Can Trump Be Sued By People Who Lose Loved Ones Because Of Trump's Pronouncements?

Today Bernie called for a moratorium on evictions, foreclosures and utility shutoffs, as well as lending for small and medium-sized businesses, during the coronavirus outbreak... "We have a major, major crisis and we must act accordingly." A couple of days ago, Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany-- who does live events for the campaign that violate social distancing recommendations from the CDC herself-- told Stuart Varney's Fox Business News' audience that Trump is continuing to do rallies-- despite National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Anthony Fauci’s clear statement that holding large public gatherings like Trump rallies is exactly how outbreaks turn into epidemics, in this case an epidemic that is tanking the economy and is likely to cause millions of deaths. The imbecile said that Señor Trumpanzee "is the best authority on this issue. He takes into consult the words of everyone around him, that would include Alex Azar, that would include Dr. Fauci, that would include others."

So suppose your grandma is at her regular Wednesday afternoon bridge game and her friend Janelle's horrible sister-in-law, Hilda, is in town and Janelle brings Hilda along. Hilda was just at a Trump rally where she sat between two slobs who were coughing and sneezing all night but who guaranteed her they just have colds. Hilda dies a horrible death the following week, but not before she gives the disease to all her friends-- all Trump fanatics, so... whatever-- but also to Janelle, who rubbed her eye before washing. Can you sue Trump for the death of your grandmother?

If I were the judge... Wait and let's look at some of the evidence of how Trump is responsible for Hilda getting coronavirus and thereby causing Janelle's death. Daniel Dale, who follows Trump's lies for a living: "Trump has been comprehensively misinforming the public about the coronavirus. Trump has littered his public remarks on the life-and-death subject with false, misleading and dubious claims. And he has been joined, on occasion, by senior members of his administration." This list is chronological:

February 10: Trump says without evidence that the coronavirus "dies with the hotter weather"

Trump said on Fox Business: "You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather." He told state governors: "You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat-- as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April." And he said at a campaign rally: "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that's true."

Facts First: Experts were not saying this. They were saying, rather, that it was too soon to know how the coronavirus would respond to changing weather. "It would be reckless to assume that things will quiet down in spring and summer," Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, told CNN. "We don't really understand the basis of seasonality, and of course we know we absolutely nothing about this particular virus." You can read a longer analysis here.

February 24: Trump baselessly claims the situation is "under control"

Trump tweeted: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA."

Facts First: "Under control" is subjective, but by any reasonable definition, the coronavirus was not under control in the US-- and there was no way for the government to fully understand how dire the problem was given how few Americans were being tested. There were 53 confirmed cases and no deaths on the day of Trump's tweet; as of March 11, there were more than 1,000 cases and 31 deaths.

February 25: A senior White House official falsely claims the virus has been "contained"

White House National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow said, "We have contained this, I won't say airtight but pretty close to airtight." Kudlow said again on March 6 that the coronavirus "is contained" in the US. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway made similar though less definitive comments the same day, saying the virus "is being contained."

Facts First: Experts said the US has not come close to containing the coronavirus. They also said the small number of tests conducted in the United States had prevented the government from getting an accurate picture of how widespread the virus truly is.

"In the US it is the opposite of contained," said Harvard University epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. "It is spreading so efficiently in so many places that it may be difficult to stop."

February 25: Trump falsely claims Ebola mortality was "a virtual 100%"

In comments to journalists on both February 25 and February 26, Trump contrasted the fatality rate for the coronavirus with the fatality rate for the Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016, saying "in the other case (Ebola), it was a virtual 100%" and that "with Ebola-- we were talking about it before-- you disintegrated. If you got Ebola, that was it."

Facts First: While the Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016 certainly had a much higher death rate than the coronavirus, the Ebola rate was never "virtually 100%"; for the entire epidemic, it was about 40% overall in the three African countries at the center of the situation. It was higher in the early stages of the outbreak, but it was never true that every infected person "disintegrated."

There were 28,616 "suspected, probable, and confirmed cases" and 11,310 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of mid-September 2014, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers reported that there was an estimated fatality rate of 70.8%. But the rate "fell later in the epidemic with lessons learned in improving treatment," said Julie Fischer, associate research professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Georgetown University and director of the Elizabeth R. Griffin Program. Still, even at 70.8%, death was never guaranteed for infected people, as Trump suggested.

"It was never 100%. That is just patently untrue," Fischer said.

February 25: Trump falsely claims "nobody had ever even heard of Ebola" in 2014.

Comparing the coronavirus outbreak with the Ebola situation of 2014, Trump said, "At that time, nobody had ever even heard of Ebola."

Facts First: Some Americans certainly didn't know a whole lot about Ebola before 2014, but the claims that "nobody" had ever even heard of Ebola and that "nobody" knew anything about it are absurd. Ebola was discovered in 1976. It had been the subject of considerable media coverage in the next three decades, not to mention scientific study.

February 26: Trump wrongly says the coronavirus "is a flu"

Trump, contrasting the coronavirus with Ebola, said: "This is a flu. This is like a flu."

Facts First: While Trump may have simply meant that the coronavirus has a fatality rate more like the flu than like Ebola, experts have emphasized that the coronavirus is, simply, not the flu. They are different viruses with different characteristics, though they share symptoms, and the coronavirus has a higher mortality rate.

Experts say the mortality rate for the coronavirus is much higher than the approximately 0.1% rate for the seasonal flu, though the exact rate for the coronavirus is not yet known. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Congress on March 11 that it is "10 times" that of the flu's 0.1%.

As World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said March 3, the coronavirus "causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza. While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease."

Also, the behavior of the flu over the course of a year is pretty well-understood, while the behavior of the coronavirus over time is not yet known. And while there are flu vaccines available, there is no vaccine available for the coronavirus (and no proven treatment).

February 26: Trump baselessly predicts the number of US cases is "going very substantially down" to "close to zero"

Trump said: "I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don't think it's going to come to that, especially with the fact that we're going down, not up. We're going very substantially down, not up." And he said: "And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

Facts First: Clearly, the number of US cases and deaths was going up, not down. As the New York Times noted in its own fact check, both Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Principal Deputy Director Dr. Anne Schuchat said at the same press conference that they expected "more cases."

There were 60 total cases in the US on the day Trump spoke here. The "15 people" referred to the cases that did not involve people who had been on the Diamond Princess cruise ship or who had been repatriated from China.

February 26: Trump wrongly says the flu death rate is "much higher" than Dr. Sanjay Gupta said.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN chief medical correspondent, told Trump, "Mr. President, you talked about the flu and then in comparison to the coronavirus. The flu has a fatality ratio of about 0.1%." Trump said, "Correct." But Trump later disputed the figure, saying, "And the flu is higher than that. The flu is much higher than that."-- February 26 coronavirus press conference.

Facts First: Gupta was right, Trump was wrong. Even if Trump meant that the flu has a "much higher" fatality rate than 0.1% -- rather than meaning that the flu's mortality rate is "much higher" than that of the novel coronavirus-- he was wrong, according to Fauci, other experts and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. February 27: Trump baselessly hints at a "miracle"

Trump said: "It's going to disappear. One day-- it's like a miracle-- it will disappear. And from our shores, we-- you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows. The fact is, the greatest experts-- I've spoken to them all. Nobody really knows." He made similar comments later in the outbreak, saying on March 10, "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

Facts First: There was no apparent basis for Trump's claim that the virus will miraculously "disappear." (He did immediately soften the claim by saying "nobody really knows," but still.)

February 28: Trump baselessly hints at an immigration link to the virus.

Trump said: "The Democrat policy of open borders is a direct threat to the health and well-being of all Americans. Now you see it with the coronavirus, you see it. You see it with the coronavirus."

Facts First: Prominent Democrats do not support "open borders," literally unrestricted migration. Aside from that, though, there was no evidence from the coronavirus situation that Democrats' preferred immigration policies would be harmful to Americans' health. There was no known US case in which someone brought the virus to the US while immigrating or making an asylum claim.

February 29: Trump exaggerates Tim Cook's comments about Apple and China

Trump said: "And if you read, Tim Cook of Apple said that they are now in full operation again in China." Trump also said: "You probably saw that-- as I mentioned, Tim just came out and he said Apple is back to normal in terms of production in their facilities in China. They've made a lot of progress."

Facts First: Trump was overstating what Cook told Fox Business. Cook had not said Apple's production in China was "back to normal" or that plants in China were in "full operation." Rather, he said that plants in China were "getting back to normal."

"When you look at the parts that are done in China, we have reopened factories, so the factories were able to work through the conditions to reopen. They're reopening. They're also in ramp, and so I think of this as sort of the third phase of getting back to normal. And we're in phase three of the ramp mode," Cook said.

March 1: Azar wrongly says 3,600 people have been tested

Azar said: "In terms of testing kits, we've already tested over 3,600 people for the virus."

Facts First: Politico reported: "Two days later, CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat told the Senate health committee that her agency had tested more than 3,000 specimens taken from roughly 500 people-- a fraction of what Azar claimed." Politico reported that a Health and Human Services spokesperson explained that Azar had meant to say that the CDC had processed more than 3,600 tests, not that it had tested more than 3,600 people.

March 2: Trump falsely claims "nobody knew" the number of US flu deaths

Trump said: "You know, three, four weeks ago, I said, 'Well, how many people die a year from the flu?' And, in this country, I think last year was 36- or 37,000 people. And I'm saying, 'Wow, nobody knew that information.'" He said at a campaign rally: "So when you lose 27,000 people a year, nobody knew that. I didn't know that."

Facts First: Trump might not have known the number of annual flu deaths in the US, but that doesn't mean "nobody" else did. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes annual estimates on its website. The CDC estimates that between 12,000 and 61,000 people have died in the US in each flu season between 2010-2011 and 2018-2019; its preliminary figure for 2018-2019 is 34,157 deaths.

March 2: Trump says a vaccine is coming "relatively soon"

Trump said: "We had a great meeting today with a lot of the great companies and they're going to have vaccines, I think relatively soon. And they're going to have something that makes you better and that's going to actually take place, we think, even sooner."

Facts First: "Relatively soon" is too vague a phrase to call this claim false, but Trump did not mention that Fauci had told him earlier that day that a vaccine was "a year to a year and a half" away. Fauci similarly told the Senate the next day that the process of getting a vaccine ready to deploy "will take at least a year and a year and a half."

March 4: Trump falsely claims Obama impeded testing

Trump claimed he had reversed a decision by President Barack Obama's administration that had impeded testing for the coronavirus, saying that "the Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we're doing. And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion. That was a decision we disagreed with." He said on March 5: "They made some decisions which were not good decisions...We undid some of the regulations that were made that made it very difficult, but I'm not blaming anybody."

Facts First: There is no Obama-era decision or rule that impeded coronavirus testing. The Obama administration did put forward a draft proposal related to lab testing, but it was never implemented.

When asked what Obama administration decision Trump might be referring to, Peter Kyriacopolous, chief policy officer at the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said: "We aren't sure what rule is being referenced."

Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who was principal deputy commissioner of the FDA under Obama and is now professor of the practice at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, "There wasn't a policy that was put into place that inhibited them. There was no Obama policy they were reversing."

March 4: Trump wrongly says as many as 100,000 people died of the flu in 1990

Speaking about deaths from the flu, Trump said on March 4: "I think we went as high as 100,000 people died in 1990, if you can believe that." He said on March 6 that as many as 77,000 people might die in a given year, then added: "And I guess they said, in 1990, that was in particular very bad; it was higher than that."

Facts First: While the 1989-1990 flu season was considered bad at the time-- the CDC declared that it was an epidemic-- Trump greatly overstated the number of deaths. A CDC analysis in 2010 estimated that there were 26,582 deaths from the seasonal flu in 1989-1990. (The same analysis found that this number of deaths was exceeded in nine of the 17 subsequent flu seasons through 2006-2007.)

March 4: Trump says "the borders are automatically shut down"

Trump said during a meeting with airline chief executives: "And we're talking about the effects of the virus on air travel and what they see. In a certain way, you could say that the borders are automatically shut down, without having to say 'shut down.' I mean, they're, to a certain extent, automatically shut down."

Facts First: Trump did not explain what he meant by "the borders are automatically shut down." Trump's travel restrictions on China do not constitute a complete border closure even on China in particular.

Trump's China policy prohibits entry into the US by non-Americans who have been in China within 14 days-- but it makes exceptions for immediate family members of American citizens and permanent residents. And American citizens themselves are free to go back and forth.

Returning citizens who have been in Hubei Province in the previous 14 days are subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine, while citizens who have been in the rest of mainland China in the previous 14 days "will undergo proactive entry health screening at a select number of ports of entry and up to 14 days of monitored self-quarantine," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said. Still, this is not a shutdown.

March 4: Trump says he believes there was a coronavirus death in New York, though there hadn't been one

Trump said: "And then, when you do have a death, like you have had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California-- I believe you had one in New York..."

Facts First: There had not been any New York deaths attributed to the coronavirus at the time. (There still had not been any as of the morning of March 11, seven days later.)

March 4: Trump falsely claims the Obama administration "didn't do anything" about H1N1

Trump said of H1N1, also known as swine flu: "And they didn't do anything about it."

Facts First: The Obama administration did respond to H1N1. On April 26, 2009, less than two weeks after the first US cases of H1N1 were confirmed, the Obama administration declared a public health emergency. Two days later, the Obama administration made an initial $1.5 billion funding request to Congress. (Congress ultimately allocated $7.7 billion). In October 2009, Obama declared a national emergency to allow hospitals more flexibility for a possible flood of H1N1 patients.

The Obama administration did face criticism over the pace of the government's vaccination effort, but "they didn't do anything" is clearly false.

March 5: Trump misleadingly describes a Gallup poll

Trump tweeted: "Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation." Pointing to the Gallup poll again at a Fox News town hall the same day, he said the administration got "tremendous marks" in the poll "for the way we've handled it."

Facts First: The Gallup poll was positive for Trump, as 77% percent of respondents did say they had confidence in the federal government's ability to handle a coronavirus outbreak. But it was not a poll about how the administration had handled the situation: the poll asked about confidence in the federal government's future acts, not about its actual work to date. Critically, it was conducted from February 3-16, when there were far fewer reported cases and reported US deaths; Trump was still, at minimum, 10 days away from appointing Vice President Mike Pence as his point man on the response.

A Quinnipiac University poll conducted March 5-8 found that 43% of registered voters approved of the way Trump was handling the coronavirus response, 49% disapproved. When the poll asked about confidence in "the federal government" to handle the response, 53% said they had confidence, 43% said they didn't.

March 5: Trump wrongly claims the virus only hit the US "three weeks ago"

Trump said, "We got hit with the virus really three weeks ago, if you think about it, I guess. That's when we first started really to see some possible effects."

Facts First: The US had its first confirmed case of the coronavirus on January 21, more than six weeks before Trump spoke here.

Facts First: Azar wrongly claims there is no test shortage.

Azar said: "There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been."

Facts First: Vice President Mike Pence had said the day prior: "We don't have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward." Doctors, health authorities and elected officials in various locations around the country indeed said they did not have enough tests.

March 6: As the number of cases and deaths in Italy rises, Trump says the number is "getting much better"

Trump said: "...I hear the numbers are getting much better in Italy."

Facts First: The number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in Italy was continuing to increase at the time Trump made this comment. As of Saturday, March 7, the day after Trump spoke here, Italy had 5,883 confirmed cases and 233 deaths; as of Monday, March 9, there were 9,172 cases and 463 deaths. (The Italian government announced a national lockdown on Monday.)

March 6: Trump falsely claims anybody can get tested if they want

Trump said: "Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That's what the bottom line is."

Facts First: That wasn't true. There were an insufficient number of tests available, as Pence said the day prior, and Americans could not get tested simply because they wanted to get tested. "You may not get a test unless a doctor or public health official prescribes a test," Azar said the day after Trump's remark. (Azar claimed Trump was using "shorthand" for the fact that "we as regulators, or as those shipping the test, are not restricting who can get tested.")

March 6: Trump exaggerates the number of people on the Grand Princess cruise ship

Trump said, of the Grand Princess cruise ship being kept in limbo over coronavirus concerns, "We do have a situation where we have this massive ship with 5,000 people and we have to make a decision." He later amended the claim slightly, "It's close to 5,000 people."

Facts First: Trump was overstating the numbers. There were 3,533 people aboard the Grand Princess: 2,422 guests and 1,111 crew members.

March 6: Trump falsely says US coronavirus numbers "are lower than just about anybody"

Trump said that "we have very low numbers compared to major countries throughout the world. Our numbers "are lower than just about anybody."

Facts First: Trump was exaggerating. The US did have fewer confirmed coronavirus cases than some countries, including China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, France and Germany. But it had more confirmed cases than big-population countries like India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Russia and Nigeria, plus neighbors Mexico and Canada, plus many other high-income countries.

In addition, the number of confirmed cases is dependent on how many people are tested. The US was conducting fewer tests than some countries with much smaller populations.

March 6: Trump baselessly muses that "maybe" the coronavirus improved US jobs numbers

Trump touted the jobs report for February, which showed a gain of 273,000 jobs. He then said that, instead of traveling abroad, "I think, you know, a lot of people are staying here and they're going to be doing their business here." He continued, "And maybe that's one of the reasons the job numbers are so good. We've had a lot of travel inside the USA."

Facts First: We can't definitively call this false, but there's no evidence to back it up. Reports suggest the domestic travel industry is also being hurt by the coronavirus.

In March, US airlines announced they were reducing domestic flights as well as international flights in March, and companies called off US conferences and limiting corporate travel. While industry experts said some particular domestic travel destinations could possibly benefit if the virus causes travelers to opt for local trips rather than international trips, there is no hard evidence for that yet.

March 9: Pence says Trump's "priority" was getting Americans off the ship

Vice President Mike Pence said "the President made the priority to get-- to get the Americans ashore."

Facts First: Trump may have eventually been convinced to get the Americans ashore, but he had said three days prior to this Pence claim that he wanted passengers to stay on the ship so that "the numbers" of US coronavirus cases would stay low.

"I have great experts, including our Vice President, who is working 24 hours a day on this stuff. They would like to have the people come off. I'd rather have the people stay, but I'd go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather-- because I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship," Trump said on March 6. "That wasn't our fault, and it wasn't the fault of the people on the ship, either. OK? It wasn't their fault either. And they're mostly Americans, so I can live either way with it. I'd rather have them stay on, personally. But I fully understand if they want to take them off. I gave them the authority to make the decision."

UPDATE: Trump has finally announced that he is cancelling his campaign rallies, following Bernie's and Biden's leadership. But as we've been saying since late January, you elected someone like Trump and you wind up with a rudderless ship when the inevitable storm hits. This morning Rev John Pavlovitz told Trump supporters that the bill for MAGA has come due and that "it's time to pay up, the deferred invoice" for them selling their souls is here."

It’s time to pay for every incendiary campaign boast you cheered,
every factless diatribe you vigorously applauded,
every nonsensical middle-of-the-night tweet you boosted,
every dehumanizing stereotype and slur you shared,
every callous and cruel rally insult you passionately amen-ed.

Its time to pay for every denial of Scientific evidence,
every terminated qualified conscientious objector,
every attack on factual, responsible journalism,
every vicious assault on objective reality,
every star-spangled dog-and-pony show distraction,
every lazy xenophobic caricature,
every tired racist tirade.

This is how your beloved capitalism works isn’t it: someone was always going to pay for services rendered? Nothing is free, isn’t that what you’ve been saying-- no handouts? Well, dig deep friend because you are on the hook for this.

Many people have been footing the bill for a long time: migrants and Muslims and transgender people, young black men, refugees, the sick and the poor, already vulnerable communities pushed all the way to the brink-- and now past it.

You were paying too of course, you were just too willfully ignorant or intellectually negligent to realize it. Over and over we tried to tell you about the cost: the civil rights you were sacrificing too, the environmental protections you were losing as well as we were, the safety and security you were relinquishing alongside us. We tried to tell you that this hardship was not a partisan expense, that his moral bankruptcy would eventually hit you hard too.

But your Fox News bubble and your white Evangelical echo chamber and your America First, Don’t Tread on Me, middle-finger affinity clubs left you certain you were insulated from it all; that the only tears that would fall would be liberal ones, that the only people suffering voted for Hillary, that all of the pain would be isolated to people who vote Blue.

You felt immune from the spreading sickness. You felt invincible, because your messiah told you that you were winning and that was enough for you.

He was lying to you as he always does, but you preferred to believe the lie because it felt warm running through your veins even as it was poisoning you-- the intoxicating, cheap high of making America great while owning the Libs. That was a costly drug, that arrogance-- and you were slowly going broke in your addiction.

Now, in the middle of a burgeoning pandemic and a precipitous market crash and a hopelessly fractured nation, the bill is coming due.

You can’t avoid paying now.
You’re here with us.
I think even you realize that now.

This President didn’t create this virus,
but he ignored it,
denied it,
minimized it,
joked about it,
weaponized it,
politicized it,
exacerbated it.

He systematically removed qualified people and replaced them with genuflecting, sycophantic traitors, or with no one.

He generated a steady stream of partisan attacks and conspiracy theories and abject lies created in the moment, and the kind of “I am smarter than anyone in the room” sermonizing that cult leaders bellow all the way to the terrible and tragic end.

He is culpable for the chaos and the unnecessary illness, and yes the preventable deaths because of it-- and you are too.

This is the human cost of the MAGA cult delusion, and we’re all paying for it now equally, however we vote and wherever we live and whatever we value. Pandemics don’t choose sides or spare voting blocks or respect affiliations.

He will pay for it in November and in the unflattering, incorruptible light of History.

I hope whatever you received was worth it.

I hope you still feel like you’re winning.

Working Class Hero

Alan Grayson's grassroots PAC, The Resistance, did a final appeal for Randy Bryce Sunday evening. At this point, forget about the contribution part, just try to remember if you know anyone who lives in Racine, Kenosha, Janesville, the suburbs south of Milwaukee... and call them and tell them why they should vote for @IronStache. Meanwhile, though Grayson's PAC made some good points.

When no one else was willing to take on the Speaker of the House, Randy Bryce took on the Speaker of the House.  He put his hand right next to the woodchipper, filing to run against Paul Ryan in Ryan's Wisconsin Congressional district.

Ryan couldn't take the heat.  He quit the race, and he's stepping down as Speaker of the House two months from now.

Randy Bryce beat the second most powerful person in Washington, DC, a current Speaker and former Vice Presidential nominee. Bryce chased Paul Ryan out of politics.

But that is not the end of the story.

"You come at the king, you best not miss."
- Omar, The Wire (2006)

Paul Ryan's Super PAC, the "Congressional Leadership Fund," has spent $2.7 million in the last two months, relentlessly smearing Randy Bryce in order to hand Ryan's seat to Ryan's hand-picked successor.

We can't let Ryan beat Bryce from beyond the political grave.  Ryan wouldn't stand and fight for his seat; instead, he hides behind his Super PAC to fling mud at Bryce. Let's show our support for the candidate who stepped up to face Paul Ryan, and beat him.

Randy Bryce: Ironworker, veteran and cancer-survivor. A true Man of the People.

But now that Paul Ryan's Super PAC is spending $2.7 million to smear him, no one has come to Randy's defense.

Here is a list of Super PAC expenditures in Bryce's campaign. The blue ones are for Bryce, and the red ones against him:

Paul Ryan's Super PAC has outspent all the pro-Bryce Super PACs by nine to one-- combined!

(And by the way, there's no shortage of blue money available to help Bryce, The Democratic counterpart to Ryan's Super PAC has spent $72 million so far this year. None of that has gone to defend Randy Bryce.)

We can't let Republican sewer money defeat our Working Class Champion.

Yep, not a dime from the DCCC, not a dime from Pelosi's House Majority PAC-- both of which have been spending millions of Blue Dogs and New Dems from coast to coast. Fine, if Randy wins today, he won't owe them a nod.

Señor Trumpanzee-- Working Class Hero?

Trump makes a big deal about keeping his campaign promises. And, unfortunately, the ones he wants to keep, he does try to keep. Sometimes the courts and occasionally, even Congress, keeps him from keeping the worst of them. His excuse for torpedoing the bipartisan DACA fix was that it flew in the face of one of his ugly outbursts of bigotry during the campaign. Now Ryan and McConnell are using his bizarre and incoherent approach as an excuse for not bringing popular DACA fixes to the floor of each house for a vote.

But on promise that was very specific, consistent, loud and very public during the campaign was his promise to the workers at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis. Looks like that's one he didn't really care much about-- or at least not enough about to do anything proactive once he had lost Marion County (Indianapolis) in 2016. Primary day was interesting there:

• Hillary- 59,649
• Bernie- 58,799
• Trumpanzee- 49,835
• Lyin' Ted- 39,557
• Kasich- 9,633

And, despite Mike Pence's presence on the ticket-- or maybe because of it-- Hillary kicked his ass in the county. She beat him 212,676 (58.9%) to 130,228 (36.1%). Maybe he thought he shaped have won the state's biggest county. He did do better than Romney had though. And he certainly won the state-- and the Carrier workers-- who are unionized-- helped. I bet they're sorry now.

It was raining in Indiana's capital city on the day Renee Elliott and millions of other blue collar Americans stunned the world by helping to elect a Manhattan real estate mogul the 45th president of the United States.

But all Elliott saw that day was sunshine.

As she waited patiently in line to cast her vote, Elliott said she was buoyed by the belief that Donald Trump would make good on his campaign pledge and prevent her job at the Carrier plant-- the job that she said allowed her to escape an abusive marriage and live a modest but comfortable life-- from being sent to Mexico.

Now, very soon, Elliott will be standing in another line-- the unemployment line.

Elliott, 44, was one of the 215 workers at the Indianapolis plant who were given pink slips on Thursday. And to say she is disappointed by Trump would be an understatement.

“We all voted for him,” she said of herself and her Carrier co-workers. “We just thought he was going to protect our jobs. It sounded really good. And then, boom.”

Elliott doesn't know what she is going to do next. She has only a high school diploma to go along with the hairdresser license she earned before she got the job five years ago at Carrier, when she was studying to be a nurse.

“My five-year plan was to finish out nursing school and work on the line and take classes at night,” she said.

What Elliott does know is that it will be hard to find anything that will match the $18-an-hour she made as a press operator at Carrier-- and that whatever savings she had were eaten up raising two now-grown kids. Her 73-year-old mother, who had also been living with her, has moved in with her brother, who still has a job at Carrier.

“Being a paycheck away from being homeless is terrifying,” she said.

...Elliott’s fate was sealed long before she voted for Trump. The Carrier Company announced on Feb. 10, 2016, that it was closing its plants in Indianapolis and Huntington, Indiana, and moving the operations to Monterrey, Mexico.

It was during the first presidential debate with Hillary Clinton that Trump gave Elliott and her co-workers some hope that their lives and livelihood would be spared.

“We have to stop our companies from leaving the United States and, with it, firing all of their people,” Trump declared. “All you have to do is take a look at Carrier air-conditioning in Indianapolis. They left-- fired 1,400 people. They’re going to Mexico.”

The exact details of what was happening at Carrier were somewhat different. But the gist of what Trump said on national television electrified the workers on the Carrier plant floor.

Suddenly, there was a savior on the horizon.

Until that moment, Elliott said she didn’t think much of Trump, the son of a wealthy real estate developer who was trying to cast himself as a working-class hero.



“When I first heard on the radio that he was going to run, you’re thinking, ‘He’s a billionaire and so forth,’” she said. “And I was thinking, ‘There’s no way, but he’s going to find a cause and pick it up and when he does he’ll change things. And little did I know we’ll be the cause.”

Elliott said workers began showing up for their shifts in red Make America Great Again baseball caps and she started seeing Trump bumper stickers and posters everywhere.

After the election, there seemed to be even more reason to cheer when a triumphant Trump and his running mate Mike Pence, then the governor of Indiana, announced that they had worked out a deal with Carrier's parent company, United Technologies, to save “more than a thousand jobs right here in the head of the Heartland.”

“Actually the number’s over 1,100 people, which is so great, which is so great,” Trump said.

Chuck Jones, the tough-talking Local 1999 steel worker president who spent decades fighting the exodus of good-paying American manufacturing jobs to countries like Mexico, said he didn’t buy what Trump was selling. Jones began working in the 1970s when 19.4 million Americans had manufacturing jobs, a number that had shrunk to fewer than 11.5 million when he recently retired.

“I didn’t vote for Trump,” he said. “And I kept on saying I think he’s full of shit.”

Privately, however, Jones hoped Trump would prove him wrong. He worked for the nearby Rexnord plant for more than 40 years before that operation was moved to Monterrey. And he knows a lot of the Carrier workers who had pinned their hopes on Trump. But as Trump spoke, Jones did the math.

“When Trump and Pence showed up here, they kept on referring to the fact they had saved over 1,100 jobs,” he said. “The people in the crowd thought that everybody was going to have a job. They misled the people.”

Jones said it was an especially cruel move because many of the Carrier workers had already made peace with the idea that layoffs were looming and were looking for other jobs.

“Then people went home that evening and told their families, ‘Everything is going to be all right. President Trump saved our jobs,’” Jones said.

The Carrier plant in Indianapolis will have a work force of 1,100 people after about 215 workers depart Thursday, “completing the final phase of the previously announced plan to relocate fan coil manufacturing production lines,” Ashley Barrie, a spokeswoman for United Technologies, said in an email to NBC News.

Also, Barrie added, the laid-off workers will “receive a one-time payment, severance pay and six months of medical insurance.”

“Since the initial announcement, approximately 60 impacted employees have chosen to take advantage of the company’s Employee Scholar Program and pursue degree programs,” Barrie said. “In addition to reimbursing four-year education costs, Carrier has also reimbursed, and will continue to reimburse, technical training costs for those who prefer to pursue a vocational technical certification program.”

Elliott said she was convinced her job was safe until some strangers from Monterrey showed up at the plant.

“Mexicans came in and some even came to me and asked questions, but I didn’t want to talk to them,” she said.

But other Carrier workers were forced to train those who would be doing their jobs for a quarter of the salary the Americans made.

“The Mexicans aren’t our enemy,” Jones said. “Pure and simple, corporate greed is driving it.”

...Come Friday, though, Elliott will be another unemployed American factory worker. “At my age, I don’t have the confidence to start all over again,” she said.

Virginia Foxx's opponent in North Carolina's 5th district, Jenny Marshall grew up in a small town in Indiana. She told us that she "saw first hand the damage NAFTA had on our town and in the communities across our country. The effects were swift and brutal. Companies packed up and left town seeking out cheap labor in foreign countries. My father was a tool and die maker in a plant that employed hundreds of people in a town of just 17,000. When they closed and shipped their jobs out of the country it caused a ripple effect of businesses closing across the town. It was devastating. We must end these disastrous free trade policies that allow companies to shutter plants just to import those products back into the United States to be sold to the people who used to make them. And we cannot expect people to pick up the pieces and find a new career time and time again. It is a simple case of companies prioritizing profits over the people who work for them. I say enough is enough. It is high time our laws actually protect the people instead of a company's bottom line."

    

Sanders: "United Technologies Took Trump Hostage and Won"

"You think you're so clever and classless and free..."
(so many versions, so little time)

by Gaius Publius

This matters, both the Carrier settlement itself (how it was achieved) and the Sanders pushback against it. Let's start with Sanders, then go to the settlement. Sanders writes (my bolded emphasis):

Bernie Sanders: Carrier just showed corporations how to beat Donald Trump

We need a president who can stand up to big corporations, not fold to their demands.

Today, about 1,000 Carrier workers and their families should be rejoicing. But the rest of our nation’s workers should be very nervous.

President-elect Donald Trump will reportedly announce a deal with United Technologies, the corporation that owns Carrier, that keeps less than 1,000 of the 2100 jobs in America that were previously scheduled to be transferred to Mexico. Let’s be clear: It is not good enough to save some of these jobs. Trump made a promise that he would save all of these jobs, and we cannot rest until an ironclad contract is signed to ensure that all of these workers are able to continue working in Indiana without having their pay or benefits slashed.

In exchange for allowing United Technologies to continue to offshore more than 1,000 jobs, Trump will reportedly give the company tax and regulatory favors that the corporation has sought. Just a short few months ago, Trump was pledging to force United Technologies to “pay a damn tax.” He was insisting on very steep tariffs for companies like Carrier that left the United States and wanted to sell their foreign-made products back in the United States. Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut. Wow! How’s that for standing up to corporate greed? How’s that for punishing corporations that shut down in the United States and move abroad?

In essence, United Technologies took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shock wave of fear through all workers across the country.

Or, as Politico succinctly put it, "Carrier tariff now Carrier tax cut?" Trump went toe-to-toe with United Technology, and lost.

Trump As Enabler of Offshoring

This is a 180 degree reversal and he's not even in office yet. But Sanders is exactly right:

Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe in the United States. Why? Because he has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives. Even corporations that weren’t thinking of offshoring jobs will most probably be re-evaluating their stance this morning. And who would pay for the high cost for tax cuts that go to the richest businessmen in America? The working class of America.

Sanders closes: "I will soon be introducing the Outsourcing Prevention Ac [details here]t, which will address exactly that. If Donald Trump won’t stand up for America’s working class, we must."

Some working class hero Trump turned out to be. I guess we're still peasants after all.

The "Deal"

A little more detail on the so-called "deal." They say "1000 jobs" were saved, but of those only 800 were originally at risk. Plus, 1300 jobs will still move to Mexico.

From The Hill:

The company that owns Carrier will receive $7 million worth of tax breaks over 10 years from Indiana to keep 1,000 jobs in the state, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Carrier confirmed the news Thursday in a statement, writing that the deal is contingent upon factors including employment, job retention and capital investment.

The company this week reached a deal with President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to keep the jobs in the state, after announcing earlier this year it would shut down a plant in Indianapolis and move manufacturing to Mexico. ...

The deal would cover 800 workers from the Indianapolis furnace plant and an additional 300 research and headquarters positions that weren't planned to go to Mexico, according to the Journal.

But 600 jobs will still move from Indianapolis to Mexico.

Carrier also still plans to close a second plant in Huntington, Ind., shifting another 700 jobs to Mexico.

More detail via the WSJ (subscripton required): 

Carrier has previously said it expected to save about $65 million a year by shutting the plant and shifting its operations to Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo León, where wages average about $11 a day, plus benefits. The average wage of the Indiana jobs that will be retained is $30 an hour, according to a document reviewed by the Journal.

In case that didn't sink in, Indian-to-Mexico wages shift $30 per hour to $11 per day. That's why we can't have nice jobs, or at least decent paying ones. How much of that savings, do you think, would have ended up in the executive suite, via stock buybacks, sweetened salaries and bonuses, and "golden parachutes"? Answer, as much as possible.

Plus $7 million in tax breaks. Unless some of it is federal, all will come out of the pockets of cash-strapped Indiana and its (largely Trump-voting) tax-payers.

Why This Is Important

First, Bernie Sanders is right — Trump sold out his voters in Indiana. Second, Sanders is saying this out loud and getting lots of attention for it, which means the sound of Sanders analysis is likely playing in Trump's ears right now, and hopefully in the ears of his Sanders-tempted supporters as well.

Which ought to put Trump on the defensive and keep real systemic solutions to corporate America's outsourcing addiction alive. Remember, the problem that got Trump elected isn't going away until cash-strapped citizens — not corporations — get relief they can see, feel and spend. Under Trump, that's not going to happen.

Which means, there's hope after all.

"Working Class Hero"

Trump may not be a working class hero, but Sanders is, and so was John Lennon. Here's the original version. Enjoy:

Fun with music theory: One of the things that makes this song so interesting, so not a "four-square" song, is its phrase length. Each phrase — each line in the verse or chorus — occupies seven measures of music, not eight. It's why you feel off-balance as you listen, like the lines end too soon or restart too quickly. Count if you like; each measure is three beats long, so they're easy to identify. Be sure to stop at seven and restart at one. Very good song-writing from a master at it.

GP
 

IMAGINE-- Herbie Hancock, John Lennon, Joyce Elliott...

 

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
          -John Lennon

It isn't always easy to cover the kinds of classics that have made lasting and profound impressions on our collective unconscious, let alone our souls. On June 22 Herbie Hancock's Imagine Project will be released and he's done just that-- and with seeming ease. Monday night I took a little time away from my keyboard to watch a filming of a conversation with a different kind of keyboard master at the Grammy Museum here in Los Angeles. It's always hard for me to stay calm the night before an important election. And yesterday was important because American voters had an opportunity to move our country down the road away from corporate rule, away from war, away from the deathly stink of conservatism.

Joyce Elliott's 53.8- 46.2% victory over reactionary Robbie Wills in Arkansas last night did just that. We didn't quite get there statewide-- where Blanche Lincoln will be the Democratic nominee against probably winner John Boozman-- nor in CA-36, where voters decided to return warmonger and corporately-oriented anti-family reactionary Jane Harman.

Herbie's cover of Imagine features Pink, Seal, India Arie, Jeff Beck, Oumou Sangare, and Konono #1 and it definitely helped soothe my own soul last night. The 70 year old Hancock is a practicing Buddhist so it shouldn't surprise anyone that he music does just that. The first time I heard it, it blew my mind. And the John Lennon masterpiece is just one of many incredible international collaborations on the new CD. Among the others are Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up," which features Pink and John Legend; Dylan's "The Times, They Are A' Changin'," featuring The Chieftains, Toumani Diabete and Lisa Hannigan; Marley's classic "Exodus" featuring Los Lobos, Tinariwen and K'naan; The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" which features Dave Matthews; Sam Cooke's Civil Rights anthem "A Time Is Gonna Come" featuring James Morrison and plenty of others.

Monday night Herbie talked a lot about humans defining how we want globalization to look and then embracing it. He sounded like Alan Grayson-- who I told about the event and who waxed enthusiastic about how meaningful Herbie's music has been in his life since buying his first album when he was still in college! “Music truly is the universal language,” said Hancock who was excited that his new project explores "that concept across the globe, uniting a myriad of cultures through song and positive creative expression.  My hope is that the music will serve as a metaphor for the actions taken by the inhabitants of this wonderful planet as a call for world harmony on all levels.”

Before leaving on a European tour on June 28, he'll be doing TV appearances with Letterman (June 21), Jimmy Fallon (June 22) and then on the Today Show (June 23) and warm-up gigs in Rochester, NY (June 15), Portsmouth, New Hampshire (June 16), Carnegie Hall in NYC (June 24th-- hardly a warm-up and a show that is rumored to be featuring some of the big names who played on the album), Ottawa (June 25), Toronto (June 26) and the Montreal Jazz Festival (June 27). That's some schedule for anyone, let alone a 70 year old. Although for a 70 year old Buddhist... makes sense.

When he's back in the U.S. August 6 finds him starting up a tour again in Buffalo, crisscrossing the country and winding up at the Hollywood Bowl on September 1 for another show which will featuring some of the big name stars from the recording sessions.

"America -- land of the free and the armed and the crazy"

by Ken

When I came across this December 1980 entry in Michael Palin's newly published Diaries 1980-1988: Halfway to Hollywood and realized I had to share it, for a moment I was disappointed that we'd missed the anniversary by just a week-and-a-bit. Then I was relieved; it's not an occasion I would want to feel as if we were "celebrating."

As the entry begins, Michael is on the railway platform near his home in northwest London, waiting for a train that will eventually take him to Southwold on the Suffolk coast, where his mother lives. He runs into a schoolmate of his 11-year-old son Tom, who delivers news that alters his world.

Tuesday, December 9th, Southwold

At Gospel Oak station by a quarter to nine to combine a visit to Southwold with my first opportunity to thoroughly revise the Time Bandits for publication at Easter. [Michael had co-written the Time Bandits screenplay with the director, fellow Python Terry Gilliam, and also appeared in the film, which had been shot but was then still in postproduction.]

It's a dull and nondescript morning -- the shabby, greying clouds have warmed the place up a bit, but that's all. I reach the station in good time. Holly Jones is waiting for her train to school, having just missed the one in front with all her friends on. It's she who tells me that over in New York John Lennon has been shot dead.

A plunge into unreality, or at least into the area of where comprehension slips and the world seems an orderless swirl of disconnected, arbitrary events. How does such a thing happen? How do I, on this grubby station platform in north-west London, begin to comprehend the killing of one of the Beatles? The Rolling Stones were always on the knife-edge of life and death and sudden tragedy was part of their lives, but the Beatles seemed the mortal immortals, the legend that would live and grow old with us. But now, this ordinary December morning, I learn from a schoolgirl that one of my heroes has been shot dead.

My feelings are of indefinable but deeply-felt anger at America. This is, after all, the sort of random slaying of a charismatic, much-loved figure in which America has specialised in the last two decades.

Once I get to Southwold I ring George.* And leave a message, because he's not answering.

I work through for a five-hour stretch and we have a drink together by the fire and watch tributes to John Lennon, clumsily put together by newsroom staff who know a good story better than they know good music. And Paul McCartney just says 'It's a drag' and, creditably I think, refuses to emote for the cameras.

What a black day for music. The killer was apparently a fan. The dark side of Beatlemania. The curse that stalks all modern heroes, but is almost unchecked in America -- land of the free and the armed and the crazy.

*George Harrison was a passionate Monty Python fan, and from the group's inception had been eager to find ways to work with them. Unlike your average show-biz phony, he followed through, devoting both time and money to Python-related projects, eventually serving as an executive producer on a number of movies by Pythons jointly and separately. Michael P developed a cordial relationship with him, and paints an affectionate portrait in the first volume of his diaries, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years.




FAN-WORSHIP POSTSCRIPT

By odd chance, a week-and-change later Michael -- in agony with a foot problem that seems to become more painful after each treatment -- hobbles with his wife (who "has looked in her books and is bandying words like 'toxaemia' around") to an opening-night showing of Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, which is steeped in its creator's discomfort with his too-admiring fans.

The cinema is full and I like the film very much indeed. But I can see that my appreciation of some of the scenes depicting horrific excesses of fan worship comes from having experienced this sort of thing and viewed from the other side, this could be seen as Allen kicking his fans in the teeth.

Though my foot still throbs angrily, I feel the worst is over. I have been cured by a Woody Allen movie!

#

Time Wounds All Heels-- Meet McCain's Transition Team

I have to admit that I never watched the Jerry Springer Show or any reality TV; it's just not my thing. And I would be perfectly happy never tuning into Livin' Palin and her dysfunctional brood again. In fact, for me, the entire lame and shameful Palin episode is only about one thing: McCain's horrendous judgment and his ability to sacrifice dignity and integrity-- not to mention national security-- to give himself a shot of grabbing the White House. And his shocking cynicism.

Today, he announced another unbelievable choice, not for as visible a position as "heartbeat from the presidency" but the guy he picked... OMG! The job: a honcho on a transition team that, hopefully, will never do any transitioning. The man: another in a long list of the most corrupt and despicable lobbyists in the country-- and that isn't even the worst of this guy! William E. Timmons Sr. has worked for every Republican president since his mentor Richard Nixon. He's the lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, the American Medical Association, Freddie Mac, and Visa.

By tapping Timmons, McCain has turned to one of Washington's steadiest and most senior inside players to guide him in the event of a victory — but also to someone who represents the antithesis of the kind of outside-of-Washington change he has recently been promising. One Republican familiar with the process said the decision to involve Timmons could become a political liability for the campaign's reformist image, especially in the wake of the controversies over the lobbying backgrounds of other McCain staffers, including campaign manager Rick Davis. "It's one more blind spot for Rick Davis and John McCain," the person said.

Before going to work on destroying the regulatory system protecting consumers from predatory mortgage lenders and for Big Oil, Timmons had made a name for himself leading the lobbying effort in Congress to keep Nixon from being impeached. He was also the White House contact for right wing efforts to get John Lennon deported in advance of the 1972 elections!