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Autocratic forces are ascendant in America, but the story isn’t fully written. Truth-telling independent media is one remaining bulwark against the unrestrained exercise of power. At a time when billionaire owners of corporate media are making accommodations to power, our nonprofit newsroom cannot be bought or broken. Please stand with us.
The FBI raided Michael Cohen’s home and office today, seizing records related to Cohen’s payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign. Susan Simpson has a question:
Something I’d love to see a reporter ask Trump Org about:
1) Cohen formed EC LLC on Oct 17 2016
2) The contract provided for EC LLC to pay Stormy $130K by Oct 27 2016
3) Between Oct 17 & Oct 25, the Trump campaign made payments to Trump Org properties that add up to $129,999.72. pic.twitter.com/CMAxgl3Vn4
Update: On Oct. 26th – 1 day after the Trump campaign completed a series of disbursements to Trump Org hotels that totaled $130K – the bank emailed Cohen at his https://t.co/cCbScNgkaG account to confirm the $130K for Stormy’s settlement had been deposited.
This is Bill. He moved to San Pedro in 1952 and has lived in this house for the past 45 years. He worked at the port for 15 years and is now retired.
He told me he was outside “doing a little cleaning up.”
BY THE WAY: The top picture is a composite. I had one photo that showed the junk pile well but I liked Bill’s expression better in another one. So I lifted it out and copied it onto the first photo. This is the kind of Photoshopping that got Brian Walski fired from the LA Times a few years ago. Luckily, I’m not a photojournalist, so I can get away with stuff like this.
Today’s CBO budget report is out, and it tells us that the Republicans’ $1.5 trillion tax cut will increase the federal debt by…$1.9 trillion:
This comes from Table B-3 in the report. In other words, the tax cut doesn’t pay for itself. It doesn’t even partially pay for itself. It does have some positive economic feedback, but not very much, and nowhere near enough to make up for the lost revenue and the increase in interest payments:
This is not the CBO’s long-term budget report, so it only goes through 2028. During that period, spending goes up only modestly. In other words, spending still isn’t the problem. The problem is tax cuts for the rich that slash revenue and increase debt service. Put those together, and even with a modest supply-side economic benefit the tax cut still costs more than the static revenue estimate. Maybe it’s time to finally put the Laffer Curve to rest, boys.
95. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (vv. 31-46), Jesus expands on the Beatitude that calls the merciful blessed. If we seek the holiness pleasing to God’s eyes, this text offers us one clear criterion on which we will be judged. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (vv. 35-36).
….100. I regret that ideologies lead us at times to two harmful errors. On the one hand, there is the error of those Christians who separate these Gospel demands from their personal relationship with the Lord.
….101. The other harmful ideological error is found in those who find suspect the social engagement of others, seeing it as superficial, worldly, secular, materialist, communist or populist. Or they relativize it, as if there are other more important matters, or the only thing that counts is one particular ethical issue or cause that they themselves defend. Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection. We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel, spend with abandon and live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty.
The Washington Postreports that “traditionalists” are not going to be happy with this. Apparently it’s disgraceful to suggest that the things Jesus cared the most about were the things he talked the most about. I guess poor Francis is just too simpleminded to see past the actual words Christ uttered.
A recent GAO report on school discipline came to a startling conclusion: boys are punished far more than girls. This is true for all types of discipline, and the effect is the same for schools of all types and income levels:
Do you find this shocking? My mother the former fourth-grade teacher probably wouldn’t. Boys are generally less mature than girls and they act out more. It’s not really too surprising that they get disciplined more. This finding would only be outrageous if there were some way to independently measure the behavior of boys and girls and then determine that boys are disciplined more even though they don’t break the rules any more than girls do.
This GAO report was brought to my attention by German Lopez at Vox, and I’m just kidding about the whole boy-girl thing. Nobody really cares about that. What people care about is that the report also finds that black students are disciplined more than white students:
This is about the hundredth report to find that black students are disciplined more than white students, so I don’t think there’s any doubt that the numbers are basically correct. But this chart includes a footnote:
Disparities in student discipline such as those presented in this figure may support a finding of discrimination, but taken alone, do not establish whether unlawful discrimination has occurred.
That’s because there’s no independent measure of black student behavior compared to white students. There’s not even any control for poverty or for parental education, two obvious possibilities for behavioral differences.
So is this disciplinary divide a result of racism? It’s impossible to say. Hispanic students are underrepresented, which suggests something else might be at work. But again: you simply can’t draw any conclusions from this report aside from the fact that there is a difference—which we already knew—and that more detailed study is needed to determine the causes. Unfortunately, more detailed study is profoundly tricky. How do you objectively measure classroom behavior? And even if you do—and you still find a difference in rates of discipline—how do you know if it’s something intrinsic to the students or something extrinsic caused by different treatment by teachers? Or is it caused by something else entirely? Household composition? Racial disparities outside of school? Concentrated poverty? Does it differ by state or region?
This is a wickedly tough problem to measure. We know that black students are disciplined more than white students. That’s very well established. But we still don’t know why.
We should shortly be getting the CBO’s latest budget outlook, which includes the effects of the Trump tax cut. To prepare ourselves, here’s the projection from last year’s long-term budget outlook:
Over the next 30 years, net spending increases from 19.3 percent of GDP to 23.2 percent. That’s about one percentage point per decade, mostly due to rising health care costs. In other words, it’s not a lot. What’s more, if technological advances slow down health care spending—something I find likely even if it seems hard to believe right now—spending won’t go up even that much.
But if you add interest on the national debt, spending goes up nearly 9 percentage points. That’s the killer, and there’s no technological advance that can change this. In the 2018 version of the CBO report, this will get even worse thanks to last year’s tax bill.
Despite what conservatives say endlessly, spending is not the problem. We can easily manage an increase of 1 percent per decade for the next few decades. It’s only if we refuse to pay for it that the national debt explodes.
Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s appointee to oversee the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has given big pay raises to the deputies he has hired to help him run the bureau, according to salary records obtained by The Associated Press. Mulvaney has hired at least eight political appointees since he took over the bureau in late November. Four of them are making $259,500 a year and one is making $239,595. That is more than the salaries of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and nearly all federal judges apart from those who sit on the Supreme Court.
….Kirsten Mork, Mulvaney’s chief of staff, got a significant bump in pay for going to work at the CFPB. She made $167,300 in her job working for Rep. Jeb Hensarling on the House Financial Services Committee, according to LegiStorm, a website that tracks congressional salary data. She now makes $259,500 as chief of staff of the CFPB, according to bureau records….Another former congressional staffer, Brian Johnson, who also worked for the House Financial Services Committee, made $164,600 in his role there before going to the CFPB, according to LegiStorm. He now makes $239,595 as a “senior advisor” to Mulvaney, a position that did not exist under Cordray.
Eric Blankenstein, who oversees supervision, enforcement and fair lending for the bureau, previously was a lawyer for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative making $153,730, according to federal salary data website FedSmith. He now makes $259,500, according to bureau records. Another Mulvaney appointee, Sheila Greenwood, who used to work in the Department of Housing and Urban Development making $179,700 a year, now makes $259,500. Anthony Welcher, who worked outside government before becoming a director of external affairs for the bureau, is also making $259,500 a year. His position also did not exist under the previous administration, according to bureau records.
I hardly even know how to react to this stuff anymore. The federal government under Trump is apparently just a big pot of spoils to be divvied up. Do any Republicans even care about this anymore?
While Security spending was somewhat more than his predecessor, Scott Pruitt has received death threats because of his bold actions at EPA. Record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars. Rent was about market rate, travel expenses OK. Scott is doing a great job!
Are you following Philippe Reines on Twitter? You should be. Reines is a famously, um, colorful guy who’s a longtime Hillary Clinton aide, and after she lost he took to Twitter and decided he didn’t give a shit what he said anymore. This naturally makes him great fun to read.
Oh, and as long as we’re on the subject of Pruitt, Michael Grunwald has a long piece in Politico making the point that Pruitt hasn’t actually accomplished much. He’s certainly good at self-promotion, but the fact is that rolling back EPA rules takes years of careful, detailed work. Will Pruitt pay attention long enough to do any of that? We’ll see. But so far it doesn’t seem like it. The press coverage seems to be what he’s really after.
Is this catblogging or caterpillar blogging? You be the judge. As you can see, Hilbert was pretty intrigued by the caterpillar crossing his path, but in the end he didn’t do anything. He raised his paw at one point to give it a swipe, but for some reason decided not to. So the caterpillar made it safely to the other side and is now, I believe, a cocoon attached to the wall of the house. In a few days, if its luck holds, it will become another lovely Monarch butterfly.
The life of a caterpillar must be a stressful one, don’t you think? Living in a world full of thousand-foot giants on the ground and predators the size of rocs in the air. Every morning at 6:30 it rains, but the raindrops are the size of refrigerators. And then there are the flash floods that come without notice, usually when one of the million-foot giants is around. It’s a wonder they don’t spontaneously explode just from high blood pressure.
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