Desperate Times for the Constitution

47 may well be, and most probably is, creating a force of MAGA people who have been convicted and pardoned of violent crimes and seditious behaviour which they undertook to overturn 47's election loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

His will be a lawless band. His troops will not be sworn to uphold the Constitution, but will be sworn by oath and promises of future pardons for any criminal act they might undertake, to do whatever he asks of them.

This force may well be tasked with eliminating persons whom 47 cannot control and/or who will thwart any unlawful or seditious MAGA acts they see.

Certainly this concept is known to many and I hope those who value the Constitution will enact a new organization to protect it from 47's sedition.

The Future of the United States of America, together with our rule of law,  may well require that some Patriots act outside of the law in order to preserve that law for the country.

The job of such an organization will be to monitor all the member of 47's force to determine whether they have been tasked with an order to perform an act against the Constitution. When such a task is identified, then the organization is tasked with preventing said act by 47's lawless band.

Any means necessary to prevent said act should be authorized, up to and including termination of the individual.

Quiet Liberals?

 

Some have raised concerns that seemingly fewer liberals are bashing 45 than before.

 

It's different now.  We fought for decency. We lost.

 

Now some will pursue protecting many actual underprivileged people from the Evil people who will harm us.

 

This fight uses lawsuits, individual resistance to Evil actions directed at them, protests and whatever real tools we have. 

 

The fight will be long and nasty but not fodder for headlines.

 

  

Why Pardons??

 

We should ask the question: Why did he pardon all the people in jail from the Jan 6 insurrection?

The obvious answer may be the right one: He created a recruiting pool for an off-book militia to carry out whatever acts of violence he wishes.

Now, he has a list of 1,600 +/- people who have committed political acts of violence at his request, have served jail time for that offense and have been pardoned and are now free. 

Some of them will be willing to commit further acts of violence at his request. A major reason is that they know they will be pardoned for any crime. Thus, they have zero external motivation to avoid committing further violence.

Throw an opponent out a window? Done.

Poison an obstreperous judge? Done.

Push a journalist off a bridge? Done. Only one ??

Beat and torture a social media critic? No problem.

Identifying the Commuted

A list of crimes, sentences and city of residence for these (whom I) commute the sentences of the following individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, to time served as of January 20, 2025: • Stewart Rhodes • Kelly Meggs • Kenneth Harrelson • Thomas Caldwell • Jessica Watkins • Roberto Minuta • Edward Vallejo • David Moerschel • Joseph Hackett • Ethan Nordean • Joseph Biggs • Zachary Rehl • Dominic Pezzola • Jeremy Bertino

ChatGPT

Here is a list of the individuals convicted of crimes related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, along with their sentences, crimes, and city of residence as of the latest available information:

1. Stewart Rhodes

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and other related charges.
• Sentence: 18 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Granbury, Texas.

2. Kelly Meggs

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy and other related charges.
• Sentence: 12 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Dunnellon, Florida.

3. Kenneth Harrelson

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy and other related charges.
• Sentence: 4 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Titusville, Florida.

4. Thomas Caldwell

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and other related charges.
• Sentence: 4 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Berryville, Virginia.

5. Jessica Watkins

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy and other related charges.
• Sentence: 8 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Woodstock, Ohio.

6. Roberto Minuta

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy and other related charges.
• Sentence: 4 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Ocoee, Florida.

7. Edward Vallejo

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy and other related charges.
• Sentence: Awaiting sentencing.
• City of Residence: Phoenix, Arizona.

8. David Moerschel

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy and other related charges.
• Sentence: 7 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Sarasota, Florida.

9. Joseph Hackett

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy and other related charges.
• Sentence: 10 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Sarasota, Florida.

10. Ethan Nordean

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and other related charges.
• Sentence: 18 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Auburn, Washington.

11. Joseph Biggs

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and other related charges.
• Sentence: 17 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Ormond Beach, Florida.

12. Zachary Rehl

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and other related charges.
• Sentence: 15 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

13. Dominic Pezzola

• Crime: Destruction of government property, assaulting law enforcement officers, and other related charges.
• Sentence: 10 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Rochester, New York.

14. Jeremy Bertino

• Crime: Seditious conspiracy and other related charges.
• Sentence: 7 years in prison.
• City of Residence: Belmont, North Carolina.

---

This list reflects the crimes for which they were convicted, their sentences as of the latest available data, and their cities of residence.

Here's how Corporations Use Your Browsing History to Overcharge You - F T C

January 18, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

'Shortly before midnight last night, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published its initial findings from a study it undertook last July when it asked eight large companies to turn over information about the data they collect about consumers, product sales, and how the surveillance the companies used affected consumer prices. The FTC focused on the middlemen hired by retailers. Those middlemen use algorithms to tweak and target prices to different markets.

The initial findings of the FTC using data from six of the eight companies show that those prices are not static. Middlemen can target prices to individuals using their location, browsing patterns, shopping history, and even the way they move a mouse over a webpage. They can also use that information to show higher-priced products first in web searches. The FTC found that the intermediaries—the middlemen—worked with at least 250 retailers.

“Initial staff findings show that retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and services—from a person's location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage,” said FTC chair Lina Khan. “The FTC should continue to investigate surveillance pricing practices because Americans deserve to know how their private data is being used to set the prices they pay and whether firms are charging different people different prices for the same good or service.”

The FTC has asked for public comment on consumers’ experience with surveillance pricing.

FTC commissioner Andrew N. Ferguson, whom Trump has tapped to chair the commission in his incoming administration, dissented from the report.

Matt Stoller of the nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project, which is working “to address today’s crisis of concentrated economic power,” wrote that “[t]he antitrust enforcers (Lina Khan et al) went full Tony Montana on big business this week before Trump people took over.”

Stoller made a list. The FTC sued John Deere “for generating $6 billion by prohibiting farmers from being able to repair their own equipment,” released a report showing that pharmacy benefit managers had “inflated prices for specialty pharmaceuticals by more than $7 billion,” “sued corporate landlord Greystar, which owns 800,000 apartments, for misleading renters on junk fees,” and “forced health care private equity powerhouse Welsh Carson to stop monopolization of the anesthesia market.”

It sued Pepsi for conspiring to give Walmart exclusive discounts that made prices higher at smaller stores, “​​[l]eft a roadmap for parties who are worried about consolidation in AI by big tech by revealing a host of interlinked relationships among Google, Amazon and Microsoft and Anthropic and OpenAI,” said gig workers can’t be sued for antitrust violations when they try to organize, and forced game developer Cognosphere to pay a $20 million fine for marketing loot boxes to teens under 16 that hid the real costs and misled the teens.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “sued Capital One for cheating consumers out of $2 billion by misleading consumers over savings accounts,” Stoller continued. It “forced Cash App purveyor Block…to give $120 million in refunds for fostering fraud on its platform and then refusing to offer customer support to affected consumers,” “sued Experian for refusing to give consumers a way to correct errors in credit reports,” ordered Equifax to pay $15 million to a victims’ fund for “failing to properly investigate errors on credit reports,” and ordered “Honda Finance to pay $12.8 million for reporting inaccurate information that smeared the credit reports of Honda and Acura drivers.”

The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice sued “seven giant corporate landlords for rent-fixing, using the software and consulting firm RealPage,” Stoller went on. It “sued $600 billion private equity titan KKR for systemically misleading the government on more than a dozen acquisitions.”

“Honorary mention goes to [Secretary Pete Buttigieg] at the Department of Transportation for suing Southwest and fining Frontier for ‘chronically delayed flights,’” Stoller concluded. He added more results to the list in his newsletter BIG.

Meanwhile, last night, while the leaders in the cryptocurrency industry were at a ball in honor of President-elect Trump’s inauguration, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency. By morning he appeared to have made more than $25 billion, at least on paper. According to Eric Lipton at the New York Times, “ethics experts assailed [the business] as a blatant effort to cash in on the office he is about to occupy again.”

Adav Noti, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told Lipton: “It is literally cashing in on the presidency—creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office. It is beyond unprecedented.” Cryptocurrency leaders worried that just as their industry seems on the verge of becoming mainstream, Trump’s obvious cashing-in would hurt its reputation. Venture capitalist Nick Tomaino posted: “Trump owning 80 percent and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it.”

Yesterday the European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, asked X, the social media company owned by Trump-adjacent billionaire Elon Musk, to hand over internal documents about the company’s algorithms that give far-right posts and politicians more visibility than other political groups. The European Union has been investigating X since December 2023 out of concerns about how it deals with the spread of disinformation and illegal content. The European Union’s Digital Services Act regulates online platforms to prevent illegal and harmful activities, as well as the spread of disinformation.

Today in Washington, D.C., the National Mall was filled with thousands of people voicing their opposition to President-elect Trump and his policies. Online speculation has been rampant that Trump moved his inauguration indoors to avoid visual comparisons between today’s protesters and inaugural attendees. Brutally cold weather also descended on President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, but a sea of attendees nonetheless filled the National Mall.

Trump has always understood the importance of visuals and has worked hard to project an image of an invincible leader. Moving the inauguration indoors takes away that image, though, and people who have spent thousands of dollars to travel to the capital to see his inauguration are now unhappy to discover they will be limited to watching his motorcade drive by them. On social media, one user posted: “MAGA doesn’t realize the symbolism of [Trump] moving the inauguration inside: The billionaires, millionaires and oligarchs will be at his side, while his loyal followers are left outside in the cold. Welcome to the next 4+ years.”

Trump is not as good at governing as he is at performance: his approach to crises is to blame Democrats for them. But he is about to take office with majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, putting responsibility for governance firmly into his hands.

Right off the bat, he has at least two major problems at hand.

Last night, Commissioner Tyler Harper of the Georgia Department of Agriculture suspended all “poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets, and sales” until further notice after officials found Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or bird flu, in a commercial flock. As birds die from the disease or are culled to prevent its spread, the cost of eggs is rising—just as Trump, who vowed to reduce grocery prices, takes office.

There have been 67 confirmed cases of the bird flu in the U.S. among humans who have caught the disease from birds. Most cases in humans are mild, but public health officials are watching the virus with concern because bird flu variants are unpredictable. On Friday, outgoing Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra announced $590 million in funding to Moderna to help speed up production of a vaccine that covers the bird flu. Juliana Kim of NPR explained that this funding comes on top of $176 million that Health and Human Services awarded to Moderna last July.

The second major problem is financial. On Friday, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen wrote to congressional leaders to warn them that the Treasury would hit the debt ceiling on January 21 and be forced to begin using extraordinary measures in order to pay outstanding obligations and prevent defaulting on the national debt. Those measures mean the Treasury will stop paying into certain federal retirement accounts as required by law, expecting to make up that difference later.

Yellen reminded congressional leaders: “The debt limit does not authorize new spending, but it creates a risk that the federal government might not be able to finance its existing legal obligations that Congresses and Presidents of both parties have made in the past.” She added, “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Both the avian flu and the limits of the debt ceiling must be managed, and managed quickly, and solutions will require expertise and political skill.

Rather than offering their solutions to these problems, the Trump team leaked that it intended to begin mass deportations on Tuesday morning in Chicago, choosing that city because it has large numbers of immigrants and because Trump’s people have been fighting with Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat. Michelle Hackman, Joe Barrett, and Paul Kiernan of the Wall Street Journal, who broke the story, reported that Trump’s people had prepared to amplify their efforts with the help of right-wing media.

But once the news leaked of the plan and undermined the “shock and awe” the administration wanted, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said the team was reconsidering it.

—

Notes:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-surveillance-pricing-study-indicates-wide-range-personal-data-used-set-individualized-consumer

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/10/andrew-ferguson-ftc-chair-trump-00193517

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/surveillance-pricing-6b-research-summaries-ferguson-dissent-final.pdf

https://www.regulations.gov/docket/FTC-2025-0007

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/genshin-impact-game-developer-will-be-banned-selling-lootboxes-teens-under-16-without-parental

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/18/trump-meme-coin-25-billion

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/us/politics/trump-meme-coin-crypto.html

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-addresses-additional-investigatory-measures-x-ongoing-proceedings-under-digital-services

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/17/eu-asks-x-for-internal-documents-about-algorithms-as-it-steps-up-investigation

https://www.newsweek.com/peoples-march-photos-show-large-dc-protest-before-trump-inauguration-2017249

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/thousands-gather-washington-protest-trump-inauguration-2025-01-18/

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-transition-inauguration-news-01-18-25/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/18/us/bird-flu-georgia-suspends-poultry-activities-commercial-flock/index.html

https://georgiarecorder.com/briefs/first-case-of-commercial-bird-flu-is-a-serious-threat-to-ag-industry/

https://www.iflscience.com/over-20-million-us-chickens-killed-by-bird-flu-contributing-to-egg-price-rises-77639

https://apnews.com/article/treasury-debt-limit-janet-yellen-7e598f2811d75ad5159f9338f7cdce16

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2798

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-to-begin-large-scale-deportations-tuesday-e1bd89bd

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/01/18/chicago-immigration-raids/

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/bird-flu-is-raising-red-flags-among-health-officials

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2025/01/17/hhs-provides-590-million-accelerate-pandemic-influenza-mrna-based-vaccine-development-enhance-platform-capability-other-emerging-infectious-disease.html

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/18/nx-s1-5266868/bird-flu-vaccine-moderna

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