By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 28, 2018 ~ Apparently, somebody on the Republican staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee forgot to give Rachel Mitchell the memo advising her that she was supposed to lob softball questions at Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee now accused by two separate women of sexual assault and by a third of aiding and abetting the gang rape of women during his teen years. Rachel Mitchell is the long-tenured sex crimes prosecutor from Maricopa County, Arizona who was hired by the Republican majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee to avoid the optics of 11 male Republicans questioning Dr. Christine Blasey Ford yesterday over the intimate details of her sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh. The Republicans allowed Mitchell to conduct all questioning of Ford, who testified first, on behalf of Republicans, and to proceed with questioning Kavanaugh in the afternoon session that followed. The … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 27, 2018 ~ The front groups that have been funded for decades by billionaires Charles and David Koch, majority owners of the fossil fuels conglomerate, Koch Industries, are determined to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court because he has demonstrated a willingness to write decisions favorable to gutting regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. Whether Kavanaugh has a history of sexual assaults is irrelevant to that agenda. As recently as last evening, a dark money group that keeps its donors a secret from the American people, the Judicial Crisis Network, continued running its multi-million dollar ad campaign on television in support of Kavanaugh. This week, its Chief Counsel, Carrie Severino, has made the rounds on cable news shows calling the women’s allegations a smear campaign. The Judicial Crisis Network has been running these ads since July and says it is prepared to spend … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 26, 2018 ~ The dark money stench now surrounding the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination  bears a striking resemblance to what happened in the backdoor effort to land Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court in 1991. After credible testimony from Anita Hill over egregious sexual harassment by the nominee, Thomas was confirmed in a 52 to 48 vote by the Senate on October 15, 1991. That was the narrowest margin for a Supreme Court nominee in more than a century. In 2011 it emerged that Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, had received at least $1,051,214 in compensation from the Heritage Foundation from 1999 to 2007 while Thomas sat as a Supreme Court justice. Despite his legal requirement to report that income and its source, he had failed to do either and had to amend years of his financial disclosure reports. The Heritage … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 25, 2018 ~  Last evening we got a sneak peek at what all of that coaching of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at the White House over the past two months has done for his demeanor under fire. He’s now effectively been turned into a cross between Fred Rogers, the beloved host of the children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Ward Cleaver, the wholesome dad in the 1950s sitcom, Leave It To Beaver. In an interview last evening with Fox News host Martha MacCallum, Kavanaugh sat next to his wife Ashley and did everything just short of singing the refrain “look at me I’m Sandra Dee, lousy with virginity.” Kavanaugh told MacCallum that he was a virgin throughout his high school years and “many years after.” What he focused on at his elite private high school known as Georgetown Preparatory in North Bethesda, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 24, 2018 ~ Yesterday, two of the most trusted reporters in America, Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, reported that Senate Democrats are investigating a second sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The second charge comes from a woman who attended Yale University when Kavanaugh was a freshman there in the 1983-84 school year. The women, Deborah Ramirez, told the reporters that “she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away.” Like Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the first woman to accuse Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when she was 15 and he was 17, Ramirez is also calling for the FBI to investigate the incident. Dr. Ford, a professor in clinical psychology in California, is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 21, 2018 ~ Wall Street On Parade has repeatedly called attention to the fact that President Donald Trump, who ran on a fiercely populist platform of helping the little guy, infused his administration from the get-go with lawyers and executives connected to the fossil fuels conglomerate, Koch Industries, and/or front groups funded by its two majority owners, billionaires Charles and David Koch. Now a step-by-step guide has been published on how to defeat the new-age robber barons, the corporate structure that made them billionaires while leaving workers with crumbs, and the enshrined political system that marches to the crack of their unaccountable whip. Released by Cambridge University Press on August 31, the book is titled “A Manifesto for Social Progress: Ideas for a Better Society,” by Marc Fleurbaey, Professor in Economics and Humanistic Studies at Princeton University and a prolific social justice author. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 20, 2018 ~ Michael Bloomberg served three terms as New York City’s Mayor from January 2002 to January 2014. In 2009, the New York Times reported that Bloomberg had spent “$261 million of his own money” in order to get elected to those three terms as Mayor. When Bloomberg took office, there was a two-term limit in place which had been voted on in public referendums in 1993 and 1996. But two years before Bloomberg’s second four-year term ended, he asked the City Council to repeal the two-term limit to allow him to serve a third term. Because voters had already expressed their will in a public referendum twice, numerous members of the City Council felt it would be unethical for them to repeal that decision and that the matter should be determined by another voter referendum. But the City Council went forward … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 19, 2018 ~ Last Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a 372-word press release that carried the title SEC Charges Citigroup for Dark Pool Misrepresentations. Buried within that press release was a brief sentence casually mentioning that a division of Citigroup had “failed to register as a national securities exchange.” Since the thrust of the SEC’s press release was that the big travesty Citigroup had committed was to allow high frequency traders to operate within one of its Dark Pools while lying to its customers about that, this became the sole focus in multiple news articles on the matter. See here and here. The SEC also buried the information that Citigroup was running an illegal stock exchange within its cease-and-desist order and settlement document. In fact, what the SEC actually did was to dump two vastly different violations of security law – … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 18, 2018 ~ Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who effectively conducted himself as Clarence Thomas’s attorney instead of as an impartial member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Anita Hill’s testimony on October 11, 1991, is still using the strategy of “nut-shaming” women who accuse men of sexual misconduct. Yesterday, Hatch, still a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that holds confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees, told reporters that Christine Blasey Ford, who has credibly accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, is “mixed up.” Adding to the outrage over Hatch’s statement is the fact that he made his “mixed up” remark about Ford before he heard her testimony, which is scheduled to take place before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, with Kavanaugh also invited to testify. In a letter that has been published by CNN, Ford, a research … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 17, 2018 ~ As thousands of residents of North and South Carolina remain in shelters in the aftermath of catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Florence, zoning and planning boards across America are signing off on the plans of developers to build new communities in areas with inadequate water drainage and runoff facilities. At the same time, large expanses of lush native vegetation with the ability to absorb heavy rains are being replaced with concrete sidewalks and driveways, exacerbating the flooding problem. Government safeguards against over-development are being rolled back or simply ignored in towns and cities across the country by officials too cozy with moneyed developers who finance the government officials’ political campaigns. Last Thursday, 8600 customers of Columbia Gas in the towns of Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover, Massachusetts were ordered from their homes as more than 60 area homes erupted in flames and … Continue reading →