Congress Critters

I want the Government Ethics Office to put up a website that posts all the financial info of every member of congress, and every government official above the rank-n-file, and I want to be able to get a notification every time one of these fuckers makes a trade.

Every

Fucking

Time

This shit has to stop.

Business Insider:

48 members of Congress have violated a law designed to stop insider trading and prevent conflicts-of-interest

(Ed Note: 28 Republicans and 20 Democrats)

Insider and other media have identified numerous US lawmakers not complying with the federal STOCK Act.

Their excuses range from oversights, to clerical errors, to inattentive accountants.
Ethics watchdogs — and even some in Congress — want to ban lawmakers from trading individual stocks.

Insider and several other news organizations have this year identified 47 members of Congress who've failed to properly report their financial trades as mandated by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act.

Congress passed the law in 2012 to combat insider trading and conflicts of interest among their own members and force lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings. A key provision of the law mandates that lawmakers publicly — and quickly — disclose any stock trade made by themselves, a spouse, or a dependent child.

But many members of Congress have not fully complied with the law. They offer excuses including ignorance of the law, clerical errors, and mistakes by an accountant.

While lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act face a fine, the penalty is usually small — $200 is the standard amount — or waived by House or Senate ethics officials. Ethics watchdogs and even some members of Congress have called for stricter penalties or even a ban on federal lawmakers from trading individual stocks, although neither has come to pass.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California

Feinstein was months late disclosing a five-figure investment her husband made into a private, youth-focused polling company.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama

Tuberville was weeks or months late in disclosing nearly 130 separate stock trades from January to May.

Sen. Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas

Marshall was up to 17 months late disclosing stock trades for one of his dependent children.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky

Paul was 16 months late in disclosing that his wife bought stock in a biopharmaceutical company that manufactures an antiviral COVID-19 treatment, the Washington Post reported.

Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona

Kelly, a retired astronaut, failed to disclose on time his exercising of a stock option on an investment in a company that's developing a supersonic passenger aircraft, Fox Business reported.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming

Lummis was several days late reporting a purchase in August of up to $100,000 in bitcoin, CNBC reported.

Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey

Malinowski failed to disclose dozens of stock trades made during 2020 and early 2021, doing so only after questions from Insider.

The independent Office of Congressional Ethics, in part citing Insider's reporting, found "substantial reason to believe" that Malinowski violated federal rules or laws designed to promote transparency and defend against conflicts. It voted 5-1 to refer its findings to the Democrat-led House Committee on Ethics, which confirmed on October 21 that it will continue reviewing the matter.

Rep. Pat Fallon, a Republican from Texas

Fallon was months late disclosing dozens of stock trades during early- and mid-2021 that together are worth as much as $17.53 million.

Rep. Diana Harshbarger, a Republican from Tennessee

Harshbarger failed to properly disclose more than 700 stock trades that together are worth as much as $10.9 million.

Rep. Katherine Clark, a Democrat from Massachusetts

Clark, one of the highest-ranking Democrats in the House, was several weeks late in disclosing 19 of her husband's stock transactions. Together, the trades are worth as much as $285,000.

Rep. Blake Moore, a Republican from Texas

Moore in early- to mid-2021 did not properly disclose dozens of stock and stock-option trades together worth as much as $1.1 million. He was late again disclosing trades made in August.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat from New Jersey

Sherrill was months late disclosing two sales of vested stock her husband earned as part of his employment. The trades were worth up to $350,000 and Sherrill paid a $400 late fee.

Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama

Brooks, who is running for US Senate, failed to properly disclose a sale of Pfizer stock worth up to $50,000.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas

Crenshaw was months late disclosing several stock trades he made in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Daily Beast reported.

Rep. Susie Lee, a Democrat of Nevada

Lee failed to properly disclose more than 200 stock trades between early-2020 and mid-2021. Together, the trades are worth as much as $3.3 million.

Rep. Kevin Hern, a Republican from Oklahoma

Hern did not disclose nearly two-dozen stock trades in a timely manner, in violation of the STOCK Act. Taken together, the trades are worth as much as $2.7 million.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida

Wasserman Schultz was months late reporting four stock trades made either for herself or her child.

Rep. Michael Guest, a Republican from Mississippi
Guest was more than eight months late disclosing trades in the stock of two oil companies held by a family trust benefitting his wife.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat from New York

Maloney was months late in disclosing he sold eight stocks he inherited in mid-2020 when his mother died.

Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida

Mast was late disclosing that he had purchased up to $100,000 in stock in an aerospace company. The president of the company had just testified before a congressional subcommittee on which Mast sits.

Rep. Lori Trahan, a Democrat from Massachusetts

Trahan was months late disclosing the sale of stock shares in a software company.

Rep. John Rutherford, a Republican from Florida

Rutherford failed to properly disclose five individual stock transactions he made in late 2020.

Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat of Florida

Castor was late disclosing the purchase of tens of thousands of dollars worth of stock shares throughout 2021.

Rep. August Pfluger, a Republican from Texas

Pfluger was several months late disclosing numerous stock purchases or sales made in January or March either by himself or by his wife.

Rep. Brian Higgins, a Democrat from New York
Higgins was about 11 months late disclosing three stock trades he made in late 2020.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from Illinois

Bustos was months late in disclosing that she had sold up to $150,000 worth of stocks in March.

Rep. Steve Chabot, a Republican from Ohio

Chabot was months late disclosing a stock share exchange he held in early 2021.

Rep. Victoria Spartz, a Republican from Indiana

Spartz was two weeks late disclosing a purchase of up to $50,000 worth of stock in a commercial real-estate firm.

Rep. Rick Allen, a Republican from Georgia

Allen, a four-term Republican who represents a large southeastern region of Georgia, appears to have improperly disclosed the purchases and sales of several stocks during 2019 and 2020.

Rep. Mike Kelly, a Republican from Pennsylvania

Kelly was more than seven weeks late reporting a stock purchase made by his wife.

Rep. Chris Jacobs, a Republican from New York

Jacobs was months late filing various transactions made throughout early- to mid-2021, Forbes reported.

Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia

Scott was months late in disclosing a pair of stock sales from December 2020, Forbes reported. NPR also reported several other late transactions, as first identified by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

Rep. Austin Scott, a Republican from Georgia

Scott, a Republican from Georgia, was a week late reporting a handful of transactions conducted by his spouse.

Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican from Texas

Sessions was a month late in reporting a purchase of stock in Amazon.com.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat from Colorado

Perlmutter ran a few days late in filing disclosures for as much as $30,000 in stock trades his wife made in June.

Rep. Kim Schrier, a Democrat from Washington

Schrier was more than two months late disclosing that her husband purchased up to $1 million in Apple Inc. stock, Sludge and Forbes reported. Schrier's office told Insider that the congresswoman was initially unaware of the transaction.

Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from New York

Suozzi failed to file required reports on about 300 financial transactions, NPR reported, citing research from the Campaign Legal Center.

Rep. Cindy Axne, a Democrat from Iowa

During 2019 and 2020, Axne didn't file required periodic transaction reports for more than three-dozen trades, reported NPR, citing research by the Campaign Legal Center.

Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio

Davidson didn't properly disclose the sale of stock worth up to $100,000, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.

Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican from Texas

Gooden failed to file mandatory periodic transaction reports for a dozen stock transactions, per the STOCK Act, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research. Gooden's office disputed to the Dallas Morning News that the lawmaker did anything wrong.

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, a Republican from Tennessee

Fleischmann, a Republican from Tennessee, was late in disclosing a pair of stock transactions together worth up to $30,000.

Del. Michael San Nicolas, a Democrat from Guam

San Nicolas did not properly disclose two trades — one in 2019 and another in 2020, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.

Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont

Welch, an outspoken environmentalist, was late disclosing the sale of his wife's ExxonMobil stock.

Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana

Banks was a week late reporting a handful of stock transactions.

Rep. Rob Wittman, a Republican from Virginia

Wittman was a few days late in disclosing four of his stock transactions that included pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat from California

Lowenthal was late disclosing his wife's purchase of a corporate bond in cloud computing and technology company VMWare, worth between $15,001 and $50,000, Forbes reported. "We have no comment," Lowenthal spokesman Keith Higginbotham told Insider on November 18.

Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican from Texas

Williams did not properly report three stock transactions his wife made in 2019, reported NPR, citing Campaign Legal Center research.

Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican from Pennsylvania

Meuser was about one year late disclosing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock purchases his wife and children made during March 2020, LegiStorm reported.

Jan6 Stuff

We have to be careful about the whole "chilling effect" thing. Free speech has to be a priority in a democracy.

But SCOTUS has ruled that money = speech, so people get to speak as loudly as their checking accounts can stand, and when those checking accounts can stand to buy $650,000 worth of "free speech" which gets used to support an attempted coup, then we've got some big fuckin' problems, and it's prob'ly a really good idea to chill the fuck outa that shit.

The long reach of the plutocrats needs to be shortened.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Low-profile heiress who ‘played a strong role’ in financing Jan. 6 rally is thrust into spotlight

Eight days before the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, a little-known Trump donor living thousands of miles away in the Tuscan countryside quietly wired a total of $650,000 to three organizations that helped stage and promote the event.

The lack of fanfare was typical of Julie Fancelli, the 72-year-old daughter of the founder of the Publix grocery store chain. Even as she has given millions to charity through a family foundation, Fancelli has lived a private life, splitting time between her homes in Florida and Italy, and doting on her grandchildren, according to family members and friends.

Now, Fancelli is facing public scrutiny as the House committee investigating the insurrection seeks to expose the financing for the rally that preceded the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Fancelli is the largest publicly known donor to the rally, support that some concerned relatives and others attributed to her enthusiasm for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

The Washington Post previously reported that on Dec. 29, 2020, Fancelli donated $300,000 to Women for America First, a nonprofit group that helped organize the Jan. 6 rally, and $150,000 to the nonprofit arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which paid for a robocall touting a march to “call on Congress to stop the steal.”

On the same day, Fancelli gave $200,000 to State Tea Party Express, according to Sal Russo, a top consultant to the conservative group. Russo told The Post last week that he gave the House committee records of Fancelli’s donation, which he said was used for radio ads and social media urging supporters of President Donald Trump to attend the rally and subsequent march. He condemned the violence at the Capitol.

On Wednesday, Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington posted on its website tax filings from the group that showed the donation. The tea party group also provided the filing to The Post.

Although much about it remains unknown, the funding of the protests — including travel and hotel expenses for thousands of Trump supporters — has been coming into focus slowly over the past 11 months.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House committee examining the events of Jan. 6, told The Post that he believes Fancelli “played a strong role” in helping to finance the rally. “We’re trying to follow the money,” he said.

Fancelli has not responded to phone calls and emails from The Post since August. She rarely, if ever, speaks to the media about her campaign donations or charity work. She has not commented on her support for the Jan. 6 rally except for a statement 10 months ago, saying, “I am a proud conservative and have real concerns associated with election integrity, yet I would never support any violence, particularly the tragic and horrific events that unfolded on January 6th.”

Her family’s fortune comes from the fast-growing Publix supermarket chain, which has tried to distance itself from Fancelli’s involvement in the rally. Based in her hometown of Lakeland, Fla., Publix touts its reputation for customer service with a decades-old “where shopping is a pleasure” slogan.

After an initial report a few weeks after the rally that Fancelli had donated about $300,000, Publix released a statement saying that she was not involved in the business and that it could not comment on her actions. Last week, after The Post inquired about Fancelli’s contributions totaling $650,000, the company went further, saying it “cannot control the actions of individual stockholders” and issued an unusual rebuke of a member of the founder’s family. Because the company is privately held, Fancelli’s stake — if any — is not a matter of public record.

“We are deeply troubled by Ms. Fancelli’s involvement in the events that led to the tragic attack on the Capitol on January 6,” Publix said in a statement to The Post.

In the weeks leading up to the rally, Fancelli frequently emailed to her relatives and friends links to Jones’s talk show, according to two people with knowledge of the emails who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications. Jones was a leading proponent of false claims that Trump’s reelection had been foiled by election fraud and that Congress could refuse to certify Biden’s victory.

“I don’t want Trump to step down,” Jones said during his show streamed on the Infowars platform on Dec. 28, one day before Fancelli donated to the rally. “Either by overturning the election and showing it’s a fraud and getting Congress to act on Jan. 6 to not certify for Biden, or whether we end up impeaching Joe Biden or getting him arrested as a Chi-Com agent, one way or another, he will be removed.”

Fancelli’s donations related to the rally were arranged by Republican fundraiser Caroline Wren, who was listed on the event permit as a “VIP ADVISOR,” according to records reviewed by The Post and a Republican with knowledge of the contributions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The House committee has issued a subpoena to Wren seeking records and a deposition.

“The funding behind the First Amendment rally at the White House Ellipse was entirely lawful and consistent with the rights Ms. Fancelli has as an American citizen,” Wren said in a statement to The Post.

Fancelli had planned to attend the rally and had a room reserved at the Willard hotel, but she decided not to go because of concerns about traveling during the pandemic, according to the Republican familiar with her donations.

Fancelli was a regular listener to Jones’s show and had an assistant make contact with him at his office in Austin to find out how she could support Trump’s attempt to undermine Biden’s victory, the person said. She and Jones talked by phone at least once between Dec. 27 and Jan. 1, the person said.

“I am not tantalized by that fellow, but apparently she is, and a lot of other people are addicted, to the detriment of the country,” Fancelli’s brother-in-law Barney Barnett, a retired Publix executive who describes himself as a conservative Republican, said in a recent interview with The Post. “Julie is one of the finest people I know, and I am sorry she got tied up with this guy.”

Fancelli’s sister Nancy Jenkins said they avoid talking politics and stick to topics like “the grandchildren and the nieces and nephews and how long she’s coming to Florida for Christmas.”

Of Jones, Jenkins said: “He’s kind of a rabble rouser, and I don’t listen to that. I listen to the regular news. That guy is crazy. Everybody knows Trump lost.”

Jones, who is among dozens of people subpoenaed by the House committee, declined to comment on Fancelli’s involvement.

A few weeks after the rally, top executives of the Republican National Committee called to check on Fancelli, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation. Fancelli — who records show had donated roughly $1 million to a joint account for the Trump campaign and Republican Party in 2019 and 2020 — told the RNC executives that she believed the election was stolen and backed the rally “to fight for Trump,” the person said. She also said she had no idea there would be violence at the Capitol, according to the person.

Fancelli has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to GOP candidates and party organizations over the past two decades but did not become a top-tier donor until Trump moved into the White House, records show. She worked with Wren as well as Kimberly Guilfoyle, the partner of Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.

Guilfoyle declined to comment for this report.

“We’d never heard of her. … She only came into the picture once Trump was president,” the person familiar with the RNC call to Fancelli said. “She is basically just a right-winger, smarter than a lot of donors, but has an affinity for Alex Jones and conspiracy theories and that sort of thing.”

In 2017, Fancelli met with RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and complained that the national party had not done enough to help Trump in the previous year’s election, according to a person familiar with that exchange, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Fancelli also sent party insiders emails supporting conspiracy theories about Trump’s political opponents, the person said.

Her political donations this year suggest continued support for the far right. In September, she gave $5,800 to Rep. Matthew M. Rosendale of Montana, who was among 21 House Republicans who opposed awarding the congressional gold medal to police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6. In July, Fancelli gave $1,000 to an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Lakeland, Fla., who thanked the right-wing One America News for “correctly” referring to Trump as the president after Biden’s inauguration.

“She’s a wealthy woman who has lived a quiet life, mostly over in Florence, growing olives and grapes,” said Mel Sembler, a longtime Republican fundraiser in Florida who visited Fancelli in Italy when he served as the U.S. ambassador there during the administration of George W. Bush. “A nice lady from a nice family who writes checks for things that she thinks are important. I wonder if she even realized she was writing checks for Jan. 6.”


Fancelli is one of seven children of George Jenkins, who as a young man quit his job at the local Piggly Wiggly to open his first grocery store in Central Florida in 1930. Today, Publix has nearly 1,300 stores in the Southeast, with net earnings of $4 billion in 2020. Forbes ranked Jenkins’s offspring last year as the 39th richest family in the United States, with an estimated worth of $8.8 billion.

Fancelli owns homes in Lakeland and Longboat Key but has kept a low profile in Florida. Friends and relatives say she spends most of her time in Italy, where she met her husband while studying abroad.

“The bride is a graduate of Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington and the University of Florida,” reads the New York Times announcement of her wedding to Mauro Fancelli in 1972. “ Mr. Fancelli heads his family’s fruit and vegetable wholesale business in Florence, where the couple will live.”

In the late 1980s, she hired a longtime friend of her husband’s, a Florentine named Italo Casini, to be chef of two Italian restaurants she owned at various times in Florida, Casini recalled in a recent interview. “It was a guarantee of good food when she was in Lakeland,” said Casini, who called Fancelli “the sweetest person in the world.” Friends and family members in the United States say she sent them olive oil and wine from Italy.

Fancelli’s charitable giving is done through the George Jenkins Foundation, named after her father. She serves as president of the foundation, which reported net assets of $27.7 million in 2020 and gave more than $3.3 million that year to about two dozen charities that provide education, health care and social services to poor children and the elderly, records show. Public records also show that she co-owns, with other relatives, a private golf club in Lakeland founded by her father.

Fancelli has been registered as a nonpartisan voter in surrounding Polk County since 2001, but, like several members of her family, she has contributed overwhelmingly to Republicans, records show. On top of her large donations to Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020, a company where she was then a director gave $800,000 to a political committee formed by allies of Trump Jr. to support the Republicans in the hotly contested U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia in January.

Fancelli has never served on the Publix board of directors or as a company executive. She previously owned a business that sold millions of dollars worth of food to Publix at a time when family members were running the chain, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Fancelli left that company, Alma Food Imports, Inc., in 2017.

Publix declined to disclose how many shares Fancelli owns in the private company. She does not appear in recent SEC filings that list individuals who own at least 5 percent of the company’s shares. The majority of shares, which are not traded publicly, are owned by employees, from store cashiers to truck drivers.

The company temporarily stopped making campaign donations after survivors of the mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school protested Publix’s contributions to the 2018 gubernatorial campaign of Republican Adam Putnam, an outspoken National Rifle Association supporter.

As Fancelli’s involvement in the Jan. 6 rally has emerged this year, some Publix shoppers have threatened boycotts on social media. Supermarket analyst David Livingston said Publix’s bottom line is unlikely to suffer because the chain is so popular in the Southeast, especially in Florida.

“People love Publix like people in Wisconsin love the Green Bay Packers,” Livingston said. “While Publix has made their own controversial donations, they are also the first in line to help after a hurricane.”

Russo of State Tea Party Express said he did not solicit the donation from Fancelli but has worked closely in the past with some of the Jan. 6 organizers. The group paid Virginia-based Go BIG Media to promote the rally on social media and bought radio spots targeted at a conservative audience in the D.C. region.

The radio ad did not repeat Trump’s false claims of election fraud but did promote the Jan. 6 rally and march as well a website that featured a “StopTheSteal!” tweet from the president.

Russo said his goal was to “help build the crowd” for Trump, not to try to subvert Biden’s victory.

“We did it for the right reasons, so I don’t regret that,” Russo said. “What I regret the most is that there were people with bad intentions at the Capitol. I am sorry that people got caught up in the emotion.”

"...caught up in the emotion" = plausible deniability. And those statements are always a little sly because they always pull up short of condemning the shitty thing that happened.

Michigan Shooter

“LOL I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.”

WaPo: (pay wall)

Parents of Mich. school-shooting suspect in custody as police investigate possible accomplice
The pair, who were located after a tip, were found hiding in a commercial building, police said.

The fugitive parents of a 15-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four classmates at a Michigan high school were taken into custody overnight, after they were found hiding in a commercial building in Detroit, police said in a news conference early Saturday.

Jennifer and James Crumbley were located after a tip from the local community, and were taken into custody unarmed and “without incident,” Detroit police chief James White said. It came after an extensive search for the pair involving K-9 units, local law enforcement and the U.S. Marshals Service.

They each face four counts of involuntary manslaughter, after being criminally charged in an extraordinarily rare move to hold parents accountable when a minor uses their weapon in a school shooting.

The pair “did not break in” to the building, but “were aided,” White said, adding that police were investigating one other person that may have assisted the couple.

He thanked the community, saying “it was a tip that led us to this location,” and that officers responded “in a matter of minutes,” arriving on scene at 10.30 p.m. local time on Friday.

Chief Deputy Mike McCabe, from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, said the arrest had happened after “a 911 call from a business owner that observed the suspect vehicle in his parking lot on Bellevue near Jefferson in the city of Detroit.”

“A female was observed near the car by the business owner. When he called 911 she fled on foot,” he added in an emailed statement.

White told reporters that police had found “video of one of the two fugitives entering the building,” and that police had quickly “set up a perimeter” at the location.

When asked about the pair’s emotional state as they were taken into custody, White said they were “very distressed” and that one of them left the scene with their head bowed.

Detroit police said that the Crumbleys were turned over to the Oakland County Sheriff’s department who were on the scene and would be transported to a jail in Oakland County, Michigan. Oakland police said the couple could be arraigned after 9 a.m. Saturday.

Attorneys for the Crumbleys had earlier said the couple left town the night of the shooting “for their own safety,” adding that they would return to be arraigned.

However, White told reporters on Saturday: “This isn’t indicative of turning themselves in, hiding in a warehouse.”

Four students aged between 14-17 were killed in the shooting, which took place Nov. 30 and appears to be the deadliest episode of on-campus violence in the United States in more than 18 months. Seven others were wounded.

Community vigils have been held to honor the victims: Tate Myre, 16, Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Hana St. Juliana, 14 and Justin Shilling, 17.

The suspect, Ethan Crumbley, faces a slew of charges as an adult — with one count of terrorism causing death, four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of assault with intent to murder and 12 counts of possession of a firearm.

- snip -

The morning of the fatal shooting both parents were summoned to a meeting by school administrators after a teacher found a troubling note in Ethan’s desk, McDonald said. It contained a drawing of a semiautomatic handgun pointing at the words “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”

The note included a drawing of a bullet with the words “blood everywhere.” There was also a drawing of a bloody figure with two gunshot wounds, McDonald said, and another drawing of a laughing emoji.

Ethan altered the note, McDonald said, scratching out the most disturbing parts of it by the time the meeting with his parents began shortly after 10 a.m. on Tuesday Nov. 30. McDonald said the teen brought his backpack to the counselor’s office and noted that at no point did his parents ask about the recently purchased gun. McDonald said neither the Crumbleys nor school officials searched the teen’s backpack.

- more -

Let me offer my heartiest congratulations to a "conservative" SCOTUS, the GOP, and every dog-ass member of Congress who's ever taken one fucking dime in blood-soaked NRA money - the dream vision of America they've been striving for these many years is finally in full flower.

BTW - "You have to learn not to get caught" has to be the hallmark phrase of this fucked up era we're living in right now.

Question

I continue to get this junk because I've been known to go to the websites and troll his little "surveys".

And also too, it doesn't matter how often I "unsubscribe". I'm on the list and there's no escape.

Anyway, here's the question:

How exactly do you build a party by whittling it down to a tiny core of rabid true-believers?

"Addition by subtraction" is another bullshit concept being pimped by a conservative movement that's been built on very similar lies - like "Creative Destruction" and "Healthy Forests Initiative".

For Trump, I just can't see how this is about building anything but his donor base. As always, it's about bilking the rubes, which finances his plan to command a percentage of the hardcore GOP voters big enough to set himself up as King-Maker.

Today's GOP Hypocrisy

A case went before SCOTUS in 2003, and the decision was named after Mitch McConnell - because Mr McConnell was a driving force behind the effort to make sure companies could continue their out-sized influence in shaping national policy.

Now Mitch is showing us - again - that he's king of the colossal hypocritical assholes.

And that he intends to continue his Daddy State ways, trying to impose his whimsy regarding what anybody can and can't do in politics.

St Louis Post-Dispatch:

‘Stay out of politics,’ Republican leader McConnell tells U.S. CEOs, warns of ‘consequences’

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell lashed out at corporate America on Monday, warning CEOs to stay out of the debate over a new voting law in Georgia that has been criticized as restricting votes among minorities and the poor.

In a sign of a growing rift in the decades-old alliance between the conservative party and U.S. corporations, McConnell said: “My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics. Don’t pick sides in these big fights.”

McConnell warned companies there could be risks for turning on the party, but he did not elaborate.

“Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order,” McConnell told a news conference in his home state of Kentucky.

Big business ties with Republicans began fraying under former President Donald Trump’s leadership and the party’s focus on voting restrictions has soured businesses embracing diversity as key to their work force and customer base.

Major Georgia employers Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines have spoken out against the law signed by Governor Brian Kemp, and Major League Baseball pulled the 2021 All-Star Game out of the state over the law strengthening identification requirements for absentee ballots and making it a crime to offer food or water to voters waiting in line.

“I found it completely discouraging to find a bunch of corporate CEOs getting in the middle of politics,” McConnell said.

Trump spent months after losing his reelection bid falsely claiming that his defeat was the result of widespread fraud. He failed in dozens of legal challenges. Nonetheless, lawmakers in 47 states this year have introduced 361 bills imposing new restrictions on voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Georgia law brought a backlash from some U.S. companies with strong ties to the state.

Coca-Cola Co. Chief Executive James Quincey called the law “unacceptable” and a “step backwards.” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said: “The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 election.”

Independent reviews have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is rare in the United States, and state and federal probes found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election which the Republican Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Corporate America has long thrown its political muscle behind Republican candidates and officeholders, often funneling more campaign contributions to conservative candidates than Democratic ones.

The Scam

We talked for a while, and as he was fixin' to leave, my new buddy the banker looked me up and down - at my frayed cuffs and my slouchy hat - and he said, "You're smart - why aren't you rich?"

I smiled, and said, "You're rich - why ain't you smart?"

WaPo:

Like many Trump supporters, conservative donor Fred Eshelman awoke the day after the presidential election with the suspicion that something wasn’t right. His candidate’s apparent lead in key battleground states had evaporated overnight.

Fred Eshelman - Gullible Rich Guy

The next day, the North Carolina financier and his advisers reached out to a small conservative nonprofit group in Texas that was seeking to expose voter fraud. After a 20-minute talk with the group’s president, their first conversation, Eshelman was sold.

“I’m in for 2,” he told the president of True the Vote, according to court documents and interviews with Eshelman and others.

“$200,000?” one of his advisers on the call asked.

“$2 million,” Eshelman responded.

Over the next 12 days, Eshelman came to regret his donation and to doubt conspiracy theories of rampant illegal voting, according to court records and interviews.

Now, he wants his money back.

The story behind the Eshelman donation — detailed in previously unreported court filings and exclusive interviews with those involved — provides new insights into the frenetic days after the election, when baseless claims led donors to give hundreds of millions of dollars to reverse President Biden’s victory.

Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party collected $255 million in two months, saying the money would support legal challenges to an election marred by fraud. Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress also raised money off those false allegations, as did pro-Trump lawyers seeking to overturn the election results — and even some of their witnesses.

True the Vote was one of several conservative “election integrity” groups that sought to press the case in court. Though its lawsuits drew less attention than those brought by the Trump campaign, True the Vote nonetheless sought to raise more than $7 million for its investigation of the 2020 election.

Documents that have surfaced in Eshelman’s litigation, along with interviews, show how True the Vote’s private assurances that it was on the cusp of revealing illegal election schemes repeatedly fizzled as the group’s focus shifted from one allegation to the next. The nonprofit sought to coordinate its efforts with a coalition of Trump’s allies, including Trump attorney Jay Sekulow and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the documents show.

Eshelman has alleged in two lawsuits — one in federal court has been withdrawn and the other is ongoing in a Texas state court — that True the Vote did not spend his $2 million gift and a subsequent $500,000 donation as it said it would. Eshelman also alleges that True the Vote directed much of his money to people or businesses connected to the group’s president, Catherine Engelbrecht.

Asked about the shifting focus from allegation to allegation, Engelbrecht said, “A good thorough investigation takes the course it takes, and we were not going to expose whistleblowers to make a quick headline.” She said that the group’s investigation “is ongoing even now.” In court documents, True the Vote says Eshelman’s money was spent properly.

True the Vote’s lawyer, James Bopp, said that no conditions were attached to Eshelman’s donations and he is not entitled to the return of his money just because he didn’t like the outcome.

The court documents and interviews show how quickly Eshelman and his allies became disillusioned with True the Vote.

“We were just not getting any data or proof,” said Tom Crawford, who had worked for Eshelman as a lobbyist and served as his representative on the True the Vote effort. “We were looking at this and saying to ourselves, ‘This just is not adding up.’ ”

Search for a 'smoking gun'

True the Vote was formed in 2010 by Engelbrecht, a Texas-based tea party activist. Engelbrecht, 51, came to prominence during the Obama administration partly for accusing the Internal Revenue Service of improperly targeting True the Vote and other conservative nonprofit groups.

True the Vote has spent the past decade aggressively promoting claims of voter fraud and pushing for voter-identification laws. The group has established itself as a hub for training volunteer poll watchers to monitor voters for their eligibility. Democrats have accused it of trying to intimidate minorities and other low-participation voters.

As a nonprofit, True The Vote is required to be nonpartisan, and Engelbrecht has said that its mission has nothing to do with party politics. But it has worked with Republicans on other campaigns — for instance, partnering with the Georgia GOP on a “voter integrity” effort for last month’s Senate runoffs in that state.

Eshelman, 72, was not familiar with True the Vote before Election Day. A drug company founder turned financier whose Wilmington, N.C.-based firm invests in health-care companies, he had previously donated largely to initiatives and groups that championed free-market principles and attacked Democratic candidates.

But after Biden jumped ahead — a shift election experts had expected as mail-in ballots were tallied — Eshelman asked Crawford for advice on funding an operation to determine if widespread fraud existed. Crawford agreed to help as an unpaid, informal adviser.

“I thought about the range of possibilities around vote fraud,” Eshelman said in an interview with The Washington Post. “There was already noise around cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Philadelphia.”

He added: “I wanted to determine if this was legit. Can we find a real smoking gun?”

Eshelman’s Nov. 5 donation was easily the biggest gift True the Vote had ever received, according to a person familiar with its operations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters in litigation. True the Vote had never raised more than $1.8 million in a single year, its tax returns show.

The windfall propelled the nonprofit into action.

That evening, Engelbrecht sent Crawford a one-page summary of the group’s ambitious new “Validate the Vote 2020” campaign. It included a budget of $7.3 million and envisioned plans to set up cash rewards for whistleblowers, analyze voter data to identify “patterns of election subversion” and file lawsuits to “nullify the results” in seven battleground states.

In a news release announcing the whistleblower program the next morning, Engelbrecht said: “Unfortunately, there is significant tangible evidence that numerous illegal ballots have been cast and counted in the 2020 general election, potentially enough to sway the legitimate results of the election in some of the currently contested states.”

But over the following days, in federal lawsuits True the Vote filed in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the group said the evidence for its claims was still being developed.

The suits, filed by Bopp, said True the Vote would use “sophisticated and groundbreaking programs” to show that enough illegal votes had been cast — by noncitizens, felons, fake voters and others — to swing the election to Biden. “This evidence will be shortly forthcoming,” each complaint said.

Bopp, whose firm received a retainer of $500,000 for its work on the lawsuits, told The Post that there was “tons of evidence” of voter fraud but that it was “anecdotal, circumstantial.”

Drawn in deeper

True the Vote and Eshelman believed that finding people in swing states with vivid tales of voter fraud would be a crucial part of the project’s success, according to emails. Crawford gave Eshelman regular updates about True the Vote’s progress on that front.

Catherine Engelbrecht - SmarmSpace native

“We need [True the Vote] to get whistleblowers vetted and ready and to get their data teams beefed up,” Crawford told Eshelman in a Nov. 10 email.

Later that day, Crawford reported to the financier that a man in Yuma, Ariz., had come to True the Vote with allegations of large-scale “ballot harvesting” by Democrats in the region. “Please God let his story pan out,” Crawford wrote.

“Sensational,” Eshelman replied, adding that he was “still committed to putting in big money” if progress was made.

While it scrutinized the accounts of purported whistleblowers, True the Vote also sought to prove fraud through data analysis. Bopp’s lawsuits promised “expert reports” comparing vote tallies with registration databases and other records. True the Vote, he wrote, had “persons with such expertise and data-analysis software already in place.”

Engelbrecht’s Validate the Vote plan, an exhibit in the lawsuit, budgeted $1.75 million for “data and research” work. It was to be led by a company whose name evoked the shadowy world of intelligence operations: OPSEC Group LLC.

Records show that OPSEC had been formed less than two months earlier in Alabama by Gregg Phillips, a former True the Vote board member whose 2016 tweet was the source of the false claim that Trump would have won the popular vote that year but for millions of fraudulent votes by undocumented immigrants.

Phillips, 60, and Engelbrecht are business partners in a health-care company. Eshelman alleges in a legal filing — without providing evidence — that the two are also lovers.

In an interview, Phillips denied any such romantic relationship. Engelbrecht declined to comment on the allegation, which was first reported by the Intercept in partnership with the website Type Investigations.

On Nov. 12, Eshelman and Crawford joined a conference call with Engelbrecht and Bopp to hear an update on the data analysis and other aspects of the legal plan. “I was encouraged,” Eshelman wrote in an email to Crawford a couple of hours later, but noted: “You did not really give details on whistleblowers. Where are we on that?”

Crawford replied that three whistleblower complaints, including the Yuma allegation, had survived initial screening.

The following day, Eshelman wired another $500,000 to True the Vote.

'We cannot get ANY information'

On that day, Nov. 13, Engelbrecht received a bill for a $1 million publicity campaign from Old Town Digital Agency, an online advertising firm whose founder, Dikran Yacoubian, has worked in Republican politics on and off since the 1990s. Yacoubian had worked with Eshelman and helped introduce him to True the Vote. Eshelman and Crawford then brought Yacoubian on to help plan a publicity campaign.

Most of the money was to cover the upfront costs of online ads to trumpet True the Vote’s fraud findings, according to Yacoubian. The rest, he said, was to be spent on retainers for Republican consultants who would push the project’s findings through political and media channels.

Yacoubian said he had already begun securing the services of these consultants, including Robert Heckman, a longtime strategist for Graham. Yacoubian hoped Heckman would pass the group’s findings on to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Graham then chaired.

But Engelbrecht didn’t pay the $1 million bill, saying later in an email to Eshelman’s handpicked firm that it had no contractual agreement with True the Vote and had not provided “any services.”

Her refusal to pay contributed to an emerging rift between Engelbrecht and Crawford, who at the same time was growing frustrated by what he described as the group’s vague and ever-shifting leads.

“There was a guy in Georgia who claimed to be the bagman for Stacey Abrams,” Crawford told The Post. “It was, ‘We’re getting an affidavit,’ and then it was, ‘He ran away and we can’t find him.’ ”

The “ballot harvesting” whistleblower in Yuma turned out to have already contacted law enforcement, according to the person familiar with the group’s operations. Two people were later indicted on a charge of submitting votes for other people — but during August’s primary, not the general election.

Yacoubian, too, was frustrated that True the Vote’s whistleblowers were not materializing. “I really didn’t get to do, on the promotion side, anything — because there wasn’t anything to promote,” he said in an interview.

At one point, a publicist working for Engelbrecht instead sent Yacoubian an eight-minute video titled “Who Is Catherine Engelbrecht?” that she wanted posted online.

Engelbrecht continued to make promises about whistleblowers, claiming in a Nov. 14 email to Eshelman: “We are writing up the briefs on these individuals now to give Senator Graham and Cruz.”

Heckman, the veteran Graham consultant, said he listened to a pair of conference-call presentations from Engelbrecht and Phillips but came away so unimpressed that he never even mentioned the effort to Graham. “I was asked to determine whether there was any legitimate evidence there,” he told The Post. “My conclusion was there wasn’t.”

In an email, Engelbrecht said the group shared promising early leads with Heckman while it continued to gather information. She acknowledged that her publicist sought help in posting the video.

She denied that True the Vote gave Yacoubian and Crawford nothing to work with, saying that the group’s own publicists were “working non-stop” at the time to issue news releases on its activities. “The fact is that [neither] Dikran nor Tom seemed interested in actually doing anything,” she wrote.

In any case, Crawford’s exasperation was growing.

“We cannot get ANY information from her or her team,” he wrote in a Nov. 15 email to Eshelman. “It goes on and on like this.”

Abandoned efforts

As True the Vote struggled to produce solid whistleblower accounts, its lawsuits also failed to gain traction. Bopp, who serves as the group’s general counsel, told The Post that he reached out to Trump and his legal team with a proposal: that they join forces.

In phone conversations with Sekulow and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorneys, Bopp said he urged the Trump legal team to adopt True the Vote’s legal strategy, which hinged on persuading a federal judge to open up access to voter rolls.

“It was becoming clear to me that the lawsuits we filed were not getting the attention they needed” from judges, Bopp said in an interview. “And the Trump legal effort was a disaster, both their strategy and the tactics.”

Bopp said Sekulow and Giuliani supported the proposal and told him they would recommend it to Trump.

Bopp said that, at Sekulow’s request, he briefed a group of Trump allies in a phone call that included Sekulow, Graham and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment. Representatives for Graham and Hannity declined to comment. Sekulow wrote in a text message: “I do not disclose discussions that I may have had on legal matters on behalf of a client.”

Bopp said that on the morning of Nov. 15 he spoke to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, and sent him a written proposal about True the Vote’s legal approach. A spokesman for Meadows declined to comment.

According to Bopp, Meadows said he would speak to Trump and get back to Bopp by 3 p.m. that day. But the call never came.

The following day, Bopp decided to abandon all four of True the Vote’s lawsuits, concluding that without the campaign’s involvement the suits had little chance of advancing before the election was to be certified in December. The lawsuits were just one component of the operation Eshelman was funding, but True the Vote had pitched them as critical to overturning the election results.

Bopp told Eshelman about the decision that day, during a tense phone call.

Eshelman was furious, according to court documents and interviews.

On Nov. 17, he sent Engelbrecht an email demanding the return of his money. True the Vote offered on Nov. 23 to return $1 million to settle the matter. Eshelman filed his first lawsuit two days later, saying the group had failed to provide an accounting of how the remainder of his money had been spent.

He withdrew the federal lawsuit on Feb. 1 and filed the suit in Texas state court.

None of Eshelman’s money has been returned, court documents show.

Bopp told The Post his firm ultimately billed True the Vote roughly $300,000 — more than half its retainer — for its work on the four lawsuits. He said he withdrew them because he “could see they were not going to accomplish anything.”

Overall, the experience left several people who were involved in the effort unconvinced that there ever was evidence of voter fraud to be discovered.

Even Phillips, the former True the Vote board member, said he has doubts about the impact of any irregularities. “I don’t know if there was enough to make a difference in the presidential election,” he said.

Crawford said: “I believe very much that Biden won and that anything we saw in terms of irregularities was not widespread enough to have changed the outcome.”

Eshelman said he still believes there was “some misbehavior” in the election. “But do I believe it might have risen to a degree that would change the electoral outcome?” he said. “I don’t know.”

Sometimes the "smart money" leads to some pretty stoopid places.

And not that I expect anything to come of it, but given the investigation launched by DA Fani Willis in Georgia, Lindsey Graham could be in bigger trouble than previously thought. That one bears watching.

Pony Up

Whatever else you wanna say about Mike Bloomberg, the guy's putting his money where his mouth is.

There's a good probability (in my little brain) that he's mostly hedging his bets. He's trying to short-circuit the kind of backlash that makes the pendulum swing wildly away from the nice well-ordered environment that plutocrats need to foster - the kind that still eats everybody who hasn't scrambled into the upper echelons, but eats them at a slower pace than what a guy like 45* is pushing for.

Bloomberg (et al) can't afford to let Trump push too many of us into Bernie's Revolution.

What I hear from Bloomberg is: "Yes, I'm a top-down authoritarian, but I'm pretty gosh darned benevolent about it."

Which is kinda weird, cuz that's what I used to complain about when I referred to the Dems in the 90s, when it first really started to look like the parties were losing their differentiating features.

"Vote for Democrats - we're slightly less asshole-ish than those other guys."

Anyway, it appears Mike is going to put some of that $60,000,000,000 to "good use".

WaPo, Greg Sargent:

It has long been an open question whether Mike Bloomberg would actually make good on his promise to spend lavishly from his fortune to defeat President Trump, should he fall short of the Democratic nomination. Now he’s fallen short — he dropped out on Wednesday — and we have our answer.

It’s a resoundingly good one, as The Post’s Michael Scherer reports:

Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg has decided to form an independent expenditure campaign that will absorb hundreds of his presidential campaign staffers in six swing states to work to elect the Democratic nominee this fall.

The group, with a name that is still undisclosed because its trademark application is in process, would also be a vehicle for Bloomberg to spend money on advertising to attack President Trump and support the Democratic nominee, according to a person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

It seems clear that Bloomberg believes he can make himself useful by using his fortune to rattle Trump, to get in his head, causing him to make mistakes or, better yet, perform even more spectacular meltdowns than usual.

Pay To Play

Ya gotta know something's wrong when a candidate for POTUS has to raise close to a billion dollars to land a job that pays $400k a year.

That's pretty fucked up right there.

In Passing On Passing

Walker Bragman, The Independent:

How does one eulogize a villain? It’s a question I find myself asking today after reading the news that David H Koch has died. What else can we really call a man who spent his entire adult life enriching himself at the expense of the world around him, leaving in his wake millions of destroyed lives, a planet on the brink of ecological catastrophe, and a nuclear superpower governed by a far-right political party? 

While it is generally impolitic to castigate someone after death, in the case of David Koch, it’s hard not to point out that his life’s work was the destruction of others. 

Koch went by many titles — billionaire industrialist, businessman, philanthropist, entrepreneur, conservative activist, libertarian vice presidential candidate — and I expect we’ll see many of those thrown around today. But “villain” is the one that suited him best.

Indeed, such is the appropriate term for a profoundly wealthy man who relies on a shadowy network of political advocacy groups to sell unpopular, detrimental policies to unsuspecting voters for the purposes of personal gain. 

Along with a 42 per cent stake in Koch Industries, David inherited what could be described as a pathological distaste for government from his father, a founding member of the far-right John Birch Society and a man who reportedly once built an oil refinery for Nazi Germany. Together with his brother Charles, David would use both to reshape America for the worse.

David and Charles, colloquially known as the infamous “Koch Brothers,” poured money into causes like climate change denial to ensure their fossil fuel empire remained profitable for as long possible. They went after public education, throwing their cash behind voucher programs in states like Arizona, which ranked 47 in the nation for its public schools last year. They went after unions through proxies like former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. They targeted Social Security for privatization. According to one report, they even tried to hamper cleanup efforts after Hurricane Katrina. 

And these are just some of the worthy causes David Koch and his brother used their vast fortunes to pursue. The reality is, given the porous nature of America’s campaign finance laws, there is no way of truly knowing the complete extent of their political ventures. 

David Koch’s legacy is truly one of injustice. For as much injustice as there was in how he lived, there is much more in how he died. Rather than slip into obscurity, forgotten by the generations that will hopefully do the work of undoing the damage he caused the planet, Koch finds unearned immortality in infamy.

If not for our human need to learn from the mistakes of our past, this man ought to have no legacy. But the world he left behind is undeniably impacted by his actions and riddled with inequities, many of which he should have answered for in life, but instead will have to do so in the books of history.

I've never wished any man dead, but I've read some obituaries with great pleasure.

--Mark Twain (but not really)