Bess Levin at Vanity Fair writes—Everyone Connected to Trump Is a Crook:
According to federal prosecutors, [Duncan] Hunter and his wife, Margaret, engaged in wire fraud, falsifying records, campaign-finance violations, and conspiracy, while “convert[ing] campaign funds to personal use.” That personal use allegedly entailed, among other things:
-
A 2015 family vacation to Italy at a cost of more than $14,000;
-
A spring-break trip to Hawaii for $6,500;
-
A $3,700 jaunt to Las Vegas and Boise [...]
-
Clothes for the couple, which prosecutors say the Hunters misrepresented by, in one instance, buying items at a golf course so they could tell the campaign treasurer the money was spent on “balls for the wounded warriors” [...]
-
A $2,000 birthday gift for a family member to attend a Pittsburgh Steelers game [...]
The congressman is also accused of demanding that his wife be made a paid campaign manager, allegedly telling his treasurer the family “needed the extra money that would come from her salary.” (According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego, the couple overdrew from their personal bank accounts more than 1,100 times in seven years, leading to $37,761 in “overdraft” and “insufficient funds” bank fees.)
1,100 overdrafts. Yikes and a half.
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media's costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become "routine" news sources have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sourceManufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers. It should also be noted that in the case of the largesse of the Pentagon and the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, the subsidy is at the taxpayers' expense, so that, in effect, the citizenry pays to be propagandized in the interest of powerful groups such as military contractors and other sponsors of state terrorism.”
~~Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988 & 2002)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—Michelle Rhee still refuses to answer questions about cheating scandal:
"Why won't Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today," the New York Times asks.
USA Today, of course, broke the story of suspicious erasure patterns on standardized tests taken by Washington, D.C. students during Rhee's tenure as the city's schools chancellor. The story was the product of serious investigative journalism by reporters Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, who marshaled significant amounts of data as well as talking to parents, academics, DC schools administrators and the consultant hired to do a cursory investigation of the possibility of cheating. But Rhee would not talk to them.
Now, the Times is telling the story of Rhee's refusal. Michael Winerip contrasts her typical eagerness to talk to the press—"It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. [...] Always, she preens for the cameras"—with her determined evasion of the USA Today reporters
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Hey, what do you think we should talk about today? The Paul Manafort conviction? The Michael Cohen allocution? The Duncan Hunter indictment? The Vern Buchanan allegations? Greg Dworkin and Armando help make sure we hit it all.
RadioPublic|LibSyn|YouTube|Patreon|Square Cash (Share code: Send $5, get $5!)