Miriam, another factor is that all articles have a lead in time, from weeks to
months. I just heard on the radio this morning that Trump is pulling away with
the lead in New Hampshire, Florida, and Ohio. I think that information may be
more recent.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Thursday, November 3, 2016 6:10 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Outrageous False Trump-Clinton Equivalencies
Dominate Corporate Media and Are Distorting the Election
It seems like different articles are saying different things about the polls.
Every article I've read says that Clinton is ahead, although not by a huge
amount. Her lead did increase, however, after the video with Billy Bush was
released. The Clinton surrogates, however, do keep saying that Trump might win.
They have a reason for doing that. It is to scare people who are thinking about
not voting for her. But polls reflect what the pollsters have writtn into the
questions and subjective interpretations of statistics. Of course, there's
voter intimidation, unreliable machines, and the fact that Republicans have
stolen the Ohio vote twice before. Who knows?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Frank Ventura
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2016 5:29 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Outrageous False Trump-Clinton Equivalencies
Dominate Corporate Media and Are Distorting the Election
Trump is in a very good position to win. Here are a few ways:
a. He can win straight out. He is slightly ahead in national polls but the lead
is within the margin of error.
b. He doesn't have to beat Clinton but has to get close in at least one swing
state that is located within a right leaning federal court district.
For Trump this scenario is like playing hand grenades. He doesn't have to hit
Clinton but has to come close enough to blow her up. In a close race he can
challenge the results in any swing state and any right leaning federal court
will rule in his favor. With a 4 to 4 split supreme court the decision will
stand and he will take the oval office. This is why the republicans in the
Senate blocked a supreme court nomination. This strategy didn't work for the
Republicans in 2008 and 2012 because Obama was too far in the lead to have a
smaller enough margin of victory to get a court challenge.
c. This is the scenario that has gotten very little airplay. If Clinton and
Trump split the election with the exact number of electoral votes each the law
(constitution) requires Congress to vote to decide the president. With a
Republican Congress as it is now Trump will take the Oval Office.
So as you can see, as it stands now Trump has about a 75 percent chance of
ultimately winning.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of S. Kashdan
Sent: Wednesday, November 2, 2016 10:47 AM
To: Blind Democracy List <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Outrageous False Trump-Clinton Equivalencies
Dominate Corporate Media and Are Distorting the Election
Outrageous False Trump-Clinton Equivalencies Dominate Corporate Media and Are
Distorting the Election
By Steven Rosenfeld [1]
AlterNet [2], November 1, 2016
http://www.alternet.org/print/election-2016/outrageous-false-trump-clinton-e
quivalencies-dominate-corporate-media-and-are
As national polls released Tuesday show a tightening or virtually tied
presidential race, voters are being deluged with new revelations about Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump that are far from equivalent measures of their
characters and fitness for office.
On the Democratic side, the solo and apparently illegal decision by FBI
Director James Comey to alert Congress that the agency wants to examine newly
discovered emails from the ex-secretary of state has become a gut-punch to a
campaign that was rising in the polls. There is no recent precedent for Comey's
action, which violates FBI rules of not commenting on investigations and
interfering in elections. Yet Comey's letter to Congress last Friday has cut
into voter enthusiasm for Clinton, polls released Tuesday found [3], even
though it is long on innuendo and short on substance.
On the Republican side, in contrast, a string of new evidence-based revelations
about Trump this week reinforce a lifelong pattern of self-centered and deviant
behavior that questions his fitness for any public
office. There's his refusal to pay a top campaign consultant nearly
three-quarters of a million dollars owed, just as Trump didn't pay hundreds of
contractors when building his casinos. There's Trump using now-banned
tax-avoidance tactics to evade tens of millions of dollars in federal taxes,
basically claiming his investors' losses--other people's money--as his own.
There is Trump destroying emails and other legal records over decades of
litigation, even as he hits Clinton for erasing personal emails. And most
insidiously, there is a series of reports saying he has longstanding links to
Russia's government, which is seen as overtly and covertly helping Trump's
presidential campaign.
The biggest double standard is that the FBI has been investigating links
between Trump and Russia--apparently going beyond this year's hack into
Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails. Yet astoundingly, Comey has said
he did not want [4] to tell Congress about that probe on the eve of an
election, even though it raises serious national security questions; namely,
what are Trump's loyalties and debts to his Russian backers?
Let's go through these false equivalencies and loose ends.
1. The 'Comey Effect' tightens race, cuts enthusiasm for Clinton. The bombshell
about the investigation broke last Friday, just before the latest Washington
Post/ABC News tracking poll was conducted. That poll, whose results were
released Tuesday, found [3] Trump with a one-point lead (46 to
45 percent), which is a statistical tie. More insidious was its finding that
Clinton's base suffered a 10-point drop in supporters who are "very
enthusiastic." While no single poll can be seen as definitive--especially when
25 million people have already voted nationally--the unambiguous takeaway is
that Comey's disclosure has impacted the race and hurt a presidential
frontrunner's campaign.
It's important to note that just because the FBI is examining emails from
Clinton found on former congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop, there is no
indication the agency will announce anything before Election Day. It's very
likely the FBI has already seen most of these emails, as it has examined the
computers of Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, who is a top Clinton aide.
Should the FBI find previously unseen emails, there's no indication that any
would contain classified material and not personal banter.
Nonetheless, this new investigation is letting Republicans talk about something
other than [5] Trump, which is helping them.
2. There is an FBI investigation of Trump's ties to Russia. There is, without
dispute, an FBI investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. The question is not
if one exists, but what is its scope? Major newspapers such as the New York
Times have reported [6] the FBI is looking into ties between
top Trump advisers and Russian financial interests, as well as Russian-led
hacking into Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails. Other breaking news
reports this week have pointed to potentially deeper ties. On Monday, Slate.com
published a lengthy report [7] based on an investigation by computer scientists
who traced a server that was sending messages between Trump's offices and
Russia, although they could not tell what its purpose was. Also Monday,
MotherJones.com's David Corn wrote a report [8] quoting notes an ex-spy from a
U.S. ally gave the FBI about how Russia has for years
"tried to co-opt and assist Trump."
In response to MoJo's story, Matthew Miller, a former Department of Justice
spokesman, tweeted [9], "No other conclusion can be drawn from this story but
that the FBI is officially investigating Trump for coordination with Moscow."
That is not a far-fetched conclusion, considering that Paul Manafort, Trump's
ex-campaign manager, was forced to resign last summer over
reports he was paid millions in cash while working for pro-Russia candidates
in Ukraine.
But let's be clear: There is no equivalency between these probes. On the
campaign trail, Trump has called Clinton's use of a private email server, "the
biggest scandal since Watergate." That is another huge distortion, as the
Watergate scandal involved a presidential conspiracy to target enemies, spy on
them, steal their private files, and cover it up. If anything, it is Trump's
weird, unexplained links to Russia, and Comey's one-sided decision to talk
about Clinton and not Trump, that may be the biggest presidential campaign
scandal since Watergate.
3. While Trump assails Clinton over emails, he's destroyed records defying
court orders. Also Monday, Newsweek published a report [10] by Kurt Eichenwald
tracing Trump's decades-long record of destroying and hiding "thousands" of
emails, records and other documents in ongoing lawsuits.
"Over the course of decades, Donald Trump's companies have systematically
destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents
demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders," the
report [11] begins. "These tactics--exposed by a Newsweek review of thousands
of pages of court filings, judicial orders and affidavits from an array of
court cases--have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and
the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump. In each
instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that
made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums
of money in legal fees as they struggled--sometimes in vain--to obtain records."
Trump's brazen hypocrisy is nothing new. But the false equivalency here is that
Clinton has said the 30,000 emails her legal team erased were personal,
whereas Trump's missing document trail was business-related and connected to
disputes resulting in litigation.
4. More evidence of 'crooked Donald,' the boss who doesn't pay his bills or
taxes. There was more evidence as the week began that Trump's word cannot be
trusted, adding to his long track record of doing whatever is best for him.
It's been widely reported that Trump has stiffed [12] hundreds of small
businesses that built his resorts, pushing many into bankruptcy or financial
hardship. Now a top Republican pollster hired by the campaign is feeling the
same pain, according to the Washington Post.
"The Trump campaign's latest Federal Election Commission report shows that it
is disputing nearly $767,000 that Fabrizio's firm says it is still owed,"
the Post reported [13] Monday. "Fabrizio was an ally of former campaign
chairman Paul Manafort, who persuaded a skeptical Trump in the spring that he
needed a professional pollster. The abrupt departure of Manafort in August and
Trump's hiring of pollster Kellyanne Conway to be his campaign manager raised
questions about whether Fabrizio would stay on. There have also been multiple
reports that Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have rejected Fabrizio's
advice."
This pattern of doing whatever is best for Trump at everyone else's expense was
also displayed in a New York Times report [14] Tuesday, which described how
Trump used "a tax avoidance measure so legally dubious his own lawyers advised
him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it improper if
he was audited. Thanks to this one maneuver, which was later outlawed by
Congress, Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in
federal personal income taxes."
Simply said, Trump claimed the losses his investors suffered in a New Jersey
casino project as his own--meaning he used other people's money to avoid paying
taxes. He disguised that move by giving his banks and investors shares in a
worthless casino partnership. That covered up that he wasn't relieved of that
debt (which is taxable) by his investors. "He deducted someone else's losses,"
a former congressional tax expert told [14] the Times. "He is double-dipping
big time."
False Equivalencies, Loose Ends
These new disclosures about Trump--the FBI investigating his ties with Russia;
his long record of destroying legal documents related to ongoing lawsuits; not
paying in full for agreed-upon services; not paying tens of millions in income
taxes--cannot be compared in any substantive way to whatever mistakes Clinton
made while using a private email server as secretary of state.
And yet, because FBI director Comey told Congress he wants to look at some more
Clinton emails found in a related case, a pall has been cast on her campaign,
and its effect is being seen in the latest polls in the form of declining voter
enthusiasm and tightening presidential and Senate races.
Meanwhile, Comey doesn't think he needs to say anything [4] to Congress about
the FBI investigation into the ties between Trump and the Russian government
because it might unduly affect the election's outcome. On Tuesday, Clinton's
campaign manager, Robbie Mook, accused [15] Comey of a "double standard," but
that is an understatement.
It's worth pondering the concluding thoughts in Eichenwald's Newsweek
investigation about Trump's real-life behavior. Voters who are having second
thoughts about Clinton because of the FBI director's one-sided intrusion into
the campaign's finale need to be clear-eyed if they don't vote for her.
"This review of Trump's many decades of abusing the judicial system,
ignoring judges, disregarding rules, destroying documents and lying about it
is not simply a sordid history lesson," Eichenwald wrote. "Rather, it helps
explain his behavior since he declared his candidacy. He promised to turn
over his tax returns and his health records--just as he promised to comply
with document discovery requirements in so many lawsuits--then reneged. As a
result, he has left a sparse evidentiary trail that can be used to assess
his wealth, his qualifications for the presidency or even his fitness.
Should voters choose him to be the next U.S. president, he will enter the
Oval Office as a mystery, a man who has repeatedly flouted the rules. He has
solemnly told the country to trust him while refusing to produce any records
to prove whether he speaks the truth or has utter contempt for it."
Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including
America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and
elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting"
(AlterNet Books, 2008).
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Trump-Clinton Equivalencies Dominate Corporate Media and Are Distorting the
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/outrageous-false-trump-clinton-equival
encies-dominate-corporate-media-and-are
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-rosenfeld
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/01/post-abc-tracking-
poll-clinton-falls-behind-trump-in-enthusiasm-but-has-edge-in-early-voting/?
tid=pm_politics_pop_b
[4]
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/31/fbis-comey-opposed-naming-russians-citing-ele
ction-timing-source.html
[5]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clintons-email-is-a-conversation-sta
rter-for-republicans-in-tight-races/2016/11/01/c300454a-a033-11e6-8832-23a00
7c77bb4_story.html
[6]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-tru
mp.html?ref=politics&_r=0
[7]
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_se
rver_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
[8]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-allegi
ng-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump
[9] https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/793250102714437632
[10]
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/11/11/donald-trump-companies-destroyed-emails-d
ocuments-515120.html
[11]
http://http://www.newsweek.com/2016/11/11/donald-trump-companies-destroyed-e
mails-documents-515120.html
[12]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trum
p-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274/
[13]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/10/31/donald-trump
-is-refusing-to-pay-his-campaign-pollster-nearly-three-quarters-of-a-million
-dollars/?postshare=7601477933633852&tid=ss_tw
[14]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/donald-trump-tax.html?hp&a
ction=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=fir
st-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
[15]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/new-clinton-ad-revisits-famous-daisy
-ad-as-democrats-try-to-move-past-damaging-fbi-news/2016/10/31/294a9be0-9f6f
-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html
[16] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Outrageous False ;
Trump-Clinton Equivalencies Dominate Corporate Media and Are Distorting the
Election
[17] http://www.alternet.org/
[18] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
