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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
dec 3, 2024
Real News Today
Inside the “very, very guarded” agreements that dictate what’s sold in grocery stores — and the cost(Capitalism)
US health system ranks last compared with peer nations, report finds
(Reality)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
america's felon-in-chief
making america the world's laughingstock!!!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Target/comments/1gsrozw/and_so_it_begins/
HEY TRUMP VOTERS, WHAT PART DO YOU GET???
the kleptocracy reigns!!!
Whoops, Medicare Advantage Costs Taxpayers 22% More
Taxpayers spend 22% more per patient to support Medicare Advantage – the private alternative to Medicare that promised to cost less.
The Conversation — crooks & liars
November 29, 2024
Medicare Advantage – the commercial alternative to traditional Medicare – is drawing down federal health care funds, costing taxpayers an extra 22% per enrollee to the tune of US$83 billion a year.
Medicare Advantage, also known as Part C, was supposed to save the government money. The competition among private insurance companies, and with traditional Medicare, to manage patient care was meant to give insurance companies an incentive to find efficiencies. Instead, the program’s payment rules overpay insurance companies on the taxpayer’s dime.
We are health care policy experts who study Medicare, including how the structure of the Medicare payment system is, in the case of Medicare Advantage, working against taxpayers.
Medicare beneficiaries choose an insurance plan when they turn 65. Younger people can also become eligible for Medicare due to chronic conditions or disabilities. Beneficiaries have a variety of options, including the traditional Medicare program administered by the U.S. government, Medigap supplements to that program administered by private companies, and all-in-one Medicare Advantage plans administered by private companies.
Commercial Medicare Advantage plans are increasingly popular – over half of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in them, and this share continues to grow. People are attracted to these plans for their extra benefits and out-of-pocket spending limits. But due to a loophole in most states, enrolling in or switching to Medicare Advantage is effectively a one-way street. The Senate Finance Committee has also found that some plans have used deceptive, aggressive and potentially harmful sales and marketing tactics to increase enrollment.
Baked into the plan
Researchers have found that the overpayment to Medicare Advantage companies, which has grown over time, was, intentionally or not, baked into the Medicare Advantage payment system. Medicare Advantage plans are paid more for enrolling people who seem sicker, because these people typically use more care and so would be more expensive to cover in traditional Medicare.
However, differences in how people’s illnesses are recorded by Medicare Advantage plans causes enrollees to seem sicker and costlier on paper than they are in real life. This issue, alongside other adjustments to payments, leads to overpayment with taxpayer dollars to insurance companies.
Some of this extra money is spent to lower cost sharing, lower prescription drug premiums and increase supplemental benefits like vision and dental care. Though Medicare Advantage enrollees may like these benefits, funding them this way is expensive. For every extra dollar that taxpayers pay to Medicare Advantage companies, only roughly 50 to 60 cents goes to beneficiaries in the form of lower premiums or extra benefits.
As Medicare Advantage becomes increasingly expensive, the Medicare program continues to face funding challenges.
In our view, in order for Medicare to survive long term, Medicare Advantage reform is needed. The way the government pays the private insurers who administer Medicare Advantage plans, which may seem like a black box, is key to why the government overpays Medicare Advantage plans relative to traditional Medicare.
Paying Medicare Advantage
Private plans have been a part of the Medicare system since 1966 and have been paid through several different systems. They garnered only a very small share of enrollment until 2006.
The current Medicare Advantage payment system, implemented in 2006 and heavily reformed by the Affordable Care Act in 2010, had two policy goals. It was designed to encourage private plans to offer the same or better coverage than traditional Medicare at equal or lesser cost. And, to make sure beneficiaries would have multiple Medicare Advantage plans to choose from, the system was also designed to be profitable enough for insurers to entice them to offer multiple plans throughout the country.
To accomplish this, Medicare established benchmark estimates for each county. This benchmark calculation begins with an estimate of what the government-administered traditional Medicare plan would spend on the average county resident. This value is adjusted based on several factors, including enrollee location and plan quality ratings, to give each plan its own benchmark.
Medicare Advantage plans then submit bids, or estimates, of what they expect their plans to spend on the average county enrollee. If a plan’s spending estimate is above the benchmark, enrollees pay the difference as a Part C premium.
Most plans’ spending estimates are below the benchmark, however, meaning they project that the plans will provide coverage that is equivalent to traditional Medicare at a lower cost than the benchmark. These plans don’t charge patients a Part C premium. Instead, they receive a portion of the difference between their spending estimate and the benchmark as a rebate that they are supposed to pass on to their enrollees as extras, like reductions in cost-sharing, lower prescription drug premiums and supplemental benefits.
Finally, in a process known as risk adjustment, Medicare payments to Medicare Advantage health plans are adjusted based on the health of their enrollees. The plans are paid more for enrollees who seem sicker.
The government pays Medicare Advantage plans based on Medicare’s cost estimates for a given county. The benchmark is an estimate from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services of what it would cost to cover an average county enrollee in traditional Medicare, plus adjustments including quartile payments and quality bonuses. The risk-adjusted benchmark also takes into consideration an enrollee’s health. Samantha Randall at USC, CC BY-ND
Theory versus reality
In theory, this payment system should save the Medicare system money because the risk-adjusted benchmark that Medicare estimates for each plan should run, on average, equal to what Medicare would actually spend on a plan’s enrollees if they had enrolled in traditional Medicare instead.
In reality, the risk-adjusted benchmark estimates are far above traditional Medicare costs. This causes Medicare – really, taxpayers – to spend more for each person who is enrolled in Medicare Advantage than if that person had enrolled in traditional Medicare.
Why are payment estimates so high? There are two main culprits: benchmark modifications designed to encourage Medicare Advantage plan availability, and risk adjustments that overestimate how sick Medicare Advantage enrollees are.
Benchmark modifications
Since the current Medicare Advantage payment system started in 2006, policymaker modifications have made Medicare’s benchmark estimates less tied to what the plan spends on each enrollee.
In 2012, as part of the Affordable Care Act, Medicare Advantage benchmark estimates received another layer: “quartile adjustments.” These made the benchmark estimates, and therefore payments to Medicare Advantage companies, higher in areas with low traditional Medicare spending and lower in areas with high traditional Medicare spending. This benchmark adjustment was meant to encourage more equitable access to Medicare Advantage options.
In that same year, Medicare Advantage plans started receiving “quality bonus payments” with plans that have higher “star ratings” based on quality factors such as enrollee health outcomes and care for chronic conditions receiving higher bonuses.
However, research shows that ratings have not necessarily improved quality and may have exacerbated racial inequality.
Even before fully taking into account risk adjustment, recent estimates peg the benchmarks, on average, as 8% higher than average traditional Medicare spending. This means that a Medicare Advantage plan’s spending estimate could be below the benchmark and the plan would still get paid more for its enrollees than it would have cost the government to cover those same enrollees in traditional Medicare.
Overestimating enrollee sickness
The second major source of overpayment is health risk adjustment, which tends to overestimate how sick Medicare Advantage enrollees are.
Each year, Medicare studies traditional Medicare diagnoses, such as diabetes, depression and arthritis, to understand which have higher treatment costs. Medicare uses this information to adjust its payments for Medicare Advantage plans. Payments are lowered for plans with lower predicted costs based on diagnoses and raised for plans with higher predicted costs. This process is known as risk adjustment.
But there is a critical bias baked into risk adjustment. Medicare Advantage companies know that they’re paid more if their enrollees seem more sick, so they diligently make sure each enrollee has as many diagnoses recorded as possible.
This can include legal activities like reviewing enrollee charts to ensure that diagnoses are recorded accurately. It can also occasionally entail outright fraud, where charts are “upcoded” to include diagnoses that patients don’t actually have.
In traditional Medicare, most providers – the exception being Accountable Care Organizations – are not paid more for recording diagnoses. This difference means that the same beneficiary is likely to have fewer recorded diagnoses if they are enrolled in traditional Medicare rather than a private insurer’s Medicare Advantage plan. Policy experts refer to this phenomenon as a difference in “coding intensity” between Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare.
In addition, Medicare Advantage plans often try to recruit beneficiaries whose health care costs will be lower than their diagnoses would predict, such as someone with a very mild form of arthritis. This is known as “favorable selection.”
The differences in coding and favorable selection make beneficiaries look sicker when they enroll in Medicare Advantage instead of traditional Medicare. This makes cost estimates higher than they should be. Research shows that this mismatch – and resulting overpayment – is likely only going to get worse as Medicare Advantage grows.
Where the money goes
Some of the excess payments to Medicare Advantage are returned to enrollees through extra benefits, funded by rebates. Extra benefits include cost-sharing reductions for medical care and prescription drugs, lower Part B and D premiums, and extra “supplemental benefits” like hearing aids and dental care that traditional Medicare doesn’t cover.
Medicare Advantage enrollees may enjoy these benefits, which could be considered a reward for enrolling in Medicare Advantage, which, unlike traditional Medicare, has prior authorization requirements and limited provider networks.
However, according to some policy experts, the current means of funding these extra benefits is unnecessarily expensive and inequitable.
It also makes it difficult for traditional Medicare to compete with Medicare Advantage.
Traditional Medicare, which tends to cost the Medicare program less per enrollee, is only allowed to provide the standard Medicare benefits package. If its enrollees want dental coverage or hearing aids, they have to purchase these separately, alongside a Part D plan for prescription drugs and a Medigap plan to lower their deductibles and co-payments.
The system sets up Medicare Advantage plans to not only be overpaid but also be increasingly popular, all on the taxpayers’ dime. Plans heavily advertise to prospective enrollees who, once enrolled in Medicare Advantage, will likely have difficulty switching into traditional Medicare, even if they decide the extra benefits are not worth the prior authorization hassles and the limited provider networks. In contrast, traditional Medicare typically does not engage in as much direct advertising. The federal government only accounts for 7% of Medicare-related ads.
At the same time, some people who need more health care and are having trouble getting it through their Medicare Advantage plan – and are able to switch back to traditional Medicare – are doing so, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal. This leaves taxpayers to pick up care for these patients just as their needs rise.
Where do we go from here?
Many researchers have proposed ways to reduce excess government spending on Medicare Advantage, including expanding risk adjustment audits, reducing or eliminating quality bonus payments or using more data to improve benchmark estimates of enrollee costs. Others have proposed even more fundamental reforms to the Medicare Advantage payment system, including changing the basis of plan payments so that Medicare Advantage plans will compete more with each other.
Reducing payments to plans may have to be traded off with reductions in plan benefits, though projections suggest the reductions would be modest.
There is a long-running debate over what type of coverage should be required under both traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage. Recently, policy experts have advocated for introducing an out-of-pocket maximum to traditional Medicare. There have also been multiple unsuccessful efforts to make dental, vision, and hearing services part of the standard Medicare benefits package.
Although all older people require regular dental care and many of them require hearing aids, providing these benefits to everyone enrolled in traditional Medicare would not be cheap. One approach to providing these important benefits without significantly raising costs is to make these benefits means-tested. This would allow people with lower incomes to purchase them at a lower price than higher-income people. However, means-testing in Medicare can be controversial.
There is also debate over how much Medicare Advantage plans should be allowed to vary. The average Medicare beneficiary has over 40 Medicare Advantage plans to choose from, making it overwhelming to compare plans. For instance, right now, the average person eligible for Medicare would have to sift through the fine print of dozens of different plans to compare important factors, such as out-of-pocket maximums for medical care, coverage for dental cleanings, cost-sharing for inpatient stays, and provider networks.
Although millions of people are in suboptimal plans, 70% of people don’t even compare plans, let alone switch plans, during the annual enrollment period at the end of the year, likely because the process of comparing plans and switching is difficult, especially for older Americans.
MedPAC, a congressional advising committee, suggests that limiting variation in certain important benefits, like out-of-pocket maximums and dental, vision and hearing benefits, could help the plan selection process work better, while still allowing for flexibility in other benefits. The challenge is figuring out how to standardize without unduly reducing consumers’ options.
The Medicare Advantage program enrolls over half of Medicare beneficiaries. However, the $83-billion-per-year overpayment of plans, which amounts to more than 8% of Medicare’s total budget, is unsustainable. We believe the Medicare Advantage payment system needs a broad reform that aligns insurers’ incentives with the needs of Medicare beneficiaries and American taxpayers.
Medicare Advantage, also known as Part C, was supposed to save the government money. The competition among private insurance companies, and with traditional Medicare, to manage patient care was meant to give insurance companies an incentive to find efficiencies. Instead, the program’s payment rules overpay insurance companies on the taxpayer’s dime.
We are health care policy experts who study Medicare, including how the structure of the Medicare payment system is, in the case of Medicare Advantage, working against taxpayers.
Medicare beneficiaries choose an insurance plan when they turn 65. Younger people can also become eligible for Medicare due to chronic conditions or disabilities. Beneficiaries have a variety of options, including the traditional Medicare program administered by the U.S. government, Medigap supplements to that program administered by private companies, and all-in-one Medicare Advantage plans administered by private companies.
Commercial Medicare Advantage plans are increasingly popular – over half of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in them, and this share continues to grow. People are attracted to these plans for their extra benefits and out-of-pocket spending limits. But due to a loophole in most states, enrolling in or switching to Medicare Advantage is effectively a one-way street. The Senate Finance Committee has also found that some plans have used deceptive, aggressive and potentially harmful sales and marketing tactics to increase enrollment.
Baked into the plan
Researchers have found that the overpayment to Medicare Advantage companies, which has grown over time, was, intentionally or not, baked into the Medicare Advantage payment system. Medicare Advantage plans are paid more for enrolling people who seem sicker, because these people typically use more care and so would be more expensive to cover in traditional Medicare.
However, differences in how people’s illnesses are recorded by Medicare Advantage plans causes enrollees to seem sicker and costlier on paper than they are in real life. This issue, alongside other adjustments to payments, leads to overpayment with taxpayer dollars to insurance companies.
Some of this extra money is spent to lower cost sharing, lower prescription drug premiums and increase supplemental benefits like vision and dental care. Though Medicare Advantage enrollees may like these benefits, funding them this way is expensive. For every extra dollar that taxpayers pay to Medicare Advantage companies, only roughly 50 to 60 cents goes to beneficiaries in the form of lower premiums or extra benefits.
As Medicare Advantage becomes increasingly expensive, the Medicare program continues to face funding challenges.
In our view, in order for Medicare to survive long term, Medicare Advantage reform is needed. The way the government pays the private insurers who administer Medicare Advantage plans, which may seem like a black box, is key to why the government overpays Medicare Advantage plans relative to traditional Medicare.
Paying Medicare Advantage
Private plans have been a part of the Medicare system since 1966 and have been paid through several different systems. They garnered only a very small share of enrollment until 2006.
The current Medicare Advantage payment system, implemented in 2006 and heavily reformed by the Affordable Care Act in 2010, had two policy goals. It was designed to encourage private plans to offer the same or better coverage than traditional Medicare at equal or lesser cost. And, to make sure beneficiaries would have multiple Medicare Advantage plans to choose from, the system was also designed to be profitable enough for insurers to entice them to offer multiple plans throughout the country.
To accomplish this, Medicare established benchmark estimates for each county. This benchmark calculation begins with an estimate of what the government-administered traditional Medicare plan would spend on the average county resident. This value is adjusted based on several factors, including enrollee location and plan quality ratings, to give each plan its own benchmark.
Medicare Advantage plans then submit bids, or estimates, of what they expect their plans to spend on the average county enrollee. If a plan’s spending estimate is above the benchmark, enrollees pay the difference as a Part C premium.
Most plans’ spending estimates are below the benchmark, however, meaning they project that the plans will provide coverage that is equivalent to traditional Medicare at a lower cost than the benchmark. These plans don’t charge patients a Part C premium. Instead, they receive a portion of the difference between their spending estimate and the benchmark as a rebate that they are supposed to pass on to their enrollees as extras, like reductions in cost-sharing, lower prescription drug premiums and supplemental benefits.
Finally, in a process known as risk adjustment, Medicare payments to Medicare Advantage health plans are adjusted based on the health of their enrollees. The plans are paid more for enrollees who seem sicker.
The government pays Medicare Advantage plans based on Medicare’s cost estimates for a given county. The benchmark is an estimate from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services of what it would cost to cover an average county enrollee in traditional Medicare, plus adjustments including quartile payments and quality bonuses. The risk-adjusted benchmark also takes into consideration an enrollee’s health. Samantha Randall at USC, CC BY-ND
Theory versus reality
In theory, this payment system should save the Medicare system money because the risk-adjusted benchmark that Medicare estimates for each plan should run, on average, equal to what Medicare would actually spend on a plan’s enrollees if they had enrolled in traditional Medicare instead.
In reality, the risk-adjusted benchmark estimates are far above traditional Medicare costs. This causes Medicare – really, taxpayers – to spend more for each person who is enrolled in Medicare Advantage than if that person had enrolled in traditional Medicare.
Why are payment estimates so high? There are two main culprits: benchmark modifications designed to encourage Medicare Advantage plan availability, and risk adjustments that overestimate how sick Medicare Advantage enrollees are.
Benchmark modifications
Since the current Medicare Advantage payment system started in 2006, policymaker modifications have made Medicare’s benchmark estimates less tied to what the plan spends on each enrollee.
In 2012, as part of the Affordable Care Act, Medicare Advantage benchmark estimates received another layer: “quartile adjustments.” These made the benchmark estimates, and therefore payments to Medicare Advantage companies, higher in areas with low traditional Medicare spending and lower in areas with high traditional Medicare spending. This benchmark adjustment was meant to encourage more equitable access to Medicare Advantage options.
In that same year, Medicare Advantage plans started receiving “quality bonus payments” with plans that have higher “star ratings” based on quality factors such as enrollee health outcomes and care for chronic conditions receiving higher bonuses.
However, research shows that ratings have not necessarily improved quality and may have exacerbated racial inequality.
Even before fully taking into account risk adjustment, recent estimates peg the benchmarks, on average, as 8% higher than average traditional Medicare spending. This means that a Medicare Advantage plan’s spending estimate could be below the benchmark and the plan would still get paid more for its enrollees than it would have cost the government to cover those same enrollees in traditional Medicare.
Overestimating enrollee sickness
The second major source of overpayment is health risk adjustment, which tends to overestimate how sick Medicare Advantage enrollees are.
Each year, Medicare studies traditional Medicare diagnoses, such as diabetes, depression and arthritis, to understand which have higher treatment costs. Medicare uses this information to adjust its payments for Medicare Advantage plans. Payments are lowered for plans with lower predicted costs based on diagnoses and raised for plans with higher predicted costs. This process is known as risk adjustment.
But there is a critical bias baked into risk adjustment. Medicare Advantage companies know that they’re paid more if their enrollees seem more sick, so they diligently make sure each enrollee has as many diagnoses recorded as possible.
This can include legal activities like reviewing enrollee charts to ensure that diagnoses are recorded accurately. It can also occasionally entail outright fraud, where charts are “upcoded” to include diagnoses that patients don’t actually have.
In traditional Medicare, most providers – the exception being Accountable Care Organizations – are not paid more for recording diagnoses. This difference means that the same beneficiary is likely to have fewer recorded diagnoses if they are enrolled in traditional Medicare rather than a private insurer’s Medicare Advantage plan. Policy experts refer to this phenomenon as a difference in “coding intensity” between Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare.
In addition, Medicare Advantage plans often try to recruit beneficiaries whose health care costs will be lower than their diagnoses would predict, such as someone with a very mild form of arthritis. This is known as “favorable selection.”
The differences in coding and favorable selection make beneficiaries look sicker when they enroll in Medicare Advantage instead of traditional Medicare. This makes cost estimates higher than they should be. Research shows that this mismatch – and resulting overpayment – is likely only going to get worse as Medicare Advantage grows.
Where the money goes
Some of the excess payments to Medicare Advantage are returned to enrollees through extra benefits, funded by rebates. Extra benefits include cost-sharing reductions for medical care and prescription drugs, lower Part B and D premiums, and extra “supplemental benefits” like hearing aids and dental care that traditional Medicare doesn’t cover.
Medicare Advantage enrollees may enjoy these benefits, which could be considered a reward for enrolling in Medicare Advantage, which, unlike traditional Medicare, has prior authorization requirements and limited provider networks.
However, according to some policy experts, the current means of funding these extra benefits is unnecessarily expensive and inequitable.
It also makes it difficult for traditional Medicare to compete with Medicare Advantage.
Traditional Medicare, which tends to cost the Medicare program less per enrollee, is only allowed to provide the standard Medicare benefits package. If its enrollees want dental coverage or hearing aids, they have to purchase these separately, alongside a Part D plan for prescription drugs and a Medigap plan to lower their deductibles and co-payments.
The system sets up Medicare Advantage plans to not only be overpaid but also be increasingly popular, all on the taxpayers’ dime. Plans heavily advertise to prospective enrollees who, once enrolled in Medicare Advantage, will likely have difficulty switching into traditional Medicare, even if they decide the extra benefits are not worth the prior authorization hassles and the limited provider networks. In contrast, traditional Medicare typically does not engage in as much direct advertising. The federal government only accounts for 7% of Medicare-related ads.
At the same time, some people who need more health care and are having trouble getting it through their Medicare Advantage plan – and are able to switch back to traditional Medicare – are doing so, according to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal. This leaves taxpayers to pick up care for these patients just as their needs rise.
Where do we go from here?
Many researchers have proposed ways to reduce excess government spending on Medicare Advantage, including expanding risk adjustment audits, reducing or eliminating quality bonus payments or using more data to improve benchmark estimates of enrollee costs. Others have proposed even more fundamental reforms to the Medicare Advantage payment system, including changing the basis of plan payments so that Medicare Advantage plans will compete more with each other.
Reducing payments to plans may have to be traded off with reductions in plan benefits, though projections suggest the reductions would be modest.
There is a long-running debate over what type of coverage should be required under both traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage. Recently, policy experts have advocated for introducing an out-of-pocket maximum to traditional Medicare. There have also been multiple unsuccessful efforts to make dental, vision, and hearing services part of the standard Medicare benefits package.
Although all older people require regular dental care and many of them require hearing aids, providing these benefits to everyone enrolled in traditional Medicare would not be cheap. One approach to providing these important benefits without significantly raising costs is to make these benefits means-tested. This would allow people with lower incomes to purchase them at a lower price than higher-income people. However, means-testing in Medicare can be controversial.
There is also debate over how much Medicare Advantage plans should be allowed to vary. The average Medicare beneficiary has over 40 Medicare Advantage plans to choose from, making it overwhelming to compare plans. For instance, right now, the average person eligible for Medicare would have to sift through the fine print of dozens of different plans to compare important factors, such as out-of-pocket maximums for medical care, coverage for dental cleanings, cost-sharing for inpatient stays, and provider networks.
Although millions of people are in suboptimal plans, 70% of people don’t even compare plans, let alone switch plans, during the annual enrollment period at the end of the year, likely because the process of comparing plans and switching is difficult, especially for older Americans.
MedPAC, a congressional advising committee, suggests that limiting variation in certain important benefits, like out-of-pocket maximums and dental, vision and hearing benefits, could help the plan selection process work better, while still allowing for flexibility in other benefits. The challenge is figuring out how to standardize without unduly reducing consumers’ options.
The Medicare Advantage program enrolls over half of Medicare beneficiaries. However, the $83-billion-per-year overpayment of plans, which amounts to more than 8% of Medicare’s total budget, is unsustainable. We believe the Medicare Advantage payment system needs a broad reform that aligns insurers’ incentives with the needs of Medicare beneficiaries and American taxpayers.
How Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI Pick, Embraced the Unhinged QAnon Movement
His extremism goes far beyond assailing a supposed Deep State.
David Corn - mother jones
Washington, DC, Bureau Chie
In the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday stretch, Donald Trump announced what might be his most extreme and controversial appointment yet: Kash Patel for FBI director. There are many reasons why this decision is outrageous. Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who has championed January 6 rioters as patriots and unfairly persecuted political prisoners. (The still ongoing January 6 case, including scores of prosecutions for assaults on police, is one of the FBI’s largest and most successful criminal investigations ever.) Patel is also a fervent promoter of conspiracy theories. At the end of Trump’s first presidency, when he was a Pentagon official, he spread the bonkers idea that Italian military satellites had been employed to turn Trump votes to Joe Biden votes in the 2020 election. And he has falsely claimed that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax cooked up by the FBI and so-called Deep State to sabotage Trump.
Moreover, Patel has been supportive of the most loony conspiracy theory in MAGA land: QAnon.
The QAnon theory, which arose in 2017, holds that an intelligence operative known only as Q has revealed through cryptic messages that a cabal of global, Satanic, cannibalistic elitists and pedophiles is operating a child sex trafficking operation as it vies for world domination and conspires against Trump. This evil band supposedly includes Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, business tycoons, and other notables. Those who believe this bunk see Trump as a hero who is secretly battling this conspiracy in a titanic, behind-the-scenes struggle. It is pure nuttery. Worse than that, QAnon has sparked multiple acts of violence.
Yet Patel repeatedly has hailed QAnoners and promoted this conspiracy theory. In early 2022, when he sat on the board of Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, Patel amplified an account called @Q that pushed out QAnon messaging. As Media Matters reported: “Patel’s catering to the QAnon community has also gone beyond the @Q account. In July, he posted an image featuring a flaming Q on Truth Social and starting in at least April, he went on numerous QAnon-supporting shows to promote Truth Social--urging viewers to join the platform, praising hosts for being on the platform, and promising to promote the hosts there.” On one show, Patel declared, “Whether it’s the Qs of the world, who I agree with some of what he does and I disagree with some of what he does, if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it.”
On another show, Patel acknowledged he was courting the QAnon crowd for Truth Social: “We try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured a widespread breath of the MAGA and the America First movement. And so what I try to do is—what I try to do with anything, Q or otherwise, is you can’t ignore that group of people that has such a strong dominant following.” He praised QAnon, saying, “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” and he agreed with a host who said Q had “been so right on so many things.” Patel praised Q for starting a “movement.”
Appearing on Grace Time TV in Septmeber 2022, Patel said of the QAnon community, “We’re just blown away at the amount of acumen some of these people have.” He added, “If it’s Q or whatever movement that’s getting that information out, I am all for it, every day of the week.”
When Patel was promoting a children’s book he wrote—about a King Donald who is persecuted by his political enemies—he offered ten copies in which he signed the books and added a special message: “WWG1WGA!”” That’s the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.” He hyped this special offer on Truth Social using the hashtag “#WWG1WGA.”
Appearing on the MatrixxxGrove Show, Patel defended his use of the QAnon motto: “People keep asking me about all this Q stuff. I’m like, what does it matter? What I’m telling you is there is truth in a lot of things that many people say, and what I’m putting out there is the truth. And how about we have some fun along the way?” He added, “Let’s have fun with the truth.” He also characterized the QAnon movement as being a vital part of the national debate: “Basically, the bottom line is—and I get attacked for calling out some of the stuff that quote-unquote Q says and whatnot. I’m like, what’s the problem with that? It’s social discourse.”
Patel is a purveyor of far-right conspiracism in other ways that overlap with QAnon. He claims a nefarious Deep State controls the US government and is arrayed against Trump and conservatives. He encourages paranoia and calls for revenge. Talking to MAGA strategist Steve Bannon on Bannon’s podcast last year, Patel proclaimed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whither its criminally or civilly.”
Seeking retribution, spreading conspiracy theories, backing an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, supporting J6 rioters, echoing Moscow talking points—none of this is what one would see in a responsible choice for FBI director. But Patel’s cozying up to QAnon is especially troubling. Among many vital duties, the FBI director oversees the federal government’s efforts to combat violent crime—an area where QAnon remains a concern. Patel’s relationship with QAnon shows either that he has a severely distorted view of reality or that he will recklessly exploit dangerous, misguided, and false ideas for political benefit. Neither is an approach suitable for the most powerful and important law enforcement agency in the land.
Moreover, Patel has been supportive of the most loony conspiracy theory in MAGA land: QAnon.
The QAnon theory, which arose in 2017, holds that an intelligence operative known only as Q has revealed through cryptic messages that a cabal of global, Satanic, cannibalistic elitists and pedophiles is operating a child sex trafficking operation as it vies for world domination and conspires against Trump. This evil band supposedly includes Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, business tycoons, and other notables. Those who believe this bunk see Trump as a hero who is secretly battling this conspiracy in a titanic, behind-the-scenes struggle. It is pure nuttery. Worse than that, QAnon has sparked multiple acts of violence.
Yet Patel repeatedly has hailed QAnoners and promoted this conspiracy theory. In early 2022, when he sat on the board of Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, Patel amplified an account called @Q that pushed out QAnon messaging. As Media Matters reported: “Patel’s catering to the QAnon community has also gone beyond the @Q account. In July, he posted an image featuring a flaming Q on Truth Social and starting in at least April, he went on numerous QAnon-supporting shows to promote Truth Social--urging viewers to join the platform, praising hosts for being on the platform, and promising to promote the hosts there.” On one show, Patel declared, “Whether it’s the Qs of the world, who I agree with some of what he does and I disagree with some of what he does, if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it.”
On another show, Patel acknowledged he was courting the QAnon crowd for Truth Social: “We try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured a widespread breath of the MAGA and the America First movement. And so what I try to do is—what I try to do with anything, Q or otherwise, is you can’t ignore that group of people that has such a strong dominant following.” He praised QAnon, saying, “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” and he agreed with a host who said Q had “been so right on so many things.” Patel praised Q for starting a “movement.”
Appearing on Grace Time TV in Septmeber 2022, Patel said of the QAnon community, “We’re just blown away at the amount of acumen some of these people have.” He added, “If it’s Q or whatever movement that’s getting that information out, I am all for it, every day of the week.”
When Patel was promoting a children’s book he wrote—about a King Donald who is persecuted by his political enemies—he offered ten copies in which he signed the books and added a special message: “WWG1WGA!”” That’s the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.” He hyped this special offer on Truth Social using the hashtag “#WWG1WGA.”
Appearing on the MatrixxxGrove Show, Patel defended his use of the QAnon motto: “People keep asking me about all this Q stuff. I’m like, what does it matter? What I’m telling you is there is truth in a lot of things that many people say, and what I’m putting out there is the truth. And how about we have some fun along the way?” He added, “Let’s have fun with the truth.” He also characterized the QAnon movement as being a vital part of the national debate: “Basically, the bottom line is—and I get attacked for calling out some of the stuff that quote-unquote Q says and whatnot. I’m like, what’s the problem with that? It’s social discourse.”
Patel is a purveyor of far-right conspiracism in other ways that overlap with QAnon. He claims a nefarious Deep State controls the US government and is arrayed against Trump and conservatives. He encourages paranoia and calls for revenge. Talking to MAGA strategist Steve Bannon on Bannon’s podcast last year, Patel proclaimed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whither its criminally or civilly.”
Seeking retribution, spreading conspiracy theories, backing an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, supporting J6 rioters, echoing Moscow talking points—none of this is what one would see in a responsible choice for FBI director. But Patel’s cozying up to QAnon is especially troubling. Among many vital duties, the FBI director oversees the federal government’s efforts to combat violent crime—an area where QAnon remains a concern. Patel’s relationship with QAnon shows either that he has a severely distorted view of reality or that he will recklessly exploit dangerous, misguided, and false ideas for political benefit. Neither is an approach suitable for the most powerful and important law enforcement agency in the land.
Two Faces of Fascism
Trump nominees Russell Vought and Kash Patel can wreak havoc if confirmed—and require wide and deep opposition
Steven Beschloss - americaamerica news
Dec 02, 2024
Many of the men and women likely to animate the Trump cabinet and “leadership” group come across as reckless, dangerous buffoons, more defined by their inexperience, incompetence and extremism than their capacity to inflict damage smartly and methodically.
Then there’s Russell Vought, a chief architect of Project 2025, who stands out as a particularly determined ideologue and tactician with a clear extremist agenda to dismantle government agencies by inflicting “trauma” and demoralizing civil servants and other government employees to convince them to quit their jobs. This is all in the name of serving a president whose emergence for a second term he calls “a gift from God.” This is who Donald Trump selected to run the Office of Management and Budget, which might sound eye-glazingly boring and bureaucratic but is exactly the spot where he can wreak massive damage with OMB’s ability to stop or redirect spending allocations.
Then there’s Kash Patel, who stands out as a particularly determined, aggrieved and unprincipled henchman who is champing at the bit to execute retribution on behalf of Trump. With great excitement, this former House staffer and aggressive critic of the FBI foreshadowed his menacing intentions in a podcast last year with Steve Bannon: “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said. “We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly—we’ll figure that out.” This is the sycophant who wrote a children’s book called The Plot Against the King, about a villain named Hillary Queenton, a hero named King Donald and a wizard named Kash. Seriously.
This is who Donald Trump has said he wants to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation, despite lacking the needed experience in a position so sensitive to the nation’s safety (and which would require FBI director Christopher Wray resigning or being fired). Don’t just rely on me; here’s what former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his memoir when Trump tried to make Patel deputy director of the FBI during his first term: Patel “had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.”
While the issue with nearly every one of Trump’s dangerous nominees is their incompetence, inexperience, cruelty and arrogant extremism—just the kind of “leadership” Trump seeks to lead his demolition derby—Vought and Patel represent particularly vivid and vicious examples of how Trump can succeed in destroying our system of checks and balance, our commitment to the rule of law, and our traditional dedication to providing government departments the independence they need to perform their work with seriousness and skill and without poisonous partisanship.
These two faces of fascism are fully committed to turning the president into a king, accountable to no one, opposing any criticism, meting out punishment to serve the whims of their ruler.
Consider what Vought said in a private speech last year, its video recently obtained by ProPublica, when he led the pro-Trump Center for Renewing America. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought told the invite-only gathering. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.”
That’s not all. He has talked about employing the Insurrection Act to crack down on protests, prioritizing Christianity in government and making all government departments subservient to the will of the president. In an interview with Tucker Carlson soon after the election but before his nomination was announced, Vought said, “The president has to move as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers. Number one is going after the whole notion of independence. There are no independent agencies.”
Have no doubt the planning for this dismantling is already far along. This key architect of Project 2025—the agenda Trump denied knowing anything about or who its creators were—said before the election that they were busy shaping a plan for Trump’s presidency: “We have detailed agency plans. We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.”
Russell Vought may look and sound like a dry, dyed-in-the-wool bureaucrat, but pay attention to his plotting and you can be sure he’s a radical ready to destroy the governmental infrastructure that has built and advanced modern America. While other nominees may face a tougher time achieving Senate confirmation, I suspect this dangerous ideologue who served as OMB’s acting director during Trump’s first term will be advanced.
That is more predictable because Kash Patel will be a lightning rod for everyone who rejects a fascist presidency driven by vengeance, fear and hate. While I will offer a few examples of Patel’s dangerousness, I urge you to read writer Elaina Plott Calabro’s October profile in The Atlantic titled “The Man Who Will Do Anything for Trump.” It opens like this: “Kash Patel was dangerous. On this both Trump appointees and career officials could agree.”
A few nuggets worth paying attention to from Calabro’s article and elsewhere:
We may also take strength from the optimistic insight yesterday from John Dean, the White House counsel who testified against Richard Nixon and hastened his resignation. Yesterday Dean commented on the potential power of opposition within the federal government. “Recall what happened with the FBI when Nixon politicized it by appointing Patrick Gray director,” Dean noted on the social media platform Bluesky. “The rank and file leaked, leaked and leaked up to the assistant director (aka Mark Felt/Deep Throat) level. They destroyed Nixon. Trump is inviting big trouble with Kash Patel.”
Should it be Patel at the FBI or Vought at OMB, we can hope that there will be dedicated civil servants who refuse to carry out their hateful demands. The opposition is going to require all willing patriots committed to serving their country and pushing back against fascist rule.
Then there’s Russell Vought, a chief architect of Project 2025, who stands out as a particularly determined ideologue and tactician with a clear extremist agenda to dismantle government agencies by inflicting “trauma” and demoralizing civil servants and other government employees to convince them to quit their jobs. This is all in the name of serving a president whose emergence for a second term he calls “a gift from God.” This is who Donald Trump selected to run the Office of Management and Budget, which might sound eye-glazingly boring and bureaucratic but is exactly the spot where he can wreak massive damage with OMB’s ability to stop or redirect spending allocations.
Then there’s Kash Patel, who stands out as a particularly determined, aggrieved and unprincipled henchman who is champing at the bit to execute retribution on behalf of Trump. With great excitement, this former House staffer and aggressive critic of the FBI foreshadowed his menacing intentions in a podcast last year with Steve Bannon: “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said. “We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly—we’ll figure that out.” This is the sycophant who wrote a children’s book called The Plot Against the King, about a villain named Hillary Queenton, a hero named King Donald and a wizard named Kash. Seriously.
This is who Donald Trump has said he wants to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation, despite lacking the needed experience in a position so sensitive to the nation’s safety (and which would require FBI director Christopher Wray resigning or being fired). Don’t just rely on me; here’s what former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his memoir when Trump tried to make Patel deputy director of the FBI during his first term: Patel “had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.”
While the issue with nearly every one of Trump’s dangerous nominees is their incompetence, inexperience, cruelty and arrogant extremism—just the kind of “leadership” Trump seeks to lead his demolition derby—Vought and Patel represent particularly vivid and vicious examples of how Trump can succeed in destroying our system of checks and balance, our commitment to the rule of law, and our traditional dedication to providing government departments the independence they need to perform their work with seriousness and skill and without poisonous partisanship.
These two faces of fascism are fully committed to turning the president into a king, accountable to no one, opposing any criticism, meting out punishment to serve the whims of their ruler.
Consider what Vought said in a private speech last year, its video recently obtained by ProPublica, when he led the pro-Trump Center for Renewing America. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought told the invite-only gathering. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.”
That’s not all. He has talked about employing the Insurrection Act to crack down on protests, prioritizing Christianity in government and making all government departments subservient to the will of the president. In an interview with Tucker Carlson soon after the election but before his nomination was announced, Vought said, “The president has to move as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers. Number one is going after the whole notion of independence. There are no independent agencies.”
Have no doubt the planning for this dismantling is already far along. This key architect of Project 2025—the agenda Trump denied knowing anything about or who its creators were—said before the election that they were busy shaping a plan for Trump’s presidency: “We have detailed agency plans. We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.”
Russell Vought may look and sound like a dry, dyed-in-the-wool bureaucrat, but pay attention to his plotting and you can be sure he’s a radical ready to destroy the governmental infrastructure that has built and advanced modern America. While other nominees may face a tougher time achieving Senate confirmation, I suspect this dangerous ideologue who served as OMB’s acting director during Trump’s first term will be advanced.
That is more predictable because Kash Patel will be a lightning rod for everyone who rejects a fascist presidency driven by vengeance, fear and hate. While I will offer a few examples of Patel’s dangerousness, I urge you to read writer Elaina Plott Calabro’s October profile in The Atlantic titled “The Man Who Will Do Anything for Trump.” It opens like this: “Kash Patel was dangerous. On this both Trump appointees and career officials could agree.”
A few nuggets worth paying attention to from Calabro’s article and elsewhere:
- In his first term, Trump considered naming Patel deputy director of the FBI. The response of Attorney General Bill Barr: “Over my dead body.”
- Near the end of his term, CIA director Gina Haspel threatened to resign after learning that Trump planned to name Patel deputy director of the agency. Only the intervention of VP Mike Pence and others stopped Trump.
- A year ago, Trump was already promising to employ Patel if he got back into office. “Get ready, Kash,” Trump said at a public event of young Republicans. “Get ready.” As author Calabro summarizes: If Trump wins, “there will be no [General Mark] Milleys, Haspels, or even Barrs to restrain him as he seeks revenge against his political enemies. Instead, there will be Patels—those whose true faith and allegiance belong not to a nation, but to one man.”
- In his 2023 book Government Gangsters, Patel wrote that “the rot at the core of the FBI isn’t just scandalous, it’s an existential threat to our republican form of government.” He also called the FBI a “tool of surveillance and suppression of American citizens,” recommended emptying the agency’s headquarters and turning it into a “Museum of the Deep State,” and fingered the “entire fake news mafia press corps” as members of this so-called deep state.
- Even Trump has brought up Patel’s extremism, but clearly with respect. “A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Trump once said of Patel, Calabro reports. “But sometimes you need a little crazy.”
We may also take strength from the optimistic insight yesterday from John Dean, the White House counsel who testified against Richard Nixon and hastened his resignation. Yesterday Dean commented on the potential power of opposition within the federal government. “Recall what happened with the FBI when Nixon politicized it by appointing Patrick Gray director,” Dean noted on the social media platform Bluesky. “The rank and file leaked, leaked and leaked up to the assistant director (aka Mark Felt/Deep Throat) level. They destroyed Nixon. Trump is inviting big trouble with Kash Patel.”
Should it be Patel at the FBI or Vought at OMB, we can hope that there will be dedicated civil servants who refuse to carry out their hateful demands. The opposition is going to require all willing patriots committed to serving their country and pushing back against fascist rule.
comment/tweet of the day
Trump tariffs would increase the price of cars made by US automakers by over $2K: Wells Fargo
He is not my president.
kentuck - du
He has not earned the respect of that title.
It doesn't really matter to me how many votes he received. It did not change him to a decent or honest person.
He is a disgrace to our nation. He lied to and deceived his followers and the people of this country.
He should not be in the White House.
He should be in jail.
I will never call him Mr President.
You can call him whatever you wish.
******
thom hartmann
Book Bans Overwhelmingly Target Children’s Books by People of Color, Study Finds
A new peer-reviewed study finds that books by women of color, often featuring diverse characters, are frequent targets.
By Katherine Spoon & Isabelle Langrock , The Conversation - truthout
Published December 1, 2024
Book bans in U.S. schools and libraries during the 2021-22 school year disproportionately targeted children’s books written by people of color — especially women of color — according to a peer-reviewed study we published. They also tended to feature characters of color.
In addition, we found book bans were more common in right-leaning counties that were becoming less conservative over time.
These findings were based on a comprehensive review of a then-record 2,532 bans that took effect in 32 states during the 2021-22 school year and compiled by PEN America, a nonprofit that defends the freedom of expression. The bans involved 1,643 unique book titles. We combined this with data on counties, sales of restricted books and author demographics.
While much has been written about the rise in book bans, there has been little empirical work done on their content, causes and consequences.
In our review, we found that 59% of banned books were children’s books featuring diverse characters or nonfiction books about historical figures and social movements. The top banned books were “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” by Maia Kobabe, which was banned by 41 school districts; “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” by George M. Johnson, with 29 bans; and “Out of Darkness,” by Ashley Hope Pérez, with 24 bans.
What’s more, authors of color — particularly women of color — were far more likely to be banned compared with white authors. Authors of color wrote 39% of the banned books in our study. Women of color alone penned almost a quarter of them. That’s even though authors of color make up just 10% of U.S. authors and write less than 5% of the most popular books in the U.S.
We also found that while most book bans occurred in counties with a Republican majority, they were even more likely to occur in counties where that majority had decreased over the previous two decades. Districts where the majority had increased or grown stronger since 2000 were less likely to ban books.
Why It Matters
The number of book bans has only increased since the data from our study came out.
In the 2022-23 school year, PEN America reported 3,362 book bans, affecting 1,557 unique titles. And its latest data, released Nov. 1, 2024, shows that the number of book bans soared in the 2023-24 school year to more than 10,000, with Florida and Iowa accounting for over 8,000 of them.
While those pushing book bans often claim they are doing so to protect children, there is little evidence to suggest that book bans actually shield them from harmful content.
The costs can be high. They’re causing conflict and tension in the local communities where they are occurring, and some estimates put the monetary cost of implementing book bans in the millions of dollars for some states. But because the focus of these bans tends to be on titles featuring characters of color or LGBTQ+ themes, there’s a risk that diverse characters will become even more underrepresented in children’s literature.
This could negatively affect children’s sense of belonging and learning outcomes, even in schools not directly affected by these bans.
Book bans — often initiated by school boards, legislators and prison authorities — are one of the most symbolic forms of censorship, but our findings also suggest they are being used as a form of political activism. This means that in addition to the traditional questions around censorship, such as what information children have or don’t have access to, there are questions about the political actions behind book bans and how they might attract or dampen a community’s civic participation.
And given our finding about where these bans are most often occurring and that we found little impact on state and national levels of interest in the targeted books, as measured by Google searches and book sales, it seems that many of these bans amount to symbolic political gestures aimed at galvanizing a shrinking electoral base.
What Still Isn’t Known
Research on book bans is just emerging. Our study is one of the first, in part because of a lack of data about the publishing industry overall. We encourage future work to bring data together about books — to facilitate this, we made much of the data we used public.
In addition, we found book bans were more common in right-leaning counties that were becoming less conservative over time.
These findings were based on a comprehensive review of a then-record 2,532 bans that took effect in 32 states during the 2021-22 school year and compiled by PEN America, a nonprofit that defends the freedom of expression. The bans involved 1,643 unique book titles. We combined this with data on counties, sales of restricted books and author demographics.
While much has been written about the rise in book bans, there has been little empirical work done on their content, causes and consequences.
In our review, we found that 59% of banned books were children’s books featuring diverse characters or nonfiction books about historical figures and social movements. The top banned books were “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” by Maia Kobabe, which was banned by 41 school districts; “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” by George M. Johnson, with 29 bans; and “Out of Darkness,” by Ashley Hope Pérez, with 24 bans.
What’s more, authors of color — particularly women of color — were far more likely to be banned compared with white authors. Authors of color wrote 39% of the banned books in our study. Women of color alone penned almost a quarter of them. That’s even though authors of color make up just 10% of U.S. authors and write less than 5% of the most popular books in the U.S.
We also found that while most book bans occurred in counties with a Republican majority, they were even more likely to occur in counties where that majority had decreased over the previous two decades. Districts where the majority had increased or grown stronger since 2000 were less likely to ban books.
Why It Matters
The number of book bans has only increased since the data from our study came out.
In the 2022-23 school year, PEN America reported 3,362 book bans, affecting 1,557 unique titles. And its latest data, released Nov. 1, 2024, shows that the number of book bans soared in the 2023-24 school year to more than 10,000, with Florida and Iowa accounting for over 8,000 of them.
While those pushing book bans often claim they are doing so to protect children, there is little evidence to suggest that book bans actually shield them from harmful content.
The costs can be high. They’re causing conflict and tension in the local communities where they are occurring, and some estimates put the monetary cost of implementing book bans in the millions of dollars for some states. But because the focus of these bans tends to be on titles featuring characters of color or LGBTQ+ themes, there’s a risk that diverse characters will become even more underrepresented in children’s literature.
This could negatively affect children’s sense of belonging and learning outcomes, even in schools not directly affected by these bans.
Book bans — often initiated by school boards, legislators and prison authorities — are one of the most symbolic forms of censorship, but our findings also suggest they are being used as a form of political activism. This means that in addition to the traditional questions around censorship, such as what information children have or don’t have access to, there are questions about the political actions behind book bans and how they might attract or dampen a community’s civic participation.
And given our finding about where these bans are most often occurring and that we found little impact on state and national levels of interest in the targeted books, as measured by Google searches and book sales, it seems that many of these bans amount to symbolic political gestures aimed at galvanizing a shrinking electoral base.
What Still Isn’t Known
Research on book bans is just emerging. Our study is one of the first, in part because of a lack of data about the publishing industry overall. We encourage future work to bring data together about books — to facilitate this, we made much of the data we used public.
american exceptionalism - defined
1. illegitimate & corrupt scotus
2. significant voting population of stupid people who lack a basic understanding of how government operates or even know the 3 branches of government
3. a traitor and criminal running for president. Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean
4. 2 neo-confederate candidates who smell funny.
5. allow corporations to price-gouge american consumers while providing mediocre products.
Biden Blocks Trump Team Out Of Federal Departments
Trump's transition team was rebuffed for failing to sign ethics agreements due to, ya know, lack of ethics.
Jonathan Larsen — crooks & liars
November 27, 2024
It’s the feel-good story America’s been waiting for. No, it won’t matter much in the long run, but if it helps Newsfuckers make it through today, then it matters today!
RePresident-elect Donald Trump’s agency transition teams — so-called “landing teams” — are getting locked out of the federal departments they soon hope to manage/mismanage. The Biden administration reportedly is refusing to let Trump minions — including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — into their future homes.
That’s because Team Trump has refused to sign the three federal transparency and ethics forms promising to conform to some fucking half-assed pretense of transparency and ethics. Thing is, without those forms, the feds can’t legally start showing Team Trump where the coffee-maker is and how to turn it on and what to do if it makes a weird sound when you try to dismantle it along with the entire agency.
Reportedly, Kennedy “advisers” (brrr) reached out multiple times to the Health and Human Services Department. Only to get told to take a long drive off a short bridge. Oh, wait, wrong Kennedy!***
The lockout is also virtual, meaning no agency email addresses for Team Trump’s landing teams. And the cabinet heads picked by Trump without FBI background checks also can’t request background checks of the people they want to pick. (Pretty sure that’s a feature, not a bug, for this administration, though.)
It also means Biden administration officials aren’t reading Trump’s people in on various threats and crises, let alone the normal stuff. It’s not just war shit in Ukraine and Israel and the places we ignore no matter who’s president, it’s also domestic issues.
For instance, with Trump back in the White House, we’re due another pandemic, no? Trump handed one to Pres. Joe Biden, so it seems only fair.
RePresident-elect Donald Trump’s agency transition teams — so-called “landing teams” — are getting locked out of the federal departments they soon hope to manage/mismanage. The Biden administration reportedly is refusing to let Trump minions — including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — into their future homes.
That’s because Team Trump has refused to sign the three federal transparency and ethics forms promising to conform to some fucking half-assed pretense of transparency and ethics. Thing is, without those forms, the feds can’t legally start showing Team Trump where the coffee-maker is and how to turn it on and what to do if it makes a weird sound when you try to dismantle it along with the entire agency.
Reportedly, Kennedy “advisers” (brrr) reached out multiple times to the Health and Human Services Department. Only to get told to take a long drive off a short bridge. Oh, wait, wrong Kennedy!***
The lockout is also virtual, meaning no agency email addresses for Team Trump’s landing teams. And the cabinet heads picked by Trump without FBI background checks also can’t request background checks of the people they want to pick. (Pretty sure that’s a feature, not a bug, for this administration, though.)
It also means Biden administration officials aren’t reading Trump’s people in on various threats and crises, let alone the normal stuff. It’s not just war shit in Ukraine and Israel and the places we ignore no matter who’s president, it’s also domestic issues.
For instance, with Trump back in the White House, we’re due another pandemic, no? Trump handed one to Pres. Joe Biden, so it seems only fair.
Why Trump voters should be held accountable for their choice
raw story
11/14/2024
For now, I’m not getting involved in the debate over what Kamala Harris did wrong. For one thing, whatever conclusions are drawn now will almost certainly be forgotten by the time of the next election. For another, the debate takes vital attention away from the choice of the majority of American voters, which is to say, their terrible choice.
Why did they break for Donald Trump? Lots of worthy people are going to spend lots of time exploring that question. I won’t, though. What I know is that Trump campaigned on easily proven lies. What I also know is his supporters chose to believe them. What I care about now are the consequences of that choice, and those consequences are going to be bad for all of us, including everyone who voted for him.
Yesterday, the president-elect said among the first things he’s going to do is eliminate the US Department of Education. That agency not only sends federal money to local school districts, it makes sure children are treated equally. This is usually understood in terms of race, but special-education is protected too, and it needs it. There was a time in American history when special-needs kids were told to sink or swim.
My kid is one of those kids, and if the funding and protection she now has disappears, I’m going to take that personally. I’m going to blame everyone who supported Trump. I won’t care if they didn’t believe he’d follow through on his pledge. I won’t care if they didn’t know about it. I won’t care if they were lied to by the rightwing media apparatus. I won’t care if the kids of Trump voters are themselves victims of their parents’ bad choices. I’m going to blame them and I will be right to.
Ignorance is no defense in law.
It should be no defense in politics either.
Trump has also promised to impose punishing tariffs on imported goods from countries like China and Mexico. Tariffs are a tax and every adult knows how a tax works. Yes, some of his supporters pretended not to know that importers pass that cost on to consumers. But whether they did or didn’t is going to be irrelevant to me when I’m paying two or three times more for necessities like food and clothing.
As I’m standing in the checkout at Stop & Shop, sticker-shocked for the umpteenth time, I’m not going to be wondering what Kamala Harris could have done to persuade white working-class Americans to vote for her. I’m not going to feel sympathy for them, knowing that they decided to impoverish themselves out of spite and resentment. No, I’ll be too busy cursing them for the titanic assholes they are.
Trump has also promised to deport millions of so-called illegal immigrants. He said he’ll only go after “the bad ones” and his supporters, even some Latinos, decided to believe a liar. But I’m not going to care how they came to that decision if the government starts snatching taxpayers out of their homes, arresting and detaining whole families, including US citizens, in the insane belief that doing so is going to make America great again. Why should I care about why they voted the way they did when the consequence of that choice brings chaos to communities, decimates the labor supply and raises prices?
Trump has denied it, but his Republicans are looking forward to taking another crack at repealing the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of Americans depend on Obamacare, including independent businesspeople, like me, who could not do what we do without the law. Voters who supported Trump are included in that number, but again, it does not matter to me whether they knew a vote for him was a vote for abolishing affordable insurance. I tend to lose interest in the reasons behind another person’s choices if those choices ruin me.
The conventional wisdom is that Trump inflamed resentments in order to win. What’s missing from that story is that the resentments are over race, or rather racism. Fact is, lots of white people feel like nonwhite people are taking something from them when they do better for themselves. Trump has made an art form out of getting white people to believe nonwhite people are robbing them, making them poorer, even when the economy is rapidly benefiting those same white people.
Well, when it comes to resentment, you haven’t seen anything yet.
If Trump does what he says, by the time he’s done, America is going to be poorer, sicker, weaker and more chaotic. In some cases, he will have done irreparable harm, as he did last time he was president, including to the people who supported him. And he will have done it because … well, it doesn’t matter. They made their choice and it was terrible.
And the rest of us will be right to resent it.
Why did they break for Donald Trump? Lots of worthy people are going to spend lots of time exploring that question. I won’t, though. What I know is that Trump campaigned on easily proven lies. What I also know is his supporters chose to believe them. What I care about now are the consequences of that choice, and those consequences are going to be bad for all of us, including everyone who voted for him.
Yesterday, the president-elect said among the first things he’s going to do is eliminate the US Department of Education. That agency not only sends federal money to local school districts, it makes sure children are treated equally. This is usually understood in terms of race, but special-education is protected too, and it needs it. There was a time in American history when special-needs kids were told to sink or swim.
My kid is one of those kids, and if the funding and protection she now has disappears, I’m going to take that personally. I’m going to blame everyone who supported Trump. I won’t care if they didn’t believe he’d follow through on his pledge. I won’t care if they didn’t know about it. I won’t care if they were lied to by the rightwing media apparatus. I won’t care if the kids of Trump voters are themselves victims of their parents’ bad choices. I’m going to blame them and I will be right to.
Ignorance is no defense in law.
It should be no defense in politics either.
Trump has also promised to impose punishing tariffs on imported goods from countries like China and Mexico. Tariffs are a tax and every adult knows how a tax works. Yes, some of his supporters pretended not to know that importers pass that cost on to consumers. But whether they did or didn’t is going to be irrelevant to me when I’m paying two or three times more for necessities like food and clothing.
As I’m standing in the checkout at Stop & Shop, sticker-shocked for the umpteenth time, I’m not going to be wondering what Kamala Harris could have done to persuade white working-class Americans to vote for her. I’m not going to feel sympathy for them, knowing that they decided to impoverish themselves out of spite and resentment. No, I’ll be too busy cursing them for the titanic assholes they are.
Trump has also promised to deport millions of so-called illegal immigrants. He said he’ll only go after “the bad ones” and his supporters, even some Latinos, decided to believe a liar. But I’m not going to care how they came to that decision if the government starts snatching taxpayers out of their homes, arresting and detaining whole families, including US citizens, in the insane belief that doing so is going to make America great again. Why should I care about why they voted the way they did when the consequence of that choice brings chaos to communities, decimates the labor supply and raises prices?
Trump has denied it, but his Republicans are looking forward to taking another crack at repealing the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of Americans depend on Obamacare, including independent businesspeople, like me, who could not do what we do without the law. Voters who supported Trump are included in that number, but again, it does not matter to me whether they knew a vote for him was a vote for abolishing affordable insurance. I tend to lose interest in the reasons behind another person’s choices if those choices ruin me.
The conventional wisdom is that Trump inflamed resentments in order to win. What’s missing from that story is that the resentments are over race, or rather racism. Fact is, lots of white people feel like nonwhite people are taking something from them when they do better for themselves. Trump has made an art form out of getting white people to believe nonwhite people are robbing them, making them poorer, even when the economy is rapidly benefiting those same white people.
Well, when it comes to resentment, you haven’t seen anything yet.
If Trump does what he says, by the time he’s done, America is going to be poorer, sicker, weaker and more chaotic. In some cases, he will have done irreparable harm, as he did last time he was president, including to the people who supported him. And he will have done it because … well, it doesn’t matter. They made their choice and it was terrible.
And the rest of us will be right to resent it.
the real christain nationalist!!!
Anti-LGBTQ MAGA Evangelical Leader Busted With Child Porn
I'm starting to see a pattern here.
Conover Kennard — crooks & liars
November 8, 2024
In yet another 'not a drag queen' story, former My Faith Votes CEO Jason C. Yates, 55, whose organization is known for voter outreach for Trump, has been charged with possessing child pornography. The MAGA evangelical leader was charged last month in district court in McLeod County, Minnesota, on eight felony charges. Yates is facing up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $10,000 for each charge.
The Christian Post reports:
According to court records, a witness told authorities in July that a family member of Yates “accidentally discovered” a hard drive that contained child sexual abuse material “in the office of Jason Yates.”
“The contents included over 100 sexually explicit images of children,” noted the district court document, with several of the photos believed to be of minors younger than 10.
Yates was released Monday “on his own recognizance,” with a condition of his release being that he not have any contact with individuals younger than 18, reported Ministry Watch.
Yates was listed as the CEO of My Faith Votes on the organization's IRS Form 990 filed last year, according to Ministry Watch, with articles on the website having been published under his byline as recently as July.
At present, he is not listed on the organization’s website as part of the leadership. Instead, the “About” page identifies former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as honorary national chairman and Sealy Yates, a lawyer related to Jason Yates, as founder and president.
Dr. Ben Carson, an author and conservative activist, previously served as honorary chairman until he assumed the role of Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the first Trump administration.
My Faith Votes was "founded in 2015 by Sealy Yates to reach millions of Christians to vote and stand for biblical values,” according to its website.
Some of the explicit images and videos involved children between five and seven years old. According to The Independent, Yates met with investigators on September 13 and refused to give the investigators a password to access the encrypted files on the drive. Also, he revealed that he had a prior expunged conviction related to child sex abuse materials.
“In early August 2024, the My Faith Votes board of directors separated Jason Yates from My Faith Votes and board member Chris Sadler assumed the position of Acting CEO,” a My Faith Votes spokesperson told RNS.
A few weeks before the hard drive was discovered, Yates published an op-ed in the Washington Times encouraging Christians to push back against "sexually deviant" messaging toward children. The "deviant" messaging he was describing involved LGBTQ issues.
I'm starting to see a pattern here. It's not the LGBTQ community, and it's not drag queens. It's them. Who knew! So, he's out on his own recognizance as long as he doesn't contact children. Did he swear to God that he won't? Did he pinky promise? The man should be behind bars.
I need to go throw up now. Brb!
The Christian Post reports:
According to court records, a witness told authorities in July that a family member of Yates “accidentally discovered” a hard drive that contained child sexual abuse material “in the office of Jason Yates.”
“The contents included over 100 sexually explicit images of children,” noted the district court document, with several of the photos believed to be of minors younger than 10.
Yates was released Monday “on his own recognizance,” with a condition of his release being that he not have any contact with individuals younger than 18, reported Ministry Watch.
Yates was listed as the CEO of My Faith Votes on the organization's IRS Form 990 filed last year, according to Ministry Watch, with articles on the website having been published under his byline as recently as July.
At present, he is not listed on the organization’s website as part of the leadership. Instead, the “About” page identifies former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as honorary national chairman and Sealy Yates, a lawyer related to Jason Yates, as founder and president.
Dr. Ben Carson, an author and conservative activist, previously served as honorary chairman until he assumed the role of Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the first Trump administration.
My Faith Votes was "founded in 2015 by Sealy Yates to reach millions of Christians to vote and stand for biblical values,” according to its website.
Some of the explicit images and videos involved children between five and seven years old. According to The Independent, Yates met with investigators on September 13 and refused to give the investigators a password to access the encrypted files on the drive. Also, he revealed that he had a prior expunged conviction related to child sex abuse materials.
“In early August 2024, the My Faith Votes board of directors separated Jason Yates from My Faith Votes and board member Chris Sadler assumed the position of Acting CEO,” a My Faith Votes spokesperson told RNS.
A few weeks before the hard drive was discovered, Yates published an op-ed in the Washington Times encouraging Christians to push back against "sexually deviant" messaging toward children. The "deviant" messaging he was describing involved LGBTQ issues.
I'm starting to see a pattern here. It's not the LGBTQ community, and it's not drag queens. It's them. Who knew! So, he's out on his own recognizance as long as he doesn't contact children. Did he swear to God that he won't? Did he pinky promise? The man should be behind bars.
I need to go throw up now. Brb!
talking to the stupid is a waste of time!!!
american values redefined: greed, racism, hypocrisy
racism: The unfair treatment of people who belong to a different race. Violent behavior towards them. Having the belief that some races of people are better than others. General beliefs about other people based only on their race. Showing this through violent or unfair treatment of people of other races.
greed: intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food
hypocrisy: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.
There’s No Denying It Anymore: Trump Is Not a Fluke—He’s America
The United States chose Donald Trump in all his ugliness and cruelty, and the country will get what it deserves.
Elie Mystal - the nation
11/7/2024
America deserves everything it is about to get. We had a chance to stand united against fascism, authoritarianism, racism, and bigotry, but we did not. We had a chance to create a better world for not just ourselves but our sisters and brothers in at least some of the communities most vulnerable to unchecked white rule, but we did not. We had a chance to pass down a better, safer, and cleaner world to our children, but we did not. Instead, we chose Trump, JD Vance, and a few white South African billionaires who know a thing or two about instituting apartheid.
I could be more specific about the “we.” Roughly half of “us” didn’t vote for this travesty. I could be more specific about who did, and as people pore over exit polls, the only thing liberals will do liberally is dole out the blame. But the conversations about who is to blame, the hand-wringing about who showed up and who failed the moment are largely academic and pointless.
America did this. America, through the process of a free and fair election, demanded this. America, as an idea, concept, and institution, wanted this. And America, as a collective, deserves to get what it wants.
To be clear, no individual person “deserves” what Trump will do to them… not even the people who voted for him to do the things he’s going to do. Nobody deserves to die for their vote, even if they voted for other people to die.
But we, as a country, absolutely deserve what’s about to happen to us. We, as a nation, have proven ourselves to be a fetid, violent people, and we deserve a leader who embodies the worst of us. We are not “better” than Trump. If anything, thinking that we are better than Trump, thinking there is some “silent majority” who opposes the unserious grotesqueries of the man, is the core conceit that has led the Democratic Party to such total ruin. America willed Trump into existence. He was created from our greed, our insecurities, and our selfishness. We have summoned him from the depths of our own bile and neediness, and he has answered.
And now that he is here, we deserve our fate, because the most fundamental truth about Trump’s reelection is that Trump was right about us. He will be president again because he, and perhaps he alone, saw us for how truly base, depraved, and uninformed we are as a country. Trump is not a root cause of our ills. He did not create the conditions that allowed him to rise. He is, and always has been, a mirror. He is how America sees itself.
If people would just look at him, they would see themselves as we’ve always been. He is rich, because we are rich or think we will be. He is crass because we are crass. He is self-interested because we are. He punks the media because the media are punks. He is unintelligent because we are uninformed. The president of the United States is the singular figure who is supposed to represent all Americans, and Trump reflects us more accurately than perhaps any president ever has.
That’s why the people who love him love him so passionately. He is them. And he tells them that being what they are is OK. He never for a second requires America to be better than it is. He never expects more of America than it is able to give. Trump tells America to be garbage. Garbage is easy.
That’s why the people who hate him hate him so intensely. He’s the monster we turn into after a few drinks. He’s the intrusive thought we have at work that we don’t act on and try to quickly forget. He’s the glimpse you catch of yourself in the mirror that makes you think, “Damn, I need to hit the gym.” He’s the ketchup stain you acquired at lunch that you try to hide under your tie until the end of the day. He is our embarrassments, our failures, and our regrets made flesh and come to haunt us.
We cannot rid ourselves of Trump because we cannot run away from ourselves. This is who we are, whether we’d like to be or not. We will never be better than we are if we do not first confront what we are. As any recovering alcoholic or drug user could tell you, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. But that requires admitting you have a problem, not them, not somebody else, not the gods, not forces beyond your control.
Trump is America’s problem, but America is not ready to take responsibility for what we have become. And so, we will suffer. We’ve done this, and we deserve to face the consequences of our actions. Indeed, the utter lack of consequences is a huge reason why Trump is back: America could not bring itself to punish our avatar after he left office the last time, and so we must sit for our remedial lessons. The beatings, as it were, will continue until morale improves.
Everyone who hates Trump is asking how America can be “saved” from him, again. Nobody is asking the more relevant question: Is America worth saving? Like I said, Trump is the sum of our failures. A country that allows its environment to be ravaged, its children to be shot, its wealth to be hoarded, its workers to be exploited, its poor to starve, its cops to murder, and its minorities to be hunted doesn’t really deserve to be “saved.” It deserves to fail.
Trump is not our “retribution.” He is our reckoning.
I could be more specific about the “we.” Roughly half of “us” didn’t vote for this travesty. I could be more specific about who did, and as people pore over exit polls, the only thing liberals will do liberally is dole out the blame. But the conversations about who is to blame, the hand-wringing about who showed up and who failed the moment are largely academic and pointless.
America did this. America, through the process of a free and fair election, demanded this. America, as an idea, concept, and institution, wanted this. And America, as a collective, deserves to get what it wants.
To be clear, no individual person “deserves” what Trump will do to them… not even the people who voted for him to do the things he’s going to do. Nobody deserves to die for their vote, even if they voted for other people to die.
But we, as a country, absolutely deserve what’s about to happen to us. We, as a nation, have proven ourselves to be a fetid, violent people, and we deserve a leader who embodies the worst of us. We are not “better” than Trump. If anything, thinking that we are better than Trump, thinking there is some “silent majority” who opposes the unserious grotesqueries of the man, is the core conceit that has led the Democratic Party to such total ruin. America willed Trump into existence. He was created from our greed, our insecurities, and our selfishness. We have summoned him from the depths of our own bile and neediness, and he has answered.
And now that he is here, we deserve our fate, because the most fundamental truth about Trump’s reelection is that Trump was right about us. He will be president again because he, and perhaps he alone, saw us for how truly base, depraved, and uninformed we are as a country. Trump is not a root cause of our ills. He did not create the conditions that allowed him to rise. He is, and always has been, a mirror. He is how America sees itself.
If people would just look at him, they would see themselves as we’ve always been. He is rich, because we are rich or think we will be. He is crass because we are crass. He is self-interested because we are. He punks the media because the media are punks. He is unintelligent because we are uninformed. The president of the United States is the singular figure who is supposed to represent all Americans, and Trump reflects us more accurately than perhaps any president ever has.
That’s why the people who love him love him so passionately. He is them. And he tells them that being what they are is OK. He never for a second requires America to be better than it is. He never expects more of America than it is able to give. Trump tells America to be garbage. Garbage is easy.
That’s why the people who hate him hate him so intensely. He’s the monster we turn into after a few drinks. He’s the intrusive thought we have at work that we don’t act on and try to quickly forget. He’s the glimpse you catch of yourself in the mirror that makes you think, “Damn, I need to hit the gym.” He’s the ketchup stain you acquired at lunch that you try to hide under your tie until the end of the day. He is our embarrassments, our failures, and our regrets made flesh and come to haunt us.
We cannot rid ourselves of Trump because we cannot run away from ourselves. This is who we are, whether we’d like to be or not. We will never be better than we are if we do not first confront what we are. As any recovering alcoholic or drug user could tell you, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. But that requires admitting you have a problem, not them, not somebody else, not the gods, not forces beyond your control.
Trump is America’s problem, but America is not ready to take responsibility for what we have become. And so, we will suffer. We’ve done this, and we deserve to face the consequences of our actions. Indeed, the utter lack of consequences is a huge reason why Trump is back: America could not bring itself to punish our avatar after he left office the last time, and so we must sit for our remedial lessons. The beatings, as it were, will continue until morale improves.
Everyone who hates Trump is asking how America can be “saved” from him, again. Nobody is asking the more relevant question: Is America worth saving? Like I said, Trump is the sum of our failures. A country that allows its environment to be ravaged, its children to be shot, its wealth to be hoarded, its workers to be exploited, its poor to starve, its cops to murder, and its minorities to be hunted doesn’t really deserve to be “saved.” It deserves to fail.
Trump is not our “retribution.” He is our reckoning.
Literacy Statistics 2024- 2025 (Where we are now)
On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024. 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024. 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).
national literacy institute
10/2024
The capacity to read and write, commonly known as literacy, stands out as a pivotal determinant in shaping an individual's career trajectory. Individuals with literacy skills have access to a broad spectrum of career possibilities, including highly skilled and well-paying positions. Conversely, those lacking literacy face severely restricted options, with even entry-level, low-skilled jobs posing challenges to secure.
Globally, the overall literacy rate stands at a commendable level. For individuals aged 15 and above, the combined literacy rate for both genders is 86.3%. Males in this age group exhibit a literacy rate of 90%, with females closely trailing at 82.7%. Notably, substantial variations exist between countries. Developed nations consistently boast adult literacy rates of 96% or higher, while the least developed countries struggle with an average literacy rate of just 65%. Accurate cross-country comparisons of literacy rates face challenges due to two primary factors: irregular reporting practices among countries, and divergent definitions of what constitutes literacy.
Where does the US rank in literacy?
The US ranks 36th in literacy.
The relationship between literacy and poverty
The nexus between poverty and literacy is pronounced, with these two challenges often interlinked. In impoverished regions, educational opportunities are frequently scarce, exacerbated by the necessity for struggling families to prioritize immediate income generation over sending their children to school. The majority of countries with the lowest literacy rates are concentrated in South Asia, West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, regions also characterized by a prevalence of the world's poorest nations.
A discernible gender gap further compounds the issue of literacy, as nearly two-thirds of the approximately 781 million globally illiterate adults are female. This disparity is particularly evident in less-developed countries, where societal expectations often confine women to domestic roles, caring for the household and children while men pursue employment opportunities. In contrast, developed nations exhibit higher literacy rates with narrower, if any, gender gaps. For a comprehensive overview of global literacy rates, refer to the table below, which presents the latest and most reliable information available.
Globally, the overall literacy rate stands at a commendable level. For individuals aged 15 and above, the combined literacy rate for both genders is 86.3%. Males in this age group exhibit a literacy rate of 90%, with females closely trailing at 82.7%. Notably, substantial variations exist between countries. Developed nations consistently boast adult literacy rates of 96% or higher, while the least developed countries struggle with an average literacy rate of just 65%. Accurate cross-country comparisons of literacy rates face challenges due to two primary factors: irregular reporting practices among countries, and divergent definitions of what constitutes literacy.
- On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024.
- 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.
- 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).
- Low levels of literacy costs the US up to 2.2 trillion per year.
- 34% of adults lacking literacy proficiency were born outside the US.
- Massachusetts was the state with the highest rate of child literacy.
- New Mexico was the state with the lowest child literacy rate.
- New Hampshire was the state with the highest percentage of adults considered literate.
- The state with the lowest adult literacy rate was California.
Where does the US rank in literacy?
The US ranks 36th in literacy.
The relationship between literacy and poverty
The nexus between poverty and literacy is pronounced, with these two challenges often interlinked. In impoverished regions, educational opportunities are frequently scarce, exacerbated by the necessity for struggling families to prioritize immediate income generation over sending their children to school. The majority of countries with the lowest literacy rates are concentrated in South Asia, West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, regions also characterized by a prevalence of the world's poorest nations.
A discernible gender gap further compounds the issue of literacy, as nearly two-thirds of the approximately 781 million globally illiterate adults are female. This disparity is particularly evident in less-developed countries, where societal expectations often confine women to domestic roles, caring for the household and children while men pursue employment opportunities. In contrast, developed nations exhibit higher literacy rates with narrower, if any, gender gaps. For a comprehensive overview of global literacy rates, refer to the table below, which presents the latest and most reliable information available.
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congrats moronic trump voters!!!
With trifecta secured, GOP already eyeing destructive healthcare cuts
Jake Johnson, Common Dreams raw story
November 14, 2024 12:58PM ET
Having secured control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress and the White House starting in January, Republicans are making no secret of their intention to pursue sweeping healthcare cuts that would raise costs and imperil insurance coverage for millions of people across the country.
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters earlier this week that the GOP is looking to use the filibuster-evading reconciliation process to pursue cuts to "mandatory programs"—a category that includes Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, noted in response to Arrington's comments that Republicans attempted to cut both Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that help enrollees afford health insurance.
The Republican Study Committee, of which Arrington is a member, proposed eliminating the ACA tax credits in its 2025 budget proposal—a move that could result in around 4 million people losing insurance.
The tax credits are set to expire next year, meaning Republicans could just do nothing and allow them to lapse.
Last time Republicans had a federal trifecta, they tried and failed to fully repeal the ACA—an effort that sparked a wave of civil disobedience on Capitol Hill.
Both President-elect Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on the campaign trail that they're looking to try again.
"We're going to replace it," Trump said during his lone debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September—while admitting that he did not have a fully formed alternative plan.
Johnson, for his part, said during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania last month that "healthcare reform's going to be a big part of the agenda." When a voter posed the question, "No Obamacare?" Johnson replied in the affirmative, "No Obamacare."
"The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work," he added, "and we've got a lot of ideas on how to do that."
Sarah Lueck and Allison Orris of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote Wednesday that Trump's return to the White House and the GOP's capture of both chambers of Congress poses "big risks to people's ability to access and afford health coverage in Medicaid and the marketplaces."
"While Republicans have moved away from talking about their plans for changing health coverage in the U.S. as 'repeal,'" Lueck and Orris added, "Trump's first term and Republicans' recently released policy agendas suggest they may pursue policies that would have much the same result: higher costs for people, reduced access to care for vulnerable groups, and more people who are uninsured."
"Just as a grassroots movement of Americans around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump's first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare."
Even if Republicans don't succeed at enacting major legislative changes to the nation's healthcare system, Trump will still have the power to do significant damage unilaterally. Lueck and Orris noted that the first Trump administration "took numerous administrative steps that made it harder for eligible people to get coverage" and weakened consumer protections, from adding new paperwork requirements to the Medicaid enrollment process to expanding so-called "junk" insurance plans.
Vice President-elect JD Vance also suggested during the 2024 campaign that a second Trump administration could seek to roll back protections for people with preexisting conditions.
"If there are a lot of details still to be filled in, the theme of the GOP's healthcare agenda is clear: cuts," Vox's Dylan Scott wrote days before the November 5 election. "Cutting regulations. Cutting spending."
Stephanie Armour of KFF Health Newswrote following Trump's victory that his second term "will likely bring changes that scale back the nation's public health insurance programs—increasing the uninsured rate, while imposing new barriers to abortion and other reproductive care."
Medicaid is particularly vulnerable, Armour noted, with Trump and the Republican Party potentially set to pursue "the imposition of work requirements on beneficiaries in some states" and changes to how the program is funded.
"Now, the federal government pays states a variable percentage of program costs," Armour explained.
"Conservatives have long sought to cap the federal allotments to states, which critics say would lead to draconian cuts."
As for Medicare, the Project 2025 agenda authored by many former members of Trump's first administration calls for making privatized Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment option for the nation's seniors—a change that advocates say would pose an existential threat to traditional Medicare.
"Trump and Republicans will try to cut our earned benefits," Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, warned in an op-ed for Common Dreams on Wednesday. "But just as a grassroots movement of Americans around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump's first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare."
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters earlier this week that the GOP is looking to use the filibuster-evading reconciliation process to pursue cuts to "mandatory programs"—a category that includes Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, noted in response to Arrington's comments that Republicans attempted to cut both Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that help enrollees afford health insurance.
The Republican Study Committee, of which Arrington is a member, proposed eliminating the ACA tax credits in its 2025 budget proposal—a move that could result in around 4 million people losing insurance.
The tax credits are set to expire next year, meaning Republicans could just do nothing and allow them to lapse.
Last time Republicans had a federal trifecta, they tried and failed to fully repeal the ACA—an effort that sparked a wave of civil disobedience on Capitol Hill.
Both President-elect Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on the campaign trail that they're looking to try again.
"We're going to replace it," Trump said during his lone debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September—while admitting that he did not have a fully formed alternative plan.
Johnson, for his part, said during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania last month that "healthcare reform's going to be a big part of the agenda." When a voter posed the question, "No Obamacare?" Johnson replied in the affirmative, "No Obamacare."
"The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work," he added, "and we've got a lot of ideas on how to do that."
Sarah Lueck and Allison Orris of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote Wednesday that Trump's return to the White House and the GOP's capture of both chambers of Congress poses "big risks to people's ability to access and afford health coverage in Medicaid and the marketplaces."
"While Republicans have moved away from talking about their plans for changing health coverage in the U.S. as 'repeal,'" Lueck and Orris added, "Trump's first term and Republicans' recently released policy agendas suggest they may pursue policies that would have much the same result: higher costs for people, reduced access to care for vulnerable groups, and more people who are uninsured."
"Just as a grassroots movement of Americans around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump's first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare."
Even if Republicans don't succeed at enacting major legislative changes to the nation's healthcare system, Trump will still have the power to do significant damage unilaterally. Lueck and Orris noted that the first Trump administration "took numerous administrative steps that made it harder for eligible people to get coverage" and weakened consumer protections, from adding new paperwork requirements to the Medicaid enrollment process to expanding so-called "junk" insurance plans.
Vice President-elect JD Vance also suggested during the 2024 campaign that a second Trump administration could seek to roll back protections for people with preexisting conditions.
"If there are a lot of details still to be filled in, the theme of the GOP's healthcare agenda is clear: cuts," Vox's Dylan Scott wrote days before the November 5 election. "Cutting regulations. Cutting spending."
Stephanie Armour of KFF Health Newswrote following Trump's victory that his second term "will likely bring changes that scale back the nation's public health insurance programs—increasing the uninsured rate, while imposing new barriers to abortion and other reproductive care."
Medicaid is particularly vulnerable, Armour noted, with Trump and the Republican Party potentially set to pursue "the imposition of work requirements on beneficiaries in some states" and changes to how the program is funded.
"Now, the federal government pays states a variable percentage of program costs," Armour explained.
"Conservatives have long sought to cap the federal allotments to states, which critics say would lead to draconian cuts."
As for Medicare, the Project 2025 agenda authored by many former members of Trump's first administration calls for making privatized Medicare Advantage plans the default enrollment option for the nation's seniors—a change that advocates say would pose an existential threat to traditional Medicare.
"Trump and Republicans will try to cut our earned benefits," Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, warned in an op-ed for Common Dreams on Wednesday. "But just as a grassroots movement of Americans around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump's first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare."
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IT'S OBVIOUS!!!
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Man indicted for shooting Arizona Democratic office facing new felonies
Jerod Macdonald-Evoy, Arizona Mirror - raw story
November 5, 2024 5:54AM ET
A man already indicted for shooting at a local Democratic National Committee Office is facing new charges related to allegations that he posted anti-Democratic signs outfitted with razor blades and bags of white powder attached to them.
Jeffrey Michael Kelly, 60, was arrested for his alleged involvement in four separate incidents of political violence. Police have tied him to a series of shootings at a Democratic National Committee office in Tempe, as well as placing the razor-blade and powder-laden anti-Democratic signs in nearby Ahwatukee.
Prosecutors said they believe he was allegedly planning a “mass casualty” event in Arizona. A search of his home revealed 120 guns, 250,000 rounds of ammunition, body armor and a grenade launcher, they said in court documents filed last month.
Kelly is accused of shooting at the Democratic office on three different occasions between Sept. 16 and Oct. 6. He initially used a C02 powered gun before escalating to .22 caliber firearms, according to Tempe Police.
Over the course of the three shootings, he fired more than 20 times, causing damage to the building late at night, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Police were tipped off that Kelly might have been involved after they released photos of his vehicle, which had been spotted near thefts of Democratic yard signs in 2022.
After they began watching Kelly, they saw him placing signs that read “Dems kill Jews,” “Dems Lie” and “Never Harris,” referring to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. The signs had razor blades and bags of white powder attached to them with the message “biohazard” and “F*** you! Play stupid games win stupid prizes! Guess the poison.”
Kelly was indicted on terrorism charges last month for the incidents involving the DNC office, but had not yet faced an indictment for the signs police saw him put up. The newly obtained grand jury indictment shows that he has since been indicted for four counts of “unlawful use of a biological substance or radiological agent,” a class 2 felony.
The indictment notes that Kelly placed “a simulated infectious biological substance” at multiple locations with the “intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten or harass.” The four counts are for each of the signs Kelly placed along the roadway in Ahwatukee.
Kelly is being represented by an attorney who uses a gun range that Kelly also frequents and has represented militia members before. During Kelly’s initial appearance, attorney Jason Squires argued that Kelly is a “sportsman” who owns a “multitude of firearms,” adding that they were all legally obtained.
The Arizona Mirror found a LinkedIn profile that appears to belong to Kelly in which he said he worked for Honeywell. His attorney said he held top secret clearances for his job until 2020.
Kelly has also posted unfounded conspiracy theories on a Facebook page found by the Mirror. As far back as 2014, Kelly was amplifying the debunked and racist “birtherism” claims about former President Barack Obama.
On Jan. 6, 2021, while rioters were storming the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election for former President Donald Trump, Kelly changed his Facebook banner to a “Stop The Steal” logo, the movement that pushed unfounded claims around the 2020 election results.
He also posted frequent pro-gun memes, including an Islamaphobic one, and his profile picture is an edit of the infamous photo of Kathy Griffin with the severed head of Donald Trump but replaced with Biden and captioned “this is still funny right?”
The Department of Homeland Security has warned that election deniers connected to the far-right may attempt to bomb drop boxes or commit other acts of violence in the coming weeks.
A probable cause statement against Kelly disclosed that he is also under two separate federal investigations. Among the evidence police uncovered are Google searches Kelly allegedly performed looking up the address of the DNC office. The police also noted that Kelly “has finances and resources to conduct further acts of terrorism” and frequently travels across state lines.
The grand jury indictment also notes that Kelly “has a large sum of money and access to lots of guns and ammo” as the rationale behind a $500,000 cash bond. Kelly also has a $500,000 cash bond related to the terrorism charges making his total cash bond $1 million.
Kelly’s attorney claimed he did not own the vehicle at the center of the case, however, it was found on Kelly’s property, where it was covered in blankets. Police said it had been recently cleaned. Police also found two expired out-of-state license plates that were seen on the vehicle fleeing the scene.
Kelly also reportedly researched silencers and additional modifications for his weapons.
During their investigation, Tempe police found spent ammunition in Kelly’s trash that matched the caliber of rounds fired at the DNC office.
Kelly is set to appear in court on Nov. 5.
Jeffrey Michael Kelly, 60, was arrested for his alleged involvement in four separate incidents of political violence. Police have tied him to a series of shootings at a Democratic National Committee office in Tempe, as well as placing the razor-blade and powder-laden anti-Democratic signs in nearby Ahwatukee.
Prosecutors said they believe he was allegedly planning a “mass casualty” event in Arizona. A search of his home revealed 120 guns, 250,000 rounds of ammunition, body armor and a grenade launcher, they said in court documents filed last month.
Kelly is accused of shooting at the Democratic office on three different occasions between Sept. 16 and Oct. 6. He initially used a C02 powered gun before escalating to .22 caliber firearms, according to Tempe Police.
Over the course of the three shootings, he fired more than 20 times, causing damage to the building late at night, according to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Police were tipped off that Kelly might have been involved after they released photos of his vehicle, which had been spotted near thefts of Democratic yard signs in 2022.
After they began watching Kelly, they saw him placing signs that read “Dems kill Jews,” “Dems Lie” and “Never Harris,” referring to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. The signs had razor blades and bags of white powder attached to them with the message “biohazard” and “F*** you! Play stupid games win stupid prizes! Guess the poison.”
Kelly was indicted on terrorism charges last month for the incidents involving the DNC office, but had not yet faced an indictment for the signs police saw him put up. The newly obtained grand jury indictment shows that he has since been indicted for four counts of “unlawful use of a biological substance or radiological agent,” a class 2 felony.
The indictment notes that Kelly placed “a simulated infectious biological substance” at multiple locations with the “intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten or harass.” The four counts are for each of the signs Kelly placed along the roadway in Ahwatukee.
Kelly is being represented by an attorney who uses a gun range that Kelly also frequents and has represented militia members before. During Kelly’s initial appearance, attorney Jason Squires argued that Kelly is a “sportsman” who owns a “multitude of firearms,” adding that they were all legally obtained.
The Arizona Mirror found a LinkedIn profile that appears to belong to Kelly in which he said he worked for Honeywell. His attorney said he held top secret clearances for his job until 2020.
Kelly has also posted unfounded conspiracy theories on a Facebook page found by the Mirror. As far back as 2014, Kelly was amplifying the debunked and racist “birtherism” claims about former President Barack Obama.
On Jan. 6, 2021, while rioters were storming the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election for former President Donald Trump, Kelly changed his Facebook banner to a “Stop The Steal” logo, the movement that pushed unfounded claims around the 2020 election results.
He also posted frequent pro-gun memes, including an Islamaphobic one, and his profile picture is an edit of the infamous photo of Kathy Griffin with the severed head of Donald Trump but replaced with Biden and captioned “this is still funny right?”
The Department of Homeland Security has warned that election deniers connected to the far-right may attempt to bomb drop boxes or commit other acts of violence in the coming weeks.
A probable cause statement against Kelly disclosed that he is also under two separate federal investigations. Among the evidence police uncovered are Google searches Kelly allegedly performed looking up the address of the DNC office. The police also noted that Kelly “has finances and resources to conduct further acts of terrorism” and frequently travels across state lines.
The grand jury indictment also notes that Kelly “has a large sum of money and access to lots of guns and ammo” as the rationale behind a $500,000 cash bond. Kelly also has a $500,000 cash bond related to the terrorism charges making his total cash bond $1 million.
Kelly’s attorney claimed he did not own the vehicle at the center of the case, however, it was found on Kelly’s property, where it was covered in blankets. Police said it had been recently cleaned. Police also found two expired out-of-state license plates that were seen on the vehicle fleeing the scene.
Kelly also reportedly researched silencers and additional modifications for his weapons.
During their investigation, Tempe police found spent ammunition in Kelly’s trash that matched the caliber of rounds fired at the DNC office.
Kelly is set to appear in court on Nov. 5.
Welcome to RepublicanDebt.org
This site tracks the current Republican Debt.
The Republican Debt is how much of the national debt of the United States
is attributable to
the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush,
George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump,
and
the Republican fiscal policy of Borrow-And-Spend.
As of Sunday, November 17, 2024 at 5:21:06PM PT,
The Current Republican Debt is:
$16,973,218,990,071.70
which means that in a total of 24 years,
these four presidents have led to the creation of
94.78%
of the entire national debt
in only 9.6774% of the 248 years of the existence of the United States of America.
'You’ll pay for it!' Leaked videos show fringe pastors' warnings on interracial marriage
Brad Reed - RAW STORY
December 3, 2024 10:26AM ET
The Arizona Star has obtained videos showing multiple pastors at a Pentecostalism offshoot known as "The Message" that explicitly warns congregants against dating and marrying people of other races or ethnicities.
According to the Arizona Star, The Message was founded in the 1950s by a self-style "prophet" named William Branham, who drew attention not only for his purported faith healings but also preached heavily against racial mixing.
Despite the fact that the churches he founded now welcome people of all races, preachers within it still tell congregants that it is against God's will to date or marry people of different races.
One pastor of the church, Donny Reagan, told congregants back in 2013 that it was "pitiful" to see Black professional athletes dating white women.
"Why is it so many Black basketball stars, Black football stars, Black baseball stars want a white wife?" he asked rhetorically. "Why? Lord have mercy. It’s another defiance of God’s law. It is a worldly way. And then it creeps over into The Message.”
Louisiana Message minister Tim Pruitt, meanwhile, told congregants earlier this year that they would face severe consequences for dating outside of their races.
"“You'll pay for it in your children, in your family, and society and situations," he said. "You'll pay for it with marriage problems and everything else that'll be the result of it... I don't think you'll go to Hell for it, certainly not. But you will run into troubles.”
Interestingly, these pastors don't believe that interracial marriage is technically a sin -- rather, they think that the cultural differences between people of different races is so strong that it will be harmful for the stability of the relationship, according to the Arizona Star.
But one former congregant tells the Arizona Star that the lessons he learned were nonetheless deeply racist, even if the church itself doesn't see them that way.
“You live in a community where they're like, ‘Alright, yes, you are our brother. You are equal to us. But you may not under any circumstances, date our daughters,’” former The Message devotee Martin Maene explained. “Things like that build up to make you feel like — even if they're not outright saying it — you feel inferior.”
Read the full story here.
According to the Arizona Star, The Message was founded in the 1950s by a self-style "prophet" named William Branham, who drew attention not only for his purported faith healings but also preached heavily against racial mixing.
Despite the fact that the churches he founded now welcome people of all races, preachers within it still tell congregants that it is against God's will to date or marry people of different races.
One pastor of the church, Donny Reagan, told congregants back in 2013 that it was "pitiful" to see Black professional athletes dating white women.
"Why is it so many Black basketball stars, Black football stars, Black baseball stars want a white wife?" he asked rhetorically. "Why? Lord have mercy. It’s another defiance of God’s law. It is a worldly way. And then it creeps over into The Message.”
Louisiana Message minister Tim Pruitt, meanwhile, told congregants earlier this year that they would face severe consequences for dating outside of their races.
"“You'll pay for it in your children, in your family, and society and situations," he said. "You'll pay for it with marriage problems and everything else that'll be the result of it... I don't think you'll go to Hell for it, certainly not. But you will run into troubles.”
Interestingly, these pastors don't believe that interracial marriage is technically a sin -- rather, they think that the cultural differences between people of different races is so strong that it will be harmful for the stability of the relationship, according to the Arizona Star.
But one former congregant tells the Arizona Star that the lessons he learned were nonetheless deeply racist, even if the church itself doesn't see them that way.
“You live in a community where they're like, ‘Alright, yes, you are our brother. You are equal to us. But you may not under any circumstances, date our daughters,’” former The Message devotee Martin Maene explained. “Things like that build up to make you feel like — even if they're not outright saying it — you feel inferior.”
Read the full story here.
This statue just appeared at a park in Philadelphia
Eleven children worked on Iowa pork plant’s ‘kill floor’, US labor officials say
Federal investigators find children working at Sioux City meat processing plant for second time
Jessica Glenza - THE GUARDIAN
Tue 3 Dec 2024 09.41 EST
Nearly a dozen children were working shifts cleaning meat processing equipment used at an Iowa pork plant’s so-called kill floor over a four-year period, the US Department of Labor announced.
Eleven children were using corrosive chemicals to clean as well as perilous “head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers and other equipment” at a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux City, according to officials. This is the second time federal investigators have found children working at that particular Sioux City meat processing plant.
The most recent settlement comes with Qvest LLC, an Oklahoma-based cleaning company hired by Seaboard from 2019 to 2023. The company was fined $171,919 for violating federal law.
In September 2023, Seaboard hired a new cleaning contractor: Fayette Janitorial Services, headquartered in Tennessee. Investigators found Fayette hired 24 children to work overnight shifts – some as young as 13 and carrying glittery school backpacks – including some of the same minors who were employed by Qvest, the previous cleaning company. In May, Fayette was fined $649,304.
“These findings illustrate Seaboard Triumph Foods’ history of children working illegally in their Sioux City facility since at least September 2019,” said wage and hour midwest regional administrator Michael Lazzeri. “Despite changing sanitation contractors, children continued to work in dangerous occupations at this facility.”The federal investigation comes after a 2023 New York Times report on migrant child exploitation, in which the paper documented children working dangerous jobs and overnight hours.
Children who arrive at the US’s southern border alone often stay in the country for years before their cases are adjudicated. While they wait, they live with sponsors. As of 2023, only one-third of migrant children went to live with their parents, a sea change from a decade ago. That can leave children vulnerable to exploitation or trafficking.
Similarly, the Guardian has documented children as young as 14 working in US tobacco fields, although legally.
Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has pledged to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants using the US military.
The settlements require Qvest to hire a third-party compliance officer who will direct a review of company policies, conduct training on child labor, establish a hotline for violations and submit compliance reports for three years to the department. Fayette was required to implement many of the same provisions – and to discipline managers responsible for child labor violations.
Labor investigators uncovered violations affecting 4,030 children in 736 investigations this year, and assessed $15.1m in fines, an 89% increase since 2023.
Eleven children were using corrosive chemicals to clean as well as perilous “head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers and other equipment” at a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux City, according to officials. This is the second time federal investigators have found children working at that particular Sioux City meat processing plant.
The most recent settlement comes with Qvest LLC, an Oklahoma-based cleaning company hired by Seaboard from 2019 to 2023. The company was fined $171,919 for violating federal law.
In September 2023, Seaboard hired a new cleaning contractor: Fayette Janitorial Services, headquartered in Tennessee. Investigators found Fayette hired 24 children to work overnight shifts – some as young as 13 and carrying glittery school backpacks – including some of the same minors who were employed by Qvest, the previous cleaning company. In May, Fayette was fined $649,304.
“These findings illustrate Seaboard Triumph Foods’ history of children working illegally in their Sioux City facility since at least September 2019,” said wage and hour midwest regional administrator Michael Lazzeri. “Despite changing sanitation contractors, children continued to work in dangerous occupations at this facility.”The federal investigation comes after a 2023 New York Times report on migrant child exploitation, in which the paper documented children working dangerous jobs and overnight hours.
Children who arrive at the US’s southern border alone often stay in the country for years before their cases are adjudicated. While they wait, they live with sponsors. As of 2023, only one-third of migrant children went to live with their parents, a sea change from a decade ago. That can leave children vulnerable to exploitation or trafficking.
Similarly, the Guardian has documented children as young as 14 working in US tobacco fields, although legally.
Donald Trump’s second presidential administration has pledged to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants using the US military.
The settlements require Qvest to hire a third-party compliance officer who will direct a review of company policies, conduct training on child labor, establish a hotline for violations and submit compliance reports for three years to the department. Fayette was required to implement many of the same provisions – and to discipline managers responsible for child labor violations.
Labor investigators uncovered violations affecting 4,030 children in 736 investigations this year, and assessed $15.1m in fines, an 89% increase since 2023.
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in the land of stupid!!!
THE DAILY TRASH REPORT FEATURING TODAY'S DESPICABLES
THOMAS JEFFERSON CALLED THEM "WASTE PEOPLE" AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN CALLED THEM "RUBBISH" WE CALL THEM "MAGA PEOPLE" and the worthless media gives them a voice.
they are more accurately called euro-trash!!!
Nick Fuentes Mocks Men For Not Wanting To Rape Women
What's for dinner, Donald?
"Corporate abuse": Kroger and Albertsons are in hot water over alleged strike sabotage
“These companies rigged the system against us, undermining our right to fight for better pay and fair treatment"
By Ashlie D. Stevens - salon
Food Editor
Published December 2, 2024 12:01PM (EST)
Supermarket chains Kroger and Albertsons, already under scrutiny for their proposed $24.6 billion merger, are now facing a new class-action lawsuit that alleges the companies conspired against unionized workers during a 2022 strike. The suit, which was filed in Colorado, accuses the companies of entering a “no-poach” agreement which illegally undermined workers’ bargaining power.
The lead plaintiff, Valarie Morgan, is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 who led King Soopers contract negotiations from 2021 to 2022. She and the other grocery workers who claim they are similarly affected are represented by the progressive legal nonprofit, Towards Justice. Morgan claims the companies colluded to prevent Albertsons, which owns Safeway stores in Colorado, from hiring workers striking against King Soopers, which is a Kroger subsidiary.
“I want to stand up for all the workers who were harmed by this corporate abuse,” Morgan said in a statement. “These companies rigged the system against us, undermining our right to fight for better pay and fair treatment through our unions.”
In 2022, more than 8,000 King Soopers employees walked off the job as they demanded higher wages and improved working conditions. The strike ended with a new contract, but the new lawsuit contends the alleged no-poach agreement limited employees’ leverage and cost workers potential gains during bargaining. According to The Denver Post, Morgan’s lawsuit targets “the same alleged ‘no-poach’ deal that Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said Kroger and Albertsons Cos. agreed to when members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 went on strike against King Soopers.”
Weiser’s lawsuit — which was filed in February and sought to block the merger between Kroger and Albertsons — alleges that emails between senior labor executives at both companies, disclosed during the inquiry, revealed that an Albertsons executive promised not to hire striking King Soopers workers or solicit their pharmacy customers, violating the state’s antitrust laws.
According to the Denver Post, the complaint about the agreements is independent of the merger.“But the fact that the company entered into such agreements and thought they could get away with it, underscores why competition matters, to consumers, to workers, to farmers and to our communities,” Weiser said.
At the time, Kroger’s legal team rejected claims that the correspondence constitutes unlawful agreement. During the Colorado trial, as reported by Colorado Newsline, a lawyer for Kroger argued the companies were not engaging in a “quid pro quo,” but only sought to understand each other’s intent.
“That’s all my client did — asked Albertsons, ‘This is what your folks are doing. This is what our folks are doing. What is your intent?’” said Kroger attorney Matt Wolf. “That is not an unlawful question. Responding to that question is not unlawful. That is not an agreement.”
However, union officials see it differently. Kim Cordova, the president of the UFCW Local 7, said the group’s members “could have made even more gains if these corporations had not broken the law behind our backs.”
“Had we known the companies were working in tandem, in a coordinated effort to hurt the members, we believe the outcome would have been different,” Cordova told the Denver Post.
The lawsuit, filed in Colorado state court, seeks financial compensation for lost wages and an injunction to prevent similar agreements in the future. It also claims the companies’ actions violated Colorado’s antitrust laws, which prohibit agreements that restrain competition.
This latest controversy adds fuel to the ongoing debate surrounding Kroger and Albertsons’ proposed merger, which has drawn opposition from labor groups, consumer advocates and government regulators. Critics of the deal argue that combining two of the largest grocery chains in the country could stifle competition, which might lead to higher prices for customers and layoffs and worsened conditions for workers.
The Federal Trade Commission has filed its own lawsuit to block the merger, citing antitrust concerns. The agency argues that the deal would reduce competition and lead to price increases for consumers.
To address regulatory concerns, Kroger and Albertsons have proposed divesting hundreds of stores, particularly in regions where their operations overlap. Earlier this year, the companies announced plans to sell Safeway locations in Arizona and other areas.
Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran has defended the merger as a strategic necessity to compete with non-union retail giants like Walmart, Amazon and Costco. “I have deep concerns when I look forward about our competitive condition,” Sankaran said earlier this year. “If you don’t fundamentally change your competitive condition as you look out two, three, four years, your financial condition will deteriorate. I’m losing more of our customers’ dollars to Costco and Walmart than to Kroger.”
However, labor leaders argue that such corporate moves prioritize profits over people.
“Coloradans remember the King Soopers strike well. Many of us refused to cross the picket line to support workers’ right to fair wages,” David Seligman, executive director of Towards Justice, said in a statement. “Little did we know that these companies had worked behind the scenes to rig the game. Their illegal scheme hurt workers, consumers, and the broader community. That’s what this case is about.”
As the lawsuit unfolds, it underscores broader tensions in the grocery industry over labor rights and market consolidation. For workers like Morgan, the fight is about more than wages; it’s about accountability.
“Hardworking Coloradans deserve better,” she said.
The lead plaintiff, Valarie Morgan, is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 who led King Soopers contract negotiations from 2021 to 2022. She and the other grocery workers who claim they are similarly affected are represented by the progressive legal nonprofit, Towards Justice. Morgan claims the companies colluded to prevent Albertsons, which owns Safeway stores in Colorado, from hiring workers striking against King Soopers, which is a Kroger subsidiary.
“I want to stand up for all the workers who were harmed by this corporate abuse,” Morgan said in a statement. “These companies rigged the system against us, undermining our right to fight for better pay and fair treatment through our unions.”
In 2022, more than 8,000 King Soopers employees walked off the job as they demanded higher wages and improved working conditions. The strike ended with a new contract, but the new lawsuit contends the alleged no-poach agreement limited employees’ leverage and cost workers potential gains during bargaining. According to The Denver Post, Morgan’s lawsuit targets “the same alleged ‘no-poach’ deal that Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said Kroger and Albertsons Cos. agreed to when members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 went on strike against King Soopers.”
Weiser’s lawsuit — which was filed in February and sought to block the merger between Kroger and Albertsons — alleges that emails between senior labor executives at both companies, disclosed during the inquiry, revealed that an Albertsons executive promised not to hire striking King Soopers workers or solicit their pharmacy customers, violating the state’s antitrust laws.
According to the Denver Post, the complaint about the agreements is independent of the merger.“But the fact that the company entered into such agreements and thought they could get away with it, underscores why competition matters, to consumers, to workers, to farmers and to our communities,” Weiser said.
At the time, Kroger’s legal team rejected claims that the correspondence constitutes unlawful agreement. During the Colorado trial, as reported by Colorado Newsline, a lawyer for Kroger argued the companies were not engaging in a “quid pro quo,” but only sought to understand each other’s intent.
“That’s all my client did — asked Albertsons, ‘This is what your folks are doing. This is what our folks are doing. What is your intent?’” said Kroger attorney Matt Wolf. “That is not an unlawful question. Responding to that question is not unlawful. That is not an agreement.”
However, union officials see it differently. Kim Cordova, the president of the UFCW Local 7, said the group’s members “could have made even more gains if these corporations had not broken the law behind our backs.”
“Had we known the companies were working in tandem, in a coordinated effort to hurt the members, we believe the outcome would have been different,” Cordova told the Denver Post.
The lawsuit, filed in Colorado state court, seeks financial compensation for lost wages and an injunction to prevent similar agreements in the future. It also claims the companies’ actions violated Colorado’s antitrust laws, which prohibit agreements that restrain competition.
This latest controversy adds fuel to the ongoing debate surrounding Kroger and Albertsons’ proposed merger, which has drawn opposition from labor groups, consumer advocates and government regulators. Critics of the deal argue that combining two of the largest grocery chains in the country could stifle competition, which might lead to higher prices for customers and layoffs and worsened conditions for workers.
The Federal Trade Commission has filed its own lawsuit to block the merger, citing antitrust concerns. The agency argues that the deal would reduce competition and lead to price increases for consumers.
To address regulatory concerns, Kroger and Albertsons have proposed divesting hundreds of stores, particularly in regions where their operations overlap. Earlier this year, the companies announced plans to sell Safeway locations in Arizona and other areas.
Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran has defended the merger as a strategic necessity to compete with non-union retail giants like Walmart, Amazon and Costco. “I have deep concerns when I look forward about our competitive condition,” Sankaran said earlier this year. “If you don’t fundamentally change your competitive condition as you look out two, three, four years, your financial condition will deteriorate. I’m losing more of our customers’ dollars to Costco and Walmart than to Kroger.”
However, labor leaders argue that such corporate moves prioritize profits over people.
“Coloradans remember the King Soopers strike well. Many of us refused to cross the picket line to support workers’ right to fair wages,” David Seligman, executive director of Towards Justice, said in a statement. “Little did we know that these companies had worked behind the scenes to rig the game. Their illegal scheme hurt workers, consumers, and the broader community. That’s what this case is about.”
As the lawsuit unfolds, it underscores broader tensions in the grocery industry over labor rights and market consolidation. For workers like Morgan, the fight is about more than wages; it’s about accountability.
“Hardworking Coloradans deserve better,” she said.
in the land of stupid!!!
The Power of Dumb
In the Second Trump Era, don’t expect reality to be realistic.
Hamilton Nolan - in these times
November 20, 2024
There is a power that dumb things have in this world. It is not the power of imperviousness to criticism, but rather of being so permeable that all criticism passes through with no effect, like the invisible neutrinos that stream through our bodies every second. Grappling with the dawn of the Second Trump Era will require an acceptance of the disquieting truth that Dumb Things and Important Things are about to merge into a single excruciating category of existence.
Donald Trump is an ignorant, overconfident, narcissistic, grievance-ridden man — a dumb man, who over time has attracted around him an asteroid field of dumb allies who are but lesser versions of himself. His invariable instinct to act without knowledge is dumb; his unwavering instinct to make consequential decisions based upon minor personal whim is dumb; his unshakeable belief in his own laughable reasoning is dumb. No sober analysis would grant him any benefit of the doubt. He possesses the poisonous combination of great power and the utter absence of concern for responsibility. He knows little and does much. He lives the child’s fantasy of arranging the immediately visible parts of the world for his own flattery and receiving in return the praise of all the people who wish that they themselves could live such a charmed and feckless existence.
In 2004, a Bush White House official was famously quoted in the New York Times Magazine deriding the “reality-based community.”
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out,” the anonymous official said. “We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” This quote was widely mocked at the time. These haughty imperial stereotypes! Surely they will be hoist on the petards of their own grandiosity! The failures of the Iraq War were attributed to this sort of overweening arrogance in the White House.
Two decades later, the arc of the moral universe has bent back towards this attitude. But dumber. The Trump administration will have not only the belief that it can create an alternate reality, but also the pacifying lack of understanding that such a thing might raise eyebrows. Here are history’s new actors: Reality show dregs, cable news hair gel models, pro wrestling moguls, wastrel political heirs driven insane by online conspiracy theories. If you think that the joke is on them, I’m sorry to report that it’s the other way around. They will create the reality that all of us are about to be swamped by. The sooner we understand this, the better.
Part of Trump’s power has always been that his dumb decisions strike his opponents like a series of blows to the head, leaving them woozy and spluttering. The amount of analytical power that non-Republicans have dedicated to trying to process Trump’s actions over the past decade could fuel all the nation’s data centers. We scrutinize each apparently idiotic policy or quote or appointment for signs of hidden strategy, like crazed numerologists trying to pull meaning out of a random number generator. This serves to exhaust the intellectual opposition, while Trump World proceeds merrily on its way. We can do ourselves a tactical favor by coming to terms with the role of one integral factor in what is about to happen to America: Dumbness.
How has the mightiest nation in the world ended up with a Fox News host as its Defense Secretary nominee? A weird vaccine disbeliever running its health services? A fraud-adjacent television doctor named to lead Medicare, a pro wrestling executive to run education, a skeevy little failson sex predator as attorney general, a meme-poisoned billionaire nerd king as Lord of the federal budget? The swirl of senselessness that seems to grow with each passing day should be a familiar feeling to anyone who was forced to reckon seriously with the first iteration of a Trump presidency. It is enough to make people welcome the nominees who are merely fascist but not incompetent. That is one of its most dangerous effects.
Donald Trump is an aggressively ignorant man who doesn’t care about anything that doesn’t affect him personally. He doesn’t know much about issues of consequence and is picking his cabinet based upon who has done the best job of flattering him and who he has seen on television. The fact that this is a ridiculous thing to do — a method that a child operating in a dream might use, a fearful abdication of responsibility that will surely have terrible consequences for the entire world — does not matter. He is the president and this is how he is. The American people decided to forsake the opportunity to prevent this, in favor of the entertainment value of watching it play out. We can torture ourselves by trying to impose mental order on the chaos that is to come, but it is not the best use of our time.
Reading the mind of a dumb man has no payoff. The Reign of the Dumb is a black hole for attacks of the intellect. It is going to happen much faster than any complex theories about it can be usefully employed. What is worth thinking deeply about is not what will happen, but how we got here. The fact of the Dumb Tidal Wave is already upon us.
The question of how our nation became so disgusted by the myth of politics-as-public-service that it happily embraced the apocalyptic politics-as-Squid Game we now face is one that can actually do us some good. That question, you see, is not about the dumb man himself, or his retinue of cretins, or the wearisome parade of sociopathic looting that our government is about to endure. It is instead about all the nice, respected, smart people who came before him, and how their justifications for the sociopathic looting of the past grew so transparent that they disappeared.
Run a system without humane values long enough and people will crave for nothing more than to laugh while it burns. The only thing left now is to rebuild it better when the smoke clears.
Donald Trump is an ignorant, overconfident, narcissistic, grievance-ridden man — a dumb man, who over time has attracted around him an asteroid field of dumb allies who are but lesser versions of himself. His invariable instinct to act without knowledge is dumb; his unwavering instinct to make consequential decisions based upon minor personal whim is dumb; his unshakeable belief in his own laughable reasoning is dumb. No sober analysis would grant him any benefit of the doubt. He possesses the poisonous combination of great power and the utter absence of concern for responsibility. He knows little and does much. He lives the child’s fantasy of arranging the immediately visible parts of the world for his own flattery and receiving in return the praise of all the people who wish that they themselves could live such a charmed and feckless existence.
In 2004, a Bush White House official was famously quoted in the New York Times Magazine deriding the “reality-based community.”
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out,” the anonymous official said. “We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” This quote was widely mocked at the time. These haughty imperial stereotypes! Surely they will be hoist on the petards of their own grandiosity! The failures of the Iraq War were attributed to this sort of overweening arrogance in the White House.
Two decades later, the arc of the moral universe has bent back towards this attitude. But dumber. The Trump administration will have not only the belief that it can create an alternate reality, but also the pacifying lack of understanding that such a thing might raise eyebrows. Here are history’s new actors: Reality show dregs, cable news hair gel models, pro wrestling moguls, wastrel political heirs driven insane by online conspiracy theories. If you think that the joke is on them, I’m sorry to report that it’s the other way around. They will create the reality that all of us are about to be swamped by. The sooner we understand this, the better.
Part of Trump’s power has always been that his dumb decisions strike his opponents like a series of blows to the head, leaving them woozy and spluttering. The amount of analytical power that non-Republicans have dedicated to trying to process Trump’s actions over the past decade could fuel all the nation’s data centers. We scrutinize each apparently idiotic policy or quote or appointment for signs of hidden strategy, like crazed numerologists trying to pull meaning out of a random number generator. This serves to exhaust the intellectual opposition, while Trump World proceeds merrily on its way. We can do ourselves a tactical favor by coming to terms with the role of one integral factor in what is about to happen to America: Dumbness.
How has the mightiest nation in the world ended up with a Fox News host as its Defense Secretary nominee? A weird vaccine disbeliever running its health services? A fraud-adjacent television doctor named to lead Medicare, a pro wrestling executive to run education, a skeevy little failson sex predator as attorney general, a meme-poisoned billionaire nerd king as Lord of the federal budget? The swirl of senselessness that seems to grow with each passing day should be a familiar feeling to anyone who was forced to reckon seriously with the first iteration of a Trump presidency. It is enough to make people welcome the nominees who are merely fascist but not incompetent. That is one of its most dangerous effects.
Donald Trump is an aggressively ignorant man who doesn’t care about anything that doesn’t affect him personally. He doesn’t know much about issues of consequence and is picking his cabinet based upon who has done the best job of flattering him and who he has seen on television. The fact that this is a ridiculous thing to do — a method that a child operating in a dream might use, a fearful abdication of responsibility that will surely have terrible consequences for the entire world — does not matter. He is the president and this is how he is. The American people decided to forsake the opportunity to prevent this, in favor of the entertainment value of watching it play out. We can torture ourselves by trying to impose mental order on the chaos that is to come, but it is not the best use of our time.
Reading the mind of a dumb man has no payoff. The Reign of the Dumb is a black hole for attacks of the intellect. It is going to happen much faster than any complex theories about it can be usefully employed. What is worth thinking deeply about is not what will happen, but how we got here. The fact of the Dumb Tidal Wave is already upon us.
The question of how our nation became so disgusted by the myth of politics-as-public-service that it happily embraced the apocalyptic politics-as-Squid Game we now face is one that can actually do us some good. That question, you see, is not about the dumb man himself, or his retinue of cretins, or the wearisome parade of sociopathic looting that our government is about to endure. It is instead about all the nice, respected, smart people who came before him, and how their justifications for the sociopathic looting of the past grew so transparent that they disappeared.
Run a system without humane values long enough and people will crave for nothing more than to laugh while it burns. The only thing left now is to rebuild it better when the smoke clears.
the stupid are many!!
Should Billionaires Exist?
by Robert Reich | the smirking chimp
May 4, 2024 - 6:07am
Do billionaires have a right to exist?
America has driven more than 650 species to extinction. And it should do the same to billionaires.
Why? Because there are only five ways to become one, and they’re all bad for free-market capitalism:
1. Exploit a Monopoly.
Jamie Dimon is worth $2 billion today… but not because he succeeded in the “free market.” In 2008, the government bailed out his bank JPMorgan and other giant Wall Street banks, keeping them off the endangered species list.
This government “insurance policy” scored these struggling Mom-and-Pop megabanks an estimated $34 billion a year.
But doesn’t entrepreneur Jeff Bezos deserve his billions for building Amazon?
No, because he also built a monopoly that’s been charged by the federal government and 17 states for inflating prices, overcharging sellers, and stifling competition like a predator in the wild.
With better anti-monopoly enforcement, Bezos would be worth closer to his fair-market value.
2. Exploit Inside Information
Steven A. Cohen, worth roughly $20 billion headed a hedge fund charged by the Justice Department with insider trading “on a scale without known precedent.” Another innovator!
Taming insider trading would level the investing field between the C Suite and Main Street.
3. Buy Off Politicians
That’s a great way to become a billionaire! The Koch family and Koch Industries saved roughly $1 billion a year from the Trump tax cut they and allies spent $20 million lobbying for. What a return on investment!
If we had tougher lobbying laws, political corruption would go extinct.
4. Defraud Investors
Adam Neumann conned investors out of hundreds of millions for WeWork, an office-sharing startup. WeWork didn’t make a nickel of profit, but Neumann still funded his extravagant lifestyle, including a $60 million private jet. Not exactly “sharing.”
Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud for her blood-testing company, Theranos. So was Sam Bankman-Fried of crypto-exchange FTX. Remember a supposed billionaire named Donald Trump? He was also found to have committed fraud.
Presumably, if we had tougher anti-fraud laws, more would be caught and there’d be fewer billionaires to preserve.
5. Get Money From Rich Relatives
About 60 percent of all wealth in America today is inherited.
That’s because loopholes in U.S. tax law —lobbied for by the wealthy — allow rich families to avoid taxes on assets they inherit. And the estate tax has been so defanged that fewer than 0.2 percent of estates have paid it in recent years.
Tax reform would disrupt the circle of life for the rich, stopping them from automatically becoming billionaires at their birth, or someone else’s death.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against big rewards for entrepreneurs and inventors. But do today’s entrepreneurs really need billions of dollars? Couldn’t they survive on a measly hundred million?
Because they’re now using those billions to erode American institutions. They spent fortunes bringing Supreme Court justices with them into the wild.They treated news organizations and social media platforms like prey, and they turned their relationships with politicians into patronage troughs.
This has created an America where fewer than ever can become millionaires (or even thousandaires) through hard work and actual innovation.
If capitalism were working properly, billionaires would have gone the way of the dodo.
America has driven more than 650 species to extinction. And it should do the same to billionaires.
Why? Because there are only five ways to become one, and they’re all bad for free-market capitalism:
1. Exploit a Monopoly.
Jamie Dimon is worth $2 billion today… but not because he succeeded in the “free market.” In 2008, the government bailed out his bank JPMorgan and other giant Wall Street banks, keeping them off the endangered species list.
This government “insurance policy” scored these struggling Mom-and-Pop megabanks an estimated $34 billion a year.
But doesn’t entrepreneur Jeff Bezos deserve his billions for building Amazon?
No, because he also built a monopoly that’s been charged by the federal government and 17 states for inflating prices, overcharging sellers, and stifling competition like a predator in the wild.
With better anti-monopoly enforcement, Bezos would be worth closer to his fair-market value.
2. Exploit Inside Information
Steven A. Cohen, worth roughly $20 billion headed a hedge fund charged by the Justice Department with insider trading “on a scale without known precedent.” Another innovator!
Taming insider trading would level the investing field between the C Suite and Main Street.
3. Buy Off Politicians
That’s a great way to become a billionaire! The Koch family and Koch Industries saved roughly $1 billion a year from the Trump tax cut they and allies spent $20 million lobbying for. What a return on investment!
If we had tougher lobbying laws, political corruption would go extinct.
4. Defraud Investors
Adam Neumann conned investors out of hundreds of millions for WeWork, an office-sharing startup. WeWork didn’t make a nickel of profit, but Neumann still funded his extravagant lifestyle, including a $60 million private jet. Not exactly “sharing.”
Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud for her blood-testing company, Theranos. So was Sam Bankman-Fried of crypto-exchange FTX. Remember a supposed billionaire named Donald Trump? He was also found to have committed fraud.
Presumably, if we had tougher anti-fraud laws, more would be caught and there’d be fewer billionaires to preserve.
5. Get Money From Rich Relatives
About 60 percent of all wealth in America today is inherited.
That’s because loopholes in U.S. tax law —lobbied for by the wealthy — allow rich families to avoid taxes on assets they inherit. And the estate tax has been so defanged that fewer than 0.2 percent of estates have paid it in recent years.
Tax reform would disrupt the circle of life for the rich, stopping them from automatically becoming billionaires at their birth, or someone else’s death.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing against big rewards for entrepreneurs and inventors. But do today’s entrepreneurs really need billions of dollars? Couldn’t they survive on a measly hundred million?
Because they’re now using those billions to erode American institutions. They spent fortunes bringing Supreme Court justices with them into the wild.They treated news organizations and social media platforms like prey, and they turned their relationships with politicians into patronage troughs.
This has created an America where fewer than ever can become millionaires (or even thousandaires) through hard work and actual innovation.
If capitalism were working properly, billionaires would have gone the way of the dodo.
a congress of traitors, thieves, grifters!!!
elected officials who owe their offices to stupid voters and the greedy
Trump tells Trudeau Canada should become 51st state if it doesn't like tariffs: report
Billionaire investor with military contracts picked to be No. 2 at Trump's Pentagon
Report: Orange Felon Selling Cabinet Seats To Highest Bidder
Orange Felon was willing to appoint Tim Michels, a failed GOP carpetbagger candidate, to Dept of Transportation after Michels and family donated a half a million dollars to Felon friendly groups.
Chris capper Liebenthal — crooks & liars
November 24, 2024
Recently, the Orange Felon tagged reality TV star and fake lumberjack Sean Duffy to be the Secretary of Transportation. But Duffy wasn't the Felon's first choice. That honor went to Tim Michels is a GOP carpetbagger from Connecticut who ran in 2018 to be the governor of Wisconsin. Like the California carpetbagger, Eric Hovde, Michels ran as a mini-me to the Orange Felon and like Hovde, got sent back to his home state with his tail between his legs.
Per a report written by Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Felon had more than 500,000 reasons why he wanted Michels:
MIchels, his two brothers and each of their spouses gave a total of $503,600 to a Trump-aligned political action committee, a Trump fundraising committee and the Republican National Committee — all on the same day in late September.
Less than two months later, Trump — known for his transactional approach to politics — offered Michels a position in his cabinet as head of the U.S. Department of Transportation last Saturday, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The deal fell through, however, when Trump's transition committee insisted that Michels divest his holdings as co-owner of Michels Corp., the family-owned construction business worth an estimated $3.9 billion. At that point, Trump pivoted and selected former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy for the post.
It sure makes one wonder how many of the other appointees to the Felon's crime syndicate, er, cabinet, had paid for their appointments and how much they paid. Surely, the Felon was charging top rates. He's got a lot of legal fees to pay off.
Per a report written by Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Felon had more than 500,000 reasons why he wanted Michels:
MIchels, his two brothers and each of their spouses gave a total of $503,600 to a Trump-aligned political action committee, a Trump fundraising committee and the Republican National Committee — all on the same day in late September.
Less than two months later, Trump — known for his transactional approach to politics — offered Michels a position in his cabinet as head of the U.S. Department of Transportation last Saturday, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The deal fell through, however, when Trump's transition committee insisted that Michels divest his holdings as co-owner of Michels Corp., the family-owned construction business worth an estimated $3.9 billion. At that point, Trump pivoted and selected former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy for the post.
It sure makes one wonder how many of the other appointees to the Felon's crime syndicate, er, cabinet, had paid for their appointments and how much they paid. Surely, the Felon was charging top rates. He's got a lot of legal fees to pay off.
Bites from Real News
*12/3/2024*
*Pete Hegseth's church explains it all
Fringe denomination's leader argues that men "dream of being rapists" because women aren't submissive enough
Amanda Marcotte
*Formaldehyde Causes More Cancer Than Any Other Toxic Air Pollutant. Little Is Being Done to Curb the Risk.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to reckon with formaldehyde have been repeatedly thwarted by the companies that rely on it. If the past is any guide, even modest steps toward reform are all but guaranteed to hit a dead end under Trump.
*These Billionaires Subsidize the Israeli Military Through a US Nonprofit
A US nonprofit funnels money from billionaires like Home Depot’s co-founder to effectively subsidize Israeli troops.
*'Quickly rot from within':
Expert sees 3 traits the U.S. is sharing with declining empires
*How Trump Plans to Seize the Power of the Purse From Congress
The second-term president likely will seek to cut off spending that lawmakers have already appropriated, setting off a constitutional struggle within the branches. If successful, he could wield the power to punish perceived foes.
*Life of the Mother A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments.
Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages.
*Climate Crisis Is Impeding Access to HIV Treatment in High Risk Regions
A new report finds that the parts of the US with high HIV prevalence are also at the highest risk for climate disasters.
*Queer Farmers Are Working to Transform Our Food Systems — and Paying a Price LGBTQ+ farmers are over three times more likely to “experience depression and suicidal intent,” a recent study found.
*Can Earth Support a Human Future? Maybe, If the Rich Consume Less.
Due to their extravagant habits, the richest 1 percent produces more greenhouse gas than half the global population.
Sale of RFK Jr.’s Beloved Raw Milk Suspended at Farm in Home State After Bird Flu Detected
DON’T CRY OVER SPILLED RAW MILK
Liam Archacki
Breaking News Intern
Published 12.03.24 11:55AM EST
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
A California farm’s distribution of raw dairy products has been suspended by the state’s department of food and agriculture after bird flu was detected in its unpasteurized milk, according to Axios. Last week, Raw Farm had voluntarily recalled two batches of its milk that had tested positive for the H5N1 viral strain, before state regulators stepped in. “All Raw Farm operations are currently under quarantine, from herds to bottled product, which means that all raw milk product distribution is suspended,” Steve Lyle, a spokesperson for the CDFA, said in a Monday statement to Axios. No illnesses have so far been linked to the affected batches. The news comes in the home state of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services and one of the highest-profile advocates of the health benefits of drinking raw milk. A wave of support for raw milk consumption, coming from right-wing figures as well as online wellness influencers, has corresponded to rising demand for unpasteurized dairy, despite officials warning about the potential health risks, The Associated Press reported earlier this year.
RFK Jr. Once Sold Bottled Water With Higher Fluoride Levels Than Tap
WHAT CHANGED?
William Vaillancourt
Updated 12.02.24 8:32PM EST /
Published 12.02.24 8:30PM EST
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, may be against fluoride in drinking water these days—but it wasn’t long ago when he was selling it in bottles, according to a New Yorker report published Monday. Kennedy co-founded Keeper Springs in 1999 in what was at the time considered an odd attempt to help clean polluted waterways. Before the company closed up shop in 2013, it had been selling water with fluoride in it—up to 1.3 milligrams per liter, according to a 2009 chemical analysis that the New Yorker cites. Tap water typically doesn’t contain as much of the mineral. The company’s other co-founder, Chris Bartle, told the outlet, “For a while, we had a source in upstate New York where the water was naturally fluoridated.... These two Iranian guys owned it. It was a pretty neat scenario, but we didn’t stay with them for long.” Bartle added that he never heard any complaints about fluoride from his then-business partner. Fluoride has been shown to prevent tooth decay.
the key to republican support
*What's Inside*
Poor People Are Business Owners, Too – But Myths Around Poverty and Entrepreneurship Hold Them Back(Reality)
Higher prices, lower turnover, more workers: The reality of California's $20 fast-food minimum wage(Reality)
During antitrust trial, exec admits Kroger jacked up milk and egg prices above inflation(Capitalism)
Us Has Its First National Strategy To Reduce Plastic Pollution − Here Are 3 Strong Points and a Key Issue To Watch(Environment)
Debunking the myth that 'inflation is caused by wage increases and too much government spending'
REALITY
AMERICA IS STILL HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF RONALD REAGAN'S CORRUPTION
america
ROBERT REICH DEBUNKS THE MYTH THAT 'THE RICH DESERVE TO BE RICH'
reality
THE MOST COMMON ESSENTIAL JOBS IN THE US DON’T PAY A LIVING WAGE
THE ECONOMY IS IMPROVING, BUT INEQUALITY IS TEARING THE US APART. DEMOCRATS IGNORE WORKING-CLASS PAIN AT THEIR PERIL.(SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY)
SHATTERING DECEPTIVE MIRRORS: YOUNGER GENERATIONS HAVE THE CHANCE TO BUCK THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY SCAM(REALITY)
BOTTLED WATER CONTAINS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PLASTIC BITS: STUDY
REALITY
THE GREAT MEDICARE ADVANTAGE MARKETING SCAM
CORPORATE CRIMINALS
2023 SAW RECORD KILLINGS BY US POLICE. WHO IS MOST IMPACTED?
GESTAPO USA
AMERICA HAS NEVER BEEN UNITED. SO HOW DO WE MOVE FORWARD TOGETHER?
COMMENTARY
MEDICARE ADVANTAGE PLANS: THE HIDDEN DANGERS AND THREATS TO PATIENT CARE
REALITY
enduring commentary
How stupidity is an existential threat to America
Bobby Azarian, Raw Story
May 31, 2024 7:00AM ET
It may sound like an insensitive statement, but the cold hard truth is that there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and their stupidity presents a constant danger to others. Some of these people are in positions of power, and some of them have been elected to run our country. A far greater number of them do not have positions of power, but they still have the power to vote, and the power to spread their ideas. We may have heard of “collective intelligence,” but there is also “collective stupidity,” and it is a force with equal influence on the world. It would not be a stretch to say that at this point in time, stupidity presents an existential threat to America because, in some circles, it is being celebrated.
Although the term "stupidity" may seem derogatory or insulting, it is actually a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure. It is important to realize that stupidity is not simply a lack of intelligence or knowledge, but rather a failure to use one's cognitive abilities effectively. This means that you can be “smart” while having a low IQ, or no expertise in anything. It is often said that “you can’t fix stupid,” but that is not exactly true. By becoming aware of the limitations of our natural intelligence or our ignorance, we can adjust our reasoning, behavior, and decision-making to account for our intellectual shortcomings.
To demonstrate that stupidity does not mean having a low IQ, consider the case of Richard Branson, the billionaire CEO of Virgin Airlines, who is one of the world’s most successful businessmen. Branson has said that he was seen as the dumbest person in school, and has admitted to having dyslexia, a learning disability that affects one’s ability to read and correctly interpret written language. But it wasn’t just reading comprehension that was the problem — “Math just didn’t make sense to me,” Branson has said. “I would certainly have failed an IQ test.”
So, what is responsible for his enormous success, both financially and in terms of being a prolific innovator? Branson attributes his success to surrounding himself with highly knowledgeable and extremely competent people. Branson’s smarts come from his ability to recognize his own limitations, and to know when to defer to others on topics or tasks where he lacks sufficient knowledge or skill.
This means you don’t have to be traditionally intelligent or particularly knowledgeable to be successful in life, make good decisions, have good judgment, and be a positive influence on the world. Stupidity is a consequence of a failure to be awareof one’s own limitations, and this type of cognitive failure has a scientific name: the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a well-known psychological phenomenon that describes the tendency for individuals to overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge, or competence in a particular area. They may also simultaneously misjudge the intelligence, expertise, or competence of others. In other words, they are ignorant of their own ignorance. The effect has been widely written about, and investigated empirically, with hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed journals confirming and analyzing the phenomenon, particularly in relation to the dangers it poses in certain contexts.
It is easy to think of examples in which failing to recognize one’s own ignorance can become dangerous. Take for example when people with no medical training try to provide medical advice. It doesn’t take much Internet searching to find some nutritionist from the “alternative medicine” world who is claiming that some herbal ingredient has the power to cure cancer. Some of these people are scam artists, but many of them truly believe that they have a superior understanding of health and physiology. There are many people who trust these self-proclaimed experts, and there is no doubt that some have paid with their lives for it.
What’s particularly disturbing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that people are attracted to confident leaders, so politicians are incentivized to be overconfident in their beliefs and opinions, and to overstate their expertise. For example, Donald Trump — despite not having any real understanding of what causes cancer — suggested that the noise from wind turbines is causing cancer (a claim that is not supported by any empirical studies). It is well documented that on topics ranging from pandemics to climate change, Trump routinely dismissed the opinions of the professionals who have dedicated their lives to understanding those phenomena, because he thought that he knew better. It’s bad enough that politicians like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene don’t recognize their own ignorance and fail to exercise the appropriate amount of caution when making claims that can affect public health and safety — but what is really disturbing is that they are being celebrated for their overconfidence (i.e., stupidity).
Although the term "stupidity" may seem derogatory or insulting, it is actually a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure. It is important to realize that stupidity is not simply a lack of intelligence or knowledge, but rather a failure to use one's cognitive abilities effectively. This means that you can be “smart” while having a low IQ, or no expertise in anything. It is often said that “you can’t fix stupid,” but that is not exactly true. By becoming aware of the limitations of our natural intelligence or our ignorance, we can adjust our reasoning, behavior, and decision-making to account for our intellectual shortcomings.
To demonstrate that stupidity does not mean having a low IQ, consider the case of Richard Branson, the billionaire CEO of Virgin Airlines, who is one of the world’s most successful businessmen. Branson has said that he was seen as the dumbest person in school, and has admitted to having dyslexia, a learning disability that affects one’s ability to read and correctly interpret written language. But it wasn’t just reading comprehension that was the problem — “Math just didn’t make sense to me,” Branson has said. “I would certainly have failed an IQ test.”
So, what is responsible for his enormous success, both financially and in terms of being a prolific innovator? Branson attributes his success to surrounding himself with highly knowledgeable and extremely competent people. Branson’s smarts come from his ability to recognize his own limitations, and to know when to defer to others on topics or tasks where he lacks sufficient knowledge or skill.
This means you don’t have to be traditionally intelligent or particularly knowledgeable to be successful in life, make good decisions, have good judgment, and be a positive influence on the world. Stupidity is a consequence of a failure to be awareof one’s own limitations, and this type of cognitive failure has a scientific name: the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a well-known psychological phenomenon that describes the tendency for individuals to overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge, or competence in a particular area. They may also simultaneously misjudge the intelligence, expertise, or competence of others. In other words, they are ignorant of their own ignorance. The effect has been widely written about, and investigated empirically, with hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed journals confirming and analyzing the phenomenon, particularly in relation to the dangers it poses in certain contexts.
It is easy to think of examples in which failing to recognize one’s own ignorance can become dangerous. Take for example when people with no medical training try to provide medical advice. It doesn’t take much Internet searching to find some nutritionist from the “alternative medicine” world who is claiming that some herbal ingredient has the power to cure cancer. Some of these people are scam artists, but many of them truly believe that they have a superior understanding of health and physiology. There are many people who trust these self-proclaimed experts, and there is no doubt that some have paid with their lives for it.
What’s particularly disturbing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that people are attracted to confident leaders, so politicians are incentivized to be overconfident in their beliefs and opinions, and to overstate their expertise. For example, Donald Trump — despite not having any real understanding of what causes cancer — suggested that the noise from wind turbines is causing cancer (a claim that is not supported by any empirical studies). It is well documented that on topics ranging from pandemics to climate change, Trump routinely dismissed the opinions of the professionals who have dedicated their lives to understanding those phenomena, because he thought that he knew better. It’s bad enough that politicians like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene don’t recognize their own ignorance and fail to exercise the appropriate amount of caution when making claims that can affect public health and safety — but what is really disturbing is that they are being celebrated for their overconfidence (i.e., stupidity).
