Notices by Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im), page 4

In a filing responding to Trump's attempt to dismiss the case,
Jack Smith's team said
it "is incorrect" for Trump's team to assert that the superseding indictment returned against Trump in August does not show that Trump bears responsibility for the events of Jan. 6.

Trump, Smith's team said, "willfully caused others" to obstruct the certification of President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory by repeating his false claims of election fraud
and giving "false hope" to his supporters who believed that then-Vice President Mike Pence might overturn the election,
and by "pressuring" Pence and legislators to accept fraudulent certificates as part of the fake electors scheme.

"Those allegations link the defendant’s actions on January 6 directly to his efforts to corruptly obstruct the certification proceeding," Smith's team wrote.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/donald-trump-bears-responsibility-jan-6-attack-jack-smith-argues-new-f-rcna175707

Donald Trump was once harshly criticized for 🔸failing to release his tax returns, but no one seems to care much anymore.

♦️Neither he nor his running mate JD Vance have disclosed their filings, and there’s no sign they intend to,
-- though they could shed light on potential conflicts of interest and personal stakes they have in legislation before Congress.

In past years, that would have been a big deal
— it was a major issue in Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

But it’s barely come up in this year’s contest or in the news media, though the race is a toss-up and lawmakers will take up next year a sweeping debate over the fate of trillions of dollars in tax cuts.

✅ President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris released their returns in April.

🆘 Trump’s steadfast refusal, and the dog-that-didn’t-bark nonresponse to that nondisclosure,
amounts to yet another blow to the decades-old tradition of presidential contenders in both parties volunteering their returns.

It’s also a victory for Trump, says Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, since Trump has outlasted his critics.

“This issue, which was one of the largest in the 2016 campaign, is now one of the smallest,” said Rosenthal.

⚠️“Trump has been successful, by and large, at taking tax-return disclosure off the table of the political debate.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/13/trump-hasnt-released-his-tax-returns-the-response-meh-00182874

The Republican and Democratic parties have historically recruited poll workers,
and almost every state legally requires some amount of partisan balance.

Ahead of 2024, Republicans have accused officials in five Michigan and Wisconsin cities of unfairly overlooking their nominees and overstaffing polling places with Democrats.

The challenges in Flint, Michigan, and Madison, Wisconsin, were dismissed (one by a court, the other by the Wisconsin Elections Commission),
and Republican applicants in some places have since filed the required paperwork and signed up; other challenges are ongoing.

⚠️What’s newer is groups outside the parties making concerted efforts to recruit poll workers themselves.

The Election Integrity Network, founded by #Cleta #Mitchell, a former lawyer for ex-President Donald Trump, began enlisting poll workers during the 2022 midterms.

Now, more groups have joined it.

💥These include True the Vote, whose claims formed the basis of the widely debunked and eventually retracted film “2000 Mules,” which claimed to show election fraud,

💥and The Lion of Judah, a group aspiring to be the “Christian version of the NRA” that is traveling to swing states with #Lance #Wallnau to recruit conservative Christian poll workers.

Late last month, Trump’s vice presidential nominee, JD #Vance, lent Wallnau’s efforts credibility by appearing at a tour stop in Pennsylvania.

It is unknown how many poll workers these groups have recruited, in part because they aren’t saying and in part because election offices don’t ask people about their motivation.

https://www.propublica.org/article/poll-worker-recruitment-swing-states-true-the-vote-lion-of-judah

“You have a clear admission publicly of what the game is,
that they fundamentally assume that our election systems are corrupt,
♦️and so they believe that it is their job to corrupt them in their own direction,”
Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, said of Sparks’ remarks.

Taylor, whose new book documents the role of Christian right leaders like Wallnau in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection,
said
the ⭐️“propaganda value” of having someone inside the voting system, who “presents quote unquote evidence of election fraud that does not stand up in court, that is completely debunked later on,” is still enormous and bad for democracy.

“Stand Up. We’re Going to Induct You.”

Historically, campaigns, parties and advocacy groups have enlisted volunteer #poll #watchers to observe the process and flag concerns.

In 2020, hundreds swarmed ballot-counting centers in states where the vote was close.

On social media and in unsuccessful lawsuits, Trump claimed Republican poll watchers had witnessed fraud or were denied the chance to observe, fueling conspiracy theories that the contest had been stolen from him.

But poll watchers can only look and, in some states, raise challenges.

#Poll #workers, on the other hand, are paid to help to physically administer the election.

As temporary government employees, they may register voters, check identification, issue ballots and assist with equipment.

In Georgia and Arizona this year, they’ll also help hand-count ballots or the envelopes for absentee ballots returned on Election Day.

🆘That direct access to the voting is exactly what the activists are promising.

In May, Wallnau brought his Courage Tour to a massive white tent an hour outside Detroit.

He moved among the crowd, clasping his arms around believers as they swayed together to worship music.

Later that day, he summoned them to their feet as he issued a holy assignment: to serve as poll workers.

“Who here is bothered about the election integrity issue?”
Wallnau asked.

“Who is interested in obeying God, election integrity and getting paid to do it? All right, stand up. We’re going to induct you.”

Dozens in the crowd stood, heads bowed and arms raised

“I pray for an anointing.
Angels will go with them,
and they’ll expose the hidden works of darkness,”
Wallnau said.

“They’ll be led to discover whatever nefarious things are being done by the darkness.”

Wallnau did similar recruiting in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,
directing attendees to Lion of Judah.

The organization, which features Trump prominently on its website, offers a free course titled “Fight the Fraud,”
with modules detailing poll workers’ basic duties and helping people find their local elections offices so they can apply
as well as email templates to streamline the process.

It tells students that “election workers matter now more than ever”
because the “threat of election fraud is a serious concern”
and “what happened in 2020 can never happen again!”

At a Wallnau event outside Pittsburgh last month, #Greg #Pontinen of Murrysville, Pennsylvania, said he decided to register as a poll worker after speaking with an activist soliciting support for administering elections by hand-counting paper ballots.

“It just seems like there’s a lot of controversy, and there’s a lot of people that have been in a lot of anguish over the last election,
of improprieties and rigged elections,” he said.

“I think if you have oversight on that, you have less chance of that, and I think that’s a firsthand chance for me to actually watch for that.”

When I saw the news that Trump is planninga rally at #Madison #Square #Garden
— as the Nazis did in 1939
— I checked the date to see whether that was before or after #Steve #Bannon gets out of prison.
Bannon is due to get out on October 29; the rally is two days earlier, on October 27.

On the current schedule, Bannon will be released nine days before the election, but not soon enough to attend what will undoubtedly be a larger version of the #Nazi #rant that Trump put on in Aurora the other day.
Unless something disrupts it, Bannon will start trial for defrauding Trump supporters on December 9, days before the states certify the electoral vote.
This is the kind of timing I can’t get out of my head.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Kamala Harris currently has a 53% chance of winningthe electoral college -- That’s bleak enough.
But based on everything I know about January 6, I’d say that if Trump loses, there’s at least a 10% chance Trump’s fuckery in response will have a major impact on the transfer of power.
Experts on right wing extremism are suggesting the same thing.
-- @emptywheel

The two Stephens
— #Bannon, whose War Room podcast would serve to show that Trump intended to loose all Hell on January 6,
— and #Miller, who added the finishing touches to Trump’s speech making Mike Pence a target for that violence
— appear to have a plan to deliberately stoke violence, working in concert with Elon #Musk.

THE TWO STEPHENS SAY TRUMP MUST BE ABLE TO STOKE VIOLENCE WITH FALSE CLAIMS AS PART OF HIS CAMPAIGN
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/13/machine-for-fascism-the-two-stephens/

In suburbs across Japan, homes filled to the rafters with hoarded junk are common enough to have an ironic idiom: #gomi-#yashiki (trash-mansions).

And in areas where space is limited, cluttered residences and shops will often erupt, disgorging things onto the street in a semi-controlled jumble so ubiquitous that urban planners have a name for it:
#afuré-#dashi (spilling-outs).

This is an ecstatic, emergent complexity, born less from planning than from organic growth, from the inevitable chaos of lives being lived.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-life-changing-magic-of-japanese-clutter

Over the past few months there has been a lot of rending of media garments over the fact that a group of #billionaires from the usually-assumed-to-be-far-left San Francisco area

💥 suddenly decided to go all in for Trump.

“Oh billionaires, oh billionaires, why hast thou forsaken us?”was the refrain across all manner of podcasts, think pieces, and posts on The Privatized Public Square.

What seemed to go unmentioned, however, was the fact that these were not just regular tech bro billionaires.

These were #crypto #bro billionaires.

And not only were they publicly endorsing Trump, they had assembled what is currently the
🔥single largest pool of money being deployed to influence the upcoming American election

You will notice that the crypto bro’s Orwellian “Fairshake PAC” has raised more money than the Make America Great Again PAC (and has way, way, way more money left to spend).

Frustratingly (at least for me) no one outside a small group of sceptics and a handful of journalists seemed to have noticed either the important tech bro/crypto bro distinction3 or the enormous pile of money they had assembled4.
Or rather no one besides a small group of sceptics and Mark Cuban

https://open.substack.com/pub/cryptadamus/p/of-tech-bros-and-trumpers?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Most of the obscenely wealthy and obnoxiously loud tech bros you see turning up to Trump’s beat have enormous financial stakes in companies -- whose business activities include either participating in or indirectly enabling things that the laws of the United States currently forbid.

Things like #laundering money for fentanyl dealers,
helping Vladimir #Putin evade sanctions,
running telehealth pill mills for #controlled #substances,
and ensuring #North #Korea has continual access to sufficient capital for its nuclear weapons program

-- all set against a backdrop of alleged securities #fraud and good old fashioned #embezzlement on a scale the world hasn’t seen since 1928.

#billionaires #crypto #bro

Six Republican members of Congress are suing the Pennsylvania Department of State,
arguing that ballots from overseas voters
— including members of the U.S. military
— are susceptible to fraud because those voters are not subject to ID requirements applied to U.S.-based absentee voters.

💥None of the six lawmakers, who represent Pennsylvania, voted to certify the 2020 election results,

💥and the lawyers working with them were involved in the election-denial efforts in 2020.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/overseas-ballots-pennsylvania-20241010.html

Trump Plans to Amp Up His Violent, Bigoted Rhetoric in Closing Pitch to Voters

In recent weeks, Trump reiterated he wants to be “dictator” for a day, urged police to be more violent, and claimed migrants are predisposed to murder

There's less than
a month left in the presidential election,
which will not only shape Donald Trump’s political legacy and the nation’s trajectory,
but also likely decide whether he’ll face multiple prison sentences.

And as he makes his closing argument,
Trump is planning to amp up his violent, fascist rhetoric all the way to Election Day.

In recent conversations with close allies, the former and perhaps future president has stressed that he can’t
— as some advisers apparently would like him to
— play it safe in these final weeks of campaigning,
two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone.

“That’s how you lose,”
Trump told one small huddle of these allies,
one of the sources relays,
as he emphasized that,
especially on immigration,
he needs to slam his foot on the gas.

This belief helps explain Trump’s recent diatribes,
which have included talking about dictatorship, repeatedly lying about and demonizing migrants,
and encouraging police to be extra violent in ways that resemble The Purge, the popular dystopian-horror movie franchise.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-violent-rhetoric-immigrant-dictator-police-election-2024-1235131086/

Poverty is not an intractable problem that requires complex solutions, long timeframes and large increases in production and throughput that conflict with ecological objectives.

The solution is straightforward.

We need to actively plan to shift productive capacities away from capital accumulation and elite consumption in order to focus instead on the goods and services that are necessary to meet human needs and enable decent living for all,

while ensuring universal access through public provisioning systems.

We have framed this work around the concept of human needs, following the recent literature.

However it is important to underscore that this approach is ultimately about far more than just satisfying material requirements for human well-being.

Achieving decent-living for all is critical to enabling broader human capabilities, individual and collective self-realisation, full participation in society and politics and, ultimately, freedom.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493

The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality.
As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet.
The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel.
Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government,
and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”

As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud
with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!”
The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago.
Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images
—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight
—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/hurricane-milton-conspiracies-misinformation/680221/

A Very Good Sign: Kamala Harris Is Going Right at Corporate Greed

Immediately before the pandemic, corporate profits were 9.7 percent of the total GDP.

👉From 2020 to 2023, they spiked to an average 11.2 percent of annual GDP.

⚠️The disparity between those two numbers amounts to a jaw-dropping $1.5 trillion more of our economy that was transferred over to corporate profits in the last four years.

😨That money was picked directly from the pockets of American families,
who each paid $12,000 more to plump the profit margins of corporations
(and that’s not even counting the excess APR rates that have cost the average credit card user $946 over the same four-year period).

This is unsustainable.

⭐️By taking a stand against those CEOs and bringing prices back down for the American people,
🔥Harris can ensure that the American people continue to make our economy the envy of the world.

A healthy economy is an ecosystem where companies compete for consumers
—and also for workers, which leads to lower prices and higher wages.

Those higher wages result in stronger consumer demand, which causes businesses to create more jobs.

✅Everyone benefits from this virtuous cycle of inclusion, innovation and demand.
❌And everyone loses when a greedy few CEOs addicted to soaring profits are milking us dry.

https://newrepublic.com/article/184937/harris-price-gouging-corporations

Tesla’s value drops $60bn after investors fail to hail self-driving ‘Cybercab’

Analysts criticise lack of detail about the ‘#robotaxi’ showcased by CEO Elon Musk

Shares in the electric carmaker 🔸fell to $219.40 in early trading on Friday after an event in Hollywood,
where the chief executive, Elon Musk, revealed a much-hyped driverless vehicle.

Musk said the company would start building the fully autonomous “#Cybercab” by 2026 at a price of less than $30,000,
and showed off a van he claimed was capable of transporting 20 people around town autonomously
– which he said would reshape cities by turning car parks into parks.

Before the event, he tweeted:
“And all transport will be fully autonomous within 50 years.”

During the showcase, he wrote that car parks would no longer be needed in cities.

However, analysts said the event was short on detail and also expressed disappointment over a lack of specifics about other Tesla projects.

Musk has a history of making grand projections about upcoming products and failing to follow through in the timeframe he has set,
or at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/11/teslas-value-drops-60bn-after-self-driving-cybercab-fails-to-excite-investors?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Despite state bans and restrictions that followed the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade,
the number of U.S. abortions continues to climb
— with abortion pills now accounting for nearly two-thirds of them.

Yet the very uneven post-Roe landscapemakes navigating the legality of a medication abortion difficult.
A June report from the Repro Legal Helpline, a project supporting abortion access, found that 💥about half of adult callers said they were unsure if medication abortion was available or prohibited in their state.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2024/abortion-pills-legal-states/

The Senate race in Pennsylvania is in a dead heat.

• A number of polling agencies and political experts have released figures showing that Bob Casey’s race will be one of the closest on the map.
• Washington Post Poll: Bob Casey 48% – David McCormick 48%
• CNN Poll: Bob Casey 46% – David McCormick 46%
• RealClearPolitics: PA Senate race is a tossup.
• Roll Call: Bob Casey is the 3rd most vulnerable Senator running for re-election.
• The numbers tell some clear signs. This is one of the closest Senate races in the country.

McCormick and GOP billionaires are spending $150 million to flip this battleground.

• With less than 5 weeks left until Election Day, this campaign is being outspent by tens of millions and is at risk of being drowned out on the airwaves.
• Keystone Renewal, one of the largest single-candidate super PACs in history, is spending more than $56 million supporting David McCormick. That’s unheard of in Senate races this cycle.
• The Senate Leadership Fund, a Mitch McConnell-linked super PAC, is spending $24 million to defeat Bob Casey.
• We believe David McCormick will continue to self-fund his campaign with millions from his personal fortune, and you can expect more opposition ad spending in the final weeks.
• While Pennsylvanians are being inundated with GOP attack ads, Bob Casey’s campaign might have to go dark if they don’t have the resources to keep up. In a race this close, that could be the difference between winning and losing.

Pennsylvania has historically been the tipping point for U.S. Elections.

• We’ve been on both the winning and losing side of elections, and here’s what we know for sure: As PA goes, so goes the nation.
• In 2016, 44,292 votes in PA propelled Donald Trump to his unexpected win.
• In 2020, Joe Biden clinched Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes by a narrow 1.17% margin, helping him secure the White House.
• Nate Silver’s model is predicting that whichever presidential candidate wins PA has over a 93% chance of winning.
• When charting a path to a Democratic Senate majority, Pennsylvania is a must-win race.

Bob Casey needs the resources to make his case.

• In order to win, this campaign needs to make the case directly to voters about the threat David McCormick poses to Pennslyvanians' fundamental freedoms — and that takes organizing and advertising.

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/casey-sms-p2p-lr-ln-20241010?t=w0CDtO&refcodeSB=b-128532-w0CDtO&refcode=casey-sms-p2p-lr-ln-20241010&noskip=true

Eight years ago, Trump vowed to ‘drain the swamp.’
Now he swims in it.

Eight years after Trump entered politics promising to reduce the influence of Washington lobbyists
— to “drain the swamp,” as he put it
— advocates for corporate interests,
including companies based in China and other foreign countries denounced by Trump,
now sit at virtually every level of his campaign.

Lobbyists are represented among high-level staff, informal advisers and party faithful who planned the summer convention in Milwaukee,
as people with access to Trump or insight into his at-times erratic decision-making turn that knowledge into moneymaking opportunities.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/11/trump-corporate-interests-drain-the-swamp/

Kamala Harris's campaign has publicly named 99 Republicans who voted AGAINST Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding two weeks ago.

The bill passed both the House and Senate
-- however 82 representatives and 18 senators voted against the bill
-- ALL of whom are Republicans.

These included
🔥legislators for some of the areas most affected by Hurricane Helene,
such as Florida Representative Matt #Gaetz,
Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor #Greene,
Senator Tim #Scott of South Carolina,
and Senator Marsha #Blackburn of Tennessee.

https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-republicans-voting-against-fema-1965493