Melt Down Monday: Another Fine Mess Trumplicans got us into
Posted: March 13, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: Bank Runs, Bernie Sanders, CryptoCurrency, Dodd-Frank bill, Elizabeth Warren, FDic, Federal Reserve Bank, Flash Digital Bank Runs, Janet Yellen, junk bond king, Katie Porter, SEC, Silicon Valley Bank, US Treasury 15 Comments
My body still tells me to say Good Morning!
I’m only on my second cup of coffee while waiting for my Irish Oats to cook. The clock tells me it’s afternoon, but something about me refuses to believe it. Why am I rudely being pushed into a part of the day rather than enjoying my lazy morning and looking forward to my Night Life? The best thing about teaching Grad school is that I no longer teach morning classes. Thanks to Dubya (wrecked the country) Bush, I only have that sacred space with its full glory for about 4 months a year. I’m grading midterms and wading through a seriously unnecessary set of bank failures in a bit of a fog. This is my version of No Exit.
Every time I teach my Grad Derivatives class in the Spring, some unnecessary financial crisis pops up. It’s not a huge one like another thing for which we can thank Dubya (wrecked the economy), Bush, and his cronies. This will not be the next “Great Recession” creator.
The Republicans under Theodore Roosevelt and Ulysses S Grant determined that you cannot trust huge actors in concentrated markets to regulate themselves. They called them trusts back then. They muck things up worse than the regulations while taking advantage of their customers for extraordinary profits until the jig is up. They also lead to substantial negative spillover costs paid for with taxpayer money. Many times, especially with situations like the Norfolk situation, victims of these costs never fully recover their losses. Real economists know this. It’s why Republicans haven’t had one around since Bernanke.
I wrote extensively about why the financial system ran amok and wrecked the economy around 2008. I am again writing about a very similar situation. Much of it’s rooted in the chipping away of protections set up to protect us from a recurrence of the Great Recession removed by Trump, the Republicans, and any elected official that basically gets vast donations from Wall Street and Banks. NBC News Sahil Kapur follows the ties between that and what’s happening now. “Silicon Valley Bank collapse puts new spotlight on a 2018 bank deregulation law. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who led the push against that Trump-era law, now wants to restore those rules on financial institutions. Biden is also calling on Congress to act.”
Five years ago, Warren was the most outspoken opponent of the Republican-led Congress’ push to undo regulations imposed under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law for small and midsize banks. The bill, led by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, sought to reclassify the “too big to fail” standard, which came with enhanced regulatory scrutiny. By raising the threshold from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion, medium-size banks were exempted from those regulations.
“Had Congress and the Federal Reserve not rolled back the stricter oversight, S.V.B. and Signature would have been subject to stronger liquidity and capital requirements to withstand financial shocks,” Warren wrote Monday. “They would have been required to conduct regular stress tests to expose their vulnerabilities and shore up their businesses. But because those requirements were repealed, when an old-fashioned bank run hit S.V.B., the bank couldn’t withstand the pressure — and Signature’s collapse was close behind.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who also opposed the 2018 law, blamed it for Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.
“Let’s be clear. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 bank deregulation bill signed by Donald Trump that I strongly opposed,” he said in a statement. “Five years ago, the Republican Director of the Congressional Budget Office released a report finding that this legislation would ‘increase the likelihood that a large financial firm with assets of between $100 billion and $250 billion would fail.’”
The 2018 battle featured intense lobbying by banks — including Silicon Valley Bank and an array of smaller community banks — that were seeking regulatory relief.
The bill passed the House 258-159, winning 225 Republicans and 33 Democrats. In the Senate, it needed some Democrats to defeat a filibuster and achieve 60 votes. Warren infuriated some colleagues when she called out some Senate Democrats by name for trying to weaken Dodd-Frank rules.
In the end, 17 Democrats joined a unanimous Senate Republican conference to pass it. Trump signed it into law.
The entire financial industry plays a role in the economy held by no other. The safekeeping role is why rules for bank deposits, the FDIC insurance mandates exist, and capitalization laws are in place. I think no one teaches about the Bank Holidays and Runs we experienced during the Great Depression. The more you chip away at what used to be legal differences and responsibilities between banks with deposits and fiduciary responsibility and their ability to play around with risky loans and investments, the more these things will reoccur. Also, speculative investors like hedge funds’ special tax treatment lower their risk costs and increase their ability to make investment decisions that have a likelihood of implosion. The rollback of substantial sections of Dodd-Frank was integral to last week’s runs.
https://twitter.com/ritujay/status/1634432765692366849
More importantly, the recent failures of financial institutions and companies involved with Cryptocurrencies will be part of the focus as state and federal regulators–including the Fed–do a post-mortem on both Silicon Valley and the Signature Bank in New York. These banks look like Country Clubs for risky and poorly managed loan portfolios. They have many big accounts backed up by cryptocurrency, a highly speculative and risky asset. This is from CNBC. “Regulators close crypto-focused Signature Bank, citing systemic risk.” The reporter is Yun Li.
The banking regulators said depositors at Signature Bank will have full access to their deposits, a move similar to that which was made to ensure depositors at the failed Silicon Valley Bank will get their money back.
“All depositors of this institution will be made whole. As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer,” the regulators said.
The regulators shuttered Silicon Valley Bank on Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis — and the second-largest ever. The dramatic moves come just days after the tech-focused institution reported it was struggling, triggering a run on the bank’s deposits.
Signature is one of the main banks to the cryptocurrency industry, the biggest one next to Silvergate, which announced its impending liquidation last week. It had a market value of $4.4 billion as of Friday after a 40% sell-off this year, according to FactSet.
As of Dec. 31, Signature had $110.4 billion in total assets and $88.6 billion in total deposits, according to a securities filing.
To stem the damage and stave off a bigger crisis, the Fed and Treasury created an emergency program to backstop all deposits at both Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank using the Fed’s emergency lending authority.
The FDIC’s deposit insurance fund will be used to cover depositors, many of whom were uninsured due to the $250,000 cap on guaranteed deposits.
While depositors will have access to their money, equity and bondholders at both banks are being wiped out, a senior Treasury official said.
The article is written by DDay. “The Silicon Valley Bank Bailout Didn’t Need to Happen. The debate over protecting all deposits in a blink looks past the incompetence that got us here.” Buried in the fine print of the joint statement is something exciting. It states that “certain unsecured debtholders” and shareholders are not protected. Certain unsecured debtholders may likely apply to crypto-tainted accounts used to secure debt. The Fed has been anxious to get more involved with the rogue market. Will today’s Republican Congress let them?
The brightest minds in and around San Francisco Bay had an unadulterated meltdown over the weekend over the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. This was a failure that they themselves caused, mind you, engineering a digital flash bank run that forced SVB to realize heavy losses, mostly from interest rate hikes and the bank’s unbelievable failure to even attempt to manage interest rate risk.
The venture capitalist–led mob quickly moved on to another dire warning: Because over 90 percent of SVB’s depositors exceeded $250,000 in guaranteed FDIC insurance, the government must make them 100 percent whole, immediately, or every regional bank in America will see the same failure. Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman, venture capitalist David Sacks, and angel investor Jason Calacanis led the charge, saying that thousands of startup firms will have trouble making payroll, and other regionals won’t be able to stop a torrent of withdrawals. They essentially took out a match next to a gas pump and demanded that federal regulators not force them to light it.
It worked. Federal officials announced a backstop to “fully protect all depositors” at both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, which was also closed on Sunday. “Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13,” the joint announcement by Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC read. A special bank assessment will offset losses, they say; all shareholders and bondholders “will not be protected,” with senior management fired. A $25 billion fund has been initiated to protect deposits, even though the theory is that no taxpayer funds will be implicated.
Run on San Antonio’s City-Central Bank and Trust Company during the Depression, 1931
Have I ever mentioned how much I’d admire California Representative Katie Porter?
THE FIRST WORDS OUT OF THE MOUTH of Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) when I talked to her on Sunday were: “Can you believe we have to talk about this shit again?” She was referring to a conversation we had in 2018, when she was still just a financial expert and a candidate for Congress, about S.2155, which I call the Crapo bill, a reference to its co-author (Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo) and its underlying contents.
Some of these provisions don’t mitigate risk; they encourage it. For depository institutions with fiduciary responsibilities, it’s like giving Bourbon-drenched pecan pie to alcoholics. Remember when Bill Gates sold Tesla short? Anyone with an excellent eye for financial statement analysis can see this stuff coming. But wait, how do you explain that “KPMG Gave SVB, Signature Bank Clean Bill of Health Weeks Before Collapse. Accounting firm faces scrutiny for audits of failed banks“? This is from Jonathan Weil and WSJ.
Silicon Valley Bank failed just 14 days after KPMG LLP gave the lender a clean bill of health. Signature Bank went down 11 days after the accounting firm signed off on its audit.
What KPMG knew about the two banks’ financial situation and what it missed will likely be the subject of regulatory scrutiny and lawsuits.
KPMG signed the audit report for Silicon Valley Bank’s parent, SVB Financial Group SIVB 0.00%increase; green up pointing triangle, on Feb. 24. Regulators seized the bank on March 10 after a surge of withdrawals threatened to leave it short of cash.
“Common sense tells you that an auditor issuing a clean report, a clean bill of health, on the 16th-largest bank in the United States that within two weeks fails without any warning, is trouble for the auditor,” said Lynn Turner, who was chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1998 to 2001.
Two crucial facts for determining whether KPMG missed the banks’ problems are when the bank runs began in earnest and when the bank’s management and KPMG’s auditors became aware of the crisis.
This reminds me of Moody’s, which had no idea how to rate tranches of mortgage-based swaps and completely missed the boat on the Mortgage crisis in 2008. You may also remember Moody’s role during the Junk Bond Kings’ rule in the late ’80s. This was also a time of intense deregulation of the industry.
. Moody’s also missed this current one. “Moody’s Failed to Warn About Silicon Valley Bank’s Problems. The prestigious rating agency still gave the bank of startups an A rating until its collapse on March 10, repeating the same errors of the subprime crisis in 2008.” This is from The Street and Luc Olinga.
Fifteen years after the subprime mortgage crisis which devastated the global economy, rating agencies continue to make the same mistakes.
At least, this seems to be the case with the prestigious rating agency Moody’s Investors Service.
Regulators shut down California’s Silicon Valley Bank on March 10, after its US Treasury bets went awry, due to the interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve.
Consequently, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seized its assets and created a new entity, which will begin operating on March 13.
Created in 1983, Silicon Valley Bank, which presented itself as a “partner for the innovation economy,” offered higher interest rates on deposits than its larger rivals, to attract customers. The company then invested the clients’ money in long-dated Treasury bonds and mortgage bonds with strong returns.
Moody’s Gave Silicon Valley Bank an A Rating
This strategy had worked well in recent years. The bank’s deposits doubled to $102 billion at the end of 2020 from $49 billion in 2018. In 2021, deposits increased to $189.2 billion.
But everything turned upside down when the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates, which made existing bonds held by SVB less valuable. As a result, the bank had to sell the bonds at a discount to cover withdrawals from its customers. In selling these bond positions, SVB had to take a significant loss of $1.8 billion.
Due to this loss, SVB suddenly announced that it needed to raise additional capital of $2.25 billion, by issuing new common and convertible preferred shares. This decision caused panic and a run on the bank.
While investors saw nothing coming, this is also the case with Moody’s Investors Service, whose role is to assess the intrinsic value of a company and its ability to meet its obligations, including its ability to pay lenders back. Rating agencies must flag the financial risks associated with a company.
But everything turned upside down when the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates, which made existing bonds held by SVB less valuable. As a result, the bank had to sell the bonds at a discount to cover withdrawals from its customers. In selling these bond positions, SVB had to take a significant loss of $1.8 billion.
Due to this loss, SVB suddenly announced that it needed to raise additional capital of $2.25 billion, by issuing new common and convertible preferred shares. This decision caused panic and a run on the bank.
While investors saw nothing coming, this is also the case with Moody’s Investors Service, whose role is to assess the intrinsic value of a company and its ability to meet its obligations, including its ability to pay lenders back. Rating agencies must flag the financial risks associated with a company.
American Union Bank, New York City. April 26, 1932.
I’ve lived through a banking crisis in charge of strategic planning and financial statement forecasting for one of the original too big to fail Savings and Loan Companies in the early 1980s. I was also trying to hedge our loan commitments using GNMA futures which is why Derivatives are real to me. Any time interest rates start moving in the wrong direction and any bank that hasn’t realigned their related risks, like being long on one side of the balance sheet and short on the other, you’ll lose big.
I had to tell the head of Financial Operations there was no way to break even when every rate marks an asset to market with every tick, and you’re mismatched. I was barely 25 at the time. I also saw loan brokers selling mortgages where due diligence was lacking in 2005. A student told me he was being offered a mortgage based on his student loan as income. I can’t imagine any in-house loan officer being that ignorant. That’s what happens when you farm out your core business ou to salespeople earning money by volume. I can’t imagine how Moody’s or major Auditing firms keep missing this. They’re probably as captured by their customers as the politicians are captured by their lobbyists and checks. Right Senator Sinema?
James Stewart and Donna Reed in a scene from the film ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, 1946. (Photo by RKO Radio Picture/Getty Images)
So, these bank runs don’t exactly look like the ones in those black-and-white photographs from the 1930s. This is a good explanation from Fast Company. What exactly is a Digital Flash Bank Run? It’s not a DC comic. Silicon Valley Bank: An ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ bank run for the digital age. The downfall of the Valley institution, which has been called “the backbone of the startup economy,” was caused by a good old-fashioned bank run, but one that ran at internet speed.”
The run began on Thursday, after a powerful Silicon Valley VC—Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund—had begun advising its portfolio companies to withdraw their money from SVB, sources told Fast Company. Other VCs soon caught wind of the advisory and began advising their own portfolio companies to withdraw funds from SVB, the people said. As the withdrawals accelerated, the bank began taking steps to stem the tide and preserve its solvency—just like George Bailey did in the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life.
SVB Financial Group CEO Greg Becker seemed to be reading from director Frank Capra’s script when he uttered the fateful words “stay calm” during a Thursday conference call with customers, as fears over the bank’s solvency grew. Those words probably only increased depositors’ anxieties. And the withdrawals likely continued to snowball.
“The whole thing was predicated on a few folks who put out calls to make withdrawals,” Spencer Greene, a general partner at the venture fund TSVC, tells Fast Company. “I think the folks who made those calls weren’t correct on the facts, but once the thing got going it was hard to stop.” In other words, before the run started there was not sufficient evidence to suggest the bank was facing serious solvency issues.
Northern Rock Bank run, September 2007
Just another point, we knew these things could happen. Here’s a 2019 article speculating about a digital bank flash run by Joe McGrath, writing for The Raconteur. “Turmoil, panic and bank runs in a digital future.”
Potentially, cash can now be transferred from accounts in greater amounts, more quickly than before and, even if banks enforce temporary limits on online withdrawals, what effect would the resulting panic have on the banking system as a whole?
“In a world without physical cash, the rules of engagement for situations such as a bank run will require a different framework,” says Simon Fairbairn, director of solution development, western Europe, for Ingenico Group. “The rules and systems of today will need to evolve to accommodate the demands of a run.”
Mr Fairbairn questions whether present digital banking infrastructure is sufficient to cope with sustained pressure of this nature. “Regulation, compliance, technology; processes have all evolved to try and prevent the sins of the past, but until tested, can we really be sure it won’t already be found wanting,” he says.
It may sound like scaremongering, but Mr Fairbairn’s cautious view has broad support from many in the financial services community.
“A digital bank run in a hypothetical future would be much more dangerous as it would happen in seconds and minutes when clients could simply use mobile banking apps to transfer money to another account,” says Susanne Chishti, chief executive of Fintech Circle.
“Such a digital bank run would be much more difficult to contain and an appropriate technical response for such a scenario would have to be coded in at the outset to offer any chance of being effective.”
In 2020, Harvest Finance experienced the first type of digital bank run. “Harvest Finance: $24M Attack Triggers $570M ‘Bank Run’ in Latest DeFi Exploit, Harvest Finance has seen its total value locked drop by more than $500 million in the 12 hours since being hit by a flash loan attack.” DeFi is short for Decentralized Finance, which is based on peer-to-peer finance services on blockchains. Welcome to the Wild West World of cryptocurrency and bitcoins. This should give you pause.
An arbitrage trade exploiting weak points in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Harvest Finance led to some $24 million in stablecoins being siphoned away from the project’s pools on Monday, according to CoinGecko.
According to reports, an attacker used a flash loan – a technique that allows a trader to take on massive leverage without any downside – to manipulate DeFi prices for profit. The exploit sent the platform’s native token, FARM, tumbling by 65% in less than an hour, followed by the project’s total value locked (TVL), which dropped from over $1 billion before the exploit to $430 million as of press time.
The funds were eventually swapped for bitcoin (BTC), but not before being swept through Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash.
The jargon term for this was a “bad harvest.” Stay out of this stuff is the only thing I have to say, which is the advice I would have given to these banks. Unfortunately, Silicon Valley is rife with Elon Musk Clones taking risks for adventure and attention. All traders have their own language. I’m still surprised youngest daughter can keep her department of derivatives traders and products on a leash. They’ve always thought of themselves as Wild West Cowboys. (See Lions of Wall Street.) But then, she and the brokerage firms she’s worked for are licensed and babysat by the SEC to keep the nonsense in check. We both stay out of this market.
So, a part of this and a bit more will be a lecture for me tomorrow. Last year the Game Stop thing did this to me. You’ll be glad to know billionaire Carl Icahn is happy about that crash. Someone always is because there are two sides to every trade. If you’re head’s spinning, you’re doing just fine. I got a Ph.D. and real-life experience in the stuff, plus a daughter that lives it daily and who I consult for a reality check. It still makes my head spin.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
And the SEC is far behind
Down in the swamp with the gators and flamingos
A long way from Liechtenstein
I’m a junk bond king playing Seminole Bingo
And my Wall Street wiles
Don’t help me even slightly
‘Cause I never have the numbers
And I’m losing nightly
I cashed in the last of my Triple B bonds
Got a double-wide on the Tamiami Trail
I parked it right outside the reservation
Fifteen minutes from the Collier County Jail
(Warren Zevon, backed up by Neil Young live)
Finally Friday Reads
Posted: March 10, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: afternoon reads, child brides, Child Predators, Frozen Embryos, Republican Hypocrisy 42 Comments
Claude Monet – Flowering Pear Tree, 1885
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’ve been appalled recently by the number of arrests of sexual predators of children down here and in surrounding states that are attached to churches as either Pastors or Youth Ministers. There has also been appalling news about the social media behavior of the Lt. Governor of Tennessee and the resurrection of a child marriage bill in the West Virginia Senate. You get a pretty clear picture of who the child predators are in this country if you do any research in the area.
My trip down this nasty rabbit hole started with a local story in the parish just east of me, as reported by our local NBC affiliate WDSU here in New Orleans. “Louisiana State Police: St. Bernard Parish pastor arrested, accused of carnal knowledge and sexual battery. Louisiana State Police: St. Bernard Parish pastor arrested, accused of carnal knowledge and sexual battery.”
Quickly after that, a friend posted this arrest from Texas. “Former Leon County teacher, youth pastor indicted on child sex crimes. The Leon County Sheriff’s Department said Gary Buckaloo surrendered to authorities Monday after being indicted on two felonies.” This is from the CBS affiliate in Bryan, Texas, KBTX. I’m not sure, but we could change an old adage to say it is spring, and a dirty old white man pastor thinks of assaulting the innocent lambs in his flock. I’m not going to go into the details at the link. They’re tiredly the same we see all the time. In both instances, the police are looking for more victims.
Almond Tree in Blossom
Vincent van Gogh
Date: 1888; Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France
The third article was placed on my Facebook thread by another Hillary pal. This news piece on the GLBT-hating LT Governor of Tennessee disabused me of thinking I’d seen it all. Many studies have shown the highest levels of porn abuse are down south in the bible belt. This study was reported in 2015, and I’m pretty sure it still stands as valid. According to data released by Pornhub, 5.6% of porn users in Mississippi seek out gay porn, compared to 2.8% in North Dakota. You can see the distribution of porn abuse on a map at the link.
But, back to Tennessee, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R). This is from The Daily Beast. “Anti-Drag Tennessee Lt. Guv Really Loves This LGBTQ Man’s Thirst Traps.” It’s reported by Bill Sommer. The pictures and comments accompanying the article are explicit.
As one of the top politicians in deep-red Tennessee, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R) has joined the anti-LGBTQ+ wave sweeping the Republican Party. With McNally as the head of the state Senate, Tennessee passed bills earlier this year banning transgender children from receiving gender-affirming care and outlawing drag performances from many public spaces.
But on Instagram, McNally takes a more encouraging tone towards at least one LGBTQ youth—leaving heart emojis and other compliments on raunchy photos of an aspiring 20-year-old Tennessee performer, including one close-up shot of the man’s butt.
McNally’s Instagram comments, which were first reported by digital news site The Tennessee Holler, were left on the page of Knoxville native Franklyn McClur.
In November, for example, McClur posted an entirely nude picture that only narrowly avoided showing his penis.
“Great picture, Finn!” McNally commented, referencing McClur’s nickname. “Best wishes for continued health and happiness.
Today, Nashville’s News Channel 5 reports, “‘I’m really, really sorry.’ Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally apologizes after uproar over social media posts.” I am not a prude about any form of sexuality that involves consenting adults. Like many women, I have conflicting thoughts on the porn industry, which I feel no need to explore here. I’m focused solely on the exploitation, the hypocrisy, and mostly the damage done to children. This guy is a world-class hypocrit.
Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, in an exclusive interview Thursday, apologized after the uproar over his interactions with provocative posts on social media, while insisting that his intentions have been misconstrued.
“I’m really, really sorry if I’ve embarrassed my family, embarrassed my friends, embarrassed any of the members of the legislature with the posts,” McNally told NewsChannel 5 Investigates. “It was not my intent to [embarrass them] and not my intent to hurt them.”
The 79-year-old East Tennessee Republican — who has presided over a legislative session defined by bills outlawing drag shows in public places and targeting gender care for the trans community — found himself facing accusations of hypocrisy after a progressive site, the Tennessee Holler, unearthed his social media interactions with a 20-year-old gay model.
Among them: provocative Instagram posts that were liked by McNally from his official account, including one where the young man doesn’t appear to be wearing clothes.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked McNally, “When people see these posts, what should they take away from them?”
“Well,” he answered, “I don’t know that they should take away a whole lot.”
In the interview, McNally described how he befriended the young man, first on Facebook, then on Instagram.
Among the posts: a close-up of the young man’s underwear-covered backside.
McNally responded with three red hearts and three “on-fire” emojis, along with the comment: “Finn, you can turn a rainy day into rainbows and sunshine.”
The lieutenant governor’s explanation?
“It’s that, you know, I, you know, try to encourage people with posts and try to, you know, help them if I can,” McNally said.
Flowering Peach Tree, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888
There’s more of the interview at the link. Today, I also tripped across this news from the AP. “Child marriage ban bill resurrected in West Virginia Senate by John Raby.
A bill to prohibit minors from getting married in West Virginia was resurrected in the state Senate on Thursday, a day after its defeat in a committee.
The about-face didn’t necessarily give the bill a clear path to passage. Several senators gave impassioned speeches after the bill was brought back, some of whom defended the right of teenagers in love to marry.
The House of Delegates passed the bill last week. The Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly rejected it Wednesday night without debate. Republican Sen. Charles Trump of Morgan County, a committee member, made a motion that was adopted by the full Senate Thursday to withdraw the bill from the committee and give it a second reading. It will be up for a final reading Friday, and the Senate will have the right to amend the bill.
Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.
The bill’s main sponsor, Democratic Del. Kayla Young of Kanawha County, has said that since 2000 there have been more than 3,600 marriages in the state involving one or more children.
Cabell County Democratic Sen. Mike Woelfel, an attorney, said he represented a girl who got both married and divorced when she was in the eighth grade. Woelfel said he was concerned about older men who court young girls “and the next thing you know, some young girl has convinced her parents to let her get married.”
The Park 1910 by Gustav Klimt
They should change the law, which basically legalizes instances of statutory rape. But then, women and children are chattel? How about this one shared with me by JJ? This is from the Washington Post. “Judge uses a slavery law to rule frozen embryos are property.” This was reported by Matthew Barakat from the AP.
Frozen human embryos can legally be considered property, or “chattel,” a Virginia judge has ruled, basing his decision in part on a 19th century law governing the treatment of slaves.
The preliminary opinion by Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Richard Gardiner – delivered in a long-running dispute between a divorced husband and wife – is being criticized by some for wrongly and unnecessarily delving into a time in Virginia history when it was legally permissible to own human beings.
“It’s repulsive and it’s morally repugnant,” said Susan Crockin, a lawyer and scholar at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics and an expert in reproductive technology law.
Solomon Ashby, president of the Old Dominion Bar Association, a professional organization made up primarily of African American lawyers, called Gardiner’s ruling troubling.
“I would like to think that the bench and the bar would be seeking more modern precedent,” he said.
Gardiner did not return a call to his chambers Wednesday. His decision, issued last month, is not final: He has not yet ruled on other arguments in the case involving Honeyhline and Jason Heidemann, a divorced couple fighting over two frozen embryos that remain in storage.
Honeyhline Heidemann, 45, wants to use the embryos. Jason Heidemann objects.
Initially, Gardiner sided with Jason Heidemann. The law at the heart of the case governs how to divide “goods and chattels.” The judge ruled that because embryos could not be bought or sold, they couldn’t be considered as such and therefore Honeyhline Heidemann had no recourse under that law to claim custody of them.
But after the ex-wife’s lawyer, Adam Kronfeld, asked the judge to reconsider, Gardiner conducted a deep dive into the history of the law. He found that before the Civil War, it also applied to slaves. The judge then researched old rulings that governed custody disputes involving slaves, and said he found parallels that forced him to reconsider whether the law should apply to embryos.
Country Garden with Crucifix, 1911 by Gustav Klimt
Many cases involving Trump are moving through the courts. Yesterday, we read about the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels for her silence. The New York Times continues to report that “Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely. The former president was told that he could appear before a Manhattan grand jury next week if he wishes to testify, a strong indication that an indictment could soon follow.” Interesting comments from lawyers in the know have inkled that Trump should beware the Ides of March to press members.
We now have another finding in the Trump Sexual Assault Case. This analysis is from Law and Crime. “Jury can see ‘Access Hollywood’ tape in E. Jean Carroll’s rape case against Trump, federal judge rules.” It’s written by Adam Klasfeld.
Former President Donald Trump cannot keep E. Jean Carroll from showing a jury the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that nearly derailed his 2016 campaign in a lawsuit accusing him of rape, a federal judge ruled.
“In this case, a jury reasonably could find, even from the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape alone, that Mr. Trump admitted in the Access Hollywood tape that he in fact has had contact with women’s genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so,” Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in a 23-page memorandum opinion.
Carroll has filed two lawsuits against the former president: one accusing him of defaming her in responding to her sexual assault allegations by telling reporters “she’s not my type,” and another confronting the sexual battery allegations directly under New York’s recently passed Adult Survivors Act.
In the mid-1990s, Carroll claims, Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman. Trial on the allegations is slated for April.
As the parties prepare their cases for a jury, Kaplan issued a ruling hashing out what evidence they can see and hear. Trump has argued that the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he can be heard boasting to Billy Bush about grabbing women “by the p—-,” is inadmissible propensity evidence.
We should be far enough along in civilization to stop thinking boys will be boys and to stop projecting our bad behavior on others. These things are clearly issues because the patriarchy wants them. The louder a group of white christianist men scream about bad behavior, the more likely they are perpetrators.
Sorry for the Triggering Topic today, but sometimes a dark rabbit hole needs some light.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: Some Cherry Reads
Posted: March 6, 2023 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Afternoon Reads, Right Wing Angst | Tags: Cherry Blossom Festival, Culture Wars, DOJ Investigation January 6, Sakura, The Salty Tears of CPAC 9 Comments
Hana no Yube or Flowers (Image of Evening) was made in 1938 by Funada Gyokuju. The power of this sizeable folding screen painting is in the scale of the cherry blossom tree.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
So far, things are going well here at the KatHouse. Keeley has not had a seizure since last Monday and is resigned to her pill regime. I hope we can continue on this path!
I’m sharing some Japanese paintings and block prints of the upcoming Cherry Blossom Season. My late mother-in-law was born and raised in Kyoto during World War 2. The season is vital to Japan and Washington D.C., where everyone recognizes the beautiful sakura blooming on the mall. I love it because it always starts on the Spring Equinox, which occurred the day Doctor Daughter was born. It starts on March 20 this year, and it’s another Monday, so I may give you some more Sakura artwork.
Our National Cherry Blossom Festival and the trees were a gift from Japan. It’s certainly good they’re located in the National Mall, part of our National Park System. The last glum lady in the White House didn’t do positive things to the gardens there. The First Lady that helped plant these trees was Helen Herron Taft.
The National Cherry Blossom Festival, an annual spring celebration in the capital, commemorates the gift of 3,020 Japanese cherry trees given by former Toyko Mayor Yukio Ozaki to the U.S. in 1912, which were planted in Washington, D.C.
The Sakura tree does not actually produce cherries. They give us these brilliant pink blossoms when we need to remove the winter darkness from our national psyche. So, that’s one symbol of rebirth we can enjoy coming from Washington, D.C. I’m keeping that in mind as I read the news today.
Erik Wemple–reporting for the New York Times–has an exciting Op-Ed today on Faux News and the Dominion Law Suit. “What is Fox News hiding in the Dominion lawsuit?”
Yet the filing is filled with frustrating dead ends, the result of the network’s aggressive effort to prevent disclosure of many of the internal communications that came out of discovery in the case, Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News. The black passages in the document raise the questions: What is Fox News hiding? And will those passages ever be unredacted?
As the Dominion filing makes clear, Fox News executives panicked in the weeks after the November 2020 presidential election. The network had called Arizona on election night for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, a move regarded as treason by the network’s MAGA crowd, which declared viewers would flee to the competition, especially conservative cable news outlet Newsmax.
So, Fox News tried playing both sides — a little conspiracy-mongering here, a little factual injection there. Anything to hang on to its ratings preeminence.
One way the network competed with Newsmax was to host election-denying attorney Sidney Powell and her extravagant claims. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, who appeared multiple times in the Dominion filing, apparently commented on the situation, though the public, for now, doesn’t have the goods:
Impenetrable black expanses in the filing thwart a complete understanding of what was happening as Fox News faced down a ratings collapse. We do know what happened when White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a stolen election claim made by Trump: Host Tucker Carlson advocated for her firing. Similar tensions arose when anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a news conference at which Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, was inveighing against the election. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cavuto said on air. “She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.”
Sakura, © Meiji Hashimoto, Sakura, 1970s
Pictures of the redacted bits and more examples are included in the media critic’s take at the link. David Folkenflik at NPR has this piece today. “Fox News stands in legal peril. It says defamation loss would harm all media”. Faux is uniquely a propaganda outlet. I’m not sure its demise will be significant for other media other than to create more room to breathe. Can you imagine not having to offset the Fox Lies daily? An entire group of comedians may become unemployed, but that’s like Faux, which is a self-serving entertainment and propaganda outlet.
Outside legal observers say the Fox News Channel finds itself in real legal jeopardy in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by an election tech company over lies broadcast about the 2020 presidential race.
The amount and weight of evidence is perhaps without equal among other major, recent defamation cases.
“How often do you get ‘smoking gun’ emails that show, first, that persons responsible for the editorial content knew that the accusation was false, and also convincing emails that show the reason Fox reported this was for its own mercenary interests?” says Rutgers University law professor Ronald Chen, an authority on constitutional and media law.
Fox News has endured one humiliation after another from the rolling revelations in the case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Private communications made public in legal filings demonstrate the network’s producers, stars and executives — even controlling owner Rupert Murdoch — knew the claims they were broadcasting were false, and at times unhinged. A trial in the case is slated for next month.
Fox’s legal team is grounding much of its defense in a claim that it was merely reporting allegations by the most newsworthy public official of all, then-President Donald Trump.
“We err on the side of speech because the more and more speech you have, the better chance of having people actually getting the opportunity to point out what’s right and what’s wrong,” attorney Erin Murphy, one of the senior figures on Fox’s defense team, tells NPR in an interview. “And that’s why we don’t suppress the speech that we don’t think is right.”
A loss for Fox would make it harder for all journalists to serve the public, she says.
“At the end of the day, it’s going to hinder the ultimate objective of the First Amendment, of getting to the truth,” Murphy argues.
The case may serve as a test for the elasticity of that argument.
Cherry Blossom Flurry, 1903, Kayburagi Kiyokata. The Smithsonian.
It also tests the elasticity of calling nearly anyone at Faux an actual reporter rather than a propaganda spewer or hate-mongering shouter of conspiracy theories. I suppose I should be more excited about the possibility of a less Trumpy network and Republican Party, but those waiting in the right wing are just as, if not more, scary. It’s also still well-funded by freak families like the Mercers. They die off and come back like Koch zombies.
Here’s Tim Miller of The Bulwark writing on what used to be the influential CPAC event. “CPAC: Taste the Sadness. Go ahead and laugh. They deserve it.”
As I pulled into Matt Schlapp’s preferred Gaylord Hotel in suburban Washington for the latest rendition of CPAC, ghosts of past selves flashed through my head. I remembered 2015, my last time at the gathering. It was an early inflection point in Jeb!’s campaign. As Bush was interviewed on stage by an obsequious Sean Hannity, a Revolutionary War cosplayer in a tricorne hat led a walkout. I was backstage managing an impending Breitbart News story about how Jeb’s new spokesman (moi) and campaign manager were hostile to homophobes.
It’s been quite the journey since then.
For all the familiar flashbacks, this year’s CPAC felt . . . different and a little sad. You might even say, low energy. Rick Wilson put it well on Charlie’s podcast this weekend, comparing the event to a “collapsing neutron star . . . it’s smaller. It’s hotter. It’s more intensely crazy.” A reporter at the event had a different sad-sack metaphor, describing the energy in the building as “what it feels like when the Apple Store leaves a dying mall.”
It’s funny, in a laugh-out-loud sort of way. Because we’re not laughing with CPAC. We’re laughing at it. But cheap laughs aside, there are some consequential questions about CPAC’s decline.
What does it signal for the direction of conservative politics and for the belle of the ball, Donald Trump? Were the ballrooms barren because some of the faithful decided to at long last change the channel from the Trump show? Or did they just figure they didn’t want to contribute to the legal defense fund of a dude who pummeled another dude’s dick against his will (allegedly).
Or is the reality simply that the entire Republican party is CPAC now, so there’s no real need for it anymore? Especially when there’s a younger, more dynamic offering for culture warriors looking for fellowship in Turning Point USA?
It’s probably a bit of each. What we do know is that Trump won the straw poll, again, with Tiny D finishing a distant second. But whether that matters . . . whether it’s a precursor of primaries to come or more of a Fat Elvis-meets-Ron Paul demonstration of fading niche power is something we can speculate about, but won’t actuallyknow until next year’s CPAC.
Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869); 1859-1861; colour woodcut; RV-1353-290a
High-ranking prostitute parading under cherry blossoms
Another piece at the Washington Post has totally given me a bad case of the sads as a former History teacher at public schools. “‘Slavery was wrong’ and 5 other things some educators won’t teach anymore. To mollify parents and obey new state laws, teachers are cutting all sorts of lessons.” This is written by Hannah Natanson.
Excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Passages from Christopher Columbus’s journal describing his brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples. A data set on the New York Police Department’s use of force, analyzed by race.
These are among the items teachers have nixed from their lesson plans this school year and last, as they face pressure from parents worried about political indoctrination and administrators wary of controversy, as well as a spate of new state laws restricting education on race, gender and LGBTQ issues.
“I felt very bleak,” said Lisa Childers, an Arkansas teacher who was forced by an assistant principal, for reasons never stated, into yanking Wollstonecraft’s famous 1792 polemic from her high school English class in 2021.
The quiet censorship comes as debates over whether and how to instruct children about race, racism, U.S. history, gender identity and sexuality inflame politics and consume the nation. These fights, which have already generated at least 64 state laws reshaping what children can learn and do at school, are likely to intensify ahead of the 2024 presidential election. At the same time, an ascendant parents’ rights movement born of the pandemic is seeking — and winning — greater control over how schools select, evaluate and offer children access to both classroom lessons and library books.
In response, teachers are changing how they teach.
A study published by the Rand Corp. in January found that nearly one-quarter of a nationally representative sample of 8,000 English, math and science teachers reported revising their instructional materials to limit or eliminate discussions of race and gender. Educators most commonly blamed parents and families for the shift, according to the Rand study.
The piece continues with a list of how 20 educators nationwide have changed and eliminated teaching “certain” subjects. Jose Pagliery writes this in today’s The Daily Beast. “How a New DOJ Memo Sets Up Two Potential Trump Indictments. What seemed like a narrow decision could have far-reaching implications.”
When the Department of Justice took the position this week that former President Donald Trump acted improperly by urging his followers to attack Congress in 2021, prosecutors did more than open the door to a potential flood of civil lawsuits from police officers who were injured on Jan. 6.
What they actually did, according to legal scholars, is lay the groundwork for a potential criminal indictment against Trump for inciting the insurrection.
“If they took the position that the president was absolutely immune, then they wouldn’t be able to bring a criminal prosecution,” said one person familiar with the DOJ’s ongoing investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Legal scholars have come to the same conclusion.
“Had DOJ concluded that incitement unprotected by the First Amendment could nevertheless be within the president’s official functions, that could conceivably have impacted criminal charging decisions related to the same speech,” said Mary B. McCord, a former federal prosecutor now teaching at Georgetown University Law Center.
At the behest of the District of Columbia’s federal appellate court, the DOJ last week submitted a legal memo weighing in on a civil dispute by injured police officers. The department clarified that Trump’s speech, full of vitriol and fury, was not protected by presidential immunity, nor was it protected by his own free speech rights under the First Amendment.
“Such incitement of imminent private violence would not be within the outer perimeter of the Office of the President of the United States,” the DOJ wrote.
The department went out of its way to say it doesn’t necessarily support officer lawsuits against Trump, noting that it “expresses no view on that conclusion, or on the truth of the allegations in plaintiffs’ complaints.” But by making clear that Trump’s speech was outside the norms of his office, it stripped the former president of virtually any defense he could make.
“If they’re saying it’s outside the scope of immunity of civil suits, and outside the scope of protected speech, there really isn’t anything else out there protecting Trump,” said one attorney, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid rattling DOJ leadership.
The two indictments Trump could face are for his incitement of the Jan. 6 riot—a federal crime—and his attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia, a state case there.
So far, the Justice Department has not indicated its legal analysis of the looming federal case against Trump, which concerns the effort his campaign led to undermine the electoral vote by Congress. However, its new legal memo draws a clear red line on his actions during the lead up to the actual attack on Congress.
Now, I’m contemplating the difference between the rebirth of life in spring and unwanted zombies in your Government and Media. Well, that will be another rabbit hole for me to enter, and rabbits are an elemental totem of spring.
Have yourselves a good, peaceful week, and start looking for the signs of spring!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
And don’t laugh, but I can actually play Sakura on the koto. It’s like the first thing kids learn!
Finally Friday Reads: Republican Freak Show Edition
Posted: March 3, 2023 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, republican craycray 10 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’ve gotten some of the tests results back on Keely Kitty. She doesn’t have any viruses, and she’s slightly anemic. The vet thinks she has some inflammation somewhere in her brain of undetermined cause. She’s on phenobarbital and doing better taking her pill from me. She’s getting some chicken-flavored anti-inflammatory liquid that will serve as her nightcap. They’re compounding it now. She hasn’t had a seizure since the two she had on Monday, so we’re taking this as a good sign. A few more blood tests coming, and then we’ll see what happens next. At least I can sleep through the night, making me not so churlish.
CPAC is incredibly gross this year, as it appears to be a parade of perverts and insane people. Attendance is sparse and CBS reports that many usual suspects have stayed home. It appears that most folks in attendance are Trump Dead-Enders. Writing about this is going to require a post-blog shower. The elected officials that came are all pretty gross. Trump’s former Vice President is one noticeable MIA. The tweet below has more names.
This is from US News and World Report. “Trump Set to Headline Diminished Gathering of Conservatives. The annual Conservative Political Action Conference was once one of the premier gatherings on the GOP campaign calendar.”
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference was once one of the premier gatherings on the GOP campaign calendar — a must-stop for serious contenders testing the waters on presidential runs.
No longer.
Many of the party’s best-known likely candidates — from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to former Vice President Mike Pence — are skipping the marquee event kicking off Wednesday as the group grapples with controversy and questions over its place in a movement that remains deeply split over its allegiance to former President Donald Trump.
Adding to the turmoil: A lawsuit filed by an unnamed Republican campaign staffer against Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the conference. The suit accuses Schlapp of groping the staffer during a car ride in Georgia before the November election.
Schlapp, who has denied the staffer’s account, did not address the allegations against him as CPAC programming began Thursday, but did make a nod to the notable absences.
The media is not ignoring the sexual battery charges facing Schlapp. The Guardian has some analysis at the link. However, the main stage show is the worst of the worst of the Republican Congressional baboons.
I will change topics to several interesting reads at various Substack blogs. It helps to get out of the mainstream media, which will cover a group of tin hat crazies in detail but ignore serious news.
First up, from America, America, “The Recklessness of Rupert Murdoch. The Fox owner knew Donald Trump was lying and chose ratings over responsibility. What will it take to stop the dangerous propaganda?” This is the Substack of Steven Beschloss.
Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham (to name just three) continue to spew their poison into the political bloodstream, despite their knowledge that they are feeding their millions of viewers lies.
Keep in mind Carlson’s texted response to Hannity after learning that a Fox reporter had fact-checked Trump’s election lies: “Please get her fired. Seriously What the fuck? I’m actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down.” We have no reason to assume they’re going to change their money-obsessed tune without the demand of their ultimate boss, who still has shown no sign of stemming the pollution.
How about $12 billion or $14 billion?
“What should the consequences be when Fox News executives knowingly allow lies to be broadcast?” Dominion lawyers asked Rupert in their deposition, parts of which were made public on Monday.
“They should be reprimanded,” Murdoch replied. “They should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.”
Dominion: “You are aware now that Fox did more than simply host these guests and give them a platform; correct?”
Murdoch: “I think you’ve shown me some material in support of that.”
Yet, asked about Fox endorsing Trump’s lies, he was quick to differentiate Fox the corporation from its “commentators.”
Dominion: “In fact, you are now aware that Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election?”
Murdoch: “Not Fox. No. Not Fox.”
Murdoch was asked about hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity.
Dominion: “All were in that document; correct?”
Murdoch: “Yes, they were.”
Dominion: “About Fox endorsing the narrative of a stolen election; correct?”
Murdoch: “No. Some of our commentators were endorsing it.”
Dominion: “About their endorsement of a stolen election?”
Murdoch: “Yes. They endorsed.”
Asked his own opinion, Fox’s owner didn’t hesitate admitting the facts. “Oh, yes,” he replied when asked if he “seriously doubted” any claim of massive election fraud. From the beginning? “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up. I think that was shown when we announced Arizona.” He even acknowledged in the deposition that some of Trump’s election lies were “bullshit and damaging.”
I will say that the CPAC circus of perverted clowns certainly draws attention away from these topics that we should be following closely. I want to point out another story that should have some huge legs. This is from Murray Waas’ Rule of Law. “EXCLUSIVE: After he left office, Donald Trump ordered his chief of staff to leak classified information to the press about an FBI agent and other adversaries. Experts believe that may be a felony. The ex-president may now face even greater legal jeopardy than previously known.”
Months after he had left office, former president Donald Trump, directed his former chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows to leak highly classified government records regarding Peter Strzok, the former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, to the press. In the final days of Trump’s presidency, Meadows had removed the classified files from the White House, which Trump and Meadows believed would discredit Strzok.
The explosive ramifications of such a knowing and willful leak of classified information by Trump, or by someone on his behalf, at his direction, after he left office, is that Trump would have potentially committed a felony.
As president, Trump enjoyed a virtually absolute and unfettered constitutional authority to declassify virtually almost any government secrets he so wished. But once gone from office, Trump no longer had any legal authority or power beyond that of an ordinary citizen to declassify government papers or; much less leak classified records. Any provision of classified information at that time would be a crime.
Brad Moss, an attorney specializing in national security law, explained to me: “Anything Trump had in his possession that was still classified and that he gave to a reporter or anyone else unauthorized to receive it, after 12:01 pm on January 21, 2021, was unlawful as a legal matter.”
Richard Immerman, an Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence during the George W. Bush administration told me: “Once a president’s tenure in office has ended, he or she has no authority to declassify documents. If he does, he’s breaking the law.”
This new issue arises just as special counsel Jack Smith is already conducting a federal criminal investigation to determine whether Trump broke the law by taking hundreds of pages of other classified papers from the White House to his home in Mar-a-Largo when his presidency was over. The Justice Department has also previously alleged in federal court that Trump “likely concealed and removed” classified documents from one place he was keeping them, to another less likely place where they would be found by federal prosecutors and the FBI, with a purpose to “obstruct” their investigation. Smith has also taken charge of the investigation of whether Trump obstructed justice.
As I have previously reported, Smith has questioned a small number of witnesses about Trump’s and Meadows’ mishandling of classified documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. But the issue does not appear, at least for now, to be a major focus for the special counsel.
There’s plenty out there to wade through, but we must know what the folks are selling their cult. I’d still say following News on DeSantis and what he’s trying in Florida is more important than the Trump Rumpers, even though they are in Congress. Here are more samples of why. Both BB and I are committed to keeping up with his fascist governance. This is from the Washington Post. “DeSantis cannonballs into America’s deep blue states for war on ‘woke’ ahead of 2024. The Florida governor has used his trips to highlight his state’s accomplishments — citing statistics that sometimes mask far more complicated debates.” This is reported by Maeve Reston and Hannah Knowles.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has found a comfort zone as he moves closer to launching a campaign for president: America’s bluest states, where he is brawling with liberal governors and mingling with donors as he tiptoes around a direct conflict with Donald Trump.
DeSantis will travel this weekend to California, where the Republican has already drawn the renewed ire of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frequent critic taunting him ahead of his visit. “Welcome to the real freedom state,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement to The Washington Post, predicting his GOP counterpart is “going to get smoked by Trump” in the Republican primary. DeSantis aides did not respond to a request for comment.
DeSantis has used his blue state trips to contrast them with Florida — using statistics that sometimes mask far more complicated debates — and present himself as a combatant against the “woke” left. The arguments he has advanced serve as a foundation for the presidential campaign many expect him to launch later this year, though DeSantis has not said publicly if he is running.
So, this stuff, like everything BB shared with us yesterday, is disturbing and the wet dreams of authoritarians. I’m reading and watching the news as much as possible, but it’s a hard job.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Serious Farce Edition
Posted: February 23, 2023 Filed under: American Fascists | Tags: Crooked Donald Trump, Morning reads, Ohio Train derailments, Ron DeSantis, White Christian Nationalism 29 Comments
The Studio Boat (Le Bateau-atelier),Claude Monet,1876
Good Day Sky Dancers!
BB and I switched days this week so she can deal with inspectors in her apartment building, and I can take Keely to the vet tomorrow. So, I’m the one that gets to laugh with you–and at Trump–about his trip to Ohio, where he thinks a few cases of his Trump-branded water will look as Presidential as Biden going to Ukraine and standing firm with air raid sirens sounding. This is especially true since his concessions to remove railroad safety standards led to the disaster and poisoned local water source. Trump’s trot to East Palestine, Ohio, spotlighted how seriously deluded his supporters are and how his policies have turned the country into a backward cesspool.
Who on earth could think that visiting a diaster you created compares to a Presidential visit to a warzone where war crimes and active missile and drone attacks are aimed at civilian targets? Are Trump supporters really that stupid? This is from the New York Times. “Trump Visits East Palestine, Seeking to Draw Contrast With Biden. The former president has attacked the administration’s handling of the train derailment, even as his own environmental policies while in office have been criticized.” His crowd was mostly wipipo, so he felt no need to toss water bottles at them.
It was evocative of the former president’s time in office: an at-times meandering address, punctated by self-promotion — his brand-name Trump Water — and an undercurrent of grievance.
But as he visited the small Ohio town of East Palestine on Wednesday, former President Donald J. Trump sought to hammer home a message just by showing up — that his successor and the man he’s seeking to replace, President Biden, had been ineffective in responding to a domestic crisis after a train derailed and spewed toxic chemicals early this month.
Mr. Trump had arrived on the ground before either Mr. Biden or the transportation secretary to a train derailment many Republicans have turned into a referendum on a lack of federal concern with the needs of red-state America.
At an East Palestine firehouse where he met first-responders and local elected officials, Mr. Trump, in remarks behind a lectern, said that “what this community needs now are not excuses and all of the other things you’ve been hearing, but answers and results.”
It was evocative of the former president’s time in office: an at-times meandering address, punctated by self-promotion — his brand-name Trump Water — and an undercurrent of grievance.
But as he visited the small Ohio town of East Palestine on Wednesday, former President Donald J. Trump sought to hammer home a message just by showing up — that his successor and the man he’s seeking to replace, President Biden, had been ineffective in responding to a domestic crisis after a train derailed and spewed toxic chemicals early this month.
Mr. Trump had arrived on the ground before either Mr. Biden or the transportation secretary to a train derailment many Republicans have turned into a referendum on a lack of federal concern with the needs of red-state America.
At an East Palestine firehouse where he met first-responders and local elected officials, Mr. Trump, in remarks behind a lectern, said that “what this community needs now are not excuses and all of the other things you’ve been hearing, but answers and results.”
Starry Night Over the Rhône, Vincent van Gogh,1888
This man gets worse every time he follows his slime trail out of Mar-a-lago. Greed of senior management is all over the Ohio train derailment. This is from the Washington Post. “Crew tried to stop Ohio train after alert about overheating wheel bearing, NTSB says. Federal investigators’ preliminary report provides clues about the cause of the derailment and the response.”
The crew of the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, received an alert about an overheating wheel bearing and was trying to slow the train before it came off the tracks, according to a preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report released Thursday.
As the engineer applied the brakes, an automatic braking system kicked in, according to the report. Investigators found that a wheel bearing was heating up over several miles as the train approached the derailment site, according to data from trackside sensors, but did not reach a critical threshold until shortly before the incident, when it registered 253 degrees above normal.
The report was released as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is visiting the scene in East Palestine, Ohio.
Buttigieg is set to get a briefing from investigators and meet with experts from his department who have been aiding the response. He is also expected to meet with members of the community, many of whom were forced to evacuate during a controlled burn of hazardous vinyl chloride in the derailed train cars.The NTSB’s preliminary report didn’t formally reach conclusions about the cause of the derailment, but revealed new information about it. The boardsaid last week it had gathered evidence showing that a wheel bearing on the train overheated.
The Feb. 3 derailment — characterized by images of a fireball and billowing smoke rising over the community near the Pennsylvania border — has ignited calls for stricter regulation and increased fines for railroad safety breaches. Twenty cars in the 149-car Norfolk Southern train were carrying hazardous materials, 11 of which derailed along with 27 cars carrying nonhazardous goods, the NTSB said.
The agency’s preliminary report on Thursday indicated the train was traveling at 47 mph, below the speed limit of 50 mph, when it went off the tracks.
After the train came to a stop, the crew reported fire and smoke to the dispatcher, alerting of a possible derailment, the report said. The crew then was instructed to apply handbrakes to the two rail cars at the head of the train, then uncoupled the head-end locomotives and moved them about one mile from the rail cars.
Paul Cezanne, Annecy Lake,1896
ProPublica has this headline. “A Norfolk Southern Policy Lets Officials Order Crews to Ignore Safety Alerts. In October, months before the East Palestine derailment, the company also directed a train to keep moving with an overheated wheel that caused it to derail miles later in Sandusky, Ohio.” This worries me because they run trains down the track that is pretty much right behind my house. The Saturday early morning train carries toxic substances, and many others carry oil and gas.
Norfolk Southern allows a monitoring team to instruct crews to ignore alerts from train track sensors designed to flag potential mechanical problems.
ProPublica learned of the policy after reviewing the rules of the company, which is engulfed in controversy after one of its trains derailed this month, releasing toxic flammable gas over East Palestine, Ohio.
The policy applies specifically to the company’s Wayside Detector Help Desk, which monitors data from the track-side sensors. Workers on the desk can tell crews to disregard an alert when “information is available confirming it is safe to proceed” and to continue no faster than 30 miles per hour to the next track-side sensor, which is often miles away. The company’s rulebook did not specify what such information might be, and company officials did not respond to questions about the policy.
The National Transportation Safety Board will be looking into the company’s rules, including whether that specific policy played a role in the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine. Thirty-eight cars, some filled with chemicals, left the tracks and caught fire, triggering an evacuation and agonized questions from residents about the implications for their health. The NTSB believes a wheel bearing in a car overheated and failed immediately before the train derailed. It plans to release a preliminary report on the accident Thursday morning.
ProPublica has learned that Norfolk Southern disregarded a similar mechanical problem on another train that months earlier jumped the tracks in Ohio.
Hudson River, Logging (1892) by Winslow Homer,
I listened to Joy Reid and her panel yesterday discuss how Republicans no longer argue for any actual policy and ideas because they know their rationale isn’t correct and it’s unpopular. Their plan is to simply us federal and state governments to push through laws to enact their drastic attacks on the US Constituion and hope their packed Supreme Court will go along with it.
Ron DeSantis is entirely in on creating challenges to first amendment rights and rights to privacy in the 14th amendment. Still, the blueprint for these attacks was the decimation of Roe v. Wade which still remains highly unpopular. PRRI has this information about “Abortion Attitudes in a Post-Roe World: Findings From the 50-State 2022 American Values Atlas”.
Just under two-thirds of Americans (64%) say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while roughly one-third (34%) say it should be illegal in most or all cases. More granularly, 30% say abortion should be legal in all cases, 34% say it should be legal in most cases, 25% say it should be illegal in most cases, and just 9% say it should be illegal in all cases.
The share of Americans who say abortion should be legal in most or all cases has continued to increase since PRRI began tracking abortion legality in 2010, when it was at 55%. The share of those who say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases has shrunk (from 42% in 2010 to 34% now), with the proportion who say abortion should be illegal in all cases seeing the largest decline (from 15% in 2010 to 9% now).
However, there has been little movement in attitudes about abortion’s legality in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022. In March 2022, 64% of Americans felt that abortion should be legal, as did a similar share in June (65%). After Dobbs, support for abortion’s legality remained fairly constant in August (64%), September (62%), and December (65%).
Thomas Hart Benton,
Current River, circa 1961
This latest DeSantis plot against the US Constitution is outrageiousl This is from Politico. “DeSantis wants to roll back press freedoms — with an eye toward overturning Supreme Court ruling. Florida Republicans are seeking to weaken laws protecting journalists.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ broken relationship with the mainstream media could get even worse.
At the governor’s urging, Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature is pushing to weaken state laws that have long protected journalists against defamation suits and frivolous lawsuits. The proposal is part DeSantis’ ongoing feud with media outlets like The New York Times, Miami Herald, CNN and The Washington Post — media companies he claims are biased against Republicans — as he prepares for a likely 2024 presidential bid.
Beyond making it easier to sue journalists, the proposal is also being positioned to spark a larger legal battle with the goal of eventually overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limits public officials’ ability to sue publishers for defamation, according to state Rep. Alex Andrade, the Florida Republican sponsoring the bill.
“There is a strong argument to be made that the Supreme Court overreached,” Andrade said in an interview. “This is not the government shutting down free speech. This is a private cause of action.”
Andrade said he is working with DeSantis’ office on the bill: “I would say I am accepting their input.”
DeSantis has a combative relationship with many media outlets, refusing to conduct interviews with platforms except Fox News and building a communications team that openly brags that its role is to be antagonistic to members of the press. His former press secretary, Christina Pushaw, frequently argued with journalists on Twitter and was once suspended by the social media giant for abusive behavior.
The lady of the lake
Henry John Yeend King (English, 1855–1924)
There’s several news articles relevant to the DOJ investigation of the insurrection.
From the New York Times: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Subpoenaed in Jan. 6 Investigation — The special counsel overseeing the inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to retain power after the 2020 election wants the former president’s daughter and son-in-law to testify to a grand jury.
From Rachel Weiner at the Washington Post: Rep. Scott Perry fights to keep phone from team probing Jan. 6 attack.
Also from the Washington Post is this update on the Fox-Dominion Lawsuit. “‘Incredibly damning:’ Fox News documents stun some legal experts. The disclosure of behind-the-scenes emails and texts greatly increased the chances that Dominion will win its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, experts say.”
The disclosure of emails and texts in which Fox News executives and personalities disparaged the same election conspiracies being floated on their shows has greatly increased the chances that a defamation case against the network will succeed, legal experts say.
If so, the messages could amount to powerful body of evidence against Fox, according to First Amendment experts, because they meet a critical and difficult-to-meet standard in such cases.
Dominion Voting Systems included dozens of messages sent internally by Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch and on-air stars such as Tucker Carlson in a brief made public last week in support of the voting technology company’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network. Dominion claims it was damaged in the months after the 2020 election after Fox repeatedly aired false statements that it was part of a conspiracy to fraudulently elect Joe Biden.
Dominion said the emails and texts show that Fox’s hosts and executives knew the claims being peddled by then-president Donald Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell weren’t true — some employees privately described them as “ludicrous” and “mind blowingly nuts”— but Fox kept airing them to keep its audience from changing channels.
We can safely agree with Reid and her panel that there is no whiff of a “conservative” theoretical or philosophical drift to any of these actions. It’s simply White Christian Nationalists and Big Money asking for relief from the U.S. Constitutional Principles and American democracy. It takes a kleptocracy, theocracy, and autocracy to erase history and established law. What drive me nuts is their base is radical, uneducated, and incredibly frightened by headlines like this “Young people are more likely to accept gay couples — and to identify as gay” and “Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline. As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year – probably accelerated by Covid.”
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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