Did You Know A Democrat Won A Trump District In Connecticut Last Night? But Can ANYONE Beat Robert Hyde?

Last night, while that horrible CNN debate was droning on-- the DNC should tell CNN there will be no more debates on CNN if they use anchors as viciously bigoted as Abby Phillip-- there was an actual special election going on in Connecticut. One way to look at it is-- a Democrat replaced another Democrat in a blue state. And that is what happened. 23 year long Democratic veteran legislator Linda Orange died in November and Democrat/Working Families Party candidate Brian Smith defeated Republican Mark DeCaprio in the 48th District.

But there's another way to look at the results as well. The 48th district in eastern Connecticut is relatively conservative compared to other parts of the state. It includes large parts of Colchester and Lebanon and smaller pieces of Mansfield and Windham. It was an Obama district that slipped over to the Dark Side in 2016. Trump took 52% of the vote, beating Hillary. And two years later, during the big anti-red wave of 2018, this district did not flip back to blue. Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob Stefanowski beat Ned Lamont with 56% of the vote, even as Lamont was victorious statewide.

So, while Abby Phillip was blatantly smearing Bernie on CNN last night, Brian Smith was helping Connecticut Democrats breath a sigh of relief in one of the first special elections of 2020. 

And, by the way, there's another Connecticut special election coming up next week, because by the resignation of Republican Fred Camillo on December 2. Democrat Cheryl Moss will face Republican Harry Arora in this Republican-leaning district in Greenwich. In 2018 Camillo beat Democrat Laura Koston there 56.2% to 43.8%.

Connecticut elections are on people's minds today, though, for another reason. A GOP congressional candidate hoping to take on freshman Jahana Hayes (CT-05) is the latest in a cast of Trumpian crackpots from the daily news cycle, lunatic fringe character Robert Hyde has been written into the realty show. We'll come back to him in a moment. First CT-05, in the northwest corner of the state (along with part of central Connecticut ). With a PVI of D+2, it's the least blue part of the state. Hillary beat Trump there but not by much-- 49.9% to 45.8%. (In 2008, Obama beat McCain 56.4% to 42.4%.) The district is made up of Litchfield County (which leans red and where both Ned Lamont and Chris Murphy lost in 2018 and where Trump won in 2016) and parts of New Haven, Hartford and Fairfield counties, all safely blue. Hayes won in all 4 counties in 2018, although very narrowly in Litchfield. Litchfield was the only county is Connecticut that Hillary lost-- 53,376 (54.8%) to 39,836 (40.9%). Establishment Democrats aren't popular there. Bernie also beat Hillary in the county-- 56.4% to 41.6%.

So who's Hyde? He's a mentally ill (literally) Trumpist-- an incompetent gardener-turned-lobbyist and Giuliani fan boy-- who probably has little chance of even winning the Republican primary-- or at least he didn't until the scandal we're about to talk about broke this week. Now... who knows? Republicans might be crazy enough to turn to him just because... he's so obviously unfit for elected office and... well, that's what the GOP is all about these days, isn't it?

There are 4 Republicans vying for the GOP nomination against Hayes-- David Sullivan, Ruben Rodriguez, Peter Barresi and Robert Hyde. Hyde hasn't filed any FEC reports yet, indicating he probably hasn't raised or spent $5,000. You can hear him being interviewed by another far right crackpot last month here. Kind of funny/sad. TrumpStock 2020! The video below, though, is from Rachel Maddow's show that run while the debate was going on last night:





Will Sommer and Betsy Swan from the Daily Beast started the ball rolling earlier in the week. They wrote that "Before Tuesday, he was best known as a little-known, scandal-scarred Republican congressional candidate who tweeted an obscene joke at Kamala Harris. But new documents from the House Intelligence Committee have put a completely different kind of spotlight on Robert F. Hyde, the Trump donor who appears to have tracked U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s movements in Ukraine."

In WhatsApp messages exchanged in March 2019 with Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who provided the committee with the files, Hyde and Parnas discussed Yovanovitch’s location. Hyde, a retired Marine, appeared to have associates in Ukraine monitoring her.

“They know she’s a political puppet,” Hyde wrote to Parnas. “They will let me know when she’s on the move… They are willing to help if you/we would like a price.”

“Guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money… what I was told,” Hyde wrote in another message. Parnas responded: “LOL.”

Parnas attorney Joseph A. Bondy confirmed to The Daily Beast that the Hyde in the text messages is the same person as the Republican congressional candidate. 

Asked about his previously undisclosed involvement in Ukraine, Hyde texted The Daily Beast an insult about House Intel chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), writing “Bull Schiff is a giant bitch.”

“Did Pelosi get drunk and lose the impeachment articles?” he added. “Looks like Schiff wants to whistle blow me.”

Hyde seemed to acknowledge authoring the messages in a Facebook post, but claimed they were just meant as jokes meant to fool Parnas, who he called a “dweeb.”

“How low can liddle Adam Bull Schiff go?” Hyde wrote. “I was never in Kiev. For them to take some texts my buddy’s and I wrote back to some dweeb we were playing with that we met a few times while we had a few drinks is definitely laughable. Schiff is a desperate turd playing with this Lev guy. Have fun with your witch-hunt liddle Schiff.”

In messages released to Schiff’s committee, Hyde used similarly off-color language, describing Yovanovitch as a “bitch” and providing other details about the ambassador, such as her “heavy security.”

Yovanovitch, the United States ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 to 2019, was targeted by Parnas and conservative media figures intent on ousting her from the embassy. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, has claimed that Yovanovitch hurt his attempts to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter in Ukraine. In November, Yovanovitch testified in an impeachment hearing that her firing had been motivated by “a campaign of disinformation.”

"They are moving her tomorrow,” Hyde wrote to Parnas, who has since been indicted on campaign finance charges. “The guys over they (sic) asked me what I would like to do and what is in it for them. Wake up Yankees man. She's talked to three people. Her phone is off. Computer is off. She's next to the embassy. Not in the embassy. Private security. Been there since Thursday."

Hyde runs a Washington-based government relations firm, Finley Hyde & Associates, according to his LinkedIn account. The company’s website is decorated with pictures of Hyde and high-powered Republicans like Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Hyde’s firm claims to have handled “major public affairs projects in the U.S. and abroad” and worked for clients that included “foreign government allies of the U.S.”

In August, Hyde launched a bid against Rep. Jahana Hayes (D) in Connecticut’s 5th District. Hyde’s Twitter and Facebook accounts are filled with pictures of him and prominent Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Sen. Rand Paul (KY). Hyde has also taken pictures with Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Hyde with his lover, Eric Trumpanzee

Hyde frequently took pictures with other Republican figures and posted online. Pictures on Hyde’s Instagram account show him posing with former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), former Trump adviser Roger Stone, and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Hyde also took pictures with Trump children Eric, Tiffany, and Don Jr., as well as Fox News employee Shannon Bream and Ed Henry.

He reportedly suffered some sort of episode at a Trump resort last year, according to Mother Jones, which cited a 2019 police report from the City of Doral Police Department. According to that report, Hyde was taken into police custody at the Trump National Doral Miami last May before being involuntarily admitted to a medical facility in accordance with a state law that allows the confinement of people believed to pose a danger to themselves.

He was described as a “male in distress fearing for his life” and reportedly told police he believed a “hit man was out to get him.” Police described him as acting “paranoid” and said he claimed “landscape workers” and the Secret Service were targeting him.

Hyde with bestie Kevin McCarthy, minority leader (D-CA)

Before the Intelligence Committee’s release, Hyde also drew attention by sending an obscene tweet about Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and oral sex after the senator dropped out of the presidential race.

“She went down, brought to her knees,” Hyde tweeted. “Blew it. Must be a hard one to swallow….”

Leading Connecticut Republicans called on Hyde to drop out of the race, but he declined. (“We are winning in the polls and will win this seat from the squad member Jahana Hayes. Liddle Adam Bull Schiff will twist anything to carry on in his SHAM,” he texted the Daily Beast on Tuesday.)

In the aftermath of that controversy, the Connecticut GOP refunded contributions Hyde had made to the party.

"I appreciate you putting this out there publicly too," Hyde shot back on Twitter. "It's almost my birthday so double win. #thanks."

Hyde has made $56,000 in political contributions since 2016, according to the Hartford Courant, with much of it going to the Republican National Committee. But as of November, Hyde owed more than $2,000 in child support to Jennyfer Morin, the mother of his son.

"He can't even afford $100 a week in child support but he's golfing with Trump," Morin said, according to The Courant.

As news of Hyde’s involvement in the Ukraine scandal broke Tuesday, he was tweeting about his child support and claiming that he wasn’t a “deadbeat.” Hyde later deleted the tweets.

Impeachment evidence for MoscowMitch's coverup?

Trump Will Never Resign-- Unless It's Part Of A Plea Deal To Keep Himself Out Of Prison... But Newspapers Are Already Calling For His Resignation

Coup d'état-- The dismantling of American Democracy by Nancy Ohanian

The Connecticut Post, part of the Hearst chain, serves the southwest part of the state-- primarily Fairfield County (think Fairfield, Bridgeport, Trumbull Darien, Stratford, New Canaan, Derby). It reaches over 50,000 families a day. Hillary won Fairfield County handily-- 238,723 (58.2%) to 155,457 (37.9%)-- and last year Democrats swept the county. Senator Chris Murphy racked up a 61.8% win. Ned Lamont took 53.0% in his gubernatorial win. And the county performed massively (D+24) for Jim Himes, the well-regarded local congressman. His was reelected 168,726 (61.2%) to 106,921 (38.8%) in what was once a GOP stronghold. So, over the weekend, the Connecticut Post was largely preaching the the choir when it called on Trump to resign. Someone had to be first, right?

The editors noted that "Even given the incredibly fast pace of news in the Trump era, the speed with which the Ukraine scandal has moved from vague complaint to impeachable offense has been stunning. Though we’re still at the beginning of the process, there is already a mountain of evidence implicating President Donald Trump with conduct far outside the accepted norms of a democratic leader. The most damning evidence came from the president himself. It centers around a phone call with the president of Ukraine in which Trump raises the issue of investigating the son of presidential hopeful Joe Biden, and the implication of Trump’s words is clear as day. He asks for an investigation that would benefit him politically and has nothing to do with legitimate U.S. interests, and he brings it up repeatedly, including immediately upon the Ukrainian president mentioning the need for U.S. security aid."

This is an impeachable offense. Republicans spent Wednesday arguing there was no explicit quid pro quo, but there is seemingly no line the president can cross that would inspire them to put the public good ahead of politics. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, joined by the entirety of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, has called for impeachment proceedings, and that process must now begin in earnest.

The proper next step for the president is clear. He should resign. He has repeatedly proven himself unfit for office and appears to view the presidency as a position meant to benefit himself personally, not as one that must represent the interests of an entire nation.

Because there’s almost no chance he is going to step down, Congress’ work becomes that much more vital.

The truth is that Trump has been breaking laws and norms with impunity from the beginning. For instance, the U.S. Constitution forbids federal officeholders from receiving any gifts or payments from foreign entities, but in the same phone call with the Ukrainian president we see evidence that Trump is in violation. “I stayed at the Trump Tower,” President Volodymyr Zelensky says of his last trip to the U.S. Since Trump never divested himself from his business and continues to profit from it, he’s in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, according to many legal scholars, and it’s just one of countless examples on that score.

Further, the Mueller report into Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election details multiple occasions when the president apparently obstructed justice, and he was saved from criminal indictment only by virtue of the office he currently holds. The president, as is his wont, called the report a total exoneration. It wasn’t.

It’s not clear how much worse the Ukraine scandal will get. The summary of the phone call was released by the White House without need for a subpoena, but it is apparently abridged and does not represent all the whistleblower complaint that set the issue in motion. It’s easy to imagine that what we don’t know could be much worse than what we do.

But what we know is enough, and because it’s from the president himself, there’s no reason to question its veracity. There’s no going back from here. The long, bumpy ride of the Trump era may have turned a corner, but it’s nowhere near over.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had a slightly different message for its readers in Missouri yesterday, one aimed at congressional Republicans: Trump is exhausting the nation's and his party's patience. Time to dump him. "Try as Republicans will to distract the American public and label the impeachment inquiry a witch hunt, there is no escaping the hard truth that President Donald Trump solicited help from a foreign leader for his 2020 campaign, an act that U.S. law specifically forbids. Republican leaders in Congress find themselves, once again, scrambling furiously to concoct a believable defense for a man whose conduct is indefensible. Trump’s recklessness and divisiveness is exhausting the nation’s patience. How far will GOP leaders in Congress allow Trump to drag this country down before they stand in defense of the Constitution?... How far must a president go in betraying his country before Republicans finally declare that he no longer represents their values? How much crisis, chaos and scandal can Republicans, exhausted from constantly defending him, tolerate before they decide enough’s enough? The time has come for Republicans to stand up for the Constitution, stand up for America, and tell Trump to step down."

Top New Dem Calls On Pelosi To Open Impeachment Hearings

I first met Jim Himes when he was running for Congress in 2008, turning a red district blue. The southwest corner of Connecticut is a pretty wealthy area and had been represented since 1987 by moderate Republican Chris Shays, the last New England House Republican at the time, clinging on to a House seat. Although Shays won 14 of the district’s 17 towns, Himes took 80% of the vote in Bridgeport, the districts largest town and also beat him in the 2nd and third largest towns, Norwalk and Stamford. He beat Shays 51-47% and today the district has a nice safe D+7 PVI. Times vanquishes his GOP opponents with ease and was reelected last year 61.2% to 38.8%. Hillary did better (59.6%) against Trump in Himes’ district than anywhere else in Connecticut.

Himes is a classic liberal on social issues— 100% on Choice, same on LGBTQ issues, guns, immigration issues, etc. He joined the New Dems and rose to chair the coalition, which is why he’s gotten a bad reputation among progressives. A former Goldman Sachs employee and member of the House Financial Services Committee, he voted, for example, with the GOP to dismantle Obama era Dodd-Frank consumer protections. Monday Roots Action named him as one of the 15 Democrats who need to be primaried, entirely because of his work on the financial sector. Ironically, at the same time “Bad Blues” was being released, Himes, a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, announced that he now backs beginning impeachment proceedings against Señor Trumpanzee. This was the official press release from his office:

Today, Representative Jim Himes (CT-04) called for the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump:

“During my career, I have learned that there are moments for calculation, prudence, compromise and the careful weighing of competing interests. And there are moments for clarity and conviction. This is such a moment.

“The time has come for the House of Representatives to begin an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. From the moment of his inauguration, this President has shown contempt for the truth, has attacked our institutions, and has ignored the Constitution he swore to defend. He has refused the oversight which is Congress’ long-established right and duty. In recent weeks, he has refused to comply with subpoenas, he has ordered administration officials to refuse to testify, and he has asserted executive privilege of unprecedented scope with respect to attempts to alter the census.

“The President attacks our free press, threatens to jail his political opponents and attacks courts and judges when they challenge his unprecedented behavior.

“That we have not slouched closer to autocracy is due to the strength of the democratic safeguards and protections that we have built and defended for two and a half centuries. Most Americans sense the danger and have reacted, most recently by electing a House of Representatives with the power and desire to check this President. The President has refused to acknowledge or acquiesce to that power.

“The framers of the Constitution placed the power of impeachment not in the courts, but in the Congress, so that Congress might consider not just the facts and the letter of the law, but the broader interests of the Republic.

I’ve, until now, been conflicted about those interests. Impeachment, along with the right to declare war, is the most awesome power of Congress.  The politics of impeachment are messy and uncertain, and might, in the short run, serve the President’s narrow political interests.

“But look at where we are today.  Republicans cheer or justify or stand woefully silent in the face of behavior for which they would have impeached a Democratic president many times over. Our best and most proven ideas cannot get even a hearing in the United States Senate. Unless we restore respect for the law, respect for truth and respect for common decency, we cannot hope to solve any of our other pressing problems.

“The American people should understand that opening an impeachment inquiry is not removal of the President. Given the behavior of the United States Senate, that outcome is probably out of the question. An impeachment inquiry will be a fair consideration of the facts that the American people must understand, with both sides fairly and openly represented.

“My motive today is not to pressure the Speaker of the House, whose leadership in this Congress has been superb. She leads us today in the epic mission of defending our democracy. That mission requires a vigorous debate and competing ideas, but it also requires care, discipline and a measure of deference.

“There are moments for careful calculation. For weighing political expediency and conflicting interests. And there moments for clarity and conviction. This is that moment.”

.

Across The Board, Yesterday's Primary Turnout Was Catastrophic For The GOP

A great night for progressives and reformers 

Yesterday Nate Silver said that "In races where insurgent, progressive Democrats are running against party-backed nominees ... the establishment Democrat is winning 89% of the time." If not so sure about definitions that make that even remotely true. And it certainly wasn't true last night. I'll give you two examples. First, the only contested congressional race in Connecticut was in the 5th district. Although Obama is a big fan of Teacher of the Year, progressive Jahana Hayes, the establishment candidate was, clearly the more conservative Mary Glassman, the first Democratic primary candidate to be backed by the U.S. Chamber since they tried to rescue Blanche Lincoln. They failed and Jahana won-- big.

The Republicans had hoped to make a race out of that district but while 39,115 Democrats voted, just 31,394 Republicans bothered showing up to vote, a good harbinger for November-- and a dynamic we'll be discussing in a moment. Another race that puts the lie to Silver's assertion was in Wisconsin's first congressional district. Randy "@IronStache" Bryce, came into the race as a progressive insurgent with ZERO backing from the DCCC and he has no establishment crap attached to his campaign. When the DCCC saw that he had created an invincible brand and was outraging all their own candidates across the country, they added him to their red-to-blue page and tried to run to the front of the parade, which they never quite caught up with. Silver might consider that a win for the establishment but... well, that's another example of a flaw in what Silver does. Randy's results against a fake progressive (who backed Hillary in 2016 and who was heavily backed by Paul Ryan's SuperPAC in the primary) shows how a progressive reformer wins in a swing district without even a nod in the direction of the DCCC's Republican-lite one-size-fits-all prescription for victory:

Again, in a district where both Romney and Trump won and where voters had become accustomed to backing Paul Ryan locally, 61,087 Democrats showed up at the polls, but the GOP could muster only 59,870 Republican voters for a lively primary that featured Bryan Steil, a Ryan clone and establishment pick, and a neo-Nazi millionaire, Paul Nehlen, a guy named Ryan and 3 other white male conservatives.

In both these races and the others in all the states we were following last night, a big story was the turnout. Democrats out-performed and Republicans under-performed. Let's start in Vermont:

The Republican governor, Phil Scott, is popular in the state and the top Democratic candidate-- who wn handily, is a transgender woman, Christine Hallquist. It wasn't only that Hallquist drew more voters than Scott-- 27,558 to 24,206-- it was that 57,102 voters turned up for the Democratic race, but just 35,840 turned up to vote in the Republican primary, where a gun-nut backed by the NRA campaigned vigorously against Scott. In the other statewide races it was the same thing: huge turnouts for the Democratic races, significantly smaller turnouts for the GOP.

The Republicans think they have a shot to grab the Connecticut governor's mansion, but progressive Democrat Ned Lamont alone, took more votes than all 5 Republicans combined! 211,499 Democrats voted but only 142,890 Republicans.

In Wisconsin, the Democrats picked the most likely Democrat-- from a field of 10-- to beat Scott Walker in November, State Superintendent of Education, Tony Evers. But the big news was that 537,840 voters showed up for the Democratic primary but just 456,007 came for the GOP primary. Alarm bells are ringing. In the state's U.S. Senate race, Leah Vukmir beat Kevin Nicholson, even though she was tarred as the anti-Trump candidate and even though he was backed by the big money-- and even though polls showed him performing better than Vukmir against Democrat Tammy Baldwin in November. Nicholson outspent her $3,087,414 to $1,573,068 and the outside money that flowed into the race included around $10,000,000 for Nicholson and just $2.5 million for Vukmir. She took 217,023 votes to his 190,040-- 49% to 42.9%.

And that brings us to Minnesota-- and the same story as in Vermont, Connecticut and Wisconsin: more Democrats, fewer Republicans coming out to vote. In the gubernatorial race-- won by Tim Walz-- 580,962 Dems voted but just 319,276 Republicans. And, better yet, the mainstream conservative, Tim Pawlenty was defeated 52.6% to 43.9% by right-wing extremist Jeff Johnson, making Walz's job in November much easier than anyone expected. Pawlenty told the media that "The Republican Party has shifted. It is the era of Trump, and I’m just not a Trump-like politician." In the two U.S. Senate races it was the same story-- way more Democrats voting. Amy Klobuchar alone won more votes than all 4 Republicans combined-- 554,611 to 288,482-- as did Democrat Tina Smith Smith in the special election.

Even in the contested Republican-leaning congressional districts, Democratic voter turnout out-performed Republican voter turnout. The GOP hopes to pick up two blue seats that Trump won. In MN-08, where Rick Nolan is retiring, the PVI is R+4 and Trump beat Hillary 54.2% to 38.6%-- but 67,083 voters showed up for the Democratic primary and just 49,032 came to vote in the GOP primary. Same story in the first district, where Walz left a vulnerable seat open. The PVI is R+5 and Trump beat Hillary 53.3% to 38.4%.. But bad news for the NRCC: 47,248 Democrats and 42,385 Republicans.

And as long as we're on Minnesota, no one expected a Republican showing in the 5th district (Minneapolis) for Keith Ellison's empty seat but the results were noteworthy because super-progressive Ilhan Omar won in a rout, 48.2% in a 6-person field. And just so you can see what happens in a blue district-- 135,318 voters showed up for the Democratic primary and only 15,367 for the Republican primary. The third highest vote getter among the Democrats won more votes than all 3 Republican contestants combined.

As Chuck Todd mentioned this morning for NBC, "Democratic enthusiasm is still sky-high." In both Minnesota and Wisconsin voter turnout was over 20%, higher than primaries in non-presidential years than anything since decades.

Having tested their messaging with their pathetic and very negative puppet, Cathy Myers, in the WI-01 race, the GOP was out this morning with a vicious radio ad based on the issues they gave her to use against Bryce, issues they pounded with incessant push-polling on her behalf all during the primary. This is what happens when an unserious vanity candidate can capitalize on a high-profile race to make a few greedy consultants rich at the expense of accomplishing something that the progressive community has been craving-- and needs-- so badly. Cathy Myers-- worst and most detrimental candidate to have run in 2018.

Primaries Today

Today, voters are at the polls in Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Connecticut. (In 2 weeks, on August 28, Florida and Arizona.) The most important state to watch-- and to vote in-- today is Wisconsin. Most of the contested primaries are on the Republican side. The Republicans hope to take on U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and of the 5 combatants, it's come down to a race between Ken doll and former Democrat Kevin Nicholson and state Senator Leah Vukmir. Nicholson, backed by Big Money, is the likely nominee.

The big congressional race will be in southeast Wisconsin (WI-01) where both parties are looking for a replacement for Paul Ryan, who-- fearful of losing to Randy "@IronStache" Bryce-- folded up his tent and headed for the hills. The Republicans have 5 candidates contesting the nomination, from wealthy neo-Nazi Paul Nehlen to Ryan-clone (and establishment pick) Bryan Steil. The Republicans have also been spending money on a weak-- albeit extremely vicious and negative-- Democratic vanity candidate, to annoy Bryce and make it appear that his race is seriously contested. Bryce's win tonight will be one of the most significant congressional results in the country and will likely result in an important red-to-blue flip in November. More important, though, than just a red-to-blue flip, is a flip from corporate conservatism to actual working class solidarity. There is bipartisan agreement inside both DC political establishments that Bryce could be a real interrupter to repulsive congressional business-as-usual.

There are also 8 candidates running for the Democratic nomination to take on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker-- state superintendent of schools Tony Evans, Matt Flynn, Mike McCabe, Mahlon Mitchell, Josh Pade, former state Rep Kelda Roys, Madison mayor Paul Soglin and state Senator Kathleen Vinehout. Both public polls in July show Evers winning the primary and then going on to beat Walker in November, the Marist poll 54 to 41% (which also shows Trump with a 52% disapproval rating and 36% approval). And here's the top-line result from the Emerson poll:

State Senator Chris Larson sent his supporters a get-out-the-vote e-mail urging them to cast ballots for Mandela Barnes for Lieutenant Governor, Sarah Godlewski for Treasurer, Arvina Martina for Secretary of State, Errnell Lucas for Milwaukee County Sheriff, noting that "This is race is a very important one. Since being appointed by a Republican Governor in 2002, Sheriff David Clarke has been steadily making our community less safe. From radio ads encouraging citizens to arm themselves to deaths in his custody, Clarke has been a horrible embarrassment for our county. With Scott Walker’s blessing, Clarke’s chief enabler is now the acting Sheriff and is running to serve a full 4-year term. Earnell Lucas is the man to stop him and, more importantly, lead the Sheriff’s office out of the controversies and mayhem it’s been in. Earnell has 40 years experience in protecting the public and understands the need for justice reform on a broader scale. He also will be a key partner in stemming drunk driving in our corner of the state."

Larson introduced me to Randy Bryce last year and suggested that I urge him to run for Congress, so it was no surprise when he endorsed Bryce again this week: "Randy has been a friend since we first met standing up to the abuses of power by Scott Walker 8 years ago. Randy has been a powerful voice, speaking at just about every major action in Wisconsin since. His spirited campaign has already gotten Paul Ryan to flinch and jump ship. Having him fight for the forgotten working class of Wisconsin in congress is just too good of an opportunity to pass up."

He also endorsed Gwen Moore in the WI-04 district. As for local state legislative races, Larson is asking voters to back 4 for the state Assembly and 2 for the state Senate:

• Marisabel Cabrera- 9th AD
• Fred Kessler in the 12th AD
• Supreme Moore Omokunde in the 16th AD
• Evan Goyke in the 18th AD
• Lee Snodgrass in the 19th SD
• Jeff Smith in the 31st SD.

Remember to bring your ID. Polls are open 7am-8pm

In the northwestern Connecticut congressional district (CT-05), wealthy New Dem Elizabeth Esty got involved in an office scandal and was forced to retire. The best candidate-- the progressive one-- running to replace her is Jahana Hayes, who was the 2016 National Teacher of the Year. It's the least Democratic of the state's 5 congressional seats (PVI is D+2 and Hillary only beat Trump 49.9-45.8%) and includes Waterbury, Danbury, Meriden, New Miller and Salisbury. Hayes' opponent, conservative Mary Glassman, was endorsed yesterday by the very, very Republican U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The last time the Chamber weighed in on a Democratic primary was when they endorsed right-wing GOP-lite Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. (The other "Democrat" the Chamber is backing this year is right-wing Blue Dog Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey.)

There's also an important gubernatorial race in Connecticut, where immensely unpopular Governor Dan Malloy did everyone a favor by not running again. It could be relatively hard for the Democrats to hold on but Ned Lamont looks like the front-runner. His main opponent is Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, who went to prison for corruption during an earlier stint in elected office.

And that brings us to Minnesota, where there are also some important races. Let's start with Alan Franken's U.S. Senate that a Gabby Giffords-led coup gave to Tina Smith. She's been a good enough voter but hasn't distinguished herself at all and is now asking the voters to elect her. She has 5 challengers but the only one who has gotten any attention is Bush's former ethics lawyer Richard Painter, who's on MSNBC bitching about Trump's corruption all the time and has switched parties. He hasn't raised enough money to fund a competitive campaign (just $233,848 against Smith's $4,844,776).

Minnesota has 8 congressional districts and I'm sorry to say that corrupt arch-conservative, Blue Dog Collin Peterson has no primary opponent (again) in MN-07. Nor does New Dem Angie Craig, a status quo establishment Democrat who many people believe is progressive-- she isn't-- because she's a lesbian. The 2 things-- a progressive vision and sexuality-- are not related. I wouldn't vote for her in a primary, although it is necessary to back her in November against woman-hating/homophobe insane incumbent, Jason Lewis. Another conservative is favored to win in the open 1st district, Dan Feehan. I wouldn't vote for him either. Same in the 3rd, where conservative Dean Phillips is the establishment pick to take on Erik Paulsen in November. Vote for Phillips and Feehan in November, but not today. Minnesota's brightest hope for helping to reform and improve Congress is Ilhan Omar in the crowded race to replace Keith Ellison in Minneapolis (MN-05).

There's also a 5-way gubernatorial primary among Democrats for the open seat. The winner is likely to face Tim Pawlenty (unless the Trumpists are strong enough to give the nomination to lunatic Jeff Johnson). Among the Democrats it looks like a close race been conservative congressman Tim Walz and state Attorney General Lori Swanson. Polls show either one beating Pawlenty, albeit narrowly.

The next really crucial races are in Florida, where Blue America is backing Alan Grayson in Orlando, Matt Haggman in Miami and Andrew Gillum for governor. Please keep in mind that the GOP is experimenting with pouring money into Democratic primaries to knock out progressives so that conservatives win. They're doing this in Orlando where a SuperPAC controlled by No Labels is targetting Alan Grayson (in favor of conservative Democrat Darren Soto) and is funded by GOP billionaires like James Murdoch, who chipped in $500,000 to smear Grayson.

Job Guarantee, Good-- Guaranteed Basic Income, Scam

Elizabeth Esty is a New Dem backbencher from northwestern Connecticut (CT-05)— Meriden, Waterbury, Danbury, New Farfield, Mew Milford, Salibury… Obama won the district both times (with 56.4% in 2008 and 53.5% in 2012) and Hillary beat Trump 49.9% to 45.8%. The district’s PVI is D+2, least blue in the state. Esty is a relatively conservative Democrat, an EMILY’s List politician, who won Chris Murphy’s seat in 2012 when he ran for the U.S. Senate. She won the primary by beating progressive House Speaker Chris Donovan in a 3-way race, a real tragedy since he’s a proven leader and she’s a big waste of a seat, a seat she’s being forced to vacate after being exposed for creating a horrible workplace by retaining a chief of staff, a violent sexual harasser for three months after she first learned of the allegations in 2016. Among the Democrats eyeing the race to replace her are Harvey Weinstein buddy Dan Roberti, Waterbury Mayor Neil O'Leary, state Rep. Liz Linehan of Cheshire and former state Sen. Dante Bartolomeo of Meriden are considered top contenders. Luckily for the Democrats, the filing deadline is June 8 and the primary is August 14.

Not much of a news story, right? But it’s getting a thousand times more coverage than Chris Hedges’ TruthDig column about, a scam being pushed by oligarchs, guaranteed basic income, which is a thousand times more consequential. Bernie, the most important advocate of Job Guarantee has been warning his supporters that UBI is a scam. Hedges agrees. He wrote that “A number of the reigning oligarchs-- among them Mark Zuckerberg (net worth $64.1 billion), Elon Musk (net worth $20.8 billion), Richard Branson (net worth $5.1 billion) and Stewart Butterfield (net worth $1.6 billion)-- are calling for a guaranteed basic income. It looks progressive. They couch their proposals in the moral language of caring for the destitute and the less fortunate. But behind this is the stark awareness, especially in Silicon Valley, that the world these oligarchs have helped create is so lopsided that future consumers, plagued by job insecurity, substandard wages, automation and crippling debt peonage, will be unable to pay for the products and services offered by the big corporations.”

The oligarchs do not propose structural change. They do not want businesses and the marketplace regulated. They do not support labor unions. They will not pay a living wage to their bonded labor in the developing world or the American workers in their warehouses and shipping centers or driving their delivery vehicles. They have no intention of establishing free college education, universal government health or adequate pensions. They seek, rather, a mechanism to continue to exploit desperate workers earning subsistence wages and whom they can hire and fire at will. The hellish factories and sweatshops in China and the developing world where workers earn less than a dollar an hour will continue to churn out the oligarchs’ products and swell their obscene wealth. America will continue to be transformed into a deindustrialized wasteland. The architects of our neofeudalism call on the government to pay a guaranteed basic income so they can continue to feed upon us like swarms of longnose lancetfish, which devour others in their own species.

“Increasing the minimum wage or creating a basic income will amount to naught if hedge funds buy up foreclosed houses and pharmaceutical patents and raise prices (in some cases astronomically) to line their own pockets out of the increased effective demand exercised by the population,” David Harvey writes in “Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason.” “Increasing college tuitions, usurious interest rates on credit cards, all sorts of hidden charges on telephone bills and medical insurance could steal away the benefits. A population might be better served by strict regulatory intervention to control these living expenses, to limit the vast amount of wealth appropriation occurring at the point of realisation. It is not surprising to find there is strong sentiment among the venture capitalists of Silicon Valley to also support basic minimum income proposals. They know their technologies are putting people out of work by the millions and that those millions will not form a market for their products if they have no income.”

The call for a guaranteed basic income is a classic example of Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci’s understanding that when capitalists have surplus capital and labor they use mass culture and ideology, in this case neoliberalism, to reconfigure the habits of a society to absorb the surpluses.

…This phase of capitalism ended once industry moved overseas and wages stagnated or declined. The well-paying unionized jobs disappeared. Jobs became menial and inadequately compensated. Poverty expanded. The oligarchs began to mine government social services, including education, health care, the military, intelligence gathering, prisons and utilities such as electricity and water, for profit. As a publication of the San Francisco Federal Reserve reportedly noted, the country-- and by extension the oligarchs-- could no longer get out of crises “by building houses and filling them with things.” The United States shifted in the 1970s from what the historian Charles Maier called an “empire of production” to “an empire of consumption.” In short, we began to borrow to maintain a lifestyle and an empire we could no longer afford.

Profit in the “empire of consumption” is extracted not by producing products but by privatizing and pushing up the costs of the basic services we need to survive and allowing banks and hedge funds to impose punishing debt peonage on the public and gamble on tech, student debt and housing bubbles. The old ideology of the New Deal, of government orchestrating huge social engineering projects under the Public Works Administration or in the War on Poverty, was replaced by a new ideology to justify another form of predatory capitalism.

In Harvey’s book A Brief History of Neoliberalism he defines neoliberalism as “a project to achieve the restoration of class power” in the wake of the economic crisis of the 1970s and what the political scientist Samuel Huntington said was America’s “excess of democracy” in the 1960s and the 1970s. It achieved its aim.

Neoliberalism, Harvey wrote, is “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.”

American oligarchs discredited the populist movements of the 1960s and 1970s that had played a vital role in forcing government to carry out programs for the common good and restricting corporate pillage. They demonized government, which as John Ralston Saul writes, “is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.” Suddenly-- as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, two of the principal political proponents of neoliberalism, insisted-- government was the problem. The neoliberal propaganda campaign successfully indoctrinated large segments of the population to call for their own enslavement.

The ideology of neoliberalism never made sense. It was a con. No society can effectively govern itself by basing its decisions and policies on the dictates of the marketplace. The marketplace became God. Everything and everyone was sacrificed on its altar in the name of progress. Social inequality soared. Amid the destruction, the proponents of neoliberalism preached the arrival of a new Eden once we got through the pain and disruption. The ideology of neoliberalism was utopian, if we use the word “utopia” as Thomas More intended—the Greek words for “no” and “place.” “To live within ideology, with utopian expectations, is to live in no place, to live in limbo,” Saul writes in “The Unconscious Civilization.” “To live nowhere. To live in a void where the illusion of reality is usually created by highly sophisticated rational constructs.”

Corporations used their wealth and power to make this ideology the reigning doctrine. They established well-funded centers of propaganda such as The Heritage Foundation, took over university economic departments and amplified the voices of their courtiers in the media. Those who questioned the doctrine were cast out like medieval heretics, their careers blocked and their voices muted or silenced. The contradictions, lies and destruction within neoliberal ideology were ignored by those who dominated the national discourse, leading to mounting frustration and rage among a populace that had been abandoned and betrayed.

The propagandists for neoliberalism blamed the other-- Muslims, undocumented workers, African-Americans, gays, feminists, liberals, intellectuals and, of course, government-- for the downward spiral. Politicians who served the interests of the corporate oligarchs told dispossessed white workers their suffering was caused by the ascendancy of these marginalized groups and a cultural assault on their national identity and values, not corporate pillage. It was only a matter of time before this lie spawned the xenophobic, racist hate speech that dominates American political life and led to the rise of imbecilic and dangerous demagogues such as Donald Trump.

“Each of Globalization’s strengths has somehow turned out to have an opposing meaning,” Saul writes in The Collapse of Globalization and the Reinvention of the World. “The lowering of national residency requirements for corporations has morphed into a tool for massive tax evasion. The idea of a global economic system mysteriously made local poverty seem unreal, even normal. The decline of the middle class-- the very basis of democracy-- seemed to be just one of those things that happen, unfortunate but inevitable. That the working class and lower middle class, even parts of the middle class, could only survive with more than one job per person seemed to be the expected punishment for not keeping up. The contrast between unprecedented bonuses for mere managers at the top and the four-job family below them seemed inevitable in a globalized world. For two decades an elite consensus insisted that unsustainable third-world debts could not be put aside in a sort of bad debt reserve without betraying Globalism’s essential principles and moral obligations, which included unwavering respect for the sanctity of international contracts. It took the same people about two weeks to abandon sanctity and propose bad debt banks for their own far larger debts in 2009.”

The oligarchs mask their cruelty and greed with an empty moralism. They claim to champion women’s rights, diversity and inclusivity, as long as women and people of color serve the corporate neoliberal project. An example of this moralism occurred last Tuesday when NPR’s Ari Shapiro interviewed Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer and former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett, a member of the company’s board, about diversity and gender equality in the workplace. Shapiro asked about Lyft offering free rides to those marching against gun violence and donating to the ACLU.

“We serve our drivers, we serve our passengers, and we serve the employees that work for us,” Zimmer said in the interview. “And when it comes to [resisting gun] violence, when it comes to equality, those are things that we’re going to stand up for.”

America’s “gig economy,” as I wrote last week in my column, is a new form of serfdom. Corporations such as Lyft use lobbyists and campaign donations to free themselves from regulatory control. They force poorly paid temporary workers, who lack benefits, to work 16 hours a day in a race to the bottom. This neoliberal economic model destroys regulated taxi and livery services, forcing drivers who were once able to make a decent income into poverty, bankruptcy, foreclosures, evictions and occasionally suicide. By fighting gender, sexual and racial inequality in the workplace rather than economic inequality, by denouncing mass shootings rather than out-of-control police violence and mass incarceration, these corporations hide their complicity in societal disintegration. Their empty moralism and faux compassion is an updated version of the publicity stunt that John D. Rockefeller, whose personal fortune was $900 million in 1913, or $189.6 billion in today’s terms, used when he handed out shiny new dimes to strangers.

Neoliberalism heralds a return to the worst days of unregulated capitalism, after the Industrial Revolution when workers were denied a living wage and decent, safe working conditions. Oligarchs have not changed. They are out for themselves. They do not see government as an institution to defend and promote the rights and needs of citizens. They see it as an impediment to unrestricted exploitation and profit. Human beings, to oligarchs, are commodities. They are used to increase wealth and then discarded. Oligarchs don’t propose programs such as a guaranteed basic income unless they intend to profit from it. This is how they are wired. Don’t be fooled by the grins and oily promises of these human versions of the Cheshire Cat. The object is to spread confusion while they increase levels of exploitation.

“Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ ” Lewis Carroll wrote. “The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’”

The longer the elites keep us in darkness with their ideological tricks and empty moralism, the longer we refuse to mobilize to break their grip on power, the worse it will get.

In a brilliant new working paper, Job Guarantee: Design, Jobs, and Implementation, Pavlina Tcherneva answers the questions “Why don’t we just give people cash assistance instead?” and “Isn’t universal basic income (UBI) a better program?”

Even if UI were increased, other cash assistance programs were strengthened, and a form of basic income guarantee were implemented, people would still want jobs.

Research indicates that the nonpecuniary costs of unemployment (85–93 percent) far outweigh the pecuniary costs (15–7 percent). This suggests that interventions that are based on providing income alone will not be successful. People reap a great many benefits from working; income is but one of them. Decent work at decent pay brings significant mental and physical health benefits, it increases and deepens one’s social capital, strengthens educational and labor market outcomes of other family members, and offers institutional support and economic opportunities not available to those outside the labor market, to name just a few.

While there are many good reasons why some people cannot or should not work and why other public policies should be designed to offer them economic security, income assistance does not solve the problem of involuntary unemployment.

There are reasons to doubt the effectiveness of UBI programs. The first is that they do not address unemployment and the associated social and personal costs. Experiments around the world show that, even in places where some form of UBI has been implemented, many people still seek but are unable to find paid employment.

Secondly, UBI in and of itself does not guarantee access to needed real resources. Working families today have trouble finding adequate housing, care, afterschool programs, clean public spaces, etc., even if they already have above-poverty incomes.

The JG guarantees both: the income and the public goods and services that are currently in short supply. The JG is a type of guaranteed income, except it guarantees both the income-- through public service employment-- and the provisioning of the very goods and services communities need.

I had a discussion with Bernie's economic advisor and Stony Brook professor, Stephanie Kelton, about this today. “The Silicon Valley version of a UBI is obviously a self-serving Trojan horse,” she told me. "Money for Nothing and the [shredding of the last vestiges of the New Deal and Great Society] for free.” 

Whenever someone pitches a basic income guarantee, ask them: (1) Is it genuinely universal?-- ie does everyone get the same no-strings-attached payment? (2) Is it enough to live on without working? (3) How do you “pay for it?” Chances are, it’s a scheme to enrich those at the top by eviscerating the safety net-- that’s their “pay-for-- under the guise of “efficiency” or some other bogus neoliberal label. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Stephanie introduced me to Geoff Coventry last January and he did a guest post on Modern Monetary Theory. He’s a serial entrepreneur and a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group dedicated to ending the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America. I asked him to comment on this one as well. “We all recognize,” he told me this morning, “that there are some people in society who should be the beneficiary of income support, including children & students, the elderly, those who cannot or will not work for various reasons. But we should also recognize that there are many who want to work for a living but are denied this opportunity to participate in the economy, contribute their skills, and provide a living for themselves and their families. The Job Guarantee specifically addresses this need by providing local work for any who seek it but who are not currently needed for any private or public sector labor needs. It also provides a floor to what a full time job deserves in terms of wages, benefits, and working conditions. Proponents of a UBI but not a job guarantee are suggesting those who want a job should not receive a job but instead receive income, effectively denying these citizens their right to work.

“In addition to meeting a basic need of society, a well designed job guarantee can play a key role in reshaping our economy in ways that reduce discrimination, wage suppression, inequality, and structural poverty. The formerly incarcerated, the long-term unemployed, those living in abandoned towns and communities all need targeted opportunities to learn skills, become reconnected in their communities, and contribute to meeting the needs unique to their locale. Income alone does not connect people together. Income alone does not help people gain skills and confidence by working with others. It does not provide pride of having done something in the community that matters to their friends and neighbors. It doesn’t set a new bar for company wages, benefits and working conditions. A job guarantee is a foundational policy for those who seek to restructure our economy to one that works for all, raises the standard of living for those who most need it, and providing a path for both personal and community development.”

 

Welcome To Waterbury: The City That Holds Secrets That Could Bring Down Trump-- A Guest Post By Andrew Kreig And Wayne Madsen

A woman who was allegedly sodomized and raped at the age of 12 along with at least one other underage girl by Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at Epstein’s midtown Manhattan townhouse in 1993 is alive and trying to maintain obscurity from alt-right operatives who have identified her and her current residence.

The Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) and Justice Integrity Project (JIP) are revealing here for the first time the identity of “Maria,” who was identified as such in two 2016 federal civil lawsuits brought against Trump and Epstein by another underage victim of the pair, Katie Johnson (aka, "Jane Doe"). The product of a month-long investigation that took us to the site of the girl’s kidnapping in Waterbury, Connecticut, this information comes from confidential sources in multiple states. They have been pursuing the “Maria” story since the name and 1993 incident was first referenced in Johnson’s lawsuits. Johnson dropped the suit after she became the victim of physical threats by individuals who claimed to be Trump supporters, according to her account in court records.

The original tip came to WMR, which reported exclusively earlier this week with this column that Maria was the 12-year old child rape victim of Donald Trump's and convicted underage girl molester, Jeffrey Epstein's sex orgies at Epstein's midtown Manhattan mansion then owned by his friend Les Wexner, a billionaire retailing mogul. Maria was kidnapped on March 20, 1993, when she was 11-years old from the front of Nash’s Pizza in Waterbury. The girl's kidnappers were involved in a child trafficking ring that provided abductees to wealthy individuals like Trump and Epstein in Manhattan, according to our information.

The Waterbury Police Department has refused to provide us with a copy of the original police report on the abduction. It defers to Linda Wihbey, the city’s Corporation Counsel. On December 12, 2017, Wihbey made her views known in a phone call with Andrew Kreig of JIP, as Wayne Madsen listened. She said that she was ready to “welcome us to Waterbury” until she decided that our investigation was “hostile” to her and Waterbury’s interests. These suffered greatly some 17 years ago over a high-profile pedophilia incident involving the city’s Republican mayor.

Waterbury’s stance emerged from our request for the 1993 police report on Maria’s abduction, including any relevant witness statements provided to the police.

The site of “Maria’s” kidnapping in 1993, then known as Nash’s Pizza restaurant, since relocated

Waterbury reported 110,000 in population at the last census and is located 77 miles northeast of New York City.

In 1993, Maria lived with her mother and nine siblings in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Waterbury, which is nicknamed “The Brass City” for its once-booming brass and clock factories. It is now suffering from urban blight, like many New England cities with abandoned factories.

Maria, whose father died in 1991, was reportedly abducted just moments after her mother entered the pizzeria while asking Maria to wait outside. The precise circumstances are among the secrets that police are withholding, thus limiting news coverage. The mother died in 2015.

One resident of the kidnapped girl's close-knit neighborhood told us that the circumstances always seemed strange to the family and neighbors, and yet almost no police or other interest has been apparent for many years. Our source also stated that Maria’s mother always felt that her daughter was alive and, at one time, was in New York City. Another source in Waterbury said that it was the belief by many neighborhood residents at the time of Maria’s abduction that she was kidnapped by a ring operating out of New York. “Those who took her [Maria] were not from Waterbury,” said one longtime Puerto Rican resident familiar with the case.

In the interest of responsible journalism, we are withholding Maria’s actual full name. A June 25, 2010 paper, titled “Protecting victims’ identities in press coverage of child victimization,” which was published by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, spells out the concerns of releasing the identities of child sex victims without prior precautions being taken. The authors of the paper contend, “When the names of child victims and other identifying information appear in the media it can exacerbate trauma, complicate recovery, discourage future disclosures and inhibit cooperation with authorities for the children involved.”

Maria is still listed as a “missing person” by the Waterbury Police Department. The police missing person notification states that Maria was last seen at the corner of Walnut Street and Walnut Avenue at Nash’s Pizza. It adds that the girl “was 11-years-old when she went missing.”

Here is a development that proved startling in Maria’s neighborhood, including to at least one family member: She is alive.

Maria has been avoiding any public limelight since the Trump Organization discovered her actual identity, according to our sources. During the 2016 presidential campaign, there was some interest in the Maria story by major corporate media outlets, but they were intimidated by Trump Organization legal threats.

The incident helps illustrate the institutional cowardice and greed of many of the major news organizations and the danger that unprotected whistleblower/victims face when they share their stories with such journalists. Although the initial reporters and producers are usually very well-intentioned they work for conglomerates whose top executives realize that it’s typically safer not to antagonize the power structure.

That would be in this case a litigious billionaire Trump, who now influences, if not controls, a vast “law enforcement,” national security and broadcast federal regulatory apparatus.

The federal government delivers (or withholds) merger and tax approvals, for example, scrutiny over a host of other legal and regulatory issues, plus discretionary grants that can be vital to local authorities, particularly those with financial struggles like Waterbury. Beyond that, monied interests in the power structure have fostered private goons and trolls-- sometimes equipped with the trappings of legitimate law enforcement or journalism-- who can seek out whistleblowers, victims and reporters alike to set them up for vicious legal or extra-legal reprisals.

In the case of Katie Johnson, she alleged in lawsuits filed in federal courts first in California and then in New York that Trump knew that she was 13-years-old when he assaulted and raped her in 1993. Johnson said that it was Trump who initiated contact with her at four different parties at Epstein's residence in Manhattan. The mansion, shown below in a photo via Google Maps, was owned by the billionaire retailing magnate Les Wexner, who controls such companies as Victoria’s Secret.

Here is Johnson’s account, taken from her most recent lawsuit filed in Manhattan’s federal court:

She said that she was inveigled into the “party” scene after she was approached by an Epstein party “recruiter” while she was at the New York-New Jersey Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street in Manhattan. The recruiter suggested that she might become a model if she met the right people at a fashionable party. That was a typical approach used by Epstein’s recruiters, who leveraged his high-level contacts with fashion, modeling, photography, travel, political and entertainment figures to entice girls, tweens and teens, according to court records.

The Johnson lawsuit states that at their fourth encounter at an Epstein party: "Defendant Trump tied Plaintiff to a bed, exposed himself to Plaintiff, and then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff. During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop but with no effect. Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff’s pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted."

Johnson (shown in a screenshot with her face obscured) claimed that at two parties Epstein raped her once after she had been raped by Trump. During the second encounter with Epstein, Johnson stated that Epstein raped her "anally and vaginally despite her loud pleas to stop." She stated that Epstein attempted to strike her on the head "with his closed fists," while he angrily screamed that he [Epstein], rather than Trump, should have been the one who took the girl's virginity.

According to the suit, Trump told Johnson that if she ever revealed the sexual encounter with Trump, the girl and her family would be "physically harmed if not killed." Johnson also stated that Epstein periodically reiterated to her Trump's earlier threat that if she were to "reveal any of the details of his sexual and physical abuse of her or else," she and her family would be "seriously physically harmed, if not killed."

Trump Fights Back: All Lies and Fake News, He Says

Trump and his representatives have repeatedly insisted that any woman who alleges that he harassed or sexually assaulted her is lying. The Washington Post, among other outlets, reported that stance in All of the women who have accused Trump of sexual harassment are lying, the White House says, a story published on Oct. 26, 2017.

After filing her first complaint against Epstein and Trump in California on April 26, 2016, Johnson said that she began receiving threatening phone calls on her cell phone from blocked numbers. She refiled in New York. A courtroom hearing was scheduled for mid-December 2016 in federal court for the Southern District of Manhattan. U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams [pictured at right] said that she was requiring Epstein and Trump to appear before her in the Johnson lawsuit, an unusual requirement for a pre-trial hearing, especially in a civil case. Because of the threats, Johnson pulled her lawsuit just prior to the 2016 presidential election and no hearing occurred.

There are many pundits who will say from their comfortable perches that the withdrawal of this and similar lawsuits means there is nothing further to examine, especially if any flaw can be found or alleged involving the personality of a plaintiff, the supporting witnesses or lawyers. But that blame-the-victim conventional wisdom is being upended by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements-- and is especially wrong-headed in this case for several important reasons.

First, there is substantial evidence that Epstein and Trump are notorious sexual predators and billionaire litigants who use threats and the legal system to their advantage. Epstein is a convicted pedophile who targeted junior high and high school girls, as described below.

Epstein was required to register as a convicted sex offender [pictured at left]. Trump has long been notorious as a lecher, telling ABC’s The View in 2006, “I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."

More recently in November, the Washington Post published in President Trump and accusations of sexual misconduct: The complete list extensive details of thirteen women (not including those alleging crimes only on social media or those like Katie Johnson who had withdrawn lawsuits) making accusations against him, along with names and details of corroborating witnesses. Wikipedia, under a heading Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations, lists 15 claims as of this writing.

After underage sexual abuse allegations began surfacing during the failed campaign of GOP Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, Ivanka Trump (shown on her Twitter portrait) said of Moore, “there’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children. She added, “I’ve yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ account.” Bannon, who supported Moore’s campaign, replied to Trump’s daughter in a December 2017 interview with Vanity Fair, “What about the allegations about her dad and that 13-year-old?” Bannon was referring, of course, to Katie Johnson.

Second, the vulnerability of sex abuse victims in their early teens from poor families requires special attention. Nowhere is that more poignant than in the case of the girl “Maria.” Police reports say that she was kidnapped at age 11 from her own neighborhood and, to all outward appearances, then disappeared off the face of the earth. In sum, the track record and power of these two particular defendants requires a deeper look at the allegations, particularly in light of the lessons learned from the #MeToo harassment and assault revelations this past fall regarding other powerful predators.

So, we return to the allegations in the “Jane Doe” (aka Katie Johnson) lawsuit despite the practice of pundits, lawyers, trolls, fanatics and thugs, many well-paid or fanatically ideological, using their varied skills to claim that there’s nothing to see or know. You be the judge, based on these lawsuit claims:

On July 23, 2016, "Joan Doe," a classmate of Johnson during the 1994-1995 school year, signed an affidavit avowing that Johnson had told her during the summer of 1994 about the sexual assaults by Epstein and Trump.

Another witness, “Tiffany Doe,” signed an affidavit in support of Johnson's suit on June 18, 2016. Tiffany Doe stated that she had been hired in 1990 by Epstein when she was 22 to "provide entertainment" for his various "guests." She further stated that Epstein hired her in 1991 as a "party planner" to, among other duties, entice "attractive adolescent women" to attend Epstein's parties. Tiffany Doe stated that she personally witnessed Trump's sexual assault and rape of Johnson during four encounters.

Johnson also stated in the suit that Trump told her that she "shouldn’t ever say anything if she didn’t want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident" with Trump. Johnson said she had not seen “Maria” after the third sexual encounter with Trump. Tiffany Doe said that she witnessed Johnson and 12-year old “Maria” perform oral sex on Trump.

Vendetta Against Puerto Rico?

There’s a larger story here. Trump's psychopathy of disinterest in Puerto Rico and its post-Hurricane Maria problems likely revolves around the fact that Maria hails from Puerto Rico. Trump’s addled ego may have reacted when Puerto Rico was struck by Hurricane Maria. It could well have reminded him that a 12-year old whom he had raped and knew as Maria knows details that could very well bring down him and his administration.

The Trump administration’s extreme disinterest in Puerto Rico’s recovery-- especially in comparison to post-hurricane rescue efforts for continental U.S. sites this fall-- has been reported by many news organizations. The national media reported it visually by showing his contemptuous hurling of paper towels to Islanders at a photo op soon after the disaster.

Waterbury's Secrets

In terms of solving the 1993 kidnapping, Waterbury Corporate Counsel Wihbey did reveal to us that about four or five years ago-- she said “around 2012 or 2013”-- there was some interest by “law enforcement” and “a few journalists” in the Maria missing person police report from 1993. Wihbey told us that the case remains under “active” investigation even though it has been a dormant “cold case” for several years. Originally, spokespersons for Waterbury Police Chief Vernon Riddick Jr. expressed no real opposition to releasing the police report, claiming that all that was needed was the chief’s concurrence.

Wihbey is pictured above at a Connecticut Freedom of Information hearing defending Waterbury’s insistence on retaining secret documents in another matter. It involved the details of a largely secret arrangement whereby Waterbury taxpayers paid former Republican Connecticut governor and ex-con John Rowland, a former Waterbury state assemblyman and congressman after he had been imprisoned on a federal political corruption charge in 2004.

Waterbury’s Democratic Mayor Neil O’Leary may continue to have good reason to be concerned about public interest in the abduction of Maria to provide sex for pedophiles like Trump and Epstein in New York.

Waterbury Mayor Neil O'Leary, center, was a witness in a high-profile Freedom of Information complaint in 2013 by Connecticut journalist and author Andy Thibault, right.

O’Leary was the Waterbury police chief (as shown below) when now-imprisoned Republican Mayor Phil Giordano (nicknamed Pedo Phil”) was arrested by the FBI as part of their investigation of payoffs to the mayor by Mafia building contractors. During court-authorized wiretaps of Giordano’s phones, the FBI became aware that the mayor was paying a female Puerto Rican prostitute named Guitana (“Gigi”) Jones for sex with her 10-year old niece and 8-year old daughter. Giordano and Rowland were once close political allies and Rowland’s cozy relationship with Mayor O’Leary has raised eyebrows in Connecticut.

Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, center, a former Waterbury assemblyman later imprisoned on corruption charges, and then Waterbury Mayor Philip Giordano, at right, meet in October 2000 at the exclusive Burning Tree Country Club in Greenwich

According to federal court records: The trysts between Mayor Giordano and the children took place over nine months in 2000 and 2001 in the mayor’s office, his official car, his home, a friend’s home, and his private law office. Giordano paid Jones $40 to $60 per visit. Giordano made special requests for the two girls on days when he knew they were off from school.

During 2000, Giordano, a former U.S. Marine and state assemblyman representing Waterbury, was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate against then-Democrat Joe Lieberman. Giordano, married to an attractive heiress, also made no secret of his desire to become the vice president of the United States. In 2003, Giordano was sentenced to 37 years in a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona after his conviction of violating the civil rights of the two female children, using interstate devices (cellphones) to arrange the meetings, and conspiring with Jones to supply the children for sexual purposes.

Mafia Connections

It is not known how long Giordano [pictured above in police mug shot] was using his mayoralty and other political influence to arrange for sexual encounters with girls. In 1993, when Maria was abducted, Giordano had been a Republican state representative for Waterbury. Giordano’s mob-linked friend, Joseph Pontoriero, owner of Worth Construction Company, Inc. of Bethel, Connecticut, was also tied to a Mafia syndicate’s numerous concrete-pouring construction contracts in Manhattan and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Pontoriero provided Giordano with $8,300 in designer clothing and a $12,000 loan for a minivan in return for Waterbury contracting favors, federal authorities showed.

Trump's Genius

According to several major biographies, Trump grew his businesses while maintaining relationships with Mafia chieftains Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno (shown at right), the Genovese family crime underboss, and Paul Castellano, chief of the Gambino family. The Genovese and Gambino organizations, named after leaders in their heyday, have historically been the most powerful and dangerous of the New York City metro region’s five Mafia families. The construction firms they controlled, including S & A Concrete, poured concrete for Manhattan’s Trump Tower, Trump Plaza, and other Trump building projects in New York and Atlantic City. Trump’s Atlantic City construction projects also involved Philadelphia and South Jersey Mafia chief Nick “Little Nicky” Scarfo, who was regarded as vengeful and murderous at a level reaching psychotic proportion.

Trump’s association with Mafia bosses resulted from intermediary services provided by the infamous mobbed-up lawyer Roy Cohn (shown at left), someone also known for his prurient sexual interests involving young men. Cohn, who represented leaders in both the Genovese and Gambino mobs, died in 1986 from complications from AIDS. Before that, however, as Trump’s business attorney, friend and mentor, Cohn made the right “introductions” for Trump in the organized crime underground of the New York City area, including Connecticut.

It is very likely that Trump’s affectation for young girls involved compromising him with “favors” that were provided by mob elements in New York and elsewhere, such as Waterbury. And, considering Waterbury’s current obfuscation on providing official information on Maria’s abduction and Giordano’s mob ties and pedophile problems, concerned citizens might reasonably demand answers regarding basic information about the kidnapped girl-- as well as how those secrets relate to the city’s troubled past and current politics.

In Waterbury, federal authorities broke up the massive corruption scheme and documented Giordano’s compulsive sex obsession with teens and pre-teens. Meanwhile, Waterbury authorities apparently proceeded in an oblivious manner that, in the most charitable interpretation, resembled the acumen of Inspector Clouseau in the movies.

Eventually, the Italian Mafia would introduce Trump to the even more nefarious Russian Jewish mob, which was nestled around Brighton Beach, also known as “Little Odessa,” in Brooklyn.

WMR has reported extensively that it was from these quarters that Trump would be introduced to the money-laundering services of shady Eastern European, mostly Jewish, gangsters. These included Felix Sater, David Bogatin, Vyachelsav Ivankov, and the most dangerous mobster of them all-- Semion Mogilevich. These mobsters specialized in not only money laundering, but the other big threat to Trump’s presidency-- sex trafficking, including of underage girls. WMR's findings are summarized in a visual relationship chart of "Trump-Kushner-Sater-Manafort Global Syndicate Road Map" showing persons and entities that was first published last spring and is updated.

Helping to confirm the importance of this illicit network was former Trump Chief Strategist Steven Bannon’s remark quoted by author Michael Wolff in the Fire and Fury best-seller that Trump and his associates are highly vulnerable to money laundering charges in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe.

Epstein’s “Lolita Express”

Trump’s pedophile problems also extend to his Mar-a-Lago private estate and club in Palm Beach, Florida. In 2005, when a Florida mother accused Trump’s “good friend” Epstein with having her underage daughter “Mary” strip down and “massage” Epstein for $300, a barrage of subsequent civil lawsuits was brought against the billionaire investor, who started out his career as a seventh-grade teacher at the exclusive Dalton School in Manhattan from 1973 to 1975.

In a 2002 interview with New York Magazine, Trump said of his friend Epstein, “I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it-- Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Trump’s 15-year relationship with Epstein put the alleged rapes of Katie Johnson and Maria well within the timeframe of their friendship.

Palm Beach police detectives led by Det. Joe Recarey and the FBI built up a criminal case against Epstein that soon involved over 100 “Jane Does” who accused the Palm Beach resident Epstein, a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, with sexual assault.

One victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, claimed that she was 15 when Epstein’s chief procurer of young girls, Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late newspaper press lord and Mossad operative Robert Maxwell, recruited her into “service” while she was a towel girl at Mar-a-Lago.

Giuffre said that the adjoining photo of her with Maxwell and Prince Andrew of Britain's royal family when she was 17 illustrates the time when she was being trafficked. Epstein, Maxwell and Buckingham Palace denied improprieties, and Giuffre settled a lawsuit against Epstein.

Some of the girls were 14-years-old at the time of Epstein’s alleged assaults at these venues: his Palm Beach El Brillo Way mansion (which is just a mile away from Mar-a-Lago), Epstein’s private Little Saint James Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, his private Boeing 737, and his huge ranch in New Mexico. The other “Jane Does” in the civil cases against Epstein were identified in court documents with the initials of "L.M.," "E.W.," and "M.J."

The Sweetheart Deal Protecting Pervert Pedophiles

Under the Bush administration, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alexander Acosta (shown at right), arranged a sweetheart plea deal for Epstein. The billionaire pervert served merely 13 months of a nighttime-only sentence in a minimum-security wing of the Palm Beach County prison for his misdemeanor guilty plea of soliciting sex from an underage female. The New York Post reported (Massage Maven out of prison) that Epstein was permitted to have a mistress whom Epstein had described as his "sex slave" visit him in jail 67 times.

Most shocking, Epstein was spared from any further Florida or federal charges in a non-prosecution agreement approved by Acosta in coordination with Epstein’s high-powered legal team, which included Florida attorney Jack Goldberger, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz and former President Clinton's Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who was dean of Pepperdine School of Law beginning in 2004.

And, in yet another free ride for those VIPs who were present at Epstein’s orgies with underage girls, Acosta’s plea deal stipulated that neither Florida nor the federal government would charge anyone else for having sex with underage females. Normally, sweetheart plea deals are to encourage small fry to rat out higher-ups, not to protect everyone except one miscreant receiving a slap on the wrists.

The honest police in West Palm Beach were so outraged by the sellout that they risked firing by anonymously posting on the web details (redacted to remove names) of the shocking specifics of Epstein’s crimes against the girls, who were primarily of junior high and high school age. WMR has inspected the court record in criminal and civil cases, and identified 104 separate “Jane Doe” victims of Epstein and his ring in one case alone.

Ironies abound. Clinton and Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom's royal family were among Epstein's social circles. The former president while involved with Clinton Foundation activitiestook many documented flights on Epstein's luxury airplane, although no abuse claims have yet surfaced against him. Starr (shown in a portrait) would go on to become chancellor of Baylor University, where he would intone on the importance of moral instruction for college students, as we reported in the 2015 column Moralist Ken Starr Explains His Help For Billionaire Pervert Jeffrey Epstein. However, a massive sex scandal in football player recruitment, whereby students reported being raped after serving as hostesses for prospective student athletes, festered under his nose and would ultimately cost him his job.

Trump ultimately rewarded Acosta for his “deal” with Epstein by nominating him last year to become U.S. Secretary of Labor. Acosta was approved on a near-party line vote. Most Democrats were too timid to grill him on the Epstein plea deal. Republicans touted his Hispanic and “law enforcement” backgrounds. From this Trump post where Acosta serves as the supposed watchdog over the employment rights of workers, the Labor Secretary continues to serve as an ostensibly decent public servant and rare minority face in the Trump cabinet.

Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, with his hand on a Bible and surrounded by family members, is sworn into office by ViP Mike Pence last year.

What's Next?

Let's think about the high stakes involved and the apparent lack of sustained scrutiny and public disclosure despite the #MeToo movment.

In this instance, the trail of Trump’s and Epstein’s pedophile sexual assaults on young girls is a long one. It extends from the greater Palm Beach area in Florida to Manhattan and, we believe, at least as far north as Waterbury, Connecticut. In most instances, substantial evidence points to law enforcement investigations that have been stymied by government cover-ups, witness intimidation, and monetary pay-offs to victims.

And now there are two new factors: One is an array of zealots, trolls and thugs determined to attack vulnerable victims, particularly to protect President Trump, the leader of their alt-right movement. Also, we see that an entire U.S. territory, Puerto Rico, apparently is suffering from continued storm damage and loss of life because an addled but vengeful Trump apparently conflates a 12-year old Puerto Rican girl whom he knew as Maria with the devastating hurricane of the same name.