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robertreich · 4 years ago

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FAQs About What’s Ahead

You’ve been in or around politics for more than 50 years. How are you feeling about Tuesday’s election?

I’m more frightened for my country than I’ve ever been. Another four years of Donald Trump would be devastating. Nonetheless, I suspect Biden will win.

But in 2016, the polls ….

Polling is better now, and Biden’s lead is larger than Hillary Clinton’s was.

What about the Electoral College?

He’s also leading in the so-called “swing” states that gave Trump an Electoral College victory in 2016.

Will Trump contest the election?

Yes. He’ll claim fraudulent mail-in ballots in any swing state with a Republican governor or legislature. He'll tell them not to certify Biden electors until fraudulent ballots are weeded out.

What’s his goal?

To deny Biden a majority of electors and throw the decision into the House of Representatives, where Republicans are likely to have a majority of state delegations.

Will it work?

No, because technically Biden only needs a majority of electors already appointed. Even if disputed ones are excluded, I expect he’ll still get a majority.

What about late ballots? Trump has demanded all ballots be counted by midnight Election Day.

It’s not up to him. It’s up to individual state legislatures and state courts. Most will count ballots as long they’re postmarked no later than Election Day.

Will these issues end up in the Supreme Court?

Some may, but the justices know they have to appear impartial. Last week they turned down a request to extend the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in Wisconsin but allowed extensions to remain in place in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

But the Supreme Court decided the 2000 election for George W. Bush.

The last thing Chief Justice Roberts wants is another Bush v. Gore. With 6 Republican appointees now on the court, he knows the legitimacy of the court hangs in the balance.

Trump has called for 50,000 partisans to monitor polls while people vote, naming these recruits the “Army for Trump." Do you expect violence or intimidation?

Not enough to affect the outcome.

Assume you’re right and Biden wins. Will Trump concede?

I doubt it. He can’t stand to lose. He’ll continue to claim the election was stolen from him.

Will the Democrats retake the Senate?

Too close to call.

If not, can Biden get anything done?

Biden was a senator for 36 years and has worked with many of the current Republicans. He believes he can coax them into working with him.

Is he right?

I fear he’s overly optimistic. The GOP isn’t what it used to be. It’s now answerable to a much more conservative, Trumpian base.

If Republicans keep the Senate, what can we expect from a Biden administration?

Reversals of Trump executive orders and regulations – which will restore environmental and labor protections and strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Biden will also fill the executive branch with competent people, who will make a big difference. And he’ll end Trump’s isolationist, go-it-alone foreign policy.

And if Democrats retake the Senate?

Keep your expectations low. Both Clinton and Obama had Democratic congresses for their first two years yet spent all their political capital cleaning up economic messes their Republican predecessors left behind. Biden will inherit an even bigger economic mess plus a pandemic. With luck, he’ll enact a big stimulus package, reverse the Trump Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and distribute and administer a Covid vaccine. All important, but nothing earth-shattering.

If Biden wins, he’ll be the oldest man to ever be president. Will this be a problem for him in governing?

I don’t see why. He’s healthy. But I doubt he’ll seek a second term, which will affect how he governs.

What do you mean?

He’s going to be a transitional rather than a transformational president. He won’t change the underlying structure of power in society. He won’t lead a movement. He says he’ll be a “bridge” to the next generation of leaders, by which I think he means that he’ll try to stabilize the country, maybe heal some of the nation’s wounds, so that he can turn the keys over to the visionaries and movement builders of the future.

Will Trump just fade into the sunset?

Hardly. He and Fox News will continue to be the most powerful forces in the GOP, at least for the next four years.

And what happens if your whole premise is wrong and Donald Trump wins a second term?

America and the rest of the world are seriously imperiled. I prefer not to think about it.

#Joe Biden #Biden #Trump #Donald Trump #2020election #2020 election

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years ago

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Like the US president, Jair Bolsonaro has raged against the quarantine implemented by his own government and has just dismissed his level-headed health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta. A few days after the first shutdown measures were announced in São Paulo, the president blatantly defied them by encouraging his supporters to attend a mass rally on March 15, filling part of the megalopolis’s wide Avenida Paulista in support of Bolsonaro and against Congress. Covid-19 is just a gripezinha (sniffle), he insists, while heading a campaign on social media to reopen the economy under the slogan “Brazil cannot close.” On Sunday, he headed a second small rally in the capital of Brasília, where social distancing was replaced by manic jostling to get close to the president, along with chants demanding that the army intervene to get people back to work.

Bolsonaro has dismissed as “hysteria” the lockdown measures, implemented swiftly in Brazil despite the president’s rhetoric. “Let’s face the virus like men, not kids,” he urged, as he visited a Brasília street market last month. Perhaps the only head of state able to out-Trump Trump in sheer recklessness and social-networked delirium, Bolsonaro has mobilized his three loyal sons, two of them members of Congress, to help peddle conspiracy theories concerning China and snake-oil remedies such as chloroquine. Ironically, Bolsonaro, 66, was lucky to escape infection on March 7, when he attended a neoconservative get-together hosted by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, after which several members of the Brazilian delegation came down with severe symptoms.

The terrifying implications of such a cavalier approach to the pandemic in a country with a stretched health care system and vast slum cities where social isolation, and even the routine precaution of washing hands, is an impossible challenge, soon forced the Brazilian establishment into action. When Bolsonaro—following the Trumpian script—announced that he would reverse the lockdowns in São Paulo, Rio, and other cities, the Supreme Court reiterated that under Brazil’s federal system, it is state and city authorities who decide such matters. Leaders of both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies supported Mandetta, while governors like João Doria in São Paulo and Wilson Witzel in Rio—allies of Bolsonaro in the presidential elections of 2018—maintained the city lockdowns. Justice minister and super judge Sérgio Moro, who led the “car wash” anti-corruption probe and sentenced former president Lula da Silva to nine years in prison, dared to defy the president whom he had helped into power.

The other super minister in the Bolsonaro government, billionaire financier Paulo Guedes, whose global investment funds are now staring into the abyss, also seemed skeptical of Bolsonaro’s antics, despite his concern that the lockdowns and a pandemic-driven 5 percent drop in GDP this year (an IMF forecast) might scupper his plans to privatize the Brazilian economy. Pots and pans were banged from the balconies of locked-down apartment blocks in middle-class districts of Rio and São Paulo in protest against Bolsonaro, just as they had been five or six years before against the soon-to-be-impeached President Dilma Rousseff. Like Trump’s health adviser Anthony Fauci, also a doctor, Mandetta had emerged as a voice of reason, with better ratings in the polls than Bolsonaro’s, and appeared to have cleverly outmaneuvered the president. At least, until his dismissal last week.

Even the armed forces—well represented in the Bolsonaro cabinet—seemed prepared to intervene against the madness of President Jair, despite the Bolsonaristas’ calls for military action in favor of the president. A report in DefesaNet, an online media outlet used by the military to get its message out, said that effective control of the government’s strategy on Covid-19 had devolved to the chief of staff, Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto. “The president will thus be able to behave democratically as if he did not belong to his own government,” explained DefesaNet, a contorted phrase that perfectly captures the Brazilian establishment and military’s paternal approach to Bolsonaro’s childish outbursts.

When Mandetta was confirmed in his post after Bolsonaro’s initial threats to oust him, many concluded that the lunatic had been removed from control of the asylum, or at least the intensive care ward. “The general feeling here is that Bolsonaro is a puppet,” remarked an employee early last week at the country’s state development bank, BNDES, whose role in successfully fending off the global economic crisis in 2009 will be sorely missed this time, after Guedes’s decision to downsize it. But the removal of Mandetta, and Bolsonaro’s paranoid appeal to his base Friday to help him fight off an alleged coup attempt orchestrated by Doria in São Paulo and Rodrigo Maia, the head of the Chamber of Deputies, suggest an alternate reading. Could the president glimpse opportunity in the chaos?

“There is method in the madness,” explained the anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares in an interview. Soares is co-author of Elite da Tropa, a gripping 2006 account of police brutality and extreme-right-wing death squads in Rio’s favelas that was turned into two blockbuster films, Elite Squad and Elite Squad 2. Soares, whose latest book, O Brasil e Seu Duplo (Brazil and Its Duplicate), explores the origins of Bolsonaro and Brazilian neofascism, says Covid-19 will either stop the Bolsonaro project in its tracks or accelerate its progress. “Bolsonaro has been advised to deny the threat of the pandemic,” said Soares. “He feels sure of himself, in part because he’s mimicking Trump. But his authority has diminished, and he’s in danger of becoming a lame-duck president only a year into his term.”

But the president has a plan. Behaving, as the generals suggested, “as if he did not belong to his own government,” Bolsonaro may be able to escape the blame for the devastating economic crisis now unfolding. A brutal recession triggered, as elsewhere, by the pandemic, comes after seven years of stagnation. Even before the pandemic, 60 million Brazilians had fallen back into poverty (defined as earning less than $5 a day) after the advances of the Lula years. “The plan is to transfer responsibility and accuse the others for allowing the tremendous crisis which we are going to encounter,” said Soares.

The worsening social conditions will undoubtedly create fertile ground for Bolsonaro’s bid to capitalize on discontent. A survey cited by piauí magazine found that 72 percent of Brazilians have enough savings to cushion lost earnings for just one week before entering serious hardship, and 32 percent already report problems buying essential goods like food. “We are staying in, but food is scarce, and without work there is no money,” said a mother of two who lives in the enormous Rio favela of Rocinha, where at least 50,000 inhabitants are packed into the hillside above Ipanema and Leblon. “Practically everybody in the favela works in the informal economy, so the lockdown doesn’t really apply here; businesses are open but close earlier. People are wearing masks; there is little information,” said Macarrao, a rapper from Cinco Bocas, a favela in the North Zone of Rio, whose daughter has Covid-19. “She got treatment fairly quickly,” he added. This may not be the case now. Epidemiologists at five important institutes in Brazil forecast recently that the health system could reach the point of collapse by late April.

The Bolsonaro government has guaranteed a basic monthly income of 600 reales ($112) to those with no income, but the electronic application has failed, and long lines of people—practicing scant social distancing—have waited outside the public savings bank Caixa Econômica, only to discover that their transfer has not arrived. In any case, $4 a day is a pittance, and Guedes seems reluctant to take any other measures to soften the blow for Brazil’s poor, even though he has passed tax cuts for business. There is a logical link to Guedes’s neoliberal stance, as millions descend into poverty and hunger, and Bolsonaro’s populist plan to blame it all on Mandetta and the governors of the two big cities: Both governors are potential rivals for the next presidential elections, and Bolsonaro will use his media to pinpoint them as responsible for the hardship.

While registered cases of the coronavirus in Brazil are 40,000, the real figure is probably over 10 times that, as indicated by the current unnaturally high mortality rate. According to official data, by the end of last week some 2,600 people had died from the virus—low compared with Europe and the United States, but Brazil is late in the curve. And Brazil’s intensive care units are fast approaching capacity, just as they have in Europe. Manaus, the Amazon metropolis where the reports of contagion in the indigenous territories make harrowing reading, is already at 100 percent capacity and is transferring patients to other sites. A survey by the University of Pelotas in Rio Grande do Sul, in the south of the country, estimates that there are at least seven times more cases than the official figures suggest.

Bolsonaro will try to build a strategy from his base of support among evangelicals and people in the orbit of the police and military. Evangelicals have been another element of the Covid-19 denial, but they are fired by conviction rather than nonchalance. Edir Macedo, the billionaire pastor whose TV networks are used by Bolsonaro in preference to the establishment Rede Globo, said the WHO’s warnings on Covid-19 were the “work of Satan.” “Our position from the first moment has been to keep the churches open, because God will defeat the virus,” said Washington Reis, the evangelical mayor of the Rio working-class district of Duque de Caxias last week. Days later, God had spoken, and Reis was hospitalized with Covid-19. The tactic may be working. Bolsonaro appears to have maintained support in the pandemic, despite the pot banging and international horror at his stance. A poll by Datafolha last week showed that 36 percent of Brazilians believe his management of the health crisis is “good or great,” slightly more support than before the pandemic. And 52 percent say he’s capable of leading the country through the crisis.

There may even be a second phase to Bolsonaro’s strategy of leveraging Covid-19 to stay in power, said Soares. “Building on the contradictions of his own government and the coming crisis in the health system and the economy, Bolsonaro may be hoping for some kind of a social explosion in the streets,” he said. “That would create the conditions for a state of emergency and the end of democratic institutions that are still blocking the path of Bolsonaro’s basic project: a dictatorship and the perpetuation in power of his family.”

The call for a coup against Congress—pitched, at Sunday’s rally, at more extremist elements in the armed forces—may be a first step in this direction. By first denouncing an alleged coup plot against his own presidency, allegedly planned by Congress and the big-city governors, and then calling for military action in his defense, “Bolsonaro is following the example of many authoritarian presidents, starting with Hitler in 1933,” writes Nabil Bonduki, former São Paulo culture secretary, in an article in Folha de S.Paulo. “The allegation of an attempted coup is thus the pretext for a coup planned by the president himself.” The idea might sound fanciful, and as paranoid as Bolsonaro’s own rhetoric. But the former army captain was a reluctant recruit to democratic politics even before the devastating arrival of Covid-19.

Bolsonaro’s close links to right-wing militias made up of former military police and firemen, which run whole swaths of the West Zone of Rio, may help. “The militias have always been close to the Bolsonaro family, and now they are becoming more ideological, part of a Bolsonarist movement. They could help in a coup if he wants that,” said Soares. The militia Escritório do Crime (the Crime Office) is known to be implicated in the assassination of left-wing Rio city councilor Marielle Franco over two years ago. To square the circle of fascism and Covid-19, reports are just out that the militias in Itanhangá and Rio das Pedras, adjacent to the kitsch beach resort of Barra da Tijuca, where the Bolsonaro family has its base, are forcing businesses to stay open during the lockdown so they can continue to charge for protection.

as ian kershaw points out, the latin american cold war governments that were called fascism don’t really correspond with the italian and german examples because they lack the mass movements that brought hitler and mussolini to power. they, like salazar and franco, used symbols of fascism to exude power, but did not share the key characteristics of the movement. for instance, the nazi party numbered in the hundreds of thousands before it took power, while the falange only had 10,000 members at the outbreak of the spanish civil war. bolsonaro, in contrast, has a mass movement behind him, with the parties that back him having membership in the millions. his supporters are not older men, like most conservatives, but men in their 20s and 30s who are willing to go out and rally and brawl for him. like nazis, they have developed an intellectualized but conspiratorial and religiously-imbued notion of national salvation from international threats. they are often armed and control territory, with more favelas actually being under control of paramilitary groups than drug gangs.

on the other hand, many definitions of fascism, particularly on the left, require an economic component. a crude form of trotsky’s theory of fascism essentially labels these groups as pinkertons who took over a state, who come when the rate of profit is low and force labour to give up more of its share of national income. brazil is indeed experiencing a low rate of profit, but its labour movement is not well organized enough to seriously defend its prerogatives from a traditional state-backed approach. it can be pointed out that PT, which was attempting such an approach, was removed from power by those who viewed the party as defenders of labour. this grouping, based in the traditional military power centres of the brazilian regime, did not have any real support on their own among the brazilian populace, with temer’s government having a 5% approval rating. bolsonaro was seized upon by this grouping because it offered the chance for a government that largely agreed with its goals but could muster a far greater base of support among the populace. this partially mirrors the rise of hitler, who was also seen by supporters of the former military dictatorship as their ticket back into such a situation. the combination of hitler’s love of the military contrasted with the disdain of him by actual military figures (hindenburg called him “the little corporal”) can be seen in the current bolsonaro-generals dynamic. it took the nazi party leadership a year and a half to subsume the military to its own prerogatives, while bolsonaro has done far less in that time. however, bolsonaro’s base has been primed for a coup they view as a countercoup, with rumours of a military takeover having spread across the pro-bolsonaro blogosphere starting in march along with rhetoric of defending him from such an event.

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statusquoergo · 5 years ago

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Pour one out for the total lack of Mike Ross callouts in this episode; I guess they filled up their pre-episode 5 quota with that deluge last time.

In any event, we get the ball rolling this time with a reminder that Samantha served…somewhere…at some point… Not that the specifics matter overmuch, I just think that if they want to make this such a key feature of her personality, they should invest some time in fleshing it out instead of tossing a reference in whenever it’s convenient. Anyway her old Marines buddy Lucas was fired from SW Industries for botching a DoD contract, he suspects nepotism is at play, and she takes the case pro bono even though he’s got his pride and tries to turn down her charity.

Smash cut to Donna and Harvey visiting Louis at home, before work, to formally divulge to him their new relationship status, and the revelation that Louis apparently wears Speedos instead of underwear, because I super needed to know that. Louis is again explicitly mocked for not getting that they’re dating as Harvey marvels that he ever got through law school, and I, for one, am over it. “It” being this show’s treatment of Louis’s character. He’s mature until he’s not, he’s growing until he has the same setback for the fifth time in a row, he’s coming into his own until he can’t control his emotions or make a rational decision to save his life. I’m done with being told to laugh derisively at his cluelessness and his quirky habits while simultaneously being asked to admire his devotion to saving his firm at any cost as he insists that a man’s character is his most valuable asset. Louis could have developed into a really interesting character, but they can’t seem to stop shooting themselves in the foot every time they have the chance.

Side note, am I the only one who thought Harvey’s smile at “we’re happy” looked more like a grimace? Boy’s got some inner conflicts to work out.

Back at the firm, I do my very best to ignore the fact that the Bar Association doesn’t have the authority to install a special master, and a special master doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally decide to take over a law firm, as Faye Richardson steps right into my good graces with a severely truncated list of the firm’s biggest grievances. Namely, Jessica’s and Robert’s disbarments, Mike’s prison term (this doesn’t count as a callout, she doesn’t even name him), and the firm’s higher-ups definitely having been a party to the fraud, even though they were never charged. She undercuts it a little by “wiping the slate clean of everything [they’ve] ever done,” but I mean at least she’s there, so that’s a start. Her first act as supreme overlord is to take Robert’s name off the wall, at which point Samantha flips her shit and does herself precisely zero favors by promising to dig up dirt on Faye if she goes through with it; Faye, who’s apparently used to reactions like that, gives no fucks, informing them that their “days of operating however [they] want are over,” and all I have to say about that is better late than never.

Samantha’s reaction to all this is to threaten to quit rather than seek permission she won’t get to take Lucas’s case, and Harvey, who wasn’t the managing partner even before Faye showed up, takes it upon himself to give her permission to keep the case by lying that she took it last night rather than that morning and I don’t know who’s using the shared single brain cell right now, but I think Harvey needs to borrow it for a minute. Louis and Alex bitch at each other about whose fault it is that Faye is there at all and Gretchen, who’s apparently worked at every law firm in the city, confides that as managing partner at her old firm, Faye stripped her husband’s name from the wall and fired him for crossing “some kind of line,” indicating that she is in fact a cold-hearted bitch, but also giving Louis the idea that she does care about the Bar, and this is going to end well, I’m sure.

In her first move of actually making a move, Faye asks Donna, in her role as the firm’s COO, to set up a meeting with Thomas Kessler so Faye can ask him why he left. Donna snidely informs her that she has a reputation for solving problems rather than hiding them, and I’d like to bring to the court’s attention the events of “Break Point” (s02e05), in which Donna quite consciously and to potentially devastating effect went out of her way to hide a problem. By shredding it. In a shredder.

Donna promises to set up this meeting and then rushes to warn Harvey about it, and they have a very weird exchange that I honestly don’t know how to interpret. To wit, Harvey says that he knows she’ll disagree with him, but Faye needs to go; of course Donna doesn’t disagree, but like, why did he think she would? The whole firm was pretty abrasive toward Faye in that first meeting, and they all know just how many skeletons are buried under the floorboards; why would any of them want her around?

Cue flirty banter and my first major Darvey red flag of the evening: Harvey says it’s unlike Donna to not try to talk him out of it. Ignoring the fact that “it” is a vague concept rather than a concrete plan, this overt admission that their dynamic is him doing stuff and her trying to convince him not to do that stuff doesn’t do much to convince me that this relationship is particularly functional, or healthy, or makes either of them especially happy. They go back and forth on which of them became less uptight since they fucked (“Since we, uh.” “Since we what?” “Nothing. Since we nothing.” “That’s right.”) and Harvey declares that between the two of them, he’s the one acting consistently, and if by that he means “shoving his emotional turmoil way down deep until he’s almost walking on it and pretending everything’s fine until it explodes,” then yes, I have to agree.

Next up we have Samantha barging into Lucas’s former place of business to accuse the CEO of wrongful termination, her main argument seeming to be that Lucas deserves his job because he’s a veteran. The CEO informs her that “Lucas was far from perfect,” including missing work at crunch time and apparently assaulting an employee to the point of needing medical care; after beating us over the head with these hints that Lucas has post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he sends Samantha on her way, and here’s hoping they don’t botch this too badly.

Louis continues to erode my faith in his character by storming into Benjamin’s office—yes, Benjamin, the IT guy, who “just set up [Faye’s] firewall this morning,” because that’s a thing—to demand that he find a loophole in the Bar’s 3000-page long, non-digitized bylaws that’ll allow him to get rid of Faye. Couple things here: One, Benjamin is in IT, he doesn’t know how to find a loophole in the bylaws. Two, the New York State Bar Association’s bylaws are 41 pages long, including amendments and indices, and they’re available online, for free, in PDF format.

Part II

#suits usa #season 9 #s09e02 #analysis

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Thursday, November 5, 2020

Presidential election: Race to 270 electoral votes still on (USA Today) By early Thursday, Joe Biden led with 264 electoral votes to 214 for President Trump, both short of the 270 necessary to win the presidency. Biden also had an edge in the popular vote. The Trump campaign announced Wednesday it is pursuing court actions to stop ballot counting in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and to prevent the counting of absentee ballots in Georgia that it claims arrived after an Election Day deadline. Launching a multi-state legal battle to secure a second White House term over Biden, the campaign also made plans to seek a recount in Wisconsin.

World waits nervously, impatiently for US vote count (AP) From Ford Model T cars that popped off the assembly line in just 90 minutes to 60-second service for burgers, the United States has had a major hand in making the world a frenetic and impatient place, primed and hungry for instant gratification. So waking up to the news Wednesday that the winner of the U.S. election might not be known for hours, days or weeks—pundits filled global airwaves with their best guesses—came as a shock to a planet weaned on that most American of exports: speed. But as world leaders generally refrained from commenting on the outcome until it was clear, the particularly fractious and contested nature of the vote was already sparking concerns overseas that the superpower’s sharp divisions and internal conflicts exposed by the election might endure long after the winner is declared. “The battle over the legitimacy of the result—whatever it will look like—has now begun,” said the German defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. “This is a very explosive situation. It is a situation of which experts rightly say it could lead to a constitutional crisis in the U.S.,” she said on ZDF television. “That is something that must certainly worry us very much.” Overall, uncertainty ruled. In the vacuum of no immediate winner, there was some gloating from Russia, Africa and other parts of the world that have repeatedly been on the receiving end of U.S. criticism, with claims that the election and the vote count were exposing the imperfections of American democracy. “Africa used to learn American democracy, America is now learning African democracy,” tweeted Nigerian Sen. Shehu Sani, reflecting a common view from some on a continent long used to troubled elections and U.S. criticism of them.

Fighting words (NYT) The disputed election was a “sham” and a blow to democratic traditions. The country was in “a crisis,” as rival electoral candidates had both declared victory. There were “convincing reports of serious irregularities with ballot counting and reporting of election results.” For four years, the U.S. government has offered stern words on disputed elections around the world. The condemnations fit into an American tradition of promoting democracy that dates to World War II and using pressure to fight autocratic rivals. The U.S. presidential election, which pits President Trump against Democratic challenger Joe Biden, looks to be as tense as any U.S. vote in living memory. Trump has previously refused to commit to a “peaceful transition of power.” With disputes over mail-in ballots and the electoral college likely to dominate the post-election discussion, U.S. democracy is already being called into question by election observers from groups such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Experts like Sarah Repucci, vice president of research and analysis at Freedom House, warn that other nations will be watching closely. “There’s an issue where people will say: ‘Well, who are you to tell us what to do?’ “ Repucci said. “ ‘You’re not doing it right yourself.’”

Some Americans say they want to leave if Trump wins again (USA Today) Some Americans have threatened to move to another country depending on the election outcome Tuesday, reminiscent of the dismay they felt after the 2016 presidential contest results. But not everyone ditched the USA as they claimed they would, including actor Samuel L. Jackson and comedian Jon Stewart. One sheriff in Ohio, Richard K. Jones, is already mocking celebrities who said they’d leave four years ago but didn’t. Now he’s offering a one-way ticket for them out of the country. Still, record numbers of Americans have wanted to flee in the U.S. in recent years during President Donald Trump’s administration, according to Gallup’s World Poll in 2019. The 16% of Americans who said in 2017 and again in 2018 that they would like to permanently move to another country is higher than the average levels during either the George W. Bush (11%) or Barack Obama administrations (10%). The number of Americans, particularly young women, who say they desire to leave the U.S. permanently is on the rise. In fact, 40% of women younger than 30 say they would like to leave, the study showed. An estimated 9 million U.S. citizens live overseas as of 2019, according to the State Department.

Hurricane Eta weakens to a tropical storm as it sets course toward US Gulf Coast after slamming Nicaragua (CNN) Tropical Storm Eta still has days of devastation in store for Central America, and after lingering there the storm is set to move on to the US coast. Reports of Eta’s catastrophic damage from rains, winds and flooding in Nicaragua and Honduras have begun to roll in, but it could be days until residents there are able to survey the totality of the impact. The slow-moving storm made landfall along the coast of Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane Tuesday afternoon. Eta had maximum sustained winds near 140 mph at landfall, but by Wednesday morning had dropped to tropical storm status with 70 mph winds, according to the National Hurricane Center. Though it has weakened, the storm will linger over the region for the coming days, bringing “catastrophic, life-threatening flash flooding, river flooding and mudslides,” according to the NHC.

Pints poured, retail therapy: England readies for lockdown (AP) Thirsty drinkers in England will be enjoying their final freshly poured pints in a pub for a month Wednesday while shoppers will get one last dose of retail therapy as the country prepares to join large swathes of Europe in lockdown as part of intensified efforts to contain the resurgent coronavirus. Pubs, along with restaurants, hairdressers and other retailing outlets deemed to be selling non-essential items, such as books and sneakers, will have to close their doors Thursday until at least Dec. 2 following a sudden change of course last weekend by the British government. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had for weeks argued in favor of more regional strategies to contain the virus, but said he had to be “humble in the face of nature.” England’s lockdown follows similar restrictions elsewhere in the U.K. and across Europe, as nations grapple with mounting new COVID-19 infections and clear signals that the number of people being hospitalized—and subsequently dying—from the virus are increasing,

Austrian attacker named (Foreign Policy) Austrian police have arrested at least 14 people in connection with Monday’s terrorist attacks in Vienna, which left four dead and 22 wounded. The arrests came as authorities identified the man they believe to be the sole assailant, Kujtim Fejzulai, a 20-year-old Austrian who had served time in prison for attempts to join the Islamic State in Syria. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, although it is not yet known to what extent Fejzulai was affiliated with the group.

Spain’s former king Juan Carlos faces new corruption allegations (Guardian) Spain’s attorney general has instructed supreme court prosecutors to investigate new corruption allegations against the country’s disgraced former king. Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014, is already under investigation over his alleged role in a deal under which a Spanish consortium won a €6.7bn (£5.9bn) contract to build a high-speed rail line in Saudi Arabia. Reports emerged in March suggesting Juan Carlos had received a $100m (€88m) payment from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah in 2008, three years before the contract was awarded. The king was covered by constitutional immunity while on the throne, but lost the protection when he stepped down to make way for his son, King Felipe. The attorney general’s office did not give details of the new investigation. Juan Carlos announced in August that he was going into exile to protect his son from further embarrassment. In a letter sent to Felipe and released by the royal house, Juan Carlos said he would move from Spain because of the “public repercussions that certain past events in my private life are causing”.

Facing pandemic economic woes, Nepal reopens to adventurers (AP) Adventurers looking to scale Nepal’s Himalayan peaks and trek its mountain trails can finally do so for the first time in seven months, as the country reopens to foreigners even as the coronavirus pandemic has left it short of hospital beds. Foreign visitors are a major source of income for Nepal and the closure has impacted the estimated 800,000 people who work in the tourism industry. For now the reopening will come with restrictions and mainly be limited to those seeking to climb or trek its famous peaks. Nepal is home to the eight of the 14 highest mountains in the world, including the tallest, Mount Everest.

China punishes Australia, again (Foreign Policy) The relationship between Canberra and Beijing hit another new low this week, after China effectively imposed tens of billions of dollars in trade curbs on wine, barley, sugar, and other goods—but wouldn’t admit to them. Imposing unofficial boycotts and increased costs is part of Beijing’s playbook, such as the harassment of South Korean firms after the decision to install a U.S. missile-defense system there. Such use of state power violates trade rules, but complaints aren’t likely to move the Chinese government.

As Japan moves to revive its countryside, pandemic chases many from cities (Reuters) When the coronavirus outbreak caused rice and instant noodles to disappear from supermarket shelves in Tokyo this year, Kaoru Okada, 36, decided to leave the capital because he was worried about food security. Okada settled in the central Japanese city of Saku, Nagano prefecture, about 160 kilometres (100 miles) northwest of Tokyo, maintaining his online retail and export business while growing vegetables in shared farms and threshing rice. “Living close to a food-producing centre and connections with farmers give me a sense of security,” Okada said. As the pandemic has pushed many companies to allow telecommuting, it has also caused population to flow out of Tokyo—the first time that has happened in years, the latest government data showed. The shift could boost Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who made revitalising Japan’s decaying rural regions a core plank of his socioeconomic platform. Despite a lack of jobs and infrastructure to support them, local governments and businesses have been trying for years—largely in vain—to draw more people to rural areas.

Ethiopia sends army into Tigray region, heavy fighting reported (Reuters) Heavy fighting broke out in Ethiopia’s Tigray region on Wednesday, diplomatic sources said, after the prime minister launched military operations in response to what he said was an attack on federal troops. In September, Tigray held regional elections in defiance of the federal government, which called the vote “illegal”. The row has escalated in recent days with both sides accusing each other of plotting a military conflict. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office said that early on Wednesday, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) tried to steal artillery and other equipment from federal forces stationed there. “The last red line has been crossed with this morning’s attacks and the federal government is therefore forced into a military confrontation,” it said, adding that the aim was to prevent instability engulfing the country and region. Tigrayans ruled Ethiopian politics since guerrilla fighters ousted a Marxist dictator in 1991, but their influence has waned under Abiy. Last year, the TPLF quit his ruling coalition. Since Abiy came to power in 2018, many senior Tigrayan officials have been detained, fired or sidelined, in what the federal government describes as a clamp-down on corruption but Tigrayans see as a means to quell dissent.

Ivory Coast police surround opposition leaders’ houses (Reuters) Police in Ivory Coast surrounded the houses of two of President Alassane Ouattara’s main rivals on Tuesday after the government accused them of sedition for creating a parallel administration in defiance of Ouattara’s landslide win in Saturday’s election. It was not immediately clear if anyone had been arrested. But the moves deepened a bitter standoff over the president’s bid for a third term that has cost more than 35 lives since August, including at least five during election day on Saturday. The dispute followed a campaign marred by violent clashes between Ouattara’s supporters and opponents that spurred fears of longer term unrest. More than 3,000 people were killed in a brief civil war that followed a 2010 election that brought Ouattara to power.

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automaticpostinfluencer · 5 years ago

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Workday to give employees cash bonuses, Germany seals off its borders

This is CNBC’s live blog covering all the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak. All times below are in Eastern time. This blog will be updated throughout the day as the news breaks.

Global cases: More than 169,387, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Global deaths: At least 6,513, according to Johns Hopkins University.

US cases: At least 3,774, according to Johns Hopkins University.

US deaths: At least 69, according to Johns Hopkins University.

10:53 am: Supreme Court postpones arguments, citing Spanish flu precedent

Crowds line up outside the Supreme Court as it resumes oral arguments at the start of its new term in Washington, October 7, 2019.

Mary F. Calvert | Reuters

The Supreme Court said Monday that it will postpone arguments scheduled for March and early April because of health concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The top court cited its actions during the Spanish flu epidemic of the early 19th century and the yellow fever outbreaks of the 18th century as precedents.

The postponement will delay arguments in three blockbuster cases over whether President Donald Trump may shield his financial records, including tax returns, from state and congressional investigators, among other matters. Those cases were set to be argued on March 31. —Tucker Higgins

10:30 am: New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut ban eating in restaurants, limit events to less than 50 people

The governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have agreed to a common set of rules to reduce density throughout the region, closing restaurants and bars and limiting public gatherings to less than 50 people.

“We have agreed to a common set of rules that will pertain in all of our states, so don’t even think about going to a neighboring state because there’s going to be a different set of conditions,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday during a press call on the fast-spreading COVID-19 outbreak in the state.

The briefing came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday urged people across the U.S. to cancel or postpone events with 50 or more attendees for the next eight weeks to try to contain the fast-moving coronavirus pandemic.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he will sign an executive order, set to take effect Tuesday, that effectively closes restaurants, bars, and cafes. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr., Noah Higgins-Dunn, Will Feuer

10:25 am: Treasury Secretary Mnuchin tells Cramer there will be a lot of ‘pent-up demand’ when crisis ends

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks with reporters outside White House in Washington, DC, on March 13, 2020.

Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC on Monday there will be a surge of demand for stocks once the coronavirus threat abates.

“There will be a huge amount of pent-up demand when this is done. And it will be done,” the Treasury secretary told CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

“Look for companies that have a ton of liquidity. An Apple will have customers,” Mnuchin added. “That’s just a given. The goal is not to bail out companies.” —Thomas Franck

10:07 am: Millions could lose their jobs in a coronavirus recession. Many won’t get severance pay

The odds of slipping into a recession are increasingly likely as the global coronavirus outbreak puts acute stress on the U.S. economy. That could be bad news for American workers, who may lose jobs by the millions in a downturn. For those workers who don’t receive severance pay, the financial impact could be especially devastating.

Economic cracks are beginning to emerge. Small-business owners are starting to report supply-chain problems and lost sales. The travel industry is reeling. Big oil and gas companies are slashing spending and cutting dividends amid a plunge in oil prices. Consumer spending has fallen as Americans pull back from their daily routines.

Many workers don’t have an adequate financial backstop in layoff situations, experts said. Half of U.S. adults expected to be living paycheck to paycheck this year and 53% did not have an emergency fund that covers at least three months of expenses, according to a financial planning survey conducted prior to the coronavirus outbreak by First National Bank of Omaha in Nebraska.

Federal law doesn’t require American companies to pay severance in the event of layoffs, leaving it up to the discretion of business owners. —Greg Iacurci

9:58 am: NYSE implements new procedures for floor participants

CNBC’s Bob Pisani reports that while entering the New York Stock Exchange Monday morning a medical team was at the entrance. An attendant took his temperature and he was asked to fill out a one-page questionnaire on whether he was feeling ill or had traveled out of the country. —John Melloy

9:51 am: Workday will give employees a cash bonus worth two weeks of pay amid outbreak

Aneel Bhusri, CEO, Workday

Adam Galica | CNBC

Workday will pay its lower-level employees the equivalent of two-weeks pay as a cash bonus to help support them during the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The move, which excludes executives at the vice president level and above in addition to “certain senior individual contributors,” is expected to add about $80 million to Workday’s first quarter and full-year 2021 expenses compared to initial guidance, the company said in a financial filing. Workday, which provides human resources software, reported 12,200 total employees as of the end of January and said it also employs contractors. Workday plans to pay the bonus in its first fiscal quarter ending April 30. —Lauren Feiner

9:39 am: Uber is delivering free meals to health-care workers and first responders

Uber is giving away free meals to health workers and first responders who are helping combat the coronavirus pandemic, Nelson Chai, the company’s chief financial officer, told CNBC on Monday.

“We’re going to deliver over 300,000 meals for health officials and first responders who are on the front line,” Chai said in a “Squawk Box” interview. “We’re doing what we can.”

The company’s Uber Eats segment is also waiving delivery fees for small businesses in some of its markets. —Jessica Bursztynsky

9:36 am: Germany seals off borders as European countries report record jump in coronavirus deaths

Germany is the latest European country to seal off its borders in an effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak, as the number of deaths in Europe jumped overnight.

As of Monday morning, Germany had shut its borders with Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, and Denmark. Only German citizens, those who reside in the country and work in a neighboring nation and vice-versa, and physical goods, can cross the German border. Though Berlin is not the first European capital to impose border restrictions, the move marked a U-turn in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy.

“It’s a crisis situation,” Friedrich Heinemann, head of public finance at the German-based think tank ZEW, told CNBC about the German decision. —Silvia Amaro

9:31 am: Stocks crater at the open, circuit-break kicks in almost immediately and halts trading

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange March 12, 2020.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Stocks cratered at the open, with the major averages dropping more than 5% and leading to a 15-minute halt in trading after the circuit-breaker threshold was triggered.

According to the New York Stock Exchange, a market trading halt occurs at “three circuit breaker thresholds” on the S&P 500 due to large declines and volatility. The exchange classifies this at three levels based on the preceding session’s close in the S&P 500.

Before trading was halted, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,250 points, or 9.7%. The S&P 500 fell 8%, while the Nasdaq Composite was down 6%. —Pippa Stevens

9:26 am: Fiat Chrysler ends production at the majority of its European plants

Fiat Chrysler is ending production at the majority of its European plants through March 27 due to the coronavirus, the company said Monday.

The plans come less than a week after the Italian-American automaker announced it would “intensify measures” against the spread of the coronavirus in Italy, including temporarily closing plants there, where the government has implemented a national quarantine amid a rapid spread of COVID-19.

The temporary shutdowns include plants in Italy, Serbia, and Poland. It’s unclear at this time how many of the company’s 23 plants will remain open. A company spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Fiat Chrysler, in a release, said its plans include measures to enable the company to “promptly” restart manufacturing operations once ready. —Michael Wayland

9:24 am: JPMorgan tells employees around the world to work from home if possible

JPMorgan Chase is telling all its employees globally to work from home if possible.

The New York-based bank, which has 256,981 workers and operates in 60 countries, is expanding on a policy it began last week for New York-metro area employees as it copes with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Effective immediately, we are asking all managers globally to allow employees to work from home to the extent feasible,” the bank’s operating committee said Sunday in a staff email. “This will further facilitate social distancing in the communities we call home while continuing to serve our clients and customers.” —Hugh Son

9:12 am: Ex-FDA chief sees US peak late April to early May

9:02 am: Coronavirus forces airlines to consider the once unthinkable: a halt to US flights

An empty check-in area is seen at the United Airlines domestic check-in area at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, on Thursday, March. 5, 2020.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Airlines around the world are racing to preserve cash as demand for flights craters after political leaders turn to increasingly draconian measures that have disrupted daily life in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. Now U.S. airlines are grappling a scenario that unthinkable earlier this year when they reported record revenues: a suspension of U.S. air travel.

On Sunday, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said, “all options remain on the table” when asked at a White House press conference whether the administration is considering a halt of domestic air travel. A day earlier, President Donald Trump said the American public should avoid unnecessary travel. Early Monday, the administration expanded its 30-day ban on most European visitors to Ireland and the U.K., an unprecedented curb on international travel.

While it is not guaranteed that the administration will take that route, which would be the first time the U.S. instituted a blanket air travel ban since the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, or whether it would last two weeks, a month, or longer, several executives told CNBC that they are considering all possibilities. —Leslie Josephs

8:53 am: IMF says it’s ready to ‘mobilize its $1 trillion lending capacity’

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaks at a press conference in Washington D.C., the United States, on March 4, 2020.

Liu Jie | Xinhua | Getty Images

The International Monetary Fund on Monday said it “stands ready” to use its $1 trillion lending capacity to help countries around the world that are struggling with the humanitarian and economic impact of the novel coronavirus.

“As a first line of defense, the Fund can deploy its flexible and rapid-disbursing emergency response toolkit to help countries with urgent balance-of-payment needs,” wrote Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

“The Fund already has 40 ongoing arrangements — both disbursing and precautionary — with combined commitments of about $200 billion,” she added. “In many cases, these arrangements can provide another vehicle for the rapid disbursement of crisis financing.” —Will Feuer

8:08 am: Doctor says we ‘really should look a little more like China’

Dr. Corey Hebert, assistant professor at both Louisiana State and Tulane Universities, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the U.S. should commit to social distancing in an effort to “flatten the curve.” “If we do what we’re supposed to do, we really should look a little more like China,” he said in reference to China’s aggressive mitigation efforts that include wide-scale quarantines and travel restrictions. “What we’re trying to do is instead of having 15,000 people sick at one time, which would overburden the medical system, we’d rather have 10 people sick, or 10,000 people sick rather, over a longer amount of time, so 15 days.” —Will Feuer

7:37 am: Roche CEO says it will provide over 400 tests this week

In an effort to boost screening capacity to help contain the growing epidemic, the Food and Drug Administration issued emergency authorization last week for a COVID-19 test made by Swiss diagnostics maker Roche. The company says automated tests can provide results in 3.5 hours as opposed to a few days. The company will begin its rollout with over 400 tests this week, Roche CEO Dr. Severin Schwan told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“We are of course ramping up supply as much as we can,” he said, adding that the tests go first where they’re most needed. “For that purpose, we are closely working together with the authorities, the CDC, in particular, to allocate tests to those labs and to those regions where we can make the biggest impact during this crisis.” —Will Feuer

7:05 am: Retail store closures in the US could explode

Temporary closed signage is seen at a store in Manhattan borough following the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in New York City, U.S., March 15, 2020.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

The year 2019 brought with it record store closures in the retail industry in the U.S., and 2020 looks like it is about to be a lot worse. Retail store closures this year are now on pace to be “double what we saw last year,” which was a record year, said Deborah Weinswig, CEO and founder of retail advisory and research firm Coresight Research. “I think that is already in motion. … If [COVID-19] stays longer, it will be greater.” —Lauren Thomas

7:01 am: Iran’s death toll surges to 853

Iran’s death toll has reached 853, with 129 new deaths in the past 24 hours, a health ministry official tweeted on Monday, adding that 14,991 people have been infected across Iran. “In the past 24 hours we had 1,053 confirmed new cases of coronavirus and 129 new deaths,” Alireza Vahabzadeh tweeted. To contain the outbreak in Iran, one of the deadliest outside of China, officials have called on people to stay at home. —Reuters

6:21 pm: UK government asks manufacturers to make ventilators, health equipment

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will ask manufacturers to support the production of essential medical equipment, such as ventilators, for the National Health Service.

“Preparing for the spread of the coronavirus outbreak is a national priority and we’re calling on the manufacturing industry and all those with relevant expertise who might be able to help to come together to help the country tackle this national crisis,” a Downing Street spokesperson said late Sunday.

“We need to step up production of vital equipment such as ventilators so that we can all help the most vulnerable, and we need businesses to come to us and help in this national effort.” —Holly Ellyatt

5:28 am: Impact will last at least until the third quarter, Germany’s economy ministry says

The German economy ministry said the impact of COVID-19 meant it no longer expected an economic upswing in the first quarter, Reuters reported. The ministry added that the economy was unlikely to stabilize before the third quarter at the earliest. “The strength and duration of the impact cannot yet reliably be forecast,” the ministry said. “But given the very rapid pace of developments, we have to anticipate significant economic impacts.” —Holly Ellyatt

4:48 am: ‘Where is Boris?’: The UK government’s cautious strategy provokes a public backlash

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits a laboratory at the Public Health England National Infection Service in Colindale on March 1, 2020 in London, England.

WPA Pool

4:46 am: European shares slide 8% and airline stocks tank as regional shutdown widens

European markets plunged as much of the continent went into shutdown mode to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. The pan-European Stoxx 600 dropped 8% near the start of trading, travel and leisure stocks plummeting 14.3% to lead losses as all sectors and major bourses slid into the red. —Elliot Smith

3:30 am: Asia-Pacific markets dive, with Australia leading losses

Asia markets plummeted even after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced a massive monetary stimulus campaign to curb slower economic growth in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Australian markets led losses in the Asia-Pacific region, as it tanked nearly 10%. Mainland Chinese stocks dropped as well, with the Shanghai composite 3.4% lower, while the Shenzhen composite slipped 4.834% and the Shenzhen component plunged 5.34%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 4.38%. Overall, the MSCI Asia ex-Japan index declined around 5%.

“Ironically, markets might have perceived the Fed’s response as panic, feeding into its own fears; especially as COVID-19 cases spike globally, prompting harder border controls,” Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank, wrote in a note. —Eustance Huang

Read CNBC’s coverage from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific and Europe teams overnight here: New York City to limit restaurants and bars to take-out and delivery, movie theaters to shut

Reuters and CNBC’s Saheli Roy Choudhury, Weizhen Tan, Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.

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thechasefiles · 5 years ago

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The Chase Files Daily Newscap 10/9/2019

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your daily news cap for Tuesday, September 10th, 2019. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a DAILY Nation Newspaper (DN).

MINISTER MAY REVISIT HOURS – As the hustle and bustle of the new school term kicked in yesterday, Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw said she was willing to reopen talks on staggering school hours. Speaking to THE NATION at Frederick Smith Secondary School in Trents, St James, as part of another tour of some schools which did not reopen yesterday, Bradshaw said she was all for anything to increase the efficiency of the education system. “Communication is a large part of the problem. It should have been a conversation that took place at the level of the Ministry of Education, principals, the Ministry of Transport and Works, where we all sat together and determined how to stagger. And of course you would have to consult the parents and the teachers,” she added. Bradshaw was referring to the failed proposal to change the opening hours of some secondary schools to 8 a.m. to 2:10 p.m. instead of 8:45 a.m. to 3 p.m., in an effort to ease traffic congestion. While some like The St Michael School, Lodge School and St Leonard’s Boys’ School had already adopted earlier hours, the proposal was vetoed as it did not receive enough buy-in from teachers. (DN)

LATE OPENING AT ST MARY’S - Some parents are upset about the delayed start of teaching at St Mary’s Primary school. At the start of the Michaelmas school term today, scores of parents showed up at the Mason Hall Street school from as early as 7:30 a.m. They however were informed that some areas of the facility were still being cleaned, so the students would have to wait until that process was completed before they could enter the premises. However, just after 9 a.m. some of the students were able to enter the classrooms. The parents however told THE NATION that they felt the work was too last-minute. St Mary’s was not listed as one of the other 20 government schools scheduled to begin next week due to incomplete maintenance work.(DN)

FREDERICK SMITH OPENING PUSHED BACK – The Frederick Smith Secondary School will not be opening on Wednesday as previously indicated. The Trents, St James school will instead open on Monday, September 16.

Santia Bradshaw, Minister of Education, Technological and Vocational Training, made this announcement today, after touring a number of schools, including Frederick Smith, to examine their state of readiness. She said the ministry took the decision to stagger the opening of some schools at the start of the new school term because major works being done at those sites were not completed on time. The minister said she was “sensitive” to the issue of teachers and children operating in environments which were not necessarily conducive to their health. The Education Minister noted that they were trying to get the works completed, so as to avoid any disruptions after teachers and children settled into the new term. The schools which will reopen on Wednesday are Alexandra, Grantley Adams Memorial Secondary and Princess Margaret Secondary. (BGIS)

SYBIL STILL AT SCHOOL AT 90 –A school day finds Sybil Leacock in the classroom doing what she has been doing for the last 72 years – teaching. At age 90, nothing can keep her away from Leacock’s Private School Inc., which she founded in 1946.Today, the Farm Road, St Peter institution has a roll of 50, half of its 100 student capacity, and Leacock still approaches the job of shaping young minds with the same passion as when she was first influenced to take on just one student to begin her teaching career at age 17.She continues to do it her way, the “old-time way”, teaching students the basics – “their tables; how to add and subtract”, employing a hands-on approach, and making one-on-one contact with students.For her, education is key to progress and this is the reason she has invested her life in ensuring that countless children from the north and beyond receive a sound educational grounding.Leacock grew up in The Whim, St Peter, with a single mother who worked for five shillings a week as a domestic servant to support her family after the early death of her husband.“When we were in primary school, we went from Infants to Class 4,” she recalled, and school ended for many children at age 14. She was bright and completed that early phase at St Peter’s Girls’ School at age 13. For a period after that she continued her lessons at a desk and chair provided by the head teacher, on the school’s platform, until she was taken in at the Muriel Archer Private School located in the St Peter community.Reflecting on that part of her journey, Leacock said: “My mother, a domestic, could not afford the $23 a month school fees at Alexandra School.” However, the teenaged Leacock went on to sit the Junior Cambridge examinations (the GCE equivalent of the day).In the meantime, she would help teach other children at Muriel Archer Private School and her performance must have impressed because it was soon after unfortunate circumstances forced the closing of that school, that she was asked by a parent to teach their child.In the library across the yard from her school, there sits an old-fashioned wooden table, worn with age and use, and a chair which Leacock has preserved as a reminder of those early days when her classroom was the verandah of a nearby Farm Road house. Word of her teaching skills spread and more and more children came, filling the gallery and forcing a move to more spacious accommodation.(DN)

LIVES ROCKED AGAIN –Everything was mashed up by Matthew. Now Dorian has left them in despair.Four years ago, husband and wife Sherry and Graham Smith had to rebuild from scratch after Hurricane Matthew pounded The Bahamas. Just over a week ago, they were thrown into an even worse state – including losing more than 20 relatives – due to the rampaging Category 5 Hurricane Dorian. The Smiths, who live in the community of Heritage, tucked away in Grand Bahama, operated a seafood restaurant called Shebo’s Fresh Conch Salad. The only thing left standing was its foundation.Only renovated two months ago, it was smashed to pieces by monster winds as the strongest tropical system of the 2019 hurricane season hovered over the island for 48 hours, leaving total devastation behind. Sherry, 45, sitting with her head in her hands in total disbelief, has been barely able to cope with the tragedy.(DN)

HOPING TO CLEAR BACKLOG ON 2 YEARS –With five new judges coming to tackle the backlog of almost 1 000 criminal cases, the island’s Chief Justice is hoping to “wrestle” that backlog to the ground in about two years. In addition, says Sir Marston Gibson, all civil cases will go through mandatory mediation in an attempt to reduce the backlog on the civil side as well. He was delivering remarks at the opening of the 2019-2010 Legal Year in Court No. 1 at the Supreme Court Complex yesterday. Sir Marston noted that even though there had not been a recent count of the number of criminal cases in the backlog, there were between 900 and 1 000 old cases still waiting to be tried. As a result, he said the five new judges were welcomed.(DN)

TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD CHARGED IN CONNECTION WITH SHOOTING –Earlier today, police from the Major Crime Unit arrested and charged 26-year-old Raheim Forde, of 10th Avenue, New Orleans, St Michael, in connection with a shooting in the same district. On Friday, August 23, police responded to a report that Sharon Matthews, 57, of Beckles Avenue, New Orleans, received a gunshot injury to her right hand. The report stated that a man pointed a gun through her bedroom window and fired one shot into the room.Forde has been charged with use of firearm, serious bodily harm, and endangering life. He is scheduled to appear in the District ‘A’ Magistrates Court tomorrow.(DN)

DISCOURAGING SIGNS UNDER SKERRITT– Early signs for West Indies’ cricket under the stewardship of new President Ricky Skerritt are far from encouraging, to say the least. The team was swept by India in all formats of the game – T20, 50-over, and Test – in the just-concluded series, following a disappointing 2019 Cricket World Cup in England, where they won only two in nine matches and finished second-from-bottom in the 10-team championship. Only Afghanistan fared worse. And, adding salt to the wounds, is a lawsuit filed by members of the previous West Indies panel of selectors, who were sacked by Skerritt immediately after securing a spectacular 8-4 win ballot over incumbent Dave Cameron, a Jamaican, in the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) elections last May. That court procedure, which was announced by their legal counsel on Thursday, September 5, is being channelled by former Windies chief selector Courtney Browne and his counterpart on the selection panel, Eldine Baptiste, both of whom are former Test players. A third member of the selection panel who was sacked, Lockhart Sebastien, has not indicated a challenge. However, Barbadian Vasbert Drakes, the former assistant coach, has also served notice through his lawyers to file a lawsuit. Skerritt’s board had initiated their dismissal as part of a process to revamp the selection criteria, but the former panellists contend that the move was unfair based on high appraisal ratings from the previous director of cricket and head coach of the Windies team, South African Richard Pybus. Pybus himself was also sacked, controversially, on the eve of the World Cup, a move that came in for widespread criticism, including from team captain Jason Holder and former West Indies batting genius Sir Viv Richards, who openly expressed disappointment over Skerritt’s moves thus far. Watching the team has been painstaking, both at the World Cup, where an incapacitated André Russell was allowed to play a number of matches despite being clearly unfit; and in the follow-up series against India, especially in the Tests, where the team was bowled out for 222 and 100 in the first Test, and 117 and 210 in the second. Embarrassingly, there were complaints that Windies had 13 players on the field at one stage. Shamarh Brooks walked out of his crease to give away his wicket after scoring 50, and players appeared largely uninterested in batting on the final day of the second Test. Most disrespectfully, none of the West Indies players even took the field for the post-match presentation, and skipper Jason Holder made an appearance to do a post-match interview then went right back inside the pavilion. Clearly, the cricket is on auto pilot. There appears to be no leadership. Pybus’ dismissal, in particular, was particularly nonsensical and ruinous, based on the timing ahead of the World Cup, with the West Indies having just secured a morale-boosting 2-1 Test series win over highly ranked England. Players, as you would imagine, would have been developing trust, understanding, and a good rapport with the coach at that time for having pulled the team to a point where they were becoming somewhat competitive at world level. The move, however, was part of a greater plan in which Skerritt – a former WI team manager, who was sacked in May, 2001 – was inserted at the 11th hour to unseat Cameron and characterises the complexity and vast number of problems affecting West Indies cricket. Regional prime ministers – Dr Keith Mitchell, of Grenada; and Dr Ralph Gonsalves, St Vincent and the Grenadines – consistently hit out at Cameron’s handling of the WICB affairs, and Skerritt, a politician, who has served in varying roles as minister of tourism, international transport, international trade, industry, commerce and consumer affairs between 2010-13 in his native St Kitts and Nevis, was put up as challenger. The coaching and selection decisions reflected the kind of thinking associated with the dissatisfied lot for greater inclusion of West Indians in the running of the team, including senior players, many of whom were sidelined for primarily choosing international T20 cricket over the domestic game. On the face of it, that decision by the players appeared reasonable, given the huge financial gains from cash-rich leagues such as the Indian Premier League (IPL), which has made the players multimillionaires. Conditions, however, were provided for their participation in Windies’ domestic competitions, on a limited basis, to become eligible for selection. This is key for the development of the local game given the magnitude of benefits for inexperienced first-class players competing against, and gaining greater insight from their regional peers, who rank among the world’s best. That was the case during the glory years when leading regional cricketers such as Sir Viv, Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, and many other West Indies legends, were playing professionally in England and also played in regional Shell Shield competition. A major difference then is that those legends played league cricket. That format is the base of cricket, the foundation of the game, and it inculcated habits for doing the right things consistently that were easier to transfer into Test cricket, which calls for significantly greater levels of concentration given its five-day challenge. Measure that against the hit or miss T20 format and the picture becomes much clearer in the application of reasoning surrounding the team’s ongoing failure. To be honest, much of the Windies’ demise was also caused by rulings from the game’s hierarchy, which limited bouncers and such, plus a massive scaling down of West Indian players in the English leagues, which served as great preparation through constant play against the game’s best. Little by little, that door is being opened again, and earlier this week, promising opening batsman Kraigg Brathwaite of Barbados was offered a contract to play the final three games of the season for Glamorgan, who are chasing promotion to Division One. Other things have been established for improvements, most notably retainer contracts for regional first-class players that were established between the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) and the previous WICB team led by Cameron. The governors must ensure that the players abide by the stipulations and do what is necessary to elevate their game. Additionally, world-level competition resumed on Thursday night with another edition of the Caribbean Premier League T20. That promises excitement for fans, more money for the players, and some opportunity to learn, however limited, given the nature of the competition. What is really needed are regional competitions over four days with notable international personalities that will really challenge the players’ mental capacity for applying key requisites, batting and bowling, especially, which they can transfer to the Test arena for its arduous five-day fixtures. It will require tremendous marketing support to generate the type of funding needed from governments across the region and private entities across the world, including airlines to subsidise travel among foreign parties. To take a lesson from football, Japan and Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz’s made thier debut at the 1998 World Cup in France, but they have been a constant since, given the way they have ‘internationalised’ their local leagues with players of notable world standard, even some who were over the top or nearing the end. China is doing the same. Skerritt’s West Indies need a revolutionary platform to alter cricket’s sequence. (BT)

POLLARD NEW WHITE-BALL SKIPPER, HOLDER AND BRATHWAITE SACKED – Cricket West Indies have sacked both Jason Holder and Carlos Brathwaite as One-Day and Twenty20 captain respectively, and have appointed experienced batting all-rounder Kieron Pollard to lead the Caribbean side in the white-ball formats. In a media conference in Trinidad today, CWI said they had accepted the recommendation of the selection task force headed by its vice-president Dr Kishore Shallow and including director of cricket, Jimmy Adams, to implement specific red-ball and white-ball captains, and had subsequently ratified the choice of the 32-year-old Pollard. “Kieron Pollard, with immediate effect, has agreed to take up the position of captain of both our T20 and ODI white-ball teams,” CWI president, Ricky Skerritt told the media.(BT)

112days left in the year Shalom! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps #bajannewscaps #newsinanutshell

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surly01 · 8 years ago

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This Week in Doom, April 9, 2017

Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on April 9, 2017

It's been a week in which we took several steps toward our own Appointment in Samarra. We are expected to believe that the nation's Chief Executive, who heretofore has demonstrated absolutely no empathy for anyone, reversed his own stated foreign policy based on news pictures of children, ostensibly suffering from a Syrian government gas attack. Just the week before, said executive's Secretary of State had affirmed a new policy in which the US would be content to let the destiny of Bashar Al-Assad be settled by the Syrian people.

And who exactly are we fighting in Syria? Is it ISIS? Al Qaeda? Jabhat al Nusra? But Assad purchased oil from ISIS, yes? How did that work? And now we're bombing Assad? All of the Jihadis in opposition to Assad are Sunni, whereas Assad's regime belongs to the Alawite sect of Islam, related somehow to the Shia branch of Islam. One needs a scorecard…

As difficult as this might be to sort out, when the newest atrocity pictures appeared on FOX News, they hit our non-reading president right in the feels. And like Xanadu, a military action was decreed. Meanwhile, trump's legions of right-wing zealots were discomfited that he had bombed Syria and thus had gone "full neocon." Great was the hue and cry therefrom. Meanwhile, in the West Wing, Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon wrestled for primacy. If you're not the president's son-in-law, I don't like your chances. Mitch McConnell got clean away with the heist of a Supreme Court seat, and, oh yes, in spite of the Trump administration's decision to ban the phrase "climate change", the Arctic north is melting and we are awash in icebergs. Can global sea level rise be far behind?

The Rockets' Red Glare

We are told the short-fingered vulgarian "became president" by sending a volley of Tomahawk missiles, costing $1-1.5 million the each, to light up a Syrian airstrip, the assets of which had been moved by previously-alerted Russians and Syrians who, unlike Congress, had received prior notice. The air show on a virtually deserted airstrip avoided most of the runways, such that Syrian planes are reported to be flying missions as I write. Thus the US spent about $93,810,000, blowing up very little in order to show them that "we mean business."

The Palmer Report estimates that Donald Trump's ineffective Syria attack could have fully funded Meals on Wheels through 2029.

The MSM, hot on the trail of #trumpRussia connections, were captivated. On MSNBC, which we are constantly reminded is the "left" news network, fake news parolee Brian Williams waxed rhapsodic about the beauty of the rocket launches, if not the tumescence of the manhood which unleashed them. CNN's Fareed Zakaria proudly asserted Trump’s missile strike in Syria shows him emerging from the chrysalis and displaying the same bloodthirsty qualities as America’s past leaders. Friday morning on CNN’s “New Day," I stood openmouthed in astonishment as Zakaria said

“I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night. I think this was actually a big moment.”

Making this Zakaria's Van Jones moment, and exposing him as another to-be-ignored careerist. Neocon Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham swooned, and were observed to have rare swellings in their crotches at the audacity of dope. If these last for more than four hours, they should call a doctor. Or a Capitol Hill reporter.

Leading papers published opinions like "Trump’s Chance to Step Into the Global Leadership Vacuum," "Trump Has an Opportunity to Right Obama’s Wrongs in Syria," "Syrian Opposition Leader: Trump Has a Chance to Save Syria" and "Syria Missile Strike Could Lead to Political Solution"–but no pieces opposing an unauthorized military attack against a sovereign nation. Dan Rather had a few choice words.

"War must never be considered a public relations operation. It is not a way for an Administration to gain a narrative," Rather continued. "It is a step into a dangerous unknown and its full impact is impossible to predict, especially in the immediate wake of the first strike."

On other news, Raytheon, the company that makes the Tomahawk missiles used in the air strikes, was rising in early stock trading Friday. In related news, Lockheed Martin, helps Raytheon make the Javelin missile launcher system, gained nearly 1%. We may be headed for the End Times, but we're creating some beautiful opportunities for profit in arms.

Pepe nonplussed

Trump's troll army was not pleased, and the alt-right crowd broke with the president over his perfidy. The web-savvy, anti-establishment "alt-right" neo-nazis at the passionate core of Trump’s online support last year, have become apoplectic over the strikes. This "America First" wing, which includes Milo Yiannopolis, Mike Cernovich, Ann Coulter, and the famously punched-in-the-face Richard Spencer, (he of the memes), as well as those basement dwellers on The_Donald subreddit and the /pol/ section of 4Chan, warn of a slippery slope to intervention in Syria.

As recently as last week, they believed Trump would keep the country out of unnecessary wars. Last Thursday on a trip to Turkey, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, the “longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people.” And then came the news pictures of Syrian children being gassed. Whereupon, we are told, the president decided to "follow his heart."

Leaving aside for a moment the notion of how a Republican Congress or the American public would react did if a female president had decided to "follow her heart," and launch 59 Tomahawk missiles, we are left to marvel at 180° whipsaw-like change in the direction of American foreign policy.

Meanwhile, about those pictures, and who was responsible for them. Many on the fascist fringe scream that Trump has been duped into a war a "false flag" operation. "The Syrian gas attack was done by deep state agents," tweeted alt right agitator and Pizzagate auteur Mike Cernovich. And other marginal voices, including Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson, as well as Ron Paul, Scott Adams and Michael Savage, have upped the ante, blamed the attack on George Soros, and condemned Trump for surrendering to "Republican hawks."

Plus, Julian Assange, believed to have sole control of the WikiLeaks Twitter account, shared a video from a Syrian activist in Germany on Thursday that said Islamist extremists were probably behind the chemical attack, not the Syrian government. Even left-wing observers have opined that the chemical strikes may have originated with Syrian rebels. Assessing the truth is to walk in a hall of mirrors.

Speaking of a hall of mirrors, Tina Nguyen of Vanity Fair does exemplary reporting on all things Trump, and made the following salient observation:

The missile strike came only hours after Bannon, the de facto representative of the alt-right in the White House, had been removed from the National Security Council Principals Committee, cutting off his access to military decision-making. His supporters quickly, and not without logic, blamed the Syria situation on the same people they believed were responsible for Bannon’s ouster and diminishing stature in the West Wing: Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and the leader of what a White House source described to Politico as the “West Wing Democrats.”

Few things gladden my heart more that a right wing circular firing squad, as headlines broke on Friday that Bannon had called Kushner "a cuck" and a "globalist." What the Bannon-Kushner tussle portends for the future, and for Trump's relationship with the reclusive Mercer family (which bankrolled his electoral victory) is anyone's guess.

It Stays Stole

Mitch McConnell and wife in a rare tender moment.

In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said: "One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, 'You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy,'" and in 2017, he said, "Apparently there's yet a new standard now, which is not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all. I think that's something the American people simply will not tolerate."

This week, McConnell invoked a parliamentary maneuver to end the filibuster opposing the nominee, Neil Gorsuch, for the stolen Supreme Court seat, thus clearing the way for Gorsuch to occupy said stolen seat. This legislative coup will ratify the primacy of the corporate state for the next 30 years.

In a related story, hypocrisy stocks were up 12 percent this week.

Global melting

And in climate change news, which we no longer count anymore because trump, we learn that Greenland’s coastal ice has passed a critical “tipping point,” according to a new study. Which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the island’s ice.

The Greenland ice sheet, which covers about 80 percent of the island’s surface, is the second-largest ice body in the world after the Antarctic ice sheet. The same processes that have caused the accelerated melting of Greenland’s coastal ice bodies could also influence the island’s massive ice sheet — with devastating results, lead study author Bryce Noël said.

“For now, the ice sheet is still safe,” he said. “Its tipping point hasn’t been crossed yet. But if warming continues, it’s very likely that it will be crossed.”

If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would cause a global sea level rise of more than 20 feet.

In a related story, The Guardian tells of a swarm of more than 400 icebergs that have drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes over the past week, unusually large for so early in the season.

Most icebergs entering the North Atlantic have “calved” off the Greenland ice sheet. Michael Mann, director of the earth system science center at Pennsylvania State University, said it was possible climate change was leading to more icebergs in the shipping lanes, but wind patterns were also important.

US Coast Guard Commander Gabrielle McGrath, who leads the ice patrol, said she had never seen such a drastic increase in such a short time. Adding to the danger, three icebergs were discovered outside the boundaries of the area the Coast Guard had advised mariners to avoid, she said.

Another week in which we incrementally slip towards the doom which awaits us for our fecklessness and irresponsibility for failing to summon the will to be good stewards of what we have inherited.

Surly1 is an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere, and once quit barking and got off the porch long enough to be active in the Occupy movement. Where he met the woman who now shares his old Virginia home and who, like he, is grateful that he is not yet taking a dirt nap, and like he, will be disappointed to not be prominently featured on an enemies list compiled by the incoming administration.

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ongames · 8 years ago

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Trump Wants To Dismantle The Clean Water Rule. Here’s What’s At Stake.

Calling it a “disaster,” President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to dismantle the controversial Waters of the United States rule.

Trump instructed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to review and reconsider the rule, also known as WOTUS or the Clean Water Rule. But he did not mention that rolling back the provision could put at risk the health of 117 million Americans, the well-being of plant and animal species ― including endangered ones ― and the protection of critical habitats. The economic risks could also be significant.

The story of the Clean Water Rule dates back to a sweltering summer day in 1969 when Ohio’s Cuyahoga River, a tributary of Lake Erie, became so polluted with sewage and industrial waste that it burst into flames.

The disaster sparked an environmental revolution in the U.S. It helped lead to the establishment of the EPA in 1970 and the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, which gave the federal agency the authority to limit pollution in “navigable waters.”

The law was a game-changer for America’s large water bodies, including the Cuyahoga, which went from burning to “gleam[ing]” by the late 1980s.

But despite its effectiveness, the Clean Water Act was shrouded in ambiguity for many decades. Large bodies of water like rivers, lakes and the ocean were uncontroversially subject to the regulation. But when it came to smaller or intermittent bodies of water (according to the EPA, almost 60 percent of all streams in the continental U.S. flow only seasonally or after storms), there was confusion as to whether the law should apply.

Would seasonal streams or ephemeral ones (those that flow partly underground), for example, be covered by the Clean Water Act? How about smaller wetlands and ponds?

The questions about the law came to a head in 2006, when the Supreme Court took up a case regarding a Michigan landowner who wanted to fill in wetland areas on his property to build a shopping center. In a split decision, a plurality of the court ruled that a waterway must have a “continuous surface connection” with a “water of the United States” to qualify for protection under the Clean Water Act. But it wasn’t a majority ruling, and the justices disagreed on how to define those connections ― essentially kicking the issue back to the lower courts to figure out.

Determining which smaller bodies of water should qualify for protection is an important legal question, but it is also critical in ensuring that the Clean Water Act actually works. Bodies of water great and small are, after all, often interconnected. “Pollution that enters these smaller bodies of water often flows into larger bodies or underground aquifers that may be sources of drinking water,” Michael Gerrard, an environmental law professor at Columbia University, explained.

For that reason, the Obama EPA undertook what ended up being a mammoth effort to clarify the law. After issuing a draft proposal in 2011, the agency released its final Clean Water Rule ― an attempt to clarify the original Clean Water Act ― in 2015. It was the result of more than 400 stakeholder meetings, along with the review of more than 1 million public comments and over a thousand scientific articles.

‘Victory For All Americans’

The 2015 rule outlined which bodies of water would be automatically protected by the Clean Water Act. Naturally, large bodies like lakes and rivers were listed, but the rule also included streams (intermittent and ephemeral ones too), ponds and other, smaller features that have connections to these bigger, “navigable” waterways. According to ThinkProgress, the rule extended protection to 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands that hadn’t been clearly covered under the original federal law.

Under the new rule, anyone — developers, landowners, farmers, golf course owners and so on — who wanted to discharge pollutants into these smaller bodies of water, or dredge or dirt-fill them, would need to get a permit. Protecting these features, explained the EPA, was critical to ensuring the health of downstream waters, and the well-being of people, habitats, species and industries that depend on them. “We need clean water upstream to have clean water downstream where we live, work and play,” the agency said on its website.

At the time, many environmentalists celebrated the rule’s release. “The Clean Water Rule is a victory for all Americans,” Chris Espinosa, a clean water policy advocate for Earthjustice, said in 2015. “Today... is a new day for clean water.”

Not everyone, however, was pleased with the provision. It received condemnation from farmers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and real estate developers, among others. The rule is now tied up in courts, as some 31 states, businesses and agricultural groups argue that it is an example of federal overreach and a threat to industry.

Both Trump and his EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, have vowed to eliminate it.

But the effects of the rule’s repeal could be devastating, several environmental and outdoor groups have warned.

Tossing out the rule would be “an unmitigated disaster for fish and wildlife, hunting and fishing, and clean water,” said Chris Wood, president of the conservation group Trout Unlimited, in a statement last week.

Coming full circle, repealing the rule could also endanger Lake Erie and its tributaries, including the Cuyahoga River.

Jeff Reutter, special adviser for Ohio Sea Grant, a program dedicated to the protection of the Great Lakes, warned last week that without EPA oversight and rigorous regulations to protect America’s water bodies, Lake Erie’s pollution levels could return to what they were “decades ago.” The lake is already experiencing alarming levels of pollution, largely from agricultural runoff. In 2014, a massive algal bloom in Lake Erie caused 400,000 residents of Toledo, Ohio, to lose access to their drinking water.

Former U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in December that those examples show exactly why the Clean Water Rule is so necessary. “We need to begin with protecting our source waters, because if we do not, the expense of treating those waters before they get to consumers as drinking water supply is simply going to escalate up and up and up,” she said. “Source water protection is one of the key reasons why the Clean Water Rule is so important.”

Here’s some of what could be at risk if the rule is thrown out:

What Happens Next?

Even though Trump has signed the executive order, the Clean Water Rule isn’t going away any time soon.

The order merely allows Pruitt and the EPA to begin the lengthy rulemaking process ― which includes a public comment period ― to kill the rule and find a possible replacement. (According to The New York Times, the whole process could take more time than Trump has left in his first term.)

Still, environmentalists say they are concerned about what the order could mean for America’s waters, a significant share of which remain unprotected as the rule languishes in the courts and faces the chopping block under Trump.

“The [executive order] is certainly a statement about the administration’s goals,” the Audubon Society’s Meghan Bartels wrote last week. “The continuing ambiguity means it’s hard to know exactly what changes will come about, or when they’ll begin. But the Trump administration’s intent is clear: to reverse Obama-era environmental protections no matter what, even if they have been effective at protecting avian and human life.”

______

Dominique Mosbergen is a reporter at The Huffington Post covering climate change, extreme weather and extinction. Send tips or feedback to [email protected] or follow her on Twitter.

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Trump Wants To Dismantle The Clean Water Rule. Here’s What’s At Stake. published first on http://ift.tt/2lnpciY

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yes-dal456 · 8 years ago

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Trump Wants To Dismantle The Clean Water Rule. Here’s What’s At Stake.

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Calling it a “disaster,” President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to dismantle the controversial Waters of the United States rule.

The law was a game-changer for America’s large water bodies, including the Cuyahoga, which went from burning to “gleam[ing]” by the late 1980s.

Would seasonal streams or ephemeral ones (those that flow partly underground), for example, be covered by the Clean Water Act? How about smaller wetlands and ponds?

‘Victory For All Americans’

Both Trump and his EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, have vowed to eliminate it.

But the effects of the rule’s repeal could be devastating, several environmental and outdoor groups have warned.

Coming full circle, repealing the rule could also endanger Lake Erie and its tributaries, including the Cuyahoga River.

Here’s some of what could be at risk if the rule is thrown out:

What Happens Next?

Even though Trump has signed the executive order, the Clean Water Rule isn’t going away any time soon.

______

Dominique Mosbergen is a reporter at The Huffington Post covering climate change, extreme weather and extinction. Send tips or feedback to [email protected] or follow her on Twitter.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from http://ift.tt/2n2rwh4 from Blogger http://ift.tt/2mC7Nas

#http://www.topwaytohappy.tk/2017/03/trump-wants-to-dismantle-clean-water.html

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imreviewblog · 8 years ago

Text

Trump Wants To Dismantle The Clean Water Rule. Here’s What’s At Stake.

Calling it a “disaster,” President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to dismantle the controversial Waters of the United States rule.

The law was a game-changer for America’s large water bodies, including the Cuyahoga, which went from burning to “gleam[ing]” by the late 1980s.

Would seasonal streams or ephemeral ones (those that flow partly underground), for example, be covered by the Clean Water Act? How about smaller wetlands and ponds?

‘Victory For All Americans’

Both Trump and his EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, have vowed to eliminate it.

But the effects of the rule’s repeal could be devastating, several environmental and outdoor groups have warned.

Coming full circle, repealing the rule could also endanger Lake Erie and its tributaries, including the Cuyahoga River.

Here’s some of what could be at risk if the rule is thrown out:

What Happens Next?

Even though Trump has signed the executive order, the Clean Water Rule isn’t going away any time soon.

______

Dominique Mosbergen is a reporter at The Huffington Post covering climate change, extreme weather and extinction. Send tips or feedback to [email protected] or follow her on Twitter.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://huff.to/2mTFEwf

#Healthy Living - The Huffington Post

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movietvtechgeeks · 8 years ago

Photo

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/week-3-donald-trump-proves-facts-unneeded-accessory/

Week 3: Donald Trump proves facts an unneeded accessory

One thing we've learned is that President Donald Trump doesn't like facts that run asunder to his 'facts.' Week 3 has ended, and what was hoped were just learning mistakes the first two weeks in office are looking to be the way things are in this White House. Trump has chosen to spout out figures that have been debunked continuously, but that doesn't stop the commander-in-chief. Chaos continues to reign in this administration as those around him are creating newsworthy issues like Michael Flynn and Kellyanne Conway. In a speech to the Major Cities Police Association, Trump used these figures yet again and railed against both the news media and judicial system. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830904083519242241 Another thing he continues to show of importance to him is that size does really really matter. We also got it confirmed that he will promote anything he dang well pleases because he's beyond the law. At least, that's the impression he's giving America. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830751875578355713 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830741932099960834 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/830552079240409089 It was a week of sound and fury from President Donald Trump, the commander in tweets. A look at how some of his statements fit with the facts: TRUMP made an unsupported assertion Monday that terrorist acts in Europe are going unreported: "All over Europe it's happening. It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported. And in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that." THE FACTS: Trump and his team cited one example of a deadly terrorist attack going unreported: the one that didn't happen in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Adviser Kellyanne Conway spoke a week earlier about a Bowling Green "massacre" that didn't take place, correcting herself when she was called out on the error. As for Trump's claim about Europe, it's probably true that you haven't heard of every attack on the continent that can be tied to terrorism. Scores if not hundreds happen every year. Many don't rise to the level of an international audience because they cause no casualties, or little or no property damage, or are carried out by unknown assailants for unclear reasons. One exhaustive list is the Global Terrorism Database, maintained by the University of Maryland. It lists 321 episodes of suspected or known terrorism in Western Europe alone in 2015. Many are anti-Muslim attacks against mosques, not the brand of terrorism Trump has expressed concern about. Many are attacks undertaken for right-wing or left-wing causes that have nothing to do with Islamic extremism or xenophobic attacks on mosques. The database defines a terrorist act as one aimed at attaining political, religious, social or economic goals through coercion or intimidation of the public, outside acts of war. The devastating attacks by Islamic extremists in 2015 are also on the list, among them the murderous assault on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and the even bloodier attack at Paris' Bataclan concert hall, the worst in a series of killings in one day. Those attacks and other deadly ones in Europe received saturation coverage for days. But even the smaller, nonlethal acts of terrorism received coverage. The database itself is built from media reports. THE WALKBACK: Trump made his claim before a broad audience on live television, while speaking at Central Command headquarters in Florida. On Air Force One, before a smaller audience, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump did not really mean that terrorist attacks received no coverage. Trump's actual complaint, he said, was that such acts don't get enough attention. The White House later released a list of 78 worldwide attacks it described as "executed or inspired by" IS. Most on the list did not get sufficient media attention, the White House said, without specifying which ones it considered underreported. Attacks on the list that had high death tolls were given blanket coverage, such as the Brussels bombings in March, the San Bernardino, California, shootings in December 2015, and the Paris attacks in November 2015. Some with a smaller death toll, such as two attacks in Canada that killed one soldier each, were covered at the time and well known. The White House did not point to any examples supporting Trump's contention that terrorist attacks were "not even being reported." TRUMP, speaking to sheriffs Tuesday: "The murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years. I used to use that - I'd say that in a speech and everybody was surprised because the press doesn't tell it like it is." He circled back to add: "The murder rate is the highest it's been in, I guess, from 45 to 47 years." THE FACTS: The murder rate in 2015, the latest year for which figures are available, is actually among the lowest in half a century. It stood at 4.9 murders per 100,000 people, a far cry from the rates in the 1970s, 1980s and most of the 1990s, when they were typically over 6 per 100,000, peaking at over 10 in 1980. It's true that 2015 saw one of the largest increases in decades, up 10 percent from 4.4 murders per 100,000 people in 2014. But even with that rise, homicides are not on the order of what the country experienced in previous decades. Trump has misrepresented crime statistics on several occasions. He stated last month that Philadelphia's murder rate has been "terribly increasing" even though it dropped slightly last year. The city's murder rate rose in the previous two years but remained substantially lower than in past decades. He also incorrectly claimed that two people "were shot and killed" in Chicago during then-President Barack Obama's farewell speech on Jan. 10. Although Chicago has experienced a surge in murders compared with previous decades, no one was fatally shot in Chicago that day, police records show, much less during Obama's speech. TRUMP in a tweet Thursday: "It is a disgrace that my full Cabinet is still not in place, the longest such delay in the history of our country. Obstruction by Democrats!" THE FACTS: That's a premature judgment. It's only February, and several other recent presidents did not have their full Cabinets seated this soon. Obama did not have all his Cabinet vacancies filled until late April 2009, for example, or President Bill Clinton until mid-March 1993. Looking at the far broader range of people throughout government who must be confirmed by the Senate, it's true that the process has lagged this time. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price this past week became the ninth member of Trump's administration to be confirmed. At this point eight years ago Obama had more than 20 officials confirmed, including department heads and deputies. Democratic resistance is partly responsible. So is the fact that Trump has been slower than his predecessor in submitting vetting information and paperwork for his nominees, even though he was unusually fast in putting the names of his Cabinet picks into play. As for his accusation of Democratic obstructionism, the opposition party can cause some procedural delays and has done so. But obstructionism isn't what it used to be. Unlike Obama, Trump only needs a simple majority to confirm his executive office nominees, thanks to a change in rules instituted by Democrats when they controlled the Senate in 2013. And Trump has a Republican-controlled Senate to push his nominees through. TRUMP on Thursday disputed statements by at least three senators that his nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, voiced complaints to them about the president's recent attacks on the judiciary. Tweet: "Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?" At a lunch with senators: "His comments were misrepresented." THE FACTS: Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut who falsely claimed in years past that he had served in Vietnam, offered an account of his meeting with Gorsuch that was corroborated by Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist serving as communications director for the team that is working to get Gorsuch confirmed by the Senate. The senator said Gorsuch told him it was "disheartening" and "demoralizing" to see Trump disparage the judge who temporarily blocked the president's restrictions on visitors from seven mainly Muslim countries and on refugees. Trump has called U.S. District Judge James Robart a "so-called judge" and accused the judiciary of being political. Robart's decision was upheld Thursday in a unanimous decision by an appeals court panel that includes a Republican appointee. A Republican senator said Gorsuch also objected to Trump's comments about Robart during their meeting. "He got pretty passionate about him, about it," Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska told MSNBC on Thursday. "I asked him about the 'so-called judges' comment, because we don't have so-called judges or so-called presidents or so-called senators, and this was a guy who kind of welled up with some energy and he said any attack on any of - I think his term to me was, brothers or sisters of the robe - is an attack on all judges, and he believes in an independent judiciary." The Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, also said Gorsuch told him he was "disheartened" by Trump's insult. Former GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who is helping to usher Gorsuch through the Senate, said in a statement released by the White House that the nominee "made clear that he was not referring to any specific case," but "finds any criticism of a judge's integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing." Even if Gorsuch did not name Trump in some of his exchanges with senators, however, it's clear that judicial integrity only came up because Trump had attacked it. Blumenthal told media outlets that Ayotte and White House staff members were in the room during his conversation with Gorsuch, that "there's no question that he said that President Trump's attacks on the judiciary are demoralizing and disheartening" and that the nominee added: "You can repeat that. You can quote me." TRUMP tweet Thursday: "Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave 'service' in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!" THE FACTS: Not so. Cuomo, a CNN host, brought up that issue upfront with Blumenthal. Cuomo asked him about Trump's belief that the senator has no credibility "because you misrepresented your military record in the past." Blumenthal did not answer the question but went on to talk about his meeting with Judge Gorsuch. During Blumenthal's Senate campaign in 2010, The New York Times reported on multiple occasions when he falsely claimed he had served in Vietnam during the war. He joined the Marine Reserve but never served in Vietnam. Blumenthal told media outlets on Thursday: "I've been in public life for quite a while. Anyone who is interested can go back over it." TRUMP tweet Friday: "LAWFARE: 'Remarkably, in the entire opinion, the panel did not bother even to cite this (the) statute.' A disgraceful decision!" THE FACTS: In this rather bewildering tweet, Trump cited a legal blog as support for his complaints about the appeals case that kept the borders open to people he wants banned. Trump accurately quoted a passage from the Lawfare blog about the decision Thursday by the federal appeals court in San Francisco. But the blog's editor-in-chief and author of the post, Brookings Institution scholar Benjamin Wittes, actually wrote in favor of the decision while exposing what he considers its weaknesses. He wrote that Trump's executive order barring visitors from seven mainly Muslim countries and refugees worldwide was promulgated with "incompetent malevolence." Continuing its suspension, as the appeals court did, avoids plunging the country into turmoil again while other courts address the merits of the case, he said. Yet Wittes said the judges failed to address the law at the heart of Trump's statutory case. The law says the president may, "by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens" or impose "any restrictions" if he decides their presence in the country would be detrimental to the U.S. That's a "pretty big omission," he wrote. Wittes also criticized the court's "arch and clucking dismissals of presidential demands for deference in national security cases." Trump's selective citation from the blog suggests that this line of argument could be central to the administration's case that courts have not given presidential authority proper weight. The passage quoted by Trump was featured on MSNBC's "Morning Joe, " and the president's use of it prompted the author to tweet: "You've found the only sentence in it congenial to your views."

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