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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
Aug 20, 2019
Real News Today
Aug 20, 2019
*Plutonium found in Colorado soil at five times higher level than acceptable radioactive level
(Environment)
*Trump Accuses Most American Jews of “Disloyalty” to Israel, Deploying Anti-Semitic Trope
(Trump)
*Weapons cache, grenade launcher, Neo-Nazi literature and instructions for owning slaves found in man’s home(Amerikkkans)
*China Did Not Trick the US — Trade Negotiators Served Corporate Interests
(Reality)
*Sen. Elizabeth Warren Asks Why The Justice Department Went Easy on Big Banks
(Candidates)
*Was a man wrongly identified after police digitally altered his mugshot?
(Gestapo USA)
*Nevada casino workers fight an uphill battle to get – and keep – their unions
(Slavery 21st Century)
*God Says He’s Getting A Lot Of Prayers About Mitch McConnell Having A Stroke
(Funnies)
*New York Offers to Rename Public Toilet After Trump
(Funnies)
*How Many White Supremacist Terrorists Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb (Ferret/Shower Cap)
(Talkers)
*Mexican man facing voter fraud trial in Sacramento. He’s a Trump supporter
(Elections)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
comment/tweet of the day
Denmark gives Trump administration price for Greenland
ck4829 - demo underground
Instead of giving us money; give your own people healthcare, go after the NRA, say "white nationalist terrorism is real and it's bad", and criticize Vladimir Putin for once. Do these things and we will give you Greenland
---
How do you reach across the aisle when your adversaries are;
SamKnause - demo underground
Shills for corporations
Shills for Wall Street
Shills for the NRA
Shills for coal, oil, and natural gas industries
Trying to implement a theocracy
Suppressing voting rights
Shrinking the rights of women
Attacking undocumented immigrants
Guilty of starting illegal wars
Enriching the wealthy
Wiping out unions
Supporting racism and fascism
Ignoring or don't believe in climate change
Opposed to health care for all ???
They are the enemy.
They are evil.
They are liars.
The Trump cult and republican party needs to be destroyed.
They are the greatest threat this country has ever faced.
---
Trump is a ‘paranoid, delusional individual’ who ‘can’t do much about anything’: Congressman
Americans, Cohen said, need to come “to grips with the fact that we have a leader who is not capable of leading this country. The economy is in danger because the president has no clue. He doesn’t have an economist. He’s got a TV commentator. They don’t know what to do.”
---
profits over children's safety!!!
The Car Seat Industry Helped Delay a Child Safety Regulation — Again
A long-delayed safety standard for children’s car seats in side-impact crashes is being pushed back further. The industry is arguing that the government should not act without also updating its other safety standards for car seats.
by Daniela Porat - Pro Publica
Aug. 20, 5 a.m. EDT
A long-awaited federal safety standard to test child car seats for their effectiveness in side-impact car crashes has been delayed to March 2020 — more than six years since the regulation was first proposed and nearly two decades since Congress urged the Department of Transportation to address the issue.
Attempts to improve car seat safety have bogged down because of a lack of good data on accidents involving children, antiquated technology and industry lobbying. The car seat industry has sought to delay the side-impact rule, arguing that the government should not act without also updating its other safety standards for car seats.
Joseph Colella, the director of child passenger safety for the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, said that having to test multiple types of child car seats under varying crash scenarios with different testing tools would impose an “undue burden” on manufacturers and would lead to price increases for consumers.
The timetable for setting new rules for child seats has slowed further under the administration of President Donald Trump. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not had a permanent administrator since January 2017. And Trump issued an executive order in January 2017 directing federal agencies to get rid of two regulations for each new one, a standard that consumer safety advocates say often hurts the ability of regulators to address dangers.
“This isn’t really new that NHTSA is slow to rule,” said Denise Donaldson, the editor of Safe Ride News, a child passenger safety publication. “When you’re already pretty slow and this happens, it just adds to the problem.”
Tim Edwards, a regulatory compliance manager at Dorel Juvenile, a car seat maker, said the company believes that NHTSA plans to update its front-collision standards and put forward the side-impact rule at the same time. If true, that could delay the side-impact standard beyond 2020.
The Department of Transportation provided a cryptic reason for the continued delay in a recent report on its regulatory agenda: “additional research and data analysis necessary.” Some previous reports simply listed “N/A” as the explanation. NHTSA, the agency that regulates car seats, declined to comment.
Motor vehicle crashes are a leading killer of children. Currently, child car seat manufacturers are required to test their seats in a simulated frontal collision. While those kinds of crashes are more common, side-impact crashes, like T-bone collisions, are more dangerous with higher rates of injury.
According to NHTSA, 794 child passengers age 14 and younger died in car crashes in 2017, the latest data available. The number of deaths of child passengers has been about the same since 2013.
NHTSA’s efforts to develop a side-impact standard for child seats began in the early 2000s. But the agency lacked solid data on how and how many children got hurt or died in vehicle accidents. The industry also did not have a crash test dummy that could be used to measure the crash forces experienced by children in real-world side-impact crashes.
In January 2014, NHTSA finally issued a proposed standard that would require all seats designed for children up to 40 pounds (or children in the infant to 4-year-old range) to be tested in a simulated side-impact collision.
The industry pushed back. In October of that year, Dorel Juvenile wrote in a public comment to NHTSA that releasing the side-impact test rule and the updated frontal test rule at different times would lead to major disruption and simultaneous “synchronization of both standards” would be “preferred.” While the agency was supposed to issue a final standard in 2014 according to the deadline set by Congress, NHTSA has repeatedly postponed the test requirement.
Consumer advocates have raised concerns about the delays. “I don’t understand why anyone hasn’t sued,” said Rena Steinzor, a professor of administrative law at the University of Maryland School of Law. An agency can be sued for unreasonable delays in implementing regulations or for failing to meet a deadline specified by Congress. “Unless they are worried that the Trump NHTSA would come up with a very weak rule,” she added.
A key issue is that the vehicle seat used to test the safety of child car seats in head-on crashes was initially based on the 1974 Chevrolet Impala. It was updated in 2003 to represent car seats of that time, but it is still not considered an accurate model for today’s cars.
While NHTSA has conducted and supported research on what a new seat for head-on tests might look like, the agency hasn’t formally proposed a design or said whether other aspects of the head-on test will change. (NHTSA’s explanation for delaying its proposal for an updated frontal test: “additional coordination necessary.”) That process would require public comment and could take years.
Benjamin Hoffman, the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention, said that he is saddened by the continued delays.
“I can’t not be hopeful, but I remain skeptical,” he said. “We’ve been burned too many times.”
Attempts to improve car seat safety have bogged down because of a lack of good data on accidents involving children, antiquated technology and industry lobbying. The car seat industry has sought to delay the side-impact rule, arguing that the government should not act without also updating its other safety standards for car seats.
Joseph Colella, the director of child passenger safety for the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, said that having to test multiple types of child car seats under varying crash scenarios with different testing tools would impose an “undue burden” on manufacturers and would lead to price increases for consumers.
The timetable for setting new rules for child seats has slowed further under the administration of President Donald Trump. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not had a permanent administrator since January 2017. And Trump issued an executive order in January 2017 directing federal agencies to get rid of two regulations for each new one, a standard that consumer safety advocates say often hurts the ability of regulators to address dangers.
“This isn’t really new that NHTSA is slow to rule,” said Denise Donaldson, the editor of Safe Ride News, a child passenger safety publication. “When you’re already pretty slow and this happens, it just adds to the problem.”
Tim Edwards, a regulatory compliance manager at Dorel Juvenile, a car seat maker, said the company believes that NHTSA plans to update its front-collision standards and put forward the side-impact rule at the same time. If true, that could delay the side-impact standard beyond 2020.
The Department of Transportation provided a cryptic reason for the continued delay in a recent report on its regulatory agenda: “additional research and data analysis necessary.” Some previous reports simply listed “N/A” as the explanation. NHTSA, the agency that regulates car seats, declined to comment.
Motor vehicle crashes are a leading killer of children. Currently, child car seat manufacturers are required to test their seats in a simulated frontal collision. While those kinds of crashes are more common, side-impact crashes, like T-bone collisions, are more dangerous with higher rates of injury.
According to NHTSA, 794 child passengers age 14 and younger died in car crashes in 2017, the latest data available. The number of deaths of child passengers has been about the same since 2013.
NHTSA’s efforts to develop a side-impact standard for child seats began in the early 2000s. But the agency lacked solid data on how and how many children got hurt or died in vehicle accidents. The industry also did not have a crash test dummy that could be used to measure the crash forces experienced by children in real-world side-impact crashes.
In January 2014, NHTSA finally issued a proposed standard that would require all seats designed for children up to 40 pounds (or children in the infant to 4-year-old range) to be tested in a simulated side-impact collision.
The industry pushed back. In October of that year, Dorel Juvenile wrote in a public comment to NHTSA that releasing the side-impact test rule and the updated frontal test rule at different times would lead to major disruption and simultaneous “synchronization of both standards” would be “preferred.” While the agency was supposed to issue a final standard in 2014 according to the deadline set by Congress, NHTSA has repeatedly postponed the test requirement.
Consumer advocates have raised concerns about the delays. “I don’t understand why anyone hasn’t sued,” said Rena Steinzor, a professor of administrative law at the University of Maryland School of Law. An agency can be sued for unreasonable delays in implementing regulations or for failing to meet a deadline specified by Congress. “Unless they are worried that the Trump NHTSA would come up with a very weak rule,” she added.
A key issue is that the vehicle seat used to test the safety of child car seats in head-on crashes was initially based on the 1974 Chevrolet Impala. It was updated in 2003 to represent car seats of that time, but it is still not considered an accurate model for today’s cars.
While NHTSA has conducted and supported research on what a new seat for head-on tests might look like, the agency hasn’t formally proposed a design or said whether other aspects of the head-on test will change. (NHTSA’s explanation for delaying its proposal for an updated frontal test: “additional coordination necessary.”) That process would require public comment and could take years.
Benjamin Hoffman, the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention, said that he is saddened by the continued delays.
“I can’t not be hopeful, but I remain skeptical,” he said. “We’ve been burned too many times.”
FEC Republicans block efforts to investigate NRA’s financial ties to Russia
It's the latest roadblock in trying to untangle the NRA's links with a sanctioned Russian figure.
CASEY MICHEL - Thinkprogress
AUG 20, 2019, 3:10 PM
Late last week, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) deadlocked on whether to pursue an investigation into potential Russian financing of the National Rifle Association (NRA). The split 2-2 vote fell along partisan lines, with the FEC’s two Republicans voting against any further inquiry into whether Alexander Torshin, a sanctioned Russian official, and Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent, grew close to the NRA in order to help direct the group’s 2016 political donations.
FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub castigated her Republican colleagues in an open letter, issued immediately after the vote.
In the letter, Weintraub noted that the NRA not only admitted that it had received previous donations from unidentified Russian nationals, but that the NRA likewise saw a substantial spike in its own political donations in 2016, issuing nearly $35 million more in political donations in 2016 than in the previous presidential election. The NRA admitted that Butina had once paid nearly $570 at a 2015 NRA fundraiser, but said it was unable to locate any donations from Torshin or sanctioned Russian official Dmitry Rogozin, with whom NRA officials also met in Moscow in 2015.
Indeed, Weintraub’s letter was scathing, regarding both her Republicans colleagues’ votes against further investigation, as well as regarding the NRA’s relationship with Torshin and Butina.
As Weintraub wrote:
Some allegations are too serious to ignore. Too serious to simply take Respondents’ denials at face value. Too serious to play games with. Yet in this matter, my colleagues ran their usual evidence-blocking play and the Commission’s attorneys placed too much faith in the few facts Respondents put before us.
As a result, this agency barely lifted a finger to find out the truth behind one of the most blockbuster campaign finance allegations in recent memory….
[The NRA’s] search of its records for foreign contributions in this enforcement context was ludicrously inadequate. Who’s on this list of “known Russian nationals”? We don’t know. Were there any suspicious patterns of transactions that would indicate that contributions were being made in the name of another? We don’t know. The NRA’s effort was hardly more thorough than searching a contributor list for the name “Vladimir Putin” and calling it a day.
Weintraub wasn’t the only one to condemn the FEC Republicans’ votes. In a statement to ThinkProgress, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) slammed FEC Republicans.
“A foreign adversary interfered in the 2016 presidential election and the response from Republicans at every level, whether it be President [Donald] Trump, congressional Republicans, or now the Republican appointees on the Federal Election Commission, has been to bury their heads in the sand or actively obstruct getting to the bottom of what happened,” Wyden said.
It’s unclear what next steps may remain to uncover ties between Russia and the NRA. The gun-rights group has imploded over the past few months, with unprecedented infighting spilling into the public. Six NRA board members have already resigned this year, and multiple attorneys general have opened formal inquiries into the group’s internal financing.
Regardless of the FEC vote, it’s clear that the group’s proximity to Torshin and Butina in the lead-up to the 2016 election was, to say the least, inadvisable. As a series of internal FBI analyses, released just earlier this month, indicate, Torshin — who had previously been linked to a massive Spanish money laundering operation — was considered by the FBI a “mobster” who was well-known for his ties to “Russian Organized Crime… and the Russian government.”
FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub castigated her Republican colleagues in an open letter, issued immediately after the vote.
In the letter, Weintraub noted that the NRA not only admitted that it had received previous donations from unidentified Russian nationals, but that the NRA likewise saw a substantial spike in its own political donations in 2016, issuing nearly $35 million more in political donations in 2016 than in the previous presidential election. The NRA admitted that Butina had once paid nearly $570 at a 2015 NRA fundraiser, but said it was unable to locate any donations from Torshin or sanctioned Russian official Dmitry Rogozin, with whom NRA officials also met in Moscow in 2015.
Indeed, Weintraub’s letter was scathing, regarding both her Republicans colleagues’ votes against further investigation, as well as regarding the NRA’s relationship with Torshin and Butina.
As Weintraub wrote:
Some allegations are too serious to ignore. Too serious to simply take Respondents’ denials at face value. Too serious to play games with. Yet in this matter, my colleagues ran their usual evidence-blocking play and the Commission’s attorneys placed too much faith in the few facts Respondents put before us.
As a result, this agency barely lifted a finger to find out the truth behind one of the most blockbuster campaign finance allegations in recent memory….
[The NRA’s] search of its records for foreign contributions in this enforcement context was ludicrously inadequate. Who’s on this list of “known Russian nationals”? We don’t know. Were there any suspicious patterns of transactions that would indicate that contributions were being made in the name of another? We don’t know. The NRA’s effort was hardly more thorough than searching a contributor list for the name “Vladimir Putin” and calling it a day.
Weintraub wasn’t the only one to condemn the FEC Republicans’ votes. In a statement to ThinkProgress, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) slammed FEC Republicans.
“A foreign adversary interfered in the 2016 presidential election and the response from Republicans at every level, whether it be President [Donald] Trump, congressional Republicans, or now the Republican appointees on the Federal Election Commission, has been to bury their heads in the sand or actively obstruct getting to the bottom of what happened,” Wyden said.
It’s unclear what next steps may remain to uncover ties between Russia and the NRA. The gun-rights group has imploded over the past few months, with unprecedented infighting spilling into the public. Six NRA board members have already resigned this year, and multiple attorneys general have opened formal inquiries into the group’s internal financing.
Regardless of the FEC vote, it’s clear that the group’s proximity to Torshin and Butina in the lead-up to the 2016 election was, to say the least, inadvisable. As a series of internal FBI analyses, released just earlier this month, indicate, Torshin — who had previously been linked to a massive Spanish money laundering operation — was considered by the FBI a “mobster” who was well-known for his ties to “Russian Organized Crime… and the Russian government.”
op - ed: GOP’s Response to Inequality Crisis? More Tax Cuts for the Rich, of Course.
BY Morris Pearl, Truthout
PUBLISHED August 20, 2019
The U.S. is now experiencing higher levels of economic inequality than we’ve seen at any time since the Gilded Age. Roughly 4 out of 10 Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency expense, and for the first time in modern history, life expectancy is going down for large parts of our population. If trends continue, the wealthiest 10 percent could own allU.S. wealth in a little over three decades.
So, what are Republican lawmakers proposing to address the crisis? More tax cuts for the rich, of course.
Recently, a group of 21 Republican senators led by Ted Cruz wrote a letter pushing the White House to index capital gains taxes to inflation, a move that would save wealthy investors like me billions of dollars a year — while normal working Americans would get nothing.
Here is how the proposal would work. Say I bought a house in 1974 for $37,200 with the intention of renting it out. Things were going great, but this year, I decided to sell the house, and sell it for $320,000. Assuming I depreciated the original value and had to pay capital gains on the profit, I would owe the government $36,188. Under the GOP senators’ new proposal, $193,276 of the house value would be attributed to inflation, so I would only pay tax on the remaining $126,724. This means that I would only pay a tax of $7,196.
In other words, the Republican proposal would cut my tax by about 80 percent. What would I do with that extra money? Almost all of it would go into my personal investment portfolio, not into creating jobs — the pretense Republicans use to justify giving tax cuts to the rich.
Decades of experience have proven trickle-down economics are a fantasy; the wealthy tend to pocket benefits from tax breaks, not reinvest the money into job creation and economic productivity.
Nonpartisan economic analysis of the Republican proposal, and its damning conclusion, should be enough to stop it dead in the water: According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), indexing capital gains to inflation will not lead to economic growth. PWBM found, in the first decade, we would lose $100 billion in tax revenues — for the overwhelming benefit of the wealthy. A jaw-dropping 86 percent of the benefits of indexing capital gains to inflation would go to the top 1 percent of income earners, and 63 percent of the benefits would go to the tippy top: the 0.1 percent.
The current proposal has a chance of becoming the Trump administration’s interpretation of current law.
Why? Because it benefits the rich by design, not by accident. Giving tax cuts to the donor class has long been a core (if unspoken) priority for the GOP, and they are only getting more brazen. Public opinion of tax cuts for the rich were deeply unpopular when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, a bill that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, and public perception of the bill remained so negative during the 2018 midterm elections that many Republicans were forced to distance themselves from it.
Even still, many Republican lawmakers are already and will continue to get behind this most recent attempt to push a handout to the rich through Congress.
The Republican Party will continue to promote this idea in the name of “fairness.” But there are different concepts of fairness. Some people believe that fairness means that wealthy real estate developers should pay a much lower percentage of their income in taxes than do Americans who work for a living. Their basic argument is that wealthy people can threaten to move to Mars … or something. So, we must have an appeasement policy. Working-class people have no choice but to work and pay taxes, so there is no need to appease them.
That’s not the way I was raised to understand fairness, and I’m not alone. Most Americans believe that our tax system should reflect a simple principle: People should pay taxes based on their ability to pay taxes. There is no reason public school teachers should pay a higher tax rate than wealthy investors. True fairness would be making the tax code work for all, not just the wealthy few.
So, what are Republican lawmakers proposing to address the crisis? More tax cuts for the rich, of course.
Recently, a group of 21 Republican senators led by Ted Cruz wrote a letter pushing the White House to index capital gains taxes to inflation, a move that would save wealthy investors like me billions of dollars a year — while normal working Americans would get nothing.
Here is how the proposal would work. Say I bought a house in 1974 for $37,200 with the intention of renting it out. Things were going great, but this year, I decided to sell the house, and sell it for $320,000. Assuming I depreciated the original value and had to pay capital gains on the profit, I would owe the government $36,188. Under the GOP senators’ new proposal, $193,276 of the house value would be attributed to inflation, so I would only pay tax on the remaining $126,724. This means that I would only pay a tax of $7,196.
In other words, the Republican proposal would cut my tax by about 80 percent. What would I do with that extra money? Almost all of it would go into my personal investment portfolio, not into creating jobs — the pretense Republicans use to justify giving tax cuts to the rich.
Decades of experience have proven trickle-down economics are a fantasy; the wealthy tend to pocket benefits from tax breaks, not reinvest the money into job creation and economic productivity.
Nonpartisan economic analysis of the Republican proposal, and its damning conclusion, should be enough to stop it dead in the water: According to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), indexing capital gains to inflation will not lead to economic growth. PWBM found, in the first decade, we would lose $100 billion in tax revenues — for the overwhelming benefit of the wealthy. A jaw-dropping 86 percent of the benefits of indexing capital gains to inflation would go to the top 1 percent of income earners, and 63 percent of the benefits would go to the tippy top: the 0.1 percent.
The current proposal has a chance of becoming the Trump administration’s interpretation of current law.
Why? Because it benefits the rich by design, not by accident. Giving tax cuts to the donor class has long been a core (if unspoken) priority for the GOP, and they are only getting more brazen. Public opinion of tax cuts for the rich were deeply unpopular when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, a bill that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy, and public perception of the bill remained so negative during the 2018 midterm elections that many Republicans were forced to distance themselves from it.
Even still, many Republican lawmakers are already and will continue to get behind this most recent attempt to push a handout to the rich through Congress.
The Republican Party will continue to promote this idea in the name of “fairness.” But there are different concepts of fairness. Some people believe that fairness means that wealthy real estate developers should pay a much lower percentage of their income in taxes than do Americans who work for a living. Their basic argument is that wealthy people can threaten to move to Mars … or something. So, we must have an appeasement policy. Working-class people have no choice but to work and pay taxes, so there is no need to appease them.
That’s not the way I was raised to understand fairness, and I’m not alone. Most Americans believe that our tax system should reflect a simple principle: People should pay taxes based on their ability to pay taxes. There is no reason public school teachers should pay a higher tax rate than wealthy investors. True fairness would be making the tax code work for all, not just the wealthy few.
French model tycoon at heart of Epstein scandal accusations
August 20, 2019
By Agence France-Presse - Raw Story
A formerly powerful French modeling tycoon has emerged as a key figure in the scandal surrounding US billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in jail while facing charges of sexually trafficking minors.
Jean-Luc Brunel, regarded as a close friend and ally of the disgraced US financier, has been accused in court documents of procuring young girls for Epstein, as well as of rape. He has in the past unequivocally denied the accusations.
The model scout, an influential figure in the industry, has always been a low-profile figure and like some other former Epstein allies vanished after the financier was charged in early July.
Brunel has issued no comment over the latest events, but in a statement in 2015 that itself broke years of silence he vehemently denied involvement, “directly or indirectly”, in Epstein’s crimes.
Jailed ahead of a trial, Epstein was found hanged in his cell on August 10 after being linked to a string of sordid abuses involving underage girls at both his Palm Beach home and on his private island in the Caribbean.
– ‘Investigators must shed light’ –
But there have been allegations that some abuses may also have taken place in Paris at Epstein’s sumptuous apartment on Avenue Foch near the Champs-Elysees.
Calls are growing in France for an investigation into what went on behind the walls of the apartment, which was frequented by Brunel.
“It is up to investigators… to shed light on the use of this apartment which was owned by Mr Epstein,” said Innocence in Danger, a French NGO working to protect children against sexual violence, urging Paris prosecutors to investigate.
Two French government ministers have also demanded action, saying the US inquiry had exposed links with France that needed investigating.
So far, prosecutors have said they are carrying out an initial analysis before making a decision over launching a probe.
– Rape, procuring allegations –
Epstein, who at one time counted Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Britain’s Prince Andrew among this friends, was accused of recruiting young girls to administer massages which frequently led to abuse and even rape.
His address book, which was made public in 2015 through the Gawker website, included dozens of names listed under “massages”, some 30 of which were in France.
Now in his 70s, Brunel began his career as a model scout who in 1978 was involved in setting up the prestigious Karin Models agency.
He then moved to the United States where he co-founded the Miami-based agency MC2.
Brunel’s name had been linked to Epstein for several years but details emerged only relatively recently during a civil lawsuit launched in 2015 by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Epstein.
According to court documents, Giuffre accused Epstein of using her as a “sex slave” and said she had been forced to have sex with well-known politicians and businessmen, including Brunel.
She also alleged that Brunel would bring girls as young as 12 to the United States and pass them on to his friends, including Epstein.
These claims prompted Brunel to issue his statement saying he had “decided to bring judicial proceedings in France and in the United States against allegations which cause considerable damage to me personally and to my model agencies.”
– ‘Omerta in place’? –
Long before the Epstein scandal broke, Brunel was accused of rape by several models in a 1988 documentary by CBS.
Last week, French investigative website Mediapart released testimony from former Dutch model Thysia Huisman alleging she was “drugged and raped” by him in the early 1990s when she was 18.
“We have been contacted by many models who worked for MC2 and Karin about accusations of potential sexual trafficking and sexual abuse,” former top model Sara Ziff, who now runs the modeling rights organization Model Alliance, told AFP.
“For years, everyone knew about these practices but said nothing, there was some kind of omerta in place,” said Ekaterina Ozhiganova, co-founder of Model Law, a French association that works to protect models’ rights.
“It’s not the first time that people in power benefit from favorable treatment” guaranteeing them years of impunity, she told AFP, pointing to the similarities with the Harvey Weinstein scandal that rocked Hollywood and launched the #MeToo movement.
“Potential abusers gravitate towards certain professions linked to the body, like modeling,” she said. “That allows them to mix with easy prey.”
Jean-Luc Brunel, regarded as a close friend and ally of the disgraced US financier, has been accused in court documents of procuring young girls for Epstein, as well as of rape. He has in the past unequivocally denied the accusations.
The model scout, an influential figure in the industry, has always been a low-profile figure and like some other former Epstein allies vanished after the financier was charged in early July.
Brunel has issued no comment over the latest events, but in a statement in 2015 that itself broke years of silence he vehemently denied involvement, “directly or indirectly”, in Epstein’s crimes.
Jailed ahead of a trial, Epstein was found hanged in his cell on August 10 after being linked to a string of sordid abuses involving underage girls at both his Palm Beach home and on his private island in the Caribbean.
– ‘Investigators must shed light’ –
But there have been allegations that some abuses may also have taken place in Paris at Epstein’s sumptuous apartment on Avenue Foch near the Champs-Elysees.
Calls are growing in France for an investigation into what went on behind the walls of the apartment, which was frequented by Brunel.
“It is up to investigators… to shed light on the use of this apartment which was owned by Mr Epstein,” said Innocence in Danger, a French NGO working to protect children against sexual violence, urging Paris prosecutors to investigate.
Two French government ministers have also demanded action, saying the US inquiry had exposed links with France that needed investigating.
So far, prosecutors have said they are carrying out an initial analysis before making a decision over launching a probe.
– Rape, procuring allegations –
Epstein, who at one time counted Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Britain’s Prince Andrew among this friends, was accused of recruiting young girls to administer massages which frequently led to abuse and even rape.
His address book, which was made public in 2015 through the Gawker website, included dozens of names listed under “massages”, some 30 of which were in France.
Now in his 70s, Brunel began his career as a model scout who in 1978 was involved in setting up the prestigious Karin Models agency.
He then moved to the United States where he co-founded the Miami-based agency MC2.
Brunel’s name had been linked to Epstein for several years but details emerged only relatively recently during a civil lawsuit launched in 2015 by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Epstein.
According to court documents, Giuffre accused Epstein of using her as a “sex slave” and said she had been forced to have sex with well-known politicians and businessmen, including Brunel.
She also alleged that Brunel would bring girls as young as 12 to the United States and pass them on to his friends, including Epstein.
These claims prompted Brunel to issue his statement saying he had “decided to bring judicial proceedings in France and in the United States against allegations which cause considerable damage to me personally and to my model agencies.”
– ‘Omerta in place’? –
Long before the Epstein scandal broke, Brunel was accused of rape by several models in a 1988 documentary by CBS.
Last week, French investigative website Mediapart released testimony from former Dutch model Thysia Huisman alleging she was “drugged and raped” by him in the early 1990s when she was 18.
“We have been contacted by many models who worked for MC2 and Karin about accusations of potential sexual trafficking and sexual abuse,” former top model Sara Ziff, who now runs the modeling rights organization Model Alliance, told AFP.
“For years, everyone knew about these practices but said nothing, there was some kind of omerta in place,” said Ekaterina Ozhiganova, co-founder of Model Law, a French association that works to protect models’ rights.
“It’s not the first time that people in power benefit from favorable treatment” guaranteeing them years of impunity, she told AFP, pointing to the similarities with the Harvey Weinstein scandal that rocked Hollywood and launched the #MeToo movement.
“Potential abusers gravitate towards certain professions linked to the body, like modeling,” she said. “That allows them to mix with easy prey.”
Bites from Real News
*8/20/2019*
*Some of the Country’s Worst Prisons Have Escaped Justice Department Action
by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting
*The Administration Rushed on a Sweeping Immigration Policy. We Found Substantive, Sloppy Mistakes.
Trump’s new immigration policy applies more harshly to families of U.S. citizens in the military than to families of noncitizens in the military. Experts think it’s an error that suggests officials are pushing policies even they don’t fully understand.
*Measles outbreak grows to more than 1,200 cases reported in 30 states
The measles outbreak spreading across the country has spiked to 1,200 confirmed cases, in 30 states as of Aug. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The outbreak is on track to be the worst since 1992 when measles was declared "elimi ... (The Hill)
*City sues to remove Confederate monument, citing free speech
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- The city of Norfolk, Virginia, is claiming in a lawsuit that its free speech rights are being violated because a state law won't let it remove 80-foot (24-meter) Confederate monument from its downtown. (Associated Press)
*The US won't provide flu vaccines to migrant families at border detention camps
The U.S. won't be vaccinating migrant families in holding centers ahead of this year's flu season, despite calls from doctors to boost efforts to fight the infection that's killed at least three children at detention facilities in the past year. &qu ... (CNBC)
*white working class: Truck driver arrested before carrying out mass shooting at Memphis church
A man has been arrested by the FBI and charged with planning to carry out a mass shooting at a church in Memphis, Tennessee. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that court filings Monday detailed the arrest and charges against Thomas Matthew McVic ... (The Hill)
*23 Texas Towns Hit With Ransomware Attack In 'New Front' Of Cyberassault
Texas is the latest state to be hit with a cyberattack, with state officials confirming this week that computer systems in 23 municipalities have been infiltrated by hackers demanding a ransom. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and state cybersecu ... (NPR)
*Gun sellers are sneaking onto Facebook's secondhand marketplace
An online gun bazaar is taking shape on Facebook Inc.’s Marketplace, as recent mass shootings have renewed the debate in Washington over access to firearms. Facebook launched its Marketplace feature four years ago, allowing its more than two billi ... (Wall Street Journal)
*When Trump talks about "our movement," be afraid — it will outlast his presidency
"Our movement is built on love," Trump told his followers in New Hampshire. Don't laugh — they really believe it
...At its core, Donald Trump's love is filtered through fascism and authoritarianism. His form of tainted love rests upon moral inversion, a state of being in which truth is replaced by lies, empirical reality itself is usurped, and the evil and immoral are transformed into the good and the noble. As Hannah Arendt warned in her landmark book "The Origins of Totalitarianism":
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
*Climate crisis: How US cities are scrambling to protect people from extreme heat
Amid rapid growth and radical, permanent climate change, urban populations are increasingly vulnerable
*LOCKED DOWN: Inside The Prison Where Inmates Set Each Other On Fire and Gangs Have More Power Than Guards
At South Mississippi Correctional Institution, inmates have been on perpetual lockdown for seven months and gangs enforce rules. With frequent beatings, burnings and escapes, the prison has become a violent tinderbox.
*OIL LOBBYIST TOUTS SUCCESS IN EFFORT TO CRIMINALIZE PIPELINE PROTESTS, LEAKED RECORDING SHOWS
THE AMERICAN FUEL & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a powerful lobbying group that represents major chemical plants and oil refineries, including Valero Energy, Koch Industries, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Marathon Petroleum, has flexed its muscle over environmental and energy policy for decades. Despite its reach, AFPM channels dark money and influence with little scrutiny.
The group is now leveraging its political power to criminalize protests of oil and gas infrastructure.
*the choice between a sellout and a progressive: DEMOCRATS HAVE AN OPEN SENATE SEAT IN NEW MEXICO. WILL THEY ELECT A PROGRESSIVE, OR THE FORMER HEAD OF THE DCCC?
*We Could Eliminate Extreme Global Poverty If Multinationals Paid Their Taxes
..A range of research findings from academics and international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put the annual global revenue losses due to multinational tax avoidance in a range between $200 billion and $600 billion...
*The 1619 Project - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/.../1619-america-slavery.html
American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country's true ...
*The Brutal History of Anti-Latino Discrimination in America
School segregation, lynchings and mass deportations of Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are just some of the injustices Latinos have faced.
*The U.S. Deported a Million of Its Own Citizens to Mexico During the Great Depression
Up to 1.8 million people of Mexican descent—most of them American-born—were rounded up in informal raids and deported in an effort to reserve jobs for white people.
*400 years of slavery Do idyllic southern plantations really tell the story?
In these memorials to southern splendor, much of the history being told is devoid of the atrocities of slavery
GOP lawmaker cut the mic on black woman’s facts — but let white men spew ‘lunacy and lies’: report
August 20, 2019
By Bob Brigham - Raw Story
The Republican chair of a Tennessee legislative committee is under fire for cutting off the microphone while a woman of color was speaking — but allowing white men to spew “lunacy.”
“It took all of five minutes for Sen. Mike Bell, chairman of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, to prove Cherisse Scott’s point. Scott is founder and CEO of Sister Reach, a Memphis organization that fights for reproductive freedom and health for rural women and girls of color struggling with poverty,” Memphis Commercial Appeal columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee explained.
“Last week, Scott was telling the committee, which is considering a measure that would effectively ban most abortions in the state, that the “colonial and supremacist,” ideologies behind it would result in more death for women who looked like her,” she explained. “It was then that Bell, a Riceville Republican, acted on those supremacist tendencies that Scott alluded to; tendencies which made him tolerate lunacy and lies from other speakers, but not passion and facts from Scott, who was the only African American woman to testify.”
“He shut off her microphone. He summoned the sergeant-at-arms to remove her,” Weathersbee reported. “She turned to the audience and kept talking. Then, he announced a five-minute recess and left the room.”
Scott blasted the Republican’s actions.
“I was the only black woman to speak, but they didn’t really want to listen to me talk about my lived experiences,” Scott said. “It also shows the racism and the sexism, because they couldn’t bear to hear a black woman talk about how this could impact us…”
Weathersbee reminded who Bell did not cut off.
“Bell didn’t cut off Hal Rounds, a Fayetteville, Tennessee man who, among other things, claimed to have a “conceptual memory,” of being born,” she noted. “He didn’t cut off Alan Keyes, a perennial presidential candidate with neither a salient point to make nor a Tennessee residency. And he didn’t cut off June Griffin, founder of the Tennessee Committee for The Bill of Rights, when she lamented the lack of prosecutions for moral turpitude, and said the nation never had a problem with morals until after the 1960s.”
The columnist blasted the Republican lawmaker.
“Apparently, Scott’s words, which called out Christian hypocrisy, among other things, were too much for Bell,” she suggested. “Yet if Bell was that dismissive of the only black woman who deigned to address the committee, that speaks to how people like him don’t care about saving fetuses or women as much as they care about keeping them in their place. Whether it’s by curtailing their speaking time or curtailing their rights.”
Read the full column.
“It took all of five minutes for Sen. Mike Bell, chairman of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, to prove Cherisse Scott’s point. Scott is founder and CEO of Sister Reach, a Memphis organization that fights for reproductive freedom and health for rural women and girls of color struggling with poverty,” Memphis Commercial Appeal columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee explained.
“Last week, Scott was telling the committee, which is considering a measure that would effectively ban most abortions in the state, that the “colonial and supremacist,” ideologies behind it would result in more death for women who looked like her,” she explained. “It was then that Bell, a Riceville Republican, acted on those supremacist tendencies that Scott alluded to; tendencies which made him tolerate lunacy and lies from other speakers, but not passion and facts from Scott, who was the only African American woman to testify.”
“He shut off her microphone. He summoned the sergeant-at-arms to remove her,” Weathersbee reported. “She turned to the audience and kept talking. Then, he announced a five-minute recess and left the room.”
Scott blasted the Republican’s actions.
“I was the only black woman to speak, but they didn’t really want to listen to me talk about my lived experiences,” Scott said. “It also shows the racism and the sexism, because they couldn’t bear to hear a black woman talk about how this could impact us…”
Weathersbee reminded who Bell did not cut off.
“Bell didn’t cut off Hal Rounds, a Fayetteville, Tennessee man who, among other things, claimed to have a “conceptual memory,” of being born,” she noted. “He didn’t cut off Alan Keyes, a perennial presidential candidate with neither a salient point to make nor a Tennessee residency. And he didn’t cut off June Griffin, founder of the Tennessee Committee for The Bill of Rights, when she lamented the lack of prosecutions for moral turpitude, and said the nation never had a problem with morals until after the 1960s.”
The columnist blasted the Republican lawmaker.
“Apparently, Scott’s words, which called out Christian hypocrisy, among other things, were too much for Bell,” she suggested. “Yet if Bell was that dismissive of the only black woman who deigned to address the committee, that speaks to how people like him don’t care about saving fetuses or women as much as they care about keeping them in their place. Whether it’s by curtailing their speaking time or curtailing their rights.”
Read the full column.
The Trump administration wants to make it easier to fire women who act too ‘masculine’
May the Lord open.
IAN MILLHISER - Thinkprogress
AUG 20, 2019, 8:00 AM
Thirty years ago, in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, the Supreme Court held that “sex stereotyping” is forbidden by a federal law banning employment discrimination. “We are beyond the day,” Justice William Brennan wrote in the court’s plurality opinion, “when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotype associated with their group.”
Nevertheless, the Trump administration filed a brief last week asking the Supreme Court to bring back the day when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotype associated with their group.
The Trump Justice Department’s position in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC wouldn’t nuke Price Waterhouse entirely. But it would severely weaken protections against sex discrimination, and give employers broad new authority to fire employees who do not comply with stereotypes about how people of a particular gender should appear.
It would do so, moreover, in service of the broader goal of denying civil rights protections to transgender workers. The thrust of the Trump administration’s position in Harris Funeral Homes is that, if existing law is broad enough to protect trans workers from discrimination, then that law must be rolled back — even if doing so will legalize a fair amount of discrimination against cis women in the process.
“Because of . . . sex”
Harris Funeral Homes involves Aimee Stephens, a trans woman who was fired because of her decision to transition. Her former boss claims to “believe that the Bible teaches that a person’s sex is an immutable God-given gift.”
In response to her termination, Stephens sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides that employers may not “discharge any individual…because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
Thus, as a textual matter, Stephens should have an easy case. Title VII’s language is capacious. It forbids any discrimination “because of” an employee’s “sex” (a term that, in this context, refers to gender). As the federal appeals court that ruled in her favor explained, “it is analytically impossible to fire an employee based on that employee’s status as a transgender person without being motivated, at least in part, by the employee’s sex.”
The entire reason why Stephens was fired is that her employer believes that she is a man, and that men must dress and act a certain way. That’s discrimination because of sex.
Stereotyping
Setting aside this simple, textual argument explaining why Stephens should prevail, she also benefits from the separate line of cases prohibiting sex stereotyping — or, at least, she does under those cases as they currently stand.
Price Waterhouse is a bit of a confusing decision because it did not produce a single majority opinion. Nevertheless, a majority of the Supreme Court clearly agreed that sex stereotyping is not allowed. Brennan concluded, on behalf of himself and three other justices, that “Congress intended to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes.'”
Meanwhile, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that the plaintiff in Price Waterhouse could proceed with her lawsuit because she proved that “stereotypical attitudes towards women [played] a significant, though unquantifiable, role” in her employer’s decision not to make her a partner. So Brennan’s opinion plus O’Connor’s opinion equals five votes against sex stereotyping in the workplace.
Significantly, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he argued that “Title VII creates no independent cause of action for sex stereotyping.” Though Kennedy conceded that “evidence of use by decisionmakers of sex stereotypes is, of course, quite relevant to the question of discriminatory intent,” his dissenting opinion denied that sex stereotyping alone is a valid basis for a Title VII lawsuit.
Which brings us to the Trump administration’s argument in is Harris Funeral Homes brief:
Stephens’s and the Sixth Circuit’s sex-stereotyping argument rests on the incorrect premise that Price Waterhouse construed Title VII to prohibit sex stereotypes per se. But that case, which produced no majority opinion, merely recognized that a plaintiff can use evidence that an employer engaged in sex stereotyping to show that the employer discriminated because of sex under the ordinary Title VII rubric. It did not recognize sex stereotyping as a novel, freestanding category of Title VII liability.
See the problem here? This passage does not describe the majority’s view in Price Waterhouse at all. To the contrary, it’s the exact same view that Justice Kennedy took in dissent.
Having confused the majority’s view with a dissent, the Trump administration then claims that much of Price Waterhouse must be rolled back.
Indeed, it’s notable that the Trump administration is only able to cite one lower court opinion that supports its novel view of Price Waterhouse, and that opinion is a concurring opinion by Judge James Ho — a Trump judge known for writing aggressive opinions that read more like Fox News editorials than like judicial decisions. The Ho opinion that Trump’s Justice Department relies upon does not cite any other case that shares his reading of Price Waterhouse.
Price Waterhouse, moreover, is hardly an obscure case. It is a seminal decision that recognized an entire branch of American civil rights law. According to the legal research database Lexis Advance, 6,265 court decisions cite Price Waterhouse. The fact that Judge Ho (and the Trump administration) wasn’t able to find a single one that supports his reading of Price Waterhouse is compelling evidence that Ho is wrong.
It’s unclear just how drastically the Trump administration’s reading of Price Waterhousewould roll back protections for women generally, but one line in their brief suggests that the rollback would be quite significant. Unless Price Waterhouse is read narrowly, the Trump Justice Department warns, “a dress code that required men to wear neckties, for example, would be susceptible to challenge as predicated on sex stereotypes.”
Perhaps. A prototypical example of sex stereotyping is declaring that men must look a certain way and women must look another way (although some lower courts permit gender-specific dress codes so long as they are “equally burdensome” on men and women). At the very least, the Trump administration appears eager to strip all American workers of their right to keep their job even if they don’t tailor their appearance to their employer’s gender norms.
One lesson of Harris Funeral Homes, in other words, is likely to be that the fate of various civil rights plaintiffs are unavoidably linked. Denying trans workers the right to be free of employment discrimination means rolling back doctrines that protect other workers as well.
If the Supreme Court joins the Trump administration’s crusade against trans rights, the consequences will spill over to all workers.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration filed a brief last week asking the Supreme Court to bring back the day when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotype associated with their group.
The Trump Justice Department’s position in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC wouldn’t nuke Price Waterhouse entirely. But it would severely weaken protections against sex discrimination, and give employers broad new authority to fire employees who do not comply with stereotypes about how people of a particular gender should appear.
It would do so, moreover, in service of the broader goal of denying civil rights protections to transgender workers. The thrust of the Trump administration’s position in Harris Funeral Homes is that, if existing law is broad enough to protect trans workers from discrimination, then that law must be rolled back — even if doing so will legalize a fair amount of discrimination against cis women in the process.
“Because of . . . sex”
Harris Funeral Homes involves Aimee Stephens, a trans woman who was fired because of her decision to transition. Her former boss claims to “believe that the Bible teaches that a person’s sex is an immutable God-given gift.”
In response to her termination, Stephens sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides that employers may not “discharge any individual…because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
Thus, as a textual matter, Stephens should have an easy case. Title VII’s language is capacious. It forbids any discrimination “because of” an employee’s “sex” (a term that, in this context, refers to gender). As the federal appeals court that ruled in her favor explained, “it is analytically impossible to fire an employee based on that employee’s status as a transgender person without being motivated, at least in part, by the employee’s sex.”
The entire reason why Stephens was fired is that her employer believes that she is a man, and that men must dress and act a certain way. That’s discrimination because of sex.
Stereotyping
Setting aside this simple, textual argument explaining why Stephens should prevail, she also benefits from the separate line of cases prohibiting sex stereotyping — or, at least, she does under those cases as they currently stand.
Price Waterhouse is a bit of a confusing decision because it did not produce a single majority opinion. Nevertheless, a majority of the Supreme Court clearly agreed that sex stereotyping is not allowed. Brennan concluded, on behalf of himself and three other justices, that “Congress intended to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes.'”
Meanwhile, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that the plaintiff in Price Waterhouse could proceed with her lawsuit because she proved that “stereotypical attitudes towards women [played] a significant, though unquantifiable, role” in her employer’s decision not to make her a partner. So Brennan’s opinion plus O’Connor’s opinion equals five votes against sex stereotyping in the workplace.
Significantly, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he argued that “Title VII creates no independent cause of action for sex stereotyping.” Though Kennedy conceded that “evidence of use by decisionmakers of sex stereotypes is, of course, quite relevant to the question of discriminatory intent,” his dissenting opinion denied that sex stereotyping alone is a valid basis for a Title VII lawsuit.
Which brings us to the Trump administration’s argument in is Harris Funeral Homes brief:
Stephens’s and the Sixth Circuit’s sex-stereotyping argument rests on the incorrect premise that Price Waterhouse construed Title VII to prohibit sex stereotypes per se. But that case, which produced no majority opinion, merely recognized that a plaintiff can use evidence that an employer engaged in sex stereotyping to show that the employer discriminated because of sex under the ordinary Title VII rubric. It did not recognize sex stereotyping as a novel, freestanding category of Title VII liability.
See the problem here? This passage does not describe the majority’s view in Price Waterhouse at all. To the contrary, it’s the exact same view that Justice Kennedy took in dissent.
Having confused the majority’s view with a dissent, the Trump administration then claims that much of Price Waterhouse must be rolled back.
Indeed, it’s notable that the Trump administration is only able to cite one lower court opinion that supports its novel view of Price Waterhouse, and that opinion is a concurring opinion by Judge James Ho — a Trump judge known for writing aggressive opinions that read more like Fox News editorials than like judicial decisions. The Ho opinion that Trump’s Justice Department relies upon does not cite any other case that shares his reading of Price Waterhouse.
Price Waterhouse, moreover, is hardly an obscure case. It is a seminal decision that recognized an entire branch of American civil rights law. According to the legal research database Lexis Advance, 6,265 court decisions cite Price Waterhouse. The fact that Judge Ho (and the Trump administration) wasn’t able to find a single one that supports his reading of Price Waterhouse is compelling evidence that Ho is wrong.
It’s unclear just how drastically the Trump administration’s reading of Price Waterhousewould roll back protections for women generally, but one line in their brief suggests that the rollback would be quite significant. Unless Price Waterhouse is read narrowly, the Trump Justice Department warns, “a dress code that required men to wear neckties, for example, would be susceptible to challenge as predicated on sex stereotypes.”
Perhaps. A prototypical example of sex stereotyping is declaring that men must look a certain way and women must look another way (although some lower courts permit gender-specific dress codes so long as they are “equally burdensome” on men and women). At the very least, the Trump administration appears eager to strip all American workers of their right to keep their job even if they don’t tailor their appearance to their employer’s gender norms.
One lesson of Harris Funeral Homes, in other words, is likely to be that the fate of various civil rights plaintiffs are unavoidably linked. Denying trans workers the right to be free of employment discrimination means rolling back doctrines that protect other workers as well.
If the Supreme Court joins the Trump administration’s crusade against trans rights, the consequences will spill over to all workers.
Russia Tells Nuclear Watchdog: Radiation From Blast Is ‘None of Your Business’
Barbie Latza Nadeau - Correspondent-At-Large
Updated 08.20.19 7:06AM ET
Daily Beast Cheat Sheet
Russia has told the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization that the nuclear-reactor explosion at a White Sea missile test site in early August is none of their business. The news came as two additional Russian monitoring stations designed to warn about nuclear radiation threats have gone silent after the mysterious Aug. 8 blast at the site this month, according to The Wall Street Journal. Four monitoring stations are now down, which is alarming experts who suspect Russia is attempting to cover up what really happened and keep details about the weapon being tested under wraps. “Experts continue to reach out to our collaborators in Russia to resume operations as expediently as possible,” Lassina Zerbo, executive director of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Organization, told the Journal. The Kremlin claims nothing is being covered up. “There is no threat here, no increase in the [radiation] background exists either,” Putin said on a state visit to France on Monday. “We don’t see any serious changes there, but preventive measures are being taken so there are no surprises.”
Colin Kaepernick: The Mario Woods Police Shooting Inspired Me to Kneel During Anthem
Shira Feder
Updated 08.20.19 12:29PM ET
Daily Beast Cheat Sheet
Colin Kaepernick told the magazine Paper that it was the December 2015 police shooting of Mario Woods in San Francisco that inspired him to kneel during the national anthem at NFL games and subsequently began his career as an activist. Five police officers shot Wood 20 times in the city’s Bayview neighborhood after he reportedly did not drop his knife. An autopsy report showed that six of the gunshots hit him in the back. A video of the incident shared on social media ignited outrage. The San Francisco District Attorney's Office declined to bring criminal charges against the officers involved and an internal affairs investigation concluded the SFPD officers acted within agency guidelines. Woods’ family later filed a wrongful-death suit against the city and settled for $400,000. Kaepernick, at the time the 49ers star quarterback hasn’t played pro football since 2017, when he declared free agency, and sued the NFL for allegedly colluding to keep him out of the league. The claim was settled out of court.
Feds: Ashkenazi Jews Should Consider Breast Cancer Gene Test
Shira Feder
Published 08.20.19 12:55PM ET
Daily Beast Cheat Sheet
A federal task force is now recommending that people take their ancestry into consideration when deciding whether to get screened for genetic mutations linked to breast cancer—guidance that appears to be aimed at Ashkenazi Jews. Studies have shown that one in 40 Ashkenazi Jews have one of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, compared with one in 300 people in the general population. The recommendation published in the Journal of the American Medical Association does not specify which ancestry should think about getting tested, but the task force is certainly referring to Ashkenazi Jews, who are disproportionately affected by the mutations.
When your history is a lie, the truth hurts!!!!
Creator of New York Times slavery project not surprised by conservative meltdown
Nikole Hannah-Jones made a case for putting enslaved Africans at the center of America's origins story. A lot of white conservatives threw a fit.
SAM FULWOOD III - Thinkprogress
AUG 20, 2019, 10:54 AM
Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times correspondent and the visionary behind its ambitious examination of racial issues stemming from the 1619 arrival of enslaved people in the English colonies, isn’t the least bit surprised by the meltdown among white conservatives reacting to her recasting American history with African Americans and slavery at the forefront.
“The whole reason we did the project in the first place is because our society has been unwilling to grapple with the legacy of slavery, with the centrality of slavery to the development of the United States,” Hannah-Jones said in an interview Monday on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. “So this isn’t shocking to me.”
Her remarks came in reaction to uproar over The 1619 Project, which launched on Sunday and reframed American history in the context of the 400th anniversary this month of the arrival of a ship carrying enslaved Africans into a port near Hampton, Virginia.
In a series of essays and narrative accounts, The 1619 Project makes the point that overlooked and discredited contributions of African Americans began with that historical marker and continues into the present-day state of U.S. society.
Predictably, conservative activists rushed to condemn the project, often boldly stating their opposition without reading it or comprehending its contents. For example, arch-conservative commentator Eric Erickson inaccurately described the project’s authors as “opinion writers who profit from seeing things through racial lenses and keeping racial tension aflame as much as Trump does.”
In fact, only one of the project’s authors is an opinion writer — New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie — and most are journalists and historians, well steeped in writing about America’s racial past and present.
A common complaint among many of the conservative critics was that the project struck them as an attack on President Donald Trump, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York argued in a recent column.
In her interview, Hannah-Jones brushed aside such critiques as “ridiculous.”
“Anyone [who] would call this a propaganda tool or that somehow I’d spent, you know, since February working on this to commemorate the anniversary because we, the New York Times, wanted to ‘get’ Trump is, of course, ridiculous,” Hannah-Jones said.
“We didn’t plan the anniversary to happen in August of 2019, just so it would coincide with Trump’s issues with being called a racist.”
Instead, Hannah-Jones explained that The 1619 Project “excavates our true nature and is in direct opposition to our founding myths.”
And, she said, that is why there has been such a negative reaction among many white conservatives who want to cling to a version of American history that places them at the exclusive center of the story.
“I think what a lot of conservatives want is they want to choose which parts of our path we remember and which parts of our path we forget,” she said.
“And I don’t understand why people are so afraid of, we’re simply revealing the truth about our country.”
“The whole reason we did the project in the first place is because our society has been unwilling to grapple with the legacy of slavery, with the centrality of slavery to the development of the United States,” Hannah-Jones said in an interview Monday on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. “So this isn’t shocking to me.”
Her remarks came in reaction to uproar over The 1619 Project, which launched on Sunday and reframed American history in the context of the 400th anniversary this month of the arrival of a ship carrying enslaved Africans into a port near Hampton, Virginia.
In a series of essays and narrative accounts, The 1619 Project makes the point that overlooked and discredited contributions of African Americans began with that historical marker and continues into the present-day state of U.S. society.
Predictably, conservative activists rushed to condemn the project, often boldly stating their opposition without reading it or comprehending its contents. For example, arch-conservative commentator Eric Erickson inaccurately described the project’s authors as “opinion writers who profit from seeing things through racial lenses and keeping racial tension aflame as much as Trump does.”
In fact, only one of the project’s authors is an opinion writer — New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie — and most are journalists and historians, well steeped in writing about America’s racial past and present.
A common complaint among many of the conservative critics was that the project struck them as an attack on President Donald Trump, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York argued in a recent column.
In her interview, Hannah-Jones brushed aside such critiques as “ridiculous.”
“Anyone [who] would call this a propaganda tool or that somehow I’d spent, you know, since February working on this to commemorate the anniversary because we, the New York Times, wanted to ‘get’ Trump is, of course, ridiculous,” Hannah-Jones said.
“We didn’t plan the anniversary to happen in August of 2019, just so it would coincide with Trump’s issues with being called a racist.”
Instead, Hannah-Jones explained that The 1619 Project “excavates our true nature and is in direct opposition to our founding myths.”
And, she said, that is why there has been such a negative reaction among many white conservatives who want to cling to a version of American history that places them at the exclusive center of the story.
“I think what a lot of conservatives want is they want to choose which parts of our path we remember and which parts of our path we forget,” she said.
“And I don’t understand why people are so afraid of, we’re simply revealing the truth about our country.”
*What's Inside*
Aug 17 - Aug 19
✔NBA star Stephen Curry finances college golf team for six years
(Real People)
*New planet discovered in orbit of young Milky Way star
(Space News)
*Economics of racism and neglect: Flint, Newark and a generation of children at risk
(America)
*Video: California High-School Students Sang Nazi Song and Gave Hitler Salute
(Amerikkkans)
*‘You May Not See a Lot of Us, But We’re There’: FSU’s First Black Woman to Graduate With Doctorate in Nuclear Physics Opens Up About Historical Moment
(Real People)
*US and EU Accept Dire Consequences for Refugees to Keep Them Out
(World)
*CDC probes lung illnesses linked to e-cigarette use
(Currents)
*Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley Sought Extra Security After Trump Called Her ‘Dishonest’
(Trump)
✔Bernie Sanders Just Promised to Cut the Nation’s Prison Population in Half
(Candidates)
*Teachers Fighting for Public Schools Were Key to the Uprising in Puerto Rico
(Colonies)
*UK faces food, fuel and drug shortages, says contested leaked document
(World)
*Bounty Hunters Are a Lethal Weapon in a Justice System Corrupted by Money
(Gestapo USA)
*‘It's techno-racism’: Detroit is quietly using facial recognition to make arrests
(Gestapo USA)
*A rural town confronts its buried history of mass killings of black Americans
(Black History)
✔The Gas Field Next Door
(Environment)
*GOP leadership tells House Republicans to lie about white supremacist gun massacres – call it ‘violence from the Left’(GOP Politics)
*Trump intervention triggered EPA's surprise biofuel waiver decision: sources
(Payback)
*Two-Mile Dead Zone Confirmed in Chesapeake Bay Due to Warm, Wet Weather
(Environment)
*late news of interest*
Betsy DeVos-linked Christian adoption agency exposed dozens of children’s highly sensitive medical data online: report
Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement Alternet
August 20, 2019
A Christian adoption agency linked to Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that also has a disturbing history of anti-LGBTQ bias is once again under fire, this time over a report that it left exposed online the “highly sensitive” medical data from 40 of its potential child adoptees.
In addition to names and dates of birth, Bethany Christian Services allegedly left information ranging from HIV status to lab test results to “intellectual development” to number of teeth in “PDFs openly available on its website. Some PDFs were called ‘Children Medical Examination Records,’” VICE News reports.
The charity has multiple connections to the DeVos family: Brian DeVos, a cousin of Betsy DeVos’ husband, was a senior vice president at the organization; Maria DeVos has served on Bethany’s board; and the DeVos family foundations donated more than $6 million to the charity between 1998 and 2016, according to NPR.
Bethany Christian Services is a faith-based foster care and adoption contractor that says it works in 30 states across the country. The State of Michigan last year sued the organization after learning Bethany refused to work with LGBTQ people and same-sex parents. In April the organization, saying it was “disappointed,” agreed to reverse its policy for Michigan, and reportedly will place children in homes headed by LGBTQ people.
Last month Rewire News reported Bethany is one of two organizations that are now “receiving federal teen pregnancy prevention funding” that “promote medication abortion reversal, which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considers ‘unproven and unethical.’”
Bethany has benefited from the Trump administration’s family and child migrant “zero tolerance” separation policy. It has been awarded contracts to foster children – reportedly at the rate of $200 to $700 per night per child.
In addition to names and dates of birth, Bethany Christian Services allegedly left information ranging from HIV status to lab test results to “intellectual development” to number of teeth in “PDFs openly available on its website. Some PDFs were called ‘Children Medical Examination Records,’” VICE News reports.
The charity has multiple connections to the DeVos family: Brian DeVos, a cousin of Betsy DeVos’ husband, was a senior vice president at the organization; Maria DeVos has served on Bethany’s board; and the DeVos family foundations donated more than $6 million to the charity between 1998 and 2016, according to NPR.
Bethany Christian Services is a faith-based foster care and adoption contractor that says it works in 30 states across the country. The State of Michigan last year sued the organization after learning Bethany refused to work with LGBTQ people and same-sex parents. In April the organization, saying it was “disappointed,” agreed to reverse its policy for Michigan, and reportedly will place children in homes headed by LGBTQ people.
Last month Rewire News reported Bethany is one of two organizations that are now “receiving federal teen pregnancy prevention funding” that “promote medication abortion reversal, which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considers ‘unproven and unethical.’”
Bethany has benefited from the Trump administration’s family and child migrant “zero tolerance” separation policy. It has been awarded contracts to foster children – reportedly at the rate of $200 to $700 per night per child.
Lawsuit on behalf of 55,000 migrants accuses Trump administration of torture in ICE detention centers
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams Alternet
August 20, 2019
A class-action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Monday on behalf of 55,000 detainees accuses the Trump administration of systematically denying adequate food, medicine, and other basic necessities to migrants in ICE facilities nationwide.
The suit alleges that the widespread mistreatment and brutal conditions inside the Trump administration’s detention centers amount to torture and have driven some asylum-seekers to “accept deportation out of a desperate desire to escape.”
“The atrocious conditions in immigrant detention are an open secret,” said Tim Fox, co-executive director at the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, one of several advocacy groups that joined the suit.
The lawsuit details the horrific experiences of a number of detained immigrants, including some with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
As the Guardian reported:
Melvin Murillo Hernandez suffered allergic reactions so bad he had to be hospitalized four times. Martín Muñoz had no access to insulin for ten long days. Denied a wheelchair, Faour Abdallah Fraihat was unable to get to the cafeteria…
The plaintiffs, who live with conditions ranging from cerebral palsy and bipolar disorder to blindness and schizophrenia, accuse the US government of denying jailed migrants food, medicine, surgeries, and the most basic accommodations for disabilities
The suit filed in Los Angeles on Monday outlines individual experiences at eight different facilities, but immigration lawyers say the mistreatment is representative of systemic problems that affect tens of thousands of people. The complaint comes as the Trump administration escalates its efforts to make it harder for asylum seekers and migrants from certain countries to come to the U.S.
Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, noted in a statement that conditions in ICE facilities are often deadly and likely to get worse as the Trump administration rapidly expands its detention dragnet.
“This administration’s horrific mistreatment of immigrants is not limited to individuals at the border,” said Graybill. “The fact that immigrant detention is supposed to be civil, and not punitive, is a distinction without a difference when it comes to how detained immigrants are treated.”
“At least 26 people have died [in ICE custody] since Trump took office,” Graybill added, “and tens of thousands have suffered as a result of the federal government’s abject failure to provide basic medical care at the facilities where taxpayers are spending billions to detain immigrants. More will suffer, and more will die, without court intervention.”
The suit alleges that the widespread mistreatment and brutal conditions inside the Trump administration’s detention centers amount to torture and have driven some asylum-seekers to “accept deportation out of a desperate desire to escape.”
“The atrocious conditions in immigrant detention are an open secret,” said Tim Fox, co-executive director at the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, one of several advocacy groups that joined the suit.
The lawsuit details the horrific experiences of a number of detained immigrants, including some with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
As the Guardian reported:
Melvin Murillo Hernandez suffered allergic reactions so bad he had to be hospitalized four times. Martín Muñoz had no access to insulin for ten long days. Denied a wheelchair, Faour Abdallah Fraihat was unable to get to the cafeteria…
The plaintiffs, who live with conditions ranging from cerebral palsy and bipolar disorder to blindness and schizophrenia, accuse the US government of denying jailed migrants food, medicine, surgeries, and the most basic accommodations for disabilities
The suit filed in Los Angeles on Monday outlines individual experiences at eight different facilities, but immigration lawyers say the mistreatment is representative of systemic problems that affect tens of thousands of people. The complaint comes as the Trump administration escalates its efforts to make it harder for asylum seekers and migrants from certain countries to come to the U.S.
Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, noted in a statement that conditions in ICE facilities are often deadly and likely to get worse as the Trump administration rapidly expands its detention dragnet.
“This administration’s horrific mistreatment of immigrants is not limited to individuals at the border,” said Graybill. “The fact that immigrant detention is supposed to be civil, and not punitive, is a distinction without a difference when it comes to how detained immigrants are treated.”
“At least 26 people have died [in ICE custody] since Trump took office,” Graybill added, “and tens of thousands have suffered as a result of the federal government’s abject failure to provide basic medical care at the facilities where taxpayers are spending billions to detain immigrants. More will suffer, and more will die, without court intervention.”
