Arpaio is a Really Bad Hombre

Posted on August 27, 2017 by David Posnett

From Paul Clements (running for Congress in Kalamazoo MI)

Friday, the President announced that he had pardoned notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio on his conviction for contempt of court. When I first heard the news, I called it “a travesty” and “an insult to justice.”  Truth be told, I am still in shock. Just to illustrate why pardoning Joe Arpaio is so wrong, let me list some of the horrific, racist, and egregious action of abuse he has perpetuated:

  1. Officers under Arpaio’s employment once grabbed a pregnant Latina woman, slammed her against a car, stomach-first, three times, and then dragged her into the patrol car and shoved her in the back seat. They left the pregnant woman alone for 30 minutes, without air conditioning, only to issue a citation for “failure to provide an ID.”
  2. In his inhumane jails, for people convicted of no crimes, and more often than not, illegally detained because of their race, Arpaio withheld sanitary pads and napkins from menstruating women for days, forced to wallow in their menstrual blood.
  3. Arpaio once neglected a mentally ill prisoner for weeks, until he had lost 20 pounds from starvation and malnourishment.
  4. Arpaio regularly kept mentally-ill people, under his care, in 85-degree heat until their psychotropic drugs malfunctioned.
  5. He regularly fed inmates rotten food. Some days they only got bread and water, despite being forced to be in 110 degree weather.
  6. Deputies under Arpaio’s supervision once raided a home by launching tear gas canisters into the house. The canisters caused the house to combust. A puppy came running out of the house. But his deputies, they drove the puppy back inside, where it burned to death. The homeowners were forced to watch their pet burn to death, while the officers laughed at them.
  7. Officers in his jail once restrained a veteran in a chair while they tased him multiple times. A few hours later, this veteran died from a cardiac arrest caused by the electric shock.
  8. Officers arrested a wheelchair bound man for possession of marijuana. Because of his disability, he required a catheter to urinate. He pounded on the cell door to ask for the catheter. To “punish” this man, guards placed him in a “restraint chair” despite not being able to use his legs. During this time, the guards broke his neck. This entire episode was caught on tape. The guards were laughing and smiling while the man writhed.
  9. A blind man was found dead in Arpaio’s jails. At first, Arpaio claimed he had died because he had fallen from a bunk bed. But, autopsies showed that officers under his supervision had beaten this blind man. This blind man later died from his injuries.
  10. A 13-year-old came forward that her uncle was raping her. The sheriff told her parents that there was no evidence of rape, but in reality, a state crime lab returned a rape kit that tested positive for semen. Sheriff Arpaio ignored this evidence and withheld it from her parents. The sheriff didn’t arrest her rapist, who raped her continuously for five years until she became pregnant with his child.

Pardoning Sheriff Arpaio says responsibility for conduct like this can go unpunished even when a court has ordered it stopped. Trump is moving America from a constitutional democracy toward a police state.

 — We must unite to preserve our democracy and the rule of law. Please support my campaign here to help me fight Trump and his GOP enabler Fred Upton.  Paul Clements.

Posted in Civil Rights, Courts, Discrimination, GOP, immigration/deportation, Torture, Trump, Uncategorized, Zeldin | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Arpaio is a Really Bad Hombre

The Trouble With Ivanka’s Business Partner

Posted on August 27, 2017 by David Posnett
From Politico

The first daughter’s longtime friend and associate is falling afoul of his creditors—and the courts.

By BEN SCHRECKINGER | August 27, 2017

His vendors call him a “career grifter.” His father’s creditors claim he’s a fraud and a serial extortionist who shakes people down with trumped-up threats of criminal charges. With these and other allegations piling up in court records along with judgments—against him, his wife and his businesses—for millions of dollars, his lawyers are abandoning him, saying he’s a deadbeat. All the while, he’s been living in one of the most luxurious mansions in the Bronx.

For the past decade, Lax, a 43-year-old New York diamond heir and entrepreneur, has been Trump’s partner in Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, the first major venture of her business career.

Trump and her family have continued to associate with Lax even as his legal problems have mounted and Trump has been dragged into Lax’s business disputes. On election night, Lax and his wife stood at the front of the ballroom at the Trump campaign’s victory party in New York, and Lax went on to visit Trump Tower during the transition, while Tiffany Trump attended the launch party for a new Lax venture in February. Ivanka Trump has even continued to rely on Lax’s advice in recent years: In depositions they gave for an unrelated case last summer, both Trump and her brother, Don Jr., cited advice they received from Lax in assessing another business partner.

And according to court records, Trump renewed her licensing agreement with Lax in 2011, allowing him to continue using her name even after his company defaulted on payments and he violated numerous terms of their agreement.

“He cheated not just us, he also cheated Ivanka,” says Mahipal Singhvi of KGK, a company that was recently awarded a multimillion-dollar judgment against Lax, his wife and their businesses after they kept, but did not pay for, a large shipment of KGK diamonds.

Trump’s relationship with Lax and the mountain of legal and financial troubles—reported here for the first time based on dozens of interviews and public records—raise serious questions about the first daughter’s judgment, even as she continues to serve as a powerful White House adviser. In response to detailed questions sent to the White House and the Trump Organization, White House spokesman Josh Raffel requested more information about this article but did not provide comment.

Lax initially agreed to a telephone interview about his relationship with Trump, but then said he might be traveling to Washington imminently and would prefer to meet in person. In response to an email listing detailed questions about the judgments and allegations against him, Lax responded that he was the victim of a blackmail and extortion scheme by one of his creditors.

“I do have all the hard evidence that this is an extortion case for money,” he wrote. “I will pursue criminally.” Lax declined to elaborate, and POLITICO Magazine is withholding the name of the creditor, for lack of any evidence of wrongdoing.

Lax grew up in Brooklyn the son of a diamond magnate with a sideline in real estate. He began his partnership with Trump a decade ago when both were rich kids looking to make their mark in the world of business. In 2007, Lax approached Trump pitching her on a land deal in Fort Myers, Florida.

Trump found herself drawn to Lax, seeing him as a kindred spirit. “Moshe was looking to take his business to a whole new level,” she recounts in “The Trump Card,” a 2010 memoir in which the entire final chapter is devoted to her partnership with Lax. “In that way, I suppose, we were a lot alike, trying to make our own way along a path set out for us by our fathers and trying to extend that path in exciting new directions, which I guess explains why we hit it off.”

Lax was not the only person Trump would hit it off with through the proposed deal. Soon after meeting Trump, he called a meeting of real estate heirs to discuss business opportunities at Prime Grill, a steakhouse across the street from Trump Tower, according to an April profile of Lax in Mishpacha, a magazine serving the Orthodox Jewish diaspora. At Lax’s networking lunch, Trump met her future husband Kushner for the first time (in the profile, Lax joked that it was a “state secret” whether he received a match-making fee and said he had gained an appreciation for President Trump’s “decency” and “sense of humor” by working with him up close).

The real estate deal went nowhere, but Trump and Lax soon embarked on a more promising venture together. At the time, Lax had a steady supply of diamonds from his family’s business, but was having trouble differentiating his product. Trump had a famous name with which to brand jewelry and ideas about how to create a shopping experience geared toward working women buying for themselves – a break from other diamond retailers that catered to husbands and boyfriends.

The pair decided to embark on a joint business venture, Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, converting Lax’s retail space on Madison Avenue into their flagship boutique.

According to Trump’s memoir, the partnership was a homerun. “As of now, in this tough economy, we’re doing very well,” she wrote in 2010. “Actually we’re doing better than ‘very well’ … We’ve succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.”

But beneath the rosy picture Trump painted in public, there were a number of problems. In June 2011, Trump and Lax entered into a new licensing agreement. This agreement, which has since surfaced in litigation, states that Lax’s company defaulted on licensing payments to Trump and that Lax or his company committed numerous violations of the original deal, including entering into unauthorized sublicensing agreements and failing to keep accurate records. The agreement charges Lax’s company $300,000 per year and 36 percent of net proceeds for the right to use Trump’s name.

Despite those problems, Trump remained in business with Lax as troubles kept piling up.

In 2012, Lax’s company, Madison Avenue Diamonds, found itself in court after it accepted delivery of millions of dollars in diamonds but refused to pay for them, claiming that the vendor, KGK, had breached their agreement by delivering some computer files related to the diamonds late. Lax was represented by David Scharf of Morrison Cohen, who in the past had done extensive legal work for the Trump Organization (the firm later went to court with the Trump Organization over half a million dollars in disputed legal fees).

 

The diamond dispute entangled Trump in a web of litigation against her will. At one point, Judge Charles Ramos became agitated with Trump’s attempts to avoid testifying about her relationship with Lax.

Ramos expressed special annoyance at the fact that Trump submitted an affidavit from her lawyer in an attempt to quash a subpoena, rather than submitting one herself. “You know something, if she does not want to testify she can tell me she doesn’t want to testify,” Ramos said at a hearing on the matter. “She has not done that. She does it through counsel? Thanks a lot. The deposition will go forward.” Trump also made the unusual request that the deposition take place at her office in Trump Tower, which the judge denied.

At her deposition, Trump’s lawyer revealed that in addition to her licensing agreement with Lax, Trump had an ownership stake in Madison Avenue Diamonds through an entity called IHoldings Madison LLC.  It’s not clear how large a share of the company Trump held, or for how long.  In the personal financial disclosure she made this year upon entering the White House, Trump says she served as president of IHoldings Madison until this May.

In 2015, the court ordered Lax’s company and his wife, Shaindy—who had personally guaranteed payment of the diamonds and in whose name Lax conducts many of his financial dealings—to pay the stiffed vendor $2.4 million plus interest. Singvhi of KGK says that the company has still not received the payments due, which at this point amount to $3.5 million.

In the meantime, Lax has had other problems. ***

In 2008, Lax’s father died, leaving him as co-executor of a vast estate. But his father also left vast debts, including $27 million owed to the IRS and a multimillion-dollar loan guaranteed by the Brooklyn real estate developers Joseph Brunner and Abe Mandel.

The fallout from that loan has led to some of the most disturbing charges against Lax: that he has been extorting members of his tight-knit religious community, threatening to bring criminal charges against them if they do not pay him—and that he engaged in a massive financial fraud to hide tens of millions of dollars left by his father from the government and creditors.

In 2014, Brunner and Mandel sued Lax, his wife, his brother-in-law Martin Ehrenfeld, his father’s estate, his father’s family trust and various corporate entities, claiming the defendants had used a series of shell corporations to hide Lax’s father’s money and avoid paying his father’s debts. The developers say that before his death, Lax’s father showed them documentation that his net worth was $174 million. According to their complaint, Lax and his co-defendants managed to make the fortune disappear—so that when creditors came calling, the estate had no assets to repossess.

The developers also claimed that Lax attempted to extort them in a scheme to avoid paying on the debts. In a sworn affidavit, Mandel said he received a call from Scharf in March 2014 informing him that a legal complaint was being prepared that would “destroy” him and Brunner and inviting him to a follow-up meeting to discuss the issue at Scharf’s office.

At the meeting, Scharf allegedly told the developers that his client was working with a former prosecutor, was prepared to accuse them of racketeering and would demand $20 million in damages—that is, unless they negotiated with Lax and his brother-in-law “to make this go away.”

In the affidavit, Mandel also said that a private intelligence firm had been approaching his business and personal contacts, telling them Mandel and his partner were under investigation and telling a charity he had given to that his gift was made with “stolen funds.” The developers submitted business card from the firm Sage Intelligence bearing the name Herman Weisberg, a former NYPD detective, that had been left with one of their acquaintances. Weisberg declined to comment for this story.

The developers said they were not the only victims, and that the defendants had been engaging in a “pattern and practice” of extorting and trying to extort other members of the Orthodox Jewish community, to which all involved belong, through “sham” entities called Diligence I LLC and Prudence LLC.

“Brunner and I inquired in our community about Scharf, Lax and Ehrenfeld,” states Mandel in a sworn affidavit. “We learned that they have been shaking down other people in our community for large settlement payments by threatening criminal actions.”

The Laxes and Ehrenfeld have denied wrongdoing. Scharf and his firm, who were never named as defendants, also deny any wrongdoing. Morrison Cohen has since withdrawn as counsel for Lax’s father’s estate, citing a conflict of interest (in June, the firm also withdrew from the KGK case, saying Lax and Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry had failed pay them).

Morrison Cohen’s withdrawal was just one of many bizarre turns the Brunner and Mandel case has taken. At one point, an attorney for Diligence claimed not to know who actually controlled the shell corporation he was representing. At another point. Lax claimed not to know the original identities of the lenders for the loan under dispute.

Judge Shirley Kornriech later concluded that Lax was lying, and over the course of the case she grew increasingly frustrated with such shenanigans. “A theme in this case is the pleading of ignorance by defendants and their counsel,” she wrote in one court order, listing off assertions that she did not find credible.

In June 2015, the lawyer for Diligence, Steven Schlesinger, withdrew from the case, saying his client had failed to communicate with him and had stiffed him on $85,000 worth of legal fees. Diligence then got a replacement lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, but he also withdrew from the case this January.

In his request to abandon the case, Jaroslawicz said he had been retained by someone named Eldridge Glasford running a corporate services firm on the Caribbean island of Nevis— population 11,000—that he was “not computer literate” because of a disability, and that he was never paid for his work. In November, a lawyer representing Lax’s sister, Zlaty Schwartz, and his father’s estate, withdrew from the case, citing “irreconcilable differences” with the estate.

Since then, the case has settled, according to the developers’ lawyer, William Fried, who declined to comment, citing a confidentiality agreement.

Those cases represent only a small sample of the suits filed against Lax in recent years. In September 2013, the law firm Cohen & Perfetto sued Lax, claiming he stiffed them for $48,000 in legal fees. The case settled, with Scharf representing Lax.

Last January, Lax’s cousin, Aron, sued Lax and his sister for allegedly pursuing “unjust enrichment” by trying to evict Aron and his wife from a Brooklyn condo that they have resided in since 2006 but whose mortgage is in the name of Lax’s late father. Last October, the firm Porzio, Bromberg & Newman sued Lax for $100,000 in unpaid legal fees. And in June, the law firm Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone sued Lax for $20,000 in unpaid legal fees. The cases remain ongoing. Lax has also been named as a defendant in a number of cases claiming failures to make mortgage payments.

Lax’s problems have continued to entangle Ivanka Trump. In recent years, the state of New York has issued at least three warrants for unpaid taxes against Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, totaling over $300,000. The outstanding taxes were eventually paid.

The financial travails of Lax and his wife have also put Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry in danger of at least partly falling into the hands of the highest bidder at a public auction in order to satisfy their unpaid debts. In January, a New York couple, Michael and Rachel Goldenberg, sued Lax and his wife for stiffing them on a six-figure loan. Lax’s wife owned at least part of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, and in April, a New York court ordered her to turn over her stake in the company to the city so that it could be auctioned off to settle the debt. She apparently failed to do so, leading the Goldenbergs to request in May that she be held in contempt of court. In July, the court ordered the Laxs to pay the Goldenbergs $675,000, and the motion for contempt has been put on hold until September 19, the deadline for paying the debt.

The Laxes’ finances are further obscured by the fact that they are sometimes conducted under the name Chana Weisz, an alias used by his wife, Shaindy. Lax will sometimes write checks from a checkbook made in the name of Chana Weisz, according to a person who has seen him do this. Theperson recently received a five-figure check from Lax out of that checkbook but said they were unable to cash it because, as an alarmed bank teller pointed out, Lax’s signature did match the name on the check.

Amid so many setbacks, Lax did score at least one massive, if temporary, reprieve thanks to some highly irregular tax relief. In October 2015, the IRS released a $27 million tax lien against his father’s estate, saying the obligation had been satisfied. But last May, the IRS reinstated the lien, saying it had been released by mistake and that the $27 million in back taxes had never actually been paid.

Michael Macgillivray, a prominent Chicago attorney specializing in tax collections and a veteran of the IRS collections department, was gob-smacked by the botched lien release. “That is extremely extraordinary,” he said. “Of the things I’ve seen in my practice, nothing has even remotely approached a million dollars when there was an erroneously released lien.”

MacGillivray added that he had difficulty fathoming the explanation the IRS offered on the form reinstating the lien—that the lien had been released “mistakenly.” A spokesman for the IRS said the agency does not comment on individual cases.

“I could not believe that on a $27 million issue somebody would just make a mistake like that. You’d think there’d be a lot of due diligence,” MacGillivray said. “I can’t say its corruption because the IRS has 80,000 employees and there are incompetents.”

As Lax’s problems mounted, Trump did not sever ties or disavow him. The continued relationship briefly came up last summer, when she gave a deposition in a dispute between the Trump Organization and restaurateur Geoffrey Zakarian, who years before had ended a partnership with Lax amid acrimony and litigation.

In her testimony, Trump recalls receiving advice about Zakarian’s character from Lax, which she passed along to her older brother, Don Jr. “I recall telling my brother to make sure that he got a good guarantee, because I had heard from a partner of mine that Zakarian had treated him very badly in a deal,” Trump said. “Moshe certainly feels that Geoffrey is not a very good human being.” Don Jr. also cites Lax’s advice in his deposition for the suit.

In November, Lax and his wife attended the Trump campaign’s official election night party at the Midtown Hilton. A few days later, with the new president-elect and his team holed up at Trump Tower to chart the course of his administration, Lax was spotted in the lobby, taking an elevator upstairs.

In March, Trump’s company announced it was discontinuing the Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry line to focus on a mass-market collection, leaving the current status of her business relationship with Lax unclear. Until his LinkedIn profile was taken down this week, it listed him as the current chairman of Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry. Pieces from the line remain available for sale alongside glamorous black-and-white photos of Trump at IvankaTrumpFineJewelry.com, a website registered to the Trump Organization.

Despite all his problems, Lax has been residing of late in a luxurious mansion in Riverdale, an exclusive section of the Bronx, according to a subpoena response submitted by his wife earlier this year. The house is named “Ochre Point” after a Gilded Age mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and at one point last year, it was the second-most expensive residence on the market in the entire borough, featuring “eight bedrooms, an elevator, a motor court, a three-car garage, and an outdoor pool,” with a $7.75 million asking price, according to the real estate publication Curbed. The house is part of the Villanova Heights development, where houses rent for between $17,500 and $25,000 per month, according to the New York Post.

Meanwhile, Lax has continued to pursue new ventures and keep his name in the news. Earlier this year, he launched Code, a 10,000-square-foot “conceptual fashion retail gallery harboring a Community of Designers” at 800 Fifth Avenue. Trump’s younger sister Tiffany attended the launch party, along with Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who happens to be the landlord.

In July, Lax announced a new diamond gallery, Facet of Love, slated to open on August 15, also at 800 Fifth Ave. But Lax has fallen afoul of Spitzer, according to a person close to the building, who said Lax is now being booted from it “as a consequence of his failure to pay rent.”

Facet of Love has not yet opened, and is not clear when it will, if ever. “I really can’t give a date,” said Lax’s publicist Ronni Kairney, whose website lists Trump as a former client and who also said she did not know when Lax might be available for an interview. “He’s just very busy.”

Indeed, despite it all, Lax continues to exhibit the same hustle that first drew Trump to him all those years ago. “My new associate was an entrepreneur through and through,” the future first daughter recalled in her memoir. “I admired that about him.”

Posted in Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Trump | Tagged | Comments Off on The Trouble With Ivanka’s Business Partner

A Catholic Nun Schooled Paul Ryan in Humility Last Night

Posted on August 23, 2017 by David Posnett

From Esquire.com

It was a Biblical beatdown.

Getty

While the president* was fastening on his Serious World Leader face Monday night, Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, was facing a carefully tailored audience at a CNN “town hall” in Racine. Because Ryan is the biggest fake to hit Congress since the King of the Cranks, Ignatius Donnelly, there was the usual nonsense and prevarication. (Chait puts paid here to Ryan’s outright mendacity concerning healthcare. Alas, Jake Tapper, who otherwise did a good job, whiffed on this one.) But my favorite moment came when Ryan was confronted by a Dominican nun who challenged him to square his zombie-eyed granny-starving with his Catholicism. What followed was pure Ryan, which is to say dishonest, cowardly, patronizing, and totally unmoored from either self-awareness or actual reality. Gaze in awe.

(This, by the way, is the second time this year that CNN has handed Ryan this kind of platform. I do not know why that is.)

QUESTION: Good evening, Mr. Speaker. I know that you’re Catholic, as am I, and it seems to me that most of the Republicans in the Congress are not willing to stand with the poor and working class as evidenced in the recent debates about health care and the anticipated tax reform. So I’d like to ask you how you see yourself upholding the church’s social teaching that has the idea that God is always on the side of the poor and dispossessed, as should we be.

RYAN: Spoken like a great Dominican nun. Look…

Patronizing? Check.

Sister, you may — this may come as a surprise to you, but I completely agree with you. Where we may disagree is on how to achieve that goal. As you know, we all exercise prudential judgment in practicing our faith. And for me, the preferential option for the poor, which is something that’s a key tenet of Catholic faith, that means upward mobility, that means economic growth, that means equality of opportunity. That to me means working with this guy over here at Gateway Tech to make sure that we can close the skills gap, to make sure that every person who wants a career and job can get the benefits.

The budget produced by the House Of Representatives—Paul Ryan, Speaker—would cut education and job training programs by 25 percent.

We actually just passed this bill in July. Before that, we passed another skills bill. That means to me taking this 20th century poverty program that we have, which is — we’re in the 32nd year of the war on poverty. Trillions spent, and guess what? Our poverty rates are about the same as they were when we started this war on poverty 32 years ago.

No outside events have occurred since 1985 that might account for this. Also, Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty in his State of the Union address in 1964, which is 53 years ago. Again, nothing has happened in the intervening years that might account for the difficulty in waging this war.

So the status quo isn’t working, Sister. And what I think we need to do is change our approach on fighting poverty instead of measuring success based on how much money we spend or how many programs we create or how many people are on those programs, you know, measuring on inputs. Let’s measure success in poverty on outcomes. Is it working? Are people getting out of poverty?

CNN

Well, since, for example, the House budget cuts food stamps by almost $200 million from the food stamp program, one way people might get out of poverty is by starving to death. You will note, by the way, that we are now a loooooonnnng way from the 25th chapter of Matthew.

And what I believe, when you look at it that way — actually, I have a commission that Patty Murray and I set up that’s underway right now to focus on these measurements. We need to make sure that we bring people into the workforce. The poverty — the poor are being marginalized and misaligned in many ways because a lot of the programs that we have, well intended as they may be, are discouraging and dis-incentivizing work.

OK, so here is what I don’t get. First of all, a great many poor people work their asses off, and in the private sector, too, and they’re being patronized by a guy who hasn’t spent 15 seconds in the private sector since he went away to college. His family got rich building roads on government contracts. His father died, and he went through high school on Social Security’s survivor benefits, a program that the budget proposed by the president* would eviscerate. Since then, he’s been a congressional aide and a congressman. My question is that, when he was going through high school on my nickel, and the nickels of millions of other Americans, including the poorer ones, why wasn’t he “disincentivized”? How did he avoid the terrible trap of the government “hammock”?

We were just — no, it’s true. We were just talking about it. We were just talking about tax reform. And I was telling you about these successful small businesses in Wisconsin, they got a 44.6 percent tax rate. That’s not the highest tax rate payer. I mean, Aaron Rodgers, who deserves every salary, is not the highest tax rate payer in this state. You know who it is? It’s a single mom getting $24,000 grand in benefits with two kids who will lose 80 cents on the dollar if she goes and takes a job.

Surely you recall that passage from the gospels where Jesus talks about lowering the top rate and doing away with estate taxes. (It was in the small print, and in Aramaic, at the bottom of the scroll.) And, anyway, the budget proposed by the House of Representatives—Paul Ryan, Speaker—would cut programs that would benefit that “single mom” by over $3 trillion.

We have to fix that. And that is why we have to fix it not by just kicking people off callously…

I’m sorry, but I have to stop here. This guy is still fighting for a policy that the Congressional Budget Office says would kick 30 million Americans off their health insurance. Maybe Ryan plans not to do this “callously.” Maybe he’s going to hand out balloons and lollipops. And, anyway, wasn’t this supposed to be about the gap between his policies and the teachings of his faith? I wish that nun had a ruler.

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Resignation From President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities

Posted on August 21, 2017 by David Posnett

 

Note: The first letters of each paragraph spell “RESIST”

 

Melania Trump

Honorary Chairman

John Abodeely

Acting Executive Director

 

Ex Officio:
Carla Hayden, Librarian Library of Congress
John Parrish Peede,
Acting Chairman
National Endowment for the Humanities
Jane Chu, Chairman National Endowment for the Arts
David M. Rubenstein, Chairman
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Kathryn Matthew, Director Institute of Museum and Library Services
Ryan Zinke, Secretary U.S. Department of the Interior
Betsy DeVos, Secretary U.S. Department of Education
Tim Horne, Administrator U.S. General Services Administration
Rex Tillerson, Secretary U.S. Department of State Earl A. Powell, III, Director
National Gallery of Art David Skorton, Secretary Smithsonian Institution Steven Mnuchin, Secretary U.S. Department of the Treasury

The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities

August 18, 2017

Dear Mr. President:

Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville. The false equivalencies you push cannot stand. The Administration’s refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further emboldens those who wish America ill. We cannot sit idly by, the way that your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions. We are members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH). The Committee was created in 1982 under President Reagan to advise the White House on cultural issues. We were hopeful that continuing to serve in the PCAH would allow us to focus on the important work the committee does with your federal partners and the private sector to address, initiate, and support key policies and programs in the arts and humanities for all Americans. Effective immediately, please accept our resignation from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American. We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment. We must learn from our rich and often painful history. The unified fabric of America is made by patriotic individuals from backgrounds as vast as the nation is strong. In our service to the American people, we have experienced this first-hand as we traveled and built the Turnaround Arts education program, now in many urban and rural schools across the country from Florida to Wisconsin.

Speaking truth to power is never easy, Mr. President. But it is our role as commissioners on the PCAH to do so. Art is about inclusion. The Humanities include a vibrant free press. You have attacked both. You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding. The Administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Act, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country. This does not unify the nation we all love. We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and culture delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here. Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.

Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.

 

Thank you,
Paula Boggs
Vicki Kennedy/Eric Ortner/Andrew Weinstein

Chuck Close/Jhumpa Lahiri/Ken Solomon

Richard Cohen/Anne Luzzatto/Caroline Taylor

Fred Goldring/Thom Mayne
Jill Cooper Udall

Howard L. Gottlieb/Kalpen Modi (Kal Penn)

John Lloyd Young

 

400 7th St. SW, Washington, D.C. 20506 | (202) 682-5409

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The Open Internet Rule expands online streaming video options

Posted on August 21, 2017 by David Posnett
From  BROOKINGS.EDU/TECHTANK

Tom Wheeler  Tuesday, August 15, 2017

The front-page story in The Wall Street Journal announced, “Walt Disney Co. just became the biggest cord-cutter Hollywood has ever seen.” The iconic company announced it was starting two online streaming services that will bypass its traditional cable television distribution.

Thank you, Open Internet Rule!

The move to offer ESPN and Disney content direct to consumers, “rather than through [cable] services that…serve as gatekeepers to audiences” follows on the success of other direct-to-consumer broadband services such as CBS All-Access.

The sine qua non that made it all possible was the FCC Open Internet Rule that the cable operators cannot deny, degrade or deprioritize Disney access to their broadband service, even when it is competitive to their cable service. This is the very same rule that the Trump FCC, at the request of the lobbyists for the big broadband companies, has announced an intention to eliminate. And the very same rule that Republican legislators are pushing content providers to help them scuttle.

Fascinatingly, one of the Open Internet’s biggest opponents, AT&T, also benefits from the Open Internet rule preventing AT&T’s DirecTV service – a direct competitor to cable – from being discriminated against on a cable system’s broadband capacity.

Yet, the Republicans in Congress and the Trump FCC continue to push to eviscerate the rule that is the law of the land and working quite well.

“Republican House leadership told Facebook, Google and Amazon that overly aggressive net neutrality activism [i.e., opposition to the Republican gutting effort] could make it harder to work together on other policy issues the firms care about,” Axios reported. If this were The Godfather instead of Washington, such a threat would be called extortion.

And speaking of The Godfather, the genius behind it, Francis Ford Coppola, wrote the Trump FCC in opposition to their effort to gut the existing rules. “The Internet was conceived and designed to be a free medium, with network neutrality assured and the resurgent power of big business held in check on behalf of the public’s greater interests.  Coppola wrote, “I assure you that none of the films I or my contemporaries are known and celebrated for could exist today in such a climate.”

Despite the Republicans’ holy war in behalf of the half a dozen broadband Internet Service Providers (ISP) who dominate the market, the benefits from the Open Internet Rule accrue to everyone.

Consumers – who seldom have a choice between competing ISPs – benefit because the broadband providers are prohibited from acting as gatekeepers, determining what consumers see and assessing extra charges for certain services (like they do when operating as cable companies).

Innovators and the growth economy that produces half of all new American jobs benefit because they have open access to the entire online marketplace without having to worry that the broadband company would charge them extra or favor a deep-pocketed incumbent who could pay a special fee – or even, as increasingly the case, favor the ISP’s own video content.

Americans’ choice of video programming has exploded thanks to open access to online households. The critics talk of a golden age of scripted drama. It is happening because producers like Netflix and Amazon Prime – and now Disney – can reach consumers directly through an open Internet.

Even the handful of broadband companies that control most Americans’ access to the Internet, yet oppose meaningful Open Internet rules, have seen their revenues, profits, and stock prices rise since the rule was adopted.

Now venerable Walt Disney, home of everything from ESPN to Star Wars, is set to benefit from unfettered broadband access to American consumers that is enabled by the Open Internet Rule. Not only will the ISPs not be able to block, throttle or deprioritize Disney’s traffic, but also the so-called General Conduct part of the Rule prevents clever lawyers from inventing loopholes from the continuing obligation to provide open access.

The Open Internet Rule – especially the General Conduct Rule portion – is like Disney’s famous character Jiminy Cricket, who acted as Pinocchio’s conscience. As the Jiminy Cricket of the Internet Age, the Open Internet Rule sits on the shoulder of broadband providers to make sure they do the right thing.

Editor’s Note:

Tom Wheeler served as the 31st Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013-2017, during which time the FCC passed the Open Internet Rule.

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Mr. Zeldin Learns the Trump “Two-Step”

Posted on August 19, 2017 by David Posnett
How many times is Congressman Zeldin going to try to disavow his embrace of Trump’s pro-white supremacy, without really doing so

By Sally Persons – The Washington Times – Friday, August 18, 2017

Rep. Lee Zeldin said Friday that there were parts of President Trump’s statement on white supremacists that were “factually inaccurate.”

“There should not be anyone, who is a good person, who is participating in any type of an effort that in any way, shape, or form is associated with the KKK and Nazism and all of the evil they represent. There are parts of what the president said that you can say are factually inaccurate. There are other parts that are hard truths. But as far as the factually inaccurate piece, I don’t know of anyone who would be there, who would associate themselves with that particular protest, who are good people,” Mr. Zeldin, New York Republican, said on CNN.

But Mr. Zeldin said criticism of the president, like that from Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, was “a little broader” than he would agree with. Mr. Corker said Thursday at a media availability that Mr. Trump had not shown the “competence” or “stability” of a successful leader.

“Sen. Corker is making a statement that could be interpreted a little broader than I would necessarily agree with. Sen. Corker might have a disagreement on, for example what we just had happen in Charlottesville. Speaking for myself for sure — I’m Jewish — I have zero tolerance whatsoever for any individual that associates themselves with KKK and Nazism and the hatred and bigotry and intolerance evil that is filled within their ranks,” Mr. Zeldin said.

The New York Republican came under fire after posting his support for Mr. Trump on Facebook in the wake of white supremacists protesting in Charlottesville, Virginia, last week. Mr. Zeldin said the president was right for blaming the violence on “both sides.”

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The G.O.P. Kool-Aid

Posted on August 19, 2017 by David Posnett

From The East Hampton Star – letters to the editor

East Hampton, August 13, 2017

Dear David:

Republicans owe America an apology.

Sadly, we have arrived at a point at which the White House, the political crown jewel that the G.O.P. so ardently sought, is in disarray, which has taken down the G.O.P.-led Congress as well.

After making President Obama’s failure its number-one priority (so much so that it became an obsession), the G.O.P. worked hard to get a rich white guy — any rich white guy — to take the mantle of leadership after Mr. Obama. In pursuing its obsession, it abandoned its stated principles and abandoned those it promises to serve.

Republicans refused to negotiate honestly when Democrats spent months seeking Republican support for the Affordable Care Act. Then they tried repeatedly over seven-plus years to take away that health care — not, as it turns out because they had a better idea, but because it was Mr. Obama’s idea. Even worse, for 70-plus years Congress has worked to create, and then perfect (or try to) a safety net that would protect working-class America and the disadvantaged among us from financial and social ruin. The current Republican credo, adhered to from the top of the ticket to its most local echelons, holds dear the destruction of those protections.

Yet, in the last election cycle, all one heard from G.O.P. candidates was the mantra that working-class America had been “forgotten” and only they were the ones capable of repairing this so-called injustice. Decrying the political opposition by fomenting race-based paranoia allowed these candidates to camouflage their real agenda. It is not the furtherance of the “forgotten,” it is the furtherance of unscrupulous greed.

Help the forgotten? Not President Trump. The policies that have actually been implemented by the Trump administration, with the help of a Republican Congress, reflect a disdain for ordinary working-class Americans. Shortly after Mr. Trump took office, he and the G.O.P.-led Congress rejected numerous Obama-era regulations that were actually designed to support workers, including rules barring worker discrimination, rules designed to enhance workers’ wages, and rules enhancing workplace protection, such as barring companies with a history of wage, labor, or workplace safety violations laws from receiving federal contracts. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So, the G.O.P. agenda has no intention of protecting the forgotten. Its true colors are shown in its efforts to rip away health care, savage the social safety net, and, in so doing, leaving the forgotten to fend for themselves. Under the G.O.P. agenda, the forgotten will soon be the trampled.

The sad truth behind the G.O.P. camouflage is that millions of hard-working Americans drank the G.O.P. Kool-Aid, believing that the party truly cared for them and would make good on promises to deliver wealth, improve health care, and preserve the all-important safety net protecting these folks. For some, it was hard not to be seduced by Mr. Trump and his G.O.P. cohorts.

However, like everyone else who has succumbed to Mr. Trump’s wiles, these voters too have been had.

And for this, the G.O.P. owes America an apology. And the lesson for voters from all this is that old adage: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Let’s not be fooled again, either in our local elections this year, or next year, when the G.O.P. Congress has to face the music. Trust not the G.O.P. Kool-Aid another time.

Sincerely,   BRUCE COLBATH

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Devoid of Emotion & Supported by Zeldin

Posted on August 19, 2017 by David Posnett

From the East Hampton Star (letter to the editor)

Devoid of Emotion

Springs, August 14, 2017

To the Editor:

Impeach him.

Trump was oddly devoid of emotion as he read his statement after Charlottesville. Where was his outrage? He lashes out with barely-suppressed venom and fury over perceived slights, but violence meted out by neo-Nazis and white supremacists doesn’t merit condemnation.

Having others in the White House clarify “what he really meant” days later doesn’t cut it. We’ve seen into his heart — it’s a hollowed-out space, corroded by his ceaseless quest for personal glory.

CAROL DEISTLER

Posted in Religion & tolerance, Trump, Uncategorized, Zeldin | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Remove Lee Zeldin from the US Holocaust Memorial Council

Posted on August 19, 2017 by David Posnett
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Charlottesville protests

August 17, 2017

We are writing to publicly demand the removal of Congressman Lee Zeldin from the US Holocaust Memorial Council (USHMC) in Washington, D.C..  As a member of the USHMC, as a steward of our collective memory of atrocity, Lee Zeldin has a responsibility to work towards ensuring that identity-based hatred has no place in our society.

Lee Zeldin is failing in this primary responsibility. His official, tepid statement1 about the hate rally this weekend in Charlottesville is unacceptable in its failure to call out Nazi and white nationalist movements as the cause of the violence. Instead, he effectively put Nazis and those opposing Nazis on equal footing, calling them both “ extremes that try to tear us all apart.” Most recently, Rep Zeldin has come out to support Trump’s defense of the white supremacist mob2. While elected officials from both parties reacted immediately to condemn the president’s false equivalency as logically and morally reprehensible, as dangerous for our country, and a threat to democracy, Rep Zeldin placed himself on the wrong side of history. In Zeldin’s willingness to spread blame across white supremacist groups and those who oppose them, he gives outright license to the white supremacist cause and actions.

The Nazis are hearing these messages loud and clear. David Duke praised the president’s reaction. Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer said: “Trump comments were good… He said he loves us all. Also refused to answer a question about white nationalists supporting him. No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”

Americans all over the country are relying on our leaders to name and condemn identity-based hate immediately and in no uncertain terms. We are relying as well on institutions like the US Holocaust Memorial to uphold its mission to remind us of what happens to a democratic country when hate is used as the fastest route to power. It is unacceptable to condone—implicitly, through silence, omission, inaction, delayed action, or false equivalencies—acts of hate, while sitting on a board committed to protecting against them. Representative Zeldin should be removed from the US Holocaust Memorial Council until he acts with the integrity that the office demands by

1) demanding that Trump disavow Neo-Nazis, skinheads, the KKK, white nationalism, and fire White House staff who are allies to the alt-right,

2) demanding funding to fight white nationalism,

3) defunding Trump’s anti-immigrant budget proposals, and

4) protecting our immigrant friends and neighbors from deportation.

 

¹ https://zeldin.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-zeldin-statement-condemning-violence-charlottesville-va

² https://www.facebook.com/RepLeeZeldin/posts/816798751822244

 

Please sign the following petition: https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/remove-congressman-lee?source=c.em&r_by=18002441

 

Mara Gerstein, Show Up Long Island

Amy Turner, Zeldin Watch (PEER NYPAN)

Eileen M. Duffy, Let’s Visit Lee Zeldin

David Posnett MD, Resist and Replace

Chris Cangeleri, Organize, Plan, Act

Shoshana Hershkowitz, Suffolk Progressives

Julia Z. Fenster, ATLI, Action Together Long Island

Vincent Geary, Indivisible Patriots of Long Island

Susan Perretti, NCPG, North Country Peace Group

Rebecca Dolber, EEAN, East End Action Network

 

 

Posted in Civil Rights, first amendment, Guns, immigration/deportation, National Parks & Monuments, Religion & tolerance, Trump, Uncategorized, Zeldin | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Remove Lee Zeldin from the US Holocaust Memorial Council

Yes, What About the “Alt-Left”?

Posted on August 18, 2017 by David Posnett

From Slate

What the counter-protesters Trump despises were actually doing in Charlottesville last weekend.

97024013
White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” clash with counter-protesters as they enter Emancipation Park on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Dahlia LithwickDAHLIA LITHWICK

Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate, and hosts the podcast Amicus.

 

On Tuesday, after a weekend that included a white supremacist mowing down and killing a peaceful counter-protester in Charlottesville and Nazis marching on the University of Virginia with torches, the president of the United States stood in front of the American people and said, “What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging at, as you say, the ‘alt-right’? Let me ask you this: What about the fact they came charging—that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.”

There were, as it turns out, a great number of Charlottesville locals present to witness the violence and lawlessness on display in this town—my town—last weekend. I asked local witnesses, many in the faith community, every one of whom was on the streets of Charlottesville on Saturday, whether there was a violent, club-wielding mob threatening the good people on team Nazi. Here’s what I heard back:

 

Brandy Daniels
Postdoctoral fellow at the Luce Project on Religion and Its Publics at UVA

It was basically impossible to miss the antifa for the group of us who were on the steps of Emancipation Park in an effort to block the Nazis and alt-righters from entering. Soon after we got to the steps and linked arms, a group of white supremacists—I’m guessing somewhere between 20-45 of them—came up with their shields and batons and bats and shoved through us. We tried not to break the line, but they got through some of us—it was terrifying, to say the least—shoving forcefully with their shields and knocking a few folks over. We strengthened our resolve and committed to not break the line again. Some of the anarchists and anti-fascist folks came up to us and asked why we let them through and asked what they could do to help. Rev. Osagyefo Sekou talked with them for a bit, explaining what we were doing and our stance and asking them to not provoke the Nazis. They agreed quickly and stood right in front of us, offering their help and protection.

Less than 10 minutes later, a much larger group of the Nazi alt-righters come barreling up. My memory is again murky on the details. (I was frankly focused on not bolting from the scene and/or not soiling myself—I know hyperbole is common in recounting stories like these, but I was legitimately very worried for my well-being and safety, so I was trying to remember the training I had acquired as well as, for resolve, to remember why I was standing there.) But it had to have been at least 100 of them this go around. I recall feeling like I was going to pass out and was thankful that I was locked arms with folks so that I wouldn’t fall to the ground before getting beaten. I knew that the five anarchists and antifa in front of us and the 20 or so of us were no match for the 100-plus of them, but at this point I wasn’t letting go.

“Cornel West said that he felt that the antifa saved his life. I didn’t roll my eyes at that statement or see it as an exaggeration.”

At that point, more of the anarchists and antifa milling nearby saw the huge mob of the Nazis approach and stepped in. They were about 200-300 feet away from us and stepped between us (the clergy and faith leaders) and the Nazis. This enraged the Nazis, who indeed quickly responded violently. At this point, Sekou made a call that it was unsafe—it had gotten very violent very fast—and told us to disperse quickly.

While one obviously can’t objectively say what a kind of alternate reality or “sliding doors”–type situation would have been, one can hypothesize or theorize. Based on what was happening all around, the looks on their faces, the sheer number of them, and the weapons they were wielding, my hypothesis or theory is that had the antifa not stepped in, those of us standing on the steps would definitely have been injured, very likely gravely so. On Democracy Now, Cornel West, who was also in the line with us, said that he felt that the antifa saved his life. I didn’t roll my eyes at that statement or see it as an exaggeration—I saw it as a very reasonable hypothesis based on the facts we had.

 

Rabbi Rachel Schmelkin
Congregation Beth Israel

There was a group of antifa defending First United Methodist Church right outside in their parking lot, and at one point the white supremacists came by and antifa chased them off with sticks.

Rebekah Menning

Charlottesville resident

I stood with a group of interfaith clergy and other people of faith in a nonviolent direct action meant to keep the white nationalists from entering the park to their hate rally. We had far fewer people holding the line than we had hoped for, and frankly, it wasn’t enough. No police officers in sight (that I could see from where I stood), and we were prepared to be beaten to a bloody pulp to show that while the state permitted white nationalists to rally in hate, in the many names of God, we did not. But we didn’t have to because the anarchists and anti-fascists got to them before they could get to us. I’ve never felt more grateful and more ashamed at the same time. The antifa were like angels to me in that moment.

Mary Esselman

Writer

My 13-year-old son and I stood by ourselves on the corner down the street from the synagogue, in front of the Catholic Church, trying to walk back home but interrupted by a stream of white extremist marchers, with their signs and firearms and crazy regalia. I felt like an idiot but tried to look each in the eye and said, “Peace,” and “Peace be with you,” with as much sincerity as I had in me, trying to reach some humanity in them, and they jeered and mocked me, called me what you might imagine, told my son, Luke, that his mom was a this and a that. And now I learn that my son and labradoodle and I, and our little “peace be with you”s are apparently “alt-left.”

Our path home was blocked by them, and we had no choice but to face them. Just us alone on that street corner, and all of them menacing, streaming past us on their way to the rally. Later, when we were a block away from where everyone was clashing and considering going to the front steps of the public library, there was a big line of white supremacists, the leader wearing some kind of yellow spiked helmet, and as they tromped toward the rally, these lovely older women standing beside us wearing sky blue T-shirts that said “Quaker” kind of trotted alongside them gently, holding signs that said “Love.” Alt-left for sure. I was armed with my iPhone and my dog’s leash. Luke was armed with his acne and hormones.

Rev. Seth Wispelwey

Directing minister of Restoration Village Arts and consulting organizer for Congregate C’ville

I am a pastor in Charlottesville, and antifa saved my life twice on Saturday. Indeed, they saved many lives from psychological and physical violence—I believe the body count could have been much worse, as hard as that is to believe. Thankfully, we had robust community defense standing up to white supremacist violence this past weekend. Incredibly brave students held space at the University of Virginia and stared down a torch-lit mob that vastly outnumbered them on Friday night. On Saturday, battalions of anti-fascist protesters came together on my city’s streets to thwart the tide of men carrying weapons, shields, and Trump flags and sporting MAGA hats and Hitler salutes and waving Nazi flags and the pro-slavery “stars and bars.”

“They have their tools, and they are not ones I will personally use, but our purposes were the same: block this violent tide.”

Out of my faith calling, I feel led to pursue disciplined, nonviolent direct action and witness. I helped lead a group of clergy who were trained and committed to the same work: to hold space on the frontline of the park where the rally was to be held. And then some of us tried to take the steps to one of the entrances. God is not OK with white supremacy, and God is on the side of all those it tries to dehumanize. We feel a responsibility to visibly, bodily show our solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized.

A phalanx of neo-Nazis shoved right through our human wall with 3-foot-wide wooden shields, screaming and spitting homophobic slurs and obscenities at us. It was then that antifa stepped in to thwart them. They have their tools to achieve their purposes, and they are not ones I will personally use, but let me stress that our purposes were the same: block this violent tide and do not let it take the pedestal.

The white supremacists did not blink at violently plowing right through clergy, all of us dressed in full clerical garb. White supremacy is violence. I didn’t see any racial justice protesters with weapons; as for antifa, anything they brought I would only categorize as community defense tools and nothing more. Pretty much everyone I talk to agrees—including most clergy. My strong stance is that the weapon is and was white supremacy, and the white supremacists intentionally brought weapons to instigate violence.

 

One more thing

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