ancianita
ancianita's JournalDEMOCRATS WHO SUPPORT GOVERNOR CUOMO
As long as cases get built against Democratic leaders, I will throw mine in with the rest, along with my thanks to anyone who reads it to the end. 
Executive Branch officials
Joe Biden, President of the United States
State Governors
Phil Murphy, Governor of New Jersey
Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan
Candidates for the 2021 New York City mayoral election
Andrew Yang, entrepreneur
23 women of NY's General Assembly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cuomo_sexual_harassment_allegations
Why they support Gov Cuomo:
1. They know what Andrew Cuomo’s history is.
2. They know how hard a governor’s job is in the best of times, let alone in a pandemic, dealing with a monster in the White House and an incompetent, corrupt administration.
3. They know that no Democratic leader is perfect.
4. They support Democrats.
I support Democrats who support Democrats.
I support imperfect Democratic leaders like FDR, Clinton, Franken, Biden and Cuomo, who bring their experience and skill to govern, and who do their jobs better than they can please others.
I support allegations, official investigations, full and fair assessments of Democratic leaders.
I support women who file complaints of work place toxicity and harassment to their HR, the EEOC, or police.
I support media who report factual truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So do most New Yorkers.
They know that Gov Cuomo has done far more good for them than any single one of his Democratic detractors.
Now, after the worst of a four-year dark time is over, this governor faces the fault finding that eludes other governors who learned from his covid execution models;
they are Democratic governors who in the first pandemic of our lifetimes, made similar, more, and worse mistakes than he.
The learning curve is steep and fraught in a pandemic, and those who come out of it polititcally intact, owe a debt of gratitude to those who led them. The imperfect Democrats who want Cuomo out stand on the shoulders of Gov Cuomo and his advisers, Drs. Fauci and Zucker, who cut a path through the dark.
Governor Cuomo deserves to be understood in the context of his 40-year political pre-covid work:
Pre-covid, Gov Cuomo introduced or supported and signed
— passage of New York's 2011 Marriage Equality Act,
— New York’s 2014 Compassionate Care Act, legalizing medical marijuana.
In response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the 2012 Webster shooting, Cuomo
— signed the NY SAFE Act of 2013, the strictest gun control law in the United States.
— co-founded the United States Climate Alliance, a group of states committed to fighting climate change by following the terms of the Paris Climate Accords.
— the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act;
— the 2011 restructured tax code that raised taxes for the wealthy and lowered taxes for the middle class;
— 12-week paid family leave along with a gradual increase of the state's minimum wage to $15; and pay equity.
More details on his governing outcomes above…
In 2007, Cuomo was active in a high-profile investigation into lending practices and anti-competitive relationships between student lenders and universities. Specifically, many universities steered student borrowers to a "preferred lender," which resulted in the borrowers' incurring higher interest rates.
This led to changes in lending policy at many major American universities.
Many universities also rebated millions of dollars in fees to affected borrowers
June 10, 2008, Cuomo announced that three major Internet service providers (Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint) would "shut down major sources of online child pornography" by no longer hosting many Usenet groups. Time Warner Cable ceased offering Usenet altogether, Sprint ended access to the 18,408 newsgroups in the alt.* hierarchy, and Verizon limited its Usenet offerings to the approximately 3,000 Big 8 newsgroups. The move came after Cuomo's office located 88 different newsgroups to which child pornography had been posted.
Cuomo launched a suit against the United Homeless Organization, a New York charity. He charged that the majority of the group's income was not used to provide services to the homeless but was diverted to the founders for unrelated personal expenses. In 2010, Judge Barbara R. Kapnick granted the judgement and forced the group to disband.
Cuomo signed New York's Marriage Equality Act, introducing same-sex marriage, on June 24, 2011, following an "intense public and private lobbying campaign", and later called for all states to do the same.
Cuomo was praised for his 2011 restructuring of the New York State tax code. He was also criticized for including tax increases for high earners, and for allegedly requesting a unanimous Assembly vote in favor of the proposal and threatening to campaign against Assembly members who voted "no" – a charge he denied. Cuomo also received criticism from voices on the left who felt that the tax reform was insufficient.
January 15, 2013, Cuomo signed into law the first state gun control bill to pass after the December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in neighboring Connecticut. The NY SAFE Act was described as the toughest gun control law in the United States.
In 2013, Cuomo called for the passage of a Women's Equality Act.
The Women's Equality Act included 10 component bills affecting issues such as
domestic violence,
human trafficking,
pregnancy discrimination.
The tenth bill of the Women's Equality Act was the Reproductive Health Act, which would have "enshrine[d] in state law existing federal protections for abortion rights...
"[After] the 2014 election season was over, with Cuomo victorious, the governor and his lieutenant governor Kathy Hochul both declared the abortion plank of the act officially dormant, if not dead.”
In 2015, the non-abortion-related Women's Equality Act bills passed both houses of the State Legislature.
In October 2015, Cuomo signed eight of the 10 Women's Equality Act bills into law (no thanks to both Republican and Democratic legislative down-votes, the abortion rights bill was not among them)...
December 17, 2014, the Cuomo administration announced a ban on hydraulic fracturing in New York State.
Cuomo announced an executive order against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement re Israel.
April 18, 2017, Cuomo signed the New York State 2018 fiscal year budget. that included the Excelsior Scholarship, a provision that families making less than $125,000 in 2019 could have free tuition at all SUNY and CUNY universities,
August 2017, the Cuomo administration awarded more than $7 million, financed with money from large bank settlements, in grants to New York colleges to offer courses to New York prisoners.
In January 2018, Cuomo proposed reforms that would "reduce delays during trials, ban asset seizures in cases where there has been no conviction and make it easier for former convicts to get a job after leaving prison.”
He also called for an end to cash bail for minor crimes.
In 2017
Cuomo's predecessors had spent decades and millions of dollars trying to figure out how to rebuild the Tappan Zee Bridge. Cuomo will open a new span later this year. (NewNYBridge)...
Cuomo has somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion worth of infrastructure projects underway or approved around the state, including major overhauls of Penn Station in Manhattan and JFK and LaGuardia airports. He has also devoted some $25 billion to various projects and proposals designed to boost the upstate economy.
https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-cuomo-new-york-governor-progressives.html
On January 22, 2019, Cuomo signed the 2019 version of the Reproductive Health Act, which passed days after Democrats took control of the state Senate. Cuomo ordered One World Trade Center and other landmarks to be lit in pink to celebrate the bill's passage. Cuomo's signing and the lighting of the World Trade Center building sparked intense criticism from conservatives. The Catholic cardinal Timothy Dolan criticized Cuomo over the Reproductive Health Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cuomo
December 5, 2019, Cuomo announced the $15 minimum wage phase-in starting December 31
More relatively good and bad context:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/19/andrew-cuomo-the-king-of-new-york
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/05/12/cuomo-new-yorks-coronavirus-crackdown-saved-thousands-of-lives/?sh=3b8c060f5f93
We have honored Democrats who do good for their states and the nation, with all their flaws; e.g., FDR, Kennedy and Clinton had sexual lives outside their marriages during their tenures, yet we've honored them as good Democrats. Cuomo has been a Clinton Democrat.
Cuomo got us through the darkest of times when no other Democratic governor could.
Yes, the outcome of AG James’ investigation matters to me; yes, he's been an unlikable, demanding asshole, lonely and stressed.
Yes, no matter how many Dems here or elsewhere chorus his ousting, Democratic Governor Cuomo deserves my support.
Our bus must take America into the 21st Century.
Biden knows that through the power of our unity, which comes through mutual support,
we flawed Democrats have the knowledge, skill and heart to drive that bus.
No ifs, buts, or howevers. Whoever Joe supports, I'll support.
Sheldon Whitehouse Conducts Justice Reform Hearing On Dark Money's Structural Influence In US Courts
If there's a transcript it will be posted in comments.
CSPAN's complete video record is here:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?509728-1/senate-hearing-judicary-branch-special-interest-group-money
Go get 'em, Sheldon! 
Commander In Chief Biden Announces His Female Nominees for Combatant Command Promotion
On International Women's Day 2021, Jacqueline D. Van Ovost and Laura J. Richardson stand as two of our generals in the US military.
Jacqueline Desiree Van Ovost (born September 29, 1965) is a United States Air Force general who serves as the commander of the Air Mobility Command. In early 2021, she was the only active-duty female four-star general officer in the United States.
President Biden nominates Laura J. Richardson to become commander of the United States Southern Command.
Bill McKibben's Review Is Why I Won't Buy Bill Gates' New Book
And why, if Gates is serious about climate, he should write another book only after he rethinks the politics of inertia and his own.Bill McKibben is the author, most recently, of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? and writes the Climate Crisis newsletter for The New Yorker.
HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER
The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
By Bill Gates
He’s absolutely right that we should be investing in research across a wide list of technologies because we may need them down the line to help scrub the last increments of fossil fuel from the system, but the key work will be done (or not) over the next decade, and it will be done by sun and wind...
politics ... is where Gates really wears blinders. “I think more like an engineer than a political scientist,” he says proudly — but that means he can write an entire book about the “climate disaster” without discussing the role that the fossil fuel industry played, and continues to play, in preventing action.
We now know from great investigative reporting that the oil companies knew everything about climate change back in the 1980s, and that they systematically built an edifice of disinformation and denial to keep us in the dark. That’s why we’ve wasted almost three decades of scientific warning. “I don’t have a solution to the politics of climate change,” Gates writes, but in fact he does: He founded, and his foundation is a shareholder in, a company that has donated money to exactly the politicians who are in the pocket of big oil. A Bloomberg analysis last fall found that Microsoft had given only a third of its contributions to “climate-friendly” politicians...
Microsoft had joined 42 other corporations in a letter to President-elect Biden calling on him to enact “ambitious” climate policies — and then donated to David Perdue for his Georgia Senate runoff (other signatories to the letter also gave to Kelly Loeffler). Had they won and the G.O.P. retained control of the Senate, the chances for those ambitious climate policies would have been nil....
Gates mentions in passing at one point that he chose to divest his fortune from fossil fuel companies, but only because “I don’t want to profit if their stock prices go up because we don’t develop zero-carbon alternatives.” He scoffed at the idea that activists (who otherwise go mostly unmentioned in this book) thought that “divesting alone” would “transform the world’s energy system.” But of course those activists, myself included, thought no such thing. They understood that weakening the fossil fuel industry was simply one key part of the job of rapid decarbonization, just like engineering. That is, the activists were thinking multidimensionally, which Gates is so far not.
Maybe that’s a weakness that comes with wealth; it’s obviously easy enough to slag Gates for flying in a private jet (and his publisher must have winced a little when he chose the winter of his book launch to join a bidding war for ownership of the world’s largest private jet servicing company). But I think that’s missing the point: The exhaust plume from his airplane won’t make or break the planet’s temperature, but given his resources and political reach, the quality of his analysis just might.
Power comes in many forms, from geothermal and nuclear to congressional and economic; it’s wonderful that Gates has decided to work hard on climate questions, but to be truly helpful he needs to resolve to be a better geek — he needs to really get down on his hands and knees and examine how that power works in all its messiness. Politics very much included.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/15/books/review/bill-gates-how-to-avoid-a-climate-disaster.html
Republicans stay quiet while billionaire donor stands trial in 'biggest tax fraud scheme' in history
Yes! Defund the GOP corporate enablers and their joint war against democracy.
He’s also accused of working tirelessly to have records destroyed both physically and digitally as the walls began closing in on him. Prosecutors point to profits Brockman made out of his stakes in Vista Equity Partners, and it is not coincidence that Robert Smith, the chief executive of Vista reached a $140 million tax evasion, non-prosecution settlement with the government just one day before Brockman’s charges were announced. On a side note, Robert Smith made headlines for his very generous donation to pay off both the graduating Morehouse University college loans—as well as their parents’ loans, in 2019. It’s an important reminder that billionaires can do all kinds of nice-seeming, very easy for them to afford things while still belonging in prison for their sociopathic criminal practices.
The WSJ says that Brockman has “a reputation as a relentless litigant,” but legal experts also say the government’s evidence is “strong.” Brockman’s legal team is also making a play to argue that the elderly Brockman is suffering from dementia and therefore unable to take part in his own defense. They hope to have the case completely dismissed. Remember Vincente Gigante? He was a leader of the Mafia in the 1990s in New York City who pretended he was senile...
Brockman handed out $80,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and “Brockman also gave over $100,000 to entities linked to former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, including a six-figure check to the Wisconsin lawmaker’s now-defunct joint fundraising committee.” He also has given money to Paul Ryan’s Political Action Committee that is still active.
Federal prosecutors are arguing that there was nothing unnecessary in Brockman’s complicated schemes. They were by design. The conservative groups who benefited from his crimes are conveniently quiet because, as Mitch McConnell has taught them, it is necessary that they hide where the money they use to misinform the public comes from.
Carry on, soon-to-be Attorney General Garland!
Capitol riot task force led by Lt. Gen. Russel Honore recommending 24/7 'quick reaction force'
or QRF.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/capitol-riot-task-force-lt-gen-honore
Though it's a Fox News Exclusive, it's still worth an early look and discussion.
A draft copy of the task force’s recommendations, exclusively obtained by Fox News, also calls for U.S. Capitol police reforms, an increased National Guard presence and stocking up on mobile fencing that could be deployed in response to a crisis in the future, then quickly packed up when it’s over.
The QRF, as proposed, would be manned 24/7, 365 days a year, and cost taxpayers between $40 and $130 million annually.
"[W]e recommend establishment of a robust, dedicated QRF, not only for the USCP, but to serve the nation’s capital writ large," the report from Task Force 1-6 says.
At the link is the draft copy of Honore's Task Force 1-6 Capitol Security Review.
The draft includes sections called "Operational Review," "Physical Infrastructure," and "Member Security While Traveling and In Their Districts."
It's a good read and will likely be published tomorrow in The New York Times.
Lawrence O'Donnell On Protest, With Norm Ornstein, Sasha Baron Cohen & Aaron Sorkin on Patriotism
For the Record, The Christopher C. Miller (Acting) Memo
Front and center, so that the nation can know who gave him these orders to not materially help allDC law enforcement.
Additional information
-- Jeffrey A. Rosen was Trump's acting AG after Barr at the time of this memo;
-- Executive Order 11485 that is referred to, defines the District of Columbia National Guard; it's found in the
Federal Register. National Archives. ( It was retrieved to justify Miller's stand down order 4 January 2021) Under this likely original memo, the command hierarchy is laid out, which proves that it all started with Trump two days before the seditious insurrection and attempted assassinations of the Vice President and House Speaker.
The president of the United States is the commander-in-chief for the District of Columbia National Guard.
Command is exercised through the Secretary of Defense and the commanding general, Joint Force Headquarters (JFHQ), District of Columbia National Guard.
The Secretary of Defense has delegated his command authority to the Secretary of the Army for the District of Columbia Army National Guard and the Secretary of the Air Force for the District of Columbia Air National Guard.[2]
The District of Columbia National Guard is commanded by a major general with a brigadier general as his or her adjutant general.
The mayor of the District of Columbia, the United States marshal for the District of Columbia, or the National Capital Service director may request the commander-in-chief to aid them in suppressing insurrection and enforcement of the law; however, there is no chain of authority from the District of Columbia to the D.C. National Guard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_National_Guard (redirected from EO 11485)
March 4 -- THIS time
Stop them at the DC city limits for probable cause,
obtain ID's,
disarm them,
cuff them,
haul them to the waiting paddy wagons,
have waiting tow trucks haul their vehicles away to pay for later.
Haul their asses to police stations,
check them against Jan 6 databases of names and facial recog, and if they're detected as back,
process their arrests,
detain them until a lawyer shows up,
arraign them,
offer deals that get cooperation, and
make them post bail unless
they are Rittenhouse flight risks.
Write reports to leadership.
Hold a joint Homeland, FBI, Capitol police press conference.
Get ready for the next round. And the next round.
We will find the funders, accomplices after the fact, and win their war of attrition.
Senator Whitehouse Questions FBI Dir. Christopher Wray About Congress's Unanswered Questions
Wray: "Let me be clear with you... there's no question in my mind... I will commit to you that I will do what I can... obviously we need to get better... "
Whitehouse: "That is your executive branch rigamarole. That is not a legitimate answer to a legislator's question... the courts have said we should hold up appropriations for the FBI ... when there's a political interest in getting info out to the committee, suddenly none of that rigamarole pertains, suddenly everybody gets their hands on all the information they need just as soon as they need it, and by the way I believe on a partisan basis, not shared with both sides of the committee.
We've got to get through the problem of why you're not answering our questions.
You run an organization that seems to have operated by very different rules, and it was you running that organization...
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: New England, The South, Midwest
Home country: USA
Current location: Sarasota
Member since: Sat Mar 5, 2011, 12:32 PM
Number of posts: 36,055
