Archive for the ‘Law’ Category
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on May 22, 2020 at 12:39 am
…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
- Trump boasted that he “never” settled cases out of court. But New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressed fraud claims against the real estate mogul’s counterfeit Trump University—and Trump settled the case out of court rather than take the stand.
- “Today’s $25 million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald Trump,” said Schneiderman on November 18, 2016, “and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”
- On May 17, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller to investigate links between Russian Intelligence agents and the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign.
- Upon learning of his appointment, Trump wailed: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”
- “How could you let this happen, Jeff?” Trump demanded of Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General. “You were supposed to protect me. Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels, it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
- Throughout Mueller’s probe, Trump hurled repeated insults at him via Twitter and press conferences. He also called on his shills within Fox News and the Republican party to attack Mueller’s integrity and investigative methods.
- But aides convinced him that firing Mueller would be rightly seen as obstruction of justice—and thus grounds for impeachment. So he never dared go that far.
Robert Mueller
Perhaps the key to Trump’s innermost fear can be found in a work of fiction—in this case, the 1996 historical novel, The Friends of Pancho Villa, by James Carlos Blake.
The book depicts the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) and its most famous revolutionary, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. it’s told from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Fierro, Villa’s most feared executioner. In one day, for example, Fierro—using two revolvers—executed 300 captured Federale soldiers.
As in history, Blake’s Fierro presides over the execution of David Berlanga, a journalist who had dared criticize the often loutish behavior of Villa’s men.
On Villa’s command, Fierro approaches Berlanga in a Mexico City restaurant and orders: “Come with me.”
Standing against a barracks wall, Berlanga lights a cigar and requests permission to finish it. He then proceeds to smoke it with such a steady hand that its unbroken ash extends almost four inches.
The cigar finished, the ash still unbroken, Berlanga drops the butt to the ground and says calmly: “I’m ready.”
Then the assembled firing squad does its work.
Later, Fierro is so shaken by Berlanga’s sheer fearlessness that he seeks an explanation for it. Sitting in a cantina, he lights a cigar and tries to duplicate Berlanga’s four-inch length.
But the best he can do is less than three inches. He concludes that Berlanga used a trick—but he can’t figure it out.
Rodolfo Fierro
It had to be a trick, Fierro insists, because, if it wasn’t, there were only two other explanations for such a calm demeanor in the face of impending death.
The first was insanity. But Fierro rules this out: He had studied Berlanga’s eyes and found no madness there.
That leaves only one other explanation (other than a trick): Sheer courage.
And Fierro can’t accept this, either—because it’s disturbing.
“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill….No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men’s lack of courage.
“There is even less courage in this world than there is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
“But a man brave enough to control his fear of being killed, control it so well that no tremor reaches his fingers and no sign shows in his eyes…well. Such a man cannot be ruled, he can only be killed.”
Throughout his life, Trump has relied on bribery and intimidation. He well understands the power of greed and fear over most people.
What he doesn’t understand—and truly fears—is that some people cannot be bought or frightened.
People like Elliot Ness. Like Robert Mueller. And like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on May 21, 2020 at 12:54 am
On July 14, 2019, President Donald Trump unleashed a brutal Twitter attack on four Democratic members of the House of Representatives who had harshly criticized his anti-immigration policies:
“So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……
“….and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….
“….it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
Donald Trump
The Democrats—all female, and all non-white—were:
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York;
- Rashida Tlaib of Michigan;
- Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and
- Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Of the Congresswomen that Trump singled out:
- Cortez was born in New York City.
- Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan.
- Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Only Omar was born outside the United States—in Somalia. And she became an American citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old.
Critics have assailed Trump as racist for implying that these women were not United States citizens.
Moreover, as members of Congress, they had a legal right to declare “how our government is to be run.” Republicans in the House and Senate vigorously—and often viciously—asserted that right during the Presidency of Barack Obama.
Ocasio-Cortez quickly struck back on Twitter on the same day: “You are angry because you don’t believe in an America where I represent New York 14, where the good people of Minnesota elected , where fights for Michigan families, where champions little girls in Boston.
“You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.
“You won’t accept a nation that sees healthcare as a right or education as a #1 priority, especially where we’re the ones fighting for it. Yet here we are.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
But then followed the most significant part of Cortez’ reply:
“But you know what’s the rub of it all, Mr. President? On top of not accepting an America that elected us, you cannot accept that we don’t fear you, either.
“You can’t accept that we will call your bluff & offer a positive vision for this country. And that’s what makes you seethe.”
“You cannot accept that we don’t fear you, either.”
For all his adult life, Donald Trump—as a businessman, Presidential candidate and now President—has trafficked in bribery and coercion.
First bribery:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
- Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who says he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons.
- Paxton’s office issued a cease and desist letter to former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens after he made public copies of a 14-page internal summary of the state’s case against Donald Trump for scamming millions from students of his now-defunct real estate seminar.
- After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Now coercion:
- Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump forced his employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, threatening them with lawsuits if they revealed secrets of his greed and/or criminality.
- In 2016. USA Today found that Trump was involved in over 3,500 lawsuits during the previous 30 years: “At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings” were from contractors claiming they got stiffed.
- On March 16, 2016, as a Republican Presidential candidate, Trump warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
- An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there. Shame if something happened to it.'”
- Speaking with Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter, Trump confessed: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
- During his Presidential campaign he encouraged Right-wing thugs to attack dissenters at his rallies, even claiming he would pay their legal expenses.
But when he has confronted men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, Trump has reacted with rage and desperation.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics on May 1, 2020 at 12:06 am
Why do Republican voters support sex predators?
Roy Moore’s 2017 run for Republican United States Senator from Alabama offers several answers.
To attain his goal, he had to overcome a serious obstacle: The allegation that, during his 30s, he pursued relationships with teenage girls.
At least nine women accused him of making improper advances toward them—ranging from harassment to sexual assault.
In years past, such allegations would have proven fatal for any political candidate—especially one who repeatedly cited the Bible as his source of inspiration.
But in 2016, Presidential candidate Donald Trump proved that more than a dozen women can accuse you of sexual harassment—or even assault—and you can still win office.
Roy Moore
So Moore hoped that what worked for Trump would work for him: Deny all the charges and accuse your accusers of lying in pursuit of a corrupt political agenda.
And many Alabama voters said they would support him—even if the charges were true.
Among the reasons they offered:
“The Lord has forgiven him.”
According to voter Dottie Finch: “At first, I really wasn’t sure how I felt about the situation. But then I look at it this way: I don’t have the best past, and to have it be brought up after years of speculation and never anything being said about it, I don’t know just because he’s trying to prove himself that now people want to come out of the closet and accuse him of things.
“And if it has happened, I believe the good Lord has forgiven him and he has the right to continue to prove himself.
“I would power forward and keep on supporting him, just like I have with Donald Trump as our president.”
“Yes, he acted improperly. But so did other people in the Bible.”
One such voter was Jim Ziegler, Alabama state auditor: “Take the Bible: Zechariah and Elizabeth, for instance. Zechariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist.
“Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”
“If Democrats say it, it has to be untrue.”
According to voter Tom Cammack: “I feel that the Democrat Party, like a lot of things it does, tries to manufacture things to make President Trump look bad. It’s all done for political reasons.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong.”
Said Alfonso Bradford: “I don’t think he’s done anything like that. Why didn’t it come up seven to eight months ago when he was running? All of a sudden, when it’s two weeks from now, all of this stuff comes up. I believe it’s a lot of BS. I really do.”
“He may be a pedophile, but he’s a Republican pedophile.”
Even a pedophile Republican was better, in their eyes, than any Democrat. For them, it was strictly a matter of holding power over those they hate. And the best way to guarantee that was with a Congress stocked with only Republicans.
According to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey:
“I believe in the Republican party, what we stand for, and, most important, we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like the Supreme Court justices, other appointments the Senate has to confirm and make major decisions. So that’s what I plan to do, vote for Republican nominee Roy Moore.”
Fortunately for Alabama, Moore lost. His Democratic opponent, former United States Attorney Doug Jones, received 49.9% of the vote; Moore got 48.4%.
* * * * *
Seventy-five years ago, another fanatical, Right-wing woman concluded: “If we can’t rule the world, there’s no point in living in it.”
She was Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels—Propaganda Minister for the rapidly-collapsing Third Reich.
On April 30, 1945, Russian troops lay only a few blocks from the underground bunker where Adolf Hitler—and the Goebbels family—-awaited the inevitable.
That afternoon, at about 3 P.M., Hitler shot himself in the right temple while biting on a cyanide capsule.
Magda and Joseph Goebbels, with their six children and a uniformed friend
On May 1, it was the turn of his propaganda minister—and his wife.
“I do not wish to live in a world without National Socialism,” Magda Goebbels said.
Nor did she want her six children to do so: “The children are much too good for anything that will come after us.”
To make certain they escaped living in a world not governed by Nazis, she gave each of them a powerful sleeping tablet. Then she crushed a cyanide capsule between their jaws.
Finally, it was time to for Joseph and Magda Goebbels to exit the Third Reich: He shot her in the back of the head, and then he shot himself.
That, more than anything, was the mentality at work in the Alabama election.
Those supporting Moore cared, foremost, about having power over those they hate. And they gave their allegiance to any candidate, no matter how despicable, who promises to give them that.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 27, 2020 at 5:51 am
Until recently, only organized crime witnesses with a price on their head could obtain falsified job histories. But no more.
Thousands—if not millions—of job-seeking Americans are now able to obtain stellar job references to impress potential employer. And they’re doing it the unconventional way: They’re hiring companies to create them.
One such company is CareerExcuse.
CareerExcuse runs 200 fictional companies that don’t exist, have staffs or make money.
But for a fee, you can say you worked at one of them, and they’ll confirm you were an outstanding employee.
For between $100 and $200, you’ll get:
- One to three false—and positive—references from a company or companies you’ve never worked for.
- A fake company address.
- Local phone numbers to give to prospective employers.
- A guarantee that those employers will receive positive vouchers for you.
- “Instant” degrees.
- Landlord reference
- A “completely legitimate” resume-writing service.
Unlike the Federal Witness Security Program (WITSEC) the clients of CareerExcuse aren’t hardened criminals.
They are legitimate citizens trying to erase gaps in their resumes. Or they have worked for a long series of short-term employers and want to appear a stable employee.
Click here: CareerExcuse Job References
Or they’ve acquired–deservedly or not–a series of bad job references
“Some people see it as unethical,” Jennifer Hatton, senior partner at CareerExcuse, said in a 2015 interview with Business Insider.
But, said Hatten, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t deserve a shot, just like the next person” if you do have the skills and experience required.
“There are many things that happen in people’s lives, with [employers] going out of business, being laid off, managers just unrightfully firing you, sexual harassment suits—-you name it, it happens in the workforce.”
And it’s true.
An article in the March, 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest gives the lie to the excuses so many employers use for refusing to hire.
Entitled “22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting a Job,” it reveals such truths as:
- After you’re unemployed more than six months, employers consider you unemployable—no matter your skills/experience.
- It’s not what but who you know that counts.
- Cover letters are often ignored, going directly into “the round file.”
- Many employers illegally try to screen out parents—such as by checking cars for child safety seats.
- You’re not protected against age discrimination. Many employers regularly ignore the law. If you are in your 50s or 60s, leave your year of graduation off your resume.
And in its June 8, 2011 cover-story on “What U.S. Economic Recovery? Five Destructive Myths,” Time magazine warned that profit-seeking corporations can’t be relied on to ”make it all better.”
Wrote Rana Foroohar, Time‘s assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business:
“There may be $2 trillion sitting on the balance sheets of American corporations globally, but firms show no signs of wanting to spend it in order to hire workers at home.”
Meanwhile, CareerExcuse claims to have more than 2,000 job-seeking clients.
“Our main clientele right now is IT executives, and they’re pretty high-level,” Hatton claimed. The average customer seeks a salary of $60,000 to $80,000.
There are areas of employment that CareerExcuse refuses to fill—medicine, government, law enforcement or government. Jobs where your employment would “put other people in danger,” said Hatten. These are also employers capable of conducting serious background investigations.
Hatton claimed that during the almost two years she had been with CareerExcuse, no one had ever discovered a faked background.
But William Schmidt, who founded the company, admitted to Motherboard that a fake reference could easily be punctured: “All it would take is one person to drive to that address and go to that office.”
And the inevitable result would be immediate termination.
For some users of CareerExcuse, the company has proven an infuriating disappointment.
Click here: 17 CAREER EXCUSE complaints and reports @ Pissed Consumer
Like many clients of the Federal Witness Security Program, they complain of promises not kept. Among their complaints on Pissed Consumer, a consumer-complaint website:
- “When a serious job opportunity came recently, I realized alot of loop holes in their services, address of company on the website was different, email addresses weren’t valid or active.”
- “They took my $ and never returned my calls or emails.What a joke!”
- “Their phone go to voice mail and they dont reply back to calls after a voice mail is left for them to reply …It is easy for the employer to know that the reference is fake.”
- “When the prospective employers called, Career excuse answered the phone with ‘Career Excuse, how can I help you.’ They were supposed to answer the phone in the name of the fake company they put together.”
- “They only gave me a cheap looking web page and they don’t even answer the phones to GIVE the service I payed for. They are a scam and complete rip-off.”
Throughout the United States, countless numbers of lazy, greedy, arrogant and/or incompetent employers are refusing to hire. And millions of willing-to-work Americans remain trapped in unemployment or under-employment as a result.
Until this situation changes, companies like CareerExcuse will continue to function—and proliferate.
Such a change isn’t going to happen tomorrow.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 24, 2020 at 12:17 am
In 1966, the U.S. Department of Justice did something it had never before done: Protect a witness against the Mafia during trial, and then relocate him (and his family) to safety under a new identity.
That witness was Joseph “The Animal” Barboza. Once the most-feared enforcer for the New England Mafia family of Raymond Patriarca, Barboza had run afoul of his boss.
With a mob contract out on him, Barboza felt he had nothing to lose by telling FBI agents and Federal prosecutors everything they wanted to know about the Boston Mafia.
Joseph Barboza
A 16-man security detail of deputy U.S. marshals was immediately assigned to Barboza. The marshals relocated him to Thatcher’s Island, off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts. There they foiled two attempts by the mob to kill Barboza with a telescopic-sighted rifle.
Through a series of trials, Barboza sent the top echelons of the Patriarca family—including Patriarca himself—to prison. Then he and his wife and daughter were outfitted with new names and shipped out of New England to begin life over in safety.
The success of the Barboza detail led other Mafia witnesses to come forward. And this, in turn, led to the official creation of the Witness Security Program (WITSEC) by the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970.
To date, the U.S. Marshals Service—which runs WITSEC—has successfully protected, relocated and given new identities to more than 8,500 witnesses and 9,900 of their family members.
Click here: U.S. Marshals Service, Witness Security Program.
It’s been the “new identities” part of the Program that has always attracted the most attention from the press and movie-makers.
Staged photograph of a WITSEC detail
In the early days of WITSEC, a handful of security Inspectors created these in a totally haphazard fashion. These included legal name-changes, Social Security card, driver’s licenses and falsified job histories.
In some cases, marshals would tell prospective employers, “We can vouch for this man’s skills as a(n) ———-, but that’s all we can tell you.”
Witnesses’ children were provided with fictitious school records. The names of schools would be changed, but the actual grades earned by the children would be retained.
These records would be “backstopped”—supported with documentation placed at those institutions where the witness (or his family) was alleged to have worked or attended school.
Similarly, medical records for witnesses and their children would be partially falsified. That is, names of hospitals they had obtained care in would be changed, but their actual medical histories would be accurately charted.
Since the 1990s, the Marshals Service has centralized its “re-documentation” program. Parents, spouses, children, siblings and even mistresses are all taken to an orientation center in a Washington suburb
There, witnesses are debriefed by Federal agents and prosecutors. They—and their families—are also prepared for the new lives they’ll take on under new identities.
In the early years of the program, witnesses were provided with flimsy aliases that quickly collapsed under even light scrutiny.
In 1973, Gerald Martin Zelmanowitz, a convicted stock swindler, found his new identity of Paul J. Maris easily punctured.
He got into a legal dispute with Creative Capitol, an investment firm that had loaned $2 million to his struggling new business,”The Paul Maris Company.”
Creative Capitol’s president, Milton Stewart, ordered a quiet investigation into Maris’ background.
This quickly turned up the following:
- Maris and all five members of his family had been issued sequential Social Security numbers.
- There was no record of Maris’ birth certificate.
- Maris had claimed a background in Army Intelligence, but his Army service number had never been issued.
- Maris’ resume said he had attended John Bartram High School in Philadelphia and Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. But officials at both schools denied that he had ever been one of their students.
- Maris’ alleged home address in Philadelphia turned out to be a vacant lot in an all-black neighborhood.
Finally, the private investigator discovered that Maris had testified against a Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, a notorious New Jersey Mafia chieftain. His testimony had convicted DeCarlo for murder conspiracy.
Fearing for his life, Maris fled with his family from San Francisco. All of them were readmitted to the Witness Security Program and relocated under new identities.
Until recently, only organized crime witnesses with a price on their head could obtain falsified job histories. But no more.
Thousands—if not millions—of job-seeking Americans are now able to obtain stellar job references to impress potential employers.
CareerExcuse runs 200 fictional companies that don’t exist, have staffs or make money.
But for a fee, you can say you worked at one of them, and they’ll confirm you were a stellar employee while you were there.
For between $100 and $200, you’ll get
- One to three false—and positive—references from a company or companies you’ve never worked for.
- A fake company address.
- Local phone numbers to give to prospective employers.
- A guarantee that those employers will receive positive vouchers for you.
- A “completely legitimate” resume-writing service.
Unlike WITSEC, the clients of CareerExcuse aren’t hardened criminals. They are legitimate citizens trying to erase gaps in their resumes. Or they have worked for a long series of short-term employers and want to appear a stable employee.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 17, 2020 at 12:56 am
Coronavirus is ravaging the country.
But in Ohio, churches are exempted from the statewide stay-at home order that bans mass gatherings during the pandemic. Even worse, some churchgoers are defiantly continuing to attend services—and even claiming they are immune from the disease.
A CNN reporter asked members of the Solid Red Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio, why they risked infection for themselves and non-members in the community.
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” a woman said.
“Aren’t you concerned you can infect other people if you get sick inside?” CNN’s Gary Tuchman asked.
“No,” the woman responded. “I’m covered in Jesus’ blood. I’m covered in Jesus’ blood.
“I go to the grocery store every day! I’m in Walmart, Home Depot. Look at those people. They could get me sick! But they’re not because I’m covered in his blood.” Then she drove off.
Yet Ohio is not the only state whose citizens have defiantly put their own lives—and those of others—at risk.
Jack Roberts, a 76-year-old preacher at Maryville Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, told the Courier Journal that he would rather face a fine than close his doors.
“I don’t want to battle with anybody,” he said. “What I’d like to do is just preach the gospel, and that’s become more difficult as time’s gone on. And it’s truthfully what I plan on doing.”
Some officials, however, are not turning a blind eye to irresponsible behavior—even if it is committed by church pastors.
In early April, Rodney Howard-Browne, the head pastor at Florida’s The River Tampa Bay Church, was arrested for holding services during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister charged him with demonstrating a “reckless disregard for human life” after he held Sunday services in violation of county orders calling for social distancing. Soon after that, the megachurch lost its insurance when the insurance carrier canceled it.
So what’s going on here?
First, despite the claim of the Solid Red Rock worshiper that she was “washed in Jesus’ blood”: Crucifixion is an extremely painful way to die—but hardly a bloody one. Nails are driven into the wrists and ankles of the condemned, and s/he is left to die of slow suffocation.
Second, it’s hard to find traces of blood in a man who died more than 2,000 years ago—and whose body can’t be recovered.
Third, for all the reverence Americans have for the Christian religion, few of them dare to examine these two fundamental truths about the Bible:
- Its stories cannot be independently proven, and
- Many of its stories violate the most fundamental notions of common sense.
Consider these examples:
- Adam and Eve meet a talking snake. (Presumably it spoke Hebrew. When was the last time a zoologist had a serious discussion with a serpent?)
- Noah saves the world’s wildlife by stuffing them into an ark. (Sure—untrained wild animals are going to meekly walk, two-by-two, into a huge building. Then they’re going to let themselves be caged. And Noah and his family must store a huge variety of food for each type of animal for an indefinite period of time. And the sheer stench of all that animal urine and feces would have been horrific.)
- Moses parts the Red Sea. (Some scholars believe “Red” has been mistranslated from “Reed,” which is like upgrading “the White Quail” in Moby Dick to “the White Whale.”)
Moses (played by Charlton Hestono) parts the Red Sea
- Lot’s wife becomes a pillar of salt. (A human being can be turned into ashes, but not salt.)
- Samson kills 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. (Even Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his physical strength couldn’t kill so many men—except with a machinegun.)
- Daniel is thrown into a pit of lions—but survives because an angel closes their jaws. (This sounds inspiring—until you remember that didn’t happen when Christians were thrown to the lions by the Romans.)
- The will of God violates physical laws. (Jesus turns water into wine and raises Lazarus from the dead; Jonah lives inside a fish for three days; Noah dies at 950 years.)
- Jesus rises from the dead. (There have been near-death experiences, but there has never been a documented case of someone being certified as dead who came alive again.)
- Jesus will return more than 2,000 years after he died to wipe all evil from the earth and usher in a paradise for his faithful followers. (There has never been a case in recorded history of anyone returning from the dead decades or hundreds of years later—let alone more than 2,000 years later.)
“The Transfiguration of Jesus” as painted by Carl Bloch
Americans live in an age of rockets and computers. Yet millions of fundamentalist Christians (and Jews and Muslims) continue to believe stories written when men believed the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around it.
The Constitution guarantees “freedom of worship.” But it does not guarantee freedom to irresponsibly put the lives of others at risk.
At least some states are prepared to stand fast for public safety against social irresponsibility.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 16, 2020 at 3:50 am
It’s a scene familiar to anyone who’s seen Scarface, the 1983 classic starring Al Pacino as a Cuban drug dealer who makes it big in the cocaine business.
Tony Montana (Pacino) is holding court in his Florida estate. His visitor is a WASPish banker.
Bankers as a rule don’t make house calls. But Tony is no ordinary customer—his men literally haul bags full of bills into the bank when making deposits.
Except that now the banker has some unpleasant news for Tony: “We’re not a wholesale operation. We’re a legitimate bank. The more cash you give me……the harder it is for me to rinse. The fact is I can’t take any more of your money unless I raise the rates on you.”
Then follows this exchange:
TONY: You gonna raise…
BANKER: I gotta do it.
BANKER: The IRS is coming….
TONY: Don’t give me that shit! Let’s talk. I’m talking. I go low, you go high. I know the game. This is business talk.
BANKER: Let me explain something. The IRS is coming down heavy on South Florida. There was a Time magazine story that didn’t help. There’s a recession. I got stockholders I got to be responsible for. I got to do it, Tony.
TONY: We’ll go somewhere else. That’s it.
BANKER: There’s no place else to go.
TONY: Fuck you, man! Fuck you! I’ll fly the cash myself to the Bahamas.
BANKER: Once maybe. Then what? You’ll trust some monkey in a Bahamian bank with millions of your hard-earned dollars? Come on, Tony. Don’t be a schmuck. Who else can you trust? That’s why you pay us what you do. You trust us.
Stay with us. You’re a well-liked customer. You’re in good hands with us.
(At this point, movie audiences burst into laughter. The line, “You’re in good hands with us” seemed directly lifted from the slogan used by Allstate Insurance: “You’re in good hands with Allstate.”)
Now, fast forward to 2014.
A Reuters news story dated May 21, 2014 noted that investigators from the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were probing Charles Schwab and Bank of America Corporations Merrill Lynch brokerage.
The SEC wants to determine if these brokerages violated anti-money laundering rules that require financial institutions to know their customers.
Broker-dealers are required to establish, document and identify customers and verify their identities in compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act.
In 2012, David Cohen, the U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen, ordered regulators to guarantee that financial institutions are identifying the true beneficial owners of their accounts.
The reason: Drug cartels and terrorist groups have become highly creative in hiding and transferring their illegal funds.
According to sources close to the investigation, Charles Schwab and Merrill accepted shell companies and persons with phony addresses as clients.
In both cases, some of the accounts were eventually linked to drug cartels. Some of those accounts held hundreds of thousands of dollars; others held millions.
A Texas rancher and Charles Schwab client transferred money to a holding company that was actually a shell company.
Most of the Schwab clients being investigated lived near the Mexican border. Some were linked to Mexican drug cartels.
Click here: Exclusive: SEC probes Schwab, Merrill, for anti-money laundering violations – sources | Reuters
In December, 2017, the the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Merrill Lynch $26 million for failing to identify suspicious money-transfer activities in customer accounts for years.
In fact, the government should have assumed long ago that brokerage companies were engaging in such behavior.
As Niccolo Machiavelli warned in The Discourses, his landmark book on how to preserve freedom within a republic:
All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
Niccolo Machiavelli
If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself.
But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.
Whenever the creating of wealth becomes an end in itself, all other ends are sacrificed to this.
Greed begins in the neurochemistry of the brain. A neurotransmitter called dopamine fuels our greed. The higher the dopamine levels in the brain, the greater the pleasure we experience.
Harvard researcher Hans Breiter has found, via magnetic resonance imaging studies, that the craving for money activates the same regions of the brain as the lust for sex, cocaine or any other pleasure-inducer.
But snorting the same amount of cocaine, or earning the same sum of money, does not cause dopamine levels to increase. So the pleasure-seeker must increase the amount of stimuli to keep enjoying the euphoria.
Federal investigators need to view large concentrations of wealth as sources for at least potential corruption.
And they should ruthlessly—and routinely—investigate those sources, whether in the vaults of the Mafia or of major financial institutions.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 1, 2020 at 12:21 am
On June 22, 1941, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler sent three million soldiers smashing into the Soviet Union. During the first six months—June to December, 1941—German armies lured huge Soviet forces into gigantic “cauldron battles,” surrounding and exterminating them.
An estimated 5.7 million prisoners of war (POWs) fell into German hands. The Germans found themselves surprised and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of them. But their mandate demanded that they keep marching forward—ever forward.
So they simply imprisoned their captives behind barbed wire and wasted no food or medical care on them. Between starvation, illness and the brutal Russian cold, at least 3.5 million POWs died in custody.
Soviet POW’s
Republicans have learned a serious lesson from this. If you simply deprive those you detest of food, clothing and shelter, you don’t need gas chambers or firing squads.
That has been their chief reason for opposing Social Security since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law in 1935.
That is why they opposed President Lyndon B. Johnson when he pushed Medicare through Congress in 1965.
And that is why they have fervently tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act—better known as Obamacare—since it went into effect in 2010.
Of course, Republicans will never admit this. Their mantra has always been they fear such programs will bankrupt the country.
That claim might have credibility—if they didn’t recklessly plunge into budget-busting wars like the 2003 Iraq war started by President George W. Bush. Not a single Republican opposed this needless, bloody conflict—which has cost the United States more than $1.1 trillion.
But the best evidence of Republicans’ desire to use illness as a weapon against those Americans they hate comes from President Donald J. Trump.
Donald Trump
On March 26, during an interview on Fox News, Trump blamed the failures of his administration’s response to Coronavirus on Democratic state governors like Andrew Cuomo (NY), Jay Inslee (WA), and Gretchen Whitmer (MI).
On March 27, during his press briefing, Trump said he told Vice President Mike Pence—who’s officially in charge of the White House’s response effort—to not call Inslee and Whitmer because they weren’t “appreciative” enough of his efforts.
Trump said this even as hospitals in each of their states were being overwhelmed with Coronavirus patients.
“I tell him—I mean I’m a different type of person— I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor in Washington, you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan,’” Trump said. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”
Trump said that when people criticized him, they were criticizing the federal government: “When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps, they’re not appreciative to FEMA. It’s not right.”
Trump also attacked Whitmer on Right-wing Fox News’ “Sean Hannity Show”: “I don’t know if she knows what’s going on, but all she does is sit there and blame the federal government.”
That same day—March 27—Whitmer told a Michigan radio station: “What I’ve gotten back is that vendors with whom we’ve procured contracts—they’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan. It’s really concerning. I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on.”
Gretchen Whitmer
Julia Pickett / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
A March 29 story in the Washington Monthly sheds light on what lay behind Whitmer’s inability to secure desperately-needed ventilators from her longtime vendors. Its headline ran: “What If Trump Decides to Save Republicans But Not Democrats?”
And it was followed by a sub-headline: “He’s providing vital resources to red states and ignoring blue states.”
Florida submitted a request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves—and received a shipment with everything three days later.
It received an identical shipment on March 23, and is awaiting a third.
In 2019, Trump demanded a “favor” from the embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—“dirt” on Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden—in return for releasing military aid Ukraine needed to combat an increasingly aggressive Russia.
Now he is apparently demanding Democratic governors praise him and blame themselves if they want their citizens to receive desperately-needed medical supplies.
On Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, bluntly told governors: “Take the blame when you have to. When you play with your boss, sometimes it’s better when you don’t win the golf game. He’s the boss, he’s got all the resources.”
This is precisely the dictatorial arrogance of which Republicans falsely accused President Barack Obama.
The Washington Monthly story concludes on an ominous note: “What if the White House simply gives all the masks and ventilators to red states and counties, leaving blue ones to struggle? What mechanisms of accountability are left?
“U.S. democracy wasn’t set up to deal with a president openly behaving like a James Bond villain while being protected by a political party behaving more like a mafia than a civic institution.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on March 9, 2020 at 12:07 am
On August 23, 2018, President Donald Trump offered an unprecedented reason why he shouldn’t be impeached.
Appearing on “Fox and Friends,” he said:
- “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job.”
- “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
- Pointing to his head, he said: “Because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”
He didn’t say: “I shouldn’t be impeached because I’m innocent. I didn’t collude with Russian Intelligence to subvert the 2016 Presidential election.”
Instead, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
Donald Trump
On February 5, the Republican-dominated Senate acquitted him of the two charges brought by the Democratic House of Representatives on December 18, 2019:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging former Vice President Joseph Biden, his possible 2020 Democratic rival; and
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
So Trump escaped impeachment—and the country is now suffering for it. On February 27, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its single worst one-day drop in history—falling 1,191 points.
The reason can be summed up in one word: Coronavirus. Simply put, investors hate uncertainty, because it makes it hard to plan. And nothing makes uncertainty like a new and frightening virus that’s easily passed on and for which there is no vaccine or cure.
Coronavirus
CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM / Public domain
And that causes millions of people to change their everyday behavior in unprecedented ways–such as not attending basketball games, eating in restaurants, flying on airplanes, going on cruises—and simply going to work.
Of course, Trump didn’t create the Coronavirus. But he has made it even more of a threat to Americans than it had to be.
In 2017, nearly 700 positions remained vacant at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because Trump imposed a hiring freeze. This affected programs supporting local and state public health emergency readiness, infectious disease control and chronic disease prevention.
Making the situation worse: The CDC’s director, Tom Friedman, stepped down in January, 2017, and it wasn’t until July that the agency got another one: Brenda Fitzgerald. But she served only until January, 2018. She was succeeded—two months later—by Robert Ray Redfield, Jr. He has been the director since then.
The post of director of the CDC is considered one of the most crucial public health positions in the government. The CDC is charged with tracking and preventing infectious disease outbreaks in the United States and worldwide.
CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia
Another way Trump has sabotaged America’s ability to respond to the Coronavirus outbreak: Gutting the permanent epidemic monitoring and command groups set up inside the White House: The National Security Council (NSC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The reason for this: Trump’s pathological jealousy of and hatred for former President Barack Obama.
Since taking office, Trump has made an all-out effort to destroy every vestige of Obama’s legacy as the first black President of the United States. And these disease-monitoring groups were set up by Obama following the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014.
In the spring of 2018, Trump pushed Congress to cut $15 billion from national health spending—and cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Federal $30 million fund for Complex Crises was eliminated as well.
In April, 2018, National Security Adviser John Bolton forced Tom Bossert, director of the infectious disease unit at DHS, to resign—along with his entire team. In May, 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s global health security unit shut down.
Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, who headed the unit, was reassigned.
Neither the NSC nor the DHS epidemic team has been replaced.
The global health section of the CDC was decimated, and had to reduce the number of countries it was monitoring from 49 to 10.
It’s popular to assume that Trump did all of this out of mere ignorance—and there’s plenty of proof of his ignorance in many areas (such as attributing windmills to causing cancer). But far more is at work here.
The vast majority of those who voted for Trump believe that the Federal Government is evil and its agencies that regulate business should be eliminated.
An example of this constituency is Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, which opposes all tax increases and has forced most Republicans to publicly pledge they will as well, under any circumstances.
His most famous quote: “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Under Trump, the epidemic-fighting arm of the Federal Government has become so shrunk that America itself may be the one to drown—in an epidemic of Coronavirus.
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In Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on February 25, 2020 at 12:06 am
In 2018, consumers were victimized in more “emotional romance scams” than any other category of fraud.
“That’s $143 million that consumers reported that they lost in 2018 to romance scams,” said Monica Vaca, of the Federal Trade Commission.
The average loss per victim amounted to $2,600—seven times higher than other frauds. Most of that money was wired or sent with gift cards.
But there are plenty of other online scams to be alert for:
- Email phishing scams
- Credit card scams
- Bank loan scams
- Lottery fee scams
- Online dating scams
- “Nigerian Prince” scams
Here’s how to protect yourself.
- Addressed Generally: “Attention!” “Dear Friend,” “Attention the owner of this email,” “Hello, Dear.” Your name is not mentioned, because this email has been mass-mailed to thousands of intended victims.
- Unsolicited: You’re told that you’ve won a lottery you never entered, or have inherited a fortune from someone you never knew existed.
- Appeals to Religion: “Hello Beloved in the Lord” or “Yours in Christ” seeks to create a bond with those who deeply believe in God.
- Misuse of English: Mis-spellings and faulty grammar usually denote someone—probably a foreigner—using English as a second language. Examples: Run-on sentences; “you’re” for “your”; “except” instead of “accept”; “Dear Beneficial” instead of “Dear Beneficiary.”
- Appeals to Sympathy: “My husband just died” or “I am dying of cancer.” This is to make you feel sorry for the sender and lower your guard as an intended victim.
- Use of Important Titles/Organizations: “Director,” ‘Barrister,” “Secretary General of the United Nations,” “Police Inspector.” This is to impress recipients and convince them that the email comes from a trusted and legitimate organization.
- Request for Personal Information: This includes some combination of: Name / Address / Telephone Number / Bank Name / Bank Account Number / Fax Number / Driver’s License Number / Occupation / Sex / Beneficiary / Passport Number
- Claims of Deposit: “We have deposited the check of your fund to your account” is a typical line to instantly grab your attention. Someone you’ve never heard of claims he has just put a huge amount of money into an account you know nothing about. Nor can you access it unless you first pay a “contact fee.”
- The “Bank” is in Africa: Unless you know you have relatives there, this should be a dead giveaway to a scam. Africa is a continent kept alive by the charity of other nations. It’s not in the business of doling out large sums of money to Westerners.
- Overseas Phone Numbers: If you call these, you’ll have a huge bill. So many people skip calling and just send the money “required” to receive their “cash prize.”
- Highly Personal Requests: Asking you—someone they’ve never met—to assume the burden of acting as the executor of their “Last Will and Testament.”
- Love Scams: The scammer poses as a man or woman—usually outside the United States—seeking love. A series of emails flows back and forth for days/weeks, until the scammer says s/he will be glad to fly to the United States to be yours. All you have to do is put up the money for the flight cost.
- “Make Money From Home”: With most employers refusing to hire, “work from home” scams promise a way to support yourself and your family. You’re required to provide bank information or pay an up-front “registration fee.” Then you wait for job orders—that never come.
- Debt Relief: Scammers promise to relieve most or all of your debt—for a large up-front fee. You pay the fee—and are not only out of that money but still in debt.
- Home Repair Schemes: Huge down payments are required for home repairs that never happen.
- “Free” Trial Offers: The service or product is free for awhile, but you must opt out later to avoid monthly billings.
- The Email Claims to Be From the FBI: The FBI is an investigative agency responsible to the U.S. Department of Justice. It does not resolve financial disputes or secure monies for “deserving” recipients. If the FBI contacts you, it does so by letter or sending agents to your address.
- “I Need Help”: You get an email claiming to be from someone you know—who’s “in jail here in Mexico” or some other foreign country. S/he begs you to send money for bail or bribes to win his/her freedom. If you get such an email, call the person to make certain. Don’t rush to send money—chances are it will go directly to a scammer.
FBI Headquarters
There are several commonsense rules to follow in protecting yourself from online scammers:
- Don’t trust people you’ve never met to want to give you money.
- Shop online only with well-known merchants who have a good reputation.
- Don’t click on unknown links—especially those in emails from unknown senders.
- If you’re required to pay an advance fee—“on faith”—to receive a big amount of money, the odds are it’s a scam.
- If you can’t find any solid information on a company, chances are it doesn’t exist.
- For additional information on how to protect yourself from cybercrime, check out the FBI’s page at https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber.
- If it sounds too good to be true, the odds are: It is untrue.
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WHAT TRUMP MOST FEARS: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on May 22, 2020 at 12:39 am…A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances. And if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
The conduct of weak men is very different. Made vain and intoxicated by good fortune, they attribute their success to merits which they do not possess. And this makes them odious and insupportable to all around them. And when they have afterwards to meet a reverse of fortune, they quickly fall into the other extreme, and become abject and vile.
—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
When Donald Trump—as a businessman and President—has been confronted by men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, he has reacted with rage and frustration.
Robert Mueller
Perhaps the key to Trump’s innermost fear can be found in a work of fiction—in this case, the 1996 historical novel, The Friends of Pancho Villa, by James Carlos Blake.
The book depicts the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) and its most famous revolutionary, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. it’s told from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Fierro, Villa’s most feared executioner. In one day, for example, Fierro—using two revolvers—executed 300 captured Federale soldiers.
As in history, Blake’s Fierro presides over the execution of David Berlanga, a journalist who had dared criticize the often loutish behavior of Villa’s men.
On Villa’s command, Fierro approaches Berlanga in a Mexico City restaurant and orders: “Come with me.”
Standing against a barracks wall, Berlanga lights a cigar and requests permission to finish it. He then proceeds to smoke it with such a steady hand that its unbroken ash extends almost four inches.
The cigar finished, the ash still unbroken, Berlanga drops the butt to the ground and says calmly: “I’m ready.”
Then the assembled firing squad does its work.
Later, Fierro is so shaken by Berlanga’s sheer fearlessness that he seeks an explanation for it. Sitting in a cantina, he lights a cigar and tries to duplicate Berlanga’s four-inch length.
But the best he can do is less than three inches. He concludes that Berlanga used a trick—but he can’t figure it out.
Rodolfo Fierro
It had to be a trick, Fierro insists, because, if it wasn’t, there were only two other explanations for such a calm demeanor in the face of impending death.
The first was insanity. But Fierro rules this out: He had studied Berlanga’s eyes and found no madness there.
That leaves only one other explanation (other than a trick): Sheer courage.
And Fierro can’t accept this, either—because it’s disturbing.
“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill….No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men’s lack of courage.
“There is even less courage in this world than there is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.
“But a man brave enough to control his fear of being killed, control it so well that no tremor reaches his fingers and no sign shows in his eyes…well. Such a man cannot be ruled, he can only be killed.”
Throughout his life, Trump has relied on bribery and intimidation. He well understands the power of greed and fear over most people.
What he doesn’t understand—and truly fears—is that some people cannot be bought or frightened.
People like Elliot Ness. Like Robert Mueller. And like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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