Mark Maynard | 2016 | December

Good work, Michigan. It looks like we might have stopped Republican voter suppression efforts, at least for now.

By Mark | December 13, 2016

If we’re to believe Republican Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, it looks as though the Michigan Senate will not be voting on the controversial voter ID law that passed the House last week. According to Meekhof, Senate Republicans just didn’t have the time during the lame duck session, which adjourns for the year this Thursday. The following comes by way of a report just posted by the Detroit News.

…Meekhof hoped to discuss the voter ID package alongside other potential election reforms — including a secure form of no-reason absentee voting — with other Senate Republicans, Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and Michigan GOP Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel.

But with three days left in the two-year legislative session, Meekhof said those discussions will have to wait until next year.

“We were intending to do some of that last week with Ronna and Ruth, but their schedules got jammed up” because of an unprecedented presidential recount, said Meekhof, R-West Olive. State and federal courts later halted the recount.

Strict voter ID laws have been ruled unconstitutional in some other states, but sponsoring Rep. Lisa Lyons, R-Alto, has said she modeled her bill on a 2005 Indiana law that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The package proposed making it easier for residents to obtain the kind of identification that would be required to vote, including mechanisms for low-income residents to obtain free government ID cards or birth certificates.

“We haven’t done real well in the courts on election law, so I want to make sure that if we’re going to do something, we’re able to march it right through,” Meekhof told reporters, alluding to a ban on straight-ticket voting overturned this year by federal courts…

While it sounds as though, to a large degree, this ambitious voter suppression initiative failed due to concerns among Republican Senators that HB 6066 wouldn’t survive a court challenge, I can’t help but think that our calls and letter played at least some part. And that’s a good thing. We needed a big win to build on. We needed a real, concrete example of what can happen when we work together to resist. And that’s what this is.

When HB 6066 came to the floor of the House, it just passed 57-50, with five Republicans crossing party lines to vote against the absolutely unnecessary and completely anti-democratic legislation. And that, I think, is significant. It demonstrates, at least to me, that there’s room for progress. Furthermore, it’s something that we can build on as we move forward. We pushed back, and we made a difference. Whether we deserve to take credit for this one or not, a win’s a win, and, now, for the first time in a long time, we’ve got a little momentum on our side. And, if we play our cards right, it’ll carry over to our next fight.

To paraphrase President-elect Trump, I want for us to have so much winning that we get tired of winning, and this is just the beginning.

So, good work, Michigan. Enjoy the victory. Because of you, HB 6066 didn’t pass, which means that, next year, when it comes election time, thousands of your fellow Michiganders won’t be turned away from the polls just because they lack state identification. No, they’ll be allowed to vote, just like they always have, after signing an affidavit attesting to their identity. And, if you picked up your phone to call your elected representatives, or shared information about this lame duck maneuver on the part of Republicans to build even higher barriers to keep the poor from voting with your friends on Facebook, letting them know what was happening, you helped make that happen. You did your part, and we were able to keep this from becoming law. This, my friends, is huge. But we can’t stop here. We need to keep moving forward, building networks, sharing information, and growing our capacity for resistance. If we’re going to survive the next several years, we’re going to need it.

[If you’re not familiar with what HB 6066 would have done if signed into law, or how it would have further disenfranchised a good number of our most vulnerable citizens, check out my post from several weeks ago, when all of this started.]

Posted in Civil Liberties, Michigan, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged Arlan Meekhof, HB 6066, identification, lame duck, Michigan Senate, poll tax, voter ID, voter suppression | 9 Comments

Electors demand intelligence briefing before Electoral College vote

By Mark | December 12, 2016

Remember how I warned you that things were going to get exponentially more surreal as we approached the Electoral College vote on December 19? Well, it looks like I may have been right after all. Or at least things seem to be trending in that direction.

Not only have eight Electors come forward to say that they’re so concerned about Trump that they’re contemplating the possibility of turning “faithless” and voting in such a way as to keep him out of the White House, but, given the CIA’s recent comments about Russia’s role in getting Trump elected, ten members of the Electoral College are now asking Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for a special briefing on “Russian involvement in the election.” In an open letter to Clapper that was made public this afternoon, the ten Electors said that they needed to see the evidence of Putin’s involvement “before they could “fulfill (their) constitutional duty as Electors.”

Here’s a clip from the letter, which was signed by nine Democrats and one Republican.

As for Trump, he seems to have gone uncharacteristically quiet today, even going so far as to cancel his first press conference since winning the election… Speculation is, of course, that he doesn’t want to take questions about Russia and the extent to which he was aware of their work on his behalf. [Mi>Trump said in the past that his team had no interaction with the Russians during the campaign. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, however, has said otherwise since the election.] But don’t despair. I’m sure our favorite reality television personality turned President-elect will be back soon enough. In fact, I suspect, at this very minute, he’s either planning to start a Twitter war with a low level civil servant somewhere, or asking Mike Pence to accompany him to Broadway show in hopes of encountering the wrath of the theater-going public… anything to reset the news cycle and get people talking about something other than the fact that, in the option of the CIA, “(Russia) intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency.”

Oh, and for what it’s worth, it looks as though some high level Democrats are now supporting this Electoral College revolt. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Christine Pelosi is one of the Electors to have signed this letter to James Clapper referenced above. And Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta just came out stating that he supports the idea that these Electors should receive an intelligence briefing. “We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump,” Podesta said. “This should distress every American. Never before in the history of our Republic have we seen such an effort to undermine the bedrock of our democracy.”

And, for what it’s worth, the Republicans seem to be taking the threat seriously. The following comes by way of Politico.

The Republican National Committee is overseeing an expansive whip operation designed to lock down Donald Trump’s Electoral College majority and ensure that the 306 Republican electors cast their votes for the president-elect.

Two RNC sources familiar with the effort said the committee — with the assistance of state Republican parties and the Trump campaign — has been in touch with most of the GOP electors multiple times, and has concluded that only one is a risk to cast a vote against Trump on Dec. 19, when the Electoral College meets…

But, remember, to keep Trump out of the White House, they only need to flip 37 Republican electors, thereby keeping Trump from the 270 Electoral votes he’d need to win.

update: OK, that was fast. In the time since I posted this yesterday, another 30 Electors have signed the letter requesting an intelligence briefing on Russia’s involvement during the election. Granted, there’s still only one Republican on the list, still, that’s almost 10% of the Electoral College… Meanwhile, at Trump Tower, our President-elect convinced Kanye West to come by for a visit, in hopes of distracting the American people from the matter at hand.

update: Not only are 40 Electors now requesting a security briefing on Russia’s role in the election, but Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig is claiming that 20 Republican Electors have contacted him to ask about voting to block Trump on December 19.

[For background on the Electoral College, why the founding fathers constructed it the way in which they did, and what it means to be a “faithless” Elector, click here.]

Posted in Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged #HamiltonElectors, Christine Pelosi, Donald Trump, election tampering, electoral college, faithless Electors, James Clapper, John Podesta, Kanye West, Nancy Pelosi, national security, Presidential politics, RNC, Russia | 13 Comments

Now that we know the Russians played a role in getting Trump elected, what are we going to do about it?

By Mark | December 11, 2016

This past July, when we first discussed the possibility that Vladimir Putin might be using Russia’s vast security apparatus to get Trump elected, I think it’s safe to say that a good number of you saw it as yet another baseless conspiracy theory. And, in October, when Senator Harry Reid announced that U.S. security agencies had “explosive information” about the role of Russia in the Trump campaign, I think a great many saw it as nothing more than pre-election posturing – an attempt to shift focus away from the fact that F.B.I. Director Comey had announced the day before that he’d be reopening the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s private email server. But, the story didn’t just go away after the election. At the end of November, seven Democrats serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee formally requested that President Obama declassify all of materials related to Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential election. And, two days ago, the White House announced that President Obama had ordered a “full review” of the matter, to be concluded before the end of his term in office. Then, later that same evening, we got the payoff some of us had been expecting all this time. News broke that the CIA had concluded some time ago that Putin’s government had “intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency.”

And, today, U.S. Senators John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Lindsey Graham, Member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Chuck Schumer, Senate Democratic Leader-elect, and Jack Reed, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, released a joint statement saying that these “recent reports of Russian interference in our election should alarm every American,” and promising a bipartisan response. While I’m not a fan of either Graham or McCain, I very much appreciate the fact that they came out today promising a bipartisan investigation, knowing that, by doing so, they would, in the words of the Washington Post, “risk antagonizing the president-elect, who has said flatly that he doesn’t believe Russia interfered with the election.” That move on the part of Graham and McCain took courage, and one hopes that others in their party might follow suit, as this really is more important than which party is in power.

For what it’s worth, not only has our President-elect said that he does not believe that Russia played a role in the election, but he’s also said that his team had absolutely no interaction with the Russians during the campaign. This last claim, however, was refuted shortly after the election by Russia’s own Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who said in an interview with the state-run Interfax news agency, that “there were contacts” between the Russian government and the Trump team.

In spite of this most recent revelation about the CIA’s belief that Trump benefited from Russian intervention, the reality television celebrity turned President-elect went ahead yesterday and named Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, a close collaborator with the Russians, to be his Secretary of State… Here, from CNN, is a clip about Tillerson’s deep economic ties to Russia.

…In 2013, Vladimir Putin awarded ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson the Order of Friendship, one of the highest honors Russia gives to foreign citizens…

The 64-year-old Tillerson, a lifetime Exxon employee, came up through the ranks by managing the company’s Russia account…

In fact, his close relationship with Russia is one of the major reasons Tillerson was selected to succeed Lee Raymond as CEO of Exxon (XOM) in 2006, according to Steve Coll’s book “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.”

Once he became CEO, Exxon bet billions on Russia’s vast but notoriously-elusive oil resources through a bold partnership with Russian oil giant Rosneft. Putin himself attended the 2011 signing ceremony for the deal with Rosneft, which is majority owned by Moscow.

Russia has already indicated it would welcome Tillerson being named America’s top diplomat.

“Trump continues to amaze,” Alexey Pushkov, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of Russian parliament, said on Twitter. He said that selecting Tillerson would be a “sensation” and noted he has “a lot of experience working with Russia”…

Here are Tillerson and Putin together, sharing a laugh… no doubt about their plans for the future.

Oh, it’s also worth noting that the CIA, according to a senior U.S. administration official, believes the Russians not only hacked the emails of the the DNC, which they made public through Wikileaks, but also the emails of the RNC. And, according to some in the intelligence community, the Russians could now be using these emails to blackmail the Trump administration… Here, with that in mind, is a quote from today’s Daily Beast: “Former and current U.S. national security officials and experts say that if it is true that the Russian government possesses documents belonging to the Republican National Committee, Donald Trump’s incoming administration may be the most compromised in U.S. history.”

Oh, and here are two more quick, related factoids from today’s news.

First, satellite images suggest that Russia is moving a new generation of “nuclear-capable” missiles into Eastern Europe, on Baltic coast between Lithuania and Poland.

Second, Trump told Fox News this morning that he didn’t have to take the daily presidential security briefings because he’s “a smart person.”

So, have you got all that? Trump said that his campaign hadn’t talked with the Russians, who hacked the DNC and spread both real and false news for the purpose of aiding his campaign. The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said after the election, however, that his government had been in communication with the Trump team. Then, yesterday, the CIA finally came out and said that, yes, overwhelming evidence exists that Russian operatives worked behind the scenes to see Trump elected President. Trump then promptly announced that he would be naming Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, who Putin awarded the Russian Order of Friendship, to be his Secretary of State. And all of this is happening as Russia is moving missiles into Eastern Europe, and Trump is refusing to take security briefings, saying that he’s getting information from sources other than our national security experts… Is that clear?

What could all of this mean? Well, I’ve just started digging into it, but it looks like Tillerson and the Russians had agreed to what could have been a $500 billion dollar oil exploration venture in the Arctic, which collapsed due to Obama administration sanctions in 2014. So, might it just be possible that we’ve finally got a narrative that makes sense? Could it be that, beneath everything, this is all about stopping the move toward renewable energy and executing the biggest oil deal the world has ever seen? Could it be that’s why Putin wanted Trump in office, and why Trump has been so aggressively hostile to the science of global climate change and the Paris Accord? Is this all about lifting Russian sanctions and setting things up for the biggest cash grab the world has ever seen, even if it means the end of humanity?

Regardless of why the Russians chose to become involved, and helped Trump ascend to power, what are we going to do about it? And, perhaps more importantly, what are our Electors going to do about it come December 19?

Posted in Environment, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged blackmail, Chuck Schumer, CIA, DNC, election fraud, election tampering, espionage, Exxon, hacking, Jack Reed, John McCain, national security, Paris Accord, Rex Tillerson, RNC, Senate Committee on Armed Services, Sergei Ryabkov, Wikileaks | 209 Comments

Be safe out there

By Mark | December 11, 2016

I suspect you may have already heard this by now, but, if you don’t have to be on the road this evening, you should probably just bake some oatmeal cookies, pour yourself a stiff drink, and stay home. The family and I just made it back from Lexington, Kentucky, where we were celebrating my mother’s 70th birthday, and my grandmother’s dramatic rebound after a brief hospitalization, and the roads were a total, fucking mess. In all seriousness, toward the end of the trip, as we were making our way slowly along 23 North, we were passing a wrecked car about every three or four miles. For the most part, they weren’t terribly dramatic crashes, which was good, but it made for a stressful drive, especially as the kids kept asking how we’d survive if we left the road… With maybe one exception, the incidents we saw just involved individual cars. We saw well over a dozen of them, though. [The kids enjoyed scanning the horizon for fenders and taillights peeking out from over the edges of drainage ditches.] Thankfully, though, we avoided joining in the ditch. I’d say I lost control of the car about three times, but each incident was really brief. We’d just slide for a few feet. Thankfully, though, we were going slow, and there weren’t any cars around us to run into as the frozen road moved us from one lane to another. It could have been a lot worse, though. Someone could have run into the jackknifed fuel truck you can see above… At any rate, like I said, you should just stay home. I’m not usually one to complain about roads, as I learned to drive on the icy roads of rural New Jersey, but the conditions really are unusually bad tonight.

Posted in Mark's Life, Michigan, Uncategorized | Tagged car accidents, driving conditions, fuel truck, jackknife, Michigan winters, snow storm | 5 Comments

The robots are coming, the robots are coming… Is now the time to start talking seriously about universal basic income? And what’s all this about our new Secretary of Labor not liking human beings?

By Mark | December 8, 2016

It seems like we might have turned a corner today relative to universal basic income. Or at least that’s the sense that I get as I’m sitting here in bed, scrolling through today’s headlines. I mean, it’s something that we’ve been discussing for a while, but it seems like it’s everywhere today, which is odd, given how few non-Trump-related news stories break though these days. For some reason, though, the idea of universal basic income is everywhere today.

I think it must just be one of those “perfect storm” kind of things, the kind of thing that just happens when a tech entrepreneur like Elon Musk is asked about job loss due to automation, at roughly the same time that an industry-crushing giant like Amazon says that it may open as many as 2,000 automated grocery stores across the country, effectively eliminating an entire class of jobs overnight. Or maybe it’s just reality setting in. Maybe people are finally beginning to appreciate that they elected a conman, who was lying to them when he said he’d reopen the coal mines of West Virginia and the factories of Ohio… Speaking of which, did you happen to catch the article just posted on Wired titled “Trump Can’t Deliver the Rust Belt Jobs He Promised Because Work Has Changed“?

Whatever the reason, it seems like a significant number of people are now beginning to talk about the possibility of a universal basic income in substantive way, and I think that’s a good thing. [Musk, by the way, seems to be for it. When asked why, he said matter-of-factly, “I’m not sure what else one would do.”] Whether you think universal basic income would be a good thing or not, I hope you’d agree that it’s something that we should at least discuss as a society, given the sheer number of people, who, due to automation and other industry forces, are being pushed out of the workforce on a daily basis.

So with all of that said, I’m just sitting here, having finally gotten the kids to sleep, and I’m wondering what position I should take on the robot question… Should I advocate that we kill the robots right now, while we still have a chance… before they go all “2001” on us… or should I suggest that we roll the dice, hoping that the rising robot class makes it possible for us to live better, more fulfilling, lives?

For what it’s worth, I don’t think we have to decide at this very moment. I think we’ve still got a little time… although maybe not as much time as we thought that we had yesterday, before Trump named Andy Puzder, the CEO of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, to be his Labor Secretary. As you may recall, Puzder, a fierce opponent of the minimum wage, and worker rights in general, said last year that he’d like to start fully automating his restaurants, as machines are “always polite, always upsell, never take a vacation, never show up late, (and) never (file) slip-and-fall or age, sex or race discrimination case(s).”

And, yes, you read that right. Trump chose someone who doesn’t like human beings to be his Secretary of Labor.

So, just to bring you up to speed, Trump has now named someone that doesn’t respect civil rights to be his Attorney General, someone who hates public schools to be his Secretary of Education, and someone who has contempt for workers to be Secretary of Labor.

As for where all of this leaves us, I’m not so sure. But I need to get to bed. If I’m going to have to face off against the machines like John Henry, I’m going to need to get my rest… But keep checking back for a real post about universal basic income, which I’m sure I’ll get around to sometime.

Also, whatever budget and resources Puzder has at the U.S. Labor Department are going directly into fast food robot research, not improving the lives of U.S. workers. You can mark my words.