Wow!

I generally don't have the patience for something like this, but this is exceptional: Sen. Maizie Hirono (D-HI) really lets AG William Barr have it:

Full exchange between Senator @maziehirono and Attorney General William Barr: "You did exactly what I thought you'd do, it's why I voted against your confirmation. I expected you would try to protect the president and indeed you did." pic.twitter.com/5ecg4jF2b2

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 1, 2019

And here's Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), who is not having his bullshit:

Complete exchange between @senkamalaharris and Attorney General William Barr. pic.twitter.com/EzydIr8twh

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 1, 2019

Glad I'm not him.

Today's Must-Read: By Any Means Necessary, Again

This post by Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo starts off with a quote that -- well, hide your irony meter:

"Once you start down the path of diluting, obviating, nullifying the results of an election, it’s very hard to pull back from that," Norman Ornstein tells NBC News. Ornstein, an American Enterprise Institute scholar, responded to the domino-like chain of events in states from North Carolina to Wisconsin to Michigan in which controlling parties seen to have lost ground in the last election quickly moved to undercut the powers of the incoming electeds — governors of the opposing party, most notably.

In case you're not familiar with the American Enterprise Institute, it bills itself as non-partisan, stating on its website:

AEI actively seeks and encourages engagement with those who hold different points of view. We welcome civil disagreement because we believe that a competition of ideas is essential to a free society. This is the same approach to scholarship that AEI has taken since our founding in 1938.

It is unusual in Washington, DC, to embrace open debate, intellectual freedom, and human welfare—and to do so unencumbered by partisan considerations and special interests. As a result, decision makers and leaders in Washington and across the country trust our work, and we are able to foster cooperation at a time of deep division in our country and abroad.

Everyone else considers it a right-wing organization. As you can see from the quote above, they're absolutely correct.

At any rate, Ornstein is talking about the investigation into the chicanery in the election for North Carolina's 9th District Congressoinal seat, based on strong evidence of illegal activities by the Republican campaign. As Sullivan points out, the ones who are trying to nullify the results of elections are, in fact, Republicans.

If You Can't Win, Cheat

The Republican party, which hasn't been real enthusiastic about real democracy for a while, is pulling out all the stops. First, North Carolina:

The strange tale of election-rigging in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District gets stranger. Courtesy of Judd Legum's newsletter, "Popular Information," the state Board's decision to put on hold certification of the race in which Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes just got stranger:

The decision comes after substantial evidence of improprieties involving absentee ballots. A series of affidavits submitted suggests that a man named Leslie McCrae Dowless, who was hired by the Harris campaign through a contractor, systematically falsified, manipulated, and potentially destroyed absentee ballots -- particularly in Bladen County. Harris won Bladen County by 1,557 votes, more than his margin statewide. [districtwide, TS]

In fact, requests for absentee ballots in Bladen ran at 7.5 percent, while elsewhere in the district it was under 3 percent. Furthermore, the high percentage of the requests that went unreturned in Bladen and Robeson Counties — as many as 3,400 — suggests ballots collected by contractors working with Dowless were falsified or destroyed. Of voters in Bladen requesting absentee ballots, 19 percent were Republicans, yet Harris received 61 percent of the absentee vote.

Can you say "election fraud"?

If that doesn't work, cheat harder:

Following a script written in North Carolina two years ago, Wisconsin's Republican-controlled legislature in a lame-duck session on Friday introduced a package of legislation sharply curtailing the authorities of incoming Democrats elected statewide. During a hearing Monday, state Rep. Katrina Shankland (D) called the effort “a slap in the face of every voter who voted in record turnout in the midterms.”

On November 6, Democrat Tony Evers won the governorship, turning out Republican Scott Walker after two terms. Democrat Josh Kaul defeated Brad Schimel, Wisconsin's incumbent attorney general.

Republicans proposed moving the 2020 presidential primary date in an effort to advantage a conservative state Supreme Court justice. Other proposals would weaken the governor's power to appoint members to the Group Insurance Board and Walker’s scandal-wracked Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation Evers has pledged to dissolve. The attorney general's office is also the focus of legislation to minimize its powers by shifting them to the legislature still dominated by the GOP.

The GOP has given up any pretense of wanting to govern. Like their mainstays in the "religious" right, they are only interested in gaining and keeping power, by whatever means necessary. Trump is only the most obvious symptom.

Digby has some historical background.

The Schoolyard Bully, Once Again

He seems determined to wreck international trade, at least for us:

President Trump announced his intention late Saturday to quickly withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, a move intended to force House Democrats to enact a revised version of the pact despite concerns that it fails to protect American workers.

If the president follows through on his threat, congressional leaders will have six months to pass the measure. The agreement has been losing support in recent days as Democratic lawmakers, ready to take control of the House in January, reckon with fallout from the announcement last week that General Motors was planning to idle five plants in North America.

If no deal can be reached, both versions of the treaty would be void, which would result in far more restrictive trade that could have a severe impact on industry and agriculture in all three nations, economists have warned.

OK, bad enough that he's got to start off his relationship with a new Congress trying to strong-arm them (before they've even taken office), but that's who he is. (Although, as with so many of his threats, this one may prove to be empty: there's some debate as to whether he actually can withdraw from NAFTA without congressional approval. Of course, if he does it while the present Congress is still in session, the current office-holders would move quickly to approve it -- especially the forty who just got booted out.)

But get that last sentence: it's pretty obvious he's working for Putin. This is just another aspect of Putin's strategy of isolating the U.S. and breaking up the Western alliance. I wonder if this little ploy was the result of their brief encounter in Buenos Aires.

The Rule of Law, Trump Version

Have you noticed how often Trump and the Republicans are invoking the "rule of law" lately? Remember that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III claimed to have "restored" it in his craven resignation letter. They make a lot of noise about it, but this is what it means to them -- to the Trump wing of the party, at least, which is pretty much the whole thing. This story is from a couple of weeks ago:

After Wednesday, elected officials in the Republican Party should have no doubt that Donald Trump will force them to choose in coming days, weeks, and months between loyalty to him and loyalty to the rule of law, between the public’s right to the truth and Trump’s efforts to hide it.

The president began the day with an extraordinary threat on Twitter: “If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level,” he wrote, “then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!”

(Side note: So all those hearings on Benghazi!!1! and Her E-Mails!1!! were a game in Trump's eyes.)

There's been token resistance (Can you say "Jeff Flake"?), but they've pretty much fallen into line, from the illegal detention of migrant children while not allowing their parents to request asylum (which is a direct violation of American law, not to mention international treaties) on down the line.

And now we have another couple of examples. It's been obvious for a while that Trump considers the Dempartment of Justice, which has historically been a quasi-independent branch of the executive, to be his personal enforcers, but this takes it up a notch:

The New York Times reports:

President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

No investigation, no evidence, just prosecute. Sound like a couple of twentieth-century dictators we could name?

Here's another little tidbit:

Trump administration officials have privately discussed the possibility that in the future census information could be shared with law enforcement, according to documents filed in a legal challenge over plans for a new citizenship question on the 2020 survey.

The subject came up after a Democratic lawmaker asked whether responses to the survey could ever be shared with law enforcement agencies, something that has been strictly illegal according to federal law governing the census.

After a congressional hearing in May about the citizenship question, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) submitted a written query about whether the Justice Department agreed with a memo it had issued in 2010 saying the USA Patriot Act could not override the confidentiality of the census.

In a June 12 email, department officials discussed among themselves how to answer Gomez’s question in a way that left the answer open. Justice Department attorney Ben Aguinaga suggested to acting assistant attorney general John Gore that they not say “too much” in response to Gomez’s question, in case the issue were to “come up later for renewed debate.”

The confidentiality of census responses is not up for debate -- it's a matter of law.

Of course, Trump and the Republicans (sounds like a garage band, doesn't it?) think that "rule of law" means that the law is what they say it is. Well, no:

The ACLU and others had filed suit to stop the Trump administration from implementing rules that would prevent the migrant caravan from entering the United States and filing claims for asylum.

CNN:

In an order laced with language accusing President Donald Trump of attempting to rewrite immigration laws, a federal judge based in San Francisco temporarily blocked the government late Monday night from denying asylum to those crossing over the southern border between ports of entry.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said that a policy announced November 9 barring asylum for immigrants who enter outside a legal check point '"irreconcilably conflicts" with immigration law and the "expressed intent of Congress."

"Whatever the scope of the President's authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden," Tigar wrote, adding that asylum seekers would be put at "increased risk of violence and other harms at the border" if the administration's rule is allowed to go into effect.

He really wants to rule by proclamation.

And lest you think I'm unfairly tarring the GOP because of Trump, read this post from Digby. It's not just Trump -- it's a Republican thing.

Thanks to commenter JCF at Joe.My.God., here is, I think, the image that perfectly captures what Trump and the GOP think of the rule of law:

Where's Try Gowdy When You Need Him?

Put your irony meter someplace safe:

Oh, Trey Gowdy? This is your jurisdiction. Surely you must be extremely concerned. This is actually current:

Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules, according to people familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence.

White House ethics officials learned of Trump’s repeated use of personal email when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit. That review revealed that throughout much of 2017, she often discussed or relayed official White House business using a private email account with a domain that she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner.

She says she wasn't aware of all the rules. If that's the case, she's even more oblivious to the real world than I thought.

The only appropriate response is, to quote a source, "Lock her up!"

And from Trey Gowdy? *crickets*

It's Election Day

Do you know where your vote went?

Here are just a few of the ways the Republicans are gearing up for the big day:

First, the Orange Menace is setting up to challenge the legitimacy of the election:

A threatening tweet from President Donald Trump late Monday morning, less than 24 hours before the polls open nationwide, is leading some to accuse him of engaging in voter suppression. Others are saying the tweet is the President's attempt to lay the groundwork to call the results of Democratic midterm wins illegitimate.

"Law Enforcement has been strongly notified to watch closely for any ILLEGAL VOTING which may take place in Tuesday’s Election (or Early Voting)," Trump tweeted. "Anyone caught will be subject to the Maximum Criminal Penalties allowed by law. Thank you!"

As we all know by now, "illegal voting" is statistically non-existent in the U.S. And most of the very few cases that exist have been perpetrated by Republicans. Nevertheless, Trump is getting ready to throw the results out if Democrats win.

Others are taking more direct measures:

In Wisconsin, where incumbent Koch Bros. play toy Scott Walker is trailing in the polls:

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has taken the unusual step of activating his state's National Guard, activating their cyber security team prior to the election.

While details are scant, walker's Executive Order asks the National Guard to, "provide essential services to the Wisconsin Elections Commission."

Walker is in a difficult race against Tony Evers. Evers, a democrat, is up on Walker by 5 points.

Reid Magney, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told the Associated Press that he couldn't recall any previous election with such an order being issued. The National Guard has only had a cyber security tea, since 2016.

In Georgia, Brian Kemp, who as secretary of state is overseeing the election in which he's running for governor, is calling "foul" even before the votes are tallied:

Current Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also the Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, announced today that he was launching an investigation into the state Democratic Party, claiming that they had attempted to "hack" the voter registration system.

"While we cannot comment on the specifics of an ongoing investigation, I can confirm that the Democratic Party of Georgia is under investigation for possible cyber crimes," said Candice Broce, the press secretary for the Secretary of State in a statement. "We can also confirm that no personal data was breached and our system remains secure."

I reported on this in more detail here. Kemp has also been busily purging registered voters from the rolls.

And Trump's Department of Justice, headed by known racist Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, is getting into the act:

When Americans head to the polls on Tuesday for the midterm elections, voters in 35 counties — from Las Vegas to Dallas to Tampa — will head to precincts that are being closely monitored by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for “compliance with the federal voting rights laws,” the DOJ announced Monday.

“Voting rights are constitutional rights, and they’re part of what it means to be an American,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.

Sessions also warned that “fraud in the voting process will not be tolerated.”

A number of these counties are being noted as "tilts Democratic" by the pollsters.

That's just what's popped up in the news the last couple of days. What's next, do you suppose?

Maybe Trump will redirect those 15,000 troops from the border to "questionable" precincts. You know -- with lots of Democrats.

By Any Means Necessary

That's how Republicans plan to stay in power. Via Joe.My.God., this story on how Brian Kemp, who, as Georgia's secretary of state, is overseeing the election in which he is running for governor, is responding to slipping poll numbers:

Just two days before the election, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office launched an investigation Sunday into the Democratic Party after an alleged attempt to hack the state’s voter registration system.

Kemp, who is the Republican candidate for governor on Tuesday’s ballot, didn’t provide evidence linking the Democratic Party to the hacking attempt. He faces Democrat Stacey Abrams in the election.

The Democratic Party of Georgia called the allegation “100 percent false” and “an abuse of power” by Kemp’s office.

After election officials received a report Saturday that the state’s voter registration website was vulnerable, they blamed the Democrats instead of correcting the issue, said Democratic Party of Georgia Executive Director Rebeccca DeHart.

In fact, it looks like it was the Democrats who alerted Kemp's office to the problem:

Just before noon on Saturday, a third party provided WhoWhatWhy with an email and document, sent from the Democratic Party of Georgia to election security experts, that highlights “massive” vulnerabilities within the state’s My Voter Page and its online voter registration system.

According to the document, it would not be difficult for almost anyone with minimal computer expertise to access millions of people’s private information and potentially make changes to their voter registration — including canceling it.

In this election and during the primaries, voters have reported not showing up in the poll books, being assigned to the wrong precinct, and being issued the wrong ballot.

All of that could be explained by a bad actor changing voter registration data — and at this point there may be no way of knowing if that happened.

Georgia election officials -- i.e., Kemp -- are saying that there's no evidence that voter information has been compromised. I guess that's why the Democrats must be investigated.

As far as the investigation goes, there's apparently some confusion as to just who is doing the investigating:

According to Brian Kemp (R-GA), who’s in a tight race against state Rep. Stacey Abrams (D-GA) for governor, the state Democratic Party hacked the voter rolls but weren’t able to steal anything or change anything. Kemp provided no evidence to back up his claim, and it’s unclear who is investigating the claims.

Democratic Party chair DeBose Porter said that the FBI, who has jurisdiction in such cases, hasn’t reached out to him or anyone affiliated with the Democratic Party. He explained that it never happened and that’s why the FBI isn’t involved and hasn’t launched an investigation.

“This is simply an attempt to detract from his own record,” Porter told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Sunday. “Remember, this is a Secretary of State that mistakenly released 6 million voters’ Social Security numbers twice. What’s unnerving is that he has used the Secretary of State’s office and its official spokesperson on this made-up story.”

Of course, if it's the secretary of state's office doing the investigating, they'll come up with something. Especially if Kemp loses.

Like I said, they'll try anything.

This Is What They're Really Worried About

It's amazing what slips out of the mouths of Republicans when they think no one's listening:

Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, expressed at a ticketed campaign event that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams’ voter turnout operation “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” according to audio obtained by Rolling Stone.

Lest you think this is some sort of fluke:

Kemp’s recent decision to suspend more than 53,000 voter applications, 70 percent of which were filed by black residents, for violating the state’s “exact match” verification standard has drawn attention to his penchant for restrictive voter laws and purging of voter rolls. American Public Media reported last week that Kemp purged an estimated 107,000 voters last year simply because they didn’t vote in the prior election. He is also being sued for leaving more than 6 million Georgia voting records open to hacking.

Kemp, a staunch Trump supporter who has echoed the president’s language concerning Russia’s election interference, was also the only Secretary of State in the nation to refuse Homeland Security’s help prior to the 2016 election.

One other reason that Kemp’s “right to vote” line is potentially alarming is that he is facing another lawsuit after reports that an abnormal number of absentee ballots — 595, more than a third of the state’s total and 300 of which reportedly belong to black and Asian American voters — have been rejected in the state’s most racially diverse county, Gwinnett. The Georgia Muslim Voter Project and Asian-American Advancing Justice-Atlanta filed suit last Monday to request that three days be provided after the election for rejected voters to resolve the matter so that their ballots count.

Kemp is not unique -- in every state with Republican majorities in the legislature, or Republicans dominating the executive, there are major efforts to keep likely Democratic voters (i.e., minorities) from voting. This should really come as no surprise: they've been talking for years about gaining a "permanent majority". Their policies are highly unpopular -- at least, among normal people -- and the Republicans in Congress (yes, Mitch McConnell, I'm talking about you) have no compunction about changing the rules to maintain their hold on power.

"Permanent majority" -- by whatever means necessary.

Via Towleroad.

Blatant, Again

This is by way of a follow-up to this post. More detail on the Republicans' plan to take away our Social Security and Medicare:

After instituting a $1.5 trillion tax cut and signing off on a $675 billion budget for the Department of Defense, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

"It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem," McConnell said of the deficit, which grew 17 percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. McConnell explained to Bloomberg that "it’s a bipartisan problem: Unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future." The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.

It is a Republican problem pure and simple. And now he's trying to pin it on the Democrats.

Read the whole article. Via Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo. Read his post, too.

Today's Must-Read: How To Get Rich Without Really Trying

This piece, from Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, is a good examination of how Trump really made his money:

"What, exactly, is Donald Trump’s business?" asks The New Yorker's Adam Davidson. The Trump Organization seems to have been in and out of so many unrelated ventures and manages to profit even as the projects themselves fail. Middle-class housing, luxury housing, casinos, licensing agreements. All require different business models and skill sets. So what is it Trump really does?

"It is becoming increasingly clear that, in the language of business schools," Davidson writes, "the Trump Organization’s core competency is in profiting from misrepresentation and deceit and, potentially, fraud."

I knew that his first few projects were on this model: plan a project, get investors and lenders, funnel the money into your own companies, and then declare bankruptcy, leaving the investors and lenders holding the bag. It looks like that's actually been his method across the board.

Today in Trump's America: Banking While Black

These stories are popping up every day now. And it's not just trumpanzees doing the honors:

Barbara Carroll just wanted to cash a check for $140. The 78-year-old former probation officer and assistant bank manager, who is black, stopped by a Wells Fargo branch in Fort Lauderdale last November for what she thought would be a quick errand.

Instead, she says, she spent two and a half hours at the bank's Victoria Park location while employees refused to cash her check or return her driver's license, asking the PhD-holder what she did for the money and telling her they had called police. They were suspicious that Carroll was guilty of forgery, she says — even after the man who wrote the check confirmed it was legitimate.

We all remember Wells Fargo as the biggest fraudster -- out of a very crowded field -- responsible for the Great Recession. It seems that the banks is rewarding us for not prosecuting by continuing its racist policies.

And yes, Barbara Caroll is suing on the grounds of racial discrimination.

Via Crooks and Liars.

Tweet du Jour

A farewell message from the environment to Scott Pruitt pic.twitter.com/K9p5Caob3B

— Stone Cold (@stonecold2050) July 6, 2018

Because Pruitt, who may very well be the most corrupt member of Trump's cabinet (and that's saying something) finally got the hint and resigned. He must have felt threatened when Kristen Mink confronted him at a restaurant.

Or maybe it's because Trump wouldn't give him Sessions' job.

Here's the whole sordid story.

Today in Disgusting People: Of Course He Does

Priceless:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said on Wednesday that he now has a legal fund in place to help him fight off a growing list of allegations against him related to his spending and reported ethical missteps in office.

“It has been set up,” Pruitt told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies about the fund. He was speaking during a hearing that was meant to focus on the EPA’s 2019 budget but that centered on questions about his conduct – including an allegation he had sought to be transported through traffic with flashing lights and sirens.

Pruitt has been under pressure from lawmakers in recent weeks over reports about his routine use of first-class travel, his 24/7 security detail, costly office renovations, and ties to industry – criticisms he called overblown on Wednesday.

"Overblown"? What? Not "Fake News"?

He is still supported by President Donald Trump and most Republicans lawmakers, who have welcomed his efforts to roll back Obama-era environmental regulations that are seen by industry as overly burdensome.

So, "industry" sees drinkable water and breathable air as "overly burdensome."

Out of all the crooks and grifters Trump has shoveled into his regime, Pruitt is undoubtedly among the two or three worst. And that's some pretty stiff competition.

Read the whole thing -- Pruitt is even worse than you imagined.

Blatant

They don't even bother to pretend any more:

Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives on Tuesday that they should press lawmakers hard to pursue their agenda, and revealed that, as a congressman, he would meet only with lobbyists if they had contributed to his campaign.

“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lending industry officials at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”

At the top of the hierarchy, he added, were his constituents. “If you came from back home and sat in my lobby, I talked to you without exception, regardless of the financial contributions,” said Mr. Mulvaney, who received nearly $63,000 from payday lenders for his congressional campaigns.

So now it's right out in the open: our government's for sale.

Via Joe.My.God.

Bleh

I haven't been blogging lately because there just isn't that much to blog about -- I'm as heartily sick of Trump's tweets as you are.

However, there is one ray of sunshine in the swamp. This is from yesterday:

A federal grand jury in Washington on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter.

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are.

Wonder who's going to be first in the pokey.

And I wonder what The Hairpiece is going to focus on as the next shiny object. Invade Puerto Rico?

Via Crooks and Liars.

Addendum: I should have known -- it was Hillary!

Stray Thought: "They'll Pay For It"

It just occurred to me, thinking about Trump's insistence that Mexico will pay for his wall, that NATO and our other allies should pick up the tab for having troops stationed on their soil -- that's the way he's always done business: put together a project, line up investors and loans, pocket the cash, and walk away, letting everyone else pick up the tab.

Today's Must-Read

I'm lucky: for someone my age I take remarkably few medications. However, there are a couple that I can't afford to take for the full year because of the "doughnut hole" in Medicare Part D: They're just too expensive for that last month or two. Hence, I was very interested in this article by Gaius Publius at Hullabaloo:

Along with many others, we recently wrote about Mylan's predatory price increases on the life-saving prescription drug product EpiPen. Then came the news that the interestingly named Valeant had increased the price of a prescription drug it had purchased, not developed, more than 2700%, apparently anticipating a growing lead poisoning crisis like the one in Flint, Michigan. ("Did your kids get sick from eating lead paint? We'll fix them right up ... for $27,000.")

At the end of the Valeant piece, I added a section that argued for an industry-wide — and Executive Branch-only — fix. Don't play Whack-a-Mole with individual companies, I argued. Whack drug prices industry-wide, or we'll always be chasing a shadow and fixing problems only when they're reported as scandals.

High prescription prices are an industry problem, not a problem of "outliers" (source; click to enlarge)

It turns out that Rep. Mark Pocan and a number of his colleagues have the same idea. From a letter Pocan wrote, and dozens of his colleagues signed, here are three specific suggestions that the next president can unilaterally enact, whoever she or he may be.

Read the whole thing; it's a fairly detailed and very clear set of ways to rein in not only drug prices but some other bad effects of Republican economic policies that don't rely on congressional action: they're all within the scope of existing law.

Getting Ready For November

And practicing on New York Democrats: Can you say "election fraud"?

In the lead up to the New York Primaries this past week, an alarming situation was discovered when hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters found themselves unable to vote for the candidates they wished. Some found themselves listed as Republicans or Independents, while others were removed from the voting rolls entirely. This voter purge hit the hardest in the borough of Brooklyn, traditionally a stronghold of Democratic values and a strong base of support for the party. That this voter purge, which affected people across the state, happened at all was a shock to elected officials and observers alike. And the voter purge happened so quickly, it was impossible to address in time before the election, demonstrating a coordinated plan behind it.

As the stories came in, what was revealed was something far more insidious than some kind of voter purge used to eliminate voters who had died or moved out of the area. Instead they found fraudulent documents with forged signatures. And when the voter purge was looked at carefully, it became clear that the purge was being very specific, targeting people by street and apartment building. And there were only a handful of people with access to the data and tools needed for performing such a well-coordinated voter purge.

This has a history, and guess who was involved?

In 2012, Mitt Romney with Karl Rove developed a voting tool the likes of which had never been seen before. This tool, called Orca, was a database so massive and finite that, using it, they could identify people on a street by street, or building by building basis. Orca worked in part by collecting data gathered by poll watchers, which would be funneled into a central database for processing. As a result, Orca gave the Romney campaign a tactical ability to target people not only who Romney wanted to show up to the polls, but to deny access for people who Romney did not want to show up to the poll. Unfortunately for Romeny in 2012, the hactivist collective Anonymous killed that plan, by overloading and crashing the central servers.

However, the data collected remains intact, and available to GOP insiders – insiders such as Diane Haslett-Rudiano. With access to such data, such a voter purge becomes trivial to perform.

The GOP Secretary for the district is the only one implicated so far, but I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg. I just wonder how far up into the party hierarchy this reaches.

This is just a hint of what we can expect in November, unless something happens to disrupt it -- the Republicans have gotten as crooked and venal as the Democrats in Chicago used to be. Where's Anonymous when you need them?

It's About Time

Someone was asking the bank regulators some hard questions:

When she was campaigning to become the next U.S. senator to represent Massachusetts, Democrat Elizabeth Warren pledged that she would take her tough talk about enforcing Wall Street regulations to Washington and put them into action.

On Thursday, as Senator Warren got the opportunity to question regulators at her first Senate Banking Committee hearing, she bluntly asked "When did you last take... a large financial institution, a Wall Street bank, to trial?"

Here she is in action. Something tells me the regulators weren't ready for this.

I am so glad Elizabeth Warren is in the Senate. We need more like her.