Chris Hedges's Blog, page 22

U.S., Taliban Agree to Terms for Peace Deal, Troop Withdrawal

ISLAMABAD — The United States and the Taliban said Friday they have agreed to sign a peace deal next week aimed at ending 18 years of war in Afghanistan and bringing U.S. troops home, wrapping up America’s longest-running conflict and fulfilling one of President Donald Trump’s main campaign promises.

The planned Feb. 29 signing depends on the success of a week-long nationwide ‘reduction in violence’ agreement in which all sides have committed to end attacks. It is due to start at midnight Friday local time (1930 GMT, 2:30 p.m. EST), according to an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

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The announcement follows months of negotiations between the two sides that have broken down before. Yet both parties have signaled a desire to halt the fighting that began with the U.S. invasion after the September 11, 2001, attacks by Osama bin Laden’s Afghanistan-based al-Qaida network.

Should the truce stand, the U.S.-Taliban deal would be followed within 10 days by the start of all-Afghan peace talks that could result in the formation of a new government in Kabul, a pledge from the Taliban not to allow terrorist groups to operate in the country, and the phased withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign troops over 18 months.

The plan is a gamble for Trump, who retweeted several news accounts of the agreement. If it’s successful, he will be able to claim to have taken a first step toward meeting his 2016 campaign pledge to bring American troops home. But if it fails, Trump could be painted by his Democratic adversaries in an election year as being naïve and willing to sacrifice the security of U.S. soldiers and American interests for the sake of political expediency.

For the Taliban, the successful completion of the truce and Afghanistan peace talks would give the group a shot at international legitimacy, which it lacked at the time it ran the country and gave bin Laden and his associates safe haven.

The truce, to be monitored by American forces, will likely be fragile and U.S. officials have noted the possibility that “spoilers” uninterested in peace talks could disrupt it. Determining who is responsible for potential attacks during the seven days will therefore be critical.

Both sides were cautiously optimistic in announcing the agreement that had been previewed a week ago by a senior U.S. official at an international security conference in Munich, Germany. The announcement had been expected shortly thereafter but was delayed in part because of Monday’s release of the results of Afghanistan’s disputed September 2019 elections that showed President Ashraf Ghani winning by an extremely narrow margin.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement that the peace agreement, to be signed in Doha, Qatar, by U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban representatives, will eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire. The deal also envisions guarantees from the Taliban that Afghanistan will not be used to attack the U.S. or its allies.

“We are preparing for the signing to take place on February 29,” Pompeo said. “Intra-Afghan negotiations will start soon thereafter, and will build on this fundamental step to deliver a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire and the future political road map for Afghanistan.”

The Taliban, meanwhile, said in a statement that the agreement is intended to achieve nationwide peace and and end to the foreign troop presence in the country.

The statement said both sides “will now create a suitable security situation” ahead of the agreement signing date, invite international representatives to a signing ceremony, arrange for the release of prisoners, structure a path for peace talks, “and finally lay the groundwork for peace across the country with the withdrawal of all foreign forces.”

The Taliban added that they will not allow “the land of Afghanistan to be used against security of others so that our people can live a peaceful and prosperous life under the shade of an Islamic system.”

But the road ahead is fraught with difficulties, particularly as some Taliban elements and other groups have shown little interest in negotiations. An attack that killed two Americans last September disrupted what at the time was an expected announcement of a peace deal.

And, it remained unclear who would represent Kabul at the intra-Afghan talks. Ghani’s rivals have disputed the Afghan election commission’s declaration that he won the presidential election.

The Taliban have refused to talk to Ghani’s government and also denounced the election results, saying they will talk to government representatives but only as ordinary Afghans, not as officials. Germany and Norway have both offered to host the all-Afghan talks, but no venue has yet been set.

Pompeo did not say who would represent Kabul, only that talks “will build on this fundamental step to deliver a comprehensive and permanent cease-fire and the future political road map for Afghanistan.”

Under the terms of the ‘’reduction in violence” — which covers all of Afghanistan and also applies to Afghan forces as well as the United States and Taliban — all sides have committed to end attacks for seven days. For the Taliban, that includes roadside bombings, suicide attacks and rocket strikes.

The Taliban military commission issued instructions to its commanders “to stop attacks from Feb. 22 against foreign and Afghan forces until Feb 29.”

The peace deal also calls for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners, most of whom are being held by the Afghan government. Although the U.S. has already discussed the prisoner release with government representatives, there has been no public announcement about it from Ghani’s government.

Neighboring Pakistan, which has long been accused of backing the Taliban, welcomed the reduction-in-violence plan.

“’We hope the Afghan parties would now seize this historic opportunity and work out a comprehensive and inclusive political settlement for durable peace and stability in Afghanistan and the region,” said a Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement. Pakistan hosts more than 1.4 million Afghan refugees.

During any withdrawal, the U.S. would retain the right to continue counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, which have been focused mainly on an Islamic State group’s affiliate and al-Qaida, according to Pentagon officials.

Ghani said in a statement that “for the week of Taliban’s reduction in violence, our defense and security forces will remain in defensive mode” and continue operations against the Islamic State, al-Qaida “and other terrorist groups except Taliban.”

The Pentagon has declined to say whether the U.S. had agreed to cut its troop levels in Afghanistan to zero. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said if the truce is successful and the Afghan peace talks begin, the U.S. would reduce its troop contingent “over time” to about 8,600. There are more than 12,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Yet Suhail Shaheen, the spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Doha, tweeted that the Taliban expect a complete withdrawal. In a Pashto language tweet, he said, “based on the agreement with the U.S., all international forces will leave Afghanistan and the invasion will end and no one will be allowed to use Afghan soil against others.”

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the developments. The U.S.-led military alliance has some 16,000 troops in Afghanistan helping to train the country’s security forces, but it could draw down on its operation to accommodate any firm peace agreement. More than 8,000 of these alliance troops are American.

“This is a critical test of the Taliban’s willingness and ability to reduce violence, and contribute to peace in good faith,” Stoltenberg said in a statement. “This could pave the way for negotiations among Afghans, sustainable peace, and ensuring the country is never again a safe haven for terrorists.”

___

Lee reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Tameem Akhgar in Kabul, Afghanistan, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Lolita Baldor and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

Corporate Media Is Practically Baying for a Police State

The New York Police Department (NYPD) can generally rely on corporate media as allies on controversial police issues. A case in point was the New York subway protests earlier this month, in which the activist group Decolonize This Place organized hundreds of people to occupy New York City subway stations to demand free transit for all and an end to racialized overpolicing on the subway system. There was one injury reported.

The prospect of an event overtly critical of police tactics had Fox News (1/31/20) scandalized. “Antifa Plans Massive Anti-Cop Action in NY Subways,” its headline read. Quoting the Police Benevolent Association, it claimed that the “anti-police movement” is aiming for the “destruction of public order.” Like Fox, Britain’s Daily Mail (2/1/20) appeared particularly appalled that demonstrators were covering their faces: “Masked Anti-Cop Protesters Storm Grand Central During Rush Hour and Vandalize Subway Stations Across New York,” ran its headline.

Local news like ABC7 New York (2/5/20) claimed that the masked “vandals” were part of a “criminal effort” that had “trashed” the subway. Examples of subway destruction offered amounted to squirting glue into card readers and locking a door open, allowing commuters to ride for free. Reporter Derick Waller also told viewers that protesters painted vulgar messages, the camera panning to a wall reading “No NYPD” to illustrate. ABC ended with an appeal to arrest protesters: “Anyone with information is urged to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline.”

This was hardly Shay’s Rebellion. Yet the New York Daily News (2/4/20) was still outraged: “Trashing The Subway, Is a Crime, Not Political Speech,” it argued, as it called for state retribution.

But it was perhaps the New York Post—noted for repeating NYPD talking points (FAIR.org, 7/26/19)—that was the most dead set against the action. “Cop-hating vandals” and “radical agitators” “stormed Grand Central Terminal during rush hour,” “wreaking havoc” and holding “hateful signs” like “No Fare No Cops,” it told readers (1/31/20, 2/5/20). The cop-haters, according to one source (2/1/20), were carrying out a “twisted agenda” of “violence against police.” Throughout its reporting, the only sources were anonymous police officials, leading the stories to sound very much like they were written by the NYPD themselves.

This love of police is not extended to Hong Kong officers, however. In comparison to New York City, where the extent of the damage was limited to what small amounts of paint and glue could do, in October, Hong Kong demonstrators shut down the entire subway system (that carries 5 million daily) by bombing trains and stations. While reporting on the bombing, the New York Post (10/12/19) insisted that they were not anti-cop vandals, but peaceful “pro-democracy protesters” defending the autonomy of the city state against Beijing. An earlier subway clash was described (New York Post, 8/12/19) as police launching a “violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.”

Another Post editorial (11/13/20) made it absolutely clear who they thought was responsible: “Hong Kong’s Crisis Is Entirely Beijing’s Fault” was its headline, as the editorial board condemned the “relentless drive to remove all [the pro-democracy protesters’] liberties.”

Corporate media that appeared so alarmed with New Yorkers wearing masks glorified their counterparts in Hong Kong doing the same thing. The first sentence of CNBC’s report (10/4/19) on the government’s mask ban and the subsequent subway shutdown included the remarkable phrase, “pro-democracy protesters torched businesses and metro stations,” a combination of terms—”pro-democracy” and “torched”—not likely to be seen had US leftists done the same thing. While emphasizing that in response to the mask ban, protesters “hurled petrol bombs at police,” the report maintained that they were part of a “pro-democracy movement.”

Reuters (10/5/19) and the BBC (10/4/19) also described thousands of masked activists shutting down the entire subway network, by bombing stations and setting fire to trains, as part of a “pro-democracy” protest. The Washington Post’s editorial (10/5/19) on the subject presented the masked activists as champions of the “rule of law,” protesting against “police brutality” and “excessive use of force,” and trying to “preserve their free market and political liberties.” China is solely at fault, it concluded.

The message from the media is clear: Their protesters are good, regardless of what they do; ours are vandals, thugs or criminals. Their cops are bad; ours are unimpeachable heroes under fire for just doing their jobs. Journalists that work closely with police, credulously repeating their statements and printing copaganda, pushing a dubious “war on cops” narrative echoed by Trump himself, can effortlessly turn into anarcho-communists challenging authority, depending on the nation being reported on.

Intelligence Officials: Russia Is Boosting Trump Candidacy

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials have warned lawmakers that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election campaign to help President Donald Trump get reelected, according to three officials familiar with the closed-door briefing.

Trump pushed back Friday accusing Democrats of launching a disinformation campaign.

“Another misinformation campaign is being launched by Democrats in Congress saying that Russia prefers me to any of the Do Nothing Democrat candidates who still have been unable to, after two weeks, count their votes in Iowa. Hoax number 7!” Trump tweeted.

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The officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. said Thursday that the briefing last week focused on Russia’s efforts to influence the 2020 election and sow discord in the American electorate. The intelligence warning was first reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

A senior administration official told The Associated Press that the news infuriated Trump, who complained that Democrats would use the information against him. Over the course of his presidency, Trump has dismissed the intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s 2016 election interference as a conspiracy to undermine his victory. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting.

A day after the Feb. 13 briefing to the House committee, Trump berated the then-director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and he announced this week that Maguire would be replaced by Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist.

Moscow denied any meddling. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that the allegations are “paranoid reports that, unfortunately, there will be more and more of as we get closer to the elections (in the U.S.). Of course, they have nothing to do with the truth.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted that, “American voters should decide American elections — not Vladimir Putin.” She added that all members of Congress “should condemn the President’s reported efforts to dismiss threats to the integrity of our democracy & to politicize our intel community.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the House intelligence committee, tweeted: “We count on the intelligence community to inform Congress of any threat of foreign interference in our elections. If reports are true and the President is interfering with that, he is again jeopardizing our efforts to stop foreign meddling. Exactly as we warned he would do.”

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia interfered in the 2016 election through social media campaigns and stealing and distributing emails from Democratic accounts. They say Russia was trying to boost Trump’s campaign and add chaos to the American political process. Special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russian interference was “sweeping and systematic,” but he did not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Republican lawmakers who were in last week’s briefing by the DNI’s chief election official, Shelby Pierson, pushed back by noting that Trump has been tough on Russia, one of the officials said.

While Trump has imposed severe economic sanctions on Russia, he also has spoken warmly of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and withdrawn troops from areas, like Syria, where Moscow could fill the vacuum. He delayed military aid last year to Ukraine, a Russian adversary — a decision that was at the core of his impeachment proceedings.

The Times said Trump was angry that the House briefing was made before Schiff, the panel’s chairman, who led the impeachment proceedings.

Trump on Thursday formally appointed Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, to replace Maguire as the new acting director of national intelligence. Maguire was required to step down soon under federal law governing acting appointments. The Times cited two administration officials as saying the timing, after the intelligence briefing, was coincidental.

Grenell’s background is primarily in politics and media affairs. He lacks the extensive national security and military experience of Maguire, as well as previous holders of the position overseeing the nation’s 17 intelligence agencies.

His appointment does little to heal the president’s fraught relations with the intelligence community, which Trump has derided as part of a “deep state” of entrenched bureaucrats that seek to undermine his agenda. The administration has most notably feuded with the intelligence community over the Russian interference and the events surrounding Trump’s impeachment.

Pierson told NPR in an interview that aired last month that the Russians “are already engaging in influence operations relative to candidates going into 2020. But we do not have evidence at this time that our adversaries are directly looking at interfering with vote counts or the vote tallies.”

Pierson, appointed in July 2019 by then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, works with intelligence agencies like the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to identify anyone seeking to interfere with U.S. elections.

Pierson told NPR that the U.S. doesn’t know exactly what the Russians are planning, but she said it’s not just a Russia problem.

“We’re still also concerned about China, Iran, non-state actors, hacktivists and frankly — certainly for DHS and FBI – even Americans that might be looking to undermine confidence in the elections.”

At an open hearing this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Judiciary Committee that Russia was engaged in “information warfare” heading into the November election, but that law enforcement had not seen efforts to target America’s infrastructure. He said Russia is relying on a covert social media campaign to divide the American public.

___

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Deb Riechmann and Eric Tucker in Washington, Zeke Miller in Las Vegas and Daria Litvinova contributed from Moscow contributed to this report.

Bloomberg Serves Oligarchy and Patriarchy Before Any Party

In its zeal to unseat President Donald Trump without sacrificing one iota of its waning power and influence, the Democratic National Committee is now for a “moderate” savior for the party’s nomination. It appears to matter little to DNC operatives whether this late entry is a Democrat, a Republican, or simply a political opportunist whose loyalties or agendas, whatever they are, must be accepted

Enter Michael Bloomberg. After five years of resistance to the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the DNC uncritically embraces in Bloomberg a billionaire who once praised President George W. Bush and deployed his vast resources to help keep the Senate under Republican control. This, despite the fact that in Sanders, the Democratic Party can claim an independent who delivers a progressive and innovative policy platform, a huge wave of multi-generational popular support and even caucuses with the Democrats.

In stark contrast, former New York City mayor Bloomberg calls himself an environmentalist while investing in fracking, championing it politically (as he did at this week’s Democratic presidential debate), and donating to a notorious green-washing environmental organization, the Environmental Defense Fund, in an ongoing but doomed effort to make fracking safe. As just these kinds of research attempts served as the basis for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 proposed “safe energy policy,” which relied on discredited technology that sought to trap methane, I covered this unsuccessful agenda to manipulate science for Truthdig in 2016.

Nonetheless, Bloomberg remains committed to it. He even spent nearly $6 million to reelect a Senate Republican who sponsored a bill to prohibit any future president from banning fracking.

“Michael Bloomberg is often sold to people as a climate hero. Headlines that tout him as a green visionary adorn the pages of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He skips across the globe as the UN’s special envoy for climate action,” Derek Seidman wrote in Eyes on the Ties. “Bloomberg’s framing of fracking as the practical, common-sense option is a big obstacle to more far-reaching measures needed to curb carbon emissions now.”

At this week’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Bloomberg reiterated his support for fracking, dismissing the Sanders-backed Green New Deal. Bloomberg also opposes plans to transition to renewables within the time frame dictated by reports issued by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Bloomberg Money Played Pivotal Role in Keeping the Senate Red

Bloomberg’s support for both fossil fuels and Republicans may be connected. Consider this useful research provided by Alex Kotch of the Center for Media and Democracy:

Over the last decade, Bloomberg helped Republicans take and maintain control of the U.S. Senate, which, in the Trump era and under Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) leadership, has confirmed scores of right-wing judges, blocked liberal legislation passed by the House, and shielded the president from any repercussions after seeking foreign election assistance, tampering with witnesses and defying congressional subpoenas.

For several decades up to and through 2018, Bloomberg, whose own party affiliation has changed repeatedly, “donated over $900,000 directly to Republican candidates’ campaigns, national GOP party committees and federal PACs of state Republican Party committees,” Kotch reported. Bloomberg added millions more through his two super PACs, one of which spent over $10 million “supporting Republican federal candidates from 2012-16.”

The Toomey Campaign

In what The Philadelphia Inquirer called a “pivotal” 2016 campaign that “many thought could decide control of the Senate,” Bloomberg “poured millions of dollars into the contest — to help Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey” gain reelection. Bloomberg’s $5.9 million donation, used to buy television ads in key Philadelphia suburbs, portrayed the pro-fracking Republican as a moderate centrist, helping him win by a narrow margin over Democrat Katie McGinty, an environmental policy expert.

A Bloomberg spokesperson now claims the billionaire’s support for Toomey was based on the latter’s stance on gun control, even though Toomey’s challenger McGinty “supported far stronger gun measures, including bans on assault-style weapons.”

Raising further questions as to Bloomberg’s actual agenda in pushing Toomey, McGinty campaign adviser Mike Mikus noted that with the Senate secured by Republicans, no gun bills “would see any light as long as [McConnell] controlled the chamber. The Senate was up for grabs, and [Bloomberg] clearly sided with Mitch McConnell.”

Does Bloomberg Support Pat Toomey’s Pro-Fracking Resolution?

Whatever his purported motive in helping Toomey, Bloomberg spent considerable funds to reelect a fracking apologist who represented the environmentally devastated swing state of Pennsylvania, the second most important natural gas state after Texas. Fracking may represent a boon to investor-donors like Bloomberg and their vested politicians, but the practice poses a clear health hazard to Pennsylvania communities as well as climate hazards to the global community. A recent review of scientific literature found close correlations between “health impacts including cancer, infant mortality, depression, pneumonia, asthma, skin-related hospitalizations and other general health symptoms” and “living near unconventional oil and gas development [in] Pennsylvania.”

In November 2019, Toomey introduced federal legislation to unilaterally prevent future presidents from introducing a moratorium on fracking. The Pike County Courier reported that the measure squarely aims “at several Democratic presidential candidates” by thwarting their potential moves with regard to introducing fracking regulations.

Bloomberg’s intervention — supporting a pro-fracking senator and keeping the Senate under Republican-control — unleashed other serious consequences. One related outcome of that Senate race is that in preserving GOP control, the Senate was able to see through Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. In Justice Kavanaugh, the nation’s top court gained an anti-choice ideologue who had faced credible charges of sexual predation.

The Kavanaugh Travesty

The problematic aspect of Bloomberg’s personal history vis-s-vis allegations of his own sexist remarks and actions was discussed at Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate. After being energetically challenged on the debate stage by Democratic rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Bloomberg explained that he had needed to sign non-disclosure agreements with several women in his professional milieu who he claimed were offended because “they did not like a joke I told.”

Aside from his highly suspect personal conduct, Bloomberg’s use of his financial resources also did women no favors. His hefty donations helped to preserve the Republican majority, giving Republicans judicial oversight over the 2018 Supreme Court nomination process — and of course, the attempted impeachment of Trump.

Both political conflicts would have played out differently under a judicial committee helmed by Democrats. In the Kavanaugh case, despite testimony that alleged he had assaulted a fellow student, Republican senators awarded the judge a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. To add insult to injury, one of Bloomberg’s PACs also gave $486,000 to Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

Collins, to whom Bloomberg also made direct personal donations, most recently cast a key vote to acquit Trump on all impeachment charges. In 2018, she was widely criticized for her role in the Kavanaugh nomination, in which she also held a determining vote. Over the course of the hearings, Collins repeatedly hinted to advocates that she might vote against Kavanaugh.

Then, “during a nearly 50-minute speech on the Senate floor,” as the Cut’s Lisa Ryan reported,” Collins betrayed the interests of the women and sexual-assault survivors she professed to support.” Ryan asked, “How can one claim to be pro-choice and then allow herself to be played by a decidedly anti-choice nominee, whose record shows exactly how he will vote on abortion?”

Collins concealed her allegiances by professing one thing and doing another. As both parties have to different extents lost the trust of voters because of that kind of behavior, the last thing we can afford at this juncture is to jettison rare candidates of integrity for Bloomberg, “a figure without connections or the same value system as the party he seeks to represent, with racial and sexist skeletons in his closet, and a penchant for subverting democracy and showing contempt toward the rule of law,” as David Dayen wrote in the Prospect.

The exploitation of people, earthly resources and money cannot be ignored or dismissed. Bloomberg now poses a new danger by using his largesse to act, in turns, as either a kingmaker or candidate, thus threatening the nomination process and the will of American voters. Sanders, currently the clear Democratic front-runner, is the sole candidate who has pledged to rely only on donations from citizens rather than from the billionaires who fund nearly all the other candidates.

Through the campaign this year, Sanders has helped Americans to grasp what has been apparent but long denied: Billionaires like Bloomberg have been controlling the country, decimating the middle class, putting health care out of reach and destroying the environment for profit. Democrats can’t afford to anoint a candidate who uses his money and influence to rob them of their futures.

Medicare for All Should Be a Reality Today

“People with low or moderate incomes do not get the same medical attention as those with high incomes. The poor have more sickness, but they get less medical care,” so said the president of the United States in a message to Congress.

No, that wasn’t President Donald Trump in 2020. It was President Harry Truman in 1945, laying out his plan for a national health insurance program and starting a debate that continues today, more than 70 years later. Shortly after Truman’s proposal, Republicans gained control of Congress and, along with the powerful American Medical Association, quashed any prospects of national health insurance.

President Dwight Eisenhower provided tax credits to businesses that offered insurance to their employees. This corporate welfare, sending taxpayer money to private insurance companies, laid the foundation for the current system.

President John F. Kennedy pushed for single-payer health insurance for older Americans, but, again, the AMA defeated it. In a 1961 debate between United Auto Workers union president Walter Reuther and Dr. Edward Annis, a spokesman for the AMA, Annis argued: “This, sir, is socialism, whenever the government provides for the people, whether they need it or not, and it calls the terms under which this provision is made. This is socialism.”

President Lyndon B. Johnson won a landslide victory over Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964. His electoral mandate enabled him to push through legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid.

Johnson signed the bill in Truman’s home in Independence, Missouri, and less than a year later he hand-delivered the first two Medicare member cards to President Truman and his wife, Bess. Medicare and Medicaid have proven to be among the most successful and popular government programs in U.S. history.

Which brings us to today. Central to the Democratic party’s pitched presidential nomination battle is single-payer health care, also known as “Medicare for All.”

Of the candidates remaining in the race, both Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren support Medicare for All. In the simplest terms, this would remove the eligibility age for Medicare, currently 65 years and older, making the benefits available to all.

Most other candidates support an expansion of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, while ex-Mayor Pete Buttigieg is promoting a hybrid, “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan.

When Sanders says, “I wrote the damn bill,” he’s referring to S. 1129, the Medicare for All Act of 2019. Warren is among 14 Senate Democrats who have co-sponsored the bill. Medicare for All would cover all residents of the U.S., including undocumented immigrants, from cradle to grave.

The medical journal The Lancet recently published an analysis of the bill from the Yale School of Public Health, describing the enormous savings and improved care that would result if enacted. The Yale study found that Medicare for All would save $450 billion annually, from current costs of just over $3 trillion (that’s trillion with a ‘T’).

Improved health care delivery would also save the lives of an estimated 68,000 people per year, people who die simply because they can’t afford to see a doctor.

In addition to costing less, overall health outcomes would improve, most notably for the 38 million currently uninsured people, and the additional 41 million people who are “underinsured,” prevented from accessing their insurance because of deductibles, co-pays, out-of-pocket expenses and so-called out of network costs.

Sanders is constantly asked on the debate stages if he would have to raise taxes to fund Medicare for All, then he’s denied enough time to provide a complete answer. As the Yale study explains, taxes would go up, primarily for the richest 1% of the population. But overall health care costs would go down. Individuals, families and employers would never have to pay a health insurance premium again. Co-pays, deductibles and other costs would be eliminated.

Single-payer health care would essentially put the U.S.’s for-profit health insurance corporations out of business, cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful overhead and profit-taking. It would also allow the U.S. government to negotiate pharmaceutical costs, which it currently is legally barred from doing, saving tens or hundreds of billions more.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently released results of national polling on single-payer health care, which found that more than half of Americans support such a plan. Among Democrats, the support jumps to 87%.

The United States health care system currently costs twice as much per capita as any other industrialized country. Yet, health outcomes are worse, with the U.S. ranking lower than over 30 other countries, with higher rates of infant mortality and lower life expectancy.

From Canada to Costa Rica, universal health care is a reality. Perhaps when the reality TV show of the U.S. presidential election is over, sensible national health policy can become a reality here, too.

 

New Mexico Sues Google Over Collection of Children’s Data

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico’s attorney general sued Google Thursday over allegations the tech company is illegally collecting personal data generated by children in violation of federal and state laws.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque claims Google is using its education services package that is marketed to school districts, teachers and parents as a way to spy on children and their families.

Attorney General Hector Balderas said that while the company touts Google Education as a valuable tool for resource-deprived schools, it is a means to monitor children while they browse the internet in the classroom and at home on private networks. He said the information being mined includes everything from physical locations to websites visited, videos watched, saved passwords and contact lists.

The state is seeking unspecified civil penalties.

“Student safety should be the number one priority of any company providing services to our children, particularly in schools,” Balderas said in a statement. “Tracking student data without parental consent is not only illegal, it is dangerous.”

Google dismissed the claims as “factually wrong,” saying the G Suite for Education package allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary.

“We do not use personal information from users in primary and secondary schools to target ads,” said company spokesman Jose Castaneda. “School districts can decide how best to use Google for education in their classrooms and we are committed to partnering with them.”

UnlikeEurope, the U.S. has no overarching national law governing data collection and privacy. Instead, it has a patchwork of state and federal laws that protect specific types of data, such as consumer health, financial information and the personal data generated by younger children.

New Mexico’s claim cites violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act and the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires websites and online services to obtain parental consent before collecting any information from children under 13. In a separate case, Google already has agreed to pay $170 million combined to the Federal Trade Commission and New York state to settle allegations its YouTube video service collected personal data on children without their parents’ consent.

According to the New Mexico lawsuit, outside its Google Education platform, the company prohibits children in the U.S. under the age of 13 from having their own Google accounts. The state contends Google is attempting to get around this by using its education services to “secretly gain access to troves of information” about New Mexico children.

The attorney general’s office filed a similar lawsuit against Google and other tech companies in 2018, targeting what Balderas described as illegal data collection from child-directed mobile apps. That case still is pending in federal court, but the companies have denied wrongdoing.

The latest lawsuit claims more than 80 million teachers and students use Google’s education platform. Balderas said in a letter to New Mexico school officials that there was no immediate harm if they continue using the products and that the lawsuit shouldn’t interrupt activities in the classroom.

The Feud Between Trump and Barr Is a Grand Illusion

This piece originally appeared on The Progressive. 

Don’t place much stock in the purported feud between Donald Trump and Bill Barr. It’s just an illusion.

Although Barr told ABC News earlier this month that Trump’s tweets about the Roger Stone case were making it “impossible” for him to do his job, the Department of Justice has officially squelched rumors that the President’s social media proclivities have caused the Attorney General to consider resigning.

According to the Associated Press, “many close to Trump” are openly speculating that Barr’s talk of stepping aside is really just an attempt to “quell an internal uproar at the Department of Justice and bolster his own reputation.”

The sad truth is that Trump and Barr are as simpatico as ever in pursuit of their jointly held goal of executive supremacy. The differences between the two men are largely a matter of demeanor, vocabulary, and erudition.

When Trump declared over the summer that, under Article II of the Constitution, “I can do whatever I want,” and when he told reporters earlier this week that he was the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer, he was channeling Barr’s more refined belief in what legal scholars call the theory of the “unitary executive.”

The unitary executive theory has long been a favorite of the radical right. It has its roots, as Trump implied, in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which states: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

Unfortunately, the unitary executive theory is not easily dismissed, as the Constitution indeed establishes a single-person executive, as opposed to a committee. Nonetheless, zealots like Barr hold distorted positions on the President’s Article II powers. As professors Karl Manheim and Allan Ides of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, observed in an oft-quoted 2006 essay:

“[T]he theory of the unitary executive is anything but an innocuous or unremarkable description of the presidency. In its stronger versions, it embraces and promotes a notion of consolidated presidential power that essentially isolates the Executive Branch from any type of Congressional or judicial oversight. And it is much more than an academic theory. Rather it is an operative way of thinking about and applying Executive Branch power that has had and will continue to have real-world consequences for our republic . . . .”

The paper goes on to say: “At its extreme, unitarianism holds that executive power is as broad as the executive says it is. Or, simply put, [as Richard Nixon famously said,] if the President does it, it is not illegal.”

While Presidents from Washington onward have sought to expand their authority, the unitary theory was first articulated as an explicit doctrine during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, according to Manheim and Ides. Among the idea’s earliest proponents was Reagan-era Attorney General Ed Meese. Trump awarded Meese the Presidential Medal of Freedom in October.

Barr joined the unitary theory bandwagon in 1989, at the outset of the George H.W. Bush Administration. Following his appointment as an Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, Barr wrote a ten-page analysis aimed at combating what he claimed were “the ways Congress most often intrudes or attempts to intrude into the functions and responsibilities assigned by the Constitution to the executive branch.”

Barr was especially concerned about blunting Congressional efforts to regulate the President’s power to appoint and remove federal officers and employees at will, and to oversee the conduct of foreign affairs. Such legislative meddling, he contended, “unconstitutionally infringe[s] upon the unitary executive and must, therefore, be resisted.”

Barr restated his extreme views on presidential power in an unsolicited memorandum he sent to the Justice Department in July 2018, criticizing the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In it, he wrote:

“The Constitution itself places no limit on the President’s authority to act on matters which concern him or his own conduct. On the contrary, the Constitution’s grant of law enforcement power to the President is plenary. Constitutionally, it is wrong to conceive of the President as simply the highest officer within the Executive branch hierarchy. He alone is the Executive branch. As such, he is the sole repository of all Executive powers conferred by the Constitution.” [Emphasis in the original.]

Whether or not Barr intended the memo to serve as a job application, as some observers have suggested, Trump selected him to replace Jeff Sessions, whom the President dismissed for failing to stand up to Mueller.

“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump reportedly lamented at the height of his dissatisfaction with Sessions in early 2018, referring to the infamous attorney who once served as a legal adviser to Senator Joseph McCarthy and later represented Trump in private practice. In Barr, Trump has had his wish fulfilled.

Since his confirmation by the Senate in February 2019, Barr has succeeded in eroding the post-Watergate independence of the Justice Department, enabling Trump to transform the department into what former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates called the President’s “personal grudge squad” in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post.

Trump’s interference in the sentencing of Roger Stone is merely the dark harbinger of even more sinister moves to come. With the threat of impeachment behind him and with the full might of Barr and the Department of Justice at his disposal, we can expect more pardons of the President’s cronies and supporters, ultimately including Stone himself. We can also expect more purges of non-compliant officials inside the Department of Defense, the diplomatic corps, and the intelligence community; more attacks on the judiciary; and even more resistance to Congressional oversight.

And that’s only in the run-up to the November election. What Trump will feel entitled to do in a second term will likely be worse.

So, don’t count on the “feud” between Trump and Barr to yield any positive changes in the administration of justice. Their tiff is more like a marital spat than a divorce. They are both committed to the relationship and to the task, quite literally, of ending democracy in America as we know it.

Trump Ally Roger Stone Sentenced to 40 Months in Prison

WASHINGTON — Trump loyalist and ally Roger Stone was sentenced Thursday to 40 months in federal prison, following an extraordinary move by Attorney General William Barr to back off his Justice Department’s original sentencing recommendation.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Stone’s crimes demanded a significant time behind bars, but she said the seven to nine years originally recommended by the Justice Department were excessive.

Stone’s lawyers had asked for a sentence of probation, citing his age of 67 years, his health and his lack of criminal history.

Stone had no immediate reaction in court when Jackson announced his sentence. She is delaying execution of his sentence while she considers Stone’s motion for a new trial.

He was convicted in November on all seven counts of an indictment that accused him of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election.

The sentence came amid Trump’s unrelenting defense of his longtime confidant that has led to a mini-revolt inside the Justice Department and allegations the president has interfered in the case.

Trump took to Twitter to denounce as a “miscarriage of justice” the initial recommendation by Justice Department prosecutors that Stone receive at least seven years in prison. Attorney General William Barr then backed off that recommendation, prompting four prosecutors to quit Stone’s case.

Jackson angrily denied that Stone was being punished for his politics or his allies. “He was not prosecuted, as some have claimed, for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president,” she said.

She said during the hearing that Stone’s use of social media to stoke public sentiment against the prosecution and the court was intended to reach a wide audience, including using a photo of Jackson with crosshairs superimposed.

“This is intolerable to the administration of justice,” Jackson said.

“Why are you the one who is standing here today?” Jackson asked federal prosecutor John Crabb, who took over the case after the original trial team quit.

Crabb said there had been a “miscommunication” between Barr and Timothy Shea, the former Barr aide who now serves as the acting U.S. Attorney in the nation’s capital.

Crabb asked the judge to impose “a substantial period of incarceration.”

After Stone’s attorney, Seth Ginsberg, repeated the defense team’s plea that Stone get no prison time, Stone declined to address the court.

Outside the courthouse, a small crowd gathered. Two people held a large banner featuring a sketch of Stone and #PardonRogerStone emblazoned underneath. Next to it was a large multimedia figure of a rat constructed to look like Trump, with his distinctive red tie and hair.

Stone was the sixth Trump aide or adviser to be convicted of charges brought as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Any jail sentence seems likely to draw a public rebuke from Trump, who maintains that Stone’s entire case is just an aspect of the ongoing “witch hunt” against him and his allies by bitter Democrats and the “deep state” inside the FBI and the Justice Department.

Given Trump’s recent clemency spree that saw him commute the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, as well as nearly a dozen others, there has been speculation that Trump could eventually pardon Stone.

“I haven’t given it any thought … but I think he’s been treated very unfairly,” Trump said this week. Overnight Thursday, Trump retweeted a conservative cable host’s comment that what happened to Stone “should never happen again.”

In Stone’s initial sentencing memorandum filed Feb. 10, prosecutors said Stone deserved a prison term lasting seven to nine years, in accordance with federal sentencing guidelines. Such a sentence would send a message to deter others who might consider lying or obstructing a congressional probe or tampering with witnesses, the prosecutors said.

Stone has denied wrongdoing and consistently criticized the case against him as politically motivated. He did not take the stand during his trial and his lawyers did not call any witnesses in his defense.

Stone’s defense team requested a new trial and had asked the judge to delay sentencing until she rules on that motion. Earlier this week she refused.

Prosecutors had charged in the filing that Stone “decided to double- and triple-down on his criminal conduct by tampering with a witness for months in order to make sure his obstruction would be successful.”

“Stone’s actions were not a one-off mistake in judgment. Nor were his false statements made in the heat of the moment. They were nowhere close to that,” prosecutors wrote in the court papers.

But Justice Department officials said they were caught off guard by the recommendation, even though Shea, the acting U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., is a former top aide to Barr. The attorney general ordered a new memorandum with a less harsh punishment, though it left provided no specifics and left the details to the judge.

Barr’s decision became public just hours after Trump, in an overnight tweet, called the situation “horrible and very unfair.” He added: “Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”

Barr later said in an ABC News interview that he had not been asked by Trump to look into the case. In a stunning public rebuke, he said the president’s tweets were making it “impossible” for him to do his job. Meanwhile, Barr’s actions on the sentencing for Stone prompted the entire trial team to quit.

The public debacle also prompted a rare statement from the Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court, Beryl A. Howell, who said “public criticism or pressure is not a factor” in judges’ sentencing decisions.

The evidence presented in the trial didn’t directly address Mueller’s conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to tip the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor. But it provided new insight into the scramble inside the Trump campaign when it was revealed in July 2016 that the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks was in possession of more than 19,000 emails hacked from the servers of the Democratic National Committee.

Witnesses testified that Trump’s campaign viewed Stone as an “access point” to WikiLeaks and tried to use him to get advance word about hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton.

Prosecutors argued that Stone had lied to Congress about his conversations about WikiLeaks with New York radio host and comedian Randy Credico.

During the 2016 campaign, Stone had mentioned in interviews and public appearances that he was in contact with founder Julian Assange through a trusted intermediary and hinted at inside knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans.

Testimony revealed that Stone, while appearing before the House Intelligence Committee, named Credico as his intermediary to Assange and pressured Credico not to contradict him.

After Credico was contacted by Congress, he reached out to Stone, who told him he should “stonewall it” and “plead the fifth,” he testified. Credico also testified during Stone’s trial that Stone repeatedly told him to “do a ‘Frank Pentangeli,’” a reference to a character in “The Godfather: Part II” who lies before Congress.

Prosecutors also charged that Stone had threatened Credico’s therapy dog, Bianca, saying he was “going to take that dog away from you.”

Election Officials Are Already Raising Flags About Nevada’s Results

As early voting began in Nevada’s 2020 Democratic presidential caucus, thousands of people had to wait for two hours or more before voting. The bottleneck was due to a shortage of pre-programmed iPads that the Nevada State Democratic Party gave volunteers to check in voters.

“I have been in line for one hour and 58 minutes. This is normal from what I can tell from this line today,” said a researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno, who didn’t want to give her name after voting on campus on February 15, the first day of the four-day early voting period. “This is my second voting location today. The line at the first one was even longer.”

“We’re excited. They’re all standing in line. They’re all very nice,” said Sarah Mahler, the UNR voting site lead and Washoe County Democratic Party chair.

“It’s never been done before in Nevada. It’s never been done before in our nation. It’s the first time we’ve utilized early caucus voting.”

Despite Mahler’s enthusiasm, there were signs that delays or problems counting early votes could shadow 2020’s third Democratic presidential nominating contest. These complications would unfold behind closed doors at vote-counting hubs run by the Nevada State Democratic Party (NSDP). The possible problems concern the system used to scan and count tens of thousands of paper early ballots, as well as the database tracking all of the voters and their votes.

Nearly 75,000 people voted early, the NSDP said. That process continues on Saturday, February 22, with precinct caucuses across the state.

Top party officials have not responded to numerous requests to comment about the last-minute voter-tracking and vote-counting system that it will be using after it jettisoned the same reporting and counting technology that failed in Iowa’s Democratic Party presidential caucuses on February 3.

“Nevada Dems remain committed to executing the most accessible, expansive and transparent caucus yet,” Alana Mounce, NSDP executive director, said in a “not for distribution” memo on February 14 that was a “ballot processing update.” It said party officials would scan the early voting ballots in two locations where few observers would be allowed to watch. Those observers would not include “the public or the press.”

Skipping a Key Check-In Step

Leaders of the state party, not government election officials, are running the caucuses. That means that they had to create the entire voting system, from voter registration to the counting of votes. They have done that by hiring many private contractors and consulting with the Democratic National Committee’s technology staff to vet cybersecurity precautions. But other potential issues besides cybersecurity received less scrutiny.

“Running elections is hard. It is not for the faint of heart or rank amateurs. And it takes a lot of logistics to do it,” said Larry Moore, senior vice president of Voatz (a firm developing a smartphone voting system) and former CEO of Clear Ballot, which is the nation’s most comprehensive vote auditing system.

At an early voting site on Reno’s north side visited by Voting Booth (and elsewhere, according to media reports from Las Vegas), weary volunteers were seen skipping a key check-in step to alleviate the long wait to vote. (Voting site coordinators said the party underestimated the turnout and did not have more iPads to use to help check in voters.) Thus, the response at some early voting sites was to skip a check-in step that electronically tied voters to their filled-out ballots. That data is at the heart of the party’s digital vote-counting system.

After waiting in line, voters would first show an ID to check in with a volunteer. That party worker would check if that person was a registered voter by looking them up on a PDF document on a party-owned iPad. (If voters weren’t registered, they would be asked to fill out a state registration form and join the Democratic Party.) But there was supposed to be a second step before the voter was given a paper ballot. That step involved entering the voter’s identifying information, including a PIN number matching a sticker that the volunteers put on their paper ballot, into a Google form on another party-owned iPad.

Harried volunteers were seen skipping the Google form step to speed up the lines. That omission meant that the data that the NSDP planned to use to pair those voters to their ballots and choices ranking the candidates (a caucus is not a secret ballot and involves two rounds of ranked-choice voting) would be incomplete, unless other party workers later retraced and filled in those gaps.

The NSDP spokeswoman and its caucus director did not respond when asked to comment on this issue, which could complicate tallying the early voting results. But Mahler raised her eyebrows when told of this skipped step. At the early voting site that she was running at the university in Reno, volunteers patiently made sure that all voters verified their information and PIN numbers that were entered into the Google form.

The NSDP is creating two records of the early voting: a digital and a paper record. It plans to use only its digital system to count votes, at least in the first instance, according to the “ballot processing” memo to staff on February 14.

While national media have warned about “chaos” that could affect the voting and results after statewide caucuses on February 22—echoing Iowa’s meltdown when its digital counting systems failed—issues that might arise earlier in the process are being overlooked. The skipping of the Google form step (and thus omissions in the underlying data used to generate results) was only one of the signs that the system being used during early voting could face delays or produce inaccurate results.

Ballots Without Alignment Marks

Caucus voting is not the same as voting in a primary where there is only one round of voting and the candidate with the most votes wins. The caucus is not as simple. Early voters are asked to rank three to five presidential candidates on a paper ballot by filling in ovals in rows ranking their choices next to a candidate’s name. Their first choice who gets 15 percent or more of the vote in their precinct is counted.

The “not for distribution memo” from NSDP executive director Mounce makes it clear that the party will scan the early paper ballots to analyze the ranked choices and tabulate the results. (Mahler, the Washoe County Democratic chair, reiterated the party plans to import those local early voting results onto the iPads that all of the NSDP precinct chairs will use in the February 22 statewide caucuses.)

But the party has released no details on that scanning operation, and the little that’s known about it worries seasoned election experts. Some career election officials who since their retirement from government have developed software for counting ranked-choice ballots (one version of which will be used to tally the early voting ballots, while another ranking system will be used in precinct caucuses) said that the NSDP is heading into problematic waters as it tallies early votes.

These officials and computer scientists who study voting all noted that the paper ballot used for the NSDP’s early voting did not have alignment or “timing marks” on its perimeter, which is how scanners in government elections are calibrated and tested to correctly read the ballots’ ink-filled ovals. (These marks help computers create a grid that then links ink-marked ovals to choices on the ballot—no matter what end of the paper is put into the scanner.) Also, the NSDP ballot is the size of half of a sheet of typing paper with fairly small ovals to be marked by pen, which additionally means there’s less leeway for the scanning software to read ovals.

“I would think it could be hard to scan ballots with no timing marks,” said Duncan Buell, chair of the computer science and engineering department at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and a county election official. “This ballot looks to have rather small places for marking. I can think that timing marks might be unnecessary if the bubbles were an inch big, but as we all know from scanning things on a photocopier, a skew of [a] quarter-inch or so can be routine.”

Reflecting on the absence of timing marks and small ballot design, Buell said, “I am surprised that Nevada would not have had that done by people who have a lot of experience in scanning.”

Other longtime election officials who have retired from government posts and are now working on ranked-choice ballot technology were worried that the NSDP was not using any system produced and certified by election professionals. They were worried that if Nevada experienced scanning problems—meaning it would have to revert to counting tens of thousands of early ballots by hand—that their work to nationally advance ranked-choice voting would be undermined.

“It would be very scary if they have come up with a home-made product [scanner and software] that they think will work,” said Gary Bartlett, who was North Carolina’s election director for two decades and now directs the Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) Resource Center.

“It looks like a paper ballot that you hand-count,” said George Gilbert, who works with Bartlett, after seeing a photograph of the NSDP’s early ballot. “It would take a while” to do that should hand-counting thousands of ballots be necessary, he said.

Gilbert has developed an open-source software tool to use for counting in ranked-choice elections. But neither he nor Bartlett was aware if the NSDP was using that open-source software, he said, adding that Nevada party officials were not interested in working with the RCV Resource Center.

Nor is the state party working with other groups like FairVote, which also advises election officials on ranked-choice voting, according to its president, Rob Richie. FairVote provided memos to the NSDP, he said, but it also was not asked to help. “They’ve been pretty closed-lipped. They’re not consulting folks like us.”

Richie said that Bartlett and Gilbert were among the nation’s top technical experts on ranked-choice systems. Gilbert said that his counting software would work if all of the ranked votes were accurately entered into an underlying spreadsheet, which, presumably, is the role that the Google form would play for the Nevada party.

But that scenario presumes that the party’s data set was complete (an unknown number of volunteers skipped entering voter information and ballot PIN numbers into the Google form), and that all of the paper ballots were accurately scanned and successfully imported to the underlying Google form spreadsheet.

“I have no idea how accurately they can do that or how rapidly they can do it,” said Gilbert. “That’s the question that has to be asked: How will this ballot be scanned?”

Bartlett added that there were many things that could go “wrong” with scanners.

“There are so many small things that can go wrong with that type of voting system when you fill in an oval,” he said. “Sometimes you have somebody with dexterity problems who cannot mark the target area dark enough for the scanner to read. Other times you see weird things where you [as a human observer] can read a voter’s intent, but a scanner cannot read the voter intent.”

Other Possible Delays

Another issue that could cause delays in counting Nevada’s early votes would echo a problem faced in Iowa, where that state’s party found that it had understaffed its operations center—when it had to shift from relying on an electronic system that failed to manually recording results from precinct caucuses across the state.

If there was an issue with scanning ballots, the February 14 memo from Mounce said that a “Ballot Review Team comprised of the General Counsel for the Nevada State Democratic Party and two other individuals appointed by the [party] Chair… will review, by hand, each ballot.”

In other words, in the party’s two early vote-counting centers (that are closed to the press and public—one in Reno and one in Las Vegas), only three people, so far, are empowered to hand-count what could be many ballots out of the nearly 75,000 early votes cast.

FairVote’s Richie suggested that the NSDP was making more work for itself by having conflicting counting rules for early and regular caucuses. Mounce’s memo said that the party will not count any early ballot if a voter only made one presidential choice (although it will count their ballot if that voter picked the same candidate three times). In contrast, caucus-goers can leave after the first round, and their vote will count.

Curiously, Mounce’s memo also said that the “Ballot Review Team” would judge voter intent issues on early ballots, but the party’s “Nevada 2020 Caucus Recount Manual” said that post-caucus recounts filed by candidates “will not allow for challenges to the intent of a voter’s preference”—an apparent inconsistency.

But the big picture is that seasoned election officials and technology experts have doubts that the NSDP’s automated electronic vote-counting system for early votes will be accurate—because the paper ballots don’t have alignment markings, and because the underlying cast vote record (via Google forms) may be incomplete.

These concerns all come before Nevada’s statewide precinct caucuses on Saturday, February 22. If the party encounters any of these problems behind the closed doors of its counting centers, it is an open question as to whether or not it would publicly acknowledge them. The presidential campaigns can have one observer at the vote-counting centers, Mounce’s memo said. (Election protection lawyers working with the campaigns did not reply to requests to comment for this report.)

Meanwhile, as the party looks toward Saturday’s statewide caucuses, it sent out a release on Wednesday announcing the “State Party will host more than 55 trainings in person and online before Caucus Day” and included a link to its training hub. “We need Nevada Democrats across the state to volunteer to help us make our 2020 Caucus the most expansive, transparent, and accessible caucus yet,” the website said.

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.

Far-Right German Gunman Calling for Genocide Kills 9 People

HANAU, Germany — A 43-year-old German man who posted a manifesto calling for the “complete extermination” of many “races or cultures in our midst” shot and killed nine people of foreign background, most of them Turkish, in an attack on a hookah bar and other sites in a Frankfurt suburb, authorities said Thursday.

He was later found dead at his home along with his mother, and authorities said they were treating the rampage as an act of domestic terrorism.

The gunman first attacked the hookah bar and a neighboring cafe in Hanau at about 10 p.m. Wednesday, killing several people, then traveled about 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) and opened fire again, first on a car and then a sports bar, claiming more victims.

The bloodshed came amid growing concerns about far-right violence in Germany and stepped-up efforts from authorities to crack down on it, including last week’s detention of a dozen men on suspicion they were planning attacks against politicians and minorities.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the shootings exposed the “poison” of racism in Germany, and she pledged to stand up against those who seek to divide the country.

“There is much to indicate that the perpetrator acted out of far-right extremist, racist motives,” she said. “Out of hatred for people with other origins, other faiths or a different appearance.”

Hookah lounges are places where people gather to smoke flavored tobacco from Middle Eastern water pipes, and Metin Kan, who knew many of the victims, said it was obvious why the gunman chose the neighborhood.

“Look, a hookah bar there, a gaming parlor there, a doner kebab place there — it’s a place frequented by immigrants,” he said. “Why this hatred of foreigners? We all get along here.”

People of Turkish background make up Germany’s single largest minority, and Turkey’s ambassador said five of the people killed in the attack were Turkish citizens.

Germany’s federal prosecutor, Peter Frank, said that all nine people killed were of foreign backgrounds and that six others were injured, one seriously.

Investigators said it appeared the gunman acted alone, but Frank said the “goal of the investigation is to find out whether there were, or are, people who knew of, or supported” the attacks. He added that his office was looking into any contacts the killer may have had inside Germany and abroad.

Kadir Kose, who ran over from a cafe he runs nearby after hearing the first shots, said he was shocked at the extent of the violence. While fights or stabbings aren’t unheard of, he said, “this is a whole other level, something we hear about from America.”

Witnesses and surveillance videos of the getaway car led authorities quickly to the gunman’s home, said Peter Beuth, interior minister for the state of Hesse. Both the attacker and his 72-year-old mother had gunshot wounds, and the weapon was found on him, Beuth said.

Frank identified the gunman only as Tobias R., in line with German privacy laws, and confirmed he had posted extremist videos and a manifesto with “confused ideas and far-fetched conspiracy theories” on his website.

The man identified himself as Tobias Rathjen on the website, which has now been taken down, with a mailing address matching that where the bodies of the killer and his mother were found.

In the manifesto, Rathjen claimed to have approached police several times with conspiracy theories, but Beuth said it does not appear the gunman had a criminal record or was on the radar of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

Among the documents posted to the man’s website, which has since been taken down, was a 24-page, rambling manifesto in German detailing, among other things, fears that he has been under government surveillance for years. He blamed the surveillance for his inability to have a relationship with a woman. He also called for genocide.

“We now have ethnic groups, races or cultures in our midst that are destructive in every respect,” he wrote. He said he envisioned first a “rough cleaning” and then a “fine cleaning” that could halve the world’s population.

He wrote: “The following people must be completely exterminated: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the complete Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Usbekistan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines.”

The attack was quickly condemned by many organizations, including the Central Council of Muslims, the Confederation of Kurdish Associations in Germany, and the Central Council of Jews.

“Everything will be done to investigate the circumstances of these terrible murders,” Merkel pledged, declaring: “Racism is a poison. Hatred is a poison.”

“This poison exists in our society and its is responsible for far too many crimes,” she added, citing the killings committed by a far-right gang known as the NSU, the fatal shooting last year of a regional politician from her party, and a deadly attack on a synagogue in Halle in October.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called it a “heinous attack” and expressed confidence that German authorities “will exert all kinds of effort to shed light on all aspects of this attack.”

German police were examining a video the gunman may have posted online several days before the attack in which he detailed a conspiracy theory about child abuse in the United States, Germany’s dpa reported. The authenticity of the video couldn’t immediately be verified, but the YouTube account was under the same name as the website containing the gunman’s manifesto.

In the video, the speaker said he was delivering a “personal message to all Americans” that “your country is under control of invisible secret societies.” In a slow and deliberate voice in accented English, he said there are “deep underground military bases” in which “they abuse, torture and kill little children.”

He made no reference to the far-right fringe QAnon movement in the U.S., but the message was similar to the movement’s central, baseless belief that U.S. President Donald Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the “deep state” and a child sex trafficking ring run by satanists and cannibals.

In his manifesto, he made one reference to Trump, writing: “I doubt that Donald Trump knowingly implements my recommendations.” He suggested that “mind control” might be at work.

On the website, Rathjen wrote that he was born in Hanau in 1977 and grew up in the city, later training with a bank and earning a business degree in 2007.

___

Geir Moulson in Berlin, Michael Probst and Christoph Noelting in Hanau, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report. Rising and Jordans reported from Berlin.