Congresswoman Who Used To Receive Welfare Wants To Drug Test Rich People Who Get Tax Breaks

By Bryce Covert

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) has had enough of the growing movement to drug test poor people who need government assistance. So on Tuesday, she’s introducing a bill that she says will make things fairer.

Her “Top 1% Accountability Act” would require anyone claiming itemized tax deductions of over $150,000 in a given year to submit a clean drug test. If a filer doesn’t submit a clean test within three months of filing, he won’t be able to take advantage of tax deductions like the mortgage interest deduction or health insurance tax breaks. Instead he would have to make use of the standard deduction.

Her office has calculated that the people impacted will be those who make at least $500,000 a year.

“By drug testing those with itemized deductions over $150,000, this bill will level the playing field for drug testing people who are the recipients of social programs,” a memo on her bill notes.

Moore has a personal stake in the fight. “I am a former welfare recipient,” she explained. “I’ve used food stamps, I’ve received Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid, Head Start for my kids, Title XX daycare [subsidies]. I’m truly grateful for the social safety net.”

Ten states require applicants to their cash welfare programs to undergo a drug test. States are currently barred from implementing drug testing for the food stamps program, but Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has sued the federal government to allow him to do so and has gotten some Congressional Republican support.

Moore has been frustrated to witness attempts to tie those who avail themselves of the safety net to drug use. “Republicans continue to criminalize poverty and to put forward the narrative, the false narrative in fact, that people who are poor and reliant upon the social safety net are drug users,” she said.

Republicans continue to criminalize poverty

 

In fact, evidence from test results among states that test welfare recipients indicates that they are no more likely to use drugs than the general population — in fact, they may be less likely.

That didn’t stop House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) from using a drug rehab center as the backdrop while he unveiled his poverty plan last week. “I think this is what tipped me over the edge,” Moore said, “rolling out his poverty initiative in front of a drug treatment program to sort of drive that false narrative forward.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks at a drug rehab facility in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, Tuesday, June 7, 2016, where he proposed an overhaul for the nation’s poverty programs. CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Moore also wants to use her bill to question why some recipients of government aid are treated differently than others. “On the one hand, poor people…are entitled to things like Medicaid and SNAP [food stamps],” she said. “People who take tax deductions and particularly those in the top 1 percent…are not entitled to anything.” But they still benefit from a large pot of government money.

The government loses about $900 billion in revenue to tax expenditures every year, which mostly flow to the wealthy.

When it comes to drug abuse, “There are no boundaries with regard to class or race,” she said. “If these poor people who are entitled to SNAP for survival are required to be drug tested, then certainly those people who claim $150,000 or more in tax deductions should be subjected to the same in order to receive this benefit from the government.”

Moore also thinks that while there is no evidence that drug testing welfare recipients saves states any money, drug tests for wealthy taxpayers could be different. “We would save a lot of money on this,” she said. “When you add up all of the tax expenditures, all the money we give really wealthy people, it really rivals the amount we spend on Defense, Social Security, Medicare.” The mortgage interest deduction, which overwhelmingly benefits people making more than $100,000, alone cost $70 billion in 2013, or 0.4 percent of GDP.

When you add up all the money we give really wealthy people, it really rivals the amount we spend on Defense, Social Security, Medicare.

 

Her bill will also help illuminate this very fact: that so much is spent on tax expenditures, not just on direct aid programs like welfare and food stamps. “We think it’s important to engage in some transparency and accountability around tax deductions,” she said.

Moore is not the only lawmaker in Congress who has raised questions about unequal treatment between the poor who make use of government programs and everyone else who needs them. In February, Rep. Rosa DeLauro asked why only recipients of food stamps were being considered for drug testing but not the farmers who also make use of programs run by the Agriculture Department.

But Moore is very serious about pushing her bill forward. “I’m motivated,” she said. “I’m going to work on it very seriously. I’m going to try to get cosponsors.”

She also wants to “engage the wealthy in this poverty debate,” she said. “I would love to see some hedge fund manager on Wall Street who might be sniffing a little cocaine here and there to stay awake realize that he can’t get his $150,000 worth of deductions unless he submits to a drug test.”

Ed Schultz News and Commentary: Thursday the 16th of June

Why is the Ed Schultz Show hotter than a polar bear in Pensacola? Easy. Because he is so different from every other talk show hosts. He’s a straight talking, no-nonsense voice of reason in unreasonable times.

On Thursday's Show, Ed gives commentary on the Republicans predicament with Donald Trump as their presumptive nominee and the fight that his heating up over gun control. We are joined by Jane Kleeb, Director of Bold Nebraska and candidate for Nebraska Democratic Party Chair, joins the show to talk about the impact of Bernie Sanders on the Democratic platform.

The Punk Who Would Be President

By GARRISON KEILLOR

It is the most famous ducktail in America today, the hairdo of wayward youth of a bygone era, and it's astonishing to imagine it under the spotlight in Cleveland, being cheered by Republican dignitaries.

The class hood, the bully and braggart, the guy revving his pink Chevy to make the pipes rumble, presiding over the student council. This is the C-minus guy who sat behind you in history and poked you with his pencil and smirked when you asked him to stop. That smirk is now on every front page in America. It is not what anybody — left, right or center — looks for in a president. There's no philosophy here, just an attitude.

He is a little old for a ducktail. By the age of 70, most ducks have moved on, but not Donald. He is apparently still fond of the sidewalls and the duck's ass in back and he is proud as can be of his great feat, the first punk candidate to get this close to the White House. He says that the country is run by a bunch of clowns and that he is going to make things great again and beat up on the outsiders who are coming into our neighborhood. His followers don't necessarily believe that — what they love about him is what kids loved about Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, the fact that he horrifies the powers that be and when you are pro-duck you are giving the finger to Congress, the press, clergy, lawyers, teachers, cake-eaters, big muckety-mucks, VIPs, all those people who think they're better than you — you have the power to scare the pants off them, and that's what this candidate does better than anybody else.

After the worst mass shooting in American history on Sunday, 50 persons dead in Orlando, the bodies still being carted from the building, the faces of horror-stricken cops and EMTs on TV, the gentleman issued a statement on Twitter thanking his followers for their congratulations, that the tragedy showed that he had been "right" in calling for America to get "tough."

Anyone else would have expressed sorrow. The gentleman expressed what was in his heart, which was personal pride.

We had a dozen or so ducktails in my high school class and they were all about looks. The hooded eyes, the sculpted swoop of the hair, the curled lip. They emulated Elvis but only the look, not the talent. Their sole ambition was to make an impression, to slouch gracefully and exhale in an artful manner. In the natural course of things, they struggled after graduation, some tried law enforcement for the prestige of it, others became barflies. If they were drafted, the Army got them shaped up in a month or two. Eventually, they all calmed down, got hitched up to a mortgage, worried about their blood pressure, lost the chippiness, let their hair down. But if your dad was rich and if he was born before you were, then the ducktail could inherit enough wealth to be practically impervious to public opinion. This has happened in New York City. A man who could never be elected city comptroller is running for president.

The dreamers in the Republican Party imagine that success will steady him and he will accept wise counsel and come into the gravitational field of reality but it isn't happening. The Orlando tweets show it: The man does not have a heart. How, in a few weeks, should Mr. Ryan and Mr. McConnell teach him basic humanity? The bigot and braggart they see today is the same man that New Yorkers have been observing for 40 years. A man obsessed with marble walls and gold-plated doorknobs, who has the sensibility of a giant sea tortoise.

His response to the Orlando tragedy is one more clue that this election is different from any other. If Mitt Romney or John McCain had been elected president, you might be disappointed but you wouldn't fear for the fate of the Republic. This time, the Republican Party is nominating a man who resides in the dark depths. He is a thug and he doesn't bother to hide it. The only greatness he knows about is himself.

So the country is put to a historic test. If the man is not defeated, then we are not the country we imagine we are. All of the trillions spent on education was a waste. The churches should close up shop. The nation that elects this man president is not a civilized society. The gentleman is not airing out his fingernail polish, he is not showing off his wedding ring; he is making an obscene gesture. Ignore it at your peril.

Garrison Keillor hosts "A Prairie Home Companion." This column was provided by the Washington Post News Service.

What Is Barbecue?

Sorry, There’s Only One Legit Kind of American Barbecue

By Chris Fuhrmeister , illustrations by Hawk Krall 

 

One purist breaks down everything you’re doing wrong

Welcome to IMHO, the corner of Eater where we hand a megaphone to people with something to say about the world of food.

American barbecue is having a moment. Thanks in part to pitmasters such as Aaron Franklin in Austin and marketing campaigns from big food brands, the word "barbecue" — no matter how it's spelled — is part of this country's vernacular perhaps like never before. But for traditionalists in the South, where American barbecue flourished, there is cause for concern. Barbecue has rules, and they're being broken on a daily basis.

We should go ahead and get this out of the way: I am incredibly close-minded on the subject. In all other walks of life, I like to consider myself a progressive. There's no right way to be a person, and really, we're all just trying to figure it out as we go. No one should have to constrict their human experience just because it doesn't fit into someone else's idea of what is good and proper.

But let me tell you, when it comes to American barbecue — I certainly won't attempt to set ground rules for other barbecue cultures across the globe — there are absolute rights and wrongs. Sure, there's some room for interpretation, but good-intentioned "barbecue" lovers across this country are blaspheming day in and day out.

Before declaring what barbecue isn't, it's best to define what it is: pork that's slow-cooked with smoke. And if you think that's an idiotic opinion from someone who happens to have a keyboard and internet connection at his disposal, consider this:

Good-intentioned "barbecue" lovers are blaspheming day in and day out.

"I mean, pig and burned wood charcoal, and that, to me, is it," says John Currence, the James Beard Award-winning chef based out of Oxford, Mississippi. "If you don't have both of those things, to my mind, you don't have what constitutes barbecue."

Currence was born in New Orleans, won the 2009 James Beard Foundation award for Best Chef: South, and owns a restaurant empire expanding across the region from its home base in a small Mississippi college town. Since 2013, his City Grocery restaurant group has operated Lamar Lounge in Oxford, becoming the only smokehouse in the state to specialize in whole-hog barbecue. If anyone can claim to be an authority on the subject, it's someone with Currence's resume.

So why pork? Why does the meat have to come from a pig for a plate of barbecue to exist? Why doesn't smoked chicken, the dish that's most associated with Alabama white sauce, count? "And why in the world aren't smoked brisket and beef ribs — which have become the face of the modern barbecue movement in America — included in this conversation?" hordes of angry Texans ask as they sharpen their pitchforks.

Nope, not barbecue. Photo: m7007/Shutterstock

Southern historian Don Harrison Doyle notes the first Europeans to come in contact with the Chickasaw, a people that resided on lands that would eventually become Mississippi, were Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his crew in 1540. De Soto and his comrades introduced the low-and-slow cooking style they had learned about during their time in Mexico, and they prepared a feast of the wild hogs that were found in the area.

Writing his pro-pork manifesto for Esquire magazine in 1976, Jim Villas details how English settlers took up the method shortly after arriving in Jamestown. Pork was the obvious meat of choice during the early days of barbecue in North Carolina. Smithsonian Magazine notes pig farming was relatively cheap and low-maintenance, especially compared to the idea of domestic cattle. Carolinians didn't have to do much at all, allowing pigs to fend for themselves in the woods and then hunting them when meat was needed.

Even as the region changed over the years and cattle farming became a more reasonable proposition, I think there's a pretty clear reason why pork continued to dominate North Carolina and the rest of the South: It just tastes better. Any time I have this argument with someone who wants to extol the virtues of the cow, I see the same trump card played: "It takes a lot more talent to produce world-class smoked beef than world-class smoked pork." I will cede this point. Smoking brisket takes an incredible amount of skill, and as long as you follow a few basic rules, it isn't too hard to produce good smoked pork on your first try. But this just proves why porcine meats are so superior. They're already more delicious to begin with. Add some smoke and spice, and they're divine. Currence shared how the first taste of legendary Raleigh, N.C.-based pitmaster Ed Mitchell's ‘cue was "like a lightning bolt to my head."

Anyone traveling through the region by automobile will be able to spot endless visual cues that, despite brisket's rise in popularity around the country, pork is still king all over the South. Get off the interstate and drive around long enough, and you'll wonder how so many barbecue joints can exist within a sparsely populated area. How do you pick the best one to stop for lunch? Tradition says it's all about the human-like qualities of the pig on the sign out front. "You assign a numeric score to a barbecue joint based upon the number of human-like things the pig on the sign is doing," writes Robert Moss, author of Barbecue: The History of an American Institution. "A realistic pig just standing there: zero points. A pig standing up and wearing a hat: two points. A standing pig in a hat and overalls strumming a banjo, winking, and turning a barbecue spit (or feasting on his brethren) — well, just pull right on over. You have found a winner." You'll notice there's no mention of looking for a sign with a banjo-picking cow.

For those who worship at the Church of Carolina Barbecue, the idea of classifying anything from a cow under the barbecue umbrella makes as much sense as calling a ground turkey sandwich a burger. One must specify that this item is a "turkey burger," because a traditional burger is made of ground beef. If you must refer to brisket as barbecue, at least have the decency to call it "Texas-style barbecue" when you're outside the Lone Star State. (I respect the fact that beef-lovers believe in a slow-smoking method that transforms a cut of meat into succulence that cannot be matched.)

What I will not abide is associating hamburgers, hot dogs, direct-heat charcoal grills, and, god forbid, gas grills with the subject. How these items became linked with the idea of barbecue is beyond me. 

"It was a misappropriation of that word, and I guess it came from the barbecue pit," Currence says. "My grandfather had this giant brick barbecue pit. It had smoking chambers in it, but it also had a hot grill where you could cook hamburgers and hot dogs. It came from the cross-utilization of those implements and more processed foods: ‘We're just going to go barbecue these hamburgers.'"

"Barbecue these hamburgers" is a phrase that never should be uttered. One does not barbecue hamburgers and hot dogs. In fact, one does not really "barbecue" anything. If you're preparing barbecue — a noun — you're smoking a whole hog or ribs or pork shoulder. Even many brisket-loving Texans who are about ready to ring my neck would agree barbecue comes from indirect heat and long cooking times. When you're throwing some burgers and dogs on the hot grill for a few minutes, you're "grilling out" or "cooking out." Furthermore, a party that involves friends and family coming over to eat grilled hamburgers and hot dogs is not "a barbecue" where I'm from. That's a cook-out. Actual barbecue must be on the menu for an event to actually be a barbecue.

Yes, Merriam-Webster offers a few broad definitions of the word that seem to cover basic grilling and anything under the sun that could be thrown on a grill. Unfortunately, the brains behind the dictionary recently destroyed their credibility by attempting to define a hot dog as a sandwich. This is obviously a debate for another time, but a hot dog is its own thing. It's not a sandwich. Are you really comfortable with the idea of "barbecuing some hot dog sandwiches"? Do not trust Merriam-Webster.

CNN reporter Emanuella Grinberg, a New Yorker who now resides in Atlanta, tackled the subject of grilling vs. barbecue last year. Grinberg explains how other Southern language and comestible quirks ("y'all," sweet tea) were adopted with ease, but changing her definition of barbecue was a touch more difficult. "It would take years for me to see it [a Southerner's] way (or, more likely, give up the fight) after learning what barbecue means to the South," she wrote. And that gets to the heart of the matter. For so many Southerners, a burger or dog on the grill is all fine and good, but barbecue is something so much more.

Lest you think I'm an inflexible curmudgeon, I'm relatively open-minded when it comes to the subject of sauce. When it comes to augmenting chopped or pulled pork, I prefer the thin, sharp vinegar-and-pepper varieties of eastern North Carolina, but the inclusion of ketchup or tomato paste in the western part of the state and throughout much of the South can make for a nice accompaniment. The mustard-based products of South Carolina are tasty as well. And I would be remiss if I didn't put in a plug for white sauce, which comes from my native Alabama. Invented by Big Bob Gibson in Decatur some 90 years ago, it's based on mayonnaise, vinegar, and pepper, and it's never really been accepted outside the northern half of its home state.

Before I become Public Enemy No. 1 in the state of Texas, I will admit that smoked brisket, when done well, is phenomenal eating. It's a fact I've only learned recently. I have family in Texas, but because of my devotion to pork and poor brisket experiences, I've never bothered to give it a try in its homeland. It wasn't until an Eater event last November (in New York City of all places) that I tasted outrageously delicious brisket. John Lewis, who has experience at Austin shrines Franklin Barbecue and La Barbecue and now operates his own restaurant in Charleston, S.C., served it up. It was salty and smoky, fatty and moist. It raised my eyebrows and stopped me in my tracks. I had no idea brisket could be that good.

It was delicious, but it wasn't barbecue.

If you’re a chef, restaurant worker, or in any way involved in the food industry — or if you’re simply a smart diner with something to say — we’d love to hear from you. Send a pitch (or a completed opinion piece of 1,000-1,500 words) to imho@eater.com, along with an explanation of who you are and why your voice on this matter is an important one. Accepted submissions will go through a standard editorial process before publication, including adjustments for clarity and structure, as well as copy- and fact-checking, always with the writer’s signoff.

Chris Fuhrmeister is Eater's evening news editor and editor of Eater Atlanta. Hawk Krall is a Philadelphia-based artist, illustrator, and former line cook with a lifelong obsession for unique regional cuisine. 

Editor: Erin DeJesus

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Eater Video: American Barbecue Styles Explained in 2 Minutes

The new God of War takes Kratos to Norse mythology

Ring Of Fire: Fox News Resident PUNK Blames Obama For Orlando Massacre

By Sydney Robinson

The victims from the Orlando shooting haven’t even been completely removed from the nightclub where they died and already, news media is doing their best to politicize the issue.

There are still so many questions yet to be answered, but that didn’t stop Fox News’ Tucker Carlson from blaming Obama for the largest mass shooting in American history.

First, the segment featured an author fear-mongering about whether or not the attack was “Jihadi,” and telling regular people that they are on the “front lines” in a war against this sort of terrorism.

Carlson said that the tragedy is the fault of the president because he doesn’t regularly say the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” the talking-point repugs love to revert to when they want to blame Obama for not banning all Muslims.

For the record, there has been no confirmation that the attack in Orlando had anything to do with Islam, especially because of the added element of sexuality which appeared to be the target of the attack.

We will find out a lot more about the motives of the shooter as time goes by, but from listening to Fox, you would think we already knew.

Watch.

TOM TOMORROW: When We Were Great

Tom Tomorrow: "I didn’t have time yesterday to write anything in response to the latest horrific gun massacre, but there are relevant cartoons here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Oh, and also here. Those are just off the top of my head, I’ve undoubtedly forgotten others."

DAILY KOS LINK: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/06/13/1537198/-Cartoon-When-we-were-great

Pulse Nightclub Massacre Marks Nearly 1,000 Mass Shootings Since Sandy Hook

By Nathan Wellman

Fifty people were killed in a gay nightclub last night in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in US history. This marks 998 mass shootings in the 912 days since Sandy Hook.

These shooters have murdered at least 1,105 people and wounded 3,929 in just two and a half years.

These numbers come from the Gun Violence Archive, an online database that has been tracking this data since 2013, marking each time four or more people (not counting the shooter) were shot at the same time and location. These astronomically high numbers may actually be too low, Vox reports.

 

Mass shootings — defined as public shootings in which four or more people are shot, excluding domestic, gang, and drug violence — are getting progressively more frequent, according to this analysis from Harvard School of Public Health researchers. Pitifully, these increasingly common massacres are only a sliver of America’s total deaths from firearms, which are now totaling over 32,000 every year.

 

Compared to other developed countries, the US had 29.7 firearm homicides per 1 million people in 2012, whereas Switzerland had 7.7, Canada had 5.1, and Germany had 1.9.

When a mass shooting happens, conservatives viciously attack progressives for calling for more gun control. Barely a few hours after the Orlando massacre, conservative website Red State put out an article which snidely began with “It never fails. The collective stupidity of the left is never more apparent than when there is some kind of violent tragedy that takes place on US soil, particularly when it involves guns.”

And yet, research has definitively shown where there are more guns, there are more homicides. The United States possesses 42% of the entire world’s civilian-owned guns even though we only comprise around 4.4% of the world’s population.

Fifty deaths is the highest body count in a single shooting so far in the United States, but if we continue to allow bought-by-the-NRA conservatives to lead us away from real reform, it won’t take long before somebody goes for the new record.

Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW

Donald Trump Faces Backlash For Tweets About Orlando Shooting

By Sam Frizell

 "Appreciate the congrats," Trump tweeted




Donald Trump faced a backlash on Twitter after tweeting his response to the deadly Orlando shooting Sunday morning, when he acknowledged “congrats” for “being right” on terrorism.

Read more: What to Know About the Pulse Nightclub Shooting in Orlando

Like much of what Trump does, it inspired a wave of responses. It angered Republicans and Democrats as well as some celebrities who criticized with a familiar line: that Trump is self-centered even in moments of tragedy — the shooting killed at least 50 people and is the deadliest mass shooting in American history. The motives of suspected shooter Omar Mateen were not immediately clear.

John Legend, the singer and songwriter, Chris Sacca, the venture capitalist and George Takei, best known for his role on Star Trek, called Trump out on Twitter.

Well-known Republicans criticized Trump as well, including Sen. John McCain’s daughter Meghan and GOP strategist Ana Navarro.

Read more: What We Know About ISIS’s Role in the Orlando Shooting

The Clinton campaign and its allies, who are eyeing a general election strategy that seeks to hang Trump on his own words, criticized the presumptive nominee for his comments.

Others criticized him for calling it a terrorist attack before the facts of the case were fully known.

Amid several tweets about Orlando, Trump also tweeted on Sunday morning his response to the Clinton campaign’s new advertisement.

Microsoft Mistakenly Sold Fallout 4 For Free On Xbox

If you grabbed Fallout 4 for free on Xbox One yesterday, it will be disappearing from your account.

http://www.neowin.net/news/fallout-4-was-accidentally-free-to-download-but-licenses-are-being-revoked 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/167671-Microsoft-Revoking-Free-Fallout-4-Copies-Acquired-Due-to-Xbox-Store-Error-Yesterday 

The GOP Must Be Proud: When Your Party’s Nominee Is The Darling Of White Supremacists

By Alex Kotch

Racists are heavily lobbying to put Donald Trump in the White House — as the Republican Party looks the other way.

It’s no surprise that white supremacists love Donald Trump. For the first time in decades, a presidential nominee is stating explicitly what many in the Republican Party have been dog-whistling for years: that people of color are subhuman, that immigrants aren’t welcome, that white men have the divine right to run this country.

Whites are under attack, even genocide, think the white nationalists, and Trump is the man to prevent it.

William Johnson is head of the white nationalist American Freedom Party, which was formed in 2009 by “racist Southern California skinheads” and has called Trump “The Great White Hope.”

In 1985, Johnson proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would revoke the citizenship of any nonwhite or Hispanic white American. Weirdly, he studied Japanese in college and most of his corporate law firm’s clients are Japanese and Chinese. I guess it’s fine to make money off of people of color, just don’t give them citizenship — and definitely no interracial dating!

The American National Super PAC, formed last September, ran robocalls supporting Trump in Iowa, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Vermont during the first quarter of this year, spending about $13,000. Johnson personally provided most of the funding. The PAC booked $6,000 worth of robocalls in Wisconsin, coming after the first quarter, so in July we’ll find out who has funded and produced these calls.

“The white race is dying out in America and Europe because we are afraid to be called ‘racist,’” narrates Johnson in one of the calls. “Don’t vote for a Cuban. Vote for Donald Trump.”

Another call features white supremacist Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist think tank American Renaissance; spokesman for the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist hate group; and member of the American Freedom Party’s board of directors.

“We don’t need Muslims,” he says. “We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.”

So who made these robocalls happen? From American National Super PAC’s first-quarter report to the Federal Elections Commission, I found some interesting individuals involved in making the ads.

Connected white nationalists, people whose views align nicely with white nationalists’, or simply those who don’t mind taking a paycheck from a racist organization, are mobilizing for Trump, collaborating on political ads to support him.

Here is the cast of characters:

Besides Johnson, the only other funder of the first-quarter robocalls was Earl Holt, who contributed $500 and is president of the Council of Conservative Citizens. Dylann Roof credited Holt’s ideas for inspiring his Charleston massacre.

The super PAC paid $1,500 to Laura Burton of Columbia, South Carolina for consulting. She is the treasurer for Robert Whitaker’s presidential campaign. When you can get paid by one white nationalist, why not two?

Whitaker, once worked in the Reagan administration, was formerly the American Freedom Party’s own 2016 presidential candidate, but the party endorsed Trump because he clearly has a chance to become president. In April, after Johnson ran the robocall campaign for Trump, Whitaker withdrew as the AFP nominee. Now running as an independent, his campaign slogan remains: “‘Diversity’ is a codeword for white genocide.” His campaign site presents “The Mantra,” which eerily addresses “a final solution to the black problem.”

Sam Bushman was hired for consulting, earning $211. Bushman is a conservative radio host who had Donald Trump, Jr. on his show, interviewed by frequent host and white nationalist James Edwards. A racist and an anti-Semite, Edwards is a member of the American Freedom Party and a national board member of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

Clarence Mason, a former Black Panther, was paid $300 for consulting. The Missouri resident is a black author and speaker who now believes that liberalism is slavery and that blacks should stop “whining” about having been enslaved. He told The Daily Caller that Black Lives Matter is “garbage” and that “Barack Obama hates America.”

Johnson was in fact named a California delegate for Trump, as Mother Jones firstreported. The Trump campaign attributed this to a “database error,” and Johnsonresigned as a delegate a few days later. But Johnson has now asked the Trump campaign if he can attend the Republican National Convention as a volunteer. And the American Freedom Party claims it has more Trump delegates who have slipped through the cracks, along with other “white pride” proponents such as Chicago mortgage banker Lori Gayne.

This merry band of racists is cheering for and spending money to benefit Trump, the Republican nominee for president. And despite constant racist language from Trump himself and myriad endorsements from KKK leaders and other unsavory white supremacists, the Republican establishment quickly rallied behind him when Cruz left the race.

What a disgrace: Establishment Republicans who planned to change their tune after 2012 and appeal to Latino voters (but who thought this would really happen?) are now going all in for an outright bigot who took over their party by appealing to an angry base they created. Trump’s supporters are driven most by racial resentment, according to a recent Pew Research study. It’s an embarrassment, but more seriously, a grave danger, that the GOP is willing to rally behind someone whose campaign depends on stoking white racism. And there are more white voters than previously believed, according to an Upshot analysis.

Regardless of whether white nationalist groups continue to advertise on Trump’s behalf, the candidate desperately needs white supremacists’ votes. Many are newly registered voters, and others have never voted for a member of a major U.S. political party. Trump knows this, which explains why, as he pivots to the center for the general election, he called out a judge presiding over his Trump University case because of his Mexican heritage just days before giving what may have been his first teleprompted speech. What Trump should have made clear is, I am racist against Mexicans, and since you have Mexican heritage, you might be biased against me in the case regarding my fraudulent university. Obviously, this is an absurd, and racist, reason to remove a judge from a case.

Trump may have had to pretend on national television that he didn’t “know anything about David Duke,” the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who endorsed him, but he consistently says and tweets things (like Mussolini quotes) that keep white racists enthusiastic about his potential presidency. These statements mixed in with his proposed ban on Muslims and wall at the Mexican border conveniently resonate with the Tea Party’s racist strain as well.

While Trump’s university is being sued for fraud and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has a (very) slight chance of being indicted during an election that, perhaps, more blatantly than ever displays just how corrupt American politics are, only one candidate has the backing of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other hate groups convinced that the white race is experiencing a drawn-out genocide.

Meanwhile, for the presumptive Democratic nominee, African Americans are reliable supporters and Latinos are registering to vote like never before to cast their ballots against Trump.

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Trump's Wealth Built On Stiffing Scores Of Contractors, Businesses And Employees For Years, Report Finds

By Steven Rosenfeld

A pattern of not paying bills in full is traced.

 

Photo Credit: Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com
 
A major investigation by USA Today has revealed one of the sordid secrets to the profit making in Donald Trump’s business empire: don’t pay your bills in full, whether from small businesses, contractors or even the lawyers you’ve hired to stonewall them.

The overall ugly picture that emerges goes far beyond Trump’s use of bankruptcy court, where debts can be forgiven or restructured depending on their category and type of federal bankruptcy filing. What’s most provocative about USA Today’s reporting, which goes beyond previous accounts of the same tactics or his mob connections, is how Trump has a longstanding pattern of ignoring his bills and walking away from debts owed contractors and employees.

“At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments and other government filings reviewed by the USA Today Network, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work,” the newspaper wrote Friday. “Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.”

That summation is the tip of a later iceberg, and one that should make Trump’s white, working-class followers shudder—because he has a habit of stiffing blue-collar laborers.

“In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens—filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work—since the 1980s,” USA Today wrote. “The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.”

Trump’s real record in business matters greatly because it is the only lens into what kind of a manager and executive he actually is, rather than the made-for-reality-TV pose he strikes on the campaign trail. The same goes for Trump’s federal taxes, which he has refused to release, as those would show many other details about how he manages money and whether he even pays any income taxes. He might not, as real estate is a field filled with ways to declare losses and depreciate assets in order to offset tax liabilities.

USA Today sums up Donald Trump as an businessman who repeatedly doesn't pay his bills and relentlessly fights paying in court. It wrote, “The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years. In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.”

Trump and other family members responded to USA Today reporters, with the Republican presidential nominee characterizing the examples given as “a long time ago.” But the paper noted that's not true, as “new cases are continuing.” For example, “Just last month, Trump Miami Resort Management LLC settled with 48 servers at his Miami golf resort over failing to pay overtime for a special event. The settlements averaged about $800 for each worker and as high as $3,000 for one, according to court records. Some workers put in 20-hour days over the 10-day Passover event at Trump National Doral Miami, the lawsuit contends. Trump’s team initially argued a contractor hired the workers, and he wasn’t responsible, and counter-sued the contractor demanding payment.”

There are many such examples. Digging deeper into that one, a lawyer for the stiffed workers said this is the way the Trump organization operates. USA Today quotes Rod Hannah, of Plantation, Florida, the lawyer who represented the workers. “Trump could have settled it right off the bat, but they wanted to fight it out, that’s their M.O.”

Ivanka Trump, who works with her candidate father, told USA Today these disputes are a small slice of their thousands of monthly payments, adding, “It would be irresponsible if my father paid contractors who did lousy work. And he doesn’t do that.”

You can be sure Americans will be hearing a lot more about Trump’s real record in business in coming months, as it is a telling counterpoint to his “make America great” meme. He didn’t make the lives of these tradesmen and businesses great, he made them miserable, and in many cases these solo operators and family-owned businesses did not survive after losing thousands to billionaire Trump.

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Nina Turner blasts Elizabeth Warren: She doesn’t get ‘brownie points’ for slamming Trump

By Travis Gettys

Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D) speaks to Tamron Hall on May 18, 2016. (MSNBC)

A top surrogate for Bernie Sanders isn’t impressed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s attacks against Donald Trump, whom she frequently needles on Twitter and slams in speeches.

Nina Turner said she didn’t think Warren could woo Sanders supporters if Hillary Clinton chose her as running mate, saying the Massachusetts senator hadn’t done enough to help her colleague from Vermont during his primary campaign, reported The Hill.

“It’s easy for Democrats to attack Mr. Trump,” said Nina Turner, the former state senator from Ohio.

“You don’t get any brownie points from me and other progressives for getting into a Twitter war with Mr. Donald Trump. That’s easy. But when the fight was hard for Sen. Bernie Sanders, where was Sen. Warren?”

Turner said she and other Sanders supporters were disappointed that Warren, as one of the most high-profile progressive lawmakers, didn’t campaign for the Democratic challenger.

“They’re gonna attack me for saying this, but I’m a truth-teller at this point,” Turner said.

Warren announced Thursday night that she would endorse Clinton for president.
 

Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Owe The Democratic Party A Damned Thing

By Tom Cahill

Bernie Sanders brought millions of new people into the Democratic Party, including young people, independents, and first-time voters. But what has the Democratic Party done in return?

Now that all states and territories have voted (with the exception of Washington, D.C.) and Hillary Clinton has emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee, the pressure is mounting for the Vermont senator to drop out and endorse Hillary Clinton, and for his supporters to fall in line and vote for the candidate the establishment pre-selected before anyone got a chance to vote.

The media never gave Bernie a chance

Months before Bernie Sanders announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton had used the powerful connections her family has long had to Democratic Party insiders to virtually secure the nomination with an insurmountable lead in superdelegates. This led to the establishment media crowning Clinton as the “uncontested” nominee, who was “poised to win the Democratic nomination without a serious contest.”

Just as the media hammered Clinton’s inevitability into our heads, cable news networks essentially ignored the tremendous energy behind Sanders’ campaign, like his August 2015 West Coast barnstorming rallies, which drew out nearly 100,000 supporters in Washington, Oregon, and California.

However, as the GDELT Project’s 2016 Campaign Television Tracker shows, the highest number of media mentions Bernie Sanders got in a single day that week was 479 on August 13, 2015. That same day, Hillary Clinton got 693 media mentions, a relatively average number of media mentions for Clinton, despite her not holding any mega-rallies. Sanders didn’t break 1,000 media mentions until October of 2015, the day after the first Democratic primary debate. Throughout the course of the primary cycle, Clinton got nearly twice as much media coverage as Sanders.

As Vox recently pointed out, the media plays a significant role in influencing group-think. By establishing Hillary Clinton as the undisputed nominee before anyone got a chance to vote, the media influenced future media coverage of Sanders, portraying Sanders as a non-serious candidate whose chances of toppling Clinton were virtually impossible:

There’s no doubt that the media was largely dismissive of Sanders’s chances from the beginning of the race, even before the first vote was cast, and in a way that severely underestimated his potential to raise funds, stay in the race, and keep winning states long after earlier insurgent candidates had been forced to close up shop.

Even Media Matters, which is run by Clinton attack dog David Brock, published an article at the end of 2015 showing that ABC World News Tonight devoted less than 60 seconds of coverage to Sanders’ campaign throughout the entire year. The Tyndall Report, which tracks media coverage, learned that Bernie Sanders earned fewer than ten minutes of combined prime time news coverage on flagship cable news networks in 2015. CBS Evening News gave Sanders 6.4 minutes of coverage, and NBC Nightly News gave him just 2.9 minutes.

There’s little doubt Sanders’ chances of winning would have dramatically improved had the media given the Vermont senator the same amount of coverage as the former Secretary of State leading up to the first primaries and caucuses. But once Sanders started winning, the Democratic establishment and the Clinton machine (which are arguably one in the same) began working overtime to not only slander Bernie Sanders and his supporters, but to actively stack the deck against him.

The Democratic establishment actively opposed Bernie Sanders

When Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz rolled out the debate schedule for the Democratic primary, Sanders supporters were outraged that only six had been scheduled, while the Republicans scheduled ten. Three of the Democratic debates were scheduled on weekends, when Americans are least likely to be inside, watching television. On two occasions, the Democratic debates competed with major cultural events, like NFL playoff games.
Wasserman Schultz said her debate schedule was meant to maximize viewer exposure to the candidates, which Politifact rated as “False.”  The fact-checking website put two charts side by side, showing that viewership for the Republican debates (nearly all of which were scheduled at prime time, on weekdays) dwarfed viewership for the Democratic debates:

 

Democratic debate ratings

Republican debate ratings

Near the end of 2015, Wasserman Schultz unilaterally acted to remove the Sanders campaign’s access to the DNC voter files, which contains all the crucial information campaigns need to conduct effective voter outreach. The DNC claimed the Sanders campaign improperly accessed information belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and suspended access to the 50-state file with just weeks to go before the pivotal Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary until the Sanders campaign proved it had destroyed all the data improperly accessed.

Even though the Sanders campaign insisted it had informed the DNC of the security breach allowing opposing campaigns to access their opponent’s data, and that there was no visible way to prove it had destroyed data it no longer had, the DNC refused to budge until massive pressure from Sanders supporters forced the DNC’s hand.

When Sanders started beating Hillary Clinton in campaign fundraising, Wasserman Schultz and the DNC took drastic action to try and tilt the money advantage back to Clinton by repealing a rule limiting contributions from Wall Street and corporate lobbyists, originally put in place by Barack Obama.

Several months later, it was revealed that Hillary Clinton and the DNC exploited loopholes in campaign finance law to allow wealthy oligarchs to contribute far beyond the maximum allowable limit to the Clinton campaign. While the maximum amount an individual donor can give in an election cycle is just $2,700, the Hillary Victory Fund (Clinton’s joint fundraising committee) was able to solicit six-figure contributions from billionaires like Walmart heiress Alice Walton as long as the money was given back to the DNC.

While the money was ostensibly meant for state Democratic parties to spend in down-ballot races, the money often went right back to the Hillary Victory Fund after passing through the accounts of state parties. The Victory Fund spent much of this money on efforts that singularly helped Hillary Clinton, rather than the party as a whole. The Bernie Sanders campaign criticized this arrangement as a violation of federal law. As US Uncut reported in early May, 99 percent of the funds meant for state parties had been hoarded by the Clinton campaign.

And of course, Bernie Sanders’ delegates were openly disenfranchised at the Nevada Democratic Convention after Roberta Lange, the state party chair, disqualified enough Sanders delegates to give Hillary Clinton the advantage, and refused to hear appeals from those she disqualified. Additionally, the DNC never made any efforts to correct the lie from lame duck California senator Barbara Boxer — who casually mocked Bernie Sanders’ delegates from the convention floor — that she was physically threatened by Sanders’ supporters.

When looking at all of these instances, it’s hard to argue the Democratic establishment wasn’t working overtime to help Clinton defeat Sanders by any means necessary, despite claims it was neutral in the primary.

The DNC turned a blind eye to rampant voter suppression

The Democratic primary was especially rife with reports of election fraud and major irregularities in multiple contests. However, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz remained seemingly indifferent in each instance, whether it was longtime Democrats’ voter registration mysteriously changing in the Arizona primary, making them ineligible to vote, Bill Clinton violating electioneering laws in Massachusetts, mass purging of voter rolls and forged signatures on voter registrations in the New York primary, and the Chicago elections board erasing votes for Sanders and adding votes for Clinton.

All of these instances fed the narrative that the Democratic primary was rigged against Sanders to benefit Clinton, and the DNC has acted with little urgency to bring accountability to the process. Even though New York’s Democratic attorney general and New York City’s Democratic city comptroller both announced official investigations into the irregularities pervading the voting process, Wasserman Schultz made zero mention of it in her statement following the New York primary.

The Democratic establishment will scapegoat Sanders and his supporters for a Clinton loss in November

Bernie Sanders has, for months now, polled better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. Electoral college maps drawn up by RealClearPolitics, using statewide polling averages, show that Sanders leads Trump by 93 electoral votes with 139 toss-ups, while Clinton only leads Trump by 30 electoral votes, with 180 toss-ups.

RealClearPolitics’ general election map for a Trump/Clinton matchup.

RealClearPolitics’ general election map for a Trump/Sanders matchup.

As the maps above show, Sanders is the stronger general election candidate for a number of reasons. Traditionally blue states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Oregon are swing states if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, while Sanders wins those states outright along with New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, both of which are perennial swing states. Meanwhile, traditionally red states like Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, and Utah are toss-ups if Sanders is the nominee. Missouri and Indiana are almost guaranteed to go Republican if Clinton is the nominee.

Despite this crucial data, the Democratic establishment will blame a Trump presidency on Bernie Sanders and his followers for not getting behind Clinton for the sake of party unity. Pundits have been arguing since May that Sanders staying in the race is harming Clinton’s chances to win in November, despite polls showing that Clinton is the riskier bet as a nominee. Public Policy Polling is already preemptively blaming Sanders supporters for a tight general election race in Pennsylvania, suggesting that a Clinton loss in the Keystone State would be Sanders’ fault.

The one way the establishment can unite the party before November

The truth is, the establishment is desperately hoping Sanders’ supporters will be bullied into supporting Clinton, as the sheer numbers behind the #BernieOrBust movement has the potential to swing the general election, given Clinton’s obvious vulnerabilities in the electoral college. But the Democratic Party has an easy solution to rally Sanders’ supporters behind their chosen candidate. All the party has to do is ban corporate lobbyists from the DNC, abolish the undemocratic superdelegate system, run on Sanders’ policy proposals like a $15/hour national minimum wage, tuition-free public college, and single-payer health care, divorce itself from Wall Street and the military-industrial complex, and actively work to remove the influence of big money in politics.

The Democratic Party establishment has proven for decades that they are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and do whatever it takes to acquire more power. When confronted on its abuse of power, the establishment assures us it will change for the better as long as we continue to enable it with our money and support. If the Democratic Party refuses to adopt the changes listed above, Sanders’ supporters have the numbers, the money, and the justification to form a new, independent political party and break the Democratic Party for good.

Stacey Dash: I Can Win The Black Vote For Donald ‘Because Black People Like To Make Money’

http://crooksandliars.com/2016/06/stacey-dash-i-can-win-black-vote-trump

FBI is now pushing for warrantless access to Internet browsing history

The amendment would apply in terrorism and national security cases, but critics warn against the expansion of powers.

By Zack Whittaker

The Obama administration is pushing to amend existing privacy law in a way that critics argue would allow the government access to internet browsing histories and other metadata -- without needing a warrant.

An amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), set to be considered by the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, will allow the FBI to subpoena records associated with Americans' online communications -- so called electronic communications transactional records - with the use of national security letters, which don't require court approval.

That would allow federal agents to access phone logs, email records, cell-site data used to pinpoint locations, as well as accessing a list of visited websites.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who introduced the amendment, said the change was necessary to prevent "needlessly hamstringing our counterintelligence and counter-terrorism efforts."

Under existing law, national security letters can get access to all kinds of metadata -- but not contents of calls, emails, and other messages. But they don't permit the collection of website addresses, or internet search queries. (That said, the FBI is said to have secret legal interpretations allowing it to collect web histories in some cases.)

That's a problem for FBI director James Comey, who called the omission of the provision in the original law a "typo," arguing that it "affects our work in a very big and practical way," he told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in February.

Or as the EFF staff attorney Andrew Crocker explained in a blog post, "the FBI thinks it was already entitled to get these records using [national security letters], and Congress simply messed up when it drafted the law."

But the Justice Dept.'s Office of Legal Counsel found in 2008 that the FBI was wrong. That's why the FBI is making the push for a change in the law -- making it the second second such push in a decade.

Those privacy advocates are also back, and they brought with them key allies from the tech industry - including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, -- which were among dozens of signatures on an open letter to the Obama administration asking the government to drop the attempt.

"We would oppose any version of these bills that included such a proposal expanding the government's ability to access private data without a court order," says the open letter, dated Monday.
"The civil liberties and human rights concerns associated with such an expansion are compounded by the government's history of abusing NSL authorities," it adds.

But national security letters will still face some level of scrutiny, thanks to a provision in the Freedom Act, which replaced parts of the controversial Patriot Act, which allow secret demands for customer data to be periodically reviewed.

Leading senior senators have rejected the amendment, and will instead push for ECPA reforms, dubbed the Email Privacy Act, which was passed by the House earlier this year.

We reached out to the FBI for comment. 

How 107 Superdelegates Robbed 11 Million Democratic Voters

By Tom Cahill

The Associated Press (AP) has prematurely called the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton, despite some 11 million Democrats still waiting to vote in six states and one territory, based off the opinion of superdelegates who have yet to vote.

The dominant media narrative is that Sanders is asking superdelegates to thwart the will of the public in order to win the Democratic nomination. But the AP came to their conclusion by a phone survey of the 712 superdelegates, meaning Clinton was declared the winner due to private conversations between reporters and a relatively small handful of Democratic party bosses who won’t actually vote for a nominee until the end of July.

Clinton’s nomination depends on superdelegates defying their state’s voters

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver criticized Sanders’ strategy of courting superdelegates at the convention, saying “[Sanders] can win only if a huge number of superdelegates who have committed to Clinton flip their vote against her, despite her having won a clear majority of votes and elected delegates, thereby overturning the popular will.”

Last week, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler mocked Sanders’ battle to the finish as a “false hope,” insinuating that the Vermont senator’s Hail Mary pass to superdelegates is undemocratic by nature:

Sanders claims it would be “factually incorrect” for the media to declare Clinton the presumptive nominee once she crosses the 2,383 threshold. But he is ignoring the fact that Clinton will also win a majority of the pledged delegates. There’s not much of a case he can make to superdelegates to switch sides, especially since he has long insisted that superdelegates should follow the will of the voters.

Fusion’s Terrell Jermaine Starr pointed out that Obama was only able to persuade superdelegates backing Clinton to switch after he started racking up more primary wins than the former First Lady, and that Sen. Sanders is going against the wishes of Democratic voters by continuing his campaign for the Democratic nomination:

It’s a big stretch to believe that superdelegates will overrule the will of the people, who have overwhelmingly voted for the former New York senator… At one point during the 2008 primaries, prominent black politicians were backing Clinton. But after Obama began winning most of the black vote (especially black women) during the primaries, they were pressured to recommit to Obama. Rep. John Lewis was among the first to switch his allegiance. Why? Because the people said so. It would have been odd for Lewis to vote for Clinton, even though his constituents backed Obama. But that is what Sanders is asking superdelegates to do: overrule the people.

All of these arguments are right in that Bernie Sanders will need to rely on superdelegates to switch from Clinton’s side to his in order to become the Democratic nominee. But all three authors neglected to report that Hillary Clinton reached 2,383 delegates only with the help of 107 superdelegates from states Bernie Sanders won, who actively thwarted the will of millions of Democratic voters in their own states.

• In Utah, where Sanders won by a 79-20 margin, two of the state’s four superdelegates are backing Clinton.
• 11 of 16 superdelegates in Minnesota are supporting Clinton, even though Sanders won the state’s March 1 caucus by a 62-38 margin.
• While Sanders blew Clinton out of the water by a 73-27 margin in Washington State, Clinton has 10 of 16 superdelegates. Sanders has zero.
• Six of Wisconsin’s ten superdelegates are supporting Clinton, while only one is backing Sanders. The Vermont senator won the Badger State’s primary by 14 points.
• All nine superdelegates in Rhode Island have committed to supporting Hillary Clinton, even though Bernie Sanders defeated the former Secretary of State by a 12-point margin.
• Sanders also has only one superdelegate in Alaska, same as Clinton, even after winning the state by an 82-18 margin. One Alaska superdelegate backing Clinton patronized and belittled a Sanders supporter who asked her to cast her superdelegate vote with how her state’s residents voted.

Comparatively, only 14 of Sanders’ 49 superdelegates have come from states Hillary Clinton won. Two of those superdelegates came from Arizona, where the US Department of Justice is conducting an official investigation due to widespread complaints of election fraud and voter suppression.

11 million Democrats still haven’t voted

It’s important to note that in 2008, media networks didn’t call the nomination for Barack Obama until after every state and territory had voted. On June 3, after Obama won the final two primaries in Montana and South Dakota, media networks declared him the presumptive nominee, after having enough pledged delegates and unpledged superdelegates to cross the threshold of 2,118 total delegates necessary to clinch the nomination. 241 of Obama’s 478 superdelegates came from the 21 states and 2 territories Hillary Clinton won.

Map of 2008 Democratic primary wins for each candidate. Purple denotes an Obama win, gold denotes a Clinton win.

This year, the key difference is that the AP declared Clinton the presumptive nominee on June 6, a full day before six more states voted. This effectively discourages nearly 11 million registered Democrats from voting (7.43 million in California, 1.79 million in New Jersey, 1.29 million in New Mexico, approximately 320,000 in Washington, DC).

To accept the AP’s declaration of Clinton’s victory as undisputed fact, it would have to be assumed that zero superdelegates will change their minds before the convention. This is highly unlikely, as 99 superdelegates changed their minds in 2008 (98 flipped from Clinton to Obama, one flipped from Obama to Clinton).

However, perhaps the most important detail the AP overlooked when crowning Clinton as the nominee was that this year, Luis Miranda, the Democratic National Committee’s own communications director explicitly told CNN’s Jake Tapper that it’s incorrect for the media to count superdelegates before they vote in July:

LUIS MIRANDA: “On superdelegates, one of the problems is the way the media reports it. Any night you have a primary or a caucus, the media lumps in superdelegates that they basically polled, because they call them up and say, ‘Who are you supporting?’ They don’t actually vote until the convention, so they shouldn’t be included in any count on a primary or caucus night, because the only thing you’re picking on primary or caucus nights are the pledged delegates based on the vote.”

JAKE TAPPER: “When we do our totals, do you think it’s okay to include them?”

LUIS MIRANDA: “Not yet, because they’re not actually voting, and they’re likely to change their minds. You look at 2008, and what happened then was there was all this assumption about what superdelegates were going to do, and many of them did change their mind before the convention, and it shifted the results in the end.”

Clinton could have lost every state and still won the nomination with superdelegates

In addition to the media’s preemptive declaration of a Clinton win, the superdelegate system itself begs the question of whether or not Bernie Sanders was ever given a fair chance at winning the nomination.

In August of 2015, for example, Bloomberg reported that Hillary Clinton had secured the commitments of some 440 superdelegates — or 61.7 percent of all total superdelegates — nearly six months before New Hampshire voters had a chance to cast a ballot in the nation’s first primary. This is inherently undemocratic, as Bloomberg also pointed out that Clinton had such a huge early advantage with party insiders that she could win the nomination outright without even winning a single state:

It’s technically possible for Clinton to win the nomination by dominating the superdelegate count even if she (narrowly) loses every state: Thanks to strict proportional allocation on the Democratic side, a candidate only gains a small delegate advantage for a small edge in primary votes.

Despite the valid concerns Sanders supporters have about the media calling the race too early or superdelegates unfairly tipping the scales in Clinton’s favor, it would take nothing short of a miracle for Sen. Sanders overcome his opponent’s lead in delegates and overall votes and win the nomination. According to the delegate calculator on Demrace.com, Sanders would need to garner 79 percent of the vote in California and at least 50 percent of the vote in every other primary and caucus to overcome his opponent’s pledged delegate lead.

Sanders would also need the votes of more than 7 million of the 11 million registered Democrats in the six states and one territory that have yet to vote in order to have the popular vote advantage. Finally, he would need to convince the majority of Clinton’s superdelegates to change their minds and back him at the national convention. While credible journalists have reported that an undisclosed number of Clinton’s superdelegates are contemplating switching to Sanders should he win the California primary, it’s highly unlikely that would be enough to put the Vermont senator over the 2,383 delegate threshold.

Regardless of how the final primaries and caucuses turn out, Sanders has earned the right to stay in the race until the end of the national convention, and his supporters have every right to question and contribute to the party’s nominating procedures and official platform.

Tom Cahill is a writer for US Uncut based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at tom.v.cahill@gmail.com