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We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here’s What We Learned


November 23, 20163:31 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

Laura Sydell

 

“The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right.”

A lot of fake and misleading news stories were shared across social media during the election. One that got a lot of traffic had this headline: “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide.” The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times.

We wondered who was behind that story and why it was written. It appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the local weather. But it had only one news story — the fake one.

The Two-Way

Study Finds Students Have ‘Dismaying’ Inability To Tell Fake News From Real

We tried to look up who owned it and hit a wall. The site was registered anonymously. So we brought in some professional help.

By day, John Jansen is head of engineering at Master-McNeil Inc., a tech company in Berkeley, Calif. In the interest of real news he helped us track down the owner of Denverguardian.com.

Jansen started by looking at the site’s history. “Commonly that’s called scraping or crawling websites,” he says.

Jansen is kind of like an archaeologist. He says that nothing you do on the Web disappears — it just gets buried — like a fossil. But if you do some digging you’ll find those fossils and learn a lot of history.

The “Denver Guardian” was built and designed using a pretty common platform — WordPress. It’s used by bloggers and people who want to create their own websites. Jansen found that the first entry ever for the site was done by someone with the handle LetTexasSecede.

“That was sort of the thread that started to unravel everything,” Jansen says. “I was able to track that through to a bunch of other sites which are where that handle is also present.”

The sites include NationalReport.net, USAToday.com.co, WashingtonPost.com.co. All the addresses linked to a single rented server inside Amazon Web Services. That meant they were all very likely owned by the same company. Jansen found an email address on one of those sites and was able to link that address to a name: Jestin Coler.

Online, Coler was listed as the founder and CEO of a company called Disinfomedia. Coler’s LinkedIn profile said he once sold magazine subscriptions, worked as a database administrator and as a freelance writer for among others, International Yachtsman magazine. And, using his name, we found a home address.

On a warm, sunny afternoon I set out with a producer for a suburb of Los Angeles. Coler lived in a middle-class neighborhood of pastel-colored one-story beach bungalows. His home had an unwatered lawn — probably the result of California’s ongoing drought. There was a black minivan in the driveway and a large prominent American flag.

We rang the front doorbell and a man answered, his face obscured by a heavy mesh steel screen. I asked for Jestin Coler. The man indicated that’s who he was. But when I asked about Disinfomedia, he said, “I don’t know what to tell you guys. Have a good day.”

We left Coler our contact information thinking he wasn’t likely to talk. But a couple of hours later he had a change of heart. He sent us an email and we set up an interview.

Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right.

“The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction,” Coler says.

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.

“What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened,” Coler says

During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. “It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they’re about to get served,” Coler says. “It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election.”

Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.

Coler’s company, Disinfomedia, owns many faux news sites — he won’t say how many. But he says his is one of the biggest fake-news businesses out there, which makes him a sort of godfather of the industry.

At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the “Denver Guardian” that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy theories.

“The people wanted to hear this,” he says. “So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional: the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then … our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire.”

Did Social Media Ruin Election 2016?

And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn’t give exact figures, but he says stories about other fake-news proprietors making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him. Coler fits into a pattern of other faux news sites that make good money, especially by targeting Trump supporters.

However, Coler insists this is not about money. It’s about showing how easily fake news spreads. And fake news spread wide and far before the election. When I pointed out to Coler that the money gave him a lot of incentive to keep doing it regardless of the impact, he admitted that was “correct.”

Coler says he has tried to shine a light on the problem of fake news. He has spoken to the media about it. But those organizations didn’t know who he actually was. He gave them a fake name: Allen Montgomery.

Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn’t think fake news swayed the election.

“There are many factors as to why Trump won that don’t involve fake news,” he says. “As much as I like Hillary, she was a poor candidate. She brought in a lot of baggage.

Facebook, Google Take Steps To Confront Fake News

Coler doesn’t think fake news is going away. One of his sites — NationalReport.net — was flagged as fake news under a new Google policy, and Google stopped running ads on it. But Coler had other options.

“There are literally hundreds of ad networks,” he says. “Early last week, my inbox was just filled every day with people because they knew that Google was cracking down — hundreds of people wanting to work with my sites.”

Coler says he has been talking it over with his wife and may be getting out of the fake-news racket. But, he says, dozens, maybe hundreds of entrepreneurs will be ready to take his place. And he thinks it will only get harder to tell their websites from real news sites. They know now that fake news sells and they will only be in it for the money.

Below are highlights of NPR’s interview with Coler.

Interview Highlights

Tell me a little about why you started Disinfomedia?

Late 2012, early 2013 I was spending a lot of time researching what is now being referred to as the alt-right. I identified a problem with the news that they were spreading and created Disinfomedia as a response to that. The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly false or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction.

What got you engaged in this?

My educational background is in political science. I’ve always enjoyed the ideas of propaganda and misinformation. Then I coupled that with an interest in what makes things go viral. So that led me to finding those groups and ultimately to finding contributors. But it was just something I had an interest in that I wanted to pursue.

When did you notice that fake news does best with Trump supporters?

Well, this isn’t just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue. Sarah Palin’s famous blasting of the lamestream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn’t something that started with Trump. This is something that’s been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it’s always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat.

We’ve tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You’ll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

How many domains do you own and run?

Well, I would say there’s somewhere around 25 domains that I am currently managing. National Report has been my bread and butter, where I’ve spent most of my time. I have people who work with me and for me in developing and maintaining the other sites and social media kind of stuff. [Coler later said not all his sites are fake news.] So I, for the most part, focus on National Report, and a lot of the other stuff is run by other folks on the team.

So, you’re the publisher of an empire.

Well I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an empire but, yes, its several sites [chuckle].

How many people do you have writing for you?

It comes and goes, and as for actual employed writers, again these guys sort of make their own money through ad code. So I don’t say, ‘Hey, you have to write 10 stories this week’ and this and that. Really, we have a more free-form idea where people, when their creativity strikes them then they can write something. And if they’re in a slump then they just go dormant for a while. With that said, at any given time there’s probably 20, 25 contributors all over the country. …

Talk about the “Denver Guardian.”

Well, it’s kind of a side project. We have some people working on next steps in the fake-news industry, and that came from that whole discussion. We had purchased several domain names that sounded legitimate. … More local news sort of stories. The idea was to make the sites look as legit as possible so the home page is going to be local news and local forecast, local sports, some obituaries and things of that nature, and then the actual fake news stories were going to be buried off the home page.

We’ve tried lots of things in the past. The dot-com-dot-co domains were something I toyed in for a while. Those I quickly got away from because you don’t get away long with borrowing someone’s copyright or trademark. That was something that worked very well from a fake-news perspective. People were fooled into the domain name, but that wasn’t so much what we were after. So again, the next step was to go after more city-type sites. And the “Denver Guardian” was one of those sites.

You’re talking about the future of this (fake-news business) which looks more insidious because it’s more real?

That’s the way that it’s going to be. Not just from where I am. I mean, this is probably going to be my last run in the fake-news biz, but I can promise you that it’s not going to go away. It’s even going to grow bigger and it’s going to be harder to identify as it kind of evolves through these steps. …

Do you know who wrote the actual FBI Clinton story?

I do know who wrote the story, but only through an anonymous pen name. Privacy is something that we take very seriously in our writers group. The actual reasonings behind that story … it’s one of hundreds that have been written about mysterious deaths of Clinton associates or political foes. This one kind of took off more than others, I believe, just because of the nature of the story. The people wanted to hear this. So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional. The town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. Then, we had our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire.

Why hide your identity?

This isn’t the safest business to be in, to be honest. Just the number of death threats I’ve received. I have a beautiful family, a beautiful life.

Some of these people that we … bait is probably the right word — are often — let’s call them the deplorables, right? They’re not the safest crowd. Some of them I would consider domestic terrorists. So they’re just not people that I want to be knocking on my door.

It seems like National Report is getting spoofier.

If you went to National Report today, it’s specifically satire. “Chris Christie nominated to Supreme Food Court.” “Sarah Palin Banning Muslims from Entering Bristol Palin.” They’re a little bit more offensive than some people care for their satire. I mean fat-shaming and slut-shaming isn’t something that is normally met with applause. But again, it’s a lot more fun in nature.

Do you make serious money?

It depends on what you would call serious money. I think I do pretty well.

Can you say how well?

I would rather not. There have been some people who have been reported on recently. The folks in Long Beach that were doing just all right stuff. They were reporting $10,000 to $30,000 a month; I think that’s probably a relative ballpark.

So you’re doing as well as those?

Yes.

You’re making money through the ads?

Yes.

Who do you work with?

We have several advertisers. Google was one, although they shut down my account last week. We’ve replaced them with other advertisers.

Can I ask who?

There are literally hundreds of ad networks. Literally hundreds. Last week my inbox was just filled everyday with people, because they knew that Google was cracking down — hundreds of people wanting to work with my sites. I kind of applaud Google for their steps, although I think what they’re doing is kind of random. They don’t really have a process in place for identifying these things. I happen to know a very successful site that, as of today, of this morning is still serving Google ads. So it seems to be a kind of arbitrary step that they’re taking either based on, I don’t know if it was my reputation within the industry or specifically the “Denver Guardian” site that angered them, or I don’t know what it is, but back to your question, there’s hundreds of people that will work with me.

What can be done about fake news?

Some of this has to fall on the readers themselves. The consumers of content have to be better at identifying this stuff. We have a whole nation of media-illiterate people. Really, there needs to be something done.

Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?

Sure.

Are you one of the biggest in the fake-news biz?

If you look at someone who has specifically sometimes peddled in fictional news then I think that I would probably be considered one of the larger sites.

As a liberal, do you have any regrets?

I don’t. Again, this is something that I’ve been crying about for a while. But outside of that, there are many factors as to why Trump won that don’t involve fake news, right? As much as I like Hillary, she was a poor candidate. She brought in a lot of baggage.

You don’t feel responsible.

I do not.

Do you think you would have kept doing it if it wasn’t so lucrative?

Really, the financial part of it isn’t the only motivator for me. I do enjoy making a mess of the people that share the content that comes out of our site. It’s not just the financial incentive for me. I still enjoy the game I guess.

Would you do this all over again?

Well, I guess it came to a head here and we’re talking about it. It’ll be interesting to see what happens moving forward. If I had to, if I knew specifically the “Denver Guardian” situation, that would have been handled differently. But everything else, as far as the work I’ve done with National Report, I’m very proud of, and I’m going to continue doing it.

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What will Donald Trump’s Presidency be like? Here are 5 scenarios.


Scott GalupoNovember 21, 2016

1. The Northeastern moderate
Before he discovered birtherism, Trump gave every indication that he was a finger-wetting, wind-direction-checking, big-city Northeastern moderate. In 1999, he described himself as “very pro-choice.” As recently as December 2012, he had urged the Republican Party, still licking its wounds over the re-election of President Obama, to get ahead of the immigration issue and win over Hispanic voters with comprehensive reform. Even during the 2016 GOP primaries, he signaled a break from the Republican mainstream by vowing to protect Medicare and Social Security.
Maybe President Trump will govern like his old self.
Throughout his public life, Trump has maintained a hard-line posture on law-and-order issues. But that’s a posture common to New York/New Jersey moderates like Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, who, not surprisingly, were among Trump’s earliest boosters.
Trump has also been a persistent critic of small-l liberal trade orthodoxy. In this 1988 appearance on Late Night With David Letterman, in which he presaged every major theme of his successful presidential campaign (“Do you want to see the United States become a winner, David?”), he complained about trade deficits with Japan (“They dump the cars and the VCRs and everything else”) as well as the U.S. guarantee of the island nation’s security (“We defend Japan for virtually nothing, which is hard to believe”).
In light of this, it’s possible that all the race-baiting of the 2016 campaign, all the bluster about Mexicans and Muslims, was a crude but necessary ploy to dislodge the Republican base from its fealty to the economic libertarianism of the party establishment in Washington. To get downscale Republican voters to finally vote in their material self-interest, he had to appeal to their basest cultural instincts.
As president, Trump might well prove to be a pragmatic dealmaker. He owes nothing to the Republican congressional leadership. If anything, they owe him for their astonishing good fortune. Consequently, Trump could be as willing to cut deals with Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi as he is with GOP leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
In this scenario, a clear truth will materialize: It took a brazen figure like Donald Trump to break the partisan logjam in Washington.
2. The president of pomp
Judging from the incoherent, often downright juvenile way in which Trump spoke about policy, it’s safe to say he knows virtually nothing about virtually everything. The Trump campaign reportedly tried to entice Ohio Gov. John Kasich to join the ticket by promising that he’d be in charge of both domestic and foreign policy — leaving the vaguely momentous job of “making America great again” to the president.
What if Trump does not want to be bothered with the details of day-to-day governance and international relations? As long as he gets the credit for the legislation he signs into law; as long as it’s known that he is vested with final authority; as long as he is the “decider,” he will not sweat the details of public policy or diplomacy.
Under this scenario, the Trump administration’s policy agenda will be farmed out to Vice President Mike Pence (a right-wing conservative in good standing with the movement) and congressional leaders McConnell and Ryan. President Trump will essentially rubber-stamp into law a massive tax cut for the wealthy, the partial privatization of Medicare, the block-granting of Medicaid, plus the repeal of ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank financial-industry regulations.
3. The people pleaser
Donald Trump has a deeply felt need for people to like him, to be “nice” to him. As a result, during the campaign he found himself on every side of every issue, often inside the same sentence. It was difficult to keep track of the evolution of his policy positions. (You can peruse an attempt to do so here.)
Trump may well try to govern every which way, in the same way he campaigned every which way. We will get a border wall. Or a fence. Or an “electronic fence.” It will be big and beautiful … and porous … and virtual. And he will countenance a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented “terrific people,” after having made a show of deporting criminals in no greater number than the Obama administration.
He will repeal Obama Care. But not really. Or not immediately. Maybe never. Those with preexisting conditions will still have insurance and the 26-and-under cohort will be able to stay on their parents’ plans. No one will lose coverage and he will maintain the consumer protections of the Affordable Care Act. He’ll call the whole thing “TrumpCare” and declare victory for freedom.
He will cut taxes and make up for the shortfall in revenue by … making American revenue great again. That is, he will deficit-finance his tax cuts in the same fashion as Presidents Reagan and Bush 43.
When faced with a tough choice or politically painful trade-off, he will not choose at all. He will be all things to all people.
4. The pernicious president
The premise of Trump’s campaign was that pluralism has failed. Pluralism has made us less safe. Political correctness has made it impossible to utter the truth. And the law-abiding white Christian majority in this country is under siege from multiculturalists, Islamists, and globalists.
With the installment of Steve Bannon as a top White House strategist and the appointment of Gen. Michael Flynn and Sen. Jeff Sessions as national security adviser and attorney general, respectively, Trump may well intend to run an administration every bit as uncompromising as his most vitriolic campaign rhetoric. We will get a border wall and a ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries. The Trump administration will further gut the Voting Rights Act and make it yet harder for minorities to cast a ballot. Otherwise law-abiding undocumented workers and their families will live in a climate of fear, always looking over their shoulder.
Further, it will become clear that Trump wasn’t bluffing when he threatened to “open up” libel law to combat unfair attacks in the press and initiate antitrust action against Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. He will persecute unfriendly media and opponents in the business world via the vast regulatory power of the executive branch of government.
5. The agent of chaos
What if none of these scenarios entirely comes to pass — but instead, all of them do to one extent or another? Maybe we’ll see a partial realization of and a bleeding between each scenario. It will all depend on who has the president’s ear at any given moment — on who was the last operative to stroke his ego and seduce his narcissism. The incoherent nonsense that issues from his mouth will result in “red line”-like international confusion on a monthly basis, or worse. Our allies will never be sure if Trump can be trusted, if the intelligence we share with them isn’t already known to geopolitical rivals like Russia.
And all the while, Trump and his family will enrich themselves. The line between the Trump Organization and the Trump administration will be blurry at best, nonexistent at worst. The Trumps will co-opt the federal bureaucracy to ensure favorable regulation of their business interests. Authoritarian governments around the world will curry favor with Trump by laundering money through his network of international business contacts.
Terrifying, right? Well, I’m sorry to tell you that it’s all too possible. And this is why America urgently needs to formalize an Independents Against Trump movement — the subject of my next column. Stay tuned.

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Lost Con-troll


Running Wild in the streets with wild abandon are the Trump supporters who have the likes of Former Mayor Giuliani , Gov. Christie and the unflapped Benny Carson as point men. Aside from the obvious lies this campaign has all of the makings of a bad reality show. The establishment has spawned a genii from the bottle and can not put him back in. Now in the graceless form that they have used so many times before, they have disavowed him. The reality is that he does not care and the Dupes will get the worst of it. Voters are angry and now they should focus on the real problems their long time elected officials whose lies they believed for so long. Da Turnip has given them a voice through him and they love it. It is of no importance that they are being duped but he just speaks gutter to them with no substance to back it up and they love it. These are not conservatives, liberals or any of the other “mainstream labels” , they are just angry voters who fail to (it appears) to get a full grip on the workings of government and the effects of those workings on everyday life. The things they want are expensive and  no one wants to pay for them. There is no free ride anywhere on anything. Everything has a cost of some sort. The cost of a Trump Presidency is possibly war with the world, anarchy in some states and a breakdown of the political process. Reality is not a political platform but it is the theme of a number of TV shows. It is unfortunate  that too many of us fail to remember  the lessons of previous wars since they were not fought here (exception: the War between the States). This election has shown the worst of us and the best of us yet we have a task to handle and that is to vote. The choice is simple: vote or  don’t vote, the best choice is to vote no matter what. There are 3 parties: Scamocrats, Dupublican and Independent (Green)- Vote for one. Lastly the 2 party system  many of us have known (forever it seems) is not working anymore, our focus should be independence from party rhetoric and remember the real party  tenets (whatever they happen to at the present time). The primary goal of all voters is to elect someone they like and trust however we have not seen those two attributes  together in a long time. What we have had is a Black President who a lot of these same Trump supporters did not vote for and hate because he’s Black. It’s remarkable that this manifestation of hatred has surfaced with such vehemence and it is spread over the Congress, the military and in some foreign countries. Folks fail to realize that the tone of the country sends a message to other countries that Americans and their government are in disarray. Mr. Trump doesn’t care at all about perception unless it is about him. It is time all Americans become woke as to the real issues facing all of us collectively. If you are tired of being lied to during and after elections then you need to read more about what is really going on in this country and the Governments-local, state and federal. Consider this, because a “Plotician ” (new word) looks like you does not mean that he is going to be honest  and truthful with you. It has been said that a “con artist will slap you on the back with one hand and pick your pocket with the other”. So with that statement , wouldn’t it be smart to pay attention or better read up on the folks who are seeking office for yourself and not rely on news reports which could be erroneous or incomplete. Think about this, would you trust this candidate with your wallet? Remember there is no one (1) single issue in any election and if you allow yourself to be stuck on one issue you will miss the issues that will cause us the most harm sooner rather than later.

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Ignorance Is No Excuse


The past several days have brought forth  more erroneous information on the release of hostages from Iran. Dupublicans have loudly touted the idea that the US paid  400 million dollars in ransom for the release of hostages from Iran. Two of the main mouthers of this information include one who should have knowledge of what the real situation was, that person is Paul Ryan,  Dupublican house leader. The second shout out with no facts person is Dupublican candidate for President Donald Trump. The facts are as follows: The United States has held those funds and much more of Iran’s cash for years (since the fall of the Shah in 1979). Holding this cash has given the US some leverage but since we are dealing with an empowered religious leader rather than a diplomat, that  made it more difficult to build any sort of “normal” relation with Iran. This particular release of cash coincides with the release of US citizens but at the same time made this transition easier. This information is something the Speaker could have, should have and probably needed to know before touting the ransom scenario just to make political points. Since the information was wrong, it would make one wonder how much truth is in any statement put out by the party. Remember the middle letters of  Politics is “LI” (lie). We do not have the best choices in this election overall however my choice would be the person who has some experience and not a shoot from the lip huckster. The Dupublicans as a party have pretty much killed their party as a force beyond saying no to any thing put forth by the President and his party. These unending noes have directly affected all of the American people (you know the People they have been so fond of citing without our consent). It is true Mr. Trump speaks his mind but so does a madman and if his followers think this is an asset for a President then they are in for a rude awakening. Each one of us has an opinion on how and what should be done but these opinions are considered in a microcosm which is lacking in the details necessary for a rational opinion which would be more relative to the situations we face.

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The Worst


The worst thing about modern elections is the instantaneous transmission of information. Recently in a seemingly desperate move to shore up support for the Dupublicans party, Reince Priebus stated  “Hillary Clinton will take a way your guns”. This is a subject that has not been reported as far as I know in this  campaign. Lets remember that same thing was said about President Obama yet gun owners still have their guns. If you are a member of any gun group and are a reasonable human being , you will understand that taking legally owned guns from anyone is something that Government has no interest in. It would be tough to impossible to remove guns from people who should not have them or illegally owns them so the premise of taking guns from anyone is highly unlikely. These are the types of outright lies and untrue statements that our modern political parties issue. All voters need to first do your homework and ignore the rhetoric coming out of campaigns. Unfortunately the only candidate who truly speaks his mind is Donald Trump but being rich ,uninformed and unflappable(?) is not an asset. Do we want this person running the country and shooting from the lip and hip? This does not say much in favor his backing party. If a politician is so desperate to win that lies are issued on their behalf then I would offer that this is not a person we want to represent us on any level.

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Vote Like An Adult


Watch your toes! Any of you who plan to vote for Dupublicans (Republicans) and Scamocrats (Democrats) need to rethink your choice. If you have not done your due diligence in reading about the Parties as they currently exist then you are part of the problem of poor government. Government has never been perfect, that’s why we vote but voting by rote is why we have such poor Congressional and other representation. Do your home work and vote like an adult. The next Congressional error could arrive on your doorstep. The major political race is not where the Governmental problems arise, the real problems are the people we overlook and just vote for due to name recognition. These are the Congressional stiffs who treat us like the village idiots, they invoke us (“the American People”) to support their agendas and those agendas do not include us no matter what they say in the media. It is certainly reasonable to be upset with the current Government but if we ignore the small races ( Congress et al) we are effectively keeping the same ineffective Government. The President will change every 4 or 8 years no matter what but the lesser elected officials will be there until they retire unless we vote them out. These are the same people are willing to shut the Government down and pass laws we do not agree with but invoke us whenever they desire. I caution you to not get caught up in angry rhetoric which leads to errors in voting.

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Who Can We Trust??


The current Presidential race has shown the darker side of our politics and unearthed the deeper evil of the whole system. Fact checkers uncover the misrepresentation of statements, media sources reveal the truth behind the sitting elected officials and we still vote some of these people in time after time. First let’s think about politics overall, this is a business that hires people to lie, misrepresent and cajole to get us to vote their way. There have been many times staffers have been caught and fired but how many have never been caught and continue to do their worst? These are the things we as voters need to pay attention to. These “stuffers” have created the rifts between us religiously, racially and economically. All of this for an elected position that invariably will benefit the voter very little. Think about the “Watergate Scandal” of the 70’s when our President and his closest aides committed crimes in his behalf. It is entirely possible that these sorts of things are still being done but with more secretiveness. “Lest we forget” our political system is rife with corruption and deceit as evidenced by the lackluster performance of our Congress in the past 20 years. it is always said:” If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck then it is most assuredly a duck!”

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Benefactors -Beneslackers-Benefakers


The ongoing and seemingly never ending rhetoric accompanying election campaigns is an indication of how jaded we have become as voters. This phenomenon has worked in favor of the candidates since their objective is to win at any cost. This cost may affect the people they represent more than anyone else. If we expand that representation to the nation , it will become apparent that voters need to be better informed before voting. It is easy to become enraged by sound bites, hate speech and lies but the truth no matter how obvious is always the first to be ignored. Our misdirected anger in this season of elections has brought out the worst in us, where we should be concentrating our efforts is removing our Congressional representatives as their terms end, once this precedent is established we should begin to see an upward swing in the quality of our government at the local, State and Federal levels. The people we have elected regularly all  have the same spiel and that is, “I work for you”! We are stuck with 535 “benefakers” s  who have  offered themselves as benefactors have for as long as they have been in office. What benefactor would shutdown the Government leaving the people they are supposed to work for stranded. Now consider that these benefakers refuse to consider a replacement Supreme court justice, tried over 60 times to  overturn  the Affordable Care Act and failed. If these “benefakers” had spent the same amount of time reading the ACA and making necessary changes to create a better product, that would have  been beneficial. If these benefakers had not spent so much time naysaying climate change, air quality and economic  issues where would we be? We (voters) need to decide what we want and what we need, then balance the two for a workable solution. If we as voters urge our representatives to do what’s right, that will benefit all of us.

 

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Analysis of Scotus selection


Ten days before Justice Antonin Scalia died, launching the political battle over who would fill his vacancy, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a speech slamming the Supreme Court nomination process. In remarks at Boston’s New England Law,The New York Times reports that Roberts denounced the politicization of the process that he says is really just meant to ensure that nominees are qualified for the job.

“We don’t work as Democrats or Republicans,” the chief justice said, “and I think it’s a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmation process.”

Roberts pointed out that while nominees back in his day were easily confirmed, the last three justices — Samuel Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — have all faced split votes from the Senate. “Look at my more recent colleagues, all extremely well qualified for the court and the votes were, I think, strictly on party lines for the last three of them, or close to it, and that doesn’t make any sense,” Roberts said. “That suggests to me that the process is being used for something other than ensuring the qualifications of the nominees.”

President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court last week, despite Republicans’ promises that they will deny any Obama nominee in favor of letting the next president fill the vacancy. It has become clear that the Congress is essentially Racist and disingenuous. Vice President Biden made it clear in a recent speech that the GOP Congress has  taken excerpts from a prior speech to avoid doing the job of vetting a candidate for the Supreme court. For the past 7 years we (voters) have been operating under a dysfunctional Government due to the Political machinations of our Congress. Voters are better than the people we elected to represent us but we seemingly have not considered this. Our Federal lawmakers are no more than 535 people who are taking our money for a job poorly done or not done  at all. If this were a contractor or service, we as consumers would be up in arms so the question is: Why are we not taking these people (Congress) to task  for not doing their job?

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Guantanamo Camp Cost $900,000.00 Per Prisoner Per Year


This posting from The Huffington Post shows what the cost to keep Guantanamo Camp open and what should be spent on the actual facility to bring it up to standards. Where could this amount be better used? We have several 
“High Security” prisons in the U.S. but due to politrics and fear mongering these facilities and the apparent boon to the communities as far as material resources like jobs, products sold to the facility and traffic from products being brought in has not happened. Maximum security is just that maximum security and would cost a lot less in the United States than off shore. This move would free up military forces now engaged in guarding this facility for other duties. The move would be n money saved and well spent.

WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) – It’s been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth and President Barack Obama cited the cost this week as one of many reasons to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which burns through some $900,000 per prisoner annually.

The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.

By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.

The high cost was just one reason Obama cited when he returned this week to an unfulfilled promise to close the prison and said he would try again. Obama also said that the prison, set up under his Republican predecessor George W. Bush and long the target of criticism by rights groups and foreign governments, is a stain on the reputation of the United States.

“It’s extremely inefficient,” said Ken Gude, chief of staff and vice president at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, who has followed developments at Guantanamo Bay since 2005.

“That … may be what finally gets us to actually close the prison. I mean the costs are astronomical, when you compare them to what it would cost to detain somebody in the United States,” Gude said.

The cost argument could be a potent weapon at a time of running budget battles between Obama and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and of across-the-board federal spending cuts that kicked in, in March. The “sequestration” as it is known, is due to cut some $109 billion in spending up to the end of September and has cut government services small and large.

Just one inmate from Guantanamo, for example, is equivalent to the cost of 12 weeks of White House tours for the public – a treasured tradition that the Secret Service says costs $74,000 a week and that has been axed under sequestration.

A single inmate is also the equivalent of keeping open the control tower at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport for 45 months. That control tower, another victim of cuts, costs $20,000 per month to run.

The $900,000 also matches the funding for nearly seven states to help serve home delivered meals to the elderly. Sequestration has cost Meals on Wheels a median shortfall of $129,497 per state, the organization says.

Or measured in terms of military spending and national security, the cost of four inmates represents the cost of training an Air Force fighter pilot – based on the Department of Defense’s figure of $3.6 million per pilot.

WHY THE HUGE COST?

The huge cost of running the prison and judicial complex stem from its offshore location at a 45-square-mile U.S. Naval Base on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Because ties between the two countries are almost nonexistent, almost everything for the facilities has to be ferried in from outside.

When the military tribunals are in session, everyone from judges and lawyers to observers and media have to fly into Guantanamo on military aircraft. Food, construction materials and other goods are shipped in from outside, experts say.

But despite the high cost of the camp, and despite the fact that Republicans traditionally demand belt-tightening by the federal government, a Republican aide with the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said there was little point in asking if the price was worth it because “there isn’t an alternative at the moment.”

“No one has any particular affection for Guantanamo Bay, but no one has come up with a practical solution that’s better,” the aide said.

Obama needs to produce a plan for what to do with the detainees at Guantanamo “who are too dangerous to release,” Representative Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an opinion piece in USA Today this week. “Until a better solution is offered, at Guantanamo they must stay,” he wrote.

Among current inmates, nine have been charged with crimes or convicted, 24 are considered eligible for possible prosecution, 86 have been cleared for transfer or release and 47 are considered too dangerous for release but are not facing prosecution.

But until now, worries about security have prevented the idea of transferring some or all of the inmates to the United States from getting much traction.

Obama pledged to close the prison within a year after first taking office in January 2009 but his efforts ran aground, partly because of congressional opposition, from both Republicans and some in his own Democratic Party, to transferring prisoners to the United States.

Inmates started a hunger strike in February that has swelled to some 100 prisoners and has led to force-feeding of 23 of the prisoners. With the camp back under a critical spotlight, Obama told a news conference on Tuesday he would renew efforts to shut it down. He has an array of options, some of which would be more achievable than others.

Gude said it was difficult to figure out how much the United States has spent overall on Guantanamo detention facilities since it began housing prisoners there in 2002 because administrations only recently have been noting the expense in a budget line item.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an estimate but it is certainly more than $1 billion by a comfortable margin, I would say, probably more than $2 billion,” Gude said.

Above the annual operating cost, capital spending on the prison could rise again if the Pentagon receives the funding it says it needs to renovate the place.

General John Kelly, the head of Southern Command, which is responsible for Guantanamo, told a House of Representatives panel in March that he needed some $170 million to improve the facilities for troops stationed at the base as part of detention operations. Kelly said the living conditions were “pretty questionable” and told the panel, “We need to take care of our troops.” (Reporting By David Alexander; Editing by Frances Kerry and Tim Dobbyn)

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Io’s rison Facility