Starting at the top

The backlash against the bullies

By Robert Reich

Why are so many women now speaking out about the sexual abuses they’ve experienced for years? Is there anything unique about the time we’re now living through that has encouraged them to end their silence?

I can’t help think their decisions are part of something that’s happening throughout much of American society right now – a backlash against what has been the growing domination of America by powerful and wealthy men (and a few women) who came to believe they can do whatever they want to do, to whomever they choose.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy,” said Donald Trump in the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape.

Sexual assault is one obvious assertion of dominance. Other forms include economic bullying and the stoking of bigotry to gain political power.

Trump epitomizes it all.

As a businessman he stiffed contractors, used bankruptcy to avoid paying creditors, and wielded lawsuits to threaten critics.

As a politician he gained traction by alleging Obama was born in Africa, Mexicans are rapists and murders, and Muslims must be kept out of America.

Don't look behind the curtain

For more cartoons by Ruben Bolling, CLICK HERE.

How Trump And Congress Are Erasing The Last 20 Years

They’re using an obscure 1990s law to wipe out regulations they don't like

By Jillian S. Ambroz

The Republicans of the 115^th Congress and Trump have not accomplished much in the way of landmark legislation this year, unless you count overturning President Barack Obama’s achievements. And on that front, they’ve been prolific.

In Trump’s first four months of office, he and Congress have completely eliminated 14 rules issued Obama—rules ranging from things like protecting Americans from coal waste in drinking water to blocking individuals with severe mental illness from buying firearms—using the Congressional Review Act.

And lest you think that headache of a legislation that had only been wielded once in 21 years before now might be going away anytime soon, think again.

Congress has targeted at least 31 rules in just 11 months, including the ones that have been nullified already, according to a report prepared by former senior staff member of the Congressional Research Service, Curtis W. Copeland. Those that have not been disapproved have been introduced to the House and await further action.

It’s not enough to just remove the rules, this Republican-led Congress and Trump want to nullify these acts completely, as if they never took place.

How much will we pay for something?

Depends on the value of what we've just encountered

New York University

The value of the products we encounter influences how much we'll subsequently pay for other items, new neuroscience research has found. The results point to a previously undetected factor that affects consumer behavior.

The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that when we come across low-valued items, we're willing to pay more for products we later face; by contrast, when we see high-valued items, we'll pay less for products we view in the future.

"How people value an item is not a simple function of that item alone," explains Kenway Louie, a research assistant professor at New York University's Center for Neural Science and one of the authors of the paper. 

"The valuation process is inherently relative, with people valuing the same exact item more or less depending on the environment they recently inhabited. Our study shows that rewards cannot be evaluated in isolation, but instead must be viewed through the lens of the recent past."

It's been long established that our brains process information by relying on comparisons rather than on absolute judgments. 

Storm-weary Puerto Ricans are leaving their neglected island for the mainland in the tens of thousands.

And they’re pissed, spelling trouble for Republicans in Florida and elsewhere.

BY PETER MELLADO

Maybe they ran out of paper towels.

President Trump’s handling of federal recovery efforts following natural disasters has been a study in political calculation. 

Hurricanes Irma and Harvey devastated Florida and Texas, respectively, but the government’s response was largely praised. 

The response to Hurricane Maria that leveled Puerto Rico, however, has been widely derided.

Supplies and personnel were slow to reach the island.  Volunteers who did arrive found no organized relief effort on the ground in motion and stood around for days with nothing to do. 

Today, nearly two months since Maria made landfall, most of the island remains without power, and authorities continue to struggle to bring clean water and other basic services back online.

Despite the President’s insistence everything had gone smoothly – even famously giving himself a “10 out of 10” – it was clear to anyone willing to look that the government treated Puerto Ricans suffering from the devastation of Hurricane Maria with much less urgency, energy and care than Floridians and Texans following Irma and Harvey. 

Trump’s blame-gaming, intransigence, and refusal to admit any shortcomings in the face of overwhelming evidence only exacerbated the situation.

Paper volleys continue on Charlestown water scheme, power plant

More Motions Filed in Burrillville Power-Plant, Charlestown water scheme Debate

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

New motions have been filed and more hearings could be scheduled ahead of the final stage of Clear River Energy Center meetings that are expected to begin in December.

The next public hearing, scheduled for Nov. 27 in front of the Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB), will address the following motions:

A request by the Tribal Council of the Narragansett Indian Tribe to join the application process as an intervenor. 

The nine-member council says it was excluded from an agreement made by tribal leaders to sell cooling water from its Charlestown reservation to Invenergy Thermal Development. 

Members of the Narragansett Indian Tribe have expressed opposition to the power plant and outrage that the water agreement was made without approval from the council.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The EFSB formal hearing in Charlestown is currently scheduled for December 5th at Charlestown Elementary. On November 20 and 21, Charlestown filed motions with the Board to (a) request a postponement, if not of the hearing, then of the related filings and testimony by the town and (b) request state funding for research and analysis of the latest filings by Invenergy. 

The town cites the fact that only recently did Invenergy file new notices and paperwork and thus Charlestown has not had a fair chance to carefully review that material. - Will Collette

Who's offended?

For more cartoons by Mike Luckovich, CLICK HERE.

Groper in Chief

Get your damned flu shot. And your kids, too

Flu vaccine prevents hospitalization in children, study shows

Public Health Ontario

Children vaccinated against influenza are significantly less likely to experience serious complications from the virus that could land them in hospital, new research from Public Health Ontario (PHO) and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) has found.

Published in the Nov. 17 issue of PLOS ONE, the study found that young children who were fully vaccinated against influenza saw their risk of hospitalization due to influenza infection drop by 60 per cent overall. 

Even for children partially vaccinated against influenza (i.e., those who received one dose of influenza vaccine during their first influenza season), risk of hospitalization due to influenza dropped by 39 per cent.

Economics of healthy eating

When Vegetables Are Closer in Price to Chips, People Eat Healthier, Drexel Study Finds

By Frank Otto, Drexel University

When healthier food, like vegetables and dairy products, is pricier compared to unhealthy items, like salty snacks and sugary sweets, Americans are significantly less likely to have a high-quality diet, a new Drexel University study found. 

The research, led by David Kern, PhD, an adjunct faculty member at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health, and Amy Auchincloss, PhD, an associate professor in the school, sought to find out the real effect that price difference has on the quality of diets in the United States. 

“We found that, on average, healthier perishable foods were nearly twice as expensive as unhealthy packaged foods: 60 cents vs. 31 cents per serving, respectively,” said Kern, lead author of the study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.  

“As the gap between neighborhood prices of healthier and unhealthier foods got wider, study participants had lower odds of having a healthier diet.”

What will it take to stop Trump from killing us all?

Experts Warn It Would Take More Than One General to Thwart "Illegal" Nuclear Strike

By Jon Queally, staff writer for Common Dreams

While a top U.S. nuclear military commander made global headlines after he stated plainly on Saturday that he would resist any order from President Donald Trump that he deemed "illegal," including an unlawful directive to carry out a nuclear strike, experts warn that individual objections such as that could be overcome by a commander-in-chief determined to launch an attack.

Speaking at a security convention in Nova Scotia, Canada, Gen. John Hyten, head of U.S. Strategic Command, said that his role in the event of the president ordering a nuclear strike would be to offer both strategic and legal guidance, but that he would not betray the laws of war simply because Trump ordered it.

"I provide advice to the President," Hyten answered when asked how he would respond to a nuclear attack being ordered.

"He'll tell me what to do, and if it's illegal, guess what's going to happen? I'm gonna say, 'Mr. President, that's illegal.' Guess what he's going to do? He's going to say, 'What would be legal?' And we'll come up with options of a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that's the way it works. It's not that complicated."

But is it that simple?

Republicans in Congress Think You’re an Idiot

Prove them wrong

Robert Borosage

Republicans in Congress must believe voters are dolts. 

Nothing else can explain the tax bill that just passed the House with 227 Republican votes and no Democrats.

No rational person would make the choices that are in this bill. 

Even granting that big GOP donors want this legislation, and that cutting taxes and spending are the core Republican mission, this bill is ridiculous.

Anyone who voted for it should be drummed out of Congress simply for the insult.

Consider the following facts:

At a time when inequality has reached Gilded Age extremes, the Republicans will give fully one-half of the tax cuts to the top 1 percent. That’s not an economic strategy. That’s a plutocrats’ raid on the Treasury.

Corporate profits are near record highs, and corporate taxes are declining as share of federal income, but Republicans hope to lard Big Business with the largest one-time cut in corporate taxes ever. 

Three-quarters of the benefits of the $1.4 trillion bill go to businesses—and those are permanent. The remainder that goes to individuals will end in eight years when Senate Republicans get done with it.

Republicans actually voted to raise taxes on 36 percent of working and middle-class families. By 2023, only 40 percent of Americans would get a tax cut. The Senate bill is worse, raising taxes on families earning $10,000–75,000 over the next decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Citibank, Wells Fargo, Apple, Pfizer, and many others have for years successfully evaded paying taxes on $2.6 trillion in profits by cooking their books to report the profits as earned in foreign tax havens. Yet Republicans want to reward the companies for their past tax evasion and provide them a permanent discounted tax rate for tax-haven profits in the future.

MAGA gagger

Why Donald Trump LOVES the GOP tax bill

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