Search Results for: chris collins

It is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. – Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The reckoning is almost upon us, and local Republicans seem to be having trouble running on their records, or any coherent agenda. They are, instead, relying on the old standbys of culture war and resentment. 

Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his trusty sidekick Richard Gates stand indicted, accused of “conspiracy against the United States”, tax evasion, conspiracy to launder money, and other crimes relating to their enrichment as representatives of Viktor Yanukovich, a corrupt Ukranian kleptocrat with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Another former Trump foreign policy aide, George Papadopolous, pled guilty in early October for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia during the Trump campaign. Papadopoulous was engaged in collusion to dig up Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton, including “emails”. Manafort’s patron, Yanukovych, was ousted in a 2014 revolution, and lives in exile in Russia under Putin’s protection. It was that overthrow, and the promised resulting hastening of Ukraine’s departure from Putin’s Russia’s sphere of influence into the waiting arms of NATO and the EU that led Putin to have his proxy army invade and occupy eastern Ukraine, shoot down a Malaysian airliner, and to concoct a sham plebiscite whereby the Crimean peninsula went from being Ukranian to Russian territory overnight.

It was, in turn, Russian aggression and its Anschluss of Ukranian territory that led the US and the EU to impose sanctions on Russia’s oligarchs to make it more difficult for them to spend their stolen fortunes in London, San Tropez, and New York. When combined with the Magnitsky Act, which specifically punishes a handful of corrupt Russian officials for the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, you have the broad-brush outline of why it is that Putin’s Russia is busy trying to sow division and havoc in the US and EU. It begins to explain why Russia, and her agents and tools promoted Brexit, spent money on social media ads and useful idiots to deepen social and political divisions in the US, backed the Trump campaign and sought to destroy Hillary Clinton’s, recruited a naive Tonawandan to push a “Calexit” campaign, and other separatist movements elsewhere. 

While there may not yet be definitive proof that the Trump campaign colluded with Putin’s Russia to meddle in the 2016 campaign, the motive is crystal clear. The fact that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has a cooperating witness regarding the Trump campaign’s Russia outreach is also quite significant. Putin’s nobility can’t remain under economic stress forever. What’s the point of plundering Russia’s wealth if you can’t spend it? 

Against that backdrop, it bears repeating that Erie County’s Republican Committee is almost single-handedly responsible for the Presidency of Donald Trump. It began with a sub rosa effort to quash a proposed Jon Bon Jovi buyout of the Buffalo Bills, segued into an aborted 2013 attempt to convince Trump to run against Cuomo in 2014, and ended up with Clarence’s own Chris Collins coming out as the first sitting Congressman to endorse Trump’s candidacy. All this culminated in what we have today – a country at war with itself; half incensed that Puerto Ricans have been without electricity and clean water for over a month, and the other half offended by pre-game anthem etiquette. 

As we look, then, at the efforts that Republicans locally are mounting in various regional and countywide races of note, we find that nonsense has overtaken substance. Take these, for example. Here’s incumbent Erie County Legislator Ted Morton going after welfare recipients. 

Sure, there’s nothing easier than heaping scorn and derision against the poorest people in your community, but this recyclable claims that Morton is doing something to prevent welfare recipients from spending benefits on cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling. What, exactly, is he doing? Several quick Google searches of various terms including Morton’s name and welfare fraud turn up nothing. Not one news story or article exists highlighting the important work Mr. Morton has accomplished to stamp out welfare fraud. The most recent story I found involving welfare fraud in Erie County has to do with a criminal case. Morton hasn’t even press released anything having to do with this issue neither recently, nor in 2014, or 2015. This is Morton using class warfare and race hate to spur his suburban constituency, which probably pays scant attention to his legislative tenure, to turn out. Don’t believe me? Morton also thinks you’re innumerate or stupid. Here’s another piece of literature he’s sending out, slamming his opponent: 

So, the Grassroots political club endorsed Bruso. How was Bruso “bought off”? If we’re rejecting “politicians who are proud to be supported by organizations raided by the FBI”, someone should sit Mr. Morton down and tell him about Donald Trump’s campaign manager and, frankly, Chris Grant. This side of the mailer reads, “East Side” no fewer than three times – what do you think Morton is trying to convey here to his constituents? I think I know. Let’s flip it over. 

So, Grassroots endorsed Bruso on June 9th. The FBI raided Grassroots as part of the expanding Pigeon / Mazurek investigation on June 15th. I mean, I guess it’s true that Bruso was pleased with the support “within days”, but it was within a few days before the raid.

I would suggest that Morton lie better, but don’t forget that the FInancial Industries Regulatory Authority, or “FINRA”, the body charged with regulating stockbrokers and financial advisors, temporarily banned Morton from practicing his profession in August 2013 for borrowing over $300,000 from his customers and lying about it. His employer fired him over it. Morton may stand for the National Anthem and kick up some latent race hate over it, but he engaged in corruption before he was ever elected; just before he was first elected. 

Likewise, this piece of literature, generated by the New York State Republican Committee, has substituted dog-whistles for pretty blatant racism. 

Does it get much more obvious than this? Here you have the state Republicans touting two incumbents and one opportunistic Paladino “Democrat” running as a Republican, and instead of running on their respective records, accomplishments, or achievements, it opens with what can be generously described as an effort to manufacture outrage against black football players protesting police brutality, and setting these three white men up as the thing standing between you and Colin Kaepernick’s afro. What, precisely, does the controversy over kneeling have to do with issuing driver’s licenses, law enforcement, or being a fiscal watchdog? 

My favorite part of this pathetic effort to kick up a little good old-fashioned race hate is this line, from the back side of the mailer: “Are you tired of being convinced that you are narrow-minded because you are patriotic and believe in our traditional American values?” Yes, it really says, “being convinced“. Setting aside whether “Democratic Candidates think ‘taking a knee’ is acceptable”, this, too, is nothing more than an effort by Republicans to stoke white resentment and anti-black hatred in a very segregated area. It is incredible and unconscionable that this is the best the Republicans have to offer. Nothing about Trump or the Trump agenda, nothing about these candidates’ individual accomplishments or positions – just little more than, paraphrasing, ‘we share your hatred for uppity negroes’.

Not to be outdone, Representative Chris Collins seems to be all but ready to announce his campaign to unseat Governor Cuomo by deliberately (?) mangling American history.

By way of background, Collins was one of only two New York Congressmen to vote in favor of Trump’s proposed tax reform plan, which would eliminate the deductions for mortgage interest, and what you pay in state or local property taxes. These are, simply put, key deductions upon which New Yorkers rely. Elimination of these deductions – even with a supposed hike in the standard deduction – would burden New York’s middle class homeowners, and utterly ruin housing values and everything these state and local taxes pay for, including public schools. This is nothing more than a massive tax cut for multimillionaires like Chris Collins, paid for by middle class folks already under stress from stagnant wages, Trump’s sabotage of the health insurance industry and Obamacare, and his corrupt, spendthrift administration. Of Collins’ betrayal of New York’s middle class, Cuomo said, “I think it’s modern treason against the state. I think they are the Benedict Arnolds of today. They voted against the interests of the people in their districts. Period.”

In an article Collins published in the right-wing New York Post, he compares Governor Cuomo to King George III, the tyrant against whom the American colonies rebelled in the 18th Century. Collins calls Cuomo an “imperial governor” who imposes “unjust” taxes on New Yorkers. 

The problem is twofold:

1. Americans rebelled against George III not just over taxes, but against “taxation without representation”. Given Mr. Collins’ repeated and reported attitudes towards constituents who do not share his views, it is he who shares George III’s imperial attitude; and 

2. Cuomo doesn’t tax or spend; that’s the legislature’s job, and Mr. Collins’ own party controls one-half of it.

It speaks volumes that Collins is waging this schoolyard battle in the pages of a downstate tabloid, and not here where his constituents live. He has no use for them, after all. He doesn’t hold town halls to seek out ideas or concerns. “I represent the 72% of people who voted for me. You didn’t vote for me.” Let’s expand that sentiment: 

I represent the white people who are angry at black athletes protesting police brutality. 

I represent the suburban folks who share my hatred and disgust for welfare recipients. 

I represent the people whom the new economy has left behind and need someone – or something – convenient to blame. 

New York Republicans have no platform or accomplishments on which to run, so it all boils down to class war, race war, and culture war. 

The reason why most homicidal jihadist maniacs in Europe use homemade bombs or mow pedestrians down with cars is that it is exceedingly difficult to obtain a gun in those countries. It’s not impossible –  nothing’s impossible – but it is very difficult. In fact, in some cases, the European attackers couldn’t even rent the bigger truck they really wanted to use to mow people down, and had to settle for renting a Ford Transit van. It’s like all the trite, jejune pro-gun retorts about banning cars come to life. 

Yes, I know Switzerland has a lot of guns. The Swiss also take responsibility, order, and discipline seriously. If you want to make us more like Switzerland, that’s a conversation with which I am totally cool. 

I have resigned myself to the reality that America lacks the foresight or political will to do a thing about mass shootings. The 2nd Amendment, as recently interpreted by the Supreme Court, guarantees an individual’s right to possess and own a firearm for hunting, sport, and protection. States can, however, impose restrictions on the ownership of certain types of firearms, and New York’s own SAFE Act passes Constitutional muster, despite what somebody’s lawn sign might say. 

Some random guy set up an arsenal of weapons in a casino hotel and then rained bullets and death at people below who just wanted to hear some music. Just under 60 people killed and over 500 injured, and for what? How is that “freedom”? 

How do you reconcile “liberty” with an inability to peacefully enjoy an outdoor concert? Why does the freedom to own an arsenal of weapons and ammunition trump a citizen’s freedom to listen to Jason Aldean without having to duck for cover or “get small“? Why does the freedom to outfit oneself with the ability to shoot thousands of bullets at innocent people over the course of 10 minutes outweigh the right of those concertgoers to not have bullets shot at them in such volume, at such rapid succession? Why did Adam Lanza’s right to bear those arms outweigh the rights of 20 first graders to see their next Christmas? Where was liberty and freedom for those kids and teachers? The kids’ parents? Are they more free? Would they be more free if they lived in a country where guns like that aren’t available, like the UK or Canada, but their kids were alive? 

In Congress, concerned lawmakers bleat about “mental health” while pocketing blood money from the gun industry lobby. Yet when proposals are put before them to restrict gun sales to people who have been adjudicated to be mentally ill,  they reject them. When they are given an opportunity to ban gun sales to people on the FAA/DHS no fly list, they reject that. Objectively speaking, why isn’t that political suicide, to back the sale of literal arsenals of weaponry to the mentally ill or suspected terrorists? 

Here is some choice verbiage from our own Rep. Chris Collins, from just this week: 

At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, there was talk about what happened Sunday in Las Vegas, but, according to several members, little was said about a legislative response.

“We all discussed the tragedy and certainly all of our thoughts and prayers go out to them, and that was pretty much the total extent of it,” said Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.).

Thoughts and prayers, and let’s move on to financing a massive tax cut for millionaires by hiking taxes on the middle class. 

Collins added that Congress ought to focus on mental health rather than gun restrictions: “We are not going to knee-jerk react to every situation. The Democrats continue to want to say, when a mentally deranged person does what they do, it’s the gun’s fault, not the shooter’s fault. . . . People focused on mayhem and the kind of evil this person was — in their heart, you can’t stop them. They will do it one way or the other. You can’t stop a mentally deranged person.”

“You can’t stop a mentally deranged person”, except perhaps with universal access to mental health care and appropriate treatment and medication. They’ll do it one way or another, so let’s not restrict the number of available “ways”? Choosing to commit murder may not be something you can legislatively prevent, but limiting the extent of that murderous intent is. No one can perch 32 floors above a concert and in 11 minutes kill 60 people, wounding 500 with a knife, or even with a pistol. Pretending there’s nothing that can be done is stupid; restricting one’s response only to thoughts and/or prayers is depraved. 

After all, when Chris Collins is asked to guarantee universal health coverage to every American – including for mental health treatment and medication – he told the Batavian, 

The Democrats want universal health care, no if ands, or buts. Hillary Clinton wanted that. Barack Obama wanted that. They never could get there and that’s when we ended up with the abomination that I call Obamacare…The life I live is here now, and Republicans will never support universal health.

So, Congress should “focus on mental health” but will “never support universal health”. In other words, get yourself the psychiatric care you need, if you can afford it, and voila! No more mass shootings! 

Like it matters. 

Rep. Collins admits he wasn’t able to read entire health care bill and had to rely on staff https://t.co/5NN39ElZAj https://t.co/UmK3tuCfFC

— CNN (@CNN) May 4, 2017

Just as every civilized, 1st world country has seemingly figured out how to guarantee universal health coverage, every 1st world country has devised a way to prevent most mass shootings; after Dunblane, the UK acted.  After Port Arthur, Australia did more than just offer up a round of thoughts and prayers. There are horrific exceptions, obviously, but how many mass shootings has, e.g., Norway suffered since Anders Breivik? 

There is a way to reconcile the 2nd Amendment with the people’s right to attend concerts, clubs, or school without being massacred. 

One argument goes that restricting access to military arsenals won’t prevent bad people from shooting other people. While true, that is literally an argument against every law, ever. I mean, anti-homicide statutes don’t prevent people from murdering other people. Anti-drug laws don’t prevent pushers from selling or users from buying. Anti-DWI laws don’t prevent people from getting behind the wheel after one too many. This is among the sillier arguments. 

I have written more about this topic than I care to admit. The right to bear arms is not absolute; it is not unrestricted or unrestrictable. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t grant you to the right to arm yourself for civil war or insurrection, nor to water the tree of liberty with people’s blood. 

That tree is inundated. 

“Thoughts and prayers” are garbage – here’s audio Chris Smith and I did with Brad Riter on that subject for Trending Buffalo in 2013, after the Boston Marathon bombing. When a jihadist murders people, we don’t just think and pray, our current government tries to ban immigration and visitation of Muslim people. But when something like Las Vegas happens, Washington stands silent and still, waiting for the heat to blow over so they can get back to lifting restrictions on suppressors, or distracting us with culture wars about the National Anthem. 

Almost exactly two years ago, in October 2015, I wrote about our mass shooting leitmotif. Nothing has changed since then, reminding us of the anecdotal definition of insanity. In 2016, after Orlando, I wrote about how social media reactions generally suck.

After Orlando, Representative Chris Collins blasted President Obama and anyone else who suggested any tighter gun restrictions. 

“No…it’s actually quite shameful. Our president politicizes every tragedy with a suggestion to Americans that some sort of gun legislation to take away Americans’ second Amendment rights would stop this from happening, and that’s just not truthful. In fact, it’s an outright lie. When you think about it, this was a security guard who obviously had weapons, and it…anything that the President would have suggested, this person still would have had his weapons, and unfortunately the tragedy still would have occurred.  We should be focused on the root cause, which in this case is ISIS — it’s Islamic terrorism, it’s those who don’t respect America’s way of life, who hate women, who hate gays, and hate America.  And that’s the difference you saw yesterday — we need to identify the enemy — it is ISIS, we need to take the fight to them and we shouldn’t try to divide America, and especially suggesting that there’s some sort of law we could pass that would stop ISIS, whether this was a lone wolf or not, from attacking Americans. So, I was very … not pleased at all with the response of the President, Hillary Clinton, or Chuck Schumer, who yet again are politicizing tragedy.

I will say this — I think there’s a lot of Americans waking up this morning saying, who’s going to keep me safe? Who’s putting America first? And in fact that is Donald Trump, I think this could be a bit of a turning point as people are focused not only on jobs and the economy, but they’re focused on their own safety, and I think Americans know who the enemy is, and it’s not the Republican Party. So I was yet again disappointed, and that’s just a mild adjective, in the President, and certainly Hillary Clinton, but I wasn’t surprised…they politicize every tragedy, and it’s shameful. 

When a particular problem has a political, governmental set of solutions and nothing is done, that is already politicized. When you motherfuck the President and an opposition political figure to make a political point, you don’t get to whine about politicization. Who’s keeping us safe, Collins? Who’s putting “America” first?

Way back in early 2013 – soon after Sandy Hook, and around the time the New York legislature passed the SAFE Act, I wrote, “Fuck Your Gun,” and I incorporate its text here by reference. 

Why do the rights of the Orlando murderer or the Las Vegas shooter outweigh the rights of their victims to dance in peace? Just. Answer. That. 

In July 2017, Chris Collins proposed a law which would effectively abolish New York’s laws on firearms and require them to be no more restrictive than those found in the most permissive and ammo-liberal state in the Union. State’s rights matter only in the furtherance of a particular ammotastic political agenda. The people who most stridently oppose legislative action on guns enjoy mocking victims of gun violence, suggesting that the USS Gabby Giffords be nicknamed “grey matter splatter”. Then they’ll whine about “tone”, or kids holding picket signs that read, “f racism”.  

Our nation endured decades’ worth of armed airline hijackings, but it took 9/11 to install armored cockpit doors. What will be the gun equivalent to 9/11? Clearly, 59 killed and 500+ injured isn’t enough. Clearly, 20 1st graders wasn’t enough. What will be the gun law equivalent to armored cockpit doors? 

I don’t have any or all of the answers. But I know that the thoughtless repetition of sentiment and hypocritical, temporary attempts to demand that something be done about mental health aren’t enough. 

The victims of these ceaseless American mass shooting – and the victims of mass shootings yet to be – deserve more. 

In a Buffalo News column Thursday, Conservative fusion Party boss Ralph Lorigo laments that “Erie County Democrats have abandoned the working class”. For the uninitiated, New York’s system of electoral fusion enables petty party bosses like Lorigo to wield political and – more critically – patronage power that is wildly disproportionate to the actual size of their party committees. 

Lorigo’s column, which is little more than a poorly concealed piece of campaign literature for right wing county clerk candidate Mickey Kearns, is one big concern troll. That’s defined as, “a person who disingenuously expresses concern about an issue with the intention of undermining or derailing genuine discussion.” The Urban Dictionary’s entry is even more explicit: 

In an argument (usually a political debate), a concern troll is someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with “concerns”. The idea behind this is that your opponents will take your arguments more seriously if they think you’re an ally. Concern trolls who use fake identities are sometimes known as sockpuppets.

In his column, Lorigo purports to lament how the Erie County Democratic Committee, as led locally by Jeremy Zellner and Mark Poloncarz, has somehow “abandoned” the working class. Ralph Lorigo is no Democrat; he doesn’t speak for Democrats. He and his little reactionary club do not hold, espouse, or promote Democratic ideas or values. More to the point, his fusion party – a product of a pointless, fundamentally corrupt party system in New York – is no friend of the working class, Democrat or otherwise. 

There are 287,000 registered Democrats in Erie County. Lorigo’s little club boasts 13,169 registered members. So, where does Lorigo get off lecturing the Democratic Party committee, its chairman, and its most prominent local elected official about Democratic values? The only reason he has any clout at all is thanks to a structural legal aberration. 

The only reason a political club with 13,000 members has any pull at all is electoral fusion; it seldom puts up its own party members for election. Instead Lorigo’s group endorses a major party candidate – e.g., Mickey Kearns – who receives a “Wilson Pakula“, allowing him to run on the Conservative line, and those votes are added to the candidate’s total. In some cases, the vote is close enough that these cross-endorsements actually affect the outcome. The catch? LOL, when it comes to the so-called “Independence Party” and the Conservative fusion Party, that endorsement doesn’t come for free, or without strings. The connected get jobs. 

Lorigo’s concern trolling in the Buffalo News merits examination. 

I have been involved in Erie County Conservative politics for over 35 years, and have served as the chairman of the party for 23. I have never taken a salary, stipend or even a reimbursement from party funds for political activities. In addition, no government funds flow into my law office from any governmental source.

The power isn’t in receiving government funds, but in controlling jobs – the molten, glowing core of western New York politics. How many jobs does Lorigo’s club control? How many people in local, state, or county positions owe their livelihoods to Conservative fusion Party patronage? That is the proper metric, here, and it is conspicuously absent. 

As chairman, I have worked with both Democrats and Republicans to endorse and elect people who care about Erie County taxpayers. My executive committee and I look at a candidate’s platform, record and the office sought. We never assume that someone’s party registration fully defines one; and we know that not every elected office legislates or creates policy.

What emetic pablum to suppose that someone running for office doesn’t “care about Erie County taxpayers”. Especially in any election since 2005’s red/green budget fiasco, which happened under Conservative fusion Party endorsee Joel Giambra‘s watch. 

We work to apply our principles of smaller, smarter government to the candidates seeking our support. We then choose who will best carry that torch for the residents of Erie County. For the Erie County Conservative Party, this is not about party labels, but about principles. As long as I am chairman, that approach will continue.

More often than not, the Conservative fusion Party would conspire with Democrat Steve “the Splitter” Pigeon to endorse Democrats who didn’t have the support of Democratic Headquarters. Even if that person lost a Democratic primary, he still might appear on the ballot in November on Lorigo’s line, causing further worries for the endorsed Democrat. Pigeon is now gone, and his stragglers are beclowning themselves in the 2nd Erie County Legislature district race – a story for another time. 

My relationship with Democrats is not in trouble. In fact, the top of our ticket this year is Democrat Mickey Kearns for county clerk. In the past, we were proud to support Democrats such as Jimmy Griffin, Paul Tokasz, Dennis Gorski and countless others. They were conservative, pro-life, taxpayer-focused Democrats.

Jimmy Griffin died in 2008. Paul Tokasz hasn’t been an elected official since 2006. Until he became a town justice in Cheektowaga a couple of years ago, Dennis Gorksi had been out of public life since 1999. Mickey Kearns may be a lot of things, but he’s no Democrat. You don’t run in 2017 with the endorsements only of the Republicans and Conservative fusion Parties and get to call yourself that. Apparently, Republican party chair Nick Langworthy’s bench was too shallow to support a genuine Republican candidate for county clerk to succeed Senator Chris Jacobs. So? Recruit an opportunistic “Democrat” with the dearth of accomplishments or ideas. There are some glaring omissions from Lorigo’s recitation of “Democrats I heart”: G. Steven Pigeon. I wonder why? Joe Mascia? Chuck Swanick? 

Today’s Democratic Party leadership of Chairman Jeremy Zellner and Mark Poloncarz would reject those officials outright. It is clear that conservative values of any kind are no longer welcome at Erie County Democratic Party headquarters.

Lorigo’s closest Democratic friend Steve is in big federal and state criminal trouble, and Poloncarz won re-election in 2015 after having explicitly refused to seek or accept the Conservative fusion Party line. Which “conservative values” is Lorigo talking about, exactly? Is it Swanick’s homophobia? Mascia’s colorful racial outbursts? 

In spite of the ever-increasing sprint to the extremes, the Erie County Conservative Party will remain true to our platform, right here in the middle with the majority of Erie County voters; people who believe in common-sense ideas like: taxes are too high; criminals belong in jail; police should be respected; law-abiding gun owners are not the root of our crime problem; plastic bags should be legal; and 5-year-olds don’t need to be taught about sex reassignment surgery in kindergarten.

“Taxes are too high” and this patronage club is part of the problem. “Criminals belong in jail” reads like a Dick and Jane book. “Police should be respected”, except when they violate the laws and constitution. Gun ownership isn’t at risk. Plastic bags should be “legal” and cost a nickel, because they don’t degrade and there are better alternatives available. Can you imagine you use “plastic grocery bags” as a rallying cry for a political movement? How pathetic. 

Hey, Ralph Lorigo: please identify which Erie County school – public or private – teaches “5-year-olds” about “sex reassignment surgery” in “kindergarten”. I’d like to know the school, the textbook, and the teacher. Because it’s just gutter, hateful lies meant to get a rise out of the homophobes; literally, that’s all that is. And why haven’t you added why and how you pick and choose which pro-choice candidates you endorse, or candidates who support same-sex marriage? The idea that the Conservative fusion Party operates based on “principles” is laughable. The only principle is maximizing the quids for an endorsement pro quo. 

Sadly, if you agree with just one of those principles today, you don’t have a place in the Democratic Party of Zellner and Poloncarz.

They aren’t really “principles” as much as they are bumper sticker slogans. Lorigo’s club’s real principles might involve homophobia, criminalization of all abortion, and ensuring that everyone from children to the mentally ill have the unfettered right to possess a loaded gun; that is, unless, a candidate who opposes all or some of those makes a great offer or is an acolyte of Steve Pigeon’s.  

I can’t help but think about the Democratic Party when I started 36 years ago. Back then, the majority of Democrats I encountered crossed party lines to support Ronald Reagan. Now, the party of the working class has been replaced by ivory tower elitists who hate anyone with a different opinion.

Ronald Reagan, whose policies helped to hasten the destruction of America’s middle class? For the record, Mark Poloncarz grew up in Lackawanna; his dad worked in a steel mill, and his mom was a nurse. Jeremy Zellner lives modestly in Tonawanda with his family; his dad worked in a car factory. Meanwhile, the Lorigo family practically runs West Seneca from its law office, hobnobs with Donald gold toilet 757 Trump and endorses Spaulding Lake’s own Chris Collins, and he’s sitting there talking about “ivory tower elitists”. This is utter madness, and the “different opinion” quip is nothing but projection. 

Ralph Lorigo worked closely – even running his own primary against Rick Lazio – to ensure that Carl Paladino received the Conservative fusion Party line in his 2010 gubernatorial run. I wasn’t aware that race hate, porn, and bestiality were “conservative values” that western New York’s working class really connected with, but I guess you learn something new every day. 

Erie County residents vote for lower taxes, smarter spending and a government built to assist them with jobs, better roads and affordable services; all principles the Erie County Conservative Party champions.

LOL “assist them with jobs”. How true. 

The leaders of the Erie County Democratic Party may have taken a hard left, but Erie County Democrats have not.

Being opposed to the Republican clone party that has close ties to Steve Pigeon and Carl Paladino isn’t a “hard left”. It’s common sense and decency. 

The Conservative fusion Party purports to have principles, but it’s just an arm of the Republicans; a party so unpopular in New York State that it needs to control a bunch of extra fusion lines to win the occasional election. Its platform is made up of all the WBEN bogeymen – anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-gun control. It is the party that thinks “black lives matter” is a terrorist group and fully supports the Trump Administration. 

The Conservative Party’s most prominent recent candidates include disgraced former Assemblywoman Angela Wozniak and racial vulgarian Joe Mascia. 

So, is Lorigo’s relationship with Democrats in trouble? Quite simply, no such relationship should exist; it is right that he has to omit the indictees, the racists, and has to resort to Mickey Kearns and the deceased to underscore his purported bipartisanship. Democrats need to stop going to breakfasts with Lorigo, and they need to reject the Conservative Party fusion line. It is the antithesis of what is actually “conservative”. Meritocracy is anathema to it. Good government is beside the point – it’s about jobs.  

The highest and best use of electoral fusion for Democrats right now would be to start a “Freedom Liberty Gun-Eagle” fusion party line to out-conservative Lorigo’s and further use the system to confuse voters. 

Anyway, thanks, Ralph. Democrats are all set. You may speak for the reactionary hatred of some who can’t deal with gay people having rights, but we Democrats will fight for the working class by promoting univeral health coverage, protecting union membership, implementing a higher minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, and other policies and programs that actually help people, rather than facile talk radio slogans. 

Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through. 

Gabrielle Giffords was a congresswoman from Arizona from 2007 to 2012. On January 8, 2011, Giffords held a “Congress on your Corner” at a supermarket in Tucson, where she was meeting with constituents. Suddenly, an well-armed lunatic shot 19 people, killing six, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl.

See what a rent the envious Casca made.

Giffords was severely injured as one of the bullets entered the front of her head and exited the rear. She has undergone rehabilitation since then to regain her ability to move, speak, and write, and has become a proponent of common-sense gun control legislation so that others don’t have to endure what she did—others like Congressman Steve Scalise, who now recuperates in hospital after being gravely injured by another well-armed lunatic just last week. 

Through this the well-belovèd Brutus stabbed. 

Locally, right-wing commentators and politicians have attempted to blame Democrats for the Alexandria shooting that injured Scalise and others. The gunman was revealed to be a progressive supporter of Bernie Sanders and a vehement opponent of President Trump. The problem with the “violent Democrat” meme is that no Democrats, mainstream or fringe, have called for any sort of violence against anyone. Clumsy attempts to equate the “Antifa” black bloc movement with, say, Hillary Clinton are downright laughable. No violent anarchists were big supporters of the woman that even Bernie supporters derided as a “neoliberal shill.” If it were up to Democrats, Scalise’s shooter never should have been able to obtain a concealed carry permit, and even his ability to buy any firearm would have been restricted. After all, Scalise’s assailant has a well-documented history of domestic violence, one of the markers for mass shootings. 

And as he plucked his cursèd steel away, 

It is utterly contemptible and disgusting for anyone to shoot and kill any innocent victim without provocation. There ought to be no safe space in our society for mass shootings in general or attempted political assassinations in particular. No political party is immune from homicidal lunatics, and people who wish or effect physical harm on political opponents should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Yet just last week, Representative Chris Collins blamed Democrats for the Alexandria attack, before anyone knew anything about the shooter’s affinity for Bernie Sanders. He later recanted that accusation and apologized, and now pairs his calls for civility with a concealed handgun. Yet just a week earlier, he referred to Governor Andrew Cuomo thusly, “He’s a thug. He’s a bully. He’s an extortionist. He’s a blackmailer. He wants all the authority.” I’m sure it’s not the first time our Italian-American governor was condemned with language reserved for the mob or Mussolini, but it’s notable that a Congressman thought it ok. 

Mark how the blood of Caesar followed it, 

And when performing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, throwing in a contemporary spin and showing the betrayal and assassination of a Donald Trump character today—or, in 2012, a Barack Obama lookalike—isn’t the outrage you’re being told it is. Julius Caesar is not a play that extols the virtues of political assassination. That fact becomes evident literally minutes after the conspirators murder Caesar. 

As rushing out of doors, to be resolved 

For the sake of civility, I will take the American right’s concern about tone at face value, and not more cynically as a way to exploit a tragedy for political gain. But in order to take this seriously, the right wing have to take a good, long look in the mirror and actually confront what they’ve done and condoned over the last nine years. President Obama was not, as the current President claimed, a secret Kenyan Muslim who literally founded ISIS. Tea partiers routinely referred to President Obama as an African witch-doctor, or an ape, or a traitor to be hanged, or a dictator not dissimilar from Stalin or Hitler. Google it. While this newfound concern about tone and how propaganda can lead to violence is welcome, it’s come dramatically too late. It’s as if John Salvi never shot up a Brookline Planned Parenthood clinic, or James Kopp never shot Dr. Barnett Slepian in Amherst, or Eric Rudolph never set off a bomb at the 1996 Olympics. Tell it to the family of Richard Collins, III, or the brave passengers on a train who were stabbed to death after confronting a white supremacist harassing a Muslim girl. The ascent of Donald Trump has emboldened the violent right fringe. 

It’s almost as if a member of the Buffalo school board never wrote in a New Year’s Eve article that President Obama and Valerie Jarrett should be murdered, and that Michelle Obama was a male Zimbabwean ape. 

Before you accuse me of whataboutism or tu quoque, understand that I don’t think dehumanizing your political opponents is ever appropriate. By portraying the other side as something not human, or as an illegal usurper – whether it’s George W. Bush or Barack Obama – you give well-armed homicidal cretins an excuse to commit mass murder. If you believe that Obama isn’t a human or founded a nihilist terrorist group, then that’s one less thing stopping some ignorant loner with a rifle from shooting not just the politician, but any of his supporters whom he might encounter. Democrats made this point continually during the tea party protests, and Republicans guffawed at the suggestion that hateful speech could lead to violent action. Now, suddenly, they’ve dramatically changed their tune about tone – even Michigan’s favorite no-hit wonder, Ted Nugent now says he regrets calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel” who should “suck on [his] machine gun” before being “tried for treason and hung.” Newly minted Montana Congressman Greg Gianforte has also found the word “civility” in his dictionary, just a few short weeks after he beat the shit out of a reporter fro the Guardian who had the nerve to ask him a question about health care. 

So, as we consider tone and civility, consider this, from a man recently convicted of election fraud and his pals, discussing a woman who lost part of her brain in public service. 

If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no. 

Rus Thompson, incidentally, appeared this past weekend on a radio show on WBEN alongside David DiPietro, a sitting Assemblyman. 

Take a look, if you can get past the misspellings – or mistaking Gabby Giffords for NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. In describing the naming of a Navy ship for the wife of a Navy pilot and instructor who took a bullet through the brain while meeting with the people she served, at least two people thought it clever to refer to Ms. Giffords as, “brain dead” and that the ship would have “no guns” and “only turn left”, and that it would likely be nicknamed the, “grey matter splatter”. Only one person had the morality to challenge this barrage of unmitigated hatred directed at the victim of a horrific crime who served her country with honor and courage. 

If you want to lecture people about tone, first make sure your own hands are clean. 

This was the most unkindest cut of all. 

 

Tuesday morning, the Buffalo News reported that three members of a disgraced faction of nominal Democrats would be facing felony election law charges to be announced in a Buffalo courtroom today.

G. Stephen Pigeon is already facing state charges alleging he bribed a state Supreme Court Justice—the judge pled guilty and is awaiting sentencing. Kristy Mazurek is a former journalist who hosted WGRZ’s 2Sides program with various Republicans. She has managed or otherwise participated in a string of failed races for elective office, including her brother’s race for Assembly in 2014, and her own Assembly bid last year. David Pfaff has hopped around political jobs, most recently working in the office of former State Senator Marc Panepinto. Pfaff has a reputation for being rather competent when working in government, but his ties to Pigeon have led him to be involved in more than a few controversial races. 

When Pigeon and former Supreme Court Justice John Michalek were placed under arrest, I wrote, “There has to be more. I suspect that the Michalek bribery case is just the amuse bouche — the low-hanging, easy to reach fruit that can be pushed through quickly to reassure an impatient public that progress is being made. All the while, law enforcement continues to build its other cases against Pigeon and others. Pass the popcorn, because we’re just watching the trailers.” 

Well, take your seats and silence your cell phones, because it looks like the feature’s just starting. 

According to Bob McCarthy, 

One source familiar with the charges say they will revolve around the County Legislature candidacies of Richard A. Zydel and Wes Moore, as well as the Amherst supervisor candidacy of Council Member Mark A. Manna.

That means the Pigeon troika are being charged with crimes arising out of the 2013 handling of the WNY Progressive Caucus, which I contemporaneously referred to as “AwfulPAC”. I also coined the word “Pigeoning” as shorthand to describe the sorts of shenanigans in which Steve Pigeon and his associates would engage in races that mosty served only to harass and disrupt the electoral efforts of other Democrats. 

Pigeoning: pi·geon·ing ˈpi-jən-iŋ: (n) the action of using money and influence, oftentimes pushing the election law envelope, to actively sabotage and undermine the Erie County Democratic Committee.

The Pigeon crew would often secure the assistance—tacit and overt—of Republicans, but more frequently the execrable and obsequious fusion parties — “Independence” and “Conservative” alike — to conspire with Pigeon to advance not just candidates, but their committees’ access to patronage jobs.

Blindside the party’s endorsed candidate with a sudden and unexpected influx of expensive mailers, robocalls, and ads that defame them, or worse. Fund it through various and sundry LLCs set up for no other reason than to legally flaunt campaign finance rules. Set up PACs or independent committees whose funding and organization is sketchy, at best, or criminal, at worst. Conspire fusion party bosses, for whom influence over patronage hires regularly trumps any manufactured, elastic ideological tenets. 

Nothing that the Pigeon crew ever did brought about real reform or good government. Nothing they touched had anything to do with policy, or helping the community — it was all about enriching Pigeon and the pilot fish who clung to him. Western New Yorkers of every party, of every race, of every nationality, of every class deserve so much better than what Pigeon and his cult offered. 

AwfulPAC was only active for a very short period of time—most of what it did took place between July and September of 2013. In May 2015, state and federal agents executed three nearly simultaneous raids on the homes of Pigeon, former Chris Collins chief of staff Chris Grant, and former Buffalo deputy mayor Steve Casey. I dubbed this law enforcement action and investigation “Preetsmas,” after the former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara. Bharara had famously taken over the investigation of political corruption cases abandoned by the Moreland Commission when Governor Cuomo abruptly shut it down. 

AwfulPAC wasn’t even properly constituted; it filed its CF-02 in February 2014 to transform it — retroactively — into a multi-candidate committee participating and spending on candidates’ behalf in the 2013 primaries. AwfulPAC declared — nunc pro tunc — that it was an unauthorized committee for Dick Dobson in the primary and general elections, and in the primary for Joyce Wilson Nixon, Barbara Miller-Williams, Rick Zydel, and Wes Moore. They also claimed to be an unauthorized committee for Mark Manna for Amherst Town Board in 2013’s general election. Had AwfulPAC done that at its founding, it could have spent money on behalf of those candidates without coordination; however, as it was originally constituted, it was legally only allowed to raise and donate money to campaigns, and not to promote or oppose specific candidates. We’re meant to believe that it broke the law at the time, but a retroactive “oops” filing of a piece of paper retroactively rendered all its activities legal. 

Part of my antipathy for electoral fusion stems from Pigeon’s deft manipulation and marshalling of minor party lines.  He has conspired with Ralph Lorigo to steer the Conservative fusion Party line to his various candidates, and enjoys a close relationship with Tom Golisano, the founder of New York’s especially corrupt Independence fusion Party.

One way to think about all of this is political racketeering.

For instance, Pigeon associate David Pfaff shows up as a vendor for the “Real Conservatives” PAC, which Lorigo controls and is based out of a funeral home in Hamburg that has contributed to Lorigo’s committee and also to Mickey Kearns. That’s why a flush pro-Byron Brown PAC controlled by Steve Casey and based out of Casey’s home contributed to only one candidate—Conservative fusion Party candidate Joe Lorigo—in 2014 and 2013. So query why it took in $6,000 from Byron Brown’s campaign fund in the 11-day pre-General 2013 and another $6,000 from Brown in October 2013, while it only supported one Conservative fusion Party candidate. 

None of this was new in 2013, but there was one major difference that tripped up Pigeon’s usual M.O. It was late August and early September that anonynous, no-attribution literature blasting then-incumbent county legislators Betty Jean Grant and Tim Hogues hit mailboxes throughout Buffalo. The mailers risibly accused Grant and Hogues of being right-wing Republicans, and praised their challengers, Joyce Wilson Nixon and Barbara Miller-Williams. I wrote at the time, “so long as people aligned with the breakaway Steve Pigeon faction of disgruntled nominal Democrats exist, there will be nonsense. It is ever thus.”

What is often lost in the AwfulPAC narrative is what it actually did. It mostly produced direct mail and other advertisements, some of which were practically defamatory in their rank falsehoods. Here is a sampler of mailers that AwfulPAC sent out to Democrats during the 2013 county legislature primaries.

They attacked other candidates similarly, including Lynn Dearmyer. The language and imagery used and sent to predominately white households is pretty blatantly racist. Betty Jean Grant is “radical” and “extremist.” “They” are “dead set” on “raising our taxes”

In addition to their defamation of Wynnie Fisher being a lunatic, 

 I wrote about this in some detail in June of 2015 as “The Story of Preetsmas”. 

Grant and Hogues were understandably outraged.  Mazurek was typically flippant. At bare minimum, Mazurek cut and signed the checks that paid for those inflammatory and racist mailers. 

Under New York’s weak and hitherto habitually unenforced election law, there is no requirement that the groups sending these sorts of mailers out reveal their identity or funding. “Paid for by” isn’t a requirement, and it protects the racketeers instead of informing the voting public. 

Generally, a PAC like the “WNY Progressive Caucus” would need to disclose to the Board of Elections where its money—almost $300,000 came in and went out practically overnight—was coming from. But when these mailers hit in late August 2013, it hadn’t yet filed anything. The reason why anyone found out about it was a FOIL request: 

[Betty Jean] Grant on Friday charged that a rival wing of the local Democratic party is behind the anonymous ads. A request made under the Freedom of Information Act to the Postal Service has identified the permit holder on the mailings as the Western New York Progressive Caucus, headquartered on Doris Avenue in Lancaster.

That was Kristy Mazurek’s home, and she was listed as the group’s treasurer. Mazurek, at the time, had been a co-host of WGRZ’s “2Sides”, had helped direct the campaign of failed Comptroller candidate David Shenk, and then turned against Jeremy Zellner’s Democratic Committee and began running Moore’s and Zydel’s campaigns. In August 2013, I called them the “emoDems”, 

It should be noted that WGRZ 2Sides co-host Kristy Mazurek is [Wes] Moore’s and [Rick] Zydel’s campaign manager. Query why [her former co-host Stefan] Mychajliw would have felt the need to abandon the show when he ran for public office, yet the Democrat on the show feels no similar ethical obligation to do so, going so far as to attempt to ridicule an opponent on Facebook who wasn’t interested in going on the show. 

Mazurek had taken to Facebook to ridicule Moore’s opponent Wynnie Fisher for refusing to appear on 2Sides. Yet why on Earth would a candidate appear on a show to be interrogated by her opponent’s campaign manager? It’s an insane proposition. Mazurek left 2Sides just days later. (There’s David Pfaff again, BTW): 

And so, Mazurek Palinistically took to Facebook to issue a non-denial denial about the WNY Progressive Caucus’ literature: 

Translation: After Shenk lost, Zellner didn’t hire/get me hired for something-or-other, and so I’m going to align myself with the people who are working to undermine and unseat him. Note that Mazurek doesn’t deny that she or her PAC sent out the anti-Hogues and anti-Grant mailings. She simply says the complaints “don’t have merit”. So, I replied: 

Reply, (right under one from Erick Mullen, who did all of Jack Davis’ ads that relentlessly went after endorsed Democrat Jon Powers in ’08): 

I have no idea what that means. So, 

There was no reply, natch; I don’t think Ms. Mazurek knew what “meritless” means. Ditto her apparently erstwhile ally Pigeon, who said that the charges against him related to Mazurek’s PAC were “frivolous“. 

These types of anonymous mailers come out all the time, and when anonymous, you can bet that the people behind it want to keep you in the dark. You should be insulted by them – they figure you’re an idiot; an ignoramus. Yet there’s no law that says they have to disclose who they are. So, if you’re outraged when your candidate gets anonymously and unfairly slammed by anonyms, you’re going to have to lobby Albany to demand that the Election Law be amended to (a) require that all campaign advertisements and literature clearly disclose who paid for them; and (b) institute a hefty penalty for any violations – penalties that are confiscatory deterrents. 

Nasty people with unclean hands legally get to make electoral politics dirtier than it has to be. If Mazurek and the people behind the group for which she is treasurer think that Tim Hogues is a closet Clarence Republican and that Barbara Miller-Williams is the reincarnation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then they should disclose who they are. 

The disgruntled nominal Democrats in league with Steve Pigeon might consider this, for instance: instead of working with Republicans and the fusion parties actively to undermine endorsed Democrats, why not convince the various and sundry committee members why they should vote for Frank Max or Mark Manna over Jeremy Zellner for party chair next time around? If you’re in league with the Conservative Party, why even pretend to be a Democrat? 

But in 2013, the Pigeoning was discovered far earlier than Pigeon and Mazurek had expected, on August 30th. Because they were outed via FOIL request, they were forced to file disclosures just 11 days before the primary, and the disclosure was, at best, packed with fiction. Think about it—they clearly didn’t want to disclose who they were on the reams of literature they produced, and so long as people didn’t know who was behind it, they could defame opponents with impunity. This time, however, they were outed and came under a media microscope. Hogues and Grant filed complaints with the Board of Election, bolstered by former Assistant District Attorney Mark Sacha, and that complaint was referred to the state, which then referred it to state investigators, and it came before the Moreland Commission and into the hands of Preet Bharara. 

AwfulPAC supported a small handful of candidates; Nixon, Zydel and Moore lost their September primaries, but Dick Dobson won his for Sheriff and Barbara Miller-Williams defeated Tim Hogues. Only Miller-Williams won in November. Dick Dobson embarrassed Bert Dunn on primary night, so Dunn decided to waste his money and run on a tailor-made third party line, unsuccessfully. AwfulPAC, meanwhile, abandoned Dobson during the general election. Wynnie Fisher had defeated AwfulPAC candidate Wes Moore, so in October, Mazurek evidently used Michael Caputo’s PoliticsWNY.com to smear Fisher. Apparently, Fisher and her neighbors don’t get along, so a story was planted accusing Fisher of being crazy.

The problem was that the published letter was sent to Wes Moore at an address in Lancaster. But Moore’s campaign committee was based out of the Clarence office of longtime Pigeon associate Anthony Nanula. The Lancaster address was a house on Doris Avenue where Mazurek was living, and which also served as the mailing address for WNYPC. There was, on its face, a smoking gun of coordination. How and why would Wynnie Fisher’s neighbors decide to send a letter to an address for Wes Moore that didn’t exist in nature?

Mazurek once literally called the Shredd & Ragan show in 2014 to try and intimidate them into keeping me off their air. Almost four years ago, Steve Pigeon, Kristy Mazurek, and David Pfaff used a corrupt slush fund to defame their opponents with false and racist mailers, then called them crybabies for complaining. Now, they’re reportedly facing criminal charges for it all.  

By the way—rumor has it that Mazurek and her crew are sniffing around at least two legislative races this year specifically to exact revenge against or otherwise thwart their opponents. 

And that’s the story of Preetsmas. 

The First day of Preetsmas (5/28/15): The raids & an introduction

The Second day of Preetsmas (6/4/15): All about AwfulPAC

The Third Day of Preetsmas (6/2/15): Seneca cigarette bootlegger Aaron Pierce & Mickey Kearns.

The Fourth Day of Preetsmas (6/3/15): Steve Pigeon, PAPI, and Gene Caccamise

The Fifth Day of Preetsmas (6/3/15): Pigeon’s Tax Liens

The Sixth Day of Preetsmas  (6/4/15): Analyzing tax returns, and litigation surrounding the sale of the Front Page/South Buffalo News

The Story of Preetsmas (6/4/15): Background on AwfulPAC

The Seventh Day of Preetsmas (6/5/15): Financial Shenanigans with Pigeon-connected PACs

The Eighth Day of Preetsmas (6/7/15): The Money Orders and AwfulPAC

The Ninth Day of Preetsmas (6/9/15): Pigeon’s addresses and Ganjapreneurs

The Tenth day of Preetsmas (6/11/15): The Pigeoning

The Eleventh Day of Preetsmas (6/12/15): AwfulPAC FOIL

Preetsmas: In their Own Words (6/14/15): A trip down memory lane

A Preetsmas Recap and Update (6/16/15): Updates on the investigation

The Preetsmas Mysteries (6/22/15): More about the AwfulPAC money orders

Let’s Talk About “Mistakes Were Made” in Campaign Finance Law (7/14/15): On the question of intent.

Preetsmas in September (9/14/15): Big money in Cheektowaga politics. 

Preetsmas: Pigeon’s New Liens (12/28/15): The total reaches $270,000 in tax and condo liens. 

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Preetsmas (5/6/16): Pigeon rumors heat up

Preetsmas: Grand Jury and Speculation (5/9/16): Rumors of imminent grand jury action

Mazurek’s Unlikely Candidacy (5/31/16): Kristy Mazurek runs for Assembly while named as key witness in criminal investigation

On the 12th Day of Preetsmas (6/29/16): Charges announced against Pigeon and Michalek

12th Day of Preetsmas: Pigeon Arraigned (6/30/16): Details of the bribery charges

12th Day of Preetsmas: Schneiderman’s Remarks (6/30/16): The investigation is ongoing

How Pigeonism Ends (7/1/16): Analyzing what the charges mean

Mazurek’s Financial: A Sloppy, Illegal Mess (7/22/16): Exactly how it sounds

Unraveling the Mazurek Campaign (7/22/16): Rules exist for a reason

The Tables Turn on Crybaby Mazurek (9/12/16): LOL Karma

Campaign Workers: Frank Max Stiffed Us! (11/2/16): Frank Max Pops Up Again

Frank Max Pleads Guilty (1/25/17): Max busted for false campaign finance filings

Preetsmas: Niagara Edition (3/23/17): The Ortt and Maziarz indictments

Sit back and relax! Enjoy the show!

Republicans have had 7 years to repeal Obamacare.

They failed.

They lied about it for 7 years, scaring you with false claims about “death panels” and rationing. 

They failed. 

They had 7 years to come up with a better or cheaper plan that would insure the same number of people, or more.

They failed.

Over 7 years, they took no fewer than 60 votes to repeal Obamacare, or key parts of it.

They failed.

They had 7 years to devise, develop, disseminate, and sell an alternative health insurance scheme.

They failed.

They wanted to hold the vote on March 23rd – the 7th anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

They failed.

They held a meeting at the White House to discuss women’s health care. The result was downright Saudi. 

Fail. 

They’re now promoting Trumpcare, which is a tax handout to the wealthy and takes away 24 million people’s coverage.

It seems that this, too, has failed.

They tried to fix it. 

They failed. 

A Quinnipiac Poll revealed that a whopping 17% of Americans back the Trumpcare proposal. 

Failure. 

Obamacare was a yearlong process, and about 100 Republican amendments made their way into the bill. Trumpcare was devised in secret, kept in a secret room, is incomplete, and no one will know what’s in it until the vote is held. 

Failure. 

Representative Chris Collins openly called for “retribution” against Republican Congressmen who vote against Trumpcare. 

Ever notice how the news sounds more and more like we’re living through a fascist coup? 

They’ve decided to take away the requirement that insurance actually cover essential healthcare benefits, “doctor’s visits, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity care, mental health and substance abuse treatment, prescription drugs, lab tests, pediatrics, rehabilitation, and preventative services.” They say – with serious voices and not as a joke – that men shouldn’t have to pay for prenatal or pediatric care. 

Here, they fail morally, ethically, and vocabularily, apparently not understanding how insurance works. 

Trump is throwing around ultimatums. “You’re going to win so much you may even get tired of winning“. 

When your defining ideology is little more than lying nihilism, you fail.

When running for congress in 2012, Representative Chris Collins went on WBFO to claim – falsely – that Obamacare was identical to Canada’s single-payer Medicare system. While an overwhelming 86.2% of Canadians are satisfied with their health insurance system, in the US, it’s about half that. 

Obamacare isn’t perfect – no system is nor can be – but it did drop the rate of uninsured Americans from 20% to 9%, and polls now show that, by a wide margin, Americans want Obamacare fixed, rather than repealed. For the first time, a slim majority of Americans now says it wants to keep Obamacare rather than “repeal and replace”. 

Collins has been in Congress since 2013, and has a distinguished record of legislation renaming a few post offices. He has voted to repeal or cripple the Affordable Care Act multiple times; indeed, Republicans in Congress have had seven years to offer their own alternative to Obamacare that would lead to universal health insurance coverage using some scheme different from the individual mandate. They certainly voted to repeal Obamacare or its key elements on dozens of occasions during that time,  but never publicly offered a plan of their own, instead repeating pablum about insurance being available across state lines and restricting injured patients’ access to the courts to seek redress. 

We finally got a plan this week – a plan drafted in secret, kept in a locked room, and bearing no score or analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.  In normal times, it would be laughed out of Congress; nowadays, it might be the most serious and credible thing in town. The disastrous plan isn’t so much “repeal and replace” as it is, “placate and worsen” – it placates the people who like that insurers can’t exclude pre-existing conditions and who want to keep their kids on their policies until age 26. But make no mistake – this plan would fix none of the problems that people have with the ACA, namely that it’s too expensive in some cases and that it relies too heavily on high deductible plans that amount to an added tax on already cash-strapped families.

But the tea party wing of the Republican Party is already balking. They demand full repeal of Obamacare, without regard to the fact that such a move would automatically take away insurance held by about 30 million Americans. The tea party, however, is concerned about ideological purity rather than winning elections and majorities, and mainstream Republicans see that they’re between a rock and a hard place wholly of their own construction. They can’t simply repeal the ACA, and any replacement that takes away people’s insurance or makes it more expensive or harder to get sort of defeats the purpose and betrays everything they’ve complained about for the last seven years. 

Remember President Trump’s promise: “insurance for everyone” with “much lower deductibles”. 

I guess “insurance” may end up being the weasel word here, because you can cobble together any kind of thing sold on late-night TV and call it “insurance”. Senator Schumer said 

“After years of howling at the moon about Democrats rushing through the Affordable Care Act — the mantra they said over and over and over again on the floor here and in the House, ‘read the bill’ — Republicans are having committee votes two days after the bill is released,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor. “No wonder they don’t want anyone to know what’s in the bill.”

This isn’t governing. It’s grandstanding, and now without the threat of a Presidential veto, these clowns actually have to follow through. 

other than that it seems perfect pic.twitter.com/vFa24j8ed1

— Chris Jackson (@ChrisCJackson) March 7, 2017

Seinfeld and “Repeal and Replace” each ran for 8 years. One was a show about nothing. The other was Seinfeld. https://t.co/ZCrn3073bY

— Jason Kander (@JasonKander) March 7, 2017

Collins will go along with whatever the White House tells him to do. He will vote to take away people’s health insurance without a second thought.

Where are the grownups? 

The intragovernmental tug-of-war over Presidential power is as old as the republic; there’s nothing new under the sun. In recent days, however, President Trump’s band of malignant sycophants and apologists have declared that the President wields some sort of supreme power over matters relating to immigration and whatever he deems, “national security” – power so all-consuming and superior that not even the courts have the right to review it. 

To examine these claims, we turn to the courts themselves, and juxtapose the law concerning our uniquely American system of government with three co-equal branches, with the authoritarian claptrap from the haphazard oligarchs who discuss national security matters over dinner at Mar-a-Lago. 

The Government contends that the district court lacked authority to enjoin enforcement of the Executive Order because the President has “unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of any class of aliens.” The Government does not merely argue that courts owe substantial deference to the immigration and national security policy determinations of the political branches—an uncontroversial principle that is well-grounded in our jurisprudence. See, e.g., Cardenas v. United States, 826 F.3d 1164, 1169 (9th Cir. 2016) (recognizing that “the power to expel or exclude aliens [is] a fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control” (quoting Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U.S. 787, 792 (1977))); see also Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 33-34 (2010) (explaining that courts should defer to the political branches with respect to national security and foreign relations). Instead, the Government has taken the position that the President’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections. The Government indeed asserts that it violates separation of powers for the judiciary to entertain a constitutional challenge to executive actions such as this one.  – 3 Judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Washington v. Trump. 

ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, ‘ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!

In Washington v. Trump, the 9th Circuit directly addressed the notion that the President’s actions relating to immigration and security are not subject to judicial review: 

There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy. See Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 765 (2008) (rejecting the idea that, even by congressional statute, Congress and the Executive could eliminate federal court habeas jurisdiction over enemy combatants, because the “political branches” lack “the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will”). Within our system, it is the role of the judiciary to interpret the law, a duty that will sometimes require the “[r]esolution of litigation challenging the constitutional authority of one of the three branches.” Zivotofsky ex rel. Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U.S. 189, 196 (2012) (quoting INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 943 (1983)). We are called upon to perform that duty in this case. Although our jurisprudence has long counseled deference to the political branches on matters of immigration and national security, neither the Supreme Court nor our court has ever held that courts lack the authority to review executive action in those arenas for compliance with the Constitution. To the contrary, the Supreme Court has repeatedly and explicitly rejected the notion that the political branches have unreviewable authority over immigration or are not subject to the Constitution when policymaking in that context. See Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 695 (2001) (emphasizing that the power of the political branches over immigration “is subject to important constitutional limitations”); Chadha, 462 U.S. at 940-41 (rejecting the argument that Congress has “unreviewable authority over the regulation of aliens,” and affirming that courts can review “whether Congress has chosen a constitutionally permissible means of implementing that power”). Our court has likewise made clear that “[a]lthough alienage classifications are closely connected to matters of foreign policy and national security,” courts “can and do review foreign policy arguments that are offered to justify legislative or executive action when constitutional rights are at stake.” American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm. v. Reno, 70 F.3d 1045, 1056 (9th Cir. 1995). 

This is not a new or radical law or phenomenon. We need only to re-read the words of the subject of a hit musical on Broadway, and it’s not King Mongkut or Arthur: 

[T]he courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges as, a fundamental law. It, therefore, belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. – Alexander Hamilton Federalist No. 78.

If the words of the ten dollar founding father aren’t enough, here’s what the Supreme Court wrote in Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 landmark case dealing with the Constitution and judicial review of statutes and executive acts (and omissions). 

It is the essential criterion of appellate jurisdiction that it revises and corrects the proceedings in a cause already instituted, and does not create the cause.

The authority given to the Supreme Court by the act establishing the judicial system of the United States to issue writs of mandamus to public officers appears not to be warranted by the Constitution.

It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret the rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Court must decide on the operation of each.

If courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.

But contrast the words of our Founders and the federal court with those of Trump’s uncanny clone of Roy Cohn, Stephen Miller: 

Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is — is — is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned. – Presidential advisor Stephen Miller.

DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an empereror just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they’d put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that, eh? That’s what I’m on about — did you see him repressing me, you saw it didn’t you?

Not to be outdone, Representative Chris Collins (R)(NY-27), Trump’s chief apologist, said this on MSNBC: 

I think the job that President Trump and his team have done is exceptional, especially given the fact he doesn’t even have his whole team put together. You know, you take one step at a time, in this case a judge ruled on the executive order on the travel ban, pointed out some ambiguities – that he thought were ambiguities – easy enough to fix, easy enough to come forth with a new executive order that addresses that. Call that a very small bump; we move on, we keep the border secure, we keep the country safe. What the press is saying … you know, ‘disarray’ or ‘confusion’ or whatever they may want to say I don’t think is that at all. We just – continuous improvement, we move forward, I think we may see a new executive order coming forward that addresses those concerns, and then we just – again – we move on. I don’t see the disarray, I mean, President Trump’s been in three weeks, he doesn’t have his full cabinet, and, it’s true, what he’s been able to accomplish is extraordinary. 

When it comes to the President’s authority to secure our borders and decide who does or does not come into this country, [the President] does have absolute powers, and there’s no question about it. The ambiguity surrounded Green Card and maybe visa holders…when it comes to immigration, I think if you read it, he does have… that is a power that rests in his hands, and the judge nitpicked Green Card holders and visa holders – that can be easily addressed. But the President of the United States clearly has the authority to close the borders to people that he does not believe should be coming in, that would put our nation’s security at risk, and that is not to be questioned. 

Miller’s and Collins’, “the powers of the president…will not be questioned” is the modern equivalent of the Führerprinzip, the concept of supreme executive power that governs within a fascist totalitarian system: that the leader’s word is above all written law and not subject to review or contradiction. 

To call all of this ignorant and un-American is a dramatic understatement.

Either unable to believe he actually won, or unable to stomach the fact that he dramatically lost the popular vote, President Donald Trump insists that there was rampant voter fraud affecting the 2016 election. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, and his #1 congressional sycophant, Chris Collins (R-NY) go out of their way to explain this fantasy by repeating not that this is fact, but that it is what Trump “believes”. Dezinformatsiya is a Russian term for deliberately spreading false or misleading information (fake news?) in a calculated way to influence target audiences. 

Trump’s own lawyers representing him in several recount states averred in court documents that, “all available evidence suggests the 2016 election was not tainted by fraud or mistake.”

So, it’s not that rampant voter fraud actually affected the 2016 election, but that Trump “feels” it happened because he is embarrassed by his popular vote loss. This is snowflakeism at its most dangerous, because Trump is now one of the most powerful men in the world who has surrounded himself with sycophants: it’s not enough that people occasionally tell him “no”, but that he actually take the advice. 

Voter fraud isn’t a problem in the United States. The logistics of any group or party designing and implementing a 3 million+ voter fraud exercise would be overwhelming, and here’s the key: if Clinton or the Democrats had wanted to rig the election, they’d have done it in states where it mattered and won the whole thing. If voter fraud was a thing, you’d expect the person who overwhelmingly won the popular vote but lost the electoral college tally to complain about a rigged system. It isn’t, it wasn’t, and here’s a Republican law firm to explain why (back in October, when Trump first made the allegation): 

Yesterday on the radio, two afternoon conservative commentators wondered aloud why the Democrats were so opposed to Trump’s threatened “investigation” into voter fraud. I can give you several reasons: 1. It’s a waste of money and effort, because it’s already been studied and doesn’t exist in any statistically significant way; 2. we don’t trust Donald Trump or his minions or contractors to produce a credible or true report; 3. this is all an excuse for Trump and the Republicans to further erode, roll back, and eliminate the Voting Rights Act and to make it difficult, costly, or impossible for historically marginalized groups of Americans to vote. 

As it turns out, Trump tweeted about it: 

I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

This is funny, as it was revealed that Trump advisor Steve Bannon, Trump’s daughter Tiffany, and Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin are all registered to vote simultaneously in two states. 

Locally, Republican elections commissioner Ralph Mohr talked with WGRZ, 

Ralph Mohr, the Republican Election Commissioner overseeing 591,000 registered voters in Erie County, said he’s encountered maybe three or four cases of voter fraud in his 24 years on the job.

“There has never been a situation where any type of fraud would affect the outcome of the election,” Mohr said.

Mohr said Trump’s call for an investigation is “unnecessary,” adding that he doesn’t believe it will even materialize at the federal level. The Department of Justice would likely handle such a situation, but it has not yet commented on Trump’s false accusations of voter fraud.

We’d be able to say two or three were it not for the ongoing allegation of blatant voter fraud by local tea party agitator Rus Thompson. Thompson was evicted from his home on Grand Island in 2014, and in October of that year, his wife notified the Erie County Board of Elections that they were moving out of the county at to remove them from the voter rolls. You don’t get to vote where you feel at home, but where you are actually domiciled. That means Thompson was eligible only to vote at his new home in Niagara County. Instead, when Thompson showed up to vote – improperly – on Grand Island, where he didn’t live – he completed a sworn affidavit averring that he was eligible to vote there.

This was, however, a lie made under oath. He is under indictment for felony voter fraud – something Thompson considers to be treason. Thompson was offered a plea, but rejected it despite the overwhelming evidence against him. His defense seems to be: 1. it’s not like he voted twice!; and 2. he just did what the election inspectors told him to do. The real question is whether Thompson committed voter fraud out of stupidity or malicious intent. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t vote twice; he voted to influence elections that have nothing to do with him, and the election inspectors undoubtedly recognized Thompson when he showed up at his former polling place on Grand Island and certainly would have helped him with a provisional ballot – that’s because how are they supposed to know that he no longer lived there? 

Voter fraud is not a problem in WNY, and it’s not a problem nationally. This is a huge waste of time and effort designed to distract from more important things that the Trump administration is up to. In fact, the most prominent instance of voter fraud locally was allegedly committed by one of Trump’s loudest local supporters. 

Irony is dead. 

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry is nominated to be the next Secretary of Energy. 

Until a few weeks ago, Perry had literally no idea what the Secretary of Energy does, and it wasn’t too long ago he had called for its abolition. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Whether Rick Perry does his best Mr. Magoo, stumbling obliviously into running the Energy Department is one thing, kids’ education is far more important, and under direct assault. 

Betsy DeVos belongs to one of the wealthiest families in Michigan – they own the Amway pyramid selling multi-level marketing cult scheme. She and her husband simply do not believe in secular or public education. Mrs. DeVos is Donald Trump’s nominee to head up the Education Department – a cabinet-level position that Republicans, including Trump, have frequently expressed a desire to abolish altogether, ostensibly to ensure that the quality of public education can vary wildly from state to state. She had once led a ballot initiative to permit public funding of parochial schools, which is violative of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. She was instrumental in creating Michigan’s series of for-profit, unregulated charter schools. They have spent their billions funding so-called “Christian conservative” candidates and causes, most notably spending big money to combat same-sex marriage initiatives in Michigan and California. But for DeVos’ current nomination, this is key: 

Deep into his first term, [then-Michigan Governor John] Engler wanted to show progress in his signature proposal to reduce the state’s onerous property taxes by 20 percent. Property taxes being the funding source for Michigan’s public school system, Democrats ruled out any plan that did not include a replacement for the lost revenue, and since any new revenue would require legislators to vote for new taxes or fees, that option had little appeal heading into the 1994 campaign. On July 19, 1993, Democratic state Senator Debbie Stabenow proposed an amendment that was interpreted as an attempt to point out the absurdity of Engler’s plan: Why not cut them by 100 percent without having any replacement revenue source?

Democrats were dumbstruck by what happened next: Engler whipped the state Legislature into action, and in the course of a 24-hour period, the Senate and House eradicated property taxes—in the process completely defunding Michigan’s $6.5 billion public-education system. In the ensuing crisis, Engler legalized charter schools.

That wasn’t all. In 1998, DeVos pushed a proposition to legalize statewide school vouchers, which failed overwhelmingly. 

When you really looked at it, the parents weren’t the ones with the choices; the parochial schools were the ones with the choices. If all you do is transfer the money, you don’t transfer any of the other requirements that are put on public schools. Public schools are required to take everyone who comes through the door. But private schools, parochial schools, get to pick and choose. … It’s not really the parents who have the choice, it’s the schools. And people ultimately understood that.

The DeVos family has been expert in setting up PACs throughout Michigan – and the country – to push their religious and political agendae. 

Today, 16 years after the DeVoses’ failed constitutional amendment, this constant push has totally remade Michigan education. The cap on the number of charter schools eliminated and attempts to provide public oversight have been defeated, making Michigan’s charters among the most-plentiful and least-regulated in the nation. About 80 percent of Michigan’s 300 publicly funded charters are operated by for-profit companies, more than any other state. This means that taxpayer dollars that would otherwise go to traditional public schools are instead used to buy supplies such as textbooks and desks that become private property. It is, essentially, a giant experiment in what happens when you shift resources away from public schools…

…While a charter school cannot be religiously affiliated, many walk a fine line, appointing, for instance, a preacher as head of the school board or renting school space from a church. “They have a couple ways of getting around it,” says Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University who specializes in charter school evaluation and research. “I’ve been in charter schools where I’ve seen religious prayers to Jesus Christ—they mention Christ by name—and prayer circles with students, teachers and parents.”

What’s the result? Not great. 

Most Michigan charters perform below the state’s averages on tests, even while their enrollment has grown to include more than 110,000 students, nearly half of whom live in the Detroit area. A 2013 Stanford study that compared Detroit’s charters with its traditional public schools found that the charter students gained the equivalent of more than three months’ learning per year more than their counterparts at traditional public schools. But that doesn’t mean they’re performing at a high level, simply that by some measures, certain charters marginally outperform the historically challenged Detroit public schools.

This is the way it’s done: this is the Republicans’ best bet: 

1. Defund or otherwise siphon money out of a public program; 

2. Allow the public program to fail and declare it as such – manufacture an artificial crisis; 

3. Push for your so-called “free market alternative”, with bonus points awarded for appeals to God and capitalism. Maybe throw in some cracks against “socialism”, while you’re at it. You can make even your kid’s kindergarten teacher seem evil if you throw “socialist” at her. 

Now, you’re free to “solve” the crisis you’ve created by inaugurating a privatization of a public right and need. You and all your buddies get to profit off of something that no American family can go without. It is literally an enrichment bonanza – a transparent but politically safe scheme to do palpable harm to the poor and middle class in order to enrich the already wealthy, or in Trump’s case the politically obedient. This is shaping up to be the biggest redistribution of wealth in American history, only backwards as the working and middle classes subsidize massive tax cuts for the rich. There is a class war underway, but it’s being waged against you – not against the millionaires. 

It’s not for nothing that local Representative Chris Collins (R-Spaulding Lake), now under fire for alleged insider trading, boasted about all the “millionaires” his stock tips made in Buffalo. 

Betsy DeVos’ Senate hearing took place this week, and her performance was emetic. DeVos has wide and deep experience spending her fortune on political causes, but she is bereft of any experience – direct or otherwise – with teaching, much less administering a school or district. Sure, DeVos thinks that schools shouldn’t be “gun free zones”, and fell back repeatedly on that right-wing trope; she would leave things up “to the states”. To Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, DeVos claimed that, for instance, a school in Wyoming might need a gun to keep “grizzlies” at bay, evidencing that she has no respect for what’s being discussed – the Sandy Hook massacre of first graders. The fact that she lacks even a scintilla of qualification for the job she seeks soon became evident. 

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren took DeVos to task for her utter lack of professional or personal experience with public education or higher education debt, Pell Grants, and the like. 

Minnesota Senator Al Franken revealed that DeVos lacks even a passing knowledge of one of the great debates underway in contemporary American education – the challenge of growth vs. proficiency. It’s an obscure debate if you’re not in the business, but Franken here highlights his preference for growth, which measures how much students improve, versus proficiency, which merely records whether and how many students meet a testing threshold. It was clear that, for DeVos, Franken might as well have been speaking Mongolian.  

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine challenged DeVos on whether all schools who accept federal funding should adhere to federal statutes and regulations concerning disabilities. DeVos didn’t just punt with a “leave it to the states” answer, but revealed a fundamental ignorance about the workings of our federal system itself .

Betsy DeVos fails @timkaine‘s test at Senate hearing: pic.twitter.com/qnyFZgc52X

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 18, 2017

These weren’t gotcha questions. They instead revealed a person who is woefully unqualified for the post for which she has been nominated. Not only that, it is quite evident that the only reason why she was nominated in the first place was to advance the goal of school privatization and parochialization, and because she and her family are big political donors. This might be well and good for an appointment as Ambassador to some friendly principality, but isn’t good enough to shepherd the education of millions of American children. 

Hearings are now underway for Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Representative Tom Price. Like Collins, Price is also under fire for having made apparently fortuitous equities transactions that comported with Congressional action. Price and the Trump transition had claimed that this was impossible, because a broker handled all of Price’s trades without the congressman’s direct input. 

Except when it came to Price’s investment in Innate Immunotherapeutics, the Australian drug manufacturer on whose board Chris Collins sits, in which Collins owns a majority share of stock, and in which Collins’ children and chief of staff are also heavily invested.

We are entering a dangerous period where government is used to enrich the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of the average working and middle-class American. We are entering a world where it will be easy for the federal government to de-fund and privatize the very foundation of our democracy. This isn’t making America great or putting America first – this is a recipe for devolution into a kleptocratic oligarchical right-wing despotism. The dilettantes are in the castle. The only thing at stake is everything you hold dear.