*The EPA banned chlorpurifos for indoor pest control in 2011, but 6 million pounds of it are applied annually to approximately 50 crops, including oranges, alfalfa, and almonds. (Source: Wendy Becktold, "Toxic Neighbors," Sierra, September/October 2018.)
*Trump created 1,700,000 jobs in 2017. Obama's figures are: 1,839,000 in 2011; 2,044,000 in 2013; 2,553,000 in 2014; 2,240,000 in 2015; and 1,959,000 in 2016.
*The AFT investigated 12,700 cases of people submitting false information to illegally buy guns, and only 12 were prosecuted. Pennsylvania alone prosecuted 472 people.
*Shareholders took about a third of corporate profits from the 1950s to the 1970s. "Since the year 2000, they've been taking more than twice that." "During the 1960s, shareholders took about 1.7 percent of GDP in the cash paid in dividends and in the net number of stocks that were brought; now it is around 4.7 percent of GDP." "The top 4 percent of households hold half of all stocks; the bottom half own just 9 percent." (Source: Mike Konczal, "Economy in the Stocks," The Nation, September 10/17, 2018.)
*President Trump is dismantling the Refugee Admissions Program by announcing an all-time record low admissions cap of 30,000 for FY 2019.
*In April, the Department of Homeland Security admitted that the government has lost track of an additional 1,495 immigrant children it had moved out of shelters last year. Senate investigators could not determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,488 out of 11,254 children the agency had placed with sponsors in 2018, based on follow-up calls from April 1 to June 30.
*The Interior Department has significantly reduced restrictions on methane emissions from oil and gas firms operating on federal and tribal lands.
*Peace Action supports legislation to prohibit research, development, production and deployment of a "low-yield" nuclear warhead for the Trident D-5 missile.
*Current estimates for the war in Yemen are that 10,000 have been killed, and 15 million of Yemen's population of 23 million are "food insecure."
*The Department of Homeland Security is making a broad expansion of the government's ability to deny vises or residency to immigrants if they or members of their households benefit from programs such as Medicaid Part D, SNAP, or Section 8 housing vouchers. U.S. immigration laws have long contained provisions limiting foreigners who are likely to become a "public charge."
*Bloomberg has obtained a private, internal poll from the Republican National Committee showing respondents, by a margin of 61 percent to 30 percent, say the new tax law benefits "large corporations and rich Americans" over "middle-class families." Compared to the June before the tax bill was passed, wages (adjusted for inflation) dropped 0.2 percent in June 2018.
*Democratic AGs successfully sued Betsy DeVos in federal court to stop her from rolling back protections for student loan borrowers from predatory for-profit colleges.
*In a recent Mississippi rally, right after Trump said that people should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the crowd chanted "Lock her up!" in reference to Hillary Clinton. Early this month, Trump said: "It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of."
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