thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--Trump’s Crackdown On Diversity Training Is Fascist. And Terrifying.

The order is using the power of the federal government to essentially censor and police the actual thoughts and ideas @ @ @ @ @ federal employees and the U.S. military , but also federal contractors that are private entities @ @ @ @ @ Hee Lee , deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund The Damage @ @ @ @ @ Was Hardly Radical , Until Now

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One of the president’s most dangerous attacks on civil rights and free speech is getting relatively little attention amid the firestorm of news as Election Day approaches.
In an executive order and a series of administrative actions issued over the past month and a half, the Trump administration effectively banned diversity and inclusion training in the federal workforce and at any company or entity that contracts with the government or receives federal funding, a huge swath of American businesses and universities, covering millions of workers and students.
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As part of the administration’s continued efforts to effectively ban anti-racism training, the Labor Department announced Wednesday it would begin collecting information on diversity training from contractors (Verizon, which owns HuffPost, is one such company) as a way of policing the way diversity is discussed within private companies.
“When a society is moving to authoritarianism, it goes after the ideas. It goes after speech.” - Kimberlé Crenshaw, law professor at UCLA and Columbia Law School
The president ironically claims to be doing this in the name of equality. The administration says these trainings are un-American propaganda, claiming that learning about the history of race in the United States teaches the language of hate.
But diversity training is standard corporate practice, meant to encourage workers of all backgrounds to treat each other fairly. As the Me Too movement began, there was a shift to focus on sexual harassment education. These days, companies are increasingly concentrating on racism.
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In the case of diversity training, the White House is basing its opinion on the findings of one conservative activist, Christopher Rufo, who has appeared on Fox News and written for the New York Post and Wall Street Journal.
The word Orwellian is thrown around quite a bit in the Donald Trump era, but the doublespeak in this order stunned the lawyers, executives, activists and academics who have pushed for diversity, inclusion and equality for decades.
The order is the bureaucratic equivalent of telling white supremacists to “Stand back and stand by,” or of claiming there were “very fine people” on both sides of a deadly neo-Nazi rally and counterprotest in Virginia.
“The order is using the power of the federal government to essentially censor and police the actual thoughts and ideas and perspectives of not only federal employees and the U.S. military, but also federal contractors that are private entities and grant recipients.” - Jin Hee Lee, deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
“This is far more serious than a lot of people think,” said Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at UCLA and Columbia Law School, and an early pioneer of the academic theories now under attack from the administration. “This is no minor thing. This is an effort to put the weight of the federal government behind ideas that say anti-racism is racist itself.”
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Crenshaw and others view the administration’s moves as a direct attack on their right to share thoughts and ideas. At least one person called the order fascist. They’re a huge and powerful move by the White House to curb the right of workers, businesses and universities to discuss one of the most pivotal issues in the United States: racism.
It’s a clear assault on free speech, in the name of equality, against efforts to learn about equality.
“When a society is moving to authoritarianism, it goes after the ideas. It goes after speech,” Crenshaw said.
The administration’s actions are a way of opposing the reckoning with race that’s taken place around the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on May 25, a killing that stunned the nation.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund told HuffPost it is weighing legal action against the Trump administration.
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“This is an extraordinary and alarming act by our federal government and our president,” said Jin Hee Lee, the fund’s deputy director of litigation. “The order is using the power of the federal government to essentially censor and police the actual thoughts and ideas and perspectives of not only federal employees and the U.S. military but also federal contractors that are private entities and grant recipients.”
Timeline Of The Attack
The crackdown on diversity training began in September and has escalated over just the past few weeks.
The White House put out its order to ban diversity training, or what it called “divisive, anti-American propaganda,” on Sept. 4, just two days after Rufo appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and directly appealed to the White House to ban such seminars, calling them dangerous and “terrifying.”
In the executive order, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget directed all federal agencies to cease funding such training, as it is “contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”
The memo even identified specific terms that could not be used, including “critical race theory” and “white privilege,” or any other teaching that would suggest the “United States is an inherently racist or evil country.”
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Trump tweeted the news the next day: “This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue. Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish!” The conservative press and Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, quickly got in line. “Marxist-influenced nonsense that is racially divisive,” Hawley said. “If you didn’t know better, if you read this stuff, you’d think it was put out by some white nationalist. It’s unbelievable.”
The Congressional Black Caucus and other groups of lawmakers of color quickly responded, saying the administration was “trying to sweep our nation’s history of racism under the rug.”
Less than two weeks later, on Sept. 17, Trump broadened his attack to include The New York Times’s 1619 Project and seemingly any kind of study of history that examines race in America. “Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda,” the president said. “An ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together.”
Then on Sept. 22, the administration went further, issuing the “Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” which extended the ban to any training that promotes race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating in the military; at any company with federal contracts, which could include such behemoths as Microsoft and Boeing; and any organization that gets federal grants, which would include universities around the country.
Trump Orders Purge of ‘Critical Race Theory‘ from Federal Agencies https://t.co/ygXcTXRHsQ via @BreitbartNews This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue. Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2020
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Incredibly, the order claims its actions are in the name of equality. “The President, and his Administration, are fully committed to the fair and equal treatment of all individuals in the United States.”
But the administration is shutting down training meant to facilitate understanding, equity and belonging in the workplace.
On Oct. 4, the White House went further still, ordering all agencies to suspend diversity training until they are deemed to be in line with the president’s order.
The Labor Department has even set up a hotline that workers can call to complain about diversity training.
The Damage Is Already Done
Though Rufo, Hawley and others are calling this training Marxist, the capitalists of Corporate America actually seem to like diversity training. Not only because it feels like the right thing to do and it helps foster a welcoming atmosphere for women and people of color, but also because it’s a relatively simple way to deal with the hard issues of racial and sex discrimination.
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A few years ago, for example, Sephora convened a one-day diversity training after a well-known R&B artist said she was racially profiled at one of the makeup store’s retail outlets.
This week, the traditionally conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce signed on to a letter to the president from more than 150 business and nonprofit organizations asking Trump to withdraw his executive order.
“The [order] is already having a broadly chilling effect on legitimate and valuable D&I training companies use to foster inclusive workplaces, help with talent recruitment, and remain competitive in a country with a wide range of different cultures,” the letter says, noting that the order is ambiguous as to what is and isn’t permissible to discuss in these trainings.
There are growing reports that because of the order companies are increasingly wary of continuing with diversity efforts. A few businesses have put programs on hold.
The order has a possibly even more harmful effect on universities, especially public institutions loath to risk federal money during a severe recession.
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The University of Iowa and Texas State University have put programs on ice. John A. Logan College in Illinois canceled its programming, including a talk by an anthropology professor about his own Latino identity.
A screening of the movie “Malcolm X” and a planned talk was reportedly canceled at a military nonprofit.
Last month, the White House canceled a training on racism and public health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is currently grappling with the coronavirus pandemic that has disproportionately affected Black and Latino people. The death rate for Black people from COVID-19 is twice that of white people; the rate of infections among Latinos is nearly three times higher than for non-Latino whites. (These are current examples of systemic racism, which Rufo and Trump and other conservatives claim is not real.)
Diversity Training Was Hardly Radical, Until Now
What’s particularly startling is that diversity training in the workplace is hardly radical stuff. At least not until now. If anything, these efforts have long been criticized as something companies do instead of actually hiring more people of color and women.
These trainings have exploded in popularity since the summer, when millions took to the streets to protest police brutality. Companies at the time spoke up, too, asserting that Black lives matter; they doubled down on these kinds of trainings as a way to show their commitment to the cause. Diversity consultants said business was booming.
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Businesses wanted to find a way to acknowledge what their employees of color were going through in a way that was constructive.
“When systemic racism is denied. How will we ever move beyond it?” said anthropologist Johnnetta Cole, president emerita of Spelman and Bennett colleges. Alex Wong via Getty Images
“We knew there was a lot of trauma in the nation and among our employees. We know individuals don’t leave that pain and confusion at the door when we come to work,” Lorraine Cole, director of the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion at the Treasury Department, told a congressional subcommittee in September, explaining why she helped put together an online seminar on racism in June for some federal workers.
“We knew it was important for us to address these issues, not only as a compassionate activity but as an important business decision. We know that this can affect productivity.”
The webinar on June 24 was viewed by 8,500 federal employees and was a pretty open and, at times, moving conversation about race, Floyd’s murder and the experiences of Black Americans in the United States.
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Notably, it was moderated by Rodney Hood, chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, a Trump appointee and the first African American ever appointed to lead a federal banking agency. He spoke candidly about his experiences with racism in the financial industry.
A few weeks later, in mid-July, Rufo, the conservative activist, wrote about the event for his blog, condemning it. The next day, July 17, he wrote about it again, for the New York Post, and also appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show. (He appeared on her show again this week.)
Things settled down a bit as the story circulated on conservative websites. Then on Sept. 2, Rufo appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.
On air, Rufo called for the White House to outright ban diversity training.
Two days later, the White House put out its first order banning diversity training in federal agencies.
Anatomy Of The Backlash
The conservative media and Rufo appear to believe diversity training is radical and somehow racist and anti-white. In part that’s because they cherry-pick examples to distort meaning.
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Take the June webinar for federal employees. Critics of the event appear most incensed over not what was discussed but about the text of a supplemental resource guide given to attendees afterward.
Rufo has portrayed the guide as some sort of directive, but really it’s just resources for those who want to learn more: a link to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ seminal Atlantic article “The Case for Reparations,” and oral histories about the civil rights movement. There was also information for people of color looking for counseling or other support during a traumatic time.
What got conservatives worked up is a description and link to the work of Robin DiAngelo, the author of “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,” which hit the bestseller list this summer, as more Americans were buying books about race, and has been criticized among both liberals and conservatives.
The manual links to a video of DiAngelo on YouTube, and there is text next to that link that says: “She discusses the roots of White supremacy, of which she asserts virtually all White people, regardless of how ‘woke’ they are, contribute to racism.”
That last clause of that passage has been repeated and replayed in the conservative press as evidence that diversity training teaches people they are racist.
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Again, that’s not what is happening. For the most part in anti-racism training, Americans are being taught history and sharing their personal experiences with racism in hopes of furthering understanding of why racism persists today and how they fit into that history.
“I can tell you definitively that the kind of training Howard and I do is not centered in hating white people,” said Johnnetta Cole, who took part in the conversation that day with the well-regarded diversity consultant Howard Ross on the webinar. Cole is the president emerita of Spelman and Bennett colleges, and president and board chair of the National Council of Negro Women. She’s done consulting work for years.
“It is not centered in hating white people. It is centered in trying to understand the current state of our country and how, 401 years ago, language was created. Systems were invented. Policies were made that explained why it was all right to brutally, inhumanely enslave Black people for the economic good of some white folk,” she said.
Cole, who is 84 and grew up in the Deep South in the Jim Crow era, characterized the crackdown on diversity training as deep denial of the reality of systemic racism in the United States.
“Denial is perhaps among the most dangerous reactions to reality,” she said. “When systemic racism is denied. How will we ever move beyond it?”
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Twisting The Study Of Critical Race Theory
In his writing and on Fox News, Rufo particularly went after something called critical race theory, which he mischaracterizes as the idea that the U.S. and white people are racist and evil, a line of argument picked up in the conservative press and elsewhere.
In fact, critical race theory is a line of legal scholarship that for decades has sought to understand why structural racism persists in the U.S. despite laws on the books ensuring equality and prohibiting discrimination.
Why is there a racial wealth gap? Why are Black mortality rates higher than white mortality rates and life expectancy lower? Why is K-12 education still so segregated?
Crenshaw, an early pioneer in the field, (she also coined the term “intersectionality”) calls it a framework through which to view history and the law in the U.S. Through the prism of the theory, you might ask, “Why do we still have a society in which it’s predictable who is going to occupy the CEO’s office and who’s going to clean it?” she said. “It’s a way of thinking about race that challenges the idea that we can do away with racial inequality by not paying attention to race at all.”
“This is far more serious than a lot of people think,” said Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at UCLA and Columbia Law School, shown here speaking at a women's forum in 2018. Monica Schipper via Getty Images
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Typically these aren’t ideas that come up in corporate diversity training. Though, after this summer, more workplaces were open to discussing the roots of inequality and racism in the United States.
Some backlash was inevitable, though the fact that it’s coming from the White House was not.
The executive order reflects the deepest fears that some white folks have when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion training, said Evelyn Carter, managing director at Paradigm, a diversity consulting business. (She said the company already lost one client in the wake of Trump’s order.)
“Our general stance is that the executive order is meant to sow confusion that will make people pause and wonder if they should keep going,” Carter said. “It is essentially propaganda, and I’m concerned what this means in terms of a descent into fascism.”
Oftentimes discussions of racism can bring up a lot of anxiety for those groups in the majority; in this country that’s white people, Carter said. That fear looms large especially for those who have little experience talking about these issues.
There’s an underlying fear that conversations about racism will “belie their egalitarian self-concept,” as researchers from the University of Virginia and Northwestern explain in a 2012 paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
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In plain terms, they’re afraid that they’ll appear racist if they talk about racism.
That fear can trigger defensiveness, anger and lashing out. White people might feel like it’s unfair to have to even hear about discrimination.
By shutting down the conversation on race inside the government and within companies and universities, Trump’s order caves to that fear and lets aggrieved and scared white people off the hook.
“This is a way to say, if you feel angry that you are being forced to consider a different perspective or being made to feel your identity is being privileged, then we are going to protect you,” Carter said.
The executive order and the conservative talk about how anti-racism training is racist are also clearly examples of the backlash against the growing conversation about race in America that’s been taking place since the summer amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd. There’s also a growing fear that more white people are joining the fight against racism.
Crenshaw said it’s absolutely necessary to keep the conversation going, as she has in her work for more than 40 years. The idea is to continually work to perfect the American experiment ― and the notion that all people are created equal.
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thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--Why Progressives Love Ted Kaufman, Joe Biden’s Alter Ego

Illustration : Rebecca Zisser/HuffPost ; Photos : Getty Ted Kaufman , a longtime Biden aide who replaced his former boss @ @ @ @ @ , is considered Biden ’ s closest friend outside of his family .

Ted Kaufman, the co-chair of former Vice President Joe Biden’s transition team, fits neatly into the Democratic presidential nominee’s small inner circle.
Like most of its members, he’s old for a political operative ― 81. As a Philadelphia native, Wharton School of Business graduate and former engineer for DuPont, he shares Biden’s geographic grounding in Pennsylvania and Delaware. And like most of Biden’s closest allies, he’s worked with the candidate for decades.
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Kaufman is often seen as Biden’s alter-ego, and was even selected to take over the Senate seat Biden vacated shortly after winning the vice presidency in 2008. The two men live within walking distance of each other, and allies inside and outside the campaign say the pair are ideologically simpatico.
“I think it’s fair to say that Ted is Biden’s closest political adviser and friend outside of his family,” said Alex Mackler, who has worked for both men and was Kaufman’s deputy chief of staff in the Senate. “He has an overriding trust in Ted’s judgment.”
There is one crucial difference between Kaufman and the rest of Biden’s closest allies, however. While progressives look askance at the corporate ties of many key Biden advisers, the left-wing of the Democratic Party’s ideological spectrum has little but ebullient praise for Kaufman.
“He thinks Wall Street has too much influence in our government, he thinks that corporate America is too powerful and he thinks workers don’t have a seat at the table,” Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio said in an interview, summarizing a consensus view. “He’s a strong progressive.”
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During his roughly two years in the Senate, Kaufman proved his worth to the party’s left-wing, helping lead their battle against bank lobbyists and centrist elements of President Barack Obama’s administration to limit the influence and power of Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In a key moment that has helped shape the Democratic Party’s current contours, Kaufman stepped up to challenge the growing power of corporate interests in U.S. society.
“Progressives view 2008 to 2010 as a crucible that revealed a critical divide (within the party) on Wall Street,” said Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project. “It was an extremely revealing and important time in our history, and we remember what side people were on. And Kaufman was on the side of populist progressives.”
During the presidential primaries, progressives regularly argued Biden’s record revealed him to be subservient to power, unwilling to challenge the banks and corporate interests who historically dominated politics in his home state of Delaware. Nominating him, they argued, would guarantee the Democratic Party was insufficiently tough on Wall Street and monopoly power, repeating key mistakes of the Obama era.
But Kaufman, as a senator, fought against Wall Street, leading the charge to break up the largest banks. He has openly and repeatedly lamented the failure of the Obama administration to prosecute bankers and CEOs in the wake of the Great Recession. His leading role in shaping and staffing the next Democratic presidency gives progressives hope a Biden administration can outperform its leader’s centrist track record.
Biden, assigned other tasks by the White House, played little role in the fights over the response to the financial crisis. Kaufman, freed from political pressures because he decided against seeking a full term in 2010, joined the left to battle some of Washington’s most powerful forces. Could Kaufman’s actions serve as a preview for a more aggressive Biden presidency?
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Kaufman (right) was a frequent critic of the approach taken by Tim Geithner (left), President Barack Obama's treasury secretary, to the financial crisis. Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Kaufman was Biden’s chief of staff so long ago that his title wasn’t even chief of staff. Back in 1975, top senatorial aides were called administrative assistants. He held that job for two decades ― through Biden’s first run for president in 1988, his handling of tumultuous Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the senator’s two aneurysms in the late 1980s. Kaufman left in 1995 and into a series of roles common to once-powerful government officials.
He served on government boards, as a member of the Democratic National Committee and taught at Duke University. He remained a close friend and adviser to Biden, and a mentor to many of the younger staffers in Biden’s office.
“He was always a father figure to everyone in the office,” said Tony Allen, a former Biden staffer who is now the president of Delaware State University. “Before you made a big decision, you knew he was the one to go to.”
Throughout all of this, Kaufman remained behind the scenes, quoted in Delaware newspapers and as an expert on the Senate but with little public profile. That changed on Jan. 15, 2009, when Biden resigned his Senate seat days before becoming vice president and Kaufman was sworn in to replace him. At the time, one issue dominated Congress ― the response to the 2008 financial crisis.
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The crisis remains complex to untangle and explain, but here’s a grossly oversimplified version: A downturn in housing prices made risky bets placed by major banks turn bad, seizing the entire financial system, which crippled the broader U.S. economy and led to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
With bipartisan backing, the George W. Bush administration in its last days bailed out the largest banks, which were considered too big to fail without taking the entire economy down with them. The program they created, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), would buy up more $400 billion worth of essentially worthless financial instruments. After the Obama administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress took office in January 2009, they passed what was then the largest fiscal stimulus in U.S. history, the nearly $800 billion Recovery Act.
The perceived gap between the two responses ― $400 billion for the banks, $800 billion for everybody else ― has driven the populist rage that has shaped the nation’s politics since then, from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street to the rise of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and President Donald Trump. Today, most Democrats freely admit the party should’ve gone bigger with the stimulus law, even if many doubt a more ambitious proposal would have made it through Congress.
A decade ago, however, disputes over the crisis response were the defining rift within the Democratic Party.
On one side was a then-Harvard Law professor named Elizabeth Warren, along with the AFL-CIO, a significant chunk of the House and Senate Democrat caucuses and good government groups. Warren led an obscure panel overseeing the bailout, and regularly going viral in the process, dressing down bankers and regulators alike.
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She and others argued the new administration’s efforts to muddle through the financial crisis was too focused on the banks’ financial health, and not focused enough on helping middle-class families and alleviating a massive home foreclosure crisis.
On the other side was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers and much of the rest of the Obama administration’s economic team. They viewed Warren as a grandstander, and her allies as asking for the impossible. While they also supported the financial reform legislation that would end up being known as Dodd-Frank, they thought efforts to break up the big banks were unnecessary and counterproductive.
Kaufman joined the first team. In an interview, he told HuffPost his reaction to the financial crisis was simple: “Somebody should go to jail for this. Clearly, crimes have been committed at a massive scale.” He wondered why “the banks were all taken care of, but the foreclosures, the help for regular people, somehow we couldn’t figure out how to make that work.”
He spent much of his Senate stint consumed with Wall Street malfeasance: He played a major role in crafting a law to increase funding for law enforcement agencies to find fraud committed during the crisis. He pushed for stronger regulation of high-frequency trading. He sharply questioned bankers like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Bankfein. But the biggest showdown was over an amendment he co-sponsored with Brown to break up the nation’s largest banks.
Supporters of the amendment, which would have forced JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America to split up, argued breaking up the banks was necessary to ensure none of them would ever again grow too big to fail and require a bailout.
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“It was the very problem we needed to solve,” Warren said in an interview. “It was a really aggressive push to rein in the banks, and Ted was right in the mix.”
But the Obama administration’s Treasury Department fought against it, arguing the amendment would put passage of the larger Dodd-Frank reform legislation at risk and harm the competitiveness of U.S. financial markets. It failed on a 33-61 vote, with everyone pointing to Treasury’s opposition as key in swaying moderate Democrats against it. The larger bill became law in July 2010.
Jeff Connaughton, who was Kafuman’s chief of staff, said his boss’ efforts put the banks of defense, setting up the whole bill ― and especially its creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ― for passage. The CFPB, designed to protect consumers from financial wrongdoing, was Warren’s brainchild and the major progressive victory in the legislation.
“He was among the first to hammer at the anti-Wall Street fissures that later divided the party,” Connaughton said. “His instincts were deeply held and ahead of the curve when it came to standing up to powerful financial interests.”
A few months later, Warren’s vault from obscurity ended with Obama giving her a role in helping to launch the CFPB, a compromise reached with elements of the administration determined to block her from leading the agency she had conceived of. That meant her spot chairing the Congressional Oversight Panel, set up to oversee TARP, was open.
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Warren’s work on the panel had won her fans across the country, the beginnings of the political base that would power her to a 2012 Senate victory in Massachusetts and her unsuccessful presidential run earlier this year. It had also deeply alienated large sections of the Obama administration, including Geithner and Summers.
Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) picked Kaufman to fill the slot. But any worries that a close ally of the vice president would put the kibosh on the panel’s oversight efforts quickly faded. He kept most of Warren’s staff and continued their oversight efforts until the panel’s work wrapped up in early 2011.
“We had been really aggressive,” Warren said Kaufman. “Ted brought real continuity. He was studious, he was serious. He picked up the work right away and kept exercising real oversight. And that’s not something everyone would’ve been willing to do.”
Another panel member, AFL-CIO policy director Damon Silvers, agreed Kaufman represented a continuation of Warren’s work, saying the senator “was able to both continue Elizabeth’s public spirited approach to oversight and to maintain a general bipartisan unity among the panel.”
Even after the panel’s work ended, Kaufman remained an occasional thorn in the Obama administration’s side. In 2013, in a documentary interview, he slammed the administration’s failure to prosecute any major crimes connected to the financial crisis.
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“There’s all kinds of behavior that went on that clearly was fraudulent in my opinion, looking back on it, for which no one paid a penalty. And that has severe consequences for the country,” Kaufman told Frontline, pointing to what he saw as clear fraud leading to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
He also said: “The fact that we brought [no major prosecutions] sends a clear message that there’s two levels of justice in this country. Clearly, people can steal millions of dollars — which I think is what went on — and get away with it, and the rest of the folks have to pay for whatever crimes they commit.”
Joe Biden’s alter-ego was sounding a lot like Elizabeth Warren.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts campaigned for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden earlier this month. Warren, who sought the White House this year on a more progressive platform than his, has declined to say if she wanted to join a Biden administration. MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images via Getty Images
Suffice to say, the rest of Biden’s inner circle lacks similar credibility with the left. Steve Richetti, who served as Biden’s chief of staff during the final years of his vice presidential tenure, is a former lobbyist for the health care and telecommunications industries. Bruce Reed, his predecessor in that chief of staff role, was an early leader of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and played a key role in the reform of welfare that slashed its benefits during the Bill Clinton administration.
Both men are considered potential chiefs of staff if Biden wins the presidency. The third likely contender, Ron Klain, is progressives’ pick for the job and is now seen as the frontrunner. Klain, who was chief of staff for both Biden and former Vice President Al Gore, is seen as a more partisan figure, as open to left-leaning ideas and with a background well-suited to battling both the coronavirus pandemic and handling an economic recovery.
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But Klain’s tenure in the Clinton administration, along with his stint as a lobbyist for the mortgage finance giant Freddie Mae and time as a venture capitalist, serves to highlight the lack of truly left-leaning possibilities for one of the top jobs in a Biden administration.
(A brief definitional aside: The left-wing of the Democratic Party in Washington is loosely divided into camps allied with either Warren or Sanders. Left-leaning figures aligned with Warren, who tend to be more focused on Wall Street power and on the financial crisis as a flashpoint, also tend to be more excited about Kaufman.)
As transition chair, Kaufman would theoretically play a key role in who becomes chief of staff and who fills dozens, if not hundreds, of other slots in the administration. In his HuffPost interview, Kaufman declined to answer any questions about his work on a transition. (It’s also unclear if Kaufman would take a formal role in the administration, though Democrats who know both men said it would be difficult to stop Biden from regularly calling Kaufman for advice, regardless of the latter man’s title.)
Kaufman was the natural choice to lead the transition. He led Biden’s vice presidential transition in 2008. And after he left the Senate, he worked with former Utah GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt to co-author an influential report on how to refine the process. Many of the report’s recommendations became law in 2015.
“No other person who has run a transition has the depth of knowledge on transitions and a greater understanding of the high correlation between a successful transition and a successful launch of a presidency,” said Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Washington-based Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit good government group.
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Still, it can be easy to overstate Kaufman’s influence. His co-chairs on the transition include two mainstream Democrats ― Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond and New Mexico Gov. Michele Lujan Grisham ― alongside senior campaign adviser Anita Dunn and Jeffrey Zients, the CEO of the private equity firm Cranmere. (The left is particularly wary of the influence of Zients, who had a reputation as a deficit hawk as a top economic aide during the Obama administration.)
The left has already collected some wins in shaping the potential Biden administration. Summers took himself out of contention for top jobs. The transition’s advisory board includes Felicia Wong, the CEO of the progressive Roosevelt Institute, and Jared Bernstein, a labor-aligned economist who was Biden’s chief economic adviser during his first term as vice president. Transition staffers with left-wing ties include former Warren staffers Julie Margetta Morgan and Julie Siegel, while Gautam Raghavan, a former chief of staff for progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal D-Wash.), has a leadership role.
But equally worrying signs are evident for the left. The Biden campaign barred fossil fuel or private prison lobbyists from securing transition jobs. But it declined to ban other lobbyists from the effort, instead allowing them to secure waivers from the transition’s general counsel, Jessica Hertz. She previously worked on regulatory issues for Facebook, a company the left usually thinks of as a target for antitrust action rather than a source for hires.
“The Biden transition has been run as a more progressive transition than Obama 2008 or Hillary Clinton 2016 (had she won the presidency), but those are low bars,” Hauser said.
Even Kaufman has worried the left. His Senate farewell speech was an ode to the filibuster, the 60-vote requirement that routinely thwarts major legislation and a rule that progressives are determined to spike but Biden sometimes seems stubbornly attached to. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), a friend of Kaufman’s, suggested the decade-old speech might not reflect Kaufman’s current views: “There’s a large number of former and current numbers who have a wholly different perspective on it now after six years of” GOP control under of the chamber under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Casey said. “I’m more open to [filibuster reform] than I was even a year ago.”
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Another concern for progressives is that in an August interview with The Wall Street Journal, Kaufman suggested the huge deficits created by the Trump administration would limit a Biden administration’s economic plans. “When we get in, the pantry’s going to be bare,” Kaufman said at the time.
The Biden campaign quickly clarified his remarks to reiterate its long-standing position: Biden was willing to use deficit spending to stimulate the economy out of the coronavirus-induced recession, but tax increases on the wealthy would pay for long-term programs.
In interviews, neither Warren nor Brown worried much about Kaufman’s comments.
“There’s going to be stimulus spending to help repair the historic damage that Donald Trump has done to our economy, and to help us recover from the economic shockwave of the pandemic,” Warren said. “Biden knows that, and Ted knows that. It’s the Republicans right now who don’t understand that.”
The Biden campaign has successfully limited leaks from the transition, forcing reporters to rely mostly on scuttlebutt and chatter. While both Brown and Warren said they talked regularly with Kaufman, they declined to get into details. And Warren punted on whether she wanted to directly join the administration.
“Let’s get through the election first,” she said.
Kaufman, then a senator, and then-Vice President Biden are seen here conversing in the halls of Congress. The two men never directly discussed Kaufman's focus during his time in the Senate on dealing with the financial crisis, he said. Tom Williams via Getty Images
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Throughout all of the financial crisis fights, Biden was mostly absent. The definitive history of the Dodd-Frank law, the book “An Act Of Congress” by Robert Kaiser, barely mentions the former vice president.
Connaughton, the Kaufman’s chief of staff who also had been a Biden Senate staffer, has publicly lamented Biden’s inaction at the time. In journalist George Packer’s book “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America,” Connaughton said he pushed Kaufman to ask Biden to join their fight and apply pressure to the Treasury and Justice Department to crack down on banks.
Kaufman, then and now, has said Biden was busy with other issues, noting that Obama had assigned him a full portfolio of other tasks: leading oversight of the stimulus program, chairing a task force on revitalizing the middle class, managing the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Kaufman said he never directly spoke to Biden about his work on the oversight panel or his work on Dodd-Frank.
“Connaughton couldn’t get over the strangeness: their former boss held down the second-highest position in the country, a few steps from the Oval Office, and they couldn’t do a damn thing about Wall Street,” Packer wrote.
(Connaughton has written his own memoir and is open about his disillusionment with both Biden and Washington writ large.)
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Progressives have long assumed Biden more or less went along willingly with Geithner and Summers’ bank-friendly stances, noting his work as a senator on a controversial law passed in 2005 that made it harder for families to declare bankruptcy. The battle over that law put him head-to-head with a not-yet-famous Warren, and its eventual passage benefited MBNA, a massive bank in his home state.
Given how close he is to Biden, Kaufman’s actions during his brief Senate stint challenge that narrative. Brown, for one, was confident Kaufman’s experiences would shape how Biden governs.
“Ted’s a good influence on Joe,” the Ohio senator said. “He’ll make sure there’s a progressive voice in the administration.”
Some Biden allies also argue that the left’s image of Biden as a centrist out-of-touch with the Democratic Party and his stated desire to work with Republicans has overshadowed his broadly center-left record on guns, the environment and other key issues.
Today, Biden and his advisers are openly talking about a Rooseveltian presidency, one with eyes on super-charging an economic recovery and empowering the middle class. Bernstein and other Democratic economists openly discuss the failures and lessons learned from the Obama administration. Was Kaufman’s work a decade ago a preview of how Biden will approach things?
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Kaufman is pretty sure it is, and pointed to Biden’s plans as proof. “If you want to know what the transition’s policy positions are, just look at what the vice president has said,” he said.
If elected, Biden is likely to push for $3 trillion or more in stimulus spending on top of the $2 trillion Congress has already allocated ― far more ambitious than what Democrats secured in the 2009 stimulus, Kaufman noted to HuffPost.
Biden also supports a $2 trillion plan to boost clean energy; a nearly $800 billion initiative to make pre-K education universal and cut the cost of childcare in half for many families; and larger tax hikes on the wealthy than those Obama supported. He even, notably, supports a reversal of the bankruptcy law he and Warren battled over 15 years ago.
Kaufman’s diagnosis matches an emerging consensus among Democrats on both sides of the party’s internal divide: Biden is a party man, first and foremost, and he’ll move left or right alongside the rest of the party. Democratic voters and elected officials have unquestionably moved to the left on economics, guns, immigration and a host of other issues over the past 12 years. Those shifts are likely to matter far more than the positions Biden once advocated.
“Income inequality was not a major driving factor for the Democratic Party in 2007, 2008,” Kaufman said. “There’s been a gigantic change in the Democratic Party since 2008.”
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thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--Electrifying Homes And Cars Could Save The Climate -- And $2,500 Per U.S. Household

But what if Americans could drive the same miles and blast the A/C to cool single-family suburban homes all summer long and actually reduce U.S. emissions of climate-changing gases by 40 % ?
Not only is it possible , according to a new study , the average household would save up to $ 2,500 a year and do it with technology that ’ s on the market today .
The conclusions ran “ contrary to conventional wisdom in the energy space ” but painted an “ oddly optimistic ” picture , Vox energy columnist Dave Roberts observed in a thorough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that all the U.S. needed was “ a serious commitment to building the necessary machines and creating a regulatory and policy environment that supports their rapid deployment.
” Two years ago , Griffith ’ s research outfit Otherlab won a contact from the Department of Energy to aggregate all the publicly available data on how energy is used in the U.S. economy into one model .
Combining those data showed that the way decarbonization is usually discussed , as a sector-by-sector approach , is flawed .
Real-life energy usage does not fit in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Administration created at its founding in the 1970s .
Electrifying a home heating system not only reduces emissions from the residential sector but also from the industrial sector that produced the old equipment and the utility sector that once provided the fuel , meaning national-scale household changes can make much larger cuts to U.S. climate pollution than previously believed .
To calculate the savings in the latest report , Griffith established a baseline of energy costs per household , broken down using the Energy Information Administration ’ s state data , and identified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uses .
His team then built an “ Electrification Exchange Rate ” model to convert each unit of current energy services into an equivalent in an electrified world , accounting for the reality that a “ fraction of a gallon of gasoline used to travel a mile today can be exchanged for a fraction of a [ kilowatt-hour ] for the same mile travelled in an electric vehicle.
” Then the study looked at costs .
Griffith ’ s team calculated future electricity costs by blending the current price of electricity in each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ solar .
They analyzed the cost savings from future total household electrical load and the upfront costs of buying all this new equipment , then estimated the yearly financing payments based on different interest rates .
They then subtracted the finance payments from the annual fuel savings to determine the real savings possible for each household in each state and performed some extra calculations to account for different conditions in each state .
“ There ’ s this notion hanging in the air that there are sacrifices needed to be made , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who helped oversee New York state ’ s climate and energy portfolio and who now serves as Rewiring America ’ s executive director .
“ No , this is actually a way for us to stimulate the economy , put people back to work and put money back in people ’ s pockets.
” By applying the same household model to commercial businesses , the U.S. could slash its total carbon emissions by 65 % .
Dramatically cutting the climate pollution of the world ’ s No .
2 emitter alone will not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Celsius above pre-industrial averages , a benchmark beyond which projections show catastrophic weather , droughts and sea-level rise .
But given the economic and political might of the U.S. , other countries would almost certainly follow suit , putting the world on track to avert a current warming trajectory on pace to far surpass 2 degrees by the end of the century .
Revving U.S. manufacturing capacity to mass-produce the machines needed to make the transition would require a federal intervention in the economy unlike anything seen since Roosevelt pressed companies into cranking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ helped win World War II .
That could invite pushback from the political right , which couches its opposition to curbing carbon emissions in an ideological hostility to government command over the market .
In its “ field manual ” for decarbonizing the economy , Rewiring America argues : “ The invisible hand of markets is definitely not fast enough ; it typically takes decades for a new technology to become dominant by market forces alone as it slowly increases its market share each year .
A carbon tax isn ’ t fast @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not fast enough.
” There ’ s nothing stopping the Trump administration from doing this other than the president ’ s antipathy toward climate science and fealty to the fossil fuel companies whose profits would suffer most from such a rapid transition .
But these changes seem much more likely to take place if Democratic challenger Joe Biden , who has vowed to transition the country to 100 % carbon-free electricity by 2035 , wins next month ’ s election .

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Optimistic visions of America’s climate future look dramatically different from life today. The population abandons the suburbs for dense, efficient urban housing. Personal cars give way to bikes and green public transit. Those who can make the sacrifice sweat out the summer heat, rationing the air conditioning for those who most need it.
The alternative, so goes this line of thinking, is apocalyptic chaos.
But what if Americans could drive the same miles and blast the A/C to cool single-family suburban homes all summer long and actually reduce U.S. emissions of climate-changing gases by 40%? Not only is it possible, according to a new study, the average household would save up to $2,500 a year and do it with technology that’s on the market today.
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The finding, published Thursday morning, is the second major report from Saul Griffith, the physicist, MacArthur “genius grant” winner and energy researcher behind the group Rewiring America.
The group, which aims to rapidly decarbonize the U.S. by electrifying all aspects of the economy, made its debut in July with a report that found doing so would create 25 million good-paying jobs and eliminate roughly 75% of the country’s carbon emissions in the next 15 years.
The conclusions ran “contrary to conventional wisdom in the energy space” but painted an “oddly optimistic” picture, Vox energy columnist Dave Roberts observed in a thorough write-up of the first report, noting that all the U.S. needed was “a serious commitment to building the necessary machines and creating a regulatory and policy environment that supports their rapid deployment.”
Rewiring America's plan calls for the federal government to guarantee low-cost financing for rooftop solar the same way it does for home buying. Mike Blake / Reuters
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Griffith’s latest results could help spur the political will to make that commitment.
Two years ago, Griffith’s research outfit Otherlab won a contact from the Department of Energy to aggregate all the publicly available data on how energy is used in the U.S. economy into one model. Combining those data showed that the way decarbonization is usually discussed, as a sector-by-sector approach, is flawed. Real-life energy usage does not fit in the neat categories the federal Energy Information Administration created at its founding in the 1970s. Electrifying a home heating system not only reduces emissions from the residential sector but also from the industrial sector that produced the old equipment and the utility sector that once provided the fuel, meaning national-scale household changes can make much larger cuts to U.S. climate pollution than previously believed.
To calculate the savings in the latest report, Griffith established a baseline of energy costs per household, broken down using the Energy Information Administration’s state data, and identified the equipment required to electrify those energy uses. His team then built an “Electrification Exchange Rate” model to convert each unit of current energy services into an equivalent in an electrified world, accounting for the reality that a “fraction of a gallon of gasoline used to travel a mile today can be exchanged for a fraction of a [kilowatt-hour] for the same mile travelled in an electric vehicle.”
“It might frustrate the true-efficiency environmentalists and those who believe city living is the future for everyone, but the suburbs stand to benefit the most economically.” - Saul Griffith, energy researcher behind Rewiring America
Then the study looked at costs. Griffith’s team calculated future electricity costs by blending the current price of electricity in each state with the financed cost of rooftop solar. They analyzed the cost savings from future total household electrical load and the upfront costs of buying all this new equipment, then estimated the yearly financing payments based on different interest rates. They then subtracted the finance payments from the annual fuel savings to determine the real savings possible for each household in each state and performed some extra calculations to account for different conditions in each state.
“The technology conversation is based on existing technology,” Griffith said. “We assume no behavior change in the household.”
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The “good” model renders the yearly cost savings at about $1,000 per household. The “great” model finds savings of up to $2,500.
“There’s this notion hanging in the air that there are sacrifices needed to be made,” said Adam Zurofsky, a constitutional lawyer who helped oversee New York state’s climate and energy portfolio and who now serves as Rewiring America’s executive director. “No, this is actually a way for us to stimulate the economy, put people back to work and put money back in people’s pockets.”
In a counterintuitive twist on what’s become green dogma on decarbonization, “it’s actually suburban households that do the best,” Griffith said.
“It might frustrate the true-efficiency environmentalists and those who believe city living is the future for everyone, but the suburbs stand to benefit the most economically,” he said.
By applying the same household model to commercial businesses, the U.S. could slash its total carbon emissions by 65%. Dramatically cutting the climate pollution of the world’s No. 2 emitter alone will not keep global temperatures from climbing 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, a benchmark beyond which projections show catastrophic weather, droughts and sea-level rise. But given the economic and political might of the U.S., other countries would almost certainly follow suit, putting the world on track to avert a current warming trajectory on pace to far surpass 2 degrees by the end of the century.
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To begin deploying electric vehicles, heating systems, cooking equipment, batteries and rooftop solar panels at scale, the White House would need to take rapid steps in the next two years to lower costs, ramp up manufacturing and streamline permitting.
This is no easy task. But federal tax credits, subsidies and rebates could do a lot of the heavy lifting, along with procurement deals from the government directly. As a model, federal authorities could look to the Federal Housing Authority and Fannie Mae, two programs President Franklin D. Roosevelt created in the 1930s amid the Great Depression.
By essentially deciding “homes were critical national infrastructure deserving of the best possible financing rates,” these programs “created the largest capital market ever to exist in the world, before or since,” the report found. Griffith wants to expand that financing guarantee from homes to electric cars, heat pumps, rooftop solar panels and batteries.
Average U.S. household energy consumption comparing contemporary households with their fully electrified future equivalents. Rewiring America
Another New Deal program, the Electric Home and Farm Agency, helped the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority offload its oversupply of electricity from hydroelectric dams to homes by providing Treasury-backed loans to buy more electric appliances. Reviving that program, which was disbanded in 1942, could provide another avenue.
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Revving U.S. manufacturing capacity to mass-produce the machines needed to make the transition would require a federal intervention in the economy unlike anything seen since Roosevelt pressed companies into cranking out the arms and ammo that ultimately helped win World War II. That could invite pushback from the political right, which couches its opposition to curbing carbon emissions in an ideological hostility to government command over the market.
In its “field manual” for decarbonizing the economy, Rewiring America argues: “The invisible hand of markets is definitely not fast enough; it typically takes decades for a new technology to become dominant by market forces alone as it slowly increases its market share each year. A carbon tax isn’t fast enough, either. Market subsidies are not fast enough.”
But the programs outlined in the report would make the cost of electric vehicles and home equipment “so cheap that even the right will get on board,” Griffith said by phone Wednesday evening.
“This will help us turn the politics of this because it will start to sound like traditional American free marketism,” he said.
There’s nothing stopping the Trump administration from doing this other than the president’s antipathy toward climate science and fealty to the fossil fuel companies whose profits would suffer most from such a rapid transition. But these changes seem much more likely to take place if Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who has vowed to transition the country to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035, wins next month’s election.
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thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--Face To Face: Trump And Biden To Meet For Final Debate

Biden , who has stepped off the campaign trail in favor of debate prep , expects Trump to get intensely personal .
The former vice president and his inner circle see the president ’ s approach chiefly as an effort to distract from the coronavirus , its economic fallout and other crises .
With less than two weeks until Election Day , Biden is leading most national polls and has a narrower advantage in the battleground states that could decide the race .
More than 42 million people have already cast their ballots .
The debate , moderated by NBC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ final chance for both men to make their case to a television audience of tens of millions of voters .
The president has promoted an unconfirmed New York Post report published last week that cites an email in which an official from Ukrainian gas company Burisma thanked Hunter Biden , who served on the company ’ s board , for arranging for him to meet Joe Biden during a 2015 visit to Washington .
The Biden campaign has rejected Trump ’ s assertion of wrongdoing and noted that Biden ’ s schedule did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ official .
While Biden will defend his own record and his son , aides have said , he hopes to focus on making the case that Trump is unfit for office and let the nation down during a confluence of crises .
“ He knows that people want to hear about how we ’ re going to help working families get through the end of the month and pay the rent , ” his running mate , Sen. Kamala Harris , said Wednesday in North Carolina .
“ That ’ s what people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things I love about Joe Biden — he doesn ’ t take on or talk about other people ’ s kids.
” The initial debate was the most tumultuous in modern history , with a belligerent tone that was persistent and somehow fitting for what has been an extraordinarily ugly campaign .
Amid heated clashes over the pandemic , the Supreme Court and the integrity of the election itself , Trump refused to condemn white supremacists who have supported him , telling one such group known as the Proud Boys to “ stand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people think , ‘ Let him talk , ’ because he loses his train ( of thought ) , he just loses it and he doesn ’ t speak the train of thought , ” Trump said in a town hall discussion taped at the White House Rose Garden and aired by Sinclair Broadcast Group on Wednesday evening .
“ But we ’ ll see what happens .
I mean , you will have to be there.
” It was two days after the first debate in Cleveland when Trump tested positive for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refused to reveal when the president had last tested negative before the debate , raising questions as to whether he was already infected when he took the stage .
After the diagnosis , the Commission on Presidential Debates ruled that the second debate , which was to have been held last week , be virtual .
Trump balked , leading to the cancellation of the debate and the two men holding dueling town halls instead , speaking at the same time more than 1,000 miles ( 1,600 kilometers ) apart .
On Thursday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interruptions , Trump and Biden will each have his microphone cut off while his rival delivers an opening two-minute answer to each of the six debate topics , the commission announced .
The mute button won ’ t figure in the open discussion portion of the debate , but has drawn criticism from Trump .

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are set to square off in their final debate Thursday, one of the last high-profile opportunities for the trailing incumbent to change the trajectory of an increasingly contentious campaign.
Worried about losing the White House, some advisers are urging Trump to trade his aggressive demeanor from the first debate for a lower-key style that puts Biden more squarely in the spotlight. But it’s unclear whether the president will listen.
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Biden, who has stepped off the campaign trail in favor of debate prep, expects Trump to get intensely personal. The former vice president and his inner circle see the president’s approach chiefly as an effort to distract from the coronavirus, its economic fallout, and other crises.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, Biden is leading most national polls and has a narrower advantage in the battleground states that could decide the race. More than 42 million people have already cast their ballots. The debate, moderated by NBC’s Kristen Welker, is a final chance for both men to make their case to a television audience of tens of millions of voters.
“The rule is that last debates before the election have a big impact,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who made clear the legacy of the candidates’ first faceoff: “That was the most out-of-control presidential debate we have seen.”
Biden told reporters Thursday in Delaware before his afternoon flight to Nashville that he had undergone testing for COVID-19 and the test came back negative. The White House was asked whether the president had been tested but had not released an update.
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Trump announced on Oct. 1 he had tested positive and spent three nights in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center before returning to the White House. Last week, during a town hall-style interview on MSNBC, Trump did not specify, when he was asked, when he had last been tested before the Sept. 29 first debate.
Trump, who staged a remarkable comeback in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, believes he can do it again by using the power of the presidency to attack his rival.
Clear protective panels stand onstage between lecterns for President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden as preparations take place for the second Presidential debate at Belmont University, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Trump on Tuesday called on Attorney General William Barr to immediately launch an investigation into unverified claims about Biden and his son Hunter, effectively demanding that the Justice Department muddy his political opponent and abandon its historic resistance to getting involved in elections.
Biden could also expect questions about his comments in a CBS interview, released Thursday, in which he wouldn’t rule out adding justices to the Supreme Court. The issue has followed him since the Sept. 18 death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the GOP-controlled Senate’s move to confirm Trump’s nominee to succeed her, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
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During the interview for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Biden didn’t rule out studying the addition of members to the Supreme Court as part of a commission he plans to name to look at court reforms if he’s elected. He said the commission’s charge would “go well beyond packing.”
Trump, for his part, has been focusing on Biden’s family. He is promoting an unconfirmed New York Post report published last week that cites an email in which an official from Ukrainian gas company Burisma thanked Hunter Biden, who served on the company’s board, for arranging for him to meet Joe Biden during a 2015 visit to Washington. The Biden campaign has rejected Trump’s assertion of wrongdoing and noted that Biden’s schedule did not show a meeting with the Burisma official.
While Biden will defend his own record and his son, aides have said, he hopes to focus on making the case that Trump is unfit for office and let the nation down during a confluence of crises.
“He knows that people want to hear about how we’re going to help working families get through the end of the month and pay the rent,” his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, said Wednesday in North Carolina. “That’s what people care about, and one of the things I love about Joe Biden — he doesn’t take on or talk about other people’s kids.”
The one-two punch of the first presidential debate and Trump’s the president’s three-day hospital stint after contracting COVID-19 rattled his base of support and triggered alarm among Republicans who fear the White House and Senate could be slipping away.
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The initial debate’s belligerent tone was somehow fitting for what has been an extraordinarily ugly campaign. Amid heated clashes over the pandemic, the Supreme Court, and the integrity of the election itself, Trump refused to condemn white supremacists who have supported him, telling one such group known as the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
Aides have urged Trump, who has skipped debate prep, to show some restraint this time, allowing Biden to speak more and get himself in trouble with verbal gaffes and lapses.
“Some people think, ‘Let him talk,’ because he loses his train (of thought), he just loses it and he doesn’t speak the train of thought,” Trump said in a town hall discussion taped at the White House Rose Garden and aired by Sinclair Broadcast Group on Wednesday evening. “But we’ll see what happens. I mean, you will have to be there.”
After Trump’s diagnosis, the Commission on Presidential Debates ruled that the second debate, which was to have been held last week, be virtual. Trump balked, leading to the cancellation of the debate and the two men holding dueling town halls instead, speaking at the same time more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) apart.
As Trump continued to complain he was being treated unfairly by the news media, he posted on Facebook unedited footage of his own “60 Minutes” interview, where he repeatedly told CBS interviewer Lesley Stahl she would not have challenged Biden.
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“You wouldn’t say to Biden what you just said to me,” Trump told Stahl when she questioned his characterization of the economy prior to the pandemic. “If he had it, you would never say that to Biden.”
After posting the video, Trump tweeted: “Tonight’s anchor, Kristen Welker, is far worse! #MAGA.”
On Thursday night, in an effort to curtail interruptions, Trump and Biden will each have his microphone cut off while his rival delivers an opening two-minute answer to each of the six debate topics, the commission announced. The mute button won’t figure in the open discussion portion of the debate but has drawn criticism from Trump.
“The mute is very unfair,” he said Wednesday as he left the White House for a campaign rally.
___


thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--U.S. Jobless Claims Drop To 787,000, But Layoffs Remain High

WASHINGTON ( AP ) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 787,000 , a sign that job losses may have eased slightly but are still running at historically high levels .
With confirmed infections having neared 60,000 in the past week , the highest level since July , many consumers have been unable or reluctant to shop , travel , dine out or congregate in crowds — a trend that has led some employers to keep cutting jobs .
Several states , such as Ohio and Idaho , are reporting a record number of hospitalizations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report from the Labor Department said the number of people who are continuing to receive unemployment benefits tumbled by 1 million to 8.4 million .
The decline shows that some of the unemployed are being recalled to their old jobs or are finding new ones .
But it also indicates that many jobless Americans have used up their state unemployment aid — which typically expires after six months — and have transitioned to a federal extended benefits program that lasts an additional three months .
Many jobless recipients are now receiving only regular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supplement of $ 300 has ended in nearly all states .
And a $ 600-a-week federal benefit expired over the summer .
The still-elevated number of jobless claims underscores that a full recovery from the pandemic recession remains far off .
Job growth has slowed for three straight months , leaving the economy still 10.7 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic level .
The unemployment rate remains high at 7.9 % .
And major companies keep announcing layoffs .
Aramark , a food services contractor that provides concessions at sports stadiums , said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers in Denver , most of whom worked at Coors Field , home of the Colorado Rockies .
The company is also cutting 550 jobs in Kansas City .
Most major league baseball games this season were played with limited or no crowds , thereby reducing the need for concession workers Amtrak said at a congressional hearing Wednesday that it would have to cut 2,400 jobs unless Congress approves emergency aid as part of another stimulus bill .
Yet negotiations in Congress over another round of financial aid have largely stalled , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Day .
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are continuing to negotiate .
But Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned the White House against agreeing to a large package that would be opposed by most Senate Republicans .
The government will provide its latest picture Thursday of the pace of job cuts in the United States , which remain elevated with the viral pandemic still impeding the economy seven months after it first erupted .
The still-high number of people seeking jobless benefits reflects an economy that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 22 million jobs that were lost to the pandemic .
Many Americans are enduring unemployment with vastly diminished aid since a $ 600-a-week federal benefit expired this summer .
The latest weekly report on jobless claims coincides with fading prospects for a new federal rescue aid package that economists say is urgently needed for unemployed workers and struggling businesses , states and cities .
Congress remains at an impasse .
At the same time , economists say they have grown more skeptical about the government ’ s figures for unemployment claims , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hiring has slowed and many employers are still cutting jobs .

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 787,000, a sign that job losses may have eased slightly but are still running at historically high levels.
With confirmed infections having neared 60,000 in the past week, the highest level since July, many consumers have been unable or reluctant to shop, travel, dine out or congregate in crowds — a trend that has led some employers to keep cutting jobs. Several states, such as Ohio and Idaho, are reporting a record number of hospitalizations from the virus.
Thursday’s report from the Labor Department said the number of people who are continuing to receive unemployment benefits tumbled by 1 million to 8.4 million. The decline shows that some of the unemployed are being recalled to their old jobs or are finding new ones. But it also indicates that many jobless Americans have used up their state unemployment aid — which typically expires after six months — and have transitioned to a federal extended benefits program that lasts an additional three months.
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Many jobless recipients are now receiving only regular state unemployment payments because a federal weekly supplement of $300 has ended in nearly all states. And a $600-a-week federal benefit expired over the summer.
Did you lose your job in the downturn? Or are you worried you are soon to be out of work? We’d like to hear how you’re doing, for possible inclusion in a story for HuffPost. Email: emily.peck@huffpost.com
The still-elevated number of jobless claims underscores that a full recovery from the pandemic recession remains far off. Job growth has slowed for three straight months, leaving the economy still 10.7 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic level. The unemployment rate remains high at 7.9%.
And major companies keep announcing layoffs. Aramark, a food services contractor that provides concessions at sports stadiums, said Wednesday that it would lay off 975 workers in Denver, most of whom worked at Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies. The company is also cutting 550 jobs in Kansas City. Most major league baseball games this season were played with limited or no crowds, thereby reducing the need for concession workers
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Amtrak said at a congressional hearing Wednesday that it would have to cut 2,400 jobs unless Congress approves emergency aid as part of another stimulus bill.
Yet negotiations in Congress over another round of financial aid have largely stalled, with little prospect for a deal before Election Day. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are continuing to negotiate. But Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned the White House against agreeing to a large package that would be opposed by most Senate Republicans.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story is below:
The government will provide its latest picture Thursday of the pace of job cuts in the United States, which remain elevated with the viral pandemic still impeding the economy seven months after it first erupted.
The still-high number of people seeking jobless benefits reflects an economy that has recovered only slightly more than half the 22 million jobs that were lost to the pandemic. Many Americans are enduring unemployment with vastly diminished aid since a $600-a-week federal benefit expired this summer.
The latest weekly report on jobless claims coincides with fading prospects for a new federal rescue aid package that economists say is urgently needed for unemployed workers and struggling businesses, states and cities. Congress remains at an impasse.
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thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--Remains Found In Search For 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Victims

OKLAHOMA CITY ( AP ) — At least 10 bodies were found Wednesday in an unmarked mass grave at a Tulsa cemetery where investigators are searching for the remains of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre , Oklahoma ’ s state archaeologist said .
“ What we were finding was an indication that we were inside a large area ... a large hole that had been excavated and into which several individuals had been placed and buried in that location .
This constitutes a mass grave , ” state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said .
Investigators found 10 wooden coffins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one person in each , Stackelbeck said .
She said further examination of the coffins and remains , which have not been removed , was needed .
“ Those skeletal remains are not in great condition , ” Stackelbeck said .
“ They ’ re not the worst condition we have seen ... but they ’ re not the best.
” Combined with one set of remains found nearby on Tuesday , there have now been at least 11 bodies discovered , according to Stackelbeck .
University of Florida forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who is assisting in the search , said patience is needed before anyone can expect to know the identities of the remains or the cause of deaths .
“ We will need considerable time to investigate them because the preservation , teeth have been showing up OK , but non-dental structures ” have deteriorated , Stubblefield said .
Stackelbeck said it was too early to say definitely that the remains are victims of the massacre , even though they were found near an area known as the “ Original 18 , ” where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ buried .
There are two headstones in the Original 18 marking the graves of two massacre victims , but the area where the remains were found Wednesday is unmarked .
“ We have not yet made our assessment to say that these do actually represent the massacre victims , ” Stackelbeck said .
“ Whether they are associated with the same event or the same time period of burial is something that we are still in the process of assessing.
” Tulsa Mayor G.T .
Bynum , who in 2018 proposed looking for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 100,000 to fund it after previous searches failed to find victims , called the discovery significant in the city ’ s history .
“ What we do know as of today is that there is a mass grave in Oaklawn cemetery where we have no record of anyone being buried , ” Bynum said .
The violence took place on May 31 and June 1 , 1921 , when a white mob attacked Tulsa ’ s Black Wall Street , killing an estimated 300 mostly Black people and wounding 800 more , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and churches .
The massacre — which happened two years after what is known as the “ Red Summer , ” when hundreds of African Americans died at the hands of white mobs in violence around the U.S. — has been depicted in recent HBO shows “ Watchmen ” and “ Lovecraft County.
” It also received renewed attention after President Donald Trump selected Tulsa as the location for a June rally amid a national reckoning over police brutality and racial violence .
Trump moved the date to avoid coinciding with a Juneteenth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end of slavery .

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — At least 10 bodies were found Wednesday in an unmarked mass grave at a Tulsa cemetery where investigators are searching for the remains of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Oklahoma’s state archaeologist said.
“What we were finding was an indication that we were inside a large area ... a large hole that had been excavated and into which several individuals had been placed and buried in that location. This constitutes a mass grave,” state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said.
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Investigators found 10 wooden coffins containing what was initially presumed to be one person in each, Stackelbeck said. She said further examination of the coffins and remains, which have not been removed, was needed.
“Those skeletal remains are not in great condition,” Stackelbeck said. “They’re not the worst condition we have seen ... but they’re not the best.”
Combined with one set of remains found nearby on Tuesday, there have now been at least 11 bodies discovered, according to Stackelbeck.
University of Florida forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield, a descendent of a massacre survivor who is assisting in the search, said patience is needed before anyone can expect to know the identities of the remains or the cause of deaths.
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“We will need considerable time to investigate them because the preservation, teeth have been showing up OK, but non-dental structures” have deteriorated, Stubblefield said.
Stackelbeck said it was too early to say definitely that the remains are victims of the massacre, even though they were found near an area known as the “Original 18,” where funeral home records indicate massacre victims were buried.
There are two headstones in the Original 18 marking the graves of two massacre victims, but the area where the remains were found Wednesday is unmarked.
“We have not yet made our assessment to say that these do actually represent the massacre victims,” Stackelbeck said. “Whether they are associated with the same event or the same time period of burial is something that we are still in the process of assessing.”
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum, who in 2018 proposed looking for victims of the violence and later budgeted $100,000 to fund it after previous searches failed to find victims, called the discovery significant in the city’s history.
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“What we do know as of today is that there is a mass grave in Oaklawn cemetery where we have no record of anyone being buried,” Bynum said.
The latest search at Oaklawn began Monday. An earlier excavation of another part of the cemetery ended in July without any significant discoveries.
The violence took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when a white mob attacked Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, killing an estimated 300 mostly Black people and wounding 800 more, while robbing and burning businesses, homes and churches.
The massacre — which happened two years after what is known as the “Red Summer,” when hundreds of African Americans died at the hands of white mobs in violence around the U.S. — has been depicted in recent HBO shows “Watchmen” and “Lovecraft County.”


thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--Jimmy Kimmel Spots A Rare Moment Of Honesty From Donald Trump

Amid all of Donald Trump ’ s lies and deceit , comedian Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday spotted what he believes could have been a rare moment of honesty from the president .
But it came at the expense of Trump ’ s own supporters .
The president told a predominantly maskless audience at a rally in Erie , Pennsylvania , on Tuesday that he wouldn ’ t have bothered campaigning there had the coronavirus pandemic not struck .
“ Before the plague came in I had it made .
I wasn ’ t coming to Erie .
I mean , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was no way I was coming , ” boasted Trump , seemingly unaware of the contempt he was showing his supporters .
“ I didn ’ t have to .
I would have called you and said , ‘ Hey Erie , you know , if you have a chance , get out and vote , ’ ” he continued .
“ We had this thing won .
We were so far up , we had the greatest economy ever , greatest jobs , greatest everything .
And then we got hit with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back to work .
‘ Hello Erie , may I please have your vote ?
’ ” “ Oh my goodness , was the president just honest for a second ?
” the late night host asked .
“ I ’ m surprised gnats didn ’ t fly out of his mouth .
”

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Amid all of Donald Trump’s lies and deceit, comedian Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday spotted what he believes could have been a rare moment of honesty from the president.
But it came at the expense of Trump’s own supporters.
The president told a predominantly maskless audience at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday that he wouldn’t have bothered campaigning there had the coronavirus pandemic not struck.
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“Before the plague came in I had it made. I wasn’t coming to Erie. I mean, I have to be honest, there was no way I was coming,” boasted Trump, seemingly unaware of the contempt he was showing his supporters.
“I didn’t have to. I would have called you and said, ‘Hey Erie, you know, if you have a chance, get out and vote,’” he continued. “We had this thing won. We were so far up, we had the greatest economy ever, greatest jobs, greatest everything. And then we got hit with the plague and I had to go back to work. ‘Hello Erie, may I please have your vote?’”
Kimmel was stunned by Trump’s admission.
“Oh my goodness, was the president just honest for a second?” the late night host asked. “I’m surprised gnats didn’t fly out of his mouth.”
Check out Kimmel’s monologue here:


thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--Stephen Colbert Hits Donald Trump With His Very Own Barack Obama ‘HOPE’ Poster

For the Nov 3 election : States are making it easier for citizens to vote absentee by mail this year @ @ @ @ @ Each state has its own rules for mail-in absentee voting .
Visit your state election @ @ @ @ @ if you can vote by mail .

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Stephen Colbert put a Trumpian spin on street artist Shepard Fairey’s iconic 2008 election “HOPE” poster of Barack Obama on Wednesday’s episode of “The Late Show.”
The late night comedian noted that both former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump campaigned this week in Pennsylvania, where polls suggest Democratic nominee Joe Biden is ahead by 2 points to 10 points.
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“It’s ‘hope and change’ versus ‘grope and strange,’” Colbert joked as images of Fairey’s original and then pictures of Trump reimagined in the same style appeared on screen.
Elsewhere in his monologue, Colbert was unconvinced by the excuse Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani gave after he was caught on camera for that scene in Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming “Borat” movie.
Check out Colbert’s monologue here:


thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-22--'Racism Detective' Trevor Noah Hands Down Verdict On Republican Sen. David Perdue

Self-proclaimed “ racism detective ” Trevor Noah investigated Sen. David Perdue ( R-Ga. ) on Wednesday and found him guilty @ @ @ @ @ , Perdue mocked Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris ’ s name as he warmed @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump ’ s campaign rally in Macon , Georgia .
“ Ka-MA-la , KA-ma-la @ @ @ @ @ ’ t know , whatever , ” said Perdue , who ’ s facing a @ @ @ @ @ Democratic opponent Jon Ossoff ’ s campaign accused him of race-baiting to score cheap political @ @ @ @ @ had a couple of options to increase his lead .
Either reach out to the @ @ @ @ @ population or whip up the Trump base , ” Noah said on “ The Daily @ @ @ @ @ out that Perdue and Harris have been colleagues in the Senate for three years .
@ @ @ @ @ hearing someone on the Lakers say that they ’ re teammates with Lebern Jermaise , @ @ @ @

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Self-proclaimed “racism detective” Trevor Noah investigated Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) on Wednesday and found him guilty as charged.
Last week, Perdue mocked Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s name as he warmed up the crowd at President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Macon, Georgia.
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“Ka-MA-la, KA-ma-la, Kamala-mala-mala. I don’t know, whatever,” said Perdue, who’s facing a tough reelection race. His Democratic opponent Jon Ossoff’s campaign accused him of race-baiting to score cheap political cheers.
“Senator Perdue had a couple of options to increase his lead. Either reach out to the state’s growing minority population or whip up the Trump base,” Noah said on “The Daily Show.”
His choice was clear.
Noah also pointed out that Perdue and Harris have been colleagues in the Senate for three years.
“It’s like hearing someone on the Lakers say that they’re teammates with Lebern Jermaise,” he quipped.
Noah’s verdict? “Yeah, it’s racist.”


thehuffingtonpost--2020-10-21--James Randi, Famed Magician And Skeptic, Dies At 92

Entertainer , genius , debunker , atheist ̶ Randi was them all .
He began gaining attention not long after dropping out of high school to join the carnival .
As the Amazing Randi , he escaped from a locked coffin submerged in water and from a straitjacket as he dangled over Niagara Falls .
On a 1972 episode of “ The Tonight Show , ” he helped Johnny Carson set up Uri Geller , the Israeli performer who claimed to bend spoons with his mind .
Randi ensured the spoons and other props were kept from Geller ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Randi had bushy white eyebrows and beard , a bald head , and gold-rimmed glasses , and bounced his 5-foot-6 ( 1.6 meter ) frame energetically , even in his final years .
He sought to disprove not just those who read palms and minds , but chiropractors , homeopaths and others he saw as predators seeking innocent people ’ s money .
Randi targeted those he saw as frauds with a tenacity and dedication he admitted was an obsession .
His efforts were reminiscent of those of his great predecessor Harry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his time to debunking spiritualists and their seances .
“ I see people being swindled every day by medical quackery , frauds of every sort , psychics and their hot lines , people who claim to be able to find lost children or to help them invest their money , ” Randi told The Associated Press in 1998 .
“ I know they are being swindled because I know the methods being used.
” There were other coups for Randi : He once showed the messages television faith healer Peter Popoff claimed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were actually coming from his wife through an earpiece .
But the vast majority of those he aimed to show were frauds were lesser known , lured to prove their abilities by the James Randi Educational Foundation .
Born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge in Toronto on Aug. 7 , 1928 , Randi ̶ known by everyone simply by that surname ̶ had a nagging desire to question from a young age .
Academically , he said he was bored in school and teachers acknowledged he was prodigy far ahead of his peers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ or went to college but in 1986 was awarded a prestigious MacArthur fellowship , often known simply as a “ genius grant.
” For all the analysis Randi put into seemingly everything , he still found delight in observing magic he knew was a stunt or watching a film that was just fantasy .
He talked about the crushing feelings of watching a friend die and spoke of the magic of love .
In 2010 , he announced he was gay .
In 2013 , he married his longtime partner , Deyvi Pena @ @ @ @ @ @ @ D.C .
He was the subject of a 2014 documentary , “ An Honest Liar.
” Randi said he couldn ’ t help feeling angry that his targets always seemed to perform escape acts of their own , continuing to win new followers and earn checks he said were cashed at reality ’ s expense .
He wanted to see frauds punished , but he recognized most people wanted to believe .
It was frustrating to Randi and fueled an underlying anger toward those he labeled frauds .
When he let his displeasure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was mixed with wit , as when asked about his final wishes and how he ’ d like his ashes disposed .

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James Randi, a magician who later challenged spoon benders, mind readers and faith healers with such voracity that he became regarded as the country’s foremost skeptic, has died, his foundation announced. He was 92.
The James Randi Educational Foundation confirmed the death, saying simply that its founder succumbed to “age-related causes” on Tuesday.
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James Randi targeted those he saw as frauds with a tenacity and dedication he admitted was an obsession. Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Entertainer, genius, debunker, atheist ̶ Randi was them all. He began gaining attention not long after dropping out of high school to join the carnival. As the Amazing Randi, he escaped from a locked coffin submerged in water and from a straitjacket as he dangled over Niagara Falls.
Magical as his feats seemed, Randi concluded his shows around the globe with a simple statement, insisting no otherworldly powers were at play.
“Everything you have seen here is tricks,” he would say. “There is nothing supernatural involved.”
The magician’s transparency gave a glimpse of what would become his longest-running act, as the country’s skeptic-in-chief. In that role, his first widely seen exploit was also his most enduring.
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On a 1972 episode of “The Tonight Show,” he helped Johnny Carson set up Uri Geller, the Israeli performer who claimed to bend spoons with his mind. Randi ensured the spoons and other props were kept from Geller’s hands until showtime to prevent any tampering.
The result was an agonizing 22 minutes in which Geller was unable to perform any tricks.
Randi had bushy white eyebrows and beard, a bald head, and gold-rimmed glasses, and bounced his 5-foot-6 (1.6 meter) frame energetically, even in his final years. He sought to disprove not just those who read palms and minds, but chiropractors, homeopaths and others he saw as predators seeking innocent people’s money.
Randi targeted those he saw as frauds with a tenacity and dedication he admitted was an obsession. His efforts were reminiscent of those of his great predecessor Harry Houdini, who devoted large portions of his time to debunking spiritualists and their seances.
“I see people being swindled every day by medical quackery, frauds of every sort, psychics and their hot lines, people who claim to be able to find lost children or to help them invest their money,” Randi told The Associated Press in 1998. “I know they are being swindled because I know the methods being used.”
Once, awaiting the chance to sift through the trash of a faith healer, Randi spent days in his car, eating Twinkies and drinking Pepsi.
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“I suffer from this obsession that I have something important to do,” he explained in a 2007 interview with The AP.
There were other coups for Randi: He once showed the messages television faith healer Peter Popoff claimed to be getting from God about his audience were actually coming from his wife through an earpiece. But the vast majority of those he aimed to show were frauds were lesser known, lured to prove their abilities by the James Randi Educational Foundation.
Through that organization, Randi was guardian of a $1 million prize he promised to give anyone who could prove either their own supernatural powers or the presence of a supernatural being.
His loudest detractors said they didn’t believe the money even existed, but Randi had the bank documentation. No one ever came close to collecting.
Randi gave up the day-to-day operation of his foundation in 2009 and retired in 2015.
Born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge in Toronto on Aug. 7, 1928, Randi ̶ known by everyone simply by that surname ̶ had a nagging desire to question from a young age. Academically, he said he was bored in school and teachers acknowledged he was prodigy far ahead of his peers. He never earned a high school diploma or went to college but in 1986 was awarded a prestigious MacArthur fellowship, often known simply as a “genius grant.”
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He spoke with certainty. While he said he never really questioned his beliefs, he acknowledged there was always a chance he was wrong.
“I am probably right. But I’m always only probably right,” he said. “Absolutes are very hard to find.”
For all the analysis Randi put into seemingly everything, he still found delight in observing magic he knew was a stunt or watching a film that was just fantasy. He talked about the crushing feelings of watching a friend die and spoke of the magic of love. In 2010, he announced he was gay. In 2013, he married his longtime partner, Deyvi Pena, at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. He was the subject of a 2014 documentary, “An Honest Liar.”
Penn Jillette, a magician in the mold of Randi, mourned his friend on Twitter on Wednesday night, writing: “We will never forget that without Randi, there would not be Penn & Teller. It’s really that simple.”
Randi said he couldn’t help feeling angry that his targets always seemed to perform escape acts of their own, continuing to win new followers and earn checks he said were cashed at reality’s expense. He wanted to see frauds punished, but he recognized most people wanted to believe.
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“The true believers,” he said, “will not pay any attention to evidence that does not show that they believe to be untrue.”
It was frustrating to Randi and fueled an underlying anger toward those he labeled frauds. When he let his displeasure slip out, though, it often was mixed with wit, as when asked about his final wishes and how he’d like his ashes disposed.
“My best friend is instructed to throw them in Uri Geller’s eyes,” he said. “I’d like him to get an eyeful of my ashes. I think that would be appropriate.”
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