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

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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.

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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.

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August 13, 2020

Veterans group hits draft-dodging Trump with new ad blasting his war on the mail

https://twitter.com/i/status/1293916263945707522

August 11, 2020

Trump's Scottish and Irish golf resorts spur a new round of scrutiny on his businesses

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/11/trump-golf-resorts-scrutiny-393223

President Donald Trump appears to have inflated the value of his three golf resorts in Scotland and Ireland in documents filed with the U.S. government, according to a new examination of six years of financial records in the U.S. and Europe. And the group behind the finding wants the discrepancy investigated as part of a sprawling government probe into the Trump Organization‘s finances.

Trump claimed the resorts — Trump International Golf Links Aberdeen and Trump Turnberry, both in Scotland, and Trump Doonbeg in Ireland — brought in a total of about $179 million in revenue on U.S. documents where he is supposed to list his personal income. Records in the United Kingdom and Ireland indicate the resorts‘ revenues were millions of dollars less — about $152 million — and show they actually lost $77 million after accounting for expenses.

Trump claimed the Scottish resorts alone were worth at least $100 million total in 2018 on U.S. documents, but the U.K. records indicate that the resorts aren’t worth anywhere near that because the debts exceeded the assets by about $80 million that year.

The left-leaning American Democracy Legal Fund, a self-described government watchdog group, is asking Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to look into whether Trump, who repeatedly brags about his wealth, violated the law by filing false documents with the U.S. government to hide the financial health of himself and his company, according to a letter dated Monday obtained by POLITICO. The group is sending a similar letter to the FBI.

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August 4, 2020

Federal judge rips into Supreme Court for giving rogue cops near-total immunity to lawsuits.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/federal-judge-rips-into-supreme-court-for-giving-rogue-cops-near-total-immunity-to-lawsuits/

On Tuesday, in a police misconduct case, Mississippi federal judge Carlton Reeves reluctantly granted qualified immunity to the officer involved — but not before a blistering opinion dozens of pages long, slamming the legal status quo and demanding that the Supreme Court step in to stop giving police officers near-total immunity from lawsuits for misconduct on the job.

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“Thankfully, Jamison left the stop with his life,” wrote Reeves, who is himself Black. “Too many others have not. The Constitution says everyone is entitled to equal protection of the law — even at the hands of law enforcement. Over the decades, however, judges have invented a legal doctrine to protect law enforcement officers from having to face any consequences for wrongdoing.”

Under the current standard of “qualified immunity,” an officer cannot be sued for any action in the course of their duties that has not explicitly been ruled a violation of constitutional rights by a prior court — and in practice, that makes these lawsuits virtually impossible. The Supreme Court declined to take up a case re-examining the issue earlier this year.

“This Court is required to apply the law as stated by the Supreme Court,” wrote Reeves, granting the immunity. “But let us not be fooled by legal jargon. Immunity is not exoneration. And the harm in this case to one man sheds light on the harm done to the nation by this manufactured doctrine. As the Fourth Circuit concluded, “This has to stop.”

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