October 16, 2020

Apache - Hank Marvin

October 5, 2020

Oldest Living CIA Agent Says Russia Probably Targeted Trump Decades Ago

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oldest-living-cia-agent-says-russia-probably-targeted-trump-decades-ago?ref=home

On Aug. 18, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 1,300-page report characterizing the involvement of Russian intelligence operatives with officials of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign as an “aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” The report detailed the longstanding relationship between Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, and a Russian intelligence operative named Konstantin Kilimnik, while also describing the links of other Russian intelligence figures to Trump family members, notably Donald Jr. and Jared Kushner, and to such Trump confidants as Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, briefly the president’s national security adviser.

As to be expected, President Trump immediately denounced the report as “a hoax” (never mind that it was authored by a Republican-controlled committee), while his inner circle adopted their usual stance on such matters, either staying mum or decrying the committee’s work as a tired retread of last year’s Mueller report. The real scandal, the president declaimed, was the deep state “witch hunt” against him that spurred these investigations in the first place.

If this latest chapter in the four-year Russiagate drama is unlikely to change many minds, at least one person has examined the Senate’s findings with both great interest and alarm. His name is Peter Sichel and, at the age of 97, he is the last surviving member of the early CIA that faced off with the Soviets at the start of the Cold War.

snip...

“Most people have this idea that they came in and grabbed all those countries by force,” Sichel explained, “but that is not true. In almost every case, they worked within the structure of the prewar political parties and just gradually coopted them.”

snip...

October 4, 2020

Expert: Uber-funded ballot measure in California would create 'permanent underclass of workers'

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/expert-uber-funded-ballot-measure-in-california-would-create-permanent-underclass-of-workers/?rs=182

Those who took high school civics may recall that our democracies lives on fractions. A majority vote — one-half plus one — is what it takes to pass a bill in most legislative bodies. The constitution requires a "supermajority," meaning two-thirds of a governing body, for only the most important and crucial matters: to override a presidential veto, or remove an officer via impeachment, say.

If two-thirds seems like a high threshold for a congressional body, what about seven-eighths? That's the super-duper-majority that would be required to overturn Proposition 22 — the Uber- and Lyft-funded ballot measure that will appear on California ballots this November — should it pass this fall.

You read that right: the astroturf ballot measure written by some of Silicon Valley's biggest corporations, which is written to keep these companies' contractors from achieving benefits or a stable, salaried job, would require a seven-eighths majority of state legislators in both state chambers in order to be overturned — such a difficult threshold to meet that experts say it would be effectively permanent.

The origin of Proposition 22

It all goes back to California's Assembly Bill 5, which went into effect on January 1, 2020. The impetus for AB5 was to make gig economy work into more stable and reliable work, and reduce worker exploitation; currently, driver-contractors like those who work for Uber or Lyft are not guaranteed health care of any other benefits if they work more than 40 hours a week, as they are legally contractors rather than employees.

snip...


If this passes here in California...

October 2, 2020

Here's why the presidential election could be upended if one of the candidates dies

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/election-law-expert-sheds-some-light-on-the-messy-complications-that-could-arise-if-a-presidential-nominee-dies-or-is-incapacitated-before-the-election/

The bombshell news, in the wee hours on Friday morning, that President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and Trump adviser Hope Hicks had all tested positive for COVID-19 is sparking discussions about the presidential line of succession. And to make matters even more complicated, the U.S. is only a month away from a presidential election. Rick Hasen, an expert on U.S. election law and a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, asks the following question on his Election Law Blog: "what happens if a presidential candidate dies or is incapacitated before Election Day?"

And Hasen's answer is harrowing: "a mess."

Hasen, in his posts, notes that so far, President Trump has been asymptomatic (in fact, by the time of this posting, he reportedly has "mild symptoms." But what if Trump were to take a turn for the worse? COVID-19 can infect people in very different ways. Some people infected with COVID-19 never had so much as a sneeze, while others suffer severe respiratory problems, cardiovascular issues, and death.

"As a matter of national importance," Hasen writes, "we need to ask what would happen if one of the presidential candidates died or became incapacitated before Election Day."

snip...

September 10, 2020

'Appalling Betrayal': New Report Details Dozens of Trump Rollbacks Perpetrated Under Cover of Covid-

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/10/appalling-betrayal-new-report-details-dozens-trump-rollbacks-perpetrated-under-cover

"Nearly 200,000 Americans are dead and more than 6 million have been infected with Covid-19 because of the administration's disastrous response, but Trump's top priority is showering giant corporations with deregulatory special favors," says Matt Kent of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

In the nearly six months since President Donald Trump declared a public health emergency over the coronavirus pandemic, he has rolled back at least 30 public protections, while proposing changes to at least 20 others, according to a report published Thursday by Public Citizen's Coalition on Sensible Safeguards.

The report—Pandemic Rollbacks: Slashing Safeguards During the Coronavirus—tracks dozens of regulatory rollbacks enacted or proposed by the Trump administration since March.

snip...

Noting that Trump "has directed agencies to press forward with his dangerous, unpopular, and corrupt deregulatory agenda as if it's business as usual," the report accuses the president of appearing "eager to take advantage of the crisis and ram through deregulatory policies while the rest of the country is distracted."

------------

The article enumerates some of those rollbacks.

September 8, 2020

Is a second American civil war really possible?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/is-a-second-american-civil-war-really-possible/

snip...

If we are, indeed, on the brink of a second Civil War, it’s already being waged as a “cold war,” with the occasional armed skirmish being provoked by the so-called Alt-Right movement, which, as of summer, 2020, had murdered thousands of Americans since Tim McVeigh kicked off the modern “boogaloo” white supremacy era.

And, as in the past, this would be a war where the very, very rich—the oligarchs—pit Americans against each other, dividing us by class, region, race and religion simply to gain and hold more and more power and wealth.

This is not the first time we’ve faced such a crisis as a nation.

Each time, forces of massive accumulated or inherited wealth have nearly succeeded in taking full control of our nation, replacing a democracy, where the will of the people is accomplished through their elected representatives, with a form of government where most government functions reinforce the power, wealth and control of the morbidly rich.

snip...

September 7, 2020

'Touted as 'essential'... treated as disposable': Labor Day anger as migrant farm workers toil inside

‘Touted as ‘essential’… treated as disposable’: Labor Day anger as migrant farm workers toil inside wildfire evacuation zones

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/touted-as-essential-treated-as-disposable-labor-day-anger-as-migrant-farm-workers-toil-inside-wildfire-evacuation-zones/

“For the workers, their hands were forced by a combination of circumstances as toxic as the ash that falls over the region’s famous vineyards.”

This Labor Day, immigrant and worker’s rights advocates are sounding the alarm in response to reports of migrant grape pickers, many of whom are undocumented, being forced to work in fire evacuation zones by California growers in a situation critics say demonstrates how some of those deemed “essential” at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic have been rendered “disposable” in the face of a record-setting heat wave and extremely dangerous conditions.

“What’s needed more than anything is an economic safety net in times of disaster so that people don’t have to accept perilous work and changes to immigration laws, so they don’t have to fear offers of help.”
Alleen Brown, reporter, The Intercept

While the threat of flames and smoke was strong enough in Sonoma County to provoke the relocation of area residents, “the county agriculture commissioner invited workers to continue laboring in the fields, doling out evacuation-area access passes to dozens of agricultural producers,” Alleen Brown reported for The Intercept.

snip...

=====

edited to add
I live in Sonoma county and it is currently 103 degrees outside (at 3:32 pm).

September 2, 2020

Businesses Balk at Trump's Payroll Tax Holiday

https://www.inc.com/diana-ransom/trump-payroll-tax-holiday-launch-key-issues.html

President Donald Trump's payroll tax holiday for American workers kicked in on September 1, but few if any are likely to see a dime of it. That's because tax and benefits experts are calling the current proposal unworkable.

"It's a nightmare for an employer," says Shauna Zobrist, a CPA and an adviser at Breakaway Bookkeeping & Advising, a virtual network of bookkeepers and accountants in Portland, Oregon. "There are so many unknowns that become apparent when you start peeling back the layers."

That's even after the U.S. Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service on August 28 issued joint guidance on the implementation of Trump's August 8 executive order--which temporarily deferred the employee portion of payroll taxes for workers with annual incomes of $100,000 or less, or $4,000 per biweekly pay period.

The guidance from the two agencies confirmed that employers would be on the hook for repaying the government for any payroll taxes that their employees defer. The businesses in turn are supposed to collect the taxes from their employees. That amounts to 6.2 percent of an employee's salary for Social Security and 1.45 percent for Medicare. The tax can be deferred from September 1 through December 31 of this year and recouped from January 1 through April 30, 2021.

snip...

August 22, 2020

For all those RWNJ's that whine about "illegals" taking their jobs...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/22/california-farmworkers-wildfires-air-quality-coronavirus?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

Workers who pick our fruits and vegetables are out in the field through wildfire, pandemic, drought or storm, putting their health in jeopardy

snip...

As hundreds of fires burn across California, blanketing swaths of the state in smoke so thick that it muted the sun, low-wage farmworkers continued to toil in the fields, working through grueling conditions, now made even worse by the air quality.

snip...

August 13, 2020

As GOP Blocks Covid Relief, Experts Warn of 'Wave of Despair' and Devastating Anecdotes Show Crisis

As GOP Blocks Covid Relief, Experts Warn of 'Wave of Despair' and Devastating Anecdotes Show Crisis Already Here

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/13/gop-blocks-covid-relief-experts-warn-wave-despair-and-devastating-anecdotes-show

As millions of Americans grapple with the consequences of the refusal by the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers to extend the $600 weekly unemployment benefit or provide other urgent relief, experts warned Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic could directly lead to a "wave of despair"—including pervasive economic anxieties, increased suicides, and drug overdoses across the country.

The American Medical Association has already reported a rise in fatal opioid overdoses in at least 35 states during the pandemic, according to a Guardian report, and medical examiners in a number of states have reported a rise in suicides five months into the public health and economic crisis.

Fifty-eight suicides have been reported in Cook County, Illinois so far in 2020, compared with 56 total suicides in all of 2019. Low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods, which have borne the brunt of the pandemic's effects, have seen the sharpest rise in suicides in the county. Officials in cities and counties in California, New Mexico, and Georgia have also been startled by rises in suicides there.

On social media, Washington Post journalist Jeff Stein has posted a number of anecdotes found on the online forum Reddit since the pandemic began, with people across the country this week describing the precarious circumstances they've been thrown into following Senate Republicans' refusal to extend a federal eviction moratorium for some Americans and the $600 benefit, claiming that doing so would keep unemployed people from seeking work—despite evidence to the contrary.

snip...