stacey-abrams

Stacey Abrams in Conversation with Holland Taylor

One of America’s rising Democratic stars and the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States, she gained national attention for her campaign in Georgia last year-and raised more money than any candidate, Democrat or Republican, in Georgia’s history. After witnessing the gross mismanagement of the 2018 election by the Secretary of State’s office, Abrams launched Fair Fight to ensure that every Georgian has a voice in our election system. She talks with Holland Taylor for a revealing conversation about her politics, her own personal story, and her future plans. Recorded April 11, 2019, at the 92nd Street Y.

Secretive Bilderberg Meeting Draws Pompeo and Kushner

BERN, Switzerland — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on a weeklong trip to Europe where he is raising sensitive issues with national leaders — from Iranian missiles to Chinese technology to the economic collapse of Venezuela — but the most colorful conversations could take place this weekend out of public earshot in a secretive conclave at a Swiss lakeside resort.

In Montreux, on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva, political and business leaders from Western nations are gathering for the 67th Bilderberg Meeting, an annual forum in which participants agree not to reveal exactly what was said or who said it. It is a shadow version of Davos, the elite annual winter conference in the Swiss Alps that President Trump has attended once but has also criticized.

The State Department has not even put the Bilderberg Meeting on Mr. Pompeo’s public schedule, though a senior official confirmed he was attending Saturday.

.. No doubt those culinary treats will be on hand at venues in Montreux, to fuel discussion on 11 central topics now hotly debated in countries around the globe:

the future of capitalism,

the weaponization of social media,

artificial intelligence,

Brexit,

China,

Russia and so on.

Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, is another top administration official planning to attend. The 130 or so participants also include King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands; Stacey Abrams, the American politician; Henry Kissinger, the former senior American foreign policy official; Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; and David H. Petraeus, the retired general. Some top bank executives are on the list, too.

On at least one subject, climate change, many of the participants are expected to have radically different views than Mr. Pompeo. In early May, the American secretary, speaking at a meeting of the Arctic Council in Finland, praised the changes caused by the melting of ice in the Arctic Circle.

“Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade,” Mr. Pompeo said, while noting the abundance of undiscovered oil and gas, uranium, rare-earth minerals, coal, diamonds and fisheries in the Arctic.

What Mr. Pompeo, Mr. Kushner and the other Bilderberg attendees actually say to each other will be a mystery to most of the public, thanks to the meeting’s use of the Chatham House Rule, which states that although attendees can tell the public what was discussed, generally, participants must not reveal who said what.

The rule was devised in 1927 by the eponymous policy institute in London, when many people feared that the practice of “secret diplomacy led to the horrors of the First World War,” said Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House. The idea, he said, was to encourage officials and experts to speak frankly together, in private, and then to share what they discussed with the public.

“It’s actually not a rule of secrecy, it’s a rule of openness from an era when everything was secret,” he said.

The Bilderberg Meetings used to hold news conferences and distribute synopses to attendees, but discontinued the practices in the 1990s and 2000s. Organizers do not plan to reinstate them, a spokesman said.

Still, the Bilderberg’s reputation for secrecy fed conspiracy theories soon after the first meeting, held in 1954 to strengthen ties between North America and Europe, at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands. In a book published a decade later, the right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly wrote that the “secret kingmakers” of America and a “select assortment of foreigners” met at Bilderberg events, and exercised influence over American affairs.

In 1971, “Bilderbergers” appeared in “None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” a book by Gary Allen that argued that international bankers and politicians had taken decisions out of elected officials’ hands. Mr. Allen’s book has been cited as an inspiration by Alex Jones, the internet conspiracy theorist who has ranted about “globalists” trying to engineer a “new world order.”

Most of the conspiracy theories around the group center on fears that a “one-world government” will take control of a nation’s domestic government, said Anna Merlan, a journalist and the author of “Republic of Lies,” a book about conspiracy theories.

“You can see a lot of the same concerns about Masons or communists,” Ms. Merlan said, adding that there was often an anti-Semitic cast to the theories. Some are more esoteric than others. Mr. Jones’s version, she said, “is like a medieval conspiracy, the idea that elites meet in secret to undertake occult rituals to solidify their bonds.”

A Bilderberg spokesman said he believed that the theories were driven by people’s desire to make sense of complex trends like globalization, and that they have been given new life by the rise of the internet. On its website, the organizers expressed regret, anonymously, about the tenacity of the “wild allegations” against it.

“While these claims lack any and all merit,” the site said, “we regret to see that many continue to flourish online and in social media groups.”

The Cynicism of Georgia’s Stacey Abrams

Ms. Abrams has claimed that Mr. Kemp unlawfully purged 1.5 million voters from the rolls, put 53,000 new registrations on hold, created long polling lines on Election Day, and misplaced provisional ballots. She says her “accusations are based entirely on evidence.” Let’s take a look.

.. The 1993 National Voter Registration Act, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Clinton, requires states to keep voter lists “accurate and current” by identifying persons who died or moved, using “uniform, nondiscriminatory” procedures.

.. Georgia’s law to comply with the federal act is similar to Ohio’s, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this year. It works like this: If the U.S. Postal Service’s change-of-address list shows a Georgia voter has moved or is no longer at his address of record, the state sends him a postage-paid confirmation reply card. It there’s no response for 30 days, the voter is considered “inactive,” but can still vote if he wants.

.. Then there’s the charge of holding up registration applications. This involves the state’s “exact match” law, which requires the last name, first initial, date of birth and other simple information on voter-registration applications match the information in the Social Security database or the Georgia driver’s-license file. If they don’t match, the prospective voter is notified online and by mail, and given 26 months to correct any discrepancy.

.. Meanwhile, he can vote by presenting a valid ID that is “a substantial match” with his application. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a similar law in Florida.

.. Ms. Abrams herself may be responsible for many of the botched voter applications. Before running for governor, she led a $12.5 million registration drive that paid her $442,000 over three years for serving as its part-time leader. Despite ample resources, Ms. Abrams’s efforts relied on paper forms, not online registration or electronic forms. As a result, many applications contained mistakes or fraudulent signatures.

.. Ms. Abrams’s complaints about long lines at polling places and mishandled provisional ballots are also misplaced. County election boards, not the secretary of state, decide on poll closures, set the number of voting machines, and handle provisional ballots. These local officials are in many cases Democrats, and Ms. Abrams carried the three Atlanta-area counties—Fulton, Cobb and DeKalb—with the most closures, the largest numbers of machines withdrawn from service, and the bulk of provisional-ballot problems.

.. As a rising star on the Democratic left, Ms. Abrams drew millions in donations from the Soros family and billionaire hedge-funder Tom Steyer, as well as campaign appearances by Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama and many of the party’s 2020 presidential hopefuls. She lost anyway.

.. Ms. Abrams now cynically claims she’s a victim of election fraud motivated by bigotry. Even in this ugly period of American politics, trying to use defeat in a close election to create racial resentment stands out as dangerous and corrosive. Ms. Abrams’s suit, Fair Fight Action v. Crittenden, is unlikely to have a happy ending. And damaging the state’s reputation won’t help her win future races, no matter how much she says she loves Georgia and wants to serve it. Sometimes you should exit gracefully.