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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
may 8, 2024
Real News Today
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
comment/tweet of the day
Tennessee company fined nearly $650K for illegally hiring minors to clean slaughterhouse
A Tennessee-based cleaning company has agreed to pay nearly $650,000 in civil penalties after federal investigators found the company employed at least 24 children at two slaughtering and meat packing facilities, t ... (USA Today)
New York AG Sues Anti-Abortion Groups Over Unproven Pill Claims
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Monday announced that the state is suing Heartbeat International, an anti-abortion group, for making what she says are misleading and “incredibly dangerous” claims abo ... (Huff Post)
thom hartmann
Are Billionaires Simply Money Addicts - Like Scrooge McDuck?
Why are the GOP and billionaires so committed to gutting worker protections while increasing the wealth of the top one percent?
Less for Labor Means More for CEOs
Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream"
hypocrisy personified: the house is promoting an antisemitism bill to limit antisemitism, really!!!
HISTORY
excerpt: The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies
In a long tradition of “persecuting the refugee,” the State Department and FDR claimed that Jewish immigrants could threaten national security
Daniel A. Gross
smithsonian magazine
November 18, 2015
In the summer of 1942, the SS Drottningholm set sail carrying hundreds of desperate Jewish refugees, en route to New York City from Sweden. Among them was Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, a 28-year-old from Germany, who was also seeking entry to the United States. When he arrived, he told the same story as his fellow passengers: As a victim of persecution, he wanted asylum from Nazi violence.
But during a meticulous interview process that involved five separate government agencies, Bahr's story began to unravel. Days later, the FBI accused Bahr of being a Nazi spy. They said the Gestapo had given him $7,000 to steal American industrial secrets—and that he'd posed as a refugee in order to sneak into the country unnoticed. His case was rushed to trial, and the prosecution called for the death penalty.
What Bahr didn’t know, or perhaps didn’t mind, was that his story would be used as an excuse to deny visas to thousands of Jews fleeing the horrors of the Nazi regime.
World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen—although today's refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.
Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe that Bahr's case was practically unique—and the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion.
In the court of public opinion, the story of a spy disguised as a refugee was too scandalous to resist. America was months into the largest war the world had ever seen, and in February 1942, Roosevelt had ordered the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans. Every day the headlines announced new Nazi conquests.
Bahr was “scholarly” and “broad-shouldered,” a man Newsweek called “the latest fish in the spy net.” Bahr was definitely not a refugee; he had been born in Germany, but immigrated to the U.S. in his teens and become a naturalized citizen. He returned to Germany in 1938 as an engineering exchange student in Hanover, where he was contacted by the Gestapo.
At his preliminary hearing, the Associated Press reported that Bahr was “nattily clad in gray and smiling pleasantly.” By the time his trial began, he had little reason to smile; in a hefty 37-page statement, he admitted to attending spy school in Germany. His defense was that he'd planned to reveal everything to the U.S. government. But he sad he'd stalled because he was afraid. “Everywhere, no matter where, there are German agents,” he claimed.
Comments like these only fed widespread fears of a supposed “fifth column” of spies and saboteurs that had infiltrated America. U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle said in 1942 that “every precaution must be taken...to prevent enemy agents slipping across our borders. We already have had experience with them and we know them to be well trained and clever.” The FBI, meanwhile, released propaganda films that bragged about German spies who had been caught. “We have guarded the secrets, given the Army and Navy its striking force in the field,” one film said.
These suspicions were not only directed at ethnic Germans. “All foreigners became suspect. Jews were not considered immune,” says Richard Breitman, a scholar of Jewish history.
The American ambassador to France, William Bullitt, made the unsubstantiated statement that France fell in 1940 partly because of a vast network of spying refugees. “More than one-half the spies captured doing actual military spy work against the French Army were refugees from Germany,” he said. “Do you believe there are no Nazi and Communist agents of this sort in America?”
These kinds of anxieties weren't new, says Philip Orchard, a historian of international refugee policy. When religious persecution in the 17th century led to the flight of thousands of French Huguenots—the first group ever referred to as “refugees”—European nations worried that accepting them would lead to war with France. Later, asylum seekers themselves became objects of suspicion. “With the rise of anarchism at the turn of the 20th century, there were unfounded fears that anarchists would pose as refugees to enter countries to engage in violence,” Orchard says.
These suspicions seeped into American immigration policy. In late 1938, American consulates were flooded with 125,000 applicants for visas, many coming from Germany and the annexed territories of Austria. But national quotas for German and Austrian immigrants had been set firmly at 27,000.
Immigration restrictions actually tightened as the refugee crisis worsened. Wartime measures demanded special scrutiny of anyone with relatives in Nazi territories—even relatives in concentration camps. At a press conference, President Roosevelt repeated the unproven claims from his advisers that some Jewish refugees had been coerced to spy for the Nazis. “Not all of them are voluntary spies,” Roosevelt said. “It is rather a horrible story, but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”[...]
But during a meticulous interview process that involved five separate government agencies, Bahr's story began to unravel. Days later, the FBI accused Bahr of being a Nazi spy. They said the Gestapo had given him $7,000 to steal American industrial secrets—and that he'd posed as a refugee in order to sneak into the country unnoticed. His case was rushed to trial, and the prosecution called for the death penalty.
What Bahr didn’t know, or perhaps didn’t mind, was that his story would be used as an excuse to deny visas to thousands of Jews fleeing the horrors of the Nazi regime.
World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen—although today's refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.
Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe that Bahr's case was practically unique—and the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion.
In the court of public opinion, the story of a spy disguised as a refugee was too scandalous to resist. America was months into the largest war the world had ever seen, and in February 1942, Roosevelt had ordered the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans. Every day the headlines announced new Nazi conquests.
Bahr was “scholarly” and “broad-shouldered,” a man Newsweek called “the latest fish in the spy net.” Bahr was definitely not a refugee; he had been born in Germany, but immigrated to the U.S. in his teens and become a naturalized citizen. He returned to Germany in 1938 as an engineering exchange student in Hanover, where he was contacted by the Gestapo.
At his preliminary hearing, the Associated Press reported that Bahr was “nattily clad in gray and smiling pleasantly.” By the time his trial began, he had little reason to smile; in a hefty 37-page statement, he admitted to attending spy school in Germany. His defense was that he'd planned to reveal everything to the U.S. government. But he sad he'd stalled because he was afraid. “Everywhere, no matter where, there are German agents,” he claimed.
Comments like these only fed widespread fears of a supposed “fifth column” of spies and saboteurs that had infiltrated America. U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle said in 1942 that “every precaution must be taken...to prevent enemy agents slipping across our borders. We already have had experience with them and we know them to be well trained and clever.” The FBI, meanwhile, released propaganda films that bragged about German spies who had been caught. “We have guarded the secrets, given the Army and Navy its striking force in the field,” one film said.
These suspicions were not only directed at ethnic Germans. “All foreigners became suspect. Jews were not considered immune,” says Richard Breitman, a scholar of Jewish history.
The American ambassador to France, William Bullitt, made the unsubstantiated statement that France fell in 1940 partly because of a vast network of spying refugees. “More than one-half the spies captured doing actual military spy work against the French Army were refugees from Germany,” he said. “Do you believe there are no Nazi and Communist agents of this sort in America?”
These kinds of anxieties weren't new, says Philip Orchard, a historian of international refugee policy. When religious persecution in the 17th century led to the flight of thousands of French Huguenots—the first group ever referred to as “refugees”—European nations worried that accepting them would lead to war with France. Later, asylum seekers themselves became objects of suspicion. “With the rise of anarchism at the turn of the 20th century, there were unfounded fears that anarchists would pose as refugees to enter countries to engage in violence,” Orchard says.
These suspicions seeped into American immigration policy. In late 1938, American consulates were flooded with 125,000 applicants for visas, many coming from Germany and the annexed territories of Austria. But national quotas for German and Austrian immigrants had been set firmly at 27,000.
Immigration restrictions actually tightened as the refugee crisis worsened. Wartime measures demanded special scrutiny of anyone with relatives in Nazi territories—even relatives in concentration camps. At a press conference, President Roosevelt repeated the unproven claims from his advisers that some Jewish refugees had been coerced to spy for the Nazis. “Not all of them are voluntary spies,” Roosevelt said. “It is rather a horrible story, but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”[...]
Biden on Trump: He 'didn't build a damn thing'
President Joe Biden on Wednesday cast a major new investment in battleground Wisconsin as emblematic of the nation’s economic comeback.
But the main thrust of his address wasn’t so much to boast about the current climate as it was an attempt to contrast it with his predecessor’s record. Time and again, Biden took aim at former President Donald Trump, casting him as someone who talked but didn’t deliver. Even the setting of the speech itself was meant to deliver the point: Biden was highlighting a new Microsoft data center that would be built on grounds where then-President Trump announced that Foxconn would build a $10 billion factory for making LCD panels. That plant was never built, even after the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer received millions in subsidies and bulldozed homes and farms to build the factory. “He promised a $10 billion investment by Foxconn. He came with your senator, Ron Johnson, with a golden shovel and didn’t build a damn thing,” Biden said. “They dug a hole with those golden shovels and then they fell into it.” |
slavery 21st century!!!
US income inequality
‘We deserve more’: US workers’ share of the pie dwindles
Bureau of Labor Statistics releases latest estimate of how much labor receives of national income, showing bleak decline
Michael Sainato - the guardian
Mon 6 May 2024 07.00 EDT
When Jesse Motte began working at a Starbucks inside a Target store in Columbia, South Carolina, more than two years ago, $15 an hour sounded great. He was excited to start because it was the most he had ever made after working for years in the service industry.
The excitement has dissipated due to his inconsistent and erratic work schedule, the rising costs of necessities and the minuscule raises he and his co-workers receive annually. His most recent annual wage increase was $0.37 an hour.
Motte is not alone. This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest estimate for the share labor receives of national income for the first quarter of 2024. The statistics shows the income workers receive compared with the productivity their labor generates.
According to BLS, this income share has declined for non-farm workers from about two-thirds, 64.1% in the first quarter of 2001, to 55.8% in the first quarter of 2024.
Target raised their company minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2017 and has since only increased the range of starting wages, which vary from $15 to $24 an hour.
“I’ve been working here a little over two years and I still have not made it out of the $15-an-hour range,” said Motte. “Last week I got paid, my pay was about $700 for about 60 hours of work I did for two weeks. I still haven’t bought groceries, I’m still eating some canned food that I have.
“I’m still eating a bunch of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and drinking protein shakes. I’m scared to go buy groceries because I know if I do, I’m going to spend about $100 for not much.”
Motte explained that working at Starbucks in a Target store, he often has to deal with long lines toward the end of his shift while managing the closing duties, and that he can get pulled to work in different departments within Target. He said that for the work he and his co-workers do and their role in running Target stores, their pay is not enough, especially compared with the Target CEO Brian Cornell’s compensation.
In 2022, Target’s CEO was paid more than $17.6m in total compensation, 680 times more than the median worker at Target, and more than double the average for S&P 500 corporations. The company reported $5.7bn in profits in 2023.
CEO pay has soared 1,209.2% from 1978 to 2022, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, compared to a 15.3% rise in typical workers’ pay.
It’s part of several contributing factors to runaway income and wealth inequality that has resulted in low-income workers’ share of the pie dwindling as the distribution of wages in the US has trended toward high-end wage earners receiving more and more.
“We have an incredibly corrupt corporate governance structure,” said Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy research. “CEOs in the US get paid way more than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.”
He cited other contributing factors, such as the fallen corporate tax rate, patent and copyright monopolies that enable industries such as pharmaceuticals to price-gouge medications that are cheap to manufacture, industries such as Wall Street that are not taxed properly and are heavily subsidized, and policies that are unfriendly to labor unions.
“We could structure the market differently in ways that didn’t produce as much inequality as we have now,” Baker added. “The bulk of the story of wage stagnation for the typical worker has been that an increasing share of wage income has gone to high-end earners.”
Erica Groshen, a senior economics adviser at Cornell University and the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, also noted the median workers’ share of the national income had declined.
“We have these different components, and these influences have led both to a widening inequality and this declining share, particularly for workers on the lower end of the education spectrum,” said Groshen.
Rita Blalock has worked at McDonald’s in Durham, North Carolina, for 10 years. She recently received a wage increase that she spent years fighting for, to get her over $15 an hour.
Comparatively, the McDonald’s chief has one of the highest CEO-to-worker pay ratios in the world, at 1,224 times the median worker pay. A typical McDonald’s worker would have to work more than 1,200 years to make his compensation for a year.
“We deserve more than what we are getting paid. We deserve $25 an hour. Because executives are paid seven to eight figures, so they can afford to go have fun, go on vacations. Here I am, I have to sit here and work hard for them at their store,” said Blalock. “We are shorthanded. The customers are not happy. We tell them if pay was better, then maybe we could keep people longer and we wouldn’t have to work ourselves to death because we’re so short-staffed.”
Blalock’s sentiments are reflected in data on income and wealth inequality in recent decades.
From 1979 to 2022, wages for the top 1%of wage earners in the US rose by 171.1% compared to 32.9% for the bottom 90% of wage earners. In the same period, the share of total earnings for the bottom 90% declined 8.8% while it increased for the top 0.1% of earners by 4.6%.
Billionaires alone have gained $2.7tn since March 2020. According to a 2020 report published by the Rand Corporation, the wealthiest 1% in the US have taken $50tn from the bottom 90% in recent decades.
Productivity has failed to keep up with wage growth; from 1979 to 2019, net productivity for US workers increased by 59.7%, while typical compensation for a worker only grew by 15.8% in the same period. The median worker would have made an extra $9 an hour if the rates had grown together.
The federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 an hour since July 2009, the longest period in the minimum wage’s history without an increase, and it’s worth 29% less today than 15 years ago.
Cecilia Ortiz makes a little more than $16 an hour as a wheelchair attendant at Phoenix international airport in Arizona, where she has worked for a little less than two years.
She made $13.85 when she started and only received a raise after getting a promotion. Ortiz has been homeless and has health issues. But she receives no benefits from work; no healthcare, no vacation time or paid sick time, and she has to pay $50 a month for parking at the airport where she works.
“I love my job, I’m very good at my job, I have good relationships with my passengers during the time I’m with them, but I have to kind of sugarcoat the real situation, because they automatically assume that working in the airport I must be making good money. For the 1.5 years I’ve been working for these airlines, I’ve been sleeping on an air mattress. I still can’t afford to buy a dresser for my clothes,” explained Ortiz.
During a shift, Ortiz said, she can walk up to 15 miles. Her ability to take breaks is limited, depending on management’s preference, and she isn’t allowed to carry water with her through the airport, despite the exposure to Phoenix’s intensely hot temperatures in parts of the airport where there isn’t air-conditioning, such as the gate bridges to airplanes.
Her employer is a contractor for major US airlines, where CEOs receive millions of dollars in compensation, including $31.4m for the American Airlines CEO in 2023 and more than $34m in 2023 for the Delta Airlines CEO.
“There are thousands of us doing the same thing, we’re just trying to get by. We would like to live comfortably as well,” added Ortiz. “We’d like to be appreciated a little bit here. and it’s really not too much to ask, it’s a shame we have to ask. It’s an even bigger shame that we have to fight.”
The excitement has dissipated due to his inconsistent and erratic work schedule, the rising costs of necessities and the minuscule raises he and his co-workers receive annually. His most recent annual wage increase was $0.37 an hour.
Motte is not alone. This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest estimate for the share labor receives of national income for the first quarter of 2024. The statistics shows the income workers receive compared with the productivity their labor generates.
According to BLS, this income share has declined for non-farm workers from about two-thirds, 64.1% in the first quarter of 2001, to 55.8% in the first quarter of 2024.
Target raised their company minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2017 and has since only increased the range of starting wages, which vary from $15 to $24 an hour.
“I’ve been working here a little over two years and I still have not made it out of the $15-an-hour range,” said Motte. “Last week I got paid, my pay was about $700 for about 60 hours of work I did for two weeks. I still haven’t bought groceries, I’m still eating some canned food that I have.
“I’m still eating a bunch of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and drinking protein shakes. I’m scared to go buy groceries because I know if I do, I’m going to spend about $100 for not much.”
Motte explained that working at Starbucks in a Target store, he often has to deal with long lines toward the end of his shift while managing the closing duties, and that he can get pulled to work in different departments within Target. He said that for the work he and his co-workers do and their role in running Target stores, their pay is not enough, especially compared with the Target CEO Brian Cornell’s compensation.
In 2022, Target’s CEO was paid more than $17.6m in total compensation, 680 times more than the median worker at Target, and more than double the average for S&P 500 corporations. The company reported $5.7bn in profits in 2023.
CEO pay has soared 1,209.2% from 1978 to 2022, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, compared to a 15.3% rise in typical workers’ pay.
It’s part of several contributing factors to runaway income and wealth inequality that has resulted in low-income workers’ share of the pie dwindling as the distribution of wages in the US has trended toward high-end wage earners receiving more and more.
“We have an incredibly corrupt corporate governance structure,” said Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy research. “CEOs in the US get paid way more than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.”
He cited other contributing factors, such as the fallen corporate tax rate, patent and copyright monopolies that enable industries such as pharmaceuticals to price-gouge medications that are cheap to manufacture, industries such as Wall Street that are not taxed properly and are heavily subsidized, and policies that are unfriendly to labor unions.
“We could structure the market differently in ways that didn’t produce as much inequality as we have now,” Baker added. “The bulk of the story of wage stagnation for the typical worker has been that an increasing share of wage income has gone to high-end earners.”
Erica Groshen, a senior economics adviser at Cornell University and the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, also noted the median workers’ share of the national income had declined.
“We have these different components, and these influences have led both to a widening inequality and this declining share, particularly for workers on the lower end of the education spectrum,” said Groshen.
Rita Blalock has worked at McDonald’s in Durham, North Carolina, for 10 years. She recently received a wage increase that she spent years fighting for, to get her over $15 an hour.
Comparatively, the McDonald’s chief has one of the highest CEO-to-worker pay ratios in the world, at 1,224 times the median worker pay. A typical McDonald’s worker would have to work more than 1,200 years to make his compensation for a year.
“We deserve more than what we are getting paid. We deserve $25 an hour. Because executives are paid seven to eight figures, so they can afford to go have fun, go on vacations. Here I am, I have to sit here and work hard for them at their store,” said Blalock. “We are shorthanded. The customers are not happy. We tell them if pay was better, then maybe we could keep people longer and we wouldn’t have to work ourselves to death because we’re so short-staffed.”
Blalock’s sentiments are reflected in data on income and wealth inequality in recent decades.
From 1979 to 2022, wages for the top 1%of wage earners in the US rose by 171.1% compared to 32.9% for the bottom 90% of wage earners. In the same period, the share of total earnings for the bottom 90% declined 8.8% while it increased for the top 0.1% of earners by 4.6%.
Billionaires alone have gained $2.7tn since March 2020. According to a 2020 report published by the Rand Corporation, the wealthiest 1% in the US have taken $50tn from the bottom 90% in recent decades.
Productivity has failed to keep up with wage growth; from 1979 to 2019, net productivity for US workers increased by 59.7%, while typical compensation for a worker only grew by 15.8% in the same period. The median worker would have made an extra $9 an hour if the rates had grown together.
The federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 an hour since July 2009, the longest period in the minimum wage’s history without an increase, and it’s worth 29% less today than 15 years ago.
Cecilia Ortiz makes a little more than $16 an hour as a wheelchair attendant at Phoenix international airport in Arizona, where she has worked for a little less than two years.
She made $13.85 when she started and only received a raise after getting a promotion. Ortiz has been homeless and has health issues. But she receives no benefits from work; no healthcare, no vacation time or paid sick time, and she has to pay $50 a month for parking at the airport where she works.
“I love my job, I’m very good at my job, I have good relationships with my passengers during the time I’m with them, but I have to kind of sugarcoat the real situation, because they automatically assume that working in the airport I must be making good money. For the 1.5 years I’ve been working for these airlines, I’ve been sleeping on an air mattress. I still can’t afford to buy a dresser for my clothes,” explained Ortiz.
During a shift, Ortiz said, she can walk up to 15 miles. Her ability to take breaks is limited, depending on management’s preference, and she isn’t allowed to carry water with her through the airport, despite the exposure to Phoenix’s intensely hot temperatures in parts of the airport where there isn’t air-conditioning, such as the gate bridges to airplanes.
Her employer is a contractor for major US airlines, where CEOs receive millions of dollars in compensation, including $31.4m for the American Airlines CEO in 2023 and more than $34m in 2023 for the Delta Airlines CEO.
“There are thousands of us doing the same thing, we’re just trying to get by. We would like to live comfortably as well,” added Ortiz. “We’d like to be appreciated a little bit here. and it’s really not too much to ask, it’s a shame we have to ask. It’s an even bigger shame that we have to fight.”
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.
nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people
opinion
How Donald Trump is making America stupid
Sabrina Haake, Raw Story
May 06, 2024
Recent polls suggest half the country may vote against their own self-interests in November.
The self sabotage is head-turning: Christians who defend Donald Trump’s debauchery, poor people who give their money to a billionaire with rotating Ponzi schemes, pensioners who don’t understand that tax cuts for the 1 percent threaten their own entitlements.
As the new Time Magazine interview made clear, Trump has done nothing for the common man and everything for his wealthy donors. Yet somehow, in the MAGAverse, that fact doesn’t seem to compute.
To misquote Jesus, the stupid will always be among us.
But stupid seems to be spreading in the U.S., and data suggest that excessive sensory stimulation may be the cause.
Our politics reflect a cognitive decline
When Trump celebrated his 2016 election win, his declaration, “I love the poorly educated” made headlines. Nearly eight years on, it’s not that half the country supports violent coup attempts, it’s that half the country sincerely believes the 2020 election was stolen, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The United States seems to be slumbering toward Idiocracy, a funny-not-funny satire about Americans in the year 2500. Instead of possessing superior intellect, they have lost the ability to think. In the movie, Americans elect as president a dimwitted pro-wrestler — President Camacho — because he is loud and manipulative and they don’t know any better. The Trump sequel writes itself.
Amusing as that movie was, America’s declining cognition is serious. Americans’ logic, language and reading comprehension levels have fallen measurably. Last year, researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Oregon reported that, while Americans’ IQs increased dramatically over the past century, their cognitive abilities showed measurable decline between 2006 and 2018. Scores in three of four broad domains of intelligence fell during that period: logic, vocabulary and visual/mathematical problem-solving.
Excessive use of personal electronics, social media
In 1850, unwashed kids aged 6 to 18 were crammed into smelly one-room schoolhouses with no electricity or technology — and often no books. Yet despite their primitive educational settings, most still emerged well-versed in Latin, French, humanities and trigonometry.
Today, with whiteboards, laptops, separate rooms for each grade and teacher/student ratios at historical lows, student comprehension levels are falling instead of rising. Last year, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, math and reading scores for 13 year-olds hit their lowest scores in decades, which isn’t explained by the COVID-19 gap of recent years.
The explanation may be found in a growing reliance on smartphones, social media and electronic devices that offer addictive and excessive visual and audio stimulation, dulling the brain’s ability to think critically and organically.
Observational studies in human learning have shown a direct link between a child’s exposure to fast-paced television in the first three years of life and his subsequent attentional deficits as he gets older. Excessive sensory stimulation (ESS) during childhood has been shown to increase cognitive and behavioral deficits overall.
Even rising levels of ADHD among older children and college students are correlated with subjects’ early exposure to excessive electronic media.
Educators are taking cellphones out of the classroom
Educators are paying attention. This year, dozens of schools across the country have taken steps to remove cellphones from the classroom.
Although three-quarters of U.S. schools already disallow cellphone use in the classroom, it’s up to individual teachers to enforce, which results in high variability among schools and classrooms. Unruly and disruptive students who need instruction the most may be getting it the least as exhausted teachers pacify them with their cellphones to keep them quiet and in their seats so others may learn.
Congress is catching on, too. Bipartisan concern is growing over how cellphones and social media may be harming children. With about a third of U.S. teens reporting that they are on social media “almost constantly,” the U.S. surgeon general recently issued a warning about social media and mental health. It is clear that more studies on the relationship between ESS and both mental and cognitive health are needed.
Oddly enough, Congress may actually do something about it. In November, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill to study how cellphones affect mental health and cognitive development. The Focus on Learning Act, presently in committee, would require the U.S. Department of Education to complete a study on the effects of cellphone use in K-12 classrooms, both on students’ mental health and their academic performance.
Over-stimulation, overall, reduces our ability to think
It seems logical that over-stimulating the human brain with loud colors and noises would, over time, reduce our capacity for nuanced and critical thinking. Just as over-reliance on crutches can cause leg muscles to atrophy, over-exposure to electronics and addictive but thoughtless social media can atrophy the learning centers of the brain.
Smartphones aren’t the only culprit. Recent studies have also shown that high levels of noise, including exposure to high-decibel music at home or in the car, and loud, omnipresent television, also leads to cognitive impairment and oxidative stress in the brain.
It’s been reported that 100 million people are exposed to dangerous environmental noise due to traffic, personal listening devices and other sources. Noise pollution has emerged as a risk factor for depression, cognitive impairment and neurodegenerative disorders of the central nervous system leading to cognitive and memory defects.
It seems the entire nation could use a long walk in the woods, or an extended visit to one of our 429 national park sites — sans devices.
Education levels are affecting U.S. politics
America’s growing political divide may have more to do with education and cognition levels than policy differences. By wide margins, the mostly highly educated congressional districts in the United States elect Democrats, while the least educated districts elect Republicans.
According to data compiled by Politico, Democrats control 77% of the most highly educated congressional districts, while Republicans control 64% of the least educated districts. The rural poor love Trump, even though Democrats deliver kitchen table results that benefit them most: jobs, infrastructure, broadband, healthcare, and industry regulations so trains don’t derail and parts don’t fly off aircraft at 16,000 feet.
Maximilien Robespierre, one of the most influential figures of the French Revolution, was known for his attacks on the monarchy and his advocacy of democratic reforms. He famously wrote, “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”
Even though Trump’s closest advisers widely regard him as an idiot, he has a preternatural skill: manipulating ignorance.
Call it a conman’s intuition.
The self sabotage is head-turning: Christians who defend Donald Trump’s debauchery, poor people who give their money to a billionaire with rotating Ponzi schemes, pensioners who don’t understand that tax cuts for the 1 percent threaten their own entitlements.
As the new Time Magazine interview made clear, Trump has done nothing for the common man and everything for his wealthy donors. Yet somehow, in the MAGAverse, that fact doesn’t seem to compute.
To misquote Jesus, the stupid will always be among us.
But stupid seems to be spreading in the U.S., and data suggest that excessive sensory stimulation may be the cause.
Our politics reflect a cognitive decline
When Trump celebrated his 2016 election win, his declaration, “I love the poorly educated” made headlines. Nearly eight years on, it’s not that half the country supports violent coup attempts, it’s that half the country sincerely believes the 2020 election was stolen, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The United States seems to be slumbering toward Idiocracy, a funny-not-funny satire about Americans in the year 2500. Instead of possessing superior intellect, they have lost the ability to think. In the movie, Americans elect as president a dimwitted pro-wrestler — President Camacho — because he is loud and manipulative and they don’t know any better. The Trump sequel writes itself.
Amusing as that movie was, America’s declining cognition is serious. Americans’ logic, language and reading comprehension levels have fallen measurably. Last year, researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Oregon reported that, while Americans’ IQs increased dramatically over the past century, their cognitive abilities showed measurable decline between 2006 and 2018. Scores in three of four broad domains of intelligence fell during that period: logic, vocabulary and visual/mathematical problem-solving.
Excessive use of personal electronics, social media
In 1850, unwashed kids aged 6 to 18 were crammed into smelly one-room schoolhouses with no electricity or technology — and often no books. Yet despite their primitive educational settings, most still emerged well-versed in Latin, French, humanities and trigonometry.
Today, with whiteboards, laptops, separate rooms for each grade and teacher/student ratios at historical lows, student comprehension levels are falling instead of rising. Last year, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, math and reading scores for 13 year-olds hit their lowest scores in decades, which isn’t explained by the COVID-19 gap of recent years.
The explanation may be found in a growing reliance on smartphones, social media and electronic devices that offer addictive and excessive visual and audio stimulation, dulling the brain’s ability to think critically and organically.
Observational studies in human learning have shown a direct link between a child’s exposure to fast-paced television in the first three years of life and his subsequent attentional deficits as he gets older. Excessive sensory stimulation (ESS) during childhood has been shown to increase cognitive and behavioral deficits overall.
Even rising levels of ADHD among older children and college students are correlated with subjects’ early exposure to excessive electronic media.
Educators are taking cellphones out of the classroom
Educators are paying attention. This year, dozens of schools across the country have taken steps to remove cellphones from the classroom.
Although three-quarters of U.S. schools already disallow cellphone use in the classroom, it’s up to individual teachers to enforce, which results in high variability among schools and classrooms. Unruly and disruptive students who need instruction the most may be getting it the least as exhausted teachers pacify them with their cellphones to keep them quiet and in their seats so others may learn.
Congress is catching on, too. Bipartisan concern is growing over how cellphones and social media may be harming children. With about a third of U.S. teens reporting that they are on social media “almost constantly,” the U.S. surgeon general recently issued a warning about social media and mental health. It is clear that more studies on the relationship between ESS and both mental and cognitive health are needed.
Oddly enough, Congress may actually do something about it. In November, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill to study how cellphones affect mental health and cognitive development. The Focus on Learning Act, presently in committee, would require the U.S. Department of Education to complete a study on the effects of cellphone use in K-12 classrooms, both on students’ mental health and their academic performance.
Over-stimulation, overall, reduces our ability to think
It seems logical that over-stimulating the human brain with loud colors and noises would, over time, reduce our capacity for nuanced and critical thinking. Just as over-reliance on crutches can cause leg muscles to atrophy, over-exposure to electronics and addictive but thoughtless social media can atrophy the learning centers of the brain.
Smartphones aren’t the only culprit. Recent studies have also shown that high levels of noise, including exposure to high-decibel music at home or in the car, and loud, omnipresent television, also leads to cognitive impairment and oxidative stress in the brain.
It’s been reported that 100 million people are exposed to dangerous environmental noise due to traffic, personal listening devices and other sources. Noise pollution has emerged as a risk factor for depression, cognitive impairment and neurodegenerative disorders of the central nervous system leading to cognitive and memory defects.
It seems the entire nation could use a long walk in the woods, or an extended visit to one of our 429 national park sites — sans devices.
Education levels are affecting U.S. politics
America’s growing political divide may have more to do with education and cognition levels than policy differences. By wide margins, the mostly highly educated congressional districts in the United States elect Democrats, while the least educated districts elect Republicans.
According to data compiled by Politico, Democrats control 77% of the most highly educated congressional districts, while Republicans control 64% of the least educated districts. The rural poor love Trump, even though Democrats deliver kitchen table results that benefit them most: jobs, infrastructure, broadband, healthcare, and industry regulations so trains don’t derail and parts don’t fly off aircraft at 16,000 feet.
Maximilien Robespierre, one of the most influential figures of the French Revolution, was known for his attacks on the monarchy and his advocacy of democratic reforms. He famously wrote, “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”
Even though Trump’s closest advisers widely regard him as an idiot, he has a preternatural skill: manipulating ignorance.
Call it a conman’s intuition.
Natural Gas Is a Climate Scam — and Consumers Are Paying for It
Despite the fracking boom, the price of natural gas for US households has skyrocketed by 52 percent since 2016.
By Mike Ludwig , TRUTHOUT
Published May 4, 2024
Despite the fracking boom that made the United States the world’s top fossil fuel producer, the price households pay for natural gas skyrocketed by 52 percent between 2016 and 2023. The increase in energy bills was fueled in part by a surge in liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to foreign markets that is enriching the domestic fossil fuel industry, according to a new report released by the watchdog group Public Citizen this week.
Domestic natural gas production increased by 45 percent between 2016 and 2023, but the price manufacturers and other businesses paid for it rose by 31 precent over the same time frame. In June 2022, natural gas prices plunged by 30 percent after a fiery accident and massive explosion shut down an LNG export terminal in Freeport, Texas, underscoring the link between exports and domestic prices.
While global natural gas prices have cooled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine shocked the market in 2022, the cost of natural gas used by utilities to produce electricity is still 17 percent above 2016 levels, according to the report. U.S. households and businesses paid a total of $106 billion more for electricity in 2023 than in 2016. That increase has hit low-income families especially hard, with an estimated one in six households behind on energy bills as of January 2024.
The report, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, shows how the cost of natural gas shapes the economy by impacting the price of everything from fertilizer to the cost of electricity, for example, which in turn makes food production more expensive and lifts prices at the grocery store. The price of fertilizer is closely tied to the price of natural gas — the petrochemical industry depends on fossil fuels — and the cost to North American farmers ballooned by 400 percent between 2016 and 2023 due to increased exports and a volatile global market.
Even consumers in states where the fossil fuel industry is entrenched are paying more for energy, despite living in the shadow of the pollution that comes with extracting, transporting, refining and burning natural gas. Residents of Texas and Pennsylvania, the top two gas-producing states, saw their natural gas bills increase by 50 and 51 percent between 2016 and 2023, respectively. In Ohio, where fracking waste disposal threatens drinking water, residential households pay an average of $148 for natural gas each month, making Ohio second only to Alaska for the nation’s highest gas bills.
This is not what we were promised. As the fracking boom swept across the nation and made the U.S. the world’s top producer of fossil fuels, the industry spent years assuring the public that the explosion in “natural” gas production was a win-win. By unlocking vast shale formations, fracking would allow the nation to gain energy independence and provide cheap energy, all while replacing coal with a “bridge fuel” that burns cleaner and produces fewer climate-warming emissions.
However, the “bridge fuel” concept turned out to be a ruse, and just one of many, according to a multi-year congressional investigation released this week. Even top executives at BP knew back in 2017 that fossil fuel infrastructure leaks so much methane directly into the atmosphere that gas is no cleaner than coal over the course of its lifecycle. A recent study found that pollution leaked from oil and gas wells, pipelines and compressors causes $9.3 billion per year in damage linked to climate disruption, and that’s before the fossil fuels are burned for energy.
Of course, it was decades ago when scientists at ExxonMobil determined that their fossil fuel consumption was driving climate change but said nothing. Experts told the Senate budget committee on Wednesday that the industry shifted over the years from explicit climate denial to a more sophisticated strategy of “deception, disinformation and doublespeak” that wrongly paints “natural” gas as cleaner energy.
“Time and again, the biggest oil and gas corporations say one thing for the purposes of public consumption but do something completely different to protect their profits,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, during a hearing on Wednesday. “Company officials will admit the terrifying reality of their business model behind closed doors but say something entirely different, false, and soothing to the public.”
With the White House controlled by Democrats, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized new regulations in December that require oil and gas companies to update infrastructure and reduce methane pollution. Methane is essentially unrefined natural gas.
The U.S. produces more natural gas than any other country, but booming exports keep prices high for domestic industries and consumers, according Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. Republicans constantly complain that climate initiatives are raising prices for consumers, but it’s the industry’s rush to expand LNG export infrastructure that keeps prices high — and profits flowing.
“This is the whole intention of the push for LNG exports; it’s to make [gas] more expensive, because when you make it more expensive, you get bigger profits,” Slocum said in an interview. “There’s no hometown discount. These guys do not care … they don’t care about supplying gas to local communities.”
After coming under pressure from grassroots climate activists and local fishers on the Gulf Coast, where massive LNG terminals load huge tanker ships with liquified gas for export, the Biden administration announced in January a “pause” on permits for newLNG facilities while regulators reexamine whether exports are in the public interest. Well over a dozen export terminals are already causing air pollution, and at least 17 more are awaiting federal permits. Sixteen GOP-led states filed a federal lawsuit in response, arguing that a pause of permits for future export terminals would harm the economy in states such as Louisiana and Texas.
“This whole concept of ‘drill baby, drill’ for lower prices is a complete fabrication,” Slocum said. “The whole goal of pushing exports is making gobs of money for gas producers.”
Domestic natural gas production increased by 45 percent between 2016 and 2023, but the price manufacturers and other businesses paid for it rose by 31 precent over the same time frame. In June 2022, natural gas prices plunged by 30 percent after a fiery accident and massive explosion shut down an LNG export terminal in Freeport, Texas, underscoring the link between exports and domestic prices.
While global natural gas prices have cooled since the Russian invasion of Ukraine shocked the market in 2022, the cost of natural gas used by utilities to produce electricity is still 17 percent above 2016 levels, according to the report. U.S. households and businesses paid a total of $106 billion more for electricity in 2023 than in 2016. That increase has hit low-income families especially hard, with an estimated one in six households behind on energy bills as of January 2024.
The report, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, shows how the cost of natural gas shapes the economy by impacting the price of everything from fertilizer to the cost of electricity, for example, which in turn makes food production more expensive and lifts prices at the grocery store. The price of fertilizer is closely tied to the price of natural gas — the petrochemical industry depends on fossil fuels — and the cost to North American farmers ballooned by 400 percent between 2016 and 2023 due to increased exports and a volatile global market.
Even consumers in states where the fossil fuel industry is entrenched are paying more for energy, despite living in the shadow of the pollution that comes with extracting, transporting, refining and burning natural gas. Residents of Texas and Pennsylvania, the top two gas-producing states, saw their natural gas bills increase by 50 and 51 percent between 2016 and 2023, respectively. In Ohio, where fracking waste disposal threatens drinking water, residential households pay an average of $148 for natural gas each month, making Ohio second only to Alaska for the nation’s highest gas bills.
This is not what we were promised. As the fracking boom swept across the nation and made the U.S. the world’s top producer of fossil fuels, the industry spent years assuring the public that the explosion in “natural” gas production was a win-win. By unlocking vast shale formations, fracking would allow the nation to gain energy independence and provide cheap energy, all while replacing coal with a “bridge fuel” that burns cleaner and produces fewer climate-warming emissions.
However, the “bridge fuel” concept turned out to be a ruse, and just one of many, according to a multi-year congressional investigation released this week. Even top executives at BP knew back in 2017 that fossil fuel infrastructure leaks so much methane directly into the atmosphere that gas is no cleaner than coal over the course of its lifecycle. A recent study found that pollution leaked from oil and gas wells, pipelines and compressors causes $9.3 billion per year in damage linked to climate disruption, and that’s before the fossil fuels are burned for energy.
Of course, it was decades ago when scientists at ExxonMobil determined that their fossil fuel consumption was driving climate change but said nothing. Experts told the Senate budget committee on Wednesday that the industry shifted over the years from explicit climate denial to a more sophisticated strategy of “deception, disinformation and doublespeak” that wrongly paints “natural” gas as cleaner energy.
“Time and again, the biggest oil and gas corporations say one thing for the purposes of public consumption but do something completely different to protect their profits,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, during a hearing on Wednesday. “Company officials will admit the terrifying reality of their business model behind closed doors but say something entirely different, false, and soothing to the public.”
With the White House controlled by Democrats, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized new regulations in December that require oil and gas companies to update infrastructure and reduce methane pollution. Methane is essentially unrefined natural gas.
The U.S. produces more natural gas than any other country, but booming exports keep prices high for domestic industries and consumers, according Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. Republicans constantly complain that climate initiatives are raising prices for consumers, but it’s the industry’s rush to expand LNG export infrastructure that keeps prices high — and profits flowing.
“This is the whole intention of the push for LNG exports; it’s to make [gas] more expensive, because when you make it more expensive, you get bigger profits,” Slocum said in an interview. “There’s no hometown discount. These guys do not care … they don’t care about supplying gas to local communities.”
After coming under pressure from grassroots climate activists and local fishers on the Gulf Coast, where massive LNG terminals load huge tanker ships with liquified gas for export, the Biden administration announced in January a “pause” on permits for newLNG facilities while regulators reexamine whether exports are in the public interest. Well over a dozen export terminals are already causing air pollution, and at least 17 more are awaiting federal permits. Sixteen GOP-led states filed a federal lawsuit in response, arguing that a pause of permits for future export terminals would harm the economy in states such as Louisiana and Texas.
“This whole concept of ‘drill baby, drill’ for lower prices is a complete fabrication,” Slocum said. “The whole goal of pushing exports is making gobs of money for gas producers.”
Oh, to be a fly on the wall ...
NanceGreggs - du
Christians believe that at the moment of death, they will stand before their Creator to be judged, and either welcomed to heaven or condemned to hell.
Oh, to be there and hear a Trump-humper explain how he saw a lying, theiving, adulterous bigot, who proposed killing migrants at the border, a man who used the power of the presidency to enrich himself while his fellow citizens went hungry and homeless, who mocked those afflicted with a crippling disease, and proudly breaks every Commandment - and then compared him to Jesus Christ,
"Honestly, Your Godship, how could I not think that of all the men on earth, a selfish, self-centered, orange-faced braggart was 'chosen' by You to lead a nation? Surely you recognize that Donald Trump and Jesus are so alike, it's almost impossible to tell them apart."
If nothing else, at least God will get a few chuckles out of the MAGAts who try to wiggle their way out of eternal damnation with this sorry excuse.
I don't believe in God or a Final Judgement - but I often wonder if those MAGAts who do ever spend time practicing what they'll say in their own defence when their time comes.
Oh, to be there and hear a Trump-humper explain how he saw a lying, theiving, adulterous bigot, who proposed killing migrants at the border, a man who used the power of the presidency to enrich himself while his fellow citizens went hungry and homeless, who mocked those afflicted with a crippling disease, and proudly breaks every Commandment - and then compared him to Jesus Christ,
"Honestly, Your Godship, how could I not think that of all the men on earth, a selfish, self-centered, orange-faced braggart was 'chosen' by You to lead a nation? Surely you recognize that Donald Trump and Jesus are so alike, it's almost impossible to tell them apart."
If nothing else, at least God will get a few chuckles out of the MAGAts who try to wiggle their way out of eternal damnation with this sorry excuse.
I don't believe in God or a Final Judgement - but I often wonder if those MAGAts who do ever spend time practicing what they'll say in their own defence when their time comes.
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, May 5, 2024 at 4:33:26PM PT,
The Current Republican Debt is:
$16,695,191,011,685.90
which means that in a total of 24 years,
these four presidents have led to the creation of
94.69%
of the entire national debt
in only 9.6774% of the 248 years of the existence of the United States of America.
another corrupt federal judge!!!
Judge Cannon's secret right-wing getaway: Why didn't we know about this?
Federal judge in Trump's documents trial didn't tell us about those right-wing conferences at a Montana resort
By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV - salon
Columnist
PUBLISHED MAY 7, 2024 9:11AM (EDT)
Let me ask you a question: How many all-expenses-paid vacations at luxury hunting and fishing lodges have you enjoyed over the last few years? I’m not talking about a motel in the boonies of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or a drafty log cabin on a lake in Maine or Minnesota. We’re talking about a luxury resort on 1,200 acres alongside the Yellowstone River just outside Yellowstone National Park. We’re talking about a lodge featuring rooms with stone fireplaces that go for upwards of $1,000 a night in high season, meals that include “house-cured meats from local ranches, garden-fresh produce from nearby farms, and, of course plenty of Northwest craft beers and spirits,” as the resort’s website describes the offerings.
It's called the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, and it’s where George Mason University sends gaggles of federal judges for a week-long “colloquium” every year or so. Paid for by the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, the “colloquium” held at the Sage Lodge in 2021, for example, featured lectures on such subjects as “Woke Law!” – and yes, the exclamation point is part of the lecture topic — by one Todd J. Zywicki, who is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives of the Cato Institute. Another juicy topic covered at the Sage Lodge in 2021 was “Unprofitable Education: Student Loans, Higher Education Costs, and the Regulatory State,” also featuring a lecture by Zywicki, a topic that rings what we might call a rather different bell after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program last year.
The Antonin Scalia Law School, by the way, was established and largely funded by the efforts of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who helped put together $30 million from conservative donors, including Leo himself, to rename the law school after the late legendary right-wing justice, who it will be remembered died of a heart attack in 2016 at another luxury hunting lodge, that one in Texas, while on a trip paid for by wealthy conservative “friends of the court,” I guess we could call them. The other major donor to the Scalia Law School was the Charles Koch Foundation, which threw in a handy $10 million.
Why are we talking about luxury hunting lodges and right-wing “colloquiums” for judges? Because one of our favorite federal judges, Aileen Cannon of Florida, currently presiding over the case against Donald Trump over the secret documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago, was a guest at that same 2021 “colloquium” at the Sage Lodge, and the one held in 2022 as well. The thing is, Cannon failed to file the form known as a Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report, which lists whoever paid for the judge to attend the seminar, who the speakers were and what topics were discussed. The form is supposed to be posted on the website of every federal court within 30 days of the time a judge attending such an all-expenses-paid seminar. Cannon, however, somehow forgot to do so, so anyone who might be interested in learning who was paying for Cannon’s vacations and the nature of her judicial education would have been out of luck.
So why do we suppose Judge Cannon was so shy about who’s paying for her luxury trips and what she might have learned there? Oh, I don’t know … might it be because she didn’t want anyone to know about her links to the Leonard Leo wing of legal theory? Could it have been that she didn’t want it known that she had taken money from an organization that was in large part funded by billionaires friendly to the man whose case she was presiding over?
I mean, 10 grand or so in first-class air travel and luxury accommodations and bottomless trips to the luxo-resort’s “local produce” salad bar and steak pit might start to look like a bribe when you pay attention to what was actually being discussed between float trips down the Yellowstone and hikes through the mountains, don’t you think?
Wouldn’t you love to see the thank-you notes Cannon sent to Leonard Leo and his pals? I would. But until NPR called up Judge Cannon and asked her about her journeys out to the Montana luxury resort, nobody knew a thing about who had tried to curry favor with her. That was when she hurriedly filled out the forms and posted the disclosure she had actually been required to post within 30 days of returning from her trip.. So now we know what she was concealing, but we didn’t know where she had been or who she had been listening to when she first got the Trump case and made the rulings — later overturned by judges of the 11th Circuit — that many legal experts had said were ridiculously favorable to Trump.
Being a federal judge is a lifetime appointment. It’s almost impossible to get rid of a federal judge once they’re on the bench. But it’s not a right, it’s a privilege. Citizens should have the right to know who is attempting to influence judges and why. That’s why the Congress established federal reporting rules.
Right-wingers like Mitch McConnell and Leonard Leo made no secret of their ambition to appoint as many conservatives as they could to the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. Judges like Cannon sneak off to remote luxury lodges in Montana to listen to right-wing legal scholars spouting off on subjects that sound like topics at a CPAC convention, about “woke” laws and the “regulatory state,” and they do that for a reason: so we won’t know who’s paying for their time and their attention and their fun.
Gee, is it possible that Leonard Leo and his pals think they might be getting a return on their investment?
It's called the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, and it’s where George Mason University sends gaggles of federal judges for a week-long “colloquium” every year or so. Paid for by the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, the “colloquium” held at the Sage Lodge in 2021, for example, featured lectures on such subjects as “Woke Law!” – and yes, the exclamation point is part of the lecture topic — by one Todd J. Zywicki, who is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives of the Cato Institute. Another juicy topic covered at the Sage Lodge in 2021 was “Unprofitable Education: Student Loans, Higher Education Costs, and the Regulatory State,” also featuring a lecture by Zywicki, a topic that rings what we might call a rather different bell after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program last year.
The Antonin Scalia Law School, by the way, was established and largely funded by the efforts of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who helped put together $30 million from conservative donors, including Leo himself, to rename the law school after the late legendary right-wing justice, who it will be remembered died of a heart attack in 2016 at another luxury hunting lodge, that one in Texas, while on a trip paid for by wealthy conservative “friends of the court,” I guess we could call them. The other major donor to the Scalia Law School was the Charles Koch Foundation, which threw in a handy $10 million.
Why are we talking about luxury hunting lodges and right-wing “colloquiums” for judges? Because one of our favorite federal judges, Aileen Cannon of Florida, currently presiding over the case against Donald Trump over the secret documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago, was a guest at that same 2021 “colloquium” at the Sage Lodge, and the one held in 2022 as well. The thing is, Cannon failed to file the form known as a Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report, which lists whoever paid for the judge to attend the seminar, who the speakers were and what topics were discussed. The form is supposed to be posted on the website of every federal court within 30 days of the time a judge attending such an all-expenses-paid seminar. Cannon, however, somehow forgot to do so, so anyone who might be interested in learning who was paying for Cannon’s vacations and the nature of her judicial education would have been out of luck.
So why do we suppose Judge Cannon was so shy about who’s paying for her luxury trips and what she might have learned there? Oh, I don’t know … might it be because she didn’t want anyone to know about her links to the Leonard Leo wing of legal theory? Could it have been that she didn’t want it known that she had taken money from an organization that was in large part funded by billionaires friendly to the man whose case she was presiding over?
I mean, 10 grand or so in first-class air travel and luxury accommodations and bottomless trips to the luxo-resort’s “local produce” salad bar and steak pit might start to look like a bribe when you pay attention to what was actually being discussed between float trips down the Yellowstone and hikes through the mountains, don’t you think?
Wouldn’t you love to see the thank-you notes Cannon sent to Leonard Leo and his pals? I would. But until NPR called up Judge Cannon and asked her about her journeys out to the Montana luxury resort, nobody knew a thing about who had tried to curry favor with her. That was when she hurriedly filled out the forms and posted the disclosure she had actually been required to post within 30 days of returning from her trip.. So now we know what she was concealing, but we didn’t know where she had been or who she had been listening to when she first got the Trump case and made the rulings — later overturned by judges of the 11th Circuit — that many legal experts had said were ridiculously favorable to Trump.
Being a federal judge is a lifetime appointment. It’s almost impossible to get rid of a federal judge once they’re on the bench. But it’s not a right, it’s a privilege. Citizens should have the right to know who is attempting to influence judges and why. That’s why the Congress established federal reporting rules.
Right-wingers like Mitch McConnell and Leonard Leo made no secret of their ambition to appoint as many conservatives as they could to the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. Judges like Cannon sneak off to remote luxury lodges in Montana to listen to right-wing legal scholars spouting off on subjects that sound like topics at a CPAC convention, about “woke” laws and the “regulatory state,” and they do that for a reason: so we won’t know who’s paying for their time and their attention and their fun.
Gee, is it possible that Leonard Leo and his pals think they might be getting a return on their investment?
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"
Self-proclaimed Prophet Chris Reed: Muslims Can't Be Americans
Claiming to be a self-proclaimed as a prophet should tell you all you need to know how demented this man is.
Poll: States With Strict Abortion Bans Are Driving Young Workers Away
More than 6 in 10 young workers said they would "definitely" or "probably" not live in a state with abortion bans.
Federal Judge Condemns Alabama AG’s Abortion Prosecution Warning
“The right to interstate travel is one of our most fundamental constitutional rights,” the judge said in his ruling.
another mtg exposed!!!
Kathy Hochul
New York governor said Black kids in the Bronx do not know the word ‘computer’
Kathy Hochul made comment at California conference to showcase upstate AI center before apologizing on Monday night
Ed Pilkington in New York - the guardian
Tue 7 May 2024 08.53 EDT
The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has rapidly backtracked on remarks she made on Monday after she came under a blizzard of criticism for saying that Black children in the Bronx did not know the word “computer”.
Hochul had intended her appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California on Monday to showcase Empire AI, the $400m consortium she is leading to create an artificial intelligence computing center in upstate New York. Instead, she dug herself into a hole with an utterance she quickly regretted.
“Right now we have, you know, young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is,” she said. For good measure, she added: “They don’t know, they don’t know these things.”
The backlash was swift and piercing. Amanda Septimo, a member of the New York state assembly representing the south Bronx, called Hochul’s remarks “harmful, deeply misinformed and genuinely appalling”. She said on X that “repeating harmful stereotypes about one of our most underserved communities only perpetuates systems of abuse”.
Fellow assembly member and Bronxite Karines Reyes said she was deeply disturbed by the remarks and exhorted Hochul to “do better”. “Our children are bright, brilliant, extremely capable, and more than deserving of any opportunities that are extended to other kids,” she said.
Few public figures were prepared to offer the governor support. They included the speaker of the state assembly, Carl Heastie, who said her words were “inartful and hurtful” but not reflective of “where her heart is”.
The civil rights leader Al Sharpton also gave her the benefit of the doubt, saying that she was trying to make a “good point” that “a lot of our community is robbed of using social media because we are racially excluded from access”.
By Monday evening, Hochul had apologized. “I misspoke and I regret it,” she said.
In a statement to media, she said, “Of course Black children in the Bronx know what computers are – the problem is that they too often lack access to the technology needed to get on track to high-paying jobs in emerging industries like AI.”
This is not the first time this year that Hochul has found herself with her foot in her mouth. In February she envisaged what would happen if Canada attacked a US city, as a metaphor for the Israeli military operation in Gaza in response to the 7 October Hamas attacks.
“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” she said. That apology for a “poor choice of words” was made swiftly, too.
Hochul had intended her appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California on Monday to showcase Empire AI, the $400m consortium she is leading to create an artificial intelligence computing center in upstate New York. Instead, she dug herself into a hole with an utterance she quickly regretted.
“Right now we have, you know, young Black kids growing up in the Bronx who don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is,” she said. For good measure, she added: “They don’t know, they don’t know these things.”
The backlash was swift and piercing. Amanda Septimo, a member of the New York state assembly representing the south Bronx, called Hochul’s remarks “harmful, deeply misinformed and genuinely appalling”. She said on X that “repeating harmful stereotypes about one of our most underserved communities only perpetuates systems of abuse”.
Fellow assembly member and Bronxite Karines Reyes said she was deeply disturbed by the remarks and exhorted Hochul to “do better”. “Our children are bright, brilliant, extremely capable, and more than deserving of any opportunities that are extended to other kids,” she said.
Few public figures were prepared to offer the governor support. They included the speaker of the state assembly, Carl Heastie, who said her words were “inartful and hurtful” but not reflective of “where her heart is”.
The civil rights leader Al Sharpton also gave her the benefit of the doubt, saying that she was trying to make a “good point” that “a lot of our community is robbed of using social media because we are racially excluded from access”.
By Monday evening, Hochul had apologized. “I misspoke and I regret it,” she said.
In a statement to media, she said, “Of course Black children in the Bronx know what computers are – the problem is that they too often lack access to the technology needed to get on track to high-paying jobs in emerging industries like AI.”
This is not the first time this year that Hochul has found herself with her foot in her mouth. In February she envisaged what would happen if Canada attacked a US city, as a metaphor for the Israeli military operation in Gaza in response to the 7 October Hamas attacks.
“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” she said. That apology for a “poor choice of words” was made swiftly, too.
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.
the stealing continues!!!
Trump allies rake in lucrative contracts with right-wing non-profit they founded: report
Travis Gettys - raw story
May 6, 2024 1:24PM ET
The nonprofit Conservative Partnership Institute has enjoyed a substantial boost in fundraising after becoming a nerve center for the MAGA movement, but recent tax filings show much of that money has been funneled to corporations led by the group's leaders or their relatives.
The filings show the institute's three highest-paid contractors were each connected to insiders, including its president Edward Corrigan and his brother Patrick Corrigan, chief operating officer Wesley Denton and senior legal fellow Cleta Mitchell, which could be in violation of its nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service, reported the New York Times.
“There’s no checks and balances,” said Michael West, a lawyer at the New York Council of Nonprofits. "The potential for overpayment here is epic.”
The nonprofit has become a landing spot for Trump's former allies and staffers, including Mitchell, who assisted the former president in his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former senior adviser Stephen Miller.
The institute is funded by Republican political campaigns and conservative businesspeople.
“I’ve known them a long time,” said major donor Robert Bruce, a retired Texas aviation entrepreneur who has given "several hundred thousand" dollars. “They’re good people.”
Former Senator Jim DeMint founded the institute in 2017, after he was ousted as president of the conservative Heritage Institute, and its fundraising jumped — from $7 million in 2020 to $45 million in 2021 — after Democrats returned to power.
The newly flush organization bought a 2,200-acre retreat in Maryland and commercial properties near the U.S. Capitol, and the institute's leaders founded a series of companies in Delaware that soon contracted with the nonprofit.
“You have an obligation to behave in the interest of that organization,” said Linda Sugin, a professor of nonprofit law at Fordham University. “The problem is, when you’re on both sides of the transaction, then we’re skeptical that you’re going to put the organization’s interests before your own.”
The institute could have reduced its risks by soliciting outside bids to see whether insiders were charging market rates for their service or asked them to recuse themselves from decisions on hiring their own companies, Sugin said, and Corrigan and other leaders did not respond to requests for comment from the Times on whether those steps were taken.
The Conservative Partnership Institute could face financial penalties from regulators or lose its tax-exempt status if it is found to have improperly benefitted insiders, the Times reported.
The filings show the institute's three highest-paid contractors were each connected to insiders, including its president Edward Corrigan and his brother Patrick Corrigan, chief operating officer Wesley Denton and senior legal fellow Cleta Mitchell, which could be in violation of its nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service, reported the New York Times.
“There’s no checks and balances,” said Michael West, a lawyer at the New York Council of Nonprofits. "The potential for overpayment here is epic.”
The nonprofit has become a landing spot for Trump's former allies and staffers, including Mitchell, who assisted the former president in his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former senior adviser Stephen Miller.
The institute is funded by Republican political campaigns and conservative businesspeople.
“I’ve known them a long time,” said major donor Robert Bruce, a retired Texas aviation entrepreneur who has given "several hundred thousand" dollars. “They’re good people.”
Former Senator Jim DeMint founded the institute in 2017, after he was ousted as president of the conservative Heritage Institute, and its fundraising jumped — from $7 million in 2020 to $45 million in 2021 — after Democrats returned to power.
The newly flush organization bought a 2,200-acre retreat in Maryland and commercial properties near the U.S. Capitol, and the institute's leaders founded a series of companies in Delaware that soon contracted with the nonprofit.
“You have an obligation to behave in the interest of that organization,” said Linda Sugin, a professor of nonprofit law at Fordham University. “The problem is, when you’re on both sides of the transaction, then we’re skeptical that you’re going to put the organization’s interests before your own.”
The institute could have reduced its risks by soliciting outside bids to see whether insiders were charging market rates for their service or asked them to recuse themselves from decisions on hiring their own companies, Sugin said, and Corrigan and other leaders did not respond to requests for comment from the Times on whether those steps were taken.
The Conservative Partnership Institute could face financial penalties from regulators or lose its tax-exempt status if it is found to have improperly benefitted insiders, the Times reported.
STUCK ON STUPID!!!
elected officials who owe their offices to stupid voters
GOP LAWMAKER REFUSES APOLOGY AFTER 'AVALANCHE OF HATE' HITS HIM FOR CALLING TEENS 'RIPE'
Mike Johnson says he 'intuitively' knows 'illegals' vote — but it's not 'easily provable'
Republicans Nominate Dead Woman In IN-07
Jennifer Pace died from a sudden heart attack in March but that didn't stop Republicans from casting their ballots for her in Indiana's 7th district.
democracy in america!!!
'A gift to MAGA election deniers': Critics fume at new Georgia voting law
Travis Gettys - raw story
May 8, 2024 1:14PM ET
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation that allows more options to challenge election results while also restricting the options for voting.
The Republican governor signed bills into law that expand the opportunities to challenge a voter's eligibility, makes scanned ballots publicly available online, reduces the number of voting machines and requires election workers to be U.S. citizens, reported Law & Crime.
“By signing SB 189 to become law, Brian Kemp delivered a gift to MAGA election deniers,” said Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Senate Bill 189 establishes new "probable cause" criteria to allow residents to challenge voter qualifications, including evidence a person has died, voted in another election, obtained a homestead exemption on their taxes or registered to vote from a non-residential address.
They may also be removed from the voter rolls within 45 days of an election, which seems to violate the 90-day limit set by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
The bill also would grant Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third-party candidates access to the Georgia ballot if their party has qualified for the presidential ballot in at least 20 other states.
House Bill 974 will allow the public to access a database of scanned ballots that will be uploaded online by the second Friday after the election, but cleared of all personal identifying information, although it's not clear what cybersecurity measures will be taken to ensure the source data can't be hacked or otherwise made available before redactions are made.
The Republican governor signed bills into law that expand the opportunities to challenge a voter's eligibility, makes scanned ballots publicly available online, reduces the number of voting machines and requires election workers to be U.S. citizens, reported Law & Crime.
“By signing SB 189 to become law, Brian Kemp delivered a gift to MAGA election deniers,” said Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
Senate Bill 189 establishes new "probable cause" criteria to allow residents to challenge voter qualifications, including evidence a person has died, voted in another election, obtained a homestead exemption on their taxes or registered to vote from a non-residential address.
They may also be removed from the voter rolls within 45 days of an election, which seems to violate the 90-day limit set by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
The bill also would grant Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third-party candidates access to the Georgia ballot if their party has qualified for the presidential ballot in at least 20 other states.
House Bill 974 will allow the public to access a database of scanned ballots that will be uploaded online by the second Friday after the election, but cleared of all personal identifying information, although it's not clear what cybersecurity measures will be taken to ensure the source data can't be hacked or otherwise made available before redactions are made.
Bites from Real News
*5/8/2024*
*This School for Autistic Youth Can Cost $573,200 a Year. It Operates With Little Oversight, and Students Have Suffered.
No state agency has authority over Shrub Oak, one of the country's most expensive therapeutic boarding schools. As a result, parents and staff have nowhere to report bruised students and medication mix-ups.
‘How Do You Approve an Underground Toxic Waste Dump Without Telling Nobody?’
An oil and gas firm planned to convert a New Mexico water well into a disposal site for toxic wastewater. A familiar face stood in its way.
*From Toxic Mold to Rampant Fraud: How Privatizing Military Housing Became a Nightmare for Soldiers
The Pentagon wanted to offload rising maintenance costs. America’s service members have paid the price ever since.
Sony and Apollo Enter Talks to Buy Paramount: Report
COMING SOON
AJ McDougall
Breaking News Reporter
Published May 05, 2024 3:39PM EDT
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
Paramount Global has begun deal talks with a bidding group representing Sony and private-equity firm Apollo after the companies made a joint overture to acquire the entertainment giant for $26 billion, according to the The New York Times. Three people familiar with the matter told the newspaper on Sunday that a special committee of Paramount’s board of directors met on Saturday and signed off on the start of negotiations, which comes after an exclusive negotiating window between Paramount and Skydance Media lapsed on Friday night. The potential merger with Skydance, favored by controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, faced challenges from other shareholders, who said it favored her and Paramount parent company National Amusements too heavily. Another reported critic of the Skydance deal was Bob Bakish, the longtime chief executive of Paramount who was unceremoniously removed from his position by the board earlier this week. It was not immediately clear whether National Amusements, presided over by Redstone, would sign off on a Sony-Apollo buyout.
Madonna Draws Whopping 1.6 Million to Copacabana Beach for Free Concert
SHOWSTOPPER
Amanda Yen
Breaking News Intern
Published May 05, 2024 12:56PM EDT
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
An estimated 1.6 million people lit up Copacabana Beach in Brazil on Saturday night, transforming a free concert by Madonna into an all-out party—likely the third most-attended concert in history. Fans crowded the shore and several blocks near the famous Rio de Janiero beach, braving the heat to hear songs like “Vogue” and “Like a Prayer” by the 65-year-old pop icon. To accommodate the massive crowd, more than 3,000 police officers were stationed around the area, firefighters sprayed water at fans, and free drinking water was provided to keep concertgoers cool. (Heat safety was a heightened concern in Rio after a fan died of a heatstroke during a Taylor Swift concert months ago.) The city spent about $3.9 million to finance the event, with additional funding provided by private partners, and authorities estimate it could rake in as much as $60 million. “Rio, here we are, in the most beautiful place in the world, with the ocean, the mountains, Jesus,” Madonna told the crowd, referencing the Christ the Redeemer statue. “Magic.”
the key to republican support
*What's Inside*
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
A NEW STUDY DESCRIBES IN GROTESQUE DETAIL THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE ULTRARICH HAVE PERVERTED THE CHARITABLE GIVING INDUSTRY.
REALITY
HOW TRUMP AND BUSH TAX CUTS FOR BILLIONAIRES BROKE AMERICA
REALITY
FROM 1947 TO 2023: RETRACING THE COMPLEX, TRAGIC ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
REALITY
RED STATE CONSERVATIVES ARE DYING THANKS TO THE PEOPLE THEY VOTE FOR
REALITY
HOW TEXAS BECAME THE NEW "HOMEBASE" FOR WHITE NATIONALIST AND NEO-NAZI GROUPS
AMERICA
HOW THE GOP SUCKERED AMERICA ON TAX CUTS
REALITY
ADVOCATES SUE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FOR FAILING TO BAN IMPORTS OF COCOA HARVESTED BY CHILDREN(SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY)
RACISM AT HEART OF US FAILURE TO TACKLE DEADLY HEATWAVES, EXPERT WARNS
WHITE SUPREMACY
'MISLEADING': ALARM RAISED ABOUT MEDICARE ADVANTAGE 'SCAM'
REALITY
SLAVERY ISN’T JUST BLACK HISTORY — IT’S US HISTORY
RACE MATTERS
*late news of interest*
A Meditation On Practical Applications Of Stupidity
The Mystery of Anti-Vax & Anti-Mask
Kat Ignatz - DAILY KOS
Sunday August 01, 2021 · 5:00 AM PDT
...“The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” seems as good a way as any to explain the insane situation we’re in. It’s speculative, but in my opinion, guessing is all we’ve really got right now.
In his essay, Cipolla divides human beings into four categories and builds his theory on these characteristics.
His categories are:
And he presents his theory as five laws:
Taking Cipolla’s laws and looking for correlations with anti-vax/mask behavior, you can map out anti-vax/mask actions like this:
And you could do the same matching of Cipolla’s laws with anti-vax/mask actions, and together, we could come up with a big, five-part list of parallels between Cipolla’s theory and the anti-vax/mask movement.
And it would prove nothing.
But looking at it might make you wonder, like me, if there’s anything but dangerous, illogical, and incomprehensible behavior there.
Cipolla doesn’t explain stupid people. He simply says that they exist, and they’re irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. He states that irrational people can’t be understood by rational minds and cautions against getting involved with irrational people because it always comes with a cost that’s often a big cost.
He says the only hope is for rational people to create more gains than the losses that irrational people cause. He was an economist so his theory is all gains and losses, and another way to think about his four human traits is total gain, loss/gain, gain/loss, and total loss.
And maybe that’s the real answer here. Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger to our country, states, cities, friends, families, and selves, and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.
I like Cipolla’s theory, and I find it to be a compelling model for many of the problems we’re experiencing—like, for instance, Republicans.
In this writings, Cipolla makes a point of dividing bandits into Intelligent Bandits and Stupid Bandits. Intelligent bandits cause an equal amount of loss and gain, and they get everything they take from others. Stupid bandits cause more loss than gain, and they only get part of what they cause others to lose.
When I read that, I think about how Republicans are actively working to crash the US so they can keep their wealth and power. And then I think that they’re going so far with it that they may have moved from being stupid bandits to fully stupid because it’s irrational to think they’ll keep much of anything if the country collapses.
I also start thinking about how prevalent stupid banditry is in the world—as if it’s the only way to do business. The “bigs” are especially dangerous: big agriculture, apparel, chemical, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals, retail, etc.
We’re all losing our lives in one way or another to these dubious ventures.
But that’s my mind drifting on to a topic for another diary, and I’ll stop this one here.
In his essay, Cipolla divides human beings into four categories and builds his theory on these characteristics.
His categories are:
- Intelligent People whose actions benefit others and themselves
- Helpless People whose actions harm them but benefit others
- Bandits whose actions harm others but benefit them
- Stupid People whose actions harm others but don’t benefit them and may, in fact, harm them, too
And he presents his theory as five laws:
- Everyone always underestimates how many stupid people there are.
- Stupidity is unrelated to any other human trait.
- Stupid people cause losses to others without gain and, possibly, with losses to themselves.
- Non-stupid people always underestimate how harmful stupid people are.
- Stupid people are the most dangerous type of person.
Taking Cipolla’s laws and looking for correlations with anti-vax/mask behavior, you can map out anti-vax/mask actions like this:
- How many: 30% of the US population is hesitating, resisting, or outright refusing to get a coronavirus vaccine.
- Unrelated to other traits: Health care workers are protesting against getting vaccinated.
- No gain and possible losses: Not even the threat of death is changing anti-vax/mask behavior.
- How harmful: Who would have predicted that Missouri would end up in such terrible condition?
- Most dangerous: Anti-vax/maskers are bringing the systems we rely on for our safety and health to the brink of crashing.
And you could do the same matching of Cipolla’s laws with anti-vax/mask actions, and together, we could come up with a big, five-part list of parallels between Cipolla’s theory and the anti-vax/mask movement.
And it would prove nothing.
But looking at it might make you wonder, like me, if there’s anything but dangerous, illogical, and incomprehensible behavior there.
Cipolla doesn’t explain stupid people. He simply says that they exist, and they’re irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. He states that irrational people can’t be understood by rational minds and cautions against getting involved with irrational people because it always comes with a cost that’s often a big cost.
He says the only hope is for rational people to create more gains than the losses that irrational people cause. He was an economist so his theory is all gains and losses, and another way to think about his four human traits is total gain, loss/gain, gain/loss, and total loss.
And maybe that’s the real answer here. Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger to our country, states, cities, friends, families, and selves, and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.
I like Cipolla’s theory, and I find it to be a compelling model for many of the problems we’re experiencing—like, for instance, Republicans.
In this writings, Cipolla makes a point of dividing bandits into Intelligent Bandits and Stupid Bandits. Intelligent bandits cause an equal amount of loss and gain, and they get everything they take from others. Stupid bandits cause more loss than gain, and they only get part of what they cause others to lose.
When I read that, I think about how Republicans are actively working to crash the US so they can keep their wealth and power. And then I think that they’re going so far with it that they may have moved from being stupid bandits to fully stupid because it’s irrational to think they’ll keep much of anything if the country collapses.
I also start thinking about how prevalent stupid banditry is in the world—as if it’s the only way to do business. The “bigs” are especially dangerous: big agriculture, apparel, chemical, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals, retail, etc.
We’re all losing our lives in one way or another to these dubious ventures.
But that’s my mind drifting on to a topic for another diary, and I’ll stop this one here.