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Clovis even more morbidly obese than Christie.
Just yet another ignorant, anti-science, anti-self-health-care, incompetent political hack asshole to insult, disrespect professional govt employees and degrade, up USDA.
the oligarchy/Capital gets more power over, becomes less challengeable by Labor
Top Republicans Just Filed A Bill To Eviscerate The National Labor Relations Board
Now, with Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, a gaggle of the most conservative members of the U.S. Senate have introduced a bill to defang the NLRB forever.
The sponsors, all Republicans, are Senators Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Luther Strange of Alabama and Marco Rubio of Florida.
What these right wing activists are calling the “Protecting American Jobs Act”
would strip the NLRB of its power to prosecute and to act as a judge in labor disputes.
It would
transfer the power to hear labor disputes to the already overcrowded federal courts, which would raise the legal cost of any action
and ensure it would take a long time to be settled.
The NLRB would still be allowed to conduct investigations of labor disputes but it would not be allowed to prosecute or judge them. It would be like a cat with its teeth and nails removed.
http://washingtonjournal.com/2017/07...lations-board/
Clovis even more morbidly obese than Christie.
Just yet another ignorant, anti-science, anti-self-health-care, incompetent political hack asshole to insult, disrespect professional govt employees and degrade, up USDA.
Trump administration seeks to sidestep border wall environmental study
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol plans to use a 2005 anti-terror law to sidestep an environmental impact study for a section of President Donald
Trump's border wall that will pass through a Texas national refuge for endangered ocelots
, according to two government sources familiar with the matter.
Trump's 2018 budget proposal calls for 32 miles (51 km) of new border wall in the Rio Grande Valley Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border,
where the 2,000-acre Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge is located.
The area near the southern tip of Texas is home to 400 species of birds as well as a dwindling population of federally protected ocelots. Only about 50 ocelots remain in the United States, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The sources said CBP officials had informed them CBP would rely on exemptions provided to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under the Real ID Act, a law created on recommendations from the 9/11 Commission, so
they can start building the section of wall without waiting for the years-long environmental study.
Environmental impact studies are generally required under federal law whenever a proposal is made to build on public lands, including national forests, wildlife refuges and land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
The Real ID Act also allows the secretary of Homeland Security to exempt CBP from adhering to the Endangered Species Act, which the sources said would otherwise make the wall's construction inside the refuge impossible due to the presence of the ocelots.
The sources asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...e=domesticNews
So nature, the law, UP everything the Repugs touch.
Farmworkers Protest EPA’s Pesticide Ruling
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency to rebuff the advice of its own scientists to ban the brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos has prompted protests from California’s farm worker communities, now demanding an immediate statewide ban of the dangerous chemical.
A delegation delivered more than 167,000 pe ion signatures along with a letter signed by 75 organizations representing hundreds of thousands of Californians.
The pe ion was also co-signed by
Care2,
Center for Biological Diversity,
Center for Environmental Health,
Center for Food Safety,
Courage Campaign,
CREDO,
Friends of the Earth, and
Pesticide Action Network.
EPA scientists have do ented that
chlorpyrifos can cause serious and profound neurological and respiratory damage, as well as developmental delays, autism and IQ loss for children — even in very small doses,
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/2...ticide-ruling/
of course, the "EPA scientists" have all been purged, then Trash as added an obese, ignorant greasebag as chief scientist at USDA.
Kushner still selling $500,000 visas to Chinese investors as program meant to help poor is subverted
Far from being shut down, the scheme is still going on, and Jared Kushner is more deeply involved than ever.
Jared Kushner's status as a top aide to President Donald Trump was used to lure Chinese investors to his family's New Jersey development, even after his family's company apologized for mentioning his name during a sales pitch in May, CNN has found.
Kushner is selling entry into the United States for people that invest in his buildings. And it’s working.
References to Kushner are part of online promotions by two businesses that are working with Kushner Companies to find Chinese investors willing to invest in the 1 Journal Square development in exchange for a US visa. …
The promotions are aimed at bringing in investors who pay at least $500,000 apiece and in exchange get US visas, and potentially green cards, for themselves and their families if the development meets certain criteria.
The deals are part of a legal US government program called EB-5, which grants up to 10,000 immigrant visas per year.
That program, in turn, is part of the extremely loose set of regulations intended to funnel foreign investments into real estate development. That’s great for developers, but often not so great for home buyers in the U.S. who find that their compe ion extends far beyond families in the same neighborhood.
Real estate developers have often used the program to develop luxury properties, especially when analysis leads U.S. banks to believe those properties aren’t a good fit for the markets where they’re being built.
The original intent of the EB-5 visa program was to promote investments into poor neighborhoods.
But, like so many other loopholes, ultra-wealthy developers have hijacked the program to build gold-plated palaces.
A block south of Central Park in Manhattan, construction crews are working on the base of what is poised to be the tallest apartment building in the country and the latest condominium tower to cater to the super rich.
It is also poised to be the latest skyscraper to benefit from a provision of a federal immigration program meant to aid distressed neighborhoods and rural areas, offering a striking example of what lawmakers and critics have called a widespread abuse of the program known as EB-5.
That tower off Central Park is being built by Extell Development, another of the large New York development firms. But it’s a prime example of how EB-5 visas have come to be a benefit to developers like Trump and Kushner—and turned into a weapon against the
people they were designed to help.
Kushner’s 1 Journal Square development in Jersey City is currently wrangling with local authorities who have pulled away from providing the 30-year tax abatement that Jared and Company want.
That fight has put the $821 million tower in jeopardy. But it hasn’t stopped Kushner’s firm from peddling the building in China.
A former White House ethics expert tells CNN the EB-5 program already raises a potential government-backed quid pro quo -- favorable immigration status in exchange for investment dollars. And he says any use of the President's son-in-law as a marketing tool is ethically unacceptable.
To which you can expect Trump’s team to respond as they have to every other ethical issue: So what?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/21/1682718/-Kushner-still-selling-500k-visas-to-Chinese-investors-as-program-meant-to-help-poor-is-subverted?detail=emaildkre
I bet the lobbyists who wrote and sold EB-5 as a program to develop poor areas absolutely knew it would be used by developers for luxury developments.
Trump's DOJ gears up for crackdown on marijuana
President Trump’s Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, led by Sessions, is expected to release a report next week that criminal justice reform advocates fear will link marijuana to violent crime and recommend tougher sentences for those caught growing, selling and smoking the plant.
Sessions sent a letter in May asking congressional leaders to do away with an amendment to the DOJ budget prohibiting the agency from using federal funds to prevent states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana."
“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” said the letter from Sessions, first obtained by Massroots.com and verified by The Washington Post.
As for the task force, Sessions said another subcommittee would “explore our use of asset forfeiture and make recommendations on any improvements needed to legal authorities, policies, and training to most effectively attack the financial infrastructure of criminal organizations.”
On Wednesday, Sessions reportedly re-established a controversial criminal asset seizure program ahead of the committee’s recommendations.
The Trump administration is readying for a crackdown on marijuana users under Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
President Trump’s Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, led by Sessions, is expected to release a report next week that criminal justice reform advocates fear will link marijuana to violent crime and recommend tougher sentences for those caught growing, selling and smoking the plant.
Sessions sent a memo in April updating the U.S. Attorney’s Offices and Department of Justice Department (DOJ) component heads on the work of the task force, which he said would be accomplished through various subcommittees. In the memo, Sessions said he has asked for initial recommendations no later than July 27.
“Task Force subcommittees will also undertake a review of existing policies in the areas of charging, sentencing, and marijuana to ensure consistency with the Department's overall strategy on reducing violent crime and with Administration goals and priorities,” he wrote. Criminal justice reform advocates fear Sessions’s memo signals stricter enforcement is ahead.
“The task force revolves around reducing violent crime and Sessions and other DOJ officials have been out there over the last month and explicitly the last couple of weeks talking about how immigration and marijuana increases violent crime,” said Inimai Chettiar, director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program.
“We’re worried there’s going to be something in the recommendations that is either saying that that’s true or recommending action be taken based on that
being true.”
Sessions sent a letter in May asking congressional leaders to do away with an amendment to the DOJ budget prohibiting the agency from using federal funds to prevent states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana."
“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” said the letter from Sessions, first obtained by Massroots.com and verified by The Washington Post.
As for the task force, Sessions said another subcommittee would “explore our use of asset forfeiture and make recommendations on any improvements needed to legal authorities, policies, and training to most effectively attack the financial infrastructure of criminal organizations.”
On Wednesday, Sessions reportedly re-established a controversial criminal asset seizure program ahead of the committee’s recommendations.
Local law enforcement leaders say a crackdown appears to be next, though they argue there’s no need for it.
“From a prac ioner’s point of view, marijuana is not a drug that doesn’t have some danger to it, but it’s not the drug that’s driving violent crime in America,”
http://thehill.com/regulation/admini...n-on-marijuana
Life long AL Confederate racist Sessions gonna big him 100Ks of black and brown pot heads.
important priorities
white male supremacy has been a Repug racist priority for 50 years.
Nixon's War on Drugs targeted blacks, because they're black, and hippies, because resisted the VN war.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 07-24-2017 at 07:21 AM.
As Trump wages war on legal marijuana, military veterans side with pot
The 2 million-member American Legion last spring got involved in a big way by launching a campaign to reduce marijuana restrictions that, it says, hurt veterans and may aggravate a suicide epidemic.
The move reflects the changing politics of marijuana and of a conservative, century-old veterans service organization facing new challenges as its
membership grows with those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-n...s=mcnewsletter
I suppose Trash and Little Jeffie have no plan to stop the CIA trafficking cocaine and heroin.
Sessions was hired as slave state racist, and he's delivering
Sessions sets limits on U.S. federal funding for sanctuary cities
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...2F+Top+News%29
House Vote on CFPB Forced Arbitration Rule a Victory for Big Banks and Predatory Lenders
AFR Condemns House Vote to Roll Back CFPB Rule Curbing Forced Arbitration\
“Members of Congress who voted to roll back this rule have thrown in their lot with Wall Street banks and predatory lenders,
who all want to be able to rip off their customers, and
then use forced arbitration as their get-out-of-jail-free card,
so they can keep profiting from illegal actions,”
“They voted for denying Americans the right to take a bank to court if they have been defrauded.”
voters were asked in a recent poll if the rule helps hold companies accountable, or whether it encourages frivolous lawsuits.
Sixty-six percent of those surveyed approved of the rule,
with 77 percent of Democrats,
68 percent of Independents and
55 percent of Republicans in favor.
Support was broadly consistent across regions.
http://ourfinancialsecurity.org/2017...atory-lenders/
Reflexively, Repug ignore citizens' preferences, even their own voters' preferences, to spread their cheeks for BigFinance checks.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 07-25-2017 at 05:21 PM.
ICE agent anonymously speaks out: 'We seem to be targeting the most vulnerable, not the worst'
The agent, who has worked in federal immigration enforcement since the Clinton Administration, has been unsettled by the new order at ICE.
During the campaign, many rank-and-file agents publicly cheered Trump’s pledge to deport more immigrants, and, since Inauguration Day, the Administration has explicitly encouraged them to pursue the undo ented as aggressively as possible.
“We’re going to get sued,” the agent told me at one point.
“You have guys who are doing whatever they want in the field, going after whoever they want.”
At first, the agent spoke to me on the condition that I not publish anything about our conversations. But that has changed. Increasingly angry about the direction in which ICEis moving,
“We used to look at things through the totality of the cir stances when it came to a removal order—that’s out the window,”
People say, ‘Well, they put themselves in this position because they came illegally.’ I totally understand that. But you have to remember that our job is not to judge. The problem is that now there are lots of people who feel free to feel contempt.”
“I don’t see the point in it,” the agent said.https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...tail=emaildkre
“The plan is to take them back into custody, and then figure it out. I don’t understand it. We’re doing it because we can, and it bothers the out of me.”
The agent went on,
“The whole idea is targeting kids.
I know that technically they meet the legal definition of being adults. Fine.
We’re not doing what we tell people we do.
If you look next month, or at the end of this month, at the people in custody, it’s people who’ve been here for years. They’re supposed to be in high school.”
The agent was especially concerned about a new policy that
allows ICE to investigate cases of immigrants who may have paid smugglers to bring their children or relatives into the country.
ICE considers these family members guilty of placing children “directly in harm’s way,” as one spokeswoman recently put it, and
the agency will hold them “accountable for their role in these conspiracies.”
“We seem to be targeting the most vulnerable people, not the worst.”
The agent also believes that the policy will make it harder for the government to handle unaccompanied children who show up at the border.
“You’re going to have kids stuck in detention because parents are too scared of being prosecuted to want to pick them up!” the agent said.
Trash "bad hombres"?
Trump’s Energy Secretary Just Got Humiliated By Russian Pranksters
U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, who oversees America’s nuclear stockpile among his many duties, spent 22 minutes on the phone recently with two Russian prankers while he thought he was talking to the president of the Ukraine.
http://washingtonjournal.com/2017/07...an-pranksters/
Trash protecting BigCorp criminal tax evaders
U.S. government delays Obama earnings-stripping rule deadline
- The U.S. government on Friday gave companies an extra year to comply with an Obama-era regulation meant to crack down on corporations that try to minimize their U.S. tax bills by shifting profits abroad to countries with lower tax rates.
The regulation, known in corporate tax circles as the "385 rule," is intended to combat a tax-avoidance technique called earnings-stripping, in which multinational corporations transfer taxable income from a U.S. subsidiary to a foreign affiliate in the guise of tax-deductible interest payments on internal debt.
The rule, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is now reviewing as part of the Trump administration's push for deregulation, seeks to eliminate the incentive for earnings-stripping by reclassifying certain loans as equity under Section 385 of the U.S. tax code.
The change converts tax-deductible interest payments employed by the schemes into taxable stock dividends.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...2F+Top+News%29
Trash and predatory BigFinance asshole Mnuchin will kill this rule
Of course Trash supports a crapified internet
Trump Net Neutrality: White House Offers Support For FCC Plan To End Protections
The White House offered its support Tuesday to the proposal of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to do away with Obama-era net neutrality protections.
“We support the FCC chair’s efforts to review and consider rolling back these rules and believe that the best way to get fair rules for everyone is for Congress to take action and create regulatory and economic certainty,”
The “Restoring Internet Order” plan,
proposed by Donald Trump appointee Ajit Pai, received nearly 10 million comments in total including 4.7 million in the last 30 days.
http://www.ibtimes.com/trump-net-neu...ctions-2567446
The oligarchy always get its laws and regs passed (or removed) when the Repug s are in power.
This is richer
That red herring is just as rich as your poor understanding of strawmen
Sally Yates Just Alerted The American People To Trump’s Tyrannical Takeover Of The Justice Department
“President Trump’s actions appear aimed at destroying the fundamental independence of the Justice Department,” Yates writes in a New York Times op-ed published today.
“All the while,he’s ripping the blindfold off Lady Justice and attempting to turn the department into a sword to seek vengeance against his perceived enemies and a shield to protect himselfand his allies.”
“The president is attempting to dismantle the rule of law,” says the former U.S Attorney and Deputy Director of the Justice Department, “destroy the time-honored independence of the Justice Department, and undermine the career men and women who are devoted to seeking justice day in and day out, regardless of which political party is in power.”
“At its core,” writes Yates, “the President’s complaint is that he doesn’t have a political ally at the Justice Department to protect him from the Russia investigation.
And he is apparently trying to bully Mr. Sessions into resigning so he can put someone in place who will.”
“In short, no one at the White House should have anything to do with the decisions about whom or what to investigate or prosecute. Period.”
“We must do more than rubberneck as we drive past this car crash,” concludes Yates.
“We all have a responsibility to protect our Justice Department’s ability to do its job free from interference.
The very foundation of our justice system – the rule of law – depends on it.”
her warning implies an even larger threat.
Trump’s heroes are dictators and authoritarian leaders who take control of the justice system – both prosecutors and the courts- to get their way, just as they try to destroy a free press and discourage anyone from voting who is not guaranteed to support their position.
http://washingtonjournal.com/2017/07/28/sally-yates-just-alerted-american-people-trumps-tyrannical-takeover-justice-department/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/o...rump.html?_r=0
Senate Advances Bill Undermining Trump Administration's Energy Research Cuts
The Senate Appropriations Committee moved to sustain funding for energy research and development,Last week, the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal year 2018 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, which establishes funding levels for energy and water research, development, and infrastructure.
breaking with the president and House of Representatives
The bill provides $38.4 billion to fund U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) programs, critical infrastructure projects administered by the Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation, and related agencies.
The bill is $629 million above the fiscal year 2017 enacted level and a whopping $4.1 billion above the President’s request — which cut some DOE programs by as much as 70 percent. The bill was approved 30-1.
First, it not only restores but increases funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), which funds high-risk, high-reward research with the potential to achieve breakthroughs in U.S. energy competiveness.
While the President’s budget request and the House appropriations bill both
aimed to zero-out and eliminate ARPA-E,
the Senate bill increases its funding by $24 million versus fiscal year 2017 levels.
The Senate bill’s second major break from the President and the House is its relatively high funding levels for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
The Senate bill funds EERE at $1.94 billion, roughly $153 million below fiscal year 2017 levels. This cut pales in comparison to the President’s proposed cut of $1.45 billion (70 percent) or the House’s cut of $986 million (47 percent).
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...research-cuts/
Will the House Repug Freedom Kockus succeed in destroying DoE? That's their goal.
The Office of Environmental Justice Is on the Chopping Block -- Can Democrats Save It?
This tiny corner of the EPA was established 24 years ago to advocate for minorities and the poor, populations most likely to face the consequences of pollution and least able to advocate for themselves.
It does so by acting as a middleman, connecting vulnerable communities with those who can help them. It heads a group that advises EPA officials about injustices and another that brings together representatives from other federal agencies and the White House to swap proposals.
Trump's budget proposal would effectively eliminate the office and the $2 million it takes to operate it.
with the Office of Environmental Justice's fate in doubt, it's become achingly apparent that well before Trump, those who purported to champion environmental justice -- primarily Democratic legislators and presidents -- did little to codify the progress and programs related to it, even when they were best positioned politically to do so.
Trump Takes Aim
Six months into the Trump administration, environmental regulation and enforcement is in broad retreat.
Changes at the EPA have
made it easier to dump coal-mining waste in waterways,
spew greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and
spray a pesticide that has been found to damage the developing brains of children.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has banned settlements in cases that allowed companies to fund community projects not directly related to their violations. For example, when
Harley Davidson was cited for selling equipment that polluted the air, it agreed to give $3 million
to an American Lung Association program to help people replace wood stoves with cleaner appliances -- a move toward clean air that was unrelated to motorcycles, but would've helped low-income homeowners. Last week,
the Department of Justice said it didn't have to pay.
You weaken policy development when you don't have an Office of Environmental Justice to play a role in that space.
"You're placing communities' health at risk, and most people don't get that,"
Pruitt "I agree that it is important that all Americans be treated equally under the law,"
he said in written responses to questions raised during his confirmation hearing, "including the environmental laws."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/4...ocrats-save-it
Leaked Kushner Tape Just Confirmed Our Worst Fears On His “Job” Securing Middle East Peace
Yesterday, White House advisor and Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner delivered a closed door speech to a group of Republican Congressional interns who were warned against recording the off-the-record speech.
Today, seven and a half minutes of leaked audio were published
by WIREDfrom the session (below) in which Kushner discusses his approach to solving the Middle East conflict.
Kushner begins his remarks about the Middle East by reassuring everyone that he has researched the topic and history extensively, and says “what I’ve determined from looking at it is that not a whole lot has been accomplished over the last 40 or 50 years we’ve been doing this.”
, offering all the insight of a high school sop re trying to fill a 1,000-word essay on a book he hasn’t read.
He then admits that, after his exhaustive research into the Middle East’s past, he is ready to cast the history and its potential lessons aside.
http://washingtonjournal.com/2017/08...le-east-peace/
He and his airbrain wifey are worth $100Ms, mostly inherited, but are DUMB AS
Paul Ryan's border wall commercial is as god-awful as he is
It wasn’t that long ago when Speaker Paul Ryan dismissed the idea of a massive wallalong the entirety of the U.S/Mexico border, so maybe now after this
early-2000s-dance-party-meets-an-Axe-body-spray-wearing-Wisconsin-cowboy-at-Crossfit
commercial promoting Donald Trump’s ineffective and immoral wall that actual border Republicans don’t really want anyway and is opposed by over half of Americans according to Rasmussen,
we can dispel once and for all with this fiction that Paul Ryan has any spine whatsoever and will never stand by anything from three seconds ago, including his own words:
https://twitter.com/SpeakerRyan/status/892378735512563712
We can establish the fact that basically only Ryan is less popular than Trump and his godforsaken wall.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...awful-as-he-is
Poll: 'Scary' Number of Republicans Support Court-Ordered Press Censorship
45 percent of Republicans favor giving courts the power to shutter "biased" media outlets
To the question "do you favor or oppose permitting the courts to shut down news media outlets for publishing or broadcasting stories that are biased or inaccurate?" 45 percent of Republican respondents said they would support giving courts such powers. A mere 20 percent of Republicans said they oppose the idea.
The poll also found:
- 55 percent of Republicans support allowing courts to fine media outlets for publishing stories that are deemed "biased" or "inaccurate."
- By contrast, only 12 percent of Republicans oppose giving courts the power to fine media outlets for "bias."
- 71 percent of Republicans trust Trump more than the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Analysts argued that these results clearly indicate that Trump's hatred of the media is moving
more Republicans to view freedom of the press as an obstacle to be overcome, rather than as a necessity.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...ess-censorship
Trash's military junta / Goldman-Sacks govt continues to take shape
https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/sta...28950349246464
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