Tag: democrats

Democrats Campaigning to Keep Green Party off the Ballot in Key Swing States

The 2020 presidential election is already underway — or, at least, it should be. Because of an ongoing legal battle, none of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties will be sending out mail-in ballots today like they were originally scheduled to. Democrats are attempting to remove Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins from the ballot because of an alleged procedural mistake his running mate Angela Walker made when informing election authorities about a change in her South Carolina address. A similar battle is raging between the two parties in Wisconsin, another key battleground state.

That such a minor procedural error could, in effect, disbar an entire political party from running might be news to many Americans. It is also a charge the Green Party strenuously denies. “I filed my address change properly to the Wisconsin Elections Commission as they instructed me to when our campaign informed them of my address change,” Walker said in a press release this morning,

The Democrat chairing the hearing concerning Democratic objections to my filing prevented that documentation from being presented. They had that information in hand. The Democratic commissioners could have resolved the problem last month at the hearing. Instead, they are playing politics with Wisconsin voters. They could end this now by withdrawing their phony objections. The Democratic commissioners are as guilty as the Republican justices in this hold-up of absentee ballots.”

“The court should have made a decision by now. We want a decision today to put us on the ballot. We want the absentee ballot process to proceed without further delay,” Hawkins added.

Why the Democrats might benefit from the removal of the Greens is clear. With many predicting a close election, third party votes could prove crucial in preventing one of the two major parties from getting over the line. One Emerson poll found that 51 percent of Bernie Sanders primary voters were at least considering opting for a third party come November. Hawkins and Walker have been pitching hard to disenchanted leftists, reminding voters that they embrace a Green New Deal, while Biden has rejected it.

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Heiress to Predatory Mortgage Empire to Spend $200 Million for Dems

The heiress to the subprime mortgage empire that preyed on minorities on its way to earning billions of dollars is now spending $200 million to boost liberal groups in battleground states, according to the New York Times.

Susan Sandler, the daughter of billionaire banking giants Herb and Marion Sandler, announced Monday that she is investing $200 million in “racial justice groups” as part of an effort to build a liberal infrastructure in states “undergoing rapid demographic change” such as Texas, Florida, and Georgia. The move from Sandler, a longtime donor to Democratic candidates and groups, is the start of a transition away from the short-term world of supporting campaigns to a long-term effort at building power, according to the Times.

The source of Sandler’s cash injection is her parents’ subprime mortgage company, Golden West Financial Corp., which was sold to Wachovia Bank in 2006 for a reported $25 billion. The couple built its fortune by offering millions of adjustable-rate mortgage loans to individuals, many of whom couldn’t afford them and eventually defaulted on their homes.

While the Sandlers came away with billions of dollars, many blame the loans they offered for causing the burst of the U.S. housing bubble and resulting financial crisis of 2007. The defaulted loans cost Wachovia billions of dollars, forcing it to merge with Wells Fargo, which eventually agreed to pay a $50 million settlement to borrowers who were misled by the Sandlers.

The Times, which covered the Sandlers’ predatory loan practices both in 2008 after the housing bust and last year in Herb Sandler’s obituary, made no mention of the source of Susan Sandler’s wealth. The 2008 Times article referred to the loans created by the Sandlers as the “Typhoid Mary” of the financial crisis.

The Times did not respond to a request for comment.

Though Sandler’s money is characterized in the Times as an investment in “racial justice groups,” the money will largely flow to political groups working to elect Democrats across the country. The listed recipients of the $200 million include the Texas Organizing Project, New Virginia Majority, New Florida Majority, and New Georgia Project.

Sandler’s political spending continues the tradition set by her parents, who used the billions of dollars they earned through offering risky loans to vulnerable populations to fund liberal giants such as Human Rights Watch and the Center for American Progress.

Documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon in 2016 revealed that the Sandler Foundation directed at least $24.4 million to the Center for American Progress alone. Wikileaks emails released in 2016 showed that the liberal nonprofit worked to push back against criticism of the Sandlers’ loan business and its role in causing the financial collapse.

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Atlantic Op-ed: Democrats Will Riot If They Lose, Therefore Republicans Should Let Joe Biden Win

The Atlantic has published an op-ed that argues that “law-and-order” Republicans should vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden because Democrats will riot if he loses, refusing to accept the results if President Donald Trump wins re-election.

In an essay titled, “The Democrats May Not Be Able to Concede,” Shadi Hamid writes:

A loss by Joe Biden under these circumstances is the worst case not because Trump will destroy America (he can’t), but because it is the outcome most likely to undermine faith in democracy, resulting in more of the social unrest and street battles that cities including Portland, Oregon, and Seattle have seen in recent months. For this reason, strictly law-and-order Republicans who have responded in dismay to scenes of rioting and looting have an interest in Biden winning—even if they could never bring themselves to vote for him.

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A bug in Joe Biden’s campaign app gave anyone access to millions of voter files

A privacy bug in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s  official campaign app allowed anyone to look up sensitive voter information on millions of Americans, a security researcher has found.

The campaign app, Vote Joe, allows Biden supporters to encourage friends and family members to vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election by uploading their phone’s contact lists to see if their friends and family members are registered to vote. The app uploads and matches the user’s contacts with voter data supplied from TargetSmart, a political marketing firm that claims to have files on more than 191 million Americans.

When a match is found, the app displays the voter’s name, age and birthday, and which recent election they voted in. This, the app says, helps users “find people you know and encourage them to get involved.”

While much of this data can be already public, the bug made it easy for anyone to access any voter’s information.

The App Analyst, a mobile expert who detailed his findings on his eponymous blog, found that he could trick the app into pulling in anyone’s information by creating a contact on his phone with the voter’s name.

Worse, he told TechCrunch, the app pulls in a lot more data than it actually displays. By intercepting the data that flows in and out of the device, he saw far more detailed and private information, including the voter’s home address, date of birth, gender, ethnicity and political party affiliation, such as Republican or Democrat.

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Stop crying foul over fascism

The former Vice-President is not exactly the type you would imagine clad in all-black combat-style street apparel, hurling commercial-grade fireworks at police officers. Rather, he drafted the infamous 1994 omnibus crime bill in concert with the National Association of Police Organizations. He is even known to venerate the arcane institutionalist ethos of the US Senate — whereas to insurrectionary anarchists, such institutions could only be tools of oppression.

But the Trump Era has an odd way of bringing about unexpected ideological convergences. In the announcement video that formally kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden paid homage to what he called the “courageous group of Americans” who descended upon Charlottesville, VA in August 2017 to confront an assembly of Right-wing rally-goers. Among that “courageous group” were Left-wing activist factions broadly classified under the banner of “antifa”.

For Biden, what transpired in Charlottesville was a “defining moment,” and formed the basis for his decision to launch a third campaign for the presidency at age 76. While Biden did herald generic American idealism in that announcement video — which would be anathema to most insurrectionary anarchists — in the gravity he assigned to the Charlottesville episode, he also affirmed a core tenet of the “antifa” worldview: the notion that a uniquely pressing fascistic threat has gripped the country, and crushing this threat is a matter of unparalleled world-historic urgency.

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Maine Dem Sara Gideon Killed Child Abuse Bill

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Sara Gideon killed an anti-child abuse bill backed by health officials just days after a Democratic legislator resigned for allegedly having sexual relationships with high school girls.

Gideon, who has served as speaker of the Maine House of Representatives since 2016, mobilized her caucus to vote against legislation that would have attached criminal penalties to those who knowingly fail to report child abuse. Just 10 days before the Aug. 30, 2018, vote, Democratic state legislator Dillon Bates resigned after allegations surfaced that he had sex with multiple high school students that he taught. Former Maine legislator Deborah Sanderson said it was the height of hypocrisy for Gideon to kill child abuse legislation at a time when she also had to contend with an alleged child sex offender in her caucus.

“You can’t say you care about children and … at the same time, not be willing to put in stricter and stronger regulations for someone who knowingly or intentionally does not report child abuse,” Sanderson said. “Not only are the people who don’t report culpable, but those who wouldn’t pass that legislation are culpable.”

Gideon’s decision to rally votes against the mandated reporting law put Maine out of step with the rest of the country. More than 40 states currently consider it either a felony or a misdemeanor for mandated reporters to not report suspected abuse, according to a federal government report. Maine law currently imposes only a civil penalty for mandated reporters—a class of people which includes teachers, doctors, and other professionals who regularly interact with kids—that do not report child abuse. The lack of criminal consequences motivated some reporters to shirk their responsibilities, according to a testimony by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.

“It is the Department’s position that adding consequences for failing to report child abuse and neglect will remind mandated reporters of the gravity and importance of this duty and therefore increase the safety of the children in Maine,” said Bethany Hamm, the then-acting Maine HHS commissioner.

Gideon did not respond to request for comment.

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