Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, August 6, 2020
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86 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The headline of the day-
Clorox says disinfectant wipes shortage may last until 2021
The Florida headline of the day-
After botching Florida’s unemployment system, consultant just won a $110 million state contract
@Bill: Failing up.
Gorgona: Italy’s last penal colony where 100 criminals care for 180 farm animals
This article by Norm Ornstein gives a good flavor for why I say “the Republican Party of Today is not the Republican Party of the past”. I suspect James And Stephen would see a lot to agree with there.
Ornstein is older than me and so remembers when decent Republicans were in the ascendency. But I grew up after they had taken that first draft of poison: the Goldwater era pitch to racist Democrats, “You don’t have to deal with the changes the Civil Rights movement is bringing to your world if you throw in with us. We will ask nothing of you and defend you to others.”
The first time I ever identified someone as Republican first and foremost was with Reagan, and in my youthful naïveté I was certain the majority of voters would see him for the hollow shell he was. However, I still differentiated between national and local (at the time, NY State) Republicans, even after David Stockman’s book came out where he admitted that the entire Reagan economic policy was based on lies and elementary math mistakes, and their governing philosophy was simply that the country really would grow stronger if the rich were exempted from “onerous” taxes, and it didn’t much matter how that was done. The best policies were the simplest, and the best implementation of them was to enact them without excessive though or oversight and let the magic of the free market carry the day.
But by the time Gingrich became Speaker of the House and Limbaugh was invited to be feted in the halls of Congress I knew the party had entered a horrible feedback loop, attracting the worst people who in turn repulsed the best. Norm Ornstein knew the decent Republicans he describes when they were at the pinnacle of their power. I knew them when they were in decline, pushed aside as irrelevant by the next generation.
@OzarkHillbilly:
No, no.
Pays kickbacks in full and on time.
@Bill:
@OzarkHillbilly:
Actually, he didn’t fail, he developed just the unemployment system that the Scott administration wanted and it functioned as intended during the pandemic.
Yesterday there was a link on Memeorandum to an interview with DiSantis, where he admits that the system was designed to frustrate applicants, thereby reducing unemployment costs and the unemployment rate. He didn’t call Scott out by name, but threw so much shade at him that nothing could grow.
@Kathy: I sit down corrected.
@MarkedMan:
While I agree Repubs have shifted significantly in the last few decades, it’s not in recent memory. Reagan was 40 years ago and since most people don’t start noticing or caring about political differences till they are in the teens at best, that slides the gap back to over half a century, possibly even up to 75 years if you use college students as your basis.
That means a huge chunk of Gen X, vast majority of Millennials and everybody born after 1990 has never known the party you speak of. It’s always been like this for them so the question becomes “who keeps propagating the nostalgia of the Good Ole’ GOP?” A 30 yr old voter has only known the Moral Majority and TEA Party nuts – tell them about Rockefeller Republicans and they think you are crazy.
It’s kinda like the Lost Cause in it’s own way. The mythologizing about how it “used to be” gets feed to the upcoming generation who can see with their own eyes it’s BS….. but it’s better BS then reality. Nostalgia and denial let vicious cycles start and keep going because otherwise you’d have to admit things have changed for the worse. “Decent” Republicans became a vanishing breed because, like cops, they tolerated too many bad apples to ever really be considered decent – you cannot keep compromising yourself and your morals without risk of losing who you are. Trump is the merely final symptom of this wasting disease, the thing that freaks you out enough to finally go to the doctor only to learn you waited too long.
@MarkedMan:
Excellent article.
@Bill: The state of FL got the unemployment system Rick Scott wanted, clumsy enough to suppress unemployment claims.
ETA I see Sleeping Dog beat me to this observation.
@KM:
The GOP will die out as a national party in the next 2-3 election cycles unless they change dramatically. Mostly because their base is dying off, and they offer nothing to people currently young or of color. Texas will turn Blue if not 2020, then 2024. NC is already there. Georgia will probably become completely Blue in 2024 as well. Arizona is going the way of Colorado and New Mexico. Ohio, on the other hand, seems to be turning more red, as well as Missouri. I’ll trade growing states vs dying states every day of the week.
@KM: Good points. Here’s a couple of observations that go along with them.
As expected from what you said the younger someone is, i.e. the farther from the era of decent Republicans, the less likely they are to self identify as a Republican. This has been steadily true since at least 1994.
You mentioned the start must have been fifty years ago. The start actually has a pretty precise date: 56 years ago when Goldwater strategists convinced key Republican leaders to pursue the Southern Strategy. Other Republican leaders argued strongly against it in private or even publicly, such as Senator Jacob Javits whose lengthy 1964 N.Y. Times Magazine editorial outlined exactly what would happen if they pursued the strategy.
Even as late as 1988-1992 there was a competent and serious Republican administration. But 1992 was the final gasp of that generation. Republicans fully embraced their golden hazed memories of Reagan’s Potemkin Village, and repudiated the real world compromises necessary to actually govern represented by George H. W. Bush.
Some photos of an absolutely packed high school in Georgia found their way into the public sphere–I believe they were featured on CNN.
According to a thread on Twitter, the student who took the photo has been suspended, the yearbook teacher is in hot water over the photo, and another teacher is in trouble because his or her spouse posted on social media that the school is a mess.
If your beef is that people are out there telling the truth, maybe it’s not those who are raising their voices who are in the wrong here.
@Jen:
Dman straight.
@Jen:
An example of the utter arrogance of the petty despots that populate school districts. To believe that threats and punishment would keep the ineptitude of the district from public view is ludicrous.
Let’s look forward to the effected teachers and students dragging their sorry asses before a judge. ACLU where are you!
@Bill:
When I was hired for my state legislature’s budget staff, one of the reasons I got the job was I was the only applicant with a lengthy background in technology and software. The state had recently been through multiple software acquisition fiascos. One of the things I learned from going back through the history — my state’s and some others who were willing to talk to me — is that states suck at writing requirements.
As for Deloitte winning a subsequent contract for a human services support system, keep in mind that the human services systems have to meet not just state requirements, but a whole lengthy list of federal requirements. Among those, the feds often require that states contract with “qualified” vendors. There are a handful of such companies: Deloitte is a relative newcomer, EDS, IBM, and a couple of others. In some cases, a state puts out a request for proposals and only one of the qualified companies responds.
@Bill & @Sleeping Dog:
Came here to say this. Our Social Safety Nets are not failing because of technical issues — they are functioning just as their architects intended (i.e. making it hard to access these services).
This is why, while technical updates are important, policy updates are far more important. Tech systems are just the manifestation of policy and the underlying ideologies and biases.
We like to say things were “botched” because no one wants to admit that we are addicted to punishing poor people (and by that we really mean Black and people of color–we’re just more than ok with sacrificing poor Whites in the process, because they probably did something bad otherwise they wouldn’t be poor).
@OzarkHillbilly: “Failing up.”
Only if the Florida unemployment was actually a failure, instead of doing exactly what the state wanted it to do.
Hat tip to the dozen people who said this before I did!
@mattbernius:
There can be snafus even when the intentions are pure, the Obamacare website roll out is an example. And as @Michael Cain: points out state governments can be terrible at writing the specification, that is why you often see request for bid for specific products rather than request for proposals to meet a specific need. They are terrible at writing the spec and supervising the development.
That’s not to say that the private sector doesn’t screw these things up, there is a whole history of “shelfware” at most large corporations. It’s just that the private sector can implement how they want out of sight of prying eyes, while the public sector is often audited for compliance with the spec.
@MarkedMan: I remember heated debates about Goldwater in my freshman dorm. I have been reading Rick Pearlstein’s Before the Storm, a detailed history of the Goldwater campaign. What’s the French line about the more things change? It’s all there, the racism (dogwhistled and not), the apocalyptic portrayal of Dems and moderate Rs as commies who would sell out the country, the cultlike devotion, the overflowed large halls (albeit listening to generally boring speeches by Goldwater), the race riots (real ones), the conspiracy theories, the wink and nod relationship with the KKK, and Goldwater was the heir, not the builder, of his business. About all that’s missing is Roe v Wade (1973), and it was the conservatives bitching about the Supreme Court. It was the birth of Movement Conservatism, as now, financed by wealthy donors opposed to regulation and taxes.
We even had the Lincoln Project ads, sorta. The famous”Daisy” ad was produced by the Doyle Dane Berbach agency and paid for by the Johnson campaign. They only paid to run it once, then it went “viral”.
Goldwater lost the general election “bigly”, but he sure showed how to win the Republican nomination.
@Sleeping Dog:
So true. When I was working for a large telecom company, there was “the new billing system” project. $150M (in mid-1990s dollars) was spent and resulted in exactly zero lines of working code. But no one outside the company knew that $150M had gone down a rat hole.
@Sleeping Dog:
Knowing a bit of the inside track, Obamacare was a bit of a unique case. There were screw-ups on all sides (not to mention a timeline that was deeply unrealistic for the complexity of that challenge). But at the end of the day, they were launching a completely new initiative rather than implementing a policy update to a legacy social safety net system/policy.
Speaking from being inside the Civic/Giv Tech space, we do see that from time to time. But the far more common issue is that these systems are set up to create friction (theoretically to ensure that only “deserving” people get aid… don’t get me started on how we define “deserving”). And, to Michael’s point, that also gets exacerbated by inconsistent/fragmented roll-out at the county and municipal level.
I also 100% agree that some of these issues exist in traditional enterprise systems applications (and that many of those also trace back to explicit internal policy decisions).
From an article about North Paulding High School:
I already never wanted to hear another “joke” about the French being “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” We’re the world’s leading quitters.
A Republican faces reality…
Link
I’ve been watching this blog for quite some time. Is this just an echo chamber or are alternative views allowed?
Breaking:
NYAG James files suit to dissolve the NRA.
YYuuuuuge!!!
@Monala: Oh for crying out loud. All of the “but did you do X” would be hysterical if they weren’t so pathetic. Facebook armchair physicians second-guessing those who went to medical school and actually became doctors is yet another sign of our national decline.
According to NBC, 200,000 have been left homeless by the explosion in Beirut. The death toll keeps climbing.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
NRA is going down.
How is Russia going to funnel tens of millions of dollars into the Republican party, now?
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
And what will the ammosexuals do?
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Dissolving the NRA seems like overreach, and is worrisome from a 1st amendment angle. Prosecuting the individuals doesn’t have that problem of course.
Politically, it fits into a “Democrats are coming for your guns” narrative.
And realistically, I would rather the leadership just steal the money than spend it on more advertising and campaign donations.
And on a petty note, this makes Ollie North right (he was fired for pointing out the graft), and no one wants Ollie North to be right about anything.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Politically, this is terrible. Republicans run on guns, abortion, and grievance. Two out of three right here. If you believe negative partisanship drives turnout and elections, this is bad for Democrats.
@Gustopher: There was commentary at the time that this flowed from North threatening to rat them out if he didn’t get a bigger cut and then the situation got out of hand.
@Jen: I had to laugh at one comment about it on Twitter:
On a more serious note, the guy has young kids. I hope he pulls through.
@Michael Cain: There is actually a huge body of research on this in the private sector. The go to book was, and is, “The Mythical Man Month”. Written in 1975, the author spent the next 20 years trying to make headway on the problem. In the 1995 update he laid out additional facets of the problem but cautioned against even hoping for significant improvements in the next decade.
To my mind, among large companies only Apple has addressed this successfully but does so in a way that is not practical for other publicly held companies. Basically, they come up with and collect concepts for products that will be transformative to people’s lives. They focus on the actions people will take with them and how they will perform their actions. They then identify key technological And infrastructure challenges that must be met before the product can be realized. Next, they form small groups to focus on those challenges. They don’t form a product development team until all those challenges have been retired. It’s why they are usually not the first one out the gate, but are often the ones to achieve sustained revenue from their relatively small suite of product families.
The concept for the iPad was in development for 25 years before it was marketed.
@Sleeping Dog: Working in the software world, I was naturally interested in the Healthcare.gov fiasco. While there were a lot of contributions to the roll-out disaster, the biggest point of failure was the company that, aside from developing most of the code, was supposed to integrate and deliver the efforts of everyone involved in this complex development effort. Rather than hire someone who was skilled in the state of the art in building and delivering complex systems, HHS chose a company that was skilled in building and delivering complex systems for the US federal government. There are some good analyses of what happened (here’s one), but I can’t emphasize enough that if you don’t have good technical leadership in this kind of endeavor, the rest of the effort almost doesn’t matter.
@Gustopher:
Anymore than dissolving Trump’s fraudulent charity?
@Scott:
I don’t believe this is going to drive anyone to vote for Trump that wasn’t already going to vote for Trump. But it does put a kink in laundering money into the GOP.
@Monala:
I’m waiting for someone to accuse Randy Fine of being a Deep State Plant in the pay of George Soros who’s trying to bring about the downfall of Donald Trump.
My pet peeve of the day: people who are producing content on important issues, who nonetheless speak as if they were teenagers.
This morning, I was listening to the otherwise very good Moonrise podcast, a Washington Post production about the race to the moon. In the midst of a discussion of the early Soviet space program, the host used cutesy language like, “And Khrushchev was like…And Korolev was like…” Some other famous podcasters have the same way of talking. Ira Glass, for example, often uses phrasing like, “OK, so there’s this guy…” I’ve watched a few Pod Save America videos recently, on which Alyssa Mastromonaco, a regular contributor, also has an acute version of this verbal habit.
I don’t want to sound pompous or stuffy but…Come on. Grown-ups talking about serious topics sound like they’re trivializing the content when they speak this way. ” “And Khrushchev was like…” yanked me out of what the host of Moonrise was saying, distracting me from what she was trying to say.
Sure, be humorous. For instance, I find Jon Meacham, who definitely speaks more like an adult, to be pretty funny at times. I also think it’s OK in some contexts to speak this way. Pod Save America often features political operatives having inside baseball discussions about House and Senate races, which might be not as grave an issue as the federal government’s botched coronavirus response. But it doesn’t sound right, at least to me, to speak in the same way about both topics.
Or I could just be a grumpy old man, yelling at my iPhone instead of my TV. I’m curious if other people feel the same way.
@Michael Cain: I’ve been an SBC/ATT customer for decades now. Through all the buying and selling of companies, they still don’t have a single billing system for their products. I still get separate bills for Wireless and Internet/Uverse/etc. I think they’ve tried but it has been 16 years since the big wireless/telecom merger.
Mike DeWine has tested positive for Covid-19. He says he’s asymptomatic and will be quarantining at home for the next 14 days.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: We’re talking turnout here, not voting preference. Democrats talking about gun regulations and abortion rights will not drive turnout of their voters but will incentivize Trump voters to make an extra effort.
@CSK: I think he faked a positive test to get out of meeting with Trump.
This blind good boy just found a puddle.
There’s a Hindu story that goes like this. An elderly man and his dog passed away on the same day. When the old man, accompanied by his dog, presented himself to the god Vishnu at the gates of Paradise, Vishnu told him that he must pass a number of tests before he would be allowed to enter. The old man agreed, and Vishnu proceeded to question him in great detail about his life. The old man answered as truthfully as he could, and finally Vishnu said, “You have passed all the tests that I have given you, therefore you may enter Paradise, but your dog must remain behind.” “Well,” said the man, “if my dog, who has been my companion for years and who has loved me unconditionally for all those years, cannot enter Paradise, then I will not enter Paradise, either.” Vishnu smiled at the old man, and grasping the old, wrinkled face, kissed the old man on the forehead and said, “That was the last test, enter both of you into Paradise.”
@Kingdaddy: Doesn’t bother me. And I really am a grumpy old(ish) man.
@Kingdaddy:
I’m with you. I don’t know where this came from. An annoying corollary of it is the tendency to voice all statement as if they were questions. “I am so, like, totally over him?” “We had fish for dinner last night?” Fifty years ago this was something some southern women did. Now practically everyone under sixty does it.
@Jen:
Can you blame him?
@Kingdaddy: I’m with you! I found Alyssa Mastromonaco very annoying, too. I am happy that Jon Favreau has returned from his parental leave.
@sam: I’ve dealt with so many smart and well spoken individuals to whom English is a 2nd (or 3rd, 4th or 5th) language that have odd intonations, quirks and habits that it’s all water off a ducks back to me….
@MarkedMan:
Ah, non-native speakers don’t bother me, either. I admire them. It’s 55-year-old men who sound like parodies of Valley Girls who annoy me.
Here’s what Donald Trump just said about Biden in Cleveland:
“No religion, no anything, hurt The bible, hurt God. He’s against God.”
How do you hurt the Bible?
@CSK: Styles change and the language moves on and doesn’t ask us permission. No one says “Forsooth” or “Zounds” anymore either…
My only gripe is when we lose a word with nothing to replace it. “Literally”. “Bi-weekly” or “Semi-weekly”. It doesn’t bother me that the language changes but it bothers me that I have to say “Literally literally” to get my meaning across.
@CSK: Of course, the irony being Biden is rather religious while Trump’s most significant church attendance to date consisted of violating a bunch of people’s 1st Amendment right to free assembly in order to stand in front of a church holding a Bible.
@Keef: “Is this just an echo chamber or are alternative views allowed?”
Ladies and gentleman, the world’s laziest troll.
Anyone else would have posted some sort of inflammatory bullshit — “The Dhimms are blocking distribution of a working vaccine because they hate Trump” or something, wait to be called out for spreading right-wing nonsense, and the start an endless thread about how this is an echo chamber and everyone here is a sheeple and blah blah blah.
But this guy? Straight to the accusation without even the pretense of caring at all about anything other than trolling.
Go back to troll school, kid. It’s clear you slept through a lot of the classes..
@Mikey:
Ah, yes. Didn’t Trump say something about two Corinthians?
I still can’t figure out what the hell he thought he was doing standing in front of a church holding a Bible up and looking, in general, like a moron. What message did he think he was sending? Does he think all religious people are so imbecilic that they’d be wowed by a photo op of him with a Bible?
@CSK: I was personally amazed that the Bible didn’t burst into flames, that’s a “Wow” effect I would’ve believed. 😉
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Thoughts and prayers.
@Jax:
If you ever get into an argument about the existence of God, all you need to point to is that Trump wasn’t struck by lightning that evening.
@dazedandconfused:
HA!
@CSK:
He did. It began “Two Corinthians walk into a bar…”
@DrDaveT:
Yes. I knew that was it.
People Are Calling Out “White Privilege” Of Man Who Fired An AK-47 At Cops & Lived
One of the things that makes me angriest about this is this part: “The Express-Times reported that authorities tended to Zaboroski’s injuries before he was flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital.” I think about all the black people killed by police, for whom care for their injuries was denied, such as Tamir Rice and Elijah McClain. He was also shot in the leg — the pro-police defenders always say you have to aim for the center of the body, so why not in this case when the guy has an Ak-47?
@Sleeping Dog: All I have to do is point at my non pillar of salt blaspheming heretic self.
I doubt very much they were aiming at his legs. In fact, I doubt very much they were aiming at anything at all, especially not when they were being shot at by a nutjob with an AK-47 and it was just pure dumb luck that they managed to actually hit something.
@OzarkHillbilly: still, the fact that they rendered aid to him, while leaving unarmed black victims to bleed out, sometimes mocking them while they died, is so enraging. (Not that he received aid, but that so many black victims do not).
@Jen: Downthread from the post you drew attention to was another parallel (at least in my thinking) theme (or is this a meme?):
@CSK: Give it to Fearless Leader?
@Monala: While this whack-job was only wounded, my primary question is exactly how many shots were fired and didn’t hit him? I know my personal preference against an AK-47 (or any variant) is, if I can’t be in another county, to hide behind the engine block and spray shots in his direction to make him keep from aiming at me and mine.
I can’t make the link pull up (my vacuum tube brain remains fogged) but I loved the “damning with faint praise” from VP about John Roberts not being a “principled conservative.”
I’m gonzo confused. First, where did anyone get the idea that Chief Justice was principled.
And how would VP, or anyone he works for/with, recognize principled in any way, shape, or form?
Fresh Air featured 3 interviews today with Pete Hamill the journalist who died yesterday. Hamill was with Robert Kennedy in California the night he was shot just after giving the victory speech for winning the Democratic Primary to be nominated as a candidate for President of the United States.
Hamill was one of several people who subdued the assassin.
I have seen the Zapruder film and I was watching live TV when Bobby Kennedy gave his victory speech. I was still watching when just moments after he walked off camera word came that he had been shot. I have seen photos of Kennedy just after he was shot.
This eyewitness account is by far the most compelling record of this event.
The second interview about his relationship with Kennedy starts about 13:43.
@Monala: Yeah, but did he take the Azithromycin, too?
How about the henbane? Eye of newt? Dandelion root tea? Burdock root? Ginseng?
You have to do the whole series or it doesn’t work, you know. 😉
ETA: I can see that you’re a much nicer person than I am. I’m perfectly content with leaving whether he pulls through in God’s hands.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: Is that why I got the letter from the NRA with “NOTICE OF GUN CONFISCATION” on the envelope today? I don’t have any guns to confiscate, so I didn’t need to open the letter to find out, but now I’m curious. Hmmm…
@Kingdaddy: What you’re describing doesn’t grate on me like it does you, but I the ratio of time I spend with young people compared to adults is also about 4 or 5 t0 one, so I’m less likely to notice to begin with. ETA: Also, don’t listen to NPR very often or podcasts at all, so I may be lacking in reference points.
@Monala:
Oh, please! It wasn’t blessed by Donald Trump and consecrated with Demon Sperm, and he expected it to work? What is he, some kind of heathen? Rino!
@Kathy: There are not enough emoji’s for how much I love your sarcasm.
Edit: I tried Windows LMAO emoji’s there, but it did not work. 🙁
This is hardly surprising, after all, this is the same state that gave the world Rick Scott, who has gone quite far after committing massive Medicare fraud…
@Jax:
Long habit. One of my earliest sources for English practice involved MAD Magazine books*, in particular “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” by Al Jaffee
*My brother had lots of them. Also Peanuts and Beetle Bailey.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
Yes. Trump’s fraudulent charity is not a political advocacy group.
The first amendment protects political speech, and thus political advocacy groups. The standards for attempting to destroy them should be higher. Even if we don’t like the organization.
If an AG was trying to shut down NAMBLA because there were a bunch of child molesters on the board, would you be ok with that? Ok, bad example.
What about trying to shut down the entire ACLU because of embezzlement at the top? Or conspiracy to commit criminal trespass or something?
I’m not going to be contributing to the NRA’s legal defense fund or anything, because fuck them, but this seems like overreach. When that AG tries to run for higher office, I might contribute to their primary opponent though.
@Michael Cain:
I’ve worked on projects that got put in the memory hole myself. Feels horrible.
@Mister Bluster:
Fresh Air is the best media today.
Terry Gross is the best interviewer alive.
And all the interviews are available at the NPR site for free.
@de stijl:
Anderson had a method – point a lot of bright kids at a problem with one or two senior folks to corral and assign. Not the sharpest process people in the world, but they had a crude methodology based on flow.
Deloitte sent a few folks in fancy suits to talk down to us plebs and tell people they were stupid.
Both sets were assholes, but Deloitte were prickish assholes.
—
I met up with a high school ex on a job. She was with Anderson. It was both cool and awkward.
@Gustopher:
Technically, neither is the NRA. I believe it’s listed as a nonprofit 501(c)4, which makes it a nonprofit designed to promote social welfare.
@de stijl: many years ago I knew a woman who worked at Deloitte Touche and haaaaated her job, and said internally her buddies called them Toilet Douche.
@Teve:
Those firms used to dangle promotions and the semi-implicit promise of partnership at bright kids. Shove them at projects. Tell them they were white knights. Provide a one size fits all framework to all problems. Granted, Anderson could produce usable process flows which were too facile to be truly useful, but did indicate where to deploy actual process analysts.
Where possible, we used the big guys’ troops as scouts.
Deloitte hype / sales guys were dicks. Always guys. Always amazed they were not in Manhattan. Annoyed they were in the provinces.
The follow on forces were very like Anderson.
Bright, focused, junior, propagandized they knew more than they did.
We used them as screeners.
@Gustopher: She’s not going after them because of their message. She’s going after them because the four people at the top have looted this charitable organization of tens of millions of dollars — flat out stole money that was donated to charity.