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Sunday, December 15, 2019
Thursday, October 24, 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/23/chaos-erupts-as-republicans-barge-into-trump-impeachment-inquiry-hearing
Republicans are using Brown shirt tactics to destroy impeachment investigation. This is not open democracy this is disruption. What if criminals and other people invaded the police and demanded to know what evidence they had found in their investigation? This assumes the house committee is not the valid body to instigate,call your congressman demand they stop this.
Republicans are using Brown shirt tactics to destroy impeachment investigation. This is not open democracy this is disruption. What if criminals and other people invaded the police and demanded to know what evidence they had found in their investigation? This assumes the house committee is not the valid body to instigate,call your congressman demand they stop this.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Phonegate: Oil and gas connection
Rachel Maddow just went on the Colbert show (Late Night) to plug her new book Blow Out.[1] The point of the book is abuses in the oil and gas industry but in discussing the impeachment topic with Colbert she actually said enough to connect the dots and link the impeachment crimes to a brewing scandal in the oil and gas industry. Here is Publisher's Weekly's review of the book:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-57547-4
[Rachel] Maddow (Drift), host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, surveys Big Oil’s recent misdeeds, including Western oil companies’ support for Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang dictatorship, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and blocking rules to regulate fracking practices that cause earthquake swarms and pollution in Oklahoma (while the same companies demand tax breaks). Anchoring the book is Russian president Vladimir Putin’s cutthroat petropolitics. Maddow contends he turned Russia’s oil and gas sectors into cesspools of corruption and inefficiency, seized well-managed private oil companies and arrested their CEOs, and made energy a foreign policy weapon while getting investments and technology from ExxonMobil. Maddow tells these stories in colorful, sardonic prose—she pillories Putin’s campaign “to piss in the punch bowl of free elections all over the civilized world”...[2]That review is ultimately not kind as he thinks she does not connect enough dots. Perhaps that is the case I don't know. But the picture taking shape from those she clearly connects gives us a good idea that much more lies behind the phone call. Not that it was directly about the oil and gas industry but it raises questions that the phone giving out of the transcript might be a diversion from the brewing oil and gas problems. Even if that is too hair brained it is clearly the case that here lies more to investigate, the impeachment proceedings open the door to do so. Mind you the hair brain idea of connection between the book and telephone call is my idea not her's. She is not that zany.
Another reviewer summarizes the book:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/14526/blowout
With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia's rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia's rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West's most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, "like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can't really blame the lion. It's in her nature."[3]
The oil and gas industry destroys enirinmentandcomunities, it doesnot bring review to thepeople of nationas crsedwith oil but rather dictatorship asiti hasto theRussiamns,
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/behind-trumps-energy-dominance/
President Donald Trump has pledged allegiance to what he calls America’s “energy dominance.” This is good news for the oil and gas industry. We examine what this means for villagers in Alaska coping with climate change, Native American artifacts in Utah and birds flying over the U.S. To find out, we talk with a former Interior Department official who became a whistleblower after helping relocate Alaska Native villages threatened by rising temperatures. We also examine the energy industry’s influence on the Trump administration and visit public lands in southeastern Utah, where parcels leased for oil and gas exploration contain sensitive Native American archeological sites.[4]
We know the phone call is, like wiretapping the Wategrate headquarters just the tip of the iceberg.
[1]"Late Night with Steven Colbert Interview Rachel Maddow," Wedesday, CBS 11. Dallas Texas,Oct 2, 2019.
[2]"Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth" PW Publisher's Weekley, 8/12/2019 https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-57547-4
[accessed oct 2,2019]
[3]"Blowout," Bool Browse, Oct 2019
https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/14526/blowout
[accessed oct 2,2019]
[4] "Behind Trump's Energy Dominance," Reveal the center for Investigative reporting, Amy Walters. Editors: Deborah George, Taki Telonidis and Marla Cone. Reporters: Zack Colman, Elizabeth Shogren and Jennifer Oldham.
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/behind-trumps-energy-dominance/
[accessed oct 2,2019]
Monday, July 1, 2019
An eight-year-old boy from Guatemala has died in US government custody, officials say, the second migrant child to die in US detention this month.
The border agency says the boy died on Monday night hours after showing signs of illness. A Texas congressman named him as Felipe Alónzo-Gomez.
The child was detained with his father on 18 December after illegally crossing the US-Mexico border.
A seven-year-old girl died earlier this month just hours after being detained.
Jakelin Caal, also from Guatemala, developed a high fever and died of liver failure. Her funeral was held in her village on Tuesday. Thousands of migrants have travelled from Central America - mainly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador - to the US border.
Many say they are fleeing persecution, poverty and violence in their home countries and plan to seek asylum in the US.
What do we know about the latest case?
In a new, lengthy statement, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said the boy, whose identity has not been officially confirmed, died at 23:48 local time(06:48 GMT) on 24 December. The cause of death is still unknown.
After being detained in El Paso, Texas, he and his father were taken to a local processing centre, where they spent two days. They were then sent to El Paso Border Patrol Station, where they were held for another two days.
On 22 December, they were transferred to Alamogordo Border Patrol Station, in neighbouring New Mexico.
On Monday morning, an agent noticed that the boy "was coughing and appeared to have glossy eyes". He was taken with his father to a hospital where he was diagnosed with a common cold and given Tylenol (paracetamol).
Pamela Wheelock Call senator Johnson. Head of the senate committee for Homeland Security and has oversight . He may not care, but call because you DO. 202-224-5323 Flood his phone.
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Tax Cuts failed (surprise!)
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/study-trump-tax-cuts-failed-growth-investment.html?fbclid=IwAR1wUfEkn-oHaIQ_SUuUk9LN1Is9O9ROfd2Q91mT6H3LgccSjiDTuHykXVQ
from the article:
Study Finds Trump Tax Cuts Failed to Do Anything But Give Rich People Money
The Intelligencer
MAY 29, 2019
from the article:
The biggest effect of the Trump tax cuts is obvious: People who own businesses and other sources of concentrated wealth will have a lot more money, and the federal budget will have less. But the advocates of the tax cuts insisted it wasn’t about letting the makers keep their hard-earned money rather than handing it over to the takers. It was about incentivizing business to repatriate funds and ramp up its investments, thereby increasing growth and wages.
The Congressional Research Service, a kind of in-house think tank for Congress, has a new paper analyzing the effects of the Trump tax cuts. It finds that none of those secondary effects have materialized. Growth has not increased above the pre-tax-cut trend. Neither have wages. After a brief and much smaller than expected bump, repatriated corporate cash from abroad has leveled off.
Monday, May 6, 2019
New numbers show Economic growth due to Obama
from Forbes o less, the great conservative mag.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/10/30/two-charts-show-trumps-job-gains-are-just-a-continuation-from-obamas-presidency/?fbclid=IwAR3PTKHDak9lh1Lr1lk7mbNphQHZ5ccuvbSeKZ7iwSBS_08Hfs2J5eSuIAs#402ee0ef1af3
Quote:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/10/30/two-charts-show-trumps-job-gains-are-just-a-continuation-from-obamas-presidency/?fbclid=IwAR3PTKHDak9lh1Lr1lk7mbNphQHZ5ccuvbSeKZ7iwSBS_08Hfs2J5eSuIAs#402ee0ef1af3
Quote:
This is an update using the October jobs report.
Over 2 million jobs added per year for the past 8 yearsBelow are the employment gains from President Bush’s last four years in office from just before the start of the Great Recession, through President Obama’s and so far through President Trump’s tenure.
Bush’s last four years in office:
- 2005: 210,000 per month or 2.52 million for the year
- 2006: 175,000 per month or 2.09 million
- 2007: 96,000 per month or 1.15 million
- Last six months averaged 55,000 per month
- 2008: Negative 297,000 per month (recession takes hold)
Obama’s eight years:
- Lost 3.6 million jobs
- 2009: Negative 422,000 per month
- Lost 5.1 million jobs (teeth of the recession)
- 2010: 88,000 per month or 1.05 million for the year
- 2011: 174,000 per month or 2.09 million
- 2012: 179,000 per month or 2.14 million
- 2013: 192,000 per month or 2.3 million
- 2014: 250,000 per month or 3 million
- 2015: 226,000 per month or 2.7 million
Trump’s through September:
- 2016: 187,000 per month or 2.24 million
- 2017: 182,000 per month or 2.19 million
- Through September 2018: 208,000 per month or 2.5 million run rate
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Trump seeks to Destroy due Process
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-raises-eyebrows-saying-we-should-get-rid-judges?cid=sm_fb_maddow&fbclid=IwAR3b6Ocv_7f1q4VW0bWu3POxTxIGpakpVvA2McS5YCjZVKaWGNqyAHwrL7k
MASNBC
MASNBC
Trump raises eyebrows by saying, ‘We should get rid of judges’
A reporter asked Donald Trump this morning why, after all of his rhetoric, he didn’t close the border like he said he would. The president replied:Read More
“Because Mexico has been absolutely terrific for the last four days. They’re apprehending everybody…. It’s really good.
“Now, Congress has to act. They have to get rid of catch and release, chain migration, visa lottery. They have to get rid of the whole asylum system because it doesn’t work. And, frankly, we should get rid of judges.”
On the first point, the idea that Mexico is suddenly implementing policies that the White House likes is odd: according to Mexican officials, nothing’s changed. By all appearances, Trump is playing make-believe in order to justify the latest example of him talking tough before caving.
But it’s that second point that probably raised the most eyebrows. Any time an American president says we should “get rid of judges,” it’s going to cause a stir – especially when that president is known for his authoritarian tendencies.
The trouble is, it’s easy to misinterpret what Trump is trying to say. Indeed, the Republican made the same argument earlier this week – “To be honest with you, you have to get rid of judges,” he said – and that was misunderstood, too.
As we discussed the other day, Trump hasn’t gone into a lot of detail, but in context, he almost certainly wasn’t referring to sitting Article III jurists serving lifetime positions on the federal judiciary. Rather, I’m reasonably sure the president was referring to immigration judges – whom he apparently wants to fire.
The trouble is, that’s bad, too. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent noted, “This is akin to declaring that we must end due process for asylum seekers, and with it, our international humanitarian commitments on this front.”
That’s absolutely right, though I’d add one related thought: the Trump administration’s position had long been that we need more immigration judges, not fewer, which means the president keeps denouncing his own team’s agenda.
As regular readers may recall, the Trump White House called on Congress to approve funding for hundreds of additional immigration judges in order to expedite the legal process at the U.S./Mexico border.
The president, apparently unsure what immigration judges are, later reversed course and expressed bewilderment that “they” – he didn’t say who – want more immigration judges, which Trump said would invite “graft” and corruption.
Current immigration judges were reportedly “shocked” and “dismayed” by the president’s criticisms, which was understandable, since his rebukes were nonsensical.
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Debate Trickle Down
this is a thread from facebook of my debate with Trumpie over Trickle down
Inequality is not just unfair but stifles growth. 90% of gains sine 2009 recovery began goes to 1%.
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