15 November 20
The Hated Rollover Page Actually Worked
So the Rollover fundraising page was very unpopular, with our readers, our staff and me. In fairness it was never anywhere we wanted to be.
The truth and the problem is that it worked. When we were having a slow day for donations Rolling-over the site to the fundraising message would pick up the pace of donations just enough to keep the funding-drive viable.
Without that we are once again seeing days of fundraising numbers so low we have no chance of covering our costs.
It’s also nowhere we want to be.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611
14 November 20
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
RSN: Harvey Wasserman | Trump Is US History's Biggest Loser
Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "It's over!!! Donald Trump will not be re-inaugurated on January 20, 2021."
( … except for the next two months of residual rape and pillage.)
Donald Trump will not be re-inaugurated on January 20, 2021.
This could not have been said with certainty mere days ago. Our nation and the world have rightfully taken to dancing in the streets. We have dethroned a dictator for all to see.
For the rest of human history, the overthrow of Donald Trump can serve as a shining example of an angry public successfully disposing of a despicable tyrant.
This exquisite human triumph was not a certainty. (Even now there may be some reasons to doubt it.)
But Trump had numerous plausible legal and political routes to another term. Our nation and our species will not survive another criminal psychopath puked up by a corrupt, obsolete electoral relic.
So over the next four years, America’s grassroots Election Protection movement must forever eradicate such travesties as stripped registration rolls, sabotaged voting by mail, black box touchscreens, rigged vote counters, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and more.
Meanwhile, we face two months of abject terror. Trump won’t leave his position of power and privilege without grifting out every possible ounce of personal profit at public expense.
The sheets, towels, and silverware will all disappear from the White House, along with precious furniture, various national treasures, and every re-sellable artifact Trump’s mobster famiglia can grab.
Expect them to pee on every couch and carpet as they exit in signature arrogance and entitlement.
Pardons and tee fees aside, Trump will run out his remnant regime-clock trashing every official shred of environmental protection, financial regulation, social justice, human kindness, and judicial tolerance he somehow missed.
Above all, he’ll let his viral epidemic kill another 200,000 of us while driving our economy to utter collapse. No cure will emerge until Trump arranges his personal cut.
And, of course, his unsteady hand is still on the nuclear button (why don’t we get rid of that thing altogether!!).
Biden’s 306 electoral votes exactly match Trump’s total from 2016 (when he called it a “massive landslide.”)
But Biden won 2020 by some 5 million popular votes, versus Trump’s 2016 loss by nearly 3 million. An 8 million popular vote differential yielding identical Electoral College vote counts screams of the need to abolish the Electoral College.
Trump’s obvious plan to win 6-3 or 5-4 at the Supreme Court has fallen to his losing too many states to credibly challenge. With a tighter popular margin, he might’ve overthrown just Pennsylvania’s vote count and maybe one more and gotten the Supremes to give him another term, a la Bush v. Gore.
But negating the popular balloting in the three or four states he’d need to get to 270 electoral votes is beyond his pale now, especially with a powerful wing of conservative “Never Trumpers” demanding his departure.
Trump could still try a military coup. He could order the Defense Department and his cultist militias to take violent control. It would be foolhardy at this point to totally dismiss that possibility.
For a less abrasive fascist, that route to totalitarian control might appear an easy one.
But the Donald has done a spectacular job of alienating even much of the armed forces. His civilian paramilitary followers might well do some damage. He did get 70-plus million votes.
But the 75 million Americans who voted against him include the tens of millions who marched for George Floyd. The public abhorrence of all things Trump is broad and deep. A general strike, saturation marches, a relentless forever resistance are all within the grassroots democratic arsenal.
In a face-to-face confrontation with a hugely hated terrorist tyrant, we are prepared to win.
And Trump will become American history’s Biggest Loser.
Twenty-one incumbent US presidents have won re-election. Trump becomes the tenth to be ousted (elected in 1884, Grover Cleveland lost in 1888, then won again in 1892). No other president has been forced from office amidst both an economic collapse and a viral pandemic.
Uniquely to his time, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon faced federal prison when he fled the White House in 1974. Unlike Tricky Dick, Trump faces financial ruin. A pardon might spare him (like Nixon) from federal prosecutions. But not from civil and criminal charges awaiting him in New York and other states.
Serious jail time might come at him from fraud, tax fraud, money laundering, petty larceny, grand theft, libel, perjury, alleged sexual impositions involving some two dozen women, and accusations of outright rape from at least one (where a definitive judgment awaits a DNA sample).
Trump could thus become the first ex-president to go to prison. He might fight extradition from Florida … or from Russia or Saudi Arabia.
But no other president has plopped into a lethal swamp like the one awaiting the Donald. Thus his fight to stay in the White House (and out of the Big House) is both demented and desperate.
But he’s failed in too many states to get a credible Supreme Court lifeline. And he’s alienated too many potential conservative and military supporters – along with tens of millions of vigilant mainstream progressive and nonviolent Americans – to make a coup do-able.
For the next two months, this Biggest Loser will hold us all hostage. His virus will kill countless thousands. His greed will further ravage an already devastated economy. His racism will more deeply poison our national spirit. His madness will pillage our mother Earth. His complete lack of morality, compassion, and empathy will forever cheapen our national spirit. His utter depravity will threaten us all with eco-nuclear extinction.
If we somehow get through it, our children, grandchildren, and theirs will forever know him as America’s “Biggest Loser.”
And all that pain he’s inflicted on people and the planet will precisely torture his pathetic, shriveled soul until, at some point in the very distant future, redemption may come ... along with a joyous snowball fight in Hell.
Harvey Wasserman co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition at www.grassrootsep.org.
A free pdf of his People’s Spiral of US History is available through www.solartopia.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Supporters of Donald Trump rally in Washington, D.C. (photo: Guardian UK)
Trump Supporters Gather in Washington as President Refuses to Concede to Biden
Oliver Milman, David Smith and Samira Sadeque, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Donald Trump continues to rage against the dying light of his US presidency, falsely claiming to be the victim of mass voter fraud and praising rightwingers and conspiracy theorists who gathered in Washington on Saturday to echo his fabrication."
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United States Postal Service worker. (photo: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images)
Project Veritas Could Face Legal Liability for Postal Worker's Ballot Fraud Allegations, Experts Say
Roger Sollenberger, Salon
Sollenberger writes: "A Pennsylvania postal worker who initially alleged that a postmaster had tampered with mail ballots - an accusation embraced by Republicans as evidence of an unfair election - told federal investigators in a recorded interview that his sworn affidavit had been written by Project Veritas, and that he could no longer stand by his statement."
After congressional investigators said on Tuesday that the postal worker, Richard Hopkins, had "completely" recanted his allegation, Project Veritas posted a video of Hopkins denying that he had done so.
"I'm here to say I did not recant my statements," Hopkins said in the video. "That did not happen."
The next day, Project Veritas posted a two-hour audio clip of Hopkins' interview with U.S. Postal Service investigators, apparently in the belief that it would bolster Hopkins' case and show that investigators had manipulated him into confessing.
The audio recording, which Hopkins himself made secretly and Salon has reviewed, does not indicate that, however. Hopkins repeatedly disavows any first-hand knowledge of misconduct by the postmaster, saying instead that his allegation was largely an assumption, drawn from pieces of a conversation he overheard amid the noise of a mail processing facility.
"I didn't specifically overhear the whole story. I just heard a part of it," Hopkins said in the recording. "And I could have missed a lot of it."
"My mind probably added the rest. I understand that," he said at another point, adding: "All it is is hearsay, and that's the worst part."
When an agent asked Hopkins in the recording if he would still swear to the affidavit's claim that the postmaster "was back-dating ballots," he replied: "At this point? No."
Hopkins also told the federal agents that the affidavit, which he signed under penalty of law and which was later provided to the Trump campaign and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had been written by Project Veritas.
Because he had signed the document in a state of "so much shock," Hopkins said, "I wasn't paying that much attention to what [Project Veritas] were telling me."
In an email to Salon, a Project Veritas spokesperson described the group's draft of the affidavit as "starter text" that Hopkins later "revised and discussed" with them. When asked how Hopkins' input had changed the text, the spokesperson responded that "Hopkins was the author of the affidavit" — apparently contradicting Hopkins' statement that Project Veritas had written it.
Hopkins also expressed remorse for how the saga had affected his supervisor, who has received death threats as a result of the amplification of the allegations.
"That's f**ked," Hopkins said, according to the audio.
To be clear, there is no evidence of significant or widespread voter fraud in the presidential election, which was clearly won by President-elect Joe Biden. President Trump's campaign has filed at least a dozen lawsuits since Election Day. Most have been dropped or dismissed, and none is remotely likely to change the result in any individual state, let alone the Electoral College count.
Recounts in statewide elections rarely shift more than a few hundred votes, and almost never overturn established results. Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania by more than 60,000 votes, according to the official count as of Friday. Hopkins' allegation was about one single ballot.
Barry Burden, political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, lamented the accusation and its subsequent politicization in the context of a broader assault on the integrity of the country's election systems.
"It is a sad situation that those who loudly raise questions about the validity of the election are relying on sketchy and sometimes fabricated incidents such as these to justify their reluctance to accept the results," Burden told Salon.
Legal experts told Salon that if Hopkins' allegations of ballot tampering are in fact unsubstantiated, he and Project Veritas could both be criminally liable in the case.
"The postal worker signed the affidavit under penalty of law, but if these accusations are indeed false, Project Veritas could also potentially be on the hook for defamation," Jon Sherman, senior counsel at the Fair Elections Center, told Salon. "If those allegations are false, then they have defamed the Erie postmaster by falsely accusing him of instructing people to backdate ballots."
"It could be witness tampering or suborning perjury, depending on the facts and Pennsylvania state law defining those crimes," another election law attorney told Salon on condition of anonymity.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an election law expert and professor at Stetson University, outlined in an email to Salon the possible legal ramifications at both federal and state levels.
"If this was done before a federal court then there's a strong argument that it would violate 18 U.S. Code § 1622 as a subornation of perjury," Torres-Spelliscy said. "If it were before a state court then it could be illegal as perjury under the Pennsylvania statutes."
Torres-Spelliscy added that Hopkins' retraction may qualify for an exemption under Pennsylvania law, as long as his statement was changed before it could "substantially affect" legal proceedings.
But the Trump campaign cited Hopkins' allegations in a federal lawsuit filed on Monday to block Pennsylvania from certifying the election results.
"He filed a very detailed affidavit. He named names. He described explicitly what it is that he experienced. And we don't know what kind of pressure he has been under since he publicly made those statements," Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told reporters on Tuesday evening.
The available audio, however, does not present a complete record of Hopkins' interview with postal investigators. Project Veritas — which The Washington Post describes as "an organization that uses deceptive tactics to expose what it says is liberal bias and corruption in the mainstream media and government" — did not publish the full interview, which according to Veritas ran three hours, an hour longer than the version posted online.
When Salon reached out to Project Veritas for comment, communications director Neil McCabe initially replied, "I want to caution about republishing libel or falsehoods about James O'Keefe and Project Veritas." O'Keefe founded Project Veritas in 2010, after previously working for Andrew Breitbart, the late founder of Breitbart News. The organization defines its mission as "to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society." It is best known for undercover video and audio recordings targeting media organizations and liberal groups.
McCabe added in his preface that the group "is not a right-wing or conservative organization."
"In the past year, we have reported on Republicans and Democrats," he said.
He also claimed that "we are not activists, we are journalists," and insisted that "we do not deceptively edit video, although that is often repeated."
"We are suing The New York Times for defamation and libel for stories that they posted about us," McCabe added, without providing specifics. "Before we filed, the paper's deputy general counsel wrote to us that their reporting was speculation, not fact, and that the academics they cited were also speculating."
McCabe may be referring to a New York Times report from September, in which a group of Stanford University researchers concluded that a Project Veritas video accusing Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., of voter fraud was part of a "coordinated disinformation campaign."
Later, in an emailed statement to Salon, Jared Ede, chief legal officer at Project Veritas, accused the Washington Post of witness intimidation. Ede also claimed that Veritas lawyers had been retained to represent Hopkins, though he would not verify that claim. (Hopkins told investigators that Project Veritas had lawyers ready if anything went "haywire," but said he had no personal representation.)
Here is Ede's statement in full:
In this country, we have rights, including the rights to representation when we are being interrogated. The inspectors who interrogated Hopkins for three hours know better but refused to let Hopkins speak with the attorneys he unequivocally disclosed were "on retention for [him] … in case there's anything that happens[.]". They then refused to leave him alone or let him speak to anyone until he executed a watered-down statement drafted by them using their words (even overruling his objections as to the wording).
To top it off, they refused to provide him a copy of what they forced him to sign, refuse to take Mr. Hopkins' calls, and have not even given Mr. Hopkins' attorneys a copy of the statement.
As you heard, the inspectors then warned Mr. Hopkins not to discuss the investigation, all while their findings were being leaked to The Washington Post. As The Post says, democracy dies in darkness. It used to be The Post offered this as a warning — now it appears to be a motto as they coordinate to intimidate witnesses who dare defend the integrity of our democracy.
Asked specifically whether Ede's remarks rose to the level of accusing the Post of the crimes of witness intimidation and conspiracy to do the same, Anne Champion, a First Amendment attorney at Gibson Dunn, told Salon that she believed so.
"Yes, I think it is an accusation," Champion said. "They flat out say that The Post is 'coordinat[ing] to intimidate witnesses,' and the implication is obviously that they are 'coordinat[ing]' with the 'inspectors' who were allegedly 'leak[ing]' to The Post information about the investigation which the inspectors 'warned Mr. Hopkins not to discuss.'"
Champion added that she did not think the facts supported Ede's accusation.
"Some wrongful means is necessary to constitute witness intimidation — it can't just be that you interrogated someone, told them to maintain confidentiality and had them sign a statement regarding what they said. There is nothing wrongful there," she said. "There needs to be improper influence, a threat, a bribe or some improper attempt to instill fear if the witness doesn't testify in a certain way."
McCabe, the group's communications director, told Salon that Hopkins' affidavit had been "drafted based on Mr. Hopkins' Nov. 5 and 6 statements to James O'Keefe to create some starter text, which Mr. Hopkins revised and discussed with Project Veritas. His affidavit was consistent with his public statements and the narrative he gave Agent Klein on Nov. 6. No further comment is offered."
When Salon asked how Hopkins' revisions had changed the content between the first draft and the final text of the affidavit, McCabe responded: "Hopkins approved the affidavit, because Hopkins was the author of the affidavit."
Ede later wrote in an email, "If you intend to print that what we have told you contradicts what we have previously confirmed, you had best have evidence. I also warn that accusing us of committing crimes is in many jurisdictions considered defamation per se."
In Hopkins' interview with investigators, one federal agent tells Hopkins — who is now on unpaid leave and started a GoFundMe out of fear he might lose his job — that the Postal Service had an interest in protecting him against possible future charges that he had traded on his false claims to defraud donors.
Hopkins makes clear in the recording that while Project Veritas came up with the fundraiser idea, it was his own page and the group was taking no money. (GoFundMe deactivated Hopkins' page soon after news of his interview with investigators broke.)
On Sunday, the day before Hopkins told his story to federal investigators, Project Veritas announced it would award $25,000 for "tips related to election, voter and ballot fraud in Pennsylvania."
Hopkins has since then reasserted his initial allegation on the new fundraising site: "I am willing to testify under oath that my supervisors ordered workers including myself to deliver ballots received after November 3rd in order to 'back date' so they would still be accepted in the 2020 Presidential Election."
Asked whether Project Veritas planned to give Hopkins the $25,000 reward — and whether Hopkins had ever been under the impression that he might receive the money — Ede did not answer directly, but offered this response: "Project Veritas has and always will support and protect its sources to the fullest extent of the law," adding that the group encourages whistleblowers to reach out.
On Thursday, O'Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, shared a new account Hopkins had opened on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo.
"Thank You, James O'Keefe and Project Veritas for letting me tell my story when others wouldn't," Hopkins writes in his personal note on the page. "Please support me as I go forward with this battle."
As of this writing, the page had raised $215,301 toward its $250,000 goal, gathered from 5,223 donations. It has also accrued 2,272 "pray now" clicks.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. (photo: A
Democrats Need to Clearly Embrace Popular, Progressive Policies or They Will Continue to Fail in Down Ballot Elections
Eoin Higgins, Business Insider
Higgins writes: "Despite President Donald Trump's refusal to concede, President-elect Joe Biden's clear victory means that the focus of the election can shift from who will win the Oval Office to what happened beyond the presidential race."
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An Uber vehicle in Los Angeles. (photo: Getty Images)
Big Tech Threw $200 Million at a Ballot Measure to Hurt Gig Economy Workers. And They Won
Ross Barkan, Guardian UK
Barkan writes: "One of the darker outcomes of 21st-century work life has been the predatory gig economy. Divorced from healthcare benefits and regular pay, millions of workers are told they are supposed to be lucky to drive passengers around in a car for ever-diminishing returns."
Last week, there was hope that Proposition 22, a ballot measure that allows gig economy companies to continue treating drivers as independent contractors, would be defeated in California, an increasingly progressive state. But voters passed the measure overwhelmingly, thanks to obscene amounts of spending by Uber, Lyft, Seamless and DoorDash. Unleashing more than $200m – 10 times the amount of the proposition’s opponents, like labor unions – the coalition of tech giants easily drowned out those fighting for the rights of workers.
The sum is titanic. Uber and its allies left nothing to chance. Reaping billions in investment capital, the companies could easily deploy the cash to crush those advocating on behalf of their workforce.
With Proposition 22’s passage, the underclass of these tech giants will remain overworked and underpaid, denied the benefits of full-time employees. They will continue to dwell in precarity, unable to access unemployment insurance, paid family leave or healthcare during a pandemic.
The vote will probably have a nationwide impact, since it rejected the principles outlined in a 2018 state supreme court ruling and enshrined in a 2019 state law that said workers who performed tasks within a company’s regular business must be treated as employees. Now gig workers are exempted from these rules and can continue to work independently.
This is a pernicious new era of capitalism, in which companies can brutally exploit their workers without ever turning a profit. Old-world giants, like General Motors, at least needed to make money to survive.
The Uber business model is Trumpian. Storming into cities across the world and openly flouting local regulations, Uber burns up investor cash, winning through sheer ubiquity. Uber loses money every year but devours the market, offering artificially cheap transportation while driving rivals, like taxi drivers, to suicide. There is no way to compete with a company that is allowed to thrive while losing money. Uber can continually discount its rides, confident new capital will arrive to prop it up forever.
In fact, Uber’s survival depends on not classifying its drivers as full-time employees. That would make them a conventional company, subject to certain laws of gravity. Workers can be costly; they make demands, after all.
Had Proposition 22 failed, Uber, with its multibillion-dollar valuation, would have been forced to redirect its capital into the pockets of its workers. This, in the long run, would be unacceptable, depriving its wealthy benefactors and executives of their unreality.
In a sane society, a company could not habitually lose money, punish its workers and keep functioning. Uber can.
For much of the 2010s, gig companies coasted on the goodwill of the public. Blissfully unaware of how their goods were rendered so cheaply, most consumers and politicians celebrated the rise of Uber, Lyft and their brethren.
The outcome of this measure should not be treated as a referendum on big tech – not with such an absurd spending disparity. Give a labor union $200m to counter propaganda, and a vote total could be flipped. The outcome does, however, serve as a warning to the left that these rapacious companies will do anything and everything to protect their unnatural advantage in the marketplace.
Uber and its ilk treat workers as expendable assets. Having won in California, they will seek devastating victories elsewhere. It will be up to other states, even Congress, to somehow bring these companies to heel. This is the fight that must be joined.
Marielle Franco's Seeds: Black Women and the 2020 Brazilian Election
Dalila Fernandes de Negreiros, NACLA
Excerpt: "Black women have been historically underrepresented in elected positions in Brazil. Since Brazil's re-democratization in 1989, the Black population, which makes up more than 50 percent of the total Brazilian population, is not equivalently represented among elected representatives."
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Polar bears in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (photo: Josh Haner/NYT)
Trump Administration Pushes to Sell Alaska Oil Leases Pre-Biden Inauguration
Yereth Rosen, Reuters
Rosen writes: "The Trump Administration will take key steps to finalize a sale of oil drilling leases in the sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska just before Democrat Joseph Biden, who opposes drilling there, becomes president, a government spokeswoman said on Friday."
The White House will be sending out a call for nominations in coming days, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Anchorage, Alaska. The call is a request to energy companies on what specific land areas should be offered for sale.
That would start the clock on a 60-day period before sales could take place in ANWR, where drilling had been banned for decades before a Republican-led tax legislation signed in 2017 removed that ban. Biden opposes drilling in ANWR, while lawmakers in Alaska have long pushed to open up the ecologically sensitive area for oil and gas exploration.
“Development in ANWR is long overdue and will create good-paying jobs and provide a new revenue stream for the state - which is why a majority of Alaskans support it,” said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group.
Following a 30-day period after the call for nominations, the government would have to issue a notice for an impending sale of leases. Thirty days after that, the sale would take place, just before Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
Alaska produces roughly 500,000 barrels per day of crude oil, far below its peak of 2 million bpd in the late 1980s.
“This lease sale is one more box the Trump administration is trying to check off for its oil industry allies before vacating the White House in January,” said Adam Kolton, executive director at the Alaska Wilderness League, which opposes drilling in ANWR.
Bloomberg reported the news earlier on Friday.
The White House finalized a plan to allow drilling earlier this year. The 19 million acre (7.7 million hectares) refuge is home to Native tribes and wildlife populations including caribou and polar bears. In recent months, several big U.S. banks have said they would not finance oil and gas projects in the Arctic region.
“This administration has consistently ignored our voices and dismissed our concerns. Our food security, our land and our way of life is on the verge of being destroyed,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. The Gwich’in tribe lives in scattered villages in the reserve and across the national border in Canada.
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