vu became, as a neighbor put it, “one of the best-liked couples in the airpark.”

Brown had just raised the hangar door when an unmarked Dodge Durango roared into the driveway, along with a Marion County police cruiser. As Brown turned toward the commotion, a law enforcement agent in a tactical vest leapt out of the SUV. He was pointing an MK18 short-barreled automatic rifle at Brown’s face. “Step back! Raise your hands!” the agent shouted.

Brown did as he was told. Officers from a half-dozen federal agencies were fanning out across the property. “Are you Tim Brown?” the lead officer demanded as he approached the hangar. Brown nodded. “I’ve got a warrant for your arrest,” the officer said. Agents moved in formation to clear the hangar and headed toward the main house to execute a search warrant.

Brown’s neighbors would later recount their confusion at the fleet of official vehicles facing every which way in the street. No one knew what Brown had done. But whatever they imagined, the truth was almost certainly stranger.

For the previous 35 years, Tim Brown had been living a carefully constructed lie. He wasn’t just an aging retiree with a passion for aviation. In fact, he wasn’t Tim Brown at all. His real name was Howard Farley Jr., and law enforcement alleged that he’d been the leader of one of the largest drug-trafficking rings in Nebraska history.

As he was placed under arrest, a wry grin spread across his face. “I had mentally prepared myself for being caught,” he would later say. “When it happened, with men pointing guns at me, the only thing to do was smile.”

 

The note here is that I spent summers with my brother and cousin in Lincoln, Nebraska with my grandparents about the same time Tim Brown, who was actually Robert Farley, was becoming one of the top coke dealers in Lincoln in the 80's, and just the concept of "Lincoln's top coke dealer in the 80's" is wild if you've ever been to Lincoln.

Of course we had no idea what was going on. Lincoln was flat, boring, had a couple of good mini-golf places and Gramps worked in an office building downtown. It's still a hell of a tale.

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

In Idaho today, domestic terrorist group Patriot Front pretty much announced to anyone who was listening that they were going to "disrupt" the Pride event in Couer d'Alene.What could have been an ugly, if not lethal event was stopped when a local citizen called the police on a U-Haul van full of white guys looking like Tom Clancy's Division 2 video game NPCs.

Dozens of masked members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front were arrested late Saturday as they prepared to stage a riot near a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, authorities say.

Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White told reporters that 31 individuals affiliated with the group were in police custody and charged with conspiracy to riot.

The group had traveled from all over the country to sow chaos during the LGBT+ event, White said. They came from states like Texas, Utah, South Dakota, Arkansas, Oregon, and Virginia. Law enforcement was quick to derail the group's plans, he said, thanks to “one concerned citizen.”

“We received a telephone call from a concerned citizen who reported that approximately 20 people jumped into a U-Haul wearing masks, they had shields, and ‘looked like a little army,’” he said.

“They had shields, shin guards, and other riot gear with them, including at least one smoke grenade,” White said, adding that paperwork including an apparent “operations plan” had also been found in the group’s U-Haul. It was not immediately clear if they had any firearms.

Video from the scene of their arrest showed several members of the group kneeling in the grass, their hands zip-tied behind their backs, as counter-protesters jeered and shouted “losers!”

Approximately 20 members of the group, all clad in their trademark balaclavas, blue shirts and khakis, could be seen kneeling as police officers stood around them. Local reports said members of the group were unmasked before being placed in police vans.

One video purportedly filmed at the scene showed a cop telling onlookers the group had been detained thanks to “informants in their chats,” but the police chief disputed that at an evening press conference, saying law enforcement was tipped off only by “one concerned citizen.”

“It appears they did not come here to engage in peaceful events,” Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris was quoted telling Coeur d'Alene Press.

Patriot Front didn’t immediately return a request for comment from The Daily Beast on Saturday evening.

Patriot Front is a white supremacist, neo-fascist group that likes to travel inconspicuously: in U-Haul trucks. Police reportedly stopped the group's U-Haul on Saturday a short distance from the “Pride in the Park” event, which had already been the target of a counterprotest by a conservative motorcycle club called the Panhandle Patriots. That group had announced that they would go “head-to-head” with attendees of the Pride event and host their own event called “Gun d’Alene.”

White said law enforcement had received information ahead of the Pride event about “a number of groups planning to disrupt today’s activities.”

 

So yes, this was going to be a brutal attack on people at a public park, specifically targeting the LGBTQ+ community. No doubt this was a full on terrorist attack, by an avowed white supremacist domestic terrorist group.

They were stopped this time. The people we care about in the LGBTQ+ community need them to be stopped every time, because they are absolutely under attack by right-wing reactionary terrorists and their Republican allies in Congress and in statehouses all over America.

The assault isn't going to stop until the Republicans are ripped out of power.

Hearing Aides For America, Con't

As I said Friday, the purpose of the hearings is the make the case to America why Donald Trump must be arrested, tried, and convicted of sedition. 

The New York Times has come to a similar conclusion.

The first prime-time hearing into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol this past week confronted the fundamental question that has haunted Mr. Trump, the 45th president, ever since he left office: Should he be prosecuted in a criminal court for his relentless efforts to defy the will of the voters and hang on to power?

For two hours on Thursday night, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack detailed what it called Mr. Trump’s “illegal” and “unconstitutional” seven-part plan to prevent the transfer of power. The panel invoked the Justice Department, citing charges of seditious conspiracy filed against some of the attackers, and seemed to be laying out a road map for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to their central target.

Several former prosecutors and veteran lawyers said afterward that the hearing offered the makings of a credible criminal case for conspiracy to commit fraud or obstruction of the work of Congress.

In presenting her summary of the evidence, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, demonstrated that Mr. Trump was told repeatedly by his own advisers that he had lost the election yet repeatedly lied to the country by claiming it had been stolen. He pressured state and federal officials, members of Congress and even his own vice president to disregard vote tallies in key states. And he encouraged the mob led by extremist groups like the Proud Boys while making no serious effort to stop the attack once it began.

“I think the committee, especially Liz Cheney, outlined a powerful criminal case against the former president,” said Neal K. Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama.

“A crime requires two things — a bad act and criminal intent,” Mr. Katyal said. By citing testimony by Mr. Trump’s own attorney general, a lawyer for his campaign and others who told him that he had lost and then documenting his failure to act once supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Katyal said, the panel addressed both of those requirements.

 

The whole point is to make to case to people why the Justice Department must charge Trump. Whether or not that happens, well. 

 

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is now entering into its fifth month, and while Ukrainian forces have put up a good fight, the reality of Moscow's attrition strategy is coming into view as Kyiv is literally running out of ammo because the curent flow of weapons isn't working quickly enough. 

Unless something changes and very soon, Biden and the other NATO nations are going to have to decide whether they are going to put troops and materiel in-country and fight for Ukraine, or leave it to the tender mercies of Putin.

 

The euphoria that accompanied Ukraine’s unforeseen early victories against bumbling Russian troops is fading as Moscow adapts its tactics, recovers its stride and asserts its overwhelming firepower against heavily outgunned Ukrainian forces.

Newly promised Western weapons systems are arriving, but too slowly and in insufficient quantities to prevent incremental but inexorable Russian gains in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, which is now the focus of the fight.

The Ukrainians are still fighting back, but they are running out of ammunition and suffering casualties at a far higher rate than in the initial stages of the war. Around 200 Ukrainian soldiers are now being killed every day, up from 100 late last month, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky told the BBC on Friday — meaning that as many as 1,000 Ukrainians are being taken out of the fight every day, including those who are injured.

The Russians are still making mistakes and are also losing men and equipment, albeit at a lesser rate than in the first months of the conflict. In one sign that they are suffering equipment shortages, they have been seen on videos posted on social media hauling hundreds of mothballed, Soviet-era T-62 tanks out of storage to be sent to Ukraine.

But the overall trajectory of the war has unmistakably shifted away from one of unexpectedly dismal Russian failures and tilted in favor of Russia as the demonstrably stronger force.

Ukrainian and U.S. hopes that the new supplies of Western weaponry would enable Ukraine to regain the initiative and eventually retake the estimated 20 percent of Ukrainian territory captured by Russia since its Feb. 24 invasion are starting to look premature, said Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, an adviser to the Ukrainian government on defense and intelligence issues.

“The strategies and tactics of the Russians are completely different right now. They are being much more successful,” he said. “They have more resources than us and they are not in a rush.”

“There’s much less space for optimism right now,” he added.

Ukrainian forces remain resolute. In a cafe in the front line town of Slovyansk, two Ukrainian soldiers on a break from the trenches nearby recounted how they were forced to retreat from the town of Dovhenke, northwest of Slovyansk, under withering Russian artillery fire. Thirty-five of their 100-strong unit were killed in the assault, typical of the tactics Russia is using. “They destroy everything and walk in,” said one of the soldiers, Vitaliy Martsyv, 41.

“There is nothing there,” Andriy Tihonenko, 52, said of Dovhenke. “It’s all burned down.”

As troop fatalities mounted, the surviving soldiers felt “more motivated to hold our position,” Tihonenko said. To retreat after their comrades were killed defending the town, he said, would have felt like treating their deaths as insignificant.

But eventually, the defensive line was no longer effective, the two men said. With more than one-third of their force killed, the remaining soldiers had no choice but to pull back.

“Sometimes you feel down,” Tihonenko said. “But then you realize war is war — and you have to finish it.”

But the odds against the Ukrainians are starting to look overwhelming, said Danylyuk, the government adviser.

“The Russians are using long-range artillery against us, often without any response, because we don’t have the means,” he said. “They can attack from dozens of kilometers away and we can’t fire back. We know all the coordinates for all their important targets, but we don’t have the means to attack.”

Ukraine has now almost completely run out of ammunition for the Soviet-era weapons systems that were the mainstay of its arsenal, and the Eastern European countries that maintained the same systems have run out of surplus supplies to donate, Danylyuk said. Ukraine urgently needs to shift to longer-range and more sophisticated Western systems, but those have only recently been committed, and in insufficient quantities to match Russia’s immense firepower, he said.

Russia is firing as many as 50,000 artillery rounds a day into Ukrainian positions, and the Ukrainians can only hit back with around 5,000 to 6,000 rounds a day, he said. The United States has committed to deliver 220,000 rounds of ammunition — enough to match Russian firepower for around four days.

The majority of the American M777 howitzer artillery guns that U.S. officials said would enable Ukraine to match Russian firepower are now in use on the battlefield, according to the Pentagon. Yet the Russians continue to advance.

 

We're at the most critical juncture here. The Ukrainians have put up an amazing fight, but the Russians just have the numbers.

 

Putin's plan from the beginning was to force NATO into a shooting war in order to save Ukraine.  If Putin wins here, he can take the rest of the old Soviet Bloc and more, and everyone will know that NATO won't risk fighting back.

 

That plan is working pretty well right now.  Something on the NATO side has to change this month, or Donbass is lost, and the rest of Ukraine may follow.

Hearing Aides For America

The January 6th Committee hearings got underway last evening, and the criminality recounted in the primetime show included that yes, the Committee absolutely believes that Donald Trump organized a conspiracy to commit sedition, that everyone in Trump's inner circle, including his family, were in on it, that former VP Mike Pence got cold feet at the end and Trump wanted active harm to come to him as a result, and that multiple sitting Republicans in Congress wanted full pardons after the coup succeeded and Trump remained in power.

 

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was one of “multiple” GOP lawmakers who asked President Trump for pardons given their roles in seeking to unwind the 2020 election results, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said in its first hearing Thursday night.

Perry’s office forcefully denied the allegation.

Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Perry, who helped introduce former President Trump to a mid-level Justice Department attorney willing to forward his election fraud claims, was among several seeking pardons due to their roles.

“As you will see, Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon. Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election,” Cheney said.

Perry spokesman Jay Ostrich denied that Perry sought a pardon from Trump.

“Laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie,” Ostrich told The Hill.

 

But we know for a fact that GOP lawmakers wanted pardons. They knew what they were doing was seditious conspiracy.

CNN reported in January 2021 that “several” GOP lawmakers who were involved with the rally at the Ellipse in front of the White House that Trump spoke before the Capitol riot sought pardons from Trump. GOP lawmakers who spoke at the rally include Arizona GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, as well as Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).

And according to an October 2021 Rolling Stone report, Gosar floated the idea of “blanket pardons” for some of those organizing the Ellipse rally of Jan. 6.

The Jan. 6 committee issued subpoenas to Perry, Biggs, and Brooks. In a May letter requesting information from Biggs, the committee said that Biggs was identified by former White House personnel as being part of “an effort by certain House Republicans after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon for activities taken in connection with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

 

And that's because Trump wanted to become dictator, as the NY Times's Peter Baker tells us.

In the entire 246-year history of the United States, there was surely never a more damning indictment presented against an American president than outlined on Thursday night in a cavernous congressional hearing room where the future of democracy felt on the line.

Other presidents have been accused of wrongdoing, even high crimes and misdemeanors, but the case against Donald J. Trump mounted by the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol described not just a rogue president but a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power at all costs.

As the committee portrayed it during its prime-time televised hearing, Mr. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election. According to the panel, he lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president.

“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the select committee. “The violence was no accident. It represents Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.”

 

The purpose of the hearings is the make the case to America why Donald Trump must be arrested, tried, and convicted of sedition. 

They made that case last night alone.

Most incriminating were the words of Mr. Trump’s own advisers and appointees, played over video on a giant screen above the committee dais and beamed out to a national television audience. There was his own attorney general who told him that his false election claims were “bullshit.” There was his own campaign lawyer who testified that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome. And there was his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, who acknowledged that she accepted the conclusion that the election was not, in fact, stolen as her father kept claiming.

Much of the evidence was outlined by the lead Republican on the committee, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has been ostracized by Mr. Trump and much of her own party for consistently denouncing his actions after the election. Unwavering, she sketched out the case and then addressed her fellow Republicans who have chosen to stand by their defeated former president and excuse his actions.

“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone but your dishonor will remain,” she said.

 

These bastards have to fry. I know in the past I've said that Trump will never be convicted, and that any federal court proceedings will almost certainly lead to nationwide attacks on Democrats, but it has to happen. After what I saw last night, we have to do it.

 

More than ever, I am convinced that the alternative to perp-walking Trump is far worse.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Yet Again

As the January 6th hearings get underway this evening, Michigan GOP gubernatorial hopeful Ryan Kelly, running on a platform of being a January 6th white supremacist domestic terrorist and openly bragging about it, has been arrested for being a January 6th white supremacist domestic terrorist.  Who knew, etc.

FBI agents arrested Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley on misdemeanor charges related to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The arrest and search that unfolded at Kelley's home in Allendale outside of Grand Rapids add more uncertainty to a chaotic race for governor that has seen five Republican candidates blocked from the ballot for submitting fraudulent nominating petition signatures.

Prosecutors filed four charges against Kelley, 40. They are knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct; knowingly engaging in any act of physical violence against person or property in a restricted building or grounds; willfully injuring or committing depredation against property of the U.S.

If convicted, Kelley faces maximum punishment of up to one year in federal prison. He was freed on a personal recognizance bond following a brief hearing in federal court in Grand Rapids.

Kenzi Niewiadomski, one of Kelley’s neighbors in his Allendale subdivision whose sister lives across the street from him, said she witnessed FBI agents leading Kelley away from his home in handcuffs Thursday morning. Kelley's wife and children left the home with backpacks in hand and got into a family van moments after Kelley was taken into custody, Niewiadomski said.

“He was just cooperating,” she said. “What are you going to do at that point?”

Niewiadomski said she can’t personally stand Kelley as a politician. He has a campaign flag flying below an American flag on the flagpole in his front yard.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment,” Niewiadomski said. 

 

Kelley will certainly make bond, and if he's smart, he'll hold a press conference to say specifically that being a white supremacist domestic terrorist is exactly why Republicans should vote for him in the primary in August. 

Keep an eye on this asshole.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Homeland Security is warning that online extremist and white supremacist forums are pushing for more Uvalde-style school shootings as part of Republican "Great Replacement" theory rhetoric.

The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security warned on Tuesday that people in online forums known for hosting violent extremist content are lauding the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas—and are pushing others to commit further attacks.

“Individuals in online forums that routinely promulgate domestic violent extremist and conspiracy theory-related content have praised the May 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and encouraged copycat attacks,” DHS officials wrote in a bulletin released Tuesday morning.

DHS officials explained that others have capitalized on the shooting—during which a lone gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers—to push conspiracy theories, including the false claim that the federal government faked the shooting to boost support for gun control measures.

DHS officials also noted that the alleged perpetrator of a mass shooting that killed 10 in a majority-Black neighborhood of Buffalo, NY 10 days before the Uvalde shooting, was motivated by racist conspiracies he found online; the shooter that killed 23 in a majority Latinx neighborhood in El Paso in 2019 was animated by many of the same theories.

Officials advised readers to “maintain digital and media literacy” and practice recognizing “false or misleading narratives” to protect themselves against proliferating misinformation.

Mass shootings have fomented similar conspiracies in the past: after a gunman killed 20 kids at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, Austin-based far-right provocateur Alex Jones pushed the lie that the federal government had staged the shooting to drum up support for gun control measures.

After Buffalo, claims that the shooting was an orchestrated ‘false flag’ operation bubbled up again. Jones’ website ‘Infowars’ trumpeted that he’d predicted a false flag operation at a grocery store in the days after; an Arizona state lawmaker is now under investigation for endorsing the conspiracy on Telegram following the shooting.

 

Nobody should be surprised that a shooting at a predominately Hispanic school and a shooting at a predominately Black neighborhood grocery store are both being praised by those encouraging more shootings.

I expect things to get worse, as they have steadily since 2016.

Birthday Blast

It's my birthday, so I'm taking the day off.  I need it. (I think we all need a day off.)

If any really important  news breaks, I'll get it in Last Call or so.

Thanks for being with me all these years, folks.  America has changed dramatically in some ways over these nearly 14 years that I've been doing this, and documenting those changes has been a vital part of dealing with them.

It's something I can control, you know?

Have a good one.  I'll be around tomorrow.

Last Call For Housing, Afire

The housing market is absolutely going to fold soon, it's just unsustainable with rent gouging like what's going on in New York City, where you now need well into three times the median national wage to even be considered for an apartment at four times the median rent.

 

New York City’s housing market has always been competitive, but renters are facing a particularly tough flat hunt now. The median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan reached $3,995 in April, a record 38% year-over-year increase and well above pre-pandemic levels, data from the real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman showed.

In New York City, it’s standard for landlords to apply what is known as the 40x rule to judge someone’s ability to pay their rent. In order to qualify as a tenant, a person’s annual gross income should be at least 40 times the monthly rent. To rent a one-bedroom at Manhattan’s current median price, that means an income of $159,800 or more. In Brooklyn, where the median one-bedroom apartment goes for $2,900 a month, anyone with an income of less than $116,000 annually will also struggle to qualify.

Meanwhile, the median household income in New York City was $67,046 from 2016 to 2020, according to the latest data available.

New York City rents point to a deepening affordable housing crisis in the city as it struggles to bounce back from the pandemic. It also calls into question the feasibility of mayor Eric Adams’ repeated pleas to have employees return to work in person.

Rising rents impact New Yorkers particularly hard because two-thirds of the population rent, twice the national rate, according to a report by The New York Times. The pain extends to aspiring home owners too—a recent Zillow survey found that half of US home buyers are crying during the process.

Prices are forecasted to rise even higher in the summer. The warmer months have always been primetime for moving as it catches new students who relocate to the city, and families with kids tend to use the school holidays to move.

In April, bidding wars accounted for more than one in five new lease signings in Manhattan, according to Douglas Elliman. In those instances, landlords received an average premium of nearly 11% above asking price. It’s a sharp contrast to just a year ago when landlords were regularly handing out one month’s free rent and other concessions like waived utilities and amenities fees to attract tenants.

Several theories exist for surging rent prices. The one-bedroom flat is reportedly the most in demand as couples forced to spend more time with their other halves during the pandemic split up, sending more single flat hunters into the market.

It also coincides with large corporates, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Google, recalling workers back to the office. With the future of work likely some kind of hybrid, people are willing to spend more money on their apartments to have space for a home office.

Another factor is Airbnb, which is distorting the market. There are more entire-apartment Airbnb rentals available in New York City than standard rental apartments by several thousand units, Curbed reported recently, squeezing supply even further.

So how do people get around these expensive prices? Many shack up with someone—a roommate, a partner, or they find a guarantor with at least 40x the rent who agrees to pay if the tenant defaults.

Another option is to downsize. The median studio rent was $2,994 in Manhattan and $2,674 in Brooklyn for the month of April. However, even at those lower rates, anyone not earning six-figures will be put out.

 

It won't be long either.  Be careful, because once the housing market augurs into the tarmac, the economy goes with it.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Greg Sargent looks at the growing Proud Boys seditious conspiracy being charged by the federal government over January 6th and what it means for the white supremacist domestic terror networks in 2022.

 

It’s tempting to dismiss all the 1776 talk as something akin to adolescent revolutionary cosplay. But the way 1776 comes up in the indictment — combined with some surprising new details it reveals — should prompt a serious look at how far-right extremist groups genuinely think about the long struggle that they envision themselves waging.

In short, groups such as these generally are driven by a dangerous vision of popular sovereignty. It essentially holds that the will of the truly authentic “people,” a flexible category they get to define, is being suppressed, requiring periodic “resets” of the system, including via violent, extralegal means.

Such groups aren’t going away anytime soon. We should understand what drives them.

 

I mean it's white supremacist dogma, but there is somewhat more to it than that.

In this context, while all the 1776-oriented talk might seem like posturing, it points to something real and enduring on the far right.

It isn’t easy to pin down the Proud Boys, who tend to define themselves as defenders of Western civilization. But Kathleen Belew, an expert in right-wing extremism, has discerned hints of white power ideology in some of the group’s symbolism and messaging.

As Belew notes, the white power movement includes opponents of non-white immigration, militia groups, and white supremacists, loosely bound by an ideology centered on the violent defense of whiteness. On Jan. 6, numerous such groups and adherents attacked the Capitol.

Tarrio’s views appear pretty convoluted. In a 2021 interview, he admitted that the 2020 election had not been stolen from former president Donald Trump, and went through the motions of disavowing the Jan. 6 violence. Yet he openly celebrated the “fear” that members of Congress felt of “the people,” and helped mobilize Proud Boys to mass around the Capitol that day.

So how to make sense of that, as well as the broader tangle of ideologies on the far right?

A helpful framework comes from Joseph Lowndes, a scholar of the right wing at the University of Oregon. As Lowndes notes, a longtime strain in American political culture treats procedural democracy as itself deeply suspect, as subverting a more authentic subterranean popular will.

For such ideologues, what constitutes “the people” is itself redefined by spasmodic revolutionary acts, including violence. The people’s sovereignty, and with it the defining lines of the republic, are also effectively redrawn, or even rebirthed, by such outbursts of energy and militant action.

In this vision, Lowndes told me, the “people” and the “essence of the republic” are “made new again through acts of violent cleansing.” He noted that in this imagining, the “people” are something of a “fiction,” one that is essentially created out of the violent “act.”

“This regeneration through violence is going to be with us for a long time," Lowndes said, "because it is fundamental to the right-wing political imagination.”

Lurking behind all the 1776 cosplay, then, is a tangle of very real radical and extreme ideologies. Importantly, they’re sincerely believed in, and they aren’t going away.

 

Straight white Christian men are "we the people" and everyone else is suspect. Rights, citizenship, and lives can be taken at a whim.

 

In the end, they're bullies.

 

Bullies need to get punched in the mouth.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

As mass shooting numbers continue to mount this year, and Americans are dying daily from gun violence, a new CBS News poll finds an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that Congress and President Biden can do something about Gunmerica, but nearly half of Republicans say that mass shootings are the price we pay for being free.

Most Americans continue to favor stricter gun laws, but feel that getting them passed is stymied by big money and inaction by politicians. And Americans say the nation's gun debate — no matter where they stand on it — is influenced more by partisanship than public safety. Polling shows they're partly right.

There is bipartisan support for measures that are applied to people — such as background checks and a federal "red flag" law, which most Americans think could do a lot to help prevent mass shootings. But there are more partisan differences over what to do about the guns themselves.

Democrats look for more gun restrictions — including banning AR-15s — and fewer people having guns in general, and also support background checks and more mental health services. But Republicans tend to oppose AR-15 bans and feel that allowing more people to carry guns and more armed security would stop mass shootings. They think that these measures, along with better mental health screening, would be most effective in preventing mass shootings.

Americans overall overwhelmingly believe mass shootings can be prevented, if we try. But Republicans, in particular, are less likely to think so — four in 10 Republicans say mass shootings are, unfortunately, something we have to accept in a free society.

In all, most don't expect Congress to pass any significant changes to gun policy in the coming months.

 

Americans overwhelmingly want Republicans in Congress to stop blocking measures.

 

 

 

But the only issue that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Manchin will allow to be considered is a red flag law. Everything else is already off the table in Senate negotiations, as the bill being considered will almost certainly be a copy of Florida's red flag laws under then GOP Gov. Rick Scott.

The senators at the helm of negotiating gun legislation are looking to the Florida law passed in 2018 after the school shooting in Parkland as a potential blueprint for the nation, Sen. Chris Murphy said Sunday.

Murphy (D-Conn.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the bill passed by a Republican legislature and signed into law by then-Republican Gov. Rick Scott has elements that senators are considering as they look to pass gun legislation following a school shooting that took place in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers.

“Well, Sen. Scott, then-Gov. Scott, passed that law in Florida because it was the right thing to do, but also because Republicans saw it as good politics. We have to make the case for Republicans that right now this is good politics,” Murphy said.

The Florida law, known as the red flag law, raised the age to buy long guns, including AR-15s, from 18 to 21, added a three-day waiting period, created a program to allow trained school staff to carry guns and invested $400 million in mental health and school security.

“The template for Florida is the right one. Which is do some significant mental health investment, some school safety money and some modest, but impactful, changes in gun laws,” Murphy said. “That’s the kind of package we’re putting together right now. That’s the kind of package I think can pass the Senate.”

 

It won't pass the Senate, despite McConnell singing on to his own bill. It won't get more than five or six Republican votes for a filibuster, meaning it will come up well short of sixty votes, and everyone will go "oh well". 

Nothing's going to happen.  Nothing ever will happen, not with Senate Republicans and with Joe Manchin. The 70%+ people who expect nothing from Republicans are right.

It's just another day in Gunmerica.