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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
january 20, 2019
Putin's Bitch!!!
real news today
january 20, 2019
*A call for a national general strike part 2: Times up for deferring MLK’s dream
(Talkers)
*Austin Police Department Orders Deeper Investigation After Audit Finds It Misclassified Cleared Rape Cases
(Gestapo USA)
*A naked escape and bribed presidents: El Chapo trial's shocking testimony
(World)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
comment/tweet of the day
H. L. Mencken: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
---
And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. Watch him again, behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
– Charles Pierce / Esquire
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“A thought about where we are as a nation: We're living in the age of the unsurprising revelation. Is there anyone who doesn't already believe that Trump-Putin-treason is a real thing? Even Trump loyalists surely know it's true, they just think it's an OK price for the racism 1/
The question instead is when and whether the evidence will become so dramatic, so blatant, that Trump's defenders won't feel able to keep pretending they don't know. That is, it's not really about what we learn but about how it plays 2/
Think of the Steve King story as a dress rehearsal. Everyone knew what he was, and has for years. Somehow, though, we reached a tipping point where GOP leaders felt they had to say "We're shocked, shocked to find open racism going on in our party!" 3/
I don't know if we'll ever reach that sort of tipping point with Trump. But even if we do, remember: they've known all along, but were willing to sell out America as long as it was convenient 4/”
paul krugman
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‘Be careful, Nancy’: Trump threatens to deport 11 million immigrants unless ‘irrational’ Pelosi approves wall
TOM BOGGIONI - raw story
20 JAN 2019 AT 08:51 ET
Pissident Donald Trump launched a furious attack at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Sunday morning in a series of tweets filled with threats and invective.
Taking to Twitter, the president began: “No, Amnesty is not a part of my offer. It is a 3 year extension of DACA. Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else. Likewise there will be no big push to remove the 11,000,000 plus people who are here illegally-but be careful Nancy!”
He followed that up with a personal attack.
“Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far to the left that she has now officially become a Radical Democrat. She is so petrified of the ‘lefties’ in her party that she has lost control…And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting!,” he continued.
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
No, Amnesty is not a part of my offer. It is a 3 year extension of DACA. Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else. Likewise there will be no big push to remove the 11,000,000 plus people who are here illegally-but be careful Nancy!
5:23 AM - Jan 20, 2019
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far to the left that she has now officially become a Radical Democrat. She is so petrified of the “lefties” in her party that she has lost control...And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting!
5:35 AM - Jan 20, 2019...
Taking to Twitter, the president began: “No, Amnesty is not a part of my offer. It is a 3 year extension of DACA. Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else. Likewise there will be no big push to remove the 11,000,000 plus people who are here illegally-but be careful Nancy!”
He followed that up with a personal attack.
“Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far to the left that she has now officially become a Radical Democrat. She is so petrified of the ‘lefties’ in her party that she has lost control…And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting!,” he continued.
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
No, Amnesty is not a part of my offer. It is a 3 year extension of DACA. Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else. Likewise there will be no big push to remove the 11,000,000 plus people who are here illegally-but be careful Nancy!
5:23 AM - Jan 20, 2019
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
Nancy Pelosi has behaved so irrationally & has gone so far to the left that she has now officially become a Radical Democrat. She is so petrified of the “lefties” in her party that she has lost control...And by the way, clean up the streets in San Francisco, they are disgusting!
5:35 AM - Jan 20, 2019...
The shutdown has exposed the disaster that is Trumponomics
When the president is proud to close government and proud to slash taxes for the rich, American workers get shafted
Robert Reich - the guardian
Sun 20 Jan 2019 01.00 EST
One of the least talked-about consequences of the partial shutdown of the US government – courtesy of Donald “I’m proud to shut down the government” Trump – is its negative effect on the US economy.
Federal spending accounts for just over 20% of the total economy. When that spigot is turned halfway off, as it is now, demand for goods and services necessarily drops. The result is less investment and slower growth.
Right now some 800,000 government employees aren’t collecting paychecks. Nor are hundreds of thousands of government contractors being paid. None of them can buy as much as before.
It’s just another aspect of Trumponomics, which stands for the highly dubious proposition that prosperity comes from cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while squeezing American workers – the people who do most of the buying.
A year ago, Trump and congressional Republicans predicted that their corporate tax cut would cause business investment to soar, which would lead to faster economic growth and higher wages.
It was classic supply side rubbish. Rather than invest more, American corporations have been scaling back their investment plans.
The tax-cut steroid wore off within six months of its passage. Corporate investment rose at a 10% annual rate in the first half of 2018 but then slowed to 2.5% in the third quarter. According to the Institute for Supply Management, new orders for manufacturing equipment plunged 11 points in December.
The logical explanation is that corporations won’t invest unless they expect an adequate return on such investments. That return depends on there being enough buyers for the goods and services they produce.
But there aren’t enough. Besides all the government workers and contractors who aren’t being paid, American consumers as a whole have seen little if any rise in their paychecks, adjusted for inflation. Jobs are plentiful but typical pay is still in the dumps.
When Trump slashed taxes on corporations he promised everyone else a wage boost of $4,000. It never happened. Instead, the benefits of the giant corporate tax cut went largely into the pockets of top executives and big investors.
Corporate stock buybacks fueled a temporary stock market boom, but its benefits didn’t trickle down because more than 80% of stocks are owned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans.
Unlike typical workers, the wealthy spend only a tiny fraction of what they earn. So when money flows to the top, total demand falls behind.
Meanwhile, American employers have continued to cut pension and healthcare benefits. Jobs are less secure than ever. One in five is now held by a worker under contract, without any unemployment insurance, sick leave or retirement savings.
Trump’s response? Allow employers to do more outsourcing. Make it harder for workers to form unions. Don’t even enforce labor laws on the books.
Trump continues to undermine what’s left of the Affordable Care Act. Over the past two years, some 4 million people have lost health insurance coverage, according to the Commonwealth Fund. This undermines their capacity to buy anything else.
Trump and his fellow Republicans refuse to raise the federal minimum wage, which would put money into the pockets of people who’d spend it. At $7.25 an hour, the minimum wage is now more than 25% below where it was in real terms half a century ago.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that raising it to $15 an hour would directly or indirectly lift the wages of 41.5 million people. That’s almost 30% of the wage-earning workforce.
This would generate $144bn in additional income for families who need it most, including 23.1 million women and 4.5 million single parents. Talk about buying power.
Nor has Trump moved an inch toward his campaign pledge to spend $1tn to reconstruct the nation’s roadways, waterworks and bridges. Infrastructure remains near the end of the legislative line.
So where will demand for goods and services come from? Don’t count on exports. The global economy is slowing. And the Chinese aren’t buying lots of things produced in America these days. That’s the fallout from Trump’s trade war.
Trumponomics is an abject failure because its premises are flawed. Cutting taxes on big corporations and the wealthy doesn’t stimulate investment. It only creates a bigger national debt that has to be paid off somehow, sometime.
And who’s going to have to pay it off, either in higher taxes or fewer government services? You guessed it. Average Americans, who are already being shafted by Trump’s policies.
Federal spending accounts for just over 20% of the total economy. When that spigot is turned halfway off, as it is now, demand for goods and services necessarily drops. The result is less investment and slower growth.
Right now some 800,000 government employees aren’t collecting paychecks. Nor are hundreds of thousands of government contractors being paid. None of them can buy as much as before.
It’s just another aspect of Trumponomics, which stands for the highly dubious proposition that prosperity comes from cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while squeezing American workers – the people who do most of the buying.
A year ago, Trump and congressional Republicans predicted that their corporate tax cut would cause business investment to soar, which would lead to faster economic growth and higher wages.
It was classic supply side rubbish. Rather than invest more, American corporations have been scaling back their investment plans.
The tax-cut steroid wore off within six months of its passage. Corporate investment rose at a 10% annual rate in the first half of 2018 but then slowed to 2.5% in the third quarter. According to the Institute for Supply Management, new orders for manufacturing equipment plunged 11 points in December.
The logical explanation is that corporations won’t invest unless they expect an adequate return on such investments. That return depends on there being enough buyers for the goods and services they produce.
But there aren’t enough. Besides all the government workers and contractors who aren’t being paid, American consumers as a whole have seen little if any rise in their paychecks, adjusted for inflation. Jobs are plentiful but typical pay is still in the dumps.
When Trump slashed taxes on corporations he promised everyone else a wage boost of $4,000. It never happened. Instead, the benefits of the giant corporate tax cut went largely into the pockets of top executives and big investors.
Corporate stock buybacks fueled a temporary stock market boom, but its benefits didn’t trickle down because more than 80% of stocks are owned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans.
Unlike typical workers, the wealthy spend only a tiny fraction of what they earn. So when money flows to the top, total demand falls behind.
Meanwhile, American employers have continued to cut pension and healthcare benefits. Jobs are less secure than ever. One in five is now held by a worker under contract, without any unemployment insurance, sick leave or retirement savings.
Trump’s response? Allow employers to do more outsourcing. Make it harder for workers to form unions. Don’t even enforce labor laws on the books.
Trump continues to undermine what’s left of the Affordable Care Act. Over the past two years, some 4 million people have lost health insurance coverage, according to the Commonwealth Fund. This undermines their capacity to buy anything else.
Trump and his fellow Republicans refuse to raise the federal minimum wage, which would put money into the pockets of people who’d spend it. At $7.25 an hour, the minimum wage is now more than 25% below where it was in real terms half a century ago.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that raising it to $15 an hour would directly or indirectly lift the wages of 41.5 million people. That’s almost 30% of the wage-earning workforce.
This would generate $144bn in additional income for families who need it most, including 23.1 million women and 4.5 million single parents. Talk about buying power.
Nor has Trump moved an inch toward his campaign pledge to spend $1tn to reconstruct the nation’s roadways, waterworks and bridges. Infrastructure remains near the end of the legislative line.
So where will demand for goods and services come from? Don’t count on exports. The global economy is slowing. And the Chinese aren’t buying lots of things produced in America these days. That’s the fallout from Trump’s trade war.
Trumponomics is an abject failure because its premises are flawed. Cutting taxes on big corporations and the wealthy doesn’t stimulate investment. It only creates a bigger national debt that has to be paid off somehow, sometime.
And who’s going to have to pay it off, either in higher taxes or fewer government services? You guessed it. Average Americans, who are already being shafted by Trump’s policies.
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A party built on lies: Here’s why Donald Trump is the perfect GOP leader
LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV, SALON - COMMENTARY - raw story
19 JAN 2019 AT 08:36 ET
It’s hard to put your finger on the foundational lie of the modern Republican Party, there are so many contenders. But I would date it back to Ronald Reagan and the lie of supply side economics. Remember that whopper? Even George Bush the First called it “voodoo economics” before he embraced it. The idea that lowering taxes would raise revenue was as close to a perfect Republican lie as there ever was. It simultaneously lined the pockets of the wealthy, “starved the beast” of government (in the immortal words of Grover Norquist), and laid the groundwork to attack the so-called “entitlements” of Social Security and Medicare as the culprits when the deficit inevitably blew up. That the arguments for lowering taxes were spurious if not entirely fact free was just icing on the cake.
The only thing Republicans have learned from Donald Trump is that they no longer have to lie strategically. They don’t need a rationale behind a lie. Trump has taught them that all lies, all the time is the way to go. They didn’t even bother trying to defend the Trump/Ryan tax cuts of 2017 with lies about increased revenues and lowered deficits. They just sat back and threw money at their rich donors and let Trump sign the tax cuts into law, and then of course immediately went after Social Security and Medicare for blowing up the deficit.
They’ve been looking for a professional liar like Donald Trump to lead them for decades. Remember how they turned on George Bush the First when he went back on his pledge of no new taxes? Bush had the gall to actually take stuff like the budget and the deficit into account when he raised taxes half way through his term. That was it for Bush. Enough Republicans stayed home on election day in 1992 that Bill Clinton turned Bush into a one-term president.
The arrival of Slick Willie in White House opened the door for the lie that was the Whitewater investigation. Whitewater begat an early embrace by the Republican Party of far-right conspiracy mongers who floated the story that White House aide Vince Foster had been murdered by the Clintons. Foster committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth, but that wasn’t good enough for loons like Republican Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana, who shot a watermelon in his own backyard to prove that the FBI didn’t know anything about investigating a murder.
It wasn’t far from Dan Burton’s theories about the Clintons murdering Vince Foster to the lie that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile sex ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza place. Shades of Whitewater, they managed to spend a couple of years and about $8 million investigating Hillary for Benghazi. It’s not really necessary to go into all the lies they floated because pretty much all they did was yell “Benghazi! Benghazi!” and that was all the evidence they needed that somehow Clinton was responsible for a terrorist attack on a State Department outpost in Libya. Even Trey Gowdy’s own committee’s report had to admit there was nothing to the charges. But that didn’t stop them from using “Benghazi” as a battle cry against Clinton during her 2016 run for president.
It was during Bill Clinton’s presidency that Republican leader Newt Gingrich put into practice his infamous list of words to use against Democrats. Looking for a way to take back the House of Representatives after some four decades of Democratic rule, Gingrich counseled Republican candidates not to attack Democratic policies, but simply to say they were working to undermine America and American values. They were to say Democrats were “undermining” our “values.” They were “radicals” and “traitors” set on “betraying” their country. Democrats were “anti-flag,” “sick,” “permissive,” “corrupt,” and “destructive.”
It was a strategy of lies and name-calling, lacking even a nod in the direction of ideas or truth, and it was a harbinger of things to come.
They elected George W. Bush in 2000 on a campaign of lies about Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet. When the attacks of 9/11 happened, they launched the blizzard of lies that got us into invading Iraq. WMD’s, mobile chemical weapons labs, Saddam’s close ties to al-Qaeda — they went on and on, each lie bigger and better than the last. But perhaps the biggest of them all was when they sold the war in Iraq by saying it would “pay for itself.” Remember that Paul Wolfowitz jewel?Some six trillion dollars later, (according to estimates by Brown University), what are they doing? Trump sold the wall by saying Mexico would pay for it. When that one fell apart, Republicans are of course assuring us it will “pay for itself.”
By the time Bush was running for re-election in 2004, things were sufficiently upside down in Iraq and Afghanistan that Republicans couldn’t run on having “won,” so they turned loose the loons and went after Bush’s opponent John Kerry with the “Swift Boat” lies. Kerry, who had been decorated for valor in combat with a Bronze Star and Silver Star and was awarded not one, but two Purple Hearts, was attacked in a blizzard of lies orchestrated primarily by John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi. Recognize that name? Corsi’s back in the news with new lies about his and Roger Stone’s connections to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and what they did to aid Trump’s campaign for president. These guys just don’t go away, do they? Nor do the Republicans who use their lies to achieve and remain in power.
It turned out that the Swift Boat campaign against Kerry was just a practice run for what they had in store for Barack Obama when he won the presidency.
Republicans didn’t bother with “facts” at all, fake or otherwise, when they went after Obama for not being born in this country and practicing the Muslim religion. They just threw the lies out there and kept repeating them. And you know who repeated them the most, don’t you? Donald Trump. Remember him calling for Obama’s birth certificate? And remember what he did when Obama produced it? He wanted another. When he got that one, he announced that he was sending detectives to Hawaii to uncover the conspiracy behind Obama’s birth certificate. When his fake investigation in Hawaii didn’t turn up anything, he just kept lying.
That was when Republicans finally took notice of Trump. Here was a guy who was untethered to either facts or morals. He was the perfect Republican. He was like a one-note Newt Gingrich. He didn’t have to say anything other than Obama was not an American. He didn’t care that it was a lie. He just kept repeating it over and over and over again.
Every single Republican in congress, every single Republican thinking about running for president, every single Republican Party official knew it was all a lie, every last syllable uttered by Trump. But try finding a Republican who would say it. They were busy lying at top speed about the Affordable Care Act. It would explode the deficit! They were lying about Obama’s attempts at stimulus to recover from the Great Recession. Inflation! The deficit!
Meanwhile, Trump was out there undermining Obama every day for them with his nonsense about the birth certificate, and his father was an anti-colonial socialist, and he’s a Muslim and whatever else came out of his mouth. Republicans were happy Trump was out there doing their dirty work for them.
What they didn’t see coming was Trump doing his dirty work on them. Remember the Republican primaries? More than a dozen candidates for president, some of them establishment figures like Jeb Bush and John Kasich, others like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio at least marginally respectable. Remember how weird Trump looked up on those debate stages at first? He would just stand there, looking kind of lost. He stepped in it with stuff like not knowing what the “nuclear triad” was, and the rest of them got self-satisfied smiles on their faces.
Then Trump went after them the same way he went after Obama. No facts. No policies. Just name calling and derision. They had as little idea as Obama did about how to get him to back off. It turned out they couldn’t, and one by one they fell. In retrospect, it was blindingly fast. One day there were a dozen or so on the stage. The next, three.
Trump’s empty, bottomless lies worked. At first, the Republican “establishment” was appalled. The National Review devoted an entire issue to anti-Trump diatribes. Then they decided to get on board. Hey, wait a minute, they seemed to say. This guy is one of us after all! He’s willing to lie about anything! And when his lies are proven false, he just doubles down! And then he repeats them!
Republicans don’t have anything to run on that anyone actually likes. Tax cuts for the wealthy? Nope. Killing Obamacare? Not that either. The misbegotten wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they got us into and spent us into the poorhouse with? I don’t think so.
What they needed was somebody who didn’t stand for anything, who didn’t care about boring stuff like “issues” and “policy,” who was willing to take every lie they’d been pushing for 40 years and make them his own. They wanted someone at the head of their party and in the White House who didn’t care about who he appointed to his cabinet, who didn’t care if the government stopped doing stuff like taking care of the air and the water and inspecting food and testing drugs for safety, who would let predatory lenders rip off poor people while Wall Streeters ran amok, who wasn’t afraid to take the leash off the racist and xenophobic fringe in the party, who cared even more than they did about getting rich off the fat of the land and fuck everybody else.
They wanted a perfect Republican, and they’ve got him in Donald Trump.
The only thing Republicans have learned from Donald Trump is that they no longer have to lie strategically. They don’t need a rationale behind a lie. Trump has taught them that all lies, all the time is the way to go. They didn’t even bother trying to defend the Trump/Ryan tax cuts of 2017 with lies about increased revenues and lowered deficits. They just sat back and threw money at their rich donors and let Trump sign the tax cuts into law, and then of course immediately went after Social Security and Medicare for blowing up the deficit.
They’ve been looking for a professional liar like Donald Trump to lead them for decades. Remember how they turned on George Bush the First when he went back on his pledge of no new taxes? Bush had the gall to actually take stuff like the budget and the deficit into account when he raised taxes half way through his term. That was it for Bush. Enough Republicans stayed home on election day in 1992 that Bill Clinton turned Bush into a one-term president.
The arrival of Slick Willie in White House opened the door for the lie that was the Whitewater investigation. Whitewater begat an early embrace by the Republican Party of far-right conspiracy mongers who floated the story that White House aide Vince Foster had been murdered by the Clintons. Foster committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth, but that wasn’t good enough for loons like Republican Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana, who shot a watermelon in his own backyard to prove that the FBI didn’t know anything about investigating a murder.
It wasn’t far from Dan Burton’s theories about the Clintons murdering Vince Foster to the lie that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile sex ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza place. Shades of Whitewater, they managed to spend a couple of years and about $8 million investigating Hillary for Benghazi. It’s not really necessary to go into all the lies they floated because pretty much all they did was yell “Benghazi! Benghazi!” and that was all the evidence they needed that somehow Clinton was responsible for a terrorist attack on a State Department outpost in Libya. Even Trey Gowdy’s own committee’s report had to admit there was nothing to the charges. But that didn’t stop them from using “Benghazi” as a battle cry against Clinton during her 2016 run for president.
It was during Bill Clinton’s presidency that Republican leader Newt Gingrich put into practice his infamous list of words to use against Democrats. Looking for a way to take back the House of Representatives after some four decades of Democratic rule, Gingrich counseled Republican candidates not to attack Democratic policies, but simply to say they were working to undermine America and American values. They were to say Democrats were “undermining” our “values.” They were “radicals” and “traitors” set on “betraying” their country. Democrats were “anti-flag,” “sick,” “permissive,” “corrupt,” and “destructive.”
It was a strategy of lies and name-calling, lacking even a nod in the direction of ideas or truth, and it was a harbinger of things to come.
They elected George W. Bush in 2000 on a campaign of lies about Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet. When the attacks of 9/11 happened, they launched the blizzard of lies that got us into invading Iraq. WMD’s, mobile chemical weapons labs, Saddam’s close ties to al-Qaeda — they went on and on, each lie bigger and better than the last. But perhaps the biggest of them all was when they sold the war in Iraq by saying it would “pay for itself.” Remember that Paul Wolfowitz jewel?Some six trillion dollars later, (according to estimates by Brown University), what are they doing? Trump sold the wall by saying Mexico would pay for it. When that one fell apart, Republicans are of course assuring us it will “pay for itself.”
By the time Bush was running for re-election in 2004, things were sufficiently upside down in Iraq and Afghanistan that Republicans couldn’t run on having “won,” so they turned loose the loons and went after Bush’s opponent John Kerry with the “Swift Boat” lies. Kerry, who had been decorated for valor in combat with a Bronze Star and Silver Star and was awarded not one, but two Purple Hearts, was attacked in a blizzard of lies orchestrated primarily by John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi. Recognize that name? Corsi’s back in the news with new lies about his and Roger Stone’s connections to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and what they did to aid Trump’s campaign for president. These guys just don’t go away, do they? Nor do the Republicans who use their lies to achieve and remain in power.
It turned out that the Swift Boat campaign against Kerry was just a practice run for what they had in store for Barack Obama when he won the presidency.
Republicans didn’t bother with “facts” at all, fake or otherwise, when they went after Obama for not being born in this country and practicing the Muslim religion. They just threw the lies out there and kept repeating them. And you know who repeated them the most, don’t you? Donald Trump. Remember him calling for Obama’s birth certificate? And remember what he did when Obama produced it? He wanted another. When he got that one, he announced that he was sending detectives to Hawaii to uncover the conspiracy behind Obama’s birth certificate. When his fake investigation in Hawaii didn’t turn up anything, he just kept lying.
That was when Republicans finally took notice of Trump. Here was a guy who was untethered to either facts or morals. He was the perfect Republican. He was like a one-note Newt Gingrich. He didn’t have to say anything other than Obama was not an American. He didn’t care that it was a lie. He just kept repeating it over and over and over again.
Every single Republican in congress, every single Republican thinking about running for president, every single Republican Party official knew it was all a lie, every last syllable uttered by Trump. But try finding a Republican who would say it. They were busy lying at top speed about the Affordable Care Act. It would explode the deficit! They were lying about Obama’s attempts at stimulus to recover from the Great Recession. Inflation! The deficit!
Meanwhile, Trump was out there undermining Obama every day for them with his nonsense about the birth certificate, and his father was an anti-colonial socialist, and he’s a Muslim and whatever else came out of his mouth. Republicans were happy Trump was out there doing their dirty work for them.
What they didn’t see coming was Trump doing his dirty work on them. Remember the Republican primaries? More than a dozen candidates for president, some of them establishment figures like Jeb Bush and John Kasich, others like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio at least marginally respectable. Remember how weird Trump looked up on those debate stages at first? He would just stand there, looking kind of lost. He stepped in it with stuff like not knowing what the “nuclear triad” was, and the rest of them got self-satisfied smiles on their faces.
Then Trump went after them the same way he went after Obama. No facts. No policies. Just name calling and derision. They had as little idea as Obama did about how to get him to back off. It turned out they couldn’t, and one by one they fell. In retrospect, it was blindingly fast. One day there were a dozen or so on the stage. The next, three.
Trump’s empty, bottomless lies worked. At first, the Republican “establishment” was appalled. The National Review devoted an entire issue to anti-Trump diatribes. Then they decided to get on board. Hey, wait a minute, they seemed to say. This guy is one of us after all! He’s willing to lie about anything! And when his lies are proven false, he just doubles down! And then he repeats them!
Republicans don’t have anything to run on that anyone actually likes. Tax cuts for the wealthy? Nope. Killing Obamacare? Not that either. The misbegotten wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they got us into and spent us into the poorhouse with? I don’t think so.
What they needed was somebody who didn’t stand for anything, who didn’t care about boring stuff like “issues” and “policy,” who was willing to take every lie they’d been pushing for 40 years and make them his own. They wanted someone at the head of their party and in the White House who didn’t care about who he appointed to his cabinet, who didn’t care if the government stopped doing stuff like taking care of the air and the water and inspecting food and testing drugs for safety, who would let predatory lenders rip off poor people while Wall Streeters ran amok, who wasn’t afraid to take the leash off the racist and xenophobic fringe in the party, who cared even more than they did about getting rich off the fat of the land and fuck everybody else.
They wanted a perfect Republican, and they’ve got him in Donald Trump.
$11 toothpaste: Immigrants pay big for basics at private ICE lock-ups
Reuters - raw story
18 JAN 2019 AT 07:09 ET
Detained in a California lockup with hundreds of other immigrants seeking asylum, Duglas Cruz faced a choice.
He could content himself with a jailhouse diet that he said left him perpetually hungry. Or he could labor in the prison’s kitchen to earn money to buy extra food at the commissary.
Cruz went to work. But his $1-a-day salary at the privately run Adelanto Detention Facility did not stretch far.
A can of commissary tuna sold for $3.25. That is more than four times the price at a Target store near the small desert town of Adelanto, about two hours northeast of Los Angeles. Cruz stuck with ramen noodles at 58 cents a package, double the Target price. A miniature deodorant stick, at $3.35 and more than three days’ wages, was an impossible luxury, he said.
“If I bought that there wouldn’t be enough money for food,” Cruz said.
Tuna and deodorant would seem minor worries for detainees such as Cruz. Now 25, he sought asylum after fleeing gangs trying to recruit him in his native Honduras, a place where saying “no” can mean execution.
But immigration attorneys say the pricey commissary goods are part of a broader strategy by private prisons to harness cheap inmate labor to lower operating costs and boost profits.
Immigrants and activists say facilities such as Adelanto, owned by Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group Inc , the nation’s largest for-profit corrections company, deliberately skimp on essentials, even food, to coerce detainees to labor for pennies an hour to supplement meager rations.
Geo Group spokesperson Pablo Paez called those allegations “completely false.” He said detainees are given meals approved by dieticians, the labor program is strictly voluntary, and wage rates are federally mandated.
The company said Geo Group contracts with outside vendors to run its commissaries, whose prices “are in line with comparable local markets.” It also said Geo Group makes a “minimal commission” on commissary items, most of which goes into a “welfare fund” to purchase recreational equipment and other items for detainees.
Relatives can send money electronically to fund their loved ones’ commissary accounts, for fees that can reach as high as 10 percent of the amount deposited, some families report. But for many immigrant detainees, scrubbing toilets or mopping floors is the only way they say they can earn enough to stay clean and fed.
You “either work for a few cents an hour or live without basic things like soap, shampoo, deodorant and food,” detainee Wilhen Hill Barrientos, 67, said in a class-action lawsuit filed last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center against Nashville-based CoreCivic Inc, the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison operator. In the complaint, Barrientos said guards told him to “use his fingers” when he asked for toilet paper at the Stewart Detention Center, located in rural Lumpkin, Georgia.
Detainees are challenging what they say is an oppressive business model in which the companies deprive them of essentials to force them to work for sub-minimum wages, money that is soon recaptured in the firms’ own commissaries.
“These private prison companies are profiting off of what is essentially a company-store scenario,” said the SPLC’s Meredith Stewart, a lead attorney on the class action.
Immigrant rights groups have filed similar lawsuits against CoreCivic and Geo Group in California, Colorado, Texas and Washington.
Government watchdogs and lawmakers are taking notice too.
In November, 11 U.S. senators, including 2020 presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, sent letters to Geo Group and CoreCivic lambasting the “perverse profit incentive at the core of the private prison business,” which has benefited from a crackdown on illegal immigrants under U.S. President Donald Trump.
The senators cited a December 2017 report from the U.S. Office of the Inspector General documenting problems at lockups contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The inspector general found spoiled, moldy and expired food, and cited detainees’ complaints that hygiene products were “not provided promptly or at all,” the report said.
The lawmakers have demanded Geo Group and CoreCivic respond to allegations of detainee mistreatment.
Geo Group said a comprehensive, detailed response is underway. The company told Reuters that Geo Group has “already taken steps to remedy areas where our processes fell short of our commitment to high-quality care.”
CoreCivic spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist said the company disagrees with the senators’ assertions, and that it provides “all daily needs” of detainees.
She said CoreCivic follows all federal standards for ICE-contracted facilities, including management of the outside vendors that run its commissaries, prices for commissary products, and fees charged to families for depositing funds into detainees’ commissary accounts.
BULL MARKET IN IMMIGRANT DETENTION
The U.S. for-profit prison industry has exploded over the past two decades. In 2016, 128,300 people – roughly 1 in 12 U.S. prisoners – were incarcerated in private lock-ups. That is an increase of 47 percent from 2000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Geo Group and CoreCivic together manage over half of U.S. private prison contracts, with combined revenues of nearly $4 billion in 2017. ICE is the No. 1 customer by revenue for both companies.
Trump’s immigration polices have been a boon for the industry, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his election and inauguration. In fiscal 2019, the number of people in ICE detention has averaged 45,200 daily, according to agency spokesman Vincent Picard. That is up nearly 19 percent from fiscal 2017.
Both Geo Group and CoreCivic have added hundreds of immigration detention beds over the past year. Stock prices for the two companies are up about 30 percent since Trump’s election.
The government pays private prison companies fees ranging from roughly $60 to $130 daily for the care and feeding of each detainee.
At CoreCivic’s Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, which houses about 1,700 undocumented immigrants, ICE pays a per diem of $62.03 for each detainee housed there. CoreCivic’s revenue from Stewart alone was $38 million last year, court records show.
Detainee Barrientos, the lead lawsuit plaintiff, said in court documents he worked 7 days a week at the facility in order to purchase hygiene products and phone cards to call family members in Guatemala.
Those basics can add up. Reuters viewed a copy of the center’s commissary price list. It shows detainees are charged $11.02 for a 4 oz. tube of Sensodyne toothpaste, available on Amazon.com for $5.20.
Dove soap priced at $2.44 at the commissary is available for just over a dollar at Target. A 2.5 oz tube of Effergrip denture cream that sells for $4.99 at Walmart is $7.12 at the commissary.
Fees are pricey too. Vioney Gutierrez, a former detainee at Geo Group’s Adelanto facility in California, said 10 percent of the money her family spent to fund her commissary account was consumed by fees.
“When my daughter put in $40, I got $36,” said Gutierrez, 37. A native of Mexico, she said she spent six months at Adelanto in 2018 after asking for asylum at a port of entry. She is currently out on bond and staying with family in Oregon while she awaits the outcome of her deportation case.
Geo Group said its inmate commissary account services are provided by a third-party vendor, and that it does not profit from those transactions.
At Adelanto, Gutierrez said it cost $1 a minute to make calls to Mexico, and even more to places further afield, prices that keep many detainees from communicating with their families.
Geo Group said ICE contracts with a third-party telecom vendor and that the company plays “no role whatsoever in communications services.”
High commissary prices have long been a complaint of prison reformers. But for immigrant detainees, many of whom borrowed money or drained savings to reach the United States, the prices are particularly prohibitive.
Cruz, the Honduran detainee, spent eight months at Adelanto last year before an immigrant rights organization paid the $10,000 bond for his release. He is now in Texas awaiting the outcome of his case.
In his final months at Adelanto, Cruz said he resorted to bartering, trading shoes he wove out of plastic bags for ramen and cookies.
He could content himself with a jailhouse diet that he said left him perpetually hungry. Or he could labor in the prison’s kitchen to earn money to buy extra food at the commissary.
Cruz went to work. But his $1-a-day salary at the privately run Adelanto Detention Facility did not stretch far.
A can of commissary tuna sold for $3.25. That is more than four times the price at a Target store near the small desert town of Adelanto, about two hours northeast of Los Angeles. Cruz stuck with ramen noodles at 58 cents a package, double the Target price. A miniature deodorant stick, at $3.35 and more than three days’ wages, was an impossible luxury, he said.
“If I bought that there wouldn’t be enough money for food,” Cruz said.
Tuna and deodorant would seem minor worries for detainees such as Cruz. Now 25, he sought asylum after fleeing gangs trying to recruit him in his native Honduras, a place where saying “no” can mean execution.
But immigration attorneys say the pricey commissary goods are part of a broader strategy by private prisons to harness cheap inmate labor to lower operating costs and boost profits.
Immigrants and activists say facilities such as Adelanto, owned by Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group Inc , the nation’s largest for-profit corrections company, deliberately skimp on essentials, even food, to coerce detainees to labor for pennies an hour to supplement meager rations.
Geo Group spokesperson Pablo Paez called those allegations “completely false.” He said detainees are given meals approved by dieticians, the labor program is strictly voluntary, and wage rates are federally mandated.
The company said Geo Group contracts with outside vendors to run its commissaries, whose prices “are in line with comparable local markets.” It also said Geo Group makes a “minimal commission” on commissary items, most of which goes into a “welfare fund” to purchase recreational equipment and other items for detainees.
Relatives can send money electronically to fund their loved ones’ commissary accounts, for fees that can reach as high as 10 percent of the amount deposited, some families report. But for many immigrant detainees, scrubbing toilets or mopping floors is the only way they say they can earn enough to stay clean and fed.
You “either work for a few cents an hour or live without basic things like soap, shampoo, deodorant and food,” detainee Wilhen Hill Barrientos, 67, said in a class-action lawsuit filed last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center against Nashville-based CoreCivic Inc, the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison operator. In the complaint, Barrientos said guards told him to “use his fingers” when he asked for toilet paper at the Stewart Detention Center, located in rural Lumpkin, Georgia.
Detainees are challenging what they say is an oppressive business model in which the companies deprive them of essentials to force them to work for sub-minimum wages, money that is soon recaptured in the firms’ own commissaries.
“These private prison companies are profiting off of what is essentially a company-store scenario,” said the SPLC’s Meredith Stewart, a lead attorney on the class action.
Immigrant rights groups have filed similar lawsuits against CoreCivic and Geo Group in California, Colorado, Texas and Washington.
Government watchdogs and lawmakers are taking notice too.
In November, 11 U.S. senators, including 2020 presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, sent letters to Geo Group and CoreCivic lambasting the “perverse profit incentive at the core of the private prison business,” which has benefited from a crackdown on illegal immigrants under U.S. President Donald Trump.
The senators cited a December 2017 report from the U.S. Office of the Inspector General documenting problems at lockups contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The inspector general found spoiled, moldy and expired food, and cited detainees’ complaints that hygiene products were “not provided promptly or at all,” the report said.
The lawmakers have demanded Geo Group and CoreCivic respond to allegations of detainee mistreatment.
Geo Group said a comprehensive, detailed response is underway. The company told Reuters that Geo Group has “already taken steps to remedy areas where our processes fell short of our commitment to high-quality care.”
CoreCivic spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist said the company disagrees with the senators’ assertions, and that it provides “all daily needs” of detainees.
She said CoreCivic follows all federal standards for ICE-contracted facilities, including management of the outside vendors that run its commissaries, prices for commissary products, and fees charged to families for depositing funds into detainees’ commissary accounts.
BULL MARKET IN IMMIGRANT DETENTION
The U.S. for-profit prison industry has exploded over the past two decades. In 2016, 128,300 people – roughly 1 in 12 U.S. prisoners – were incarcerated in private lock-ups. That is an increase of 47 percent from 2000, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Geo Group and CoreCivic together manage over half of U.S. private prison contracts, with combined revenues of nearly $4 billion in 2017. ICE is the No. 1 customer by revenue for both companies.
Trump’s immigration polices have been a boon for the industry, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his election and inauguration. In fiscal 2019, the number of people in ICE detention has averaged 45,200 daily, according to agency spokesman Vincent Picard. That is up nearly 19 percent from fiscal 2017.
Both Geo Group and CoreCivic have added hundreds of immigration detention beds over the past year. Stock prices for the two companies are up about 30 percent since Trump’s election.
The government pays private prison companies fees ranging from roughly $60 to $130 daily for the care and feeding of each detainee.
At CoreCivic’s Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, which houses about 1,700 undocumented immigrants, ICE pays a per diem of $62.03 for each detainee housed there. CoreCivic’s revenue from Stewart alone was $38 million last year, court records show.
Detainee Barrientos, the lead lawsuit plaintiff, said in court documents he worked 7 days a week at the facility in order to purchase hygiene products and phone cards to call family members in Guatemala.
Those basics can add up. Reuters viewed a copy of the center’s commissary price list. It shows detainees are charged $11.02 for a 4 oz. tube of Sensodyne toothpaste, available on Amazon.com for $5.20.
Dove soap priced at $2.44 at the commissary is available for just over a dollar at Target. A 2.5 oz tube of Effergrip denture cream that sells for $4.99 at Walmart is $7.12 at the commissary.
Fees are pricey too. Vioney Gutierrez, a former detainee at Geo Group’s Adelanto facility in California, said 10 percent of the money her family spent to fund her commissary account was consumed by fees.
“When my daughter put in $40, I got $36,” said Gutierrez, 37. A native of Mexico, she said she spent six months at Adelanto in 2018 after asking for asylum at a port of entry. She is currently out on bond and staying with family in Oregon while she awaits the outcome of her deportation case.
Geo Group said its inmate commissary account services are provided by a third-party vendor, and that it does not profit from those transactions.
At Adelanto, Gutierrez said it cost $1 a minute to make calls to Mexico, and even more to places further afield, prices that keep many detainees from communicating with their families.
Geo Group said ICE contracts with a third-party telecom vendor and that the company plays “no role whatsoever in communications services.”
High commissary prices have long been a complaint of prison reformers. But for immigrant detainees, many of whom borrowed money or drained savings to reach the United States, the prices are particularly prohibitive.
Cruz, the Honduran detainee, spent eight months at Adelanto last year before an immigrant rights organization paid the $10,000 bond for his release. He is now in Texas awaiting the outcome of his case.
In his final months at Adelanto, Cruz said he resorted to bartering, trading shoes he wove out of plastic bags for ramen and cookies.
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Native American Mocked by Kentucky High School Students in D.C. is Military Veteran Nathan Phillips
The Omaha elder and activist leads an annual ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery honoring Native American vets.
Victoria Bekiempis - daily beast
01.19.19 3:29 PM ET
Shocking videos have emerged that appear to show Kentucky high school students mocking participants of the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington D.C. on Friday—including a widely respected elder from Omaha who served in Vietnam.
The videos, which have since gone viral on social media, seem to show Covington Catholic High School students surrounding a group of marchers. The students shout and jump as marchers start playing music, footage appears to show. WHAS 11-ABC, which is based in Kentucky, identified these teens as students of Covington, an all-boys school in the city of Park Hills.
WHAS 11-ABC reported that the students were in Washington D.C. for the March for Life, a yearly anti-abortion rally. March for Life happened to take place on the same day as the Indigenous Peoples March.
The school was not immediately available for comment, as its phone number rang busy Saturday afternoon.
“We are just now learning about this incident and regret it took place. We are looking into it,” Laura Keener, a spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington, reportedly said in a statement.
Several students captured on video wear “Make America Great Again” gear, and several others are clearly wearing Covington apparel. One boy, who sports a “Make America Great Again” hat, appears to stand just inches from the face of Omaha Elder Nathan Phillips, who is singing and playing a drum. Phillips smiles calmly at the teen and continues to play.
“When I was there singing, I heard them saying, ‘build that wall! build that wall!’” Phillips said in a video posted to Twitter. “This is indigenous land—not supposed to have walls here. We never [did] for millennium.”
“Before anybody else came here, you never had walls, you never had a prison,” he also said. “We always too care of our elders. We took care of our children.”
Phillips, a Vietnam veteran and previous director of the Native Youth Alliance, is a “keeper of a sacred pipe” who leads an annual ceremony honoring Native American veterans in Arlington National Cemetery, according to Indian Country Today.
Phillips said he wished the young men’s energy was used “to making this country really great.”
New Mexico Democrat Deb Haaland, one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress, slammed the students on Twitter.
“This Veteran put his life on the line for our country,” she said. “The students’ display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance is a signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration. Heartbreaking.”
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes condemned the students’ behavior in a Facebook post, but largely placed the blame on the adults who shape their lives.
“In spite of these horrific scenes, I refuse to shame these children. Instead I turn to the adults that are teaching them and those that are silently letting others promote this behavior. This is not the Kentucky I know and love. We can do better and it starts with better leadership,” Grimes wrote.
The videos, which have since gone viral on social media, seem to show Covington Catholic High School students surrounding a group of marchers. The students shout and jump as marchers start playing music, footage appears to show. WHAS 11-ABC, which is based in Kentucky, identified these teens as students of Covington, an all-boys school in the city of Park Hills.
WHAS 11-ABC reported that the students were in Washington D.C. for the March for Life, a yearly anti-abortion rally. March for Life happened to take place on the same day as the Indigenous Peoples March.
The school was not immediately available for comment, as its phone number rang busy Saturday afternoon.
“We are just now learning about this incident and regret it took place. We are looking into it,” Laura Keener, a spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington, reportedly said in a statement.
Several students captured on video wear “Make America Great Again” gear, and several others are clearly wearing Covington apparel. One boy, who sports a “Make America Great Again” hat, appears to stand just inches from the face of Omaha Elder Nathan Phillips, who is singing and playing a drum. Phillips smiles calmly at the teen and continues to play.
“When I was there singing, I heard them saying, ‘build that wall! build that wall!’” Phillips said in a video posted to Twitter. “This is indigenous land—not supposed to have walls here. We never [did] for millennium.”
“Before anybody else came here, you never had walls, you never had a prison,” he also said. “We always too care of our elders. We took care of our children.”
Phillips, a Vietnam veteran and previous director of the Native Youth Alliance, is a “keeper of a sacred pipe” who leads an annual ceremony honoring Native American veterans in Arlington National Cemetery, according to Indian Country Today.
Phillips said he wished the young men’s energy was used “to making this country really great.”
New Mexico Democrat Deb Haaland, one of the first Native American women to serve in Congress, slammed the students on Twitter.
“This Veteran put his life on the line for our country,” she said. “The students’ display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance is a signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration. Heartbreaking.”
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes condemned the students’ behavior in a Facebook post, but largely placed the blame on the adults who shape their lives.
“In spite of these horrific scenes, I refuse to shame these children. Instead I turn to the adults that are teaching them and those that are silently letting others promote this behavior. This is not the Kentucky I know and love. We can do better and it starts with better leadership,” Grimes wrote.
the bribes did not worked!!!
Businesses hit hard by Trump shutdown are suddenly silent about the GOP lawmakers they bankrolled
Companies that spent big in 2018 to support Congressional Republicans -- who hold the power to re-open the government -- are paying the price.
JOSH ISRAEL - thinkprogress
JAN 18, 2019, 1:54 PM
American businesses are losing hundreds of millions of dollars every day President Donald Trump’s partial government shutdown — now the longest on record — rages on. But few industry leaders say they are pressuring Republican members of Congress they bankrolled to end the shutdown — even though few have chosen to break ranks with the president to reopen the government with a veto-proof majority of votes.
Business organizations have vigorously objected to shutdowns before, particularly when they occurred under Democratic presidents.
In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, the conservative National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) likened a government shutdown to kings sacrificing the wellbeing of the peasants. William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist of the NFIB (which calls itself “the voice of small business”), said then that “the president’s ego is at stake. He refuses to compromise or negotiate.” Dunkelberg said the resulting impasse would hurt “the little people,” such as small businesses with government contracts and workers living paycheck-to-paycheck. “We need to elect better,” he concluded.
The organization responded by spending against Democrats: NFIB’s political action committee distributed millions of dollars — almost exclusively to Republican House and Senate candidates — in the 2014, 2016, and 2018 elections. But did they “elect better”? Six years after Dunkelberg’s statement, a Republican president has shut down the government to try to force American taxpayers to bankroll a border wall he’d promised Mexico would fully fund. Most congressional Republicans are standing with him.
This time, the NFIB has been suspiciously quiet, and it did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry. NFIB is not alone among interest groups representing the business community.
The nation’s largest business group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, spent millions of dollars in independent expenditures in 2018 in support of congressional Republicans, including recently appointed Arizona Sen. Martha McSally ($2 million), Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn ($1.5 million), Florida Sen. Rick Scott ($750,000), Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith ($675,000), Alabama Rep. Martha Roby ($342,902), Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez ($300,000), and Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon ($250,000).
These lawmakers are now standing with Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to perpetuate the shutdown. The chamber sent an open letter to Congress on Jan. 8 noting that the “shutdown is harming the American people, the business community, and the economy.” The letter urged a compromise “that combines increasing border security with protection and legal status for Dreamers and long-term beneficiaries of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program” — a compromise that would the government immediately.
But asked if the chamber or its members were concerned that the candidates they bankrolled are obstructing efforts to reopen the government, a spokesperson told ThinkProgress only that “the letter covers it all on the impact of the shutdown.”
A ThinkProgress examination of corporate PAC contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee (the official campaign arms of the House and Senate Republican Conferences) found that hundreds of companies and trade associations contributed five-figure or larger donations in the 2018 campaign in support of the GOP majorities. Many of these PACs represented companies or industries already feeling the effects of the shutdown. ThinkProgress reached out to several to ask whether they would support the efforts by congressional Democrats and a few fed-up Republicans to reopen the government immediately.
The largest combined donor to the GOP committees was Northrop Grumman, funneling $330,000 through its primary corporate PAC and its subsidiary Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Inc. PAC. While the partial shutdown does not include the Defense Department, the contracting behemoth did release an announcement in December noting that “[s]ome activities may be impacted by the Government shutdown.” The company did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry.
Boeing ($196,000 in PAC donations) may also feel the harms of the shutdown. The Federal Aviation Administration is one of the shuttered agencies and its inspectors must approve any new planes added to an airline’s fleet, potentially impacting its sales. The company did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry.
Airlines are also feeling the pinch. Delta’s CEO told CNBC this week that the shutdown was costing his business about $25 million a month. His company gave $60,000 in PAC money to the Republican campaign committees. Asked whether Delta was pushing those lawmakers it helped elect to do something about the shutdown, a spokesperson told ThinkProgress, “We don’t have any comment beyond what our CEO, Ed Bastian, has already said publicly.”
United Airlines, which also gave $60,000 in PAC money, is also concerned. CEO Oscar Munoz told CNBC: “Clearly, the longer this goes, of course, there’s going to be impact, and we do worry about that.” A spokesperson forwarded to ThinkProgress a recent earnings call where company leaders “made clear our elected leaders in Washington need to reopen the government as soon as possible.”
American Airlines ($30,000 in PAC money) has reportedly experienced a hold-up in its aircraft approval, but did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry.
The National Association of Realtors also spent big ($180,000 in PAC donations) to back congressional Republicans. A series of posts on the group’s website noted the negative impact the shutdown on federal housing and mortgage programs and other government agencies has already had on the real estate market. Nearly a quarter of the trade group’s members surveyed said they felt an impact on current and potential clients. In a video, the organization’s chief economist made clear the shutdown was harming the market and expressed hope that it would end soon. But the group did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry about the topic.
A related trade group — the Mortgage Bankers Association — donated $150,000 in PAC contributions to the GOP campaign committees. Back in 2013, the group’s then-president denounced a government shutdown and demanded its immediate end. “The federal government shutdown will have a growing impact on the housing market the longer it continues” David H. Stevens said. “If this shutdown is temporary, the ones affected most will be out of work federal employees. However, the longer it goes, the greater impact it will have on borrowers, the housing market, and the national economy.” This time around, the group has not posted a statement and did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry.
The beer industry is another consumer sector impacted by the shutdown. Companies are reportedly unable to launch any new products while the regulatory agencies overseeing them are shuttered. Anheuser-Busch, America’s largest beer company, gave $180,000 to the Republican campaign arms through its corporate PAC. The National Beer Wholesalers Association, the trade group for distributors, kicked in another $60,000. Neither responded to ThinkProgress inquiries.
Business organizations have vigorously objected to shutdowns before, particularly when they occurred under Democratic presidents.
In 2013, when Barack Obama was president, the conservative National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) likened a government shutdown to kings sacrificing the wellbeing of the peasants. William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist of the NFIB (which calls itself “the voice of small business”), said then that “the president’s ego is at stake. He refuses to compromise or negotiate.” Dunkelberg said the resulting impasse would hurt “the little people,” such as small businesses with government contracts and workers living paycheck-to-paycheck. “We need to elect better,” he concluded.
The organization responded by spending against Democrats: NFIB’s political action committee distributed millions of dollars — almost exclusively to Republican House and Senate candidates — in the 2014, 2016, and 2018 elections. But did they “elect better”? Six years after Dunkelberg’s statement, a Republican president has shut down the government to try to force American taxpayers to bankroll a border wall he’d promised Mexico would fully fund. Most congressional Republicans are standing with him.
This time, the NFIB has been suspiciously quiet, and it did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry. NFIB is not alone among interest groups representing the business community.
The nation’s largest business group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, spent millions of dollars in independent expenditures in 2018 in support of congressional Republicans, including recently appointed Arizona Sen. Martha McSally ($2 million), Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn ($1.5 million), Florida Sen. Rick Scott ($750,000), Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith ($675,000), Alabama Rep. Martha Roby ($342,902), Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez ($300,000), and Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon ($250,000).
These lawmakers are now standing with Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to perpetuate the shutdown. The chamber sent an open letter to Congress on Jan. 8 noting that the “shutdown is harming the American people, the business community, and the economy.” The letter urged a compromise “that combines increasing border security with protection and legal status for Dreamers and long-term beneficiaries of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program” — a compromise that would the government immediately.
But asked if the chamber or its members were concerned that the candidates they bankrolled are obstructing efforts to reopen the government, a spokesperson told ThinkProgress only that “the letter covers it all on the impact of the shutdown.”
A ThinkProgress examination of corporate PAC contributions to the National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee (the official campaign arms of the House and Senate Republican Conferences) found that hundreds of companies and trade associations contributed five-figure or larger donations in the 2018 campaign in support of the GOP majorities. Many of these PACs represented companies or industries already feeling the effects of the shutdown. ThinkProgress reached out to several to ask whether they would support the efforts by congressional Democrats and a few fed-up Republicans to reopen the government immediately.
The largest combined donor to the GOP committees was Northrop Grumman, funneling $330,000 through its primary corporate PAC and its subsidiary Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Inc. PAC. While the partial shutdown does not include the Defense Department, the contracting behemoth did release an announcement in December noting that “[s]ome activities may be impacted by the Government shutdown.” The company did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry.
Boeing ($196,000 in PAC donations) may also feel the harms of the shutdown. The Federal Aviation Administration is one of the shuttered agencies and its inspectors must approve any new planes added to an airline’s fleet, potentially impacting its sales. The company did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry.
Airlines are also feeling the pinch. Delta’s CEO told CNBC this week that the shutdown was costing his business about $25 million a month. His company gave $60,000 in PAC money to the Republican campaign committees. Asked whether Delta was pushing those lawmakers it helped elect to do something about the shutdown, a spokesperson told ThinkProgress, “We don’t have any comment beyond what our CEO, Ed Bastian, has already said publicly.”
United Airlines, which also gave $60,000 in PAC money, is also concerned. CEO Oscar Munoz told CNBC: “Clearly, the longer this goes, of course, there’s going to be impact, and we do worry about that.” A spokesperson forwarded to ThinkProgress a recent earnings call where company leaders “made clear our elected leaders in Washington need to reopen the government as soon as possible.”
American Airlines ($30,000 in PAC money) has reportedly experienced a hold-up in its aircraft approval, but did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry.
The National Association of Realtors also spent big ($180,000 in PAC donations) to back congressional Republicans. A series of posts on the group’s website noted the negative impact the shutdown on federal housing and mortgage programs and other government agencies has already had on the real estate market. Nearly a quarter of the trade group’s members surveyed said they felt an impact on current and potential clients. In a video, the organization’s chief economist made clear the shutdown was harming the market and expressed hope that it would end soon. But the group did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry about the topic.
A related trade group — the Mortgage Bankers Association — donated $150,000 in PAC contributions to the GOP campaign committees. Back in 2013, the group’s then-president denounced a government shutdown and demanded its immediate end. “The federal government shutdown will have a growing impact on the housing market the longer it continues” David H. Stevens said. “If this shutdown is temporary, the ones affected most will be out of work federal employees. However, the longer it goes, the greater impact it will have on borrowers, the housing market, and the national economy.” This time around, the group has not posted a statement and did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry.
The beer industry is another consumer sector impacted by the shutdown. Companies are reportedly unable to launch any new products while the regulatory agencies overseeing them are shuttered. Anheuser-Busch, America’s largest beer company, gave $180,000 to the Republican campaign arms through its corporate PAC. The National Beer Wholesalers Association, the trade group for distributors, kicked in another $60,000. Neither responded to ThinkProgress inquiries.
Trump's Federal Finance Regulators Expensed $2,500 for Booze: Report
daily beast
Trump’s federal financial regulators racked up tens of thousands in sketchy expenses, such as $11,000 each on two plane tickets to Vienna, as well as $2,500 on booze and $450 on a seafood dinner, according to The Washington Post. J. Mark McWatters, who heads the National Credit Union Administration, and agency chief of staff Sarah Vega, racked up this alcohol tab in 2016 and 2017, “despite a written policy prohibiting reimbursement for the purchase of alcohol.” One example of the top-shelf liquor expenses includes a $45 serving of 18-year-old, single malt scotch, per The Post. These expense reports surfaced after an anonymous whistleblower told administration’s inspector general, spurring a lengthy investigation in 2017 and 2018, reported the newspaper, citing information from public records requests and “investigative reports.” While McWatters and Vega’s spending seems outlandish, both the agency’s probe and officials there said it was likely allowed under agency rules.
Porn Viewership Rises in Washington D.C. During Government Shutdown
daily beast
Porn viewership has rocketed in Washington D.C. during the government shutdown, with Pornhub.com claiming a 6.32 percent upswing in traffic from area web domains the week of Jan. 7, according to a report. Female viewership on Pornhub also totaled 12.3 percent above average, the site’s analytics team claimed. “Pornhub's statisticians noted not only an increase in visits to the site, but also a distinct shift in the hours during which people are watching porn,” Pornhub reportedly said. “When compared to traffic levels prior to the shut-down, weekday visits across the United States were up 5.94 percent.” Whereas most of Pornhub’s traffic is from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m., post-midnight visits to the sit were also up almost 12 percent. The partial federal government shutdown has left some 800,000 workers furloughed or working without pay.
University of Oklahoma's Tri Delta Sorority Expels Member Who Made Blackface Video
daily beast
The Tri Delta sorority chapter at Oklahoma University has expelled a member who filmed and posted a racist video of another student in blackface, reportedly using a racial slur. “The behavior documented in the video is abhorrent and is in no way consistent with Tri Delta’s ideals. To those students directly impacted by this senseless act of racism, we are deeply sorry, and we know that is not enough,” the chapter president said in a statement. OU also condemned the video, which was posted to Snapchat earlier in the week, but did not say what action it would take beyond that. “While students have the freedom of expression, the negative impact of such conduct cannot be underestimated. The students have offered to apologize in order to reflect their regret,” the school said in a statement. The Black Students Association, meanwhile, is demanding the university amend its code of conduct to include a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech. They say the school has not adequately addressed racism since a 2015 incident in which fraternity brothers were filmed singing a chant about lynching.
Ann Coulter Slams Trump for Offering DREAMers ‘Amnesty’
daily beast
Ann Coulter lashed out at President Donald Trump on Twitter Saturday afternoon in response to his proposal to Democrats to end the longest government shutdown in American history by exchanging “legislative relief for 700,000 DACA recipients” for $5.7 billion to build his border wall. “Trump proposes amnesty. We voted for Trump and got Jeb!” Coulter snarked, adding, “100 miles of border wall in exchange for amnestying millions of illegals. So if we grant citizenship to a BILLION foreigners, maybe we can finally get a full border wall.” House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi swiftly shot down Trump’s offer because, among other things, it “does not include the permanent solution.” The last time Coulter attacked Trump for reportedly caving on his threats to shut down the government for the wall—declaring, “Trump will just have been a joke presidency who scammed the American people, amused the populists for a while, but he’ll have no legacy whatsoever”—the president promptly reversed course and has now kept the government partially closed for nearly a month.
*bites from real news - 1/20/2019*
*MEET THE TEAM BEHIND CNN BRASIL: A BUSINESSMAN ACCUSED OF EXPLOITING SLAVE LABOR AND AN EXECUTIVE FROM A FOX NEWS-STYLE OUTLET
LAST MONDAY, CNN announced that it will launch a Portuguese-language channel in Brazil. The U.S.-based cable news channel will roll out the latest foreign operation to bear the CNN brand through a license. However, the scandal-prone records of the two Brazilian partners behind the venture are already raising questions over the forthcoming channel’s credibility.(THE INTERCEPT)
* Who is more dangerous: El Chapo or Carlos Slim? Michael Massing
While attention focuses on a mafia boss on trial in Brooklyn, the billionaire heads a power elite preserving inequality in Mexico
*Chechen Authorities ‘Demand Families Kill LGBT Relatives’
According to campaigners, families in Chechnya are being ordered to kill their LGBT relatives, with authorities also demanding money for the release of detained LGBT relatives.
*Defying Trump Administration, Calif. Offers Federal Workers Unemployment Benefits
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says the Trump administration has told states they can't offer unemployment benefits to federal employees who are required to report to work without pay during the government shutdown. Newsom called a letter sent to stat ... (NPR)
*Trump's Treasury secretary flew on a private jet owned by jailed 'junk bond' king lobbying for pardon
*Montana public schools caught blocking LGBT advocacy websites -- while allowing anti-gay sites
*Inside the GM plant where nooses and 'whites-only' signs hung
It took 14 months for the noose to show up.
*The Dirty Truth About Oat Milk
*The latest front in Russian infiltration: America’s right-wing homeschooling movement
This is the latest connection between Russia and the American religious right.
*Immigration: The US detention center where sick children receive ‘the bare minimum'
*Religion has a smart-people problem: The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith
Religious belief the world over has a strenuous relationship with intellectualism. But why?
a United Nations list of the 20 best countries to live in shows the least religious nations generally at the top. Only in the United States, which was ranked as the 13th best country to live in, is religious belief strong relative to other countries.
*American Capitalism has failed us: We’re overworked, underemployed and more powerless than ever before Ann Jones / Tom Dispatch, The Nation
Denmark, Norway and Sweden are all thriving under democratic socialism. Why is it so difficult for us to embrace?
A Grammy-winning R&B singer took $75K to sing for Trump — and then watched her fans desert her
Bob Brigham - raw story
19 JAN 2019 AT 13:59 ET
R&B singer Chrisette Michele explaining her decision to perform at Trump's inauguration on CNN (screengrab)
During the contentious time following the 2016 presidential election, R&B singer Chrisette Michele thought she could “be a bridge” to unite the country by performing at Donald Trump’s inauguration.
She did not succeed in her goal.
Instead, the black musician alienated her fanbase by validating Trump despite his decades-long history of racism.
“She accepted the gig against the advice of her fans, former collaborators and even her husband,” The Washington Post explained. “The 36-year-old lost an album distribution deal and radio stations stopped playing her songs. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and endured a miscarriage that she publicly attributed to stress from death threats and a hydrant of criticism.”
“She still feels the sting of former fans who saw themselves in her music, then accused her of selling her blackness to a presidential candidate who, while on the campaign trail, repeatedly cast black Americans as impoverished people living in hellholes and dependent on food stamps,” The Post explained.
Yet Michele took the gig, for which she was paid $75,000 to perform a single song. Questlove, the drummer for The Roots, offered to pay her to cancel, but she did not accept his offer.
Linette Payne, the singer’s mother, was unprepared for the backlash.
“I had no kind of thought in my head that it would turn into the bomb that it did,” Payne said.
Two years later, Michele reflected on her decision.
“People didn’t feel hopeful from that moment,” Michele said. “They didn’t feel represented in that moment. They felt misrepresented.”
“They felt further misunderstood, and they felt the person they were depending on to speak on their behalf just betrayed them,” she explained.
She did not succeed in her goal.
Instead, the black musician alienated her fanbase by validating Trump despite his decades-long history of racism.
“She accepted the gig against the advice of her fans, former collaborators and even her husband,” The Washington Post explained. “The 36-year-old lost an album distribution deal and radio stations stopped playing her songs. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and endured a miscarriage that she publicly attributed to stress from death threats and a hydrant of criticism.”
“She still feels the sting of former fans who saw themselves in her music, then accused her of selling her blackness to a presidential candidate who, while on the campaign trail, repeatedly cast black Americans as impoverished people living in hellholes and dependent on food stamps,” The Post explained.
Yet Michele took the gig, for which she was paid $75,000 to perform a single song. Questlove, the drummer for The Roots, offered to pay her to cancel, but she did not accept his offer.
Linette Payne, the singer’s mother, was unprepared for the backlash.
“I had no kind of thought in my head that it would turn into the bomb that it did,” Payne said.
Two years later, Michele reflected on her decision.
“People didn’t feel hopeful from that moment,” Michele said. “They didn’t feel represented in that moment. They felt misrepresented.”
“They felt further misunderstood, and they felt the person they were depending on to speak on their behalf just betrayed them,” she explained.
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Mississippi Government Says It’ll Be Closed on MLK Day in Celebration of ‘Robert E. Lee’s Birthday’
By Tanasia Kenney - atlanta black star
January 18, 2019
The Mississippi government is getting backlash for a now-deleted tweet concerning the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
On Thursday, the Mississippi Department of Revenue tweeted that it would be closed in honor of MLK Jr. Day and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s birthday. The update was quickly scrubbed from Twitter, but not before users could take screenshots.
Lee, who was born on Jan. 19, 1807, is a revered war leader among Confederate sympathizers, however, his birthday is not, nor has it ever been, a federal holiday. Lee’s birthday historically has been a state holiday across states that comprised the Confederacy, and Alabama and Mississippi continue to observe it on the federal MLK holiday.
“I’m sorry, who’s birthday?” D.C. activist Jordan Uhl wrote on Twitter. “They deleted it … I guess those rebel colors do run.”
A fellow user pointed out that in Virginia “it used to be a celebration of both Lee and [Gen.] Stonewall Jackson, so for years it was Lee-Jackson-King Day.”
“Its ‘Confederate Hero’s Day’ on Jan. 19 in Texas,” another chimed in. “I like to call it ‘Saturday’ this year. Seriously, WTF?!”
Despite the nationwide push to rid cities of their Confederate monuments and symbols, Mississippi has been fighting to keep vestiges of its Southern “heritage” alive and well, all while blatantly ignoring the region’s dark history of slavery and Jim Crow. These efforts were on display again in 2016 when Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill declaring April as “Confederate History Month.”
“As countless historians have pointed out, most Confederate monuments were erected as part and parcel of the signing of Jim Crow laws, the development of Lost Cause mythology, and the establishment of white supremacy in the South in the decades following the end of Reconstruction,” EdWeek editor Stephen Sawchuck wrote in a recent op-ed.
Of the MLK-Lee Day mashup, Sawchuck wrote that “Whether these decisions were made for bureaucratic reasons or more ominous ones — likely a combination of both — it’s pretty ghastly to pair a holiday for a black civil rights leader with one celebrating someone who fought for the preservation of a slave society.”
Alabama reporter Leada Gore also previously noted that Gen. Lee precedes King on the state’s official calendar, and reads as “Robert E. Lee/Martin Luther King Birthday.”
On Thursday, the Mississippi Department of Revenue tweeted that it would be closed in honor of MLK Jr. Day and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s birthday. The update was quickly scrubbed from Twitter, but not before users could take screenshots.
Lee, who was born on Jan. 19, 1807, is a revered war leader among Confederate sympathizers, however, his birthday is not, nor has it ever been, a federal holiday. Lee’s birthday historically has been a state holiday across states that comprised the Confederacy, and Alabama and Mississippi continue to observe it on the federal MLK holiday.
“I’m sorry, who’s birthday?” D.C. activist Jordan Uhl wrote on Twitter. “They deleted it … I guess those rebel colors do run.”
A fellow user pointed out that in Virginia “it used to be a celebration of both Lee and [Gen.] Stonewall Jackson, so for years it was Lee-Jackson-King Day.”
“Its ‘Confederate Hero’s Day’ on Jan. 19 in Texas,” another chimed in. “I like to call it ‘Saturday’ this year. Seriously, WTF?!”
Despite the nationwide push to rid cities of their Confederate monuments and symbols, Mississippi has been fighting to keep vestiges of its Southern “heritage” alive and well, all while blatantly ignoring the region’s dark history of slavery and Jim Crow. These efforts were on display again in 2016 when Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill declaring April as “Confederate History Month.”
“As countless historians have pointed out, most Confederate monuments were erected as part and parcel of the signing of Jim Crow laws, the development of Lost Cause mythology, and the establishment of white supremacy in the South in the decades following the end of Reconstruction,” EdWeek editor Stephen Sawchuck wrote in a recent op-ed.
Of the MLK-Lee Day mashup, Sawchuck wrote that “Whether these decisions were made for bureaucratic reasons or more ominous ones — likely a combination of both — it’s pretty ghastly to pair a holiday for a black civil rights leader with one celebrating someone who fought for the preservation of a slave society.”
Alabama reporter Leada Gore also previously noted that Gen. Lee precedes King on the state’s official calendar, and reads as “Robert E. Lee/Martin Luther King Birthday.”
Striking Teachers and Students in LA Protested Outside the House of the Ex-Banker Now in Charge of the City’s Schools
“Black and brown students are tired of being disrespected and profited off of.”
EDWIN RIOS - mother jones
JANUARY 18, 2019 10:15 AM
On a quiet, tree-lined street in the hills in Pacific Palisades, California, 18 miles from downtown Los Angeles, a coalition of frustrated students, parents, and teachers chanted and jeered Thursday night outside the front gate of the man who, for the last four days, has been the focus of ire for teachers on strike across Los Angeles: District Superintendent Austin Beutner.
“Billionaires can’t teach our kids,” the crowd shouted. They had just returned from the large, white-paneled house of William Siart, a former banking executive who founded Excellent Education Development, an organization that helps manage charter schools. A day earlier, the protesters dropped by school board president Monica Garcia’s house to demand much of the same.
Now, this rambunctious crowd of parents and students, organized under the umbrella group Reclaim Our Schools LA, rattled off a list of demands at Beutner’s house: Reduce class sizes, pay teachers more, cap and regulate charter schools, hire more librarians and counselors for schools, and invest in community schools. “Open the door,” they bellowed, ringing on the bell to his front gate.
For the last four days, teachers have picketed outside schools, as the teachers union on Thursday restarted negotiations with the district. So why all the focus on a former investment banker and former first deputy mayor who now oversees the nation’s second-largest school district? Early in his career, Beutner worked for the private equity firm Blackstone and eventually co-founded the investment bank Evercore Partners.
Without much of a background as an educator, last year Beutner became the city’s sixth superintendent in the past decade, and has reportedly considered a controversial “portfolio” plan to divide the sprawling school district into 32 networks, according to the Los Angeles Times, leaving more autonomy to neighborhoods. United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl pointed out in an LA Times op-ed that the so-called “portfolio” model had been criticized for its “negative effect on student equity and parent inclusion.”
Outside Beutner’s house Thursday night, it was students who mostly aired their frustration with the state of their schools. “We are tired of the privatization of our public schools,” one teenager named Cheyenne, from the grassroots group Students Deserve, told the crowd. “Black and brown students are tired of being disrespected and profited off of.”
“We want Austin Beutner to keep his hands off our schools,” said Marshe Doss, a senior at Susan Miller Dorsey Senior High School in south Los Angeles. “My education is not a business.” Doss was losing her voice, but the crowd yelped as she spoke. She demanded that the district prevent charter schools from moving into vacant spaces at traditional district schools, a widespread practice known as co-locating. Throughout Los Angeles, 102 charter schools share space with traditional public school sites.
“Do not use our money to fund charter schools and then tell us that you don’t have money for us,” Doss said, rousing the crowd. Before the crowd dispersed, they raised plastic candles up in the air and had a moment of silence outside the Beutner house, ending another day without a resolution for their schools.
For the last few days, Neelima Hossain, 14, who attends the New Open World Academy at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, has opted to picket alongside her teachers instead of going to school. She found it important to stay out of school for the sake of her community. “I hope that every single support system that I could meet at my school is available to me and I have access to it,” she says. “That’s what I deserve to make sure that I get what I want in my future. And all of my peers get that, too.”
Hossain, a leader at Students Deserve, says her geometry class has around 40 students while her English class has 39. Hossain adds that her school lacks a full-time nurse. “When there are so many children in the class, the teachers don’t have enough time to make sure everyone understands the material and make sure that everyone is on the same page,” Hossain says.
She hoped that the district would find a way to end random searches at schools and that her community’s schools were fully funded like those in affluent neighborhoods.
“At the end of the day, I’m thinking of this fight in the long term,” she says. “Do I want to miss out on school for one day and have, for years going forward, my education be disadvantaging to me? Or do I want to improve my education and improve my community?”
“Billionaires can’t teach our kids,” the crowd shouted. They had just returned from the large, white-paneled house of William Siart, a former banking executive who founded Excellent Education Development, an organization that helps manage charter schools. A day earlier, the protesters dropped by school board president Monica Garcia’s house to demand much of the same.
Now, this rambunctious crowd of parents and students, organized under the umbrella group Reclaim Our Schools LA, rattled off a list of demands at Beutner’s house: Reduce class sizes, pay teachers more, cap and regulate charter schools, hire more librarians and counselors for schools, and invest in community schools. “Open the door,” they bellowed, ringing on the bell to his front gate.
For the last four days, teachers have picketed outside schools, as the teachers union on Thursday restarted negotiations with the district. So why all the focus on a former investment banker and former first deputy mayor who now oversees the nation’s second-largest school district? Early in his career, Beutner worked for the private equity firm Blackstone and eventually co-founded the investment bank Evercore Partners.
Without much of a background as an educator, last year Beutner became the city’s sixth superintendent in the past decade, and has reportedly considered a controversial “portfolio” plan to divide the sprawling school district into 32 networks, according to the Los Angeles Times, leaving more autonomy to neighborhoods. United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl pointed out in an LA Times op-ed that the so-called “portfolio” model had been criticized for its “negative effect on student equity and parent inclusion.”
Outside Beutner’s house Thursday night, it was students who mostly aired their frustration with the state of their schools. “We are tired of the privatization of our public schools,” one teenager named Cheyenne, from the grassroots group Students Deserve, told the crowd. “Black and brown students are tired of being disrespected and profited off of.”
“We want Austin Beutner to keep his hands off our schools,” said Marshe Doss, a senior at Susan Miller Dorsey Senior High School in south Los Angeles. “My education is not a business.” Doss was losing her voice, but the crowd yelped as she spoke. She demanded that the district prevent charter schools from moving into vacant spaces at traditional district schools, a widespread practice known as co-locating. Throughout Los Angeles, 102 charter schools share space with traditional public school sites.
“Do not use our money to fund charter schools and then tell us that you don’t have money for us,” Doss said, rousing the crowd. Before the crowd dispersed, they raised plastic candles up in the air and had a moment of silence outside the Beutner house, ending another day without a resolution for their schools.
For the last few days, Neelima Hossain, 14, who attends the New Open World Academy at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, has opted to picket alongside her teachers instead of going to school. She found it important to stay out of school for the sake of her community. “I hope that every single support system that I could meet at my school is available to me and I have access to it,” she says. “That’s what I deserve to make sure that I get what I want in my future. And all of my peers get that, too.”
Hossain, a leader at Students Deserve, says her geometry class has around 40 students while her English class has 39. Hossain adds that her school lacks a full-time nurse. “When there are so many children in the class, the teachers don’t have enough time to make sure everyone understands the material and make sure that everyone is on the same page,” Hossain says.
She hoped that the district would find a way to end random searches at schools and that her community’s schools were fully funded like those in affluent neighborhoods.
“At the end of the day, I’m thinking of this fight in the long term,” she says. “Do I want to miss out on school for one day and have, for years going forward, my education be disadvantaging to me? Or do I want to improve my education and improve my community?”
*What's Inside*
january 17 - january 19
✔TUCKER CARLSON TRIES AND FAILS TO MAKE HIS CASE FOR WHY WHITE PEOPLE ARE THE REAL VICTIMS OF RACISM
(WHITE SUPREMACY)
*LAQUAN MCDONALD'S FAMILY LAMENTS LIGHT SENTENCE GIVEN TO WHITE CHICAGO OFFICER
(GESTAPO USA)
*CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS WERE ONCE THE NATION'S ENVY. WHAT WENT WRONG?
(EDUCATION)
✔BLACK MISSISSIPPI NEWS ANCHOR SAYS SHE WAS BANNED FROM WEARING NATURAL HAIR BECAUSE VIEWERS WANT TO SEE A ‘BEAUTY QUEEN’(RACE MATTERS)
*FLINT WATER CRISIS: HOPE FOR JUSTICE AS TOP DEMOCRAT VOWS TO REVIEW INVESTIGATION
(AMERICA)
*RECALLS OF ‘POTENTIALLY LETHAL’ US MEAT AND POULTRY NEARLY DOUBLE SINCE 2013
(ENVIRONMENT)
*TRUMP DISLOYAL TO RUSSIA?
(FUNNIES)
✔LINDSEY GRAHAM JUST ACCIDENTALLY ADMITTED THAT SUPPRESSING BLACK VOTER TURNOUT IS A CORE GOP GOAL
(GOP POLITICS)
*SOUTH DAKOTA TAKES AIM AT TRANSGENDER STUDENT ATHLETES
(RIGHTS)
*RUDY GIULIANI JUST CONTRADICTED NEARLY ALL THE TRUMP TEAM’S PAST COLLUSION DENIALS
(TRUMP)
*FAITH-HEALING IDAHO WOMAN CLAIMS RELIGION FORBID HER FROM REPORTING HUSBAND’S SEX ABUSE OF KIDS
(AMERIKKKANS)
*TRUMP TARIFFS FORCE TOUGH CHOICES ON AUTO SUPPLIERS
(PAYBACK)
*NEW PLANT-FOCUSED DIET WOULD ‘TRANSFORM’ PLANET’S FUTURE, SAY SCIENTISTS
(EARTH)
*THOUSANDS FLEE NORTH-EAST NIGERIA AFTER DEVASTATING BOKO HARAM ATTACK
(WORLD)
*THE ATLANTIC: IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP
(TRUMP)
*late news of interest*
Marine vet held by ICE for possible deportation is U.S. citizen, lawyer says
UPDATED ON: JANUARY 16, 2019 / 1:16 PM / CBS/AP
A Marine veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder was held for three days for possible deportation before federal authorities learned the 27-year-old is a U.S. citizen born in Michigan, lawyers said Wednesday. Jilmar Ramos-Gomez was a lance corporal in the Marines and received awards for service in Afghanistan.
"He was decorated with a national defense service medal, a global war on terrorism service medal, an Afghanistan campaign medal, and a combat action ribbon, among other awards," the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan said Wednesday in a statement.
"Why did they think he was a non-citizen? Did they get him confused with someone else? Who knows," ACLU attorney Miriam Aukerman said. "This is an individual who's incredibly vulnerable with a mental illness."
Ramos-Gomez had been in the Kent County jail after being accused of trespassing and damaging a fire alarm at a Grand Rapids hospital on November 21. The ACLU said his PTSD had a role in the disturbance.
He pleaded guilty and was supposed to be released on December 14 while awaiting a sentence, according to the ACLU. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contacted the jail and requested that Ramos-Gomez be held for pickup.
"Once he was released from our custody, he was under the domain of ICE. Where they take him is their process," Kent County Undersheriff Chuck DeWitt said. "Our procedures were followed."
DeWitt said he didn't know whether Ramos-Gomez protested when immigration officers picked him up. He was driven 70 miles to a detention center in Battle Creek and released after three days, after lawyer Richard Kessler contacted ICE on behalf of the man's family.
There was no immediate comment from ICE. Spokesman Khaalid Walls in Detroit said he couldn't respond to media inquiries because of the partial government shutdown.
"He was decorated with a national defense service medal, a global war on terrorism service medal, an Afghanistan campaign medal, and a combat action ribbon, among other awards," the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan said Wednesday in a statement.
"Why did they think he was a non-citizen? Did they get him confused with someone else? Who knows," ACLU attorney Miriam Aukerman said. "This is an individual who's incredibly vulnerable with a mental illness."
Ramos-Gomez had been in the Kent County jail after being accused of trespassing and damaging a fire alarm at a Grand Rapids hospital on November 21. The ACLU said his PTSD had a role in the disturbance.
He pleaded guilty and was supposed to be released on December 14 while awaiting a sentence, according to the ACLU. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contacted the jail and requested that Ramos-Gomez be held for pickup.
"Once he was released from our custody, he was under the domain of ICE. Where they take him is their process," Kent County Undersheriff Chuck DeWitt said. "Our procedures were followed."
DeWitt said he didn't know whether Ramos-Gomez protested when immigration officers picked him up. He was driven 70 miles to a detention center in Battle Creek and released after three days, after lawyer Richard Kessler contacted ICE on behalf of the man's family.
There was no immediate comment from ICE. Spokesman Khaalid Walls in Detroit said he couldn't respond to media inquiries because of the partial government shutdown.
maniacs in charge!!!
Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo belong to a doomsday cult — and may be trying to bring on the apocalypse
TRAVIS GETTYS - raw story
15 JAN 2019 AT 08:30 ET
Pissident Donald Trump’s vice president and secretary of state appear to have a conflict between their private religious beliefs and their public duties, according to a financial journalist.
Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo are each a “genuine, end-of-days, believer in the apocalypse,” and Financial Times journalist Edward Luce said their religious beliefs about the end times exerts a troubling influence on their duties.
“Generally I believe a public figure’s beliefs should be irrelevant to their job,” Luce wrote. “Whether they’re atheist, Opus Dei, Buddhist or Muslim, should have no bearing on our assessment of their fitness for office. Yet I can’t help but feel anxious that both of Donald Trump’s main global envoys, Pompeo and Pence, have a conflict between their private beliefs and what they publicly claim to be doing.”
Luce argued that both Trump administration officials were part of a “millenarian cult,” and he worried their “militant creed” would influence their public policies to spark a “final conflagration in which the righteous will vanquish the wicked.”
“Call me a serial fretter, but I don’t take comfort from the fact that Pence is a heartbeat away from being commander-in-chief,” Luce wrote. “Nor do I see Pompeo as one of the grown-ups restraining Trump. He’s an enabler, not a preventer. Where Trump goes, Pompeo will follow. Let’s hope Trump never gets religion.”
Read more of Luce’s column here.
Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo are each a “genuine, end-of-days, believer in the apocalypse,” and Financial Times journalist Edward Luce said their religious beliefs about the end times exerts a troubling influence on their duties.
“Generally I believe a public figure’s beliefs should be irrelevant to their job,” Luce wrote. “Whether they’re atheist, Opus Dei, Buddhist or Muslim, should have no bearing on our assessment of their fitness for office. Yet I can’t help but feel anxious that both of Donald Trump’s main global envoys, Pompeo and Pence, have a conflict between their private beliefs and what they publicly claim to be doing.”
Luce argued that both Trump administration officials were part of a “millenarian cult,” and he worried their “militant creed” would influence their public policies to spark a “final conflagration in which the righteous will vanquish the wicked.”
“Call me a serial fretter, but I don’t take comfort from the fact that Pence is a heartbeat away from being commander-in-chief,” Luce wrote. “Nor do I see Pompeo as one of the grown-ups restraining Trump. He’s an enabler, not a preventer. Where Trump goes, Pompeo will follow. Let’s hope Trump never gets religion.”
Read more of Luce’s column here.
