Kevin McCarthy Wants To Be Speaker-- And He's Very, Very Corrupt

The DCCC never seems to be very enthusiastic about targeting Republican leaders. This cycle, for example, they made sure there would be relatively strong opponents for the candidates in the districts that surround Kevin McCarthy's CA-23, while ignoring McCarthy entirely. They have no candidate opposing him, not even someone viable enough to build towards a 2020 challenge. CA-25 has a hot race between Katie Hill (D) and Steve Knight (R). CA-22 has a hot race-- although ignored by the DCCC-- between Andrew Janz (D) and Devin Nunes (R) and CA-21 has a warm race between TJ Cox and David Valadao, CA-04 has a hot race between Jessica Morse and Tom McClintock, CA-24 has a Democratic incumbent and CA-08, has two Republicans facing off in the general. And in McCarthy's own CA-23? Not a creature is stirring.

Going into the final stretch, the pitiful and meaningless Democrat "running," Tatiana Matta, has $6,103 up against McCarthy's $4,135,573. Neither the DCCC nor Pelosi's SuperPAC has spent a cent against McCarthy-- something like how they treated Paul Ryan for his entire career. The L.A. Times exposed an interesting McCarthy story today, one that the DCCC will not publicize and that Tatiana Matta doesn't have the means to spread: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s family benefited from U.S. program for minorities based on disputed ancestry

A company owned by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s in-laws won more than $7 million in no-bid and other federal contracts at U.S. military installations and other government properties in California based on a dubious claim of Native American identity by McCarthy’s brother-in-law, a Times investigation has found.

The prime contracts, awarded through a federal program designed to help disadvantaged minorities, were mostly for construction projects at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in McCarthy’s Bakersfield-based district, and the Naval Air Station Lemoore in nearby Kings County.

Vortex Construction, whose principal owner is William Wages, the brother of McCarthy’s wife, Judy, received a total of $7.6 million in no-bid and other prime federal contracts since 2000, The Times found.

The Bakersfield company is co-owned by McCarthy’s mother-in-law and employs his father-in-law and sister-in-law, Wages said. McCarthy’s wife was a partner in Vortex in the early 1990s.

Vortex faced no competitive bids for most of the contracts because the Small Business Administration accepted Wages’ claim in 1998 that he is a Cherokee Indian. Under the SBA program, his company became eligible for federal contracts set aside for economically and socially disadvantaged members of minority groups, a boon to its business.

Wages says he is one-eighth Cherokee. An examination of government and tribal records by The Times and a leading Cherokee genealogist casts doubt on that claim, however. He is a member of a group called the Northern Cherokee Nation, which has no federal or state recognition as a legitimate tribe. It is considered a fraud by leaders of tribes that have federal recognition.

Vortex was awarded more than $4 million in minority set-aside contracts for projects at China Lake. McCarthy has been a staunch advocate in Congress for funding and staffing for China Lake, the Navy’s largest property at more than 1.1 million acres, and spearheaded successful efforts to expand its borders.

McCarthy is no ordinary member of Congress, but one of the most powerful elected officials in California and on the national stage. The contracts obtained by Wages’ company have prompted questions about whether he improperly benefited from being McCarthy’s brother-in-law.

...“There is a direct and symbiotic connection between who McCarthy is and what he does and what his brother-in-law does,” said Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson, a former member of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. She said Wages’ work on federal contracts important to McCarthy’s in-laws and his district “should never have happened at all.”

...All three Cherokee tribes with federal recognition consider the Northern Cherokee group illegitimate.

“It’s very much a con,” said David Cornsilk, the Cherokee genealogist and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, the largest of the recognized Cherokee tribes.

At The Times’ request, Cornsilk cross-checked Wages and his ancestors against census records and the membership rolls of the recognized Cherokee tribes. Neither Wages nor any of his known ancestors appear on the rolls, which date to the early 19th century, Cornsilk said.

A Times examination of census, birth, death, marriage and other available public records show Wages’ ancestors were identified as white. He is listed as white on his birth certificate.

“It’s disheartening to see this,” Cornsilk said. Native Americans are “the poorest people in the United States,” and “the poverty gets worse” if there are abuses in the SBA program, he added.

Cherokee leaders said the Northern Cherokee group is one of many masquerading as bona fide tribes. Chuck Hoskin Jr., secretary of state for the Cherokee Nation, said “it is particularly disturbing” when minority set-aside contracts are granted to members of “a group that is posing as a tribe.”

UPDATE: Will Tax Cheat Donald J. Trumpanzee Now Welch On The Million Dollars He Owes The Charity Of Elizabeth Warren's Choice?

As you probably know by now, on Sunday Elizabeth Warren released a DNA test that provides "strong evidence" she had a Native American in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations. Earlier today, she released the biographical video below. The DNA analysis was done by Carlos Bustamante, a Stanford University professor and expert in the field who won a 2010 MacArthur fellowship, also known as a "genius grant," for his work on tracking population migration via DNA analysis. So when will Trumpy-The-Clown hand over the million dollar check to the National Indigenous Womer's Resouce Center, the charity of her choice, like he publicly promised he would? (SPOILER: Never.) In fact, a couple of hours ago, Trump lied and said that he never promised to send a million dollars to a charity of Warren's choice if she took a DNA test. Maybe he needs to look at his segment in the video below:

New Film Rumble Reclaims Indigenous Roots of American Music

-by Denise Sullivan

Forget everything you think you know or have been told about the birth of the blues and the histories of jazz and rock 'n' roll: Rumble-- The Indians Who Rocked The World has a different story to tell and by the sound of it, much of what's been handed down to us about North American music and its origins has been wrong.

The sound of the American South-- the rush of its waters, the song of the bird, the crack of thunder and the rain that follows-- informs the sound of Native American music, the root of all other American forms. Take the story of the Mississippi Delta's Charley Patton, widely acknowledged to be the father of the country blues. An existing photograph of him reveals he is likely a man of mixed race origins, though without clear proof, historians have remained perplexed and inconclusive in their findings. Rumble reveals through interviews, research, and recordings, that Patton's blood ties are to the Chocktaw nation and moreover, his connection to Native American music contributed to the rhythmic and vocal patterns of what we know as country blues. In the film, musician Pura Fé (Tuscarora) a/b's his technique with a turntable and her voice: “That's Indian music with a guitar,” she says. Calling on a kind of pre-blues origin of his sound, the assembled scholars and musicians, including modern day bluesmen Corey Harris and Alvin Youngblood Hart, go into deeper explanation of Patton's relationship to Dockery Plantation, the setting where he developed a showstopping style living among Black, Choctaw, and European farmworkers. He went on to pass on what he knew to other area musicians like Son House and visiting players like the young Roebuck Staples and Chester Burnette (who of course became Howlin' Wolf). So why is Patton's history generally painted so sketchily in the history books?

Pura Fé

Insufficient investigation into Native America's contribution to popular music is of course by design. Following the US government's attempts to eradicate the tribes and erase all vestiges of its culture, particularly following the slaughter at Wounded Knee, embracing and promoting Native ways became a dangerous pursuit. And yet, despite the genocide, Native musicians continued to innovate with sound.

Link Wray (Shawnee), with his heavy touch on the guitar strings, as on his signture song “Rumble,” became the inventor of rock's power chord. Iggy Pop, Slash, the Band's Robbie Robertson, MC5's Wayne Kramer, bluesman Taj Mahal, and Little Steven Van Zandt, all testify to the startling, life-changing power of Wray's sound. Pete Townshend and Jimmy Page owe their electric styles to him.

Monk Boudreaux and Cyril Neville unravel how Indian music came to New Orleans where indigineous people of the US and the indigenous people of Africa met and stirred it up. Poet Joy Harjo (Muscogee) explains how blues, rock, and jazz are tied up in these origins.Historian Erich Jarvis puts together how the slave trade resulted in African-Americans and Native people living in close proximities and why many Southern Indians lived their lives masked as Black. The lineage is matrilineal, usually a great grandmother on the mother's side, though none of this information is generally incorporated into our understanding of the origins of American music. Rumble lays down all of the prequel and more in the first 20 minutes of the film, and then it goes deeper:

Mildred Bailey, the first woman with her own radio show and to perform in front of a swing band was born on the Couer d'Alene reservation in Idaho; she was a profound influence on Tony Bennett and also informed the melodic styles of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. The details are best left to be revealed by the excellent use of original recordings, film stock, and interviews collected by filmmakers Cathernine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana who left no Indian unsung in their effort to make their definitive documentary about Native Americans and popular music.

The film's producer, hard funk and rock guitarist, Stevie Salas (Apache), introduces Jimi Hendrix's story into the mix. Hendrix's ties to his grandmother's Cherokee ancestry extended not only in the way he looked and to his style, but in the touch with which he played (“I Hear My Train A'Comin'”). His sister Janie recalls Jimi's pride at his mixed cultural heritage (and the way his interpretation of The Star Spangled Banner nearly 50 years ago at Woodstock was a reflection of that pride). Derek Trucks calls Hendrix a national superhero for the power his multi-ethnicity brought him-- and in turn to his listeners. Trucks words serve as a critical reminder that a society's multiethnic pride is in fact its strength.

Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree) and John Trudell (Santee Sioux) address the government's continued interference with their art and activism; Robbie Robertson recalls his journey from a partime reservation Indian to full tilt teenage rocker who toured the world with Bob Dylan. With the Band, Robertson forged a timeless vision of American electric music. Names lesser-known to casual listeners, from folksinger Peter LaFarge, Redbone's Pat Vegas, metal drummer Randy Castillo, and Jesse Ed Davis also get their due.

It was Taj Mahal who brought the guitarist best known to friends and fans as Jesse Ed into his band, and the Rolling Stones who brought the band to Europe, introducing Jesse Ed to the rock aristocracy for whom he became the sideman of choice. Davis is perhaps best known for his solo in Jackson Browne's hit, “Doctor My Eyes;" he later collaborated with Trudell on the acclaimed Graffitti Man, a groundbreaker in spoken-word recording in the '90s. A moving sequence pairs Salas and Trudell (who passed away in 2015 after the film's making) on a trip to New Mexico in memory of drummer Castillo, who died in 2002: It is in fact Castillo's story that underscores why the imprint Native Americans have left on popular music is singular: It is of the earth.

After viewing Rumble, it's unlikely you'll hear, sing, or play music the same way: Now we know not only was the land and air we breathe stolen, but the music we claim as our own was Native American too.





Denise Sullivan is the author of Keep On Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop and an occasional contributor to DWT! on arts, culture, and gentrification issues.

Obama’s Dakota Pipeline Twist Is Not a Victory—And Could Erase the Struggle

There's no better intro to what been going on in North Dakota than this fun, informative clip from Lee Camp's Redacted Tonight.

by Gaius Publius

Another piece with not many parts to keep in mind, this time about the native American protests of the DAPL pipeline in North Dakota. Here are the pieces:

• The pipeline is a big deal. It will cost at least $3.7 billion dollars and carry close to half a million barrels of fracked Bakken oil per day.

• The investors in the project are a group of major banks, both national and international, led by Citibank. 

• DAPL will cross through or near tribal lands at Standing Rock, North Dakota. This is where the protest are occurring. This is also where the pipeline crosses the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, a "lake" formed by the Oahe Dam.

• There is no way to stop climate change without stopping dead cold the use of carbon as a fuel. That means disrupting — totally shutting down — its extraction and delivery.

• Stopping the fracking and delivery of Bakken crude oil is a major goal of environmentalists and climate activists alike, for all the obvious reasons. 

• Right now, the protests at Standing Rock are all that's keeping the DAPL project from continuing.

• President Obama is well into the legacy phase of his presidency. He can't afford to look bad, either to people who read news stories about him or to people who will contribute to his library and his foundation. (For more, see "Climate Change and Barack Obama's Legacy".)

And that's all you need to know to follow the next phase of the DAPL story. The map below shows the pipeline route and the protest location. Note again that the protest location is also a major crossing point on the Missouri River.

Dakota Access Pipeline route and protest location. Lake Oahe is in fact a massive widening in the Missouri river behind the Oahe Dam. It's also a choke point for the pipeline construction project (source; click to enlarge).

Now the news — just two items for now.

The Obama Administration Is Appearing to Relent

President Obama and his administration are appearing to acquiesce to the native American protesters, especially in light of the relentless — and ugly — response by the corporation behind the pipeline and its private security force (for more on that, see the video above or google "DAPL attack dogs").

A bit of that story from Larry Buhl at DeSmogBlog:

Mixed Reactions as Feds Give Standing Rock Sioux Partial Victory

Friday afternoon brought a roller coaster of emotions for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and supporters in the battle to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) near the tribe’s North Dakota reservation. Shortly after a court rejected the tribe’s emergency legal challenge, a joint statement by three federal agencies effectively stopped work on the pipeline until significant questions are answered about potential environmental and cultural impacts. ...

Minutes after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued a 58-page ruling [pdf] today denying the tribe's request for a temporary injunction to halt construction, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Army, and the Department of the Interior issued a joint statement to “cease to authorize construction” on federally controlled lands — essentially nullifying the court’s action.

This news has stirred a number of emotions in the climate community (cautious optimism and some cheering) and also in the progressive Democratic community ("Obama's doing the right thing").

I'm not that sanguine. In fact, I'm downright pessimistic.

"Appearing to Relent" Means Lucy with the Football

This tactic, dampening protests with the lure of optimism, is an old old trick, and those who suspect it's being deployed here are right to be very very suspicious. I'd be much more optimistic if (a) there weren't so much money already on the table, and (b) Obama weren't deep into playing the middle between building a people-friendly "legacy" and collecting major corporate cash to finance his post-presidential projects.

As I said, I'm downright pessimistic, to the extent that I'd bet money Obama and his administration are playing against the protesters and for the pipeline builders. No one has explained that better than Kelly Hayes at Yes! Magazine:

Obama Pipeline Plot Twist Is Not a Victory—And Could Erase the Struggle

The illusion of victory is a dangerous thing. We could undo what we have built at Standing Rock, this unprecedented act of Native American collective resistance.

All Native struggles in the United States are a struggle against erasure. The poisoning of our land, the theft of our children, the state violence committed against us — we are forced to not only live in opposition to these ills, but also to live in opposition to the fact that they are often erased from public view and public discourse, outside of Indian Country. The truth of our history and our struggle does not match the myth of American exceptionalism, and thus, we are frequently boxed out of the narrative.

The struggle at Standing Rock, North Dakota, has been no exception, with Water Protectors fighting tooth and nail for visibility, ever since the Sacred Stone prayer encampment began on April 1.

For months, major news outlets have ignored what’s become the largest convergence of Native peoples in more than a century. But with growing social media amplification and independent news coverage, the corporate media had finally begun to take notice. National attention was paid. Solidarity protests were announced in cities around the country. The National Guard was activated in North Dakota.

The old chant, “The whole world is watching!” seemed on the verge of accuracy in Standing Rock.

And then came today’s ruling, with a federal judge finding against the Standing Rock Sioux, and declaring that construction of the pipeline could legally continue. ... But then something happened. Headlines like, “Obama administration orders ND pipeline construction to stop” and “The Obama Administration Steps In to Block the Dakota Access Pipeline” began to fill my newsfeed, with comments like, “Thank God for Obama!” attached to them.

Clearly, a major plot twist has occurred. But it’s not the one that’s being sold.

"Thank God for Obama!" must be sweet music indeed to post-White House legacy ears.

Now the plot twist:

To understand that this isn’t the victory it’s being billed as, you have to read the fine print in the presently lauded joint statement from the Department of Justice, the Department of the Army and the Department of the Interior:

“The Army will not authorize constructing the Dakota Access pipeline on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe until it can determine whether it will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions regarding the Lake Oahe site under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or other federal laws.”
Note what’s actually being said here, what’s being promised and what isn’t.

What is actually being guaranteed?

Further consideration.

In addition, the joint statement includes this: "In the interim, we request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahu."

"Letting the air out of a movement's tires"

Here's why that's so bad:

Let’s reflect on that for a moment: A company that recently sicced dogs on Water Protectors, including families, who stepped onto a sacred site to prevent its destruction, is being asked to voluntarily do the right thing.

But the thing is, they probably will. For a moment. Because what’s being asked of them isn’t an actual reroute. Right now, all that’s being asked is that they play their part in a short term political performance aimed at letting the air out of a movement’s tires. ...

As someone who organizes against state violence, I know the patterns of pacification in times of unrest all too well. When a Black or Brown person is murdered by the police, typically without consequence, and public outrage ensues, one of the pacifications we are offered is that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will investigate the shooting. It’s a deescalation tactic on the part of the state. It helps transition away from moments when rage and despair collide, creating a cooling off period for the public. “Justice” is still possible, we are told. We are asked to be patient as this very serious matter is investigated at the highest level of government, and given all due consideration.

The reality, of course, is that the vast majority of investigations taken up by the DOJ Civil Rights Division end in dismissal – a batting average that’s pretty much inverse to that of other federal investigations. But by the time a case gets tossed at the federal level, it’s probably not front page news anymore, and any accumulated organizing momentum behind the issue may have been lost — because to many people, the mere announcement of a federal investigation means that the system is working. Someone is looking into this, they’re assured. Something is being done. Important people have expressed that they care, and thus there is hope.

So how is this similar to what’s happening with Standing Rock?

It’s the same old con game.

Anyone who's watched every Black Lives Matter protest of what appears to be police murder has seen this game. The offer of hope, the promise of due process, then months after the protest has stood down, the whitewash. It's almost Lucy and the football at this point — entirely predictable — which is why I'm much more pessimistic than my climate brethren (and sistren).

How to Apply the Lesson that BLM Protesters Learned

In my view the only way to apply that knowledge and that lesson is this — do not stand down short of real victory. In other words, ask for the right thing and hold to it. If the ask is, "Please, Obama, take us under your wing if you can," then the answer will certainly be, "Sorry, I tried, but I can't ... but I did try, right?"

The ask must be, "Obama, stop this pipeline. Period. We're here until you do." It's the only way.

And frankly, if that's what happens — if the protesters ramp up instead of ramping down, continue to disrupt in the way that got them this far in the first place — I'm extremely optimistic. This is indeed, as Kelly Hayes writes, "the largest convergence of Native peoples in more than a century." If battles can't be won in the election booth or the courts, they'll have to be won in the streets — or unhappy citizens will just have to continue to take their lumps and go home.

This advice applies as much to progressives in their contest against the Democratic Party — can progressives really win at the voting booth and fundamentally change the Party? — as much as it applies to forgiveness of student debt (will asking for relief solve the problem?), as well as to stopping the almost certain climate crisis to come.

At Standing Rock, victory will be won by the protesters, so long as they don't take the administration bait and stand down. Remember, no matter where DAPL is routed, it still has to cross that river. If they can't cross the Missouri River, they can't ship the crude to refineries in Illinois.

More as it develops. If this goes as I hope it will go, it could be big.

GP