A Florida woman was charged with falsifying 10 voter registration forms, at least six of which enrolled Democrats and independent voters as Republicans, ay after officials said she filled out 10 voter registration forms with false information, at least six of which enrolled Democratic and independent voters in the Republican Party without their consent.
The woman, Cheryl A. Hall, 63, of Clermont, Fla., worked for Florida First, a voter registration group heavily funded by America First Policies, which supports President Trump, the New York Times reported (3/9).
America First Policies announced plans last year to spend more than $20 million on voter registration efforts in at least four battleground states: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Alan Hays, the supervisor of elections in Lake County, Fla., near Orlando, said that although Hall was charged with submitting 10 false voter registration forms, he believes she might have submitted another 109 forms with false information.
The Times reported in January 2018 that America First Action has steered money to the president’s businesses and his most ardent surrogates. One of the groups — a “super PAC” called America First Action — spent nearly $33,000 at the Trump International Hotel, primarily on events for donors, and paid tens of thousands of dollars each to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; Brad Parscale, a digital strategist for Trump’s campaign; and Katrina Pierson, a campaign spokeswoman. Those figures were revealed in a report filed on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, which shows that the group raised $4 million in 2017, Charles Pierce noted at Esquire.com (3/9).
Back in Florida, the Times reported, “Some forms submitted by Florida First contained faulty information in handwriting that did not match Ms. Hall’s, Mr Hays said, leading him to believe that others at the organization might have also falsified voter information. Mr. Hays said he could not speculate on Ms. Hall’s motive, and he was continuing to investigate to ensure the integrity of the county’s voter registration system. Florida holds its presidential primary on March 17, and Lake County began early voting on March 5. ‘It has absolutely nothing to do with party politics,’ said Hays, a Republican. ‘If you’re misbehaving, I’m going to call you on it.’”
Pierce noted, “Not all Republicans are Mr. Hays, especially at the local level. And even Mr. Hays is wrong here. This has everything to do with party politics.
“It’s just really bizarre,” Mr. Hays said. “I don’t know what part of her imagination was convinced she could get away with this.” Ms. Hall was charged with 10 counts of submitting false voter registration information [a third-degree felony, punishable by a $5,000 fine or up to five years in prison] and released on $20,000 bond on Thursday, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. At least six of the forms were of Democrats or independents who had their party affiliation changed to Republican, Mr. Hays said. The others had their signatures or other details falsified, he said. “We don’t know what she was hoping to accomplish,” said Lt. John Herrell of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, adding that it “certainly does not appear” that Florida First did anything wrong. Ms. Hall, he said, may have simply gone “off the rails.”
KOS: SANDERS LOST SUPER TUESDAY BECAUSE HE DIDN’T EXPAND HIS BASE. Markos “Kos” Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of DailyKos (3/8), thinks Bernie Sanders’ campaign was bound to lose when they decided they could win in a fragmented field and contest a brokered convention with just 30% of the vote.
After Super Tuesday, Sanders had received 4 million votes, 29% of the total in the 17 states that had cast ballots up to then. Biden’s Super Tuesday blowout (3/3) put his total popular vote with 4.9 million, 35.5% of the total that far, followed by Sanders, Elizabeth Warren’s 1.8 million (12.99%) and Michael Bloomberg’s 1.72 million (12.4%).
Warren and Bloomberg both quit the race after Super Tuesday. Bloomberg endorsed Biden while Warren was staying mum as of press time. Eli Yokley of Morning Consult pollsters noted (3/5) that 43% of Warren’s supporters backed Sanders as their second-choice candidate versus 36% who named Biden. If those supporters switch to their second choices, it would likely amount to 5- and 4-point increases in support for Sanders and Biden, respectively, Yokley noted. However, a Warren endorsement for either candidate could significantly alter the picture.
“I’d bet it’s even worse for Sanders” Kos wrote. “While half of Warren supporters might prefer Sanders in the idealistic terms, this hasn’t been a campaign driven by idealism. Asked if they could wave a ‘magic wand,’ respondents in this poll chose Warren over the rest of the field. But for whatever reasons—fear of electability, sexism, whatever—a large number of those people actually voted for someone else.
“I’m willing to bet that, in the coming contests, Sanders will struggle to break 30% in most of them, even if he has larger support among that electorate. In other words, people will be voting to end this thing now, rather than let it fester deep into the calendar year like in 2016.
“You can sense it online and off—relief that this long, hard-fought and oftentimes contentious primary is all but over. Even Sanders supporters seem to be in those last moments of grief, just like supporters of other candidates underwent, as realization dawns that things just aren’t meant to be. Like John Kerry coming back from the dead in 2004, Joe Biden benefitted from a frantic consolidation as voters became eager to train guns on the real enemy. Then, it was George W. Bush. Today, it’s Donald Trump.
“Things might be different if Sanders had shown the desire and ability to expand his base of support, but as I’ve previously written, that was never in the cards. Perhaps he might have had a chance if he and his supporters hadn’t alienated the Warren camp—from Sanders calling her a liar on national TV in front of millions, to his toxic supporters online. Actions have consequences, and Sanders’ campaign—happy with their core 30%—comported itself accordingly. He didn’t expand his message. He refused to meet with key black leaders like Jim Clyburn because if they weren’t endorsing him, he saw no value in them. (The black community reacted accordingly.) He refused to reign in his toxic, bridge-burning surrogates and supporters. It was okay to “other” and treat other liberals as the enemy, because his campaign also didn’t see value in them.”
REPUBLICANS RESUME SMEARING HUNTER BIDEN. Now that Joe Biden appears headed toward the Democratic nomination for president, Republicans are reviving their efforts to smear him via his son, Hunter, and Hunter’s service on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, Kos noted at DailyKos (3/7). “Nothing untoward has ever been proved against Hunter, not even alleged (beyond generic) ‘corruption,’ and the search for something untoward is all an effort to create this cycle’s version of ‘but her emails’,” Kos wrote.
Key to the Republican argument is the notion that the younger Biden had no qualifications for the job. “When speaking with ABC News about his qualifications to be on Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden didn’t point to any of the usual qualifications of a board member,” Donald Trump lawyer Pam Bondi said at Trump’s impeachment trial. “Hunter Biden had no experience in natural gas, no experience in the energy sector, no experience with Ukrainian regulatory affairs. As far as we know, he doesn’t speak Ukrainian.”
Trump has whittled all that down to the claim that Hunter Biden was appointed to the board because he “didn’t have a job.”
In fact, Kos noted, Hunter Biden is a graduate of Yale Law School, and at the time he was appointed to the board of Burisma in 2014, he was a lawyer at the firm Boies Schiller Flexner; an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s foreign service program; chairman of the board of World Food Program USA; and chief executive officer and chairman of Rosemont Seneca Advisors, an investment advisory firm. He also served on other boards.”
Boies Schiller Flexner was founded by David Boies, the same Boies who defeated Microsoft in an antitrust case, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election recount, and who successfully challenged California’s ban on gay marriage, Kos noted.
Rosemont Seneca was co-founded by Christopher Heinz, son of Teresa Heinz (of ketchup fame) and stepson of John Kerry, Kos noted. “There’s little information about the firm online, but it looks like a garden-variety hedge fund. No one has alleged anything shady about it yet. But what it does show is that Biden had connections to the world of high finance that would be of interest to any conglomerate looking to raise capital and expand into new markets.”
And by all indications, Hunter was an active member of the board of Rosemont Seneca, investigating possible expansion opportunities and connecting the company to legal and financial resources in the US.
“Was he on the board, likely, because of his last name? Probably. Was it a stupid idea to join such a board while his father was vice president? Of course. But no less stupid than pretty much everything the Trump children have done since their father entered the White House. Still, ugh. It sure would’ve been nice to head into the general election with a candidate unencumbered by such baggage.
“We now get to spend the rest of the year playing the ‘both sides are corrupt’ game, muddying the waters on an issue (corruption) we should own easily. But pretending that Hunter had zero qualifications for the job, or worse, had no job? It’s utter [nonsense], and we should be very clear to call it out as such.”
Dispatches adds that if Hunter is called to testify before a Senate committee on his business activities, Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump should be subpoenaed to testify to the appropriate House committee to explain their business activities since their dad became president, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to the Great Misleader, should be called in to explain how his family real estate company got a Canadian asset management company whose major investor is the Qatar Investment Authority to bail out the Kushners’ disastrous investment at 666 Fifth Avenue in August 2018, just months before a $1.4 billion mortgage payment was due.
‘SANCTITY OF LIFE’ MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN ALABAMA, APPARENTLY. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, another unconstitutional anti-choice law that even Ivey admits, in the statement accompanying her signing the law, is “unenforceable,” Charles Pierce noted at Esquire.com (3/6) But it is going to be right there on the statute books waiting to be activated when the Supreme Court finally gets around to “letting the states handle it.”
What made this interesting was that, the night before signing the Human Life Protection Act, Ivey allowed Alabama to execute someone who very likely had not committed the crime for which Alabama killed him. From Newsweek:
Prosecutors said Woods had “conspired” with Kerry Spencer to kill police officers Carlos Owen, Harley Chisholm III, and Charles Bennett when they arrived at a drug house in June 2004. But Spencer, who is on death row, said he shot the officers in self-defense after one officer pointed a gun at him and insisted that Woods had nothing to do with it. Under Alabama law, Woods was deemed an accomplice and convicted. Kimberly Chisholm Simmons, sister of Harley Chisholm, had pleaded with the Alabama governor to intervene and to allow more time for the courts to investigate evidence. She said in a statement, “I do not think that Nathaniel is guilty of murder. ...
”My conscience will not let me live with this if he dies. I beg you to have mercy on him,” criminal justice website The Appeal reported. Just before the execution, she told local investigative journalist Beth Shelburne in a phone conversation, “He did not kill my brother. This is so unjust. I don’t understand.”
“Nobody does. Not really,” Pierce noted.
PENTAGON VACANCIES IN HIGH-LEVEL POSITIONS HIT RECORD HIGH AS TRUMP TRIES TO TAKE TOTAL CONTROL. Remember how impeached Donald Trump went on a rampage of firing national security people a few weeks ago? It’s not just those high-level firings lawmakers are worried about. It’s also the gutting of civilian positions at the Pentagon, which is putting our already shaky national security under an unstable would-be autocrat in even more jeopardy, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (3/6).
The number of high-level vacancies at the Pentagon has reached a record, with fully one-third of all the civilian positions that are subject to Senate approval either vacant or filled by a temporary, acting official. “Out of 60 senior positions, 21 lack permanent appointees,” Politico reports. “Thirteen of those positions have no nominee identified, including the slots for comptroller, space policy chief, and the head of international security affairs.” Which is great. It’s not like we’re dealing with a potential global pandemic to destabilize international security, or a presidential election in the US that Russia is interfering with, or anything.
“These vacancies continue to challenge the department’s ability to effectively respond to national security challenges and undermine civilian input into the decision-making process with political appointees largely absent,” Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing (3/4). Trump is trying to wrest control over the nominating process from the Pentagon, which has more influence than most departments in installing officials. Trump is, of course, trying to get his loyalists installed. One source with knowledge of the Pentagon told Politico that the White House office “has taken total control over staffing at DoD and anything that they perceive as disloyalty is a disqualification.”
“They want to make sure that there’s no hint or indication of conflicting loyalties,” the source said. “It’s complete and total control. … You have to be a 110% Trump supporter and they want nobody else. … The problem is they’re not going to identify, nominate and confirm enough people before November.” The upshot: a 35% vacancy rate for high-level Pentagon positions.
TRUMP STILL SUCKING UP TAXPAYER DOLLARS FROM SECRET SERVICE. New documents show that the Secret Service paid Donald Trump’s properties $157,000 more in taxpayer dollars than had previously been disclosed. That brings Trump’s total revenues from Secret Service stays at his properties to more than $628,000 in total since the beginning of 2017, according to the Washington Post.
The watchdog group Public Citizen obtained the documentation through a public records request it made three years ago. The Post notes that the big picture is still unclear when it comes to exactly how many taxpayer dollars Trump properties have received, since most of the data comes from 2017 and 2018.
In an interview last year, Eric Trump downplayed how much the Trump properties were charging the Secret Service. “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,” he said, “We charge them, like, 50 bucks.”
Not exactly, Kerry Eleveld noted at DailyKos (3/6). The new documents show that Mar-a-Lago charged the agency $396.15 per room for room rentals in 2017-2019. The receipts also show that Trump’s club charged the agency $17,000 per month to rent a cottage in Bedminster, N.J., in the summers of 2017, 2018, and part of 2019. “That rate is unusually high for homes in the area, according to local rental listings,” the Post noted (3/5).
Most recent presidents and vice presidents have allowed the Secret Service to use space on their properties free, according to their spokesmen or presidential library staff. Before Trump, the one recent exception had been then-Vice President Joe Biden, who charged the Secret Service $2,200 a month to rent a cottage at his home in Delaware. A Biden spokesman said that was a fair market rate. Biden’s payments were formalized in a federal contract and listed in public databases of federal spending, the Post reported.
ANTI-CHOICE REPUBLICAN REALITY TV STAR LEVERAGES TRUMP PARDON IN ATTEMPT TO UNSEAT JOHN LEWIS. An anti-choicer and vanity press publisher has entered the political fray just weeks after being pardoned by Donald Trump for her role in a car theft ring. In a move that’s certain to get her disinvited to every cookout ever, Angela Stanton-King qualified as the Republican challenger to the inimitable Rep. John Lewis in Georgia’s 5th District, which encompasses most of Atlanta, and is 60% African American, Jessica Sutherland noted at DailyKos (3/7). (Lewis also has a challenger from the far left.) Ten Republicans have tried and failed to end the civil rights icon’s 33 years of service in the US House, but Stanton-King, a BET reality show cast member who first made headlines after self-publishing not one, but two books that bashed another reality star, seems convinced that she’s the one who will succeed.
In an interview with Atlanta’s 11Alive, Stanton-King didn’t hesitate to dismiss the lifelong fight of Lewis, a bonafide national treasure. “With all respect to Congressman Lewis, when I think about him, I always have that image in my mind when he was on the Selma Bridge,” Trump’s newest black friend said, seemingly unaware that Lewis had commemorated the 55th anniversary of the historic “Bloody Sunday” bridge crossing—which left him with a cracked skull—in Alabama just five days earlier, and that the actual anniversary was hours away.
“The truth of the matter is,” she rambled on, purporting to speak for all black people with her attempt to force the vocal Trump opponent into retirement, “with all that he has given towards the fight for civil rights—which we greatly appreciate—these are no longer the days of marching over the Selma Bridge.”
So who is this woman? Stanton-King served six months of home confinement in 2007 for her role in a stolen-vehicle ring. Her book “Life of a Real Housewife” explores her difficult upbringing and her encounters with reality TV stars; she was pardoned by Trump (2/18) in the same batch of pardons that “cleared” corrupt former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. With a whoosh of the Sharpie fumes that accompany Trump’s signature, the author says, she became eligible to run for federal office, which she claims is a lifelong dream. (She was always eligible.)
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2020
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