Good Day, Good Newsies! Surprise! I am sitting in for Karij today!
How about that TRMS interview with Michael Cohen last night, huh? I guess I’ll go on record here and say I just don’t know about Michael. Seems like the old “Mr. Trump” fascination is still flickering inside of him. That interview left me wondering — and not just about the awkward (and unconvincing) cleanup of the Falwell business. I guess time will tell, but I’m not going to count on any help from Michael Cohen.
Luckily, we don’t need help from criminals to get rid of the criminal squatting in the White House. We are going to oust this illegitimate “president” ourselves. With the help of thousands of patriots working on investigations and putting together cases, we may even eventually prosecute the rest of his “associates” who committed crimes.
Even though all the talk yesterday was about one Michael, I’m going to open this GNR with music from another Michael — Michael Bublé — who is celebrating a birthday today! Although he is best known for singing covers of beautiful standards, here is a song Michael wrote himself with a sentiment I expect we will all be feeling on November 4th!
🎶 Opening Music 🎶
📫 Postal Service 📫
Hooray for Gov. Bullock!
DeJoy is in trouble. This is of course a felony:
Louis DeJoy’s rise as GOP fundraiser was powered by contributions from company workers who were later reimbursed, former employees say, Aaron C Davis, et al, Washington Post, September 6, 2020.
Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece.
Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful.
“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations — and that covered the tax and everything else.”
And it looks like debus may be about to back up over DeJoy:
Everything is interconnected
Why veterans want money for the Postal Service, Eleanor Mueller, Politico, September 8, 2020.
The shrinking U.S. Postal Service payroll is imperiling a go-to career for military veterans, who have long relied on the agency for well-paid and secure jobs in public service.
Driven by years of financial strain and accelerated by operational changes imposed by newly installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the agency has steadily reduced pay, intensified workloads and shifted toward temporary workers, resulting in a higher turnover and a steadily declining workforce at one of the nation’s largest employers of vets. ✄
“We’re promoting these jobs for veterans as these stable, good jobs to make sure our disabled veterans have gainful employment because they served their country, and now we’re trying to underfund it, cut the programs, cut the way hiring processes are,” said Will Attig, executive director of AFL-CIO’s United Veterans Council. “Now, when a veteran comes home, they get hired as a temporary worker.”
“That’s kind of, in my opinion, pretty disrespectful.”
We’ve got good, smart people in our corner
Smart lawyers
And Defiance Like This Is Significant
Another Facebook worker quits in disgust, saying the company ‘is on the wrong side of history’, Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin
Facebook software engineer Ashok Chandwaney has watched with growing unease as the platform has become a haven for hate. On Tuesday morning, it came time to take a stand.
“I’m quitting because I can no longer stomach contributing to an organization that is profiting off hate in the US and globally,” Chandwaney wrote in a letter posted on Facebook’s internal employee network shortly after 8 a.m. Pacific time. The nearly 1,300-word document was detailed, bristling with links to bolster its claims and scathing in its conclusions. ✄
Tuesday’s resignation made Chandwaney the latest Facebook employee to quit amid rising discontent within a company that, just a few years ago, was considered an ideal employer — exciting, deep-pocketed and, as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg frequently said, animated by the seemingly benevolent mission of connecting the world together. Worker frustration with Facebook’s policies on hate and racist speech has risen as protests against racial injustice have swept the country, with thousands of employees demanding that Zuckerberg, who controls a majority of Facebook’s voting shares, change his stances.
Defiance like this, more please
even More Defiant, Brave, Fierce People
It makes me angry that people have been denied the comfort of stress-free voting by mail, but I am humbled by the bravery and determination of the people in this article:
Some older Americans committed to voting in person despite COVID, Karma Allen, ABC News, September 8, 2020.
Many states have broadened absentee voting rules to make the service available to all voters, representing a first for any presidential election in states like Michigan, experts said. That is in addition to the states already offering no-excuse absentee voting and the handful that have fully mail-in systems.
But while the share of Americans casting votes by mail has risen in recent presidential election cycles, it remains relatively low overall, and there’s wide variation across the country when it comes to the percentage of voters who have used this method, according to Pew. ✄
"Senior citizens are known to vote and they are dependable voters. Our immediate ancestors died so that we could vote," she said. "They were lynched and attacked by dogs, so there are many people who have said they're planning to vote in person because they don't know what to expect from this president, who is doing things that are unprecedented."
🎶 Music for Good, Smart People 🎶
✔️ Election ✔️
Last week, Old Navy made news because of their announcement that they will pay the day’s wages to any employees who want to work on the November 3 election. Now here is more to the story of companies encouraging civic engagement and voter turnout:
Here’s Why Major Companies Are Paying Employees To Skip Work On Election Day, Chris Iovenko, HuffPost, September 8, 2020.
The U.S. is one of the few democracies in the world where Election Day is not on a weekend or recognized as a federal holiday. Instead, Americans are required to vote on a Tuesday in November, which forces many to choose between exercising their right to vote or earning a day’s pay. The fact that Election Day occurs during a workday disenfranchises many low-wage workers, working parents and others who might not be able to leave work, miss out on paid hours, or find child care in order to cast their ballots.
Add coronavirus into the equation and 2020 is likely to be one of the most daunting elections in history to effectively participate in.
To clear the path to the polls this November — and to bump the country’s abysmal voter turnout rates — hundreds of companies including Coca-Cola, Nike, PayPal and Uber are offering employees a paid day off (or other benefits) to encourage voting. ✄
Along with executives at Patagonia and Levi Strauss & Co., PayPal’s Paasche was one of the organizers of a corporate campaign called Time to Vote, launched ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. Now with over 700 member companies — all offering some form of encouragement for their more than 6 million employees to participate in the upcoming election — the non-partisan effort is raising awareness around the importance of elections and citizen participation.
North Carolina Court Wipes Out Voting Restrictions Designed to “Secure White Supremacy”, Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, September 8, 2020.
On Friday, a North Carolina court dramatically expanded the number of voters eligible to participate in the 2020 election. The state may not disenfranchise citizens who owe fines, fees, and other debts from a felony conviction, the Wake County Superior Court ruled on Friday. And while the court limited its order to those affected by wealth-based voter suppression, its reasoning portends a broader ruling in the near future that could restore voting rights to 70,000 more North Carolinians on probation or parole.
Many felon disenfranchisement rules, including North Carolina’s, are rooted in overt white supremacy. After Reconstruction, racist Democrats in the state sought to revoke Black citizens’ suffrage. They accomplished this task, in part, through vague criminal laws that stripped convicted felons of their civil rights—then enforced these laws disproportionately against Black people. North Carolina’s current statute is rooted in an 1877 law spearheaded by a representative who later presided over the lynching of three Black men. At the time, Democrats argued that felon disenfranchisement was necessary to stop “the honest vote of a white man” from being “off-set by the vote of some negro.” Its purpose, alongside other Jim Crow measures like the literacy test, was to “secure white supremacy.”
💰 Republican Corruption 💰
How Jerry Falwell Jr. mixed his personal finances with his university's, Aram Roston, Joshua Schneyer, Reuters, September 5, 2020.
In 2001, property records show, Falwell set up a private company while he was a lawyer for Liberty, used it to buy an undeveloped tract of land from the school, and then developed a strip mall on the plot. The company sold the property five years later at a significant premium.
In 2005, property records show, Falwell again acted as a private businessman when a university nonprofit affiliate and a company he operated joined together to sell land to a third company - controlled by Falwell’s real estate partner.
And in 2012, in a project Falwell launched as Liberty’s president, the university spent more than $2 million to build a tunnel that links the campus to another shopping plaza near campus. Falwell is a part owner of that shopping plaza. ✄
The tax-exempt Liberty relies on hundreds of millions of dollars in Pell grants and government-backed student loans. Liberty students received $618 million in federal taxpayer loans and aid in a single year, according to a 2018 audit report.
Anthony Scaramucci demands to know what happened to $200 million the Republican Party funneled to Trump, Sarah K Burris, Raw Story, September 8, 2020.
“I think the real question, though, is, what happened to the $200 million-plus that went into the LLC?” he asked. “I’m asking Ronna Romney McDaniel where is the money? It’s sort of a joke at this point. We know they’re grifting off the campaign. The president will never write a personal check into that campaign, and we know that they spend gajillions of dollars in his hotels to fortify him. It’s a sickening thing, Chuck. I don’t like it at all. I haven’t written a lot of checks since 2016 as a result of this. They have really exposed the dark side of this sort of fundraising.”
Scaramucci seems to be referencing the buckets of money that the Republican Party has given to Trump’s properties over the past four years. It adds to questions about international leaders, corporations and other influencers giving money to Trump’s properties to garner favor with the U.S. president.
Trump has spent $60 million on legal defense and $11 million for a Superbowl ad earlier in the year. Trump has blamed the coronavirus, saying that he has had to buy more ads to fight “fake news” about the virus, which is false as evidenced by the fact that none of Trump’s commercials are have addressed the virus.
Sheldon Adelson is Buying the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in Israel, Martin Longman, Washington Monthly, September 8, 2020.
The linkage of official acts and political fundraising is called bribery, and the August 8 phone call between Trump and Adelson has been referred to the FBI by Democrats:
Adelson’s support for Trump in 2016 was at least partially the result of his promise to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and to end the Iran nuclear deal.
Adelson is one of the richest people in the United States and is also the owner of the pro-Netanyahu “Israel Hayom” newspaper in Israel.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Democratic lawmakers Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice asked to investigate the phone call, suggesting that it could have been a criminal act.
The representatives sent a letter to the intelligence agency on Monday alleging that “a crime may have occurred” during the conversation, because linking of legislative action to donor funds would be illegal.
It will be difficult to prove an illegal quid pro quo, but it’s highly unusual to see a private citizen so enmeshed in a major foreign policy change. Adelson just made the most expensive real estate purchase in Israeli history just so our ambassador can keep his kids in their preferred high school and underscore the Trump commitment to keeping the American embassy in Jerusalem. It may not be illegal, but it’s certainly not normal.
💉 Pandemic 💉
Scientists are beginning to get their arms around Covid-19 treatment, and that is very good news!
The State of the Fight Against COVID-19, Dhruv Khullar, the New Yorker, September 8, 2020.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control sent a letter to state governments telling them to prepare for the possible distribution of a coronavirus vaccine this fall; it described the progress of “Vaccine A” and “Vaccine B”—almost certainly the vaccines being developed by Pfizer and Moderna, respectively. Though these vaccines are promising, there is no guarantee that they will be cure-alls. “Unless you have a perfect vaccine, which very few are, you’ll always have people who end up getting sick,” Fauci said. “With or without a vaccine, we’re going to need other treatments.”
We could get lucky. But we need to be prepared for the possibility that, in the absence of a single-shot cure, it will be the tuberculosis model—incremental, simultaneous progress on multiple fronts—that gets us through the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a good thing, then, that vaccine research programs aren’t the only ones progressing at unprecedented speed. Three kinds of therapies currently in development—antiviral drugs, antibodies, and immunomodulators—may be ready soon. Alone or in combination with a vaccine, they could help us turn the tide.
There are lots of ways to fight back against sars-CoV-2 and covid-19, the disease it causes. We can limit the virus’s spread in the population at large; we can also build barriers against infection for at-risk people, such as caregivers or essential workers, in particular. We can devise therapies that prevent the newly infected from getting worse, and we can create interventions that target the sickest and give them a fighting chance. By surrounding the virus in this way, we can make it less contagious and lethal, changing the character of the pandemic.
Thank goodness For smart policy by Navajo leaders:
For What it’s worth
9 Drugmakers Sign Safety Pledge In Rush To Develop Coronavirus Vaccine, Bill Chappell, NPR News, September 8, 2020.
Nine drug companies pledged Tuesday that they will not submit vaccine candidates for FDA review until their safety and efficacy is shown in large clinical trials. The move is intended to bolster public confidence amid the rush to make a COVID-19 vaccine widely available, and counter fears of political pressure to have a vaccine before the November presidential election.
The CEOs of AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer are among those who signed the pledge to follow "high ethical standards and sound scientific principles." All three companies are conducting large studies of potential vaccines for the disease that has killed nearly 200,000 people in the U.S. and nearly 900,000 worldwide. The other biopharmaceutical companies are Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novavax, BioNTech and Sanofi. ✄
Many top U.S. health officials, including infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, have repeatedly said they hope that a coronavirus vaccine could be ready for distribution by early next year.
Bottom line:
⚖ Justice ⚖
Judge orders Trump administration to stop 'winding down' 2020 Census field work, Gregory Wallace, CNN, September 6, 2020.
A federal judge on Saturday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily stop "winding down or altering any Census field operations." The order applies nationwide.✄
Judge Lucy Koh, who sits in California, noted in the temporary restraining order the concern from the groups suing the government "that each day that the Census does not conduct its field operations to reach and count hard to reach populations increases the inaccuracy of the Census count and thus increases their irreparable harm."
The Census Bureau sent a message to its field operations leadership late Saturday informing them of the order from the federal judge to continue Census field work.
"The Census Bureau and the Commerce Department are obligated to comply with the Court's Order and are taking immediate steps to do so," the message sent to the field leadership staff read. "Enumeration will continue."
👀 Trump Judge Kills DeVos Plan to Funnel Covid Relief to Private Schools, Megan Mineiro, COurthouse News, September 8, 2020.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich was not the first to block private schools from accessing the $13 billion earmarked for K-12 education in the CARES Act. Going further than the judges who temporarily blocked the policy, however, Friedrich ruled against Education Secretary Betsey DeVos at summary judgment late Friday, saying her rule was void because it violated the unambiguous mandate of the CARES Act to disburse the money with a focus on low-income students. ✄
Reaching a similar conclusion last month in Michigan, U.S. District Judge James Donato railed against what he called “‘interpretive jiggery-pokery’ in the extreme.”
Friedrich meanwhile said Congress could have adopted the equal-funding formula developed by DeVos if it wanted, but instead opted to hand out the relief according to the formula found in Title I.
“In enacting the education funding provisions of the CARES Act, Congress spoke with a clear voice,” Friedrich wrote.
Remember Epstein?
Records of billionaire hedge fund manager, wife subpoenaed in ongoing Jeffrey Epstein probe, Kevin G Hall, Miami Herald, September 8, 2020.
The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands has issued subpoenas for testimony from several former financial and business associates of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, court documents made public Tuesday show. ✄
The subpoena for Dubin asked for all documents and recordings of his communications with Epstein, Epstein entities and Epstein’s alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell.
Subpoenas were issued to banks and to Broadview Networks, a telephone and internet services company that helped wire Epstein property in the Virgin Islands. Atelier 4, a logistics company in Long Island that specializes in the transport of valuable art for museums and galleries, was also subpoenaed.
More here: Virgin Islands Intends to Subpoena Dubin in Epstein Lawsuit, Jim Wyss and Katherine Burton, Bloomberg News, September 8, 2020.
And remember Assange?
💕 Happy Gorilla News! 💕
Tiny critically endangered gorilla baby born in New Orleans, Janet McConnaughey, AP News, September 8, 2020.
13 Year-old western lowland gorilla, Tumani and her newborn baby.
Keepers don’t yet know the sex of the critically endangered western lowland gorilla born Friday to 13-year-old Tumani and father Okpara, Audubon Zoo spokeswoman Katie Smith said in an email.
“Tumani is demonstrating excellent mothering behaviors and the entire troop is doing exceptionally well,” Smith said. She said keepers first saw the baby during their morning check Friday. ✄
Native to central Africa, western lowland gorillas were declared critically endangered in 2007 because of habitat loss as well as deaths caused by the Ebola virus and hunters who killed them illegally for their meat.
🎶 Happy Birthday, Baby Gorilla! 🎶
⚡️ Lightning Roundup ⚡️
⚡️ Yer Wonkette: HOT NEW PETER STRZOK TEXT Says Trump Totally F-ing Compromised By Russia, Evan Hurst, Wonkette, September 8, 2020.
⚡️ Wonderful, hopeful essay: For the First Time, America May Have an Anti-Racist Majority, Adam Serwer, the Atlantic, October 2020.
⚡️ Indeed: Everyone Knows It’s True, David Frum. the Atlantic, September 7, 2020.
⚡️ This guy pulls no punches: Trump may reach a new milestone by Election Day, Michael D’Antonio, CNN, September 9, 2020.
⚡️ Just desserts: How Maine Turned on Susan Collins, Christina Cauterucci, Slate, September 8, 2020.
⚡️ Good. Plain talk: Newsom: 'No patience for climate change deniers' amid historic wildfires, Colby Bermel, Politico, September 8, 2020.
⚡️ That Barrstard: Mary Trump among those demanding Congress impeach Attorney General Bill Barr, Bob Brigham, Raw Story, September 8, 2020.
⚡️ It’s awful, but not new: Our Long, Forgotten History of Election-Related Violence, Jelani Cobb, the NewYorker, September 6, 2020.
⚡️ Decent article on how the people will stop fascism: Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État? Sasha Abramsky, the Nation, September 7, 2020.
⚡️ 👀: REPORT: THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN IS SPENDING MONEY LIKE A GUY WHO BANKRUPTED A CASINO (AND FIVE OTHER BUSINESSES), Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, September 8, 2020.
⚡️ Well, duh: Why No One Should Ever Trust Trump With Their Money, Nancy LeTourneau, Washington Monthly, September 8, 2020.
⚡️ Double duh: Veterans Advocate Says Trump Has 'No Integrity' and 'No Honor', Jason Lemon, Newsweek, September 8, 2020.
⚡️ To tide you over until NNNE’s book report: Michael Cohen’s Book: Hannity, Ailes, and Pecker All Groveled for Trump’s Love, Lloyd Grove, Maxwell Tani, Daily Beast, September 8, 2020.
🔗 Helpful Links 🔗
Here’s a bunch of links to help you stay involved from home:
Joe Biden’s Action Website
Act Blue — fundraising for Democratic candidates in one easy site.
Write on!
Postcards to Voters — Our own gnusie, Progressive Muse posts most days with information about PtV and updates on current campaigns and progress. This is the ideal “do it at home” contribution especially suited to those who enjoy getting a little creative and connecting with fellow voters around the country.
Vote Forward — whether organizing an effort to encourage voter registration, including providing addressees with voter registration forms — or working toward the BIG SEND (millions of letters to voters arriving in mailboxes in late October), this is one of several “do it at home” projects through which many of us can really make a difference. Voter to voter initiatives have a track record of increasing voter turnout. The Vote Forward letter system is ideal for those who want to contribute but can’t write too much. The letter templates are provided and all you do is put in a line or two of your own and make sure the letters get to the voters on your list!
Powered By People — Beto O’Rourke’s virtual phone bank center for flipping Texas BLUE! (h/t to Slideman)
Fair Fight — Stacey Abrams’ initiative which has already made a difference in several elections! Find out how you can help out at this link.
Spread the Vote — wonderful organization which works hard to help eligible voters obtain valid ID so they can register and vote.
⭐️ And finally, for one-stop all-purpose voter information (check your registration!):
Everything you need to know to vote — Vote.org — This site covers everything any eligible voter needs to know, from how to register, how to check that you are still registered, how to obtain an absentee ballot and what to do if your right to vote is challenged or you are stopped from voting.
The Best Way to Vote in Every State
Yosef 52 writes diaries packed with information to help GOTV. List of Yosef 52’s diaries here.
💙 RoundUp WindDown 💙
Time for me to wind down this roundup and get some shut-eye. Curlygirl has already gone to bed!
Happy Birthday to my puffin-loving friend!
We are nearing the end of this long nightmare, Gnusies, and it’s vital that we stay strong, stay focused and keep working hard to GOTV.
And to stay strong and focused, be sure to look after yourself and those you love. Get enough rest, eat nutritious food and try to get outdoors every day. Keeping to a routine of self-care can help to keep you grounded through the demanding couple of months ahead.
It will be hard work but it will be so worth it! We can toss out the grifter in our White House and the Republican enablers who really brought us to this sorry pass. Keep your eyes on that prize!
Thanks for reading and thanks for being here. I am so glad to be in this effort with all of you!
