#fee's law and order elective

[fishcat480]

Bad Day

Fandom: The Vampire Diaries

Pairing: Damon Salvatore x Plus size! Reader

Warnings: None

Description: You’re having a very bad day when Damon Salvatore decides to make it worse, but then maybe he also makes it much better.

It was one of those fucking days.

You know those days when everything just goes completely, spectacularly wrong?

You shouldn’t have even been surprised. Once you’d woken up and your favorite sweater had had cat puke on it, you should have given up there. But no - you just had to power through and continue your day.

You got a call right after breakfast that your car payment hadn’t gone through, and now you’d have to pay a late fee you couldn’t afford. While running errands, you’d managed to knock over your Starbucks in the middle of the aisle of Target, forcing you to have to buy another coffee. And once back home, you were greeted with a passive aggressive note from your neighboring apartment asking you to close your door “just a tad quieter”.

By the time you had to get ready for work, your ‘fucks to give’ meter was dangerously low.

You quickly tossed on your uniform shirt and broke several traffic laws driving to the Grill, because of course you were late. At a red light, you tossed your messy Y/H/C hair into a ponytail, griping at your reflection as some asshole in a sports car cut you off. Really? Who the hell drove sports cars in Mystic Falls? You’d only ever seen one person do that, and that was Damon Salvatore.

You scanned the license plate. Then you squinted to see inside the drivers seat and swore loudly. Damon fucking Salvatore. And he waggled his pale fingers at you before peeling off at top speed.

He was there at the Grill when you finally clocked in, tossing apologies at your manager and ignoring Matt’s teasing grins as you settled behind the bar and counted up your liquor. The day bartender threw you a goodbye and a sympathetic look.

Once finished your count, you sauntered over to Damon, who was enjoying a scotch on the rocks with a self righteous grin on his face.

“You cut me off.” you said, placing your hands on the bar.

He shrugged. “Did I?”

Damon had been drinking at the bar of the Grill long before you worked there, but somehow after you started you felt as if he was suddenly there all the time. You’d had an easy relationship at first, due to your infamiliarity. He was a flirt, you were determined to make good money. You flirt with Damon, he gives you a twenty on top of his tab. That was how it had always been for you, and for the other bartenders before you.

But something had changed, and you remembered the day that it did almost as well as you remembered Damon’s drink order.

It had been a slow night, with only Damon and his buddy Alaric holding down the fort. Most of the other drink orders came from tables, and those were practically empty too. You elected to pass the time with Damon and Ric, talking about nothing and everything. That quickly nosedived into a pissing contest between the two men and which one could do a handstand when you mentioned offhand that you were able to perform a fancy little trick, and that had been your downfall.

“There’s no way!” Ric was crying, his words slurring out of the side of his mouth. “You prove it right now.”

You folded your arms across your chest and shrugged, your grin too confident. Damon’s eyes were laser focused, and he took a long drag of his scotch, watching you intently.

“Don’t tease us…”he said finally.

You sighed, and cursed yourself.

Normally, you wouldn’t mind showing this particular party trick off for customers. It happened sometimes on raucous nights, when people were coming from or on their way to parties, looking to boost their mood and spend their money. It felt good to do it and see the looks of awe on their faces, sometimes even lust.

But you were feeling very self conscious at the prospect of doing it for Damon Salvatore.

You couldn’t deny he was attractive. His face, yeah, but his swagger was practically debilitating. He had the confidence of a much older man, which was funny considering you were the same age. There weren’t guys your age acting like him, of that you were sure.

It fueled your desire toward him as much as your flirtatious little routine did.

But Damon was always on the arm of the skinniest, hottest girl in the room. He’d chased after Elena Gilbert for a while, and she was less than half your size. There was no way his flirting had anything more to do with you than you wished. He liked to have fun, plain and simple.

Ric was slamming his fists on the table now, demanding you not to leave them hanging.

You mustered up all your courage - they knew what you looked like, you thought. They were asking you to do it.

So you lifted yourself up onto the bar in a much more fluid motion than you might have ever expected from yourself, and in one easy rotation you were doing a handstand.

You could feel the fabric of your shirt rising up, but you ignored it. You carefully started placing the majority of your weight on your left hand.

You could hear Ric and a few customers oohinh and aahing at you, and it spurred you on. You lifted your right hand into the air, and separated your legs a bit. And then you were doing a handstand on one hand.

You held the pose as Ric hollered and cheered, and then easily flipped backwards and onto your feet again before jumping back behind the bar, standing once more on your own two feet.

“Am I drunk or did I just witness cirque de soleil?” Ric asked.

“You’re drunk.” You told him, as you wiped off the spot on the bar where your feet had been. “But you did witness something pretty cool.”

Your eyes flitted over to Damon, curious to see if he had any kind of reaction. What you saw stopped you in your tracks.

His eyes were dark - darker than you’d ever seen them. There was something hungry in their expression, like you were dessert and he had saved plenty of room. His lips were covered by his tongue as it slowly lapped over it, before he closed his mouth and swallowed.

“Let’s do a shot.” Damon decided, reaching out and placing his hand on top of yours. “I’m buying.”

“Shots!” Ric called, and you internally groaned. He definitely did not need another one.

But you were glued into Damon’s atmosphere, and you watched as his thumb stroked along your hand. “You want me to do a shot?” you asked.

“That was hard work you did up there.” He encouraged. “You must be thirsty.”

You flushed, hoping Ric couldn’t see the effect he was having on you. When you glanced over, he was exclaiming happily as a Bruce Springsteen song came on, completely ignoring you. Your blush must have been crimson, and your cheeks felt as if they were on fire.

Damon’s thumb was still marking its path on your skin. You needed to get away fast.

“I’ll get those shots.”

“Sounds good.” Damon said.

“I’ll need my hand to pour them.”

He let out a sound of displeasure, but withdrew his hand from yours and you robotically turned away, pouring three shots of Bulleit bourbon. If your hand was shaking and you spilled one, that was between you and the security camera.

You, Ric and Damon cheersed, tapping your glasses on the bar top before throwing the alcohol back. Ric sputtered and coughed, and you giggled as he tried to compose himself.

“Well that’s me!” he said, standing up and lurching dangerously to the left. “I’m tapping out.” He went to put his card down, but as usual Damon stopped him. He started waving his card in your direction, but you made no move to grab it.

“I don’t even bother running you up a tab anymore. Damon’s always got it covered.” You admired that about Damon. A lot of people thought of him as kind of shitty, but you knew better. He was loaded, and he always spent the majority of that money on other people. Even after Elena had rejected him for good, he still came in and covered her tab from time to time. He’d done it for all of their friends. He’d even done it for Matt - despite their apparently rocky history.

Ric sighed in defeat. “Me and my teacher’s salary are very thankful.”

Once Ric had left, it was you and Damon. Alone.

Never before had you felt so nervous serving him by yourself. Whatever you’d seen in his eyes after your little show had altered the atmosphere between the two of you. It thrilled you and scared you all at once.

“How come you never told me you were so flexible?” Damon asked, as you cleaned Ric’s empty glasses. He hadn’t taken his eyes off you, and you were avoiding meeting his gaze like the plague.

You shrugged. “I didn’t realize you had any interest in my level of flexibility.”

“If it’s about you, I’m interested.”

Since when did he say things like that to you? God, and if his words didn’t just send shockwaves straight to your core. Had you stepped into an alternate reality where Damon Salvatore was horny for you? No, that couldn’t be right. He was a flirt, and he was probably still heartbroken over Elena picking his brother.

“Damon.” you said finally, meeting his eyes. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

He frowned. “And why not?”

You gave him a knowing look. “I know you.” He was looking for a rebound, and you wanted more than that.

His frown deepened, and within a few moments Damon had gone from sad to furious. There was something working beneath the surface, and he looked….hurt.

“Well, fuck you very much.”

He stalked out of the bar, and your jaw was on the floor. Never did you ever expect Damon to get mad when rejected. How many girls had said no or called him names or even slapped him while you’d watched, bemused, from your side of the bar? And every time he’d smiled or shaken his head. He’d thought it was funny. So what made you different?

The next time you’d seen him, he’d asked for a drink and didn’t say a word to you other than a hi, bye or check, please.

And then this morning he’d cut you off, as if he somehow knew you were having a shit day and wanted to make it even fucking worse, as only Damon Salvatore could do.

Which sucked, because you’d spent weeks wishing that he would man up and talk to you, and explain why he’d been so hurt that day. You’d spent weeks wanting to have Damon back, cracking jokes and flirting with you and being your best customer.

So you confronted him. It was going to be another slow night, and you more than had the time.

“You cut me off. And you did it on purpose.”

This got his attention. He looked up from his drink, his nostrils flaring.

“I cut you off because you’re not a very good driver.”

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, come on! I wasn’t even moving!”

“And yet, your inexperience was glaringly evident.” He downed the last of his scotch and shoved the glass toward you. “And I’ll take another whenever you’re ready to work.”

Oh, he had another thing coming if he thought he was going to speak to you like that! You clicked your tongue against the roof of your mouth and moved quickly to pour him a shot - you were on the clock after all, even though you’d much rather leave him hanging - but not the top shelf he was used to. Oh no, you were pouring him the cheap stuff.

You slammed the glass in front of him and slid it over, glaring. He gave as much as he got, giving you a wicked little smile before taking a sip.

And promptly spitting it out.

“What the fuck is that?” He asked, rising to his feet. He grabbed a handful of cocktail napkins and dabbed at what he’d spilled onto his shirt, but the damage was done.

“Oh, sorry, were you looking for something specific? Unless you specify, we typically just give customers the rail.”

You had no issue being bitchy bartender tonight. In fact, it was kind of fun to dish it out. And he deserved it for being a jerk.

“What the hell is your problem?” He yelled. “I cut you off. It happens. I’m kind of an asshole sometimes.”

You groaned in frustration. “What about the whole silent treatment for three weeks? I tell you I don’t want to sleep with you and you act like a child!”

He bristled violently at that, and then looked around for a moment. You weren’t really sure what he was doing until he grabbed Matt by the scruff of his neck and brought him around to your side of the bar.

“Y/N needs a fiver. You’ve got this covered, right?”

Matt sighed, but started cleaning pint glasses. You were about to protest when Damon began dragging you off, and Matt smiled apologetically.

“Just go with it! It’ll be a lot easier!” He tells you, and then he’s gone and you’re being dragged through the back of house and out the back door.

Once outside, Damon released his grip on your arm.

“What the hell are you doing?” You ask, incredulous. “I’ll get written up if I’m gone too long.”

“Look.” Damon says, ignoring your pleas. “You…you hurt my feelings that day, ok? You said something kind of mean, or implied it at least. But…I shouldn’t have handled it like that. I’m working on that stuff.”

“Mean?” You asked. “What did I say that was mean?”

He sighs. “Do I have to spell it out?”

You nodded. “All caps, double spaced, please.”

He laughed despite himself. “You basically implied that I am some womanizing creep that wanted to use you for your body.”

You blinked. And then blinked again.

“Ok, two things… the first: are you NOT a womanizing creep that uses women for their bodies?”

He raised his eyebrows, and his head tilted in thought. “Ok fair point.”

“And the second: that’s not what I meant at ALL.”

He brought a finger up to his mouth and placed the tip on his lower lip. “……you didn’t?”

“No. Damon, what I was trying to say was that I’m not your type, and that you probably just wanted me for a night because you were drunk. Which is great and fine, but that’s just not what I’m looking for. I want a relationship.”

There was confusion in his too-blue eyes, and he took a step toward you, entering your personal space.

“What do you mean you’re not my type?”

Oh lord, this was exactly what you didn’t want to talk about right now. You blew out a steadying breath, choosing your words carefully.

“The girls you date are usually of the same variety….both in looks and in size. So I just figured I wasn’t really your type.”

Damon’s entire face changed. Gone was the confusion and the mock anger, replaced with a quiet rage. He flexed his knuckles, and you involuntarily stepped back. He kind of looked pissed.

“You think I didn’t want to sleep with you because you’re not skinny?”

You struggled to get words out. “I mean, yes? In a way…”

“Are you fucking stupid?”

Did he really want an answer to that? Based on the dangerous look in his eyes, it was probably in your best interest to stay quiet.

He was now fully in your space, standing with you toe to toe. His arms were crossed over his chest, which was absolutely heaving. He was very, very angry and it was kind of turning you on.

“I have been throwing hints at you since the moment you started working here. I tip you double the amount I tip anyone else, I always call you pet names, I’m constantly flirting with you…and you really thought I just wanted one random night of fun because you were warm and available?”

His words were like shockwaves to your system. Now that you were faced with it, you realized that no other bartender had ever said anything good about Damon’s tips. Anytime you were switching shifts, he never called anyone else “darling” or “sweetheart”. He flirted, sure, but you were always different….

“Oh my god….” You said quietly. “Oh my god, I didn’t even realize…”

His hands were on your hips, and your senses were assaulted by him. He smelled good, clean with a hint of spice. His eyes were making you melt with the heat of his gaze. His fingers, too, worked over your skin in delicate little circles, and you knew that given the chance those fingers would drive you wild.

“I do want to sleep with you.” He says, and you sigh but he places a finger on your lips, shushing you.

“I do, and I’m not afraid to say it. I got…overwhelmed when you did that sexy little handstand, and I moved too fast. But what I really want is to take you on a date.”

You tentatively wrapped your arms around his neck, your forehead resting against his. “Yeah?” You ask.

“Yeah.” He breathes.

You don’t answer, just press your lips against his and let yourself drown in him. His lips are like brands against yours, and you can imagine steam coming off you both as your mouths battle for dominance, slotting and slanting over each other again and again until you’re breathless.

“Ok, but if you bring me here for our date there will be actual hell to p-“

He cut you off with another searing kiss. A promise.

So maybe it wasn’t such a bad day after all.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An interoperability rule for your money

This is the final weekend to back the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, The Lost Cause. These kickstarters are how I pay my bills, which lets me publish my free essays nearly every day. If you enjoy my work, please consider backing!

"If you don't like it, why don't you take your business elsewhere?" It's the motto of the corporate apologist, someone so Hayek-pilled that they see every purchase as a ballot cast in the only election that matters – the one where you vote with your wallet.

Voting with your wallet is a pretty undignified way to go through life. For one thing, the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes, and for another, no matter who you vote for in that election, the Monopoly Party always wins, because that's the part of the thick-wallet set.

Contrary to the just-so fantasies of Milton-Friedman-poisoned bootlickers, there are plenty of reasons that one might stick with a business that one dislikes – even one that actively harms you.

The biggest reason for staying with a bad company is if they've figured out a way to punish you for leaving. Businesses are keenly attuned to ways to impose switching costs on disloyal customers. "Switching costs" are all the things you have to give up when you take your business elsewhere.

Businesses love high switching costs – think of your gym forcing you to pay to cancel your subscription or Apple turning off your groupchat checkmark when you switch to Android. The more it costs you to move to a rival vendor, the worse your existing vendor can treat you without worrying about losing your business.

Capitalists genuinely hate capitalism. As the FBI informant Peter Thiel says, "competition is for losers." The ideal 21st century "market" is something like Amazon, a platform that gets 45-51 cents out of every dollar earned by its sellers. Sure, those sellers all compete with one another, but no matter who wins, Amazon gets a cut:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Think of how Facebook keeps users glued to its platform by making the price of leaving cutting of contact with your friends, family, communities and customers. Facebook tells its customers – advertisers – that people who hate the platform stick around because Facebook is so good at manipulating its users (this is a good sales pitch for a company that sells ads!). But there's a far simpler explanation for peoples' continued willingness to let Mark Zuckerberg spy on them: they hate Zuck, but they love their friends, so they stay:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

One of the most important ways that regulators can help the public is by reducing switching costs. The easier it is for you to leave a company, the more likely it is they'll treat you well, and if they don't, you can walk away from them. That's just what the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau wants to do with its new Personal Financial Data Rights rule:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-rule-to-jumpstart-competition-and-accelerate-shift-to-open-banking/

The new rule is aimed at banks, some of the rottenest businesses around. Remember when Wells Fargo ripped off millions of its customers by ordering its tellers to open fake accounts in their name, firing and blacklisting tellers who refused to break the law?

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/07/497084491/episode-728-the-wells-fargo-hustle

While there are alternatives to banks – local credit unions are great – a lot of us end up with a bank by default and then struggle to switch, even though the banks give us progressively worse service, collectively rip us off for billions in junk fees, and even defraud us. But because the banks keep our data locked up, it can be hard to shop for better alternatives. And if we do go elsewhere, we're stuck with hours of tedious clerical work to replicate all our account data, payees, digital wallets, etc.

That's where the new CFPB order comes in: the Bureau will force banks to "share data at the person’s direction with other companies offering better products." So if you tell your bank to give your data to a competitor – or a comparison shopping site – it will have to do so…or else.

Banks often claim that they block account migration and comparison shopping sites because they want to protect their customers from ripoff artists. There are certainly plenty of ripoff artists (notwithstanding that some of them run banks). But banks have an irreconcilable conflict of interest here: they might want to stop (other) con-artists from robbing you, but they also want to make leaving as painful as possible.

Instead of letting shareholder-accountable bank execs in back rooms decide what the people you share your financial data are allowed to do with it, the CFPB is shouldering that responsibility, shifting those deliberations to the public activities of a democratically accountable agency. Under the new rule, the businesses you connect to your account data will be "prohibited from misusing or wrongfully monetizing the sensitive personal financial data."

This is an approach that my EFF colleague Bennett Cyphers and I first laid our in our 2021 paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly," where we describe how and why we should shift determinations about who is and isn't allowed to get your data from giant, monopolistic tech companies to democratic institutions, based on privacy law, not corporate whim:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

The new CFPB rule is aimed squarely at reducing switching costs. As CFPB Director Rohit Chopra says, "Today, we are proposing a rule to give consumers the power to walk away from bad service and choose the financial institutions that offer the best products and prices."

The rule bans banks from charging their customers junk fees to access their data, and bans businesses you give that data to from "collecting, using, or retaining data to advance their own commercial interests through actions like targeted or behavioral advertising." It also guarantees you the unrestricted right to revoke access to your data.

The rule is intended to replace the current state-of-the-art for data sharing, which is giving your banking password to third parties who go and scrape that data on your behalf. This is a tactic that comparison sites and financial dashboards have used since 2006, when Mint pioneered it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/mint-late-stage-adversarial-interoperability-demonstrates-what-we-had-and-what-we

A lot's happened since 2006. It's past time for American bank customers to have the right to access and share their data, so they can leave rotten banks and go to better ones.

The new rule is made possible by Section 1033 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Chopra is one of the many Biden administrative appointees who have acquainted themselves with all the powers they already have, and then used those powers to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

It's pretty wild that the first digital interoperability mandate is going to come from the CFPB, but it's also really cool. As Tim Wu demonstrated in 2021 when he wrote Biden's Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, the administrative agencies have sweeping, grossly underutilized powers that can make a huge difference to everyday Americans' lives:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: Steve Morgan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._National_Bank_Building_-_Portland,_Oregon.jpg

Stefan Kühn (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abrissbirne.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 - 

Rhys A. (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhysasplundh/5201859761/in/photostream/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[longwindedbore]

‘“This lawsuit represents a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process,” Parker wrote. “This case was never about fraud – it was about undermining the People’s faith in our democracy and debasing the judicial process to do so,” she added.

‘Parker ordered the lawyers to pay legal fees to the city of Detroit and state of Michigan, and will require them to attend legal education classes on pleading standards and election law within six months.

‘She also referred the lawyers to the Michigan attorney grievance commission and other appropriate disciplinary authorities, where they could face further investigation and potential suspension or disbarment in the state.’

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Rudy Giuliani, who once served as Donald Trump’s attorney, has conceded he made defamatory statements about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss—two Black Georgia election workers—in an attempt to settle their lawsuit against him and to satisfy a judge who thought about sanctioning him.

In the Tuesday night filing, Giuliani stated he does not contest Moss and Freeman’s claims that he made slanderous statements about them following the 2020 election. The pair counted ballots in Fulton County, Ga. However, in the filing, he also stated that the false claims about vote-rigging in the 2020 presidential election were constitutionally protected speech and did not damage Freeman and Moss.

In a defamation lawsuit that was filed in 2021, the women said that they became targets of ridiculous conspiracy theories pushed by Giuliani and employees of the right-wing news network One America News. While Giuliani refuted the claims, One America News settled with Freeman and Moss for an undisclosed amount in 2022. The federal judge, Beryl A. Howell of the DC District Court, is still reviewing Tuesday’s filings from Giuliani.

On Wednesday, Howell recognized Giuliani’s concessions in the lawsuit and ordered him to pay more of Moss and Freeman’s legal fees, after he was already ordered Giuliani to pay the pair $90,000. It’s also unknown how criminal prosecutors from the Justice Department’s special counsel’s office, who have questioned Giuliani, will react to his revelations in the lawsuit.

Attorneys for Moss and Freeman will respond next week in court to several of Giuliani’s latest statements. The duo’s lead attorney Michael J. Gottlieb, a partner at Willkie, Farr & Gallagher, stated on Wednesday that Giuliani’s concessions were a “major milestone” in the case.

“Giuliani’s stipulation concedes what we have always known to be true—Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss honorably performed their civic duties in the 2020 presidential election in full compliance with the law; and the allegations of election fraud he and former-President Trump made against them have been false since day one,” he explained.

[transgenderer]

The 2014 Bundy standoff was an armed confrontation between supporters of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and law enforcement following a 21-year legal dispute in which the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) obtained court orders directing Bundy to pay over $1 million in withheld grazing fees for Bundy's use of federally owned land adjacent to Bundy's ranch in southeastern Nevada.

On March 27, 2014, 145,604 acres (589 km2) of federal land in Clark County were temporarily closed for the "capture, impound, and removal of trespass cattle." BLM officials and law enforcement rangers began a roundup of such livestock on April 5, and Cliven Bundy's son, Dave, was arrested.[2] On April 12, 2014, a group of protesters, some of them armed, approached the BLM "cattle gather." Sheriff Doug Gillespie negotiated with Bundy and newly confirmed BLM director, Neil Kornze, who elected to release the cattle and de-escalate the situation. As of the end of 2015, Cliven Bundy continued to graze his cattle on federal land and still had not paid the grazing fees.

as far as i can tell, bundy just like...continues to illegally graze his cattle? its weird. he got briefly arrested cuz he tried to go help out those people who seized that govt building. but he got out

[tomorrowusa]

EXCELLENT!

Congrats to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss on the settlement. ❤️ Make him pay every cent that he owes you.

A Washington DC jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148.1mtotwo Atlanta election workers after he spread lies about them, one of the most significant verdicts to date seeking accountability for those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election. The verdict follows a four-day trial in which Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, her daughter, gave haunting details about the harassment and threats they faced after Giuliani falsely accused them of trying to steal the election in Georgia. The women, who are Black, described how they fled, are afraid to give their names in public, and still suffer severe emotional distress today. Their lawyers asked the jury to award them each at least $24m in damages. Giuliani’s attorney said earlier this week that awarding the plaintiffs their sought damages would be a “death penalty” and would be "the end of Mr Giuliani”. The damages included nearly $16.2m and $17m in compensatory damages for Freeman and Moss respectively. It also included $20m to each woman for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The jury also awarded an additional $75m in punitive damages. Giuliani also owes approximately an additional $275,000 in legal fees.

If Giuliani owes $148.1 million because of lies he's spread about two election workers, can you imagine how much Trump would owe for his nonstop dishonesty? I was thinking: maybe in the range of the GDP of Thailand.

The case is the latest in a series of cases in which plaintiffs have used defamation law to push back on lies spread about them since the 2020 election. The voting equipment vendor Dominion settled with Fox for $787m earlier this year in a defamation case. Freeman and Moss also have a pending lawsuit against the Gateway Pundit, a far-right news outlet. Last year, they also settled with One America News, another far-right outlet. Civil rights groups are turning to defamation law as a new tool to ward off misinformation. The lies about both women were a cornerstone of efforts by Giuliani and Trump to try to overturn the election results in Georgia. On 3 December 2020, Giuliani tweeted a selectively edited video that he claimed showed Freeman and Moss wheeling suitcases full of ballots out from under a table after counting had concluded for the night. The accusation was quickly debunked by Georgia officials, but Giuliani continued to spread the lie.

Trumpsters live in an alternative universe where they imagine that whatever comes out of their mouths is instant reality. If anything, it's the direct opposite.

[luthienebonyx]

What a truly progressive government looks like

The man in this photo is Gough (pronounced Goff) Whitlam, the 21st prime minister of Australia. Fifty years ago, on 2 December 1972, Gough Whitlam’s Australian Labor Party won the federal election, and ushered in easily the most progressive government Australia has ever had. It was a government that truly changed Australia, and set it on the path towards being the country it is today.

Gough (he was one of those rare politicians who was widely known simply by his first name. There was truly only one Gough) was tall and imposing, with silver hair and dark eyebrows, and a booming voice that delivered his razor sharp wit. When he led the ALP to victory in 1972, the party had been out of government for 23 long years, and were determined to make a difference when at last they were back in power. As you’ve probably worked out from the glorious 1970s t-shirts in the picture, the election campaign slogan was It’s Time. It featured in a famous election ad jingle, performed by Alison McCallum and accompanied by many famous faces of the time.

After winning the 1972 election, Gough wasted no time in implementing his election promises. Not willing to wait until the final results of the election were confirmed and the full ministry could be appointed, he and his deputy, Lance Barnard, were sworn in as prime minister and deputy prime minister on 5 December. Between the two of them, they held all 27 government portfolios for two weeks until the rest of the ministry was sworn in. The duumvirate, as it was known:

ordered negotiations to establish full relations with China

ended conscription in the Vietnam War

freed the conscientious objectors who had been jailed for refusing conscription

ordered home all remaining Australian troops in Vietnam

re-opened the equal pay case (for women, who were at that time by law paid less than men for doing the same job) and appointed a woman, Elizabeth Evatt, to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, the body that made the decision

abolished sales tax on the contraceptive pill

announced major grants for the arts

appointed an interim schools commission

barred racially discriminatory sport teams from Australia, and instructed the Australian delegation at the United Nations to vote in favour of sanctions on apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia

And that was just the first two weeks.

In the three years that followed, the Whitlam government:

introduced a national universal health scheme

abolished university fees

abolished the death penalty for federal crimes

established Legal Aid

replaced God Save the Queen with Advance Australia Fair as the national anthem

replaced the British honours system with the Order of Australia

created the family court and introduced no fault divorce, the first country in the world to do so

ended the White Australia policy

introduced the racial discrimination act

advocated for Indigenous rights, including creating the Aboriginal Land Fund and the Aboriginal Loans Commission, and returned some of their traditional lands to the Gurunji people in the Northern Territory. This was the first time that any Australian government had returned land to its original custodians. Here’s a famous photograph by Mervyn Bishop of Gough pouring a handful of red earth into the hands of Gurunji leader Vincent Lingiari, ‘as a sign that this land will be in the possession of you and your children forever‘:

I’m sure there are more achievements of the Whitlam government that I’m forgetting. There were a lot.

Of course, the Whitlam government will always be seen through the lens of the way it ended, but I’m not going to talk about the constitutional crisis of 1975 - plenty of books have been written about that, including one by Gough himself - or about the various dysfunctions of the Whitlam government, particularly once the international oil crisis hit in 1973.

I just really want to point out that truly progressive governments can change their countries profoundly, and for the lasting betterment of their people. Not everything that the Whitlam government achieved withstood the assaults of the conservative government that followed it, but some did and are still with us, half a century later, while other aspects, like universal healthcare, were resurrected by the Hawke Labor government a decade later, and endure to this day.

Gough died in 2014 at the age of 98, not quite making his personal century. Tonight I’m raising a glass to his memory. Thanks, Gough, for all the things you did to make this country a better, fairer, more inclusive place.

[frothlad]

Before I dive into a closer look at two thematically linked cases, I want to make something clear: If Chief Justice John Roberts were standing on front of me, on fire, begging me to piss on him to put it out, I would say, no, that's the Court's prerogative, I can't intrude on that.

The two cases are Loper Bright v. Raimondo, and Corner Post v. Federal Reserve, and together they establish the principle that the courts are in charge of federal regulations, not the executive branch and the agencies charged by law with making those regulations, and these regulations may be challenged at any time by anyone, no matter how long those regulations have been in place.

When coupled with the potent and perfected weapon of judge shopping that the right-wing uses with such enthusiasm, the power of democratic Presidents past and present has been crippled. For instance, under Corner Post, there's nothing to stop Judge Kacsmaryk from re-opening the challenge to the mifepristone approval of 2000; after all, the plaintiff organization was not "injured" until the organization came into existence.

Since there is no corresponding lawlessness on the democratic side -- no massive legal movement, no indoctrinated judges, no pattern of behavior, no supermajority on the Supreme Court -- there is no corresponding loss of power to Republican presidents in the future.

Before I go any further, and before we give into despair: What can we do? Unlike the presidential immunity case, this can be resolved with statutory changes. This means that we must make Congress functional again. And that means electing Democratic members of Congress in the House, where a simple majority is sufficient, and electing young Democratic senators who are willing to overturn the filibuster, and then riding them as constituents with the demand that they modify the Administrative Procedures Act and related laws to make clear that technocratic agencies are responsible for technocratic regulations, not judges, and that final rules become genuinely final with the passage of time.

So, onto the cases. It is instructive to note that for all the talk about the grand principles that these cases turn into anarchy, these cases are penny-ante bullshit. That's what the Federalist Society and its associated projects do: They find -- or make up, as in the Colorado gay wedding website case -- some half-ass case and proceed to contort it into a case that attacks a grand principle.

Loper Bright is about federal observers on fishing boats. Under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the National Marine Fisheries Service administers the fisheries in US marine waters in order to ensure that we don't vacuum up every fish and turn the ocean into desert. It's been sort of successful. E.g. the flounder fishery in Alaskan waters is very healthy, but the Grand Banks are sitting at less than 10% of historic catches, IIRC.

Anyway, under the Act, the NMFS has set regulations that (some) fishing boats must carry federal observers, and sets fees to pay for the observers. Loper Bright Enterprises and others don't want to pay the fees, because they have listened to evil advisors. Or, I dunno. Now, granted -- life on a fishing vessel is hard, and the market does not permit fishers to receive fair value for their labor, which is an issue throughout our economy. But we know as clearly as we know anything that without those observers, fishers will vacuum the oceans empty.

But again, who pays?

The Act does not lay any of this out; it delegates authority to the NMFS, which has made regulations to implement the Act's goals of not running out of fish. When Loper Bright et al challenged the fees, they lost in the lower courts, under the doctrine of "Chevron deference". Now, Chevron deference dates from a Reagan-era case, and it says, essentially, that as long as an agency justifies its regulations in a reasonable fashion that's compatible with the law behind the regulation, the courts should defer to the agency, which presumably has experts who have made their careers working in the industry being regulated and therefore know what's possible and what's reasonable. Since judges aren't any of that, it's not a good idea to second-guess those who are.

The decision here says that's bullshit; judges are the only people who can have final say over what a law means and whether a regulation is a reasonable way to achieve it.

It is breathtaking in its arrogance, and in its arrogating of power away from the executive to the judicial.

Fun fact: Justice Roberts speaks of Chevron being decided "by a bare quorum of six Justices". Guess what the margin in this decision is.

Also fun fact: Chevron was decided by a right-wing Court in 1984 when Republicans controlled the executive, and overturned by a right-wing Court in 2024 when Republicans controlled the courts. Yes, this is deeply, fundamentally, partisan. It is impossible to consider this case without considering the politics.

Roberts' opinion anchors its lawlessness in the Administrative Procedures Act, which says that courts will decide questions of law -- which is fair enough, but this case makes it clear that the Court thinks that everything is a question of law. This is why Congress could fix this; all it has to do is put Chevron deference into the APA.

Since as soon as Clinton was elected, the right-wing Court started chipping away at Chevron, Roberts concludes that there has been no "reliance" on Chevron, so there is no reason not to explicitly overrule it. Which is brilliant: All you have to do is hate on something long enough, and the fact that you hate it becomes justification to overturn it. But the fact is that agencies and Congress have been operating under Chevron for 40 years, so this is not a little change, this is a huge change. And, as we'll see, it opens a hunting season on every regulation that will overwhelm the lower courts, or empower courts like the Fifth Circuit to enact the 2025 Project knowing that the Court will not have the ability to respond to every case.

Roberts for six, Kagan for three. Thomas solo concurrence to rant about separation of powers; Gorsuch solo concurrence to attack stare decisis as a principle. There's a reason why Gorsuch -- for all that he is sometimes principled -- is a key member of the anarchist wing of the Court. He would blow up any inconvenient precedent, and do so while proclaiming how principled it is to do so. You know how some left-wing activists fail to achieve anything because nothing is sufficiently principled to satisfy them. That's Gorsuch's relationship to precedent: No precedent is pure enough to survive.

Kagan is, of course, completely persuasive: Courts are not political and do not answer to voters, and Congress does not and cannot give power to the judiciary branch to execute its laws, and agencies have expertise that court do not have. Etc., etc. Any practitioner could write this opinion, as futile as it is.

The separation of powers that the majority invokes here is contrary to our understood theory of government: Instead of Congress binding agencies to law and granting them power to executive, and agency overreach checked by the courts, with the courts prudentially checking themselves and Congress having the power to check and rebalance by rewriting the law, in this case, the Court takes advantage of Congress's inability to act to declare the entire judicial branch unchecked by any prudence.

So every federal regulation is now subject to the whim of any district judge in Texas or Louisiana.

It gets worse.

The statute of limitations for challenging a regulation that has reached the Final Rule stage is six years.

Corner Post throws that out.

Corner Post is about credit card fees. Corner Post is a truck stop in North Dakota, opened in 2018. Credit card companies charge "interchange fees" for moving money from banks to merchants. Those fees were standardized under Dodd-Frank in 2010, which gave the Federal Reserve the authority to cap the fees, which became a final rule in 2011. You already know the critical point: This is an agency action. Under the APA, from the time the rule became final, there was a six-year statute of limitations to challenge it, which expired before Corner Post opened. (Industry groups challenged the regulation at the time, and lost.)

Now, if you're me, you say "Corner Post had fair notice of the business environment it was to operate in, and is presumed to have known that it would be subject to the interchange fees under the final rule". That's how law works. If Corner Post is so successful that it "has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in interchange fees" in the six years since its opening, the interchange fee rule is not really impeding their business. If it didn't want to pay interchange fees, it didn't have to open. If it didn't like interchange fees, it could lobby Congress or the Federal Reserve to change the rule.

But I am not a Federalist Society judge, and I am not part of a sexumvirate dedicated to granting itself power.

Corner Post joined an industry group that was continuing to challenge the regulation, and claimed that the six-year limit didn't apply to it, because its claim didn't accrue until it paid the first interchange fee.

The Court holds that Corner Post was injured by the rule, and because its injuries were within the six year limit, it has standing to challenge the rule. Barrett for six.

This is a technical decision about when a claim accrues; it is very inside-law. That technical aspect is probably why Barrett wanted to write the opinion, or why Roberts assigned it to her; it would have appealed to her professorial nature.

Kavanaugh has a long solo concurrence reiterating that Corner Post was injured (it's not subject to the rule, the bank and credit card companies are, but it must pay the fees), and a long discourse on the remedy available, arguing that vacatur of the regulation is appropriate. He's writing presumably because some of his colleagues like Gorsuch have been inveighing against nationwide injunctions and overbroad vacaturs.

Jackson has the dissent.

So, Greg, why is this a deal? It's a technical decision about when claims accrue. That's something only lawyers could love, surely? I think you can probably work it out.

If a claim accrues for purposes of challenging a regulation when a newly-created entity is subject to the regulation, then you can challenge any regulation, no matter how old or entrenched in the industry, simply by creating a new entity.

That is, in part, what happened in the mifepristone case: A new "physicians' group" was formed in Amarillo, solely that it could raise a new claim against the FDA's actions (and sue specifically in Amarillo). You could do the same thing with any claim against any regulation. If the petrochemical industry wanted to put lead back in gasoline, it just runs up a new refinery subsidiary that wants to market "no-knock gasoline"; now that subsidiary has been injured by the regulation against lead, so it can sue.

In combination with Loper Bright, that courts need not pay attention to agencies' choices in response to gaps and ambiguities in empowering laws, you now have courts with final authority over anything the federal government has ever done, regardless of the passage of time.

The Court is not empowering Trump's coup; it is empowering its own.

[arpov-blog-blog]

..."President Biden will announce the formation of a “strike force” Tuesday to hold companies accountable for price-gouging practices.

The announcement comes days before the State of the Union address, when Biden is expected to make his economic pitch to Congress and voters ahead of the 2024 election.

The strike force, which will be co-chaired by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), aims to coordinate the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in anti-competitive and unfair practices and lower prices in key sectors including food, prescription drugs and transportation.

“Even as prices have come down on important items like a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, some corporations aren’t passing those savings on to consumers,” National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard told reporters. “Instead, some corporations are tacking on extra fees, hiding costs and sometimes even breaking the law.”

Republicans have pushed back on the narrative that corporate profiteering is driving inflation — which topped 9 percent in summer 2022 and has steadily fallen to around 3 percent in recent months — contending government spending is actually the culprit. The U.S. is one of many countries to suffer from high inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brainard called on congressional Republicans to “join this effort instead of standing in the way.”

The strike force builds on the work of Biden’s Competition Council, which he established through an executive order in July 2021 to promote economic competition and crack down on “junk fees.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 19, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 20, 2024

In Florida, Kansas, Ohio, Illinois, and Arizona, Republican voters chose their presidential candidate today. The results highlight the weaknesses former president Trump is bringing to the 2024 presidential contest.

Trump, who is the only person still in the Republican race, won all five of today’s Republican races. But the results showed that his support is soft. Results are still coming in, but as I write this, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who has suspended her campaign, received between 13% and 20% of the vote, Florida governor Ron DeSantis—who has also suspended his campaign—picked up votes, and “none of the names shown” got more than 5% in Kansas. 

Even in Ohio, where Trump’s preferred Senate candidate won, Trump received less than 80% of the Republican vote. After NBC News conducted an exit poll in Ohio, MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin reported that of Ohio Republican primary voters—who are typically the most committed party members—11% said they would vote for Biden in November and another 8% said they wouldn’t vote for either Trump or Biden.

Trump has money problems, too. This morning, Brian Schwartz of CNBC reported that while Trump has pushed Haley voters away, Biden’s team has courted both voters and Haley donors to help Biden defeat Trump. Schwartz said that at least a half dozen former Haley fundraisers have decided to help Biden. 

Aside from the Haley supporters who are moving to Biden, Trump’s campaign faces a money crunch. As Schwartz reported yesterday, small donors have slowed down their financial support for Trump considerably, possibly because of fatigue after 9 years of Trump’s supercharged fundraising pitches. Big donors have also been holding back funds out of concern that they will not go toward electing Republicans, but rather will be used to pay Trump’s legal fees.

On March 14, Trump’s people organized a new joint fundraising committee, called the Trump 47 Committee. It is designed to split the money it gets between state Republican parties, the Republican National Committee, and Trump’s Save America Political Action Committee (PAC). As Schwartz notes, Save America spent $24 million on Trump’s legal bills in the last six months of 2023.

While running for president is pricey, so is breaking the law. The former president continues to rail against the law that he must deposit either money or a bond to cover the court-ordered $454 million he owes in penalties, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, and interest, after he and the Trump Organization were found liable for fraud. “I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone. Does that make sense? WITCH HUNT. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” Trump posted on his social media channel. 

Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, and Jill Colvin of the Associated Press wrote today that Trump is putting the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol at the heart of his presidential campaign, rewriting the five deaths and the destruction to claim that the rioters were “unbelievable patriots” whom he will pardon as soon as he takes office again. His new hires at the Republican National Committee to replace staff he fired are strengthening the idea that Biden stole the 2020 election. 

He’s being helped by loyalists in Congress who are trying to rewrite the history of that day to claim that Trump and the rioters have been persecuted by the Department of Justice. They are attacking the testimony of witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, about what she saw that day, although she testified under oath and they are not similarly bound to tell the truth. Trump has said former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, a Republican who served as vice chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” 

But while Trump’s supporters are willing to sing along to a recording of incarcerated participants in the riots singing their version of the national anthem—the song lyrics are credited to “Donald J. Trump and J6 Prison Choir”—the fact that more than 1,200 people have been charged for their actions that day and many of them have been sentenced to prison seems likely to dampen enthusiasm for trying something like that again. 

Today, former Trump advisor Peter Navarro also had to report to prison, in his case a federal prison in Miami, for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the January 6th committee for documents and testimony. Last September, a jury found Navarro guilty of contempt of Congress, rejecting his insistence that he didn’t have to answer to Congress because Trump had invoked executive privilege over their conversations about overturning the 2020 presidential election. 

Navarro vowed to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, but a federal appeals court agreed with the verdict, and yesterday, for the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts rejected Navarro’s plea to stay his sentence. “I am pissed—that’s what I am feeling right now,” Navarro told reporters just before he reported to prison for his four-month sentence. 

Trump is also facing renewed scrutiny on his past behavior. With the election interference case in Manhattan heating up, Trump sought to block his former fixer Michael Cohen, adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and former model Karen McDougal from testifying. All of them say Trump paid to keep voters from hearing negative stories about him before the 2016 election. Judge Juan Merchan denied those motions.

And there was a surprise announcement today. Tomorrow, the House Oversight Committee will hold another hearing in the Republicans’ ongoing attempt to impeach President Joe Biden. Today the Democrats on the committee announced they have invited Lev Parnas as their witness. The Ukrainian-born Parnas was an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and was deeply involved in the effort to create dirt to smear Biden before the 2020 election. 

In 2022, Parnas was convicted of wire fraud, false statements, and breaking campaign finance laws by funneling money illegally to Trump and other Republican lawmakers. Since he broke with Giuliani, he has been eager to explain what happened and how. He will likely bring up stories that Trump would prefer that voters forget.

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, told reporters: “Lev Parnas can debunk the bogus claims at the heart of the impeachment probe and, in the process, explain how the GOP ended up in this degraded and embarrassing place.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[reddancer1]

Heather Cox Richardson

March 22, 2023 (Wednesday)This week, news has been focused on the former president’s possible indictment for paying $130,000 in hush money to adult film performer Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about their 2006 affair before the 2016 election. The information currently being thrown about has been shaped by Trump himself and is obviously suspect (among other things, he has apparently raised $1.5 million since he claimed he would be arrested on Tuesday).

NOTE:  his supporters are such MORONS!  The grift goes on..........

Although Republican lawmakers have no more idea than any of the rest of us do what the Manhattan grand jury might have seen, or what charges might be brought against Trump, they have tried to gloss over the scandal by claiming it is about a non-disclosure agreement or that it happened seven years ago or that its investigation is “a political witch hunt perpetrated by one of the far left radical socialist district attorneys,” as Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said. But as journalist Aaron Rupar and Noah Berlatsky explained today in Public Notice, the payment was a big deal in the larger scheme of American democracy.

Trump bought Daniels’s silence because he was willing to break laws in order to get elected. Then–Trump fixer Michael Cohen paid Daniels for her story in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. Cohen testified that he paid her through a shell company to keep Trump’s connection to the payment hidden. Then Trump reimbursed Cohen for “legal fees.” 

That’s a problem with regard to business filings and tax fraud. It is also a problem for the campaign finance laws intended to protect clean elections. Cohen’s payment was a contribution to the Trump campaign because it was made “in order to influence the 2016 presidential election.” The payment was intended to make sure voters didn’t hear another sex scandal in October 2016, just after the Access Hollywood tape came out in which Trump talked vulgarly about sexually assaulting women, when it might have hurt his chances at election. The $130,000 contribution was far above the individual limit of $2,700, and the Trump campaign did not disclose it. 

This is not small potatoes. When the issue came to light, Cohen pleaded guilty for his role in the payments, and he was sentenced to three years in prison. Cohen testified that he made the payments at Trump’s direction. 

This is also not an isolated incident. Trump has proved himself more than willing to cheat to win elections. In the 2020 presidential election season, before he tried to overthrow the election altogether, he tried to strong-arm Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into the son of the Democratic candidate about whom he was most worried: Joe Biden. Trump knew that the media would run with an announcement of an investigation, wounding Biden’s candidacy by keeping the story in the news even without any real investigation behind it.

The Trump campaign had done much the same thing in 2016. According to the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, which investigated the ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, Trump’s people were willing at the very least to work alongside Russian operatives to weaken Trump’s Democratic opponent, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Trump campaign also boosted Trump’s standing in the 2016 election season with the recurring refrain of the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails, convincing voters—falsely—that she had committed crimes. 

The pending issue of the hush-money payment is not just about 2016, and it is not just about Trump. That today’s Republican leaders have not condemned any of his attempts to cheat speaks volumes about the party. As Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) pointed out today, when “Cohen was arrested, indicted, convicted, and went to prison for participating in an illegal hush money payment scheme to Stormy Daniels, not a single Republican leader complaining now said a thing about what happened to Michael Cohen.” So why the rush to defend Trump in the same case?

It appears Republicans have gotten to the point that they don’t believe they can win a free and fair election, and in their conviction that Democrats will destroy the country, they believe cheating to win is justified. They cannot condemn Trump because he delivered what they wanted: a victory. 

In a democracy, the way parties are supposed to win elections is by making a better case for being in power than their opponents do. Losing elections is supposed to make leaders think deeply about how better to appeal to voters. That system keeps all parties constantly honing their policies, thinking through problems, benefiting their constituents. 

Our election laws are designed to try to hold the playing field level, and a party should want to keep the system fair in order to keep itself healthy. But if a party is willing to cheat to win, it no longer has to work on policies that appeal to voters; it can simply game the system to dismantle the competition on which democracy depends and instead create a one-party state.

There are many legal problems in Trump’s front yard these days. Some, like his theft of documents with markings bearing the highest level of classification and his attempt to overturn the Georgia results for the 2020 presidential election, are heating up fast, and their significance is clear. 

But for all that the case we are currently hearing so much about seems less serious on its face than the other things charged to Trump's account, a hush-money payment to silence someone whose story might have affected the 2016 election is no laughing matter.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

If you could make a poll, what would you ask?

Let's see.

1. "Would you like to be a wizard?"

2. "If you got a chance to be born as a wizard, would you take it?"

3. "You have just been brought to the attention of the Wizengamot, the Wizarding governing body. Do you understand the nature of wizarding elections and want to run, or are you afraid of what it would mean for wizarding democracy?"

4. "You can cast a spell that you can see in your mind and it will be so realistic you are sure to be mistaken for an ordinary human, but the spell only works if you're completely and utterly sure that you're not faking it."

5. "The Wizengamot, or council, has declared you a Wizard Royalty. Would you accept your title?"

6. "It has come to the attention of your mother that you are planning to get a pet snake, and she has no idea what it is you think you're planning. Would you please be so good as to tell her what you are doing? You won't have to be responsible for the snake, only her reaction to it."

7. "The Wizengamot, or council, has declared you a Wizard Royalty. Would you accept your title?"

8. "The Wizengamot, or council, has declared you a Witch Royalty. Would you accept your title? If not, what is your objection to your title? If so, do you have any idea how you can resolve the conflict?"

9. "You can cast a spell which will make all wizards who call you by any name sound exactly as much alike as is humanly possible, but it takes place in two hours and you will not be able to predict which wizards will appear to you in which form in that time."

10. "The Wizengamot, or council, has declared you a Wizard Royalty. A single vote can be cast which will change your name to a unique name in your own language, not in one of the languages of the Wizengamot or council, and not in a language not in their languages. Would you like to have a vote taken to do this?"

11. "The Wizengamot has granted you a lifetime membership for free. They have also announced a new rule that there will be no age limit on Wizard Membership, and they have no idea whether you will go on to become a member of the Wizengamot. Would you like to become a member and enjoy your membership for the rest of your life for free?"

12. "The Wizengamot, or council, has declared you an Auror. It has been revealed that you will be given your membership, life membership, and post-retirement benefits for free. Do you wish to become an Auror?"

13. "The Wizengamot has declared you an Auror. Would you like to return to school to become an Auror? If not, do you have any idea what other form of employment or non-employment would be best for you?"

14. "Wizards of the Wizengamot, or Wizengamot, and witches of the Wizengamot have been discussing the issue of whether or not the Council is going to grant you your membership benefits for free. Wizards are saying it is impossible to find another full-time wizarding employment for someone who does not belong to the Wizengamot, and witches are saying that their careers, while mostly magical, can take place outside the realm of wizardry. Are you sure you want to go forward with this plan to become an Auror, as your application is going to be extremely complicated and may involve working for the Wizengamot?"

15. "The Wizengamot and council have announced that you can have all your spells, but that they will be held in your memory for your convenience. You will have to take a test on them in order to qualify, and in order to pass the test you will have to recite your spells, not a single one of which you have ever committed to memory."

16. "The Wizengamot has announced that they will pay you a monthly retainer fee, on which they have no other obligation. The contract states that they will pay your expenses for travel to, from, or within the realm of the Wizengamot, and you are sure that this will cover your costs. However, since this is a new law, there is no way of proving that they will actually pay your expenses. If you have any suggestions as to how to test this, do feel free to contact your representative(s) for Wizengamot."

17. "The Wizengamot, or council, has told you that you will be granted membership for life if you can defeat the great final boss of wizardry, the great final witch of witchcraft, the great final wizard of wizards, and the great final wizard of witches by giving them your strongest wizard and witch form, all in a single combat. Your wizard and witch forms are not necessarily your strongest forms, although if you can defeat them in a single combat then the council would grant you membership for life. However, you have not been told how many forms there are of the great final boss. You are not sure if you are strong enough to defeat them all without their help or if you have to defeat them with their help. Would you like to have the fight with them or not?"

18. "The Wizengamot, or council, will grant you membership in life unless you do your own wizardly or witchy research and find that a lesser level of wizard or witch could accomplish your goals."

19. "The Wizengamot has granted you your membership for life. They have also given you an offer which you think is generous, but to accept it will require you to break your oath as an Auror. Would you be able to accept their offer?"

20. "The Wizengamot has granted you your membership for life with full post-retirement benefits, except that it takes place over a period of several years. Would you like to take the offer of lifetime membership with full post-retirement benefits? If so, the post-retirement terms for the position of Auror and the life membership have not been decided yet."

[bopinion]

2023 / 07

Aperçu of the Week:

"Success has two letters: Do!"

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Bad News of the Week:

The only serious competition to Silicon Valley is neither in Europe nor in the Far East, but between the Dead, the Red and the Mediterranean Sea: Israel. Unfortunately. Because it's rather frightening innovations that come out of the more than 300 development and research centers around Tel Aviv. And I don't mean the energy that the state puts into cutting-edge technology for the military, surveillance and espionage. But rather the focus that private-sector companies in the region have also chosen.

Three examples: Cellebrite openly advertises that it can crack iDevices. Much to the delight of the FBI, for example, because Apple had refused to crack iPhones for U.S. authorities or to build a backdoor into their encryption. The questionable services are open to any organization, even criminal ones, for a fee, as if it were a normal IT service.

NSO became a global player in commercial spyware. A market that has grown into an industry estimated to be worth twelve billion dollars, estimates The New Yorker. Their tool named Pegasus was found on the phones of politicians, activists, and dissidents under repressive regimes. The suppression of the Catalan independence movement and the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi with the help of this spyware are documented.

And just last week, investigative media revealed Team Jorge's business model: professional spreading of fake news to influence elections. They were hired for 32 campaigns, 27 of which were verifiably successful, they say. Yes, political success can be bought - at the expense of the opposition.

What these three examples have in common is a perfidious "not giving a fuck" attitude, which goals are pursued and also achieved with their help. For these are clearly directed against such trivialities as free democracy, independent media, functional rule of law or transparent power apparatuses. The main thing is that the money is right. The framework conditions for this seem to be optimal in Israel, of all places. And when I look at the position of Benjamin Netanyahu's newly enthroned right-wing government against an independent judiciary or free media, this will not change.

Good News of the Week:

In mid-February, Munich always hosts the "Munich Security Conference" (MSC), the world's most important meeting of top politicians on international security. While last year appeals to Russia not to attack Ukraine dominated - we all know what happened a few days later - this time it is about the concrete handling of the war that initiated the much-cited "turning point in time":

The unexpectedly dysfunctional NATO is strengthening internally (higher defense budgets) and externally (Sweden and Finland want to join the alliance), new bloc formations are emerging, the arms industry can no longer keep up with demand, Europe is groaning under a wave of refugees, economic sanctions by the West are turning out to be far less effective than expected, Putin is not wavering. War has become the order of the day.

Major strategic news is not to be expected. All countries have already clearly positioned themselves. From clear, even military support for Ukraine (e.g. all NATO members) to an effort of neutrality based on energy policy (e.g. India or Latin America) to support for the Putin course (e.g. Belarus, Syria or Myanmar). All countries have already taken a clear position? No - the elephant in the room is China.

The youngest major security power calls for peace, but does not name Russia as the aggressor. And just yesterday launched "Operation Mosi II," a joint large-scale naval maneuver with Russia and South Africa off the latter's Indian Ocean coast. So there was little hope that the Middle Kingdom - seen by almost all observers as the only power with de facto influence over the Kremlin - would actively do anything to defuse the conflict.

But then Wang Yi, longtime foreign minister of the People's Republic of China, entered the Munich stage - and stunned. By announcing a peace initiative to end Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, he said, "We will put something forward. And that is the Chinese position on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis," the Politburo member said Saturday, according to an official translation. "We will stand steadfastly on the side of peace and dialogue." For a safer world, he said, "the principles of the UN Charter are something we must uphold." Good. Very good. Now words just need to be followed by action.

Personal happy moment of the week:

In our countryside, there are plenty of typical Bavarian inns. And, as everywhere, countless Italians and Asians. Rarer are nice cafés where you can have a good breakfast. One we have - thanks to a voucher that I already got last year for my birthday - tried today. Very good coffee, a manageable but balanced menu. With regional products and in a former monastery building. It was worth it. It's always nice to start the Sunday with a delicious breakfast.

I couldn't care less...

...that Ukraine has requested cluster bombs and chemical weapons on the MSC. These are internationally outlawed because they cause massive collateral damage in violation of international law - including to the civilian population. That Russia is not caring about this may be, is even probable. Nevertheless, this quid pro quo logic is too weak for me. If they go low, you (still should) go high.

As I write this...

...I am mourning a little Lothar Wieler quitting his job. As head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) he was the Anthony Fauci of Germany. And yet more than just the side kick of the respective health minister. As a politically independent person, he moderated the pandemic in a serious but calm manner. He analyzed, commented, admonished and annoyed. Far away from the day-to-day political business. Against his will, he became a media star, even though he much preferred to sit in the lab and work on his figures. He did what he thought he had to do. Tormented by the thought that "even one more child must die". Big shoes to fill.

Post Scriptum

To be climate neutral, each person should only emit less than one ton of CO2 or similar greenhouse gases per year - currently the average is 11.6 tons. Far ahead of the consumption of beef or air travel to the South, individual transport is the main polluter: the Germans' favorite child, the car. But the will in this country to rely on electromobility seems to be driven more by financial interests than by actual conviction. When gasoline was expensive and electric cars were tax-subsidized in 2022, there was a boom. That plummeted dramatically over the turn of the year, with 83 percent fewer fully electric cars and 87 percent fewer plug-in hybrids registered in January 2023 compared to the previous month. Sigh...

[mariacallous]

In 2018, Rebecca Varney could have used Josh Hawley’s help.

Hawley, currently a U.S. senator, was Missouri’s attorney general at the time. Among the key responsibilities of that office is to enforce the state’s Sunshine Law, which governs public access to records and meetings.

Varney, who lives in Edgar Springs, was being harassed by city officials in that south-central Missouri town as she sought to use the Sunshine Law to figure out what was going on in City Hall. Things got so bad that city attorney Brandi Baird banned Varney from the public building, even when there were public meetings going on there.

Around the same time, Hawley, a Republican, had his own Sunshine Law problems. Despite being elected in large part because of the “Lock Her Up” crowd — Republicans who were angry over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server — Hawley had been engaged in similar activity. In 2017, Hawley’s campaign consultants, using private email to communicate with public employees, set up a raid on a massage parlor to portray Hawley as tough on human trafficking.

By 2019, both Varney and Hawley were wrapped up in lawsuits. Varney, since she didn’t get any help from the state, hired attorney David Roland of the Freedom Center of Missouri to make sure she had access to City Hall. Hawley was sued by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for hiding records the committee had sought in a Sunshine Law request.

Last week, both of the lawsuits came to their inevitable conclusions. Hawley’s got the most attention, of course. He’s a sitting U.S. senator and the person who defended him in the lawsuit, current Attorney General Eric Schmitt, was just elected as Missouri’s second U.S. senator.

The two senators lost the lawsuit badly. Cole County Circuit Court Judge Jon Beetem, a fellow Republican, chided Hawley, and by inference Schmitt, for the “insincerity” of the arguments in the lawsuit. Beetem found that Hawley “deliberately withheld these documents without any plausible, lawful rationale for doing so.” He fined the attorney general’s office $12,000, the maximum possible, and ordered that it pay attorneys fees, which will be significantly higher than the fine.

It’s a stunning decision that exposes the worst kind of abuse of the public trust by a politician — hiding public records that might have had an impact on his election. “It’s cheating,” says attorney Mark Pedroli, who won the lawsuit along with the Elias Law Group.

But it’s more than that. It’s an indictment of how broken the Sunshine Law is in Missouri, primarily because the attorney general’s office has been using its power to evade the law rather than enforce it.

You can’t truly appreciate the impact of Hawley’s abuse of the law without understanding its effect on people like Varney. In Varney’s case, Phelps County Circuit Court Judge John Beger fined the city of Edgar Springs $600 and secured Varney’s access to City Hall to see and inspect public records.

“Public access to public records is not a new or novel policy for this state,” Beger wrote.

But it is often treated that way by state and county officials, as well as cities. Too many public officials believe they can get away with violating the Sunshine Law because there has not been a Missouri attorney general who would take the law seriously and bring lawsuits against government bodies on behalf of citizens. Instead, the work has been left to private attorneys.

Those attorneys include Pedroli and Roland. Also, Elad Gross, Jean Maneke, Bernie Rhodes and Joe Martineau (who represents the Post-Dispatch). These attorneys have won Sunshine Law actions in the past few years that reinforce Beger’s obvious statement. Each of those lawsuits could have been brought by the attorney general or avoided altogether if the office worked harder to enforce the law.

In that vacuum, cities and counties regularly violate the Sunshine Law with impunity.

That means citizens are often left on their own. They know nothing about the Sunshine Law until the bulldozers are in the backyard. That’s what happened to Jason Maki, who took on the city of Parkville because he couldn’t get help from Schmitt’s office after filing Sunshine Law requests that were ignored. Maki was seeking information about a proposed development near his house.

Last year, he won a $195,000 settlement from the small city northwest of Kansas City.

“It became obvious that I had to take things in my own hands,” Maki told me last year.

It is telling that Hawley, the former attorney general, was found to have deliberately withheld public records the same week Varney won her battle for records with Edgar Springs.

Such is the state of play for public accountability in Missouri. The office that is supposed to enforce the Sunshine Law is leaving citizens to go to court themselves when they get locked out of City Hall.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Local, state and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump is indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations.

Law enforcement agencies are conducting preliminary security assessments, the officials said, and are discussing potential security plans in and around the Manhattan Criminal Court, at 100 Centre Street, in case Trump is charged in connection with an alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels and travels to New York to face any charges.

The officials stress that the interagency conversations and planning are precautionary in nature because no charges have been filed.

The agencies involved include the NYPD, New York State Court Officers, the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the officials said.

NBC News has reached out to all of those agencies for comment, and all have declined to comment.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to a federal charge relating to a $130,000 payment to Daniels, an adult film star, in the closing days of the 2016 campaign. Daniels has said the money was to keep her quiet about her claim that she’d slept with the married Trump in 2006, an allegation Trump denies.

Cohen has said that Trump ordered him to pay the hush money and that it was for the “principal purpose of influencing” the 2016 presidential election.

Cohen was later repaid the money he’d shelled out to Daniels through payments that were listed by Trump’s company as “legal fees.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is investigating Trump for felony falsification of business records. Cohen testified before the grand jury hearing evidence in the case for a second time Wednesday.

[beardedmrbean]

Fair Fight Action and other plaintiffs must repay the state over $231,000 after the organization lost its lawsuit that alleged Georgia laws violated voting rights, according to a court order Tuesday.

The costs include nearly $193,000 for trial and deposition transcripts and over $38,000 for copies of thousands of exhibits the state used in the four-year case that started after Democrat Stacey Abrams’ loss to Republican Brian Kemp in the 2018 race for governor.

“This is a win for taxpayers and voters who knew all along that Stacey Abrams’ voter suppression claims were false. It has never been easier to vote and harder to cheat in the state of Georgia,” Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. “This is a start, but I think Stacey Abrams should pay back the millions of taxpayer dollars the state was forced to spend to disprove her false claims.”

Overall, the cost to taxpayers in defending the lawsuit in federal court was nearly $6 million, according to the attorney general’s office.

But only $231,000 of that amount was recovered from the plaintiffs through the court’s order. Attorney fees to defend state’s laws won’t be repaid.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled against Fair Fight Action on all counts in September, dismissing allegations that the state’s voting laws were illegal or discriminatory.

The plaintiffs had challenged Georgia’s “exact match” voter registration policy, absentee ballot cancellation practices and registration inaccuracies that arose from voters who alleged problems in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

Jones found that while Georgia’s election system was imperfect, it didn’t violate the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in elections.