The judge also noted that this does not mean that Bolton is in the right, and that he is likely to lose any profits and advances from the book, as well as facing civil and criminal sanctions.
All in all, it's a wonderful ruling, because the first and second most horrible people on earth* both lose:
President Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton can go forward with the publication of his memoir, a federal judge ruled on Saturday, rejecting the administration’s request for an order that he try to pull the book back and saying it was too late for such an order to succeed.
“With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe — many in newsrooms — the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo,” wrote Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia.
But in a 10-page opinion, Judge Lamberth also suggested that Mr. Bolton may be in jeopardy of forfeiting his $2 million advance, as the Justice Department has separately requested — and that he could be prosecuted for allowing the book to be published before receiving final notice that a prepublication review to scrub out classified information was complete.
I am amused.
*If I was forced to choose whether to let Trump or Bolton die, I would ask for the Dion Sanders option.† †Both.
Andrew McAfee, a "technologist" at MIT, wrote a book, More From Less showing that the US use of natural resources has declined even as its GDP has increased, implying that growth can continue unencumbered without any economic cost.
Scientists are increasingly concerned about the impact that excess industrial activity is having on our planet’s ecosystems. Our pursuit of perpetual economic growth is driving ever-increasing levels of material extraction, which is causing a wide range of ecological problems: deforestation, soil depletion, habitat loss, and species extinction. The crisis has become so severe that last year more than 11,000 scientists from over 150 countries published an article calling on governments to shift toward “post-growth” economic models, focusing on human well-being and ecological stability rather than constant expansion.
But some figures have rejected this idea and are rallying around a different narrative altogether. In a book published last October titled More From Less, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-based technologist Andrew McAfee argues that we can continue to grow global GDP indefinitely while reducing our ecological impact at the same time—and all without any structural, much less revolutionary, changes to the economy or society.
At the core of McAfee’s argument is his analysis of the U.S. economy. He claims that U.S. consumption of resources has remained steady or even declined since the 1980s, while GDP has continued to rise. In other words, the United States is “dematerializing,” thanks to increasingly efficient technology and a shift toward services. The same thing has been happening in other high-income nations, he says. This proves “green growth” can be achieved; rich countries are showing the way, and the rest of the world should follow suit.
………
There’s only one problem: McAfee’s argument is based on a fundamental accounting error. McAfee uses data on domestic material consumption, which tallies up the resources that a nation extracts and consumes each year. But this metric ignores a crucial piece of the puzzle. While it includes the imported goods a country consumes, it does not include the resources involved in extracting, producing, and transporting those goods. Because the United States and other rich countries have offshored so much of their production to poorer countries over the past 40 years, that side of resource use has been conveniently shifted off their books.
With no constraints on their behavior beyond their own desire for profit, they have become a menace to their employees and their communities:
………
“I wasn’t going to get tested, because on Saturday they were going to give out half a slab of rib-eye, and I really wanted it,” she says. “I thought, I’ll get tested on Monday.” Morales says her husband eventually talked her into getting screened that Friday. She tested positive for Covid-19 and didn’t get to collect the prized meat, though she did make a full recovery. Two months later, there were six Covid-19 deaths associated with the plant and more than 900 infections. (The company disputed those numbers but did not provide its own.) While this was going on, managers at multiple JBS plants were promising $600 to workers with no unexcused absences.
………
The federal agency that does have the power to regulate conditions in meat plants is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the Department of Labor. But with its staff cut by the Trump administration and its inspection activity sharply curtailed, the agency hasn’t issued a single enforceable order for what meat plants should do to prevent workers from contracting Covid-19. As usual, meatpacking companies are on their own, unencumbered by regulators they’ve assiduously kept at bay.
Together, JBS SA and three other big U.S. producers, Tyson Foods, Cargill, and National Beef, control more than 80% of the U.S. beef market. There have long been allegations of price fixing, driving up costs at the supermarket. For the past decade, meatpackers and processors have spent close to $5 million annually on lobbying, up from only $542,000 in 1999. The industry spent $1.3 million on the 2018 election, with two-thirds of that going to Republican candidates, according to an analysis of campaign finance data from the Center for Responsive Politics. After Tyson ran full-page newspaper ads and a statement on its website warning of food shortages if meat and poultry plants were forced to shutter, President Trump signed an executive order to keep them open.
In the interest of averting cases like Morales’s, the CDC warned JBS on April 20 to stop offering inducements for workers to come in, but JBS ultimately didn’t follow the agency’s advice. OSHA, for its part, ordered its staff in April to do in-person inspections only of hospitals and other front-line facilities during the pandemic—not meat plants—because health-care employees and first responders were deemed to be the only workers at sufficient risk of contracting the virus to warrant immediate investigation. All other OSHA probes were to proceed by phone and fax. Even in normal times, OSHA and its state partners have just 2,100 inspectors, who are responsible for the well-being of 130 million U.S. workers at more than 8 million work sites. That translates to one compliance officer for every 59,000 workers.
………
A safer, less deadly meat industry could be fashioned through widespread legislative and regulatory reform. Consumers, too, could force change with mass boycotts—or if they were willing to spend more money on less meat. But in the absence of pressure, the industry has no incentive to change.
Covid-19 has become just another workplace hazard in one of America’s deadliest industries.
………
Historically, politicians and regulators have rewarded the industry with autonomy and lax regulations. As its labor supply dwindled, National Beef appealed to Kansas Secretary of Agriculture Mike Beam to muscle the union on its behalf. “Our request is that they hear from the Governor’s office about the importance and special responsibility of food production workers and to ask the Union to encourage its folks to continue to report for work,” Simon McGee, National Beef’s chief financial officer, wrote to Beam in an email.
In Nebraska, Governor Pete Ricketts directed departments not to release Covid-19 case statistics at meat plants, citing concerns about privacy and the quality of the data. Cattle production is the leading industry in the state, where cows outnumber humans 4 to 1 and license plates proudly boast that it’s “the beef state.” Among the donors who’ve supported Ricketts’s career are Tyson Foods Inc., Smithfield Foods Inc., and the Nebraska Cattlemen.
This is why we need real regulation and real antitrust, and not just in the meat packing industry.
Geoffrey Berman, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, just got fired. ("Resigned")
I wonder which Trump crony pulled some strings when the heat got too intense:
The Justice Department on Friday abruptly tried to oust the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. But Mr. Berman said in a statement that he was refusing to leave his position, setting up a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs. “I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said, adding that he learned that he was “stepping down” in a press release from the Justice Department. Attorney General William P. Barr’s announcement that President Trump was seeking to replace Mr. Berman was made with no notice. Mr. Barr said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman’s successor Jay Clayton, current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign but he refused so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said.
………
The announcement came late on a Friday night, a time of day when government officials sometimes release information so that it does not attract widespread attention.
There are so many potential conflict of interest and corruption here that it is going to be tough to narrow it down to a specific clause.
He had accumulated an extensive accumulation of illegal weapons while having accusations of domestic violence lodged against him.
Additionally, he received a massive (Can$475,000.00) cash transfer 2½ weeks before the shooting.
Experts say that this all points to his being an undercover asset of the law enforcement agency:
The withdrawal of $475,000 in cash by the man who killed 22 Nova Scotians in April matches the method the RCMP uses to send money to confidential informants and agents, sources say. Gabriel Wortman, who is responsible for the largest mass killing in Canadian history, withdrew the money from a Brink’s depot in Dartmouth, N.S., on March 30, stashing a carryall filled with hundred-dollar bills in the trunk of his car. ……… Sources in both banking and the RCMP say the transaction is consistent with how the RCMP funnels money to its confidential informants and agents, and is not an option available to private banking customers. The RCMP has repeatedly said that it had no “special relationship” with Wortman. Court documents show Wortman owned a New Brunswick-registered company called Berkshire-Broman, the legal owner of two of his vehicles (including one of his police replica cars). Whatever the purpose of that company, there is no public evidence that it would have been able to move large quantities of cash. Wortman also ran his own denturist business and there is no reason to believe it also would require him to handle large amounts of cash. If Wortman was an RCMP informant or agent, it could explain why the force appeared not to take action on complaints about his illegal guns and his assault on his common-law wife. A Mountie familiar with the techniques used by the force in undercover operations, but not with the details of the investigation into the shooting, says Wortman could not have collected his own money from Brink’s as a private citizen. “There’s no way a civilian can just make an arrangement like that,” he said in an interview. He added that Wortman’s transaction is consistent with the Mountie’s experience in how the RCMP pays its assets. “I’ve worked a number of CI cases over the years and that’s how things go. All the payments are made in cash. To me that transaction alone proves he has a secret relationship with the force.”
Without some sort of law enforcement or intelligence service involvement, I cannot imagine that he could have been able to do any of this.
There have been a number of infamous instances, Whitey Bulger being the most prominent, where law enforcement assets have gone onto commit notorious crimes.
I think that this is one such case, and the RCMP will never come clean about it.
The ruling was not on constitutional grounds, it was essentially a statement that the way that they had repealed DACA was so incompetently done as to be invalid.
Oh, Lord, thank you for making the evil so inept:
It has been eight years since the Obama administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which allows undocumented young adults who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation. In 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would end the program, which it believed had been illegal in the first place. Today, by a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration acted improperly in terminating the program, and it sent the case back for the Department of Homeland Security to take another look. The ruling means that the DACA program will remain in place, at least for the foreseeable future. ……… The battle over DACA came to the Supreme Court in November 2018, when the Trump administration asked the justices to take up three different challenges, filed in California, the District of Columbia and New York, to the decision to end DACA. The challengers – which include states, cities, universities, DACA recipients, civil rights groups and even Microsoft – argued that the decision to rescind DACA violated the rights of DACA recipients and the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal law governing administrative agencies. In all three cases, the lower courts ruled for the challengers and ordered the government to keep DACA in place. At the end of June 2019, the Supreme Court announced that it would review the three cases. ……… Roberts then turned to the central question in the case: whether the Trump administration followed proper procedures in terminating DACA. Under the APA, Roberts stressed, courts should not substitute their own judgment for that of the agency. Instead, he explained, their job is to determine whether an agency made its decision “based on a consideration of the relevant factors and whether there has been a clear error of judgment.” In the majority’s view, the Trump administration had failed to meet even this relatively low bar.
Businesses are reopening after coronavirus shutdowns, governments are easing restrictions, and workers are gradually returning to their jobs. But the layoffs keep coming.
Another 1.5 million people applied for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, while 760,000 more filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal emergency program that extends benefits to self-employed workers, independent contractors and others who don’t qualify for standard benefits.
It was the 13th straight week that filings topped one million. Until the present crisis, the most new claims in a single week had been 695,000, in 1982.
………
Economists said the current layoffs, though smaller than the wave in March and early April, were in some ways more worrying because they suggested that the crisis was reaching deeper into the economy even as lockdowns eased.
I still can't believe that I am saying this, but Trump's lack of subtlety on race baiting has stunned me.
Facebook on Thursday removed advertisements posted on its platform by the Trump campaign that prominently featured a symbol used by Nazis to classify political prisoners during World War II, saying the imagery violated company policy.
The Trump campaign had used the ads, with a picture of a large red triangle, to inveigh against antifa, a loose collective of anti-fascist protesters that President Trump has blamed for violence and vandalism during the nationwide protests against racial injustice. There is scant evidence that antifa has been involved in any coordinated campaigns during the demonstrations.
………
It was not clear if the Trump campaign was familiar with the origin of the symbol, which was reclaimed after World War II by some anti-fascists in Britain and Germany, in the same way that various political groups over the years have reclaimed words and symbols used to oppress them.
“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate,” Facebook said in a statement. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”
I'm even more stunned that Facebook actually took action and yanked the ads.
I think that the judge should sentence the company to a few years in prison.
If a flesh and blood person pled guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter, they would spend a significant amount of time in prison.
I know that there are no corporation jails out there, but that's not the judge's job, he just needs to direct the Department of Corrections to take them into custody.
Let them hash it out while PG&E chills its heels in its cell:
California utility firm Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges that it was responsible for the deaths of more than 80 people in a massive 2018 wildfire caused by its equipment.
The fire, known as the Camp Fire, began in November 2018 when two PG&E power lines came into contact with nearby dry brush, sparking flames. Eighty-five people died in the fire, which also destroyed 18,800 structures.
………
PG&E "had a legal duty to the public to avoid wildfires and failed to perform that legal duty by recklessly failing to maintain and operate its electrical lines and equipment in a manner that would minimize the risk of catastrophic wildfires posed by those electrical lines and equipment, resulting in the Camp Fire," each of the 84 manslaughter counts reads.
Company president and CEO Bill Johnson entered the guilty plea in court yesterday on behalf of the company. "Our equipment started the fire that destroyed the towns of Paradise and Concow and severely burned Magalia and other parts of Butte County," Johnson said. "On behalf of PG&E, I apologize for the pain we have caused."
As part of its plea agreement, the company agreed to pay a $3.5 million dollar fine and an additional $500,000 to cover the costs of the investigation.
The deal has been cut with the prosecutor, and while the judge is expected to approve the deal, the judge can sentence the utility to prison.
As protests against racial police violence have spread across the US, we’ve seen how video captured on mobile devices can help identify misconduct by law enforcement. But such evidence isn’t just useful at a protest, but during all sorts of routine interactions with the police, including traffic stops. That’s why the Siri shortcut “I’m getting pulled over” exists.
Once you load this (free) shortcut onto your iPhone, all you need to do is say “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over” and it will kickstart a chain of events. It will dim your phone, pause any music being played, and start recording video from your front-facing camera. It can also send your current location and a copy of that video to an emergency contact, though you’ll need to confirm a few pop-up messages to complete these steps.
………
So, to get things up and working, you’ll have to first make sure iOS is updated to at least iOS 12. Then, download the Shortcuts app which you can find here on the App store. After that’s done, visit this link on your mobile device from the built-in Safari browser to set-up the shortcut. (Be careful: other browsers won’t work!) You’ll also need to make sure your phone can load unverified shortcuts (go to Settings > Shortcuts and toggle Allow Untrusted Shortcuts to allow this) and give the program access to your location, which you can see how to do here.
The cop who shot Rayshard Brooks has been charged with felony murder, and his partner has been charged with charged with aggravated assault.
Normally, a DA would present it to a grand jury, and remind them that a police officer is not a ham sandwich, and the would no-bill.
Not this time, which shows that something has moved in the political ecology of law enforcement:
The former Atlanta police officer who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks was charged Wednesday with felony murder and 10 other offenses in his death, the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office said. At an afternoon news conference, DA Paul Howard announced the charges against Garrett Rolfe, who shot Brooks twice during a suspected DUI arrest at an Atlanta Wendy’s on Friday night. Rolfe was fired the next day, shortly before Chief Erika Shields stepped down from her post. ……… A second officer present during the incident, Devin Brosnan, will face four charges, including a count of aggravated assault and three counts of violation of oath, the warrants said. ……… Howard, who faces a runoff election in August, cited that his office has reviewed eight videos, including three cellphone videos. Due to the amount of video evidence, Howard said he did not need to wait on the GBI to complete its investigation.
And here we have the politics coming in. Howard came in a fairly distant second place in the Democratic primary, and his speed in filing charges is (for now at least) a political winner for him.
I cannot remember there ever being a time when a willingness to prosecute police for excessive force was a political winner, but it is now.
Shumer's "Great White Hopes" of the US Senate races this year are Amy McGrath in Kentucky and John Hickenlooper in Colorado, and things are not going well fore either of them.
The largest papers in the state endorsed her primary opponent Charles Booker, as has Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is part of the Democratic Party aristocracy in the state. (Useless, but all aristocracy is useless)
I'm thinking that her deer in the headlights performance when asked about police protests in the last debate which was lame beyond belief: (See vid)
Remember Amy McGrath? Maybe you do. In 2018, the Kentucky Democrat was briefly famous for a viral campaign ad and an ultimately doomed campaign to represent her state’s Sixth Congressional District. A moderate and a former Marine fighter pilot, McGrath is the apotheosis of a particular Democratic electoral strategy: to win in a conservative state, dispatch a veteran with lukewarm politics. That strategy didn’t put McGrath in the House in 2018. But two years later, Senate Democrats tried it again, pitting McGrath against a top prize: Mitch McConnell.
Now she might be lucky to win her primary race.
McGrath faces a robust challenge from Charles Booker, the youngest Black legislator in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Booker has run to her left, and while McGrath holds a major fundraising advantage, Booker is gaining significant momentum ahead of the primary on June 23. Two of the state’s largest newspapers have endorsed him, and on Tuesday, Booker earned another major supporter. Alison Lundergan Grimes, who challenged McConnell in 2014, endorsed him over McGrath.
— Alison Lundergan Grimes (@AlisonForKY) June 16, 2020
The Grimes endorsement might be the clearest sign yet that McGrath is in real trouble. Booker already had the backing of a number of progressive politicians and groups, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, but Grimes is no leftist. She’s firmly part of the Kentucky Democratic Establishment, which makes her endorsement something of a surprise — and an unignorable vote of no confidence in McGrath. The retired Marine is backed by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, but locals are less convinced.
Democrats’ best pickup opportunity in their battle for the majority in the U.S. Senate has suddenly been complicated by not one but two unforced errors from their star candidate in Colorado, former governor John Hickenlooper. But it’s not clear whether either or both are enough to turn the tide of the race in favor of Republicans. The two controversies:
An independent ethics commission in Colorado said Hickenlooper violated state law on gifts when he was governor in 2018 by accepting rides on a private jet and, separately, in a Maserati limousine.
He appeared to compare a job as a political scheduler to the slave trade, in 2014 comments that were unearthed Monday. His campaign immediately apologized for them. “Imagine an ancient slave ship,” he said, “with the guy with the whip, and you’re rowing. We elected officials are the ones that are rowing.”
………
The first controversy carries a more immediate impact for Hickenlooper. The commission, which was set up as part of an anti-graft law Colorado voters approved more than a decade ago, fined him almost $3,000 for the luxury rides as he was traveling as governor. The commission also held him in contempt for not showing up for the first day of video hearings even though he was subpoenaed.
………
Hickenlooper’s most immediate contest is a June 30 primary. He’s facing Andrew Romanoff, a former Colorado House speaker, who has his supporters but is not seen as a major threat to Hickenlooper. Romanoff is campaigning on Hickenlooper’s left in support of Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal and has the support of some younger, liberal activists. (But no endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or his liberal allies in Congress.)
That may still be the case, given how late Hickenlooper’s ethics violation is coming in the primary and how much Hickenlooper has been billed as the best candidate to beat Gardner among Democrats. Romanoff is trying to leverage Hickenlooper’s ethics troubles to reverse that narrative. “He represents a threat we cannot afford,” Romanoff told The Washington Post recently.
I am not sure how much Romanoff is a long shot. Romanoff won the Democratic Party endorsement at the state convention, though that does not count for much in the primary.
And this woman has a badge, a gun, and power to arrest people.
Protect and serve, protect and serve:
There’s not much sympathy online for this cop crying over an Egg McMuffin.
A tearful video of a Georgia police officer accusing a McDonald’s MCD, +0.24% of withholding her breakfast order went viral on Twitter TWTR, -0.83% on Wednesday, leading the local owners of the burger joint to apologize to the officer and clarify to MarketWatch that she “was never denied service.”
A Twitter user who calls herself “Ann” and identifies as a conservative Trump supporter in her profile posted the clip of an officer she says is named “Stacey” who sobs while recounting how the restaurant workers kept her waiting and withheld part of her breakfast order. Stacey suggests this was done on purpose as part of the growing backlash against officers and the calls for police reform in the weeks since Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were killed during their encounters with law enforcement.
“Stacey who has been a cop for 15 yrs went to @McDonalds,” Ann writes in her post. “She paid for it in advance and this is how she gets treated for being a cop.” MarketWatch reached out to Ann to verify the authenticity and origins of the video, but she did not respond by press time. But the local McDonald’s owner/operators confirmed the incident to MarketWatch.
Ann’s post had already been viewed 4.5 million times and retweeted more than 50,000 times by the time this story posted, renewing a heated online debate about the relationship between police officers and the communities they serve.
The clip, which runs just under two-and-a-half minutes, features Stacey explaining that she placed a mobile order for an Egg McMuffin meal. But her order wasn’t ready when she went to pick it up.
“And I’m waiting. And I’m waiting. And I’m waiting,” she says, noting that she was hungry because she had not eaten for a very long time. She was told to pull over to the side, and an employee eventually came over and gave her a coffee. But Stacey’s order was supposed to include an Egg McMuffin and a hash brown, as well.
“That’s all she hands me is the coffee,” Stacey says, breaking down into tears. “I said, ‘Don’t bother with the food because right now I’m too nervous to take it!’ It doesn’t matter how many hours I’ve been up. It doesn’t matter what I’ve done for anyone. Right now, I’m too nervous to take a meal from McDonald’s because I can’t see it being made!”
She pleaded with people watching the video to, “Please, just give us a break. I don’t know how much more I can take.” She added that she has never had such anxiety in all of her years of service, and asked people to say “thank you” when they see cops.
Stacey who has been a cop for 15 yrs went to @McDonalds She paid for it in advance and this is how she gets treated for being a cop😢😡 Come on America. We are better than this. pic.twitter.com/IcudsNfVLY
There business model is the abuse of the H1B visa program to provide cheap consultants to their US clients, and they go through contortions NOT to find qualified US workers, because they would have to pay them the prevailing wage:
Infosys has rejected the premise of a lawsuit brought by Davina Linguist, the former head of its diversity program recruiting manager program, who alleges the company prefers to hire South Asians and conducted visa fraud to replace US workers.
Filed in the East Texas District Court last week, case 4:20-CV-465, Divina Linguist vs. Infosys Limited, opens with the accusation that Infosys’ staff is 90 percent Indian as a result of a “pattern and practice of discrimination against individuals who are not Indian in the hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination.”
“Infosys managers have obstructed her efforts to increase the non-South Asian diversity of Infosys’ workforce,” the complaint alleges, adding that “Infosys retaliated against Ms. Linguist, stripping her of her title as the head of diversity recruiting (and replacing her with an individual with no relevant experience) and demoting her, among other improper conduct.”
The filing also alleges that “Infosys has gone to great lengths to obtain its primarily South Asian work force in the United States, including by engaging in visa fraud to bring South Asians (primarily Indians) into this country to replace or supplant non-South Asians and non-Indians.” The filing also mentions “bulk rejection of about 12,000 U.S. applicants for positions in favor of South Asian visa holding applicants”.
Infosys denies the allegations.
Needless to say, Mandy Rice-Davies applies. ("Well they would say that, wouldn't they?")
This won't happen of course, because holding corporations to the terms of their contracts isn't "Business Friendly," so they will let General Motors skate:
The state of Ohio has put General Motors on notice that it may be forced to repay more than $60 million in public subsidies as a result of the automaker closing its massive assembly plant last year in Lordstown.
The state’s collection effort, initially outlined in a letter to GM in March, has not been previously reported, and the automaker itself has not disclosed the potential liability to shareholders in its corporate filings.
State officials say the Lordstown shuttering, which made national headlines and drew the ire of President Donald Trump, violated the terms of two state economic development agreements that GM signed more than a decade ago, according to documents obtained by The Business Journal and ProPublica through public records requests. In return for tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks, the company had pledged to maintain operations at the Lordstown site until at least 2027.
“If the state were to claw back $60 million, that would be one of the biggest clawback events in U.S. history,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a national nonprofit that advocates for accountability in economic development. “This is very significant, very interesting that it would come from a Rust Belt state from a very pro-business administration.”
Ohio is not going to claw back even a fraction of the money, because they want to maintain their reputation as a, "Very pro-business administration," and in our race to the bottom political system, this will trump every other consideration.
I expect, at most, a couple of job developments centers, and perhaps the donation of some land for a city park.
The bigots were claiming that this was never the original intend of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which is true, but it is also true that the sections on sex discrimination were inserted by an ardent segregationist, Howard W. Smith, to kill the bill, so the claim of original intent is rather specious.
I'm just enjoying the butt-hurt of the bigots and the haters right now:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination “because of sex.”
Today the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, ruled that even if Congress may not have had discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status in mind when it enacted the landmark law over a half century ago, Title VII’s ban on discrimination protects gay, lesbian and transgender employees. Because fewer than half of the 50 states currently ban employment discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, today’s decision is a major victory for LGBT employees.
………
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the third lawsuit, involving the rights of transgender employees, in federal district court in Michigan against R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes after the funeral home fired Aimee Stephens, a funeral director and embalmer who announced that she would begin living as a woman. (Stephens died on May 12 from complications from kidney failure, but her wife, Donna, took her place in the lawsuit.) The district court agreed with the funeral home that Title VII does not protect transgender employees from discrimination, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed. The justices agreed to hear the cases last spring. Although the two cases involving discrimination based on sexual orientation were argued separately from the case involving discrimination based on gender identity, the court issued one ruling this morning that covered all three cases. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Gorsuch framed the question before the court as a straightforward one: “Today,” he wrote, “we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender.” The answer to that question, he continued, “is clear.” When an employer fires an employee “for being homosexual or transgender,” that employer “fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
It is particularly delicious that this has been authored that the right's golden boy Gorsuch.
Fox News was reporting on the Seattle Capitol Hill occupation, and unironically reported dialogue taken from Monty Python and the Holy Grail as evidence of growing tension within the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone."
Does the phrase, "We're an Anarcho-Syndaclyst Commune," sound familiar?
Seriously?
I am left staring at the screen like a cow that has just stepped on its own udder.
By cyber-stalking, I don't mean that they were trolling them on Twitter and Facebook. I mean that they were sending them bloody pig masks, cockroaches, funeral wreaths, late night pizza deliveries, and explicitly labeled pr0n.
Not only that, it appears that the (also former) CEO of eBay, while not arrested, may have been fired as a result of these activities.
This is f%$#ed up and sh%$:
Six former eBay employees were "charged with leading a cyberstalking campaign" against a newsletter editor and publisher, which "included sending the couple anonymous, threatening messages, disturbing deliveries—including a box of live cockroaches, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig mask—and conducting covert surveillance of the victims," the US Department of Justice and US Attorney's Office in Massachusetts announced today.
James Baugh, 45, is eBay's former senior director of safety and security, and David Harville, 48, is eBay's former director of global resiliency—both were arrested today and charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Each charge "carr[ies] a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000 and restitution," the DOJ said.
The bloody pig mask was a Halloween mask and shipped via Amazon.com, a court document said. The mask arrived at the victims' home the same day one of the victims "received an email reporting that a 'Preserved Fetal Pig' had been ordered online to be sent to the Victims' house," the document said. A few days later, the victims "received a box of cockroaches" that was purchased from a roach breeder and seller.
The alleged targets were a couple in Natick, Massachusetts, who publish an online newsletter that covers e-commerce companies and which "eBay executives viewed as critical of the company," the DOJ said. One alleged victim is a reporter and editor for the newsletter, while her husband is the publisher. The alleged victims' names and the news website they operate are not identified in the charging documents filed in US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
………
SAC Joe Bonavolonta, MA USA Andy Lelling & Natick Police Chief Jim Hicks announce charges against six @eBay employees for an aggressive cyberstalking campaign targeting the editor & publisher of an online newsletter. They're also charged with obstructing our investigation. pic.twitter.com/yBRWL7SvaO
The alleged crimes took place in August and September 2019. Four other former eBay employees weren't arrested today but face the same charges. They are Stephanie Popp, 32, eBay's former senior manager of global intelligence; Stephanie Stockwell, 26, former manager of eBay's Global Intelligence Center (GIC); Veronica Zea, 26, a former eBay contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst in the GIC; and Brian Gilbert, 51, a former senior manager of special operations for eBay's Global Security Team. Harville is from New York City while the other five defendants are from California.
………
Thirdly, the defendants allegedly conducted surveillance of the editor/publisher couple. After registering for a software-development conference as a pretext to go to Boston, "Baugh, Harville, and Zea (and later Popp) allegedly drove to the victims' home in Natick several times, with Harville and Baugh intending at one point to break into the victims' garage and install a GPS tracking device on their car," the DOJ said. "As protection in the event they were stopped by local police, Baugh and Harville allegedly carried false documents purporting to show that they were investigating the victims as 'Persons of Interest' who had threatened eBay executives. The victims spotted the surveillance, however, and notified the Natick police, who began to investigate. The police learned that Zea had rented one of the cars used by the defendants and reached out to eBay for assistance."
………
eBay issued a statement today saying that it "immediately launched a comprehensive investigation" upon being notified by law enforcement. "As a result of the investigation, eBay terminated all involved employees, including the company's former Chief Communications Officer, in September 2019," eBay said.
eBay further said that it "does not tolerate this kind of behavior" and "apologizes to the affected individuals and is sorry that they were subjected to this."
Devin Wenig was the CEO of eBay at the time of the incidents and left the company in September 2019. eBay said that its "internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig's communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband. However, as the company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure from the company."
Also, even without the whole fetal pig thing, the fact that eBay has a senior manager of global intelligence, a manager of their Global Intelligence Center (GIC), with intelligence analysts, and a senior manager of special operations for eBay's Global Security Team is completely and totally whack.
I understand the need for security to prevent things like industrial espionage, but the fact that eBay has a paramilitary wing is an indication of some deeper problems in the organization.
This is aircraft manufacture 101, and it happened on one of the first air frames that was supposed to been accepted by the Air Force.
Boeing really cannot make airplanes any more:
The delivery of a new KC-46 Pegasus tanker aircraft to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina has been delayed after foreign object debris was found inside the plane by Boeing inspectors.
The delayed aircraft was to have been one of the first two KC-46s delivered to Air Force Reserve Command at Seymour Johnson on June 12. But while the first was successfully delivered, debris was found in the fuel tank of the second during its pre-acceptance inspections.
In a statement provided to Air Force Times and Defense News on Monday, the Air Force said the debris came from “non-standard factory rework,” and not the kind of “production line quality escapes” that caused the Air Force to halt KC-46 deliveries in March 2019.
Those problems with foreign object debris, or FOD, led the Air Force to put a plan in place to correct the problem.
………
Just a month after Boeing began delivering the KC-46 to the Air Force in January 2019, the service found foreign object debris — tools or other materials used to build the aircraft — left behind in multiple KC-46s, creating a potential safety hazard. As a result, the Air Force stopped accepting new tankers over a weeks-long period in March and April 2019 as it investigated the issue.
I'm not sure that Boeing can be fixed without burning the whole rotten edifice down and rebuilding from the ashes.
Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow said he would appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Trump had earlier lost the initial case before a federal district court, and it was since fast-tracked.
………
The three-judge panel wrote in their decision that "any presidential immunity from state criminal process does not extend to investigative steps like the grand jury subpoena at issue here," affirming the lower court's ruling on that question.
Vance is seeking to obtain eight years of Trump's tax documents through his account firm, Mazars USA, to evaluate the Trump Organization's role in the payouts to porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as the reimbursements made to Trump's former longtime attorney Michael Cohen, who is now serving a three-year federal prison sentence for a litany of crimes, including campaign finance violations. Daniels and McDougal claimed to have had affairs with Trump, allegations he has denied.
Because the tax documents were requested under a grand jury subpoena, it's unlikely they will become public if turned over. Trump is engaged in a series of legal battles across the country to keep his tax returns private.
I don't think that it's going to be resolved before the election, but I hope that will be.
DISTRICT 16 (northern parts of the Bronx and southern half of Westchester County, including Mt. Vernon, Yonkers, New Rochelle and Rye): The current representative — Eliot Engel — has been in Congress since 1989, and his connections to the district seem to have frayed.
He was criticized for not returning home even as the coronavirus raged through communities he represents, particularly New Rochelle. When he did return for this race, he was caught on a hot mic pushing for a chance to speak during a protest rally, saying, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”
His main challenger is Jamaal Bowman, an educator for more than 20 years and a fierce advocate for public schools. Mr. Bowman helped found a public middle school in the Bronx, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, and promises to work for all of the district, including sections he says have been neglected during Mr. Engel’s time in Congress.
Mr. Bowman says he wants to see the United States adopt a kind of Marshall Plan for climate change, jobs, housing and education. “We need political imagination,” he said. In a district that needs new energy, Mr. Bowman will bring it.
It's important to remember that primary challenges are important even when they fail, and a relatively low success rate is a given.
Dan Lipinski has already been taken out this election cycle, and if Engel is taken down, it will put fear in the hearts of a lot of Democratic Party incumbents.
When the number drops below ½ million, we can start to talk about having a meaningful recovery.
As it stands, we still have not seen the full knock-on effects for April and May:
The number of people seeking unemployment benefits continued to fall while those receiving them appeared to plateau, signs the U.S. labor market continues to slowly mend from the coronavirus employment shock.
The ranks of Americans drawing on unemployment benefits declined slightly in the week ended May 30 to 20.9 million, the Labor Department said Thursday. So-called continuing claims remain historically high—the prepandemic record was 6.6 million in 2009—and appear to have stabilized in recent weeks after peaking in early May.
Though states continue to work through a backlog of claims, new applications for unemployment benefits have trended down since the coronavirus pandemic and related lockdowns triggered a surge in claims at the end of March. About 1.5 million applications were filed last week, compared with a peak of nearly 7 million in the week ended March 28.
Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night.
“We harshly disagree with how Facebook has approached this,” said Mr. Gardideh, the co-founder of Pearmill, a New York marketing agency with a dozen clients, mostly tech start-ups. “For the past couple of years, this problem has become bigger and bigger. These massive platforms have to care about free speech issues to some extent, but Facebook is on the extreme end of not caring.”
Unlike Twitter and Snap, which have toughened their stances against Mr. Trump’s online statements that contain misinformation or promote violence, Facebook has held firm on its decision to leave his posts alone. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has defended the policy, despite the resignations of some staff members and public criticism from current and former employees.
In recent days, many companies have cautiously returned to advertising, after having pulled back during the height of the pandemic in the United States. But some have decided not to advertise on Facebook, now that it has become clear that Mr. Zuckerberg will give the president a wide berth.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's refusal to apply platform policies to moderate rule-breaking posts by President Trump and other political figures has prompted a pair of tech policy groups to stop accepting money from the ad biz. On Wednesday, Public Knowledge and the Open Technology Institute said they would no longer accept funding from Facebook because it refuses to moderate hate, misinformation, and abuse. "I believe that different platforms can have different moderation policies," said Chris Lewis, President and CEO of Public Knowledge, in a statement. "However, platforms shouldn't hide behind the First Amendment as an excuse to allow hate, misinformation, and abuse to run rampant on their services, particularly when they hold such a dominant position in the marketplace. Doing so distorts what the First Amendment means, and ignores the influence that moderation has on our civic conversations and system of democracy."
Facebook's relentless support of right-wing lies and exhortations are not an accident, nor are they an artifact of deeply held beliefs about free speech by Zuckerberg.
They are an artifact that right-wing mythology and violence get more engagement from the users than does the left wing equivalent, and so generates so generates more money, as both Zuckerberg and the Macedonian teens promulgating conspiracy theories in 2016.
The others just hung out, instead of ……… you know ……… Doing Their F%$#ing Jobs.
Then again, considering that their job right now is basically basically brutalizing people for engaging in First Amendment protected behavior.
Still, their asses should be fired:
As protests across Chicago devolved into chaos last week and residents started to loot nearby stores, police officers were making popcorn and drinking coffee while “lounging” inside Congressman Bobby Rush’s office, officials said in a stunning news conference on Thursday.
This is F%$#ed Up & Sh%$
Speaking alongside Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Rush said at least 13 Chicago Police officers were loitering inside his South Side campaign office in the early hours of June 1 and were “relaxing” while nearby stores were being looted and burned, and their fellow officers were clashing with demonstrators.
“They even had the unmitigated gall to make coffee for themselves and to pop popcorn, my popcorn, in my microwave, while looters were tearing apart businesses within their sight and within their reach,” Rush (D-IL) said.
………
The incident, which Rush and Lightfoot said was captured on CCTV, showed the officers—and at least three supervisors—with feet up on desks. One officer “was asleep on my couch” while another “was on his cellphone,” Rush said.
“They were in a mode of relaxation and did not care about what was happening. They did not care. They absolutely did not care,” Rush added.
………
Lightfoot, at times visibly angry and tearful during the Thursday press conference, said the officers “demonstrated a total disregard for their colleagues [and] for the badge” and should be held accountable. She said she and her team were “enraged” when they learned of the incident. None of the 13 officers has been identified, and she urged them to come forward before investigators find them.
They're not going to come forward, because ……… COPS.
That being said, when they get caught, I think that the statement from the Chicago police union defending them is going to HAVE to be one for the ages.
Британский парламентарий призывает громить еврейские могилы. 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ https://t.co/lY5ymjJDGh
— Ruslana Boshirova Альянс пианистов (@ValLisitsa) June 11, 2020
In case you are wondering, "Британский парламентарий призывает громить еврейские могилы," translates to, "British MP calls for smashing Jewish graves."
It's not a statue that he wants destroyed, it's Karl Marx's grave stone.
I guess that the "Ride Sharing" companies are going to have to find a new way to f%$# over their drivers to justify the obscene money that they pay their senior executives.
Oh, the humanity.
Think of the venture capitalists!
The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates private transport companies including Uber and Lyft, has ruled that the two upstarts' drivers should be recognized as employees instead of contractors.
The issue over the status of drivers for ride-hailing companies has been controversial for a while. Cali Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5, known as AB5, that classifies gig economy workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers, as employees in the US state.
The law came into force in January this year, though Uber and Lyft have resisted the change. Both companies were sued by the state’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra last month for failing to recognize its drivers as employees. Now, the California Public Utilities Commission has weighed in.
When Republicans read the platform their party is using for the 2020 campaign, they may be surprised to see that it is full of condemnations of the sitting president.
“The survival of the internet as we know it is at risk,” the platform reads. “Its gravest peril originates in the White House, the current occupant of which has launched a campaign, both at home and internationally, to subjugate it to agents of government.”
The warning about speech online is one of more than three dozen unflattering references to either the “current president,” “current chief executive,” “current administration,” people “currently in control” of policy, or the “current occupant” of the White House that appear in the Republican platform. Adopted at the party’s 2016 convention, it has been carried over through 2024 after the executive committee of the Republican National Committee on Wednesday chose not to adopt a new platform for 2020.
The platform censures the “current” president — who in 2016 was, of course, Barack Obama — and his administration for, among other things, imposing “a social and cultural revolution,” causing a “huge increase in the national debt” and damaging relationships with international partners.
Ray Ciccarelli (0-31 in his career) has announced his retirement from NASCAR due to their decision to ban confederate flags. NASCAR is scrambling to find someone else to regularly finish 28th.
It's no surprise. Ciccarelli has never been good at anything race-related.
I've always felt that of everyone at The Daily Show John Oliver was the best host.
Jon Stewart was always a big subscriber to the view from nowhere, and while Trevor Noah is better, he is still tentative. (The less said of Craig Kilborne the better)
John Oliver is better at addressing the outrages of the day because he actually shows sincere outrage when an outrage occurs:
Amid the depths of a global pandemic and financial downturn, the demand for real estate is unexpectedly rocketing in wealthy regions outside San Francisco, reports Bloomberg. Agents say that demand is soaring in affluent areas around the Bay Area such as Napa, Marin and further afield in Carmel, as people who have the means look to get away from the city. Meanwhile, the market in San Francisco and Alameda County is still well below where it was last year.
Elsewhere, Lake Tahoe has also seen a surge in real estate interest. The prospect of living out of the city on an alpine lake while maintaining a career is appealing for a new generation of young buyers, as many tech companies have signaled that remote work may be the new norm for a long time.
“I’ve never seen the demand higher for Marin County real estate than when COVID-19 hit,” Sotheby's Josh Burns told Bloomberg this week, as real estate agents see a surprising uptick in wealthy buyers leaving San Francisco.
………
Meanwhile, the rental market in San Francisco has dropped significantly, with rates for one-bedroom apartments in the city dropping by 9.2% since June 2019, and hitting a three-year low.
However, buying a new home in an isolated haven in a nearby bucolic county is not an option for lower-income San Francisco residents, and some believe the trend is only exacerbating the wealth divide.
“This is an example of another way the most advantaged, the most affluent have isolated themselves from this latest crisis,” Patrick Sharkey, a sociology professor at Princeton University, told Bloomberg. “It’s a very small segment of the population that has another home that they can go take off to.”
The wealthy have made San Francisco unlivable, and not that it is, they are moving on leaving devastation in their wake.
The wealthy are to community as my cats are to their litter box.
I knew that William Barr was an egregiously corrupt political hack, and I knew that his attempt to drop charges was motivated by a desire to please Donald Trump, but I did not expect this fact to be called out so explicitly in a legal filing authored by a former federal judge:
A retired federal judge accused the Justice Department on Wednesday of a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power” and urged a court to reject its attempt to drop the criminal case against Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.
The arguments in a 73-page brief by John Gleeson, the retired judge and former mafia prosecutor appointed to argue against the Justice Department’s unusual effort to drop the Flynn case, were the latest turn in a politically charged case that now centers on the question of whether Mr. Flynn should continue to be prosecuted. He said Mr. Flynn should be sentenced.
The Justice Department’s intervention last month, directed by Attorney General William P. Barr, came after a long public campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies and prompted an outcry from former law enforcement officials that the administration was further politicizing the department.
………
Mr. Gleeson’s brief amounted to a step-by-step dissection of the factual claims and legal arguments the Justice Department put forward last month to justify withdrawing a charge of making false statements that Mr. Flynn had twice pleaded guilty to. Mr. Gleeson said the department’s intervention was an example of the kind of “corrupt, politically motivated dismissals” that judges have the power to guard against.
“The reasons offered by the government are so irregular, and so obviously pretextual, that they are deficient,” Mr. Gleeson wrote. “Moreover, the facts surrounding the filing of the government’s motion constitute clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse. They reveal an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.”
………
To justify Mr. Barr’s decision to drop the case, the Justice Department has argued that Mr. Flynn’s lies were not “material” to any legitimate investigation — rejecting the department’s own previous position that his lies were relevant to the counterintelligence inquiry into the scope of Russia’s covert operation to tilt the 2016 election in Mr. Trump’s favor and the nature of links to Trump campaign associates.
Mr. Gleeson, who had co-written an op-ed article calling into question the legitimacy of Mr. Barr’s intervention before Judge Sullivan appointed him, offered a blistering critique of that rationale.
“Pursuant to an active investigation into whether President Trump’s campaign officials coordinated activities with the government of Russia, one of those officials lied to the F.B.I. about coordinating activities with the government of Russia,” Mr. Gleeson wrote. “It is hard to conceive of a more material false statement than this one.”
Marching through other issues raised by Mr. Flynn’s defenders and embraced by the Justice Department, Mr. Gleeson portrayed the arguments as “absurd,” “legally unsound,” “misdirection,” “preposterous” and “empty.” He said the department’s request was both “riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact” and departed from its position in other cases — all evidence, he said, that its rationale for dropping the case was just a pretext.
………
“The government may not enlist a court in dismissing a case solely because the defendant is a friend and political ally of the president — and where the ostensible reasons advanced for dismissal amount to a thin and unpersuasive disguise,” wrote Mr. Gleeson, who gained fame as the prosecutor who put the Gambino crime boss John Gotti in prison, and went on to serve as a federal judge in Brooklyn from 1994 to 2016.
He added: “If the executive wishes for the judiciary to dismiss criminal charges — as opposed to issuing a pardon or taking other unilateral action — the reasons it offers must be real and credible. Its professed concerns about materiality are neither.”
Damn. That's gonna leave a mark.
Why there hasn't been a complaint filed against Barr to the Washington, DC bar for discipline is beyond me.
This makes the entire incident look like a deliberate decision to kill him as a matter of personal animus:
As mourners in Houston honor the life of George Floyd in Minneapolis, CBS News is learning new details from a nightclub coworker about alleged history between Floyd and Derek Chauvin, the former officer who is charged in Floyd's death. According to a former coworker, not only did they know each other, but they had a history of friction.
Floyd and Chauvin both worked security at a nightclub at the same time. Coworker David Pinney said the two men had a history.
"They bumped heads," Pinney said.
"How?" CBS News asked.
"It has a lot to do with Derek being extremely aggressive within the club with some of the patrons, which was an issue," Pinney explained.
The Floyd family says they believe what happened on May 25 was in part personal. Their lawyer has called for Chauvin to be charged with first-degree murder, "because we believe he knew who George Floyd was."
"Is there any doubt in your mind that Derek Chauvin knew George Floyd?" CBS News asked Pinney.
"No. He knew him," the coworker said.
"How well did he know him?" CBS News asked.
"I would say pretty well," Pinney replied.
Maya Santamaria, the owner of the now protest-torched club, described how Chauvin treated black patrons when she talked to CBS News for the upcoming special "Justice for All."
Santamaria said she had been paying Chauvin, when he was off-duty, to sit in his squad car outside El Nuevo Rodeo for 17 years. She said Floyd worked as a security guard inside the club frequently in the last year. In particular, they both worked on Tuesday nights, when the club had a popular weekly dance competition.
"Do you think Derek had a problem with black people?" CBS News asked.
"I think he was afraid and intimidated," Santamaria said.
"By black folks?" CBS News clarified.
"Yeah," Santamaria confirmed.
This is just one report, and the information has not been vetted, but Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has an obligation to fully investigate.
This blog is a place to put my stream of consciousness thoughts about life, politics, technology, and cats.
It's a posting ground for my more-or-less annual personal newsletter, 40 Years in the Desert.(PDF's available at link)
I find that if I wait until year's end I miss stuff from earlier in the year.
40 Years is put out the old fashioned way, it's printed out on ledger sized paper with 4 pages and mailed to people, total circulation of about 100.
I'm just not the holiday card kind of guy.
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Federal judge Judge Royce Lamberth ruled against an injunction against the publication of John Bolton's tell-all memoir.
