Charles Pierce | The Corndogs and Down Vests Are Over. The Democratic Primary Has Entered the Hot Zone.

13 February 20

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Coming to Terms With the 99.5% Who Do Not Contribute

Our challenge at this point is to address the 99.5% of those who visit RSN on a monthly basis but do not contribute. Those who are really strapped we understand. But .05% of the Readers donating on a monthly basis, that's absurd. It's unfair to those who do contribute and it's holding the project back. If you are an active donor please be patient as we work through this.

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12 February 20

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ATTENTION PLEASE: URGENT CALL FOR DONATIONS - We have not yet reached the 20% mark for our February budget. At this point the lack of support is doing significant damage to the organization. In earnest. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Charles Pierce | The Corndogs and Down Vests Are Over. The Democratic Primary Has Entered the Hot Zone.

Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "It's getting real coming out of New Hampshire, as Bernie Sanders faces a stern test from Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren's campaign is muddled, and Joe Biden's is sinking fast."
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Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg waits by his tour bus ahead of adressing his supporters at Central Machine Works in Austin, Texas on January 11, 2020. (photo: Mark Felix/Getty)

Bloomberg Would Pay Billion Less Under His Wealth Tax Than Under Sanders Plan
Stephen Gandel, CBS News
Gandel writes: "Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg says he would pay more to Uncle Sam under his plan to raise taxes on wealthy Americans. What the former New York City mayor hasn't said: He'd pay as much as .5 billion less under his wealth tax than he would under similar proposals from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two of his rivals for the party's nomination."
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Robert Hyde, the Trump donor with ties to indicted Trumpworld associate Lev Parnas. (photo: AP)

Accused Yovanovitch 'Stalker' Robert Hyde Now Supplying Documents to Congress
Erin Banco and Adam Rawnsley, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "Not long ago, he was accused of tracking a U.S. ambassador from the shadows. Now he says he wants to step into the light and share what he knows with Congress."

EXCERPT:

Hyde, who is running for Congress in Connecticut’s 5th District, made headlines last month when Democrats released messages to the public that showed Hyde in communication with Parnas, the former Rudy Giuliani ally who pleaded guilty to charges of funneling money from foreign entities. The pair spoke about Yovanovitch, and the messages appeared to show that Hyde had the ambassador under physical surveillance in Kyiv. (Multiple media outlets suggested he was “stalking” her.) Hyde later told the media he was never a close associate of Parnas and was only joking when he texted him about the ambassador. 

When asked what he gave the congressional committee, Hyde told The Daily Beast: “Everything that I had between Parnas and I.” He said the committee wanted to “talk about Parnas and how I know him.” 

“You should look into Parnas. Bad man,” Hyde added. 

Hyde said he’d spoken to the House committee several times to aid in its investigation. Chairman Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) said Jan. 15 that his committee would investigate the Hyde-Parnas text messages, saying in a statement that they were “profoundly alarming.” Democrats on Capitol Hill have been probing Yovanovitch’s ouster for several months, and aides say they see the committee’s work as more crucial now than ever following President Donald Trump’s acquittal in the Senate. Engel has previously said that it was former National Security Adviser John Bolton who, unprompted, suggested he and the committee look into Yovanovitch’s situation in Ukraine.

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Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. (photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Trump Says Military May Consider Disciplinary Action Against Vindman
Myah Ward, Politico
Ward writes: "The comments came days after the star impeachment witness was ousted from the White House."
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Students rally against white supremacy at Syracuse University in New York on 20 November 2019. Last year saw cases of propaganda circulated on college campuses nearly double. (photo: Maranie Staab/Reuters)

White Supremacist Propaganda in US More Than Doubled in 2019, Report Finds
The Anti-Defamation League
Excerpt: "ADL's Center on Extremism tracked an ever-growing number of white supremacist propaganda efforts in 2019, including the distribution of racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ fliers, stickers, banners and posters."
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Members of the Salvadoran Armed Forces are seen within the Legislative Assembly during a protest outside the Legislative Assembly to make pressure on deputies to approve a loan to invest in security, in San Salvador on Feb. 9, 2020. (photo: Getty)

Explaining El Salvador's Violence
Hilary Goodfriend, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The grisly violence in El Salvador has social and political origins. It is neither inevitable nor insuperable."

EXCERPT:

Jimmy Carter ignored Archbishop Oscar Romero’s plaintive request to sever aid to the Salvadoran military dictatorship in 1980, shortly before Romero’s assassination by US-trained death squads. Ronald Reagan escalated and sustained the bloody civil war that ensued, in which US-backed security forces were responsible for over 85 percent of the seventy thousand deaths and ten thousand disappearances suffered during the twelve-year conflict with the leftist insurgency. It was the Clinton administration that escalated the incarceration and deportation of Salvadoran refugees, many of whom adapted to local gang culture in working-class California neighborhoods and prisons, and approved the draconian 1996 immigration reforms that created the foundations for today’s mass deportation machine.

Bush Jr signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which further subordinated the region’s labor and natural resources to the demands of US capital, ravaging local economies and spurring US-bound migration beyond even wartime levels. And in 2012, the Obama administration designated MS-13 an international criminal organization on par with the Italian Camorra, Mexico’s Zetas, or the Japanese Yakuza, all while accelerating the detention and deportation of migrants to unprecedented levels.

Decades of bipartisan US security aid fueled El Salvador’s repressive zero-tolerance policing, which radicalized and fortified incipient gang organizations. All this, to say nothing of the preceding century of imperial pillage, intervention, and exploitation, produced a predictably monstrous social formation.

With MS-13 in the spotlight, a flurry of new English-language publications seek to shed light on the gang for a US audience. Few are better positioned to do so than the investigative journalists from the Salvadoran digital magazine El Faro, who gained international acclaim for their reporting on gangs and government corruption. In a recent book, The Hollywood Kid: The Violent Life and Violent Death of an MS-13 Hitman, celebrated El Faro contributors and brothers Óscar and Juan José D’Aubuisson Martínez — nephews of Roberto D’Aubuisson, the notorious death squad leader and founder of the far-right ARENA party — chronicle the devastating story of a notorious MS-13 hitman turned police informant, providing at the same time a detailed history of the gang’s origins and rise within a broader international context.

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Rhino, springboks, zebra, elephant and lion in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. (photo: Getty)

Trump's Trophy Hunting Council Disbanded After Legal Defeat
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "The Department of the Interior has disbanded a controversial council that promoted big game hunting after a judge ruled that environmental groups could challenge the legitimacy of the council in court."

…..as The Associated Press reported.

The DOI told a federal judge on Friday that the International Wildlife Conservation Council (IWCC) had ended its charter in October and would not be renewed. The IWCC was created to boost trophy hunting and to relax federal regulations around importing heads and hides of exotic animals like African elephants, rhinos, lions, and other threatened wildlife, according to The Associated Press.

"The Council will not meet or conduct any business again, it can no longer be renewed, and there [is] no plan to establish another committee with a similar mission or scope in the future," the DOI explained in a court filing Friday, according to NPR.

The lawyers for the DOI argued that since the council had been disbanded, the judge should dismiss a lawsuit from environmental groups looking into the "formation, composition, ethics provision, or meetings" by the IWCC, as NPR reported.

"The IWCC's disbandment is a huge victory in the fight against the Trump administration's illegal advisory bodies," said Democracy Forward senior counsel Travis Annatoyn, in a statement. "But the fight isn't over."

Democracy Forward is representing the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International in a lawsuit challenging the legality of the IWCC under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The disbandment announcement came on the heels of a slew of FACA lawsuits against the administration.

Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who had to resign under a corruption scandal, put the 16-member advisory board together. It was formed as a response to an Obama-era ban on elephant and lion trophy imports from Africa. In 2018, The Associated Press revealed that the board members were big-game hunters, many with direct ties to President Trump and his family, according to The Associated Press.

Animal rights groups and environmental activists cheered that the committee would not continue its work.

"I have little doubt our litigation spurred the administration's decision to abandon the IWCC and walk away from its biased and un-transparent practices," said Zak Smith, international wildlife conservation director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in a statement. "We're glad the Trump administration is closing shop on this ridiculously misguided council and we await a full accounting of its tainted work product."

The taxpayer-funded committee met five times over its two-year span and formed four sub-committees. The government said, "Ultimately, the IWCC did not vote on or make any recommendations or otherwise provide any advice or work product," NPR reported.

"The end of Trump's thrill-kill council is a huge victory for elephants, lions and other imperiled animals targeted by trophy hunters," said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. "It's still critical to address this biased committee's past legal violations and prevent self-serving advice from trophy hunters from poisoning federal wildlife policies."

IWCC members claimed that recreational hunting is necessary because fees paid by big-game hunters help fund conservation programs. They also argued that it boosts local economies and creates hundreds of jobs.

An Interior spokesperson told The Hill in a statement that the department "takes illegal wildlife trafficking seriously and will continue working to grow our partnerships, while continuing to move toward shared conservation stewardship."

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