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Bloomberg: Buying Up Airwaves; Why Isn’t he Running as a Republican?
Ryan Grim of The Intercept noted at end of January: “Just before jumping into the race, @MikeBloomberg gave $325,000 to the DNC [Democratic National Committee], on top of the gobs he spent on ads this month. Totally normal system.” And contrary to popular belief, Bloomberg is courting high-dollar donors. He’s just directing them to give money to the DNC, instead of his campaign. This was followed by the DNC changing its debate rules to help Bloomberg. He is thus expected to take part in the NBC organized debate on Wednesday.
A picket was formed outside ABC following the last debate, organized by Accuracy2020, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy, noting: “while the DNC and corporate-media-coproduced debates have excluded serious candidates at times, they have just changed their own rules to include billionaire Bloomberg. Last night, ABC injected him into the debate. Not the words of candidates of color who have been forced out of the debates — Tulsi Gabbard, Cory Booker or Julián Castro — but Bloomberg.” See report on The Real News: “Activists Demand Public Control of Presidential Debates.”
ROBERT McCHESNEY, rwmcchesney at gmail.com
McChesney is research professor at the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His books include Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America and Rich Media, Poor Democracy, The Political Economy of the Media. He is also co-founder of the media reform group Free Press.
McChesney just wrote the piece “If Bloomberg Wants to Buy an Election, He Should Run as a Republican Against Trump — Not Sabotage Democrats,” which states: “Bloomberg could spend $100 million every single day on his presidential campaign between now and election day in November … and he would still have a net worth greater than $30 billion. He would remain one of the 30 richest people in the world. …
“Bloomberg may well be successful. He has already made media corporations hugely profitable by flooding the airwaves with his expensive and slick advertising — he has shown something corporate America knows well: carpet-bombing advertisements works if you can afford it — and this is just the beginning. … He has a large chunk of the political class on his payroll, with many more to come. He will accordingly get terrific mainstream press coverage, the type any other candidate would like, and Bernie Sanders can’t even begin to imagine.”
McChesney added that Bloomberg “could have done everything possible to expose Trump and to locate and encourage anti-Trump Republicans. He could have supported primary challengers on the Republican side to defeat Trump’s allies and enablers. He could have built up a parallel party apparatus employing thousands of Republican operatives at big salaries. He probably would have lost, but you never know for sure until you try. Bloomberg could outspend Trump 20 to 1. He would have been able to force public attention to this issue, and keep it there. He might have made Trump completely crack up. At any rate, he would have had an enormous impact that might have helped to slow and begin to reverse the Trumpian drift.”
Blog Posts
Timeline: How DNC Manipulated 2016 Presidential Race
April 25, 2017: In class action lawsuit alleging DNC fraud, DNC attorney argues the party has the right to ignore primary voters: “The party has the freedom of association to decide how it’s gonna select its representatives to the convention and to the state party. Even to define what constitutes evenhandedness and impartiality really would already drag the court well into a political question and a question of how the party runs its own affairs. The party could have favored a candidate. I’ll put it that way... We could have voluntarily decided that, ‘Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.’” (See Newsweek: "Was the Election Rigged Against Bernie Sanders? Dnc Lawsuit Demands Repayment for Campaign Donors.")[more]
Francis A. Boyle in Defense of Kings Bay Plowshare 7 Activists
It was my conclusion in June 25, 2018, for the reasons set out at length in that document, that the existence, threat or use of any of the Trident thermonuclear weapons at Kings Bay is absolutely illegal and criminal under the laws of the United States and international law...I repeat my opinion that the charges against these Defendants should be dismissed. The Court must recognize that the possession, preparation for use, threat of use or use of Trident nuclear weapons at Kings Bay is illegal and criminal. The non-violent, symbolic disarmament actions by Defendants in this matter are in full compliance with the laws, treaties and principles of U.S. and international law and served a lawful purpose: preventing the ongoing commission of genocidal international and U.S. domestic crimes.[more]
Affidavit by Daniel Ellsberg for Plowshare Activists Being Allowed a Defense of Necessity
In 1971 I gave the U.S. Senate, the New York Times and the Washington Post copies of what have come to be known as The Pentagon Papers. I was arrested on twelve felony counts. My trial was dismissed because of government misconduct which figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon...These considerations bear on two other elements of the necessity defense, the "lack of legal alternatives" and the "imminence" of the harms to be averted. Again, I speak from my own experience, but not only mine, in saying that it is the perceived insufficiency of other means, by themselves not their unavailability or irrelevance that impels one to add, in some circumstances, tactics that risk arrest to a program of social action. And the urgency of such means reflects the prolonged time required to mobilize political efforts perhaps measured in months or years to avert deaths and injuries that will not be averted at all without campaigns that include these dramatic elements.[more]A Long List of Democratic Candidates Requires a Large Catalog of Their Funders
By Sam Haut: As the first debates for the Democratic primary begin, and the list of candidates has grown to 24, it can be difficult to contextualize where each candidate has received funding from over the course of their time in office. What follows is a list of the Democratic candidates and the top sources for how much money they’ve made and where those top sources come from.[more]News Items
Scrutinizing Mueller and Russiagate
Following being on a pair of accuracy.org news releases, FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and journalist Aaron Maté appeared on several programs just after Robert Mueller's long-anticipated testimony on Capitol Hill. See Rowley on The Real News, where, among other things, she gives critical background on Mueller. And see Maté on the Jimmy Dore Show and CGTN's "The Heat"scrutinizing much of the conventional wisdom on Russiagate.[more]Manuel Pérez-Rocha in “New York Times”
After appearing in a recent IPA news release, Manuel Pérez-Rocha, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, was quoted in the article "Trump and Mexico’s New Leader, Both Headstrong, Begin With a ‘Good Conversation’."[more]Activist Kathy Kelly talks Afghanistan on Democracy Now!
After appearing on an IPA press release, Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was interviewed by Democracy Now! today to discuss the significance surrounding Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's announcement of an unconditional ceasefire with the Taliban.[more]ExposeFacts Panel Discussion on War, Journalism and Whistleblowers on “Flashpoints”
Thomas Drake, Katharine Gun, and other key 21st century whistle blowers featured in a special panel discussion sponsored last week by the Institute for Public Accuracy, on the radio program "Flashpoints," 15 years after Katherine Gun blew the whistle on U.S. dirty tricks to try influence the UN on the invasion of Iraq.[more]Pat Elder on JROTC and the NRA in U.S. Schools on Democracy Now!
After appearing on an IPA news release, Pat Elder, author of Military Recruiting in the United States and director of National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, @studentprivacy (studentprivacy.org) was interviewed this morning on Democracy Now! He spoke about the role of JROTC and the NRA in U.S. Schools, including the one that trained the Parkland Shooter, Nikolas Cruz.[more]From the NYT: Robert Parry, Investigative Reporter and Founder of ConsortiumNews, Dies at 68
Robert Parry, a tenacious investigative reporter and author who exposed details of the Reagan administration’s secret support for Nicaraguan rebels in the 1980s, died on Saturday in Arlington, Va. He was 68.[more]
