Knocked For A Hyperloop

Elon Musk is at it again, this time getting his dig on for the proposed hyperloop route leg between DC and Baltimore.

The first Hyperloop tunnel on the East Coast will be built in Maryland.

Gov. Larry Hogan made the announcement in a video posted on Twitter. Electric car pioneer Elon Musk’s Boring Company will start digging a tunnel in the state for an ultra-high-speed connection between Baltimore and Washington that would transport travelers in a matter of minutes.

Get hyped. 🚄 pic.twitter.com/gPRTQWnICi
— Larry Hogan (@LarryHogan) October 19, 2017 

Musk teased the idea on Twitter over the summer, saying he had received verbal government approval to start building the Hyperloop, which Musk ultimately wants to connect New York and D.C.

So the tunnels will be dug at least.  What happens after, well who knows.  Cincinnati has had subway tunnels for decades that were never finished, and I'm betting the same thing will happen here.

I've been calling BS on Hyperloop since 2013, and I still haven't seen anything that makes me think this is anything but the Springfield monorail.

Last Call For Battle Of The Amazon

Like plenty of other North American cities, Cincinnati is prostrating itself to Jeff Bezos and Amazon for the lure of 50,000 potential jobs as the company plans a second HQ outside Seattle.  Cities had until yesterday to submit a bid and Cincy Mayor John Cranley threw the Queen City's hat into the ring with dozens of other metropolitan centers across the US, Mexico and Canada this week.

Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley says the region can win the bid for Amazon's second headquarters. 

Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky submitted a joint proposal. They're competing against dozens of other cities and regions across the country. 

Cranley says this area has the best story to tell. 

"We have the best combination of assets that Amazon.com is looking for," Cranley says. "I'm not here to promise you that we will win, but I promise you that we will be taken seriously and that we have a real chance to win this bid." 

Cranley is providing few details about what's in the region's proposal. He says the city is offering Amazon the same tax incentive package General Electric received to locate a headquarters at The Banks.

Many of the bid details are protected by confidentiality agreements. The proposal was partly compiled by REDI Cincinnati, which is a private operation and not subject to state open records laws. 

City Manager Harry Black praised the regional proposal and the people who cooperated to put it together. He tells reporters Cincinnati is one of the most desirable destinations in the country. 

"We have higher ed, we've got medicine, we've got the arts and culture, we've got technology, we've got a dynamic and impactful business ecosystem here," Black says. "So if Amazon knows what's good for itself, it will select Cincinnati."

To be fair, the reasons Cranley and Black list are the reasons why Amazon opened a Midwest distribution hub here in NKY by the airport.  Cincy has always been a pretty good central location for reaching several East coast and Midwest states and cities.

But what makes sense for a distribution center operation doesn't really translate into a company HQ.  Cincy is home to some Fortune 500 heavy hitters like Kroger and Proctor and Gamble, but it's not a top ten population center like New York or Chicago or LA or even a second-tier US city like Miami or Denver or Atlanta.

I don't expect Cincy to make it through even the first round.  Amazon is going to go to whoever gives them the billions in tax incentives they are looking for, and that will be a city that has both the resources and the shamelessness to debase their economy to give it to them at the cost of taxpayers and voters.  Cincy's not that town.

I would expect Texas will win the day, or Florida.  Both have real need for immediate infrastructure investments after various hurricanes this year and it's a buyer's market for Amazon, and everyone knows it.  Texas seems to have their stuff together more in this regard.

My money's on Dallas/Houston/San Antonio, with Houston being a feel-good story of the year, even though I'm sure the deal Amazon will get from that city will be a disaster in the long-run. Let's not forget that Amazon is a major US corporation and will gleefully screw over anyone they can to make profit.

Cincy will come out ahead.

Listen All Y'All It's Sabotage, Con't

The Trump regime's sabotage of the Affordable Care Act is working.  New Gallup numbers show the ranks of the uninsured have grown by 1.4% since Trump took office in January 2017, meaning that 3.5 million adults have lost their health coverage through the first nine months of the year.

The percentage of U.S. adults lacking health insurance rose in the third quarter of 2017 to 12.3%, up 0.6 percentage points from the previous quarter and 1.4 points since the end of 2016. The uninsured rate is now the highest recorded since the last quarter of 2014 when it was 12.9%. 

The uninsured rate, measured by Gallup and Sharecare since 2008, had fallen to a record low of 10.9% in the third and fourth quarters of 2016. However, the 1.4-point increase in the percentage of adults without health insurance since the end of last year represents nearly 3.5 million Americans who have entered the ranks of the uninsured. 

Still, the uninsured rate remains well below its peak of 18.0% measured in the third quarter of 2013, prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) mandated healthcare exchanges and the associated requirement that all adults have health insurance or be subject to a fine. 

Several marketplace factors could be contributing to the growth of the uninsured rate since 2016. Some insurance companies have stopped offering insurance through the exchanges, and the lack of competition could be driving up the cost of plans for consumers. As a result, the rising insurance premiums could be compelling some Americans to forgo insurance, especially those who fail to qualify for federal subsidies. 

Uncertainty about the healthcare law also may be driving the increase. Congressional Republicans' attempts to replace the healthcare law may be causing consumers to question whether the government will enforce the penalty for not having insurance. 

The results for the third quarter of 2017 are based on more than 45,000 interviews with U.S. adults aged 18 and older from July 1 to Sept. 30, conducted as part of the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index. Gallup and Sharecare have asked a random sample of at least 500 U.S. adults each day since January 2008 whether they have health insurance.

And remember, this is all before the end of subsidies to insurance companies in order to lower premiums, and before Trump's messy executive orders designed to drive insurance exchange markets into the ground that happened earlier this month.

Expect this number to be significantly higher, and soon.  Even without Republican in Congress repealing Obamacare and wrecking health coverage for tens of millions, Trump can do a lot of damage by enforcing the ACA so badly that it breaks.  We're already seeing 3.5 million examples of this.

More will be coming.  A lot more.

The Coming Blue Wave, Con't.

It's a brutal sign for the GOP that after running the House for all but four of the last 23 years in Congress that Republicans, now with complete control of the federal government, are running for the exits thanks to Trump.  And there's no bigger loser in this exodus than House Speaker Paul Ryan.

A number of the speaker's closest comrades in the House have called it quits in recent weeks because they're tired of President Donald Trump's antics, depressed over the GOP's dearth of legislative accomplishments this year or have personal reasons. Whatever the causes, the departures are certain to make Ryan's job as House speaker harder, depriving him of loyal lieutenants in a conference already riven by ideological and stylistic divisions.

Rep. Pat Tiberi, a loyal ally of Ryan, is the latest departure. The Ohio Republican announced Thursday that he will resign by the end of January to take a job in the private sector. House GOP leaders had hoped the senior Ways and Means Committee member would lead the powerful tax panel in the coming years, House GOP sources told POLITICO. But Tiberi, a longtime tax reform proponent, made other plans just as tax talks are kicking off in earnest.

Tiberi will hardly be the last to leave, multiple House GOP sources say.

Lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump’s penchant for drama and inability to focus on the legislative agenda, numerous House GOP lawmakers and staffers said. While Trump and most Republican voters blame Congress for nothing substantial getting done, GOP lawmakers are privately exasperated that they don’t have a coherent leader who can help them deliver.

That’s part of what drove Republican Rep. Dave Trott to announce he'd head back to Michigan once his current term ends. Trott stood up at a late July House Republican Conference meeting to complain that the White House was so distracted by the scandal enveloping Anthony Scaramucci at the time that Trump failed to help the Senate pass its Obamacare repeal bill.

Six weeks later, after the health care repeal collapsed in the upper chamber, Trott announced his retirement.

The legislative letdowns under Trump have weighed heavily on House Republicans, said Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent, another Republican who recently announced he won't seek reelection in 2018.

“It’s very difficult to achieve big-ticket items, not to mention just accomplish the basic items of governance — keeping the government open or not defaulting on our obligations — so that’s a source of frustration for me," said Dent, a leader of the faction of Republican moderates.

Dent added: “Congress should take a lot of the blame; but so should the president. The president doesn’t lay down his plans, his ideas, his policies, and he sure as hell didn’t try to sell it to the American people on health care — and that’s a function of leadership. Saying, ‘Send me a bill and I’ll sign it' — that’s not leadership.”

One recently departed House staffer had this to say about the challenges of legislating in the era of Trump: “The job isn't fun anymore. You get beat up in D.C. for everything Trump says or does, only to go home to get beat up for not defending Trump enough by the base. It's brutal.”

Look at these whiny, petulant kids.  They have everything they wanted, Congress, the White House, a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court, almost two-thirds of the states...and they're complaining that they can't get anything done.

So much so that they're quitting in frustration.  Why?  They see what's coming.

The question is can the Dems capitalize on it?  That remains very much up in the air.  The Dems are making the kind of candidate moves they need to be at the ground level, but they're also not making the arguments for Democrats at the top level, either. 

There's no doubt that GOP voter suppression laws have played a major role in giving the GOP the level of single-party control they have now, and that's only going to get worse in 2018 and 2020, and so far Dems don't seem very interested in fighting back.

If they don't, and immediately, the GOP could still be running the country, only with the retiring crop of Republicans replaced by a new wave of mini-Trumps, interested only in the obliteration of Democrats and their voters.  Just because the GOP is about to lose dozens of veteran lawmakers to retirement doesn't mean they'll all be replaced by Democrats.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Bother former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama delivered pointed speeches on Thursday criticizing the Trump regime without mentioning him by name.
• American hospitals are facing a major nursing shortage, the Labor Department is predicting one million additional nurses will be needed by 2024.
• By a 51-49 vote, the Senate GOP has passed a budget blueprint that will allow massive tax cuts for the wealthy to be passed with just 50 votes, eliminating a guaranteed Democratic filibuster.
• Donald Trump is expected to name attorney Joseph Simons as head of the FTC, Simons is a partner at Washington's biggest corporate antitrust defense law firm.
• Facebook's head of data security says the social networking company faces "a very painful process" in developing effective defenses to protect user data.

Last Call For Crossfire Hurricane

One month after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, millions of Americans remain in a dire humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands lacking food, water, shelter, electricity, and access to basic services.  Maria by the numbers:

Here is a by-the-numbers account of how things on the island currently stand. 

Provisions 

• More than a third of Puerto Rican households, or about 1 million people, still lack running water according to CNN.
• FEMA says it has distributed 23.6 million liters (6.2 million gallons) of bottled and bulk water in Puerto Rico. That figure includes water for hospitals and dialysis centers
• These deliveries equate to only 9% of the island's drinking water requirement, going by the World Health Organization's (WHO) assessment that each person needs at least 2.5 liters (2/3 of a gallon) per day. Some residents are so desperate for drinking water they have broken into polluted wells at industrial waste sites.
• The shortfall is far greater when you consider the WHO also recommends 15 liters per person per day for basic cooking and hygiene needs. Dirty water ups the risk of diseases like cholera and at least one person has died as a result of being unable to get to dialysis treatment on time, CNN reports.
• Some 86% of grocery stores have re-opened. But they are not necessarily stocked.
• FEMA says 60,000 homes need roofing help. It has delivered 38,000 tarps.

Power and Personnel 

• Less than 20% of Puerto Rico's power grid has been restored and around 3 million people are still without power, says CNN
• The news broadcaster adds that 75% of antennas are down so even those able to charge phones are unlikely to have cellular service.
• All of the island's hospitals are now up and running, with most using back-up systems, but only a quarter are being supplied with power from the grid, says Axios
• According to CNN, FEMA has deployed 1,700 personnel in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which were also ravaged by Hurricane Maria. That's 900 less that the 2,600 FEMA personnel reportedly still in Texas and Florida, but the agency told CNN that around 20,000 other federal staff and military have been deployed in response to Maria.
• Thousands of people have donated money or volunteered to help Puerto Rico. Among them, celebrity chef José Andrés says he's serving 100,000 meals a day on the island.

Puerto Rico is a disaster area and remain so for months if not longer.  Look at Haiti in the wake of that devastating earthquake almost six years ago, and how the country is still struggling for even day-to-day functions.  There's good news, but at this rate Puerto Rico will get statehood before it gets power.

The disaster continues, and it remains Trump's fault.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

I've talked before about the multiple mistrials in the case of Shannon Kepler, a white former Tulsa cop who shot his daughter's 19-year-old black boyfriend, Jeremey Lake, in cold blood and claimed self-defense.  Lake didn't actually have a weapon on him as Kepler claimed, but juries deadlocked three times when it came to murder charges.

Oklahoma state prosecutors settled for manslaughter charges instead on the fourth trial, and this week a jury found Kepler guilty and recommended a sentence of 15 years.

Jurors deliberated about six hours before finding ex-Tulsa officer Shannon Kepler, 57, guilty of the lesser charge in the August 2014 killing of 19-year-old Jeremey Lake, who had just started dating Kepler's then-18-year-old daughter, Lisa. 

The jury recommended a sentence of 15 years in prison. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for November 20. 

Lake's death occurred four days before a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson on Aug. 9, 2014. Michael Brown's killing touched off months of protests and became a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement, which decries police violence against minorities and calls for greater transparency from law enforcement officials, especially in cases of officer-involved shootings. 

The issue of race had also become an undercurrent in each of Kepler's previous three trials, with only one African-American being selected for each jury and accusations by civil rights activists that Kepler's attorneys were purposely trying to exclude potential black candidates. 

Another racial element had been recently added to the case when Kepler argued that he couldn't be tried by state prosecutors because he's a member of an American Indian tribe. A judge determined the fourth trial in less than a year could move forward in state court. Kepler says he's 1/128th Muscogee (Creek). 

Kepler's attorneys said the 24-year-police veteran was trying to protect Lisa Kepler because she had run away from home and was living in a crime-ridden neighborhood. Defense attorney Richard O'Carroll said Lisa had been in and out of a homeless shelter after her father forbade her from bringing men home into the house.

A white cop killed his daughter's black boyfriend because he knew he would never be convicted.  He was right on that as far of being convicted of premeditated murder, no Oklahoma jury would ever convict a white cop on murder one, a lifetime of police retaliation would be just the least of the jury's problems.

But manslaughter has a different burden of proof, and the jurors were willing to convict on that.  Whether or not Kepler ever serves a day in prison based on sentencing, bail and appeal, that's anyone's guess.

Cleaning House At The DNC

DNC Chairman Tom Perez is finally taking the axe to some long-time dead wood at the DNC, and of course nobody's happy about it.  But the reality is that DNC Deputy Chair Keith Ellison lost the fight to lead the DNC, and that means Perez gets to call the shots.  Now that Perez is finally doing that, people are pissed off.

A shake-up is underway at the Democratic National Committee as several key longtime officials have lost their posts, exposing a still-raw rift in the party and igniting anger among those in its progressive wing who see retaliation for their opposition to DNC Chairman Tom Perez.

The ousters come ahead of the DNC's first meeting, in Las Vegas, Nevada, since Perez took over as chairman with a pledge earlier this year that he would unite the party that had become badly divided during the brutal Bernie Sanders-Hillary Clinton 2016 primary.

Complaints began immediately after party officials saw a list of Perez' appointments to DNC committees and his roster of 75 "at-large" members, who are chosen by the chair.

The removal and demotion of a handful of veteran operatives stood out, as did what critics charge is the over-representation of Clinton-backed members on the Rules and Bylaws Committee, which helps set the terms for the party's presidential primary, though other Sanders and Ellison backers remain represented.

Those who have been pushed out include:

• Ray Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic chairman and longtime DNC official who ran against Perez for chair before backing Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., lost his spots on the Executive Committee and DNC Rules Committee;
• James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute and prominent Sanders backer, is no longer co-chair of the Resolutions Committee and is off the Executive Committee, a spot he has held since 2001;
• Alice Germond, the party’s longtime former secretary and a vocal Ellison backer, who was removed from her at-large appointment to the DNC; and
• Barbra Casbar Siperstein, the first transgender member of the DNC who supported Ellison and Buckley, was tossed from the Executive Committee.

The moves exposed a rift in the partnership between Perez and his deputy chair, Ellison, who have publicly broadcast their "bromance" since Perez tapped the lawmaker for the post in a show of unity after their hard-fought race earlier this year for the party's chairmanship.

"I’m concerned about the optics, and I’m concerned about the impact," Zogby said of the changes. "I want to heal the wound of 2016."

"I understand the chair can do as he pleases, but still, it's all just very disappointing," Buckley said.

Germond has been on the DNC since the 1980s.

"It is quite unusual for a former party officer who has been serving on the DNC for like forever to just be left out in the cold without even a call from the chairman," said Germond, who was a vocal Ellison backer for DNC chairman. "So I assumed it had something to do with myself support for Keith."

"I understand that I fought very hard for Keith Ellison. And I understand that to the winners go the spoils," she added.

Zogby in particular has been a pain in Perez's ass for a year now, but his consolation prize is he remains co-chair of the party's Unity and Reform Commission, so his damage can be limited.  Backing a guy who's not even in the party means that maybe you shouldn't be in charge of said party's major committees, just saying.

Whether or not Perez can actually get anything done heading into 2018, we'll see.  I didn't have high hopes for Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the previous DNC chair and she failed to meet even that low bar. Hopefully he won't have his won organization strangling him from behind when Trump and the GOP are trying to destroy 80 years of classic liberalism in the United States.  I guess maybe that's too much to ask for.

Go figure.

StupidiNews!

• Jacinda Ardern of the Labour Party will be New Zealand's youngest female Prime Minister after striking a coalition deal with the Green party and the NZ First party.
• A man who fatally shot three co-workers in Maryland was captured by police in Delaware after a related shooting there, police say Radee Prince shot six people and is now in custody.
• Senate Republicans will vote today on a 2018 budget resolution that would allow the GOP to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy with just 50 votes.
• Spain will move ahead with suspending Catalonia's government as Regional President Carles Puidgemont continues to push for talks with Madrid.
• Michigan is the latest state to declare war on municipal broadband, a new GOP bill would block any government funding from being used for internet service agreements.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

We've known for a while that the Trump campaign was actively benefiting from Russian social media manipulation, but Spencer Ackerman and the Daily Beast's crew have now connected the Trump campaign directly to a Russian propaganda outlet pretending to be the digital voice of the Tennessee GOP.

Some of the Trump campaign’s most prominent names and supporters, including Trump’s campaign manager, digital director and son, pushed tweets from troll accounts paid for by the Russian government in the heat of the 2016 election campaign.

The Twitter account @Ten_GOP, which called itself the “Unofficial Twitter account of Tennessee Republicans,” was operated from the Kremlin-backed “Russian troll farm,” or Internet Research Agency, a source familiar with the account confirmed with The Daily Beast.

The account’s origins in the Internet Research Agency were originally reported by the independent Russian news outlet RBC. @Ten_GOP was created on November 19, 2015, and accumulated over 100 thousand followers before Twitter shut it down. The Daily Beast independently confirmed the reasons for @Ten_GOP's account termination.

The discovery of the now-unavailable tweets presents the first evidence that several members of the Trump campaign pushed covert Russian propaganda on social media in the run-up to the 2016 election.

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment, “for privacy and security reasons."

And several times, including before and right up to the election, the Trump campaign helped spread tweets from the fake account.

Two days before election day, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway tweeted a post by @Ten_GOP regarding Hillary Clinton’s email.

“Mother of jailed sailor: 'Hold Hillary to same standards as my son on Classified info' #hillarysemail #WeinerGate” the tweet reads.

Three weeks before the election, Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign’s digital director, retweeted a separate post from @Ten_GOP.

“Thousands of deplorables chanting to the media: "Tell The Truth!" RT if you are also done w/ biased Media!” the tweet read.

President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. followed the account until its closure on August 23rd of this year. Trump Jr. retweeted the account three times, including an allegation of voter fraud in Florida one week before the election.

“BREAKING: #VoterFraud by counting tens of thousands of ineligible mail in Hillary votes being reported in Broward County, Florida Please, RT,” the tweet read.

Trump Jr. also retweeted the account on Election Day.

“This vet passed away last month before he could vote for Trump.. Here he is in his #MAGA hat.. #voted #ElectionDay,” the account wrote.

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn retweeted the Russian-backed troll account at least once. His son, Michael Flynn Jr., retweeted the account 34 times before it was removed from Twitter in August for its ties to Russian propaganda.

The account notably pushed for Flynn’s reappointment as Trump’s national security advisor, a job Flynn lost after press revelations that he’d lied about his telephone discussions with the Russian ambassador after the election hacks. It also repeatedly pushed Breitbart-backed talking points, including a fake news story about a gang rape in Twin Falls, Idaho that merited dozens of articles from Breitbart News.

And even though this was clearly a fake account, it had over 100k followers (mostly Russian bots of course) and was challenged and reported by the actual Tennessee GOP account @tngop, Twitter allowed it to continue even after being suspended in July. In fact, the @Ten_GOP account was operating up until six weeks ago when it was shut down by Twitter as part of the service's crackdown on fake Russian propaganda accounts.

But the larger story is that this account was specifically retweeted multiple times by the Trump campaign.  They knew to do it, and knew to retweet this particular account.  It's the most obvious evidence yet that the Trump campaign was an active participant in spreading Russian propaganda on social media, propaganda designed to help the Trump campaign win in 2016.

This one is big, guys.  And you'd better believe there's more evidence like this coming.

Bevin's Pension Deficit DIsorder

Today came the announcement of Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin's super double top secret plan to fix the state's unfunded pension liability problem, and since what Matt Bevin believes is that the problem is that "Kentucky state employees are people who should be paid and everything" his solution pretty much fixes that "oversight".

After months of planning and closed-door negotiations, Gov. Matt Bevin and GOP legislative leaders on Wednesday released a plan they say begins to tackle Kentucky’s multibillion-dollar pension debt while honoring promises to retirees and public employees. 

As expected the plan calls for transitioning most public employees from traditional pension plans to 401(k)-like plans – but it does so in a much more gradual way than recommended by the Bevin administration’s pension consultant. 

New workers and teachers will go into 401(k)-like plans, but instead of immediately shifting current state and local government workers to 401(k)s, those workers would be able to remain in their current pension plans for 27 years.

Current teachers with 27 years of service also would be moved to the 401(k)-style savings plans. But their plans will be more generous than those of other public employees to compensate for the fact that teachers do not draw Social Security benefits.

To avoid a rush of teacher retirements, those teachers will be given an option of remaining in their current traditional pension plans for three additional years.
And both current and future workers in “hazardous duty” jobs like law enforcement would not go into the 401(k)-type plans. They would retain their current pension benefits instead. 

The plan also would bring legislators, who have more generous benefits, into the retirement system of other state employees. And it would end the ability of teachers to use accumulated sick days to boost their pension benefits – but not until July 1, 2023. 

And the plan would begin to pay for pensions under a new approach “that mandates hundreds of millions more into every retirement plan, making them healthier and solvent sooner,” a summary of the plan said.

“If you are a retiree, if you are working to be a retiree at some point, you should be rejoicing,” Bevin said. “... It guarantees by law that your pension is going to be funded. There will be no more kicking of the can down the road.” 

Some immediate response to the plan questioned Bevin's statement that all promises have been kept. 

"I think the plan includes some very harsh cuts to benefits," said Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. Bailey said the handouts summarizing the plan say cost-of-living increases for teacher retirement benefits would be suspended for five years and that teachers and other public employees will have to pay more for health care benefits.

So, cops and firefighters get full benefits, but teachers and other state employees get benefit cuts and have to pay more into the system in order to fund it.  The suspension of cost of living increases is pretty ridiculous.

Meanwhile, Bevin's too busy playing Good Cop, Bad Cop to actually get the plan signed into law.

Bevin has said all year that he would call a special legislative session in 2017 for lawmakers to pass a reform plan to set the state on course to pay off pension debts. Those debts are officially listed at more than $40 billion, but Bevin estimates them at more than $64 billion. 

The plan released Wednesday is only an outline of the bill to be considered. And Bevin did not say when that session will begin. 

“As soon as we are ready,” he said when asked when he will call the session. “There’s still a little ‘I’ dotting and ‘T’ crossing” before that announcement, Bevin said. 

The plan is much friendlier to employees and retirees than many of the highly controversial recommendations offered in August in a report by the administration’s Philadelphia-based consultant – PFM Group. It does not, for instance, call for raising the retirement age for public employees or the clawing back of any benefits earned by current retirees. 

“Nothing is changing for retirees," Bevin said. "They’re going to be getting everything they’re getting now.”

That's a lie, of course.  But the devil is in the details, and not word of those details has been written yet.

We'll see.

The Commander, Chiefly In Need Of A Soul

When it comes to basic empathy for human beings, Donald Trump's circuits are emotionally cauterized.

President Donald Trump told U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson's widow Tuesday that "he knew what he signed up for ... but when it happens, it hurts anyway," when he died serving in northwestern Africa, according to Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami Gardens.

"Yes, he said it," Wilson said. "It's so insensitive. He should have not have said that. He shouldn't have said it."

The president called about 4:45 p.m. and spoke to Johnson's pregnant widow, Myeshia Johnson, for about five minutes. She is a mother to Johnson's surviving 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. The conversation happened before Johnson's remains arrived at Miami International Airport on a commercial Delta Airlines flight.

A top advisor later told Local 10 News "The president's conversations with the families of American heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice are private."

Wilson watched as the widow, who is expecting their third baby in January, leaned over the U.S. flag that was draping Johnson's casket. Her pregnant belly was shaking against the casket as she sobbed uncontrollably. Their daughter stood next to her stoically. Their toddler waited in the arms of a relative.

There was silence.

Local politicians, police officers and firefighters lined up to honor Johnson for his service and for the efforts and discipline that got the former Walmart employee to defy all odds and become a 25-year-old member of the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Johnson, who participated in a mentorship program Wilson founded in 1993, died during a mission fighting alongside Green Berets. Islamic militants ambushed them on Oct. 4 with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. The team reportedly didn't have overhead armed air cover and was in unarmored pickup trucks. Reuters reported the lack of planning upset the French.

So Trump's response, two weeks after American soldiers were killed in Niger in an ambush, is "he knew what he signed up for" to a serviceman's pregnant, grieving widow.

Let that absolute lack of empathy sink in, folks.  He has no empathy because he's incapable of it.  He is incapable of empathy because his clinical narcissism is so pathological that he cannot process the basic human function of being able to emotionally relate to anyone other than himself, because that would require him to give a damn about somebody other than Donald Trump.

You might be able to get away with saying that this was a case of nerves, or early term jitters, except that lack of empathy has driven pretty much every decision Trump has made since attaining the office, and he's proven that lack of empathy again and again.

The man is a monster.  Like I said, pathological.

StupidiNews!

• Ethics watchdog CREW and the hospitality industry will get their day in court today as a lawsuit against Donald Trump over the Constutution's emoluments clause begins.
• A federal judge in Hawaii has once again blocked parts of Trump's travel ban against six majority-Muslim nations, the Justice Department is expected to appeal.
• A bipartisan deal to restore Obamacare subsidy payments to insurers for two years is gaining momentum in the Senate but faces a very uncertain future in the House.
• Senate Republicans want to use budget reconciliation to open up federal wildlife refuge lands to oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic.
• Los Angeles has approved a one-year pilot program for the use of commercial drones for the LAPD, the drones will be limited to search and rescue operations and tactical observation.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment

The Senate investigation grows deeper as the focus shifts to former Trump national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and now we learn from NBC News that this focus includes Flynn's son, Michael Jr. as well.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested documents and testimony from Michael G. Flynn, the son of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, but has not received a response, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. 

The committee, which is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, is interested in Flynn’s work as his father’s aide and travel companion with Flynn Intel Group, the consulting firm retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn formed after he left government service, the sources said. 

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the intelligence committee chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner, of Virginia the ranking Democrat, declined to comment when asked about the matter Monday by NBC News. 

Michael G. Flynn’s lawyer, Barry Coburn, declined to comment. 

The younger Flynn, 34, accompanied his father on a 2015 trip to Moscow, where the elder Flynn sat next to Vladimir Putin at a dinner to celebrate Russia’s state-funded media network, RT. The younger Flynn can be seen in video from an associated event. 

Ultimately, the committee could issue a subpoena to Flynn if he doesn’t comply, but he could assert his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

NBC News reported last month that the younger Flynn is a subject of the criminal and counterintelligence investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is also interested in Flynn’s work with his father’s consulting business. 

Flynn responded on Twitter to the NBC News report, tweeting on Sept. 14: “I’m not the sub of any federal investigation.”

Mini Moscow Mike was already in Mueller's crosshairs, now the Senate wants him too.  The Flynns are neck deep in Putin's dirty business at this point and the only question in my mind, as with Paul Manafort, is how much damage they do to Trump before they go to prison.

I know, I know, that's when the pardons start coming in hot and heavy, but that leads to the Nixon road, and down that path is the end the of the GOP and a lot of unhappy billionaire donors.  We'll see where this goes but it's a race now to see who gets indicted first, the Flynns or Manafort.

Broken Bad, Or That's Not How Drug Czars Work

Over the weekend, both the Washington Post and CBS's 60 Minutes laid into Trump's nominee for drug czar, Rep. Tom Marino, for essentially writing a bill that made the DEA's job of tracking opioids and stopping massive shipments from drug companies impossible.

In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets. 

By then, the opioid war had claimed 200,000 lives, more than three times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War. Overdose deaths continue to rise. There is no end in sight. 

A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation’s major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes.” The DEA had opposed the effort for years. 

The law was the crowning achievement of a multifaceted campaign by the drug industry to weaken aggressive DEA enforcement efforts against drug distribution companies that were supplying corrupt doctors and pharmacists who peddled narcotics to the black market. The industry worked behind the scenes with lobbyists and key members of Congress, pouring more than a million dollars into their election campaigns. 

The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino,a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump’s nominee to become the nation’s next drug czar. Marino spent years trying to move the law through Congress. It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA.

That was late Friday, followed with a devastating 60 Minutes piece on Sunday.  A DEA agent named Joe Rannazzisi who was fired from the DEA for criticizing Marino's bill as a deliberate effort to sink the DEA to help drug company profits blew the whistle on the department, in an interview with CBS's Bill Whitaker.

JOE RANNAZZISI: Addiction rate was still increasing. The amount of people seeking treatment was still increasing. It was all increasing. Still, the amount of prescriptions were increasing. And we started slowing down. 

As cases nearly ground to a halt at DEA, the drug industry began lobbying Congress for legislation that would destroy DEA's enforcement powers. That part of the story when we return. 

In 2013, Joe Rannazzisi and his DEA investigators were trying to crack down on big drug distributors that ship drugs to pharmacies across the country. He accused them of turning a blind eye as millions of prescription pain pills ended up on the black market. Then, a new threat surfaced on Capitol Hill. With the help of members of Congress, the drug industry began to quietly pave the way for legislation that essentially would strip the DEA of its most potent tool in fighting the spread of dangerous narcotics.

JOE RANNAZZISI: If I was gonna write a book about how to harm the United States with pharmaceuticals, the only thing I could think of that would immediately harm is to take the authority away from the investigative agency that is trying to enforce the Controlled Substances Act and the regulations implemented under the act. And that's what this bill did. 

The bill, introduced in the House by Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, was promoted as a way to ensure that patients had access to the pain medication they needed. 

Jonathan Novak, who worked in the DEA's legal office, says what the bill really did was strip the agency of its ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets -- what the DEA calls diversion.

That was Sunday. So now, Marino is out as the nation's direction of drug policy today, his nomination pulled.

Rep. Tom Marino has withdrawn from consideration as the White House’s pick for drug czar following a bombshell report that he championed a bill that hindered federal agents from going after the Big Pharma firms that flooded the country with addictive opioids. 

President Donald Trump made the announcement Tuesday morning on Twitter. 

“Rep.Tom Marino has informed me that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as drug czar,” Trump wrote. “Tom is a fine man and a great Congressman!”

Sure he's great.  But when Eric Holder warned that Marino's bill would make the opioid epidemic exponentially worse?

Obama did sign the bill but there was no debate in Congress.

Besides the sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, few lawmakers knew the true impact the law would have. It sailed through Congress without debate and was passed by unanimous consent, a parliamentary procedure reserved for bills considered to be noncontroversial. The White House was equally unaware of the bill’s import when President Barack Obama signed it into law, according to interviews with former senior administration officials.

Marino pulled a fast one...and note that his partner in crime is Marsha Blackburn, running for retiring Tennessee Senator Bob Corker's seat.  Suddenly that race got a whole lot more interesting.