All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[Malvolio]

https://thinkprogress.org/federal-ju...-7d7f9330d3f1/

Some good news.

[Iron Maiden]

Pence seems to have a knack for staying out trouble and out of news most of the time. But something is coming back from his past business ties that doesn't make him look so good.

Pence family gas stations put Indiana taxpapers on the hook for $20 million.

Kentucky and Illinois — are still on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up more than 85 contaminated sites across the three states, including underground tanks that leaked toxic chemicals into soil, streams and wells.

Indiana alone has spent at least $21 million on the cleanup thus far, or an average of about $500,000 per site, according to an analysis of records by The Associated Press. And the work is nowhere near complete.

The federal government, meanwhile, plans to clean up a plume of cancer-causing solvent discovered beneath a former Kiel Bros. station that threatens drinking water near the Pence family's hometown.

Attachment 68277

Greg and Mike Pence's father, Edward Pence, was one of the builders of a "Midwestern Empire" of 200 gas stations located mostly in Indiana along with a smaller number in Kentucky and Illinois. The company was known as Kiel Brothers Oil company and it was founded in 1960 by Carl Kiel. Edward Pence joined the company and became vice president in the 1970s and after his death, his son Greg Pence became President. In 2004 the business went sour and it went into bankruptcy. Then the shenanigans started:

Not long after, Pence also resigned from the board of a local bank that loaned $16 million to the company. He and Ted Kiel, whose father founded the company, had personally guaranteed the loans, promising to repay outstanding debts with their own assets, records show.

Ted Kiel settled. The bank fought Greg Pence in court and obtained a $3.8 million judgment, which he later settled for pennies on the dollar, according to records and interviews.

As part of the bankruptcy settlement, most of the over 200 gas stations were sold off. Some sites were closed and then subsequently abandoned, including storage tank in Indianapolis. These close storage sites and gas stations are part of an expensive cleant up effort after the owners failed to take care of them.

Nearby residents cheered last December as a crew tore down the tank, which was sold by the company for $10 in 2005 and has been an eyesore ever since. The cleanup will cost an estimated $260,000 , according to the city.

Elsewhere in the city, business continues as usual at a gas station that has been in continuous state of cleanup since 1990. Pictures taken in 1992 show standing pools of black sludge where two underground storage tanks were removed. At the time, Greg Pence and state environmental regulators pledged to work together on the cleanup. Since then, it has become one of the most expensive Kiel Bros. sites, costing the state $1.7 million.

In the immediate aftermath of the bankruptcy, the state sought about $8.4 million from the company for cleanup and fines. After a new Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, assumed office in 2005, the state dropped that claim , which had been filed under Daniels' Democratic predecessor, Gov. Joe Kernan.

The justification for the change is a matter of debate.

Citing the complexities of bankruptcy law, experts said there was no guarantee a judge would approve Indiana's claim.
Bankruptcy court is the last refuge of environmental scofflaws," said Pat Parenteau, a Vermont Law School professor who specializes in environmental and natural resource issues. "This is one of the more fiendishly complicated areas of crossover between environmental law and bankruptcy law that you can imagine."

But Tim Method, a former deputy commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, said the state's approach to business regulation changed abruptly with the new administration.

"Daniels felt we ought to work for business rather than be a hindrance," said Method, who was among a handful of administrators forced out after Daniels took over.

Coincidentally, Greg Pence was hired by the Daniels administration deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Managment. It's like the fox guarding the hen house. He only lasted a few months in the position and went back to the private sector, once again in the petroleum business.

The remnants of the Pence family's former business is still haunting the residents though. In the Pence home town of Columbus for example:

For some families living near Columbus, the Kiel Bros. business left behind more than debt. They smelled oil in water drawn from private wells. Nearly three decades later, the unincorporated area known as Garden City is a federal Superfund site, a designation reserved for the nation's most heavily polluted locations.

Investigators initially determined Kiel Bros. was the source of the oil, along with a plume of trichloroethylene detected decades ago under a gas station. The chemical called TCE is a solvent used to degrease metal parts. The EPA says the plume is drifting toward the aquifer that is Columbus' primary source of drinking water.

State officials seesawed over whether the company was responsible for the TCE before concluding in 2002 that it was not.

"Why did we absolve the company that we think the problem started with?" said Kevin Butler, a former teacher whose father was one of the first to smell the oil. "It just doesn't seem very logical that this problem would be centered to this area, and confined to this area, if it wasn't the responsibility of that company."

When these underground storage tanks leak, usually its the company that is supposed to pay for the clean up costs. But the state of Indiana, that is to say the taxpayers in the State of Indiana, has been using public funds to clean up many of these sites around the state. The cap per site was set at $2 million until 2016 when Governor Mike Pence signed a law raising that to 2.5 million. The GOP has a super majority in the state congress so they get pretty much anything they want passed.

Oh, and near Pence's old home town of Columbus, many of the residents either buy bottled water, buy paper filters or simply take the risk of drinking the water without using an elaborate filtration system that was provided to a few businesses and residents in the area.

[worstblogever]

In 2014, 2015, 2016, and in 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Art Robinson, the former Chairman of the Republican Party of Oregon who going into 2016, had challenged Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio for the seat to represent Oregon’s 4th District three times, and was about to make it a fourth one. Even with the Tea Party wave working for him back in 2010, Robinson still lost by double digits, and since, he’s gotten blasted by twenty whole points. The key factor why might be that Art Robinson has some of the weirdest opinions on science of any member of the GOP we’ve ever profiled. Like mad scientist levels of weird. It would be one thing if he just denied climate change (which he does), but Art Robinson has argued that the dangerous banned pesticide, DDT, was wrongly discontinued by environmentalist “opportunists”, and suggested we dilute nuclear waste and sprinkle it in the ocean, or even over the mainland as a means of its disposal. He’s even suggested it should be added to the water supply, specifically, and that such an action would “hermetically enhance our resistance to degenerative diseases”. Robinson also denies the link between the HIV virus and AIDS, and that it’s just “a natural consequence of the gay lifestyle”. Robinson has said public schooling is “tax-financed socialism” and “child abuse”. He has also argued against diversity in universities, because “difficult, total-immersion training in science is an experience few women and blacks desire”. That last comment might make sense when you consider that Robinson is a self-professed fan of G.A. Henty, an author he recommends in his own home-schooling curriculum whose books tend to say things like the average intelligence of an adult of African descent equates to a 10 year old white person, or that the plight of American slaves wasn’t that bad. In 2014, Art Robinson also sent out mailers asking his district’s constituents for five years of urine samples, without much explanation of what he was going to do with them, scientifically.

Now, maybe Art Robinson would have a chance to knock off Bill DeFaizo, what with Oregon’s 4th only having a +2 Democratic lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index… but on the other hand, DeFazio is a capable legislator, while Art Robinson is bats*** insane.

The good people of Oregon’s 4th are well aware of that, thankfully, and Art Robinson lost to Peter DeFazio for the FOURTH consecutive election, this time coming in with just shy of 40% of the vote. Robinson has been propped up by the conservative billionaire Mercer family, who you may also know as the biggest donors to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And, after Trump won the presidency but Robinson lost his latest bid for Congress, they were recommending he be brought on to Trump’s administration as a science advisor, because the Cabinet of Horrors that Trump assembled wasn’t deliberately meant to destroy the agencies they were placed in charge of enough as it is. Thankfully, Robinson didn’t get the gig, and is kept… skulking about Oregon. And this year, at the age of 76, would you believe the Mercers have propped up Art Robinson again as a candidate in 2018, when by all estimations, Democratic voter turnout is predicted to be at its highest in a decade, and his candidacy will truly be a lost cause?

Because it’s happening. Art Robinson won the GOP Primary for Oregon’s 4th District, and in November, he could lose for the fifth straight election cycle, yet another ***-kicking courtesy of Peter DeFazio. The definition of insanity is considered by many to keep doing the same thing and expect different results, and at this point, Art Robinson’s persistence seems like one more point to prove he’s deranged.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This is creepy, follow this Twitter thread and see what you think



A related discussion

Yeah, that WAS weird. No way in hell Trump wrote that. And since it's hardly a secret that White House surrogates have been known to use his account, clearly someone else typed that piece.

[Tendrin]

Jesus.

https://www.facebook.com/CBSNews/vid...5966636225950/

[worstblogever]

Jesus.

https://www.facebook.com/CBSNews/vid...5966636225950/

I mean, if I wanted to write an ghost story for a prison that's already haunted when it opens, this would definitely be an origin story.

[Tendrin]

https://twitter.com/Curious_Kurz/sta...77924029976576

Tell me again about how ICE is merely arresting convicted criminals and such.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

https://twitter.com/Curious_Kurz/sta...77924029976576

Tell me again about how ICE is merely arresting convicted criminals and such.

Zero tolerance, baby! Doesn't matter if you're legal or not! Trump's personal Gestapo is working overtime to get rid of those undesirables and help Make America Great Again!

[aja_christopher]

"Former Fox News reporter says Russians colluded with Trump campaign through Roger Stone"

"In a series of exclusive interviews, former Fox News Channel chief political correspondent Carl Cameron explained to ThinkProgress how the Russians coordinated their cyber attack on the 2016 election with the Trump campaign.

“Trump confidant Roger Stone’s success was having the connections and creating the opportunities for [Russian intelligence officer] Guccifer2.0 and other Russian groups to really start taking advantage of social media and pounding these negative memes that Hillary’s a crook, et cetera,” Cameron explained to ThinkProgress’ Joe Romm — as related in the new book, How to Go Viral and Reach Millions.

Russian interference was decisive in electing Trump, as former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. told PBS in late May. “To me, it just exceeds logic and credulity that they didn’t affect the election, and it’s my belief they actually turned it,” Clapper said.

In his interviews with ThinkProgress, Cameron, who covered the Trump campaign for Fox News, connected the dots between the campaign, Russian intelligence, and the various Russian trolls around the world who were creating and viralizing memes and fake news on social media to help elect Trump.

Cameron explained that getting Trump elected had been a major goal of long-time Trump adviser and surrogate Roger Stone. Stone had encouraged Trump to run for years, and in 2000 he worked on Trump’s brief run for the Reform Party presidential nomination. He worked for Trump’s presidential campaign in 2015 before transitioning to a more informal advisory role. Cameron has followed this dynamic for decades. After working in New Hampshire radio and TV starting in 1985, Cameron was one of Fox News’ original hires. He has covered every presidential campaign for them starting in 1996.

In 2016, Cameron explained, Stone helped Guccifer2.0 — who worked for Russian intelligence — and other Russian-backed groups boost an anti-Clinton narrative online targeted at key groups. Stone direct-messaged with Guccifer2.0 and WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange on Twitter in August 2016.

Stone denies this was collusion, but as Cameron explains, “it’s important to know that Roger’s entire career was based on doing dirty tricks. He boasted about it from the time he was in college until today.”

Guccifer2.0, who claimed credit for giving WikiLeaks the DNC’s stolen emails, had been masquerading as a self-described “lone hacker.” Stone amplified that phony narrative in an August piece for Breitbart News, Steve Bannon’s viral pro-Trump fake news site. In a piece headlined “Dear Hillary: DNC Hack Solved, So Now Stop Blaming Russia,” Stone asserted: “I think I’ve got the real culprit. It doesn’t seem to be the Russians that hacked the DNC, but instead a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer2.0.”

But FBI investigators were able to track Guccifer2.0 online and determined he was an officer of Russian military intelligence, as the Daily Beast reported in 2018. Significantly, on August 4, 2016, Stone sent an email to former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg saying, “I dined with my new pal Julian Assange last nite.”

The email also suggested Assange had material that could help Trump overcome Clinton’s big lead in the polls. On the same day, Stone appeared on the conspiracy theory pro-Trump InfoWars radio show and explained Assange had “devastating” information about “Clinton Foundation scandals.”

Stone claimed that while the Clinton campaign argued there was no proof of those scandals, “I think Julian Assange has that proof and I think he is going to furnish it for the American people.” Stone also said he spoke with Trump a day earlier, on August 3.

On August 10, Stone told a local Florida GOP group, “I’ve actually communicated with Julian Assange.” CNN points out that on August 12, Stone said he knew Assange had some of Clinton’s emails, “and I believe he will expose the American people to this information in the next 90 days.” On August 14, Stone exchanged direct messages with Guccifer2.0. And on August 21, Stone tweeted, “It will soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel,” implying Stone had early inside knowledge that Podesta’s emails had been stolen — which they had been, also by the GRU.

Late last month, emails obtained by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Stone withheld documents from the House Intelligence Committee that showed he lied about his communications with radio host Randy Credico, who he viewed as a back channel to WikiLeaks during the campaign.

In mid-September, Stone emailed Credico, who had interviewed Assange weeks earlier, and asked him to “Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30 — particularly on August 20, 2011.” That contradicts Stone’s September 2017 House testimony that he “merely wanted confirmation” from Credico that Assange had information about Clinton.

Indeed, in one of his responses, Credico made clear he was a back channel to Assange’s team: “That batch probably coming out in the next drop… I can’t ask them favors every other day. I asked one of his lawyers… they have major legal headaches right now..relax.”

On October 1, Stone tweeted “Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.”

Within days, the Podesta emails were made public by WikiLeaks with perfect timing for Trump — one hour after Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood tape was made public on October 7. They became a key part of the narrative used to drown out the negative attention Trump’s remarks were getting with a deluge of social media alternative story lines.

And no one did more to help WikiLeaks go viral than Trump himself — as ThinkProgress pointed out in a piece headlined, “Trump mentioned WikiLeaks 164 times in last month of election, now claims it didn’t impact one voter.” Trump spoke about the WikiLeaks emails or their content over and over again from October 10 to election day in speeches, media appearances, and debates. He said: “Boy, that WikiLeaks has done a job on her, hasn’t it?”; and “We love WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks.”; and “The media is an extension of the Clinton campaign as WikiLeaks has proven, and they will not talk about WikiLeaks.”

Of course, Trump had publicly asked for Russian help with Clinton’s emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” Trump said on July 29. Hours later, he tweeted “If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!”

But Stone and Trump were hardly the only members of the campaign working to coordinate messaging with the Russians and their operatives. George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that the Russians had a lot of dirt on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails stolen to embarrass her — and that he had learned about this weeks earlier directly from Russians associated with the Kremlin.

On March 27, 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team filed court documents asserting that Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were communicating with someone (“Person A”) who the FBI said “has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.” The filing indicates one of Gates’ associates stated “that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian intelligence officer with the GRU..."

https://thinkprogress.org/former-fox...-595f6ddd09d8/

[GindyPosts]

Pence seems to have a knack for staying out trouble and out of news most of the time. But something is coming back from his past business ties that doesn't make him look so good.

Pence family gas stations put Indiana taxpapers on the hook for $20 million.




Attachment 68277

Greg and Mike Pence's father, Edward Pence, was one of the builders of a "Midwestern Empire" of 200 gas stations located mostly in Indiana along with a smaller number in Kentucky and Illinois. The company was known as Kiel Brothers Oil company and it was founded in 1960 by Carl Kiel. Edward Pence joined the company and became vice president in the 1970s and after his death, his son Greg Pence became President. In 2004 the business went sour and it went into bankruptcy. Then the shenanigans started:



As part of the bankruptcy settlement, most of the over 200 gas stations were sold off. Some sites were closed and then subsequently abandoned, including storage tank in Indianapolis. These close storage sites and gas stations are part of an expensive cleant up effort after the owners failed to take care of them.



Coincidentally, Greg Pence was hired by the Daniels administration deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Managment. It's like the fox guarding the hen house. He only lasted a few months in the position and went back to the private sector, once again in the petroleum business.

The remnants of the Pence family's former business is still haunting the residents though. In the Pence home town of Columbus for example:



When these underground storage tanks leak, usually its the company that is supposed to pay for the clean up costs. But the state of Indiana, that is to say the taxpayers in the State of Indiana, has been using public funds to clean up many of these sites around the state. The cap per site was set at $2 million until 2016 when Governor Mike Pence signed a law raising that to 2.5 million. The GOP has a super majority in the state congress so they get pretty much anything they want passed.

Oh, and near Pence's old home town of Columbus, many of the residents either buy bottled water, buy paper filters or simply take the risk of drinking the water without using an elaborate filtration system that was provided to a few businesses and residents in the area.

Yeah, but it's the environment, and we all know that's that annoying thing preventing us from making more low paying, temporary jobs because it's Good who is mad at us for allowing gay marriage causing hurricanes instead.

...

I feel dumber having to type what logic would constitute defending environmental negligence.

Abandoned gas stations are just part of the infastructure problem in the state. Indianapolis is undergoing a massive project that will finally stop dumping sewage in Fall Creek and the White River, and our roads are so awful that last week, a major pothole broke out downtown in a key intersection, causing the area to be blocked off until yesterday. Our system is decades beyond repair, and that's gonna cost us dearly.

But, hey; live for today, am I right?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

https://thinkprogress.org/former-fox...-595f6ddd09d8/

The length and breadth of that operation to derail Hillary Clinton's campaign is positively staggering, and who knows if the bottom will ever be reached in terms of the people involved in it. Now, it doesn't take Einstein to figure out Putin wanted Trump to win the election because he hated Clinton from her days as Secretary of State and the confrontations she had with him, but, what if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic candidate? Would Putin still have put that smear operation into motion and gone through all those machinations to battle Sanders, or left Trump to his own devices?

[aja_christopher]

The length and breadth of that operation to derail Hillary Clinton's campaign is positively staggering, and who knows if the bottom will ever be reached in terms of the people involved in it.

Not just people but entire platforms via both trolls and bots -- Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Yahoo... and I'm sure we've had a few here on these boards as well.

------
"As Cameron explained to ThinkProgress, a key goal of this coordination was to create opportunities for Russian intelligence and Russian trolls. The point was to viralize the anti-Clinton memes and narratives to suppress the vote for her.

It’s no secret the Trump campaign was running a major effort to suppress Clinton’s vote through negative messaging. In fact, nearly two weeks before the election, Bloomberg ran a lengthy article on the Trump campaign that quoted a “senior official” saying, “We have three major voter suppression operations under way.”

The article explains that “Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails… was designed to turn off Sanders supporters.”

The role of Cambridge Analytica

Cameron added one more key point involving Cambridge Analytica, the “big data” firm that the Trump campaign had hired to help micro-target voters with messages tailored and tested to persuade them.

The company had built a vast database of more than 10 million persuadable voters to target using its analysis of their demographic information and psychological profiles developed from Facebook and other data. But in March, a major New York Times investigation revealed that much of that data was obtained fraudulently..."

https://thinkprogress.org/former-fox...-595f6ddd09d8/

[Tami]

Trump-Putin summit underway, after Trump faults U.S. ‘stupidity’ for poor relations with Russia

HELSINKI — President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met here Monday for their first formal one-on-one summit, firmly shaking hands hours after Trump began the day by blaming his own country, rather than Russia, for the hostilities between their two nations.

Seated alongside Putin, Trump began by congratulating Russia on successfully hosting the World Cup soccer tournament, which concluded Sunday, then noted that the United States and Russia have “not been getting along too well” in recent years. He said he hoped that would change and that “I think we will end up having an extraordinary relationship.”

“Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing,” Trump said, as Putin slouched in his chair. Trump added that the “world wants to see us getting along.”

Trump said he and Putin have a “lot of good things to talk about, and things to talk about,” including trade, military issues, nuclear proliferation and China, in particular their “mutual friend,” Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The meeting began later than originally planned, after the perennially tardy Putin arrived in Helsinki well behind schedule, keeping Trump waiting.

[Putin’s Helsinki showmanship starts with his limo]

Although most U.S. officials argue that Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, use of a nerve agent on British soil and aggression in Ukraine and Syria have worsened relations, Trump instead faulted “U.S. foolishness and stupidity” in tweets Monday morning, as well as the expansive Justice Department investigation into Russia’s election intrusion.

“Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!” Trump tweeted Monday morning as he prepared for his meeting with Putin.

Trump — who has been reticent to criticize Putin and has said he admires the Russian autocrat’s leadership style and strongman image — began their meeting shortly after 2 p.m. (7 a.m. Eastern time) at the Presidential Palace, a neoclassical residence facing Helsinki’s heavily touristed Baltic Sea waterfront. They were originally scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. here (6 a.m. ET).

Oh boy......

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump-Putin summit underway, after Trump faults U.S. ‘stupidity’ for poor relations with Russia







Oh boy......

Christ on a crutch. Could Trump possibly give Putin better fellatio than that? I'm sure there's video out there from long before 2015 where Caramel Caligula praised U.S. leaders for being tough on Russia. Now he can't slurp the Ivans hard enough. Disgraceful.

[Tami]

What it’s like when Ice detains you: 'They own you. You're impotent'

That’s when they came. I don’t know where they had been hiding, but suddenly there were seven Ice officers, all in uniform. I don’t know how they found me, but they thought I was driving the car. One of them started knocking on the driver’s side window and asking Jennifer: Are you Floricel Liborio Ramos?

One officer, he spoke Spanish. He said: You have to get out of the car and answer some questions. Then he said: Sorry, but we’ll be taking you in, and the kids will be staying here. Is there anyone who can come and get them?

I had to phone my friend who was miles away. She asked me if I was allowed to wait for her to arrive – after all, the youngest kids were only 10 and 12. The officer said no, they had to take me right now. IHOP is always busy on a Sunday. There was a line of people waiting to eat and they were all standing there watching as the commotion happened. One officer told me I was going to go through deportation, that I couldn’t see a judge. I cried out: I have a life here! I have three kids who live here! They’re citizens!

They put me in handcuffs in front of my kids and put me in the back of a car. I looked at my children’s faces. All I felt was sadness.

I kept eye contact with them until the car started moving. Then I sat in the back, alone. The ride was silent.