Did Delaware’s Department Of Elections Tell Dark Money PAC’s How To Avoid Detection In Delaware? According to one of our barrister commenters, yes. From our tipline:
Just for the record, the US Supreme Court on October 1 denied the application of the AFP Foundation organization to prohibit DE from enforcing its election finance law that requires entities making “election communications” to disclose the name of their donors. The Court issued a one line order denying the AFP stay request (with no noted dissents). That means the DE disclosure requirement remains in effect.
FWIW, the main thrust of the State’s response to the stay request (filed by a DC liberal-leaning election organization/law firm) was that AFP should have used the “work around” for the disclosure requirement that everyone else uses and that the seemingly State easily accepts: AFP should have created a subsidiary to make its election communications in DE and and funded it internally with AFP money. In that case the new sub would only have had to disclose AFP as it’s single donor and would not have to disclose all the names of those nationwide who donated to AFP. AFP would not be the entity making the election communications and would not have to disclose its donors. That work around sort of makes the disclosure law easily avoided and it is odd to here State suggest that organizations should follow the route to hide the donors really funding the subsidiary.
I’ve said it before: The Delaware Department Of Elections needs a giant enema, as they have become the Enema Of The People. They don’t pursue any elections violations, their reporting system is a disaster, their site usually crashes on Election Nights, and it’s run by political hacks instead of experts. Have I missed anything? BTW, the General Assembly should plug the ‘workaround’ that the Department of Elections has so generously shared with dark money PAC’s.
You Can Now Access The Office Of The Delaware Inspector General:
After months of building up an office, Delaware’s new government watchdog charged with investigating fraud, waste, mismanagement and corruption is formally seeking out whistleblowers.
On a website launched Tuesday, the Delaware Office of Inspector General lists a hotline where users can anonymously submit reports of government malfeasance by phone or email.
The website also provides a clickable orange button that directs users to an online form to make such reports.
The form notes that the new inspector general’s office is charged with investigating the operations of Delaware’s state government, including its school districts. Also within its investigative purview are claims of retaliation against whistleblowers.
The website works and is easy to use. I know, because I filed a complaint on the Underwater City At Fort DuPont yesterday. Needless to say, I had plenty of supporting documentation, dating back to 2014. I’ll let you know what, if anything happens as a result.
What Snacks Will You Enjoy During The Execution?:
Pentagon officials said on Thursday that the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting would be executed in public, a practice that ended in the United States nearly a century ago and is most commonly carried out in a handful of countries, including Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon said in a statement that the military execution, scheduled for Dec. 3, would also be broadcast via livestream. Such a broadcast has little precedent, and releasing video of executions is most often associated with extremist militant groups like the Islamic State.
The announcement adds to the growing spectacle around the planned execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others when he brought a personal handgun onto the grounds of Fort Hood, Texas. The rampage was the deadliest shooting at an American military base and sent shock waves through the U.S. military.
There are few countries that hold public executions. The human rights group Amnesty International has highlighted some cases in which public executions in Iran and Saudi Arabia have been filmed by bystanders.
I can’t even…
Dog Bites Man–Another ICE Outrage:
Leading New York Democrats expressed anger and demanded curbs on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violence after a federal officer shot a man in a car where a five-year-old child was sitting, sparking fierce protest.
At least seven shots were reportedly fired and the man was hit in the neck late afternoon on Thursday as children were coming home from school in the busy Marble Hill neighborhood of the south Bronx in New York City.
The man was conscious and hospitalized, authorities said, while later he was taken away from the hospital by ICE, according to the mayor.
Mamdani called the incident “unconscionable” and said on Thursday night that ICE, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), had “whisked him away” from the New York-Presbyterian Allen hospital in upper Manhattan.
Early reports indicated that agents had surrounded the man and a five-year-old child in his car in a residential area before firing multiple rounds, Mamdani said in a statement. The child was physically unharmed, he said. Both Hochul and Mamdani spoke to Donald Trump and Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, by phone.
You need say no more than that the ‘agents’ fired multiple rounds into a car that had a five-year-old in it.
Peter Thiel’s Latest Antichrists? Obama and the Pope:
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is escalating his attacks on critics of artificial intelligence, accusing former President Barack Obama and the pope of exploiting the public’s fears about AI, according to exclusive recordings of closed-door lectures obtained byIn a new series of talks in Nashville, Thiel singled out the two leaders as he sharpened his warnings about the Antichrist — a figure who he sees as stopping the progress of technology and advocating for a “one world government” of regulation.
“Many people know that AI is politically unpopular and want to leverage that to boost their own popularity,” Thiel said. “Both Obama and the pope fall into this category. Obama knows the Democrats have no ideas, but they can at least oppose AI.”
The former president recently urged Democrats to come up with a more comprehensive plan on AI.
“He needed something politically popular to distract from the church’s child sex abuse scandals, and he found it in AI,” Thiel said, referring to the pope’s first encyclical on AI.
Nobody would listen to this wingnut if he didn’t have obscene wealth. Unfortunately, he does.
Absolute Corruption. The so-called ‘Russian Oil Deal’:
The Trump administration argues that its proposed multibillion-dollar Russian oil deal would advance American foreign policy interests and lower energy prices.
But most of the ownership in the deal would go to a group of Middle Eastern investors, including some with business ties to key U.S. officials involved in the negotiations, according to people familiar with the talks.
The deal, for a worldwide portfolio of oil fields, refineries and gas stations now owned by the sanctioned Russian energy giant Lukoil, has become intertwined with the U.S. talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, The New York Times reported last week.
The United States government, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, would get a stake of about 15 percent in the deal, without investing any cash up front, the people said.
The leader of the investor group, Todd Boehly, an American billionaire who has donated $2 million to pro-Trump causes in the last two years, would get a smaller minority stake.
But more than half of the equity will be cumulatively held by investors in the Middle East, according to three participants in the negotiations. The investors include entities tied to the royal family in Abu Dhabi and to two billionaire Syrian-born Qatari brothers, who are business partners with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.
Putin, Middle East oligarchs, Jared and Ivana, and Trump. Perfect together.
What do you want to talk about?
