Chart with photos and links to more data.
Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to bring water to California’s drought-stricken Central Valley. He promised to revitalize coal mining in West Virginia. He promised to revive manufacturing jobs in Erie, Pennsylvania.Now, Trump supporters in those three communities are counting on him to follow through on his economic promises.Hear the personal stories of people living in these economically hard-hit regions in “Betting on Trump,” a series of three digital shorts and related reporting from FRONTLINE, Marketplace and PBS NewsHour as part of our "How the Deck Is Stacked" project:
- In "Betting on Trump: Coal," travel to West Virginia, where nearly 70 percent of the vote went to Trump, coal mining is a way of life, and more than 12,000 mining jobs have disappeared over the last few years. You'll meet Dave, a retired coal miner now getting black lung treatment through Obamacare, and Dakota, a 20-year-old coal miner with two young children who was laid off, and hopes Trump's win means he'll be able to get back to work. Plus: With demand for coal continuing to decline, read about why for Trump, moving beyond campaign rhetoric and delivering on the promise to bring back mining will be a challenge.
- In "Betting on Trump: Water," journey to California's Central Valley, where many jobs are tied to farming, environmental regulations are largely seen as a cause of the region's water woes, and where most counties voted red in an otherwise blue state. You'll meet Joel, a farmer who backed Trump because he promised to increase the region's water supply: "I don't want to be the generation that loses the farm," Joel says. Plus: Why scientists say farmers need to adjust to a world where water will continue to be scarce — regardless of regulation.
- In "Betting on Trump: Jobs," meet Joe, a small business owner in Erie, Pennsylvania, one of three historically Democratic counties in Pennsylvania that flipped in the last election -- helping Donald Trump win the battleground state. Manufacturing jobs have been declining there since the mid-1970s, and Joe voted for Trump because he wants to "see Erie the way it used to be. We've gotta get our manufacturing back." Plus: Read about why labor-intensive manufacturing is rapidly disappearing from communities like Erie, and why economists say traditional factory jobs are not coming back.
We hope you'll watch these three portraits of communities that are "Betting on Trump," read our related reporting, and let us know what you think.
- Patrice Taddonio
Assistant Director of Audience Development, FRONTLINE
[....] The handful of government agencies that bear the brunt of the expenses, including the Defense and Homeland Security departments, have not responded to Washington Post requests for data laying out the costs since Trump took office.
But some figures have dribbled out, while others can be gleaned from government documents.
Trump’s three Mar-a-Lago trips since the inauguration have likely cost the federal treasury roughly $10 million, based on figures used in an October government report analyzing White House travel, including money for Coast Guard units to patrol the exposed shoreline and other military, security and staffing expenses associated with moving the apparatus of the presidency.
Palm Beach County officials plan to ask Washington to reimburse tens of thousands of dollars a day in expenses for deputies handling added security and traffic issues around the cramped Florida island whenever Trump is in town.
In New York, the city is paying $500,000 a day to guard Trump Tower, according to police officials’ estimates, an amount that could reach $183 million a year.
Earlier this month, The Post reported that Secret Service and U.S. embassy staff paid nearly $100,000 in hotel-room bills to support Eric Trump’s trip to promote a Trump-brand condo tower in Uruguay [....]
A New Jersey judge has ruled for the second time that a citizen's criminal complaint against Governor Chris Christie over the "Bridgegate" scandal can move forward.
At a hearing on Thursday, Judge Roy McGeady, who oversees municipal courts in Bergen County, found probable cause for the official misconduct complaint filed by activist Bill Brennan, a retired firefighter who is running for governor this year.
Brennan, a Democrat, has accused Christie, a Republican, of knowing about a plot to close lanes at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 intended to punish a local mayor for failing to endorse Christie's re-election bid [....]
By Jenna Johnson & Adam Entous @ Washington Post, February 16 at 7:33 PM
Retired Vice Adm. Robert Harward has turned down President Trump's offer to become his new national security adviser, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.
Harward would have replaced Michael Flynn [....]
“This president keeps telling untrue things.”
as reported @ Buzz Feed News, Feb. 16
Fox News anchor Shep Smith went on a rant against President Trump for his White House press conference on Thursday, saying “it’s crazy what we’re watching every day.”
WITH VIDEOS
From Eclectablog:
The document proposes that DeVos “rename the Department of Education to President’s Advisory Council on Public Education Reform, a sub-Cabinet level department whose goal is to become a consulting service to state departments of education.”
Once the Department of Education has been all but eradicated, they then propose the following list of items for the state and local level:
By James Risen & Matthew Rosenberg @ New York Times, Feb. 15
Stephen A. Feinberg, the billionaire co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, appears to be President Trump’s choice.
Some see this as a way for Mr. Trump to get inside a world he has viewed with suspicion. It has raised anxiety within the agencies that the review could curtail their independence.
[....] There has been no announcement of Mr. Feinberg’s job, which would be based in the White House, but he recently told his company’s shareholders that he is in discussions to join the Trump administration. He is a member of Mr. Trump’s economic advisory council.
Mr. Feinberg, who has close ties to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, declined to comment on his possible position. The White House, which is still working out the details of the intelligence review, also would not comment.
[....] Mr. Bannon and Mr. Kushner, according to current and former intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers, had at one point considered Mr. Feinberg for either director of national intelligence or chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service, a role that is normally reserved for career intelligence officers, not friends of the president. Mr. Feinberg’s only experience with national security matters is his firm’s stakes in a private security company and two gun makers [....]
Makes perfect sense, eh? I can't imagine anyone more perfect for the job! And hey, Trump supporters: he just screams man of the people? So far out of the box you can't see any boxes anymore?
The dangers of secondhand smoke have been used to justify banning smoking in public places. This article reviews the evidence and finds the dangers wildly overstated. Using faulty science to stigmatize smokers has pushed them out of society and ignored their rights.
Early arguments for smoking bans at least paid lip service to the idea that restrictions were necessary to protect unwilling bystanders’ health. But as bans have grown ever more intrusive even as the case for expanding them has withered, that justification has been revealed as a polite fiction by which nonsmokers shunted smokers to the fringes of society. It was never just about saving lives.
"It's possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time," one defense official told CNN.But the official emphasized that any decision is ultimately up to President Donald Trump, who has ordered his defense secretary to come up with a proposal to combat ISIS before the end of the month.
Just one possible proposal, certainly not a done deal. But the very idea that it's even being considered by this administration is frightening ...
By Washington Post Staff February 15 at 3:51 PM
Chaos:wonder if Bannon is enjoying or not.
Message from this installation - it was more demographic shifts & overall messaging/strategy, not the GOTV driver or any particular state.
By Whitney Eulich for Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 14
[....] President Nicolas Maduro has been uncharacteristically quiet about sanctions leveled against his vice president, posting nothing on Twitter, and leaving it to other officials to condemn the US. And no one has mentioned President Trump by name. The change in tactic, some analysts say, comes down to a third-party player: Russia, which is a friend of Venezuela. [....]
By Alan Yuhas @ The Guardian, Feb. 14
[....] Since his family evacuated on Sunday on orders from officials fearful that the spillways of the Oroville dam would break, Sam Lyon said he has sometimes felt “like a refugee in my own country”.
The 38-year-old from Olivehurst, California, was angry on Tuesday that state officials had not done more to provide aid to the 180,000 people ordered to the roads.
The Lyons had taken refuge in west Sacramento, where volunteers at the Gurdwara Sahib Sikh Temple opened their doors to about 250 people at the evacuation’s peak. “They took us in. We had nowhere to go,” Lyon said. “Anything I can do to return that 10,000 fold, I would.”
This story of Americans helping one another is made more interesting by the fact that Lyon voted for Donald Trump
The 2016 election was Lyon’s first trip to the voting booth, and he stressed that he considered himself an unaffiliated voter, a member of the Sierra Club and a skeptic of the parties. He said that some parts of Donald Trump’s early agenda, including the order to suspend the refugee program and ban travel for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries, left him feeling “twisted”.[....]
We've learned to hate it but we still need it, now more than ever - the alternative of standardless news is too horrific.
But this tale's largely about economics and process, not journalistic standards.
Strangely enough, Trump is probably 24x7 Christmas for them. Maybe *they're* engineering everything.
By Jelani Cobb @ NewYorker. com "Daily Comment", Feb. 14
When the school cancelled the alt-right darling’s event, he emerged as both the putative victim and victor.
Probably only Donald Trump can whip the party's warring factions in line, but so far he's sent vague and conflicting messages.
By Burgess Everet, Josh Dawsey, Rachel Bade & Jennifer Haberkorn
@ Politico.com, 02/14/17 07:16 PM EST
Republicans have reached a gut check moment: After spending more than six years vowing to fix the flagging patient that is Obamacare, it’s the GOP’s own repeal effort that’s on life support.....
House Republicans are expected to pass a measure to thwart efforts by California, Illinois and other states to establish basic retirement savings plans for employees at companies that do not offer such coverage... Financial firms claim that the plans represent unfair government competition. That’s false, but that doesn’t seem to concern House Republicans as they use a fast-track process to derail the states’ plans, siding with the financial industry over ordinary savers.
No wonder Goldman Sachs hit a record high today.
Wow.
Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time that they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.
. . .
The National Security Agency, which monitors the communications of foreign intelligence services, initially captured the communications between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russians as part of routine foreign surveillance. After that, the F.B.I. asked the N.S.A. to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls, and to search through troves of previous intercepted communications that had not been analyzed.
The F.B.I. has closely examined at least four other people close to Mr. Trump, although it is unclear if their calls were intercepted. They are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative; and Mr. Flynn.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. climbed to a record high on optimism President Donald Trump’s administration will spur trading and dealmaking, slash corporate taxes and roll back costly regulations after installing the firm’s executives in top government posts.
The plot thickens so fast it's hard to keep up with things. At today's WH press conference, Sean Spicer dodged Jonathan Karl's question about whether there were any pre-election contacts between Russia and the campaign, and said he had no reason to change the Administration's previous denial of such contacts.However, Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak has stated he began communicating with Flynn before Election Day. David Corn writes:
So what was Spicer to say when Karl posed this query [about pre-election day contacts]? At first, Spicer said that Flynn did speak to the Russian ambassador during the transition. No, Karl protested, that's not the question. What about before the election? Spicer then sputtered out this reply: "There's nothing that would conclude me that anything different has changed with respect to that time period."
That contorted reply would seem to mean that the White House is sticking to its previous denial. But this assertion runs contrary to what is now the public record: that the Trump campaign was in contact with Putin's man in Washington while Putin was subverting an American election to help Trump. What was going on? What was said? What messages did Flynn send to the Putin regime? These are the obvious questions that warrant answers. They are also dangerous questions for Trump. And that's why Spicer cannot acknowledge the hard truth that the Flynn scandal started before the election. These contacts deserve as much, if not more, attention than the conversations that triggered this controversy, for they are relevant to the fundamental subject at hand: Trump's relationship with the autocratic leader who mounted an operation to subvert American democracy to assist Trump.
Intelligence Community pushes back against a White House it considers leaky, untruthful and penetrated by the Kremlin
By John R. Schindler @ Observer, Feb. 12
[....] In light of this, and out of worries about the White House’s ability to keep secrets, some of our spy agencies have begun withholding intelligence from the Oval Office. Why risk your most sensitive information if the president may ignore it anyway? A senior National Security Agency official explained that NSA was systematically holding back some of the “good stuff” from the White House, in an unprecedented move. For decades, NSA has prepared special reports for the president’s eyes only, containing enormously sensitive intelligence. In the last three weeks, however, NSA has ceased doing this, fearing Trump and his staff cannot keep their best SIGINT secrets.
Since NSA provides something like 80 percent of the actionable intelligence in our government, what’s being kept from the White House may be very significant indeed. However, such concerns are widely shared across the IC, and NSA doesn’t appear to be the only agency withholding intelligence from the administration out of security fears [....]