POLITICS

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Associated Press

"St. Louis prosecutor's appeal in McCloskey case turned away"


JIM SALTER

Fri, January 8, 2021, 3:01 PM EST

O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri appeals court on Friday denied St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner's appeal challenging the disqualification of her office from prosecuting Mark McCloskey who, along with his wife, drew guns on racial injustice protesters last summer.

The decision upholds Judge Thomas Clark II's ruling last month that removed Gardner and her office from the case, citing concerns over two campaign fundraising emails by Gardner that referenced the prosecution.


Clark's ruling applied only to Mark McCloskey, but attorneys for the couple are seeking to have the ruling apply to Patricia McCloskey's case, too.

A spokeswoman for Gardner said the ruling will be appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court.

The McCloskeys, both of them lawyers in their 60s, face weapons and evidence tampering charges.

Both have pleaded not guilty.

They were celebrated in conservative circles but criticized by others for the June incident that happened during nationwide protests that followed George Floyd’s death.

A large group of protesters marching to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home instead detoured onto a private street that includes the McCloskeys’ home.

They came outside and pointed guns at the protesters, accusing them of trespassing and saying they felt threatened.

Protest leaders said the demonstration was peaceful.

The McCloskeys spoke on video during the Republican National Convention and garnered support from President Donald Trump and other leading Republicans.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson vowed to pardon them if they are convicted.

Their attorney, Joel Schwartz, sought Gardner’s removal, citing her reference to the case in fundraising emails during her successful Democratic primary campaign in August.

Gardner, St. Louis’ first Black circuit attorney, won reelection in November.

If Clark's ruling stands, a special prosecutor would be appointed to take over the case.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/st-louis-pros ... 59135.html
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Re: POLITICS

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CNBC

"Clarida says Fed bond purchases to keep pace through the rest of the year"


Jeff Cox @jeff.cox.7528 @JeffCoxCNBCcom

Published Fri, Jan 8 2021

Key Points

* Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said Friday he expects the central bank to maintain the pace of its asset purchases through the rest of 2021.

* Markets have been looking for more guidance about the balance sheet expansion, which has taken the Fed’s holdings past $7 trillion.


Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said he expects the central bank to maintain the pace of its asset purchases through the balance of 2021.

“My economic outlook is consistent with us keeping the current pace of purchases throughout the rest of this year,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations during a presentation Friday.

As things stand, the Fed is buying at least $120 billion a month, split between a minimum $80 billion in Treasurys and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities.

The pace of purchases has accelerated through the Covid-19 pandemic as a continuing effort both to maintain economic growth and market functioning.

Markets have been wondering how long the Fed will keep the program going given that its holdings have now eclipsed $7 trillion.

Clarida said Friday he doesn’t see a pullback anytime this year even though he expects growth to accelerate.


“I think it could be quite some time before we would think about tapering the pace of our purchases the way I look at the data, and I’m relatively optimistic about the economic outlook,” he added in a session moderated by CNBC’s Steve Liesman.

“We want further progress in the labor market and moving toward our 2% inflation objective, and I think that’s some ways away before we declare victory on that.”

While the Fed will keep its options open as the economy progresses through the year, Clarida said officials are committed to hitting and likely exceeding their inflation goal, as well as to full, inclusive employment.

Following the December meeting, the Fed committed to keeping the asset purchase program going until substantial progress has been made toward the mandate.

Earlier this week, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said he wouldn’t be surprised if the pace of the bond buying decelerates by the end of the year.

“Right now, I think maintaining the current pace of purchases throughout the remainder of this year is my expectation,” Clarida said.

Data also provided by Reuters

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/clarida ... -year.html
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Re: POLITICS

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CNBC

"White House Covid task force warns of possible new ‘USA variant’ driving spread"


Berkeley Lovelace Jr. @BerkeleyJr Noah Higgins-Dunn @higginsdunn Will Feuer @WillFOIA

Published Fri, Jan 8 2021

Key Points

* The White House coronavirus task force said there could be a fresh variant of the virus that evolved in the U.S. and is driving spread, according to a document obtained by NBC News.

* The new strain is already spreading in communities and may be 50% more transmissible, it said.

* The report, which was issued to states on Jan. 3, offers few further details about this possible new variant.


The White House coronavirus task force said there could be a new variant of the virus that evolved in the U.S. and is driving spread, according to a document obtained by NBC News.

The strain variant, in addition to the U.K. variant, is already spreading in communities and may be 50% more transmissible, according to the report that was issued to states on Jan. 3.


The task force said the recent spike in cases has been at nearly twice the rate seen in the spring and summer seasons, according to the report.

The U.S. is recording at least 228,400 new Covid-19 cases and at least 2,760 virus-related deaths each day, based on a seven-day average calculated by CNBC using Johns Hopkins University data.

The U.S. reported its deadliest day Thursday with more than 4,000 deaths.

“This acceleration suggests there may be a USA variant that has evolved here, in addition to the UK variant that is already spreading in our communities and may be 50% more transmissible,” the report said.

“Aggressive mitigation must be used to match a more aggressive virus; without uniform implementation of effective face masking (two or three ply and well-fitting) and strict social distancing, epidemics could quickly worsen as these variants spread and become predominant.”

“It is highly likely there are many variants evolving simultaneously across the globe,” Jason McDonald, a spokesman for the CDC, said in an email to CNBC.

He added that there’s a “strong possibility” there are variants in the U.S., but it could be weeks or months before officials identify a particular variant that is “fueling the surge in the United States similar to the surge in the United Kingdom.”

“Researchers have been monitoring U.S. strains since the pandemic began, including 5,700 samples collected in November and December,” he said.

“To date, neither researchers nor analysts at CDC have seen the emergence of a particular variant in the United States as has been seen with the emergence of B.1.1.7 in the United Kingdom or B.1.351 in South Africa.”

Representatives for the Department of Health and Human Services did not return CNBC’s requests for comment.

Few details were provided about the new U.S. strain in the report, including how long it has been circulating.

In recent weeks, the U.S. has ramped up its genomic sequences to try and detect other strains.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told CNBC on Friday that the new strain the White House task force has found appears to be behaving like the one circulating in the United Kingdom.

But he told “Closing Bell” the new strain isn’t the same as the U.K. one, known as B.1.1.7, adding, “if it was we’d recognize that because we’re looking for it.”

UK strain in several states

Public health officials have been worried about the new strain of the virus found in the U.K.

The CDC has identified at least 52 Covid-19 cases with the B.1.1.7 mutation in the U.S., according to data posted on the agency’s website last updated on Thursday.

However, the CDC warns that its numbers “do not represent the total number of B.1.1.7 lineage cases that may be circulating in the United States” and may not match the figures reported by local officials.

So far the CDC only shows California, Florida, New York, Colorado and Georgia with cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, but other states like Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Texas announced the arrival of the strain in their states on Thursday.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Thursday the new strain from the U.K. could force the state into another economic shutdown if it spreads unchecked and weakens the state’s hospitals.

“In the U.K., it overtook everything in three weeks,” Cuomo said.

“If the U.K. spread catches on in New York, hospitalization rate goes up, the hospital staff is sick, then we have a real problem and we’re at shutdown again.”

Vaccines ‘in arms now’

In the task force report issued over the weekend, officials urged states not to delay immunization of those over 65 and vulnerable to severe disease.

“No vaccines should be in freezers but should instead be put in arms now; active and aggressive immunization in the face of this surge would save lives,” the task force said.

A new study from Pfizer found that its vaccine developed with BioNTech appeared to be effective against a key mutation in the U.K. strain as well as a variant found in South Africa.

Michael Osterholm, a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, said Tuesday that the U.S. would likely see more new variants of the virus emerge.

Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said in an interview with CNBC that the strain that was discovered in the U.K. is “a very big concern.”

“And it’s the first of what will likely be a number of these strains that are emerging as we’re at this point in the pandemic,” he added.

Data also provided by Reuters

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/white-h ... pread.html
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Re: POLITICS

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"Albany wants Schuyler statue moved but $40,000 cost raises eyebrows - Mayor Kathy Sheehan said relocation of monument requires a solid plan to avoid having to move the statue again if relocation site draws complaints"

Steve Hughes, Albany, New York Times Union

Jan. 6, 2021

Updated: Jan. 8, 2021 12:32 p.m.

ALBANY – The Maj. Gen. Phillip John Schuyler statue in front of City Hall isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

The city believes it will cost roughly $40,000 to move the bronze statute of the Revolutionary War hero whose ownership of slaves ignited efforts to move the monument.


Given the city’s tight finances and the uncertainty of where the statute’s new home will be, city officials say they want to make sure they have a plan in place before removing it from it’s current home atop a traffic circle near City Hall.

“It’s a substantial amount of money,” Mayor Kathy Sheehan said in a recent interview with WAMC 90.3 FM.

She added that she was in the process of forming an advisory group of city residents for public conversations on where it should go.

“I don’t want to pay to move it twice,” she said.

Sheehan abruptly announced plans for an engineering report to examine how and where to move the statute on June 11 amidst the city’s Black Lives Matter protests.

Citing Schuyler’s history of slave ownership and requests to remove the statute from Black city employees and residents, Sheehan said the city would be better served if the statute was in a place that could put it into historical context.


"Scores of community members have reached out to my office requesting the removal of the statue of former slave owner Gen. Philip Schuyler and I thank those residents for making their voices heard," she said at the time.

The city has indicated it would like work with the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, which owns the Schuyler Mansion, to keep the statute in the city as part of the moving process but has not said specifically where it believes the statute should go.

The Colonie Historical Society asked Sheehan to consider relocating the statue to his gravesite at the Albany Rural Cemetery while Saratoga County officials have requested it be moved to Schuylerville.

The proposed move drew criticism on several fronts, including from Schuyler descendants.

Schuyler, who was the largest owner of enslaved people in the city in the 1700s, is known as a prominent figure of the American Revolution who served in the state Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

He was also Founding Father Alexander Hamilton’s father-in-law.

Schuyler owned 13 enslaved people at his South End mansion in 1790 and another four worked on his farm in Saratoga County, according to Times Union archives.

While Americans typically associate slavery with Southern plantations, research shows enslaved people were a key part of New York's agrarian economy, especially for Dutch landowners in the Capital Region.

There were 3,722 enslaved people of African descent listed in the 1790 census in Albany County, for instance, the most of any county in the state at the time.

In 2005 the remains of 14 enslaved people the Schuyler family owned were discovered as part of a sewer line project several miles north of the mansion.

They were reinterred at the Historic African Burial Ground at St. Agnes Cemetery in Menands in 2016.

Their names were never recorded and almost nothing about them was found in the family's documents.

The city raised the statue to honor him in 1925.

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 850420.php
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REUTERS

"Biden to unveil trillions in pandemic economic relief spending next week"


By Trevor Hunnicutt

January 8, 2021

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Joe Biden said Americans need more economic relief from the coronavirus pandemic now and that he will deliver a plan costing “trillions” of dollars next week.

Biden, introducing several members of his economic team, spoke on Friday after data showed the U.S. economy lost jobs for the first time in eight months in December as a resurgent COVID-19 pandemic shuttered restaurants and other businesses.

He said the proposal includes relief for state and local governments grappling with the pandemic, as well as new support for people who lost their jobs or cannot afford rent.

Biden also called for raising the minimum wage to $15, a campaign promise, and for sending out $2,000 in direct cash payments.

Democrats sought those cash payouts in the last relief bill, passed in December, but only were able to get Republicans to agree to $600.

“We need more direct relief flowing to families, small businesses, including finishing the job of getting people that $2,000 relief direct payment."

"$600 is simply not enough,” he said.

Biden said he would unveil the plan on Thursday.

The Democrat, who takes office on Jan. 20, emerged emboldened from a pair of Senate elections this week in Georgia that handed Democrats a majority in that chamber to complement control of the House of Representatives.

The majorities could allow Biden to pass larger spending bills.

Biden’s initial plan was for a bill under $1 trillion but he said on Friday that “economic research confirms that with conditions like the crisis today, especially with such low interest rates, taking immediate action - even with deficit financing - is going to help the economy.”

Speaking to reporters as he announced his nominees to head the Commerce and Labor departments, the president-elect said action was needed to help Americans get to the other side of the health and economic crisis, and to “avoid a broader economic cost that exists out there, that will happen due to long term unemployment, hunger, homelessness and business failings.”

Markets have reacted quickly to expectations that government spending will rise since Democrats won the Georgia elections, with stock indexes rising and the interest investors demand on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds climbing to their highest levels since March.

Yet Republicans and even some Democrats may be resistant to greater deficit-fueled spending, with Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, among those who initially greeted the idea skeptically.

Biden’s transition team also said on Friday that they are looking into other economic relief actions they can take unilaterally, including extending a pause on repayments of federal student loans.

Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Writing by Doina Chiacu, Andrea Shalal and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Grant McCool and Alistair Bell

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-bid ... SL1N2JJ2BL
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Re: POLITICS

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THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR January 7, 2021 at 7:46 pm

Paul Plante says:

Based on what we saw transpiring yesterday in Washington, D.C. with respect to what is purported to be the “electoral college,” it seems time to revive this thread on the electoral college as it was originally envisioned to be, as opposed to the farce that we have now.

IF the electoral college actually functioned the way the so-called “founders” envisioned it working, “Corn Pop” Biden would never be an American president, no matter how many popular votes he received, because “Corn Pop” is far too controversial, based on his past statements where without any proof adduced at a trial, and no due process of law offered, “Corn Pop” denounced the followers of Donald Trump as the “dregs of society.”

Given his obvious contempt and disdain for those American citizens, there is no way that “Corn Pop” Biden can be trusted to take care that the laws are enforced, period, which would make him unfit to be an American president, again, regardless of how many popular votes he received, as it would appear that those people who were voting for “Corn Pop” Biden were doing so on the hope and belief that he would deprive American citizens that they don’t like of their due process rights and equal protection of law.

As to the electoral college, going back in our history to this nation’s beginnings, in the election of 1789, the electoral votes were as follows:

George Washington 69
John Adams 34
John Jay 9
Robert H. Harrison 6
John Rutledge 6
John Hancock 4
George Clinton 3
Samuel Huntington 2
John Milton 2
James Armstrong 1
Benjamin Lincoln 1
Edward Telfair 1

That is the system as it was originally intended to function, with each elector voting for the person he thought best for the position of chief magistrate of the United States of America.

Contrast that with what we have today:

On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a presidential election year, each state’s electors meet, usually in their state capitol, and simultaneously cast their ballots nationwide.

This is largely ceremonial: Because electors nearly always vote with their party, presidential elections are essentially decided on Election Day.

Although electors aren’t constitutionally mandated to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state, it is demanded by tradition and required by law in 26 states and the District of Columbia (in some states, violating this rule is punishable by $1,000 fine).

Historically, over 99 percent of all electors have cast their ballots in line with the voters.

On January 6, as a formality, the electoral votes are counted before Congress and on January 20, the commander in chief is sworn into office.

end quotes

So today, someone can be made president because like “Corn Pop” Biden, they have campaigned on a platform of depriving American citizens of protection of law, and that platform was popular enough with the faction whose rights would not be stripped from them, to give that person the electoral college votes for that state based solely on popularity, and the electoral college will simply rubber-stamp that, which totally perverts OUR Constitution.

http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-315015
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"Churchill: Watching a despicable attack on democracy -
Wednesday's scene at the U.S. Capitol is the cost of cynicism."


Chris Churchill, Albany, New York Times Union

Jan. 6, 2021

Updated: Jan. 7, 2021 12:13 a.m.

ALBANY — I'm sitting here, on Wednesday evening, watching scenes that, at a more innocent time, I wouldn't have thought possible.

A person has been killed during what seems to have been a shootout at the U.S. Capitol.

Terrorists — I won't call them protesters — broke windows to force their way in.

They stormed into the House chamber, marauders in the people’s building.

It is my country, our country, on the television screen, but it looks like a scene from a banana republic.

I don't know where this is going and what will happen in the hours to come.

But already it is clear this is an ugly, disgusting, despicable attack on democracy and the ideals that undergird it.

This isn't American.

Or, at least, it didn't used to be.

The context for what’s happening, of course, is the presidential election and President Donald Trump’s insistence that it was stolen from him.

The president and his supporters have had their days in courts across the country and lost.

Despite the vast resources at their disposal, they have been unable to prove their claims.

In many cases, they haven't even bothered to try.

There is simply no evidence of material fraud.

There is nothing that suggests the president was cheated.

He did not win in a landslide.

He did not win at all, but no matter.

Trump insists it was so.

Worse, he has convinced a sizeable number of Americans that his baseless claims are true, and that some sort of treason has been committed by a broad swath of thieves, Republicans and Democrats alike.

Everywhere, the convinced see shadows and darkness.

They no longer trust … anything.

Given the rhetoric and the loss of faith, the scene at the Capitol feels inevitable.

It seems like a culmination of all the lies and distortions of recent weeks and the realization of our worst fears.

Trump didn't get us here alone, of course.

Too many Republicans – not all, but too many – not only refused to condemn his nonsensical claims about the election but winked at them.

They backed the lawsuits and the challenge to electoral votes planned Wednesday.

They participated in this cynical, awful farce.

The group includes, I'm deeply sorry to say, our own Elise Stefanik, the Republican who represents the North Country, a woman who entered Congress at a young age and with so much promise.

What a disappointment.

To be clear, Stefanik is not responsible for Wednesday’s violence.

No person is responsible for the bad behavior of others.

As I write this, many of the details of what has happened at the Capitol remain unclear.

But Stefanik and some other Republicans have been playing with fire.

They refuse to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election, even though they must know that he did.

They won't actually say material fraud impacted the election, instead wrapping their unspecified objections in vagaries and legalese, because they realize there’s no evidence the election was stolen.

They aren't selling Trump’s snake oil, but they're helping him push the cart from town to town.

Here's what George W. Bush, Stefanik's former boss, said Wednesday: "I am appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election and by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, our traditions, and our law enforcement."

"The violent assault on the Capitol ... was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes."

What was this all supposed to accomplish?

Where did Stefanik and the others want this to go?

Have they thought about the consequences of turning aside the votes of millions of Americans, as the challenge they mounted Wednesday sought to do?

"If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday, before terrorists stormed the building.

"We would never see the whole nation accept an election again."

McConnell is right, of course.

Overturning the results of a fair election would end the country as we've known it.

This experiment of ours would be over.

The truth of McConnell's words highlight how unpatriotic Stefanik and the others have been.

Though their challenge to the election was never going to succeed, as they surely knew, they undermined faith in democracy.

They weakened the country.

Their reputations are forever stained, and we should never forget what they have done.

And now we have this terrible scene at the Capitol.

What do we call it, exactly?

An insurrection?

A coup?

Whatever we decide to describe it, Wednesday must be a turning point.

It shows the costs of cynicism.

It should open our eyes to how bad things have become and how terribly, deeply divided we are.

We can't go on this way.

cchurchill@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 851282.php
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NEWSWEEK

"The Top Five Rigged U.S. Presidential Elections"


Fred Lucas

On 10/23/16 at 6:30 AM EDT

This article first appeared on The Daily Signal.

In the 2016 presidential election, one candidate is warning about voter fraud, while another proclaims Russians are interfering.

It's not the first time contenders have alleged some form of a "rigged" election.


Tuesday in the Rose Garden, President Barack Obama dismissed concerns of fraud.

"I have never seen in my lifetime, or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections process before votes have even taken place."

"It's unprecedented."

"There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections, in part because they are so decentralized and the number of votes that are cast."

"There is no evidence that has happened in the past, or instances that will happen this year."

While such complaints have been rare before votes were cast, they were very prominent in certain presidential elections, as was evidence that votes weren't always counted properly.

In my book, Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections, I write about some of the most controversial presidential elections that left large segments of the population believing their president was selected instead of elected.

In two elections, the aftermath nearly led to mass violence.

1800: John Adams vs. Thomas Jefferson/Thomas Jefferson vs. Aaron Burr

James Monroe, who was aligned with the Democratic-Republican faction led by Thomas Jefferson, worried about reports that Jefferson supporters were arming for revolt, and said, "Anything [like] a commotion would be fatal to us."

Jefferson much preferred a convention to amend the Constitution if the opposing Federalists continued down this road.

Though it would be Alexander Hamilton who would play a massive role in the outcome, there was a great flurry of activity that led up to the final result.

Moderates in both camps didn't want to see the country torn apart should the die-hard Federalists push it to the deadlock and try to appoint a president.

Thousands poured into Washington, prepared for partisan violence if there was what the Jeffersonians called "usurpation."

President John Adams would assert years later, "a civil war was expected."

Benjamin Franklin's cautionary words, "a Republic, if you can keep it," were put to the test.

As it turned out, Americans could keep it.

Flaws and all, these were men with enough character and intellect to realize the folly of clinging to power or risking bloodshed to obtain it.

The nation truly could have been on the brink of collapse while still in its infancy.

1824: John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson

On February 14, 1824, Henry Clay accepted the offer of the President-elect John Quincy Adams to serve as his secretary of state — presumably making him the next heir apparent since the last four men to lead the State Department became president.

Andrew Jackson and his supporters immediately called this a "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Clay.

The enraged Jackson said Speaker Clay approached him with a similar offer — to make him president in exchange for Jackson appointing him as secretary of state.

As Jackson told it, he had too much character to accept such an offer.

So Clay went to Adams with the same offer and received a different answer.

Clay and Adams denied that any deal was made.

Clay even demanded a congressional investigation into the allegations, which found no proof.

It is one of those things that can be difficult to prove or disprove if no witnesses were present for those meetings.

Above all, having those meetings to start with seems a miscalculation on the part of Adams, who should have known it might look suspicious.

That said, there is no question who Clay preferred between the two.

The only real question is who was telling the truth, Jackson or Clay, on the charge that he made the same offer to both rivals.

Clay considered the optics of becoming secretary of state as well, he later told friends, but thought he couldn't reject the nomination because: "It would be said of me that, after having contributed to the elevation of a president, I thought so ill of him that I would not take first place under him."

1876: Rutherford B. Hayes vs. Samuel Tilden

Henry Watterson, publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal and a Democratic congressman from Kentucky, on January 8, 1876 — which he called "St. Jackson's Day" because it marked the Battle of New Orleans — called for "the presence of at least 10,000 unarmed Kentuckians in the city" to march on Washington to ensure Samuel Tilden was elected.

His friend Joseph Pulitzer, still building a vast newspaper empire, went further, calling for 100,000 people "fully armed and ready for business" to ensure that Tilden became president.

Angry Democrat mobs across the country would chant, "Tilden or blood," and reportedly in a dozen states, club-wielding "Tilden Minutemen" had formed threatening to march into Washington to take the White House for their candidate.


This came to Tilden's chagrin, who sought to calm the rowdiness, as he didn't want to be responsible for an insurrection.

Still, with all the bellicose verbiage from the newspapers and the masses, it was the Democrat hierarchy in the South that was ready to make a deal, though not the Northern Democrats.

Richard Smith of the Republican Cincinnati Gazette reached out to Southern powerbrokers.

Rutherford Hayes asserted to Smith in early January 1877: "I am not a believer in the trustworthiness of the forces you hope to rally."

But, he told the newspaperman, he did back internal improvements and education funding in the South believing it would "divide the whites" and help "obliterate the color line."

On the night of February 26, 1877, four Southern Democrats — Representatives John Y. Brown and Watterson of Kentucky, Senator J.B. Gordon of Georgia and Representative W. M. Levy of Louisiana — met with Ohio Republicans James Garfield and Charles Foster, both House members, and Ohio Senator Stanley Matthews and Ohio Senator-elect John Sherman at the Wormley House hotel in Washington to see if a deal could be reached to prevent the House Democrats from blocking the results with a filibuster.

The men talked about details through the night, and by morning agreed to stop the House Democratic delay tactics that were blocking the certification of the Electoral Commission's findings, on the condition of ending Reconstruction, appointing a Southern Democrat to the Cabinet, and providing federal money for Southern projects.

These were things Hayes expected to do anyway.

1960: John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon

Earl Mazo, a Washington reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, began his investigation after he said Chicago reporters were "chastising" him and other national reporters for missing the real story.

He traveled to Chicago, obtained a list of voters in the suspicious precincts, and began matching names with addresses.

Mazo told The Washington Post:

"There was a cemetery where the names on the tombstones were registered and voted."

"I remember a house."

"It was completely gutted."

"There was nobody there."

"But there were 56 votes for [John F.] Kennedy in that house."

Mazo also found that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's charge that other counties were doing the same thing in favor of Republicans proved to be true — but nothing on the scale of what happened in Chicago.

In Texas, Mazo found similar circumstances.

The New York Herald Tribune planned a 12-part series on the election fraud.

Four of the stories had been published and were republished in newspapers across the country in mid-December.

At Richard Nixon's request, Mazo met him at the vice president's Senate office, where Nixon told him to back off, saying, "Our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis" in the midst of the Cold War.

Mazo didn't back off, and Nixon called his editors.


The newspaper did not run the rest of the series.

"I know I was terribly disappointed."

"I envisioned the Pulitzer Prize," Mazo said.

The entire matter wasn't void of accountability.

Illinois state special prosecutor Morris Wexler, named to investigate charges of election fraud in Chicago, indicted 677 election officials, but couldn't nail down convictions with state Judge John Karns.

It wasn't until 1962, when an election worker confessed to witness tampering in Chicago's 28th Ward, that three precinct workers pleaded guilty and served jail sentences.


Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported hearing tapes of FBI wiretaps about potential election fraud.

Hersh — whose books indicate he is a fan of neither Kennedy nor Nixon — believed Nixon was the rightful winner.

2000: George W. Bush vs. Al Gore

Al Gore campaign aide Bob Beckel intended to make that moral case to Florida's electors — and perhaps electors in other states — who could be convinced to follow the will of the people.

Gore did not need all of the state's electors, just four.

For that matter, he didn't think it had to be limited to Florida.

He thought demonstrating statistics to prove Gore's win could sway enough of the George W. Bush electors to switch their votes since they were not legally bound.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that Gore's team "has been checking into the background of Republican electors with an eye toward persuading a handful of them to vote for Mr. Gore."

Beckel insisted afterward he never had plans to try to blackmail electors to collect Gore votes, which he thought the article implied.

But in an interview on Fox News on November 17, 2000, Beckel said: "I'm trying to kidnap electors."

"Whatever it takes."

Beckel later explained what the Founders wanted: "The idea was that electors, early on, were to be lobbied."


Pro-Gore websites even started popping up, listing the names and contact information of Republican electors across the country, asking the public to barrage them with demands to vote for Gore and follow the will of the people.

Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nichols sent an email to supporters asking them to "Help Stop Democratic Electoral Tampering."

Responding to the chairman, Beckel said: "The Constitution gives me the right to send a piece of mail to an elector."

It never made a difference.

No electors shifted, but it did serve as another twist as the 2000 election story unfolded — and another PR fumble for Democrats.

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal.

https://www.newsweek.com/top-five-rigge ... ons-511765
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Re: POLITICS

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICS

"The 1876 election was the most divisive in U.S. history. Here’s how Congress responded."


By Erin Blakemore

PUBLISHED January 5, 2021

On January 6, the U.S. Congress will convene to count and certify the results of the Electoral College vote, the last step to formally naming Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

But Republican members from both houses of Congress, many with presidential ambitions of their own, have announced they intend to contest the results.

Under pressure from President Donald Trump, and despite the fact that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of voter fraud, one faction of Republican legislators is calling for an investigation into the president’s fraud allegations before the vote is counted — and invoking an extraordinary 144-year-old compromise as a model.

“In 1877, Congress did not ignore those allegations [of fraud],” wrote Texas Senator Ted Cruz and 10 other senators in a joint statement.

“We should follow that precedent.”

But what is that precedent, and could it really apply in 2021?

To find out means delving into the unsavory history of an election that, until 2020, was deemed the nation’s most divisive — and that led to an unusual compromise with weighty consequences.

Here’s what you need to know about the 1876 election and why it still looms large in American history.

A nation united, but still divided

In 1876, the nation was still scarred and divided by the Civil War, which had ended a decade earlier.

During the war’s aftermath, approximately four million enslaved people were freed.

In what would become known as the Reconstruction era, a Republican-controlled Congress moved swiftly to restore the former Confederacy to the Union, limit the political power of former Confederates, and protect the rights of formerly enslaved people by granting them citizenship and the right to vote.

Newly enfranchised Black voters overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party, the party of President Abraham Lincoln and a critical force behind the Union’s Civil War victory.

They registered to vote in large numbers and ran for and were elected to public office.

But as Black citizens gained political and social power in the late 1860s, white Southerners, who largely supported the anti-Reconstruction Democratic Party, resented the federal government’s policies.

Reconstruction represented what they saw as the theft of their rightful dominance of the racial, political, and economic hierarchy.

In an attempt to wrest back their power, they used intimidation and violence to disenfranchise Black voters.


Then, in the early 1870s, the Republican Party’s popularity took a hit due to an economic depression and political scandals like the Whiskey Ring, a bribery scheme in which federal officials helped whiskey distillers evade taxes.

Between the Republicans’ tarnished reputation and the intimidating tactics that allowed white Southerners to suppress Republican votes, Democrats finally saw a path to electoral victory.

A bitter election

Although the stage was set for a dirty election, both 1876 candidates were solid, sensible, and seemingly above reproach.

The Republican candidate, war hero and Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes, ran on a reform platform, promising to clean up the civil service and serve for only one term.

His opponent, Democrat and New York governor Samuel J. Tilden, was known for challenging political corruption.

At the time, though, candidates let their party operatives promote them, and they staged a cutthroat campaign.

Tilden’s opponents painted him as a diseased drunkard who planned to pay off the former Confederacy’s debts; Hayes’s enemies claimed he had stolen money from his brothers in arms during the war.

Election Day was even worse: Both parties participated in rampant fraud.


Republican operatives stuffed ballot boxes, allowed repeat votes, and threw out Democratic ballots; Democrats physically intimidated Black voters in an attempt to keep them from the polls.

(Voter fraud used to be rampant. Now it’s an anomaly.)

When the votes were counted, it appeared that Tilden had garnered 200,000 more votes than Hayes.

But results were unclear in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, where both parties claimed victory — and alleged tampering.

Republican-led state election boards in those three states rejected enough Democratic votes to give Hayes a chance at victory through the Electoral College, despite his opponent’s three-point lead in the popular vote.

The states convened dueling slates of electors and sent conflicting returns to Congress.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, where Hayes had won the popular vote, the Democratic governor claimed one of the state’s three Republican electors was ineligible because he was employed by the postal service.

(Federal employees are not allowed to serve as members of the Electoral College.)

As a result, the state submitted two competing certificates of the final electoral vote tally, one signed by the Democratic governor that showed two votes for Hayes and one for Tilden, and another signed by the secretary of state that showed three votes for Hayes.

A total of 20 Electoral College votes — four from Florida, eight from Louisiana, seven from South Carolina, and one from Oregon — were contested.

It would be up to Congress to sort out the mess.

Electoral mayhem

Democrats were furious about what they saw as the Republicans’ theft of the Southern states.

Henry Watterson, a journalist and Democratic member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, used his platform to call for a “peaceful army of 100,000 men” to march on Washington unless Tilden was declared the winner, stoking fears of a second Civil War.


Faced with fears of violence and a deadlock between the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate, Congress struggled to find a solution.

The Constitution offered no clear guidance about how to deal with a contested electoral vote, and members suggested and bitterly rejected a variety of proposals.

Time was ticking.

The inauguration was scheduled for March 5, 1877, and the legislators didn’t hit on a solution until late January.

Finally, they reached a compromise: a one-time commission consisting of an equal number of House and Senate lawmakers, four Supreme Court justices, and an additional justice selected by the participating Supreme Court members.

Although multiple Republicans objected to the measure, it passed and outgoing President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Electoral Commission Act on January 29.


An unprecedented commission

The electoral commission conducted a court-style tribunal in the Supreme Court chamber in February 1877.

Though the Democrats objected to the vote counts put forward by the Southern states’ Republican electoral boards, they were outnumbered by their Republican colleagues by one and were consistently overruled.

Each contested state was decided in favor of Hayes.

Yet the Democrats refused to accept the results and filibustered in the House of Representatives as fear of civil unrest grew throughout the nation.

It would take a backroom deal — and a momentous political compromise — to settle the election.

During a series of secretive meetings, Southern Democratic lawmakers promised to call off the filibuster and concede the election in exchange for an end to Reconstruction.

Though the terms of the informal agreement remain unknown, it is thought to have included the withdrawal of all federal forces from the former Confederacy, increased federal funds for Southern states, the construction of a transcontinental railroad through the South, and the appointment of a Southern Democrat to Hayes’s cabinet.

In the wee hours of March 2, 1877, a mere three days before the scheduled inauguration, Congress completed the electoral vote count.

Hayes won by a single electoral vote.

Amid fear of assassination, he was sworn in during a secret ceremony the next day.


The controversial Compromise of 1877 was lauded by many at the time as a move that preserved the fragile Union and allowed the country to move forward as one.

But it had disastrous consequences for Black Southerners.

Without federal oversight, states created harsh “Jim Crow” laws that reestablished a brutal racial hierarchy in the South and effectively disenfranchised Black citizens.

A decade after the Hayes-Tilden election was finally decided, Congress passed the Electoral Count Act of 1887 in an attempt to avoid further electoral chaos by providing a consistent system for the delivery of electoral votes.

The law, which still stands today, provides a mechanism by which Congress can determine whether electoral votes are legal: During the joint session of Congress on January 6, members can object to the votes of individual electors or states’ overall returns.

For an objection to be formally considered and voted upon, it must be lodged by both a member of the House and the Senate.

That has only happened twice in history, and both objections failed.

Is it precedent?

Will Republican lawmakers’ calls for an 1877-style commission change the outcome of the election?

Don’t count on it, say legal and historical experts.

The 2020 election didn’t result in a close electoral vote.

More than 50 court actions challenging the legitimacy of the returns have been rejected.

And though the Republican Party has attempted to submit a dueling slate of electors in five states, they were not certified and thus were not passed to Congress as official electoral slates.

Although Congressional Republicans have sufficient numbers to object to the returns and force a debate on the issue, their effort is destined to fail.

Enough of their Republican colleagues have signaled their opposition to the last-ditch effort to overturn the electors’ votes, and are expected to vote in favor of certifying the election.

Nor is a proposed gambit for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results likely to succeed.

Though President Trump falsely claims that Pence, who as president of the Senate will preside over the count, has the power to reject “fraudulently chosen” electors, the vice president in fact lacks that power.

As president of the Senate, his job is merely to count the electoral votes — whether the President likes the outcome or not.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/hist ... responded/
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Re: POLITICS

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3 U.S. Code § 15 - Counting electoral votes in Congress

Congress shall be in session on the sixth day of January succeeding every meeting of the electors.

The Senate and House of Representatives shall meet in the Hall of the House of Representatives at the hour of 1 o’clock in the afternoon on that day, and the President of the Senate shall be their presiding officer.

Two tellers shall be previously appointed on the part of the Senate and two on the part of the House of Representatives, to whom shall be handed, as they are opened by the President of the Senate, all the certificates and papers purporting to be certificates of the electoral votes, which certificates and papers shall be opened, presented, and acted upon in the alphabetical order of the States, beginning with the letter A; and said tellers, having then read the same in the presence and hearing of the two Houses, shall make a list of the votes as they shall appear from the said certificates; and the votes having been ascertained and counted according to the rules in this subchapter provided, the result of the same shall be delivered to the President of the Senate, who shall thereupon announce the state of the vote, which announcement shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons, if any, elected President and Vice President of the United States, and, together with a list of the votes, be entered on the Journals of the two Houses.

Upon such reading of any such certificate or paper, the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any.

Every objection shall be made in writing, and shall state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received.

When all objections so made to any vote or paper from a State shall have been received and read, the Senate shall thereupon withdraw, and such objections shall be submitted to the Senate for its decision; and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, in like manner, submit such objections to the House of Representatives for its decision; and no electoral vote or votes from any State which shall have been regularly given by electors whose appointment has been lawfully certified to according to section 6 of this title from which but one return has been received shall be rejected, but the two Houses concurrently may reject the vote or votes when they agree that such vote or votes have not been so regularly given by electors whose appointment has been so certified.


If more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State shall have been received by the President of the Senate, those votes, and those only, shall be counted which shall have been regularly given by the electors who are shown by the determination mentioned in section 5 of this title to have been appointed, if the determination in said section provided for shall have been made, or by such successors or substitutes, in case of a vacancy in the board of electors so ascertained, as have been appointed to fill such vacancy in the mode provided by the laws of the State; but in case there shall arise the question which of two or more of such State authorities determining what electors have been appointed, as mentioned in section 5 of this title, is the lawful tribunal of such State, the votes regularly given of those electors, and those only, of such State shall be counted whose title as electors the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide is supported by the decision of such State so authorized by its law; and in such case of more than one return or paper purporting to be a return from a State, if there shall have been no such determination of the question in the State aforesaid, then those votes, and those only, shall be counted which the two Houses shall concurrently decide were cast by lawful electors appointed in accordance with the laws of the State, unless the two Houses, acting separately, shall concurrently decide such votes not to be the lawful votes of the legally appointed electors of such State.

But if the two Houses shall disagree in respect of the counting of such votes, then, and in that case, the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted.

When the two Houses have voted, they shall immediately again meet, and the presiding officer shall then announce the decision of the questions submitted.

No votes or papers from any other State shall be acted upon until the objections previously made to the votes or papers from any State shall have been finally disposed of.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 644, 62 Stat. 675.)

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/3/15
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