Empire State Of Voting

New York state and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have gotten a lot of flack for the state's convoluted voting rules, particularly in the wake of last year's primary. But that's another difference between red and blue states: red states want to make it more difficult and burdensome to vote, blue states want to make voting easier and more streamlined so as many people can participate as possible, and Cuomo is promising major voting reforms ahead of 2018's contests.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday a new proposal meant to make it easier for all New Yorkers to vote, which will in turn shorten lines at the polls and increase accuracy when ballots are counted. That proposal is called the “Democracy Project.”

It will allow early voting and institute automatic and same-day voter registration, thus streamlining voter services and making it simpler for all eligible citizens to vote and eliminate possible voting inaccuracies.

“These proposals will modernize and open up our election system, making it easier for more voters to participate in the process and helping to make a more fair, more just and more representative New York for all,” Cuomo said in a news release.

New early voting policy will require every county to offer access to at least one early voting site during the 12 days before Election Day, according to a news release. At least eight hours on weekdays and five hours on the weekend will be devoted to keeping voting sites open for this purpose.

There must be one early voting site per 50,000 residents and the location must be chosen by the bipartisan county board of elections, according to a news release. Location will be determined based on accessibility and convenience.

Early voting aims to increase access to the polls and make it easier for people with commitments to take the time to vote. That also means shorter lines on Election Day and makes it easier for poll workers to deal with registration errors as they arise.

The project also aims to simplify DMV services by automatically sending voter information from DMV applications directly to the County Board of Elections, according to a news release. Those who do not wish to register can simply check an “opt out” box on their application.

Citizens can already register to vote at the DMV but often face a number of regulations that slow down the process and create errors on voter rolls. Automatic registration aims to improve the accuracy of voter rolls and registration lists, increase convenience for voters and election officials alike and reduce total costs associated with the process.

Same-day voter registration will also go into effect as part of the project. New Yorkers will be able to register and vote on the same day and avoid deadlines before Election Day that could potentially keep them from registering in time.

Imagine that.  Some simple fixes to get people registered so that they can participate in the voting process where they live, but I guarantee you Republicans are screaming bloody murder right now because they know they do better when fewer people are allowed to vote.

Again, in a representative democracy like our own, making rules to add burdens to the citizen in order to vote, rather than putting the onus on the state, is unconscionable.  The state, not the citizen, is responsible for running a smooth, free, and fair election.  I'm very glad to see Gov. Cuomo propose these measures and I definitely hope New York can implement them in time for 2018 midterms.

Good job.

Bibi B-busted B-big Time

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is in quite a bit of trouble after leaked recordings showing that he planned to strike a deal to help an Israeli newspaper by freezing out access to a rival publication.

Media tycoon Arnon Mozes is the businessman who negotiated a quid pro quo with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in conversations caught on tape that came to light on Sunday.

Haaretz reported Sunday that suspicions in the main corruption affair involving Netanyahu are backed by recordings documenting contacts between him and a businessman over mutual benefits.

According to Channel 2, several months ago Netanyahu offered Mozes, publisher of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, a deal that would limit the circulation of the free daily Israel Hayom, Yedioth's top competitor and widely regarded as the prime minister's mouthpiece. In return, Mozes would make Yedioth's coverage more sympathetic to Netanyahu.

Israel Hayom, now Israel's largest newspaper, is owned and published by U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a close confidant of the prime minister.

Mozes was questioned in the case last week and released under certain conditions.

Channel 10 reported that the negotiations were an effort by Netanyahu to prevent Yedioth Ahronoth from publishing a story about his son Yair. The conversations were apparently recorded by Mozes, whose financial benefit from such a deal would be significant.

The taped conversations were brought to the attention of Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit months ago. Mendelblit and State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan believed that while the affair had far-reaching ramifications politically, its legal status was unclear, Channel 2 reported.

In August, Netanyahu said he was considering promoting a bill that would bar recordings of conversations without consent from all the parties involved.

So now we know what the bribery and fraud investigation rumors from last month about Netanyahu involved: a cover-up to protect his son and to get better press.

We'll see where this goes, but I'm betting Bibi is in trouble here.

Sunday Long Read: Justice Served

Texas Monthly writer Skip Hollandsworth gives us this week's Sunday Long Read, the story of Edwin Debrow, who in 1991 killed a cab driver in San Antonio at age 12, and was tried under Texas's brutal juvenile law.  Debrow has served 25 years of his 40 year sentence, has been denied parole ever since he reached adulthood, and has essentially spent his entire life in a maximum security facility.

Just after midnight on September 21, 1991, a San Antonio school teacher named Curtis Edwards was found sprawled across the front seat of a taxi that he drove part-time at night to earn extra money. He had been shot point-blank in the back of the head. It was a gruesome scene: blood and bits of brain were scattered throughout the car. A few days later, police announced they had made an arrest in the case. Edwards’s killer, they said, was a twelve-year-old boy named Edwin Debrow. Apparently, investigators said, Edwin had shot Edwards while attempting to rob him.

At the police department, a photographer from the San Antonio Express-News took a photo of Edwin as he was being escorted down a hallway by a uniformed officer and a detective. Edwin, who was just four feet eight inches tall and 79 pounds, was wearing a T-shirt, basketball shorts, and unlaced high-top tennis shoes. His face was peeking out of a suit coat that the detective had thrown over his head in hopes of protecting his identity.

Almost overnight, Edwin became one of Texas’s most notorious criminals. People were stunned that such a small child could have committed such a cold-blooded killing. A prosecutor for the Bexar County district attorney’s office called Edwin a “sick little monster.” In a speech addressing the problems of the inner city, President George H. W. Bush went so far as to single out Edwin, describing his behavior as “truly horrifying.”

Today, Edwin is 37 years old. He is five feet ten inches tall, and he weighs 170 pounds. He looks a little like the boxer Floyd Mayweather, and because of the exercises he does every day in his cell—endless numbers of push-ups, crunches, pull-ups, and leg lifts—he is built like him too, with broad shoulders, a tapered waist, and biceps the size of baseballs. His head is shaved, and his arms and chest are inked with tattoos. “When my mom comes to see me, she always says I still look young,” Edwin told me during one of our conversations. “But I know she’s only trying to make me feel better. I know I’ve got the prison look.”

“The prison look?” I asked.

He gave me a thin smile. “The look of someone who’s not going anywhere soon.”

Edwin has been behind bars since the day he was arrested: he is now more than halfway through a forty-year sentence that a juvenile court ordered him to serve as punishment for Edwards’s murder. Although he has been eligible for parole since 1999, the members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles have refused to release him, always citing the severity of his crime. If he continues to be denied parole, he will not be released until September 2031. He will be 52 years old.

For decades, the members of the criminal justice system have argued about what should be done with kids who commit violent crimes. Lawyers, judges, police officers, politicians, and victims’ rights advocates have debated whether lawbreaking youngsters should be treated as regular criminals or as misguided delinquents with potential for rehabilitation. Is the public better served by putting them in adult prisons and keeping them off the streets for years and years? Or does the experience of incarceration only make them more disturbed and even more dangerous?

In Texas the law allows for very strict punishment of juvenile offenders. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, of the 140,000 inmates now housed in its prisons, approximately 2,000 are there for crimes that they committed as juveniles, which state law defines as anyone under the age of seventeen. Nearly a hundred of those inmates committed their crimes when they were only eleven, twelve, or thirteen years old. Of that group, only two have served more time than Edwin. “I’m considered the bad seed, the worst of the worst, all because of one stupid, terrible thing I did when I was twelve,” he told me.

He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Why can’t people understand I’m not that twelve-year-old boy anymore? Why can’t I be given a second chance?”

Edwin Debrow did kill when he was twelve, but throwing a child in prison like this is unconscionable.  For him to still be in prison now is repugnant.  And yet odds are very good he will serve his sentence and have nothing waiting for him on the outside, no skills, no hopes of getting a job, no place to go.  He'll be a 52-year-old black man in Texas after serving 40 years in prison.

The death penalty would have been a kindness.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

In a finding that should surprise precisely no one, it seems Trump voters are not only ignoring the report on Russian interference with US elections, but are actively hostile towards the notion and consider it to be nothing more than "fake news".

“Sour grapes,” explained Bob Marino, 79, weighing in on the recent spycraft bombshell from the corner table of a local McDonald’s.

“Sour grapes,” agreed Roger Noel, 65, sitting next to him.

“Bunch of crybabies,” Reed Guidry, 64, offered from across the table.

The subject of conversation was the report released by United States intelligence chiefs on Friday informing President-elect Donald J. Trump of their unanimous conclusion that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered an extensive, but covert, cyberoperation to help Mr. Trump win the election. The Russians had hacked and leaked emails, unleashed “trolls” on social media and used their “state-run propaganda machine” to spread stories harmful to Hillary Clinton.

In Washington, the report was viewed as extraordinary, both for its timing, raising sharp questions about the president-elect’s legitimacy on the verge of his taking office, and for its assertions, describing the operation as Russia’s boldest effort yet to meddle with American elections, to spread discontent and to “undermine the U.S.-led democratic order.”

But interviews with Trump supporters here in Louisiana, a state the president-elect won by 20 points, and in Indiana, a state he won by nearly the same margin, found opinions about the report that ranged from general indifference to outright derision.

“From the parts of the report I’ve seen,” said Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel who twice ran for Senate here as Tea Party favorite, “it seems silly.”

There are genuine concerns about Russia’s cyberoperations, he said, but the notion that they changed the outcome of the election was absurd. (The report made no determination on how they affected the election.)

Of the comments he had seen from fellow Trump supporters on Facebook and in emails, he added, “90 percent of them are like, ‘What’s the big deal?’”

The Russians may have very well gotten involved, several people said. They added that kind of interference should be combated. But many assumed that foreign actors had long tried to play favorites in American elections, and that the United States had done the same in other countries’ elections. Even if the Russians did do it — which some were more willing to concede than others — what difference did it make? People did not need the Russians to make up their minds about Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump’s election opponent. Blaming her loss on the Russians was, as one Trump supporter here said, “just being sore losers.”

Again, there's nothing that Trump could do to lose support from Angry White America short of pledging to help those people like Obama and Clinton did.  If the Russians were involved, so what?  Even Republicans who are worried aren't going to lift a finger about it.  Trump's promised to help them and punish the Obama coalition.  That's all that matters.

As they watched their son skate with his Boy Scout group at the public ice rink in downtown Valparaiso, Monty and Mary Willis, both registered Republicans, considered the ramifications of the intelligence report.

“The idea of a fair election” had been placed in doubt, Ms. Willis said. “We were concerned about money being involved in the election. Now you’re talking about espionage.”

The Willises, who both work in real estate, might be Republicans, but they were not Trump voters. In fact, they had last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 2008, when Senator John McCain of Arizona ran. The party seemed to have changed in recent years, they said. And the incoming administration had them deeply worried.

“Our president being in cahoots with the Russian government?” Mr. Willis said. “Yes, I’m very concerned about that.”

In Louisiana, David Gubert, 56, chain-smoked Eagle 20 cigarettes in the cab of his pickup, with stacks of firewood for sale behind him in the bed. Like the Willises, he ruminated on what it would mean if the Russians had gotten involved, and possibly even swung the election.

But Mr. Gubert came to a different conclusion.

“If that’s what it took,” he said, “I’m glad they did it.”

We are now ruled by those who believe anything is permissible as long as those people are the ones made to suffer as a result.

Last Call For The Difference Between Republicans And Democrats

In North Carolina, under GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, millions of people remained trapped in limbo with no access to subsidies for health insurance and no access to Medicaid. Under Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper however, that has now changed for nearly two-thirds of a million people.

The state moved formally Friday to make changes to the Medicaid program with the aim of adding hundreds of thousands of people to the government insurance plan despite opposition from state Republican leaders.

Gov. Roy Cooper announced earlier in the week he would seek to expand Medicaid as allowed under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The details of the plan were made public Friday evening.

Proposed changes to the state plan must be posted on the state Department of Health and Human Services website for 10 days before a request goes to the federal government office that oversees Medicaid, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS. The state is accepting comments on the proposal.

Republican legislative leaders are already fighting it.

In a letter to CMS, legislative leaders said Cooper was violating the state constitution and three state laws. One of those laws, passed in 2013, prevents Medicaid expansion without legislative approval.

In a statement, Cooper said the 2013 law does not apply to the draft plan.

Expansion is no sure thing, and the statement from Cooper’s office is couched in several conditions.

“If CMS approves a change, if local matching money can be secured, and if state eligibility requirements are changed, then more than a half-million North Carolinians could receive health care beginning in January 2018,” Cooper’s office said.

Note that Republicans are screaming bloody murder over this, and quite frankly there's a very good chance that this expansion will never happen thanks to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump even should this somehow get past NC Republicans with their veto-proof margins to kill this cold.

But Cooper is doing the right thing by getting the process rolling.

That's the difference.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/under-the-dome/article125085989.html#storylink=cpy

Steal This Book, She Said

Former BuzzFeed News editor turned CNN Money investigative reporter Andrew Kaczynski is certainly leading off the network's new KFile project with a bang in 2017. Their first big scoop of the year turns out to be the fact that right-wing radio host and incoming Trump National Security Council mouthpiece Monica Crowley's 2012 book is chock-a-block with dozens of instances of plagiarism, some stolen wholesale from everyone from FOX News to the Mises Institute to National Review.

In the book, Crowley lifted an entire section on Keynesian economics from the IAC-owned website Investopedia.

In one instance, Crowley lists a variety of so-called "pork" items she claimed were part of the 2009 stimulus package. Many of the instances were copied wholesale from a conservative list of pork barrel spending, with some items dating back to the 1990s. Most of the copied instances were listed on a website for a podiatrist dating back to 2004.

A section on organized labor appears largely copied from a 2004 article by the libertarian think tank the Mises Institute. Another portion of her book on torture is copied from a Fox News article.

Sections of her book are repeatedly lifted from articles by National Review author Andrew C. McCarthy, who is a friend of Crowley’s. Lines in her book also match word-for-word the work of other columnists, including National Review’s Rich Lowry, Michelle Malkin, conservative economist Stephen Moore, Karl Rove, and Ramesh Ponnuru of Bloomberg View.

Crowley also lifted word-for-word phrases from the Associated Press, the New York Times, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the BBC, and Yahoo News.

Crowley has been accused of plagiarism before. In 1999, Slate reported a column by Crowley in the Wall Street Journal mirrored a 1988 article in Commentary, the neoconservative magazine.

"Had we known of the parallels, we would not have published the article," a Journal editor’s note said at the time. Crowley denied the charge at the time, saying, "I did not, nor would I ever, use material from a source without citing it."

Kacyznkisi brings his receipts, too, and includes all the instances he could find.

We're going to need more reporting like this, stuff where we remember that the leaders of this country and the people who work for them need to be held accountable.  Crowley should be let go, there's no way she can have a working relationship with the media as a spokesperson after stealing their work like this.

But we'll see who steps up to defender her among the right.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Still plenty of folks, including our incoming leader, who are doing everything they can to try to deflect attention away from the fact that a hostile foreign power manipulated our elections. The loudest cries from the defenders of Putin have been "Show us the evidence! You can't trust the CIA! Let's see it!"

And lo, the CIA said "Here you go."

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.  

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. 

We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. 

Moscow’s approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia’s understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.  

Further information has come to light since Election Day that, when combined with Russian behavior since early November 2016, increases our confidence in our assessments of Russian motivations and goals.

The intelligent report is pretty clear about this analysis: Russia was up to no good, and they clearly decided that Trump was better for their interests, so much so that it was worth the risk of getting involved in influencing US elections.

Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.” Russia, like its Soviet predecessor, has a history of conducting covert influence campaigns focused on US presidential elections that have used intelligence officers and agents and press placements to disparage candidates perceived as hostile to the Kremlin. 

Russia’s intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major US political parties. 

We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks. 

Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards. DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying. 

Russia’s state-run propaganda machine contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences. 

We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes.

So the plan was that if Trump couldn't win, that they would use WikiLeaks, Russia Today, Sputnik and a host of internet trolls to unload massive disinformation about the Clintons in order to destroy Hillary Clinton's ability to govern.  The plan was so successful however that it outright put Trump in the White House and the Russians were celebrating the fact.

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome. 

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

My question is of course they couldn't have done this without Trump.  He's been very, very vocal in defending Putin and saying the Russians had nothing to do with it, and even after the classified briefing he got Friday he still doesn't believe it.

At this point I have to assume the Russians have a Sword of Damocles waiting for him, and he'll do anything they want in order to keep them from unloading what they know about him. The evidence is overwhelming that our incoming president has been compromised by a foreign power.

Mad Dog Bites Back

So it turns out when you want to hire a guy nicknamed "Mad Dog" to run the Pentagon that 1) he doesn't take constructive criticism very well at all and 2) he really doesn't like other people making decisions for him.  In other words, before Trump and Gen. James Mattis even take office as president and Secretary of Defense respectively, they're already fighting like, well, cats and Mad Dogs.

The honeymoon seems to be ending between retired Gen. James N. Mattis and Donald Trump’s transition team amid an increasingly acrimonious dispute over who will get top jobs in the Defense Department — and who gets to make those decisions. 

With only two weeks left before Inauguration Day and days before Mattis’s Senate confirmation hearing, most major Pentagon civilian positions remain unfilled. Behind the scenes, Mattis has been rejecting large numbers of candidates offered by the transition team for several top posts, two sources close to the transition said. The dispute over personnel appointments is contributing to a tenser relationship between Mattis and the transition officials, which could set the stage for turf wars between the Pentagon and the White House in the coming Trump administration. 

The Trump transition team was already considering candidates for a host of Defense Department top jobs when Trump announced Dec. 1 that he intended to nominate “Mad Dog” Mattis to lead the military. The Mattis pick was seen by Republicans around Washington as an indication that Trump would rely on senior and experienced officials to shape and implement his national security and foreign policies. Many “Never Trump” Republicans also thought this might be their way into service despite having opposed Trump in the GOP primary. 

Initially, both Mattis and the Trump team intended to engage in a collaborative process whereby Mattis would be given significant influence and participation in selecting top Pentagon appointees. 

But the arrangement started going south only two weeks later when Mattis had to learn from the news media that Trump had selected Vincent Viola, a billionaire Army veteran, to be secretary of the Army, one source close to the transition said. 

“Mattis was furious,” said the source. “It made him suspicious of the transition team, and things devolved from there.” 

Again, I can't overstress how ridiculous it is to have the President-elect and the Secretary-designate to be having this level of acrimony before either one is actually in the job.  And again, this is a fight over our nation's intelligence agencies as well.

One position that is a source of tension is undersecretary of defense for intelligence, a powerful post that overseas all Defense Department intelligence agencies, which include the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. 

Retired General Michael T. Flynn, President-elect Trump’s national security adviser-designate, was DIA director until he was sacked by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. following a dispute with then-Undersecretary for Defense for Intelligence Michael G. Vickers. 

Mattis has rejected all of the names the Trump team has offered to be the top intelligence official in the department, another transition source said. Mattis is also unlikely to accept Trump’s top Pentagon transition landing team official, Mira Ricardel, as a top official. She was rumored to be in line to be undersecretary of defense for policy, a hugely influential job. 

“Let’s put it this way, he’s being very picky about the options presented to him,” said the source, who was not authorized to talk about internal deliberations.

So yes, this is already a serious personnel disaster.  Trump ultimately believes he's the smartest guy on Earth, it's why he won the election duh he's the smartest and best.  And yet he's already fighting with his Pentagon pick.

I expect this is a preview of what's to come, anyone who wasn't already a sycophant will be by the time Trump is done...or they'll be done.

Last Call For Flights Of Fancy

Ol' Perfessor Glenn Reynolds is quite perplexed in his USA Today column this week as to why liberals haven't simply all moved to Canada or dashed themselves on the jagged rocks below or something, and he's having a hard time with this notion of "resisting" America's rightful God-Emperor Trump.

When people feel their place in the world is threatened, they tend to lash out. And after all, the gentry liberals were promised by no less a figure than Clinton Labor secretary and former Harvard professor Robert Reich that the symbolic analysts like them would own the future. 

But my favorite example came much more recently, in the form of a New Yorker cartoon showing an airline passenger (seated in Economy, of course) standing up and asking his fellow passengers: “These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?” 

In this view, ordinary people are just carried along for the ride, while the country is run by experts with vast experience and credentials. Letting ordinary people take charge would surely result in a disastrous crash. If the pilots are “smug” it’s because they have abilities that ordinary people lack. 

This is nice, if you see yourself as one of the pilots, possessed of those special abilities. If you think of yourself as one of the smart people, the ones who should be guiding the airplane of state (we used to talk about the “ship of state,” but hey, this is the 21st century), then the suggestion that the passengers might want to take over the controls is both insulting and frightening. 

But, of course, being a member of the governing class doesn’t involve anything like the specialized skills that flying an airplane does. And just as passengers on an airplane actually do get to choose their destination — they’re paying customers, after all — so the voters get to choose things, too. (And if you look at recent history, the “pilots” tend to crash the plane a lot, but then walk away unscathed, unlike those passengers in the back. Peggy Noonan calls these political elites the “protected class” and she’s not far wrong: “The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it.”) 

And now that Trump has won, people are, in fact, a lot less respectful of the traditional academic and media and political elites. Trump didn’t just beat them, after all. He also humiliated them, as they repeatedly assured everyone (and each other) that he had no chance. It’s a huge blow to the self-importance of a lot of people. No wonder they’re still lashing out.

This would be funny if it wasn't for two things: First, Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million or so, and second, Trump and his "pilots" are the least-experienced group in modern times to try to run America's "airplane of state".  It's one thing for the passengers on the plane to try to fly one, it's another for the airline to actually employ people who have not only never flown a plane as pilots but who don't believe planes can fly because the "scientific debate on aeronautics isn't settled" or that their "religious beliefs are being impinged upon by the people who think man should take to the skies" or that they've taken large amounts of money to lobby against airplanes, airports, and the FAA even existing.

Trump airlines hires literally the least capable people to fly an airliner, guys.  But the problem is liberals who maybe don't want to crash into the sea, right?

Climate Of Hostility, Con't

Remember last month when I talked about the Trump transition team being very, very interested in the identities of any Department of Energy employees that helped shape the Obama administration's climate change policies?

When I said that the Trump administration's official position on climate change is that it's a best bad science to be eliminated and at worst a dangerous hoax, either way Trump was going to claim that Obama cost the nation billions and that this "government waste" was always going to be purged.

The problem for Trump and the GOP was that they couldn't just blanket fire people.  Civil service has long-standing legal protections against political pogroms like this.  But it seems Republicans in Congress may have just found the solution they've been waiting for.

House Republicans this week reinstated an arcane procedural rule that enables lawmakers to reach deep into the budget and slash the pay of an individual federal worker — down to a $1 — a move that threatens to upend the 130-year-old civil service. 

The Holman Rule, named after an Indiana congressman who devised it in 1876, empowers any member of Congress to offer an amendment to an appropriations bill that targets a specific government employee or program. 

A majority of the House and the Senate would still have to approve any such amendment, but opponents and supporters agree that it puts agencies and the public on notice that their work is now vulnerable to the whims of elected officials. 

Democrats and federal employee unions say the provision, which one called the “Armageddon Rule,” could prove disastrous to the federal workforce, when combined with president-elect Donald Trump’s criticism of the Washington bureaucracy, his call for a freeze on government hiring and his nomination of Cabinet secretaries who seem to be at odds with the mission of the agencies they would lead. 

“This is part of a very chilling theme that federal workers are seeing right now,” said Maureen Gilman, legislative director for the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal employees.

In other words, Republicans can't fire hundreds of thousands of federal government employees, that's illegal.  But what they can do is reduce their yearly salaries to one dollar and wait for them to quit on their own accord.

But why go through all this trouble?  Very simple: To hurt blue states with lots of federal employees and push them towards being red states.  Places like say, Maryland and Virginia.

The rule is particularly troubling to Virginia and Maryland lawmakers and the District’s nonvoting delegate, who represent large numbers of federal workers in the national capital region. 

The Holman provision was approved Tuesday as part of a larger rules package but received little attention amid the chaos of Republicans’ failed effort to decimate the House ethics office on the first day of the new Congress.

Oh.  Suddenly tens of thousands of Northern Virginia and Maryland federal employees, many unionized, have their salaries arbitrarily cut to $1.  You want to talk about destroying the local economy?  People would flee in droves.  And guess what?  A lot of these workers and their families are 1) people of color and 2) die-hard Democrats.

The Holman rule would obliterate the region, and the GOP knows it.

Would you want to rock the boat when Congress could cut your salary to $1 at any time?  Would you want to stay in your job knowing that?  Would you want to move to the capital region and take a job as a federal employee knowing that?

Oh, and if you think this would only be used against Virginia and Maryland federal employees, remember the state with the most federal employees is of course California.  There's little chance that going after tens of thousands of federal employees in the Golden State would do much to affect voting there, but it certainly would make a difference in Virginia and Maryland.

Trump's GOP will be worse than anyone can imagine, folks.  This will be used to decimate communities and entire government agencies.

Watch.

Home Rule Is No Longer Cool

I'm old enough to remember when Republicans demanded local control over their city and county governments because those knuckleheads in the state capitol and those nasty evil parasites in Dee Cee had no idea how anything worked in Our Heartland Real American Town.

Of course that was before the Kenyan Mooslim was elected and Republicans became those knuckleheads in the state capitol and those nasty evil parasites in Dee Cee after 2010, and now of course we have to stop those liberal enclaves from passing their own laws because who the hell do those people think they are anyway?  We're going to have to put a stop to home rule immediately.

Republican state legislatures are planning so-called preemption laws, which prevent cities and counties from passing new measures governing everything from taxes to environmental regulations and social issues.

Republican legislators around the country say liberal cities and counties vastly overstepped their bounds by implementing new taxes on sodas and sugary beverages, by raising local minimum wages or through strict new environmental regulations.

“What we see is circumventing the process that’s in place,” said Linda Upmeyer, the Republican speaker of the Iowa state House. “I think we will likely look at language on preemption so that the state is making decisions where it ought to, and cities and counties are making decisions where they should.” 

Democrats and city officials, however, see the preemption laws as a power grab aimed at limiting local governance in their party’s last bastions of political power — which have become ground zero in the fight to resist Trump. 

Preemption laws are nothing new in American history. The Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution makes clear that federal law supersedes state law, and similar clauses in state constitutions give state laws precedence over local laws.

In recent decades, tobacco companies have used preemption laws to overcome local smoking bans, and the National Rifle Association turned to preemption to block cities from implementing new gun control measures.

But in the last four years, after Republicans swept to power in legislatures across the country, the number of issues on which states are asserting their rights has skyrocketed, said Mark Pertschuk, director of the Oakland-based Grassroots Change, which keeps close tabs on preemption legislation. 

The tension has grown as cities experiment with measures to raise revenue, keep their citizens healthy or add new protections for workers — and as Republicans have won control of states where Democrats still run large cities. 

“In the past 10 to 15 years, cities have become the laboratories of innovation,” said Brooks Rainwater, director of the Center for City Solutions at the National League of Cities, which opposes local preemption laws. “The discordant views of those at the local level and those at the state level have led to some real challenges.”

And yes, the Constitution makes it clear that states can pass preemption laws.  But for some odd reason they were never a priority until you had large, diverse, Democratic cities in red states decide that they should start being nice to those people and that Republicans at the state level had managed to gerrymander state legislatures into near permanent control and even majorities large enough to override vetoes by governors.

Now in 2017, suddenly cities deciding local laws for themselves needs to be made illegal as quickly as possible, particularly local minimum wage increases.

As yourselves why that is.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump transition team is floating a plan to build 700 miles of wall along the Texas/Mexico border and funding it through attaching it to must-pass spending legislation later this year.
• The nation may be without ambassadors to critical allies as the Trump camp is demanding all US ambassadors be out of office by the inauguration.
• Sources indicate Trump will choose former Indiana GOP Sen. Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence as current DNI James Clapper will brief Trump today on Russia.
• For the fifth year in a row, New Jersey tops the list of states Americans are moving out of in United Van Lines' annual national relocation survey, South Dakota has the best inbound rate.
• House Republicans confirm they will strip all Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood as part of Obamacare repeal, the move could affect more than 50 million women.

Kasich's Bill Comes Due

Understand that Trump and his administration are motivated by greed and petty revenge, and as we get closer to his inauguration, you're going to start seeing those in the GOP who dared to oppose Trump start to pay a higher and higher price for doing so.  Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich is definitely on the top of that list.

On Friday, President-elect Donald Trump and Gov. John Kasich will face off in their latest proxy battle for the hearts and minds of Ohio Republicans – and the president-elect himself on Thursday entered the fray.

Trump supporter Jane Timken, a Cincinnati native and Walnut Hills High School graduate, is challenging Kasich-backed incumbent Matt Borges for the Ohio Republican Party's top spot.

On Thursday, Trump himself called at least two Southwest Ohioans who have a vote in the race for chairperson, pushing for Timken's election, according to a person close to the situation. Kasich has also made personal calls.

Kasich and his supporters installed Borges as chairman in 2013 after they deposed former leader Kevin DeWine and replaced much of the party's governing body with supporters. But some Republicans, including Trump, aren't thrilled with Borges' tepid support of the president-elect – or with the opposition Trump experienced this fall from Kasich.

Why would a president-elect care about a state GOP chair?  Just to piss off Kasich, of course.

Even before Trump started making phone calls on her behalf, Timken had Trump's support to challenge Borges. "I spoke with President-elect Trump and he agrees that it is time for a leadership change at the ORP," she wrote in an email to the Ohio Republican Party's 66 central committee members.

Kasich is backing Borges. "He has done an outstanding job running a complex organization and has an unparalleled record of winning," the governor said in a statement.

Trump and Kasich waged a war of words throughout the GOP primary campaign, when both were presidential hopefuls, and into November. In July, Trump's then-campaign manager Paul Manafort bashed Kasich before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Kasich later refused to endorse Trump or even vote for him.

Borges largely stood by Kasich, speaking out against Trump's policies and demeanor before ultimately backing him in the general election. Many Republicans thought Borges should have kept his mouth shut.

The Trump-Kasich fight continues with this latest round, the battle for control of the Ohio Republican Party. If the state's top Republican is out of step with the nation's top Republican, where will the state party stand?

And they'll have to tread carefully.  Maybe it'll make an opening for Ohio Dems.  Maybe.  We'll see.

The Rhetoric Has Consequences

Since Trump and the GOP have declared war on American Muslims over the last year and change, things have gotten very bad for our friends and neighbors, to the point now where local governments full of Trump-voting bigots are using everything from traffic studies to zoning ordinances to get rid of Islamic centers and places of worship in an effort to NIMBY them out of town.  This is particularly bad in Virginia, where hate is running rampant.

Turns out the Islamic Center of Fredericksburg has been operating in Spotsylvania County for 28 years. And Shalaby’s family has been there for 31. Until last year, they were viewed as neighbors. They were engineers, car salesmen, moms picking up their kids from soccer games or band practice. 

But then Donald Trump began running for president, pledging to ban Muslims from entering the country and establish a registry for Muslim Americans. 

It was amid that heated and ugly rhetoric that the center announced its expansion plans — and promptly ran into a wall of opposition. And now, a year later, the Islamic center is still tied up in traffic-pattern objections and subdivision squabbles. 

In Culpeper, about 40 miles away, local officials rubber stamped pump-and-haul permits to handle sewage for businesses or houses of worship. The county board approved 26 of them since 1992, including nine for churches. 

But when the Islamic Center of Culpeper bought a parcel of land and proposed a small mosque, a local Republican activist whipped the community in a frenzy over the sewage permit, which became a sneaky way to block the entire project. 

“I understand the Islamic Center of Culpeper wishes to rehabilitate the existing home and use it on a weekly basis as a place of prayer. . . . Hmmmmmmmmm,” he wrote. And right after that — just like Fredericksburg — there was a raucous community meeting with abnormally high attendance, there was grandstanding and a round of applause after the board broke its quarter-century streak of issuing permits and denied that one. 

Its decision was so ham-handed that the Justice Department hit Culpeper County with a lawsuit last month based on the Religious Land Use act. Justice has plenty of ammo on this case, from the emails sent out before the meeting to the communications that other board members got from folks opposing the mosque — emails that mentioned terrorists, not sewage.

This is the other real problem.  Does anyone believe for a moment that a Trump administration would ever direct a Department of Justice headed by Jeff Sessions to go after a city denying permits to an Islamic center?  What happens to the lawsuit against Culpeper County after January 20? How much do you want to bet that the lawsuit quietly vanishes?

And now we’ve got Nokesville. 

About 200 Muslims who hold their prayers in rented hotel space in Manassas want to build their own space. It would be the Nokesville branch of the All Dulles Area Muslim ­Society (ADAMS), one of the country’s largest and most prominent mosques. ADAMS has 11 chapters around Northern Virginia and the District. 

They’ve been working with county officials for two years now on the building’s height, lighting and parking on the parcel of land they bought. But that cooperation hasn’t been enough for some opponents. 

“No more suburban sprawl!” they say. And they’re pushing their leaders to deny connection to the public sewage system the mosque would need. 

Two churches recently got this very same approval. Churches. 

Rizwan Jaka, chairman of the ADAMS board, told The Washington Post’s Tara Bahrampour that the concern over sewage is a red herring and something he’s seeing across the country. 

“With over 30 mosques being prevented from being built based off of anti-Muslim bigotry or implicit bias wrapped in land-use arguments, that gives us some concern,” he said.

It's this bad now before these local governments start having the DoJ weigh in to help them persecute Muslims, as will most certainly happen.  Why would anyone think a President who has openly advocated rounding up Muslims would ever start enforcing their religious freedoms?  That only applies to Christianity (and remember who is in the Trump camp these days, the First Amendment's application to America's Jewish population would be selective at best.)

But this is the new reality, folks.  Expect a lot more of this in the months to come.

All Over The Place On The ACA

Yesterday was a bad day for the GOP on Obamacare repeal, judging from the headlines at Talking Points Memo.

First, that's NC Republican Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones in a state of near-panic over the lack of a replacement for the ACA, even though Republicans have been working on one for more than six year.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) on Wednesday joined a growing, if not extremely vocal, chorus of Republicans warning that the GOP should not move forward with its longtime goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act until it has a replacement plan ready to go.

“You cannot repeal and not replace,” Jones told MSNBC’s Peter Alexander. “You have to replace.”

Asked to elaborate on what a replacement would look like, Jones acknowledged that he and his fellow GOP lawmakers have yet to see a proposed bill in writing.

Second, Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso doesn't think anyone's actually getting insurance through the ACA because it's all a big lie or something.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) accused leading Democrats, including President Obama, of making up the number of people insured under Obamacare.

"It’s interesting the numbers because the president uses one number. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi came out with a much higher number. I think they're making them up," Barrasso told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill when asked about whether the GOP plans to maintain Obamacare's coverage levels. "We've done a lot of research into what the numbers truly are."

Which brings us to Kellyanne Mouth of Sauron Conway, who says "If you like your Obamacare plan, you can keep it!"

Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway says that the Trump administration doesn't want anyone who currently has health insurance to lose it due to Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“We don't want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance,” Conway said Tuesday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

Conway was responding to co-host Joe Scarborough, who asked if Americans who “have healthcare today under the Affordable Care Act” would be covered under the Republican replacement plan for the healthcare law.

Conway didn’t present any details on what a replacement for Obamacare would look like in the interview. She said it would be "the ideal situation" if Republicans had a replacement plan for the ACA immediately available upon repeal, but said “some experts say that it could take years to actually complete the process.”

I'd laugh at this upcoming disaster, except for the fact that millions of Americans are going to suffer because these assholes hate the fact a black president did more for America than these idiots ever will, and all the people who voted for him will have to be punished.

Never forget that's the plan.