"The demise of the New Hampshire primary? Nah, they’ve heard that one before." by Victoria McGrane and James Pindell Globe Staff, June 19, 2019
CONCORD, N.H. — For more than 100 years, New Hampshire has played a leading role in picking presidential candidates by holding one of the first primaries on the nominating calendar.
“You’re going to see an awful lot of me,” former vice president Joe Biden told the crowd earlier this month at IBEW Local 490. “You are among the most informed voters in the country. And I want to know what’s on your mind, what you think.”
May not want to see an awful lot of him, but I'm going to leave that for later because of the TURN IN to NEW HAMPSHIRE, Page A4.
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"At raucous reparations hearing, Ta-Nehisi Coates takes aim at Mitch McConnell" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg New York Times, June 19, 2019
The House waded into the decades-old debate over reparations for African-Americans on Wednesday, convening its first hearing on legislation introduced 30 years ago that would create a commission to develop proposals to address the lingering effects of slavery and consider a “national apology” for the harm it has caused.
Hundreds of spectators, mostly black, were on hand for the historic hearing by a House Judiciary subcommittee, whose witnesses included Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat and presidential candidate, actor Danny Glover, and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who took direct aim at Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, for remarks he made Tuesday opposing the idea.
The room grew raucous at times, with spectators hissing at Republican witnesses and Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the subcommittee’s senior Republican, when he spoke against the measure. In a comment that rippled throughout the hearing, Johnson suggested that great black leaders like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington thought African-Americans should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Must have felt like a lynch mob.
“Those great leaders encouraged people to take responsibility for their own lives because that gives every human being a greater sense of meaning and satisfaction,” he said, adding that the bill “risks communicating the opposite message.”
That the hearing was held at all was a reflection of how the debate over reparations has been rejoined. Nearly 60 House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, support the bill, and at least 11 Democratic presidential candidates — with former Vice President Joe Biden a notable exception — have embraced either the concept of reparations or the bill to study it.
The legacy of slavery is “a cancer on the soul of this country,” but the real star was Coates and there will be more from Biden below.
The hearing itself was laden with symbolism. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the first documented arrival of Africans to the port of Jamestown in what was then the colony of Virginia. Wednesday, June 19, is Juneteenth, the holiday that celebrates the end of slavery in the US. And the bill carries the designation HR 40, a reference to the first proposal for reparations: the unfulfilled “40 acres and a mule” promise to freed slaves after the Civil War.
We need a lot less $ymboli$m and more solutions to current problems, sorry.
The House bill would authorize $12 million for a 13-member commission. Wednesday’s session does not guarantee that the bill will be taken up by the full committee or get a vote on the House floor. A Democratic aide characterized it as an educational opportunity and a chance to enhance the national dialogue around reparations, and even if the bill passed the House, it has virtually no chance of securing Senate passage or President Trump’s signature, but both witnesses and advocates of the bill, including Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said it was important to at least have a conversation about reparations. “The discussion of reparations is a journey in which the road traveled may be almost as important as the destination,” Nadler said.....
No Mueller hearings yesterday?
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I will say this, it is an interesting concept. I can already see Vietnamese and Palestinians at the head of the line for future reparations, followed in short order by Native Americans, Iraqis, Afghanis, Iranians(!) and all the other victims of EUSRaeli aggressions lo the last 75 years or so.
Maybe someday, even whitey will get hi$ quota.
"Hope Hicks declines to answer lawmakers’ questions on transition, White House" by Nicholas Fandos New York Times, June 19, 2019
WASHINGTON — After weeks of simmering frustration, House Democrats took their first shot on Wednesday at questioning a key figure from Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether President Trump obstructed justice. They were not entirely happy with the results.
Behind closed doors, lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee pressed Hope Hicks, one of Trump’s closest former aides, on her recollections of episodes documented by Mueller, the special counsel, in which Trump tried to assert control over investigations of his campaign’s ties to Russian election interference. They also resurrected an older accusation against Trump: the president’s role in an illegal scheme to make hush payments to two women during his 2016 campaign, but if the hearing had the potential to kick-start Democrats’ stalled investigations into Trump, it quickly veered toward an increasingly familiar outcome.
Related: "Five anchorwomen at a New York City news channel sued their company Wednesday, saying they were marginalized and cast aside to make room for younger women and men. The Manhattan federal court lawsuit blamed Charter Communications and its 2016 takeover of the local news channel NY1, known as New York One, for altering the career trajectories of Roma Torre, Kristen Shaughnessy, Jeanine Ramirez, Vivian Lee, and Amanda Farinacci. Maureen Huff, a Charter spokeswoman, said the Stamford, Conn.-based company takes the allegations seriously but ‘‘as we complete our thorough review, we have not found any merit to them.’’ She said in e-mailed comments that all of the women are ‘‘still gainfully employed and on air.’’
There is your $olution.
Under the direction of White House and her private lawyers, Hicks declined to answer questions about her time working in the administration and on the presidential transition, citing instructions from the president that she was “absolutely immune” from answering, lawmakers from both parties said.
She even refused, Democrats said, to identify the location of her West Wing office, but Hicks did engage in queries about her work on the campaign, which is not subject to executive privilege or claims of immunity. The Judiciary Committee said it intended to release a full transcript of the interview within 48 hours.
Democrats were displeased, if not altogether surprised. Even as the interview went on, several lawmakers emerged threatening to take Hicks to court to enforce a subpoena for her full testimony. “I’m watching obstruction of justice in action,” said Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California. “We’re going to go to court. We’re going to win and just make Hope Hicks come back again and actually answer the questions about her tenure in the White House.”
Good, because she is hot!
Others said later that it had been “productive” at least on the topic of Hicks’ campaign work.
Republicans, for their part, called the session “a complete waste of time,” given Hicks’ extensive past statements to other congressional committees and Mueller’s investigators. They accused Democrats of refusing to accept Mueller’s decisions not to charge Trump or his campaign for either conspiracy with the Russians or obstruction of justice — ignoring the special counsel’s conclusion that he could not exonerate the president of obstruction, either.
When is Kushner going to get called to testify, and where are those e-mails?
“They are just trying to continue to make some hay out of the whole Russian collusion and obstruction of justice,” said Representative Steve Chabot, Republican of Ohio. “They seem to be bound and determined to keep this story alive about the president getting impeached.”
It's called providing the narrative.
Trump seethed on Twitter. He called House hearings “#Rigged” and accused Democrats of “presidential harassment” and seeking to conduct a “Redo, or a Do Over” because they were dissatisfied with Mueller’s conclusions.
Got cut off there.
The president’s view has bedeviled House Democrats for weeks. Some Democrats on the committee have begun arguing that they should reach down the witness list to Trump associates who may figure less prominently in Mueller’s report but whom the White House cannot shield from testifying because they never worked in the administration.
One such possibility is Corey Lewandowski. Another is Christopher Ruddy, a friend of Trump, but both men, and others like the former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, are also political allies of the president and savvy messengers capable with the help of House Republicans of upending a hearing to undermine Democrats.....
Christie got the screws put to him for prosecuting Kushner's dad, and yet I'm presented with this distorted pos.
Democrats are more likely to call Jody Hunt, Sessions’ former chief of staff who kept detailed notes of White House and Justice Department meetings; and Rick Dearborn, a White House aide whom Lewandowski enlisted to help him deliver Trump’s message to Sessions, but both men could try to claim that Trump’s right to assert executive privilege keeps them from disclosing information about those episodes.
Hicks has already made such an assertion once. When she appeared for private questioning by the House Intelligence Committee in February 2018, she declined to answer questions about her work on the Trump presidential transition or in the White House. On Wednesday, she came armed with a letter from the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, saying that she is “absolutely immune” from being forced to testify.
“The longstanding principle of immunity for senior advisers to the president is firmly rooted in the Constitution’s separation of powers and protects the core functions of the presidency,” he wrote in a letter to the committee’s chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, but the president stopped short of trying to assert executive privilege over his conversations with Hicks.....
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Related:
"Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday ruled out censuring President Trump if the House doesn’t impeach him, downplaying a less drastic censure as ‘‘a day at the beach’’ for the president. Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor that censure would be ‘‘just a way out’’ of House Democrats’ efforts to see if Trump has committed impeachable offenses. ‘‘If you’re going to go, you ought to go. In other words, if the goods are there, you must impeach,’’ she said. Pelosi spoke as she tries restraining House Democrats from jumping quickly into a preelection effort to impeach Trump. Pelosi has said she wants the numerous committees investigating Trump to gather more evidence, including on whether he obstructed special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election....."
They think if they say it enough times, we will believe it.
They have have to censor this guy instead:
"Biden invokes segregationists in recalling Senate civility" by The New York Times, June 19, 2019
NEW YORK — Joe Biden, defending himself Tuesday night against suggestions that he is too “old fashioned” for today’s Democratic Party, invoked two Southern segregationist senators by name as he fondly recalled the “civility” of the Senate in the 1970s and 1980s.
Uh-oh!
No passing the buck to the states on that one!
Speaking at a fund-raiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden, 76, stressed the need to “be able to reach consensus under our system,” and cast his decades in the Senate as a time of relative comity. His remarks come as some in his party say that Biden is too focused on overtures to the right as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination.
At the event, Biden noted that he served with the late Senators James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, both Democrats who were staunch opponents of desegregation. Eastland was the powerful chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Biden entered the chamber in 1973.
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said, slipping briefly into a Southern accent, according to a pool report from the fund-raiser. “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’ ”
Joe, Joe, Joe!!!
He called Talmadge “one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys.”
“Well guess what?” Biden continued. “At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
He's nostalgic for the damn crackers and the Good Old Boys network.
On Wednesday, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, one of two black candidates running for president, said Biden was “wrong” to use segregationists as examples for bringing the country together.
“You don’t joke about calling black men ‘boys,’ ” Booker said in a statement. “I’m disappointed that he hasn’t issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans. He should.”
Joe really does seem out of step with the times.
Another presidential candidate, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, posted a photo of his multiracial family on Twitter and cited a racial epithet that Eastland used. “It’s 2019 & @JoeBiden is longing for the good old days of ‘civility’ typified by James Eastland,” de Blasio wrote.
Look at him try to exploit the moment to rise form the bottom of the heap, and with all due respect, I don't think the mayor of NYC is going to win the nomination.
Eastland, a plantation owner, was known as a vociferous opponent of integration efforts and a staunch critic of the civil rights movement, which he sometimes dismissed as the work of “communists.” Throughout his career he referred to African-Americans as members of an “inferior race” and used the racist term “mongrelization.”
That was then, although the commies are coming back under Bernie.
Talmadge was also a critic of the civil rights movement and opposed the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, that declared racially segregated public schools unconstitutional.
But there was civility, and doesn't all the hubbub take away from the current wealth inequality i$$ue regarding the $chools these days?
Is that what it is meant to do (ruling cla$$ is the one bringing you the paper).
Biden has long discussed his personal commitment to civil rights, and he has many strong relationships in the black community, but Biden is also now seeking the nomination of a party that is increasingly young and diverse — and skeptical of his emphasis on compromise.....
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I know the Globe wants to refight the Civil War, but.....
Also see:
"President Trump raised $24.8 million in less than 24 hours as he officially launched his reelection, GOP officials said Wednesday, underscoring the huge fund-raising lead the president has over a divided and crowded Democratic primary field. The Wednesday announcement by Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, confirmed by campaign officials, indicates that the Trump campaign is on track to report its best fund-raising quarter since he became president. The president is scheduled to headline a high-dollar fund-raising luncheon at the Trump National Doral hotel in Florida Wednesday that is set to bring in $5 million, officials said. The president’s fund-raising bonanza this week far eclipsed the $6.3 million that former vice president Joe Biden’s campaign said it pulled in on the day of his late April campaign announcement — the largest 24-hour amount raised by any of the Democratic campaigns this year....."
He ate his $upper!
"President Trump’s participation in the nation’s annual Fourth of July celebration will include a Trump speech honoring America’s armed forces, along with music, military demonstrations, and flyovers, the administration announced Wednesday, about two weeks before the patriotic holiday. Federal lawmakers, local officials, and others have voiced concerns that Trump could alter the tone of what traditionally is a nonpartisan celebration of America’s founding by delivering an overtly political speech after he added himself to an event that typically has not included the president. After losing out on his wish for a military parade in Washington, Trump tweeted in February for people to ‘‘HOLD THE DATE!’’ for the ‘‘Salute to America’’ event, which he said would be held at the Lincoln Memorial and feature a major fireworks display, entertainment, ‘‘and an address by your favorite President, me!’’ Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said Wednesday that Trump will use the speech, which the president promised in a February tweet, to honor the military. Some groups are organizing anti-Trump protests."
It wasn't a partisan issue when the rapist Bill Clinton did it, but times have changed so there is no need to mention it anymore, and he's keeping his promises:
"President Trump wasted no time implementing a campaign promise when he imposed a federal hiring freeze on his first Monday in office. His Jan. 23, 2017, presidential memorandum doing that included this caution: ‘‘Contracting outside the Government to circumvent the intent of this memorandum shall not be permitted,’’ yet the Trump administration has more than doubled the value of federal government contracts with temporary help service agencies, according to the study by the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates worker rights....."
Other than that it has been record amounts of work visas while we are all distracted with a wall -- as he makes MIGA and the Special Olympics great again.
God, what if he wins again?
"General Motors Co. wants to hire more temporary workers at US plants and trim its health care costs, said people familiar with the automaker’s thinking. Its union — still steaming over the carmaker’s plans to close four US factories — has little interest in obliging. That sets up a hot summer of negotiations for the United Auto Workers and GM as the two try to hash out a new four-year labor deal in the coming months. The last contract was bargained over in better times, when auto sales were growing from financial crisis lows to all-time highs and GM was marching toward record profits."
Same as Ford.
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Back to NEW HAMPSHIRE, continued from Page A1:
Today, however, inside and outside the state, politicos point to signs heralding the decline of New Hampshire’s importance, for both structural reasons unique to the 2020 contest and the recognition that more politics is being waged on cable news and social media than in coffee shops and at house parties in the early states.
Thanks to these forces, the two dozen would-be Democratic presidents are courting voters in a long roster of other states, including the delegate-rich outposts of California and Texas, both of which moved their primary contests to Super Tuesday in early March.
The Democratic National Committee’s rules dictating who gets a spot on the crowded debate stage, meanwhile, have sent candidates running for the cable TV cameras and toward rallies in once-forgotten places such as Illinois, Colorado, Mississippi, and Puerto Rico, as they hunt for the 65,000 individual donors from 20 states that they need to qualify.
To Jim Demers, who has guided presidential candidates through the New Hampshire primary for three decades [and] who leads New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s campaign in New Hampshire, his candidate is running a traditional Iowa and New Hampshire campaign of showing up early and earning local endorsements and hiring staff, but, he said, the only other candidate running a similar campaign is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
I don't want Booker-Warren, but I might take Warren-Booker.
There’s no doubt, analysts say, that the presidential primary process has become more nationalized. Cable news and social media have helped give voters front-row seats for the political show that was once the exclusive domain of people living in Iowa and New Hampshire.
$ee, it's a "show" -- like WWE Wrestling.
The DNC’s debate rules have accelerated this change. Winning a spot on the stage depends on two metrics: the number of individual donors to a campaign and polling performance in national or early-state surveys. The rules have created a feedback loop for candidates who must now put time and money into pursuing e-mail addresses and Facebook “likes” from which they’ll solicit more donations in hopes of crossing the threshold to get on the debate stage.
Sure hope they are clearing all those fake accounts, etc.
Still, most observers in New Hampshire believe reports of damage to the state’s clout are overblown.
“Once upon a time, it was the case that New Hampshire voters had more of a monopoly over delivering first cuts or first impressions of candidates,” said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political science professor, but looking at how many candidates have visited the state, and how many events each is doing here, “I think New Hampshire is more than holding its own as one of the first four states,” he said. “A number of candidates, at least so far, have included New Hampshire as part of their plausible path to the nomination.”
“The candidates are coming here all the time,” said Judy Reardon, a Democratic operative who helped guide John Kerry’s 2004 campaign in New Hampshire.
The New Hampshire primary is likely to be held Feb. 11, a few weeks before the Super Tuesday contests on March 3 and just after the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses.
What you see, traditionally, is most of the field winnowed down to a handful if not less after Iowa and New Hampshire; however, there may be more candidates staying in because not only is Super Tuesday front loaded, but if Biden stumbles it will help diffuse and dilute the delegate totals for Sanders or Warren going forward -- thus denying them a first ballot nomination at the convention (which will then end with Hillary Clinton parachuting from the roof of the Fiserv Forum).
Indeed, the historically large field of candidates and the front-loaded primary schedule could even end up amplifying New Hampshire’s influence, some analysts say.
Others have raised concerns that early voting in California will overlap with the Iowa and New Hampshire contests and could diminish the relevance of the latter two states, but Charlie Cook, publisher of the Cook Political Report, views it another way: California voters casting ballots in real time as the winners in Iowa and New Hampshire are holding victory events.
“Any candidate [who] does badly in both Iowa and New Hampshire, given the timing of early voting in the dozen states for the March 3 Super Tuesday states, will have a very difficult time bouncing back,” he said. “Conversely, whoever does well in one or both, they are getting a gigantic boost and at exactly the right time for those Super Tuesday early voters.”
New Hampshire voters at the Biden event weren’t sweating the situation.....
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Maybe they should be sweating:
"Joe Biden’s comfort food can be hard to swallow" by Joan Vennochi Globe Columnist, June 19, 2019
Joe Biden is supposed to be the comfort food of the 2020 presidential race, but the mac-and-cheese he’s offering up to Democratic primary voters is getting harder to swallow.
On the same night President Trump launched his reelection bid with a big serving of anti-immigration red meat, Biden promoted his relationship with two segregationist Democrats — Senators James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia — as examples of the good old days of civility and getting things done in American politics.
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son,’ ” said Biden at a New York City fund-raiser, where he slipped “briefly into a Southern accent,” The New York Times reported. Given that “boy” is used to insult black men, not white men, Biden’s fond memory is oddly irrelevant and detached from historical context. It also overlooks what The Washington Post describes as Eastland’s view that black Americans were an inferior race and integration would cause “mongrelization.” Biden also went on to describe Talmadge, a longtime civil rights opponent, as “one of the meanest guys I ever knew,” but “At least there was some civility. . . . We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done.”
Getting along to get things done is a key ingredient of what’s supposed to be a comforting campaign message, but with Biden dishing it out, it can lead to some uncomfortable moments. How many riffs like the one above will primary voters accept in the name of Biden’s alleged electability? At what point does a calculated pitch to Trump voters become a dog whistle of its own? Serving two terms as Barack Obama’s vice president doesn’t inoculate Biden from questions about race, or anything else.
I gave him a pass on hair-sniffing and shoulder-rubbing, on the grounds that his brand of old-school politics allowed for more touching than the modern variety, but by now, he should be disciplined enough to refrain from telling a 10-year-old girl who asked him a question at a recent town hall, “I’ll bet you’re as bright as you are good-looking.”
Ugh, let's get back to the comfort of parsing Biden’s remarks about the two Southern segregationist senators and not those creepy proclivities that he can't seem to help even with the whole world watching.
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Any questions?
"Census citizenship question merits more consideration in light of new evidence, judge says" by Tara Bahrampour Washington Post, June 19, 2019
WASHINGTON — A federal district judge in Maryland on Wednesday ruled that new evidence in the case of a census citizenship question merits additional consideration, opening the door for plaintiffs’ lawyers to request that an appeals court return the case to him.
Civil rights groups who had sued the government over its addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census had asked US District Court Judge George Hazel to reconsider his ruling on whether the government was guilty of conspiracy and intent to discriminate after new evidence in the case emerged last month.
Surely you jest!
Files discovered on hard drives of a deceased Republican redistricting strategist suggested that he had communicated with the Trump administration about how to get the citizenship question onto the survey and that the strategist had determined that adding the question would create an electoral advantage for Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
Hazel had ruled in April against the question, joining two other federal judges in finding that the government had violated administrative law when it added it last year, but in that ruling he did not find enough evidence to support plaintiffs’ claims that the government intended to discriminate against immigrants, Latinos, and Asian-Americans by adding the question, or that adding it was part of a conspiracy within the Trump administration to violate the constitutional rights of noncitizens and people of color.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of this month on whether to uphold the three lower courts’ rulings, but the Supreme Court had expedited consideration of the question in order to enable census forms to be sent to the printer in July, and it is expected to announce a decision before its term ends next week.....
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The key takeaway is that Democrats -- thus Biden -- can't win without the vote fraud.
Someone call the police:
Sacramento police officer killed during domestic call
I wonder where he got the gun.
72 officers off Philadelphia streets amid probe into social media posts
The posts were uncovered by a team of researchers who spent two years looking at the personal Facebook accounts of police officers from Arizona to Florida, and.....
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross spoke to members of the media during a news conference Wednesday. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)
About stays it all.
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"Agassiz descendants put pressure on Harvard to give up slave photos" by Deirdre Fernandes Globe Staff, June 19, 2019
A Connecticut woman suing Harvard University over slave images that she says belong to her family has gained support from an unlikely corner: the descendants of the professor and controversial scientist who commissioned the pre-Civil War daguerreotypes.
More than 40 descendants of Louis Agassiz have signed an open letter to Harvard’s president and trustees urging them to relinquish the images to Tamara Lanier, who traces her lineage to the slaves.
REPARATIONS!
Lanier filed a lawsuit against Harvard in March, alleging that the university has capitalized on what are believed to be the oldest images of American slaves. The daguerreotypes of a South Carolina slave named Renty and his daughter Delia were taken for Agassiz to bolster his theory of white biological superiority.
What was it, hanging on a wall?
Lanier has said that the images are of her family members who as slaves were forced to sit for the photographs and that those images now belong to her family.
Agassiz’s descendants back her claim, which probably puts additional public pressure on Harvard to surrender the images.....
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Call it bigotry or racism, but Harvard was right and it is time to go to lunch.
Boston University honors Boston Public School scholars
A lively, diverse crowd attends the MFA’s Juneteenth, amid controversy
Looks like they set up a straw man just in time for Juneteenth and the MFA went along for the usual agenda-pushing purposes.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town:
Vigil held at park in honor of two men fatally shot in Jamaica Plain
It's much easier to address contrived problems that are self-created than the blood running down the streets.
Speaking of which:
Whitey Bulger’s girlfriend Catherine Greig returns to Mass. to go to halfway house
Bit of nostalgia there, huh?
Btw, the reason Bulger was put in position and then allowed to be murdered by the government is because he was about to blow the whistle on Mueller (who didn't make the movie).
"In 1994, O.J. Simpson pleaded not guilty in Los Angeles to the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ronald Goldman."
What helped O.J. is he was considered ‘black-ish’ and a ‘celebrity,’ with a trophy wife (even if she was depressed), and was thus allowed to enter the club.
Phone's ringing:
Alleged victim’s cellphone is missing in Kevin Spacey sex-assault case
Case dismissed!
Law enforcement can sure fu*k up a case when they need to, always to benefit the richer and ruling cla$$ while framing and killing the rabble.
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Don't choke on the reality:
"EPA finalizes plan to replace Obama-era climate rules" by Lisa Friedman New York Times, June 19, 2019
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday replaced former President Barack Obama’s effort to reduce planet-warming pollution from coal plants with a new rule that would allow plants to stay open longer and slow progress on cutting carbon emissions.
While the Obama plan would have set national emissions limits and mandated the reconstruction of power grids to move utilities away from coal, the new measure gives states broad authority to decide how far, if at all, to scale back emissions.
Andrew Wheeler, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said Wednesday that the Obama administration overreached its authority with its rule, the Clean Power Plan, which was suspended by the Supreme Court after challenges from 28 states and hundreds of companies.
The new rule is also likely to prompt a flurry of legal challenges, this time from environmental groups, saying that it could have far-reaching implications for global warming. If the Supreme Court ultimately upholds the administration’s approach to pollution regulation, it would shut down a key avenue that future presidents could use to address climate change.
As if he were, what, a dictator?
You have been warned.
At issue is whether the EPA has authority to set national restrictions on carbon emissions and force states to move away from coal, as assumed under Obama’s rule.
Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University and a former legal counsel in the Obama administration, said it would be “a blockbuster” if the battle reached the Supreme Court and justices endorsed the Trump administration approach. “It could foreclose a new administration from doing something more ambitious,” she said.
The new rule, which is expected to come into effect within 30 days, assumes that the forces of the market will guide the country to a future of cleaner energy by naturally phasing out coal over time. It imposes only modest requirements on coal plants.
The $ad truth is, fossil fuel companies are pushing hard for a carbon tax.
While it instructs states to reduce emissions, the new measure sets no targets. Instead, it gives states broad latitude to decide how much carbon reduction they consider reasonable and suggests ways to improve efficiency at individual power plants.
Jeffrey R. Holmstead, who served in the EPA during both Bush administrations and now represents utility companies as a lawyer for the firm Bracewell, said he thought the current Supreme Court would be skeptical of any presidential effort to regulate carbon emissions under existing law.
“It will establish what the EPA can and can’t do,” Holmstead said of the new Trump rule. “I think it really will tie the hands of future administrations.”
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Related:
"President Trump’s nominee to serve as the next ambassador to the United Nations publicly broke with him on climate change Wednesday, stating at her Senate confirmation hearing that she believes fossil fuels and human behavior contribute to the planet’s shifting weather phenomena. Kelly Knight Craft, currently the US ambassador to Canada, stressed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that ‘‘human behavior has contributed to the change in climate, let there be no doubt.’’ She added: ‘‘I also understand that fossil fuels have played a part in climate change,’’ but Democrats had voiced serious concerns about how Craft would address climate change, due to her family’s investment — tens of millions of dollars — in the fossil fuel industry. Craft pledged to the panel Wednesday that she would recuse herself from any negotiations or meetings related to coal and other fossil fuels....."
Forget the last 9 months of weather, and if you want the job you must swear upon the altar of $cience le$t you be labeled a climate-denier!
Either that or get burned:
"PG&E Corp., the California utility giant that sought bankruptcy protection five months ago amid crippling wildfire liabilities, has reached a $1 billion settlement with local government agencies that were harmed by blazes its equipment ignited. The deal between PG&E and 14 public entities includes a settlement for the town of Paradise, which was destroyed in November’s Camp Fire — the deadliest in California history. It’s the first “significant settlement” since PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January, said Greg Gordon, an analyst at Evercore ISI. The agreement doesn’t affect lawsuits filed by individual homeowners and businesses against the San Francisco company, owner of California’s largest utility, and it must be approved by the judge overseeing the bankruptcy case."
That's the excu$e we are being given for the weather warfare, and it sets the stage for rolling blackouts like that of a third-world nation -- all while letting the political cla$$ claim it was the Russians!
Want to watch some JouTube?
"YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates children’s privacy" by Tony Romm, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg The Washington Post, June 19, 2019
WASHINGTON — The US government is in the late stages of an investigation into YouTube for its handling of children’s videos, four people familiar with the matter said, a probe that threatens the company with a potential fine and already has prompted the tech giant to reevaluate some of its business practices.
The Federal Trade Commission launched the investigation after numerous complaints from consumer groups and privacy advocates, according to the four people, who requested anonymity because such probes are supposed to be confidential. The complaints contended that YouTube, which is owned by Google, failed to protect kids who used the streaming-video service and improperly collected their data.
All the better for pedophiles.
As the investigation has progressed, YouTube executives in recent months have accelerated internal discussions about broad changes to how the platform handles children’s videos, according to a person familiar with the company’s plans. That includes potential changes to its algorithm for recommending and queuing up videos for users, including kids, part of an ongoing effort at YouTube over the past year and a half to overhaul its software and policies to prevent abuse.
A spokeswoman for YouTube, Andrea Faville, declined to comment on the FTC probe. In a statement, she emphasized that not all discussions about product changes come to fruition. ‘‘We consider lots of ideas for improving YouTube and some remain just that — ideas,’’ she said. ‘‘Others, we develop and launch, like our restrictions to minors live-streaming or updated hate speech policy.’’
The FTC declined to comment, citing its policy against confirming or denying nonpublic investigations.
The Wall Street Journal first reported Wednesday that YouTube was considering moving all children’s content off the service into its separate app, YouTube Kids, to better protect younger viewers from problematic material — a change that would be difficult to implement because of the sheer volume of content on YouTube, and potentially could be costly to the company in lost advertising revenue. A person close to the company said that option was highly unlikely, but that other changes were on the table.
Oh, they are more concerned with the adverti$ing revenue than the $afety of the kids.
I sure hope none of them are going hungry playing video games.
The internal conversations come after years of complaints by consumer advocates and independent researchers that YouTube had become a leading conduit for political disinformation, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and content threatening the well-being of children.
Maybe they should take a census, hmmmm?
The prevalence of preteens and younger children on YouTube has been an open secret within the technology industry and repeatedly documented by polls even as the company insisted that the platform complied with a 1998 federal privacy law that prohibits the tracking and targeting of those under 13.
They just didn't tell you -- for the sake of the children, of course.
The FTC has been investigating YouTube about its treatment of kids based on multiple complaints it received dating back to 2015, arguing that both YouTube and YouTube Kids violate federal laws, people familiar with the investigation said. The exact nature and status of the inquiry is not known, but one of the sources said that it is in advanced stages — suggesting a settlement, and a fine depending on what the FTC determines, could be forthcoming.
So this was going on during the Obama years, huh?
Major advertisers also have pushed YouTube and others to clean up its content amid waves of controversies over the past two years.
That's where the printed video froze.
‘‘Google has been violating federal child privacy laws for years,’’ said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, one of the groups that has repeatedly complained about YouTube.
A report last month by PWC, a consulting group, said that Google had an internal initiative called Project Unicorn that sought to make company products comply with the federal child privacy law, called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection ACT and known by its acronym COPPA.
The company that commissioned the PWC report, SuperAwesome, helps technology companies provide services without violating COPPA or European child-privacy legal restrictions against the tracking of children.
‘‘YouTube has a huge problem,’’ said Dylan Collins, chief executive of SuperAwesome. ‘‘They clearly have huge amounts of children using the platform, but they can’t acknowledge their presence.’’
He said the steps being considered by YouTube would help, but ‘‘They’re sort of stuck in a corner here, and it’s hard to engineer their way out of the problem.’’
That is where kids get sent when they are bad. Called time out now.
Earlier this month, YouTube made its biggest change yet to its hate speech policies — banning direct assertions of superiority against protected groups, such as women, veterans, and minorities, and banning users from denying that well-documented violent events took place. Previously, the company prohibited users from making direct calls for violence against protected groups, but stopped short of banning other forms of hateful speech, including slurs. The changes were accompanied by a purge of thousands of channels, featuring Holocaust denial and content by white supremacists.
Truth never fears investigation, and this undercuts U.S. moral authority in the world when they holler human rights and censorship at China, Russia, Iran, etc.
The company also recently disabled comments on videos featuring minors and banned minors from live-streaming video without an adult present in the video. Executives have also moved to limit its own algorithms from recommending content in which a minor is featured in a sexualized or violent situation, even if that content does not technically violate the company’s policies.
You can go watch Disney for that!
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