The Conversation -- December 13, 2024
Annie Grayer of CNN: "Rep. Nancy Pelosi was admitted to a hospital in Luxembourg after she 'sustained an injury during an official engagement,' a spokesperson said. Pelosi, 84, is continuing to work, the spokesperson, Ian Krager, said, and is currently receiving 'excellent' treatment from doctors and medical professionals. 'While traveling with a bipartisan Congressional delegation in Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge,' Krager said."
Walt Bogdanich & Michael Forsythe of the New York Times: "McKinsey & Company has agreed to pay $650 million to settle a Justice Department investigation of its work with the opioid maker Purdue Pharma. A former senior partner, Martin Elling, has also agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for destroying internal company records in connection with that work. At the center of the government’s case was McKinsey’s advice that Purdue Pharma should 'turbocharge' sales of Purdue’s flagship OxyContin painkiller in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic that was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. More than two dozen McKinsey partners consulted for Purdue over roughly 15 years, earning the firm $93 million."
~~~~~~~~~~
It's Friday the 13th, Trump is the president*-elect. What could possibly go wrong?
Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "Kash Patel..., Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has called the top ranks of the bureau 'a threat to the people' and published a list of enemies, vowing retribution for investigations of top Republicans. He appears — at least for now — to be on a glide path for confirmation, with Republican senators lining up enthusiastically behind him. As Mr. Patel made the rounds on Capitol Hill this week ahead of his confirmation hearing, he received almost universal praise from G.O.P. members, even those who had raised concerns about some of Mr. Trump’s other picks. Mr. Patel’s warm welcome is fueled in part by an eagerness among Republicans to avoid incurring the wrath of Mr. Trump and his base after a groundswell of anger at Senate pushback to his picks to lead the Pentagon and the Department of Justice, Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz. But it also reflects the extent to which a deep distrust of the F.B.I. has become Republican orthodoxy." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Of course we are not surprised that GOP senators are lying down in the path of the Trump bus to facilitate his running over them (beep beep). And that's especially a shame give the following item, which I missed, but which laura h. picked up on it in yesterday's Comments: ~~~
~~~ David French of the New York Times: "By stepping down, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, [FBI Director Christopher] Wray has created a 'legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.'... According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation. Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria.... That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1.... So a resignation that at first blush looks like a capitulation (why didn’t he wait to be fired?) is actually an act of defiance.... Patel is just such an 'unfit character' [as Alexander Hamilton referenced in Federalist No. 76,] and now it’s senators’ responsibility to protect the American republic from his malign influence — if, that is, they have the courage to do their jobs." ~~~
~~~ ⭐Garrett Graff in Politico Magazine: Christopher "Wray’s surprise decision [to resign] is, simply put, a damning decision, an abdication of leadership, and a terrifying indication of how unready Washington remains for a second Trump term. Wray’s decision undermined decades of hard work — by Congress, presidents, the Justice Department and the FBI itself — to move it out of a partisan, political framework.... [Established] safeguards and traditions exist because the FBI, in the wrong hands, is incredibly dangerous to American democracy.... We’ve spent a half-century as a nation trying to make sure that [J. Edgar Hoover's abuse of the agency's power] never happens again — and now Trump is explicitly saying he wants to restart that darkest chapter of the FBI’s history.... The only reason Trump wants to change FBI directors is he doesn’t think he can boss, bend and break Wray to his will sufficiently.... Wray’s ... decision ... seems to help only one person: Wray, easing his way back into polite legal society and a top-shelf corporate or legal role with a minimum of awkward fuss and Trump vitriol." Read to the end; Graff smacks down Jim Comey, too.
Marie: Donald Trump will kiil millions of Americans. His plan is already past the planning stage. I'm not kidding: ~~~
~~~ ⭐Christina Jewitt & Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death. That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds. Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions. Much of Mr. Siri’s work — including the polio petition filed in 2022 — has been on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit whose founder is a close ally of Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Siri also represented Mr. Kennedy during his presidential campaign." ~~~
~~~ Daniel Payne of Politico: "... Donald Trump said he’s open to getting rid of vaccines depending on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s review of their safety. Trump’s comments to Time magazine contradict promises previously made by Kennedy, who is Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and has long been skeptical of vaccines widely considered to be safe and effective. Last month, Kennedy told NBC he would not take vaccines away from anyone who wants them. But Trump said in an interview with Time released Thursday that he might get rid of some vaccines if he thinks they’re 'dangerous' or 'not beneficial' after working with Kennedy to review evidence on them."
What? Trump repeatedly made a major campaign promise that he's broken even before taking office? Unpossible! ~~~
~~~ Meryl Kornfield of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump said in an interview that bringing down grocery prices will be 'very hard,' after he repeatedly promised during his campaign to cut costs, a major factor in winning over voters dissatisfied with the economy.... Throughout the campaign, Trump vowed to reduce the cost of food and energy as he blamed price hikes on Vice President Kamala Harris, who had promised to push for a federal ban on price gouging. In August at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump stood near a table of produce such as milk, eggs, cereal and coffee and attributed the price hikes to Harris.... 'I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. But I think that they will,' he said in the interview....
"In a wide-ranging interview on Nov. 25 that was published Thursday as part of his Time 'Person of the Year' honor, Trump said he would pardon people convicted of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol within hours of his inauguration, sought to distance himself from anti-transgender messages that Republicans used effectively against Democrats in the election and described the Middle East as an 'easier problem' to resolve than Russia’s war against Ukraine." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Well, sure, because Trump has a super-duper Middle-East advisor who says he hasn't even visited the Middle East in years and apparently is not the crack dealmaker Trump claims (see releated story on Tiffany Trump's father-in-law, linked below).
Dancing with Donald at the Billionaires' Ball
Karen Weise & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Amazon said on Thursday that it was planning to donate $1 million to ... Donald J. Trump’s inaugural fund, part of a pattern in which tech companies and their leaders are taking steps to repair their relationships with Mr. Trump. [Mark Zuckerberg's company] Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said on Wednesday that it was putting $1 million into the inaugural fund.... Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, have had a rocky history with Mr. Trump.... But over the summer, Mr. Bezos spoke with Mr. Trump after the former president was shot at a campaign event.... More recently, Mr. Bezos has said that he is 'very optimistic' about the incoming Trump administration. At the DealBook Summit in New York on Dec. 4, Mr. Bezos said that Mr. Trump “seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country.... Mr. Trump said on Thursday that Mr. Bezos, who chairs Amazon’s board, was meeting him next week.” ~~~
~~~ Make that $2MM. Thanks Jeff! Filip Timotija of the Hill: "Amazon will be donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and also making a $1 million in-kind contribution, as the company will stream the formal admission through Prime Video, multiple outlets reported on Thursday." ~~~
~~~ Keeping the Lights On. Marie: If you saw yesterday's Conversation, you know that Jeff is happy to have you and me pay for Amazon delivery personnels' safety (which I'm glad to do), while he gives billionaire Trump $1MM. ~~~
~~~ Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Katie Robertson of the New York Times: "After ... Donald J. Trump announced a cascade of cabinet picks last month, the editorial board of The Los Angeles Times ... prepared an editorial arguing that the Senate should follow its traditional process for confirming nominees, particularly given the board’s concerns about some of his picks, and ignore Mr. Trump’s call for so-called recess appointments.... Hours before the editorial was set to be sent to the printer for the next day’s newspaper..., the paper's owner, the billionaire medical entrepreneur Dr. Patrick ... Soon-Shiong told the opinion department’s leaders that the editorial could not be published unless the paper also published an editorial with an opposing view.... Editors removed the editorial, headlined 'Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be.' It never ran. Dr. Soon-Shiong’s intervention, recounted by four people inside the Times..., is one of a string of events in which he has waded into the publication’s opinion section in ways that he hadn’t until this fall’s presidential campaign." ~~~
~~~ Caroline O'Donovan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Top executives in the technology industry have long been a target of Donald Trump’s vitriol. As he prepares to return to the White House, they’re lining up to gain favor with the president-elect. Some come bearing checkbooks. Google CEO Sundar Pichai was scheduled for a sit-down with him on Thursday. Salesforce CEO and Time magazine owner Marc Benioff celebrated his publication’s naming of Trump as 'person of the year.'... The corporate giants appear to be hoping for a fresh start with Trump, who has lambasted the industry as biased and anticompetitive and targeted some of the biggest tech companies with threats of punitive action.... Trump filed lawsuits against Google and Meta in 2021, accusing them of censorship, and as president in 2019 threatened the two companies with legal assaults from the U.S. government.... Trump said Andrew Ferguson, his pick to head the Federal Trade Commission, will be 'standing up to Big Tech censorship.'” ~~~
~~~ So, Um, Not a Billionaire. Ruth Maclean, et al., of the New York Times: "... Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East adviser, Massad Boulos, has enjoyed a reputation as a billionaire mogul at the helm of a business that bears his family name. Mr. Boulos has been profiled as a tycoon by the world’s media, telling a reporter in October that his company is worth billions.... In fact, records show that Mr. Boulos has spent the past two decades selling trucks and heavy machinery in Nigeria for a company his father-in-law controls. He is chief executive of the company, SCOA Nigeria PLC, which made a profit of less than $66,000 last year, corporate filings show. There is no indication in corporate documents that Mr. Boulos, a Lebanese-American whose son is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Tiffany, is a man of significant wealth as a result of his businesses. The truck dealership is valued at about $865,000 at its current share price. Mr. Boulos’s stake, according to securities filings, is worth $1.53. As for Boulos Enterprises, the company that has been called his family business in The Financial Times and elsewhere, a company officer there said it is owned by an unrelated Boulos family. Mr. Boulos will advise on one of the world’s most complicated and conflict-wracked regions — a region that Mr. Boulos said this week that he has not visited in years." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The Times headline calls Boulos "a small-time truck salesman." Donald Trump calls him a "dealmaker" and a “highly respected leader in the business world, with extensive experience on the international scene.” While I will agree that a small-time truck salesman must make deals and can be highly-respected. But a leader in the business world? Seems a bit of a stretch. In fairness to Boulos, it's entirely possible that the reason his company's profits were so low is that he and his father-in-law skimmed millions off the top.
Christina Wilkie of CNBC: "The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday charged global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald with violating laws related to regulatory disclosures by so-called blank-check companies before they raise money from the public. Cantor’s chairman and CEO, Howard Lutnick, was recently nominated by ... Donald Trump to lead the Commerce Department. Lutnick is co-chair of Trump’s transition team. Cantor agreed to settle the SEC’s charges by agreeing to pay a $6.75 million civil penalty and agreeing to not violate the securities laws at issue in the case. The firm did not admit or deny the charges...." MB: Oh, there's a way to eliminate fines for violating regulatory laws. Just repeal or ignore the laws! Or the agencies that enforce them! ~~~
⭐ ~~~ Party Like It's 1929 All Over Again. Alex Lang of the Independent: "Donald Trump’s transition team has reportedly looked at ways to shrink or eliminate banking oversight - a move that could have dramatic impacts on everyday Americans and protecting their money. In interviews with candidates to oversee the banking sector, Trump advisers and DOGE - the advisory Department of Government Efficiency - officials have asked if the president-elect can abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to the Wall Street Journal. Trump’s team has also asked if the FDIC could be absorbed into the Treasury Department. Any move to eliminate the FDIC would require Congressional approval. But, if it were to happen, it would be a massive shakeup in the industry. The FDIC was created during the Great Depression. It is designed to help bulk up faith in the nation’s banking system. Most people know the agency as it insures deposits in banks up to $250,000." ~~~
~~~ Marie: So the worst of both worlds: (1) inflation guaranteed because of tariffs, & (2) you'll have to keep your money under the mattress, where it will lose value every day. I don't see how fatcat bankers would think eliminating the FDIC would benefit them. Anyhow, major financial institutions will fail and the economy will collapse. Other than that, great idea!
Another Trumpy Conspiracy Theory Bites the Dust. Glenn Thrush & Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "More than two dozen F.B.I. informants were in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, but contrary to widespread conspiracy theories, bureau officials did not order anyone to break the law as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol that day, according to a report by a Justice Department watchdog released on Thursday. After a nearly four-year investigation, the department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, also determined that the F.B.I. had not stationed any undercover agents in the crowd that gathered at the Capitol to disrupt the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory over Donald J. Trump in the 2020 election. In his nearly 90-page report, Mr. Horowitz said the bureau 'undertook significant efforts to identify domestic terrorism subjects' who planned to travel to the Washington area on Jan. 6. But he criticized its leaders for failing to recognize the potential dangers posed by the rioters before they descended on the city. Moreover, he specifically chided the F.B.I.’s top ranks for failing to follow through on their promise to canvass their field offices for intelligence on potential threats after the 2020 election." (The link to the report embedded in the story is to a DOJ webpage, not to a NYT page, so it's free.) Politico's story is here.
GOP's Pet Biden-Corruption Fabulist to Go to Prison. Perry Stein of the Washington Post: "The FBI informant accused of lying about the Biden family’s business dealings has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, admitting that he concocted a tale of President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden accepting bribes in exchange for protecting a Ukrainian energy company. The defendant, Alexander Smirnov, will also plead guilty to multiple tax charges, according to the agreement filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday morning. Special counsel David Weiss charged Smirnov in February with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.... In November, prosecutors indicted him again on tax charges.... As part of the plea agreement filed Thursday — which still needs to be reviewed by a judge — prosecutors recommended that Smirnov be sentenced to 48 to 72 months in prison.
"The agreement brings to a close an ugly chapter in which Republicans in Congress pinned allegations of Biden family corruption largely on claims Smirnov made to FBI agents in 2020 — claims that Smirnov now admits were lies. Again and again, lawmakers repeated these and other accusations about the Biden family, at the same time saying that the Justice Department and FBI were not aggressively prosecuting the Bidens and other Democrats.... Parts of Smirnov’s tale emerged in FBI documents trumpeted by congressional Republicans, even as his identity remained unknown on Capitol Hill — and his claims unvetted."
Tobi Raji of the Washington Post: "A bill that would create dozens of new federal judgeships across the country received final approval in Congress on Thursday morning, setting up a likely veto from President Joe Biden even as his administration pushes to confirm his final nominees to fill existing judicial vacancies.... The White House announced this week that Biden would veto the bill, and leading Democratic lawmakers who had supported it are questioning it as well, wary of handing ... Donald Trump a trove of new federal judicial vacancies to fill once he takes office."
Annie Correal of the New York Times: "... a burial ground for enslaved people has been discovered at Andrew Jackson’s home in Nashville, known as the Hermitage, the Andrew Jackson Foundation announced this week. The brash and divisive seventh U.S. president, whose portrait hung in the Oval Office during ... Donald J. Trump’s first term, was known to have owned, along with his son, more than 300 enslaved people before the Civil War."
Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "Before the two-year marine heat wave that ended in 2016, Alaska had an estimated 8 million common murres — a quarter of the world’s population — spread across abundant colonies in the Gulf of Alaska and the Eastern Bering Sea. These black-and-white seabirds nest in dense clusters among shoreline cliffs during the summer months and then head to the ocean the rest of the year to feast on schools of small fish such as capelin and sand lance, herring and krill. Some populations of such forage fish collapsed during the heat wave as temperatures in the north Pacific spiked by 2.5 to 3 degrees Celsius above normal. Many predators that rely on them suffered.... The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ... found that more than half of Alaska’s common murres died — some 4 million birds — in what they described as the largest mortality event of any non-fish vertebrate wildlife species reported during the modern era. The killing was an order of magnitude larger, she said, than the hundreds of thousands of murres that perished in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska."
In yesterday's Conversation, we had some discussion about the structural problems in our socio-political system that have led us to this perilous point in our national history. Here's a part of the overall problem: ~~~
~~~ Dan Froomkin of Press Watch: "The nation’s biggest, most important news organizations failed in their biggest, most important task in 2024. The whole reason the press is free in this constitutional democracy of ours, after all, is to create an informed electorate. And this one decidedly was not.... Why wasn’t the media more aggressive about fighting disinformation and advancing democracy?... Why don’t working-class voters pay as much attention to traditional media anymore?...
The answer to both questions is the same: It’s the business model ... that singularly values affluent customers. And that business model affects everything they do.... The advertisers want to connect with the affluent, not the working class. The rich can afford subscriptions.... The marketing? It’s directed at people with disposable income.... That means a tone that is effete, cautious, careful not to offend, and almost never outraged. That means avoiding anything that could conceivably be seen as partisan, for fear of alienating the affluent or the advertisers.... Nothing too antagonistic to corporate power. In short, nothing too populist." Thanks to RAS for the link. ~~~
~~~ Froomkin goes on in Part II to describe what he considers an ideal, non-profit news organization, one that was accessible, explanatory, committed to fighting disinformation, & crusading. After Froomkin details what he means here, he writes: "So how do we get this ideal newsroom? The easiest, quickest way would be for Jeff Bezos to turn the Washington Post – and an endowment — over to an independent nonprofit with a board of esteemed, public-minded journalists. That would be a good start. Another possibility: ProPublica – the wildly successful nonprofit investigative news organization – could spin off its Washington bureau and start doing non-investigative work as well.... Any solution inevitably involves philanthropy...."
~~~ Marie: Say, what are the odds of Jeff Bezos giving away/relinquishing control of his newspaper? Therein lies the structural problem. Who are philanthropists? Oh, they're rich people. Multi-millionaires and billionaires. Those who aren't ultra-rich but might give to independent journalistic enterprises are likely to be well-educated. You know, the elite. The people who need the information Froomkin recommends are not in a position or of a mood to financially support informative political journalism. Hop on a NYC subway that goes to the outer boroughs, and you'll see what I mean: the straphangers (who may not be wealthy but who are, on the whole, better-educated than the average American) are reading a tabloid, possibly a Murdoch tabloid.
~~~~~~~~~~
Kentucky. David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department announced an agreement Thursday with the city of Louisville on a federal oversight plan that will require the local police department to make sweeping changes aimed at curbing excessive force and racial discrimination. Authorities said the 242-page consent decree, which will be submitted to a federal judge for approval, mandates that the Louisville Police Department pursue changes to use-of-force policies, officer training and supervision, the handling of search warrants and officer wellness initiatives under the supervision of a federal monitor. The plan emerged more than 4½ years after a Louisville officer fatally shot Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, during a nighttime raid on her apartment in March 2020, an incident that helped spark nationwide social justice protests. One former officer who participated in the raid and another who helped falsify the search warrant were convicted on federal charges related to the raid, while two others are under indictment." (The embedded link is to a DOJ document, not a WashPo doc.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Syria. The Washington Post's live updates of developments Friday in Syria are here: "A growing swell of diplomatic action is focused on the transition of power in Syria in the wake of the sudden collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime last week, along with broader de-escalation across the Middle East. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday in Ankara, the second day of meetings that reflect the central role Turkey will play in the weeks to come as the United States and its allies seek an inclusive and orderly transition of power. Turkey backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the assault that ultimately toppled Assad, and reopened its embassy in Damascus on Thursday. Blinken has repeatedly pushed for an inclusive Syrian transition this week in his visits to Turkey and Jordan, a call echoed by the Group of Seven nations in a joint statement saying they would back a 'credible, inclusive, and non-sectarian governance' in Syria. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres also echoed those calls, at the same time calling on Israel to refrain from taking additional military moves there, saying Israel’s attacks on Syrian targets this week represented 'extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.' Israel has said that its attacks were designed to prevent weapons from ending up in the wrong hands. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, in the Middle East for visits to Israel, Qatar and Egypt, echoed that defense on Thursday.”
15 Comments
Reader Comments (15)
When I was a young boy already in awe of the wonders of science, picturing myself someday in the future making ever greater discoveries that would cure even more of the world's ills, I sure never thought the world would get to this place. Never. Ever.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/health/aaron-siri-rfk-jr-vaccines.html
A vaccine denying health minister.
Pardons for insurrectionists.
An FBI to protect criminals.
"War is peace.....ignorance is strength....freedom is slavery..."
Orwell did his best to warn us.
But it did turn out that for one of our political parties ignorance IS strength.
After the new leader of the Department of Health and Human
Services rids the country of mandatory vaccinations, it's going
to the survival of the fittest.
Guess who the fittest is goin' to be. It'll be the ones who have the
vaccines against things like polio, pneumonia, etc. etc.
Too bad no one has come up with a vaccine against stupidity.
ProPublica
"The FDA Hasn’t Inspected This Drug Factory After 7 Recalls for the Same Flaw, 1 Potentially Deadly
So the danger was obvious in May, when Indian drugmaker Glenmark Pharmaceuticals recalled nearly 47 million capsules for a dire flaw: The extended-release medication wasn’t dissolving properly, a defect that could lead to a perilous spike in potassium. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed it the most serious kind of recall, a defective drug that had the potential to kill people.
At the time of the recall, the FDA, which is charged with protecting Americans from unsafe drugs, was already on notice about troubles at Glenmark.
The Mumbai-based company had four recalls in the previous eight months and would have two more in following months, all for the same dangerous tendency for pills to dissolve improperly. All the faulty medications were made at the same Glenmark factory in central India, government records show.
Yet the FDA hasn’t stopped Glenmark from shipping pills from the factory to American patients. Nor did it send investigators to the Indian facility to figure out what had gone wrong. Its last inspection of the plant was more than four years ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic."
Marshall Project
"Hospitals Gave Patients Meds During Childbirth, Then Reported Them For Positive Drug Tests
Mothers were reported after they were given medications used routinely for pain or in epidurals, to reduce anxiety or to manage blood pressure during cesarean sections.
Amairani Salinas was 32 weeks pregnant with her fourth child in 2023 when doctors at a Texas hospital discovered that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. As they prepped her for an emergency cesarean section, they gave her midazolam, a benzodiazepine commonly prescribed to keep patients calm. A day later, the grieving mother was cradling her stillborn daughter when a social worker stopped by her room to deliver another devastating blow: Salinas was being reported to child welfare authorities. A drug test had turned up traces of benzodiazepine — the very medication that staff had administered before wheeling her into surgery.
In a time of increasing surveillance and criminalization of pregnant women since the end of Roe v. Wade, the hospital reports have prompted calls to the police, child welfare investigations and even the removal of children from their parents."
Birds of a feather
"Musk’s Foundation Gave Away Less Money Than Required in 2023
Private foundations must donate 5 percent of their assets every year. Elon Musk’s enormous charity missed that standard for three consecutive years.
New tax filings show that the Musk Foundation fell $421 million short of the amount it was required to give away in 2023. Now, Mr. Musk has until the end of the year to distribute that money, or he will be required to pay a sizable penalty to the Internal Revenue Service.
Mr. Musk, in his new role as a leader of what President-elect Donald J. Trump is calling the Department of Government Efficiency, is promising to downsize and rearrange the entire federal government — including the I.R.S. But the tax records show he has struggled to meet a basic I.R.S. rule that is required of all charity leaders, no matter how small or big their foundations."
Waldman is at it again:
https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/everything-is-awful
And he's always interesting.
This one reminded me of a phrase I first encountered in high school: the poverty of rising expectations, which is closely akin to de Tocqueville's much earlier "revolution of rising expectations."
IOW, people want more than they get...and thoughtlessly lash out at the people who haven't provided it.
Will be interesting to see how satisfied they will be with the reign of economic, medical, and social ignorance they are about to experience.
Crypto
"Texas House introduces bill to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve"
ProPublica
"UnitedHealth Is Strategically Limiting Access to Critical Treatment for Kids With Autism"
I think Trump is going to be able to afford to have his tanks at his inauguration this time. And we don't have people around to tell him no this time. So the inauguration will probably end up looking North Korea style.
Marie: Why would fatcat bankers want to ditch the FDIC?
I don't know. But am always willing to guess.
1. Banks pay the premiums to insure depositors. The FDIC holds those funds against claims, but also would pay out if claims exceed premium funds.
2. Banks often claim that they can self-regulate (everything) better than the gummint can regulate them. If you replace the FDIC with a deal that says that banks self-insure, they would keep the premium and make money off the retained cash.
3. Experience in the past three decades tells bankers that they can expect bailouts, and no jail time, when they fail to ensure that they can actually cover lost deposits. The moral hazard is just too much for them to resist.
4. Republicans live to give more money to the Rich. So they (all three branches as of 1/20) would go along with jeopardizing your deposits in order to give more cash to finance CEOs and at the same time reduce their legal liability for fiduciary accountability.
Or, they just don't like filling out those FDIC audit forms.
Or, because it was a New Deal solution to a major problem.
I don't know but am always willing to guess.
The banks also know that many people make most of their payments digitally or by card these days. That is harder to do and much more work if you don't have a bank account and have to use cash to pay all your bills. The over reliance on non-cash payments have strengthened the banks' importance and their power over the public. And everything Patrick said.
Hello from the epicenter of Dronegate. Boy, I am so sick of this stuff. I don't know why the feds don't release what they have-- They just said that they know nothing and also they said the drones pose no danger. Huh? How do they know that if they don't know their beginnings or endings, what they are "studying" in order to tell people it's no big deal, and it makes no sense. It is really grand knowing that the better government is not doing their jobs, heading into the worst possible government. So great.
I guess we should keep our eyes on the sky just in case the unknown vehicles fall on our heads, or are spying on us for some insane reason.
Maybe governmental idiocy is now in the water systems, brought on by incoming yahoos who poison us in anticipation of great wealth and renown. I guess the higher ups don't appreciate the difficulties of down-ballot mayors etc having to calm fears and answer questions. Maybe everyone in charge is partying for the holidays...
Just wait, Trump is going to claim that he will solve the drone
episode on day one.
But that's about 5 weeks away. A lot can happen in 5 weeks.
Re FDIC: I forgot 2(a). When the banks "self insure," they will charge the depositors "insurance fees", and then lay off the risk with off-shore reinsurance, unregulated.
Seems to me the FDIC talk is a lead in to the Trumpie crypto talk... easy scam on folk thinking it'll protect their money... hah!