propaganda

Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen is getting a legal education

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Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer Michael D. Cohen is like Thomas “Tom” Hagen, the consigliere to the Corleone family in The Godfather.

A couple of weeks ago, McClatchy News reported Mueller probe tracking down Trump business partners, with Cohen a focus of queries;

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with President Donald Trump’s company in recent years.

Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.

Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The New York Times reported on March 15 that Mueller had subpoenaed unspecified records from the Trump Organization. Days before that, the Washington Post reported that Mueller’s team was looking into a Moscow hotel deal for which Cohen brought to Donald Trump a letter of intent from a Moscow developer during the 2016 presidential campaign.

They must have obtained something of evidentiary value because a week ago Monday the F.B.I. Raided the Office of Trump’s Longtime Lawyer Michael Cohen: “The F.B.I. raided the Rockefeller Center office and Park Avenue hotel room [and home] of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, on Monday morning, seizing business records, emails and documents related to several topics, including a payment to a pornographic film actress.”

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The other ‘Trump TV’ propaganda network, Sinclair Broadcasting

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Doctor Steven Jonas correctly noted in his 2015 essay, Fascism in the 21st Century:

When we are looking at 21st century fascism, in the context of what is happening in certain of the capitalist states, at the present particularly in the United States, it should be noted that it is entirely possible that wholesale violence will not be required for its introduction. Nor will a maximum leader necessarily be required. Like the fog in the famous, ultra-short poem by the U.S. person Carl Sandburg, it may well come in “on little cat feet.”

Fascism can gradually creep in over time little noticed, until it is too late.

But in the 21st Century, strong cults of personality were carefully built by large propaganda media apparatuses.

The personality cult of Donald Trump appears to be following this more established model for its “Trump TV” propaganda network at FOX News, and at Sinclair Broadcasting.

David Atkins reports at the Political Animal Blog, Sinclair Is Bad for Democracy. So Are Other Media Monopolies.

Remember when right-wing media company Sinclair Broadcast Group took over 40 percent of local TV news stations? [Sinclair owns more television stations than any other broadcaster in the country. ] The results are beginning to speak for themselves:

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This is only the most chilling and most recent example of the company enforcing its Trumpist ideological views on its local subsidiaries:

The broadcaster has aligned itself with the Trump administration: In addition to the “one-sided news” script featured last week, Sinclair stations are also required to run political commentary from the network’s chief political analyst, Boris Epshteyn. Epshteyn previously worked for the Trump White House and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The Post-Intelligencer noted that another must-run segment aired on KOMO last week featured former Trump White House official Sebastian Gorka. (During a panel on Sinclair-owned WJLA in October, Gorka lamented “black Africans” killing each other “by the bushel” in Chicago.)

Gorka, Post-Intelligencer reported, spoke about an alleged “deep state” attempting to undermine the Trump presidency. The segment’s producer, according to the report, was Kristine Frazao, who before working for Sinclair was a reporter and anchor for the Russian state-owned network RT.

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Trump’s hate-filled Easter Twitter tirade fueled by Fox & Friends

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Just to be clear, last September President Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which grants work authorizations and protection from deportation to undocumented young people who meet certain qualifications.

Two federal judges have blocked Trump’s action, leaving DACA recipients in limbo to face an uncertain future.

On Easter Sunday morning, President Trump tweeted a generic “Happy Easter!,” which was then followed by this hate-filled Easter Twitter tirade:

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As we have come to learn, Trump’s morning Twitter tirades are fueled by his morning television viewing habits (jokingly referred to as “executive time”) of watching the “tree dolts on a divan” at Fox & Friends. Trump Declares ‘NO MORE DACA DEAL!’ After Quoting Border Patrol Union Prez:

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s outburst borrowed nearly word-for-word from an interview on “Fox & Friends Sunday,” minutes earlier, with Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

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The social media leg of the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation comes into focus (Updated)

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Cambridge Analytica is a company created by Robert Mercer, a billionaire patron of right-wing outlets like Breitbart News. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, is a board member. Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Steve Bannon, is a former vice president of Cambridge Analytica, and the former editor of Breitbart News. Trump confidant Gen. Michael Flynn also had “a brief advisory role” with Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica, the shady data firm that might be a key Trump-Russia link, explained:

Cambridge Analytica specializes in what’s called “psychographic” profiling, meaning they use data collected online to create personality profiles for voters. They then take that information and target individuals with specifically tailored content.

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In June 2016, the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica to take over its data operations.

We know from the reporting of Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim at the New York Times that Jared Kushner, who was charged with overseeing Trump’s digital operations, is the reason Cambridge Analytica joined the Trump campaign.

Kushner hired a man named Brad Parscale, a Texas-based digital expert who had worked previously for team Trump. According to Confessore and Hakim, Cambridge Analytica convinced Parscale (who has since agreed to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee) to “try out the firm.” The decision was reinforced by Trump’s campaign manager, Steve Bannon, a former vice president of Cambridge Analytica.

It’s not clear to what extent Cambridge Analytica helped (Parscale denied that Cambridge was of any use in a recent 60 Minutes interview), but we do know that Trump’s digital operation was shockingly effective. Samuel Woolley, who heads the Computational Propaganda project at Oxford’s Internet Institute, found that a disproportionate amount of pro-Trump messaging was spread via automated bots and anti-Hillary propaganda. Trump’s bots, they reported at the time of the election, outnumbered Clinton’s five to one.

Pro-Trump programmers “carefully adjusted the timing of content production during the debates, strategically colonized pro-Clinton hashtags, and then disabled activities after Election Day.”

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Teachers, Taxes and Tea-Publicans, Oh My!

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Our Koch-Bot Governor Doug Ducey, the self-annointed “education governor”(sic), claims that he wants to put more money into public education and to give teachers raises.

But the Arizona Republic recently took a look at the actual numbers. How much are Arizona teachers paid?

The Arizona Republic took a closer look at the numbers. Here’s what we found:

Median teacher pay

According to an analysis by the Arizona School Boards Association published in January, the median teacher pay in 2018 is $46,949.

This number takes into account how the allocation of Proposition 123 has so far factored into teacher pay. It shows the median salary has risen 4.6 percent since 2015, giving teachers about $2,000 more a year.

The number does not reflect a 1 percent pay increase for teachers that the Legislature and Ducey approved last year. Because of the way that money was allocated [i.e., a bonus], it is not part of teachers’ base pay.

How does Arizona compare?

The most recent — and arguably most equitable — comparison of teacher salaries nationwide is a May 2017 analysis by Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. That analysis adjusted the numbers to take into account the cost of living in each state.

According to that data, the median salary for Arizona elementary school teachers in 2016, adjusted for regional purchasing power, was $42,474. The median salary for high school teachers was $47,890.

When all state salaries are adjusted in this way, Arizona ranks 50th in the nation for elementary teacher salaries, and 49th for high school teacher salaries. Oklahoma ranked 50th for high school teachers.

“Education governor” my ass! What a fraud.

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