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Contents contributed and discussions participated by blythewallick

blythewallick

Opinion | Changes to the Census Could Make Small Towns Disappear - The New York Times - 0 views

  • According to the 2010 census, 590 people lived in Toksook Bay. State demographers expect the total to rise by about 100 people when census results are published next year.
  • The law requires individual census records to be kept confidential for 72 years. Fearing that data brokers using new statistical techniques could de-anonymize the published population totals, the bureau is testing an algorithm that will scramble the final numbers. Imaginary people will be added to some locations and real people will be removed from others.
  • In Toksook Bay, the population dropped from 590 people to 540 in the test run. Mr. Pitka said that a decrease in the count due to the privacy algorithm would be “disappointing and hurtful.”
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  • In Toksook Bay, federal grants helped pay for a permanent path to the nearby village of Nightmute, according to Mr. Pitka. “Now people aren’t making their own trails and tearing up the environment with their A.T.V.s.,” he said.
  • “When a small tribe puts its own money into getting all members to participate and it gets back information that it has a population of zero, it’s certainly not going to be willing to promote the census in the future,” said Norm DeWeaver, a consultant for Native American tribes on data issues.
  • Census officials have already exempted state population totals from the algorithm’s effects, so congressional apportionment will remain as accurate as possible. Dr. Abowd said that the census plans to increase accuracy for the populations of some small areas, such as reservations, and that the undercount of Native Americans in the test run is “unacceptable.” There is still time to modify the algorithm — the bureau has more than a year before it releases results to the states for redistricting.
  • The goal of the Census Bureau is to “count everyone once, only once and in the right place.” Trudging through the snow, enumerators in rural Alaska are helping the government reach that standard. But if the bureau uses its privacy algorithm without hearing from small communities like Toksook Bay, it risks undermining their efforts and damaging the census’s reputation for decades to come.
blythewallick

Opinion | In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear - The New York... - 0 views

  • Think back to the fall of 2002, just a few weeks before that year’s crucial midterm elections, when the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq was up for a vote. A year after the 9/11 attacks, hundreds of members of the House and the Senate were about to face the voters of a country still traumatized by terrorism.
  • History has indeed taught us that when it comes to the instincts that drive us, fear has no rival. As the lead House impeachment manager, Representative Adam Schiff, has noted, Robert Kennedy spoke of how “moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle.”
  • Late in the evening on day four of the trial I saw it, just 10 feet across the aisle from my seat at Desk 88, when Mr. Schiff told the Senate: “CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that Republican senators were warned, ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’” The response from Republicans was immediate and furious. Several groaned and protested and muttered, “Not true.” But pike or no pike, Mr. Schiff had clearly struck a nerve. (In the words of Lizzo: truth hurts.)
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  • I have asked some of them, “If the Senate votes to acquit, what will you do to keep this president from getting worse?” Their responses have been shrugs and sheepish looks.
  • Or — worst of all — that he might come to their state to campaign against them in the Republican primary. They worry:“Will the hosts on Fox attack me?”“Will the mouthpieces on talk radio go after me?”“Will the Twitter trolls turn their followers against me?”
  • As Senator Murray said on the Senate floor in 2002, “We can act out of fear” or “we can stick to our principles.” Unfortunately, in this Senate, fear has had its way. In November, the American people will have theirs.
blythewallick

Trump Called for Paid Family Leave. Here's Why Few Democrats Clapped. - The New York Times - 0 views

  • President Trump called for paid family leave in the State of the Union on Tuesday, the first Republican president to do so. But the bill he supported does not offer what has generally been considered paid family leave.
  • It is a bipartisan bill, introduced in December by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, and Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana. And it would enable new parents to collect a portion of their future child tax credits early and receive a smaller credit for the next 10 to 15 years.
  • “Not only is it a good solution, but it’s possible in the political world we live in today,” Senator Sinema said at an American Enterprise Institute and Brookings event in September.
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  • Paid leave, in general, is an easy sell with voters. Families need it — 72 percent of mothers and 93 percent of fathers with children at home are in the labor force — and a large majority of voters support it. But Americans, like their elected representatives, disagree on the details, particularly how to pay for it.
  • The child tax credit is worth up to $2,000 per child. If the Trump-backed bill passed, the average worker with a new child could receive $5,000, and then collect $500 less in child tax credits each year for 10 years. Workers earning less than $11,000 a year, who don’t qualify for the full child tax credit, could also get up to $5,000, and pay it back over 15 years.
  • Republicans have instead focused on ways to let people borrow from their future federal benefits. One idea, tapping Social Security early, has been unpopular, because it would mean receiving less money in retirement.
  • But opponents say that it would just delay parents’ financial stressors, because they would collect smaller tax credits for the first decade of their children’s lives, when they still had significant expenses like child care, clothes and food.
  • “Republicans have really painted themselves into a corner on taxes,” said Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research group. “They know voters want it, constituents need it, but they don’t have anywhere to go for funding except for anything that already exists.”
blythewallick

Iowa Caucus Results Riddled With Errors and Inconsistencies - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses were delayed by “quality control checks” on Monday night. Days later, quality control issues have not been resolved.
  • But not all of the errors are minor, and they raise questions about whether the public will ever get a completely precise account of the Iowa results. With Mr. Sanders closing to within 0.1 percentage points with 97 percent of 1,765 precincts reporting, the race could easily grow close enough for even the most minor errors to delay a final projection or raise doubts about a declared winner.
  • The errors are detectable because of changes to the way the Iowa Democratic Party reports its results, put in place after the Sanders campaign criticized the caucus results in 2016. This cycle, and for the first time, the party released three sets of results corresponding to different steps in the caucus process. The rules are complex and thorough, and they create conditions in which the results can be obviously inaccurate or inconsistent within a precinct.
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  • No new voters are permitted to join the caucus after the first alignment. But in at least 70 precincts, more than 4 percent of the total, there are more tabulated total votes on final alignment than on first alignment.
  • The Iowa Democratic Party has corrected some errors, but the errors became far more frequent on Wednesday as the count dragged on.
  • The Iowa Democratic Party quickly corrected these errors, and they are not included in our overall count of discrepancies in more than 100 precincts. The party has not yet addressed other irregularities reported to it or circulating on social media. In another case, The Times alerted the party to an error at 6 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday that remained in the data released several hours later.
  • Even if the appropriate candidate is deemed the winner, the irregularities in the results are likely to do little to restore public confidence in the Iowa caucuses.
blythewallick

Trump Acquitted of Two Impeachment Charges in Near Party-Line Vote - The New York Times - 0 views

  • WASHINGTON — After five months of hearings, investigations and revelations about President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, a divided United States Senate acquitted him on Wednesday of charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress to aid his own re-election, bringing an acrimonious impeachment trial to its expected end.
  • It was the third impeachment trial of a president and the third acquittal in American history, and it ended the way it began: with Republicans and Democrats at odds. They disagreed over Mr. Trump’s conduct and his fitness for office, even as some members of his own party conceded the basic allegations that undergirded the charges, that he sought to pressure Ukraine to smear his political rivals.
  • Like this one, the trials of Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton also ended in acquittal — a reflection of the Constitution’s high burden for removing a chief executive.
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  • “It is, therefore, ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges in said articles,” declared Chief Justice Roberts after the second article was defeated.
  • “The verdict of this kangaroo court will be meaningless,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said moments before the vote. “By refusing the facts — by refusing witnesses and documents — the Republican majority has placed a giant asterisk, the asterisk of a sham trial, next to the acquittal of President Trump, written in permanent ink.”
  • At the Capitol earlier in the day, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who presided over the trial, put the question to senators shortly after 4 p.m.: “Senators how say you? Is the respondent, Donald John Trump, president of the United States guilty or not guilty?”
  • “Today, the sham impeachment attempt concocted by Democrats ended in the full vindication and exoneration of President Donald J. Trump,” said Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary. “As we have said all along, he is not guilty.”
  • But most argued that the conduct was not sufficiently dangerous to warrant the Senate removing a president from office for the first time in history — and certainly not with an election so near. Others dismissed Democrats’ arguments altogether, insisting their case was merely an attempt to dress up hatred for Mr. Trump and his policies as a constitutional case.
  • “There will be so many who will simply look at what I am doing today and say it is a profile in courage,” Mr. Jones said before the vote. “It is not. It is simply a matter of right and wrong.”
  • The possibility of impeachment has hung over Mr. Trump’s presidency virtually since it began, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, initially resisted it. After Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russia’s election interference in 2016 and possible collaboration with the Trump campaign, found 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice by Mr. Trump, she said impeachment was too divisive a remedy to pursue.
  • Impeachment was seriously contemplated for a president only once in the first two centuries of the American republic; it now has been so three times since the 1970s, and two of the past four presidents have been impeached.
blythewallick

Democrats defend Pelosi for ripping up Trump's State of the Union speech - CBS News - 0 views

  • Washington — Democrats on Capitol Hill are coming to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's defense after she dramatically ripped up her copy of President Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday night, earning condemnation from the president's supporters.
  • Pelosi called the speech a "manifesto of mistruths" and told reporters that ripping it up was "courteous" compared to the alternatives. Republicans likened the move to a "temper tantrum," and Mr. Trump retweeted two dozen tweets disparaging Pelosi in the hours after the address.
  • But Democrats defended and even praised the speaker. Congressman Hakeem Jeffries quipped that "as far as I'm concerned the shredder wasn't available, and so she did what she needed to do." Congressman Jerry Nadler said he was "delighted" by Pelosi's action, saying the president's speech was full of "lie after lie."
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  • Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, said it was Democrats' responsibility to "rise above" the president's words and actions.
  • "I think our challenges as public leaders, all of us, is not to simply reflect and amplify that division but to find moments where we can work to heal some of our sharp divisions," Coons said. "It is a challenge for all of us in public life not to respond in kind to some of the things that the president does and says but to instead find ways to rise above it." .recirc_item:nth-child(5) { display: none; } #recirc_item_b65848e2-d4a2-4992-b707-9e7c445fc574 { display: none; } #recirc_item_b65848e2-d4a2-4992-b707-9e7c445fc574 ~ .recirc_item:nth-child(5) { display: list-item; }
blythewallick

Susan Collins will vote to acquit Trump, saying he's "learned" from impeachment - CBS News - 0 views

  • Washington — Republican Senator Susan Collins announced Tuesday she will vote to acquit President Trump in his Senate trial, telling CBS News she believes the president has learned a "pretty big lesson" from impeachment and will be "much more cautious" about seeking foreign assistance in the future.
  • The Senate plans to vote Wednesday on whether to convict Mr. Trump on two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Collins and Senator Mitt Romney were the only two Republicans who voted last week to allow witnesses in the impeachment trial, an effort that ultimately failed.
  • "I'm voting to acquit. Because I do not believe that the behavior alleged reaches the high bar in the Constitution for overturning an election, and removing a duly elected president," Collins said.
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  • "I'm sure there are going to be people unhappy with me in Maine. All I can do is apply the constitutional standard. And that's my job," Collins said. "My job is not to weigh the political consequences, but to do impartial justice to live up to the oath that I took."
blythewallick

Opinion | What Will Finally Defeat Donald Trump? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • On Tuesday night, President Trump delivered the most harshly partisan State of the Union speech in memory.
  • But when he was wrong, as he often was, he was poisonously wrong. He grotesquely caricatured the criminality of undocumented immigrants, rewrote the history of his assaults on Americans’ health care and drastically inflated the number of jobs expected to be created by the new trade bill.
  • By the end, many Republicans had conceded that Mr. Trump did the things he was accused of. Some agreed that they were “improper,” “inappropriate” or even “wrong.” Yet rather than try to get to the bottom of his behavior, they joined the White House in covering up as much about it as they could.
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  • Against all evidence to the contrary, some Republicans claim Mr. Trump has been chastened by his impeachment. He will be “much more cautious,” said Senator Susan Collins, adding that she hopes the president has “learned from this.”
  • Given the dishonesty, if not downright absurdity, of some passages in the speech, it was perhaps a human reaction on the part of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to tear it to shreds. It was still disappointing to see her stoop to the kind of stunt the president himself would pull, and, as she certainly knows as well as anyone, a gesture like that won’t defeat the president’s argument. So what will?
  • Given the stakes, anxiety is rightly running high. Yes, the Democratic voters can and should narrow the field over the next several weeks. But the fact that they’ll eventually pick a nominee isn’t enough. It matters how they get there.
  • On Twitter, Mr. Walsh described telling a crowd of thousands of Iowa Republicans that Americans deserve a president who is decent, who tells the truth and who doesn’t care only about himself. The crowd booed.
  • Given these facts, sticking with the other Republicans and voting to acquit “would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.” Just eight years ago, Mr. Romney was the Republican nominee for president; today, his vote will cast him as a pariah.
blythewallick

Senate gets ready to open impeachment trial against Donald Trump | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

  • For only the third time in US history, the Senate is preparing to open an impeachment trial against the president, who stands accused of abusing the powers of his office and obstructing a congressional investigation of his deeds.
  • At 2pm, US supreme court chief justice John Roberts is scheduled to join the proceedings and be sworn in for his presiding role at the trial. He then will swear in the 100 senators – 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents – as jurors.
  • A two-thirds majority of voting senators would be required to convict Trump and remove him from office, but he appears to be extremely well insulated against that possibility by Republican loyalists.
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  • “We’ll pledge to rise above the petty factionalism and do justice for our institutions, for our states and for the nation,” McConnell said.
  • “The House’s hour is over. The Senate’s time is at hand.”
  • The White House released a statement on Wednesday that said “President Trump has done nothing wrong” and “expects to be fully exonerated”.
  • Following the vote on Wednesday, Pelosi signed the articles of impeachment, which were placed in folders and moved in a procession at sunset from the House to the Senate. The Senate invited House members to return to formally “exhibit” the articles on Thursday.
  • “Don’t talk to me about my timing,” she said. After months of resisting calls “from across the country” for Trump’s impeachment, she said, Trump ultimately “gave us no choice. He gave us no choice.”
  • I solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws: so help me God.
  • No US president has ever been removed through impeachment, though Richard Nixon resigned in the face of the prospect.
  • House Republicans responded vigorously to Trump’s demands that they defend him, offering worshipful assessments of Trump’s conduct, which they said was motivated by Trump’s desire to fight corruption in Ukraine.
  • House prosecutors are expected to present newly obtained evidence from Parnas over the course of the impeachment trial, which could unearth new evidence of misconduct by Trump.
blythewallick

Trump rails against refrigerators and promises cleaner dishes | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

  • President bemoans better energy efficiency standards at Milwaukee rally, saying women must wash dishes ‘10 times’
  • Donald Trump unveiled unusual, new campaign promises to a crowd of thousands of his fervent supporters at a Milwaukee campaign rally on Tuesday: better household appliances.
  • Trump taking particular offense at household items that limit water usage. “Sinks, toilets, and showers – you don’t get any water,” he said.
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  • “Remember the dishwasher? You’d press it, boom! There’d be, like, an explosion. Five minutes later you open it up, the steam pours out,” he said. Trump then criticized newer models, claiming women – just women – across the country have to now wash their dishes “10 times”.
  • The rant follows months of increasing criticisms from Republican lawmakers to energy regulators over stricter environmental standards. According to the International Energy Agency, a common critique of energy-efficient appliances is that they are inefficient, resulting in more usage, reversing energy savings effects.
  • The criticisms also come just a day after some Republicans condemned bipartisan legislation to gradually eliminate or reduce heat-trapping chemicals in air conditioners and refrigerators.
  • Opponents pinpoint a potential rise in costs for consumers. But the bipartisan legislation has support from environmental advocates and appliance industry leaders even as Trump probably calculates it has appeal to a support base skeptical of environmental causes and hostile to government regulation.
  • “We are letting our government know that no matter what they do, we will never stay silent,” Nadxely Sanchez, of Voces de la Frontera, told the local Fox affiliate WITI.
  • “All of this is all part of [a] strategy and of course to draw attention away from our debate,” she said. “What do animals do? They just kind of pee on your carpet.”
blythewallick

Warming oceans force leatherback turtles on longer journeys to feed | Environment | The... - 0 views

  • Leatherback turtles are making exhausting journeys, in some cases nearly twice as long as usual, from nesting to feeding grounds, because of rising ocean temperatures and changing sea currents.
  • In another stark example of the dangers to marine life from human actions, one turtle followed was found dead on a beach in Suriname only 120km (74 miles) from the starting point, drowned after having become enmeshed in a discarded fishing net.
  • Warming oceans pose clear dangers to human life as they lead to more intense storms and rising sea levels, but the impact of the increasing frequency of heatwaves at sea on marine species is much less studied. There is evidence that some species, including commercially important fish such as cod, are migrating towards the poles in search of cooler waters, but more research is needed for a fuller picture.
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  • Though small in scale, the research provides an insight into how some marine species are being forced to adapt to the warming oceans. This week scientists warned that ocean temperatures had reached record levels with the last five years, which were the five hottest on record.
  • Estimates say more than half of all sea turtles have ingested plastic. The animals also face threats from overfishing, though they are mainly bycatch rather than targets.
  • “Sea turtles survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, but they might not survive us,” said Will McCallum, a campaigner at Greenpeace. “Human activity has put such severe pressure on sea turtle populations around the world that six out of the seven species are threatened with extinction. Without urgent action the situation will only get worse.”
blythewallick

Climate crisis fills top five places of World Economic Forum's risks report | Business ... - 0 views

  • A year of extreme weather events and mounting evidence of global heating have catapulted the climate emergency to the top of the list of issues worrying the world’s elite.
  • “There is mounting pressure on companies from investors, regulators, customers, and employees to demonstrate their resilience to rising climate volatility. Scientific advances mean that climate risks can now be modelled with greater accuracy and incorporated into risk management and business plans.
  • The report was released ahead of the WEF’s annual meeting in Davos next week, which will be attended by the chief executives of some of the world’s biggest and powerful companies. Despite the large number of participants flying in to Switzerland by private jet, the WEF said Davos would be a carbon-neutral event.
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  • After a month in which bushfires have raged out of control in Australia, Brende said there was a need for urgent action.
  • “Biologically diverse ecosystems capture vast amounts of carbon and provide massive economic benefits that are estimated at $33tn (£25tn) per year – the equivalent to the GDP of the US and China combined. It’s critical that companies and policymakers move faster to transition to a low carbon economy and more sustainable business models.
  • “We are already seeing companies destroyed by failing to align their strategies to shifts in policy and customer preferences. Transitionary risks are real, and everyone must play their part to mitigate them. It’s not just an economic imperative, it is simply the right thing to do,” he said.
blythewallick

YouTube ads of 100 top brands fund climate misinformation - study | Technology | The Gu... - 0 views

  • Some of the biggest companies in the world are funding climate misinformation by advertising on YouTube, according to a study from activist group Avaaz.
  • “This is not about free speech, this is about the free advertising YouTube is giving to factually inaccurate videos that risk confusing people about one of the biggest crises of our time,” said Julie Deruy, a senior campaigner at the group. “YouTube should not feature, suggest, promote, advertise or lead users to misinformation.”
  • “YouTube has previously taken welcome steps to protect its users from anti-vaccine and conspiracy theories,” Avaaz argued
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  • Include climate misinformation in its “borderline content” policy, which limits the algorithmic distribution of videos that do not reach the bar required to fully remove them from the site.
  • Provide transparency to researchers by releasing data showing how many views are driven to misinformation by its own recommendation algorithms.
  • Work with independent fact-checkers to inform users who have seen or interacted with verifiably false or misleading information.
  • Demonetise misinformation, “ensuring such content does not include advertising and is not financially incentivised. YouTube should start immediately with the option for advertisers to exclude their ads from videos with climate misinformation.”
  • “In 2019 alone, the consumption on authoritative news publishers’ channels grew by 60%. As our systems appear to have done in the majority of cases in this report, we prioritise authoritative voices for millions of news and information queries, and surface information panels on topics prone to misinformation – including climate change – to provide users with context alongside their content. We continue to expand these efforts to more topics and countries.”
blythewallick

How bad can the climate crisis get if Trump wins again? | Environment | The Guardian - 0 views

  • While US climate emissions fell 2.1% in 2019, they rose significantly in 2018, according to estimates from the economic analysis firm Rhodium Group. On net, emissions are slightly higher than in the beginning of 2017, when Trump’s administration began enacting dozens of environment rollbacks aimed at helping the oil and gas industry.
  • “What they have done is created confusion within the business community and the environmental world as to what are going to be the standards,” said Christine Todd Whitman, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under the Republican president George W Bush. “Essentially every regulation the agency promulgates gets a lawsuit that goes with it, almost inevitably … that’s the only good thing you can say about it.”
  • Whitman called the approach “mindless” and said “whoever is a bigger donor gets to tell them what the environmental policy should be, it seems”.
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  • Americans choosing Trump would send the signal that they don’t care about the climate, Light said.
  • “In the case of a second Trump term, we’ve got to totally double down on the efforts to communicate how serious the non-federal actors are in the United States,” Light said. “And what you really want to try to make sure is that those people in other countries who are not in favor of strengthening their countries’ own climate target are not able to point to the United States and say nothing’s going on there.”
  • The concentration of climate-heating greenhouse gases is at a record high, according to a report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. The planet is already 1C hotter than it was before industrialization.
  • As the technology for retrieving oil and gas has advanced, with hydraulic fracturing, the cost of production has plummeted. The US is now a net exporter of oil products.
  • Much of the expansion expected would be for feedstocks to make chemicals and plastics, explained Courtney Bernhardt, the group’s research director.
  • “The US is already struggling to meet climate commitments and transition to a low-carbon future,” Bernhardt said. “This analysis shows that we’re heading in the wrong direction and really need to slow emissions growth from the oil, gas and petrochemical industries.”
  • In the race against Trump, all the major Democratic candidates have similarly pledged to seek at least net-zero emissions by 2050.
  • The League of Conservation Voters’ called the House committee effort encouraging and said the announcement “is further proof that elections have consequences”. But other groups were critical, saying the plan would not transition away from fossil fuels fast enough.
blythewallick

Putin critics ask how his PM choice acquired expensive properties | World news | The Gu... - 0 views

  • Russian president’s supporters praise Mikhail Mishustin as technocrat and self-made man
  • Russian opposition figures have raised questions about how Vladimir Putin’s surprise choice for new prime minister has acquired properties worth millions of dollars.
  • Mishustin’s appointment is part of a sweeping reorganisation of Russian government that will help enable Putin to maintain power after his expected exit from the presidency in 2024 under term limits. Analysts said Mishustin may play a role as a “caretaker” figure but was unlikely to be Putin’s long-term successor.
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  • Researchers for Alexei Navalny, the opposition politician and anti-corruption researcher, noted that Mishustin’s wife had earned nearly 790m rubles (nearly £10m) in the past nine years, according to government declarations. Little is known about her business and there are no companies listed in her name, the investigative group said. “Mishustin has been a ‘servant of the people’ for 20 of the past 22 years,” Navalny wrote in the investigation. “So why is he so damn rich?”
  • Corruption scandals hounded Medvedev in recent years
  • “The school of life has been tough for this man, and he is capable of big missions,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, the hard-nosed chairman of Russia’s parliament, adding that Mishustin was a “self-made man”.
blythewallick

6 Takeaways From the January 2020 Democratic Debate - The New York Times - 0 views

  • There was little incentive to go on the attack.
  • It’s a reflection of the muddled state of the race. The candidates have all made a calculation that being the aggressor in any interpersonal conflict would only lead to increasing their unfavorable ratings — or falling down Iowa caucusgoers’ second-choice lists, a critical element because supporters of candidates who don’t receive 15 percent support will be free to back someone else.
  • The Sanders-Warren clash fell flat — until after the debate.
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  • Ms. Warren did highlight her status as the top-polling female contender at several points in the debate, ending her closing statement with a reference to the possibility of electing the first woman president.
  • Warren makes her electability pitch.
  • One of Ms. Warren’s biggest political obstacles is the perception among some voters that she would face daunting challenges in a general election — both thanks to her boldly progressive outlook, and to societal sexism that many Democrats believe damaged Mrs. Clinton in 2016. @charset "UTF-8"; /*********************** B A S E S T Y L E S ************************/ /************************************* T Y P E : C L A S S M I X I N S **************************************/ /* Headline */ /* Leadin */ /* Byline */ /* Dateline */ /* Alert */ /* Subhed */ /* Body */ /* Caption */ /* Leadin */ /* Credit */ /* Label */ /********** S I Z E S ***********/ /******************** T Y P O G R A P H Y *********************/ .g-headline, .interactive-heading, .g-subhed { font-family: "nyt-cheltenham", georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; } .g-alert, .g-alert.g-body, .g-alert_link, .g-byline, .g-caption, .g-caption_bold, .g-caption_heading, .g-chart, .g-credit, .g-credit_bullet, .g-dateline, .g-label, .g-label_white, .g-leadin, #interactive-leadin, .g-refer, .g-refer.g-body, .g-table-text { font-family: nyt-franklin, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; 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  • And she invoked her 2012 victory over then-Senator Scott P. Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, as she declared herself “the only person on this stage who has beaten an incumbent Republican anytime in the past 30 years.”
  • Klobuchar throws punches.
  • Yet while she described herself as a winner tethered to the Midwest, somebody whose friends and neighbors hail from flyover country, she didn’t come out of Tuesday’s debate with any significant headlines of her own.
  • The only vetting of Buttigieg came from the moderator Abby Phillip on race.
  • Mr. Buttigieg deftly dodged by suggesting that the black voters who “know me best” — in his native South Bend — chose him twice to lead the city. And he cited recent endorsements from Representative Anthony Brown of Maryland and Mayor Quentin Hart of Waterloo, Iowa, who this week became the two most prominent African-American elected officials to back him.
  • Biden avoids attacks.
  • Mr. Biden, who flew under the radar particularly at the last debate, often stayed in his comfort zones — discussing foreign policy and health care — and he was not the center of the kind of memorable exchanges that had dealt his campaign blows earlier in the race.
blythewallick

F.B.I. Arrests Suspected Members of Neo-Nazi Group Before Virginia Gun Rally - The New ... - 0 views

  • The F.B.I. has arrested three men suspected of being members of a neo-Nazi hate group, including a former reservist in the Canadian Army, who had weapons and discussed traveling to a pro-gun rally next week in Richmond, Va., in anticipation of a possible race war.
  • Mr. Mathews was trained as a combat engineer and was considered an expert in explosives. He was dismissed from the Canadian Army after his ties to white supremacists surfaced.
  • The Base is an “accelerationist group that encourages the onset on anarchy,” according to the Counter Extremism Project, a group that tracks far-right extremists.
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  • In November, the F.B.I. arrested a young man in New Jersey, who was suspected of recruiting on behalf of The Base and of advocating violence, including the killing of black people with a machete.
  • On Wednesday, Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia declared a state of emergency and announced a temporary ban on weapons on the grounds of the State Capitol ahead of the rally. Thousands of protesters are expected to converge in Richmond on Monday to protest proposed restrictions on gun purchases by the Virginia Legislature.
  • Protesters were expected to descend on the State Capitol on Monday, which is a federal holiday for Martin Luther King’s Birthday.
blythewallick

Germany confirms US made trade threat to Europe over Iran policy | World news | The Gua... - 0 views

  • The United States threatened to impose 25% tariffs on cars to push Europeans to initiate proceedings against Iran for violating the nuclear deal, the German defence minister has confirmed.
  • Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters on Thursday: “This expression or threat, as you will, does exist.” She is in the UK to meet her counterpart Ben Wallace to discuss Anglo-European defence co-operation post-Brexit.
  • A Ukrainian Boeing 737 plane was shot down outside Tehran killing all 176 crew and passengers. Iran’s handling of the crash led to four days of street protests mainly in Tehran.
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  • There is concern that some in Iran are refusing to co-operate with the international investigation and refusing to hand over the black box flight recorder. There are claims within the country that the US may have jammed Iranian radar, making it impossible for the anti-aircraft battery operator to have checked the status of the plane.
  • As a result they claim the Trump threat did not push Europe into abandoning its policy of trying to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive.
  • We are enriching more uranium than before the deal was reached … Pressure has increased on Iran but we continue to progress.”
  • But the threat is a further insight into Trump’s modus operandi with Europe – in effect using threats of economic sanctions and the power of the dollar to try to force Europe to follow US foreign policy.
  • Iran continued to abide by the agreement until last summer, when it began openly breaching some of its limits, saying it would not be bound by the deal if it saw none of its promised economic benefits.
  • Iran said it would abandon all restrictions in the nuclear deal.
  • “A single bullet can cause a war, and not shooting a single bullet can lead to peace,” he said, adding that his administration was seeking greater security.
blythewallick

The Iowa caucuses are three weeks away - and there's no clear frontrunner | Art Cullen ... - 0 views

  • Our attention has been firmly fixed on a historically huge field of 25 Democratic presidential candidates since each stood on a soapbox and delivered their pitch at the state fair in August, within earshot of the butter cow.
  • And that about half of us who think we are close to decided are still sucking our thumbs and remain open to some other suitor.
  • The Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll reported Friday that Bernie Sanders has a slight lead at 20%, with Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden bunched in close behind in double digits. Amy Klobuchar is in shouting distance at 6%, and Andrew Yang pulls in 5%.
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  • Second choices, in this context, are as important as first.
  • Only Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg and Biden muster 15% so far. Klobuchar is worth keeping an eye on, as the next-door neighbor from Minnesota, but her support hasn’t swelled.
  • “Viability” is the watchword. That’s because the caucus rules dictate that a candidate must have 15% support from the attendees who show up for two hours in a school cafeteria on a typical winter evening draped in freezing rain.
  • Sixty perc ent of those polled said the former South Bend mayor is either their first or second choice, while 59% say the same about the senator from
  • Sanders benefits from a core of support that has stayed in place since he virtually tied Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus in 2016. His indictment: Clinton supported the Iraq war. His indictment revisited: Biden supported the Iraq war – a not-inconsiderable charge in Iowa. Iowa Democrats have a strong anti-war streak that runs deep among descendants of Prussian draft-dodgers.
  • I suspect on-the-ground organization matters most – especially for candidates who are tied up in a congressional impeachment trial and can’t campaign. For certain, caucus night is going to be crazy. No doubt about that.
blythewallick

Trump impeachment: White House broke law by freezing Ukraine aid, says watchdog - live ... - 0 views

  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi is speaking to reporters and said the impeachment trial is needed because “every day new, incriminating information comes forward.”
  • Pelosi then spoke about a poster in her grade school classroom which said: “What a tangle web we weave when we first practice to deceive,” and said with this White House, you see that happen “more and more.”
  • This year America will face an epic choice. The future of the White House and supreme court, abortion rights, climate policy and a range of other issues – all are in play, at the same time that misinformation makes rigorous reporting more important than ever. Across the world, similar challenges lie ahead: far-right populism, escalating inequality, and a growing number of autocrats in power.
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  • The GAO’s central argument is the White House can’t unilaterally decide to withhold foreign aid that has been appropriated by Congress. An OMB spokesperson said the office disagreed with the watchdog’s findings.
  • Government investigators says White House broke the law by freezing Ukraine aid
  • “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the report said.
  • Yesterday, the House voted to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, setting in motion the third impeachment Senate trial in US history.
  • Lev Parnas said while he did not speak directly with Donald Trump about efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating the former vice-president Joe Biden, a political rival, he had met with the president several times. Parnas also said Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, told Parnas he was updating Trump in an interview with the New York Times.
  • “My biggest regret is trusting so much,” Parnas said. “I thought I was being a patriot and helping the president,” he said, adding that he “thought by listening to the president and his attorney that I couldn’t possibly get in trouble or do anything wrong”.
  • Trump has denied misconduct, and it’s unclear how much this new material will be absorbed into the Senate impeachment trial.
  • Trump, meanwhile, has a quiet schedule for the day besides an announcement about prayer in schools in the afternoon.
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