#General Liability Washington

[tomorrowusa]

Special legislative elections were held in Minnesota and Iowa on Tuesday to fill vacancies.

In Minnesota, Democrat (DFL) Doron Clark won election in MN Senate District 60. He received 90.9% of the vote in the deep blue district. He replaces the late Kari Dziedzic. The Minnesota Senate had been evenly split 33-33. Clark's victory breaks the tie. Clark outperformed Harris-Walz who got 83% of the vote in that district in November.

While the outcome in MN SD-60 was largely expected, what happened across the border in Iowa Senate District 35 was a shocker. In a district carried by Trump with a 21% margin in November, a Democrat pulled a major upset.

Democrats on Tuesday flipped an Iowa state Senate seat in a district Donald Trump carried by 21 percentage points just a few months earlier, an incredible special election result that may serve as an early warning signal for Republicans about the 2026 midterms. Democrat Mike Zimmer defeated Republican Kate Whittington, 52% to 48%, in a special election for Senate District 35—a rural seat located on the state’s eastern side.  In November 2022, Republican Chris Cournoyer defeated her Democratic opponent, 61% to 39%, in this same seat—making Zimmer's win a massive shift toward Democrats. (Cournoyer resigned the seat to become Iowa’s lieutenant governor, creating the vacancy.) Zimmer’s win should give Republicans a case of heartburn since special election results often correlate with the outcome in the next midterm election. 

In Washington, Capitol Hill Republicans are pooping in their pants worrying about the threat of getting primaried by MAGA opponents if they dare to vote against any of Trump's profoundly incompetent nominees or oppose his autocratic dictates. But they should instead be worried about the 2026 general election where association with Trump is likely to be a liability. They need only look back to the 2018 midterm Blue Wave 🌊.

Iowa Republican US Sen. Joni Ernst was elected in 2020 with just 51.7% of the vote. If she keeps rubber stamping the anti-American Trump agenda, she should not assume that her re-election in 2026 will be a sure thing.

State government matters. Find out who represents you in your state's legislature. If they are Democrats, support them. If they are MAGA Republicans, work to defeat them.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

[todaysdocument]

Letter from Arthur R. Boyden to the President Describing the Effect of Unemployment on Crime

Record Group 10: Records of the National Commission on Law Observance and EnforcementSeries: Letters from the PublicFile Unit: B 1929 [4/5]

[handwritten] ack 8/8/29

Sugg

Boyden

Nase Comm on Law

Observance & [illegible]

[stamp] RESPECTFULLY REFERRED

FOR CONSIDERATION,

Lawrence Richey

Secy, to the President. [stamp]

[stamp] THE WHITE HOUSE

AUG. 8 1929

RECEIVED [/stamp]

My Dear Mr.President.-

I have been particularly interested in press notices regarding your commission for the study of crime. As a newspaper man of about twenty-five years standing and through my experiences as a big brother etc.,I have come in contact with many criminals,especially among the younger generation and I have discovered that a majority of the boys who become criminals have been more or less forced into such a life through lack of employment,attempting to hold down jobs which they were unfitted for an disliked or because they were the product of broken homes.

Personally I believe if the unemployment situation was cleaned up crime would decrease very perceptibly. Of course it may be conceit or ego but I believe that I have a solution for the unemployment situation. That is the reason for this letter.

Idle men and women are like idle machines,a liability instead of an asset. Unlike machines,idle humans must eat and sleep and,if they can not secure employment, than many of them take other methods of procuring these things. Usually criminal methods.

Now supposing every merchant,every manufacturer and other employers of labor were to put on every man or woman they could what would happen? For a time they would be an expense but does it not stand to reason that when all of these additional persons were working and earning money that it would stimulate buying? And would not all of the companies xxx benefit through this employment? Think of the additional money that would be put into circulation. Idle men and women do not spend money but men and women who are employed do. It seems to me that if a movement such as I suggest was launched the unemployment situation would be materially helped and business would show a decided improvement.

I may be way off but at any rate xx I thought it would not do any harm to lay this idea before your commission. Some good might come of it and that is all I want.

Having been a Washington correspondent some years ago I realize full well that this letter stands no chance of falling into your hands but it might,by lunch,be submitted to the commission.

Very truly

[signed]

Arthur R.Boyden

R.K.O. Studios

Hollywood, Calif.

[mariacallous]

A constitutional crisis is brewing in Tbilisi, Georgia. It will quickly reach a boiling point when the newly elected, far-right pro-Russian President Mikheil Kavelashvili is inaugurated on Dec. 29. The current president, staunchly pro-European Salome Zourabichvili, refuses to step down, because she alleges that the Oct. 26 parliamentary elections were fraudulent, thus deeming Georgian Dream party’s electoral victory as illegitimate. Zourabichvili has called for new elections—a demand echoed by the European Parliament and many international observers—while trying, unsuccessfully, to challenge the Georgian Dream party in the nation’s Constitutional Court.

This looming crisis comes after mass protests in Tbilisi on Nov. 30 against the government’s decision to delay EU accession until 2028 were violently suppressed by security forces, leaving demonstrators and journalists injured. The unrest was part of a yearlong wave of protests against the government’s Kremlin-inspired “foreign agents” law, which has been criticized for targeting civic groups and undermining democratic opposition ahead of the parliamentary elections in October.

Local factors drive democratic declines, and post-election protests are common in post-Soviet regions as well as globally, but Georgia’s crisis highlights deeper failures in Euro-Atlantic policies on democratization in Eurasia.

With a rich pre-Soviet civic history, Georgia was most recently the U.S.-supported democratic trailblazer in the South Caucasus—and yet it now faces significant setbacks. What went wrong?

In the 1990s, Washington embraced Georgia as the “cause in the Caucasus.” Years of financial and political support culminated in what is now a suspended strategic partnership. Georgian elites—particularly one of the leaders of the Rose Revolution, Mikheil Saakashvili—sought Western support, claiming Georgia as a European nation. In the public imagination, Georgia’s democratic aspirations became deeply intertwined with its geopolitical orientation toward the West: striving for democracy, joining the EU.

Georgia is now deeply polarized by geopolitical divisions between Russia and the West. Should Georgia’s democratic slide continue, the rest of the South Caucasus will feel the negative impact, especially with creeping dictatorship in neighboring Azerbaijan and a challenge to democratic consolidation in neighboring Armenia. The strategic value of the Georgian-Armenian democratic dyad will be no more.

This situation demonstrates how Washington’s habit of projecting global power through regionally untethered alliances, such as Georgia in the South Caucasus, is becoming a liability. Reliant on its hub-and-spoke network of bilateral alliances, of which Georgia was one, Washington has lacked a coherent approach to the Eurasian continent since the Soviet collapse. The result is that the U.S. alliance system’s ability to withstand authoritarian coordination by China and Russia is weakening. Pivoting on specific states, without a broader continental approach and blueprints for regional integration, will only strengthen the local elites and undercut U.S. power in this challenging continent.

A fresh new approach to the world’s largest landmass is needed. Specifically, a continental strategy should involve fostering economic integration and connectivity across subregions such as the South Caucasus and Central Asia—which means promoting the creation of trade and transit routes and establishing clear rules for their operation. Such a continental vision can help Washington generate economic dividends in the various subregions. This approach would strengthen smaller states collectively, enhance U.S. influence in Eurasia, and improve Washington’s bargaining power against Sino-Russian coordination.

Unlike Washington, both China and Russia have developed continental designs for Eurasia. For the Kremlin, Eurasianism—the idea that Russia is not exclusively part of Europe or Asia, but rather the center of gravity of a Eurasian civilization—has become a guiding political doctrine. Initially motivated to resurrect aspects of the multinational Soviet Union across its successor states, Eurasianism has now evolved for Moscow into a civilizational, anti-Western, anti-liberal precept. It has been bombastic, territorial, aggressive, and exclusive, culminating in the establishment of Russia-centric regional organizations such as the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, as well as in its invasion in Ukraine.

And now, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing trade disruptions and shifting trade routes in Eurasia and beyond. The Kremlin’s loss of geopolitical and strategic leverage over Eurasian connectivity—infrastructural and political—is a development of historical proportions.

China’s continentalism, on the other hand, advances unchallenged. In contrast to Russia, China is advancing its influence over this landmass largely through its infrastructural power: The Belt and Road Initiative and its network of pipelines and power lines. It is through this infrastructural power that China is reshaping existing regional orders in Russia’s peripheries, with Central Asia as a key front line. And Beijing’s approach is ambiguous, nontransparent, and nonterritorial, allowing China to advance through Russia’s periphery without confrontation.

Early visions and designs of a continental approach to Eurasia started to emerge during the Biden administration. Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden has tried to close the gap with China’s massive infrastructural advancement by investing in infrastructure, revitalizing partnerships, and building “connective tissue” between allies on the continent, as explained in essays by the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

In 2023, Sullivan emphasized boosting connectivity between Europe and the Indo-Pacific  to strengthen U.S. alliances and burden-sharing. In response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the United States has revamped its hub-and-spoke approach to Eurasia in recent years with initiatives such as AUKUS; the Quad; and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, which would link Asia, the Persian Gulf, and Europe.

Yet this approach remains dangerously outdated, having changed little since the end of the Second World War. Its strategic thinking still compartmentalizes Eurasia into disjointed subregions, within each relying on a so-called pivot state to exercise U.S. power and protect Washington’s interests. Some examples include Japan, Turkey, India, and South Korea.

Influence projected in this way is what political scientist Peter Katzenstein and others have called the “American imperium”: various territorial and nonterritorial mechanisms used to penetrate a region, often through a single state designated as a regional intermediary, for purposes of sustained influence and global hegemony.

Approaching this vast continent via bilateral alliance politics rather than a continental vision has weakened the United States in identifiable ways.

First, it diluted Washington’s bargaining power relative to smaller states, such as Georgia, and middle powers, including Turkey. In Georgia, for example, Washington ended up enhancing the bargaining power of the increasingly authoritarian government, which was able to centralize power and capture the state institutions. These trends only further polarized society. Despite losing influence in the region since its invasion in Ukraine, Moscow can now snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the South Caucasus.

In the aftermath of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, as more Eurasian subregions were taking shape—such as Central Asia, the Baltic states, the South Caucasus, and the Balkans—this strategy has become a liability. These subregions are frontier spaces between larger geopolitical powers, and the political elites in their pivot states quickly learned to play off Washington, Moscow, and Beijing against one another.

Second, this approach created regional conditions that are unfavorable to democratic breakthroughs and conducive to authoritarian durability. The fractured geopolitics of Eurasia pose an immediate threat to the rules-based order nurtured under U.S. hegemony—perhaps even more than the rise of China.

In continuing to focus on pivot states across Eurasia, the United States has, since the end of the Cold War, inadvertently created or exacerbated geopolitical cleavages there. Such cleavages have weakened regional markets, making it hard for nascent democracies to produce economic dividends. State fragility in these regions crystallized into a condition, keeping regions stuck in armed conflicts of various severity. In the Caucasus, with its singular alliance with Georgia, Washington has contributed to economic fracture.

Georgia emerged as the short-term beneficiary of poorly connected regional markets. This then enhanced the bargaining power of the Georgia Dream, relative to Washington. Indeed, Tbilisi continues to play off China, Russia, and the West against one another.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the severe political crisis in Georgia, the South Caucasus is where a diplomatic push for broader continental approach by the incoming Trump administration could deliver quick dividends for Washington’s influence in Eurasia.

Unlike its policies in Indo-Pacific, where the Biden administration succeeded in deepening principles of open regionalism and rules-based free trade, Washington is still playing defense in the South Caucasus. Azerbaijan, a tiny, declining, and autocratic petrostate has succeeded in keeping the West out and Russia in. President Ilham Aliyev’s repeated threats to carve an extraterritorial Zangezur corridor in Armenia’s south aim to create a sanctions-proof, overland Middle Corridor.

If successful, this plan would turn Armenia’s south into a gray-zone entrepôt, overseen militarily by Russia and Azerbaijan. Opaque to the United States, this would connect Russia and Iran, giving China a new route to its Anaklia deep-water port facility, which is under construction on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. In addition to sabotaging Washington’s diplomacy directed at opening trade and transit routes in the region, Baku also derides the EU civilian monitors on Armenia’s borders. Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin also champion regional formats of engagement that are specifically designed to exclude the Euro-Atlantic powers.

Indeed, Russia is likely to compensate its losses in the Middle East by pushing harder in the South Caucasus, where it has been losing ground since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

James C. O’Brien, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, emphasized in a June interview that Washington’s supports a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, highlighting its potential to foster regional prosperity by creating a trade route from Central Asia to the Mediterranean.

In the short term, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump can continue Biden’s policies of open regionalism and continental connectivity. This entails deepening the currently limited U.S. support to Armenia’s Crossroads for Peace initiative, an effort to enhance broad-based regional connectivity. This promises to generate economic benefits to the South Caucasus while reducing Russia’s influence over the region.

This initiative can also turn the United States into a key player in Eurasian connectivity, giving Washington transparent and diversified access to Central and South Asia. To this end, leaning on Turkey to open its border with Armenia—to date an ongoing but unsuccessful diplomatic engagement between Ankara and Yerevan—could have far-reaching regional and continental effects, diminishing Russia’s control over trade and transit routes.

In the long term, the U.S. president-elect can rewrite the forms of democratic assistance to countries in such regions. Allocating funding designed specifically for building cross-border collaboration or cultivating professional networks across the region can address the problem of regional fracture in Eurasia. And just as importantly, offering political and financial support for trilateral governance between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, under the U.S. umbrella, will allow Washington to have predictable connectivity to Central Asia and South Asia—perennial goals for successive administrations since the end of the Cold War. Washington has done it in the postwar Balkans and can do so again in postwar Caucasus.

But none of these goals will be possible if the threat of war and aggression continues to shape regional politics in the Caucasus. Euro-Atlantic powers are uniquely positioned to strengthen the norms against conquest and aggression—the very norms that Russia-backed Azerbaijan has been trying to undermine in the region. With its rapidly declining oil revenues, Azerbaijan is set to lose its regional leverage, making Baku more amenable to Trump’s much-touted strategy of “peace through strength.”

Washington’s continental approach to Eurasia can help to reverse the growing authoritarian tide in the South Caucasus. Georgia’s hope for a European future can be restarted by pushing back against authoritarian actors in the region, of which the Georgian Dream is just one of many.

[strictlyfavorites]

One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million.

Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments.

There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.

One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes. They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America—Atlanta, New York, Washington—where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.

Two, they are overtly political. Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.

Carroll’s suit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.

Smith sued to rush his court schedule in hopes of putting Trump on trial before the November election.

Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.

Carroll’s suit bypassed statute of limitation restrictions by prompting the intervention of a left-wing New York legislator. He passed a special bill, allowing a one-year window to waive the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims from decades past.

Until Trump, no New York prosecutor like James had ever filed a civil suit against a business for allegedly overvaluing real estate assets to obtain loans that bank auditors approved and were paid back in full, on time, and with sizable interest profits to the lending institutions.

Alvin Bragg bootstrapped a Trump private non-disclosure agreement into a federal campaign violation in a desperate effort to find something on Trump.

Smith is also charging Trump with insurrectionary activity. But Trump had never been so charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.

Willis strained to find a way to criminalize Trump’s complaints about his loss of Georgia in the 2020 national election. She finally came up with a racketeering charge, usually more applicable to mafiosi and drug cartels.

Four, in all these cases, the charges could have been equally applicable to fellow left-wing public figures and officials.

Joe Biden, like Trump, was accused of sexual assault decades earlier by former staffer Tara Reade. Yet Reade was torn apart by the media and the left for inconsistencies in her memory. By contrast, the wildly inconsistent and amnesiac E. Jean Carroll won $83 million from Trump.

Jack Smith created the precedent of charging former president Trump for unlawfully removing classified files to his private residence.

But the government simultaneously did not charge Joe Biden for similar offenses. Yet Biden had removed files not for two years but for more than 30. He stored them not in one location but several.

His rickety garage was a mess, not a secure family compound like Trump’s estate. Moreover, Biden did so while a senator and vice president, without any presidential authority to declassify almost any presidential document he wished.

Biden never came forward to report the crime for over thirty years—until Trump was charged. Indeed, he was caught on tape six years ago, admitting to his ghostwriter that he possessed classified files but never reported it.

Bragg might have noticed that both Hillary Clinton (fined $113,000) and Barack Obama (fined $350,000) broke campaign financing laws. Neither was subject to federal criminal charges by local prosecutors.

An array of left-wing celebrities, politicians, 2004 House Members, former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams have all recently challenged elections. They sought either to delay or redo ballot counting or, on the federal level, to sidetrack electors to ignore popular votes in their respective states.

These lawfare cases are part of other efforts that were highly partisan and without merit. Recall the Trump “Russian collusion” hoax and the “Russian disinformation” laptop farce.

In another first, some blue states are suing to take Trump’s name off the ballot for “insurrection,” a crime for which he has never been charged.

Total up the deaths, damage, and length of the summer 2020 Antifa/BLM riots. Then compare the tally to the one-day January 6 riot.

The former proved far more lethal, long-lasting, and destructive. Yet very few of the 14,000 arrested rioters in 2020 were ever prosecuted, much less convicted.

By contrast, the Biden administration sought to jail hundreds for crimes allegedly committed on January 6, such as “illegal parading.”

We are entering a dangerous era in America.

Ideology and party affiliations increasingly determine guilt and punishment. Opponents are first targeted, and then laws are twisted and redefined to convict them.

The left is waging lawfare with the implicit message to political opponents: either keep quiet or suffer the consequences.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kyle Cheney at Politico:

Donald Trump will be rubbing elbows in Milwaukee with a crowd that may include dozens of witnesses and alleged co-conspirators in his criminal cases — people he has sworn not to communicate with about details of the charges against him. Avoiding them may not be possible for the former president during the four-day convention, creating an unusual dynamic, and a potential legal liability for Trump, against the backdrop of a national nominating convention.

“If I were a Trump attorney, my biggest fear might be that Trump finds himself in close quarters with a defendant and starts running his mouth off,” said Anthony Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University. Several false electors for Trump in 2020 who were charged with crimes in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia are expected to be at the Republican National Convention. In addition, many of Trump’s former White House aides who testified to grand juries in Washington and Florida are likely to be on hand. Though the roster of speakers hasn’t been publicly shared, there’s a high likelihood that others embroiled in Trump’s alleged crimes — a long list of GOP officials and activists — will also be there. The situation is, like many things associated with Trump, unprecedented, and it’s hard to gauge the likelihood that an interaction in a crowded convention hall could become legally perilous for the former president. But it’s not zero, according to legal experts.

“I imagine the tight scripted nature of the convention will help isolate Trump from that danger,” Kreis said. “But you also never know.” General attacks on the prosecutions he’s facing in Washington, Florida and Georgia — familiar themes in Trump rallies and speeches — or superficial encounters with people involved in his cases are unlikely to raise prosecutors’ eyebrows. But legal experts say there are lines Trump could cross if he mentions codefendants or witnesses by name or has more substantive interactions with them. And even general remarks, whether scripted or extemporaneous, could present risks if they could be interpreted as pressure on witnesses against cooperation or an attempt to influence their future testimony.

At the RNC this week, Donald Trump could be liable for legal risks, as dozens of witnesses and alleged co-conspirators in his criminal cases are expected to be in attendance. #RNCinMKE

[beardedmrbean]

After misinformation spread about its gender-affirming care program, Washington University in St. Louis has come under intense scrutiny. Under a new Missouri law banning such treatments for new patients, the university's Transgender Center has decided not to prescribe medications to minors going forward.

In a statement posted online, the Washington University Transgender Center attributed its decision to “unacceptable” legal exposure if it were to continue.

The center said that patients under 18 will be referred to other providers for these medications, including hormones and puberty blockers. Gender-affirming health care for transgender youth is supported by a vast majority of medical associations in the United States, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“We are disheartened to have to take this step,” a university statement read. “However, Missouri’s newly enacted law regarding transgender care has created a new legal claim for patients who received these medications as minors. This legal claim creates unsustainable liability for health-care professionals and makes it untenable for us to continue to provide comprehensive transgender care for minor patients without subjecting the university and our providers to an unacceptable level of liability.”

Gov. Mike Parson signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for new patients under 18 in June after the Republican legislature passed it. Patients of Washington University’s youth gender clinic could still receive treatment under the new law. However, a special provision in the law allows patients to sue doctors who prescribe hormones to minors.

Patients who received care as minors can sue their doctors 15 years after treatment or after their 21st birthday, whichever is later. A Missouri patient generally has two years to file a medical malpractice lawsuit.

This law made the university’s continuation of these services “untenable,” it said.

An ex-employee of the university’s gender clinic accused doctors in the spring of prescribing treatment too quickly, drawing the attention of politicians who want to ban gender-affirming care for minors.

Former caseworker Jamie Reed, who worked at the facility between 2018 and late 2022, alleged that children were often given puberty blockers or hormones without obtaining proper mental health assessments.

An internal investigation by Washington University in St. Louis released in April found no evidence that the gender-affirming medicine clinic failed to assess minors in its care.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

What are your thoughts on the He Gets Us ads that have been taking reddit like an eleventh plague upon religious trauma subs?

I'm going to be generous and assume that it's a problem in Reddit's algorithm. But then, I don't quite know how Reddit's ad system works. If it's deliberate, than it's unacceptable to be putting it into those types of subs. I'd hope people were reporting them as inappropriate. Imagine ads for Tinder in a spouse-abuse recovery sub. Or Triple Whopper ads in a bulimia recovery sub.

I'm sure there'd be endless complaints if the "there's probably no god" ad was targeted into /r/christianquestions.

They lost their shit and called it offensive when it was simply posted out in the open in public space. It's not like billboard trucks were parked right outside their churches.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jan/09/atheist-bus-campaign-asa

The advertising regulator has received almost 150 complaints that an atheist ad campaign, proclaiming "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", is offensive to Christians and other religions that believe in a single God.

"How dare you tell people to stop worrying and enjoy life?!? What's wrong with you, you monster?!?"

Regarding "He Gets Us":

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2023/02/13/this-billionaire-is-a-donor-behind-the-jesus-focused-super-bowl-ads/

The group behind the Jesus-focused ads is He Gets Us, a limited liability company that says it’s an initiative of The Servant Foundation, a public charity and Christian foundation based in Kansas that last year launched a $100 million effort to improve the image of Jesus, as the Washington Post reported. One of the backers of the initiative is billionaire David Green, the founder of craft store chain Hobby Lobby, who is estimated by Forbes to be worth $14.8 billion.

I mean, he can spend his money however he likes, but it's weird that Jesus needs so much human assistance. Surely if he was real, they could just put him on TV. There's plenty of networks that would pay for the privilege. Why would I want to follow a savior and god who was that helpless? If he can't even convincingly exist, what's he going to do in the war against evil? (The evil he created.)

It seems like Xians are finally acknowledging the exodus - pun intended - of "nones."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/Ad-Meter/buzz-meter/2023/02/12/he-gets-us-super-bowl-ad-commercial-jesus/11243476002/

In a September 2022 modeling, the Pew Research Center estimates that if Christians in the USA continue leaving religion at its current rate, Christians of all ages will shrink from the current 64% to “between a little more than half (54%) and just above one-third (35%) of all Americans by 2070.” The study also estimates that if current trends continue, those identifying with no religion will increase from the current 30% to “somewhere between 34% and 52% of the U.S. population.”

Also in the above USA Today article:

a group touting itself as a “movement to reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible and his confounding love and forgiveness.”

You know, forgiveness for things we didn't do, which nobody else did either. Except the crime of existing as a human.

The "Jesus of the Bible" is a pretty nasty piece of work. It's only with modern interpretation, editing, revision and cherry-picking that he's been refashioned into the "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" we are told about today.

The "Jesus of the Bible" is a racist, sexist, xenophobic, slavery-endorsing, anti-Semitic mobster. I suppose in a way I'm all for reintroducing people to that, so I can go:

And from the Forbes article:

The ad ended with the phrase “Jesus loved the people we hate.”

As has been made abundantly clear, "Jesus" doesn't care about humans. He doesn't care whether you hate someone or not. All he cares about is whether he hates them or not. And whether he hates you or not depends on what you give him. He loves people who idolize him, not people who are good, decent or moral.

What you want is irrelevant; he just wants you to join his enablers and flying monkeys.

Matthew 12:30

He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.

Luke 11:23

He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.

Jesus doesn't give a shit about you until you grovel at his feet and feed his rampant narcissism. That is, he's pathologically incapable - at least as far as fictional characters are capable of anything - of genuine, benevolent, sincere altruism.

Mark 7:25-30

For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed.

Matthew 15:22-28

And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

"Tell me you're a filthy dog and maybe I'll cure your daughter with my magic powers that cost me nothing to use as freely as I wish."

So, "Jesus loved the people we hate" isn't the selling point they think it is. Jesus loves Gerald Ridsdale and George Pell, for example. They'll join Hitler in heaven. On the other hand, he also hates the people we love. Such as my atheist parents; he regards them as "not with me" and therefore "against me."

Matthew 10:32-33

Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

It's always about him. That's how narcissists operate.

"Jesus loved the people we hate" kind of blows the whistle on the whole "love the sinner, hate the sin" thing, though, huh? They're admitting they do hate "the sinner."

Remembering, of course, that Xian love is - like every cult - only for other Xians.

John 13:34-35

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

"My disciples" ... "love one another." There is no instruction for universal love, and obligatory love is a demonstration of not understanding love in the first place.

I'm not even sure who the ads are intended for. If you're already a Xian, why are they recruiting for a club you've already joined? And Jesus is clear: only belief is necessary for salvation.

And if you aren't already a Xian, why would these ads convince you of the existence of this storybook character in the real world? It seems to be the Xian refusal to acknowledge that people legitimately don't believe what Xians and the bible claim, and are just "angry" at or "hate" their fairytale characters.

Circling back, I hope, and am going to be charitable and give them the benefit of the doubt until I see evidence otherwise, that they're not being predators deliberately targeting the ex-religious subs, and that it's just the algorithm putting "topic = religion" together.

However, these are the same people who think that questioning whether any of it is actually true is a personal failing and moral flaw. And whine that non-believer blogs exist at all. All while $100m ad campaigns for their thing air on TV. The writing appears to be on the wall.

Next time you get a religious whiner, point out the "He Gets Us" campaign and tell them to either be consistent and condemn it, or else shut up.

[reasoningdaily]

The Associated Press: 22 attorneys general oppose 3M settlement over water systems contamination with 'forever chemicals'

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Twenty-two attorneys general urged a federal court Wednesday to reject a proposed $10.3 billion settlement over contamination of U.S. public drinking water systems with potentially dangerous chemicals, saying it lets manufacturer 3M Co. off too easily.

The deal announced in June doesn’t give individual water suppliers enough time to determine how much money they would get and whether it would cover their costs of removing the compounds known collectively as PFAS, said the officials with 19 states, Washington, D.C., and two territories. In some cases the agreement could shift liability from the company to providers, they said.

“While I appreciate the effort that went into it, the proposed settlement in its current form does not adequately account for the pernicious damage that 3M has done in so many of our communities,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta, leader of the multistate coalition.

3M spokesman Sean Lynch said the agreement “will benefit U.S.-based public water systems nationwide that provide drinking water to a vast majority of Americans” without further litigation.

“It is not unusual for there to be objections regarding significant settlement agreements,” Lynch said. “We will continue to work cooperatively to address questions about the terms of the resolution.”

The company, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, manufactures per- and polyfluorinated substances — a broad class of chemicals used in nonstick, water- and grease-resistant products such as clothing and cookware, as well as some firefighting foams.

Described as “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade naturally in the environment, PFAS have been linked to a variety of health problems, including liver and immune-system damage and some cancers.

3M has said it plans to stop making them by the end of 2025.

Some 300 communities have sued 3M and other companies over water pollution from the compounds. A number of states, airports, firefighter training facilities and private well owners also have pending cases.

They have been consolidated in U.S. District Court in Charleston, South Carolina, where the proposed settlement was filed last month.

Although the company put its value at $10.3 billion, an attorney for the water providers said it could reach as high as $12.5 billion, depending on how many detect PFAS during testing the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered over the next three years.

The law firm representing the water providers did not immediately respond Wednesday to messages seeking comment.

EPA in March proposed strict limits on two common types, PFOA and PFOS, and said it wanted to regulate four others.

In addition to California, states urging Judge Richard Gergel to reject the deal included Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin. Also opposed were Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.

In a court filing, the attorneys general said it would force nearly all public water providers nationwide to participate unless they withdraw individually — even those that haven’t filed suits or tested for PFAS.

“Troublingly, they would have to make their opt-out decisions without knowing how much they would actually receive and, in many cases, before knowing the extent of contamination in their water supplies and the cost of remediating it,” the officials said in a statement.

A provision in the proposed deal would shift liability from 3M to water suppliers that don’t opt out, the statement said. That could enable the company to seek compensation from providers if sued over cancer or other illnesses in PFAS-affected communities, it said.

“As such, the proposed settlement is worth far less than the advertised $10.5 billion to $12.5 billion,” the attorneys general said.

The attorneys general did not take a position on a separate $1.18 billion deal to resolve PFAS complaints against DuPont de Nemours Inc. and spinoffs Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc.

[mightyflamethrower]

One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million.

Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments.

There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.

One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes. They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America—Atlanta, New York, Washington—where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.

AD

Two, they are overtly political. Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.

Carroll’s suit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.

Smith sued to rush his court schedule in hopes of putting Trump on trial before the November election.

Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.

AD

Carroll’s suit bypassed statute of limitation restrictions by prompting the intervention of a left-wing New York legislator. He passed a special bill, allowing a one-year window to waive the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims from decades past.

Until Trump, no New York prosecutor like James had ever filed a civil suit against a business for allegedly overvaluing real estate assets to obtain loans that bank auditors approved and were paid back in full, on time, and with sizable interest profits to the lending institutions.

Alvin Bragg bootstrapped a Trump private non-disclosure agreement into a federal campaign violation in a desperate effort to find something on Trump.

Smith is also charging Trump with insurrectionary activity. But Trump had never been so charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.

Willis strained to find a way to criminalize Trump’s complaints about his loss of Georgia in the 2020 national election. She finally came up with a racketeering charge, usually more applicable to mafiosi and drug cartels.

Four, in all these cases, the charges could have been equally applicable to fellow left-wing public figures and officials.

Joe Biden, like Trump, was accused of sexual assault decades earlier by former staffer Tara Reade. Yet Reade was torn apart by the media and the left for inconsistencies in her memory. By contrast, the wildly inconsistent and amnesiac E. Jean Carroll won $83 million from Trump.

Jack Smith created the precedent of charging former president Trump for unlawfully removing classified files to his private residence.

But the government simultaneously did not charge Joe Biden for similar offenses. Yet Biden had removed files not for two years but for more than 30. He stored them not in one location but several.

His rickety garage was a mess, not a secure family compound like Trump’s estate. Moreover, Biden did so while a senator and vice president, without any presidential authority to declassify almost any presidential document he wished.

Biden never came forward to report the crime for over thirty years—until Trump was charged. Indeed, he was caught on tape six years ago, admitting to his ghostwriter that he possessed classified files but never reported it.

Bragg might have noticed that both Hillary Clinton (fined $113,000) and Barack Obama (fined $350,000) broke campaign financing laws. Neither was subject to federal criminal charges by local prosecutors.

An array of left-wing celebrities, politicians, 2004 House Members, former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams have all recently challenged elections. They sought either to delay or redo ballot counting or, on the federal level, to sidetrack electors to ignore popular votes in their respective states.

These lawfare cases are part of other efforts that were highly partisan and without merit. Recall the Trump “Russian collusion” hoax and the “Russian disinformation” laptop farce.

In another first, some blue states are suing to take Trump’s name off the ballot for “insurrection,” a crime for which he has never been charged.

Total up the deaths, damage, and length of the summer 2020 Antifa/BLM riots. Then compare the tally to the one-day January 6 riot.

The former proved far more lethal, long-lasting, and destructive. Yet very few of the 14,000 arrested rioters in 2020 were ever prosecuted, much less convicted.

By contrast, the Biden administration sought to jail hundreds for crimes allegedly committed on January 6, such as “illegal parading.”

We are entering a dangerous era in America.

Ideology and party affiliations increasingly determine guilt and punishment. Opponents are first targeted, and then laws are twisted and redefined to convict them.

The left is waging lawfare with the implicit message to political opponents: either keep quiet or suffer the consequences.

[aviewofthejames]

The Containment of George F. Kennan

As of January 2025, Michael Anton is Director of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff. This excerpt is from Anton's summing-up of George F. Kennan's career as a diplomat and public intellectual, presented through the lens of a review of Frank Costigliola's Kennan: A Life Between Worlds (2023). I couldn't leave out the first segment because the compare-and-contrast between Kennan's feelings toward the common man and that of today's elite is not only funny but illuminates both Kennan and them. The second segment details a condensed history of Kennan's policy positions, while the third seeks to reposition Kennan on the political spectrum. The full piece, linked above, is well worth a read. Kennan is still with us today.

***

…Kennan was something of a natural-born expatriate, always more at home overseas than in his own country. Whether this was the cause or an effect of his, if not anti-Americanism, certainly his contempt for ordinary Americans and their culture, is not easy to say. But Costigliola frequently quotes Kennan railing in his letters or diary against the preferences and habits of his fellow citizens in language bound to repel patriots but appeal to the present ruling class. “More and more it is borne in upon me how little I have in common with, how little I belong to, this polyglot accumulation of people in the meridial part of North America.” “I hate the ‘peepul’; I have become clearly un-American.”

I doubt this was Costigliola’s intention, but the most interesting thing about his book is what it reveals about the differences between the ruling class Kennan was a member of and the one we’re saddled with today. In the two decades since I began my researches, elite idolatry of the “Wise Men” and the order they helped create has only intensified. Few of their admirers seem to realize, or at least admit, that all of them would be canceled today for one or more offenses (or for just being white men), with George Kennan easily the most cancelable of all.

Costigliola mentions, and is at pains to apologize for (but never excuse!), Kennan’s many, many anti-woke transgressions. At one time or another—and in most cases consistently over decades—George Kennan offended every present-day ruling class piety. He does not appear, to put it mildly, to have been overly enamored of Jews, Catholics, blacks (“ineradicable bitterness and hatred of the whites”), Chinese, Mexicans, Arabs, the Third World, immigrants generally, “inferior races,” miscegenation, homosexuals—really, it would be easier, and take less space, to list out those who didn’t repulse him. Not even his beloved Russia got off the hook: “a filthy, sordid country, full of vermin, mud, stench, and disease.” Kennan was an early adopter of the allegedly discredited “Great Replacement conspiracy theory”: he lamented the decline of old stock Protestant Americans into “not only a dwindling but disintegrating minority” and their replacement by a “sea of helpless, colorless humanity, as barren of originality as it is of nationality, as uninteresting as it is unoriginal—one huge pool of indistinguishable mediocrity and drabness.”

The best Costigliola can do against this tidal wave of offense is sigh that Kennan’s “racist, eugenicist views were stock in trade for his generation and social class.” He also invokes the rebuke “orientalist” every time he quotes Kennan musing on the ethno-cultural traits of the Russian people. Still, if that’s the lamest bit of woke jargon in a book published by an academic press—and it is—things could have been worse.…

***

…The issue that did more than any other to convince the rest of official Washington that Kennan had become more liability than asset—and which especially roused Dean Acheson’s ire—was his proposal (developed while he was still in government but advanced most forcefully in his 1957 Eastman Lectures at Oxford) that the United States withdraw west of the Rhine and support a unified, disarmed, neutral Germany. Kennan repeatedly asserted that doing so was the only way to avoid a nuclear World War III. That this was, incidentally, also the Soviet position might have opened Kennan to charges of disloyalty, but he somehow managed to remain personally untouched by McCarthyism, even as many of his friends saw their careers derailed, or worse.

There’s no way to know what might have happened had this specific advice been heeded, but even though—or because—it wasn’t, the Cold War ended in precisely the way Kennan in his glory years predicted it would. The Soviet Union, successfully contained, collapsed from a combination of external pressure and internal rot. When it did, Kennan not only didn’t want credit, he resented the near-universal attempts to heap it upon him. He saw in all those accolades a rejection of his insistence over four decades that missed opportunities to negotiate squandered the chance to end the whole thing sooner. Kennan could never accept (and neither can Costigliola) that he had been right the first time.

It is here that we find Kennan at his most inconsistent. He despised Richard Nixon—but what was détente and all its attendant treaties and agreements if not a Kennan-esque attempt to ease tensions, reduce the chances of war, and see a way toward peaceful coexistence? He dismissed 1975’s Helsinki Accords, but what were they if not a shrewd trade—recognition of 1945 borders (a concession Kennan had long advocated) in exchange for commitments on basic rights—that over time undermined the Soviet grip on its wartime conquests and accelerated the Warsaw Pact’s dissolution? Kennan had even greater contempt for Ronald Reagan—but what were Reagan’s early arms buildup and tough rhetoric if not a deliberate tactic to throw the Soviets off balance so as to drag them back to the negotiating table? In other words, exactly the strategy Kennan protested he had meant by “containment” all along.

But by far the biggest problem today, right now, for our ruling class’s Kennan idolatry is their hero’s unapologetic counsel, persistent for more than seven decades, that American policymakers exert real effort to see the world through Russian eyes, recognize Russia’s legitimate security interests, and come to terms with Russia as a peer with whom we have no choice but to coexist. Neither country can simply vanquish the other, Kennan insisted, and so neither should try. In particular, he explained that, rightly or wrongly, Moscow will always consider Ukraine integral to Russia and will never accept the loss of “the totally un-Ukrainian Crimean peninsula, together with one of the three greatest Russian naval bases.” No less than, and well before, political scientist John Mearsheimer, George Kennan predicted that pushing NATO’s border to the Ukrainian frontier would spark a crisis. In other words, he rejected in advance the Western policies that helped lead to the present war and he would almost certainly oppose the Western aid that keeps it going. If his track record is any guide, he would—as ever—advocate peace talks.

Today’s neoliberal Russophobic Kennanphiles are in a double bind, or would be, if they in any way valued consistency. The George Kennan they profess to admire was a consistent advocate of negotiation with Russia, something today’s ruling class regards as equivalent to breaking bread with Hitler. The only way to marshal Kennan to their present cause of sticking it to Russia come what may is to resort to his ’46-’47 hardline anti-Communism, which good liberals have long regarded as troglodytic, warmongering, and McCarthyite—and which, more to the point, Kennan himself carefully qualified for the second half of his life.

The key to the apparent paradox isn’t very complicated, but grasping it seems beyond our rulers’ reasoning powers. All you have to do is go back to the original documents and remember that Kennan argued that the sources of Soviet conduct were a combination of classic Russian state interest and Communist ideology. Take away the latter, and you’re left with unadulterated Russianness. It was a staple of American Cold War policy and rhetoric that we had no quarrel with the Russian people but only with their murderous regime, which was a greater burden on them than on us. Is our government now determined to convince the Russian people that we were lying all along? At any rate, if the sanctified Kennan was right, that would mean that a non-Communist, less ideological Russia is today more amenable to talks than was Stalin in 1952, and at least as amenable as Leonid Brezhnev in 1972. So why aren’t we talking?

***

Politically, Kennan identified with and mostly served Democrats, but that may have been a function more of timing than anything else: his prime coincided with five consecutive Democratic presidential terms. He sought an appointment in the Eisenhower Administration and assisted there in an informal capacity, only to be rebuffed by Dulles. Apart from his perennial advocacy of negotiation and opposition to the arms race, about the only issue on which George Kennan was consistently liberal was environmental conservation—which has always been at least as much a concern of the Right as of the Left. Indeed, Kennan’s instinctual conservatism ran so deep that he was something of a Luddite. He lived to see the internet but said little about it. Judging from his lifelong disdain for machines and industrialization (he hated cars), he would have loathed Big Tech. As much as saying so would unnerve and anger his admirers and heirs—to say nothing of the haughty, quasi-aristocratic Kennan himself—it is not unreasonable to assert that the culturally conservative, economically ecumenical, anti-technology, anti-immigration, anti-intervention George Kennan shared more opinions with today’s populist Right than with the contemporary Left.

And yet despite all this, apart from a little grumbling occasioned by the publication of his diaries, our ruling class still professes reverence for George Kennan. Though not for the real Kennan—the isolationist Russophile immigration hawk—but a Kennan reinterpreted on their terms: scourge of the Boomer-hated Vietnam war, thorn in the side of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and the two Bushes, despiser of the average Joe. The real George Kennan, one may say, has been contained.

But mostly our overlords still exalt Kennan because he was a key architect of the postwar liberal international order, which remains a core source of their strength and power. They eagerly tear down statues of their enemies’ heroes; they know better than to deface one of their own.

—Michael Anton, Claremont Review of Books (Winter 2022/2023)

[cyberbenb]

EU seeks strategic resource partnership with Ukraine amid US negotiation strains

In a significant move, the European Union has proposed a deal to Ukraine for access to its "critical" resources, EU Commissioner for Industrial Strategy, Stephan Sejourne, announced on Monday, February 24. Sejourne indicated that "21 out of 30 critical materials needed by Europe can be supplied by Ukraine as part of a mutually beneficial partnership," though he did not specify which resources were under consideration.

During his visit to Kyiv on February 24, Sejourne presented this proposal to Ukrainian officials, reiterating that this agreement would indeed be mutually beneficial. He assured that Europe would never demand a deal unfavorable to Kyiv.

European Council President Antonio Costa, meanwhile, made it clear that the EU is not seeking Ukrainian natural resources in exchange for financial and military support. "Over the past three years, the European Union has been a significant donor in supporting Ukraine, and we do this for Ukraine, for Ukrainians, and for European security," Costa stated.

The EU's proposition comes amid discussions of a resource deal between Ukraine and the United States. The initial idea to allow rare earth metal extraction in Ukraine in exchange for military aid was floated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This caught the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump, who demanded that Kyiv reimburse $500 billion, which he claims Washington has already spent in supporting Ukraine.

The U.S. deal proposed did not include security guarantees for Kyiv, leading Zelensky to refuse to sign. In response, Trump criticized the Ukrainian president and demanded broader access not only to rare earth metals but also to oil and "anything we can get."

Defiantly, Zelensky has rejected the assertion that Ukraine owes the U.S. $500 billion for aid. "Whether someone likes it or not, I do not recognize even $100 billion; we agreed with President Biden that this is a grant! A grant is not a liability. We will not repay grants. I will not sign up for something ten generations of Ukrainians will pay," Zelensky declared.

Later, Trump indicated that despite public disagreements, Washington and Kyiv are close to finalizing a deal. "Almost all key details are agreed upon. We intend to finalize them as soon as possible to proceed with the document signing," Trump said.

According to informed sources within CNN, the agreement might be signed within the next two weeks during Zelensky’s forthcoming visit to Washington, although "troublesome technical details," including the matter of security guarantees for Ukraine, have been earmarked for further discussion.

[ipconsultinggroup-1]

US Copyright Office: AI-Assisted Works Eligible for Copyright If Sufficient Human Creativity Is Involved

The U.S. Copyright Office has clarified that artists can copyright works created with AI assistance, as long as human creativity plays a central role. The report reinforces that fully AI-generated content is not eligible for copyright, and merely prompting an AI tool does not grant ownership. However, it does not address the ongoing legal disputes over AI training on copyrighted works. The office is preparing a separate report to explore licensing, liability, and AI model training on copyrighted content.

Contact Us

DC: +1 (202) 666-8377 MD: +1 (240) 477-6361 FL +1 (239) 292–6789 Website: https://www.ipconsultinggroups.com/ Mail: protect@ipconsultinggroups.com Headquarters: 9009 Shady Grove Ct. Gaithersburg, MD 20877 Branch Office: 7734 16th St, NW Washington DC 20012 Branch Office: Vanderbilt Dr, Bonita Spring, FL 34134

[syrtissolutions]

AUDIT REVEALS MILLIONS SPENT ON DUPLICATE MEDICAID ENROLLMENTS

A recent audit by the Washington State Auditor's Office revealed that Washington state is overspending on Medicaid premiums-- an estimated $8.6 million on a yearly basis-- as a result of individuals being enrolled in Medicaid programs in multiple states. The audit focused on seven states but indicated that the financial impact from duplicate Medicaid enrollments is most likely even higher nationwide.

In 2023, the total Medicaid expenditure across the U.S. reached $880 billion. Amongst the states with the highest spending on individuals enrolled in Medicaid across multiple states, California topped the list at $134 million, followed by Washington at $65 million.

Duplicate Medicaid payments happen when an individual is concurrently enrolled in multiple state Medicaid programs. Duplicate enrollments typically occur when program beneficiaries relocate or do not have stable housing. In Oregon, as an example, those with concurrent Medicaid enrollments were found to be two times as likely to be experiencing homelessness compared to the general Medicaid population in Washington.

When beneficiaries are enrolled in more than one state's Medicaid system, the government improperly pays for their coverage multiple times-- without providing any extra benefits. Between 2019 and 2022, Oregon alone spent $445 million on Medicaid payments for duplicate enrollees. A report from Oregon's state auditors found that somewhere around 3% of Medicaid recipients in the state were also enrolled in another state's program.

The problematic data tracking system used to detect duplicate enrollments is a major hurdle in resolving this issue. The Social Security Administration's records are often unreliable, making it troublesome for state agencies to pinpoint individuals enrolled in multiple programs. Dealing with this issue requires both internal and external improvements. Internally, Washington's Auditor's Office suggests that the Health Care Authority and the Department of Social and Health Services bolster communication to better track people who may have moved out of state. If someone leaves a state-run program because of relocation, that information should be shared across pertinent agencies to prevent continued Medicaid enrollment in Washington. Externally, stronger coordination between states is vital. Since individuals who enroll in multiple Medicaid programs often transfer to neighboring states, it would be advantageous for state agencies to collaborate and cross-check enrollment records. Washington and Oregon have agreed on a strategy that includes efforts to reclaim funds spent on duplicate enrollments, partnering with the U.S. Treasury to kick off a pilot program, implementing national data verification techniques, and acquiring funding for additional staff dedicated to data matching.

One of the most effective data-driven solutions for determining active other coverage in the Medicaid program has emerged from the private sector. Syrtis Solutions (Syrtis) has launched a technology-based solution to aid the program in identifying third party liability (TPL) before medical and Rx claims are paid improperly. With the help of Syrtis Solutions and their proprietary ePrescribing data, Medicaid plans can now identify other coverage on utilizing members in real-time. Consequently, plans can avoid duplicate payments and other improper payments.

Medicaid and other taxpayer-funded programs need greater efficiency, quality data, and strict oversight to protect program resources from duplicate payments and other improper payments. Duplicate Medicaid enrollments drain program resources, and with Washington alone incurring a $8.6 million cost, urgent action is needed to stop further waste and ensure that program dollars are used to help the nation's most vulnerable populations.

Find out more here.

[newsmatik]

Nomene killed Donald Trump for the dispute of the need

Unlock NewStter Houple Disease For Free Your guide to the US 2024 for the Washington and the World Billionaire soldiers Howard Lutnick focuses on Donald Trump for his liability for his liability. If confirmation, the General Wall Street Center Fitzgerald and the Trump Trump chief to the Business Community will help her previous benefit, including Cryptocurrerencies. The satellite area and…

[darkmaga-returns]

Trump to Serve a Third Term? Trump Bans CBDC. Trump addresses the WEF Forum. Canada's political chaos. Kremlin Downplays Trump's Threat . RFK Jr. is distancing himself from anti-vaccine work

Lioness of Judah Ministry

Jan 24, 2025

Rep. Ogles Proposes Amending the 22nd Amendment to Allow Trump to Serve a Third Term

WASHINGTON, DC - Congressman Andy Ogles introduced a House Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States to allow a President to be elected for up to but no more than three terms. The language of the proposed amendment reads as follows:

‘‘No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.’’

Trump Orders Declassification of Files Related to JFK, RFK, and MLK Assassinations

President Donald J. Trump is ordering classified documents relating to the federal investigations into the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, his brother and former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and civil rights movement leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to be declassified.

The order was signed by Trump on Thursday, fulfilling a long-standing campaign promise to bring transparency as to what the U.S. government knows regarding the high-profile political assassinations that rocked the 1960s. “Everything will be revealed,” President Trump told reporters as he signed the executive order in the Oval Office and directed the pen be given to RFK’s son, Robert F. Kenendy Jr.

President Trump Signs Executive Order To Ban Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC)

The President has also assigned a working group to assess the creation of a strategic bitcoin stockpile.

Today, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order (EO) related to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, titled “Strengthening American Leadership In Digital Financial Technology”. This EO officially banned the creation and issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the United States, defining a CBDC as “a form of digital money or monetary value, denominated in the national unit of account, that is a direct liability of the central bank.”

Trump orders crypto working group to draft new regulations, explore national stockpile

Jan 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the creation of a cryptocurrency working group tasked with proposing new digital asset regulations and exploring the creation of a national cryptocurrency stockpile, making good on his promise to quickly overhaul U.S. crypto policy.

The much-anticipated action also ordered that banking services for crypto companies be protected, alluding to industry claims that U.S. regulators have directed lenders to cut crypto companies off from banking services - something regulators deny. The order also banned the creation of central bank digital currencies in the U.S. which could compete with existing cryptocurrencies.

[dankusner]

The Inauguration of Trump’s Oligarchy

In modern terms, a Presidential Inauguration is an open-air branding opportunity.

John F. Kennedy, a hatless Cold Warrior, placed his Administration at the vanguard of a new generation “born in this century,” and delivered an internationalist vow to “pay any price, bear any burden.”

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump set a distinctly different inaugural tone, delivering a sunless stem-winder of populist fury in which he vowed to heal the hellscape of “American carnage.”

No longer would the country bow to self-serving élites and rapacious foreigners:

“America will start winning again, winning like never before.”

Upon leaving the reviewing stand, George W. Bush was heard to say, “That was some weird shit.”

Trump was apoplectic about the coverage of his first hours in office, and he dispatched his spokesman, Sean Spicer, to the White House briefing room to declare that the press had “intentionally framed” images of the crowd to make it seem paltry, when, in fact, Trump had drawn, Spicer huffed incredibly, the “largest audience ever to witness an Inauguration, period.”

Spicer then shifted registers to one of unmistakable threat.

“And I’m here to tell you that it goes two ways,” he said.

“We’re gonna hold the press accountable.”

With that, the Era of Trump was truly inaugurated.

Joe Biden, whose Presidency is now grinding to its conclusion, had hoped to render Trump’s Administration a historical fluke—a fleeting, if ugly, interregnum.

And, as Biden leaves office, he can reasonably argue that jobs are up, inflation is down; violent crime has declined; and, for the first time in a generation, there are no American soldiers engaged in foreign battle.

Nevertheless, Biden’s obdurate unwillingness to step aside for younger, more plausible Democratic candidates resulted in the reëmergence of his nemesis.

Once more, the music of apocalypse is in the air:

“Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” Trump declared recently.

He will return to the Oval Office with a résumé enhanced by two impeachments, one judgment of liability for sexual abuse, and a plump cluster of felony convictions.

He will take the oath of office next week at the scene of his gravest transgression, his incitement of an insurrection on Capitol Hill.

Still, Trump soldiers on, as if all the legal accusations against him are badges of merit, further proof of his anti-establishment street cred.

Since the election, he has proposed so many advisers of low character and dubious qualification that he has overwhelmed the circuitry of the confirmation process and the public sphere.

It’s almost as if the early proposition of Matt Gaetz to head the Justice Department were a way to divert attention from the unalloyed awfulness of so many others: Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Mehmet Oz, and Kristi Noem among them.

The dessert for this feast of misbegotten nominations was served when Trump appointed Kimberly Guilfoyle, the longtime fiancée of his eldest son, Don, Jr., as the new Ambassador to Greece—a move that accommodates the son’s fresher affections for a Palm Beach socialite.

Across the land, a willing suspension of disbelief has taken hold.

(Critical thinking is so 2017.)

Certain titans of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and (God forgive us) the media have hustled off to Mar-a-Lago, a scene of such flagrant self-abnegation, ring-kissing, and genuflection that it would embarrass a medieval Pope.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post, no longer seems determined to fight the darkness; instead, he kills an endorsement drafted by his editors, watches as some of his most skilled reporters head for the exits, and pays forty million dollars for a documentary on Melania Trump.

Mark Zuckerberg’s maga conversion is now so thorough that he has added Trump’s friend Dana White, the C.E.O. of Ultimate Fighting Championship, to the board of Meta.

One of Trump’s most effective political maneuvers might be called “whacking the beehive,” a propensity to unleash so much buzzing menace into the air that it’s impossible to maintain calm, much less focus.

Will he set up detention camps for undocumented immigrants?

Will he split with nato and cut off Ukraine?

Are we about to send the 82nd Airborne to descend on the good people of Nuuk?

For decades, Vladimir Putin’s greatest rhetorical gambit has been the charge of hypocrisy.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, American critics have rightly described Russia as an oligarchic state.

In the nineteen-nineties, a half-dozen or so hustlers emerged from the rubble of the old system to exploit their proximity to Boris Yeltsin and his family to snatch up invaluable state properties––oil fields, mines, television stations––at knockoff prices.

Putin came along, in 2000, and eventually deposed most of the first-generation oligarchs, replacing them with his own satraps.

He created a personalist system in which all power and all fortunes depended on his good graces.

Perhaps what is most striking about the ascendant Trump Administration, which takes pains to cast itself as the champion of a forgotten working class, is its own oligarchic features.

The influence of big money in American politics is hardly new.

To read Theodore Dreiser’s “The Financier” is to plunge headlong into the muck of Gilded Age deceit.

The essential modern text is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that equates money with speech, resulting in an ever more corrupt system of campaign finance.

Something ominous, if not entirely novel, is taking shape in Washington.

When Trump takes the oath of office, on January 20th, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, will not be far away.

Like so many other tech billionaires, Musk apparently thinks of himself as a self-reliant genius-of-the-future, a Nietzschean superman, and yet he well knows that everything from the rise of the Internet to the creation of many newer technologies profits from the support of the state.

What’s more, Musk’s influence, unlike that of his Gilded Age predecessors, is amplified by his gargantuan following on a social-media engine in his possession.

When Trump steps up to the lectern next week to recite the oath of office, he will stand beside his wife.

But he will have a great deal of other company—multibillionaires who have shamelessly dispensed with principle to seek an indulgent new President’s favor and enhance their fortunes.