Poor Stallman

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#15_October_2020_(Voter_suppression) -- After Republicans stacked the appeals court, it approved the Texas voter-suppression measure of allowing only one ballot drop-off per county. I am curious to see their rationale, but I suspect it is based on taking at face value the pretense that this is a measure to prevent fraud, and disregarding the question of what effect it will really have. That gives officials a free hand to oppress people: just fabricate a motive that would have been legitimate, no matter how absurd. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/13/stacked-trump-appointees-federal-appeals-court-upholds-texas-gops-rule-restricting -- Stacked With Trump Appointees, Federal Appeals Court Upholds Texas GOP's Rule Restricting Ballot Drop-Off Sites to One Per County -- Tuesday, October 13, 2020 -- "Three Trump appointees upholding voter >>372,420 suppression." -- >>427

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#13_October_2020_(Political_officials_alter_the_CDC's_weekly_reports) -- Political officials alter the CDC's weekly reports for political purposes. They are pushing the head of the CDC to modify old reports too. Dr. Rick Bright resigned from the National Institute of Health after he was sidelined for insisting on doing what was scientifically and medically called for. -- https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/11/exclusive-trump-officials-interfered-with-cdc-reports-on-covid-19-412809 -- Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19 -- 09/11/2020 -- The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC’s scientific reports to health professionals. -- >>435

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#13_October_2020_(Masks_in_public_transportation) -- The CDC wanted to order people to use masks in public transportation, but the wrecker's political officials blocked it. If our state and local officials were on our side and getting good advice, all trying to do the best thing to protect people from Covid-19 and bring it to an end, it might be better for these decisions to be made locally. Alas, led by the wrecker, many of them are on the virus's side, and this decision helped them spread it. -- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/health/coronavirus-covid-masks-cdc.html -- White House Blocked C.D.C. From Requiring Masks on Public Transportation -- Oct. 9, 2020 -- The order would have mandated that both passengers and employees wear face coverings on planes, trains, buses and subways and in airports, stations and depots.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drafted a sweeping order last month requiring all passengers and employees to wear masks on all forms of public and commercial transportation in the United States, but it was blocked by the White House, according to two federal health officials. The order would have been the toughest federal mandate to date aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus, which continues to infect more than 40,000 Americans a day. The officials said that it was drafted under the agency’s “quarantine powers” and that it had the support of the secretary of health and human services, Alex M. Azar II, but the White House Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, declined to even discuss it. The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment, said the order would have required face coverings on airplanes, trains, buses and subways, and in transit hubs such as airports, train stations and bus depots.

A task force official said the decision to require masks should be left up to states and localities. The administration requires the task force to sign off on coronavirus-related policies. “The approach the task force has taken with any mask mandate is, the response in New York City is different than Montana, or Tuscaloosa, Alabama,” said the official who asked not to be identified because he did not have permission to discuss the matter. “Local and state authorities need to determine the best approach for their responsive effort depending on how the coronavirus is impacting their area.” Most public health officials believe that wearing masks is one of the most effective ways to protect against the spread of the virus, particularly in crowded, poorly ventilated public places that attract people from all over, like transportation venues. Many feel that the Trump administration has turned the wearing — or not wearing — of masks into a political expression, as seen most dramatically on Monday evening when President Trump whipped off his surgical mask at the White House door after returning from the hospital where he was treated for Covid-19.

“I think masks are the most powerful weapon we have to confront Covid and we all need to embrace masks and set the example for each other,” Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director, who oversaw the drafting of the order, said in a recent interview. Dr. Redfield has been publicly at odds with President Trump for promoting mask wearing along with social distancing, and for warning that a vaccine for the virus won’t be widely available until next year. The thwarting of the mask rule is the latest in a number of C.D.C. actions stalled or changed by the White House. Late last month, the coronavirus task force overruled the C.D.C. director’s order to keep cruise ships docked until mid-February. That plan was opposed by the tourism industry in Florida, an important swing state in the presidential election. Political appointees at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services have also been involved in rewriting the agency’s guidelines on reopening schools and testing for the virus, bypassing >>435 the agency’s scientists.

Some other members of the White House Task Force support a mask mandate. But others do not, among them Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a radiologist who has become Mr. Trump’s closest adviser on the coronavirus, and Mr. Pence, who runs the panel and sets the agenda. Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the House committee on transportation and infrastructure, criticized Mr. Trump for ignoring public health experts from his own administration on the mask issue. “It’s especially outrageous because the science is so clear: masks save lives,” Mr. DeFazio said. “The millions of Americans who work in and use our transportation systems every day — from bus drivers, train conductors and flight attendants, to the frontline workers who rely on public transit — deserve to know their president is relying on experts’ best advice and doing everything possible to keep them safe.”

The transportation trades department of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which represents 33 unions with what it describes as “millions” of transportation workers, said that the administration last week rejected its July petition to require passengers to wear masks on public transportation. Larry Willis, president of the department, said his members were being endangered by a patchwork of rules regarding face coverings on airplanes, trains and buses around the country, as well as in airports, train stations and bus depots. “Some airports are all in and they require masks when you walk in the door,” Mr. Willis said. “Some places where masks have become too politicized, the right mandates are not in place.”

“I think it creates an uncertain level of health and safety for workers and passengers,” he said. “This is a global pandemic, this is a national emergency. We should have a national standard.” Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said that while airlines do technically require passengers to wear face coverings, enforcement can be difficult. “If there is a requirement by regulation or law, then there’s typically a consequence for not following that regulation or law,” Ms. Nelson said. “So that gives us backing and it often serves as a deterrent from bad behavior.”

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#19_October_2020_(A_meeting_of_Republican_heavyweights) -- A meeting of Republican heavyweights to discuss voter suppression was recorded. Someone said, "Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor." -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/council-national-policy-video/2020/10/14/367f24c2-f793-11ea-a510-f57d8ce76e11_story.html -- http://archive.is/pgHMa -- Videos show closed-door sessions of leading conservative activists: ‘Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor’ -- Oct. 14, 2020

As the presidential campaign entered its final stages, a fresh-faced Republican activist named Charlie Kirk stepped into the spotlight at a closed-door gathering of leading conservatives and shared his delight about an impact of the coronavirus pandemic: the disruption of America’s universities. So many campuses had closed, he said, that up to a half-million left-leaning students probably would not vote. “So, please keep the campuses closed,” Kirk, 26, said in August as the audience cheered, according to video of the event obtained by The Washington Post. “Like, it’s a great thing.” The gathering in Northern Virginia was organized by the Council for National Policy, a little-known group that has served for decades as a hub for a nationwide network of conservative activists and the donors who support them. Members include Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Leonard Leo, an outside adviser to President Trump who has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars from undisclosed donors to support conservative causes and the nominations of conservative federal judges. Videos provided to The Post — covering dozens of hours of CNP meetings over three days in February and three in August — offer an inside view of participants’ obsessions and fears at a pivotal moment in the conservative movement. The videos, recorded by CNP to share with its members, show influential activists discussing election tactics, amplifying conspiracy theories and describing much of America in dark and apocalyptic terms. “This is a spiritual battle we are in. This is good versus evil,” CNP’s executive committee president, Bill Walton, said on Aug. 21, addressing attendees at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City. “We have to do everything we can to win.”

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told attendees that same day that the left is “war-gaming” a plan to delay the election tally until Jan. 20, 2021, and enable House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to become acting president. “This is kind of like crazy talk” among political people, Fitton said. But he added: “This is not an insignificant concern.” Expressing concern about voter fraud and disenfranchisement, Fitton called on the audience to find a way to prevent mail-in ballots from being sent to voters. “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do,” said Fitton, whose organization is a tax-exempt charity. “But this is a crisis that we’re not prepared for. I mean, our side is not prepared for.” In an interview with The Post, Fitton elaborated on his remarks. “The left has war-gamed this out,” Fitton said. “And it could cause civil war.” Brent Bozell, a CNP executive committee member and founder of the Media Research Center, another tax-exempt charity, told attendees at one of the August sessions that he believes the left plans to “steal this election.” “And if they get away with that, what happens?” he said. “Democracy is finished because they usher in totalitarianism.”

Bozell did not respond to messages seeking comment. At the February meetings, attendees discussed plans for seeking an advantage in the upcoming vote. Two said the right will begin “ballot harvesting,” a controversial technique that involves the collection and delivery of sealed absentee ballots from churches and other institutions. At the time of the meeting, Trump, his campaign officials and other Republicans were blasting the practice as an abuse by Democrats. “GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD,” Trump tweeted this spring. But Ralph Reed, chairman of the nonprofit Faith & Freedom Coalition, told the CNP audience that conservatives are embracing the technique this year. “And so our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches,” he said. “We’re going to be specifically going in not only to White evangelical churches, but into Hispanic and Asian churches, and collecting those ballots.”

Reed did not respond to requests for comment. J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official and the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a charity, described mail-in voting as “the number one left-wing agenda.” Adams urged the activists not to worry about the criticism that might come their way. “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth,” Adams said. In response to questions, Adams wrote in an email: “I stand by what I said because it is accurate.” The partisan commentary and election-related discussions captured on the videos involved members of an array of nonprofit organizations, including tax-exempt charities. In exchange for the right to accept tax-exempt donations, charities are prohibited from actively supporting political candidates or working in coordination on candidates’ behalf.

Such laws are rarely enforced, in part because of murkiness about what constitutes a violation, and because of the complex interactions between some charities and nonprofits known as “social welfare” groups, tax specialists said. Social welfare groups are permitted to engage in lobbying and advocacy but must devote less than half of their resources to political activity. An individual may serve as a leader of both a charity and an affiliated social welfare group. Some of the sessions at the CNP conferences are designated as being run by CNP Action, a social welfare affiliate that shares leaders with CNP. Two tax law specialists who viewed hours of video at The Post’s request said some of the remarks and planning on the videos could be improper for the groups that are registered with the IRS as charities. “What was jarring was that it was pretty clear to any reasonable observer that the entire purpose of the panel was to help the Republican Party win in November, up and down the ticket,” said Roger Colinvaux, director of law and public policy at Catholic University’s law school, referring to a panel about health care. Marcus Owens, a lawyer who led the Exempt Organizations Division at the IRS from 1990 to 2000, told The Post that participants’ comments on the videos raise potential issues of compliance with election laws and charity rules. “I’ve never seen anything like it on videotape and live,” Owens said, referring to the overt partisan coordination among the nonprofit leaders. “It’s almost like a movie.”

A spokesman for Kirk said he was there representing himself, not in his capacity as the leader of Turning Point USA, a prominent conservative youth organization based in Phoenix. In an interview, Bob McEwen, CNP’s executive director, said the Washington-based organization complies with IRS regulations and does not itself “do anything.” “CNP doesn’t do ad campaigns. It doesn’t do brochures. It is a meeting of leaders,” said McEwen, who is also president of CNP Action, the related social welfare group. “Anything that’s done is done by the membership, not by the Council for National Policy.” The sessions are closed to the public, and participants are told not to talk to the media about the group or its proceedings. “It absolutely could be open to the media, except that the media is known to be left, and then creates a distorted vision of their conversations,” McEwen said. The Council for National Policy was launched during the Reagan administration by figures in the religious right to bring more focus and force to conservative advocacy.

It has attracted conservative luminaries and front-line activists from across the country, according to internal directories obtained by The Post. In the years leading up to Trump’s election, members included Stephen K. Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. The videos make clear that CNP maintains strong links to the White House. Some participants spoke of a CNP-associated delegation that meets weekly with White House officials. They said the group, the Conservative Action Project, has helped to choose loyalists to run federal agencies and coordinate outside messages with nonprofit organizations to support administration policies and leaders. “It’s kind of this little secretive huddle that meets every Wednesday morning,” Paul Teller, a Trump deputy and director of strategic initiatives for Vice President Pence, told the audience in August. In February, during three days of meetings in Southern California, a CNP member named Rachel Bovard described the Conservative Action Project’s influence in helping the Trump administration select political appointees for the executive branch. She said the Conservative Action Project coordinated closely on these and other efforts with CNP members and the Conservative Partnership Institute, a tax-exempt charity run by former senator and tea party leader Jim DeMint of South Carolina. “We work very closely — CAP does and then we at CPI also — with the Office of Presidential Personnel at the White House to try and get good conservatives in the positions because we see what happens when we don’t vet these people,” she said.

Bovard cited as examples two figures who testified against Trump last year in the House impeachment hearings: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, former director for European affairs at the National Security Council, and Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. “All these people that led the impeachment against President Trump shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Bovard told the CNP audience. “We want to prevent that from happening.” In addition, Bovard described Ginni Thomas as a crucial link to the White House. “She is one of the most powerful and fierce women in Washington,” Bovard said. “She is really the tip of the spear in these efforts.” Bovard and Thomas did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesman said Teller declined to comment.

In another February session, Kelly Shackelford was introduced as CNP vice president, chairman of CNP Action and leader of the First Liberty Institute, another organization registered as a tax-exempt charity. He bragged about extensive behind-the-scenes coordination by his group and other nonprofit organizations to influence the White House selection of federal judges. “Some of us literally opened a whole operation on judicial nominations and vetting,” he said. “We poured millions of dollars into this to make sure the president has good information, he picks the best judges.” Shackelford said he is among the nonprofit leaders now coordinating with the White House to support the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat previously held by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In an interview, Shackelford said he is focused on educating Americans and providing information that will help the White House choose judges who interpret the Constitution in a literal way.

Speakers at the August conference touched on many of the cultural issues absorbing conservatives today — sometimes with more edge and heat than they do in their typical public remarks. In one of the sessions, author and former professor Carol Swain, speaking on a panel about race relations, said that “White people have lost their voice in America.” She likened the Black Lives Matter movement to the Ku Klux Klan. “The Democratic Party is using Black Lives Matter and antifa the same way they used the KKK,” said Swain, who is Black. “They created the KKK. It was their terrorist wing to terrorize everyone.” In response to questions, Swain stood by her remarks. Some participants bridled at pandemic restrictions — and the video showed that many did not wear masks.

“You will need to wear masks in the public part of the hotel but not here,” Walton, the CNP president, announced to applause. “Yeah,” Walton said. “That’s great!” A state mandate in Virginia generally requires masks at indoor public settings. On Aug. 21, in a rare CNP open session, Trump addressed the audience, which included acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf. Later that day, Teller, the White House deputy, gave a high-spirited shout-out from the front of a conference room to Wolf’s team. “I don’t know if you got to know Secretary Wolf’s team, sitting in the corner, they’re just a bunch of wingers. That’s like the most conservative table in the entire room, is Secretary Wolf’s team,” Teller gushed. “Great, great, great secretary.”

In contrast to his ebullience, some speakers at the meeting raised doubts about Trump’s prospects in November. Nancy Schulze, a CNP member and co-chair of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Wives Council, said the lack of a clear health-care plan from Trump poses a “huge vulnerability” for the president. “If we don’t get this right in the next 75 days, there is a question as to whether we’re going to prevail at all within the presidential campaign, or the House or the Senate,” she said. Others described an elaborate social media and advertising campaign by a collection of nonprofits — some of them tax-exempt charities — to convince voters this fall that a Republican free-market approach to health care would offer more choices. Organizers showed ads that feature doctors in white lab coats with stethoscopes. They told the CNP audience that market research found that featuring doctors engenders trust among voters.

“And so I remind people that what we’re trying to do is put on theater here,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president of Job Creators Network and chief executive of its foundation. “It’s the stage. It’s the script and the actors.” Ortiz did not respond to requests for comment. Among those involved are former House speaker Newt Gingrich and former health and human services secretary Tom Price. Organizers are asking allies in Congress to introduce a resolution that echoes the policy themes, such as the notion of personalized health care, Price told the crowd. “It’s urgent, but it’s not too late,” Price said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#10_October_2020_(Senator_Lee's_opposition_to_democracy) -- Senator Lee, a Republican, declared his opposition to democracy. He refuses to clarify who he thinks should rule, but I think the answer would be "billionaires and Republicans." Pence, in the debate, repeated the wrecker's veiled threat to seize power if they cannot pretend to have won. I say "pretend" because their voter-suppression efforts will be included in the count. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/08/republican-us-senator-mike-lee-democracy -- Republican senator says 'democracy isn't the objective' of US system -- Thu 8 Oct 2020 -- Lee claimed US ‘is not a democracy’ during Wednesday debate

A top Republican senator has said that “democracy isn’t the objective” of America’s political system, sparking widespread outrage at a time when his party has been accused by Democrats of plotting voter suppression and questioning a peaceful transition of power in November’s election. The Utah senator Mike Lee made the inflammatory declaration in an early morning tweet following Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate. “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that,” he wrote, misspelling prosperity. It followed a series of tweets he made during the debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris in which Lee claimed “We’re not a democracy” and questioned its role in US government.

Lee, who is among a swath of Republicans who recently tested positive for coronavirus, wrote: ‘The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic. To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few.’ He added: “Government is the official use of coercive force–nothing more and nothing less. The Constitution protects us by limiting the use of government force.” His democracy tweet immediately prompted alarm, including from a number of former government officials. Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director, tweeted: “‘Democracy isn’t the objective’. Our suspicions are confirmed.”

Walter Shaub, former director of the US office of government ethics, said: “People of my grandfather’s generation knew what to do about fascists. Now a member of Congress is urging us to join them. I wonder what made you hate America so much.” The Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein wrote: “If we’re not to have rule of the people, who exactly should rule? Throughout American history, from the Framers up to the present, the answer has always been the same: the people.” It comes amid growing concerns over the integrity of the election on 3 November. In the vice-presidential debate Harris accused Donald Trump of promoting voter suppression, saying he “openly attempted to suppress the vote”.

During the presidential debate he prompted fears over potential voter intimidation when he told supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully”. Meanwhile, Trump and Pence have refused to assure voters of a peaceful transfer of power if the Republicans lose November’s election. The president has said [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/24/republicans-trump-peaceful-transfer-presidency ]: “Well, we’re going to have to see what happens.” And in the vice-presidential debate, when asked what he would do if Trump refused a peaceful transfer of power, Pence said [ https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/pence-transfer-of-power/index.html ]: “First and foremost, I think we’re going to win this election.”

With less than a month to go until the election, Democrats and civil rights groups have sought [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/06/mail-in-voting-legal-battles-pennsylvania-michigan-wisconsin ] to make it easier to vote by mail during the pandemic, while Republicans and the Trump campaign have fought to keep restrictions in place. In Florida, a federal appeals court ruled in September that people with felony convictions could not vote unless they had repaid all outstanding debts – potentially blocking an estimated 744,000 people from voting.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#19_October_2020_(Creative_destruction) -- Plutcratist economists call unemployment "creative destruction." In the 80s and 90s, plutcratist politicians said the solution for unemployment in the US was to teach Americans to be "more entrepreneurial". Kudlow is saying the same thing in different words. What they disregard is that starting a business typically requires an investment of capital, that investment is a gamble, and you shouldn't gamble what you can't afford to lose. Most people in the US can't even scrape together 400 dollars for an emergency; they can't afford to invest in the risk of starting a business. Starting a business with a good chance of success also requires knowing all aspects of that business. Most people don't have suitable knowledge. And success for the business requires superiority or unmet demand. The same Kudlow told the public in February that the novel coronavirus was no problem, while telling rich Republicans that no one knew how dangerous it was. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/16/trump-advisers-privately-warned-gop-donors-about-covid-19-february-while-telling -- Trump Advisers Privately Warned GOP Donors About Covid-19 in February While Telling Public Virus Was 'Very Much Under Control' -- Friday, October 16, 2020 -- "Apparently, if Americans want to hear the full truth from the Trump administration about the severity of Covid-19, they need to be wealthy and well-connected donors."

As the Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. surpasses 218,000, the New York Times revealed [ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/stock-market-coronavirus-trump.html ] this week that while President Donald Trump in February lied to Americans about the coronavirus outbreak being "very much under control," his economic advisers at the same time warned wealthy Republican donors and members of a right-wing think tank behind closed doors that a public health crisis of the magnitude expected would severely affect the U.S. and world economy. "Apparently, if Americans want to hear the full truth from the Trump administration about the severity of Covid-19, they need to be wealthy and well-connected donors," said Kyle Herrig, president of the watchdog group Accountable.US, in a statement Friday. The Times' investigation focused on the discrepancy between Trump's cheerful public messaging to Americans in February and the less optimistic information that White House officials shared simultaneously and secretly with the conservative Hoover Institution's board members, many of whom are GOP donors.

For instance, hours after Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, asserted [ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/larry-kudlow-says-us-has-contained-the-coronavirus-and-the-economy-is-holding-up-nicely.html ] on February 25 on CNBC that the coronavirus had been contained in the U.S.—"it's pretty close to airtight"—he said privately that "we just don't know." William Callanan, a hedge fund consultant who attended the Hoover board meetings, wrote a document describing what he heard. The memo, obtained by the Times, demonstrated that "a devastating virus outbreak in the U.S. was increasingly likely to occur, and that government officials were more aware of the threat than they were letting on publicly." According to the Times:

The consultant's assessment quickly spread through parts of the investment world. U.S. stocks were already spiraling because of a warning from a federal public health official that the virus was likely to spread, but traders spotted the immediate significance: The president's aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.

"To many of the investors who received or heard about the memo, it was the first significant sign of skepticism among Trump administration officials about their ability to contain the virus," the Times reported. "It also provided a hint of the fallout that was to come, said one major investor who was briefed on it: the upending of daily life for the entire country." Moreover, at least some of the elite traders who had access to information from the administration used it to "gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering." Anticipating that the stock prices of companies were on the verge of falling, one investor who had access to the memo made the recommendation to, in Wall Street lingo, "short everything," or, bet on that outcome. Others "stocked up on toilet paper and other household essentials" weeks before the general public was made aware of the severity of the pandemic.

"So disgusting," said epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding. "They knew." The recent revelation, published late Wednesday night, follows last month's groundbreaking news that the president spent months knowingly misleading the public about the danger posed by the pandemic, utterly failing to use experts' insights to avert a catastrophic outcome.

As Common Dreams reported [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/09/reckless-homicide-audio-tapes-reveal-trump-knew-covid-19-was-deadly-stuff-months ] in early September, Trump chose to withhold information about Covid-19 from the public in order to "play it down." Despite understanding as early as January that the coronavirus was transmitted via airborne particles and caused a lethal disease, the president sowed debate and confusion about risks and safety measures—undermining recommendations made by epidemiologists and committing what some called "reckless homicide." "Trump has mismanaged this crisis from the beginning," said Herring, "and it's long past time for his administration to stop lying to the public and ensure that relief finally reaches the families that need it most."

[1/2] https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#21_October_2020_(OSHA) -- How [the wrecker] Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules. -- https://theintercept.com/2020/10/20/trump-osha-workplace-safety-covid/ -- How Trump Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules -- October 20 2020 -- Trump’s attack on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has left workers vulnerable to Covid-19.

The coronavirus had already begun tearing through the JBS Foods beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, when Kim Cordova wrote to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late March. Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, asked the federal agency to send inspectors to that plant, where 3,000 members of the union work, as well as to five other businesses where members of the local work. Many of the JBS workers, who cut, process, and package the meat from the newly slaughtered animals, had begun to fall sick with Covid-19. Yet JBS hadn’t provided the workers with masks and in some cases had advised specifically against wearing them, according to Cordova. The workers didn’t have enough room to distance themselves from their co-workers in the cafeteria, the locker rooms, or elsewhere around the plant. Although Cordova had been in direct communication with the management at JBS about the health hazards at the plant, the largest of its kind in the country, talks had recently hit a wall. A few days later, Cordova received a call from OSHA letting her know that help was not on the way. “He said they didn’t have the staff and they weren’t doing any on-site visits. They just didn’t have any direction,” she recalled. “And I told them, people are going to die in this facility.” Cordova’s prediction proved true on April 7, when Saul Sanchez, a 78-year-old production worker became the first worker at JBS Greeley to die of Covid-19. Eventually five of his co-workers — Eduardo Conchas De La Cruz, Way Ler, Daniel Avila Loma, Tibursio Rivera Lopez, and Tin Aye — also died of the disease, as well as a seventh employee, whom JBS identified as “one of our corporate colleagues.” So far, at least 292 workers at the plant have been infected with the virus, and 51 workers have been hospitalized with Covid-19. Cordova said she knows of at least three family members of JBS Greeley workers who also died as a result of the outbreak. On May 14, OSHA finally sent an inspector to the beef plant. But according to Cordova, the visit was brief. “They did a quick walk-through, more like a run-through,” she said. Although the union suggested that OSHA interview workers who had been sick with Covid-19, the inspectors declined to do so. “I understand that you can’t talk to the workers who are dead,” Cordova said. “But what about the ones who almost died?” And while the local offered interpreters so the inspectors could communicate with the workers, who speak dozens of languages, Cordova said the OSHA representatives declined.

Problems at the plant persisted after the visit, and the union filed a formal complaint with OSHA in July. On September 11, the agency issued a citation to JBS, finding that “the employer did not furnish employment or a place of employment which were free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees.” For this “serious violation” of the law as well as one “other-than-serious” violation, OSHA issued a fine: $15,615. JBS, the biggest meat processing company in the world, with more than $51 billion in revenue last year, refused to pay the fine. In an emailed statement, Cameron Bruett, head of corporate affairs for JBS USA, wrote “the OSHA citation is entirely without merit. It attempts to impose a standard that did not exist in March as we fought the pandemic with no guidance. When OSHA finally provided guidance in late April, one month after the beginning of the citation time period, our previously implemented preventive measures largely exceeded any of their recommendations.” While more than 1,000 meatpacking, food-processing, and farming facilities have reported cases of Covid-19, resulting in 269 deaths as of October 15, according to Food and Environment Reporting Network [ https://thefern.org/2020/04/mapping-covid-19-in-meat-and-food-processing-plants/ ], OSHA cites only two: JBS and Smithfield Foods. Smithfield, which operates a pork-processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where at least 1,294 employees contracted the virus and four died of Covid-19, was hit with an even smaller fine than JBS: just $13,494, or about $10 for each worker at the plant who fell sick. Smithfield, which is owned by the WH Group, the largest pork company in the world with more than $25 billion in revenue last year, also refused to pay the fine and is contesting its OSHA citation.

In an emailed statement, Keira Lombardo, executive vice president of corporate affairs and compliance at Smithfield, described the OSHA citation as “wholly without merit.” The statement also said that the company “took extraordinary measures on our own initiative to keep our employees as healthy and safe as possible so that we could fulfill our obligation to the American people to maintain the food supply. OSHA then used what we had done as a model for its April 26 guidance. We have incurred incremental expenses related to COVID-19 totaling more than $500 million to date.” In an emailed response to questions about JBS, Department of Labor spokesperson Megan Sweeney said that the Department of Labor does not comment on pending litigation. OSHA was founded in 1971 to protect Americans from industrial accidents, poor ventilation, fires, and many other perils of the workplace. And while it has been hobbled by insufficient funding and staffing at various points over the years, the agency has reached its weakest state during the current pandemic, when the nation needs it most. Under Donald Trump, while a deadly disease has been spreading through America’s workplaces, OSHA has had fewer inspectors than at any point since the 1970s. The International Labor Organization recommends having one labor inspector for every 10,000 people; the U.S. now has one for every 83,207. Meanwhile, Trump has tried to slash OSHA’s funding in every one of his budget proposals (Congress has repeatedly restored it) and has never bothered to nominate a leader for the agency. Almost half the senior positions at OSHA remain vacant.

Without an assistant secretary of labor to guide the agency, the direction of OSHA has fallen to the Secretary of Labor, Eugene Scalia, the son of the late conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. Eugene Scalia, an attorney who replaced Alexander Acosta after he stepped down amid the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, may be best known for attacking worker protections [ https://www.epi.org/blog/why-eugene-scalia-is-the-wrong-person-for-the-job/ ], including a rule that would have prevented 600,000 repetitive strain injuries each year. During the pandemic, while masks have been essential in protecting workers from infection, the labor secretary has repeatedly appeared in public without a mask. Scalia and his wife, Trish, also attended and did not wear a mask at the superspreader event at the White House in September; she later tested positive for Covid-19. Asked about Scalia’s failure to use of face masks, the Department of Labor’s Sweeney wrote in an email to The Intercept, “Secretary Scalia follows the latest recommendations from health experts and medical professionals, including social distancing and wearing a mask where social distancing or other precautions are not able to be taken.” Sweeney also wrote that, “Since February 1, 2020, OSHA inspections alone have helped to ensure more than 634,000 workers are protected from COVID-19. The claim that OSHA is not enforcing its standards and the OSH Act with respect to COVID-19 is patently false.” Fines for serious occupational violations doubled under the Obama administration, but they have fallen since Trump took office to the point of being meaningless. OSHA recently touted the fact that it has levied $1,222,156 in what it refers to as “proposed penalties” to 85 establishments for “coronavirus violations.” But that averages out to less than $15,000 each, a trivial amount for many large companies.

“OSHA was invented to ensure that workers are safe. And here you have this unprecedented crisis and OSHA has been absolutely silent,” said David Michaels, who led the agency during the Obama administration and is the longest serving assistant secretary of labor in OSHA’s history. “It’s beyond unfortunate that this country has faced a massive worker safety crisis when OSHA has no leadership and is weaker and less resourced than it has been in its history.” According to Michaels, who is now a professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the George Washington School of Public Health, OSHA could easily have levied sizable fines to the meat plants and other businesses that would actually deter the kinds of violations that are fueling the ongoing spread of the virus throughout American workplaces. “The political leadership has made the decision in each one of these inspections that OSHA will issue at most one citation for violating the general duty clause,” said Michaels, referring to the section of the Occupational Safety and Health Act that requires employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards. “That’s a choice. They could issue multiple citations at the same worksite and they could classify those violations as willful, which allows them to multiply the size of the fine by 10.” The administration made another decision that has devastated the government’s ability to respond to the pandemic. Early in 2017, Trump worked with congressional Republicans to repeal [ https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-resolution/83 ] an Obama-era OSHA rule that had required employers to maintain records of work-related illnesses. Without that rule, the agency cannot issue a citation for failure to record a Covid-19 case if more than six months has passed since the case appeared. The result has been shoddy record-keeping that’s left the country without an accurate count of workers sickened and killed by Covid-19.

[2/2] >>449 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#21_October_2020_(OSHA) -- How [the wrecker] Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules. -- https://theintercept.com/2020/10/20/trump-osha-workplace-safety-covid/ -- How Trump Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules -- October 20 2020 -- Trump’s attack on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has left workers vulnerable to Covid-19.

“Employers now know that the likelihood of OSHA catching them is extremely low,” Michaels said. “I have no doubt that some employers have decided to not record cases.” Perhaps the deadliest choice OSHA has made under Trump was to kill a yearslong effort that was underway at the agency to require hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical workplaces to prepare for a pandemic exactly like the one we are now experiencing. Michaels became head of OSHA in December 2009, the year that the H1N1 pandemic started. And it was already clear that the health crisis sparked by that airborne flu virus, which killed 12,469 people in the U.S., would not be the last. So he and his staff began what would be six years of work creating a “standard” that would prepare workplaces to prevent the spread of airborne pathogens like the coronavirus. The effort was modeled on the bloodborne standard the agency issued in 1991 during the HIV crisis, which brought about the use of safe sharps containers. Health care facilities that fail to use safe sharps containers and adhere to the other elements of the standard can be fined; as a result, the number of needlestick injuries to health care workers declined. The airborne standard, which was drafted by 2012, called for health care institutions to create plans to minimize workers’ risk from infectious airborne pathogens, a category that includes the coronavirus, and to stockpile necessary PPE to protect them in the case of an outbreak. Masks were to have been central to the preparations. “We had long discussions with CDC about the need for N95s,” Michaels said.

The standard was written to apply to hospitals and other health care facilities but would have been “expandable” to other employers, according to Michaels. Had it passed, OSHA inspectors would have been able to fine hospitals and nursing homes that hadn’t prepared for an epidemic of an infectious airborne disease by stocking masks and other PPE well before the pandemic began. Although the airborne pathogen standard was put on the regulatory agenda in 2016 and was scheduled to be issued as a proposal the following year, the agency stopped work on it when Trump took office. Health care institutions were woefully unprepared for the pandemic. More than 250,000 health care workers have been infected with the virus and at least 1,700 health care workers have died from Covid-19, according to estimates from National Nurses United. But no one knows the exact number, in part because of the poor tracking that’s followed OSHA’s loosening of the record-keeping requirements. Since January, more than 84,000 nursing home residents and staff have died, and hundreds of nursing homes have reported shortages of both PPE and staff. In the absence of a permanent standard for airborne pathogens, labor groups have called on OSHA to issue an emergency temporary standard to protect workers from Covid-19. While Virginia enacted a temporary standard in July, after agriculture and meatpacking workers petitioned the governor, and several state OSHAs are working on their own enforceable standards that will help protect workers, the federal agency has continued to refuse to issue one. Instead, some of the guidance it has issued around the pandemic, such as its instruction to distance workers six feet apart “if feasible,” has been phrased as optional. Thousands of health care workers have reported dangerous conditions to OSHA during the pandemic. Yet under Trump the agency has taken action on only a tiny fraction of those complaints. Overall, OSHA has investigated fewer than 3 percent of the 9,488 coronavirus-related complaints it has received as of October 18 during the pandemic. And the majority of those investigations did not lead to fines or citations. In her email, the Department of Labor’s Sweeney wrote that “every single complaint has been investigated.”

As of August 4, the agency had also received 1,744 complaints from whistleblowers who felt they were retaliated against at work because they raised coronavirus-related safety concerns or requested OSHA inspections, according to the National Employment Law Project — a significant increase in whistleblower complaints. Yet the agency investigated just 2 percent of those complaints. As with the complaints about coronavirus-related workplaces hazards, most of the whistleblower complaints were also dismissed or closed [ https://www.nelp.org/publication/osha-failed-protect-whistleblowers-filed-covid-retaliation-complaints/ ] without investigation. An August report from the Department of Labor’s Inspector General found that OSHA cut the staff that handles these whistleblower complaints during the pandemic, even as the number of complaints was going up. Meanwhile, entire sectors of the workforce that have been devastated by the coronavirus have not received any intervention from OSHA. More than 147,000 agricultural workers have been infected with the virus, according to Purdue University’s Food and Agriculture Vulnerability Index, yet OSHA has not cited or penalized a single farm. Nor has it issued any citations or penalties to any retail establishments, nonresidential schools, or restaurants. While Kim Cordova asked OSHA to visit workplaces owned by six major companies, the JBS plant in Greeley plant was the only one that was inspected. JBS has made some changes to protect workers, including staggering start and break times to promote physical distancing, requiring the use of masks and face shields, erecting physical barriers, and “removing vulnerable populations from our facilities with full pay and benefits,” according to the statement from company, which says that it would have made these changes without intervention from OSHA. Nevertheless, according to Cordova, conditions there remain perilous. She acknowledged that the company installed some physical barriers, but she said that there were no such barriers on the “kill” side of the plant, where the freshly slaughtered animals arrive to be processed, and that workers continue to be forced to work “elbow-to-elbow” in part because the line speed is too fast to allow them to spread out. The union confirmed that workers who were over 65 or had conditions that made them particularly susceptible to Covid-19 were allowed to stay home for a time, but said that they were asked to return to work in August. And while the company has begun screening employees on their way into work, a medical assistant hired by JBS recently reported [ https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/investigations/whistleblower-says-covid-19-screening-process-at-jbs-plant-places-employees-in-danger ] that only about half the staff was actually being screened and that she was pressured to allow employees with concerning symptoms into the plant.

The union is now struggling to address these ongoing problems, but Cordova says she has no illusions that the federal workplace safety agency can help her do it. “It was OSHA’s job to protect people,” she said, “and they didn’t.”

[...] called for health care institutions to create plans to minimize workers’ risk from infectious airborne pathogens, a category that includes the coronavirus, and to stockpile necessary PPE to protect them in the case of an outbreak. [...] Had it passed, OSHA inspectors would have been able to fine hospitals and nursing homes that hadn’t prepared for an epidemic of an infectious airborne disease by stocking masks and other PPE well before the pandemic began. -- >>450

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#24_October_2020_(Right-wing_terrorism) -- 2/3 of the terrorist attacks and plots this year were by right-wing extremists. A right-wing extremist has just been charged with travelling to Minneapolis to carry out a false-flag attack, burning a thug department building. He is not the first right-wing provocateur to be charged over violence at Black Lives Matter protests this summer. I wonder if we will find that provocateurs were chiefly responsible for the violence. They fooled a lot of people, including me. -- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-boogaloo-boi-minneapolis-police-building-george-floyd -- ‘Boogaloo Boi’ charged in fire of Minneapolis police precinct during George Floyd protest -- Fri 23 Oct 2020 -- Ivan Harrison Hunter, a Texas rightwing extremist, bragged about helping to set the fire then was seen shooting 13 rounds at the building

A rightwing extremist boasted of driving from Texas to Minneapolis to help set fire to a police precinct during the George Floyd protests, federal prosecutors said. US attorney Erica MacDonald said on Friday that she had charged Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old Texas resident, with traveling across state lines to participate in a riot. The charges are the latest example of far-right extremists attempting to use violence to escalate national protests against police brutality into an uprising against the government, and even full civil war. The case also reveals the extent of the coordination between violent members of the nascent far-right “Boogaloo Bois” movement operating in different cities across the country. According to the criminal complaint against Hunter, on 26 May, as intense protests broke out in Minneapolis over the killing of George Floyd by a city police officer, a “Boogaloo Boi” based in Minnesota posted a public Facebook message: “I need a headcount.”

Hunter, a resident of Boerne, Texas, which is roughly 1,200 miles away, responded: “72 hours out.” Another “Boogaloo Boi”, based in North Carolina, posted a public message the same day: “Lock and load boys,” he wrote, adding, “the national network is going off.” “Boogaloo” has long been used on online message boards as an ironic term for a second civil war, one that might be sparked by any government attempts to confiscate Americans’ guns. But in 2019 and early 2020, the memes about a coming “boogaloo” began to coalesce into an anti-government, pro-gun movement, with armed “Boog bois” showing up at protests, some wearing the “Boogaloo” uniform of a bright Hawaiian shirt paired with a military-style rifle. In the late winter and early spring of 2020, researchers noted a growing number of “Boogaloo” groups on Facebook, many of them posting explicitly about military tactics and killing government officials, as well as the proliferation of “Boogaloo”-themed merchandise for sale, such as flags, patches, and Hawaiian-print gun accessories.

Prosecutors say that Hunter would later describe himself to Austin police officers as “the leader of the Boogaloo Bois in south Texas”. By 28 May, during a night of the most intense unrest and destruction in the city, Hunter was in Minneapolis, just as the 3rd precinct police station, known locally as a “playground for renegade cops”, was being set on fire. Video shot that night shows a person later identified as Hunter firing 13 rounds from a semiautomatic assault-style rifle on the 3rd precinct police station while people believed to be looters were inside. He then high-fived another person and shouted, “Justice for Floyd!” according to the complaint. Later, he privately messaged Steven Carrillo, another alleged “Boogaloo Boi” in California, urging him to “go for police buildings”, according to the federal criminal complaint.

“I did better, lol,” Carrillo allegedly replied. Hours before Carrillo sent that message, according to the complaint, federal prosecutors say Carrillo had driven to Oakland with an accomplice, and, as protesters were demonstrating blocks away, shot two officers [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/30/oakland-courthouse-shooting-george-floyd-protest ] guarding a federal courthouse in downtown Oakland, killing one, David Patrick Underwood. Carrillo was later charged [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/08/steven-carrillo-ambush-accusations-case-police-investigation-oakland ] with killing another law enforcement officer, a Santa Cruz sheriff’s deputy, in an ambush attack in June. According to the complaint, Hunter would later post multiple messages on Facebook bragging of his actions in Minneapolis on the night of 28 May and morning of 29 May, writing, “I set fire to that precinct with the Black community,” and, “My mom would call the FBI if she knew.”

“I’ve burned police stations with Black Panthers in Minneapolis,” he claimed in one message, and in another, “The BLM protesters in Minneapolis loved me.” Police in Austin, Texas, stopped a pickup truck, in which Hunter was a passenger, on 3 June for multiple traffic violations. Hunter had six loaded magazines for a semiautomatic rifle in a tactical vest he was wearing. Officers also found multiple firearms in the truck. Several days after the stop, federal agents learned of Hunter’s online affiliation with Carrillo. MacDonald said Hunter made his initial court appearance on Thursday in San Antonio, Texas. It is unclear if he has an attorney. Hunter is the third alleged “Boogaloo Boi” [ https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/two-self-described-boogaloo-bois-charged-attempting-provide-material-support-hamas ] to be charged in connection with protests in Minneapolis. Across the country, the “Boogaloo” movement has been linked to more than two dozen arrests and at least five deaths this year, including the alleged plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, >>379,382 Gretchen [ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/09/facebook-rightwing-extremists-michigan-plot-militia-boogaloo ] Whitmer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328

Here's what the FBI labels your crowd. https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories-terrorism-160000507.html -- http://archive.is/c5Sy1 -- The FBI document is from "May 30, 2019". Some highlights from the article: "The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News." -- "The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant (which didn’t actually have a basement)." -- "It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle." -- >>411

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#3_October_2020_(The_wrecker_is_following_a_playbook_from_1930s_Germany) -- *Signalling to his base, as he did referring to the Proud Boys on Tuesday, the [wrecker] is following a playbook from 1930s Germany.* An FBI memo warns about violent right-wing extremist violence, perhaps after the election. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/01/citing-post-election-period-possible-flashpoint-fbi-memo-warns-far-right-white -- Citing Post-Election Period as Possible 'Flashpoint,' FBI Memo Warns of Far-Right, White Supremacist Violence to Come -- Thursday, October 01, 2020

One day after President Donald Trump urged his supporters to engage in voter intimidation [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/30/behavior-desperate-man-trump-denounced-calling-supporters-engage-voter-intimidation ] during the general election and called on [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/29/fascism-our-door-asked-condemn-white-supremacist-groups-trump-tells-them-stand ] the violent white supremacist group Proud Boys to "stand by" rather than "stand down," The Nation reported [ https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/white-supremacist-boogaloo/ ] that the FBI is preparing for a "violent extremist threat" posed by a far-right, anti-government militia whose members have advocated for a "race war." Identifying the loosely-organized group known as the "Boogaloos" as the specific threat, the FBI's Dallas field office prepared an intelligence report on Tuesday—the day of the first presidential debate—titling the document, "Boogaloo Adherents Likely Increasing Anti-Government Violent Rhetoric and Activities, Increasing Domestic Violent Extremist Threat in the FBI Dallas Area of Responsibility." Known for wearing Hawaiian shirts and military fatigues and carrying weapons to rallies, "Boogaloos" reportedly intend to bring about a second American Civil War, which some adherents believe will be a "race war." In one high-profile case against a Boogaloo proponent, Steven Carrillo was accused this year of killing two law enforcement officers with the aim of "provoking retaliation from the police against the demonstrators" at a Black Lives Matter rally.

The Boogaloo movement has also had a strong presence [ https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/virus-restrictions-fuel-anti-government-boogaloo-movement ] at protests against Covid-19 restrictions, where many adherents were armed. With Trump repeatedly stoking the perception among his supporters that—despite the fact that he trails Democratic candidate Joe Biden in several swing state polls—the only legitimate election will be one that he wins and that mail-in ballots will result in a rigged election, the FBI believes Election Day could be a "potential flashpoint" in an escalation of the Boogaloos' violent activities over the next three months, leading up to Inauguration Day in January 2021.

"Boogaloo adherents likely will expand influence within the FBI Dallas AOR [Area of Responsibility] due to the presence of existing anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, the sentiment of perceived government overreach, heightened tensions due to Covid-19-related state and local restrictions, and violence or criminal activity at lawful protests as a result of the death of an African American USPER [US person] in Minneapolis, factors that led to violence at otherwise peaceful and lawful protests in the FBI Dallas AOR," the report reads. "Indicators that this assessment is correct include increased violent social media posts of boogaloo adherents and increased 'patrolling' or attendance at events that are anti-law enforcement, anti-government, or anti-authority," the Dallas field office continues. On social media, journalist Medhi Hasan called the report "a huge story." Nation reporter Ken Klippenstein, who wrote about the FBI's warning for the outlet, urged federal law enforcement agents to share more information about their concerns regarding the election and potential violence by white supremacist groups.

As Common Dreams reported [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/30/proud-boys-celebrate-trump-shout-out-warnings-grow-president-inciting-violence ] Wednesday, members of the Proud Boys celebrated the president's refusal to denounce white supremacy at the debate. The group's reaction was "a perfect example of how Trump's voter fraud disinformation and emboldened white supremacists and other violent extremists are a recipe for disaster this fall," tweeted Amy Spitalnick of the anti-racist group Integrity First for America.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#14_October_2020_(Koch-Funded_group_pushes_for_mass_evictions) -- *Koch-Funded Legal Group Pushes to Allow Mass Evictions During Pandemic.* The greatest danger of putting Barrett on the Supreme Court is that it could adopt that philosophy — that "civil liberties" means there cannot be any limit on the power to evict tenants. -- https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/10/13/koch-funded-legal-group-pushes-allow-mass-evictions-during-pandemic/ -- Koch-Funded Legal Group Pushes to Allow Mass Evictions During Pandemic -- October 13th, 2020

As many as 40 million Americans face possible eviction in January, thanks to the coronavirus’ toll on the economy and insufficient federal stimulus dollars for struggling renters. In early September, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a moratorium on evictions through the end of 2020, citing a potential increase in the spread of the coronavirus if people lose their places of residence. But five weeks later, after multiple court cases and aggressive lobbying by the real estate industry, the moratorium has lost its teeth. On Oct. 9, the CDC issued a new document of frequently asked questions about its moratorium that allows landlords to begin eviction proceedings now as long as the actual eviction takes place after Dec. 31. It also states that land­lords are not required to inform ten­ants of the moratorium. A major force behind this change is a legal nonprofit that is heavily funded by the foundation of billionaire industrialist and Republican megadonor Charles Koch.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA)—a group with a mission to fight the “unconstitutional administrative state”—went to court on Sep. 8 representing Virginia landlord Rick Brown, arguing that the CDC did not have the legal authority to prevent Brown from evicting clients who can’t pay rent and replacing them with those who can afford market-rate rents. The National Apartment Association, a major lobbying group for landlords, joined the suit as a plaintiff two weeks later. Koch is NCLA’s biggest known donor, having given $2 million to the group via the Charles Koch Foundation from 2017, the year when the group was founded, to 2018. Tax records for 2019 are not yet available to the public. The CDC’s eviction moratorium update “is symptomatic of a system that has always and continues to work to benefit the profiteers,” Tara Raghuveer, a tenants’ rights activist who leads KC Tenants and the People’s Action Institute’s Homes Guarantee campaign, told CMD. “It’s naked self-interest…. Every single eviction that we allow right now, we are putting someone’s profits over another person’s life, and it’s disgusting.” “It’s because of corporate America, the stranglehold that they have over our democracy and our economy that coronavirus is the deep and pernicious threat that it remains in America,” continued Raghuveer. “We are consistently prioritizing private industry over public health and science and people’s lives, and it shows.”

In addition to advocating for evictions during the pandemic and resulting economic crisis this year, NCLA filed a lawsuit against Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Banker over his COVID-related public safety orders. And as Koch-funded groups prepared to wage legal battles over COVID-19 restrictions, other groups he finances helped organize protests [ https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/04/22/groups-aligned-right-wing-megadonors-promoting-coronavirus-protests/ ] of state lockdown orders and fought to block bailouts [ https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/07/02/koch-backed-groups-fight-to-block-ohio-covid-19-bailouts-despite-crushing-pandemic-deficits/ ] of desperately cash-strapped states and localities, as CMD has reported. About one-third of U.S. adults say they’re somewhat or very likely to face the threat of eviction or foreclosure in the next two months. The National Council of State Housing Agencies estimated late last month that potentially 34 million Americans will owe as much as $34 billion when the CDC moratorium expires at the end of this year. “Even under this moratorium period…nothing is stopping the debt from piling up,” said Raghuveer. “People are being buried under this mountain of debt, and there is no proposed solution to that right now…. Come January, people are going to be facing real financial ruin. This is the type of financial ruin that people don’t recover from, and their kids don’t recover from. They’ll lose everything.” On top of crushing debt, millions of new homeless people on the streets during the pandemic will drastically worsen the public health emergency that exists today.

Can our systems cope with potentially tens of millions of evictions early next year? “It can’t. That’s the reality,” said Raghuveer. “What’s baffling to me is that, in my view, there’s no one member of Congress, there’s no one person in leadership in the country who has fully recognized what a catastrophe this will be, and what a catastrophe it already is.” Even if the Trump administration extends the eviction moratorium into 2021, a major crisis looms. “The tenant movement has been arguing since March that the only way we get out of this with any semblance of dignity and stability for the poor and working class people in this country who are suffering now…is by canceling rent and mortgages and canceling rental debt that’s accrued,” Raghuveer said.

Koch’s investments in NCLA appear to have already paid off. NCLA is an associate member of the Koch-funded State Policy Network (SPN), a web of right-wing, free-market think tanks and other nonprofits that also receive funding from Koch foundations. In its short existence, NCLA has litigated on behalf of, filed amicus briefs in support of, and publicly supported many similarly Koch-funded organizations. NCLA and eight other groups directly funded by Koch’s foundations filed amicus briefs [ https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/01/10/koch-funds-groups-supporting-lawsuit-against-donor-transparency/ ] supporting SPN member Americans for Prosperity, Koch’s premier political organization, in its fight to keep its biggest donors secret from California regulators. In another campaign finance case, Campaign Legal Center v. Federal Election Commission, NCLA filed an amicus brief asking the FEC to dismiss the case. The Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog group, sued the FEC for failure to act on a four-year-old complaint it had filed over former presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s establishment of a super PAC that spent tens of millions of dollars backing his 2016 campaign.

In January 2019, NCLA came out in support of the Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice, both SPN members and funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, regarding the groups’ legal action against the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “gag rule.” Koch is one of organized labor’s biggest foes, and he funds anti-labor policy organizations such as SPN and its sister group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). NCLA is part of this fight. It is representing right-wing media company FDRLST Media, LLC, which runs The Federalist, in a labor case that arose when publisher Ben Domenech threatened to “send back to the salt mine” the first staffer who tries to unionize. In another case, NCLA filed an amicus brief supporting tech giant Oracle in its case against the Department of Labor that challenges the agency’s internal process for adjudicating race and gender discrimination claims, a process that stemmed from Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 nondiscrimination executive order. NCLA’s legal work often references the 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which established the important legal precedent called “Chevron deference,” which holds that courts should defer to agencies’ interpretations of laws passed by Congress that are ambiguous. This deference empowers agencies to fulfill their missions with effective regulation.

Koch and his network have opposed Chevron deference since its origin. As Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland, explains in his Oct. 12 op-ed [ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/opinion/charles-koch-amy-coney-barrett.html ] about Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Koch is spending money to get her confirmed, betting that she’ll join other conservatives in striking down Chevron deference. For Koch, whose business deals heavily in fossil fuels, hobbling the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases would be enormously profitable. NCLA attacked Chevron in its challenge to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ 2019 ban on bump stocks—attachments that effectively turn semi-automatic rifles into fully automatic ones and that terrorists have used to kill more people more quickly [ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/what-bump-stock-las-vegas-shooter-stephen-paddock-automatic-weapons-a7985741.html ]. “We look forward to the Court setting a major precedent limiting Chevron‘s unconstitutional reach,” said NCLA litigation counsel Caleb Kruckenberg in a press release. A number of staff members of NCLA, including multiple top executives, have close ties to Koch’s business and his political network. The setup is common in Kochworld; alumni of various Koch-funded think tanks, political groups, and academic programs often shuffle between the numerous entities in the businessman’s vast influence operation. These organizations have not only a shared funder but a shared mission: to slash taxes and eviscerate government regulation. These chief goals of the Koch network seek to increase profits and legal headaches for Koch and his industrial conglomerate, Koch Industries.

NCLA’s Executive Director and General Counsel Mark Chenoweth was general counsel for Koch Industries at its Kansas headquarters, and he most recently spent four years as general counsel of the Koch-funded Washington Legal Foundation, an SPN member. Multiple other staffers have worked at the Washington Legal Foundation, including NCLA’s director of development, Lauren McDonald, who also completed the Koch Associate Program, a program sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute that places staff at its approved nonprofits and trains them in Koch’s trademarked “Market-Based Management” business methodology. Communications and Marketing Director Judy Pino has worked for the Libre Initiative, a Koch-backed political group that was recently folded into Koch’s Americans for Prosperity. Senior Counsel John Vecchione was previously CEO of the Cause of Action Institute, which has received grants from the Charles Koch Institute.

Other employees have completed Koch internship programs, worked at Koch-funded think tanks such as the Cato Institute, and graduated from Koch-backed academic programs, such as the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. NCLA’s board includes Marty Zupan, a Koch network insider who was president and CEO of the heavily Koch-funded academic program the Institute for Humane Studies, an SPN member. Koch grants to NCLA make up a large portion of the group’s total funding. The $2 million from 2017 to 2018 accounts for 34 percent of the group’s total revenue during that period. While Koch is easily the biggest known donor to NCLA, several of his allies have also funded the group. According to CMD’s research of publicly available tax records, four right-wing foundations that often fund the same causes as Koch have give six-figure amounts since 2017: the Thomas W. Smith Foundation ($666,666), the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation ($600,000), the Searle Freedom Trust ($300,000), and the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($300,000).

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#22_October_2020_(The_wrecker_spread_Covid-19_and_covered_up_how_it_spread) -- The wrecker simultaneously acted to spread Covid-19 and cover up how it was spreading. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/20/trump-called-mass-murderer-after-white-house-docs-show-he-lied-about-recent-covid-19 -- Trump Called 'Mass Murderer' After White House Docs Show He Lied About Recent Covid-19 Surge -- Tuesday, October 20, 2020 -- The congressman who released the reports said they reveal "Trump's contempt for science and refusal to lead during this crisis have allowed the coronavirus to surge."

President Donald Trump has known for over a month that new coronavirus infections have been soaring even as the White House has lied about the seriousness of the surge, documents released Tuesday by a leading Democratic lawmaker show. HuffPost reports [ http://archive.is/QGb46 ] Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, published six weekly White House Coronavirus Task Force reports (pdf)—dated August 16, August 23, August 30, September 6, September 13, and September 20—proving the administration has known since early September that Covid-19 infections were rising rapidly. However, instead of being forthcoming with the American people and the world, Trump opted to hide the reports while spuriously claiming that the virus "affects virtually nobody"— even as it caused [ https://www.kshb.com/news/coronavirus/september-brings-record-covid-19-cases-deaths-in-kansas-missouri ] record infections and deaths in numerous states in September.

Not only did the administration fail to honestly inform the nation, Trump held several so-called superspreader rallies [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/11/its-superspreader-event-few-masks-sight-packed-trump-campaign-rally-michigan ] and other events in September, including in states hit hard by surging Covid-19 infections, such as Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. On October 1, Trump declared [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/02/just-after-declaring-end-pandemic-sight-trump-tests-positive-coronavirus ] that "the end of the pandemic is in sight." The following day, he announced [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/02/not-tragic-accident-crime-scene-critics-say-trump-covid-diagnosis-culmination-his ] that he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for coronavirus. The reports also show that the White House was fully aware that the number of states in the so-called "red zone"—where new coronavirus cases rose above 100 per 100,000 people and where more than 10% of test results were positive—soared from 18 on September 13 to 31 on October 18.

On October 19, Trump told [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/19/pandemic-surges-us-trump-says-people-are-tired-hearing-fauci-and-all-these-idiots ] campaign staffers on a phone call that "people are tired of Covid... People are saying, 'Whatever. Just leave us alone.' They're tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots," a reference to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci [ https://dis.tinychan.net/read/anarchy/1587122567#reply_155 ]. Clyburn released a statement on Tuesday calling the reports proof that "Trump's contempt for science and refusal to lead during this crisis have allowed the coronavirus to surge." "Contrary to his empty claims that the country is 'rounding the turn,' more states are now in the 'red zone' than ever before," Clyburn said. "It is long past time that the administration implement a national plan to contain this crisis, which is still killing hundreds of Americans each day and could get even worse in the months ahead."

Indeed, according to prominent University of Minnesota epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm, "the darkest part of the pandemic [will occur] over the course of the next 12 weeks." According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 8.2 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and nearly 221,000 deaths in the United States, representing just under 20% of the global death toll of 1.12 million people.

As many as 40 million Americans face possible eviction in January

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#8_October_2020_(The_bullshitter_lied_when_he_said_jobs_were_staying_in_the_US) -- [The bullshitter] lied to America's workers when he told them jobs were staying in the United States. Under his watch jobs have left while he continues rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in lucrative government contracts — in the middle of a pandemic. -- https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/10/05/during-trump-presidency-200000-jobs-offshored-and-corporations-involved-awarded -- During Trump Presidency, 200,000 Jobs Offshored and Corporations Involved Awarded $425 Billion in Federal Contracts -- Monday, October 5, 2020 -- Public Citizen releases new report "promises made, workers betrayed: Trump’s bigly broken promise to stop job offshoring." -- >>375

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#24_October_2020_(Supreme_suppression) -- The Supreme Court decided for voter suppression when it blocked polling places in Alabama from collecting ballots from people waiting near the door in their cars. This voter-suppression measure originated from state officials who ordered that no county in Alabama could do this. A lower court blocked the order; the Supreme Court reinstated it. This will affect white voters as well as black voters. However, the Republican Party is now a mad cult, so Republican voters may refuse to believe that there is any danger. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/22/forcing-vulnerable-alabama-choose-between-voting-and-staying-alive-scotus-upholds -- Forcing the Vulnerable in Alabama to 'Choose Between Voting and Staying Alive,' SCOTUS Upholds Ban on Curbside Ballot Drop-Off -- Thursday, October 22, 2020 -- "An outrageous 5-3 ruling that puts Alabama voters at risk."

Offering no explanation for their ruling, the five conservative justices who hold the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Alabama state officials Wednesday night in a decision banning curbside voting in the state. The ruling will bar counties [ http://archive.is/yENho ] including Democratic-leaning Montgomery and Jefferson from allowing voters with disabilities or who are at risk of severe, potentially fatal Covid-19 infections from remaining in their cars when they go to the polls to vote in person rather than voting by mail. Sam Spital of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, whose client, Howard Porter Jr., was a plaintiff in the case, called the decision an "outrageous 5-3 ruling that puts Alabama voters at risk." The counties have sought for months to allow curbside voting, in which voters would hand their ballots to a poll worker to avoid having to wait in a crowded polling place and increasing their chances of being exposed to the coronavirus.

"The Department of Justice has sanctioned curbside voting as a remedy to ADA violations, and some 28 States and the District of Columbia already permit curbside voting... The Alabama secretary of state, however, has prohibited counties from offering curbside voting, even for voters with disabilities for whom Covid–19 is disproportionately likely to be fatal."—Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Secretary of State John Merrill, who has sought to ban the practice, applauded the Supreme Court ruling and called the decision a victory for "election integrity and security" and for "the people of Alabama"—but the five conservative justices did not explain in their ruling how election security might be threatened by a voter receiving assistance from a poll worker while remaining in their car instead of waiting in a crowd of people during a pandemic. In her dissent on behalf of the three liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Supreme Court has now flouted public health recommendations by the CDC, which has urged states to adopt curbside voting to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

"This is no radical recommendation," Sotomayor wrote. "The Department of Justice has sanctioned curbside voting as a remedy to ADA violations, and some 28 States and the District of Columbia already permit curbside voting... The Alabama secretary of state, however, has prohibited counties from offering curbside voting, even for voters with disabilities for whom Covid–19 is disproportionately likely to be fatal. If those vulnerable voters wish to vote in person, they must wait inside, for as long as it takes, in a crowd of fellow voters whom Alabama does not require to wear face coverings." Sotomayor also noted that Merrill has never "meaningfully" disputed that forcing voters with disabilities and pre-existing health conditions to vote in person in the traditional manner could prove fatal this year. The Supreme Court ruling overturned two lower federal court rulings which stated that Merrill's ban on curbside voting was a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, granting state officials a stay of those orders.

Outraged disability rights advocates said the ruling will force people with disabilities "to choose between voting and staying alive." Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, noted that the conservative justices had ruled from the safety of their homes against voters who aim to protect themselves from severe Covid-19 infections. "Reminder: the Supreme Court is still operating remotely," Clarke tweeted.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#29_October_2020_(Wisconsin's_postal_votes) -- The Supreme Court ordered Wisconsin to stop counting postal votes at the end of Tuesday, so Democrats are wisely calling on voters to drop them off rather than mail them. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/27/democrats-urge-voters-to-hand-deliver-ballots-to-beat-court-deadline -- Democrats urge voters to hand-deliver ballots to beat court deadline -- Wed 28 Oct 2020 -- Scramble after supreme court sides with Wisconsin Republicans to bar late ballots despite >>221 postal >>284 delay

Democratic campaigners were scrambling to convince American voters to deliver absentee ballots by hand rather than rely on the US postal service, after the supreme court sided with Republicans in Wisconsin in refusing to allow a count of votes arriving after election day. Democrats argued that the flood of absentee ballots, and other challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, made it necessary to extend the posting deadline. The court is due to hear similar cases from two pivotal battleground states, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, before 3 November. With the bench now packed with a 6-3 conservative majority after the swearing in on Tuesday of the new Donald Trump-picked justice, Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court has become the object of intense scrutiny. Barrett, 48, was formally sworn in by the US chief justice, John Roberts, in a private ceremony on Tuesday, fuelling anxiety among Democrats over what her presence in the court might mean for other election-related cases, including any challenge to the result.

The Wisconsin decision triggered a rush by Democratic party campaign workers to track more than 360,000 so far unreturned mail-in ballots in the state. They urged voters to deliver their ballots by hand by 3 November rather than rely on a postal service that has been hamstrung by delays, some reportedly politically inspired. “We’re phone banking. We’re text banking. We’re friend banking. We’re drawing chalk murals, driving sound trucks through neighbourhoods & flying banners over Milwaukee. We’re running ads in every conceivable medium,” Ben Wikler, the party’s chairman in Wisconsin, tweeted after the supreme court decision. With Barrett formally joining the court on Tuesday concern has grown over how she might rule in any election related case, not least in the event of a contested election. In a century and a half no justice has been sworn in so close to an election; and Trump has said he expects the court to decide the outcome of the US election campaign – in which the Democrat Joe Biden currently enjoys a national nine-point lead.

The supreme court has only once decided the outcome of a US presidential election; that was the disputed contest in 2000 which ultimately was awarded to the Republican George W Bush over his Democrat rival, Al Gore. The supreme court is also weighing a plea from Trump to prevent the Manhattan district attorney from acquiring his tax returns. Focus on the US president’s partisan effort to stack the court comes with justices also due to hear a series of high-profile cases including over Obamacare and LGBTQ rights. While it is not certain Barrett will take part in any of these issues, it is up to her to make the decision whether or not to recuse herself. Barrett, the most open opponent of abortion rights to join the court in decades, could also be called upon to weigh in on Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. Trump has said he wants Barrett to be confirmed before election day so she could cast a decisive vote in any election-related dispute, potentially in his favour.

The Wisconsin ruling on vote counts comes as the two candidates for president entered the final week of campaigning. Amid a historic wave of early voting, more than 70 million Americans having already cast their ballots, the Biden campaign released two new “closing argument” ads emphasising that the election represented both a test of “character” and a “battle for the soul of the nation” (without mentioning Trump by name). Significantly about half of those who have already voted early have done so in a dozen or so of the battleground states that will likely decide the presidency. With Trump staging rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska on Tuesday, Biden was scheduled to hold two events in Georgia, a state not won by Democrats in a presidential election since 1996. In the midst of the continuing campaigning, and with national polls showing Biden maintaining a substantial lead, the moves around the supreme court have assumed an outsized significance even as Barrett vowed it was the “job of a judge to resist her policy preferences”.

The last week of the campaign will take place against the backdrop of a record seven-day stretch of new coronavirus cases reaching above 71,000 daily. Focus on the court has intensified with the Wisconsin ruling, which was seen as an indication of how Barrett’s appointment could affect such cases. The conservative majority, even before her appointment, generally sided with state officials opposing court-imposed changes to election procedures to make it easier to vote during the pandemic. The ruling on Monday prevents Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots that are received after election day. In his ruling Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another Trump pick, appeared to give support to the president’s argument that results counted after election day could be fraudulent. He said results should be announced on election night to avoid “the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election”.

[1/3] https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(Supporters_of_QAnon-Supporting_extremist_candidates) -- *[Republican] Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates.* -- https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/10/01/trump-megadonors-freedom-caucus-and-ceos-bankroll-qanon-supporting-extremist-candidates/ -- Trump Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates -- October 1st, 2020

The FBI labeled the QAnon conspiracy theory a >>411 domestic terrorism threat [ http://archive.is/c5Sy1 ] in May 2019. But that hasn’t prevented members of the House Freedom Caucus, gun rights organizations, and a number of prominent Republican Party donors and business executives from donating to QAnon-friendly congressional candidates. The primary QAnon theory imagines President Donald Trump as a selfless savior waging a secret war against a child sex trafficking ring led by his political enemies, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Eventually, Trump will conduct a military takeover and arrest Democrats en masse. The bizarre theories emerged from the related “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory—that a D.C. pizza restaurant was the headquarters of a child trafficking operation run by Clinton and her associate John Podesta. QAnon proponents often assert that John F. Kennedy, Jr. faked his own death in 1999 and is a faithful Trump supporter. The theories have led to real-life crime—by the theorists. A North Carolina man angered by the bogus Pizzagate story drove up to Washington and entered the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, with an assault rifle that he discharged, for which he was sentenced [ http://archive.is/GqWTr ] to four years in prison. More recently, QAnon adherents have committed kidnappings, murder [ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/nyregion/gambino-shooting-anthony-comello-frank-cali.html ], and terrorism.

One QAnon supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is now the Republican nominee in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, and has received campaign donations from the House Freedom Fund and a number of business executives and major GOP funders. Greene has no Democratic challenger, meaning she is guaranteed to become a U.S. representative in 2021. Greene is a corporate executive, a position that has made her quite wealthy. She owns Taylor Construction, a renovation firm that her father founded. Greene’s wealth allowed her to provide nearly $1.4 million for her campaign via donations and loans. During Greene’s short window of national fame, a trove of racist comments, ads, and social media posts [ https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/17/house-republicans-condemn-gop-candidate-racist-videos-325579 ] has emerged. She has said that liberal benefactor George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, is a Nazi. She’s stated that Muslims should not be allowed to be members of Congress, saying, “There is an Islamic invasion into our government offices right now.” She calls unemployed people of color lazy and rejects the idea of racial disparities in the U.S. “The most mistreated group of people in the United States today are white males,” Greene concluded in a video. Greene is perhaps the most vocal QAnon backer of the GOP congressional nominees. She recorded a lengthy video, allegedly in November 2017, explaining the main Q conspiracy and clearly endorsing it. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it,” she said.

Other candidates who have expressed favorable views of QAnon clinched GOP nominations in liberal districts and are unlikely to ascend to the House or Senate. And another extremist GOP nominee, anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer, has also received support from some of the same business leaders who support QAnon-linked candidates. Loomer’s history of discriminatory statements led companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Lyft, and PayPal to permanently ban her from their platforms. Among other atrocious displays of bigotry [ https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/a-history-of-laura-loomers-stunts-and-islamophobic-comments-11684153 ], Loomer has celebrated the deaths of 2,000 migrants, denounced rideshare services for having Muslim drivers, and was banned from Twitter for harassing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whom Greene has also attacked. Loomer is a conspiracy theorist but is not associated with the QAnon movement. Trump praised Loomer [ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/19/trump-laura-loomer-primary-gop/ ] after her primary victory. Many key individual donors to these extremist candidates are also big-time supporters of the president, who often promotes wild conspiracy theories he’s caught wind of from social media, Fox News, or other rightwing media outlets. Trump has made no secret of his support for Greene, calling her as “a future Republican star” on August 12.

Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia against a very tough and smart opponent. Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up – a real WINNER! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2020

In June, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s spokesperson called some of Greene’s racist statements “appalling.” But McCarthy stayed neutral in Greene’s Republican primary and welcomed her [ https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/12/mccarthy-qanon-questions-394439 ] to his caucus after she won an August runoff election, saying she’ll get committee seats. In the last few years, vocal QAnon supporters have shown up at Trump’s numerous campaign rallies sporting T-shirts and signs promoting the conspiracy movement. In turn, the campaign has courted QAnon fanatics, putting its director of press communications on a QAnon program to encourage listeners to attend a Trump Victory Leadership Initiative training. “We’re seeing the Trump campaign tack closely to an almost explicitly QAnon narrative,” Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told [ http://archive.is/5jK4z ] The Washington Post. The Republican Party overall has become more receptive to QAnon, likely recognizing that its adherents have become part of the GOP base, a base that’s increasingly populated by those radicalized by right-wing conspiracies and propaganda, often originating in online message boards and distributed by Fox News and on Facebook. The social media giant has played an important role in QAnon indoctrination, according to tech investor and author Roger McNamee.

“QAnon is turning into an aggregator for standard right-wing talking points, part of their new ‘camouflage’ strategy to decouple conspiracy theories from Q,” tweeted NBC News extremism reporter Ben Collins, after the group elevated a baseless rumor that Joe Biden would be wearing an earpiece at the Sep. 29 presidential debate. Vice President Mike Pence was set to attend a Montana fundraiser in September hosted by a couple that trafficked in QAnon memes, but he withdrew without explanation after media reports. An AP report indicates that the fundraiser was rescheduled or canceled. GOP candidates from the state, Rep. Greg Gianforte, Sen. Steve Daines, and Rep. Matt Rosendale, planned to attend. Republican Party and Trump campaign officials were also on the guest list: Trump fundraiser and the girlfriend of Donald Trump, Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee (RNC) finance chairman Todd Ricketts, and RNC co-chairman Tommy Hicks Jr. The couple hosting the event, Carlyn and Michael Borland, has donated $223,000 to Trump Victory—the Trump campaign and RNC’s joint fundraising committee—nearly $6,000 directly to the Trump campaign, and $147,000 to the RNC. “I don’t think it’s surprising to see the GOP cozying up to Q, but at same time they also see it as a mechanism to deliver more power,” Julian Feeld, co-host of the podcast QAnon Anonymous, told CMD.

“I think as they see [Greene’s] approach they go, ‘Well, this is a very powerful woman. She’s built a coalition incredibly fast, she has money to back it, and she’s done a lot of boots-on-the-ground work.'” Regarding GOP leaders initially condemning Greene’s remarks and then welcoming her to the caucus, Feeld said, “I think it’s like they protest and then they check: ‘OK, are people horrified, is this going to work, is QAnon being made a big deal of in the mainstream media, is it going to affect my votes, my base?’ And once they realize it doesn’t, I mean, let’s be honest, they’re Republicans, they’re highly pragmatic people, and so of course they’ve adapted to this like they did to [white supremacist outgoing representative] Steve King. “They just want power, so it’s very simple. It’s not like a moral calculus for them…I think Greene is the rightwing [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] for them. I think she will probably be a presidential candidate at some point.” The House Freedom Fund, a PAC associated with the House Freedom Caucus, has endorsed Greene and directed $227,000 in earmarked contributions to her campaign. Donors can give to Greene and other candidates through the Freedom Fund website, and the fund pays the processing fees.

[2/3] >>464 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(Supporters_of_QAnon-Supporting_extremist_candidates) -- *[Republican] Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates.* -- https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/10/01/trump-megadonors-freedom-caucus-and-ceos-bankroll-qanon-supporting-extremist-candidates/ -- Trump Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates -- October 1st, 2020

The Freedom Fund has also endorsed and directed donations to QAnon-friendly GOP nominees Lauren Boebert and Burgess Owens. The Freedom Fund itself donated $5,000 to the Greene campaign, and it reported making $47,000 worth of independent expenditures backing Greene and over $57,000 supporting Boebert. Fifteen out of the 37 Freedom Caucus members are alumni of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing pay-to-play network of state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists that writes corporate-friendly model bills. Current Freedom Caucus members have also helped out Greene. The campaigns of Jim Jordan, who was previously chair of the group, and current chair Andy Biggs (R-AZ), donated $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. Biggs’ leadership PAC donated $3,500 to Right Women PAC, which spent money helping Greene. Another member, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), tweeted enthusiastic support for her.

Your Voice Counts, the leadership PAC of Mark Meadows, the former chair of the Freedom Caucus who is now Trump’s chief of staff, donated $2,000 to the Greene campaign in April, days before his PAC was terminated. Your Voice Counts also donated $5,000 to the House Freedom Fund. Gun groups are also supportive of Greene’s House bid. The PAC of Gun Owners for America gave the maximum allowed donation of $5,000 to Greene’s campaign, and the National Association for Gun Rights PAC added $1,000. Pro-gun activists’ support for Greene should come as no surprise. Greene posted a photo to Facebook of herself holding an assault rifle alongside the faces of three progressive congresswomen of color [ https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-deleted-gop-candidates-post-threatening-violence-against-aoc-2020-9 ]. The company took down the image because it violated its policy against “violence and incitement.” The corporate PAC of Koch Industries donated $5,000 to Greene’s campaign but asked for a refund [ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/07/koch-withdraw-qanon-candidate/ ] after photos emerged of Greene posing with known neo-Nazi leader [ http://archive.is/uoA80 ] Chester Doles and members of right-wing militia group.

No other corporate PACs gave directly to the Greene campaign, but several others donated to PACs that did. The PACs that gave to Greene all revolve around Meadows. Through his campaign committee, leadership PAC, a super PAC, and the PAC of the Freedom Caucus, Meadows boosted Greene’s campaign or helped fund ads supporting her. Additional corporate and union PACs gave money to the House Freedom Fund, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. Pfizer PAC gave $5,000 in January 2019, and Devon Energy gave $5,000 in April 2020. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association PAC gave $1,000 in January 2019 and $2,500 in February 2020. Pfizer spokesperson Sharon Castillo condemned QAnon but indicated the company PAC will not ask for a refund of its donation to the House Freedom Fund. “Pfizer’s PAC has not donated to Ms. Greene’s campaign,” she wrote in an email. “Pfizer rejects and condemns the hateful speech and divisive conspiracy theories promoted by the QAnon movement. Our political contributions are led by two guiding principles—furthering innovation and expanding access to medicines and vaccines for the patients we serve.”

Devon Energy spokesperson Lisa Adams told CMD that her company PAC did not contribute to the Freedom Fund. “I can confirm that no money from our corporate PAC (DEC PAC) was contributed to the House Freedom Fund,” she wrote in an email. “We believe there has been a mistake, and Devon was incorrectly identified as a contributor. We are in touch and working with the FEC to investigate further and correct the information.” Corporations and unions have also indirectly supported QAnon-friendly candidates by giving to Meadows’ Your Voice Counts. In 2019, the PACs of the Air Line Pilots Association ($1,000), Altria Group ($5,000), Dominion Energy ($1,000), FedEx ($3,000), Mylan ($1,000), National Air Traffic Controllers Association ($2,000), National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association ($5,000), and Reynolds American ($5,000) donated to Your Voice Counts.

AltriaPAC gave $5,000 to Your Voice Counts in August 2019. Company spokesperson David Sutton told CMD that Altria has not supported Greene and that it “never direct[s] a leadership PAC to make a contribution to a candidate or otherwise earmark our funds for particular candidates.” “Our contribution to the Meadows’ leadership PAC was well before the leadership PAC’s contribution to [Greene],” said Sutton. “As the leadership PAC’s FEC reports indicate, our contribution was not earmarked for this candidate.” National Air Traffic Controllers Association spokesperson Doug Church declined to comment, telling CMD that the trade group does not comment on its PAC donations. The other PACs listed above did not return CMD’s requests for comment.

Your Voice Counts also gave $5,000 to Right Women PAC, a super PAC that spent over $26,000 on independent expenditures supporting Greene or opposing her primary opponent, John Cowan. The biggest donor to Right Women PAC by far is Mark Meadows’ campaign committee, having given over $61,000. The “social welfare” nonprofit Americans for Limited Government donated $22,500. The group’s former chairman and co-founder, Howard Rich, is a director at the libertarian Cato Institute and the conservative political group Club for Growth. Reynolds American PAC added $2,000. Other donors of note to Right Women PAC include financial services executive and Heritage Foundation trustee Mark Kolokotrones, who gave $20,000, and Diana Davis Spencer ($1,000), whose charitable foundation is a major player in the right-wing political donor network. Since 2014, Spencer’s foundation has given large amounts to dozens of conservative think tanks, higher education programs, and political operations including the Manhattan Institute ($3.5 million), Hoover Institution ($1.75 million), the Daily Caller News Foundation ($550,000), and Turning Point USA ($325,000), according to CMD’s research. The foundation has also contributed to the anti-Muslim hate group the Center for Security Policy, giving $440,000 since 2014. Many of the same PACs that contributed to Meadows’ leadership PAC or the House Freedom Fund also gave to Meadows’ campaign committee directly during the 2020 election cycle:

🐘 Reynolds American PAC ($10,000)
🐘 National Air Traffic Controllers Association PAC ($4,500)
🐘 Pfizer PAC ($3,500)
🐘 Altria Group PAC ($3,500)
🐘 Koch PAC ($2,500)
🐘 FedEx PAC ($2,500)
🐘 Air Line Pilots Association PAC ($2,000)
🐘 National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association ($1,000)

Boebert is a gun rights activist and restaurant owner who upset five-term GOP incumbent Rep. Scott Tipton in the June primary in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. While her campaign manager told CNN [ https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_2bdac2f66c55f11d7cc8d19d1f2a540c ] that the GOP nominee “does not follow QAnon,” Boebert told the online talk show Steel Truth, which is hosted by a “prominent” QAnon supporter, “Everything I heard of Q—I hope that this is real because it only means America is getting stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values, and that’s what I am for.” The National Republican Congressional Committee, led by Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), embraced Boebert, including her in its “Young Guns” fundraising push. “Lauren won her primary fair and square and has our support,” Emmer told [ https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/blog/meet-press-blog-latest-news-analysis-data-driving-political-discussion-n988541/ncrd1232673#blogHeader ] NBC News. “This is a Republican seat and will remain a Republican seat as Nancy Pelosi and senior House Democrats continue peddling their radical conspiracy theories and pushing their radical cancel culture,” he said.

[3/3] >>465 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(Supporters_of_QAnon-Supporting_extremist_candidates) -- *[Republican] Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates.* -- https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/10/01/trump-megadonors-freedom-caucus-and-ceos-bankroll-qanon-supporting-extremist-candidates/ -- Trump Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates -- October 1st, 2020

Burgess Owens, the GOP candidate for Utah’s 4th congressional district, is a retired NFL player and a Fox News contributor, and he has appeared on multiple QAnon-friendly talk shows [ https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/gop-candidate-and-pundit-burgess-owens-went-another-qanon-supporting ], including one in May and another on Sep. 23. The campaign previously claimed Owens does not support QAnon, yet the candidate appeared on Flockop, which openly supports QAnon, and said, “This is a team effort. What you guys are doing right now is part of the team.” Owens is also an NRCC “Young Gun.” A number of wealthy business executives and major GOP donors have donated to one or more of the most extreme congressional candidates of the 2020 election cycle.

🐘 Lewis Topper 🐘 GOP megadonor Lewis Topper, president of Fast Food Systems, Inc., and his wife, Margaret, of Jupiter, Florida, donated $11,200 to Loomer’s campaign, the maximum allowed amount for the primary and general elections. Lewis Topper, who has been a major Wendy’s franchisee and lists himself as operating a Domino’s pizza franchise, also contributed $2,800 to the Greene campaign in June. The Toppers have made over $2.6 million in federal contributions so far in the 2020 election cycle, including $595,000 to the RNC, $575,000 to Trump Victory, and $235,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. In addition, Lewis Topper donated $25,000 to the pro-Trump super PAC American First Action and another $25,000 to Club for Growth Action. Some of Topper’s largest contributions went to the American Liberty Fund, a super PAC mostly financed by Topper. The fund has reported spending nearly $100,000 on independent expenditures, much of it on digital advertising, benefiting four GOP House candidates, including close to $27,000 backing Loomer.

🐘 Robert Shillman 🐘 The only other donor to the American Liberty Fund is Robert Shillman, the wealthy founder of machine vision systems company Cognex, who gave $10,000. He and his wife, Judy, also maxed out to Loomer, each giving $5,600. The Shillmans have given nearly $400,000 to the RNC and $306,000 to Trump Victory. The couple has also given the maximum allowed campaign contributions to Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and vulnerable GOP incumbent Sens. including Thom Tillis (NC), Joni Ernst (IA), Cory Gardner (CO), and Martha McSally (AZ), out of a total of $882,000 in federal contributions this cycle. Shillman has a history of funding right-wing extremist organizations and was previously a board member of anti-Muslim hate group the David Horowitz Freedom Center, to which he has also donated. He helped finance a movement against Syrian refugees and has funded ACT for America, another anti-Muslim hate group, and right-wing sting operation Project Veritas. Loomer and British anti-Muslim figure Tommy Robinson were “Shillman Fellows” at the far-right Rebel Media, which had previously employed neo-Nazi sympathizer Faith Goldy.

Shillman also joined an amicus brief filed by the American Freedom Law Center, another hate group, on behalf of “national security experts” supporting Trump’s 2018 proposal for “extreme vetting” of incoming refugees. Shillman’s charitable foundation has given hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, but it appears that he does the bulk of his giving through the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, a donor-advised fund sponsor that allows donors to anonymize their contributions. In 2016, the Shillman Foundation gave $5 million to Fidelity Charitable, meaning that Shillman could then instruct the fund to disperse his donations to other charities without public record of his contributions. Shillman also runs the International Freedom Alliance Foundation, a nonprofit that sponsored trips to the U.S. by Dutch nativist politician Geert Wilders. The foundation paid a Dutch law firm $214,000 “on an individual’s behalf…for legal defense fees in defense of free speech” in 2017. In late 2016, judges found Wilders guilty of inciting discrimination of the Netherlands’ Moroccan immigrant community. In an anti-Muslim speech during an event honoring Shillman at the David Horowitz Freedom Center in August 2017, Wilders said that Shillman “knows that it is our duty to defend our superior Western civilization” from Islam.

🐘 Cherna Moskowitz 🐘 Republican megadonor Cherna Moskowitz gave $2,800 to Greene and $5,600 to Loomer. She’s made $6.4 million in federal contributions in the 2020 cycle, including $1.3 million to America First Action, $700,000 to the NRCC’s joint fundraising committee Take Back the House 2020, $678,000 to Trump Victory, and $672,000 to the RNC. Moskowitz is a major funder of pro-Israel causes, as well as hate groups. In 2018, her charity donated $75,000 to the Clarion Project and $50,000 to Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, both considered anti-Muslim hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The foundation named after her late husband, Irving, of which she was president in 2018, has also donated to the same hate groups. From 2016 to 2018, the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation contributed $275,000 to Proclaiming Justice to the Nations and $75,000 to the Clarion Project. The foundation also gave $25,000 to the far-right student political group Turning Point USA in 2018. Irving Moskowitz donated millions of dollars to Jewish settlement efforts in the Palestinian areas East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

🐘 Lawrence Gelman 🐘 Another donor of note is Texas anesthesiologist, hospital administrator, and GOP activist Lawrence Gelman, who gave $1,500 to Greene, $1,500 to Loomer, and $1,000 each to Boebert and Owens. Gelman has been a host of a right-wing radio program and produced a documentary called “The Hoax of Man-Made Global Warming in 2017.” Along with his fringe views, Gelman has financially supported additional extremist candidates, including Kris Kobach (R-KS) in his 2020 Senate bid and former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore in his 2017 special Senate race. The doctor’s older daughter, Zina Bash, a multi-millionaire, has clerked for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and served as an advisor in Trump’s White House.

🐘 Thomas W. Smith 🐘 Prescott Investors managing partner Thomas Smith of Boca Raton, Florida has given $5,000 each to Boebert and Owens. Smith has emerged as a major donor in the right-wing political network of billionaire industrialist Charles Koch. From 2015 to 2018, he donated nearly $1.4 million through his foundation to conservative media groups, including to the Real Clear Foundation and the National Review Institute, as CMD reported. The Thomas W. Smith Foundation also bankrolls Turning Point USA, the climate change-denying CO2 Coalition, multiple think tanks in the State Policy Network, and numerous free-market higher education programs.

🐘 Steven Cowles 🐘 Steven Cowles, owner of Cowles Parkway Ford in Virginia, gave $8,400 to Greene’s campaign, which includes maximum allowed amounts for her primary, runoff, and general elections. Cowles has made $543,000 worth of federal contributions this cycle, including $231,000 to House Freedom Action, the super PAC affiliated with the House Freedom Caucus, and $142,000 to Senate Conservatives Action. In addition to his donations to Greene, Cowles has delivered campaign contributions to right-wing incumbents and candidates including Jim Jordan (R-OH), Dan Bishop (R-NC), Kobach, Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX).

🐘 Tatnall Hillman 🐘 GOP megadonor Tatnall Hillman of Colorado gave $2,800 to Greene and $4,600 to Boebert. Hillman is the son of coal billionaire J. Hartwell Hillman, Jr., and is a regular Republican megadonor. Along with his wife, Roberta, Hillman contributed over $1 million to GOP outside spending groups in the 2018 election cycle. Hillman heavily funded a super PAC, Drain the DC Swamp PAC, which spent $30,000 on digital and TV ads backing Greene and over $16,000 on ads against her primary opponent. He was responsible for $228,000 out of the PAC’s total $316,000 total raised as of August 13. Drain the DC Swamp PAC has also spent money on ads supporting Trump and attacking Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, as well as ads opposing Democratic primary candidate Pete Buttigieg. The super PAC’s unhinged ads include one called “Creepy Joe Biden,” another that includes transphobia, one that broadcasts easily refutable tales of immigrants coming into the U.S. and spreading COVID-19, and one claiming that Buttigieg, a centrist, is a “far-left socialist ideologue.”

Additional corporate executives and other figures of note who have donated to one or more extremist candidates in the 2020 election cycle include:

🐘 Matt Miller, president of Indiana-based motorhome company Newmar, donated $5,600 each to the Greene and Loomer campaigns.
🐘 Nashville’s Charles Irby, the son of the founder of Irby Construction, a power-line construction company from Mississippi, and currently head of Irby Investments, donated $3,300 to Greene and $2,000 to Loomer.
🐘 Kansan Kenneth Burgess, CEO of Midwest Scrap Management, donated $2,800 each to Owens and Loomer.
🐘 Bill Pope, CEO of the Texas-based NCIC Inmate Telephone Services, donated $5,600 to Greene.
🐘 Keith White, vice president at Louisiana-based oil-drilling equipment company Quail Tools, donated $5,600 to Greene.
🐘 Billionaire Todd Ricketts, a prolific GOP donor, Trump’s first deputy commerce secretary nominee, and the current RNC finance chairman, gave $5,600 to Owens.
🐘 Texan Andy Pitts, CEO of credit card processors MLS Direct Network and Titanium Payments, gave Loomer $5,600.
🐘 Karen Giorno, a correspondent for right-wing news outlet Newsmax and Loomer’s campaign manager, gave $5,600 to the campaign. Newsmax itself has made political donations. In the current election cycle, the company gave $50,000 to the pro-Susan Collins (R-ME) super PAC 1820 PAC.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#14_October_2020_(Unauthorized_ballot_boxes) -- *California investigates unauthorized ballot boxes installed by Republicans.* Setting up an unauthorized ballot drop-off box is electoral fraud and I hope those Republicans get punished. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/12/republicans-election-2020-unauthorized-ballot-boxes -- California investigates unauthorized ballot boxes installed by Republicans -- Mon 12 Oct 2020 -- Boxes have appeared in three counties, secretary of state says, as GOP officials defend practice

California authorities have launched a criminal investigation into unauthorized ballot boxes that the Republican party has placed in several counties, with authorities warning that these set-ups are illegal. The boxes have appeared in Fresno, Los Angeles and Orange counties at locations including political party offices, campaign headquarters and churches, according [ https://www.ocregister.com/2020/10/11/unofficial-ballot-drop-boxes-popping-up-throughout-the-state-worry-elections-officials/ -- http://archive.is/LcTOA ] to the California secretary of state. The GOP admitted Monday that it owned the boxes and defended the practice. The secretary of state issued a memo to county registrars this weekend clarifying that unofficial drop boxes are illegal and ballots must be returned by mail or to official polling places, vote centers or ballot drop-off locations. The memo comes after a regional field director for the California Republican party in Orange county supporting the congressional campaign of Michelle Steel posed in a social media photo with a box labeled “official ballot drop off box” and encouraged voters to message him for “convenient locations” to drop their ballots, the newspaper reported. Steel, a county supervisor, is challenging Harley Rouda, a Democrat, for his seat in Congress.

There was a report about a similar box at a church in the Los Angeles county community of Castaic. The church posted on social media the box was “approved and brought by the GOP”, the Orange County Register reported. In Orange county, the registrar of voters, Neal Kelley, said official drop boxes were clearly recognizable and carried the official county elections logo. He said it wasn’t clear how many voters had used these unofficial drop boxes in his county but after receiving reports about them, he notified the state and district attorney’s office. “It would be like me installing a mailbox out on the corner – the post office is the one that installs mailboxes,” Kelley told the newspaper. The state has sent cease-and-desist orders to the GOP in all three counties. California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said late Monday he had received “disturbing reports” that some GOP officials “may not be prepared or willing to remove those boxes”. If the boxes aren’t removed, the Republican leaders could face prosecution, he added.

The Orange county district attorney has launched a criminal investigation into at least two unauthorized ballot boxes in the county, a spokeswoman, Kimberly Edds, told the Guardian. The DA’s office received numerous reports from concerned residents, though she declined to specify where the boxes were located while the investigation continues. There are prosecutors available 24-7 to investigate these claims, and the DA has set up a hotline for reports about fraud. “This is something we take extraordinarily seriously,” Edds said, adding that it was too early to comment on how many voters may have been affected. She noted that residents could track their ballots online if they had concerns. Lance Trover, a spokesman for Steel’s campaign, referred questions to the state Republican party. Hector Barajas, a spokesman for the party, pointed to a state law that allows a third party to collect voters’ ballots. Republicans have long decried the law.

“In California, where you can have convicted felons and individuals with a criminal history go door to door and collect ballots from voters, Democrats are now upset because organizations, individuals and groups are offering an opportunity for their friends, family, and patrons to drop off their ballot with someone they know and trust,” Barajas said in the statement. “The Democrat anger is overblown when state law allows organizations, volunteers or campaign workers to collect completed ballots and drop them off at polling places or election offices.” But reliance on the law is misleading. The provision says the voter must authorize the person who returns the ballot and that the third party must sign the return envelope. People who collect ballots cannot be compensated based on the number of ballots they return and must bring a ballot to the elections office shortly after receiving it. Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor, noted that voters had a right to choose how they delivered their ballots, and that the unauthorized boxes were misleading voters.

“Republicans have been saying, ‘You can’t trust the system, there is fraud,’ and then they engage in arguably fraudulent behavior and create the problems they are complaining about,” she said, adding she feared a chilling effect, even if few people were directly impacted. People were already fearful about voting in person due to Covid, and wary about voting by mail due to concerns with possible delays, Levinson said: “It creates a psychological question and undermines the integrity of the election at a moment when it’s so important for voters to be able to trust the elections.” The party questioned on Twitter this weekend what would be wrong with a group providing an option for associates to drop off ballots in a safe location rather than handing them to an individual. A message was left seeking comment with California’s Democratic party. Ada Briceño, chair of the Democratic party in Orange county, said in a statement the boxes were an attempt at voter suppression.

“Voters need trust in our election system, and this latest attempt by senior Republicans only erodes that trust,” she said. Orange county is one of the most conservative regions in California and has been the site of numerous pro-Trump rallies. In 2016, however, the county went blue [ https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-me-oc-clinton-20161109-story.html ] for the first time in decades, with voters backing Hillary Clinton. Ana Gonzalez, a representative for the state Democratic party in San Bernardino county in southern California, said there was a lot of confusion about mail ballots and that volunteers were canvassing to ensure voters are educated about the process. “People are desperate right now with the pandemic and the GOP is taking advantage of this and distracting and misleading folks,” she said. “In marginalized communities, we’ve got to make sure that voters have the right information and are safely turning in their ballots. We’ve got to stay vigilant.”

Trump has continued to escalate baseless attacks on mail-in voting, repeating false claims about voter fraud and spreading lies [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/26/trump-twitter-fact-check-warning-label ] about the process in California.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#1_November_2020_(Right-wing_Texas_provocateur) -- It took just two days for right-wing Texas provocateur Ivan Hunter to bring his rifle to Minneapolis and start a false-flag attack on the thugs. -- https://www.startribune.com/charges-boogaloo-bois-fired-on-mpls-precinct-shouted-justice-for-floyd/572843802/ -- Texas member of Boogaloo Bois charged with opening fire on Minneapolis police precinct during protests over George Floyd -- October 24, 2020 -- Feds say Texas adherent of far-right group fired on precinct building, conspired with cop killer to ignite civil war.

In the wake of protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a member of the Boogaloo Bois opened fire on the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, according to a federal complaint made public Friday. A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence [ https://www.startribune.com/inside-minnesota-s-boogaloo-movement-armed-and-eager-for-societal-collapse/571821151/ ] that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s death while in police custody. Ivan >>453 Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is charged with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot for his alleged role in ramping up violence during the protests in Minneapolis on May 27 and 28. According to charges, Hunter, wearing a skull mask and tactical gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Minneapolis police headquarters while people were inside. He also looted and helped set the building ablaze, according to the complaint, which was filed Monday under seal.

Unrest flared throughout Minneapolis following Floyd’s death, which was captured on a bystander’s cellphone video, causing Gov. Tim Walz to activate the Minnesota National Guard. As police clashed with protesters, Hunter and other members of the Boogaloo Bois discussed in private Facebook messages their plans to travel to Minneapolis and rally at the Cub Foods near the Third Precinct building, according to federal court documents. One of the people Hunter coordinated with posted publicly to social media: “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off,” the complaint states. Two hours after the police precinct was set on fire, Hunter texted with another Boogaloo member in California, a man named Steven Carrillo. “Go for police buildings,” Hunter told Carrillo, according to charging documents.

“I did better lol,” Carrillo replied. A few hours earlier, Carrillo had killed a Federal Protective Services officer in Oakland, Calif., according to criminal charges filed against him in California. On June 1, Hunter asked Carrillo for money, explaining he needed to “be in the woods for a bit,” and Carrillo sent him $200 via a cash app. Five days later, Carrillo shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy [ https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2020/06/23/steven-carrillo-boogaloo-associated-suspect-in-killing-of-two-ca-officers-has-first-court-appearance-in-federal-death-penalty-case/ ] in Santa Cruz when authorities tried to arrest him, according to charges filed in California. Authorities say he then stole a car and wrote “Boog” on the hood “in what appeared to be his own blood.”

A couple of days later, during police protests in Austin, Texas, police pulled over a truck after seeing three men in tactical gear and carrying guns drive away in it. Hunter, in the front passenger seat, wore six loaded banana magazines for an AK-47-style assault rifle on his tactical vest, according federal authorities. The two other men had AR-15 magazines affixed to their vests. The officers found an AK-47-style rifle and two AR-15 rifles on the rear seat of the vehicle, a pistol next to the driver’s seat and another pistol in the center console. Hunter denied he owned any of the weapons found in the vehicle. He did, according to the complaint, volunteer that he was the leader of the Boogaloo Bois in South Texas and that he was present in Minneapolis when the Third Precinct was set on fire. Police seized the guns and let Hunter and the others go. Hunter had bragged about his role in the Minneapolis riots on Facebook, publicly proclaiming, “I helped the community burn down that police station” and “I didn’t’ [sic] protest peacefully Dude … Want something to change? Start risking felonies for what is good.”

“The BLM protesters in Minneapolis loved me [sic] fireteam and I,” he wrote on June 11. According to the complaint, “fire team” is a reference to a group he started with Carrillo “that responds with violence if the police try to take their guns away.” “Hunter also referred to himself as a ‘terrorist,’ ” the complaint states. A confidential informant told police that Hunter planned to “go down shooting” if authorities closed in. He didn’t. They arrested him without incident in San Antonio, Texas, this week, and he made his first court appearance Thursday.

Hunter is the third member of the Boogaloo Bois [ https://www.startribune.com/2-boogaloo-bois-charged-with-conspiring-with-terrorist-organization/572321772/ ], a loose-knit group intent on igniting a second American civil war, to be charged in Minneapolis as a result of the unrest that followed Floyd’s death. Michael Robert Solomon and Benjamin Ryan Teeter were indicted in September with conspiracy to provide material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-may-aug.html#15_August_2020_(The_wrecker_admitted_to_sabotaging_vote_by_mail) -- The wrecker admitted that he is undermining the USPS to sabotage voting by mail. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump-usps-post-office-election-funding -- Trump admits he is undermining USPS to make it harder to vote by mail -- The president says he opposes providing additional money to the postal service to help it deliver mail-in ballots -- Thu 13 Aug 2020 -- >>221

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#13_October_2020_(Voter_suppression) -- Georgia kicked over 310,000 voters off the registration list on the grounds that they had moved. Supposedly it did this based on data from the USPS. Greg Palast's team checked properly with the USPS and found out that 197,000 of them should not have been deleted. This is an example of voter suppression. The current governor of Georgia stole the election in 2018 by voter suppression like this. -- https://www.acluga.org/sites/default/files/georgia_voter_roll_purge_errors_report.pdf -- September 1, 2020

https://stallman.org/archives/2018-sep-dec.html#28_October_2018_(Voter_suppression_in_Georgia) -- Georgia is grasping any excuse to block poor and black people from voting. The latest excuse is to claim signatures don't match. The Republican candidate for governor, Kemp, is in charge of this, and he takes the usual Republican attitude: "If you can't stop me, I will do it." -- https://www.aclu.org/blog/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression/19-days-midterms-georgia-rejecting-ballots-over -- October 17, 2018

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#6_November_2020_(Israeli_forces_demolished_a_Palestinian_village) -- Israeli forces demolished a Palestinian village, making 73 residents homeless.
Israel uses many excuses for ethnic cleansing. Declaring land a "closed military zone" is one of the standard excuses.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/05/israeli-forces-leave-41-children-homeless-after-razing-palestinian-village-un-says

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#14_October_2020_(Unauthorized_ballot_boxes) -- *California investigates unauthorized ballot boxes installed by Republicans.* Setting up an unauthorized ballot drop-off box is electoral fraud and I hope those Republicans get punished. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/12/republicans-election-2020-unauthorized-ballot-boxes -- California investigates unauthorized ballot boxes installed by Republicans -- Mon 12 Oct 2020 -- Boxes have appeared in three counties, secretary of state says, as GOP officials defend practice -- >>468

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#6_November_2020_(The_wrecker_is_suing_to_stop_counting_ballots) -- The wrecker is suing to prematurely stop the counting of ballots in some states. I don't think this is merely an attempt to influence public opinion, because that alone could not change defeat into victory, and the wrecker knows this. I suspect he is trying to give Barrett and company an opportunity to make an insane, non-sequitur ruling to throw the election. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/04/trump-election-lawsuit-uncounted-votes -- Trump's lawsuits are diversionary tactic with little legal basis, experts say -- Thu 5 Nov 2020 -- No evidence that legal challenges will affect result, but they could undermine public’s view of how election was conducted

With millions of votes waiting to be counted in the US presidential election, Donald Trump has effectively threatened to sue his way to re-election. The president and his campaign have promised to bring the election to the supreme court, sued to halt vote-counting in several battleground states and requested a recount in another. But at this moment, there is no evidence the campaign’s legal challenges will have a bearing on the election result under the law. Instead, the concern is how litigation plays in the court of public opinion, where the suggestion of fraud in one battleground state could cast doubt on the whole election.

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Americans should be confident their votes will be counted, but warned of Trump’s history of voting disinformation. “The more desperate he may become, the more baseless allegations there are about the ways in which states count ballots, about our democratic process and his own authority over this process,” Gupta said. Post-election litigation is normal. Lawsuits are always filed on election day and the days after in response to issues such as equipment malfunctions, printing errors and polls not opening on time.

Usually, they receive little attention. This year, they are under more intense scrutiny because the president has spent the year making frequent, baseless claims about election fraud. For one of these routine cases to affect the outcome of the election, the ballots being contested would need to be both (a) big enough in number to determine the state’s result (for example, a suit which concerns 50,000 votes in a state a candidate won by 30,000 votes) and (b) in a state decisive for the election result. As of Wednesday evening, election law experts said none of the lawsuits filed appeared to meet both these qualifications. “These case don’t seem to be very strong, they also don’t seem to be significant as a matter of votes,” said Paul Smith, vice-president for litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center.

That could change as counting continues. For now, the more significant cause for alarm is the Trump campaign’s actions on Wednesday as election results turned in Biden’s favor. Instead of waiting for a media outlet to call Pennsylvania, as is traditional, the campaign said Trump had won it despite the fact that 1 million votes were still waiting to be counted. The campaign also announced it was suing to halt vote-counting in Michigan – which the Associated Press called for Biden – Pennsylvania and Georgia and that it would request a recount in Wisconsin, which the AP also called for Biden.

The first three challenges are unrealistic – most states count ballots until the results are certified two to three weeks after election day and ending the process is not something the court would consider seriously. On Thursday morning, the Trump campaign sued alleging voter fraud in Nevada, claims that have already been struck down twice. Hours before the Trump campaign filed the lawsuits against Michigan and Pennsylvania, the newly re-elected Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said as much.

“Claiming you win the election is different from finishing the counting, and what we’re going to see in the next few days, both in the Senate races and the presidential race, is each state will ultimately get to a final outcome and you should not be shocked that both sides are going to have lawyers there,” McConnell said. Late on Wednesday, the Trump campaign has filed the lawsuit seeking to pause the vote count in Georgia, where Biden was trailing Trump by one point. The Fulton county elections director said that they would finish counting votes on Wednesday, “whatever it takes”. The Wisconsin recount is also unlikely to fall in the Trump campaign’s favor. Biden was more than 20,000 votes ahead of Trump and statewide recounts in elections from 2000 to 2015 resulted in an average margin swing of 282 votes, according to FairVote.

In response to the legal actions, Biden said: “Now every vote must be counted. No one is going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever. America has come too far.” One reason an election-upsetting lawsuit has not emerged is because before the election, hundreds of lawsuits were filed to work out the inevitable kinks that would follow the dramatic increase in mail-in voting. This left fewer opportunities to challenge the process, because most issues had been tested in court. One exception to this is in Pennsylvania, where there were more open questions about how mail-in votes would be processed. It is also one of the three states which wasn’t able to start processing absentee ballots until election day and it has an unresolved legal fight about whether mail-in ballots that arrive after election day should be counted. The Trump campaign also filed several lawsuits there on election day.

If the election comes down to Pennsylvania, this is a recipe for chaos. As of Wednesday night, Biden could win the electoral college without Pennsylvania. This all followed Trump’s baffling early-morning proclamation that he would go to the supreme court to stop voting – which had already stopped. If one assumes he meant he would go to the nation’s highest court to stop ballot counting, that too is unlikely to work out. Guy-Uriel Charles, a Duke Law School professor, said in a press call: “He certainly can’t just run to the US supreme court and file a suit there. That’s just not how our legal system operates.” It is possible, but unlikely, one of the new legal challenges his campaign filed could end up in the supreme court. But that case would have to have a legal basis, be tried in a lower court, then appealed to the nation’s highest court, which would have to accept it. And for it to matter in the presidential race, it would have to meet the qualifications of affecting a large enough number of ballots in a decisive state.

Charles said: “But again, you can’t just walk into federal court and say, ‘I lost.’ You have to have a legal basis for saying a law has been violated.” In reviewing the day in legal challenges, the election law expert Rick Hasen wrote that the Trump campaign’s moves could be done to slow the vote or be a last-minute attempt to capture one of the battleground states. Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, professor, also echoed other legal experts’ concerns that the moves could simply be a disturbing effort to undermine Biden’s presidency, should he win. “We always knew Trump would claim without evidence that fraud cost him the election,” Hasen wrote. “These suits let him pile up what might appear to some supporters as evidence but are actually unsupported assertions of illegality.”

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#29_October_2020_(Eviction_spree) -- *Despite CDC Moratorium—and With Help From White House—Corporate Landlords Have Gone on Eviction Spree.* I think we should have a law putting a real-estate tax on corporations owning more than a few rental houses, or more than a few apartment buildings, and likewise on the corporations that own them, etc. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/26/despite-cdc-moratorium-and-help-white-house-corporate-landlords-have-gone-eviction -- Despite CDC Moratorium—and With Help From White House—Corporate Landlords Have Gone on Eviction Spree -- Monday, October 26, 2020 -- "The spike in homelessness that results from the absence of continuing tenant protections in the Covid era spells disaster for too many Americans."

Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a moratorium on evictions during the coronavirus last month—absent any similar action from the Republican-led Senate—wealthy corporate landlords have blatantly ignored the order, issuing eviction >>458 notices to thousands of tenants across five states, according to a watchdog report. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project, which tracks the impact private equity firms have on communities, revealed [ https://www.nbcnews.com/business/personal-finance/large-corporate-landlords-have-filed-10-000-eviction-actions-five-n1244711 ] on Monday that in 23 counties across Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, corporate management companies run by deep-pocketed financial firms evicted or tried to evict nearly 10,000 tenants between early September and October 17. The total number of eviction proceedings by corporate landlords across the U.S. since the CDC attempted to stop them is likely much larger. As NBC News reported, corporate landlords flouted the CDC's guidance, which ordered them to halt evictions for any tenant who was affected by the coronavirus pandemic and couldn't pay rent, as soon as it was issued on September 4.

The Trump administration, though, made it even easier [ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/14/issued-when-no-one-was-looking-critics-warn-new-trump-guidance-eviction-moratorium ] for wealthy companies to continue evicting tenants this month when it issued new guidance saying landlords can challenge tenants' claims that they are eligible for the moratorium. The National Apartment Association proudly claimed this month that it had direct conversations with the White House and the Department of Justice to ensure the eviction ban would be less stringent for corporate landlords to follow—and more punitive to struggling renters. After the new guidance was issued, nearly 2,000 new eviction proceedings were reported across the five states in one week—nearly double the amount issued the previous week.

"The decisions of large companies to advance evictions despite the moratorium quite literally threatens the health of residents and the broader public," Jim Baker, executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, told NBC. The organization noted some of the wealthy corporate landlords which have filed the most evictions since the moratorium was called in early September, including Invitation Homes, MAA Communities, and Greystar Apartments. Invitation Homes moved to eject more than 130 tenants since September 2 despite its skyrocketing stock price and earnings, which rose by 54% in the first six months of 2020.

Ventron Management, a Canadian real estate firm, has initiated 281 proceedings during the moratorium—the worst offender documented by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. David Wertheimer, a housing rights activist in Seattle, called the project's report "terrifying." "The spike in homelessness that results from the absence of continuing tenant protections in the Covid era spells disaster for too many Americans," Wertheimer tweeted.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#4_November_2020_(Kentucky_state_thug_training) -- *Kentucky state [thug] training quoted Hitler to create ‘ruthless’ warriors.* If we want police officers rather than thugs, we should not teach them to think of themselves as "warriors". That was the basic mistake in this training; no matter who they quoted, it would be wrong. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/02/kentucky-state-police-training-materials-hitler-quotes -- Kentucky state police training quoted Hitler to create ‘ruthless’ warriors -- Mon 2 Nov 2020 -- Instructional presentation quotes the Nazi leader on three separate slides, as well as Confederate general Robert E Lee

Quotes attributed to Adolf Hitler and Confederate general Robert E Lee appear in training materials [ https://manualredeye.com/90096/news/local/police-training-hitler-presentation/ ] once used by the Kentucky state police (KSP) to create “ruthless” warriors who would “fight to the death”. The instructional slideshow, decorated with a bald eagle and American flag, advises officers to “meet violence with greater violence”. It includes the line “über alles” – a phrase from a Nazi-associated verse of the German national anthem – ironically juxtaposed against a background of American troops in Iwo Jima during the second world war. “It is entirely inexcusable for the words of Hitler to be used in training Kentucky State Police,” the Anti-Defamation League tweeted on Friday.

The genocidal führer is quoted more than any other figure in the presentation, on three separate slides. “The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence,” reads one of the citations. A quote attributed to Lee, meanwhile, touts the importance of “truth and manliness” in a slide titled The Thin Gray Line. During the American civil war, Confederate soldiers who betrayed the Union wore grey uniforms. The training’s explosive contents were first reported by Manual RedEye, a high school news publication in Louisville, Kentucky, after a local attorney uncovered the slideshow while requesting information about a detective who shot and killed a man.

Lt Josh Lawson of the KSP told student reporters that “the quotes are used for their content and relevance” to teach “topics [that] go to the fundamentals of law enforcement such as treating everyone equally, service to the public, and being guided by the law”. But Morgan Hall, the communications director for the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, called the controversial material “unacceptable” and said it had not been used since 2013. The slideshow’s title page includes a subhead with the name of Lt Curt Hall, who according to LinkedIn was a decades-long veteran with Kentucky law enforcement.

“As a Kentuckian, I am angry and embarrassed,” congressman John Yarmuth, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter. “And as a Jewish American, I am genuinely disturbed that there are people like this who not only walk among us, but who have been entrusted to keep us safe.” He continued: “And don’t give us the ‘it’s a few bad apples’ excuse. This is a poisonous culture that has gotten too many innocent people harassed and killed, and we refuse to stand for it any longer.” More than a hundred people have been shot and killed by police in Kentucky since the start of 2015, according to a database published by the Washington Post [ http://archive.is/hqrny ]. Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, died in March after Louisville police raided her apartment and shot her. When no officer was charged directly with Taylor’s death, Americans across the country took to the streets in protest, decrying yet another example of Black lives cut short by police violence.

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-sep-dec.html#2_November_2020_(A_Philadelphia_woman_down_the_wrong_street) -- A Philadelphia woman drove into the wrong street, wrong because thugs were kettling protesters at the end of the block. One thug told her to turn around, but as she did so, other thugs broke her car windows, grabbed her very young son, beat her up, then posted a photo of her son to claim they were protecting him. I suppose it is not a coincidence that she is black. We must demand prosecution of the thugs that did these mad things. It's not enough to prosecute them solely for murder. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/30/truly-sociopathic-behavior-after-mother-beaten-philly-cops-fraternal-order-police -- 'Truly Sociopathic Behavior': After Mother Beaten by Philly Cops, Fraternal Order of Police Use Photo of Terrified Toddler as Propaganda -- Friday, October 30, 2020 -- "The underlying story of Philadelphia police conduct is shocking enough, but the added layer of intentional lies and deception... is unbelievable."

The conduct of Philadelphia police officers and the nation's largest law enforcement association this week amounted to what one journalist called "an extraordinary mix of police violence and disinformation," after it was revealed [ http://archive.is/ROhZN ] Friday that officers beat a young mother who had accidentally driven into a protest and then snatched her toddler from the car and later used his image in pro-police propaganda. Along with several posts urging voters to support President Donald Trump, the Fraternal Order of Police on Thursday night posted a photo of a toddler who the union falsely claimed had been found by Philadelphia police "wandering around barefoot" amid the "lawlessness" of the fourth night of demonstrations over the killing of Walter Wallace, Jr. But the union soon deleted the post after being confronted by the Philadelphia Inquirer and lawyers for the two-year-old boy's mother, Rickia Young, said the officers forcibly removed the toddler from his mother's vehicle after smashing the car's windows and violently arresting Young after she accidentally drove into an area where protesters were being confronted by lines of riot police. The reality of what the photo shows, tweeted HuffPost reporter Ryan J. Reilly, offers "a tremendously valuable lesson in why you always need to treat initial police narratives with intense skepticism."

.@GLFOP has now deleted their propaganda posts on Facebook and Twitter, but offered a tremendously valuable lesson in why you always need to treat initial police narratives with intense skepticism. pic.twitter.com/hxOLbu36KH — Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) October 29, 2020
1/ This post by @GLFOP is a lie. My firm @MinceyFitzRoss represents this boy and his mother. This photo was taken moments after police attacked their vehicle, busted out the windows, ripped the mother from her car and assaulted her. pic.twitter.com/6dmDfoBe2B — Riley H. Ross III (@AttorneyRoss) October 30, 2020

According to attorneys Riley H. Ross III and Kevin Mincey, Young attempted to turn around immediately after she turned down a street where police were clashing with protesters Thursday night, while her son and teenage nephew were in the car with her. While she was trying to make a three-point turn as directed by officers, the police suddenly surrounded her SUV, smashing Young's windows while the toddler sat in the back seat. The police violently dragged Young out of the car, beat her with batons, and then threw her to the ground. A nearby resident, Aapril Rice caught the police violence on video:

Here’s the vid. pic.twitter.com/nhFXBjwBrg — [indistinct chatter] (@mattyford) October 29, 2020

While Young was left with a bloodied head and badly bruised left side from the police attack and was detained and separated from her son for hours, a female police officer was photographed holding the toddler in what was later used for what Ross called "propaganda." "Using this kid in a way to say, 'This kid was in danger and the police were only there to save him,' when the police actually caused the danger," Ross told the Washington Post. "That little boy is terrified because of what the police did." The child was also hurt during the attack and was taken to Children's Hospital to be treated for a head injury after being reunited with his mother. According to the Post, the family still has not been able to locate the SUV or their belongings, including the toddler's hearing aids, which were inside. Observers on social media expressed shock at the story, with filmmaker Peter Ramsey tweeting that accounts like that of Young and her child are evidence of a police force that is "begging to be defunded."

Truly sociopathic behavior. Philadelphia police broke car windows. Pulled a 2 y/o Black toddler out & away from his family. Injured his mom. Then police union posted a photo of the child. Claimed officers were protecting him after he got “lost.” Propaganda:https://t.co/QdXDZau0U3 — Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) October 30, 2020
Philly police stole a toddler and tried to play like their rescued him. After dragging the parents out of a car and beating them. I am disgusted. Beyond disgusted. https://t.co/IQC9lpKY7K — eva maria (@imyagirleva) October 30, 2020
This reporting gave me chills. The underlying story of Philadelphia police conduct is shocking enough, but the added layer of intentional lies and deception by the Fraternal Order of Police is unbelievable. https://t.co/2oCRtT09c0 — Erin *VOTE* Lloyd (@mserinlloyd) October 30, 2020

"This is state sanctioned terror," tweeted Vox journalist Kainaz Amaria.