All posts by BP

Trump: Mission creep

International, ,

There seems to be a bit of Trump-style mission creep happening for U.S. troops deployed to the U.S. / Mexico border.trumpmcreepThe Trump administration has sent roughly 4,000 US troops and 2,000 National Guard personnel to the U.S. / Mexico border. The troops were deployed — according to the administration — to help assist U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials. The move was widely considered political theater-part of Trump’s long-running campaign against immigrants. Several governors have refused to deploy their states’ National Guard troops.

Now the Pentagon has announced the deployment of 300-plus additional troops — and the force’s mission is being expanded with some rules for engagement loosened. The changes, they say, expand the mission but are still designed to keep the military from violating longstanding prohibitions on military participation in domestic law enforcement.

Govexec.com reports these tasks and numbers include:

  • 160 troops who will be “driving high-capacity [Customs and Border Protection] vehicles to transport migrants;”
  • 100 more troops for “administrative support” work like cooking and passing out food, building or improving heaters, and “monitoring the welfare of individuals in CBP custody;”
  • 20 more troops for “attorney support” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel already in the region.

The Washington Post writes that soldiers will be able to hand out snacks and refreshments such as crackers and juice boxes. And will now be allowed to drive CBP vehicles […] military personnel would remain in a “segregated driver’s compartment” when driving migrants to detention facilities. Customs and Border Protection officials would provide security on those trips.

Handing out crackers, juice boxes and sitting in “segregated driver’s compartments,” well, that all sounds benign enough.

But in early April at the Texas border Donald Trump bemoaned to reporters that constraints prohibited the troops from getting as rough as he’d like. […] “Our military, don’t forget, can’t act like a military would act. Because if they got a little rough, everybody would go crazy. They have all these horrible laws that the Democrats won’t change [and] they will not change them,” the president said, without explaining what laws he means, or how his political opponents thwarted him.

So how benign can a tense situation remain when Trump, the Commander-in-chief is openly wishing the law would allow the situation to get “a little rougher?” Who does he think he is? Two guesses, and the first one doesn’t count — or as DT’s friend would say, “первый на не в счет ! ”

 

Bernie’s own book of the month club

Business, National, ,

Bernie Sanders has become a millionaire, and he did it by selling his new book! In blunt fashion Sanders explained his get rich strategy: “I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.” NYTimes.com

During the 2015 primary campaign the pre-millionaire Bernie employed a book buying/selling strategy that never would have gotten him rich but might be worth a glance now as the crowded Democratic primary race heats up.

According to FEC filings, the Sanders campaign bought thousands of dollars of his books. Sanders spent almost $445,000 of his donors’ campaign funds with Verso Books, the publisher of Outsider in the White House, which was a quick re-working of his earlier Bernie book: Outsider in the House. I mentioned the purchase in a diary: Campaign dollars to donuts back then without really taking aim at it; I don’t recall it making any waves in that long campaign.

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Buying your own books with your campaign-donor dollars sure looks a little shady, but it isn’t unheard of or apparently illegal. But since the Citizens United decision super-PAC dark money is running rampant in campaigns — and with the six-member Federal Election Commission often deadlocked, enforcement is spotty.

In recent years candidates for national office have been regularly buying their own books (aka 300-page hardcover party favors) with campaign money. For instance in 2015 the csmonitor.com reported that Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign paid $122,252.00 to the publisher of  his book A Time for Truth. Ben Carson, Sarah Palin, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney all used campaign or PAC funds to buy their own books.

The FEC found a variety of likely violations made by Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign over a book-promotion deal and campaign funding. After three years of wrangling, a deadlocked vote between Democratic and Republican Commission members halted any possibility that the FEC would be investigating the former Speaker of the House.

Now, I’m fine with Bernie Sanders in the millionaire club, despite what some see as hypocrisy. But he really shouldn’t be in that particular book club.

WCAX/Gray TV’s Greta Van Susteren: “I am now the local media.”

local/regional, National, , , , ,

WCAX’s catch phrase was once “Vermont’s Own News station” but no more. In May 2017 the station became part of Gray Television, a large  corporation based in Atlanta, GA, with 144 local TV stations covering 10.4% of U.S. households. Layoffs hit the WCAX newsroom about a year later.

Although not considered to be as openly right-wing as Sinclair Broadcasting — which stipulates all outlets must carry conservative political content — Gray TV may be “Foxifying” WCAX  a bit.

This fall, just in time for the 2020 presidential race, Gray-owned stations will begin airing Full Court Press, a Sunday public-affairs program featuring FoxNews veteran Greta Van Susteren. On theHill.com Gray TV Chairman and CEO Hilton Hatchet Howell, Jr., characterized Full Court Press this way: “Our goal is to provide critical information without bias to allow viewers to form their own opinions and reach their own decisions by exploring all sides of a complex issue.”

For those not familiar with her, Van Susteren spent 14years as a prime-time FoxNews host — replaced by Tucker Carlson in 2016.Then in 2017 she was on MSNBC but was dropped after six months.plutotweet

At Fox, Van Susteren once wondered if the government was wasting our tax dollars at NASA because of the long delay getting satellite images from Pluto back to Earth.

More recently Media Matters reported something more problematic : With one terrible tweet, Greta Van Susteren helped fuel a conspiracy theory that made its way to the president, who repeated it within hours

On Twitter, former Fox News and MSNBC host Greta Van Susteren tweeted that the “FBI obviously tipped off CNN,” adding that “even if you don’t like Stone, it is curious why Mueller’s office tipped off CNN.”

Nearly three hours later, Van Susteren conceded that she might be wrong about CNN acting on a tip. Even so, the original tweet, which had accumulated thousands of retweets, remained up and continued to be shared. The new tweet, correcting her mistake, had just 95 retweets at the time of this writing. [The Mueller investigation later vigorously denied the claim in a court filing]

The 2016 presidential primary and general election brought in upwards of $100 million on political ads in broadcast and cable television in New England markets. And now Full Court Press here in Vermont with a little bit of FoxNews is going to get a share this fall for Gray Television. vanSuswcax2

Van Susteren told The LA Times: […] she expects Gray’s geographical reach to help in booking presidential candidates to appear on the program.

“Politics begins in local markets,” Van Susteren said. “I am now the local media. I’m going to reach their voters.”

Gives a whole new spin to the late columnist Peter Freyne’s moniker for WCAX: he always called it WGOP; only now, of course he might call it WFOX, or WGRAY.

Howard Dean, Canadian cannabis corporation, and Anheuser-Busch

Business, National, , ,

VtDigger.com reported this past weekend that the former Vermont Governor and DNC Chairman Howard Dean has formally joined the board of directors of Tilray, a large (Nasdaq traded) Canadian-based international cannabis company that manufactures and markets cannabis flower and extract products. There was no mention of how much compensation corporate board members receive.

Dean actually “went to pot” months ago, in December 2018, when he, along with former RNC Chairman Michael Steele became advisors to Tilray.

As recently as 2003, when running for president, Dean was opposed to legalizing pot; according to VtDigger.com he said: […] decriminalizing drugs would send “a very bad message to young people.” The country already had issues with alcohol and tobacco, “and adding a third drug is not a good idea.” Fast-forward to 2019: Faced with “the combination of deciding medical marijuana might really have some efficacy, backed up by studies that I thought were reasonable, which I didn’t think were reasonable 10 years earlier, backed up by my daughter’s public-defender experience, I flipped.”

As a physician Dean was impressed with the pharmaceutical operation Tilray is running and he was impressed by research that shows CBD is useful as a treatment for seizures associated with two severe forms of epilepsy.tilrayfortune1

But Tilray is big business and part of a fast growing hyper-competitive industry. Therefore they are looking at a wide ranging menu of possible uses for their cannabis products for shareholder profit. It wasn’t mentioned in VtDigger that early this year, not long after the two former national party chairs signed on  that Tilray  announced that it had partnered with Anheuser-Busch in a $100-million venture to study (and possibly market) not only a non-alcoholic CBD beverage but also one containing THC … the psychoactive ingredient.

I wonder if you will need Doctor Dean’s prescription for that drink.

The Valley News: reporting on the minimum

Business, local/regional, , ,

The business reporter for The Valley News recently did a story about minimum wage changes in the works in Vermont and New Hampshire legislatures. Both states have Democratic majorities with GOP governors who oppose hikes. In 2018 Vermont Governor Scott vetoed a minimum wage increase.

The focus of the VNews article is on “tipped” service workers that are allowed to be paid lower minimum wages than other workers and in theory can make up the difference in gratuities.

At issue in both states are changes to the overall minimum wage and possible hikes to the minimum for tipped workers. Currently: In New Hampshire, the minimum wage for employees who earn more than $30 per month through tips — known as the “tipped minimum wage” — is 45% of the applicable $7.25 per hour minimum wage, or $3.27 per hour.

In Vermont, tipped minimum wage for employees who earn more than $120 per month from tips is 50% of the applicable $10.78 per hour minimum wage, or $5.39 per hour.

Both states have written into their rules that if a server’s tip income falls below the general wage floor then the employer is required to pay the difference to bring the server up to the general per-hour minimum wage.

While that may seem to paint a bleak picture for the waitstaff’s income, the opposite is often true. As a rule, servers are the highest-paid non-management employees in the restaurant business.

Included are  quote and comments from Governor Sununu’s office (who opposes any change) and a representative of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce (a group that has opposed hikes in the past). The reporter also wrangled a couple comments from two high-end pub/restaurant-business owners (who presumably oppose changes). And finally he chatted to three servers who work for tips in the same prosperous local establishments. No comments by low-end tipped workers, a legislative sponsor, or  an economist are included.EPItipped1

If the article had included a supporter of the changes, they might have related a less rosy picture of the current situation … the negative points most people working at a sub-minimum wage for tips experience. The Economic Policy Institute wrote in 2018: that in states that have a lower tipped minimum wage [such as Vermont and New Hampshire] , tipped workers have worse economic outcomes and higher poverty rates than their counterparts in equal treatment states (regular state minimum wage plus tips, the law in eight states).

Now, to be fair I have to assume all the newly elected legislators from New Hampshire and Vermont Democratic majorities who support minimum wage hikes were reluctant to talk to the newspaper. Because otherwise the VNews business reporter would have managed to include a quote from one or even two of them…wouldn’t he?

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Leaving Howell: VT group threatens to move en masse if state won’t address concerns

local/regional,

Taking a page from businesses that often leverage the threat of picking up and moving offices and jobs out of state unless certain tax breaks and incentives are provided, a group of Vermont residents in Howell Center are making a similar pitch.howellinsign

Calling themselves “Leaving Howell”; a group of 20-25 households in Howell Center (part of Howell Falls) have signed and published a pledge to sell out and relocate to New Hampshire. The group’s major concerns  — maintaining public infrastructure: roads, local aging sewage treatment plants, and reliable broadband service — carry state wide implications for commerce.

They draw a contrast between the millions of dollars and attention lavished on out-of-state and in-state businesses (programs difficult for the state to audit). This they say happens even while many local concerns that could be addressed with equal vigor by Vermont state agencies are given only scant and piecemeal attention.

“The entire state would benefit if Howell and other towns were actively managing these challenges. State development agencies should refocus on local municipal needs and problems” said Percy Alleline, the group’s spokesperson. “If tax incentives and grants can be used to supposedly lure and retain out-of-state businesses here, why not a similar effort for Vermont’s small town residents’ needs?” Alleline added that Leaving Howell membership almost doubled in size after news spread last year about the Agency of Commerce and Community Development’s plan to give young out-of-state professionals $10,000 to move here and work remotely online. “For many, that personalized relocation program and the accompanying advertising blitz was a last straw — and anger turned to action.” Group members have observed that craft brewed beer can help but will not save us.

Few people in Howell Falls doubt that the problems facing small towns require  state help, but some are uneasy with this level of activism. While development officials say it is unlikely all of the group would pack up and leave en masse for New Hampshire, the threat is not taken lightly by town selectman worried about their property tax base. “A loss of even one or two households in town could affect our tax base.’  

The Howell Register in an opinion piece agrees with the organization’s overall goals but doubts their methods. They believe few are likely to scuttle across the Connecticut River to Live free or Die. Four of the group’s principals — Percy Alleline, William Haydon, Royce Bland and Tobias Esterhase are large land and business owners. The Register concluded “… there are three of them and Alleline that are seventh generation residents… real Vermont ‘Howellers’. ”

The Onion cure for Mueller Report & mudseason blues

International,

Haul yourself out of a springtime funk-hole with a bit of satire.

The Onion.com: If it wasn’t Trump whom Russian President Putin was conspiring with in the 2016 U.S. election, then Vladimir is left to ponder who he was dealing with.vladonion

MOSCOW—Saying that he had been “totally blindsided” by the revelations from the recently released findings of the Mueller investigation, a shocked Vladimir Putin reportedly came to the realization Tuesday that he didn’t conspire with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign after all. “What the hell? I worked so hard on this—if I wasn’t colluding with the Trump campaign, who the hell was I colluding with?” said the dumbfounded Russian president, growing increasingly angry [added emphasis]

[…]“Man, it seemed so legit. I can’t believe I let myself get conned like this. I spent so much time emailing back and forth with DonaldTrump46@hotmail.com about compromising the democratic voting process, and now it turns out it was all fake? And we spent so much time gathering all that kompromat on the wrong people. Goddammit, I feel like I’ve wasted my life.” At press time, Putin was frantically double-checking that Russia had assisted in propping up a dictator in Syria and not some other country.

The amazing DNC voter data machine: Who gets the profit?

Business, local/regional, National, ,

Some news just washes by like untreated sludge in the stormwater overflow, but here’s some national news with a local angle that fetched up on the shore last week.

Reports are that Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez has organized a new data-exchange operation. Perez is matching the successful GOP voter-data operation on display in the last presidential vote that is believed to have boosted their turnout. The plan is for the Democrats to do as the Republicans did and form a for-profit entity; Perez’s new organization will be gathering all available Democratic data now scattered throughout state party organizations and some non-profits.

The complex operation is coming together  after months of serious internal wrangling. Politico.com reported last December that state party officials were looking to know who exactly would stand to benefit financially from the new for profit data base entity.

Now Howard Dean, with stints as a Vermont governor, a presidential candidate, and as DNC Chairman has agreed to  oversee the new DNC voter-info project. AP reports: The arrangement would allow the national party, state parties, and independent political action groups on the left to share voter data in real time during campaigns. That means, for example, that a field worker for a congressional campaign in Iowa and another for an independent political action committee knocking on doors in Florida could update a master voter file essentially as they work. When a presidential campaign spends big money on consumer data to update voter profiles, the new information would go into the central file as well. And all participating organizations would have access to the latest information.

The new exchange will operate as an independent for-profit enterprise led initially by Democratic strategist Jen O’Malley Dillon, once a top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. [emphasis added]DNCdata

The deal worked out with the DNC chair to calm the waters among the state party officials divvies up the control over the data-exchange between former Hillary people and people seen as progressives — Howard Dean and Ken Martin (leader of the Democratic state party chairs association, a MN liberal inspired by the late Senator Paul Wellstone).

As APNews reports: Martin and Perez would chair a party committee that would license the party’s voter files to O’Malley Dillon’s group, which would establish its own agreements with PACs and other groups. Dean would chair the governing board of the new outfit, and once assembled, that board will hire staff to run the operation.

Some competition and general wrangling for resources between the national organization and state party organizations are nothing new. But a for-profit business model — copied from the GOP — stocked full of licensed DNC voter data available for a price seems designed to invite grifters up to the campaign table for a big-money feast. And as always there is the ever-present potential for hackers gaining access to all that data — all those eggs in one basket could prove an irresistible target.

By splitting up oversight Perez, Dean, and all the professional movers and shakers in the presidential election industrial complex seem to have decided for now to navigate this one with some care. Except there are still questions: 1) who keeps the profits; and 2) why should state and local volunteers provide free labor to stock a data base for sale to favored, deep-pocketed entities/campaigns, when the “profits” are not going to the parties? I’d hate to see the Democrats following the Republican-capitalist model: privatize the profits and socialize the cost and the consequences.

I hope Perez, Dean, et al., at least manage to keep the peace. After all there’s not much riding on this next election but the whole ball of wax. But let’s not lose sight of our principles in the process.

Using hot highway de-icer: radioactive AquaSalina®

Business, local/regional, National, , ,

In Ohio a Cleveland Plain Dealer report on state legislation surrounding a 2017 public health report details radiation hazards from a salt-brine road de-icer mix used there. And the risk is more than a little alarming. keepback

Salt-brine is defined by the American Public Works Association as a solution of salt (typically sodium chloride, calcium chloride or magnesium chloride) and water.

It seems AquaSalina, the commercial brine mixture spread all over Ohio, has: […] elevated levels of radioactivity in excess of state limits on the discharge of radioactive materials. The average radioactivity in AquaSalina also exceeded the drinking water limits for Radium 226 and Radium 228 by a factor of 300. Human consumption of any amount of AquaSalina is highly discouraged, the report said. [find Ohio Department of Natural Resources pdf here]

Ohio’s Duck Creek Energy, Inc., maker of the trademarked product, says the de-cier brine and dust control agent  “AquaSalina® is a natural saltwater solution produced from ancient seas dating back to the Silurian age almost 425 million years ago.”

That is likely true — as far as it goes — but the “ancient sea water” is also toxic oil-field brine dredged up from conventional (not shale fracking) oil and gas wells. At the wells the waste water is stored in tanks and residual oil and gas is removed after it floats to the surface. The toxic waste water — err, I mean “ancient sea water” — is trucked to Duck Creek facilities where volatile organics and trace minerals — but not naturally occurring radium — are filtered out. What remains is rebranded (apparently with a straight face) as AquaSalina “natural saltwater” road brine and dust control agent.

Problem is: “Heavy metals and radiologicals accumulate in the soil and become problematic for drinking water,” said Trish Demeter, the Ohio Environmental Council vice president of Policy, Energy. “They don’t just go away. The more you use deicers [and dust control agents] the more these toxins build up over a long period of time.” Not sure if Ohioans should feel complacent, even though the report does say they believe radiation exposure from wintertime use of AquaSalina was “unlikely” to exceed human dosage limits. In the previous winter Ohio road crews used one million gallons of AquaSalina, a fraction of the 10 million total gallons of de-icer mixes used. But then again, it is the only proven radioactive mix splashed on the roads.

 The State of Vermont started experimenting with salt-brine highway deicers (the non-radioactive variety as far as we know) about ten years ago. The VTrans FAQ webpage says that the state currently uses them to “jump start” the melting process and to minimize the amount of salt that bounces into the ditches. The salt we typically use is sodium chloride, the same as on your dinner table at home. Then again, VTrans has not yet (that we know of) released the exact chemical make-up of its brine formula.

Road salt, brine de-icing brews, and mixtures are widely seen as culprits that not only pollute streams but prematurely rust car bodies, corrode brake lines, and erode concrete highway structures. In 2017 a Vermont bill that would have banned the use of sodium chloride, calcium chloride and or magnesium chloride brine mixes was introduced but not passed.

Alternatives to salt-based brines are being tested. Carbohydrate sugars in juices left over from commercial industrial processing beets, cheese, potatoes and pickle brine are effective at lower temperatures. Beet wastewater reportedly smells like stale coffee and may change oxygen levels in waterways. Dumping tons and tons of anything on the highways is bound to be problematic for water runoff and throw habitats out of whack.

While it may be difficult to find out exactly what homemade blend or commercial salt-brine product VTrans may be using, an increase in rusty trucks and cars, eroding bridges, and polluted streams seem to suggest there’s evidence of increased harm to balance a supposed increase in vehicular safety on otherwise slick roads. The assumption appears to be that spraying salt-brine  can’t be as bad as sluicing ancient radioactive sea water all over the roadways … or can it ?

Big Pharma drug money & big museums

Business, local/regional, National,

Did you know Vermont went to “war” last September? “We’re going to war with Big Pharma” said Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo along with Attorney General TJ Donovan at a press event to announce that Vermont had joined 23 other states suing the manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma. “The basis of our lawsuit is this: Purdue Pharma lied, they misrepresented, they fabricated, they deceived, and they spread falsehoods, and they made billions off of it and they created a path of destruction that the state of Vermont is still reeling from,” Donovan said.

And later Governor Scott announced he wanted to support the effort too, although he accepted and will not return campaign donations from Purdue.drugmoney

The “war” against Purdue Pharma that Vermont joined is being fought on a second front, and the Sackler family — the owners — are beginning to feel heat. Thanks to OxyContin, their wealth rivals that of the Walton (WalMart) and Rockefeller families. The Sacklers are known for their (upscale) philanthropy, and accordingly have donated to and funded dozens of well known museums and universities around the world. Those institutions are now being targeted.

The Guardian.com reports on a recent demonstration: US art photographer and activist Nan Goldin brought the Guggenheim Museum in New York to a standstill on Saturday night as thousands of fake prescriptions were dropped into the atrium to protest against the institution’s acceptance of donations from the family who owns the maker of OxyContin – the prescription painkiller at the root of America’s opioids crisis.

Once addicted herself to OxyContin, Nan Goldin is quoted in January telling Art Forum magazine: “They have washed their blood money through the halls of museums and universities around the world,” she wrote. “We demand that the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma use their fortune to fund addiction treatment and education. There is no time to waste.”

In New York these institutions are recipients of Sackler family foundations:

Seventeen major arts and educational institutions in the UK are major recipients as well as others in France (The Louvre) and Germany.

And even right here in Vermont the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation gave 313 historical Ancient Near Eastern, Chinese, Korean, Byzantine, Islamic, and Pre-Columbian American  art objects to the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in 2017 according to a press release.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey alleged in a recent 274 page Purdue suit memorandum that: “[…] the Sacklers flooded Massachusetts with sales reps, influenced state legislation, and financially backed medical facilities and universities so they could tout Purdue opioids.” If these charges are any indication of what is to come, that family’s name may not be what famous-image-minded international institutions want over their front entrance or on their donor list.

The Sacklers did what all upper echelon corporados do: privatize profit and socialize cost/consequences. Is there no PR advisor to these robber barons who might recommend they fund an addiction treatment center in every state instead of more art museums for the rich?