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Stormy Daniels Is Running Rings Around Trump's Lawyer |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Monday, 12 March 2018 08:39 |
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Pierce writes: "This is quite a crew of miscreants we have running things these days."
Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. (photo: Getty Images/Pinterest)
Stormy Daniels Is Running Rings Around Trump's Lawyer
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
12 March 18
Michael Cohen strikes back.
 his is quite a crew of miscreants we have running things these days. If they'd planned the Great Train Robbery, they’d have left the money behind and taken the coal from the engine. If they’d burgled the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, they’d have left the Rembrandt and made off with the fire extinguishers and the Men’s Room sign.
Take it away, NBC News.
President Donald Trump's personal attorney used his Trump Organization email while arranging to transfer money into an account at a Manhattan bank before he wired $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence. The lawyer, Michael Cohen, also regularly used the same email account during 2016 negotiations with the actress — whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford — before she signed a nondisclosure agreement, a source familiar with the discussions told NBC News. And Clifford's attorney at the time addressed correspondence to Cohen in his capacity at the Trump Organization and as "Special Counsel to Donald J. Trump," the source said.
Remind me not to hire this guy to set up my money-laundering operation in the Caymans. Or to help me with my parking tickets, for all that.
In a statement last month, Cohen said he used his "personal funds to facilitate a payment" to Clifford, who says she had an intimate relationship with Trump a decade ago. "Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly," Cohen said in that statement. But an email uncovered in the last 24 hours and provided to NBC News by Clifford's current attorney, Michael Avenatti, shows First Republic Bank and Cohen communicated about the money using his Trump company email address, not his personal gmail account.
If the Benny Hill theme is running through your head right now, you’re not alone.
That Cohen is the bozo in this little dunk-tank exercise is an occasion for unmistakable schadenfreude. Cohen was the most prominent faux tough-guy in an entourage full of them. Now, it turns out the big-time Manhattan mouthpiece has managed to bungle himself into legal jeopardy regarding a scandal involving the president*’s canoodling with an adult-film actress. If the Republic is saved just because the people trying to steal it are dumb, I’ll take it.
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Colombia's Future Is at Stake |
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Sunday, 11 March 2018 12:53 |
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Franz writes: "Perhaps unsurprisingly, the deal is far from stable, as right-wing proposals for renewed militarization gain popularity over the commitment to continuing the peace process."
A voting booth during the 2016 peace referendum in Bogotá, Colombia. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Colombia's Future Is at Stake
By Tobias Franz, Jacobin
11 March 18
With the Right threatening a fragile peace, today's elections are the most important in Colombia’s recent history.
 little over one year ago, Colombian president Manuel Santos pushed through a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), ending a decades-long war and transitioning FARC from a guerilla army to a legal political party. He did so despite the original deal’s narrow rejection, with 50.2 percent of Colombians voting against it, in a popular referendum earlier that year. The polarization visible in the referendum has only intensified since the deal’s ratification. Human rights advocates and Colombia’s marginalized depend on peace to lessen the violent repression that shapes their political participation, while the Right and sections of the elite prefer the climate of fear and militarization fostered by civil war.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the deal is far from stable, as right-wing proposals for renewed militarization gain popularity over the commitment to continuing the peace process. It’s in this context that Colombians are asked to go to the polls for several national elections — arguably the country’s most important in recent history — first, today, for parliamentary elections of both houses and then, on May 27, for presidential elections.
After eight years in office, President Santos is constitutionally barred from running again. He is deeply unpopular, both with his traditional right-wing base due to his efforts to achieve peace with the FARC as well as with progressive sectors of society. Moreover, while his National Unity Party is currently the largest fraction in the Senate, it will likely lose the majority of its seats in today’s parliamentary election. The party has also failed to put forward a new presidential candidate despite the drastic fall in Santos’s popularity.
The other parties in Santos’s coalition government have long jumped ship. The Liberal Party, one of Santos’s early coalition partners, does everything it can to distance itself from the incumbent. This still might not be enough for their candidate, Humberto de la Calle, who faces slim chances as Santos’s chief peace negotiator. Other coalition parties, such as the right-wing Radical Change, are backing former vice president Vargas Lleras, who recently called for Colombians to “revive local security fronts and to create a body of volunteers of citizen security forces.”
Lleras’s rhetoric recalls the parapolitics of the early 2000s, when political leaders clamored to voice their support for paramilitary mobilization against the FARC. It’s aimed at far-right sections of Colombian society, especially supporters of former president Álvaro Uribe, who can’t run himself. While Uribe’s Democratic Center party is still in the process of finding a front-runner that can best serve at Uribe’s will, a variety of right-wing candidates are trying to woo for the support of the highly popular ex-president. This includes former inspector general of Colombia Alejandro Ordóñez, former senator and defense minister Marta Lucía Ramírez, and Senator Iván Duque Márquez, all of whom oppose the current peace deal with the FARC. One by one, they seek to outbid one another in their promises to turn the clock back to the state-sponsored human rights violations littering Colombia’s recent past.
This is accompanied by a classic Colombian phenomenon: invoking the specter of communism in Latin America. The far right issues constant warnings of Castro-Chavismo taking over Colombia from nearby Cuba and Venezuela. Despite the real dangers facing civil rights activists and community leaders who risk being murdered for their defense of the peace deal, mainstream commentators prefer to focus on the perils of creeping communism and “gender ideology.”
Amid this polarization, many Colombians put their hope in Sergio Fajardo, a supporter of the current peace deal with the FARC. Fajardo, a former professor of mathematics who has served as mayor in Medellín and governor in Antioquia, has a signature look: blue jeans, no tie, and rolled-up shirtsleeves. He is at pains to project himself as a man of the people; different from “los de siempre” (the usual suspects); different from Uribe; different from Santos. And with the support of the “Colombia Coalition” — featuring Senator Jorge Robledo of the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA) and the Green Alliance frontwoman Claudia López — he’s positioned to mobilize large parts of the progressive popular vote.
But while Fajardo defends the peace deal with the FARC, he gravitates towards neoliberal policies that undermine the structural changes needed for real and lasting peace. Case in point is his record in Medellín.
There, he built a coalition called Citizen Compromise that tied together NGOs and social movements as well as local business elites and the chamber of commerce. Many placed their hopes in the Compromise as a vehicle for bringing real political, social, and economic change to Medellín — a city mostly known for its high violence and inequality. However, following his electoral victory in 2003, Fajardo’s government was dominated by the interests of the local business elite. The NGO actors and social movements in the coalition were marginalized.
Unsurprisingly, Fajardo claimed that inequality could not be solved by income redistribution or “appealing to a discourse of anger or aggression.” Instead, he focused on municipal mega-projects, public-private initiatives for microcredit and insurance, and promoting the city as a cheap-labor destination for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). His close ties to Antioquia’s capitalist firms, such as the country’s largest insurer Sura, the leading bank Bancolombia, and the biggest cement producer Argos are documented in close detail. In interviews, CEOs repeatedly stress that Fajardo is a man of their own, one “who calls and asks for advice, asks (CEOs) to be part of his government, to form public-private partnerships.”
By mobilizing disgust against the corrupt, “usual suspect” politicians, Fajardo managed to capture popularity first at the local level and now at the national one. Yet his refusal to reform the crumbling health sector, with its privatized “health promoting entities” (Entidades Promotoras de Salud, EPS), to fight for more equal and free access to education at all levels, or to move the economy away from extractive industries and low-wage services makes him more of an alternative for Colombia’s oligarchy than for the broader society. Some of the main players in Antioquia’s capital have already positioned themselves behind Fajardo — though this support may waver once the Uribismo candidate is chosen.
The Left, meanwhile, is highly divided and caught up in sectarian fighting. The now-demobilized FARC, which is met with public outrage and protests at nearly all of their events, struggles to be accepted as a legal political party. The progressive Alternative Democratic Pole has failed to unite around a presidential candidate, with one of its internal fractions dissenting from the party leadership’s desire to join Fajardo’s coalition. Instead, a growing number of PDA members and other leftist movements have voiced their support for Bogotá’s former mayor, Gustavo Petro. In recent opinion polls, Petro has surpassed Fajardo as most likely to win the presidential elections. Still, he will face an uphill battle in a country dominated by landed capitalist interests bent on deepening Colombia’s current neoliberal accumulation strategy. In a country with a long history of assassinating popular leftist presidential candidates, there are growing fears for Petro’s safety — especially after his convoy was attacked during an election event in the northeastern town of Cúcuta.
The elections today and on May 27 are arguably the most decisive in Colombia’s recent history, but the electoral panorama gives little reason for hope. With the peace agreement on the line, with continued killing of social leaders at the hands of neo-paramilitary groups, and with the Right casting every progressive proposal as a Chavista communist conspiracy, there’s a real danger that the peace process will be reversed. The country’s progressive sectors continue to mobilize for justice, reconciliation, and in defense of the agreement. The elections will show whether their efforts have paid off. Until then, the divisive political climate will likely continue to polarize the country with far-fetched warnings of Castro-Chavismo. What’s at stake? Only a historic opportunity to achieve peace in Colombia.
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FOCUS: The West Virginia Teachers' Strike Is What Real Resistance Looks Like |
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Sunday, 11 March 2018 10:54 |
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Biggers writes: "The victorious strike by teachers in West Virginia did not only result in a long overdue pay raise. With the exuberance of a nine-day teach-in, the teachers and their supporters have taught the nation a compelling lesson on the historical role of a true resistance."
From left, Lois Casto, Nina Tunstalle, Katherine Dudley and Kara Brown, elementary school teachers in West Virginia, reacted to news of the 5 percent raise on Tuesday. (photo: Hudson/Charleston/Gazette-Mail/AP)
The West Virginia Teachers' Strike Is What Real Resistance Looks Like
By Jeff Biggers, Guardian UK
11 March 18
This kind of resistance does not allow onlookers to look away, especially in an age of social media. It brings the story to those who have refused to read it
he victorious strike by teachers in West Virginia did not only result in a long overdue pay raise. With the exuberance of a nine-day teach-in, the teachers and their supporters have taught the nation a compelling lesson on the historical role of a true resistance.
Taking to the streets, picketing on the sidewalks, and charging into the Capitol itself, the strike turned the public commons into a counter space for “we the people.”
One by one, the roughly 20,000 teachers in West Virginia essentially forced lawmakers – and the nation – to stop our daily routine and address the growing education crisis on the terms of those most devoted to ensuring the best outcomes for our children: our teachers.
This is why strikes, more than one-day protests, often bring lasting victories. It took an uncompromising walk-out to get West Virginia lawmakers to recognize that our inability to commit to a living wage and decent health benefits for our teachers mirrors our negligence in investing in classrooms for our children.
Instead of a fleeting protest, the hardship of the open-ended West Virginia strike reflected the urgency of our times and the long-haul commitment of the teachers for an enduring resolution, not a compromise or some sort of fleeting gain.
With an estimated 10% of the American workforce reportedly in a union, the legacy of striking might have become a lost tactic to some. As the son of a union teacher and the grandson of a union coal miner, I believe the West Virginia teachers have renewed a strategic call for other movements engaged in what we have called a “resistance” against the onslaught of policies decisions and regulatory rollbacks by the Trump administration.
The time has come to employ strikes in other areas.
When it comes to dealing with the inexorable grip of the National Rifle Association lobby on our gun policies or the undue influence of the oil, gas and coal lobbies on our energy and climate plans, for example, wide-scale strikes by students, teachers and all concerned citizens may be our last best hope for policy changes today.
Imagine how quickly we could begin to deal with gun control, if all pre-school employees, teachers and staff walked out and went on an indefinite strike – and the large majority of supporters, according to most polls, joined them.
Imagine how swiftly we could start the process of transitioning to renewable energy alternatives, low-carbon transportation designs, local food and regenerative agricultural policies, if all school employees, teachers and students refused to teach and study in schools powered by carbon emission-spewing fossil fuels that are destabilizing our planet.
The strike in West Virginia has powerfully revived this historic tactic for the rest of the nation.
Addressing the same egregious combination of low wages and underfunded schools in bottom-rung states like Arizona and Oklahoma, teachers are wearing red in solidarity this week and negotiating the terms of their own possible walk-outs to raise attention to the instability of school districts that have been gutted by disastrous funding policies.
This is a tactical lesson of resistance that reminds us that our schools have always served as the front lines of the challenges of inequality facing our communities.
This kind of resistance does not allow onlookers to look away, especially in an age of social media. It brings the story to those who have refused to read it. It forces everyone to take part in the national discussion, and engage in the still small possibility of justice.
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FOCUS | One Thing Democrats and Republicans Apparently Agree On: Destabilizing the Banking Sector Again |
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Sunday, 11 March 2018 10:25 |
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Dayen writes: "Next week marks the 10th anniversary of the run on Bear Stearns, the investment bank that collapsed under the weight of toxic subprime mortgages."
Senator Joe Donnelly. (photo: ABC News)
One Thing Democrats and Republicans Apparently Agree On: Destabilizing the Banking Sector Again
By David Dayen, The Los Angeles Times
11 March 18
 ext week marks the 10th anniversary of the run on Bear Stearns, the investment bank that collapsed under the weight of toxic subprime mortgages. Although JPMorgan Chase snapped up Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar, this maneuver failed to stop the bleeding from the mortgage meltdown, leading to the biggest economic crisis in nearly a century.
That seems like a terrible political backdrop for the Senate to pass a bill that deregulates the banking sector. But that's exactly what's about to happen.
The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, which pro-regulation groups have called the "Bank Lobbyist Act," advanced in the Senate this week with the support of 50 Republicans, 16 Democrats, and one Democratic-leaning independent. Bipartisanship, it seems, isn't dead.
We're witnessing a familiar swing of the pendulum: toward regulation when banks crash the economy, away from regulation when memories fade. The next stop is often financial crisis, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office stated this week that the bipartisan legislation would increase the risk of another one happening.
Pitched as a way to provide regulatory relief for community banks, the bill goes well beyond that; it rolls back key pieces of the Dodd-Frank Act and includes giveaways to large institutions of the same size and scope as the ones that crashed the economy in 2008.
The most important measure in the legislation raises the threshold for enhanced regulatory supervision by the Federal Reserve from $50 billion to $250 billion. The beneficiaries, 25 of the top 38 banks in America, could be called "stadium banks:" not big enough to count as Wall Street mega-banks, but big enough to have a sports stadium named after them.
A failure of one or more of these banks would likely be catastrophic — a fact made obvious by the recent past. For example, Calabasas-based Countrywide was America's biggest subprime lender, supplying one out of every five new mortgages, when it fell in 2008, deepening the financial crisis. It had assets of $200 billion.
Dodd-Frank targeted stadium banks for more rigorous monitoring and increased capital and liquidity requirements, so they — instead of taxpayers — could pay for their own losses. If the new legislation releases stadium banks from such rules, they could take on more risk, and they would lose a powerful disincentive to get even bigger by gobbling up smaller rivals. So although it is intended to enhance community bank competition, the deregulatory legislation will likely consolidate the industry.
Technically speaking, the Federal Reserve could still apply tighter rules on these banks. But a one-word change in the bill, from "may" to "shall," obligates the Fed to tailor any new rule it makes to a bank's size and risk profile. This language is an invitation to litigation, with banks claiming that the Fed didn't undertake the proper cost-benefit analysis. It actually would leave the Fed more constrained to act than before the financial crisis. And the Fed didn't exactly cover itself in glory during that episode.
Big banks shouldn't be jealous, as they get goodies as well. Nearly all giant foreign banks with operations in the U.S. could enjoy the same weaker rules as the stadium banks. Stress tests currently conducted semi-annually to measure how big banks would perform in a downturn will now occur on a "periodic" basis, with no definition of "periodic" given. Citigroup and JPMorgan could take advantage of a relaxation of leverage rules, enabling them to take on more debt and ramp up risk. And big banks would also be able to count municipal bonds as highly liquid assets, hooking an unrelated $3.8-trillion market into any financial catastrophe.
The list of problems with the legislation goes on. It rips consumer protections away from mortgage borrowers. It exempts 85% of banks and credit unions from supplying data used to detect discriminatory lending practices. There are a few crumbs for consumers, but nothing that justifies the widespread weakening of financial rules.
Banks, including the community banks that allegedly need relief, are enjoying record profits. And the Trump administration doesn't need any help deregulating the financial sector; they're busily doing that on their own. So why would more than one-third of the Senate Democratic caucus provide the margin of victory on a bill assisting Trump's aims?
The answer is simple: money. North Dakota, Indiana and Montana may not have any banking giants within their borders, but the top three recipients of campaign donations from commercial banks since 2017 are Democrats from those states who are up for reelection in November: Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly, and Jon Tester.
This whole process reveals that bipartisanship usually arrives in Washington at the barrel of a money cannon. There is no constituency for bank deregulation outside of executive boardrooms and K Street lobby shops. Nobody is begging Congress to call off financial regulators. In fact, they'll likely punish politicians who do. But when powerful interests need something done, suddenly Democrats and Republicans can put aside differences and work together. Another way of saying bipartisanship is "watch your wallet."
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n each of my daughters’ lives came the day in fifth grade when we had to sit on her bed and practise. I pretended to be the boy in class who was making her sick with dread. She had to look right at me and repeat the words until they felt possible, if not easy: “Don’t say that to me. Don’t do that to me. I hate it.” As much as I wanted to knock heads around, I knew the only real solution was to arm a daughter for self-defence. But why was it so hard to put teeth into that defence? Why does it come more naturally to smile through clenched teeth and say “Oh, stop,” in the mollifying tone so regularly, infuriatingly mistaken for flirtation?
