Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Comedian Michelle Wolf routine stuns White House Correspondents' Dinner
Politico | Brent D. Griffiths | 04/28/18

Members of the Trump administration walked out of the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night after comedian Michelle Wolf ripped into White House staffers, including press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in the absence of the president himself.

A year after the White House boycotted the annual dinner -- and with President Donald Trump holding a competing campaign-style rally in Michigan -- director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp and her husband, conservative activist Matt Schlapp, were among those who marched out of the ballroom at the Washington Hilton long before Wolf's keynote routine was over.

Footage broadcast live on cable TV networks showed Sanders sitting at the head table on stage stone-faced, wincing and at times raising her eyebrows as Wolf compared her to a character on the dystopian TV series "The Handsmaid's Tale" and to an "Uncle Tom" for white women. ... Read more
Michelle Wolf performs stand-up routine at White House Correspondent's dinner | ABC | 04/28/18 | 19:56

The Feigned Outrage At Michelle Wolf
HP | Michelangelo Signorile | 04/30/18

Sitting at a table pretty far from the stage at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday night, I watched comedian Michelle Wolf deliver a brilliant, well-timed roast of President Donald Trump, those who work for him and the media establishment that covers him.

The performance has everyone talking, and many are expressing outrage that she "went too far" ? outrage that seems phony and forced. Some journalists who cover the White House and, unsurprisingly, many conservatives and Trump supporters are up in arms about Wolf's barbs. In both cases, the reactions are troublingly hypocritical. ... Read more
Did White House Correspondents Roast Go Too Far? | AM Joy | MSNBC | 04/30/18 | 16:01

Koreas: A day of historic talks | BBC News | 04/27/18 | 3:08

Bonus Intercepted Podcast: Ralph Nader on Gina Haspel, John Bolton, Syria, and the "Decrepit" Democratic Party
TheIntercepted | Jeremy Scahill | 04/29/18

RALPH NADER IS the best known public advocate in modern U.S. history and has run four times for president. On this special episode of Intercepted, we are going to dig deep into several issues facing the country and the world right now. In case you are not familiar with Nader, he rose to prominence in the 1960s after blowing the lid on extreme safety issues with General Motors and other car manufacturers' products. His book "Unsafe at Any Speed" was an influential investigation and exposé. Throughout his life, Nader has waged countless campaigns aimed at food safety, worker and environmental protections, ending pollution, cronyism in government, financial crimes, and more. Nader simply calls himself a public citizen. ... Read more
Intercepted | Jeromy Scahill Intercepted Podcast: Ralph Nader on Gina Haspel, John Bolton, Syria and the 'decrepit' Democratic Party | TheIntercept | 04/29/18 | 1hr

Plant-strong & healthy living by Rip Esselstyn | TEDTalk | | 17:53

'Fox & Friends' Couldn't Get Trump Off The Phone | Stephen Colbert | 04/27/18 | 8:49

Trump Celebrates Melania's Birthday by Ranting to "Fox & Friends" | Trevor Noah | 04/26/18 | 5:22

Trump Goes on Fox & Friends and Freaks Out About Michael Cohen | Seth Meyers | 04/26/18 | 11:25

*The Puzzle of Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Politico | Jason Schwartz | may/june

How a bright, competent and likable young operative became the face of the most duplicitous press operation in White House history.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is best known to the American public for running the White House daily briefing, a televised performance in which, without so much as raising her voice, the president's press secretary manages to deflect questions, flatly contradict facts and generally throw wet blankets over the countless fires burning around the administration of Donald Trump. But the most Sandersesque moment yet may be one that happened away from the West Wing, at a little-publicized February event in downtown Washington. She was appearing alongside Mike McCurry, who had held the same position under Bill Clinton, on a panel about the job. McCurry was letting her have it.

"You have got to have an administration that's committed to respect the role of the free press," McCurry said. "You cannot have a president who declares them to be the enemy and goes out and describes them as fake news every day." ... Read more

Scientists Say California's Weather Is About to Get Even Crazier -- and Deadlier
MotherJones | Megan Molteni | 04/26/18

In December 1861, as a California drought was wearing into its fifth year, farmers on the West Coast were all asking for one thing for Christmas: rain. And boy did they get it. For 43 days rain and snow fell across the state, causing rivers to surge their banks, turning the 300-mile long, 20-mile-wide Central Valley into an ice-cold inland sea. LA got 66 inches. So deep were Sacramento's floodwaters that the capital had to be relocated to San Francisco. With a quarter of the economy underwater the state was forced into bankruptcy. Thousands of people died. It was the most violent flooding California had ever seen, and no storms have come close to topping it since.

Soil cores and climate models tell scientists that megafloods like this one have happened about once every 200 years. Which, if you're doing the math, means the state is due.That's not the bad news. The bad news is that by the middle of the century, a megaflood could be striking California every couple of decades.

That's according to a new study out this week in Nature Climate Change, which predicts up to a 100 percent increase in extreme precipitation swings across California over the next seven decades.... Read more

The Internet Is Designed for Corporations -- Not People
AlterNet | author | 04/27/18

... Let's start with Facebook and privacy. Sites like Facebook supposedly protect user privacy with a practice called "notice and consent." This practice is the business model of the internet. Sites fund their "free" services by collecting information about users and selling that information to others.

Of course, these sites present privacy policies to users to notify them how their information will be used. They ask users to "click here to accept" them. The problem is that these policies are nearly impossible to understand. As a result, no one knows what they have consented to. But that's not all. The problem runs deeper than that. Legal scholar Katherine Strandburg has pointed out that the entire metaphor of a market where consumers trade privacy for services is deeply flawed. It is advertisers, not users, who are Facebook's real customers. Users have no idea what they are "paying" and have no possible way of knowing the value of their information. Users are also unable to protect themselves, as opting out of sites like Facebook and Google isn't viable for most. ... Read more

Ex-'Smallville' Star Kristin Kreuk 'Disturbed' Over Past NXIVM Link | InsideEdition | 03/30/18 | 2:50

Actress Allison Mack Negotiating Possible Plea After Sex Trafficking Arrest | TODAY | 04/24/18 | 3:28

Allison Mack faces 15 years to life in prison | FoxNews | 04/25/18 | 1:49

Former NXIVM member says she was branded when invited to secret sorority | ABC | 12/16/17 | 11:19

Roger Stone Exposes NXIVM Sex Cult | Alex Jones | 04/25/18 | 13:09

A Guide To Unscrambling Trump's Bonkers 'Fox & Friends' Interview
HP | Marina Fang | 04/26/18

President Donald Trump on Thursday called into his favorite TV program, "Fox & Friends," and spoke for more than 30 minutes in what at times was an agitated, stream-of-consciousness rant. The president careened over a lot of ground in the rare interview. Here's a summary:

President Trump on Fox & Friends | FoxNews | 04/26/18 | 30:01

I haven't read the book below or indorse the views of the author. I'm posting the book and article below to go along with the interview from NPR The1a.org in the right column.

The Capitalist Comeback: The Trump Boom and the Left's Plot to Stop It by Andrew Puzder

As a successful CEO in the restaurant industry, Andy Puzder uniquely understands how important the profit motive is to our country's ultimate prosperity. Furthermore, as the grandson of immigrants, the son of a car salesman, and someone who worked his way up from earning minimum wage to running an international business, he has a first-hand view of how America's exceptional capitalist spirit can lift everyone to success.

In 2016, the American people faced a stark choice between two very different presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton spent most of her adult life involved in politics and promised to uphold and advance the progressive legacy of President Barack Obama who had first won the White House on promises to "spread the wealth around." Donald Trump, on the other hand, came from the business world, was an unapologetic capitalist, used his own personal wealth as inspiration, and promised simply to "Make America Great Again."

By choosing Trump over Clinton, the American people put a stop to decades of government expansion under progressive leadership, and they might just have saved our economy by doing so.

America was once a land where everyone was encouraged to seek their fortune - the more prosperous our citizens, the more our whole society could in turn prosper. But leftist forces in the United States have been seeking to tarnish the pursuit of prosperity and to paint profit as an evil motivation fit only for greedy plutocrats.

Andy Puzder: What Trump-haters don't get about the incredible power of American capitalism
Fox News | Andy Puzder | 04/20/18

President Trump promised to reverse the Obama era's progressive economic policies and free American capitalism to do what it does best: increase prosperity for all. And, sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

Buoyed with optimism as taxes were cut and anti-business regulations eliminated, businesses invested, GDP growth climbed to a 3.1 percent average for Trump's first three full quarters in office and the unemployment rate declined to a low last seen during President Clinton's final year in office.

To avoid slipping back into the economic doldrums we experienced under President Obama -- which, incidentally, offer a look at the alternate reality we might have faced had we elected Hillary Clinton -- it is important to understand how far we've come and why. ... Read more

*Mick Mulvaney Admits He Spoke Only To Lobbyists Who Paid Him
HP | Ed Mazza | 03/25/18

ick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump's budget director and the acting head of a top consumer watchdog group, raised eyebrows on Tuesday with an anecdote about his time in the House of Representatives.

"We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress," he said at the American Bankers Association conference in Washington, according to The New York Times. "If you're a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn't talk to you. If you're a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you." ... Read more

Church of The Donald
Politico | Ruth Graham | May/June 2018

Never mind Fox. Trump's most reliable media mouthpiece is now Christian TV.

Hendersonville, Tenn. -- The Music City campus of the Trinity Broadcasting Network is about a half-hour drive from Music City itself, in a placid Nashville suburb on a bend in the Cumberland River where the main road through town is called the Johnny Cash Parkway. TBN, America's largest Christian television network, acquired the complex in 1994 after the death of country singer Conway Twitty, who had operated it as a sprawling tourist attraction he called Twitty City. Last year, TBN renovated Twitty's personal auditorium, leveling the floor, adding large neon signs and a faux-brick backdrop under the original Corinthian columns. The resulting TV set looks like an urban streetscape framed by a Greek temple.

On a February night, in his large office just above the auditorium, the network's biggest star is making last-minute plans for what's shaping up to be a busy evening. First, Mike Huckabee fields some logistics for dinner at his nearby condo, where he will host three couples who won the privilege in a charity auction. He takes a call from the actor Jon Voight, who tells Huckabee he is free to do an interview about Israel. (Huckabee leaves the next day for Jerusalem, where TBN opened another studio a few years ago.) He checks with one of his producers about an old "Laugh-In" clip Huckabee had requested. "We aren't paying $6,500 for it, good gosh!" he laughs when he hears the cost of the snippet. "Did they point a gun at your head and wear a ski mask when you asked that?" (They decide not to use it.) ... Read more

*Millennial and Gen X Generations Say Baby Boomers Have Ruined the World With Their Poor Decisions
AlterNet | Sarah Burris / Raw Story | 05/245/18

The whole world has gone to hell thanks to the poor political and economic decisions of Baby Boomers, according to the Millennial Generation. However, their opinions aren't unique, as many generations blame boomers for their epic blunders since the 1980s.

Axios cited their latest poll with Survey Monkey noting that millennials expect a more difficult future as a result of the poor decisions from boomers. ... Read more

Could CIA Nominee Gina Haspel Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
Daily Beast| Jay Michaelson | 03/19/18

The nomination of Gina Haspel to be the next director of the CIA faces trouble amid accusations that she personally supervised the torture of suspected terrorists and destroyed the evidence of the interrogations.

Haspel supervised a U.S. "black site" in Thailand in 2002 where Abu Zubeidah and Abdul Rahim Nashiri were tortured by CIA personnel. In 2005, she helped destroy 92 videotapes showing their torture. She faced no consequences for those actions, and, assuming senators ask about them at her upcoming confirmation hearing, it's likely that her answers will be given in a closed, secret session. ... Read more

Intercepted Podcast: The Haspel Ultimatum | TheIntercept | 04/25/18 | 1hr

Trump lied to me about his wealth to get onto the Forbes 400. Here are the tapes.
WP | Jonathan Greenberg | 04/20/18

Posing as 'John Barron,' he claimed he owned most of his father's real estate empire.

In May 1984, an official from the Trump Organization called to tell me how rich Donald J. Trump was. I was reporting for the Forbes 400, the magazine's annual ranking of America's richest people, for the third year. In the previous edition, we'd valued Trump's holdings at $200 million, only one-fifth of what he claimed to own in our interviews. This time, his aide urged me on the phone, I needed to understand just how loaded Trump really was.

The official was John Barron -- a name we now know as an alter ego of Trump himself. When I recently rediscovered and listened, for first time since that year, to the tapes I made of this and other phone calls, I was amazed that I didn't see through the ruse: Although Trump altered some cadences and affected a slightly stronger New York accent, it was clearly him. "Barron" told me that Trump had taken possession of the business he ran with his father, Fred. "Most of the assets have been consolidated to Mr. Trump," he said. "You have down Fred Trump [as half owner] .?.?. but I think you can really use Donald Trump now." Trump, through this sockpuppet, was telling me he owned "in excess of 90 percent" of his family's business. With all the home runs Trump was hitting in real estate, Barron told me, he should be called a billionaire. ... Read more
EXPOSED: Trump Lying About His Wealth Since The 80's | TYT | 04/23/18 | 16:11

James Comey's Memos Reveal the Reasons Donald Trump Wants to Find Leakers and Put Reporters in Jail
TheIntercept | James Risen | 04/23/18

BY NOW, IT is well known that Donald Trump wants to jail reporters in order to force them to reveal their sources. "They spend a couple of days in jail, make a new friend, and they are ready to talk," Trump told former FBI Director James Comey, according to a memo Comey wrote after a conversation between the two men in February 2017.

The Justice Department turned over this memo, along with others Comey wrote about his meetings with Trump before he was fired last year, to congressional leaders last week. The memos were leaked almost immediately. Republicans in Congress apparently wanted them out in order to attack Comey. While they don't make Comey look particularly good, they generally make Trump look worse.

Just as the Comey memos were being published, former Forbes reporter Jonathan Greenberg supplied further proof that Trump has been obsessed with how he is portrayed in the press for as long as anyone can remember. Greenberg dug up a 1984 audiotape in which Trump pretended to be someone else in order to try to convince Forbes to include Trump on its roster of the wealthiest Americans. Greenberg says that Trump called him claiming to be an aide named John Barron, hyping the value of Trump's assets in order to get him on the Forbes 400 list. ... Read more
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Trump Bullshitted His Way onto the Forbes List | Trevor Noah | 04/23/18 | 5:47

Watch Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg Discuss Nuclear War
TheIntercept | author | date

Betsy Reed, the editor-in-chief of The Intercept, is moderating a discussion between Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg on the topic of nuclear policy and war. Chomsky, a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona, and Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower and author of "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner," are appearing onstage together for the first time. The event will be held at the University of Arizona College of Social and Behavioral Sciences on Tuesday, April 24, at 10 p.m. ET. ... Read more
The Haury Conversation: Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky Discuss Nuclear War | 04/24/18 | 10:00pm.

*Big Banks Are Raking in Record Profits Thanks to Trump's Supposedly 'Middle-Class' Tax Cuts
AlterNet | Cody Fenwick | 04/20/18

When President Donald Trump and the Republican Party pitched their bill to overhaul the American tax code, they promised voters that their plan was aa "middle-class tax relief." As the law goes into effect, though, most Americans are seeing little benefit, while the big banks are raking in record profits.

According to new analysis by the Associated Press, six big Wall Street banks made an additional $3.59 billion dollars so far this year thanks to the tax law. ... Read more
Republican Tax Cuts Are Saving Banks BILLIONS | TYT | 04/22/18 | 7:38

*Iran Deal: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) | 04/22/18 | 21:21

Junk Raft: An Ocean Voyage and a Rising Tide of Activism to Fight Plastic Pollution by Marcus Eriksen

News media brought the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"--the famous swirling gyre of plastic pollution in the ocean--into the public consciousness. But when Marcus Eriksen cofounded the 5 Gyres Institute with his wife, Anna Cummins, and set out to study the world's oceans with hundreds of volunteers, they discovered a "plastic smog" of microscopic debris that permeates our oceans globally, defying simple clean-up efforts. What's more, these microplastics and their toxic chemistry have seeped into the food chain, threatening marine life and humans alike.

Far from being a gloomy treatise on an environmental catastrophe, though, Junk Raft tells the exciting story of Eriksen and his team's fight to solve the problem of plastic pollution. A scientist, activist, and inveterate adventurer, Eriksen is drawn to the sea by a desire to right an environmental injustice. Against long odds and common sense, he and his co-navigator, Joel Paschal, construct a "junk raft" made of plastic trash and set themselves adrift from Los Angeles to Hawaii, with no motor or support vessel, confronting perilous cyclones, food shortages, and a fast decaying raft.

As Eriksen recounts his struggles to keep afloat, he immerses readers in the deep history of the plastic pollution crisis and the movement that has arisen to combat it. The proliferation of cheap plastic products during the twentieth century has left the world awash in trash. Meanwhile, the plastics industry, with its lobbying muscle, fights tooth and nail against any changes that would affect its lucrative status quo, instead defending poorly designed products and deflecting responsibility for the harm they cause.

JUNK RAFT film (trailer) | 07/20/17 | 1:11

Know Your Plactics - Click to zoom
Know Your Plastics

Plastic Poison - Click to zoom
Plastic Poison

How Long Until They're Gone - Click to zoom
How Long Until They're Gone

Plastic Bags - Click to zoom
Plastic Bags

9 Tips for Living Without Plastics - Click to zoom
9 Tips for Living Without Plastics

Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency
New Yorker | Adam Davidson | 04/14/18

... I arrived in Baghdad on April 12th of that year, a few days after Saddam's statue at Firdos Square had been destroyed. There were a couple of weeks of uncertainty as reporters and Iraqis tried to gauge who was in charge of the country and what the general plan was. There was no electricity, no police, no phones, no courts, no schools. More than half of Iraqis worked for the government, and there was no government, no Army, and so no salaries for most of the country. At first, it seemed possible that the Americans simply needed a bit of time to communicate the new rules. By the end of April, though, it was clear: there was no plan, no new order. Iraq was anarchic.

We journalists were able to use generators and satellite dishes to access outside information, and what we saw was absurd. Americans seemed convinced things were going well in Iraq. The war--and the President who launched it--were seen favorably by seventy per cent of Americans. Then came these pictures of a President touting "Mission Accomplished"--the choice of words that President Trump used in a tweet on Saturday, the morning after he ordered an air strike on Syria. On the ground, we were not prophets or political geniuses. We were sentient adults who were able to see the clear, obvious truth in front of us. The path of Iraq would be decided by those who thrived in chaos. ... Read more

Trump Tries To Cover Up Corrupt Illegal Deals but The New Yorker Breaks Story | NY | older | 3:06

Inside Trump's Dirty Deals Abroad
New Yorker | Dorothy Wickenden | 02/22/18

What does the Trump Organization's unorthodox business conduct reveal about the Administration's political troubles with the special counsel Robert Mueller? Adam Davidson joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how the Trump family's financial ties to Russian oligarchs led to extraordinarily risky behavior during the campaign, and the current questions about obstruction of justice and collusion with Putin's Russia. ... Read more

Trump's Business of Corruption
New Yorker | Adam Davidson | 08/21/17

President Donald Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow recently told me that the investigation being led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, should focus on one question: whether there was "coördination between the Russian government and people on the Trump campaign." Sekulow went on, "I want to be really specific. A real-estate deal would be outside the scope of legitimate inquiry." If he senses "drift" in Mueller's investigation, he said, he will warn the special counsel's office that it is exceeding its mandate. ... Read more

Here Are The Redacted Copies Of The Comey Memos
HP | Nick Visser | 04/19/18

The Department of Justice released copies of the so-called Comey memos to congressional leaders on Thursday. In the documents, the former FBI director detailed his early encounters with newly-minted President Donald Trump, including Trump's obsession with disproving allegations in the infamous Steele dossier and his demands for aides' loyalty.

The memos, which contain no notable information that Comey hasn't already discussed in congressional testimony or his new memoir, were leaked to a swath of news outlets late Thursday. Redacted copies of the seven documents can be seen below. ... Read more
Here Are The Redacted Copies Of The Comey Memos | 04/19/18

Curing Exceptionalism: What's wrong with how we think about the United States? What can we do about it? by David Swanson

U.S. exceptionalism, the idea that the United States of America is superior to other nations, is no more fact-based and no less harmful than racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. The purpose of this book is to persuade you of that statement. This book examines how the United States actually compares with other countries, how people think about the comparison, what damage that thinking does, and what changes we might want to consider making.

"I hope Curing Exceptionalism will be part of coursework in classrooms throughout the U.S." -- Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Decoding the Weather Machine | PBS NOVA | S45E07 | 1:53:21

We've Ignored Climate Change For More Than a Century | PBS Hot Mess | 04/19/18 | 4:58

ICE ALIVE - Documenting Life and Rapid Change | Climate State | 04/10/18 | 20:01

Deconstructed Podcast: How Bad is the News? With Hasan Minhaj
The Intercept | author | 04/20/18

IN RECENT YEARS, the right has turned free speech into a wedge issue, claiming that a rising tide of liberal intolerance has made it difficult or even impossible to express conservative views. But is that what's really going on? Last year, comedian Hasan Minhaj memorably took on the president and the press corps when he hosted the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. This week, Mehdi sits down with the "Daily Show" correspondent to discuss comedy, free speech, and whether the news media are doing a good job covering the current occupant of the Oval Office. ... Read more
Deconstructed Podcast: How Bad is the News? With Hasan Minhaj | The Intercept | 04/20/18 | 1hr

Trump allies worry Cohen will flip
Politico | Darren Samuelsohn | 04/19/18

Longtime Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen is fighting the seizure of his records by federal investigators in New York, but people close to the president are fretting he might fold if he faces severe charges.

Two sources close to the president said people in Trump's inner circle have in recent days been actively discussing the possibility that Michael Cohen -- long seen as one of Trump's most loyal personal allies -- might flip if he faces serious charges as a result of his work on behalf of Trump.

"That's what they'll threaten him with: life imprisonment," said Alan Dershowitz, the liberal lawyer and frequent Trump defender who met with the president and his staff over two days at the White House last week. "They're going to threaten him with a long prison term and try to turn him into a canary that sings." ... Read more

Gulf Stream

Senator Bob Menendez: Syria Strikes May Have Been 'Choreographed' With Russia | All In | MSNBC | 04/18/18 | 6:27

Come Sunday (trailer) | Netflix | 03/21/18 | 2:27

Come Sunday, The story was told on This American Life, and has now been turned into a movie. | 1a.org | 04/19/18 | 1hr

Dry, The Beloved Country
HP | A dispatch from Cape Town by Eve Fairbanks | 04/19/18

Barbara Bush, matriarch of Bush dynasty, dies at 92
Politico | David Cohen | 04/17/18

She was 92 and had been recently reported by Jim McGrath, a family spokesman, to be in failing health. McGrath did not immediately specify the cause of death.

Bush joined Abigail Adams (wife of John Adams, mother of John Quincy Adams) in her distinctive feat, though she also achieved her own stature in public life, especially as an advocate for literacy. She was also widely admired for her devotion to family and her sharp-tongued and full-throated defense of one of America's most prominent political families (dogs included). ... Read more

Full Uncut Interview: James Comey | Stephen Colbert | 04/17/18 | 32:17

James Comey To 'Fresh Air': The FBI Isn't 'On Anybody's Side' | Fresh Air | 04/17/18 | 1hr

James Comey Sees Himself as a Victim of Trump. He Refuses to See the Victims of the Justice System.
The Intercept | Peter Maass | 04/18/18

... Most stories about Comey's best-selling memoir have focused on its Hamlet-like agonizing over his potential role in tilting the 2016 election, and his horror of discovering that Trump, once in the White House, was as thugishly corrupt as the mafia dons Comey had prosecuted before leading the FBI and getting fired by Trump. But Comey's insistence on upholding the law is devotional to the point of ruthlessness, as he makes clear when explaining the need to send Martha Stewart to jail in 2003 for lying about an insider stock tip she had received.

"People must fear the consequences of lying in the justice system or the system can't work," Comey writes. "There was once a time when most people worried about going to hell if they violated an oath taken in the name of God. That divine deterrence has slipped away from our modern cultures. In its place, people must fear going to jail. They must fear their lives being turned upside down. They must fear their pictures splashed on newspapers and websites. People must fear having their names forever associated with a criminal act if we are to have a nation with the rule of law." ... Read more

Trump Talk: All Our Best Mashups In One Video | VICE | 04/17/18 | 8:26

The Company Michael Cohen Kept -- "Trump, Inc." Podcast
ProPublica | Ilya Marritz | 04/18/18

Long before Donald Trump's attorney paid Stormy Daniels or had his office raided by the FBI, a pattern was established: The associates of Michael Cohen have often been disciplined, disbarred, accused or convicted of crimes.

If you've seen video or images of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, they've probably been set in locations that exude power and importance: Cohen berating a CNN anchor in a TV studio, for example, or striding across the sleek marbled interior of Trump Tower, or more recently, smoking cigars in front of Cohen's temporary residence, the Loews Regency Hotel on Manhattan's Park Avenue.

But to understand how Michael Cohen arrived in those precincts, you need to venture across New York City's East River. There, in a Queens warehouse district in the shadows of an elevated No. 7 subway line, is a taxi garage that used to house his law practice. The office area in the front is painted a garish taxicab-yellow, with posters of hockey players on the wall and a framed photo of the late Hasidic rabbi Menachem Schneerson. Cohen practiced law there and invested in the once-lucrative medallions that grant New York cabs the right to operate. ... Read more
The Company Michael Cohen Kept -- "Trump, Inc." Podcast | ProPublica | 04/18/18 | 1hr

It's Time to Admit That Half-Measures Can't Stop Climate Change
TheIntercept | Kate Aronoff | 04/17/18

... AMERICA MAY WELL be the only country in the world where climate deniers making claims similar to Müller enjoy access to the reins of power. Given its status as the world's largest economy and its second-largest polluter, that's not something to be taken lightly; former EPA administrators estimate that the damage wrought by agency head Scott Pruitt in his first year could take three decades to repair. A few dozen miles from the EIKE confab, though -- at a sprawling U.N. campus along the Rhine -- was a preview for the kinds of climate politics that will dominate the 21st century once Trump and Pruitt are out of office. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they're only marginally more in touch with scientific reality than our German revelers.

The relevant question isn't whether the Earth is heating up, but what we intend to do about it. That's a radically different conversation about climate change than the one that's been had in America to this point. Here, decades of propaganda from the fossil fuel industry and the denialist think tanks they support have forced the debate to orbit around whether there's a problem at all, prying open the Overton window to accommodate conspiracy theorists and Nobel Prize winners alike. .... Read more

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey

In his forthcoming book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.

Mr. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. He previously served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. deputy attorney general in the administration of President George W. Bush. From prosecuting the Mafia and Martha Stewart to helping change the Bush administration's policies on torture and electronic surveillance, overseeing the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as well as ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Comey has been involved in some of the most consequential cases and policies of recent history.

The Michael Cohen Case: A Definitive Guide to Key Players
TheAtlantic | Natasha Bertrand | 04/17/18

The criminal investigation brings together the president of the United States, an adult-film performer, several lawyers, and a combative Fox News host.

The longtime attorney for President Donald Trump's real-estate empire, Michael Cohen, went to federal court on Monday in a bid to block federal prosecutors from reading documents and other materials that were seized from Cohen's home in a sweeping raid. The porn star Stormy Daniels, whom Cohen allegedly paid off to protect Trump, was there to watch. And the hearing was presided over by Judge Kimba Wood, who ordered Cohen to reveal the name of a client he'd tried to keep secret: the Fox News host Sean Hannity.

In a blow to Cohen and Trump, who asked to review the seized documents before the government had a chance to look at them, Wood ruled that Justice Department staffers divorced from federal investigators--known as a "taint team"--could be trusted to sift through the seized materials and determine what is and isn't protected by attorney-client privilege. ... Read more

Why Japan Is Begging Trump for Help
Politico | William Pesek | 04/17/18

Escaping overseas as scandals explode at home is perhaps the oldest of political strategies. Japan's Shinzo Abe hopes to make it seem new again as he arrives at Mar-a-Lago this week.

There are few better distractions -- or shinier objects -- than President Donald Trump. And Prime Minister Abe hopes getting a warm welcome at Trump's "Winter White House" will remind 127 million Japanese back home he's still got some diplomatic game.

Abe's approval ratings show a distinct lack of faith. A year-long cronyism controversy involving a sweetheart land deal drove his numbers below even Trump's. Nor are voters happy with Abe's enthusiastic embrace of a leader whose bombast is bringing Japan nothing but grief -- a scandal all its own. A month ago, Abe seemed a shoo-in for a third term, putting him on course to be Japan's longest-serving leader. Now, Tokyo is buzzing about who's next. ... Read more

Billion-Dollar Blessings
Propublica | Alec MacGillis | 04/17/18

How Jerry Falwell Jr. transformed Liberty University, one of the religious right's most powerful institutions, into a wildly lucrative online empire.

It was the start of the 2017 Fall Family Weekend at Liberty University, the school founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. 47 years ago in Lynchburg, Virginia, and the lines were especially long to get into the basketball arena for the mandatory thrice-weekly student convocation. There was a festive feel in the air -- as usual, a live band kicked things off with some Christian rock.

Penny Nance, a newly named Liberty trustee who is the head of the socially conservative group Concerned Women for America, took the stage to say that with Donald Trump in the White House, the country was much closer to overturning Roe v. Wade and putting "true limits on the abortionist's hand." Tim Lee, a Texas preacher and evangelist who lost his legs in the Vietnam War, gave a sermon bemoaning "homosexuals and pornographers," declaring that one problem with "pulpits today is that they've got a lot of girlie men in them." ... Read more

In Searing Interview, James Comey Unleashes Against 'Morally Unfit' Trump
HP | Nick Visser | 04/15/17

Former FBI Director James Comey gave a no-holds-barred interview on Sunday night in which he called Donald Trump "morally unfit to be president" and a liar who possibly obstructed justice.

"A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person's not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds," Comey said. ... Read more
New revelations from fired FBI director in exclusive interview | ABC | 04/15/18 | 7:23

Watch James Comey's explosive interview with USA TODAY | USA Today | 04/16/18 | 25:51

Corporate Taxes | John Oliver | 04/15/18 | 16:02

Trump Tax Cuts Add WAY More Debt Than Advertised | TYT | 04/15/18 | 9:06

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--and How to Make It Work for You by Jeremy Heimans

Why do some leap ahead while others fall behind in our chaotic, connected age? In New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms confront the biggest stories of our time--the rise of mega-platforms like Facebook and Uber; the out-of-nowhere victories of Obama and Trump; the unexpected emergence of movements like #MeToo--and reveal what's really behind them: the rise of "new power."

For most of human history, the rules of power were clear: power was something to be seized and then jealously guarded. This "old power" was out of reach for the vast majority of people. But our ubiquitous connectivity makes possible a different kind of power. "New power" is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It works like a current, not a currency--and it is most forceful when it surges. The battle between old and new power is determining who governs us, how we work, and even how we think and feel.

New Power shines fresh light on the cultural phenomena of our day, from #BlackLivesMatter to the Ice Bucket Challenge to Airbnb, uncovering the new power forces that made them huge. Drawing on examples from business, activism, and pop culture, as well as the study of organizations like Lego, NASA, Reddit, and TED, Heimans and Timms explain how to build new power and channel it successfully. They also explore the dark side of these forces: the way ISIS has co-opted new power to monstrous ends, and the rise of the alt-right's "intensity machine."

In an era increasingly shaped by new power, this groundbreaking book offers us a new way to understand the world--and our role in it.

How the NRA Sells Guns in America Today
NewRepublic | Elliott Woods | 04/16/18

... Carry Guard policies are managed by Lockton Affinity, a third-party insurance company, which severed its connection to the NRA in February, but this is some seriously effective fear-marketing, nonetheless. First, the NRA scares the mostly white people who buy guns into arming themselves against imagined brown-skinned thugs, in an era of falling crime--the overall crime rate in the United States is less than half of what it was in 1991, according to the Brennan Center for Justice; then it scares those same white people into worrying about their own inadequacies; and, finally, it scares them again with the prospect of legal prosecution in a country that the NRA paints as increasingly hostile to gun owners. Even if you shoot the right person, as it were, you still might be sent to prison or bankrupt yourself with legal bills. What's a couple more bucks on top of the ammo and NRA dues to ease your troubled mind? ... Read more

Trump may try to claw back as much as $60 billion from spending bill
Politico | Nancy Cook | 04/13/17

Budget director Mick Mulvaney is developing a proposal, expected to be released around May 1, to re-open the $1.3 trillion omnibus package.

The White House is ignoring warnings from worried Hill Republicans and moving ahead with plans to cut billions of dollars from the massive spending bill that Congress passed in late March, after President Donald Trump has spent weeks grousing about the legislation.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney -- himself a former congressman -- is taking the lead on developing the rollback proposal, according to eight current and former administration officials and Republicans close to the White House. The White House expects to release it around May 1, according to one administration official.

These officials anticipate the White House could propose slashing anywhere from $30 billion to $60 billion dollars from the $1.3 trillion dollar spending bill passed for this year -- even as Republican lawmakers are openly asking the president not to re-open the negotiations. ... Read more

President Trump and James Comey battle over new book | CNN | 04/13/18 | 12:55

Deconstructed Podcast: Is Trump About To Start Au Illegal War With Syria?
The Intercept | author | 04/13/18

THE WAR IN Syria is seemingly without end: Seven long years of bloodshed, terror, foreign interventions and -- perhaps most horrifically -- the use of chemical weapons to kill women and children. The latest such incident in Douma has prompted president Donald Trump to threaten his second aerial attack against the Assad regime since coming to office. But on what authority, and with what plan? This week on Deconstructed, Mehdi Hasan speaks to Rep. Barbara Lee, one of the most principled and consistent voices against U.S. military interventions on Capitol Hill, and the only member of congress to vote against the invasion of Afghanistan back in 2001. ... Read more
Intercept | Jeromy Scahill Deconstructed Podcast: Is Trump About To Start Au Illegal War With Syria? | TheIntercept | 04/13/18 | 1hr

Trump's Company Is Suing Towns Across the Country to Get Breaks on Taxes -- "Trump, Inc." Podcast
ProPublica | Katherine Sullivan | 04/11/18

Why is Trump's business arguing its properties are worth just a fraction of what Trump has claimed they are on his own financial disclosures? To save on taxes.

President Donald Trump is famous for bragging about his net worth. Publicly, he claims he’s worth more than $10 billion. He even sued an author over the issue and lobbied the editors of Forbes about his ranking on their billionaires list. ... Read more
ProPublica | Trump, inc Trump's Company Is Suing Towns Across the Country to Get Breaks on Taxes | ProPublica | 04/11/18 | 1hr

'We have brought swallows into Milan', says father of the vertical forest
ClimateChangeNews.com | staff | 04/10/18

It has been said that they can be seen as "a house for trees inhabited by people". The exterior facades feature a total of 21,000 plants, including 800 full size trees.

Megalopolises grow at impressive speed. To give you an example, Beijing, with its suburbs, has now reached 103 million inhabitants. Cities occupy only 2% of our planet's land mass but account for 75% of the production of carbon dioxide pollution, the main cause of climate change. ... Read more

Twilight of the Reaganites
The New Republic | Alex Shephard | 04/12/18

Paul Ryan's departure marks the end of an era -- and the further Trumpification of the Republican Party.

Speaker Paul Ryan, who on Wednesday announced he would be retiring at the end of his term, was characteristically modest when asked to assess his legacy at a press conference. Emphasizing that he only "reluctantly" became speaker of the House in 2015--without mentioning that he did so to head off a Republican civil war--Ryan said, "I think we've achieved a heck of a lot. ... I like to think I've done my part, my little part in history to set us on a better course."

But Ryan played more than a bit part on the political stage. He shepherded a $1.5 trillion tax bill through Congress, permanently enshrining an upward redistribution of wealth into the tax code. He extended the Reagan Revolution into the 21st century, putting a sunny sheen on policy goals that would make the lives of the least fortunate significantly more difficult. And he did it all by code-switching to the language of wonkery, convincing Beltway reporters that the same old Republican attempts to roll back the policies of the New Deal and the Great Society were grounded in empirical necessities, in charts and graphs and actuarial analysis. ... Read more

Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? by Robert Kuttner

In the past few decades, the wages of most workers have stagnated, even as productivity increased. Social supports have been cut, while corporations have achieved record profits. Downward mobility has produced political backlash.

What is going on? Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? argues that neither trade nor immigration nor technological change is responsible for the harm to workers' prospects. According to Robert Kuttner, global capitalism is to blame. By limiting workers' rights, liberating bankers, allowing corporations to evade taxation, and preventing nations from assuring economic security, raw capitalism strikes at the very foundation of a healthy democracy.

The resurgence of predatory capitalism was not inevitable. After the Great Depression, the U.S. government harnessed capitalism to democracy. Under Roosevelt's New Deal, labor unions were legalized, and capital regulated. Well into the 1950s and '60s, the Western world combined a thriving economy with a secure and growing middle class.

Beginning in the 1970s, as deregulated capitalism regained the upper hand, elites began to dominate politics once again; policy reversals followed. The inequality and instability that ensued would eventually, in 2016, cause disillusioned voters to support far-right faux populism. Is today's poisonous alliance of reckless finance and ultranationalism inevitable? Or can we find the political will to make capitalism serve democracy, and not the other way around? Charting a plan for bold action based on political precedent, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? is essential reading for anyone eager to reverse the decline of democracy in the West.

China Viewed From Above
The Atlantic | Alan Taylor | 04/12/18

Simply a collection of some amazing recent aerial images showing the vast diversity of landscapes across China, from cities to mountains, deserts to sea shores, and much more. ... Read more
Great Pictures

Trump Reportedly Narrows In On Rosenstein Amid Frustration With Mueller Probe
HP | Antonia Blumberg | 04/10/18

Reports that President Donald Trump is considering firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein surfaced this week in the wake of FBI raids on the offices and hotel room of Michael Cohen, the president's personal attorney.

The raids, which Rosenstein reportedly signed off on personally, came as a result of a referral by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. The raids had the president fuming on Monday and Tuesday.

Trump was reportedly weighing a number of potentially drastic options, including firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, CNN reported Tuesday, citing multiple unnamed sources familiar with the matter. But officials said the most probable target, if the president acts, would be Rosenstein. ... Read more
Trump 'Losing His Sh*t' After FBI Raids Lawyer | TYT | 04/10/18 | 19:30

Tar Sands is a messy job

Intercepted Podcast: A Nation Addicted to War
TheIntercept | Jeromy Scahill | 04/11/18

THE BIPARTISAN WAR party is once again giddy with excitement as Trump prepares to become "presidential" again. This week on Intercepted: U.N. inspectors have not even arrived on the ground in Syria to investigate the latest reported use of chemical weapons, but Trump has already threatened Syria, Russia, and Iran that they will pay a "big price" and "nothing is off the table." Historian Andrew Bacevich and Jeremy make the case against escalating U.S. military action in Syria, even if Assad's forces were behind the attack. Read more

Intercepted Podcast: A Nation Addicted to War | TheIntercept | 04/11/18 | 1hr

The Family Trying to Escape Blame for the Opioid Crisis
The Atlantic | David Armstrong | 04/10/18

Much as the role of the addictive multibillion-dollar painkiller OxyContin in the opioid crisis has stirred controversy and rancor nationwide, so it has divided members of the wealthy and philanthropic Sackler family, some of whom own the company that makes the drug.

In recent months, as protesters have begun pressuring the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other cultural institutions to spurn donations from the Sacklers, one branch of the family has moved aggressively to distance itself from OxyContin and its manufacturer, Purdue Pharma. The widow and one daughter of Arthur Sackler, who owned a related Purdue company with his two brothers, maintain that none of his heirs have profited from sales of the drug. The daughter, Elizabeth Sackler, told The New York Times in January that Purdue Pharma's involvement in the opioid epidemic was "morally abhorrent to me." ... Read more

Israel Confirms Video of Sniper Shooting Unarmed Palestinian, as Soldiers Cheer, Is Genuine
TheIntercept | Robert Mackey | 04/10/18

An Israel Defense Forces statement said the shooting caught on video had not taken place during the recent wave of protests in Gaza, during which Israeli snipers have killed at least 27 protesters. The incident took place on December 22, the army said, during protests in Gaza over Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The distressing video, which has been subtitled by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was apparently recorded through binoculars or a gun scope, and captures the soldier who recorded it shouting as the protester is hit, "Yes! Son of a bitch!" ... Read more

Searched and Seized: F.B.I. Agents Raid Michael Cohen's New York Hotel
Vanity Fair | Emily Jane Fox | 04/09/18

he paparazzi lingering outside the Loews Regency on Park Avenue, hoping to get a photo of U.F.C. fighter Conor McGregor, appeared not to notice the stream of F.B.I. agents that entered the New York hotel early Monday morning, as they made their way up to the room where the president's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has been staying. A handful of them remained upstairs for several hours, according to a source familiar with the situation. "Today the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients," Cohen's attorney, Stephen Ryan, said in a statement. "I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller." ... Read more

BREAKING: FBI Raids Trump's Lawyer's Office | TYT | 04/09/18 | 5:49

Seth Meyers tells the dramatic story of his second son's birth. | Seth Meyers | 04/10/18 | 10:58

The 1918 Flu Pandemic: Photos From a Century Ago
TheAtlantic | Alan Taylor | 04/10/18/span>

Gathered here are images from the battle against one of the deadliest events in human history, when the flu killed up to 6 percent of the Earth's population in just over a year, between 1918 and 1919.

One hundred years ago, an outbreak of influenza spread rapidly across the world, and killed more than 50 million -- and possibly as many as 100 million -- people within 15 months. The speed of the pandemic was shocking; the numbers of dead bodies overwhelmed hospitals and cemeteries. Quarantine centers, emergency hospitals, public use of gauze masks, and awareness campaigns were all undertaken swiftly to halt the spread. But as World War I was coming to a close, millions of soldiers were still traveling across the globe, aiding the spread of the disease. .... Read more

Is climate change really too hard to understand?
WashingtonPost | Tom Toles | 04/09/18/span>

A lot of people wonder why we are doing so little to prevent the slow-motion catastrophe of climate change. One theory is that it's too big a subject to understand.

It's a big subject, all right. And a difficult one to address. But too big to understand it isn't. Quantum physics is too big to understand. Climate change is simple. I'll put it in one sentence: There are known heat-trapping gasses, and if we add too much of them to the atmosphere, it will cause large, foreseeable damage to humans and natural environments. That is not too big to understand. ... Read more

The Last Hours of Humanity | Thom Hartmann | 04/01/14 | 12:18

Crisis Pregnancy Centers | John Oliver | 04/08/18 | 21:08

Behind the race to replace Paul Ryan
Politico | Rachael Bade | 04/09/18

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Whip Steve Scalise have started courting Republicans in case the speaker retires.

They're closely monitoring the moves of the other and quietly courting Republicans who could help either of them clinch the top post, according to 20 GOP lawmakers and aides interviewed for this report.

Neither is actively rounding up votes at this point, and both downplayed the possibility of a looming clash. Scalise said in an interview that he would not challenge McCarthy for speaker -- "I'm not running against Kevin for anything," he told POLITICO -- while McCarthy said he's focused solely on keeping the House in November and pursuing President Donald Trump's agenda. Read more

*Sinclair's Soldiers in Trump's War on Media | Deadspin | 04/02/18 | 1:38

As Antarctic Melting Accelerates, Worst-Case Scenarios May Come True
Truth-out | Dahr Jamail | 04/05/18

... According to a study recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the underwater melting of Antarctic glaciers is now occurring at a rate that is doubling every 20 years. This means that melting in the ice continent of Antarctica could soon outpace that occurring across Greenland, which would make Antarctica the single largest source of sea level rise. ...

... The study shows that warming ocean waters have caused the base of the ice near the ocean floor around the south pole to shrink by 1,463 kilometers from 2010 to 2016. This development will likely force worst-case projections of sea level rise to be revised upwards. ... Read more

Also look at: Environment & Climate Change

Scott Pruitt Reportedly Lied About Knowledge Of Staff Raises
HP | Nick Visser | 04/06/18

... Citing two EPA officials familiar with the decision and a White House official, the Post said Pruitt instructed agency officials to give a $56,765 raise to Sarah Greenwalt and a $28,130 raise to Millan Hupp. Both women worked with Pruitt in Oklahoma where he served as attorney general and followed him to Washington, according to The Atlantic, which first reported the salary bumps.

Just a day earlier, Pruitt was subject to a blistering line of questioning from Fox News' Ed Henry, who asked if the EPA administrator had any knowledge of the pay increases, which were carried out through a provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act after the White House rejected them. ... Read more

Israel Is Prepared to Kill More Unarmed Protesters in Gaza
TheIntercept | Robert Mackey | 04/05/18

ISRAEL'S ARMY EXPECTS up to 50,000 Palestinians to attend protests in Gaza on Friday, and is prepared to once again use deadly force against unarmed demonstrators, one week after Israeli snipers fired at least 650 bullets at Palestinian civilians, killing 15.

With President Donald Trump apparently ignoring last week's massacre in a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior Israeli officials brushed off pleas from human rights groups to rescind orders that permit snipers to open fire on protesters who approach Israel's perimeter fence.

"We have defined the rules of the game clearly and we do not intend to change them," Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said as he toured the frontier on Tuesday. "Anyone trying to approach the fence is putting their lives at risk." ... Read more

Researchers Discover Common Thread Among Christians Who Voted For Trump
HP | Carol Kuruvilla | 04/04/18

Social scientists have a number of theories on why President Donald Trump captured the votes of 80 percent of white evangelical Protestants in the 2016 election, much more than his support from any other religious group. And the president still enjoys the approval of 78 percent of white evangelicals, according to a recent Pew Research Center

Some researchers have theorized that the economic anxiety of the working class may explain the Trump support, while others cite white Americans' fears about "cultural displacement."

n a recently published study, a team of sociologists claims there's another common thread that could explain why some evangelicals are willing to overlook behavior they would typically condemn as immoral, including multiple allegations of sexual impropriety. ... Read more
Why Christians Wouldn't Care If Trump Paid For Abortions | TYT | 04/05/18 | 14:01

Help Us Dive Into the Swamp -- 'Trump, Inc.' Podcast
ProPublica | Eric Umansky | 04/04/18

This week, we're doing a couple of things differently on "Trump, Inc." Instead of focusing on President Donald Trump's businesses, we're looking more broadly at business interests in the Trump administration. We're also giving you, our listeners, homework.

Last month, ProPublica published the first comprehensive and searchable database of Trump's 2,684 political appointees, along with their federal lobbying and financial records. It's the result of a year spent filing Freedom of Information Act requests, collecting staffing lists and publishing financial disclosure reports.

We've found plenty in the documents. We know there are lots of lobbyists now working at agencies they once lobbied. We know there are dozens of officials who've received ethics waivers from the White House. We know there are "special-government employees" who are working in the private sector and the government at the same time. ... Read more

Open for Business | CNN | 03/21/18 | 14:55

Trump's Attacks On Migrant Caravan underscore How The U.S. Outsources Immigration Enforcement To Mexico
TheIntercept | José Olivares | 04/05/18

THE MIGRANT AND refugee caravan traveling through Mexico continued its northbound trek on Wednesday, heading towards Mexico City after temporarily stopping in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where they regrouped amid a flood of attention lavished on their journey. Organized by a migrant activist collective called Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 people are participating in the caravan. National media outlets from the U.S. embedded on the trip. Eventually, President Donald Trump tweeted about the migrants, denouncing the caravan with his characteristic xenophobic vitriol.

Trump focused his ire on the Mexican government: "Mexico is doing very little, if not NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border, and then into the U.S.," he tweeted. A day later, however, Trump changed his tune, recognizing Mexico's crackdown on immigration. "I told Mexico yesterday that, because of the fact that their laws are so strong, they can do things about [migration], that -- hard to believe -- the United States can't," Trump said in a speech. ... Read more

Robert Mercer backed a secretive group that worked with Facebook, Google to target anti-Muslim ads at swing voters
OpenSecrets.org | Robert Maguire | 04/05/18

As the final weeks of the 2016 elections ticked down, voters in swing states like Nevada and North Carolina began seeing eerie promotional travel ads as they scrolled through their Facebook feeds or clicked through Google sites.

In one, a woman with a French accent cheerfully welcomes visitors to the "Islamic State of France," where "under Sharia law, you can enjoy everything the Islamic State of France has to offer, as long as you follow the rules." ... Read more
*Robert Mercer backed a secretive group that worked with Facebook, Google to target anti-Muslim ads at swing voters | OpenSecrets.org | 10/18/17 | 1:08

Rex Tillerson's $12M army of consultants
Politico | Nahal Toosi | 04/05/18

The cost-cutting former Secretary of State had grand ambitions for a department 'redesign,' but its clearest impact is a huge bill for consultants, some of whom charged more than $300 an hour.

It was one of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's core goals: radically reshaping the State Department to make it leaner, cheaper and modernized to the standards of a former private-sector CEO. Now that Tillerson has been fired, the vaunted "Redesign" initiative he launched faces an uncertain future, but at least one clear legacy: around $12 million spent just for private consultants who in some cases charged the State Department more than $300 an hour. ... Read more

Here's How You Can Use Trump Town
Propublica | Derek Kravitz | 04/05/18

President Donald Trump sits atop a sprawling executive branch, with thousands of hand-picked lieutenants across dozens of agencies who make sure his agenda is pursued and his priorities are followed. Presidential appointees have historically wielded a significant amount of power, playing dealmaker on Capitol Hill and handling billion-dollar budgets in federal offices.

With all of this hiring going on, it's important that the public gets a chance to know who these new power players are and what conflicts of interest they may have. Figuring that out can be difficult, requiring painstaking, laborious research and public records sleuthing. ... Read more

Trump Town Tracking White House Staffers, Cabinet Members and Political Appointees Across the Government

Tweets to Propublica

Sinclair Journalists Worry They're Being Watched: 'There's A Lot Held Over Us'
HP | Eliot Nelson | 04/03/18

The Sinclair Broadcast Group handbook warns employees to have no expectation of privacy in their communications.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner and operator of local TV stations in the U.S., is under fire this week for requiring dozens of its news anchors to recite an on-air critique of "fake" news stories, echoing the language of President Donald Trump and his allies in their attacks on the media.

Some employees have spoken out about their frustration at having to parrot the conservative politics of their employer. Others say they'd like to do more, but they're wary due to what they say is Sinclair's policy and practice of closely monitoring its employees. Sinclair's employee handbook, provided in part to HuffPost, states that the company "may monitor, intercept, and review, without further notice, every employee's activities using Company's electronic resources and communications systems." ... Read more

*Sinclair's Soldiers in Trump's War on Media | Deadspin | 04/02/18 | 1:38

On Fox News, Mark Steyn promotes "stunningly racist" anti-immigrant French novel
MediaMatters | Staff | 04/02/18

In his April 2 appearance on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight, Mark Steyn praised Jean Raspail's The Camp of the Saints, a novel described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a "favorite racist fantasy of the anti-immigrant movement" and "revered by American white supremacists." Steyn claimed the novel "actually predicted what is happening before our eyes." The novel describes "an invasion of France and the white Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees." ... Read more
*White Supremacy World With Tucker Carlson | TYT | 04/03/18 | 7:28

*How Truth Lost Its Meaning In Trump's America | Vice | 03/30/18 | 17:14

INTERCEPTED PODCAST: Injustice League
TheIntercept | staff | 04/04/18

TWO MILLION PALESTINIANS live in the open-air prison that is Gaza. Last Friday, Israeli snipers gunned down 17 protesters and wounded more than a thousand others. This week on Intercepted: Yousef Mema, a 24-year-old nursing student in Gaza who witnessed the massacre, describes the killings and the aftermath, and he has a message for U.S. lawmakers. ... Read more

Intercepted Podcast: Injustice League | TheIntercept | 04/04/18 | 1hr

EPA Guts Emissions Standards
HP | Alexander C. Kaufman | date

The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it plans to undo a landmark Obama-era rule tightening fuel standards for vehicles, weakening the only major federal policy to reduce planet-warming emissions from the nation's top source of greenhouse gas pollution.

... The federal rule required vehicles to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, nearly double today's standard. The new standard provided significant environmental and financial benefits if fully implemented. Under those rules, oil consumption would fall by 12 billion barrels, tailpipe emissions would halve and fuel efficiency would nearly double, saving consumers $3,200 to $5,700 in gasoline costs over a vehicle's lifetime. The regulation would have prevented 6 billion metric tons of planet-warming gases -- equivalent to a year's worth of pollution from 150 power plants -- from ever entering the atmosphere. ... Read more

Yunte Huang's new book chronicles the lives of the "original Siamese twins," who were brought to America in 1829 and forced to perform in a freak show. They later married and fathered 21 children. | NPR Fresh Air | 04/02/18 | 1hr

Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang

Inseparable tells an astonishing story, by turns ghastly, hilarious, unnerving, and moving. Huang is a dazzling writer, bold, energetic, and intellectually alert. His gripping account of the lives of the celebrated Siamese twins Cheng and Eng not only richly illuminates the past of P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain but also probes the racial and sexual politics of the present.

How America's Largest Local TV Owner Turned Its News Anchors Into Soldiers In Trump's War On The Media
| Timothy Burke | 04/01/18

Earlier this month, CNN's Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about "the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country." The script, which parrots Donald Trump's oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as "fake news," brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair's consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts.

You might remember Sinclair from its having been featured on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight last year, or from its requiring in 2004 of affiliates to air anti-John Kerry propaganda, or perhaps because it's your own local affiliate running inflammatory "Terrorism Alerts" or required editorials from former Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, he of the famed Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that failed to mention Jewish people. ... Read more
*Watch Sinclair Turn Local News Anchors Into Creepy Trump Drones | TYT | 04/02/18 | 15:12

*Sinclair's Soldiers in Trump's War on Media | Deadspin | 04/02/18 | 1:38

*Sinclair Broadcast Group fires back at criticism | CNN | 04/02/18 | 5:49

The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump's First Year by Amy Siskind | 03/27/18

In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump's election as president, Amy Siskind, a former Wall Street executive and the founder of The New Agenda, began compiling a list of actions taken by the Trump regime that pose a threat to our democratic norms. Under the headline: "Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you'll remember" Siskind's "Weekly List" began as a project she shared with friends, but it soon went viral and now has more than half a million viewers every week.

Compiled in one volume for the first time, The List is a first draft history and a comprehensive accounting of Donald Trump's first year. Beginning with Trump's acceptance of white supremacists the week after the election and concluding a year to the day later, we watch as Trump and his regime chips away at the rights and protections of marginalized communities, of women, of us all, via Twitter storms, unchecked executive action, and shifting rules and standards. The List chronicles not only the scandals that made headlines but just as important, the myriad smaller but still consequential unprecedented acts that otherwise fall through cracks. It is this granular detail that makes The List such a powerful and important book.

The List website

*The Meaning of American Factories
NewRepublic | David Sessions | 04/02/18

After decades of plant closures and anti-union politics, why does heavy industry symbolize prosperity?

Four decades after the first predictions of "post-industrial society," industrial factories have once again returned to Americans' collective consciousness. Where they once symbolized power, pride, and progress, they are now icons of decline: jobs lost, communities decimated, a period of prosperity that turned out to be all too brief. In the American Midwest and in pockets across Europe, voters who once supported left-leaning parties have increasingly turned to candidates who promise industrial revival wrapped in ethnonationalism.

It's hard to imagine that these voters are longing for the conditions that most factory workers today are subjected to. In the new centers of industrial production--Mexico, China, and Vietnam among others--factory work utterly lacks the aura it had in mid-century America, and workers endure authoritarian conditions that recall a much earlier period. Meanwhile, many sectors in the United States now subject their employees to industrial-style discipline. The warehouses of companies like Lidl and Amazon combine hyper-regulated, mentally and physically exhausting work with ruthless metrics and pitiable pay. ... Read more

America's dysfunctional immigration court system forces many children to appear in court alone. | John Oliver | 04/01/18 | 17:51

*The 200-Year Legal Struggle That Led to Citizens United
NewRepublic | Kim Phillips-Fein | 03/29/18

How businesses campaigned to win constitutional rights and expand their political reach

More than 100 years ago, at the height of the last Gilded Age, Congress passed its first law prohibiting corporations from spending money to influence election campaigns. From the start, the wealthy chafed against this limit, and some sought to test it in court. Alcohol manufacturers -- terrified of high taxes and Prohibition -- might not have seemed the ideal candidates to take on this fight. But they were nonetheless the first to challenge the law, contributing cash to candidates in state and federal races and then arguing that any effort to keep money out of politics was no less than an unconstitutional limitation on free speech.

At that time, state and federal courts rejected these arguments out of hand. To the Michigan Supreme Court, for example, it was self-evident that a local brewery had no "right to participate" in elections. ... Read more

*Teenagers: Saving Our Country So You Don't Have To | Seth Meyers | older, 03/22/18 | 2:47

Thanks to Climate Disruption, Earth Is Already Losing Critical Biosphere Components
Truth-out | By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | 04/02/18

Half of all plants and animals in global forests are forecast to disappear by 2100. The Arctic is in meltdown as human-caused global warming threatens to melt more than one-third of all glaciers. And the biosphere is convulsing as runaway climate disruption marches on under the business-as-usual approach of the world's most powerful government and corporate forces.

Here is the gist of what I said: Based on years of research for my forthcoming book, The End of Ice, along with my work compiling these monthly climate disruption dispatches for four years now, I know that by 2050, we will be inhabiting a dramatically different planet. I believe we will already have tens -- if not hundreds -- of millions of climate refugees from sea-level rise and conflicts born of lack of food and water. What we currently call extreme weather events (massive floods, droughts, hurricanes) will have long since become the norm. In the US, growing food in the Midwest and the central valley of California will be extremely difficult, if not largely impossible, due to shifting weather patterns of rainfall and drought. Some swaths of the world, including the Gulf states in the Middle East and parts of the US Southwest, will be largely uninhabitable due to simply being too hot. Greenland and the Antarctic will both be experiencing dramatically advanced melting, and most of the glaciers in the contiguous 48 US states will have long since ceased to exist. And given that we are officially already amidst the Sixth Mass Extinction Event of the planet, which humans triggered, the biological annihilation that comes with this is happening apace. ... Read more