Tag Archives: united-states

Death Penalty Opponents Lose Two Big Battles

by claudiospeckman Posted on November 9, 2016

Mother Jones

Voters in California and Nebraska on Tuesday rejected efforts to abolish the death penalty in their states. The two states—one deep red and the other deep blue—were seen as significant bellwethers for longtime opponents of capital punishment who had hoped for a different result.

In California, the ballot proposition to repeal the death penalty fell short with about 46 percent of the vote as of Wednesday morning. At the same time, voters narrowly passed a second proposition to speed up the process of executing death row inmates. In Nebraska, voters overwhelmingly chose to keep the death penalty by a margin of 66 percent to 34 percent.

Heading into Tuesday, polls in California showed voters closely divided on the issue; Nebraska’s scant polling showed the pro-death penalty side leading. But overall in the country, support for capital punishment and executions have both waned. In September, a Pew poll found support for the death penalty nationwide had fallen below 50 percent for the first time in nearly 50 years. Some states have been unable to carry out executions due to a shortage of the requisite drugs, including Nebraska, which has not executed anyone since 1997. California has not executed anyone since 2006, also out of concern for its drug protocols.

The results send a signal that voters in both red and blue America are reluctant to part with the death penalty, even as the number of executions around the country has declined in recent years. In Oklahoma, a state that carried out a notoriously botched and brutal execution nearly two years ago because it used the wrong drug, voters passed a ballot initiative to protect the constitutionality of the death penalty, by a margin of 66 percent to 34 percent.

Still, the ballot initiatives in California and Nebraska were a bold effort to push the issue forward, with a deep-blue state questioning the morality of a system that has taken innocent lives and a deep-red state beginning to see the death penalty as a flawed and wasteful government program. “California and Nebraska are such different states that we’re seeing the death penalty being fought on multiple fronts,” said James Clark, an anti-death penalty advocate at Amnesty International, on the eve of the election. “We’re seeing diehard progressives who believe in human rights, who believe this is a violation of human rights, are really on the forefront in states like California. And then also conservatives are on the forefront in both states, saying this is a failed government policy, this is government overreach, it costs so much money.”

The conservative argument played a big role in the death penalty debate in Nebraska. The state’s conservative legislature voted in 2015, over the governor’s veto, to repeal the death penalty. But the issue was forced to a referendum when the governor, Republican Pete Ricketts, spent $300,000 of his own money to try to reinstate it.

Opponents of the death penalty in states across the country, both red and blue, were looking to the outcomes on Tuesday to decide whether to try to repeal the death penalty in their own states. Other countries were watching, too. The United States is the only Western democracy with a death penalty; more than half of the world’s countries have abolished it, and many more countries have stopped using it. “There’s a lot of momentum building around the world to abolish the death penalty, and those countries that continue to use if often point to the United States as the justification for using it,” Clark said.

Even with Tuesday’s defeats, death penalty opponents still believe the momentum is on their side—if for no other reason than the shortage of execution drugs. Clark said the ballot initiatives were “bold risks that could cause setbacks, but I don’t think they will change the overall trend of the death penalty in the United States. I don’t think we’re in jeopardy of that.”

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Death Penalty Opponents Lose Two Big Battles

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President Obama says the Dakota Access pipeline could get rerouted.

by MargariKunze Posted on November 2, 2016

The Republican candidate on Monday promoted his plan to purportedly save the government $100 billion over eight years. It involves cutting all federal spending on climate change programs, both domestic and international.

“We’re going to put America first,” Trump said at a Michigan rally. “That includes canceling billions in climate change spending for the United Nations, a number Hillary wants to increase, and instead use that money to provide for American infrastructure including clean water, clean air, and safety.”

As Bloomberg BNA reports, Trump didn’t give a precise tally for how he got to $100 billion:

[The] campaign press office said that the figure combined an estimate of what the Obama administration had spent on climate-related programs, the amount of U.S. contributions to an international climate fund that Trump would cancel, and a calculation of what Trump believes would be savings to the economy if Obama’s and Clinton’s climate policies were reversed.

That math, however, doesn’t work out: According to a 2014 report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, a global temperature increase of just 3 degrees C would cost the United States 1 percent of GDP, or $150 billion a year, by damaging public health and infrastructure and battling sea-level rise, stronger storms, declining crop yields, and increased drought and wildfires.

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President Obama says the Dakota Access pipeline could get rerouted.

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Donald Trump Promises to Sue Women Who Accused Him of Assault

by AkilahTeasdale Posted on October 22, 2016

Mother Jones

On Saturday, Donald Trump vowed to sue the 11 women who have come forward over the last few weeks with accusations of sexual assault against the Republican presidential nominee.

“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” Trump claimed. “Total fabrication, the events never happened—never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

Trump’s threat came during a speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which was plugged as a major policy speech to lay out his first 100 days in office should he win the election next month. His promise to sue his accusers wasn’t the only notable moment.

While taking a hard line on his accusers, he seems to be softening on a key campaign promise: That the US will build a wall along its southern border and that Mexico will pay for it. Now, according to his speech, his position is that the United States will pay for the wall but Mexico will reimburse the US.

Trump also promised to break up Comcast and NBC as part of a response to media bias against him during the campaign.

Excerpt from – 

Donald Trump Promises to Sue Women Who Accused Him of Assault

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A federal court has dealt a blow to protestors fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

by BrentC68dttk Posted on October 10, 2016

The majority of Sunday’s presidential debate involved the candidates trading blows on tax returns, Donald Trump’s so-called “locker room talk” about assaulting women, and Hillary Clinton’s email account. Just when we had given up hope, energy policy got over four minutes of stage time.

Although there was no direct question about climate change, one audience member asked how the candidate’s energy policies would meet the country’s energy needs in a way that doesn’t destroy the environment.

Trump declared affection for “alternative forms of energy, including wind, including solar,” but added “we need much more than wind and solar.” He went on to say: “There is a thing called clean coal … Coal will last for 1,000 years in this country.”

Clinton responded that she has “a comprehensive energy policy, but it really does include fighting climate change, because I do think that’s a serious problem.” She described making the United States a “21st century renewable energy superpower,” while also touting natural gas as a “bridge to alternative fuels.”

This is the third debate in a row (two presidential and one vice presidential) in which environmental issues have been marginalized. The conversation on climate in the first presidential debate amounted to just 82 seconds.

Update: See Grist’s detailed fact check of last night’s energy exchange.

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A federal court has dealt a blow to protestors fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

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Trump wants to keep burning coal for 1,000 years.

by DaltonAlngindabu Posted on October 10, 2016

The majority of Sunday’s presidential debate involved the candidates trading blows on tax returns, Donald Trump’s so-called “locker room talk” about assaulting women, and Hillary Clinton’s email account. Just when we had given up hope, energy policy got over four minutes of stage time.

Although there was no direct question about climate change, one audience member asked how the candidate’s energy policies would meet the country’s energy needs in a way that doesn’t destroy the environment.

Trump declared affection for “alternative forms of energy, including wind, including solar,” but added “we need much more than wind and solar.” He went on to say: “There is a thing called clean coal … Coal will last for 1,000 years in this country.”

Clinton responded that she has “a comprehensive energy policy, but it really does include fighting climate change, because I do think that’s a serious problem.” She described making the United States a “21st century renewable energy superpower,” while also touting natural gas as a “bridge to alternative fuels.”

This is the third debate in a row (two presidential and one vice presidential) in which environmental issues have been marginalized. The conversation on climate in the first presidential debate amounted to just 82 seconds.

Update: See Grist’s detailed fact check of last night’s energy exchange.

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Trump wants to keep burning coal for 1,000 years.

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Mexican Magazine Letras Libres Declares Donald Trump an "American Fascist"

by OdellGriswold Posted on September 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Throughout this increasingly disturbing election season, a slew of prominent magazines have dedicated its covers to Donald Trump and the real estate magnate’s unlikely rise to the top of the Republican party. But the most brilliant cover may have just arrived from Mexico, where the culture magazine Letras Libres featured a magnified image of the presidential candidate with two simple words, “Fascista Americano.” The description appears to be presented to form the shape of a Hitler mustache:

From the first day of his campaign, Trump has vowed to build a wall along the US-Mexico border to stop Mexican immigrants, who he has called rapists and criminals, from entering the United States.

(h/t Huffington Post)

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Mexican Magazine Letras Libres Declares Donald Trump an "American Fascist"

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Intelligence Officials Are Looking Into a Trump Adviser’s Possible Kremlin Ties

by MandyWalkom Posted on September 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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US intelligence officials are looking into the Kremlin ties of a US businessman who is serving as a foreign policy adviser to Republican nominee Donald Trump, Yahoo News reported today. During briefings given to senior members of Congress about the possibility that the Russian government is trying to tamper with the presidential election, intelligence officials have discussed Trump adviser Carter Page, who runs an energy investment firm that specializes in Russia and Europe, according to the site.

Yahoo reports that members of Congress were told that Page may have had contact or set up meetings with high-level Kremlin officials and may have discussed the possibility of the United States lifting sanctions on Russia if Trump becomes president. An unnamed senior law enforcement official confirmed to Yahoo, “It’s being looked at.”

Trump told the Washington Post in March that Page, a former Merrill Lynch investment banker, was part of his foreign policy team. Page’s role in the campaign has been described in various ways since, including as an informal adviser.

Page has a long history with Russia, and he is known for expressing sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier this year, Page told Bloomberg News that he had lived in Moscow in the early 2000s for several years when he worked for Merrill Lynch, working closely with the state-owned Russian oil and gas company Gazprom. After leaving Merrill Lynch, Page started his own investment firm, and this firm has invested in Gazprom, which has been included on the list of Russian firms targeted for sanctions by the United States due to its close links to Putin. Page has been consistently critical of Western attempts to sanction Russian companies and officials over Putin’s incursions into Ukraine.

In July, Page raised eyebrows by traveling to Russia to speak at an event for an organization with links to Putin’s inner circle, where he took issue with US policy, declaring that Western countries “criticized these regions for continuing methods which were prevalent during the Cold War period…Yet ironically, Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change.”

A Trump campaign spokesman told Yahoo that Page has no role in the campaign but did not respond when asked why the campaign had earlier called Page an adviser.

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Intelligence Officials Are Looking Into a Trump Adviser’s Possible Kremlin Ties

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AP Jumps on the "Lie" Bandwagon

by KellieTrue3 Posted on September 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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The New York Times started us off, and today Josh Marshall points us to yet another news outlet telling it like it is:

Meanwhile, Trump himself seems delighted by the coverage of his birther event yesterday:

This is fairly remarkable since Trump is promoting a story that’s all about the fact that he lied about Obama, lied about Hillary Clinton, and hoodwinked the press into giving his hotel and his campaign free publicity. I have two theories about this. First, Trump assumes his fans never click the link. Second, his fans love the idea of Trump pulling one over on the press. I suppose it’s a combination of both.

Meanwhile, here’s a taste of other straight news reporters finally calling Trump’s lies lies:

Michael Barbaro, New York Times: “Around 11 a.m. Friday in Washington, he gave up the lie….This lie was different from the start, an insidious, calculated calumny that sought to undo the embrace of an African-American president by the 69 million voters who elected him in 2008.”

Julie Pace, AP: “Trump’s latest attempt to persuade voters that he’s the lesser of two evils came Friday, when he abruptly reversed course on his lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.”

Philip Rucker and Dan Balz, Washington Post: “After five years of peddling lies and innuendo about the circumstances of President Obama’s birth, Trump on Friday bowed to the facts and acknowledged for the first time that Obama was born in the United States, though he refused to apologize for his efforts to delegitimize the nation’s first black president.”

“Tribune News Services,” Chicago Tribune: “After five years as the chief promoter of a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace, Donald Trump abruptly reversed course Friday and acknowledged the fact that the president was born in America. He then immediately peddled another false conspiracy.”

Mary Ann Georgantopoulos and Ruby Cramer, BuzzFeed: “Donald Trump on Friday admitted that President Obama was born in the United States — and lied twice while doing so — after pushing the conspiracy theory he was not since 2011.”

That seems to be about it. The LA Times is sticking with “falsehood” for now, and the Wall Street Journal with “false accusations.” USA Today went with “no factual basis.” CNN barely even mentioned that birtherism was untrue in its print piece, and said only that Trump “continues to falsely blame” Hillary Clinton for starting the rumors. The BBC called it a “conspiracy theory.”

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AP Jumps on the "Lie" Bandwagon

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Accused of Tax Dodging, Apple Says It’s the World’s Largest Taxpayer

by MapleHogan4 Posted on September 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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In a landmark ruling handed down on Tuesday, the European Commission ordered Apple to pay $14.5 billion in back taxes to Ireland. The commission found that Ireland’s tax arrangement with Apple, set up in 1991, was a sweetheart deal that violated the European Union’s antitrust statutes and amounted to illegal state aid.

The ruling, while significant, is just a speeding ticket for the tech giant. Apple’s stock is valued at $570 billion, and it holds more than $230 billion in cash, more than 90 percent of which is kept offshore, beyond the reach of the IRS. The EU ruling implies that the company has been holding as much as $115 billion in profits tax-free in Ireland. That’s more than half of the profits Apple has stashed in its offshore subsidiaries, according to its latest financial filings.

Apple has a long and colorful history of tax minimization, having been deemed both a “pioneer” and a “poster child” of stashing corporate profits beyond the reach of tax collectors. In 2003, Apple paid an effective tax rate of just 1 percent on its profits from selling iPhones and iPads outside of the United States. By 2014, that effective tax rate was just 0.005 percent—or $50 in tax for every $1 million in profit.

Despite Ireland’s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, Apple’s arrangement with the country allowed it to split its international profits between its Irish branch and a head office that existed only on paper. The company paid the already-low Irish rate on the profits it attributed to Ireland and allocated the rest to this phantom, stateless company, which is untaxable. According to CNN Money, Apple made 16 billion euros (roughly $22 billion) in international profits in 2011, attributing less than 50 million (just below $70 million) to its Irish branch. The rest was funneled through the tax-immune, employee-free “head office”. Via this arrangement, Apple has been able to shift up to two-thirds of its global profits to Irish-registered companies, paying an effective tax rate of one percent or less.

Nevertheless, Apple has roundly condemned the European Commission ruling, with CEO Tim Cook penning an open letter decrying it. Cook said that the “vast majority” of Apple’s profits are taxed in the United States, and claimed that Apple is the largest taxpayer in the United States, Ireland, and the world.

Verifying those claims isn’t easy. A 2014 report on corporate taxation by Citizens for Tax Justice omitted Apple due to the company’s “implausible geographic breakdowns of pretax profits.” In other words, it is very likely that profits Apple claimed in Ireland were actually earned in the United States, making it difficult to confirm Apple’s tax assertions. In particular, CTJ raised an eyebrow at Apple’s US tax rate. Apple claimed to have paid a 36.5 percent effective tax rate on its American profits from 2008 to 2012, even though the highest corporate tax rate is 35 percent. Using Apple’s 2015 filings, CTJ found that the company claimed its most recent tax rate was 46.7 percent. (Apple did not respond for a request comment.)

An Irish Times list of the country’s top taxpayers in 2016 gave the number one spot to the pharmaceutical group Medtronic, though Apple placed in the top ten. And as to Cook’s claim that the “vast majority” of Apple’s profits are taxed in the United States, Matthew Gardner, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, says that statement contradicts information in Apple’s own annual report.

Ireland may not be the only beneficiary of the European Commission ruling, which allows for other countries to partake of the penalty, including cash-strapped EU countries like Greece, as well as the United States. According Gardner, the decision provides a jumping-off point for the United States to recoup back taxes from Apple, which he estimates has avoided close to $70 billion in US taxes.

Yet the official US reaction to the ruling has been largely negative. The Treasury Department expressed disappointment, saying that the assessment was “unfair” and “contrary to well-established legal principles.” Last week, the department warned the European Commission against pursuing American companies for tax avoidance, on the grounds that clawback penalties could harm American efforts to collect taxes from domestic companies with international operations. Even though Apple’s $14.5 billion tax bill represents more than a third of Ireland’s total tax revenue and more than the entirety of Ireland’s annual health spending, Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan has promised to appeal the ruling.

Google, Facebook, and Microsoft also hoard profits in Ireland, benefiting from its so-called “double Irish” tax structure, an arrangement which Ireland has promised to phase out by 2018. European competition regulators are currently investigating tax deals awarded to McDonald’s and Amazon by Luxembourg, as well as Anheuser-Busch InBev’s arrangement in Belgium. Tax deals given to Fiat/Chrysler (incorporated in Luxembourg) and Starbucks (incorporated in the Netherlands) were found illegal by the European Commission in October.

Even if the EU ruling stands, tax havens will not go away overnight. Fortune 500 companies have an estimated $2.4 trillion in offshore holdings, avoiding up $695 billion in US taxes. While President Obama has criticized corporate inversions, the process by which corporations move their headquarters offshore, Congress has been slow to act. The Treasury Department’s reaction indicates that that is unlikely to change.

Still, European regulators aren’t waiting around for American support. EU bodies are actively investigating possible anti-competitive behavior and tax avoidance by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix, with penalties expected to be announced sometime in the fall. Google is facing tax probes in Spain, Italy, and France, all of which claim the company should have declared more profits and paid more taxes. As James Wentworth, the vice president for Europe at the US-based Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech lobbying group, tells the Wall Street Journal, “It’s an avalanche coming.”

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Accused of Tax Dodging, Apple Says It’s the World’s Largest Taxpayer

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The US Just Met Its Goal of Admitting 10,000 Syrian Refugees

by EloisaBastow Posted on August 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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It’s been one year since President Barack Obama announced that the United States would take in 10,000 Syrian refugees by this September. After much criticism from Republican politicians and a slow start, the administration picked up the pace of resettlement and met its goal a month ahead of schedule. Today, the United States is resettling its 10,000th Syrian refugee.

In a statement, National Security Advisor Susan Rice welcomed the newcomers. “On behalf of the President and his Administration, I extend the warmest of welcomes to each and every one of our Syrian arrivals,” Rice said.

The newest group of Syrian refugees are arriving in California and Virginia from Jordan. Among them is Nadim Fawzi Jouriyeh, a 49-year old former construction worker from Homs. He, his wife Rajaa, and their four children are being resettled in San Diego. Jouriyeh told the Associated Press that in anticipation of his journey, he feels “fear of the unknown and our new lives, but great joy for our children’s lives and future.”

Most of the 10,000 Syrian refugees who have been granted asylum in the United States look a lot like the Jouriyeh family. According to the State Department, approximately 80 percent are women and children. Roughly 60 percent are under the age of 18. The vast majority of male refugees are fathers, grandchildren, or older siblings. Only 0.5 percent are adult men unattached to families.

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In the last year, Syrian refugees have been placed in 39 different states, with California and Michigan hosting the largest numbers. More than half of have been resettled in eight states—California, Michigan, Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and New York.

Although the goal of admitting 10,000 Syrians in this fiscal year marked a six-fold increase over last year, the number of refugees resettled this year only accounts for about two percent of the total number of Syrian refugees the United Nations says are in need of resettlement. Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has proposed a target of admitting 65,000. Donald Trump has ridiculed that proposal. In April, he told supporters in Rhode Island to “lock your doors” to stay safe from Syrian refugees. “We don’t know who these people are. We don’t know where they’re from,” he warned. In December 2015, Trump tweeted that a Syrian family who crossed the US-Mexico border were “ISIS maybe?”

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security told Mother Jones that the Syrian refugees it is currently vetting are subject to the same stringent security and medical requirements as other asylum-seekers. Those applying for refugee status must go through a 21-step vetting process that includes security screenings by the National Counterterrorism Center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that Obama plans to increase the number of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States by “a few thousand more” next year. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to put the administration’s proposal before Congress in the coming weeks. Any increase is likely face opposition from Republican lawmakers who have resisted the introduction of more Syrian refugees to the United States. “The president would like to see a ramping-up of these efforts but he’s realistic,” said Earnest.

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The US Just Met Its Goal of Admitting 10,000 Syrian Refugees

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