These fucking malevolent dipshits again:
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has filed charges today against two political operatives for allegedly orchestrating a series of robocalls aimed at suppressing the vote in the November general election.
Jack Burkman, 54, and Jacob Wohl, 22, are each charged with:
One count of election law – intimidating voters, a five-year felony;
One count of conspiracy to commit an election law violation, a five-year felony;
One count of using a computer to commit the crime of election law – intimidating voters, a seven-year felony; and
Using a computer to commit the crime of conspiracy, a seven-year felony.The charges were filed today in the 36th District Court in Detroit. Arraignment is pending for the defendants. The Attorney General’s office will be working – with local law enforcement if necessary – to secure the appearance of each defendant in Michigan. It’s too early to say if formal extradition will be necessary or if they will present themselves here voluntarily in the very near future.
Burkman, an Arlington, Virginia resident, and Wohl, a Los Angeles, California resident, allegedly attempted to discourage voters from participating in the general election by creating and funding a robocall targeted at certain urban areas, including Detroit. The calls were made in late August and went out to nearly 12,000 residents with phone numbers from the 313 area code.
Why are they not in jail yet? And why can they not move on to something else? They are clearly not good at criming, despite repeated attempts. How many times are these guys going to do this shit until they figure out maybe they should try another line of ‘work?’
Spanky
Because the wheels of justice grind slowly. I suspect that the Michigan courts are not gonna go easy on these recidivists.
Chief Oshkosh
They’ll probably move on right after the first instance of a Koch check bouncing.
IOW: Never.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
They’ve been banned from most occupations, so their only remaining career path is to form a band called The Malevolent Dipshits
ETA: what the Chief said. Also, has any of their previous crimineptitude occurred in Michigan?
MazeDancer
Not sure if this is an open thread, if not, then OT, but worth it.
John Harwood just tweeted:
Their poll also reported Biden 48 v Trump 46
lee
I believe Jacob Wohl already has felony changes working their way through the courts.
Once he is a convicted felon all other convictions will have mandatory prison sentence.
matt
I’m sure it pays really well. If you commit enough crimes as a Republican you eventually reach Roger Stone ‘super fixer’ status in the eyes of the suckers.
feebog
So the robocall identifies Burkman and Wohl as the creators of the call. Kind of like leaving your business card with the teller as you rob the bank.
Baud
@MazeDancer: Huh. I though Greenfield was having a tough time. That’s amazing.
mali muso
@MazeDancer: Woah! Those seem like some mighty big (good) numbers. Fingers crossed.
Mary G
The National Futures Association (NFA) banned Wohl for life in 2017, after he was charged with 14 counts of securities fraud. WHEN HE WAS 20 YEARS OLD. You have to be pretty stupid to accomplish that, and he’s not getting any smarter with age. Isn’t Wohn funded by his rich daddy?
ETA: IOKIYAR also, too. I hope the judge in MI throws the book at them.
debbie
I hope Mr. Sir is grilled about this at the earliest opportunity. Once again, it turns out it’s conservatives who are violating election law.
catclub
This is silly.
is there a different penalty for bookies who use pencils WITH erasers versus bookies who use pencils WITHOUT erasers?
catclub
@feebog: “it says ‘gun, not ‘gub’ “
Aleta
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Texas-governor-restricts-mail-in-ballot-drop-off-15613346.php
Death Panel Truck
Shouldn’t Wohl be in a hipster coffee shop somewhere overhearing a group of Democrats talking about how Trump defeated Biden in the debate?
The Thin Black Duke
These rich white punks won’t spend one day in jail.
MazeDancer
Rachel just tweeted she is going to report on Jack and Jacob on her show tonight.
Benw
These two jabronies again!
C Stars
@Aleta: I’m fuming about this, and also realizing that there’s absolutely nothing I can do (other than give to Democracy Docket)
oatler.
Money. Like,duh.
Wapiti
@Aleta: Heck, King County, WA has only about 2 million inhabitants, not registered voters, and we have something like 69 drop boxes across the county.
Marcopolo
@Baud: So when I see a poll like this from a new outfit with #s that are surprising my reaction is “Big, if true.” Then I throw it into the average with all the other polling out of IA. Which as a result of this shift a bit to Greenfield.
But it really would be big if true.
MarkPainter
If they were Black, they would certainly be doing hard time by now.
catclub
@Aleta: Let me just add GOP governors to this comment:
dmsilev
There’s a silver lining in the cloud of their continued freedom, which is that they’re so bloody bad at what they do that the main impact of the attempted ratfuckery is to give evidence to all the people saying “voter fraud is a fake; the real scandal is right wing voter suppression.”.
Omnes Omnibus
@MarkPainter: If they were Black, the GOP wouldn’t be using them to fuck with elections.
Anonymous At Work
I’ve had nothing but admiration for Jacob Wohl since he tried to accuse Elizabeth Warren of such sexual appetite, prowess and stamina that she broke the will of an active-duty Marine one-third her age. Would that my enemies devise such rumors about me…
Marcopolo
Adding into big if true polling:
Second poll out of GA this week showing a race w/ a Biden lead though in the margin of error.
Sure feels like we’re just a hop, skip, and jump from this race being out of reach of Trump.
MomSense
Abbott is fucking with the Harris County vote.
One drop box for the entire county?
https://twitter.com/ronbrownstein/status/1311759916885925888?s=21
Mo Salad
Elections matter. I am so proud of and happy with the Whitmer/Nessel/Benson team that I got to vote for.
Sab
In Ohio, with the one drop box per county and the postal service iffy, I don’t know how this helps Republicans. Democrats, especially POC Democrats tend to live in cities. Republicans live in suburbs and exurbs.
Democrats know where the BOE is located because it is downtown near the old postal sorting place that got closed years ago. Republicans haven’t been downtown for a couple of generations, since the big department stores closed.
I saw a woman at a suburban bank freak out because she needed foreign currency for her vacation and she had no idea where the main downtown branch of the bank was. How on earth will she find the BOE?
Citizen Alan
@catclub: If they do this, I really don’t see a way forward for the country that doesn’t involve violence on a national scale. I’ve been anti-gun for nearly as long as I’ve been politically aware, but right now, I’m closer to buying a gun than I ever imagined I might be.
zhena gogolia
This is one of LP’s best ones yet.
Olivia
When they do finally end up behind bars, they will be those guys that file lawsuit after lawsuit about anything they can come up with from prison.
Immanentize
@Citizen Alan: This is the dumbest reason for buying a gun I ever read.
Ruckus
Lines of work other than rat fucking?
They aren’t even qualified for that, what makes you think they might be qualified for any other work?
I’ve seen lots of jobs that are mostly physical and don’t require a lot of brain work but they don’t have that level. They do seem to be able to dress themselves most of the time but past that?
Baud
@zhena gogolia: That was weird.
Llelldorin
@MazeDancer:
I had a brief moment of “That’s terrible!” before realizing that this was a poll of Iowa, not the entire country.
MisterForkbeard
@MazeDancer: was that a typo? Ernst at 39 and not 49?
Mary G
I’ve got to find a new place to buy stuff.
Citizen Alan
@Immanentize: GFYS
Anoniminous
@MazeDancer:
That’s so far out from previous polling until we get some confirmation it has to be considered an outlier.
Poe Larity
Bob Murray, Who Fought Against Black Lung Regulations As A Coal Operator, Has Filed For Black Lung Benefits
jl
Their comedy stunts started failing seriously, so maybe they’ve outlived their usefulness
Too bad they weren’t able to understand how to refrain from too much criming while setting up their sad spoof and disinformation stunts and smears that weren’t even entertaining.
Immanentize
@Citizen Alan: With a new gun?
gVOR08
They’ll keep at it as long as they can con some rich Republican into paying them for it. Or, hopefully, they go to jail.
Frank Wilhoit
“…And why can they not move on to something else?”
Because they are ideologues. This is a great weakness and could be turned against them if anyone knew how.
zhena gogolia
@Mary G:
Oh, God, they are my lifeline.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t think it’s a big risk.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: Holy shit. 19,000.
That makes me wonder: 1) just how many workers they have, 2) how many workers did they test, and 3) what percentage of total workers have they tested?
edit: and Baud answered most of my questions at #49.
Winston
Mailman zipped right by my mailbox today, without stopping. No ballot for me, yet.
James E Powell
@MazeDancer:
I know there are those who will disagree, but I’m pretty sure it was my $100 that produced the surge of support for Greenfield.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Oh, I guess I shouldn’t look at statistics out of context. I thought this was just recently.
catclub
@WaterGirl: all great questions. all bad reporting by journalist to not include that context.
James E Powell
@Anonymous At Work:
Reminds of the joke that begins, “An old man comes into the confessional . . .”
Immanentize
@James E Powell: There is no doubt in my mind you are correct! Imagine what another C-note might accomplish!
Immanentize
@James E Powell: all the personal jokes of my pre-Reagan years start that way.
randy khan
@catclub:
Get a big enough margin and they won’t try it.
And a friend did some research and pointed out that nearly all state legislatures are out of session right now and that of what I would think of as the target states only Wisconsin allows the legislature to bring itself back into session. (Everywhere else it’s up to the governor, and the governors of those states currently are Democrats.)
jl
@Baud: The absolute fail in the US at protecting essential workers, and others who remained on the job, all lesser people, has reduced the effectiveness of our control policies, shut downs, and everything else, greatly. And that has caused immense damage to our health, society, and economy. IMHO, that may be the key factor in NY and CA’s ‘last mile’ problem: just can’t get prevalence down to very low levels seen in East Asian and Pacific, European, and now even poor and very poor African countries to allow safe reopening.
In surveying other countries’ control policies, the most successful ones made sure control was applied equally across all sectors of the economy to everyone, lesser people as well as greater.
Switzerland has been particularly strict, but now they are getting even stricter. Maybe because they have observed that some of the most dangerous outbreaks in other European countries have come from lax protection in essential and non-retail worksites: mining in Poland, food processing and agriculture in several other countries (Spain, Denmark, Netherlands), tourism (Norway).
The US, even the more competent health authorities on the ‘good side’, cannot seem to understand that the whole world is NOT middle and upper class White people. Obsession with snot nosed punks at beach bars, backyard BBQs, etc., which in CA at least is only 50 percent of transmission. California finally passed a law last week that mandated necessary groundwork for contact tracking in essential and non-retail worksites. Until now, those workers were not even being notified that they were exposed to a case. No adequate contact tracing at all. Amazing sloppiness. It took more than 6 months into the US epidemic!
CarolPW
@Mary G: I would want to see how many Safeway, PetSmart and Rite Aid workers have tested positive nationally before I got too upset, since Amazon is currently filling all those roles for many.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: Given what you have shared about your history, I would think more than once before I bought a gun.
Baud
@jl: Agree completely. Essential workers have been treated like shit.
catclub
meanwhile, headlines at Bloomberg: wonderful. also they have been putting up ‘markets up on hopes of agreement on more federal relief’ for the last 6 weeks. meanwhile ‘Pelosi says no progress with Mnuchin in talks’
Benw
@Anonymous At Work: Liz Warren fucking fucking slaps!
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
Well, that was terrifying.
Immanentize
@Baud: I thought an “essential worker bill” could be passed In States and Congress. Is someone is declared an “essential worker” they must be paid time and a half (overtime rate).
TS (the original)
@Aleta:
The only way the GOP keeps Texas. Suppress or don’t count democratic party votes.
debbie
@MomSense:
That’s how it is here in Ohio.
jl
@Immanentize:
The completely unaddressed problem is outbreak control. Very inadequate somethings have been done for economic support and equity. Almost nothing for disease control.
Even in supposedly sane and on-the-ball CA, totally inadequate outbreak control, contact tracing and isolation in essential and non-retail worksites: construction, food processing, ag, distribution, light manufacturing.
Even with mandated notification of exposed workers, outbreak control is split between CA Dept of Public Health and Cal/OSHA (occupational health and safety). Still a mess. And add to that, testing still completely inadequate for effective outbreak control.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
I always quarantine deliveries for 72 hours.
MomSense
@Citizen Alan:
I know a lot of people who feel the way you do, but I encourage you to try to channel that legitimate fear into healthier activities. It is so much more likely that a gun in the household will be used to self harm than to defend oneself. And if you had a gun would you really want to shoot someone?
Can you put that energy into some voter outreach, gardening, exercise? We are all struggling to various degrees with fear, trauma, feelings of hopelessness, depression, and anxiety. These are all completely appropriate responses to the hell we are living. We have to try to hold on to each other and to the values and actions that preserve our humanity and dignity.
Sending you a hug and an invitation to dialogue about this. None of us know what to do because we’ve never faced all of this before.
SiubhanDuinne
@MisterForkbeard:
I looked at some Iowa media, and they all show 51-39. Appears to be a legit 12-point lead for Greenfield.
I mean, I suppose the polling outfit could have had a typo in their press release, but it seems unlikely in the extreme that nobody would have caught it.
MomSense
@debbie:
I’m so sad about Ohio. On my mom’s side we are all Buckeyes. I was born in Cleveland (long story) but my mom’s family are all from Akron. She was living in Akron before she moved in with me.
My mom recently unfriended one of her last living friends in Akron because she said terrible things about our governor in Maine and because she is now a trumper and thinks COVID is a Democrat hoax. Ugh.
SiubhanDuinne
@Poe Larity:
Lemme guess. Republican?
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
Well, the way The Hill’s tweet was written, you can hardly be blamed. Especially the JUST IN part.
planetjanet
@SiubhanDuinne:
Several other polls in the race in the past few days have only been a 1 or 2 point lead for Greenfield. Still good, but the RABA one is an outlier.
The Moar You Know
@Citizen Alan: you can, I’ve owned them all my life, so long as you keep a couple of things in mind:
1. You have no skills and no experience and will kill yourself with the fucking thing unless you get educated, and a one hour class is not going to remotely get that job done.
2 . You’re not going up against the cops and making a difference. They’ll just blot you off the pavement.
3. Ten times #2 for the military.
I frankly don’t know what my fellow liberals have been thinking. The signs that it was coming to this have been loud and clear since the 1980s. Why y’all didn’t arm up twenty years ago is beyond me. Now is way too fucking late for that.
debbie
@MomSense:
Yep, definitely sounds like this place to me. I do take care about what I say because, being an open carry state, you just never know. I fully expect to see guns brandished when I vote early in two weeks.
Sister Golden Bear
I guess Wohl finally achieved his dream of graduating to big-boy crimes.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MazeDancer: Wow, my donation is bearing fruit already!
I hadn’t given $$ in a while, and of course I was being bombarded with end-of-quarter pleadings via text and email. So I gave late last night to a bunch of close Senate races, along with the DCCC. And Greenfield was one of them.
SiubhanDuinne
@planetjanet:
Oh, not arguing with that. But they are very pretty numbers :-)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@SiubhanDuinne: Are these post-debate polls? Seems too early for results from a debate bounce.
Ken
Given that debate, I can easily imagine people calling the polling firm and asking to change their answers.
Josie
@Aleta:
I had just read about this before coming here. I am so angry my stomach is in knots. Thank goodness I had already decided to vote early in person, but this insures that the lines will be longer than I had anticipated. I hope this makes Abbott’s name mud so that someone can run against him and beat his ass when the time comes.
Dahlia
@Ruckus: Although Burkman is known to have trouble operating his zipper from time to time.
Ruckus
@Dahlia:
Up or down?
laura
Shiny nickel wager that these two Jamokes have a Roger Stone back tatoo/tramp stamp.
Citizen Alan – and others worried about insurrection, please do not buy a gun. Who, exactly, are you willing to kill and under what circumstances are you willing to be killed.
Dahlia
@Ruckus: Apparently pulling it back up is challenging for him. Poor dear.
laura
@jl: Worse – essential workers who tested positive for CV were presumed to have acquired it on the job and thus would be entitled to an uncontested claim for Workers comp….until the Cares Act expired. Now you’re on you own having to overcome the presumption that the virus was acquired in the community or home and not on the job.
MazeDancer
@MisterForkbeard: 39
MazeDancer
@James E Powell:
Saw that in the crosstabs.
Bill Arnold
@debbie:
There remains zero solid evidence of contact transmission of SARS-CoV-2 via fomites (contaminated surfaces). As northern-US indoor season starts, everyone should be focusing their attention on minimizing sharing of unfiltered exhaled air.
(Particularly recently exhaled air but indoors the virus can linger for a while in the air in mostly-dried-up small droplets.)
Any fluid mechanics among us might be interested in this. The takeaway (CO2 levels monitoring) is actionable and would apply to SARS-CoV-2 and many other viruses spread through the respiratory system.
(Basically, CO2 sensors could be used to detect high levels of exhaled air. It doesn’t address filtration, but that could be considered in a safety formula as well.)
Effects of ventilation on the indoor spread of COVID-19 (Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 25 November 2020)
MazeDancer
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Yay!
Dmbeaster
@catclub: Existing US Supreme Court precedent is that they cannot change the method of selection of electors after the election. Every state currently has laws providing for the selection of electors by elections, and other laws as to how to certify the result of an election. The Legislature does not have the power after the election to change that. They would have to change the law beforehand.
This assumes the USSC would follow precedent.
The more fruitful scenario for Trumpies is a process that mucks with certifying the result, which requires a very close outcome like Florida 2000.
Or else just violence and a coup.
J R in WV
@Poe Larity:
When Bob Murray’s underground mine in Utah had it’s fatal cave-ins, killing the miners on their shift AND rescuers attempting to reach them, I looked the operation up online at the Utah department responsible for coal mining.
At the time I worked for WV DEP, and knew what to look for and how. It was fascinating to see the maps and permit information. The next day all that data was gone from their web site. I also learned that the miners were “pulling pillars” that is taking out the last blocks of coal holding the mountain above the coal seam up.
It is the most dangerous possible mining activity, and speaks of desperation to milk every penny out of a mine that is past its productive period. Most states no longer allow pillar pulling at all, as there is nothing to keep the mountain from fall into the miners, which of course is exactly what happened.
If Murray has black lung, he deserves it more than any ordinary miner, who of course don’t deserve it at all. Murray owned and operated those mines, and was a micro-manager, just like Don Blankenship, who owned and operated a mine not far from me right now, which exploded and killed 29 men, because of neglect ordered by Blankenship.
These men are vampires, sucking the life out of their employees, their families, the communities they live in. They are despicable blood suckers killing people for money. As coal seams become thinner, as the better coal has long ago been mined, they become more expensive to operate, and the first thing they do to keep a profit margin is stop doing safety management, which doesn’t return a profit margin, as long as you don’t count people dying as a cost against the profit margin.
Don Blankenship served, IIRC just under a year in prison for killing 29 men. He is a Billionaire, big surprise there. Anything for money!
End Rant, sorry to go off topic on everyone. The Murray blacklung story really set me off.
Tim Wayne
Yes, they should be in jail. Throw away the key. But half of those charges are bullshit. Using a computer to do something doesn’t make it worse. There should not be separate, additional charges for doing something on a computer versus doing it some other way.
J R in WV
@Tim Wayne:
Give me a break — there are extra charges for using a phone, using the US Mail, crossing a state line… why should be using data services regulated by the government be any different?
The whole purpose of “Law and order” is to stack 3 or 4 charges up for every crime so as to sent people away for LIFE for selling a few bags of pot or coke. So I think trying to help stealing an election is way worse than dealing drugs — what do you think?
Black guys selling reef, go away for life; white guys stealing a presidential election, pat on the back, go try again ??? Say WHAT!!???
ETA: I agree that charges are out of control… but stealing an election is so much worse than drug dealing…
CarolPW
@J R in WV: Steve Earle and some playwrights put together a musical about the Blankenship mine explosion after extensive conversations with the community affected; are you familiar with it? It opened (off-Broadway I think) shortly before Covid shut everything down. I don’t know much about the musical, but the actual songs are devastating.
Searcher
@Bill Arnold: There is a reported case of fomite transmission in NZ from a worker handling frozen imports, but quarantining your frozen foods dozen help much, since they’re frozen.
Tim Wayne
@J R in WV: “So I think trying to help stealing an election is way worse than dealing drugs — what do you think?”
Like I said, lock them up and throw away the key. It was the first thing I wrote. The point is, using a computer to do something should not result in charges that are shorter or longer than using some other method to do the same thing.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you have never used firearms before — it does take quite a while to learn what to do, and much more importantly NOT to do. I first fired a rifle when I was 10 or 12, with my grandma watching like a hawk. Since then I had courses in military boot camp, took classes, have shot at pro ranges with coaches, shoot with friends on the farm.
I have used pistols and rifles to protect livestock from predators, mostly dogs — owls are really hard to shoot, and Federally protected, I prefer the owls to the yard birds, really. Anyway, I’m still really careful.
I served jury duty on a capital murder case, and the ballistics witness was asked on the witness stand “Have you ever been in a police ready room that didn’t have places where unintended discharges have hit walls?” and his answer was no!
I worked with a woman who limped when the weather changed, and when I asked about it, years after we first worked together, she told me her husband, a veteran police officer, shot her in the thigh in their kitchen while working with a .357 magnum pistol. She was lucky to be alive, let alone able to walk OK 95% of the time.
A .357 magnum pistol can shatter an engine block!
Professionals with years of training and experience can make a horrible mistake. I am so careful when I hold a loaded firearm, I have never had an unintentional discharge, if I did I would be getting rid of all my functional firearms.
My great-uncle’s old ratty pistols, them I would keep, they won’t shoot anyway, but are family keepsakes. He carried them when he was a pack peddler with a train of mules a hundred years ago.
J R in WV
@CarolPW:
I have not heard of it. Steve Earle is a master, so I’m sure the songs are seriously emotional. I hope to learn more, but Broadway is a long way from here. We love it when we can get to NYC, but when will that happen again?
Thanks so much for letting us know about it. Do you know the name of the play/musical?
jl
@J R in WV: Good point. No implicit selective prosecution via selective over charging. IANAL so don’t know about the specifics of using common carrier communication or computer networks.
But the lesser people get destroyed with over charging for doing much less than threatening our democracy.
jl
@J R in WV: On the farm, taught to never touch a gun unless the first thing you do is check it is totally completely unloaded. No exceptions ever. No ammo in it until everything is double checked and you are ready to fire.
If that prevents you from getting that chicken hawk, no problem. There is always next time.
laura
@J R in WV: what are you doing this Saturday from 2 til 5? If you want to see Steve Earle and a passel of super solid performers you couldnt imagine together in one place for free – now’s your chance.
https://www.hardlystrictlybluegrass.com
In the before times I’d be driving to San Francisco to spend the weekend in the park luxuriating in the sounds, the sights and the joy of it all. Instead, it’s the backyard with the iPad and sound bar.
CarolPW
@J R in WV: The play is called Coal Country NPR story
After the show closed Earle put out an album of the songs called Ghosts of West Virginia. In his Sirius/XM Outlaw Country show after the close he had the authors on and they all talked about the show, the music, and their interviews with the community members. They really seemed to have done a good job getting community members on board, and brought several up to NY for the opening.
rikyrah
They are White, Cole.
They.are.WHITE.
The Lodger
@zhena gogolia: What the hell is that supposed to be, From Slovenia with Love?