Tag Archives: people

Businesswoman Who Bought Trump Penthouse Is Connected to Chinese Intelligence Front Group

by ITJIsla245 Posted on March 15, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When a Chinese American businesswoman who sells access to powerful people recently purchased a $15.8 million penthouse in a building owned by President Donald Trump, the deal raised a key question. Was this a straightforward real estate transaction, or was this an effort to win favor with the new administration? The woman, Angela Chen, refused to discuss the purchase with the media. The White House and the Trump Organization would not comment on it. Further investigation by Mother Jones has unearthed a new element to the story: Chen has ties to important members of the Chinese ruling elite and to an organization considered a front group for Chinese military intelligence.

Chen, who also goes by the names Xiao Yan Chen and Chen Yu, purchased the four-bedroom condo in the Trump Park Avenue building in New York City on February 21. As Mother Jones first reported, Chen runs a business consulting firm, Global Alliance Associates, which specializes in linking US businesses seeking deals in China with the country’s top power brokers. “As counselors in consummating the right relationships—quite simply—we provide access,” Chen’s firm boasts on its website. But Chen has another job: She chairs the US arm of a nonprofit called the China Arts Foundation, which was founded in 2006 and has links with Chinese elites and the country’s military intelligence service.

The China Arts Foundation was created by Deng Rong, the youngest daughter of Deng Xiaoping, the iconic revolutionary figure and Chinese leader. Deng Rong is what’s known in China as a princeling—a term used for the sons and daughters of former high-ranking officials or officers in the Chinese Communist Party who now hold significant sway in business and political circles. Since 1990, Deng has also served as a vice president of the China Association for International Friendly Contacts, which is an affiliate of the intelligence and foreign propaganda division of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). China experts say CAIFC exists to cultivate relationships with former leaders and retired military officials and diplomats of various countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, in order to influence foreign defense policies toward China and the Far East.

To sum up: An influence-peddler who works with a princeling tied to Chinese military intelligence placed $15.8 million in the pockets of the president of the United States.

Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a Virginia-based think tank that focuses on national security policy with respect to Asia, says CAIFC’s leadership consists largely of retired (and some current) Chinese military and government officials. Stokes, who has written about Chinese political warfare, says CAIFC has become “an important channel of access to Chinese Communist Party princelings.” He adds that “by influencing perceptions” of China (especially in connection to controversial issues, such as China’s stance toward Taiwan), CAIFC hopes to “influence policies of foreign governments, particularly related to defense and national security.”

The China Arts Foundation bills itself as a promoter of cultural exchanges between the United States and China, often involving classical music. The group has a branch in New York, which is run by Angela Chen, and another in Hong Kong. Various members of China’s elite serve on the group’s board, including Wang Boming, one of the founders of China’s stock market; Hong Kong orchestra conductor Long Yu; and Marjorie Yang, a political power broker and textile magnate who’s nicknamed the “cotton princess.” (Yang is reportedly bankrolling the campaign of John Tsang, a candidate for chief executive of Hong Kong, the city’s highest office.) Li Zhaoxing, a former foreign minister, and Guo Shuqing, the chairman of China’s banking regulation commission, were named as board members in a promotional video posted on the website of the foundation’s American branch.

On Tuesday, after Mother Jones made inquiries, the website for the China Arts Foundation International went offline. (You can view an archived version of the site here.)

Angela Chen’s role with the China Arts Foundation has brought her into contact with prominent American and Chinese figures. In 2014, the foundation hosted its Chinese New Year gala at New York’s Le Cirque restaurant on behalf of Deng Rong, and the guests included billionaire Chinese real estate developer Zhang Xin, philanthropist and banker Steven Rockefeller, and Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire investor and CEO of the Blackstone Group. The Chinese consul general in New York, Zhang Qiyue, and former US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman attended a 2015 benefit dinner hosted by the foundation.

The promotional video indicates that there has been a working relationship between the China Arts Foundation and CAIFC. In it, Chen’s group takes credit for sponsoring numerous international summits, including a meeting of international business leaders and think tank experts called the Sanya Forum, which was organized by CAIFC. Several China experts tell Mother Jones that CAIFC engages in legitimate cultural exchange activities but that it has long been seen as part of the Chinese military intelligence apparatus. In a 2002 article published in the China Quarterly, a peer-reviewed British academic journal, George Washington University professor and China scholar David Shambaugh characterized CAIFC as an offshoot of the intelligence bureau of the People’s Liberation Army. He noted that CAIFC’s offices are located in a Beijing compound used by military units.

In 2012, the Republican National Committee considered a resolution expressing concern about a cultural exchange program organized by CAIFC because of the group’s ties to Chinese military intelligence. The resolution, which was not adopted, was fueled by a report from a congressional committee that studies US-China relations. The report labeled CAIFC “a front organization for the International Liaison Department of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Political Department.”

CAIFC has also prompted concerns at the US State Department. During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, an aide to Bill Clinton sought the State Department’s approval for the former president to make a November 2012 speaking appearance co-sponsored by CAIFC and the China Arts Foundation, according to government emails released through the Freedom of Information Act. An official at the State Department noted that CAIFC’s leadership included current and former Chinese government officials and wrote to Clinton’s aide, “I don’t believe we’ve approved Chinese gov’t entities in the past and so we will need to further consider this one.” In the end, Clinton’s aide told the State Department that the former president was backing out of the appearance.

In 2015, a high-ranking CAIFC official was detained as part of an anti-graft campaign by the Chinese army. A South China Morning Post story on the arrest described him as “the chief of a Chinese military intelligence agency.” The paper noted that the official “was in charge of overseas espionage and is better known to the West as the vice-chairman of the government-backed China Association for International Friendly Contact, which used to be the Department of Enemy Work.”

Chen’s purchase of the penthouse unit from Trump was the first deal consummated by Trump’s company since he became president. Prior to taking office, Trump claimed he would remove himself from the daily operations of his business empire, but he remains the owner of the limited liability company that sold Chen the unit. How the deal went down remains a mystery. Chen apparently paid cash, and the apartment she purchased, unlike other penthouse units in the Trump Park Avenue building, was not publicly listed for sale. Chen currently lives in an apartment on a lower floor of the building and uses the unit as a mailing address for the China Arts Foundation and her consulting company. Before moving to Washington, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump lived in the same building. (They are currently trying to sell their apartment.)

Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who, along with Trump’s two adult sons, was handed the task of running Trump’s business empire while he is in the Oval Office, signed the sale documents with Chen. He did not respond to a request for comment. Chen also did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the apartment deal or her relationship with Deng Rong and CAIFC. CAIFC did not respond to an email seeking comment.

When Trump became president, the Trump Organization enlisted an ethics adviser, attorney Bobby Burchfield, to vet potential business deals involving Trump. Burchfield declined to comment about the Chen transaction or explain the vetting process for her purchase of the Trump Park Avenue penthouse.

Norm Eisen, who served as President Barack Obama’s lead ethics lawyer, says the links between Chen, the foundation, CAIFC, and the Chinese government and military raise “a series of very profound and troubling questions.” He notes that there is no transparency regarding the vetting of business deals benefiting Trump. Without such a process, he points out, there are well-founded questions about the true source of the funds used to buy the $15.8 million condo. “When, as here, the public interest is implicated, we’re left at a loss,” Eisen says. “You shouldn’t be asking these questions about a president.”

View this article – 

Businesswoman Who Bought Trump Penthouse Is Connected to Chinese Intelligence Front Group

Posted in alo, Anker, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Businesswoman Who Bought Trump Penthouse Is Connected to Chinese Intelligence Front Group

5 Reasons Why People Don’t Recycle and 5 Reasons They Should

by juliosly165492 Posted on March 4, 2017

My last post, I Dont Recycle seems to have struck a chord with many. Leave it to the Care2 community to enlighten, elevate and express their opinions on why people do and do not recycle.

Most of us believe that recycling is ethically the right thing to do. From the comments on the post, it was evident that sadly, we all seem to have friends, family and acquaintances that do not recycle. Below are some of the reasons why people do not recycle and why they should:

 5 Reasons Why People Do Not Recycle

1. Recycling is inconvenient.
This seems to be the number one reason why people dont recyclethey dont want to put in the extra effort. Some places have no pick-up. Some people say that they just cant be bothered. Is that a good enough reason?

2. I do not have enough space in my home to recycle.
The lack of space is an issue for many. People dont want to see garbage cans with a little storage space for recycling bins on the side; the extra trash is an eyesore. Is that a good enough reason?

3. If they paid me, Id recycle.
Some countries fine people for not recycling. Some regions pay for just bottle recycling (we know that works). Some areas have no penalties or incentives for recycling. Is that a good enough reason?

4. Recycling doesnt make a difference. So why do it?
Misinformation about overflowing landfills, depleted resources and climate change has convinced some people that recycling doesnt make a difference. They believe there is no problem. Is that a good enough reason?

5. It is just to hard to do.
Since there are so many facets to recycling bottle, plastic and paper, its hard to decipher which kinds go where. Is that a good enough reason?

Related: 5 Things You Should Never, Ever Put in Your Recycling Bin


5 Reasons Why People Should Recycle

1. Recycling saves energy.
Recycling saves energy because the manufacturer doesn’t have to produce something new from raw natural resources. By using recycled materials we save on energy consumption, which keeps production costs down.

2. Recycling reduces landfills.
Recycling reduces the need for more landfills. No one wants to live next to a landfill.

3. Recycling preserves our resources and protects wildlife.
By recycling, we reduce the need to destroy habitats for animals. Paper recycling alone saves millions of trees.

4. Recycling is good for the economy.
Recycling and purchasing recycled products creates a greater demand for more recycled goods. Goods made from recycled materials use less water, creates less pollution and uses less energy.

5. Recycling helps our climate problems.
Recycling produces considerably less carbon, which reduces the amount of unhealthy greenhouse gas omissions.

Related: Top 10 Most Important Items to Recycle

Add some more reasons why you do or do not recycle.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

See original:  

5 Reasons Why People Don’t Recycle and 5 Reasons They Should

Posted in alo, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 5 Reasons Why People Don’t Recycle and 5 Reasons They Should

What? Republicans Were Serious About Killing Obamacare?

by payoneerreview91 Posted on March 2, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Stop me if you’ve heard this story before:

Kathy Watson was anxious about her health coverage even before she woke up gasping for breath last month and drove herself to the emergency room with a flare-up in her heart condition. After struggling for years without insurance, the 55-year-old former small-business owner — who has battled diabetes, high blood pressure and two cancers — credits Obamacare with saving her life.

Watson also voted for Donald Trump, believing the businessman would bring change. She dismissed his campaign pledges to scrap the Affordable Care Act as bluster. Now, as she watches the new president push to kill the law that provided her with a critical lifeline, Watson finds herself among many Trump supporters who must reconcile their votes with worries about the future of their healthcare.

Watson, a proud, salty woman who was uninsurable a few years ago, isn’t ready to renounce Trump. But she’s increasingly frustrated by his vague promises to replace Obamacare with something better. “I’ve been through enough,” Watson said recently, sitting on the patio outside her mobile home, down a sandy road in a rural corner of northern Florida. “I don’t want to go back.”

“She dismissed his campaign pledges to scrap the Affordable Care Act as bluster.” A lot of people seem to have done that. But this isn’t just because Trump was such a ridiculous, blustery candidate. It’s also because it’s what we’ve come to expect from Republicans, and everyone tends to give them a pass for it. They say absurd things routinely, but the general reaction is a shrug: Oh, they have to say that stuff for the base. They’re just checking boxes.

But now a lot of moderate conservatives are learning that it wasn’t just affinity politics after all. They’re actually going to try to do all those things they’ve been talking about for years. At this point, our best hope is that they’re too fractious and too incompetent to pull it off.

See the article here:  

What? Republicans Were Serious About Killing Obamacare?

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What? Republicans Were Serious About Killing Obamacare?

Mississippi Still Won’t Make Domestic Abuse Grounds for Divorce

by SherryTKFuqf Posted on March 1, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

There are several grounds for divorce in Mississippi, including impotency, adultery, and even “habitual drunkenness.” But domestic violence is not one of them, and it won’t be anytime soon, after recent legislative efforts to add spousal abuse to Mississippi divorce law failed in a state House committee on Tuesday.

Battered spouses in Mississippi often argue that they have suffered “habitual cruel and inhuman treatment,” which qualify as grounds for divorce under state law. Domestic violence advocacy groups in the state say that the “habitual” standard requires a high burden of proof of recurring violence. But many cases of abuse, which often occur in private, are unable to meet this standard unless there is photographic evidence or a witness. Advocates also argue that the current law does not sufficiently cover spouses dealing with emotional or financial abuse.

In order to address these problems, Republican state Sen. Sally Doty introduced a bill earlier this year that would add domestic violence to the 12 grounds for divorce available in the state. The bill passed the Mississippi Senate by an overwhelming margin and seemed poised for an easy victory in the House. But when the bill arrived in Mississippi’s House Judiciary Committee, Chairman Andy Gipson, a Republican, quickly objected.

Gipson argued that the measure did not clearly define what constituted domestic spousal abuse and suggested the addition would lead to a sharp uptick in divorces in the state. “To me the way it’s worded could possibly be interpreted that if someone raised their voice at their spouse, is that domestic assault?” he asked, according to the Clarion-Ledger. “If that’s the case, then a lot of people would have a ground for divorce in Mississippi.”

According to local news outlet Mississippi Today, Gipson, who is also a Baptist pastor, said that at a time when “we need to be adopting policies that promote marriage and people sticking together, I have some serious concerns about opening the floodgates any more than they already are. I think the floodgates are already open and this just tears the dam down.”

Mississippi state law prefers that both parties agree to end a marriage, allowing couples with a mutual desire for a divorce to cite “irreconcilable differences” and move forward in the process. But when one party refuses to accept the divorce, things can become complicated. In those cases, the person seeking to end the marriage must reach an agreement with his or her spouse on the terms of the divorce or claim one of the grounds provided under state law. The final decision to grant the divorce is left to the courts.

This is the second time in two years that an effort to add domestic violence to Mississippi’s divorce laws has failed. Last year, a similar measure, also introduced by Doty, died in the state Senate after other new grounds for divorce were added to the bill.

Gipson has declined to consider at least one other divorce law proposed this year: He refused to advance a bill adding extended separation to the grounds for divorce. His actions suggest that few divorce proposals would ever win his support. “If there’s a case of abuse, that person needs to have a change of behavior and a serious change of heart,” Gipson said yesterday. “Hopefully even in those cases restoration can happen.”

Update, 8:52 p.m. EST: In a statement posted to Facebook, Gipson defended his decision to scuttle the domestic abuse bill, citing the “cruel and inhuman treatment” standard as sufficient protection for abused spouses. “The law already provides a clear way out of a marriage for victims of domestic abuse, without the need for another bill,” he wrote. “To deny this reality is to ignore the current state of Mississippi law.”

See the original article here: 

Mississippi Still Won’t Make Domestic Abuse Grounds for Divorce

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mississippi Still Won’t Make Domestic Abuse Grounds for Divorce

Trump Lashes Out at "Fake News Media" and Anonymous Sources at Conservative Gathering

by MarianaWhitely Posted on February 24, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

President Donald Trump excoriated the “fake news media”—a category he has previously used to describe such outlets as the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post—during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday for reporting stories that portray his increasingly tumultuous administration in a negative light.

“I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are,” Trump said. “There are some terrible dishonest people and they do a tremendous disservice to our country.”

He specifically railed against reporters’ use of anonymous sources and demanded that people who leak information to the press instead criticize him to his “face.”

“I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources,” he said. “They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there.”

The remarks come just hours after White House officials anonymously refuted a bombshell CNN story, which reported that the White House had asked the FBI to dispute recent evidence that Trump aides had communicated with Russian officials throughout the presidential election. Trump himself has also touted anonymous sources to underscore his conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

The president reiterated his commitment to building a border wall and repealing Obamacare. He also pledged to continue working to deport the “bad dudes” living in the country and to put “its own citizens first.”

“They’re not coming back in, folks,” he said.

This article is from – 

Trump Lashes Out at "Fake News Media" and Anonymous Sources at Conservative Gathering

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Lashes Out at "Fake News Media" and Anonymous Sources at Conservative Gathering

Trump’s Thin Skin Is Keeping Him From Staffing the Federal Government

by CameronWand Posted on February 19, 2017

Mother Jones

Rex Tillerson’s choice of Elliott Abrams to be his deputy at the State Department was vetoed by the White House. Abrams had once said some bad things about Donald Trump, so he was out. The New York Times reports on what this means:

Mr. Trump remains fixated on the campaign as he applies a loyalty test to some prospective officials….Six of the 15 statutory cabinet secretaries are still awaiting Senate confirmation as Democrats nearly uniformly oppose almost all of the president’s choices.

….It is not just Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson who has no deputy secretary, much less Trump-appointed under secretaries or assistant secretaries. Neither do the heads of the Treasury Department, the Education Department or any of the other cabinet departments. Only three of 15 nominees have been named for deputy secretary positions. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has a deputy only because he kept the one left over from President Barack Obama’s administration.

Yes, Democrats are slow-walking Trump’s cabinet choices. You can decide for yourself if this is justified. But it’s the deputies who often really run things, and Trump has only managed to name three out of 15 candidates. After he interviewed all those cabinet nominees, I guess he got bored.

In other words, it’s not Democrats who are holding up the rest of government. The problem is that Trump has no idea what he’s doing, and his staff is too busy with Trump’s thin skin and chaotic management style to find qualified deputies that are acceptable to him. After the debacle with his National Security Advisor, I imagine this has gotten even harder. You could almost feel qualified conservatives backing away from Trumpland as that shitshow played out.

Trump has always had a pretty small set of people acceptable to him, and now a shrinking number of experienced players are finding Trump acceptable to them. This doesn’t bode well for basic management of government business, let alone the “change for the ages” that he promised last night.

View original article:

Trump’s Thin Skin Is Keeping Him From Staffing the Federal Government

Posted in Abrams, alo, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump’s Thin Skin Is Keeping Him From Staffing the Federal Government

Who Really Benefits From Repealing the Stream Protection Rule?

by LucieLHAEafk Posted on February 18, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Behold the politics of Donald Trump in a nutshell:

Weigel is in Florida, so the workers in question are mostly Appalachian miners. Here’s a quick look at Appalachian coal mining employment:1

This chart shows two things. First, coal mining in Appalachia has been plummeting for a long time. Decades, actually. So it’s pretty easy to see why Appalachian coal miners are in dire straits and eager to listen to someone, anyone, who sounds sympathetic to their plight.

Second, Trump is getting a lot of of attention for rolling back the Stream Protection Rule, but it’s not going to put anyone back to work. I had to cheat to even get it to show up on the chart. It’s responsible for maybe a hundred mining jobs out of a total decline of 30,000 between 2009 and 2020.

So who does benefit from rolling back this rule? Well, OSM figures that Appalachian mine owners will save about $24 million per year in compliance costs.3 So they’re pretty happy. This is a dynamic that we’re going to see over and over from Trump:

He puts on a big show about something or other. Workers cheer.
Offstage, it turns out the benefit to workers is minuscule.
Instead, the bulk of the benefits end up going to corporations and the rich.
Liberals will find out about this because the New York Times will probably write about it. Working-class Trump fans won’t, because none of it will be reported by Fox News or Drudge or Limbaugh or Breitbart.

Executive summary: workers get a pittance, the rich get rewarded, and streams and rivers will continue to be fouled by mine tailings. But Trump’s supporters will be happy because they’ll be kept in the dark by all the people supposedly looking out for them.

1This is approximate. I counted coal mine employment from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama. The projection is based on a 50 percent loss of coal production and coal jobs between 2012 and 2020. The Office of Surface Mining figures that the Stream Protection Rule will cost about 260 mining jobs, and that Appalachia will bear 46 percent of compliance cost. (See this CRS report, p. 17.) So we can roughly figure that it will cost Appalachia a little over a hundred mining jobs.2

2The net job loss will be about zero, thanks to additional hires of engineers and biologists. However, that does nothing for miners.

3See here, p. 15. Total estimated compliance costs are $52 million per year, with Appalachia bearing 46 percent of the total.

View article: 

Who Really Benefits From Repealing the Stream Protection Rule?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Who Really Benefits From Repealing the Stream Protection Rule?

NYT: Trump Team Had "Repeated Contacts" With Russian Intelligence During the Presidential Campaign

by KathieZxckyniu Posted on February 15, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

ZOMG!

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….The intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin….The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump.

….Officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, which Russian intelligence officials were on the calls, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians.

This is from Michael Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, and Matt Apuzzo at the New York Times. If Trump thought that firing Michael Flynn was going to stop the recent bloodletting, he thought wrong.

Just to make this clear: At the same time that Russian intelligence was hacking various email accounts in order to sabotage Hillary Clinton, multiple members of the Trump team had repeated phone calls with senior Russian intelligence officials. And during this entire time, Trump himself was endorsing a foreign policy that appeared almost as if it had been dictated to him by Vladimir Putin.

As a number of people have pointed out, the American intelligence community has all but declared war on Trump since his inauguration. I hardly need to spell out why this is dangerous. At the same time, it’s sure becoming a lot clearer why they’re so alarmed by the guy.

And by the way, I shouldn’t miss this chance to flog my favorite hobbyhorse again: FBI Director James Comey, who knew all about this, pushed hard not to make it public during the campaign. Instead he considered it more important to inform Congress that he had discovered additional copies of Hillary Clinton’s emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Priorities.

See more here:  

NYT: Trump Team Had "Repeated Contacts" With Russian Intelligence During the Presidential Campaign

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on NYT: Trump Team Had "Repeated Contacts" With Russian Intelligence During the Presidential Campaign

Paris Jackson gave the #NoDAPL movement a shout-out at the Grammys.

by ClintRedden Posted on February 13, 2017

The industry is growing so fast it could become the largest source of renewable energy on both sides of the Atlantic.

In America, wind power won the top spot for installed generating capacity (putting it ahead of hydroelectric power), according to a new industry report. And in the E.U., wind capacity grew by 8 percent last year, surpassing coal. That puts wind second only to natural gas across the pond.

In the next three years, wind could account for 10 percent of American electricity, Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, said in a press release. The industry already employs over 100,000 Americans.

In Europe, wind has hit the 10.4 percent mark, and employs more than 300,000 people, according to an association for wind energy in Europe. Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, and Lithuania lead the way for European wind growth. In the U.S., Texas is the windy frontier.

“Low-cost, homegrown wind energy,” Kiernan added in the release, “is something we can all agree on.”

Originally posted here – 

Paris Jackson gave the #NoDAPL movement a shout-out at the Grammys.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Jason, LG, ONA, Ringer, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, wind energy, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Paris Jackson gave the #NoDAPL movement a shout-out at the Grammys.

Raw Data: Here’s What Violent Crime Really Looks Like Over the Past Decade

by TashaMathew Posted on February 12, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Donald Trump keeps saying that the murder rate is the highest it’s been in 45 years. This is wildly untrue, but other people are joining the bandwagon anyway. Jeff Sessions says the current rise in crime is a “dangerous permanent trend.” Talk show hosts agree. America is a dark and dangerous place, and it’s getting more dangerous all the time.

Aside from outright lies, a lot of this is based on cherry-picked statistics. The murder rate in Chicago has skyrocketed over the past three years. Los Angeles has seen a substantial rise in its violent crime rate. Etc. But if you’re interested in the whole picture, I have it for you below, complete and un-cherry-picked.

You’re all used to seeing long-term crime charts from me because I’m usually illustrating the effect of lead on crime over the past 50 or 60 years. Those charts show national crime rates plummeting in the 90s and early aughts. This time, though, the chatter is all about recent increases in murder and violent crime in big cities. For starters, then, here are the basic numbers for the past decade on violent crime in large cities from the National Crime Victimization Survey:1

The data goes through 2015,2 and shows that big-city violent crime did tick upward slightly in 2015. More generally, though, violent crime has displayed a noisy but steadily downward trend over the past decade. In 2015, violent crime in big cities was nearly a third lower than it was in 2007.

Next up is violent crime from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. This is based on reports from police departments, and includes detailed data at the city level. Here are violent crime rates in America’s ten biggest cities3 through the first half of 2016:4

Some big cities have indeed shown worrying upward trends: Chicago, San Antonio, and Los Angeles are all up over the past two or three years. At the same time, Philadelphia, New York City, and San Diego are all down. More generally, except for San Antonio every single one of these cities has a lower violent crime rate than in 2006, ranging from 4 percent down (San Jose) to 40 percent down (Dallas and Philadelphia). The overall violent crime rate for all big cities is up over the past two years, but still lower than it was in 2006.

Finally, here are the murder rates in our ten biggest cities:

Chicago, obviously, is a big outlier, with a high and rising murder rate (up 53 percent over the past two years). The three biggest cities in Texas have also seen big recent increases. Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York City are down compared to 2015.

You can draw different conclusions from this data depending on what you look at.5 However, this is the best data we have. This is reality. Whatever you decide to say about violent crime, it needs to be based on this.

1The NCVS data on violent crime doesn’t include homicide because, obviously, you can’t call up people and ask if they’ve been murdered in the past year. Generally speaking, however, violent crime as a category includes murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.

2Unlike the other charts in this post, this one starts in 2007 because the Bureau of Justice Statistics warns that a change in methodology in 2006 makes it difficult to compare 2006 to other years.

3Because of a dispute over methodology, Chicago has no official numbers for forcible rape before 2015. Because of this, it also has no official numbers for violent crime. However, it’s pretty easy to create a close estimate of the rape rate and then use that to recreate the violent crime rate. That’s what I’ve done here.

4I’ve annualized the rates for the first half of 2016 so they’re comparable to the other years.

5It’s worth mentioning that property crime is also down over the past decade. Ditto for crime in smaller cities and towns. I haven’t shown any of that here because big-city violent crime seems to be the topic of the moment. However, you might be interested in a little-known bit of crime trivia that will surprise most people: violent crime in big cities has fallen so much that it’s actually lower than anyplace else. The safest places in America are the biggest and smallest cities. It’s the medium-sized cities that now have the biggest violent crime problems.

See the original post – 

Raw Data: Here’s What Violent Crime Really Looks Like Over the Past Decade

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Raw Data: Here’s What Violent Crime Really Looks Like Over the Past Decade