*ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times report that Border Patrol chases have resulted in 22 deaths and 250 injuries from 2015 to 2018.
*Reuters has reported that the governments of Iraq, Kuwait, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Thailand and the European Union were allowed to rent luxury condos in Trump World Tower in New York. The lease requests were never reported to Congress. Trump is still an active owner of the Trump Organization.
*A researcher for the Boy Scouts identified 12,254 reported victims of sex abuse, and that may be a serious undercount.
*Trump's advisers and appointees are attracting an unusually high number of complaints over accusations that they violated the Hatch Act. Kellyanne Conway, for example, delivered a scathing attack on Joe Biden.
*Trump's new rule would allow health-care workers to refuse to provide or pay for services that violate their religious or moral beliefs.
*Trump wants to put "low-yield" nuclear warheads on U.S submarines. An adversary wouldn't know if an incoming missile was armed with a low-yield warhead or a full-sized one. Several lawmakers are sponsoring the Hold the LYNE Act that would prohibit the research, development and deployment of low-yield nuclear warheads for submarine-launched missiles.
*The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia -- in a split decision--ruled that President Trump's decision to rescind DACA was "arbitrary and capricious," and it was in line with a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
*Only half of the federal government's 10 largest law enforcement agencies currently have permanent chiefs.
*By a 236 to 173 vote, the U.S. House passed a bill banning anti-LGBT discrimination. The bill would expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act to bar discrimination on employment, housing, jury selection, and public accommodations based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
*Federal judges in Oregon, Washington and California have sided with Democratic AGs in their lawsuits against Trump's anti-abortion Title X "gag rule."
*After the Florida governor called President Trump, an announcement was made that no more undocumented immigrants would be sent to Florida.
*President Trump has called Hungary's authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban, "highly respected," and said he is doing a "tremendous job."
*The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study showing that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease, had been found in the brains of 110 of 111 ex-NFL players examined by Boston University researchers.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Tax Return Rationale, Democracy Buy-in, and Politics of Delusion
I. Giuliani Ruins Trump Tax Return Rationale
Rudy Giuliani has blown apart President Trump's rationale on not providing tax returns. During a Fox News appearance, Giuliani said the IRS "has investigated his taxes." "They exist to come after us if we don't pay our taxes. We know they're damn good, and they're confidential and they don't leak. If they haven't gone after him on taxes for that six-year period, than there is nothing wrong with his taxes." "They can't investigate his taxes better than the IRS." The "they" that Giuliani is referring to are Democratic lawmakers.
The question that Giuliani doesn't address is why the IRS would be investigating Trump's tax returns for six years if they weren't finding anything wrong? Trump has repeatedly said that he will release his tax returns to the public as soon as the IRS has finished his audit. Nobody, it deems, including the IRS, can't answer the audit question.
II. Democracies Depend on Buy-In
"Democracies depend on buy-in: citizens need to believe in certain basics, starting with the legitimacy of elections. Trump both runs the government and runs it down. The electoral system, he asserts, can't be trusted. Voter fraud is rampant. His contempt for institutions ranging from the courts ('slow and political'), to the Federal Communications Commission ('so sad and unfair') to the F.B.I. ('What are they hiding?') weakens these institutions, thereby justifying his contempt." [1]
III. Politics of Delusion
"Practicing a politics of delusion, he [Trump] targets enemies in the press, the academy, and the courts. Increasingly, he finds his global allies in the ever-growing club of the Illiberal International, from the Sunni Arab leaders in his own region, to Viktor Orban, in Hungary; Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil; and Vladimir Putin, in Russia." "Netanyahu might now seek to trade the rule of law for annexation." "Trump has provided Netanyahu with instruction on the possibilities of outrageous invective, voter repression, and disdain for the law." [2]
"His [Trump's] appointments grow worse, his resentments more inflamed. his policies more damaging. His reelection would have a catastrophic effect on the rule of law, liberal democracy, the values of tolerance, and the baseline of decency in American life. We are seeing it all over the globe: the politics of fear and division exact an inestimable price."
IV. Judge Napolitano Slams Barr
Fox News judicial analyst Napolitano accused William Barr of misleading the U.S. House when he claimed to be unsure of Mueller's concerns about the Russia investigation. Nepolitano said Barr failed the response to Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL). "Congressman Crist questioned [Barr] about whether there were objections to the tone and tenor and content of your four-page summary by failing to tell them about the complaint that Mueller had raised." Barr had falsely claimed that Mueller was concerned about the press coverage, whereas Mueller was upset by the content of the summary.
Footnotes:
[1] Elizabeth Kolbert, "That's What You Think," The New Yorker, April 22, 2019.
[2] David Remick, "Partners in Division," The New Yorker, April 22, 2019.
Rudy Giuliani has blown apart President Trump's rationale on not providing tax returns. During a Fox News appearance, Giuliani said the IRS "has investigated his taxes." "They exist to come after us if we don't pay our taxes. We know they're damn good, and they're confidential and they don't leak. If they haven't gone after him on taxes for that six-year period, than there is nothing wrong with his taxes." "They can't investigate his taxes better than the IRS." The "they" that Giuliani is referring to are Democratic lawmakers.
The question that Giuliani doesn't address is why the IRS would be investigating Trump's tax returns for six years if they weren't finding anything wrong? Trump has repeatedly said that he will release his tax returns to the public as soon as the IRS has finished his audit. Nobody, it deems, including the IRS, can't answer the audit question.
II. Democracies Depend on Buy-In
"Democracies depend on buy-in: citizens need to believe in certain basics, starting with the legitimacy of elections. Trump both runs the government and runs it down. The electoral system, he asserts, can't be trusted. Voter fraud is rampant. His contempt for institutions ranging from the courts ('slow and political'), to the Federal Communications Commission ('so sad and unfair') to the F.B.I. ('What are they hiding?') weakens these institutions, thereby justifying his contempt." [1]
III. Politics of Delusion
"Practicing a politics of delusion, he [Trump] targets enemies in the press, the academy, and the courts. Increasingly, he finds his global allies in the ever-growing club of the Illiberal International, from the Sunni Arab leaders in his own region, to Viktor Orban, in Hungary; Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil; and Vladimir Putin, in Russia." "Netanyahu might now seek to trade the rule of law for annexation." "Trump has provided Netanyahu with instruction on the possibilities of outrageous invective, voter repression, and disdain for the law." [2]
"His [Trump's] appointments grow worse, his resentments more inflamed. his policies more damaging. His reelection would have a catastrophic effect on the rule of law, liberal democracy, the values of tolerance, and the baseline of decency in American life. We are seeing it all over the globe: the politics of fear and division exact an inestimable price."
IV. Judge Napolitano Slams Barr
Fox News judicial analyst Napolitano accused William Barr of misleading the U.S. House when he claimed to be unsure of Mueller's concerns about the Russia investigation. Nepolitano said Barr failed the response to Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL). "Congressman Crist questioned [Barr] about whether there were objections to the tone and tenor and content of your four-page summary by failing to tell them about the complaint that Mueller had raised." Barr had falsely claimed that Mueller was concerned about the press coverage, whereas Mueller was upset by the content of the summary.
Footnotes:
[1] Elizabeth Kolbert, "That's What You Think," The New Yorker, April 22, 2019.
[2] David Remick, "Partners in Division," The New Yorker, April 22, 2019.
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
A Varied Look at the World
#In Syria, the United States "is only one player in a battlefield tat has included hundreds of armed Syrian factions: Russian, Iranian, Turkish, British, and French troops; Al Qaeda and the Islamic State; Hezbollah and Iraqi militias and Russian and Afghan mercenaries; and Saudi and Qatari funders and arms suppliers." "The unofficial U.S. policy has been that the more people battling the Islamic State the better." [1]
#Martin Garbus tells us what he saw at an Immigration Detention Center. "Nearly every women seeking asylum that I met there came from the Northern Triangle of Central America: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador." [2]
One of Garbus's most vivid observations was that, often, "bathroom breaks are not granted, or not in time, so both women and children soil themselves" He describes the prison-like detention as an attempt to persuade these immigrants to give up before they are even interviewed by an asylum officer."
#This past October, the World Wildlife Fund announced that the populations of thousands of vertebrate species around the world have declined by an average of 60 percent since 1970. "Plants and animals are disappearing at rates comparable to past extinctions." "Forty-five years later, the ESA remains the best and most effective law for wildlife conservation in the world." "The power of the ESA is that it safeguards not only the 1,618 domestic species currently listed but also their habitats." [3]
#Abortion Facts
6 - Number of weeks after which an abortion is now illegal in five states -- part of a recent wave of so-called heartbeat bills.
4-7 - Number of weeks it takes most women to realize they're pregnant.
50% - Percentage of women in Wyoming who live more than 160 miles from the nearest abortion clinic.
1 - Number of abortion clinics that Missouri and Mississippi each have.
29 - Number of states that restrict insurance companies from covering abortion services.
O - Number of states that provide "total access" to comprehensive reproductive health care, according to NARAL's metrics. [4]
#Yemen's Dire Condition
77% - Percentage of Yemen's population in need of humanitarian assistance.
5M - Yemenis on the brink of famine,or more than one in six residents.
1.4M - Suspected cholera cases in Yemen since the violence started to escalate in 2016.
85,000 - Yemeni children who died from disease or starvation from April 2015 to October 2018.
19,278 - Saudi air attacks on Yemen from 2015 to January 2019.
$68.2B - Value of US arms deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since 2015.
1 - Joint resolutions passed by Congress to end the US involvement in Yemen (vetoed by President Trump). [5]
#Some Taxation Effects
$266M - Tax revenue from Colorado pot sales in 2018 that went toward funding public-health services.
$850M - Annual revenue raised via a new Ohio gas tax that will go into fixing the state's roads.
503K - Number of handguns sold in California each year that may be subject to a gun tax to fund violence-intervention programs.
1.5C - Per-ounce soda tax in Philadelphia used to fund preschools and parks, though the tax has been criticized for targeting the poor.
$650M - Estimated revenue from New York City's abandoned pied-a-terre tax that could have been used to fix the subways. [6]
ADDENDUMS:
*Last month the Pentagon announced two military contracts worth $976 million for border wall construction.
*The number of migrants required to report to ICE has jumped by 26 percent to 2.9 million.
*Last year saw 151 exonerations in the U.S., in which people were cleared of convictions for crimes they did not commit, according to the National Registry of Executions data published April 9. The 151 served 1,639 years in prison, a record, averaging 10.9 years per exoneree.
Footnotes:
[1] Shane Bauer, "Behind the Lines," Mother Jones, May/June 2019.
[2] Martin Garbus, "What I saw at an Immigration Detention Center," The Nation, April 22, 2019.
[3] Rachel Nawer, "What the World Knows." Sierra, March/April 2019.
[4] Isabel Cristo, "By the Numbers," The Nation, May 20/27, 2019.
[5] Edwin Aponte, "By the Numbers," The Number, May 13, 2019.
[6] Liz Boyd, "By the Numbers," The Nation, April 29, 2019.
#Martin Garbus tells us what he saw at an Immigration Detention Center. "Nearly every women seeking asylum that I met there came from the Northern Triangle of Central America: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador." [2]
One of Garbus's most vivid observations was that, often, "bathroom breaks are not granted, or not in time, so both women and children soil themselves" He describes the prison-like detention as an attempt to persuade these immigrants to give up before they are even interviewed by an asylum officer."
#This past October, the World Wildlife Fund announced that the populations of thousands of vertebrate species around the world have declined by an average of 60 percent since 1970. "Plants and animals are disappearing at rates comparable to past extinctions." "Forty-five years later, the ESA remains the best and most effective law for wildlife conservation in the world." "The power of the ESA is that it safeguards not only the 1,618 domestic species currently listed but also their habitats." [3]
#Abortion Facts
6 - Number of weeks after which an abortion is now illegal in five states -- part of a recent wave of so-called heartbeat bills.
4-7 - Number of weeks it takes most women to realize they're pregnant.
50% - Percentage of women in Wyoming who live more than 160 miles from the nearest abortion clinic.
1 - Number of abortion clinics that Missouri and Mississippi each have.
29 - Number of states that restrict insurance companies from covering abortion services.
O - Number of states that provide "total access" to comprehensive reproductive health care, according to NARAL's metrics. [4]
#Yemen's Dire Condition
77% - Percentage of Yemen's population in need of humanitarian assistance.
5M - Yemenis on the brink of famine,or more than one in six residents.
1.4M - Suspected cholera cases in Yemen since the violence started to escalate in 2016.
85,000 - Yemeni children who died from disease or starvation from April 2015 to October 2018.
19,278 - Saudi air attacks on Yemen from 2015 to January 2019.
$68.2B - Value of US arms deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since 2015.
1 - Joint resolutions passed by Congress to end the US involvement in Yemen (vetoed by President Trump). [5]
#Some Taxation Effects
$266M - Tax revenue from Colorado pot sales in 2018 that went toward funding public-health services.
$850M - Annual revenue raised via a new Ohio gas tax that will go into fixing the state's roads.
503K - Number of handguns sold in California each year that may be subject to a gun tax to fund violence-intervention programs.
1.5C - Per-ounce soda tax in Philadelphia used to fund preschools and parks, though the tax has been criticized for targeting the poor.
$650M - Estimated revenue from New York City's abandoned pied-a-terre tax that could have been used to fix the subways. [6]
ADDENDUMS:
*Last month the Pentagon announced two military contracts worth $976 million for border wall construction.
*The number of migrants required to report to ICE has jumped by 26 percent to 2.9 million.
*Last year saw 151 exonerations in the U.S., in which people were cleared of convictions for crimes they did not commit, according to the National Registry of Executions data published April 9. The 151 served 1,639 years in prison, a record, averaging 10.9 years per exoneree.
Footnotes:
[1] Shane Bauer, "Behind the Lines," Mother Jones, May/June 2019.
[2] Martin Garbus, "What I saw at an Immigration Detention Center," The Nation, April 22, 2019.
[3] Rachel Nawer, "What the World Knows." Sierra, March/April 2019.
[4] Isabel Cristo, "By the Numbers," The Nation, May 20/27, 2019.
[5] Edwin Aponte, "By the Numbers," The Number, May 13, 2019.
[6] Liz Boyd, "By the Numbers," The Nation, April 29, 2019.
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