https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ook-track-browsing-history-california-lawsuit Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says
Oh good. I was worried that Zuckerberg's "what do non-billionaires do?" Iowa tour would interfere with his ability to invade my privacy. That fucker will run the most targeted campaign ever. Kill us all.
This is a dumb rule HOWEVER Chicago does offer free community college tuition to Chicago Public School graduates - plus it says an acceptance letter not that they actually have to matriculate. But yeah - it's a dumb rule.
All of the jobs that don't exist for summer employment (many that do are federally funded grants) are going to magically appear and be full-time? Wtf
That is a scary decision for anyone who believes in any form of privacy. Also, I'd be willing to bet Facebook still tracks visits in Private or Incognito mode.
well yeah, incongnito mode doesn't do anything more than stop recording visits to pornhub in the browsing history
Pop-up ad on my computer, two years from now: "Hi, my name is Mark Zuckerberg, and I'm running for president. Issues concerning multiracial transsexual little people dressed as clowns are a great concern to me, just as I know they are to you..."
Hobby Lobby Fined $3M, Agrees to Return Smuggled Iraqi Artifacts by Tracy Connor The arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby will pay $3 million to settle a federal case over smuggled Iraqi antiquities it bought to demonstrate its "passion for the Bible." The Oklahoma-based retailer also agreed to forfeit thousands of clay artifacts it bought in 2010 — an acquisition that prosecutors said was "fraught with red flags" the company didn't heed. Hobby Lobby to pay $3 million fine over smuggled Iraqi artifacts In a statement, Hobby Lobby President Steve Green acknowledged "regrettable mistakes" that he chalked up to inexperience. "We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled," Green said, adding that the firm fully cooperated with the investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Hobby Lobby is perhaps best known for its Supreme Court victory in a 2014 religious freedom case over contraception. The family that owns the company is also bankrolling a $500 million Museum of the Bible slated to open in Washington in the fall. In 2009, the company decided to amass a collection of books and artifacts "consistent with the Company’s mission and passion for the Bible." Green and a consultant traveled to the United Arab Emirates to inspect cuneiform tablets that were thousands of years old, along with engraved seals and the clay impressions they made. According to a civil complaint, an expert hired by Hobby Lobby had warned its in-house lawyer that there was a risk the items it wanted to buy had been looted and counseled them to make sure the country of origin was properly labeled on customs forms. Hobby Lobby paid $1.6 million for tablets and other artifacts. U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York Instead, prosecutors said, the 5,500 artifacts were shipped without proper documentation, with labels that described them simply as "ceramic tiles" or "samples" from Turkey or Israel. The company didn't pay the dealer who supposedly owned the items, instead wiring $1.6 million in payment to the accounts of seven other individuals. Green said Hobby Lobby didn't know the items were from Iraq and has put safeguards in place to ensure future acquisitions are properly vetted.
Late to the "bash Kurt Eichenwald" party but that's not even the right dude. That guy killed his two parents in Louisiana, iirc, the other dude killed his two kids in Minnesota. In his defense, I'm sure that if the news had a pic that crazy looking of the dad, they would've run with it.
Elections and Democracy: The future of humanity will not be decided through the ballot box http://en.internationalism.org/icco...umanity-will-not-be-decided-through-ballot-bo
GOP tensions rise over Cruz proposal The Hill Alexander Bolton3 hrs ago © Provided by The Hill GOP tensions rise over Cruz proposal Tensions between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his old antagonist, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have reappeared in the high-stakes negotiation over healthcare reform. Spoiler Cruz is insisting on a reform to the Senate GOP bill that senior GOP aides say is a nonstarter with much - if not most - of the Republican conference. While Cruz sought out Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to play what he promised would be a constructive role in the debate, senior GOP aides say Cruz is no longer being agreeable. Instead, he is again being a thorn in McConnell's side, much like he was in 2013, when he insisted on blocking a government spending bill unless it included language halting the implementation of ObamaCare, the staffers argue. Two years ago, Cruz famously called McConnell a liar on the Senate floor amid a debate on the Export-Import Bank. GOP aides say the proposal that Cruz and his allies are framing as the potential key to passing the stalled healthcare bill is a nonstarter with most Republicans in the upper chamber. The proposal would allow insurance companies the freedom to sell any kinds of health plans they want as long as they also sell at least one plan that qualifies under the regulatory requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). "I would say that if we voted on the Cruz proposal, it would be in the neighborhood of 37 to 15 against, 37 no votes and 15 yeses, and that's probably generous," said a GOP aide familiar with the Senate negotiations. "Nobody wants to go home and say to a 45-year-old steelworker with diabetes that you should have to pay a lot more for your health insurance," the aide added. Frustrations are mounting with Cruz among Senate negotiators because leaders have felt blindsided by his demand that the legislation essentially eliminate the protection for people with pre-existing conditions. When McConnell told GOP colleagues at a presentation this spring that the bill would not touch pre-existing conditions, Cruz did not specifically object. "What he would say is we need to go after all insurance rules, as many as we can," said a Republican source familiar with the meeting. A conservative Republican aide acknowledged that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) was more outspoken in his objection to the refusal by leaders to touch pre-existing conditions, while Cruz's position was left murky. GOP leaders thought Cruz would be on board if the legislation tackled other regulations, such as rules for what services insurers must provide as essential health benefits, which the public Senate bill addresses. Cruz's insistence, according to GOP aides, in recent weeks that the Senate bill scrap the regulations governing pre-existing conditions is a shift that has made their job more difficult. These claims are getting strong pushback from Cruz defenders. Aides siding with the Texas Republican say he made it clear to leaders from the start that the Senate bill should give people the freedom to buy cheaper health plans that are exempt from federal regulation. "From day one of the Senate discussions, in a working group that Sen. Cruz started with Chairman Alexander, consumer freedom has been one of Cruz's major points. The idea that this is sprouting at the last minute is inaccurate," said a senior conservative Republican aide. The Hill reported Monday that Senate GOP leaders have sent two versions of a revised healthcare bill to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), one with the Cruz amendment and one without it. Republican aides who say Cruz's amendment is politically untenable acknowledge that the CBO could report some good news, like that the proposal would send down premiums without significantly affecting coverage. But they think it's more likely that the CBO analysis will be damning. "Or CBO will come back and say the market will be destroyed and 45 million people will be left without insurance," said one staffer. Conservatives close to Cruz admit the CBO score will be better for the revised bill that does not include Cruz's amendment because that version includes a market stabilization fund without including any of the regulatory reforms that would destabilize - at least temporarily - the market. "It's getting all the money without needing the money," said one source familiar with the talks who is sympathetic to Cruz's proposal. Various policy experts are siding with McConnell in the debate. American Action Network, a nonpartisan, nonprofit policy research group led by former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, warned that a proposal like Cruz's would send premiums soaring for people who are older and sicker than the general population. It would have the effect of gutting ObamaCare's popular requirement that insurance companies sell affordable plans to people regardless of pre-existing medical conditions, the group warned. "If one modified the statute and treated the setting of premiums by pricing two separate risk pools (or if it was determined that these are in fact different plans and can be priced differently), premiums for [qualified healthcare plans] would skyrocket," Tara O'Neill Hayes, the deputy director of healthcare policy at American Action Forum, wrote in a June 29 analysis. Other experts agree. "It sounds like a recipe for segmenting the market in a way that would destabilize it. You would end up back in the scary dysfunctional world we were in before the ACA where healthy people could get coverage although that coverage might not protect them if they got sick and sick people would have to pay an unaffordable amount for coverage," said Jason Levitis, a senior fellow at the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School. "The coverage that sick people need would still have to be offered but offered at any price, so probably unaffordable," he added. Levitis led the implementation of the law at the Treasury Department under President Obama. This makes Cruz's proposed reform, which is backed by other conservatives such as Lee, dead on arrival with the Republican caucus, senior Senate GOP aides warn. One aide said that while a "room full of actuaries" would favor getting rid of regulations protecting pre-existing conditions, "the political real-world consequences are too devastating to take on and not of the interests of people we are trying to help." More than three-quarters of voters across the nation, 77 percent, say it is "very important" that people with pre-existing conditions pay the same price for health insurance as others, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University survey of 1,000 voters conducted from June 24 to June 27. © AP Photo/Susan Walsh Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas,, second from left, waits for President Donald Trump to join a meeting of Republican senators on health care in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, June 27, 2017. Many Republican senators have either called for protecting people with pre-existing conditions or praised the Senate bill unveiled on June 22 for keeping the current protection intact. "The draft healthcare legislation preserves access to care for people with pre-existing conditions, strengthens Medicaid and does not change Medicare, gives people more health insurance choices, and allows people to stay on their family health insurance plan until they are 26," Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of McConnell's leadership team, said in a statement the day the bill was made public. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), another McConnell ally, emphasized in a statement, "The Senate bill keeps current-law protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions, prohibiting the denial of health insurance coverage for this reason." Cruz disputes claims that his proposal would destroy protections for people with pre-existing conditions. He said that even if healthy people were to flock to plans free of federal regulations, sick people would still receive government subsidies to help them afford insurance coverage. "You would likely see some market segmentation," Cruz told Vox last week. "But the exchanges have very significant federal subsidies, whether under the tax credits or under the stabilization funds." He and his allies show no signs of backing down. "If they don't want to include that amendment, they can get to 50 elsewhere," said a conservative Senate Republican aide. They are backed up by conservative groups such as FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth, which panned the legislation made public last month. Club for Growth on Wednesday praised the Cruz-Lee proposal as a "significant step in the right direction." "At a bare minimum, Congress should not stand in the way of allowing Americans who want to opt out of ObamaCare to do so," said Club for Growth President David McIntosh. Cruz and Lee also have the support of members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, such as Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who tweeted Wednesday that he could support the Senate bill with Cruz's amendment. This puts McConnell and his leadership team in a very tough spot after the July Fourth recess, when the Senate is supposed to take up the bill. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is considering a run for governor in 2018, is seen as a certain no because she has made clear to GOP leaders that she will not vote for legislation that includes language defunding Planned Parenthood, according to a Republican source familiar with the talks. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has made repeated statements that he will likely vote against the bill if it includes refundable tax credits to help low-income Americans buy health insurance - a pillar of the current Senate bill. Republicans control 52 seats and can afford only two defections and still pass the legislation. Vice President Pence would cast the tie-breaking vote.
I was Ambushed by InfoWars - and Won By ChrisPerri Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 7:06 PM CDT 2017/07/05 · I initially planned to talk about my education policy… but then this happened: So there I was, returning from giving my speech at an Impeach Trump March in Austin, when suddenly an “InfoWars shouter” ambushed me. He thought he would win — he thought wrong. Below is a link from Raw Story covering this encounter. Its title says it all: “WATCH: InfoWars shouter tries to ambush progressive Texas candidate – and goes down in flames” We have a saying down here in Texas that I’m sure we’ve all heard: Don’t Mess with Texas. It’s time to update it to read: Don’t Mess with Texas Progressives. Here’s the video itself. Don’t worry — its title is Fake News (InfoWars did write this particular title after all). I come into the picture at 03:15. I am Chris Perri; I am a progressive of the people, by the people, and for the people; and I am a fighter who does not back down. For more information, please visit my: Website Facebook Twitter Donate Volunteer
warning wonk post from dk warning wonk post from dk UPDATE: GOP Congress OFFICIALLY takes responsibility for mandate enforcement sabotage By Brainwrap Wednesday Jul 05, 2017 · 11:06 AM CDT 2017/07/05 · UPDATE: Someone in the comments noted that I never explained what “CSR” payments are. Spoiler Short version: There are two types of financial aid provided for people on the individual market under the ACA: Advance Premium Tax Credits (APTC), which are available for people with incomes between 100-400% of the federal poverty level, or roughly $12K — $48K for individuals) and Cost Sharing Reductions (CSR), which are available for those between 100-250% FPL, or $12K — $30K for an individual. Around 9 million people receive premium tax credits. Around 7 million receive CSR assistance. The GOP filed a lawsuit in 2014 claiming that CSR payments are illegal because even though the ACA authorized the payments, it didn’t explicitly appropriate the funds as well. A federal judge surprised everyone (including the Republicans) by ruling in their favor that the payments weren’t authorized...but then put a stay on her own ruling at the GOP’s request, because they realized that “winning” their lawsuit would actually blow up in their faces by causing million of people to lose coverage and rates to skyrocket. As longtime readers know, I've often separated the problems with the ACA into several categories: Some were inherent in the original bill as signed into law. Yes, many of these only exist because of futile attempts to win over support from Republicans (or a handful of blue dog Dems), but the Democrats are still responsible for them. This includes things like the APTC tax credits being too skimpy, the "family glitch", the "skinny ESI glitch" and so forth. In these cases, the GOP can certainly be criticized for refusing to help resolve those issues, but that's a matter of "passive" obstruction as opposed to overtly doing so. Some were genuine judgment errors made by the Obama Administration or state regulators after the law was signed. Here I'm mainly referring to a) the sloppy management surrounding the development of the federal exchange website (HealthCare.Gov), resulting in an ugly technical mess at launch in October 2013, and b) the decision, a month or so later, to allow states to let insurance carriers "grandmother in" transitional healthcare policies which were supposed to sunset on 12/31/13 in response to the "If You Like It You Can Keep It" backlash. Of course, all President Obama did was allow the states to do so; it was still the state regulators who had to decide whether to allow transitional plans or not. About 1/3 of the states, almost all of which lean Blue, wisely chose not to allow it; the other 2/3, most of which lean Red, did so. For that matter, even in the states which did allow transitional plans, it was still left up to the insurance carriers themselves whether to do so or not, so some of this falls on them as well. Some were technical issues needlessly exploited by the Republican Party to sabotage the law. This mainly includes the King v. Sebelius (later King v. Burwell) and House v. Burwell (now House v. Price)federal lawsuits. The first (which had to do with which enrollees are allowed to receive premium tax credits) was utterly ridiculous but somehow managed to make it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before being shot down. The second (which relates to Cost Sharing Reduction reimbursement payments) is currently pending. House v. Price has slightly more merit on the face of it...but is also utterly unnecessary; it only exists as a thing because the House GOP chose to pursue legal action over it rather than a) not doing so or b) passing (with unanimous consent from the Dems, I might add) a 64-word bill to resolve the issue at any point over the past 3 years. Some were overt, unbelievably cynical/disingenuous actions taken by the GOP. This includes things like trying to pass laws/regulations severely obstructing ACA navigators, but by far the worst example was Marco Rubio's infamous Risk Corridor Massacre in December 2014. He deliberately attached it to the must-pass CRomnibus spending bill as a poison pill, forcing the Dems into a situation where they had to either pass the whole thing or have the federal government shut down again. Result? Over a dozen co-ops went belly-up, hundreds of people lost their jobs, over 800,000 people lost their coverage and the federal government will likely still have to pay out billions of dollars anyway once the class action lawsuits are settled. Out of everything listed above, most of the damage from them is already done...that is, the major impact of each has already been baked into the equation. The major exception to this is the CSR reimbursement crisis, which is only starting to cause real damage right now. Why? Because while the lawsuit was originally filed by the House GOP (under John Boehner!) back in 2014, the federal judge in the case didn't make her decision until 2016, and there's been stay after stay issued every quarter since then as the Republicans have come to realize how ugly the consequences of winning their own lawsuit could be to them. This has been compounded manyfold by Donald Trump's explicit threats to simply cut off CSR funding altogether (which he has the ability to do at any time by simply instructing the Justice Dept. to drop their appeal of the judge's decision). For the upcoming 2018 Open Enrollment Period, by far the biggest threat to both carrier rates and participation in the individual market at all focuses on two main concerns: The CSR reimbursement threat...and Trump's other overt sabotage move: His Day One executive order instructing the HHS Dept. to do everything possible to obstruct proper administration of the ACA, including but not limited to not enforcing the individual mandate penalty. Here's the thing, though: Trump and Congressional GOP may share the blame equally for the CSR threat (the GOP for filing the lawsuit in the first place & refusing to pass a standalone appropriation bill; Trump for overtly threatening to cut off payments altogether), but until today, blame for the individual mandate enforcement threat fell squarely on the shoulders of Donald Trump himself (along with HHS Secretary Tom Price). Until today, the rest of the GOP Congress could plausibly claim innocence on the mandate enforcement issue--after all, that's entirely up to the executive branch, don'cha know? Don't look at us! Well, according to this article by Robert Pear of the New York Times, that's no longer the case: Congress Moves to Stop I.R.S. From Enforcing Health Law Mandate WASHINGTON — Congress is moving to prevent the Internal Revenue Service from enforcing one of the more unpopular provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which requires most Americans to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty. The plan is separate from Republican efforts to repeal the health care law, and appears more likely to be adopted because it would be written into the annual spending bill for the Treasury and the I.R.S. But it has a similar purpose: to weaken the health law that President Trump and Republicans in Congress want to dismantle. Congress has been working for months on a bill to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, including the coverage requirement. That provision, known as the individual mandate, is widely disliked, according to opinion polls. In case that effort fails or bogs down, the House Committee on Appropriations has drafted a provision to stop the I.R.S. from enforcing the mandate. The restrictions, for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, are included in an appropriations bill that was approved on Thursday by the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. “None of the funds made available by this act may be used by the Internal Revenue Service to implement or enforce section 5000A of the Internal Revenue Code,” which imposes the tax penalty on people who go without insurance, the bill says. The bill would also prohibit the I.R.S. from enforcing a requirement that employers and insurance companies inform the government of the name and Social Security number of anyone to whom they provide health insurance coverage. The government uses these reports to help administer the individual mandate and other requirements. I cannot stress enough how big of a deal this is. Until now, insurance carriers, in attempting to set their prices for 2018, have had to ask themselves two big questions: Are CSR reimbursement payments guaranteed through the end of next year, and will the Trump Administration even bother enforcing the individual mandate next spring? The response so far has been all over the map. Some state insurance commissioners are allowing carriers to submit two different rate filings; some are requiring them to do so. Some are submitting rates under the assumption that neither CSR payments nor mandate enforcement will be in place; others are assuming both will, and so forth. However, again, until now, the biggest fears have been on the CSR side, with the mandate enforcement factor being less obvious, more vague, so some carriers appear to have shrugged that part off somewhat. In addition, in past years there were complaints that the Obama Administration tended to drag their feet a bit on enforcement as well, by allowing too many hardship exemptions and so forth. As of today, that's changed. Insurance carriers across the country are now very much aware that it's no longer just Trump making vague threats with his usual infantile bluster; the Republican-controlled Congress is actively planning to kill individual mandate penalty enforcement next year. As of today, insurance carriers have to operate on the assumption that a) CSR reimbursements will not be guaranteed for 2018 and b) the individual mandate will not be enforced next year...and will set their prices accordingly. And here's the other thing: As I've noted before, it may not even matter whether they follow through with this legislation or not. Remember, enforcement of the mandate isn't actually done until next spring, when people file their 2017 income taxes. What matters most is whether people think the mandate will be enforced or not. If people think it won't be enforced and don't enroll in a healthcare policy as a result, it doesn't really matter whether Trump/Price/the GOP ends up enforcing it next spring or not...because by that point it will be too late; the damage to the individual market risk pool will already have been done. In any event, going forward, I no longer have to distinguish between "Trump Sabotage" and "GOP Sabotage" when it comes to the CSR and mandate enforcement issues...both are now one and the same. It takes an awful lot of time and effort to maintain the ACA Signups website. If anyone’s in a position to help support the ACA Signups project, it would be tremendously appreciated.
'I know they are going to die.' This foster father takes in only terminally ill children Spoiler The children were going to die. Mohamed Bzeek knew that. But in his more than two decades as a foster father, he took them in anyway — the sickest of the sick in Los Angeles County’s sprawling foster care system. The children were going to die. Mohamed Bzeek knew that. But in his more than two decades as a foster father, he took them in anyway — the sickest of the sick in Los Angeles County’s sprawling foster care system. Hailey Branson-PottsContact Reporter The children were going to die. Mohamed Bzeek knew that. But in his more than two decades as a foster father, he took them in anyway — the sickest of the sick in Los Angeles County’s sprawling foster care system. He has buried about 10 children. Some died in his arms. Now, Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for a bedridden 6-year-old foster girl with a rare brain defect. She’s blind and deaf. She has daily seizures. Her arms and legs are paralyzed. Bzeek, a quiet, devout Libyan-born Muslim who lives in Azusa, just wants her to know she’s not alone in this life. “I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” he said. “I’m always holding her, playing with her, touching her. … She has feelings. She has a soul. She’s a human being.” He’s the only one that would take a child who would possibly not make it.— Melissa Testerman, Department of Children and Family Services intake coordinator Of the 35,000 children monitored by the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, there are about 600 children at any given time who fall under the care of the department’s Medical Case Management Services, which serves those with the most severe medical needs, said Rosella Yousef, an assistant regional administrator for the unit. There is a dire need for foster parents to care for such children. And there is only one person like Bzeek. “If anyone ever calls us and says, ‘This kid needs to go home on hospice,’ there’s only one name we think of,” said Melissa Testerman, a DCFS intake coordinator who finds placements for sick children. “He’s the only one that would take a child who would possibly not make it.” Typically, she said, children with complex conditions are placed in medical facilities or with nurses who have opted to become foster parents. But Bzeek is the only foster parent in the county known to take in terminally ill children, Yousef said. Though she knows the single father is stretched thin caring for the girl, who requires around-the-clock care, Yousef still approached him at a department Christmas party in December and asked if he could possibly take in another sick child. This time, Bzeek politely declined. Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times Bzeek is a quiet, religious man who wants his foster daughter to know she's not alone in this life. Bzeek is a quiet, religious man who wants his foster daughter to know she's not alone in this life. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) ::: The girl sits propped up with pillows in the corner of Bzeek’s living room couch. She has long, thin brown hair pulled into a ponytail and perfectly arched eyebrows over unseeing gray eyes. Because of confidentiality laws, the girl is not being identified. But a special court order allowed The Times to spend time at Bzeek’s home and to interview people involved in his foster daughter’s case. The girl’s head is too small for her 34-pound body, which is too small for her age. She was born with an encephalocele, a rare malformation in which part of her brain protruded through an opening in her skull, according to Dr. Suzanne Roberts, the girl’s pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Neurosurgeons removed the protruding brain tissue shortly after her birth, but much of her brain remains undeveloped. She has been in Bzeek’s care since she was a month old. Before her, he cared for three other children with the same condition. “These kids, it’s a life sentence for them,” he said. Bzeek, 62, is a portly man with a long, dark beard and a soft voice. The oldest of 10 children, he came to this country from Libya as a college student in 1978. Years later, through a mutual friend, he met a woman named Dawn, who would become his wife. She had become a foster parent in the early 1980s, before she met Bzeek. Her grandparents had been foster parents, and she was inspired by them, Bzeek said. Before she met Bzeek, she opened her home as an emergency shelter for foster children who needed immediate placement or who were placed in protective custody. The key is, you have to love them like your own.— Mohamed Bzeek Dawn Bzeek fell in love with every child she took in. She took them to professional holiday photo sessions, and she organized Christmas gift donation drives for foster children. She was funny, Bzeek said during a recent drive home from the hospital. She was absolutely terrified of spiders and bugs, so much that even Halloween decorations creeped her out — but she was never scared by the children’s illnesses or the possibility that she would die, Bzeek said. The Bzeeks opened their Azusa home to dozens of children. They taught classes on foster parenting — and how to handle a child’s illness and death — at community colleges. Dawn Bzeek was such a highly regarded foster mother that her name appeared on statewide task forces for improving foster care alongside doctors and policymakers. Bzeek started caring for foster children with Dawn in 1989, he said. Often, the children were ill. Mohamed Bzeek first experienced the death of a foster child in 1991. She was the child of a farm worker who was pregnant when she breathed in toxic pesticides sprayed by crop dusters. She was born with a spinal disorder, wore a full body cast and wasn’t yet a year old when she died on July 4, 1991, as the Bzeeks prepared dinner. “This one hurt me so badly when she died,” Bzeek said, glancing at a photograph of a tiny girl in a frilly white dress, lying in a coffin surrounded by yellow flowers. By the mid-1990s, the Bzeeks decided to specifically care for terminally ill children who had do-not-resuscitate orders because no one else would take them in. There was the boy with short-gut syndrome who was admitted to the hospital 167 times in his eight-year life. He could never eat solid food, but the Bzeeks would sit him at the dinner table, with his own empty plate and spoon, so he could sit with them as a family. There was the girl with the same brain condition as Bzeek’s current foster daughter, who lived for eight days after they brought her home. She was so tiny that when she died a doll maker made an outfit for her funeral. Bzeek carried her coffin in his hands like a shoe box. “The key is, you have to love them like your own,” Bzeek said recently. “I know they are sick. I know they are going to die. I do my best as a human being and leave the rest to God.” Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times “I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” Mohamed Bzeek says. “I know she can’t hear, can’t see, but I always talk to her,” Mohamed Bzeek says. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Bzeek’s only biological son, Adam, was born in 1997 — with brittle bone disease and dwarfism. He was a child so fragile that changing his diaper or his socks could break his bones. Bzeek said he was never angry about his own son’s disabilities. He loved him all the same. “That’s the way God created him,” Bzeek said. Now 19, Adam weighs about 65 pounds and has big brown eyes and a shy grin. When at home, he gets around the house on a body skateboard that his father made for him out of a miniature ironing board, zooming across the wood floor, steering with his hands. Adam studies computer science at Citrus College, driving his electric wheelchair to class. He’s the smallest student in class, Bzeek said, “but he’s a fighter.” Adam’s parents never glossed over how sick his foster siblings were, and they told him the children were going to eventually die, Bzeek said. They accepted death as part of life — something that made the small joys of living all the more meaningful. “I love my sister,” the shy teenager said of the foster girl. “Nobody should have to go through so much pain.” About 2000, Dawn Bzeek, once such an active advocate for foster children, became ill. She suffered from powerful seizures that would leave her weak for days. She could hardly leave the house because she didn’t want to collapse in public. The frustrations of her illness wore on her, Bzeek said. There was stress in the marriage, and she and Bzeek split in 2013. She died a little over a year later. Bzeek chokes up when he talks about her. When it came to facing the difficulties of the children’s illnesses, the knowledge that they would die, she was always the stronger one, he said. ::: On a chilly November morning, Bzeek pushed the girl’s wheelchair and the IV pole that carries her feeding formula into Children’s Hospital on Sunset Boulevard. She was wrapped in a soft pink blanket, her head resting on a pillow with the stitched words: “Dad is like duct tape holding our home together.” The temperatures had been bouncing up and down that week, and the girl had a cold. Her brain cannot fully regulate her body temperature, so one leg was hot while the other was cold. On the elevator, her face glowed bright red as she coughed, her throat filled with phlegm, screaming for air. People in the elevator looked away. Bzeek rubbed her cheek playfully and held her hand, waving it playfully. “Heeeey, mama,” he cooed in her ear, calming her down. For Bzeek, the hospital has become a second home. When he’s not here, he’s often on the phone with her many doctors, the insurers who fight over who’s paying for it all, the lawyers who represent her and her social workers. Any time they leave the house together, he carries a thick black binder filled with her medical records and pages of medications. Still, Bzeek — who had to be licensed through the county to care for medically fragile children and receives about $1,700 a month for her care — is not able to make medical decisions for her. Roberts entered the exam room, smiling at the girl’s frilly socks and brown dress with fall-colored leaves. “There’s our princess,” the doctor said. “She’s in her pretty dress, as always.” Roberts has known Bzeek for years and has seen many of his foster children. By the time this girl was age 2, Roberts said, doctors said there were no more interventions to improve her condition. “Nobody ever wants to give up,” she said. “But we had run through the options.” But the girl, who is hooked to feeding and medication tubes at least 22 hours a day, has lived as long as she has because of Bzeek, the doctor said. “When she’s not sick and in a good mood, she’ll cry to be held,” Roberts said. “She’s not verbal, but she can make her needs known. … Her life is not complete suffering. She has moments where she’s enjoying herself and she’s pretty content, and it’s all because of Mohamed.” Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times Mohamed Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for the bedridden child. Mohamed Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for the bedridden child. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Other than trips to the hospital and Friday prayers at the mosque — when the day nurse watches her — Bzeek rarely leaves the house. To avoid choking, the girl sleeps sitting up. Bzeek sleeps on a second couch next to hers. He doesn’t sleep much. ::: On a Saturday in early December, Bzeek, Adam and the girl’s nurse, Marilou Terry, had a celebratory lunch for the child’s sixth birthday. He invited her biological parents. They didn’t come. Bzeek crouched in front of the girl — wearing a long, red-and-white dress and matching socks — and held her hands, clapping them together. “Yay!” he said, cheerfully. “You are 6! 6! 6!” Bzeek lit six birthday candles in a cheesecake and sat the girl on the kitchen table, holding the cake near her face so she could feel the warmth of the flames. As they sang “Happy Birthday,” Bzeek leaned over her left shoulder, his beard gently brushing the side of her face. She smelled the smoke, and a small smile crossed her face.
What the stock market’s rise under Trump should teach Democrats Updated by Mike Konczal Jul 7, 2017, 9:20am EDT tweet Spoiler Robert Nickelsberg / Contributor .cls-1{fill:#333;}.cls-2{fill:#f7ec16;}Artboard 1 Outside contributors' opinions and analysis of the most important issues in politics, science, and culture. A lot of predictions were upended when Donald Trump won the presidency. But one of the most interesting was the idea that a President Trump would cause a stock market collapse — or at least a sharp decline. As the liberal economist Justin Wolfers argued at the end of September, after analyzing market movements during a presidential debate, “Wall Street fears a Trump presidency. Stocks may lose 10 to 12 percent of their value if he wins the November election.” “The market,” Wolfers concluded, “prefers the Democrat and believes that Mr. Trump is a unique threat to prosperity.” From Wolfers to Mark Cuban to Bill Maher, this looming stock-market dive was yet one more reason Trump would be bad for the country — or so Democrats told themselves. The opposite happened. The stock market soared, driven by Wall Street firms in particular. The stock market is not a barometer of economic health or growth, of course. It’s an amoral calculator of short-term corporate profits and dividends over the next few years, nothing more or less. Stocks were right to rally, as corporate profits would be seeing a windfall with a wave of deregulation and elite tax cuts. Though it was lost in the endless debates about what went wrong for the Democrats, that the stock market so welcomed Trump was yet another source of troubling pain for the Democrats’ self-conception. This pain is worth dwelling on. Since the election, numerous articles have argued that the Democrats need to become more populist. But they generally don’t get into the specific questions that Democrats need to answer in the wake of 2016. The stock market issue is useful here, as it touches on several issues that Democrats need to reckon with while they are in the political wilderness. First, Democrats need to reevaluate their idea of themselves as disinterested stewards of the economy — as a party that accepts the current economic arrangements largely as a given. Second, they need to understand what their coalition looks like if they can’t peel off moderate Republicans, as they predicted they would throughout 2016. Third, they also need to decide if the economy requires structural changes, or merely some tinkering around the edges. And finally, they must decide whether social programs should target narrow populations or lean towards universalism. A Democratic Party that believes that it is the party that is truly good for the stock market would answer these questions one way; a party that looks beyond the stock market answers it another way. Decrying Trump’s outlandishness is (still) not enough Of course, the Democrats could spend the political wilderness not changing anything. Trump is a mess of a president, with his approval numbers steadily falling. Republicans are trying to take health care from millions while cutting taxes for the rich, toxic positions within the electorate across parties. Grassroots Democrats are swarming town halls and running for office in massive numbers. Maybe the funk will take care of itself. Yet the Democrats face an uphill battle to gaining power again. Trump is unpopular, but he’s more popular than the Democrats. (Sound familiar?) A recent poll has a 40 percent favorable rating for Trump, but only 35 percent for the Democratic Party. An April 2017 poll surprisingly found that Trump would win in a rematch against Clinton. Democrats haven’t gained in popularity or gained in party identification. The Republican Party as a whole hasn’t been this powerful since the 1920s. The Democrats have collapsed in state governments, now controlling only 31 of 98 state legislative chambers. Some rethinking is necessary. One idea to reexamine is how the Democratic Party views itself in relationship to the economy. That the Democrats are the best stewards of the economy is central to how the Democratic elite view themselves. I choose the word steward carefully, especially given how the left and right loathe the course Democrats have taken on economic matters over the past several decades. The left considers Democrats corporate-friendly sellouts, “history's second-most enthusiastic capitalist party,” as Kevin Phillips once called it. The right believes Democrats want to control business and bend it to their power-hoarding ideological ends of social engineering. Each side scores its points, but neither captures how elite Democrats view their approach. Democrats have come to view themselves as neutral caretakers of the existing economic system Stewardship conveys ideas of looking after and keeping order. Democrats now see their role as serving as a fair broker among the competing parts of the economy. They insist they can come up with an arrangement in which capital and labor are simultaneously better off, and that they are the ones who will make the hard decisions, in contrast with the feckless Republicans. Think of the number of times Democrats have emphasized that they balance the budget while Republicans run giant deficits. Think of the balancing acts required to promote reform without naming business as an enemy — as we saw in both the financial and health care arenas. Think of how President Obama tried to achieve a Grand Bargain with Republicans in 2011 that would have cut Social Security under the mantra of responsibility, only to be stopped by the fact that conservatives wouldn’t budge an inch in raising taxes. This approach hit two serious walls in 2016. The first was that people weren’t happy with the economy. Nearly three-fourths of people said the country was on the wrong track, with similar numbers describing the economy as rigged. Median household incomes in 2016 had finally inched back to 2007 levels. This lead to a year of awkward juxtapositions, with “America is Already Great” headlines running next to reports on how much life expectancy is falling for white workers. Democrats attacked Trump as a poor steward, someone too unstable and chaotic to run the economy as it was. But that message doesn’t motivate voters when they believe the economy isn’t working for them. The second wall Democrats hit was the inclination of the business community, with its eye on deregulation and tax cuts, to side with the Republicans regardless of how responsible the Democrats are or whether someone like Trump is at the helm of the GOP. The stock market rally shows concretely how happy the capital markets are to have anyone who will boost corporate profits, even Trump. But there were also strategic miscalculations. There was a sense, for example, that the insurance companies would help defend the ACA from reckless repeal efforts like the ones we’re seeing. Yet, as Vox’s Dylan Scott reports, the insurance companies are on the sidelines: “Health industry groups generally don’t love Obamacare enough to jeopardize their ability to shape the rest of the Republican agenda — including big corporate tax cuts,” he writes. The Obama administration avoided calling out the predations of Wall Street after the financial crisis and didn’t take strong actions to prevent foreclosures that would upset the capital markets. Yet finance still hates the Democrats and is waging war on the sensible, necessary reforms Dodd-Frank put in place to prevent Wall Street from creating another crisis. There’s no middle ground to be had there. (Fittingly, the current Treasury secretary, busily rolling back financial reform and soon to lead an assault on progressive taxation, ran a foreclosure mill that the Democrats refused to investigate or prosecute aggressively.) One key question for Democrats is the old labor one: “Which side are you on?” The Democratic Party used to give the answer, as Harry Truman did in 1948, that it “is pledged to work for labor.” In recent decades they’ve given an answer that was essentially “all sides, for the common good.” After 2016, Democrats should pick a side again. Democrats should end the romancing of the Republican professional class The appeal of the stock market also shows who the ideal marginal voter is for today’s Democratic Party: a well-educated, moderate-Republican professional. Though tough to get in normal times, certainly these professionals would never vote for Trump. Professionals would more than make up for the white-working class voters Trump would win over. Authors like Thomas Frank have documented the transition of the vision of the Democratic Party base from workers to professionals. Democrats had a slightly different vision: 2016 would be the year that yoked those two groups together to create a dominant new political coalition, rivaling the one Democrats maintained through the New Deal and afterward. It worked in some places, like affluent Republican suburbs of Dallas, Kansas City, and Atlanta, as well as old-money GOP areas like Greenwich and Winnetka. But overall, well-educated professionals joined the Democrats in nowhere near enough numbers to offset declines in working-class voters of all races, and they were not in the right places to help. Faced with Trump, Republicans stayed Republican. This theory missed that in our polarized world, elections are increasingly about mobilizing the base rather than convincing independent voters. The upscale moderate defectors the Democrats keep expecting to show up still haven’t appeared. So another important question is: Can Democrats fix their woes by continuing to try to appeal to moderate voters? A predominant Democratic view is that the economy is mostly fine; it’s just a matter of adjusting and correcting it to ensure everyone has access. Deeper, structural, changes are put to the side in favor of taxes, transfers, and behavioral nudges to help people out. <img src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8813245/GettyImages_584451620.jpg" alt="Hillary Clinton pitched herself as a far more responsible steward of the economy than Donald Trump. The business community was unmoved."> Hillary Clinton pitched herself as a far more responsible steward of the economy than Donald Trump. The business community was unmoved. Chip Somodevilla / Getty On trade, for example, the consistent Democratic narrative in 2016 was that we need to “compensate the losers” of trade. The phrasing alone tells us everything we need to know. Which voters want to be identified as losers? Democrats may mean something more abstract when they speak of “losers” in a globalized economy, but the language carries the connotation of personal blame. But what role does individual agency play when global capital flows upend communities? And why are we treating the economy as a natural phenomenon — one whose consequences we simply must accept — when voters know it’s a series of laws, trade agreements, and businesses making decisions? If this is the best Democrats can offer, it’s not surprising workers aren’t interested. Worse, small-scale redistribution creates inter-group competition that Trump has all-too-easily exploited. Whereas Democrats say that they’ll ensure that the worst off get taken care of, Trump turns this logic upside down: He says that he’ll take care of his white, middle-class voters (and not the “undeserving” poor, implicitly black and Latino). Universal programs are the way to defuse the zero-sum competition created by narrowly targeted programs. It is telling, on this score, that a choke point Republicans are hitting in their efforts to overhaul health care is state resistance to killing the Medicaid expansion. The Medicaid expansion helped bring in more people and turned a program for people in poverty into a broader program for working-class people. If the current health care arrangement survives, this will be one reason why. The questions I’m raising here frame a clear choice. How the Democrats decide to answer them will determine much of what they’ll do later. Democrats should redouble their commitment to labor, abandon the obsessive focus on the preferences of American professionals, rein in the most predatory parts of the economy, and throw their weight behind simple, universal programs that would improve citizens’ economic and social lives. The Democratic Party had started to move in this direction during the election, but it was never the central pitch. Now, however, every time the Democrats are tempted to deviate from this agenda, they should remember that the stock market loves Trump and could not care less about his antics. That’s because the business class has already decided what side it is on. Mike Konczal is a fellow with the Roosevelt Institute, where he works on financial reform, unemployment, inequality, and a progressive vision of the economy. He blogs at Rortybomb, and his Twitter handle is @rortybomb. The Big Idea is Vox’s home for smart discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at [email protected].
Libs and minorities have no sense of humor. Lighten up Francis /s Deliveryman in New York handed a noose by customer is left traumatized, unable to return to work Spoiler By Kelly Macias Thursday Jul 06, 2017 · 1:39 PM CDT 2017/07/06 Victor Sheppard's employer continued to do business with the butcher who handed him a noose during a delivery on the morning of April 5th When you are black in America and have to navigate living and working around non-black people, you get used to dealing with racial microaggressions—statements which are directed at members of minority groups that reflect stereotypes and racial bias. Many of these microaggressions are not actually intended to cause harm, but the impact can serve to have a lasting effect—an ever constant reminder that we are seen as different and unrelatable. Racial microaggressions are not only experienced by black people. People of color can also be the recipients of them but certain microaggressions have a different meaning for blacks because of our long and complex history in this country. And then there are the times when we have to deal with flat-out racism in the workplace. Because so many people have been willfully ignorant as to how pervasive racism is in our society, they’d be shocked to know how commonly this occurs. Of course, racial microaggressions are more likely to occur on a day-to-day basis but, in interracial workplaces, black folks also deal with our share of outright racism too. These instances are almost always painful. And sometimes they make it so that we feel as if are unable to work at all. Such is the case of Victor Sheppard, a deliveryman working in New York, who was given a noose by a butcher in a store where he was making a delivery. Joe Ottomanelli passed Sheppard a hand-fashioned noose at the butcher shop on April 5 during a morning meat delivery. “Here is your gift. You can put it around your neck and pull if you want to end it all,” Ottomanelli, 58, said, according to a criminal complaint. “If you are feeling stressed out I can help you with it.” As a result, Sheppard is now too traumatized to go back to work. He has since been let go on the claim that since he failed to show up for his duties on two separate occasions, so the company had no choice but to assume he had abandoned his position. Victor Sheppard says he was not comfortable returning to his job with Hunts Point meat distributor Mosner Family Brands because it continued to serve the Bleecker St. butcher shop following the disturbing “gift.” [...] “It’s not easy returning to an environment where you mean nothing.” Because of how privilege and racism work, right now someone is finding a way to justify this act. No matter how horrible this is (and it is truly loathsome), someone is reading or hearing about Victor and saying to themselves, “I get it. It’s terrible. But he should just get over it and find a new route to deliver to.” Rest assured, this person is probably not black. If they are, they have found a way to cope with white supremacy by deluding themselves into thinking that this isn’t as bad as it is. And who can blame them? There are few things worse than being an adult and suddenly having your humanity stripped away and reduced to nothingness. The fear, anxiety and stress produced by racism are real and nooses are a physical manifestation of that—one that serves to take away black people’s power and dignity. When white people wield them against us, it is not a joke. It is a cruel reference to history, a time when they could kill blacks whenever they so chose for what they perceived as “stepping out of line.” It is, simply put, an act of terror. Sheppard's attorney Wylie Stecklow insisted the 37-year-old couldn’t continue to work. “Victor could not return to that environment. His employer knew exactly what happened and was supportive but they never stopped doing business with Ottomanelli,” Stecklow said. He added that Sheppard is “unable to sleep through the night and unsure when his life will return to normal.” Sheppard was offered free counseling through his employer which he chose not to pursue. He was also offered a new delivery route. But let’s face it—why in the world would he want to take a risk in coming into contact with another racist customer? And the fact that the employer had offered alternatives but never stopped doing business with the butcher likely left him with serious doubts about working with them ever again. Who in their right mind would want to continue employment with an employer that is aware that a customer threatened your life but still continues to do business with them? That would be enough to stress out anyone and to keep them up at night. For his part, the butcher, Joe Ottomanelli (who was charged with a hate crime), claims that no malice was intended by passing the noose to Sheppard in the first place. That it was just a bad joke. This is how disgusting this person is—that he thinks his actions are the same as if he had told a vulgar “your momma” joke. His lawyer “admits the noose ordeal was ‘hateful and deplorable’ but argues it was an inappropriate prank and not a crime.” Well, here’s some food for thought: nothing about racism is not funny. Nooses and evoking the memories of the lynching of thousands of black people are especially not humorous. Sheppard has not filed a lawsuit in this case. But perhaps, he should. Let’s see how funny Ottomanelli would think it is should a jury decide he should actually pay cash to Sheppard for his vile sense of humor. also in before Southerners jump on there being racists up North too
No, i continue to post ity because not everthing imo is better placed in the way arbys thread. Why are you annoyed?
speaking of dumping an article, as Trump clearly sees his Warsaw speech yesterday as some sort of defining moment (he said as much himself), it demands a close look. Jam Bouie parses the symbolism of the speech for us in this piece for Slate (which was prolly posted in the trump thread but I'm not digging through 30 pages of bettercallsaul and tahd posts to find it). http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...st_roots_of_donald_trump_s_warsaw_speech.html
Sssooo what's your issue w me posting articles itt for the consideration of people who may read this thread?