Ponderable

An article from one of the best!

Gregory Cheadle, the black man President Donald Trump once described at a rally as “my African American,” is fed up.

After two years of frustration with the president’s rhetoric on race and the lack of diversity in the administration, Cheadle told PBS NewsHour he has decided to leave the Republican party and run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representative as an independent in 2020.

www.pbs.org

Why the man Trump once called 'my African American' is leaving the GOP

After two years of frustration with the president’s rhetoric on race and the lack of diversity in the administration, Gregory Cheadle told PBS NewsHour he has decided to leave the Republican party and run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representative as an independent in 2020.
www.pbs.org www.pbs.org
 
Right wing cop killers...they're in the protests...

Suspect held in officer killings is tied to far right
An Air Force sergeant charged in 2 Bay Area shootings is linked to ‘boogaloo’ movement.
By Maura Dolan, Richard Winton and Anita Chabria
OAKLAND — When sheriff’s deputies searched a white van on June 6 in a wooded hamlet in Santa Cruz County, they found ammunition, firearms, bomb-making equipment — and a ballistic vest with a curious patch.
The patch contained an igloo and Hawaiian-style print, markings associated with a growing, extremist, anti-government movement aimed at fomenting unrest and civil war.
On Tuesday, federal law enforcement officials announced that they were charging Air Force Sgt. Steven Carrillo, 32, the alleged owner of that vest, and suspected accomplice Robert A. Justus Jr., 30, of Millbrae in the May 29 shooting death of a federal security officer in Oakland.
Officials said Carrillo, who also faces state charges in the June 6 killing of a Santa Cruz sheriff’s deputy, was a follower of the “boogaloo” movement, which a federal complaint said is not a fixed group but includes people who identify themselves as militia and target perceived government tyranny.
Justus’ social media posts also show support for boogaloo memes. One post reviewed by The Times names people who have been killed by law enforcement, including Oscar Grant, shot by transit police at Oakland’s Fruitvale station in 2009, and Vicki Weaver, wife of white supremacist Randy Weaver, killed by an FBI sniper during the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege in Idaho.
The federal government charged Carrillo with killing federal security officer David Patrick Underwood, 53, a resident of the small East Bay city of Pinole, and the attempted murder of Underwood’s partner. The charges qualify for the death penalty, but officials said no decision has yet been made on whether to seek it. Justus is charged with aiding Carrillo in the killing and attempted killing.
The security officers were shot while guarding a federal building in downtown Oakland during a protest over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The pair used the protest as a cover for their plans to attack law enforcement, said FBI Special Agent In Charge Jack Bennett.
“There is no evidence that these men had any intention to join the demonstration in Oakland,” Bennett said at a Tuesday news conference. “They came to Oakland to kill cops.”
Federal officials said Carrillo fired the shots and Justus drove him around in a white van. Surveilance video showed that Carrillo slid open the van’s side door to fire his weapon, officials said, and Justus acted at the getaway driver.
The two men were linked through cellphone records, officials said. Carrillo used a privately made, unmarked machine gun — a so-called ghost gun — with a silencer to kill Underwood, Bennett said. The federal complaint against Carrillo said law enforcement found similarities in fired cartridge cases at the shootings in both Oakland and Santa Cruz.
The Oakland killing sparked an eight-day manhunt that led to Carrillo’s arrest after someone reported a white van containing firearms and bomb-making equipment in the small, mountainous Santa Cruz County community of Ben Lomond.
Evidence in the van led authorities to Carrillo’s Ben Lomond home. There, in the early afternoon, Carrillo allegedly opened fire on the deputies, killing Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller and injuring another deputy. An explosion rocked the property, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Carrillo was shot during the gunfire, ran away and then hijacked a car on a nearby highway, according to the federal complaint against him. When he was arrested, he was bleeding from his hip.
Carrillo apparently used his own blood to write messages on the hood of the hijacked car, the complaint said. It identified the writing as “BOOG,” “I Became Unreasonable,” and “Stop the Duopoly.”
He was part of an elite Air Force security unit at Travis Air Force Base in the East Bay city of Fairfield. He served as a team leader trained to protect aircraft at airstrips from insurgents and terrorists.
Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, said Carrillo’s posts on social media, including Facebook, became increasingly disturbing in the days before the Oakland shooting.
Levin said the center’s research shows there have been 27 homicides connected to far-right extremists in the U.S. since 2019. That number doesn’t include the most recent Bay Area killings. The FBI arrested three devotees of the boogaloo movement in Nevada recently, and they were charged with inciting violence with the use of Molotov cocktails at protests.
Levin said boogaloo followers include ultra-libertarians and white supremacists, but they all share a belief in a coming second civil war.
“They are 2nd Amendment insurrectionists,” Levin said. “The boogaloo boys believe in armed insurrection and include attacks on the police.”
Other experts on extremists said the boogaloo movement was still evolving, and its philosophy varied depending on geography and the underlying beliefs of individual members.
While followers all want a second civil war to reset American society, their desired new society varies from embracing racism to one focused on armed libertarianism, the experts said.
Many followers discovered the movement on internet chat sites. It then migrated to more mainstream social media, including Facebook and TikTok, where young adherents post videos of themselves dancing in their trademark Hawaiian shirts.
Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which tracks far-right extremist activity, said alt-right groups, including the boogaloo movement, increased their online presence dramatically when governments ordered shutdowns to protect people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adherents attended reopen protests and later shifted to the Floyd demonstrations, he said.
Following President Trump’s call for “MAGA night” on Twitter after protesters demonstrated in front of the White House, Burghart said, he saw an uptick in alt-right participation in Floyd rallies.
“We only saw a handful of instances” before that, Burghart said. “We saw more boogaloo boys showing up at rallies with their Hawaiian shirts.”
Members of the New Mexico Civil Guard militia group, one of whom shot a protester recently over the removal of a statue, also have ties to the boogaloo movement, he said.
“A number of boogaloo boys started in different elements of the far right and have been drawn to the more confrontational stance of the boogaloo over time,” Burghart said.
Justus was under surveillance when he and his parents entered the federal building in San Francisco on June 11, nearly a week after Carrillo’s arrest, and asked to speak to an FBI agent. His mother said they wanted to tell the FBI about the white van used in the Oakland killing.
Justus told an agent he met Carrillo on Facebook, and they agreed that Carrillo would pick him up at a transit station in Oakland for the May 29 Floyd protest. At the station, Carrillo turned over the wheel to Justus.
According to the criminal complaint against him. Justus said he did not want to participate in the killing but he was trapped in the van with Carrillo.
After shooting the officers, Justus said, Carrillo was thrilled. “Did you see how they ... fell!” Justus said Carrillo exclaimed.
An FBI agent who wrote the criminal complaint called Justus’ statement “a false, exculpatory narrative carefully crafted to fit what Justus believed to be the state of evidence.”
 
The T administration gives billions to businesses but they won't tell us which ones? Odd, isn't it?

Watchdogs flying blind on who’s getting relief money
Coronavirus funding oversight hamstrung by Trump, Congress
TREASURY Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, shown with President Trump in April, said he would not disclose the names of small businesses receiving loans through the $600-billion Paycheck Protection Program. (Alex Brandon Associated Press)
MICHAEL HILTZIK
If you put money down on March 27 on a bet that the Trump administration would do its best to block oversight of the $2-trillion coronavirus rescue program, congratulations: You’ve won the bet.
Since President Trump signed the CARES Act 81 days ago, he has fired government inspectors general who had been assigned the task of monitoring the disbursements of this cash to businesses big and small.
The day after he signed the act, Trump signaled his intention to restrict the information his appointees can submit to Congress about rescue program spending.
Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steve T. Mnuchin, flatly declared this month that he wouldn’t disclose the names of small businesses receiving loans through the act’s $600-billion Paycheck Protection Program.
Even if you landed on the right side of the bet, however, you almost certainly underestimated how far the White House would go in trying to keep information about the payouts secret — or Congress’ apparent complicity in the undermining of its own oversight responsibility.
On April 10, for instance, the White House Office of Management and Budget instructed executive branch agencies that they don’t have to disclose any more information about their business grants than earlier laws required.
But that’s absolutely false : The CARES Act explicitly requires much more disclosure, including information about how the recipient businesses plan to use the money.
When I last spoke with Barofsky, as the CARES Act was being considered on Capitol Hill, he warned of the necessity of strong oversight of its spending.
Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, an influential watchdog group, calls the administration’s effort to withhold spending data from all scrutiny “the primary crisis underlying oversight of COVID relief funding.”
Although the firing of inspectors general and other interference with the oversight process are troubling, Brian says, “if we’re not getting the data, all these other things don’t matter.” Full transparency not only provides raw material for formal oversight bodies, but for journalists and others with the time and expertise to mine the data for clues to how the money is spent.
The burden of keeping this bailout transparent, Barofsky told me, will necessarily fall on Congress.
But Congress hasn’t held up its end thus far. Its most glaring shortcoming is its inability to settle on a chairperson for its own pandemic oversight commission, the only oversight body created by the CARES Act that is outside Trump’s control.
The body comprises four members — one each appointed by the Democratic and Republican leaders in each chamber.
They’re in place. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) haven’t yet publicly agreed on a chair.
As a result, the commission has been unable to hire staff or schedule public hearings, which require a majority vote. “Until the commission has a Chairperson, the taxpayers are funding a bailout without the mandated accountability,” Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) wrote to Pelosi and McConnell on June 10 .
“It’s not just about the chair,” Porter told me. “But having a chair unlocks the other tools the commission needs to be effective.” At its peak, Barofsky’s TARP oversight office employed 46 staff members.
Rumors persist in Washington that a chair could be named any day now. It’s unclear who is to blame for the blockage, or how strongly Pelosi has pushed back against the hamstringing of the commission.
But she certainly hasn’t spoken in public as though it’s a top priority. At a Thursday news conference , she brushed off a question about the appointment by saying it would happen “hopefully soon as I think it will be imminent.” But she used almost exactly the same words on May 5 — “hopefully we’ll have a decision soon.”
That’s curious because oversight of the CARES Act disbursements was an issue that congressional Democrats went to the mat for, declining to advance the rescue bill until it was in place.
The act ultimately established three oversight bodies. In addition to the congressional commissioner, they were a special inspector general for pandemic recovery, or SIGPR; and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which comprises 20 inspectors general from across the federal government and is chaired by Michael E. Horowitz, the Department of Justice inspector general.
For SIGPR, Trump nominated Brian Miller, a member of the White House counsel staff. Miller’s nomination raised objections from Senate Democrats that he was too close to the president’s staff to exert independent oversight of coronavirus spending.
Miller did have the support of the Project on Government Oversight, based on his effectiveness as inspector general of the General Services Administration in 2005-14. The Senate confirmed Miller on June 2.
Less than two weeks after signing the CARES Act, Trump undermined the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee by firing two inspectors general slated to be members of the body.
They included Glenn Fine, the Defense Department acting inspector general, who had been appointed by his fellow members to be the committee chair.
He also has aimed public rhetorical attacks on Christi Grimm, the acting inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, who is also a member of the committee.
Horowitz and the committee’s executive director, Robert Westbrooks, told Congress last week that the White House had quietly issued a series of legal rulings sharply constraining the information that federal officials must disclose to the committee related to the CARES Act’s Division A, which includes $1 trillion in funding for small businesses and loans to major corporations.
“If this interpretation of the CARES Act were correct, it would raise questions about PRAC’s authority to conduct oversight of Division A funds,” the officials told Congress in a letter reported by the Washington Post .
Independent oversight of the government spending is crucial because very little of it needs to be doled out with strings attached.
“The commission’s task is going to be tracking which companies are getting the money and what they do after they get the money,” says Bharat Ramamurti, a former economic advisor to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s appointee to the congressional commission.
“The money is not coming with serious conditions,” Ramamurti told me.
“One thing the commission is required to do under the law is to report on the effect of this program on the financial well-being of the people of the United States,” Ramamurti says. “To do that, you have to ask, did the companies fire workers, did they pull full executive compensation, did they do a stock buyback? Only if we track the money in that way will we be able to assess whether this has been helpful in improving the financial well-being of families.”
Mnuchin’s assertion that the identity of Paycheck Protection Program recipients and the terms of their funding are “proprietary” and confidential, Brian of the Project on Government Oversight says, “is a really uninformed position.” The paycheck program is based on an existing program at the Small Business Administration, “which has been making that information transparent since 1991.”
Indeed, Mnuchin’s argument was so extreme that it provoked objections even from congressional Republicans. Mnuchin later backed off, saying that he will confer with Congress to determine the extent of his disclosure obligations.
The combination of lack of disclosure and the undercutting of oversight bodies’ independence “is rendering the oversight institutions to be powerless,” Brian says. “Congress has to respond.”
The question boils down to whether the administration and Congress are intent on making the coronavirus rescue programs successful. Without disclosure and oversight, they won’t be.
The $2 trillion allocated — so far — is the largest such spending package ever enacted, an unprecedented temptation for corruption and turpitude at every level, from administration officials disbursing the funds down to applicants with their hands out. Federal prosecutors already have brought threecases alleging attempted fraud by applicants for PPP funding.
The money allegedly sought fraudulently totaled almost $13 million in the three cases. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared with the roughly $650 billion authorized for the program. Just think about how much could go astray if no one is watching.
As the disbursements get larger with time, “it becomes even more important to have the right oversight provisions in place,” Barofsky says. Already, he notes, “there is a significant problem with fraud in the PPP program. That’s exactly why you want more transparency and oversight.”
What incentive could the Trump administration possibly have for keeping the curtains pulled shut?
Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page or email michael.hiltzik @latimes.com.
 
messy said:
The T administration gives billions to businesses but they won't tell us which ones? Odd, isn't it?

Watchdogs flying blind on who’s getting relief money
Coronavirus funding oversight hamstrung by Trump, Congress
TREASURY Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, shown with President Trump in April, said he would not disclose the names of small businesses receiving loans through the $600-billion Paycheck Protection Program. (Alex Brandon Associated Press)
MICHAEL HILTZIK
If you put money down on March 27 on a bet that the Trump administration would do its best to block oversight of the $2-trillion coronavirus rescue program, congratulations: You’ve won the bet.
Since President Trump signed the CARES Act 81 days ago, he has fired government inspectors general who had been assigned the task of monitoring the disbursements of this cash to businesses big and small.
The day after he signed the act, Trump signaled his intention to restrict the information his appointees can submit to Congress about rescue program spending.
Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steve T. Mnuchin, flatly declared this month that he wouldn’t disclose the names of small businesses receiving loans through the act’s $600-billion Paycheck Protection Program.
Even if you landed on the right side of the bet, however, you almost certainly underestimated how far the White House would go in trying to keep information about the payouts secret — or Congress’ apparent complicity in the undermining of its own oversight responsibility.
On April 10, for instance, the White House Office of Management and Budget instructed executive branch agencies that they don’t have to disclose any more information about their business grants than earlier laws required.
But that’s absolutely false : The CARES Act explicitly requires much more disclosure, including information about how the recipient businesses plan to use the money.
When I last spoke with Barofsky, as the CARES Act was being considered on Capitol Hill, he warned of the necessity of strong oversight of its spending.
Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, an influential watchdog group, calls the administration’s effort to withhold spending data from all scrutiny “the primary crisis underlying oversight of COVID relief funding.”
Although the firing of inspectors general and other interference with the oversight process are troubling, Brian says, “if we’re not getting the data, all these other things don’t matter.” Full transparency not only provides raw material for formal oversight bodies, but for journalists and others with the time and expertise to mine the data for clues to how the money is spent.
The burden of keeping this bailout transparent, Barofsky told me, will necessarily fall on Congress.
But Congress hasn’t held up its end thus far. Its most glaring shortcoming is its inability to settle on a chairperson for its own pandemic oversight commission, the only oversight body created by the CARES Act that is outside Trump’s control.
The body comprises four members — one each appointed by the Democratic and Republican leaders in each chamber.
They’re in place. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) haven’t yet publicly agreed on a chair.
As a result, the commission has been unable to hire staff or schedule public hearings, which require a majority vote. “Until the commission has a Chairperson, the taxpayers are funding a bailout without the mandated accountability,” Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) wrote to Pelosi and McConnell on June 10 .
“It’s not just about the chair,” Porter told me. “But having a chair unlocks the other tools the commission needs to be effective.” At its peak, Barofsky’s TARP oversight office employed 46 staff members.
Rumors persist in Washington that a chair could be named any day now. It’s unclear who is to blame for the blockage, or how strongly Pelosi has pushed back against the hamstringing of the commission.
But she certainly hasn’t spoken in public as though it’s a top priority. At a Thursday news conference , she brushed off a question about the appointment by saying it would happen “hopefully soon as I think it will be imminent.” But she used almost exactly the same words on May 5 — “hopefully we’ll have a decision soon.”
That’s curious because oversight of the CARES Act disbursements was an issue that congressional Democrats went to the mat for, declining to advance the rescue bill until it was in place.
The act ultimately established three oversight bodies. In addition to the congressional commissioner, they were a special inspector general for pandemic recovery, or SIGPR; and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which comprises 20 inspectors general from across the federal government and is chaired by Michael E. Horowitz, the Department of Justice inspector general.
For SIGPR, Trump nominated Brian Miller, a member of the White House counsel staff. Miller’s nomination raised objections from Senate Democrats that he was too close to the president’s staff to exert independent oversight of coronavirus spending.
Miller did have the support of the Project on Government Oversight, based on his effectiveness as inspector general of the General Services Administration in 2005-14. The Senate confirmed Miller on June 2.
Less than two weeks after signing the CARES Act, Trump undermined the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee by firing two inspectors general slated to be members of the body.
They included Glenn Fine, the Defense Department acting inspector general, who had been appointed by his fellow members to be the committee chair.
He also has aimed public rhetorical attacks on Christi Grimm, the acting inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, who is also a member of the committee.
Horowitz and the committee’s executive director, Robert Westbrooks, told Congress last week that the White House had quietly issued a series of legal rulings sharply constraining the information that federal officials must disclose to the committee related to the CARES Act’s Division A, which includes $1 trillion in funding for small businesses and loans to major corporations.
“If this interpretation of the CARES Act were correct, it would raise questions about PRAC’s authority to conduct oversight of Division A funds,” the officials told Congress in a letter reported by the Washington Post .
Independent oversight of the government spending is crucial because very little of it needs to be doled out with strings attached.
“The commission’s task is going to be tracking which companies are getting the money and what they do after they get the money,” says Bharat Ramamurti, a former economic advisor to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s appointee to the congressional commission.
“The money is not coming with serious conditions,” Ramamurti told me.
“One thing the commission is required to do under the law is to report on the effect of this program on the financial well-being of the people of the United States,” Ramamurti says. “To do that, you have to ask, did the companies fire workers, did they pull full executive compensation, did they do a stock buyback? Only if we track the money in that way will we be able to assess whether this has been helpful in improving the financial well-being of families.”
Mnuchin’s assertion that the identity of Paycheck Protection Program recipients and the terms of their funding are “proprietary” and confidential, Brian of the Project on Government Oversight says, “is a really uninformed position.” The paycheck program is based on an existing program at the Small Business Administration, “which has been making that information transparent since 1991.”
Indeed, Mnuchin’s argument was so extreme that it provoked objections even from congressional Republicans. Mnuchin later backed off, saying that he will confer with Congress to determine the extent of his disclosure obligations.
The combination of lack of disclosure and the undercutting of oversight bodies’ independence “is rendering the oversight institutions to be powerless,” Brian says. “Congress has to respond.”
The question boils down to whether the administration and Congress are intent on making the coronavirus rescue programs successful. Without disclosure and oversight, they won’t be.
The $2 trillion allocated — so far — is the largest such spending package ever enacted, an unprecedented temptation for corruption and turpitude at every level, from administration officials disbursing the funds down to applicants with their hands out. Federal prosecutors already have brought threecases alleging attempted fraud by applicants for PPP funding.
The money allegedly sought fraudulently totaled almost $13 million in the three cases. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared with the roughly $650 billion authorized for the program. Just think about how much could go astray if no one is watching.
As the disbursements get larger with time, “it becomes even more important to have the right oversight provisions in place,” Barofsky says. Already, he notes, “there is a significant problem with fraud in the PPP program. That’s exactly why you want more transparency and oversight.”
What incentive could the Trump administration possibly have for keeping the curtains pulled shut?
Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page or email michael.hiltzik @latimes.com.
Click to expand...
The investigations, indictments and trials involving this admin will go on for years. I will not be surprised if we find out much of the money was given to themselves, businesses they are invested in, donors and others close to the supposed president*. Like when Puerto Rico was devastated and phantom companies popped up out of nowhere to secure multimillion dollar contracts.
 
Ricky Fandango said:
View attachment 7720

Do we start ripping the bottles off the shelves now?
Click to expand...

Unbelievable.....The woman markets a fantastic product and now the PC " Fags "
want to alter a Very Very Successful Products...!

Hmmmm......
Interesting observation:

So the PC Police want to scrub the " LOGO " because they find it offensive....
So does that mean EVERY Item on the market that depicts ANY person of
Color will have the " LOGO " scrubbed ?
My God, she was absolutely successful and now she is judged by the color
of her skin " On a LOGO " not the content within......

Unf@#king Believable !!!!
 
Are these offensive.......

Cuz I sure as hell won't buy them if they Change...!

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQA0xNZifaoG1R5H9z8dwPvUOs-L_ZWL1nzsVPPEjsb2MDT2IfQ&usqp=CAU
 
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