usatoday | The New York Post story's publication prompted
some to draw parallels to the runup to the 2016 election, when emails
from the Democratic National Committee were hacked by Russian-affiliated
operatives and released by WikiLeaks.
The FBI is now examining whether Russia is tied to the information cited by the New York Post.
Some experts say the story has many hallmarks of a disinformation campaign.
"It
is also an old Cold War disinformation tactic to pass information,
especially but not exclusively when forged, to low-brow newspapers that
have high circulation and low standards of investigation. Ideal for
surfacing and amplification," Thomas Rid, a political scientist who
focuses on disinformation and information warfare at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies, said in a tweet.
Russian
operatives worked to sow partisan divisions in the U.S. and spread
disinformation during the 2016 presidential election cycle, according to
a 2017 report from U.S. intelligence services. That report found that
Russian President Vladimir Putin "aspired to help President-elect
Trump’s election chances," in part by discrediting his Democratic
opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump's own intelligence officials have warned Moscow is interfering again in the 2020 election.
Bannon was indicted for fraud
in August in connection to a border-wall fundraising effort that raised
more than $25 million "under the false pretense that all of that money
would be spent on construction," according to prosecutors. Bannon has
pleaded not guilty.
In
the case of Giuliani associate Derkach, the Treasury Department's move
was aimed at "exposing Russian malign influence campaigns and protecting
our upcoming elections from foreign interference." It also made clear
that Giuliani has engaged with Russian agents in his campaign against
the Bidens.
Former Biden aides have also suggested that Russians are behind the story.
"This
is a Russian disinformation operation,” Michael Carpenter, a former
deputy assistant secretary of defense with a specialization in Eastern
Europe who now heads the Penn Biden Center, said to POLITICO. "I’m very comfortable saying that.”
Every public school district in America should be planning for in person school next semester. It can be done safely, *even in places with pretty high community transmission*. We now have pretty good data to show that. https://t.co/4fCs2tqVHa
economicprism | One of the absurdities of the coronavirus era is the purported faith
in science by the political class; in particular, the left. Joe Biden,
for instance, said he would shut the country down if recommended by scientists. Nancy Pelosi, this week, with respect to coronavirus stimulus, told Wolf Blitzer, that “…the science should call the shot and when they do, we should all trust it.”
“Trust, but verify,” counseled Ronald Reagan. No doubt, the Gipper, didn’t envision the ridiculous science behind coronavirus containment policy.
President Trump, taking the advice of Reagan, recently verified the
effects of coronavirus himself. His findings, following a three day
bout with the illness, revealed the science based policies that have
been applied are not to be trusted. Trump tweeted these conclusions:
“One thing that’s for certain: Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re going to beat it.”
According to Science magazine, “[Trump’s]
repeated public dismissals of scientific expertise, and his disdain for
evidence have prompted many researchers to label him the most
antiscience president in living memory.”
Maybe so. But when science is being used by policy makers to do
stupid and destructive things, like locking down the economy, being
antiscience is the intelligent choice. What’s more, the World Health
Organization now says it’s opposed to lockdowns, and told world leaders: “stop using lockdowns as your primary control method.”
We have a hunch that the science of lockdowns has little to do with
stemming the spread of coronavirus. We’ll have more on this in a
moment. But first, we must make an important distinction. And to do
so, we must take a brief diversion…
Black Lives Matter has no concrete specific policy, statutory, or legislative agenda - which is how you know it's a symbolic "stir the pot" and "get out the black vote" initiative. (as if you didn't gather as much from the fact that it's a Warren Buffett production)
The problem with this is that the MSM and social media have amplified the already popular and political cultural influence of selected "woke" sock puppets who have leveraged the disproportionate social, cultural and political capital of American negroes and applied this appropriated clout the exceedingly pedestrian objective of re-aquiring partisan control of the presidency, period. (and that control won't be used to satisfy any concrete-specific political-economic priorities or needs of Black Americans.
Once it was known that Negroes boycotted the 2016 election, the obvious marketing strategy became to
create racial appeals that boosted the Democrat’s ‘brand’
and diminished their competitor’s. In fact, leading Democratic
strategists who had spent storied careers crafting cynical dog whistle
campaigns, began shouting racist! to shut down any challenge to their
campaign.
By election eve 2016, Clinton campaign officials had
decided on the ‘Russia stole the election’ storyline. Additionally,
Democratic strategists were most certainly aware that blacks stayed home
en masse in 2016. This made Donald Trump, with his nativist chatter and
typical Republican deference to repressive authority, the perfect foil
to retroactively portray the election as about race and foreign
intrigue.
When the Democratic-leaning press began (falsely) reporting on
rising hate and racial backlash, and the CEOs of large banks and tech
companies began stating publicly that white supremacy is the only
problem in need of solving, the havoc that neoliberal policies have
wrought quickly disappeared as a topic of polite conversation.
This elite pot-stirring and color-revolution antic is an exceedingly dangerous gambit. Since it wasn't done for Black people in America, but was instead something done to Black people in America - I gots to say the nayno...,
Right-wingers
come from somewhere other than thin air. There’s at least a germ of
truth in their beliefs. Fortunately, the rest of their beliefs are so
abhorrent they’re dismissed out of hand. Nevertheless, I believe the day
of another European holocaust, ethnic cleansing in the parlance of the
day, has moved a step closer with this weeks display of barbarism in France. Cutting off a single French head doesn't really hold a candle to the pain and suffering and self-serving pot-stirring implemented this year in the U.S. Does this sound familiar?
For a start, this is a murder that has nothing to do with immigration
from the Maghreb, unemployment, discrimination, neo-colonialism or
anything similar. The assailant was white, and came from a refugee
family that had been settled in France, looked after and educated. The
town where it happened, Conflans Sainte-Honorine, is a quiet, dull,
middle-class community about thirty-five kilometres west of Paris at the
end of the high-speed Metro. (I passed through there once: it was
closed). “Nothing ever happens here” said one shocked resident this
morning. The killer was not a native of the town, but travelled there to
do the killing. Moreover, this is one of a series of murders since 2015
– the body count is nearly 300 – carried out for explicitly political
and religious reasons by radicalised young men, who believe, as do a
significant proportion of French Muslims, that the Koran takes
precedence over any secular laws. Thus, laws conflicting with Islam must
not be obeyed, but equally it is the responsibility of all Muslims to
punish anyone who violates the injunctions of the Koran. hence the
present killing. This would be problematic in any modern state, but
especially so in France, with its history of bitter struggle against the
Church to establish a secular republic.
The problem has been
building in schools for decades now, but has been ignored by successive
governments, worried about upsetting the professional anti-racist lobby.
Teachers have been threatened and physically attacked for giving
lessons on secularism, for teaching the theory of Evolution or
discussing non-Islamic religions. Militant parents, egged-on by
fundamentalist Imams mostly sent from Qatar, have pressured schools to
stop serving pork, or to excuse their daughters from mixed swimming
classes or class photographs where non-muslim pupils are not veiled.
Little by little, such tactics have undermined the educational system,
as local mayors, always in search of votes, have made accommodations
with local religious leaders. (Ironically, French schools only went
co-educational in 1969, after generations of bitter opposition from the
Church). This horrific incident at last seems to have brought home to
French elites that uncontrolled immigration has produced communities in
the country which do not believe that they have to obey the law, and
consider themselves justified in using violence to enforce their
religious principles. Macron seemed genuinely shocked when he spoke
yesterday . Of course doing something about it is another matter.
Finally,
the fact that the victim was a teacher doing his job has stunned
people. Partly this is because so many French people are parents of
school-age children or have a teacher in the family. But partly also the
teacher is a traditional mythic figure of Republican Virtue, a kind of
secular priest promoting the virtues of equality and secularism. Not for
nothing were teachers known as “the hussars of the Republic”, and the
bitter opposition between the local priest and the schoolteacher was a
feature of French life until quite recently. As a number of politicians
have said, to strike at a teacher is to strike at the very foundation of
secular and republican French values. Unlike many countries who witter
on about “values” the French do actually have them written down and seek
to adhere to them: hence the shock and dismay.
Rep. Adam Schiff says he’s concerned that he hasn’t “gotten much from the intelligence community” on Russia peddling disinformation.
“At times, some of the leadership, like Director Ratcliffe, not been very forthcoming in terms of the intelligence on the Russian threat.” pic.twitter.com/JhcVYlCgcf
turcopolier | This is the story of an American patriot, an
honorable man, John Paul Mac Issac, who tried to do the right thing and
is now being unfairly and maliciously slandered as an agent of foreign
intelligence, specifically Russia. He is not an agent or spy for anyone.
He is his own man. How do I know? I have known his dad for more than 20
years. I’ve known John Paul’s dad as Mac. Mac is a decorated Vietnam
Veteran, who flew gunships in Vietnam. And he continued his military
service with an impeccable record until he retired as an Air Force
Colonel. The crews of those gunships have an annual reunion and Mac
usually takes John Paul along, who volunteers his computer and video
skills to record and compile the stories of those brave men who served
their country in a difficult war.
This story is very simple–Hunter
Biden dropped off three computers with liquid damage at a repair shop
in Wilmington, Delaware on April 12, 2019. The owner, John Mac Issac,
examined the three and determined that one was beyond recovery, one was
okay and the data on the harddrive of the third could be recoverd.
Hunter signed the service ticket and John Paul Mac Issac repaired the
hard drive and down loaded the data. During this process he saw some
disturbing images and a number of emails that concerned Ukraine,
Burisma, China and other issues. With the work completed, Mr. Mac Issac
prepared an invoice, sent it to Hunter Biden and notified him that the
computer was ready to be retrieved. Hunter did not respond. In the
ensuing four months (May, June, July and August), Mr. Mac Issac made
repeated efforts to contact Hunter Biden. Biden never answered and never
responded. More importantly, Biden stiffed John Paul Mac Issac–i.e., he
did not pay the bill.
When the manufactured Ukraine crisis surfaced in August 2019, John
Paul realized he was sitting on radioactive material that might be
relevant to the investigation. After conferring with his father, Mac and
John Paul decided that Mac would take the information to the FBI office
in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mac walked into the Albuquerque FBI office
and spoke with an agent who refused to give his name. Mac explained the
material he had, but was rebuffed by the FBI. He was told basically, get
lost. This was mid-September 2019.
Two months passed and then, out of the blue, the FBI contacted John
Paul Mac Issac. Two FBI agents from the Wilmington FBI office–Joshua
Williams and Mike Dzielak–came to John Paul’s business. He offered
immediately to give them the hard drive, no strings attached. Agents
Williams and Dzielak declined to take the device.
Two weeks later, the intrepid agents called and asked to come and
image the hard drive. John Paul agreed but, instead of taking the hard
drive or imaging the drive, they gave him a subpoena. It was part of a
grand jury proceeding but neither agent said anything about the purpose
of the grand jury.
archive | Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani says he spent three weeks authenticating the materials on a copy of a hard drive that once allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The contents of the drive are the subject of a series of explosivereports by the New York Post that shed further light on Hunter Biden’s dealings with China and Ukraine.
Giuliani,
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, told The Epoch Times that
he and his attorney, Robert Costello, checked some of the written notes
in the drive against samples of Hunter Biden’s handwriting, matched
details about undisclosed meetings with confidential information they
had already obtained from other sources, and verified the email
addresses in the data trove, among other steps. Giuliani said the drive
contains roughly 800 of Hunter Biden’s personal photos, including some
which Giuliani alleges show illegal acts. The Epoch Times could not
independently verify the claim as Giuliani declined to provide a copy of
the files.
Costello
allegedly received a copy of the hard drive in August from the owner of
a Mac repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, and handed it to Giuliani
three weeks ago, according to the former mayor. Trump’s former chief
strategist, Stephen Bannon, negotiated an exclusive deal with the Post
and Giuliani handed a copy of the drive over to the newspaper on Oct.
10. The Post conducted its own authentication effort, Giuliani said.
The
exclusive deal with the Post gave the newspaper a head start on
covering the material but allows Giuliani to eventually begin disclosing
the material to other media, the former mayor said.
Along
with the copy of the drive, the owner of the Mac repair shop gave
Costello a receipt dated April 12, 2019, which he allegedly generated on
the day Hunter Biden dropped off a water-damaged laptop and requested
the data to be recovered. After Biden failed to pick up the laptop for
90 days and the shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, was unable to reach
him, Mac Isaac took possession of the laptop and reviewed its contents.
Mac Isaac also gave Costello a copy of an alleged subpoena for the
laptop, dated Dec. 9, 2019, which the FBI allegedly used to seize the
laptop the same month.
An
FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware
declined to confirm the authenticity of the subpoena. Hunter Biden’s
lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. Mac Isaac did not
respond to requests for an interview.
politico | Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, world leaders, and distinguished
delegates: Welcome to New York. It is a profound honor to stand here in
my home city, as a representative of the American people, to address the
people of the world....
Strong, sovereign nations let diverse countries with different
values, different cultures, and different dreams not just coexist, but
work side by side on the basis of mutual respect.
Strong, sovereign nations let their people take ownership of the
future and control their own destiny. And strong, sovereign nations
allow individuals to flourish in the fullness of the life intended by
God.
In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but
rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to watch. This week
gives our country a special reason to take pride in that example. We are
celebrating the 230th anniversary of our beloved Constitution -- the
oldest constitution still in use in the world today.
This timeless document has been the foundation of peace, prosperity,
and freedom for the Americans and for countless millions around the
globe whose own countries have found inspiration in its respect for
human nature, human dignity, and the rule of law.
The greatest in the United States Constitution is its first three beautiful words. They are: “We the people.”
Generations of Americans have sacrificed to maintain the promise of
those words, the promise of our country, and of our great history. In
America, the people govern, the people rule, and the people are
sovereign. I was elected not to take power, but to give power to the
American people, where it belongs.
In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of
sovereignty. Our government's first duty is to its people, to our
citizens -- to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve
their rights, and to defend their values.
As President of the United States, I will always put America first,
just like you, as the leaders of your countries will always, and should
always, put your countries first. (Applause.)
All responsible leaders have an obligation to serve their own
citizens, and the nation-state remains the best vehicle for elevating
the human condition.
But making a better life for our people also requires us to work
together in close harmony and unity to create a more safe and peaceful
future for all people.
The United States will forever be a great friend to the world, and
especially to its allies. But we can no longer be taken advantage of, or
enter into a one-sided deal where the United States gets nothing in
return. As long as I hold this office, I will defend America’s interests
above all else.
But in fulfilling our obligations to our own nations, we also realize
that it’s in everyone’s interest to seek a future where all nations can
be sovereign, prosperous, and secure.
America does more than speak for the values expressed in the United
Nations Charter. Our citizens have paid the ultimate price to defend our
freedom and the freedom of many nations represented in this great hall.
America's devotion is measured on the battlefields where our young men
and women have fought and sacrificed alongside of our allies, from the
beaches of Europe to the deserts of the Middle East to the jungles of
Asia.
It is an eternal credit to the American character that even after we
and our allies emerged victorious from the bloodiest war in history, we
did not seek territorial expansion, or attempt to oppose and impose our
way of life on others. Instead, we helped build institutions such as
this one to defend the sovereignty, security, and prosperity for all.
Our movement is about replacing a failed
and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by
you, the American People. There is nothing the political establishment
will not do, and no lie they will not tell, to hold on to their prestige
and power at your expense.
The Washington establishment, and the
financial and media corporations that fund it, exists for only one
reason: to protect and enrich itself.
The establishment has trillions of dollars
at stake in this election. As an example, just one single trade deal
they’d like to pass, involves trillions of dollars controlled by many
countries, corporations and lobbyists.
For those who control the levers of power
in Washington, and for the global special interests they partner with,
our campaign represents an existential threat.
This is not simply another 4-year
election. This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that
will determine whether or not We The People reclaim control over our
government.
The political establishment that is trying
everything to stop us, is the same group responsible for our disastrous
trade deals, massive illegal immigration, and economic and foreign
policies that have bled this country dry. The political establishment
has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs, as they
flee to Mexico, China and other countries throughout the world. Our
just-announced jobs numbers are anemic, and our gross domestic product,
or GDP, is barely above one percent. Workers in the United States, were
making less than they were almost 20 years ago – and yet they are
working harder.
It’s a global power structure that is
responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working
class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the
pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.
Just look at what this corrupt
establishment has done to our cities like Detroit and Flint, Michigan –
and rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and across our
country. They have stripped these towns bare, and raided the wealth for
themselves and taken away their jobs.
medium |As sick as I am of Donald Trump, I am no match for my mama — and based on recent observations, probably not for yours either.
Whenever my mom is about to say something that might be considered impolite,
she prefaces her comments with “Lord forgive me.” I question whether
God takes offense to criticism of someone that’s the seven deadly sins
rolled up into a stupid man who acts as if he’s the omnipotent one, but I
don’t tell her how to be a good Christian and she lets me be a heathen
who elects to speak to God without an intermediary.
Where
we differ on how to practice our faith, we align in tone whenever
discussing the demon in the White House. That’s why more often than not,
what follows “Lord forgive me” is something that recalls the Old
Testament.
I
love that my mom aims to be polite even if the person she’s talking
about is spiritually something akin to a boil on the left ass cheek of
Satan, but Black elders have earned the right to be especially venomous,
given what his victory in the 2016 presidential election signified.
In an Undefeated article about Black voters’ reactions
published soon after the election, Melvin Steals, a retired educator
and school administrator living in western Pennsylvania, said of Trump’s
victory, “Now we see what was hidden.” Steals, 70 at the time, went on
to compare the outcome to the Great Redemption, the period after Reconstruction “when they wanted to eradicate all of the gains made by Blacks after the Civil War.”
“I’m working the voter protection hotlines and I’ve had some conversations with older voters that made me blush.”
“This
is another opportunity to reassert their authority,” Steals added. “At
the core there is something nefarious about it. It’s tied into White
supremacy, that it’s their way or the highway.”
President Obama had the house and a supermajority in the senate. He passed an insurance giveaway health care bill w no public option, failed to break up the banks, failed to rescue homeowners, and then has the audacity to blame progressives for his administration’s failures. Wow. https://t.co/QRZH9jzbHP
breitbart | Breitbart News recently reported on the New York Post’sbombshell story that
indicated that Joe Biden may have met with an adviser to the board of
Burisma while he was Vice President, arranged by his son Hunter, who was
working as a lobbyist for the company at the time. Joe Biden has previously said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
But, the leaked emails allegedly show that Hunter introduced his
father to a Bursima executive less than a year before Biden, acting as
Vice President, pressured the Ukrainian government into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company. Shortly after the story broke, many found themselves having trouble sharing it across social media. This censorship comes just weeks after executives from both Facebook and Twitter joined the Biden transition team.
Breitbart News reported in September that Twitter Public Policy Director Carlos Monje left the social media company to join
the transition team for Joe Biden. Monje’s specific role on the team
has not been made clear and Biden’s transition team reportedly declined
to comment on the situation.
Despite a specific role not being named, Monje will reportedly be
serving as co-chair of Biden’s infrastructure policy committee and has
already helped to host a fundraiser for Biden this week, according to an
invitation sent to Politico.
Monje has worked in the world of presidential transition politics in
the past, previously serving as the director of agency review on the
team that prepared for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s
administration, which failed to take flight. Monje also worked on the
Obama administration team’s 2008 national security working group
according to his LinkedIn profile.
Monje also acted as deputy policy director during Obama’s first run
for office and subsequently served as a senior policy advisor and
special assistant to the president on the Domestic Policy Council.
Monje’s final years in the administration were spent in the
Transporation Department before he departed for Twitter.
In October, Breitbart News further reported
that Biden’s transition team had hired top Facebook executive Jessica
Hertz to its general counsel to oversee ethical issues. The move
reportedly came as the campaign struggles with Facebook to have posts by President Trump censored on
the platform. This is the second Big Tech executive to join Biden’s
campaign. Hertz will reportedly be responsible for “enforcement,
oversight, and compliance” of the ethics plan that Biden’s team unveiled
this week.
New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari was one of the
first to note that Twitter was blocking him from posting a link to the
Biden-Ukraine story, claiming that the link was “potentially harmful.”
realsludge | Democrats are looking ahead to the second nominating ballot at the
July Democratic National Convention, when superdelegates will be allowed
to cast votes if no presidential candidate receives a majority of
pledged delegates on the first ballot.
Superdelegates include 75 at-large DNC members, often prominent party
figures who are put forward as a slate by DNC Chair Tom Perez and do
not directly represent a state or other region. Among the 447 total
voting DNC members, who make up the majority of 771 superdelegates,
there are scores of corporate lobbyists and consultants—including many
of the 75 at-large DNC members, who were not individually elected.
These corporate lobbyists will be allowed to vote on the second
ballot under the compromise that emerged from the Unity Reform
Commission meeting in 2017. The Unity Reform Commission’s proposed
package of reforms was later passed by the Rules and Bylaws Committee
and adopted as the 2020 convention rules in a rushed voice vote of full
DNC members at the summer 2018 national party meeting.
In October 2017, Perez purged DNC committees of several members who
had supported either his rival candidate for chair, then-Rep. Keith
Ellison, or Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid. In their place, Perez
appointed several handpicked corporate lobbyists to the committees that
govern the party’s operating rules, budget, convention delegates, and
other matters.
Sludge reviewed a DNC committee membership list from September 2019
and found that nearly two-thirds of the members of the DNC Rules and
Bylaws Committee have backgrounds in corporate influence and legal
defense that present possible conflicts of interest for their work on
the party rules. Some individuals may not currently hold the same
committee assignments, but all are current DNC members. Committee
membership details are not made publicly available by the DNC.
The 32-member DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee contains the following
20 individuals: a health insurance board member co-chair, three
surrogates for presidential campaigns (two for Bloomberg, one for
Biden), four current corporate lobbyists, two former corporate
lobbyists, six corporate consultants, and four corporate lawyers.
This article, the second in a series
on DNC committees, looks at the Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is
responsible for the Charter of the Democratic Party, for which it “shall
receive and consider all recommendations for adoption and amendments.”
Here are the rules-making DNC members—many of them unelected—whose
voting power raises ethics questions, as the Rules and Bylaws Committee
continues to block proposed changes for stronger conflict of interest
policies.
theintercept |Members of the Democratic National Committee will meet on Saturday to choose their new chair, replacing the disgracedinterim chair Donna Brazile, who replaced the disgraced five-year chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Even though the outcome is extremely unlikely to change the (failed) fundamentals of the party, the race has become something of an impassioned proxy war
replicating the 2016 primary fight: between the Clinton/Obama
establishment wing (which largely backs Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez,
who vehemently supported
Clinton) and the insurgent Sanders wing (which backs Keith Ellison, the
first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congress, who was an early
Sanders supporter).
The New Republic’s Clio Chang has a great, detailed analysis
of the contest. She asks the key question about Perez’s candidacy that
has long hovered and yet has never been answered. As Chang correctly
notes, supporters of Perez insist, not unreasonably, that he is
materially indistinguishable from Ellison in terms of ideology (despite his support for TPP,
seemingly grounded in loyalty to Obama). This, she argues, is “why the
case for Tom Perez makes no sense”: After all, “if Perez is like Ellison
— in both his politics and ideology — why bother fielding him in the
first place?”
The timeline here is critical. Ellison announced
his candidacy on November 15, armed with endorsements that spanned the
range of the party: Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Raúl Grijalva, and
various unions on the left, along with establishment stalwarts such as
Chuck Schumer, Amy Klobuchar, and Harry Reid. He looked to be the clear
frontrunner.
But as Ellison’s momentum built, the Obama White House worked to
recruit Perez to run against Ellison. They succeeded, and Perez announced his candidacy
on December 15 — a full month after Ellison announced. Why did the
White House work to recruit someone to sink Ellison? If Perez and
Ellison are so ideologically indistinguishable, why was it so important
to the Obama circle — and the Clinton circle — to find someone capable
of preventing Ellison’s election? What’s the rationale? None has ever
been provided.
I can’t recommend Chang’s analysis highly enough on one key aspect of
what motivated the recruitment of Perez: to ensure that the Democratic
establishment maintains its fatal grip on the party and, in particular,
to prevent Sanders followers from having any say in the party’s
direction and identity:
There is one real difference between the two: Ellison has
captured the support of the left wing. … It appears that the underlying
reason some Democrats prefer Perez over Ellison has nothing to do with
ideology, but rather his loyalty to the Obama wing. As the head of the
DNC, Perez would allow that wing to retain more control, even if
Obama-ites are loath to admit it. …
And it’s not just Obama- and Clinton-ites that could see some power
slip away with an Ellison-headed DNC. Paid DNC consultants also have a
vested interest in maintaining the DNC status quo. Nomiki Konst, who has
extensively covered the nuts and bolts of the DNC race, asked Perez how he felt about conflicts of interest within
the committee — specifically, DNC members who also have contracts with
the committee. Perez dodged the issue, advocating for a “big tent.” In
contrast, in a forum last month, Ellison firmly stated, “We are battling the consultant-ocracy.”
politico | I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of
her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to
disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to
show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money
they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the
other way.
When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found
the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement
between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and
Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for
raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the
party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had
the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director,
and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also
was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing,
budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release
without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.
When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the
candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the
party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996
or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party
already is under the control of the president. When you have an open
contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes
under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I
was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our
people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had
been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her
candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.
I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption
that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary
to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the
staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual
conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I
had found none. Then I found this agreement.
The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was
not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair,
one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had
decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but
as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.
I had to keep my promise to Bernie. I was in agony as I dialed
him. Keeping this secret was against everything that I stood for, all
that I valued as a woman and as a public servant.
“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient.”
I discussed the fundraising agreement that each of the candidates had
signed. Bernie was familiar with it, but he and his staff ignored it.
They had their own way of raising money through small donations. I
described how Hillary’s campaign had taken it another step.
theintercept | It didn’t have to be this way. Obama’s campaign operation, Obama for
America, took small-dollar giving to never-before-seen heights
and opened up the possibility of a transformation of politics. But he
quickly decided to marginalize his group after the 2008 election. He
renamed it Organizing for America, but ordered it to do very little
organizing, worried that if grassroots activists attacked Blue Dog
Democrats, they would bolt from the president and lose in 2010.
Then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously told activists
such a strategy was “fucking retarded.” (Most lost anyway in 2010, as
the tea party wave swept them out.)
OFA became Obama’s primary campaign apparatus, supplanting the DNC,
which became an afterthought handed to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who later
became Clinton’s running mate. After the 2010 wave, Obama put
Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on top of the moribund
institution, a clear signal that he was uninterested in it as a central
component of the party. Obama’s poor relationship with Wasserman Schultz
was widely known and written about, but he left her in the job for six
years regardless.
Raising money for a bland outfit like the DNC isn’t easy in the best
of times, but with Obama offering little to no help, and clinging to his
invaluable email list, Wasserman Schultz was set up to fail, even if
she would have done so on her own.
Obama instead reasoned that he could become the party, his dynamic
and charismatic personality carrying it at the national level.
Obama was re-elected, but the party itself went on a historic losing
spree, ultimately shedding nearly 1,000 seats across the country. Even
after Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, and the DNC continued spending
money on consultants at an eye-popping rate, Obama decided not to make a
leadership change. Instead, he left it saddled with debt — debt the
Clinton campaign would later agree to pay off in exchange for control.
Obama finally became interested in the party after the 2016 loss. His
final gift to the party apparatus was Tom Perez, his labor secretary,
who he recruited to stop Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., from winning the
race for DNC chair. Obama and Perez won. DNC funding has been anemic, and it recently had to add to its roughly $3 million in debt.
speaker.gov |Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Wolf Blitzer on
CNN’s The Situation Room to discuss the resumption of COVID relief talks
after the President’s decision to walk away and other news of the day.
Below are the Speaker’s remarks:
Wolf Blitzer. Madam Speaker, thank you so much for joining
us, and as you know, there are Americans who are being evicted from
their homes. They can't pay their rent. Many Americans are waiting
in food lines for the first time in their lives. Can you look them in
the eye, Madam Speaker, and explain why you don't want to accept
the President's latest stimulus offer?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, because – thank you very much, Wolf. I
hope you'll ask the same question of the Republicans about why they
don't really want to meet the needs of the American people. Let me say
to those people, because all of my colleagues, we represent these
people. I have for over 30 years represented my constituents. I know
what their needs are. I listen to them. And their needs are
not addressed in the President's proposal.
So, when you say to me, ‘Why don't you accept theirs?’ Why don't
they accept ours? Our legislation is there to do three things
primarily: to honor our workers, honor our heroes, our health
care workers, our police and fire, our first responders, our teachers,
our transportation, sanitation, food workers the people who make our
lives work. We couldn't be doing what we are doing without them. Many
of them have risked their lives so that they – to save lives and now
will lose their job because Mitch McConnell says, ‘Let the states go
bankrupt.’ ‘Let the states go bankrupt.’
[Crosstalk]
Wolf Blitzer. Excuse me for interrupting, Madam Speaker, but they need the money right now. And even members of your own –
Speaker Pelosi. I understand that. You asked me a question.
Wolf Blitzer. Members of your own Caucus, Madam Speaker, want to accept this deal, $1.8 trillion. Congressman Ro Khanna –
[Crosstalk]
Speaker Pelosi. Wait a minute. Wait a second.
Wolf Blitzer. Let me just quote Ro Khanna, a man you
know well. I assume you admire him. He’s a Democrat. He just said
this, he said, ‘People in need can't wait until February. 1.8 trillion
is significant and more than twice Obama stimulus.’ ‘Make a deal, and
put the ball in McConnell court.’ So what do you say to Ro Khanna?
Speaker Pelosi. What I say to you is, I don't know if you're
always an apologists, and many of your colleagues apologists, for
the Republican position. Ro Khanna, that’s nice. That isn’t what we’re
going to do, and nobody is waiting until February. I want this very
much now, because people need help now.
But it's no use giving them a false thing just because the President
wants to put a check with his name on it in the mail that we should not
be doing all we can to help people pay the rent, put food on the table,
to enhance benefits, that they don't lose their jobs if they’re
state and local, that they – this – we are talking about
the consequences of a pandemic, symptoms of a problem that the President
refuses to address and that is the coronavirus. That is the
coronavirus.
[Crosstalk]
Wolf Blitzer. But we know, Madam Speaker, we know about the
problem out there, but here are millions of Americans who have lost
their jobs. They can't pay their rent. Their kids need the food.
Speaker Pelosi. That’s right, and that’s what we’re trying to get done.
Wolf Blitzer. $1.8 trillion and the President just tweeted, ‘Stimulus go big or go home.’
Speaker Pelosi. Right.
Wolf Blitzer. He wants more right now
Speaker Pelosi. That’s right.
Wolf Blitzer. So, why not work out a deal with him and don't let the perfect, as they say here in Washington, be the enemy of the good?
Speaker Pelosi. Well, I will not let the wrong be the enemy of the right.
Wolf Blitzer. What is wrong with $1.8 trillion?
Speaker Pelosi. You know what? Do you have any idea what
the difference is between the spending they have in their bill and that
we have in our bill? Do you realize that they have come back and said
all of these things for Child Tax Credits and Earned Income Tax Credits
or helping people who lost their jobs are eliminated in their bill? Do
you realize they pay no respect to the fact that child care is very
important for people whose children cannot go to school because they are
doing remote learning and, yet, they minimize the need for child
care, which is the threshold with which people, mothers and fathers, can
go to work if they have that? Do you have any idea at how woefully
short their concern, their concern –
[Crosstalk]
Wolf Blitzer. That is precisely why, Madam Speaker,
it's important right now. Yesterday, I spoke yesterday to Andrew Yang
who said the same thing. It's not everything you want, but a lot there.
[Crosstalk]
Speaker Pelosi. Okay you know what? Honest to God. You
really – I can't get over it because Andrew Yang, he’s lovely. Ro
Khanna, he’s lovely. But they are not negotiating this situation. They
have no idea of the particulars. They have no idea of what
the language is here. I didn't come over here to have you – so you're
the apologist for the Obama – excuse me. God forbid. Thank God for
Barack Obama
Wolf Blitzer. Madam Speaker, I’m not an apologist. I'm asking you serious questions because people are in desperate need right now.
sagepub | An early reader of this article posed a provocative question: is
there anything analytically distinct about the Internet? My answer
revealed my priors. “Of course the Internet is distinct,” I wanted to
say. But that is arguing from an embarrassingly basic logical fallacy.
The question of what the Internet does analytically that, say, “capital”
or “economy” or “culture” or “organizations” does not already do is
important. My answer is debatable, but the debate is worthwhile. I do
not know if the Internet adds something analytically distinct to our
social inquiries, but it adds something analytical precision. Other
constructs capture important dimensions of social life in a digital
society. For instance, one can argue that Silicon Valley is a racial
project (Noble and Roberts 2019; Watters 2015) or a sociohistorical construction of racial meanings, logics, and institutions (Omi and Winant 2014). White racial frames (Feagin 2020) or color-blind racism (Bonilla-Silva 2006)
can elucidate how ironic humor about Black people, Muslims, and
immigrants in online gaming platforms reproduces “offline” racism (Fairchild 2020; Gray 2012).
These are just two examples of noteworthy approaches taken to studying
Internet technologies and “mainstream” sociological interests (i.e.,
economic cultures and discourses, respectively). Still, sociological
practice does not systematically engage with the social relations of
Internet technologies as analytical equals to the object of study. If
there is anything particular about Internet technologies for
sociological inquiry, we should make it explicit. And once explicit, we
should give it the same theoretical care as states, capital, and power. Daniels (2013) points us in the right direction when she argued that
the
reality is that in the networked society . . . racism is now global . .
., as those with regressive political agendas rooted in white power
connect across national boundaries via the Internet, a phenomenon that
runs directly counter to Omi and Winant’s conceptualization of the State
as a primary structural agent in racial formation.
Daniels
named to the global nature of both racism and the networks of capital we
gesture to when we say Internet or digital. It is an argument for
bringing back the political economy of race and racism. Internet
technologies are specific in how they have facilitated, legitimized, and
transformed states and capital within a global racial hierarchy. An app
with which underemployed skilled labor sells services to customers
(e.g., TaskRabbit) might be a U.S. racial project. But the capital that
finances the app is embedded in transnational capital flows. Global
patterns of racialized labor that determine what is “skill” and what is
“labor” mediate the value of labor and the rents the platform can
extract for mediating the laborer-customer relationship. Even the way we
move money on these platforms—“Cash App me!”—is networked to
supranational firms such as PayPal and Alibaba (Swartz 2020).
Internet technologies have atomized the political economy of
globalization with all the ideas about race, capital, racism, and
ethnicity embedded within. An understanding of the political economy of
Internet technologies adds a precise formulation of how this
transformation operates in everyday social worlds: privatization through
opacity and exclusion via inclusion. Both characteristics are
distinctly about the power of Internet technologies. And each
characteristic is important for the study of race and racism.
Understanding platform capitalism helps us understand how these two
characteristics are important.
Internet technologies have networked forms of capital (Srnicek and De Sutter 2017; Zhang 2020), consolidated capital’s coercive power (Azar, Marinescu, and Steinbaum forthcoming; Dube et al. 2020), flattened hierarchical organizations (Treem and Leonardi 2013; Turco 2016), and produced new containers for culture (Brock 2020; Noble 2018; Patton et al. 2017; Ray et al. 2017).
By that definition, the Internet has amplified and reworked existing
social relations. Platform capitalism moves us toward the analytical
importance of Internet technologies as sociopolitical regimes. Platforms
produce new forms of currency (i.e., data) and new forms of exchange
(e.g., cryptocurrencies), and they structure new organizational
arrangements among owners, workers, and consumers (see “prosumers”).
Even more important for the study of race and racism, platforms
introduce new layers of opacity into every facet of social life.
mintpressnews |The enormous economic dislocation
caused by the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to
fundamentally alter the structure of society, and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) if using the crisis to implement near-permanent
austerity measures across the world.
76 of the 91 loans it has negotiated with 81 nations since the
beginning of the worldwide pandemic in March have come attached with
demands that countries adopt measures such as deep cuts to public
services and pensions — measures that will undoubtedly entail
privatization, wage freezes or cuts, or the firing of public sector
workers like doctors, nurses, teachers and firefighters.
The principal cheerleader for neoliberal austerity measures across
the globe for decades, the IMF has recently (quietly) begun admitting
that these policies have not worked and generally make problems like
poverty, uneven development, and inequality even worse. Furthermore,
they have also failed even to bring the promised economic growth that
was meant to counteract these negative effects. In 2016, it described its own policies as “oversold” and earlier summed up its experiments in Latin America as “all pain, no gain.” Thus, its own reports explicitly state its policies do not work.
“The IMF has sounded the alarm about a massive spike in inequality in
the wake of the pandemic. Yet it is steering countries to pay for
pandemic spending by making austerity cuts that will fuel poverty and
inequality,” Chema Vera, Interim Executive Director of Oxfam
International, said today.
These measures could leave millions of people without
access to healthcare or income support while they search for work, and
could thwart any hope of sustainable recovery. In taking this approach,
the IMF is doing an injustice to its own research. Its head needs to
start speaking to its hands.”
Oxfam has identified at least 14 countries that it expects will
imminently freeze or cut public sector wages and jobs. Tunisia, for
example, has only 13 doctors per 10,000 people. Any cuts to its already
scant healthcare system would cripple it in its fight against the
coronavirus. “If people can’t afford testing and care for COVID-19 and
other health needs, the virus will continue to spread unchecked and more
people will die. Out-of-pocket healthcare expenses were a tragedy
before the pandemic, and now they are a death sentence,” Vera added.
tabletmag | Tides
was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, a California real estate investor
who named the entity after a Bay Area bookstore popular among
left-leaning activists. From the beginning, according to their own documents,
Tides was designed unlike most other nonprofit institutions. Rather
than building up or spending down an endowment, it sought to become more
like a sophisticated piece of software—a financial instrument that
would allow wealthy individuals and donors to contribute to the causes
of their choosing with more anonymity than is generally allowed by the
laws governing ordinary nonprofits.
Recently,
after Pike stepped away, the Tides network has taken on a distinctly
political role, whose guiding star appears to be Barack Obama. The
secretary of the Tides board
is Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America and a former deputy assistant
secretary of state for international organizations in the Obama
administration; board member Cheryl Alston was appointed by Obama to the
advisory committee of the federal pension program. Peter Buttenwieser,
the heir to the Lehman Brothers fortune who passed away in 2018,
financed a fund in his own name which is administered and distributed
entirely by the Tides Foundation. A “major behind-the-scenes supporter of Democratic candidates,”
Buttenwieser was one of President Obama’s earliest high profile
backers, helping the then-senator organize his bid for the White House.
Moreover, Atlantic Philanthropies, a nonprofit created by billionaire retailer Chuck Feeney in the 1980s, has directed more than $42 million in grants through the Tides network since 2000. Based in Bermuda,
Atlantic Philanthropies was able to participate in political lobbying
efforts in ways that continental United States nonprofits cannot.
Atlantic became increasingly aggressive under the Obama administration.
As Gara LaMarche, Atlantic’s president, said in one think tank address,
when Obama was elected “we saw opportunities to assist our grantees in
moving forward more rapidly and broadly in a number of areas central to
our mission.” In return, Atlantic dispensed $27 million to help push Obamacare through Congress. At the ceremony to sign Obamacare into law, LaMarche stood beside President Obama in the East Room of the White House.
In
any case, what’s clear is that there is now a sophisticated and complex
structure underneath what many assume to be an organic and spontaneous
social movement, one with deep pockets and ambitious goals. “After over
fourteen years of learning and over 700 million dollars invested ... the
collapse we have been expecting is surely underway,” reads the NoVo
Foundation’s website. Right now there’s only this one statement on the
site, which is under construction as noted: “Working on solutions now so
old patterns of power can’t, once again, re-form to rebuild and
continue to repress.”
WaPo | The
day after President Trump told the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a
history of inciting violence, to “stand back and stand by,” during the
first presidential debate last week, tech investor Cyan Banister tweeted that the group was misunderstood and had “a few bad apples.”
The
open defense of an organization that has been deemed a hate group by
the Southern Poverty Law Center is one extreme example of an
increasingly public reactionary streak in Silicon Valley that diverges
from the tech industry’s image as a bastion of liberalism. Some
libertarian, centrist and right-leaning Silicon Valley investors and
executives, who wield outsize influence, power and access to capital,
describe tech culture as under siege by activist employees pushing a
social justice agenda.
Curtis Yarvin, dubbed a “favorite philosopher of the alt-right” by the Verge, has become a familiar face
on the invite-only audio social network Clubhouse, in rooms with
investors such as Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, the founder of
Andreessen Horowitz, which invested in the app.
Cryptocurrency
start-up Coinbase recently sought to restrict political speech by
employees, a move many interpreted as a shift to the right because it
came in reaction to internal discussions of Black Lives Matter.
Tensions
are running high even at some of the biggest tech companies. The
crackdown on employee speech in response to social activism over the
past year has spread to Facebook, Google and Pinterest, among others.
In September, Facebook restricted spaces
for political discussions after employees protested the company’s
moderation policies against hate speech affecting Black users. Pinterest
shut down a Slack channel used to submit questions for company meetings
and turned another Slack channel read-only, opting to use a different
tool for up-voting. Employees, who had used both channels to question
leadership about race and gender bias and pay equity in recent months,
were upset, according to records viewed by The Washington Post.
Banister, a
former partner at Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm and an early
investor in Uber and SpaceX, said she applauded Coinbase’s decision.
“Enough is enough. The pendulum swings and it swings back,” she told The
Post. “Sometimes people just want to have a safe place to go where they
don’t have to think about this stuff anymore because it’s literally
everywhere. ”
Banister
told The Post she became interested in the Proud Boys after Trump
mentioned them during the debate. She said she does not condone white
supremacy and it should have been “dead easy” for the president to say
the same.
“Questioning something does not mean condoning or agreeing,” she said.
Often, the trigger for this public pushback has been social pressure around racial equity, according to diversity consultants.
The tech industry went through similar reactionary spasms around the last presidential election, revealing a different strain
of libertarianism from the counterculture and cyberculture geeks coding
away in their garages. At the time, the underlying tension was also
around equity and injustice. But the battle was about disavowing Thiel, a
Trump donor and adviser, rather than expressing support for Black Lives
Matter.
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