Year: 2019

Te Stooped! It Burnz Us!!!!

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Just when you thought that the whole Russiagate meme could not get any more insane on MSNBC, they a guest on the show insisted that the Soviets may have been grooming Trump since 1977, when he married Ivana.

Of course, Ivana is not Russia of Soviet, but, to quote Mason Williams, “Who needs truth if it is dull.”

MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance, long one of the network’s loudest voices when it comes to pushing Russiagate conspiracies, claimed Tuesday morning that President Donald Trump is a Russian asset who was compromised “as early as 1977” via his first marriage to Czech-born Ivana Trump.

………

Having established that he was aware that Russia was looking to interfere in the election at an early stage, Nance then dove headfirst into conspiratorial waters about Trump.

………

“They had ten years of collection and then they brought him to Moscow for what he wanted, which is Trump Tower,” Nance added. “But from that moment on, an enormous dossier of information was collected on him and more importantly, how to exploit him and his simple exploit—as we call it in the intelligence community—and he is avaricious to a fault. He wants money, they now own him. Modern Russia, with a former KGB director as president, they know how to exploit people, they know how to manipulate people, and they know how to buy people.”

………

According to Nance, “supervillain” Putin “took all the files of everyone he had ever flipped” during his Soviet days and “brought that into the business world when it became modern Russia,” claiming it was around 2014 they decided to move Trump from “useful idiot” to an “unwitting asset, where he’s being used and he doesn’t know it.”

Seriously, I Malcolm Nance is a walking avatar of Sinclair Lewis’ observation that, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Seriously this is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

Clearly this means that the Village People were Soviet targets as well:  They came to prominence at around the same time, and they had access to military facilities:

I ♥ New York

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Also, I ♠️ my cats, but this is not about proper care of one’s pets, this is about how the good people of the Big Apple heckled the sh%$ out of Donald Trump yesterday:

President Trump returned to his hometown on Monday to kick off the 100th annual New York City Veterans Day Parade, his second visit to the city since he announced he was making Florida his primary home.

In an 18-minute speech, Mr. Trump expressed his gratitude to American veterans, but also used his remarks to pay tribute to the city, where he remains deeply unpopular.

“Since the earliest days of our nation, New York has exemplified the American spirit and has been at the heart of our nation’s story of daring and defiance,” Mr. Trump said.

Defiance, in particular, was on display throughout Mr. Trump’s speech, at Madison Square Park in Manhattan, just two miles down Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower, which had been Mr. Trump’s primary residence since 1983, until he filed to switch it to Florida in late September.

Even before the president arrived, protesters had gathered along the streets, a number of them from an anti-Trump group, Rise and Resist. They carried signs calling for Mr. Trump’s impeachment and repeatedly shouted, “Shame!”

In the windows of a nearby glass tower overlooking the dais where Mr. Trump spoke, large signs placed in the windows spelled the word “impeach.” A few floors higher, letters spelling “convict” were placed in another set of windows.

………

But raucous boos and chants jeering Mr. Trump could also be heard throughout the president’s remarks. A chorus of people shouted “lock him up!” and “traitor” and blew whistles as he spoke, causing some veterans to complain that the din was drowning out the president’s speech.

Drowning him out is kind of the point.

Good Point

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Over at the Gray Lady, Charles Blow makes a trenchant point about Mike Bloomberg, that he ran the most racist New York City mayor’s office in modern memory:

With his filing of paperwork on Friday to put his name on the ballot for the Democratic primary in Alabama, the billionaire businessman and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg inched closer to declaring a run for the Democratic nomination for president.

According to The New York Times, his advisers say he hasn’t made up his mind yet. But I have.

Let me plant the stake now: No black person — or Hispanic person or ally of people of color — should ever even consider voting for Michael Bloomberg in the primary. His expansion of the notoriously racist stop-and-frisk program in New York, which swept up millions of innocent New Yorkers, primarily young black and Hispanic men, is a complete and nonnegotiable deal killer.

Stop-and-frisk, pushed as a way to get guns and other contraband off the streets, became nothing short of a massive, enduring, city-sanctioned system of racial terror.

This system of terror exploded under Bloomberg, with his full advocacy and support.

………

A federal judge ruled in 2013 that New York’s stop-and-frisk tactics violated the constitutional rights of racial minorities, calling it a “policy of indirect racial profiling.”

Yet, a little over a month before that ruling, Bloomberg said on a radio show, “I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” As USA Today pointed out at the time: “About 5 million stops have been made during the past decade. Eighty-seven percent of those stopped in the last two years were black or Hispanic.”

Not only has Bloomberg failed to express any regret for what he did, he has continued to defend it.

BAM!

It is worth noting that there is virtually no difference between Bloomberg cheerleading stop-and-frisk and Donald Trump musing during the last election about somehow instituting the program nationwide.

It’s not just that Mikey is a billionaire intent on preserving his privilege. It is that he is a bad man, and either profoundly racist, or a racist for crass and politically opportunistic reasons, which is worse.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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There is now an investigation of the consultant McKinsey & Company over what appears to be egregious self-dealing in its bankruptcy consulting:

McKinsey & Company, the elite consulting firm that advises many of the world’s largest and most powerful institutions, is facing a federal criminal investigation of its conduct advising bankrupt companies, according to five people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors and other Justice Department officials in New York and Washington are trying to determine if McKinsey used its influence over insolvent companies in violation of the rules of Chapter 11 bankruptcy — where billions of dollars can change hands — by quietly steering valuable assets to itself or favoring its own clients over other creditors.

………

In the past two weeks, investigators have conducted interviews about McKinsey’s actions in the bankruptcies of at least two companies, Alpha Natural Resources, a coal producer, and SunEdison, an alternative energy company, said one of the people, who was questioned by F.B.I. agents.

The judges overseeing both those cases have already suggested that questions over McKinsey’s conduct could best be resolved by the Justice Department — either with civil actions or criminal charges.

In addition to the previously unreported criminal investigation, an investigation by the Office of the United States Trustee, a division of the Justice Department that polices the conduct of companies in the bankruptcy system, is underway.

The office, which can seek civil penalties and make criminal referrals to prosecutors, has told judges in at least three other bankruptcy cases that it was examining McKinsey’s practices. The firm said it had responded to questions from the United States Trustee.

American business is rotten to its core, and McKinsey is just a particularly brazen and corrupt avatar of this situation.

I’m sure that they will get off with a fine of a few bucks, so in the end, it’s just a cost of doing business.

H/t Eschaton.

Before You Give, Do Your Homework

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Among the other potential impeachable offenses that are not being investigated at the moment, are the Trump foundation’s rampant self dealing and corruption.

The foundation is being liquidated, and paying a $2,000,000.00 fine.

This raises a bigger point though, that there is little in the way of oversight or accountability for so called charitable foundations:

The New York State attorney general’s case against the Trump Foundation — Donald Trump’s nonprofit that a court shut down earlier this year — has concluded. The Trumps have agreed to pay a $2 million fine, the attorney general’s office said in a press release on Thursday.

The deal follows years of incredible, careful reporting by a number of reporters but most of all the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold. As Fahrenthold discovered, the Trump Foundation often operated as a slush fund for the Trump family and Trump’s businesses. It bought Trump an autographed Tim Tebow helmet, a portrait of himself, and money for various lawsuit settlements. Less entertainingly but perhaps more importantly, he also used a foundation fundraiser, which was nationally televised a few days before the Iowa caucuses, to promote his presidential bid in 2016.

Now, per the deal with the New York attorney general’s office:

The $1.78 million in assets currently being held by the Trump Foundation, along with the $2 million in damages to be paid by Mr. Trump, will be disbursed equally to eight charities: Army Emergency Relief, the Children’s Aid Society, Citymeals-on-Wheels, Give an Hour, Martha’s Table, United Negro College Fund, United Way of National Capital Area, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The charities — which were required as part of the resolution to be entities that did not have any relationship with Mr. Trump or entities he controlled — were approved by the Office of the Attorney General and the court.

It’s a fitting punishment: forcing a fake foundation that funneled money to bogus causes to actually use its money to benefit real charities. “My office will continue to fight for accountability because no one is above the law — not a businessman, not a candidate for office, and not even the president of the United States,” Attorney General Letitia James concluded in her statement.

It’s a nice sentiment, but it’s not true: Plenty of foundations are and remain above the law. The investigation into the Trump Foundation was unusual. There are some 86,000 foundations in the United States, with total assets of around $890 billion, and the vast majority of them never face this kind of scrutiny.

………

The Trump case is egregious, but it didn’t merely happen because Trump is seemingly prone to playing fast and loose with tax law. It happened because there are tens of thousands of foundations in the US, and they operate with little or no regulatory oversight — from state attorneys general, from the IRS, from anyone.

This really is an area that needs a sh%$-load more oversight and requirements.

Cue the Death Squads

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Following mass protests and demands from the military, Bolivian President Evo Morales has resigned.

We are now seeing the coordinated efforts to put the setting fire to official residences and the home of Morales’ sister.

I expect to see assassination of labor and environmental activists to proceed forthwith, as happened in Honduras following the 2009 coup.

It should be noted that, notwithstanding the OAS statements to the contrary, there were no statistical anomalies in the election returns indicative of fraud.

I’m sure that someone in Langley will be getting a permission over this.

Welcome to the Republic of Gilead

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Last November, a top Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a candid email to colleagues about pressure from the White House to reroute Middle East aid to religious minorities, particularly Christian groups.

“Sometimes this decision will be made for us by the White House (see… Iraq! And, increasingly, Syria),” said Hallam Ferguson, a senior official in USAID’s Middle East bureau, in an email seen by ProPublica. “We need to stay ahead of this curve everywhere lest our interventions be dictated to us.”

The email underscored what had become a stark reality under the Trump White House. Decisions about U.S. aid are often no longer being governed by career professionals applying a rigorous review of applicants and their capabilities. Over the last two years, political pressure, particularly from the office of Vice President Mike Pence, had seeped into aid deliberations and convinced key decision-makers that unless they fell in line, their jobs could be at stake.

Five months before Ferguson sent the email, his former boss had been ousted following a mandate from Pence’s chief of staff. Pence had grown displeased with USAID’s work in Iraq after Christian groups were turned down for aid.

ProPublica viewed internal emails and conducted interviews with nearly 40 current and former U.S. officials and aid professionals that shed new light on the success of Pence and his allies in influencing the government’s long-standing process for awarding foreign aid. Most people spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration’s efforts to influence USAID funding sparked concern from career officials, who worried the agency risked violating constitutional prohibitions on favoring one religion over another. They also were concerned that being perceived as favoring Christians could worsen Iraq’s sectarian divides.

………

The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed have previously reported Pence’s interest in increasing foreign aid to Christians and his displeasure with USAID’s activities in Iraq.

Please, impeach Pence first.

A Pox on Architects

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It’s Also Ugly as Sin

The New York City Public Library spend $41,500,000.00 on its Hunters Point Library in Queens, which, in addition to being hideous, cannot function as a library, with severely restricted disabled access, insufficient elevator service, and significant portions of the building being too dangerous to be used in it’s intended manner.

This is what happens when you allow architects to design buildings according to their own masturbatory inclinations, as opposed to the actual needs of the people who will have to function in this space:

It has been heralded as an architectural triumph: A new $41.5 million public library in Long Island City that ascends over multiple landings and terraces, providing stunning Manhattan views to patrons as they browse books and explore.

But several of the terraces at the Hunters Point Library are inaccessible to people who cannot climb to them. A staircase and bleacher seating in the children’s section, judged too risky for small children, has been closed off. And the five-story, vertically designed building only has one elevator, creating bottlenecks at times.

………

It has also raised the question of how the pricey public building, nearly two decades in the works, made it through the lengthy planning process without more consideration for accessibility.

………

Some of the accessibility problems, though, are rooted in the design itself.

The placement of the adult fiction section on three terracelike levels between the library’s first and second floors was the first issue patrons noticed. A few complained that they couldn’t access the fiction books, because those levels were only accessible by stairs, Gothamist reported.

………

The disputed shelves are now bare; the library, responding to the criticism, has moved the 2,900 adult fiction books to an accessible area on the second floor, and is now figuring out how to use the vacated space.

Chris McVoy, a senior partner at Steven Holl Architects, the firm that designed the building, said that too much emphasis was being placed on the inaccessibility of the terraces, which he called a “small wrinkle in an incredibly successful project.” Concepts of accessibility, he added, have changed in the years since the building was designed in 2010.

So the response of the architect is that the peasants don’t appreciate their genius, and so don’t deserve to browse books.

………

But the decision to build only a single elevator is also causing grumbles. The congestion is compounded by the placement of the main stroller parking area on a second floor landing, which is insufficient for the dozens of strollers sometimes seeking a spot.
………

The closure of the children’s wing stairs is adding congestion to the elevator. Patrons who want to travel between the children’s levels must now either use the elevator, or take a circuitous route around the library, up and down flights of stairs.

In his 2010 renderings for the children’s wing, Steven Holl, the project’s lead architect, had sketched images of children reading on bleacher-like seats that spanned from the lower level of the wing to the upper one, adjoined by an interior staircase.

But library officials, in a walk-through before the building opened, instead saw a potential liability for small children who could jump and fall on them. They have closed off the stairs and the top five bleachers until fixes can be made, said Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the Queens Library.

Wood panels now block the staircase entrances and protective glass barriers have been added to the tallest bleachers. The bottom three bleachers remain open, however, and a security guard who usually stands there keeps an eye on them.

Seriously, architects need adult supervision.

Adding to the List of They Who Must Not Be Named

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I’ve never written about him before, but I need to add Kanye West to my list of they who must not be named, after he announced that he is changing his name to, “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West”, and that he will run for President in 2024.

Normally, my list has exception for people who run for office, but in the case of Kanye, Imma let you finish, but unless you actually win a caucus or a primary, you are out of here.

Kanye West is now on my list of my list of They Who Must Not Be Named:

Kanye West knows what’s going to put him in the Oval Office in 2024 — he’s reaffirming his plans to run while revealing his platform and a name change … a huge one.

………

Ye also complained about Forbes’ reluctance to label him a billionaire and announced he’ll change his name to “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West” … just to stick it to the outlet. 

 As near as I can tell, this is not some sort of performance art for a mockumentary.

It Now Looks Like Jeff Bezos Set a Few Million Bucks on Fire for Nothing

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After over of a million dollars of super PAC money, it now appears taht Jeff Bezos and his Evil Minions™ have not managed to flip a single seat in the Seattle city council:

Council Member Kshama Sawant has all but assured her victory over Egan Orion after a Friday night ballot drop put her 1,515 votes and 3.62 percentage points over her Amazon-approved challenger. With an estimated 1,157 votes left to count in District 3, Sawant has essentially guaranteed that she will be reelected to her third term on the council.

Friday night’s ballot drop also delivered some unfortunate news for the council race’s other socialist. Shaun Scott is still sitting 5 percentage points behind Amazon-backed Alex Pedersen in District 4. With Scott trailing by 1,579 votes his chances of a win have sadly ended. Although Scott’s final vote count is far better than what many observers expected and far better than the nearly 16 percentage points he was trailing on Tuesday’s election night.

………

Andrew Lewis expanded his lead over Jim Pugel in District 7. Lewis is now over 2,000 votes ahead of Pugel, a dramatic swing from the 200-vote deficit Lewis started with on Tuesday night.

Friday night’s vote tally essentially guarantees terrible results for Amazon and the Chamber of Commerce’s record-breaking election spending spree. If the results Friday night hold—and there’s little reason to think the outcomes will change—the chamber supported only two winning candidates: Pedersen and Debora Juarez in District 7. Both of those candidates were already favorites before the chamber started spending millions in this election.

………

Only 5 percent of King County’s votes still need to be counted after Friday’s two ballot drops, according to a spokesperson for King County Elections.

Just in case you are wondering, the reason for the delays in counting is Washington State’s vote by mail system, where late arriving votes tend to be more progressive:

Raise your hand if you are confused by the way the vote totals have been counted in the days post-election. Okay, great. And is this your first time paying attention to a local election? Noted. Now, do you know how mail-in elections work?

Mail-in elections have been the standard in Washington state since 2009. This means the gradual process for counting ballots has been around for 10 years, so people should really know what’s going on. “It’s always been this way,” Kendall Hodson, chief of staff for King County Elections, told The Stranger, “People do tend to forget every year.”

………

To put things in perspective, mail-in elections are tough because 60,000 ballots came in the mail the day after election day. They were all good and kosher, post-marked on election day as they should be. Snail mail is just, snail mail. Add to that the 215,000 they collected from drop boxes that were delivered on election night that weren’t counted until the days after and it starts to seem less of a conspiracy theory and more of an “oh, that’s just the process.”

I know that there is going to be some sort of pablum about needing to work together coming from the Seattle Times and its ilk, but this should be ignored.

Amazon, Chamber of Commerce, the real estate industry, etc. went nuclear, and made a shambles of Seattle’s public election financing system, and they will keep coming back again, and again, and again until they realize that they have made implacable enemies on the council.

To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

With progressives having a 5:2 majority on the City Council, they need focus on reducing the political power of the “rich pigs” in Seattle.

Burying the Lede

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So, the Washington Post has an article titled Four big facts that blow up the GOP’s latest defense of Trump, and the 4th fact should be the bloody headline, on page 1 in 72 point bold:

………

Pence directly delivered the message about suspended aid to Ukraine.

On Sept. 1, the same day Sondland informed a top Zelensky aide that the military aid was conditional, Vice President Pence met with Zelensky.

Zelensky raised the withheld aid with Pence. And as The Post reports, Pence informed Zelensky that the administration was “still looking at” the aid, i.e., it was on hold. Pence also told Zelensky he needed to do more to fight “corruption.”

So, Mike Pence  is a co-conspirator.

One hopes that the House looks into this in a through manner.

I wouldn’t mind a few months of President Pelosi.

Linkage

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The DR Who Theme as a Spaghetti Western Theme is a complete mind-f%$#:

Yeah, His Demeanor Screams Client from Hell

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Rudolph Giuliani is under investigation in the Ukraine affair, and so needed a lawyer, but no one wanted him as their client:

President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said on Wednesday that he had assembled a legal team to represent him in the criminal investigation into his activities related to Ukraine, an announcement that came after weeks of sputtered attempts to find a lawyer willing to take him on as a client.

Mr. Giuliani said on Twitter that he would be represented by three lawyers, including his longtime friend, Robert J. Costello. The hires show how seriously Mr. Giuliani is treating the inquiry by federal prosectors in Manhattan, who are investigating whether he violated lobbying laws in his efforts to dig up damaging information about Mr. Trump’s rivals.

………

The hires came after a weekslong search to find a lawyer who would represent Mr. Giuliani, who rose to prominence as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same office that is now investigating him. He has a wide range of close associates — including former prosecutors and judges — who could have taken him on as a client.

But at least four prominent attorneys declined for various reasons, according to people familiar with the matter. They included Mary Jo White, who also once led the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District, as well as Theodore V. Wells Jr., a trial lawyer at Paul, Weiss, according to people familiar with those discussions.

Another was Daniel L. Stein, a former senior prosecutor who recently held top posts in the Southern District, where he oversaw the prosecutions of public officials including Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the New York State Assembly, and Dean Skelos, the State Senate majority leader.

………

Big law firms are, for the most part, conservative institutions that often represent a wide range of clients with varying business interests, many of whom tend to shy away from controversy, regardless of their politics. Mr. Giuliani’s connection to Mr. Trump, his unpredictability and his recent history of outbursts in his frequent television appearances could make him a challenging client.

Lawyers who are solo practitioners were concerned that Mr. Giuliani, who is known to have difficulty delegating, would try to manage his own case, according to a person close to Mr. Giuliani.

So basically, Rudy is a complete asshole, and there is not enough money for most white-shoe lawyers to be willing to work with him.

Hoocoodanode?

This is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

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It turns out that the College Board, aka the SAT folks, have been selling the names of low performing SAT takers so that schools can aggressively recruit these students.

It turns out that by getting under-qualified students to apply, and then rejecting them these schools appear more exclusive, and get a boost to their college rankings.

This is profoundly cruel and yet more evidence that if US News and World Report, and its associated college rankings, were swallowed by a black hole, the world would be a better place:

Jori Johnson took the practice SAT test as a high-school student outside Chicago. Brochures later arrived from Vanderbilt, Stanford, Northwestern and the University of Chicago.

The universities’ solicitations piqued her interest, and she eventually applied. A few months later, she was rejected by those and three other schools that had sought her application, she said. The high-school valedictorian’s test scores, while strong by most standards, were well below those of most students admitted to the several schools that had contacted her.

………

The recruitment pitches didn’t help Ms. Johnson, but they did benefit the universities that sent them. Colleges rise in national rankings and reputation when they show data suggesting they are more selective. They can do that by rejecting more applicants, whether or not those candidates ever stood a chance. Some applicants, in effect, become unknowing pawns.

Feeding this dynamic is the College Board, the New York nonprofit that owns the SAT, a test designed to level the college-admissions playing field.

The board is using the SAT as the foundation for another business: selling test-takers’ names and personal information to universities.

That has helped schools inflate their applicant pools and rejection rates. Those rejection rates have amplified the perception of exclusivity that colleges are eager to reinforce, pushing students to invest more time and money in preparing for and retaking exams College Board sells. Colleges say the data helps them reach a diverse pool of students they might have otherwise missed.

“The top 10% of universities don’t need to do this. They are buying some students’ names who don’t have a great chance of getting in,” said Terry Cowdrey, an enrollment consultant for universities and Vanderbilt University’s acting dean of undergraduate admission in 1996 and 1997. “Then the kids say, ‘well why did you recruit me if you weren’t going to let me in?’ They do it to increase the number of applications; you’ve got to keep getting your denominator up for your admit rate.”

………

College Board now controls the majority of tests students take to earn college admission, which places it at the nexus of opportunity, resources and ambition in American life, said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and a former vice president at Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT.

By selling student names to attract more applications, College Board is helping colleges expand and market their reputations of exclusivity, he said. “The College Board runs the game, and there is an intimate, mutual dependency between them and the colleges,” he said. “They are selling class and that’s a good business to be in. People are terrified of falling out of the middle class. Basically, your job as a parent is to make sure your kids don’t fall out of the middle class.”

This some seriously evil sh%$ that the College Board and the Universities are pulling.

I Cannot Find the Evil Here

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Gilead Sciences has been sued by the US government for violating HHS patents with its HIV preventative drugs. (Truvada and Descovy)

Considering the fact that their drugs costs $1800.00/month in the US, and $8.00 in Australia, going after the price gougers at Gilead is an unalloyed good, but it’s the Trump administration, so I’m trying to figure out how they got here.

There has to be some sort of corruption or evil behind this.

A rift between the Centers for Disease Control and pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences ruptured further Wednesday when the Trump administration sued Gilead in U.S. District Court, asserting that Gilead made billions of dollars on HIV prevention therapy while repeatedly ignoring government patents.

 The patent infringement case against a major drug company, coming at a time of increasing political anger over drug prices, signals a shift in a relationship that typically has been collaborative. The San Francisco-based company has worked for years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight HIV, including providing free drugs for government experiments, as well as efforts to expand treatment of hepatitis C.

 But the lawsuit filed on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services this week describes how, beginning in 2015, Gilead repeatedly refused to recognize CDC patents for an HIV prevention called Truvada for PrEP.

“Gilead has repeatedly refused to obtain a license from CDC to use the patented regimens,’’ the government said in its lawsuit, filed by the Justice Department in federal court in Delaware. “Meanwhile, Gilead has profited from research funded by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Indeed, Gilead has reaped billions from PrEP . . . but has not paid any royalties to CDC.’’

If I were directing CDC of HHS policy, I would not be asking for royalties, I’d be demanding price controls as a condition for the license.

It would save a lot more money than any royalty scheme.

Great, Another Self-Important Billionaire Throws His Hat into the Presidential Ring

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This time, it’s Michael Bloomberg who appears to be upset that he will have to pay more taxes under a Sanders or Warren presidency.

Michael R. Bloomberg is actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary and is expected to file paperwork this week designating himself as a candidate in at least one state with an early filing deadline, people briefed on Mr. Bloomberg’s plans said.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House for weeks and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, an adviser said. But in the first sign that he is seriously moving toward a campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has dispatched staffers to Alabama to gather signatures to qualify for the primary there. Though Alabama does not hold an early primary, it has a Friday deadline for candidates to formally enter the race.

Mr. Bloomberg and his advisers called a number of prominent Democrats on Thursday to tell them he was seriously considering the race, including former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the retired majority leader who remains a dominant power broker in the early caucus state. Aides to Mr. Bloomberg also reached out to Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Yes, the problem with the Democratic Party Presidential primaries are that there are not enough arrogant billionaires in the race, said no one ever.

If you think that Kamala Harris has problems because of her record as District Attorney and California Attorney General, just imagine how “Mayor Stop and Frisk” will be received by minority voters.

ISPs Lie

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The latest controversy over internet technology is browsers implementing DNS over HTTPS, which would prevent ISPs from tracking their users browser habits, and selling that information to 3rd parties.

Mozilla is claiming, with a lot of justification, that ISPs lied when lobbying against this technology:

Mozilla is urging Congress to reject the broadband industry’s lobbying campaign against encrypted DNS in Firefox and Chrome.

The Internet providers’ fight against this privacy feature raises questions about how they use broadband customers’ Web-browsing data, Mozilla wrote in a letter sent today to the chairs and ranking members of three House of Representatives committees. Mozilla also said that Internet providers have been giving inaccurate information to lawmakers and urged Congress to “publicly probe current ISP data collection and use policies.”

DNS over HTTPS helps keep eavesdroppers from seeing what DNS lookups your browser is making. This can make it more difficult for ISPs or other third parties to monitor what websites you visit.

“Unsurprisingly, our work on DoH [DNS over HTTPS] has prompted a campaign to forestall these privacy and security protections, as demonstrated by the recent letter to Congress from major telecommunications associations. That letter contained a number of factual inaccuracies,” Mozilla Senior Director of Trust and Security Marshall Erwin wrote.

This part of Erwin’s letter referred to an Ars article in which we examined the ISPs’ claims, which center largely around Google’s plans for Chrome. The broadband industry claimed that Google plans to automatically switch Chrome users to its own DNS service, but that’s not what Google says it is doing. Google’s publicly announced plan is to “check if the user’s current DNS provider is among a list of DoH-compatible providers, and upgrade to the equivalent DoH service from the same provider.” If the user-selected DNS service is not on that list, Chrome would make no changes for that user.

………

In addition to the broadband-industry letter to Congress, Comcast has been giving members of Congress a lobbying presentation that claims the encrypted-DNS plan would “centraliz[e] a majority of worldwide DNS data with Google” and “give one provider control of Internet traffic routing and vast amounts of new data about consumers and competitors.” Comcast and other ISPs are urging Congress to intervene.

But a number of the arguments ISPs made to lawmakers are “premised on a plan that doesn’t exist,” Erwin told Ars last week, referring to the ISPs’ claims about Google.

………

Mozilla’s letter to Congress said the ISP lobbying against encrypted DNS amounts to telecom associations “explicitly arguing that ISPs need to be in a position to collect and monetize users’ data. This is inconsistent with arguments made just two years earlier regarding whether privacy rules were needed to govern ISP data use.”

………

Web users are tracked by Google, Facebook, and other advertising companies, of course. ISPs, though, have “privileged access” to users’ browsing histories because they act as the gateway to the Internet, Erwin said to Ars.

There is already “remarkably sophisticated micro-targeting across the Web,” and “we don’t want to see that business model duplicated in the middle of the network,” he said. “We think it’s just a mistake to use DNS for those purposes.”

………

Mozilla has established specific policy requirements that DNS providers have to meet to earn a spot in Firefox’s encrypted-DNS program. For example, DNS resolvers must delete data that could identify users within 24 hours and only use that data “for the purpose of operating the service.” Providers also “must not retain, sell, or transfer to any third party (except as may be required by law) any personal information, IP addresses or other user identifiers, or user query patterns from the DNS queries sent from the Firefox browser.”

Do you really trust COMCAST to protect your privacy when their profits depend on NOT protecting your privacy?

I know that I don’t.