Donald Trump, clearly terrified over the direction of the Russia
investigation, is considering to use his pardon powers on himself, his
family members and his aides, according to a stunning new report in The Washington Post.
The Post reports that Trump has asked his advisers about his ability
to pardon himself or others, and another source said that the
president’s lawyers are also discussing the possibility of issuing
pardons.
The president is also reportedly trying to build a case against
Special Counsel Robert Mueller – the man running the wide-ranging
investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and Moscow’s
connections to the Trump campaign.
More from the eye-popping report:
Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways
to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia
investigation, building a case against what they allege are his
conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant
pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.
Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides,
family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according
to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been
discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.
Trump’s legal team declined to comment on the issue. But one
adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in
understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the
limits of Mueller’s investigation.
With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s
lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of
the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of
Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could
serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal
advisers.
It’s hard to be shocked by any news about this president or the
increasingly explosive scandal surrounding his ties to Russia, but this
is a rather incredible development.
The news also comes a day after Trump threatened Mueller in an interview with The New York Times, telling the paper that if Mueller decides to investigate his family’s finances, then he will be crossing a “red line.”
Ultimately, Trump’s efforts to intimidate Mueller in hopes that he
will back off the Russia investigation, while now reportedly considering
whether to pardon himself and those close to him, suggests this is a man running scared.
In just six short months, it's become absolutely clear: Everyone who
didn't vote for Donald Trump was right and everyone who voted for him
was wrong. Yeah, yeah, they weren't wrong in that Trump won the
election, just as someone isn't wrong for supporting a shitty baseball
team. But it's incredibly clear now that the poor suckers and greedy
fuckers who wanted to nuzzle up to Trump's man-teats for a suckle were
wrong on just about every account regarding who he is and what he'd do.
They were wrong that he's a man of his word, they were wrong that he
would look out for working people, they were wrong that he would make
the nation respected "again" (as if it wasn't before), they were wrong
that he wouldn't have scandals, and they were just wrong about him being
a human being worthy of the office. They were wrong and we who voted
against him (and I'm tossing anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton, Jill
Stein, Gary Johnson, and Deez Nutz into the category of "voted against
him") were right.
Trump voters fucked the goat,
and so everything they say should be framed within the fact that they
are goatfuckers. "Oh, you have an opinion on health care? Sorry, you
fucked a goat. I don't give a shit about your goat-fucking opinion," we
should think. But that's not what we do. We don't shun the goatfuckers,
no matter how savagely they fucked that goat. We see that most clearly
by the fact that the news networks and other media outlets still
entertain the opinions of people who supported the Iraq war and never
said they were wrong about it. Goatfuckers get away with it.
So we're treated on an almost daily basis to articles and stories about
Trump voters and what they think about some issue and whether or not
Trump's evil, batshit incompetence is enough for them to bail on the
Orange King. Every single one of these stories is the same: Here are
some assholes who voted for Trump. Let's treat them with reverence, as
if they have hard-won wisdom because they shovel shit or work at
Wal-Mart. Let's tell them about all the fuckery that Donald Trump has
been up to and see what they think. Oh, look, they don't give a shit
because he still hates the Mooslems and Messicans. And what might change
their minds about Trumpochet? "I don’t know what he would have to
do...I guess maybe kill someone. Just in cold blood."
That's an actual quote from an actual person in a Tennesseeanarticle
on Wayne County, Tennessee, an almost entirely white rural area with
less people than my neighborhood. The thrust of the piece is that Trump
voters couldn't give a happy monkey fuck about the Russia scandal. In
fact, they think Trump is being maligned and Don Jr. is awesome. This
is the newest wrinkle in the genre: What do stupid people think about
something they don't understand at all? In the last week, Vox has done a story on Michigan Trump voters, who don't think the Russian connections are any big deal. The BBC sent a reporter
to the Nebraska State Fair to get some American color (yes, ironic, I
know) and some video of deluded shit heels sharing their delusions.
As Newsweek's Alexander Nazaryn wrote,
"The real story here is how thoroughly Trump supporters have been
deceived, both by Trump and tireless boot-lickers like Hannity and
Jones. Every quote from an Ohioan who declares the Russia investigation
is irrelevant is a testament to the delusive brand of Republicanism that
now reigns supreme." Joshua Green said much the same in the New York Times.
Each of the Trump voter pieces generally has a token interview with
someone who doesn't support Trump. But they are presented as
curiosities, the two-headed cow that shouldn't exist but somehow does.
But the reality is, obviously, people who think Trump is full of shit
vastly outnumber the aforementioned suckers and fuckers who stand by
their man. How about interviewing some of us? How about asking us, "How
did you know?" And we can say, "Anyone with a fuckin' brain knew." Ask
us, "What do you think about the Russia dealie?" And we can say, "Either
we do something about it or we're fucked."
Hell, you don't even have to stick to the cities, where the majority of
the country lives. Since you've got a rural jones, you can head to
Bolivar, Tennessee, a town in the ass-crack of nowhere, near to the
Alabama border, as Deep South as you can get. They went
for Hillary Clinton, as did nearby Whiteville. Of course, those are
majority African American towns, so you'd have to change the whole
goddamned narrative away from the mighty white working class.
Or, here's an idea, why not go to the communities that went for Trump
and find the people who didn't. Talk to them. See if they're feeling
smug or sad or angry. See what their ideas are for getting us out of
this or through this goddamn bullshit time. Find out how they're feeling
about Trump's relationship with Russia. Ask them because they, like the
majority of the country, were right.
Let's spend a little time and energy, dear, sweet reporters, on people who aren't barking mad or madly barking.
(Note: If you didn't vote at all, go suck a donkey's dick.)
(Note: If you wanna write to me about "goatfucker shaming," I hate you
already. Same for "donkey-dick sucker shaming." Some things are just
fucking shameful. Sucking a donkey's dick, fucking a goat, and voting
for Donald Trump, for examples.)
A meeting arranged by Donald
Trump Jr. was held at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer who
has connections to the Kremlin.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton
before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during
the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House
briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The
meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J.
Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr.
Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in
confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.
The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trumpclinched the Republican nomination
— points to the central question in federal investigations of the
Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump
campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting
represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign
were willing to accept Russian help.
And
while Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed
meetings between his associates and the Russians, the episode at Trump
Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving members of
his inner circle during the campaign — as well as the first one known to
have included his eldest son. It came at an inflection point in the
campaign, when Donald Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and a
surrogate, was ascendant and Mr. Manafort was consolidating power.
It
is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually
produced the promised compromising information about Mrs. Clinton. But
the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the
expectation was that she would do so.
In
a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the
Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries
were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information
that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic
National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were
vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information
was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no
meaningful information.”
He
said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children
and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian
human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian
children.
“It
became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the
claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the
meeting,” Mr. Trump said.
When
he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, he said only that it
was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton.
President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also attended the meeting last year at Trump Tower.Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Mark
Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer, said on Sunday that
“Trump was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”
Lawyers
and spokesmen for Mr. Kushner and Mr. Manafort did not immediately
respond to requests for comment. In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said
he asked Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner to attend, but did not tell them
what the meeting was about.
American intelligence agencies have concluded
that Russian hackers and propagandists worked to tip the election
toward Donald J. Trump, in part by stealing and then providing to
WikiLeaks internal Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails that
were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton. WikiLeaks began releasing the
material on July 22.
A
special prosecutor and congressional committees are now investigating
the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians. Mr. Trump has
disputed that, but the investigation has cast a shadow over his
administration.
Mr.
Trump has also equivocated on whether the Russians were solely
responsible for the hacking. On Sunday, two days after his first meeting
as president with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post:
“I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our
election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion.....”
He also tweeted that
they had “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that
election hacking, & many other negative things, will be
guarded...””
On
Sunday morning on Fox News, the White House chief of staff, Reince
Priebus, described the Trump Tower meeting as a “big nothing burger.”
“Talking
about issues of foreign policy, issues related to our place in the
world, issues important to the American people is not unusual,” he said.
But
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on
the House Intelligence Committee, one of the panels investigating
Russian election interference, said he wanted to question “everyone that
was at that meeting.”
“There’s
no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul
Manafort or with Mr. Kushner or the president’s son if it wasn’t about
the campaign and Russia policy,” Mr. Schiff said after the initial Times
report.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting,
is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky
Act.
The
adoption impasse is a frequently used talking point for opponents of
the act. Ms. Veselnitskaya’s campaign against the law has also included
attempts to discredit the man after whom it was named, Sergei L.
Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor who died in 2009 in mysterious
circumstances in a Russian prison after exposing one of the biggest
corruption scandals during Mr. Putin’s rule.
Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 in Cleveland.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
Ms.
Veselnitskaya’s clients include state-owned businesses and a senior
government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the
United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and
associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according
to a former senior law enforcement official.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya said in a statement on Saturday that “nothing at all
about the presidential campaign” was discussed. She recalled that after
about 10 minutes, either Mr. Kushner or Mr. Manafort walked out.
She
said she had “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and
“never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the
Russian government.”
The
Trump Tower meeting was disclosed to government officials in recent
days, when Mr. Kushner, who is also a senior White House aide, filed a
revised version of a form required to obtain a security clearance.
The Times reported in April
that he had failed to disclose any foreign contacts, including meetings
with the Russian ambassador to the United States and the head of a
Russian state bank. Failure to report such contacts can result in a loss
of access to classified information and even, if information is
knowingly falsified or concealed, in imprisonment.
Mr.
Kushner’s advisers said at the time that the omissions were an error,
and that he had immediately notified the F.B.I. that he would be
revising the filing.
In
a statement on Saturday, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said:
“He has since submitted this information, including that during the
campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with
representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during
transition. Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included,
out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person,
which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law Donald
Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to
cooperate and share what he knows.”
Mr.
Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the
meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional
investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to
people familiar with the events. Neither Mr. Manafort nor Mr. Kushner
was required to disclose the content of the meeting.
A spokesman for Mr. Manafort declined to comment.
Since
the president took office, Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric have
assumed day-to-day control of their father’s real estate empire. Because
he does not serve in the administration and does not have a security
clearance, Donald Trump Jr. was not required to disclose his foreign
contacts.
Federal and congressional investigators have not publicly
asked for any records that would require his disclosure of Russian
contacts.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya is a formidable operator with a history of pushing the
Kremlin’s agenda. Most notable is her campaign against the Magnitsky
Act, which provoked a Cold War-style, tit-for-tat dispute with the
Kremlin when President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2012.
Under
the law, about 44 Russian citizens have been put on a list that allows
the United States to seize their American assets and deny them visas.
The United States asserts that many of them are connected to the fraud
exposed by Mr. Magnitsky, who after being jailed for more than a year
was found dead in his cell. A Russian human rights panel found that he
had been assaulted. To critics of Mr. Putin, Mr. Magnitsky, in death,
became a symbol of corruption and brutality in the Russian state.
An
infuriated Mr. Putin has called the law an “outrageous act,” and, in
addition to banning American adoptions, he compiled what became known as
an “anti-Magnitsky” blacklist of United States citizens.
Among
those blacklisted was Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in
Manhattan, who led notable convictions of Russian arms and drug
dealers. Mr. Bharara was abruptly fired in March, after previously being asked to stay on by President Trump.
One
of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients is Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of
Prevezon Holdings, an investment company based in Cyprus. He is the son
of Petr Katsyv, the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways
and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In a civil forfeiture
case prosecuted by Mr. Bharara’s office, the Justice Department alleged
that Prevezon had helped launder money linked to the $230 million
corruption scheme exposed by Mr. Magnitsky by putting it in New York
real estate and bank accounts. Prevezon recently settled the case for $6
million without admitting wrongdoing.
Ms. Veselnitskaya was also deeply involved in the making of a film that disputes the widely accepted version
of Mr. Magnitsky’s life and death. In the film and in her statement,
she said the true culprit of the fraud was William F. Browder, an
American-born financier who hired Mr. Magnitsky to investigate the fraud
after three of his investment funds companies in Russia were seized.
Mr. Browder called the film a state-sponsored smear campaign.
“She’s not just some private lawyer,” Mr. Browder said of Ms. Veselnitskaya. “She is a tool of the Russian government.”
John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, testified in May
that he had been concerned last year by Russian government efforts to
contact and manipulate members of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Russian
intelligence agencies do not hesitate at all to use private companies
and Russian persons who are unaffiliated with the Russian government to
support their objectives,” he said.
Among those now under investigation is Michael T. Flynn, who was forced to resign as
Mr. Trump’s national security adviser after it became known that he had
falsely denied speaking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions
imposed by the Obama administration over the election hacking.
Congress
later discovered that Mr. Flynn had been paid more than $65,000 by
companies linked to Russia, and that he had failed to disclose those
payments when he renewed his security clearance and underwent an
additional background check to join the White House staff.
In May, the president fired the F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey, who days later provided information about a meeting
with Mr. Trump at the White House. According to Mr. Comey, the president
asked him to end the bureau’s investigation into Mr. Flynn; Mr. Trump
has repeatedly denied making such a request. Robert S. Mueller III, a
former F.B.I. director, was then appointed as special counsel.
The
status of Mr. Mueller’s investigation is not clear, but he has
assembled a veteran team of prosecutors and agents to dig into any
possible collusion.
Follow Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman on Twitter.
Maggie Haberman, Sophia Kishkovsky and Eric Lipton contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Apparently there are still some that don't understand what the Green Party's purpose is. So let me explain.
There are two reasons, only two, that people run for federal office
under the Green Party. The first is personal ego and enrichment (and
free trips to Russia). The second is to help Republicans defeat
Democrats. That's it.
It never has anything to do with policy. Or with giving voters
another "choice". The Green Party isn't a political choice any more
than a lottery ticket is a retirement plan. And the people selling you
the Green Party know that, just like the ones selling you lottery
tickets do. Actually that's not fair to lottery tickets. Some people
have won the lottery. But in 20+ years of trying, no Green has come
anywhere close to winning a house or senate seat or a single electoral
vote. Blowing your money on lottery tickets is more rational than
blowing your vote on the Green Party.
With Jill Stein, if she actually believed any of her own bullshit,
she would be utterly devastated by the election. First, she gets about
1% of the vote. Second, the guy who wins proceeds to do the opposite of
everything in the Green Platform. The Greens like to bash Dems about
how bad the Dems did, but the Dems got 40 times as many votes in
November. Also the Dems hold infinitely more congressional seats than
the Green party ever has and ever will.
But, facing this epic defeat and humiliating showing, Stein is
(still) out bragging about the "critical role" she played. This is a
straightforward admission that her objective all along was not President
Stein, but President Trump, and that she feels her siphoning away votes
from Dems and convincing gullible alt-leftists that Trump was the
lesser evil was critical to Trump's victory.
She wanted Trump to win, she helped Trump win, and now she's happy about it. She's a Trump ally, period.
Trump’s budget calls for sharply reducing funding for programs that
shelter the poor and combat homelessness — with a notable exception: It
leaves intact a type of federal housing subsidy that is paid directly to
private landlords.
One of those landlords is Trump himself, who
earns millions of dollars each year as a part-owner of Starrett City,
the nation’s largest subsidized housing complex. Trump’s 4 percent stake
in the Brooklyn complex earned him at least $5 million between January
of last year and April 15, according to his recent financial disclosure.
When will the people of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, those
stalwart Trump voters who believe he’ll be bringing back coal jobs,
finally figure out they’ve been had?
History suggests it's
unrealistic to expect people to change their minds quickly. This is a
pattern that has held for centuries. In the 1600's the Salem witch trials
dragged on for eight long months before townsfolk finally began to
realize that they had been caught up in an irrational frenzy. More
recently, Americans proved during Watergate that they are reluctant to
turn on a president they have just elected despite mounds of evidence
incriminating him in scandalous practices. The Watergate burglary took
place on June 17, 1972. But it wasn't until April 30, 1973 – eleven
months later – that his popularity finally fell below 50 percent. This
was long after the Watergate burglars had been tried and convicted and
the FBI had confirmed news reports that the Republicans had played dirty
tricks on the Democrats during the campaign. Leaked testimony had even
showed that former Attorney General John Mitchell knew about the
break-in in advance. But not until Nixon fired White House Counsel John
Dean and White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resigned
did a majority turn against the president. And even at that point
Nixon's poll numbers stood higher than Trump's. Nixon: 48 percent;
Trump: 42 percent.
It's not just conservative voters who are
reluctant to change their minds. So are liberals. After news reports
surfaced in the 1970s proving that John Kennedy was a serial philanderer
millions of his supporters refused to acknowledge it. A poll in 2013
show a majority of Americans still think of him as a good family man.
Thus
far not even many leading Democrats have been willing to come out in
favor of Trump's impeachment. Cory Booker, the liberal senator from New
Jersey, said this past week it's simply too soon. And if a guy like
Booker is not yet prepared to come straight out for impeachment, why
should we think Trump voters would be willing to? It is only just in the
last few weeks that polls show that a plurality of voters now favor
Trump's impeachment. (Twelve percent of self-identified Trump voters
share this view, which is remarkable.)
It's no mystery why people
are reluctant to change their minds. Social scientists have produced
hundreds of studies that explain the phenomenon. Rank partisanship is
only part of the answer. Mainly it’s that people don't like to admit
they were wrong, which is what they would be doing if they concede that
Trump is not up to the job. When Trump voters hear news that puts their
leader in an unfavorable light they experience cognitive dissonance. The
natural reaction to this is to deny the legitimacy of the source of the
news that they find upsetting. This is what explains the harsh attacks
on the liberal media. Those stories are literally making Trump voters
feel bad. As the Emory University social scientist Drew Westen
has demonstrated, people hearing information contrary to their beliefs
will cease giving it credence. This is not a decision we make at the
conscious level. Our brain makes it for us automatically.
So what
leads people to finally change their minds? One of the most convincing
explanations is provided by the Theory of Affective Intelligence. This
mouthful of a name refers to the tendency of people experiencing
cognitive dissonance to feel anxiety when they do so. As social
scientist George Marcus has explained, when the burden of hanging onto
an existing opinion becomes greater than the cost of changing it, we
begin to reconsider our commitments. What's the trigger? Anxiety. When
there's a mismatch between our views of the way the world works and
reality we grow anxious. This provokes us to make a fresh evaluation.
What
this research suggests is that we probably have a ways to go before
Trump voters are going to switch their opinions. While some are
evidently feeling buyers' remorse, a majority aren't. They're just not
anxious enough yet. Liberals need not worry. The very same headlines
that are giving them an upset stomach are making it more and more likely
Trump voters are also experiencing discomfort. What might push them
over the edge? One possibility would be a decision to follow through on
his threat to end subsidies to insurance companies under Obamacare,
leading to the collapse of the system, and the loss of coverage for
millions of Trump voters. That’s become more and more likely since the
Senate is apparently unable to pass the repeal and replace measure Trump
has been counting on. So liberals just have to wait and watch. Will
the story unfold like Watergate? Every day the answer increasingly
seems yes.
An optimist would argue that social media will
help push people to change their minds faster now than in the past. But
social media could also have the opposite effect. People living in a
bubble who get their media from biased sources online may be less likely
to encounter the contrary views that stimulate reflection than was
common, say, in the Nixon years when virtually all Americans watched the
mainstream network news shows. Eventually, one supposes, people will
catch on no matter how they consume news. Of late even Fox News viewers
have heard enough disturbing stories about Trump to begin to reconsider
their commitment to him. That is undoubtedly one reason why Nate
Silver found that so many Trump voters are reluctant to count themselves
among the strongest supporters.
The White House's real position on bringing back coal jobs was revealed
after Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn made it clear in a meeting with
reporters that coal isn't even good feedstock anymore, and the future of
American energy is in natural gas, solar, and wind.
Here is what Cohn told reporters according to The White House Press Pool:
Cohn’s comments are the opposite of what Trump promised during the campaign when he said,
“We’re going to get those miners back to work … the miners of West
Virginia and Pennsylvania, which was so great to me last week, Ohio and
all over are going to start to work again, believe me.
They are going to
be proud again to be miners.”
The truth is that the coal jobs are gone, and they aren’t coming
back. Trump lied to former and current coal miners in places like West
Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Western Pennsylvania.
It was a rare moment of truth from the Trump administration that is
likely to be walked back by the White House. The coal jobs aren’t coming
back. Trump’s advisers know this even as the President continues to
sell a fantasy to a depressed economic region of a coal based revival
that is never going to come.
House Republicans just voted to slash hundreds of billions of dollars
in health care for the poor as part of their Obamacare replacement.
Now, they’re weighing a plan to take the scalpel to programs that
provide meals to needy kids and housing and education assistance for
low-income families.
Donald Trump’s refusal to overhaul Social Security and
Medicare — and his pricey wish-list for infrastructure, a border wall
and tax cuts — is sending House budget writers scouring for pennies in
politically sensitive places: safety-net programs for the most
vulnerable.
Under enormous internal pressure to quickly balance the budget,
Republicans are considering slashing more than $400 billion in spending
through a process to evade Democratic filibusters in the Senate,
multiple sources told POLITICO.
The proposal, which would be part of the House Budget Committee's
fiscal 2018 budget, won't specify which programs would get the ax;
instead it will instruct committees to figure out what to cut to reach
the savings. But among the programs most likely on the chopping block,
the sources say, are food stamps, welfare, income assistance for the
disabled and perhaps even veterans benefits.
If enacted, such a plan to curb safety-net programs — all while
juicing the Pentagon’s budget and slicing corporate tax rates — would
amount to the biggest shift in federal spending priorities in decades.
Atop that, GOP budget writers will also likely include Speaker Paul
Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal to essentially privatize Medicare in their
fiscal 2018 budget, despite Trump’s unwavering rejection of the idea.
While that proposal is more symbolic and won’t become law under this
budget, it’s just another thorny issue that will have Democrats again
accusing Republicans of “pushing Granny off the cliff.”
“The Budget Committee is trying to force the entire conference and
committees of jurisdiction to focus on ways to bring down this deficit,”
said senior budget panel member Rep. Tom Cole.
Republicans have long
sought to tackle the nearly $20 trillion debt, but Trump has tied their
hands by ruling out cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
The Oklahoma Republican, however, acknowledged that mandatory
spending reductions could become “very tough issues” — though he
declined to name which programs would see major cuts:
“These are hard
for anybody, no matter where you’re at on the political spectrum.”
While budget writers are well aware of the sensitive nature of their
proposal, they feel they have no choice if they want to balance the
budget in a decade, which they’ve proposed for years, and give Trump
what he wants.
Enraged by Democrats claiming victory after last month’s government
funding agreement, White House officials in recent weeks have pressed
Hill Republicans to include more Trump priorities in the fiscal 2018
blueprint.
House Budget Republicans hope to incorporate those wishes and are
expected, for example, to budget for Trump’s infrastructure plan. Tax
reform instructions will also be included in the budget, paving the way
for both chambers to use the powerful budget reconciliation process to
push a partisan tax bill through Congress on simple majority votes, as
well as the $400 billion in mandatory cuts.
“The critique last time was that we didn’t embed enough Trump agenda
items into our budget,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a budget panel
member. Trump has "made it clear it will be embedded in this budget. …
And so people will see a process much more aligned with President
Trump’s agenda in this forthcoming budget.”
New spending, however, makes already tough math even trickier for a
party whose mantra is “balance the budget in 10 years.” Lawmakers need
to cut roughly $8 trillion to meet that goal, budget experts say. And
while a quarter of their savings in previous budgets came from repealing
Obamacare and slicing $1 trillion from Medicaid, Republicans cannot
count on those savings anymore because their health care bill sucked up
all but $150 billion of that stash — relatively speaking, mere pocket
change to play with.
Republicans’ first reflex would be to turn to entitlement reform to
find savings. Medicare and Social Security, after all, account for the
lion’s share of government spending and more than 70 percent of all
mandatory spending.
But while former Freedom Caucus conservative-turned-White House
budget director Mick Mulvaney has tried to convince the president of the
merits of such reforms, Trump has refused to back down on his campaign
pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security alone. (He’s reversed
himself on a vow not to touch Medicaid, which would see $880 billion in
cuts under the Obamacare repeal bill passed by the House.)
Mulvaney, sources say, has been huddling on a weekly basis with House
Budget Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Senate Budget Chairman Mike
Enzi (R-Wyo.) to plot a path forward. There appears to be some common
ground to consider cuts to other smaller entitlement programs:While
the Office of Management and Budget would not respond to a request for
comment, CQ reported Tuesday that the White House was also considering
hundreds of billions in cuts to the same programs being eyed by House
budget writers.
“I’ve already started to socialize the discussion around here in the
West Wing about how important the mandatory spending is to the drivers
of our debt,” Mulvaney told radio host Hugh Hewitt in March. “There are
ways that we cannot only allow the president to keep his promise, but to
help him keep his promise by fixing some of these mandatory programs.”
Final details of the GOP’s budget plan aren’t expected until June,
and specific language mandating the mandatory cuts still hasn’t been
written, according to one aide familiar with the process.
Committees
would then have several months to put together the
department-by-department details on what exactly to cut, proposals that
probably won’t land until the fall at the earliest, given the
legislative calendar.
The idea could run into problems: It is unclear whether such cuts
would be acceptable in the more moderate Senate. In order for the
proposal to actually move, Senate Republicans would need to include the
same instructions in their own budget.
In the House, Republican leaders hope the moves toward deficit
reduction will buy them some good will with conservatives going into
September, when the party’s right flank will have to swallow difficult
votes to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government.
Cole argued the deficit-trimming push will appeal to the House
Freedom Caucus, which blocked the House GOP’s budget on the floor last
year in protest of spending levels its members considered too high.
But pleasing conservatives this time around will fuel anxiety on the
other end of the conference. Endorsing cuts to programs for the poor
will certainly make centrist House Republicans — many of whom were
uncomfortable voting to slice Medicaid just weeks ago in the Obamacare
repeal bill — very uncomfortable.
Rep. Charlie Dent, a centrist and senior Appropriations Committee
member, said budget reconciliation instructions should center solely on
tax reform, which “is complex enough on its own,” he said.
“All I can say is: Tax reform by itself is very complex and
controversial,” Dent (R-Pa.) said. “Adding some of these other changes
will only make the tax reform more difficult.”
Asked about mandatory programs that might be cut, he added: “This
will create challenges, no question about it. When so many of the
entitlement programs are taken off the table for discussion … that
limits our ability to fund the non-defense discretionary programs and
other mandatory programs that affect a lot of people.”
GOP backers of the idea will argue in the coming weeks and months
that moderates have voted for GOP budgets that included similar cuts in
the past — so they should be able to support them again.
But if House GOP leadership has learned anything from the Obamacare
repeal debacle, it should be that voting for something that has no
chance of becoming law and makes for great campaign fodder is much
easier than backing a bill that could be enacted.
The Jimmy Dore Show is a hilarious and irreverent take on news, politics
and culture featuring Jimmy Dore, a professional stand up comedian,
author and podcaster.
With over 5 million downloads on iTunes, the show
is also broadcast on KPFK stations throughout the country.
It is part of
the Young Turks Network-- the largest online news show in the world.
"The Associated Press, via the Boston Globe, reports that earlier this
month, “Ivanka Trump’s company won provisional approval from the Chinese
government for three new trademarks, giving it monopoly rights to sell
Ivanka brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world’s
second-largest economy.”
What’s significant is that the
trademarks were awarded on April 6 — which just happened to be the same
day that the Trump family entertained Chinese President Xi Jinping at
Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Sunday blamed the
American people for the decision of Senate Republicans not to grant
President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick Garland, a
hearing.
"The tradition had been not to confirm vacancies in the middle of a presidential [election] year," McConnell told Meet the Press
host Chuck Todd. "You'd have to go back 80 years to find the last time
it happened... Everyone knew, including President Obama's former White
House counsel, that if the shoe had been on the other foot, [Democrats]
wouldn't have filled a Republican president's vacancy in the middle of a
presidential election."
"That's a rationale to vote against his confirmation," Todd argued.
"Why not put him up for a vote? Any senator can have a rationale to not
to vote for a confirmation. Why not put Merrick Garland on the floor and
if the rationale is, 'You know what? Too close to an election,' then
vote no?"
McConnell laughed defensively.
"Look, we litigated that last year," the Majority Leader stuttered.
"The American people decided that they wanted Donald Trump to make the
nomination, not Hillary Clinton."
McConnell argued that Democrats should focus on the issue at hand, the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, Trump's Supreme Court pick.
"There's no rational reason, no basis for voting against Neil Gorsuch," McConnell opined.
"You say it's been litigated, the Garland situation," Todd replied.
"For a lot of Senate Democrats, they're not done litigating this... What
was wrong with allowing Merrick Garland to have an up or down vote?"
"I already told you!" McConnell exclaimed. "You don't fill Supreme Court vacancies in the middle of a presidential election."
"Should that be the policy going forward?" Todd interrupted. "Are you
prepared to pass a resolution that says in election years any Supreme
Court vacancy [will not be filled] and let it be a sense of the Senate
resolution, that says no Supreme Court nominations will be considered in
any even numbered year? Is that where we're headed?"
"That's an absurd question," McConnell complained. "We were right in
the middle of a presidential election year. Every body knew that either
side -- had the shoe been on the other foot -- wouldn't have filled it.
But that has nothing to do with what we're voting on this year."
It's really one of the weirdest things in the American Health Care Act,
the bullshit bill that bullshit Republicans rolled out so their
bullshit president could declare that he was St. Donald fighting the
Affordable Care Act dragon. From pages 10-16, the bill's authors lay out
the conditions by which MegaMillions and Powerball and other winners
would have to pay for their own damn health insurance. That new part
takes up a tenth of the length of the entire 66 page bill that escaped Mario Kart
character Sean Spicer jigged around and pointed at for its brevity,
contrasting it with the monstrously huge stack of pages that make up
Obamacare (yeah, the black guy's was bigger and you could do more with
it).
And the lottery section is just bizarrely precise in talking about the
conditions when a lottery winner wouldn't be able to get Medicaid: "a
State shall, in determining such eligibility, include such winnings or
income (as applicable) as income received— (I) in the month in which
such winnings or income (as applicable) is received if the amount of
such winnings or income is less than $80,000; (II) over a period of 2
months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is
greater than or equal to $80,000 but less than $90,000; (III) over a
period of 3 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as
applicable) is greater than or equal to $90,000 but..." You get the
idea.
Obsessively detailed, no?
This is easy to mock in a "God, how fucking dumb are they?" kind of way.
Except, instead, looking at why this language is in the bill reveals
something just a little more sinister about the hypocrisy under which
the GOP is operating to commit this health care fuckery.
One of the reasons that Republicans are desperately trying to cram the
bill through like a limp cock on an unlubed asshole is because the
Congressional Budget Office hasn't finished
its scoring of the bill to see what its effects might be. When the CBO
is done, it will likely reveal that the AHCA is, as previously
mentioned, a bullshit bill that will cost a ton of money and kick
millions of people off health insurance. Republicans in the House, at
least, are trying to maintain the illusion that they're not just
complete twat mites who want to straight up murder people to give the
wealthy a tax cut, but, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on.
A cynical reader might be thinking, "Well, sure, everyone loves the CBO
when it gives them the numbers they want. What's the big deal?" But
that's not quite cynical enough.
See, the lottery exclusion
up there was actually first brought up in 2016 because, apparently,
there are enough winners to make a big damn difference: "Using the
typical per capita cost for Medicaid adults, this provision would reduce
direct spending by $475 million over the 2016-2026 period." You know
who came up with that nearly half-billion dollars in savings because of a
seemingly odd provision? The Congressional Budget Office.
That's the depth of hypocrisy occurring here. The Republicans need the
CBO's figures to write their goddamn bill, but they are running scared
from the CBO when it comes to the final bill's effects on Americans.
That's the incredible dickishness involved here.
The
MSNBC host told America to "get back to the main point," which is that
it's slowly looking like the Trump campaign was working with Russia to
topple Hillary Clinton.
On MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show on Tuesday, the liberal superstar
dropped another Russian reality check on viewers, telling America to
“get back to the main point,” which is that it’s slowly looking like the
Trump campaign was working with Russia to topple Hillary Clinton last
year.
In her opening segment, Maddow focused on a so-far unsubstantiated
dossier released in January that details damning links between Trump and
high-ranking Russian officials. While Trump and his apologists try to
muddy the waters, point fingers, and deny any wrongdoing, more and more
of that controversial dossier has become verified as truth.
As Maddow said, pieces from that document continue to fall into
place, which is slowly raising the likelihood that Russia and Trump’s
campaign worked together.
Rachel Maddow notes that while the dossier of intelligence about Donald
Trump ties to Russia remains unconfirmed, pieces of it have checked out
upon investigation by the press, though the primary government
investigators are former Trump campaign officials.
Maddow said:
Forget all the salacious personal stuff. Forget all the
stuff that made the White House so mad when this was published. The
bottom line of this dossier, the bottom line allegation, the point of it
is that the Trump campaign didn’t just benefit from Russia interfering
in our presidential campaign. The point of this is that they colluded,
they helped, they were in on it. The money quote from this dossier is,
“The operation had been conducted with the full knowledge of Trump and
senior members of his campaign team.” That’s basically what this whole
dossier alleges – that the Trump folks were in on it. There were
multiple people close to Trump, involved in the Trump campaign, who were
in contact with the Russian government about the Russian government’s
attacks on Hillary Clinton, while those attacks were happening, while
Russia was waging these attacks. Overall, yes, we still have to describe
this as a sheaf of uncorroborated allegations, but little pieces
supporting that bottom line thesis really do keep falling in line.
Maddow then listed the series of Russian revelations – and secret
meetings between Trump associates and the Russian officials – that have
come out over the past several weeks, despite initial claims from the
president that nobody on his team met with the Russians during the
campaign.
It turns out that more than a half-dozen Trump associates are linked
to Russia, including Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, Carter Page, J.D.
Gordon, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Michael Cohen.
As Maddow noted in her coverage, it was reported by Politico
on Tuesday that one of those associates, Carter Page, was given
permission by the Trump campaign last year to make a visit to Russia in
the heat of the 2016 election cycle.
All of these bits of information are turning what was previous an
unverified dossier into a credible document implicating Donald Trump’s
presidential campaign in what would be the biggest political scandal in
U.S. history.
Even though there is so much going on in our politics right now, much
of it disturbing and distracting, we must not lose focus on this
scandal.
Wells Fargo committed massive fraud and blamed it on its lowest level
employees. Senator Elizabeth Warren isn’t having it. Cenk Uygur, host of
The Young Turks, breaks it down.
"Facing off with the CEO whose massive bank appropriated customers'
information to create millions of bogus accounts, Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
D-Mass., had sharp questions Tuesday for Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf.
She said Stumpf made millions of dollars in the "scam," telling him,
"You should resign ... and you should be criminally investigated."
As
we've reported before, Wells Fargo is paying $185 million in penalties
for acts that date to at least to 2011. The firm says it fired some
5,300 employees who were found to have created false accounts as it
sought to increase "cross-selling" — building the number of accounts
each customer holds...
The exchanges between Warren and Stumpf
were among the sharpest, but other senators also pressed the executive
about what have become hot topics as public outrage has grown over the
case. Here's some of what panel Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,
and others wanted to know:
Whether Stumpf regards the case as one
of fraudWhether the bank will "claw back" any of the millions it has
paid to former executive Carrie Tolstedt, who is retiring with nearly
$125 million
How the bank will help customers whose credit ratings have been hurt by the fake accounts…”*
Corpulent, multi-divorced sea cucumber Rush Limbaugh apparently still
has a radio program.
Limbaugh, like Ann Coulter, is desperately clawing
at the ledge of relevance, trying to prevent his final fall off the
cliff and into the Pat Buchanan Valley of the Lost, and he thinks that
the number one priority in Uhmerka is to stop Hillary Clinton from
becoming president.
He is so committed to this and to electing
corpulent, multi-divorced cartoon Donald Trump that, today, on his show, Oxy the Walrus's Spunkorama of Incoherent Rage,
he told his listeners, in so many words, "Don't be fucking dumb twats.
Of course Donald Trump was a fuckin' liar who never meant that he'd
deport all the stinky illegals. Vote for him for Uhmerka."
The actual quote
ain't that far off: "I never took him seriously on this," and, as far
as Trump's idiot hordes of voters who did believe him, "They still don't
care! My point is they still don't care! They're gonna stick with him
no matter what."
And why is that?
Because the evil whore of Babylon,
Hillary Clinton, will get her whore germs all over this beautiful
country just like Nigger Obama got his nigger germs everywhere and the
country will be flushed down the toilet like one of those icky tampon
things that women have to put up their hoo-has or something.
Again, the actual quote ain't that far off from the hyperbole there: " I
don't care what the options are. Anybody but Hillary Clinton. Anybody
but more of what we have had the last eight years...We're losing our
country. Our country's being torn apart. Our country's being
disassembled right before our very eyes by people who have that as their
objective. And it's working on people like Colin Kaepernick, by the
way. It's working on a whole lot of otherwise innocent people who are
being radicalized each and every day by hatred for this country, which
is absurd." Do the whore and the nigger have no shame? They are making
innocent footballers become politically aware, and if the footballers
become woke, then rape-by-Hottentot can't be that far behind. Why won't
Obama stop jizzing in the face of Lady Liberty? Why won't Hillary stop
twerking on Uncle Sam?
But, no, really, it's so much wiser to vote for the person that you just
fucking admitted has been lying to the faces of millions of people.
It's so much better to trust someone you are saying is a shameless
fraud. That is surely the better path for Uhmerka.
Rush Limbaugh has been fucking the corpse of the dead past for decades
now. It's time to stomp his sausage fingers and make him plunge away.
Among the many things New Yorkers pride ourselves on is food: making
it, selling it and consuming only the best, from single-slice pizza to
four-star sushi. We have fish markets, Shake Shacks and, as of this
year, 74 Michelin-starred restaurants.
Yet most everything we eat is fraudulent.
In his new book, “Real Food Fake Food,”
author Larry Olmsted exposes the breadth of counterfeit foods we’re
unknowingly eating. After reading it, you’ll want to be fed
intravenously for the rest of your life.
Think you’re getting Kobe steak when you order the $350 “Kobe steak”
off the menu at Old Homestead? Nope — Japan sells its rare Kobe beef to
just three restaurants in the United States, and 212 Steakhouse is the
only one in New York. That Kobe is probably Wagyu, a cheaper, passable
cut, Olmsted says. (Old Homestead declined The Post’s request for
comment.)
Fraudulence spans from haute cuisine to fast food: A February 2016
report by Inside Edition found that Red Lobster’s lobster bisque
contained a non-lobster meat called langostino. In a statement to The
Post, Red Lobster maintains that langostino is lobster meat and said
that in the wake of the IE report, “We amended the menu description of
the lobster bisque to note the multiple kinds of lobster that are
contained within.”
Moving on: That extra-virgin olive oil you use on salads has probably
been cut with soybean or sunflower oil, plus a bunch of chemicals. The
100 percent grass-fed beef you just bought is no such thing — it’s very
possible that cow was still pumped full of drugs and raised in a cramped
feedlot.
Unless your go-to sushi joint is Masa or Nobu, you’re not getting the
sushi you ordered, ever, anywhere, and that includes your regular sushi
restaurant where you can’t imagine them doing such a thing, Olmsted
says. Your salmon is probably fake and so is your red snapper. Your
white tuna is something else altogether, probably escolar — known to
experts as “the Ex-Lax fish” for the gastrointestinal havoc it wreaks.
Escolar is so toxic that it’s been banned in Japan for 40 years, but
not in the US, where the profit motive dominates public safety. In fact,
escolar is secretly one of the top-selling fish in America.
The food industry isn’t just guilty of perpetrating a massive health and economic fraud: It’s cheating us out of pleasure.
“Sushi in particular is really bad,” Olmsted says, and as a native
New Yorker, he knows how much this one hurts. He writes that multiple
recent studies “put the chances of your getting the white tuna you
ordered in the typical New York sushi restaurant at zero — as in never.”
Fake food, Olmsted says, is a massive national problem, and the more
educated the consumer, the more vulnerable to bait-and-switch: In 2014,
the specialty-foods sector — gourmet meats, cheeses, booze, oils —
generated over $1 billion in revenue in the US alone.
“This category is rife with scams,” Olmsted writes, and even when it
comes to basics, none of us is leaving the grocery store without some
product — coffee, rice or honey — being faked.
The food industry isn’t just guilty of perpetrating a massive health
and economic fraud: It’s cheating us out of pleasure. These fake foods
produce shallow, flat, one-dimensional tastes, while the real things are
akin to discovering other galaxies, other universes — taste levels most
of us have never experienced.
“The good news,” Olmsted writes, “is that there is plenty of
healthful and delicious Real Food. You just have to know where to look.”
‘Safety isn’t a niche’
One of the most popular, fastest-growing foods in America is olive
oil, touted for its ability to prevent everything from wrinkles to heart
disease to cancer. Italian olive oil is a multibillion-dollar global
industry, with the US its third-largest market.
The bulk of these imports are, you guessed it, fake. Labels such as
“extra-virgin” and “virgin” often mean nothing more than a $2 mark-up.
Most of us, Olmsted writes, have never actually tasted real olive oil.
Old
Homestead in NYC lists “Kobe Beef” on its menu, but that’s not
precisely true. The luxurious Japanese meat can be found at only three
restaurants in the country, including 212 Steakhouse in Midtown.Photo: Shutterstock
“Once someone tries a real extra-virgin — an adult or child, anybody
with taste buds — they’ll never go back to the fake kind,” artisanal
farmer Grazia DeCarlo has said.
“It’s distinctive, complex, the freshest thing you’ve ever eaten. It
makes you realize how rotten the other stuff is — literally rotten.”
Fake olive oil, Olmsted claims, has killed people. He cites the most
famous example: In 1981, more than 20,000 people suffered mass food
poisoning in Spain. About 800 people died, and olive oil mixed with
aniline, a toxic chemical used in making plastic, was blamed.
In 1983, the World Health organization named the outbreak “toxic oil
syndrome,” but subsequent investigations pointed to a different
contaminant and a different food — pesticides used on tomatoes from
Almeria. (Olmsted stands by his reporting.)
Some of the most common additives to olive oil are soybean and peanut
oils, which can prove fatal to anyone allergic — and you’ll never see
those ingredients on a label. Beware, too, of olive oil labeled “pure” —
that can mean the oil is the lowest grade possible.
Some
of the most common additives in olive oil are soybean and peanut oils,
which can prove fatal to anyone allergic — and are often missing from
labels.Photo: Shutterstock
“No one is checking,” Olmsted writes.
How do we find the real thing? Olmsted recommends a few reliable
retailers, including Oliviers & Co. in New York and New Jersey.
Otherwise, look for labels reading “COOC Certified Extra Virgin” — the
newly formed California Olive Oil Council’s stamp — or the international
EVA and UNAPROL labels.
In terms of scope and scale, there’s an even greater level of fraud
throughout the seafood industry.
“Imagine if half the time you pulled
into a gas station, you were filling your tank with dirty water instead
of gasoline,” Olmsted writes. “That’s the story with seafood.”
He cites a 2012 study of New York City seafood done by scientists at
Oceana, a nonprofit advocacy group. They discovered fakes at 58 percent
of 81 stores sampled and at all of the 16 sushi restaurants studied, and
this goes on throughout the United States. If you see the words “sushi
grade” or “sashimi grade” on a menu, run. There are no official
standards for use of the terms.
Red snapper, by the way, is almost always fake — it’s probably tilefish or tilapia. (Tilapia also doubles for catfish.)
“Consumers ask me all the time, ‘What can I do?’ and all I can say
is, ‘Just don’t ever buy red snapper,’ ” Dr. Mark Stoeckle, a specialist
in infectious diseases at Weill Medical College, told Olmsted. “Red
snapper is the big one — when you buy it, you almost never get it.”
Red snapper is almost always fake — it’s probably tilefish or tilapia, which can also double for catfish.Photo: Shutterstock
Farmed Cambodian ponga poses as grouper, catfish, sole, flounder and
cod. Wild-caught salmon is often farmed and pumped up with pink coloring
to look fresher. Sometimes it’s actually trout.
Ever wonder why it’s so hard to properly sear scallops? It’s because
they’ve been soaked in water and chemicals to up their weight, so
vendors can up the price. Even “dry” scallops contain 18 percent more
water and chemicals.
Shrimp is so bad that Olmsted rarely eats it. “I won’t buy it, ever,
if it is farmed or imported,” he writes. In 2007, the FDA banned five
kinds of imported shrimp from China; China turned around and routed the
banned shrimp through Indonesia, stamped it as originating from there,
and suddenly it was back in the US food supply.
Seafood fraud puts pregnant women at risk; high levels of mercury in
fish are known to cause birth defects. Allergic reactions to shellfish
have been known to cause paralysis.
“All the gross details you have heard about industrial cattle farming
— from the widespread use of antibiotics and chemicals to animals
living in their own feces and being fed parts of other animals they
don’t normally consume — occurs in the seafood arena as well,” Olmsted
writes. “Only it is much better hidden.”
Red Lobster’s lobster bisque contains a non-lobster meat called langostino.Photo: Shutterstock
Corruption in the seafood industry is so rife that in 2014, President
Obama formed the Presidential Task Force on Illegal, Unreported, and
Unregulated Seafood Fraud. In the meantime, Olmsted has some
suggestions.
Look for the reliable logos MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) for
wild-caught fish and BAP (Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture
Practices) for farmed, he says.
The most trusted logo is “Alaska Seafood: Wild, Natural,
Sustainable.” Alaska’s system mandates complete supervision of chain of
custody, from catching to your grocery store.
Perhaps most surprising of all: Discount big-box stores such as
Costco, Trader Joe’s, BJ’s Wholesale Club and Walmart are as stringent
with their standards as Whole Foods.
“When customers walk into a store, they don’t expect to have to pay a
premium for safe food,” Walmart exec Brittni Furrow said in 2014.
“Safety isn’t a niche.”
Your grass-fed cow was drugged
One of the simplest things we can do, Olmsted writes, is to look for
products named after their geographical location. Grated Parmesan cheese
is almost always fake, and earlier this year, the FDA said its testing
discovered that some dairy products labeled “100% Parmesan” contained
polymers and wood pulp.
That’s all the FDA did: You can still buy your woody cheese at the supermarket.
The term “grass-fed” does not ensure free-range meat.Photo: Shutterstock
Parmigiano-Reggiano, however, derives its name from Parma, the region
in Italy that’s produced this cheese for over 400 years. If you buy it
with that label, it’s real.
Same with Roquefort cheese and Champagne from France, and San Marzano
tomato sauce, Bologna meat and Chianti from Italy, and Scotch whisky
from Scotland. Still, Olmsted strongly advises looking for the label PDO
— Protected Designation of Origin, the highest guarantee of
authenticity there is.
As for our own lax labeling standards, Olmsted is outraged.
Ninety-one percent of American seafood is imported, but the FDA is
responsible for inspecting just 2 percent of those imports. And in 2013,
the agency inspected less than half of that 2 percent.
“The bar is so low,” he says. “Congress could not have given them
less to do, and they still fail.
They’re not clueless. They know.
They’re actually deciding not to do it. They say they don’t have the
budget.”
When it comes to beef, Olmstead reports that the USDA is no better;
the agency repealed its standards for the “grass-fed” designation in
January after pressure from the agriculture industry.
All that stamp now means, he says, is that in addition to grass, the
animals “can still be raised in an industrial feed lot and given drugs.
It just means the actual diet was grass rather than corn.”
If you don’t have access to a farmer’s market, Olmsted says that
Eli’s and Citarella in New York are reliable providers of true grass-fed
beef.
“Go up to the counter and ask them where the grass-fed beef comes
from,” he says. “They need to know. In New York in particular, you have
access to a lot of specialized gourmet stores, and you can source stuff
locally. You can’t do that in most of the country.”
Here’s a look at some of the grossest ingredients that might be lurking in your favorite foods, including human hair:
Virtually every aspect of cybercrime has been made into a service or
plug-and-play product. That includes dating scams — among the oldest and
most common of online swindles. Recently, I had a chance to review a
package of dating scam emails, instructions, pictures, videos and love
letter templates that are sold to scammers in the underground, and was
struck by how commoditized this type of fraud has become.
The dating scam package is assembled for and marketed to
Russian-speaking hackers, with hundreds of email templates written in
English and a variety of European languages. Many of the sample emails
read a bit like Mad Libs or choose-your-own-adventure texts, featuring decision templates that include advice for ultimately tricking the mark into wiring money to the scammer.
The romance scam package is designed for fraudsters who prey on
lonely men via dating Web sites and small spam campaigns. The vendor of
the fraud package advertises a guaranteed response rate of at least 1.2
percent, and states that customers who average 30 scam letters per day
can expect to earn roughly $2,000 a week. The proprietor also claims
that his method is more than 20% effective within three replies and over
60% effective after eight.
One of hundreds of sample template files in the dating scam package.
The dating scam package advises customers to stick to a
tried-and-true approach. For instance, scammers are urged to include an
email from the mother of the girl in the first 10 emails between the
scammer and a target. The scammer often pretends to be a young woman in
an isolated or desolate region of Russia who is desperate for a new
life, and the email from the girl’s supposed mother is intended to add
legitimacy to the scheme.
Then there are dozens of pre-fabricated excuses for not talking on
the phone, an activity reserved for the final stretch of the scam when
the fraudster typically pretends to be stranded at the airport or
somewhere else en route to the target’s home town.
“Working with dozens of possible outcomes, they carefully lay out
every possible response, including dealing with broke guys who fell in
love online,” said Alex Holden, the security expert who
intercepted the romance scam package. “If the mark doesn’t have money,
the package contains advice for getting him credit, telling the customer
to restate his love and discuss credit options.”
A sample letter with multiple-choice options for creating unique love letter greetings.
Interestingly, although Russia is considered by many to be among the
most hostile countries toward homosexuals, the makers of this dating
scam package also include advice and templates for targeting gay men.
Also included in the dating scam tutorial is a list of email
addresses and pseudonyms favored by anti-scammer vigilantes who try to
waste the scammers’ time and otherwise prevent them from conning real
victims. In addition, the package bundles several photos and videos of
attractive Russian women, some of whom are holding up blank signs onto
which the scammer can later Photoshop whatever message he wants.
Holden said that an enterprising fraudster with the right programming
skills or the funds to hire a coder could easily automate the scam
using bots that are programmed to respond to emails from the targets
with content-specific replies.
CALL CENTERS TO CLOSE THE DEAL
The romance scam package urges customers to send at least a dozen
emails to establish a rapport and relationship before even
mentioning the subject of traveling to meet the target. It is in this
critical, final part of the scam that the fraudster is encouraged to
take advantage of criminal call centers that staff women who can be
hired to play the part of the damsel in distress.
The login page for a criminal call center.
“When you get down to the final stage, there has to be a crisis, some
compelling reason why the target should you send the money,” said
Holden, founder of Hold Security
[full disclosure: Yours Truly is an uncompensated adviser to Holden’s
company]. “Usually this is something like the girl is stranded at the
airport or needs money to get a travel visa. There has to be some kind
of distress situation for this person to be duped into wiring money,
which can be anywhere between $200 and $2,000 on average.”
Crooked call centers like the one pictured in the screen shot above
employ male and female con artists who speak a variety of languages.
When the call center employees are not being hired to close the deal on a
romance scam, very often they are used to assist in bank account
takeovers, redirecting packages with shipping companies, or handling
fraudulent new credit applications that require phone verification.
Another reason that call centers aren’t used earlier in romance
scams: Hiring one is expensive. The call center pictured above charges
$10 per call, payable only in Bitcoin.
“If you imagine the cost of doing by phone every part of the scam,
it’s rather high, so they do most of the scam via email,” Holden said.
“What we tend to see with these dating scams is the scammer will tell
the call center operator to be sure to mention special nicknames and to
remind him of specific things they talked about in their email
correspondence.”
An
ad for a criminal call center that specializes in online dating scams.
This one, run by a cybecrook who uses the nickname “Sparta,” says “Only
the best calls for you.”
Check back later this week for a more in-depth story about criminal call centers.
