 30 August 18
Garrison Keillor | A Man Watching His Own Heartbeat
 Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website Keillor writes: "I lay on a couch at a clinic last week, watching my echocardiogram on a screen, and made a firm resolution, the tenth or twelfth in the past couple years, to buckle down and tend to business, fight off distraction and focus on the immediate task, walk briskly half an hour a day, eat green leafy vegetables, drink more liquids, and finish the projects I've been working on for years. Seeing your heartbeat is a profound moment." READ MORE  Former Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver (foreground left) stands next to defense attorney Miles Brissette (right) after being sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison for the murder of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards. (photo: Rose Baca/AP)
Texas Officer Who Fatally Shot Black Teen Is Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison
Scott Neuman, NPR Neuman writes: "A jury in Texas sentenced former police officer Roy Oliver to 15 years in prison for the murder last year of an unarmed black teenager." READ MORE  Teachers across Washington state are negotiating higher wages as a result of additional funding from the state because of the McCleary fix. (photo: Molly Solomon/OPB)
Thousands of Teachers in Washington State Strike Over Salaries
Gina Cherelus, Reuters Cherelus writes: "Nearly 80,000 students in Washington state were unable to attend the first day of school this week as thousands of teachers went on strike seeking higher salaries, teacher's unions said." READ MORE  Detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. (photo: Getty)
Trump Admin Considering Sending Captured ISIS Fighters to Guantanamo Bay
Courtney Kube, Dan De Luce and Josh Lederman, NBC News Excerpt: "The Trump administration is weighing a plan to send hundreds of captured ISIS fighters to an Iraqi prison after other countries refused to take them, and to send several of the highest-value fighters to the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, according to five U.S. officials and two European diplomats." READ MORE  Mother Isamar holds her baby Saniel at their home under reconstruction following Hurricane Maria, December 23, 2017, in San Isidro, Puerto Rico. Their neighborhood remained without electricity nearly three months after Hurricane Maria made landfall. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty)
Trump Responds to New Puerto Rico Death Toll: 'I Think We Did a Fantastic Job'
Zack Ford, ThinkProgress Ford writes: "During a press gaggle Wednesday, President Trump bragged that the federal government had done a 'fantastic job' with recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria last year." READ MORE  Nurses at an Iranian hospital. (photo: Fars News)
Iran Doctors: US Sanctions Endangering Patients' Lives
Zein Basravi, Al Jazeera Basravi writes: "Doctors in Iran say US sanctions are endangering lives." READ MORE  The emissions cuts promised by cities and businesses fall short of enabling countries to avoid breaching agreed thresholds for dangerous warming. (photo: Jim Cole/AP)
Climate Change: Local Efforts Won't Be Enough to Undo Trump's Inaction, Study Says
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK Milman writes: "Individual cities, regions and businesses across the globe are banding together determinedly to confront climate change - but their emissions reductions are relatively small and don't fully compensate for a recalcitrant US under the Trump administration, a new study has found." READ MORE |
Friday, August 31, 2018
Garrison Keillor | A Man Watching His Own Heartbeat
FOCUS: Michael Cohen, Lanny Davis and the Russian Mafia
DEAR RUSSIAN TROLLS:
YOU KNOW THIS ALREADY...AMERICANS DON'T.
AND THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW THEIR ECONOMY WAS RAPED AND WHY THEY LIVE IN POVERTY.
ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS IMPRISON AND KILL MAGNITSKY TO SILENCE THE INFORMATION.
THERE ARE ADVANTAGES FOR THE PEOPLE TO HAVE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.
30 August 18
EXCERPT:
Davis’ client roster puts him in the same league as Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman who also made a living representing dictators and Ukrainian oligarchs. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that Manafort, who was convicted last week on eight counts, also did business with Firtash. In 2008, while Manafort was working in Ukraine for the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, Firtash’s company Group DF agreed to commit $112 million to Manafort’s vision for “Bulgari Tower,” a $1.5 billion skyscraper project in midtown Manhattan on the corner of Park Avenue and 56th Street, said to be one of the most valuable development sites in North America. The tower deal later collapsed, but not before Firtash wired in a $25 million deposit from Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG, an Austrian bank that U.S. officials believed served as a Mogilevich front. Andrey Kozlov, a deputy chairman of the Russian central bank, was gunned down in 2006 after he blew the whistle on large amounts of rubles that were being laundered through Raiffeisen. (Raiffeisen also provided a $310 million construction loan to finance Trump’s tower in Toronto.) In a federal lawsuit filed in New York, Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine, claimed that Firtash was laundering proceeds from sales of natural gas through Manhattan real estate.
Hettena writes: "Something most people don't know about Michael Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, is that he's also currently representing a Ukrainian oligarch whose name is often linked to one of the most powerful mobsters in the world."
READ MORE
FOCUS: Charles Pierce | This Is Fascism, Pure and Simple
 30 August 18
FOCUS: Charles Pierce | This Is Fascism, Pure and Simple
 Charles Pierce, Esquire Pierce writes: "This is unprecedented. This is unAmerican in the extreme. This is the kind of thing out of which blood-and-soil laws are drawn." READ MORE |
Thursday, August 30, 2018
PLYMOUTH COUNTY DA TIM CRUZ'S FAILURES: Plymouth DA waited on office harassment case
Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz spoke to the media in December 2014. To his right stood Frank J. Middleton Jr.
Plymouth DA waited on office harassment case
By Michael Rezendes
GLOBE STAFF
AUGUST 19, 2016
Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz waited six months to act on an allegation that his top prosecutor groped a female subordinate during a 2014 conference at the Seaport Hotel, according to documents filed in a federal lawsuit.
Even then, the documents say, Cruz admitted he did not read the report of an outside investigator he hired to review the matter, who found that a second employee had made a similar allegation against the same prosecutor.
By the time Cruz obtained the resignation of the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Frank J. Middleton Jr , in April 2015, nearly a year had passed since Cruz learned of the first sexual misconduct allegation.
Cruz, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in Plymouth County, said in sworn testimony that his secretary told him about the first episode a week or two after the event at which it allegedly occurred — a conference sponsored by the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association. A female employee had complained to her supervisors that Cruz’s chief deputy at the time, Middleton, had grabbed her backside, Cruz’s secretary told him.
Cruz said during pretrial testimony in a civil lawsuit that his secretary also told him “that the alleged victim had no interest in doing anything, did not want to go forward, did not want to do anything with it.”
Cruz took no immediate action, but almost a year later — around the time the second alleged incident came to his attention — Cruz asked Middleton to step down, according to the documents.
This week, Cruz declined to comment, saying that the judge in the lawsuit, a wrongful termination claim filed by one of Cruz’s former prosecutors, prohibits him from speaking publicly about the matter.
“The federal court orders and rulings currently in place that bar the dissemination of materials in this ongoing civil case are in place to protect the alleged victims involved and therefore prevent our office from commenting without violating the law,” Cruz said in a statement. “Mr. Middleton has resigned from the office and we do not comment on personnel matters.”
Middleton also declined to comment.
Guidelines of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination say that employers “should always investigate a complaint of sexual harassment as soon as practicable, even if an employee asks that it not investigate his or her claim.”
The guidelines were put in place to encourage employers to eradicate harassing behavior as quickly as possible, with the understanding that some victims may not want to pursue a case for fear of being branded as troublemakers or losing their jobs.
In the court documents, Cruz said he attended the conference during which the alleged incidents occurred and that, at one point, he could see that Middleton was intoxicated. But Cruz could not explain why he waited six months before asking Middleton, his right-hand man, about the alleged sexual misconduct.
“I don’t remember exactly why it went that way,” Cruz said. When he eventually did raise the issue with Middleton, Cruz said, he did so “because I felt it was something that needed to be addressed.”
Cruz testified that, when he asked Middleton about the first allegation, Middleton took a couple of days before returning to his office to deny it.
At about that time, Cruz hired an outside attorney, Walter Sullivan, to look into the alleged incident and the investigator learned of the second allegation against Cruz’s top prosecutor. Sullivan apparently interviewed both alleged victims.
Cruz said Sullivan told him about the second allegation in a telephone call in March of 2015, but acknowledged that he never read Sullivan’s written review.
“I haven’t read the report,” Cruz said. “It’s still in the envelope.”
Sexual assault and sexual harassment in the workplace are prohibited by law and by Cruz’s own office regulations. “It is illegal and against the policies of this office for any employee to sexually harass another employee,” according to the regulations, a copy of which was filed in connection with the federal lawsuit.
In the regulations, sexual harassment includes “creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment,” as well as “making sexual advances or requests for sexual favors as a condition of the harassed employee’s retention in employment.”
When Middleton resigned, he said leaving the office was “a tough decision but the right one for me and my family,” while Cruz, in a terse e-mail to staff, simply thanked his top deputy for “over 23 years of public service to the citizens of Plymouth County.”
Whether Middleton’s resignation was directly related to the misconduct allegations is unclear. And in his pretrial testimony, Cruz said Middleton was never disciplined for sexual misconduct.
The sexual misconduct allegations surfaced publicly as part of a federal wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former Plymouth County prosecutor John E. Bradley Jr., against Cruz, Middleton, and another top manager in the office who is still working for Cruz.
Bradley, now a homicide prosecutor in Worcester County, says he was wrongly fired in 2012 for refusing to contribute to Cruz’s 2010 reelection campaign, and for objecting to what he described as Cruz’s reckless use of violent offenders as confidential informants during criminal investigations.
Cruz, Middleton, and the third official, Michael Horan, have denied Bradley’s accusations and have asked Federal District Judge Indira Talwani to dismiss the case.
Middleton’s alleged sexual misconduct became an issue in the lawsuit when Bradley’s lawyers argued that he was fired even though he had not violated any office policy. By contrast, they said, Cruz allowed Middleton to continue working for nearly a year after he allegedly violated state law and Cruz’s own regulations prohibiting sexual misconduct.
The records revealing the sexual misconduct allegations were filed in May and have been available to the public via the US District Court’s website ever since. But earlier this week, after the Globe notified Cruz and Middleton that it had reviewed the documents, Talwani ordered them sealed.
Attorneys for both Cruz and Bradley have urged the Globe not to publish information from the sealed documents, but Globe editors and lawyers determined that the news organization obtained the records legally. They also concluded that sexual misconduct allegations — and the way they are handled — against senior government officials are of compelling public interest.
“We have a responsibility to hold public officials accountable for their actions or, as the case may be, their inaction,” said Globe editor Brian McGrory.
The sexual misconduct allegations are part of a history of turmoil in Cruz’s office in which he has battled with Bradley and other prosecutors over a variety of issues. Cruz charges that, after Bradley was fired for being disrespectful, Bradley entered Cruz’s office without permission and copied memos he believed were damaging to him.
“There was reason to believe that if I did file suit, that these documents would be useful to me,” Bradley explained.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/08/18/plymouth-district-attorney-waited-months-act-sexual-misconduct-allegations-against-top-deputy/0TrBIm3gCY1gwYBAMbTRLO/story.html
Staggering Number of Americans Can't Meet Basic Needs While Trump Brags About the Economy
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FOCUS | Tuesday's Big Winner: Bernie Sanders
29 August 18
FOCUS | Tuesday's Big Winner: Bernie Sanders
David Siders, Politico
Siders writes: "When Andrew Gillum was lagging in third or fourth place in most public opinion polls and almost no one thought he could win, Bernie Sanders was there."
READ MORE
David Siders, Politico
Siders writes: "When Andrew Gillum was lagging in third or fourth place in most public opinion polls and almost no one thought he could win, Bernie Sanders was there."
READ MORE
FOCUS: White House Counsel Don McGahn to Resign, Trump Confirms
 29 August 18
FOCUS: White House Counsel Don McGahn to Resign, Trump Confirms
 Tom McCarthy and Jon Swaine, Guardian UK Excerpt: "President says McGahn, who cooperated with Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, will depart in autumn." READ MORE |