turbinetree
turbinetree's JournalAmericans overwhelmingly want Trump to testify in Russia probe
By Tommy Christopher - September 12, 2018
Trump has a lot to answer for, and Americans want to hear those answers.
Trump’s lawyers are desperately try to keep him out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s hot seat — but the vast majority of Americans think Trump needs to explain himself under oath.
According to a new poll from CNN, 72 percent of Americans say Trump should testify under oath to Mueller, versus only 23 percent who say he should not.
That’s incredibly bad news for Trump, who has been waging a relentless campaign of attacks on Mueller and his investigation. But that campaign is clearly a complete failure, as public approval for the Mueller investigation has continued to climb.
In the CNN poll, 61 percent of Americans also said that the Russia investigation is “a serious matter that should be fully investigated.”
https://shareblue.com/poll-americans-overwhelmingly-want-trump-testify-mueller-russia-probe/
Republicans are in so much trouble, George W. Bush is trying to help
By Kaili Joy Gray - September 12, 2018
You know it's bad when the GOP is calling on George W. Bush to rescue the party.
Republicans are facing a massive wipeout this November, and the party is growing increasingly desperate to try to stave off the damage.
So desperate, in fact, that now they’re turning to former President George W. Bush for help.
Bush left office in 2009 with an abysmal 33 percent approval rating. While that number has gone up considerably since Trump took office, disapproval of Bush among his fellow Republicans has tripled since 2015.
But desperate times call for desperate measures — so Bush is hitting the fundraising trail for his party, Politico reports.
The infamously awkward and inarticulate Bush won’t be out on the campaign trail; the party isn’t quite that desperate, at least not yet.
Instead, he’ll be addressing donors behind closed doors, trying to raise money for embattled incumbents like Texas Reps. Will Hurd and Pete Sessions, and Senate hopefuls like Josh Hawley in Missouri and Mike Braun in Indiana.
https://shareblue.com/republicans-trouble-george-w-bush-worst-president-help/
He's still an enabler to war crimes..................next up Dick Cheney coming out to toot the horn of BS................POS
Chicago hotel strike enters sixth day, as workers demand year-round health insurance
Workers from 26 hotels have joined the fight.
CASEY QUINLAN
SEP 12, 2018, 10:26 AM
Thousands of Chicago hotel workers continued their strike for the sixth day Wednesday, primarily to demand a year-round health insurance guarantee. The union said workers also want higher wages, more sick days, and more manageable workloads, the Associated Press reported. Their contracts, which covered 6,000 employees, expired on August 30.
The number of hotel workers involved in the strike has only increased since then. On Monday, workers at Cambria Chicago Magnificent Mile joined the strike, which brought the count of hotels affected by the strike to 26. Before the strike, more than 3,000 UNITE HERE Local 1’s members voted on the issue and 97 percent voted to authorize it.
The union told the Chicago Tribune that it is the most widespread and coordinated hotel worker strike ever held in Chicago. It’s the first strike in the city to include all hotel workers, whether they’re dishwashers or housekeepers, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.
As the Tribune reported, there are only four hotels that have expired contracts where hotel workers are not on strike: Hotel Raffaelo, Tremont Chicago at Magnificent Mile, Park Hyatt Chicago, and Fairmont Chicago.
https://thinkprogress.org/chicago-hotel-strike-sixth-day-workers-demand-year-round-health-insurance-c4998ba711af/
Is Slate a right wing site? There is an article that heard about on the Michael Signorelli show.
That should be published about Facebook and censorship
Trump officials denied 97 percent of Puerto Rico funeral aid requests
By Caroline Orr - September 12, 2018
Trump claims his administration's response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico was a 'success,' but the numbers tell a very different story.
Under Trump’s leadership, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has approved just 75 out of 2,431 requests for funeral assistance stemming from Hurricane Maria-related deaths in Puerto Rico, according to newly released correspondence.
In a letter to Senate Democrats, the agency said just 3 percent of requests had been approved as of the end of July, while the remaining 97 percent have either been rejected or have not received a decision nearly a year after the deadly hurricane devastated the island.
The letter is dated Aug. 14 but was only made public Tuesday — the same day Trump touted his administration’s handling of the disaster as an “incredible, unsung success.”
According to Buzzfeed News, which first reported on the correspondence, FEMA’s funeral aid is meant to cover funeral expenses “including caskets, mortuary services, burial plots, and cremations.”
Brock Long, director of FEMA, did not specify why the agency had denied nearly all of the requests for assistance but said that in order to qualify, applicants must provide evidence “that clearly indicates the death was attributed to the emergency or disaster, either directly or indirectly.”
https://shareblue.com/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-deaths-fema-funeral-assistance-denied/
What a POS of shit.......................30 million FEMA meals that were never distributed.............this asshole has no empathy...............no cognitive ability to see trouble for other people...............none................
GOP plan takes food stamps away from 2 million Americans in need
By Tommy Christopher - September 12, 2018
Senior citizens and children get hit the hardest, according to a new study.
Trump and Republicans have spent months trying to kick needy Americans off of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. And they are poised to “succeed” in stripping crucial nutrition aid from 2 million households, according to a new study released Thursday.
Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan research organization, analyzed how certain provisions of the new Farm Bill in the U.S. House would affect eligibility for food stamps.
About 1 in 11 households receiving SNAP would lose benefits, the shocking study found. And the pain resulting from the Republican-led House bill would hit vulnerable Americans hardest.
Of the nearly 2 million households poised to lose SNAP benefits, “34 percent (677,000 households) include seniors, 23 percent (469,000 households) include children, and 11 percent (214,000 households) include a person with a disability,” the study found.
And that’s not even the whole picture of how many low-income Americans will be denied food assistance thanks to Trump and congressional Republicans.
The study’s authors told The New York Times that those 2 million households who would immediately lose benefits don’t include the 1.2 million Americans whom the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in May would be thrown off of SNAP by 2028, thanks to the work requirement and income requirements that Trump and House Republicans have been pushing.
https://shareblue.com/gop-plan-cuts-food-stamps-2-million-americans/
The day Donald Trump's narcissism killed the USFL
Although the president is a constant critic of the NFL, he unintentionally helped the league during a hapless turn as a witness in a 1986 lawsuit
As its third season came toward a close, the United States Football League filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, claiming it had established a monopoly with respect to television broadcasting rights. The suit was led by Donald Trump, the New Jersey Generals owner who was convinced his league would win and, as a result, force a merger with the NFL. Held over 42 days in the United States District Court in Manhattan, it was one of the most eagerly anticipated trials in the history of modern sports. And the USFL seemed to have a good shot – until Trump stepped up …
The NFL’s lead attorney, Frank Rothman, utilized an approach that was the 180-degree opposite of [USFL attorney Harvey] Myerson’s. He didn’t beat people down. He didn’t scream, rant, snarl. A distinguished 59-year-old with broad shoulders and gray hair, Rothman was the former CEO of MGM/UA Entertainment, and he exuded a natural dignity. He sat back, let Myerson do his dance (as the entity that led the suit, the USFL was first to call witnesses), then meticulously went about making the NFL’s case that the USFL, by moving to fall, dug its own grave. “They had everything their way at the beginning,” Rothman said. “They had the jury they wanted. They hammered away at the Harvard [presentation]. Myerson was pitching the little guys versus the big guys. I would go back and tell the NFL people, ‘Listen, when we get our turn we can start turning this thing around. We have to be patient.’ But, actually, it didn’t take that long.”
Beginning with the trial’s opening day, Rothman asked himself a single question: Who is my bad guy? He sought someone the jury would find difficult to believe and even harder to like. He sought someone with false bravado, with arrogance, with indifference. He didn’t want the jury to think about a sad little league going up against a powerful machine. No, he wanted the jury to see that the USFL, sympathy be damned, was its own Frankenstein. “The more I developed the strategy,” he said, “the more I wanted Donald Trump as my fall guy. I would call it Donald versus Goliath. I would make their scheme Donald’s plan, which it was. I would show that Donald Trump is not a little lightweight; he is one of the richest men in America . . . He was such a lousy witness for them, and a great one for us.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/sep/11/the-day-donald-trumps-narcissism-killed-the-usfl
Hey traitor......................remember this.................is this why you are so pissed off at the NFL in your psychopathic way of thinking......................
American public schools need help. To achieve change, we need to vote
By casting their ballots and running for office, determined educators are fighting for change
As students and teachers return to school each year, so do I. As the American Federation of Teachers president, I visit classrooms throughout the country in order to see for myself how our students and teachers are doing. On the one hand, I find myself inspired by those helping our students to thrive. On the other hand, I’m angered by the many forces hindering public education.
Last week, teachers in Burnsville, Minnesota, proudly showed me classrooms with reading nooks, educational games and extra supplies – all purchased with teachers’ own money – so no child would have to go without. Educators in Massena, New York, organized a Ready-4-School event so their students could get free school supplies, clothing, books and even haircuts. And in Baltimore, where many schools were too cold last winter and too hot last week to conduct classes, school staff recently helped distribute more than $30,000 worth of books and school supplies to students in need.
I hear the same things over and over during these visits: Disinvestment in public education is hurting our students. Teachers are struggling to get by on salaries that don’t reflect the importance of their work. Educators are frustrated by their lack of latitude to meet children’s needs because decisions about instruction and classroom assessment are driven more by standardized testing than by teaching and learning.
And yet, these educators persist.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/american-public-schools-help-vote
Ten years on from the financial crash, we need to get ready for another one
Robert Skidelsky
The lessons of 2008 have not been fully learned: stop risky lending by banks, address fiscal policy and reduce inequality
The collapse of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008 unleashed the worst global downturn since the Great Depression of 1929. And it was almost entirely unanticipated. Ten years on is a good time to ask what governments, policymakers, and economists might learn from this catastrophe – how to prevent future ones, and how to overcome them if they happen. Of these two, prevention is far better than cure. Once a downturn gathers momentum, the scale of intervention needed to reverse it becomes frighteningly large. Budget deficits balloon, public debts soar, governments take over banks – all conjuring up visions of looming state bankruptcy, or worse, state control over the economy. So the most important question is: how can these catastrophes be prevented?
By prevention, I do not chiefly mean trying to stop the semi-regular fluctuations of the business cycle. Capitalist market economies exhibit rhythms of economic activity. The political economist Joseph Schumpeter called them waves of creation and destruction, or perhaps they simply arise from temporary mistakes of optimism and pessimism. The authorities already possess the tools to dampen, if not altogether prevent, these fluctuations – if they want to. Central banks can use interest rates to restrict or expand credit; government budgets have built-in stabilisers, with revenues falling when the economy turns down, and rising when it expands.
Beyond this, central banks could vary the reserve requirements of member banks counter-cyclically; local authorities could keep a buffer stock of public works – local improvements – which could be quickly expanded and contracted as unemployment rises and falls. Finally, there is a question of the “norm” around which the fluctuations might be allowed to occur. Should policy aim to maintain “high” full employment or be satisfied with “low’” full employment – the difference being between (say) an unemployment rate of 2-3% and 4-5%?
But the job of preventing economic collapses (of the order of 5% to 10% of national income, with unemployment doubling from “normal” times) requires far more ambitious thinking. Such collapses can happen at any time because, as John Maynard Keynes taught, the future is uncertain. It was the rapid spread of contagion through the banking system that brought it low in 2008. This was because big global banks held each other’s heavily insured risky assets. When the value of these assets collapsed, the banks and their insurers went bust. They then had to be rescued because they were “too big to fail”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/crash-2008-financial-crisis-austerity-inequality
-snip-
What is hardly realised, even today, is that the rhetoric supporting this policy of deficit-cutting in a slump gets almost no support from economic theory. The national debt is not a “burden on future generations”; it is a transfer between creditors and debtors. Such transfers may have undesirable distributional effects, but no net burden arises, either now or in the future.
Much more important was the false argument that cutting public spending promotes recovery by increasing the confidence of the business community. This doctrine of “expansionary fiscal consolidation” was much in vogue in 2010. It is false, because businesses invest when they see a market, and the market expands when consumers have more money to spend. If government, in an attempt to “balance the books”, reduces the community’s spending power, economic recovery stalls. And this is what happened. Osborne’s cuts chopped down the “green shoots of recovery” that had begun to appear at the end of 2009, and condemned Britain to at least two further years of stagnation. In fact, the effects of his “cure” linger still, in the form of lost output and earnings.
Even though this is written for the British Population, it can also be used here in the United States.....................
North Carolina didn't like science on sea levels ... so passed a law against it
In 2012, the state whose low-lying coast lies in the path of Hurricane Florence reacted to a prediction of catastrophically rising seas by banning policies based on such forecasts
When North Carolina got bad news about what its coast could look like thanks to climate change, it chose to ignore it.
In 2012, the state now in the path of Hurricane Florence reacted to a prediction by its Coastal Resources Commission that sea levels could rise by 39in over the next century by passing a law that banned policies based on such forecasts.
The legislation drew ridicule, including a mocking segment by comedian Stephen Colbert, who said: “If your science gives you a result you don’t like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved.”
North Carolina has a long, low-lying coastline and is considered one of the US areas most vulnerable to rising sea levels.
But dire predictions alarmed coastal developers and their allies, who said they did not believe the rise in sea level would be as bad as the worst models predicted and said such forecasts could unnecessarily hurt property values and drive up insurance costs.
As a result, the state’s official policy, rather than adapting to the worst potential effects of climate change, has been to assume it simply won’t be that bad. Instead of forecasts, it has mandated predictions based on historical data on sea level rise.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/12/north-carolina-didnt-like-science-on-sea-levels-so-passed-a-law-against-it
-snip-
“The science panel used one model, the most extreme in the world,” Pat McElraft, the sponsor of the 2012 bill, said at the time, according to Reuters. “They need to use some science that we can all trust when we start making laws in North Carolina that affect property values on the coast.”
So Pat , may I call you Pat,....................what do you think the property values will be now..................
-snip-
But Orrin Pilkey, a retired Duke University coastal geologist, wrote in a recent op-ed in the News & Observer that the state has still failed to take the steps that communities in Virginia and New Jersey have taken, to prepare for rising sea levels.
“Instead coastal development flourishes as more beachfront buildings, highways and bridges are built to ease access to our beautiful beaches,” he wrote. “Currently the unspoken plan is to wait until the situation is catastrophic and then respond.”
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