#Election Assistance Commission

[itwaslegendary]

Since I’m not seeing many posts about what’s happening in Venezuela, I will make one myself. Please do not turn a blind eye to their ongoing crisis.

First I will put you into context, please note that all this information is taken from posts, threads and statements made by Venezuelans so I will hyperlink each one of my sources.

From 2002 to 2013, Hugo Chávez was the president of Venezuela. Not only did he ruin the country’s economy, imprison people and remove liberty of speech in the country, but he also changed the constitution, allowing unlimited reelection. His regime became a dictatorship disguised as a democracy. Here’s an entire page about this period. (And you can read more searching “chavismo”)

After his death in 2013, Nicolás Maduro took the presidency. Venezuelans started protesting and, as a response, they were repressed and killed, universities were burned down and Venezuela became massively poor, people lacked basic needs (supermarkets were empty, increasing famine and malnutrition), hospitals lacked resources and, consequently, illnesses spread and infant mortality rates increased severely.

This Sunday, July 28th, 2024, elections were held and Venezuelans voted for Edmundo González to be the next president of the country. Exit polls expected him to win the elections.

Later, the revealed results were that Maduro had won with the 51,2% votes, while Edmundo González had only 44,2%. But, as of right now, already 75% of the electoral records confirm that Edmundo González was, in fact, the chosen candidate, meaning that Maduro once again cheated on the elections. This is electoral fraud. This is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship.

Now, Venezuelans are protesting and the government are once again repressing them. Civilians are being persecuted, attacked and killed. Innocent people are being arrested. The government is cutting their communication and are planning on cutting the electricity next.

I urge you to check this thread on Twitter by @/postmortemria. Her account is full of information about Venezuela and their crisis, please check her posts and share them to spread the voice. Try to raise Venezuelans’ voices and donate to them if you can.

At the moment, there aren’t many ways to help other than speaking up, but under this tweet you can find many talented artists and commissions are their way to make some money to pay for basic human needs. If you can, think about commissioning a piece or donating to them.

In addition, here’s another tweet with information to donate to the people affected in the protests. They’re in desperate need of assistance so anything can help.

[idhren]

Remember election night results are always unofficial. While the focus on election night is on who won and who lost, those races are called by the media, not election officials. In the days and weeks to come, election officials will count every eligible ballot, including ballots cast in-person on or before Election Day, mail ballots, provisional ballots, and ballots cast by military and overseas voters. Accurately counting millions of ballots takes time and it is important to be patient. Some races will be close and may require a recount or a recanvass. Many election officials will also con­duct audits to verify the accuracy of the results. We implore all Americans to understand these pro­cesses are normal and done in accordance with state and territorial law.

[kemetic-dreams]

Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (born Hubert Gerold Brown; October 4, 1943), is an American human rights activist, Muslim cleric, African separatist, and convicted murderer who was the fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. Best known as H. Rap Brown, he served as the Black Panther Party's minister of justice during a short-lived (six months) alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party.

He is perhaps known for his proclamations during that period, such as that "violence is as American as cherry pie", and that "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it down." He is also known for his autobiography, Die Nigger Die! He is currently serving a life sentence for murder following the shooting of two Fulton County, Georgia, sheriff's deputies in 2000.

Brown's activism in the civil rights movement included involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Brown was introduced into SNCC by his older brother Ed. He first visited Cambridge, Maryland with Cleveland Sellers in the summer of 1963, during the period of Gloria Richardson's leadership in the local movement. He witnessed the first riot between whites and blacks in the city over civil rights issues, and was impressed by the local civil rights movement's willingness to use armed self-defense against racial attacks.

Brown later organized for SNCC during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, while transferring to Howard University for his studies. Representing Howard's SNCC chapter, Brown attended a contentious civil rights meeting at the White House with President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Selma crisis of 1965 as Alabama activists attempted to march for voting rights.

Major federal civil rights legislation was passed in 1964 and 1965, including the Voting Rights Act, to establish federal oversight and enforcement of rights. In 1966, Brown organized in Greene County, Alabama to achieve African voter registration and implementation of the recently passed Voting Rights Act.

Elected SNCC chairman in 1967, Brown continued Stokely Carmichael's fiery support for "Black Power" and urban rebellions in the Northern ghettos.

During the summer of 1967, Brown toured the nation, calling for violent resistance to the government, which he called "The Fourth Reich". "Negroes should organize themselves", he told a rally in Washington, D.C., and "carry on guerilla warfare in all the cities." They should, "make the Viet Cong look like Sunday school teachers." He declared, "I say to America, Fuck it! Freedom or death!"

In this period, Cambridge, Maryland had an active civil rights movement, led by Gloria Richardson. In July 1967 Brown spoke in the city, saying "It's time for Cambridge to explode, baby. Black folks built America, and if America don't come around, we're going to burn America down." Gunfire reportedly broke out later, and both Brown and a police officer were wounded. A fire started that night and by the next day, 17 buildings were destroyed by an expanding fire "in a two-block area of Pine Street, the center of African-American commerce, culture and community." Brown was charged with inciting a riot, due to his speech.

Brown was also charged with carrying a gun across state lines. A secret 1967 FBI memo had called for "neutralizing" Brown. He became a target of the agency's COINTELPRO program, which was intended to disrupt and disqualify civil rights leaders. The federal charges against him were never proven.

He was defended in the gun violation case by civil rights advocates Murphy Bell of Baton Rouge, the self-described "radical lawyer" William Kunstler, and Howard Moore Jr., general counsel for SNCC. Feminist attorney Flo Kennedy also assisted Brown and led his defense committee, winning support for him from some chapters of the National Organization for Women.

The Cambridge fire was among incidents investigated by the 1967 Kerner Commission. But their investigative documents were not published with their 1968 report. Historian Dr. Peter Levy studied these papers in researching his book Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland (2003). He argues there was no riot in Cambridge. Brown was documented as completing his speech in Cambridge at 10 pm July 24, then walking a woman home. He was shot by a deputy sheriff allegedly without provocation. Brown was hastily treated for his injuries and secretly taken by supporters out of Cambridge.

Later that night a small fire broke out, but the police chief and fire company did not respond for two hours. In discussing his book, Levy has said that the fire's spread and ultimate destructive cost appeared to be due not to a riot, but to the deliberate inaction of the Cambridge police and fire departments, which had hostile relations with the African community. In a later book, Levy notes that Brice Kinnamon, head of the Cambridge police department, said that the city had no racial problems, and that Brown was the "sole" cause of the disorder, and it was "a well-planned Communist attempt to overthrow the government."

While being held for trial, Brown continued his high-profile activism. He accepted a request from the Student Afro-American Society of Columbia University to help represent and co-organize the April 1968 Columbia protests against university expansion into Harlem park land in order to build a gymnasium.

He also contributed writing from jail to the radical magazine Black Mask, which was edited and published by the New York activist group Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. In his 1968 article titled "H. Rap Brown From Prison: Lasima Tushinde Mbilashika", Brown writes of going on a hunger strike and his willingness to give up his life in order to achieve change.

Brown's trial was originally to take place in Cambridge, but there was a change of venue and the trial was moved to Bel Air, Maryland, to start in March 1970. On March 9, 1970, two SNCC officials, Ralph Featherstone and William ("Che") Payne, died on U.S. Route 1 south of Bel Air, when a bomb on the front floorboard of their car exploded, killing both occupants. The bomb's origin is disputed: some say the bomb was planted in an assassination attempt, and others say Payne was carrying it to the courthouse where Brown was to be tried. The next night, the Cambridge courthouse was bombed

Brown disappeared for 18 months. He was posted on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted List. He was arrested after a reported shootout with officers in New York City following an alleged attempted robbery of a bar there. He was convicted of robbery and served five years (1971–76) in Attica Prison in western New York state. While in prison, Brown converted to Islam. He formally changed his name from Hubert Gerold Brown to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin.

After his release, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he opened a grocery store. He became an imam, a Muslim spiritual leader, in the National Ummah, one of the nation's largest African Muslim groups. He also was a community activist in Atlanta's West End neighborhood. He preached against drugs and gambling. It has since been suggested that al-Amin changed his life again when he became affiliated with the "Dar ul-Islam Movement"

On May 31, 1999, al-Amin was pulled over while driving in Marietta, Georgia by police officer Johnny Mack for a suspected stolen vehicle. During a search, al-Amin was found to have in his pocket a police badge. He also had a bill of sale in his pocket, explaining his possession of the stolen car, and he claimed that he had been issued an honorary police badge by Mayor John Jackson, a statement which Jackson verified. Despite this, al-Amin was charged with speeding, auto theft and impersonating a police officer.

On March 16, 2000, in Fulton County, Georgia, Sheriff's deputies Ricky Kinchen and Aldranon English went to al-Amin's home to execute an arrest warrant for failing to appear in court over the charges. After determining that the home was unoccupied, the deputies drove away and were shortly passed by a black Mercedes headed for the house. Kinchen (the more senior deputy) noted the suspect vehicle, turned the patrol car around, and drove up to the Mercedes, stopping nose to nose. English approached the Mercedes and told the single occupant to show his hands. The occupant opened fire with a .223 rifle. English ran between the two cars while returning fire from his handgun, and was hit four times. Kinchen was shot with the rifle and a 9 mm handgun.

The next day, Kinchen died of his wounds at Grady Memorial Hospital. English survived his wounds. He identified al-Amin as the shooter from six photos he was shown while recovering in the hospital[citation needed] Another source said English identified him shortly before going into surgery for his wounds.

After the shootout, al-Amin fled Atlanta, going to White Hall, Alabama. He was tracked down by U.S. Marshals who started with a blood trail at the shooting site, and arrested by law enforcement officers after a four-day manhunt. Al-Amin was wearing body armor at the time of his arrest. He showed no wounds. Officers found a 9 mm handgun near his arrest site. Firearms identification testing showed that this was used to shoot Kinchen and English, but al-Amin's fingerprints were not found on the weapon. Later, al-Amin's black Mercedes was found with bullet holes in it.

His lawyers argued he was innocent of the shooting. Defense attorneys noted that al-Amin's fingerprints were not found on the murder weapon, and he was not wounded in the shooting, as one of the deputies said the shooter was. A trail of blood found at the scene was tested and did not belong to al-Amin or either of the deputies. A test by the state concluded that it was animal blood, but these results have been disputed because there was no clear chain of custody to verify the sample and testing process. Deputy English had said that the killer's eyes were gray, but al-Amin's are brown.

At al-Amin's trial, prosecutors noted that he had never provided an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the shootout, nor any explanation for fleeing the state afterward. He also did not explain why the weapons used in the shootout were found near him during his arrest.

On March 9, 2002, nearly two years after the shootings, al-Amin was convicted of 13 criminal charges, including Kinchen's murder and aggravated assault in shooting English. Four days later, he was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole (LWOP).He was sent to Georgia State Prison, the state's maximum-security facility near Reidsville, Georgia.

Otis Jackson, a man incarcerated for unrelated charges, claimed that he committed the Fulton County shootings, and confessed this two years before al-Amin was convicted of the same crime. The court did not consider Jackson's statement as evidence. Jackson's statements corroborated details from 911 calls following the shooting, including a bleeding man seen limping from the scene: Jackson said he knocked on doors to solicit a ride while suffering from wounds sustained in the firefight with deputies Kinchen and English. Jackson recanted his statement two days after making it, but later confessed again in a sworn affidavit, stating that he had only recanted after prison guards threatened him for being a "cop killer". Prosecutors refuted Jackson's testimony, claiming he couldn't have shot the deputies as he was wearing an ankle tag for house confinement that would have showed his location. Al-Amin's lawyers allege that the tag was faulty.

Al-Amin appealed his conviction on the basis of a racial conspiracy against him, despite both Fulton County deputies being black. In May 2004, the Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously ruled to uphold al-Amin's conviction.

In August 2007, al-Amin was transferred to federal custody, as Georgia officials decided he was too high-profile for the Georgia prison system to handle. He was first held in a holdover facility in the USP Atlanta; two weeks later he was moved to a federal transfer facility in Oklahoma, pending assignment to a federal penitentiary.

On October 21, 2007, al-Amin was transferred to ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He has been under an unofficial gag order, prevented from having any interviews with writers, journalists or biographers.

On July 18, 2014, having been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, al-Amin was transferred to Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina. As of March 2018, he is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Tucson.

Al-Amin sought retrial through the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Investigative journalist, Hamzah Raza, has written more about Otis Jackson's confession to the deputy shootings in 2000, and said that this evidence should have been considered by the court. It had the potential of exonerating al-Amin. However, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his appeal on July 31, 2019.

In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from al-Amin. His family and supporters continue to petition for a new trial.

[reddest-flower]

In Gulinka, a village overnight by train from Moscow plus a two-hour walk through the mud, there was no reason for rushing the election. But Maria Kurkina, the village President, thought the holidays on the anniversary of the Revolution offered an excellent chance to hold both an election and an Old Home Week. "We are rather a backward village," she said. "We have only a four-year school and frightful roads and no electricity yet. But we've stirred up in these past four years a lot of public spirit that is ready for great achlevements. Most of us have not seen the world and don't know the many things there are to get. Yet from our backward Gulinka no less than fifty people have gone to honorable tasks in our Soviet country- some engineers, an army commander, a doctor, a surveyor, an assistant editor, the foremen of the marten ovens in Stalingrad, many promislng students and several other notables. Let us invile them to tell us what is this Soviet power and what it offers. Let them tell us the shortcomings of our Gulinka, that we may know how to instruct our Deputies; then we shall be behind nobody in all new blessings there are to acquire."

Every one in the village thought the idea splendid, and as there was no opposing voice President Kurkina went to the township election commission and asked that commissioners be sent to see that Gulinka's election was held properly. "All your grain deliveries in?" asked the township commission. "Potato deliveries too? No village campaigns unfinished? No work which the outgoing Soviet has still to do? Then hold it when you like; it's your affair. Have you made your report yet ?" "Made it and printed it, and every one has discussed it," Kurkina replied proudly, producing a neat little folder, My Report to the Voters. Such reports, though not always printed, are made by all Soviet officials to their constituents. The reports, telling how the instructions given at the previous election have been carried out, must be discussed at least a week before the voting so that the election meeting may confine itself to candidates.

Kurkina's report was homely enough in its detalla. Nowhere in its sixteen printed pages did she brag of her own work; nowhere did she ask for votes. She told of great improvements in the village and described how they were accomplished.

"During your daily work you hardly notice how life is changing," President Kurkina's report began. But when you look back to sum up these four years you note a very great difference in our life, our village and our people. Many new brick houses replace the broken huts, A radio central rereiver gives Moscow conoerto to our homes. Outside the villago great brick structures are rising- the slables, barns and granaries of our collective farms. Cottage windows that formerly frightened one by their blackness are bright with flowers and white curtains People also are changing. The children of former farmhands become doctors , engineers, commanders."

The Voice of the Soviet Village, Anna Louise Strong (1935)

[mariacallous]

Congress is moving closer to putting US election technology under a stricter cybersecurity microscope.

Embedded inside this year’s Intelligence Authorization Act, which funds intelligence agencies like the CIA, is the Strengthening Election Cybersecurity to Uphold Respect for Elections through Independent Testing (SECURE IT) Act, which would require penetration testing of federally certified voting machines and ballot scanners, and create a pilot program exploring the feasibility of letting independent researchers probe all manner of election systems for flaws.

The SECURE IT Act—originally introduced by US senators Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican—could significantly improve the security of key election technology in an era when foreign adversaries remain intent on undermining US democracy.

“This legislation will empower our researchers to think the way our adversaries do, and expose hidden vulnerabilities by attempting to penetrate our systems with the same tools and methods used by bad actors,” says Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The new push for these programs highlights the fact that even as election security concerns have shifted to more visceral dangers such as death threats against county clerks, polling-place violence, and AI-fueled disinformation, lawmakers remain worried about the possibility of hackers infiltrating voting systems, which are considered critical infrastructure but are lightly regulated compared to other vital industries.

Russia’s interference in the 2016 election shined a spotlight on threats to voting machines, and despite major improvements, even modern machines can be flawed. Experts have consistently pushed for tighter federal standards and more independent security audits. The new bill attempts to address those concerns in two ways.

The first provision would codify the US Election Assistance Commission’s recent addition of penetration testing to its certification process. (The EAC recently overhauled its certification standards, which cover voting machines and ballot scanners and which many states require their vendors to meet.)

While previous testing simply verified whether machines contained particular defensive measures—such as antivirus software and data encryption—penetration testing will simulate real-world attacks meant to find and exploit the machines’ weaknesses, potentially yielding new information about serious software flaws.

“People have been calling for mandatory [penetration] testing for years for election equipment,” says Edgardo Cortés, a former Virginia elections commissioner and an adviser to the election security team at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

The bill’s second provision would require the EAC to experiment with a vulnerability disclosure program for election technology—including systems that are not subject to federal testing, such as voter registration databases and election results websites.

Vulnerability disclosure programs are essentially treasure hunts for civic-minded cyber experts. Vetted participants, operating under clear rules about which of the organizer’s computer systems are fair game, attempt to hack those systems by finding flaws in how they are designed or configured. They then report any flaws they discover to the organizer, sometimes for a reward.

By allowing a diverse group of experts to hunt for bugs in a wide range of election systems, the Warner–Collins bill could dramatically expand scrutiny of the machinery of US democracy.

The pilot program would be a high-profile test of the relationship between election vendors and researchers, who have spent decades clashing over how to examine and disclose flaws in voting systems. The bill attempts to assuage vendors’ concerns by requiring the EAC to vet prospective testers and by prohibiting testers from publicly disclosing any vulnerabilities they find for 180 days. (They would also have to immediately report vulnerabilities to the EAC and the Department of Homeland Security.)

Still, one provision could spark concern. The bill would require manufacturers to patch or otherwise mitigate serious reported vulnerabilities within 180 days of confirming them. The EAC—which must review all changes to certified voting software—would have 90 days to approve fixes; any fix not approved within that timetable would be “deemed to be certified,” though the commission could review it later.

A vendor might not be able to fix a problem, get that fix approved, and get all of its customers to deploy that fix before the nondisclosure period expires.

“Updates to equipment in the field can take many weeks, and modifying equipment close to an election date is a risky operation,” says Ben Adida, the executive director of the vendor VotingWorks.

Some vendors might also chafe at the bill’s legal protections for researchers. The legislation includes a “safe harbor” clause that exempts testing activities from the prohibitions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and bars vendors from suing researchers under those laws for accidental violations of the program’s terms.

There is also a funding question. The SECURE IT Act doesn’t authorize any new money for the EAC to run these programs.

“I hope Congress accounts for the necessary funding needed to support the increased responsibilities the EAC will take on,” says EAC chair Ben Hovland. “Investments in programs like this are critical to maintaining and strengthening the security of our elections.”

Meanwhile, the bill’s prospects are unclear. Even if it passes the Senate, there is no sign of similar momentum in the House.

[loneberry]

September 11, 1973: On the 50th Anniversary of the Coup in Chile 

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile, when a fascist junta led by dictator Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. For those of us who are on the left, the story should be familiar by now: Allende had charted a ‘Chilean way to socialism' ("La vía chilena al socialismo") quite distinct from the Soviet Union and communist China, a peaceful path to socialism that was fundamentally anti-authoritarian, combining worker power with respect for civil liberties, freedom of the press, and a principled commitment to democratic process. For leftists who had become disillusioned with the Soviet drift into authoritarianism, Chile was a bright spot on an otherwise gloomy Cold War map.

What happened in Chile was one of the darkest chapters in the history of US interventionism. In August 1970, Henry Kissinger, who was then Nixon’s national security adviser, commissioned a study on the consequences of a possible Allende victory in the upcoming Chilean presidential election. Kissinger, Nixon, and the CIA—all under the spell of Cold War derangement syndrome—determined the US should pursue a policy of blocking the ascent of Allende, lest a socialist Chile generate a “domino effect” in the region. 

When Allende won the presidency, the US did everything in their power to destroy his government: they meddled in Chilean elections, leveraged their control of the international financial system to destroy the economy of Chile (which they also did through an economic boycott), and sowed social chaos through sponsoring terrorism and a shutdown of the transportation sector, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. Particularly infuriating to the Americans was Allende’s nationalization of the copper mining industry, which was around 70% of Chile’s economy at the time and was controlled by US mining companies like Anaconda, Kennecott and the Cerro Corporation. When the CIA’s campaign of sabotage failed to destroy the socialist experiment in Chile, they resorted to assisting general Augusto Pinochet's plot to overthrow the democratically elected government. What followed was a gruesome campaign of repression against workers, leftists, poets, activists, students, and ordinary Chileans—stadiums were turned into concentration camps where supporters of Allende’s Popular Unity government were tortured and murdered. During Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror, 3,200 people were executed and 40,000 people were detained, tortured, or disappeared, 1,469 of whom remain unaccounted for. Chile was then used as a laboratory for neoliberal economic policies, where the Chicago boys and their ilk tested out their terrible ideas on a population forced to live under a military dictatorship.

It shatters my heart, thinking about this history. I feel a personal attachment to Chile, not only because my partner is Chilean (his father left during the dictatorship), but because I’ve always considered Chile to be a world capital of poetry and anti-authoritarian leftism. The filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky asks, “In how many countries does a real poetic atmosphere exist? Without a doubt, ancient China was a land of poetry. But I think, in the 1950s in Chile, we lived poetically like in no other country in the world.” (Poetry left China long ago — oh how I wish I’d been around to witness the poetic flowering of the Tang era!) Chile has one of the greatest literary traditions of the twentieth century, producing such giants as Bolaño and Neruda, and more recently, Cecilia Vicuña and Raúl Zurita, among others. 

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coup, the Harvard Film Archive has been  screening Patricio Guzmán’s magisterial trilogy, The Battle of Chile, along with a program of Chilean cinema. I watched part I and II the last two nights and will watch part III tonight. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Guzmán’s work, and even quoted his beautiful film Nostalgia for the Light in the conclusion of my book Carceral Capitalism, when I wrote about the Chilean political prisoners who studied astronomy while incarcerated in the Atacama Desert. Bless Patricio Guzmán. This man has devoted his life and filmmaking career to the excavation of the Chilean soul. 

Parts I and II utterly destroyed me. I left the theater last night shaken to my core, my face covered in tears. 

The films are all the more remarkable when you consider it was made by a scrappy team of six people using film stock provided by the great documentarian Chris Marker. After the coup, four of the filmmakers were arrested. The footage was smuggled out of Chile and the exiled filmmakers completed the films in Cuba. Sadly, in 1974, the Pinochet regime disappeared cameraman Jorge Müller Silva, who is assumed dead. 

It’s one thing to know the macro-story of what happened in Chile and quite another to see the view from the ground: the footage of the upswell of support for radical transformation, the marches, the street battles, the internal debates on the left about how to stop the fascist creep, the descent into chaos, the face of the military officer as he aims his pistol at the Argentine cameraman Leonard Hendrickson during the failed putsch of June 1973 (an ominous prelude to the September coup), the audio recordings of Allende on the morning of September 11, the bombing of Palacio de La Moneda—the military is closing in. Allende is dead. The crumbling edifice of the presidential palace becomes the rubble of revolutionary dreams—the bombs, a dirge for what was never even given a chance to live.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Our Generals that kicked Hitler's Generals asses.

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 23, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 24, 2024

The struggle over whether the U.S. government should work for everyone or for the very wealthy and corporations was on display today. Cable and internet providers and home security companies sued to stop the newly finalized Federal Trade Commission “click-to-cancel” rule that says it must be as easy to cancel a service as it is to sign up for it. 

Also today, the Department of Transportation reached a record settlement of $50 million with American Airlines, whose damage to wheelchairs and dangerous physical assistance to disabled passengers has broken laws. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), who lost both legs in combat in the Iraq War, praised the fine and commented: “When an airline damages or breaks someone’s wheelchair, it’s like breaking their legs.”

"The era of tolerating poor treatment of airline passengers with disabilities is over," U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. "With this penalty, we are setting a new standard of accountability for airlines that violate the civil rights of passengers with disabilities. By setting penalties at levels beyond the mere cost of doing business for airlines, we're aiming to change how the industry behaves and prevent these kinds of abuses from happening in the first place.”

A reader called to my attention that the recent Federal Election Commission filings showed one significant difference in the expenditures of the two presidential campaigns. The Harris campaign spent $34,550.02 on sign language interpreting services. The Trump campaign spent $0.00. 

These details of governance are fragments of a larger picture of how we see our country. Are we all created equal and entitled to be treated equally before the law? Or are some people better than others?

CNN was supposed to host another presidential debate tonight, but while Vice President Kamala Harris accepted, Trump declined to attend. In place of a debate, CNN invited each candidate to hold a town hall. Harris accepted; Trump declined. 

In her discussion with host Anderson Cooper, Harris focused on the reiteration yesterday by Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired U.S. Marine Corps general John Kelly, that Trump had spoken admiringly of Adolf Hitler and expressed a desire to have generals like Hitler’s. In an interview with the New York Times, Kelly said Trump “met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”

The ideology of fascism is associated with Italian journalist and politician Benito Mussolini, who articulated a new political ideology in the 1920s. Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter what socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince their neighbors that they must rise up and take over the country’s means of production. The efficiency of World War I inspired Mussolini to give up on socialism and develop a new political theory.

Mussolini rejected the equality that defined democracy and came to believe that some men were better than others. Those few must lead, taking a nation forward by directing the actions of the rest. They must organize the people as they had during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians worked together. Logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate.

This hierarchical system of government was called “fascism” after the bundle of rods tied around an axe that was the ancient Roman symbol of authority and power. Italy adopted it, and Mussolini’s ideas inspired others, notably Germany’s Adolf Hitler. These leaders believed that their new system would reclaim a glorious past with the ideology of the future, welding pure men into a military and social machine that moved all as one, while pure women supported society as mothers. They set out to eliminate those who didn’t fit their model and to destroy the messy, inefficient democracy that stood in their way.

But while today we associate fascism with this European movement, its foundational principle—that some men are better than others and have the right and even the duty to rule over the majority—runs parallel to that same strand in United States history. Indeed, Nazi lawyers and judges turned to America’s Jim Crow laws for inspiration, and Hitler looked to America’s Indigenous reservations as a way to rid a country of “unwanted” people.

For retired Marine general John Kelly to have spoken out against Trump before the 2024 election was a huge deal. As Secretary Buttigieg put it: “It’s one thing for some leftist group to call you a fascist. Quite another when it’s a fellow Republican. And absolutely astonishing when it’s your own chief of staff.” But Kelly was not alone. Former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told veteran journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core.” 

In tonight’s CNN town hall, Vice President Harris told Cooper that she agreed that Trump is a fascist. She noted that when a four-star Marine general comes out two weeks before an election to warn Americans that one of the candidates is a fascist, we should see this as “a 911 call to the American people.” 

Trump is “increasingly unstable,” Harris said, “and unfit to serve…. [T]he people who know Donald Trump best, the people who worked with him in the White House, in the Situation Room, in the Oval Office, all Republicans by the way, who served in his administration, his former chief of staff, his national security advisor, former secretaries of defense, and his vice president have all called him unfit and dangerous. They have said explicitly he has contempt for the Constitution of the United States. They have said he should never again serve as President of the United States,” she said. 

When Trump talks about “the enemy within,” Harris said, “ [h]e's talking about the American people. He's talking about journalists, judges, nonpartisan election officials…. And he's going to sit there unstable, unhinged, plotting his revenge, plotting his retribution. Creating an enemies list.” In contrast, she said, she would have a “to-do list” to work on the things that matter to the American people. 

When Trump responded to Kelly’s claims, he appeared to confuse Kelly, who was retired when Trump chose him to serve as White House chief of staff, and Mark Milley, the active-duty chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump referred to four-star general Kelly, whose son died in Afghanistan, as “tough and dumb,” a “LOWLIFE, and a bad General,” but then went on to talk of him as active duty and to say he stopped seeking his advice in the White House. 

Forced to comment on Kelly’s comment about Trump’s embracing fascism, Republican leaders are either ducking the question or acting as if it is not a big deal. On CNN this morning, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu said the news that Trump has praised Hitler will not affect Sununu’s support. “If we can get a Republican mindset out of Washington,” he said, “we need that culture change.” 

At a rally tonight in Macon, Georgia, Trump agreed with the audience as it chanted: “Lock him up.” “You should lock them up,” Trump said. “Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary. Lock ‘em up.” 

Tonight, Shawn Reilly,  the mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin—a key Republican stronghold—announced he’s voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[christianstepmoms]

Hey all if you're like me and can't be bothered with Jury Summons or simply want less spam mail here's a useful portal to withdraw from the voter registry!

Each state has its own forms and rules but luckily most of them are listed here, and the process is SIMPLE and FREE!

Remember, it's never too late and there's no drawbacks or penalties for removing yourself from the voter registry!

[fancy-strawberry-beard]

Ok now that I've had some time to come to terms with the orange fuck being elected (again!) I think the best thing to do is to spotlight some Ukrainian fundraisers.

These are all legit as far as I can tell but as always it's always best to double check for yourself.

I'll be keeping this post pinned for the foreseeable future and reblog it every once in a while to remind everyone to donate.

Also this hasn't really worked in the past but I can do commissions in exchange for donations, if anyone's interested.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims at Popular Information:

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Senator JD Vance (R-OH) refused to acknowledge that former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. “Did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?” Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) asked Vance. “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance responded.  Vance then echoed Trump’s false claims about election fraud occurring during the 2020 election, despite there being no evidence of any significant fraud. “Obviously, Donald Trump and I think that there were problems in 2020,” Vance said.  When asked by CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell, Vance refused to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election if it was certified by all 50 states. Vance deflected, stating, “[W]e’re focused on the future.” 

A more likely scenario for the 2024 election, however, is that the results of closely contested states are not officially certified by Republican election officials in an effort to validate spurious claims of fraud. A new report published this week by the Brookings Institution revealed that election officials across the country have histories of election denialism and have refused to certify elections. A report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found “[a]t least 35 current county election officials” that have voted against certifying an election in the past. Public Wise, Informing Democracy, and the Center for Media and Democracy identified dozens of additional election officials that have “promot[ed] election denialism or amplif[ied] unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud or irregularities.” The amount of election deniers acting as election officials “presents a challenge for monitoring certification,” specifically in swing states and remote areas. 

This has been a growing problem since Trump began spreading lies about election fraud during the 2020 election. The Brookings Institution found that in 2020, “at least 17 county election officials across six swing states attempted to prevent certification of county vote totals.” In 2022, it grew to “at least 22 county election officials” who voted to delay certification in swing states. This year, there have been “at least eight county officials” that have already voted against certifying election results for primary or special elections. This is part of a larger landscape of election deniers in positions of power across the country. According to a data tracker created by States United Action, there are 26 election deniers that hold statewide office and 172 election deniers in Congress. It is not clear what will happen if state officials refuse to certify the 2024 presidential election. But the point of blocking certification is to inject chaos and uncertainty into the election process.

The basics of certification

Until the last few years, election certification was a process that received very little attention from activists or media. It is a formality that occurs days or weeks after election day, depending on state or local procedures — by which point the winners of nearly every election have already been declared, defeated candidates have conceded, and everyone has moved on. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, election certification follows four general steps, although there are some differences in how each state handles the process. First, when polls close on election day, and all the ballots are counted, election officials release a preliminary count. While these results are technically unofficial, they are the numbers that the media uses to call races on election night. Then, election officials will canvass the results. According to the EAC, “[t]he canvass process aggregates and confirms every valid ballot cast and counted, including mail, uniformed and overseas citizen, early voting, Election Day, and provisional ballots.”  Most states also require an audit of the technology that was used to record and count ballots. 

Once these steps are complete, election officials certify the results. Deadlines for certification vary for state and local races, but usually fall between mid-November and mid-December. The deadline for certifying presidential election results is six days before the meeting of the Electoral College. In 2024, states will need to certify their presidential election results by December 11. At the county level, it is typically a board of three to five officials who certify results, although in some places just one person is responsible for certification. Once counties have certified their results, they send their results for state and federal elections to state authorities who aggregate and certify statewide results. The certification process is separate from the process by which a state might investigate any irregularities in an election, like voter fraud. Instead, other state officials such as a secretary of state or governor are vested with the authority and resources to investigate any issues and address them through a recount or audit. The certification process simply affirms that election officials have double checked that they counted correctly and the technology they used was working properly.

Most importantly, election certification is not a discretionary duty. Instead, it is a ministerial responsibility, meaning it is a task that must be completed by the officials elected or appointed to do so. All states have some kind of mechanism at their disposal to ensure that the certification duty is fulfilled. Some states have statutes specifically mandating that election officials complete certification. Others have more general laws to ensure that elected officials fulfill the non-discretionary requirements of their office. In 2022, these mechanisms ensured that election results were certified even in counties where election officials resisted certification.

Popular Information takes a look at how the Republicans could commit perfidious acts to subvert the 2024 elections, such as refusal to certify election results that show Donald Trump losing.

[memphisfoodnotbombs]

In this video, the Memphis chapter of Food Not Bombs faces harassment from the Blue Suede Brigade (BSB), a seemingly subservient apparatus of the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC). BSB targeted and disrupted our compassionate service under the pretense of requiring a permit for sharing food in a public park. This incident occurred during a picnic at Court Square Park on Saturday, 10/14/2023, at approximately 2:05 pm.

The DMC, a business entity supposedly responsible for governing residential and business areas in downtown Memphis, receives public funding based on property value assessments and utilizes the BSB as the “eyes and ears of the business community.”

The requirement of a permit to offer a basic necessity further highlights the systemic injustice endured by our community.

This incident is not isolated but represents an ongoing problem concerning the DMC. We have attempted to engage with the DMC and elicit a plausible explanation for their legal authority to impose permit requirements on non-vendors in a public space. Despite sending a letter to the DMC over 11 weeks ago, their response has been evasive and unsatisfactory.

Memphis mayor-elect Paul Young, President/CEO of the DMC, vaguely suggested that the issue would be addressed internally through comments on our social media pages. Why then was the Blue Suede Brigade officer unaware of this supposed resolution?

The persistent harassment we face is a direct result of the DMC's failure to provide a satisfactory answer to our legitimate question: "We ask the Downtown Memphis Commission to immediately clarify its legal authority to require and issue permits to non-vendors."

When will the DMC cite its legal authority?

The recent harassment exposes the negligence and indifference of the DMC towards addressing the legitimate concerns we have raised. We question the DMC's reluctance to cite their legal authority and establish a justifiable basis for impeding acts of compassion and the sharing of food in public parks.

During the incident, one of the individuals seeking food assistance was a homeless veteran who had not eaten in over 24 hours. Another unhoused person recounted being denied access to local shelters due to not possessing the "proper" identification simply because they hailed from another state. These stories reflect the dire situations faced by the unhoused population in Memphis while exposing the failure of the existing system to meet their basic needs.

Unhoused individuals are our neighbors. It is our collective responsibility to support and uplift them, rather than subjecting them to further harm and exclusion. It is not a crime to extend a helping hand, enjoy a picnic in a public park, or share food with those in need. Compassion and solidarity should never be trumped by bureaucratic restrictions.

The Memphis Flyer

We invite you to read our open letter to the DMC for further details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19xCJbdgkjPBVw-r6oC_m9tuNPfIVixHFAz-KlX0MZ9E/edit?usp=sharing

Find more videos, press articles, links to socials and information in our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/memphisfoodnotbombs

Link to this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MNxS11bK87c?si=8bzqe2du6ZpECWfg

In this video, the Memphis chapter of Food Not Bombs faces harassment from the Blue Suede Brigade (BSB), a seemingly subservient apparatus of the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC). BSB targeted and disrupted our compassionate service under the pretense of requiring a permit for sharing food in a public park. This incident occurred during a picnic at Court Square Park on Saturday, 10/14/2023, at approximately 2:05 pm.

The DMC, a business entity supposedly responsible for governing residential and business areas in downtown Memphis, receives public funding based on property value assessments and utilizes the BSB as the “eyes and ears of the business community.”

The requirement of a permit to offer a basic necessity further highlights the systemic injustice endured by our community.

This incident is not isolated but represents an ongoing problem concerning the DMC. We have attempted to engage with the DMC and elicit a plausible explanation for their legal authority to impose permit requirements on non-vendors in a public space. Despite sending a letter to the DMC over 11 weeks ago, their response has been evasive and unsatisfactory.

Memphis mayor-elect Paul Young, President/CEO of the DMC, vaguely suggested that the issue would be addressed internally through comments on our social media pages. Why then was the Blue Suede Brigade officer unaware of this supposed resolution?

The persistent harassment we face is a direct result of the DMC's failure to provide a satisfactory answer to our legitimate question: "We ask the Downtown Memphis Commission to immediately clarify its legal authority to require and issue permits to non-vendors."

When will the DMC cite its legal authority?

The recent harassment exposes the negligence and indifference of the DMC towards addressing the legitimate concerns we have raised. We question the DMC's reluctance to cite their legal authority and establish a justifiable basis for impeding acts of compassion and the sharing of food in public parks.

During the incident, one of the individuals seeking food assistance was a homeless veteran who had not eaten in over 24 hours. Another unhoused person recounted being denied access to local shelters due to not possessing the "proper" identification simply because they hailed from another state. These stories reflect the dire situations faced by the unhoused population in Memphis while exposing the failure of the existing system to meet their basic needs.

Unhoused individuals are our neighbors. It is our collective responsibility to support and uplift them, rather than subjecting them to further harm and exclusion. It is not a crime to extend a helping hand, enjoy a picnic in a public park, or share food with those in need. Compassion and solidarity should never be trumped by bureaucratic restrictions.

No one needs permission to share the gift of compassion. Food is not a privilege but a fundamental human right that must be secured for all individuals.

We invite you to read our open letter to the DMC for further details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19xCJbdgkjPBVw-r6oC_m9tuNPfIVixHFAz-KlX0MZ9E/edit?usp=sharing

Find more videos, press articles, links to socials and information in our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/memphisfoodnotbombs

Link to this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MNxS11bK87c?si=8bzqe2du6ZpECWfg

#FoodNotPermits #FoodNotBombs #FoodNotBombsMemphis #MemphisFoodNotBombs #PermitPaul #PaulYoung #Memphis #MemphisTennessee #MayorOfMemphis #MemphisTN #PleaseShare #DowntownMemphis #DowntownMemphisCommission #BlueSuede #BlueSuedeBrigade #FoodIsARight #FoodIsAHumanRight #Love #Compassion

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

The DOT has since that meeting has refused to release any information due to “privacy” concerns for non-US citizens with a Wisconsin driver’s license.

The DOT request from these Legislative Committees, dated September 3, 2024 (See attached DOT Letter Non-US Citizens Driver’s License), asks for an immediate release of the non-US citizens data from the DOT that have a Wisconsin driver’s license and or a photo ID to assist all Wisconsin Clerks (1,852) in the administration of elections with integrity to make sure only US citizens receive a ballot for the Wisconsin Presidential Election in November.

The DOT was reminded in the Legislative Letter that as a State Agency they (DOT) are absolutely required to release this information upon request to the proper authorities per Wisconsin State Statute 13.45 (7) (click here – Wisconsin Legislature: 13.45).

The DOT was further reminded that this request is in compliance with the Driver Privacy and Protections Act (DPPA) with respect to the Legislative Committees are not a “person”, but rather a “State or agency thereof” per various portions of 18 U.S.C. 2725 (2) (click here – 18 USC 2725: Definitions (house.gov)) and that disclosure of this information is allowed per 18 USC 2721 (a) and (b) (1) and (4) (click here – 18 USC 2721 – Prohibition on release and use of certain personal information from State motor vehicle records (govregs.com)).

Finally, the DOT was reminded that the Governor’s Office wants this information shared between the DOT and the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) to assist all Clerks in the administration of elections with integrity to make sure only US Citizens are participating in Wisconsin Elections.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More proof of cheating. Hiding relevant, important, information regarding voter legitimacy is only done to cheat. PERIOD.

And we all know it.

[thesobsister]

A January 3 letter from Biden campaign staffers

Dear President Biden, we need a ceasefire now.

Dear President Biden,

We write to you as the current staff of your re-election campaign. As we work to mobilize voters to cast their ballots for you in 2024, we must take a moment to acknowledge our tremendous grief, and the grief shared by countless other Americans, toward the violence occurring in Gaza.

We joined this campaign because the values that you — and we — share are ones worth fighting for. Justice, empathy, and our belief in the dignity of human life is the backbone of not only the Democratic Party, but of the country. However, your administration’s response to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing in Gaza has been fundamentally antithetical to those values — and we believe it could cost you the 2024 election. Therefore, we join your 2020 campaign alumni in imploring you to:

Publicly call for — and use financial and diplomatic leverage to bring about — an immediate, permanent ceasefire;

Advocate for de-escalation in the region, including demanding that Hamas release all hostages and that Israel release the over 2,000 Palestinians in administrative detention being held without charge;

End unconditional military aid to Israel;

Investigate whether Israel’s actions in Gaza violate the Leahy Law, prohibiting U.S. military aid from funding foreign military units implicated in the commission of gross violations of human rights;

Take concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this conflict.

Like so many others, we continue to be devastated by Hamas’s attack against Israeli civilians on October 7th — it was a vile assault, one that touched the consciousness of the country. The subsequent killing of 20,000 Palestinian civilians, however, has struck the same societal nerve. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past by allowing the actions of Hamas to justify such further violence against civilians.

Israel’s attacks in Gaza have had one of the highest civilian death tolls of any conflict in decades. Children have been caught in the center of it, many of them killed by bombs made in St. Charles, MO. In the past 88 days, over 1% of the population of Gaza — including countless women, children, and premature babies — have been killed, while almost 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes. There is no safe place for innocent civilians to go, no shelter, and no humanitarian assistance. What we are witnessing in Gaza, as highlighted by countless experts from around the world, is a genocide.

You have said numerous times that silence in the face of human rights violations is complicity. We agree, which is why we are speaking out now. Every minute that passes without a ceasefire is another life that is lost — a life that could have been saved with political action from you. As your staff, we believe it is both a moral and electoral imperative for you to publicly call for a cessation of violence.

The majority of Democrats support an end to Israel’s military campaign. Americans, especially young Americans, feel extraordinarily passionate about this issue. In fact, 72% of voters under 30 — a key Democratic voting bloc — disapprove of your handling of the conflict in Gaza.

Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict. It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump. The campaign has to shift the feeling in the pits of voters’ stomachs, the same feeling that weighs on us every day as we fight for your reelection. The only way to do that is to call for a ceasefire.

This Administration’s profound sense of empathy is one of the reasons we felt inspired to join your reelection campaign. Now, we have faith that you will listen to the two-thirds of the country and three-quarters of our fellow Democrats who support a ceasefire. Complicity in the death of over 20,000 Palestinians, 8,200 of whom are children, simply cannot be justified. Only with an end to violence can we achieve a real and lasting peace that upholds the right to self-determination, safety, and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Sincerely,

17 Biden for President Staffers

[racefortheironthrone]

Who do you consider to have been some of the most important / formative mayors of New York?

This is a great question, and actually rather difficult to answer, because for the longest time both Tammany Hall and the Whig/Republican machine tended to prefer mayors who were dull but reliable non-entities. Starting in 1824, NYC was divided into wards that elected Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen to the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Assistants, who together made up the bicameral Common Council. This led to a system whereby the real political action was shunted to the local level, where the ward's Aldermen and the ward boss (and his precinct bosses) ran the show.

The downfall of Boss Tweed led to some reforms, with the bicameral Common Council replaced by a unicameral Board of Aldermen who were elected from larger State Senate districts or at-large, as part of the Whig Party's drive to dilute the power of Tammany's Irish Catholic voting base. This would change somewhat when the five boroughs were consolidated into Greater New York in 1898, which added the borough presidents and the Board of Estimate into the mix, and then again in 1901 and so forth.

However, the overall trend was a weak mayor system where real political power was fairly evenly distributed between aldermen (who were not only the city's legislatures but were also represented on the Board of Estimate through their President), the borough presidents, the mayor, and the comptroller.

So the major players in NYC politics tended not to be mayors:

Dewitt Clinton was incredibly transformational, but despite serving three terms as mayor his real mark on New York was as governor where he was the driving force behind the construction of the Erie Canal.

Andrew Haswell Green, the "Father of Greater New York," was responsible for the creation of Central Park, the New York Public Library, the Bronx Zoo, The Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Riverside, Morningside, and Fort Washington Parks, Columbus Circle, and the consolidation of Greater New York - but he never served as mayor. The original Robert Moses, Green's political power came from his leadership of the Central Park Commission, the Greater New York Commission, a six-year stint in the Comptroller's office, and his position on a number of NGOs.

But if we're talking transformative mayors, there is one name that rises above all the rest: Fiorello goddamn LaGuardia.

There had been other reform mayors before him - Seth Low had established the Civil Service, John P. Mitchel brought scientific management to city government - but none of them had ever been able to get re-elected. Unlike the wealthy WASP reformers, LaGuardia knew how to beat Tammany at the ethnic politics game. Tammany's strength had always been in the Irish wards of the city, and while they had tried to divide-and-rule by promoting the naturalization of Russian and Polish Jews in return for them voting for Irish-American politicians in the Lower East Side while noticably neglecting the naturalization of Italians, the emergence of second-generation Jewish and Italian voters meant that this strategy had run its course.

Born to a Sephardic mother from Trieste and a lapsed Catholic father from southern Italy, Fiorello had an astonishing knack for transcending ethnic political boundaries in New York City - he spoke Italian, German, Yiddish, and Croatian, but he was also a progressive Republican and Episcopalian (which meant he could speak middle-class WASP too). LaGuardia won the 1933 mayoral election by bringing together a Fusion coalition that brought middle class German-American Republicans together with Italians and Jews, a coalition that he would expand in 1936 by bringing socialists, unions, and black voters together into the American Labor Party.

Over his twelve years as Mayor, LaGuardia was almost pathologically active (in a way that's oddly reminiscent of Henry II), transforming almost every aspect of New York City:

Jobs for the Unemployed:

LaGuardia's immediate mission as mayor was to fight the Great Depression that had had left a third of the City unemployed. He did this by forming an enduring alliance with FDR in which the New Deal would provide NYC with unpredecented level of federal support in exchange for NYC becoming the New Deal's model city - the first of the "Little New Deals." In his first hundred days in office, LaGuardia convinced FDR to give New York City a full 20% of the Civil Works Administration's work relief budget. This put 200,000 New Yorkers back to work - and this would only be the beginning of New York City's experiments with direct job creation.

As part of Fiorello LaGuardia's "Little New Deal," LaGuardia's new Parks Department employed 70,000 workers - paid for by CWA and later WPA money - to rebuild New York City's parks, constructing the Central Park Zoo and 60 playgrounds in the first year.

When the New Deal created the Works Progress Administration in 1935, LaGuardia once again lobbied FDR to put NYC first in line. This culminated in some 700,000 New Yorkers - a tenth of the city's entire population - getting jobs through the WPA and other New Deal programs. Together with the Parks Department, LaGuardia and Robert Moses would mobilize this workforce to completely transform the city.

Public Works:

This is where we have to discuss Fiorello LaGuardia's fateful decision to make Robert Moses his master builder. While Moses was in the process of becoming the "Power Broker" before LaGuardia - he had already been made president of the Long Island State Park Commission and chairman of the New York State Council of Parks - LaGuardia enabled his ascent to the heights of power by making him Parks Commissioner, Commissioner and then Chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority, Commissioner of the NYC Planning Commission, and Chairman of the Emergency Public Works Commission.

The pact between them was simple: LaGuardia would give Moses the public appointments he needed to consolidate public works across the city and would steer New Deal public works money through Moses' agencies, and in exchange Moses would be LaGuardia's master builder with a mandate to "build it quickly and build it well." This was not an easy task, because Robert Moses was a political enemy of FDR and FDR tried to bar him from being given any WPA or PWA funding, but the mayor was able to persuade Roosevelt that it was more important that LaGuardia's proposed $1 billion public works program for NYC be carried at speed and administered efficiently.

As LaGuardia's workhorse, Moses would oversee almost all of NYC's public works, including the West Side Highway, the future FDR Drive, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, the LaGuardia and future JFK Airports, and Jones Beach Park, among others. LaGuardia would also construct the Sixth Avenue Subway line, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel without Moses (who was completely uninterested in mass transit and who always preferred bridges to tunnels).

In addition to these major projects, LaGuardia with and without Moses built the city's first municipal power plants, 37 sewage treatment plants, 9 fire houses, 142 elementary schools and 22 high schools, half of NYC's then-23 municipal hospitals, eight District Health Centers to provide preventative, specialized, and public health immunization care, and the first 14 of the City's public housing projects.

City Government:

To dismantle Tammany's patronage system, he began to massively expand the civil service to eliminate patronage jobs, and then when Tammany beat him on a government reform bill in 1934, he simply kept pushing. He pushed through the LaGuardia Reform Charter of 1938 that abolished the Tammany-dominated Board of Aldermen and replaced it with a City Council elected by Single Transferrable Vote, established the Board of Estimate as a central administrative body with powers over the city budget, public contracts, franchises, and land use - crippling Tammany's ability to raise money through graft and kickbacks.

To transform New York City into a "strong mayor" model, he undertook a campaign of transforming independent agencies scattered across the five boroughs into a system of unified citywide departments or public authorities that answered directly to the mayor and gave him unprecedented state capacity. In 1934, he formed the Parks Department and the New York City Housing Authority; in 1936 he formed the Department of Buildings and the City Planning Commission; in 1938, he restructured the Department of Welfare to run the city's social welfare programs and a massively expanded public hospital system; in 1940, he took over the IRT (operating the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), and the BMT and IND (operating the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, L, M, N, Q, R, W, and Z lines), unifying the NYC subway system for the first time.

To deal with police corruption, LaGuardia appointed Lewis Valentine to purge the NYPD so that the mayor could use it (and Thomas Dewey) in a crusade against the mafia's gambling, racketeering, and vice operations. This marked a rare period of honesty and effectiveness in the NYPD, although after WWII the system of protection rackets and mafia corruption would eventually re-establish itself.

Ironically, this exhaustive list of accomplishments really made it hard for later mayors to distinguish themselves, because mostly their task was completing, managing, or mis-managing the system that LaGuardia had built. After LaGuardia I would say that Robert Wagner Jr. (established public sector collective bargaining, created CUNY, Lincoln Center, Shakespeare in the Park, and dealt the killing blow to Tammany) and John Lindsay (see my previous post, but chiefly scatter-site housing, the civilian complaint review board, and the Knapp Commission on police corruption) are on my list of formative mayors.

After them, there have been long-serving mayors and good mayors, but unfortunately not the two combined.

[dutifullylazybread]

Tav Character Worksheet: Tav of The Dock Ward

Thank you @faerunsbest and @commander-krios for this tag! It took me a minute (and a century), but I am catching up now!

No pressure tags: @voloslobotomyservice @kimberbohwrites @savriea

Name: Tav of the Dock Ward (in-game, I named her Cassandra, but it's just easier to refer to her as Tav when talking about her online).

Age: I leave it fairly vague, but I'd say late twenties to early thirties.

Gender: Cis!woman

Sexuality: Bisexual

Pronouns: she/her

Tav voice: voice 4

Family: Both of her parents are deceased. Her father was originally from Icewind Dale, and her mother was from Baldur's Gate. She hasn't met her paternal grandparents, and she is unsure if they are alive. She supposedly has several cousins in the Dale, but she hasn't met any of them. Her maternal grandparents lived in Baldur's Gate but passed away during an epidemic. She had an aunt who was an adventurer, but that aunt hasn't been heard from in several decades.

Birthplace: Born and raised in her family's home in the dock ward.

Job(s): While attending Blackstaff, she worked as an (underpaid) research assistant and she was also responsible for maintaining several academy herb gardens. When she left the academy, she worked as a glassblower and a stained glass-artist for the artisans' guild in Baldur's Gate.

Phobia(s): Abandonment, for sure.

Guilty Pleasures: She loves reading smut novels.

Hobbies: She loves reading poetry, cooking, and gardening. She used to press flowers while at Blackstaff--she actually gave her flower presses to Halsin as a thank-you gift at one point. Had she the resources more readily available, she would create more stained glass art pieces for her personal enjoyment.

alignment: Neutral good

sins: Hmm. This is a tough one. She most definitely got into a fistfight with one of the other artisans who worked at the artisan's guild (both of them had to pay fines for damaging guild property). The artisan in question was responsible for balancing the guild's books and had skimmed money off of more than one of Tav's commissions. She tried to report it to the owners of the guild and was ignored.

virtues: She does believe in simply helping people because "isn't that just what you do when someone is struggling?" She grew up in a tightly-knit community that pitched in to help where they could, so being a 'do-gooder' adventurer comes naturally because it is what she has always known. However, when she got to Blackstaff and realized how competitive and underhanded academia could be, she became a bit more hesitant to accept the help of others.

This or That? This?

Introverted or extraverted? Introverted

Organized or disorganized? Chaotically organized. She will know where everything she needs is, but if someone tries to find something with her organization system, they're going to struggle.

Closed or open-minded? Open-minded

Calm, anxious, or restless? She likes to think she is calm, and occasionally, she is. Otherwise, she is a very anxious person.

Disagreeable or agreeable? Agreeable, but sometimes too agreeable.

Cautious or reckless? It depends. While conducting research, she is usually cautious and will expect things to go wrong. But if she feels as if she has been thrown into a corner, she can be very, very reckless.

Patient or impatient? Patient to a point.

Outspoken or reserved? Reserved on most things, but if she thinks someone is wrong, she's gonna let them know.

Leader or follower? The type of leader who is elected to be one and says, "Wait, what? Since when? I just made a suggestion and everyone was fine with it. That's not leading."

Empathetic or apathetic? Empathetic

Optimist, pessimist, or realist? She is an optimist when it comes to everyone else--she wants to assume that people have the best intentions, even if she struggles to ask for their help. She is a pessimist when it involves anything she is doing--the self-doubt is agonizing.

Traditional or modern? I'd say she leans more towards modernity when I consider her character. She wanted to build out the Artisan's Guild to also offer artificing services, which felt like a move away from how the guild had been run for decades at that point.

Hardworking or lazy? It depends. She takes a lot of pride in her work, and she will happily toil into the late hours of the night, scrap designs over and over again. But if she thinks something should be easy or unimportant (laundry comes to mind), she's lazy. She'll wash her clothes, but she is slow to fold and put away, for example.

OTP: Rolan x Tav

BROTP: Karlach and her were best friends. Their dynamic was, "That is a horrible idea. It's going to go terribly wrong. We're gonna do it, right?"

This isn't to say that she didn't have other close friendships with her companions, however.

NOTP: Probably the Emperor. He really fucked with her "assume everyone has the best of intentions" mindset when she found out about Orpheus and Ansur. That isn't to say she still isn't conflicted about him, however.