In this clip from the 2011 version of The Young Turks, host Cenk Uygur explains why he turned down a different role on MSNBC in favor of continuing to build his online progressive empire which he had begun just a few years before.
Seeing the sort of drivel which Comcast-owned MSNBC turns
out daily now and the scores of liberal commentators they have scorned
and tossed aside, we know without a doubt that Cenk made the right
choice.
As more people wake up to the reality of corporate media and the growing conservative vein in MSNBC, more people flock to online outlets like The Young Turks. In this way, MSNBC is giving a gift to progressive online outlets, but not willingly.
We should all be grateful for that day in 2011 when Cenk said “no
thanks” and instead continued to provide non-corporate, progressive news
to a massive and loyal audience online.
There is a rot at the heart of our democracy,
rooted in a nagging mystery that has yet to be unraveled. It gnaws at people,
occupies their thoughts, leaves them searching for answers in the chill of the
night. Americans want to know why no high-ranking Wall Street executive has gone
to jail for the conduct that precipitated the financial crisis.
The oddest thing about the predominance of the question is that everyone
already assumes they know the answer. They believe that too many politicians,
regulators, and law enforcement officials, bought off with campaign
contributions or the promise of a future job, simply allowed banker miscreants
to annihilate the law in pursuit of profit. But they must not like the
explanation very much, because they keep asking why, as if they want to be
proven wrong, to be given a different story.
Maybe they don’t like the implications of a government that lets Wall Street
walk. It does too much violence to the conception of the country they have in
their mind, with its ideals of justice and fairness. It explains the dis-empowerment people feel in the face of a rigged economic and political
system, with differing standards of treatment depending on wealth and power. It
engenders a loss of faith in core institutions, turning our democracy into a
sideshow, where the real action happens offstage. It inspires people to don
tri-cornered hats and protest crony capitalism, or pitch camp at the base of Wall
Street and refuse to move. It generates a profound anxiety, for if bankers can
bring the economy to the point of ruin and get away with it, what’s to stop them
from doing it again? It makes our economy seem too fragile, our laws too
impotent.
Or maybe people just want the details filled in, to confirm their suspicions,
so they can point fingers at those who created this two-tiered system of
accountability. There must be a set of facts that prove we’re living in a new
Gilded Age, where holders of prodigious wealth guide government policy the way a
string guides a marionette. There must be a smoking gun.
Those details are available, but not where most chroniclers of the financial
crisis have ever cared to look. They usually take a ten-thousand-foot view,
recounting stories of the hubris of bank CEOs or tracking the swashbuckling,
without-a-net exploits of those tasked with stanching the bleeding. But few have
offered the perspective of millions of ordinary Americans, the ones who never
visited a Wall Street office tower or a Washington conference suite, and who
endured most of the suffering that resulted from the crash. At ground level, the
crisis was not a cautionary tale of greed or an adventure plot: It was a
tragedy, too casually hidden from view.
Starting in 2009—as the crisis raged—three of these ordinary Americans
decided to take on this mystery for themselves, to fill in those details, to
understand what Wall Street perpetrated and why. In so doing, they played a
significant role in uncovering the largest consumer fraud in American
history.
They didn’t work in government or law enforcement. They were not experts in
real estate law. They had no history of anti-corporate activism or community
organizing. They had no resources or institutional knowledge. They were a cancer
nurse, a car salesman, and an insurance fraud specialist, and they were all
foreclosure victims. While struggling with the shame and dislocation and
financial stress that foreclosure causes, they did something extraordinary: They
read their mortgage documents. Wall Street’s scheme was not hidden but readily
apparent in millions of pieces of documentary evidence, and to be a whistle blower, you just had to pay attention.
All whistle blowers are a little bit crazy. They obsess over things most
people overlook. They see grand conspiracies where others see only shadows. In
this case, these whistle blowers, armed with only a few websites and a hunger for
the truth, found that the mortgage industry fundamentally ruptured a
centuries-old system of U.S. property law; that millions of documents generated
to foreclose on people’s homes were phony; and that all those purchasing a
mortgage in America were taking a gamble that they would be tossed onto the
street with nothing, even if they made every payment and played by the rules.
Virtually everyone to whom they presented this information reacted the same way:
“That can’t be true.” Right up until the day the banks admitted it.
These three—Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak— unearthed
another layer of the mystery, too. After they exposed foreclosure fraud and
forced the nation’s leading mortgage companies to stop repossessing homes, they
saw firsthand the unwillingness of our government to deliver any consequences.
In fact, walk into any courtroom today and you will see the same false
documents, the same ones Lisa, Michael, and Lynn exposed, used to foreclose on
homeowners.
As America searches for understanding amid the perversity of the financial
crisis, they should know that there were a few determined people, far from the
corridors of power, who tried to write an alternative history, one where the
perpetrators of fraud get rounded up and put away. But the same democracy that
allows ordinary Americans to collaborate and organize and build a movement
allows their deep-pocketed opponents to use the tools of entrenched power to
counteract it. And we have to reckon with the fact that, in our current system
of justice, who you are matters more than what you did.
Michael Redman, one of these whistleblowers, sat next to me one night as he
told me his story, and said over and over again, “I don’t believe your book. I
lived through it, and I don’t believe it.” I will forgive readers their
skepticism, as even a protagonist in the tale shares it. It is unbelievable.
That doesn’t make it untrue.
A Knock at the Door
February 17, 2009
The sun crept down over the Intracoastal Waterway, separating Palm Beach from
its companion cities to the west. With the proper nautical chops, you could
navigate from Norfolk, Virginia, to Key West through this shore-hugging water
highway bordering open ocean, down through the Great Dismal Swamp, under the
Hobucken Bridge, across the marshy lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia, and
through the Mosquito Lagoon Aquatic Preserve, on the Indian River near the city
of Edgewater.
Eventually you would hit Palm Beach, located on a 16 mile long
barrier island of manicured lawns, ritzy mansions, and precisely fashioned
grains of sand, a place where American ingenuity and truckloads of money
summoned paradise out of the Atlantic. A few miles inland, amid vacationers and
part-time snowbirds seeking refuge from winter winds up north, a car motored
down Route 80 to tell Lisa and Alan Epstein that their bank wanted to take their
home away.
Florida felt the worst of the Great Recession’s
force, a financial hurricane that spared almost nobody, not even in
paradise. This was one of the “sand states,” warm-weather regions of the
country with economies disproportionately based on real estate. Home prices in
Florida, Arizona, California, and Nevada surged more than 264 percent from 1998
to 2006. Over half of all subprime mortgages written in 2006 were issued in
these four states. “Sand states” turned out to be an accurate description of the
market’s feeble foundations, as prices crumbled and industries that supported
and sustained the bubble washed out.
In fact, Florida suffered two waves of foreclosures. The first engulfed those
who purchased or refinanced mortgages at the height of the bubble, in 2004,
2005, and 2006. While tagged as “irresponsible,” these homeowners actually
suffered from inadvertent timing and susceptibility to predatory lending. When
prices sank, borrowers went “underwater”—owing more on the mortgage than the
homes were worth. They couldn’t sell or refinance to escape, and many couldn’t
afford the payments to begin with. This led to defaults, even in Palm Beach.
Then came the second wave, relentless ripple effects from unemployment in real
estate, construction, and pretty soon everything else, swallowing those who paid
their mortgages effortlessly for years. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of
Floridians needed help, and help was slow to come.
So it was not uncommon to find cars like the four-door sedan motoring past
West Palm Beach’s shiny subdivisions. Process servers contracted by “foreclosure
mill” law firms, so named because they pumped out foreclosures the way a textile
mill would fabrics, made their daily rounds here, unsmilingly handing homeowners
legal documents and informing them that as a result of their failure to pay
their mortgage promptly, their lender would place them into foreclosure.
By early 2009, one in 22 Florida homeowners had received some sort of filing
like this, such as a notice of default, court summons, auction sale, or
foreclosure judgment—nine times the historical average. Local sheriff’s deputies
used to deliver the papers, but there were now too many to handle.
So the
foreclosure mills had to hire private contractors; it represented one of the few
recession-era growth industries in the state.
Nobody on either side of the transaction felt particularly good about it. The
process servers greeted eyes filled with tears, faces lined with desperation.
The full force of post-recession fury at Wall Street malfeasance and personal
tragedy refracted onto them. Though business boomed, it was shit work, the
misery beat. In fact, you can almost understand why some contractors ducked the
emotional tumult by resorting to “sewer service”—a popular scam where they would
simply throw envelopes in front of the home, technically fulfilling their
obligations while ensuring that the homeowner would not see the complaint or
know to show up for court. This was illegal, but it also carried the benefit of
being way faster than actually knocking on the door, increasing volume—and
profits.
Sensing opportunity, some process servers and foreclosure mills even invented
fake recipients of foreclosure papers. In Pasco County, Judge Susan Gardner
found numerous charges for serving papers to “unknown spouses” and “unidentified
tenants.” One process server in Miami listed 46 defendants on a single property,
racking up $5,000 in fees. He claimed he had to serve everyone in the state with
the same name as the homeowner, in case one of them was the real defendant.
Every two-bit business in Florida had its own way of skirting the edges of the
law to get ahead; this was a particularly crude one.
As for the homeowners, news of foreclosure tore
through their front door like a wrecking ball. Taking a family’s house
involved taking their spirit and snuffing it out like a candle, the bright light
fading into smoke. Millions of Americans who thought they gained a foothold in
the middle class, a clear pathway to wealth and economic security, absorbed the
collateral damage of a fatal miscalculation on Wall Street.
This evening’s pageant of process serving would come to rest at 607 Gazetta
Way, in an unincorporated area near West Palm Beach, a classic post-boom
development of oversized properties on small lots. Built in 2006, the
three-bedroom, two-bathroom, one-story home with a clay tile roof and yellow
siding was wedged between a collection of larger properties all painted the
same, as if the builder decided yellow was the optimal color to convince buyers
to take the leap. Inside the house, the Epstein family had no warning of their
impending visitor.
Lisa Epstein sat on a ledge in the master bathroom, hospital scrubs rolled to
her knees, her daughter Jenna kept upright in the bathtub by a reclining baby
seat. Lisa’s brown hair was pulled back with her trademark multicolored scarf,
the kind you would see in the 1970s, maybe on Rhoda or The Bob
Newhart Show. She had blue eyes, soft features, and a laugh you could hear
across a crowded room.
When she got excited she got very loud. But at the moment
she focused on her daughter in the tub.
Blond-haired, big-eyed Jenna had been born with a mild form of spina bifida.
Her spinal cord was tethered at the base, something that could generate motor
control problems as she grew. The child would turn two in March; surgery had
been scheduled for April. And Lisa could think of practically nothing else,
ministering to Jenna at nearly every waking moment. As a cancer nurse, she
worked with families coping with the stress of a sick child. Now she was
experiencing the same emotions: consumed by the same yearning to keep her
daughter comfortable, and at stray moments wondering how this beautiful creature
could be marked for affliction.
Lisa was 43, a nurse, a wife, and a new mother. She had only lived in the
house two years. And her live was about to change forever.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
She did not hesitate for a second. “That’s about the house, Alan!” she yelled
out to her husband.
Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders. (Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Watching this year’s presidential nomination process from Australia
has been a very interesting affair.
I can’t say I’ve followed every
single speech or piece of news, but I’ve certainly kept abreast of what
is going on and have seen plenty of articles and commentary from people
on my feed putting their opinions forward. What interests me the most
are the people and media pundits who emphatically denounce Bernie
Sanders and his supporters. The reasons all generally boil down to the
fact that he is the reincarnation of Karl Marx and he wants to turn the
U.S. into a communist state. That he is so far left of center that he’s
basically off the chart.
For those people, here’s a reality check.
Around the rest of the world, Mr. Sanders represents a point on the
political spectrum that is mildly left of center. His “wacky” ideas of
free (and we’ll get to that term a bit later) education, free
healthcare, regulating banks and corporations and so on are all actually
staple ideas of many of the happiest and most prosperous countries in
the world.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the happiest countries in
the world index for 2016. The U.S. doesn’t make the top 10—but almost
every single country that does has the kind of policies Mr. Sanders is
promoting at some level.
Looking at the other candidates, Hillary
Clinton would in most countries be considered right of center, not left.
Donald and Ted? Man, those guys are so far right of center you couldn’t
plot where they exist—they’re pretty much off the spectrum.
But back to Bernie. Throughout the nomination process, Bernie’s
critics always seem to be asking the wrong questions. The most common
one I see is “how is he going to pay for all of this?” This question
misses the point entirely. Even if economists say that he can’t, does
that really invalidate everything he’s aiming to achieve? If he can’t
pay for all of it and the only thing that actually gets passed is
universal college education and a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, is
that such a horrible thing? Why does it have to be so all or nothing?
That’s why it also baffles me when people say that they don’t want the
kind of revolution Mr. Sanders is pushing—the reality is that even if he
is swept to victory, the amount of change he’ll actually be able to
implement won’t be half of what he wants to do.
The other elephant in the room is that the current political status quo is to spend over half a trillion dollars per year on
the military. So you’re against universal health care or college
education because you don’t think it can be paid for, but you’re happy
for your government to spend that amount of money on your military when
the last time you actually had to defend yourselves was over two
centuries ago?
When you’re willing to sacrifice so many of the best
parts of a socialist democracy in order to fund a military juggernaut
that has to go out looking for things to shoot, your priorities are
ridiculously lopsided.
The War on Terror started with over 3,000 people
being killed in a terrorist attack on your own soil. It has since cost
the U.S. over 5 trillion dollars—money that could have been
used to save far more lives than were lost in the first place, if they
had been provided with adequate health care.
The other nonsensical argument I often hear is that government needs
to be smaller, and Bernie will make it bigger by running all these
programs. First of all, more government programs means more jobs for
people. Considering government jobs usually come with pretty decent
conditions, that’s undoubtedly a good thing, because from where we sit,
your working conditions are some of the worst in the developed world. No
days paid vacation in your first year? Only a week per year after that,
and that’s assuming your boss even lets you go on vacation.
Jesus, no wonder Gallup polling shows over 85 percent of you are
disengaged and miserable at your jobs. But hey, as long as you can afford a Cadillac (if you can afford a Cadillac), it’s all good.
Here’s the big thing about Bernie that makes so much sense to the
rest of the world, but not to a lot of you. Our earliest ancestors
formed tribes so we could hunt more efficiently and protect one another.
We moved on to villages, then cities and finally nations for mutual
benefit. We can do more together than alone, and when we band together
we can put safety nets in place so if people are unlucky and get struck
down, we can all help them back up. That way no one has to live in fear
of losing out in the lottery of life. That’s what social democracy is,
and those of us who live in them recognize that what we have is pretty
damn great.
So when we talk about “free” healthcare, for example, we know it
isn’t free and are happy to accept it. We recognize that the good of
many outweighs the selfish wants of the individual. It’s easy to tell
someone that if they want health care then they should pay for it, until you
are the one that gets struck down by misfortune and has to pay through
the nose because the government has privatized everything.
We also
recognize that, while it might be more difficult to reach the
stratospheric heights of billionairdom here, it can be done with a lot
of hard work. That extra work is worth it, because our society has a
baseline standard of living provided by our government with our tax
dollars.
All of this ignores the massive elephant in the
room: that your corporations, banks and politicians have no qualms about
being socialist when it suits them.
Do we still bitch that we’re paying too much in tax? Sure, who
doesn’t? But most of us made peace with high taxation long ago because
it means:
We won’t lose our job and get bankrupted by the hospital bill if we get sick
We can attend university for a reasonable fee, not leaving us saddled with horrific debt
We can work a minimum wage job and actually survive on the income
We have a real shot at moving up in society if we work hard
America likes to brand itself as “the land of opportunity,” but from
elsewhere in the world, the cost of that opportunity is shockingly high.
It looks more and more like the land of oligarchy, where those with
privilege move higher and higher up more and more easily, and those
below have to scramble with all their might, sacrificing everything and
never making a bad decision to even have a shot at being upper middle
class.
And if you don’t get there? Well you shouldn’t have made that bad
decision that one time, it’s your fault. Christ, even your poster boys for innovation and striking it rich—Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates—went to freaking Harvard.
Land of opportunity, huh? Yeah, when the next Facebook is founded by a
guy working out of a college dorm at Indiana State, you might be able to
say that without irony.
You guys have lost so much since Reagan came to power. We fight to
keep all our benefits—you should have heard the uproar a couple of years
ago when our government tried to institute a fee of $5 to go to the
doctor instead of it being for free. The government scrapped that idea
very quickly. All of your benefits have already been given away so those
at the very top can take a little bit more. I could scarcely believe my
ears when I heard that your government repealed estate tax not long
ago—because God forbid people inheriting huge sums of money should have
to give some of that up for the good of society.
And all of this ignores the massive, massive elephant in the
room: that your corporations, banks and politicians have no qualms
about being socialist when it suits them. They’ll happily put their
hands out for subsidies that they don’t need to make billions more that
won’t be taxed—or when they tank your economy and the rest of the
world’s economy they’ll complain that they’re too big to fail before
taking all your hard earned money. None of them went to jail or even
attracted regulation from the establishment politicians. Instead, they
just got more money to continue as before.
And yet, so many of you continue to engage in pointless arguments
over why your taxes should pay for healthcare, university and other
social goods, when they are already paying for those at the top to
continue polluting and disrupting the economy.
But fuck Bernie. He’s just a commie, right?
Peter Ross deconstructs the psychology and philosophy of the
business world, careers and every day life. You can follow him on
Twitter @prometheandrive. He lives in Australia.
Apparently, evangelical Christians are feeling abandoned by the
Republican Party.
Like a wealthy businessman who tosses aside a wife in
order to marry a younger woman, the GOP - in the form of its voters -
has decided to shit-can the usual boring old politicians who kissed the
Jesus's ass and gone with a dick-waving hedonist who couldn't give a
single shit about the Bible even when he tries.
Yeah, the poor
Christ-lovers have the sads over Donald Trump, and they're sounding like
pussy atheist liberals over it. Said one God-fearing woman,
"I really do feel like in the future I would hate to look back and say,
‘I voted for Hitler.’ I feel like that may be what is happening if I
vote for Trump."
Yes, Father, you have forsaken them. Trump even attacked one of the leaders of the creepy conservative Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, for the thought-crime of questioning
the racist statements coming from the Republican nominee. Thus tweeteth
Donald, "Russell Moore is truly a terrible representative of
Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no
heart!" Trump only has one cheek, apparently.
One GOP activist says that Christian conservatives are gonna take a mulligan
on this whole goddamned election: "I think they will probably stay
home. That’s what I’m hearing. That’s what happened four years ago,
that’s what happened eight years ago.” Of course, should Trump pick a
beloved son or daughter of the godly people to be his running mate,
well, that's another matter.
Richard Viguerie, the longtime right-wing
fluffer who is shockingly still alive, explained, "He needs to prove to
us that he’s worthy of our support."
Oh, silly old fuck, Donald Trump doesn't need to prove a damn thing.
That's the whole point of his campaign. The man has already said he
ain't changing
his tone, he's doubling down on all the things he believes, including
that transgender people should be able to use whatever shitter they
want, and he doesn't give a happy monkey fuck about outreach. Hell,
he'll just tout the support of Jerry Falwell, Jr. and other leaders and groups
in the movement, and he'll say how everyone can say, "Merry Christmas"
or some such shit and promise to buff Bibi's balls and make Israel great
again, and that'll be just enough Christian idiocy to please the
yahoos.
But, mostly, fuck you, evangelicals. You sold your souls to the greedy,
pandering politicians to fight for you in the bullshit culture wars. You
ignore people who actually want to do things that Jesus talked about,
like helping the poor and the sick and the oppressed, in favor of false
prophets and sinners who get you to believe the lie that you'll get rich
by making the rich richer, and that's fine as long as they hate them
some queers and abortion, the twin baubles you are tossed as your
presumptive leaders rob you blind, turn you into willing hypocrites, and
tell you it's all God's will.
Right now, you're actually thinking about voting for the vulgar serial
adulterer. And if you feel, as one pastor said, "abandoned by our
party," well, shit, it was never really your party. You were just the
marks for a bunch of con men, starting with Ronald Reagan.
And as long
as they abided by your hatred of difference and progress, you let them
go on conning you. Now, in Trump, you finally have to face a candidate
who can barely find the time to pay you lip service, let alone give you
the blow jobs you're used to.
Congratulations, motherfuckers. Get on your knees. Not to pray. Now it's your turn to blow.
Rep. Keith Ellison on ABCs This Week
with the quote of the day on the dangers of a Trump presidency and the
non-stop lying where he refuses to acknowledge the anger and bigotry
he's been more than willing take advantage of to fuel his campaign.
KARL: Well, I guess you're not going to be giving anybody a pass.
REP. KEITH ELLISON (D), MINNESOTA: Well, absolutely not. But I think
Paul Ryan needs to be -- needs to consider his own credibility here. He
has said -- and I appreciate him saying this -- that there shall be no
religious test for people coming into this country.
He called the idea un-American. He called it un-American. How you going to turn around and say, OK, well, it's sort of American.
Paul Ryan has in his own integrity to protect. And I hope he protects it carefully because it is a long-term --
(CROSSTALK)
COLE: I think he's already demonstrated he will protect that integrity.
ELLISON: Well, we'll see. You know, I mean, he said -- he said he was
open to immigration reform. This guy wants to build a wall and build it
higher. As a matter of fact, I mean, I think that the stakes are
incredibly high for everybody here.
Trump has suppressed press freedom. He has said punch people
in the face. He has made open appeals to racism and he has tried to
persecute religious minorities. This is dangerous to the whole republic.
And I think people ought to take it a whole lot more seriously. It's
bigger than an election, in my view.
KARL: OK. But let's listen to what Trump said about these campaign proposals. Take a listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Look, anything I say right now -- I'm not the president.
Everything is a suggestion, no matter what you say, it's a suggestion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ELLISON: It just goes to prove that he even lies about his
own bigotry. He doesn’t -- so he says he doesn’t know who David Duke is.
When he, 10 years before, had denounced David Duke. But when it was in
his interest to play coy in the Louisiana primary, he acts like, oh, I
don't know who David Duke is. He's not even serious about that.
He
has openly appealed to banning Muslims. He didn't say people from the
Muslim world; he said ban Muslims and now he's acting like, oh, I didn't
really quite mean it that way.
He's not even sincere about his own bigotry. And that is his core strength, that he's --
(CROSSTALK) ELLISON: -- a truth-teller and authentic. He's neither one of those.
What a "Luddite" this guy is. He runs a profitable operation without
spraying his fields with chemical poisons and artificial fertilizers and
without buying patented GM seeds.
Doesn't he know he is rejecting the
"scientific" approach to modern agriculture? How dare he have the gall
to succeed by simply mimicking the processes of nature on his farm, and
then have the nerve to tell other farmers they too can use the same
methods to get themselves off the chemical agriculture treadmill,
improve their own soils and still have a profitable farm.
Why, if his
methods work, it would mean Monsanto and its big-ag partners are mostly
full of bovine excrement. Hard to believe, I know.
Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita wants to limit access to free lunch for poor children.
When it comes to children, Republicans are hypocrites.
They go
on and on about how "pro-life" they are, but they really only care about
"humans" before they're born. After that, they couldn't care less.
Case
in point: the so-called "Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of
2016," the brainchild of Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita that would decimate a
key part of the federal free lunch program.
This bill is about as
mean-spirited as it gets, and to understand why, you first need to
understand something about how the federal free lunch program works.
Thanks
to something called "community eligibility," students at certain
schools automatically qualify to get a free lunch if 40 percent of their
classmates live in poverty.
Although it may not sound like much, this is a really big deal.
Under
community eligibility, high poverty schools no longer have to fill out
the mountains of paperwork they'd normally have to fill out to get
individual students enrolled in the free lunch program.
Everyone
is enrolled, and as a result, these high poverty school are now free to
focus on other problems like, you know, educating their students.
Sounds like pretty good idea, right? Not only are you keeping kids healthy, you're also cutting a lot of red tape.
That's something everyone can get behind.
Everyone that is, except for Representative Rokita.
Rokita's
"Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016" would raise the
poverty threshold necessary to participate in community eligibility to
60 percent.
Again this might not sound like much, but in the
context of how the free lunch program actually functions, it's a really,
really, big deal.
If Representative Rokita's bill becomes law, more than 7,000 schools serving almost 3.5 million students would be affected.
Those
schools would no longer get to use community eligibility to
automatically enroll all students in the free lunch program and would
instead have to go back to the old application system, student by
student, with its mountains and mountains of paperwork.
This isn't
quite a death sentence, but for high poverty schools that are already
struggling to deal with things like violence, drugs and broken homes,
it's just another thing to deal with, and an unnecessary one at that.
Obviously,
there's a certain amount of irony in the fact that Representative
Rokita, a Republican, is pushing a bill that would create even more red
tape.
But then again, Republicans have always been fine with "big government" if it means demonizing poor people.
So that's not that shocking.
No, the really shocking thing here is the fact that this is the same Representative Rokita who is 100 percent on board with House Republicans' kangaroo court investigation of Planned Parenthood.
That investigation, of course, is based on a total lie, and it's cost taxpayers' so much money that House Republicans have had to dip into Congress' reserve fund to help pay for it.
You
really couldn't ask for a better example of the screwed-up priorities
of so-called "pro-life" Republicans like Representative Rokita.
They'll
go out of their way to protect a mass of cells that is only
philosophically a child, but once it comes to real, live, breathing
children, suddenly there's no money, suddenly cost is an issue, suddenly
we need to talk about cutting spending.
And here's the thing: Republicans don't even really care about "unborn children" - the whole "pro-life" thing just a front.
Sure,
some of them probably believe that abortion is the next Holocaust, but
in the grand scheme of things, most of them know that all the outrage
about Roe v. Wadeis just a way to keep the suckers in line.
How do you know? Well, if Republicans really cared about kids they'd stop their blockade of Medicaid expansion.
They'd
also stop supporting the war on drugs that creates the school-to-prison
pipeline. They'd stop turning our schools into profit-making engines
for the billionaire class; and they'd stop trying to cut
Head Start,
food stamps and welfare for single moms.
They'd also pass federal funding for Flint, Michigan.
The list goes on.
When it comes down to it, most Republicans don't give a rat's ass about US children.
Security researcher Matt Blaze
noticed this vehicle in Philadelphia. It had a large Google Streetview sticker
on the window, but Matt noticed a Philadelphia Office of Fleet Management
placard on the windshield. He took a photo of the vehicle and tweeted it,
along with the comment, "WTF? Pennsylvania State Police license plate reader SUV
camouflaged as Google Street View vehicle."
The PA State Police read Matt's tweet and replied via
Twitter, "Matt, this is not a PSP vehicle. If this is LPR [license plate reader]
technology, other agencies and companies might make use of it."
The placard showing the vehicle is owned by the City of
Philadelphia. Image: Dustin Slaughter
So, who is driving around in a vehicle disguised as both a Google Streetview
car and is equipped with a license plate reader? Motherboard asked the office of
Fleet Management, and got some more information:
A placard on the dashboard indicates that the SUV is registered with the
Philadelphia Office of Fleet Management, which maintains city government’s 6,316
vehicles, indicating that the vehicle is being used by a local agency.
Christopher Cocci, who serves as the city’s fleet manager, and whose
signature is on the document, says that the vehicle does not belong to the
Pennsylvania State Police, which is known to use automated license plate
recognition (ALPR), or the Philadelphia Parking Authority, a local agency that
also utilizes ALPR.
So whose surveillance truck is it?
“All city vehicles such as police, fire, streets etc.…are registered to the
city. Quasi [public] agencies like PPA, Housing Authority, PGW and School
District are registered to their respective agencies,” fleet manager Christopher
Cocci wrote in an email to Motherboard after reviewing photos of the vehicle. He
also believes it to be connected to law enforcement activity.
Motherboard concludes that it is probably the city’s police department, not
the state's. They've reached out to the Philadelphia Police Department but have
not heard back from them.
Mitt Romney, of all
people, is claiming that Donald Trump has disqualified himself from the
presidency by refusing to release his tax returns.
After Trump announced that he won’t be releasing any of his tax returns until after the election, Romney wrote on Facebook:
It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee
to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has
not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public
service. Tax returns provide the public with its sole confirmation of
the veracity of a candidate’s representations regarding charities,
priorities, wealth, tax conformance, and conflicts of interest. Further,
while not a likely circumstance, the potential for hidden inappropriate
associations with foreign entities, criminal organizations, or other
unsavory groups is simply too great a risk to ignore for someone who is
seeking to become commander-in-chief.
Mr. Trump says he is being audited. So? There is nothing that
prevents releasing tax returns that are being audited. Further, he could
release returns for the years immediately prior to the years under
audit. There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump’s refusal to
release his returns: there is a bombshell in them. Given Mr. Trump’s
equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it’s a
bombshell of unusual size.
(Anticipating inquiries regarding my own tax release history, I
released my 2010 tax returns in January of 2012 and I released my 2011
tax returns as soon as they were completed, in September of 2012.)
Mitt Romney, who stalled, made up excuses, and refused to release a
full disclosure of his tax returns is running around claiming that Trump
can’t be president because he won’t release his tax returns.
Mitt Romney is not the person to be making the argument that Donald
Trump is disqualified from the presidency because he won’t release his
tax returns. In fact, Romney is one of the last people in the world who
should be discussing releasing tax returns.
The Republicans have dragged the American people into some kind of
bizarre Twilight Zone where Mitt Romney is the moral compass of the GOP.
The last thing that Republicans needed was their former tax dodging
nominee telling their current tax dodging nominee that he has
disqualified himself by not releasing his tax returns.
Every single day, the Republican Party manages to find a new way to make things worse for themselves.
We really have entered a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man, and it is called The Republican Zone.
Tapper then asked why he liked Trump, “Mr. Trump is the real deal. He
will not govern by public opinion poll. He says what’s on his mind.”
"Right now in today's society, they're passing around the
word racist, more and more. Everybody is being called a racist
nowadays."
Usually, only racists are called racists, like skin heads, the KKK, Pat Buchanan and of course, white nationalists.
Tapper asked Johnson if he believed "the white race, or the European white race, is the superior race - is that your view?"
William Johnson continued, "“I believe that Western civilization is
declining and dying out in every country around the world that has
traditionally been white. Europe is being replaced by immigrants from
Africa. America, the same thing’s happening here, and so I believe that
we need to be aware of this precipitous decline in the white race. And
it's good for people to be proud of your heritage, whatever heritage
that might be, but particularly for white people because the whites now
are so afraid to be proud of their heritage because they're called bad
name.”
If anyone could be more of a slime than George Zimmerman, I'm not sure who (besides Donald Trump, possibly).
In a stellar example of wingnut free enterprise, Zimmerman is auctioning off the gun he used to murder stand his ground against an unarmed Trayvon Martin as a "piece of history."
Prospective bidders, I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American Firearm Icon. The firearm for sale is the firearm that was used to defend my life and end the brutal attack from Trayvon Martin on 2/26/2012. The
gun is a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm. It has recently been returned to me by the
Department of Justice. The pistol currently has the case number written
on it in silver permanent marker. Many have expressed interest in owning
and displaying the firearm including The Smithsonian Museum in
Washington D.C. This is a piece of American History. It
has been featured in several publications and in current University
text books. Offers to purchase the Firearm have been received; however,
the offers were to use the gun in a fashion I did not feel comfortable
with. The firearm is fully functional as the attempts by the
Department of Justice on behalf of B. Hussein Obama to render the
firearm inoperable were thwarted by my phenomenal Defense Attorney. I
recognize the purchaser's ownership and right to do with the firearm as
they wish. The purchaser is guaranteed validity and authenticity of the
firearm. On this day, 5/11/2016 exactly one year after the shooting
attempt to end my life by BLM sympathizer Matthew Apperson I am
proud to announce that a portion of the proceeds will be used to: fight
BLM violence against Law Enforcement officers, ensure the demise of
Angela Correy's persecution career and Hillary Clinton's anti-firearm
rhetoric. Now is your opportunity to own a piece of American History. Good Luck. Your friend, George M. Zimmerman ~Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum~
I wonder if he went out and stomped on Trayvon's grave, too.
Over 2,000 locations across NYC have been
sprayed.
New Yorkers who visit their local parks have likely been exposed to
glyphosate, the controversial, cancer-linked main ingredient in Monsanto's
popular herbicide Roundup. But the data about herbicide and pesticide spraying
projects across the city isn’t adding up.
In May 2015, in response to the concerns of community activists and
public health advocates, the city government released a report, “Pesticide
Use by New York City Agencies in 2014,” detailing the use of pesticides by
city agencies in 2014. According to that report, the city applied glyphosate
2,748 times.
However, according to data procured by a Freedom of Information Law
request, the city has revealed only 2,000
locations of glyphosate use in 2014. Pesticide information related to
Central Park and other areas that are managed not by the city government, but by
nonprofit conservancies has not been made public.
Several environmental and community activist groups, including
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, Stop the Spray, and members of the
Coalition Against Poison Parks, are pursuing legal action to “force
the City to reveal all locations where it has been used."
According to the parks report, the city applied pesticides 162,584
times in 2014. Various city agencies used nearly 8,000 gallons ans more than
100,000 pounds of pesticides. Compared to 2013 levels, there was a 21 percent
increase in insecticides by volume in 2014. What is of particular concern is the
fact that, as the report states, "there was a 16 percent increase in herbicide
use by volume, reversing a declining trend. Much of the change was due to a 9
percent increase in glyphosate products used.”
In March 2015, the World Health Organization, the U.N.'s public
health agency, said glyphosate, which is widely used on genetically modified
crops such as corn and soybeans, likely
causes cancer.
In its report,
the International Agency for Research on Cancer, WHO’s cancer arm, classified
glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans." IARC scientists found that the
chemical "induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal
cells in vitro."
They concluded that there was "sufficient evidence" that the
herbicide causes cancer in non-human animals and "limited evidence" that it also
causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans. They said that the primary exposure to
glyphosate comes through diet, home use—Roundup is a popular consumer gardening
spray for people who are not informed about effective nontoxic methods—and
living near sprayed areas.
A study
published in February in the journal Environmental Health found that glyphosate
persists in soil and water longer than previously thought, and that human
exposure to the chemical is rising. The chemical also has harmful effects on
birds, fish, and other wildlife.
While there was an increase in glyphosate use in New York City in
2014 as compared to 2013, the amount is much lower than it was in 2009, when,
according to the Parks Department, it was
used "to control invasive species in remote, often wooded, parkland.” The
increase in glyphosate spraying in 2014 may have been due to “forest restoration
work [which] was again done by Parks and their contractors, accounting for a substantial
proportion of the city’s glyphosate use."
To help residents steer clear of the toxic areas, Reverend Billy and
the Stop Shopping Choir, a performance-based activist group based in New York
City, created a map
charting the parks and public areas across the city that have been sprayed with
glyphosate. The map was created using data provided by the New York City Parks
Department.
New York isn't the only major U.S. city that sprays glyphosate. San
Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Seattle and Philadelphia also use the
controversial herbicide. Some big cities, like Chicago and Boulder, as well as
smaller cities like Richmond, California, and Takoma Park, Maryland, have
instituted glyphosate bans.
The NYC Parks Department notes in its report that the NYC Department
of Health and Mental Hygiene “encourages the pursuit of alternative weed control
methods that would reduce the need for these herbicides.” The city should follow
its own advice and protect its citizens from this cancer-linked chemical.
Fox News host Sean Hannity had to warn Geraldo Rivera on Tuesday that
his microphone was still live and that the public was hearing insults he
was uttering during Bernie Sanders’ victory speech.
After Sanders won the West Virginia Democratic primary on Tuesday
night, Fox News host Sean Hannity announced that he would briefly air
some of the candidate’s victory speech live.
“He’s so annoying,” Rivera complained as the broadcast cut to Sanders. “This guy is so annoying.”
“Your mic is hot!” Hannity exclaimed. “What are you saying?”
“That he’s so annoying,” Rivera repeated. “And people that think that his supporters go to Donald Trump are smoking dope.”
Rachel
Maddow presents the results of a new PPP poll which finds, among other
things that Donald Trump is less popular than lice, and yet, contrary to
media narratives about a party split, Republican voters are shown as
likely to vote for him and even Republican politicians who said terrible
things about him are eating their words and supporting him.
Democratic party insider Ed Rendell has some advice for Bernie Sanders
supporters who show up to the upcoming convention. He wants them to
“behave and not cause trouble." Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks,
breaks it down.
Hey, Republicans, that buffoon up there is your candidate
for president. Your voters want him. That fake motherfucker fake eatin'
a bowl of fake Mexican food and claiming it's awesome represents the
party of Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt. Shit, Donald Trump makes
fuckin' Warren G. Harding look like a goddamn golden hero.
How does that feel, John McCain? Lindsey Graham? Kelly Ayotte? All you
supposedly once-rational Republicans? How do you feel seeing your
party's standard bearer acting like he's gonna stuff thousands of
calories and a tub of lard into his fat fucking cheddar-colored face?
"I love Hispanics!" his tweet screams, which is an improvement on his
Archie Bunker-esque "I love the Hispanics" that he's been saying in
every stream of consciousness speech, like in Pennsylvania
recently: "I love the Hispanics, and I’m going to get so many jobs for
the Hispanics, for the African Americans, for people that can’t get jobs
now."
Meanwhile, Trump has doubled down on his vision of a deportation force
rounding up undocumented immigrants, no doubt going into the homes of
immigrants here legally, to drag away parents and break up families.
It's an effort that one center-right think tank has estimated would kick the American economy
right in the nuts. It would "reduce real private sector output by 2.9
percent to 4.7 percent or $381.5 billion to $623.2 billion." Or, you
know, cause a shitload of unemployment.
But, hey, jump on board the hateful white-supremacist train, Nikki Haley (who, in a mighty stand, said she'll support Trump but won't be his vice president), Mitch McConnell, and Senator
Richard Burr. One thing is for sure: After Trump finishes that taco
salad, he'll be ready to shit all over anyone who is near him. And then
he'll get Chris Christie to wipe his ass.
Filmmaker Rob Reiner joins Morning Blow to discuss his thoughts on Donald
Trump, who he says is only taken seriously as a political candidate
because Trump is a celebrity.
Cheri Amoore (left) is charged with kidnapping Ahsir Simmons (right).
The sprawling King of Prussia Mall played host Thursday night to the
kind of paralyzing terror that a parent of a small child hopes to never
experience: getting momentarily distracted, and then finding an empty
space where their child had just been.
7 week old Ahsir Simmons was taken from right
under his mother’s nose inside the mall’s food court shortly before 5:30
p.m., authorities said. In this case, the culprit wasn’t a menacing
figure who swooped in quietly from the shadows.
Cherie Amoore, 32, allegedly abducted the baby boy
after bumping into his mother apparently at random, and then chatting
her up pleasantly for a while, said Upper Merion Police Chief Tom Nolan.
Renee Amoore
Amoore is the daughter of Renee Amoore, the deputy chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.
“She did befriend the mother. She walked around with them and then
followed them into the food court,” he said. “At one point, when the
baby started to fuss, [Amoore] picked up the baby and tried to calm him
down. The mom got distracted with a phone call, and [Amoore] quickly
left.”
It didn’t take long for panic to set in. Local police and the FBI
responded immediately to the reported abduction, Nolan said, and photos
of baby Ahsir were shared across social media and through local news
outlets.
A blurry image of Amoore leaving the mall with the infant also made
the rounds. She had apparently walked around the mall with him for at
least a half hour, Nolan said.
Minutes turned into hours, each one filled with a growing sense of
dread. Investigators ultimately tracked Amoore to her house in
Tredyffrin Township, Chester County, at 10:18 p.m., according to
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele.
Baby Ahsir was unharmed. Amoore was apparently home alone with him.
“She freely admitted to taking the baby in the statement she gave to investigators,” Nolan said.
Steele described the incident as “every parent’s worst nightmare.”
Amoore was officially charged Friday with felony counts of kidnapping
of a minor, unlawful restraint and related offenses. She was led
handcuffed to an arraignment, wearing a purple hooded sweatshirt and
purple sweat pants.
She remained quiet as a small crowd of reporters surrounded her, asking why she kidnapped the baby or if she felt any remorse.
Nolan said Amoore told investigators that in early February, she gave
birth to a baby boy who soon passed away, and the loss fueled her
impulsive decision to run off with Ashir.
Investigators haven’t been able to verify that claim, he said.
Renee Amoore is the founder and president of the Amoore Group, an
organization that includes three companies: Amoore Health Systems Inc.,
521 Management Group Inc., and the Ramsey Educational and Development
Institute, according to her biography on the Pennsylvania GOP’s website.
A woman who answered the phone at Renee Amoore’s house this afternoon
identified herself as a relative, and said Amoore didn’t want to
comment.
“Just pray for [Cherie],” she said. “And pray for the baby’s family.”
Nolan said child abductions — especially in crowded environments like a mall — are rare.
“You do hear of cases where a child wanders off, but in this one, the mom was right there,” he said.
The placard showing the vehicle is owned by the City of
Philadelphia. Image: Dustin Slaughter
Mitt Romney, of all
people, is claiming that Donald Trump has disqualified himself from the
presidency by refusing to release his tax returns.
