Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged 2

Rss Feed Group items tagged

kaylynfreeman

Trump Impeached for Inciting Insurrection - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Donald J. Trump on Wednesday became the first American president to be impeached twice, as 10 members of his party joined with Democrats in the House to charge him with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in egging on a violent mob that stormed the Capitol last week.
  • It accused Mr. Trump of “inciting violence against the government of the United States” in his quest to overturn the election results, and called for him to be removed and disqualified from ever holding public office again.
  • The top House Republican, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, conceded in a pained speech on the floor that Mr. Trump had been to blame for the deadly assault at the Capitol. It had forced the vice president and lawmakers who had gathered there to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory to flee for their lives.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • If a Senate trial resulted in Mr. Trump’s conviction, it held out the prospect, tantalizing for Democrats and many Republicans alike, of barring him from ever holding office again.
  • At least five people did die during the attack, including an officer and a member of the mob who was shot just outside the chamber door
  • President Trump became the first president to be impeached twice, after the House approved a single charge citing his role in whipping up a mob that stormed the Capitol. He faces a Senate trial that could disqualify him from future office.
  • “He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love,” the speaker said, adding later, “It gives me no pleasure to say this — it breaks my heart.”
  • “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” said Mr. McCarthy, one of the 138 Republicans who returned to the House floor after the mayhem and voted to reject certified electoral votes for Mr. Biden. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.”
kaylynfreeman

Pentagon to Arm National Guard Troops Deploying to Capitol for Inauguration - The New Y... - 0 views

  • The armed National Guard troops will be responsible for security around the Capitol building complex, officials said. About 15,000 Guard troops are expected to be deployed in the city.
  • While those scenarios are among the more extreme, the officials said they were particularly worried about the possibility of multiple, violent confrontations, including with firearms, simultaneously flaring up around the inaugural dignitaries.
  • “In light of the attack on the Capitol and intelligence suggesting further violence is likely during the inaugural period, my administration has re-evaluated our preparedness posture for the inauguration, including requesting the extension of D.C. National Guard support through Jan. 24, 2021,” Ms. Bowser wrote.
kaylynfreeman

Why Remove Trump Now? A Guide to Trump's Impeachment - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The House on Wednesday impeached President Trump for a second time, a first in American history, charging him with “incitement of insurrection” one week after he egged on a mob of supporters that stormed the Capitol while Congress met to formalize President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
  • At least five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died during the siege and in the immediate aftermath.
  • The process is taking place with extraordinary speed and will test the bounds of the impeachment process, raising questions never contemplated before.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • The House vote requires only a simple majority of lawmakers to agree that the president has, in fact, committed high crimes and misdemeanors; the Senate vote requires a two-thirds majority.
  • The test, as set by the Constitution, is whether the president has committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
  • Impeachment is one of the weightiest tools the Constitution gives Congress to hold government officials, including the president, accountable for misconduct and abuse of power.
  • The article cites Mr. Trump’s weekslong campaign to falsely discredit the results of the November election, and it quotes directly from the speech he gave on the day of the siege in which he told his supporters to go to the Capitol. “If you don’t fight like hell,” he said, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
  • The article, drafted by Representatives David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jerrold Nadler of New York, charges Mr. Trump with “incitement of insurrection,” saying he is guilty of “inciting violence against the government of the United States.”
  • While the House moved with remarkable speed to impeach Mr. Trump, the Senate trial to determine whether to remove him cannot begin until Jan. 19, his final full day in office.
  • The Senate could hold a trial for Mr. Trump even after he has left office, though there is no precedent for it. Only two presidents other than Mr. Trump have been impeached — Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 — and both were ultimately acquitted and completed their terms in office.
  • Conviction in an impeachment trial would not automatically disqualify Mr. Trump from future public office. But if the Senate were to convict him, the Constitution allows a subsequent vote to bar an official from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”
  • There is no precedent, however, for disqualifying a president from future office, and the issue could end up before the Supreme Court.
  • Democrats who control the House can choose when to send their article of impeachment to the Senate, at which point that chamber would have to immediately move to begin the trial. But because the Senate is not scheduled to hold a regular session until Jan. 19, even if the House immediately transmitted the charge to the other side of the Capitol, an agreement between Senate Republican and Democratic leaders would be needed to take it up before then.
  • Once the Senate receives the impeachment charge, it must immediately take up the issue, as articles of impeachment carry the highest privilege.
  • Democrats have argued that Mr. Trump’s offense — using his power as the nation’s leader and commander in chief to incite an insurrection against the legislative branch — is so grave that it must be addressed, even with just a few days remaining in his term.
  • With only a week left in his term, the House impeached President Trump, but he will leave office before he stands trial in the Senate. Here’s how the process works.
  • The charge against Trump is ‘incitement of insurrection.’
  • That vote would require only a simple majority of senators. Such a step could be an appealing prospect not just to Democrats, but also to many Republicans who either have set their sights on the presidency themselves or are convinced that it is the only thing that will purge Mr. Trump from their party. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, is said to hold the latter view.
anonymous

Congress Poised to Apply Banking Regulations to Antiquities Market - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Regulators have long worried that the secrecy of the antiquities trade, where buyers and sellers are seldom identified, made it an easy way to launder money.
  • “We believe this type of legislation is long overdue,” said John Byrne, a lawyer with 30 years of experience in anti-money-laundering rules. “This is an area where clearly organized crime, terrorists, and oligarchs have used cultural artifacts to move illicit funds.”
  • “Over the last decade, we’ve been working with all the industries and stakeholders to build a bill that satisfies everyone,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat, who introduced the Corporate Transparency Act in 2019 and later shepherded that bill into the defense package. “We are at a point that we’ve built so much support that it became impossible to oppose the bill.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The new legislation calls for a study on the role of art in money laundering and terror financing. (A recent Senate report has already outlined how at least two Russian oligarchs had exploited the opaqueness of the art world to bypass U.S. sanctions.) If the study finds a link between the art market and illicit activity, it could, upon congressional review, trigger the creation of rules similar to the ones now concerning the antiquities trade. Regulators have also signaled that the Bank Secrecy Act could be further extended into the art market.“You have to know who is buying and selling,” Mr. Byrne said. “The argument that you have no obligation to report suspicious activity because you are in the private sector doesn’t work. Banks lost that argument 30 years ago.”
kaylynfreeman

Who Died in the Capitol Building Attack? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • These five people from disparate backgrounds and different corners of the country now share one fate: Their lives all ended last week as a mob incited by Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol.
  • After serving in the Air National Guard and dreaming of becoming a police officer, Brian D. Sicknick joined the Capitol Police force in 2008. He died the day after he was overpowered and beaten by rioters from the mob at the Capitol.
  • Ashli Babbitt, 35, an Air Force veteran from Southern California, was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she clambered through a broken window leading to the Speaker’s Lobby inside the Capitol.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Kevin D. Greeson, 55, of Athens, Ala., was standing in a throng of fellow Trump loyalists on the west side of the Capitol when he suffered a heart attack and fell to the sidewalk. He was talking on the phone with his wife at the time.
  • Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Ga., posted fervently in support of President Trump on social media, followed the baseless conspiracy theories of QAnon and latched onto Mr. Trump’s false claims that he had won the election, family members told The Associated Press.
  • How she died remained unclear on Monday
  • Mr. Philips died of a stroke in Washington, those who accompanied him to the Capitol told the newspaper. The exact circumstances of his death were still unclear, and his family could not be reached for comment.
  • A police officer was beaten, a rioter was shot, and three others died during the rampage.
  • One had dreamed of becoming a police officer and was injured in a clash with rioters. One was an Air Force veteran and a fervent supporter of President Trump who was shot by the police. Three others were Trump loyalists — including one who sold kangaroos dressed like the president — who suffered what the authorities called “medical emergencies.”
  • Law enforcement officials said he had been “physically engaging with protesters” and was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.
  • Her last moments, captured from multiple angles on video, show Ms. Babbitt, a Trump flag knotted around her neck, being hoisted to the window as others in the mob shout. Moments later, a shot rings out and Ms. Babbitt falls back, blood pouring from her mouth
  • Mr. Greeson had high blood pressure and she had not wanted him to travel to Washington. But she said Mr. Greeson believed the election had been stolen and saw the Jan. 6 rally as “a monumental event.”
kaylynfreeman

House Sets Impeachment Vote to Charge Trump With Incitement - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Democrats are planning a Tuesday vote to formally call on the vice president to wrest power from President Trump and a Wednesday impeachment vote if he does not.
  • The Republican Party was fracturing over the coming debate, as some agreed with Democrats that Mr. Trump should be removed and many others were standing behind the president and his legions of loyal voters. They were also fighting among themselves, with many Republicans furious over what took place a week ago and blaming their own colleagues and leaders for having contributed to the combustible atmosphere that allowed a pro-Trump rally to morph into a deadly siege.
  • Modern presidential impeachments have been drawn-out affairs, allowing lawmakers to collect evidence, hone arguments and hear the president’s defense over the course of months. When the Democratic-led House impeached Mr. Trump the first time, it took nearly three months, conducting dozens of witness interviews, compiling hundreds of pages of documents and producing a detailed case in a written report running 300 pages.
cartergramiak

Their First Try Backfired, but Giuliani and Allies Keep Aiming at Biden - The New York ... - 0 views

  • The former New York mayor’s dirt-digging effort on Hunter Biden in 2019 ended with President Trump’s impeachment. Now he is back with new associates. So far it is not going exactly as planned.282
  • On the weekend of Oct. 10, President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, his former adviser Stephen K. Bannon and a prominent new ally, a Chinese billionaire and Mar-a-Lago member named Guo Wengui, gathered at Mr. Guo’s luxury apartment overlooking Central Park for dinner and cigars.
  • Now Mr. Giuliani, undaunted and surrounded by a new cast of characters after some of his wingmen in the Ukraine caper were indicted, is trying again.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Mr. Giuliani expressed frustration with the way the news media was keeping its distance, and said he would have preferred to have pushed out the materials earlier.“I would have loved to have had this six months ago,” he said in a recent interview. “It would have solved a lot of my problems.”
  • Mr. Guo and Mr. Bannon began working together after Mr. Bannon left the White House in 2017, quickly bonding over their mutual antipathy toward the Chinese Communist Party.
  • Mr. Guo, who is also known as Miles Kwok, left China in 2014, as the government there began leveling corruption allegations against his business associates and eventually Mr. Guo. He moved to New York, buying a $67.5 million apartment along Central Park and spending time aboard the Lady May.
  • Mr. Bannon asserted that the effort to limit the spread of the New York Post’s articles on social media had backfired, drawing more attention to them. “Social media overplayed this and did us a favor,” Mr. Bannon said.
  • At the same time Mr. Bannon and Mr. Giuliani were shopping the purported hard drive, two other efforts were afoot to disseminate related information on Hunter Biden.
cartergramiak

Conservative News Sites Fuel Voter Fraud Misinformation - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Harvard researchers described a “propaganda feedback loop” in right-wing media. The authors of the study, published this month through the school’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, reported that popular news outlets, rather than social media platforms, were the main drivers of a disinformation campaign meant to sow doubts about the integrity of the election
  • So far in October, Breitbart has published nearly 30 articles with the tag “voter fraud.”
  • As the country faces a third wave of Covid-19 cases, tens of millions of Americans plan to mail their ballots, and more than 25 states have expanded access to universal mail voting. The voting system, stressed by greater demand, has struggled in places with ballots sent to incorrect addresses or improperly filled out
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Election experts have calculated that, in a 20-year period, fraud involving mailed ballots has affected 0.00006 percent of individual votes, or one case per state every six or seven years.
  • Among the billions of votes cast from 2000 to 2012, there were 491 cases of absentee-ballot fraud, according to an investigation conducted at Arizona State University’s journalism schoo
  • intentional voter fraud is extremely uncommon and rarely organized, according to decades of research.
  • In June, The Washington Post and the nonprofit Electronic Registration information Center analyzed data from three vote-by-mail states and found 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of dead people in 2016 and 2018, or 0.0025 percent of the 14.6 million mailed ballots.
  • Mr. Trump’s effort to discredit mail-in voting follows decades of disinformation about voter impersonation, voting by noncitizens and double voting, often promoted by Republican leaders.
  • Voting by mail under normal circumstances does not appear to give either major party an advantage, according to a study this spring by Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research.
  • But many conservative outlets have promoted the idea that fraud involving mailed ballots could tip the scales in favor of Democrats.
  • Mr. Stedman said right-leaning outlets sometimes conflated fraud with the statistically insignificant administrative mishaps that occur in every American election
  • In a similar cycle, the Fox News host Sean Hannity and conservative publications magnified the reach of a deceptive video released last month by Project Veritas, a group run by the conservative activist James O’Keefe. The video claimed without named sources or verifiable evidence that the campaign for Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, was collecting ballots illegally.
  • Stephen J. Stedman, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, said he thought “about disinformation in this country as almost an information ecology — it’s not an organic thing from the bottom up.”
  • Breitbart, The Washington Examiner and others amplify false claims of rampant cheating in what a new Harvard study calls a “propaganda feedback loop.”
  • The Washington Examiner, Breitbart News, The Gateway Pundit and The Washington Times are among the sites that have posted articles with headlines giving weight to the conspiracy theory that voter fraud is rampant and could swing the election to the left, a theory that has been repeatedly debunked by data.
  • “EXCLUSIVE: California Man Finds THOUSANDS of What Appear to be Unopened Ballots in Garbage Dumpster — Workers Quickly Try to Cover Them Up — We are Working to Verify.” The envelopes turned out to be empty and discarded legally in 2018. Gateway Pundit later updated the headline, but not before its original speculation had gone viral.
  • Pennsylvania’s elections chief that the discarded ballots were a “bad error” by a seasonal contractor, not “intentional fraud.” Mr. Trump cited the discarded Pennsylvania ballots several times as an example of fraud, including in last month’s presidential debate.
  • “FEDS: Military Ballots Discarded in ‘Troubling’ Discovery. All Opened Ballots were Cast for Trump.” Headlines on the same issue in The Washington Times were similar: “Feds investigating discarded mail-in ballots cast for Trump in Pennsylvania” and “FBI downplays election fraud as suspected ballot issues found in Pennsylvania, Texas.” A Washington Times opinion piece on the matter had the headline “Trump ballots in trash, oh my.”
  • “DESTROYED: Tons of Trump mail-in ballot applications SHREDDED in back of tractor-trailer headed for Pennsylvania.” The material was actually printing waste from a direct mail company.
  • RIGGED ELECTION!” He linked to a Breitbart article that included a transcript of Attorney General William P. Barr’s telling the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that voting by mail “absolutely opens the floodgates to fraud.”
cartergramiak

Trump's Return Leaves White House in Disarray as Infections Jolt West Wing - The New Yo... - 0 views

  • The West Wing was mostly empty, cleared of aides who were sick or told to work from home, and staff in the White House residence were in full personal protective equipment.
  • Aides said the president’s voice was stronger after his return from the hospital Monday night, but at times he still sounded as if he was trying to catch air.
  • Four more White House officials tested positive, including Stephen Miller, a top adviser to Mr. Trump, bringing to 14 the number of people carrying the virus at the White House or in the president’s close circle.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • West Wing aides, shaken by polls showing the president badly trailing Joseph R. Biden Jr., worried that they were living through the final days of the Trump administration
  • Late in the day, the stock market collapsed when Mr. Trump abruptly called off talks for a congressional coronavirus relief bill after the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, said such a stimulus was badly needed.
  • Some White House staff members wondered whether Mr. Trump’s behavior was spurred by a cocktail of drugs he has been taking to treat the coronavirus, including dexamethasone, a steroid that can cause mood swings and can give a false level of energy and a sense of euphoria.
  • Prominent supporters of the administration said Mr. Trump should have stayed at the hospital until he was no longer infectious or should remain confined to his residence.
  • There were no answers, either, on when Mr. Trump last tested negative for the virus — a crucial piece of information that the White House and Dr. Conley have refused to answer and would establish the known state of Mr. Trump’s health before the presidential debate last Tuesday or before he attended a fund-raiser in New Jersey on Thursday. The White House first made public that Mr. Trump had tested positive early last Friday.
mattrenz16

More Hacking Attacks Found as Officials Warn of 'Grave Risk' to U.S. Government - 0 views

  • The warning, from the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm, indicated that hackers had found another line of attack to enter systems used by the government and Fortune 500 companies.
  • Federal officials issued an urgent warning Thursday that the hackers who had penetrated deep into government systems also used other malware — and different attack techniques — that posed “a grave risk to the federal government.”
  • Russian intelligence agency’s hackers had, since this spring, gotten into critical network monitoring software used by the government and hundreds of Fortune 500 companies.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The alert also ramped up the urgency of government warnings. After playing the incident down — President Trump has said nothing and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo deflected the hacking as one of the many daily attacks on the federal government,
kennyn-77

Spain's national day salutes Columbus with little opposition - 0 views

  • The date marks explorer Christopher Columbus’ Oct. 12, 1492 sighting of land while traveling under Spanish royal sponsorship in search of what came to be known as the Americas. That event heralded centuries of colonization of the Americas by European nations while bringing violence, disease and death to indigenous people.
  • In Spain, the suffering of native populations during that period has not received the same attention or prompted the kind of historical reevaluation as it has, for example, in the United States, where in many places Columbus Day has been paired or replaced with Indigenous Peoples Day to switch the focus of the annual holiday.
  • Near to where Tuesday’s official national day celebrations were held in Madrid is a statue of Columbus atop a pedestal. It is 17 meters (56 feet) high.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But at a separate far-right rally in the northeastern Spanish city, participants argued that the Spanish conquests were benign. “But now things are being twisted around,” said Ester Lopez, a 40-year-old office worker.
kennyn-77

Kim vows to build 'invincible' military while slamming US - 0 views

  • as he vowed to build an “invincible” military to cope with what he called persistent U.S. hostility
  • “The U.S. has frequently signaled it’s not hostile to our state, but there is no action-based evidence to make us believe that they are not hostile,”
  • “I say once again that South Korea isn’t the one that our military forces have to fight against,” Kim said. “Surely, we aren’t strengthening our defense capability because of South Korea. We shouldn’t repeat a horrible history of compatriots using force against each other.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • North Korea has long sought improved ties with the United States because it wants sanctions relief and a better security environment to focus on reviving its moribund economy. The high-stakes diplomacy between the countries fell apart in early 2019 after the Americans rejected North Korea’s calls for extensive sanctions relief in return for partial disarmament steps.
  • Kim has called such an offer “cunning” attempt to conceal U.S. hostility against North Korea
  • The date marks explorer Christopher Columbus’ Oct. 12, 1492 sighting of land while traveling under Spanish royal sponsorship in search of what came to be known as the Americas. That event heralded centuries of colonization of the Americas by European nations while bringing violence, disease and death to indigenous people.
  • In Spain, the suffering of native populations during that period has not received the same attention or prompted the kind of historical reevaluation as it has, for example, in the United States, where in many places Columbus Day has been paired or replaced with Indigenous Peoples Day to switch the focus of the annual holiday.
  • But at a separate far-right rally in the northeastern Spanish city, participants argued that the Spanish conquests were benign. “But now things are being twisted around,” said Ester Lopez, a 40-year-old office worker.
dytonka

State Actions Undermining Abortion Rights in 2020 - Center for American Progress - 0 views

  • in Maryland, a district court vacated and enjoined a Trump administration rule that would have required separate insurance payments for abortion care and all other health care for people insured by certain plans under the Affordable Care Act.3
  • On August 7, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited Roberts’ concurrence as justification to lift an injunction on multiple abortion restrictions in Arkansas.8 The laws ban the most common procedure for second-trimester abortions, require clinics to report to law enforcement the names of minors who have abortions, and treat fetal tissue as criminal evidence.
  • Restrictive abortion laws are nothing new. For decades, states have been passing laws designed to limit access to abortion care in an effort to make the right to abortion virtually meaningless.14 Since 2011 alone, state legislatures have passed more than 400 restrictive laws.15
  •  
    Abortion laws people may not know
pier-paolo

Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire - mrdowling.com - 0 views

  • After the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, Charlemagne built an empire that extended more than 800 miles from east to west. Though he ruled in an era many scholars describe as a “Dark Age," Charlemagne made the capital of his vast kingdom a center of learning.
  • Charlemagne was a Frank. The Franks were a Germanic tribe that developed in present-day France.
  • For many years after assuming the throne in 768, Charlemagne led his army on military campaigns throughout Western Europe, expanding the Frankish kingdom as he vanquished his foes. During his reign, Charlemagne doubled the size of Frankish territory to include present-day France, northern Spain, Germany, and Italy.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The Frankish kingdom eventually included people of diverse cultures who spoke many languages, so Charlemagne appointed native members of the lands he conquered to administer the provinces in his name.
  • he set up schools throughout his empire, and invited scholars from throughout Europe to establish a palace school in Aachen, the German city where he moved his capital.
  • In 800, Charlemagne traveled to Rome to celebrate Christmas with Pope Leo III. As Charlemagne rose from prayer, Leo placed a crown on Charlemagne’s head and proclaimed him “Augustus,” emperor of the “Holy Roman Empire.” The coronation united Christendom under Charlemagne’s rule, but it also troubled the newly crowned emperor. If the Pope had the power to proclaim Charlemagne as King, the Pope might also have the right to remove his power.
  • The empire Charlemagne created crumbled soon after his death and the promise of returning the glory of Rome to Western Europe soon faded
  • Francis II, who ruled until the early nineteenth century, was the last monarch to call himself the Holy Roman Emperor. But after a defeat by Napoleon’s army, Francis renounced his title
Javier E

Inequality And The Right - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - 0 views

  • The Atlantic Home todaysDate();Monday, March 7, 2011Monday, March 7, 2011 Go Follow the Atlantic » Politics Presented by The Rise and Fall of John Ensign Chris Good Sarah Palin Feud Watch Tina Dupuy In Wisconsin, the Mood Turns Against Compromise Natasha Vargas-Cooper Business Presented by Credit Card Balances Resume Their Decline Daniel Indiviglio 5 Ways the Value of College Is Growing Derek Thompson America's 401(k)'s Are a Mess, Are Its Pensions? Megan McArdle Culture Presented By 'Spy' Magazine's Digital Afterlife Bill Wyman http://as
  • To many on the right, this inequality is a non-issue, and in an abstract sense, I agree. Penalizing people for their success does not help the less successful. But at a time of real sacrifice, it does seem to me important for conservatives not to ignore the dangers of growing and vast inequality - for political, not economic, reasons. And by political, I don't mean partisan. I mean a genuine concern for the effects of an increasingly unequal society.
  • it increasingly seems wrong to me to exempt the very wealthy from sacrifice, in the context of their gains in the last three decades, if we are to ask it of everyone else. It's not about fairness. It isn't even really about redistribution, as we once understood that from the hard left. It's about political stability and cohesion and coherence. Without a large and strong middle class, we can easily become more divided, more bitter and more unstable. Concern about that is a legitimate conservative issue. And if someone on the right does not find a way to address it, someone on the left may well be empowered to over-reach.
katyshannon

E.P.A. Broke Law With Social Media Push for Water Rule, Auditor Finds - The New York Times - 0 views

  • WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded. From Our Advertisers .story-link { position: relative; display: block; text-decoration: none; padding: 6px 0; min-height: 65px; min-width: 300px; } .story-link:hover { background-color: #eeeeec; } .story-kicker, .story-heading, .summary { margin: 0; padding: 0; } .thumb { position: absolute; left: 0; top: 6px; } .thumb-hover, .story-link:hover .thumb-main { display: none } .thumb-main, .story-link:hover .thumb-hover { display: block } .story-body { padding-left: 75px; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 400; color: #000; } .story-body .story-kicker { font-family: 'nyt-franklin', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 11px; line-height: 11px; font-weight: 400; color: #5caaf3; } .story-heading { font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 700; padding: 5px 0 0; } Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation Changing Charity Younger donors are finding new ways to give. <noscript class=&quot;MOAT-nytdfp348531439194?moatClientLevel1=31074278&amp;amp;moatClientLevel2=343740158&amp;amp;moatClientLevel3=58584518&amp;amp;moatClientLevel4=94015704638&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer1=28390358&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer2=30706478&amp;amp;zMoatPR=n
  • The ruling by the Government Accountability Office, which opened its investigation after a report on the agency’s practices in The New York Times, drew a bright line for federal agencies experimenting with social media about the perils of going too far to push a cause. Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda.
  • An E.P.A. official on Tuesday disputed the finding. “We use social media tools just like all organizations to stay connected and inform people across the country about our activities,” Liz Purchia, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. “At no point did the E.P.A. encourage the public to contact Congress or any state legislature.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • But the legal opinion emerged just as Republican leaders moved to block the so-called Waters of the United States clean-water rule through an amendment to the enormous spending bill expected to pass in Congress this week. While the G.A.O.’s findings are unlikely to lead to civil or criminal penalties, they do offer Republicans a cudgel for this week’s showdown.
  • The E.P.A. rolled out a social media campaign on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and even on more innovative tools such as Thunderclap, to counter opposition to its water rule, which effectively restricts how land near certain surface waters can be used. The agency said the rule would prevent pollution in drinking water sources. Farmers, business groups and Republicans have called the rule a flagrant case of government overreach.
  • The publicity campaign was part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to counter critics of its policies through social media tools, communicating directly with Americans and bypassing traditional news organizations.
  • At the White House, top aides to President Obama have formed the Office of Digital Strategy, which promotes his agenda on Twitter, Facebook, Medium and other social sites. Shailagh Murray, a senior adviser to the president, is charged in part with expanding Mr. Obama’s presence in that online world.
  • White House officials declined to say if they think Mr. Reynolds or other agency officials did anything wrong.
  • Federal agencies are allowed to promote their own policies, but are not allowed to engage in propaganda, defined as covert activity intended to influence the American public. They also are not allowed to use federal resources to conduct so-called grass-roots lobbying — urging the American public to contact Congress to take a certain kind of action on pending legislation.
  • As it promoted the Waters of the United States rule, also known as the Clean Water Rule, the E.P.A. violated both of those prohibitions, a 26-page legal opinion signed by Susan A. Poling, the general counsel to the G.A.O., concluded in an investigation requested by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
malonema1

Supreme Court won't hear Trump bid to end DACA program - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court said on Monday that it will stay out of the dispute concerning the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for now, meaning participants will still be able to renew their status.
  • The move will also lessen pressure on Congress to act on a permanent solution for DACA and its roughly 700,000 participants -- undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children.
  • Originally, President Donald Trump had terminated DACA but allowed a six-month grace period for anyone with status expiring in that window to renew. After that date, March 5, any DACA recipient whose status expired would no longer be able to receive protections.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • "You know, we tried to get it moved quickly 'cause we'd like to help DACA. I think everybody in this room wants to help with DACA, but the Supreme Court just ruled that it has to go through the normal channels, so it's going back in," Trump told a group of state governors at the White House. "There won't be any surprise. I mean, it's really sad when every single case filed against us -- this is in the 9th Circuit -- we lose, we lose, we lose, and then we do fine in the Supreme Court. But what does that tell you about our court system? It's a very, very sad thing. So DACA's going back, and we'll see what happens from there."&lt;img alt="Sen. Durbin tells story of Chloe Kim " class="media__image" src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180214095613-dick-durbin-2-13-large-169.jpg"&gt;JUST WATCHEDSen. Durbin tells story of Chloe Kim ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHtheoplayer-texttra
  • "While we were hopeful for a different outcome, the Supreme Court very rarely grants certiorari before judgment, though in our view, it was warranted for the extraordinary injunction requiring the Department of Homeland Security to maintain DACA," O'Malley said. "We will continue to defend DHS's lawful authority to wind down DACA in an orderly manner."
silveiragu

Trump and Mussolini: The same, only different? Eleven key lessons from historical fascism - 0 views

  • Trump and Mussolini:
  • I’d like to draw some comparisons and contrasts between our present situation and that of fascist Italy between 1922 and 1945. I choose fascist Italy rather than Nazi Germany because it has always seemed to me a better comparison
  • Italy was the original form, while Germany was an offshoot. Although there have been many European and some Latin American varieties of fascism since then, the Italian model was the first and the one that has had the most lasting influence.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • His was a revolutionary agenda, designed to turn the world order upside down, rooted deeply in romantic and even avant-garde sensibilities. To see fascism as stemming ultimately from liberalism might sound surprising, but this is true of both socialism as well as fascism, because finally it is liberalism’s principle of human perfectibility from which these impulses derive.
  • the myth of American exceptionalism is just that, a myth, and that we have traveled so far from our national founding impulses that other tendencies, namely forms of what used to be considered peculiarly European anxieties, have now become the defining features of our polity.
  • 1. Fascism rechannels economic anxiety
  • . Especially after the Russian Revolution, the urgent question for all of Europe became: Was socialism the right path, or capitalism? And in either case, was a new political order required?
  • For the elites who propagated the “Washington consensus” in the 1990s, supported by such popularizers as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, there was nothing complicated about globalization: Incomes would rise around the world, inequality would fall and liberal tolerance would flourish. This rosy picture is so far from reality as to be laughable
  • Thus the question arises again, with as much urgency as in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution: What shall be the world’s economic order? Is it possible to conceive, at this late date, of globalization with a human face? Or is something more revolutionary needed?
  • 2. Liberal institutions have already been fatally weakened
  • We are currently lamenting Trump’s evisceration of the media and other institutions of democracy, but he would not be having such success, at least with half of the population, if those institutions were not already seriously compromised
  • They may now be reacting viscerally against Trump, because of the crude way in which he takes on their shallowness, but it doesn’t mean anything to his supporters.
  • The Italian parliamentary system was marked by a tendency toward transformismo or “transformism,” to which our strongest parallel would be Bill (or Hillary) Clinton’s triangulation.
  • 4. Fascism keeps mutating
  • 3. Internal strongmen tussles don’t mean anything
  • There were always more assertive fascists around than Mussolini — for example, Roberto Farinacci, the ras (or leader) of Cremona
  • 10. Racism is inherent to fascism
  • its chameleon-like tendency to absorb the ideas of the opposition and to neutralize them and make them invisible leaves a profoundly disillusioning aftertaste. Ideology desperately wants to make a comeback
  • Mussolini, though an inveterate atheist, made peace with the Vatican, in the famous Lateran Accords of 1929, abandoning his most cherished beliefs in order to gain the complicity of the Catholic church. Earlier in the 1920s, he installed corporate-friendly ministers to work with Italy’s industrialists to enact an agenda they could be comfortable with. Such mutations are par for the course for fascists, they’re nothing to get excited about.
  • 6. Of course it’s a minority affair
  • To note that Trump did not win the popular vote (as was true of George W. Bush in 2000), does not take away from the power of fascism
  • Mussolini, though he established his regime on the myth of the March on Rome, was actually appointed by King Victor Emmanuel III when Mussolini seemed like the only figure, compared to the discredited liberal politicians, who could bring order to the country
  • Only a small minority need give overt consent. The rest can be quiet, or complacent, or complicit
  • 7. There is an ideology behind the chaos of ideologies
  • Italian historians after the fact claimed that fascism was an aberration
  • 8. Its cultural style makes no sense to elites
  • Trump and his successors will have to work with less potent stuff. So-called conspiratorial thinking is a unifying strand — I already mentioned Alex Jones — which connects many of the strands of ultra-conservative ideology throughout the past century. The Reds become Jews and then Muslims; the substitutions are not that difficult to make.
  • faux masculinity — is an important part of this cultural style
  • 9. Fascism leads inexorably to suicidal war
  • Once the façade of virile domesticity starts getting exposed, war becomes the only option to keep the regime going
  • 11. No form of resistance works
    • silveiragu
       
      Interestingly dark take on the nature of fascism; read this section carefully, if you are interested, to get a sense of what the author means.
  • What this shows is that fascism is highly adaptable to different needs and conditions, just as its opposite, democracy, is similarly flexible.
  • The thing to notice is that fascism, in all the places it’s been known to arise, converts an admittedly minority point of view into a mass energy that soon overwhelms every civilized instinct. Perhaps Trump doesn’t need to do this footwork; perhaps much of this foundational work was already accomplished in the Bush era. What should really concern us is that fascism now seems to have a certain stability that we have not seen in earlier models that relied on a single charismatic leader. Despite the Obama interlude, Trump has resumed where George W. Bush in his most feverish mood had left off. This suggests that fascism has become permanently stabilized in this country. It is the most worrisome aspect of the present situation.
  • One remarkable similarity — among many others — between Trump and Mussolini is their total preoccupation with coverage in the media
sidneybelleroche

Inflation in 19 nations using euro hits record high of 4.9% | AP News - 0 views

  • Consumer prices across the 19 countries that use the euro currency are rising at a record rate as a result of a huge spike in energy costs this year, official figures showed Tuesday.
  • Consumer prices across the 19 countries that use the euro currency are rising at a record rate as a result of a huge spike in energy costs this year, official figures showed Tuesday.
  • Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, said the eurozone’s annual inflation rate hit 4.9% in November, the highest since recordkeeping began in 1997 and up from 4.1% in October, the previous high mark.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • the eurozone, which is made up of 19 economies including France and Germany, is enduring big price hikes as a result of the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and blockages in supply chains.
  • Across the eurozone, inflation is running at multiyear highs, including in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, where the annual rate has hit 6%.
  • Even that is below the 6.2% recorded at last count in the U.S., the biggest 12-month jump since 1990.
  • The eurozone’s core inflation rate, which strips out potentially volatile items such as alcohol, energy, food and tobacco, also spiked higher in November to an annual rate of 2.6% from 2%.
  • higher wages, for example.
  • However, the recently discovered omicron variant of the coronavirus has prompted some uncertainty over the global economic outlook, and as a result, central banks around the world are expected to hold back from announcing any big policy changes soon.
  • Many economists think the inflation spike over recent months will reverse next year as base effects linked with the sharp fall in prices during the pandemic last year, primarily of energy, are stripped out from annual comparisons.
  • Records started being compiled about the euro two years before its actual launch in 1999. For the first three years of its existence, it was an invisible currency that was traded on foreign exchange markets and used for accounting purposes and electronic payments. In 2002, euro notes and coins first came into circulation, replacing historic currencies such as the French franc, the German deutschmark and the Italian lira.
katyshannon

Drug C.E.O. Martin Shkreli Arrested on Fraud Charges - The New York Times - 0 views

  • It has been a busy week for Martin Shkreli, the flamboyant businessman at the center of the drug industry’s price-gouging scandals. From Our Advertisers quot;frameC
  • He said he would sharply increase the cost of a drug used to treat a potentially deadly parasitic infection. He called himself “the world’s most eligible bachelor” on Twitter and railed against critics in a live-streaming YouTube video. After reportedly paying $2 million for a rare Wu-Tang Clan album, he goaded a member of the hip-hop group to “show me some respect.”
  • Then, at 6 a.m. Thursday, F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Shkreli, 32, at his Murray Hill apartment. He was arraigned in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on securities fraud and wire fraud charges.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Shkreli said he was confident that he would be cleared of all charges.
  • Mr. Shkreli has emerged as a symbol of pharmaceutical greed for acquiring a decades-old drug used to treat an infection that can be devastating for babies and people with AIDS and, overnight, raising the price to $750 a pill from $13.50. His only mistake, he later conceded, was not raising the price more.
  • Those price increases combined with Mr. Shkreli’s jeering response to his critics has made him a lightning rod for public outrage and fodder for the presidential campaign. His company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, and others, like Valeant Pharmaceuticals, have come under fire from lawmakers and consumers for profiting from steep price increases for old drugs.
  • But the criminal charges brought against him actually relate to something else entirely — his time as a hedge fund manager and when he ran his first biopharmaceutical company, Retrophin.
  • Still, for many of his critics, Mr. Shkreli’s arrest was a comeuppance for the brash executive who has seemed to enjoy — relish, even — his public notoriety. On Thursday, a satirical New Yorker column by the humorist Andy Borowitz said Mr. Shkreli’s lawyers had informed their client their hourly legal fees had increased by 5,000 percent.
« First ‹ Previous 41 - 60 of 2449 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page