Chris Hedges's Blog, page 386

Trump Says He’s Eager to Sign Bipartisan Criminal Justice Bill

WASHINGTON — A criminal justice bill passed by the Senate would give judges more discretion when sentencing some drug offenders and would boost prisoner rehabilitation efforts and was hailed by scores of conservative and liberal advocacy groups.

The sweeping bill addresses concerns that the nation’s war on drugs had led to the imprisonment of too many Americans for non-violent crimes without adequately preparing them for their return to society. Its passage in the Senate, by an 87-12 vote on Tuesday, culminates years of negotiations and gives President Donald Trump a signature policy victory. The House is expected to pass the bill this week, sending it to Trump’s desk for his signature.

“America is the greatest Country in the world and my job is to fight for ALL citizens, even those who have made mistakes,” Trump tweeted moments after the Senate vote.

“This will keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it. In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved. I look forward to signing this into law!” the Republican president added.

The vote also thrilled Democrats. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said the nation’s prisons are full of Americans who are struggling with mental illness and addiction and who are overwhelmingly poor. He said the nation’s criminal justice system “feeds on certain communities and not on others,” and he said the bill represents a step toward “healing” for those communities.

“Let’s make no mistake, this legislation, which is one small step, will affect thousands and thousands of lives,” Booker said.

The bill would reduce the life sentence for some drug offenders with three convictions, or “three strikes,” to 25 years. Another provision would allow about 2,600 federal prisoners sentenced for crack cocaine offenses before August 2010 the opportunity to petition for reduced penalties.

When the bill appeared to have stalled in recent weeks, Sen. Charles Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pleaded with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring it up for a vote. With Trump’s urging, McConnell eventually agreed, and he voted for the bill as well.

“The First Step Act,” Grassley said, “takes lessons from history and from states — our laboratories of democracy — to reduce crime, save taxpayer dollars and strengthen faith and fairness in our criminal justice system.”

The Senate on Tuesday turned back three amendments from Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and John Kennedy of Louisiana, who said the bill endangered public safety. Supporters voiced concerns that passing any of the amendments would have sunk the bill.

One amendment would have excluded more prisoners from participating in educational and training programs that allow them to earn credits that can then be used to gain earlier release to a halfway house or home confinement to finish out their sentences. Another amendment would have required that victims be notified before a prisoner gets that earlier release. The third would have required the Federal Bureau of Prisons to track and report the re-arrest rate for each prisoner who gets early release.

“While the bill has marginally improved from earlier versions, I’m disappointed my amendments to exclude child molesters from early release and to protect victims’ rights were not adopted,” Cotton said. “I also remain concerned that reducing sentences for drug traffickers and violent felons is a threat to public safety.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the bill already carves out some 60 crimes that make prisoners ineligible for early release to a halfway house or home confinement. He said Cotton’s amendment was too expansive and would prevent at least 30,000 prisoners from participation.

Durbin said the Federal Bureau of Prisons also gives victims the opportunity to be notified upon a change in the prisoner’s status, but it’s a choice. He said about 10 percent of victims choose not to be notified because of the trauma involved in revisiting the crime. Meanwhile, the amendment from Cotton and Kennedy would make it a requirement.

“Supporting the Cotton amendment is basically saying to these crime victims, ‘We’re going to force this information on you whether it’s in the best interest of your family, whether you want it or not,’” Durbin said. “That is not respectful of crime victims.”

The bill would affect only federal prisoners, who make up less than 10 percent of the country’s prison population.

An array of liberal and conservative advocacy groups rallied in support of the bill. For example, the Koch brothers-backed group, Americans for Prosperity, applauded senators for putting “policy ahead of politics.” The American Civil Liberties Union said the bill was “by no means perfect. But we are in the midst of a mass incarceration crisis, and the time to act is now.”

Law enforcement groups were more split. The bill was backed by the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police but opposed by the National Sheriffs’ Association. The union representing federal prison guards also joined in supporting the measure.

Senate Passes a Sweeping Criminal Justice Bill

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a sweeping criminal justice bill Tuesday that addresses concerns that the nation’s war on drugs had led to the imprisonment of too many Americans for non-violent crimes without adequately preparing them for their return to society.

Senate passage of the bill by a vote of 87-12 culminates years of negotiations and gives President Donald Trump a signature policy victory, with the outcome hailed by scores of conservative and liberal advocacy groups. The House is expected to pass the bill this week, sending it to the president’s desk for his signature.

The bill gives judges more discretion when sentencing some drug offenders and boosts prisoner rehabilitation efforts. It also reduces the life sentence for some drug offenders with three convictions, or “three strikes,” to 25 years. Another provision would allow about 2,600 federal prisoners sentenced for crack cocaine offenses before August 2010 the opportunity to petition for a reduced penalty.

“America is the greatest Country in the world and my job is to fight for ALL citizens, even those who have made mistakes,” Trump tweeted moments after the vote.

“This will keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it. In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved. I look forward to signing this into law!” Trump added.

The vote also thrilled Democrats. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said the nation’s prisons are full of Americans who are struggling with mental illness and addiction, and who are overwhelmingly poor. He said the nation’s criminal justice system “feeds on certain communities and not on others,” and said the bill represents a step toward “healing” for those communities.

“Let’s make no mistake, this legislation, which is one small step, will affect thousands and thousands of lives,” Booker said.

When the bill appeared to have stalled in recent weeks, Sen. Charles Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pleaded with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring it up for a vote. With Trump’s urging, McConnell eventually agreed, and voted for the bill as well.

“The First Step Act takes lessons from history and from states — our laboratories of democracy — to reduce crime, save taxpayer dollars and strengthen faith and fairness in our criminal justice system,” Grassley said.

The Senate turned back three amendments Tuesday from Republican senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and John Kennedy of Louisiana, who said the bill endangered public safety. Supporters voiced concerns that passing any of the amendments would have sunk the bill.

One amendment would have excluded more prisoners from participating in educational and training programs that allow them to earn credits. Those credits can then be used to gain an earlier release to a halfway house or home confinement to finish out their sentence. Another amendment would have required that victims be notified before a prisoner gets that earlier release. The third would have required the Federal Bureau of Prisons to track and report the re-arrest rate for each prisoner who gets early release.

“While the bill has marginally improved from earlier versions, I’m disappointed my amendments to exclude child molesters from early release and to protect victims’ rights were not adopted,” Cotton said. “I also remain concerned that reducing sentences for drug traffickers and violent felons is a threat to public safety.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the bill already carves out some 60 different crimes that make prisoners ineligible for early release to a halfway house or home confinement. He said Cotton’s amendment was too expansive and would prevent at least 30,000 prisoners from participation.

Durbin said the Federal Bureau of Prisons also gives victims the opportunity to be notified upon a change in the prisoner’s status, but it’s a choice. He said about 10 percent of victims choose not to be notified because of the trauma involved in revisiting the crime. Meanwhile, the amendment from Cotton and Kennedy would make it a requirement.

“Supporting the Cotton amendment is basically saying to these crime victims, ‘We’re going to force this information on you whether it’s in the best interest of your family, whether you want it or not,’” Durbin said. “That is not respectful of crime victims.”

The bill would affect only federal prisoners, who make up less than 10 percent of the country’s prison population.

An array of liberal and conservative advocacy groups rallied in support of the bill. For example, the Koch brothers-backed group, Americans for Prosperity, applauded senators for putting “policy ahead of politics.” The American Civil Liberties Union said the bill was “by no means perfect. But we are in the midst of a mass incarceration crisis, and the time to act is now.”

Law enforcement groups were more split. It was backed by the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police but opposed by the National Sheriff’s Association. The union representing federal prison guards also joined in supporting the measure.

Trump Foundation Reaches Deal to Dissolve Amid Lawsuit

NEW YORK—President Donald Trump’s charitable foundation reached a deal Tuesday to go out of business, even as Trump continues to fight allegations he misused its assets to resolve business disputes and boost his run for the White House.

New York’s attorney general and lawyers for the Trump Foundation agreed on a court-supervised process for shutting down the charity and distributing about $1.7 million in remaining funds to other nonprofit groups.

The agreement resolved one part of the legal drama surrounding Trump, whose campaign, transition, inauguration and real estate empire are all under investigation.

Attorney General Barbara Underwood’s lawsuit alleging Trump and his family illegally operated the foundation as an extension of his businesses and his presidential campaign will continue.

The lawsuit, filed last spring, seeks $2.8 million in restitution and a 10-year ban on Trump and his three eldest children — Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka — from running any charities in New York.

In a statement Tuesday, Underwood cited “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.”

The foundation operated as “little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests,” she said.

Lawyers for the foundation have said any infractions were minor.

Trump pledged to dissolve the three-decade-old foundation and donate its funds to charity after his 2016 election, but that was only after it found itself under investigation in New York state. The attorney general’s office said it would have been “unacceptable” to let the foundation fold without close supervision from a judge.

Trump Foundation lawyer Alan Futerfas said the nonprofit has distributed approximately $19 million over the past decade, including $8.25 million of the president’s own money, to hundreds of charitable organizations.

The agreement was reached after a New York judge last month rejected arguments from the foundation’s lawyers that the lawsuit was politically motivated and should be thrown out.

Once the judge approves the deal to dissolve the charity, the two sides will have 30 days to provide her with a list of nonprofit organizations that should get the remaining funds. Each charity will get the same amount, and the attorney general’s office will have the right to reject ones it deems unfit to receive funds.

In her lawsuit, Underwood alleged that Trump used the foundation to help bolster his campaign by giving out big grants of other’s people money to veterans organizations during the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, the first presidential nominating contest of 2016.

Trump was also accused of directing that $100,000 in foundation money be used to settle legal claims over an 80-foot flagpole he had built at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, instead of paying the expense out of his own pocket.

In addition, the foundation paid $158,000 to resolve a lawsuit over a prize for a hole-in-one contest at a Trump-owned golf course; $10,000 to buy a 6-foot (1.8-meter) portrait of Trump at a charity auction; and $5,000 for ads promoting Trump’s hotels in the programs for charitable events.

Underwood sued the Trump Foundation after taking over for fellow Democrat Eric Schneiderman, who resigned in May amid allegations he abused women. Schneiderman started investigating the foundation in 2016 and ordered it to stop fundraising in New York after The Washington Post reported that some of its spending personally benefited the presidential candidate.

Underwood has referred her office’s findings to the IRS and the Federal Election Commission. Those agencies have not commented on the matter.

Federal Workers Not Happy With Their Jobs Under Trump: Survey

President Donald Trump made shrinking the federal government a cornerstone of his campaign, winning cheers at campaign rallies by promising to “drain the swamp,” his term for the staff of the network of agencies that keep the government functioning. Unlike, say, the wall on the border with Mexico, this is a promise he’s managed to keep. By the end of his first year, The Washington Post reported, all but three agencies—Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior—had fewer employees than they started with in 2017. By the end of 2018, Trump had changed civil service rules to make it easier to fire federal employees and canceled pay raises for 2 million federal workers.

Federal government workers are beginning to feel the strain, according to a new survey from the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service and the Boston Consulting Group, and as reported by The Washington Post. Federal job satisfaction “has tumbled,” as “the number of employees who would recommend their agency as a good place to work dropped at 60 percent of federal offices,” the annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings found.

2018 is the 15th year of the survey, which includes all of the Cabinet and intelligence agencies, plus 415 smaller government departments.

The results came after three years of improving ratings during the Obama administration. For the 2018 edition of the survey, “less than 40 percent of agencies improved their ratings on the scorecard of job satisfaction at federal workplaces,” a decline in comparison with figures of over 70 percent in the last years of the Obama administration, and even Trump’s first.

Just a third of the employees in the office within the Department of Health and Human Services, which among its duties oversees the fight against the opioid crisis, reported satisfaction with their jobs.

Among the largest year-over-year declines in satisfaction as listed by agency were those at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with a 25-point decline, and the Import-Export Bank, with an 18-point drop. The Education and State departments and the Environmental Protection Agency also had low scores.

Conservatives, who have long been eager to shrink the size of the federal government, largely were unsurprised and unbothered by the results. Grover Norquist, a conservative anti-tax activist since the Reagan era and a key force in passing George W. Bush’s tax cut of 2001, told NPR in that year that he didn’t want to abolish the government but instead hoped to “reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Interviewed for the Post story this week, Norquist downplayed the survey results, saying federal workers are merely adjusting to a new era of deregulation, and he added, “You’re measuring a swing and a change. … It can make you grumpy.”

The president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, Max Stier, thinks this is more than a case of grumpiness, and one that could eventually hurt Trump. “It’s a workforce that is not getting the leadership it needs to perform its best,” Stier told the Post. “Employees believe their leaders are not listening to them.”

 

 

Flynn Sentencing Abruptly Postponed; Judge Expresses Disgust

WASHINGTON—A federal judge abruptly postponed the sentencing of President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, on Tuesday, saying he could not hide his disgust for Flynn’s crime of lying to the FBI and accusing him of selling out his country.

Lawyers for Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who pleaded guilty last year to lying to the agency about his Russia contacts, requested the delay during a stunning hearing in which U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan gave Flynn a blistering rebuke.

“Arguably you sold your country out,” Sullivan told Flynn, who was flanked by his attorneys.

The judge added: “I can’t hide my disgust, my disdain.”

Sullivan’s harsh words raised the prospect that he could send Flynn to prison — an unexpected development since prosecutors have recommended against prison time, citing his cooperation in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

The delay allows Flynn to continue cooperating with the Russia probe and get credit for it in his punishment.

The hearing came amid escalating legal peril for Trump, who was implicated by federal prosecutors in New York this month in hush-money payments to cover up extramarital affairs. Nearly a half-dozen former aides and advisers — including Flynn — have pleaded guilty or agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Flynn became known during the Trump presidential campaign for leading chants of “Lock her up” during rallies, referring to Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton.

Trump signaled his continued close interest in the case by tweeting “good luck” to Flynn hours before the sentencing hearing. He added: “Will be interesting to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him, about Russian Collusion in our great and, obviously, highly successful political campaign. There was no Collusion!”

At the White House afterward, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked if the administration had changed its stance on Flynn or the FBI in light of his admissions and guilty plea.

“Maybe he did do those things, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the president,” she said. “It’s perfectly acceptable for the president to make a positive comment about somebody while we wait to see what the court’s determination is.”

Sanders repeated her allegation that the FBI “ambushed” Flynn in an interview in which he denied contacts with Russian officials, and she said of Trump’s earlier criticism, “We don’t have any reason to want to walk that back.”

The new delay in sentencing upset what had been a carefully crafted agreement, with Mueller’s office saying Flynn had already provided “the vast majority” of information he could.

Flynn, who served as national security adviser for only a few weeks, was to be the first White House official sentenced in Mueller’s investigation. Prosecutors had praised his cooperation and recommended against prison, and Tuesday’s sentencing was expected to be relatively straightforward. Flynn had expected to walk out the courthouse a free man.

But the hearing turned on a dime. Sullivan lambasted Flynn for lying to the FBI in the West Wing of the White House and said he wouldn’t allow Flynn to minimize the seriousness of his crime.

After a prosecutor raised the prospect of Flynn’s continued cooperation with other investigations in the future, Sullivan warned Flynn that he might not get the full credit for his assistance to the government if he were sentenced as scheduled.

Prosecutors noted that Flynn had provided the “vast majority of his cooperation” already. But Sullivan gave a visibly shaken Flynn a chance to discuss a delay of the hearing with his lawyers, and the court went into a brief recess.

When they returned, Flynn lawyer Robert Kelner defended Flynn’s cooperation but requested a postponement to allow for him to keep cooperating. Kelner said he expected Flynn would have to testify in a related trial in Virginia involving Flynn’s former business associates, and the defense wanted to “eke out the last modicum of cooperation” so he could get credit in any sentence.

Kelner asked Sullivan not to penalize Flynn for arguments his lawyers made in sentencing memos that appeared to suggest the FBI had tricked Flynn into lying. He said they only included those to differentiate Flynn from other defendants in the case who had received short prison sentences for lying.

But Sullivan fired back.

“Neither of those individuals were a high-ranking official who committed a crime while in the West Wing and on the premises of the White House,” the judge said.

At the hearing, Sullivan told Flynn that he would take into account his extensive cooperation with the government, which includes 19 meetings with investigators as well as a 33-year military career that included service in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he also said he was forced to weigh other factors, including Flynn’s decision as national security adviser to lie to the FBI about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

The judge set a new hearing date for March. Flynn left the courthouse hand-in-hand with his wife, climbing into a large, black SUV as protesters heckled and supporters chanted “USA!”

___

Read the Flynn FBI interview notes: http://apne.ws/xfm8IsO

Taking Back the Country Starts With the States

With the media’s laser focus fixed on President Donald Trump, the election of Gavin Newsom as governor of California, plus the seating of an overwhelmingly Democratic state Legislature, slipped by without getting the attention it deserved.

Now these Democrats have the opportunity to show the nation what they can do. Can California, with so many rich and poor, including the largest percentage of homelessness in the U.S., ameliorate the income inequality that plagues the state and the rest of the nation?

It was encouraging that Newsom brought up such inequality at his televised election-night celebration, an occasion in which bringing up downbeat topics is usually considered to be in poor taste. “In many ways and in many places, we are simultaneously the richest and the poorest state,” he said in his victory speech. “The dream is far too distant for too many. We are a land of plenty, but we are far from perfect.”

A few days later, Gov.-elect Newsom met with reporters at St. Anthony’s Foundation, a social service agency assisting the poor in San Francisco, the city for which he served as mayor for two terms. There are, he said, “134,000 souls on the street in this state, 24 percent of the nation’s homeless. That is unacceptable and that’s our collective responsibility. It happened on our watch. That’s not a Democratic watch or a Republican watch. That’s our watch.”

St. Anthony’s is in downtown San Francisco, a setting that provides a prime example of what the former mayor-turned-governor is talking about. Despite Newsom’s good intentions and some efforts of the liberal city, a walk through downtown entails weaving through homeless people on streets that run by upscale high-rises where the tech, financial and legal elite work and live.

The situation is much the same in California’s largest city, Los Angeles. Encampments of homeless people have sprung up on the sidewalks and under the freeways next to high-rise office buildings and fashionable loft apartments downtown as well as in the growing and affluent high-tech area farther west toward the beach.

I’ve written about the development of this tragedy for years, explored the encampments and tried to figure out why, despite the efforts of well-meaning, smart people, the situation has gotten worse. A tangle of local government and relatively uninterested state government officials has certainly factored in, as has the very immensity of the problem. And with housing costs escalating, the outlook is grim as more people tumble from rental units into homelessness.

The Public Policy Institute of California, studying figures through 2016, said in a report titled “Poverty in California” that about 7.4 million of the most populous state’s 39.7 million residents can’t afford to pay for sufficient housing, food, medical care, transportation or other basic needs. A family of four would need an income of $31,000 a year to meet those needs.

Poverty is highest among children and Latinos. “Latinos remain disproportionately poor, making up 52.8 percent of poor Californians but [only] 39.2 percent of all Californians,” the report noted.

In another report, “Income Inequality and the Safety Net in California,” researchers at the Public Policy Institute said:

What may be most problematic is not the level or even the growth of inequality in itself—rather, it is the growth in inequality during a long period of rising economic productivity. Since 1997, the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has increased by more than 30 percent in California. Over this same period, top incomes have grown at more than double the rate of low and middle incomes. This seems contrary to the idea that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.'

Newsom takes over from Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown who, after two terms, is leaving the state with a surplus, the result of a tax structure that hits the high-income earners.

Brown did not take up the “Medicare for all” cause during his tenure; he also resisted calls for state-sponsored preschool education and two free years of community college, although he did sign legislation that provides for one free year. He also opposed raising tuition for California residents enrolled in the University of California and California State University systems.

Newsom has embraced all these ideas and then some, framing the initiatives in the context of income inequality. Free preschool education became a major theme of his campaign for governor. To ease housing costs, he has proposed the creation of a state bank to provide low-interest public financing to reach his goal of building 3.5 million new homes. His long-term aim is to make housing more affordable in a state in which it is becoming prohibitively expensive for much of the middle class in the coastal areas where the jobs are.

If Newsom and the Democratic Legislature achieve most of these goals, they would be returning to a tradition when social progress was a priority in many  statehouses.

Those days seem distant in this era of ineffective or right-wing state legislatures. By neglecting state elections, national Democratic powers have been largely to blame for the Republican takeover of state governments around the country. This has resulted in anti-abortion, anti-labor and anti-voting rights laws in state capitals dominated by conservative Republicans.

All but forgotten is the fact that the beginnings of the New Deal came from a smart young New York team assembled by then-Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt. The public universities and public-school systems built after the Great Depression and World War II came from the drawing boards of little-known state educators, architects, planners and scholars. They were gateways created to help the poor reach the middle class and beyond.

The temptation for politicians and the media will be to ignore poverty and focus on Trump, especially as evidence points to his use of the presidency for his own monetary gain.

This temptation will be great in Congress, given the Democrats’ strong majority in the House. And it will be great in the “blue state” of California, a center of resistance to Trump’s war on immigrants and the environment. Trump-bashing gets officeholders on cable news shows and racks up numbers on their social media accounts. Talking about early childhood education or about community colleges preparing people for a wired world, on the other hand, does not.

With the Trump fixation, Newsom’s campaign didn’t get the notice it deserved.  As a result, Newsom was able to skate to victory without the close examination a candidate for governor needs.

Big tasks await Newsom and the rest of the Democrats, especially when it comes to protecting immigrants, Obamacare and environmental laws from the Trump administration. None is more important than income inequality, for it encompasses all of society’s ills. Without housing, transportation, clothing, nutritious food and a chance for a productive education, the lower classes are stuck.

Newsom’s postelection words on the gap separating the rich from working people and the poor after his election were encouraging—now the reality of governing is here. If Democrats, firmly in control of state government, can’t deal with the misery caused by income inequality in California, it can’t be done anywhere.

 

Democrats Deserve Better Than Beto O’Rourke

News media tell us that Beto O’Rourke has reached the top tier of potential contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. CNN polls now rank him in third place—behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders—among likely Iowa caucusgoers as well as among Democrats nationwide.

Progressives are apt to be enthusiastic about O’Rourke — if they don’t know much about his record.

Inclinations to hop on the Beto bandwagon are understandable. O’Rourke was inspiring this year as he fought to unseat the despicable U.S. Senator Ted Cruz with a campaign that built a broad coalition of Texans, while gaining huge small-dollar support from across the country. In late summer, many were thrilled by a video of O’Rourke’s response to a question about NFL players kneeling in protest during the national anthem; his ringing defense of dissent in the context of civil rights history was excellent.

Cruz had to sweat it out on election night and won by only 2.6 percent, a slim margin in such a conservative state. Since then, publicity about Beto O’Rourke potentially running for president has mushroomed, with corporate news outlets portraying him as a progressive.

Released a week ago, the much-publicized results of a poll that MoveOn conducted of people on its email list found O’Rourke in first place, neck-and-neck with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Media spin intensified, portraying Beto as a challenge to Bernie.

NBC News broke the news of the MoveOn poll while calling it “a potentially troubling indication for Sanders.” A couple of days later, the New York Times speculated that “Mr. Sanders’s hold on the party’s progressive base may be slipping as a new generation of Democrats like Representative Beto O’Rourke demonstrate early strength in polls and straw polls, such as the one conducted this week by the liberal group MoveOn.”

Meanwhile, Democracy for America was concluding a poll of its own active supporters online. As the second week of December began, the organization’s website was showing Bernie Sanders far ahead in the top spot at 38 percent, followed by Biden at 15 percent, O’Rourke at 12, Elizabeth Warren at 8, and Kamala Harris at 7. (DFA later removed the running totals from its site until release of final numbers.)

Given their at-times extreme antipathy toward Bernie during his first presidential run, mainstream news media are likely to have an appetite for a 2019 storyline that Sanders’ support is eroding. O’Rourke is apt to be quite useful for such a narrative. The Democratic Party establishment that went all-out to get Hillary Clinton the 2016 nomination is palpably eager to block Bernie. And some in that establishment are already indicating that they believe O’Rourke might do the trick.

A revealing sign came early this month from a leading sentinel of the Democratic Party’s corporate wing — the relentless Clinton loyalist Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress. What set her off was a matter-of-fact tweet from investigative reporter David Sirota, who told people “Something I didn’t know: Beto O’Rourke is the #2 recipient of oil/gas industry campaign cash in the entire Congress.” Sirota provided a link to campaign finance data.

Tanden quickly went into onslaught overdrive with a tweet lashing out at the sharing of such information about the three-term congressman: “Oh look. A supporter of Bernie Sanders attacking a Democrat. This is seriously dangerous. We know Trump is in the White House and attacking Dems is doing Trump’s bidding. I hope Senator Sanders repudiates these attacks in 2019.”

A money-in-politics reporter, Alex Kotch, responded that he was “pretty shocked” to see Tanden attack Sirota for simply sending out a factual tweet: “Tanden, a close Clinton ally and Bernie Sanders foe, has had a contentious relationship with the left, with which Sirota is often associated. But her claim that a reporter’s tweet of campaign finance statistics about a potential 2020 candidate was a dangerous attack that Trump would have ordered? Who was really being attacked here?”

For some context, Kotch added: “It’s worth noting that the Center for American Progress has in the past accepted donations from multiple fossil fuel companies and, as of 2017, was still receiving money from Pacific Gas and Electric Company. During the 2016 Democratic Platform Committee’s drafting process, Tanden voted against a fracking ban, a carbon tax, and a measure to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

Kotch followed up on Dec. 12 by reporting: “I have confirmed that according to the latest campaign finance report, which covers the period from Oct. 17 through Nov. 26, the O’Rourke campaign had not returned 29 ‘large donations’ of over $200 from oil and gas executives, violating the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge O’Rourke signed.”

Beto O’Rourke’s actual political record deserves scrutiny, and it’s not what progressives might expect from the overheated adulation that has sent his presidential balloon aloft. Some pointed reporting and critiques this month may have begun a process of bringing Beto fantasies down to earth. For instance:

**  Under the headline “Why This Progressive Texan Can’t Get Excited About Beto O’Rourke,” columnist Elizabeth Bruenig looked ahead to the upcoming presidential race: “I think the times both call for and allow for a left-populist candidate with uncompromising progressive principles. I don’t see that in O’Rourke.” She noted that “O’Rourke’s statements on energy have been surprisingly thin” — and that “he has called the decision between oil and gas and renewable energy sources ‘a false choice.’” Bruenig concluded: “We still have time to pick a politician with a bold, clear, distinctly progressive agenda, and an articulated vision beyond something-better-than-this, the literal translation of hope-change campaigning. Beto is a lot like Obama, true; it’s perhaps time for left-leaning Democrats to realize that may not be a good thing.”

**  A similar insight came from another progressive Texan, Dan Derozier, who chairs the elections committee of Houston Democratic Socialists of America. He wrote: “O’Rourke’s message covers rhetorical territory familiar from the Obama era: It’s positive and innocuous, but noncommittal. It relies on lofty but meaningless phraseology like Shared Values, Finding Common Ground and Bringing People Together. The message describes itself with words like ‘ambitious’ and ‘bold,’ but doesn’t promote any specific policy that could actually be described as such.”

Derozier summed up: “Before choosing O’Rourke as their next presidential nominee, Democrats would do well to reflect on the perils of preferring style over substance, consider the benefits of expanding their political imagination, and, most importantly, remember that political moments like O’Rourke’s are rare. Democrats shouldn’t waste the next one.”

**  An in-depth article by political journalist Zaid Jilani — headlined “What Does Beto O’Rourke Actually Stand For?” — indicates that O’Rourke doesn’t stand for much that progressives should embrace. During his six years in the House of Representatives, O’Rourke has been politically close to inert. “While the Democratic base is coalescing around single-payer health care and free college, O’Rourke sponsored neither House bill. During his time in Congress, he never joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He has been, however, a member of the New Democratic Caucus, the group organized to carry on the ideas of Clintonite policies. During the 2016 presidential primary, he stayed on the sidelines.”

Nor can O’Rourke’s caution be chalked up to conservative constituents in Texas. His 16th congressional district, centered in El Paso, “is among the more liberal in the country,” Jilani pointed out.

“While O’Rourke steadily avoided left-wing legislation, he went above and beyond to ally himself to the corporate wing of the Democratic Party,” Jilani reported. “In 2015, Congress narrowly gave President Obama so-called ‘Fast Track’ authority as it related to the Trans-Pacific Partnership… which many labor, consumer, human rights, and environmental advocates worried would vastly expand the power of investors and corporations and undermine U.S. sovereignty…. O’Rourke was one of the Democrats who voted to grant the authority to Obama…. What populists like [Elizabeth] Warren and Sanders feared most about the TPP was its vast expansion of patent and copyright protections — which could lock in arduous high drug prices, among other things. Regardless, O’Rourke continues to be a defender of these sorts of agreements. During his Senate run, the local press noted that he and Cruz essentially agreed on the merits of the North American Free Trade Agreement.” Such positions in favor of so-called free trade can hardly play well in Rust Belt states that put Trump in the White House.

Jilani’s assessment concluded: “The next president should be someone with a record of sticking their neck out against concentrated power, someone who has made tough decisions even when it may anger donors and political elites, and someone who has accomplished a great deal of actual tangible real change in the world. There are a number of people who fit that description, but it’s difficult to say O’Rourke is one of them.”

**  In Jacobin magazine, writer Branko Marcetic describes the political record a bit more favorably. On the one hand, he gives O’Rourke credit for “advocating for drug legalization and health benefits for same-sex and unmarried partners in El Paso” as well as “staunchly defending immigrants’ rights, the right to abortion, and speaking out against border militarization in Congress.” Also, O’Rourke “bucked Obama on several important issues, pressuring him to close Guantanamo, supporting legislation to curtail NSA spying, opposing war in Syria and arming the country’s rebels, and demanding Obama get congressional authorization for his continued war on ISIS.”

On the other hand, Marcetic explains, O’Rourke actively tried to “chip away at the Dodd-Frank financial reform law” and has cast many awful votes siding with big banks and against workers. His years in the House “have given him one of the better U.S. Chamber of Commerce voting scores among Democrats.” And O’Rourke’s congressional votes on criminal justice have often been on the side of repressive measures.

“O’Rourke is a decent, progressive candidate in slowly purpling Texas,” Marcetic wrote, “but when you put him on the national stage and drill down on his record, he becomes just another flawed Democrat…. Politicians like Beto O’Rourke represent a step forward for states like Texas. Making them national standard-bearers is a step backward.”

As candidates and in office, the last two Democratic presidents have been young, dynamic and often progressive-sounding, while largely serving the interests of Wall Street, big banks, military contractors and the like. Do we need to make it three in a row?

The Pentagon Failed Its Audit Amid a $21 Trillion Scandal (Yes, Trillion)

New York Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was ruthlessly attacked recently, and I feel a bit responsible. I might have accidentally tainted her Twitter feed with truth serum.

But that sounds weird—so let me back up.

A few months ago, I covered the story of the $21 trillion that has gone unaccounted for at the Pentagon. That’s right—trillion with a T—an amount of money you can’t possibly come to terms with, so stop trying. Seriously, stop. It’s like trying to comprehend the age of the earth.

(The earth is 4.5 billion years old. To put that into context, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we have 11 years left to completely change our ways or climate change will make the earth uninhabitable. If you were to take the age of the earth and lay it out on the span of a calendar year, this means we would have less than a millisecond left on Dec. 31 to utterly change our ways or all is lost.)

Anyway, the $21 trillion includes $6.5 trillion unaccounted for at the Pentagon in 2015 ALONE. When I covered all this a few months ago, very few people were talking about it. David Degraw investigated it for his website (which has since been destroyed by hackers), and Mark Skidmore, the economist who discovered the unaccounted adjustments, co-authored a single Forbes article on the subject. And by “discovered,” I don’t mean that Skidmore found a dusty shoebox in Donald Rumsfeld’s desk underneath the standard pile of baby skeletons. I mean that he took a minute to look at the Defense Department’s own inspector general’s report. So really he just bothered to look at the thing that was designed for the public to look at.

Anyway, my column on this topic went viral, as did the Forbes article, each garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Yet despite all that, still not a word from Congress, and not a word from the hacks at your mainstream media outlets. But then again, getting important news about the corruption of our military-industrial complex from the mainstream media would be like getting a philosophy lesson from a strip-club dancer (in that it would be most unexpected, and it’s not really why you’re there).

But just a few weeks ago, something significant happened. It took place in a quiet news dump during a Pentagon press conference that TRULY began like this:

DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PATRICK SHANAHAN: So you guys know why I came down here today?

REPORTER: To see if we ate the donuts?

Yes, Pentagon press conferences apparently begin in much the same manner as a “Three Stooges” sketch. (Unfortunately the subsequent bonks on the head usually involve Tomahawk missiles.)

During that wacky press conference, the deputy secretary of defense casually mentioned halfway through that the Pentagon had failed its first-ever audit. This is the first time the Pentagon has ever been audited, even though it has been legally required to do so since the early 1990s. Don’t you wish you could put off your tax returns for 20 years? (I once put them off for two years, but it wasn’t a conscious decision. It was simply the period of my life when I discovered that Netflix had every episode of “The West Wing.”)

After Shanahan dropped this bombshell, here was what followed:

REPORTER: What part did the Pentagon fail in the audit?

SHANAHAN: How about I give you, like, the technical version of that—there are a considerable number of areas where we kind of had a pass, then there’s some other ones where they went through and they said we went into your inventory system and we didn’t find these things; therefore that’s a finding, so you don’t have a clean assessment. So—and—in a lot of these audits, it’s the type of finding that matters.

Yes, the Pentagon’s official response to why it failed its audit is a word salad after it has gone through an industrial-grade militarized Slap Chop. It’s the type of response you get when a fraud has been filtered through a cover-up, then filtered through a publicist, then filtered through a public official who probably doesn’t know that much to begin with.

It’s the corrupt feeding the blind feeding the stupid feeding the disingenuous.

And yet even THAT didn’t get much press coverage. As far as I can tell, The New York Times didn’t report on the audit failure until two weeks later, and even that column contained this caveat:

But audits are hard work; most defense officials aren’t business experts; and to some, bookkeeping and other management operations just aren’t a priority in wartime, which since Sept. 11, 2001, has been a permanent state.

In the Times’ defense, there are different genres of reporting, and in this case, journalists were working in the genre of “shit reporting.” So should we really be surprised? If they want to learn what real reporting looks like on this same topic, they can read The Nation’s investigative exposé. That article stated:

For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud, deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher. … DoD has literally been making up numbers in its annual financial reports to Congress—representing trillions of dollars’ worth of seemingly nonexistent transactions … according to government records and interviews with current and former DoD officials, congressional sources, and independent experts.

It doesn’t get much clearer than that. (The following page in the magazine was simply an image of a hand dropping a mic.)

So here’s how this fraud works: Every year, the Pentagon tells Congress how much money it needs. It submits the financial reports from the year before, filled to the brim with heaping, steaming bullshit. Trillions of gallons of bullshit, called “adjustments.” Those adjustments cover up the fact that it didn’t necessarily spend all the money the year before.

“However, instead of returning such unspent funds to the US Treasury, as the law requires, the Pentagon sometimes launders and shifts such moneys to other parts of the DoD’s budget,” The Nation’s Dave Lindorff wrote.

And this is no mistake. This is straight-up fraud. How do you know when something is fraud? Well, one way is when the paper trail is covered up, as Lindorff noted:

Indeed, more than 16,000 records that might reveal either the source or the destination of some of that $6.5 trillion had been “removed,” the inspector general’s office reported.

Sixteen thousand records! By my calculations, such a cover-up would require multiple shredder operators working in shifts, only stopping once every five hours to use the bathroom and briefly giggle at their villainy.

One congressional staffer [said] … “We don’t know how the Pentagon’s money is being spent. … We don’t know how much of that funding gets spent on the intended programs, what things actually cost, whether payments are going to the proper accounts. If this kind of stuff were happening in the private sector, people would be fired and prosecuted.”

Here’s more analysis from The Nation:

The Pentagon’s accounting fraud diverts many billions of dollars that could be devoted to other national needs: health care, education, job creation, climate action, infrastructure modernization, and more. Indeed, the Pentagon’s accounting fraud amounts to theft on a grand scale—theft not only from America’s taxpayers, but also from the nation’s well-being and its future.

But apparently, disappearing at least 16,000 documents wasn’t enough. Somebody might still connect the dots. So the Pentagon took the next step:

[T]he most recent report for the DOD on the OIG website … summarizes unsupported adjustments for fiscal year 2017. However, this document differs from all previous reports in that all the numbers relating to the unsupported adjustments were redacted. That is, all the relevant information was blacked out.

Right after The Nation article came out, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted about it—basically saying that these unaccounted trillions at the Pentagon could help pay for “Medicare for all.”

Clearly things are ramping up. People are finding out about the $21 trillion, and that means it is now time for the true hacks—the military-industrial complex defenders—to jump in and chastise anyone who dares speak out about this fraud. Enter Vox—-which, if you’re unfamiliar, is a cross between HuffPost and an NPR tote bag filled with rotting raccoon carcasses.

Vox ran an article titled, “The $21 trillion accounting error that can’t pay for Medicare-for-all, explained.” You know how to tell for sure that you’re a nitwit spraying idiocy like a Super Soaker? When you find yourself saying the phrase “$21 trillion accounting ERROR.”

Error?! Yeah, and Timothy McVeigh just had a faulty carburetor.

Vox “journalist” Matthew Yglesias tried to push this idiotic justification: “The Pentagon’s accounting errors are genuinely enormous, but they’re also just accounting errors—they don’t represent actual money that can be spent on something else.”

Sorry, but no. These are not “accounting errors.” It’s impossible to have trillions of dollars of “accounting errors.” Since I have now saturated my keyboard with my anger-saliva, I’ll let Laurence Kotlikoff at Forbes answer this:

Let’s recall that this is not simply a matter of boring accounting. Trillions in unaccounted outlays, if that’s what’s involved here, is trillions of our tax dollars being spent without our knowledge. If that’s the case, we’re talking about the biggest government financial deception in the history of the country.

Long story short, this $21 trillion story is starting to gain traction. People can finally see the truth. And right now, it is the corporate media puppets who are trying to make sure you think, “It’s just a few accounting errors. Pay no mind to the fact that it amounts to the largest theft ever perpetrated against the American people.”

If you think this column is important, please share it. Also check out Lee Camp’s new comedy special, which one review called “the new standard for political stand-up comedy.” It’s only available at LeeCampComedySpecial.com .

This column is based on a monologue Camp wrote and performed on his TV show “Redacted Tonight.”

White House Pulls Back From Shutdown Threat Over Wall Funds

WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday appeared to inch away from forcing a partial government shutdown over funding for a southern border wall, with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying there are “other ways” to secure the $5 billion in funding that President Donald Trump wants.

It was the first sign of a potential White House counter offer as the clock ticks down toward Friday’s deadline to fund the government.

“At the end of the day, we don’t want to shut down the government,” Sanders said on Fox News. “We want to shut down the border from illegal immigration.”

Trump’s $5 billion is far more than the $1.3 billion Democrats have offered, which is not for Trump’s promised wall along the southern border with Mexico, but fencing and other security measures.

Sanders pointed to one bill, likely referring to the Senate’s bipartisan appropriation measure for the Department of Homeland Security, which provides $26 billion, including $1.6 billion for fencing and other barriers. It was approved by the committee in summer on a bipartisan vote.

“That’s something that we would be able to support,” she said, as long as it’s coupled with other funding, such as using defense money on border security.

What other funds could be tapped to satisfy the president’s demand remains unclear. Asked about using military funds, Sanders said, “There’s certainly a number of different funding sources that we’ve identified that we can use that we can couple with the money that would be given through Congressional appropriations that would help us get to that $5 billion that the president needs in order to protect our borders.”

The fight over Trump’s border wall has brought Congress to a familiar standoff just days before Christmas.

It wasn’t always like this, with Congress and the White House at a crisis over government funding. The House and Senate used to pass annual appropriation bills, and the president signed them into law. But in recent years the shutdown scenario has become so routine that it raises the question: Have shutdowns as a negotiating tool lost their punch?

A partial shutdown that could occur at midnight Friday risks disrupting government operations and leaving hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay over the holiday season. Costs would be likely in the billions of dollars.

Trump was meeting with his team and getting regular updates, Sanders said. Trump has also tweeted to keep up the pressure.

Exiting a Senate Republican leadership meeting late Monday, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said, “It looks like it probably is going to have to build for a few days here before there’s a solution.”

The president is insisting on $5 billion for the wall, but he does not have the votes from the Republican-led Congress to support it.

It’s unclear how many House Republicans, with just a few weeks left in the majority before relinquishing power to House Democrats, will even show up midweek for possible votes. Speaker Paul Ryan’s office had no update. Many Republicans say it’s up to Trump and Democrats to cut a deal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump talk most days, but the senator’s spokesman would not confirm if they spoke Monday about a plan. McConnell opened the chamber hoping for a “bipartisan collaborative spirit” that would enable Congress to finish its work.

“We need to make a substantial investment in the integrity of our border,” McConnell said. “And we need to close out the year’s appropriation process.”

Meanwhile, more than 800,000 government workers are preparing for the uncertainty ahead.

The dispute could affect nine of 15 Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Interior, Agriculture, State and Justice, as well as national parks and forests.

About half the workers would be forced to continue working without immediate pay. Others would be sent home. Congress often approves their pay retroactively, even if they were ordered to stay home.

“Our members are asking how they are supposed to pay for rent, food, and gas if they are required to work without a paycheck,” said a statement from J. David Cox, Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the large federal worker union. “The holiday season makes these inquiries especially heart-wrenching.”

Many agencies, including the Pentagon and the departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, are already funded for the year and will continue to operate as usual, regardless of whether Congress and the president reach agreement this week.

Congress already approved funding this year for about 75 percent of the government’s discretionary account for the budget year that began Oct. 1.

The U.S. Postal Service, busy delivering packages for the holiday season, wouldn’t be affected by any government shutdown because it’s an independent agency.

Trump said last week he would be “proud” to have a shutdown to get Congress to approve a $5 billion down payment to fulfill his campaign promise to build a border wall.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused.

Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, in a meeting last week at the White House, suggested keeping funding at its current level, $1.3 billion, for improved fencing. Trump had neither accepted nor rejected the Democrats’ offer, telling them he would take a look.

Schumer said Monday he had yet to hear from Trump. Speaking on the Senate floor, Schumer warned that “going along with the Trump shutdown is a futile act” because House Democrats would quickly approve government funding in January.

“President Trump still doesn’t have a plan to keep the government open,” Schumer said Monday. “No treat or temper tantrum will get the president his wall.”

One option for lawmakers would be to provide stopgap funding for a few weeks, until the new Congress convenes Jan. 3, when Pelosi is poised to become House speaker.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, who is in line to become the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, suggested a stopgap bill could be one way to resolve the issue or a longer-term bill that includes money for border security.

GOP leaders, though, were frustrated as the clock ticked away. Leaving the weekly leadership meeting, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said any planning was a “very closely held thing. That’s why we should never let this happen. We should pass the bills the way we’re supposed to pass them.”

Corporate Advertisers Slowly Back Away From Tucker Carlson

Corporate advertisers are jumping ship from Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox News show hosted by the right-wing xenophobe, but Carlson appears to welcome the controversy sparked by recent comments that immigrants make the United States a “poorer and dirtier” country.

While the number of sponsors who have been pressured to suspend their campaigns on the show grows, Carlson on Monday night vowed not to be intimidated and declared his intention “to say what’s true until the last day.”

According to Buzzfeed, at least five companies have pulled their ads since Carlson’s remarks last week caused a firestorm of criticism.

Writing for ThinkProgress, Frank Dale details how Carlson has long been “a favorite of white supremacists” and in recent years “has used his Fox News platform to claim that immigration advocates want to ‘change your country forever,’ advocate for excluding Latinx people from the U.S. to preserve the country’s white identity, complain about how difficult it is to be a white man, promote a social media site frequented by white nationalists, and defend a white nationalist Pizzagate conspiracy theorist.”

It’s scandalous that they advertised on his show in the first place. Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist propagandist, but often panders to the left by conceding certain points (e.g. Amazon, etc.) to both legitimize himself and distract from said white supremacy. Don’t buy it. https://t.co/i9rjQIyvi6

— The Humanist Report