If Aliens Decide To Visit, Would You Want Trump In Charge? Just Asking For A Friend

For some reason, the government wants to keep its UFO programs secret. The Pentagon hides the UFO office and makes it almost impossible to find in its budget requests. Congress obliges with increasingly secretive appropriations for the military UFO hunters, even though the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program went the way of the dodo bird with the retirement of its greatest advocate, Harry Reid. Yesterday, the NY Times had a team on the case, which reported that "For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by the New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze. The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties."

The shadowy program-- parts of it remain classified-- began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.



On CBS’s 60 Minutes in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.

Working with Mr. Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, the program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift.

Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft-- including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

Mr. Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the program. “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going,” Mr. Reid said in a recent interview in Nevada. “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”

Two other former senators and top members of a defense spending subcommittee-- Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat-- also supported the program. Mr. Stevens died in 2010, and Mr. Inouye in 2012.

While not addressing the merits of the program, Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at M.I.T., cautioned that not knowing the origin of an object does not mean that it is from another planet or galaxy. “When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it’s worth investigating seriously,” she said. But, she added, “what people sometimes don’t get about science is that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained.”

James E. Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle engineer and the author of 10 books on spaceflight who often debunks U.F.O. sightings, was also doubtful. “There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual traits that can account for these stories,” Mr. Oberg said. “Lots of people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”

Still, Mr. Oberg said he welcomed research. “There could well be a pearl there,” he said.

In response to questions from The Times, Pentagon officials this month acknowledged the existence of the program, which began as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials insisted that the effort had ended after five years, in 2012.

“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in an emailed statement, referring to the Department of Defense.

But Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the effort’s government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then on, Mr. Elizondo said in an interview, he worked with officials from the Navy and the C.I.A. He continued to work out of his Pentagon office until this past October, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal opposition.

“Why aren’t we spending more time and effort on this issue?” Mr. Elizondo wrote in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a successor, whom he declined to name.

U.F.O.s have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United States, including by the American military. In 1947, the Air Force began a series of studies that investigated more than 12,000 claimed U.F.O. sightings before it was officially ended in 1969. The project, which included a study code-named Project Blue Book, started in 1952, concluded that most sightings involved stars, clouds, conventional aircraft or spy planes, although 701 remained unexplained.

Robert C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the time, said in a memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue Book that it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.”

Mr. Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow. In 2007, Mr. Reid said in the interview, Mr. Bigelow told him that an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency had approached him wanting to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.

Mr. Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his meeting with Mr. Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a research program on U.F.O.s. Mr. Reid then summoned Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye to a secure room in the Capitol.

“I had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid said, referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio, who died in 2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he thought that the federal government should be looking seriously into U.F.O.s, and should be talking to military service members, particularly pilots, who had reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain.

The sightings were not often reported up the military’s chain of command, Mr. Reid said, because service members were afraid they would be laughed at or stigmatized.

The meeting with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye, Mr. Reid said, “was one of the easiest meetings I ever had.”

He added, “Ted Stevens said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this since I was in the Air Force.’” (The Alaska senator had been a pilot in the Army’s air force, flying transport missions over China during World War II.)

During the meeting, Mr. Reid said, Mr. Stevens recounted being tailed by a strange aircraft with no known origin, which he said had followed his plane for miles.

None of the three senators wanted a public debate on the Senate floor about the funding for the program, Mr. Reid said. “This was so-called black money,” he said. “Stevens knows about it, Inouye knows about it. But that was it, and that’s how we wanted it.” Mr. Reid was referring to the Pentagon budget for classified programs.

...The program collected video and audio recordings of reported U.F.O. incidents, including footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to understand what they are seeing. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one exclaims. Defense officials declined to release the location and date of the incident.

“Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue,” Mr. Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are scared of being ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma. China and Russia are much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a juvenile taboo.”

By 2009, Mr. Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary discoveries that he argued for heightened security to protect it. “Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Mr. Reid said in a letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time, requesting that it be designated a “restricted special access program” limited to a few listed officials.

A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered. Mr. Reid’s request for the special designation was denied.

Mr. Elizondo, in his resignation letter of Oct. 4, said there was a need for more serious attention to “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” He expressed his frustration with the limitations placed on the program, telling Mr. Mattis that “there remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.”

Mr. Elizondo has now joined Mr. Puthoff and another former Defense Department official, Christopher K. Mellon, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, in a new commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They are speaking publicly about their efforts as their venture aims to raise money for research into U.F.O.s.

In the interview, Mr. Elizondo said he and his government colleagues had determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country. “That fact is not something any government or institution should classify in order to keep secret from the people,” he said.

For his part, Mr. Reid said he did not know where the objects had come from. “If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling themselves,” he said. “We do not know.”

I certainly do not know-- and I had 3 scary but not aggressive UFO experiences in the 1970s (long after I had quit using drugs, one near Sitges south of Barcelona, one on the North Sea near Alkmaar northwest of Amsterdam and one in Noe Valley in San Francisco). The most physical one was on the beach in Holland when my girlfriend and I, late at night, watched a tiny speck of light rapidly descend and hover just above us, as big as a barn-- a big barn. We never saw who was driving but they communicated with us both telepathically. They wanted us to come with them-- seemed completely aware of what was going on with us (a breakup)-- but didn't insist. In fact they were very amicable and reassuring that they had no intention of forcing us to do anything. When we said we weren't going to go with them, they said bye-bye and took off and because a speck of light again. Years later in San Fran, they indicated it was my last chance to come with them and I got the feeling it was either the same beings or beings that the ones on the beach near Alkmaar had told about me. I said no and they said bye-bye again. I never heard from them again.

Blink-182's big breakthrough third album, Enema of the State had sold over 15 million copies when lead singer Tom DeLonge left the band. If the anti-Hillary Wikileaks leaks are to be believed, DeLonge has some kind of a relationship with Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta (a lobbyist and former Obama chief of staff). Podesta's in a documentary DeLonge produced about UFOs and the two of them emailed about UFOs as well. Hillary's campaign didn't want to talk about UFOs but certainly blamed the Podesta-Blink-182 leak on the Trump's pal Vlad in the Kremlin.

Nevada's U.S. Senate Race Looks Wide Open-- Party Establishment Picks May Fail To Make The Final Ballot

The ad above by Save My Care started running yesterday in Nevada, where panic-stricken serial flip flopper Dean Heller is widely seen as the most vulnerable Senate incumbent up for reelection in 2018. After vowing to Nevadans to not help GOP extremists repeal Obamacare he was threatened by Trump and immediately buckled and voted against Nevadans. And now he's back with another bill he helped write that will rip healthcare away from even more Americans than the last one! Below is the ad a Trump SuperPAC, with money raised by Mike Pence, used as an effective cudgel to beat up Heller and force him to switch his postion from the pro-healthcare position that the popular Republican governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval, embraces to flat-out a flat-out anti-healthcare stand that Nevadans hate:



Last year Clinton beat Trump in Nevada, 539,260 (47.92%) to 512,058 (45.50%). She won big in Clark County (Vegas)-- 52.43% to 41.72%-- and narrowly in Washow County (Reno)-- 46.39% to 45.14%-- enough to take the state's 6 electoral votes. On the same day Catherine Cortez Masto beat Republican Joe Heck for the U.S. Senate seat, also narrowly-- 521,994 (47.1%) to 495,079 (44.7%). Nevada is a swing state trending blue.

Schumer and Harry Reid have selected the worst possible candidate to run against Heller, conservative and utterly undistinguished and unaccomplished, Republican-lite freshman Jacky Rosen. Rosen has already earned one of the lowest "F" scores of any Democrat in Congress from ProgressivePunch, normally voting with the Blue Dogs on every important issue. In July Stanley Paher wrote in the Reno Gazette-Journal that it would be very unwise for the Democrats to run her. "For more than a half century," he wrote, "successful Nevada politicians have ascended from lower offices upwards into the U.S. Senate. These include Paul Laxalt, Harry Reid, Dick Bryan and Dean Heller. In contrast, a non-political background as touted by Rosen seldom translates into electoral success. How does synagogual leadership, computer programming skills, and familial experience translate into votes? Her lone electoral win last November was a 1% squeaker against a very weak Republican who had lost 5 elections over the past 8 years... The Rosen forces will point to Las Vegas’ large Democratic registration as an advantage for her statewide bid. But tell that to the bushel full of Nevada Democrats who lost in the 2014 midterm elections up and down ballot, as well as in 2010 when Joe Heck bested incumbent Las Vegas Congresswoman Dina Titus and Republicans Krolicki and Sandoval won in landslides for Nevada’s top two offices."

Rosen beat Danny Tarkanian, a crackpot Trumpist, for the open congressional seat last year, 146,869 (47.2%) to 142,926 (46%). The southern Clark County district, basically everything south of the airport, including Henderson and Boulder City, right down to the tip of the state where California, Arizona and Nevada meet in the Mohave Valley. Obama won the district both times but Hillary lost it to Trump 47.5% to 46.5%. Rosen's brief tenure in Congress has shown her to be, basically, everything that voters in NV-03 didn't like about Clinton. She's a disaster as a candidate and Reid and Schumer-- and EMILY's Lidt, of course-- stumbled right into it.

Meanwhile the Trumpist, Tarkanian, is primarying Heller with the support for Bannon and the rest of the whole nationalist fringe of the GOP. The most recent poll of Nevada Republicans-- which shows Trump with an 80% approval rating and Heller with a 34% approval-- indicates that Tarkanian would beat him 39-31% if the primary were held today.

Democrats do have a choice in their own primary as well. If they want to stand up to the party bosses-- Reid and Schumer-- they can vote for a Berniecrat in the race, Jesse Sbaih, someone who Reid rejected as a Democratic candidate last year because of his Muslim faith. When he was running for Congress, Reid told him to get out of the race because "a Muslim cannot win this race." Unlike Rosen Sbaih is a dedicated progressive and has pledged to fight for Medicare-For-All. Rosen is one of the minority of House Democrats who has refused to co-sponsor John Conyers' Medicare-For-All bill. Sbaih's wife is a physician and he has made Medicare-For-All one of the keystones of his campaign.

Would The Senate Democrats Be Better Off With Schumer Or With A Steaming Pile Of Pig Poop As A Leader?

I don’t remember Jason Zengerle having been at James Madison High School in Brooklyn. In fact, even if he did go to school there, it would have been many years not just after Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Bernie Sanders, but many years after I went was there at the same time as Norm Coleman and Chuck Schumer. And in his new feature for New York I don’t think he meant too write a story about what an inadequate pile of crap Schumer is for the job of Democratic Senate Leader. I suspect it was meant to be a paean to the retiring Harry Reid— trying to prepare his Democratic colleagues to battle Trump without him— another slimy character, like Schumer, but one with , unlike Schumer, some saving (political) graces. “Shell-shocked Democats,” he wrote, “wouldn’t have Harry Reid around anymore to help them deal with this new nightmare” of Trump, McConnell and Ryan running there entire show. “To Democrats, Reid was indispensable — not only the man who helped them win back control of the Senate in 2006 but also the party insider who encouraged Barack Obama to run for president and, later, the parliamentary wizard who helped pass Obama’s legislative agenda.”

Compounding the loss of Reid is the sack of garbage he’s leaving behind: Schumer, a ruthless and corrupt congressman who became the single most corrupted Wall Street stooge in history. He’s taken more in legalistic bribes from the banksters than any non-presidential candidate ever. These are the current totals (since 1990) of Finance Sector “contributions” to their half dozen biggest puppets in Congress:

• Chuck Schumer- $26,213,631
• Mitch McConnell- $11,890,851
• Paul Ryan- $9,261,692
• Rob Portman- $9,013,382
• Richard Shelby- $8,446,508
• John Cornyn- $8,303,966

I’m sure you noticed that the sleazy Schumer has taken more in schmears from the banksters than Majority Leader McConnell and House Speaker Ryan combined— $26,213,631 to their $21,152,543. Wall Street is careful with their investments; they know which crooked politicians they’re buying and where they’ll get value. Reid didn’t take nearly as much Wall Street bribery— “just” $6,263,688 (almost $20 million less than Schumer). “In many ways,” continued Zengerle, “Schumer was the perfect complement to Reid. ‘Senator Reid never cared about messaging and he sure as hell didn’t care about polls,’ says Jim Manley, Reid’s former communications director, ‘but Schumer certainly thrives on that stuff.’ Unlike Reid, Schumer also had good working relationships with many of his Republican colleagues. More than anything, though, Reid — who grew up in abject poverty and moonlighted as a Capitol police officer to put himself through George Washington law school — admired Schumer’s hustle.” And then came the “but.”

But the job that Reid had in mind for Schumer when he anointed him as his successor isn’t the one Schumer will actually be doing. “Schumer would be a very good majority leader under President Hillary Clinton, and that’s what he thought he was signing up for,” says one prominent Democratic strategist, noting how aggressively Schumer waded into several Democratic Senate primaries in 2016. “He made the calculation that he wanted to win the Senate with people who were easily tamable and then he could be a majority leader like LBJ, just ramming things through.” As a minority leader with a Republican in the White House, however, Schumer will have a very different task — and there’s concern among some Democrats that he might not be cut out for it. “Chuck will go to the ramparts on an issue when it’s polling at 60 percent, but as soon as it gets hairy, he’s gone,” says one senior Democratic Senate aide. “Chuck wants issues to have no negatives, but it’s the Trump era. He’s looking at polls ­showing 60 percent for the Carrier deal” — in which Trump persuaded the company to keep a furnace plant in the U.S. in exchange for $7 million in tax breaks — “and thinking to himself, Maybe we should support that.”

Indeed, in the days immediately after Trump’s victory, Schumer sought common ground with the president-elect. Other Senate Democrats soon followed suit. Even Elizabeth Warren, who had spent the presidential campaign taunting Trump, pledged to work with him on increasing economic security for the middle class. Much of this was, presumably, typical morning-after posturing, but Reid was nonetheless alarmed. Three days after the election, he released a statement branding Trump “a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate.”

“What I was trying to say,” Reid told me, “is, ‘Be careful, because this is not all fun and games. The stuff he has said has been hateful and disruptive and crude and not helpful to anybody, and so be careful what you agree with him about.’ ” Adam Jentleson, a top Reid adviser, puts it more bluntly: “He was standing athwart the normalization of Trump, yelling ‘Stop!’ He wanted to show Democrats that this is how you should be approaching things.”

The message was delivered, but even though Senate Democrats, including Schumer, have since struck a more defiant tone toward Trump and the GOP, they haven’t been as defiant as Reid might have hoped. Schumer, in particular, has continued to signal a willingness to work with Trump. “We’re not going to say no to something just because Trump’s name is on it,” says Matt House, a Schumer aide. “If people are concerned we’re going to work with Trump, they’re concerned we’re going to work with Trump on things Democrats have been fighting for for a long time. People need to pay attention to the nuances.” But the question remains whether those nuances will be lost on some of Schumer’s Democratic colleagues.

Nearly two months after the election, Senate Democrats are by all accounts unprepared and without a coherent strategy when it comes to opposing Trump’s agenda. Should they obstruct at all costs, even if it grinds government to a halt, and risk criticism that they’re just as partisan and ruthless as Republicans were under Obama? Should they partner with Trump in areas where he disagrees with GOP orthodoxy and hope that voters reward them as the party out of power? Should they prioritize delegitimizing Trump and winning 2020 — or defending vulnerable Senate seats in 2018? It is in the Senate where, theoretically, Democrats have the best shot at countering almost total Republican dominance of Washington. But to be effective they will need to be ­tactical and tough, and it’s likely they will be missing Harry Reid a lot.

One of Reid’s greatest skills as his party’s leader in the Senate was keeping his caucus unified. That’s a task that will be especially crucial under Trump: With ten Democratic senators from states Trump won up for reelection in 2018, the temptation for some of them to peel off and vote with Republicans — to demonstrate they can be reasonable — will be strong.

…Had Reid decided not to retire, it’s quite possible the upcoming term would have been the most significant of his career. Trump’s claim of a mandate notwithstanding, significant parts of the GOP agenda remain unpopular, from privatizing Medicare to deregulating Wall Street. Reid would have led the fight against the president. “It would have been two guys who don’t really care about, to borrow the phrase, ‘traditional norms’ and customs going at it,” Jim Manley muses. “It really would have been something to see.”

Instead, we are about to witness the most significant term of Schumer’s career. He has already earned the allegiance of Democratic senators by naming a number of them to newly created leadership posts. (“It’s like Oprah,” jokes one Senate aide. “You get a new leadership post! And you get a new leadership post!”) And it’s likely that Schumer will hold the caucus together during the confirmation process for Trump’s nominees. Senate Democrats appear to be unanimous in their opposition to Tom Price, Trump’s choice for Health and Human Services secretary, and they hope to raise such a ruckus about Medicare during Price’s hearings that at least three Republicans decide to vote against Price, too, thus handing Democrats their first scalp of the Trump era.

According to various Senate aides, Schumer doesn’t believe his party has a chance of torpedoing any other Trump nominees, but he hopes to make their confirmations as bruising — and, with smart floor management, as prolonged — as possible. (Schumer himself declined to comment.) “The goal will be to show the public how controversial these nominations are,” explains a Senate Democratic aide. Similarly, Schumer can expect to have the unanimous support of his caucus in pushing for a select committee to investigate Russian hacking of the election, and thanks to his bringing several Republicans onboard for that effort, he’s made it more ­difficult (or at least more uncomfortable) for Mitch McConnell to stop them.

But those are the easy parts. The battlefield becomes more perilous for Schumer as Trump and his party move on to other parts of their agenda. Again and again, the New York senator will be faced with the question of where and how often to use intransigence as a strategy. That his primary congressional adversary will be McConnell raises the stakes further, as the Kentucky senator has proved to be an even more ruthless majority leader than Reid was before him. It was McConnell’s singular insight that, even if Republicans were responsible for the lack of bipartisanship and the resulting gridlock, it would be the party that controls the White House that takes the blame for it. This nuclear strategy won back all parts of government from a president and party that was historically popular at the time McConnell cooked up his plan. But will Democrats have the stomach to stymie Trump in the same way McConnell and his fellow Republicans blocked Obama?

Schumer has signaled that he’s open to backing Trump’s infrastructure package — in part on the merits (this country could use some infrastructure spending) and in part because it might turn off enough Republicans that Schumer will have some leverage over a president eager to get points on the board. “Infrastructure will really test how much Democrats are willing to hold out for a good deal versus any deal,” says one Senate Democratic aide. Obamacare will be another tricky fight. Schumer and the Democrats will obviously oppose any effort to repeal the health-care law, but the crucial battle won’t occur until Republicans try to replace it. Some Democrats are already dismayed that Schumer hasn’t done a better job of firming up commitments from Senate Democrats that under no conditions will they vote for an Obamacare replacement. “You’ve got to establish your leverage early and make it clear to Republicans that it’s a ‘You break it, you bought it’ situation,” explains the same aide. “If you don’t lock down Democrats on that position early, before the repeal bill passes, you leave yourself vulnerable to things developing in such a way that makes it harder for Democrats to maintain their opposition.”

And then there’s the budget. Trump has promised to increase defense spending; it’s likely he won’t propose a similar increase in domestic spending, and it’s possible he’ll actually seek cuts. Schumer will face an agonizing choice in how he tries to get Democrats to respond: Go to the mat in opposing such a budget and threaten to shut down the government — knowing full well that by doing so, Democrats will run the risk of losing seats in 2018 in the states Trump won? Or acquiesce?

“You can get talked out of each individual fight, and you can make the case that in every one of these instances, Democrats should cave under pressure and go along,” says the aide. “But if we do, we’ll have allowed Trump to have a functional first year that completely devastated Democratic priorities in the process.”

“The problem with Democrats is that we believe in legislating,” laments Jim Manley. It’s a sanctimonious thing to say. But would Democrats really vote against an Obamacare replacement — as bad as it might be — to spite Trump if by doing so they’d throw the American health-care system into crisis? Would they vote against a budget bill that slashes domestic spending if it meant shutting down the government?

Sometimes. And sometimes they won’t. The question confronting Democrats is whether Schumer will demonstrate instincts as canny as Reid’s. And when a fight is engaged, who will emerge as a leader who can see it through? “There’s no natural person,” concedes a senior Democratic staffer in the Senate. “It’s not Chuck’s nature. Both Bernie [Sanders] and Warren are more interested in shaping the party and the fights that we choose” — which means they’ll often be battling with Democrats as much as Republicans—“and Durbin has an instinct, but we’ll see how much he’s able to rally other people.” Reid, who’s reluctant to offer much advice to his fellow Democrats (at least publicly), nonetheless recognizes the urgency of the issue. “Senator Schumer — or somebody — will have to be willing on a consistent basis to say no,” Reid told me. “You know, stand up there and say, ‘I object.’ ”

Beltway Political Bosses Don't Put Much Premium On The Independent Minded Or The Uncorruptible

Recently Farron Cousins spoke with Alan Grayson about why he has such a beef with the corporate establishment Democrats who run the Senate, particularly out-going leader Harry Reid and-- unless someone can stop him-- in-coming leader Chuck Schumer, two of the most grotesquely corrupt men to ever hold U.S. Senate seats. Cousins reminds his audience that Grayson has always been an anti-establishment type-- running and winning against an incumbent Republican without any help from the DCCC on a platform primarily based on ending the Iraq War. "Grayson," Cousins wrote, "has made himself such an enemy of beltway Democrats that Senate Minority leader Harry Reid has made it his sole mission to block Grayson from winning the Florida senate seat against establishment candidate Rep. Patrick Murphy." He claims that 4 reasons have turned Reid against Grayson:

• Grayson consistently opposes cuts to Social Security, an issue of utmost importance in his state of Florida. Grayson authored a petition which gathered nearly 3 million signatures in order to oppose cuts.
• Grayson has given the power of his Superdelegate vote over to the people, launching a website which asked citizens all over the nation to decide who he would be supporting in the Democratic primary. Grayson also spoke about the corrupt nature of the delegate system and has called for a change in the way the DNC operates.
• Grayson has written and sponsored multiple bills which aim to cut money out of politics.
• Grayson has consistently spoken out against the Trans Pacific Partnership, even as the president has tried to convince the public that the deal is a good one. Grayson voiced his concerns on videos posted to Facebook as well as telling his supporters that the deal is a rotten egg.

Oh, and a fifth one: "Much like Senator Bernie Sanders, Grayson is focusing more on the will of the people rather than playing the complex game of political elite strategy, which means that he makes enemies of establishment Democrats all while advocating for the wants and needs of regular folks like us."

More than anything, though, what party bosses like Schumer and Reid can't take is Grayson's incorruptibility and his independence of mind, two traits which fly in the face of the Senate's hierarchical system. Saturday, Grayson sent his Florida supporters sure to have the slimy little Reid gnawing on his own leg in fury.

More than a month ago, not very long after Bernie Sanders won eight Presidential primaries and caucuses in a row, nasty party hack Harry Reid asked Bernie to drop out of the Presidential race. This was several months after Reid manipulated polling in Las Vegas in order to defeat Bernie in Nevada. (Reid ordered the casinos to give casino workers time off in the middle of the day to attend the caucuses, and then deployed 100 “poll watchers” to make sure that “people know what they’re doing.”)

When Reid issued his edict to Bernie to drop out, Reid was fresh off wrecking the political career of Donna Edwards, for no good reason whatsoever. Donna, a committed progressive, would have been the second African-American woman elected to the Senate. Reid, a rather confused individual, thought that Donna had hurt Reid protégé Shelley Berkley. Donna hadn’t, but of course, that didn’t matter to Reid.

Reid also wasted around $3 million of Democratic Party money in order to defeat the highest ranking military official ever to serve in Congress, Joe Sestak, in the Democratic primary. Why? Because Sestak ran for the Senate in 2010, and stayed in the race after Reid ordered him to drop out against a GOP party-switcher whom Reid liked. Also, Reid told Sestak, “Sestak, when I tell you something, the only answer is to be ‘yes,’” and Sestak, a three-star admiral who felt a greater loyalty to the voters than to the party Politburo, found it difficult to agree to those terms of surrender.

Seriously, who do these people think they are?

It’s not as if these corrupt party bosses are any good at picking our candidates. They’ve lost 14 Senate seats in the last six years. Mitch McConnell, Mr. Mealy-Mouth himself, has wiped the floor with them. The party bosses are no good at beating Republicans, so they have to take out their frustration on liberal Democrats.

So, anyway, Bernie told Reid that he was staying the Presidential race. And in response, Reid and the party Politburo stole some delegates from Bernie in Nevada, Reid’s home state, and then stacked the Democratic Convention against Bernie and his supporters.

And still, Bernie won’t drop out. Neither will I.

But seriously, who do these people think they are?

The last Public Policy Poll had us up by one point in the Florida Democratic Senate Primary. Reid has broadcast despicable lies, and lined up every flunky in the D.C. Establishment that he can find against us-- and we’re still winning.

Grayson closed by asking a simple question: "who gets to choose our candidate? Corrupt party bosses, or We, the People?" If you think it's the latter, please consider contributing to Grayson's grassroots campaign. Like Bernie, he's depending on small contributions from the people whose interests he represents. Please, just tap on the thermometer:

Patrick Murphy's Out Of Control Corruption-- A Perfect Symbol For Reid's Clouded Departure And Schumer's Ominous Arrival

I only ever had one argument with Keith Ellison. He wanted the Congressional Progressive Caucus to endorse Patrick Murphy when Murphy first ran for Congress against war criminal Allen West in 2012. I pointed out that Murphy was a rich, spoiled, drunken Republican without a single Democratic value-- let alone progressive value-- in his simple, fogged little mind. Ellison didn't dispute the obvious but claimed that Murphy would take direction from him. Fortunately, not enough CPC members agreed and they didn't endorse Murphy. Many Democrats did however. The DCCC loved everything bad about Murphy and spent $548,517 on the election, coordinated with a $2,375,691 expenditure from Nancy Pelosi's House Majority PAC, some of that money coming from the powerful Al-Rashid family from Saudi Arabia, which has taken a gigantic role in financing Murphy's political career. (Murphy managed to get himself assigned to the House Intelligence Committee, which is exactly what the Saudis wanted of him.)

Murphy went on to beat a stunned West, who remarked during the campaign that Murphy "doesn’t want to be in front of the public, he has no ideas, he does not address any of the issues, he is the emptiest of an empty suit-- I think he’s just a name on the ballot." That was a perfectly accurate description. And as soon as Murphy took his seat, he joined the New Dems and started amassing an incredibly reactionary voting record-- the 4th worst of any Democrat in the House, featuring votes to remove President Obama from the Keystone XL Pipeline decision-- he wasn't following Ellison on that one-- and joining the Republicans to establish an anti-Clinton witch-hunt called the Benghazi Committee-- again, not following Ellison.

In 2013, the Shark Tank reported that Murphy "Boehner granted Patrick Murphy’s request to a private meeting to discuss Murphy’s possible defecting to the Republican Party" and then turned down his conditions and told him to stay with the Democratic Party. Friday I confirmed this story with a former Boehner staffer who told me he had first had knowledge of the meeting.

Now Murphy is being heavily pushed by Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, the Wall Street banksters and, of course, the Al-Rashids for the open Florida Senate seat Marco Rubio is giving up. His Democratic primary opponent is independent-minded progressive champion Alan Grayson, who is loathed by corruptionists on Wall Street and their Beltway puppets-- namely Schumer and Reid. When Reid publicly announced he wanted Grayson to lose, Mitch McConnell chimed in that he agrees and that he also wants Grayson to lose. Steven Law, the CEO of McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund said. Grayson's "Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders agenda of more government may appeal to uncompromising liberals, but it's the wrong direction for our country." Last week, Josh Holmes, McConnell's former chief of staff talked about the Florida Senate race with the media and said he "can envision a scenario where the balance of the Senate tips to the Democrats with the election of Alan Grayson. And I'm not the least bit kidding about that...Grayson could beat that entire field of Republicans."

Friday, the Courage Campaign noted that Wasserman Schultz, like Murphy a corrupt New Dem, was getting too much of the blame for the pay day lender scandal. Sure, she took massive amounts of money from the finance sector and she "is pushing to gut a rule by Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to crack down on predatory payday lenders" BUT "it turns out she's far from the only corporate Democrat attacking the CFPB while cashing in on Wall Street. Representative Patrick Murphy, the lead Democrat sponsoring the bill, received $1.4 million from the financial sector this year alone, the fifth-most of anyone in the entire House of Representatives... Wall Street is stuffing millions into the pockets of corporate Democrats who are attacking Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau."

Writing for the Washington Post last week, Jennifer Rubin, gave more "credit" for the disaster that Murphy has turned into to Reid than to the real culprit, Chuck Schumer, who has vowed to the Wall Street banksters that he can "deliver" Murphy as a way of "balancing" Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley and other progressives. Rubin, writing that the Dems will find it nearly impossible to take back the Senate without winning Florida, asserted that Reid "set out to crush" Grayson on behalf of Patrick Murphy.

Reid’s handpicked candidate turned out to be a nightmare. One GOP operative gleefully said, “Murphy has had the worst month of any Senate candidate.” That could well be true, considering the stream of revelations and stumbles that suggest Reid and the Democratic establishment did not vet Murphy very well.

Murphy was caught embellishing his academic record. In and of itself, that might not raise concerns, but it comes amid a slew of other issues.

Local media have seized on a swirl of controversies about his wealthy father’s campaign support:

The Democrat has seen an avalanche of news headlines and political attacks in the last week surrounding: money his family-owned company and father gave to a super PAC that supports him; donations he received from an admitted felon; and a House bill he co-sponsored that would have benefitted political donors and his family business.

Most of these facts aren’t new, but Republican groups and primary opponent U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson have latched onto them.

Two Federal Election Commission complaints have already been filed concerning allegations about illegal coordination between his campaign and his super PAC. One of his donors was Ibrahim al-Rashid, who is the son of a shady adviser to the Saudi royal family and who pleaded guilty to assaulting his ex-wife. (Murphy was compelled to return the donation from Rashid, whose father has given huge amounts to the Clinton Foundation.)

That’s not the only fishy donor, according to local press accounts:

Murphy also played down questions about his support for the EB-5 visa program. His campaigns have received contributions from Florida developers who tap into the funding source. Foreigners who invest at least $500,000 are given green cards; many participants are from China. The program has enjoyed broad support but also come under scrutiny for fraud and a perception it sends the wrong message about the country’s immigration system.

Nicholas A. Mastroianni II, a major EB-5 player based in Florida, has along with family members given Murphy about $25,000 and he has used companies to give at least $50,000 to the pro-Murphy super PAC. Another EB-5 developer and Murphy donor is Jeffrey Berkowitz, who is developing SkyRise Miami, a $430 million entertainment and observation tower... Murphy said Mastroianni and Berkowitz are friends and he gives them regular updates on the campaign. But he said he did not recall specific conversations with them about legislation he sponsored in 2014 to make the EB-5 program permanent. He also did not recall meeting with Liu Yu, a New York based lawyer who specializes in the field. The two appeared in a 2014 article on a Chinese-language website.

As if that were not enough, yesterday the Tampa Bay Times reported:

“Immediately following the BP oil spill, Congressman Murphy spent six months in the Gulf of Mexico leading cleanup efforts with his small business, Coastal Environmental Services,” reads his official House website.

But a review raises questions of whether Murphy exaggerated his role in the catastrophe... His campaign refuses to make public contracts he says he secured to clean up oil, or to characterize how much oil the company’s skimmers cleaned up and how much the firm earned.

Meanwhile, a source familiar with the records from Murphy’s first congressional race is pouring through the money trail of maxed-out donors to determine whether there are irregularities. (Patterns of low-income voters related to or employed by the candidate or candidate’s close associates and family can raise the issue of so-called “straw” donors.)

One wonders whether Reid could have benefited from a cursory Google search about Murphy before going out on a limb and going to war with Grayson. The primary is now turning into a lose-lose for the Democrats. If Grayson wins, Reid is humiliated and is stuck with a gadfly candidate. If Murphy wins, he’s a sitting duck for Republicans in the general election. Maybe Reid needs a new handpicked candidate to take out his first handpicked candidate.

Better idea: maybe Reid-- and, more important, Schumer-- should stop interfering with Democratic primaries outside of their own states. Contributors to the DSCC have been furious that Schumer and Reid have directed Jon Tester to spend immense sums against progressive Democrats and in favor of the kinds of corrupt conservatives Schumer and Reid prefer. Please consider contributing to Grayson's Senate campaign here:

Koch Brothers Prepare To Go To War Against Democrats, While Schumer, Reid And Wasserman Schultz Go To War Against Progressives

So what are the Democrats doing while the Koch brothers ready a $30 million Senate war-chest for August and September targeting races in Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania? If you're on the DSCC mailing list you know they are asking for contributions on a daily basis. But if you get your Senate campaign news from that list what you don't know is that they've been deploying whatever money they can get their hands on to smear and destroy progressive Democrats. If you contributed to the DSCC, regardless of what the e-mail you were responding to said, your money went to knock Joe Sestak out of the Pennsylvania Senate race because he refused to kiss Chuck Schumer's ass. (The Democrats don't put it that graphically and just claim he is too independent-minded for what they have in mind.)

And what they had in mind included spending $1,797,025 to push their weak and pathetic candidate who probably can't beat Toomey, Katie McGinty, into the nomination. The conservaDem women's group, EMILY's List, put in another $1,750,447, primarily an especially ugly and untruthful smear campaign against Joe Sestak, a former Admiral who served the country in war-time and didn't deserve the treatment from the vicious, bloodthirsty beasts at EMILY's List, who have long taken special pleasure destroying progressive men. Schumer and Reid also recruited the lobbyist-run but nice-sounding Environmental Defense Fund to spend another $395,320 against Sestak. So that was about $4,000,000 in outside cash poured into Pennsylvania to help a weak Democrat get the nomination to oppose the GOP incumbent. Now the Democrats have one prayer to win the seat: a Trump meltdown dragging down the whole ticket. Short of that, the DSCC just reelected Pat Toomey for another six year term. Did you help them?



Next on the crooked establishment's hit list is Florida, where Schumer has been helping Wall Street stooge Patrick Murphy, an "ex"-Republican and member of the conservative New Dems, rake in immense amounts of special interest money, especially from Wall Street. In fact, getting privileged Patrick into the Senate is the #1 priority of the banksters this cycle. He's gotten money campaign loot from the Finance Sector than any non-incumbent running this year-- $1,105,850, so far. He's also the second biggest recipient on Pay Day Lender money of anyone running for the Senate this year, beaten out only by Richard Shelby, the current chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. And privileged Patrick is involved in all kinds of campaign finance scams that have already sent Rep. Ami Bera's father to prison and one that is so outrageous that even a crook like Harry Reid, sent $100,000 back to one of privileged Patrick's closest friends, Saudi national Ibrahim Al-Rashid, that he gave Reid to spend on the Murphy election bid. Another $100,000 grand to the Murphy family's own Patrick PAC hasn't been returned, even though Al-Rashid was convicted of brutally beating his wife, who was also Patrick's campaign finance director.

Reid and Schumer are so desperate to follow Wall Street's orders-- to "balance out" Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders with corrupt shills like Patrick Murphy, that it was pretty shocking to see Reid give back the $100,000. After all, Reid has been sending out letters to right-wing, pro-Wall Street donors telling that that he is openly trying to destroy Grayson's career. "I will be blunt. I want Alan Grayson to lose," he wrote Monday, in an e-mail with the subject line, "I want Grayson it lose." He then sites a bunch of charges Schumer made up about Cayman Islands hedge funds as "proof" that Grayson is should't be in the Senate. As Noam Chomsky has explained, today's Democratic Party is now the party of moderate Republicans. Writing for Salon, Alexandra Rosenmann explained Chomsky's point, basically that "the majority of Democrats have shifted to the right so far that the two-party system is almost unrecognizable." Instead of a party of the right representing business interests and a party of the left representing the interests of working families, we now have a neo-fascist Republican Party representing the End Times-- "a radical insurgency that doesn’t care about fact, doesn’t care about argument, doesn’t want to participate in politics, and is simply off the spectrum"-- and a right-of-center Democratic Party representing business and professionals, also the subject of Thomas Frank's new book, Listen Liberal-- What Ever Happened To The Party of the People?



Chomsky: "There used to be a quip that the United States was a one-party state with a business party that had two factions: the Democrats and Republicans-- and that used to be pretty accurate, but it’s not anymore. The U.S. is still a two-party state, but there’s only one faction, and it’s not Democrats, it’s moderate Republicans. Today’s Democrats have shifted to the right." The Wall Street-owned New Dems are a dominant force in the House and the Progressive Caucus has dissipated whatever power it once had and has make itself next to meaningless, its members sincerely devoted to public policy but unable to exercise any effective or meaningful power whatsoever-- basically uninterested in that kind of grubbiness and leaving it to the corrupt conservatives instead, who have been only to happy to fill the void.

That's why electing smart and tough young progressives like Tim Canova (FL-23), Zephyr Teachout (NY-19), Alex Law (NJ-01), Pramila Jayapal (WA-7), and Jamie Raskin (MD-08) is so very important, something that could make all the difference in the world-- in a way that electing a bunch of hacks from the DCCC's Red to Blue list will do nothing put seal the fate of the Democratic Party as the moderate Republican party. Can you step up?

Meet The Saudi Billionaire Al-Rashid Family... And Their Attempts To Buy Influence In Congress

Ibrahim and Patrick-- no photos of Moose available

This Al-Rashid scandal is starting to burn Patrick Murphy and other politicians who have gotten into bed with him. The background that everyone knows is that a close friend of Murphy's, Ibrahim Al-Rashid, an investment broker and the son of one of the most powerful Saudi billionaires, gives immense amounts of money to Patrick, married Patrick's finance director, beat her up and was convicted of battery and drew a sentence of one year's probation. People are less aware that several sons of that Saudi billionaire, Nasser Al-Rashid, one of the Saudi royal family's closet advisors, have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of some of the most easily corruptible conservative Democrats, particularly Patrick Murphy, of course, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and on a subcommittee which the Saudi government is very interested, the Department of Defense Intelligence and Overhead Architecture Subcommittee. Some of the money Ibrahim Al-Rashid has given Murphy is legal and some extremely illegal-- and he has also been giving money to congressional crooks Murphy has wanted to funnel money to for his own purposes.

Ibrahim married Murphy's campaign finance director, Morgan Budman, although earlier he had given many thousands of dollars for her and to her relatives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania to contribute to Murphy's campaign, a serious federal offense. He also gave large sums to other people to contribute to Murphy, like his maid,all of which is highly illegal. The legal contributions that Ibrahim gave Murphy amounted to approximately $16,000 directly, $100,000 to Murphy's American Sunrise PAC (run by Murphy's crooked Republican father), $180,000 to the Pelosi-run House Majority PAC, $35,800 to the DCCC, $6,000 to the DSCC and $100,000 to Harry Reid's Senate Majority PAC, specifically earmarked for Murphy's race. (He's also contributed several thousand dollars directly to Reid himself.) Over the weekend-- as a brighter light has been shone on Al-Rashid-- Reid decided to return the $100,000 Senate Majority PAC contribution to Al-Rashid. Murphy claims to have donated his $16,000 to a charity for battered women after Rashid was convicted of beating his wife/Murphy's finance director to within an inch of her life. But Murphy has refused to disgorge the $100,000 made directly to his SuperPAC. Wassermann Schultz, Eric Swalwell, Joe Garcia, Steve Israel, the DCCC, Pelosi and Charlie Crist have also so far refused to get rid of the tainted money.

Murphy cronies, most of whom play fast and loose on the ethics front, who have accepted Ibrahim Al-Rashid's bribes include:

• Debbie Wasserman Schultz- $4,800
• Eric Swalwell- $10,400
• Lois Frankel- $7,500 (of which she returned $2,500)
• Joe Garcia- $5,400
• Alcee Hastings- $5,000
• Charlie Crist- $4,800
• Ami Bera- $2,600
• Steve Israel- $2,500
• Harry Reid- $2,400
• Frederica Wilson- $5,200
• Ted Deutch- $10,200

Nasser Al-Rashid himself-- the father (also a notorious woman abuser, particularly of Ibrahim's mother who wrote a book about it)-- has given over $1,000,000 to the Clinton Library. Nasser's other sons are in on it as well. This cycle, Mohammed Al-Rashid, who uses the pseudonym "Moose" Al-Rashid, gave two fat checks to Murphy, both on June 2, 2015, one for $2,700 and one for $2,300. Another brother, Salman, also contributes to the same clown-show of candidates in Murphy's orbit:

• Patrick Murphy- $10,200
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz- $2,400
• Ami Bera- $1,000
• Steve Israel- $2,500
• Ted Deutch- $2,400
• Alcee Hastings- $2,400
• Charlie Crist- $4,800

And then there's Ramzi, who gave Patrick Murphy another $5,000 in Al-Rashid money. Both before and after she married Ibrahim, Morgan Budman was contributing large amounts of money to the same corrupt Democrats the Al-Rashid family had decided to buy into, especially Murphy, but many of Murphy's cronies as well, especially Wasserman Schultz, Charlie Crist, Ted Deutch and Alcee Hastings. So... now that Harry Reid has given back the $100,000 in tainted money, what about the DSCC, the DCCC, Pelosi's House Majority PAC and all the dirty little corruptionists like Wasserman Schultz and Bera? And what about that $100,000 that went to Murphy's SuperPAC? And will there be a serious investigation into what information the Saudi government wants from House Intelligence Committee member Patrick Murphy that would make them spend so many hundreds of thousands of dollars on his career? You can help make sure the Al-Rashids and Murphys are stopped dead in their tracks by helping elect Alan Grayson to the Senate and retiring Patrick Murphy and his corruption:

It's Never Easy To Fight Tammany Hall On Your Own-- They Fight Back... And Really Dirty

The Ring of Fire interview (above) will give you a very good idea why he is so hated by corrupt shills like Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. When they hear him saying things like he said in the interview, they know that although he doesn't mention their names, they are exactly who he;'s talking about-- and should be talking about.

ProgressivePunch grades Harry Reid's lifetime voting record a "C," which seems very generous of them. There are 10 conservative Senate Democrats with even worse scores than Reid's pitiful 76.83. Even Dianne Feinstein, Bill Nelson and Bob Casey vote more frequently for progressive values and principles than Reid does. Ole Harry is basically a twisted and corrupt career politician going through a slow-mo breakdown after he was beaten within an inch of his life and threatened that the inch would be gone if he didn't retire. So he put out a bogus story about an exercise equipment malfunction he announced he is retiring and giving the Senate Leadership job to the only Democrat in the Senate more corrupt than himself: Chuck Schumer.

You may have heard that about the argument that started today when Reid wandered over to the Congressional Progressive Caucus-- odd place for someone like him-- between himself and Grayson, a member of the caucus and a candidate for Senate who Reid has been sliming and slandering from coast to coast, calling Grayson donors and demanding they not support him. (By the way, Grayson has been endorsed by Blue America and we urge you to contribute to his Senate campaign for the soon-to-be-empty Rubio seat, by tapping on the thermometer on the right.) Why did Reid snap that he wants Grayson to lose? Simple: Grayson is an existential challenge to the corrupt political system that elevates amoral little shits like Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, John Cornyn and Reid himself, to the top of the Beltway heap. They define and twist the meaning of "corruption" in such a way as to justify their own behavior and then proceed to rig the U.S. government for their own benefit. It's a very bipartisan endeavor. In fact, within moments of Reid's ugly attack on Grayson, one of Karl Rove's Crossroads affilates, the Senate Leadership Fund was agreeing with Reid about Grayson in an incendiary press release to the right-wing media. Yes, Beltway bipatisanship dictates that a Karl Rove and a Harry Reid would want Alan Grayson to lose and would want "ex"-Republican Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy to win. What could possibly make more sense than that? They hate Alan Grayson, the same way they hate Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid agree

Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani, writing for The Intercept today painted a perfect picture of the Reid/Schumer Democratic Party as the home away from home of the K Street lobbyists including ardent Republicans. "[T]he 2016 convention in Philadelphia," they wrote, "will be officially hosted by lobbyists and corporate executives, a number of whom are actively working to undermine progressive policies achieved by President Barack Obama, including health care reform and net neutrality."

The composition of the 15-member Host Committee may appear out of sync with the rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but the reality is that the party, in the form of the Democratic National Committee, has moved decisively to embrace the lobbying industry. In October 2015, DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., reportedly huddled with dozens of lobbyists to plan the convention in Philadelphia, and provided the influence peddlers involved with a menu of offerings in exchange for donations. In February, news reports revealed that the DNC had quietly lifted the Obama-era ban on federal lobbyist donations to the party and convention committee.

Anna Adams-Sarthou, the communications director for the Philadelphia 2016 Host Committee, wrote in an email to The Intercept that she has “no concerns” about lobbyists participating in the effort, because “the Host Committee is a nonprofit entity that does not lobby.”

The Host Committee, however, is deeply involved in planning events for the delegates, fundraising, and handling media relations, among other responsibilities.

“Our Host Committee is made up a diverse group of civic leaders that have led efforts like this in the past, many of whom were integrally involved in the bid for Philadelphia to host the convention,” Adams-Sarthou wrote.

The Host Committee’s finance chair is Daniel Hilferty. In his day job, Hilferty is CEO of Independence Blue Cross, a health insurance giant that covers nine million people. In December, Hilferty became board chairman of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of America, a trade group that lobbies for the insurance industry, and he serves on the board of directors of America’s Health Insurance Plan’s (AHIP), the insurance industry lobbying group that spearheaded the campaign against the Affordable Care Act. Lobby registration documents show the BCBS Association is actively supporting a number of Republican bills to roll back provisions of the ACA.

In an interview conducted late last year, Hilferty said he plans to make “sure to work closely at the congressional level, with the administration, with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to have input” into how the ACA is implemented under the next administration.

Hilferty has also donated heavily to Republicans this cycle, giving $10,000 to Prosperity for Pennsylvania, a Super PAC supporting the reelection of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.; $1,000 to the PAC supporting Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah; $1,000 to Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; $2,700 to Chris Christie’s presidential campaign; $25,300 to the NRCC, a GOP committee designed to re-elect House Republicans; and $2,700 to Jeb Bush. Hilferty also gave $2,700 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Allyson Schwartz, a former Democratic lawmaker, is a co-chair of the Host Committee. She was recently named head of a new advocacy group for the health insurance industry called Better Medicare Alliance. The group, according to the Center for Public Integrity, was set up by APCO, a lobbying firm for health insurance companies, to push to expand Medicare Advantage plans, the privately managed programs that were curtailed with the enactment of the ACA.

David Cohen is the special advisor to the Host Committee, and serves as the executive vice president of Comcast, overseeing the company’s lobbying and regulatory strategy. In addition to being a “Hillblazer”-- one of Hillary Clinton’s bundlers who has raised $100,000 or more-- Cohen has been a particularly bitter and duplicitous leading opponent of the rules regarding net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic must be treated equally. And despite hosting fundraisers for Clinton at his home last summer, Cohen has spent heavily to help elect a Republican Congress, including recent donations to the NRCC; Sen. Toomey; Sen. Scott; Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.; as well as $33,400 to the NRSC, a committee for helping elect GOP members to the Senate.

The Philadelphia Host Committee chair, former Gov. Ed Rendell, headed for Wall Street as soon as he left office, and has since represented a number of controversial special interests. In 2011, as New York was debating regulations on fracking, Rendell wrote a pro-fracking opinion column in the New York Daily News, while failing to disclose that he was a paid consultant at a private equity firm that had investments in the industry.

That same year, Rendell started providing paid speeches on behalf of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a fringe Iranian exile group that was considered a terrorist organization by the State Department at the time (it was delisted in 2012).

The former governor also joined the group Fix The Debt-- an organization backed by private equity billionaire Pete Peterson that advocates for cutting Social Security benefits-- co-chairing its activities alongside Judd Gregg.

Rendell is currently a special counsel at the law and lobbying firm Ballard Spahr; earlier this year, the firm launched a new election law group, advising clients on campaign finance and lobbying strategy.

“The Democratic Party, especially the DNC, have never liked Obama’s policies to disengage lobbyists from campaign fundraising,” says Craig Holman, an expert on ethics and campaign finance with Public Citizen. “The party only went along with the restrictions because Obama was the party leader. As soon as Obama could no longer be viewed as the leader of the party, the DNC quietly repealed the lobbyist restrictions. The public learned about it only weeks later.”

“Party bosses have always preferred a Wild West when it comes to fundraising,” he adds. “If party bosses had their way, we would have no restrictions on campaign contributions to the parties and return to the days of Tammany Hall.”

No need to ever worry which side Patrick Murphy will be on