Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon showers, with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 6:56 PM, for 12h 16m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1832, the Sauk and Fox cede Iowa lands:

On this date Sauk and Fox Indians signed the treaty ending the Black Hawk War. The treaty demanded that the Sauk cede some six million acres of land that ran the length of the eastern boundary of modern-day Iowa. The Sauk and Fox were given until June 1, 1833 to leave the area and never return to the surrendered lands. Some sources place the date as September 21. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark, p. 160-161]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Patrick Marley reports Teen prison guard fired in incident that left teen brain damaged gets reinstated and nearly $30,000 in back pay:

A fired prison guard who falsely claimed she had repeatedly checked on a teen inmate before the inmate hanged herself in her cell has won reinstatement — with back pay.

Taxpayers must pay guard Rosemary Esterholm about $29,000 after the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission determined last week that she was wrongly fired in March and must get her job back.

The decision follows a round of firings in March around the time the state reached an $18.9 million settlement with a former 16-year-old inmate who was severely brain damaged after she hanged herself at Copper Lake School for Girls.

Copper Lake and Lincoln Hills School for Boys, which sit on the same campus north of Wausau, have been under criminal investigation since 2015 for prisoner abuse and child neglect. The facilities are slated to close by 2021.

Lauren Bauer writes Behind the numbers: Millions seeking a path out of poverty:

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 39.7 million Americans experienced poverty last year – statistically the same as last year. In order to effectively craft policies to combat poverty, we need to know exactly who is poor – not just whether their pre-tax income falls below a given number.  Millions of Americans – including children and their parents, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and workers – make up the national number of people living in poverty.

Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau calculates how many people overall in the United States were living in poverty in a given year by both the official and supplemental poverty measure. Specifically, the official poverty measure utilizes a formula (pre-tax income must be less than the current value of three times a minimum food diet in 1963 adjusted by family composition), that determines whether family is below the poverty threshold.

….

For the past several years, I have worked with my colleagues at The Hamilton Project to produce an annual update characterizing those who are living below the official poverty line—with a particular focus on working-age adults. Today, we learn in broad strokes who lived below the poverty line in 2017.

12.8 million children lived in poverty.

3.5 million fewer children lived in poverty than at the depths of the Great Recession in 2010. The share of children in poverty continues to decline; children made up a smaller share (32.2 percent) of those in poverty than at any point in the past 30 years. This is a welcome development, but children still represent an unacceptably large share of those in poverty given that we know that childhood is a time for indispensable and cost-effect investments.

4.7 million senior citizens lived in poverty.

Senior citizens are decreasingly likely to live in poverty, but because the U.S. population is aging, the number of senior citizens living in poverty will likely continue to increase. Senior women are twice as likely to experience poverty as men; a recent Hamilton Project at Brookings proposalrecommends that Social Security beneficiaries be permitted to voluntarily forgo some benefits to in exchange for an enhanced benefit in the event of one’s own disability or the death of a spouse.

3.8 million working-age adults with a disability lived in poverty.

The share of working-age adults in poverty – who reported not working due to disability – has doubled in the past 30 years, rising from a 10.9 percent share of the working-age poor in 1986 to a 20.5 percent share in 2016. A quarter of working-age adults with a disability lived in poverty in 2017. Different policy solutions are required for those who are not capable of achieving economic self-sufficiency through work than for those who are, including reforming and modernizing disability insurance programs.

Natasha Bertrand writes ‘Carter Page Is a Very Unlikely GOP Hero’ (“President Trump and House Republicans are declassifying documents to allege the campaign aide was spied on by Hillary Clinton partisans, but the FBI had been investigating Page’s ties to Russian intelligence for years”):

Intelligence and law-enforcement veterans broadly agree that President Donald Trump’s latest directive to the FBI and Justice Department—issued after much urging from a small group of his GOP supporters in Congress—to declassify portions of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (fisa) warrant and other documents that are part of the ongoing Russia investigation is remarkable.

“This appears to be an unprecedented use of the president’s discretionary authority to declassify information for purely partisan political reasons,” said David Laufman, a former high-ranking DOJ official who served as the chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section before leaving in February. “I believe it raises the resignation issue more forcefully than anything the president has done so far,” said John McLaughlin, a former acting director of the CIA.

But one of the more bizarre subplots in the ongoing saga of Trump and House Republicans condemning alleged “deep state” corruption has been the martyrdom of Carter Page—a former Trump campaign adviser suspected by the FBI of acting as a foreign agent for Russia, and the subject of the fisawarrants that Trump and his allies now want declassified. “Carter Page is a very unlikely GOP hero,” Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told me. “But there’s a desperation by Republicans to cast the initiation of the Russia investigation as illegitimate. And that includes creating a completely different story around Carter Page.”

….

But it’s looking more and more like House Republicans have chosen to die on a hill that’s shifting below their feet. “Be careful what you wish for,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Tuesday. He was indicating, according to an aide, that “it’s simply impossible to review the documents” on Page and conclude anything other than that the FBI “had ample reason” to investigate him. It’s not only Democratic senators who believe that: Republican Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN in July that he believes the fisa judges had “sound reasons” for issuing the Page surveillance warrant to the FBI. “I don’t think I ever expressed that I thought the fisa application came up short,” Burr said at the time.

 Denise Clifton writes Trump’s Lies Have Grown Far More Frequent—and More Dangerous (“The president is accelerating a dark phenomenon called ‘truth decay'”):

Although Washington Post journalists and other fact-checkers have dutifully documented President Donald Trump’s now more than 5,000 misleading statements and outright lies, the American public may no longer pay much attention to the exhausting flood of misinformation. Now, a book-length study from the nonpartisan RAND Corporation warns that a growing disregard for basic facts could have dire longterm consequences for American democracy.

From June through August, Trump averaged more than 15 bogus statements a day—more than triple his daily rate in 2017. Recently, he went after Google, falsely claiming the country’s biggest information search tool is “rigged” to make him look bad. He sowed confusion over a key statement he made about the Russia investigation by falsely accusing NBC News of doctoring video of his famous interview with Lester Holt (which has been publicly available in full since May 2017). And in his startling rebuke of an official government-commissioned report concluding that 2,975 people in Puerto Rico died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Trump falsely claimed that the report was a Democratic hit job and that the toll “did not go up by much” beyond 6 to 18 deaths.

This unprecedented behavior from a US president is akin to dumping gasoline on a long-smoldering trend RAND researchers call “Truth Decay”: a deepening disagreement over basic facts that is increasingly undercutting the fundamentals of our democracy, from elections to policymaking. When Trump’s personal lawyer makes the argument that “truth isn’t truth” in Robert Mueller’s investigation, or argues that “facts develop” to explain away a shifting story about the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting, this misinformation coming from the highest levels of the US government fuels blind partisanship. And it could potentially leave the public confused and mistrustful during crucial times, from national votes to a national security crisis.

Watch as a Baboon Hitches Ride On Car Roof:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a mix of sunshine, clouds, and occasional thunderstorms, with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 6:58 PM, for 12h 19m 40s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 65.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1863, Wisconsin troops prepare for battle at Chickamauga:

Major General Alexander McCook’s command, including the 15th Wisconsin Infantry, arrived at Chickamauga, Georgia, the night before the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia. The 1st, 10th, 15th, 21st, and 24th Wisconsin Infantry regiments along with the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry and the 3rd, 5th, and 8th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries would participate in some of the fiercest fighting.

Recommended for reading in full — 

► Grigor Atanesian reports How Hackers Could Attack Wisconsin’s Elections And What State Officials Are Doing About It (“Cybersecurity Experts Warn Private Vendors, Modems, Removable Memory Devices Make State’s Decentralized Voting System Vulnerable To Attack”):

In July, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reported that Russian hackers have targeted websites of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, the state Department of Workforce Development and municipalities including Ashland, Bayfield and Washburn. Elections in this swing state are administered by 1,853 municipal clerks, 72 county clerks and the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Top cybersecurity experts from the United States, Canada and Russia interviewed by the Center said some practices and hardware components could make voting in Wisconsin open to a few types of malicious attacks, and that Russian actors have a record of these specific actions.

And it is not just Wisconsin — this is a nationwide threat, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine stated in its newly released report, Securing the Vote.

“With respect to foreign threats, the challenge is compounded by the great asymmetry between the capabilities and resources available to local jurisdictions in the United States and those of foreign intelligence services,” according to the report.

► Anna Nemtsova writes Russia Shows Us What Happens to ‘Enemies of the People’: Bloodied Heads, Murdered Reporters, Poisoned Dissidents:

Media experts have monitored an increasing number of attacks on journalists all over Russia. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 38 reporters have been targeted for murder in Russia since 1992, and in 33 of those cases the killers acted with impunity. Just speak with any independent reporter in Russia today and you will hear stories of death threats and violence.

After three years of covering anti-Putin rallies, 22-year-old Polukeeva had plenty of experience as an “enemy of people” and has no patience with those, like U.S. President Donald Trump, who try to inspire hatred for journalists with phrases like that.

“Journalists should feel safe to be able to do their job—that is what the president should understand and explain to the nation, that we reporters work for the society,” Polukeeva told The Daily Beast. “We have to be in the field to prove that this is not fake news, that OMON [Russia’s special riot police] is being more violent—than ever.”

► Caitlin Dickerson reports Detention of Migrant Children Has Skyrocketed to Highest Levels Ever:

Even though hundreds of children separated from their families after crossing the border have been released under court order, the overall number of detained migrant children has exploded to the highest ever recorded — a significant counternarrative to the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the number of undocumented families coming to the United States.

Population levels at federally contracted shelters for migrant children have quietly shot up more than fivefold since last summer, according to data obtained by The New York Times, reaching a total of 12,800 this month. There were 2,400 such children in custody in May 2017.

The huge increases, which have placed the federal shelter system near capacity, are due not to an influx of children entering the country, but a reduction in the number being released to live with families and other sponsors, the data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services suggests. Some of those who work in the migrant shelter network say the bottleneck is straining both the children and the system that cares for them.

► The Washington Post editorial board writes of China’s Orwellian tools of high-tech repression:

THE TOTALITARIANISM of the 21st century is being pioneered in a vast but remote region of western China inaccessible to most outsiders and subject to a media blackout by China’s Communist authorities. In Xinjiang province, twice the size of Germany, an estimated 1 million people have been forcibly confined to political reeducation camps, where they are required to memorize and recite political songs and slogans in exchange for food. The rest of the region’s 23 million people are subjected to an extraordinary network of surveillance based in part on the collection of biometric data such as DNA and voice samples, and the use of artificial intelligence to identify, rate and track every person. Those rated as suspicious — possession of certain phone apps is sufficient — are sent to the camps without process, trial or even a fixed term.

A new report by Human Rights Watch, which pieced together information about the repression based on interviews with 58 former Xinjiang residents, adds new details about what the group calls human rights violations “of a scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.” Not only is the regime of Xi Jinping persecuting millions of people based on their ethnicity and religion, but also it is developing tools of high-tech repression that could be used by dictatorships around the world. Yet China, says the report, “does not foresee a significant political cost to its abusive Xinjiang campaign.” That must change.

The principal target of the crackdown, which began in 2014 but accelerated two years ago, are the some 11 million ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang, who are predominantly Muslim, along with several other smaller Muslim ethnic groups. Some Uighur individuals have supported separatist groups, and there have been a handful of violent attacks on Chinese targets. But nothing could justify Beijing’s response, which Human Rights Watch concluded aims at the eradication of “any non-Han Chinese sense of identity.”

► How SpaceX, Blue Origin, And Virgin Galactic Plan On Taking You To Space:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny, with a high of eighty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 7:00 PM, for 12h 22m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 54.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

It’s Constitution Day in America. On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention takes up a final draft of their work:

From August 6 to September 10, the report of the committee of detail was discussed, section by section and clause by clause. Details were attended to, and further compromises were effected.[31][33] Toward the close of these discussions, on September 8, a “Committee of Style and Arrangement” – Alexander Hamilton (New York), William Samuel Johnson (Connecticut), Rufus King (Massachusetts), James Madison (Virginia), and Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania) – was appointed to distill a final draft constitution from the twenty-three approved articles.[33] The final draft, presented to the convention on September 12, contained seven articles, a preamble and a closing endorsement, of which Morris was the primary author.[28] The committee also presented a proposed letter to accompany the constitution when delivered to Congress.[35]

The final document, engrossed by Jacob Shallus,[36] was taken up on Monday, September 17, at the Convention’s final session. Several of the delegates were disappointed in the result, a makeshift series of unfortunate compromises. Some delegates left before the ceremony, and three others refused to sign. Of the thirty-nine signers, Benjamin Franklin summed up, addressing the Convention: “There are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them.” He would accept the Constitution, “because I expect no better and because I am not sure that it is not the best”.[37]

The advocates of the Constitution were anxious to obtain unanimous support of all twelve states represented in the Convention. Their accepted formula for the closing endorsement was “Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present.” At the end of the convention, the proposal was agreed to by eleven state delegations and the lone remaining delegate from New York, Alexander Hamilton.[38]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Mark Sommerhauser reports Critics call WisDOT’s preferred plan for I-39/90 at Beltline ‘brand-new bottleneck’:

The department recently told federal highway officials it recommends rebuilding the I-39/90 interchange with the Beltline such that the northbound side narrows, through its core section, to two lanes.
The interchange overhaul, set to be completed in 2022, would be the final phase of a $1.2 billion plan to widen the interstate to three lanes each way from Madison to the Illinois state line.

Overhauling the interchange without expanding to three lanes in both directions — which would be the case north and south of the interchange — would crimp the flow of northbound traffic, causing “significant safety concerns,” said Craig Thompson, director of the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin, a group of business, labor and local governments that advocate for more spending on roads, bridges and transit.

“It would be a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars to build a brand-new bottleneck,” Thompson said.

Madison-area officials also lambasted the plan. Mayor Paul Soglin called it “crazy” and said it would cost lives.

“They’re creating another pinch point in a heavily congested area,” Soglin said. “We’ve already got a dangerous, inadequate interchange. Now they’re going to invest all this taxpayer money in a brand-new, dangerous, inadequate interchange.”

Anne Applebaum writes Once again, Putin gives us a lesson on the usefulness of the blatant lie:

They were, they declared, just tourists. Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov — identified by British authorities as the Russian intelligence agents who poisoned four people in the English town of Salisbury — were simply on vacation: “Our friends had been suggesting for some time that we visit this wonderful town.”

Sweating, nervous, thuggishly coiffed and wearing similar sweaters, this is what Petrov and Boshirov (not their real names, say the British) told Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the propaganda channel RT (formerly Russia Today): Yes, they are the men in the videos and photographs produced by British police. Yes, they were in Salisbury at the time of the attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter. But no, they knew nothing of the Skripals or their house. “I wish somebody told us where it was,” said Petrov. “Maybe we passed it, or maybe we didn’t,” said Boshirov.

The two men offered a reason for their visit: “They have a famous cathedral there, Salisbury Cathedral. It’s famous throughout Europe and, in fact, throughout the world, I think. It’s famous for its 123-meter spire.” Inspired, as it were, by the 123-meter spire (a statistic available in the second paragraph of the Salisbury Cathedral Wikipedia page), they went to Salisbury twice. On the first attempt — the British say this was a reconnaissance mission — the two men stayed only an hour and didn’t manage to walk the few hundred yards from the train station to the cathedral because of the terrible snow and slush. (Pictures from the day show the streets were clear.) On the second attempt — the day Novichok, a powerful nerve agent, was sprayed on Skripal’s front door — they say they made it to the cathedral, even though they were photographed walking in the opposite direction. Their memories of this Gothic masterpiece were not very detailed. “There are lots of tourists,” said Boshirov, “lots of Russian tourists.”

David E. Sanger reports North Korea’s Trump-Era Strategy: Keep Making A-Bombs, but Quietly:

For seven years, Kim Jong-un has pursued an in-your-face strategy for building his nuclear arsenal: detonating blasts underground and firing missiles into the sky, all to send the message that his country’s nuclear buildup is irreversible.

Now he appears to be changing his approach, current and former American intelligence officials say, tailoring it to his reading of the man he met for a few hours three months ago in Singapore: President Trump.

North Korea is making nuclear fuel and building weapons as actively as ever, the publicly available evidence suggests. But he now appears to be borrowing a page from Israel, Pakistan and India: He is keeping quiet about it, conducting no public nuclear demonstrations and creating no crises, allowing Mr. Trump to portray a denuclearization effort as on track.

Mr. Kim’s new forbearance has helped keep a stream of warm words coming from Mr. Trump. A week ago, the president praised Mr. Kim, with whom he says he has forged a special relationship, after the North Korean leader refrained from parading missiles down the streets of Pyongyang during a military celebration.

Alex Horton reports A woman’s daring escape from a Border Patrol agent helped reveal a ‘serial killer,’ police say:

The woman in the white pickup was feeling increasingly uneasy about the driver, whom she knew only as “David.” Two fellow sex workers in Laredo, Tex., had been recently killed, and one of them was her friend Melissa.

The man and the woman had already been at his house, where she had discussed Melissa. He had reacted strangely, she later told authorities, and the situation had grown so tense that she vomited in the front yard before they left for a gas station. The woman’s mind lingered on Melissa. She wanted to keep talking about her.

He produced a gun in response, and grabbed hold of her shirt. She managed to jump out of the truck and into the night, her shirt torn from her body. He fled, and she found a state trooper fueling up nearby. She told the trooper where the man lived.

That information led officers to Juan David Ortiz, a supervisory Border Patrol agent. He had been hiding in a hotel parking lot after fleeing from officers and was arrested at 2:30 a.m., according to an affidavit provided to The Washington Post by county prosecutors.

Ortiz, 35, confessed to the two September murders, according to the document.

But he had other confessions to make.

He had killed two more people early Saturday morning in the five hours between the assault on the escaped woman and his capture.Juan David Ortiz, accused in the killing of at least four sex workers in Laredo, Tex., where he is a supervisor with the Border Patrol. (Webb County Sheriff’s Office, via AP)

“We consider this man to be a serial killer who was preying on one victim after another,” Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar said.

This Man Launched a New Internet Service Provider from His Garage:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny, with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 7:02 PM, for 12h 25m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, Wisconsinites are engaged in Tennessee:

The Wisconsin 13th Infantry participated in an operation against Confederate generals Forrest and Hood in Tennessee.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Ross Douthat comments on Conservatism After Christianity (“A new survey reveals the Republican Party’s religious divide”):

One of the many paradoxes of the Trump era is that our unusual president couldn’t have been elected, and couldn’t survive politically today, without the support of religious conservatives … but at the same time his ascent was intimately connected to the secularization of conservatism, and his style gives us a taste of what to expect from a post-religious right.

The second point was clear during the Republican primaries, when the most reliable churchgoers tended to prefer Ted Cruz but the more secular part of the party was more Trumpist. But it was obscured in the general election, and since, by the fact that evangelical voters especially rallied to Trump and have generally stood by him.

Now, though, a new survey reveals the extent to which a basic religious division still exists within Trump’s Republican Party. The churchgoers who ultimately voted for Trump over Clinton still tend to hold different views than his more secular supporters, and the more religious part of the G.O.P. is still the less Trumpist portion — meaning less populist on economics, but also less authoritarian and tribal on race and identity.

The survey was conducted by the Cato Institute’s Emily Ekins for the Voter Study Group, who analyzed the views of Trump voters based on their frequency of church attendance — from “never” to “weekly” or more often. The trend was consistent: The more often a Trump voter attended church, the less white-identitarian they appeared, the more they expressed favorable views of racial minorities, and the less they agreed with populist arguments on trade and immigration.

(It’s impossible to overstate how important these findings are. It’s simply false to contend that increasing secularization necessarily tends toward a progressive position – Trumpism is proof that an increasingly secular core of followers can – and in this case does – lead not leftward but to reactionary and nihilist demands for a herrenvolk. Peter Beinart has written along similar lines. See Breaking Faith: “The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something much worse.” A few high-profile evangelical Trumpists mean nothing compared to a far larger, motivated faction of secular rightists. Those who embrace this position – a militant secular racism – have slipped beyond normal acculturation in a democratic society and will prove hard to reach and restore to the wider society. The point isn’t that all secularism is necessarily dangerous – the point is that it’s a myth to conclude that all secularism is necessarily progressive let alone beneficial.)

Ron Nixon reports $10 Million From FEMA Diverted to Pay for Immigration Detention Centers, Document Shows:

The Department of Homeland Security transferred nearly $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a budget document released by a Democratic senator late Tuesday night, diverting funds from the relief agency at the start of the hurricane season that began in June. The release of the document comes as a major storm barrels toward the East Coast.

The document, which was released by the office of Senator Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, shows that the money would come from FEMA’s operations and support budget and was transferred into accounts at ICE to pay for detention and removal operations. The document also shows that the Department of Homeland Security transferred money from accounts at Customs and Border Protection that pays for border fencing and technology.

The transfer was a part of more than $200 million the Department of Homeland Security moved from the budgets of other agencies to ICE’s detention and removals.

Randall D. Eliason writes What Manafort’s plea agreement could mean for Trump:

As the White House was quick to point out, the charges to which Manafort pleaded guilty do not directly relate to Trump or his campaign. But cooperation agreements are not limited to cooperation in the same case. Prosecutors would have no reason to seek Manafort’s cooperation in connection with the charges listed in his D.C. indictment; Manafort was the primary defendant and his plea largely resolves that case. The existence of the agreement — and the favorable terms offered by prosecutors — suggest Manafort can provide useful information about other aspects of Mueller’s investigation.

What’s more, prosecutors don’t enter into such agreements blindly. The agreements typically are preceded by extensive debriefings that allow prosecutors to see what the witness has to offer and to assess the credibility of the information. Mueller’s team apparently found Manafort’s information important and credible enough to be worthy of a deal — and a pretty sweet deal at that.

Contrary to some initial reports, there is no carve-out in the cooperation agreement for matters involving the campaign. Those who cooperate with federal prosecutors don’t get to pick and choose the subject matter. Either you agree to tell prosecutors everything you know about whatever topics the prosecutors are interested in, or there’s no deal. Manafort’s agreement requires him to cooperate “in any and all matters as to which the Government deems the cooperation relevant.” And if Manafort lies or tries to protect the president (or anyone else), the deal is off, and prosecutors are free to bring back all charges against him.

Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani has professed nonchalance about whether Manafort cooperates, claiming the president’s team isn’t concerned because the president did nothing wrong, and that Manafort is an “honorable man.” But despite that bravado, this is grave news for the president.

Gerry Shih reports A government institute gave China’s biggest celebrity a low ‘social responsibility’ rating. She hasn’t been seen for months:

Fan Bingbing is one of China’s biggest celebrities, a ubiquitous actress, model and singer who earned more in 2016 than Hollywood A-listers such as Amy Adams and Charlize Theron, according to Forbes.

But in July, the “X-Men” actress suddenly vanished. And in the weeks since, the mystery surrounding her disappearance from public view has only deepened amid speculation that she ran afoul of Chinese authorities.

The latest clue emerged Tuesday after a state-affiliated think tank and Beijing university ranked Fan dead last in their annual “Social Responsibility Report” — she earned a 0 out of 100 — citing her “negative social impact,” among other things.

The report, which was widely covered by state media, didn’t shed any more light on Fan’s predicament, but it does add to the sense that China’s Communist Party is sending a message to the country’s burgeoning entertainment industry.

Meet The Brothers Revolutionizing Japanese Jazz:

The shamisen is classic Japanese instrument best known for creating the sweet sounds in Kabuki Theatre. With a history dating back centuries, the shamisen has been a pivotal part of many ancient musical genres. But today, in the hands of the Yoshida Brothers, it’s getting a modern twist. After picking up the instrument at age five, brothers Ryoichiro and Kenichi fell in love with the quick tempo required to play Tsagaru-jamisen, a Japanese genre of shamisen music. Today, they meld the ancient art and precision of playing shamisen with new, popular sounds, creating their own brand of music and finding fans around the world.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny, with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 7:03 PM, for 12h 28m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1940, Britain wins decisive victories in engagements during the Battle of Britain:

On 15 September, two massive waves of German attacks were decisively repulsed by the RAF by deploying every aircraft in 11 Group. Sixty German and twenty-six RAF aircraft were shot down. The action was the climax of the Battle of Britain.^[248]

Two days after the German defeat Hitler postponed preparations for the invasion of Britain. Henceforth, in the face of mounting losses in men, aircraft and the lack of adequate replacements, the Luftwaffe completed their gradual shift from daylight bomber raids and continued with nighttime bombing. 15 September is commemorated as Battle of Britain Day.

Recommended for reading in full — 

The New York Times editorial board describes Medicine’s Financial Contamination (“Disclosure rules may seem arcane, but money corrupts medical research”):

The fall from grace last week of Dr. José Baselga, the former chief scientific officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, illuminated a longstanding problem of modern medicine: Potentially corrupting payments by drug and medical device makers to influential people at research hospitals are far more common than either side publicly acknowledges.

Dr. Baselga, a giant in cancer research whose work led to the discovery of the lifesaving drug Herceptin, resigned on Thursday after The New York Times and ProPublica reported that he had repeatedly failed to properly disclose millions in industry payments.

Decades of research and real world examples have shown that such entanglements can distort the practice of medicine in ways big and small. Even little gifts have been found to influence doctors’ prescribing habitsand their perceptions of a given company’s products. Larger payments have been shown to affect the design of clinical trials and the reporting of trial results, among other things. And such financial entanglements have proved devastating to individual patients — and to society at large. The opioid epidemic, to take one recent example, was partly spread by doctors who were persuaded to ignore warning bells and prescribe these drugs liberally by companies that showered them with gifts and consulting fees.

Dr. Baselga’s lapses may not have touched off a drug epidemic, but they have damaged the reputation of a leading cancer hospital in which tens of thousands of patients place their trust every year. Medical institutions should prize that trust at least as much as they prize profits. They should work aggressively to keep themselves beyond such reproach. And they should hold leaders of Dr. Baselga’s rank to an especially high standard, because leaders more than rule books set the example that others will follow.

( Small towns like Whitewater do not have the contamination of payments from Big Pharma – they have the contamination of entitled landlords and bankers, for example, who stack public committees with friends and even employees while simultaneously running private special interest groups.  Indeed, they feel entitled to do so, falsely comforting themselves – despite decades of policy failures and contrary to any observable evidence – that they are somehow more capable than anyone picked at random from the community. Where pride was once seen as a serious flaw, it’s now a justification.)

Victoria Clark, Mikhaila Fogel, Matthew Kahn, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, and Benjamin Wittes consider The Manafort Guilty Plea, the Mueller Investigation, and the President:

Only three weeks ago, the president of the United States lauded Paul Manafort for bravely rejecting any cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller:

I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” – make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man! 8:21 AM – Aug 22, 2018

So much for that.

On Friday, Manafort, who was chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign from June to August 2016, pleaded guilty in federal district court in Washington to two charges of conspiracy against the United States—one involving a lobbying scheme that involved financial crimes and foreign-agent registration violations, and the other involving witness tampering. In the course of his plea, Manafort also admitted guilt on bank-fraud charges on which a federal jury in Virginia hung last month. And in exchange for the special counsel’s office dropping the remaining federal charges against him in the District of Columbia, he stopped “refusing to ‘break’” and entered into a cooperation agreement that obligates him to “cooperate fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly with the Government in any and all matters” in which it may need him.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders hastily sought to put distance between the plea agreement and the president, stating: “This had absolutely nothing to do with the President or his victorious 2016 Presidential campaign. It is totally unrelated.”

As it was with the president’s tweet three weeks ago, the White House is once again way out on a limb.

The grain of truth in Sanders’s claim is that most, though not all, of the criminal conduct to which Manafort admitted preceded his work for the Trump campaign, and none directly implicates the campaign itself or Trump. But it is only a grain. For one thing, Trump constantly boasted of hiring the “best people”—and even in March 2016, when Manafort first joined the campaign, it was clear that he was superlative chiefly in influence peddling on behalf of unsavory characters close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. His questionable reputation and murky relationships with former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska were matters of public knowledge long before the campaign began.

Indeed, though the specific crimes to which Manafort has now pleaded were not yet public, the most rudimentary vetting would have flagged him as a person of particularly high risk. As Franklin Foer noted in the Atlantic last month, Sen. John McCain rejected Manafort’s involvement in the 2008 Republican National Convention because of his disreputable ties even back then, before his involvement with Yanukovych. Trump hired him anyway.

And it gets worse for the president. Manafort has admitted to committing crimes while serving as Trump’s campaign manager, although those crimes were not committed in his capacity as campaign manager or on behalf of the campaign. Manafort was found guilty in Virginia on, among other charges, a bank fraud allegation involving conduct that the indictment describes as continuing through May 2016—the second month of Manafort’s formal involvement with the Trump campaign. But as part of his plea on Friday, Manafort admitted to the charges against him in his Virginia trial on which the jury hung, including charges of bank fraud that took place between April and November 2016—that is, during the time in which he led the Trump campaign. He also admitted that during his time as campaign chairman, he had still not met his disclosure obligations under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), incurring criminal liability.

Stephen Bates, Jack Goldsmith, and Benjamin Wittes assess The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the Coming Mueller Report:

According to countless media accounts and President Trump’s own lawyers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is writing some kind of report on allegations of presidential obstruction of justice. Exactly what sort of report this may be is unclear. But to the extent that Mueller is contemplating a referral to Congress of possible impeachment material, he has two historical models of such documents to draw on. One, the so-called Starr Report, is famous and publicly available. The other is a document most people have never heard of: the “Road Map” that Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski sent to Congress in 1974 and that informed its impeachment proceedings, which were already underway.

The Road Map was very different from the Starr Report. Where Starr wrote a lengthy narrative, the Road Map was reportedly spare. Where Starr evaluated the legal relevance of the evidence he referred, the Road Map apparently contained no analysis and drew no conclusions. And where the Starr Report was in bookstores worldwide and today is just a Google search away, the Road Map is largely forgotten.

There’s a reason for that: The Road Map remains under seal at the National Archives. Kenneth Starr couldn’t read it. You can’t read it. And, remarkably for a document that may be the best model available for his current project, Mueller can’t read it either.

The three of us filed a petition on Thursday to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that seeks to rectify this problem. Represented by attorneys at Protect Democracy, we asked the court to unseal the Road Map. We did so because the document is of significant historical interest and significant contemporary interest. As we will explain in this post, which is drawn from declarations that we and others filed in the matter, the Road Map is one of the few significant pieces of Watergate history that remains unavailable to the public. The document is also keenly relevant to current discussions of how Mueller should proceed. It is possible that it is even relevant to discussions taking place within the Mueller investigation itself.

It is time for Jaworski’s Road Map to see the light of day.

The Road Map grew out of intensive discussions within the Special Prosecutor’s Office about how to proceed against President Richard Nixon for alleged crimes uncovered by the special prosecutor’s investigation of the Watergate scandal. The Watergate Special Prosecution Force had obtained important evidence through the grand jury that the House Judiciary Committee had not obtained. Some members of the Special Prosecutor’s Office wanted to indict the president for obstruction of justice and related crimes. Others in the office argued that the special prosecutor should draft a presentment charging Nixon with crimes, including obstruction of justice. According to this plan, the grand jury would approve the presentment and the presiding federal district court judge, John Sirica, would transmit it to the House of Representatives for its consideration in deliberations about possible impeachment proceedings against the president.

Tom Kertscher writes Scott Walker misleads in claiming Tony Evers could have revoked teacher license in porn viewing case:

Walker says: “A teacher watched hard-core pornography in his classroom,” along with other inappropriate behavior, but Tony Evers didn’t revoke the teacher’s license and “the teacher is still in the classroom.”

The first part of Walker’s statement, about the teacher’s behavior, is correct on two points; but on two other points, the validity of the allegations is unclear.

Meanwhile, the more important part of Walker’s statement is misleading in saying Evers could have and didn’t revoke the teacher’s license. There was a lack of legal basis for revocation at the time — made clear by the fact that Walkers and Evers backed a change in state law so that teachers can be fired for viewing pornography at school.

The Milwaukee County Zoo announces birth of its first-ever red panda cub:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny, with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 6:34 AM and sunset 7:05 PM, for 12h 31m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 27.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1812, French dictator Napoleon enters Moscow, only to find the city abandoned:

On September 14, 1812, Napoleon moved into Moscow. However, he was surprised to have received no delegation from the city. At the approach of a victorious general, the civil authorities customarily presented themselves at the gates of the city with the keys to the city in an attempt to safeguard the population and their property. As nobody received Napoleon he sent his aides into the city, seeking out officials with whom the arrangements for the occupation could be made. When none could be found, it became clear that the Russians had left the city unconditionally.^[85] In a normal surrender, the city officials would be forced to find billets and make arrangements for the feeding of the soldiers, but the situation caused a free-for-all in which every man was forced to find lodgings and sustenance for himself. Napoleon was secretly disappointed by the lack of custom as he felt it robbed him of a traditional victory over the Russians, especially in taking such a historically significant city.^[85] To make matters worse, Moscow had been stripped of all supplies by its governor, Feodor Rostopchin, who had also ordered the prisons to be opened.

Before the order was received to evacuate Moscow, the city had a population of approximately 270,000 people. As much of the population pulled out, the remainder were burning or robbing the remaining stores of food, depriving the French of their use. As Napoleon entered the Kremlin, there still remained one-third of the original population, mainly consisting of foreign traders, servants and people who were unable or unwilling to flee. These, including the several hundred strong French colony, attempted to avoid the troops.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Patrick Marley reports Legal woes at teen prison have cost Wisconsin $20.6 million and counting:

Lawsuits over the problems at Wisconsin’s juvenile prison complex have cost the state $20.6 million so far and those costs will continue to rise — possibly by large sums if some cases aren’t resolved in the state’s favor.

The facility for more than three years has been under criminal investigation for prisoner abuse and child neglect. If charges are issued, that could open the state to more legal exposure from lawsuits.

“It’s the cost of getting it wrong,” state Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee) said of the state’s legal tab.

RELATED: Wisconsin will pay nearly $19 million to former teen inmate injured in suicide attempt

The legal fees and settlements come on top of an $80 million plan by Gov. Scott Walker and lawmakers to close Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls by 2021 and replace them with regional facilities for teen inmates.

Glenn Kessler writes Anatomy of a Trump rally: 68 percent of claims are false, misleading or lacking evidence:

More than two-thirds of every factual claim made by President Trump at two of his rallies turns out to be false, misleading or unsupported by evidence.

In July, The Fact Checker examined every factual claim made by the president at a rally in Montana. He returned to Montana on Sept. 6, and we decided once again to put every statement of material fact to the truth test to see whether the July rally was an outlier.

In July, 76 percent of his 98 statements were false, misleading or unsupported by the evidence. Last week the tally, out of 88 statements, was 68 percent. The average percentage for the two rallies was 72 percent.

Trump may have done slightly better, fact-wise, at the more recent rally because he spoke more about bills he had signed and actions he had taken. But he veered off course with his tendency to unnecessarily hype good economic data with assertions that it was the best in U.S. history.

John Wagner and David Fahrenthold report Trump asked to have Braille removed from elevators in early 1980s, executive says:

Barbara Res, a former vice president in charge of construction, made the allegation in an op-ed published Wednesday by the New York Daily News and in a subsequent interview with The Washington Post, in which she said the incident happened in 1980 or 1981 as Trump Tower was being designed.

According to Res’s account, an architect came to Trump’s office to show him designs for the interiors of residential elevator cabs in Trump Tower, which also hosts businesses. He noticed dots next to the buttons and asked what they were, she said.

“Braille,” the architect replied, according to Res.

Trump then told the architect to “get rid of it,” and the architect resisted, saying doing so would be against the law, she said.

“Get rid of the (expletive) Braille. No blind people are going to live in Trump Tower. Just do it,” Trump told the architect, according to Res’s account.

The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Following the Money that Followed the Meeting:

According to BuzzFeed News, federal law enforcement officials are investigating two waves of curious financial transfers involving Aras and Emin Agalarov that took place at two key points in time that could be relevant to the Russia investigation.

The first set came just 11 days after the June 9 meeting, when an offshore company controlled by [Aras] Agalarov wired more than $19.5 million to his account at a bank in New York.

The second flurry began shortly after Trump was elected. The Agalarov family started sending what would amount to $1.2 million from their bank in Russia to an account in New Jersey controlled by the billionaire’s son, pop singer Emin Agalarov, and two of his friends. The account had been virtually dormant since the summer of 2015, according to records reviewed by BuzzFeed News, and bankers found it strange that activity in Emin Agalarov’s checking account surged after Trump’s victory.

After the election, that New Jersey account sent money to a company controlled by Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime business associate of the Agalarovs and their representative at the Trump Tower meeting. Kaveladze’s company, meanwhile, had long funded a music business set up by the person who first proposed the meeting to the Trump camp, Emin Agalarov’s brash British publicist, Rob Goldstone.

(…)

The transactions came to light after law enforcement officials instructed financial institutions in mid-2017 to go back through their records to look for suspicious behavior by people connected to the broader Trump-Russia investigation. The bankers filed “suspicious activity reports” to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which in turn shared them with the FBI, the IRS, congressional committees investigating Russian interference, and members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide clues to investigators looking into possible money laundering, tax evasion, or other misconduct. In the case of the Agalarovs and their associates, bankers raised red flags about the transactions but were unable to definitively say how the funds were used.

(…)

Over the past nine months, BuzzFeed News has reported on the financial behavior of Manafort, former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, accused foreign agent Maria Butina, GOP operative Peter W. Smith, and others.

In the case of the Agalarovs and their associates, the documents show funds moving quickly between accounts across the globe, often, bankers said, with no clear reason and with no clear purpose for how the money was supposed to be used.

BuzzFeed details exactly why the money transfers raised red flags. The timeline starts with the Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Kaveladze, and others, set up for the Agalarovs through Goldstone, which took place on June 9, 2016.

Eleven days later — on June 20, the day Trump fired campaign chief Corey Lewandowski and put Manafort in charge — Aras Agalarov used a company called Silver Valley Consulting to move millions that bankers flagged as suspicious.

Silver Valley’s only address is a post office box in the capital of the British Virgin Islands, a country seen as a haven for money laundering and tax evasion. On June 20, Silver Valley sent through its Zurich-based account at Societe Generale Suisse a wire transfer for a little more than $19.5 million to Agalarov’s account at Morgan Stanley in the US.

That same day, another entity controlled by Agalarov — ZAO Crocus International, an arm of his business empire — sent a wire transfer through Societe Generale Suisse for about $43,000 to the same Morgan Stanley account.

(…)

Swiss employees of the bank told their American colleagues that the account was closed in May 2017, but that “due to Swiss confidentiality laws the requested information cannot be provided.”

(…)

Between 2006 and 2016, Silver Valley made nearly 200 transactions for $190 million. Bankers believed that most were legitimate and were part of Agalarov’s global construction business. But some of the transactions raised red flags.

Bank officials said they found high, round-dollar amounts sent to or received from shell companies. Round-dollar wire transfers often trigger alarm bells because most transactions are not that clean. Bankers also noted that some of the transactions passed through multiple companies, a process that can indicate “layering,” a way to hide the original source of funds.

US bank examiners also found that Silver Valley received nearly $900,000 in 2012 from a Russian investigated in the past for tax evasion and embezzlement.

(…)

The following year, Silver Valley received two payments from an aviation firm that were flagged by bankers because they learned that a shareholder was involved with a suspected Russian money laundering scheme.

(I’ve linked here to the Committee to Investigate Russia as a friendly reminder that it’s a good collection – from national and international sources – of information on Russian interference in American democracy.)

The Curious Case of Shizo Kanakuri’s 1912 Olympic Marathon Run:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny, with a high of seventy-eight.  Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 7:07 PM, for 12h 34m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 18.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1759, Britain defeats France at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham:

The Battle of the Plains of Abraham, also known as the Battle of Quebec (Bataille des Plaines d’Abraham, or Première bataille de Québec in French), was a pivotal battle in the Seven Years’ War (referred to as the French and Indian War to describe the North American theatre). The battle, which began on 13 September 1759, was fought by the British Army and Navy against the French Army on a plateau just outside the walls of Quebec City, on land that was originally owned by a farmer named Abraham Martin, hence the name of the battle. The battle involved fewer than 10,000 troops between both sides, but proved to be a deciding moment in the conflict between France and Britain over the fate of New France, influencing the later creation of Canada.[4]

The culmination of a three-month siege by the British, the battle lasted about an hour. British troops commanded by General James Wolfe successfully resisted the column advance of French troops and Canadien militia under General Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, employing new tactics that proved extremely effective against standard military formations used in most large European conflicts. Both generals were mortally wounded during the battle; Wolfe received three gunshot wounds that ended his life within minutes of the beginning of the engagement and Montcalm died the next morning after receiving a musket ball wound just below his ribs. In the wake of the battle, the French evacuated the city; their remaining military force in Canada and the rest of North America came under increasing pressure from British forces.

France ceded most of its possessions in eastern North America to Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris.

Recommended for reading in full — 

John Wagner reports Trump questions number of deaths attributed to Hurricane Maria, falsely says Democrats created a higher count to make him look bad:

President Trump took issue Thursday with the number of deaths attributable to Hurricane Maria, falsely saying a much higher count had been generated by Democrats to “make me look as bad as possible.”

A sweeping report from George Washington University released last month estimated there were 2,975 “excess deaths” in the six months after the storm made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017.

Trump said on Twitter that “they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths” when he visited the island about two weeks after the storm.

….

Trump’s tweets — which came as a highly dangerous Hurricane Florence churned toward the Carolinas — brought an immediate rebuke from Democrats in Congress, as well as some Republicans.

Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said she believes the figure of nearly 3,000 is sound.

“What kind of mind twists that statistic into ‘Oh, fake news is trying to hurt my image,’” she said. “How can you be so self-centered and try to distort the truth so much? It’s mind boggling.”

In a tweet, Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said only Trump “could see the tragedy in Puerto Rico and conclude that he is the victim. May God bless the souls of the nearly 3,000 Americans that died in Puerto Rico and may he take pity on your soul, Mr. President.”

(There may never have been a more excuse-making, irresponsible chief executive than Donald J. Trump.)

Seam Illing writes Trump’s ties to the Russian mafia go back 3 decades (“Journalist Craig Unger talks Russia, Trump, and “one of the greatest intelligence operations in history”):

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

I’ll ask you straightforwardly: Do you believe the Russian government successfully targeted and compromised Trump?

Craig Unger

Yes, absolutely. But let’s go back in time, because I think all of this began as a money-laundering operation with the Russian mafia. It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when traditional banks won’t, so it was a win-win for both sides.

The key point I want to get across in the book is that the Russian mafia is different than the American mafia, and I think a lot of Americans don’t understand this. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. When I interviewed Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Vladimir Putin’s boss at one point, I asked him about the mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.”

And that’s essential to the whole premise of the book. Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not.

Sean Illing

Let’s dig into this a bit. You claimed just now, as you do in the book, that the Russian mafia has been using Trump-branded real estate to launder money for over three decades. What evidence do you have to back this up?

Craig Unger

You really have to go back 20 or 30 years to understand who the key Russians were, what role they played in the Russian mafia, and how they related to Trump.

The very first episode that’s been documented, to my knowledge, was in 1984 when David Bogatin — who is a Russian mobster, convicted gasoline bootlegger, and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin came to that meeting prepared to spend $6 million, which is equivalent to about $15 million today.

Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. [Full interview continues @ Vox.com.]

The Committee to Investigate Russia asks Is Russian Money Behind Graham’s Growing Defense of Trump?:

The Intellectualist, a left-leaning news aggregator, points out that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has received at least $800,000 in campaign donations from a man with ties to Putin-allied oligarchs, which could explain why the Senator has been increasingly supportive of President Trump lately.

Ruth May, in a piece for the Dallas Morning News, details the donations from Len Blavatnik, “one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle.”

Data from the Federal Election Commission show that Blavatnik’s campaign contributions dating back to 2009-10 were fairly balanced across party lines and relatively modest for a billionaire. During that season he contributed $53,400. His contributions increased to $135,552 in 2011-12 and to $273,600 in 2013-14, still bipartisan.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik’s political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

In 2017, donations continued, with $41,000 going to both Republican and Democrat candidates, along with $1 million to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund.

An infographic accompanying May’s article notes the following:

Blavatnik contributed $800,000 to the Security is Strength PAC, associated with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., via Access Industries.

Blavatnik and oligarch Viktor Vekselberg met attending university in Russia years ago, and together they now own a 20.5% stake in Rusal, oligarch Oleg Deripaska‘s aluminum company.

Further, nearly 4 percent of Deripaska’s stake in Rusal is owned by Putin’s state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin.

Earlier this year, The Associated Press reported that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin’s interests with Western governments. Deripaska’s name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller’s team by Manafort’s attorneys …

(…)

Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle. They are among several Americans who also merit Mueller’s scrutiny.

The first is his cousin Andrew Intrater, and the second is Alexander Shustorovich.

(See also How Putin’s oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns and GOP campaigns took $7.35 million from oligarch linked to Russia, both stories reported from the Dallas Morning News.)

Anne Applebaum writes A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come (“Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well”):

onarchy, tyranny, oligarchy, democracy—these were all familiar to Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. But the illiberal one-party state, now found all over the world—think of China, Venezuela, Zimbabwe—was first developed by Lenin, in Russia, starting in 1917. In the political-science textbooks of the future, the Soviet Union’s founder will surely be remembered not for his Marxist beliefs, but as the inventor of this enduring form of political organization. It is the model that many of the world’s budding autocrats use today.

Unlike Marxism, the Leninist one-party state is not a philosophy. It is a mechanism for holding power. It works because it clearly defines who gets to be the elite—the political elite, the cultural elite, the financial elite. In monarchies such as prerevolutionary France and Russia, the right to rule was granted to the aristocracy, which defined itself by rigid codes of breeding and etiquette. In modern Western democracies, the right to rule is granted, at least in theory, by different forms of competition: campaigning and voting, meritocratic tests that determine access to higher education and the civil service, free markets. Old-fashioned social hierarchies are usually part of the mix, but in modern Britain, America, Germany, France, and until recently Poland, we have assumed that competition is the most just and efficient way to distribute power. The best-run businesses should make the most money. The most appealing and competent politicians should rule. The contests between them should take place on an even playing field, to ensure a fair outcome.

Lenin’s one-party state was based on different values. It overthrew the aristocratic order. But it did not put a competitive model in place. The Bolshevik one-party state was not merely undemocratic; it was also anticompetitive and antimeritocratic. Places in universities, civil-service jobs, and roles in government and industry did not go to the most industrious or the most capable. Instead, they went to the most loyal. People advanced because they were willing to conform to the rules of party membership. Though those rules were different at different times, they were consistent in certain ways. They usually excluded the former ruling elite and their children, as well as suspicious ethnic groups. They favored the children of the working class. Above all, they favored people who loudly professed belief in the creed, who attended party meetings, who participated in public displays of enthusiasm. Unlike an ordinary oligarchy, the one-party state allows for upward mobility: True believers can advance. As Hannah Arendt wrote back in the 1940s, the worst kind of one-party state “invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

Lenin’s one-party system also reflected his disdain for the idea of a neutral state, of apolitical civil servants and an objective media. He wrote that freedom of the press “is a deception.”