Monday, June 29, 2020

RSN: Barr Forms Task Force to Counter 'Anti-Government Extremists'






Reader Supported News
28 June 20
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Reader Supported News
28 June 20
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Barr Forms Task Force to Counter 'Anti-Government Extremists'
Attorney General William P. Barr at the White House. (photo: Leah Millis.Reuters)
Matt Zapotosky, The Washington Post
Zapotosky writes: "Attorney General William P. Barr on Friday directed the formation of a task force that will be dedicated to countering 'anti-government extremists,' escalating federal law enforcement's response to the violence that has sometimes marked nationwide protests against police brutality and racism."
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A supporter wears a 'It's OK to be White' shirt as he listens to President Donald Trump speak during a campaign rally at the BOK Center on June 20, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (photo: Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images
A supporter wears a 'It's OK to be White' shirt as he listens to President Donald Trump speak during a campaign rally at the BOK Center on June 20, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (photo: Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images

Trump Retweets Video Showing Supporter Yelling "White Power": "Great People"
Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "President Donald Trump wanted to thank his supporters Sunday morning, and did so by retweeting a video that included one of them shouting 'white power.'"

 Trump expressed his thanks to the “the great people of The Villages,” a community in Florida, where supporters of the president apparently held a golf cart parade in his honor and verbally clashed with protesters who lined up on their route. The first bit of the video shows protesters yelling “racist” at a couple driving in a golf cart with a “Trump 2020” and “America First” signs. The man driving the golf cart gives a thumbs up and yells back, “White power!” The man protesting seems to see that as a recognition that his racist label is accurate, “There you go, white power.”
Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!! https://t.co/4Gg1iGOhyG
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020
The video also includes other clips, apparently of the same pro-Trump golf-cart parade in which protesters and supporters of the president yelled slurs and insults at each other. In one clip, for example, a woman yells, “Nazi, racist pig” at Trump supporters. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar was asked about the video and the president’s retweet on Sunday morning. “I’ve not seen that video or that tweet, but obviously neither the President, his administration nor I would do anything to be supportive of white supremacy or anything that would support discrimination of any kind,” Azar said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Trump retweeting the video and praising his supporters comes amid reports that the president’s allies have been calling on him to tone down his rhetoric at a time when his poll numbers appear to be plummeting. So far, though, the president hasn’t seemed too eager to take the advice and instead has apparently chosen to focus on appealing to his base.
Update at 12:50 p.m.: President Donald Trump deleted the tweet about three hours after posting it. This is the video Trump had retweeted while writing, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!” White House spokesperson Judd Deere issued a statement that said: “President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”
Seniors from The Villages in Florida protesting against each other: pic.twitter.com/Q3GRJCTjEW
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) June 27, 2020




Steve Bannon in Washington DC in November 2019. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Steve Bannon in Washington DC in November 2019. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Bannon Aims to Make a Comeback in Circle of Trump Influencers Ahead of Election
Daniel Strauss, Guardian UK
Strauss writes: "As an election approaches, Steve Bannon and his allies are trying to return the former chief White House strategist to media circles known to influence the president's thinking."
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William Faulkner. (photo: Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
William Faulkner. (photo: Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

How Mary Trump Found Herself in the Hot Mess of a Faulkner Novel
Malcolm Jones, The Daily Beast
Jones writes: "Doing it once could be chalked up to an inside joke. Doing it twice? That's as good as saying, this is not just a story. This is her story."
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Trump's rally in Tulsa. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)
Trump's rally in Tulsa. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)

Workers Removed Thousands of Social Distancing Stickers Before Trump's Tulsa Rally, According to Video
Joshua Partlow and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "In the hours before President Trump's rally in Tulsa, his campaign directed the removal of thousands of 'Do Not Sit Here, Please!' stickers from seats in the arena that were intended to establish social distance between rallygoers, according to video and photos obtained by The Washington Post and a person familiar with the event."

EXCERPTS:

The removal contradicted instructions from the management of the BOK Center, the 19,000-seat arena in downtown Tulsa where Trump held his rally on June 20. At the time, coronavirus cases were rising sharply in Tulsa County, and Trump faced intense criticism for convening a large crowd for an indoor political rally, his first such event since the start of the pandemic.
As part of its safety plan, arena management had purchased 12,000 do-not-sit stickers for Trump’s rally, intended to keep people apart by leaving open seats between attendees. On the day of the rally, event staff had already affixed them on nearly every other seat in the arena when Trump’s campaign told event management to stop and then began removing the stickers, hours before the president’s arrival, according to a person familiar with the event who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
In a video clip obtained by The Washington Post, two men — one in a suit and one wearing a badge and a face mask — can be seen pulling stickers off seats in a section of the arena. It is unclear who those two men are. When Trump took the stage on Saturday evening, the crowd was clustered together and attendees were not leaving empty seats between themselves.
The actions by Trump’s campaign were first reported Friday by Billboard Magazine.
As rally preparations were underway, Trump’s campaign staff intervened with the venue manager, ASM Global, and told them to stop labeling seats in this way, Doug Thornton, executive vice president of ASM Global, told the magazine.
“They also told us that they didn’t want any signs posted saying we should social distance in the venue,” Thornton said. “The campaign went through and removed the stickers.”
The director of the Tulsa Health Department, Bruce Dart, had recommended that the event be postponed until it was safer. A number of city residents and business owners brought a lawsuit against the venue manager, ASM Global, seeking to require all attendees wear masks and adhere to social distancing guidelines from health authorities.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected that suit.
On June 13, a week before the rally, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) wrote to the venue management saying he understood that Trump’s campaign “has presented plans to ASM Global in order to accommodate capacity crowds during a political rally.”
Stitt noted that Oklahoma was in “Phase 3” of its reopening plan and Trump’s rally “proceeding as planned is consistent with the guidance” of that plan. Stitt’s letter added that “we have also encouraged event licensees to refer to the general CDC guidelines for more information about COVID-19.”
Two days before the rally, the managers of the BOK Center had asked the Trump campaign to provide a detailed written plan outlining the “health and safety” measures it intended to use to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Before the rally, Murtaugh said in an emailed statement: “We take safety seriously, which is why we’re doing temperature checks for everyone attending, and providing masks and hand sanitizer. This will be a Trump rally, which means a big, boisterous, excited crowd. We don’t recall the media shaming demonstrators about social distancing — in fact the media were cheering them on.”
As the crowd entered the day of the rally, the Trump campaign handed out masks and small bottles of “Make America Great Again 2020” branded hand sanitizer.
Trump had told North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) during a May 29 phone call that he would not hold a socially distanced convention in Charlotte because he had never had an empty seat since he came down the escalator at the start of his presidential campaign in 2015.
Neither Trump nor the White House asked that the stickers be removed, said a senior White House official. While campaign staff and some attendees wore masks during the rally, many rallygoers did not.
At least six members of the Trump campaign advance staff have tested positive for the coronavirus, including two Secret Service employees. Dozens of Secret Service officers and agents who attended the Tulsa rally were ordered to self-quarantine.


Lazarus Chakwera waves to a crowd as he arrives at his last campaign rally, in Lilongwe, ahead of the rerun general elections. Chakwera on June 27, 2020 was declared winner with 59 percent of the vote. (photo: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP)
Lazarus Chakwera waves to a crowd as he arrives at his last campaign rally, in Lilongwe, ahead of the rerun general elections. Chakwera on June 27, 2020 was declared winner with 59 percent of the vote. (photo: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP)

After Historic Election, What Next for Malawi?
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Malawi opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera has been sworn in as the country's new president after beating the incumbent Peter Mutharika in an historic rerun vote."
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Fossil fuel emissions. (photo: DWalker44/Getty Images)
Fossil fuel emissions. (photo: DWalker44/Getty Images)

Rolling Back Environmental Protections Under Cover of the Pandemic
Rachel Golden Kroner, Scientific American
Kroner writes: "In Malaysia, it's happening so a housing development can be built. In Albania, it's to make room for an airport. And in both Brazil and the United States, it's to extract more minerals and fossil fuels."

EXCERPT:
Some of these actions threaten endangered species and could  fragment vital ecosystems. Others  increase risks to indigenous communities. Some may lead to the release of significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating the pace of climate change. Many are flying under the radar while the pandemic and the struggle for racial justice understandably absorb public attention.
In one particularly egregious example, the government of Canada’s province of Alberta has proposed to remove protective status for 175 provincial parks , following a quiet amendment that removed the requirement for public consultation in these types of decisions.
Wherever they are happening, these rollbacks to protected areas can increase the likelihood of future pandemics. We know that land use change is the most significant driver of emerging infectious zoonotic diseases, like the virus that caused COVID-19. That is why leading public health experts are urging governments to protect nature as a part of their pandemic prevention strategies, something that protected areas do by definition.
By opening up protected areas to development, we don’t just undermine our efforts to care for protected places. We run the risk of creating the conditions for another pandemic, even while we’re still dealing with the current one. We also further risk locking in a harmful trajectory for our climate, when we know that climate change disproportionately affects communities of color.
This is why governments around the world must stop harmful environmental rollbacks, especially at a moment when the public cannot adequately participate in the decision-making process. Instead of exploiting this moment to scale back protected areas, governments should follow the EU’s example and use economic recovery efforts to scale them up.











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RSN: FOCUS: David Sirota | Regulators: Private Equity Is on a Crime Spree




Reader Supported News
28 June 20
It’s late in the month, very late and we are looking at fundraising returns that again will not address the organizations operating costs.
Regardless of what any of us want, this will not work. We have to better on donations.
We don’t need a windfall, we need a budget.
In earnest.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611





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28 June 20
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FOCUS: David Sirota | Regulators: Private Equity Is on a Crime Spree
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Jay Clayton awaits the start of a hearing on Capitol Hill September 24, 2019 in Washington, DC. (photo: Win McNamee / Getty Images)
David Sirota, Jacobin
Sirota writes: "Securities and Exchange Commission regulators recently issued a scathing report that reads like a last-ditch plea for help in reeling in private equity billionaires, who have all but free rein to fleece whoever they want, whenever they want."

n 2017, Donald Trump appointed private-equity lawyer Jay Clayton as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), one of the agencies that is responsible for policing the financial industry. Soon after getting the job — and only a few years after the SEC fined major private equity firms for bilking investors — Clayton was pushing to change federal law to let asset managers funnel more money from retirees to those high-risk, high-fee firms.
Clayton finally got his way last week when the Trump administration issued a letter letting 401(k) plans move the savings of 100 million workers and retirees to private equity billionaires, some of whom have been among big donors to Donald Trump’s political machine. Clayton publicly celebrated the change, insisting it “will provide our long-term Main Street investors with a choice of professionally managed funds” that would benefit workers and retirees.
But in a stunning move yesterday, Clayton’s law enforcement agency effectively blew the whistle on its own chairman, issuing a scathing report documenting a private equity crime spree that is fleecing pension funds, university endowments, and other investors.
The timing of the alarm is particularly important. The SEC’s report reads like career regulators’ last-ditch plea for help at the very moment they see private equity billionaires on the verge of creating a lawless autonomous zone for themselves.
In a little-noticed ruling last week, the Supreme Court restricted the SEC’s power to punish private equity firms. With the agency successfully neutered, Trump is now trying to move Clayton into the job of US Attorney, overseeing Wall Street.
If his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, Clayton would be positioned to defang the prosecutors who are the last line of law-enforcement defense against the very private equity wrongdoing that SEC regulators are now frantically trying to blow the whistle on.
“Expenses That Were Not Permitted”
rivate equity firms are notorious for looting companies and torching the environment, while charging investors huge fees in exchange for middling returns.
In 2014, a top SEC official warned that there were “violations of law or material weaknesses in controls” in more than half of the private equity firms the agency had examined. The SEC’s new Risk Alert expands on that discovery, summarizing findings from hundreds of the agency’s examinations of private equity firms. It reads like a scathing rap sheet documenting a culture of abuse, misconduct, and theft — and it obliterates Clayton’s recent claims that the investments are good for workers and retirees.
For example: amid recent headlines about the private equity industry charging investors $230 billion in fees, one section of the SEC document shines a spotlight on fee gouging. Regulators report that private equity firms have “failed to follow their own travel and entertainment expense policies, potentially resulting in investors overpaying for such expenses.” The SEC also notes that firms are charging “clients for expenses that were not permitted” or not properly disclosed — including expenses for lavish annual investor meetings.
In practice, such fees and expenses are being paid for out of the money entrusted to private equity firms by investors such as pension funds, university endowments, and charities.
Similarly, SEC regulators seemed to bolster long-standing allegations that private equity firms mislead investors about the value of their assets. The agency reported finding private equity firms “that did not value client assets in accordance with their valuation processes or in accordance with disclosures to clients.”
The agency notes that in some cases, fraudulent valuations “led to overcharging management fees and carried interest because such fees were based on inappropriately overvalued holdings.”
“As A Result, Some Investors Were Unaware of the Potential Harm”
n recent years, critics have asserted that private equity firms secretly give preferential treatment to certain politically connected investors — preferences that are paid for by exorbitant fees and abusive terms imposed on “dumb money” investors like pension funds.
The SEC appears to confirm these allegations.
“The staff observed private fund advisers that preferentially allocated limited investment opportunities to new clients, higher fee-paying clients, or proprietary accounts or proprietary-controlled clients, thereby depriving certain investors of limited investment opportunities without adequate disclosure,” the agency wrote. “The staff observed private fund advisers that did not provide adequate disclosure about economic relationships between themselves and select investors or clients.”
One example of particularly predatory terms that critics cite are provisions that could let preferred investors bail out early on failing investments, leaving the other investors, like pension funds, with all the losses. Again, the SEC confirms that this is happening.
“The staff observed private fund advisers that entered into agreements with select investors that established special terms, including preferential liquidity terms, but did not provide adequate disclosure,” the agency wrote. “As a result, some investors were unaware of the potential harm that could be caused by selected investors redeeming their investments ahead of other investors, particularly in times of market dislocation where there is a greater likelihood of a financial impact.”
A Private Equity Takeover
n 2016, a group of Rhode Island retirees requested federal law-enforcement action to investigate whether special preferences were harming their state’s pension fund. To date, that request has gone unanswered — and moves by the Supreme Court and Trump suggest they will remain unanswered.
The high court last week limited government regulators’ power to punish financial firms that rip off investors. While the ruling preserved the Securities and Exchange Commission’s power to order companies to return ill-gotten gains from illegal schemes, it limits the size of those financial punishments in order to make sure they don’t end up being a “punitive sanction” — the kind that is designed to deter crime.
If Trump now successfully installs Clayton as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Clayton would be able to make sure there is no investigation or prosecution of the private equity industry that he worked with as a Wall Street attorney, that he personally invested in, and that is helping bankroll Trump’s reelection.
It would be the culmination of the private equity industry’s takeover of the federal law-enforcement system — at precisely the moment regulators are desperately trying to warn America about the industry’s crimes.








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Top News | 'He’s Not Going to Run Unopposed': Sanders Rejects Schumer for Majority Leader

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