riversedge
riversedge's Journal@SenatorBaldwin We launched an investigation into big drug companies jacking up inhaler costs....
@SenatorBaldwin
We launched an investigation into big drug companies jacking up inhaler costs.
Within weeks, three out of the four of them came clean and capped their costs at $35/month.
I will not stop fighting to lower health care costs and keep Wisconsinites healthy.
https://twitter.com/SenatorBaldwin/status/1770950478261588161?s=20
@BarackObama: The day that the Affordable Care Act passed was one of my proudest moments and @JoeBiden was right
#HappyBirthdayACA:
It's still a big effing deal, as Joe told him.💜🇺🇸
https://x.com/kentucky1792/status/1771576030580359521?s=20
Barack Obama
@BarackObama
The day that the Affordable Care Act passed was one of my proudest moments — and @JoeBiden
was right by my side to get it done.
The future of the ACA hangs in the balance in this election. We've come too far to go back — and we've got to do everything we can to protect it.
https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1771552747306791327?s=20
Sen. Cory Booker @SenBooker
The protection and access that the Affordable Care Act provides has assisted millions and millions of Americans. Democrats remain committed, just as we were 14 years ago when passing Obamacare, to ensuring every American has a right to health care.
https://twitter.com/SenBooker/status/1771578960578547857?s=20
Obamacare allowed people with pre-existing conditions to get health insurance with no strings attached. Prior to Obamacare (#ACA), many group plans (to include private AND employer-sponsored plans) required a 12-month waiting period to get coverage for pre-e: xisting conditions.
https://twitter.com/finbarvano/status/1771578208564969507?s=20
Obamacare transformed the healthcare landscape COMPLETELY
So much so we take it for granted
#HappyBirthdayACA
This November, let’s vote like our health depends on it
Because it LITERALLY does!
https://twitter.com/QondiNtini/status/1771568292794073246?s=20
https://twitter.com/OldSassyDem/status/1771577058763681900?s=20
https://twitter.com/DougWahl1/status/1771575383105699942?s=20
Moscow concert hall attack: death toll rises to 115 as suspects held and Ukraine denies any involvement - live updates
Source: the guardian
2h ago07.05 EDT
Russia’s FSB tries to link Ukraine to Moscow attack despite IS claiming responsibility
...............................
The director of Russia’s federal security service (FSB) informed Vladimir Putin that 11 individuals had been arrested in connection with Friday’s terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow, including four suspects involved in the shooting. Putin has not appeared or commented in public so far after the assault.
Islamic State, through an affiliated news agency, claimed responsibility for the attack late on Friday in a post on Telegram, in which they claimed the gunmen had managed to escape afterwards. A US official said Washington had intelligence confirming Islamic State’s claim.
There are already signs that Moscow will try to pin blame for the attack on Ukraine, despite the claim of responsibility by Islamic State. Without providing any evidence, the FSB on Saturday appeared to point the finger at Kyiv, saying that the gunmen were arrested while trying to cross into Ukraine. “They had contacts on the Ukrainian side,” the FSB said in a statement.
Kyiv has vehemently denied it had any involvement in the attack. “Ukraine certainly has nothing to do with the shooting/explosions in the Crocus City Hall,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential administration, wrote on social media. “It makes no sense whatsoever. Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods.”..................
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/mar/23/moscow-concert-attack-crocus-city-hall-shooting-russia-live-updates?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-65fe9e9f8f08ed13c27ca92f#block-65fe9e9f8f08ed13c27ca92f
So much horror--so many innocent deaths!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/mar/23/moscow-concert-attack-crocus-city-hall-shooting-russia-live-updates?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-65feced58f08ed13c27caa4f#block-65feced58f08ed13c27caa4f
People mourn at the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow. Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA
Exclusive: Texas AG Ken Paxton could see criminal charges dropped in deal with prosecutors
Source: statesman.com
Felony charges would be erased in exchange for community service and six-figure restitution.
March 22, 2024
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is nearing a resolution to the 9-year-old securities fraud charges that have dogged his tenure as the state's top attorney through a special agreement with prosecutors, the American-Statesman has learned.
Under a draft agreement, prosecutors would dismiss felony charges against Paxton if he successfully completes the terms of the deal, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations.
The sources, with knowledge of the discussions between Paxton's legal team and prosecutor Brian Wice, a Houston attorney appointed to handle the case, said the terms could include community service, advanced legal education classes and a six-figure restitution, among other possible punishment. Two sources said the restitution could be between $300,000 and $400,000.
Read more: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/state/2024/03/22/ken-paxton-securities-fraud-case-felony-charges-texas-ag-plea-negotiation/72960517007/
Putting on a janitors uniform and cleaning the public toilets in the Texas state Capitol would be a grand public service IMHO
https://twitter.com/plesafortexas/status/1771349459055595939?s=20
The Bankruptcy of Donald Trump The so-called billionaire's inability to pay his tax fraud fines exposes his career of bo
I got as an email.
Great article--
Steven Beschloss from America, America Unsubscribe
5:19 AM (13 hours ago)
to me
Note this generous comment from Helen, a new paid subscriber: "I have been moved by Steven Beschloss’s posts. They are intelligent, well researched and come from a calm perspective. I realize I need to do my part and pay to support this worthwhile journalism."
The Bankruptcy of Donald Trump
The so-called billionaire's inability to pay his tax fraud fines exposes his career of bombast and lies
Steven Beschloss Mar 22
He’s a very, very successful businessman, a multi-billionaire, an incredible winner, he told America, with a net worth of “well over $10 billion.” He’d been touting his winning ways for decades, well before publishing The Art of the Deal in 1987, not just when he pretended to be that capable guy on The Apprentice with the editorial trickery of TV producer Mark Burnett.
In a news interview in 2011, when he was ostensibly mulling a run for president, Donald Trump said that “part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That's a huge advantage. I must tell you, that's a huge advantage over the other candidates."
Four years later, on June 16, 2015, when he descended a golden escalator and declared himself a candidate for president, he is best remembered for telling America that Mexico was sending rapists and criminals, that they were using our country as “a dumping ground.”
But he also took plenty of time in his announcement to emphasize how rich and successful he was (even while relying on other peoples’ money). He told the story of a big bank that came to him and said, “Donald, you don't have enough borrowings. Could we loan you $4 billion”? I said, “I don't need it. I don't want it. And I've been there. I don't want it. But in two seconds, they give me whatever I wanted.”
To the applause of hired extras that day, he said he has “the greatest assets” worth billions, including Trump Tower (725 5th Avenue), the Neuberger Berman building (1290 Avenue of the Americas) and the Trump Building (40 Wall Street) in New York City and the Bank of America building (555 California Street) in San Francisco. “I'm not doing that to brag, because you know what? I don't have to brag. I don't have to, believe it or not,” Trump said. “I'm doing that to say that that's the kind of thinking our country needs. We need that thinking. We have the opposite thinking.”
And what is that opposite thinking? “We have losers. We have losers,” Trump said. “We have people that don't have it. We have people that are morally corrupt. We have people that are selling this country down the drain.”
Oh, the bombast, the scapegoating, the self-assurance from the nation’s top confidence man (con man, that is), who, to no surprise, refused to release his tax returns.
This Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James may begin to seize some of those great assets in order to cover fines of $464 million and counting that he owes (and apparently is not rich enough to pay) after losing his tax fraud case. Some financial and legal experts suggest his best option to secure the necessary bond while he appeals—now that over 30 surety companies that could cover his bond refused—is to declare bankruptcy.
It’s a strategy Trump knows well with six previous bankruptcies, including three Atlantic City casinos buried in debt he couldn’t manage. Yet somehow those bankruptcies failed to register with enough voters when they were assessing the quality of this self-described success story.
But The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Trump is loath to declare bankruptcy this time since it might send the wrong message to voters assessing his business acumen and financial worth. “Even though bankruptcy could alleviate his immediate cash crunch,” the Post noted, “it also carries risks for a candidate who has marketed himself as a winning businessman—and whose greatest appeal to voters, some advisers say, is his financial success.”
In other words, declaring bankruptcy would not be simply a legal and financial strategy to buy him time, it would be a loud and clear message of the bankruptcy of the bill of goods he’s been dishing out all these years. A winner, a top businessman, a multi-billionaire can’t come up with half a billion to avoid financial disaster? Is his penthouse apartment—including the toilet—not really covered in gold? Might some of his followers comprehend, heaven forbid, that he’s been lying to them? Could a few even begin to wonder why they have to keep sending him money to pay his legal bills?
As one of those close to Trump told the Post, “He’d rather have Letitia James show up with the sheriff at 40 Wall and make a huge stink about it than say he’s bankrupt…Bankruptcy doesn’t play well for him, but having her try to take his properties might.”
In a 2017 Economist/Yougov poll, 55 percent of Americans said they believed Trump was a successful businessman, including a third of Democrats. By 2019, in a Politico/Morning Consult poll, that view had changed little, as 54 percent still said they thought he was successful in business, including 85 percent of Republicans.
But after respondents in that same 2019 poll learned that Trump reported more than $1 billion in losses from 1985 to 1994—thanks to an exhaustive investigation by The New York Times armed with Internal Revenue Service documents—the percentage who believed in his business success dropped 11 points to 43 percent.
Exit polls from the GOP primaries have found that roughy a third of Republican voters say they think Trump is not fit to be president if he’s convicted of a crime. For many of us who think a man with 91 felony charges should not be nominated for president, that has made the possibility of trial delays that extend beyond the November election that much more maddening.
But perhaps in the coming weeks, if AG James begins padlocking some buildings or otherwise demonstrating that the so-called billionaire is not such a winner after all, some of the pro-Trump crowd (albeit not the impenetrable cultists) might begin to reset their gaze. Maybe, just maybe, the cries of political persecution will strike a few Republicans and a growing number of independents as the sad whines of a bankrupt man. Because, in America, people like winners—and when the odor of loser grows thicker, the crowds turn away.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d88491f-3e11-4a5e-8786-334b6b0bc737_1024x683.jpeg
A financially troubled man in his Florida club. (Photo by Alon Skuy via Getty Images)
Red States Are Coming For No-Fault Divorce
Source: crooksandliars.com
Republican legislatures looking at banning no-fault divorce. Wonder how many of them are on wife number two or three?
— March 22, 2024
by Marcia Zug
“First comes love, then comes marriage” – so goes the classic children’s rhyme. But not everyone agrees. Increasingly, the idea that love is the most important reason to marry – or at least to stay married – is under attack. Republican pundits and lawmakers have been pushing back on the availability of no-fault divorce, challenging the idea that not being in love is a valid reason to end a marriage.
Speaking as a professor of family law, I know such views aren’t new. Zsa Zsa Gabor once quipped, “Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.” But while Gabor was probably joking, the Republican attack on divorce is serious.
..................
For most of U.S. history, getting a divorce was difficult. Many states banned it entirely, while others permitted it only under limited circumstances – typically cruelty, desertion or adultery. Unhappily married couples who couldn’t prove such “faults” were effectively stuck..............................
Crowder isn’t alone in such criticisms: Divorce has become a hot topic among many red-state Republican lawmakers. Most recently, in January 2024, Oklahoma lawmaker Dusty Deevers proposed a bill to eliminate no-fault divorce and suggested “public shaming” of spouses who commit marital fault and then divorce. Restricting no-fault divorce is also part of both the Texas and Nebraska Republican Party platforms, and was recently debated by Louisiana lawmakers.......................
Read more: https://crooksandliars.com/2024/03/red-states-are-coming-no-fault-divorce
BREAKING- IT WILL SOON JUST BE DOWN TO 1 Rep. Mike Gallagher, he is a Republican from Wisconsin,
he had announced he would not seek re-election a few months ago. But his leaving now is double wonderful
BREAKING- IT WILL SOON JUST BE DOWN TO 1
Rep. Mike Gallagher, he is a Republican from Wisconsin, announced he's leaving Congress on April 19. In his absences House Republicans will have just a one-seat majority.
https://twitter.com/DougWahl1/status/1771271054427640216?s=20
California Man Sentenced to Life for 'Boogaloo Movement' Killing of Federal Security Guard
You can bet that these groups are getting stirred up by Trump.
California Man Sentenced to Life for 'Boogaloo Movement' Killing of Federal Security Guard
A Northern California man was sentenced to life in prison Friday for his role in the shooting death of a federal security guard and wounding of another
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2024-03-15/california-man-sentenced-to-life-for-boogaloo-movement-killing-of-federal-security-guard
By Associated Press March 15, 2024, at 4:07 p.m.
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man who was part of the loosely organized anti-government “ boogaloo movement ” was sentenced to life in prison Friday for his role in the shooting death of a federal security guard and wounding of another.
Robert Allen Justus was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the Bay Area News Group reported.
Justus was convicted last year of murder and attempted murder for driving a van while his accomplice, Steven Carrillo, opened fire at a guard station at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland in May 2020.
David Patrick Underwood was killed and his partner was wounded.
Prosecutors said both Justus and Carrillo, a U.S. Air Force sergeant at the time, had ties to the far-right movement and hatched the plan to target the guards the day before.
..........................................
Who Are Boogaloos, Who Were Visible at the Capitol and Later Rallies?
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/01/27/who-are-boogaloos-who-were-visible-capitol-and-later-rallies
January 27, 2021
Among the most visible ideological adherents at state capitol protests after Jan. 6 and in Richmond, Virginia, on Jan. 18 for pro-Second Amendment rallies were people involved with the boogaloo movement, easily recognizable in most cases because of Hawaiian-themed shirts and masks along with their weapons, signatures of boogaloo followers. The shirts are a reference to “big luau,” which is an adaptation of the word “boogaloo.”
Following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that resulted in five deaths, large swaths of the American right have continued to falsely claim that former President Trump won the election and that President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party “stole” it.
Right-wing protests were also slated for state capitols the weekend of Jan. 17, and boogaloo adherents (self-proclaimed “boogaloo boys”) were among those either planning the protests or planning to go.
However, as a result of the events of Jan. 6, state capitols and the U.S. Capitol are under heightened security and tech companies have finally deplatformed a number of groups, individuals and even whole social media apps where conspiracies, mis- and disinformation and violent rhetoric have been spreading for years. This rhetoric was amplified by GOP officials, allies and Trump himself.
The deplatforming and increased media and security scrutiny on right-wing groups after the attempted coup thus put a damper on right-wing events scheduled for Jan. 17, but nonetheless, there were still a few who showed up at sparsely attended state capitol rallies, and among those who did were boogaloo followers, perhaps most visible in Richmond, Virginia, on Jan. 18 for “Lobby Day” – in support of the Second Amendment. Last year, the event drew thousands of gun advocates; this year, maybe a couple of hundred.
Regardless, rallies and protests have continued across the country in support of false claims that the election was stolen.......................................
Boogaloo boys
Armed "boogaloo boys" stand holding a flag in front of the New Hampshire Capitol in Concord on Jan. 17 during a nationwide protest called by antigovernment and far-right groups supporting outgoing President Donald Trump and his claim of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
Utah mental health counselor --Mitchell McKee, has been arrested for child sex trafficking charges.
Not a day goes by without seeing an article about a so-called trusted official abusing a child!!
Utah sheriff’s office administrator, mental health counselor & retired law enforcement officer, Mitchell McKee, has been arrested for child sex trafficking charges.
https://twitter.com/antifaoperative/status/1771233082147836192?s=20
Ladies, Mario here thinks Eric Hovde will appeal to women voters because he's rich and easy on the eyes. Hovde came in
Eric Hovde is a Repug who is running against Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin.
I do hope the people of WI have some brains and kick him back to CA!!
He is multi-millionaire and money talks. damn
Ladies, Mario here thinks Eric Hovde will appeal to women voters because he's rich and easy on the eyes. Hovde came in 14 points in the hole with women voters. If that's how he thinks women make their decisions, it doesn't say much for Mario's wife.
https://twitter.com/blossomedchild/status/1771207693073551803?s=20
https://twitter.com/blossomedchild/status/1771212118588571815?s=20
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