Every day, a new tweet, a new speech, a new lie Trump-ets failure, rigged elections, voter fraud.
These are lies. We know they are lies. Every study, every bit of evidence, says voter fraud is vanishingly small. Small like 31 likely voter fraud cases out of more than 1 billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. Politifact puts it in perspective: more people are struck by lightning than accused of voter fraud. Continue reading
Filed under elections, Uncategorized
Photo from funeral bombing, posted on Facebook.
As the campaign circus goes on across the United States, U.S. bombs are killing civilians in Yemen, potentially making the United States complicit in war crimes. Last weekend’s bombing of a funeral is only the latest and most dramatic case. The funeral in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, had been announced in advance. Saudi warplanes hit hard, twice. Then, after first responders arrived on the scene to help victims, the bombers returned to hit them two more times. The bombers killed at least 140 people and wounded 525 more. One rescuer described the scene as “a lake of blood.” Continue reading
Filed under human rights, war and peace
When Lisa and Ryan Grassley brought baby Samuel home from the hospital, they laughed at one part of the bill: $39.35 for “skin to skin after C-Sec,” the charge for the privilege of holding their baby after delivery. The charge exemplifies the convoluted system of charges and record-keeping made necessary by the insurance industry system of payment for U.S. health care. In contrast, the BBC reports, “The average cost for a normal delivery or planned Caesarean section in the NHS in England in 2016 is £1755 [$2168], rising to £2582 [$3199] if there are complications.” Both charges are far below the cost of hospital delivery in the United States. And both represent the total cost — without need for a complicated breakdown of charges for everything from aspirin to diapers to holding the baby. Continue reading
Filed under health care, health insurance
Senator John Marty has a single-payer plan for Minnesota health care. (Photo by Senate Media Services)
John Marty wants to make Minnesota a leader in real single payer health care. In a new book, Healing Health Care (free, available on-line), he outlines many of the problems with our current, insurance-controlled health care system and proposes an alternative, the Minnesota Health Plan. Continue reading
Filed under health care, health insurance
Mississippi River in Minneapolis (Photo by Mary Turck)
The Mississippi River, source of drinking water for 15 million people including millions in the Twin Cities, is being steadily polluted from its source in northern Minnesota and all along its course through the state. In a powerful series in the Star Tribune, Josephine Marcotty pulls together the evidence of danger to the upper Mississippi in northern Minnesota, along with stories of the Red River and Chippewa River. Continue reading
Filed under agriculture, environment, food and farming
Photo by Jes, published under Creative Commons license
In the Lowry Grove mobile home park, families own their homes, but not the ground on which those homes sit. Many of the mobile homes jin the St. Anthony, MN park are too old to move. Aside from physical stress, the older homes wouldn’t be allowed in more modern mobile home parks. So if the residents lose their leases, they lose everything. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Photo of Sacred Stone Camp by Tony Webster, published under Creative Commons license.
As thousands of Native Americans gather in North Dakota to resist the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), local law enforcement has pushed back by arresting journalists covering the protests and the Sacred Stone Camp and by outright lies about the protests and protesters. In addition, misinformation and propaganda is flooding social media, posted through sock puppets and other sources. Continue reading
Filed under environment, human rights, media, race
Photo by Joe Brusky, published under Creative Commons license
The Stone Spirit encampment began back in April with 50 people. By August, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe chair David Archambault II wrote in the New York Times that it was “a spectacular sight: thousands of Indians camped on the banks of the Cannonball River, on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. … The Indian encampment on the Cannonball grows daily, with nearly 90 tribes now represented.” As summer slides into fall, the protesters — or protectors, as they call themselves — plan to stay through the winter. Continue reading
Filed under environment, human rights, race
Photo by Jeffrey Putney, published under Creative Commons license
I remember the old story of the emperor’s new clothes. The emperor bought new clothes from a charlatan who sold him on the idea of clothes so fine that they would be invisible to anyone who was stupid or unfit for their position. The emperor paraded before his courtiers and sycophants and everyone admired the new clothes. Only a child said, “But he isn’t wearing any clothes!”
Today pipeline companies and their buddies in government dismiss the threats posed by pipelines. Nobody should worry about the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), tunneling underneath the Missouri River. Maybe some old pipelines leak, but this is a new pipeline. Can’t you see the difference? The emperor’s new pipeline poses no problems. Continue reading
Filed under environment, human rights, race
Image by A. Golden, published under Creative Commons license.
On Friday, September 2, lawyers for the Standing Rock Sioux went to court to ask for a halt to construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline over specific sacred sites and burial grounds. They provided a map of the specific cultural sites identified by the tribe’s expert.
The very next day — September 3, Saturday of Labor Day weekend — Energy Transfer Company sent its bulldozers to destroy the specific cultural sites identified in the map submitted to the court. Continue reading
Filed under environment, human rights, race
Bombing schools and hospitals is a war crime. Deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Yesterday’s fulminations from the Führer in the White House go beyond war crimes to announce that he intends genocide: the wiping out of an entire people and civilization.
ICE is only one of the federal agencies surveilling people. Federal surveillance reaches far beyond immigrants. Federal agents use massive databases, facial recognition, cell phone photos, and license plate records. Beyond surveillance, they target and threaten people involved in protests, bringing the full weight of federal power to bear on individuals. Their actions often remain […]
Five years after the violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, the attacks on democracy and on elected officials continue. Yesterday, two politicians currently under attack by the Trump administration spoke out with anger and eloquence.
The New York Times today has plenty of coverage of who, how, when, and where the United States illegally attacked Venezuela and abducted its president and first lady. But that’s far from the whole story. A few easily overlooked but essential facts: For informed insights on the consequences of Trump’s attack on Venezuela, see:
50 USC Ch. 33: WAR POWERS RESOLUTION §1541. Purpose and policy (a) Congressional declaration It is the purpose of this chapter to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United […]
Mary Turck