News bits: Americans' concerns; The political donor class; Secrecy shields megasleaze

Poll data obtained in January lists public policy priorities. 

Defending democracy or protecting elections not a listed priority. However, the 4th priority is reducing the influence of money in politics. 

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A WaPo opinion describes how political donor class money circumvents laws to influence politics:

But [public concern about the influence of money in politics] not stopping America’s megadonors. In fact, wealthy contributors have been increasingly pumping cash into the political system — circumventing campaign finance laws in doing so.

Overall, political spending has ballooned in recent years:

One big reason for this has been an innovation known as “joint fundraising committees.” Both parties use them. And their influence is growing.

Here’s how they work: Election laws try to limit the influence of any one rich person by capping how much the individual can donate to a given candidate. In 2020, individuals could give no more than $5,600 directly to Joe Biden or Donald Trump. That’s a tidy sum, but it’s not enough to curry favor with Biden, who amassed more than a billion dollars in the 2020 election, or Trump, whose haul surpassed $800 million.

Joint fundraising committees render such limits meaningless. They allow presidential candidates to bring their campaign, their national party and state parties into a single fundraising entity. Donors can give a limited amount to each group, but -- thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in McCutcheon v. FEC — they can hit the contribution limit for as many groups as they want.

The result: The maximum donation to these mega-committees is not $5,600. It’s the combined maximum for each participating group.

This is how two donors were able to cut $817,800 checks to Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee run by the former president in 2020. Multiple donors gave $730,600 to the Biden Victory Fund. Both campaigns amassed hundreds of millions of dollars this way.

.... in practice, much of the money flows to the national party. .... state-level Republican parties sent 90 percent of their cut of the Trump Victory Fund to the Republican National Committee. In 2020, they sent 96 percent to the RNC. Meanwhile, Democratic state parties sent three-quarters of their haul from the Hillary Victory Fund to the DNC in 2016. In 2020, state parties gave about a quarter of their take to the DNC.

Given the amount of money involved, it seems unlikely that either party has a serious interest in reducing the influence of money in politics. Public opinion can go pound sand.

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The rule of law crashes and burns again?: Reports are coming out that the defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Faux News could wind up in a settlement. If that happens, the most likely outcome (~97% chance?) is a Faux payment of an undisclosed amount to Dominion, a secrecy agreement and Faux either (i) proudly claiming that it admits no wrongdoing, or (ii) invoking KYMS to avoid FIMS. The Guardian reports:

The trial in the closely watched $1.6bn defamation lawsuit between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox will begin a day later than scheduled, the judge overseeing the case announced on Sunday evening, hours before opening arguments were set to begin on Monday and amid reports of settlement talks.

The Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported on Sunday that Fox had made a late push to settle the case out of court. Reuters also reported that the delay was due to settlement talks, according to a source familiar with the situation, as did the Washington Post, citing two sources.

KYMS = keep your mouth shut 

FIMS = foot in mouth syndrome

About a week ago, Faux settled another defamation lawsuit brought by a rich person that Faux slandered. On April 10, CNN reported:

Fox News has settled a defamation lawsuit from a Venezuelan businessman who had accused the network of making false claims about him and the 2020 election, attorneys for the man and Fox News said Saturday in a court filing.

The details of the settlement were not made public.

“This matter has been resolved amicably by both sides,” a Fox News spokesperson said Sunday, declining further comment.

Following the 2020 election, former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs had accused the businessman, Majed Khalil, of playing a key role in supposedly rigging the election against Donald Trump.

In a tweet calling the 2020 election a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” Dobbs named Khalil as one of four people he wanted his audience to “get familiar with” for committing supposed election fraud.

That's probably how the Dominion lawsuit will fizzle out if there is a settlement. As usual, the public will be kept in the dark and fed bullshit about it. Faux will proudly claim it did nothing wrong but settled just to be done with it. In fact, Faux will have settled to make it go away, leave loyal Faux viewer's feng shui calm and comfortable, profits coming in and lies and slanders going out. For liars and anti-democracy authoritarians and fascists, it's a win-win. For democracy supporters and inconvenient truth, it's a lose-lose. 

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From the shocked but clueless commentator files: Juan Williams, a friend of Clarence Thomas is shocked, shocked mind you: An opinion The Hill published comments:

I consider Clarence Thomas a friend, and I’m shocked by recent reports

The smell of financial corruption around Thomas is now stronger than the longstanding fear that his votes on the high court are dictated by his hatred of the liberals who put him through painful nomination hearing dominated by Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment.

The smell of financial favors is also now stronger than puzzlement about Thomas’s unyielding loyalty to a hardline Republican agenda that made former President Trump call Thomas his favorite justice.

Thomas’s one-sided rulings on guns, abortion and race have long provoked critics who suggest he is motivated by something other than the facts, legal precedent, and fair application of a 236-year-old Constitution to life in contemporary America.

But even with this partial awakening by Williams, he still frames it favorably for Thomas. Williams spins it by saying that Thomas merely failed to appreciate the “limiting influence on his thinking” that came from cavorting with far-right players, e.g., the Nazi billionaire Harlan Crow. 

Limiting influence? How about corrupting influence? 

What is wrong with radical right people? They are cognitively broken. Even when they occasionally see inconvenient truth, they cannot accept it. To assuage their cognitive dissonance, they frame inconvenient reality to soften the blow to their fragile egos. That's wuss to say the least.

A criticism and sharp warning: Democrats are failing to defend democracy

PD wrote a long pointed reply in response to one of my comments. 

My comment: If it is inaccurate to say the Dems managed to pass improvements to the ECA over GOP opposition, what is it accurate to say?

PD's response: It's accurate to say that the *bipartisan* Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 was introduced by Republican Senator Susan Collins and co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, and that it was signed into law by Joe Biden. It's accurate to say that the Bill was the product of concerned Republicans and Democrats all of whom were motivated by the concern that electoral subversion after 1/6 and Trump's attempt to steal the election could easily recur if at least these minimal steps were taken. That it could not have been passed without the critical input of Republicans against the Trump-Maga wing of the Republican Party, which was purging these very Republicans. Therefore, it was a now or never legislative act which, again, not only required Republican buy in (before the anti-Trump Republicans would be purged and the bill would be impossible to pass after 2022), but that it was drafted, negotiated, and passed all on a *bi-partisan* (not "Democratic") basis despite the objections of most of the Trump-loyalists in the GOP ( not the GOP as such, as, for example, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell voted for it and promoted it as did the often Trump-friendly Rand Paul who mad a statement praising the bill, thus giving other Repubs some cover to do likewise).

From a WaPo article at the time:

A *bipartisan* bill that would change how members of Congress could object to electoral votes — Congress’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — passed the House on Friday as part of a sweeping spending bill to fund the government.

The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act [was] sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and passed by the Senate as part of the funding package....[and that Joe Biden stated that] “*Bipartisan* members of Congress passed the Electoral Count Act and took long overdue steps to protect the integrity of our elections,” [adding that] “This is *critical bipartisan action* that will help ensure that the will of the people is preserved.”

In a joint statement Thursday, Collins and Manchin welcomed the bill’s passage and noted that it was the result of *nearly a year of bipartisan negotiations.*“Our bipartisan group worked tirelessly to draft this legislation that fixes the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887 and establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for President and Vice President,” the two said. [all emph added] 

The emphasis here on * bipartisanship* (as with the 1/6 committee itself) is unmistakable. To frame it as one party "managing to do something despite the other party's objections" is not accurate. Concerned legislators across the ideological spectrum from the likes of Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Ben Sasse, Rob Portman, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul and other Republicans made this positive, but inadequate, last minute passage of the bill in the omnibus package possible. If it hadn't been done THEN, it could not have been done at all because of the crucial input and voting of Republicans willing to take the risk despite Trump's threats and intimidation. That's because most-- though not all-- of these critical Republicans either retired or were replaced by Trump picks in the midterms.

It's sort of like calling 1/6 a Democratic rather than a bi-partisan committee. That would be quite inaccurate, esp. since Cheney's work was probably the most rigorous and uncompromising of all despite her awful far Right Wing politics. Meanwhile, many of the most vocal critics of Trump in the Democratic Party (for example, AOC, and other "progressives") played no role in either the 1/6 Committee's gathering and presenting of evidence, or the drafting or the promotion of ECA Reforms.

To make my point, I typed the following statement into the Google search bar: "Progressive Democrats urge passage of Electoral College Reform Act" and none of the returns I saw included references to well known, influential progressive Democrats. 

Rather than hunting for articles that make this point (you requested some corroborative articles) it is precisely the *absence* of articles about the loudest critics of Trump who failed even to mention and promote this legislation in all their tweets, media interviews, PR statements etc.-- it is this conspicuous inaction on doing what is possible to prevent electoral subversion that supports my claim that Dems had 3 years and have been "all talk and no action" on the pro-democracy front. The same is true of banning the dangerous far right militias that have coordinated with Trump (Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Oath Keepers and the like-- even Canada banned most of them).

I've heard more about Ukraine from "progressives" (sorry, I don't think these politicians represent what I would call "progress" in concrete action to prevent electoral subversion) in connection with the cause of democracy than I have heard from them regarding the John Eastman memo playboook revealing unacceptable loopholes in our system. I don't think it's right to say the majority of Dems, and ironically even those most critical of Trump as a would-be-dictator on which I agree, have done due diligence here. They've complained in the limelight about Trumpism and MAGA, sure. But workhorses they have not been.

I think there's a lot of phoniness and pious virtue signalling going on these days on the so-called Left Wing of the Dem Party. I hear much more about frankly vague ideas about fighting social inequities than I see realistic attempts at legislating to get much of anything done that's not pie in the sky non-starter stuff like "Green New Deal" which has a snowball's chance in Hell given the composition of both chambers in this country. They should be grown up enough to swallow that reality, and get busy with what Bismarck aptly called the "politics of the possible." I'm an idealist at heart, but a realist in practice. I think we've fallen into a sad state in which messaging has become more important than governing for many poltiticians whether they virtue signal as loyal Trumpists (to their base that's a virtue) or as quasi-socialist progressive Dems who will usher in all the things they're "supposed" to stand for (clean energy, a hundred splendid social programs that don't stand a chance of even getting a vote on the floor, much less passing). This is not the time for utopian idealism but for minimalism. We need to save the bare minimum bottom line status quo ante of a flawed democracy with plutocratic features. That's what we had before Trump. We may lose even that admittedly shabby state of affairs and decline precipitously into counter-democratic conditions. 

All of this is much more basic than, and is presupposed by loftier goals such as a Green New Deal with all kinds of government programs based on progressive taxation that nobody will support right now. I too want to see some of those measures (not exactly as advertised by the progs, but yes, an end to regressive taxation, corporate tax evasion via loopholes and offshore accounts, universal healthcare for real, et al.). But right now about half the country supports politicians who won't even defend the Affordable Care Act that, frankly, their own voters now rely on even if they don't think about it as "Obamacare." So, in such a divided and confused age where so many voters are lost and spun by the pols, social media propaganda, disinfo and misinfo, and all the rest-- where many people who think they know what is in their interest believe in conspiracies, and tell pollsters they are prepared to use violence against the government if necessary to "protect their liberties"--in such an age we need clear-headed, balanced realists who understand the "art of the possible" and are ready and willing to roll up their sleaves and do things like that minimal ECA reform as unglamorous as it may be. It won't get you more Twitter followers (or Mastadon now or whatever); it won't make college students love you; it won't rile up Trump haters that are glued to MSNBC, it won't be written up by progressive op-ed journalists in the frankly mainstream, corporate media like NYT and WaPo who deep down support the status quo and bottom line. It won't make you famous. But it MIGHT (if enough people get busy negotiating with anyone who will get anything constructive done) prevent the MAGA lunatics from gaining total control of the system. Right now, that's my focus. Not pie in the sky. Just holding back the intruders at the gates who have already crashed the (Republican) party, as it were. It's getting quite late for this. Like some others, I was active in the Trump resistance (remember Indivisible in 2016 and 2017?). Somewhere along the way, the progressives who started that movement have lapsed into rhetoric over realism; talk over substantive policy; language over legislation. That's why I say, it's LESS important (not totally unimportant) what we call the dangerous Trumpian insurgency than what we DO to fight it back. 

The next election may be the last opportunity to turn things around for a long while, maybe even for good. If Biden (as expected) runs again and trots out the fear mongering about MAGA without having done anything about it after all that melodramatic speechifying last fall, it will fall flat. It won't be enough to motivate voters to show up and get engaged. We need ANTI-MAGA LEADERSHIP and instead all I read each day is about American Exceptionalism, fighting autocracy in Russia, preparing to fight the Chinese over Taiwan (that's suicidal), while Europe falls apart and the majority of countries in the world do not see Russia and China as existential threats, but valued suppliers of goods and business partners. They were rightly against Putin's invasion, but not for an embargo on a state they rely on for affordable energy, goods, foodstuffs etc. And Biden spends most of his time shoring up NATO, asking Europe to endure much higher energy prices for LNG we now chiefly supply them with for more $ than before, and scolding the "neutral" and developing countries who don't want to it or agree. All of that bombastic talk of America as the Leader of the Free World could end in one second if Republicans get the executive branch. Biden acts like we are a strong united democracy ready to take on Russia and China, while keeping the global economy sound and preventing our own internal demise all at the same time. It's not so. A house divided cannot stand. Our politicians all across the specturm of both parties have (in different ways of course) become detached from basic realities where the rubber hits the road. The wheels are coming off the vehicle called America, and there's less than a year to sell some reasonable ideas about the future to voters. Ukraine and China are NOT going to be the main issues. But inflation resulting from Putin's invasion AND our economic response to it in attempting an embargo the world beyond Europe doesn't really want (I speak of Brazil, India, Israel, the Gulf States, much of Asia outside S. Korea and Japan, South Africa and most of the countries in Africa, Latin America etc.) Even Macron in France said, defending good trade relations with China, "Europe must not be a vassal of the US." Right now our media is having a field day criticizing him for that. But he's stating something that resonates with many in the world on that point. It reminds me of an incisive remark made by outgoing Angela Merkel a few years ago when Biden swept into power saying "America's back now." She replied, "Really? For how long?"

The next election is right around the corner.

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Questions:

1. Is that criticism of the Democrats defense of democracy at least mostly correct or not?

2. What can or should average people do, if they are concerned about the collapse of our flawed democracy into some form of an authoritarian autocracy-plutocracy-theocracy?

News bits: CREW requests Thomas investigation; Trump intimidates jurors?

Washington ethics watchdog CREW has asked the DoJ and the Supreme Court to initiate formal investigations about laws that Clarence Thomas might have broken by refusing to disclose gifts and real estate transactions. CREW's 13 page letter is here. Page 10 states that criminal sanctions may apply, but the cited statute (5 USC §13106 - Failure to file or filing false reports) provides only for a civil penalty of up to $50,000. 

The penalty attaches if a person knowingly and willfully fails to file or report any information they required to report under 5 USC §13104. That would seem to let Thomas off the hook if he claims that he claims that he did not knowingly or willfully fail to file or report any required information. If that is correct, this will probably amount to a nothingburger. 

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Given the lack of laws and ethics rules that apply to Supreme Court justices, Thomas will probably not face any meaningful repercussions for anything he did or will do in the future. Some people really are above the law.

Supreme Court corruption update: New reporting by the WaPo asserts that in recent years, Thomas has received between $50,000 and $100,000 annually from a company that arose from a defunct real estate company Ginger Ltd. His 6 page reporting statement is here. At page 4 of his 2021 annual financial disclosure statement, Thomas' income from Ginger Ltd. was estimated by Thomas to be category N ($250,001 to $500,000). I'm not sure where the WaPo's annual $50,000 to $100,000 amount comes from. The new Ginger entity is listed as owned by the sister of Thomas' wife Ginni. As expected from a master of the KYMS tactic, Thomas refuses to answer any questions and apparently nothing can force him to answer.

KYMS = keep your mouth shut

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Is this juror intimidation or not? Firstpost writes:

The names of the jurors who will determine in a future civil lawsuit whether the former president defamed the author E. Jean Carroll, who also alleges Trump assaulted her, will remain a secret from Donald Trump.

Trump’s latest attempt to mandate that potential jurors supply their names, job information, and 38 other pieces of information on written questionnaires was denied by US District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan on Friday.

Nothing has changed US District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s decision to seat an anonymous jury for the April 25 trial, reflecting the potential of juror harassment, as he said that the law was “abundantly clear” and that it was up to him to decide whether to utilize questionnaires.

Science based medicine and quack medicine

 The CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine) industry lobbies in Washington and congress considers what it has to say. Most CAM products are scientifically unproven. My guess is that nearly all of the reported benefits arise from placebo effects. 

A couple of weeks ago, a science based medicine expert, Steven Novella, attended roundtable discussion a US senate healthcare committee held to consider what to do, if anything. Novella, a practicing neurologist, is a well-known skeptic of pseudo science, psi research and CAM. A new sales propaganda pitch to congress is to rebrand CAM as "integrative" medicine to make it sound like science-based medicine. 

Marketing propaganda

At Science Based Medicine Novella comments about that meeting:

Alternative, No – Complementary, No – Integrative

CAM proponents use a lot of bait-and-switch or what David Gorski has dubbed “Trojan Horse” strategies to push their treatments. Interestingly, it’s mostly the same exact treatments that have been around for 50 years or more.  When we talk of CAM we are still mostly referring to homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic manipulation, energy medicine, and herbal medicine. There are branding tweaks, or new versions of these things, but the core concepts are the same. It doesn’t matter if you call them alternative, complementary, or integrative. It’s the same stuff.

The evolution of the branding, however, is to reassure those who care about things such as the standard of care in medicine that they will not be replacing proven therapies, and are offered in addition to them. First, this is never entirely true. If a CAM method is being placed somewhere in the hierarchy of treatments, then it is displacing or delaying non-CAM therapies. Also, health care is often resource limited. If a patient is availing themselves of acupuncture, that is using up their limited resources of time and health-care dollars.

 

Further, the very concept of “integrative” medicine is flawed to its core. What, exactly, are they integrating into what? Try to answer this question without just referring to euphemisms – no alternative or complementary methods, traditional, non-mainstream, etc. None of these really work, nor can they be operationally defined. If, for example, you define it as integrating non-mainstream methods into mainstream medicine, that provokes the question of why they are non-mainstream in the first place.

All of this rhetorical dancing is to avoid the obvious answer – integrative medicine is all about creating a double standard (legally, academically, professionally) so that treatments and methods that are below the line of scientific medicine can be integrated with those that are above the line. That’s it, and the laws that are pushed to promote CAM explicitly carve out this double standard.

Integrative medicine is preventive medicine/health promotion

This is the most annoying aspect of the CAM propaganda – the retconning* CAM into preventive medicine. This is nothing short of gaslighting. The first piece of this strategy is to slander mainstream medicine by saying it is not about disease prevention, only disease intervention.

None of the CAM modalities I listed above have any preventive value (or arguably, any value).

But this line is rhetorically very powerful. If they can slip in this equivalency, then they have already won. To further support this approach CAM proponents are very liberal in defining what is CAM. They would love to include all nutrition and exercise – but again, this is anti-historical gaslighting.  

Appeal to anecdote**

I almost always hear the phrase, “I have seen it work in my practice” from CAM proponents justifying their non-science based interventions. Of course, this is anecdotal, it means close to nothing. Anecdotal evidence leads us to the conclusions we want to be true (quoting Barry Beyerstein), not the truth. Legions of patients swore by all kinds of nonsensical treatments throughout history, that we now know to be nothing but snake oil.  

The appeal to anecdote can also sometime be camouflaged with euphemisms. We see this treatment working individually, even if it cannot be demonstrated with group level data. Translation – this treatment does not work when studied scientifically, so I am going to refer to anecdotes instead.

* Retcon (retroactive continuity): changing an existing fictional narrative by introducing new information that recontextualizes previously established events, characters, etc.; a literary or rhetorical device or propaganda where asserted facts in a fictional narrative, e.g., a sales pitch, or work are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former; a form of gaslighting

** Appeal too anecdote (argument from anecdote): an informal logic fallacy, where anecdotal evidence is presented as an argument without other contributory evidence or reasoning. This type of argument is considered as an informal logical fallacy as it is unpersuasive – since the anecdote could be made up, misconstrued or be a statistical outlier which is insignificant when further evidence is considered

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