Author: Steven D

On April 14th I posted a story (which I have now deleted) that stated the voting hours for many people living in New York state had been “cut by six hours” if they lived in a county outside NYC, its suburbs and Erie County.

While it is true that voters in those other counties will have six less hours in which to cast their votes in the New York Primary on Tuesday, it was misleading of me to say that those hours had been cut, or to imply that this was something new for this election cycle.

The simple fact is that all primary elections held in New York have, in effect, suppressed the vote of people who live outside downstate New York (and Buffalo) by limiting the hours the polls are open for decades.

The law is a peculiarity that vexes early-rising voters and elections boards alike, not to mention reinforces stereotypes of downstate superiority.

“The varying hours of operating for polling places strike at the heart of one’s voting rights,” state Supreme Court Justice Lawrence Kahn wrote in finding the law unconstitutional in 1982. “A farmer in his pickup truck is entitled to the same opportunity to vote in a primary as a subway commuter.”

Kahn, who is now a federal judge, was right. That hasn’t mattered for years, though, because he was reversed on appeal and the state’s highest court upheld that extending voting hours for some New Yorkers and not others was “reasonable.”

Unfortunately, Justice Kahn’s decision was overruled. And ever since them, this separate and unequal treatment of voters simply on the basis of where they live has continued to exist. Welcome to New York, a state just as politically corrupt as Illinois or New Jersey, if not moreso.

Nonetheless, I let my umbrage at obvious inequity of allowing some voters more hours to vote than others get the better of my judgment. I’m sorry. That was wrong of me. And I should have corrected my mistake sooner. Again, the errors in that post are mine alone and I accept full responsibility for it.

I’m not a journalist, but I should have done my homework on this matter. I can only ask your forgiveness for this mistake, though I cannot and do not expect those of you who were misled in any way by my story to give it to me.

Aside from the correction and apology herein, what I do wish to impress upon everyone in states yet to hold their primaries, especially those in New York, is to make sure you know what the polling hours are where you live and what election laws may apply that could effect you ability to cast your vote. Call your local election boards, or look them up online, to find out where your polling place will be, how long it will be open on election day, the status of your voter registration, and if any ID will be required to vote in your state.

For voters in New York state that means that, unless you live in New York City or the counties of Erie, Putnam, Orange, Suffolk, Nassau, Rockland and Westchester (where the polls open at 6 A.M.), your polling place will not be open until NOON on Tuesday April 19th.

In addition, New Yorkers who live in counties in which the polls do not open until noon, should be prepared for possible delays due to overcrowding. Hopefully it won’t come anywhere near what we witnessed in Arizona earlier this year, but the higher the turnout, the likelier you may have to wait in line to cast your vote.

Again, my deepest and sincerest apology to all for the poor judgment I displayed in my earlier, incorrect story regarding this matter posted here on April 14th.

Yes, this is a New York specific story, so everyone who does not live in my wonderful state, please bear with me. I know this post may not apply to you, but perhaps it will encourage everyone in states with upcoming primaries to check their voting status.

You see, much like in Arizona, stories have been popping up of registered Democrats in New York who are finding that their registration information has been changed to indicate they are either Republicans, Independents, or not registered at all, thus disqualifying them from voting in the primary on Tuesday. For your own protection, here’s what you need to do to ensure that you do not lose you right to vote. And that begins with a couple of steps to take before you go to the polls.

WHAT TO DO BEFORE GOING TO THE POLLS (and do it as soon as possible)

FIRST STEP:

Go to the NYSVoter Public Information – Voter Registration Search webpage. Fill in all of the information (name, birth date, address, county and zip code) then hit the search function. This should pull up information as to whether or not the state Board of Elections database has you listed there, and your name, party affiliation, status (active or inactive), the location of your polling place, and your voter district information.

STEP TWO

If you are listed properly: PRINT THIS PAGE or TAKE A SCREENSHOT of it which can be transferred to your mobile device of choice. You may need this document later if your status is challenged at your polling place on election day.

If you are not listed (i.e., you get a message that says: “No matches found” ) go back and make sure you entered all the information correctly. If the search still comes up empty, try possible variations of the spelling of your last name. If that still doesn’t work, don’t worry just yet.

STEP THREE

Find your local county’s voter information page. Use this NYS Board of Elections link to find your county on the New York State map, and click on your county to pull up a page with the applicable link to your county Board of Elections. Some counties provide you the means to check your registration online (mine does, thank goodness). If yours is one of them, follow the links provided to pull up your voter registration info and, if it is correct, PRINT OUT THAT PAGE or TAKE A SCREENSHOT of it, one which can be stored on a mobile device that you can bring with you to the polls.

If the county does not provide an online searchable database to check your registration, you should call the local county BOE office and explain your situation, and, ask them to check their records. You may need to go down to the BOE office itself to obtain proof of your registration and voter status.

In New York City you can call this number to check your voter registration status: 1.866.VOTE-NYC (1.866.868.3692)

WHAT TO DO ON THE DAY OF THE ELECTION IF YOUR VOTER STATUS IS CHALLENGED

STEP FOUR If possible, make sure you bring a printed or electronic copy of your voter registration information with you to your poling place (See, steps 2 and 3 above).

STEP FIVE

If you are informed by a poll worker you are not listed as an eligible voter, here is the advice given by an NYS Board of Elections employee to ensure you are allowed to cast an official ballot:

So you go to your polling place and the nice little old lady tells you that she can’t find you in the pollbook. Do you know what your rights are at this point?

First, [bear] in mind that most of the people that work at the polls are not political hacks, but elderly people that work long hours to help serve their community. They are going to be overwhelmed and sometimes you will get the wrong information. Don’t take out your frustration on them.

Next, make sure they call the local board of elections to verify why you aren’t in the pollbooks. All boards should scan all the documents they receive with your name on it, even if your records aren’t complete. You have every right to see each document they have, because it’s public information. They should check to make sure they didn’t make a mistake, and will usually be very helpful in giving you all your options.

Next, Pollworkers are required to show you a “notice to voters.” This document tells you that you have two options: affidavit ballot or court order. It is my opinion that you seek a court order. Is this going to be extra work? Yes. If you’re unsure about your voter status, give yourself plenty of time to vote […]

If you seek a court order, you will be required to meet with the local State Supreme Court Judge on call, and the Board of Elections. Many of these judges are very liberal in their rulings, often side with the voter. You will then be issued a document that you can bring to the polling place that allows you to cast your ballot INTO THE MACHINE.

If you choose the option to vote by affidavit ballot, you will be directed to a station within the polling place dedicated to this process. You will then be required to fill out what is essentially a registration form. TAKE YOUR TIME FILLING THIS OUT. It will be scrutinized by Election commissioners of both parties after the election. Your registration and party enrollment will be checked, and voted on by each commissioner to determine if the envelope should be opened and ballot counted. Generally speaking, the Democratic Commissioners will be more liberal and vote to count your vote and the Republican Commissioners will likely vote to not count your vote (shocking, I know.) One no vote negates the ballot.

This is why you need to bring a printed or electronic copy of your voter status with you. That should (not saying it will, but it should) be sufficient proof for the judge on call to rule in your favor. Heck, it might even be enough for a sympathetic poll worker to just give you a regular ballot, rather than insist that you either go the court order route or vote using an affidavit ballot.

AVOID voting by AFFIDAVIT BALLOT, unless you have no other option. Chances are good that affidavit ballots will not be counted. So, if at all possible, go the court order route if your right to vote is challenged.

I hope that most New York voters in the Democratic Primary this coming Tuesday will not find themselves in this situation, and will be allowed to vote for the candidate of their choice. However, forewarned is forearmed. Be prepared for the worst case scenario, no matter how unlikely you think it may be.

Because as voters all across the country this year have discovered, our election laws and procedures are often obscure, byzantine and easily misinterpreted, and your ability to exercise your right to vote may very well be disrupted and/or suppressed Just ask the good people of Arizona, where the Clinton and Sanders campaigns, along with the Democratic party have filed a lawsuit against the State of Arizona, Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell for suppressing the vote.

I knew I’d lost my chance. It was 7:44 am and I knew that the venue where Bernie Sanders was holding a town hall event today in my city had opened at seven to allow people to enter. I had meant to get up at 5:00 am, but I’d had a rough night. Pain in my shoulder, pain in my left hip, pain in my neck. The kind of pain that keeps you awake, that doesn’t give you a moment’s peace. Pain that was worse than usual for me, and a sure sign that my autoimmune symptoms had flared up. I eased myself out of bed, and saw that my abdomen was distended, and I felt chills. More signs that my illness had taken a wrong turn overnight. So, what did I do?

I went downstairs, took 50 mg of Prednisone (corticosteroid) to alleviate the onset of my illness, got in my car and started of to make the twelve mile drive to the place where Bernie Sanders was going to speak in my city this morning. I know, a pretty a quixotic stunt on my part (or a stupid one, to be perfectly blunt). Though the day was cold and raw, I brought with me no hat, no gloves, no windbreaker – real smart there, Steven. The local NPR radio station reported traffic was backed up all along the roads that led to Sanders’ venue. Thousands of people were already there, the news reader said. I turned the radio off and kept driving anyway. It was a fool’s errand, a fool’s hope, but I went anyway.

Just off the highway, at the exit that led to the campus of the local community college, I could see crowds of people lined up to get into the building where, even as I type this now, Bernie’s town hall event has started. I should have turned around and driven back home right then and there. I reminded myself that the doors had opened at 7:00 am, and those people in line probably weren’t going to get in either. But, I thought to myself, maybe Bernie would speak to the people outside on this raw, April morning, before the main event. Maybe I still had a chance to see him.

So, I didn’t turn around. I got in the line of cars that, moving at a snail’s pace, led to the the entrance to the campus, and then to campus parking lots made available for everyone who was coming to see Bernie. After another twenty minutes, I finally got in and found a place to park, though it was at least a half mile away from where I need to be, if not more. More fool I, I got out of my car and took off toward where I still hoped to see Bernie. I walked as fast as my 59 year old legs allowed. With every step I took on the wet, muddy lawn that lay between me and my goal, a sharp pain shot through my hip. Yeah, I’m an idiot, remember?

All around me were groups of strangers, people like me, and not so much like me, all of us hoping against hope for a miracle. Hoping that we weren’t too late, but knowing we probably were. A father with two young daughters, ages nine and ten. A group of young men and women, talking and laughing together, perhaps students. Old people (older than me, in any case). Couples, and single individuals alone by themselves, all marching into a bright morning sun, the glare of which burst straight into my retinas, half-blinding me. People in front of me and people behind me. I wasn’t the only idiot, fool, dreamer, what have you.

My face became numb from the cold breeze in my face. I pulled my hands inside the sleeves of my fleece to warm them up. But I didn’t stop. Not until I reached the entrance to the parking lot of the venue, a “2,500-seat, 170,000-square-foot non-profit indoor athletics facility” located in the far southeast corner of the Monroe Community College campus. And there she was, a young female police officer. I could tell by the look on her face she had bad news to tell us.

“They’re not letting anyone else in,” she said. “See that line?” She pointed at the hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, people standing in the parking lot of the complex. “It’s been like that since 7:30 this morning.”

I asked her if we couldn’t go in anyway, and she pointed down the road to where some bleachers stood along the west side of the building. A group of Bernie supporters were mingling around there, also stopped in front of another police officer. No one was sitting in the bleachers.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “No one else is getting in.”And then she smiled at me, a sweet, wistful smile that you rarely see on a police officer, but one I see all the time on my own twenty year old daughter and her twenty-something friends. A very human gesture.

“I wish I could go in,” she said.

I smiled at her when she said that, and thanked her. And then I began the long trudge back to my car. Funny thing is, I didn’t feel the least bit sad that I missed my chance to see Bernie Sanders in the flesh, even as I climbed back into my car, pulled out of the parking lot, and drove home. And even though I didn’t get what came for, what I’d hoped to receive, the sight of Bernie speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of thousands of like-minded people, many of whom believe in the movement he helped ignite, and to which he has given a voice. I realized I had no regrets.

I still don’t.

I live in a suburb near a nice public golf course that sits next to a quarry. The golf course is going under. Not enough people willing to pay the cost for a round of golf anymore. The quarry on the other hand, is doing good business. When the workers there use dynamite to break up more rock, my house shakes.

Guess who owns both properties. Now guess who intends to shut down the golf course and expand the quarry? Oh, the outrage among all the people who own homes nearby is really something to see. Up sprouted signs in their yards like mushrooms, all of them demanding we save “Shadow Pines” (the name of local course). But guess what? The town board imposed a one year moratorium on any further development of the property except as a golf course. But why only one year? Well, lots of people turn out to vote in Presidential elections. Next year, when the election will be less publicized, guess who I predict will get approval for converting that golf course into another quarry?

No big deal, right? You can’t fight City Hall, you can only hope to contain it. Too bad that same attitude on a national and global scale is leading us down the path to disaster.

Last year, the Paris Agreement set a target to keep the rise in global average mean temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. “Hurray!” said everyone who was so thrilled to see the nations of the world finally respond to the climate crisis. But did they? Did they really?

Here’s the thing. The odds of winning the lottery are better than meeting that 1.5 degree C target. because the status quo has no real interest in even attempting to do what it takes to even approach that goal:

The Paris deal requires no emissions reductions from countries before 2020. Steffen Kallbekken, Director of the Centre for International Climate and Energy Policy, explains that ‘by the time the pledges come into force in 2020, we will probably have used the entire carbon budget consistent with 1.5°C warming. If we stick with the INDCs we will have warming between 2.7°C and 3.7°C.’

In order to have a decent chance of reaching that 1.5° target, we need to keep at least 80 percent of known fossil fuels in the ground, and urgently halt the exploration and extraction of new sources. We need to stop deforestation and reduce other greenhouse gases such as methane, by tackling major drivers such as the growth of animal agriculture. But the Paris agreement contains no mention of the words ‘fossil fuel’ – no coal, no oil, no gas – and not a whisper about the livestock, palm oil and other industries driving deforestation either.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. And you know what’s even worse? Current climate models have been understating the rate of warming for quite some time.

As has occurred in the past, even the best climate models tend to be too cautious in their assumptions. Unfortunately, the more we learn about all the factors that influence global warming the more it often turns out that earlier predictions underestimated the rapidity of the increase in temperatures and the total amount of warming likely to occur.

Case in point, this new study published in the respected journal Science (published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science) indicates that current climate models may have failed to properly estimate the amount of atmospheric warming likely to occur because they overestimate the cooling effect of clouds.

The computer models that predict climate change may be overestimating the cooling power of clouds, new research suggests. If the findings are borne out by further research, it suggests that making progress against global warming will be even harder. […]

With less ice in the mix … however, there is less capacity for water to replace ice, said Ivy Tan, an author of the paper and a graduate student at the department of geology and geophysics at Yale University. The result, she said, is more warming.

How much more warming? Well, the study came up with a figure of 1.3 degrees Celsius more or less, or an increase of roughly 2.34 degrees Fahrenheit. Many scientists already expect the models will have to be adjusted to account for this increase. As one researcher put it: “The point is, it’s going to result in a significant amount of warming.” What she means is a significant amount more than is already projected to occur.

As it stands now, some current models are predicting a rise of up to 3 degrees Celsius, and not by the end of this century, but as soon as 2050, far in excess of the Paris Agreement’s target of “keeping temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over average temperatures in the preindustrial era.”

We are a mere 34 years away from 2050. And a three degree rise in the global mean temperature will result in catastrophic impacts on human civilization. Here’s the optimistic view of what that would look like:

A world 3 C warmer would see a significant drop in food production, an increase in urban heat waves akin to the one that killed thousands of people this year in India, and more droughts and wildfires, according to Ray Pierrehumbert, a physics professor at the University of Oxford. […]

“When talking about climate refugees … [t]he scale of climate migration could dwarf anything we’ve seen,” Pierrehumbert said. Many areas of the densely populated and mostly low-lying country could become uninhabitable within a century if warming continues, he added. […]

Jason Funk, a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said a temperature increase of 3 C would seriously disrupt global economic systems and many people’s livelihoods.

“It could potentially lead to more conflicts because resources will be impacted, and people will be trying to capture access to those resources,” Funk said. “It’s not a pleasant scenario.”

Not a pleasant scenario is an understatement. Here is a more pessimistic view of what we could be facing in less than forty years, assuming we make the status quo regarding use of fossil fuels does not change dramatically from current trends:

Beyond two degrees … preventing mass starvation will be as easy as halting the cycles of the moon. First millions, then billions, of people will face an increasingly tough battle to survive.

A three-degree increase in global temperature – possible as early as 2050 – would throw the carbon cycle into reverse. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, vegetation and soils start to release it. So much carbon pours into the atmosphere that it pumps up atmospheric concentrations by 250 parts per million by 2100, boosting global warming by another 1.5C.

With new “super-hurricanes” growing from the warming sea, Houston could be destroyed by 2045, and Australia will be a death trap. “Farming and food production will tip into irreversible decline. Salt water will creep up the stricken rivers, poisoning ground water. Higher temperatures mean greater evaporation, further drying out vegetation and soils, and causing huge losses from reservoirs. In state capitals, heat every year is likely to kill between 8,000 and 15,000 mainly elderly people.

It is all too easy to visualise what will happen in Africa. In Central America, too, tens of millions will have little to put on their tables. Even a moderate drought there in 2001 meant hundreds of thousands had to rely on food aid. This won’t be an option when world supplies are stretched to breaking point (grain yields decline by 10% for every degree of heat above 30C, and at 40C they are zero). Nobody need look to the US, which will have problems of its own. As the mountains lose their snow, so cities and farms in the west will lose their water and dried-out forests and grasslands will perish at the first spark.

In short, prepare for something on the scale of a Mad Max doomsday scenario for much of the planet.

Experts agree that if the onslaught of climate change continues unabated, water will be a highly-prized commodity. “The twenty-first-century projections make the [previous] mega-droughts seem like quaint walks through the garden of Eden,” says Jason Smerdon, a Columbia University climate scientist.

Still, we don’t have to project into the future to see the impact of climate change on our water supply. “[I]t doesn’t really require much exposition for the audience to buy a degraded world, because we already see evidence of it happening all around us,” Miller said. He’s right, and evidence can be seen all around the globe. Obama noted in his speech Wednesday that “severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram.” Meanwhile, California is in the midst of a four-year mega-drought that has led the state to try out rationing policies, and officials in Sao Paolo, Brazil are scrambling to come up with a solution to the city’s water crisis that may leave the city absolutely dry in just a few months. As policy experts work to come up with a solution, city officials are bracing for riots due to unrest. Conflict between states is also a distinct possibility, as many national security experts have predicted an era of “water wars.”

The world is poised on the brink of severe food shortages, more wars, more refugees, plagues, mega-droughts, floods, extreme storms and heat waves the likes of which humanity has never seen before. It’s coming at us faster than a speeding bullet. Those who currently hold political power in much of the world, and certainly here in the United States, have no great incentive to do what is necessary to ameliorate the harm we have already caused. Most politicians of both parties are willfully ignoring or downplaying this threat, because so many of are in thrall to large multi-national corporations that make commodities of human beings.

The same corporations that are owned and controlled by an infinitesimally small group of individuals who have accumulated wealth at a rate, in in amounts, so massive that to properly convey in a single blog post is impossible. Unfortunately, we know that the richer one becomes, the lower one’s feeling of compassion and empathy for others. The welfare of other human beings, much less the survival of the humanity doesn’t consume them much, if they think of these matters at all.

The people at the top of the global economic food chain have no interest in seeing these disasters averted. If anything, many of them will profit mightily from exploiting the crises that are coming our way. And all that many of them care about is their current net worth and how to maintain it. This short-sighted attitude is best exemplified in George W. Bush’s famous response to the question of how he thought history would view his legacy. Here it is for those for you who don’t remember his clueless and callous remarks:

“History,” he replied. “We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.”

I don’t expect to live all that much longer, and I’ll certainly be dead by 2050, but my children have a good chance of living long enough to see this catastrophe unfold over the course of the next 40 years. So will many of you and your children.

And if we continue to support, and give our votes to, politicians who, will do nothing to significantly alter the “status quo” when it comes to the environment, we will be effectively imposing a death sentence on millions of our fellow human beings, not to mention all the other species of life that runaway global warming is driving to extinction. Something to consider when you cast your vote this election cycle and in the ones to follow over the next decade.

The warning in the TV series, “Game of Thrones,” ominously proclaims “Winter is coming.” But that’s merely fiction. In reality, unless we collectively act now to address this crisis (and I don’t mean through more rallies, protests, climate accords, or the adoption by our political leaders of half-measures, or worse, the mere payment of lip service to this impending climate disaster, the truth is that We’ll All Be Royally Fucked.”

In the latest round of Bill Clinton playing whack-a-black, I choose to disagree with the assessment of some Hillary supporters who feel Bill Clinton was unfairly treated after his reaction to a few Black Lives Matters (BLM for short) protestors, which included his impassioned defense of the policies he put in place to be “tough on crime” back in the nineties.

I, for one, have a big problem with him defending that record, a record he said last year was a mistake, and I don’t think placing his conduct in the context of the eighties or nineties helps him one iota. In fact, I think it serves only to demonstrate what a truly cynical and heinous person he was back then, and still remains today.

Let’s examine some facts about Bill Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas, and running for President. In the middle of his campaign, he made a special trip back to his home state to witness the execution of a prisoner on death row. And not just any prisoner, but a severely brain-damaged African American male with the understanding of a toddler. That man’s name was <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21598681-can-you-execute-man-whose-iq-71-death-mentally-disabled"Ricky Ray Rector.

WHEN Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, he oversaw the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a man so mentally disabled that he said he would save the pecan pie from his last meal “for later”.

Now why did Clinton leave the campaign trail to witness, as Governor, his state’s judicially sanctioned murder of a man with the understanding of a small child? As many in the news media pointed out at the time, this was not only legally unnecessary, but it had never occurred before, or at least not that anyone in recent memory could recall. That a candidate running for the highest office in the land chose to interrupt his campaign to witness the execution of someone sentenced to death, a severely cognitively impaired individual for which he personally refused to grant clemency despite the pleas of many of his major supporters, political intimates and friends, was ghoulish, at best. At worst? I leave that for you to decide.

So why did he do it? The explanation can be found in Nathan J. Robinson’s article, “Bill Clinton Has Always Been This Person,” dated April 8th of this year.

As Rector’s execution time drew closer, even the prison warden had become uncomfortable with the idea of executing Rector, with one observer saying the warden “seemed to be coming apart the closer the execution got.” Meanwhile, frantic appeals were being made to Governor Clinton to give Rector clemency. […]

There was no mystery as to why Clinton had refused to grant Rector clemency. Earlier in his political career, Clinton had lost a race against a “law and order” candidate, and those around him said he was determined not to make the same mistake twice. And it worked:

[I]n the following months the political value of Rector’s execution became abundantly clear. It knocked the law-and-order issue out of the campaign. One commentator said it showed Clinton was “a different sort of Democrat.” As another put it, “he had someone put to death who only had half a brain. You don’t find them any tougher than that.” […]

[I]t’s important to be clear about just [what] Clinton did: he deliberately had a hallucinating disabled man killed, in an execution so callous it made even the warden queasy. He personally ensured the execution of a mental child so as not to appear weak. This is an unthinkably monstrous act. As Derrick Jackson wrote in the Boston Globe: “The killing of human vegetables is an exercise for brutes.”

Clinton, in as ugly and pointed a fashion as I can possibly imagine, by that single action told every white voter in 1992 that he would do whatever it took to put black people down and grind them under the boot heel of the Federal Government’s authority. And he lived up to that promise. Let me count the ways, beginning with these reflections by Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matters:

[T]he 1994 crime bill that helped lead to the crisis over hyper-incarceration and the resulting boom of the private prison industry. The crime bill was part of a national effort that resulted in the reality that black people, who comprise approximately 13% of the nation’s population, represent 40% of the people incarcerated in this country. […]

Here’s the contradiction that black voters should pay close attention to: The 1994 crime bill and its resulting policies were supposedly designed to curb violent crime.

Yet the bill itself resulted in the bloating of prisons and jails with nonviolent offenders.

So, number one, that crime bill did very little to curb violent crime, which was already on the decline, but it did result in the mass incarceration of millions of non-violent offenders, of whom a grossly disproportionate number were (and still are) African American.

And then there is the rest of Bill’s controversial record in dealing with the issues facing the black community, including Welfare Reform that Bill Clinton proposed, passed into law and continued to defend at the BLM protest the other day in Philadelphia.

Clinton championed the idea of a federal “three strikes” law in his 1994 State of the Union address and, months later, signed a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police forces. The legislation was hailed by mainstream-media outlets as a victory for the Democrats, who “were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own.” […]

To make matters worse, the federal safety net for poor families was torn to shreds by the Clinton administration in its effort to “end welfare as we know it.” […] The welfare-reform legislation that he signed—which Hillary Clinton ardently supported then and characterized as a success as recently as 2008—replaced the federal safety net with a block grant to the states, imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance, added work requirements, barred undocumented immigrants from licensed professions, and slashed overall public welfare funding by $54 billion (some was later restored).

… Extreme poverty doubled to 1.5 million in the decade and a half after the law was passed. What is extreme poverty? US households are considered to be in extreme poverty if they are surviving on cash incomes of no more than $2 per person per day in any given month. […] Currently, the United States, the richest nation on the planet, has one of the highest child-poverty rates in the developed world.

But it was so much worse than just that. Bill Clinton is responsible for any number of racially divisive, discriminatory laws that have devastated African American and minority communities. He got rid of Pell grants for prisoners. He backed laws to deny financial aid to students convicted of drug-related offenses. He signed into law a “lifetime ban on welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense.”

And he made it highly problematic for former prisoners, whether convicted of a crime or not, to return to their families, by making it easier for public housing authorities to deny housing through the “one-strike” rule, which meant that an entire family could be evicted from their home if even one member (or even a guest) had an arrest record for the most minor of crimes.

Black men and women upon their release from prison faced challenges thanks to Bill Clinton that Charles Dickens would have railed against. They left prison with “no money, no job,” and they often had no place to live, because their loved ones could not risk losing their own home by taking them in. As The Nation, in its story, “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote,” stated:

By the end of Clinton’s presidency, more than half of working-age African-American men in many large urban areas were saddled with criminal records and subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and basic public benefits—relegated to a permanent second-class status eerily reminiscent of Jim Crow.

It is difficult to overstate the damage that’s been done. Generations have been lost to the prison system; countless families have been torn apart or rendered homeless; and a school-to-prison pipeline has been born that shuttles young people from their decrepit, underfunded schools to brand-new high-tech prisons.

This is Bill Clinton’s legacy to Black America, and as long as Hillary Clinton continues to roll him out as her primary spokesperson, fundraiser extraordinaire and unofficial adviser-in chief, she implicitly has adopted his legacy as one she not only values, but for which she assumes some measure of responsibility, as well.

By now, everyone that’s been paying attention knows of the Panama Papers and the scandal that has erupted across the globe. Millions of pages of confidential information has been revealed regarding the names of hundreds of thousands of offshore corporations, their shareholders, directors and others “listed by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca.” All of them sought to evade paying their rightful share of taxes by sending their money banks in to Panama, a notorious tax haven, that benefited greatly from a 2011 treaty with the United States commonly known as The U.S. Panama Trade Promotion Agreement.

This treaty, negotiated by George Bush, was signed by President Obama, even though many prominent critics (and the one virtually unknown democratic socialist) warned that “the pact would make it easier for rich Americans and corporations to set up offshore corporations and bank accounts and avoid paying many taxes altogether.” Indeed, an International Monetary Fund investigation into Panama’s banking regulations and safeguards discovered that:

[G]aping holes still exist. The country’s anti-money laundering law, for example, is designed to regulate banks and other financial institutions. But the IMF found that the law didn’t cover lawyers, accountants, insurance companies, notaries, real estate agents or dealers of precious metals and stones.

“Because Panama is an important international financial and corporate services center…this lack of coverage is a key systemic deficiency,” the report found.

Many politicians and celebrities (say it ain’t so, David Geffen) have been caught up in the scandal. Yet none of the usual suspects, prominent American billionaires and/or the cash rich multinational corporations in which many of them hold large ownership stakes, appear on the list of those named in the Panama Papers. However, at last, a few American citizens have been identified as tax cheats, people who exploited U.S., Panamanian and international law out of greed or the selfish desire to make America great again, but only for them, by shielding their ill-gotten gains from the IRS. Who are they?

Among them: Retirees, scammers, and tax evaders, all of whom found a use for secrecy of offshore companies.

But what has this to do with Senator Bernie Sanders and his campaign, you ask. He’s Mr. Clean, right, when it comes to the way he’s raised money to fund his Quixotic quest for the presidency? Well, as Deep Throat of Watergate fame once told Bob Woodward, you need to “Follow the money.” And that, my friends, is where things get sticky for Bernie, social justice crusader and impassioned voice for the so-called 99 percent.

But to make the connection, you need to dive into the deep end of Sanders’ sordid connections to the millions of undisclosed individuals who week after week contribute to his campaign. In fact they have contributed so much money to Sanders’ presidential campaign, that he has been out-raising the mighty Hillary Clinton month after month, which is no no mean feat. Let’s take a look, shall we? Here’s what Open Secrets shows on its summary page about Senator Sanders’ sources of contributions.

Okay, what’s the first thing you notice about his donors? There are a lot of individuals. Nothing to see here, just move along, amirite? But you’ can’t stop there. As one report noted, it seems the only Americans netted by the Panama Papers have been the “small fish.” And who are Sanders’ financial backers if not small fry themselves? Fine and dandy, you say, but that’s a pretty thin thread on which to base a charge that he’s been taking dirty money to fund his campaign.

Or is it?

You need to dig a deeper. Let’s examine a what we know about Bernie’s biggest group of financial supporters. Take a look at this breakdown of those contributors, again from Open Secrets:

Ding! Ding! Ding! Do you see what I see? It right there, hiding in open sight. Who are Bernie’s biggest financial backers? Retirees! And to the tune of over THREE MILLION DOLLARS (and counting, since these numbers are only current as of the end of February). And who are the Americans who we know have been shipping their money to Panama to escape the long arm of the Treasury Department? Retirees!

The consortium has so far identified more than 200 people with U.S. addresses who own companies in the leaked data from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Some appear to be retirees purchasing real estate in places like Costa Rica and Panama …

And it gets worse for Bernie. Remember that IMF investigation that found Panama’s financial regulations didn’t even cover “lawyers … real estate agents or dealers of precious metals and stones.” Well guess who shows up among the groups of people who support Bernie Sanders the most? Lawyers (well over $1 Million) and people involved in the “real estate” industry ($442,374). And real estate is exactly the investment retirees have been making in Panama, retirees who, as we now know, are Bernie’s biggest backers!

Not to mention dealers who invest in precious metals and stones manage to escape Panamanian scrutiny of their transactions. Hmmm. Anything about that tidbit set off any alarm bells? Just read the title to this Vanity Fair article:

How a Ragtag Gang of Retirees Pulled Off the Biggest Jewel Heist in British History

I’m just saying, if a bunch of old geezers could pull this off in Great Britain, just imagine what the same criminal demographic might very well have gotten away with here, in the good old USA. Plus, old people are well known buyers of gold. Why else would so many precious metals dealers actively go out of their way to seek their business?

So, Senator Sanders (the candidate who “claims” he’s only worth $330,000), it’s time to answer the hard questions about how you’re able to finance your campaign without any billionaire backers, unlike Hillary Clinton, whose billionaire donors openly and proudly admit they’re behind her 1,000 percent.

Pritzker and his wife, Mary Kathryn (known as M.K.), are among the top five donors to outside spending groups backing Clinton, contributing more than $2.8 million to Priorities USA, a political action committee (PAC) that supports Clinton and can legally take unlimited donations. Pritzker and his wife, who each donated $1 million in January, will contribute more, he says, if necessary. He declined to say exactly how much he’s willing to spend, but the 51-year-old Chicagoan, who is worth an estimated $3.3 billion, is calling this election “one of the most important of my life.”

Hillary has come clean, Mr. Bird Man. Now it’s time for you to come out of the murky shadows of the media’s deliberate failure to properly vet your candidacy, and tell the truth about who really are your biggest supporters. Unless, that is, you and your campaign can’t handle the truth.

So please, just tell us who are all those people going to your website or your Act Blue page to give to your amazing, one might even say miraculous, run for the presidency of these United States. Inquiring minds want to know.

For those unfamiliar with Buddhism, many of you still may have heard of the four noble truths. And likely many of you have heard of the eightfold path, which is itself, the fourth noble truth. These are the fundamental principles of the Buddha’s first teachings, and they do tend to get most of the attention in college classes often named Introduction to World Religions. And that’s cool. We all should know something about Buddhism, if only the bare essentials.

But what I want to discuss today, is one of the Five Remembrances found in the Upajjhatthana Sutta, five subjects or facts about our existence, if you like, that many people often willfully ignore or deny, because they fear thinking about them. The Buddha taught, however, that to become a mindful person, to learn to live a life of meaning, it is essential to contemplate (or meditate if you prefer) on these five remembrances. By reflecting upon them as often as we can, it is possible to learn to face them without fear, but with equanimity, liberating ourselves to once again celebrate the magic of life, and remember that each life truly is a miracle, not only our own but everyone’s life.

Now if you clicked on the Wikipedia link above you can read about all five of the remembrances in the original Pali Texts and in two separate English translations. I recommend that you read them all, and consider the Buddha’s advice (not a commandment) that we should be mindful of them of them and reflect upon them as often as we can in our daily life. The purpose of such reflection is to free us from the terror they hold over us, and help guide us to follow the eightfold path. By such practice we learn not to be consumed by fear and anxiety over matters that we do not control. Instead we re-learn to appreciate life and to look at it with a sense of wonder and hope, with the ultimate goal of leading lives that are filled as often as possible with acts of lovingkindness.

But there are five remembrances, so why do I choose to write tonight only about the fifth or last of them? Because it is the one right now that strikes the deepest chord with me, especially this year, when lovingkindness has been in such short supply, not only in our nation but around the world. And when you read what I have to tell you, I hope you will understand why I consider it so important.

Now while there are many versions of the five remembrances, I like the one used by Thich Nhat Hanh, where he gives the Fifth Remembrance in three simple statements, as follows:

1. My actions are my only true belongings.

2. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.

3. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

Read each of those three sentences closely. The first, My actions are my only true belongings, reminds us that, in a world that is ever-changing, where permanence is only an illusion, we truly have nothing we can claim as belonging to us but the actions we take in the present moment. Each day we may lose something that we value, whether small or large, important or insignificant. A favorite shirt may be ruined in the wash. Our medical test results could come back confirming that we have a serious illness, like cancer. Our partner may leave us for someone else. We could total that nice new car we just bought?

In a world of constant change, we actually possess nothing material because in an instant, it can all be taken away from us (for a classic example from another faith tradition, go read the Book of Job to see what I’m getting at here). Nothing, that is, but what we do in the world. Those acts are the only true things about us, the only “stuff” that we can lay claim to as our own.

Which takes us directly to the second sentence: I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. Each day, we are faced with many decisions about what to do, what to say, how to express ourselves to others, whether to help someone or do them harm. Perhaps as many as a thousand decisions to do a thousand often tiny things. And truth be told, many of these are decisions easy enough to make, but many are not. And while it is true that not all the consequence of what we do can be foreseen, that should not stop us from remembering that consequences will flow from each deed we do.

For example, we may think a small lie is unlikely to harm anyone, only to later learn that that lie began a pattern of lies, which ultimately destroyed our family, or even an entire community. Or another example: as a worker in a large organization we might choose not to oppose the consensus opinion, even if we feel it is wrong, because we do not believe our opposition will make any difference in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps we think that by going along to get along we might later get our way on something we view as more important.

Yet, later on down the road it may turn out to that our choice, along with the choices of all those who also decided not to speak out when we had the chance, may have helped create a situation that led to catastrophic consequences; in some cases consequences that effect the lives of millions of people. If we are mindful of the potential consequences of what we say and do, we can make better judgements on how we should act, not out of shallow self-interest, but with a true understanding of what right action means, for ourselves and everyone around us.

Now for that last sentence: My actions are the ground upon which I stand. Think of that one for a while. Our core values, our core principles are meaningless if we do not match those values to the actions we take in the world. Some people do not consider this truth at all as they go about their daily lives. In my view, whether they are simply ordinary people or those who have access to great power, they are making a grave mistake when they fail to remember this truth. Put another way, (and forgive the reference to this cheesy Batman movie quote), it’s not who we tell ourselves we are underneath, but what we do that defines us.

For good or bad, our actions matter. We are known for what we do, not who we say we are. We should be mindful of that fact. I’m sure we all know far too many people, maybe even ourselves if we are willing to take a hard look in the mirror, who fail to appreciate that all the good intentions in the world, all the promises we make, saying all the right things when asked, mean absolutely nothing if we do not follow through on those promises, or fail to follow the words we speak with actions to support them when it really matters.

This is a political blog, so yes, I do have a political point to make, beyond just the spiritual one that applies to us all. We all have important choices to make this year. And while we often say campaigns and elections are decided by who has the better ideas, and the better policies, and the better story to tell, the truth is those better ideas, and better policies and better stories mean nothing. The people who stand behind those words do, the ones for whom we will be casting our votes this year.

And whether the candidates we elect will act upon what they say they will do does matter a great deal. What they have done in the past matters, too. Their history is the history of what they have done, not what they have said they would do or will do or can do. Their record for telling the truth or dishonesty matters. Their record on issues you care about matters. Just as the record of our actions matter in our own lives.

For those of you yet to vote, your actions will define you as much as the candidate you choose to give that vote. And for those of you who support a specific candidate, your actions, past and present matter, as well. Actions to overlook or consider the respective weaknesses or strengths of the people who are running for office, to overlook or consider the behavior, good or bad, of those same candidates, actions defending one or attacking another – all of that matters.

And with that in mind, I ask you all to contemplate and reflect upon the fifth remembrance from the Buddha’s Upajjhatthana Sutta tonight, and in all the days to come.

Buddhu Saranai, my friends.

It’s simple really. She owns the Democratic Party apparatus, lock, stock and both barrels.

I could explain Hillary Clinton’s “money laundering” scheme, which allows her billionaire and millionaire donors to increase their donations to her campaign far in excess of the legal limit on individual contributions (all perfectly legal thanks to the Supreme Court), in elaborate detail, but since Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks has already done all that work for me, I’ll let him do the heavy lifting:

Clinton’s Big Money supporters, in addition to what they contributed to her various Super Pacs and her campaign, were/are able to funnel up to an additional $1,320,000 per married couple in 2015 and 2016 to the DNC and Hillary’s campaign (the individual limit per person is only $660,000) by making additional contributions to those 33 state Democratic Party organizations.

If you watched the video, I hope you caught the part where Cenk explains that under last August’s agreement, which was put in place long before you and I had any say in who would the Democratic nominee, Hillary basically bought the support of the super delegates in those 33 states. The way this deal works, the super delegates are all getting kickbacks in the form of contributions laundered through the DNC. Again, this is all perfectly legal, despite the transparent similarity to a payola scheme.

Yes, this story is almost ancient history now in our 24/7 news cycle, now, but it’s one we shouldn’t forget. This deal goes a long way toward explaining how Clinton scared away any other major establishment candidate from entering the race (cough – Joe Biden –cough) or anyone but Sanders from mounting an insurgent campaign (cough – Elizabeth Warren – cough).

By January 2014, Obama’s largest Super Pac in 2012, Priorities USA Action, had already been transformed into Hillary’s Super Pac. By August, 2015 nearly all the big donors and state parties (along with their super delegates) were effectively in her pocket. Last August, Bernie Sanders badly trailed Clinton in the national polls and most Democrats just assumed she was the only viable and electable candidate the party could field.

In short, that deal secured the support of a significant number, if not a majority, of the super delegates for Hillary. In essence, she purchased them with the help of the DNC and the 33 state parties cast their vote for Clinton long before we cast our votes. It explains everything you need to know as to why super delegates are vowing to support Hillary regardless of the outcome of their state’s primary or caucus elections.

This arrangement whereby the fealty of powerful individuals to their sovereign could be bought through the payment of money, land or other “favors” used to be called Feudalism. But we don’t have kings and queens in America, anymore, at least not in the legal sense. However, what we have is a sham “democracy,” i.e., a Potemkin facade of a democracy, where the majority don’t get to decide who runs for office, the rich, powerful and well-connected do. The elections in the Soviet Union are the closest facsimile to our modern day political system.

It’s one of the reasons that Bernie’s campaign is a historic event in American history. Despite all the money and skullduggery and flat out corruption by the movers and shakers of the ironically named “Democratic Party” directed against a virtually unknown, self-described Democratic Socialist is unique in this era of Oligarchic control of the political process. Powered only by the enthusiasm of his supporters and their small, but far more numerous donations, Bernie has pushed, arguably, one of the most corrupt candidates in my lifetime to spend far more money, time and effort to secure the Democratic nomination than she ever anticipated, one which she no doubt once believed would be a stone cold lock the day after the results of the Iowa Caucuses were counted.

Well, as Cenk says, it’s “her party,” though even the candidate who now appears more electable versus any Republican in the national polls is her opponent. Of course, we are witnessing the same drama play out on the Republican side, with a full court press by the Republican establishment to do anything to stop Donald Trump, even if that means getting into bed with the loathsome Ted Cruz.

And people wonder why so may Americans feel shunted aside by our two party system with its pay to play immorality that does everything to benefit the top of the economic food chain, and tosses a few scraps every once in a while to the rest of us. And then they wonder why the rate of individual American citizens who register to vote increasingly do so as independents. Indeed, voters registered for either party has sharply declined.

Well, the high rollers who bet big on Jeb Bush and other establishment figures on the GOP side of this duopoly lost their money. Hillary Clinton is counting on the bet her big money donors made on her to pay off, even should she she fail to win a majority of ordinary delegates after the primaries are over. So far, it has, even if she is limping to the finish line exposed as a seriously flawed candidate and perpetual gaffe machine.

Niko House outed Diana Rogalle as the person behind the claim that Ryan Hughes received Clinton Super Pac money. I first reported this story on March 25th. For that reason, I now have chosen to write about the information I obtained regarding Ms. Rogalle’s role in this matter.

Let me be clear. My March 25th story that alleged Ryan Hughes, Bernie Sanders’ state director for his campaign in Michigan, took money from Super Pacs associated with Hillary Clinton, was based for the most part on Mark Craig’s statements to me. This follow-up report, which names Diana Rogalle, a prominent Democratic consultant and fundraiser, as Mark Craig’s source for that claim is, in like manner, also primarily based on statements made by Mr. Craig, as supplemented by my own independent online and offline research.

With that disclaimer, let’s proceed, beginning with Mark Craig’s account of his relationship with Diana Rogalle, and what led her to reveal she’d made payments to Ryan Hughes on behalf of entities supporting Hillary.

Mark Craig and Diana Rogalle

Mr Craig is a life-long resident of Flint, Michigan, His family has a long history of political activity supporting Democrats and liberal causes. For example, Lois Craig, Mark’s mother, and a Flint native, worked for then Speaker of the House, Bobby Crim in the seventies. She was the driving force behind creating he Crim Festival of Races, a fundraising event that raised millions over the years for the Special Olympics. Mark Craig’s father, Robert P. Craig, was also active in Michigan Democratic politics as a fundraiser.

Mark Craig met Diana Rogalle, a University of Michigan graduate interested in politics when they worked together on several political campaigns in Michigan during the nineties. They eventually became close friends and maintained their friendship over the years, even after Diana became one of the most successful and influential fundraisers for the Democratic Party.

In February of this year, Mr Craig and Dianna Rogalle met up in Florida. In a casual conversation with her, Mark brought up his concerns regarding Ryan Hughes. According to Mark, Diana responded by saying that Ryan Hughes was one of the people to whom she was directed to make payments on behalf of several Clinton Super Pacs for which she worked. He said she referred to Mr. Hughes as one of her “spies” and implied Hughes received somewhere in the range of $5000 to $7,500 per month.

Who is Diana Rogalle?

Diana Rogalle is a long time Democratic political operative and fundraiser for Democratic candidates and liberal non-profit organizations such as Planned Parenthood.

She served as the finance director for Priorities USA Action Pac, which supported President Obama in 2012. Priorities USA action moved to support Hillary beginning in January 2014 at the latest. The only candidate Priorities USA Action supports in the 2016 election cycle is Hillary Clinton, and it’s made expenditures on her behalf in the amount of $5,648,679 (as of February 29, 2016).

Diana Rogalle’s bio from Priorities USA Action’s January 23, 2014 press release, reads as follows:

Diana Rogalle, Finance Director

Diana Rogalle has been a leading Democratic political fundraiser and operative for close to twenty years. Consulting on federal and non-federal races across the nation, Ms. Rogalle has played a key role in Democratic campaigns during each of the past ten consecutive election cycles. Her relationships extend across America’s financial, entertainment, business, activist, and philanthropic communities, and her management expertise has earned her a reputation among the most elite in her field.

In March 2005, Ms. Rogalle formed The Ashmead Group based in Washington, DC. The Ashmead Group is a boutique political and non-profit fundraising consulting firm dedicated to providing the highest level of service to donors, candidates, advocacy organizations and businesses.

Clients of the Ashmead Group have included Priorities USA Action; campaigns for US Senators Max Baucus, Mark Udall, Ron Wyden, Maria Cantwell, Debbie Stabenow and Jeff Merkley, as well as a number of current and former governors; advocacy organizations including the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood and the National Resources Defense Council; and not for profit organizations including Ford’s Theater, Make It Right, Generation Rescue and the Alliance for Climate Change.

Ms. Rogalle’s experience before founding the Ashmead Group includes leading the fundraising efforts for Victory Campaign 2004 – the joint fundraising committee of America Coming Together and The Media Fund; National Finance Director for the Wes Clark for President Campaign; and four years as the Finance Director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Ms. Rogalle earned her B.A. in political science and communications from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1990. She lives with her husband and son in Washington, DC.

Ms. Rogalle also worked for Priorities USA when it supported President Obama in 2012, and was chief fundraiser for Americans Coming Together (ACT), in 2004.

In February, Priorities USA hired Diana Rogalle, who was chief fund-raiser for America Coming Together, which spent $200 million on behalf of Democrats in 2004.

Diana Rogalle supported Hillary Clinton in 2008, and she, individually, and through The Ashmead Group, donated to Hillary’s campaign.

The Ashmead Group

Diane Rogalle is the founder and President of The Ashmead Group. In the 2014 election cycle alone, The Ashmead Group received payments from Priorities USA, as shown in filings with the Federal Election Commission, of $127,124 . This sum was in addition to her salary as Priorities USA Finance Director during 2014 and 2015.

In the 2016 election cycle, Ashmead has been paid $51,938 (as of Feb 29th) by Priorities USA Pac.

Ashmead’s address (as listed in this document filed with the FEC; see, Page 45) is: 122 C Street NW, Suite 505, Washington DC, 20002-2109

When Did I learn of Diana Rogalle?

Mark Craig did not initially identify Ms. Rogalle to me as his source, though I asked him to contact her and obtain permission to tell me her name. The next day on March 23rd, after Marks says he spoke the her, Mark informed me Diana Rogalle was his source on Ryan Hughes. That was also the day I first learned of the existence The Ashmead Gruop. Mark indicated that she wished to remain anonymous and was not yet willing to speak to me directly. I asked him to keep trying to get her to change her mind so we could cite her as an anonymous source.

Last week, Mark let me know that Diana was no longer returning his phone calls. On Friday, April 1st, a friend of Diana contacted Mark by phone and said she did not want to talk to him anymore.

At that point, I made my first attempt to contact Ms. Rogalle myself, either through email or phone. However, The Ashmead Group’s website with its contact page link is no longer available online. If you try to reach Ashmead’s site, you get a page that says:

The connection has timed out
The server at www.ashmeadgroup.com is taking too long to respond.
The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy.
Try again in a few moments.

By using The Wayback Machine, an internet archive database, I was able to find an archived image of the home page of The Ashmead Group, dated May 17, 2014. Here’s a screenshot:

The phone number for The Ashmead Group is (202) 465-4622. I called that number Friday, April 1st and Saturday, but on each attempt no one picked up and it just rolled into a generic voicemail box that did not identify the company’s name. I left voicemail messages asking Diana Rogalle to please contact me. I have yet to receive any response.

Attempts to contact Ryan Hughes

The only phone number I ever had for Ryan Hughes is the number Mark Craig gave me for the cell phone Hughes used while he worked for Bernie in Michigan: (617) 428-5681. When I called that number, I received a message that it had been “disconnected or was no longer in service.”

I’ve emailed two women working for Bernie Sanders campaign. They were refereed to me as individuals who knew senior people in Bernie’s campaign. One woman worked for Bernie as a field operative. On the phone she told me she knew Becky Bond, a senior adviser. The other woman is a volunteer in Pennsylvania who told me she had contacts among Sanders’ senior staff. I asked both to pass along all the information I sent them about Mark Craig and Ryan Hughes (and other matters not relevant here).

I only withheld the following from them: that Mark had named Diana Rogalle as his source. At that time, Mark still wanted me to keep her name private while he continued to try to get her to go on the record about the Sanders’ field operatives, including Hughes, who allegedly received Clinton PAC money from her.

I also gave them Mark Craig’s contact info. I did not receive any response from anyone on Bernie’s national staff, nor did I hear from Ryan Hughes.

On Friday, in an attempt to reach Hughes (now Bernie’s state director for the campaign in Pennsylvania), I called all of Bernie’s Pennsylvania field offices for which telephone numbers are publicly available.

I left a message with the Lehigh office to pass along to Hughes my desire to speak to him. A volunteer at a Pittsburgh field office put me in touch with Gregory Minchak, Regional Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders’ campaign. I spoke to him on Friday, reiterating my desire to speak to Ryan Hughes.

Mr. Minchak gave me no official comment on behalf of the campaign. Per his request, however, I sent him all the information I previously shared with the two other Sanders’ campaign workers. I informed him that the name of Mark Craig’s source would very likely be made public in the near future, and asked him to reach out to Mr. Hughes and request that he call me. Mr. Minchak made no promises. I hope to receive a response from him or some other senior official in the campaign at some point.

To my knowledge, Ryan Hughes has made no public statement refuting the allegations against him. However, last week I learned that Bill Taylor, a volunteer activist and organizer for Bernie Sanders in the Philadelphia area, did attempt to speak to Hughes about the controversy. On March 27, 2016, Taylor confronted Ryan Hughes about the allegations he took Clinton PAC money. Taylor’s description of that encounter describes his encounter with Ryan Hughes is related in this video he made and posted on Facebook.

I contacted Taylor by phone. He claims that Ryan Hughes refused to answer any questions regarding the claim he received money from PACS supporting Clinton. Hughes, for whatever reason, did not deny the allegations when Taylor raised the issue. Instead, Taylor says Hughes made every effort to evade him and avoided answering Taylor’s questions.

Final thoughts

I deeply regret that I have been unable to speak with either Diana Rogalle or Ryan Hughes, the two people who could provide some clarity about this matter. They could either confirm or deny Mr. Craig’s claims if they chose to do so. Ms. Rogalle has not responded to the voicemail messages I left for her, and her firm’s website has apparently been taken down. It appears she has chosen not to comment about Ryan Hughes and the money he allegedly received from Clinton PACs.

Ryan Hughes knows or should have reason to know of Mark Craig’s allegations regarding him since my initial story was published on March 25th. I’ve yet to see any public statement from him about those allegations.

I can’t say with 100% certainty the accusations against Mr. Hughes are true. It’s possible that Craig made these claims to disrupt Bernie’s campaign. However, I’ve seen nothing to make me think that is the case. To the extent possible, I’ve attempted to confirm every piece of information about Ryan Hughes and Diana Rogalle I received from Mark Craig. Much of what he told me has been verified through independent publicly available online sources. In the case of Mr. Hughes and his conduct as Michigan’s state director, I’ve had conversations with volunteers worked for him that support what Mark Craig told me.

Some might claim that if Mr. Hughes received funds from Clinton Super Pacs, those expenditures would appear in the mandatory disclosure forms all PACs are required to file with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). However, that is not necessarily the case.

If the payments to Hughes and others were made by consulting firms, such as The Ashmead Group, who billed the PACs and were reimbursed for them, these payments would not show up in any document filed with the FEC. This is because companies that receive payments from political action committees,such as Priorities USA, are not required under Federal law to disclose any information to the FEC with respect to PAC expenditures they received.

The particulars of this story do not provide definitive proof that Ryan Hughes did indeed receive monies from Diana Rogalle, funds that originated from Super Pacs or other groups supporting Hillary Clinton. They are sufficient, however, to create suspicion in the minds of reasonable people that the story very well might be true.

Similar fact patterns that involve inexplicable actions taken by paid staffers in other states, combined with connections between those staffers and the Clintons, their associates and or affiliated organizations, are leading many Bernie volunteers to suspect the infiltration of Bernie’s campaign by Clinton operatives.

For myself, regarding this story, I would like to hear from Ryan Hughes and Diana Rogalle. So far, however, neither of them has addressed the claims made by Mark Craig publicly, at least to my knowledge. By remaining silent, they give the appearance of having something to hide.

In any event, I’d love to hear from either Diana or Ryan to get their side of this story.