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Trump's pick for a top Interior post has sued the agency on behalf of powerful California water interests
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-trump-bernhardt-20170517-story.html
The VRWC/Repug corporatocracy/oligarchy is ing America for profit.
Trump FCC Promotes Pro-Trump Rightist Broadcasting Group
Thanks to the deregulatory efforts of President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Committee, the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group announced today that it will purchase dozens of televisions stations across the country, allowing the company to spread its conservative programming to new markets and consolidate the ownership of broadcast stations in fewer hands.
Sinclair has entered into an agreement to purchase Tribune Media Group, which owns 42 television stations in 33 markets, along with cable, digital, and real estate assets, according to a press release from the companies.
Given Sinclair’s existing slate of 173 television stations in 81 markets and its national news operation, the combined broadcast company will become the largest provider of local TV news in the country.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-fcc-promotes-pro-trump-rightist-broadcasting-group/
The Ministry of Truth expands its propaganda reach.
Trump's pick for a top Interior post has sued the agency on behalf of powerful California water interests
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-trump-bernhardt-20170517-story.html
The VRWC/Repug corporatocracy/oligarchy is ing America for profit.
Getting insurance to pay for storm damage may become harder
The executive director of Texas Watch says it's about to get even harder for consumers to sue insurance companies with the passage of House Bill 1774.
"This is a really dangerous bill that is going to have a harmful effect on thousands if not millions of Texas property owners," Texas Watch Executive Director Ware Wendell said.
He says the bill reduces penalties against insurance companies if they don't pay property claims on time. It can reduce the recovery of attorney's fees in some cases and it requires property owners to re-notify the insurance company of an impending lawsuit.
"It doesn't distinguish between good claims and bad so it helps the worst insurance companies," Wendell said.
But, Texas gets its fair share of severe weather and hail storms. The insurance companies say some home owners try to cash in on disasters.
"We've seen an enormous increase in litigation in homeowners," Texas Coalition of Affordable Insurance Solutions Executive Director Beamon Floyd said.
The Texas Coalition for Affordable Insurance Solutions, or TCAIS, says HB 1774 is about reigning in rogue lawyers and homeowners who abuse the system.
"It prevents them from going out and gathering a huge number of people, creating a big cut and paste filing and then try and use that as leverage to get insurance companies to pay more than they should," Floyd said.
http://keyetv.com/news/local/it-coul...r-storm-damage
Senate Conservatives Look to Cut Medicaid
Millions could lose coverage, but plan faces resistance from GOP centrists
https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-...759603?tesla=y
REPUBLICAN IMMIGRATION BILL THREATENS TO TURN MILLIONS OF PEOPLE INTO CRIMINALS OVERNIGHT
REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS are pushing legislation that would bring sweeping changes to the nation’s immigration enforcement apparatus, adding thousands of new deportation officers and, among other things, equipping each of them with body armor and an assault rifle.
adding thousands of new deportation officers and, among other things, equipping each of them with body armor and an assault rifle.
would bring additional legal force to the Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda, which has already seen the pool of individuals prioritized for deportation broadened to include virtually all the country’s 11 million undo ented immigrants.
That third bill,...would see
immigration violations traditionally treated as civil infractions transformed into criminal violations, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
would codify the Trump administration’s controversial threats to cut Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security grants to state and local law enforcement agencies that do not comply with federal immigration enforcement initiatives.
Under the law, states would also be required to provide DHS a wide range of details on all immigrants who are apprehended and “believed to be inadmissible or deportable,” including that individual’s name, address, photo, and license plate number, as well as other identifying information.
The bill echoes Trump’s call to increase ICE’s ranks with the addition of 10,000 new agents, as well as 2,500 new detention officers and 60 new full-time ICE prosecutors.
With deep ties to a range of far-right policy organizations, GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee have long been known for their hawkish views on immigration
https://theintercept.com/2017/05/18/republican-immigration-bill-threatens-to-turn-millions-of-people-into-criminals-overnight/
How Republicans Are Blocking Cities From Raising the Minimum Wage
Republicans and their business allies are fighting back with a two-pronged strategy.
First, they’re working to derail the minimum-wage increases that have already passed. Business groups in Washington and Arizona have gone to court to block the November ballot initiatives, and lawmakers in Maine have introduced a number of bills that seek to roll back or weaken the wage increase.
Second, in violation of their much-lauded belief in decentralized government, Republicans are moving aggressively to block more cities and states from boosting the minimum wage.
In Arizona, GOP lawmakers have approved bills that make it harder to pass citizen ballot initiatives, a democratic process enshrined in the state cons ution for more than a century.
And legislatures in 24 states have passed so-called “preemption bills”to block cities and counties from passing their own minimum-wage hikes.
Many of the bills are the product of model legislation written by the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council, which has made the fight against minimum-wage increases a top priority.
The Iowa bill is particularly egregious because it actually lowered the minimum wage for 65,000 workers in the state who were already enjoying hourly increases of up to $3 in their counties. Those extra dollars make a huge difference to working-class Americans.
Preemption bills aren’t designed to reduce complexity—they’re intended to
override the wishes of voters and promote the GOP’s business-first ideology, at the expense of working-class Americans.
“Conservatives tout the virtues of local control all the time,” says Laura Huizar, a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. “But when it comes to local actions that raise wages for workers, that talk goes out the window. It’s a completely hypocritical agenda.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/142349/republicans-blocking-cities-raising-minimum-wage
Repugs, s to Capital, ing over Labor.
But the red/slave states' Labor will continue to elect Repugs to be ed over by Capital.
Police state following Trash's exhortation to "rough 'em up"
Reporter says he was manhandled by security at FCC when he tried to ask a question
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/reporter...sk-a-question/
Everything Trash and the Repugs touch turns to .
Goons escalate IMMEDIATELY to physical violence
Last edited by boutons_deux; 05-22-2017 at 10:31 AM.
Trump administration makes ‘unprecedented’ move to block identifying ex-lobbyists working in the White House
Thhe Trump administration is trying to block the disclosure of the names of former lobbyists who have obtained waivers to work at the White House.
The New York Times reports that the administration last week “sent a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the head of the Office of Government Ethics, asking him to withdraw a request he had sent to every federal agency for copies of the waivers” for the former lobbyists.
The OGE requested copies of the waivers because
the Trump administration has hired dozens of ex-lobbyists — and
without knowing the iden ies of the people granted waivers, it would be impossible to know if they are violating federal ethics laws.
The report notes that the administration’s move to block disclosure is a “highly unusual” procedure, and Shaub told the Times that he had “never seen anything like it” before.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trum...e+Raw+Story%29
The Corruption Will Be UnPresidented
Obama was lawless!
Crooked Hillary!
GOP Lawmaker: Lynch Anyone Who Takes Down Confederate Monuments
A Republican member of the Mississippi House of Representatives has called for lynching anyone who removes a Confederate monument, including lawmakers in a neighboring state.
On Saturday, state Rep. Karl Oliver (R) described the
“destruction” of Confederate monuments in Louisiana as “heinous and horrific” and compared leaders in that state to Nazis.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...ushpmg00000009
Once a slave state, always a slave state.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 05-22-2017 at 10:32 AM.
The Normalizing of Authoritarianism in America
The Southern Poverty Law Center offers an updated warning, reporting that “the number of hate groups operating in the country in 2016 remained at nearly historic highs, rising from 892 in 2015 to 917 last year.” And “in the immediate aftermath of Election Day, a wave of hate crimes and lesser hate incidents swept the country.”
“One would be remiss to forget that in 1922 there were fewer than one hundred members of what was to become the ruling party of Germany within eleven years.” Whereas, “in the United States alone there are over three hundred hate groups that support or embrace the same beliefs that spawned German National Socialism.”
Like Germany, American democracy is being undermined by partisan and sectarian divides. With the election of America’s first black president, Barack Hussein Obama, the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats increased dramatically. Republican politicians – and their supporters – freely vented their racism as the “loyal opposition” party. And Obama’s re-election merely served to sharpen America’s partisan political divide – with the bi-partisan center shrinking even more.
A capricious Donald Trump tapped into America’s ingrained white supremacy.
He exhibited his own brand of racial purity as the leader of the Birther Movement, charging that President Obama was not born in the United States and could well be a Muslim.
President Trump’s executive order, allowing clergy to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, may seem to be the opposite of Hitler’s Concordat requiring Catholic Churches to stay out of the affairs of the State. But the executive order is actually similar to the Concordat: Hitler required the loyalty of Christians, and Trump is rewarding the loyalty of Christians.
To the dismay of many evangelical Christians and Catholics, his executive order did not include a religious liberty clause that would allow them to legally discriminate against LGBTQ persons. But there is still hope. Trump held that discriminatory carrot in front of conservative Christians throughout the presidential campaign by selecting Mike Pence as his vice-presidential running mate, and Pence has a proven anti-LGBTQ track record as governor of Indiana.
President Trump has wooed a large conservative Christian voter block. In the process he has effectively prevented moderate and liberal Christians and their more conservative counterparts from joining in common cause against his authoritarian policies.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler said,
With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people.
Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign this way:
Mexico sends its people, they are not sending their best. . . . They are sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. (sic) They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.
Similar racist ideologies. The one is about satanic Jews “destroy[ing] the racial foundations” of “the hated white race.” The other is about a foreign and criminal element destroying the national foundations of “the American dream” – with “making America great again” translated to mean restoring America’s Euro-white Christian foundations.
President Trump is now restoring “the [white] American Dream.” He has hired more immigration police, who are carrying out his promised mass deportations of undo ented Mexicans and other persons – this indiscriminate and cruel policy tearing immigrant families apart. Trump is keeping his campaign promise to “bomb the out of ISIS,” and to “kill their family members” – by giving the Pentagon authority to use military power as its sees fit, which has resulted in an increase in the deaths of civilians in Syria and Iraq and Yemen.
But President Trump is not an American authoritarian anomaly.
President George W. Bush outdid Trump by professing Christ as his savior, which not only helped him to be elected president. His falsely-based, horrific, destructive invasion and occupation of Iraq was supported by an overwhelming majority of evangelical Christians.
Their own authoritarian belief in Christ as the savior of the world led them to enthusiastically assume that, in the wake of their “Christian brother-in-Christ’s” pre-emptive invasion of defenseless Iraq, they could extend the “Kingdom of God” by converting Iraq’s vulnerable Muslims to Christ – thus fulfilling Jesus’ recorded commandment to “go and make disciples of all nations.”
President Trump, while extremely unstable and devoid of empathy, is not an authoritarian aberration. Journalist Glenn Greenwald exposes this media-made myth in his article, “Trump’s Support of Despots Is Central to the U.S. Tradition, Not a Deviation from It.”
Recognizing President Trump’s authoritarianism as made in America is not to minimize the dangerous extent to which he is normalizing authoritarian tendencies of Americans. His put down of “political correctness” is a slick winking encouragement to supporters to act out against designated enemies. Thus the dramatic rise in hate crimes against Muslims and immigrants and Jews.
He repeatedly tells his audiences that
“the media are “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people” — an obvious attempt to neutralize any examination, questioning or challenging of his policies, which defensive behavior reveals his anti-introspective tendencies.
President Trumps’ latest, alleged, authoritarian act was to demand loyalty from FBI director James Comey, whose position is traditionally independent of presidential or other political pressure.
President Trump continues to demonstrate that he is emotionally unable to participate as a member of a democratic society, never mind lead it.
Transparency, accountability, the recognition and guidance of other authorities, these democratic traits are not part of Trump’s character.
His belittling of people with differing views,
authoritarian-like threats to kill adversaries,
demand for submission to his dictates,
anti-introspective tendencies,
stereotyping of whole groups of people as inferior, and
projection of his own aggressive tendencies on to other groups are plain to see.
But where are the faith leaders and their congregations?
But where are the public statements of mainline liberal and moderate Christian leaders?
Are they like most German Christians, who provided “virtually no public opposition” to the Nazi regime’s “state-sanctioned violence against the Jews?”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/...sm-in-america/
Last edited by boutons_deux; 05-22-2017 at 10:55 AM.
Trump to propose big cuts to safety net in new budget, slashing Medicaid and opening door to other limits
President Trump’s first major budget proposal on Tuesday will include massive cuts to Medicaid and call for changes to anti-poverty programs that would give states new power to limit a range of benefits,
Trump’s budget plan would follow through on a bill passed by House Republicans to cut more than $800 billion over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this could cut off Medicaid benefits for about 10 million people over the next decade.
The White House also will call for giving states more flexibility to impose work requirements for people in different kinds of anti-poverty programs,
Numerous social-welfare programs grew after the financial crisis, leading to complaints from many Republicans that more should be done to shift people out of these programs and back into the workforce. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump said, “We want to get our people off welfare and back to work. . . . It’s out of control.”
he is rejecting calls from a number of Senate Republicans not to reverse the expansion of Medicaid that President Barack Obama achieved as part of the Affordable Care Act
The House has voted to cut the Medicaid funding,
he sought a big increase in military and border spending combined with major cuts to housing, environmental protection, foreign aid, research and development.
Tuesday’s budget will be more significant, because it will seek changes to en lements — programs that are essentially on auto*pilot and don’t need annual authorization from Congress.
An average of 44 million people received SNAP benefits in 2016, down from a peak of 47 million in 2013. Just 28 million people received the benefits in 2008.
SNAP could be one of numerous programs impacted by changes in work requirements.
work requirements can include blanket ultimatums that don’t take into account someone’s age, physical or cognitive ability, or limitations put in place by the local economy.
Benefits from these programs are often low, and hardly replace the income someone would earn from a job.
And critics of stricter work requirements also believe it could pave the way for states to pursue even stricter restrictions, such as drug tests, that courts have often rejected.
“This budget continues to reveal President Trump’s true colors: His populist campaign rhetoric was just a Trojan horse to execute long-held, hard-right policies that benefit the ultra wealthy at the expense of the middle class,”
the White House signaled that it wanted to eliminate money for a range of other programs that are funded each year by Congress.
This included federal funding for Habitat for Humanity, subsidized school lunches and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness across 19 federal agencies.
A key element of the budget plan will be the assumption that huge tax cuts will result in an unprecedented level of economic growth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-to-propose-big-cuts-to-safety-net-in-new-budget-this-week/2017/05/21/62c01f44-3e34-11e7-adba-394ee67a7582_story.html?utm_campaign=pubexchange_a rticle&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=huffingtonpo st.com&utm_term=.e485fdd99f31
the "winner" billionaires, including those who "accept Christ as their Savior", gonna screw the loser, immoral poor. And the Christian Taliban will not object, will support all of the ing over of the poor with their silence.
Trash to propose budget cutting $1.7 trillion from programmes including Medicaid and food stamps
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...mes-including/
DHS: 600,000 US Visitors Overstayed Visas Into 2017
get to work min wage increased should not need food stamps
quoting the new York times is not very smartTrump administration makes ‘unprecedented’ move to block identifying ex-lobbyists working in the White House
Thhe Trump administration is trying to block the disclosure of the names of former lobbyists who have obtained waivers to work at the White House.
The New York Times reports that the administration last week “sent a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the head of the Office of Government Ethics, asking him to withdraw a request he had sent to every federal agency for copies of the waivers” for the former lobbyists.
The OGE requested copies of the waivers because
the Trump administration has hired dozens of ex-lobbyists — and
without knowing the iden ies of the people granted waivers, it would be impossible to know if they are violating federal ethics laws.
The report notes that the administration’s move to block disclosure is a “highly unusual” procedure, and Shaub told the Times that he had “never seen anything like it” before.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trum...e+Raw+Story%29
The Corruption Will Be UnPresidented
Obama was lawless!
Crooked Hillary!
Defending, apologizing for, fellating Trash is not very smart.
Bannon's Destruction of govt into dysfunctionality
Trump doesn’t need Congress to hamstring health and environmental agencies. It’s already happening.
Key positions in federal agencies remain vacant while talks of layoffs begin.
Steve Bannon famously called for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”) He’s built an administration that is hostile to government regulation and has promised to roll back two government regulations for every new one introduced.
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has been urging agency heads to offer buyouts and early retirement packages, do layoffs, and eliminate jobs.
And four major health and science agencies —
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
the Department of Human Health and Services,
National Ins utes of Health, and the
Environmental Protection Agency —
are acquiescing.
They have voluntarily chosen to uphold a hiring freeze put in place in January (and officially lifted in April) as they brace for staff cuts and reorganization, leaving hundreds of positions unfilled.
Trump’s hiring freeze was both larger in scope and more forceful in tone than his predecessor’s.
Less discretion was given to individual agencies on how to proceed with staffing needs, and even when the moratorium was lifted, Mulvaney said, “This does not mean that agencies will be free to hire willy nilly.”
The freeze was officially lifted in April, but many agencies have voluntarily chosen to uphold the ban in preparation for sweeping staffing cuts.
And the OMB issued a directive in Aprilthat instructed all federal agencies to submit a plan to reduce their staff by June 30.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/5/24/15663474/trump-congress-debilitate-health-environmental-agencies
Betsy DeVos: If parents want to discriminate against LGBT kids, they can have federal money to do it
Confirmed: Betsy DeVos would send federal money to schools that explicitly discriminate against LGBT students … or any other group, as long as an individual state embraced that form of discrimination.
In a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Rep. Katherine Clark highlighted the example of Lighthouse Christian Academy, which receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in vouchers from the state of Indiana despite refusing to enroll students from families where there is “ sexual or bisexual activity” or who are “practicing alternate gender iden y.”
Clark’s question: Would DeVos block federal dollars from going to schools that discriminate?
And DeVos repeatedly refused to say that she would, making very clear that
she places “choice” above equality or non-discrimination.
as far as Betsy DeVos is concerned, states can use federal dollars to support schools that discriminate. Because to her, privatization is more important than non-discrimination.
“The bottom line,” DeVos concluded, “is we believe that parents are the best equipped to make choices for their children’s schooling and education decisions.”
And she’s willing to send federal money to equip parents to make the choice to keep their kids away from LGBT kids or special needs kids or kids of other races.
She’s not just saying that bigoted parents can use their own resources to live their bigoted ideals—she’s willing to actually give them money to do it with.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5...28Daily+Kos%29
Trump’s housing secretary Ben Carson claims poverty is a ‘state of mind’
he thinks “poverty, to a large extent, is also a state of mind”.
“You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there,” Carson said in the radio interview.
“And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you can give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trum...e+Raw+Story%29
Just another Bannon-style asshole hired to "deconstruct" HUD into dysfunctionality.
House votes to undo pesticide protections for nation’s waterways
Opponents say Republican-led bill takes away the public’s right to know about pesticides.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to pass a bill that dismantles a pesticide permitting system. Opponents are calling the Republican-led legislation the “Poison Our Waters Act.”
Under the bill, anyone applying a pesticide that the Environmental Protection Agency has approved under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act would no longer require a Clean Water Act “general permit.”
https://thinkprogress.org/house-vote...s-9002a7da131d
Meet Jared Kushner, s bag slumlord
The Beleaguered Tenants of ‘Kushnerville’
https://www.propublica.org/article/t...ent=1495540887
People Think Ivanka Trump’s Memorial Day Popsicles Are Insensitive
if you’re Ivanka Trump, it’s time to shill your recipe for champagne popsicles.
http://uproxx.com/news/ivanka-trump-...-memorial-day/
IRS trying to decrapify America
U.S. To Offer Tax Incentives To Companies That Do Not Openly Make World Worse At Every Turn
WASHINGTON—A growth-stimulus package introduced in Congress Thursday aims to provide tax incentives to companies that do not openly and unapologetically make the world a worse place than it already is.
"We want to encourage American businesses not to commit blatantly destructive or fraudulent acts in plain sight where everyone can find out about them and get upset," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said.
"We all understand that companies need to stay compe ive:
Maybe you had to cut a few corners on safety and accidentally released thousands of gallons of toxins into the water supply, or
maybe you skillfully exploited regulatory loopholes to dupe your customers out of every dollar possible.
That's okay.
As long as you make a reasonable effort to cover it up, you're still eligible for this tax credit."
According to congressional sources,
companies that openly make the world worse can continue to apply for the same tax breaks they've always gotten.
http://www.theonion.com/article/us-to-offer-tax-incentives-to-companies-that-do-no-26457?utm_content=Main&utm_campaign=SF&utm_source= Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing
"Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos plan to cut over $8 billion from the Department of Education.
The pain overwhelmingly falls on the poor and disadvantaged.
The beneficiaries? Private schools and for-profit charters.Betsy DeVos is an ideologue who has previously said her goal is to"confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's kingdom."
Her vision is public money being siphoned to private, religious schools associated with the radical right.
Her children didn't go to public school.
She is the beneficiary of a billion-dollar family fortune.
Many of the cuts remain inexplicable.
Special Olympics.
Adult literacy.
Work study.
Perkins loans.
That is her vision of “God’s Kingdom on Earth.”"
... an email from peoplesaction.org
All y'all rightwingnutjob bigots, racists, xenophobes, misogynists, bubbas, ckickers, rednecks doing God's work enriching the billionaires.
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