November 2, 2017
News and Views
THIS ARTICLE, IN MY VIEW, IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FOR THE DAY, EVEN WITHOUT LOOKING AT THEM ALL YET. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE LAW IS LAWLESS? I DO HOPE THIS IS NOT A PART OF TRUMPTHINK, AND THAT HE HIMSELF HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. I’LL TRY TO FIND SOMETHING ON THE HISTORY OF THE MATTER. OF COURSE, IT MAY JUST BE AN ILLUSTRATION OF THIS WONDERFUL BOOK TITLE WHICH I FOUND AT A LAW SCHOOL WHERE I WORKED: “MILITARY JUSTICE IS TO JUSTICE AS MILITARY MUSIC IS TO MUSIC.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/appeal-filed-general-detained-contempt-guantanamo-182030812.html
Appeal filed by general detained for contempt at Guantanamo
Associated Press Associated Press•November 2, 2017
MIAMI (AP) — Lawyers asked a civilian judge in Washington on Thursday to release a Marine Corps general detained at Guantanamo Bay for contempt of court.
The habeas corpus petition filed in U.S. District Court seeks to reverse a ruling which found that Brig. Gen. John Baker should be confined to quarters for 21 days and fined $1,000 for dismissing three defense lawyers in a terrorism case at Guantanamo without a military judge's permission.
Lawyers for Baker, who oversees the legal defense teams for prisoners charged with war crimes at the U.S. base in Cuba, argue that the military judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, did not have authority to detain the general since he is a U.S. citizen. They also say his conduct was appropriate and did not amount to contempt.
"We believe that Judge Spath's ruling was fundamentally flawed in a number of ways," Attorney Barry Pollack said.
Spath issued the ruling against Baker at a hearing Wednesday, shocking the general's colleagues by having him led out of the courtroom by guards and confined immediately to his quarters inside a small trailer on the base. A Pentagon official known as the convening authority must still approve the sentence, but could also void it. A decision was expected within days.
The dispute arose during the pretrial phase in the case of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, a citizen of Saudi Arabia and alleged senior member of al-Qaida who is accused of planning the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 crew members. Al-Nashiri could get the death penalty if convicted.
Baker excused three defense attorneys assigned by the Pentagon to defend al-Nashiri on ethical issues related to alleged breaches of attorney-client privilege. Officials have not disclosed details, saying the information is classified.
The general's decision to dismiss the lawyers disrupted scheduled proceedings at the base because the remaining defense lawyer said he lacked the experience necessary to continue. Spath declined to postpone al-Nashiri's hearing.
"He shouldn't be detained at all," Pollack said, referring to Baker. "He should be permitted to do the very important job that he has been assigned to do."
U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth was expected to hold a hearing on the petition later Thursday.
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david
david2 hours ago
Are they using Guantanamo for just anybody now what the hell is going on in USA god forbid you don"t pay your taxes youll end up in that terrible camp being tortured trying to find out why you can not afford to pay your taxes?.
Reply
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WHO STAND UP FOR GOODNESS OVER STUPIDITY AND EVIL IN AN AUTOCRATIC SETTING – ALL THE MARKS OF A TRUMP ACTION? OKAY, THAT COMMENT IS MALICIOUS, AND THIS SITUATION IS NOT CONNECTED TO THE PRESIDENT, MOST LIKELY, BUT MERELY TO THE NATURE OF LIFE IN A CLOSED, RIGID, RULE-BASED WAY OF LIFE. THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A TENSION IN THIS COUNTRY BETWEEN PEOPLE WHO LIKE FREEDOM, AND THOSE WHO DON’T. DEMS V REPS! REMEMBER. GROUPTHINK IS NONTHINK, AND FOR SOME, IT IS MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gitmo-judge-convicts-us-generalbecause-he-stood-up-for-detainee-rights
OUT OF ORDER
Gitmo Judge Convicts U.S. General—Because He Stood Up for Detainee Rights
Brigadier General John Baker protested the government’s surveillance of Guantanamo Bay defense lawyers. And that got him sentenced to 21 days in confinement.
SPENCER ACKERMAN
11.01.17 5:56 PM ET
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE DAILY BEAST
The Guantanamo Bay military tribunals on Wednesday won their first conviction without a plea deal since 2008. Only it wasn’t a terrorist who was convicted – it was a one-star Marine general sticking up for the rights of the accused to have a fair trial.
In defending the principle that attorneys ought to be able to defend their clients free from government surveillance, Brigadier General John Baker was ruled in contempt of court and sentenced to 21 days in confinement. He also must pay a $1000 fine.
Baker is a senior officer within in the highly controversial military commissions process: the Chief of Defense Counsel. Maj. Ben Sakrisson, the Pentagon spokesman for detentions, confirmed that Baker is being confined in his quarters – at Guantanamo Bay.
“The military commissions are willing to put people in jail for defending the rule of law,” Jay Connell, who represents another Guantanamo detainee facing a military commission, told The Daily Beast. “If they’re willing to put a Marine general in jail for standing up for a client’s rights, they’re willing to do just anything.”
Baker’s sentence Wednesday was first reported by Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, the only reporter actually at Guantanamo and who saw the hearing. He outranks the judge who sentenced him, Air Force Colonel Vance Spath.
The shocking development at Guantanamo, described as a “national disgrace and an embarrassment” by the executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, came on the same day President Donald Trump publicly mulled detaining accused New York terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov at Guantanamo. (As a lawful permanent resident, Saipov is likely ineligible for a war-crimes trial under the 2009 Military Commission Act, which specified the court is for non-Americans, even if the Pentagon decided his alleged acts rose to the level of a war crime.)
The path that led to Baker’s contempt confinement started with a group resignation and a clash with Spath.
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Earlier this month, three civilian attorneys for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the accused bomber of the USS Cole in 2000, abruptly quit the death-penalty case. The attorneys said that they had significant reason to believe the government was listening in to their communications. Spath, the judge in the Nashiri case, barred them from discussing the issue with Nashiri, since it was classified. Nashiri had lost his lawyers without ever knowing exactly why.
It is not the first time that concerns over government spying have rocked the Guantanamo military tribunals. In 2014, pre-trial hearings for the accused 9/11 co-conspirators snarled after defense attorneys revealed indications that the FBI had turned their technical adviser into a secret informant, prompting the judge in that case to prohibit monitoring attorney-client communications in November 2016. And in 2013, in the same case, the CIA cut the audio feed at the war court before an attorney discussed an aspect of the defendants’ confinement at undisclosed CIA “black site” prisons.”
Baker supported the Nashiri attorneys’ decision to quit – and believed he, as chief defense counsel, had all sufficient authority to permit them to walk. Baker released them on October 11. But, facing the prospect of the Nashiri death-penalty commission snarling to a halt, Spath disagreed, and ordered them to return to Guantanamo.
Instead, Baker showed up at the war court this week, without now ex-Nashiri attorney Rick Kammen and Kammen’s team. Spath instructed Baker to change his mind and instruct Kammen and the two other attorneys that they still represent Nashiri. Baker did not, believing that Spath lacked the authority to do so. On Wednesday, Spath held Baker in contempt and ordered him to 21 days’ confinement in his Guantanamo quarters.
Connell, who represents 9/11 co-defendant Ammar al-Baluchi, said all this could have been avoided had the government simply not spied on the Nashiri team, “or allowed the defense counsel to discuss this issue with their client.” He added that Baker’s sentencing did not settle the issue of who in the military commissions process – a judge in a specific case, or the Chief of Defense Counsel – has final say over an attorney quitting.
“It will come up again the next time someone tries to resign or otherwise leave the case,” Connell said. He did not know if other Guantanamo defense lawyers would resign in protest.
Baker had a history of supporting unmonitored attorney communications, which are a bedrock principle of civilian trials. In June, shortly after learning of the suspected surveillance on the Nashiri lawyers, he advised defense attorneys “not to conduct any attorney-client meetings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO), until they know with certainty that improper monitoring of such meetings is not occurring,” according to a letter obtained by the Miami Herald.
“At present,” Baker continued, “I am not confident that the prohibition on improper monitoring of attorney-client meetings at GTMO as ordered by the commission is being followed.”
It’s possible that Baker won’t serve out his sentence. Harvey Rishikov, the convening authority of the military commissions, “will determine whether to affirm, defer, suspend or disapprove the sentence in the next few days,” the Pentagon’s Sakrisson said.
“HILLARY CLINTON’S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN GAINED CONTROL OF THE COMMITTEE WELL BEFORE CLINTON WAS THE PARTY’S NOMINEE.” WE REALLY NEED TO DO AWAY WITH THE “SUPERDELEGATE” SYSTEM, BECAUSE THEY RULE THE ROOST IN THE PARTY. JUST AS A NUMBER OF THINGS THAT TRUMP HAS DONE DO NOT BELONG IN A DEMOCRACY, NEITHER DOES THIS.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donna-brazile-says-clinton-campaign-144436945.html
Politics
Donna Brazile Says Clinton Campaign Took Over The DNC
HuffPost
Paige Lavender
HuffPost • November 2, 2017
Photograph -- Donna Brazile, former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, opened up about the financial chaos within the DNC and said that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign gained control of the committee well before Clinton was the party’s nominee.
Donna Brazile, former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, opened up about the financial chaos within the DNC and said that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign gained control of the committee well before Clinton was the party’s nominee.
Politico featured an excerpt from Brazile’s book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, which comes out Nov. 7. In it, Brazile describes finding out that the Clinton campaign was keeping the DNC financially afloat, “for which [Clinton] expected to wield control of its operations,” Brazile writes.
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Brazile says she was in the dark about the committee’s financial situation when she took over as interim chair. She writes that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the previous chair, “hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party.”
Brazile said Wasserman Schultz had allowed the DNC’s spending to get out of control before striking a deal with Clinton’s campaign “to sustain the DNC,” in the words of the Clinton campaign’s chief financial officer, Gary Gensler.
“When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger,” Brazile writes. “We would go forward. We had to.”
Brazile has spoken about her displeasure with the DNC before, saying she “knew things were amiss” when she stepped in as interim chair.
Brazile resigned as a CNN contributor in late Oct. 2016 after WikiLeaks released an email showing that she’d received advance questions before a town hall event and gave them to Clinton’s campaign. Brazile later called that move “a mistake I will forever regret.”
Representatives for Clinton, Sanders, Wasserman Schultz and former President Barack Obama did not immediately reply to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Read Brazile’s story at Politico.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-terror-attack-nypd-john-miller-counterterrorism/
CBS NEWS November 2, 2017, 2:17 PM
NYPD counterterrorism official John Miller on the "arc" of radicalization
Charges filed against New York City terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov on Wednesday depict the Uzbek immigrant as a disciple of ISIS propaganda.
"It appears from what we know now, and this could change, that he was radicalized after he came to the United States," said John Miller, NYPD deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism and a former CBS News senior correspondent.
The authorities are asking key questions of the suspect's motive and whether he acted alone in the deadly attack that killed eight people and injured a dozen others.
"When you capture a live terrorist, you have the ability to question that person and you're able to glean a lot about those things: Were they part of a larger network? Is this something bigger? Were they acting alone? But you can also go deeper into those questions about what brought you to this point. And there are former defendants in cases like this where we've learned a lot about the arc of their radicalization, and what we're seeing today is, in the United States, a great deal of that is just done online," Miller said.
b>
New York terror suspect allegedly practiced attack
Play VIDEO
New York terror suspect allegedly practiced attack
Asked how the "arc" of radicalization* can be broken, Miller replied, "we have no effective counter message today."
"This is something that has vexed us since 9/11 when the U.S. government started looking at this, and it is a prescription that is very hard for the government to deliver. This is something that we have been in discussion with the larger Muslim community about how to do, and we're not there yet," Miller said.
On Tuesday President Trump called the suspect an "animal" and called for the repeal of the Diversity Visa Lottery program that allowed him to enter the U.S. The president also claimed that "chain migration" had allowed Saipov to bring 23 people into the country. Miller, however, said he knew "nothing" about the claim and said it "would be a stretch" to suggest that any of the others who came into the U.S. through that visa program or with Saipov had some relation to terror plots.
Trump tweets NYC terror attack suspect "SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY"
Miller said the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI are looking through all of Saipov's communications to figure out: "Is this inspired? He just got all this off the internet? Was it enabled? Was he actually communicating with ISIS officials over encrypted channels or was this directed? Was this part of a plan?"
"At this point we don't see anything that leads us to believe there's anyone else involved, but I caution we're a day or two into this," Miller said.
© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“ARC OF RADICALIZATION”* – GREAT TERM, BUT WHERE DID IT COME FROM AND WHEN? AS SUCH, I WAS UNABLE TO FIND IT ON GOOGLE OR BING. IT UNDOUBTEDLY REFERS TO CHARTS DEPICTING A RANGE OF INCIDENCES, AND IS OBVIOUSLY IMPORTANT, IF THE FUTURE OF MANKIND IS IMPORTANT.
SURVEYGIZMO, HERE, SHOWS AN ARC CHART AND A BAR CHART. THEY BOTH ILLUSTRATE WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY EQUALLY WELL, BUT THE ARC CHARTS ARE PRETTIER, AND UNDOUBTEDLY WILL ADD PIZZAZZ TO THE PRESENTATIONS. GO TO HTTPS://HELP.SURVEYGIZMO.COM/HELP/ARC-CHART.
ON WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING AND HOPEFULLY CONTROLLING RADICALIZATION, SEE IN PARTICULAR THE MEI.EDU ARTICLE BELOW, WRITTEN BY A PROFESSOR CLUTTERBUCK ON RADICALIZATION AND DERADICALIZATION. THIS ARTICLE ISN’T DRY, JUST TOO LONG, WHICH IS WHY IT ISN’T INCLUDED HERE. SO PLEASE, IF YOU WANT TO LEARN SOME THEORY ABOUT THIS SOCIAL SCIENCE QUESTION OF HOW RADICALIZATION DEVELOPS, DO READ ON.
THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS OF OUR TIMES, ALONG WITH WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT THE PROBLEM. I FEEL SURE THAT A PSYCHOLOGICAL ANSWER IS MUCH BETTER THAN “BOMBING THEM UNTIL THE SAND GLOWS,” AS SAID BY SOME RIGHTIST REPUBLICAN ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO. FOUND IT, TED CRUZ: HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=YDRYBAURKUC.
HTTPS://WWW.MEI.EDU/SITES/DEFAULT/FILES/CLUTTERBUCK.PDF, RADICALIZATION PROGRAMS AND COUNTERTERRORISM: A PERSPECTIVE ON THE CHALLENGES AND BENEFITS; LINDSAY CLUTTERBUCK PHD, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-is-trump-politicizing-the-new-york-city-terror-attack/
By MICHAEL GRAHAM CBS NEWS November 2, 2017, 6:00 AM
Commentary: Is Trump politicizing the New York City terror attack?
Accusations about politicians "politicizing" events like the New York City terror attack or the Las Vegas shooting have always confused me.
Of course they're "politicizing." They're politicians. And issues like immigration and gun control are addressed by passing laws through Congress and sending them to the White House. It's about as elementary as "Schoolhouse Rock."
Why New York terror suspect likely targeted bike path
Play VIDEO
Why New York terror suspect likely targeted bike path
So when an immigrant commits a terrorist act in New York City that leaves eight innocent civilians dead, of course a president who ran on a platform of restricting immigration is going to use it to bolster support for his policies. Specifically, the day after the attack, President Trump called for an end to the "diversity visa lottery" program, which is the program used by the Uzbek perpetrator to enter the U.S.
"I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program," President Trump announced Wednesday. "It sounds nice. It's not nice."
Trump's critics cried hypocrisy, pointing out that Mr. Trump deferred calls for changes in gun laws two days after the Las Vegas massacre -- "we'll be talking about gun laws as time goes by," he said. White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders defended Mr. Trump, pointing out that, unlike restrictive gun laws, "the president has been talking about extreme vetting and the need for that for the purpose of protecting the citizens of this country since he was a candidate – long before he was president."
It's hard to argue that the Americans who elected President Trump are surprised he wants to tighten immigration rules. It's also hard to argue that President Trump shouldn't do in the wake of the New York attack what President Obama did repeatedly in the wake of mass shootings -- argue for gun control.
But it may be Democrats who are trying to make the more difficult case in defending the visa lotteries.
Americans have mixed feelings about immigration. One the one hand, they don't want -- to quote President Trump -- to be "mean." They don't want illegal immigrant kids deported to countries they barely remember. And Americans don't like the idea of a border wall.
At the same time, polls show Americans support Trump's efforts at a so-called "travel ban" from countries with terrorism issues. And according to Gallup, twice as many Americans want to see legal immigration levels either reduced or stay at their current levels versus increasing immigration. This may be a reaction to the fact that a record 43 million immigrants live in the U.S., and the percentage of population that's foreign-born is approaching levels not seen since the great migrations of the late 1800s.
And now yet another immigrant has turned our generosity against us, taking advantage of an immigration loophole most of us had never heard of.
For many Americans, none of the words in "diversity visa lottery" make sense. They want immigrants who can add to the economy or provide some asset to our country. Simply being from a country not many people are from doesn't do that. And living in America is a great opportunity. Why would we give that to 50,000 people a year -- at random?
And while there are no recent polls regarding the specific green-card lottery system, a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll found general support for the RAISE Act, the GOP immigration reform plan that would replace it with a merit-based immigration policy. So, the issue of immigration reform remains a winner for President Trump.
Also consider that the countries that received the largest share of diversity visas last year were Nepal, Egypt, Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uzbekistan and Ethiopia. Several of these countries have security and terrorism issues -- Iran is one the countries covered by the president's travel ban.
More than half of all Uzbek immigrants to the U.S. come here on the visa lottery system. It's one thing to welcome college students or engineers or business owners from these countries who want to bring their skills and assets to America. But granting visas to random people by pure chance from nations with these issues is likely to be viewed by voters as problematic.
Americans are starting to ask the question "What's in it for us?" How does inviting random low- or no-skill immigrants from distant nations to come to the U.S. help us? It certainly didn't help the victims of the New York attack.
Republicans are advocating an immigration approach that would, as the president says, puts America first: would-be immigrants would be evaluated on what they can do for America. This puts Democrats in the unenviable position of urging Americans to reject that.
It was already a tough debate for Democrats. Tuesday's terror attack made it worse—with or without Mr. Trump's tweets.
© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
“IMPORTANT THINGS ARE NEVER WRITTEN DOWN. DOCUMENTS CAN BE DESTROYED. PEOPLE IN THE KNOW CAN DISAPPEAR. WE ALL GET LOST IN WHAT JAMES JESUS ANGLETON, WHEN HE RAN COUNTERINTELLIGENCE FOR THE CIA, CALLED THE WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS.”
THIS IS WHY WE NEED SPIES, BECAUSE THE STAKES ARE VERY HIGH, BUT THE “WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS” IS WHY WE FIND IT SO BEAUTIFUL. IT’S LIKE RAY BRADBURY’S “THE OCTOBER PEOPLE.” ELEGANTLY CHILLING. I TAKE ANTIDEPRESSANT MEDS NOW, BUT BEFORE I DID I WOULD ALWAYS HAVE A VERY BAD TIME EACH OCTOBER.
IN APRIL, IT WAS THE OTHER WAY AROUND. I COULD FLOAT UP INTO THE SKY LIKE A BEAUTIFULLY COLORED BALLOON WITH EXHILARATION, IN MY SPRINGTIME MOOD. SOME OTHER PERIODIC DEPRESSIVES HAVE THE SAME EXPERIENCE, BUT WITH THE MONTHS REVERSED. MY SCIENTIFICALLY MINDED EX-HUSBAND SAID THE IN THOSE TWO MONTHS THE LENGTH OF DAY IS SHIFTING RAPIDLY. BRIGHTNESS AND LENGTH OF SUNLIGHT IN A DAY IS ONE OF THE MAIN TRIGGERS OF EPISODIC DEPRESSION.
THIS “MALADY” IS VERY COMMON IN HUMANS, AND I BELIEVE THAT IT IS DIRECTLY LINKED WITH THE REAL REASON WHY MOST BIRDS AND MANY OTHER ANIMALS INCLUDING HUMANS MIGRATE SEASONALLY. WHEN THE ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION HITS IN OCTOBER, THE SEASON IS JUST TURNING, SO WE SHOULD BAG UP OUR GRINDSTONE, WEAPONS, WINTER SKINS AND DRIED FOOD TO START WALKING SOUTH. (READ “CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR” OR SOME LEGITIMATE ARCHAEOLOGY.)
BY THE WAY, THIS BOOKDRUM.COM ARTICLE IS EXCELLENT. TRUE, SAD, AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN.
HTTP://WWW.BOOKDRUM.COM/BOOKS/SOMETHING-WICKED-THIS-WAY-COMES/11661/BOOKMARK/14801.HTML
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-dont-get-your-hopes-up-about-robert-mueller/
By WILL RAHN CBS NEWS November 1, 2017, 6:00 AM
Commentary: Don't get your hopes up about Mueller
Video -- Do voters care about the Mueller investigation?
From an optimist's standpoint, Monday's indictments might indicate that we are on the verge of understanding what the Russian intelligence services did, or tried to do, during the 2016 election. We know now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team has been able to identify one point of contact between Moscow and the Trump campaign in George Papadopolous, who was flipped over the summer to become a government informant.
But the truth is, we're probably never going to know, fully and exactly, what the Russians were up to. That's just the nature of espionage, which John Le Carré memorably defined as the secret theatre of our society. Important things are never written down. Documents can be destroyed. People in the know can disappear. We all get lost in what James Jesus Angleton, when he ran counterintelligence for the CIA, called the wilderness of mirrors.
Trump tries to distance himself from indicted former aides
Play VIDEO
Trump tries to distance himself from indicted former aides
And even if Mueller and company come out with a perfectly logical conclusion as to what happened, it's worth remembering that some people will never accept it, first among them the president. Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed the investigation as a witch hunt, which is what the Russians also happen to call it, and will do everything he can to cast doubt on findings that link his campaign to a foreign influence operation. Those doubts will in turn resonate, perhaps for decades, in the minds of his many millions of supporters.
This is not to say that Mueller's investigation isn't worthwhile; it's obviously necessary and important work. But anyone expecting this to end as Watergate did, with a president tacitly admitting guilt and shuffling aside, is likely in for a disappointment.
The internet joke is that the 2016 election will never end. It's something we'll just keep relitigating for the foreseeable future, or perhaps forever, particularly when it comes to Russian involvement. And it should be noted that this was likely by design, as Russian intelligence has a long history of boosting conspiracy theories in the U.S. The Kremlin's agenda here isn't to convince all Americans that the sky is orange, but rather to convince some number that it is orange, and others that it is yellow, and others that it is purple. Once that is done, they want all those groups to fight about it.
The KGB even promoted the idea that the CIA was responsible for the JFK assassination, and in a sense the aftermath of that tragedy, and the conspiracy theories that stemmed from it, is a better metaphor for the 2016 election than Watergate. The latest document dump on the 1963 assassination did not tell us much of anything that historians did not already know, so the questions about what happened that day in Dallas linger on, and probably always will. We can say confidently that Lee Harvey Oswald was the shooter, but we'll never be certain about whether he thought he was working for someone, whether others were involved, and in what way.
And so it goes with the Russians and 2016. U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Russia deployed various active measures, including hacking, to influence the election for Trump's benefit. Still, we do not know, and perhaps never will, whether Trump or his team were really in cahoots with Moscow. And should the evidence presented to the public ever establish collusion beyond a shadow of a doubt, there would still be those who never believe this official story, just as there are still people who can't bring themselves to the conclusion that it was only Oswald firing the shots. Strangely enough, two of the most prominent JFK conspiracy theorists in America – Alex Jones and Roger Stone -- were also early Trump boosters.
Do voters care about the Mueller investigation?
Play VIDEO
Do voters care about the Mueller investigation?
And all this originates in part from the broader epistemological crisis in this country, which both Trump and the Russians have exploited with ease. Political debates in our country often appear as if they're occurring on parallel timelines, with people talking past each other and working from completely different sets of facts. And so depending on what channel you're watching at any given moment, or reading on the internet, you might think that the only Russian collusion scandal was one in which Hillary Clinton was compromised, and that any links between Trump and Moscow are just the invention of the Deep State and its allies in the mainstream press.
There is nothing Mueller can unearth that will change this sad reality. There are some things we will never know about what happened in 2016, and there's likely a lot that when made public people will simply not believe. Even if the Mueller investigation somehow ends in Trump's impeachment, we know that he will never admit guilt or misfeasance, and that many if not most of his supporters will see his removal from office as nothing less than a coup.
Perhaps public memory will eventually come to a workable consensus as to what the Russians did in 2016. But we shouldn't let the indictments fool us into thinking that that will happen anytime soon.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-bill-de-blasio-trump-nyc-speech/
CBS/AP October 30, 2017, 10:03 PM
Sen. Bernie Sanders says NYC mayor is "the opposite" of Trump
Photograph -- New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio with Sen. Bernie Sanders as seen on Mon., Oct. 30, 2017. CITY OF NEW YORK
NEW YORK -- Bernie Sanders, the Vermont U.S. senator who stoked liberal passions nationwide as a Democratic candidate in last year's presidential contest, stepped into New York politics for a day on Monday, casting first-term Mayor Bill de Blasio as the antidote to the "un-American" leadership of President Trump.
Everything de Blasio is trying to do is "the opposite" of what Mr. Trump is trying to do, a fiery Sanders declared at a de Blasio campaign rally in Manhattan.
"Trump, in an extremely un-American, ugly and almost unprecedented way, unprecedented way, is trying to divide us up, based on the color of our skin or our religion, or the country we came from or our sexual orientation," Sanders said. "And this mayor is leading this city in a way to bring us together."
Sanders' appearance came as de Blasio worked to energize voters just eight days before New York's mayoral election. The Democratic mayor is expected to cruise to victory against a little-known Republican opponent, but there are signs of malaise among some supporters.
For a night, at least, Sanders changed that.
At the Fulton Street subway stop in Lower Manhattan, with Sanders at his side, de Blasio renewed his pitch for a tax to fix the subways, CBS New York writes.
"I know where the money is. I know it! We all know it!" de Blasio said. "Those who have benefited so much in this society have the resources, it's time for them to pay a little more -- and to them, I assure you, it is just a little more, so the rest of us can get around!"
Sanders chimed right in.
"If we say to the wealthiest people in this country: 'You know what? You need to start paying your fair share of taxes,'" he said.
But Sanders did say he was not taking sides in the skirmish between the mayor and Gov. Andrew Cuomo about how to finance fixing the subways.
Sanders, a democratic socialist who was born and raised in Brooklyn, earned hero status in last year's presidential contest despite losing the Democratic Party's nomination to Hillary Clinton. He helped draw hundreds of voters, many in their 20s and 30s, to a crowded music hall just a mile from Mr. Trump's longtime residence on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.
With de Blasio and his wife looking on, Sanders repeatedly slammed the Republican president, who has dubbed him "Crazy Bernie." Slamming Mr. Trump was a theme de Blasio welcomed.
"We will stand up to Donald Trump every single day," de Blasio vowed. "So long as he's in the White House, this city cannot be as fair as it needs to be unless we take him on."
The speakers were clearly concerned about next week's turnout. While few political observers expect the mayor to lose re-election, Sanders and de Blasio repeatedly called for a huge turnout to help send a message to Washington.
"Bernie taught us in too many ways, the system is still rigged," de Blasio said.
"This is your city," he added. "It doesn't belong to the titans of Wall Street. And lord knows it does not belong to Donald Trump."
© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
HIS POLICY VISION, DECIDEDLY FROM THE LEFT IN THE UNITED STATES, MATCHES MAINSTREAM CANADIAN VIEWS. .... MR. SANDERS — AFTER WEDGING HIMSELF INTO ROW 21 AND TAKING EXTENSIVE NOTES ON A LEGAL PAD DURING THE FLIGHT — HAD BARELY GOTTEN OFF THE PLANE IN TORONTO WHEN AN AIRPORT SECURITY GUARD CHASED HIM DOWN THE HALLWAY, TELLING HIM, “YOU’RE LIKE A HERO TO ME.”
LET’S FACE IT. THIS NATION IS NOT BUILT ON GENEROSITY, BUT GREED. “GREED IS GOOD!!” LUCKILY THERE ARE ALSO LIBS AND PROGRESSIVES, AS WELL AS MANY INDEPENDENTS. THE RANGE OF VIEWS IS BROADER HERE NOW THAN I REMEMBER IT IN MY YOUNG YEARS. I HAVE FAITH THAT WE ARE IMPROVING AS A SOCIETY. SO, I’LL KEEP TRUCKIN’ ALONG BEHIND BERNIE. IT’S THE ONLY DIRECTION THAT I WANT TO WALK TOWARD. I BELIEVE IN THE OLD MANTRA, “IF YOU AREN’T A PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU’RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/upshot/bernie-sanders-went-to-canada-and-learned-a-few-things.html?_r=0
What Did Bernie Sanders Learn in His Weekend in Canada?
Margot Sanger-Katz @sangerkatz
NOV. 2, 2017
Photograph – Bernie Sanders press conference Credit Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
As he tells it, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont fell in love with the Canadian health system 20 years ago when he brought a busload of his constituents across the border to buy cheaper prescription drugs. Now he wants to make Americans fall in love with his proposal to make the United States system a lot more like Canada’s.
That’s one reason he took the equivalent of a busload of staffers, American health care providers and journalists to Toronto last weekend, in a two-day trip that was part immersion, part publicity tour. Canadian government officials and hospital executives showed him high-tech care, compassionate providers and satisfied patients, all as videographers recorded.
He ended the trip with a speech at the University of Toronto titled, “What the U.S. Can Learn From Canadian Health Care.”
But our question is this: What did Bernie Sanders learn from his weekend in Canada?
Photo -- Credit Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
Lesson 1: He’s a ‘rock star’
Mr. Sanders — after wedging himself into Row 21 and taking extensive notes on a legal pad during the flight — had barely gotten off the plane in Toronto when an airport security guard chased him down the hallway, telling him, “You’re like a hero to me.”
A team of cardiac nurses at Toronto General Hospital asked to take pictures after he toured their unit. At a full 1,600-seat university auditorium on Sunday, he received repeated and sustained standing ovations. College students waited for hours to get into the auditorium and see him speak.
Mr. Sanders, who drew huge crowds as a presidential candidate in the United States last year, learned firsthand that he is also a household name in Toronto. His policy vision, decidedly from the left in the United States, matches mainstream Canadian views.
“You received the welcome here that is normally reserved for celebrity rock stars,” said Greg Marchildon, the director of the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies at the University of Toronto.
Ed Broadbent, the chairman of the progressive Broadbent Institute, called Mr. Sanders the most important social democrat in North America — even though Mr. Sanders is not a Canadian social democrat, and is not even a particularly powerful member of the Senate.
Photo
Credit Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
Lesson 2: Doctors like free health care as much as patients do
Many developed countries have achieved universal health coverage, but Canada is relatively distinct in its insistence that individuals should not have to pay any money at the point of care. When Canadians go to the doctor or hospital, they just show their Canadian “Medicare” card. There are no alternatives to the government system, which means that there’s no way for patients with more money to get faster or better care in Canada.
At Women’s College Hospital, executives showed Mr. Sanders an empty billing window. The hospital, they told him, has one employee who manages bills. “For the entire hospital?” Mr. Sanders said, in mock disbelief.
Several patients told him about the comfort that comes from not having to pay for their care directly. And doctors, too, said they felt more comfortable recommending their patients get an operation or see a specialist than they might if those treatments weren’t free.
“I didn’t have to fill out any forms; I didn’t have to worry about how I was going to pay for the simple job of staying alive,” said Lilac Chow, a kidney transplant patient at Toronto General Hospital, who had been brought in to share her experience with the senator.
Whenever Mr. Sanders was asked what he learned about the Canadian system, the value of free care came up.
“What I think stuck out to me was from both the patients and the physicians, the importance of not having to worry about money in terms of the doctor-patient relationship,” he said in an interview after his trip on Tuesday.
His Medicare-for-All bill includes free care as a central feature. If the legislation became law, no American would pay directly for a doctor, dentist or hospital visit, and co-payments for prescription drugs would be limited. (Taxpayers would, of course, finance the system.)
Photo -- Credit Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
Lesson 3: Sometimes, you have to wait
At a round-table discussion at Women’s College Hospital, the chief of surgery noted that Canadian patients can’t always get all the care they want right away. “Wait times, you could argue are a problem for certain procedures,” said Dr. David Urbach, before discussing the ways the province and hospital were working to shorten the lines. Mr. Sanders quickly turned to the glass-half-full interpretation. “What you are arguing — correct me if I’m wrong — is that waiting times are not a problem, and it’s an issue you are dealing with,” he said.
In Canada, where government finances health insurance and the private sector delivers a lot of the care, patients with life-threatening emergencies are treated right away. But patients with cataracts or arthritis often have to wait for operations the Canadian system considers elective. A governmental review of the Ontario system recently found that wait times were getting worse in some cases, like knee replacements.
The Canadian system puts hospitals on a budget and limits the number of specialists it trains, both factors that can lead to lines for complex care that’s not life-threatening. The system also limits access to services, like M.R.I. scans, that are much more abundant south of the border.
On his weekend tour, Mr. Sanders didn’t see the places where patients might wait. Hospital executives instead showed him a refugee primary care clinic, a neonatal intensive care unit and a cardiac surgery unit.
But he points out that many Americans who are uninsured — or who have limited savings and insurance with high deductibles — may wait even longer than Canadians for elective, or even urgent, care.
“If you’re very, very rich, you’ll get the highest-quality care immediately in the United States,” Mr. Sanders said, in the interview. “If you’re working class, if you’re middle class, it is a very, very different story.”
The Best Health Care System in the World: Which One Would You Pick?
Assessing the systems in eight countries can inform the debate in the U.S. over universal coverage.
The Commonwealth Fund, a health research group, ranked the United States health system at the bottom of its most recent 11-country rankings, published in July. But Canada did only a little better, at No. 9. Of all the measures in the study, Canada ranked the worst on the “timeliness” of care. (A team of Upshot experts eliminated Canada in the first round in an eight-country virtual bracket tournament of international health system performance.)
Any single-payer system will need to grapple with how much it should spend over all, and where it will save money. Mr. Sanders’s Medicare-for-All bill currently includes few details about how the government would set budgets and allocate resources once all Americans were brought into the government system.
Photo -- Credit Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press
Lesson 4: Even Canada’s system has holes
Mr. Sanders wants to bring big, sweeping change to the American health care system. Unlike the Affordable Care Act, which filled in holes in an existing system, his Medicare-for-All plan would take away the health coverage that most Americans hold now, replacing it with a single, very generous government system. It would do away with the premiums, deductibles and co-payments that individuals and businesses pay for health care, and instead impose large tax increases.
That is not the kind of change that would be politically trivial. In his speech, he noted that the creation of a single-payer system in Canada and Britain followed grass-roots movements, and political landslides by the parties that favored the change. “Real change always happens from the bottom up,” he said, to big applause. “You’ve got to struggle for it. You’ve got to fight for it. You’ve got to take it. And that is the history of all real change in this world.”
Yet even in Canada, he learned, changes to the health care system have been difficult. The Canadian system, with insurance run at the province level, covers doctors and hospitals. But decades after the 1984 Canada Health Act, many Canadians pay for supplemental private insurance through their jobs for prescription drugs, dentistry and optometry — despite a growing recognition that medications are essential to care.
“Any one of us around the table is just a job loss away from having access to prescription medications, and that’s a problem,” said Danielle Martin, a vice president at Women’s College Hospital and policy researcher, who helped organize the trip, at a round-table discussion.
“I’m on my own going to the dentist,” said Naomi Duguid, a patient, sitting across the table. “It’s the only time I get to experience what it must be like to be an uninsured American.”
Ontario has recently started a program that will provide coverage for medications to residents under 25. And there is a patchwork of drug coverage programs for older people, the poor and those who get insurance from work. But even in Canada, it’s tough to find the resources to expand coverage.
“We have to find the money to fund the program up front,” said Kathleen Wynne, the premier of Ontario, who helped establish the youth drug coverage program.
Photo -- Mr. Sanders visited Frederick Brownridge, who recently had a double bypass, at Toronto General Hospital. Credit Aaron Vincent Elkaim for The New York Times
Lesson 5: Canadians value fairness more than Americans do
Equity. Fairness. Throughout the weekend, Mr. Sanders kept asking Canadians what they thought about the higher taxes they’d paid to finance their system. Every one among the patients and doctors selected to meet him said the trade-off was worth it because it made the system fair.
“I think it’s a really fair way to do it,” said Frederick Brownridge, 67, of Etobicoke, Ontario, as he sat by the window in his Toronto General Hospital room, with I.V. lines in his arms. Mr. Brownridge had had two heart valves repaired and a double bypass three days earlier. “It also means if you’re in a lower economic status or higher economic status, you’ll get the treatment you need.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Sanders said the uniformity of this message really stuck out to him: “There really is, I think, a deep-seated belief in Canada that health care is a right, and whether you’re rich or whether you’re poor or whether you’re middle class, you are entitled to health care.”
In the United States, though, voters last year elected a Republican president, House and Senate, with many candidates who ran on a promise to roll back government support for health care coverage.
Several recent public opinion surveys show majority support for a government guarantee of health coverage, but support declines substantially when pollsters mention that government coverage would mean higher taxes.
Mr. Sanders said he knows his bill isn’t going to become law anytime soon, but he thinks discussing the idea will help make its underlying values more broadly acceptable.
“When you talk about health care, you’re not just talking about health care,” he said in his Toronto speech. “You’re talking about values, because how a society deals with health care is more than medicine. It’s more than technology. It is about the values that those societies hold dear.”
“BUT THE DETAILS COULD HAVE BIG EFFECTS ON WHAT SORTS OF CARE MIGHT BE DEVELOPED AND MADE AVAILABLE.” THIS IS THE SHKRELI ARGUMENT ON WHY PRICES RISE SO EXORBITANTLY. IT ISN’T JUST THAT CRIMINAL’S PHILOSOPHY, EITHER, BUT THAT OF ALL POLITICALLY AND ECONOMICALLY “CONSERVATIVE” THINKERS IN MODERN TIMES. I WILL AGAIN SAY THAT WHAT IS ON THE FAR RIGHT IS NOT “CONSERVATIVE,” BUT RADICAL. IN THEIR VIEW, ANYTHING, IF IT REDUCES PROFITS, IS EVIL. UNFORTUNATELY, REDUCING THE ABILITY OF THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES TO SURVIVE ECONOMICALLY IS A RESULT THAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CAN EASILY ACCEPT. THE REASONS FOR THAT ARE OBVIOUS. “NOT MY PROBLEM, JACK!”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/upshot/how-the-bernie-sanders-plan-would-both-beef-up-and-slim-down-medicare.html?action=click&contentCollection=The%20Upshot&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article
PUBLIC HEALTH
How the Bernie Sanders Plan Would Both Beef Up and Slim Down Medicare
Margot Sanger-Katz @sangerkatz SEPT. 13, 2017
In his big new single-payer health care bill, Senator Bernie Sanders says he wants to turn the country’s health system into “Medicare for all.” But his bill actually outlines a system very different from the current Medicare program.
The Sanders plan envisions changing Medicare in two important ways. First, it would make it more generous than it has ever been, expanding it to cover new types of benefits and to erase most direct health care costs for consumers. Those changes would tend to make it more expensive.
But it also would put the Medicare program on the sort of diet it has never attempted. Those changes, still in sketch form in the legislation, are in many ways the heart of its long-term overhaul plan. The changes are intended to make the health care system more affordable, but the details could have big effects on what sorts of care might be developed and made available.
Medicare, the 52-year-old health insurance program for older people and the disabled, is enormously popular. Structured as an essentially open-ended entitlement, Medicare establishes a menu of covered medical treatments at certain prices, and then pays doctors and hospitals whenever a beneficiary uses them. The total amount that Medicare spends increases depending on how many people enroll, and how many medical services they use. So far, there is no real cap on how much money Medicare can spend.
Photo -- Bernie Sanders greeting supporters after a rally on behalf of the Affordable Care Act in Convington, Ky., in July. Credit Jay Laprete/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Sanders plan — which has no near-term chance of advancing with Republicans in power — would change that. Most crucially, it would expand the program so that every American would eventually get insurance from Medicare instead of private companies or other public programs. The employer health insurance system, the Affordable Care Act exchanges and most of Medicaid would be eliminated.
Mr. Sanders says that the transition to the Medicare program would achieve several goals: It would ensure universal coverage, it would improve the affordability of health care for many Americans and it would save the country money.
Whether it can achieve that third goal depends a great deal on how the new Medicare-for-all system would be managed, and the Sanders plan leaves a lot of those details unclear for now. Covering everyone would not, by itself, make the health care system in the United States as inexpensive as those of other nations with universal health care systems. That sort of cost control would require its own set of policies and difficult choices.
In his news conference introducing the bill on Wednesday, Mr. Sanders focused his ire on insurance and drug companies, two profitable sectors of the health care system. But insurance and drug company profits don’t make up the bulk of America’s health care spending. Single-payer advocates argue that the simplicity of a single, government payer would reduce paperwork and office staff, and that is almost certainly true. But most spending in the health care system is on medical care from doctors and hospitals — and squeezing savings there may be harder.
To get savings from those areas might require reducing doctors’ pay or hospitals’ numbers of medical professionals. It could require eliminating some medical treatments that are currently offered. Even cutting spending on pharmaceuticals would have ripple effects, potentially limiting access to new or expensive treatments, or reducing investment in new technologies.
GRAPHIC
One-Third of Democratic Senators Support Bernie Sanders’s Single-Payer Plan
The ideological makeup of senators who support the health plan.
The bill specifies that Medicare would be run with an annual budget, leaving government officials to decide how to make the country’s medical spending conform to such totals every year. It also says that the government should evaluate the effectiveness of different medical treatments. Such a system has precedent: Several countries, including Canada and Britain, establish health care budgets that must be met and assess the value of medical services to determine what should be covered.
But such budgets and limits have been politically toxic in the United States, where politicians have been reluctant to say that the government should restrict care. The Affordable Care Act established a theoretical limit on spending per Medicare beneficiary, establishing a board that would reduce costs if a cap were met. But that board, assailed as a “death panel,” has never been called upon to make such choices, for no members have ever been nominated to it.
Mr. Sanders* [sic] sells the bill as a broad expansion of care, by ensuring that all Americans have similar, broad benefits and little financial exposure to medical bills. At Wednesday’s event, he stood flanked by several prominent Democratic co-sponsors and medical providers who offered testimonials about how a Medicare-for-all plan would improve access to needed health care.
The plan increases the generosity of Medicare substantially. It adds coverage for dentistry, optometry and audiology care, not part of the traditional program. It also eliminates premiums, deductibles and most co-payments for medical care, which are significant costs for many people.
The size of the Medicare budget is also unspecified. In part, that’s because the Sanders bill does not establish a funding mechanism for its planned overhauls. In a separate white paper, Mr. Sanders’s office spells out some possible revenue sources, including increases to payroll taxes, and to high-end income taxes and some corporate taxes. But those funding streams, politically risky in their own right, would need to be debated and measured before the realistic scale of the Medicare-for-all budget would be clear.
This different Medicare would face the push and pull of expanded reach and fixed means: one that would tend to increase the cost to the government for care, and one devised to reduce it. Just what sort of Medicare program results would depend on the government that runs it.
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