Supremely Bad Security

Turns out not only is The Great Supreme Court Dodds Decision Leak™ still without a chief suspect because it's almost certainly one of the conservative justices (or a spouse like Ginni Thomas) who is being ignored because of the political fallout, trying to even track the method of the leak is also extremely difficult because document security at SCOTUS is "middle school teacher's lounge" level.

 

Long before the leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, some Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts for sensitive transmissions instead of secure servers set up to guard such information, among other security lapses not made public in the court’s report on the investigation last month.

New details revealed to CNN by multiple sources familiar with the court’s operations offer an even more detailed picture of yearslong lax internal procedures that could have endangered security, led to the leak and hindered an investigation into the culprit.

Supreme Court employees also used printers that didn’t produce logs – or were able to print sensitive documents off-site without tracking – and “burn bags” meant to ensure the safe destruction of materials were left open and unattended in hallways.

“This has been going on for years,” one former employee said.

The problem with the justices’ use of emails persisted in part because some justices were slow to adopt to the technology and some court employees were nervous about confronting them to urge them to take precautions, one person said. Such behavior meant that justices weren’t setting an example to take security seriously.

The justices were “not masters of information security protocol,” one former court employee told CNN.

In a statement attached to the final report, the court called the leak a “grave assault” on the court’s legitimacy and the marshal of the court issued a road map to improve security.

The report and the new revelations of weak protocols come as the court is trying to protect its own legitimacy after an embarrassing leak and allegations (prompted by the recent rash of high profile cases breaking along familiar ideological lines) that it has simply become another political branch. The 20-page report and its still secret “Annex A” raised some questions as to whether the entire investigation should have been outsourced to someone without close ties to the court.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff reviewed and endorsed the Supreme Court’s internal investigation into the leak. However, the court did not disclose Chertoff had been paid at least $1 million in recent years to perform security assessments for the court.

The court declined to comment.

 

Printer logs not tracking print jobs and open document disposal "burn bags" left in public areas are the kind of things that your company's Security IAM (Identity & Access Management) folks fired on the spot, but I suspect that "Security so bad that anyone could be a suspect" is a feature of SCOTUS, not a bug.

Also, it's entrirely possible that Michael Chertoff has been ripping off SCOTUS for years, or simply taking the equivalent of an "outside contractor job" as a working bribe to keep security that lax.

Lot to investigate here, but who's going to do it? Biden can't, and Republicans in Congress won't because they know what the truth is.

Democrats Dance With Destiny

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison is set to meet with party officials from across the country in Philly today to vote on the new primary schedule replacing South Carolina with Iowa as first in the nation to decide 2024...if there even is a primary.

 

Democrats are poised to reorder their presidential primary schedule beginning next year, replacing Iowa with South Carolina in the leadoff spot as part of a major overhaul meant to empower Black and other minority voters critical to the party’s base of support.

The Democratic National Committee has worked for months to revamp the start of its voting calendar, and the full membership is set to vote on the plan on Saturday.

Although changes are still possible throughout the summer and beyond, the formal endorsement during the party’s meeting in Philadelphia is acknowledgement that the start of 2024′s primary will look very different from the one in 2020.

The proposal has been championed by President Joe Biden and would have South Carolina hold its primary on Feb. 3. That would be followed three days later by New Hampshire and Nevada, the latter of which is swapping the caucus it used to hold in favor of a primary. Georgia would vote fourth on Feb. 13, followed by Michigan on Feb. 27, with much of the rest of the nation set to vote on Super Tuesday in early March.

“This isn’t just about us,” Trav Robertson, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, told a gathering of the DNC Southern caucus earlier this week. “This is a regional thing, and it’s making us all look good.”

States voting early in the primary have major influence since White House hopefuls struggling to raise money or gain political traction often drop out before visiting areas outside the first five. The move marks a major shift from the current calendar, which had started with Iowa’s caucuses for the last five decades, followed by New Hampshire’s primary and subsequent contests in Nevada and South Carolina.

DNC chair Jaime Harrison, a former Senate candidate from South Carolina, said the new schedule “allows the South to stand up, for our voices to be heard.”

Four of the five states that will start Democrats’ new primary schedule are presidential battlegrounds, meaning the eventual party winner can lay groundwork in important general election locales. Michigan and Georgia both voted for Donald Trump in 2016 before flipping to Biden in 2020.

The exception is South Carolina, which hasn’t backed a Democrat in a presidential race since 1976, leading some to argue that the party shouldn’t be concentrating so many early primary resources there. But the state’s population is nearly 27% Black, and African American voters represent Democrats’ most consistent base of support. The change means many will have an earlier impact on the Democratic primary than ever before.

The revamped Democratic calendar could be largely meaningless for 2024 since Biden is expected to seek reelection with no major primary challenge — and the DNC has already pledged to revisit the voting calendar before the 2028 presidential election.

 

Everyone seems to think Biden is going to drop out or something, and that this is all for show for 2028, but it's still an important precedent. It was South Carolina that put Biden back in the race, with Black voters leading the way over Bernie Sanders. Biden knows in, Harrison knows it, the DNC knows it.

 

I expect this to go off relatively smoothly today. We'll see.

Last Call For Balloon Fight

Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful...Chinese spy balloon?

The spotting of a high-altitude balloon over the U.S. mainland has quickly spiraled into a diplomatic incident. U.S. officials say the object is a Chinese spy balloon, while Chinese officials called it a “civilian airship” mainly used to track weather.

The airborne vehicle was seen over Montana, home to some of the United States’ nuclear missile silos.

The balloon has since moved southeast from Montana, U.S. officials said Friday. The Pentagon has a “constant fix” on the aircraft and its direction and is collecting signals and data on it, the aide said. Reports of a second device in Canada and Alaska are inaccurate, a senior defense official told lawmakers Friday morning.

Spy balloons have previously passed over the United States, but this object is unusual for loitering overhead “for an extended period of time,” defense officials say.

The first known usage of reconnaissance balloons was by the French during the Battle of Fleurus in 1794, when they were used to spy on Austrian and Dutch troops in what is now Belgium.

Here’s what you need to know about spy balloons, and about the Chinese balloon spotted over Montana.

 

Indeed, the singular luftballoon has deflated US Secretary of State Tony Blinken's trip to China this weekend.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed his upcoming trip to China in response to the flying of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the United States, in what marks a significant new phase in the tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Blinken, who was due to depart Friday night for Beijing, said at a press conference Friday that the high-altitude surveillance balloon flying over the continental United States “created the conditions that undermine the purpose of the trip.” He informed China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in a call Friday morning that he was postponing.

“In my call today with Director Wang Yi, I made clear that the presence of this surveillance balloon in US airspace is a clear violation of US sovereignty and international law, that it’s an irresponsible act, and that the (People’s Republic of China) decision to take this action on the eve of my planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have,” Blinken told reporters Friday.

Blinken said Friday that the US was confident the balloon over the US is a Chinese surveillance balloon.

The Chinese foreign ministry claimed Friday that the balloon was a “civilian airship” used mainly for weather research that deviated from its planned course. The statement from a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry was the first admission that the airship originated in China.

“It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure,” the Chinese foreign ministry said.

“The Chinese side will continue communicating with the US side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force majeure,” the statement added, using a legalistic term to mean circumstances beyond China’s control.

 

If Beijing is indeed trolling us here, it's because they know perfectly well that Republicans aren't hesitating to use it to push their own garbage conspiracies. 

Several top Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, on Friday, called on the Biden administration to shoot down the balloon, which some military leaders had discussed. Ryder said at his briefing Friday that the military was still "reviewing options" but had not taken the balloon down because "right now we assess that there is no physical threat or military threat to people on the ground."

Trump posted on his platform Truth Social, “SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON!”

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., one of the most vocal critics in Congress of the Chinese government and U.S. policy toward China, also called on the U.S. government to bring down the balloon.

“President Biden should stop coddling and appeasing the Chinese communists. Bring the balloon down now and exploit its tech package, which could be an intelligence bonanza,” said Cotton. “And President Biden and Secretary Austin need to answer if this [balloon] was detected over Alaskan airspace. If so, why didn’t we bring it down there? If not, why not? As usual, the Chinese Communists’ provocations have been met with weakness and hand-wringing.”

 

Not to mention violent Sinophobia fron Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer.

 

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, blasted President Biden for a high-altitude balloon from China that is traveling over the continental United States not being shot down before it reached U.S. territory, speculating that it could have “bioweapons.”

Comer told Fox News’s Harris Faulkner in an interview on Friday that he is concerned that the federal government “obviously” does not know what is in the balloon.

“Is it bioweapons in that balloon? Did that balloon take off from Wuhan?” Comer said, referring to the Chinese city where the COVID-19 virus was first discovered. “We don’t know anything about that balloon.”

He said China is “clearly playing games” with the U.S., and the balloon should not have been allowed to cross into the airspace of the continental U.S.

 

Next thing you know, the House GOP will be demanding that we shut down your local Chinese take out place.

Welcome To Gunmerica, Cincy Edition, Con't

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval and the City Council are taking on Ohio Republicans with new gun safety ordnances for the city and a lawsuit to restore home rule for firearms regulations.

 

In an effort to curb gun violence, Cincinnati has two proposed ordinances for City Council to consider and has filed a lawsuit against the state.

The first ordinance addresses the safe storage of firearms to keep them away from children. The second ordinance would bar those convicted of domestic violence or subject to a protection order from processing firearms.

The ordinances are extensions or additions to existing laws. They give law enforcement and prosecutors a few more options when it comes to addressing gun violence in situations that might not rise to the level of a felony. As city ordinances, both of the new charges would be misdemeanors punishable by up to one year in prison.

However, cities in Ohio have largely been unsuccessful in passing gun legislation due to a 2006 law that has survived a challenge in the Ohio Supreme Court. Cincinnati's lawyers want to change that.

Often called the "preemption law," it bars political subdivisions (like cities and counties) from regulating firearms, their components, ammunition, and knives. Ohio's gun lobby has successfully sued Cincinnati and other cities in the past to block gun restrictions. In 2018, Cincinnati's ban on bump stocks was stopped in this way.

“Keeping residents safe is the top priority of our City government," Mayor Aftab Pureval said. "Gun safety measures save lives, and we will continue to do everything in our power to put an end to gun violence in Cincinnati.”

Last week, the city filed a lawsuit seeking that the "preemption law" be declared unconstitutional.

 

We'll see. Ohio's Supreme Court may choose to take this up and make a ruling, but I'm sure Ohio Republicans will find a way to block the law anyway by sending whatever legislation is needed to Gov. Mike DeWine's desk.

 

But at least Pureval is having this fight. Good on him.

Jobapalooza, Con't

A gigantic jobs report for January coupled with recent lowered inflation numbers means the Biden Boom is rolling on.

The number of new jobs created in January rose by 517,000 to mark the biggest increase in six months, suggesting little erosion in a dynamic U.S. labor market even though the economy has show lots of signs of weakening.

One caveat: The government’s formula to adjust for seasonal swings in hiring sometimes exaggerates employment levels in January. It’s unclear whether that was the case last month.

Yet employment grew even faster in the waning months of 2022 than previously reported, indicating the labor market is still quite robust.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, slid to a 54-year low of 3.4% from 3.5%, the government said Friday. That’s the lowest level since 1969.

Hourly pay rose a modest 0.3% for the second month in a row, reflecting the smallest back-to-back gains in almost two years.

The increase in pay over the past year also slowed again to 4.4% from 4.8%, indicating some relaxation in wage pressures. The Federal Reserve has been worried that rapidly rising wages could make it harder to bring down high inflation.

U.S. stocks DJIA, -0.11% SPX, +1.47% fell in premarket trades and bond yields rose after the report.

Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast an 187,000 increase in new jobs last month.

Big picture: The economy is slowing and the threat of recession is rising as higher interest rates depress growth. Many large companies such as Amazon AMZN, +7.38%, IBM IBM, +0.96% and Fedex FDX, +6.13% have announced layoffs and more job cuts are expected.

Yet the economy has also proven quite resilient and lots of businesses are reluctant to fire workers given how hard it was to hire them in the first place. The U.S. might even be able to avoid a recession if job losses remain on the low side.

 

With revisions, the jobs numbers were three times the expectation.  Even if adjustments were off by 100k or even 200k, it's still a rocket-powered jobs report.

 

And record-low 3.4% unemployment?  Yeah, Biden did that.  I don't know where this "recession" is going but people need to stop calling it that, because we're not in one.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Arizona Republicans are proposing to gerrymander the state's most populous county, Maricopa, into four smaller counties and to put nearly all of the state's Latino and Black residents in one of them, starving them out for resources and letting Republicans run the other three. Michael Greenberger at WaPo's Monkey Cage blog:

Counties oversee the administration of presidential elections, and elect their own important officials such as sheriffs, school superintendents and election administrators. That makes them critical units of political organization. As The Washington Post reported, critics of the push to divide Maricopa County see this as an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of elections, which are administered at the county level. The new counties, Republicans must calculate, will either vote for Republicans legitimately, or be more likely to be run by election officials who will support attempts to paint future elections as fraudulent.

In my research, I’ve analyzed the history of county division during the Jim Crow era. There I’ve found that newly created counties, like those proposed in Arizona, were more likely to administer fraudulent elections. I also find that these new counties hurt Black voters and Black officeholders the most.

From 1865 to 1920, the period from the Civil War through the early 20th century, state legislatures created more than 300 counties and significantly adjusted the borders of 1,000 existing ones. This geographic manipulation happened during the same period that the federal government ceased enforcing Reconstruction, enabling the former Confederate states to abandon democratic elections and voting rights for African Americans. During this time, new counties were created to target Black voters and officeholders, helping the then-white-supremacist-aligned Democratic Party solidify control over the South and institute Jim Crow rule.

I used the Newberry Library’s online atlas of historical county boundaries, which has data on the historical boundaries of every county in the United States, to detect changes to county boundaries and track the emergence of new counties from 1865 through 1920. Of the roughly 1,500 total counties that existed as this period ends, about 300 were established in the South during the Jim Crow era. Then, using historical election and demographic data, I compared new counties created in the South and counties targeted for manipulation with other counties in the South to see whether they had been targeted for political or racial reasons. By comparing the demographics, turnout, and partisanship of newly created counties and the counties from which their land was taken, I can determine whether the geographic changes were made with racial and political factors in mind. I also looked at whether these changes benefited the party that controlled that state’s legislature.

Over the years leading up to and during Jim Crow in the South, I find that Democratic state legislatures disproportionately ``packed’’ Black voters into new counties, thus reducing their voting power statewide by concentrating their electoral influence in fewer political units.

New counties had a much higher proportion of Black residents than the counties that were divided or adjusted to allow the new county to be created. While most counties in the South had only small concentrations of Black residents, making up from zero to roughly 20 percent, most new counties had between 20 and 75 percent Black residents — leaving the old counties disproportionately White.

Putting all of a minority group into a single county or district, which scholars of congressional gerrymandering call “packing,” served several purposes — just as it would in Arizona today. First, the new counties that are more likely to vote in line with the political goals of the state legislature — Democrats in the Jim Crow South, Republicans in contemporary Arizona — would elect more like-minded political officers and would certify election results favorable to the state legislature. Second, the new counties packed with non-White residents can be policed in ways that discourage voting or have the results manipulated for fraudulent outcomes.

 

What Arizona wants with three new blood red GOP counties are three new county boards of voting officials that will stack the deck to steal the 2024 election for the GOP.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black Lives Still Matter. Even Republican ones, as a Black New Jersey Borough Councilwoman, Eunice Dwumfour, was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds last night.

 

Eunice K. Dwumfour, a 30-year-old councilwoman serving her first term in Sayreville, N.J., was fatally shot on Wednesday night, officials said.

The authorities said they received reports of a shooting at 7:22 p.m. in Parlin, an unincorporated area of Sayreville, according to a statement by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office. Officers with the Sayreville Police Department found Ms. Dwumfour in her car with multiple gunshot wounds. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The authorities did not say whether there is a suspect in the crime and have not offered any information about a possible motive. An investigation is ongoing.

Victoria Kilpatrick, the mayor of Sayreville, said in a statement that “the fact that she was taken from us by a despicable criminal act makes this incident all the more horrifying.”

Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey said he was “stunned” by the “act of gun violence,” adding that Ms. Dwumfour “had already built a reputation as a committed member of the Borough Council who took her responsibility with the utmost diligence and seriousness.”

Sayreville, with a population of about 45,000 people, is in Middlesex County, about 30 miles south of New York City.

Ms. Dwumfour was elected to the Sayreville Borough Council in 2021 after she and another Republican candidate, Christian Onuoha, unseated two Democratic incumbents on the six-person council. She was serving a three-year term.

 

She was murdered and found in her crashed SUV outside her own home. Really no doubt as to what happened, but who killed her?

 

Now, the Right-Wing Noise Machine is already calling this an "Antifa assassination" and all, but the suspect needs to be brought to justice. Her life mattered.

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

The Turtle Snaps Back

 GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had his own petty vengeance moment this week as he went after his fellow Republicans who came for his job last month and failed.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pulled Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who tried to oust him as the Senate’s top Republican in a bruising leadership race, off the powerful Commerce Committee.

McConnell also removed Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who supported Scott’s bid to replace McConnell as leader, from the Commerce panel, which has broad jurisdiction over a swath of federal agencies.

The GOP leader insisted last year that he didn’t take the attempt to end his leadership reign personally, but the latest move sends a clear message to conservatives that challenging McConnell’s leadership carries a cost.

“McConnell got to pick. He kicked me off; he kicked Lee off,” Scott confirmed in an interview.

Scott acknowledged that running against McConnell was the likely reason he was booted from the panel despite his relative seniority on the committee and experience running a major company.

“I probably ran the biggest company almost any senator in the history of the country has ever run. I was governor of the third-biggest economy in the United States, Florida. I’ve got a business background,” Scott said, ticking off his credentials.

But Scott and Lee have teamed up to challenge McConnell’s leadership of the GOP conference on fiscal and spending decisions, and Lee gave one of the nominating speeches for Scott’s bid to take over as GOP leader.

Scott said he learned of the decision in a text message.

One personal familiar with the episode described the Florida senator as “furious.”

Other conservatives agree the leadership fight was a major factor in the decision to remove Scott and Lee from Commerce.

 

While I'm always glad to see Batboy end up in the "and find out" stage of the proceedings, this little tiff doesn't address the problems with Scott's mismanagement of the NRSC, and how he's almost certainly guilty of campaign finance shenanigans that would make "George Santos" blush.

Mitch won't address that, of course. But cutting Scott off from his main source of corporate lobbyist grifting is a calculated move, and both men know it.

We'll see if Scott responds in the future.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Once again, the voter fraud in America is revealed to be Republicans in red states voting extra times for the fascists.

 

To the extent that the United States has a retirement community known to national audiences, it’s probably The Villages in central Florida. As regular readers probably recall, it has also earned a reputation as a far-right Republican stronghold.

A few years ago, for example, when Donald Trump promoted a video showing a parade of supporters in golf carts — one of whom shouted, “White power!” — it was recorded at The Villages.

It was against this backdrop that we learned in 2021 that three residents of The Villages were charged with voter fraud. A fourth soon followed. As we discussed at the time, according to local police reports, the accused tried to game the system by voting in Florida, while also trying to cast absentee ballots in other states. Not surprisingly, they got caught.

Whatever happened to these charges? I’m glad you asked.

Circling back to our earlier coverage, two of the accused — Charles Barnes and Jay Ketcik — pleaded guilty to a third-degree felony. Though the charges could’ve resulted in prison sentences, both received probation. They were joined by Joan Halstead, who pleaded guilty last summer and also received probation.

This week, the final member of the quartet followed suit. WKMG in Orlando reported:

All four residents of The Villages charged with voting twice in the 2020 election have now admitted to the crime, court records show. John Rider, 62, recently entered into a pre-trial intervention program that will allow him to avoid potential prison time if he successfully completes court-ordered requirements and refrains from violating the law.

It’s worth noting for context that Rider originally pleaded not guilty. Evidently, he changed his mind ahead of a plea agreement in which he received probation.

 

Old white GOP voters in red states who knowingly vote twice get probation.

 

Black women in red states who accidentally vote at all without being eligible? Five years in prison. 

Thus endeth the lesson.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

As we enter Black History Month here in the US, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is announcing a proposal to all but remove both the teaching of that history and the descendants of those who survived it from Florida's public schools and universities completely.

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that he intends to ban state universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in hopes that they will “wither on the vine” without funding.

“It really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter,” the Republican said while speaking in Bradenton, Florida.

The proposal is a top priority for DeSantis’ higher education agenda this year, which also includes giving politically appointed presidents and university boards of trustees more power over hiring and firing at universities and urging schools to focus their missions on Florida’s future workforce needs. DeSantis, who is said to be weighing a potential 2024 presidential bid, has seen his standing among conservatives soar nationwide following his public stances on hot-button cultural and education issues.

In a press release about the announced legislation, the governor’s office called diversity, equity and inclusion programs “discriminatory” and vowed to prohibit universities from funding them, even if the source of the money isn’t coming from the state.

Diversity, equity and inclusion programs are intended to promote multiculturalism and encourage students of all races and backgrounds to feel comfortable in a campus setting, especially those from traditionally underrepresented communities. The state’s flagship school, the University of Florida, has a “Chief Diversity Officer,” a “Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement” and an “Office for Accessibility and Gender Equity.”

Tuesday’s announcement was foreshadowed in December when the governor’s office asked all state universities to account for all of their spending on programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion or critical race theory.

DeSantis announced his higher education agenda in Bradenton, a 15-minute drive from New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college where DeSantis has installed a controversial new board with a mandate to remake the school into his conservative vision for higher education. DeSantis said his budget will include $15 million to restructure New College and hire faculty.

The new board met on Tuesday, leading to protests on the campus.

One of DeSantis’ new board members, Eddie Speir, wrote in an online post that he planned to propose in that meeting “terminating all contracts for faculty, staff and administration” of the school, “and immediately rehiring those faculty, staff and administration who fit in the new financial and business model.”

 

On top of all that, DeSantis says he will radically change the curriculum of Florida's public education system as well. 

 

Mr. DeSantis’s embrace of civics education, as well as the establishment of special civics programs at several of the state’s 12 public universities, dovetails with the growth of similar programs around the country, some partially funded by conservative donors.

The programs emphasize the study of Western civilization and economics, as well as the thinking of Western philosophers, frequently focusing on the Greeks and Romans. Critics of the programs say they sometimes gloss over the pitfalls of Western thinking and ignore the philosophies of non-Western civilizations.

“The core curriculum must be grounded in actual history, the actual philosophy that has shaped Western civilization,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We don’t want students to go through, at taxpayer expense, and graduate with a degree in Zombie studies.”

 

And you can say goodbye to Black history, gender study, and any queer history courses in the state, too. We're teaching "Western history" now, and those people aren't welcome here anyway. If you want a real education, you won't get it in Florida after DeSantis gets done.

 

Of course, if he ends up in the White House, you will see all those courses gone all over America as Department of Education funding and accreditation will be cut off from any school in America that dares teach anything other than the Approved Glory Of Whiteness.

 

Believe me when I say when it comes to stripping Black folk of our history, he will have plenty of help.

After heavy criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis, the College Board released on Wednesday an official curriculum for its new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies — stripped of much of the subject matter that had angered the governor and other conservatives.

The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It ushered out some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter, from the formal curriculum.

And it added something new: “Black conservatism” is now offered as an idea for a research project.

When it announced the A.P. course in August, the College Board clearly believed it was providing a class whose time had come, and it was celebrated by eminent scholars like Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard as an affirmation of the importance of African American studies. But the course, which is meant to be for all students of diverse backgrounds, quickly ran into a political buzz saw after an early draft leaked to conservative publications like The Florida Standard and National Review.

In January, Governor DeSantis of Florida, who is expected to run for president, announced he would ban the curriculum, citing the draft version. State education officials said it was not historically accurate and violated state law that regulates how race-related issues are taught in public schools.

The attack on the A.P. course turned out to be the prelude to a much larger agenda. On Tuesday, Governor DeSantis unveiled a proposal to overhaul higher education that would eliminate what he called “ideological conformity” by among other things, mandating courses in Western civilization.

In another red flag, the College Board faced the possibility of other opposition: more than two dozen states have adopted some sort of measure against critical race theory, according to a tracking project by the University of California, Los Angeles, law school.

David Coleman, the head of the College Board, said in an interview that the changes were all made for pedagogical reasons, not to bow to political pressure. “At the College Board, we can’t look to statements of political leaders,” he said. The changes, he said, came from “the input of professors” and “longstanding A.P. principles.”

So this Black History Month, remember that Black history will soon be outlawed under a DeSantis administration...

A Taxing Problem, Black Taxpayers Matter Edition

Black taxpayers are three times more likely than white taxpayers to face IRS audits, even adjusting for all other factors, and the system has been designed to do that in the wake of Republican cuts to the agency.

 

Black taxpayers are at least three times as likely to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service as other taxpayers, even after accounting for the differences in the types of returns each group is most likely to file, a team of economists has concluded in one of the most detailed studies yet on race and the nation’s tax system.

The findings do not suggest bias from individual tax enforcement agents, who do not know the race of the people they are auditing. They also do not suggest any valid reason for the I.R.S. to target Black Americans at such high rates; there is no evidence that group engages in more tax evasion than others.

Instead, the findings document discrimination in the computer algorithms the agency uses to determine who is selected for an audit, according to the study by economists from Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and the Treasury Department.

Some of that discrimination appears to be rooted in decisions that I.R.S. officials made over the past decade as they sought to maintain tax enforcement in the face of budget cuts, by relying on automated systems to select returns for audit.

Those decisions have produced an approach that disproportionately flags tax returns with potential errors in the claiming of certain tax credits, like the earned-income tax credit, which supplements low-income workers’ incomes in an effort to alleviate poverty. Those tax returns are more often selected for audits, regardless of how much in owed taxes the agency might recover.

The result is audit rates of Black Americans that are between three and five times the rate of other taxpayers, even when comparing that group to other taxpayers who also claim the E.I.T.C.

The I.R.S. does not detail how it selects returns for audit. But the researchers were able to isolate several apparent explanations for why Black taxpayers are targeted so much more frequently. One is complexity: It is much harder for the agency to audit returns that include business income, because that process requires expertise from individual auditors. Such returns appear to be audited less often than returns from otherwise similar taxpayers who do not report income from a business.

Black taxpayers are far less likely than others to report business income. And Black taxpayers appear to disproportionately file returns with the sort of potential errors that are easy for I.R.S. systems to identify, like underreporting certain income or claiming tax credits that the taxpayer does not qualify for, the authors find.

In effect, the researchers suggest that the I.R.S. has focused on audits that are easier to conduct and as a result, finds itself disproportionately auditing a historically disadvantaged group rather than other taxpayers, including high net-worth individuals.

“What the I.R.S. chooses to focus on when it conducts audits can either undercut or complement our progressive tax system,” said Daniel Ho, an author of the study who is the faculty director of Stanford’s Regulation, Evaluation and Governance Lab, known as RegLab, where the study originated.

 

Auditing low-income taxpayers is much, much easier than auditing high-income taxpayers, and the poorest taxpayers are much more likely to be Black.

 

In other words, decades of systemic Black poverty makes Black folk easier targets for the IRS to pick on. We're the low-hanging fruit and the easiest to beat more money out of.

God forbid the IRS went after, say, Donald fucking Trump or Elon Musk, right?

No wonder Republicans want to eliminate the IRS and drop a 30% sales tax on everyone. They want to provide "subsidies for the poor" but of course red states will simply refuse to have that particular program for anyone, and surprise, it's as regressive as it gets.

The cruelty skips the middleman.

Last Call For Fantasma Santos, Con't

With Merrick Garland and the feds closing in on his millions in campaign finance fraud, GOP Rep. "George Santos" is desperately trying to keep his job as a majority of his district, Republicans, Democrats and independents, want his resignation.

 

Embattled Republican Rep. George Santos of New York will recuse himself from serving on House committees, he told his GOP colleagues in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, amid ongoing scrutiny about his background and questions about his future in Congress.

Santos was assigned to the House Small Business Committee and Science, Space and Technology Committee earlier this month by House Republican leaders. In a statement, the New York Republican said "ongoing attention" surrounding investigations into his personal and campaign finances prompted his request to be temporarily recused from the panels.

"This was a decision that I take very seriously. The business of the 118th Congress must continue without media fanfare," Santos said. "It is important that I primarily focus on serving the constituents of New York's Third Congressional District and providing federal level representation without distraction."

Santos told CBS News that he was "confident" he would be cleared in the investigation because he has "nothing to hide."

His decision to forgo his seats on the two panels comes a day after Santos met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Capitol Hill, during which Santos asked the speaker if he could recuse himself from committees, according to McCarthy.

 

The second Santos resigns, McCarthy's time left as Speaker gets reduced to ashes. Without Santos, McCarthy won't have the votes to keep his own job, and everyone knows it.

 

The question is not whether Santos resigning from committees will sate the calls for his ouster. It won't.

 

The question is how much Kevin McCarthy has left to give in order to save Santos and himself. McCarthy literally cannot afford to lose a single GOP vote in the House for his caucus. He has to gamble it all or lose it all.

We'll see how he tries to worm his way out of this.

 

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida parents are Very Concerned™ about library books being banned from teacher's classrooms because they aren't on the approved fascist checklist, as teachers are facing felony prison time for GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's "Stop WOKE Act".

 

Districts across the state -- including Duval County Public Schools -- are performing a mass review of all classroom libraries and media centers after the Florida Department of Education handed down directives intended to comply with state law.

“The Florida Department of Education has trained all Florida schools districts to ‘err on the side of caution’ in determining if a book is developmentally appropriate for student use,” DCPS said in a blog post about the decision.

The law says that all books, specifically in elementary school libraries, must be looked over by a certified media specialist who has undergone state training on the new policy.

Parents, however, have been surprised to find their schools’ bookshelves empty during the review process.

“It actually blew my mind that we were living in a world where we were removing books from classrooms,” parent Brian Covey said.

Some parents say the review came as a shock to them and their children, and they what to know when the books will be returned or replaced.

“How do we live in a world where books are being banned from the classroom,” said Covey, whose children attend Greenland Pines Elementary School. “They said that before school, all the teachers had to pack up their stuff, the librarian apparently tearfully announced that she no longer had a resource class to do. And she had to review all the books in the school. They also took all of the library books that had been checked out, and kids were in the middle of reading and said that they can’t continue to read those books until they’ve been reviewed.”

This week, a teacher in Manatee County covered up the books in his classroom and put up a sign that reads: “Closed by order of the governor.”

 

Certainly looks terrible for DeSantis, but remember, this is what Florida voters overwhelmingly approved of in November. None of the Republican voters who cast their ballots for the GOP ever expected their kid's teacher to have to empty out the classroom bookshelf. We were just stopping THE WOKEIES™.

PS, we're all the Wokeies now.

Documenting The Atrocities, Con't

The push by our "liberal" media to make President Biden's document issue the exact same as Trump's refusal to cooperate and outright admitted theft of classified documents has now been fully achieved, and that's all that matters. 

An equal number of Americans — 67% — say they are as concerned about classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s residence and former office as they are about those found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, despite clear differences in how the two men responded to these controversies.

In addition, half of Americans disapprove of the job President Biden is doing and give him low marks on uniting the country, as well as on having the necessary mental and physical health to be president — even after a string of recent political and legislative victories.

And majorities believe the new Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives will be too inflexible in dealing with Biden and will spend too much time investigating the president instead of focusing on other priorities.

These are the major findings of a brand-new national NBC News poll conducted at the beginning of the new 118th Congress, ahead of Biden’s upcoming State of the Union address next month and after news of classified documents that were found at Biden’s and Trump’s private homes.

The survey also underscores just how little has changed since last November’s midterm elections, and just how dissatisfied the public remains as the 2024 presidential election begins to take shape.

“The calendar may read 2023, but you’d excuse someone if they continue to see 2022 in the country’s outlook and in our politics,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.

“Elections are supposed to act as a chance to refresh and reset, and that did not happen,” McInturff adds.

The poll finds an American public that’s equally concerned about the discovery of classified documents found at Biden’s and Trump’s homes, even though the current president and ex-president handled their situations in different ways.

(Biden and his lawyers have argued that they turned over these classified documents — from his time as Barack Obama’s vice president — as soon as they were discovered and have cooperated with investigators, while Trump failed turn over all requested documents and has lashed out at investigators.)

 

Trump is still committing crimes, and is still refusing to fully cooperate. Biden is not. But trwo-thirds of Americans find they are the same, and perception and nuance does not matter in the least to the Body Politic.

 

People still hate the House GOP Circus of the Damned, but they hate Joe Biden too, and nothing ever changes.

 

Mission accomplished!

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump and his inner circle of crooks are heading closer to indictment in state cases this week as New York opens a new grand jury, and Georgia moves to warn people that a decision on charges is imminent. First, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is opening a new grand jury to investigate Trump's hush money scandal.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday will begin presenting evidence to a grand jury about Donald J. Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The grand jury was recently impaneled, and witness testimony will soon begin, a clear signal that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump.

On Monday, one of the witnesses was seen with his lawyer entering the building in Lower Manhattan where the grand jury is sitting. The witness, David Pecker, is the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker the deal with the porn star, Stormy Daniels.

As prosecutors prepare to reconstruct the events surrounding the payment for grand jurors, they have sought to interview several witnesses, including the tabloid’s former editor, Dylan Howard, and two employees at Mr. Trump’s company, the people said. Mr. Howard and the Trump Organization employees, Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, have not yet testified before the grand jury.

The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said. And in a sign that they want to corroborate these witness accounts, the prosecutors recently subpoenaed phone records and other documents that might shed light on the episode.

A conviction is not a sure thing, in part because a case could hinge on showing that Mr. Trump and his company falsified records to hide the payout from voters days before the 2016 election, a low-level felony charge that would be based on a largely untested legal theory. The case would also rely on the testimony of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who made the payment and who himself pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money in 2018.

Still, the developments compound Mr. Trump’s mounting legal woes as he faces an array of law enforcement investigations: A district attorney in Georgia could seek to indict him for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, and he faces a special counsel investigation into his removal of sensitive documents from the White House.

Mr. Bragg’s decision to impanel a grand jury focused on the hush money — supercharging the longest-running criminal investigation into Mr. Trump — represents a dramatic escalation in an inquiry that once appeared to have reached a dead end.

 

And second, Fulton County, Georgia DA Fanit Willis is letting everyone know the decision to indict Trump and his inner circle is coming much, much sooner rather than later.

 

Former President Donald Trump and his allies have been put on notice by a prosecutor, but the warning didn’t come from anyone at the Justice Department.

It was from a Georgia prosecutor who indicated she was likely to seek criminal charges soon in a two-year election subversion probe. In trying to block the release of a special grand jury’s report, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued in court last week that decisions in the case were “imminent” and that the report’s publication could jeopardize the rights of “future defendants.”

Though Willis, a Democrat, didn’t mention Trump by name, her comments marked the first time a prosecutor in any of several current investigations tied to the Republican former president has hinted that charges could be forthcoming. The remarks ratcheted anticipation that an investigation focused, in part, on Trump’s call with Georgia’s secretary of state could conclude before ongoing federal probes.

“I expect to see indictments in Fulton County before I see any federal indictments,” said Clark Cunningham, a Georgia State University law professor. 

 

I would expect February is going to be another dismal month for Trump. Merrick Garland is simply not going to act until he's ready. The states will have to take the lead.