#federal government agencies jobs in july 2017

[sixstringphonic]

Musk Says Trump Win Would Result in ‘Hardship’ for Some Americans

The world’s richest man promises big spending cuts if Trump gives him a job, says people “taking advantage of government are going to be upset”

By Naomi LaChance (Rolling Stone, October 27th 2024)

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, said that if Donald Trump wins and gives him a role in government, Americans will suffer “hardship” as a result of efforts to address the national debt. He made the comments Friday in a virtual town hall on his website, X. 

When asked about “tackling the nation’s debt,” he mentioned changing the tax code, and then went on to say there would be some financial difficulty imposed on some Americans. “Most importantly, we have to reduce spending to live within our means,” he said, adding that these efforts will “involve some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”

Later on, Musk said that he would “balance the budget immediately,” adding: “Obviously, a lot of people who are taking advantage of government are going to be upset about that. I’ll probably need a lot of security, but it’s got to be done. And if it’s not done, we’ll just go bankrupt.”

Trump has said that Musk would head a “government efficiency commission” to organize a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make “recommendations for drastic reforms.” 

J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, has suggested that Musk could target Social Security for potential savings. Speaking last month about the billionaire’s potential role, Vance said, “How are we going to fix all of the broken inefficiencies?” He continued: “And the thing that’s complicated about this, man, is it’s going to look much different in, say, the Department of Defense versus Social Security.”

Musk endorsed Trump in mid-July. He has given nearly $119 million to his pro-Trump Super PAC, America PAC, since the start of July, before he publicly endorsed the former president. The group has spent $123 million boosting Trump in the presidential race, including $102 million since Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic ticket, according to federal election records. 

To save cash, Trump’s campaign has effectively outsourced its get-out-the-vote program to Musk’s America PAC. As Rolling Stone has reported, some Republicans close to Trump have warned the former president that they are concerned about the effectiveness of the group’s efforts.

Republicans have long fear-mongered about the national debt during Democratic presidencies — and appeared less concerned about it during GOP administrations. “People who claim to be deeply concerned about debt are, all too often, hypocrites — the level of their hypocrisy often reaches the surreal,” wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

The tax law that Trump signed in 2017, which slashed tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, has greatly contributed to the national deficit. Trump has personally bragged about cutting taxes for the nation’s “highest” earners, pledging to maintain those tax cuts and while proposing a further cut to the corporate tax rate.

Musk is a major government contractor and beneficiary of federal spending. His company SpaceX has several federal contracts, including a $1.8 billion contract with an intelligence agency to make a global surveillance network with satellites. The company also works with NASA to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station. 

Speaking about the national debt on Friday, the Tesla CEO and X owner said, “If you’re an individual, and you’re racking up crazy debt, well, obviously … you gotta reduce your spending, and you gotta start paying down that debt. And the same is true of a country. So that’s what I’d like to do.”

Musk, of course, borrowed $13 billion to purchase Twitter in 2022, before rebranding the social media platform as X. The Wall Street Journal called this “the worst buyout for banks since the financial crisis.”

At an America PAC town hall on Saturday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Musk spoke more about potential spending. “People sometimes ask, like, where would you start with government efficiency? And it’s kind of like being in a room where the entire room is targets, and so you can shoot in any direction and not miss,” he said.

Musk added, “It can’t be like, you know, we’ll, we’ll trim a little bit here and there. That’s not going to work there. There have to be quite radical reductions in cost.”

At another point during the town hall, Musk once again “joked” about someone killing Harris. 

Calling the vice president a “puppet,” Musk said, “I made a joke that was sort of misconstrued, that it was like, ‘Nobody even bothers to try to kill Kamala.’ That’s pointless. Why? They’ll just get another puppet. Nobody even bothers. Nobody’s even tried to kill [Joe] Biden.”

It was at least the fourth time that Musk has publicly questioned why no one is trying to kill the president or vice president of the United States.

[pscottm]

Former restaurant CEO Andrew Puzder “is among the contenders being considered by President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team to lead the federal agency that enforces worker safety, minimum wage, child labor, retirement security, and other employment laws,” Bloomberg Law reports.

“Puzder was Trump’s original choice for labor secretary when he was first elected in 2017.”

Playbook: “You may recall Puzder as Trump’s Labor secretary nominee last term — who withdrew after he admitted to having an undocumented housekeeper and after our colleagues Marianne LeVine and Timothy Noah revealed that his ex-wife appeared on a 1990 Oprah episode about domestic abuse.”

Andrew Franklin Puzder (born July 11, 1950) is an American attorney, author, and businessman. He is the former chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Hardee's and Carl's Jr., a position he held from September 2000 to March 2017.[1] He was previously a commercial trial lawyer in private practice from 1978 to 1995 who handled many high-profile cases and was active in the anti-abortion movement.

Puzder co-authored the book entitled Job Creation: How It Really Works and Why Government Doesn't Understand It.[2] On December 8, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Puzder to serve as Secretary of Labor, but on February 15, 2017, he withdrew due to lack of votes needed for his confirmation.[3]

After withdrawing, Puzder published his second book entitled The Capitalist Comeback: The Trump Boom and the Left’s Plot to Stop It in 2018.[4]

Puzder has been critical of raising the federal minimum wage, claiming that a $15 per hour minimum wage would increase costs for consumers and increase automation, leading to fewer jobs.[59][60][52] He also opposes raising the $2.13 per hour minimum wage for tipped workers.[61] In an interview published by Fox Business in May 2016, Puzder said: "There are solutions to this problem, and increasing the minimum wage is not the best solution. If we are going to increase the minimum wage at all, we’ve got to keep a lower minimum wage for entry-level workers, or these people are just going to be shut out of the workforce….The Congressional Budget Office came out with a report last year that said you could raise the minimum wage to about $9 without much impact on jobs, and you probably could do that".[62][63] He said that protesters who are demanding a $15/hour minimum wage "should really think about what they’re doing".[62][63]

Puzder opposed a never-enacted rule that would have required time and a half overtime pay to certain salaried managers when they worked more than 40 hours per week. In an editorial published by Forbes Magazine in 2016, Puzder wrote: "This new rule will simply add to the extensive regulatory maze the Obama Administration has imposed on employers, forcing many to offset increased labor expense by cutting costs elsewhere. In practice, this means reduced opportunities, bonuses, benefits, perks and promotions".[64] Under his tenure, CKE paid $20 million over class-action lawsuits due to various overtime rule violations.[65]

Puzder supports repealing the Affordable Care Act.[66] In an opinion editorial published in The Wall Street Journal in October 2016, Puzder referred to the law as the "Non-Affordable Care Act" and said that "the burden these increased health-care costs place on working and middle-class Americans is inexcusable".[67] He stated that rising premiums have created a "government-mandated restaurant recession" because people have less money to spend dining out.[67][66]

[beardedmrbean]

JACKSON, Miss. -- A former director of Mississippi's welfare agency pleaded guilty Thursday to new federal charges in a conspiracy to misspend tens of millions of dollars that were intended to help needy families in one of the poorest states in the U.S. — part of the largest public corruption case in the state's history.

John Davis appeared in federal court to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of fraud against the government. During the hearing, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves asked several questions about whether Davis understood the charges to which he was pleading guilty.

“Yes, sir,” Davis responded each time.

Reeves set sentencing for Feb. 2. Davis remains free on bond, and the judge said he hopes Davis makes better decisions from now on.

“I look forward to hoping that this portion of your life is behind you," Reeves said.

Davis was indicted on state charges in February 2020. He was re-indicted this spring on state charges that he participated in misusing welfare money, including using some to send a former pro wrestler to a luxury drug rehab facility.

The state charges are being dropped in exchange for Davis agreeing to plead guilty to federal charges and to testify against others in the case, according to a state court agreement filed Wednesday. The state court document said Davis had agreed to plead guilty to five counts of conspiracy and 13 counts of fraud in federal court, but he pleaded guilty to one count of each. Attorneys in federal court did not mention multiple charges or explain the contents of the state court document.

The federal charges were handed down Sept. 15, but remained sealed until Wednesday. Federal court records show Davis appeared before a magistrate judge Wednesday, and that Davis waived indictment and agreed to be prosecuted under the federal charges.

Davis was executive director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services from February 2016 through July 2019. He was appointed to the job by then-Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican.

The federal charges say Davis conspired with four other people, who are not named. Court documents describe two of the alleged conspirators as executive directors of organizations, one as the owner of two companies and one only as a resident of Hinds County, Mississippi. The capital city of Jackson is in Hinds County.

The conspiracy charges say one of the organizations paid nearly $498,000 to one of the companies in June 2018. A few days later, that company entered a $1.1 million contract with the other company “purportedly in exchange for creating a program to serve inner-city youth.” The charges also say the same organization paid $700,000 that summer to the company with the youth program contract.

The theft charges say Davis misused federal grants of more than $10,000.

The conspiracy charge is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and the theft charge carries up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

In April, a mother and son who ran a nonprofit organization and an education company pleaded guilty to state charges of misusing welfare money, including on lavish gifts such as first-class airfare for Davis. Nancy New and Zachary New agreed to testify against others.

In a state court filing Sept. 12, an attorney for one of the News' organizations listed text messages between retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre and Nancy New, between Favre and Bryant and between Bryant and New.

The messages showed discussions about millions of dollars in welfare money being directed to a pet project of Favre — a volleyball facility being built at the University of Southern Mississippi. Favre, Bryant and New all attended the university, and Favre's daughter started playing volleyball there in 2017. Favre and Bryant have not been charged in the welfare misspending case.

[msclaritea]

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 17, 2020 ~

Donald Trump is the man that the libertarian billionaire Charles Koch reluctantly accepted to play Hank Rearden in the Oval Office. Rearden was the fictional character in Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged. The libertarian story line of the novel is that a federal government that grows too big with too many regulations is anathema to the corporate geniuses that should be running the country.

According to Nicholas Confessore, writing for the New York Times in January 2015, the Koch Brothers (Charles and David) and their billionaire minions that meet secretly twice a year at tony resorts to strategize on running the country, agreed to spend upwards of $900 million “to shape a presidential election that is already on track to be the most expensive in history.” This, writes Confessore, would allow the Koch machine to “operate at the same financial scale as the Democratic and Republican Parties.”

Once Trump was in the Oval Office, the Koch machine, known then as Freedom Partners, wasted no time in laying out its agenda for Trump to follow. In a document titled “Roadmap to Repeal: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Opportunity,” the Koch front group lists the laws and regulations it expects to be repealed in the first 100 days of his administration. And like a dutiful courtier, the Trump administration responded quickly. Repeal the Paris Climate Accord – done. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy – done. Gutting federal regulations and the Environmental Protection Agency – lots accomplished there.

Not only did Freedom Partners get its wish list checked off but its minions were invited into key jobs in the Trump administration to hasten the agenda. SourceWatch reported that as of April, 2018, 12 people who previously worked at Freedom Partners were working in the Trump administration.

One of those was Marc Short, previously President of Freedom Partners, who became Director of Legislative Affairs for Trump. Short is now Chief of Staff to Vice President Mike Pence.

Kellyanne Conway, the TV defender-in-chief for the Trump administration, previously consulted for Freedom Partners, according to the public watchdog, Public Citizen. Then there was that inexplicable hiring by Trump of 12 Jones Day lawyers on the very day of his inauguration on January 20, 2017. According to Public Citizen, two of the main hires from Jones Day, White House Counsel Don McGahn and Ann Donaldson, Chief of Staff to McGahn, both previously represented Freedom Partners.

The Koch brothers (David died on August 23, 2019) were majority owners of the private fossil fuels company, Koch Industries. Charles Koch remains its Chairman and CEO. In July of 2018, when we investigated Freedom Partners and the Koch’s massive voter data operation called i360 for the news site CounterPunch, we found this:

“All but one of Freedom Partners’ 9-member Board of Directors is a current or former Koch company employee. The Board Chair is the same Mark Holden that is the General Counsel of Koch Industries.”

A previous Koch-related corporate front group, Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), which split into Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks in 2004, was established in 1984 by David Koch and Richard Fink, who worked as an executive for Koch Industries from 1990 until his retirement in 2016. According to the in-depth research report, “To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party,” Citizens for a Sound Economy “supported the agendas of the tobacco and other industries, including oil, chemical, pharmaceutical and telecommunications, and was funded by them.”

According to a recent report by Reuters, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) took up to $1 million from the Paycheck Protection Program. The nonprofit has been heavily funded by Koch foundation money for years as well as other corporate interests. According to ARI’s 2019 Annual Report, as a result of its shipping out free Ayn Rand books like Atlas Shrugged to high school and college students for years, it estimates “that more than 300,000 students now read Ayn Rand each year.”

In 2010 it was revealed that corporate money was contractually mandating the reading and teaching of Ayn Rand books at publicly funded universities. Gary H. Jones, an Associate Professor in the College of Business at Western Carolina University, wrote about the scandal in the July-August 2010 issue of Academe, the magazine of the American Association of University Professors. Jones wrote this:

“Recent donations from the charitable arm of BB&T, one of the nation’s largest banks, have raised the issue of external influence…At the center of the concerns about these donations is the requirement that objectivist Ayn Rand’s novels be taught in special courses extolling capitalism and self-interest…the BB&T gifts raise questions of both substance and procedure. Faculty members at several universities did not even know of the gifts or that BB&T’s donations had curricular implications until after the agreements were signed. At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, for example, three years passed before faculty members learned that a million-dollar gift agreement establishing a new course contained language requiring both that Rand’s lengthy paean to laissez-faire capitalism, Atlas Shrugged, be assigned reading and that professors who teach that course ‘have a positive interest in and be well versed in Objectivism.’ ”

If Trump allowed the federal government to become the hero in saving the American people from the ravages of COVID-19, he would be undermining decades of Koch money infused into politics and the economics departments of colleges and universities across America to brainwash the public that big government is evil and only the corporations can save us.

So this is what Trump did: he refused to formally invoke the Defense Production Act but allowed all of the wonderful Hank Reardens in corporate America to voluntarily manufacture masks and ventilators.

Trump refused to issue a federal order for mask wearing because that is a federal regulation and he was put in the Oval Office to gut federal regulations, not impose more.

Even after a study by Victor Chernozhukov of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Hiroyuki Kasahara and Paul Schrimpf of the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics found that 40,000 lives could have been saved in a two-month period if there had been a federal mandate for employees working in public-facing businesses to wear masks, and the policy had been strictly obeyed, Trump issued no federal order on masks.

In fact, until just recently, Trump undermined the public’s wearing of masks by repeatedly appearing in public, and at mass indoor rallies, without wearing a mask.

He did this because this is what Kochs’ money infused into right-wing groups like the Tea Party for decades necessitated that he do. Without those right-wing supporters, there would be no one showing up at his rallies or voting for him on November 3.

Until mainstream media accurately confronts the corporate demons that reside in Donald Trump’s head, the nation will continue sliding into the pandemic pit from hell.

[aakhatrint-blog]

Federal Supporting Small Business Program, a Big Cake for Trump’s Evangelical Allies

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the US economy has been severely damaged, with many companies laying off workers and many people losing their jobs. US Federal Government and all state governments, including some of the biggest companies, are actively seeking relief. Especially, US Federal Government has taken a series of massive actions to stable and stimulate economy. For example, two acts have been passed to allocate funds to federal agencies for vaccine development, free virus testing, paid leave for affected people, additional Medicaid funding and food aid. On 27 March 2020, President Trump signed a larger Economic Relief Package, Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (the “CARES Act”) into law. It is an economic stimulus act that includes direct cash payments to tax-paying residents, unemployment insurance expansion, state aid and loans to businesses. Some of the money will be used for loans to small businesses.

Federal Supporting Small Businesses Program, a Big cake for Evangelical Allies

On July 8, the Associated Press reported that evangelical Allies of President Trump have received loans from the Federal Supporting Businesses Program while the churches of evangelical advisers connected to President Trump have received at least $17.2 million in loans, including the City of Destiny by Paula White, President Trump’s personal pastor and White House faith adviser. According to figures released by the US Treasury Department, the City of Destiny received about $350,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) clearly stipulates that eligible applicants are small businesses with fewer than 500 employees (more than 500 in individual industries, according to SBA guidance) directly affected by COVID-19 since 31 January, including self-employed, contract workers and self-employed, small agricultural cooperatives and small aquaculture enterprises, and many of the affected restaurants, hair salons, gyms, renovation companies, even start-ups (non-venture capitalists), self-employed people, Uber drivers, real estate agents, and so on are eligible to apply.

According to reporters Karl Russell and Stacy Cowley from New York Times, “A centerpiece of the federal government’s economic relief plan is to provide billions in forgivable loans to small businesses struggling during the coronavirus pandemic. But analyses of government data show that the lending program, which is overseen by the Small Business Administration, allowed many of the earliest funds to go to parts of the country that were not as hard-hit by the coronavirus as well as to a small number of companies seeking millions in assistance.”

The relief program has been criticized since its inception. Although the program focuses on supporting small businesses, the rules of the first lending round allowed large businesses to apply for loans of up to $10 million, and later evangelicals occupied massive loans. All these sparked the anger among small business owners. There is also the uneven distribution of funds across regions.

“The challenge most feared by small businesses has really happened,” said Brad Close, President of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s largest small business industry group. A lot of disaster loans went to the bigwigs and their Allies. “Small businesses in the US are on the edge of a cliff and are doing everything they can to take care of employees, reopen their businesses. The Trump administration has let them down and the smallest businesses that want to participate in the PPP are the most disadvantaged.”

President Trump and his evangelical allies             

On June 21, 2016, in the midst of an uncertain battle for the republican presidential nomination, property magnate Donald J. Trump and his campaign team decided to form the Evangelical Advisory Board, which would be one of the high-end policy advisory boards after he has won the election. This loose, mystical political advisory body was originally composed of 26 members, who are mainly evangelical leaders and megachurch ministers. After Trump was elected President, these “evangelical advisers” naturally became regular visitors to the White House, supported President Trump on many occasions and became one of the representative symbols of President Trump’s affinity with Christian evangelicals. After the Racism incident in Charlottesville, Virginia, occurred on August 12, 2017, President Trump’s inappropriate remarks drew widespread criticism and led to the disbanding of several political advisory bodies in other areas of the Trump administration, but the Evangelical Advisory Board continued to function and some members even defended him, causing controversy.

With the political awakening and participation of Evangelical Christians in politics, the large number of evangelical Christians has become a competitive voter resource for the two major Parties in the United States. They usually set up their own religious outreach organizations or projects in political elections, especially before American Presidential Election, and these organizations or projects are responsible for winning the votes of religious voters, especially evangelical voters. However, such organizations or projects usually disbanded after election and did not become a permanent establishment of the ruling Party or the new administration.

In the 2016 election, Donald Trump, a businessman, a political nerd and a religious novice, was once considered the least religious or the least religious reliable one among all presidential candidates. A key turning point of evangelical leaders’ attitude toward Donald Trump came on June 21, 2016, when Trump met with about 900 evangelical leaders at a special meeting of Christian leaders in New York, and some of those who attended the closed-door meeting were persuaded by him to believe that Trump would qualify for obtaining their support. On the same day, the Trump campaign team announced the creation of a 26-member “Evangelical Advisory Board” headed by Michelle Backmann, a former Minnesota congresswoman. The Board became Trump’s primary campaign arm for mobilizing evangelical voters to support Trump and became his official religious advisory team after he took office. In a statement, the Trump campaign team said the mission of the Evangelical Advisory Board was “to advise Mr. Trump on issues of vital importance to Evangelicals and other religious adherents in the US because he “wants to get the sagacious advice of these (Evangelical) leaders”.

Paula white, an evangelical icon, has a way of accumulating wealth

Paula White at the New Destiny Christian Center in Florida, a member of the Evangelical Advisory Board, is referred by Donald Trump as his old friend and personal pastor for many years. When Trump ran for President in 2016, he turned to her to boost his evangelical support. The White House later confirmed that Ms. White had joined the administration to advise Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, which aims to give religious groups more of a voice in government programs devoted to issues like defending religious liberty and fighting poverty.

Also in 2016, Paula White made a donation persuasion with great inducement during the Easter Sunday service: ”There’s someone that God is speaking to, to click on that donation button by minimizing the screen. And when you do to sow $1,144,” she told the crowd. “It’s not often I ask very specifically but God has instructed me and I want you to hear. This isn’t for everyone but this is for someone. When you sow that $1,144 based on John 11:44 I believe for resurrection life. ”You say, Paula, I just don’t have that, then sow $144. I don’t have that. Sow $44 but stand on John Chapter 11:44.” She emphasizes: “For those who cannot afford to the required sum, I encourage them to make a smaller donation. You say, Paula, I just don’t have that, then sow $144. I don’t have that. Sow $44 but stand on John Chapter 11:44.” In 2019, White says in an appeal for money at her website: “I Prophetically Decree and Declare Deliverance & Prosperity are Yours in 2019. This is the Year YOU Inherit YOUR Promised Land!” White adds: With obedience to this first-fruits instruction and your faith, I believe your purpose, your year, your prosperity, and power will release blessing upon your entire year! Amen!” This exhortation is equivalent to a divine command for believers: if you have money, give more; if you have no money, give less. But each believer has to give a little anyway, and each has its own price, which seems reasonable. In March, after the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, White used a televised sermon to urge evangelicals to donate money, and was forced to stop after being accused of cashing in via the epidemic.

In 2004 and 2007, the Finance Committee of the U.S. Senate conducted two investigations on Paula White, Randy white and their Evangelical Church and did not found Paula White violated the church tax exemption, but questioned Paula White’s financial condition. For example, between 2004 and 2007 the church paid a total of $2.755 million in compensation to their relatives, including Paula’s son Brad Knight and Randy’s two children, father, and sister. In addition, Randy and Paula also reportedly received $5 million a year in compensation from their church, and purchased a $3.5 million condo in Trump Tower in New York City, according to Senate documents. Furthermore, from 2004 to 2013, the U.S. federal tax office also investigated Paula White and Randy White’s personal and church finance, mainly investigating whether Paula White’s personal income and church’s financial sources violated the US federal tax law. After 2016, the U.S. government did not investigate Paula White any longer.

[dandymeowth]

Many of the landholders are newcomers from out of state, though some old-timers remain—families that earned their deeds generations ago, the principal paid by ancestors who shivered through pitiless winters in tar-paper shacks. Wilson has been hiking and hunting the Crazies since he was a little kid, but only in the past year or so, he says, have the private ranchers seemed more like obstacles than neighbors. “They could shut down pretty much the whole interior of the Crazy Mountains, as far as I can see,” he says.                

He trudges up a rooty slope and, after a blind bend, sees something straddling the trail that stops him cold. It’s a padlocked metal gate. He hiked this trail a couple of weeks before, and the fence wasn’t there. A sign on it reads, “Private Property: No Forest Service Access, No Trespassing.” It’s exactly the kind of sign he’d been bad-mouthing a few minutes earlier, but he wasn’t expecting to see one here. The locked gate feels like an escalation, a new weapon in an improvised war.                

................

A debate is taking place across the country over preserving land for recreational public use, but most of the attention is focused on vast swaths of historically or scientifically significant terrain that Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and to a lesser extent George W. Bush protected under the national monument designation—for example, Bears Ears in Utah and Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine. These disputed trails leading into the Crazy Mountains represent another front in the escalating battle over control of federal territory, and the fighting here is just as contentious as over the monuments. Historic settlement patterns in the American West created a checkerboard pattern of landownership: Public properties are often broken-up plots, resulting in numerous access disputes. According to a 2013 study by the Center for Western Priorities, that dynamic has effectively locked the public out of about 4 million acres of land in Western states; almost half of that blocked public land, or about 2 million acres, is in Montana, according to the study. The push to end public thoroughfare is either an overdue reassertion of private property rights or an openly cynical land snatch, depending which side of the gate you’re standing on.       

................

In late October 2-16, in the dying days of the Obama era, a U.S. district judge issued a verdict that seemed to set a precedent for paths like this one. The Texas-based owners of a Montana property called Wonder Ranch, about 100 miles southeast of the Crazy Mountains, had sued the Forest Service after the government filed a statement of interest claiming an easement—a legal agreement to use a portion of someone’s land for a specific purpose—on a trail that ran across the ranch’s property before reaching the Lee Metcalf Wilderness. The Forest Service said the trail had been routinely used as an access route to the forest by the government and the public for decades, and therefore it should be considered public because of historical use. The owners’ suit argued that the government had no right to an easement. The Department of Justice countersued, producing evidence dating back more than a century showing that the public and the government consistently used the trail for packhorses and hike-ins. The Forest Service won the case.                       

Had the landowners been able to show that the trail had been used for at least five consecutive years only by those who’d received their permission, their claims of private control might have held. That helps explain why Alex Sienkiewicz, the forest ranger overseeing the district that includes the Crazy Mountains, every year sends an email to his staff reminding them never to ask landowners’ permission to use trails that the government already considers public. “By asking permission,” he wrote in 2016’s reminder, “one undermines the public access rights and plays into their lawyers’ trap of establishing a history of permissive access.” That didn’t mean anyone could veer off the trail and slip onto the private property—that’s trespassing, no question about it—it just meant the trail itself should be considered a public throughway.      

....................

For a while, it seemed that attitude might be one of the rare Obama positions that President Donald Trump could live with. In a pre-election interview, Trump told the magazine Field & Stream he didn’t like the idea of transferring the land to the states, suggesting such transfers could erode public oversight of them: “I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do,” he said. “I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land. This is magnificent land.”                                       

Public land advocates smelled a contradiction, since the new president was positioning himself elsewhere as a champion of private property rights. And regardless of what he said, Trump’s campaign had tapped into a very deep well of antigovernment sentiment, the sort that Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy appealed to when he occupied public territories and led armed standoffs against federal agents in 2014 and again in 2016. The co-chair of a state group called Veterans for Trump pleaded guilty to helping organize the ad hoc rebel militia, and Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, has been one of Bundy’s most vocal supporters. Immediately after the election, whether or not the results had anything to do with their actions, the Crazy Mountains landowners launched a collective blitz to take control of the trails leading to Forest Service property.                

.................

Gregoire decided to go for it. When the trail veered through a private plot called the Hailstone Ranch, he spotted a No Trespassing sign that read, “The Forest Service Has No Easement Here.” He ignored it, consulting his GPS to make sure he never strayed from the path onto the private ranch land. The landowner somehow detected that he was using the trail (“I think he had an alarm or something,” Gregoire later speculated) and called a sheriff’s deputy, who was waiting for Gregoire to return at the end of the day. The deputy charged him with criminal trespassing.                                       

Shortly after that, the owners of nine ranches neighboring the Hailstone went after Sienkiewicz. Back on July 20, 2017, a volunteer at Public Land/Water Access Association Inc., a Montana nonprofit that supports open public access to federal lands and waterways, had gotten hold of, then posted on its Facebook page, Sienkiewicz’s most recent annual email reminder to his staff advising them never to sign visitor logs for trail access or ask permission. The property owners apparently assumed that Sienkiewicz had posted the item himself—proof that he was behaving as a political activist, not a public servant. The ranch owners sent a letter to U.S. Senator Steve Daines, a Republican representing Montana, saying in part, “As a direct result of this inflammatory Facebook post, we have many questions about the FS position regarding access across our private property.” Several of the ranchers who signed the letter have also been listed as contributors to Daines’s political campaigns in the past five years.                                       

In May 2017, Daines echoed the landowners’ complaints—and forwarded a screen shot of the Facebook post—in a letter to Thomas Tidwell, then the chief of the Forest Service, and to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, whose agency oversees the Forest Service. Less than two weeks later, Representative Pete Sessions (R-Texas) got involved, firing off a similar complaint to Perdue and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has a long history in Montana. An avid hunter and fisherman, he was born in Bozeman, about 40 miles from the Crazies. He was also a Montana congressman, filling the seat Daines had occupied before he moved to the Senate. (At least one of the ranchers donated to Zinke’s campaign.)

In his letter, Sessions described the Forest Service’s approach to public access as part of “the war on private property owners conducted by the Obama administration.” The Wonder Ranch owners hadn’t been among the nine who signed the initial letter, but they were the link that got Sessions involved. One of the co-owners, a Texan named Chris Hudson, lives in Sessions’ district, and Sessions proposed that Hudson and Perdue meet. Sessions also recommended that the Forest Service issue a nationwide directive to prevent rangers or individual districts from declaring paths and roads public based on historic use.                

.................

Defenders of Sienkiewicz and Gregoire—a group that included land access advocates, proprietors of recreation businesses, wildlife groups, and individuals—cast the developments as evidence of an under-the-table assault on public lands that the Trump administration appeared to endorse, if not initiate. In spring 2017, Trump requested that Zinke’s Department of the Interior review national monuments, designated or enlarged since 1996, and possibly downsize them, a step he said could rectify what he considered a “massive federal land grab.” Several politicians from Utah, such as Orrin Hatch, Rob Bishop, and Jason Chaffetz, had led the downsizing push, and for years they’d been advocating turning such lands over to the states—the strategy Trump had earlier declared would result in a selloff to the highest bidder. The department eventually suggested downsizing six of the 27 monuments under review, but the ultimate fate of those lands and waters remains in limbo; the matter will go to Congress, and the conservationists have said they will fight the new boundaries in court.              

................

Anderson has carved out a field for himself in something called free-market environmentalism. Along with his job at PERC, he’s a professor emeritus at Montana State University and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a libertarian-leaning think tank. In op-eds published across the country, he’s an evangelist for limited government and private property rights. He views many environmentalists with undisguised contempt, and they generally return the favor.                                       

Like many nonprofits, PERC doesn’t disclose its funding sources, but Greenpeace International has posted records showing that they’ve included Exxon Mobil Corp. and the industrialists Charles and David Koch. Anderson probably wouldn’t worry too much about how that looks: He believes the private sector, in most cases, is a better steward of nature than the government.                

...........

Quilici’s plan was seat-of-the-pants. He thought he might spend three or four days hiking to an exit point on the far side of the mountains, but he didn’t realize that the most direct trail was blocked by the gate Wilson had confronted. Other possible paths were also contested. When I told him this, he redirected his criticism away from the parking lot and toward the landowners. “I bet they have some lobbying power,” he said. “They just want to keep everything like it’s their own private reserve.”        

Herein lies the big challenge for the landowners and their defenders: Survey after survey has shown that the public hates the idea that someone can lock taxpayers out of public land, and that they’re suspicious of transferring control of such tracts to private enterprise. Nevertheless, Anderson and PERC deny that their position is out of step with public opinion, even casting it as pro-access. Their rationale is oblique: If the Forest Service insists the public has a right to use the trails, they say, private landowners will naturally rebel; numerous court battles will ensue, tying up the trails in years of litigation and costing the government millions of dollars. And as the cases proceed, the landowners will take steps to secure their property rights, blocking traffic on the trails until the mess is sorted out.                                       

“In the places where now there are signs,” Anderson predicts, “you’ll see a locked gate.” His comment is an informed one. He counts several of the landowners involved in the Crazy Mountains disputes as friends, including the owners of the Rein Anchor Outfitting and Ranch, who operate a hunting lodge and signed the letter against Sienkiewicz. PERC’s affiliation with politically connected outfitters that stand to profit if trails are closed bolsters the sense, to Wilson and others confronting locked gates, that a void in coherent policy about public land management is being filled by cronyism that rewards wealth and connections above all else. Another co-owner of the Wonder Ranch, Frank-Paul King, a friend and former student of Anderson’s, served on PERC’s board. Hudson, the man who got Representative Sessions involved, is King’s brother-in-law, and he’s also a board member and the former president of the Dallas Safari Club, a group that made national headlines in 2014 when it auctioned off a trip to Africa to hunt an endangered rhinoceros. (The winning bidder, who paid $350,000, traveled to Namibia and shot a black rhino bull, an animal the club said had threatened the rest of the herd.) The Dallas Safari Club has granted PERC funding for, among other things, a study on “private conservation in the public interest.”                                       

In 2016 the Dallas Safari Club hosted a fundraiser featuring the big-game hunting enthusiast Donald Trump Jr. that netted $60,000 in campaign donations to the Republican National Committee. “The candidate’s family connection to hunting and its legacy gives DSC a huge opportunity to have the right people in place as advocates for our mission,” the club’s newsletter stated. After Trump was elected, Hudson was listed as an organizer for a post-inaugural fundraiser called “Opening Day 45,” which featured Eric and Donald Trump Jr. as co-chairs. It was canceled after TMZ published an early draft of the invitation in December 2016, promising personal access to President Trump, along with a multiday hunting excursion with his sons, to anyone who donated more than $500,000, sparking criticism that the sons planned to peddle access to their father.                

...............

The trail access issue was extremely sensitive inside the Forest Service, she explained, and potentially costly, too. The Trump administration was proposing a 73 percent cut in the Forest Service’s capital improvement and maintenance budget and an 84 percent reduction, from $77 million to $12 million, in its trail program budget. The Wonder Ranch case, she observed, had cost the government “in the millions of dollars,” and it wasn’t over yet—the landowners were appealing the decision, and it now sat with an appellate judge. “I’m not saying we’re never going to go to court, but the Forest Service is going to be careful about when we go to court and make sure we’re going to court on cases we can win,” she said.                

...............

The agency in mid-October announced it was giving Sienkiewicz his job back. But Gevock’s frustrations spoke to an unresolved question underlying all of the disputes: Who, exactly, is the Forest Service supposed to serve? On the agency’s website, former Director Thomas Tidwell wrote that its guiding principles were clearly established by Gifford Pinchot, the service’s founding chief, during the Gilded Age—“a time when the nation’s resources were being exploited for the benefit of the wealthy few,” Tidwell stated. “The national forests were based on a notion that was just the opposite—that these lands belong to everyone.”                                       

The public access advocates say they’re not sure they trust the spirit of Pinchot’s original message has survived intact. The mixed signals coming from the Trump administration mean everything rests on how those sometimes conflicting messages are interpreted. Zinke has repeatedly insisted, without offering specifics, that he is pro-access, and on his first day in office he pledged to fight against the “dramatic decreases in access to public lands across the board” that he said were plaguing America. “It worries me to think about hunting and fishing becoming activities for the landowning elite,” he said.                                       

But in July 2017, while public land advocates were protesting the Interior Department’s pending move to downsize the national monuments and hikers were cursing the new No Trespassing signs in the Crazies, Zinke traveled to Denver to speak at the annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. The group, a conservative lobbying coalition that helps lawmakers draft legislative proposals, has energetically pushed for the potential transfer of federal lands to the states. Whether Zinke’s speech clarified the government’s general, overarching philosophy on public-vs.-private control of lands that are currently federal, only members of the lobbying group can say for sure. Unlike several other speeches delivered at the conference, Zinke’s wasn’t transcribed or published, and it was closed to the general public.                

[alexsmitposts]

Journalists that are Allowed to Exercise Freedom by the US and those Who Cannot It is quite well known that the US government applies double standards to freedom of the press issue. Despite the fact that “freedom of the press in the United States is legally protected by the First Amendment” to the US Constitution, information available to the public is not necessarily free of government interference. It would appear that everything that does not align with policies of the current US elites is excluded from the mainstream, such as reports by journalists, viewed as troublemakers, and by alternative media outlets According to a survey, conducted by the Cato Institute (a US public policy research organization) and publicized on July 22, 2020, “nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans” questioned “say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive”. There are numerous mechanisms at the US government disposal to filter out information deemed unnecessary, thus preventing it from reaching a wider audience. And such policies are being pursued on the domestic front as well as abroad. There are also regulations governing the work of foreign media outlets operating in the United States. For example, this year, the US State Department designated “five Chinese news agencies as foreign government entities”, which were from then onwards to be officially treated “as extensions of China’s government, subjecting employees to similar rules that foreign diplomats operate under”. US companies have, on a number of occasions, taken down content posted by foreign media outlets from their platforms and social media networks for various reasons. For example, in May 2020, YouTube (a video sharing company) deleted the accounts of Crimea’s TV channel Krym-24 as well as ANNA News (the Abkhazian Network News Agency) and News Front from its platform. A month earlier, Russian News Agency TASS reported that “the Federal News Agency said earlier that Google had blocked its account, as well as its YouTube account”. The New Eastern Outlook accounts on Facebook and Twitter have been blocked. The official Twitter accounts of the President and government of Russia and a number of prominent Russian media received special, McCarthy-style labels. The list goes on. Restrictions have been imposed on RT and Sputnik news agencies and their staff. In March the US Department of State made a decision to cap “the number of US-based employees of Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International and China Daily Distribution Corp at 100 from 160 currently”. In May, the US Department of Homeland Security imposed new visa restrictions “against Chinese nationals working as journalists in the United States”. In fact, the effect of censorship is being felt not only by foreign but also domestic media outlets in the United States. For example, the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization based in New York, has continuously reported about physical attacks on journalists working in the United States. At times, media outlets have been sued for publishing reports critical of certain individuals or agencies. Journalists have also been pressured to reveal their confidential sources and to quit their jobs.  In July, journalist Bari Weiss published a scathing resignation letter that she sent to Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, in which she talks about unlawful discrimination and the illiberal work environment at the newspaper. Editorial page editor James Bennet resigned after admitting that an op-ed in the New York Times, calling for the deployment of federal troops into major American cities amid nationwide protests and riots, should not have been published blaming “a break down in the editorial process for the blunder”. It would seem that any perceived transgression by a reporter can result in imposition of restrictions or even repression. Jon Caldara who worked for The Denver Post since 2016 and wrote about “a range of issues, especially those related to political and economic freedom” lost his job for stating that “sex is binary”. Yet another notable example of limitations on freedom of the press imposed in the United States is the case instigated against Julian Assange (an activist and founder of WikiLeaks) by the US government, which formally requested his extradition. He is currently serving his 50-week prison sentence in the United Kingdom. In order to discourage alternative media outlets from publishing reports critical of the US government, the US Department of Justice charged Julian Assange on 18 counts. If convicted, he could receive a sentence of up to 175 years in prison. And in such an unhealthy environment, instead of defending the freedom of the press in the United States and protecting the rights of Julian Assange and journalists who have been wronged, Washington has, surprisingly, chosen to launch propaganda campaigns against violations of press freedom in other nations. These campaigns appear to target countries whose governments have imposed restrictions on work of journalists, who have been trained in the United States to shape public opinion via foreign media outlets. For example, US Ambassador to Uzbekistan Daniel Rosenblum, who assumed office in May 2019, has recently “joined this fight for justice” by expressing “deep concern” about the case of Uzbek journalist Bobomurod Abdullayev, who was detained by Kyrgyz authorities at Tashkent’s request. “The governments of both Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan should respect Mr. Abdullayev’s freedom of movement and allow him to depart the Kyrgyz Republic to his destination of choice,” tweeted the diplomat on August 13. So why has Daniel Rosenblum not been urging the UK to release Julian Assange and allow him to travel to a destination of his choosing (and not the United States)? At this point in the article, the author would like to explain to his readers why the US Ambassador has been pushing for the release of Bobomurod Abdullayev. On August 9, 2020, the journalist was detained by the Kyrgyz state security service in Bishkek at Tashkent’s request on “suspicion of anonymously criticizing the government on social media”.  In September 2017, Uzbek authorities arrested Bobomurod Abdullayev on charges of “conspiracy to overthrow the constitutional regime” “for writing critical articles on various platforms, including social media, under the pseudonym Usman Khaknazarov”. In March 2018, Bobomurod Abdullayev admitted “that he had used a pseudonym to publish critical articles, but that he was not the author of materials calling for violence”. The author suspects that such reports must have been written with help from the outside. On May 7, 2018, “the Tashkent City Criminal Court found Abdullayev guilty of committing an offence under article 159, paragraph 1 (b) of the Criminal Code (offences against the constitutional order of Uzbekistan” and “sentenced him to three years of correctional labor”. In February 2020, Bobomurod Abdullayev travelled to Kyrgyzstan for a four-month study program at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, but was unable to leave the country due to Coronavirus restrictions. In fact, Bobomurod Abdullayev might have been influenced to become a journalist who strives to shape public opinion via media outlets in Central Asia by well-known organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Open Society Foundations (established by George Soros) and USAID (the United States Agency for International Development). The aforementioned organizations have been accused of having ties with US intelligence agencies, of attempting to instigate color revolutions in Central Asia and of destabilizing communities with the help of national media outlets. Incidentally, the fairly new Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Daniel Rosenblum, could be uniquely poised to promote color revolutions because of his vast experience in working with non-profit organizations. “From 2014 to 2019, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs,” which deals with US foreign policy and US relations with the countries of these regions. His experience in the region must have been the reason why he was appointed as the Ambassador to Uzbekistan. The country has been of great interest to the United States lately because of recent developments in Afghanistan and around it; the need to influence the political landscape in Uzbekistan and Central Asia as a whole in a manner beneficial to the United States, and the desire to drive a wedge between the aforementioned nations and China and Russia, thus bringing them closer to the USA with the help of journalists capable of shaping public opinion. And Bobomurod Abdullayev is among such reporters, which is why Daniel Rosenblum is so concerned about his arrest.

[phroyd]

Nineteen minutes before the first 911 call alerted authorities to a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Tex., a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto appeared online.

It spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” It detailed a plan to separate America into territories by race. It warned that white people were being replaced by foreigners.

The authorities were scrutinizing the 2,300-word screed on Saturday and attempting to determine whether it was written by the same man who killed 20 people and injured more than two dozen others near the Mexican border.

Police were interviewing the suspected killer, Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old white man from Allen, Tex., a roughly 10-hour drive to the Walmart. What brought him to a crowded shopping center in El Paso is one of the many questions on the minds of investigators.

The manifesto that may be linked to Mr. Crusius described an imminent attack and railed against immigrants, saying, “if we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable.”

From New Zealand to Pittsburgh to a synagogue in Poway, California, aggrieved white men over the last several months have turned to mass murder in service of hatreds against immigrants, Jews and others they perceive as threats to the white race.

The unsigned manifesto, titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” draws direct inspiration from the mass murder of Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand in March that left 51 people dead. In that attack, the alleged killer published a manifesto online promoting a white supremacist theory called “the great replacement.” The theory has been promoted by a French writer named Renaud Camus, and argues that elites in Europe have been working to replace white Europeans with immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

Christchurch has become a rallying cry for extremists the world over. The manifesto potentially linked to the El Paso killings begins, “In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

The gunman who opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, Calif., near San Diego, in April, posted an anti-Semitic diatribe on 8chan, the same online message board where the El Paso document surfaced. The Poway manifesto echoed the words of the Christchurch killer, and also drew inspiration from a massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last October. In that mass shooting, the killer railed against immigrants, Jews and other groups.

The El Paso shooting, if the manifesto is linked to the gunman, potentially underscored the global spread of white supremacist ideology in the age of social media and at a time when immigration in America and elsewhere has become a divisive political topic.

Shortly after the mass shooting Saturday, Mr. Crusius’ LinkedIn and Facebook accounts were shut down. A LinkedIn page that circulated online after the account was closed down appeared to be several years old, and Mr. Crusius seemed to be a lost young man.

He wrote on LinkedIn while in high school, “I’m not really motivated to do anything more than what’s necessary to get by. Working in general sucks, but I guess a career in Software Development suits me well. I spend about 8 hours every day on the computer so that counts toward technology experience I guess.”

The posting concluded: “Pretty much just gonna see what technology careers present themselves to me; go with the wind.”

If the manifesto is conclusively linked to the suspected gunman in El Paso, federal authorities may treat Saturday’s attack as a hate crime or an incident of domestic terrorism.

The F.B.I. has said that more Americans have died in domestic terror attacks than in international terror attacks since 9/11, and that domestic terrorism is increasingly motivated by white supremacist ideology.

In July, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray told Congress that the bureau had made about 100 domestic terrorism arrests in the first three quarters of the year, roughly the same number of international arrests over that time period. The bureau is on track to make more domestic terror arrests than it did in 2019.

No United States government agency is responsible for designating domestic terrorism organizations, and there is no criminal charge of domestic terrorism. Individuals who are considered domestic terrorists are charged under other existing laws, such as hate crime, gun and conspiracy statutes.

Officials have said that domestic terrorists continue to be radicalized online, where individuals are able to align with other extremists, become inspired and find the resources they need to act.

The investigation is currently being led by the state of Texas, with assistance from the local sheriff’s department, the F.B.I., Border Patrol and others. During a news conference Saturday afternoon, law enforcement officials said that they were exploring potential capital murder charges.

“Not speaking about this particular instance, which is still under investigation, the manifesto narrative is fueled by hate, and it is fueled by racism and bigotry and division,” said Veronica Escobar, the congresswoman who represents El Paso. “El Paso has historically been a very safe community. We’ve been safe for decades. We will continue to be safe.” She added, “This is someone who came from outside of our community to do us harm.”

Once again on Saturday, America’s epidemic of mass shootings intersected with the divisive issues of race and immigration.

The words of the manifesto, in citing “the great replacement” theory, echo the slogan that was chanted during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017: “Jews will not replace us.”

The writer of the manifesto also suggested that Democrats in the United States have a strategy to gain a permanent majority by embracing the growing Hispanic population, a notion that has gained currency on right-wing radio shows for years.

The manifesto said the gunman planned to use an AK-47-style rifle, which has been frequently used in mass shootings. The four-page document said politicians of both parties were to blame for the United States “rotting from the inside out,” and that “the heavy Hispanic population in Texas will make us a Democrat stronghold.”

The manifesto also railed against automation and embraced an argument familiar in anti-immigrant circles: that immigrants are taking jobs from “natives.”

“My opinions on automation, immigration, and the rest predate Trump and his campaign for president,” the document says.

Phroyd

[tayersaree]

The Complete History: All What You Need to Know in Particulars Supported by Video Around World Health Organization (WHO).

In 1977, the very first listing of essential medicines was created, and a year later on the enthusiastic goal of "wellness for all " was declared. In 1986, the WHO began its international program on HIV/AIDS. Two years later stopping discrimination versus sufferers was addressed and in 1996 UNAIDS was formed. In 1988, the Worldwide Polio Eradication Initiative was established. In 1998, THAT's Director-General highlighted gains in kid survival, minimized baby death, enhanced life expectancy as well as decreased rates of "scourges " such as smallpox and polio on the fiftieth anniversary of THAT's founding. He, did, nonetheless, accept that even more had to be done to help mother's health and wellness and that development around had been slow. In 2001 the measles campaign was formed, and attributed with minimizing worldwide deaths from the disease by 68% by 2007. In 2006, the company recommended the globe's first main HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe, which created the basis for a worldwide avoidance, therapy as well as assistance strategy to combat the AIDS pandemic. The WHO fulfills this goal via its functions as specified in its Constitution: (a) To serve as the directing and collaborating authority on global health job; (b) To establish and preserve reliable collaboration with the United Nations, specialized companies, governmental wellness managements, professional groups and also such other organizations as might be considered ideal; (c) To assist Federal governments, upon demand, in strengthening health services; (d) To equip suitable technological support and, in emergency situations, required aid upon the demand or approval of Governments; (e) To provide or assist in supplying, upon the request of the United Nations, health services as well as centers to special teams, such as the peoples of trust territories; (f) To establish and also preserve such management and technical services as may be required, consisting of epidemiological as well as statistical services; (g) to stimulate and progress work to remove epidemic, native and also various other illness; (h) To advertise, in co-operation with various other specific firms where necessary, the avoidance of injuries; (i) To promote, in co-operation with various other specialized agencies where essential, the enhancement of nutrition, real estate, sanitation, entertainment, financial or working problems and other facets of ecological hygiene; (j) To promote co-operation among clinical as well as professional groups which add to the innovation of health; (k) To propose laws, agreements and also conventions, and also make recommendations with respect to worldwide health and wellness matters as well as to perform. As of 2012, the THAT has actually specified its role in public health as adheres to: providing leadership on matters crucial to health and wellness and also participating in partnerships where joint action is required; forming the research agenda as well as boosting the generation, translation, and also dissemination of valuable knowledge; establishing standards and standards and also promoting and also monitoring their implementation; articulating evidence-based and also moral policy alternatives; supplying technical assistance, militarizing change, as well as building lasting institutional capability; as well as monitoring the health and wellness situation and analyzing health and wellness patterns. The World Health And Wellness Organization (THAT) is a customized firm of the United Nations that is worried with international public wellness. The THAT is accountable for the Globe Health Report, the globally Globe Health and wellness Study, and Globe Health Day. A worldwide recognized malaria scientist, as Minister of Health and wellness, Tedros obtained appreciation for a number of innovative and system-wide health reforms that substantially improved accessibility to health and wellness solutions and also essential end results. Amongst them were employing and educating roughly 40,000 female wellness extension employees, reducing infant death from 123 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2006 to 88 in 2011, and also increasing the hiring of health cadres including medical physicians as well as midwives. In 1958, Viktor Zhdanov, Replacement Priest of Wellness for the USSR, called on the Globe Health and wellness Setting up to undertake an international campaign to remove smallpox, resulting in Resolution WHA11.54. In action to cholera epidemics in 1830 and also 1847, which eliminated tens of thousands in Europe, the initial International Sanitary Conference was convened in Paris in 1851. At the time, the root cause of cholera was due and unidentified to political differences little was completed at this or the next a number of meetings. However, the conferences were the initial attempt at developing a device for worldwide collaboration for condition avoidance as well as control. The Globe Health Company (THAT) is a specialized company of the United Nations that is interested in worldwide public health. It was developed on 7 April 1948, and also is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The THAT belongs to the United Nations Development Group. Its precursor, the Wellness Organization, was a firm of the Organization of Nations. The constitution of the THAT was authorized by 61 nations on 22 July 1946, with the very first conference of the Globe Health And Wellness Assembly. It incorporated the Workplace International d'Hygiene Publique as well as the Organization of Nations Wellness Organization. The THAT played a leading role in the obliteration of smallpox. Its current priorities include contagious illness, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, jungle fever and consumption; as well as the mitigation of the results of non-communicable illness such as reproductive and sex-related aging, wellness, and advancement; nourishment, food protection and also healthy eating; work-related health; chemical abuse; as well as driving the development of reporting, publications, as well as networking. The WHO is responsible for the Globe Health Record, the globally Globe Health and wellness Study, as well as Globe Wellness Day. The existing Director-General of the THAT is Tedros Adhanom, that began his five-year term on 1 July 2017. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (born March 3, 1965) is an Ethiopian political leader, scholastic, and also public-health authority who considering that 2017 has been Director-General of the THAT. He served in the Federal government of Ethiopia as Minister of Health and wellness from 2005 to 2012 and also as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2016. Tedros joined the Ministry of Health in 1986, after finishing from the College of Asmara. A worldwide acknowledged jungle fever researcher, as Minister of Wellness, Tedros received appreciation for a variety of innovative and also system-wide health reforms that significantly enhanced access to health services and also crucial results. Among them were employing as well as training approximately 40,000 female health and wellness expansion employees, reducing infant mortality from 123 fatalities per 1,000 real-time births in 2006 to 88 in 2011, as well as increasing the hiring of wellness staffs including clinical physicians and midwives. In July 2009, he was elected Board Chair of The Global Fund to eliminate AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for a two-year term. Tedros was elected as Director-General of the WHO by the World Health Setting Up on 23 Might 2017. He took workplace for a five-year term on 1 July 2017. The International Sanitary Conferences, initially held on 23 June 1851, were the very first precursors of the THAT. A collection of 14 conferences that lasted from 1851 to 1938, the International Sanitary Conferences worked to battle lots of conditions, principal amongst them cholera, yellow fever, as well as the bubonic torment. The conferences were largely inadequate up until the seventh, in 1892, when an International Sanitary Convention that managed cholera was passed. 5 years later, a convention for the afflict was signed. Partially as a result of the successes of the Conferences, the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau, and also the Workplace International d'Hygiene Publique were quickly founded in 1902 and 1907, specifically. When the Organization of Nations was developed in 1920, they developed the Wellness Organization of the Organization of Nations. After World War II, the United Nations took in all the other wellness companies, to form the THAT. During the 1945 United Nations Seminar on International Company, Szeming Sze, a delegate from China, conferred with Norwegian and Brazilian delegates on producing an international health and wellness organization under the auspices of the new United Nations. After stopping working to get a resolution passed on the subject, Alger Hiss, the Assistant General of the conference, advised making use of a declaration to develop such a company. Sze as well as other delegates lobbied and also a declaration passed asking for an international conference on wellness. The use of words "globe " instead of "global " highlighted the absolutely global nature of what the company was looking for to attain. The constitution of the WHO was signed by all 51 countries of the United Nations, and also by 10 various other nations, on 22 July 1946. It thus ended up being the initial specialized agency of the United Nations to which every member subscribed. Its constitution formally came into force on the initial Globe Health and wellness Day on 7 April 1948, when it was ratified by the 26th member state. The initial meeting of the World Health Assembly ended up on 24 July 1948, having actually safeguarded a budget of US$ 5 million for the 1949 year. Andrija Stampar was the Setting up's first president, as well as G. Brock Chisholm was selected Director-General of THAT, having acted as Executive Secretary throughout the drawing board. Its very first priorities were to control the spread of jungle fever, consumption and also sexually sent infections, and to boost mother's and also child health, nutrition and environmental hygiene. Its first legal act was concerning the collection of precise stats on the spread and also morbidity of illness. The logo design of the THAT includes the Rod of Asclepius as a sign for recovery. In 1958, Viktor Zhdanov, Deputy Preacher of Health for the USSR, called on the Globe Health Assembly to undertake an international initiative to eliminate smallpox, resulting in Resolution WHA11.54. In 1967, the WHO magnified the worldwide smallpox elimination by adding $2.4 million every year to the initiative and embraced a brand-new illness surveillance approach. After over 2 years of fighting smallpox, the THAT declared in 1979 that the illness had actually been eradicated - the very first illness in background to be removed by human initiative. he complying with is a chronology of the THAT starting in 1967: In 1967, the THAT released the Unique Program for Study and also Training in Tropical Illness and the World Health Assembly elected to enact a resolution on Disability Prevention and also Rehab, with a focus on community-driven care. In 1974, the Expanded Program on Immunization and the control program of onchocerciasis was begun, a crucial partnership between the Food and also Farming Company (FAO), the United Nations Growth Program (UNDP), and the World Bank.

[zarroufatiah]

The Complete History: All What You Need to Know in Facts Sustained by Video About World Health Organization (WHO).

In 1977, the initial checklist of vital medications was drawn up, and also a year later on the ambitious goal of "health and wellness for all " was proclaimed. In 1986, the WHO began its international program on HIV/AIDS. 2 years later protecting against discrimination against sufferers was taken care of as well as in 1996 UNAIDS was developed. In 1988, the International Polio Removal Effort was developed. In 1998, WHO's Director-General highlighted gains in youngster survival, reduced baby mortality, raised life expectancy and lowered rates of "scourges " such as smallpox and polio on the fiftieth anniversary of THAT's starting. He, did, nonetheless, approve that even more had to be done to aid mother's health and wellness which development in this field had actually been slow-moving. In 2001 the measles effort was developed, and also credited with minimizing global fatalities from the illness by 68% by 2007. In 2006, the company endorsed the globe's first main HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe, which created the basis for a worldwide avoidance, treatment and support strategy to deal with the AIDS pandemic. The THAT meets this objective with its functions as specified in its Constitution: (a) To work as the directing and also collaborating authority on worldwide health and wellness job; (b) To develop as well as keep reliable collaboration with the United Nations, specialized companies, governmental health managements, expert groups and such various other companies as may be considered appropriate; (c) To aid Governments, upon demand, in reinforcing health services; (d) To furnish proper technical help as well as, in emergency situations, essential aid upon the request or acceptance of Governments; (e) To supply or aid in offering, upon the demand of the United Nations, health services and facilities to unique groups, such as the peoples of trust territories; (f) To develop and maintain such administrative and technological services as may be required, consisting of epidemiological and statistical solutions; (g) to boost and also advance job to eradicate epidemic, endemic as well as various other conditions; (h) To advertise, in co-operation with various other specific agencies where necessary, the avoidance of injuries; (i) To promote, in co-operation with other specialized agencies where needed, the enhancement of nutrition, real estate, hygiene, leisure, financial or working conditions as well as other elements of ecological hygiene; (j) To promote co-operation amongst clinical and specialist groups which add to the improvement of health and wellness; (k) To propose contracts, conventions as well as policies, and make referrals relative to worldwide wellness issues as well as to carry out. Since 2012, the THAT has defined its role in public health as adheres to: offering leadership on matters vital to wellness and also engaging in partnerships where joint action is required; shaping the study agenda and also boosting the generation, translation, and also circulation of beneficial expertise; establishing criteria and standards as well as advertising as well as checking their implementation; expressing moral as well as evidence-based plan alternatives; offering technical support, militarizing change, and also structure sustainable institutional capability; and checking the health scenario and analyzing health and wellness fads. The Globe Wellness Company (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public wellness. The THAT is responsible for the Globe Health And Wellness Record, the worldwide Globe Health and wellness Study, and World Health And Wellness Day. A worldwide recognized jungle fever researcher, as Minister of Health and wellness, Tedros obtained praise for a number of cutting-edge as well as system-wide health reforms that significantly enhanced accessibility to health and wellness solutions and also vital end results. Among them were hiring and educating approximately 40,000 female health and wellness extension workers, reducing infant death from 123 deaths per 1,000 online births in 2006 to 88 in 2011, and increasing the hiring of health and wellness cadres including medical doctors and also midwives. In 1958, Viktor Zhdanov, Replacement Priest of Wellness for the USSR, called on the World Health Setting up to take on a global initiative to eradicate smallpox, resulting in Resolution WHA11.54. In feedback to cholera epidemics in 1830 and also 1847, which killed tens of thousands in Europe, the first International Sanitary Seminar was assembled in Paris in 1851. At the time, the cause of cholera was unidentified and also due to political distinctions little was completed at this or the next a number of meetings. However, the seminars were the initial attempt at establishing a device for international teamwork for condition avoidance as well as control. The Globe Health Company (WHO) is a specific agency of the United Nations that is worried about global public health. It was established on 7 April 1948, and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is a member of the United Nations Development Team. Its precursor, the Wellness Company, was a company of the Organization of Nations. The constitution of the THAT was signed by 61 nations on 22 July 1946, with the very first conference of the Globe Wellness Setting Up. It incorporated the Office International d'Hygiene Publique as well as the Organization of Nations Wellness Company. The THAT played a leading role in the elimination of smallpox. Its current concerns consist of communicable conditions, particularly HIV/AIDS, Ebola, jungle fever as well as consumption; along with the reduction of the results of non-communicable illness such as reproductive and also sexual growth, health, and aging; nourishment, food safety and healthy and balanced consuming; job-related health and wellness; chemical abuse; and driving the development of coverage, magazines, and networking. The THAT is in charge of the Globe Wellness Report, the around the world World Health and wellness Study, and Globe Health Day. The present Director-General of the THAT is Tedros Adhanom, that started his five-year term on 1 July 2017. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (born March 3, 1965) is an Ethiopian politician, scholastic, and also public-health authority who because 2017 has actually been Director-General of the WHO. He offered in the Federal government of Ethiopia as Minister of Health from 2005 to 2012 and also as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2016. Tedros signed up with the Ministry of Health and wellness in 1986, after graduating from the University of Asmara. A globally recognized malaria scientist, as Preacher of Wellness, Tedros got appreciation for a variety of cutting-edge and also system-wide wellness reforms that substantially boosted access to health services and also essential results. Among them were working with as well as educating roughly 40,000 women health and wellness extension employees, cutting infant death from 123 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2006 to 88 in 2011, and also enhancing the hiring of health and wellness cadres consisting of medical doctors and midwives. In July 2009, he was chosen Board Chair of The Global Fund to combat AIDS, Consumption as well as Malaria for a two-year term. Tedros was chosen as Director-General of the THAT by the World Health And Wellness Assembly on 23 Might 2017. He took office for a five-year term on 1 July 2017. The International Sanitary Conferences, originally hung on 23 June 1851, were the first predecessors of the THAT. A series of 14 conferences that lasted from 1851 to 1938, the International Sanitary Conferences worked to deal with many illness, principal amongst them cholera, yellow fever, and the bubonic plague. The conferences were largely inadequate up until the 7th, in 1892, when an International Sanitary Convention that dealt with cholera was passed. 5 years later on, a convention for the pester was authorized. Partly as a result of the successes of the Meetings, the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau, and the Office International d'Hygiene Publique were quickly founded in 1902 and 1907, respectively. When the League of Nations was created in 1920, they established the Health and wellness Company of the Organization of Nations. After The Second World War, the United Nations took in all the other wellness organizations, to form the THAT. During the 1945 United Nations Seminar on International Company, Szeming Sze, a delegate from China, conferred with Brazilian as well as norwegian delegates on developing a global health and wellness company under the auspices of the new United Nations. Sze and also other delegates lobbied and a statement passed calling for an international meeting on health and wellness. The first meeting of the World Health Setting up completed on 24 July 1948, having actually protected a budget plan of US$ 5 million for the 1949 year. In 1958, Viktor Zhdanov, Replacement Priest of Health And Wellness for the USSR, called on the World Wellness Setting up to take on a worldwide campaign to eradicate smallpox, resulting in Resolution WHA11.54. In 1967, the WHO increased the international smallpox elimination by contributing $2.4 million each year to the effort as well as took on a new disease security approach. After over two decades of dealing with smallpox, the THAT proclaimed in 1979 that the condition had actually been eliminated - the very first illness in history to be eliminated by human effort. he adhering to is a chronology of the THAT beginning in 1967: In 1967, the WHO released the Unique Program for Study as well as Training in Exotic Illness and also the Globe Health and wellness Assembly voted to enact a resolution on Special needs Prevention as well as Rehab, with a focus on community-driven treatment. In 1974, the Expanded Program on Booster shot as well as the control program of onchocerciasis was begun, a crucial collaboration between the Food and Farming Company (FAO), the United Nations Growth Program (UNDP), as well as the Globe Financial institution.

[insatiabletc]

This is Alillia “Lala” Minthorn, a 25 year old member of the Yakama Nation in Washington. Here is how her friends and family remember her:

“Alillia “Lala” Minthorn was a daughter, a friend and a sister: big-hearted, a caretaker to everyone and altogether curious.” – as described to Emily Goodell with the Associated Press*

 “She was there in the rough times and in the dark times when nobody else wanted to be…And she never left until you were OK.” – Her sister, Tanya Miller*

Overall, outside of her sister, Alillia’s family has been quiet about the case.

One disturbing fact is that Tanya and Alillia knew quite a few women that have gone missing over recent years. They had a relationship with Linda Dave, Destiny Lloyd, and Rosenda Strong. They also knew Felina Metsker and Roselita Longee. Longee went missing in 2019 and has not been found. Felina Metsker was murdered in 2016. These women are not disappearing in a vacuum – a whole community of women are being harmed and taken.  Whole networks of families are impacted. Children, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, nieces, nephews, brothers, and friends. What is happening is an insidious toxin that is working its way through generation after generation of a people that have already experienced tremendous trauma and harm. We must start asking questions and demanding answers from our law enforcement agencies and lawmakers. By looking away we are robbing communities of the justice they so deeply deserve. Even if a perpetrator is not a white man, the racist and genocidal systems our country has implemented since the birth of our nation hold culpability. We must start caring.

Facts of the Case

On May 3rd, 2019 Alillia left a homeless camp and got into a car driven by Jordan Stevens and two unnamed “witnesses.” On May 9th a missing persons report was filed. On May 29th, with the assistance of one of two “witnesses,” police were led to Alillia’s body, where it had been left in a remote part of the Yakama Reservation. On July 10th, Stevens was remanded into custody. The cause of death was a gunshot to the head.

Currently, a trial is scheduled for February 2020. Because both Alillia and Stevens are enrolled members of the Yakama Nation, the case is being handled by the FBI and the trial will be held in federal court.

Jordan Stevens

Jordan Stevens has a long history of violence.

In 2011 Stevens was incarcerated for a serious assault against a romantic partner. He was sentenced to 41 months in jail and was released December 12th, 2016. In 2017 a warrant was issued for his arrest as he had not followed through with any of his probation conditions. The latest court document we could view for this case said his whereabouts were unknown.

He is also believed to be responsible for an assault in April, 2019, in a homeless camp in Toppenish.

 April 30th Assault

Several news sources have indicated that Stevens was involved in an assault on April 30th, 2019 at the same homeless camp that Alillia was picked up from. The court documents actually say “on or around” April 30th and “near” the homeless camp. We found three assaults that could be the one referred to.

This is the “Compound” as seen on Google Maps:

There was an assault on April 21st:

An assault April 26th:

And an assault on April 30th:

There was also an assault that occurred on May 3rd at 11pm, but since that’s the day Alillia went missing, it seems unlikely that this was the April 30th assault.

We are unable to dig up any other information about these three cases or how they relate to Stevens. We do know from the Criminal Complaint filed on June 28th 2019, that Alillia was “questioned at the scene.” She also told family “If I don’t come back, look for me” when she got into Stevens’ car.* To us, this sounds like Alillia knew that Stevens thought she had “ratted” him out to federal authorities. Later, the “witness” referred to as “Witness 1” confirmed that this was Stevens’ motive in the homicide.

What’s interesting about the court document referring to this case is that it is not expressly said that the two events are related. The April 30th date is presented, and it is implied that this is what Alillia was murdered over. We wonder though if this is truly the reason why Stevens felt he had been sold out. Maybe it was related to his probation issues. Maybe Alillia told the federal agents investigating the assault where he could be found? We won’t know really, until February 2020, so stay tuned for updates when the trial begins.

Next of Kin

One thing that stood out as incredibly strange to us about this case is how authorities treated Alillia’s sister, Tanya. When Alillia was reported missing, Tanya was determined to spread the word and find her sister. She had an active Facebook group dedicated to doing so, and made posts hoping to find her sister from May through August 2019. While authorities had identified Alillia’s body and had a suspect by May 29th, no one told Tanya until August. It is not publicly known who Alillia’s dedicated Next of Kin (NOK) was, but we know they chose to stay quiet and not alert the rest of the family. Tanya and her aunt, Tina, felt a rightful sense of betrayal, not just from the NOK, but also from authorities who they had contacted daily to get updates to Alillia’s case. We imagine it would be embarrassing and angering to be so vocal in the search for a loved one, and now know that others knew what happened and kept quiet.

Some have called for policy changes to ensure this doesn’t occur again, and we have some speculations on what might have happened in this case in particular. Before we start, it is important to remember that we do not actually know what happened so take our theories with a grain of salt.

First, authorities knew by May 29th that Stevens had murdered Alillia. They knew this because “Witness 1” came forward and led them to the body, as the “witness” felt Stevens may murder them for having information related to the homicide.

Stevens was arrested July 10th, 2019.

Newspaper articles began coming out in mid-August stating that Alillia had been found and identified, and Stevens was in custody. Tanya made a post on the page acknowledging that the search was over for her sister.

We wonder if authorities instructed Alillia’s NOK to keep quiet about the body discovery for two reasons:

1.     “Witness 1” was afraid they would be murdered for cooperating with federal agents, and since this person had been a party to a murder with Stevens that had been carried out for that very reason, this was a reasonable fear.

2.     Authorities may not have known where Stevens was (as indicated by it taking them almost two months to arrest him).

Had Tanya put on her page that Alillia had been found, Stevens may have seen that and known that one of the two “witnesses” had aided federal authorities (especially since the body was in such a remote location that authorities could only have found it with assistance. They searched for it before without the aid of the “witness” and were unable to find her). He could have left town or hurt the “witnesses.” The same would have been true for news media reporting the same information.

Perhaps this is why authorities did not reveal information to Tanya and her aunt when they sent in their daily requests for information.

There is a kink in this interpretation of events, however. On the Facebook post Tanya made about her sister being found and dead, there was this comment:

Whoever made that comment knew Alillia had been discovered and that the NOK was keeping quiet. And this person doesn’t indicate any reason why Tanya would be left in the dark.

One thing is for certain, though: if there was no good reason for keeping Tanya and her aunt in the dark, this was an exceptionally cruel undertaking by the authorities they were in contact with.

 The Compound

Tanya has stated to the press that Alillia was homeless. We cannot find anything else that states this explicitly, but it sounds like she may have been living at the “Compound.” In 2017 350 – 500 families were evicted from Tribal owned housing, forcing some to become homeless. This led to the creation of the semi-permanent “Compound” and another lot with tiny homes.

The top three reasons families were evicted were:

1.     Drug test failure

2.     Late rent payments

3.     Overcrowding in units

Before leaping on the drug test failures, it is widely known that drug use is prevalent in rural communities across the United States and is not unique to these Toppenish families. The other two reasons speak to poverty and a housing crisis currently affecting reservations.

Tribal owned housing is desperately needed on the Yakama Reservation, and in Native American communities in general. On the Yakama Reservation alone, the poverty rate is 37.3%, compared to the US average of 26.8%.

Factors that contribute to poverty on reservations:

·       Remote locations – many reservations were placed by the federal government in isolated plots of land away from urbanized environments (aka, further away from jobs).

Looking at this map, it appears that the Yakama Reservation is close to both Portland and Seattle, but in actuality it is 4.5 and 2.5 hours away by car, respectively.

·       Lack of public transportation to get to jobs

·       Tribal lands are owned by the federal government. Yakama specifically is 80% owned by the federal government, and 20% privately. This impedes the ability of tribal members to own businesses and enrich their communities. Additionally, the federal government makes it bureaucratically difficult to make economic developments on tribal land.

·       Lack of access to education – reservation schools are funded by the federal government, so they do not benefit from state taxes designated for education. The Trump administration has been consistent in their desire to cut federal funding for education.

·       Federal programs fund housing for sovereign tribes, programs the Trump administration has cut funding for.

The federal government’s historic and current meddling and abuse of tribal land has culminated in an environment where it is hard to reduce poverty in these communities. We as a society love to say it’s the responsibility of tribes to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps” and invest in their own communities, while at the same time electing leaders that make that almost impossible.

We know that homeless persons are uniquely vulnerable to violence and disenfranchisement. We know that homeless women are especially vulnerable. It is terrifying to be homeless.

We wonder if Stevens also lived at the “Compound.” Did he terrorize people there? It certainly sounds like it. When we ignore Native American communities and reservations, we create an environment where men and women can hurt others almost without consequence. We don’t know that Alillia’s housing status played into her murder, but it likely made her more vulnerable.

What Can We Do?

Learn more about the tribal communities in your state. Get to know the policies and programs that hurt or assist those communities and stop seeing your relationship with tribal communities as “us versus them.” Donate to programs that need it! Reach out to organizations that serve tribal communities in your state to see what assistance they need. Read, learn, and educate yourself. Put pressure on your law enforcement agencies to follow up on these homicides and ask your local media to report on them. Be a voice for change! Learn some facts and dismantle ignorant arguments and statements made by your friends, family, and community. We cannot keep watching this violence unfold and turn a blind eye. After decades of genocidal policies, we need to do much, much better.

 To learn more about the Yakama Nation: http://www.yakamanation-nsn.gov/

To Learn More About Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women:

·       National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada) https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/

·       Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women USA https://mmiwusa.org/

·       CBC’s database on MMIWG (Canada) https://www.cbc.ca/missingandmurdered/

·       Justice for Native Women (USA and Canada) http://www.justicefornativewomen.com/

·       The REDress Project (Canada) http://www.redressproject.org/?page_id=43

·       Melanie Bartel, an indigenous artist in Canada. Check out her work! https://www.melaniebartelart.com/justine-cochrane.html

·       Missing and Murdered (Canadian Podcast)  https://www.cbc.ca/mediacentre/program/missing-and-murdered

Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear (American activist based out of Montana, United States) https://twitter.com/native4data

 *Article here: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/if-i-dont-make-it-back-come-look-for-me-yakama-woman-told-her-sister-before-she-was-killed/

[bountyofbeads]

As Disasters Multiply, Billions in Recovery Funds Go Unspent https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/climate/federal-hurricane-wildfire-disaster-funds-unspent.html

As Disasters Multiply, Billions in Recovery Funds Go Unspent

By Christopher Flavelle | Published Sept. 5, 2019 Updated 3:50 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 5, 2019 5:45 PM ET |

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is sitting on tens of billions of dollars in unspent recovery money meant to help Americans recover from disasters, leaving people less able to rebound from the effects of Hurricane Dorian and other storms.

As of June 30, the government had spent less than one-third of the $107 billion provided by Congress following the hurricanes and wildfires of 2017 and 2018, federal data show. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which received $37 billion — more than any other agency — had spent less than $75 million.

That money is meant to help cities and states rebuild after a disaster. It is often used to fix roads, drainage systems and other infrastructure, or to repair or elevate houses in low-lying, vulnerable areas.

The funds are being held up partly by laws designed in an earlier age of fewer and less severe disasters. In addition, states and cities already reeling from earlier floods or fires often struggle to meet the federal bureaucratic requirements. As climate change amplifies the disaster risk, the logjam threatens to worsen, with increasingly dire consequences.

“If we had all the money, and everything was flowing, we would be safer,” said Laura Hogshead, chief operating officer for the Office of Recovery and Resiliency in North Carolina, a state now being menaced by Hurricane Dorian. This year, the state created a new office to try to speed up those funds — a model that Dorian could test.

“There’s a lot of suffering while you wait,” she said.

The bulk of the money comes just two federal offices: the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps communities recover from disasters by funding everything from clearing debris to rebuilding hospitals, and HUD, which helps repair homes, infrastructure and businesses.

The sluggish spending joins a long list of headaches for federal officials trying to protect Americans against climate change. Among them: The shrinking number of people with flood insurance  compared with a decade ago; the growing number of homes being built in floodplains; the refusal of many states to impose mandatory, up-to-date building codes; and the emphasis on rebuilding in the same place, rather than somewhere safer.

What sets this problem apart is that it’s largely of the government’s own making.

“There are opportunities to make the recovery process faster at every level,” said Marion McFadden, who ran the disaster recovery grants at HUD during the Obama administration. “We’ve got to fix this.”

Some delays are unavoidable, such as those associated with sprawling infrastructure projects — like building sea walls or deepening ports — requiring complex environmental reviews. But many other delays stem from a bureaucratic process for delivering federal money, coupled with state and local agencies that often lack the staff or expertise to spend it, observers say.

As a result, persuading Congress to provide money for recovery is just the beginning of the struggle for places hit by disasters.

“We build very complex systems in Washington,” said Craig Fugate, who ran FEMA under President Obama. “Then you apply it to a disaster, and it gums up the system.”

At the same time, the growing frequency of natural disasters, amplified by climate change, increases the urgency of rebuilding.

Part of the problem reflects the fundamental tension between speed and oversight, Mr. Fugate said. As disaster funding has increased, so has scrutiny from lawmakers wary of fraud and abuse. So FEMA and other agencies have responded by adding more safeguards and layers of review, which slows the process further.

States, too, have increased oversight, fearful of being ordered to pay the federal government back for money that might run afoul of the rules. For example, Florida audits every funding request its local governments submit to FEMA, Mr. Fugate said — a level of diligence he said slows recovery.

“Congress wants it both ways: They want it fast, but they also want full accountability,” Mr. Fugate said. “It is slowing down the process to a painful crawl.”

FEMA has yet to spend about $8 billion of the $34 billion allocated to it by Congress following the disasters of 2017 and 2018. An agency spokeswoman, Abigail Dennis, said that over the past few years FEMA has improved its Public Assistance program, which pays for rebuilding infrastructure and other needs, by simplifying the application process and retraining the staff who review applications.

The spending rate has been far slower at the Department of Housing and Urban Development: It has paid out less than 1 percent of its disaster funding from the past two years.

The department, which oversees the nation’s public housing, became involved in disaster recovery more by convenience than design, according to Ms. McFadden. After Hurricane Andrew struck Florida in 1992, Congress needed a vehicle for delivering large sums of money to cities and states, so it chose the department’s Community Development Block Grant program.

But the disaster-recovery function was never set up to be permanent. So Congress requires the department to essentially design a new program from scratch each time it receives disaster money, according to Ms. McFadden. That means writing new rules for how states and cities can spend that money.

“There is this period of a year or more where the money is just sitting essentially at HUD,” said Ms. McFadden, who is now senior vice president for public policy at Enterprise Community Partners, a Washington nonprofit organization. “That period is just lost.”

That problem has caught the attention of both political parties. In July, the House Financial Services Committee voted unanimously in support of a bill that would make the department’s disaster recovery program permanent, helping it get those funds to states and cities more quickly. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate the same month.

This year, Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, acknowledged that the program could be streamlined. “Some of the basic things that have to be done in order to get the grant money out is absolutely the same thing over and over again,” Mr. Carson told the House Financial Services Committee in May.

Reforming the federal government’s approach will solve only part of the delay in rebuilding, disaster experts warn.

Even once the housing department has set the rules for each batch of disaster funding, states must submit detailed plans for how they will use that money, and then help cities and counties spend it properly. That work often falls to staff who don’t have the time or expertise required, according to Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Mr. Moore offered an example. “Your office is normally handling $2 million a year. You’ve got five people to do that,” he said. But then, “A disaster hits. Suddenly you’ve got $100 million to spend. You’ve got the same five people on your staff. And you’ve still got to do your normal job.”

That tension is now playing out in North Carolina.

The state hadn’t gotten disaster recovery grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development since 2003. Then it was hit by two hurricanes in quick succession: Matthew, in 2016, and then Florence in 2018.

With those disasters came a rush of federal funds. In August of 2017, almost a year after Matthew, the housing department awarded North Carolina $237 million in recovery grants. The state has drawn down less than $20 million of that money. (A spokeswoman for North Carolina, Bridget Munger, said the state has committed $98 million of that money to specific projects, adding that the $20 million figure “does not reflect the hundreds of projects that are in the planning stage or well underway.”)

“Things were not going very quickly,” said Ms. Hogshead, at the state recovery office. “And then Florence hit.”

[thetens-blog1]

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The Full History: All What You Required to Know in Facts Supported by Video Around World Health Organization (WHO).

In 1977, the first checklist of necessary medications was created, and a year later on the ambitious objective of "wellness for all " was stated. In 1986, the WHO started its international program on HIV/AIDS. 2 years later on preventing discrimination versus sufferers was addressed and in 1996 UNAIDS was developed. In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was established. In 1998, THAT's Director-General highlighted gains in kid survival, minimized baby mortality, enhanced life span and reduced prices of "scourges " such as smallpox as well as polio on the fiftieth wedding anniversary of WHO's founding. He, did, nonetheless, accept that more needed to be done to help maternal wellness which progression in this field had been slow-moving. In 2000, the Stop TB Partnership was produced in addition to the UN's formula of the Centuries Growth Goals. In 2001 the measles campaign was developed, and also credited with lowering international deaths from the illness by 68% by 2007. In 2002, The Global Fund to combat AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was drawn up to improve the sources readily available. In 2006, the company backed the world's very first main HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe, which developed the basis for a global prevention, treatment and also assistance plan to eliminate the AIDS pandemic. The WHO satisfies this purpose through its functions as defined in its Constitution: (a) To serve as the directing as well as collaborating authority on worldwide wellness job; (b) To establish and maintain reliable collaboration with the United Nations, specialized agencies, governmental health managements, specialist teams and such other organizations as might be deemed suitable; (c) To assist Federal governments, upon request, in enhancing health services; (d) To furnish appropriate technological aid as well as, in emergencies, required aid upon the demand or acceptance of Governments; (e) To offer or assist in supplying, upon the demand of the United Nations, health services and centers to special groups, such as the peoples of depend on areas; (f) To develop and also maintain such management and also technical services as might be called for, consisting of epidemiological and also statistical solutions; (g) to boost and progress job to eliminate epidemic, native to the island and also various other conditions; (h) To advertise, in co-operation with various other specialized companies where required, the avoidance of injuries; (i) To promote, in co-operation with other specialized companies where required, the improvement of nourishment, housing, cleanliness, leisure, economic or operating problems and other facets of environmental hygiene; (j) To advertise co-operation amongst scientific and professional groups which contribute to the development of wellness; (k) To suggest laws, arrangements and conventions, as well as make suggestions with respect to global health issues and also to execute. Since 2012, the THAT has defined its duty in public health as follows: providing leadership on matters critical to health as well as engaging in partnerships where joint action is required; forming the study schedule and also boosting the generation, translation, and also dissemination of valuable understanding; establishing criteria and also standards and advertising and also checking their application; expressing honest and evidence-based plan options; giving technical support, militarizing adjustment, as well as structure sustainable institutional capability; as well as checking the health and wellness circumstance and also analyzing health trends. The Globe Health And Wellness Company (WHO) is a customized firm of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. The WHO is responsible for the Globe Wellness Report, the worldwide World Health and wellness Survey, as well as World Wellness Day. An internationally recognized jungle fever scientist, as Preacher of Health and wellness, Tedros obtained praise for a number of innovative and also system-wide health and wellness reforms that significantly boosted access to health solutions as well as vital outcomes. Among them were hiring as well as training about 40,000 female health expansion workers, reducing infant mortality from 123 fatalities per 1,000 live births in 2006 to 88 in 2011, and boosting the hiring of health and wellness cadres consisting of clinical doctors and also midwives. In 1958, Viktor Zhdanov, Replacement Preacher of Wellness for the USSR, called on the World Wellness Setting up to undertake an international effort to eliminate smallpox, resulting in Resolution WHA11.54. In reaction to cholera upsurges in 1830 and also 1847, which eliminated tens of thousands in Europe, the initial International Sanitary Meeting was convened in Paris in 1851. At the time, the reason for cholera was due and unidentified to political differences little was completed at this or the following several meetings. The seminars were the very first effort at developing a system for international teamwork for illness avoidance and control. The World Health Organization (THAT) is a specific agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. It was established on 7 April 1948, as well as is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The THAT belongs to the United Nations Growth Group. Its predecessor, the Wellness Company, was a firm of the League of Nations. The constitution of the THAT was signed by 61 nations on 22 July 1946, with the initial conference of the Globe Health Assembly. It integrated the Office International d'Hygiene Publique and the League of Nations Wellness Organization. The THAT played a leading role in the elimination of smallpox. Its present concerns consist of transmittable diseases, specifically HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; as well as the reduction of the results of non-communicable diseases such as reproductive and also sexual aging, growth, and wellness; nutrition, food security and also healthy consuming; occupational health and wellness; chemical abuse; and also driving the development of reporting, publications, as well as networking. The THAT is in charge of the World Health And Wellness Record, the globally Globe Health Survey, and World Health Day. The current Director-General of the THAT is Tedros Adhanom, who started his five-year term on 1 July 2017. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (born March 3, 1965) is an Ethiopian political leader, academic, and also public-health authority who since 2017 has actually been Director-General of the THAT. He offered in the Federal government of Ethiopia as Preacher of Health and wellness from 2005 to 2012 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2016. Tedros joined the Ministry of Health and wellness in 1986, after finishing from the University of Asmara. A worldwide acknowledged malaria scientist, as Priest of Health and wellness, Tedros received praise for a variety of system-wide as well as cutting-edge health and wellness reforms that substantially enhanced access to health services as well as essential outcomes. Amongst them were employing as well as educating about 40,000 female health extension employees, reducing baby mortality from 123 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2006 to 88 in 2011, and also raising the hiring of health and wellness staffs consisting of medical doctors and midwives. In July 2009, he was chosen Board Chair of The Global Fund to combat AIDS, Consumption and also Jungle fever for a two-year term. Tedros was elected as Director-General of the THAT by the Globe Health Setting Up on 23 May 2017. He took workplace for a five-year term on 1 July 2017. The International Sanitary Conferences, originally held on 23 June 1851, were the initial precursors of the WHO. When the Organization of Nations was formed in 1920, they developed the Health and wellness Organization of the Organization of Nations. After Globe Battle II, the United Nations absorbed all the other health companies, to form the WHO. During the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, Szeming Sze, a delegate from China, provided with Brazilian as well as norwegian delegates on producing a global health company under the auspices of the brand-new United Nations. Sze and also various other delegates lobbied and also an affirmation passed calling for a worldwide meeting on wellness. The very first meeting of the Globe Health Setting up ended up on 24 July 1948, having actually secured a spending plan of US$ 5 million for the 1949 year. In 1958, Viktor Zhdanov, Deputy Minister of Wellness for the USSR, gotten in touch with the Globe Health Assembly to undertake a worldwide effort to eliminate smallpox, causing Resolution WHA11.54. At this moment, 2 million individuals were dying from smallpox each year. In 1967, the WHO escalated the international smallpox eradication by adding $2.4 million annually to the initiative as well as embraced a brand-new illness security approach. The preliminary issue the THAT team dealt with was inadequate reporting of smallpox situations. THAT developed a network of professionals who assisted countries in establishing surveillance as well as control activities. The WHO likewise aided consist of the last European break out in Yugoslavia in 1972. After over twenty years of fighting smallpox, the THAT stated in 1979 that the disease had actually been eradicated - the very first disease in history to be removed by human effort. he following is a chronology of the THAT beginning in 1967: In 1967, the THAT introduced the Unique Program for Study and Training in Tropical Diseases and the World Wellness Assembly voted to establish a resolution on Disability Prevention and Rehab, with a concentrate on community-driven treatment. In 1974, the Expanded Program on Immunization and also the control program of onchocerciasis was started, an important partnership in between the Food and Farming Company (FAO), the United Nations Growth Program (UNDP), and also the World Financial institution.

[antoine-roquentin]

For over a year a team of taz reporters has been trying to find an answer to the following questions: Is there a right-wing underground network in Germany in which opponents of the government connect, radicalise, and prepare themselves for armed struggle? Does this network have strong ties to German state authorities, such as the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – Germany's security agency that is tasked amongst others to safeguard against threats to the national democratic order? Or even to the highest ranks of the German Bundeswehr?

During these investigations, we met so called „preppers“. Preppers are people who stock up on foods like preserved vegetables. We also looked at the inquiry of the Federal Prosecutor’s office whose officers had believed that they had discovered a right-wing terrorist group in Northern Germany. We were able to go through secret telegram chats and were able to speak with men who had been ordering books from far-right publishers – but who nevertheless saw nothing wrong with their declared nationalist German Völkish worldviews.

When we published our first larger text „Kommando Heimatschutz“back in December 2017, we did not yet know the true identity of the person behind the pseudonym Hannibal. We had learned that Hannibal was held to be the administrator of a nationwide chat-network of so called preppers. At that time, we had reasons to ask ourselves if there could be a possibility that „Hannibal“ is an officer serving actively in the German Bundeswehr and moreover, that he may have directly helped to build an underground network from within the German Army. Today we know much more.

We are now aware of Hannibal’s true identity.

André S. was born in 1985 in the city of Halle (Saale), which, back then, was still part of the communist GDR. He became a member of the KSK, in the South West German town Calw. He is also founder and chairman of an association in which elite German combatants meet. It has a postal address in Dormagen, North Rhine-Westphalia. We also know his surname. Due to his personal rights, we are withholding his full name here.

After one year of investigations, our research leads us to a single conclusion: In many parts of Germany, but also in Switzerland and Austria, groups had been formed that tried to establish what could be seen as a state within a state. Members of these groups are policemen and soldiers, reservists, civil servants and members of intelligence services.

Once they receive a sign, once “Day X“ has arrived, they wanted to be ready to take up arms. That “Day X“ was discussed frequently in their chat-groups. Some of their plans are shockingly explicit. The German news magazine Focus called it an “Underground Army“.

We see different groups that are interconnected like a web, and our research revealed that the individual threads, again and again, led to one single individual: Hannibal.

Who is this Hannibal? How could it be that nationwide extremist cells appear to have been administrated from within the Graf-Zeppelin Barracks in Calw? How is it possible that Hannibal appears to have been warned by the MAD?

Dubious Civil Servants

It is late August in 2017: Officers acting on behalf of the General German Federal Prosecution search homes and offices in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, East Germany. They also search those belonging to a police officer and an attorney. The allegations: Individuals were suspected to have planned the apprehension or „liquidation“ of politicians and other people associated with the wider German political Left. The investigations are still ongoing today.

There is something curious about these raids. Public prosecutors did not entrust this job to civil servants of the North of Germany. There is no state police involved. Not even the state-minister for Interior Affairs of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was notified until the very last moment, just before the raids were about to be carried out.

The raided attorney and police-officer in question did not act alone. Other men were supposed to have been part of this group, for example, a member of the German Special Police (Spezialeinsatzkommando – SEK) as well as a former soldier. In 2017 he still headed a company of the reserves preparing for an assignment at the G20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017.

These men are all part of a broader group from northern Germany that is ready for national catastrophes such as blackouts, heavy storms, or severe food shortages, any situation really, during which the German State could no longer provide for the safety of its citizens. They usually got together in different online chat-groups. One goes by the name of „Nordkreuz“ („North Cross“), another by „Nord.Com“. Their members discussed vaccine shortages and troop movements in Eastern Europe.

A third group is merely called „Nord“ („North“). The man that supplies this particular group with confidential information and internal reports from the German Bundeswehr is Hannibal. His messages create a feeling of belonging to an inner circle and of enjoying privileges due to the provision of knowledge labelled as confidential and secret.

The fact that groups like these grew in autumn 2015 is certainly no coincidence. It is the time when the migration policy of Germany became a central national topic of debate, no lesser so inside these chatgroups. Members started to discuss, how to fight the official German migration policy.

[robertreich]

New Year’s Update for Trump Voters

Almost one year in, it’s time for another update for Trump voters on his election promises:

1. He told you he’d cut your taxes, and that the super-rich like him would pay more. You bought it. But his new tax law does the opposite. By 2027, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the richest 1 percent will have got 83 percent of the tax cut and the richest 0.1 percent, 60 percent of it. But more than half of all Americans — 53 percent — will pay more in taxes. As Trump told his wealthy friends at Mar-a-Lago just days after the tax bill became law, "You all just got a lot richer."

2. He promised to close “special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors but unfair to American workers,” especially the notorious “carried interest” loophole for private-equity, hedge fund, and real estate partners. You bought it. But the new tax law keeps the “carried interest” loophole.

3. He told you he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “beautiful.” You bought it. But he didn’t repeal and he didn’t replace. (Just as well: His plan would have knocked at least 23 million off health insurance, including many of you.) Instead, he’s doing what he can to cut it back and replace it with nothing. The new tax law will result in 13 million people losing health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

4. He told you he’d invest $1 trillion in our nation’ crumbling infrastructure. You bought it. But after his giant tax cut for corporations and millionaires, there’s no money left for infrastructure.

5. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. But he’s brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses, and he’s filled departments and agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who are crafting new policies for the same industries they recently worked for.

6. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. But he has created the most dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, and has already fired and replaced so many assistants (one of them hired and fired in a little more than a week) that people there barely know who’s in charge of what.

7. He told you he’d “bring down drug prices” by making deals with drug companies. You bought it. But now the White House says that promise is “inoperative.”

8. He promised "a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections." You bought it. But foreign lobbyists are still raising money for American elections.

9. He told you “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” You bought it. But he and House Speaker Paul Ryan are already planning such cuts in order to deal with the ballooning deficit created, in part, by the new tax law for corporations and the rich.

10. He promised “six weeks of paid maternity leave to any mother with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.” You bought it. But the giant tax cut for corporations and the rich doesn’t leave any money for this.

11. He said that on Day One he’d label China a “currency manipulator.” You bought it. But then he met with China’s president Xi Jinping and declared "China is not a currency manipulator.” Ever since then, Trump has been cozying up to Xi.

12. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. But then he bombed Syria.

13. He said he’d build a “wall” across the southern border. You believed him. But there’s no money for that, either. Chief of staff John Kelly says it is “unlikely that we will build a wall, a physical barrier, from sea to shining sea.”

14. He promised that the many women who accused him of sexual misconduct “will be sued after the election is over.” You bought it. He hasn’t sued them, presumably because he doesn’t want the truth to come out. 

15. He said he would not be a president who took vacations. “I would not be a president that takes time off,” he promised, and he called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief." You bought it. But since becoming President he has spent nearly 25 percent of his days at one of his golf properties for some portion of the day, according to Golf News Network, at a cost to taxpayers of over $77 million. That’s already more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama cost in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.

16. He said he’d force companies to keep jobs in America, and that there would be “consequences” for companies that shipped jobs abroad. You believed him. But despite their promises, Carrier, Ford, GM, and the rest have continued to ship jobs to Mexico and China. Carrier (a division of United Technologies) has moved ahead with plans to send 1,000 jobs at its Indiana plant to Mexico. Notwithstanding, the federal government has rewarded United Technologies with 15 new contracts since Trump's inauguration. Last year, Microsoft opened a new factory in Wilsonville, Oregon, that was supposed to herald a new era in domestic tech manufacturing. But in July, the company announced it was closing the plant. More than 100 workers and contractors will lose their jobs when production shifts to China. GE is sending jobs to Canada. IBM is sending them to Costa Rica, Egypt, Argentina, and Brazil. There have been no “consequences” for sending all these jobs overseas.

17. He promised to revive the struggling coal industry and "bring back thousands" of lost mining jobs. You bought it. But coal jobs continue to disappear. Since Trump’s victory, at least 6 plants that relied on coal have closed or announced they will close. Another 40 are projected to close during the president’s four-year term. Utilities continue to switch to natural gas instead of coal.

18. He promised to protect steel workers. But according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, which tracks shipments, steel imports were 19.4 percent higher in the first 10 months of 2017 than in the same period last year. That import surge has hurt American steel workers, who were already struggling against a glut of cheap Chinese steel. For example, ArcelorMittal just announced it will soon lay off 150 of its 207 steel workers at its plant in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

19. He said he’d make America safer. You believed him. But according to Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 377 mass shootings so far this year, including 58 people killed and hundreds injured at a concert in Las Vegas, and 26 churchgoers killed and 20 injured at a church in Texas. Trump refuses to consider any gun controls.

20. He said he’d release his taxes. “I’m under a routine audit and it'll be released, and as soon as the audit is finished it will be released," he promised during the campaign. He hasn’t released his taxes.