How Can Our Own Military Be Running Out of Ammo?

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this article at Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! And did Italy just beat the US in baseball this week???

As much as the ongoing deaths of civilians and soldiers horrify me as trump pushes the United States into more bombings and more war with more nations, another thing irking me is the revelation that our military is woefully unprepared for most of this, especially in terms of supplies. Susie Madrak over at Crooks & Liars has the details:

Inside the Pentagon, there was deepening concern Sunday that the Iran conflict could spiral out of control, said people familiar with the situation. “The mood here is intense and paranoid,” one person said.

Senior leaders are worried that the fighting will extend for weeks, further stressing limited U.S. air defense stockpiles.

“I don’t think people have fully absorbed yet, like, what that has done with stockpiles,” one source added, noting that it often takes two or three air defense interceptors to ensure that an incoming missile is stopped.

The president’s senior military adviser, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, warned the White House last week that munitions shortfalls and a lack of broad military support from other U.S. allies would raise the risk to any operation in Iran and to the U.S. personnel put in harm’s way.

Granted, the government under Biden has been shipping out a lot of reserve firepower to places like Ukraine, but our own military should have been stockpiling newer gear, ammo, defense systems, tanks, planes, helicopters, and other equipment to fill that void. 

I went digging for information about what's going on with our military manufacturing, and by the looks of it there's hundreds of billions of dollars getting pumped into all that (via Jake Kaufman at Defense and Munitions, a trade magazine):

The President’s FY ’26 National Defense Budget requests $1.01 trillion, a 13% increase from 2025. However, at the moment, Congress has passed $831.5 billion for the Department of War’s Defense's discretionary budget. Outstanding budget considerations going through Congress could bring that final number up toward $893 billion...

You would think $893 billion would pay for a lot of bullets...

The budget includes an additional $1.3 billion for industrial-based supply chain improvements and an additional $2.5 billion for missiles and munitions production expansion. The budget also includes significant new investments of $200 million for automation and artificial intelligence (AI). It breaks down to shipbuilding, munitions and defense supply chains, and air and missile defense alone accounting for 50% of the total enhancements...

So the money is there - you would think - for a lot of weapons production and resources getting shipped out to our armed forces. And yet, we're getting warning signs from our own Pentagon officials that things are amiss, that they're not getting all these weapons and material to fight the wars they're being asked to fight.

This is a serious question: Just where the hell is all our defense spending going to these corporations that are supposed to be manufacturing all this shit? What happened to all the resources that are supposed to be pouring into our munitions factories to pump out the missiles and bullets and body armor and helmets and battlefield supplies?

Where's the fucking money, Lockheed Martin???

trump's Hostile Takeover of the GOP

Update: Thank you Batocchio for sharing this article at the Crooks & Liars Mike's Blog Round-Up. To the visitors, please take the time to leave comments below, and check out the more recent articles I've posted here!

Considering how much Republicans love the idea of running government - and apparently political parties - like a business, of course there was a hostile takeover of the Republican Party itself. donald trump effectively hijacked the organization in toto this week by ousting RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel because she wasn't giving him all the power (and money) he wanted (via Lara Priluck at Politico):

Trump has been increasingly public about his mounting discontent with the committee and with McDaniel in particular.

But it wasn’t always this way. McDaniel, who is the niece of retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), first captured Trump’s attention when she held the role of chair of the Michigan Republican Party in 2016. Trump rewarded McDaniel after his historic win in the state by installing her as RNC chair...

Most of Priluck's article covers how often McDaniel as RNC chair would rise to trump's defense as various scandals arose. It especially points out how McDaniel teamed up with trump's handlers to throw out the legal results of the 2020 elections:

McDaniel was also one of the many Republicans called to testify before the Jan. 6 select committee.

Her deposition footage revealed that — after the 2020 election — Trump connected her with John Eastman. Eastman is the architect of the fringe legal theory that the vice president had the power to swap official electors with ones who supported Trump during the certification process.

“He turned the call over to John Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states,” McDaniel said in the deposition video.

She then confirmed the RNC helped the Trump campaign assemble “contingent” electors...

Yet even with all that legal help to commit a serious act of illegality, trump came to blame the RNC - and thus McDaniel - for failing to help him get the courts into accepting his baseless claims of "stolen" ballots. After all, trump can't blame himself for not having any evidence behind his Big Lie.

It hasn't helped McDaniel's case that the Republican Party has been struggling since 2016 to pull off any major electoral gains. Even the major victory of flipping the US House to the GOP in 2022 wasn't enough because it left them with a disorganized and fractious House unable to do anything except grandstand on Fox Not-News.

It's been clear to a number of observers that the power struggle between the Establishment faction of the Republicans and the invasive trumpian force were coming to a head. This is the most public sign that trump decisively won that battle. It wasn't enough that trump held the power with the GOP voting base: trump wanted control of every possible decision-making role in the party so he can effectively raid it like a vulture capitalist, strip it for parts, keep the good stuff for himself, and abandon the husk when he moves on.

They're not even hiding it. trump is putting in control of the RNC a family member - Lara Trump, Eric's wife - whose only skill set is mangling Tom Petty songs. And Lara's making it clear that her father-in-law is after every penny in the GOP he can take (via Gabriella Ferrigine at Salon):

Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump and the daughter-in-law of former president Donald Trump, promised on Tuesday that she would use "every single penny" of Republican National Committee (RNC) funds to see Trump back in the White House if she becomes co-chair of the party.

During a recent appearance on the conservative network Newsmax, Trump claimed that “the RNC needs to be the leanest, most lethal political fighting machine we’ve ever seen in American history..." 

"No one tell her the RNC is supposed to be in charge of assisting the entire party at the federal, state and local level. Not just Trump’s personal slush fund," quipped attorney Bradley Moss on X/Twitter. 

Republican strategist Bobby Trivett, a self-acknowledged Nikki Haley supporter argued that Lara Trump has "no interest in Republican Victory up and down the ballot, she just wants Trump legal fees paid."

Former Department of Defense official Mike Walker seemed to posit that Lara Trump's claim of financial support for MAGA might not be politically aligned with other conservatives, tweeting that her assertion will likely come as a "surprise GOP candidates for the House and Senate and other offices..."

While individual candidates and state-level organizations of the GOP can make their own fundraising, they need the foundational support of the national party to ensure they keep their budgets in the black. The way Lara's talking about it - and how the other campaign experts are interpreting it - is that trump will ensure the RNC won't pay out, it'll vacuum up.

And as Trivett noted, a lot of evidence is out there that trump has been using his own campaign funds to pay for all of the expensive legal bills and court cases he's endured over the last three years. With a massive civil case ruling just last month over his sexual assault and defaming of Carroll costing him $88 million - and with the expected NY civil case ruling this Friday over his business and tax frauds costing him $250 million at the least - trump is going to vacuum up all the money he can get his hand on as soon as possible.

For all of trump's talk about being a big billionaire, the truth is that on his person he barely has any wealth at all. Most of a billionaire's wealth is on paper: That is, the expected value of various properties, corporations, investments, and financial papers they have on them at any given time. Elon Musk for example may be the richest man on the planet, but most of that wealth is tied up in stock holdings and investments he can't easily liquidate to put more money in his pocket right at this moment.

And in trump's case, a lot of that wealth was a lie (hence the New York civil case). trump doesn't have that much money for real.

For trump to pay off - or place in escrow for the courts while he fights his appeals - that much money would require him to either sell off a number of his properties and financial holdings - which weakens his overall claim to power and cuts into future grifting and emolument schemes - or gain access to on-hand cash, which is where the campaign donations come in. Knowing trump, he'll steal other people's money first before using his own.

Most of the other deep-pocket fundraisers for the Republican Party are the same way. Their wealth is mostly on paper as well, which was one of the reasons why the GOP across the board has been struggling with campaign fundraising the last year or so as those deep pockets are evaluating the Return On Investments their money isn't achieving. While the SuperPACs are still out there, how many of them are going to share their money with an RNC organization that's not going to help with the costs of campaigning - the ads, the office staffing, the signs, the rallies, the snacks - heading into 2024?

This is going to get messy as trump and his lackeys clean out the Republican Party vault to pay off his debts (and whatever indulgences trump still enjoys).

This is what running a business looks like, Republicans, if the aim is to crash and burn everything and move on to the next victim. Congratulations, GOP, you're now Sears.

The Jokers of the Republican Candidates Are Scary. What They Want To Do To America Is Worse.

This week saw what I think is supposed to be the final intra-party debate for the Republicans... yup, just checked, it is... so this is going to be it seeing all of the surviving blowhards begging for attention on the same stage. From now on, whomever's left - Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, and Trump - will do so from their individual rallies and town halls.

The way things are polling for this coming March Madness primary - where large-delegate states with Winner-Take-All results (Hi FLORIDA) can break the field - it's likely going to be Cruz and Trump the rest of the way.

This is still not a good situation for the United States.

Looking back on this blog, you might notice I've railed against most of the GOP candidates as Active-Negative disasters in the making. Even the ones I damned with faint praise - Lindsey Graham and John Kasich - were viewed with skepticism and dismay.

That was because - even for the ones who respected the federalist system of government, of the checks and balances - all of those candidates were arguing in defense of a political agenda that will re-create the economic (domestic) and diplomatic (international) policies of 2001-2009 that led to a massive global recession - that we STILL have not recovered from - and two costly wars/occupations that continue to destabilize half the planet to this day.

During that debate - transcript linked here - all four candidates sold their similar-sing-song platforms of tax cuts, tax cuts, deregulation, spending cuts to everything not military or CEO-related, tax cuts, wars, and more tax cuts. And on a lot of their arguments, the candidates were outright lying or failed on the facts.


Digby noted in her official column over at Salon how the candidates were mostly unified on the issues, just offering different ways in which they'd shred Social Security, handle foreign trade, arrest all illegals, and charge blindly into war zones in Syria and Ukraine.

Where the Democrats have a distinct split on the issues between a Socialist-Left take by Bernie Sanders and a Centrist-Moderate take by Hillary Clinton, there are no distinctive splits among the Republicans. All that distinguishes them from each other is the hair-splitting specifics.

There's a reason why the south Florida paper Sun-Sentinel refused to endorse any of the four remaining GOP candidates. Actually, they had several, but they all boiled down to the same thing, even for Kasich: they are all pushing the same platform, and that platform is dangerous.

Just like Mitt in 2012, all four are keen on a massive tax cut that would wreck everything for everyone not in the .01 Percent bracket.

They're pushing for putting ground troops into Syria, a move that will easily go sour and re-establish an occupation regime that already ruined much of Iraq and would wreck any diplomatic standing among our own allies.

They want to shred Social Security and every other social safety net from schools up to Medicare, as though cutting back on funding somehow creates the "reforms" necessary to actually make things work.

It doesn't matter if it ends up being Cruz or Trump or Kasich or even Rubio if he somehow pulls off a rigged ballot pulls off a miracle rally.

These are the Jokers to the Right of us: dangerous in their disdain for Constitutional norms, fervent in their dogma for tax cuts and deregulation and privatization, proudly ignorant of their view of the real world. Their personalities and arrogance may distract voters as entertainment for mockery or dismissal, but they are each covering up for a political war on rights and governance that's been waging for the last 30 years that could well devastate the U.S. if any of them make it into the Oval Office.

These Jokers are deadlier than the comic book version.

Don't laugh at these guys. Recoil in horror. And get the damn vote out for Democrats to make sure they don't win this November.

The Beltway Keeps Looking for a Savior To Rise From These Republican Streets

The political corpse of Scott Walker's Presidential ambitions is barely cold and already the pundit class in DC/NYC are anointing a replacement "he's got The Touch" candidate to fawn over:

Scott Walker just exited the Republican presidential race, so who gains? The only other solid conservative with a serious claim to electability: Marco Rubio.

Someone might wanna tell Vox's Dylan Matthews there's about five or ten other "solid conservatives" with a serious claim to electability.  (well, not really, because none of them are electable /rimshot)

It's too early to declare that Rubio has sewn up the Republican establishment. Jeb Bush is still kicking, and Chris Christie has a very low but ultimately nonzero chance of catching on. But at the moment, Rubio is the dark horse — and if insiders unite behind him, he may have a shot at beating Donald Trump.

Considering that Trump has pretty much cornered the market on the anti-immigrant voting base of the Republican Party, Rubio does not have much of a shot beating Teh Don.  The only real argument Matthews has about backing Rubio is that Marco is the only "traditional" candidate whose post-debate polling numbers have gone up, even though Rubio's polling still doesn't break over ten percent support.

And where Matthews is promoting the positive spin, we have Matt Yglesias (also at Vox) pitching the idea in another direction by trying to convince Jeb? Bush to drop out for the good of the party:

It would, of course, be totally ridiculous for Jeb Bush to drop out of the 2016 Republican primary this week. He's got a ton of money in the bank, a ton more money in his super PAC's bank, he's ahead of all the real politicians in national primary polling, and he leads the field in endorsements. If he sticks it out, Donald Trump will probably fade. The Ben Carson boomlet will probably vanish. The nascent Carly Fiorina boomlet will keep going for a while and then she'll come back down to earth too. Bush has the cash to gut it out and try to prevail against all comers and the odds of it working are at least decent.

But if he cares about his family legacy, the good of the Republican Party and the ideological principles he espouses, he should drop out as soon as possible and endorse Marco Rubio...

The sane argument for talking Jeb* out of the campaign is the simple fact he's messing up and being miserable about it.  Telling him to do it so someone else gets to be on the stage is gonna be like a shiv to the gut: when you look at his biography of coping in Dubya's and Poppy's shadows, trying to win the Presidency on his own terms is all his ego's got left to look forward to.

So why Rubio, Mr. Yglesias?  Why not Kasich - as much an Establishment figure with a more impressive resume - or even Lindsey Graham - okay, I'm pulling your leg there - to back?

Marco Rubio, by contrast, is a dynamic public speaker and gutsy political risk-taker (recall that he got to the Senate by beating a sitting governor in a primary) who impresses staffers on both sides of the aisle who've worked with him. Rubio performs better than Bush in head-to-head polling against Clinton.

Okay, I dunno if  you paid attention to the 2010 election, but the thing is Rubio won because A) Crist jumped out of the Republican Party that no longer loved him to run as an Independent, B) Crist and the Democratic challenger Greene kind of split their vote making it easier for Rubio to win, and C) in that Tea Party driven election cycle even a dead dog running for the Republican ticket would have won.  Don't go giving Rubio props for a skill he don't have.

If you're talking about political risk-taking, Rubio was tasked to give the Republicans an immigration reform package in 2013 so they could begin work post-2012 to build outreach to Latino voters.  When the Far Right anti-immigrant actors of the GOP balked, Rubio took the incredible risk... of curling up in a fetal position and letting his own bills get killed.  Not much risk there.

To be fair to Rubio, he's only been on the national stage for five years.  Maybe Yglesias is including Rubio's tenure as a Florida legislator and House Speaker, but even then Rubio doesn't have much of a track record - outside of the failed immigration push, he has gone invisible in the Senate - to crow about.  Calling him "better" at politics than Jeb^ is a bit of a reach.

And of course, David Brooks - wait, all you seven readers of this blog, I am not here to praise him - has to go and say this about Rubio:

...Instead, the party will veer on a course midway between outsider and establishment. It will probably end up with some hybrid candidate — sharp of tongue, gifted in self-expression and yet still anchored in the world of reality.

That’s where Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio come in. So far, Fiorina has looked like the most impressive candidate. She has a genius for creating signature moments. (“If you want to stump a Democrat, ask them to name an accomplishment of Mrs. Clinton’s.”) But her spotty record at Hewlett-Packard probably means she can’t start at the top of the ticket.

Rubio is young and thus uncorrupted...

That's the point where I f-cking choked.  Rubio is about as corrupt as every other Republican candidate on the primary trail.  And this is where the failure of research - the failure of even healthy skepticism - betrays the Beltway elites: Marco Rubio has some pretty scary skeletons in his closet related to his not-so-secret habit of spending other people's money for personal purchases.  There's a reason why Mitt Romney rejected going with Rubio as his Veep choice in 2012, and it has to do with Rubio's vetting uncovering some of those bad habits.

There's still the very real possibility that if Rubio does win the Republican nomination, that sort of scandal is going to go national in a way the party leaders won't like.  It's surprising they're even letting him do this well.

Here's the thing about the Beltway media once again: desperate for a likable politician on the Republican side of things with a dash of charisma and the ability to sell a hard-line Far Right social/tax cut agenda of doom, they are scrambling for the best possible Stepford Smiler left on the stage.  There's that "young" impression Brooks is yearning for, the mirage of "experience" that Yglesias admires, the sheer implausibility of Matthews' "electability".

The echo chamber of the upper echelon of our national news punditry keeps telling itself the same thing, thinking they're doing so with fresh words and excited voices.  They're just reinforcing the same bad ideas and perceptions.  It's not helping them, and it's not really helping inform the people they're sending these messages to.

Marco Rubio's Debts

From the great state of rip-off artistry - uh, sunshine - comes this champion of fiscal prudence and restrained personal habits Marco Rubio.  And yes, I'm being sarcastic, let this link to Business Insider show you why:

The New York Times reports that while the senator was juggling multiple loans and mortgages, he bought a speedboat, a luxury SUV, and made questionable investment decisions.
Rubio has a history of accruing massive debts and then spending big when money comes his way.
According to The Times, Rubio faced huge debts in 2012. Then a miracle appeared: He got an $800,000 advance on a book deal. But instead of using all of the money responsibly, Rubio went out and bought a $80,000 speedboat.
The Times notes that despite the senator's financial woes, Rubio also leased a $50,000 Audi Q7 SUV...

...Rubio's troubling spending habits are well known within Republican political circles. According to The Times, when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's team vetted Rubio as a potential vice presidential candidate, they found that the Florida senator's financial decisions were bad enough that they could damage the campaign...

This is something, by the way, that's raised a red flag as far back as 2006 (dear God, where do the years of political headdesking get to?) as this 2010 article from the St. Pete Tampa Bay Times attests to:

...On the campaign trail, Rubio likes to say "politicians don't create jobs." But politics, directly and indirectly, has generated Rubio's sizeable income, even as he has accumulated substantial debt and saw one of his homes nearly go into foreclosure...
...When Rubio joined the Florida House of Representatives in 2000, he did not own a home, had few possessions and made $72,000 as a lawyer.
But he had $30,000 in "assorted credit and retail debt" (as described on his financial disclosure form) and in 2001 listed $165,000 in loans from the University of Florida and University of Miami Law School.
As Rubio climbed the ranks, he began to use little-noticed political committees to fund his travel and other expenses and later had a Republican Party of Florida credit card.
What emerged, records show, is a pattern of blending personal and political spending. Over and over again Rubio proved sloppy, at best, in complying with disclosure requirements...

I've written before about the Florida Republicans - and it's looking like Republicans in general - have these bad personal AND political habits of spending like drunken teenagers in possession of their parents' credit cards.   Rubio's name came up often during these reports from 2010 and onward, and now that's he running for the Presidency the national media outlets are starting to dig into his past.

It's troubling how a politician from a party that hypes itself as fiscally responsible is himself a debt-riding hypocrite.  It's troubling because it's been made clear how Rubio plans on clearing that debt: using other's people money.  Feeding off deep-pocket sugar daddies whose money he can use to keep living the high life despite the weak regulations in place.  This is a man who received an $800,000 book advance and still went out and wasted the money on personal indulgences instead of taking care of his debts.

How the hell can we trust this man - trust anyone from the Republican ranks who view these political campaigns as money-making schemes - with our nation's economy?

Serious Thoughts On an April Fools Day

1) The bigot law in Indiana doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon even though it's basically made Indiana the target of scorn and ire.

And the situation's getting worse.  Arkansas is looking to pass a similar-worded religious freedom religious bigotry law.  I've mentioned it before: when one Red State does something odious in the sphere of social-economic conservatism, the other Red States are certain to follow despite the consequences already shown.  (Update: the Arkansas governor is refusing to sign the bill and is asking the state legislature to re-word the RFRA to remove the discriminatory language)

2) Speaking of bad Republican acts in the sphere of social-economic conservatism, current news out of Kansas - where the Far Right governor and the Far Right legislature passed one of the deepest tax cuts agenda among the states - is that the hit to revenues those tax cuts caused are deeper than what the state can afford to cut in spending.  In short, Kansas is bleeding again, this time budget-wise.

State figures released Tuesday showed that tax revenue came in $11.2 million below expectations in March, the latest in a string of lower-than-expected tax receipts.

Lawmakers must fill a $344 million revenue shortfall by June, and Brownback has moved to plug Kansas’ fiscal hole by slashing education funding, gutting the state’s pension fund, and cutting infrastructure. Additionally, the governor has proposed new sales taxes, which disproportionately impact the poor, in order to proceed full steam ahead with his income tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

Kansas is getting to the point where there's not enough places to cut spending, and are already at the point they've cut education funds to where even (what's left of) the middle class is going to see the damage.  And this is cyclical: the cuts to public funding affects the overall economy to where people can't earn enough to get taxed, which creates more revenue shortfalls, which forces the GOP leaders to cut more funding, which... /headdesk  At some point, Kansas is going to be in worse shape than Mississippi (arguably one of the poorest and worst-funded states in the nation).

Just remember, Republicans WANT to destroy government: they want to wipe out our schools and our pensions, because those are the things they slash first in favor of giving their corporate golfing buddies not only massive tax cuts but also massive state contracts on privatized vendor services that overcharge and underserve everybody.

3) Here in Florida, the budget shortfalls are not slowing down the state legislature's love of massive spending projects that ignore higher priority needs.

4) In very local news, The West Pasco Republican club is apparently disbanding out of sheer spite between leading local figures.  Popular local figure Mike Fasano reportedly ticked off two of the three club officers, especially over Fasano's public support for Charlie Crist for governor over Rick "No Ethics" Scott last election cycle.  I've actually met Fasano years ago at a meeting: when asked about Scott's performance as governor, I watched him physically constrain himself from blurting out what needed to be said about Scott's evil ways (Fasano's career has been a more mainstream, almost moderate Republican record: he's one of the few Republicans I like).  So it didn't surprise me Fasano wouldn't back Scott in 2014.  It doesn't surprise me that the more severe members of the GOP would carry their purity purge to the point of wiping out their own groups like this.  Bad news is for my poor Republican parents, they just moved to West Pasco and were wondering about where the local GOP charter was meeting...

It's 2014. Do You Know Where Your Mid-Term Elections Are?

January 1, 2014.

We've got mid-terms in this election cycle.  Voting for 1/3 of the U.S. Senate, all of the U.S. House seats, elections at the state level for legislatures of all 50 states and territories, and governorship elections in 36 states (including here in Florida).

Dear voters: IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT TO VOTE THIS ELECTION CYCLE.

Turnout for mid-terms has become abysmal, and yet these elections are no less important than the more attention-grabbing Presidential elections.

Because it's during these mid-terms when the low turnouts favor the partisans... because only the wingnut voters turn out no matter what, and they'll get the twisted soul-sucking candidates they want put in office.

It's also vitally important to pay attention to the two major parties dominating the electorate at the national and state levels.  Because one of the two major parties - Republicans - is currently the greatest threat to our functional federalist government in ages.

The modern Republican Party is made up of half-serious anti-government types who've taken the "Government is Bad for you" meme to the point that they're basically anarchists.  The modern GOP has staffed their ranks with elected officials and wannabes who want government to fail, who want government to stop aiding poor families and the unemployed under the excuse of "being cruel to be kind."  The current Far Right dominated Republicans want to recklessly cut taxes for the already uber-rich, deregulate everything to let our warehouses explode and our bridges collapse and our economy sink into toxic assets... and then have the majority of suckers us taxpayers bailout everyone to fix the damage they'd caused only for them to repeat the same damn mistakes again.

Say what you will about Democrats being weak-willed or divided, at least the party as a whole still believes in making government work.  At least the Democrats aren't stuck in a 1850s mindset like the GOP is.  At least the Democrats are the current party able to adapt and adjust and make sense.

The modern Republican Party is made up of con artists, fear-mongers, clueless Galtian wannabes.

For the Love of God get the vote out this year.

For the Love of God DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.  For the Love of God Democrats DON'T SCREW THIS UP.

Some Days The Schadenfreude Ends

Just found out about this three days ago.

Remember ole' Florida Speaker Ray Sansom?  The guy who got caught sneaking appropriation funds for an airport at a small college that would have benefited one of Sansom's buddies?

Well, the trial finally took place... but at a key moment where the prosecution was about to present a witness that could prove a conspiracy, the defense's argument against that witness was sustained by the judge... meaning the witness couldn't testify until the prosecution could prove through other means that there was a conspiracy afoot.

The prosecution couldn't.  The entire case pretty much unraveled and the charges were dropped.

Meanwhile back at the ranch in Tallahassee, our state legislature is passing "reforms" with campaign financing.  They just passed a law re-establishing something called "leadership funds":

If you are an interest group in Florida, a corporation, a lobbyist seeking favor, you go to these "leadership" funds run by lawmakers… And you pay them.  They will launder the money into local elections around the state, to keep electing more obedient followers.
This is so astonishing a corruption that it defies belief.
The bill in question is House Bill 1207, passed in the 2010 legislative session.
Then-Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed it. Last Thursday the Legislature overrode the veto.
The House vote was 81-39. The Senate vote was 30-9.
The twisted logic used in the Capitol, and what your legislator will try to tell you, is that it's better for the Legislature to be paid off directly.
See, they will write it down in a separate little report. So this is all about "informing the public" and "transparency."
If they try to give you this line, just ask this question: "So, is it legal to make unlimited payoffs to 'leadership funds' that are operated directly by the leaders of the Legislature, or not?"
Yes.
People ask: What can I do?
You can call or e-mail. You can go to the House's website (www.myfloridahouse.com) or the Senate's (www.flsenate.gov) and find contact information for your legislator. (I beg you to be firm but civil, especially to the hard-working staff — the world is rude enough already, isn't it?)
But they (The Republicans) are counting on you not to do anything at all.
Instead, here is what they are counting on you to do:
Re-elect them...

Robert Troxler's article is heart-breaking, but it really shouldn't come as a shock anymore.

The Republican Party goes out of its way to claim that they are "fiscally responsible", that they "know business and how to get things done", that they "can create jobs", that they can destroy "the Liberal Agenda of having lazy unemployed people" feed off "our" hard-earned tax dollars.

And then when in power, the Republicans slash corporate taxes, shift the tax burden ever more onto a middle class that can't handle it, cut social services on families and kids already struggling, spend all the other money on vanity projects that don't serve a majority of people, and sign over public-run services to privatized companies run by their old college buddies that will charge more and increase the odds of waste and corruption.  All because they can lie and trick voters into fearing anyone else getting control of the government reins.

And then to make sure their party stays in power they re-write the election laws or pursue questionable practices like twisted gerrymandered districts and voter suppression efforts.

Someone just polled how our nation is becoming "more conservative."  With the Far Right conservatives screwing more and more people out of their jobs and homes and private lives, HOW THE HELL IS THAT POSSIBLE?

All I Want This Election Day Nov. 2 2010

I want everyone who's a registered voter to get up and vote.  I despair that the overall voter turnout is always so meager.  We're supposed to be a vibrant democracy but barely half the nation even bothers to register to vote...

I want my fellow Floridians to Vote FOR Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate.  Of the three major choices, Crist is the one who's had the better, more honorable career.  Yes, he's changed his position on certain votes, but that was because a vast majority of Floridians begged him to do so.  Changing one's mind when it becomes clear that a political stance is wrong-headed DOES NOT make one a flip-flopper.  And getting driven out by the party with all those outside Far Right deep pockets is NOT being a traitor either.  A vote for Crist is a vote FOR Florida.  I seriously believe that.

I want my fellow Floridians to Vote AGAINST Rick Scott.  Scott is a goddamn crook with a history of Medicare Fraud.  There's now more evidence that his more recent health care endeavor, Solantic, has the same problem of Medicare overbilling that they had when Scott was CEO of Columbia/HCA.  The crook hasn't even stopped his bad habits!  What the hell do you think someone like that is gonna do in the Governor's office?  Here's a clue: he's gonna take all the money he can grift and make the rest of us suffer for it!  For the LOVE OF GOD, FLORIDA, DO NOT VOTE FOR HIM!  If you don't want to vote for Sink, fine, there's two other choices on the ballot.  Just... NO SCOTT.

I want my fellow Floridians to Vote FOR Amendments 5 and 6.  The Fair Districts ballots.  Of all the amendments on the ballot, these two are of major import to me: a serious and genuine attempt to stop the political gerrymandering that has favored one party over the rights of the voters, and has allowed incumbents to carve out safe districts to the detriment of honest representation.

I want my fellow Floridians... I want my fellow Americans across this nation to Vote FOR Democrats across the board.  All the Republicans will offer between now and 2012 are questionable impeachment investigations, a refusal to be serious with deficit reduction, and an upfront desire to shut down the federal government first chance and every chance they get.  I mean, the Republicans are the ones who blocked and obstructed and refused to compromise for the last two years... and THEY'RE the ones the voters want back in power?  Don't the voters have kids: any time their kids throw a tantrum and hold their breath and all, do these voters give their unruly kids more toys and candy?  Or do they send them to a corner for well-deserved Time Outs?  The collective GOP has acted like a spoiled 5-year-old brat... AND THEY ARE GETTING REWARDED FOR THEIR BAD BEHAVIOR.  What.  The.  Hell?!

I want to be able to go to bed Tuesday night in a good mood.  I want to be able to post here Wednesday morning that we're going to have responsible, sensible leadership in elected office between now and 2012 that might actually do something about our unemployment and our weak economy.

I want... I want... I want to... Put on my Sunday clothes...
There's lots of world out there
Get out the Brillantine and dime cigars
We're gonna find adventure in the evening air
Girls in white in a perfumed night
Where the lights are bright as the stars!
Put on your Sunday clothes, we're gonna ride through town
In one of those new horsedrawn open cars

We'll see the shows
At Delmonico's
And we'll close the town in a whirl
And we won't come home until we've kissed a girl!

...what?

Oh, right.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE FOR CRIST.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE FOR SCOTT.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE FOR AMENDMENTS 5 AND 6.

Schadenfreude IV: The Quickening

I am busy studying one more time (AAAAAA) for the CompTIA A+ Essentials exam.  Fourth time's the charm?


But today couldn't pass without this as a point of interest.  Via the St. Pete Times and Miami Herald, I offer up this for the moment.

Federal law enforcement agencies have launched a criminal investigation into the use of American Express cards issued by the Republican Party of Florida to elected officials and staff, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Tallahassee, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service are all involved in the inquiry, which grew out of the state investigation into former House Speaker Ray Sansom. He was indicted on criminal charges that he stashed $6 million in the state budget for an airplane hangar for a friend and campaign donor.
In the federal case, Sansom and others could be charged with making false statements on their tax returns and tax evasion stemming from hundreds of thousands dollars in charges on party credit cards.
A spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Florida, Katie Betta, said she could not confirm the investigation nor make any comments. Coming in a high-stakes election year, the investigation could expose the inner-workings of a party that has dominated state government and raked in millions of dollars from lobbyists and special interests.
Meanwhile, in a separate inquiry, the IRS is also looking at the tax records of at least three former party credit card holders — former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio (Crist is smiling over this one), ex-state party chairman Jim Greer (Crist isn't smiling so much about this one) and ex-party executive director Delmar Johnson — to determine whether they misused their party credit cards for personal expenses, according to a source familiar with the preliminary inquiry.
Political parties, which are tax exempt, are allowed to spend money only on political activities, such as fundraising, running campaigns and registering voters. While it's commonplace for party officials and politicians to wine and dine donors, the Florida party allowed credit card holders to rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges with little oversight.
The IRS opened the so-called "primary'' investigation into Rubio, the leading Republican candidate for Florida's open U.S. Senate seat, and the two former state GOP officials to see if there's enough evidence to support a full-fledged criminal inquiry, according to a source familiar with the IRS examination... (more)

This has gone national, as the GOP's open war against Crist for his hugging of Obama was well-known and as Rubio's rise was considered part of the Great Teabagger Uprising.  I shall comment further hopefully by Friday when I have time.  For now, ask yourselves these three questions:
1) Why did these politicos use the party's AmEx cards when they were perfectly capable of paying for these things out of their own pockets?  They are, after all, well-paid elected officials or else employed with salaries and benefits somewhere in the private sector...
2) How much has actually been billed to the state's GOP via these credit cards?  What other purchases were going on that WEREN'T related to party needs?
3) Who was going to pay for all of this?
4) Why is the Spanish Inquisition standing there amongst their weapons?  Wait... I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition...!

Drunken Teenagers with Their Parents' Credit Cards

This entry's title - Drunken Teenagers with their parents' credit cards - is a phrase I've been using to describe the fiscal destructiveness of the modern Republican Party.  How they spent and spent for two massive unfinished wars, a Medicare 'reform' that was in truth a payout to the Pharmaceutical companies, and constant bumping up of our debt limit put our nation into such a huge hole that China could own us without firing a shot.  I'm not the only one who noticed, and even some who are right-of-center noticed as well.

So I dare compare the Republican Party - fiscally irresponsible, spend-crazy, adding debt like there's no bill due - to drunken teens using their parents' credit cards to rack up more debt and buy crazy sh-t to satisfy their indulgences.  But I was just being figurative.

Well, here in Florida the Republicans just went and made it literal.

The local papers - so far the St. Pete Times and Orlando Sentinel leading the way - are pursuing reports of how a minor staffer with the state's GOP organization racked up over $1 MILLION on a party-issued credit card.  Expenditures of shopping sprees across the globe.  Travel tickets everywhere.  TOYS!  Further reports are examining how other leaders in the party - including current senatorial frontrunner Rubio - racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending as well.

Obviously, that staffer with the million-dollar credit debt didn't spend all that on herself or her family: evidence points to higher-ranking members of the state party - our old favorite Sansom gets a name-drop - using her card as a convenient means of side-stepping their expenditure reports.  Problem is, that credit card statement still has to go somewhere, and the papers found out.  And how the Republicans have to go into "Explain It Away" mode because while people expect the Republicans to live extravagantly they don't much like it when 12 percent of the state is STILL OUT OF WORK AND STRUGGLING FROM DAY TO DAY.

At least two questions come quickly to mind:

• Who's gonna pay all these credit card bills when they come due? (obvious answer: the deep-pocket campaign fundraisers who pretty much use this as a form of legalized bribery)
• Why are these GOP leaders spending so much of other people's money when all of them - Rubio, Sansom, even Crist had questionable spending sprees of his own - are fully employed at good wages and could well afford these things out of their OWN pocket?

I'm not sure the Republicans are gonna like the way this story is gonna play out, especially as it's coming on the heels of reports on how their National party organization the RNC went and spent money on questionable items as well... including a memorable stop at an expensive (yet tastefully refined) lesbian bondage club.

This seriously needs more play on the national stage.  This is more than just a Florida scandal: this is endemic of how the Republican leadership really behaves with people's finances.  This is a perfect example of how the Republicans are truly FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE: they spend other people's money - in some cases flat-out embezzle - to fulfill their personal needs and then have other people pay their bills.

So anyways, this isn't even the major news story in Florida right now.  Everyone's up in arms about the Florida legislature's attempt to destroy our state's educational system, with a bill SB6 sitting on Crist's desk awaiting a possible veto.  This has major ramifications: if it passes you can kiss all the good teachers goodbye (as the bill ends tenure and forces teachers onto an annual contract, no one is gonna want to work without job security).  If Crist vetoes it, he guarantees the Far Right wingnuts (who hate the Democratic-heavy teachers' unions) running the primary between him and Rubio will make him pay for it (and it's not like he's won them over anyway).  So a good number of political commentators are convinced if he vetoes it Crist is going to have to run as an Indy... so there's that drama going on today.

The third major story in the state today?  It's about a monkey!  There's an escaped rhesus macaque who's been free for over a year moving all over the bay area, and the locals keep an eye out for him. Watch the video.