[Update at 0850-0953—Three new comments, commenting on their comments begin taken down, are now up.
[Update at 0754—Comments on Roger Mason story taken down.]
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Ready to Race
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Make no decisions that cause you to lose sleep.
First of all, sleep is simply too precious. You need energy for everything you do when it comes to campaigning, and you have no spare sleep. Right now, I have less than 12 weeks left before my primary, and then it’s basically over — there is no Republican in the race, and the district is more than 80% Democratic. Whoever wins the primary — whether incumbent or me — will very likely be the state rep for the district in 2015.
But beyond this practical advice is the “sound mind and body” aspect: If a decision is causing you to stay up at night, toss and turn, unsure of what to do, you need to make the decision that is going to let you sleep — even if there are less-than-satisfactory consequences. What do I mean by this? The best way I can explain it comes from my first year on the city council. There were a couple of times when I didn’t speak up as I really had intended to. I’d wanted to question something going on; others tried to quell my concerns; I wasn’t really satisfied, but I didn’t say anything. And I literally could not sleep, knowing that I really should have raised the concerns — if only to have received a better, more specific explanation of why they were not (or maybe were) relevant. On both occasions, I called the city’s law director as early as I could the the next morning to ask about the situation. We came up with something that would be acceptable; I felt satisfied, and was able to move on.
But I never forgot how awful a feeling it was to know that I had had the chance to speak up — as a council member, in a public meeting — and that I stayed silent, letting colleagues assuage me, even though I was not really assuaged. Whether as an elected public servant or a candidate to be one, do what you feel you need to do — and then, get a good night’s rest. Chances are, you are going to need it to attend to the next big thing that comes around.
Jill Miller Zimon writing in 5 Things You’ll Never Know Unless You Run For Office for BlogHer.
All five points—No. 3 above, in particular—in Zimon’s article are spot on, but I disagree with the headline. Possibly someone else wrote the head, possibly the words were chosen as click-bait, or possibly (most likely, actually) the head reflected Zimon’s feelings and intent as she wrote, but I think the points have meaning far beyond simply running for office. I would say they echo the general philosophy of the successful person.
I see these as life instructions:
Each can be infinitely unpacked, but like the 10 Commandments, they pretty much cover everything.
This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…
Rule No. 9 – Avoid Food Products with the Word Lite or the Terms Low-Fat or Nonfat in Their Names.
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
Found in my electronic chapbook. See also Eating Mindfully by Jan Chozen Bey.
While the US Supreme Court has deemed that not allowing protesters to get right in the face of women seeking abortions is a violation of their free speech rights, the sensitivities of delegates to political conventions are so delicate that they can be shielded from opposing views.
Mano Singham writing in Seeing Cleveland through fresh eyes.
What follows below are a few of the bits from Glenn Greenwald’s and Murtaza Hussain’s Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On that I first mentioned yesterday.
Of all that I read, Jaffer’s comment below (bold, emphasis mine) is the most telling and disturbing.
Indeed, the government’s ability to monitor such high-profile Muslim-Americans—with or without warrants—suggests that the most alarming and invasive aspects of the NSA’s surveillance occur not because the agency breaks the law, but because it is able to exploit the law’s permissive contours. “The scandal is what Congress has made legal,” says Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU deputy legal director. “The claim that the intelligence agencies are complying with the laws is just a distraction from more urgent questions relating to the breadth of the laws themselves.”
***
Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations, served on the recent White House intelligence review panel convened to address concerns raised by the Snowden revelations. If he had seen the NSA spreadsheet, Clarke says, he would have asked more questions about the process, and reviewed individual FISA warrants. [Emphasis mine, JH]
“Knowing that, I would specifically ask the Justice Department: How many American citizens are there active FISAs on now?” he says. “And without naming names, tell me what categories they fall into—how many are counterterrorism, counterintelligence, espionage cases? We’d want to go through [some applications], and frankly, we didn’t. It’s not something that five part-time guys can do—rummage through thousands of FISA warrants.”
***
Asked whether he believes he would have been monitored by the NSA if he were not Muslim, Gill is blunt. “Absolutely not,” he says. “Look, I’ve never made an appearance or been a lawyer for anyone who’s been [associated with terrorism]. But there are plenty of other lawyers who have made those appearances and actually represented those governments, and their name isn’t Faisal Gill and they weren’t born in Pakistan and they aren’t on this list.”
Gill says he is deeply concerned by what the NSA was able to collect. “I’m sure there was private stuff with my wife where we were arguing about stuff, as well as emails of a more private nature,” he says. “Things that obviously I don’t want anyone looking at.”
Gill knows he faces a personal and professional risk in agreeing to discuss the government’s surveillance of his emails. “Maybe people will say, ‘Hey he was being surveilled—the government must have some reason for doing it, especially if there’s a FISA warrant.’ [Emphasis mine, JH] There will be a lot of folks who will say it was justified and there’s something there. I’m sure it’ll have some sort of negative impact with clients, and who knows what else.”
Despite those concerns, Gill agreed to discuss the surveillance. “The real reason I’m talking to you is that I don’t have anything to hide,” he says. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I served my country, the whole time.”
***
Even if the government obtained FISA warrants to monitor some or all of the five Muslim-Americans, the law’s standards do not always appear to be applied uniformly. More than a dozen former and current law enforcement officials contacted by The Intercept say that the process for seeking a FISA warrant is so bureaucratically complex and larded with privacy safeguards that it is essentially inviolate. If the surveillance court approved a warrant, they say, then the target must have deserved it.
“The Justice Department was notoriously difficult to get a FISA warrant through,” says [Marion] Bowman, the top FBI lawyer for national security matters from 1995 to 2006. “They always wanted more than probable cause. And so they would frequently, at least 50 percent of the time, send it back [to the FBI] with questions.”
According to Bowman, whose office handled all requests for domestic FISA surveillance throughout the intelligence community, requests for warrants involve multiple stages of approval. Starting at an FBI field office, a request moves up through FBI supervisory agents at headquarters and attorneys at the bureau’s National Security Branch, then on to the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence—with the various gatekeepers frequently rejecting applications or sending them back for further review. It is only once all the hurdles have been cleared, Bowman says, that the Justice Department prepares a formal application “package” for a judge with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Those packages, Bowman says, range anywhere from 35 to 150 pages. The warrant applications are supposed to establish probable cause that a target is an agent of a foreign power and is engaged in—or about to engage in—one of what Bowman calls the “three crimes” spelled out by the FISA statute: an actual or potential attack or other grave hostile act, sabotage or international terrorism, or clandestine intelligence activities. The standard for probable cause used by the court, Bowman adds, is “more than a suspicion, but less than a certainty.”
Taken together, he says, the hurdles and safeguards prevent any potential abuse. “I’ve never seen the FBI in my experience in the 11 years I was there, ever begin an investigation strictly on political issues,” Bowman says.
But one former law enforcement official paints a different picture of the process. FISA judges who approve the warrants, he says, often rely implicitly on the claims of the agents seeking them. “I got a lot of warrants signed by a judge at 2 a.m., in his pajamas in his living room. The judge would size you up, and if he believed you that you had probable cause, he would sign the warrant.”
One current senior federal prosecutor who has participated in high-level counterterrorism and intelligence cases also describes a looser standard for obtaining a FISA warrant. The process, he says, requires only that the government establish probable cause that the target meets a broad definition as an “agent of a foreign power”—not that they are actually engaged in terrorism, espionage, sabotage, or other criminal activity.
“If you are dealing with a foreign power, I don’t think you have any choice,” says the prosecutor. “I don’t believe it is realistic to say that you can only get a FISA when you have probable cause that an agent of a foreign power is committing a crime—because you’ll never know. And often the best way to figure out what is going on is not to prosecute them criminally, but to just watch what they do.”
Such a standard, law enforcement officials say, takes advantage of what amount to loopholes in the FISA law, which requires that warrants demonstrate probable cause that an agent of a foreign power is engaged in activities that “involve or may involve” criminal activity, are “about to involve” criminal activity, or constitute aiding someone who is. In a statement to The Intercept, an NSA spokesperson confirmed that warrants must demonstrate probable cause that targets “are or may be engaged in certain criminal activity … on behalf of a foreign power.”
***
Whatever the merits of the process, it is clear that at least some of the law enforcement officials involved in it harbored conspiratorial and bigoted views about Americans of Muslim descent. John Guandolo, the former counterterrorism agent who was active at the time several of the five identified Americans were monitored, provides a candid view of that mindset. Asked by The Intercept about the men, he responded with a series of uncorroborated accusations, suggesting that many of them are part of a vast Muslim conspiracy to infiltrate and topple the United States from within.
To hear Guandolo tell it, Faisal Gill, the former homeland security official under Bush, was “a major player in the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.” Asim Ghafoor, Gill’s fellow attorney, is “a jihadi” who was “directly linked to Al Qaeda guys” simply because of his representation of the Al Haramain Foundation. “He had knowledge of who they were and what they were doing,” Guandolo says. (Such logic would subject every lawyer representing defendants accused of terrorism to government surveillance.) To Guandolo, Agha Saeed was yet another secret operative for the Muslim Brotherhood. “He’s a pretty senior guy with them,” Guandolo says, “affiliated with several groups.” (“That’s a big lie,” Saeed says, “and given my life history, absurd” because he has “always been a leftist.”)
Diplomatic relations between Germany and the US plunged to a new low after Angela Merkel’s government asked the top representative of America’s secret services in Germany to leave the country.
While not formally amounting to a full expulsion, the move nonetheless sends a dramatic signal: after a year-long dispute triggered by the revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Merkel seems to have finally run out of patience with Washington’s failure to explain itself.
Philip Oltermann and Spencer Ackerman writing Germany asks top US intelligence official to leave country over spy row for The Guardian.
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Hookah hype?
ODNR pays for public records lawsuit
Up for debate: Challenger awaits response from GOP candidate
Road closure due to collapsing culvert
Fair board breaks even on Fourth festivitiesTop Headlines Poll: Have you ever or would you consider smoking a hookah?
This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…
Rule No. 8 – Avoid Food Products That Make Health Claims.
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
Found in my electronic chapbook. See also Eating Mindfully by Jan Chozen Bey.
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Via Snopes…
The White House has instructed US security agencies to review their training and policy materials for racial or religious bias after documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed training material for the intelligence agencies referring to “Mohammed Raghead.”
After an extensive investigation by the Intercept on Wednesday reported that the NSA and the FBI spied on the emails of five prominent US activists and attorneys with Muslim backgrounds, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that the administration took accusations of the slurs “extremely seriously.”
“Upon learning of this matter, the White House immediately requested that the director of national intelligence undertake an assessment of intelligence community policies, training standards or directives that promote diversity and tolerance, and as necessary, make any recommendations changes or additional reforms,” Hayden said.
It is at least the second time the White House has ordered a review of agency training materials said to include offensive language.
Spencer Ackerman writing in White House: racial slurs in NSA intelligence material ‘unacceptable’ for The Guardian.
Why the feck was there no one sufficiently empowered in the security infrastructure to raise their hand and say: “That’s fucked up.” That the president of the United States has to get involved in this level of stupid shit is indicative of how deeply the malaise runs.
Think the Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was just about birth control? Think again.
Immediately after the Hobby Lobby ruling, Rick Warren and other high-profile religious leaders began lobbying the Obama administration to demand a religious exemption in an executive order which would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. This is not about freedom of religion—it’s about corporations using religion as a license to discriminate with taxpayer dollars.
The Court’s decision created the potential for far-reaching discriminatory ramifications. In their ruling, the Court set a dangerous precedent, sanctioning discrimination against women under the guise of religious liberty. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it best: “the court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.”
From The American Civil Liberties Union’s Don’t give federal contractors a license to discriminate.
Cleveland’s Muny Light facility on the city’s east side and The Cleveland Electric Illuminating company Chairman (and Field Marshall Rommel aficionado) Ralph Besse. (inset upper left)
Cleveland in 2014 loves to proclaim its love of private-public partnerships. The reason: the private sector wants to suck resources from the public sector – sin taxes, tax abatements, free land, tax incremental financing, historic preservation subsidies, income tax credits, sales tax deductions, publicly built garages and the list can go on and on. Anything it can get free in the name of Progress.
Yet one of Cleveland’s historic public-private battles evolves from conflict over electric power – between a tiny municipal electric system and so-called private enterprise electric company guaranteed monopoly status and guaranteed profits through rate assurances.
There was a certain amusing irony in the corporate machismo of the public utility company. To have a governmental competitor stuck in their corporate craws so much so that, as we shall see, they used predatory and corrupt methods against city government. And some of the community’s leading citizens didn’t avoid such methods in the effort to deny the city’s right to produce electricity for its citizens.
It was really a lengthy and amazing story of how power works against the interests of the public.
It’s a battle that helped take down a mayor. It was an ongoing battle that helped poison a city’s politics and almost bankrupted it.
This is the battle between what was known as Muny Light, now Cleveland Public Power, and the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, now known as First Energy.
The mayor it almost took down was Dennis Kucinich. He was a great defender of the city’s system. In 1967 he used the issue to help dethrone Mayor Ralph Perk in a three-way primary. But the third candidate, Edward Feighan, also favored Muny Light. So Dennis – it’s what most called him and he appreciated the familiarity – needed another issue in the final runoff. He found it in the tax abatement issue. Feighan, in the Ohio Senate, had voted for it. Dennis was always an eager opponent with the right issue. He defeated Feighan to become mayor.
However, it was a one term flame out. And the historic battles over Muny Light had much to do with it. The city’s default at midnight Dec. 15, 1978 with $14 million owed Cleveland banks on notes previously rolled over for Perk might have been payable if Kucinich had not had to pay a similar amount to CEI on Muny Light debt, ordered by Judge Robert Krupansky. Krupansky would play a crucial, biased role in allowing CEI to later get away with anti-trust acts against the city’s plant. Krupansky denied Continue Reading »
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Produce pests
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Revitalization district restaurant gets first of 15 new licensesTop Headlines Poll: Will you attend the Riverfront Roar this year?
This is my exercise in shoveling out the blogpile…
Yesterday on the front page of The Marietta Times, Amanda Nicholson wrote a story headlined: Homeowners, farmers carry school tax load. The gist of the story is that in Ohio generally, and in Washington County particularly, homeowners and farmers carry the heaviest load when it comes to property taxes that support local schools. (This contrasts to the ’60s and early ’70s when I was a student first in the Marietta City and later Warren Local school systems and industry paid the lion’s share.)
One Times reader, greatly in need of an economics lesson, wrote:
chasing—Enough is ENOUGH this has got to stop. We need to change this tax for OWNERS ONLY. Every ONE needs to pay taxes for these (SCHOOLS). Either by an extra SALES TAX or some kind of a FAIR TAX. Most of us home owners has (NO) children in the schools as of NOW. The people whom have children now in school mostly RENT so we are going to have to do some thing QUICK [Emphasis mine, JH]. TAX the HOSPITALS all NON_PROFIT businesses.
The implication here is that renters don’t pay property taxes. That is true only if their landlord is as economically clueless as chasing. Of course renters pay property tax. The landlord factors the tax, along with all other annual costs of owning and maintaining the property (and maybe a little profit), into the rent.
On the broader issue, chasing does have a point. In 1997, the Ohio Supreme Court found in DeRolph v. State that:
Ohio’s elementary and secondary public school financing system violates Section 2, Article VI of the Ohio Constitution, which mandates a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state.
The Court ordered the State Legislature to come up with an alternative that passed constitutional muster. Nearly 20 years later, both Republican and Democratic party legislators have failed to find a solution.
I’ll be interested to see if the Times allows anyone to take chasing to school on the issue.
Rule No. 7 – Avoid Food products Containing Ingredients That a Third-Grader Cannot Pronounce.
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
Found in my electronic chapbook. See also Eating Mindfully by Jan Chozen Bey.
The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans—including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers—under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies.
According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes:
• Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;
• Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases;
• Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;
• Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights;
• Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.
The individuals appear on an NSA spreadsheet in the Snowden archives called “FISA recap”—short for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain writing in Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On for The//Intercept.
This is a long piece—some 8,500 words—and includes three video interviews; exactly the kind of reporting I’ve been waiting on. Sadly, I expect that most Americans won’t be outraged enough to even consider taking action until, as one commenter noted, white people with christian names are affected.
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