This American presidential election is a dizzying wonder: a torrent of outrages, gaffes and dramas, where one story blurs into the next, most of it driven by the Republican contender, Donald J. Trump. With such a ferocious pace it's easy to lose sight of the details, especially when it comes to Mr. Trump. So here's a quick summary of what voters have learned in recent weeks. ■ The attorney general of New York has started an investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation. At issue is a $25, 000 donation, made three years ago, in support of a Florida official who was weighing possible fraud charges against Mr. Trump. No charges were brought, and the official became a supporter of Mr. Trump. ■ Reporters have uncovered evidence that Mr. Trump spent $20, 000 of his charity's money on a tall painting of himself. It was sent to one of his private golf clubs. ■ There have been new accounts of widespread discrimination against black people at Mr. Trump's New York properties during the 1970s. ■ Last Friday, he finally admitted that "birtherism" — the racially tinged smear of President Obama he repeated for five years — was, in fact, a lie. Instead of apologizing, Mr. Trump said the baseless conspiracy theory was started by his rival, Hillary Clinton — which was itself untrue. In a conventional race, any of these revelations, slanders or gaffes might be enough to torpedo a candidate. Not Mr. Trump. A New York News poll published last week found he enjoys support among 44 percent of likely voters, a shade behind the 46 percent backing Mrs. Clinton. She remains the outright favorite, thanks to an electoral system that is based on results. Still, her supporters have reason for concern. According to my colleagues at The Upshot, The New York Times's report, Mr. Trump's chances of victory have jumped to 26 percent as of Monday evening from 10 percent in August. Another respected website, FiveThirtyEight, put his chances at 40. 6 percent on Monday morning. Mrs. Clinton's Achilles heel is well known: A majority of Americans neither like nor trust her. If Mr. Trump is Teflon, Mrs. Clinton must be Velcro: Every transgression, real or perceived, from her career in politics stubbornly sticks to her. When it comes to Mr. Trump, though, his enduring popularity is a mystery. Mr. Trump was among the first to note his ability to defy the laws of political gravity. "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose voters," he said in January. What's remarkable now is how, after months of withering scrutiny — including accusations of graft, malfeasance and racism — he remains apparently immune to the effects of negative news. This is a conundrum that has perplexed many New York Times readers who live abroad. "Trump has sleaze written all over his face and behavior," Neil Douglas, a retired teacher from Canada, wrote in an email that echoed a common sentiment. "Why can't Americans see through his braggadocio?" In other countries, and other campaigns, politicians have been derailed by much less. In 2014, the British culture secretary, Maria Miller, resigned over a $10, 000 discrepancy in her expense report. In 2012, Mitt Romney's challenge to Mr. Obama suffered a major blow after he made a comment that criticized 47 percent of the electorate. American congressional candidates have also been wrecked by comments: In 2012, Todd Akin, a Republican from Missouri, crashed out of the Senate race soon after he made a misguided statement about "legitimate rape. " Yet in choosing their president, many American voters seem prepared to accept nearly anything Mr. Trump says or does. He has praised the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, and invited foreign hackers to breach American servers. He has aired crackpot conspiracy theories, such as one linking the father of Senator Ted Cruz, his Republican primary rival, to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (His source: The National Enquirer, better known for celebrity gossip and stories about U. F. O. s) He has defended the size of his penis, and suggested gun owners might take matters "into their hands" should Mrs. Clinton come to power. It can go wrong for Mr. Trump, a former reality TV star, as demonstrated by his undignified feud with the family of Capt. Humayun Khan, a fallen Muslim American soldier — a confrontation that appeared to mark the limit of his brash, undisciplined brand of politics. Critics say it is only a matter of time before he shoots himself in the foot again, setting off a fresh plunge in popularity. For now, Mr. Trump appears to be wearing down his critics' capacity for outrage. Protests still occur at his campaign rallies, like the one in North Carolina last week when a woman was punched in the face. But the impassioned clashes of last spring, when rival groups squared off against each other after his speeches, have become more rare. In part, Mr. Trump's endurance is a product of sheer churn — the endless stream of his own provocations. "There's been so many scandals, so much outrage, that it's hard to focus on any one of them," said Charlie Sykes, a conservative talk show host and Trump critic. Mr. Sykes turned on Mr. Trump because he said that the candidate was damaging true conservatism. These days, that frequently brings him into conflict with callers to his own show, who refuse to countenance any criticism of Mr. Trump. "They don't want to hear it," he said. "They want their biases confirmed. " That points to another underlying theme of this election: the vicious polarization of America's news media. More voters than ever are getting their news from the walled gardens of Facebook and other social media sites, where views often reinforce one another. And on mainstream channels like Fox News, conspiracy theories that were once limited to the fringes of the internet are getting an airing. As a result, public trust in the media has collapsed. A Gallup poll published last week found that 32 percent of Americans trust the news media's ability to "report the news fully, accurately and fairly" — the lowest figure since Gallup started the poll in 1972. The partisan breakdown of trust is even more stark, with 14 percent of Republicans saying they trust the news media, compared with 51 percent of Democrats. On Sunday night, Mr. Obama blamed media "misinformation" for what he predicts will be a close race in November. Can any story, or revelation, hurt Mr. Trump's Teflon qualities at this stage? Mr. Sykes, the radio host, said he believed Mr. Trump had fostered a "cult of personality" among conservatives that has few parallels in the history of American politics, "except maybe in fiction. " "It doesn't matter what he says, or what his ideas are," Mr. Sykes said. "It's about the persona. He's the strong man. And he's apparently figured out a way to bond with millions of Americans. " With seven weeks until the vote, Mrs. Clinton needs to find a way to break that bond. Her next opportunity could come at the first presidential debate, on Sept. 26, at Hofstra University on Long Island. Mr. Trump may ultimately do the work for her: His bluster, lies and insults could eventually drag him down. But to ensure victory, Mrs. Clinton will also need to overcome her handicap. The high levels of voter distrust, unique in a modern presidential leave her vulnerable.


The Daily Caller is disgusting. Any media outlet that isn t disgusting wouldn t have been so cold, callous and cruel to a woman who publicly shared her difficult and tragic story of having to terminate her pregnancy after 20 weeks. The New York Times was kind enough to publish Meredith Isaakson s story in an op-ed, but what reporter Rachel Stoltzfoos and The Daily Caller did to it is beyond reprehensible.What did they do? In their own words: We Edited A New York Times Op-Ed On Abortion So It Reads Correctly. Edited so it reads correctly, does not describe the evil they just published. Isaakson found out her son wasn t likely to survive until birth, let alone after birth, because of a fatal defect in the development of his heart half of it was missing. It was an abnormality that wasn t detectable until about 20 weeks gestation, even though his heart had stopped developing correctly at five weeks. She then says: In the days that followed, after the poking and prodding, after the meetings with pediatric cardiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons and geneticists, my husband and I decided to terminate our pregnancy. I was 22 weeks pregnant when they wheeled me into the operating room, two weeks shy of viability in the state of California. Here s how The Daily Caller edited that paragraph: In the days that followed, after the poking and prodding, after the meetings with pediatric cardiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons and geneticists, my husband and I decided to terminate our pregnancy [direct an abortionist to rip him limb from limb out of my womb in order to end his life]. I was 22 weeks pregnant when they wheeled me into the operating room, two weeks shy of viability in the state of California [the point when the state of California determined he is a human with the right to live]. [emphasis in original]How does anybody do this to a woman who wanted her baby, but learned that his chances for survival were extremely slim, and was left with a choice no parent should ever have to face? How vile can you be? How black is the heart of someone who can so completely disregard what Isaakson was going through this way?But it gets worse. Isaakson goes on to say: For us, the decision was about compassion for our unborn baby, who would face overwhelming and horribly painful obstacles. Compassion for our 2-year-old son, who would contend with hours upon hours in a hospital, missing out on invaluable time spent with his parents, and the death of a very real sibling. It was about compassion for our marriage. Perhaps most important, it was about our belief that parenthood sometimes means we sacrifice our own dreams so our children don t have to suffer. Here s how The Daily Caller tore her to shreds for that paragraph: For us, the decision was about compassion for our unborn baby, who would face overwhelming and horribly painful obstacles [if we failed to suction him out of my womb with complete disregard for the pain he may already be capable of feeling]. Compassion for our 2-year-old son, who would contend with hours upon hours in a hospital, missing out on invaluable time spent with his parents, and the death of a very real sibling [killing of his brother commissioned by his mom and dad]. It [Killing our son] was about compassion for our marriage. Perhaps most important, it [killing our son] was about our belief that parenthood sometimes means we sacrifice our own dreams [kill our baby boy] so our [other] children don t have to suffer. [emphasis in original]The entire thing just gets worse, and worse. The Daily Caller has proven themselves to be pro-birth, but not pro-life, and shown that they don t give a flying rat s ass about the pain the original news caused Isaakson and her family, to say nothing of the pain of this decision.If this is how the pro-birth crowd sees this, then they re bereft of compassion, and they re bereft of love and they are bereft of empathy. Their hearts are the darkest of abysses. Sure, they say they re speaking for those who can t speak for themselves, but they do so at the horrific expense of those making the decision. There is no regard for Isaakson, and what she went through, in this perversion of her op-ed.This is probably the coldest, most heartless, most sickening thing a media outlet can do to someone. We sincerely hope that Rachel Stoltzfoos and everyone who was involved in publishing this never face such a terrible, gut-wrenching decision themselves, because nobody should ever have to go through this. Period. She and The Daily Caller owe Isaakson and every other woman who s had to make this awful decision a heartfelt apology, though, at the bare minimum.To read Isaakson s story, click here. To read The Daily Caller s so-called edit, click here, but be careful. There are no words bad enough to describe this.Image of The Daily Caller logo by Marquis de Faux, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. Flame image by Littlevisuals.co, Public Doman via Pexels


Putin's New Promise: 'I Will Defeat The Illuminati' Please scroll down for video  The Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown that he has never been afraid of fighting several opponents on different fronts. Now, it appears that he has a new target in his sights – the Illuminati. Vladimir Putin swears to take on the Illuminati  It has been previously alleged that Putin, who was born and raised in the shadow of important political influence and who previously served in the notorious Russian intelligence agency, the KGB is himself a bona fide member of the New World Order. However, it seems unlikely that Putin ever became a fully-fledged member of the Illuminati. From the outset of his rise to power, Putin has made it clear that he is a Russian patriot and that his first duty will always be to his country.  To this end, Putin has been seen to actively act against the interests of those within the Illuminati if their activities conflict with the health and prosperity of the Russian nation. This has allegedly led to Jacob Rothschild calling Putin 'a traitor to the New World Order.' In response, it has been claimed that Putin said that he would destroy the shadowy organization. It is believed that Putin has now established himself as the most dangerous opponent of the Illuminati alive today .  Over the years, Putin has forced out some oligarchs in the pay of the Khazarian Mafia out of the country and into areas such as the City of London. It is claimed that he has done this to loosen the stranglehold that the Illuminati have held over the Russian economy and major industries since the end of the Cold War. He has also expelled all businesses operating under the Rothschild Banking Group in recent months as he believed that they were playing a positive role in the Russian financial system.  It has also been alleged that Putin is moving outside of the realm of domestic concerns and is also thwarting Illuminati operations on the global scale. It has been said that the Russian military's intervention in Syria and commitment to protecting the ruling party headed by President Al-Assad has torpedoed Illuminati plans to lay a pipeline through the country which would have been operated by their agents.  This article (Putin's New Promise: 'I Will Defeat The Illuminati') is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with full attribution and a link to the original source on Disclose.tv Related Articles


If you don t know what civil asset forfeiture is, the short answer is: The police get to take your money and property and keep it for themselves even if you didn t commit, or were even charged with, a crime. If you want the long answer, watch John Oliver s definitive take on it here. Needless to say, introducing a profit motive to policing is a terrible idea, so a lot of people were understandably happy when the federal version of the program was suspended last year.But that s all done with now:The Justice Department today announced that it is resuming a controversial practice that allows local police departments to funnel a large portion of assets seized from citizens into their own coffers under federal law.The equitable-sharing program gives police the option of prosecuting asset forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law. The Justice Department had suspended payments under this program back in December, due to budget cuts included in last year s spending bill.This program allows the police to walk into your house with little to no justification, take your giant flatscreen TV and keep it to watch football games back at the station. Just to be clear, the police have admitted that they like to target people they KNOW will have nice stuff to take. They go after nice cars, expensive computers, etc. because they get to keep it and use it knowing there s almost no chance they ll ever have to give it back.Does that sound constitutional in any way, shape or form?Even worse, as the law enforcement community tumbles to the fact that they can rob the public blind, they ve gone on a spree that puts actual criminals to shame:Asset forfeiture is fast growing in 2014, for instance, federal authorities seized over $5 billion in assets. That s more than the amount of money lost in every single burglary that year.And the police wonder WHY they ve lost the public s trust? Seriously?Now that the program has resumed, they re going to want to make up for lost time so expect to hear an increasing number of horror stories in the news. Also look for stories of the police using asset forfeiture as retaliation against all those pesky Black Lives Matter protesters that keep making them look bad by filming the police unnecessarily beating/killing unarmed black people. Because why stop at abusing your power for personal gain when you can get some payback at the same time? Murika.


Saudi Arabian authorities have made further arrests and frozen more bank accounts in an expanding anti-corruption crackdown on the kingdom s political and business elite, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday Dozens of royal family members, officials and business executives have already been held in the purge announced on Saturday. They face allegations of money laundering, bribery, extortion and exploiting public office for personal gain. But the sources, speaking on Wednesday, said a number of other individuals suspected of wrongdoing were detained in an expansion of the crackdown, widely seen as an initiative of the powerful heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Others under scrutiny are being telephoned by investigators about their finances but appear to remain at liberty, one of the sources said, adding that the number of people targeted by the crackdown was expected eventually to rise into the hundreds. The number of domestic bank accounts frozen as a result of the purge is over 1,700 and rising, up from 1,200 reported on Tuesday, banking sources said. A number of those held most recently include individuals with links to the immediate family of the late Crown Prince and Defence Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz who died in 2011, the sources said. Others appear to be lower-level managers and officials, one of the sources said. Many Saudis have cheered the purge as an attack on the theft of state funds by the rich, and U.S. President Donald Trump said those arrested had been milking their country for years . But some Western officials expressed apprehension at the possible ramifications for the secretive tribal and royal politics of the world s largest oil exporter. Saudi Arabia s stock market continued to fall in early trade on Wednesday because of concern about the economic impact of its anti-corruption purge. The Saudi index .TASI was 1.0 percent lower after half an hour of trade. Shares in companies linked to people detained in the investigation slid further. Late on Tuesday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi central bank sought to ease worries about the crackdown. They said that while individuals were being targeted and having their bank accounts frozen, national and multinational companies - including those wholly or partly owned by individuals under investigation - would not be disrupted. Anti-corruption authorities have also frozen the bank accounts of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, one of the most senior members of the ruling Al Saud, and some of his immediate family members, the sources added. Prince Mohammed, or MbN as he is known, was ousted as Crown Prince in June when King Salman replaced him with the then Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Since Sunday, the central bank has been expanding the list of accounts it is requiring lenders to freeze on an almost hourly basis, one regional banker said, declining to be named because he was not authorized to speak to media. MbN made his first confirmed public appearance since his ousting at the funeral on Tuesday for Prince Mansour bin Muqrin, deputy governor of Asir province, who was killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday. No cause has been given for the crash. Among business executives detained in the probe so far are billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, chairman of investment firm Kingdom Holding 4280.SE; Nasser bin Aqeel al-Tayyar, founder of Al Tayyar Travel 1810.SE; and Amr al-Dabbagh, chairman of builder Red Sea International 4230.SE. The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had urged Saudi Arabia to carry out any prosecution of officials detained in a fair and transparent manner. Commenting on the purge, Human Rights Watch called on Saudi authorities to immediately reveal the legal and evidentiary basis for each person s detention and make certain that each person detained can exercise their due process rights . It s great that Saudi authorities are declaring that they want to take on the scourge of corruption, but the right way to do that is through diligent judicial investigations against actual wrongdoing, not sensationalistic mass arrests to a luxury hotel, Right Watch official Sarah Leah Whitson in a statement.


Saudi Arabia has pledged $100 million to a new regional military force battling jihadist groups in West Africa s Sahel region, force member Mali said on Monday. The contribution would be a major boost to the cash-strapped force and bring pledged commitments to more than half the roughly $500 million the G5 Sahel says it needs for its first year of operations. The G5 Sahel - composed of the armies of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad - launched its first military campaign in October amid growing unrest in the Sahel, whose porous borders are regularly crossed by jihadists, including affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State. Those groups have stepped up attacks on civilian and military targets, including tourist attractions in regional capitals, raising fears the zone will become a new breeding ground for militants. Mali s foreign ministry said Saudi Arabian authorities made the pledge during a visit to the kingdom late last month by Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop. Saudi Arabia s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Sunni Muslim kingdom is competing with its main rival, Shi ite power Iran, for influence across West Africa and other parts of the Muslim world. Donors from both countries have given money to mosques and other causes there. France, the G5 s most vocal foreign backer, has pressed Saudi Arabia to take concrete actions to fight Islamist militants. French President Emmanuel Macron asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to contribute to the G5 when he saw him in Riyadh last month. The European Union, France, the United States and each of the G5 countries have also promised to fund the force.


U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he has chosen David Shulkin, who currently heads the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system, to head the agency. Here is a list of Republican Trump's selections for top jobs in his administration. NOTE: Senate confirmation is required for all the posts except national security adviser and White House posts. Tillerson, 64, has spent his entire career at Exxon Mobil Corp, where he rose to chairman and chief executive officer in 2006. A civil engineer by training, the Texan joined the world's largest publicly traded energy company in 1975 and led several of its operations in the United States as well as in Yemen, Thailand and Russia. As Exxon's chief executive, he maintained close ties with Moscow and opposed U.S. sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea. Mnuchin, 54, is a successful private equity investor, hedge fund manager and Hollywood financier who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc before leaving the investment bank in 2002. He assembled an investor group to buy a failed California mortgage lender in 2009, rebranded it as OneWest Bank and built it into Southern California's largest bank. Housing advocacy groups criticized OneWest for its foreclosure practices, accusing it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. Mattis is a retired Marine general known for his tough talk, distrust of Iran and battlefield experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. A former leader of Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and South Asia, Mattis, 66, is known by many U.S. forces by his nickname, "Mad Dog." He was rebuked in 2005 for saying: "It's fun to shoot some people." Sessions, 70, was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump's presidential bid and has been a close ally since. Son of a country store owner, the lawmaker from Alabama and former federal prosecutor has long taken a tough stance on illegal immigration, opposing any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Coats, 73, served as U.S. senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999 and again from 2011 to 2017, and was U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2001 to 2005. He previously served as U.S. representative from Indiana's 4th Congressional District. Zinke, 55, a first-term Republican U.S. representative from Montana and a member of the House subcommittee on natural resources, has voted for legislation that would weaken environmental safeguards on public lands. He has taken stances favoring the coal industry, which suffered during the Obama administration. The League of Conservation Voters, which ranks lawmakers on their environmental record, gave Zinke an extremely low lifetime score of 3 percent. Ross, 79, heads the private equity firm WL Ross & Co. Forbes has pegged his net worth at about $2.9 billion. A staunch supporter of Trump, Ross helped shape the Trump campaign's views on trade policy. He blames massive U.S. factory job losses on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, which went into force in 1994, and the 2001 entry of China into the World Trade Organization. Lighthizer, 69, served as deputy U.S. trade representative during the Reagan administration in the 1980s and has since spent nearly three decades as a lawyer representing U.S. companies in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases, currently with the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. A harsh critic of China's trade practices, Lighthizer in 2010 told Congress that U.S. policymakers should take a more aggressive approach in dealing with the Asian country. Puzder, chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants Inc [APOLOT.UL], which runs the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's fast-food chains, has been a vociferous critic of government regulation of the workplace and the National Labor Relations Board. Puzder, 66, has argued that higher minimum wages would hurt workers by forcing restaurants to close and praises the benefits of automation, so his appointment is likely to antagonize organized labor. U.S. Representative Price, 62, is an orthopedic surgeon who heads the House Budget Committee. A representative from Georgia since 2005, Price has criticized Obamacare and has championed a plan of tax credits, expanded health savings accounts and lawsuit reforms to replace it. He is against abortion. Shulkin, 57, currently is under secretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, putting him in charge of the country's largest healthcare system. Shulkin, a physician, was chosen by Democratic President Barack Obama for the under secretary post in 2015. He has spearheaded an effort to cut waiting times for care at VA medical centers. Trump promised during the campaign to improve medical care for veterans. Shulkin would be the first VA secretary who had not served in the military. Carson, 65, is a retired neurosurgeon who dropped out of the Republican presidential nominating race in March and threw his support to Trump. A popular writer and speaker in conservative circles, Carson had been reluctant to take a position in the incoming administration because of his lack of experience in the federal government. He is the first African-American picked for a Cabinet spot by Trump. Chao, 63, was labor secretary under President George W. Bush for eight years and the first Asian-American woman to hold a Cabinet position. She is a director at Ingersoll Rand Plc, News Corp and Vulcan Materials Co. She is married to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky. Perry, 66, is an addition to the list of oil drilling advocates skeptical about climate change who have been picked for senior positions in Trump's Cabinet. The selections have worried environmentalists but cheered an oil and gas industry eager for expansion. Perry, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and also briefly ran for president in 2016, would be responsible for U.S. energy policy and oversee the nation's nuclear weapons program. DeVos, 59, is a billionaire Republican donor, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party and an advocate for the privatization of education. As chair of the American Federation for Children, she has pushed at the state level for vouchers that families can use to send their children to private schools and for expansion of charter schools. The final leadership role of Kelly's 45-year military career was head of the U.S. Southern Command, responsible for U.S. military activities and relationships in Latin America and the Caribbean. The 66-year-old retired Marine general differed with Obama on key issues and has warned of vulnerabilities along the United States' southern border with Mexico. Priebus recently was re-elected to serve as Republican National Committee chairman but will give up that job to join Trump in the White House, where the low-key Washington operative could help forge ties with Congress to advance Trump's agenda. Priebus, 44, was a steadfast supporter of Trump during the presidential campaign even as the party fractured amid the choice. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ADMINISTRATOR: SCOTT PRUITT An ardent opponent of Obama's measures to stem climate change, Oklahoma Attorney General Pruitt, 48, has enraged environmental activists. But he fits in with the president-elect's promise to cut the agency back and eliminate regulation that he says is stifling oil and gas drilling. Pruitt became the top state prosecutor for Oklahoma, which has extensive oil reserves, in 2011 and has challenged the EPA multiple times since. U.S. Representative Mick Mulvaney, 49, a South Carolina Republican, is a fiscal conservative. He was an outspoken critic of former House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, who resigned in 2015 amid opposition from fellow Republicans who were members of the House Freedom Caucus. Mulvaney was first elected to Congress in 2010. Haley, 44, has been the Republican governor of South Carolina since 2011 and has little experience in foreign policy or the federal government. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she led a successful push last year to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol after the killing of nine black churchgoers in Charleston by a white gunman. McMahon, 68, is a co-founder and former chief executive of the professional wrestling franchise WWE, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut. She ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012 and was an early supporter of Trump's presidential campaign. U.S. Representative Pompeo, 53, is a third-term congressman from Kansas who serves on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, which oversees the CIA, National Security Agency and cyber security. A retired Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate, Pompeo supports the U.S. government's sweeping collection of Americans' communications data and wants to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. Walter "Jay" Clayton is a New York-based attorney who advises clients on major Wall Street deals, specializing in public and private mergers and acquisitions and capital-raising efforts. His past clients have included Alibaba Group Holding Company, Oaktree Capital Group and big banks. Retired Lieutenant General Flynn, 58, was an early Trump supporter and serves as vice chairman on his transition team. He began his Army career in 1981 and was deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Flynn became head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012 under Obama but retired a year earlier than expected, according to media reports, and became a fierce critic of Obama's foreign policy. Tom Bossert, 41, who worked as deputy homeland security adviser to former President George W. Bush, will serve as the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. He currently runs a risk management consulting firm and has a cyber risk fellowship with the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. Cohn, 56, president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, had widely been considered heir apparent to Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of the Wall Street firm. Trump hammered Goldman and Blankfein during the presidential campaign, releasing a television ad that called Blankfein part of a "global power structure" that had robbed America's working class. Navarro, 67, has suggested a stepped-up engagement with Taiwan, including assistance with a submarine development program. A professor at the University of California, Irvine, who advised Trump during the campaign, Navarro argued that Washington should stop referring to the "one China" policy, but stopped short of suggesting it should recognize Taipei: "There is no need to unnecessarily poke the Panda." Viola, 60, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a U.S. Army veteran who served in the famed 101st Airborne Division. He founded high-frequency trading firm Virtu Financial Inc and served as chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange, where he began his financial services career. After the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, Viola helped found the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He is an owner of the Florida Panthers ice hockey team. CHIEF WHITE HOUSE STRATEGIST, SENIOR COUNSELOR: STEVE BANNON The former head of the conservative website Breitbart News came aboard as Trump's campaign chairman in August. A rabble-rousing conservative media figure, he helped shift Breitbart into a forum for the alt-right, a loose confederation of those who reject mainstream politics and includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites. His hiring signals Trump's dedication to operating outside the norms of Washington. As White House chief of staff, Bannon, 63, will serve as Trump's gatekeeper and agenda-setter.


This year, let s try something a little different. Wherever you are Let s Make Christmas GREAT AGAIN SEE MORE CHRISTMAS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Xmas Files


Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions told the Senate Tuesday morning that voters believe immigration policy should prioritize the needs of American workers. [Sessions' remark came when Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin claimed Sessions would not support a "humane" rewrite of the nation's immigration law. "There's not a spot of evidence in your career to suggest that as Attorney General you would use the authority of that office to resolve the challenges of our broken immigration system in a fair and humane manner," Durbin said to Sessions. "Tell me I'm wrong. " "Well, you are wrong, Senator Durbin," Sessions replied, adding: I'm going to follow the laws passed by Congress. As a matter of policy, we disagreed on some of those issues. I do believe that if you continually go through a cycle of amnesty that you undermine the respect for the law and encourage more illegal immigration into America. I believe the American people spoke clearly in this election. I believe they agreed with my basic view. Throughout the 2016 election, the American people rejected multiple candidates who ran on a position of immigration amnesty in favor of a now Donald Trump, whom Sessions endorsed and who was vocal about his desire to enforce U. S. immigration law. In addition, the American people have considered and rejected various amnesty proposals on multiple occasions, including in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2014. Ken Palinkas, the former head of the nation's immigration caseworkers — Citizenship and Immigration Services — has warned that the DREAM Act proposals to give amnesty to illegal aliens who allegedly came to the U. S. as minors, a policy which has been championed by Durbin, would expand birthright citizenship to include the (today it is applied to the U. S. children of illegal immigrants). Palinkas has explained that DREAMer amnesty "extend[s] birthright citizenship in the future to include the foreign citizens of other countries" and represents a promise of "perpetual amnesty. " Palinkas has argued that the concept of DREAMers was intended to create a permanent loophole to U. S. borders. In other Western countries all foreign nationals illegally residing in the country are subject to immigration laws. In the United States, however, the DREAMer population was created in order to effectively carve out a sector of the illegal alien population who are exempt from immigration law. During his Tuesday confirmation hearing, Sessions went on to tell the Committee that the American people are entitled to a lawful system of immigration that advances their best interests. "It's a good view, a decent view, a solid legal view for the United States of America that we create a lawful system of immigration that allows people to apply to this country, and if they're get accepted, they get in. If they're not accepted, they don't get it. And I believe that's right, and just, and the American people are right to ask for it. We have not delivered that for them," Sessions said. Sessions' declaration is remarkably similar to prior statements made by civil rights champion and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who argued in favor of immigration control and explained that, "credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in those who should be kept out, are kept out and those who should not be here will be required to leave. " Throughout the hearing, Sessions' emphasized that it is the role of Congress to implement policies supported by the American electorate. "The best thing for us to do," Sessions said, "[is] let's fix this system and then we can work together after this lawlessness has been ended and then we can ask the American people and enter into a dialogue about how to compassionately treat people who have been here a long time. " "I had a responsibility as a member of this body to express my view and vote as I believed was correct on dealing with issues of immigration," Sessions said. "That's not the Attorney General's role. The Attorney General's role is to enforce the law. "


Are Detroit's Most Terrible Schools Unconstitutional? Geoffrey R. Stone, New York Times, October 21, 2016  At one Detroit school, just 4 percent of third graders scored proficient on Michigan's English assessment test. At another, 9.5 percent did. Those students are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last month that asserts that children have a federal constitutional right to the opportunity to learn to read and write.  Illiteracy is the norm at those "slumlike" schools and others in Michigan's biggest city, according to the plaintiffs. The facilities are decrepit and unsafe. The first thing some teachers do each morning is clean up rodent feces before their students arrive. In some cases, teachers buy the books and school supplies, even the toilet paper.  Lawyers for the students are arguing, in effect, that Michigan is denying their clients the right to a minimally adequate education, an issue that has been raised over the years in courts in other states under their state constitutions.  {snip}  Now the litigation in Detroit is raising this issue under the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court has never addressed whether disparities among schools would be constitutionally permissible if, as the court put it in 1973, a state failed "to provide each child with an opportunity to acquire the basic minimal skills necessary" for success in life.  In that bitterly divided 5-4 decision, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the court upheld a Texas law that produced unequal levels of education to students living in different school districts based on the property tax revenues of each district.  The majority maintained that the law was constitutional because it served a rational policy of permitting each school district to decide for itself how much money to spend on education. Whether the level of education was at least minimally adequate in the state's poorest schools was not at issue in the case.  In what is likely to be the opening chapter in a long legal saga, a federal district judge in Michigan must determine if a state can constitutionally provide a vast majority of its students with an excellent or at least adequate education while a minority of students receive an education that denies them the chance to acquire the minimum skills the court spoke of 43 years ago in Rodriguez.  {snip}  But in the case of children who are attending a public school, how do we know whether a state has denied some of its children even the minimal level of education required by the 14th Amendment? That is the burden that the plaintiffs in the Detroit case must meet. After reviewing their evidence, the case seems to be open-and-shut.  As the plaintiffs demonstrate, "decades of state disinvestment in and deliberate indifference to the Detroit schools" have denied these children "access to the most basic building block of education: literacy." At the schools involved in this litigation, which serve almost exclusively low-income minority children, the student proficiency rates "hover near zero in nearly all core subject areas." At one school, for example, 100 percent of the sixth graders scored below proficiency in reading.  {snip}


Bill O Reilly can always be trusted to be a total ass, especially when it comes to anything that runs counter to his myopic worldview. The Women s Marches, which took place all over the world and included three million women here at home, seem to be his latest target. In a conversation with Charles Krauthammer, O Reilly went completely off the rails and actually compared the marches to totalitarianism.As Krauthammer talked about the real people who showed up to the Women s March on Washington, he obviously touched a nerve with O Reilly, who thinks women don t do anything unless they re told to: Don t you feel they showed up because they were told to show up? If you look at the totalitarian governments in the 20th century- Krauthammer, despite having his own bizarre view of the marches, seemed incredulous. He tried to interrupt with, You re told to show up? Who tells anybody to show up in this country? It s important to note that Krauthammer is not exactly the most liberal of pundits, yet O Reilly really floored him with this. Krauthammer did bring up a good point: When people do what they re told, it s because there will be negative consequences if they don t. O Reilly decided to try and explain what the consequences are, and he fell flat on his face: Well, they have to go they don t have to go through a negative, they have to go to be with her brothers and sisters, and to show their solidarity and that they are good people and fight the fascist racists. I mean, it s a whip up, and if you study history, all the totalitarian regimes were fueled by whip-ups, okay? Really? It s not possible that anybody went because they had something to say? Nobody went because they were told to or because they were afraid of bad things should they not go. Women went because they had something to say.And if anybody s totalitarian here, it s the massive Cheeto living in the White House now. O Reilly is being just as stupid as ever with this and Krauthammer can t really believe it. Watch below:


Videos Economist Jack Rasmus: Eurozone Benefits The Strongest Economies At The Expense Of The Weakest 'Greece has tied its tail to the eurozone, dominated by Germany, and it can never get out of this situation as long as Germany dominates the institutions, which it does, because the whole arrangement is great for Germany,' the writer and economist tells MintPress News. | October 31, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! Bystanders wait to be handed bags of oranges during a free distribution of fruit and vegetables as a protest by farmers and vendors over proposed pension reforms, in Athens on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. Greece's leftwing government is facing an escalating wave of protests over its proposed pension overhaul that has been demanded by bailout creditors. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)  ATHENS — This has been another eventful year in Greece. Almost one year after it turned its back on the July 2015 referendum result which rejected further austerity, the Syriza-led government has pushed forward a program of even harsher austerity, spending cuts, and privatizations .  Following the British vote to proceed with "Brexit," or a departure from the European Union, fears that Greece might follow suit led Greece's lenders to demand even more austerity measures from a country already mired in an economic depression.  In this interview, Dr. Jack Rasmus , a professor of economics and politics at St. Mary's College of California, analyzes these issues and the many challenges facing the Greek and European economies today.  The author of such books as " Looting Greece " and " Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy ," Dr. Rasmus shares his insights into the consequences of austerity for Greece and other peripheral European economies, and presents his proposed solutions for an end to the crisis and austerity.  MintPress News (MPN): In September, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras gave his annual "state of the nation" address, where he boasted that the Greek economy has turned the corner, that unemployment is going down, that salaries will be increased, and that the country is returning to growth. Is this what Greece's economic indicators actually show? Protesters march to the Greek Parliament in Athens on Tuesday Nov. 6, 2012. Greece's unions are holding their third general strike in six weeks to press dissenters in the country's troubled coalition government not to back a major new austerity program that will doom Greeks to further hardship in a sixth year of recession. Two days of demonstrations are planned to start Tuesday, continuing until lawmakers vote late Wednesday on the bill to slash euro13.5 billion ($17.3 billion) from budget spending over two years. (AP Photo/Dimitri Messinis)  Dr. Jack Rasmus (JR): No, not quite. Greece's debt is still the same as it was in 2011, roughly 180 percent of GDP. Unemployment has come down by only 3 to 4 percent, so instead of 27 percent, it's about 23 to 24 percent. That's depression-level unemployment. All the other indicators in the economy are flat or declining, so I don't see anywhere that Greece is really "recovering," and neither, really, is the entire eurozone economy. It's been bouncing along the bottom.  As I said in my book "Systemic Fragility," it's a case of chronic stagnation. [The eurozone] might grow a little, 0.5 percent or 1 percent above GDP, mostly as a result of Germany's growth, then it flattens out or goes below. Most of the periphery economies in Europe are stagnant or in a recession, as they have been for quite some time.  As far as raising wages, Greece cannot raise, at least in the public sector, any wages without the approval of the troika [Greece's three major lenders: the European Commission, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund]. It's a real stretch to say that Greece is recovering. It's kind of moving sideways, in the condition of still chronic economic depression.  MPN: One of the perceptions that has been prevalent in global public opinion with regard to the economic crisis in Greece is that the country has been "bailed out" with billions upon billions of euros in free money. Is this really the case, and where has the so-called "bailout" money to Greece actually gone?  JR: Countries don't get bailed out. Governments, banks, businesses, and sometimes, though not so frequently, households get bailed out. So the question is, who got bailed out here, in the debt restructuring deals of 2010, 2012, 2015, and this past spring? The banks got bailed out several times. Foreign investors and speculators in Greek bonds and other securities clearly got bailed out in 2012. If you look at where the money has gone, there's $400 billion in debt in Greece still, that they have to pay off, with an economy that is less than half that size, so it's impossible.  Where has all this money gone? Recent studies by the European School of Management and Technology documenting the 2010 and 2012 bailouts indicate that 95 percent of all the loans to "bail out" the Greek government, which then bailed out the Greek banks — 95 percent of that went back to Northern Europe, mostly to the German and Northern European banks that had loaned so much money to Greece. [Bailout funds also went] to the troika, particularly the European Commission, that then distributed it to the banking system and investors in turn. The EC is the big player here, and to some extent the European Central Bank, and to a minor extent now the International Monetary Fund. So, 95 percent of all the money loaned to Greece went right back to [Europe] and less than 5 percent of that went back into the Greek economy. Greece has been subsidizing the financial system elsewhere in Europe. A supporter of the communist-affiliated union PAME takes part in an anti-austerity rally in front of the parliament in Athens, Monday, Oct. 17, 2016.  MPN: What do you believe needs to be done about the Greek debt?  JR: You might ask what needs to be done about debt throughout the eurozone, because it's not just Greece. Greece is perhaps the most serious case, but other places in the periphery of Europe are still heavily indebted. You cannot sustain, with austerity measures designed to pay the interest and principal on debt, a $400-plus billion debt based on an economy that's less than $200 billion. Even the IMF has come to that conclusion and is maneuvering with the other troika members on that particular point.  Is [the debt] legitimate? Well, you have to understand the origins of this debt. It was originally private sector debt that was created as a result of the formation of the eurozone in 1999, the ECB as part of that creation, and other elements of the eurozone agreements, particularly the Lisbon Strategy that Germany adopted. Germany and other Northern European businesses and bankers pumped money and capital into the periphery, including Greece, from 2005 onward. Germany had a strong competitive advantage in exports, so a lot of the money and capital was pumped into the periphery, including Greece, in order to purchase German and other exports. So the money went in and circulated around, leaving a pile of private sector debt in Greece, Italy, and other places.  Then we had the crash of 2008-2009 and the debt could not be repaid, and the troika stepped in to [offer] the governments of Greece and other countries money in order to continue to bail out the private sector and enable the repayment of the private debt. So it starts out as private debt, because of this great imbalance in exports within the eurozone, and then that gets converted to government debt, and then the big crash of 2008-2009 adds even more debt, and then you have the recession of 2011-2013 in the eurozone and the 2012 bailout, which piled on more debt in order to pay the old debt, and then in 2015 the same thing. So the troika's piling more debt on Greece in order for Greece to pay the previous debt, and that's totally unsustainable. They're going to have to expunge some of that debt.  Of course, the Germans, Wolfgang Schauble [the German finance minister] and the coalition in the north, does not want to allow that. And they don't really want to change the eurozone, because the eurozone, while very imbalanced for the periphery, has benefited Germany significantly. [The Germans] dominate the finance ministers' council in the EC and they dominate the ECB, and they're just keeping the situation the way it is because it's profitable for them. Demonstrators hold a poster against the austerity policy of Germany prior to a special session of the parliament Bundestag on negotiations with Greece for a new bailout in Berlin, Germany, Friday, July 17, 2015. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)  MPN: Why must Greek banks be nationalized, in your view?  JR: Look at the debt negotiations of 2010, 2012, and 2015. What happened was the ECB, which pretty much controls the Greek central bank — the ECB is just a council of central banks dominated by the Bundesbank [the German central bank] and its allies, so they have control — and what you saw in the negotiations is that in 2015, the ECB put the screws to the Greek economy, and Syriza collapsed and agreed each time the screws were tightened, bringing the economy to a halt. They couldn't deal with the squeeze on the economy by the ECB. This brought the economy to a halt, squeezing it and of course not releasing loans that [the troika] had agreed to provide Greece under previous agreements. There was an economic squeeze that Syriza did not have a strategy to deal with, and eventually it capitulated.  You've got to nationalize, make the Greek central bank and the banking systems independent of the ECB. Gain control over your economy once again, and that is one of several key steps to prevent the squeeze every time you attempt to renegotiate the debt or restructure the debt. Without an independent, Greek, people-controlled banking system, the eurozone and the troika will squeeze and bring Greece to its knees every time. We've seen that three times. You've got to nationalize the banking system, including the central bank, or if you want to just leave the central bank as part of the ECB structure, go ahead, but create an independent central bank authority elsewhere in the Greek government.  In the U.S. during the Great Depression, the U.S. central bank had screwed up badly, and [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt took over and had his Treasury Department take over and run the economy. Greece would have to set up a parallel central bank in its finance sector, and isolate and bypass the influence of the ECB through the Greek central bank. You would have to create a parallel currency as part of this and impose serious controls on bank withdrawals and capital flows outside the country, which Syriza did not really do, because the ECB and the troika opposed it. When you have all the capital, bank withdrawals and capital flight is another way of squeezing the country economically. FILE – In this Sunday, Oct. 18, 2015 file photo, a man walks past street art depicting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Athens, Greece. Tsipras' decision to sign off on a bailout led to many in his left-wing Syriza party to quit in protest.  MPN: The current government in Greece has been continuing a policy of massive privatizations of Greek public assets, with profitable airports and harbors having been privatized in the past year, in addition to the recent selloff of the Greek national railroad for a total of €45 million ($49 million). What are the short- and long-term impacts of the privatization of such public assets?  JR: The short-term is that when you privatize them, under the aegis of the troika, if you sell below market prices, which a lot of these assets are being sold at, that's profit on the sale for the investors who are buying up these assets. But once the assets are in private hands, where does the revenue go? Does it go back into Greece or does it go back into the pockets of the investors and the corporations and the banks outside Greece that are buying it up? Well, it goes out. It's a form of capital flight. Money that is needed in Greece flows out of Greece.  This is a new form of financial imperialism, wealth extraction in other words, that is being structured and managed on a state-to-state basis. It's not 19th century British imperialism where they set up a factory in India, paid them low wages, and brought the textiles back to London to re-sell at a higher price. It's not that kind of production imperialism. This is financial imperialism imposed on Greece, and it's a new form that's emerging everywhere, where you indebt the country and then you force the country to engage in austerity in order to pay the principal and interest on the debt, and you extract the income from the country. Privatizations are another form of that.  You privatize public goods, you get them at fire-sale prices, and then the income flows from those assets flow back to the coffers of the private companies or the banks, outside of Greece.  The other consequence is when you privatize, they come in and they cut costs, which means they lay off people in mass numbers, they put a hold on wages, they get rid of benefits, and they do everything else to maximize their revenue.  Finally, longer term, it means that Greece has less control over its own economy if it can't control its infrastructure and everything is owned by foreigners. Then you can't influence it as much, and if you're part of the eurozone, you're legally prohibited from what you can do to make sure that these foreign-owned infrastructure companies are behaving in terms of the benefit for the public sector, for the rest of Greece.  MPN: You have argued in your book, "Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy," that there are nine major trends which account for the economic troubles that are seen on a global scale. What are some of these trends?  JR: Everywhere, and particularly since 2008, we see central banks and monetary policy to be ascendant, and that means creating money, pumping it into the economy to bail out the financial systems, the financial institutions, the banks and the shadow banks, meaning speculators, hedge funds, private equity firms, asset management companies, and so forth. We've seen bailouts of tens of trillions of dollars since 2008. All of that liquidity injection into the economy has driven interest rates down to zero or even, in Europe and Japan and elsewhere, negative rates, and that fuels debt. With rates that cheap, corporations and businesses float new corporate bonds, and they use the money not to invest necessarily, they use it to buy back the stock and drive up the stock prices and pay out dividends, or they sit on it, they hoard it, or they send it to emerging markets. That's a problem everywhere, and that's the result of massive liquidity injections, which have really been escalating since the 1980s, when controls on international capital flows were eliminated everywhere.  After the 1970s, when the Bretton Woods system collapsed and central banks took over, the combination of those has led to the financialization of the global economy in the 21st century, where profits are far greater for investing and speculating in financial securities than they are in investing in real assets and real things that create real jobs and real income and real consumption. We're becoming dependent on debt more and more. The economy is increasingly credit- and debt-driven, and that's the result of this massive liquidity injection, and it also leads to a shift from real asset investment — investing in real things that create jobs that people need — toward financial asset investment. That means that real investment collapses over time and productivity collapses over time as well, and we see that happening everywhere.  That's a major point that I argued about in my book, "Systemic Fragility," this financialization of the global economy based on liquidity and debt and squeezing out. It's diverting money and capital from real investment into financial speculation. What's going on in Greece is a concrete expression of this, the reliance on financial means and financial manipulation. The periphery in the eurozone is at a great disadvantage to Germany and others, and they're being manipulated financially. All the payments on interest and the debt flow back to the north. This is all flowing through the EC to the private sector, and it's a nice constant money capital flow from interest payments and privatization and speculation on government bonds and securities and stocks in these countries as the volatility occurs.  It's a reflection, in Greece, of what's happening on a broader scale elsewhere in the global economy, and that's why we haven't seen much of a recovery in the global economy. Global trade is stagnant and real investment everywhere is drifting toward zero, productivity is negative almost everywhere, even in the U.S., and we're seeing growth rates of barely 1 percent, 1.5 percent, at best, when it should be double that. We see these growing, non-performing bank loans, almost $2 trillion in Europe, the worst in Italy with about $400 billion. We see the same thing in Japan and in China. We're becoming more systemically fragile financially because of this shift to financial speculation. In this July 5, 2012 file photo President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi speaks during a news conference in Frankfurt, central Germany. (AP Photo/dapd, Mario Vedder, File)  MintPress: What is your outlook for the eurozone economy and the difficulties that it is currently facing?  JR: The European banking system has never fully recovered from the 2008-2009 crash. The ECB is pumping money into the banking system in various ways, long-term refinancing options and all the bailout funds and qualitative easing and negative interest rates and so forth. They're desperately pumping money into the banking system, but the banks aren't really lending, at least to those businesses that would reinvest in real assets to create jobs. It's far more profitable to make money now. Investors make more money from financial speculation than they do from investing long-term and expecting to get a return over 10 to 20 years for investment in a real company that creates real things.  We can see the strains now with the non-performing loans, in particular in Italy. Of course, we know the situation with the non-performing bank loans in Greece. Portugal is in bad shape as well in terms of non-performing loans, and now we see even institutions like [Germany's] Deutsche Bank and others beginning to feel this strain, and the further impact on the European banking system of the "Brexit" [the departure of Great Britain from the European Union].  The problem is that the private banks are either hoarding the cash, they won't invest in real growth, or they're sending their money offshore to emerging markets, or they're using it, as in the U.S., to buy back stock and pay out dividends and loaning money to companies to do just that. The global economy has changed dramatically in ways that make it much more fragile than ever before. A lot of debt has been building up everywhere: Over $50 trillion in additional debt has occurred since 2009, and when the next recession comes, how are they going to pay that debt?  When times are stable or growing, you can add debt without a great crisis emerging, but when you have a recession or a downturn that's significant, where are you going to get the money capital to pay the principal and interest on the debt? Then you start seeing defaults and you start seeing financial asset price collapses going on, and now you're back in 2008-2009. That's the picture of the global economy. A farmer tries to protect himself as he clashes with a riot policeman during an anti-government protest at central Syntagma square in Athens, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015. Greek farmers protesting over planned tax and pension reforms demanded by the country's bailout creditors have clashed outside parliament with police, who used tear gas to disperse them. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis)  MPN: What would be the steps for Greece to follow, in your view, in order to escape the spiral of economic depression and austerity?  JR: Syriza made it clear, when it came into power, that it was not in favor of "Grexit" [a Greek departure from the eurozone], and it has always maintained that position. An unprepared, "we're leaving the eurozone and the euro" kind of decision would cause a collapse of values, particularly among those who have investments in some savings in Greece. To some extent, Syriza was caught between a rock and a hard place here. They couldn't or didn't want to advocate an exit, and at least those who had investments didn't want it because of the potential effect on their investments. The broader Greek populace thinks, still, that to be European you have to be in the eurozone. That's a big mistake.  I think what Greece and Syriza should have done is to create a parallel currency and to take over its banking system. In other words, make the banking system truly independent, including the Greek central bank, and if that was not possible, bypass the Greek central bank and set up a central banking function in the finance ministry, as the U.S. has done at different times. Create a parallel currency, and policies and programs to get people to convert their euros into the parallel currency. Maybe declare that henceforth all taxes to the Greek government will be paid with the parallel currency, and that means that people would then trade in their euros for the parallel currency to pay their taxes.  Then tell the troika [the EC, the ECB, and the IMF — collectively, Greece's lenders] that we're going to pay you in your euros, but if we run out of euros here as a result of the conversion, well, tough luck, we don't have a way of paying you, let's negotiate a final deal where you expunge some of it and we pay you off and we go our separate ways. Of course, you would have to create significant capital flow controls, which has always been a problem every time there's been a crisis; the money flows out of Greece. Take the economy out of the control of the troika without a formal exit.  That could have been done, but for some reason Syriza and its finance advisers either didn't want to do that or didn't know how to do that.  MPN: Arguments that have been heard against a parallel currency include the claim that the existence of two currencies would create a situation where there would be "haves" and "have nots" — between those who would hold a stronger, hard currency, compared to those holding a weaker, devalued currency. How do you respond to this?  JR: There are policies and approaches you can take that entice and require people to convert their euros into the new currency. That would raise the demand and therefore the value, the price of the new currency. If you just had the currency and you didn't have this forced trade-in, then of course you would have "haves" and "have nots," the new currency would collapse, and pretty soon no one would want to use it. But, for example, saying that taxes could only be paid with the new currency, would force people who had corporations and businesses and so forth to purchase the new currency with the euro. It would undermine the value of the euro in Greece and it would raise the value of the new currency in Greece as well. That might set off a parallel elsewhere in the eurozone with other countries thinking the same thing, which would undermine the value of the euro and put the squeeze on the troika for once. Greece never put the squeeze on the troika, it was just the opposite in all of these negotiations that occurred, they never really hurt the troika in negotiations, and that's the only way you prevail in negotiations. You've got to make it unpleasant for the opposition. Syriza never did that, they played along and made concession after concession.  Syriza thought that their example would strike a spark elsewhere in Europe of other social democratic forces and governments. They thought that they would get the rest of the social democracies behind them and together they would reform the eurozone. That was a fiction, a fantasy thought on the part of Alexis Tsipras and others, but that was the core of their whole strategy. European social democracy is a dying force, and that's why you see the growth on the fringes, both to the right and the left.  Tsipras and [former Greek finance minister] Yanis Varoufakis' problem was that they thought they could get all these elements behind them and that together they would have enough weight to force Schauble and other finance ministers to make concessions. Well, Schauble and the other ministers, the "German faction," as I call it, within the finance ministers' council in the EC, remained dominant. At every step along the way, whenever Syriza and its few allies tried to make a compromise where some concessions were made to them, the German faction squelched it. We saw that, for example, at the very end, when [Greece held] the referendum in July 2015. Greece held the vote, and the vote said "go back and negotiate a better deal for us," and what did Tsipras do? He totally caved in to the Schauble faction, and then the Schauble faction said, "The offer we made last week is now off the table, you're going to have to accept an even worse one." So they put the screws to Syriza, and Syriza looked to its allies in the EC, and they totally caved in as well. Things just got worse and worse until you had the final [austerity] agreement on August 20, 2015.  It was a step-by-step retreat from [Syriza's election in] January 2015, because Syriza had the wrong strategy and was not engaged in certain necessary tactics. Of course, the troika itself had a lot of cards to play. It would have been an uphill fight for Syriza. The time where they might have been able to strike some concessions from the troika was 2012, but New Democracy [the center-right party in power at the time in Greece] was totally in the pocket of the troika, so that was impossible.  [This past spring], the IMF and the troika were worried about "Brexit" and what impact that might have on renewing "Grexit." So they put the screws to Greece again, raised the debt even more, austerity even more, and I think another round of that is coming, because the IMF wants out of the troika deal. We'll see what happens at the IMF meeting, but they haven't endorsed even the 2015 agreement because they know it's unsustainable. I think the IMF is maneuvering to have the EC to buy its portion of the debt, and once that happens, the EC will demand even more austerity from Greece. President of France Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Obama, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) meeting at the G20 the G-20 leaders summit in Brisbane, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 16, 2014.  MPN: In the event that a parallel currency is implemented and steps are taken to maintain or strengthen its value, could that be a prelude to a switch to a national, domestic currency?  JR: Yes. At some point, one currency will become dominant. You can't have two equal currencies like that. Another advantage of the new currency is that it will start out at less value than the euro, and that will be used as the trading currency. That will stimulate Greek exports to elsewhere, outside the eurozone.  Part of the problem is that the periphery in Europe is so dependent on exports and imports to Germany and the north, that it can't really engage in its own independent export strategy without cutting wages. Throughout Europe, you have what's called "internal devaluation," when you are stuck with a currency and someone else's central bank, the ECB and the euro. You can't really engage in independent monetary policy to stimulate your economy and you can't engage in lowering your currency in order to gain some advantage in exports. You're stuck, and only the most powerful country that's most efficient and has the lowest costs is able to take advantage of global exports, and that's Germany. The weaker economies of the periphery will always be at a disadvantage to Germany when it comes to trying to push their exports anywhere else outside the eurozone.  That's the lesson. The lesson is that you've got a 1999 agreement in which you have this quasi-central bank, the ECB, and you have [the euro], and that arrangement significantly benefits the most efficient, low-cost producer, which is Germany, at the expense of the periphery. Until you have a true central bank and fiscal union to some extent, that will pump the money into the periphery to help it grow when it doesn't, you will always have the situation you have in Europe right now.  Compare that to the U.S., where there's a fiscal union, so that if certain states have economic problems … the federal government can pump money into those specific locations. If you don't have a true federal government and fiscal union, you can't do that, and if your central bank is dominated by the largest economy — Germany — even the monetary policy has no effect. And if it's a single currency, it's to the advantage of the stronger economy at the disadvantage of the weaker.  The eurozone economy is structured to emphasize the growth of the strongest economies at the expense of the weaker, and that's not going to change. It's built into the eurozone. You cannot create a currency union and a customs union without a true banking union and fiscal union. More and more countries in the eurozone are beginning to come to that conclusion, but it was foreordained. Economists knew this from the beginning, and that's the tragedy. Greece has tied its tail to the eurozone, dominated by Germany, and it can never get out of this situation as long as Germany dominates the institutions, which it does, because the whole arrangement is great for Germany. A protesters carries a protest sign during a rally prior to the opening of the new European Central Bank (ECB) headquarter in Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, March 18, 2015. At least four police cars were set alight and two officers injured Wednesday as authorities confronted violent anti-austerity protesters ahead of the inauguration ceremony for the European Central Bank's new headquarters (AP Photo/dpa, Arne Dedert)  MPN: Tell us about your most recent book, "Looting Greece."  JR: It's really a case study of the consequences of financialization and globalization and integration. I argue that there is this phenomenon of the smaller economies being tied into the larger economies through free trade agreements, which lead to currency unions, which lead to banking unions, and then you've got a situation like Greece and the euro periphery and the problems associated with that.  The book also takes a historical look at the origins of the Greek debt, that starts in 1999 with the [creation of the] eurozone, the adoption of the euro by Greece in 2002 and the consequences of that, how the debt developed, first in the private sector because of German export domination and then conversion of the private debt in 2008-2009 to the public debt, and then the collapse of 2008-2009, which added to the government debt. Then you had the 2012 agreement where the private sector was bailed out, and that added more debt, and then 2015 and so forth. All this is described in detail in the early chapters, and then most of the book is a step-by-step look at the negotiations between Syriza and the troika, from [Syriza's January 2015 election] through the spring of 2016, and what were the strategic and tactical errors of Syriza and the strategic and tactical moves by the troika which enabled it to prevail.  At the end, [the book discusses] how this is a form of a new emerging financial and wealth extraction from smaller economies by the larger economies, because of the globalization and integration arrangement that exists, the emergence of financial extraction and financial exploitation, and how central banks are feeding that all. This will lead to my next book, which is about global central banks and the problems they've created as we move to another crisis, which I think is coming in the next five years. Demonstrators dressed as clowns pass by a burning police car Wednesday, March 18, 2015 in Frankfurt, Germany. Blockupy activists try to blockade the new headquarters of the ECB to protest against government austerity and capitalism. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) Be Sociable, Share!


The Senate approved complex health care legislation on Wednesday that would increase funding for disease research, address weaknesses in the nation's mental health systems and vastly alter the regulatory system for drugs and medical devices. The vote sealed a final legislative victory for President Obama, who strongly supported the bill against objections from many liberal Democrats and consumer groups. In many ways the bill, known as the 21st Century Cures Act, is a return to a more classic approach to legislation, with policy victories and some disappointments for both parties, and potential benefits for nearly every American whose life has been touched by illness, drug addiction and mental health issues. Years in the making, the measure passed 94 to 5 after being overwhelmingly approved by the House last week. One major winner — and a donor to both parties — was the pharmaceutical industry its role set off fierce but futile opposition by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. On many of the areas addressed by the bill, pharmaceutical companies were in step with the interests of patients desperate for cures, an unusual and emotionally charged alliance between an industry and its consumers. The bill was a test of Ms. Warren's muscle, exercised from the far left of the Senate Democratic caucus, and it is one that did not go well. "I will fight it," she said of the bill last week on the Senate floor, "because I know the difference between compromise and extortion. " In the end, however, not a single member of her home state, which has many medical research centers joined her. Nor did anyone else apart from three other senators — Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both of Oregon — and Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. The measure would benefit people with mental illness and chronic diseases, biomedical researchers, pregnant women, hospitals, children with diabetes, people addicted to opioid drugs, children who are bullied, and those who are gravely ill. "I doubt that there is a family in America who will not be touched by this important legislation," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. In a statement issued after the Senate vote, Mr. Obama said, "The Cures Act makes important investments that will save lives. " "This is a reminder of what we can do when we look out for one another," the president said. "Like Joe Biden and so many other Americans, I've lost people I love deeply to cancer. I've heard often from those whose loved ones are suffering from Alzheimer's, addiction and other debilitating diseases. Their heartbreak is real, and so we have a responsibility to respond with real solutions. This bill will make a big difference, and I look forward to signing it as soon as it reaches my desk. " Mr. Obama has noted that the bill includes money to combat the opioid epidemic, to advance his Precision Medicine Initiative, which aims to collect genetic data on one million American volunteers so scientists can develop treatments, and to support Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. 's "moonshot" to cure cancer. Mr. Biden — whose son, Beau, died of a brain tumor last year — presided on a procedural vote to move the bill forward in the Senate Monday night, a moving moment for most members of the Senate. While Republicans and Democrats often fight over government spending, the bill benefited from its largess to one agency that has broad support, the National Institutes of Health. "I don't think there is enough money that we can put into the N. I. H. ," said Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, "because it is important and it affects all Americans independent of political party, race, sexual orientation — you name it. " The bill gives the health institutes the authority to finance research using special procurement procedures, as opposed to more conventional grants and contracts. It also requires the agency's director to establish "Eureka prize" competitions to advance biomedical research and improve treatments for serious illnesses. The bill raises the status of mental health issues by creating a new assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, to be appointed by the president. It directs federal agencies to step up enforcement of laws that require equal insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses. Federal laws and rules requiring mental health parity have been adopted with bipartisan support over the last 20 years, but a White House task force found recently that compliance was lagging. "We didn't get everything we needed,'" said Representative Tim Murphy, Republican of Pennsylvania, the architect of provisions to improve the treatment of mental illness, "but we needed everything we got. " Major provisions of the bill push the Food and Drug Administration to speed the review and approval of drugs and medical devices. Kim Monk of Capital Alpha Partners, a policy research firm for investors, described the bill as "a holiday win for much of the health sector. " Scott Whitaker, president and chief executive of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a trade group for device makers, hailed the bill for creating "an expedited pathway for breakthrough medical technologies — those that offer the best hope for patients with diseases" and few treatment options. In reviewing new devices, the bill says, the F. D. A. shall consider the "least burdensome" means of showing their safety. In considering whether to approve new drugs or new uses for medications, the bill says, the F. D. A. shall pay more attention to "patient experience data" showing the impact of a disease or treatment on patients' lives, and their treatment preferences. The legislation does not include provisions to rein in prescription drug prices, a significant victory for the pharmaceutical industry. Consultants to the industry said that drug makers had kept a low profile in their lobbying on the legislation, knowing that any conversations on Capitol Hill could turn quickly to drug prices. "When the cost of our prescription drugs is skyrocketing, this bill does nothing to combat excessive prices," said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee on health and human services. She voted against the measure. "While the bill authorizes $4. 8 billion to the N. I. H. over the next 10 years — on average, a mere $480 million a year — this is barely a quarter per year of what the House passed last year," Ms. DeLauro said. "There is also no guarantee that the appropriators will follow through and provide funding each year. " Representative Kathy Castor, Democrat of Florida, who voted for the bill, said she too wished that more of the money had been guaranteed. "Medical research in America today should not be subject to the whims of congressional budget battles or political fights," she said.


Donald Trump on Tuesday declined to endorse two fellow Republicans, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and U.S. Senator John McCain, in their upcoming re-election battles after both Republicans criticized his remarks about the family of a slain Muslim U.S. Army captain. Mirroring the language Ryan used about supporting Trump before his eventual endorsement, Trump told The Washington Post he's "not quite there yet" on supporting the congressman in Tuesday's primary in Wisconsin.


This week, a racially-motivated massacre took place at an apartment complex in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The triple homicide shows where the politics of hate will lead America.Three people were slaughtered in horrifying circumstances this week, because their white neighbor was enraged by their ethnic origin and grasp of the English language. The terrifying scenes unfolded at a four unit apartment complex. One unit was occupied by Dan J Popp, one by the Manso-Perez family, and one by Phia Vue, his wife Mai, and their four children.The Journel-Sentinel reports that 40-year-old Jesus R. Manso-Perez and his son passed the apartment of their 39-year-old neighbor Dan J. Popp on their way to the basement laundry room. Popp invited them into his home with the offer of a neigborly beer, which they declined. Popp then cut short the niceties and got straight to his point, asking the pair where they were from. At their response, he reportedly said: Oh, that s why you don t speak English. You re Puerto Rican. The father and son bid their goodbyes and went on to do their laundry. However, when they made their way back up to their apartment, Popp was waiting for them on the stairs, rifle in hand. You guys got to go, Popp said, according to police, before shooting Jesus in the head, killing him. He then fired at his son, but missed.Hearing the gunshots, Phia and Mai K. Vue hid in the bedroom with their four children and a 25-year-old relative who had been watching the children that day. The couple had just returned home from a day trip. When Popp began hammering at their door, they called the police and stayed in their hiding places. But Popp kicked down their door and searched the home until he found them. He demanded 36-year-old Phia leave the room, took him into the bathroom and shot him dead. Then he returned for Mai, dragging her and two young daughters out of the apartment while the rest of the family ran out in front and around them.The couple s young son was first to reach the police and told them: He shot my father; he s in the bathroom. A further shot then rang out from the apartment complex as Popp shot and killed 32-year-old Mai.Popp then surrendered himself to police. He has no previous criminal record, and is detained on bail of $150,000, while mental health assessments are completed.The explosion of violence is however, the terrifying end game of the ever escalating racist rhetoric and violence we are seeing in the current political climate. The very worst elements of white America are being unleashed. The bitter hatred of difference, the idea that non-European immigrants to the United States are the root of all evil and that everything wrong with the nation can be traced back to those groups.There is very good reason why, at home and abroad, the rise of the racist right in modern America is being compared to the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1930 s Germany. That reason is simple: the comparison is accurate.Depressed wages, a perceived crisis of masculinity, the demand for a tough leader who would drive through his agenda as an authoritarian, an obsession with a perceived dent to national pride which must be remedied with a show of economic and military force at home and abroad and pure, unadulterated racism.When you unleash this level of anger at a scapegoat, people set out to hurt and kill that scapegoat.This is the vision of America that the racist right represents. And it is a vision of hell.The victory of such forces would be a disaster for America as a nation, but also for the international community in which she sits. This is not some television show where we sit back and watch the fall-out from the safety of our couch. This is real life. The racist right is a real and present danger, and it must be confronted with relentless and unwavering opposition by everyone who has a stake in a progressive, free, and hopeful America.


If ever there was a reminder that Sen. Ted Cruz is NOT the Republican Party s reasonable alternative to Donald Trump, it s in his response to the Brussels terror attacks. Losing badly to Trump, Cruz is clearly feeling the pressure to capitalize on the tragedy to win some crucial votes so he s gone all in on xenophobia, totalitarianism, and religious persecution. A hate cocktail sure to fire up his base.In a statement he released on Facebook, Cruz calls for the establishment of ghettos where America s Muslims can be contained and watched over by a specialized law enforcement group meant to police them. If that sounds a little to Nazi-esque for you, Cruz preemptively accused his critics of just being too politically correct to agree with him.Here s Cruz s terrifying vision for his presidency:We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence.We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration.And we need to execute a coherent campaign to utterly destroy ISIS.In other words, Cruz is plagiarizing Trump s ban all Muslims position, but adding that the Muslims already in the country should be secured in specific neighborhoods before they become radicalized. He doesn t bother clarifying how he would hope to accomplish this. Nor does he mention how he could legally target Muslims who had done nothing wrong just because his prejudice tells him they might some day.Being Lying Ted Cruz, he also couldn t help but spread a little misinformation about President Obama as well. Using the president s historic trip to Cuba as a strawman, Cruz bashed him for being on a diplomatic trip while Brussels was attacked, adding that Obama never visited Paris after the terror attacks there. It was an egregious lie, so shameless that a simple picture could debunk it.#COP21 Paying respect : President Obama & French President Hollande lay flowers at Bataclan concert hall in Paris. pic.twitter.com/YEMy7ZUDvk Catherine Field (@CatherineField) November 30, 2015Needless to say, Muslim activist groups, who have watched in horror as hate crimes directed at Muslim Americans has steadily grown thanks to people like Cruz, were not amused by this latest call to trounce the Constitution based on hate and fear. It s really beyond belief that you have one of the leading presidential candidates calling for law enforcement to target religious communities totally based on the fact that they are of a particular faith, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said by phone. In normal times, this would be the sort of thing that would disqualify someone from running for dogcatcher, much less president of the United States. We call on voters to reject this.Undoubtedly, terrorism is a serious problem. But the solutions to it need to be much more mature than the Republicans seem to want to believe. Totalitarianism doesn t work and never has. Discriminating against innocent Muslims because of a twisted death cult based in the Middle East is not only doomed to fail, but could backfire in ways that Cruz and Trump can t fathom from their build a wall childish ideology.Between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, it s hard to say who the bigger xenophobic bigot is. Both are consumed by a hatred towards scapegoated groups they hope to exploit in order to ensure people vote for them. At this point in the race, the two Republican frontrunners aren t just mirroring each other s disgusting policies, but actually driving one another to make them more abhorrent. A nuclear arms race of bigotry in a crucial moment in America s history.


College admissions experts breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday when the Supreme Court upheld a University of Texas admissions plan that allows race and ethnicity to be considered as one of many factors in admission. "I think there are going to be some parties tonight in high school counseling offices and in college admissions offices," said Phil Trout, the president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and a college counselor at Minnetonka High School outside Minneapolis. "'Sigh of relief' is not strong enough. " In its ruling, the Supreme Court noted that the Texas plan — which automatically grants admission to roughly the top 10 percent of students across the state, then uses race as one of many factors in considering the rest — was unique and very much a product of Texas politics, law and demographics. But what was encouraging about the court decision, experts said, was that in affirming the value of diversity, including race and ethnicity, in higher education, the court recognized that there was not one, immutable way of defining and achieving it. "It's a terrific outcome," said Peter McDonough, the vice president and general counsel at the American Council on Education. "I think today's decision is about deference. It's not about dictating. I think it's about the continuing recognition that our country's campuses are laboratories for experimentation, and that the formula for diversity does remain elusive. It changes over time, and it is impacted by context. " Mr. McDonough echoed a critical part of the Supreme Court opinion that described public universities as "laboratories for experimentation" and called on the University of Texas at Austin "to scrutinize the fairness of its admissions program to assess whether changing demographics have undermined the need for a policy and to identify the effects, both positive and negative, of the measures it deems necessary. " The decision was made on fairly narrow legal grounds and does not establish any bold new policy, said David Hawkins, the executive director for education content and policy of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. "I don't expect to see a resounding clarion call for further investment in the use of race and ethnicity as an admissions tool," he said. Mr. Hawkins said he expected colleges to react by heeding the court's call to be introspective — to "engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection" — about how they achieved diversity. Several states — including Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington — have banned affirmative action, and some education analysts wondered whether the court's decision would lead to more such backlash. "Public opinion polling suggests that most Americans don't like the idea of counting race in deciding who gets into universities," said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, who has argued for using poverty rather than race to achieve diversity and said he saw the decision as a setback for that cause. "Republicans have resisted pushing this issue because they fear that it will generate turnout among " he said. "But all bets are off with Donald Trump. It will be interesting to see what he does. " Affirmative action bans have led public universities like the University of Michigan to look for other ways to achieve diversity, like reaching out to minority students after they have been offered admission to persuade them to accept. Experts also said other affirmative action plans could still face challenges in state legislatures and in cases before lower courts challenging admissions policies at Harvard and at the University of North Carolina. The lawsuits argue that diversity can be achieved through alternatives. The Harvard complaint also argues that affirmative action policies have the effect of discriminating against applicants. "The lower courts will obviously have the Fisher precedent to apply while looking at those schools' programs," said Rachel Kleinman, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, referring to the name of the case, Fisher v. University of Texas, No. . "I think that could be very helpful. " Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, noted that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in his dissent, said the Texas plan discriminated against . "The points made in Justice Alito's dissent about his view and the view of dissenters that this discriminates against I think, is one of the themes that the opponents of affirmative action are pursuing," Mr. Bollinger said. "I do not expect Fisher to be the end. " On the campus of the University of Texas, Sergio Cavazos, 20, president of the Senate of College Councils, said he thought students overwhelmingly supported the admissions policy. Mr. Cavazos, a senior government major, is from Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas on the border with Mexico. One of four children from a Hispanic family, he graduated from high school in 2013 ranked 10th in his class of 350 and entered the university under its policy of admitting the top 10 percent of graduating high school seniors. He has a full academic scholarship. "We value diversity on this campus," he said. "One of the key concerns for me — myself being a Hispanic student from Brownsville — was ensuring this campus remain diverse and representative of the population of this state. " The court seemed skeptical of using poverty as a proxy for achieving racial diversity, as some have called for. The decision said that Texas had "tried, and failed, to increase diversity through enhanced consideration of socioeconomic and other factors. " Some have argued that making large allowances for race could lead to admitting students who would flounder because they were "mismatched" to academic standards, a theory that Justice Antonin Scalia seemed to be thinking of during oral arguments in the case. The court said Thursday that "the Equal Protection Clause does not force universities to choose between a diverse student body and a reputation for academic excellence. " Justice Scalia died in February before he could participate in the Fisher decision.


Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (2016) http://www.tagtele.com/videos/voir/233184/