I believe an unlikely mix of alleged drug trafficking related politicos and alleged white nationalist related politicos united to elect the infamous “Bloc of Four” in the abysmal voter turnout election of 2005. During their four year term the drug business was good again and white nationalists used Coatesville as an example on white supremacist websites like “Stormfront”. Strong community organization and support from law enforcement, in particular Chester County District Attorney Joseph W. Carroll has begun to turn our community around. The Chester County drug trafficking that I believe centers on Coatesville continues and I believe we still have public officials in place that profit from the drug sales. But the people here are amazing and continue to work against the odds to make Coatesville a good place to live.
Kompromat Russianкомпрома́т "In Russian culture, kompromat, short for "compromising material" (Russian: компрометирующий материал, translit. komprometiruyushchy material), is damaging information about a politician, a businessman, or other public figure, used to create negative publicity, as well as for blackmail and extortion. Kompromat may be acquired from various security services, or outright forged, and then publicized by use of a public relations official.[1][2] Widespread use of kompromat has been one of the characteristic features of the politics of Russia[3] and other post-Soviet states.[4][5]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat
"Ms. Butina’s arrest in July stemmed from what officials described as a broader counterintelligence investigation by the Justice Department and the F.B.I. that predated the 2016 election and is separate from the work being done by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
The investigation has focused on Aleksandr P. Torshin, a Russian government official who worked closely with Ms. Butina for years. Mr. Torshin is close to Christian conservatives in Russia and has been attending N.R.A. conventions in the United States since 2011.
Beginning in 2015, prosecutors said in the plea deal, Ms. Butina “agreed and conspired” with Mr. Torshin and Mr. Erickson — identified in court papers as the “Russian Official” and “U.S. Person 1” — to infiltrate the Republican Party and the N.R.A. and to promote Russia-friendly policies on behalf of the Kremlin. Mr. Torshin directed Ms. Butina’s work, they said, and Mr. Erickson helped her with what she called her “Diplomacy Project.”
They helped her organize trips to Moscow for prominent N.R.A. members, and helped her set up meetings for a Russian delegation to the National Prayer Breakfast in 2017. “Throughout the conspiracy, Butina wrote notes to Russian Official about her efforts and her assessment of the political landscape in the United States in advance of the 2016 election,” the prosecutors wrote.
***
“Butina also sought Russian Official’s advice on whether to take meetings with certain people,” they added. “She asked him for direction on whether the Russian ‘government’ was ready to meet with some of those people.”
On Thursday, Ms. Butina, 30, pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiring to act as a foreign agent in a deal with federal prosecutors. In doing so, she acknowledged that her activities were motivated by more than mere personal conviction.
As part of the deal, Ms. Butina admitted to being involved in an organized effort, backed by Russian officials, to open up unofficial lines of communication with influential Americans in the N.R.A. and in the Republican Party, and to win them over to the idea of Russia as a friend, not a foe.
Ms. Butina’s guilty plea now casts a spotlight on the Americans she worked with, including prominent members of the N.R.A. and her boyfriend, Paul Erickson, 56, a longtime Republican operative who ran Patrick J. Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign and who now faces accusations of fraud in three states. Officials have said federal investigators are examining what Mr. Erickson and others who helped Ms. Butina knew about her links to the Russian government."
The "War on Drugs" in the United States is complicated by our legacy of slavery. The "War on Drugs" here in the USA was largely a means to re-slave Black people. To put them in prison working as slave labor and to keep them at the bottom of the economic latter. The bottom of the economic ladder is a place that many White people believe is where Black people belong.
***
Some Vietnam War veterans came back addicted to heroin. Most recovered when their lives got better, when their daily lives were not about death & killing. And the heroin was no longer a means to escape their pain.
***
The "heroin epidemic" happened when White people began using heroin. There was no epidemic when Black people used. The "heroin epidemic began when doctors realized that Purdue Pharmaceutical was lying when they stated oxycontin was not addictive and doctors withheld prescribing oxycontin. The actual physical pain and or the emotional pain was still there and people went to heroin.
"Al Capone wasn’t getting drunk and shooting people up; the St Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, at the height of alcohol prohibition, wasn’t carried out by alcoholics. He was killing people to protect his product in a prohibited market. When alcohol prohibition ended, all that violence ended. Ask yourself: where are the violent alcohol-dealers today? Does the head of Smirnoff go and shoot the head of Heinneken in the face? Of course not. It’s not the alcohol that has changed. It’s the decision to stop banning it, and so to take it back from armed criminal gangs, and give it to licensed and regulated legal sellers. If milk was banned, and people still wanted milk, exactly the same process would take place."
The drug war’s systemic failures have become so glaring and tragic that even as that war rages on globally, many of the world’s most mainstream voices now advocate what was, until very recently, regarded as fringe and radical: the legalization, or at least decriminalization, of all drugs, not just marijuana. But while these macro-policy debates have finally become more rational and honest when it comes to data and policy outcomes, there is still far too little media attention paid to the human aspects of these debates: What are the underlying causes of addiction and why is it worsening? What is responsible for the skyrocketing rates of depression around the world and suicide in the U.S.? And why are communities ravaged by economic deprivation so vulnerable to the opioid epidemic and the pharmaceutical industry that exploits it?
The answers to these questions are not just psychological, spiritual, and medical, but also political — very political. It is extremely difficult to devise effective policy solutions to a problem when one does not understand its underlying causes; in this case, among the leading causes of many of these pathologies are policy choices in economics, the penal system, and resource distribution. Moreover, disturbing trends in addiction, mental health problems, and the opioid crisis reveal crucial signals — warning signs — about human trends that explain many of the most consequential political changes and thus, would be dangerous to continue to ignore.
To navigate Chester County, PA politics you need knowledge of politics, organized crime and white supremacist organizations. If you don’t know which politicians are connected to organized crime and which are connected to right wing extremists you will be in the dark.
Many news people track only politics. A small fraction of news people track “the mob”. An even smaller fraction track white supremacists. I think that’s why local news that follows politics here has so much difficulty making sense of Chester County politics.
Chester County politics is organized crime, political infighting and white supremacy, with one of those 3 dominating some part of politics here. Without expertise in all 3 Chester County politics makes no sense.
Trump is a celebrity TV personality with a lifetime association with the New York/New Jersey Mafia and a lifetime association with Russian immigrants living in Trump properties. Trump’s dad and Trump are white supremacists.
Trump checks all the boxes of my somewhat limited expertise.
The Trump Administration and the Republican Party do not want the Republican Party base to know about the climate report.Hiding the news release at 2 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving did not entirely work as the Whitehouse planned. The New York Times made the Fourth National Climate Assessment front page news.
Ordering ICE to attack children with tear gas appeals to the Republican Party base voters and takes headlines away from the Whitehouse climate report. Donald Trumps skill at manipulating the press is on full display here.
I think Trump is holding back his nuke Iran play to counter news of indictments of his family by Bob Mueller.
By now, everyone knows about the Friday news dump — the penchant for sleazy companies or even sleazier government agencies to hold onto a piece of really bad news until late on a Friday afternoon, so that any headlines that are generated come out when everybody's working for the weekend, or in Saturday newspapers that nearly nobody reads.
So, when the bad news involves mass death and disease, a never-ending bowl of natural disasters, the extinction of species, etc. — and when your boss is on the wrong side of the mass-death issue — that calls for the Mother of All News Dumps. That would be a news release at 2 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving, when no one works and most Americans are either waiting on a rope line at Walmart or couch-prone in a tryptophan coma.
"This is, unfortunately, par for the course for this president that he would try to bury this news and deny it," Jake Levine, who'd worked on climate issues during Barack Obama's presidency, said on MSNBC right after the Trump administration realized that Black Friday — while a month ahead of schedule — was their preferred day to drop a congressionally mandated report on climate change that predicted dire consequences if America and the world do not respond quickly.
Don't let Trumpian government dump on your right to this life-or-death information.
Since the report is mandated by Congress, not issuing it would have been a violation of the law. While some political appointees within one of the agencies that contributed scientific work to the report did suggest editing the summary of its conclusions to play down the findings, that idea was also seen as too risky politically and legally, these people said.
Instead, these people said, administration officials hoped to minimize the impact by making the assessment public on the afternoon of Black Friday, the big shopping day after the Thanksgiving holiday, thinking that Americans might be unlikely to be paying attention.
MORE AT:
Trump Administration’s Strategy on Climate: Try to Bury Its Own Scientific Report
"So, the name of the film comes from the phrase that is above the gate when you visit Auschwitz. It’s a joke, and it’s a lie, that basically means that if you’re good, and if you listen, and you do the work that we’re telling you to do, you will be set free. It was a promise, and it was a lie. It’s not far from anything that you’ve heard in the United States: Good behavior — the sentence will be cut short."
"So, we went and visited Camp Amersfoort, Birkenau, Auschwitz, Dachau. But it was after seeing these places, we were so struck by the idea that these were now museums, these beacons of hatred and suffering and death had become places of education, places of memory. And the question that was on our minds when we left was: How long before the havens of suffering in America, these beacons of hate in prison, how long before these things that they’ve built in America will also become museums, and people from all over the world will come to see what America did to its black and brown people? How long before America can be part of that conversation of rebuilding, of generational trauma? How long before we can enter that conversation, as well? It was hard to discuss and hard to film, because of the nature of the subject matter. And I guess the subject matter being two things: One being concentration camps that have now become museums, and the other being fully-functional prisons." MORE AT: DONALD TRUMP, FASCISM, AND THE DOCTRINE OF AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY Intercepted October 31 2018, 6:01 a.m.
"People raise the issue well, how can the Christian right build an alliance with Trump? And I would argue that in fact, they’re completely alike. They’re con artists. They manipulate the misery and despair of others. They perpetuate a form of magical thinking, magic Jesus. They attack reality-based science and reality-based news. This all comes out of the — all predates Trump. They are a fascism, as Paxton writes in the “Anatomy of Fascism,” it always comes draped in familiar even comforting iconography and language."
"JS: You know, it’s been interesting and I think extremely disturbing to watch how Trump, Pence, certainly Jeff Sessions, their preferred audience, certainly in the case of Trump is not the troops.
He has yet to set foot in a foreign war zone which is fairly unheard-of particularly, post-9/11 for the commander-in-chief. But he’s always talking to sheriffs somewhere or police officers somewhere.
And you and I both know from our reporting going back decades, there is a large contingent of white supremacists in the U.S. military and certainly among police officers, and sheriffs, and others. But what Trump and company are doing is really showing – and Trump said it the other day, where you know, where are my bikers, my cops?
They listed off and you do get a sense that they know they have their “Brown Shirts” that are actually in official uniforms that when the day comes are going to be on their side no matter what the African-American put in as their captain tells them to do or not to do.
"So, we’re watching Trump incite violence because none of his policies have any support.
His tax cuts don’t have support, his assault on Obamacare, his refusal to raise the minimum wage. None of this has any. All he has is hate and that’s the only weapon he’ll use. And I look at this attempt to decapitate, in essence, murder the Democratic leadership through these pipe bombs as very, very ominous because I saw it in Yugoslavia. And not only will this continue and expand, but ultimately it will be successful.
And that’s the only language they have because they’re not a majoritarian movement. Even the Nazis were never a majoritarian movement. I think the highest percentage of votes they got was about 43 percent and it was declining after that.
JS: Why do you say it’s going to succeed?
CH: Because they can marshal the forces of violence and they can decapitate already extremely weakened opposition movements.
So, you know, the only real opposition movement that the Nazis had was the Communist party, but we don’t even have a Communist party. We don’t have a militant reaction. So, we’re far weaker and far more vulnerable. Our labor unions are spent. I mean labor strikes, even the Nazis which were very anti-union had to support the strikes in Berlin because they knew that if they didn’t everybody would go into the arms of the Communists. So, we don’t even have that.
We’re in a far more fragile and debilitated state so that those popular movements which provide resistance are almost non-existent. In fact, we pretty much have to start them from scratch. So, we’re very easily, I’m afraid, controlled.
We are in a war to preserve democracy against Trump and his fascists. The Democratic Party is helpless as England was when Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler. The Democratic Party cannot defend the United States from Trump's blitzkrieg. We need a Churchill to fight against Trump and his fascists. One of the "started from scratch resistance movements" are teachers unions and a man I believe is their leader, Richard Ojeda:
"Ojeda, in positioning himself against Trump, is meeting right-wing populism with a left-wing variety. He uses language that is as direct as Trump’s, but unlike the president, he targets the nation’s elites, rather than vilifying vulnerable communities." "Members of Congress, he proposes, should be required to donate their net wealth above a certain threshold — Ojeda puts it at a million dollars — to discourage using public office for private gain. In return, retired members of Congress would get a pension of $130,000 a year and be able to earn additional income to reach $250,000. Anything above that would be donated." "He plans to pair that with other provocative ideas, such as requiring lobbyists to wear body cameras."
"Ojeda made his decision to run after surveying the field of potential presidential contenders, and concluding that none of them would be able to stand up to Trump in the way that he could and draw the contrast that’s needed. “We’re going to have quite a few lifetime politicians that are going to throw their hat in the ring, but I guarantee you there’s going to be a hell of a lot more of them than there are people like myself that is, a working-class person that basically can relate to the people on the ground, the people that are actually struggling,” he said. “I’m not trying to throw stones at people that are rich, but once again, we will have a field that will be full of millionaires and I’m sure a few billionaires.”...
Ojeda was backed in his House bid by the People’s House Project, a PAC run by former congressional candidate and MSNBC host Krystal Ball. She’s supporting his presidential run, but acknowledged in an interview that he’s an unusual candidate for today’s Democratic Party. “I think the biggest challenge for Richard is whether or not people actually want real change. Whether they actually want a nation. Or if they’d prefer to just keep their tribes and their grievances,” she said.
His lack of political experience, he said, should not be mistaken for a lack of organizational leadership experience. While he enlisted in the Army as a private out of high school, he said, he rose through the ranks to oversee a vast operation. “When I started in the military, I started as a private, the lowest rank you could possibly go, but I was also the chief of operations for the 20th Airborne engineers in Iraq, where we were in control of over 7,000 engineers. And every single operation that went on throughout the entire country of Iraq went through my JOC, and I was the chief of operations,” he said. The military helped put Ojeda through college and graduate school, and he now uses his experience overseas to argue against militarism and in favor of a diplomatic approach.
His campaign will roll out a climate and environment plank soon, he said, but he wants to launch his campaign with a focus on lobbying and corruption in Washington, which he sees as a major obstacle to progress. To that end, he’s proposing a typically atypical suite of policy solutions: Members of Congress, he proposes, should be required to donate their net wealth above a certain threshold — Ojeda puts it at a million dollars — to discourage using public office for private gain. In return, retired members of Congress would get a pension of $130,000 a year and be able to earn additional income to reach $250,000. Anything above that would be donated.
“When you get into politics, that’s supposed to be a life of service, but that’s not what it’s been. You know, a person goes into politics, they win a seat in Congress or the Senate and it’s a $174,000 [salary], but yet two years later they’re worth $30 million, and that’s one of the problems that we have in society today. That’s how come no one trusts, or has very much respect for politicians,” he said.
The notion of sacrificing for public service may seem radical, but it’s anything but that for millions of people in the military, said Ojeda. “Our servicemen that are in the military right now, staff sergeants in the United States Army out there in harm’s way, qualify for food stamps, but they truly live a life of selfless service,” he said. “Where I come from, the average family income is $44,000. So to me, this right here is something that everybody can relate to. We’re sick and tired of watching people that say that they’re going to fight for the people and run for office, but in reality they get in there and all they do is increase their wealth and power.”
He plans to pair that with other provocative ideas, such as requiring lobbyists to wear body cameras.
Ojeda, in positioning himself against Trump, is meeting right-wing populism with a left-wing variety. He uses language that is as direct as Trump’s, but unlike the president, he targets the nation’s elites, rather than vilifying vulnerable communities.
“The filthy rich convinced the dirt poor the filthy rich are the ones who care,” he said. “We need someone in Washington, D.C. who’s going to be a voice for these people.”...
Richard Ojeda is running for president. Ojeda, a West Virginia state senator and retired U.S. Army major, lost his congressional bid in the state’s 3rd District on Tuesday, but saw the largest swing of Trump voters toward Democrats in any district around the country — overperforming 2016 by more than 35 points. Still, in a district Donald Trump carried by 49 points, Ojeda, who rose to prominence leading teacher strikes in West Virginia, lost by 12 points.
Ojeda’s case for his candidacy is straightforward: The Democratic Party has gotten away from its roots, and he has a unique ability to win over a white, black, and brown working-class coalition by arguing from a place of authority that Trump is a populist fraud. He’s launching his campaign with an anti-corruption focus that draws a contrast with Trump’s inability to “drain the swamp.”
His authority — and one of his greatest liabilities — would come, in part, from his own previous support of Trump in the 2016 general election. After backing Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary, Ojeda refused to support Hillary Clinton, seeing her as an embodiment of the party’s drift toward the elite."
Hasay is the son of senior District Judge John Hasay of Shickshinny, Unlike Ian David Long, John “Jake” Hasay quickly got a medical discharge and never became an expert machine gunner. But what if he goes off his meds? Seems like "Jake" Hasay's case needs more consideration.
Officials at the U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday that John J. Hasay, 21, of Benton has been criminally charged for possessing an illegal Glock 19 9-millimeter machine gun for nearly a year, ending on Aug. 23
Authorities said Hasay was discovered by law enforcement officers after he posted in online forums, making comments "espousing racist, white-supremacist and Nazi ideologies.”
Hasay also threatened to commit a hate crime, authorities said. According to the announcement, authorities also are seeking to make Hasay forfeit his firearms and related items, including:
The Glock 19 machine gun
A CAA Model G3, Micro Roni pistol carbine conversion bearing a scope
A IWI Model MP Uzi bearing a shortened barrel (a semiautomatic firearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine)
A GSG Model 522 bearing a shortened barrel and a Black and Brown optic (a semiautomatic firearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine)
A Charter Arms Model AR-7 Explorer bearing a shortened barrel (a semiautomatic firearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine)
A Mossberg Model 500A bearing a shortened barrel
An I.O. Inc. Sporter bearing a suppressor (a semiautomatic firearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine)
Two suppressors
"Hasay, who is a Navy veteran and the son of senior District Judge John Hasay of Shickshinny, is admitting with his upcoming guilty plea that he made illegal modifications to a semi-automatic Glock handgun and converted it into a fully automatic weapon. Federal law states any fully automatic weapon is classified as a machine gun and requires a license to own — a licence Hasay lacked. The charge carries a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine...
Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip J. Caraballo previously argued Hasay should stay in prison until his trial, arguing he was a danger to both society and himself. While under arrest, he underwent in-patient psychiatric treatment after Caraballo argued against out-patient treatment.However, prosecutors never formally charged Hasay with any violent crimes, and as part of the plea deal, they are agreeing not to pursue any further charges related to the incident.Hasay’s plea has not yet been officially entered." MORE AT:
I no longer need to get out of bed at 4:30 AM on Election Day to get the voting booths set up and not get back to bed until 2:00 AM the next day.
It takes a lot of effort and training by volunteers working extraordinarily long days to allow Americans to exercise their right to vote.
The thought that some dude in St. Petersburg Russia can alter elections electronically is infuriating. In Chester County, PA we use voter marked and machine scanned tabulation. About the most secure vote tabulation used in the United States. A print out of the results that looks like a receipt from a store is posted at the polling places where it can be read from the outside. It might be a good idea to photograph that print out with your phone. If an election result in Chester County is in dispute the original voter marked paper ballots can be hand counted.
I can visualize a terrorist attack at a polling place in the United States because it would be so very simple to do. But if the terrorist thought about it at all, so very ineffective. The voter intimidation at Coatesville’s polls was tailored to specific voters. Bob Saucier was moved from polling placeto polling place to intimidate specific voters.
Bob was allegedly diagnosed as bipolar.
Bob could manage living when he was on his medication. I think most of his “incidents” happened when he tried going off his medication.
I talked him down on one Election Day when the judge of elections threatened to shut down the 110 Precinct because of fighting. I saw in his eyes when a someone he wanted to fight with came to vote. I spent most of that Election Day facing Bob and talking him down.
My wife became judge of elections at Coatesville's 110 Precinct mostly because no one else was willing to deal with Bob Saucier intimidating voters on election day.
I have no trouble talking to anyone. I can find something I like in anyone. That applies to Nazis or drug dealers who I know shot people. Pat Sellers never claimed to be a Nazi but he came close.
Bob went to his family in Alabama and died there. His son died a few years later.
I think Bob was easily manipulated. I think he felt important as part of Pat Sellers’ John Birch Society white supremacist group. Bob couldn’t follow Pat Sellers’ lead into public office. I understand that he was removed from the Coatesville School Board in a straight jacket.
Pat Sellers gave Bob Saucier’s life direction.
I can’t say if what the two of them did on election day effected the results. I do know that just seeing Bob Saucier or Pat Sellers at the polls would cause some voters to turn around and go home. Whether they came back to vote later I do not know.
I do know that Bob frightened election officers and caused great concern at Voter Services.
But I think what they did to frighten off some voters probably didn’t work and might have made them more determined to vote.
Which brings me around to the Donald Trump inspired violence in the last few days.
Trump’s conservative base is fear driven. Trump uses fear to manipulate them. If one of Trump’s madmen sprays voters with his AR-15 on election day it will be the fearful conservative Republicans who stay home.
"On Friday, the FBI arrested and charged a Florida man for carrying out the attempted bombing campaign, and the investigation is ongoing. If confirmed, the use of black powder (also known as gunpowder) would fit a pattern: It was the third most commonly used explosive charge in domestic bombing incidents last year, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Black powder (or its modern cousin, smokeless powder) has been used in countless high-profile bombings, including the World Trade Center in 1993, Atlanta in 1996, Boston in 2013, and the Unabomber’s two-decade-long spree.
It’s also untraceable in the United States, thanks in large part to the National Rifle Association’s 50-year campaign against regulations that would require the addition of trace markers, or “taggants.” The minuscule, indestructible chips can make it possible to link gunpowder back to the point of sale — information that can help investigators quickly track down the bomber.
But because many gun enthusiasts use gunpowder to make or reload their own bullets, the NRA has been successfully killing efforts to add taggants since the Nixon administration, according to a report released Thursday by the Violence Policy Center. The NRA has offered a host of reasons over the years for its opposition: There wasn’t enough credible research on their efficacy; taggants could destabilize gunpowder and affect the trajectory of bullets; adding them would be too costly for manufacturers; and implementing a tracing system would be too costly for taxpayers.
But critics of the NRA say the group’s opposition to taggants is rooted in the same rationale that animates its opposition to universal background checks and a centralized database of gun sales: Because they could be a backdoor to national gun registration."
Also in 2012 the Republican Supreme Court Citizens United decision created a means for international corporations and foreign billionaires to fund Republican candidates. An international pool of money is supporting Republican candidates and helping to write laws.
"As Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team probes deeper into potential collusion between Trump officials and representatives of the Russian government, investigators are taking a closer look at political contributions made by U.S. citizens with close ties to Russia.
Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. We have allowed our campaign finance laws to become a strategic threat to our country."
A loosely organized internationally funded organization directed by foreign & U.S. “investors”, hard right politicians, with propaganda by & at times, policy by Fox News, with a pathological narcissist president are now known as “The Republican Party.”
President Dwight Eisenhower might find today’s “Republicans” strange and repulsive.
