#but the state legislature has the GOP supermajority from HELL | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

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Pluralistic: 03 Mar 2020 (School surveillance self-defense, copyright for authors, Facebook's potemkin data-downloader, Oregon GOP's sabotage, and more!)

Today's links

EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense guide for students: Privacy is a team sport.

Oregon's Dems have a supermajority, but the GOP won't show up for work: White nationalism is how plutes get turkeys to vote for Christmas.

A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick: How to design a copyright to protect artists, not corporations.

Facebook neutered "Download Your Data": "Your data" doesn't include a list of ad-tech companies that also hold your data.

The EU's new copyright filters violate the GDPR: We told you so.

Recycling spy agencies' malware for fun and profit: NOBUS is, and always has been, an idiotic idea.

Japanese condiment company releases "sliced mayo": Comes in four flavors!

Department of the Interior climate docs include junk science: Trump's man on the inside, sabotaging our future.

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense guide for students (permalink)

EFF just launched its Surveillance Self-Defense guide for students: it's a soup-to-nuts guide for kids and parents disturbed about social media monitoring, campus facial recognition systems, and "aggression detection" mics in classrooms

https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/privacy-students

It unpacks technical concepts from stalkerware to man-in-the-middle SSL certificates, and includes guides to having difficult privacy conversations with friends, family and officials, and technical guidance for protecting your privacy.

As the press-release notes, "School discipline disproportionately targets students of color, and it's reasonable to think that additional, and more comprehensive scrutiny of their lives will only add to that injustice." These systems also disproportionately affect queer kids, "who tend to look for support online as they explore their gender identities, and find they're under so much surveillance that they learn not to look. They learn not to trust online public spaces."

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/schools-are-spying-students-students-can-fight-back

Oregon's Dems have a supermajority, but the GOP won't show up for work (permalink)

In Oregon, Democrats have a supermajority in the House and Senate, because the vast majority of Orgeonians support Democratic policies. But when Oregon drafted its constitution in 1857, it copied the Indiana constitution's provision that sets quorum at 2/3 of lawmakers.

Theoretically, this has meant that if a small handful of opposition lawmakers refused to show up for work, the state legislature would shut down. Practically, neither party has ever done this…until now. The Oregon GOP, acting on behalf of a small number of rural, white, reactionary voters, has refused to enter the statehouse when the majority was calling votes on "guns, forestry, health care, budgeting" and now, the climate crisis.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/2/29/21157246/oregon-republicans-walk-out-climate-change-cap-trade-democracy

They've killed a small tax raise to fully fund state public schools, modest gun restrictions, and mandatory vaccinations for kids. Then they signed a memo promising not to pull that stunt again, so the legislature could pursue a cap-and-trade bill.

They fucking lied.

GOP Senators went into hiding, and threatened to murder any police officers sent to get them.

Cap and trade is back before the legislature, and the GOP cowards are in hiding again, refusing to show up and do the job the taxpayers are paying them to do. House Republicans have joined their Senate co-conspirators.

A ballot initiative might force them back into their seats, though:

https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-union-leaders-initiative-stopping-legislative-walkouts/

The Oregon GOP has fielded a truckload of bullshit to defend their tantrum. They claim the measure has had insufficient "process" to proceed. It's had more process than any other bill in Oregon history.

https://twitter.com/karin_power/status/1232720734813732865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

"Democrats have bent over backward to accommodate GOP objections, layering on more process, making more concessions, but it hasn't changed Republican rhetoric or behavior a whit. GOP objections aren't to the bill's contents or process, but to its existence."

Oregon has some of the nation's loosest money-in-politics laws and the state GOP is awash in money from polluting industries hoping to render the planet unfit for habitation ("first in the country in per-capita corporate donations to politicians")

https://projects.oregonlive.com/polluted-by-money/part-1

"The Republicans who keep walking out on their jobs get 65 percent of their donations from corporations, in particular corporations like Koch Industries with assets that stand to be affected by cap-and-trade."

Democrats have walked out of legislatures, too: decades ago, and over gerrymandering attempts that would have guaranteed eternal minority rule by rendering the majority of state votes irrelevant. When the GOP stages rallies to support its actions, it is supported by 3 Percenters and other violent white nationalist terrorist elements. White supremacy is how the GOP gets turkeys to vote for Christmas.

But Oregon Dems are too timid to call white nationalism out when they see it. They won't run on the issue of the GOP doing corporate bidding with backing from white nationalists.

A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick (permalink)

My latest Locus column explores what copyright expert Rebecca Giblin calls "The New Copyright Bargain" – a copyright system designed around enriching authors above all, rather rather than treating authors' incomes as an incidental output of enriching entertainment or tech corporations. The column is called "A Lever Without a Fulcrum is Just a Stick." Copyright is billed as giving creators leverage over the corporations we contract with, but levers need fulcrums.

https://locusmag.com/2020/03/cory-doctorow-a-lever-without-a-fulcrum-is-just-a-stick/

In an increasingly concentrated marketplace, any exclusive rights that are given to creators are simply appropriated by corporations as a non-negotiable condition of the standard contract. Think of how samples could originally be used without permission (in the Paul's Boutique/It Takes a Nation of Millions era), enriching old R&B artists who'd been burned by one-sided contracts.

(Image from Kembrew Macleod's "Creative License" https://www.dukeupress.edu/creative-license)

Those artists experienced a temporary enrichment when paying for samples became the norm, but today, all contracts simply require signing away your sampling rights. The fight to require licenses for samples merely gave the labels yet another right to demand of their artists. Which means that anyone hoping to sample must sign to a label and pay for a license either to that label or one of the other three. Giving new rights to artists in a monopolized market is like giving your bullied kid more lunch money. It doesn't buy the kid lunch, it just gives the bullies the opportunity to take more money from your kid.

After the "Blurred Lines" suit, labels have begun to fret about being sued over artists' copying the "vibe" of another artist. It's easy to feel smug about copyright maximalists being hoist on their own petards. But the end-game is easy to see: just make selling your "vibe" rights a condition of signing a record deal, and you transfer ownership of whole genres to the Big 4 labels.

What would a copyright look like that protected artists, rather than practicing the Magic Underpants Gnome method of:

Enrich entertainment corporations;

?????

Artists get more money

Any new bargain in copyright centered on artists needs to take account of the concentration in tech and entertainment, and create rights for artists that aren't just creator's monopolies to be scooped up through non-negotiable contracts. Measures like reversion (which lets artists in the USA claim back rights they signed away 35 years ago), blanket licenses (designed to pay artists regardless of whether they're "rightsholders"), and restoring unionization rights are the key to paying artists.

Merely expanding the "author's monopoly" does no good in a world of industrial monopolies: it just gives those monopolists more ammo to use in the fight to shift revenues onto their own balance sheets, at the expense of working creators.

Facebook neutered "Download Your Data" (permalink)

Facebook recently unveiled a feature called "download your data," partly to comply with Europe's GDPR. But as Privacy International reveals, there's a very important omission in the data that Facebook will release to you.

https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3372/no-facebooks-not-telling-you-everything

Missing from "your data" is the list of advertisers whose targeted you by uploading some of your personal information (through the "Custom Audience" tool) – that is, the list of other companies that the GDPR lets you send data-requests to. This omission means that you can't use FB as a jumping-off point to discover all the data being held on you by all the advertisers, data-brokers, etc. It's not an accident, either: Facebook replicates this in their new "Off-Facebook" product.

Facebook is under increasing pressure to allow competition through interoperability, but argues that it can't possible protect your privacy if they are forced to allow companies that you trust to manage your Facebook experience for you. In other words, Facebook argues that it can't be a wise, benevolet steward of your privacy if you insist on allowing competitors to interfere with it. But that argument only works if you trust Facebook — and who the hell trusts Facebook?

(And why on Earth would you?)

The EU's new copyright filters violate the GDPR (permalink)

The EU's Copyright Directive effectively forces all online platforms to implement upload filters that scan everything you try to post and refuses anything that matches a database of works that anyone, anywhere has claimed to be "copyrighted." This a terrible idea in an era of rampant copyfraud. The Directive has no penalties for people who falsely claim copyright even when it's to rip off, blackmail or censor artists, and platforms still have to accept their copyright claims even after they're caught at it.

But it's also a massive violation of Article 22 of the GDPR, which promises users the right "not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing which produces legal effects concerning them or significantly affects them."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/upload-filters-are-odds-gdpr

That is to say, you aren't allowed to do the kind of filtering that Article 17 of the Copyright Directive mandates. Billions of pieces of "personal information" (under the GDPR's definition) will be processed by copyright bots every day, and that's illegal.

None of the GDPR's exemptions apply, either. For example, the Copyright Directive doesn't "authorise" the filtering, because its authors explicitly deleted all mentions of filters in order to get the Directive passed, and publicly disclaimed any filtering mandate.

Nor is filtering "necessary" for the use of the service under the GDPR – the services run today without filtering, so the GDPR's narrow, rigorous definition of "necessity" does not apply.

The GDPR does allow this kind of processing with "consent" but not the kind where you click a terms-of-service "OK" button. Consent under GDPR has to include the ability to say no and still use the service.

What's more, the Copyright Directive includes new EU-wide copyright exceptions for parody and criticism, and while it's impossible to imagine a filter being able to tell the difference between parody/criticism and other kinds of speech, any attempt will be a privacy disaster. Identifying parody/criticism requires understanding of context – and that means that a filter trying to discern these concepts will have to consider huge amounts of personal information to make its determination. And the Copyright Directive itself does not allow any system that fails to respect these "fundamental rights" of internet users, which means that you can't use a filter unless it can grasp these distinctions.

Literally all of this was obvious from the start, and boosters of upload filters hand-waved them away, insisting they were mere technicalities that could be solved by asking tech companies to NERD HARDER. Now, the whole thing is likely to fall apart.

Recycling spy agencies' malware for fun and profit permalink)

The NSA has a doctrine called "NOBUS," which stands for "No One But Us" — as in, "It's OK if we keep these bugs we discovered a secret because no one but us is smart enough to find or exploit them." But as ex-NSA hacker Patrick Wardle's RSA presentation, "Repurposed Malware: A Dark Side of Recycling" shows, foreign spy agencies – and criminals – love NOBUS because it means they get to steal NSA cyberweapons and use them for themselves.

https://www.rsaconference.com/usa/agenda/repurposed-malware-a-dark-side-of-recycling

Once you discover a snippet of malicious code in the wild (either something used by a spy agency and then blown, or something stolen from the agency), it's really easy to remix it to deliver your own malware.

In his demo, Wardle showed how he replaced a small section of the pioneering fileless Macos malware AppleJeus.c and created his own, virus-scanner-resistant strain.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/why-write-your-own-mac-malware-when-you-can-rip-off-a-competitors-a-how-to/

"With a single modification to the binary, (and building a light-weight C&C server), we now have access to an advanced nation-state loader that will perform to our bidding …without having to write any (client-side) code!"

NOBUS is, and always has been, a dead letter – equivalent to stockpiling superbugs to use as bioweapons, in hopes that no one else will discover or steal them, rather than developing a vaccine for them. It's the height of irresponsibility, and your tax-dollars pay for it.

Japanese condiment company releases "sliced mayo" (permalink)

The Japanese condiment company Bourbon just released a "sliced mayonnaise" product similar to American cheese singles. It'll come in flavors like "spicy tuna" and "cod roe."

https://www.atpress.ne.jp/news/205437

It's an addition to the company's existing sliced condiment products, like "sliced chocolate."

https://soranews24.com/2020/02/21/sliced-mayonnaise-and-white-chocolate-now-exist-in-japan-bringing-sandwiches-to-glorious-new-era/

The sliced mayo is ¥200-250, and comes in packets of four. Honestly, I'm fine with this except for the plastic – if it came in an edible wrapper, it'd make for an excellent picnic/school lunch supply.

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/mayonnaise-slices-japan

Department of the Interior climate docs include junk science (permalink)

When Trump took office, he promoted Indur M Goklany, a climate denier, to the office of the deputy secretary "with responsibility for reviewing the agency's climate policies."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/climate/goks-uncertainty-language-interior.html

Ever since, Goklany has been inserting debunked climate-denial talking points into US government science, including the myth that "increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial." Longtime agency staffers exchange private, grim jokes about being forced to insert "Goks uncertainty language" into their communications about the climate crisis, howlers like the idea that rising CO2 "may increase plant water use efficiency."

"The Interior Department declined to make Mr. Goklany available for an interview, and he did not return requests seeking comment."

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Free Software Foundation tears MPAA a new one in Grokster brief http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/grokster-amicus.pdf

#10yrsago Blind gamer speedruns Zelda with help of 100,000+ keystroke script https://boingboing.net/2010/03/03/blind-gamer-speedrun.html

#5yrsago Ed Snowden says he'll face trial in the US https://news.yahoo.com/edward-snowden-ready-return-states-144245040.html

#5yrsago Razorhurst: blood-drenched gang warfare and ghosts in Gilded Age Sydney https://boingboing.net/2015/03/03/razorhurst-blood-drenched-gan.html

#1yrago The FAIR Act will end forced arbitration for employment, consumer, antitrust and civil rights disputes https://thinkprogress.org/lawmakers-declare-war-on-the-biggest-civil-rights-problem-youve-probably-never-heard-of-eaf3b5459034/

#1yrago Google says it won't remove Saudi government app that lets men track and monitor their wives and domestic employees https://www.businessinsider.com/absher-google-refuses-to-remove-saudi-govt-app-that-tracks-women-2019-3

#1yrago Record label censors copyright lawyers' site by falsely claiming it infringes copyright https://spicyip.com/2019/02/saregama-pa-rdon-me-you-have-the-wrong-address-on-the-perils-and-pitfalls-of-notice-and-takedown.html

#1yrago German data privacy commissioner says Article 13 inevitably leads to filters, which inevitably lead to internet "oligopoly" http://www.fosspatents.com/2019/02/germanys-federal-data-protection.html#translation

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Waxy (https://waxy.org/), Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Kottke (https://kottke.org).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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dr-archeville · 7 years ago

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INDY Primer: N.C.’s Congressional Districts Are Once Again Declared Unconstitutional Gerrymanders [2018/01/10]

Hey, all. Today is one of the busiest news days I’ve seen since we started Primer. I’ll get through as much as I can. As always, you can check out the web-browser version of this newsletter here.

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1. ANOTHER N.C. GERRYMANDER STRUCK DOWN.

THE GIST: Big, big #ncpol news out of Raleigh yesterday. A federal court has struck the congressional districts the General Assembly drew in 2016 — to replace congressional districts that had previously been ruled unconstitutional racial gerrymanders — were themselves unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. A three-judge panel gave the NCGA until January 29 to solve the problem. This decision, of course, comes at a federal court in the Triad is about to redraw the state’s legislative districts — which, again, were redrawn last year after the original districts were ruled unconstitutional. I’m starting to sense a pattern. In any event, let’s go through the ruling and then talk about its greater import.

From the NYT: “Judge James A. Wynn Jr., in a biting 191-page opinion, said that Republicans in North Carolina’s Legislature had been ‘motivated by invidious partisan intent’ as they carried out their obligation in 2016 to divide the state into 13 congressional districts, 10 of which are held by Republicans. The result, Judge Wynn wrote, violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.”

“The ruling left little doubt about how the judges assessed the Legislature’s most recent map. Judge Wynn, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and was a member of a special panel considering the congressional map, said that ‘a wealth of evidence proves the General Assembly’s intent to ‘subordinate’ the interests of non-Republican voters and ‘entrench’ Republican domination of the state’s congressional delegation.’”

This is blindingly obvious to anyone who has watched the General Assembly work in recent years. Hell, Representative David Lewis said it at the time: “I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to ten Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with eleven Republicans and two Democrats.” As the N&O’s story points out: “The comment by Lewis has provided the underpinnings for a lawsuit that sets North Carolina apart from other partisan gerrymander challenges.”

The ruling (read the Google Doc here) relies in part on a study from Duke applied mathematics professor Jonathan Mattingly, who simulated more than twenty-four thousand configurations using a probability distribution of all possible redistricting plans. In those simulations, less than 1 percent ended up with ten Republicans seats and three Democratic seats: “Using actual 2016 congressional votes, a congressional delegation of 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats — the outcome that occurred under the 2016 Plan — occurred in less than 0.7 percent of the simulated plans (162/24,518), with a delegation of 8 Republicans and 5 Democrats occurring in approximately 55 percent of the plans.”

NYT: “Republican officials in the General Assembly said Tuesday evening that they intended to appeal the ruling, which many elected officials and political strategists were still scrambling to digest. Dallas Woodhouse, the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, criticized Judge Wynn and accused him of ‘waging a personal, partisan war on North Carolina Republicans.’ In a separate post on Twitter, Mr. Woodhouse argued that Judge Wynn had concluded that North Carolina’s Republicans ‘should not be allowed to draw election districts under any circumstances under any set of rules,’ an effort he called ‘a hostile takeover’ of the General Assembly and legislatures nationwide.”

WHAT IT MEANS: The redrawing of the legislative districts being undertaken by special master Nathaniel Persily seems likely to end the GOP’s supermajorities in the legislature, whether or not there’s a Democratic wave in November. That would be enough to sustain Governor Cooper’s veto power, which in turn would end Phil Berger and Tim Moore’s carte blanche to do whatever they please. The congressional districts have national implications, however.

First, there’s the timing: The short period between when new districts would be finalized — provided the GOP’s appeal is unsuccessful — and when candidates have to file means there would be a scramble. Districts will change, perhaps dramatically. Districts that looked safe for incumbents won’t be. Politicians who aren’t currently running could spot opportunity and get in the game. In short, it will alter the playing field.

Second, there’s the big picture: Right now, estimates suggest Democrats are on track to pick up thirty-eight House seats in November, which would be enough to reclaim the majority. [WaPo] But even in a Democratic wave, a lot of those races will fall in Republican-leaning districts, which means they’ll be close. An extra two or three Democratic seats in North Carolina could be the difference.

Finally, there’s the rub: Yet again, the NCGA has proven itself incapable of drawing anything resembling a fair map. The Republicans’ thirst for political power prevents that. However, if the shoe were on the other foot, do you really think the Democrats’ intentions would be any different? It’s easy to harp on gerrymandering when the results run contrary to your ideological interests — as, in my case, the Republican gerrymanders obviously do. It’s harder to do so when that dynamic is reversed. Which is why it’s time to take this out of politicians’ hands, at least so much as is possible. The state needs to create an independent redistrict commission, split between the parties (and independents!), or hand it off to legislative staffers, or something. [INDY] At the very least, we need to acknowledge that the present way of doing things is irreparably broken.

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2. FUSION GPS FOUNDER DISPUTES REPUBLICAN CLAIMS OF DOSSIER FAKERY.

THE GIST: Last week, Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley made a criminal referral to the FBI, asking the feds to investigate former British spy Christoper Steele, who contracted with Fusion GPS to investigate the Trump camp’s ties to Russia in 2016. Also last week, the former journalists behind Fusion GPS asked the Senate to release the transcript of Fusion founder Glenn Simpson’s interview with the Judiciary Committee — which includes a lot of conversation of Steele’s work — but Grassley refused. So, yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein released it herself (read it here). It’s long but important.

First, the context: Fusion’s research into Trump was funded first by a conservative site that supported another Republican for president and then by the Clinton campaign, a fact that has made it quite the political football. The so-called Steele dossier that research produced contained a number of salacious allegations, including one involving golden showers and Russian hookers. It was published by Buzzfeed last year (more on that in a second). Republicans have argued that this political oppo research (which wasn’t publicly disseminated until after the campaign) was the basis for the FBI’s investigation into collusion, and as such the investigation itself is suspect. But the transcript hardly suggests a political hit job; rather, it paints the picture of Steele as a researcher who became concerned that a potential president of the United States was compromised by a geopolitical foe.

NYT: “The interview, with Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS, provided few revelatory details about the firm’s findings on the Russian election effort or on President Trump and his campaign. But both the circumstances of its release and the vivid picture it paints of Mr. Simpson’s operation and his chief Russia investigator, Christopher Steele, provided fresh ammunition to both sides of a growing fight over the dossier. In his testimony, Mr. Simpson sought to portray himself as an astute researcher well versed in the Russian government and that country’s organized crime. And he said Mr. Steele, the former British spy he hired to investigate the campaign��s ties to Russia, had ‘a Sterling reputation as a person who doesn’t exaggerate, doesn’t make things up, doesn’t sell baloney.’ Mr. Steele believed that his investigation had unearthed ‘a security issue about whether a presidential candidate was being blackmailed,’ Mr. Simpson told the committee.”

Some key points, from WaPo: “Ultimately, the dossier claimed Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, something Trump has vigorously denied but also something neither special counsel Robert S. Mueller III nor Congress have ruled out.”

“Researchers weren't expecting to find what they did: The research started as open-ended, but as they uncovered more about Trump's alleged connections to Russia, Simpson said, he and former British spy Christopher Steele, whom Simpson hired to do the research, made a decision to go to the FBI.”

“There may have been a whistleblower in the Trump campaign: This is the biggest headline from 10 hours of interviews. Simpson says Steele told him that the FBI had ‘other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source,’ someone ‘inside the Trump organization.’” However, an NBC correspondent says the FBI didn’t actually have a walk-in source, but rather this was a reference to an Australian diplomat who heard a drunken Trump aide boasting about the Russian hack that got garbled in translation.

“Some news events have corroborated the memo's findings: Simpson points out that Steele's memo alleged members of the Trump campaign were eager to hear information from Russia. A year later, Trump Jr. released emails suggesting as much, when he said, ‘If it's what you say I love it’ to correspondence indicating that Russians had dirt on Clinton. The dossier also identified former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page as a potential intermediary between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Washington Post reported in April that Page was wiretapped by the FBI during the campaign, suggesting it had reason to believe Page was in contact with the Russians while he worked for Trump.”

“The FBI indicated it believed some of what was in the memos: After Steele and Simpson called the FBI to report that they had reason to believe the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia, Simpson said, the FBI asked Steele to share everything. A couple months after Steele gave the FBI a full briefing, the FBI said that it believed him, according to Simpson.”

But Steele cut off his talks with the FBI in October, after The New York Times — which, mind you, was in full Hillary-emails hysteria at the time — published a bogus story saying the FBI didn’t see any connection between the Trump camp and Russia. From Simpson: “There was some sort of interaction, I think it was probably telephonic that occurred after Director Comey sent his letter to Congress reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. That episode, you know, obviously created some concern that the FBI was intervening in a political campaign in contravention of long-standing Justice Department regulation. So it made a lot of people, including us, concerned about what the heck was going on at the FBI. So, you know, we began getting questions from the press about, you know, whether they were also investigating Trump and, you know, we encouraged them to ask the FBI that question. You know, I think — I’m not sure we've covered this fully, but, you know, we just encouraged them to ask the FBI that question. On October 31st the New York Times posted a story saying that the FBI is investigating Trump and found no connections to Russia and, you know, it was a real Halloween special. Sometime thereafter the FBI — I understand Chris severed his relationship with the FBI out of concern that he didn't know what was happening inside the FBI and there was a concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and that we didn't really understand what was going on. So he stopped dealing with them.”

WHAT IT MEANS: A couple of takeaways:

One, the release doesn’t likely change the state of play, other than making the Republicans’ attempt to portray Fusion GPS as composed of Democratic hacks look foolish. (There’s a reason Grassley and company wanted to keep this secret.) The Republicans will still try to muddy the waters, arguing that Democrats campaign funded questionable research to weaken Trump and thus the special counsel investigation is tainted. As NPR notes: “Nothing about Simpson's testimony will deflect the campaign of derision directed by Republicans against a Justice Department and FBI they call "biased" on behalf of Hillary Clinton and against Trump.”

Two, accept the dossier for what it is: raw, unfiltered intelligence. Some of it is wrong. Some of it is rooted in truth. But what Steele — an experienced spy who knows Russian tactics as well as anyone — saw in that raw intelligence convinced him that something pernicious was afoot, and he alerted the FBI. (And cooperated with the FBI until FBI agents fed the NYT false info a week before the election stating that Trump wasn’t under suspicion.) Which is to say, the allegations made therein should absolutely be taken seriously.

Three: The White House claims that all of this is fake news are crumbling. Was there collusion between people in his orbit and Russian intelligence? It sure looks that way, by any definition — see Don Jr.’s meeting in Trump Tower — even if Trump didn’t know about it or want to know about it. And if you accept that there is a there there, then that makes Republican efforts to shift blame and protect the president all the more troubling.

Related: One of Steele’s sources has apparently been killed. [ThinkProgress]

Related: Longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is suing Fusion GPS and Buzzfeed over the publication of the Steele dossier.

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3. THE DACA TALK-A-THON.

THE GIST: President Trump did an unusual an interesting (and, for my money, good) thing yesterday. He allowed reporters in to record negotiations over the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which the Trump administration ended, and border security.

WaPo: “And for the 55 minutes that the scene unfolded on television, the president demonstrated stability, although not necessarily capability. In trying to erase one set of queries (is he up for the job and a ‘very stable genius,’ as he claimed on Twitter?), he inadvertently opened another: What, exactly, is going to be in that immigration bill? On that, Trump left a cliffhanger.”

“While Trump offered captivating television drama, he also muddled through the policy by seeming to endorse divergent positions, including simply protecting the dreamers or a plan contingent upon funding for his long-promised wall at the nation’s southern border. ‘I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with,’ Trump said. ‘I am very much reliant on the people in this room.’”

“So pliant was Trump that when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the most liberal members of the chamber, asked if he would support ‘a clean DACA bill’ that protects the dreamers with no other conditions, the president sounded amenable. ‘Yeah, I would like to do it,’ Trump said. Trump’s apparent concession so alarmed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that he interjected himself …. ‘Mr. President, you need to be clear, though,’ McCarthy said, leaning over from his perch to Trump’s left. ‘I think what Senator Feinstein is asking here — when we talk about just DACA, we don’t want to be back here two years later. You have to have security.’”

As CNN put it, “Trump contradicts self repeatedly in immigration meeting”: “The President at times suggested he would be looking to sign everything from a stand-alone fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — set to expire in March — to comprehensive immigration reform, often appearing to being guided by lawmakers in the room to modify his positions. … At the end of the session, Trump suggested that ultimately, he would sign whatever he was presented with.”

WHAT IT MEANS: The key question, as yet unclear, is whether Trump will demand his long-promised border wall in exchange for DACA, which Democrats would never go along with, though they might be open to other border security efforts. Indeed, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the press yesterday that Trump wants “border security” funding but would not commit to the wall. According to the president, “his version of a ‘clean’ deal would include DACA, border security, ending ‘chain migration’ or family-based migration, and ending the diversity visa lottery. But those issues are commonly thought to only be achievable in a comprehensive immigration deal.” Two observations:

One: The president has a very tentative grasp of the issues at play.

Two: Later Tuesday evening, a federal court threw a wrench into the negotiations, temporarily reinstating DACA pending a lawsuit. [NBC] If nothing else, that strips these negotiations of at least some of their urgency and, because DACA isn’t going to end immediately, perhaps gives the Democrats some leverage. On the other hand, the judge’s decision also might also Republicans room to maneuver. As a political matter, they’re terrified of the repercussions of the popular DACA ending on their watch. This gives them a stay. The border wall is a fantasy. But those other things Trump says he wants — border funding, an end to chain migration — could be in play.

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3. TWELVE LOCAL HEADLINES.

This week’s cover story: The developers who are gentrifying Durham’s East End aren’t about to apologize. [INDY]

In 2016, the federal government fined N.C. nursing homes $3.4 million for failing to protect vulnerable residents. The Trump administration is putting a stop to that, at least temporarily. [INDY]

North Carolina has lost out on a sought-after Toyota-Mazda auto manufacturing plant. It will instead go to Alabama. [N&O]

The Dalai Lama isn’t coming to North Carolina either. His Holiness’s U.S. travel was canceled this year. [INDY]

The legislature is considering spending more money to address pollution. [N&O]

Eleven people have died in fires in North Carolina in 2018. [N&O]

Thomas Farr’s nomination to the federal bench will have to go back to a Senate Judiciary Committee that now includes Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. [INDY]

Bernie Sanders is coming to Duke for a conversation with the Reverend William Barber. [INDY]

DPAC ranked among the most successful venues of its type and size in 2017. [DHS]

Durham’s city council and county commission are appointing a committee to figure out what to do with the now-dismantled Confederate monument. [INDY]

Triangle immigration advocates are condemning the Trump administration’s plan to end temporary protected status for Salvadorans; there are about six thousand TPS-holding Salvadorans in North Carolina. [INDY]

The powerful Durham People’s Alliance has endorsed Javiera Caballero for the vacant city council seat. [INDY]

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4. TWELVE POLITICAL HEADLINES.

After Trump ally Rick Scott, the Florida governor and likely Senate candidate, protested, the administration backed off a plan to force offshore drilling on the Sunshine State. Offshore drilling in California, Virginia, Maryland, Oregon, and New York is still scheduled to proceed over those states’ (mostly Democratic) governors’ objections. Hmmm. [Reuters]

Trump may not release his infrastructure plan this month. [Politico]

Republicans are pressuring the IRS to withhold less money from people’s paychecks so they believe that they’re benefiting from the tax cut. This would, of course, reduce or eliminate the refunds many people get at the end of the year. [Politico]

U.S. Representative Brendan Boyle has introduced the sublimely named Stable Genius Act, which would require presidential candidates to undergo a medical exam. [ThinkProgress]

The Supreme Court is taking up the case of a state (Ohio) paring down its voting rolls by eliminating inactive voters. [AP]

The White House says it will erase data gathered by Trump’s voter fraud panel. [The Hill]

Steve Bannon is out at Breitbart after falling out with Trump. [AP]

Joe Arpaio, the racist, birther sheriff who was pardoned by Trump last year, is running for Senate from Arizona. [AP]

Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White, told her followers to send her their January salary or face divine consequences. Nice work if you can get it. [Newsweek]

A federal judge has removed the Republican National Committee from a thirty-five-year-old consent decree intended to prohibit voter suppression techniques under the guise of “ballot security.” [ThinkProgress]

Democratic women plan to wear all black to the State of Union in solidarity with the #MeToo movement. [NBC]

Trump is going to an annual Switzerland gathering of global financial, political, and media elites who mostly detest him. [Politico]

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5. SIX ODDS & ENDS.

Mudslides have claimed at least thirteen lives in Southern California. [NYT]

Mark Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million for reshoots on the movie All the Money in the World, which, at the last minute, recast a role played by Kevin Spacey. But his co-star, Michelle Williams, paid less than $1,000. [USA Today]

Jeff Bezos is the richest person in history. [CNN]

Half of the women in STEM fields have experienced gender discrimination at work, according to a new study. [NBC]

A DNA database is helping link international traffickers of rhinoceros horns to the scene of the poaching. [CNN]

Partly cloudy today, with a high of 52. [WRAL]

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#current events #NCGA #NC #gerrymandering #Fusion GPS #Steele Dossier #DACA #Trump Administration

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viewwrangler · 7 years ago

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Something good came out of the Virginia elections, and other elections nationwide! (And yes, this is a very VERY long post, but it’s been ages since that much good news came all in one night.)

Democrat Danica Roem ousted longtime incumbent Del. Robert G. Marshall (R) Tuesday, becoming the first openly transgender elected official in Virginia — and one of very few in the nation.

The race between Roem, 33, and Marshall, 73, focused on traffic and other local issues in Prince William County but also exposed the nation’s fault lines over gender identity. It pitted a local journalist who began her physical gender transition four years ago against an outspoken social conservative who has referred to himself as Virginia’s “chief homophobe” earlier this year introduced a “bathroom bill” that died in committee.

Apparently, Virginia didn’t want a “chief homophobe”. Whoda thunk?

Oh, also, there was apparently a governor’s election in Virginia as well.

Democrat Ralph Northam cruises to victory in Virginia governor's race (richmond.com Times-Dispatch)

Democrat Ralph Northam cruised to a surprisingly early victory Tuesday in the Virginia governor's race that preserves his party's control of the Executive Mansion as voters turned out in force for the candidate who promised to stand up to President Donald Trump.

Northam led a Democratic sweep of statewide offices, as Justin Fairfax defeated state Sen. Jill Vogel, R-Fauquier, for lieutenant governor, and Democrat Mark Herring was re-elected attorney general, defeating Republican John Adams.

With 94 percent of precincts reporting, Northam was swamping Republican Ed Gillespie in the state's population centers. Libertarian Cliff Hyra trailed far behind....

So that’s also a good thing, after Democrats missing wins in various special elections by justthismuch.

The exit poll breakdown is illuminating and depressing and encouraging, all at once. It’s essentially the national election breakdown writ small; the differences being that Northam somehow got minority turnout (in the face of vigorous voter suppression tactics, such the tweeter mentioned in the linked article, and including calling registered Democrats to tell them that their polling place had changed when it hadn’t), and instead of a win by the Republican with white women, there was a win by the Democrat with that group. White men, on the whole, remain as they were.

And there’s this:

Trump blasts Gillespie over Va. loss: He 'did not embrace me or what I stand for' (thehill.com)

President Trump blasted GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie in a tweet Tuesday evening in an effort to distance himself from the Republican's losing effort in Virginia.

Trump's tweet knocking Gillespie came shortly after news outlets called the race for Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who looks to be on track for a comfortable victory.

"Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for. Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!" Trump said....

The interesting thing is that The Candidate is both right and wrong on that. Gillespie embraced the most vile aspects of The Candidate’s racist tactics, judging from the various fliers sent out by his campaign in the closing days. What he did not do was to embrace The Candidate himself, either literally or metaphorically. Gillespie never once asked for The Candidate to campaign with him, apparently thinking that it would hurt more than it would help. Right or wrong? We’ll (thankfully) never know.

There’s also this: Republican Rep. Scott Taylor (Va.) called the GOP defeat in Virginia’s gubernatorial race a “referendum” on President Trump's administration on Tuesday. (thehill.com) So there’s another person from his own party on The Candidate’s hit list.

Virginia also elected their second-ever African American lieutenant governor, and apparently Democrats have made major gains in the state legislature.

Elsewhere, elections went more or less exactly as expected. In New Jersey, Democrat Murphy beat Republican Guadagno, who had one hell of an uphill slog as the current lieutenant governor to the most unpopular governor in state history. (And speaking as a resident of a state with a governor with exactly the same general profile as Murphy, but from the opposing party ... New Jersey may be in for some relentlessly interesting times.) De Blasio cruised to re-election in New York City. And as I write this, Utah’s special election isn’t in yet -- the polls have only just closed -- but let’s be real: ain’t no way anyone but a Republican is winning Chafetz’ seat. (EDIT: And, indeed, that’s exactly what happened. Curtis doesn’t seem to be particularly a Trumpetista, so I suppose there’s that.)

Overall, it was a very very VERY good night for Democrats. Astonishingly good, really.

Dems win from coast to coast (thehill.com)

Democrats roared back on Tuesday a year after suffering perhaps the most demoralizing defeat in modern political history, claiming big victories in races up and down the ballot and across the country. The breadth of the Democratic wins surprised even the most optimistic party stalwarts, who fretted over their own chances in key races Tuesday. But as the results rolled in, those Democrats said they had energized their core voters and capitalized on President Trump's unpopularity to reach swing voters. "This is not a wave. This is a tsunami," Virginia Del. David Toscano, leader of the Democratic caucus, told The Hill in an interview Tuesday night. ...

[...] In Washington, Democrat Manka Dhingra (D) appeared headed for victory in a special election to fill an open state Senate seat. Dhingra's win, in a formerly Republican district, would give Democrats control of all levers of government in the Evergreen State.

Democrats won at least 14 seats in Virginia's House of Delegates, with another three likely headed to a recount. They picked up at least two seats in New Jersey's state Senate, with several Senate and Assembly districts yet to count ballots, and a seat in New Hampshire's state House.

Georgia Democrats celebrated winning two deep red districts in special state House elections. Two Democrats appear likely to face off in a runoff in a suburban Atlanta state Senate district formerly held by a Republican after finishing first and second in the all-party primary — a result that would break the GOP's supermajority....

Ravi Bhalla wins Hoboken election, becomes N.J.'s first Sikh mayor (nj.com): City Councilman Ravi Bhalla has emerged victorious in the six-person mayoral race, becoming the first Sikh mayor of the Mile Square City -- and the state of New Jersey. Bhalla, an Indian-American born in New Jersey, was endorsed by current Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who in a surprising decision announced she would not seek a third term in office....

Democrat Vi Lyles easily defeats Smith to win Charlotte mayor’s race (charlotteobserver.com): Casting herself as a unifier after two years of tumult, Democrat Vi Lyles easily defeated Republican Kenny Smith on Tuesday to become Charlotte’s first African-American female mayor.Lyles took about 58 percent to Smith’s 42 percent in unofficial returns. She carried precincts throughout the city, including a handful in south Charlotte.Despite being heavily outspent, she won on a night Democrats flexed their muscles not only in Charlotte but in Virginia and New Jersey, where they swept state races....

In a decisive and unexpectedly early victory, Melvin Carter beat a field of 10 candidates Tuesday to become St. Paul’s first mayor of color.... (startribune.com)

#us politics #state elections #virginia #new jersey #new york city #washington (state)#charlotte nc #st paul mn

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