Tag Archives: monday

"Donald Trump Is a Bigot. There’s No Other Way to Get Around It."

by BradlyMyers Posted on August 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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While discussing Donald Trump’s attempts to convince African Americans to back his presidential bid—a pitch the candidate recently summarized as “What the hell do you have to lose?”—New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow took a moment on Monday to explain to Bruce Levell, a Trump delegate from Georgia, the bigotry at the center of the real estate magnate’s campaign and why supporting Trump implicitly validates such hatred.

“Donald Trump is a bigot, there’s no other way to get around it,” Blow said. “Anybody who accepts that, supports it. Anybody supports it is promoting it and that makes you a part of the bigotry itself. You have to decide whether or not you want to be part of the bigotry that is Donald Trump. You have to decide whether you want to be part of the sexism and misogyny that is Donald Trump.”

Levell responded by accusing Hillary Clinton’s campaign of creating the “false facade” that Trump is a racist.

“I’m not part of the Clinton campaign,” Blow interjected. “I’m a black man in America and I know a bigot when I see a bigot.”

(h/t John Whitehouse)

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"Donald Trump Is a Bigot. There’s No Other Way to Get Around It."

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Donald Trump Lies Endlessly About His Foreign Policy Positions

by RoxanaAVKV Posted on August 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Washington Post practically runs out of room this morning fact-checking Donald Trump’s big foreign policy speech on Monday. I didn’t listen to the speech, but it sounds like there was barely any room between the lies for him to have said anything that was true.

What’s remarkable about Trump’s Middle East position is that he doesn’t just exaggerate or cherry-pick; he flatly turns things 180 degrees. He supported the Iraq War in 2002-03. He favored a quick withdrawal in 2007. He supported the Libya war. He opposed getting involved in Syria. These are all the things he says have contributed to the rise of ISIS and the destabilization of the Middle East.

In other words, by his own admission, everything he would have done as president would have been a disaster. Except that he doesn’t admit it. He just lies about what his positions were. It’s an amazing performance.

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Donald Trump Lies Endlessly About His Foreign Policy Positions

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A Republican Senator Just Announced They Won’t Endorse Donald Trump. Here’s Why.

by CiaraIsaachsen Posted on August 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) announced in a Washington Post op-ed that she would not be voting for her party’s nominee, Donald Trump.

I will not be voting for Donald Trump for president. This is not a decision I make lightly, for I am a lifelong Republican. But Donald Trump does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country.

…

Some will say that as a Republican I have an obligation to support my party’s nominee. I have thought long and hard about that, for being a Republican is part of what defines me as a person. I revere the history of my party, most particularly the value it has always placed on the worth and dignity of the individual, and I will continue to work across the country for Republican candidates. It is because of Mr. Trump’s inability and unwillingness to honor that legacy that I am unable to support his candidacy.

Collins is one of the famed yet elusive GOP “moderates” so it’s not like this will change the minds of a lot of Trump diehards, but it’s still a big deal if only because Trump is making a play to win her state.

Collins will not however be going the next logical step and endorsing Clinton. She says in the piece that she doesn’t support either of the parties’ nominees.

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A Republican Senator Just Announced They Won’t Endorse Donald Trump. Here’s Why.

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This downer of a holiday keeps getting earlier every year

by AlbaStowell Posted on August 8, 2016

Congrats!

This downer of a holiday keeps getting earlier every year

By on Aug 8, 2016Share

When it comes to gobbling up natural resources, we humans are exceptionally gifted. Monday, August 8, is Earth Overshoot Day, a downer of a holiday that keeps creeping up earlier on our calendars, arriving five days earlier than last year.

The Global Footprint Network tracks the point in the year when we’ve used more of the important stuff that sustains life — you know, water, trees, fish — than nature’s ability to regenerate those resources.

And we’ve still got 145 days left to go.

Here’s how our collective footprint (red line) compares to Earth’s ability to cope with that demand (green line) over the past half century.

Global Footprint Network

We started overshooting our budget in 1971, and we’ve widened the deficit ever since. Give yourselves a pat on the back, humanity!

Check out Grist’s video on Earth Overshoot Day last year, which explains consumption habits in terms you can understand — caffeine addiction.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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This downer of a holiday keeps getting earlier every year

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Trump’s Economic Plan: Light on Details, Heavy on Tax Breaks for the Rich

by JacintoWare2 Posted on August 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump tried to reset his campaign yet again with a Monday visit to Detroit and a promise of an economic agenda. His speech at the Detroit Economic Club was light on details and full of assurances that his campaign website would soon feature specifics on how he’d tackle the economy. But what details did exist undercut his pledge to make life better for low- and middle-income families, instead serving largely to keep more money in the pockets of the wealthy people in his own income bracket.

The centerpiece of Trump’s new plan is a retooled tax system. “Nothing would make our foreign adversaries happier than for our country to tax and regulate our companies and our jobs out of existence,” Trump said. He had already laid out a vision for rewriting the tax code during the Republican primary, one whose benefits tilted heavily toward a lower tax burden for people earning more than $1 million per year. His campaign website tried to erase his previous plan ahead of the Monday speech, though web archives still retain information on that initial proposal.

During the primary, Trump had proposed four tax brackets, with rates of 0, 10, 20, and 25 percent. While his new plan lacks details, on Monday he said he’d now seek to introduce only three brackets, taxed at 12, 25, and 33 percent. That represents a tax hike from his earlier proposal, but it’s still a major tax cut from current rates for the top income tax bracket, which is taxed at 39.6 percent.

Trump also said he’d like to wipe away the estate tax altogether, using the term “death tax” that’s popular among some conservatives. “American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death—it’s just plain wrong,” Trump said. “We will repeal it.” But the inheritance tax, as currently constituted, touches only a small segment of the population. The federal government doesn’t take any taxes out of estates unless the inheritance exceeds $5.4 million for individuals or $10.9 million for couples. That leaves just the wealthiest 0.2 percent of families paying any estate taxes and makes its repeal less than a great boost to the working class.

Meanwhile, Trump’s speech included many subtle appeals to corporate interests. He promised to reduce the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. Under a President Trump, there would be a complete moratorium on new federal regulations, a massive handout to the financial industry. “Next,” he added, “I will ask each and every federal agency to prepare a list of all of the regulations they impose on Americans which are not necessary, do not improve public safety, and which needlessly kill jobs. Those regulations will be eliminated.” Given his previous claims that he’d like to ditch the 2010 Dodd-Frank law intended to rein in Wall Street, it sounds likely that Trump would vastly lower the number of rules banks and financial institutions need to follow.

But Trump’s speech didn’t contain only the normal Republican calls to lower taxes and cut government oversight of business. He also called for an end to the carried-interest loophole, which allows hedge-funders and others to pay a much lower tax rate on earnings, marking a rare policy agreement with Hillary Clinton. And as Trump launched an usual attack against free trade policies, he cited the liberal Economic Policy Institute to explain potential harms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump also proposed a tax deduction for families to offset the cost of child care—but since that benefit is a deduction rather than a credit, its benefits would skew toward the upper middle class rather than working-class families.

Not unlike other Trump speeches, this one was unconstrained by facts. Trump accused Clinton of seeking to raise taxes on the middle class, based on a blatant misreading of a recent speech. (Clinton has in fact vowed to leave taxes untouched for all but the extremely wealthy.) The Republican nominee called the nation’s low unemployment rate a hoax, another claim that has landed him in trouble with fact-checkers in the past.

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Trump’s Economic Plan: Light on Details, Heavy on Tax Breaks for the Rich

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Never Trump Delegates Have One Last Chance to Stand Up to Trump

by AngelinaMcAlexan Posted on July 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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After their revolt was crushed at the Republican National Convention on Monday, Never Trump delegates are planning one final push to deny Donald Trump the nomination on Tuesday in Cleveland. There’s little likelihood of success—and the effort may be nothing more than symbolic—but it appears the movement will go down swinging.

On Tuesday evening, the convention will be gaveled into session for the roll call of the states, when the delegates’ votes will be counted in order to officially make Trump the nominee. According to Kendal Unruh, a Colorado delegate and a leader of the dump Trump effort, her movement will use this final procedural vote to stage their last stand.

During the roll call of the states, the head of each delegation will declare his or her states’ vote breakdown. But delegates who are bound under convention rules to vote for Trump—but who personally oppose him—plan to register their dissent at this time using a specific parliamentary procedure.

“There’s a process that you use,” Unruh explained. “You have to actually directly challenge at the microphone to the chairman and say a specific phrase or they are going to call it out of order.” She declined to state the phrase, citing strategic reasons.

Technically, delegates bound to Trump by their state party rules must vote for him. But Unruh contends that there is nothing a state can do, and little the national party or state parties can do, to sanction rank and file delegates if they want to challenge this rule individually and vote their conscience. They are unlikely to stop Trump from reaching the 1,237 votes necessary to officially become the nominee, but the televised show of dissent will be an embarrassment to the Trump campaign and tarnish the image of unity the Republican National Committee is struggling to project this week.

The lingering tensions within the GOP were on full display on Monday, when Unruh and her allies made their first attempt to derail Trump’s nomination, briefly sparking chaos on the convention floor. That revolt failed after Republican National Committee officials and Trump aides persuaded delegates to abandon the anti-Trump delegates’ plan—an effort that Unruh claimed RNC chairman Reince Priebus was personally involved in.

After Tuesday’s vote making Trump’s nomination official, the Never Trump effort will finally be out of procedural weapons to use against Trump. But Unruh says that won’t stop them from planning more symbolic shows of opposition to Trump in Cleveland. “We have to hold them accountable for how they’ve treated us,” she said of the Trump campaign and the RNC. “There’s still ways to show discontent, and that’s what we’re discussing.”

“We’re dealing with a narcissist,” she continued. “There’s one thing he’s really gonna hate and that is people trying to embarrass him and not pay attention to him.”

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Never Trump Delegates Have One Last Chance to Stand Up to Trump

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Scott Baio Is About to Speak at the GOP Convention. Here’s What He Has to Say About Hillary Clinton.

by SilasZfo410 Posted on July 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the days leading up to the 2016 GOP convention, Donald Trump reportedly had a tough time securing the kind of all-star celebrities he once promised would take the stage in Cleveland to lend glittering support to his candidacy.

It appears, however, that in the end he triumphed. On Saturday, Trump revealed that none other than distinguished actor Scott Baio would address the convention on Monday evening. Yes, that Baio of Charles in Charge and Happy Days fame.

Just days before the news, in what perfectly captures the tone of this year’s GOP convention, the not-quite-A-list actor tweeted the following thoughts on Hillary Clinton:

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Scott Baio Is About to Speak at the GOP Convention. Here’s What He Has to Say About Hillary Clinton.

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The Attempt to Keep Transgender People Out of Bathrooms Is Working

by FedericArmour Posted on July 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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This year, states across the country have struggled with the question of whether transgender people should be allowed to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity rather than the sex listed on their birth certificate. In March, North Carolina enacted a law blocking trans people from public bathrooms of their choice, and lawmakers in many other states have considered similar legislation. Proponents of these bathroom bills say they want to protect women and girls from male sexual predators; opponents say the legislation discriminates against a vulnerable minority.

Some new statistics out Monday from the National Center for Transgender Equality show how bathroom access—or lack of access—can affect the health and safety of transgender adults. In the largest-ever survey of transgender people in the United States, the NCTE, an advocacy group, heard from more than 27,000 transgender adults in August and September 2015.

Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed said they’d avoided public bathrooms over the past year because they worried about potential confrontations.
Twelve percent said they’d been harassed, attacked, or sexually assaulted in a bathroom over the past year.
Thirty-one percent reported that they’d avoided drinking or eating over the past year so they wouldn’t need to use the bathroom.
Eight percent said they’d had a kidney or urinary tract infection or another kidney-related problem because they’d avoided using bathrooms.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the NCTE, says the statistics show how transgender people are affected by discrimination and violence, and “how trans people try to work around the harassment and discrimination we fear every time we use public bathrooms.” Keisling noted that in a majority of states, restaurant and store managers can legally prevent transgender customers from using bathrooms of their choice or can boot them from the premises for being trans.

The bathroom statistics were released Monday as preliminary findings of the 2015 US Transgender Survey. More data will be available later this year.

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The Attempt to Keep Transgender People Out of Bathrooms Is Working

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Donald Trump Goes on Anti-Muslim Warpath

by FranziskaAshburn Posted on June 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump launched a forceful, angry attack on immigration and Muslims in a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Monday, renewing his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States and saying Hillary Clinton would allow potential terrorists into the country.

“We cannot continue to allow thousands upon thousands of people to pour into our country, many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer,” Trump said, referring to the man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday. The speech was scheduled before Sunday’s attacks and was originally planned as a major anti-Clinton campaign speech, but the Trump campaign retooled the remarks to “further address this terrorist attack, immigration, and national security.”

Trump blamed lax immigration laws for the killer’s presence in the United States, erroneously saying that he was born in Afghanistan and that his father supports the Afghan Taliban. (The father, Siddique Mateen, is a television commentator whose political views appear to be incoherent.) “The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here,” Trump said.

Immigration dominated the speech, with Trump growing angrier and louder as he claimed the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton want to allow huge numbers of refugees into the United States without proper screening. “Under the Clinton plan, you’d be admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalization of their children,” he said. As an example, he falsely cited a “tremendous flow of Syrian refugees into the United States.” In reality, fewer than 2,000 Syrians have entered the United States so far in 2016, representing less than a fifth of the intake the government had promised.

More ominously, Trump suggested that American Muslims are operating as a fifth column by hiding attackers like Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, and the couple that carried out the San Bernardino terrorist attack last year. “They have to work with us, they have to cooperate with law enforcement,” Trump said of American Muslims. “They knew that he was bad. They knew that the people in San Bernardino were bad. But they used the excuse of racial profiling for not reporting it.”

By attacking radical Muslims, Trump also tried to cast himself as a defender of the gay community. He started the speech with a moment of silence for the victims of the shooting and called the attack “an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives, love who they want, and express their identity.” Trump, who opposes same-sex marriage and has vowed to overturn the Supreme Court ruling that made it legal nationwide, later called Clinton’s immigration policies a betrayal of the gay community. “Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as long as she continues to support immigration policies that bring Islamic extremists to our country who suppress women, gays, and anyone who doesn’t share their views,” he said.

The speech was not the first time Trump addressed the Orlando attack. On Sunday, Trump published tweets thanking his followers for the “congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism” and calling again for a ban on allowing Muslims into the United States, a proposal other Republicans have said he should drop. Trump then suggested on Monday that President Barack Obama may purposefully be turning a blind eye to terrorism, winking at conspiracy theories that Obama is secretly Muslim and anti-American. “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understand,” Trump said during an interview on Fox & Friends. “It’s one or the other.” He repeated variations on the claim during other media appearances on Monday.

On Monday, Roger Stone, one of Trump’s close friends and advisers, also suggested that Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Clinton, might be a terrorist operative. “She has a very troubling past,” Stone said on the Breitbart News Daily radio show. “She comes out of nowhere. She seems to have an enormous amount of cash, even prior to the time that she goes to work for Hillary. So we have to ask: Do we have a Saudi spy in our midst? Do we have a terrorist agent?”

Clinton gave her own speech on Monday, in which she decried Trump’s “inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric” without mentioning him by name.

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Donald Trump Goes on Anti-Muslim Warpath

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Forget Immigration and Affirmative Action. Chief Justice Roberts Wants to Talk About Peat Moss.

by DeidreBarreto Posted on May 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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With a month left before its summer recess, the Supreme Court has yet to issue rulings on several landmark cases involving immigration, reproductive rights, and affirmative action. So on Monday morning, TV cameras were parked outside, and the courtroom was buzzing with anticipation when the justices convened to release orders and opinions.

Then Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. read an opinion about peat moss.

Reporters in attendance, at least one of whom had driven all the way from Charlottesville, Virginia, for the occasion, hoped at least for a decision in Fisher v. University of Texas, the long-awaited case involving race in college admissions that was argued back in December. Or perhaps an opinion in the state of Texas’ case challenging the Obama administration’s executive action on immigration, which would defer the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Even a ruling in Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy case would have been more exciting than US Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co., a technical regulatory dispute involving peat moss and the Clean Water Act that was the subject of the first and only opinion of the day.

Reading from the bench, Roberts toyed with deflated reporters by jauntily discussing the benefits of peat, “an organic material that forms in waterlogged grounds, such as wetlands and bogs,” and its uses in gardening and golf. “It can also be used to provide structural support and moisture for smooth, stable greens that leave golfers with no one to blame but themselves for errant putts,” he continued. He ad libbed an observation about peat’s use in brewing whiskey, which was not in the published opinion.

But peat is not all golf balls and highballs, or the case wouldn’t have been at the high court. The Hawkes Co. wanted to harvest about 500 acres of peat moss from swampland in Minnesota for use in golf courses and landscaping. But the Army Corps told the company that the tract in question included wetlands, which it asserted were protected under the Clean Water Act. The Army Corps argued that its decision couldn’t be reviewed by the courts, but the company sued. The suit led Roberts to expound on the virtues of peat and ultimately to rule in the company’s favor by allowing the courts to oversee such wetlands determinations.

After Roberts cheerfully finished reading his opinion, he announced that there were no more decisions in the queue. Further opinions won’t come until next Monday.

While the unanimous Hawkes decision has the potential to weaken enforcement of the Clean Water Act, it isn’t among the court’s pending high-profile cases that could affect large numbers of people and tip the scales in the culture wars—the kinds of cases that make news. The cases that remain undecided are significant, and there are a lot of them. By one count, the court still needs to issue opinions in 24 cases argued this term. Right now there are only four days in June scheduled for the release of new decisions before the summer recess.

What explains the backlog? The court is not a transparent institution, so observers can only hypothesize. But the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia is no doubt a major factor. There’s been some speculation, for instance, that Scalia had been assigned to write the opinion in a case involving Puerto Rican self-governance. Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle remains the only case argued in January that hasn’t been decided. When Scalia died, the opinion in that case may have had to be reassigned to a different justice.

It’s possible that other half-written Scalia opinions, especially if they involved other contentious, potential 5-4 cases, are also in limbo or need to be retooled by other justices. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said last week, eight “is not a good number for a multi-member court.”

Regardless of the reasons for the slowdown, if the justices want to get out of town before the Fourth of July weekend and partake in some of those peat-enhanced activities, they’re going to have to start cranking out a lot more decisions.

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Forget Immigration and Affirmative Action. Chief Justice Roberts Wants to Talk About Peat Moss.

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