You thought 2016 and 2017 were bad? Letās look back at this past year.
Humorous summary of serious events of 2018.
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You thought 2016 and 2017 were bad? Letās look back at this past year.
Humorous summary of serious events of 2018.
Stories that inspired us and examined under-reported aspects of America's gun violence crisis.
Some important stories listed here by The Trace.
"There is nothing more critical to our nationās well-being than our childrenās safety."
Summary: [After Sandy Hook, the NRA launches] the National School Shield Emergency Response Program. "From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multifaceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields"
Three years later, "A survey of the NRA Foundationās grant-making since the announcement of the School Shield program, though, suggests that school security may not be high on the groupās list of priorities." The NRA takes in about $40 million and gives away about $30 million a year, mostly "in the form of cash grants and equipment, mostly to competitive shooting programs and shooting range improvements at gun clubs and law enforcement facilities. They also funded youth gun programs in schools, including Army Junior Reserve Officer Training programs and 4-H clubs." The "National School Shield program [⦠ends up getting] less than $200,000."
Conclusion: NRA promises to help protect students. Instead, they funded guns for the J-ROTC program at Marjory Stoneman Douglas where the shooter received training in marksmanship.
Trump Voters: One Year in, and heās BrokenĀ 20 Big Promises He Made to You
1. He told you heād 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 ā 53 percent ā will pay more in taxes. As Trump told his wealthy friends at Mar-a-Lago just days after the tax bill became law, āYou all just got a lot richer.āĀ
2. He promised to close āspecial interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors but unfair to American workers,ā especially the notorious ācarried interestā loophole for private-equity, hedge fund, and real estate partners. You bought it. But the new tax law keeps the ācarried interestā loophole.
3. He told you heād repeal Obamacare and replace it with something ābeautiful.ā You bought it. But he didnāt repeal and he didnāt replace. (Just as well: His plan would have knocked at least 23 million Americans off health insurance, including many of you.) Instead, heās 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.Ā
4. He told you heād invest $1 trillion in our nationās crumbling infrastructure. You bought it. But after his giant tax cut for corporations and millionaires, thereās no money left for infrastructure.Ā
5. He said heād drain the Washington swamp. You bought it. But heās 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 heās 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 heād 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 whoās in charge of what.Ā
7. He told you heād ābring down drug pricesā by making deals with drug companies. You bought it. But now the White House says that promise is āinoperative.ā
8. He told you heād āstop foreign lobbyists from raising money for American elections.āĀ You bought it. But foreign lobbyists are still raising money for American elections.Ā
9. He told you āIām not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and Iām not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.ā 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.Ā
10. He promised āsix weeks of paid maternity leave to any mother with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.ā You bought it. But the giant tax cut for corporations and the rich doesnāt leave any money for this.Ā
11. He said that on Day One heād label China a ācurrency manipulator.ā You bought it. But then he met with Chinaās president Xi Jinping and declared āChina is not a currency manipulator.ā Ever since then, Trump has been cozying up to Xi.Ā
12. He said he āwonātĀ bomb Syria.āĀ You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.
13. He said heād build a āwallā across the southern border. You believed him. But chief of staff John Kelly says it is āunlikely that we will build a wall, a physical barrier, from sea to shining sea.ā
14. He promised that the many women who accused him of sexual misconduct āwill be sued after the election is over.ā You bought it. He hasnāt sued them, presumably because he doesnāt want the truth to come out.Ā
15. He said he would not be a president who took vacations, and he called Barack Obama āthe vacationer-in-Chief.ā 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. Thatās 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 heād force companies to keep jobs in America, and that there would be āconsequencesā 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 withĀ 15 new contracts since Trumpās inauguration. GE is sending jobs to Canada. IBM is sending them to Costa Rica, Egypt, Argentina, and Brazil. There have been no āconsequencesā for sending all these jobs overseas.Ā
17. He promised to revive the struggling coal industry and ābring back thousandsā of lost mining jobs. You bought it. But coal jobs continue to disappear. Since Trumpās victory, at least 6 plants that relied on coal have closed or announced they will close. Another 40 are projected to close during the presidentās four-year term. Utilities continue to switch to natural gas instead of coal, and renewable energy is cheaper than ever.
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.Ā
19. He said heād make America safer. You believed him. But according to Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 377 mass shootings so far in the Trump administration, 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 control legislation.Ā
20. He said heād release his taxes. āIām under a routine audit and itāll be released, and as soon as the audit is finished it will be released,ā he promised during the campaign. He hasnāt released his taxes.
In a land where the states are united, they claim, in a sky-scraping tower adorned with his name, lived a terrible, horrible, devious chump, the bright orange miscreant known as the Trump. This Truā¦
He looked down from his perch and he grinned ear to ear, and he thought, āI could steal the election this year! Itād be rather simple, itās so easily won, Iāll just make them believe that their best days are done! Yes, Iāll make them believe that itās all gone to Hellā¦
Very well-written Grinch spoof on Trump.
As Clinton and Trump prepare to debate next week, noble ideals are overwhelmed in a culture where most Americans do not know what is real anymore and the dream of equal opportunity is just a fantasy
Another great piece from The Guardian providing perspective leading up to the 2016 election.
Big government helped make America great but it was so successful its effect has become invisible. Anti-Washington hatred helps only the super-rich and puts progress at risk for millions living with wage stagnation and rising inequality
Some perspective on things people take for granted⦠keep taking these aspects of American society for granted, and eventually weāll wake up to find they are gone.
"This has been an all-time low by mainstream corporate media," says media scholar Robert McChesney, who joins us to discuss how the media is covering the race for the White House. "What weāve seen is the Sanders campaign has been largely neglected ... And the coverage and the framing of it has been largely through the eyes of the establishment for the Hillary Clinton campaign." McChesney says reporters also failed simply to ask questions about what exactly happened over the weekend when Sanders supporters erupted in protest at the Nevada state Democratic convention after they said rules were abruptly changed and 64 Sanders supporters were wrongly denied delegate status. This "brought to the front just how little actual journalism goes on," he notes, "how much of it is simply regurgitating what people in power tell them." McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Communication and is co-founder of Free Press, a national media reform organization.
Robert McChesney makes a number of important points about various aspects of 2016 election coverage so far.
Heās no ordinary con man. Heās way above average ā and the American political system is his easiest mark ever.
A thousand ridiculous accidents needed to happen in the unlikeliest of sequences for it [President Trump] to be possible, but absent a dramatic turn of events ā an early primary catastrophe, Mike Bloomberg ego-crashing the race, etc. ā this boorish, monosyllabic TV tyrant with the attention span of an Xbox-playing 11-year-old really is set to lay waste to the most impenetrable oligarchy the Western world ever devised.
It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.
And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.
The debate over gun regulation in the US seems intractable, but there is one fact that both sides can agree on: Mass shootings are just the tip of a very complicated problem.
Interesting statistics presented in a nice format.
The American political lexicon has an appropriate word for the armed men conspicuously loitering in part of Oregonās Malheur National Wildlife Refuge instead of going home. It is not terrorist or militia or occupation or revolution or movement or front or army or resistance. The word is jamoke. āGet a load of these sad jamokes!ā is the thing you say about them.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about how seriously to take the Malheur Refuge seizure. This article captures most of them.
A tragicomic thing happens, though, when a handful of slow-witted white dorks in their best Sunday camo decide to take their guns and their entitled, useless, cosmically unserious day-to-day dull-eyed skulking to a minor government shack and pretend it's some sort of insurrection against tyranny. Liberal internet users' latent frustration at the disproportionality and unfairness of the way American law enforcement and media treat different kinds of people tips over into a mild derangement that has us likening these shit-for-brains dinguses to friggin' ISIS. This is understandable! Weāre just about a week from an Ohio grand jury deciding that summary execution is a fair consequence for 12-year-old kids who play with toys outdoorsā¦
Indiscriminate bulk data sweeps have not been useful, yet intelligence officials complain that restrictions impede their efforts.
One of the rare cases where I am in agreement with the New York Times Editorial Board.
The ability of large corporations and hugely wealthy people to control the mechanisms of American government has been established by the narrowest of margins. One vote can determine if they can have it all. Now you know why Charles Koch is shopping for a president.
How did we get here? Through a series of cases skillfully steered to the Roberts Court, including AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors, two things have happened. First, forced arbitration clauses and class action bans have been found to be legal, even if they place the aggrieved party at an insurmountable disadvantage and everyone agrees that it will be impossible to obtain justice. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, the Court's rulings send a simple message to victims of forced arbitration: "Too darn bad."
I've been wary of forced arbitration for the last couple years, but I find I cannot get mobile phone service, Internet service, or a variety of other less necessary services, without agreeing to throw my rights away. Most providers offer to pay for the arbitration proceedings, so you know that it's in their best interests.
Forced arbitration -- how people are losing their rights, while big businesses gain more advantages.
Watch SNLās Sasheer Zamata mock clueless white-dude privilege in painfully hilarious video
Before taking over as host of
An interesting look into how PAC's work.
As you can see by the clear trendline, the eighth Congressional committee investigating Benghazi is obviously warranted.
Sarcasm aside, imagine how many Congressional committee investigations there would be if young Americans were consistently being killed in groups of four or more in something like an unexpected attack on an institution⦠Oh, maybe sarcasm didn't go all the way to the side.
Graph originally sourced from Mother Jones, trendlines added by Raging Pencils.