unraveling

30.Nov.2017

The big lie

Trump’s Treasury Department is lying about its own analysis of the tax bill. If there is any analysis? If there were a legitimate analysis that showed (no matter how implausibly) that the $1.5 trillion budget-buster could somehow reduce the deficit by $1 trillion, number one, Ronald Reagan would come back from the grave, and number two, Steven Mnuchin would be waving it around like crazy.

The GOP leaders call out, FIRE! READY! AIM!

The foot soldiers, such as Idaho's Senator Mike Crapo have worked their way to succinct snippets of willful credulity such as

“I support the Senate’s tax reform proposal because it will not add to our deficit and will put our nation on a path toward fiscal stability.”

But whoops, that's not actually what just came out of the Joint Committee on Taxaxtion:

"[E]conomic growth from the tax cut will only offset $407 billion of the $1.5 trillion cost over the next decade."

So $1 trillion is about the right number, it's just a negative $1 trillion. Here are the numbers from the Joint Committee on Taxation's estimate, in Christmas colors:

Probably the most bizarre part of this strange episode is that after the 2008 financial meltdown, when there was reason for deficit spending, the Republicans were wildly against it. Now with the economy booming, the stock market hitting record highs, unemployment back down to decent levels (although with underemployment and wage growth still issues), the GOP is back to the 1980s Laffer madness, in service to looting the economy on behalf of billionaires. El Maverick John McCain is on board, suddenly not too obsessive about "regular order."

Meanwhile, the self-destruction

Thomas Edsall: The Self-Destruction of American Democracy.

President Trump has single-handedly done more to undermine the basic tenets of American democracy than any foreign agent or foreign propaganda campaign could.

“Trump is a political weapon of mass self-destruction for American democracy — for its norms, for its morality, for sheer human decency,” Henry Aaron, a senior fellow at Brookings, wrote by email:

"So if Putin backed him, and if he did it to damage the United States, then he dropped one extremely smart bomb in the middle of Washington."

America's standing is UP! with Israel, and most especially Russia.

It's down with the Philippines, Nigeria, Vietnam, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, India, South Africa, Hungary, Australia, Senegal, Italy, Japan, Indonesia, Poland, Canada, Britain, Venezuela, Greece, Tunisia, the Netherlands, Peru, South Korea, Lebanon, Colombia, France, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Germany, Turkey, Sweden, Jordan, Spain and Mexico.

And for major legislation passed in the first year of this new administration we might be going from zero to "a catchall legislative creation that could reshape major areas of American life, from education to health care" before Christmas.

A corporate tax bonanza, sure. Sounding the death knell for Social Security and Medicare? The end of the 60+ year ban on political activism by churches and fetuses turned into persons are just icing on the cake.

Who needs a debate? "This is our chance," said Mitch McConnell.

State of the Something Address

Dreamt I was addressing the Idaho Legislature, or some such august body gathered in a formal, wood-paneled setting, responding to a request from a professor who knew me, but did not say what it was he thought I should talk about, or why. I hadn't prepared anything, and after trying to get one last hint from him about "what topic?" and failing, forged ahead.

Mic check at the podium, can you hear me in the back? Not well enough with me speaking in a normal voice, so I leaned into it, and spoke in a PROJECTING STAGE VOICE. I'd write more in ALL CAPS if I could remember any of it verbatim, but that has faded in the morning light.

I launched into a testimonial to the First Amendment of the US Constitution that seemed fairly uncontroversial, putting no particular burden on the audience. From there, to the idea of giving others the benefit of the doubt, even if you disagree with their ideas. Assume they are well-intentioned, and consider the merits of what they propose.

If you assume instead that they are TERRIBLE PERSONS, you won't be able to assess anything they say, least of all substantive proposals they might make. This was a charge to the assembly: let's listen to one another, and work together.

At some point, all that SPEAKING LOUDLY woke me up, and in sleepy reverie, I thought about what else I needed to say, and how to say it, and about that large, swampy elephant in the room that there are actually some TERRIBLE PERSONS—or at least one such—in leadership just now.

Lost in the noise of all the horrible things this week, much too long for the evening news, I see C-Span has the whole video of the ceremony honoring the Navajo Code Talkers, with Peter MacDonald's full remarks. It's 18 minutes altogether, but you can skip everything after the first 12 minutes with no loss.

29.Nov.2017

Scorched earth

People are saying this whole sexual abuse issue is "nonpartisan," but it seems to be getting employed more effectively on the left than the right. Maybe that's just my cock-eyed view of it. This just in, Garrison Keillor just out, even though, wasn't he retired anyway? MPR learned of "allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him," and undertook an investigation.

No more The Writer's Almanac, no more Best of Prairie Home Companion, and the weekly music and variety show on American Public Media hosted by Chris Thile will be formerly known as that which now must not be named. (Actually that would be a pretty cool name, wouldn't it? "Welcome to tonight's broadcast of Formerly Known as That." F-KAT for short.)

Reminded me of hearing part of Thile's show recently, a really sublime musical number that I wanted to look up to share with my spouse. Maybe it was November 19, 2016 with Trey Anastasio, The Staves and Tig Notaro? No, couldn't be, that rebroadcast was just last Saturday. A good show, all the same. Thile is a blazing talent with a beautiful voice.

There could be decades of schtick going by the wayside, and a lot of history to erase. He'll need a new theme song, and the rhubarb pie and powdermilk biscuits could be out the window. At least MPR says there are no similar allegations involving other staff.

Unless you know something. They have a confidential hotline.

The Washington Post didn't know what was coming, but Keillor must have had an inkling when he wrote his op-ed on absurdity that they posted yesterday. Clever writing as far as it went, considering great name changes of history.

"[B]ack in the 18th century, Francois-Marie Arouet did a smart thing by taking the pen name Voltaire. That name worked out well for Francois-Marie — it lent an electricity to his work. For example, his statement: “Any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.” We might not believe that coming from a Francois-Marie. And how considerate of him to say it in English rather than French."

I've seen that quote with atrocities rather than mere "injustices," but unsurprisingly, Keillor's closer to the original: "Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste." And this truth, upstanding no matter the shortcomings of its messenger:

"The greatest absurdity of our time is You Know Whom, which goes without saying but I will anyway. What his election showed is that a considerable number of people, in order to demonstrate their frustration with the world as it is, are willing to drive their car, with their children in the back seat, over a cliff, smash the radiator, bust an axle and walk away feeling good about themselves."

For his part, You Know Whom lit things up with his Twitter finger this morning, further cultivating the Republican Party's alliance with fascism to rave reviews.

First the tax cut, then the meat ax

As the stock market soars to new highs and the moral standing of our country's leadership plumbs new lows, the party in charge of everything is desperate to show that it can pass one piece of major legislation this year, and tuck a $1.5 trillion package under the tree for its favorite donors. (They've been very good boys, mostly, and girls, at least in our land of make-believe.)

Desperation means "no hearing, no debate" and let's get this done before Christmas, shall we? Have the Capitol Police clear the room if need be.

The follow-on manuever, reining in spending through the grinding machinery of "Paygo" and sequestration, would provide automatic spending cuts to a host of programs, conveniently bubble-charted and listed in an interactive tabulation by the New York Times.

A $25.5 billion whack to Medicare. $13.7 billion off the Commodity Credit Corp. Fund, $13.5 billion from the Crime Victims Fund, and on down the line. $1.9 billion will be liquidated from the FDIC's Orderly Liquidation Fund, in an orderly manner. Farm Security and Rural Investment Program would be whacked twice that. Various farm aid programs stand to lose $14 billion all together. In the first year. National Flood Insurance, Mining Leasing, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Fund and so on, something (less) for most everyone.

Including coal miners, for whom the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund would cough up $69 million.

"Congress has found a way to slip around the rule in the past by including an exception in legislation from the Paygo cuts. But because of the special budget process Republicans are using for tax overhaul this year, the tax bill itself can’t include such an exception. Congress could prevent the cuts by passing separate legislation by the end of the year, but that measure would need 60 votes in the Senate, requiring several Democrats to support it."

28.Nov.2017

How do you spell hypocrisy?

A million years ago in March, 2016, the Idaho Statesman's Business Insider magazine featured what passes for Idaho Sen. Jim Risch's wit and wisdom on our most worrisome problem that nobody's talking about, where by "nobody" he meant every Republican who could find a loose microphone in any nook or cranny. (He also talked about his "incredibly interesting portfolio" sitting on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees—no pun intended.) What was keeping him up at night? Oddly, not foreign relations, nor his intelligence, but this:

"The overreaching issue is the financial condition of this country. You all have heard my speech so many times, some of your lips move as I’m talking. And I don’t have anything new to report. All I have is bad news on that front. It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse. And the even worse news is that nobody’s talking about it. Nothing’s getting done."

That includes getting his own website updated once in a while: his Home / Issues & Solutions / Issue / Appropriations/Budget page looks current as of half a decade ago. There are some newer press releases, but the lede text is whining about the deficit in "President Obama's budget for fiscal year 2013." (I wonder if a staffer has nudged him to point out that Congress is ultimately responsible for appropriations?)

Today in a public Facebook post, former US Attorney for the District of Idaho Betty Hansen Richardson called him out. Reprinted here with permission, and links added:

How do you spell “hypocrisy?” I spell it J-i-m-R-i-s-c-h.

For years now, Idaho’s junior U.S. Senator has been preaching that “[t]he overreaching issue is the financial condition of the country.” In a March 12, 2016, column in the Idaho Statesman, Risch lamented that the national debt had risen by about $10 trillion in the preceding ten years.

When our national debt reached $20 trillion, Risch issued a statement bemoaning the fact that “each dollar added to our debt is a dollar lost from critical investments in American roads, bridges, healthcare, schools, and other essential services.”

Of course, it’s not like Risch has a record of supporting investment in critical infrastructure and other essential services, but it’s a nice thought.

Now the Senate is poised to vote on a so-called tax reform plan that most major economists doubt will grow the economy, as its supporters promise. Moreover, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center has found that the tax cuts will not pay for themselves through growth. Instead of being revenue neutral, the cuts, once implemented, will likely result in a massive revenue loss.

Pouring salt in the wound, the Senate Finance Committee has announced that its plan will include a repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate that would likely leave 13 million Americans uninsured. And now the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Senate GOP's tax plan would increase the deficit by $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years.

So who will reap the largesse of this slipshod scheme? Why those who need it least – the mega corporations and the ultra-rich, people like Jim Risch who boasts about being one of the wealthiest U.S. Senators. Just how much would this plan boost his bottom line? I’m betting he’ll see quiet a windfall.

Some deficit hawks, like Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., have the courage of their convictions and don’t try to sugarcoat things. Flake recently released a statement expressing concern that "the current tax reform proposals will grow the already staggering national debt,” and cautioning that, were it to do so, our economy would be threatened. But unlike Flake, Risch appears ready – if not eager – to abandon his long-touted concerns about the debt in order to help Trump notch a “win.”

The Greek philosopher Diogenes is said to have carried a lamp everywhere in search of “one honest man.” He could have found that honest man in South Carolina senator Lindsay Graham who candidly admitted that the Republican obsession with tax cuts for the uber-rich comes down to keeping the GOP in power by ensuring that the donor spigot keeps flowing. There’s not much in the way of principle in that remark, but at least it’s honest.

Dishonest Jim Risch has for years portrayed himself as some kind of fiscal champion but his concern for the national debt has proven short-lived. He’s a self-serving hypocrite of the first order, and an embarrassment to our state.

Here's Risch in the news today, praising the tax bill, and breathing not a whisper of concern about that once upon a time "overarching issue." His deep, deep concern will spring back to mind when the swamp has sufficiently ripened, or he is instructed to care again. The Democrats have seen this play before, and described the second act two weeks ago:

“This is a nasty, two-step strategy that has long been the holy grail for hard-right Republicans,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader. “If this bill passes, you can bet the Republicans will immediately sharpen the knives for middle-class benefits.”

Shoot-out at the OK Bureau

Peter Schuck, emeritus law professor at Yale, argues that in the semi-comical bureaucratic showdown at the CFPB, Congress has the winning hand. That's the 111th Congress, unless and until the 115th can find its hind legs.

"Last week, Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose term was to end in July, pulled the bureaucratic equivalent of a “dead hand” maneuver. Having announced that he was departing at the end of the month, he abruptly left on Friday, appointing his deputy, Leandra English, as his successor. President Trump and the Republicans are eager to pare back or even close the bureau, and the president wasted no time in appointing Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, as interim director as well.

"Both Ms. English and Mr. Mulvaney showed up for work on Monday, but not before she filed a suit against Mr. Trump and Mr. Mulvaney, claiming that Mr. Cordray, not the president, had the power to appoint an interim director. While the president normally has control over appointments in the executive branch, in this case, Ms. English is right.

"This isn’t normally the case. But in creating the bureau as part of the Dodd-Frank reforms in 2010, Congress intentionally gave it an unusual degree of autonomy. If the bureau’s powers are constitutional, as I believe they are, they can be overturned only by Congress — which means that Ms. English can run the agency until the Senate confirms a successor to start in July when the term ends, or the president removes her “for cause,” which means more than mere political or policy disagreement."

Leandra English v. Donald John Trump and John Michael Mulvaney will be an interesting case. My first thought was that the D.C. District Court would probably grant English's request for a temporary restraining order, but then I learned that "the case was randomly assigned to Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was nominated by Trump this year and took his seat on the bench in September." Maybe it'll only get interesting on appeal.

"At the hearing, Kelly said he hoped to have a decision soon. But he expressed some skepticism about granting a restraining order that would “enjoin the president” from filling an executive branch position.

“That’s an extraordinary remedy,” Kelly told Deepak Gupta, English’s attorney.

Yes, but we live in extraordinary times. Also, the law and stuff.

Update: From The Intercept_: "The lawyer who wrote the Office of Legal Counsel memo supporting the Trump administration’s viewpoint that the president can appoint Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau represented a payday lender in front of the CFPB last year."

Update #2: The court denied the request for an emergency restraining order. How about a preliminary injunction? Mulvaney "has been openly hostile to the bureau, calling it a 'sad, sick' joke and supporting legislation to eliminate it." He's got as far as his name and photo on the website, and declaring a freeze on any significant actions, according to his lawyers. That'll really kick consumer protection into high gear.

27.Nov.2017

Franklin Mint for the new millennium

Reading the NYT Business Day item, Initial Coin Offerings Horrify a Former SEC Regulator, and its lead about "initial coin offerings" brought to mind that hoary outfit that was a staple of advertising in second and third tier magazines. (Maybe still is? Its Wikipedia entry makes it sound like huh uh: "exists as a brand name only," and no longer churning out diecast vehicles, dolls, sculpture and what-not.)

We're no longer talking (all that much) about collectibles, but so-called virtual currency. If you're just making stuff up, why not "custom-built virtual currencies," useful for raising money (realer money) for startups?

“ICOs represent the most pervasive, open and notorious violation of federal securities laws since the Code of Hammurabi. It’s more than the extent of the violation. It’s the almost comedic quality of the violation.”

How much money has been raised by "making money"? An estimated $3 billion this year. And here's a nice touch: "[I]nvestors pay for the coins using Bitcoin and other virtual currencies..." We also are told that "regulators in China and South Korea have recently banned such offerings outright," which makes you wonder if they know something we ought to know.

Mr. Grundfest is far from the only voice who has criticized the frenzy around coin offerings. Chamath Palihapitiya, a venture capitalist who has expressed enthusiasm about Bitcoin, has said he thinks that “99 percent of ICOs are a scam,” a sentiment that other leading venture capitalists have echoed.

25.Nov.2017

But who's counting?

Found an even better explainer for what's going down with the FCC and Net Neutrality, from Devin Coldeway on TechCrunch: The FCC’s craven net neutrality vote announcement makes no mention of the 22 million comments filed. Coldeway says the chairman's announcement "made no mention of the inconvenient and embarrassing fact that his proposal had attracted historic attention, garnering over 22 million comments — the majority of which opposed it."

Coldeway had reported back in August about the more than 20 million comments, "millions" of which "appear to be fraudulent," when the deadline was pushed out by just two weeks, rather than the 8 that had been asked for.

Anyone who's seen an online comment section might know that more comments won't necessarily be better; even if there's a pony in there somewhere, there is a ton of horseshit to wade through. And how perfectly apt (and predictable) that much of the comment flow would be trolls, bots, and dittoheads. For example:

"7.5 million identical comments from 45,000 unique names and addresses, apparently due to a scammer who repeatedly submitted the same comment under a series of different names."

That in arsTechnica's current report about how Ajit Pai is going to pay attention to comments that agree with him and ignore the ones that don't. He can't imagine a reason why he should consider disagreeable comments.

ArsTechnica had previously reported that all-in, the comments ran 60-39 against the repeal. Looking at just the "personalized" comments (one out of ten of the total), it was 1.52 million against, and 0.023 million in favor. That is, 98.5% support the current rules.

That was thanks to a study intended to be "independent and unbiased," even though it was funded by Broadband for America, which is advocating for overturning the Title II rules that prohibit blocking, throttling and prioritizing traffic to the highest bidders. The NCTA ("The Internet & Television Association") assured us that their member providers were committed to fairness, even if (ahem) they don't put that sort of thing in the contract terms. (And if they did, they would be jolly well subject to change without notice.) They even took the trouble to spell out how ISPs Commit to an Open Internet and a handy timeline below their editorial position, Title II: Net Disaster. It's a "massive regulatory regime" don't you know. Versus the "light touch" they think is best.

"[T]he FCC should reverse Title II and clear the way for Congress to pass common sense legislation that enshrines open internet principles in statute while supporting the continued growth and expansion of internet networks throughout America."

Yay for "common sense legislation," starting right... when? And don't you feel better about your cable companies looking out for your best interests? You know how much they love you.

We'd best hope, because this appears to be a done deal from Ajit Pai and his anti-regulation majority on the FCC, come December 14. We're about to color in yet another dimension of the answer to that unforgettable question from last year's presidential campaign: WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?

Inconspicuous consumption

Stayed out of stores for Black Friday once again. We did go out on Thanksgiving day after a big family dinner, to see the movie Lady Bird, which was good. (Very good, if you can believe Peter Travers' review there. We liked it a lot anyway, teased by seeing interviews with both the lead actor and the director.)

We used a couple of old Downtown Boise gift cards I'd been given as a thank you for some volunteer work, figuring this was a good time to liven them up lest they hit that "fees may apply" wall again. (I had read the back when they were new, even if I had not noticed the artfully subtle blue-on-black lettering on the front until I went to edit this image of the thing. You probably can't read it, so I'll just tell you what it says: Fees may apply. See back.

There are enough participating merchants I guess, but we're not big diners or shoppers. A bit of a shock to see the date on the back: where did those almost 4 years go? The next question was where did the $41.50 go?!

The small print reassureth, and the larger print taketh away. Card Plastic Valid Thru: 11/2023. Card funds do not expire. But, this is nice, UNLESS PROHIBITED BY LAW (which, shouldn't it be?), starting 1 day after 1 year of inactivity, we will start taking your money.

At this late date, as best I can I see without visiting www.getmybalance.com or calling 800-755-0085, between $41.50, $5.50 and a $7.50 movie ticket, $28.50—not quite half of the original funds that do not expire—had been sucked away. It would have only taken... a year and 11.4 months. Ah, point 4? If you can't trust the accounting of a company stealing your gift money, who can you trust?

It's a nice touch that "Activity" doesn't include "fee imposition," so their cash flow won't be interrupted. Next time, my god, just write me a check, would you? I'll use the money at the grocery store or something.

As for the $1.46... I invited the gal at the counter to take that as a tip for vending an adult beverage, but she said she didn't know how to do that. Sunrise Banks, N.A. will take care of it, next Black Friday.

22.Nov.2017

End of the internet

Wired joined the throng reporting on the FCC plan to gut net neutrality yesterday.

"Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet," FCC chair Ajit Pai said in a statement Tuesday. "Instead, the FCC would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them and entrepreneurs and other small businesses can have the technical information they need to innovate."

The FCC's two Democratic members blasted the proposal. "Following actions earlier this year to erase consumer privacy protections, the Commission now wants to wipe out court-tested rules and a decade’s work in order to favor cable and telephone companies," Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. "This is ridiculous and offensive to the millions of Americans who use the Internet every day."

The FCC comprises 5 members, and the 3-to-2 Republican ayes could rule the day at the December 14 meeting. Since we're talking about "technology," it's relatively easy for useful idiots to make it seem complicated. Perhaps Ted Cruz, with a cute Snapchat-based avatar on his Twitter profile saying, IDK, that net neutrality is like Obamacare. Or our Sexual Predator-in-Thief opining that it would somehow "target conservative media." If only.

Back in 2014 (when pretty much no one was paying attention to the stupid things such as that coming out of the sur-@realDonaldTrump), one wag stuffed a thousand words' worth in this image (with the version found on TechDirt 666px wide, nice touch):

Partial credit where due, TechDirt is still going despite a $15M libel suit from a guy you never heard of (at least I never heard of) who says he invented email. Their post today notes that Comcast again falsely claims you have nothing to worry about, and features Verizon's "comical video in which the company used a fake journalist to try and construct an alternate timeline; one in which Verizon hasn't been trying to undermine net neutrality and a healthy, competitive internet for the last fifteen years."

(It's just "advocacy groups" using this for fundraising, don't you know. Reassuring coming from the folks who already have you on autopay their "fundraising" business.)

Highway robbery

It's hard to know where to begin to make sense of the tax cut fever in the GOP right now. The whole "railing against the deficit" thing is right out the window. Clearly, that doesn't matter beyond the constraints that have been put in law. One of those contraints is that for slap-dash legislation under "reconciliation" rules—effectively, what a party with a bare majority can push through with zero participation from the minority—there's a limited, 10 year horizon, after which some shenanigans must expire.

But not all. As drafted and partially passed, the big picture of the current bills is that corporate tax cuts will be permanent, and the individual tax cuts—or at least those for the middle class and below—will expire. The argument for the vaunted corporate tax cutting is the trickle-down theory.

And in 10 years? We've seen this movie before. The last major looting, at the beginning of the George W. Bush terms, mined the 1990s "surplus" such as it was (we'd sort've reached balance, otherwise known as THAR'S GOLD IN THEM THAR HILLS!), and when the 10 years was up, various maneuvers were employed to fight back the expiration. Largely it was based on the simple-minded idea that TAX INCREASE BAD.

Well, you get what you pay for. Or, in the case of deficit spending, you get more than you pay for.

Paul Krugman is more knowledgeable on this subject than me, and less sanguine in his description of the Lies, Incoherence and Rage on Tax Cuts. He has numbers. And links. And the bad guys of various stripes. The "raging" anecdote is from Senator Orrin Hatch's snit when Sherrod Brown called bullshit on the GOP enterprise, and Orrin matched the hatch with "bull crap." (If only there'd been a chorus to break into he said damme!) One Facebook acquaintance added a little color about Hatch:

"Orin used to park his new Mercedes directly in front of his ward house—in a no-parking zone—and pay the tickets every time. It sent several messages:
• I’m important and rich (at least more so than you)
• I’m always at church
• I’m contemptuous of the law
• Made you look!"

And this additional insight, sourced with a 2011 blog post:

"And he is the reason America has such a profitable and unregulated MLM 'nutriceutical' industry. No one has done—or profited—more in cahoots with snake-oil salesmen and con artists."

21.Nov.2017

What else is news?

Just catching up on things... The president's Twitter habit may become a legal liability for him, with his feed replete with evidence of obstruction of justice and witness intimidation.

Looks like Jared Kushner may not be leading the charges "to reinvent government, reform the V.A., end the opioid epidemic, run point on China, and solve Middle East peace" after all. The Chief of Staff was supposedly working to get him to focus on just the last of those, and it seems that daddy-in-law is suggesting he decamp to 666 Fifth Avenue in New York. Seems like a Ghostbusters sequel must be in order.

The visitor records for the Office of Management and Budget, U.S. Trade Representative, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Council on Environmental Quality and Office of Science and Technology Policy that the Trump administration wanted to keep secret have been (mostly) disclosed, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, and Property of the People. 8,807 Meetings over the course of 230 days, 2,169 redactions in the lists.

We have the first draft of articles of impeachment of the president, for obstruction of justice, violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause against taking gifts from foreign leaders without congressional approval and undermining the independence of the federal judiciary and the freedom of the press.

For their part, the president's lawyers continue to scramble to keep him calm, lest he fly into a rage and fire Mueller. "[W]hile Trump’s lawyers and spokespeople had previously said they believe the investigation will be over by Thanksgiving, that timeframe was probably always fantastical." Thanksgiving, as in... this Thursday? Yeah, no, that's not too likely to happen.

Where's the fire?

Starting to feel like a consumer of celebrity news, but after the previous item (below), this lit up my scoreboard: Fox News Host Jeanine Pirro gets ticket for speeding at 119 mph.

That's pretty damn fast. I got a couple speeding tickets back when I was young and foolish, and I've enjoyed a spin on the Autobahn, but I've never approached that speed, certainly not in this country. Faster than I've ever driven. I think I did 100 mph in mom's Skylark once. Did I got 160 kmh in Germany? Maybe. If I'd dialed our rental up to 200 km per hour, I would have remembered that, for sure.

But anyway, Fox News bigmouth gets a speeding ticker, big deal. Well, how would you like to share the New York turnpike with someone who has her spokesman say this?

“I had been driving for hours to visit my ailing 89-year-old mom and didn’t realize how fast I was driving.”

Don't worry, be happy

Cheery opinion from an unlikely source (for me, anyway), I stumbled onto the Washington Times website, following a link about the surprisingly high cost of the citizenship interview.

That was set to rise after the election, I learned from the WT. Their story says "by $45 to $640" but you'll need more than that N–400 Application for Naturalization fee. There is an $85 "Biometric Services Fee" for your background check. And stuff. So, $725. (But see Form I-942, Request for Reduced Fee if maybe you qualify for a 50% discount on the N-400.) There are lots of fees for immigration benefits from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Anyhoo, the piece by Richard W. Rahn, chairman of the jolly-sounding Improbable Success Productions and a board member of the American Council for Capital Formation, caught my eye: The myth of growing income inequality. (The link on his name also shows him listed as "staff," a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and the chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth, which makes me wonder what's up with that goofy footer.) His thesis:

"There are many articles and books asserting that the inflation-adjusted incomes for the middle- and lower-income groups in the U.S. and some of the other developed countries have remained almost flat while the upper-income “rich” have seen a great rise in their incomes. Not true when correctly measured."

The "correct measurement" he has in mind, and describes at some length is the wealth at your fingertips in the form of—not making this up—smartphone apps. He figures they're worth $9,000 a year to every one of the 3 billion smart phone users around the world. Talk about your rising tide lifting all boats! And so progressive, to boot. If you're getting by on half the average disposable income of $18,000 (his number), that's a 50% boost. If you're a "very high-income person" making half a million bucks a year, you still only get that $9,000 deal. It hardly seems fair, this "leveling of the real ability to consume," but there you go.

And never mind about affordable health care, or insurance: "in a very few years, people will be wearing devices that constantly measure their health, and if something needs to be corrected, everyone—because of artificial intelligence—will have the same access to the very best medical advice."

"It is the wealthy who pay for the new innovations, and once they are perfected, their prices fall radically so all are beneficiaries. Less than 10 years ago, only extremely expensive cars had lane change warning indicators. Now, improved versions are available on most $40,000 cars."

Rahn apparently thinks "$40,000 cars" are something most people have? That'd be swell.

"The current GDP measures were largely developed in the 1930s. But they do not accurately measure relative well-being in the new technological world. To make tax and government spending, and other public-policy decisions based on these old measures, without fully recognizing the ramifications of the new technologies, is folly."

It's also not an argument about income inequality or a "myth" thereof. You don't need an ax to grind to come up with various ways to measure economic inequality; and yes, you could look it up on your smartphone. But you have to read for comprehension; just having a smartphone doesn't make you smart, any more than it makes your income more equal.

I've never seen much reason to give the Washington Times much creedence, but this piece usefully expands my list of default discredited sources to include Rahn and all those institutions that he chortles around, Improbable Success Productions, the American Council for Capital Formation, the Cato Institute, and the Institute for Global Economic Growth.

The Wikipedia page on the subject of income inequality in the US has some relevant datagraphics, including two citing Thomas Piketty, Emmanual Saez, and Gabriel Zucman for the source data, with a link to an academic paper in the pipeline, Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States. That paper's abstract includes this:

"Average pre-tax real national income per adult has increased 60% from 1980 to 2014, but we find that it has stagnated for the bottom 50% of the distribution at about $16,000 a year. The pre-tax income of the middle class—adults between the median and the 90th percentile—has grown 40% since 1980, faster than what tax and survey data suggest, due in particular to the rise of tax-exempt fringe benefits. Income has boomed at the top. ... The government has offset only a small fraction of the increase in inequality."

20.Nov.2017

More or less

The basic problem of always wanting more: it's never enough. If you have to outbid others for something special, that rising tide lifting your and the neighbors' mega-yachts means you're not any closer to your prized possessions. As Robert Frank puts it, for the NYT Business Day:

"It is perfectly natural to believe that extra cash will help [you] buy the special things [you] want, but that belief is a garden-variety cognitive error.

"The mistake occurs because “special” is an inescapably relative concept. A spacious home is one that is larger than most other homes. A high-performance car is one that outperforms most other cars. Successful bidding for such things depends almost entirely on relative purchasing power. Taxes affect absolute purchasing power, not relative purchasing power. The upshot is that the ability of the already rich to bid successfully for special things is not enhanced by tax cuts."

Maybe you're willing to live in your dream world and imagine that the GOP tax cut and make-believe jobs plan will be a personal boon? That won't keep it from being a collective boondoggle.

"[T]he consensus among tax-policy economists from both sides of the political aisle is that the proposals under consideration are not the reforms we need. Rate cuts for top earners would greatly increase budget deficits and do little or nothing to spur growth. Others have objected that they would make a skewed income distribution even more unequal. Fair points all. ...

"Tax cuts for the wealthy would not alter the supply of special things to be had. And by increasing government deficits substantially, they would degrade our infrastructure in ways that would harm even the ostensible beneficiaries of those cuts.

"In short, cutting taxes for the wealthy is a losing proposition — even for the wealthy."

And for the not-so-wealthy... this is about much more than whether or not they'll be able to afford that special sports car. For some bizarre reason, our country seems to have decided that students are a natural resource that we should mine for all they're worth.

Student loans used to be a good deal—lower than the prevailing interest rate, forbearance while you're in school, and a good long time to pay them back after you're out of school. Now the rates go from rather bad to worse, they can't be discharged in bankruptcy, and in 20 states, your professional and/or driver's license can be seized for good measure. That'll really help you to be able to pay a loan back, eh?

Among the consequences of the ill-formed tax cutting legislation being whipped through Congress (in Eric Levitz' estimation):

Fewer non-rich people getting graduate degrees by treating tutition waivers as taxable income;

More expensive student loans by repealing the student-loan-interest deduction; and in the more-advantage to the most-advantaged category,

More rich people sending their kids to private school, with tax-advantaged savings plans being applicable toward tuition at private K-12 schools.

Income equality has been widening for decades, as higher education gets ever less-affordable and blue collar work gets shipped overseas to find cheaper labor. Tax advantages have gone to capital rather than labor, and this latest "reform" will make it even moreso.

18.Nov.2017

Dressed for success

In all the photos I've seen of Jared Kushner, he appears meticulously groomed. A real class act.

His responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee's inquries have not been nearly as meticulous. Feigned ignorance doesn't look very smart, especially with the useful network of records that electronic communications create.

“We appreciate your voluntary cooperation with the committee’s investigation, but the production appears to have been incomplete,” said the letter, which was sent to Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell.

“It appears that your search may have overlooked several documents,” it stated.

Dryly. On his client's behalf, Mr. Lowell sounds non-plussed, never mind the bombshells exploding in the neighborhood. (He's not going to jail, anyway, outside visiting hours.)

“We provided the Judiciary Committee with all relevant documents that had to do with Mr. Kushner’s calls, contacts or meetings with Russians during the campaign and transition, which was the request,” Mr. Lowell said. “We also informed the committee we will be open to responding to any additional requests and that we will continue to work with White House Counsel for any responsive documents from after the inauguration.”

Sounds like a bit of weaseling there, doesn't it? Imagining emails didn't count for "calls, contacts or meetings"? Hoping for an "executive privilege" Cone of Silence? That's no help for the June 2016 gathering, or the dodgy answers on the multiply amended SF-86 security clearance application, as contacts with foreign officials continue to come to mind. (Maybe he could just say "I can't recall" 5 dozen times, like Jeff Sessions.)

A year after his father-in-law was elected, and 10 months into the administration, Kushner is still running on an interim security clearance. The protracted process is "completely normal" says a White House official.

“I have never seen that level of mistakes,” Charles Phalen, the director of the National Background Investigations Bureau, said in a congressional hearing earlier this fall.

The report about a Russian official offering to set up a backdoor meeting between Trump and Putin was apparently slightly less subtle than the average social media troll.

"Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian central bank who has been linked both to Russia’s security services and organized crime, had proposed a meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The subject line of the email, turned over to Senate investigators, read, 'Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite,' according to one person who has seen the message."

Give Kushner credit for resisting the lure of a free dinner, and more common sense than Junior:

"The proposal made its way to the senior levels of the Trump campaign before Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top campaign aide, sent a message to top campaign officials rejecting it, according to two people who have seen Mr. Kushner’s message."

17.Nov.17

Go, or stay?

As everybody knows by now, Al Franken did something not-so-funny back when comedy was his day job. Kind of a god-send for the never-been-funny Roy Moore, weirdly. Reactions in my feed have been "Oh no, not Al Franken!" followed by calculation about how, ok, well then, we have to apply the same new standard of decency that's going to apply to everyone, right? Otherwise, that'd be hypocritical.

The new standad, roughly, is, if you've been a man with a lot of power, and a serious creep for long enough, to enough women, you've got to be fired, and go away. Bill O'Reilly, check. Roger Ailes, check. Harvey Weinstein, check. Louis C.K., ck. Kevin Spacey? Ok, tighter new standard: if you been a creep even once, you're anathema. (At least if you were creepy enough.)

I've scoured my memory as best I can, and honestly (and I don't mean Beauregard III "I can't recall" honestly, but the real kind) can say that I'm innocent of stuff that could get me featured on the police blotter, let alone the front page. I suspect I'm not the only man who can claim basic decency. I was front page news once, for a cute pose in service to Warren Farrell's promotion of the "subtle process" of male liberation. In 1977, the aspirational goal was to have men "learning to look inside themselves and learning to listen."

That was 4 years after my own #meToo moment, a fellow who picked me up hitchhiking when I was 17, and plied me with alcohol. He's not famous (AFAIK) and I couldn't identify him in any case. 44 years on, he's most likely dead.

In the current episode, Michelle Goldberg had her say in a NYT op-ed, and concluded that Franken Should Go, ending with a backhand homage to the Charlottesville Nazi-wannabes and perhaps inviting the "fierce and ugly backlash" it's not too hard to imagine, "as men — but not only men — decide we can’t just go around ruining people’s lives and careers by retroactively imposing today’s sexual standards on past actions."

Barely a decade ago, you might remember that "comedians enjoyed wide cultural license to behave offensively." (Except... in the same year as Franken's fault, Michael Richard's show at the Laugh Factory went right off the rails. A lot of bad comedy is forgettable, whether or not it's forgiveable.)

And now... you have to be Donald Trump to get away with that kind of stuff. (Trump has been creepy enough, for long enough, that the allegations are categorized, on their own Wikipedia page.)

I think maybe Franken should go, but maybe not. The woman he abused accepted his apology and opined that she didn't think he should resign, for one thing. The Senate ethics committee can have a look at his behavior before (and after) he was elected to that august body while they contemplate electoral and post-electoral maneuvers to keep Roy Moore from joining their club.

Given the considerable backlog, it's important to prioritize truth and reconciliation. Let's start at the top, shall we? What Goldberg said: "The question isn’t about what’s fair to Franken, but what’s fair to the rest of us."

If we rely on decent men to do the right thing to make amends, the job's going to be a lot less than half done. The indecent men are going to need outside help.

Update: Ezra Klein's take includes a worthy insight about the tipping point:

"...Weinstein was a powerful Democratic donor, and that was actually important. After Trump, Democrats were primed to take allegations of sexual abuse seriously. And since Weinstein was a Democrat, Republicans didn’t respond by rallying around him or trying to change the subject. Thus, the Weinstein affair broke the normal forces of polarization and made this something more than red versus blue."

And about the big, gray elephant in the oval room:

"It is a good thing for the country and our future that we are taking sexual assault so seriously. But it is a very, very bad thing if the one exception is the most powerful, prominent abuser in the world."

16.Nov.2017

The right's new religion

It could go without saying, but Charles Blow makes the point memorably: the “religious right” as an idea is dead. Our present "incarnation of conservatism has burned its cross and erected the golden calf of Trumpism in its place."

Send money. Pray.

Brooke Pendley introduced herself to me this morning as "a fire-breathing young female conservative patriot," and cute, to boot. Almost as exciting as those ladies whose email keeps going into the spam folder for some reason. This wasn't that kind of personal, though, it was because she wants to save Judge Roy Moore.

In her capacity as Treasure for the CLUB FOR CONSERVATIVES PAC NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE'S COMMITTEE, all hail Citizens United.

To her fellow conservative, she offered a "brief trip down Memory Lane," and the boundless liberal hypocrisy exposed "as the lies and smears on Judge Roy Moore intensify." It's the Moore Feminazi Hypocrisy, don't you know.

You want some seamy, sordid history, let's make this about Bill Clinton, Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Jennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinski, James Carville and that "feminist" Gloria Steinham. (Her tour did not include the cul de sacs of Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston and Denny Hastert for some reason. We've come a long way, baby.)

"Today the Left sings a different song, and RINO losers like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and John McCain are singing it with them.

"Today they say that a West Point graduate, a Viet Nam veteran, a distinguished jurist, and a faithful husband of 33 years must abandon his candidacy for the United States Senate because the unfailingly liberal Washington Post claims that 40 years ago Moore liked to date younger women."

Also, these are "very suspiciously timed, unsupported allegations that his taste ran toward younger women 40 years ago before he was married."

"We all know what is going on here.

"Mitch McConnell and John McCain and the rest of the establishment are still butt-hurt from the licking they got from Alabama’s great conservative voters in the primary, and they have been looking desperately for weeks for an excuse to bail on Judge Moore. And the Washington Post gave it to them."

And then on about John McCain's dodgy record, ok.

"I don’t for one minute believe the salacious claims being made about Judge Moore. But even if they WERE completely, 100% true, why not give the liberals a dose of their own medicine? Why not take Gloria Steinem’s advice and say “we simply cannot afford to lose this particular conservative nominee.” There is simply too much at stake in the battle for our country and in the internal battle between conservatives and RINOs for the Republican party’s future. ...

"There are simply some things the campaign cannot say and do on its own behalf, and there has never been a time when an aggressive conservative organization like ours was more desperately needed.

Alrighty then. In closing?

You will not find a a better steward of your financial gifts.

Please pray today for our country, and for the success of conservative values and candidates in every state. With high hopes for our country’s future I remain,

Very truly your conservative friend,

Brooke Pendley
Treasurer

Not that I don't trust Ms. Pendley completely, but I did take a gander and try to find this CLUB FOR CONSERVATIVES PAC without a lot of luck. Another blogger posted a different sample of her fundraising prowess (tied inexplicably to Rep. Louie Gohmert) on politicaljack.com yesterday. Just in case my excerpts aren't enough for you. And that cute little thumbnail picture of her.

Politico's Tipsheets rundown from a month ago noted CFC as one of three new PACs, but nothing more about it there. That was enough of a hint to make me suspect the Federal Election Commission tracks these things, and sure enough:

CLUB FOR CONSERVATIVES has been assigned ID: C00658302, and reported its clubhouse in Lexington, Kentucky, and Ms. Brooke Pendley as its Treasurer. She's also the Custodian of Records. She's banking with Wells Fargo (headquartered in that left coast den of iniquity, San Francisco). Just filed a month ago tomorrow, too soon for there to be any financial reports.

The email has two different names in the "From" field: "Roy Moore for Senate Super PAC" (which is not found on the FEC site; searching for Roy Moore turns up only "ALABAMA 2017 SENATE VICTORY COMMITTEE, A JOINT FUNDRAISING COMMITTEE COMPRISED OF JUDGE ROY MOORE FOR U.S. SENATE AND THE ALABAMA REPUBLICAN PARTY," "JUDGE ROY MOORE FOR US SENATE" and "FRIENDS OF ROY MOORE") and the purported sender, info@supportroymoore.com. That domain exists, and has one-page set up with WordPress so far, lovely old picture of Roy with an eagle pecking at his ear, before he was stripped up of his judicial robes for the second time, and an embedded form to send your email. You, too, could receive future messages from Ms. Pendley.

It's like she said: "You will not find a a better steward of your financial gifts."

Update: turns out I received the "Louie Gohmert" version of Pendley's fundraising, too, routed directly to Spam. He appears in the subject: Louie Gohmert: Allegations are "grossly unfair" & "completely suspicious", and nowhere else.

15.Nov.2017

Sketchy recollections

The Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, introducing the 2017 annual oversight session yesterday, decried the 2016 hearing as "beyond disappointing" for Attorney General Loretta Lynch's "least fulsome and least transparent testimony" that he could recall in all his born days.

Contrary to his expectation for our current A.G., Hon. Sessions did not really prove to be "more willing to answer questions candidly," although we will give Sessions credit for being more fulsome.

On the left, Ranking Member Conyers noted that he's seen this show before. He was on Richard Nixon's "enemies list." And he noted that for the forty letters the minority members have sent to the DOJ under the current administration, including more than a dozen directly to the A.G., "we have not received a single substantive response."

Hours later, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries questions' for the Attorney General at yesterday's House Judiciary Committee meeting kicks off with this incomparably funny/not funny Q&A (3:12:46 in the 5h50m committee video record), talking about Sessions' previous appearance before a House committee:

Mr. Jeffries: ...you stated under oath 'I don't recall' in some form or fashion 29 times, is that correct?

Hon. Sessions: I have no idea.

Similarly, about 36 times before the Senate. And at least 20 times today. Fair to say? "I have no idea."

Mr. Jeffries: "...You also stated during that Lou Dobbs interview that 'the intentional failure to remember can constitute perjury.' Mr. Attorney General, do you still believe the intentional failure to remember can constitute a criminal act?"

The look on Sessions' face when he's answering the question about whether he said (HE JUST SAID IT) that "your story had quote never changed," verrry carefully, "I believe that's, ah, fair to say."

Hon. Sessions: We might could, er, we've added, we've added things that I did not recall at the time. So my statement at the time was my best recollection of the circumstances and, uh, I, as things are brought up...

So just to be clear, your story has changed, "as things are brought up." And I have a couple of questions to follow-up.

Sir, did you prepare for your appearance before this committee today?

How did you prepare?

Because your rather comprehensive failure to remember facts (other than an occasional exculpatory nugget) really does seem to be intentional, and perjurious.

Then there are those things that he might or might not remember, but for which he won't say, because... well, he's just making up his own special privilege.

Hon. Sessions: Uh, Mr. Miller is a, uh, a 'high government official', ah, close to the President of the United States and I'm not at liberty to reveal the na-, the nature of any conversation we may have had.

He's not claiming executive privilege (which he does not have). He's following "a long established policy of the Department of Justice."

That led to a "parliamentary inquiry" about whether this was a gaggle of toothless old pols, or what. Chairman Goodlatte very generously recognized that "senior officials from both administrations [sic], the current and past, and long-standing before that have long stated, uh, their, uh, ability to not answer questions regarding communications at the highest level of our government."

One can only imagine how similarly unctuous he was to A.G. Lynch last year.

Throwing radionuclides "away"

A new 9V battery did not revive our smoke detector. I assumed it had, must've given the test button a try and got a sufficient bleat, but the next alarming opportunity, something about me spending too much time in the shower, it could only manage a pathetic periodic whimper. At first I thought it must be a bum battery, but another new one didn't improve matters.

So yesterday, when I saw the household hazardous waste operation in the nearby library parking lot (2nd Tuesday of the month, don't you know) I took that and some spent compact fluorescents over to turn them in.

"We can't take these," one of the two attendants told me about the smoke detector. So what should I do with it? "Well, the easy thing is to just throw it away." SRSLY? "Otherwise you could try to contact the manufacturer and see if they'll send you a box for it..."

While still mulling the next step, today's inbox had one of the too-many promos from Staples, offering me $10 off a purchase of $30 or more for using their "free recycling" during America Recycles Day [sic], all week, starting November 12. Limit of one coupon per customer, not per item recycled, so they're not going to dent our dogpile much. Smoke detectors are not on the "WHAT WE CAN RECYCLE" list, nor are they on the "WHAT WE'RE UNABLE TO ACCEPT" list, but I can guess they won't accept ours.

Looking up the topic on the web, I see that our FEMA has something, the 2nd edition of their Tech Talk newsletter, December 2009. There are two types of smoke detectors most commonly encountered, that tells me, before describing three: ionization, photoelectric and combination. Ours is... ionization, with (it says on the label) 1 μCi of Americium-241, taking its time spitting out alpha particles and low-energy gamma rays "much of [those] absorbed by the case of the detector," and turning into Neptunium-237. It probably contains "about 0.28 micrograms" of the radionuclide with a 432.2 year half-life. Not much to see here. (Not to be confused with some older smoke detectors sold for industrial use with 80 microCuries' worth.)

"The Americium-241 used in smoke detectors is bonded to a metallic foil, which is sealed inside the ionization chamber. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), this presents no hazard to users as long as it is undisturbed. The NRC advises that the amount of radiation that escapes from a modern smoke detector is roughly 3,000 times less than the normal background radiation exposure rate when measured 1 meter (3 feet) from the detector. Background radiation consists of the radiation from everyday sources such as the sun, rocks, soil, air, etc."

The EPA is similarly reassuring, and says "when disposing of a smoke detector, follow manufacturer instructions or check with your local fire department for instructions." They also have the children's version if you don't get enough reassurance from the adult page. In the What you can do section,

"Throw away outdated ionization smoke detectors. Your community may have a separate recycling program for them."

Or not. "Throw" is bold-faced like that, "away" is not. Where is "away," anyway? Maybe... our 4-star Ada County Landfill qualifies as "away."

Like a lot of Fire Departments, Boise's promotes the devices, because "Smoke Alarms Save Lives!" But they do not say anything about disposing of alarms expected to last "8 to 10 years."

Oddly enough, the United States Postal Service seems to be the best organized on this topic, and encourages us to Dispose of Smoke Detectors Properly. Our accidental brand preference was Firex, and there's an 800 phone number, and an address in El Paso, Texas, and a web address, www.firexsafety.com which now goes to Kidde's Fire Safety page, Kidde having acquired Firex in 2009, and a part of UTC Climate, Controls & Security, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

They offer a "not our problem" answer to the FAQ, How do I throw away my alarms and fire extinguishers? Don't recycle, that says. Check with your local municipality (if, ah, you have one). "Typically, alarms may be disposed of in your regular residential trash."

In the meantime (and practically, forever after), our 0.28μg legacy of the Manhattan Project will keep spontaneously fissioning at individually unpredictable times, such that by 2439, a predictable 350 trillion of those Am-241 atoms will have become Np-237, while an equal number of alpha particles will have calmed down and picked up some electron hitchhikers to become Helium, and floated off into the atmosphere. (Then what happens? Half of the Neptunium decays into Protactinum in a couple million years, and so on.)

If that hasn't satisfied your curiosity, consider the University of Nottingham's Periodic Video featuring the once top-secret Americium.

Update: I wondered how the amount of Americium in this thing compared to something familiarly miniscule: a poppy seed. Looking around, I find an estimate of poppy seed mass to be 0.3 mg. That would make the Americium one-thousandth the mass of one poppy seed. Good things come in small packages.

14.Nov.2017

The awkwardness of being Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions' fragmented memory is coming into focus v e r y  s l o w l y, but he does indignation more readily. Did he meet with Russians? Just that encounter at the convention... and then that one meeting that he didn't used to recall, or maybe it was in his Senatorial capacity. 45 or 50 minutes. They had an argument about Ukraine, all of a sudden he remembers!

Here's part of today's testimony I missed in the livestream. Rep. Ted Lieu had a question: "Were you lying then, when you filled out the [SF-86 security clearance] form, or are you lying now?" The AG says his executive assistant told him none of his contacts as a member of Congress counted, who knew? He did not know.

"Lying" is such an awkward word. Let's just say he was painting a rosier picture.

And as for the obvious conclusion, that whoops, he mis-stated the facts, at the very least, now he wants his "no" to mean that "no, he wasn't meeting on a continuing basis with Russian officials."

And let it be known that he's outraged at any implication that he's come up a little short on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Irregular order

Pity the man two heartbeats from the Presidency, in a job he said he didn't want, illustrating the Peter Principle on a regular basis. Not that flat-out incompetence is the best description of what's going on. Highway robbery would be closer.

If Paul Ryan's schedules the vote in the House on tax deform later this week, it means the whip count tells him the GOP can pass their bill, cooked up behind closed doors and rolled out to the public on November 2nd. That would make it a nice, round two weeks from introduction to passage, never-you-mind a hearing.

Michael Tomasky points out that the last time we had genunine tax reform, 1986, it came 2½ years after Reagan's 1984 State of the Union call, and 16 months after the bill was introduced in May, 1985.

"The House Ways and Means Committee held hearings for months and took testimony from 450 witnesses. The Senate Finance Committee held a full month of hearings. Then both committees spent months drafting bills. There were several points at which the whole effort looked like it was going to die, because that’s what the legislative process does sometimes to a complicated bill. It took a ton of dialogue and compromise, and 16 long months, to get it done."

Like the old saying goes, time is of the essence. If this doesn't get done quickly, it probably can't get done at all. Certainly not with the ram-it-through program it's on now. Full-on CBO scoring of the 5 and 10-year sleight of hand involved in coming up with the money for the donor class would be the kiss of death. Minus $25 billion for Medicare in the first year? That's just the beginning.

Senate Republicans now move to turn their version of the tax bill into a half-assed Obamacare repeal, eliminating the coverage mandate to come up with $300 billion more. How's that?

"Because getting rid of the mandate would lead to a decline in the number of people with health coverage, the government would spend less money on subsidized health plans."

That's Tom Cotton's plan, and makes Rand Paul happy. Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowsi? John McCain? Hard to tell if this is a serious proposal, or if they all not-too-secretly want it to fail.

The Jeff Sessions show

Another @SethAbramson Twitter thread reminded me that our Attorney General is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee this morning. Tapped into the live stream just as Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California was leaning in. Asked if he'd had any discussion about the dramatic changes in the GOP platform, "Hon. Sessions" said "I don't recall."

Ms. Lofgren pointed out that he was in charge, and Hon. responded, wryly, "that may be a bit of a stretch."

Which stretch, again? Lofgren stuck to her prepared questions, rather than investigating bits of stretch.

"We were not a very effective group, really," Sessions said.

"I don't recall" was Hon's favorite answer.

16/ Given my preceding tweet, it's important to say every House Judiciary member in that room knows Sessions is lying. No one believes he's as aloof, incompetent and disinterested in his areas of policy specialization as he now so desperately claims—but they'll pretend otherwise.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) November 14, 2017

19/ Every testimony by Sessions before Congress has been a farce, and *this* testimony is a farce.

Sessions pretends to misunderstand questions; answers questions he's not asked instead of those he is; plays dumb; "can't recall"—it's all an embarrassment to Congress and America.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) November 14, 2017

Knee deep in the big muddy

Imagine living in a reservoir and not knowing it. Say... what? All that and more from the alt-universe of the Texas gulf coast in the Sunday NYT's front-page feature about Lessons from Hurricane Harvey.

The images are better online—way better—than in print, from the sepia-tinged skyline to the datagraphic of the 100-year floodplain vs. buildings damaged (and the buildings damaged). Both of those data categories are works in process. There have been three "500-year floods" in the last three years.

The Vox explainer from late August helps parse the statistical confusion, and illustrates that "it’s clear that something is deeply wrong with how the US judges flooding risk." Something about denial, and bailing. As Michael Kimmelman put it for the Times,

"Houston is also built on an upbeat, pro-business strategy of low taxes and little government. Many Texans regard this as the key to prosperity, an antidote to Washington. It encapsulates a potent vision of an unfettered America."

So unfettered, in fact that the Legislature isn't scheduled to meet again until 2019. Unless there is another emergency on the scale of gender-neutral bathrooms. Until then, business as usual:

"Houston’s affordability leans on loosely regulated, low-cost immigrant labor providing an abundance of cheaply made, slab-on-grade, single-family houses that sprawl on all that open land, in areas like the Katy Prairie.

"And it relies heavily on American taxpayers providing government tax credits, mortgage interest deductions, gas subsidies, artificially low flood insurance rates, highway construction money — and emergency relief, including buying out homeowners to remove their properties from harm’s way."

12.Nov.2017

Offensive

Highlighted in the Conservative HQ daily screed: House Conservatives Go On Offense Against Mueller. I'm struck by the projection embedded in the posturing of these "principled conservatives"; they can't imagine anyone actually investigating wrong-doing without partisan intent.

They are the president's team of useful idiots however, constructing "conflicts of interest" and reasons to fire the special counsel. And then what? Nothing to see in that stoopid Russian influence investigation, we can get right back to Hillary Clinton!

"It should surprise no steady read [sic] of CHQ that this lengthy “Special Order” received no coverage in the establishment media – despite the fact that it covered in great detail the conflicts of interest and cover-up that intertwine the Clintons, James Comey, Robert Mueller, the Uranium One pay-to-play scandal and Fusion GPS."

I'm guessing that (a) Fox will be all over it, feeding the fever of El-Tweetoh with the juiciest excerpts, not to be confused with the straight C-Span recording of the rump right talking to themselves in the otherwise empty House. "Mr. Biggs" put it together, I like that. Tap into a taste of Ted Yoho (and a bottle of rum?) of Texas:

"After the previous election, a lot of people were angry and they came to our office, demanding special investigations into the Trump campaign and uh the Russia probe. And I forewarned them then and I'll make this prediction now that if it goes there, and it leads to the previous administration or Hillary Clinton, are you willing to go down that rabbit hole? And here we are today..."

This is definitely a man willing to go down a rabbit hole after the scent of Hillary Clinton. To KaZACKistan if he has to. "And we could go on and on about this." #Truth "Very interesting."

"Why did the Clinton Foundation change its name to the 'Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation?' Ah, it is summized [sic] that it was because the public and large corporation donors had backed away from the questionable if not onethical [sic] and possibly legal, ah, illegal activities."

In other words, such a name change would totally fool @RepTedYoho.

11.Nov.2017

A glowing first year performance report

Russian President Vladimir Putin is pleased.

Mr. Putin said that Mr. Trump behaved at meetings “with the highest level of good will and correctness,” adding, “He is a cultured person, and comfortable discussing matters related to work.”

For his part, Mr. Trump said Vlad really, really means it when he said he didn't meddle. He's fine with throwing the last administration's intelligence teams under the bus. It's getting kind of crowded under the bus, in fact.

Headline news

Seems like the world is going a little crazy these days. Taking the jump to The Hill's story about a federal judge dismissing lawsuits from conservative groups trying to force the State Department to continue The Quest for Hillary's emails, and scanning down the rail:

The Lebanon prime minister resigned, announcing it from Saudi Arabia.

The State Department is taking a page from the corporate downsizing playbook, offering early retirement buyouts (for not much of a premium, I have to add; $25,000). Apparently the crippling of diplomacy by reducting senior positions isn't proceeding fast enough.

Speculation still swirling around Michael Flynn in Mueller's investigation.

And an air traffic controller was arrested for having weapon of mass destruction, what?! In the good old days, we'd call a "pipe bomb" a pipe bomb, but now a "WMD" is "any explosive, incendiary, or poisonous weapon containing an explosive or incendiary charge of more than four ounces." It was at the guy's home... and supposedly given to him by a neighbor who "was involved in an ongoing dispute," but thought better of that sort of settlement. Bad deal for the North Carolina air traffic controller, though. (What was he thinking?)

It's the whole trickle down again

Robert Reich, posted on Facebook two days ago:

It has been said that in Washington, a “gaffe” occurs when a politician tells a truth that everyone else in official Washington knows to be truthful but the public isn’t supposed to know.

Today, Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead economic advisor committed a gaffe. He said in an interview with CNBC that “the most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”

Republican Rep. Chris Collins committed a similar gaffe a few days ago when he said, about the tax plan,“my donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham also committed a gaffe today when he said if Republicans failed to pass tax reform, “the financial contributions will stop.”

Republicans charged with raising money from fat-cat donors are saying the same. According to Steven Law, head of the Senate Conservative Fund, a super PAC connected with Mitch McConnell, “(Donors) would be mortified if we didn’t live up to what we’ve committed to on tax reform.”

Which is also why secret front groups that don’t disclose their donors, like 45Committee (founded by Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino oligarch, and Joe Ricketts, the billionaire owner of the Chicago Cubs), American Action Network, America First, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, plan to spend at least $43 million on a campaign to pressure specific members of Congress to pass the bill, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Make no mistake: The Republican tax plan won’t reduce the taxes of the middle class. It is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to reward the Republican Party’s donor class. The rest of America will be shafted.

In that CNBC interview, after singing the praises of the economy during the first year of the current administration, which is to say taking credit, somehow, for the 16-year low unemployment rate, two consecutive quarters of "over 3 percent [annualized] GDP growth with hurricanes in the last quarter" and the raging stock market, John Harwood wonders why we need tax reform then.

"We have not had wage growth in this country. So, we've got a lot of Americans finding work, but they're finding work at stagnant wages," Cohn responded. "We have to find a way to really drive wage growth. What our tax plan is really aimed at doing is creating wage growth."

The make-believe "number one" principle is to deliver "middle-class tax cuts." Harwood pushes back with the details of the actual components of the tax plans revealed so far. Cohn proceeds to say up is down, and down is up.

"John, if you look at what we're doing for middle-class taxpayers, the reality is kind of simple. The median-income family in the United States, the family that earns about $60,000 in the United States, the Speaker [Paul Ryan] talked about them getting a $1,182 tax cut. That family is now paying a marginal tax rate [sic] of less than 1 percent. They're paying less than $500 of total taxes in the system. So a $60,000 earner, family of four, is paying less than $500. We have cut their taxes significantly. You can't go much further in the tax system."

We can't lower middle-class taxes, because they're already zero, what? It will, no doubt, come as a big surprise to that family earning about $60,000 they gee whiz, they're hardly paying any taxes atall! If their income is from employment, the $4,590 they're paying in payroll taxes (and the additional $4,590 their employer is paying in payroll taxes) doesn't count? State taxes? Sales tax? Property tax? Gas tax? Phone tax?

But Cohn goes further than that. "It's not our intention to give the wealthy a tax cut," he said. It's... an accident? One that doesn't upset him. Because there will be "the whole trickle-down through the economy."

Harwood: But you know no tax cut's ever paid for itself.

If you just can't get enough of this Gary Cohn guy, take the jumps for "more" at the end of the first tranche. There's this, in the estate tax piece:

Cohn: Gary Cohn doesn't care about the estate tax, I can guarantee you. I can guarantee you.

Harwood: You're the one who said only a moron pays the estate tax.

Cohn: I can guarantee you Gary Cohn doesn't care about the estate tax.

Junior rocket man

Highlighted in the last category of the weekly "Good, bad and ugly" feature of the Conservation Voters for Idaho, news that a 21-year-old eastern Idaho man has been ordered to pay $1.7 million in restitution for starting a fire that burned just shy of 53,000 acres, almost 83 square miles, for 10 days a year ago August. Turns out that bottle rockets and late summer in the desert are a bad combination.

"He told investigators he and his friends tried to extinguish the blaze but failed."

10.Nov.2017

Boss Denney's election integrity shortfall

A member of Trump's supposed voter fraud commission has filed suit, claiming "the commission has violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by preventing certain members of the commission from substantively participating in the work it does, as well as from accessing documents made available to some members and prepared for or by the commission."

"The lawsuit names Commission Chair Vice President Pence, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who serves as vice chair, and the commissioner’s designated federal officer Andrew Kossack as defendants along with the General Services Administration, the Executive Office of the President and the Executive Office of the Vice President."

The commission is the outgrowth of the line of bullshit that Kobach successfully fed the administration—that millions of illegal voters accounted for Trump's wide losing popular vote margin in last November's election—toward a demonstrable purpose of selective voter suppression.

Politico reports that "Kobach issued a statement saying the suit is without merit." The lawsuit is "baseless and paranoid," there's nothing to see here, they've just been busy with administrative matters. Such as... "He blamed the burden of defending against eight federal lawsuits challenging aspects of the panel's activities, the arrest of a commission staff member on child pornography charges, and the death of [former Arkansas state legislator David] Dunn[, another Democrat on the commission]."

Kobach's previous enterprise, the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, used manufactured fear of voter fraud to justify collecting enormous amounts of public, semi-public, and private voter data. The fact that there has been almost no proven cases of malfeasance has not prevented the program from raising obstacles for legitimate voters, most often minority, most often likely voting Democratic.

When Kobach's "good idea" went federal, ostensibly under the Vice President, and put out a call for every states' voter data, there was fierce pushback, not least here in ruby red Idaho. Our Secretary of State, former Speaker of the state House Lawerence [sic] Denney assured us that the commission could have only the voter registration information available under Idaho law—name, address, party affiliation and election-participation history—and they'd have to fill out a form and pay $20 just like anybody else would.

And Denney's office took the trouble to document the TIMELINE & DETAILS OF THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THE PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON ELECTION INTEGRITY, sneering at the Idaho Democratic Party's concerns and actions in the matter.

That was the July 3–July 27, 2017 timeline.

Now we find out from reporting in the Idaho Statesman that our Secretary's indignant act was disingenuous: Kobach's Voter Crosscheck system already has Idahoans' private voter data.

"In February, Denney gave Kobach information on all registered Idaho voters, including two pieces of voters’ non-public personal information — their birth dates and abbreviated Social Security numbers.

"And that was not the first time. Kobach received the same information about Idaho voters in 2014, 2015 and 2016."

In case we missed it, a link to ProPublica's report a couple weeks ago that the sloppy security at Kobach's Crosscheck program put millions of people's information at risk.

"[F]iles are hosted on an insecure server, according to its own information. Usernames and passwords were regularly shared by email, making them vulnerable to snooping. And passwords were overly simplistic and only irregularly changed."

The ftp/sftp terminology is slightly garbled (which transfer protocol is used doesn't say anything about how the server itself is or is not protected), but they're close enough for government work. And this:

"Through a public records request, the Idaho Statesman obtained emails between the Crosscheck program and Idaho officials. The emails confirm that Crosscheck has repeatedly sent the server’s address and login information, all in one email, to more than 50 people around the country. The practice was followed as recently as this year.

"The unredacted login information was clearly visible in the documents the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office gave the Statesman."

In other words, Idaho already did what Denney said it would not do, on systems less secure than what you use to pay your utility bills. It's ok because the state was voluntarily participating in an ad hoc (and stupidly insecure), multistate agreement? Perhaps those two little words in our Secretary of State's July declaration deserved greater scrutiny.

"I will look to fulfill the requirements of the law under Idaho Statute while continuing to protect both the Idaho Voter, their nonpublic, personal information," Denney said in his press release.

He'll "look to" it. He didn't say he'd do it. It seems the law had already been broken on four occasions, three of them after Denney became Secretary of State, in January, 2015.

The Statesman reports that Idaho House Minority Leader Mat Erpelding "said he would introduce legislation next session to remove Idaho from the Crosscheck program, citing voter privacy, cybersecurity issues and other concerns."

“I think it is time for the Legislature to look at whether or not we want to be sending our information into a system that a majority of the surrounding states of Idaho don’t participate in, so finding substantial voter fraud is highly unlikely, and at the same time increases our vulnerability to hackers.”

Things you thought would go without saying

But here it needed to be said, by the Billy Graham Distinguished Chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton College and executive director of the Billy Graham Center: No, Christians Don't Use Joseph and Mary to Explain Child Molesting Accusations.

And from the news organization that broke the story, James Hohmann's Daily 202 details the tale of two Republican parties emerging after Roy Moore declines to step aside. Take your pick out of the grab-bag for pull-quote of the day. This one caught my eye:

The Republican National Committeeman from Alabama, Paul Reynolds, said that he trusts Vladimir Putin more than Moore’s accusers. “My gosh, it's The Washington Post. If I’ve got a choice of putting my welfare into the hands of Putin or The Washington Post, Putin wins every time,” he told The Hill. “This is going to make Roy Moore supporters step up to the plate and give more, work more and pray more.”

There's a lot to pray over. For his part, Moore isn't about to quit now. The Statute of Limitations is all on his side, along with his notion of God, joined in "a spiritual battle with those who want to silence our message."

There's also a dose of the Senate's Republican graybacks grinning their fool heads off with no comment, until Chuck Grassley blinks with a circus parade wave and "goodbye everybody. Goodbye."

Update: Oh wait. Looks like there is not a Statute of Limitations on his side.

9.Nov.2017

Don't you hate rhetorical questions?

Today's mailbag includes something from "Alexi" (which... isn't that kind of Russian? Just saying), a.k.a. info@nrccvictory.com, touting "patriotic" merchandise for the purpose of increasing the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The subject line question is a good one: Why are they still protesting? We might ask "them" directly. Or listen to what they have to say. Or... declare our steadfast opposition to whatever. In a way that violates the codified norms of actual respect. Decisions, decisions...

U.S. Code > Title 4 > Chapter 1 > § 8
4 U.S. Code § 8 - Respect for flag
...
(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. ...

8.Nov.2017

Local color

Betsy Russell runs down the election results from around the state in her Eye on Boise blog for the Spokesman-Review. The one incumbent running for Boise city council, T.J. Thomson, was re-elected fairly easily (46.8% to Naomi Johnson's 38.4%, with two also-rans splitting 15%), and we added former state Rep. Holli Woodings (52.3% to Caleb Johnson's 28.8% in a 4-way), and Lisa Sanchez (44.1% to next-best 25.4% in a 5-way race).

The re-do of the misdrafted foothills open space levy garnered a whopping 83.4% of the pretty lame turnout (24,810 ballots vs. 118,434 registered voters, 20.9%), and only needed a simple majority. If nothing else, Boiseans overwhelmingly love open space in our foothills, and are willing to pay for it. Numbers off of the Ada Co. "live results" interactive, with all 88 reporting show a majority in favor in 87 of the 88 precincts. The one dissenting group was precinct 1804, furthest removed from the foothills, and 5-to-3 opposed. (That's the ratio and the tally. All 8 registered voters in the precinct cast ballots.) Consider the geography of our precinct map the next time you see one of those "counties across the country" datagraphics. 1804 is literally "fly over" country, although I guess you'd have to call it "takeoff and landing country" too; it comprises the Boise airport and its industrial surround, the handful of desert ranches down Pleasant Valley Road on the way to the penitentiary, and the "Blue Valley" mobile home park, where few or none of the inhabitants have registered to vote.

We got to move these color TVs

There weren't a ton of races to be decided yesterday, but the headliners seem to have gone to Democrats. Reliable Republican operative Ed Gillespie either failed to turn himself Trumpian enough, or faced the turning tint of Virginia, and will have to go back to whatever he used to do in the swamp.

Whupping details from David Leonhardt include more than a dozen of the 100 seats in Virginia’s house of delegates, full control—legislature and governorship—in New Jersey and Washington State, Maine voters effectively overriding their (whack job) governor with a referendum on Medicaid expansion, and Dems winning two traditionally Republican legislature seats in special elections in Georgia. Your morning Fox News Schadenfreude:

"Sean Hannity, whose Fox show airs at 9 p.m. EST, devoted just six seconds of coverage — six seconds! — to the Virginia and New Jersey results, dismissing them as “not states Donald Trump won.” Hannity carried President Trump’s 34-minute speech to South Korea’s National Assembly live and in full."

And Trumpians across the land are trying to figure out how they can change the subject. Conservative HQ headlines wonder "Why Does President Trump Keep Hiring Anti-Trumpers?" and tout "A Hidden Scandal Worse Than Uranium One," which hasn't turned out to have much for legs.

But what really caught my eye was the first ad in the CHQ bulk mail, a shouty-sized font set off with ample whitespace,

KitchenAid Mixers That Must Sell Are Going for Next to Nothing

and in such a handsome cross between avocado and lime sherbet, too.

Election Day

Let's boil this down

Contrary to what you may have read on the intertubes, in a print publication (ha!) or as seen on TV, IT IS NOT TOO SOON TO TALK ABOUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON in this country with mass mayhem. We'll take a break from the questions of transportation used to kill people, and consider the epidemic of gun violence.

Max Fisher and Josh Keller in the New York Times start with a chart of countries with more than 10 million people and at least one mass public shooting with four or more victims. You won't be surprised to learn that U.S.A. U.S.A. WE'RE NUMBER ONE. But still, with zero-based axes:

The New York Times | Source: Adam Lankford, The University of Alabama (shooters); Small Arms Survey (guns).

Why is the USA exceptional in the mass shooting category?

"Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad.

"These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion.

"The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns."

And this remarkable statistic: "Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world’s guns." In second place for the rate of gun ownership, and first place for the rate of mass shootings, Yemen. Thanks for that.

The New York Times | Source: Adam Lankford, The University of Alabama (shooters); Small Arms Survey (guns).

Another infographic from another source, the Wall Street Journal's plot of the increasing frequency and lethality of mass shootings:

What seemed like an outlier in the middle of the 1960s, Charles Whitman's killing spree that started with his mother and his wife in their homes, and proceeded to the University of Texas at Austin's tower, was an exceptional event, standing alone for almost 2 decades. (Never mind the assassinations of those good old days.)

In our latest episode, there was a good guy with a gun who interrupted the shooter, and with another upstanding Texan chased the bad guy out into the countryside where he eventually shot himself and crashed his car. But that happened after more than two dozen of the people at Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church had been fatally shot. Mad at his mother-in-law, it seems.

On the side of the argument where it's always too soon to ask the question whether 42% of the world's guns are enough to have in American hands, there's only one lesson to learn: yay, guns. And trucks.

There was a massacre, sure, but it was stopped!

Update: More infographics, and a far more useful opinion piece, from Nicholas Kristof: How to Reduce Shootings. "So let’s not just shed tears for the dead, give somber speeches and lower flags. Let’s get started and save lives." He lists a dozen proposals, almost all with strong majority or super-majority support.

Carter Page gets a LOT more interesting

Tweet #24 of 110 in Seth Abramson's thread noted that he's called Carter Page "a perjury machine." As illustrated by the 243-page transcript of Page's day-long testimony to the House Intelligence committee. Carter said he "never" spoke to Manafort, then retracted it a moment later.

25/ He goes from I "never" emailed him to—in effect—"I sent him a lengthy detailed email about Russia." In two questions. Very reckless man.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) November 7, 2017

The NY Times brief has a link to the lengthy transcript, and this gem, with my emphasis:

“I’ll send you guys a readout soon regarding some incredible insights and outreach I’ve received from a few Russian legislators and senior members of the Presidential administration here,” the former adviser, Carter Page, wrote in a July 8, 2016, email to campaign staff members after he spoke with Arkady Dvorkovich, the deputy prime minister.

The New York Times first reported the fact that Mr. Page notified campaign officials about his meetings in Moscow, but the transcript, which is over 200 pages long, discloses the names of those advisers — Tera Dahl and J.D. Gordon — and the identity of the Russian official, Mr. Dvorkovich. Mr. Page’s testimony also revealed that more campaign staff members were aware of his July 2016 trip to Russia than had previously been disclosed, including Jeff Sessions, who is now the attorney general.

That's all well and good, but they didn't enumerate MAJOR REVEALS and BOMBSHELLS the way Abramson did for us last night. T'wit:

31/ MAJOR REVEAL #4: The WH says NatSec met once; Page says it met so many times Papadopoulos only attended "some" of the "group sessions."

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) November 7, 2017

and

49/ BOMBSHELL #1: Page *lied to FBI investigators and Congress*. He in fact *told the campaign he had a private meeting with the Deputy PM*. pic.twitter.com/k8tHrZ46Ck

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) November 7, 2017

which, as detailed in tweets 50-54, means

(a) Page went to Moscow as a Trump rep and lied about that;
(b) had a private meeting with Kremlin agents and lied about it;
(c) during that secret meeting he later lied about talked Trump's Russia policy with Russia's Deputy PM;
(d) told the campaign about it;
(e) many members of the campaign then lied as to whether they knew Page had this secret contact with the Kremlin on Trump Russia policy;
(f) the aim of this significant Kremlin contact Page and the Trump campaign/administration lied about was to *negotiate Russia policy*.

[Thus] "establish[ing] that Page's dissembling is *consciousness of guilt* and *not* what otherwise could seem like personal issues."

Wilbur Ross gets more interesting

When that homage to the fabulously well-to-do, Forbes, threatened to take him off their list he claimed he moved $2 billion into dark "trust" (no pun intended), "between the election and nomination." Then what happened?

"[A]fter one month of digging, Forbes is confident it has found the answer: That money never existed. It seems clear that Ross lied to us, the latest in an apparent sequence of fibs, exaggerations, omissions, fabrications and whoppers that have been going on with Forbes since 2004. In addition to just padding his ego, Ross' machinations helped bolster his standing in a way that translated into business opportunities. And based on our interviews with ten former employees at Ross' private equity firm, WL Ross & Co., who all confirmed parts of the same story line, his penchant for misleading extended to colleagues and investors, resulting in millions of dollars in fines, tens of millions refunded to backers and numerous lawsuits. Additionally, according to six U.S. senators, Ross failed to initially mention 19 suits in response to a questionnaire during his confirmation process."

That from Dan Alexander, of the Forbes staff, in The Case of Wilbur Ross' Phantom $2 Billion. Both the Secretary and his Commmerce team were given questions and the opportunity to respond. Which they did by saying "any misunderstanding from your previous conversation with Secretary Ross is unfortunate."

6.Nov.2017

Spooky

Gal who flipped off the presidential motorcade got fired for violating her employer's "code of conduct" policy, even though you wouldn't know who it was unless she told you.

Funny/not funny thing is, says she "was in charge of the firm’s social media presence during her six-month tenure there" and recites an incident when a senior director at the country really did go antisocial, and who did not get walked out the door.

So, what about this company, Akima, LLC? After reading the WaPo story I went to see their website, and found it... offline. Their LinkedIn profile survives. They're about "Defense & Space" and specialize in Cyber Security, Government Contracting, Defense Contracting, IT Communications, Base Logistics, Protective Services, Construction, Technical Services, Facilities Management, Consulting, Space Mission Systems, C4ISR and C4IM, with 5,001-10,000 employees, based in Virginia, spittin distance from Foggy Bottom.

Wouldn't want to give our Duffer-in-Chief the middle finger, eh!

And... they're back. Complete with a link to their Code of Conduct featured on their About page, I'm quite sure I have n.e.v.e.r seen that before.

I was expecting some dry legal-ese, but no! the 25 page PDF has a glossy corporate feel about it, starting with a little non sequitur antler art, and their whooshy, logo/trademark and subhead, "A NANA Company."

Which is... a fascinating offspring of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1971, and recipient of 36,000 miles of surface and subsurface rights in NW Alaska. That's "roughly the size of the state of Indiana."

NANA now comprises a list of LLC companies as long as your arm, including Akima Construction Services in Maryland; Akima Facilities Management, Akima Logistics Services, Akima Support Operations, and Akima Technical Solutions in Charlotte North Carolina; Akima Infrastructure Services, Akima Global Services, Akima Intra-Data and plain old Akima LLC in Virginia, all a long, long way from Alaska and its natives. Maybe there's a useful affirmative action angle to awarding contracts to them? Can't tell, their investor relations info is limited access, "due to regulatory restrictions." (Yet another "never seen that before.")

At any rate, they brag up contracts with the Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA, DOD, Defense Logistics Agency, DOJ, DOE, Homeland Security, FBI and the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Moral of the story: you can apparently unsee an intemperate “You’re a f------ Libtard a------” (with or without the dashes) from a Senior Director guy, but you can't unsee the backside of an unidentified cyclist gal giving the presidential motorcade the middle finger.

Bad neighbor

There was that one time skiing that found me cross-wise with a (small) tree, and sore as all get-out after the toboggan ride down the hill and a visit to the X-ray machine. Nothing was broken in my case (I like to say "air bags saved my life"), but just breathing was guarded, laughing was not funny, and for the first night, I had to sleep as best I could sitting up. "Bruised ribs" might not sound like that big a deal if you haven't had the experience.

Broken ribs are considerably worse, I'm sure, and involve more than just a couple of uncomfortable nights. The attack that was swallowed up in larger news cycles caught my eye this morning: that weird "assaulted by a neighbor at his Bowling Green home on Friday" left Senator Rand Paul with 5 fractured ribs, three of them displaced. Unlike me bouncing off a tree, he's not quite a spring chicken, either. I was 30-something back then; he's now 50-something.

And here's legal nicety I don't understand:

"Authorities say Paul’s neighbor, Rene Boucher, tackled the senator from behind at 3:21 p.m. on Friday, leaving Paul struggling to breathe and bleeding from cuts around his mouth. Boucher, 59, has been charged with one count of fourth-degree assault, a misdemeanor that can carry up to one year in prison."

Who knew there was a "fourth degree," and this is only a misdemeanor? Kentucky Statutes list 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th degrees, which are Class B, C and D felonies, and the Class A misdeamor, respectively. The attack didn't seem "wanton" enough? Didn't involve a weapon? But however it was done, this is "serious physical injury." The 3rd degree sort has a list of specially protected roles (starting with "state, county, city or federal peace officer") but didn't think to mention U.S. Senator.

Update: Is Landscaping Drama at the Root of Rand Paul’s Assault?

Mr. Paul had just stepped off a riding lawn mower on Friday when Rene Boucher, a retired anesthesiologist who lived next door, charged and tackled him. Because Mr. Paul was wearing sound-muting earmuffs, he did not realize Mr. Boucher was coming... Authorities on Monday were considering raising the charge to a felony, given the severity of Mr. Paul’s injuries.

5.Nov.2017

Haunting Boise

Heading into town today, I noticed a pickup truck coming along behind me, two big flags flapping in back. "Game day" was yesterday, what up? After a while he got close enough for me to see a triangle-folded flag in the dashboard, coming from a funeral with military honors?

Then I noticed the big US flag in the back was upside down. He was staying at or below the speed limit on the I-184 connector into town, but my luck, in the lane I gave way next to me at 13th St., he pulled up alongside. LaVoy Finicum's brand on the side window, the alt-flag was Benjamin Franklin's 1754 "Join or Die" cartoon.

Plastered across the back window, an insistent "IN DISTRESS NOT DISRESPECT" along with various tokens of the resistance. After a lot of miles at 60 mph, both flags are indeed showing a little distress. "One Right That Secures Them All" and "FREEDOM" bumper stickers, don't recognize the "M43" thing. (43rd State Make-believe militia?) Should I call 9-1-1 to get help for him? Join the parade?

Good old palace intrigue

A bit of respite from our own, as the panoply of Saudi princes are rearranged on the chessboard. 32 y-o Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is cleaning house in inimitable style, hours after being put in charge of a a new anti-corruption committee, with "the right to investigate, arrest, ban from travel, or freeze the assets of anyone it deems corrupt."

"The Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, the de facto royal hotel, was evacuated on Saturday, stirring rumors that it would be used to house detained royals. The airport for private planes was closed, arousing speculation that the crown prince was seeking to block rich businessmen from fleeing before more arrests."

Free-wheeling billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal is the headliner, his wings clipped along with "at least 10 other princes, four ministers and tens of former ministers." Let's just say that $32 billion he planned to go to charity after his death is probably going to be redistributed sooner. Of course there are jolly connections with our own royal family:

"At least three senior White House officials, including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were reportedly in Saudi Arabia last month for meetings that were undisclosed at the time."

Travel and security funded by your tax dollars at work and play. Given how regularly our judiciary thwarts his whims and fiats, we imagine our president is jealous of this:

"Saudi Arabia is an executive monarchy without a written Constitution or independent government institutions like a Parliament or courts, so accusations of corruption are difficult to evaluate. The boundaries between the public funds and the wealth of the royal family are murky at best, and corruption, as other countries would describe it, is believed to be widespread."

We're not there yet, but on the way! In our palace we just get to read juicy stories about epic corruption, but don't (yet) have the means for rounding them all up in the royal hotel.

This just in (for example): get a gasload of our Crown Prince of Commerce (and "king of bankruptcy"), Wilbur L. Ross Jr., usefully connected with friends of Valdimir Putin. Our crème de la crème is not as well-endowed as the Saudi Royal family, but network of connections is deliciously (and profitably, you can be sure) complicated. Good luck chasing after the mere $2 to $10 million stake he retained on shipping Navigator Holdings,

"held by a chain of companies in the Cayman Islands, one of several tax havens where much of his wealth, estimated at more than $2 billion, has been tied to similar investment vehicles. Details of these arrangements surfaced in a cache of leaked files from Appleby, one of the world’s largest offshore law firms, which administered some 50 companies and partnerships in the Caymans and elsewhere connected to Mr. Ross."

You can visit Navigator on the web, contemplate the view astern some member of their fleet, covering the zodiac to move petrochemicals around our earthly orb, under flags of convenience.

3.Nov.2017

Just one more big lie

The big tax "reform" bill has a lot of sausage-makings that need to be ground finer before it's done, but everyone's curious about how much they'll save, right? My big picture guess is that if you're struggling to make ends meet (and thus are in most need of relief), there's pretty much nothing in it for you. Them that's got shall have, as ever.

Doubling the standard deduction is making headlines. That would eliminate the tedium of itemizing deductions for even more of us (than the 70% who get a better deal with the standard deduction now), right? Not making headlines: eliminating personal exemptions, which mostly wipes out the benefit of the higher deduction. "Doubling" is not the half of it. Families with multiple children will be worse off, deduction-wise. Boiling down one of the six charts the NYT offers to explain the tax plan:

Filing status	Current deduction + exemptions	GOP proposed deduction
Single, no children	$10,400	$12,000
Married, no children	$20,800	$24,000
Married, two children	$28,900	$24,000

Artificially simulated animals

Who knew? I did not know. Idaho Fish and Game is using robot deer to lure hunting violators into violation. "Some can move their heads, blink or even wag their tails." I hope they've got some with red noses, don't you?

Each time a [robot] deer is used, a thorough plan is devised and officers will be off on the side waiting for the violation to occur.

"We set these things up in a safe manner with a safe backdrop so the bullet will be captured by the decoy or pass through a safe backdrop," he said.

He said there is inherent risk while putting the ASA's out there because hunters will have some kind of weapon, whether it is archery equipment, a rifle, a muzzle loader or whatever it is they are "trying to address."

"Our first son cost us approx. $50,000"

One of the inexplicable elements of the draft GOP tax "reform" bill is elimination of the adoption assistance program. Pro-life? Pro-family? Brandon Jones provided his personal story, on Twitter. "I can say with absolute confidence that eliminating that credit WILL prevent people from adopting. No question. Because it's EXPENSIVE."

"[R]ealistically we're just creating more foster kids, which is definitely a bigger drain on govt. resources than the adoption credit. And in the meantime good families go without children and kids go without permanent homes. There's zero up side to this. And for what? So the wealthy can pass on their fortunes to their kids tax free?"

2.Nov.2017

They knew all along

In the morning mailbag, something from the Dems this time, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, to be specific. They want money (of course), and they want me to sign a petition DEMANDING that Congress investigate Trump.

The message seems different than the ones I get from the Republicans. It's strident, of course; urging me to action. But it's written intelligently, formatted well, readable. No footnotes, they don't want me to get distracted by going off to nytimes.com, and in fact, that is a distraction. There are lots of headlines pushing this now three-day old story down the stack: Trump Campaign Got Early Word Russia Had Democrats’ Emails, by Scott Shane, Oct. 30, 2017. Isn't this a BOMBSHELL?

Court documents revealed that Russian officials alerted the campaign, through an intermediary in April 2016, that they possessed thousands of Democratic emails and other “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

That was two months before the Russian hacking of the DNC was publicly revealed and the emails began to show up for all the world to see. As for the petition, I've made some attempts at DEMANDING that Republicans in Congress do something, and they generally don't go well. The fundraiser/goad says Politico reported that "Republican lawmakers say they’re approaching the end of their investigations." Three days older still, ancient news. It's not as if the committees are exactly done and dusted, though:

"Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) has suggested his panel’s investigation will end early next year, emphasizing that he wants to wrap up by February, ahead of the first 2018 primary elections."

It's a "mathematical equation," don't you know. So many witnesses, the calendar, the immovable deadlines for the real business they're all about, getting re-elected. The Republican leaders of the two bodies are said to want to "generally align their reports." How's this for unintended humor?

Wildly divergent conclusions, he said, could “embarrass the institution” and could send mixed messages about the urgency of the Russian threat.

Seems late in the day to be worried about embarrassing Congress. And the estimable junior Senator from Idaho, reliable sycophant to the president is quoted for attribution:

“We’ve hit the point of diminishing returns long ago,” said Sen. Jim Risch. “We’ve looked at lots of stuff. At some point in time, the jury needs to reach a verdict.”

Let's not get the cart before the horse. We need the House's impeachment before the whole jury—yes, including Jim—gets to hear the case.

It was back in the age of the dinosaur conventions, when up was still up, that Donald Trump said this, remember?

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens, that'll be next."

And tweeted it, how could he not have?

If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2016

David Axelrod responded in that medium to suggest the Russians maybe could hack Trump's taxes, pointing to the Huffington Post story which has an especially glossy shine after Paul Manafort's indictment for conspiracy against the United States (and some other things) on Monday. Those were the days. When Manafort was Trump's campaign chairman. And talking to “CBS This Morning” and stuff, without a lawyer to speak for him.

“Mr. Trump has said that his taxes are under audit and he will not be releasing them,” Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, said.

Addressing questions about whether Trump has financial ties to Russia, Manafort said Trump’s decision to break with tradition and not release his taxes “has nothing to do with Russia, it has nothing to do with any country other than the United States and his normal tax auditing process.”

Truth be told, how could Manafort answer a question about ties to Russia off the top of his head? His personal entanglements would make his head spin. He'd just have to boil it down to this:

WATCH: In light of AP story re Manafort - take a look at his response to a simple question re Russian oligarch ties https://t.co/getQDJUZZG pic.twitter.com/Ic85K4fAE0

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 22, 2017

Whether or not the Russians got a hold of Trump's tax returns, we can imagine that Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has them. That should be interesting. Because this has a.l.w.a.y.s been about the money.

1.Nov.2017

"I alone can fix it"

New month, new dimensions of abnormality redound, as we contemplate our country on the verge of authoritarianism. The headline echo of last year's Republican National Convention comes to mind from the second item in Greg Sargent's Morning Plum, about the "seething" president needing to be talked down from lashing out at Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and the quote from the CNN report:

"Trump grew increasingly frustrated as he viewed cable news coverage of his onetime campaign chairman arriving at the FBI field office in downtown Washington, believing his former aides’ roles were being inflated."

On the way in, every hopeful advisor was "the best people." On the way out, they're pathetic, useless sycophants who were never anything to him. The really rich, really smart, smarter than the Generals, really naked emperor always saw himself the mastermind.

But that's just sideshow to the center ring that Sargent describes to a tee, Trump and his allies laying the groundwork for a Saturday Night Massacre:

"Let’s be clear on what’s happening in our politics right now. President Trump and his media allies are currently creating a vast, multi-tentacled, largely-fictional alternate media reality that casts large swaths of our government as irredeemably corrupt — with the explicitly declared purpose of laying the rationale for Trump to pardon his close associates or shut down the Russia probe, should he deem either necessary. ...

"The Associated Press reports that people who have spoken to Trump say that he has recently revisited the idea of trying to remove Mueller, now that Mueller appears to be digging into Trump’s finances. Meanwhile, CNN reports that former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon is privately urging Trump to try to get Republicans to defund Mueller’s probe.

"Monday night, Sean Hannity delivered perhaps the most perfect expression yet of efforts to create the rationale for such moves. Hannity dismissed the news of major allegations against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the cooperation of adviser George Papadopoulos as big nothingburgers. He also hit all the high points of the new Trump/media campaign, points that Trump himself and the White House have made repeatedly in public statements. Those include reviving the made-up scandal that Hillary Clinton approved a deal for a Russian nuclear agency to gain access to U.S. uranium extraction rights in exchange for kickbacks, and the absurdly exaggerated claim that the Clinton campaign, having paid through various intermediaries for research that ultimately led to the “Steele Dossier,” actually colluded with Russia to interfere in the election. These have been extensively fact checked and debunked."

As if, fact checking and debunking worked anymore. Visit any free-for-all forum (comments on a local newspaper picking up the straight national story, for example) to see the Trump/Hannity talking points tirelessly parroted. Imagine if Clinton had won the electoral college as well as the popular vote and was now in office! The Bannon/Breitbart/Trump/Fox News/GOP Congress/Trollbot army times twenty.

Hannity has one thing spot on: “We are at a real crisis point in America tonight.”

Update: The estimable Rush Limbaugh is all over it, too: "None of this is real." Note the projection as well—from summer 2016's chants of LOCK HER UP to this:

"This is the coup. If Hillary had been elected, none of this would be happening, other than they still put Trump in jail as a message to the outsider: Don't dare try this."

raveling

Tom von Alten