Trump's lies about his friendship with Jeffrey debunked

He doesn't want you to see this one, either.

 

Alarming Study: Smoking Causes Brain Shrinkage

“It Sounds Bad, and It Is Bad”

By WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE 

Smoking shrinks the brain, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. 

The good news is that quitting smoking prevents further loss of brain tissue — but still, stopping smoking doesn’t restore the brain to its original size. Since people’s brains naturally lose volume with age, smoking effectively causes the brain to age prematurely, the researchers said.

The findings, published in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, help explain why smokers are at high risk of age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

Evaluating the truthfulness of fake news through online searches increases the chances of believing misinformation

Surprising study results show limits of using recommended steps to debunk false content

New York University

Conventional wisdom suggests that searching online to evaluate the veracity of misinformation would reduce belief in it. But a new study by a team of researchers shows the opposite occurs: Searching to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing misinformation.

The findings, which appear in the journal Nature, offer insights into the impact of search engines' output on their users -- a relatively under-studied area.

Charlestown Citizens Alliance blames others for its own mistakes

Van Slyke spins the facts about Charlestown

By Deborah Carney, Charlestown Town Council President

Bonnie Van Slyke’s letter to the editor (“Attacks against Charlestown staff need to stop,” Dec. 15) is her latest attempt to try and save the Charlestown Citizens Alliance’s crumbling legacy.  She won’t let the facts stand in the way of spinning her tall tales.

Be honest Bonnie, the CCA made mistakes. Stop trying to convince everyone that things in Charlestown were perfect under the CCA leadership. They were not. As issues come to light, this current Town Council is not sweeping them under the rug. We are addressing them, in public, as we should.

The buck stops with the Town Council, not the staff. The issue is not that there was a mistake, the issue is how you handle the mistake. The CCA handled mistakes by trying to convince people that everything was fine when it was not. Candidates endorsed by Charlestown Residents United face these issues in a transparent manner.

As to the assertions in her letter:

I never said the staff violated the Impact Fee Ordinance.  I said the town violated the ordinance.  That falls on past councils. CCA supporters can claim the impact fees have been handled properly, but no one can seem to find the required documentation for expenditures of this money.

The issue of the legality of an elected Planning Commission has been raised in the past but never decided by the courts.  A recent change in Rhode Island state law provides for applicants to appeal decisions of the Planning Commission directly to the Superior Court. It is highly likely that this issue will once again be raised by an applicant aggrieved by a Planning Commission decision. 

The Charlestown Affordable Housing Commission raised the issue of applications for Accessory Dwelling Units not being accepted by the town and requested the Town Council act upon this matter. The Town Council will hold a public hearing on the ADU ordinance amendments in January.

There was in fact a problem with the payroll, which was evidenced by the fact the council had to transfer a large sum of money to cover the shortfall.  The problem was addressed and corrected, not swept under the rug.

This Town Council is not afraid to discuss town issues in public. Nor will we sweep problems under the rug.  If something is not being done correctly, we will fix it. 

As mistakes come to light, the CCA desperately tries to convince the taxpayers that under their leadership everything was perfect, and they did everything correctly.  They did not.  Stop making statements that aren’t true as you try to divert attention away from what really happened.

To my fellow Charlestown residents, stay tuned, because we have also seen the CCA tall-tale machine spinning with regards to the Ninigret Master Plan Update. The truth will come out on that matter, despite their best efforts to the contrary.

Round and around

By Matt Davies

Yeah, guess which one

Another attempt to explain why people disagree

Rational Riddles: Unpacking the Puzzle of Political Polarization

By PETER DIZIKES, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 

U.S. politics is heavily polarized. 

This is often regarded as a product of irrationality: People can be tribal, are influenced by their peers, and often get information from very different, sometimes inaccurate sources.

Tribalism and misinformation are real enough. But what if people are often acting rationally as well, even in the process of arriving at very different views? 

What if they are not being misled or too emotional, but are thinking logically?

Why Rudy Giuliani can declare bankruptcy while you can’t

He's rich but claims to be broke - and you're not

ROBERT REICH in Robertreich.Substack.Com

Getty Images

Within days of a nearly $150 million judgment against former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for defaming Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the election workers Giuliani falsely claimed stole the 2020 election in Georgia for President Joe Biden, Giuliani filed for bankruptcy.

He thereby shielded himself from having to surrender his assets to fulfill the judgment, at least in the near term.

The long term may be quite long. Freeman and Moss may not see a penny of that judgment for many years, and when they do, it’s likely to be far less than $150 million.

One of the most basic of all questions in a market economy is what to do when someone can’t pay what they owe. The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4) authorizes Congress to enact “uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States.”

Congress has done so repeatedly. In the last few decades, Congress’ changes have reflected the demands of the wealthy, giant corporations, and Wall Street banks, which have made it harder for average people to declare bankruptcy but easier for themselves to do it.

Many people are too broke to go bankrupt. Filing for bankruptcy costs money, as does hiring an attorney (which is the best way to make sure you actually get debt relief). Because attorney fees, like other debts, are wiped out in a bankruptcy, most bankruptcy lawyers require clients to pay in full before filing.

The Big Lie

Voting fraud is demonstrably a trivially small phenomenon

By Mitchell Zimmerman, frequent Progressive Charlestown contributor

Many of those few cases that were prosecuted led to
convictions against Republicans

This article originally appeared in the Washington Post and is reprinted here with permission of the author

The Dec. 21 front-page article “GOP fraud units fail to find a vast voter plot” devastated phony Republican claims of voter fraud by showing that the efforts of right-wingers to generate evidence of significant voting misconduct have failed. 

Voting fraud is demonstrably a trivially small phenomenon. But the article erred in calling these phony efforts a “crackdown on voter fraud” and in referring to the state agencies as “election integrity units.”

Because voter fraud is insignificant, there was nothing to crack down on. The actual purpose of these units is not election integrity but voter suppression. 

They seek to deter people of color, young people and likely Democrats from voting by raising the specter of prosecution for imaginary violations of election law. 

In Florida, for example, many felons whose voting rights have been restored are nonetheless afraid of exercising their constitutional rights because of threats from these units.

Republicans aren’t disappointed by the laughably small number of prosecutions for voting misconduct because the very existence of these units tends to support the “big lie” and because attacking voting rights is now the leading strategy of the Republican Party. I appreciated this article for revealing the emptiness of this excuse.

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Seven ways to beat Trump

 

Rhode Island’s Great Swamp: It’s Not Just For Ogres

Swamps and wetlands sustain fish, birds, and mammals

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

Don't overlook the history of the Great Swamp, site
of the December 19, 1675, massacre of hundreds of 
Narragansett women, children and elders by European
colonizers. Read more HERE.

The state’s swamps aren’t only for ogres, at least at one popular South County hot spot.

Despite their pop-culture reputation as slimy, smelly habitats for all kinds of gross creatures, swamplands are the unsung heroes of the environment, and more plainly, they’re just cool as hell.

Wetlands produce enormous amounts of food to attract an equally enormous amount of species, making them essentially superhighway habitats for a stunning amount of wildlife. Swamps and wetlands sustain everything from fish to plants to birds to insects to mammals. These areas sustain wildlife so well that the Environmental Protection Agency has compared them to rainforests and coral reefs.

And where wildlife goes, so do nature lovers. Longtime residents of the state might be surprised to find out that one of the biggest swamplands in the region is in South Kingstown, nestled between Route 138 to the north and Worden Pond to the south. Aptly named the Great Swamp, it’s been owned and maintained by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management since 1950 as a state management area.

As a management area, the swamp is left mostly undeveloped, and there’s tighter restrictions over what members of the public can do. (DEM has long struggled to eliminate off-road vehicles from its management areas, which are banned.)

As a result, there’s some 2,200 acres of untouched, forested swampland — one of the largest contiguous areas of its kind in the state — primarily cedar and red maple swamp. It makes for beautiful hiking, and there are 6 miles of flat trails between the management area and nearby Worden Pond. Hikers are likely to see a plethora of wildlife, including dozens of possible bird species at any given time of the year, and other mammals such as beavers.

They really add up

US Adults’ Daily Snacks Equal a Full Meal’s Calories

By OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 

Snacks constitute almost a quarter of a day’s calories in U.S. adults and account for about one-third of daily added sugar, a new study suggests.

Researchers analyzing data from surveys of over 20,000 people found that Americans averaged about 400 to 500 calories in snacks a day – often more than what they consumed at breakfast – that offered little nutritional value.

Though dietitians are very aware of Americans’ propensity to snack, “the magnitude of the impact isn’t realized until you actually look at it,” said senior study author Christopher Taylor, professor of medical dietetics in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The Ohio State University.

“Snacks are contributing a meal’s worth of intake to what we eat without it actually being a meal,” Taylor said. 

NRA Bid to End Corruption Probe Fails in New York

New York appeals court rules there is "ample evidence of malfeasance"

JULIA CONLEY

Adam Zyglis

A New York state court will move forward with a case brought by the state against the National Rifle Association, following an appeals court ruling on Thursday that rejected the powerful pro-gun group's claim that the probe violated its First Amendment rights.

A panel of five judges in the Appellate Division in Manhattan unanimously ruled that state Attorney General Letitia James has probable cause to investigate the NRA over allegations that it diverted millions of dollars to fund the lavish lifestyles of executives including Wayne LaPierre, its chief executive officer.

James sued the NRA in August 2020, saying executives also failed to obtain board approval for conflicts of interest and retaliated against whistleblowers who spoke out against allegations of financial misconduct. She is seeking an overhaul of the NRA's leadership, including the removal of LaPierre.

The appeals court said James has provided "ample evidence of malfeasance" at the organization, and has authority to enforce state laws governing nonprofits.

Weidman whines about pressure to come up with Charlestown affordable housing plan

How do you comply with the law when your boss, CCA founder Ruth Platner, hates affordable housing?

by Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

Charlestown Planner Jane Weidman says complying with
the state affordable housing law is "a real pain." Maybe if
she put more time into it, and less time trying to
  cover up shady deals by the Charlestown Citizens
Alliance, she could get it done.

Since last summer, Warwick Planning Director Tom Kravitz has been racing against the clock. That’s why on a recent day he locked himself in an empty office with his laptop and numerous plat maps.

“I spent four of five days, six hours in a row, really plowing through it,” he said.

“It” is the work required to overhaul the city’s municipal code, something Kravitz and his staff of seven have had to do on top of their normal workload in order to comply with state-mandated changes to the city’s zoning, planning, and permitting statutes.

The changes are required by the 13 bills passed by the General Assembly back in June to stimulate the production of more affordable housing across Rhode Island. Among the changes are provisions allowing commercial buildings to be converted to residential use, shortening the review process for plans, and shifting approval power away from local boards to their municipal planners. 

The legislation was hailed as an important step in helping remove bureaucratic hurdles that slow down development in cities and towns in order to address the state’s housing crisis. But it has placed pressure on Rhode Island’s municipal planners, who have to prepare their communities to adopt these changes by Jan. 1.

Kravitz has most of his city’s new zoning rules set. But he said the city will likely need an extra month or two to update ordinances for subdivisions and land development projects.

These are changes many planners didn’t ask for and don’t want — especially the power shift from locally-appointed planning boards to these full-time planners who prefer to work in more of an advisory role.

“This was all thrown at the towns,” said Jane Weidman, the town planner of Charlestown who only has one assistant to help address the planning needs of a 36.5 square mile town of about 8,000 people. “It’s a real pain.”