Cruz Controlled, Con't

Don't look now, but the federal government shuts down without a funding bill in two weeks, and while the last things Republicans running for re-election this year want is a shutdown fight six weeks before a presidential election, our old friend Sen. Ted Cruz isn't one of those on the ballot this time around.  As such, he may be up to his old tricks, this time latching onto control of the internet as his hill to die on.

The Texas Republican senator’s latest crusade is to block an Obama administration plan to give up U.S. oversight of domain names to international supervision, warning in a Senate subcommittee hearing Wednesday that could be a threat to freedom. He warned against giving power to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a private non-profit group based in Los Angeles. 

“Imagine an internet run like China or Russia, that punish and incarcerate those who engage in political dissent,” Cruz said. Earlier on the Senate floor, Cruz said he didn’t want “to tell our children and our children’s children what it was once like when the internet wasn’t censored, wasn’t in the control of the foreign governments."

Cruz and some senior Republicans want to block the transfer as part of the stopgap spending bill required to avoid a government shutdown Oct. 1, although neither party has explicitly threatened to block the measure over the fight. 

The issue drew notice elsewhere in Washington. White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday that Cruz’s position “is, frankly, not really supported by anybody” and called for a spending measure without extra language. In the House, Representative Bill Flores of Texas, head of the influential Republican Study Committee, recommended his chamber move first with a spending measure that should include language blocking the internet transition. 

Republican leaders are hoping to wrap up a deal with Democrats and the White House quickly, but the internet issue is among about a half dozen yet to be resolved, Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune told reporters Tuesday. 

Thune predicted the funding bill would block the internet transition. 

“They’re trying to work out what that would look like, what would be effective in terms of putting the brakes on this,” he told reporters.

If the GOP is willing to shut down the government in a presidential election year over ICANN, then things just might get really interesting in November.  Please proceed, senator.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump is feeling pretty good these days as his message of "normalized" racism and bigotry continues to resonate with Republican voters, in Ohio yesterday he refused to walk back his long-held birther beliefs.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said in an interview here that he remains unwilling to say that President Obama was born in the United States, that he is more bullish than ever on his chances to win and that he is not exploring the launch of a new media company in case he loses the race.

Trump also made a far-from-subtle push — in the interview and in a letter from his doctor released Thursday — to be seen as vigorous and healthy, as his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, returned to the campaign trail after being treated for mild pneumonia.

In the interview, conducted late Wednesday aboard his private plane as it idled on the tarmac here, Trump suggested he is not eager to change his pitch or his positions even as he works to reach out to minority voters, many of whom are deeply offended by his long-refuted suggestion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Trump refused to say whether he believes Obama was born in Hawaii.

“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”

And why would Trump ever answer?  The Basket of Deplorables overwhelmingly believe Barack Obama is secretly Kenyan and never was eligible for the office of President, and there's no public penalty for such outright, overt racism among the voting public.  There are plenty of folks that think being a birther is better than voting for Hillary and they'll gladly vote in November.

Meanwhile, Trump's latest policy nugget is that he'll rid the nation of those awful food safety regulations that keep your kids from munching on broken glass.

In a fact sheet posted online Thursday, the campaign highlighted a number of "specific regulations to be eliminated" under the GOP nominee's economic plan, including what they called the "FDA Food Police." 

“The FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food,” it read.

“The rules govern the soil farmers use, farm and food production hygiene, food packaging, food temperatures and even what animals may roam which fields and when,” the statement continued. "It also greatly increased inspections of food 'facilities,' and levies new taxes to pay for this inspection overkill."

Sure is gonna be fun in a Trump administration.  Just don't plan to eat anything for the next four years.

StupidiNews!

• Gas prices in the Southeast are expected to rise sharply as a leak shutting down the Colonial Pipeline will disrupt gasoline supplies until at least next week.
• The FBI is looking into indictments for Russian hackers who have hit the DNC and other political organizations.
• The cease fire in Syria appears to be holding tenuously but aid supplies are still having issues getting through Syrian army held checkpoints in Aleppo.
• Tesla's Powerpack battery technology will help California's electric grid stand up to blackouts in a major new contract with the state, the batteries will be deployed before year's end.
• Archaeologists have discovered evidence that indigo dye was being used in Peru 6,000 years ago, almost two millennia before being recorded in use anywhere else.

Last Call For The Fraud Squad

Years of Republicans undermining the voting process has led to the widespread and erroneous belief that America's elections are rigged, with one in three Americans believing that votes will not be counted correctly in November, and that 46% believe voter fraud happens regularly.

Nearly half of Americans say that voter fraud occurs at least somewhat often according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a viewpoint at odds with studies showing it rarely occurs in U.S. elections. 

The poll also finds 63 percent of voters are confident that votes in this year’s presidential election will be counted accurately, down from about 7 in 10 in 2004. 

Republicans and Donald Trump supporters express the greatest concern about voter fraud and election accuracy -- worries which the GOP nominee has stoked on the campaign trail. The dynamic marks a reversal from 2004, when Democrats were more doubtful about the legitimacy of the vote. 

The Post-ABC poll finds 46 percent of registered voters say voter fraud -- described as multiple votes being cast by a single person, or an ineligible person casting a ballot -- occurs very or somewhat often, while 50 percent say it occurs occasionally or rarely. 

Over two-thirds of Trump voters say voter fraud occurs often, compared with less than one-third of Clinton supporters. Whatever the partisan differences, at least one-fifth of every major demographic and political group says voter fraud occurs somewhat or very often. 

The prevalence of voter fraud appears to be widely overestimated. A 2012 investigation by the News21 investigative reporting project published in The Washington Post found only 2,068 cases of alleged voter fraud had been reported since 2000, including only 10 cases of voter impersonation over the entire period. A separate study by Loyola Law School professor Justen Levitt found 241 potentially fraudulent ballots over a 14-year period out of 1 billion ballots cast. 

The Post-ABC poll also finds a sizable gap in skepticism of vote counting accuracy between Clinton and Trump supporters. Just under half of Trump supporters (49 percent) say they are “not too” or “not at all” confident” will be counted accurately, while just 18 percent of Clinton supporters are similarly skeptical.

So again, what happens when Trump loses in November?  These folks aren't just going to shrug and go "oh well" and behave, as the last eight years can attest to the mass delegitimization of the federal government.

That's a problem across the board.

Nailing The 45-Yard Field Goal

As pollsters switch over to their likely voter models and away from registered voter models, we're now starting to see state polls showing a much tighter race across the board.  Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, and Missouri are no longer considered anything close to competitive, and talk of the Av-Hill-Lanche is somewhat muted at this point.

Ed Kilgore reminds us that if the likely voter models at this point truly are correct, then the possibility of a Trump win is disturbingly real.

Sometimes you can get lulled into complacency by win-probability projections that sound immutable but really aren’t. Citigroup put out a warning about that today: 

A new note from Citigroup Inc. says that while the firm still puts the probability of Hillary Clinton securing the U.S. presidential election at 65 percent, investors are not taking the remaining chance of a win by Donald Trump very seriously. 

“A 35 percent probability for a Trump victory is more meaningful than investors may be appreciating,” the team, led by Chief Global Political Analyst Tina Fordham, writes in a note published on Tuesday. “Political probabilities are not like blackjack — there is only one roll of the dice, and 35 percent probability events happen frequently in real life.” 

The Upshot, which rates Clinton at an even higher 79 percent win probability, offers this sobering analogy: “Mrs. Clinton’s chance of losing is about the same as the probability that an N.F.L. kicker misses a 45-yard field goal.” 

So, in the fourth quarter of a very close game, when that placekicker trots out onto the field with everything on the line, how confident are you that he will nail that “high-probability” field goal? Are you a tad nervous? 

Those who have laughed off Donald Trump’s chances while believing his election would represent a turn for the worse in their own lives should be nervous right now.

Once again, I don't think the Trump will win and I believe voters will turn out to stop him.  But Clinton does have to make that field goal in November.  That means being able to execute on the fundamentals, and that's where Clinton's campaign does have the advantage.

Intercourse With Various Members Of The Genus Rattus

Republicans understand two things about politics: First, that black voters are the heart and soul of the Democratic party, and second, any efforts by the GOP to peel us away from voting blue is always "newsworthy" no matter how ridiculous.  But this time it really is worth noting, as I see our friend Bruce Carter from "Black Men for Bernie" is back...and now he's teaming up with the Trump campaign.

Promising to deliver Donald Trump and the Republicans the highest percentage of black votes since 1965 Voting Rights Act, the founder of Black Men for Bernie is now launching Trump for Urban Communities.

Bruce Carter is touting the effort “largest ground game in the country” targeted at black voters — with a platform focused on urban investment, self-sufficiency, and resources for small businesses. “It’s about teaching people how to fish instead of giving them a fish and walking away,” Carter told BuzzFeed News in an interview. 

He said he’s aiming to place 2,000 staffers in North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania, hiring them to make direct voter contact and pitch Trump’s gospel by setting up barbershops as “our information hubs.” This would be an enormous project; by comparison, Hillary Clinton’s campaign had about 700 staffers total in recent months. 

Carter believes his “partnership” with the Trump campaign is “ten times the value” of an endorsement. “A partnership means that both [sides] have an obligation to do something. It allows me to hold people accountable.” 

“It’s about getting people to buy into the partnership. No other campaign has considered spending this kind of money.” 

Carter said he had assurances from top Trump aides that the candidate and campaign was committed to making the effort successful, but he didn’t have specifics on what the Trump campaign plans to spend on Trump for Urban Communities. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. A website for the outreach strategy previewed by BuzzFeed News describes it as “a movement to ensure that Donald Trump wins the presidency and the Republicans retain Congress during the 2016 Election.” 

Carter criticized political parties and campaigns who send staff from outside of areas instead of hiring inside communities where people need help. “We’re going to have train them and teach them how to market Donald Trump.” 

The site also features video clips of Louis Farrakhan slamming Clinton as “a wicked woman,” clashing with Barack Obama on the debate stage, and her using the term “superpredators” in a 1996 speech. “We cannot afford to allow a self-serving POTUS and the Democrats to prevail, especially in light of the Supreme Court appointments (one to potentially three) that will occur this election cycle,” the site reads.

Who knew that the endgame of the anti-Clinton grift targeting black voters was to recycle the playbook and ride the Trump Train?

Oh wait.

StupidiNews!

• Hillary Clinton will be back on the campaign trail in Greensboro, North Carolina today following her recovery from pneumonia over the last few days.
• A federal lawsuit accuses Georgia's GOP Secretary of State Brian Kemp of using "strict matching" of voter rolls to reject registrations of tens of thousands of minority voters.
• A train collision in central Pakistan has killed six and injured at least 150 as an express passenger train hit a stopped cargo train, overturning four passenger cars.
• Saudi Arabia has once again become the largest producer of oil, outpacing the US as America cuts back on shale oil amid a global supply glut. 
• China is expected to launch its second Tiangong orbital laboratory today on its way to having a full-sized space station in orbit in ten years.

Last Call For The Big Con Job

It looks like our pundit class is finally asking the tough questions about Trump's financial information, questions that should have been asked 12 months ago, regarding the Trump Organization and its financial ties to Donald Trump, his family, and a number of potential national security conflicts of interest should Trump be elected to public office. Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek investigates Trump's business dealings:

A close examination by Newsweek of the Trump Organization, including confidential interviews with business executives and some of its international partners, reveals an enterprise with deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians and even criminals, although there is no evidence the Trump Organization has engaged in any illegal activities. It also reveals a web of contractual entanglements that could not be just canceled. If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires.

The Trump Organization is not like the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the charitable enterprise that has been the subject of intense scrutiny about possible conflicts for the Democratic presidential nominee. There are allegations that Hillary Clinton bestowed benefits on contributors to the foundation in some sort of “pay to play” scandal when she was secretary of state, but that makes no sense because there was no “pay.” Money contributed to the foundation was publicly disclosed and went to charitable efforts, such as fighting neglected tropical diseases that infect as many as a billion people. The financials audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global independent accounting company, and the foundation’s tax filings show that about 90 percent of the money it raised went to its charitable programs. (Trump surrogates have falsely claimed that it was only 10 percent and that the rest was used as a Clinton “slush fund.”) No member of the Clinton family received any cash from the foundation, nor did it finance any political campaigns. In fact, like the Clintons, almost the entire board of directors works for free. 

On the other hand, the Trump family rakes in untold millions of dollars from the Trump Organization every year. Much of that comes from deals with international financiers and developers, many of whom have been tied to controversial and even illegal activities. None of Trump’s overseas contractual business relationships examined by Newsweek were revealed in his campaign’s financial filings with the Federal Election Commission, nor was the amount paid to him by his foreign partners. (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for the names of all foreign entities in partnership or contractually tied to the Trump Organization.) Trump’s financial filings also indicate he is a shareholder or beneficiary of several overseas entities, including Excel Venture LLC in the French West Indies and Caribusiness Investments SRL, based in the Dominican Republic, one of the world’s tax havens.

Trump’s business conflicts with America’s national security interests cannot be resolved so long as he or any member of his family maintains a financial interest in the Trump Organization during a Trump administration, or even if they leave open the possibility of returning to the company later. The Trump Organization cannot be placed into a blind trust, an arrangement used by many politicians to prevent them from knowing their financial interests; the Trump family is already aware of who their overseas partners are and could easily learn about any new ones. 

Many foreign governments retain close ties to and even control of companies in their country, including several that already are partnered with the Trump Organization. Any government wanting to seek future influence with President Trump could do so by arranging for a partnership with the Trump Organization, feeding money directly to the family or simply stashing it away inside the company for their use once Trump is out of the White House. This is why, without a permanent departure of the entire Trump family from their company, the prospect of legal bribery by overseas powers seeking to influence American foreign policy, either through existing or future partnerships, will remain a reality throughout a Trump presidency. 

Moreover, the identity of every partner cannot be discovered if Trump reverses course and decided to release his taxes. The partnerships are struck with some of the more than 500 entities disclosed in Trump’s financial disclosure forms; each of those entities has its own records that would have to be revealed for a full accounting of all of Trump’s foreign entanglements to be made public.

The problem of overseas conflicts emerges from the nature of Trump’s business in recent years. Much of the public believes Trump is a hugely successful developer, a television personality and a failed casino operator. But his primary business deals for almost a decade have been a quite different endeavor. The GOP nominee is essentially a licensor who leverages his celebrity into streams of cash from partners from all over the world. The business model for Trump’s company started to change around 2007, after he became the star of NBC’s The Apprentice, which boosted his national and international fame. Rather than constructing Trump’s own hotels, office towers and other buildings, much of his business involved striking deals with overseas developers who pay his company for the right to slap his name on their buildings. (The last building constructed by Trump with his name on it is the Trump-SoHo hotel and condominium project, completed in 2007.) 

In public statements, Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. have celebrated their company’s international branding business and announced their intentions to expand it. “The opportunities for growth are endless, and I look forward to building upon the tremendous success we have enjoyed,” Donald Trump Jr. said in 2013. Trump Jr. has cited prospects in Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, Thailand, Argentina and other countries.

In other words, everything the Republican party is accusing Clinton of doing while at State: shady, backroom "pay-for-play" deals, slush fund money laundering, taking bribes from foreign nationals, all becomes instant and disturbing reality for Donald Trump should he ever take public office.  The rabbit warren of shell companies, offshore accounts, using family members as proxies, goes pretty deep in this article, and that's just from public information.

The details, as noted above, are hidden.  And there's zero reason to believe Trump will ever disclose it, in fact he's done everything in his power to hide it.  The reality is that we've never had a presidential candidate so boldly violate every concept of campaign finance law, and nobody seems to think this is a serious enough problem to immediately disqualify Trump from the White House.

Clinton on the other hand, well that's a different story it seems.  That's the problem.

As Goes Ohio, So Goes The Nation

Despite Donald Trump having no ground game in the state, Bloomberg's latest poll of the Buckeye State finds the GOP candidate with a significant 5-point lead in both head-to-head and third-party inclusive matchups against Hillary Clinton, but there's a catch: the likely voter model they are using matches the state's 2004 electoral makeup.

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 5 percentage points in a Bloomberg Politics poll of Ohio, a gap that underscores the Democrat’s challenges in critical Rust Belt states after one of the roughest stretches of her campaign.

The Republican nominee leads Clinton 48 percent to 43 percent among likely voters in a two-way contest and 44 percent to 39 percent when third-party candidates are included.

The poll was taken Friday through Monday, as Clinton faced backlash for saying half of Trump supporters were a “basket of deplorables” and amid renewed concerns about her health after a video showed her stumbling as she left a Sept. 11 ceremony with what her campaign later said was a bout of pneumonia.

Trump’s performance in the poll—including strength among men, independents, and union households—is better than inother recent surveys of the state. It deals a blow to Clinton after she enjoyed polling advantages nationally and in most battleground states in August before the race tightened in September as more Republican voters unified around Trump.

The poll also finds Sen. Rob Portman with a massive 17-point lead over former GOP Gov. Ted Strickland, 53-36%, as fully 20% of Clinton voters support Portman's re-election, and a whopping 51-38 generic congressional ballot lead for the GOP in the state.  Bloomberg admits their model is unlike anyone else's.

“Our party breakdown differs from other polls, but resembles what happened in Ohio in 2004,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, whose Iowa-based firm Selzer & Co. oversaw the survey. “It is very difficult to say today who will and who will not show up to vote on Election Day. Our poll suggests more Republicans than Democrats would do that in an Ohio election held today, as they did in 2004 when George W. Bush carried the state by a narrow margin. In 2012, more Democrats showed up.”

A higher proportion of men and older voters—groups that tilt Republican—passed the survey's likely-voter screen than typical in past election cycles, Selzer said, boosting Trump's numbers.

Party breakdown for the poll was 33 percent Republican, 29 percent Democrats, and 34 percent independents. Exit polling shows that Ohio's electorate in the 2012 presidential election was 38 percent Democratic, 31 percent Republican, and 31 percent independent, while in 2004 it was 40 percent Republican, 35 percent Democratic, and 25 percent independent.

That's...a gigantic swing in just four years.  If it's true, it's no longer right to call Ohio a swing state, but a red one.  The poll also finds that nearly a quarter of voters under 35 are supporting Gary Johnson, and the rest split evenly among Clinton and Trump, which I find interesting to say the least.

But among the likely voters Bloomberg is basing this poll off of, 46% approve of President Obama and 45% approve of Donald Trump.  Considering President Obama's numbers nationally are pushing 60%, I find this likely voter model to be less reflective of the truth than most.

In other words, Bloomberg's likely voter model is crap. They get points for showing exactly why their likely voter model is crap, but it's still greatly inaccurate as far as I'm concerned.

Working For The Company Store

Voters in rural Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky are increasingly viewing Democrats and our policies on climate change as a personal affront, and long-time blue-collar blue voters are turning to Trump out of "self-preservation".

Angela LeJohn is 49, has worked at a local energy company for nine years, and loves it. A registered Democrat, she never once voted for a Republican and never expected to entertain such a thought—not even in a local election—until this year.

“The short of it is that I am looking at this election through self-preservation,” she explained. “I love my job, I love that I only live three miles from work, I love that who I work for contributes to a stable life, and I love that my community is holding on because of the trickle effect Lee Supply Company’s impact has on the region.” 

LeJohn will vote for Donald Trump for president and for incumbent U.S. Senator Pat Toomey in November, she candidly admits, not because she loves either Republican candidate but because “they have my back.” 

She was among more than 60 employees who attended an informal voter-registration effort conducted by Secure Energy for America, a non-partisan trade association that has visited energy vendors and suppliers in key counties of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, and Virginia. It hopes to mobilize energy-industry workers, along with their relatives and neighbors, to vote in November. Officially, the effort is non-partisan. Yet for most energy workers in Pennsylvania, voting to preserve their industry means voting for Trump and Toomey.

The registration drive gets to the heart of the election in Western Pennsylvania. Democrats in these small communities want to hold on to their way of life; they feel their communities have as much value as those of their more-cosmopolitan Democratic cousins, and they cannot reconcile themselves to a national Democratic Party that they feel is working against them. They are the voters whose simple motivation to vote outside of the party they were born into has fallen under the radar of the national press and the polls. 

But the energy industry has noticed. “This kind of endeavor is terrifically impactful with voters,” said Ron Sicchitano, the Democratic Party’s chairman here in Washington County. “I’ve got to hand it to them.” Sicchitano, a coal miner, says anti-coal statements by President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have had a “tremendously devastating” impact on voters in a county that has been reliably Democratic in the past.

The reality is that coal jobs are not coming back.  Ever.  Finding something to replace them is difficult to say the least.  At the same time, these are real people with families and bills and pets and houses and problems like the rest of us, only the industry that kept their communities going is on its deathbed.  They want to believe Trump can put $100k a year mining jobs back on the menu, when the diner is closed.

But the reality too is that these "life-long Democrats" are making the choice to turn to Trump, despite his obvious racism, Islamophobia, misogyny and other fun garbage down in that Basket of Deplorables, and at some point these folks have to be held accountable for enabling Republicans to destroy them.

Yes, I understand the impulse to say these folks are being conned, that they are the victims of Trump's rhetoric and that it's easy to blame the Dems for wrecking the industries that put food on their table. I get that, believe me.  I grew up in small-town NC when the industries that left due to NAFTA were textiles and manufacturing moving overseas in the early 90's.  Believe me, the people where I grew up immediately blamed the Democrats and the Clintons especially and have made the foothills of western NC blood red ever since.

But it's exactly the people who feel like they have the choice to support Republicans like Toomey and Trump, despite their hideous rhetoric, that are the problem in this country.  They enable the racism and hatred and look the other way because "Trump has their back".  That's a nice luxury to have, but the rest of us are going to fight these assholes tooth and nail, and if it means we have to scrap your coal mining community, well, you'll survive.  We did 20 years ago, and back home we're finally seeing more high-tech jobs move into NC (well until HB2 came along, but that's what happens when you enable Republicans because you're afraid of those people taking your jobs.)

That's the way it works here in America: the voters decide.  The electorate is changing. Technology is changing and moving forward. Fighting for "how things used to be" is never going to work.

Hasn't yet.

StupidiNews!

• House Democrats are asking the Justice Department to formally investigate the Trump Foundation over a $25,000 donation from Florida GOP Attorney General Pam Bondi.
• More than a dozen current and former US national security and military officials want the next President to create a cabinet-level position to deal with the impact of climate change.
• The DNC says Russian hackers have hit the party's data once again after another batch of documents was leaked by WikiLeaks and hacker Guccifer 2.0 on Tuesday.
• Drugmaker Bayer says it will pay $56 billion to take over rival Monsanto, which if approved would be the largest merger in Germany's history.
• A new study out of Wales finds that people who are drunk aren't generally aware of just how drunk they actually are, especially when surrounded by other people who are drinking.

Last Call For The Obamaconomy

After years of income gains going only to the wealthiest Americans, 2015 finally saw the rest of the economy turn the corner as the country recorded its first middle class gains since 2007 and a sharp drop in the nation's poverty rate.

The Census Bureau released new numbers on Tuesday showing that, after a brutal economic recession and years of stagnation, real median household incomes rose from $53,718 in 2014 to $56,516 last year. That's a 5.2 percent rise — the first statistically significant increase since 2007. 

But, as NPR's Pam Fessler notes, "the median household income was still lower than it was in 2007." 

The official poverty rate decreased to 13.5 percent for last year, a drop of 1.2 percentage points. That represents 3.5 million people who are no longer in poverty and is the largest annual percentage point drop since 1999, the Census Bureau says. 

The supplemental poverty measure — an alternate way of gauging poverty, which takes more factors into account — also dropped significantly, falling by 1 percentage point to 14.3 percent. 

"Poverty dropped for whites, blacks and Hispanics, as well as for children and seniors," Pam reports. 

The number of people with health insurance also rose. More than 90 percent of Americans are covered by health insurance — an increase of 1.3 percentage points since 2014, and growth of 4.3 percentage points since the major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the Bureau says. 

Last year, 29 million people did not have health insurance, representing 9.1 percent of the population. 

Across the board, the Census Bureau's 2015 numbers show significant signs of progress and reflect a recovering economy. 

The 5.2 percent increase in median household income, in particular, was impressive — "one of the largest year-to-year increases that we've ever had," Trudi Renwick of the Census Bureau said. 

Income rose in every region of the country, for every age group of household head, with statistically significant increases for almost every racial group.

But there was one group that didn't share in the country's growth:

But as The New York Times' Nate Cohn points out, rural America didn't experience the same growth as the rest of the country. The median income for people living outside of metropolitan areas dropped 2 percent, to $44,657.

Economic anxiety in the heartland!

Seriously, America's cities are booming.  Red state farm country, not so much.  But hey, guess what? They get to vote too, and they've put their money on Trump.  The ultimate NYC city slicker.

That makes sense, right?

North Carolina Goes Into The Crapper, Con't

Apparently since losing the NBA All-Star Game wasn't enough to make NC Gov. Pat McCrory and the rest of the NC GOP in the legislature to drop the state's ridiculous and discriminatory HB2 law, it's time to hit the Tarheel State where it hurts: March Madness.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association said on Monday that it would relocate all seven previously awarded championship events from North Carolina during the 2016-17 academic year because of concerns over laws passed by the state that it said violated the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

The N.C.A.A. said the decision by its board of governors was based on “the cumulative actions taken by the state concerning civil rights protections” that conflicted with the organization’s commitment to “fairness and inclusion.”

“Fairness is about more than the opportunity to participate in college sports, or even compete for championships,” Mark Emmert, the N.C.A.A. president, said in a statement. “We believe in providing a safe and respectful environment at our events and are committed to providing the best experience possible for college athletes, fans and everyone taking part in our championships.”

The move by the N.C.A.A. comes less than two months after the National Basketball Association said it would move next February’s All-Star Game from Charlotte as a protest against a North Carolina law that canceled anti-discrimination protections for L.G.B.T. people. Earlier, a number of performers canceled concerts in the state, including Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and Itzhak Perlman.

The N.C.A.A. said on Monday that the legal situation facing L.G.B.T. people in North Carolina was unique because of what it called “four specific factors.”

Among them were laws that barred transgender people from using public restrooms that correspond to their gender identity and laws that allow government officials to refuse to provide services to L.G.B.T. people.

The N.C.A.A. also criticized a North Carolina law that forbids local municipalities from passing their own anti-discrimination laws that included sexual orientation or gender identity. Five states and a number of cities have also passed laws that bar public employees and representatives of public institutions from traveling to North Carolina, which the organization said could be interpreted to include student athletes and university athletics staff members.

In addition to losing the first and second round NCAA men's basketball regionals in Greensboro, the state is also losing soccer, lacrosse, tennis and baseball regional and championship events.  Losing the women's College Cup soccer championship is a blow, but being the Governor that lost March Madness in North Carolina is something that really will get Pat McCrory ejected from office faster than you can say "Demon Deacons".

The Southeast regionals get held in Greensboro pretty much every year, as we take our college basketball pretty damn seriously back home in ACC country, and believe me when I say this is damn well going to get the attention of voters in NC. McCrory is in real trouble because of this.

And I can't wait for him to get the hook.

A Streetcar Named Connector

Cincinnati's streetcar is now in full swing this week, branded the Cincinnati Bell Connector (because everything has naming rights in 2016) and passengers are, for now, lining up to get around downtown.

Lunch in Over-the-Rhine or at The Banks Monday?

Definitely, said streetcar riders. On its first full day of paid rides, lunchtime meant stuffed streetcars.

The Enquirer rode the Cincinnati Bell Connector for several loops during the morning commute and lunchtime to see how popular it was on its first day of paid operation. Crowds had jammed the new streetcar over the weekend - when it was free to ride.

Ty Harris, 30, of Over-the-Rhine hopped on the streetcar at Findlay Market at 7:30 a.m. to get to his job at General Electric at The Banks.

Harris thinks he'll be a heavy user of the streetcar, using it to get to work and lunch in Over-the-Rhine, previously too far from GE's temporary home on Fourth Street.

"This will be incredibly convenient," Harris said.

There was light ridership from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. Roughly a dozen people rode at any given time in one streetcar, using it to get to work.

Lunch was an entirely different story. There were lines for the pay machines and, at times, nowhere to sit.

Mary Cassidy-Anger, a Cincinnati native in town on business from Washington D.C., was at The Banks when she decided to ride up to Over-the-Rhine for lunch and to see how much the neighborhood flourished since she left.

"This is a much better way to get around than driving," she said. "I don't have to worry about parking,"

Tammy Monjaras lives in Landen and works at Franciscan Media in Over-the-Rhine, an hour-long commute. She rode the streetcar at lunchtime Monday to help her gauge a new commute. She'll ride the bus and use the streetcar to get to work. on Liberty Street.

The streetcar opened Friday at noon, a project eight years in the making. The $148 million streetcar runs on a 3.6-mile loop, from The Banks to Over-the-Rhine, making 18 stops.

It costs $1 to ride for two hours, or $2 for a day pass. Ridership is projected at 3,000 people a day.

Two bucks for a day pass definitely beats paying several times that for parking, especially if you can take a TANK or Metro bus into downtown to beat parking completely.  Next time I hit downtown, I definitely want to try this out.  Well, that is if the bomb threats don't keep shutting the service down but of course you have to expect problem during the first week.

Still, the real question is if streetcars will still be full in January, or next spring, or five years from now.  So far at least the streetcar seems to be pretty popular, especially in hipster OTR. 

Now, getting this to the rest of Cincy?  That's the real challenge. And there's always Mayor Cranley, who was elected to scrap the streetcar completely, and will face voters in 2017 after throwing up his hands and saying "Meh, it's probably not so bad."

But for now, the streetcar is on the go.

StupidiNews!

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• Chevy will have its new 238-mile range Bolt electric car in dealerships before the end of the year to make the first strike against Tesla's delayed Model 3.