Widget Image
Follow PPD Social Media
follow
1,000 Followers
follow
0 Followers
follow
People's Pundit Locals Community
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
SECTIONS
logo
mobile-logo
HomeStandard Blog Whole Post (Page 698)
News, Politics

Republican Presidential Candidates Hold Third Debate In Colorado

BOULDER, CO – OCTOBER 28: Presidential candidates Ohio Governor John Kasich (L-R), Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz (R-TX), New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) take the stage at the CNBC Republican Presidential Debate at University of Colorados Coors Events Center October 28, 2015 in Boulder, Colorado. Fourteen Republican presidential candidates are participating in the third set of Republican presidential debates. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

FOX Business Network announced the participants in the next two Republican debates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, Nov. 10, and the stage has thinned.

Govs. Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee have been relegated to the undercard debate at 7 p.m. ET, while Govs. George Pataki and Jim Gilmore have been completely eliminated from the stage, altogether. The final senator, Lindsey Graham, has also been removed from the stage.

“It doesn’t matter the stage, give me a podium and I’ll be there to talk about real issues like this,” Christie Tweeted, along with a link to a video showing him talking about tackling the problem of drug addiction.

“I’m happy to debate anyone, anywhere, anytime,” Huckabee first tweeted. But then he followed it up with taking a shot at the pundits and the polls, neither of which have been very predictive this cycle.

The participants in the first debate, at 7 p.m. ET will be: Gov. Chris Christie, Fmr. Gov. Mike Huckabee, Fmr. Sen. Rick Santorum, and Gov. Bobby Jindal. The participants in the prime-time debate at 9 p.m. ET will be: Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, Fmr. Gov. Jeb Bush, Fmr. HP CEO Carly Fiorina, and Sen. Rand Paul.

FOX Business Network announced the participants in

Opinion

Ben-Carson-Harlem-BLM

Ben Carson, Republican presidential candidate and child neurosurgeon, speaks on the Black Lives Matter movement in Harlem, New York. (Photo: Ross Barkan for Observer)

Some of you, especially those on the left side of the political aisle, are scratching your heads over Ben Carson’s recent surge in the polls. I get why you’re surprised, but you shouldn’t be.

This has definitely been the year of the outsiders in the Republican race, but this “outside” group may be more multifaceted than you think. Many people supporting outsiders are not just tired of business as usual from the beltway establishment. They are not just aghast at the disastrous direction in which this nation’s economy and foreign policy are headed. They are also heartsick and horrified over the nation’s moral and spiritual decline — their defeat after defeat in the ongoing culture war that is raging in this country.

Actually, it may be too charitable to our side to say there’s a war going on. It’s more like a relentless one-sided assault from the secular left on Judeo-Christian and traditional values, and conservatives have yet to declare war in return.

Despite the mainstream media’s anti-religion propaganda, it is Christians who are more tolerant, societally, while leftists want to force Christians not just to tolerate their cultural preferences, but also to embrace them. Christians aren’t the ones who are trying to turn long-standing societal mores upside down, and they aren’t the ones who’ve declared war against the left’s cultural or “spiritual” practices.

Consider some recent examples.

Item: President Obama, as commander in chief of the leftist cultural army, has trampled on the religious and conscious rights of Christians — e.g., forcing employers to offer abortifacients — after promising he wouldn’t and while still denying he has.

Item: Big Brother has investigated and punished a high school football coach for praying on the 50-yard line even though the coach did not force any of his team or students to join him. This is not only a gross perversion of the Establishment Clause of the federal and state constitutions; it is an attack on religious liberty.

I don’t care what any crazy court may say in the future. This is a ludicrous and outrageous abuse of authority by any standards of sanity.

Militant secularists and many atheists are especially nervous when people exercising their religious rights attract others, by their wonderful examples, to voluntarily join them, as students and players did with the coach — even players from opposing teams. Let’s not be naive. For these militant leftists, it is not “live and let live.” It is “we’ll live the way we want to, but we won’t allow you to.”

Item: These groups have called for boycotts of the city of Houston after the sensible citizens recently rejected an objectively offensive measure allowing transgender people to use public restrooms designated for the opposite biological gender. Disgracefully, CBS is supporting them, as is The New York Times, which has called Houston voters “bigots” and “haters” who are “destined to lose one day.” Are we really talking about this?

People are rightly appalled and are crying out for someone in power to fight back. Ben Carson and certain other Republican candidates are doing just that in defending Judeo-Christian values, and this is another reason for their appeal.

A recent Pew poll shows there has been a modest drop in overall rates of belief in God and participation in religious practices among Americans. But an already overlooked aspect of this poll is that religiously affiliated Americans are as observant as before.

Many Christians have finally awakened from their slumber and understand their values are under assault and that their opponents are less innocuous than they earlier assumed. They realize they have to do more than complain to their neighbors. They need political leaders who will respect faith-based voters and will fight for religious liberty in the government and in the culture.

Many are beginning to realize that we are suffering from what some have called a God-void in our society. God created us in His image as spiritual creatures, and if we don’t honor Him as individuals and as a society, we will find substitutes to fill this God-shaped void in our souls.

I am obviously passionate about politics, but I think we sometimes lose sight of the most important things in life. Sometimes in the midst of our political battles we Christians must take a deep breath and remind ourselves of transcendently important matters. We need to know what and why we believe and especially the divine written source of those beliefs.

That’s one reason I’ve written a new book that is coming out Nov. 9: “The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament.” It is a companion to my last book, “Jesus on Trial,” in which I trace my own spiritual journey from skeptic to believer and present the evidence that convinced me of Christianity’s truth claims.

The Emmaus Code is a laymen-friendly Old Testament primer, and shows the foundational importance of the Old Testament to the New Testament, its ongoing relevance for Christians, and its Christ-centeredness. For Christians the entire Bible is about Jesus Christ and this book attempts to demonstrate that with abundant proof.

We must value the entire Bible, not just the New Testament, for the Old Testament is the only Bible Jesus had — and he affirmed it as divinely inspired. I hope “The Emmaus Code” will persuade you of these truths and give you hope in the midst of this assault on our religious liberties.

[mybooktable book=”jesus-on-trial-a-lawyer-affirms-truth-the-gospel” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”false”]

The Emmaus Code is a laymen-friendly Old

Video

[brid video=”19356″ player=”1929″ title=””For the Sake of Allah” ISIS Releases English Pop Video Targeting Western Recruits”]

ISIS released an English pop video calling on Westerners to join the fight and enjoy maidens in heaven if and when they are killed in the fight “For the Sake of Allah.” The video, which runs just shy of 3 minutes, paints a rosy picture for disaffected Americans and Europeans thinking of traveling to ISIS terroritory to fight the infidels.

If you die, hey, don’t worry about it. “We will march through the gates of the paradise where our maidens await.”

Here’s a sample with cadence laid out:

For the sake of Allah we will march through the gates,

of the paradise where our maidens await.

We are men that love death just as you love your life,

we are soldiers that fight in the day and the night.

ISIS released an English pop video calling

Policy

medicare-fraud

Recently, I shared several stories that exposed the festering corruption of Washington. Today, let’s look at one issue that symbolizes the pervasive waste of Washington.

Medicare is the federal government’s one-size-fits-all health program for the elderly. Because of its poor design, it bears considerable responsibility for two massive problems.

  1. It contributes to the systemic third-party payer problem in American health care.
  2. It exacerbates America’s long-run challenge of excessive entitlement spending.

But there’s another issue. Medicare also has a very serious problem with fraud. As is so often the case with government programs, the offer of free money encourages unethical behavior.

Well, we have some good news and bad news about Medicare fraud.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the good news is that there is a small effort to catch fraudsters who bilk taxpayers.

Recovery audit contractors, as they are known, recouped $2.4 billion in improper payments in 2014, down from $3.7 billion in 2013 before the agency scaled back other audit activities and temporarily suspended the program… Those recoveries represent just a fraction of the total amount Medicare estimates it spends on incorrect payments. The Medicare program made $58 billion in improper payments to medical providers and health plans in 2014, according to PaymentAccuracy.gov, a federal website that tracks agencies’ estimates of waste.

But the bad news is this small program is being curtailed.

The federal Medicare agency is sharply cutting back the work of auditors that review hospital claims and seek to recoup improper payments for the government… Starting in January, the auditors will be able to review only 0.5% of the claims the agency pays to each hospital or provider every 45 days, according to an Oct. 28 letter to the contractors. That is a quarter of the prior threshold: 2% of claims. The contractors say the new directive, in what is known as a “technical direction letter,” will further limit their ability to pursue undue payments.

Readers are probably wondering why this effort is being hamstrung instead of expanded.

Well, you won’t be surprised to learn that the folks who benefit from waste want to keep the gravy train rolling.

The latest step is a sign of how the $600-billion-a-year Medicare program can struggle to effectively rein in improper payments, fraud and waste, sometimes under pressure from medical providers… The Medicare agency “is getting a lot of pressure from the provider community to scale back the [audit] program,” said Kristin Walter… Hospital representatives welcomed further restrictions on the auditors.

Sort of like burglars welcoming “further restrictions” on police officers.

Unfortunately, the interest groups benefiting from waste and fraud have allies in government.

The American Thinker has a nauseating story about the fraudulent actions of a hospital in Houston

The president of Riverside, his son, and five others were arrested on October 4 as part of a nationwide Medicare fraud sweep.  Earnest Gibson III, chief executive officer of Riverside General Hospital for 30 years, has been charged with bilking $158 million out of Medicare over the last seven years. …Friday’s arrests at Riverside came nine months after the arrest of Mohammad Khan, the hospital’s acting administrator, who pled guilty to his role in the Medicare fraud scheme…the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services suspended payments to Riverside.

You may be wondering why this is a nauseating story when it appears that some bad guys were nailed for screwing taxpayers.

Well, now we get to the disgusting part. A politician in Washington has been fighting to enable that bad behavior.

Sheila Jackson Lee, congresswoman for Houston’s 18th district…wrote CMS Acting Director Marilyn Tavenner requesting she reconsider the agency’s decision. …Jackson Lee…asks taxpayers who have already been bilked out of hundreds of millions of dollars to pour more money into a…hospital run by alleged crooks…while administrators and politicians rake in more dough.

Sadly, the Congresswoman’s political pressure generated results.

…a month after Jackson Lee appealed to CMS…, 70% of the hospital’s Medicare payments were restored.  CMS lifted the suspension even though federal investigators were only two months away from arresting Gibson and the others.  Jackson Lee’s intervention seems to have caused even more taxpayer monies to be directed toward a hospital brimming with corruption. …This is why Washington, D.C. is broken.  Like Jackson Lee, too many politicians think that redistributing other people’s hard-earned money into the pockets of potential felons is okay as long as they get political benefit.

By the way, it’s not just Democrats. The Daily Surge reports that some Republicans are helping providers rip off taxpayers.

…efforts to rid Medicare of waste, fraud and abuse have been stymied by the power of the hospital lobby that refuses to payback excessive payments made by Medicare and are working with friends and allies in government to ensure the improper payments are never returned to the taxpayers. …at least one GOP members, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) has actually introduced legislation further limiting the ability of the auditors to sniff out waste. His bill would block audits of Medicare providers unless their estimated error rate exceeded 40% of total billing. More than one third of all Medicare bills would have fraudulent before an audit could be triggered. So much for good government.

Ugh, makes me want to take a shower.

So what’s the bottom line? Unfortunately, fraud is an inherent part of government. When politicians create redistribution programs, amoral and immoral people will figure out ways to maximize their share of the loot.

In the case of Medicare, it means that providers have huge incentives to over-charge, over-diagnose, over-treat, and over-test. After all, thanks to third-party payer, the patient doesn’t care.

That’s why I’m in favor of programs to combat fraud. And the RAC program doesn’t even cost taxpayers any money since the auditors are compensated by getting a slice of the improper payments that are recovered.

Imagine that, a policy where the incentives are to save money for taxpayers! However, the only long-run and permanent solution is to shrink the size of government. And that’s why it’s time to restructure Medicare. We have 50 years of evidence that the current approach doesn’t work.

Because the program is the federal government’s

Politics

Chelsea-Hillary-Bill-Clinton-money

Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton at the Clinton Foundation with money imposed over the photo. (Original Photo: AP)

I’ve explained, over and over and over again, that big government is the mother’s milk of corruption. Simply stated, a convoluted tax code, bloated budget, and regulatory morass create endless opportunities for well-connected insiders to obtain unearned and undeserved wealth.

Is this evidence that Washington is broken?

In a column for Real Clear Politics., Mike Needham of Heritage Action suggests that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Washington actually works very well, but not for the American people.

Washington isn’t broken. It is a well-oiled machine that works for the well-connected and responds to the well-heeled. This corrupt nexus of favoritism and cronyism tends to leave hardworking Americans behind. …as we’ve seen with Obamacare, the bigger the government, the bigger the Bigs become.

Is he right? Well, let’s look at some evidence. We already know ObamaCare has been a boon for hacks from the Democratic Party.

But did you know that lots of GOP insiders also are cashing in because of ObamaCare?

Let’s not limit our analysis to Obamacare.

There are many other examples of how the folks in Washington live on Easy Street at our expense. For instance, they enjoy lavish junkets. Here’s what theWashington Post reported back in September.

As Congress returned Tuesday…, some 14 House members were resting up from a week-long trip to Hawaii. …It sounded like a fine journey via military jet (business class) to stay at the oceanfront Sheraton Waikiki in Honolulu. Dinners were planned at the famous Hy’s Steak House — the superb porterhouse is always worth the $88.95 — and the upscale Roy’s Hawaii with its great fusion menu. (We hope they tried the lobster pot stickers.) …The schedule thoughtfully included substantial “executive time” in the afternoons. This, as Loop Fans know, is often a thinly veiled euphemism for some fine lounging at the pool, or exploring beautiful Hawaii.

This boondoggle was especially irksome to me since I was in Hawaii at the same time. But I had to pay my own way! And my hotel was right next to Hy’s Steak House, which had a very appealing menu, but I didn’t go because taxpayers weren’t financing my meals.

Speaking of integrity in D.C., here’s a story from the Washington Post that belongs in the is-anyone-actually-surprised category.

The Honest Tea firm, which makes organic iced tea, set up a stand offering bottles of its tea at 27 cities throughout the country, including D.C., and used the honor system by asking people to leave $1 in a box when they took a tea. But in the District’s Dupont Circle neighborhood, someone stole money from the box. Executives at Honest Tea wouldn’t say exactly how much was in the box but said it ranged between $5 to $20. The theft happened in the early morning, officials believe, and they did not report it to police. It was the first time in the six years that the company has been doing its experiment that someone has actually stolen money from the collection box, officials with Honest Tea said.

By the way, Dupont Circle is a ritzy part of town, not a low-income ghetto.

I’m guessing the thief is a lobbyist or bureaucrat, someone who already has a track record of taking other people’s money.

But if you really want to see Washington at its most unseemly, the Clinton machine symbolizes the corrupt nexus of big government and cronyism. Here are some passages from a report by Politico.

A spring 2012 email to Hillary Clinton’s top State Department aide, Huma Abedin, asked for help winning a presidential appointment for a supporter of the Clinton Foundation, according to a chain obtained by POLITICO. The messages illustrate the relationship between Clinton’s most trusted confidante and the private consulting company that asked for the favor, Teneo — a global firm that later hired Abedin. Abedin signed on with the company while she still held a State Department position, a dual employment that is now being examined by congressional investigators. …Abedin also worked as an adviser to the Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit founded by former President Bill Clinton.

This is amazing. Working for an influence-peddling company while on the government payroll as well?!?

And speaking of influence peddling, check out these excerpts from another Politico story.

Campaigns are required to file reports detailing registered lobbyists who round up donations, but that number is only a small slice of the fundraisers who work in some capacity in Washington’s vast influence industry… A quarter of the “Hillblazers” who bundled $100,000 or more for Clinton work at lobbying firms or public affairs agencies lobby at the state level or otherwise make their living from influencing the government on behalf of special interests… Clinton received at least $5.4 million from professional influencers, compared with $3.2 million from registered lobbyists disclosed to the FEC. For Bush, the equivalent figures are $1.02 million and just under $408,000.

The Hill also has a story about D.C. insiders flocking to Hillary Clinton.

K Street is banking on Hillary Clinton, with more than twice as many Washington lobbyists donating to the former secretary of State’s presidential campaign than any other candidate.  Clinton — the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination — received at least $625,703 from 316 registered lobbyists and corporate PACs during the first half of the year, according to disclosure forms. …Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ranks as a distant second in the influence industry, collecting $444,500 from 140 lobbyists.

And why are lobbyists coughing up cash?

For the simple reason that they want access. And with access to politicians, that means they get access to other people’s money.

…support from K Street can not only help boost a candidate, but also put lobbyists in good standing with the candidate in the event he or she takes the White House. …lobbyists have hedged their bets by supporting several candidates, sometimes at the request of clients, they told The Hill, asking for anonymity.

Though keep in mind that Ms. Clinton and her cronies are just the tip of the iceberg.

She’s more guilty than most for the simple reason that she actively wants to expand government, which would create even more opportunities for mischief.

Let’s also be fair in acknowledging that this problem exists in other countries. Indeed, it’s probably worse elsewhere.

Vote buying in India, for instance, can be especially challenging. Check out these passages from a Reuters report.

Village bachelors in northern India are demanding brides for votes in state polls next month because of a shortage of women after decades of illegal abortions of female fetuses, the Mail Today reported on Thursday.

Though it appears that some Indian politicians actually are willing to say no to voters.

Politicians have dismissed the demand, the report said.

Of course, it’s quite possible that the politicians are saying no in public and then somehow trying arrange brides behind the scenes.

Time to conclude with some excerpts from a story about our ruling class in Washington.

Thousands of clients using the affair-oriented Ashley Madison website listed email addresses registered to the White House, top federal agencies and military branches, a data dump by hackers revealed. The detailed data, released Tuesday, will likely put Washington, D.C., on edge. The nation’s capital reportedly has the highest rate of membership for the site of any city. Indeed, more than 15,000 of the email addresses used to register accounts were hosted on government and military servers.

The key words above are “highest rate of membership.” Yup, these are the people who think they should tell us how to live our lives. These are the clowns who think they can spend our money better than we can. These are the buffoons who want to direct and control the private economy.

Big government is the mother’s milk of

Economy

Weekly-Jobless-Claims-Graphic

Weekly Jobless Claims Graphic. Number of Americans applying for first-time jobless benefits.

The Labor Department said on Thursday that the firing rate, as measured by weekly jobless claims, rose for the week ended Oct. 31 by 16,000 to 276,000. While the number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits remained near historic lows, the number of eligible applicants due to long-term unemployed is also playing a largely unreported role.

The four-week moving average –which is widely considered a better gauge as it irons-out weekly ups and downs–increased by 3,500 to 262,750 last week. Despite that increase, the level remains near the lowest since December 1973, but the labor force participation rate is also at a 37-year low. The Labor Department jobs report last month showed the lowest number of men ever are currently participating in the labor market.

The Labor Department said claims were unrevised at 260,000 for the week ending Oct. 24, and there were no special factors affecting the latest weekly numbers.

The Labor Department said on Thursday that

US

Gliniewicz-family

Melodie and D.J. Gliniewicz, right, two individuals with whom Fox Lake Police Lieutenant Joe Glieniewicz, left, shared his fears about being exposed for embezzlement.

The widowed wife and service-member son of an Illinois cop who “carefully staged” his own suicide are themselves under investigation, WGN-TV reported late Wednesday. Melodie and D.J. Gliniewicz, two individuals with whom Fox Lake Police Lieutenant Joe Glieniewicz communicated with in both text and Facebook messages, at the very least knew of his theft of thousands of dollars from a youth program, as well as his fear about imminent exposure.

Gliniewicz, 52, was stealing and laundering money from the Fox Lake Police Explorer’s program and committed suicide due to the “personal stress from scrutiny of his management,” Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Commander George Filenko said Wednesday. “Gliniewicz’s death was a carefully staged suicide,” said Filenko, who added that the officer had “significant experience staging mock crime scenes.”

He also said during the press conference that the evidence “strongly suggests criminal activity on the part of at least two other individuals.” Authorities released those messages Wednesday morning, identifying the recipients as “Individual #1” and “Individual #2”.

Gliniewicz, according to the messages, became increasing nervous after Fox Lake hired Anne Marrin as an administrator, who began auditing all the village departments, including the Explorer program. He allegedly used embezzled money to go on a Hawaii vacation with his wife that cost some $9,000.

“If she gets ahold [sic] of the old checking account, im [sic] pretty well f***ed,” Glieniewicz wrote in May.

“This village administrator hates me and explorer program,” he wrote in June. “This situation right here would give her the means to CRUCIFY ME (if) it were discovered.”

On Aug. 31, the day before Gliniewicz radioed that he was chasing three suspicious men on foot before shooting himself and sparking a massive manhunt for non-existent suspects, Marrin asked about the program’s inventory, which from the messages, appears to have been one of multiple times.

“I said do you have that and he said ‘yes ma’am. And I said, ‘good, can you have that to me at 2 o’clock?’ And he said ‘yes, ma’am.’

Backup officers later found his body 50 yards from his squad car, which was was hit by two rounds, including one that hit his ballistic vest with the force of a “sledgehammer” and another that pierced his upper chest, killing him.

Hundreds of police officers were searching houses, cabins and boats docked on area lakes, while helicopters using heat-sensing scanners and K-9 units scoured the area for days. Some 50 suburban Chicago police departments and sheriff’s offices assisted, which totaled more than $300,000 in overtime and other costs, according to an analysis the Daily Herald published in early October. More than 100 officers stayed on the case for weeks to investigate more than 6,500 deleted text messages from Gliniewicz, 30,000 telephone numbers, 40,000 emails and thousands of pages of financial records.

The Glieniewicz family released a statement through their attorneys after the news conference Wednesday, saying it had been, “another day of deep sorrow for the Gliniewicz Family. The family has cooperated with the Task Force’s investigation and will not comment at this time. The Gliniewicz family requests that their privacy be respected as they continue to cope with the loss of the beloved husband and Father.”

Joe Ahern, the CEO of the 100 Club of Chicago, an organization that provides financial assistance to the families of fallen officers killed in the line of duty, confirmed he requested the Gliniewicz family return the $15,000 check he gave them on the day Gliniewicz was found dead. Ahern told the Chicago Tribune this is the first time the organization has had to request the return of a family donation.

Further, Motorola Solutions announced on Wednesday a $50,000 reward that had been offered in exchange for information leading to the arrest of Gliniewicz’s killer or killers would now be used to replace the stolen funds at the Fox Lake Explorer program.

The widowed wife and service-member son of

Video

From Piñatas to Profanities: Illegal Immigration Activist Group Gets Kids to Hurl Curses at the Republican Frontrunner

[brid video=”19324″ player=”1929″ title=””Get the FK Out” Ad Shows “Dreamer” Kids Cursing at Trump”]

A new video ad produced by DeportRacism.com features a young boy and girl shouting “motherfuckers,” “fuck,” and “dick,” at Donald Trump, as well as Spanish profanity.

The group is also knee-deep in the anti-First Amendment effort to keep Trump from hosting Saturday Night Live on NBC. The ad is as follows:

¡Hola, Donald Trump! Screaming, “get out of my country!”, Republicans use offensive words. So here’s a few of our own: Fuck you, racist fuck! We’re Latino kids born in the USA! And we’ve got something to say. I’m Rosa. I’m Ricardo. My friends call me Rick. But you keep calling me “anchor baby”? Wow. Racist dick! When you say Mexican immigrants are rapists, murderers, and drug dealers, you know it’s racist code for words like “spics,” “wetbacks” and “beaners.” And you have attacked people for speaking “Mexican” in this nation. It’s Spanish, idiota! Maybe a little less hairspray and more education? Millions of working Latinos would be deported if you get yourloco way, pendejo. If you’re in the White House, for America, there would be nothing but bad hair days. Yo, Trump! You may be high in the polls, thanks to pinches racist suckers, but your whole thing has to come from me. If you try to deport my abuelita, motherfuckers! You see, the Constitution makes me a citizen. And you hate that because I’m brown! And you say you’re a patriot? But you want to tear the Bill of Rights? How? I’m an American, born in the USA. This is my home. You can’t take my rights away. If you don’t like our Constitution and what it stands for, get the fuck out of my country. There’s the door!

The video closes with children beating a Donald Trump piñata. The group’s website says that “DeportRacism.com is a registered non-profit Federal Election Commission political action committee (PAC) dedicated to fighting anti-Latino and anti-immigrant racism in the 2016 election.”

A new video ad produced by DeportRacism.com

Politics

Hastert Loses Portrait, But Gets to Keep the Money

Dennis-Hastert

Former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, center, arrives at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Oct. 28, 2015, in Chicago.

Former House Speaker-turned-felon Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., will keep his pension estimated at more than $70,000 per year despite pleading guilty to evading banking reporting rules on Oct. 8. Hastert, who was once the third most powerful man in the country and third in line for the presidency, was involved in a scheme to hide payoffs meant to keep secret decades-old sexual “misconduct.”

“He’s not going to lose his pension because the crimes that he has plead guilty to, was convicted of, in that sense were not related to his official duties,” Craig Holman, a lobbyist with Public Citizen, said in a Wednesday phone interview with Roll Call. “The main reason is the crime occurred after he left office.”

Hastert was trying to sweep sexual misconduct against the individual, who is now an adult, under the rug. The acts go back to when Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School, according to a U.S. official who requested to speak on the condition of anonymity. However, because the hush-money scheme occurred between 2010 and 2014, which is after he left office back in 2007, the rules governing congressional pension payouts do not apply to his conviction.

“Bank officials told me if I withdrew more than $10,000,” it would have to be reported, Hastert told U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin Wednesday at his plea hearing in Chicago federal court. “I didn’t want them to know how I intended to spend the money.”

In his plea agreement, Hastert admitted he had agreed to pay $3.5 million “in order to compensate for and keep confidential his prior misconduct against Individual A.” But after he made initial withdrawals of $50,000, he was questioned about it and then decided to work in smaller sums. While the plea agreement didn’t reveal any details about past misconduct, prosecutors said they may reveal more before Hastert’s sentencing slated for Feb. 29, 2016. He faces maximum penalties of five years in prison, $250,000 in fines, or three years of court supervision.

Meanwhile, less than one week after the plea deal, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., ordered Hastert’s portrait to be removed from the Speaker’s Lobby and is now in an undisclosed location out of public view. Hastert served in Congress from 1987 to 2007, the last eight years as speaker.

Former speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., will keep

Opinion, Science

robot-technology

Superhuman Robot: Meet Valkyrie, capable of several advanced automated tasks. Robots advance further in capability each year eventually robots will be a large part of our society.

Robots make the perfect employee. They don’t complain, they don’t get sick, and, as of this writing, they don’t have babies. When robots can do the job in today’s economy, they get the job.

When they can’t, a human must suffice. You still need a human to make the perfect latte, ask security questions at the airport and, for the time being, drive a taxi.

That hasn’t stopped many employers from trying to robotize the people they can’t do without. Many have built business models in which they can, in effect, dust off a human when its labor is required and ignore all its other needs.

This is the famous gig economy. It’s app-based cab services insisting that their drivers are private contractors not entitled the traditional benefits of employment. It’s national chain stores calling employees to duty at a moment’s notice, the heck with any schedule.

Some good people are challenging such employment policies, but there’s a more long-term approach: Give up defending a traditional model of employment that’s dying and come up with a new one. Any realistic solution would require a lot more government intervention and sharing of the national wealth.

I can already hear my conservative friends blowing their tops, but they should hear out the arguments.

A paper out of Brookings Institution — “What happens if robots take the jobs?” — describes the stakes and offers responses. (I’ve taken the liberty of shortening the title.)

“We need a way to provide health care, disability and pension benefits outside of employment,” author Darrell West writes.
How?

For starters, provide a guaranteed income for all. Think of it as an expansion of the earned income tax credit now supporting many low-wage workers and their families.

Isn’t there something socially debilitating about living on government “handouts”? Well, that’s a good question.

An answer, West told me, could be to attach some kind of work requirement to the checks. (Many states already do that with welfare benefits.) The work could be an existing job or government programs that pay people to do something useful.

It’s been done before. The Works Progress Administration was created during the Great Depression to employ armies of out-of-work Americans. The fruits can be seen today in some of the country’s most gorgeous courthouses, zoos and libraries — and great works of art, theater and music.

Some propose paying for volunteer activities having humanitarian value. Examples could include working for the Red Cross, a hospital or a school.

Our Social Security system allocates benefits on the basis of work credits. We could extend credits for certain volunteerism, as is already done in Britain.

Those conservative friends are moaning that the expense would be borne by the most productive Americans. It would “kill” the jobs they create. Well, some of those entrepreneurs did create jobs, but taxes were a lot lower then.

And contrary to ideology, many of our most successful business minds have become unimaginably rich finding ways to get rid of workers, certainly the Americans ones. They’ve cut pay and benefits and are no longer sharing the profits generated by rising productivity.

Small-government conservatives must ask is whether they have a better way to pull America’s working class to safety, out of the path of oncoming tsunami of robotic competition.

They should be mindful that machines don’t have the vote yet. Also, a big crowd of jobless humans hanging out on street corners leads to crime and social unrest. “If you have a large number of unemployed people,” West said, “the United States starts looking like Egypt.”

We Americans have a lot to talk about — things that really matter.

They don't complain, they don't get sick,

People's Pundit Daily
You have %%pigeonMeterAvailable%% free %%pigeonCopyPage%% remaining this month. Get unlimited access and support reader-funded, independent data journalism.

Start a 14-day free trial now. Pay later!

Start Trial

Subscribe