Wednesday, July 22, 2020

The Evils of Slavery between the Lines

Sometimes a historical document looks dry and innocuous. That is until you study it. My daughter came upon these old market bills recently. They recount things of horror.

Bounties on Indigineous

I want to keep this simple. This first one establishes bounties for killing American Indigineous people. It is evidence of mass murder.

Evidence of Rape

This second one is a bill of sale for slaves. What makes it particularly ugly is that the slaves are portrayed as "mulattos" and "creoles," which in the language of New Orleans of the time, were "mixed breed", it is possible that the master of the children for sale, could even be the children of the owner. This was a horror.

My Daughter got rid of these things. They are vile. It is a vile memory, and it is sad, some of our ancestors did these things, casualty and with no real consciousness of their evil.

I won't be coming back to this subject, I hope.

Friday, July 17, 2020

When Graffiti is Terrorism

DHS Soldiers violating State Law
These fake "Police" are Homeland Security!


Exercised over graffiti
Chad Wolf gave a justification for his illegal violation of Posse Commitatus and invasion of Portland Oregon to the NY post

refering to 47 straight days of protests, as follows:

“Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property, including the federal courthouse, and attack the brave law enforcement officers protecting it,” Post

Except the record is a bit mixed. Most other witnesses say the protests stayed peaceful until Chad's private army attacked them! 

 Wolf wrote. “A federal courthouse is a symbol of justice – to attack is to attack America.” Post

For his list of assaults?

Chad Wolf is convinced that the following crimes are terrorism;
1. Graffiti
2. Breaking or damaging windows
3. Damaging fencing.
4. Throwing grain at his troops
5. Breaking a card reader.
6. Pointing lasers at his troops.
7. Damaging a camera.
8. Fireworks [before 4th of July]
9. Doxing Contract security
The protesters deny most of this, but each complaint refers to 2-300 "violent anarchists." I'm sure some might be. But most of these offenses, if true, merit fines, not Federal Troops snatching people off the streets.

Disappearing demonstrators in Portland Oregon


Last night I was browsing twitter, trying to bore myself to sleep, and instead I ran into articles about people being grabbed off the street in Portland, Oregon. The first articles I thought someone was trolling me. Then I looked. And it really was going on! So I tweeted about it last night, and thought I'd write about it today, so I don't forget and because this is more serious than a lot of the other awful things going on right now. It is right up there with COVID-19. Indeed, since Portland is experiencing a COVID-19 upsurge, the fact that Homeland Security is sending in troops, not invited by Mayor or Governor, and with no rank, insignia or respect for rule of law, is very serious indeed. Instead of Trump sending in doctors and medical supplies, he is sending in troops to invade the city.

Officers with no badge or insignia are grabbing people in the dead of the night, throwing them into patrol cars, and their excuse is “antifa”.

The High Court ignores the Constitution and the 24th Amendment

This week the Supreme Court ratified Florida's poll tax on former felons, completely ignoring both the spirit and letter of the 24th Amendment!

The 24th Amendment clearly states:
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.”

Florida had barred felons who had served their time from voting. The state recently passed a constitional amendment stating:

“all terms of their sentence including parole or probation.”

Naturally the legislature passed a law “that required residents who have been convicted of a felony to pay all court costs, fees and fines before they can become eligible to vote.”

Since the court system doesn't seem to have any obligation to present a final bill to prisoners when they've done their time, this amounted to a poll tax, since there is no requirement that the courts not pile on additional fees (that amount to taxes) and in usual style, can turn a felon into a debt slave for years after they have done their time. Voting rights advocates sued, the first time on the grounds it discriminated against the poor, and the second time because such gratuitous fees and levies amount to a poll tax aimed at preventing the poor from voting. The district court noted these thingsf and also concluded:

“that because it could take years for the state to figure out how much residents with past convictions must pay to be eligible to vote, the law will discourage voters from registering at all, because they will be afraid that they will be charged with fraud if they make a mistake.”

So being mistaken about whether one has paid the taxes or not would lead to further incarceration!

Scotus Blog

This was appealed on 24th amendment grounds and also matters of justice. The appeal was denied with no grounds cited. Obviously to prevent the constitutional amendment from actually helping most citizens it applies to by the 6/3 Republican Majority.

Sonya Sotomayor notes:

“This Court’s order prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida’s primary election simply because they are poor,”

And

“And it allows the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to disrupt Florida’s election process just days before the July 20 voter-registration deadline for the August primary, even though a preliminary injunction had been in place for nearly a year and a Federal District Court had found the State’s pay-to-vote scheme unconstitutional.”

This is another example of how the Conservative Judges interpret "due process" meaning "following the forms" and don't really care if either the spirit or the substance of the constitution is applied.

Sources and Further Reading
https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/sotomayor-blasts-supreme-court-for-upholding-florida-poll-tax-that-excludes-voters-simply-because-they-are-poor/
Just as Bad:
Barr Vs Lee

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Reforms needed to Stop cheating

There is a reason that Trump wanted his operative Roger Stone out of jail this fall.  The GOP WILL try to cheat this year, both by a firehose of dishonest but emotional propaganda and by direct election fraud. People like Karl Rove & Roger Stone are critical to the effort.
Election security exper Jennifer Conn gives advice on stopping them:
The threat:
1. Cyberattack, or insider, efforts to alter election rolls to impede voting.
2. Cyberattack, or insider, efforts to actually, change recorded votes or flip them.
3. Intentional or negligent handling of mail in ballots to impede casting votes.
4. Breakdowns of voting machines or equipment inadequate to handle voter volume.
Vulnerabilities
1. Mail in Ballots, delay or destruction are the main concern. Fraud is less an issue with them.
2. E voting. Electronic voting can be programmed to record different votes from what voters thought they cast.
3. E pollbooks, are as dangerous as e voting, can be hacked, fail or misbehave for other reasons.
4. Encoded activation cards & bar codes can be used to disguise deliberate flipping of votes as it happens.
5. Machines break down or are supplied in insufficient numbers.
6. Polling sites closed, located abusively and/or underresourced in material & personnel.
7.  Bar codes are useful for numbering ballots but otherwise are a vulnerability.
8. Any scanner, modem or electronic tabulating device can be hacked if attached to the networked or tampered with by nefarious insiders.
9. Centralized tabulating is notorious for being vulnerable to nefarious insiders.
Remedies
1. Paper ballots are needed to memorialize voting for verification & validation.
2. Paper polling records are also needed for the same reason.
3.  Records should be eye readable, hand countable and preserved for auditing, verification & validation.
4. Election judges should act like judges.
5.  All parties involved should be present to monitor recording, tabulating & verification activities.
6. Partisan officials should not touch anything without witnesses present.
7. All election documentation should be preserved.
8. Elections should be validated and audited by default.
9. Criminal penalties should attach to official vote fraud.
10. Ballots should never be trashed. Spoiled ballots should be be documented [for why they were spoiled] and available in case their invalidation was wrong.
11. Voters should have an automatic right and the infrastructure to report
What we can do
1 support efforts to reform our process.
2. Fill out requests to vote by mail early.
3. If can't vote by mail, fill out your sample ballot in advance to speed voting.
4. Insist on paper ballots.
5. Volunteer as a poll worker or poll watcher if possible, but wear PPE if you do it this year!
6. Get informed!
Of course there is more. You can volunteer with protect our votes & similar below.
Additional info




Sunday, July 12, 2020

Reforms Needed to save our Federal Republic

In an article titled: Post-Roger Stone: Ten ideas for repairing Trump’s justice system By Jennifer Rubin, She writes:

“President Trump granting clemency to his crony Roger Stone, who served as the go-between for the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, on practically the eve of Stone’s incarceration for multiple crimes attendant to his coverup on behalf of the president, is grotesquely corrupt but unsurprising.”

She recounts the latest Cassus Belli of Trump's perfidy

She notes that “Stone virtually confessed to a quid pro quo,” (To me he was boasting), telling Howard Fineman,

“He [Trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”

I don't think anyone with integrity doesn't feel that this wasn't a high crime and a misdemeanor.Rubin writes:

“Silence for clemency. A separate system of justice for the president’s henchmen. This is the very definition of corruption.”

Former Candidate Romney put it baldly in a tweet:

"Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president." Link to Tweet

She reports:

“By this action, President Trump abused the powers of his office in an apparent effort to reward Roger Stone for his refusal to cooperate with investigators examining the President’s own conduct,”

She also reports how House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a written statement released Friday:

“No other president has exercised the clemency power for such a patently personal and self-serving purpose.”

Actually, her hero George Herbert Walker Bush, exercised his clemency and pardon powers in 1992 for just such a patently corrupt and self serving cause when he pardoned the perps in the Iran Contra scandal. But what counts with Republicans is what they are doing now, so I can forgive past crimes as long as folks have seen the light. This post is about her suggestions for fixing the problems. I'm endeavering to analyze the problem by critiquing her suggestions. Most of them are obvious or things that were taken out of the law due to misuse or to protect the wrong people. Any reforms made should be based on firm Constitutional Grounds. And if that is not adequate, it might take a Constitutional Amendment.

Related Posts
Iran Contra and Bill Barr
Trump Got His Chaika
Impeachment As Regulation

Saturday, July 11, 2020

Clarify Impeachment

Nancy Pelosi was asked about President Trump's plan to commute Roger Stone's sentance and replied that she is looking into legislation that would forbid the President using his pardon power that way.  This is exactly the scenario I forsaw 2 years + ago.  
Simplistic legislation would probably fail a constitutional test. But there is a way to proceed that might succeed. There are two basis for this.
The house has "Sole Power of Impeachment"
That means not only does the house have the power to impeach executive & Judiciary members, but it has the power to write the rules of impeachment.  That means they can define the officers and offices involved, procedures, entry points and when and how a case should go to the Senate for trial.
Except In Cases of Impeachment
As I noted before, the President:
“shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."
Thus the power to pardon is limited by impeachment.  So the House should be able to stop the President using his pardon power? But how.
Simply forbidding him won't work. He is not impeached at the moment because the case went to the Senate and they acquitted him.  SCOTUS would laugh such a law out the door.
Define the rules of impeachment
What congress needs to do is the opposite of what they have done in the past. The house needs to make impeachment part of its regular order, defining what can be impeached and setting up administrative bodies combining the powers of special prosecutors and Inspector Generals to police those infractions.
Open Impeachment
Essentially the house needs to have an open impeachment inquiry run by an inspector general under the supervision of a house Impeachment committee and define the terms under which individuals are part of an impeachment inquiry into the President and he cannot pardon them, or they are under the panels protection until it goes to trial in the Senate. It would function like a grand jury except legal products would become parts of censure resolutions & legislation.
Nancy can use Roberts 4 guidelines as input into defining impeachment legislation.






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