https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwHGSZxKNX0&ab_channel=DemocracyAtWork
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Police respond to demonstrations across the US with vicious assaults on protesters and journalists
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/28/port-s28.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
By Jacob Crosse
28 September 2020
Protests fueled by the state cover-up of the police murder of 26-year-old emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor continued throughout the weekend in multiple US cities and towns, despite far-right assaults and provocations, abetted by thuggish police departments.
Protests in Portland, Oregon and Louisville, Kentucky have been continuing for more than 120 days, while in cities such Albuquerque, New Mexico; Los Angeles, California; and New York City, local instances of police brutality coupled with the decision by Republican Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron not to bring charges against either of the Louisville police officers responsible for Taylor’s murder have reignited protests
Demonstrations were held in Louisville throughout the weekend. Similar to Thursday and Friday nights’ protests, on Saturday a multiracial group of youth and workers again fled to a nearby church to escape riot police once an “unlawful assembly” was declared prior to the 9 p.m. curfew. As with the previous nights, heavily armed militia members with the Oath Keepers were allowed to remain out past curfew. As of this writing, at least 28 protesters have been arrested in Louisville.
A protester is arrested near the Plaza Hotel, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
There is no sign that the protests in the city are subsiding, especially given the many questions still surrounding special prosecutor Cameron’s decision not to bring charges against Louisville Metro Police Department cops, Myles Cosgrove and Jon Mattingly, who combined fired 32 shots into Taylor’s apartment, killing her. On Sunday, the Kentucky State Police (KSP) released a ballistic report that does not support Cameron’s assertion that Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, actually shot Mattingly, who was struck in the thigh with a 9 millimeter round.
In Cameron’s press conference last Wednesday, he said that Brett Hankison could not have shot Mattingly because the three cops all carried .40 caliber handguns. Steven Romines, an attorney for Walker, revealed on CNN that he had acquired an LMPD record that showed Hankison had been issued a 9 mm pistol as well. The KSP report notes that “due to limited markings of comparative value” they were unable to identify nor eliminate the possibility that it was fired from Walker’s weapon.
Since nationwide protests began following the May 25 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, US President Donald Trump has consistently vilified the overwhelming peaceful protests, populated with workers and youth of every race and ethnicity as “riots” directed by “antifa,” “anarchists,” and “radical leftists.”
Trump has sought to tie the protests, as well as calls by certain layers within the protests to “defund the police” to the Democratic Party and their nominee Joe Biden, who has in fact pledged to increase federal funding for police budgets should he come to power. This has not deterred Trump; who again, during a Sunday evening press conference stated that the Democratic Party had been taken over by “socialists” and “communists.”
Within the last week, the US Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a statement identifying the cities of New York, Portland, and Seattle as “Jurisdictions Permitting Violence And Destruction Of Property,” threatening to revoke federal funding. In a statement released by the DOJ, each of the three cities was cited specifically for refusing to accept the intervention of federal troops to quell protests.
Trump first threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send federal troops into Democratic-controlled cities and states during his fascistic June 1 Rose Garden speech outside the White House. Since then, Democratic governors have responded by calling up thousands of National Guard troops and state police to crush the demonstrations, beginning with Minnesota governor Tim Waltz, who in June activated over 10,000 National Guard soldiers to terrorize and assist police in subduing protests.
This was repeated in August when Wisconsin Democratic Governor Tony Evers responded to protests in Kenosha, following the shooting of Jacob Blake in the back seven times, with the deployment of over 1,000 National Guard troops. In addition to soldiers from Wisconsin, Evers requested hundreds of National Guard infantry from neighboring states and flooded the county with hundreds of militarized police.
It is under these conditions that the Proud Boys, a self-described, “Western chauvinist” fascist group, held a rally on Saturday at Delta Park in North Portland. The rally drew less than 800 people, well below organizers’ previous estimates of 10,000 expected attendees. Approximately three miles away at Peninsula Park, a counter-rally was held attracting over 1,000 people. The two groups remained separated by police throughout the day.
Ahead of the rally, Democratic governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, issued a State of Emergency, mobilizing hundreds of Oregon state police who remained in the city well after the rally ended, which only lasted 90 minutes. Despite video evidence of heavily armed Proud Boy members assaulting journalists and bystanders, the event was allowed to proceed without any interference from the police, who reportedly only arrested two Proud Boys on weapons charges, while a third was cited for failing to display a rear license plate.
At the park, the Proud Boys were protected on all sides by the police. Prior to the event, members of the group shared “memes” that included an “antifa hunting permit.” At the park various vendors sold shirts and stickers that proclaimed, “Kyle did nothing wrong,” a reference to 17-year-old militia member Kyle Rittenhouse, who remains jailed in Illinois for his role in killing two protesters and gravely injuring a third during demonstration in Kenosha at the end of August. A delay in his extradition hearing was granted by the judge last week, postponing it until October 9. Rittenhouse’s mother, Wendy, was warmly received with a standing ovation during a Waukesha County Republican event on September 24.
In Portland, as night fell Saturday, protesters assembled outside the Federal Courthouse, where they were met with hundreds of riot police. After a protester burned a US flag, a constitutionally protected right, police declared an “unlawful assembly” and began to assault and arrest anyone they could. Over a dozen were arrested while several journalists were beaten and shoved to ground by riot police, including 73-year-old John Rudoff.
In Orange County, California, at least two pro-Trump supporters were injured after a vehicle was driven through a crowd. The pro-Trump, pro-police “back the blue” demonstration turned violent when the Trump group crossed the six-lane Imperial Highway to assault counter-protesters. As the groups converged, police declared an unlawful assembly and ordered everyone to disperse.
Unlike recent incidents in which antiracist protesters were injured in two separate vehicle assaults, which sent one person to the hospital, the police in Orange County quickly detained and charged 40-year-old Tatian Turner with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon. Turner is currently being held on a one million dollar bond.
Conversely, it took nearly 24 hours for Albuquerque police to release a statement that they would begin investigating an attempted hit-and-run that occurred during a Friday night protest. In a brief statement, Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina, said the department would be following “solid leads” but chastised protesters for not coordinating with the department and warned against blocking “roads with their own vehicles.”
In Mansfield, Massachusetts, roughly 40 miles south of Boston, members of the neo-Nazi group NSC-131 joined Trump supporters in another “back the blue” rally. The neo-Nazis mingled with the rest of the Trump supporters while counter-protesters remained on the other side of the street. Local press neglected to report the presence of Nazis at the event who were giving “Heil Hitler” salutes to passing motorists.
There is no sign that the protests in the city are subsiding, especially given the many questions still surrounding special prosecutor Cameron’s decision not to bring charges against Louisville Metro Police Department cops, Myles Cosgrove and Jon Mattingly, who combined fired 32 shots into Taylor’s apartment, killing her. On Sunday, the Kentucky State Police (KSP) released a ballistic report that does not support Cameron’s assertion that Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, actually shot Mattingly, who was struck in the thigh with a 9 millimeter round.
In Cameron’s press conference last Wednesday, he said that Brett Hankison could not have shot Mattingly because the three cops all carried .40 caliber handguns. Steven Romines, an attorney for Walker, revealed on CNN that he had acquired an LMPD record that showed Hankison had been issued a 9 mm pistol as well. The KSP report notes that “due to limited markings of comparative value” they were unable to identify nor eliminate the possibility that it was fired from Walker’s weapon.
Since nationwide protests began following the May 25 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, US President Donald Trump has consistently vilified the overwhelming peaceful protests, populated with workers and youth of every race and ethnicity as “riots” directed by “antifa,” “anarchists,” and “radical leftists.”
Trump has sought to tie the protests, as well as calls by certain layers within the protests to “defund the police” to the Democratic Party and their nominee Joe Biden, who has in fact pledged to increase federal funding for police budgets should he come to power. This has not deterred Trump; who again, during a Sunday evening press conference stated that the Democratic Party had been taken over by “socialists” and “communists.”
Within the last week, the US Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a statement identifying the cities of New York, Portland, and Seattle as “Jurisdictions Permitting Violence And Destruction Of Property,” threatening to revoke federal funding. In a statement released by the DOJ, each of the three cities was cited specifically for refusing to accept the intervention of federal troops to quell protests.
Trump first threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send federal troops into Democratic-controlled cities and states during his fascistic June 1 Rose Garden speech outside the White House. Since then, Democratic governors have responded by calling up thousands of National Guard troops and state police to crush the demonstrations, beginning with Minnesota governor Tim Waltz, who in June activated over 10,000 National Guard soldiers to terrorize and assist police in subduing protests.
This was repeated in August when Wisconsin Democratic Governor Tony Evers responded to protests in Kenosha, following the shooting of Jacob Blake in the back seven times, with the deployment of over 1,000 National Guard troops. In addition to soldiers from Wisconsin, Evers requested hundreds of National Guard infantry from neighboring states and flooded the county with hundreds of militarized police.
It is under these conditions that the Proud Boys, a self-described, “Western chauvinist” fascist group, held a rally on Saturday at Delta Park in North Portland. The rally drew less than 800 people, well below organizers’ previous estimates of 10,000 expected attendees. Approximately three miles away at Peninsula Park, a counter-rally was held attracting over 1,000 people. The two groups remained separated by police throughout the day.
Ahead of the rally, Democratic governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, issued a State of Emergency, mobilizing hundreds of Oregon state police who remained in the city well after the rally ended, which only lasted 90 minutes. Despite video evidence of heavily armed Proud Boy members assaulting journalists and bystanders, the event was allowed to proceed without any interference from the police, who reportedly only arrested two Proud Boys on weapons charges, while a third was cited for failing to display a rear license plate.
At the park, the Proud Boys were protected on all sides by the police. Prior to the event, members of the group shared “memes” that included an “antifa hunting permit.” At the park various vendors sold shirts and stickers that proclaimed, “Kyle did nothing wrong,” a reference to 17-year-old militia member Kyle Rittenhouse, who remains jailed in Illinois for his role in killing two protesters and gravely injuring a third during demonstration in Kenosha at the end of August. A delay in his extradition hearing was granted by the judge last week, postponing it until October 9. Rittenhouse’s mother, Wendy, was warmly received with a standing ovation during a Waukesha County Republican event on September 24.
In Portland, as night fell Saturday, protesters assembled outside the Federal Courthouse, where they were met with hundreds of riot police. After a protester burned a US flag, a constitutionally protected right, police declared an “unlawful assembly” and began to assault and arrest anyone they could. Over a dozen were arrested while several journalists were beaten and shoved to ground by riot police, including 73-year-old John Rudoff.
In Orange County, California, at least two pro-Trump supporters were injured after a vehicle was driven through a crowd. The pro-Trump, pro-police “back the blue” demonstration turned violent when the Trump group crossed the six-lane Imperial Highway to assault counter-protesters. As the groups converged, police declared an unlawful assembly and ordered everyone to disperse.
Unlike recent incidents in which antiracist protesters were injured in two separate vehicle assaults, which sent one person to the hospital, the police in Orange County quickly detained and charged 40-year-old Tatian Turner with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon. Turner is currently being held on a one million dollar bond.
Conversely, it took nearly 24 hours for Albuquerque police to release a statement that they would begin investigating an attempted hit-and-run that occurred during a Friday night protest. In a brief statement, Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina, said the department would be following “solid leads” but chastised protesters for not coordinating with the department and warned against blocking “roads with their own vehicles.”
In Mansfield, Massachusetts, roughly 40 miles south of Boston, members of the neo-Nazi group NSC-131 joined Trump supporters in another “back the blue” rally. The neo-Nazis mingled with the rest of the Trump supporters while counter-protesters remained on the other side of the street. Local press neglected to report the presence of Nazis at the event who were giving “Heil Hitler” salutes to passing motorists.
Michael Moore's DIRE Warning Is 2016 Déjà vu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKQHS4FAf9U&ab_channel=StatusCoup
US political warfare escalates with New York Times release of Trump tax returns
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/28/ttax-s28.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
By Patrick Martin
28 September 2020
In a further escalation of the political warfare within the US ruling elite, the New York Times, the leading newspaper backing the Democratic Party, has begun publishing an extensive report on President Trump’s personal finances, based on the leak of 20 years of Trump’s income tax returns.
Trump has refused to release his tax returns, as all US presidential candidates and presidents have done for the past 50 years, and he has waged a bitter legal struggle against the House of Representatives and New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. over subpoenas for his tax returns in connection with legislative and criminal investigations.
Only three days before, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments by representatives of Trump and Vance over Trump’s effort to quash Vance’s subpoena of Trump’s financial records from his accountants, Mazar’s. In response to questioning by one judge, a Trump attorney admitted that any request for Trump’s financial records would be “overbroad” in his opinion. The representative of Vance’s office argued that the recipient of a subpoena could not go to court “and demand to be told what an investigation is all about.”
The Times report, however, could make moot much of the barrage of litigation mounted by Trump over the past four years, since its main purpose was to suppress the disclosure of politically unflattering financial information about the president.
While Trump lamely denounced the Times for publishing “fake news,” and the chief legal counsel for the Trump Organization claimed there were gross factual errors in the first article posted on the Times website Sunday evening, there seems little doubt that the newspaper’s account is substantially true. It conforms to prior leaks of individual pages of a handful of Trump tax returns, as well as to the more general picture of his business affairs given in various media accounts and several of Trump’s own ghost-written “business” memoirs.
According to the Times account, the team of writers who produced the initial 10,000-word article, the first in a promised series, had nearly all of Trump’s personal and business tax returns for the past two decades, with the exception of his personal tax returns from 2018 and 2019. The documents were supplied by people who were legally authorized to possess them, the newspaper said, a category that would include employees of the IRS, the Trump Organization, or Trump’s various accountants and legal representatives. The Times will not publish the actual returns in graphical form, it said, to protect its sources.
The main revelation in the initial article is the sheer scale of the financial manipulation made possible by the possession of great wealth and a tax code that virtually encourages the wealthy to pay as little as possible. Despite a cash flow in the tens of millions or hundreds of millions yearly, Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the 15 years before he ran for president. He paid only $750 in income taxes for 2016 and 2017, as his accountants carried out various stratagems so that Trump could say he was paying taxes, even though the amount was derisory.
On two separate occasions, in the early 1990s and in 2009, Trump has filed returns claiming massive business losses—nearly $1 billion in the first instance, when his casino empire in Atlantic City collapsed; and $700 million in 2009, when he took advantage of a favorable change in tax laws incorporated into the Obama administration’s bailout of Wall Street. He has now accumulated another $421 million in paper losses, in part as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which the Times reports he could use to offset income beginning next year.
Through various accounting gimmicks, Trump claimed and was paid a $72.9 million tax refund by the IRS in 2010, which amounted to the repayment of all his income taxes from what was his highest income period, 2005-2008, the heyday of his reality television program on NBC, “The Apprentice.” From 2011 on, this gargantuan refund has been the subject of the IRS audit about which Trump rails incessantly whenever asked to divulge his tax returns.
One passage in the article suggests plausibly that Trump’s decision to make a bid for the Republican presidential nomination was connected to these financial strains, and an effort to revive the “marketability” of the Trump name as his long-running television program was fading. The Times writes:
The picture that perhaps emerges most starkly from the mountain of figures and tax schedules prepared by Mr. Trump’s accountants is of a businessman-president in a tightening financial vise.
Most of Mr. Trump’s core enterprises—from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington—report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.
His revenue from “The Apprentice” and from licensing deals is drying up, and several years ago he sold nearly all the stocks that now might have helped him plug holes in his struggling properties.
The methods of self-enrichment were endless. Trump claimed business expenses and charitable tax deductions for his Seven Springs estate north of New York City, although the Trump family used it as a summer estate and residence, not a business investment. And Trump’s children, particularly Ivanka, collected six and seven-figure “advisory” fees as “consultants” on various business deals, even though they were themselves executives employed by the Trump Organization (also at six and seven-figure salaries).
The Times series has a self-evident political purpose, demonstrated above all in its timing. Trump’s tax returns were not dropped through the newspaper’s mail slot last week. The newspaper has been in possession of them for many months, if not longer, in order to analyze them in the detail provided in the first article. The series began appearing only 38 days before the presidential election, and only one day before the first presidential debate.
At least in one respect, the initial exposure seems to have hit its target. Trump gave a press briefing on his nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court about an hour after the report first appeared on the Times website. He was even more disjointed and hysterical in his comments than usual, denouncing criticism of Barrett as attacks on the Catholic religion, declaring that the Democratic Party “has been taken over by socialists, extremists, and probably communists,” and demanding that Democratic candidate Joe Biden take a drug test before the debate Tuesday night.
Asked directly about the tax returns, Trump denounced the Times report as “fake news.” He claimed repeatedly “I pay a lot” of taxes, while not actually denying that he paid zero income taxes in 10 of the 15 years before his election.
Donald Trump BROKE; only paid $750 in Federal income taxes in 2016-2017: New York Times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxFMVmjL-IY&ab_channel=ChristoAivalis
US governors told in February that pandemic would get “much worse,” but did not alert public
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/28/wood-s28.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
By Kevin Reed
28 September 2020
In a secret Feb. 9 meeting, 25 US governors were told by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield, “The coronavirus outbreak is going to get much, much worse before it gets better,” even as those same governors publicly downplayed the pandemic.
The report of the meeting was detailed in Bob Woodward’s recently published book, Rage. Woodward made headlines earlier this month when he published transcripts of Trump admitting that he sought to downplay the pandemic in the eyes of the public.
But no attention has been given in the media to the growing evidence, including in Woodward’s book, that Trump’s cover-up involved not just the White House, but both houses of Congress and a wide range of government officials.
Panelists facing the governors at the NGA meeting on February 9
Woodward says the briefing included National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, Redfield and “other members of the Coronavirus Task Force” who all “took their seats at a table in a large conference room in Washington” that was attended by “over 25 state governors.”
“The coronavirus outbreak is going to get much, much worse before it gets better, Redfield warned. We have not even seen the beginning of the worst, Redfield said, letting his words sink in. There is no reason to believe that what’s happening in China is not going to happen here, he said. There were nearly 40,000 cases in China then, with more than 800 deaths, barely five weeks after announcing the first cases. I agree completely, Fauci told the governors. This is very serious business. You need to be prepared for problems in your cities and your states. Fauci could see the alarm on the governors’ faces. ‘I think we scared the shit out of them,’ Fauci said after the meeting.”
Although the author of Rage does not name the other officials on the panel, a Health and Human Services (HHS) press release—which reports the briefing without mentioning Redfield’s warning—says that they were Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli, HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Robert Kadlec and CDC Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases Jay Butler.
While there is no published list of state governors in attendance at this special session—the agenda for the three-day conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and Marriott Marquis hotel does not include the coronavirus briefing—a partial list can be assembled from those speaking on the second day of the NGA winter meeting.
The NGA attendees listed as speakers on Feb. 9 were New York Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo, Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills, North Dakota Republican Governor Doug Burgum, California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, Arkansas Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson, Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds, Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey, Kentucky Democratic Governor Laura Kelly, Montana Democratic Governor Steve Bullock and Colorado Democratic Governor Jared Polis.
Panelists at the February 9 coronavirus presentation to the NGA
Not one of the governors among the group of more than 25 who sat through the presentation in Washington D.C. on Feb. 9 reported to news media or to the public that Redfield and Fauci told them, “we have not seen the beginning of the worst” and that “there is no reason to believe that what’s happening in China is not going to happen here.”
Instead, the NGS meeting was followed by a campaign of silence, misinformation and lies spearheaded by the White House and President Trump. On Feb. 9, there were a total of 12 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US and the primary concern of the entire ruling establishment was not the dangerous and deadly threat to public health posed by the pandemic but making sure that the truth about it did not get out.
Additionally, the corporate media—which has focused exclusively on Woodward’s interview with President Trump—has not reported on this revelation of bipartisan cooperation with the White House in hiding from the public what the top public health experts were saying in the earliest days of the pandemic, information that could have saved tens or hundreds of thousands of lives.
As Woodward points out in Rage, “The official press release from the Department of Health and Human Services describing the [NGA] meeting read: ‘The panel reiterated that while this is a serious public health matter, the risk to the American public remains low at this time, and that the federal government will continue working in close coordination with state and local governments to keep it that way.’”
It is now established fact that the complicity of the governors in this conspiracy enabled President Trump to lie to the public about the coronavirus with impunity in the ensuing critical days. Within 30 days, the number of cases in the US rose to 1,263 with 28 deaths, and within 60 days, the number of cases in the US was at 500,000 with 16,690 deaths.
As Woodward explains, “The next day, President Trump said publicly three times—once at the White House, once on TV and once at a New Hampshire rally—that the virus would go away on its own. ‘When it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,’ he said at the packed rally. ‘I think it’s going to work out good. We only have 11 cases and they’re all getting better.’”
These facts substantiate the September 10 assessment made by the World Socialist Web Site about Woodward’s book and that President Trump’s plot against the people of America and the world was aided and abetted by accomplices in the Democratic and Republican parties and the corporate media.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)