July 12, 2025

Epstein and Just Us

Alexander Acosta — When serving as a US Attorney, former Secretary of Labor Acosta arranged a most lenient plea deal that served to protect child sexual predator Epstein from his accusers and justice.

https://www.vox.com/2019/7/10/20689416/jeffrey-epstein-alexander-acosta-labor-secretary-deal



The more complete story, courtesy of US Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts):

Salon: After giving Epstein "deal of a lifetime," Alex Acosta tried to slash anti-trafficking program

July 10, 2019

Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, the former federal prosecutor who gave financier Jeffrey Epstein a light plea deal when he was first accused of sex-trafficking children, tried to cut a program that combats human trafficking by nearly 80 percent.

Acosta is facing numerous calls to resign after Epstein was charged with running a child sex trafficking ring in New York and Florida. Acosta previously served as U.S. attorney in Miami, where his office identified 36 underage victims and issued a 53-page indictment against Epstein in 2007. Rather than face life in prison, Epstein cut the “deal of a lifetime” with Acosta, as the Miami Herald reported, allowing Epstein to plead guilty to two state prostitution charges and serve just 13 months in county jail, where he was allowed to leave to work from his office six days per week. The deal also granted the well-connected billionaire who investigators believed hosted underage sex parties for affluent menimmunity for any unnamed “potential co-conspirators.” A federal judge later found the deal was illegalbecause Acosta did not consult the alleged victims of Epstein's crimes before agreeing to the deal.

Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., says this was not the only time Acosta turned a blind eye to child trafficking.

Acosta’s Labor Department budget proposal for fiscal year 2020 proposed slashing the budget of the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB) by nearly 80 percent. The agency is charged with combating human trafficking, child labor and forced labor in the United States and around the world.

“This is now a pattern,” Clark told the Guardian. “Like so many in this administration Mr. Acosta chooses the powerful and wealthy over the vulnerable and victims of sexual assault and it is time that he finds another line of work.”

Clark grilled Acosta about the proposed cuts during a hearing in April.

After Clark and Acosta both agreed that more needed to be done to combat trafficking, Clark pointed out that Acosta had also “proposed a budget cut, almost 80 percent, 79 percent to ILAB where this work is done, bringing its budget from $68 million to just $18.5 million.”

“I’m sure you’ve come prepared to justify this cut to us but it doesn’t go unnoticed that this isn’t the first time that you’ve ignored human trafficking,” Clark said. “Your office found that there had been a sexual abuse pyramid scheme that involved at least 36 underage girls. … Mr. Epstein raped and recruited these girls … and there is evidence that he allowed his friends to do the same.”

“Epstein should have been looking at a sentence of 366 years at a minimum. But that’s not what happened,” Clark continued. “How can we expect you, the labor secretary, to fight for American workers if you couldn't even fight for these girls?”

The proposed ILAB cuts were not the only Acosta decision to come under fire from human rights advocates. Earlier this year, the Labor Department rolled back Obama-era protections for some human trafficking victims and will now deny certain visas to victims of trafficking or other workplace crimes unless they first consult with another law enforcement agency like the FBI.

Erika Gonzalez, a lawyer for the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking, told the Daily Beast that the new rule will force victims to jump through “a lot more hoops,” often after they have endured devastating ordeals.

“What the Epstein case shows is when these policies around human trafficking are implemented, they’re not necessarily considerate of the impact on the victims themselves,” Gonzalez told the site. “With the Department of Labor asking the FBI to look into [workplace violations] first, they’re adding another barrier for victims of trafficking to access the services the Department of Labor has.”

While the visa rule change will be implemented by the Labor Department, Democrats are fighting back against the proposed ILAB cuts. In their own 2020 budget proposal, Democrats called for expanding ILAB funding from from $68 million to $122 million.

Acosta’s future at the department remains unclear after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called for him to step down following Epstein’s arrest.

President Trump, a longtime friend of Epstein, meanwhile tried to distance himself and Acosta from Epstein’s alleged crimes Tuesday. Trump claimed he was “not a fan” of Epstein, despite previously having praised him as a “terrific guy” with a penchant for women “on the younger side.” Trump said that Acosta had done a “fantastic job” and insisted, “I do hear that there were a lot of people involved in that [Epstein] decision.”

Asked about the Epstein case on Tuesday, Trump had nothing to say about the victims but lamented the criticism of the prosecutor who let Epstein get off with a slap on the wrist more than a decade earlier.

“I feel very badly actually for Secretary Acosta because I’ve known him as somebody who works so hard and has done such a good job. I feel very badly about that whole situation,” Trump said. “But we’re going to be looking at that and looking at it very closely.”

Source with links any incorruptible Assistant DA can follow:

https://katherineclark.house.gov/2019/7/salon-after-giving-epstein-deal-of-a-lifetime-alex-acosta-tried-to-slash-anti-trafficking-program

July 11, 2025

Trump is tossing citizens in prison without due process...

…destroying the free press, destroying the NATO alliance, manipulating markets and the planet’s economy for chaos and cronies — worst of all, tearing up the Bill of Rights and shredding the Constitution aided by the corrupt Supreme Court he packed — and I’m supposed to accept it as legal and shut up?

I don’t think so. And I thought I knew you.

July 10, 2025

Just-Us John Roberts' wife is on the take...'Legitimately' is real work.

'They come to me': Jane Roberts’ legal recruiting work involved officials whose agencies had cases before the Supreme Court

In newly revealed testimony, Jane Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts said she worked for “U.S. attorneys, cabinet officials, former senators” and more.

By HAILEY FUCHS and JOSH GERSTEIN
Politico, 01/31/2023

EXCERPT...

Jane Roberts’ placements included at least one firm with a prominent Supreme Court practice, according to the complaint, which also includes sworn testimony from Roberts herself, in which she notes the powerful officials — whose agencies have had frequent cases before her husband — for whom she has worked.

“A significant portion of my practice on the partner side is with senior government lawyers, ranging from U.S. attorneys, cabinet officials, former senators, chairmen of federal commissions, general counsel of federal commissions, and then senior political appointees within the ranks of various agencies, and I -- they come to me looking to transition to the private sector,” Roberts said, according to a transcript of a 2015 arbitration hearing related to her former colleague’s termination.

In her testimony, Roberts also noted the benefit of working with senior government officials: “Successful people have successful friends.”

Continues…

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/31/jane-roberts-legal-recruiting-work-agencies-cases-supreme-court-00080515



"They come to me." -- Mrs. Jane Roberts, wife of Chief Justice John Roberts

July 10, 2025

Great! Maybe we can use our imagination?

Better yet, look at all of Trump's criminality and charge the Supreme Six as co-conspirators. The facts show they aided and abetted Trump and his acts of Insurrection, Espionage and Obstruction of Justice.

Seeing them join Trump in prison would be justice, seeing how "Just-Us" John Roberts did when he found in the Constitution that Putin's puppet Donald J Trump could do whatever he wants; and that he's immune from prosecution just as long as he's in office or the traitors on the Supreme Court say so.

July 10, 2025

Wish we could ask Rachel Corrie.

"I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will." -- Rachel Corrie

From Zinn Education Project:

On March 16, 2003, an Israeli bulldozer crushed to death 23-year-old U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie as she tried to prevent the Israeli army from destroying homes in the Gaza Strip. In a series of emails to her family, she explained why she was risking her life.

February 27, 2003

(To her mother)

Love you. Really miss you. I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again — a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded. Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of detonating an explosive in the ground nearby — one that appears to have been planted by Palestinian resistance.

This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses — the livelihoods for 300 people. The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses — right in the point of entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank. This happens every day, but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.

I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600, many have moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon (the closest city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed — the Gaza international airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the resistance but who happen to live along the border. I think it is maybe official now that Rafah is the poorest place in the world. There used to be a middle class here — recently. We also get reports that in the past, Gazan flower shipments to Europe were delayed for two weeks at the Erez crossing for security inspections. You can imagine the value of two-week-old cut flowers in the European market, so that market dried up. And then the bulldozers come and take out people’s vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people? Tell me if you can think of anything. I can’t.

If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours — do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed — just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labor of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would.

You asked me about non-violent resistance.

When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family’s house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I’m having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the willful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can’t believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be. I felt after talking to you that maybe you didn’t completely believe me. I think it’s actually good if you don’t, because I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of independent critical thinking. And I also realize that with you I’m much less careful than usual about trying to source every assertion that I make. A lot of the reason for that is I know that you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I’m doing. All of the situations that I tried to enumerate above — and a lot of other things — constitutes a somewhat gradual — often hidden, but nevertheless massive — removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive. This is what I am seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities — but in focusing on them I’m terrified of missing their context. The vast majority of people here — even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon’s possible goals), can’t leave. Because they can’t even get into Israel to apply for visas, and because their destination countries won’t let them in (both our country and Arab countries). So I think when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can’t get out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of genocide according to international law. I don’t remember it right now. I’m going to get better at illustrating this, hopefully. I don’t like to use those charged words. I think you know this about me. I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: “This is the wide world and I’m coming to it.” I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside.

When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.

I love you and Dad. Sorry for the diatribe. OK, some strange men next to me just gave me some peas, so I need to eat and thank them.

Rachel

Source: https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/rachel-corries-letters-and-questions/

July 8, 2025

Lee Harvey Oswald isn't the only subject CIA lied about re: JFK Assassination

Howard Hughes' "fixer," Robert Maheu, served as the go-between. The scheme was launched when Dwight Eisenhower was president and VP Richard Nixon was the CIA White House Action Officer.

CIA hired the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro.

The CIA’s director of security, Howard J. Osborn, sends a detailed summary to the deputy director on the CIA-Mafia collaboration to assassinate Castro before the Bay of Pigs invasion. The history starts with the authorization from the deputy director for plans, Richard Bissell, for “a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was the liquidation of Fidel Castro.” The report describes how Robert Maheu was used as a CIA “cutout” to approach mobsters Johnny Roselli and Sam Gold. It also describes how the CIA’s Technical Services Division “developed a pill that had the elements of rapid solubility, high lethal content, and little or no traceability” as an assassination device. Six pills were produced and passed initially to a Cuban official with mafia ties, Juan Orta. When he got “cold feet,” the pills were passed to a member of the Cuba Exile Junta, Anthony Verona, to pass to operatives in Havana. But, the report states, “Verona’s potential was never fully exploited as the project was cancelled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode.”

From the memo:

7. The pitch was made to Roselli on 14 September 1960 at the Hilton Plaza Hotel, New York City. His initial reaction was to avoid getting involved but, through Maheu's persuasion, he agreed to introduce him to a friend, Sam Gold, who knew the "Cuban crowd." Roselli made it clear he did not want any money for his part and believed Sam would feel the same way. Neither of these individuals were ever paid out of Agency funds.

Read the mostly unredacted memo at GWU National Security Archives:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/20836-6

Mr. Roselli and Mr. Giancana could appear when the House Select Committee on Assassinations subpoenaed them in the late 1970s. Roselli's body was discovered cut into pieces and stuffed into an oil drum floating near Miami. "Sam Gold" referenced in the CIA memo was actually Sam Giancana. Mr. Giancana died in his home in Oak Park, Illinois, where he was shot to death in the back of the head and then six times around the mouth.

The photo above depicting Robert Maheu is from Chicago magazine: How the CIA Enlisted the Chicago Mob to Put a Hit on Castro

July 7, 2025

Chip Roy may not recognize it, but this is the truth.

Quick action by 1 Texas summer camp led to timely evacuations ahead of deadly flood

Despite an absence of warning by local authorities, camp officials acted quickly on their own.

By Associated Press
07/06/2025 07:37 PM EDT

Excerpt...

Local authorities have faced heavy scrutiny and at times have deflected questions about how much warning they had or were able to provide the public, saying the reviews will come later. For now, they say they’re focusing on rescues. Officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.

Mo-Ranch suffered no loss of life, said Winters, adding that the camp received no direct information from county officials about flooding that could — and did — take lives.

“We had no warning this was coming,” Winters said, adding that it would have been “devastating” had camp officials not been looking at weather reports and the rising river waters.

Mo-Ranch “saw it coming well in advance and they did something about it,” she said.

Continues...

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/06/quick-action-by-1-texas-summer-camp-led-to-timely-evacuations-ahead-of-deadly-flood-00441065

July 6, 2025

Ex-weather bosses sent haunting letter warning Trump cuts could lead to deaths weeks before flood

Ex-weather bosses sent haunting letter warning Trump cuts could lead to deaths weeks before flood

by Jack Hobbs
Irish Star, July 6, 2025

In the weeks leading up to the devastating floods in Texas, five former directors of the National Weather Service sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump warning that continued cuts to the budget would result in the deaths of people.

The five former directors wrote the letter in May. "The proposed budget for fiscal year 2026, just released by the White House, cuts the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) by close to 30%" they wrote.

"While details aren't yet available if earlier indications hold true, this budget would essentially eliminate NOAA's research functions for weather, slash funding for next-generation satellite procurement, wrote the letter in May observations," it added. "Even if the National Weather Service remains level funded, given the interconnectedness of all of the parts of NOAA, weather forecasting will also have impacts. We cannot let this happen."

"NOAA's satellites provide vital information about the formation and pathways of storms. NOAA research on severe storms has paved the way for tools we now use every day, such as Doppler radar and storm modeling advancements," it continued. "NOAA Corps pilots fly into hurricanes to bring us real-time information on these increasingly severe storms. And data from ocean buoys adds breadth and depth to our understanding of the interaction between the atmosphere and the sea."

"These proposed cuts come just days after approximately 300 National Weather Service (NWS)employees left the public service to which they had devoted their lives and careers," continued the statement. "That's on top of the approximately 250 NWS employees who were fired due to their probationary status in new, often higher-level positions, or took the initial buyout offered by the Trump Administration in early February."

Continues...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/ex-weather-bosses-sent-haunting-letter-warning-trump-cuts-could-lead-to-deaths-weeks-before-flood/ar-AA1I32Pu?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=8f5f547cb1b24a329c277e8e5dbed907&ei=24

July 4, 2025

They are illiberal and insane.

The Americans Who Embraced Mussolini

As we confront rightwing extremism in our own time, the history of American fascist sympathy reveals a legacy worth reckoning with.

Justin H. Vassallo
Boston Review, February 17, 2021

The Machine Has a Soul: American Sympathy with Italian Fascism
Katy Hull
Princeton University Press, $35 (cloth)

On the eve of the November 1938 midterm elections, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered a forceful radio address. “If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens,” he remarked, “then Fascism and Communism . . . will grow in strength in our land.” While opposition to communism was a standard current in U.S. politics, the rise of American sympathy with fascism had become an urgent concern for Roosevelt. Among the most visible sympathizers of the time was the anti-Semitic radio broadcaster Charles Coughlin, who regularly reached tens of millions of listeners, but Roosevelt and his administration knew fascist sympathy was diffuse among prominent Americans. From Henry Ford to the esteemed, path-blazing New York Times foreign correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick, expressions of fascist sympathy had reached the center of mainstream discourse and American political thought by the late 1930s.

It is intriguing to revisit this history in light of conversations about fascism today. How did an ideology that relished violence, dictatorship, and illiberal communitarianism animate so many different people in a country whose founding myths extolled individualism and self-government? What led these Americans to admire fascism and even suggest it was the logical successor to democracy? The historian Katy Hull’s new book, The Machine Has a Soul: American Sympathy with Italian Fascism, is a welcome study of these questions, examining the intellectual legitimation of fascism in the United States in the interwar period.

In lean, eloquent prose, Hull weaves together the intellectual and status-seeking journeys of four Americans: the conservative ambassador to Italy (1921–1924) and writer Richard Washburn Child, the political philosopher Herbert Wallace Schneider, the Italian-American newspaper publisher Generoso Pope, and McCormick herself. Hull takes these four figures as representative of common threads of fascist sympathy in the United States. Their sympathy flowed from different social and political moorings, but as Hull explains, all thought that the United States, coming into full force as a world power, lacked the political leadership required “to make democracy relevant, to manage the pace of industrialization, and to support those who felt left behind in the modern world.” Italian fascism stood for them as an appealing model, yoking together communitarian values and national progress in a way that had eluded American government.

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/justin-h-vassallo-allure-italian-fascism/

CONTINUED...

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/justin-h-vassallo-allure-italian-fascism/

July 4, 2025

King Taco the Traitor and His KKKort Wish America Ill.

“They wouldn’t vote only because they hate Trump, but I hate them, too, you know?”



It's the Fourth of July and the nation is at the brink of becoming the base of an international NAZI empire. At it's head is one Donald J Trump, a man who yesterday proclaimed his hatred for Democrats.

The process has taken more than a century. But their near-complete power was put in cement, so to speak, by a corrupt Supreme Court and two corrupt Houses of Congress. They have acted in concert through GOP. And from the top down, the GOP has corrupted Washington, state capitals and local government through the Republican Party.

Thus, to at least me anyway, the GOP is an Un-American, un-Constitutional criminal organization. They are the "enemies foreign and domestic" to our nation and Constitution from which generations of loyal Americans swore their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to defend.

How did things get that way in the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave"? Getting money from Russian oligarchs laundered through NYC real estate and Deutsche Bank was a start. Even the NRA and Jeffrey Epstein got in on the action, helping grease GOP political wheels with Russian money and priceless compromising videography.



However, the crooks overseas and their hirelings in the GOP, swear allegiance to Mammon. Here's proof from Jane Roberts, hard-working, hard-wired and hot-for-the-wealthy wife of Chief Justice John Roberts:

Even wearing suits in 1983, the nation's great past was torched and pissed on in order for power to go from one GOP mob boss to another.



Seems the Roberts have been at the trough a long time. But the United States of America, no matter what they say, does not belong to them or their paymasters. And while it seems to get mentioned less and less with each passing Fourth, We the People need to remember who runs the show.