White Collar looting

Unintentional humor

Donald Trump visits Puerto Rico, tells beleaguered hurricane residents to "have a good time" and then tosses paper towels into the crowd.

Tells them they are lucky because they haven't suffered "a real catastrophe like Katrina."

You just can't make this shit up. When will this national nightmare end?

Nine Reasons Trump’s Tax Plan Will Hurt You

A Scheme of the Super-Rich, by the Super-Rich, for the Super-Rich

By David Cay Johnston, DCReport Editor-in-Chief

Donald Trump says his tax plan is “a revolutionary change, and the biggest winners will be the everyday American workers as jobs start pouring into our country, as companies start competing for American labor and as wages start going up at levels that you haven’t seen in many years.”

No, it’s not.

It’s just another con job from the most successful con artist in history.

Below are nine examples of how this is a plan of the super-rich, by the super-rich and for the super-rich. And unless you are super-rich, this plan will badly hurt you.

You’ll pay high tax rates. The 10% and 15% tax rates, paid by most Americans, will be replaced with higher rates—12% and 25% rates. This helps the poor and middle class how? Your marginal tax rate would rise by either 20% or 67%.

Even the government’s own numbers show refugees are an economic plus

Since the numbers don’t fit Trump’s bias, the study has been stuck in a drawer.

By Conover Kennard 

Trump administration officials who were under pressure from the White House scrapped a study which found that refugees had brought in more government revenue overall than they had cost in benefits, the New York Times reports.

The Trump administration has been unable to rationalize its move to reduce the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year, so it rejected a study by the Department of Health and Human Services which concluded that refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past ten years than they cost.

The New York Times reports:

The draft report, which was obtained by The New York Times, contradicts a central argument made by advocates of deep cuts in refugee totals as President Trump faces an Oct. 1 deadline to decide on an allowable number. The issue has sparked intense debate within his administration as opponents of the program, led by Mr. Trump’s chief policy adviser, Stephen Miller, assert that continuing to welcome refugees is too costly and raises concerns about terrorism.

Sad but true

For more cartoons by Ted Rall, CLICK HERE.

Ask the founders

2017 hurricanes are a taste of the future

Climate scientist describes physics behind worsening weather

David L. Chandler | MIT News Office

Donald Trump's answer to hurricane destruction: dedicate a golf trophy
in "honor" of 2017 hurricane victims. Master of empathy, that one.

In a detailed talk about the history and the underlying physics of hurricanes and tropical cyclones, MIT Professor Kerry Emanuel explained why climate change will cause such storms to become much stronger and reach peak intensity further north, heightening their potential impacts on human lives in coming years.

“Climate change, if unimpeded, will greatly increase the probability of extreme events,” such as the three record-breaking hurricanes of recent weeks, he said.

In Houston, Hurricane Harvey, which devastated parts of the Texas coastline and produced more total rainfall than any U.S. hurricane on record, would have been considered a one-in-2,000-years event during the 20th century, according to the best available reconstructions of the past record of such storms, Emanuel said. 

But in the 21st century, that probability could drop to one in 100 years, given the likely trajectory of climate change conditions. Hurricane Irma, with its record-breaking duration as a Category 5 storm, will go from being a one-in-800-years event in the area of the Caribbean that suffered a direct hit, to a one-in-80-years event by the end of this century, he said.

UPDATE: gun shares rise in price on Wall Street in aftermath of mass killing in Las Vegas

Political reaction from area political leaders

By Will Collette

U{DATE (1:15 PM EDT). Bloomberg is reporting a sharp spike in the prices for gun manufacturers shares. Bloomberg calls this a predictable pattern after a mass shooting. 

The casualty figures have been revised upwards and now stand at 58 dead and 515 wounded.

News reports from the scene of America’s worst mass shooting to date offer these facts. 64 year old Stephen Paddock (photo at left) fired on a crowd attending a Las Vegas country music concert with automatic weapons. He killed at least 50 and sent more than 400 to area hospitals.

He had been camped out in a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino that overlooked the concert site. The 64-year-old Paddock was found dead in a hotel room, police said. 

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, the city’s main newspaper, quoted Paddock’s brother Eric Paddock, 55, of Orlando, Florida:

“We have no idea how this happened. It’s like an asteroid just fell on top of our family… There is no reason we can imagine why Stephen would do something like this... Just no reason, no warning… As far as we knew, he had enough money to live the rest of his life in comfort.”

Donald Trump responded with a Tweet of course:

“My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!”

Other leaders had a more substantive response, including Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Murphy has led Congressional efforts, such as they are, to control automatic weapons used at most of America’s mass killings.

Another reason to be careful when using Facebook

Trump is trying to make Facebook give him personal info of people who criticize him

By Tim Abel 

Lawyers for the Trump administration have served Facebook with three separate search warrants, demanding the private account information of users who could be described in their words as “anti-administration activists who have spoken out at organized events, and who are generally very critical of this administration’s policies.”

Read: Trump critics, and this has the potential to affect thousands of Facebook users.

Fortunately, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion to quash the warrants on Thursday on behalf of three Facebook users. 

“What is particularly chilling about these warrants is that anti-administration political activists are going to have their political associations and views scrutinized by the very administration they are protesting,” said ACLU attorney Scott Michelman.

Common sense tax policy

Why We Must Raise Taxes on Corporations and the Wealthy, Not Lower Them

By Robert Reich

When Barack Obama was president, congressional Republicans were deficit hawks. They opposed almost everything Obama wanted to do by arguing it would increase the federal budget deficit.

But now that Republicans are planning giant tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, they’ve stopped worrying about deficits.

Senate Republicans have agreed to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, which means giant budget deficits.

Unless Republicans want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and defense, that is.  Even if Republicans eliminated everything else in the federal budget – from education to Meals on Wheels – they wouldn’t have nearly enough to pay for tax cuts of the magnitude Republicans are now touting.

But Republicans won’t cut Social Security or Medicare because the programs are overwhelmingly popular. And rather than cut defense, Senate Republicans want to increase defense spending by a whopping $80 billion (enough to fund free public higher education that Bernie Sanders proposed in last year’s Democratic primary, which deficit hawks in both parties mocked as being ridiculously expensive).

There’s also the cleanup from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, estimated to be least $190 billion. And Trump’s “wall” – which the Department of Homeland Security estimates will cost about $22 billion.

Oh, and don’t forget infrastructure. It’s just about the only major spending bill that could be passed by bipartisan majorities in both houses.

Given the state of the nation’s highways, byways, public transit, water treatment facilities, and sewers, it’s desperately needed. Trump campaigned on spending $1 trillion on it.

So how do Republicans propose to pay for any of this, and a big tax cut for corporations and the wealthy – without exploding the federal deficit?

Easy. Just pretend the tax cuts will cause the economy to grow so fast – 3 percent a year on average – that they’ll pay for themselves, and the benefits will trickle down to everyone else.

Donald Trump vs a cat

Trump's Week 36 in review

The problem with cleaners

Antibiotics, biocidal cleaners may spread multidrug resistance in MRSA

American Society for Microbiology

Antibiotic use on people or pets, and use of biocidal cleaning products such as bleach, are associated with multidrug resistance in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in the home. 

This contamination of the home environment may contribute to reinfection of both humans and animals with MRSA, and to subsequent failure of treatment. The research was published September 22nd in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Multidrug resistance to MRSA and reinfection with MRSA, said corresponding author Jonathan Shahbazian, MPH, were the most important in this study. The study also showed that whether used in humans or companion animals, the antibiotic clindamycin was not associated with the risk of multi-drug resistant bacteria in the home.

Stand up

Long sitting periods may be just as harmful as daily total

Columbia University Medical Center

A new study finds that it isn't just the amount of time spent sitting, but also the way in which sitting time is accumulated during the day, that can affect risk of early death.

The study, published online in Annals of Internal Medicine, found that adults who sit for one to two hours at a time without moving have a higher mortality rate than adults who accrue the same amount of sedentary time in shorter bouts.

"We tend to think of sedentary behavior as just the sheer volume of how much we sit around each day," said Keith Diaz, PhD, associate research scientist in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and lead investigator of the study. "But previous studies have suggested that sedentary patterns -- whether an individual accrues sedentary time through several short stretches or fewer long stretches of time -- may have an impact on health."

Is there anyone in the Trump regime who DOESN’T cheat taxpayers?

Taxpayers paid for European Vacation for Trump’s Veterans Affairs Chief

BY COLIN TAYLOR 

The Trump administration’s growing misuse of taxpayer money scandal continues to grow by the day. 

The Washington Post is now reporting that President Trump’s Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin, had the American taxpayer pick up the tab for his recent ten-day vacation in Europe.

While he did meet with British and Danish officials about veterans’ healthcare initiatives, he also spent “at least half” of his time sightseeing and shopping with his wife, enjoying a Wimbledon tennis game and touring historic sites.

The taxpayer also picked up the bill for his wife:

The agency said Friday that the government paid airfare for Merle Bari, Shulkin’s wife, because she was traveling on “approved invitational orders.” The government also provided a per diem for her meals, the agency said.

To add insult to injury, this trip was taken two weeks after he signed a memo ordering reviews of all business trips by VA officials to determine if it was “essential.”