turbinetree
turbinetree's JournalThe Supreme Court is abandoning legitimacy for partisanship
Neil Gorsuch, the man who occupies a seat on the Supreme Court because Senate Republicans held it open until Donald Trump could fill it, is on a bit of a victory tour.
Last week, the staunchly conservative judge spoke at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center — as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the center’s namesake and the man who orchestrated the strategy that placed Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, sat just a few feet away. McConnell, who also introduced Gorsuch, told the audience that he “could not have been happier” when Trump named Gorsuch to fill the seat the senator held open for more than a year.
On Thursday, Gorsuch will speak to a conservative group at Trump’s D.C. hotel. By headlining this event, Gorsuch will personally enrich the very man who appointed him to his lofty position. And he will enable the very mechanism that allows Trump to profit off the presidency. It is unlikely, to say the least, that conservative groups favor Trump’s hotel as a venue because they are fond of its $24 cocktails.
Then, in November, the tour will resume when Gorsuch keynotes the Federalist Society’s annual lawyer’s conference — the same conservative legal group that Trump relied on to pick Gorsuch in the first place.
Neil Gorsuch knows where his bread is buttered. And he rewards his friends.
https://thinkprogress.org/scotus-legitimacy-problem-a3fbe0b27c0a/
Now Its Medicare Under The Knife
By Jillian S. Ambroz
While Trump and the Senate whip the nation into another frenzy over another effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, high-flying Tom Price and his Health and Human Services Dept. (HHS) are quietly floating plans to significantly alter Medicare and Medicaid.
The new proposal? A move toward privatization, of course. Allow doctors to charge more money for their services and make the elderly and poor pay the price.
The agency’s policy center, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), put out a Request for Information last week as it prepares to “lead the Center in a new direction” and unveil potentially drastic changes to the federal programs that provide healthcare insurance for more than 130 million Americans, including children. CMMI, which has broad authority over some $1 billion annually, was created by Congress in 2010 to examine and test new models to pay for and deliver healthcare.
Medicare’s main trust fund is projected to run out of money in a decade and Medicaid is the second-largest line item in most state budgets, according to Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal selling the new ploy to overhaul the federal insurance plans a day before the agency filed the document.
https://www.dcreport.org/2017/09/25/now-its-medicare-under-the-knife/
Fuck this BS.....................and as for Seema Verma....
A Big Thank You, America! From The Super Rich
By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor in Chief
Congress is about to take up Donald Trump’s desire for people like himself to get income-tax-rate cuts. So, what’s the long-term trend in tax-rate cuts? And how has the vast majority fared compared with the richest?
Is there a case to be made that the highest income people in America need a tax-rate cut? What do the numbers tell us about the claim that at current tax rates the rich cannot afford to invest in ways that will create more jobs?
Thanks to a quirk in the official data, we can compare the very highest income Americans in 1961 and 2013 with the vast majority, the 90%. For two decades, the IRS has done an annual report on the 400 highest income taxpayers. The latest data on them is from 2013. Turns out in 1961 there were 398 taxpayers who made more than $1 million, allowing a statistical comparison to 2013.
Take a seat. The numbers may knock the breath out of you when you read what 52 years have done to the incomes and tax burdens of the vast majority and those at the apex of the economy.
https://www.dcreport.org/2017/09/26/a-big-thank-you-america-from-the-super-rich/
David Cay Johnston...............
23 Reasons Why The NRA Is Racist
Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.
In the October edition of the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) magazine America’s 1st Freedom, NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre takes on what he calls the “false notion” from the “gun-ban media” that “somehow the NRA is racist.”
Outlets covering the NRA and race should consider these examples — starting with LaPierre himself — in evaluating his claims:
1. After Hurricane Sandy struck New York City and other parts of the East Coast in 2013, LaPierre was criticized for writing an op-ed in which he falsely claimed that “looters ran wild in south Brooklyn” and fearmongered about “Latin American drug gangs.” Conservative commentator Joe Scarborough described the claims as “so laced with racial overtones.” Progressive commentator Touré pointed out that LaPierre “spoke of supposedly rampant crime and murder in some place he called South Brooklyn. … Put aside that no reporting bears that out. I live in Brooklyn, I have for a long time, and there is no place referred to as South Brooklyn, but I think it’s safe to say that when he says that, much of the country envisions a place clogged with black people.”
2.During the NRA’s 2015 annual meeting, LaPierre referenced the end of the Obama administration and told the crowd, “Eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough.” Reacting to the comment, Pulitzer-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote, “LaPierre traded his dog whistle for an air horn.”
3. During a 2014 speech, LaPierre adopted conservative media’s racially charged claims about the (nonexistent) “knockout game” phenomenon — in which black youths supposedly assault unsuspecting, mostly white, victims on the street for fun — to hype gun ownership.
4. Activists and some gun owners castigated the NRA for its feckless response to the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, a black, law-abiding gun owner, by a Minnesota police officer in 2016.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/23-reasons-nra-racist/
Should be called the National Racist Association
Baltimores Kushnerville Tenants File Class Action Against Landlord
Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.
Tenants of the Baltimore-area apartment complexes owned by Jared Kushner’s real-estate company have brought a class-action lawsuit against the firm’s property management arm over its aggressive pursuit of tenants for allegedly unpaid rent.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Circuit Court for Baltimore City, alleges that the management company and related corporate entities have been improperly inflating payments owed by tenants by charging them late fees that are often unfounded and court fees that are not actually approved by any court. This, the lawsuit charges, sets in motion a vicious cycle in which tenants’ rent payments are partly assessed toward the fees instead of the actual rent owed, thus deeming the tenant once again “late” on his or her rent payment, leading to yet more late fees and court fees. Making matters worse, the 5 percent late fees are frequently assessed on principal that includes allegedly unpaid fees, not just the rent itself. Tenants are pressured to pay the snowballing bills with immediate threat of eviction, the suit alleges.
“The routine practice of charging tenants illegal fees combined with filing eviction proceedings against tenants who have paid their rent on time is predatory and destructive to hard-working Marylanders and their families. This is yet another example of corporations profiting from deceptive policies,” said Chelsea Ortega of Santoni, Vocci & Ortega, a Baltimore-area firm that has also brought class-action suits for similar “fee-churning” practices against two other large property management companies in the area. In this case, the firm is working with Brown Goldstein & Levy, a Baltimore firm specializing in civil rights cases, and the Public Justice Center, a civil legal aid office based in Baltimore that has also brought cases against area landlords over similar practices.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/baltimores-kushnerville-tenants-file-class-action-landlord/
From all appearances this character Kusher, doesn't mind being a slum lord, just like his boss
Paul Horner, key distributor of fake news during 2016 election, dies at 38
A leading purveyor of fake news in the 2016 presidential election has died outside Phoenix at the age of 38.
A Maricopa County sheriff’s office spokesman, Mark Casey, said on Tuesday authorities had discovered Paul Horner dead in his bed on 18 September.
Casey said the Maricopa County medical examiner had performed an autopsy which showed there were no signs of foul play. He said Horner had a history of prescription drug abuse and that “evidence at the scene suggested this could be an accidental overdose”.
Horner was known for writing false stories and disseminating internet hoaxes that often went viral on Facebook and hoodwinked thousands of people.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/27/paul-horner-dead-fake-news-trump
Zinke Seems To Carve Out Exception For Home State On Shrinking Monuments
Source: Talking Points Memo
By MATTHEW BROWN Published SEPTEMBER 27, 2017 1:29 PM
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has closely followed his boss’ playbook, encouraging mining and drilling on public lands and reducing the size of national monuments that President Donald Trump called a “massive land grab” by his Democratic predecessors.
Except, that is, in Montana.
In Zinke’s home state, the former congressman who has long harbored higher political ambitions is recommending Trump create a new national monument out of the forests bordering Glacier National Park, to the disappointment of a company that wants to drill for natural gas there.
A couple hundred miles away, where rocky bluffs line the Missouri River, he decided to leave intact a 590-square-mile (1,528-square-kilometer) monument that for 16 years has stirred the kind of impassioned local opposition that Zinke cited in justifying changes to monuments elsewhere.
And he wants to curb mining along Montana’s border with Yellowstone National Park. That could discourage development of two proposed mines that supporters say would offer higher paying jobs than tourism.
Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/zinke-exception-for-montana-on-shrinking-monuments
And now the group that supported this ass**** now thinks that what he is doing is wrong....................
You have as much sh*t on your hands as this guy, and the f*cking guy you supported in the general election who is a sexual predator.
Do you realize Tawney, damn near every monument in this country is near Indigenous Peoples sacred sites, haven't you figured that out by now, it's our country..............nope, you and your Manifest Destiny bunch are hypocrites............
Democratic leaders fight Senate arbitration vote
Source: Axios
Senate Democratic leaders condemned Wednesday the Senate's impending vote on forced arbitration (when corporations require consumers to waive their right to sue), pointing to the fallout from recent scandals surrounding Equifax's security breach and Wells Fargo's fake-account scam as evidence of how the clause hurts people.
What they're protesting: Republican leaders have been working to secure votes to overturn a July Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that protects consumers from being denied their day in court, which Schumer described as "making no sense."
Timing: The Republicans' move to roll back the CFPB rule comes a week before Wells Fargo and Equifax executives will testify in court.
GOP's thinking: By getting this vote out of the way before the hearings, Republicans can avoid gifting financial companies with forced arbitration clauses while Wells Fargo and Equifax execs get grilled in court.
Read more: https://www.axios.com/democratic-leaders-fight-senates-forced-arbitration-vote-2490181675.html
How Military Outsourcing Turned Toxic
Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.
IN AUGUST 2016, an inspector from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency arrived at Barksdale Air Force base in Louisiana, a nerve center for the U.S. military’s global air combat operations, to conduct a routine look at the base’s handling of its hazardous waste.
Barksdale, like many military bases, generates large volumes of hazardous materials, including thousands of pounds of toxic powder left over from cleaning, painting and maintaining airplanes.
For years, Barksdale had been sending a portion of its waste to an Ohio company, U.S. Technology Corp., that had sold officials at the base on a seemingly ingenious solution for disposing of it: The company would take the contaminated powder from refurbished war planes and repurpose it into cinderblocks that would be used to build everything from schools to hotels to big-box department stores — even a pregnancy support center in Ohio. The deal would ostensibly shield the Air Force from the liabililty of being a large producer of dangerous hazardous trash.
The arrangement was not unique.
The military is one of the country’s largest polluters, with an inventory of toxic sites on American soil that once topped 39,000. At many locations, the Pentagon has relied on contractors like U.S. Technology to assist in cleaning and restoring land, removing waste, clearing unexploded bombs, and decontaminating buildings, streams and soil. In addition to its work for Barksdale, U.S. Technology had won some 830 contracts with other military facilities — Army, Air Force, Navy and logistics bases — totaling more than $49 million, many of them to dispose of similar powders.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/military-outsourcing-turned-toxic/
Kids are going to school built with cinder blocks.....................no wonder or health crises is where it's at............this is BS...............
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