Month: August 2018

Facebook: More Persian Cat Sh%$

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We don’t care, we don’t have to, we’re Facebook

Facebook is in negotiations with banks to exchange contact with its users in exchange for the bank’s financial data on its customers.

Seriously, Mark Zuckerburg’s new motto must be, “We’re evil.  We don’t care, We don’t have to, we’re Facebook.”

The social-media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking-account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users.

Facebook increasingly wants to be a platform where people buy and sell goods and services, besides connecting with friends. The company over the past year asked JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and U.S. Bancorp o discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger, said people familiar with the matter.

………

Facebook has told banks that the additional customer information could be used to offer services that might entice users to spend more time on Messenger, a person familiar with the discussions said. The company is trying to deepen user engagement: Investors shaved more than $120 billion from its market value in one day last month after it said its growth is starting to slow.

………

Facebook said it wouldn’t use the bank data for ad-targeting purposes or share it with third parties.

Yes, the word of Facebook.

This company has consistently made promises and broke them without a shred of remorse throughout its entire existence.

They are not be trusted.

As part of the proposed deals, Facebook asked banks for information about where its users are shopping with their debit and credit cards outside of purchases they make using Facebook Messenger, the people said. Messenger has some 1.3 billion monthly active users, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call last month.

………

In recent years, Facebook has tried to transform Messenger into a hub for customer service and commerce, in keeping with a broader trend among mobile messaging services.

(Emphasis mine)

We really need to break up the internet giants, starting with Facebook.

All for Reform, Unless It Costs Them Money

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Following the collapse of a textile factory in Bangladesh in 2013  German fashion companies created and agreed to follow a code of conduct to prevent future disasters. 

Now that these protocols are starting to have an effect, they are bailing out of the program as fast as they can:

When a factory collapse in Bangladesh claimed the lives of hundreds of textile workers in 2013, German retailers were quick to express the need to improve working conditions in Asian sweatshops. But five years on it seems they’re much less keen to actually do anything about it.

An alliance of retailers formed in 2014 with the aim of tackling the problem is crumbling fast. In 2016, there were nearly 200 members; now it is 130. This year alone, 25 retailers either quit or were thrown out for not honoring their commitments to report on improvements made in their supply chain.

There’s a simple reason why companies are jumping ship. Talk is cheap, and the alliance is now trying to move from words to action.

Previously, members showed to what extent they met their goals in the previous year and formulated new ones. Now, they are expected to publish these so-called roadmaps in August, opening them to independent auditors who will scrutinize the submitted documents and ask tough questions. For the first time, the retailers will be measured by their achievements.

But now the alliance’s management team would consider it a success if just 30 companies published their plans.

As I have noted before, “Self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance.”

This is Not a Surprise

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One of the members of Trump’s voter fraud panel, one who had to sue to get the internal documents of their deliberations, has now gone public, and revealed just how much of clown show the Kris Kobach voter fraud commission was:

Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, one of the 11 members of the commission formed by President Trump to investigate supposed voter fraud, issued a scathing rebuke of the disbanded panel on Friday, accusing Vice Chair Kris Kobach and the White House of making false statements and saying that he had concluded that the panel had been set up to try to validate the president’s baseless claims about fraudulent votes in the 2016 election.

Dunlap, one of four Democrats on the panel, made the statements in a report he sent to the commission’s two leaders — Vice President Pence and Kobach, who is Kansas’s secretary of state — after reviewing more than 8,000 documents from the group’s work, which he acquired only after a legal fight despite his participation on the panel.

………

Dunlap said that the commission’s documents that were turned over to him underscore the hollowness of those claims: “they do not contain evidence of widespread voter fraud,” he said in his report, adding that some of the documentation seemed to indicate that the commission was predicting it would find evidence of fraud, evincing “a troubling bias.”

………

“After reading this,” Dunlap said of the more than 8,000 pages of documents in an interview with The Washington Post, “I see that it wasn’t just a matter of investigating President Trump’s claims that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally, but the goal of the commission seems to have been to validate those claims.”

It was clear from day 1 that the goal of the commission was to perpetrate a fraud on the American public, but it was even worse than it appeared then.

The DC Metro is F$#@ed up and Sh%$

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In an attempt to ……… Hell ……… I don’t know what they attempting, the DC Metro considered a train with private cars for neo-Nazis for them to go o the “Unite the Right” rally, because they are scared of sharing a train with black people.

To its credit, the union told management that they would not be staffing such a train under any circumstances, so this proposal is now off the table:

Metro is no longer considering running separate trains for protesters participating in the Aug. 12 “Unite the Right” white nationalists rally in the District, the transit agency’s board chairman said Saturday.

Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans had previously said that running a separate train was among options being weighed by officials.

“Metro will not be providing a special train or special car for anyone next Sunday,” Evans said.

Word about the possibility of the service for rallygoers spread quickly Friday and Saturday, drawing condemnation from those who decried “special treatment” for white nationalist groups, which are focused on the goal of achieving a whites-only state or the separation of whites from other groups. Others thought the possible move to constitute a form of segregation.

………

Plans for the special trains were publicized by Metro’s largest union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, which released a statement expressing outrage at the idea that Metro would provide “private” rail cars to “Unite the Right” participants.

ATU Local 689 President Jackie Jeter said members of the union, the majority of whom are people of color, “draw the line” at providing special service for supporters of a group that espouses white nationalism.

“Local 689 is proud to provide transit to everyone for the many events we have in D.C. including the March [for] Life, the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter,” Jeter said. “We draw the line at giving special accommodation to hate groups and hate speech.”

If they were looking to suck up to Trump administration, or House and Senate Republicans, this was completely the wrong way to do this.

What the hell were they thinking?

Ka-Ching

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Pro Publica has looked into the activities of Kris Kobach, and it discovers that he has made huge bank off of failed lawsuits for draconian anti-immigrant laws that he he has encouraged various municipalities to adopt:

Kris Kobach likes to tout his work for Valley Park, Missouri. He has boasted on cable TV about crafting and defending the town’s hardline anti-immigration ordinance. He discussed his “victory” there at length on his old radio show. He still lists it on his resume.

But “victory” isn’t the word most Valley Park residents would use to describe the results of Kobach’s work. With his help, the town of 7,000 passed an ordinance in 2006 that punished employers for hiring illegal immigrants and landlords for renting to them. But after two years of litigation and nearly $300,000 in expenses, the ordinance was largely gutted. Now, it is illegal only to “knowingly” hire illegal immigrants there — something that was already illegal under federal law. The town’s attorney can’t recall a single case brought under the ordinance.

“Ambulance chasing” is how Grant Young, a former mayor of Valley Park, describes Kobach’s role. Young characterized Kobach’s attitude as, “Let’s find a town that’s got some issues or pretends to have some issues, let’s drum up an immigration problem and maybe I can advance my political position, my political thinking and maybe make some money at the same time.”

Kobach used his work in Valley Park to attract other clients, with sometimes disastrous effects on the municipalities. The towns — some with budgets in the single-digit-millions — ran up hefty legal costs after hiring him to defend similar ordinances. Farmers Branch, Texas, wound up owing $7 million in legal bills. Hazleton, Penn., took on debt to pay $1.4 million and eventually had to file for a state bailout. In Fremont, Neb., the city raised property taxes to pay for Kobach’s services. None of the towns are currently enforcing the laws he helped craft.

“This sounds a little bit to me like Harold Hill in ‘The Music Man,’” said Larry Dessem, a law professor at the University of Missouri who focuses on legal ethics. “Got a problem here in River City and we can solve it if you buy the band instruments from me. He is selling something that goes well beyond legal services.”

Kobach rode the attention the cases generated to political prominence, first as Kansas secretary of state, and now as a candidate for governor in the Republican primary on Aug. 7. He also earned more than $800,000 for his immigration work, paid by both towns and an advocacy group, over 13 years.

………

But in addition to his growing name recognition, Kobach’s bank account also benefited from his immigration work. Records obtained by ProPublica and the Kansas City Star show that since 2005 Kobach has made at least $800,000 through this advocacy. At least $150,000 of that was paid during Kobach’s time as secretary of state. (Kansas law permits government officials to moonlight.)

So, he’s on a crusade that also makes him a f%$# load of money at the expense of tax payers and officials by exploiting their fears and naivety.

This sequence of events evokes the Simpsons‘ Monorail episode:

My Money Is That It’s Not Columbia, but Might Be the District of Columbia

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During a speech in Caracas, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was the target of an apparent assassination attempt involving explosive laden drones:

Chaos has struck Venezuela following an apparent foiled assassination attempt against the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro.

Several drones armed with explosives were flown towards Maduro as he addressed a military parade in the capital Caracas on Saturday afternoon.

The drones did not reach Maduro, though it is not clear if they were shot down or exploded prematurely. The president survived unharmed while seven people were injured in the attack, the country’s information minister said.

Maduro, speaking from the presidential palace two hours after the attack, announced that those behind the attempt on his life had been captured.

“I am alive and victorious,” the socialist president said in a bellicose televised address, before blaming the attack on the government of neighbouring Colombia.

“Everything points to the Venezuelan ultra-right in alliance with the Colombian ultra-right, and that the name of [Colombian president] Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack.”

I wonder if someone in the US state security apparatus had some advance knowledge of this going down.

Jeremy Corbyn DIDN’T Berate a Holocaust Survivor, Which Makes Him an Antisemite

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No, I’m not joking here.  The Blairites and the Tories claiming that the fact that Jeremy Corbyn did not verbally attack a Holocaust survivor makes him an antisemite, which, even by the standards of British politics, is what one would technically called fakakte:

Oh no, look how antisemitic he is NOW. It turns out Corbyn sat on a platform with a Jewish Holocaust survivor, who compared Israel’s behaviour to that of the Third Reich. Corbyn says he disagrees with him, but that’s not enough, he should have decked the twat. The fact that Corbyn didn’t even yell abuse at him proves he’s antisemitic.

Because this man, Hajo Meyer, said that having been through his unimaginable trauma, he couldn’t bear to see appalling acts carried out in the name of the Israeli state, and this seems to have led him to conclusions that aren’t accurate. Maybe we should cut the bloke some slack, what with him having been at Auschwitz. But that would make you an ANTISEMITE, because if you care about Jews you tell Holocaust survivors: “We’ve all had problems in life, mate, now shut your mouth and get your facts straight.”

………

Luckily, other newspapers have been more measured, such as The Times which asked: “Why can’t Corbyn see antisemitism staring him in the face?” It is a puzzle why some people can’t see antisemitism staring them in the face. Sometimes antisemitism is much more subtle, such as when The Sunday Times employed David Irving – but his antisemitism was discreet, having only written a series of books in praise of Hitler and denying the Holocaust, not like those people whose antisemitism stares you in the face.

………

And the Conservative Party are genuinely appalled by it all, which is why they would never allow their prominent members to associate with an anti-Semite. Instead Boris Johnson has been meeting Trump’s ex-spokesman Steve Bannon, who gives his support to inclusive liberal groups such as the English Defence League, and wrote on his website: “Hell has no fury like a Polish elite American Jew.”

Bannon certainly wouldn’t attract an antisemitic following. It’s true that among the comments on his website are such messages as “Heil Hitler”, but it would take an expert historian to find traces of antisemitism in that.

Is there a problem with antisemitism in the Labour Party?

Yes, of course there is.

Is it worse than that of the UK as a whole, or Boris “Dances with Breitbart” Johnson ?

F%$# if I know.

Be Evil

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Google is planning to censor its search engine in China:

Google is planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China that will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept can reveal.

 The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.

 Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials.

 The planned move represents a dramatic shift in Google’s policy on China and will mark the first time in almost a decade that the internet giant has operated its search engine in the country.

 Google’s search service cannot currently be accessed by most internet users in China because it is blocked by the country’s so-called Great Firewall. The app Google is building for China will comply with the country’s strict censorship laws, restricting access to content that Xi Jinping’s Communist Party regime deems unfavorable.

Seriously, Google needs to say, “Screw this,” and buy a white Persian cat.

A Right Wing Freakout that is Completely Wrong

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They are freaking out over a court ruling in the UK.

The court recognized that a decades long Islamic marriage was covered by British law, and so the civil divorce laws apply, meaning that the husband cannot just leave, and keep everything:

A high court judge has decided that a couple’s Islamic marriage falls within the scope of English matrimonial law, in a ruling that could have implications for thousands of Muslims in the UK.

Nasreen Akhter wanted to divorce Mohammed Shabaz Khan, her husband of 20 years, but he blocked it, arguing that the couple were not married under English law.

Akhter and Khan underwent a religious marriage ceremony, known as a nikah, conducted by an imam in 1998.

This year Akhter, a solicitor, petitioned for divorce, saying the nikah constituted a valid marriage. Khan, a businessman, wanted to prevent Akhtar from bringing a case for a divorce settlement to court, and said they were married only under sharia or Islamic law.

In a written ruling, Mr Justice Williams, who heard the case in the family division of the high court in London, concluded that the marriage fell within the scope of the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act.

He said the marriage was void under section 11 of the act because it was “entered into in disregard of certain requirements as to the formation of marriage. It is therefore a void marriage and the wife is entitled to a decree of nullity.”

………

Previous cases involving nikah marriages have concluded that they were legally non-existent, meaning spouses had no redress to the courts for a division of matrimonial assets such as the family home and spouse’s pension if a marriage broke down.

Hazel Wright, a family law specialist at Hunters Solicitors, said the ruling had “given heart to many who otherwise suffer discrimination”. She said it was vital for Akhter that the “English divorce court rule in her favour, that the marriage should be recognised as void and not a non-marriage. Otherwise she would not have any rights to make any financial claims for herself.”

This seems to be a fairly anodyne story:  The court has reviewed religious divorces, and determined that women don’t lose their rights.

But the flying monkeys of the right wing, upon hearing that the law of the land trumps religious law, as been screaming “High Court Recognises Shariah Law in Divorce Case in UK Legal First!!!!”

Yes, that is the actual headline from Breitbart, but no link, because ……… Well ……… Breitbart.

Frank Impresses Me Again

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Pope Francis has changed Catholic Church teaching to fully reject the death penalty, the Vatican announced Thursday, saying it would work to abolish capital punishment worldwide.

The revision to several sentences of the catechism, the compendium of Catholic beliefs, has the potential to recast debates around the world on how to handle those accused of the most heinous crimes. It adds a new wrinkle to the question of what it means to be pro-life — particularly in the United States, where Catholics who support the death penalty sit on the Supreme Court and govern states that permit executions. At the same time, it will test the church’s ability to influence with a moral authority weakened by decades of sex abuse scandals.

The church’s updated teaching describes capital punishment as “inadmissible” and an attack on the “dignity of the person.” Previously, the church allowed for the death penalty in very rare cases, only as a means of “defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

Francis has for years been a vocal critic of the death penalty, calling it an “inhuman measure.” The Argentine pontiff has pointed to the church’s stance on the death penalty as evidence of how the Vatican can evolve: The church for centuries permitted executions, but in 1997, John Paul II dramatically narrowed the standards for when the punishment was permissible.

Francis’s latest move places the issue toward the forefront of his own efforts to overhaul and modernize the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to social justice.

“There is no doubt the pope wants politicians to pay attention to this,” said John Gehring, the Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, an advocacy group in Washington. “He is not just speaking internally. The pope wants to elevate this as a definitive pro-life issue.”

The full political significance of the new teaching stands to emerge slowly, as priests and bishops speak more clearly about the death penalty to planet’s 1.2 billion Catholics. But in part because the practice has already been abolished in most countries with large Catholic populations — including throughout the European Union and across nearly all of South America — the United States is among the places where the shift could have the greatest consequence.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Catholic, presides over the state that carries out the highest number of executions. Several states have recently opened new discussions about abolishing the punishment. And in New Hampshire, one of the most heavily Catholic states, Gov. Chris Sununu in June vetoed a legislature-backed repeal of the death penalty, saying he didn’t want to send a message that the worst criminals might be “guaranteed leniency.”

The fact that Abbott or Sunnunu get jammed up over the politics of this is just icing on the cake.

Tweet of the Day

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Obama not endorsing @Ocasio2018 is really a very clarifying thing. It shows that the rift in the Dem Party between the corporate and progressive wings isn’t some fiction that can be covered up by a #UniteBlue hashtag — the divide is quite real, and quite important.

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) August 3, 2018

This is why party unity is for suckers, in the Democratic Party at least.

It is exclusively a one way street.

Tweet of the Day

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If you put “Elon Musk” in your handle, the very next Twitter screen you click to will be a notice that your account has been locked.

They have the technology to clamp down on Nazis using Nazi buzzwords to organize. They could do that. They chose not to. pic.twitter.com/diDjfW1DpG

— April Daniels (@1aprildaniels) July 29, 2018

It’s a little bit meta, but this does reveal that many of the problems that Twitter has had recently are an artifact of what they WANT to do, not what they CAN do.

Good News, Everyone!

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A proposal to create an independent redistricting commission will appear on the November ballot, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled late Tuesday in a closely watched case.

The 4-3 decision is rife with political implications in Michigan, where Republicans have maintained or grown congressional and legislative advantages since last drawing the state’s political boundaries in 2011.

Volunteers with the Voters Not Politicians committee gathered nearly 400,000 valid signatures to put the anti-gerrymandering plan before voters. The Board of State Canvassers certified the group’s petitions, but the proposal was challenged as being overly broad.

In a split decision, the state’s highest court ruled that voter-initiated proposals are permissible if they do not “significantly alter or abolish the form or structure of our government, making it tantamount to creating a new constitution.”

The redistricting proposal “surpasses these hurdles,” Justice David Viviano wrote in the majority opinion. He was joined by fellow Republican appointee Beth Clement and Democratic-nominated Justices Bridget McCormack and Richard Bernstein.

………

The proposal would create a 13-member redistricting commission that would be composed of four Democrats, four Republicans and five independent members who vow they are not affiliated with any major political party. The secretary of state would select the commission members.

More of this.

Well, Someone is Completely Losing his Sh%$

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President Trump called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday to end the special counsel’s inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, issuing an unambiguous directive on Twitter to shut down an investigation that even now is scrutinizing his tweets for evidence of obstruction.

The White House and Mr. Trump’s lawyers moved quickly to minimize the president’s statement, dismissing it as merely a case of venting by a president who has grown increasingly angry with an investigation that he considers illegitimate — and not a direct order to a cabinet secretary to interfere with a continuing federal law enforcement matter.

But in saying that Mr. Sessions, the United States’ top law enforcement official, should take specific action to terminate the investigation, the tweet crossed a line that Mr. Trump has never explicitly crossed — until now. It immediately raised more questions about whether Mr. Trump was attempting to obstruct justice, already an issue being examined extensively by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel leading the investigation.

………

But the morning tweet signified a new chapter in the public feud between the president and Mr. Sessions, the product of Mr. Trump’s rage and sense of betrayal at his attorney general for recusing himself from the Russia inquiry. That has made it impossible for the president to control an investigation that he sees as undercutting his legitimacy.

“This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further,” Mr. Trump wrote in a morning tweet. “Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!”

I’m not sure what this all means, beyond the fact that I am profoundly amused by all of this.

So, Nu?

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I am simultaneously experiencing a feeling of surprise and a complete lack of surprise upon hearing that a study shows that multiculturalist training actually increases bigoted attitudes:

As the United States—and much of the world—becomes more ethnically diverse, how can we all get along? For many, the obvious answer is multiculturalism, the belief that respecting cultural differences can create a more just and equitable society for all.

But new research provides evidence that promoting this philosophy can be highly problematic. In a sad irony, it finds exposure to a multicultural mindset prompts people to inflate the importance of race, bolstering the assumption that individuals can be fundamentally defined by their skin tone.

“Well-intentioned efforts to portray the value of differences may reinforce the belief that fixed, biological characteristics underpin them,” writes a research team led by psychologist Leigh Wilton of Skidmore College.

“Multicultural philosophies, which stress the strengths that cultural variation can provide to society, may reinforce beliefs” that racial differences are deep-rooted and unalterable, the researchers write in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Wilton and her colleagues describe two studies, the first of which featured 165 Rutgers University undergraduates. Each read and thought about one of three 200-word essays they were told were excerpted from the university’s long-term strategic plan.

One version used multicultural language, including “We value the identity of each group, and we recognize its existence and its importance to the social fabric.” Another used color-blind language, including: “We must look beyond skin color and understand the person within, to see each person as an individual who is part of the larger group.” The third did not address race or culture.

All then completed a “race essentialism” scale, which was designed to determine the degree to which people feel race is unchangeable and biologically determined. Using a one-to-seven scale, they reported their level of agreement or disagreement with such statements as “I believe physical features determine race”; “No one can change his or her race—you are what you are”; and “It’s easy to tell what race people are by looking at them.”

The researchers report that the students who had been thinking about the concept of multiculturalism and how it pertains to their campus reported higher levels of racial essentialism. Thinking about racial and cultural differences fed the idea that they are somehow determinative.

This finding was replicated in a second study featuring 150 American adults recruited online. Once again, those who read an essay “valuing differences between diverse groups” had greater racial essentialist beliefs than those who read a different essay “emphasizing similarities among diverse groups.”

Even more problematically, “participants expressing greater racial essentialist beliefs were less likely to believe racial inequality is a problem in need of change.” As the researchers note, this makes sense, in that if “inequalities are rooted in real, unchangeable differences in racial groups,” there’s no point in addressing them.

This is not surprising:  If you are repeatedly told that you must hold people who are different from to the different standards, it is natural to start believing that any differences are innate.

Oh, Snap!

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Bob Mueller just referred the cases of shat appears to be unregistered foreign lobbyist to the Manhattan US attorney, including Tony Podesta, long time Democratic operator, and brother of John Podesta, Chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016:

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, has referred three investigations into possible illicit foreign lobbying by Washington insiders to federal prosecutors in New York who are already handling the case against President Trump’s former lawyer, according to multiple people familiar with the cases.

The cases cut across party lines, focusing on both powerful Democratic and Republican players in Washington, including one whom Mr. Trump has repeatedly targeted — the Democratic superlobbyist Tony Podesta. The cases are unlikely to provoke an outburst from Mr. Trump similar to the one he unleashed in April after prosecutors raided the home and office of Michael D. Cohen, then the president’s lawyer. But these cases do represent a challenge to Washington’s elite, many of whom have earned rich paydays lobbying for foreign interests.

They also tie into the special counsel investigation of Mr. Trump: All three cases are linked to Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman, whose trial on financial fraud charges began Tuesday in Alexandria, Va.

Mr. Manafort earned tens of millions of dollars lobbying for Ukrainian politicians with ties to Russia, and he drew other Washington lobbyists and lawyers into the work. Now, all three cases being taken on by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan are examining whether those lobbyists failed to register as foreign agents, as is required by law, and how they were paid, said people familiar with the investigations.

The cases involve Gregory B. Craig, who served as the White House counsel under President Barack Obama before leaving to work for the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; former Representative Vin Weber, Republican of Minnesota, who joined Mercury Public Affairs, a lobbying firm, after leaving Congress; and Tony Podesta, a high-powered Washington lobbyist whose brother, John D. Podesta, was the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The three men have not been charged with any crimes, those familiar with the cases said.

But the cases have progressed far enough that Mr. Mueller’s team had subpoenaed or requested documents from all three firms, starting last year, and his investigators had interviewed Mr. Craig, people familiar with the investigations said.

The question here is not whether these folks are guilty, in the case of the Podesta Group, they have been flagrantly violating the law for well over a decade, but whether they will actually be prosecuted.

My guess is that there won’t even be a slap on the wrist, because laws are for little people.