If you weren't scared till now, break out the Xanax. Donald Trump has gone where no narcissistic ex-President has gone before.
In a post to Truth Social (Trump's social media site, developed after Twitter barred him), Mr. 45 claimed the FBI buried the 'Hunter Biden laptop investigation' in order to deny Trump a win in 2020. 45 stated further that, as a result:
Trump should immediately be named the winner, or
the 2020 election should be declared compromised, and a new election held immediately
Doug Mastriano is second to no one, even his mentor Donald Trump, in the breathtaking audacity of his efforts to suborn voting rights.
In the late fall of 2021, Republicans in the Pennsylvania State Senate pursued what they called a forensic audit of voter rolls, ostensibly to verify voters’ identities. A Senator at the time, current Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano pledged, and has since reiterated, that he would:
empty, AKA completely flush, voter rolls
require all Pennsylvanians to re-register in order to be able to vote in future elections
Thankfully, federal law prohibits that last action. But legality and constitutionality appear to be of no concern to Mr. Mastriano. In June of this year, he said The most important thing is I get to appoint the secretary of state and that secretary of state is going to clean up the election laws. We’re going to reset, in fact, registration. You’re going to have to re-register. We’re going to start all over again. ... I saw better elections in Afghanistan than I saw in Pennsylvania.
That last statement is both incorrect and draconian. Mr. Mastriano was not, to the best of GOTV's knowledge, in Afghanistan during its most recent election in 2014.
If you think there was no Republican candidate for the Senate worse than Mehmet Oz, think again, and then take a look at Oz's opponents in the 2022 primary.
Barnette offered a pledge that she’d protect individual first and second amendment rights. Barnette considered herself anti-abortion and pro-limiting immigration. Finally, she vowed to fight government-imposed income stagnation and wealth inequality by keeping inflation low. GOTV doubts that would have meant her supporting the IRA.
McCormick's stance significantly mirrored Barnette's in focusing on economic issues: growing the country’s economy, standing up to China, and establishing American energy independence. So far so good. But McCormick also wanted to stop illegal immigration, rebuild the military, and promote voter ID requirements. But wait – there's more. McCormick was, and GOTV assumes still is, anti-abortion, and a full-throated supporter of the 2nd Amendment.
Bartos based his positions on the idea that he’s a fighter looking to restore hope and opportunity for all Pennsylvanians. To Mr. Bartos, that equals economic policies that can make home ownership, health care, and education more affordable; Bartos called these staples of middle-class life.
GOTV saved the best of the worst for last. Sands’ platform called for:
labeling President Biden a socialist
increasing Pennsylvania’s natural gas production (but not moving away from fossil fuels)
protecting the 2nd Amendment (which, to the best of GOTV's knowledge, has never been in danger)
building a border wall to stop illegal immigration
being anti-abortion
If there's anything one can count on from Republicans these days, it's self-serving hypocrisy. Take Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania. The endorsement should scream a message about Oz's character.
In late April of this year, the doctor tweeted his opposition to student loan debt forgiveness. He's also criticized his opponent John Fetterman on everything from immigration to marijuana legalization to universal pre-K to affordability for college educations.
Oz neglected and neglects to mention that he has benefited from, and been forgiven of debt due to, government-sponsored loans. His PPP loan (Paycheck Protection Program, offered under the Small Business Administration) of about $389,000.00 was scrapped.
About a week ago, GOTV underwent the equivalent of a warp core breach. AKA the site's old laptop crashed, and it took all the intervening time, and a plethora of technical help from a friend, to be functional again.
But here we are. Two points of real interest:
as of August 26, John Fetterman had a 13-point lead over Mehmet Oz
Doug Mastriano continues to embarrass himself and the Republican Party in PA
Typical of the lack of compassion, and the expediency, of Republicans, Mehmet Oz has challenged JohnFetterman to a series of five debates. Oz, in not-so-compassionate-conservative fashion, timed his debate demand to coincide with Fetterman’s first public rally since his stroke on May 15. Fetterman was hospitalized for several days, and briefly lost his ability to speak easily and clearly.
Nonetheless, Fetterman has held on to a considerable lead in the polls, in part thanks to his campaign’s clever use of social media to mock Oz’s not-from-Pennsylvania status. Fetterman's campaign also slowly reintroduced the candidate to his followers by releasing edited videos. But even that was used by Republicans, and especially the Oz campaign, to distort the facts. (Can you honestly say you're surprised?) The Republicans in question claim the edits to the videos were done in such a way as to disguise the speech problems Fetterman has acknowledged he developed as a result of the stroke.
Stay classy, Mehmet ...
One of Donald Trump's attorneys (as far as GOTV knows, still unidentified) signed a letter in June stating that there was no more classified information stored at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. This letter raises even more questions about how many, and which, people may have legal exposure in the ongoing investigation into how classified materials were handled during and after 45's time in the White House.
Early this week, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, and agents removed 11 sets of classified documents. Some of those were clearly marked as top secret/SCI -- one of the highest levels of classification.
The items removed contradict the letter. Taking away such highly classified information, after a letter like that mentioned had already been sent, helps us understand why prosecutors included obstruction of investigations in their search warrant request, and why more than Mr. Trump may be facing baucoup legal troubles.
In particular, 18 USC 793 suggests that folks other than 45 may be culpable and even criminally liable for violating what's commonly known as the Espionage and Censorship Act. Pay special attention below to sections b through e inclusive, in the context of Mr. Trump's behavior, and sections g through h regarding any others who might have taken part in attempts to copy, take, make, or obtain, any sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, document, writing, or note of anything connected with the national defense . Such persons may find themselves in quite deep merde.
(a) Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation, goes upon, enters, flies over, or otherwise obtains information concerning any vessel, aircraft, work of defense, navy yard, naval station, submarine base, fueling station, fort, battery, torpedo station, dockyard, canal, railroad, arsenal, camp, factory, mine, telegraph, telephone, wireless, or signal station, building, office, research laboratory or station or other place connected with the national defense owned or constructed, or in progress of construction by the United States or under the control of the United States, or of any of its officers, departments, or agencies, or within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, or any place in which any vessel, aircraft, arms, munitions, or other materials or instruments for use in time of war are being made, prepared, repaired, stored, or are the subject of research or development, under any contract or agreement with the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or with any person on behalf of the United States, or otherwise on behalf of the United States, or any prohibited place so designated by the President by proclamation in time of war or in case of national emergency in which anything for the use of the Army, Navy, or Air Force is being prepared or constructed or stored, information as to which prohibited place the President has determined would be prejudicial to the national defense; or
(b) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason to believe, copies, takes, makes, or obtains, or attempts to copy, take, make, or obtain, any sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, document, writing, or note of anything connected with the national defense; or
(c) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, receives or obtains or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain from any person, or from any source whatever, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note, of anything connected with the national defense, knowing or having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter; or
(d) Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer-
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.
Never accuse Donald Trump of being subtle; his go-to tool is a sledge-hammer. Take the laws that govern the handling of sensitive documents, a trove of which were recovered from his Mar-a-Lago property. Whatever their specific nature, these materials should never have left the custody of the National Archives. By ferrying them to Florida, 45 violated at least two of the laws that govern such scenarios.
18 USC 1519 pertains to the destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations. Specifically, the law, adopted in 2002, says Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
But wait; there's more. 18 USC 2071 declares:
(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.
If we're at all lucky, 45, because he insisted on retaining custody of more than 10 boxes of records, proceedings, ... documents, [or] papers, will be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. GOTV wonders how or to what degree 18 USC 2071 will affect Mr. Trump's long-anticipated declaration of his 2024 candidacy.
Mysteries, especially those by authors Agatha Christie, Tony Hillerman, Rex Stout, and Josephine Tey, are close-to-required reading here at GOTV.
That's why it came as no surprise when news broke that a Mar-a-Lago insider tipped off the Justice Department to Mr 45's still illegally and carelessly holding classified materials at his cheesy Florida abode, despite having been subpoenaed in June to return them to the National Archives.
Upon learning of the Mole, we found outselves wondering:
It's been a long time since cursing seemed an effective political tactic. But disdain still works.
Vice President Kamala Harris should not have had to break the 50 - 50 tie in the Senate over the Inflation Reduction Act. Not even one - uno, un, odin, ein, ichi - Republican there could see the benefit to the United States of billions of dollars for the environment, for health care, and for improving our country's infrastructure.
During debate on the bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to shame his Democratic colleagues and the Biden admnistration. McConnell claimed that the IRA wastes money on what he called, in effect, liberal pipe dreams. He claimed also that the voting public would both agree with and resent that assumption, and would (GOTV's words, not his) throw the bums out in November.
Fat chance. There will be bums thrown out in the next midterm, but they won't be Democrats. They will be Senate Republicans, among them those who voted against capping the cost of insulin. Typical right-wing hypocrisy, and shades of Alan Grayson ...
The Inflation Reduction Act will:
These estimates are from taxfoundation.org. Those folks use what's called the General Equilibrium Model to estimate that the tax provisions, IRS enforcement, and drug pricing provisions in the bill would increase federal revenues by about $656 billion over the budget window, before accounting for $352 billion in expanded tax credits for individuals and businesses, resulting in a net revenue increase of about $304 billion from 2022 to 2031.
Not bad for a bunch of left-wing doctrinaires ... 👍
GOTV understands what Will Rodgers meant when he said I belong to no organized political party; I'm a Democrat.
Events over the past week, positive though they were, bear that out Seemingly without obvious coordination or careful planning, Democrats and the Biden administration influenced:
Compare this to the recent track record of Republicans. Their biggest accomplishment? Voting against the PACT Act, thene being shamed. by the resulting public outcry, into voting for it.
In June, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor, added to his already extensive list of union endorsements, drawing support from the Pennsylvania Professional Firefighters Association. Shapiro used this opportunity to promote his support for unions in general, and promised to veto any bill that reached his desk that would reduce the right to collective bargaining. Such laws are called, ironically in GOTV's opinion, “right to work” laws. These statutes give workers at unionized workplaces the ability to opt out of union membership and out of paying union dues.
The right to work issue is a particularly clear point of contrast between Shapiro and his Republican rival, Doug Mastriano, who said during the primary campaign that he supports, and would sign, a right to work law. This past spring, Maastriano said he looked forward to signing such legislation, not because it would benefit workers, not because it would boost Pennsylvania's economy, but rather because he believed it would expand the current Republican majority in the state legislature in November.
Proponents like Mastriano say right-to-work is an important guarantor of personal liberty at the workplace. Unions despise these measures, seeing them as destroying the ability to bargain collectively for an entire workforce, thereby leading eventually to lower wages and fewer benefits.
Not only Attorney General Sapiro but also the national Democratic Party support organized labor. As President Joe Biden said in Philadelphia recently, the middle class built this country. And unions built the middle class.
Thankfully, the Democratic candidate for Governor recognizes that.
Almost all Republican voters who chose Doug Mastriano as their gubernatorial candidate in the May 17 primary voted in person. Only 13,383 votes out of 380,798 cast for Mastriano used mail-in ballots. That's 3 out of 100. Meanwhile, 386,314 of 788,288 Democratic voters who cast a ballot for Josh Shapiro did so by mailing in. (Those results were as of 10:45 p.m. on Election Night.)
Be careful what you say, Doug – someone may record it. Mastriano claims he wants to get rid of voting by mail if he's elected governor. But he voted for universal mail balloting just three years ago .
More recently, in a campaign statement in January, Mastriano wrote that Pennsylvania Democrats "hijacked" the 2019 law, the same law Mastriano voted for twice.
As is so often the case with Republicans, Mastriano found a way to pass the buck, this time on the question of mail-in voting. And as is also so often the case, he passed it to Democrats. Using the pretext of COVID, Pennsylvania Democrats made their move to hijack Act 77 … Mastriano wrote.
Never mind that historically, Republicans have used mail-in voting more heavily than Democrats. What appears to be bugging Mr. Mastriano (and his mentor Mr. Trump) is the fact that Dems have learned to use if effectively, and have won thereby.
Mail-in voting in Pennsylvania has survived a legal challenge filed by some of the same Republicans who voted in favor of it three years ago. The Associated Press reports that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the law 5 to 2 on Tuesday. Big surprise – not - both votes to discontinue the practice came from the court's Republican justices.
Millions of state voters have chosen to cast ballots by mail in recent elections. Mail-ins have been heavily used by Democrats in the past few electon cycles. Historically, Republicans also favored this method, but the PA law became unpopular among them when former President Donald Trump attacked it and the Pennsylvania election results during his losing 2020 campaign.
Aniother instance of the good guys winning one ... and in this case, handing Democrats natowide a rock-solid position upon which to campaign.
Donald Trump relies on cudgels and sledgehammers. That's why he stacked the Supreme Court with three ultra-conservative justices – in order to placate his ultra-right-wing base. The Court in turn wielded the billy club he'd handed them, doing his bidding not only by overturning Roe v Wade but also, through Clarence Thomas, by threatening to deep-six other precedents that affirm access to basic human rights.
And then came Kansas. By an overwhelming ( 2 to 1 ) majority, the usually conservative electorate, informed at least in part by progressive activists, chose to reaffirm a woman's right to manage her own health decisions.
I've taken on Big Pharma, I've gone to battle with Big Tech, Mehmet Oz, the Republican, Trump-endorsed Senate candidate said on Fox News in December 2021. He continued, I cannot be bought.
Well, sort of.
Oz has a considerable financial stake in major pharmaceutical and Silicon Valley firms, previously sealed records show. The GOP candidate and celebrity television doctor has poured millions of dollars into companies like Amazon and CVS -- a revelation seemingly at odds with a central tenet of his message to voters.
According to a financial disclosure report, Oz, together with his wife, owns between $6 million and $27 million in Amazon stocks, between $1.7 million and $6.6 million in Microsoft, and between $1.3 million and $5.7 million each in Apple and Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. Even a rough estimate brings the total so far to about $47 million. Oz and his wife also have between $615,000 and $1.3 million in shares of Thermo Fisher Scientific, between $15,001 and $50,000 in Johnson & Johnson, and between $50,001 and $100,000 each in CVS and the pharmaceutical company AbbVie. In all, Oz's disclosure shows that he and his spouse jointly own between $104 and $422 million in various assets and holdings.
Oz and his spouse also own between $1.5 million and $6 million shares in the fertility clinic network Prelude Fertility, and between $500,000 and $1 million in shares of Pantheryx, a biotechnology company that specializes in research regarding bovine colostrum. Oz has served as a director of both companies, the disclosure report shows.
Dr. Oz should stop masquerading as a friend of workers.
John Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, PA, and still lives there. I spent my first 36 years next door, so to speak, in another borough in southwest Pennsylvania, and the first seven years of my working life in Braddock itself, at a local business on - what else - Braddock Avenue. My time in that part of Allegheny County predated Mr. Fetterman's by more than a few years, but our experiences overlap significantly. Even when I still lived there, and certainly during Fetterman's residence and tenure, Braddock had become frayed and shopworn.
Fetterman came to Braddock in 2001 to serve with AmeriCorps. He took up permanent residence in 2004. At that point, the former nexus of the U. S. steel industry, and home of Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill and first Free Library, wasn't what it'd been during my years. By the time Fetterman arrived, Braddock had been hit hard. The borough had lost 90% of its population, was declared financially distressed in 1988, and even today has no real supermarkets, gas stations or ATMs.
Fetterman's accomplishments during his first term as mayor are particularly poignant to someone like me. Despite having two college degrees, I had to leave the Braddock area in order to find work. Following his election, one of Fetterman's first acts was to set up a website for Braddock, and to establish programs to improve the borough's poor economy. Other of his efforts included converting vacant lots into parks and gardens, building the town's first public basketball court, and establishing a two-acre organic urban farm, worked by teenagers of the Braddock Youth Project. To help fund such programs, Fetterman established relationships with local non-profit organizations and Allegheny County's economic development program. As an example, Fetterman helped secure a $400,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation , intended for the building of a “green roof”, which provided 100 summer construction jobs for local youth.
Join me in a wahoooo! The empathetic John Fetterman is leading the surly Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race by 11 points, according to a Fox News poll. The poll, released Thursday, July 28, found that Fetterman is backed by 47 percent of registered Pennsylvania voters surveyed, while Oz has the loyalty of only 36 percent. The poll was conducted from July 22 to 26, and surveyed 908 registered Pennsylvania voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, so no matter how one slices it, any hope Oz might have of overcoming Fetterman is baloney. Possibly relevant to that, the Oz campaign has reportedly decided to refrain from campaigning on the issue of abortion.
Sometimes the good guys do win ...
On Thursday, a member of the so-called Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives claimed that Nancy Pelosi, not the FC, were diddling w...