News bits: Public access to federal court decisions, etc.

Federal courts oppose free public 

access to court documents 

Taxpayers pay to maintain court infrastructure and personnel. For years, defenders of the public interest have been trying to get easy free public access to federal court papers. For years, arrogant anti-public interest federal courts have fight hard against free public access. Court tactics now includes fabricating blatant lies about the burdens to provide public access. Techdirt writes:

Free PACER Would Pretty Much Be Free, Says CBO, 

Undercutting Federal Judiciary’s Ridiculous $2 Billion Estimate

For years, attempts have been made to make access to federal court records free. To date, not one of these efforts have been successful. The federal judiciary likes its antiquated cash cow, raking in PACER fees meant to improve and free up (as in “free”) document access and redistributing the profit amongst itself, (illegally) blowing the funds on big screen TVs and furniture for those working at or with access to federal courthouses.

While PACER limps on in its pre-Web 1.0 state, millions of Americans are either unable or unwilling to pay librarian rates for the (lol) reproduction of PDFs at the absurd rate of $0.10/page. This page fee applies to searches (whether or not they’re successful) and docket listings, the latter of which only displays pixels on a screen.

Lawsuits and legislation have, so far, failed to give Americans free access to documents they’ve already paid for once with their tax dollars. The federal judiciary has been the main roadblock to free access, claiming (without facts in evidence) that this paywall is a necessary evil — the only thing keeping the US judiciary system from being repo’ed by… well, that’s not entirely clear.

A bill that sailed through the House following this hilarious display of bad faith by the US court system quoted the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which generated an estimate even lower than the $2 million/year originally stated by legislators.

On net, CBO estimates that enacting H.R 8235 would increase the deficit by $9 million over the 2021-2030 period.

A net loss of less than $1 million per year. So much for the billions claimed by the federal judiciary system.  

As Joe Patrice notes for his article on these findings for Above the Law, the system that’s supposed to serve the public always seems far more interested in serving itself. And if that means charging for things no one in the private sector charges for these days, so be it.

Hosting a document database in 2001 was a costly endeavor. Today, Google gives you that kind of storage for opening a Gmail account. The idea that it cost the court massive amounts of money to maintain PACER was either a lie or a symptom of the courts trying to keep an antiquated system afloat rather than transitioning to a modern approach. Or a bit of both. Or a bit of both and a vested interest in a slush fund.

Federal courts prefer to operate in as much secrecy as possible, "for obvious reasons." Secrecy includes the process used to make decisions in cases. The problem with the "obvious reasons" defense of opacity is that the courts have never stated what those reasons are. As discussed here before, people have been asking for transparency at least since the early 1970s. Courts just ignore it and stonewall. A reasonable interpretation is that the courts are too incompetent, biased and political for most federal judges' comfort. 

The health cost of being a Republican

The Atlantic writes:

How Many Republicans Died Because the GOP Turned Against Vaccines?

Party leaders are unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of their own supporters.

You can find anti-vaxxers in every corner of the country. But by far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats.

.... [Researchers] chose to analyze data from Florida and Ohio from before and after vaccines were available. Looking at the period before the vaccine, researchers found a 1.6 percentage-point difference in excess death rate among Republicans and Democrats, with a higher rate among Republicans. But after vaccines became available, that gap widened dramatically to 10.4 percentage points, again with a higher Republican excess death rate. ....

What’s most concerning about all of this is that partisan disparities in death rates were also apparent before COVID. People living in Republican jurisdictions have been at a health disadvantage for more than 20 years. From 2001 to 2019, the death rate in Democratic counties decreased by 22 percent, according to a recent study; in Republican counties, it declined by only 11 percent. In the same time period, the political gap in death rates increased sixfold.

From the Well, duh! Files:

Wall Street is rigged for wealth to flow to the wealthy

Citing an analysis that PBS broadcast in 2013, Wall Street on Parade wrote: 

If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline’s Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening’s PBS program, The Retirement Gamble.

This is not so much a gamble as a certainty: under a 2 percent 401(k) fee structure, almost two-thirds of your working life will go toward paying obscene compensation to Wall Street; a little over one-third will benefit your family – and that’s before paying taxes on withdrawals to Uncle Sam.

To put it another way – you work for Wall Street. You are their slave, their lackey and as long as their toadies dominate in Congress, nothing is going to change on the legislative front to stop the looting. 

In an update a few days ago, Wall Street on Parade wrote:

The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, announced in June that he was going to tackle the structure of the U.S. stock market – ostensibly to make it fairer to the little guy. His plans were released last Wednesday in a mountain of paper that even Wall Street veterans are having difficulty digesting. (See here, here, here, here, and here.)

While the overall thrust of the proposed changes appears to be to provide more transparency to order execution, the proposals fail to address key structural issues that have allowed the U.S. stock market to operate as an institutionalized wealth transfer system — moving vast sums of money from the pockets of average Americans to the richest one percent.

The New York Stock Exchange was at one time the most respected stock exchange in the world. It’s now become a pay-to-play venue for hedge funds, high frequency traders and Wall Street mega banks. In 2014 we found a Google cache of a promotional piece the NYSE had directed at high frequency traders. It boasts that it is offering a “fully managed co-location space next to NYSE Euronext’s US trading engines in the new state-of-the-art data center.” The NYSE says it is for “High frequency and proprietary trading firms, hedge funds and others who need high-speed market access for a competitive edge.”  

Lewis wrote for the paperback version of “Flash Boys,” released in 2015, Lewis puts a dollar figure on the cost to public pensions managed by just one money manager:

“In 2014, this giant money manager bought and sold roughly $80 billion in U.S. stocks. The teachers and firefighters and other middle-class investors whose pensions they managed were collectively paying a tax of roughly $240 million a year for the benefit of interacting with high-frequency traders in unfair markets.” 

Another area that seriously undermines the credibility of U.S. markets are the Dark Pools operated by the mega banks on Wall Street. The SEC is allowing the trading units of these banks – which have been charged with colluding on prices with each other in the past – to trade each other’s stocks in the dark as well as to make thousands of dark trades each week in the stock of their very own bank. (See our report: Wall Street Banks Are Trading in Their Own Company’s Stock: How Is This Legal?)

One scam is to locate internet servers close to NYSE servers. Those servers get trade data and information from NYSE servers before other servers farther away can get the same information. That short time lag, about 0.2 second [1], is enough time to execute stock trades before the public can become aware of the same information and act on it. That information imbalance is the “competitive edge” that high frequency or high speed traders need to game the system. Elizabeth Warren criticized the practice like this: 

Traders have good days and bad days. Some days they make good trades and they make lots of money and some days they have bad trades and they lose a lot of money. But high frequency traders have only good days.

In its recent IPO filing, the high frequency trading firm, Virtu, reported that it had been trading for 1,238 days and it had made money on 1,237 of those days…The question is that high frequency trading firms aren’t making money by taking on risks. They’re making money by charging a very small fee to investors.

What do those investors pay a small fee for? Information that no one else has access to. That is why just about every day is a good day for people who can pay to play the high speed trading game. For context, what does a 0.2 second time advantage provide to the US economy? Does it create wealth, or does it merely transfer it from average people and groups to wealthy businesses and elite investors? 

These issues apparently are significantly bipartisan. Both neoliberal Democrats and brass knuckles capitalist Republicans have built and defended this system of large-scale theft from the public to a few elites and corporations. Both congress and Wall Street are corrupt pay-to-play institutions that usually work more for the wealthy than for the public interest.

Footnote: 

1. The Week elaborated on the co-location of NYSE servers with private interest servers:

Does co-location increase speed?

Yes. The physical proximity to the exchange server reduces the time from when a firm’s buy or sell order is entered and when it’s executed. “By co-locating,” says Adam Afshar of Hyde Park Global, a high-speed trading firm, “we are able to take 21 milliseconds off our trades. In the past, 21 milliseconds was a trivial matter. Now it’s a pivotal matter.” Several academic studies have found that shaving even one millisecond off every trade can be worth $100 million a year to a large, high-speed trading firm.

Looking ahead to 2023: Random thoughts

Looks to me like 2023 is gonna be similar to 2022, but just newer. 

Hm. Should I update my etiquette rules to keep up with the toxic times we live in? Over at r/scotus, the self-professed highest subreddit in the land (that's a joke, get it?), their rules for banning include a couple of excellent, well-articulated points. Here's a couple of 'em -- they're kind of fun:

Things that will get you banned 

On Politics

Political discussion isn't prohibited here. In fact, a lot of the discussion about the composition of the Supreme Court is going to be about the political process of selecting a justice.

Your favorite flavor of politics won't get you banned here. Racism, bigotry, totally bad-faithed whataboutisms, being wildly off-topic, etc. will get you banned though. We have people from across the political spectrum writing screeds here and in modmail about how they're oppressed with some frequency. But for whatever reason, people with a conservative bend in particular, like to show up here from other parts of reddit, deliberately say horrendous shit to get banned, then go back to wherever they came from to tell their friends they're victims of the worst kinds of oppression. Y'all can build identities about being victims and the mods, at a very basic level, do not care—complaining in modmail isn't worth your time.

COVID-19

Coming in here from your favorite nonewnormal alternative sub or Facebook group and shouting that vaccines are the work of Bill Gates and George Soros to make you sterile will get you banned. Complaining or asking why you were banned in modmail won't help you get unbanned.

Racism

I kind of can't believe I have to write this, but racism isn't acceptable. Trying to dress it up in polite language doesn't make it "civil discussion" just because you didn't drop the N word explicitly in your comment.  

This is not a space to be aggressively wrong on the Internet

We try and be pretty generous with this because a lot of people here are skimming and want to contribute and sometimes miss stuff. In fact, there are plenty of threads where someone gets called out for not knowing something and they go "oh, yeah, I guess that changes things." That kind of interaction is great because it demonstrates people are learning from each other.

There are users that get super entrenched though in an objectively wrong position. Or start talking about how they wish things operated as if that were actually how things operate currently. If you're not explaining yourself or you're not receptive to correction you're not the contributing content we want to propagate here and we'll just cut you loose.

• BUT I'M A LAWYER!

Having a license to practice law is not a license to be a jackass. Other users look to the attorneys that post here with greater weight than the average user. Trying to confuse them about the state of play or telling outright falsehoods isn't acceptable.

Thankfully it's kind of rare to ban an attorney that's way out of bounds but it does happen. And the mods don't care about your license to practice. It's not a get out of jail free card in this sub.

Dang, it sounds like some lawyer wrote those rules. I like the one about the jackass. Think I'll change my rule from asshole to jackass -- it feels more polite and sophisticated. And the one about conservatives getting themselves banned for being jackasses and then complaining of horrible oppression and persecution back at the raunch they hang out at is stellar. It gets a two MAGA, i.e., MAGA!! MAGA!!, huzzah! And, what the heck is a nonewnormal alternative sub (subreddit)?

Here's another great post on the rules a r/scotus, the highest subreddit in the land. This one is about the leaked Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs decision that got rid of a woman's right to get an abortion:

Do not witch hunt SCOTUS clerks.

The leak is exciting and you're more than welcome to talk about it and the motives that the leaker may have had.

You're not welcome to single out, without any evidence whatsoever, random SCOTUS clerks by name because you saw it on some halfwit's Twitter and now your Inspector Reddit senses are tingling.

That's as stupid as it is unacceptable. Don't do it. You will get banned.

That is all.

Well, those are words of wisdom for sure. Henceforth, I'll keep them in mind.

 

Other thoughts? 

Politics as usual. Kari Lake, the crackpot, stolen election jackass in Arizona got her stolen election case tossed out of court. A local news outlet KTAR writes:

Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson concluded that there was no clear or convincing evidence of the widespread misconduct that Lake had alleged.

“The court pointed out that even the plaintiff’s witnesses and experts all testified they had no information or personal knowledge of any misconduct by Maricopa County or any state election official,” KTAR News analyst Barry Markson said.

Despite that Lake is going to appeal. She commented: “We proved without a shadow of a doubt that there was malicious intent that caused disruption so great it changed the results of the election.”

Sigh. Looks like 2023 is going to be a lot like 2022 for stolen election crackpots. They are not going away.

From the What, already?? Files

Speaking of the Supreme Court, Vox barfed up these unsettling thoughts:

Sotomayor and Kagan need to think about retiring

The US Senate is a fundamentally broken institution. Democratic judges need to account for that in their retirement decisions.

We have now lived with the consequences of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s late-life arrogance for more than two years. 

When she died in the final months of the Trump presidency, Ginsburg told her granddaughters her last desire: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” It amounted to nothing. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court, a seat that until recently belonged to the greatest women’s rights lawyer in American history, is now held by her ideological opposite.

Now, eight years later, the question arises: Should Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, 68 and 62, respectively, do what Ginsburg would not?

Both justices are much younger than Ginsburg was in 2014. There are no reports that either is in ill health (although Sotomayor has diabetes, she’s managed that condition nearly her entire life). Realistically, both justices could probably look forward to a decade or more of judicial service if they desire it. But even a mighty Supreme Court justice cannot overcome the merciless math facing Democrats in a malapportioned Senate that effectively gives extra representation to Republicans in small states.

Barring extraordinary events, Democrats will control the White House and the Senate for the next two years. They are unlikely to control it for longer than that. The 2024 Senate map is so brutal for Democrats that they would likely need to win a landslide in the national popular vote just to break even. Unless they stanch the damage then, some forecasts suggest that Democrats won’t have a realistic shot at a Senate majority until 2030 or 2032. And even those forecasts may be too optimistic for Democrats.

Methinks that Vox raises a darn good point. Thinks do look sort of bad for team reality-democracy. Team mendacity-fascism are salivating at their future prospects.

So, how do you like my revised asshole → jackass etiquette first rule?

Christmas cheer 'n stuff 'n whatnot

Merry Christmas to all!!

From Those Whacky Physicists 

Are At It Again Files

A website, maybe called Science Daily 24x7, posted a breakthrough in control of itty bitty, very tiny, little things. For example, like a single molecule. Unknown website writes:

Scientists turn single molecule clockwise

or counterclockwise on demand

Controlling the rotation of this molecule could lead to new technologies for microelectronics, quantum computing and more.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory report they can precisely rotate a single molecule that small on demand. The key ingredient is a single atom of europium, a rare earth element. It rests at the center of a complex of different atoms and gives the molecule many potential applications.

"We are able to rotate this europium complex by 60 or 120 degrees to the right or left," said Saw Wai Hla, physicist at the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne, and a physics professor at Ohio University. "The ability to control the motion of a rare earth complex such as this could impact a wide spectrum of technologies." That includes next generation microelectronics, quantum technologies, catalysis to speed up reactions, conversion of light into electricity and more.

The term "rare earth" is deceptive. The rare earth elements are not exactly rare but are critical materials used in many electronic devices, such as cellular phones, computer hard drives, solar panels and flat screen monitors. 

Scanning tunneling microscopy image of a 

rotating europium (Eu) complex on a gold sheet 

The dark spot in disc indicates the single Eu atom

From The Endless Abortion Wars Files:

Plan B: Is it an abortion or something else?

This one is pretty interesting. It points to the sometimes life and death importance of getting facts straight. The NYT writes:

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday significantly changed the information that will be in every box of the most widely used emergency contraceptive pills to make clear that they do not prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb. The agency explained in an accompanying document that the products cannot be described as abortion pills.

Up to now, packages of the brand-name pill, Plan B One-Step, as well as generic versions of it have said that the pill might work by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb — language that scientific evidence did not support. That wording led some abortion opponents and politicians who equate a fertilized egg with a person to say that taking the morning-after pill could be the equivalent of having an abortion or even committing murder.

The F.D.A. revised the leaflets inserted in packages of pills to say that the medication “works before release of an egg from the ovary,” meaning that it acts before fertilization, not after. The package insert also says the pill “will not work if you’re already pregnant, and will not affect an existing pregnancy.” 

In a question-and-answer document posted on the F.D.A.’s website, the agency explicitly addressed the abortion issue. In answer to the question, “Is Plan B One-Step able to cause an abortion?” the agency writes: “No.” It added: “Plan B One-Step prevents pregnancy by acting on ovulation, which occurs well before implantation. Evidence does not support that the drug affects implantation or maintenance of pregnancy after implantation, therefore, it does not terminate a pregnancy.”  

Students for Life of America, which earlier this year posted an Instagram video with a caption saying “Plan B can cause an abortion. It’s right there on the box,” said in an email on Friday that it rejected the F.D.A.’s new language on the science of the pills.

“For years we’ve been saying that the packaging indicated abortions could take place,” the organization said. “Their answer is to just change the box.”  

By 2007, evidence was accumulating that morning-after pills did not block implantation. In 2009 to 2010, during discussions about making Plan B available over the counter for all ages, Teva also asked that implantation be deleted from the label.

Although blind anti-abortion zealots will not accept the fact that Plan B does not cause an abortion, that fact is too inconvenient to be accepted. Plan B is in fact a contraceptive, not an abortion-inducing medication. Why it took the FDA this long to get its facts straight points to either inexcusable incompetence and/or intentional sabotage by anti-abortion zealots in the agency as the most likely culprits. The FDA claims some baloney excuse about COVID. The real reason(s) is something we will probably never know for sure. After all, we're just mushrooms. 

Are mushrooms a vegetable?

Gotta get the minions on this one right away

From the 1/6 Committee Files:

Oh Goody! Republican sleaze is 

oozing out into public view!

The AP writes about those fake electors that Republican fascist elites tried to pass off as real electors to help subvert the 2020 presidential election:

New transcripts of closed-door testimony to the Jan. 6 House committee show Donald Trump and his allies had a direct hand in the Nevada Republican Party’s scheme to send a phony electoral certificate to Congress in 2020 in a last-ditch attempt to keep the former president in power.

The documents made public Wednesday evening included interviews with state party leader Michael McDonald and Republican National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid in February. Both men served as fake electors in Carson City on Dec. 14, 2020.

McDonald and DeGraffenreid invoked Fifth Amendment protection hundreds of times in their separate interviews with the Jan. 6 committee, refusing to answer questions about their involvement and the extent to which Trump’s top allies had helped in orchestrating the plot.

On Nov. 4, 2020, for example, the day after the election, McDonald had a conference call with Trump, his then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney Rudy Giuliani and son Eric Trump.

“They want full attack mode,” McDonald later wrote in a text message describing that call. “We’re gonna have a war room meeting in about an hour.”

Those documents, detailed at length in the transcripts, included text messages, emails and internal memorandums distributed by the national GOP arm; handwritten charts, templates for press releases and the phony certificate itself; and talking points “explaining the rationale for the electors.”

Valiant patriots is not what comes to mind here. Crooks, liars, traitors, bums, hypocrites, thugs and fascist tyrants are feelings that float gently to mind in this season of joy and . . . . . forgiveness? Nah, not forgiveness.

Republican fascist tyrant 

Michael McDonald

The GOP tried its best to shield him from

the light of public scrutiny 

Republican fascist tyrant 

Jim DeGraffenreid

The GOP tried its best to shield him from

the light of public scrutiny 

More from the 1/6 Committee Files:

Oh Goody! More Republican sleaze is 

oozing out into public view!

A WaPo opinion piece writes about the glue that holds Trumplandians together. It is not a nice glue at all. It is a nasty glue. The WaPo writes:

Cassidy Hutchinson knew better than to put herself in debt to what she called “Trump world.” As she would later testify, “Once you are looped in, especially financially with them, there is no turning back.”

The deadline for turning over documents was looming, and Hutchinson was, she said, “starting to freak out.” One lawyer she consulted said he could assist — then demanded a $150,000 retainer.

So, the young aide, out of work since Trump had left office a full year earlier, initially decided to turn to Trump world for help. Which is how she came to receive a phone call from Stefan Passantino, previously a lawyer in the Trump White House counsel’s office.

“We have you taken care of,” he told Hutchinson. When she asked who would be paying the bills, Passantino demurred — this despite legal ethics rules that let attorneys accept payment from third parties but only with the “informed consent” of their client.

“If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now,” Hutchinson, in her deposition, recalled him saying. “Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.”

If Hutchinson’s live testimony before the select committee was riveting, her deposition testimony, taken several months later and released Thursday, is a page-turner: The Godfather meets John Grisham meets "All the President’s Men." Before, we could only imagine how frightening the situation must have been for the 20-something Trump staffer. Now, we can read of her frantic search for help, and her terror as she contemplated telling the truth.

One thing that bears mention here is how Trumplandia can trap people and subvert or corrupt them. Trumplanders try to get a person to cross a line, usually by breaking a law, incurring serious financial debt or by bribery. Taking a bribe is usually illegal. Once the line is crossed, Trumpland elites can then blackmail the person who crossed the line. 

IMO, that is what Passantino's offer of free legal help to Hutchinson amounted to. Once she took the offer, her attorney would advise her to lie to the 1/6 Committee, for example, using the always popular "I don't recall" lie or the "5th" (5th Amendment) shield against self-incrimination. Hutchinson understood the danger and refused temptation to fall into the clutches of fascist Trumplanders. That left her free to be honest in her testimony to the 1/6 Committee.

So when any Republican now attacks Hutchinson as a liar or a self-serving traitor, it is defensible to reject the attack as a fascist Republican lie unless there is ample evidence to support it. From what I can tell, there will never be ample evidence to undermine Hutchinson. Trumpland fascists will have to either fabricate evidence or just fall back on the KYMS propaganda tactic.

KYMS = keep your mouth shut

Cassidy Hutchinson - an actual Republican patriot 

and a woman with real guts and real moral values

Stefan Passantino - another Republican fascist 

and a thoroughly morally rotted man

Trump Lawyer Suing Over Georgia Votes 

Is Tied To Extremists & Controversies

Fascism in the Republican Party

It is interesting to see how the mainstream media is slowly coming to recognize that a lot of Republican Party elites, politicians and their propaganda, lies and slanders sources have become actual fascists. I first started using words like fascist, fascism and Christofascist a couple of years ago. That got a lot of sincere criticism for being over the top, too inflammatory, not enough like fascism in 1930s Italy and thus disrespectful of people who European fascism killed, and etc. 

Well, now, the F-word is appearing more often among political observers. To some people, the fascist label as applied to Republican elites apparently is looking more real and defensible all the time.

Salon writes in a blunt, fact-based commentary piece:

Zelenskyy visit exposes a GOP rift — between actual fascists and everyone else

Zelenskyy's argument that Ukraine's victory is necessary to protect global democracy is hard to argue against. Especially in recent years, Putin has not hidden his contempt for Western-style democracy or desire to see it collapse around the globe. Even with all the caveats and nuances one could possibly inject into this, the "bad guys" and "good guys" are crystal clear in this scenario.

Except, that is, to some Republicans in Congress and a number right-wing pundits. That world is not just anti-Zelenskyy, but imbued with such vicious sentiments that even the most jaded political watchers were shocked. This isn't just about arguments over whether aid to Ukraine is being well spent, or about whether Ukraine is strategically crucial to U.S. interests. This was about full-on vitriol, to the point where even Republicans who are open to cutting aid to Ukraine were made uncomfortable.

There's one major reason things got so ugly so fast. The debate over Ukraine, at least among Republicans, is a stand-in for the largely unspoken but very real debate that's roiling the party: Do they still believe in democracy? A faction in the GOP has decided that they don't, and now supports authoritarianism, or the F-word. Many other Republicans feel uneasy about this direction, but don't seem able to stand up to the fascist faction.

If that sounds hyperbolic, you should hear some of the things the fascist faction had to say about Zelenskyy, who may have his flaws, but has captured the world's attention with his undoubted sincerity in fighting to save his embattled country from Russian conquest and occupation.

Right after Zelenskyy's speech to Congress, Tucker Carlson of Fox News described him as a "Ukrainian strip club manager" and falsely said that Ukraine had been the aggressor, portraying Putin as the victim of a Ukrainian plot to "topple the Russian government." He also echoed the antisemitic talking points the Russian government has deployed against Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, by accusing him of waging "ongoing war against Christianity." (The decree in question targets groups for pro-Russian sentiment, not for religious belief. That may well be a legitimate free speech issue, but it's not a religious freedom issue.)

Jesse Watters of Fox News also rolled out the Russia-as-victim line, saying that Zelenskyy was "charming, but he's a killer" motivated by "vengeance."

Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk called Zelenskyy an "uppity foreigner" and an "international welfare queen." Over the weekend, his group had a conference where the keynote speaker on Sunday, defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, bragged that she was "a proud election-denying deplorable." Donald Trump Jr., unoriginal thinker to the end, also used the "international welfare queen" slur.  

Ironically, all the Republican game-playing on Ukraine only ends up reinforcing the argument Zelenskyy made in his speech on Wednesday: Protecting his country against Russian tyranny is ultimately about protecting democracy. Whatever criticisms could be made of his leadership or his imperfect nation, Zelenskyy's biggest opponents in Congress hate him because they hate democracy.

If those fascist Republican lies and slanders aren't American fascism, what are they? Reasonable, fact- and reason-based differences of pro-democracy opinion? 

We all know some real welfare queens. They are Americans, especially wealthy ones, who cheat on their taxes. Those are real welfare queens. 

Gaetz and MTG are fascists, crackpots 

and slandering liars

Feisty Democrats, etc.

From the lives of the rich, arrogant and disgusting files:

House Democrats hit back at a lying, sexual predator thug

Politico reports:

A Secret Report About a CEO’s Sexual Misconduct 

Was Just Made Public by Congress

Last week, after Zia Chishti filed a defamation lawsuit against the woman whose wrenching Congressional testimony about alleged sexual abuse cost Chishti his job as CEO of the unicorn AI firm Afiniti, Chishti explained himself by saying that “at this stage, I have nothing to lose.”

He may have spoken too soon.

On Saturday, a day after this column reported on the formerly high-flying Washington business figure’s unusual legal move against an ex-employee who testified under oath, the House Judiciary Committee entered a sharply critical 2019 arbitration tribunal ruling about Chishti’s workplace behavior into the Congressional Record — instantaneously turning the heretofore secret report into a publicly-available document.

The release, quietly added to the record of an unrelated hearing on a late-December weekend afternoon, amounts to a tidy Washington-procedural way of saying: Don’t mess with our witness.

As it happens, the document appears utterly devastating for Chishti, a man who not long ago operated from an office a block from the White House and was able to attract politics and government A-listers like former British Prime Minister David Cameron, former French Prime Minister François Fillon and former U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen to Afiniti’s advisory board.

Though Chishti’s federal lawsuit alleges that former Afiniti staffer Tatiana Spottiswoode had “weaponized” a “consensual love affair” by “deliberately lying and misleading Congress under oath,” the report by independent arbitrator Ronald G. Birch reached the opposite conclusion, declaring that Chishti, now 51, had repeatedly sexually harassed an employee half his age, groped her in front of colleagues, insulted her for rejecting advances, brutally beaten her during a business-trip sexual encounter, and lied about it.  

The arbitrator awarded Spottiswoode over $5 million, calling Chishti’s conduct “outrageous in character and extreme in degree, going beyond all possible bounds of decency.”  

Suing over allegations made under oath at a Congressional hearing is highly unusual. When we spoke last week, Chishti said his suit against Spottiswoode, her attorneys and several others involved in the testimony was necessary since members of Congress weren’t interested in asking skeptical questions that might have allowed him to tell his side of the story. But critics told me that they worry the suit represents an ominous trend in which the legal system could be used to bully witnesses, yet another disincentive to speaking out against powerful, deep-pocketed people.

Spottiswoode’s testimony in congress was instrumental. Her horrific story helped to get a federal law passed that nullifies non-disclosure agreements when they are used to hide sexual misconduct. For years, thugs like Chishti and Trump have relied on secrecy agreements to hide their thug sexual behaviors.

Here is the deeply worrying thing: If the Republicans had been in control of the House or Senate, it is a reasonable bet that no such law would have passed or that Chishti’s disgusting behavior would even have become public. Chishti would have just gone ahead with his fabricated defamation lawsuit. He would have tried to use the courts to bankrupt Spottiswoode and make her life a misery. A copy of Chishti’s 102 page fabricated defamation lawsuit against Spottiswoode and a couple of other defendants is here.

At page 75 of his complaint, despicable Mr. Chishti complains: “My reputation has been damaged to the point that it is unlikely that I will ever again be able to gain meaningful employment, build and take public another company, or enter public service. I struggle to sleep at night, and I am consumed with anxiety by day.”

Consumed with anxiety? Yeah, right. Assuming it isn't a lie, and it probably is, whose fault is that? 

The 1/6 Committee report is released

A partial summary of what CNN reports:

January 6 committee releases final report, says 

Trump should be barred from office

Trump and his inner circle engaged in ‘at least 200’ attempts to pressure state officials

Committee identifies pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro as architect of fake electors plot

Trump WH called Eastman on the day he wrote his memo

January 6 committee recommends barring Trump from holding office again

Says lawyers should be held responsible

Trump’s false victory declaration was ‘premeditated’

Trump privately called some of Sidney Powell’s election claims ‘crazy’

One can expect a stream of sleaze to come out as people read and digest the 845 page report. 

Again, If Republicans had been in charge, little or none of this sleaze and crime would have come to light. Kevin McCarthy has already publicly stated that on Jan. 3, the day that radical right Republicans take control of the House, the 1/6 Committee will be dissolved. It will be unable to do anything more to inform the public.

About the tax gap, again

A pet peeve is congressional Republicans cutting the budget of the IRS so that rich people are free to cheat on their taxes with little chance of ever being audited and forced to pay what they owe. Most rich people hate taxes with an enraged vengeance. That level of theft amounts to hundreds of billions per year. My guess is it's about $1 trillion/year, but IRS estimates are lower, at about $450 billion/year. The NYT writes:

Trump Audit Shows Depths of I.R.S. Funding Woes

The agency lacks the resources to go after rich taxpayers. For years, a single revenue agent was responsible for the audits of Donald J. Trump.

Before Donald J. Trump became president and after, his exceedingly complex and voluminous tax returns came under regular scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service. The number of agents assigned to the audit team: one.

After he left office, the I.R.S. said it was beefing up the audit team, to three. The tax agency itself acknowledged that it was still overwhelmed by the complexity of Mr. Trump’s finances and the resistance mounted by the former president and his sophisticated army of accountants and lawyers, which included a former I.R.S. chief counsel and raised questions early last year about why even three revenue agents should be assigned to audit him. 

The I.R.S. is a sprawling agency, and an audit notice can strike fear in most taxpayers. But the committee reports released this week highlight how depleted the I.R.S. has become in the last decade, as Republicans starved it of funding. They also show how the agency has become increasingly unable to crack down on wealthy taxpayers who push the legal limits to lower their tax bills and have the means to fend off audits if they get caught.

That has led to a $7 trillion “tax gap” of revenue over a decade [~ $700 billion/year] that is owed but goes uncollected, in many cases from superrich taxpayers such as Mr. Trump, who has boasted that he fights to pay as little tax as possible.

Most of the blame here (~90% ?) goes to congressional Republicans and their major donors. They accuse the IRS of being political, socialist and tyrannical. Donors have demanded and Republicans responded. They have cut the IRS budget for enforcing tax law against rich people. This is how the Republicans and wealthy people and interests get wealth to gush up to elites. Wealth does not trickle down to the masses. More wealth to elites is what the Christofascist Republican Party stands for and what it delivers.

The Electoral College Reform Act passes in the nick of time

Fr. WSJ 12/22/22

https://www.wsj.com/articles/presidential-vote-counting-to-get-revamp-after-trump-tried-to-reverse-2020-loss-11671687195 

For the first time in more than a century, Congress is poised to pass legislation that would revamp the process of certifying presidential electors, a direct response to efforts by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The Electoral Count Reform Act has been attached to a $1.65 trillion yearlong spending package currently moving through Congress that is expected to become law this week. The ECRA is the result of nearly a year of bipartisan Senate negotiations to update an 1887 law that came into focus during the certification of the presidential results on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Current law requires Congress to convene for a joint session on Jan. 6 after a presidential election to count and ratify the 538 electoral votes certified by the 50 states and District of Columbia. The vice president, serving as president of the Senate, has the duty to count the votes in a joint session of Congress. 

In 2021, Mr. Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject some electors unilaterally. Mr. Pence refused, saying such a move was beyond his power. After Mr. Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol in a speech on the Ellipse, a pro-Trump mob overran the Capitol, temporarily interrupting the proceedings. After Congress reconvened, 139 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans voted against certifying the election results.

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The new legislation would make it clear that the vice president’s role is merely to count the votes publicly and that he or she has no power to alter the results. It also would significantly raise the threshold to sustain an objection to a state’s electors to one-fifth of both chambers, up from one House member and one senator now. 

The proposal would also provide for an expedited federal court challenge if a state attempts to delay or tamper with election results. The bill holds that the court decision is final and requires Congress to accept that decision.

The current Electoral Count Act “is a time bomb under democracy, and we learned on Jan. 6 that its ambiguities and confusing terms are very dangerous,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) credited the work of a group of 15 senators who span the ideological spectrum in negotiating the bill. “The events of Jan. 6 clearly brought home the flaws in the law,” she said.

The Biden administration called the changes “a vital piece of legislation.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said he opposed changes to the current law. Mr. Hawley was the first senator to say he would object to the results of the 2020 presidential election, a move that forced lawmakers to debate and vote to affirm the states’ tallies on Jan. 6, 2021. As Mr. Hawley entered the Capitol ahead of the joint session that day, he was photographed fist-pumping to cheers from the pro-Trump crowd gathered outside.

“I think it’s fine, this is the democratic process,” Mr. Hawley said about the current rules. “I don’t think the objection caused the riot.” 

Other lawmakers have used the process outlined in the Electoral Count Act to object to election results in recent years. Some Democrats objected, unsuccessfully, to certification of both of former President George W. Bush‘s wins as well as Mr. Trump’s.

In both cases the Democratic nominee for president had already conceded and wasn’t supportive of the objections. Mr. Trump has continued to call for overturning the results and to claim falsely that he won the 2020 election.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack made four criminal referrals for Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on Monday after investigating the lead-up and attack itself. Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing related to the riot. The Justice Department is currently conducting a parallel investigation of the events.

“I don’t care whether they change The Electoral Count Act or not, probably better to leave it the way it is so that it can be adjusted in case of Fraud,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.Mr. Trump has said the planned changes show that the vice president did indeed have the power to block electors under current law. Backers say they are trying to eliminate any loopholes that could be exploited by future candidates, including Mr. Trump.

Among the Electoral Count Reform Act provisions included in this week’s spending package is a requirement that each state’s governor, unless specified in the state’s laws or constitution, submit the slate of electors. That would keep states from submitting false electors as some sought to do in 2020. 

It also would prevent state legislatures from overriding the popular vote in their states by declaring a “failed election,” except in narrowly defined “extraordinary and catastrophic” events.

Edward Foley, the director of Election Law at Ohio State University said the bill’s most significant provision is making sure the courts are the final backstop in case of false electors.

“We can look to courts as being the branch of government that is most immune from this kind of political denialism,” he said.

The version included in the spending bill is the Senate version, which had 38 co-sponsors, including both Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).

In September, the House passed its own version of the legislation, 229-203. Nine Republicans joined Democrats in voting to pass the House bill. None of them are returning to Congress next year.