Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[helene_t]

Quantum Field Theory?

Quoted For Truth.

 

It's just that I don't believe that there was no violent crime in Newark in 2020. And hopefully the reasoning that "If there had been violence, the police would have shot someone" is a bit exaggerated.

[akwoo]

The goal should be to minimize the total number of people killed.

 

When the number of people killed by police greatly outnumbers the number of police killed in the line of duty, the police are too trigger-happy; fewer people would die if police accepted a slightly higher risk of being killed to avoid killing others.

[Zelandakh]

So am I. Apparently it means there were no violent crimes committed in Newark in 2020. I wish we could say the same for New York, Atlanta, Portland, Seattle, etc.

I daresay I speak for everyone here in wishing we could say the same for Washington DC in January 2021.

[helene_t]

fewer people would die if police accepted a slightly higher risk of being killed to avoid killing others.

I find this a strange argument. As if the problem is that the police it too eager to defend themselves.

[Chas_P]

I daresay I speak for everyone here in wishing we could say the same for Washington DC in January 2021.

Yes. Also Washington, DC in January, 2017.

[y66]

Today’s column was about reasons right-wing politicians believe they can lie to their supporters about what the Biden administration is up to, especially although not only with regards to climate policy. As I said, the Republican line is that Democrats are going to take away all the good things in life, when the reality is that the Biden team is very much not calling for any serious crimping of Americans’ lifestyle.

 

But why does the current administration imagine that we can save the planet without making major sacrifices? A lot of the answer has to do with extraordinary innovations in energy technology that have taken place over the past dozen years, innovations that make achieving a low-emission economy look like a medium-difficulty technical problem rather than something that will require drastic changes in the way we live. The cost of electricity from wind power has fallen 70 percent since 2009; the cost of electricity from solar panels has fallen 89 percent.

 

Thinking about these developments, I remembered something I wrote back in 2010, when Democrats were trying unsuccessfully to push through legislation creating a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions. The economic costs of such a system that model-builders estimated at the time were significant, although far from economy-killing. But I suggested that it was a good bet that the models overstated the economic costs of climate action, largely because they didn’t allow for creativity. Indeed, what we got was innovation that transformed the whole proposition.

 

Now, you can’t always count on that kind of innovation coming along. A bit of autobiography here: I spent the summer of 1973, between my junior and senior years in college, working as a research assistant to William Nordhaus, who devised a brilliantly innovative way of modeling energy futures. (He later won the Nobel largely for his work integrating economic and climate models.) I passed most of that time in Yale’s Geology Library, rounding up the best available estimates of how much alternatives to fossil fuels, oil in particular, would cost; these estimates were crucial inputs into Bill’s model.

 

Unfortunately, over the next several decades we would learn that the engineers responsible for these estimates were wildly overoptimistic: Oil prices rose well above the levels at which alternatives like shale oil were supposed to have been competitive, but the substitutes kept not appearing. Another of my teachers, Martin Weitzman — who should also have won a Nobel! — quipped that the cost of alternatives to crude oil was always 20 percent above the current price of crude, whatever that price happened to be. We used to call it Weitzman’s Law.

 

Weitzman’s Law didn’t finally snap until after around 2009, when first fracking, then renewable energy, saw plunging costs and surging production.

 

So we couldn’t have counted on renewable energy getting so cheap so fast. But it did. Claims by conservatives that policies to reduce emissions would kill the economy never made much sense, but anyone making those claims now is living in a time warp, ignoring the way the energy landscape has changed.

 

The truth is that given current technology we can resolve the climate crisis without major changes in the way we live. No, we won’t have to give up meat. Although now that you mention it, meat alternatives have gotten immensely better over the past few years, and if you believe The Times’s food desk — which you should, it may be the best part of the paper! — vegan cheese is getting seriously good. Innovation isn’t just about energy production.

 

In other words, we can eat, drink and be merry while still saving the planet. Enjoy your grilled brussels sprouts.

[Zelandakh]

Yes. Also Washington, DC in January, 2017.

Yeah, same thing completely. :huh: :blink:

 

Whataboutish and counter-attack - last vestige of a pretend argument for those that have no reasonable position to hold. That might work in conservative media, particularly on uneducated voter groups, but I would not count on it holding too much weight here.

[Chas_P]

Yeah, same thing completely. :huh: :blink:

 

Whataboutish and counter-attack - last vestige of a pretend argument for those that have no reasonable position to hold. That might work in conservative media, particularly on uneducated voter groups, but I would not count on it holding too much weight here.

Thanks for the laughs Zel. You truly are a national treasure.

[y66]

Here's a topic D's and R's can perhaps agree on: capping school administrative expenses per student.

 

https://www.registerguard.com/article/20131211/OPINION/312119870 (2013)

 

Last year at this time I wrote a column wondering what I should get my son for Christmas. He was a freshman in college.

 

This year, I’d like to write about my daughter, who’s a sophomore at South Eugene High School. She finished finals for the first trimester last week, and starts her second trimester this week. In many cases, this means that my daughter and other high school students will be starting new subjects that they haven’t seen before.

 

After two weeks of these new subjects, there will be a two-week break for the holidays. And then classes in these subjects will resume. And meanwhile, there will be a three-month gap in the students’ education in science, language and other subjects where continuity of education is crucial.

 

Who came up with this idea? Two weeks in a new subject, immediately followed by a two-week vacation? A three-month gap in language education? I don’t see how this can possibly facilitate learning; if someone had asked me last year to produce the worst high school class schedule imaginable, I wouldn’t have come up with something this bad.

 

My plan is to blame the school board. I don’t know if they’re the folks who actually came up with this ludicrous plan, but they certainly approved it.

 

And it’s not as if the school board has covered themselves in glory in other ways. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

 

The average Eugene School Board member has been in office since 2005. Some more, and some less. Let’s compare the situation today to that in 2005 and see what’s happened during their collective tenure.

 

During the 2004-05 academic year, there were 17,907 students in the Eugene School District. The budget was just over $126 million, or $7,041 per student ($8,420 in today’s dollars).

 

Today, there are 16,027 students, as baby boomers’ kids grow up and leave the system. The budget is about $140 million, $8,724 per student. That’s a 3.5 percent increase over the 2004-05 number, including inflation. Good for us: Economic downturn notwithstanding, we’re spending more real dollars on each of our children now than we did when the school board showed up.

 

There’s only one problem. We’re spending more, but getting less. You don’t need to be reading this column to know that the quality of an education in Eugene schools has dropped drastically over the past eight years.

 

The numbers reflect this. In the 2004-05 budget, the 17,907 students were taught by people filling a total of 907.6 “certified positions,” which is what they call the teachers.

 

That’s an average of 19.7 students per teacher. In the 2012-13 budget, the 16,027 students are taught by 757.7 teachers, or 21.2 students per teacher. Given that we’ve got more money, why is there a 7.2 percent increase in the number of students per teacher?

 

In 2004-05, the district had 76.9 administrators and supervisors, one per 233 students. In 2012-13, there are 78.5 administrators, one per 204 students. How can a smaller student body require more administrators and a full 14 percent more per student?

 

I run a couple of software companies. If the finances get messed up, it’s my fault because the buck stops with me. My view on this school disaster is the same: The buck stops with the school board.

 

They have overseen the calamitous decline in quality of education that has occurred over the past eight years. And that decline has occurred while we, the citizens, have been spending more of our precious resources on education than ever.

 

I’m sure that the school board will have many excuses. Board members will blame the teachers’ union and the Public Employees Retirement System. They’ll blame increased spending on special education. They’ll blame politicians.

 

Personally, I don’t care. They’re the school board. The buck stops with them.

 

So here’s my solution.

 

First, we should rewrite the Eugene district’s budget, capping every category at inflation-adjusted, per student numbers from 2004-05.

 

Every category. Number of administrators. Superintendent’s salary. Average teacher salary. Special-ed spending. All of it. The only exception should be the number of teachers. The 3.5 percent increase in real dollars since 2005 should be spent entirely on more classroom teachers because it is teachers who actually deliver educational value to our kids.

 

And second, we should ask for, and then gratefully accept, the resignation of every member of the Eugene School Board.

[Winstonm]

Here's a topic D's and R's can perhaps agree on: capping school administrative expenses per student.

 

 

 

"The market should set the rates of remuneration!" - Every Republican caught in the U-shaped ideological trap*.

 

*Even slime mold can find its way out of a u-shaped trap. Ergo, ...?

 

 

[kenberg]

Joe Biden is not the most god-awful almost beyond imagination horrible choice for president that this country has ever had. So that's a step forward.

What do I hope for now?

Clarity perhaps. And I hope for realistic optimism.

 

A few issues.

 

 

The border: I am fully aware of the limitations of analogy, but I will use the movie Casablanca to illustrate my thinking. The movie is set in 1941, before Pearl Harbor, and opens with a recital of many desperate Europeans going to Marseille, crossing to Africa, struggling to get to Casablanca, hoping to get to Portugal and then, perhaps, to the USA. It explains that the lucky ones succeed, the others wait. And wait. And wait. Sound familiar?

 

The 1940s solution, or at least what happened next, was not that we found a way to get them all out. The solution involved D-Day, the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, and so on.

 

Granted, the magnitude of the current problem is smaller. But pretty large. People are seeking asylum because of gang violence. Gang violence is not going away. People seek asylum because of dictatorial rule. Dictatorial rule is not going away. People seek asylum or hope to immigrate, because of massive severe poverty. Massive severe poverty is not going away. By no means am I suggesting a 21st Century version of D-Day and its follow-up. But I am asking what we should see as a long-term solution. Yes we need humane practices and we need them now. But is there a long-term solution?

 

Afghanistan: Briefly put: The Taliban is not going away. And so?

 

Israel and the Palestinians: Lotsa luck with that one. Same for Iran. And Syria. And...

 

Mathematical problems have mathematical solutions. The solver presents the solution, the audience is impressed, the solution is seen as correct, everyone cheers.

This is different. I will be listening to my buddy Joe tonight. I hope for the best.

[pilowsky]

The problem was - like most things - human-made.

Passports did not exist in their current form until after WW1 - https://on.natgeo.com/3u3NJ0a.

Agatha Christie and Max used to bother people in the middle east and steal their artefacts with complete impunity at that time.

The idea of the conservative dog-whistle: "We will decide who comes to Australia and when" (to paraphrase John Howard (Tedious Australian PM) is only possible because of the post-war nationalism.

The USA did not enter WW2 to prevent the holocaust or stop a war.

Many US corporations were profiting from the conflagration, and some openly supported the NAZI's.

They were also pretty happy to give safe harbour to useful war criminals such as Werner ("I only joined the NAZI party because I had to") von Braun.

I don't know the role that the influenza pandemic played in the emergence of the passport (in the form that we know it now) in 1920.

[y66]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-votes-to-reverse-trump-era-loosening-of-methane-emission-rules-11619645144?mod=djemalertNEWS

 

The Senate voted to restore regulations on methane gas that leaks into the air from U.S. oil and gas production, reversing a Trump-era policy and giving a boost to the Biden administration’s goal of reducing emissions.

 

In a 52-42 vote Wednesday, the Senate invoked its power under the Congressional Review Act to overturn rules adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency last year on methane-gas emissions, including those easing some monitoring requirements and lowering standards for pollution-control systems to detect methane leaks by facilities that transmit and store natural gas.

 

Methane is a component of natural gas, which has grown in popularity as a fuel. It is transported via pipelines, which can leak the gas. Scientists have determined that methane, while emitted in smaller amounts into the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, is more potent in trapping the earth’s heat.

 

The oil-and-gas lobby initially fought methane regulations but has recently eased up on that effort. Top producers— Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp. , BP PLC—have said they support methane regulations as they face pressure from investors on climate issues.

 

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s top lobbying group and a powerful Washington voice, announced on the first full day of the Biden administration that it supported direct regulation of methane.

 

Even so, the regulations are likely to frustrate smaller energy companies who have said they have a harder time paying for the cost to comply with tougher monitoring and detection requirements, said Anne Austin, a former EPA official in the Trump administration who is now an energy attorney in private practice.

 

“Substantial methane regulation is going to be hard-hitting to [smaller energy companies] especially,” Ms. Austin said.

 

At a congressional committee hearing before the Senate vote, U.S. EPA administrator Michael Regan said his office has been focused on figuring out how to cut methane emissions to meet Mr. Biden’s goal of cutting emissions of planet-warming gases in half by 2030.

 

At a news conference held before the vote, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) called the move the first “of many important steps to achieve the ambitious goal that Joe Biden has set.”

 

Other lawmakers characterized the regulation as a quick and easy way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions when big questions still loom over how exactly Mr. Biden’s targets will be met.

 

“This is not something where we need some fancy technology from 20 years from now,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D., N.M.) at a news conference held before the vote. “The solution is here now. We know how to plug these leaks.”

 

The Congressional Review Act invoked by the Senate on Wednesday was used by Republicans during the Trump administration to unwind more than a dozen Obama administration policies. The 1996 law allows Congress to eliminate regulations that have been enacted within 60 legislative days of their completion.

 

The law’s power lies in its speed, said Richard Revesz, director of New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, who said that restoring methane regulations through the usual rule-making process could take two years and remain suspended for another year if challenged in court.

 

“You can imagine the whole process of getting this done through the comment-and-rule process could take the majority of Biden’s first term,” Mr. Revesz. “To get it done through the [Congressional Review Act], it can be done this week.”

 

The Democratic-controlled House hasn’t yet voted to restore the earlier methane regulations, which were introduced by President Barack Obama in 2016. That vote would end the regulatory pause on methane emissions and reinstate controls on transmission of storage segments of the oil-and-gas industry after less than a year.

[pilowsky]

Just in case anyone thought Trumpism was a malignancy confined to the USA, here is the latest offering from our Education minister Alan Tudge.

As Johnny Cash might have said:

"that should not come at the expense of dishonouring our Western heritage" - with house guests like our friendly British colonists and their genocidal tendencies, it isn't surprising that there is a desire for some actual history in the history classes.

 

You can read all about Tudge's deep respect for Family and tradition here:

Wiki entry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Tudge

 

https://www.smh.com....430-p57nsb.html

By Lisa Visentin April 30, 2021 — 1.04pm

Tudge 'concerned' about colonisation emphasis in proposed curriculum changes

TALKING POINTS

• Students to be taught that First Nations Australians see settlement as invasion
• 'Christian heritage' replaced by multi-faith in civics course
• Focus on different perspectives, such as the contested nature of Anzac Day
• Indigenous and Aboriginal replaced with First Nations Australians

Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge says he is concerned the proposed emphasis on First Nations culture in the national curriculum has come at the expense of Australia's Western heritage.

 

The draft national curriculum, unveiled on Thursday, has fired up a culture war over the nation's foundations, with children to be taught that First Nations' people experienced British colonisation "as invasion and dispossession of land, sea and sky"

 

Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge says he is concerned about some of the proposed changes to the national curriculum.

 

Mr Tudge, who along with the state and territory educations minister will be required to sign off on the final curriculum, said he welcomed history being taught from an Indigenous perspective but he was concerned the right balance had not been struck.

 

"I think it is a good development that the draft national curriculum includes more emphasis on Indigenous history. I think we should honour our Indigenous history and teach that well," Mr Tudge said on Sky News on Friday.

 

"Equally, that should not come at the expense of dishonouring our Western heritage, which has made us the liberal democracy that we are today. We have to get the balance right and I'm concerned that we haven't in the draft that's been put out."

 

Asked whether he was concerned the changes would result in Invasion Day – the recognition of Australia Day as the beginning of Indigenous colonisation – being promoted in schools, Mr Tudge said he didn't want "students to be turned into activists".

 

"I want them to be taught the facts and they should understand and be taught the facts as it relates to Indigenous history from an Indigenous perspective as much as from a non-Indigenous perspective," he said.

 

The review of the national curriculum, the first since 2014, found the themes in the current curriculum did not include enough "truth-telling" about the experience of First Nations Australians since European settlement and put too much emphasis on the period before contact with Europeans. It also proposed removing references to Australia's "Christian heritage" out of civics in favour of terms such as secular and multi-faith, while history students would be taught that cultural touchstones such as the Anzac legend and Australia Day were contested.

 

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority will seek public feedback on the draft for 10 weeks before finalising the new curriculum by the end of the year.

 

 

New curriculum teaches cultural diversity, dumps 'Christian heritage'

Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt said it was important for students to learn about Australia's Indigenous heritage but did not weigh in on the specific proposals.

 

"It is important that all Australian students are provided the opportunity to learn about the depth, wealth and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 65,000-year-old history and cultures and we want to ensure teachers are appropriately supported to embed Indigenous Australian perspectives in their classroom practice," Mr Wyatt said.

 

Mr Tudge said he would be "looking for some changes" before he'd be prepared to approve the revised curriculum. On Thursday, he said he was "perplexed" by some of the proposed changes to maths, including teaching children to tell the time in year 2 instead of year 1.

 

[johnu]

I would say "UNBELIEVABLE", but when it comes to Repugnant politicians, anything is possible, and likely.

 

How Arizona’s Attorney General Is Weaponizing Climate Fears To Keep Out Immigrants

 

In a lawsuit filed April 12, Brnovich seeks to reinstate President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, on the argument that Biden has failed to carry out mandatory environmental reviews on how more immigration could increase climate-changing pollution.

 

“Migrants (like everyone else) need housing, infrastructure, hospitals, and schools. They drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities,” the suit reads. “Their actions also directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which directly affects air quality.”

 

After green parties picked up votes in the 2019 European parliamentary elections, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen pledged to remake Europe as “the world’s first ecological civilization” and railed against “nomadic” people who “do not care about the environment” as “they have no homeland,” harkening to the Nazis’ “blood and soil” slogan that described a belief in a mystical connection between race and a particular territory. Le Pen is now a frontrunner in France’s 2022 presidential election.

 

In Germany, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party’s Berlin youth wing urged its leaders to abandon climate denialism. The green arm of Italy’s neo-fascist movement CasaPound, meanwhile sent trees to towns across the country, to pay homage to former dictator Benito Mussolini.

 

In the English-speaking world, far-right eco-fascist thinking animated the manifestos of two mass shooters posted in 2019. The white male gunman who killed nearly two dozen people in a Walmart store in El Paso in August 2019 said he sought to end the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

 

“The environment is getting worse by the year,” the manifesto, posted online, stated. “Most of y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”

[johnu]

Well,,, the Repugs were right. There was voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

 

Man Pleads Guilty to Illegal Vote for Trump, Blames 'Stupid Mistake' on 'Too Much Propaganda'

 

What's this??? The fraud was to benefit the twice impeached one term Manchurian President Grifter in Chief?????

 

70-year-old man from Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to casting an illegal ballot for former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election and was sentenced to five years of probation on Friday.

 

Bartman was one of three men in Pennsylvania accused of committing voter fraud by casting illegal ballots for Trump. Two others, Ralph Thurman of Chester County and Richard Lynn of Luzerne County, have criminal cases pending, according to the Inquirer.

 

3 people committed voter fraud for the twice impeached Manchurian President??? What is the world coming to?

[pilowsky]

Well,,, the Repugs were right. There was voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

 

Man Pleads Guilty to Illegal Vote for Trump, Blames 'Stupid Mistake' on 'Too Much Propaganda'

 

What's this??? The fraud was to benefit the twice impeached one term Manchurian President Grifter in Chief?????

 

3 people committed voter fraud for the twice impeached Manchurian President??? What is the world coming to?

 

Don't be mean.

In his heart, she was very much alive.

[pilowsky]

Senator Slime is reported as saying that he might start doing the job he's paid for if Big Corporations don't stop being more human.

Former Ethics Chief Slams Cruz's Warning To 'Woke' CEOs As 'Most Openly Corrupt' Ever

Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) threat to "woke" CEOs was slammed Sunday as likely the "most openly corrupt" message ever from the Senate, declared Walter Shaub, former head of the Government Office of Ethics.

In a Wall Street Journal column last week, Cruz warned that CEOs opposing Republican threats to voting rights will be excluded from his party's pay-to-play legislative operation — because they're no longer conservative enough for the GOP.

For example, Republicans will stop accepting donations in exchange for "looking the other way" when corporate bigwigs dodge taxes, Cruz wrote in a stunningly honest admission of his party's current modus operandi.

"This time," he wrote, "we won't look the other way on Coca-Cola's $12 billion in back taxes owed. This time, when Major League Baseball lobbies to preserve its multibillion-dollar antitrust exception, we'll say no thank you. This time, when Boeing asks for billions in corporate welfare, we'll simply let the Export-Import Bank expire."

Shaub, who served under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, called Cruz's threat a blatant admission that Republicans are selling corporate donors "access to the government." In a clear swipe at Cruz's clueless self-exposure, Shaub noted that most lawmakers have too much "sense" to say it quite so brazenly.

"It's the part everyone knows: these crooks sell access," Shaub tweeted. "Others have the sense not to admit it. This is why our republic is broken: Immoral politicians selling power we've entrusted to them like it's theirs to sell."

Many others agreed, with one Twitter critic informing the Texas senator: "Announcing you will no longer take bribes isn't the defense you think it is."

[y66]

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/05/narco-in-chief-how-america-enables-corruption-in-honduras/

 

This January, thousands of Hondurans gathered in the city of San Pedro Sula and began walking toward the Guatemalan border, the first barrier in their journey north to the United States. They were a long way off, but our frontier defenders were already on full alert. “Do not waste your time and money, and do not risk your safety and health,” the acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection had announced a week earlier. “Migrant caravan groups will not be allowed to make their way north in violation of the sovereignty, standing public-health orders, and immigration laws of the respective nations throughout the region.” The presumptive secretary of state, Antony Blinken, echoed the sentiment, saying simply: “Do not come.” Soon after the migrants crossed into Guatemala, that message was reinforced with the clubs and tear gas of the U.S.-financed Guatemalan police, forcing the crowds back into the country they had fled.

 

The men, women, and children in the caravan had hardly been risking their own “safety and health” by setting out on the hazardous journey, precisely because they had so little of either to begin with. Even before two back-to-back hurricanes tore a path of destruction across the country last November, the population was in desperate straits. Sixty percent lived in extreme poverty, almost 40 percent were unemployed, and predatory corruption by the ruling elite reigned supreme. The pandemic had added its own agonies—not only did COVID-19 sicken hundreds of thousands of people, but government insiders stole almost the entire budget intended for emergency medical treatment, and the police and military imposed a near-total countrywide lockdown, arresting thousands for curfew violations.

 

For the people making this exodus, braving the perils of the journey was evidently a safer bet than staying put. For example, a young man who would give only his first name, Francisco, told the journalist Sandra Cuffe that the hurricanes had put an end to his $8-a-day bricklaying job and that a mining company was ravaging the area where he lived, hiring thugs (often connected to the military) to terrorize him and other locals opposed to the environmental devastation. Elsewhere in the crowd, a twenty-eight-year-old mother named Olga Ramírez carried the youngest of her four children in her arms while two of the others rode in a decrepit stroller pushed by her husband. She tearfully explained to a reporter that they had lost their precarious living selling food in the municipal bus terminal in Danlí, a provincial town east of the capital, Tegucigalpa, after the local mayor privatized the terminal and summarily ejected Ramírez and her fellow vendors. “They threw us out like we were dogs, like garbage, as if we were worthless,” she said as she trudged along.

 

“I think the whole country would leave if they could,” Jean Stokan, a justice coordinator for the Catholic group Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, told me. Stokan has spent decades witnessing the plight of Central Americans. “Honduras today is like El Salvador in the Eighties, death squads and all,” she said, recalling the bloody U.S.-supported counterinsurgency. She talked of corrupt police officers enjoying impunity; community leaders, human rights activists, and labor organizers being threatened, abducted, and jailed; and a wave of femicides—“women’s bodies chopped up and discarded in plastic garbage bags.” It thus came as no surprise to Stokan that Hondurans were fleeing their country by the tens of thousands. “You know the phrase ‘a person doesn’t leave their home unless it is in the mouth of a shark?’ ” she asked. “That’s Honduras.”

 

In recent years, Washington has expressed its fair share of laments over the little country’s desperate condition, and has poured a lot of money into projects aimed at eliminating the so-called push factors driving people to flee. USAID spent $90 million in 2020 alone promoting “good governance,” fostering “competitive, resilient, and inclusive market systems,” and creating “economic opportunities that incorporate women.”

 

Our partner in these worthy efforts has been Juan Orlando Hernández, often referred to as JOH, the stocky, frequently charming president of Honduras. Since he took office in 2014, Washington has relied on Hernández to implement American-devised programs for alleviating his country’s ills: unemployment, violence, corruption, and most importantly, the cocaine trade. But despite insistent protests locally and abroad that Hernández oversees a repressive and corrupt regime, the United States has continued to treat him as an indispensable partner.

 

More

[kenberg]

The harper's article is a good presentation of just what we are up aganst. First I repeat one of the copied paragraphs:

"I think the whole country would leave if they could," Jean Stokan, a justice coordinator for the Catholic group Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, told me. Stokan has spent decades witnessing the plight of Central Americans. "Honduras today is like El Salvador in the Eighties, death squads and all," she said, recalling the bloody U.S.-supported counterinsurgency. She talked of corrupt police officers enjoying impunity; community leaders, human rights activists, and labor organizers being threatened, abducted, and jailed; and a wave of femicides—"women's bodies chopped up and discarded in plastic garbage bags." It thus came as no surprise to Stokan that Hondurans were fleeing their country by the tens of thousands. "You know the phrase 'a person doesn't leave their home unless it is in the mouth of a shark?' " she asked. "That's Honduras."

 

Exactly. "The whole country would leave if it could". Where does this leave us when we look for options? Fly them all out to resettle in the US?

 

Toward the end of the full article we see:

 

Honduran human rights organizations may have little sway in Washington, but U.S. senators from the majority party are a different matter. The Honduras Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act, introduced on February 24 by the Oregon senator Jeff Merkley, demands that the United States designate Hernández as a narcotics trafficker, cut off all aid and arms sales to the Honduran military and police, and cooperate with the United Nations in monitoring human rights.Merkley considers the security aid cutoff essential. "If we don't apply such pressure, then we're just facilitating and strengthening the force that is part of the problem," he told me the day after introducing the bill. "If we're going to be partners with them, to be part of the solution, they have to be a very different force." I asked whether Hernández, who had already responded to the bill by threatening to stop cooperating on antitrafficking efforts, was beyond redemption. "Just the fact that he would say 'I'll give the drug traffickers free rein if you try to have my security forces be part of the solution,' " Merkley replied, "tells you a lot about the type of person we're dealing with." I took that as a yes

It does indeed sound like yes.

 

It's all well and good to say we need to treat immigrants better. I agree. But there is more to it than that. We might even agree that many problems have only, at best, partial solutions. But that still leaves us with the question of what we should actually do. Quite possibly Merkely is right. Sounds right to me. But don't expect it to solve the immigration problem at our border.

[y66]

The G.O.P. Won It All in Texas. Then It Turned on Itself. by Elaina Plott at NYT

 

You hate to see it.

[y66]

What the Oversight Board Should Do With Trump

 

Tomorrow morning, May 5, the Oversight Board will issue its opinion in the case of Facebook’s indefinite suspension of Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

 

The opinion will attract enormous attention, whatever the board ends up doing. If it overturns Facebook’s action, it will provoke grave concern among those who have been demanding more rigorous content moderation on the platform. If it upholds the suspension, it will provoke howls of rage from Trump supporters and those who believe that social media is biased against conservatives. Let Trump back on, and the comparatively peaceful social media ecosystem that has prevailed over the last several months could suddenly grow cacophonous again as he blitzes Facebook with election lies and attacks on his opponents. Keeping the former president in Facebook detention, by contrast, means the board’s acceptance that social media companies have the power to silence, at least on their platforms, elected world leaders.

 

...

 

There is no serious question, in other words, that Trump violated the rules or that the rules contemplate action like the ones Facebook took. For the board to hold otherwise would be to turn Facebook’s generic commitment to giving people a “voice” into some overriding protection that compels Facebook to allow a politician to stoke political violence.

 

That’s a greater speech protection than either the House of Representatives or the Senate were willing to give Trump. A bipartisan majority of both of those houses, after all, regarded his conduct on Jan. 6 as warranting impeachment and removal from office. Surely, the Oversight Board does not mean to argue that Facebook is somehow obliged to tolerate behavior the American political system regards as warranting a Senate trial. At a minimum, a decision to overrule Facebook’s judgment would require an explanation of why encouraging a mob in a fashion that might merit impeachment does not merit action by Facebook in the interests of public safety.

 

There may be technical reasons, discussed above, for the Oversight Board not to affirmatively uphold Facebook’s action here, in which case the matter may drag on. But if it overturns it, it will effectively be preventing Facebook from taking reasonable content action in emergency circumstances in which political violence is unfolding. Facebook, after all, did the bare minimum here—and it did it very late. It waited until a violent crisis erupted during the period of the presidential transition of power. It acted only when, quite literally, the functioning of the United States government had been disrupted by a violent incursion into the Capitol and the country’s president used the platform to justify the invasion. If Facebook’s action under these circumstances is overturned, the Oversight Board will be pushing Facebook in exactly the wrong direction.

[Winstonm]

This exchange is a synopsis of what ails America, IMO:

 

 

 

After people on the street asked Dr. Fauci questions, Kimmel noted one more guy had one. He cut to a clip of Tucker Carlson asking why college students should get the vaccine because "young people are not at risk of dying from COVID" and many have been infected already.

 

"No one has explained that," Carlson said.

 

Kimmel let Fauci take it away.

 

"One, you want to protect yourself," the White House task force doc replied. "But also you don't want to be part of the propagation of the outbreak. Because if you get infected, even though you're young and healthy ... you could pass it on to someone else who could have a severe outcome. And when you get infected, you are propagating the outbreak. You're not being a dead stop. You're allowing the virus to continue from you to someone else."

Note, that in Carlson's worldview a person's concerns for welfare stop at the end of each person's nose. Who is John Galt? Oh, I think he's that guy who died of Covid.

 

[y66]

Affluent Americans are worried about President Biden’s proposed tax changes on capital gains from stocks, bonds and other assets. But those proposals would hit a sliver of taxpayers, according to a new analysis.

 

Financial advisers to the wealthy have been fielding calls from anxious clients since the plan was unveiled last week. Many are already deploying a range of tax-reducing strategies in anticipation of the increases, advisers told The Wall Street Journal. But key changes would likely affect only the very wealthy, according to Robert McClelland, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. a joint venture between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

 

The Biden plan would increase the top capital-gains tax rate to 43.4% from 23.8% for those earning over $1 million. Capital gains refer to profits on the sale of assets like stocks, homes or small businesses.

 

Of taxpayers who filed Schedule D, the form for reporting capital gains and losses, only 2.7% had adjusted gross income of $1 million or more in 2018, according to Mr. McClelland’s analysis of Internal Revenue Service data. However, that group of taxpayers accounted for 62% of capital gains, Mr. McClelland said.

 

“A small amount of people are going to end up paying it, but it could potentially affect a lot of the capital gains,” he said.

 

The Biden tax plan would also end a rule that has been a cornerstone of estate planning for generations of wealthy Americans.

 

Today, people who own assets that have risen in value— Apple Inc. stock, the family beach house, a three-generation manufacturing company—don’t pay capital-gains taxes unless they sell. Under the Biden proposal, those unrealized gains would trigger taxes upon the owner’s death. There would be a $1 million per-person exemption plus existing exclusions for residences.

 

More than two-thirds of U.S. families have some unrealized capital gains, but most would be covered by the $1 million exemption. Only about 3% of all families have unrealized gains above that threshold, said Mr. McClelland, who also analyzed 2019 Federal Reserve data.

 

Many of those people will realize gains by drawing on assets like taxable brokerage accounts during their retirement, meaning the share of people who will die with unrealized gains above $1 million is likely even smaller, Mr. McClelland said.

Is there a case for taxing capital gains differently than ordinary income? Nope.

[Winstonm]

A federal judge has ruled that former Attorney General William Barr was "disingenuous" about the process behind his decision to issue a memo clearing then-President Trump on obstruction of justice charges.

 

For Representative Matt Gaetz: this means the judge called Billy Barr a "fu#&ing liar."