turbinetree
turbinetree's JournalHouse Democrats to test Republicans on Trump's wall demand
Source: Reuters
POLITICS JANUARY 9, 2019 / 1:05 AM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As a partial U.S. government shutdown entered its 19th day, Democrats on Wednesday were set to test Republicans’ resolve in backing President Donald Trump’s drive to build a wall on the border with Mexico, which has sparked an impasse over agency funding.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats, who took control of the chamber last week, plan to advance a bill to immediately reopen the Treasury Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and several other agencies that have been in partial shutdown mode since Dec. 22.
Democrats are eager to force Republicans to choose between funding the Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service - at a time when it should be gearing up to issue tax refunds to millions of Americans - and voting to keep it partially shuttered.
In a countermove, the Trump administration said on Tuesday that even without a new shot of funding, the IRS would somehow make sure those refund checks get sent.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shutdown/house-democrats-to-test-republicans-on-trumps-wall-demand-idUSKCN1P30EK
I see a train a coming it's rolling down the tracks........................and it's going to run over the republicans, Pence and go have lunch till the cows come home, he can go over everyday and have lunch with the turtle, but there party is going to blink ....................
7 republicans in the house have defected, and three in the senate...............just need two more in the senate................
Because after all his "guy" owns this ..................we even have video......................the entire country has seen the video ...................................
Theresa May suffers Commons defeat over Brexit plan B
Source: The Guardian
PM will have to table alternative to her deal within three days of losing vote
Follow all the latest Brexit news with our live blog
Theresa May will be obliged to present MPs with a new Brexit plan within three days if her current proposal is voted down next week, after a procedural amendment to the plan’s progress through the Commons was passed amid chaotic scenes
The amendment to the business motion for the plan, drawn up by the Conservative former attorney general Dominic Grieve, gives May the deadline to put forward new plans if she loses the vote, as many expect, next Tuesday.
The amendment was passed by 308 votes to 297 following stormy scenes in which a series of Conservative MPs castigated the Speaker, John Bercow, for allowing the amendment.
Amid a series of furious points of order lasting more than an hour, a series of Conservatives argued that Commons precedent dictated that business motions could only be changed by ministers
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/09/mps-force-theresa-may-to-table-plan-b-if-she-loses-brexit-deal-vote
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2019/jan/09/brexit-latest-news-debate-pmqs-may-corbyn-grieve-mps-launch-bid-to-ensure-they-vote-on-plan-b-within-three-days-if-mays-deal-defeated-politics-live
Channel 9 sits down with Mark Harris in one-on-one interview
By: Paul Boyd
Updated: Jan 9, 2019 - 5:30 AM
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Mark Harris' campaign called Channel 9 Tuesday morning to offer a one-on-one interview, just a day after Harris used a fire escape to avoid cameras at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center.
Harris has been interviewed by state election officials amid an investigation into election fraud in the U.S. House District 9 race.
In the interview, Channel 9 pressed Harris about what he knew when and his expectations as he pushes to be seated in Congress.
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/channel-9-sits-down-with-mark-harris-in-one-on-one-interview/901229496
Hey Harris your full of shit, when you were asked why you ran away from the meeting last night, you stated that you wanted to go and watch the National Football Championship and you were hoping for a South Carolina, win, and now today you say some other cockamamie story, which one is it .......
...........your so full of the proverbial SHIT............................. 
And as for your traitor "guy" sitting in the white house.................maybe you should get up to speed and ask, why Paul Manafort his campaign chairman wanted to give data to a Russian agent......................so you want his backing.............. ................so you support a enabling traitor(s), who committed election fraud with a foreign power............ ....................your f***ed up.......................
The US house will not seat you.....................they also will hold a investigation....................
What is America going to do about its Trump problem in 2019?
Carol Anderson
Removing Donald Trump is essential but, to fully address the work that needs to be done, his appointees must also step down
It’s gut-check time. With each guilty plea, each indictment, each tweet, it becomes evident that Donald Trump is not the legitimate president of the United States. He was hoisted into the White House by at least one foreign power to whom he and his regime are now beholden. Trump’s domestic and international policies, such as an ill-conceived tariff war with China, unplanned troop withdrawals from Syria, and US abdication from key international treaties, reflect a White House that has been captured and is implementing the chaos policies that Vladimir Putin wanted.
The big question for 2019, however, is “What are Americans going to do about it?”
Impeachment will not be sufficient. Nor will a deal where Trump simply resigns and hands over the reins to Vice-President Mike Pence, who was handpicked by now-convicted felon Paul Manafort (guilty of conspiracy against the United States), and, who, as head of the transition team, overlooked the numerous warnings about Michael Flynn as a national security risk.
The problem, frankly, isn’t simply Donald Trump. He has been aided by a coterie of enablers, who have exploited the fissures, flaws, norms and loopholes in American democracy that allowed the unscrupulous to prosper at the expense of the people and the nation itself.
Removing Trump, while essential, will not fully address the work that needs to be done. Instead, it is going to take an effort akin to Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables to repair, rebuild and strengthen America.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/08/what-is-america-going-to-do-about-its-trump-problem-in-2019
-snip-
Also, the regime’s cruel policies must also be jettisoned and replaced by those that embed dignity, the rule of law, and democracy into the operating code of the United States. There are proposals for immigration reform, a Green New Deal, restoring the Voting Rights Act, non-partisan redistricting commissions, nationwide automatic voter registration, increasing the minimum wage, eliminating dark money from campaigns, protecting the special counsel’s investigation, electoral college reform, and restoring ethics as foundational for public service.
This, of course, looks like a herculean task. But it’s gut-check time. Whether the nation decides in 2019 that this work is too hard and simply accepts the fate of stagnating in years of political and economic filth or whether it embraces the challenge and takes the mighty rivers of democracy and justice to clean out the stables will ultimately determine the future of the United States.
Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy. She is also a Guardian US columnist.
Trump administration downgrades EU's status in US, without informing Brussels
Source: The Guardian
Downgrade of diplomatic role seen as a snub reflecting a general antipathy to the EU in the Trump administration
The Trump administration has downgraded the diplomatic status of the EU mission in Washington, without informing the mission or Brussels, officials confirmed on Tuesday
The downgrade from nation state to international organisation status reverses an Obama administration decision in 2016 to grant the EU an enhanced diplomatic role in Washington, and is being seen in Brussels as a snub reflecting a general antipathy to the EU in the Trump administration. The president has supported Brexit and has described the EU as a “foe”.
The change, first reported by the German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, potentially means that the EU mission would have less clout and access to US officials.
“We understand that there was a recent change in the way the diplomatic precedence list is implemented by the United States’ protocol,” Maja Kocijančič, spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs and security policy, said. She added: “We were not notified of any change.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/08/trump-administration-downgrades-european-union-status
-snip-
“This is a gratuitous and entirely unreasonable swipe at the EU by the Trump administration,” said Nicholas Burns, who was under secretary of state for political affairs in the George W Bush administration.
“It coincides with Trump’s campaign to depict the EU as a competitor, and not a partner, of the US It continues the administration’s delegitimization of international organizations and the supranational organization that is the EU.
“Americans should remember that the EU is our largest trade partner and largest investor in our economy,” Burns added. “Trump’s entire policy toward the EU continues to be misguided and ineffective.”
November 3, 2020 cannot get here fast enough.....................
Nasa spacecraft spots gaseous planet 23 times the size of Earth
‘Super-Earth’ among trio of planets and six supernovae detected by Tess mission
Three new planets and six supernovae outside our solar system have been observed by Nasa’s planet-hunting Tess mission in its first three months.
Since it started surveying the sky in July, the MIT-led Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite project has identified Pi Mensae b, a “super-Earth” that travels around its star every six days, and LHS 3844b, a rocky world with an orbit of only 11 hours.
The most recent discovery, an exoplanet named HD 21749b, has the longest orbital period at 36 days. It orbits a bright, nearby dwarf star about 53 light years away in the Reticulum constellation, and is thought to have a surface temperature of about 1,650C (3,000F). This is relatively cool considering its proximity to its star.
Diana Dragomir, a Hubble fellow at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research who led the discovery team, said: “It’s the coolest planet we know of around a star this bright. It’s very hard to find small planets that orbit farther from their stars, and are therefore cooler. But here we were lucky, and can now study this one in more detail.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/08/nasa-spacecraft-planet-earth-tess-mission
-snip-
While on this planet..............there was this orange hair "guy" sitting behind a desk.............bloviating like a gas cloud, while NASA is going unfunded (Democrats passed bills to fund the government) and employees were furloughed....................
November 3, 2020 cannot get here fast enough......................
Emergency Exit: Mark Harris trips alarm trying to evade Channel 9 in uptown
By: Joe Bruno
Updated: Jan 8, 2019 - 12:21 PM
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - After Republican 9th Congressional District candidate Mark Harris finished addressing Mecklenburg County Republicans at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Government Center Monday night, reporters, including Eyewitness News reporter Joe Bruno, tried to ask him questions.
Harris and a group of three or four other people used a fire exit to leave the Government Center as reporters attempted to ask questions.
After Harris opened the door on the ground level, an alarm sounded.
An unidentified man tried to block reporters from using the fire escape to follow Harris. When questioned if he worked for the city, the man allowed reporters to pursue the politician.
Reporters continued to volley questions at Harris after he exited through the fire escape, but he sprinted across East 3rd Street and into the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Charlotte, where he used to be a pastor.
Harris then got into a car which sped off in the opposite direction of reporters.
After the bizarre exit, in a tweet to Eyewitness News Reporter Joe Bruno, Harris said he had to get home to watch the college football National Championship game.
“Hey man,” Harris said. “Sorry I missed you guys tonight. I had to get to the kickoff of the #NationalChampionship game. We’ll have plenty to talk about in the days ahead. #GoTigers.”
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/as-reporters-try-to-ask-questions-mark-harris-uses-emergency-exit/900784100
A $20,243 bike crash: Zuckerberg hospital's aggressive tactics leave patients with big bills
I spent a year writing about ER bills. Zuckerberg San Francisco General has the most surprising billing practices I’ve seen.
By Sarah Kliffsarah@vox.com Jan 7, 2019, 6:00am EST
On April 3, Nina Dang, 24, found herself in a position like so many San Francisco bike riders — on the pavement with a broken arm.
A bystander saw her fall and called an ambulance. She was semi-lucid for that ride, awake but unable to answer basic questions about where she lived. Paramedics took her to the emergency room at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where doctors X-rayed her arm and took a CT scan of her brain and spine. She left with her arm in a splint, on pain medication, and with a recommendation to follow up with an orthopedist.
A few months later, Dang got a bill for $24,074.50. Premera Blue Cross, her health insurer, would only cover $3,830.79 of that — an amount that it thought was fair for the services provided. That left Dang with $20,243.71 to pay, which the hospital threatened to send to collections in mid-December.
“Eight months after my bike accident, I’m still thinking about [the bill], which is crazy to me,” Dang says.
Dang’s experience with Zuckerberg San Francisco General is not unique. Vox reviewed five patient bills from the hospital’s emergency room, in consultation with medical billing experts, and found that the hospital’s billing can cost privately insured patients tens of thousands of dollars for care that would likely cost them significantly less at other hospitals.
The bills were all submitted by patients to Vox’s Emergency Room Billing Database, which served as the basis for a year-long investigation into ER billing practices.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/7/18137967/er-bills-zuckerberg-san-francisco-general-hospital
-snip-
The judge ruled against the patients, finding that the hospital’s behavior was legal under California insurance regulations.
“The way for patients to solve this is to bring the hospital to court on a small claims action, but at the end of the day, that is just not a sustainable solution,” says Nicholas Carlin, the attorney who brought the suit.
Alexa Sulvetta is still contesting a $31,250 bill she received last spring for treatment of a broken ankle after she fell from a rock climbing wall. As with other patients, the hospital was not in Sulvetta’s insurance network. (I covered Sulvetta’s case previously in a separate story about emergency room trauma fees.)
She received a $113,336 bill for her one-day stay, and her insurance only agreed to pay a portion of that which it deemed reasonable — leaving Sulvetta with the $31,250 bill.
Sulvetta retained a lawyer last December to fight the bill. She has so far gotten the bill reduced by $8,000 — but also paid more than $3,000 in legal fees.
“I’m hoping to get it down to under $5,000 or $10,000,” she says. “It’s frustrating that I have to hire a lawyer, but so far it’s been worth it.”
Gavin Newson.....................is proposing a single payer system in the state
Why can companies still silence us with mandatory arbitration?
Moira Donegan
More than 55% of the American workforce is now subject to mandatory arbitration. This system of private courts must be abolished
When it was revealed in October that Andy Rubin received a $90m exit package after being forced to resign over a credible sexual harassment claim, Google employees around the world walked out in protest. They were disgusted at what appeared to be a reward for bad behavior, and they wanted more accountability for members of management. But they were also angry at the strategy that the company used to keep harassment claims a secret: forced arbitration.
Google employees, like their counterparts at a ballooning number of American companies, were subject to forced arbitration – meaning that if they had a conflict with their employer, such as wage theft, race discrimination, or in this case, sexual harassment, they were not entitled to take that claim to court. Instead, they would be forced into an alternative justice system called arbitration.
Arbitration is a system of private courts. They operate using different rules than civil courts – there is no judge or jury, for instance, but an “arbitrator” who is chosen by the parties, and paid by the employer, to decide the case. It is strictly confidential. Since the 1920s, arbitration has been legally binding: once parties agree to settle a dispute in arbitration, they give up their right to go to court.
The practice has been around for centuries, functioning as a quicker, cheaper alternative to the formal justice system, and it was originally developed to settle disputes between businesses. But starting in the mid-1980s, the US supreme court issued a series of rulings saying that arbitration could be used for other kinds of conflicts – including conflicts between employees and employers over things such as discrimination.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/08/forced-arbitration-sexual-harassment-metoo
Well apparently the Federalist on the United States Supreme court think that the First and Tenth and Eleventh amendments , basically don't mean anything, if especially the First Amendment ..........
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right. A 70% tax on the rich makes sense
Nathan Robinson
If we are serious about tackling climate change, this is precisely the kind of policy we need to see
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has continued to show her power to steer the national political conversation. In an interview, Ocasio-Cortez suggested offhandedly that income above $10m may need to be taxed up to 70%, especially if we are going to get serious about halting climate change. Her idea instantly sparked indignant replies from the right. Grover Norquist compared it to slavery. National Review’s Brian Riedl called it “completely destructive.” Steve Scalise said she wanted to “Take away 70% of your income and give it to leftist fantasy programs.”
Many critics attempt to confuse people over what Ocasio-Cortez said. Just to be clear: she said that when people earn $10m, the 10 millionth dollar and above should be taxed at a high rate. So unless you earn 10 million dollars, she’s not talking about “your” income. These are marginal tax rates, though the Republican party loves to trick people by conflating taxes that apply solely to the unfathomably rich with taxes that apply to ordinary workers.
In fact, Ocasio-Cortez didn’t even specifically say what she wanted the US tax rate to be: she said that “sometimes you see” a 70% tax on multi-multi-millionaires. And that’s true: Sweden has a 70% top tax rate and consistently remains near the top of the Global Innovation Index. She pointed to the fact that across the world, in many successful social democratic countries, high earners pay more than they do in the United States. That’s a fact, and it should make people wary of talking points about how destructive any attempt to fund critical programs would be.
Many of the arguments against taxes on the wealthy are “moralistic” rather than empirical. The argument that taxes on high earners are “slavery” is incoherent. Nobody forces you to earn $10m. When you are enslaved, someone makes you do work. Being wealthy is a choice – you could avoid the tax whenever you like by shedding your wealth and joining the working class. If we want to talk about “freedom,” the concentration of wealth at the very top has made the super-rich more free do as they please than anyone else, while it’s poor people who are faced with the choice to either work or suffer. If we want to talk about morality, having tremendous wealth when there is terrible deprivation cannot be justified.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-70-percent-tax-rich
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