UNDER THE BUS

Defense blames Trump Organization employee’s ‘greed’ in tax fraud trial


Lawyer argues chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg committed crimes to enrich himself and company’s benefit a byproduct

Allen Weisselberg enters the courtroom in New York City in August 2022.

 Photograph: Getty Images

Reuters in New YorkThu 1 Dec 2022 20.40 GMT

As the end of a criminal tax fraud trial of Donald Trump’s real estate company neared on Thursday, a defense lawyer argued that the former president knew nothing about a former senior executive’s years-long scheme.

Democrats get Trump tax returns as Republican House takeover looms

Susan Necheles, representing one unit of the Trump Organization, pointed the finger at Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer, in her closing argument to the 12-member jury in New York state court in Manhattan.

“We are here today because of one reason and one reason only – the greed of Allen Weisselberg,” Necheles said. “The purpose of Mr Weisselberg’s crimes was to benefit Mr Weisselberg.”

Necheles also pinned blame on Donald Bender, an accountant with Mazars USA, for turning a blind eye to Weisselberg’s wrongdoing.

“President Trump relied on Mazars, he relied on Donald Bender to be the watchdog,” Necheles said. “Bender failed.”

Prosecutors were expected to deliver their closing argument on Thursday afternoon and Friday, with jury deliberations beginning on Monday.

The Trump Organization was charged in July 2021 with paying personal expenses for executives without reporting the income, and compensating them as if they were independent contractors, in a 15-year scheme to cheat tax authorities.

If convicted on all nine counts, the company faces up to $1.6m in fines. Trump, who is seeking the presidency in 2024, is not charged.

Weisselberg pleaded guilty to tax fraud and other charges under an agreement with prosecutors and is expected to serve five months in jail.

The trial began on 24 October, before Justice Juan Merchan. To prove guilt, prosecutors must show Weisselberg and other executives acted as “high managerial agents” when they carried out tax fraud and that they intended to benefit the company in some way.

Weisselberg has worked for the Trump family for about five decades and is now on paid leave. He testified that he improperly received bonus payments as non-employee compensation and hid from tax authorities payments for rent, car leases and other personal expenses.

Weisselberg’s testimony may have helped the defense. He told jurors his greed motivated him to cheat on taxes, and described the company’s modest payroll tax savings as a “byproduct”. At one point, he choked up while describing his embarrassment at violating the Trump family’s trust.

Necheles told jurors: “The issue here is not whether as a byproduct the company saved some money … You see what he said. His intent was to benefit himself, not the company.”

Bender, who was granted immunity, was the main defense witness. He testified that he trusted Weisselberg to give him accurate information for company tax returns and had no obligation to investigate further. Mazars cut ties with the Trump Organization in February.

Trump has called the charges politically motivated. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is Democratic, as is his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, who brought the charges last year.

The criminal case is separate from a $250m civil lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general against Trump, three of his adult children and his company in September, accusing them of overstating asset values and his net worth to get favorable bank loans and insurance.

Trump faces federal investigations into his removal of government documents from the White House after leaving office and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, and a Georgia state investigation over attempts to undo his election defeat there.

LeBron James calls out reporters for asking about Kyrie Irving controversy but not Jerry Jones
2022/12/01

The Los Angeles Lakers' LeBron James celebrates after making a 3- point shot against the Portland Trail Blazers in the first half at Crypto.com Arena on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022, in Los Angeles.

 - Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/TNS

LeBron James expressed disappointment he wasn’t asked about a race-related Jerry Jones controversy after reporters questioned him about Kyrie Irving’s antisemitism scandal.

Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, appears in a resurfaced 1957 image showing a group of white students blocking Black students from entering an Arkansas high school.

“That Jerry Jones photo is one of those moments that our people, Black people, have been through in America,” James said Wednesday after his Los Angeles Lakers’ game against the Portland Trail Blazers.

“I feel like as a Black man, as a Black athlete, as someone with power and a platform, when we do something wrong or something that people don’t agree with, it’s on every single tabloid, every single news coverage, it’s on the bottom ticker, it’s asked about every single day.”

Jones was 14 when the photo, which The Washington Post published last week, was taken during the integration of North Little Rock High School.

“It seems like, to me, the whole Jerry Jones situation, photo — and I know it was years and years ago, and we all make mistakes ... it’s just been buried under, ‘Oh, it happened. OK, we just move on,’ ” James said Wednesday.

 LITTLE ROCK ARK 1957 THE BOY IN FRONT IS NOT JERRY JONES

The 80-year-old Jones described himself as a “curious kid” who didn’t realize the magnitude of the event that day, telling reporters last week, “I’m sure glad that we’re a long way from that.”

James, who played with Irving on the Cleveland Cavaliers, was asked Nov. 5 about Irving sharing a antisemitic documentary on social media.

“Me personally, I don’t condone any hate to any kind, to any race,” James said. “To Jewish communities to Black communities to Asian communities, you guys know where I stand.”

The Brooklyn Nets suspended Irving amid the controversy. Irving, who initially denied promoting antisemitism with his post, has since apologized.

James tweeted he believed Irving should be able to play after apologizing. Irving sat out eight games before returning to the Nets’ lineup on Nov. 20.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/11/jerry-jones-defends-newly-unearthed.html

Pope: migrant deaths 'unacceptable and almost always avoidable'

2022/12/02


ROME (Reuters) - Migrant deaths in the Mediterranean are "unacceptable and almost always avoidable," Pope Francis said on Friday, renewing a call for policymakers across the region to address the issue in a manner "beneficial to all."

The 85-year-old pontiff, son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, often speaks up for the rights of migrants, and has repeatedly denounced how the Mediterranean has turned into a "vast cemetery."

"The inability to find common solutions [on migration] continues to lead to an unacceptable and almost always avoidable loss of lives, especially in the Mediterranean," Francis said in a message to Rome Med 2022, a foreign policy conference.

Insisting that migration towards Europe "cannot be stopped", he urged all parties involved to find a solution that can be "beneficial to all, guaranteeing both human dignity and shared prosperity."

Migration has for years been a political hot potato in Europe, with governments resorting to increasingly hard-line policies to try to stem the inflow of migrants and asylum-seekers from North Africa and the Middle East.

In Italy, one of the first acts of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government was the refusal to take in a charity migrant rescue boat, forcing it to go to all the way France and causing a furious spat with Paris.

According to data from the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, around 136,500 migrants have reached Europe via Mediterranean sea crossings this year, and more than 1,800 have died or gone missing.

(Reporting by Alvise Armellini; Editing by Keith Weir)

DOJ tried to hide report warning that private border wall in Texas could collapse

Pro Publica
December 02, 2022

DOJ photo of President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr in the Oval Office.

A private border wall built along the Rio Grande in South Texas could collapse during extreme flooding, according to a federally commissioned inspection report that the government sought to keep secret for more than a year.

The 404-page report, produced by the global engineering firm Arcadis, confirms previous reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. It also shows for the first time that the federal government independently found structural problems with the border fencing before reaching a settlement agreement with the builder, Fisher Industries, in May.

Under the agreement, which ended a nearly three-year legal battle between the International Boundary and Water Commission and Fisher Industries, the company must inspect the fence quarterly, remove bollards and maintain a gate that would allow for the release of floodwaters. It must also keep a $3 million bond, a type of insurance, to cover any expenses in case the structure fails.

Engineering and hydrology experts told the news organizations the bond is inadequate to cover the kind of catastrophic failure described by Arcadis and raised concerns that the federal government’s decision to settle the case cuts against the report’s findings.

The company modeled different scenarios using the extreme weather conditions caused by Hurricane Beulah, a 1967 storm that dumped about 30 inches of rain in some areas of the border region and caused the banks of the Rio Grande to overflow. The modeling showed that the fence “would effectively slide and/or overturn” during major flooding, and that it starts to become unstable during much smaller and more frequent floods.

According to the report, the fencing doesn’t meet basic international building code and industry standards and has a foundation far shallower than border barriers built by the federal government.

“Every single conclusion in the report points to it not needing to be there and shows it is actually negatively affecting the area,” said Adriana E. Martinez, a professor and geomorphologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. (She was not involved with the report.)

Martinez, who studies the impact of border barriers in South Texas, questioned how much more evidence the state and federal governments need to take down the fencing and prevent future construction along the Rio Grande.

Arcadis referred questions about its assessment to the Department of Justice, which represented the IBWC in the lawsuit, arguing the fence violated a treaty with Mexico that requires both countries to approve any development that can affect the international boundary. A DOJ spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about the settlement or about why the government fought the release of the report.

The news organizations obtained the report on Nov. 15 after multiple Freedom of Information Act requests and 15 months of back-and-forth with the federal government, which initially denied the request. The DOJ reversed course and released the report after ProPublica attorneys threatened legal action.

As part of the settlement, federal officials ordered that Fisher Industries and its subsidiaries destroy all copies of the Arcadis report, alleging that it contained “proprietary information.”

“Reading this and seeing the settlement that came out of this, it’s as though they completely disregarded the Arcadis report,” said Amy Patrick, a Houston forensic structural and civil engineer and court-recognized expert on wall construction. “I can see why they were dragging their heels so much on letting it get out because (the report) basically completely dismantled this idea that the fence will be OK.”

Mark Courtois, an attorney for Fisher Industries, said that the construction company “strongly disagreed with the opinions in the Arcadis report and refuted those opinions to the satisfaction of the IBWC.” He said the company worked with the IBWC, which is charged with oversight of the international treaty, to “reach a mutually agreeable resolution of all matters pertaining to the fence, including any issues raised by the Arcadis report.”

“Construction of the fence was completed nearly three years ago, and we continue to be confident in its design and construction,” Courtois said.

Sally Spener, a spokesperson for the IBWC, denied that Fisher was able to counter the conclusions in the Arcadis report to the agency’s satisfaction.

In an email to the news organizations, Spener said that the agency accepted the report’s findings, which showed a far greater impact on the flow of the Rio Grande than the builder had claimed. Despite that, she added, the settlement agreement’s requirements address the agency’s concerns that the barrier would violate the treaty.

But the settlement agreement won’t address the report’s findings that the fence was built on a flawed design and featured construction shortcomings that could contribute to its collapse, said Alex Mayer, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“It just shows the shoddiness of the whole effort. It worries me even more,” Mayer said.

Tommy Fisher, president of Fisher Industries, started to construct the fence in 2019 with financial support from the online fundraising campaign We Build the Wall. The nonprofit was set up to help former President Donald Trump build his “big, beautiful wall” along the length of the border. In the end, four of the nonprofit’s top leaders, including Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon, were arrested on fraud and other charges connected to the fundraising scheme.

Trump pardoned Bannon in January 2021. But in September, Bannon was indicted on state charges in New York. Bannon called the charges “nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”

The three other men, including Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran who led the organization, face sentencing on Jan. 31 in federal court on various fraud and tax-related charges. Kolfage and another man pleaded guilty in April. The third man was convicted in October.

Soon after construction of the fence began, the DOJ filed a lawsuit in federal court to try to halt the work, claiming that Fisher Industries was violating the treaty with Mexico. A state district judge in Hidalgo County granted the government a temporary restraining order to stop construction, but a federal judge later reversed it.

During a January 2020 court hearing, Fisher claimed that his bollard wall design would bring security to the actual border by addressing the flooding and erosion concerns that previously prevented the federal government from building near the river’s edge.

The 3-mile project was completed in February 2020, making it the first border fence built directly on the riverbank in South Texas. We Build the Wall contributed about $1.5 million of the $42 million total cost, with the rest coming from Fisher, according to court testimony.

The areas around the private border fence soon started to show signs of erosion. Six hydrologists and engineers told ProPublica and the Tribune in July 2020 that the foundation of the fence was too shallow and that a series of gashes and gullies where rainwater runoff had scoured the sandy loam beneath the foundation raised stability concerns.

Following the organization’s news articles, Trump tried to distance himself from the project, saying on Twitter that it had been constructed to make him look bad.

Fisher called the news organizations’ reporting on engineering concerns “absolute nonsense” during a 2020 podcast interview hosted by Bannon.

“I would invite any of these engineers that so-called said this was gonna fall over, I’ll meet ’em there next week. … If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you probably shouldn’t start talking,” he said. “It’s working unbelievably well. There’s a little erosion maintenance we have to maintain.”

As climate change contributes to more extreme weather, better understanding the erosion that is occurring is critical, Martinez said.

“We know that there are more extreme hurricane seasons that are occurring due to climate change, so we know that it’s more likely that the fence is going to get flooded out in the Rio Grande,” Martinez said. “It’s just a matter of time before something happens.”

The fence outside Mission is one of two private border barriers built using private funds, but it may not be the last.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has embarked on an effort to build fencing along the state’s 1,200-mile border using a mixture of state funds and crowdsourced private dollars. And Trump said he would continue border wall construction while announcing last month that he would again run for the country’s highest office.

Ryan Patrick, a former U.S. attorney whose office first filed the lawsuit against Fisher, said that by settling the case and requiring a bond, the government limits the risk of losing at trial. Patrick left office before the settlement was negotiated. He continues to believe that the judge should not have allowed Fisher to build the fence.

The settlement doesn’t prevent someone from constructing on the floodplain in the future, he said, but it shows that the government will not give unrestricted authority to potential builders. “You are going to have long-term care and custody of that thing,” he said.

Amy Patrick, who is not related to Ryan Patrick, offered a different perspective.

The structural engineer said that the government’s handling of the legal case, and what she sees as an apparent indifference to its own engineering report, could set “a precedent that credible engineering will be disregarded in similar projects in the future.”

Great white sharks are migrating along the NC coast. A marine life expert explains why

2022/12/0

A Great White Shark swims off the shore of Cape Cod, Massachusetts on July 13, 2019. - JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/TNS

Great white sharks typically gather along the North Carolina coast in the winter but researchers aren’t sure why it happens.

Sara Mirabilio, a fisheries specialist at the North Carolina Sea Grant Extension Program, a state and federally-funded program that “provides research, education and outreach opportunities relating to current issues affecting the North Carolina coast and its communities,” was prompted to research the topic after an angler hooked a “mystery shark” along the coast.

“This juvenile white shark was literally in the surf zone at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, that an angler off the pier caught it,” Mirabilio said, adding that the shark was later released.

Research shows that the spot where the shark was caught – and others like it – could serve as a temporary habitat for young great whites.
Why are sharks here?

A recent study shows that shark migration patterns in the winter may have something to do with water temperature.

A research team looking to study the migration patterns of young great white sharks used satellite and acoustic to track them remotely over two winter periods, Mirabilio wrote in a blog post for the N.C. Sea Grant.

The study found that juvenile sharks “were distinctly inhabiting different geographic areas,” where the water was warmer, Mirabilio said.

“A lot of them did come to our coastal continental shelf waters, and those waters are less than 300 feet,” Mirabilio said referring to the younger sharks. “You don’t really get this from adults. Adults are in deeper waters.”

Will the presence of sharks lead to attacks?

Though there have been a handful of unprovoked shark attacks in North Carolina in recent years, the young sharks likely won’t approach swimmers, Mirabilio said.

“These are small sharks,” said Mirabilio. “If anything, they’ll give you a little nip, but I really don’t see these juvenile white sharks posing a threat to humans.”

Did some of our federal police conspire to overthrow the United States?
Thom Hartmann
December 01, 2022

Army Maj. Gen. William Walker, Commanding General of the Washington National Guard, said the Pentagon took three hours and 19 minutes to approve the deployment of the guard when the Capitol was attacked on January 6(AFP)

Congressman Ron Paul’s former staffer, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oathkeepers, was just convicted of seditious conspiracy. But how did he and his merry band get close enough to Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi to present the kind of deadly threat they tried to carry out?

“Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” the Scotland Yard police inspector asked Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story The Adventure of Silver Blaze.
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time,” Holmes replied.
“The dog,” the inspector said, “did nothing in the night-time.”
“That,” replied Holmes, “was the curious incident.”

Why didn’t the “dogs” of our federal police, investigative, and military agencies “bark” when they knew full well in advance that an armed mob was coming to the Capitol to try to overthrow our government, and that many within the mob were armed and willing to kill (and did) to try to accomplish their goal?

Why, afterward, did the Secret Service and the Department of Defense wipe their phones so the data could never be retrieved? Why has there never been a public examination of most of this?

It’s as if a small-town police force was warned that a gang of bank robbers was on their way into town on the following Saturday, and that weekend the entire police force decided to leave their phones off the hook and go fishing. And after the bank was robbed, they all said they didn’t realize they’d really intended to rob the town’s bank. And then destroyed the note warning them the robbers were coming to town.

Why are so few people openly speculating that corrupt individuals — possibly only a tiny handful — within the FBI, Secret Service, and Department of Defense may have participated in a plot led by Donald Trump to overthrow our government?

Is it simply because treason is such an unimaginably heinous act? Does journalistic integrity require them to await “smoking gun” evidence that, at the very least, some people within these organizations were knowing or unknowing participants in Trump’s plot to become America’s last president? Is it fear of losing sources in the agencies?

When I was 13 years old my father gave me a just-published book he’d gotten from a friend in the John Birch Society titled None Dare Call It Treason. It posited that the US State Department was riddled with communist sympathizers, largely based on circumstantial evidence and the “investigations” conducted a decade earlier by Senator Joe McCarthy.

There was no such conspiracy (although there were a few identified as “commies,” mostly just good liberals), but that didn’t stop the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, from frequently and loudly suggesting to the press that there was.

Similarly, from the viewpoint of some of the people working in the FBI and Secret Service on January 6th, it may not have been as absurd as it sounds today to have then believed that Democrats in a half-dozen states had successfully stolen the election from Trump.

After all, the President of the United States was making that claim himself, repeatedly. And dozens of other high-ranking officials, including members of the House and Senate from the various states where the crimes allegedly occurred, were themselves corroborating his claim.

Trump was the boss, and if people in police agencies are anything it’s deferential to the boss. And highly aware of the chain of command. As the old saying goes, if he says, “Jump!” it’s their job to reply, “How high?”

Anybody who’s ever had much contact with members of police and military agencies knows they lean conservative, sometimes to the point of outright support for police-state style fascism. In many instances and circumstances a certain amount of authoritarianism seems necessary to do the job, particularly policing, which is why that kind of work draws authoritarian personalities to it.

It’s also no secret that both police officers and military enlistees vote overwhelmingly Republican, largely for the same reasons (although the GOP also goes out of its way to court those voters).

So, should we be surprised to learn that a handful of members of our federal police agencies — the FBI and Secret Service — and a few most senior officials in the Department of Defense may have conspired — wittingly or unwittingly — with Donald Trump to end democracy in America and institute a Trump-led strongman government?

As the January 6th Select Committee in the House is wrapping up their work and writing their final report, there are more than a few questions around the DOD, FBI, and Secret Service that remain unanswered, particularly about the days and weeks leading up to that fateful day.

The largest question, of course, is why they all stood down, knowing that armed militias were coming to try to overturn an election. And that the militia members were willing to spill blood, which they did, including that of the three police officers killed and over 140 injured, to accomplish their goal.

The attack heading toward the Capitol wasn’t a secret, by any measure. Trump had tweeted an invitation on December 19th saying it would be “wild” and reiterated the invitation multiple times both on Twitter and in other venues.

Rhodes texted to his Oathkeeper members, which included at least one FBI informant:

“We are not getting through this without a civil war. Prepare your mind, body and spirit.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, he also proclaimed:
“We will have to do a bloody, massively bloody revolution against them. That's what's going to have to happen.”

Planning was all over right-wing media, Twitter, and Facebook. People were openly discussing violence and plans for violence. There was brazen talk of revolution, of assassination.

Somebody brought and assembled a gallows on the lawn of the capitol building, but somehow nobody stopped the construction or knows the identities of its builders and how or why it was organized.

And we now know that FBI field offices across the country had noticed the boiling calls for violence, and the Secret Service and DOD were also fully aware of it.

But not only did they do nothing: they actively prevented — for days in advance, and for multiple hours during the active armed assault — any rescue of the small contingent of Capitol Police and legislators left to deal with an armed mob of thousands.

The Commanding General of the National Guard, Gen. William J. Walker, has openly complained that he was prevented — for four hours — from helping the Capitol Police that day. As The Washington Post reported:
“Walker contends that restrictions placed on him by McCarthy and Trump’s acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, prevented him from sending Guard members to assist sooner.”

How is this an accident?

When Trump took the dais to whip up the crowd before sending them to the Capitol to “hang Mike Pence,” he took the unusual step of speaking from behind a wall of bulletproof glass. Congressman Mo Brooks, among others, wore a bulletproof vest.

They knew what the hell was up.

Hours before Trump’s rally, in the early morning hours, armed people had started showing up near the ellipse; DC police and the Secret Service had reports of an armed person in a tree and others carrying semiautomatic weapons.

January 6th Committee testimony suggests the Secret Service reported this to Trump himself although, weirdly, nobody tried to disarm these people in a city where guns are largely illegal. Instead, apparently there was a debate about whether or not to turn off the metal-detecting magnetometers.

Trump then demanded — in real time, from the stage — that those armed followers be allowed in to hear his speech without having to go through the magnetometers that would have identified their weapons.

Yet somehow his hand-picked FBI Director hadn’t prepared to deal with an armed mob in advance and, on the day of the assault, went fishing or something (his statement to Congress is here).

Whatever he was doing, he was seemingly paralyzed for most of the day and only took direct action, he testified under oath to Congress:
“Beginning on the evening of January 6, the FBI surged substantial resources to help ensure the safety and security of the U.S. Capitol complex, members of Congress, and their staff, and the public.” (emphasis mine)


This isn’t to say I think Chris Wray was in on the conspiracy. Unless he’s managed to drag the agency back to the era of J. Edgar Hoover and is blackmailing politicians, his retention by the Biden administration speaks volumes.

Nonetheless, many of us would like to know, “WTF?!??”

For similarly unknown reasons Trump’s acting Defense Secretary told the National Guard two days earlier, on January 4th, that they were not, without specific permission from him, allowed to help the Capitol police on January 6th. (His memo is reproduced at the end of this article.)

Meanwhile, as convicted seditionist Stewart Rhodes testified at his own trial, Oathkeepers were fully expecting counter-protestors to show up, people they could identify as “Antifa” and attack. General Mike Flynn was pushing Trump to use that expected battle as the excuse to declare martial law and suspend election activity.

And it now looks like Trump may have been prepared to execute Flynn’s plan, had those counter-protestors actually showed up.

The day before, on January 5th, Trump issued an executive order asserting that “Antifa” was both a domestic terrorist and organized crime group and should be treated as such by the federal government.
“[R]eliable reporting,” the January 5th order notes, “suggests that the movement known as Antifa is directly or indirectly responsible for some of the recent lawlessness in our communities, and has exploited tragedies to advance a radical, leftist, anarchist, and often violent agenda. In fact, Antifa has long used otherwise permissible demonstrations to engage in lawless, criminal behavior to further its radical agenda. …
“Those affiliated with Antifa have also repeatedly threatened violence, including against law enforcement officers. …
“In late September of 2020, individuals in a moving truck distributed riot equipment — including shields, masks, and a sign emblazoned with an Antifa symbol — in Louisville, Kentucky, before riots ensued there. Hours later, the violent situation resulted in the shooting of two police officers. And on October 5, 2020, reported Antifa activists in Portland were captured on video attacking a woman carrying an American flag.
“The Department of Justice has already publicly confirmed that actions by Antifa and similar groups meet the standard for domestic terrorism.”


Over at the Department of Defense then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and his Chief of Staff Kash Patel (formerly of Devin Nunes’ staff) were running the place.

They controlled the Pentagon and our armed forces but, more importantly, they controlled the National Guard, whose troops had previously surrounded buildings in the Capitol area three-deep during the peaceful BLM protests just six months earlier.

The prospect that violence was heading toward the Capitol on January 6th wasn’t a secret to anybody with a Twitter or Facebook account: the nation was awash with threats and planning for violence, much of it in the open. It was discussed on talk radio and podcasts.

This apparently so alarmed Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy that, on January 4th, he reached out to his boss, Trump’s recently-appointed Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, to get permission to send the National Guard to the Capitol building on January 6th to prevent the violence they were seeing being planned all over social media.

Acting Defense Secretary Miller, in the effective role of commander of our entire military just one step below Commander-in-Chief Trump (on whose behalf he acted), then issued a memo on January 4th specifically directing McCarthy and the National Guard that they were:*Not authorized to be issued weapons, ammunition, bayonets, batons, or ballistic protection equipment such as helmets and body armor.

*Not to interact physically with protestors, except when necessary in self-defense or defense of others.
*Not to employ any riot control agents.
*Not to share equipment with law enforcement agencies.
*Not authorized to use Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets or to conduct ISR or Incident, Awareness, and Assessment activities in assistance to Capitol Police.
*Not allowed to employ helicopters or any other air assets.
*Not to conduct searches, seizures, arrests, or other similar direct law enforcement activity.
*Not authorized to seek support from any non-DC National Guard units.

There’s no coherent theory about why Chris Miller wrote this memo and thus blocked the National Guard from protecting the Capitol and the members of Congress within it.

Some have suggested it was to retain an appearance of “normality at the Capitol,” but that makes no sense when you see their response to things like that summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. That was the new normal.

But something wasn’t normal at all in the Trump administration.

Recall, way back on November 9, 2020, right after his election loss was called on November 7th, the Los Angeles Times wrote:

“President Trump’s decision to fire Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Monday [the day before the election] raised concerns that he may be planning far-reaching military moves in his final weeks in office — and is putting in place new leadership more inclined to go along.

“Trump named Christopher Miller, director of the national counterterrorism center, to take over as acting Defense secretary, bypassing the normal practice of having the Pentagon’s No. 2 official take charge temporarily if the top job becomes vacant.”

The article also noted that Miller’s predecessor, who’d been through a Senate confirmation and was a “legal” Secretary of Defense (Miller was not), was concerned:
“In an interview conducted before his dismissal but published after he was fired Monday, Esper suggested that his successor might be more willing than he was to go along with Trump’s questionable uses of the military.
“‘Who’s going to come in behind me?’ Esper told Military Times, which covers the armed forces. ‘It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.’”


What did it take for Trump to get Chris Miller to write this memo? Was he duped? Was he an enthusiastic or reluctant participant? Did Donald Trump or his Chief of Staff and apparent co-conspirator Mark Meadows dictate it?

If this isn’t bad enough, on January 6th itself — as armed traitors were attacking police and searching to “hang Mike Pence” — Chris Miller oversaw a mid-afternoon, mid-riot conference call in which Army Secretary McCarthy was again begging for authority to immediately bring in the National Guard.

Then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations General Charles Flynn, the brother of convicted/pardoned foreign agent General Michael Flynn (who had been pushing Trump to declare martial law and seize voting machines nationwide) was on the call; both the Pentagon and the Army, it has been reported, lied to the press, Congress, and, apparently, to the Biden administration about his presence on that call for almost a year.

It wasn’t until December, 2021 that it was widely reported that the National Security Council’s Colonel Earl Matthews (who was also on the call) wrote a memo calling both Charles Flynn and Lt. Gen Walter Piatt, the Director of Army Staff, “absolute and unmitigated liars” for their testimony to Congress in which they both denied they’d argued to withhold the National Guard on January 6th.

Then we discovered that the phones and text messages of most of the group, including Chris Miller, Walter Piatt, Kash Patel, and Ryan McCarthy were all wiped of all conversations and text messages they had on and in the lead-up to January 6th.

Most of the communication-based evidence was destroyed. Completely destroyed. By coincidence, they said.

Why is it such a stretch to imagine that at least some of these men believed, as Stewart Rhodes has said he believed, that the battle of January 6th would end with Donald Trump declared the president?

That, once declared, he’d award them all presidential medals and give them promotions and positions of even greater power in his second administration?

That 2016 would be the last election actually determined by the people themselves, and they were all okay with that?

Is it simply true that “none dare call it treason?”

Perhaps I’m missing some critical detail that reduces this speculation to nonsense. Or maybe it’s just that because I’m publishing here on Substack in my own little silo I don’t have to answer to a nervous editor who wants to maintain his publication’s access to the FBI, Secret Service, and DOD.

If you know what I’m missing, please let me know in the comments section below.

If not, please join me in asking this simple question:
“Was there a conspiracy — even if it only involved a handful of people — at the highest levels of our government to end the American Experiment that was only defeated by sheer luck? And, if so, who were the conspirators and who were the unwitting dupes?”


Americans deserve to know why the dog didn’t bark on January 6th and in the days leading up to it. And, if appropriate, to dare to call it treason.

US Congress approves bill to avert major freight rail strike
AFP
December 01, 2022

US Senators approved a bill to avert a freight rail strike, but failed to green-light a measure on paid sick days


Washington (AFP) - The US Congress passed legislation Thursday to avert a freight rail strike that could have been devastating for the economy, intervening to break an impasse between workers and management as the holiday season approaches.

The bill, overwhelmingly approved by the Senate Thursday after passing with a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives a day earlier, effectively forces hold-out unions to accept a deal on higher wages, which a majority of unions already agreed to.

After the 80-15 Senate vote the measure now heads to President Joe Biden for his signature.

Under a 1926 law, Congress is empowered to resolve disputes between railroads and labor unions as part of its power to regulate commerce.

A strike would have seen almost 7,000 freight trains come to a halt, costing more than $2 billion a day, according to the American Association of Railroads.

Around 28 percent of goods transported in the country are by rail, and a large-scale strike would have had repercussions on multiple sectors.

Biden's administration had taken a hands-on approach to the long-running deadlock over a contract between organized labor and railroads, with cabinet secretaries in September taking part in all-night negotiations alongside union leaders and rail executives.

After the lengthy session, leaders from both sides announced a tentative agreement.

But since then, members of eight of the 12 rail unions approved the deal, while four voted it down.

While the House earlier backed a separate measure to add mandated paid sick time to the agreement, addressing a major sticking point identified by unions, this did not pass in the Senate on Thursday.

The Senate also failed to approve an amendment for a cooling-off period between workers and management.

But Biden told reporters Thursday that he "negotiated a contract no one else could negotiate."

"We're going to avoid the rail strike, keep the rails running, keep things moving," he added, at a news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Political risk

The agreement includes a 24 percent pay increase for workers. However, critics in organized labor had slammed a lack of guaranteed paid sick leave, an omission seen as evidence of "unchecked corporate greed," as one leading union put it.

The failure of the agreement to win universal approval among unions had set the stage for a potential strike on December 9, putting the White House in an awkward spot.

Biden has been dubbed "Union Joe" for his strong affinity for organized labor.

The prospect of rail paralysis presented a major political risk for Biden, whose administration is already grappling with decades-high inflation and risks of a slowing economy.

A freight freeze would also have impacted passenger service because some passenger trains run on tracks owned by freight companies.

"I made it really clear. I'm going to continue to fight for paid leave for not only rail workers, but for all American workers," Biden said Thursday.

CANADIAN STUDY

New research finds that atheists are just as healthy as the religious
2022/12/01


Atheists and agnostics tend to be just a healthy and satisfied with life as their religious counterparts, according to new research published in Journal of Religion and Health. The findings cast doubts on the theory that religion and spirituality enhance personal wellbeing.

Study author David Speed sought to test the belief-as-benefit effect, which describes a broad pattern of findings where religious beliefs and behaviors are positively associated with health outcomes. Much of this research has failed to include non-believers.

“There is an enormous literature addressing religion and health, there are literally 10,000s of article connecting belief, religious attendance, prayer, religiosity, etc. with a variety of health outcomes,” explained Speed, an associate professor at the University of New Brunswick. “However, there is a shortage of research addressing atheists, despite this population consisting of millions of Americans and Canadians.”

Speed used data from Canada’s General Social Survey to examine whether religion predicted physical and/or psychological wellness in a representative sample of Canadians. The survey collected data regarding religious identity, religious attendance, prayer frequency, and religiosity (“How important are your religious or spiritual beliefs to the way you live your life?”). The survey also included assessments of self-rated stress, self-rated physical health, life satisfaction, and self-rated mental health.

The sample included 455 atheists, 215 agnostics, 2,080 individuals who identified as “nonreligious,” 6,205 Catholics, 5,685 Protestants, 595 Eastern Religion practitioners, and 430 who identified their religious beliefs as “other.”

After controlling for sex, age, household income, marital status, language, minority status, education level, and geographic region, Speed failed to find any evidence that religious believers had better levels of stress, physical health, life satisfaction or mental health compared to non-believers. Additionally, religious attendance, prayer, and religiosity were generally unrelated to all four outcomes.

“The average person should be skeptical of claims that religion is inherently healthy or inherently health-promoting,” Speed told PsyPost. “While some religious people are undoubtedly healthy, the same can be said of some nonreligious people. Whatever advantages to life religion may (or may not offer), health simply isn’t one of them.”

The findings remained the same even after Speed compared the most nonreligious atheists, agnostics, and “nones” to the most religious Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Religion practitioners, and “other” practitioners.

“I’ve published a fair bit in this field so my findings weren’t particularly surprising to me,” Speed said. “But, my findings do run counter to an enormous literature that extols the health benefits of religion. My research program regularly shows that there are few (if any) health benefits to religion. This may surprise individuals who are only passingly familiar with the field.”

The findings are mostly in line with a previous study, which examined data from more than 15,000 U.S. residents. But as with any study, the new research includes some limitations. Speed noted that the General Social Survey did not collect data on two factors that could have important effects: social support and personality.

“Research addressing religion and health is almost always correlational, this means that we can’t figure out if religion is actually causing health differences,” Speed said. “For my money, I’d wager that the religion-health relationship is an indirect effect of social support or coherency.”

“We need to explore whether nonreligious groups (e.g., atheists, agnostics, Satanists, etc.) are systematically less healthy than the religious – if we can’t find a consistent difference this would suggest the field has deep problems.”

The study was titled: “Throw BABE Out With the Bathwater? Canadian Atheists are No Less Healthy than the Religious“.

How bringing back lost species revives ecosystems

AFP
November 30, 2022

Few species evoke the spirit of the American wild as much as wolves

Washington (AFP) - Scientists often study the grim impacts of losing wildlife to hunting, habitat destruction and climate change. But what happens when endangered animals are brought back from the brink?

Research has shown restoring so-called "keystone" species -- those with an outsized impact on their environment -- is vital for the health of ecosystems, and can come with unexpected benefits for humans.

Here are some notable examples from North America.
Wolves

Few species evoke the American wild as much as wolves.

Though revered by Indigenous communities, European colonists who arrived in the 1600s embarked on widespread extermination campaigns through hunting and trapping.

By the mid-20th century, fewer than a thousand gray wolves were left in the continental United States, down from at least a quarter million before colonization.

Extinction was averted in the 1970s when lawmakers passed the Endangered Species Act, helping revive the apex predator in parts of its former range.

Then, in the mid-1990s, the government took wolves from Canada and reintroduced them to Yellowstone National Park.

This generated a wealth of data that scientists are still working to understand.

The new arrivals kept elk numbers down, preventing them from over-browsing vegetation that provides material for birds to build nests and beavers to build dams -- a phenomenon known as a trophic cascade.

The recovered vegetation helped stop soil erosion into rivers, changing their course by reducing meandering.

While building their dams, the beavers also create deep ponds that juvenile fish and frogs need to survive.

When they embark on hunts, wolves focus on weak and diseased prey, ensuring survival of the fittest.

A recent paper even found that wolves brought back in the midwestern state of Wisconsin kept deer away from roads, reducing collisions with cars.

Amaroq Weiss, a biologist and senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity compared ecosystems to tapestries, "and when we take out some of the threads, we weaken that tapestry," she told AFP.

It's thought there are now more than 6,000 gray wolves in the US. The main threat is legalized hunting in some states.
Buffalo

The story of the American buffalo -- also known as bison -- is inextricably linked to the dark history of the early United States.

From an estimated 30 million, their number plummeted to just hundreds by the late 19th century as the US government sought to wipe out plains tribe Indians whose way of life depended on the animal.

"It was an intentional genocide to remove the buffalo, to the remove the Indians and force them onto reservations," Cody Considine of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) told AFP.

Buffalo, he explained, are an integral part of TNC's efforts to re-establish prairies in the Nachusa Grasslands of Illinois.

The buffalo, who were introduced there in 2014 and now number around a hundred, favor eating grass over flowering plants and legumes, which in turn allows a variety of birds, insects and amphibians to flourish.

"Some of these species without that grazing simply just disappear off the landscape due to the high competition of the grasses," added Considine.

As they forage, bisons' hooves kick up and aerate the soil, further aiding in plant growth as well as seed dispersion.

TNC currently manages some 6,500 buffalo, and is creating a pilot program with tribal partners that involves transferring excess animals to Indigenous communities, as part of broader efforts to revive America's national mammal.

Some 20,000 buffalo are now thought to roam in "conservation herds," though none are truly free roaming, added Considine.
Sea otters

As the dominant predator of marine nearshore environments, sea otters play a hugely important role in their ecosystem.

Historically they spanned from Baja California up the West Coast up to Alaska, Russia and northern Japan, but hunting in the 1700s and 1800s decimated their numbers, which were once up to 300,000.

They were thought for a while to have been completely exterminated off California, but a small surviving population of around 50 helped them partially recover to some 3,000 today.

Jess Fujii, sea otter program manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, told AFP that research during the 1970s in the Aleutian Islands showed the otters maintained the balance of kelp forest by keeping a check on the sea urchins that graze on them.

In the last decade, more complex interactions have come to light. These include the downstream benefits of otters for eelgrass habitats in California estuaries.

Here, the sea otters controlled the population of crabs, which meant there were more sea slugs who were able to graze algae, keeping the eelgrass healthy.

Eelgrass is considered a "nursery of the sea" for juvenile fish, and it also reduces erosion, which can factor in coastal floods.

"Kelp and eelgrass are often considered good ways to sequester carbon which can help mitigate the ongoing impacts of climate change," stressed Fujii, a prime example of how destruction of nature can worsen planetary warming.

Folks misunderstand hurricane ‘cone of uncertainty,’ study shows. Time for a change?

2022/11/30
Pedro Portal/El Nuevo Herald/TNS

MIAMI — When there’s a hurricane coming, one iconic image fills TV screens and social media feeds: the cone of uncertainty.

But as shown by the confusion and criticism in the devastating wake of Hurricane Ian, which struck Southwest Florida as a Category 4 in September, that single graphic isn’t great at explaining what’s coming. And that’s largely because the general public doesn’t understand what the cone actually means.

This conversation comes up every year, but as the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season draws to a close, it may finally lead to a real shift.

New research from the University of Miami confirms what a lot of emergency managers already knew, that people don’t understand the cone, and the UM experts are working with the National Hurricane Center to reshape it. Meanwhile, one Miami-based TV station, WSVN Channel 7, has already changed the way it displays the cone for storms, starting with Category 1 Hurricane Nicole in November.

The renewed scrutiny comes exactly two decades after the hurricane center debuted the cone of uncertainty, sometimes called the cone of concern. It’s a simple tool, showing the projected direction of the hurricane’s powerful eye over five days, with the most likely path of the center shown as a thin black line, with a larger shaded area covering areas with a high potential of getting hit by the eye.

The closer a storm gets, the smaller that shaded area becomes. But the width of the cone at each day actually doesn’t change from storm to storm in any given season. There is a reason for that. The cone’s size is determined by error margins from past forecasts — but even then, there is some wiggle room. The formula only predicts a two-thirds likelihood that the storm’s eye will pass somewhere within that shaded area. Thus, the “uncertainty” attached to the forecast maps.

But because scientists have gotten so much better at predicting storms, parts of the cone have shrunk nearly in half in the last decade — from 172 miles at the critical three-day mark to 92 miles. The increasing success of the hurricane center forecasts also have given the public more confidence in the cone, or overconfidence, as Ian showed.

But the bigger problem is that many people in hurricane-prone areas misunderstand that graphic, research shows. A newly published study from UM found that most Floridians surveyed incorrectly believe the shaded area represents places that will be affected by the storm. It doesn’t. The eye is likely to wind up anywhere in that cone and the damage will extend far beyond.

“I think that was the big downfall for this past event with Ian. A lot of the public was focusing just on that one singular line rather than the whole cone of uncertainty,” said Athena Masson, a meteorologist and adjunct professor at Flagler College in St. Augustine. “The public begins to think ‘it’s going to be this tiny little area. Everything outside that is safe.’ That’s wrong.”
What went wrong in Ian

Days before Ian first formed as a tropical depression, the supercomputer-powered weather models forecasters rely on were singing in a chorus. They predicted a strong storm that hooked north through Cuba and approached Florida’s west coast. As it neared the coast, that confidence fell away with a storm on a path that can pose a particular challenge for forecasters and emergency managers.

With storms running perpendicular to the coast like Ian, a small, difficult-to-predict jog this way or that — common with hurricanes — can mean the difference between losing palm fronds and losing roofs.

From five days out, the cone of uncertainty was trained on Southwest Florida. But in those five days the projected center — the dark line at the center of the cone — shifted as far north as the Panhandle before swinging over the next few days back south for an eventual landfall in northern Lee County’s Cayo Costa. The thing is, that barrier island was always within the cone.

For a time, the focus from forecasters and the media was on Tampa Bay, which hasn’t had a direct hit from a hurricane in a century and could face catastrophic storm surge flooding when one eventually hits. Ahead of that risk, Tampa area leaders correctly called for evacuations.

Some counties to the south did not, at least immediately. But as Ian drew closer and models pointed the biggest risks farther south, county emergency managers were forced to make a late call and many residents who based their decision to stay or go on earlier versions of the cone found themselves stuck.

Two days before the storm made landfall, the amount of time it takes for a successful full evacuation of hardest-hit Lee County, the center was pointed well north of Tampa. By the time officials in Lee called mandatory evacuations, residents had just over 24 hours to get out.

More than 100 people would eventually die as a result of the hurricane, many from drowning in Ian’s record-breaking storm surge. It’s impossible to know how many of those residents chose to stay behind because they misunderstood the risk they faced, because emergency officials called evacuations too late or because they simply couldn’t afford to leave.

“We’ve seen this every single year with every single cone — it always shifts,” said Masson. “But when you start losing immense amounts of lives, that really pushes the whole ‘the cone was wrong’ conversation into the spotlight.”

After the storm, residents and elected officials criticized the hurricane center’s forecast. Some leaders, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and FEMA head Deanne Criswell, incorrectly said Lee County wasn’t in the cone days before the storm. The northern half of the county, where the storm made landfall, was always in the cone, but it was on the very southern edge. The worst damage of the storm happened well south of the eye.

Acting NHC Director Jamie Rhome addressed the concerns in a blog post days after the storm had dissipated, saying he was open to changing the cone in the future but he stood by his agency’s forecast.

“I think it’s clear that not everyone is aware of our message to focus on hazards, which usually extend well outside of the cone,” he wrote.

Rhome repeated that the hurricane center has tried to shift the focus in recent years away from the cone and toward the individual risks of an incoming storm — extreme rain, high tides, storm surge, strong winds, mudslides and tornadoes — that vary for different places in the storm’s path.

“All the recent additions to our forecast suite, including new storm surge warnings and maps, were driven by social science to help us communicate hazards — something the cone was never intended to do. The challenge is that not everyone has the time, bandwidth or desire to sift through all this information. The cone is simple and familiar to them, so they make assumptions, oftentimes subconsciously, about what it means,” he wrote.
Is a better cone possible?

While Hurricane Ian was a fresh reminder of the cone’s issues, Hurricane Nicole’s arrival about six weeks later was an opportunity to put those lessons into practice, at least for one TV station.

Miami’s WSVN Channel 7 Chief Meteorologist Phil Ferro said Ian’s “messaging failure” made it clear a change was needed.

“We did not want to see that happen again,” Ferro said.

At WSVN’s North Bay Village station, discussions had already been brewing behind the scenes for about a year on how to best represent a system’s threat to South Florida. After Ian, WSVN’s weather team quickly got to work creating a new forecasting style, one that would put more emphasis on a storm’s hazards.

After all, storms and hurricanes don’t travel in a straight line, they’re more like a “spinning top,” wobbling right and left, said Ferro.

“A straight line is not the best representation of what a storm might do,” Ferro said.

After getting support from the hurricane center, Ferro thought they would roll out the new system for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, but then Hurricane Nicole formed in the Atlantic and pointed toward Florida’s east coast.

It was time.

People tuning in to WSVN’s forecast for Nicole still saw the cone of concern and got their forecast for rain, flooding and storm surge.

Gone from the forecast was the straight line representing Nicole’s center inside the cone of concern. In its place: a large shaded area showing the storm’s expected wind impacts, which stretched far outside the cone of concern.

“Hopefully, they’ll have a better grasp of what the threats may be,” Ferro said.

The WSVN team’s decision to switch up its forecasting happened fast, but change at the hurricane center will take much longer, although it’s already in the works.

A team of researchers from UM started studying the cone five years ago. Through online surveys of Floridians and in-person focus groups with Miami residents, they found that though the cone was the most accessed graphic on the hurricane center’s site, less than half of Floridians they talked to knew what it meant.

They also showed Floridians the hurricane center’s latest maps on potential storm impacts, which show how high winds will get and when, which spots are in for flooding rain and where storm surge may strike. Most respondents didn’t understand those graphics either.

“What we heard from folks is that they want to know what should they do, how should they prepare. And they rely on these types of communications to make decisions,” said Scotney Evans, an associate professor of community psychology at the University of Miami and one of the researchers on the team.

“Folks have gotten really used to the weather app experience and being able to locate themselves on the map and see what that means in relation to any type of risk that’s coming,” he said. “They’re always trying to figure out how to make it more proximal to their experience.”

Evans said his team used eye-tracking software to see how respondents looked at the NHC cone, as well as a few other test graphics they made. They also asked focus group members to describe their ideal graphic, which will inform their upcoming work to try and develop a new cone that shows all the potential hazards of the storm.

That may be tricky, said Masson, considering the laundry list of impacts a tropical storm or hurricane can have.

“How is someone going to portray all of that in one image?” she said. “Now, I’m just seeing a collage of rainbows that’s probably going to confuse the public even more.”

In his post-Ian blog post, Rhome alluded to this UM research and said he was open to making any suggested changes, but that it might not happen for a while.

“It’s tempting to want to engineer a quick fix to the cone, but we need to be scientifically disciplined and wait for the body of evidence to come forward, and then determine how to best apply it. We aren’t planning an immediate pivot away from the cone, and I don’t think the cone is ever going to go completely away,” he wrote.