Name: Anonymous 2020-02-18 17:33
I'm so sad right now.
>>400 part 7 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
Trump had big plans when he bought the property in 1996 — a golf course, a clubhouse and 15 private homes. But residents of surrounding towns thwarted his ambitions, arguing that development would draw too much traffic and risk polluting the drinking water. Trump instead found a way to reap tax benefits from the estate. He took advantage of what is known as a conservation easement. In 2015, he signed a deal with a land conservancy, agreeing not to develop most of the property. In exchange, he claimed a $21.1 million charitable tax deduction. The tax records reveal another way Seven Springs has generated substantial tax savings. In 2014, Trump classified the estate as an investment property, as distinct from a personal residence. Since then, he has written off $2.2 million in property taxes as a business expense — even as his 2017 tax law allowed individuals to write off only $10,000 in property taxes a year. Courts have held that to treat residences as businesses for tax purposes, owners must show that they have “an actual and honest objective of making a profit,” typically by making substantial efforts to rent the property and eventually generating income.
Whether or not Seven Springs fits those criteria, the Trumps have described the property somewhat differently. In 2014, Eric Trump told Forbes that “this is really our compound.” Growing up, he and his brother Donald Jr. spent many summers there, riding all-terrain vehicles and fishing on a nearby lake. At one point, the brothers took up residence in a carriage house on the property. “It was home base for us for a long, long time,” Eric told Forbes. And the Trump Organization website still describes Seven Springs as a “retreat for the Trump family.” Garten, the Trump Organization lawyer, did not respond to a question about the Seven Springs write-off.
The Seven Springs conservation-easement deduction is one of four that Donald Trump has claimed over the years. While his use of these deductions is widely known, his tax records show that they represent the lion’s share of his charitable giving — about $119.3 million of roughly $130 million in personal and corporate charitable contributions reported to the IRS. Two of those deductions — at Seven Springs and at the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles — are the focus of an investigation by the New York attorney general, who is examining whether the appraisals on the land, and therefore the tax deductions, were inflated. Another common deductible expense for all businesses is legal fees. The IRS requires that these fees be “directly related to operating your business,” and businesses cannot deduct “legal fees paid to defend charges that arise from participation in a political campaign.” Yet the tax records show that Trump Corp. wrote off as business expenses fees paid to a criminal defence lawyer, Alan S. Futerfas, who was hired to represent Donald Trump Jr. during the Russia inquiry. Investigators were examining Donald Jr.’s role in the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians who had promised damaging information on Clinton. When he testified before Congress in 2017, Futerfas was by his side.
Futerfas was also hired to defend the president’s embattled charitable foundation, which would be shut down in 2018 after New York regulators said it had engaged in “a shocking pattern of illegality.” The Trump Corp. paid Futerfas at least $1.9 million in 2017 and 2018, tax records show. Also written off was at least $259,684 paid to Williams & Jensen, another law firm brought in during the same period to represent Donald Trump Jr. Deals in countries led by strongmen, tenants who have business before the federal government, and hotels and clubs that draw those seeking access or favour. In May, the chairman of a trade group representing Turkish business interests wrote to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross urging support for increased trade between the United States and Turkey. The ultimate goal was nothing less than “reorienting the US supply chain away from China.”
The letter was among three sent to Cabinet secretaries by Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, chairman of the Turkey-US Business Council, who noted that he had copied each one to Trump. The president needed no introduction to Yalcindag: The Turkish businessman helped negotiate a licensing deal in 2008 for his family’s company to develop two Trump towers in Istanbul. The tax records show the deal has earned Trump at least $13 million — far more than previously known — including more than $1 million since he entered the White House, even as his onetime associate now lobbies on behalf of Turkish interests. Yalcindag said that he had “remained friendly” with Trump since their work together years ago but that all communications between his trade group and the administration “go through formal channels and are properly disclosed.” The ethical quandaries created by Trump’s decision to keep his business while in the White House have been documented. But the full financial measure of his extraordinary confluence of interests — a president with a wealth of business entanglements at home and in myriad geopolitical hot spots — has remained elusive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
>>401 part 8 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
The tax records for Trump and his hundreds of companies show precisely how much money he has received over the years, and how heavily he has come to rely on leveraging his brand in ways that pose potential or direct conflicts of interest while he is president. The records also provide the first reliable window onto his finances before 2014, the earliest year covered by his required annual disclosures, showing that his total profits from some projects outside the United States were larger than indicated by those limited public filings. Based on the financial disclosures, which report much of his income in broad ranges, Trump’s earnings from the Istanbul towers could have been as low as $3.2 million. In the Philippines, where he licensed his name to a Manila tower nearly a decade ago, the low end of the range was $4.1 million — less than half of the $9.3 million he actually made. In Azerbaijan, he collected more than $5 million for the failed hotel project, about twice what appeared on his public filings. It did not take long for conflicts to emerge when Trump ran for president and won. The Philippines’ strongman leader, Rodrigo Duterte, chose as a special trade envoy to Washington the businessman behind the Trump tower in Manila. In Argentina, a key person who had been involved in a Uruguayan licensing deal that earned Trump $2.3 million was appointed to a Cabinet post. The president’s conflicts have been most evident with Turkey, where the business community and the authoritarian government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have not hesitated to leverage various Trump enterprises to their advantage. When Turkish-American relations were at a low point, a Turkish business group cancelled a conference at Trump’s Washington hotel; six months later, when the two countries were on better terms, the rescheduled event was attended by Turkish government officials. Turkish Airlines also chose the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Virginia to host an event.
More broadly, the tax records suggest other ways in which Trump’s presidency has propped up his sagging bottom line. Monthly credit card receipts, reported to the IRS by third-party card processing firms, reflect the way certain of his resorts, golf courses and hotels became favored stamping grounds, if not venues for influence-trading, beginning in 2015 and continuing into his time in the White House. The credit card data does not reflect total revenue and is useful mainly for showing short-term ups and downs of consumer interest in a business. While two of Trump’s marquee draws — the Washington hotel in the Old Post Office and the Doral golf resort — are loaded with debt and continue to lose money, both have seen credit card transactions rise markedly with his political ascent. At the hotel, the monthly receipts grew from $3.7 million in December 2016 shortly after it opened, to $5.4 million in January 2017 and $6 million by May 2018. At Doral, after Trump declared his candidacy in June 2015, credit card revenue more than doubled, to $13 million, for the three months through August, compared with the same period the year before. One Trump enterprise that has been regularly profitable and is a persistent source of concern about ethical conflicts and national security lapses, is the Mar-a-Lago club. Profits there rose sharply after Trump declared his candidacy, as courtiers eagerly joining up brought a tenfold rise in cash from initiation fees — from $664,000 in 2014 to just under $6 million in 2016, even before Trump doubled the cost of initiation in January 2017. The membership rush allowed the president to take $26 million out of the business from 2015 through 2018, nearly triple the rate at which he had paid himself in the prior two years.
Some of the largest payments from business groups for events or conferences at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties have come since Trump became president, the tax records show. At Doral, Trump collected a total of at least $7 million in 2015 and 2016 from Bank of America, and at least $1.2 million in 2017 and 2018 from a trade association representing food retailers and wholesalers. The US Chamber of Commerce paid Doral at least $406,599 in 2018. Beyond one-time payments for events or memberships, large corporations also pay rent for space in the few commercial buildings Trump actually owns. Walgreens, the pharmacy giant that resolved an antitrust matter before federal regulators in 2017, pays $3.4 million a year for a lease at 40 Wall Street, a Trump-owned office building in Manhattan. Another renter at 40 Wall, for $2.5 million a year, is Atane Engineers, which changed its name in 2018 after a corruption scandal that culminated in two former top executives’ pleading guilty to paying bribes for city infrastructure contracts. Despite the criminal case — which landed the company on New York state’s list of “non-responsible entities” that require a waiver to obtain state contracts — the newly christened Atane registered as an eligible federal contractor with no restrictions listed in its file.
Rental income overall at 40 Wall has risen markedly, from $30.5 million in 2014 to $43.2 million in 2018. The tax records show that the cost of existing leases there has risen. and at least four law firms appear to have moved in since Trump ran for president. In addition to buildings he owns outright, there is the president’s stake in the Vornado partnerships that control two valuable office towers — 1290 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan and 555 California Street in San Francisco. Vornado’s chief executive, Steven Roth, is a close Trump ally recently named to the White House economic recovery council. Last year, the president appointed Roth’s wife, Daryl Roth, to the Kennedy Center board of trustees. Vornado tenants include a roster of blue-chip firms paying multimillion-dollar leases, many of whom regularly do business with, lobby or are regulated by the federal government. Among the dozens of leases paid in 2018 to Trump’s Vornado partnerships, according to his tax records, were $5.8 million from Goldman Sachs; $3.1 million from Microsoft; $32.7 million from Neuberger Berman, an investment management company; and $8.8 million from the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Threats are converging: mounting business losses, the looming IRS audit and personally guaranteed debts coming due.
When Trump glided down a gilded Trump Tower escalator to kick off his presidential campaign in June 2015, his finances needed a jolt. His core businesses were reporting mounting losses — more than $100 million over the previous two years. The river of celebrity-driven income that had long buoyed them was running dry. If Trump hoped his unlikely candidacy might, at least, revitalize his brand, his barrage of derogatory remarks about immigrants quickly cost him two of his biggest and easiest sources of cash — licensing deals with clothing and mattress manufacturers that had netted him more than $30 million. NBC, his partner in Miss Universe — source of nearly $20 million in profits — announced that it would no longer broadcast the pageant; he sold it soon after. Now his tax records make clear that he is facing a battery of threats to his business and his own financial well-being.
>>405 part 9 https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020
Over the past decade, he appears to have filled the cash-flow gaps with a series of one-shots that may not be available again. In 2012, he took out a $100 million mortgage on the commercial space in Trump Tower. He took nearly the entire amount as a payout, his tax records show. His company has paid more than $15 million in interest on the loan but nothing on the principal. The full $100 million comes due in 2022. In 2013, he withdrew $95.8 million from his Vornado partnership account. And in January 2014, he sold $98 million in stocks and bonds, his biggest single month of sales in at least the last two decades. He sold $54 million more in stocks and bonds in 2015, and $68.2 million in 2016. His financial disclosure released in July showed that he had as little as $873,000 in securities left to sell.
Trump’s businesses reported cash on hand of $34.7 million in 2018, down 40 per cent from five years earlier. What’s more, the tax records show that Trump has once again done what he says he regrets, looking back on his early 1990s meltdown: personally guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, a decision that led his lenders to threaten to force him into personal bankruptcy. This time around, he is personally responsible for loans and other debts totalling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. Should he win reelection, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president. There is, however, a tax benefit for Trump. While business owners can use losses to avoid taxes, they can do so only up to the amount invested in the business. But by taking personal responsibility for that $421 million in debt, Trump would be able to declare that amount in losses in future years.
The balances on those loans had not been paid down by the end of 2018. And the businesses carrying the bulk of the debt — the Doral golf resort ($125 million) and the Washington hotel ($160 million) — are struggling, which could make it difficult to find a lender willing to refinance it. The unresolved audit of his $72.9 million tax refund hangs over his head. The broader economy promises little relief. Across the country, brick-and-mortar stores are in decline, and they have been very important to Trump Tower, which has in turn been very important to Trump. Nike, which rented the space for its flagship store in a building attached to Trump Tower and had paid $195.1 million in rent since the 1990s, left in 2018. The president’s most recent financial disclosure reported modest gains in 2019. But that was before the pandemic hit. His already struggling properties were shut down for several months earlier this year. The Doral resort asked Deutsche Bank to allow a delay on its loan payments. Analysts have predicted that the hotel business will not fully recover until late 2023.
Trump still has assets to sell. But doing so could take its own toll, both financial and to Trump’s desire to always be seen as a winner. The Trump family said last year that it was considering selling the Washington hotel but not because it was losing money. In Trump’s telling, any difficulty in his finances has been caused by the sacrifices made for his current job. “They say, ‘Trump is getting rich off our nation,’” he said at a rally in Minneapolis last October. “I lose billions being president, and I don’t care. It’s nice to be rich, I guess, but I lose billions.”
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#2_September_2020_(Private_documents_from_the_saboteur_in_chief's_Covid-19_task_force) -- Private documents from the saboteur in chief's Covid-19 task force show that when he said it would disappear, he knew the opposite was true. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/31/white-house-cover-covid-19-task-force-reports-withheld-public-reveal-trump-knew -- Covid-19 Task Force Reports Withheld From Public Reveal Trump Knew of Threats as He Spread Lies -- Monday, August 31, 2020 -- "Rather than being straight with the American people and creating a national plan to fix the problem, the president and his enablers kept these alarming reports private while publicly downplaying the threat to millions of Americans." -- >>231
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#14_October_2020_(Insults_and_denunciation) -- Here's how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced a Republican congresscritter that first insulted her on the capital steps, then tried to claim that we shouldn't blame him for that because he has daughters. I was so moved by her strength and dignity that I found a recording to listen to via invidious. Her speech is even more impressive as spoken word. -- https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-floor-speech-about-yoho-remarks-july-23 -- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) House Floor Speech Transcript on Yoho Remarks July 23 -- Jul 23, 2020 -- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) gave a speech on the House floor about Rep. Ted Yoho’s remarks towards her on July 23. She said: “You can take photos and project an image to the world of being a family man and accost women without remorse and with a sense of impunity. It happens every day in this country”.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (00:00) Speaker, I seek recognition for a question of personal privilege.
Speaker 2: (00:04) The chair has been made aware of the valid base for the gentlewoman’s point of personal privilege. The gentlewoman from New York is recognized for one hour.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (00:14) Thank you Madam Speaker, and I would also like to thank many of my colleagues for the opportunity to not only speak today but for the many members from both sides of the aisle who have reached out to me in support following an incident earlier this week. About two days ago, I was walking up the steps of the Capitol when Representative Yoho suddenly turned a corner and he was accompanied by Representative Roger Williams, and accosted me on the steps right here in front of our nation’s Capitol. I was minding my own business, walking up the steps and Representative Yoho put his finger in my face, he called me disgusting, he called me crazy, he called me out of my mind, and he called me dangerous. Then he took a few more steps and after I had recognized his comments as rude, he walked away and said I’m rude, you’re calling me rude. I took a few steps ahead and I walked inside and cast my vote. Because my constituents send me here each and every day to fight for them and to make sure that they are able to keep a roof over their head, that they’re able to feed their families and that they’re able to carry their lives with dignity.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (01:43) I walked back out and there were reporters in the front of the Capitol and in front of reporters Representative Yoho called me, and I quote, “a f***ing b****.” These were the words that Representative Yoho levied against a congresswoman. The congresswoman that not only represents New York’s 14th Congressional District, but every congresswoman and every woman in this country. Because all of us have had to deal with this in some form, some way, some shape, at some point in our lives. I want to be clear that Representative Yoho’s comments were not deeply hurtful or piercing to me, because I have worked a working class job. I have waited tables in restaurants. I have ridden the subway. I have walked the streets in New York City, and this kind of language is not new. I have encountered words uttered by Mr. Yoho and men uttering the same words as Mr. Yoho while I was being harassed in restaurants. I have tossed men out of bars that have used language like Mr. Yoho’s and I have encountered this type of harassment riding the subway in New York City.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (03:11) This is not new, and that is the problem. Mr. Yoho was not alone. He was walking shoulder to shoulder with Representative Roger Williams, and that’s when we start to see that this issue is not about one incident. It is cultural. It is a culture of lack of impunity, of accepting of violence and violent language against women, and an entire structure of power that supports that. Because not only have I been spoken to disrespectfully, particularly by members of the Republican Party and elected officials in the Republican Party, not just here, but the President of the United States last year told me to go home to another country, with the implication that I don’t even belong in America. The governor of Florida, Governor DeSantis, before I even was sworn in, called me a whatever that is. Dehumanizing language is not new, and what we are seeing is that incidents like these are happening in a pattern. This is a pattern of an attitude towards women and dehumanization of others.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (04:35) So while I was not deeply hurt or offended by little comments that are made, when I was reflecting on this, I honestly thought that I was just going to pack it up and go home. It’s just another day, right? But then yesterday, Representative Yoho decided to come to the floor of the House of Representatives and make excuses for his behavior, and that I could not let go. I could not allow my nieces, I could not allow the little girls that I go home to, I could not allow victims of verbal abuse and worse to see that, to see that excuse and to see our Congress accept it as legitimate and accept it as an apology and to accept silence as a form of acceptance. I could not allow that to stand which is why I am rising today to raise this point of personal privilege.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (05:49) I do not need Representative Yoho to apologize to me. Clearly he does not want to. Clearly when given the opportunity he will not and I will not stay up late at night waiting for an apology from a man who has no remorse over calling women and using abusive language towards women, but what I do have issue with is using women, our wives and daughters, as shields and excuses for poor behavior. Mr. Yoho mentioned that he has a wife and two daughters. I am two years younger than Mr. Yoho’s youngest daughter. I am someone’s daughter too. My father, thankfully, is not alive to see how Mr. Yoho treated his daughter. My mother got to see Mr. Yoho’s disrespect on the floor of this House towards me on television and I am here because I have to show my parents that I am their daughter and that they did not raise me to accept abuse from men.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (07:12) Now what I am here to say is that this harm that Mr. Yoho levied, it tried to levy against me, was not just an incident directed at me, but when you do that to any woman, what Mr. Yoho did was give permission to other men to do that to his daughters. In using that language in front of the press, he gave permission to use that language against his wife, his daughters, women in his community, and I am here to stand up to say that is not acceptable. I do not care what your views are. It does not matter how much I disagree or how much it incenses me or how much I feel that people are dehumanizing others. I will not do that myself. I will not allow people to change and create hatred in our hearts.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (08:18) And so what I believe is that having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man, and when a decent man messes up as we all are bound to do, he tries his best and does apologize. Not to save face, not to win a vote, he apologizes genuinely to repair and acknowledge the harm done so that we can all move on.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: (09:06) Lastly, what I want to express to Mr. Yoho is gratitude. I want to thank him for showing the world that you can be a powerful man and accost women. You can have daughters and accost women without remorse. You can be married and accost women. You can take photos and project an image to the world of being a family man and accost women without remorse and with a sense of impunity. It happens every day in this country. It happened here on the steps of our nation’s Capitol. It happens when individuals who hold the highest office in this land admit, admit to hurting women and using this language against all of us. Once again, I thank my colleagues for joining us today. I will reserve the hour of my time and I will yield to my colleague, Representative Jayapal of Washington. Thank you.
$ wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 Firefox/77.0" -O dn2020-0724.m4a 'https://publish.dvlabs.com/democracynow/audio-m4a/dn2020-0724.m4a?end=1410.0'https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#20_September_2020_(Reversal_of_DeJoy's_postal_sabotage) -- A US court has ordered reversal of DeJoy's postal sabotage. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/18/denouncing-intentional-effort-sabotage-election-judge-orders-nationwide-reversal -- Denouncing 'Intentional Effort' to Sabotage Election, Judge Orders Nationwide Reversal of DeJoy Mail Changes -- Friday, September 18, 2020 -- "At the heart of DeJoy's and the Postal Service's actions is voter disenfranchisement," said Judge Stanley Bastian. -- >>277
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#13_October_2020_(Texas_order_to_shut_down_ballot_drop-off_sites) -- Federal judge blocks Texas governor's order to shut down ballot drop-off sites. I suppose this will go through two appeals and reach the Supreme Court. I wonder what it will say. -- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/10/texas-mail-in-ballot-drop-off-sites-judge -- Federal judge blocks Texas governor's order to shut down ballot drop-off sites -- Sat 10 Oct 2020 -- Last week the governor, Greg Abbott, limited >>372 each county to one mail-in ballot drop-off site
On Friday evening, US federal judge Robert Pitman blocked Texas governor Greg Abbott’s order to shut down mail-in ballot drop-off sites across the state as the election is currently under way. Last week, Abbott issued a proclamation [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/03/texas-mail-in-ballot-drop-off-sites ] limiting each county to only one ballot drop-off site, regardless of size or population. This decision would have led to the closure of drop-off sites across the state, including 11 in Harris county and three in Travis county. A lawsuit was immediately filed by civil right organizations.
Critics argued Abbott’s order to close drop-off sites would disproportionately affect larger, more diverse counties and hit communities of color, making it more difficult for them to vote. Harris county has more than 4.7 million residents and is the third most populous county in the nation and home to the city of Houston. Travis county is home to Texas’s capital city, Austin. By comparison, smaller counties like Brewster county in west Texas, which has a population of just under 10,000, would remain unaffected by the ruling as it has always only had one drop-off site.
Requests for absentee ballots in Texas are higher than previous elections due to the coronavirus pandemic, but concerns of mail slowdowns [ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/21/usps-post-office-mail-slowdowns-louis-dejoy ] presented a need for drop-off locations. The ruling by Pitman blocking Abbott’s move is a victory for those deemed eligible to vote by mail in the state, including the elderly and disabled who would have had to travel farther distances to drop off their ballot and risk exposure to Covid-19. In a statement, the Harris county clerk, Chris Hollins, said: “Tonight’s injunction reinstating Harris county voters’ ability to hand-deliver their ballots at 12 county offices is a victory for voting rights. The governor’s suppressive tactics should not be tolerated, and tonight’s ruling shows that the law is on the side of Texas voters.”
And how isn't your awesome political posts /lounge/?Did you just seriously try a "no u"? They are not mine since that would be off topic in the 'Poor Stallman' thread. They are from his personal site www.stallman.org and reflect his opinions on various topics. Your post has no connection to rms and would only acquire a connection to /prog/ if you had some technical details of the hack to share with us, in which case it still wouldn't belong specifically in this thread. However if rms blogs some opinion about your article then, by all means, it will belong here.
the minimal relation of "contains stallman, who is known to be a programmer"Burning strawmen has no weight here. The connection is that Stallman's opinions on various topics are on topic in the 'Poor Stallman' thread.
the saga of stallman against the self-victimizing-womans-in-tech, his support of minskyThe former is your fabrication, and you are welcome to keep bringing up the latter and it will get the standard response >>292 >>328 >>411.
your news feedThat is simply your strawman for "Stallman's opinions on various topics".
/lounge/ is where awesome political news belong./lounge/ is indeed where news articles like yours belong, unless you have some technical details of the hack to share with us, while Stallman's opinions on various topics are appropriate for the 'Poor Stallman' thread.
if you had some technical details of the hack to share with usI am not that guy.
Stallman's opinions on various topicsStallman's various anti-trump opinions, on his tax evasion, on his vote disenfranchisement plans. That's basically what you've singled out and are repeating ad nauseam. And it's come to the point where it's just you bumping this thread and another guy saying "stallman pedo" to counter you.
anti-trump opinions, on his tax evasion, on his vote disenfranchisement plansThe fact that you don't like which of Stallman's opinions are posted here, and that you ignore those items which do not fit your enumeration, has no bearing on Stallman's opinions on various topics belonging in the 'Poor Stallman' thread. As for your transparent goalpost translation from what belongs in this thread to where this thread belongs, if you have any arguments on why a generic Stallman thread, or Linus thread or Bellard thread or GJS thread, does not belong in /prog/ after being an established thread for over six months >>220,221 and two hundred posts, you are welcome to present them. So far you have not presented any. All you've done is rail against a subset of posts that you want to downvote.
And it's come to the point where it's just you bumping this thread and another guy saying "stallman pedo" to counter you.The fact that /pol/cels are incapable of anything more than ad hominem fantasy projections, having no answer of substance to his stances, reflects on the /pol/cels, not on this thread.
could have done better, keeping it more stallman and programming relatedInstead of complaining that the thread does not fit your taste, contribute the kind of on-topic material you want to see posted.
while a trump-focused thread could have made it on /lounge/Arguing against your select subset of posts that you wish you could downvote, ignoring its complement, is not arguing against the thread, it's just burning strawmen.
anti-trumpAll of the posts you are referring to are criticizing specific actions or stances of Trump, actions or stances that would also be criticized in any other public figure, and not the person divorced from those specific actions or stances, so "anti-trump" is another misrepresentation. Rms agreed with Trump on his TPP withdrawal, for example, and calls it Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
*Pro-democracy advocates are organizing more than 170 events [on Nov 4] in anticipation of President Donald Trump illegitimately declaring victory in the Nov. 3 election.* That's a good idea, but they have messed up the web site where they publish the details: it depends on nonfree Javascript code, and it is totally inaccessible in the Free World. I can't see even one word of the contents of their site, only a message saying "Enable Javascript." No way! It is a shame that I can't (without sacrificing my freedom and principles) find an event near me, and neither can you, nor can I in good conscience post an urgent note asking everyone to look at the site and find an event to join. This time, we have considerable notice — 18 days to go before Nov 4. Maybe this is enough time to correct the deficiency, rather than merely bemoan it. If you are a skilled web developer, and you have a web site where you can make a page without Javascript, and run an hourly cron job on the net, please try it. See if you can scrape the data from their site and make a simple HTML file listing all the events, sorted in some natural way. Put that that page on your site, with a brief introduction saying what these events are for. Then please email me about it, and I will post a reference to your curved mirror. -- https://protecttheresults.com/
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#4_October_2020_(What_we_have_learned_from_the_conman's_tax_returns) -- A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns. -- https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/donald-trump-did-not-pay-income-tax-in-10-of-last-15-years-894048.html -- Donald Trump did not pay income tax in 10 of last 15 years -- Sep 28 2020 -- >>388-410
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#15_October_2020_(Voter_suppression) -- After Republicans stacked the appeals court, it approved the Texas voter-suppression measure of allowing only one ballot drop-off per county. I am curious to see their rationale, but I suspect it is based on taking at face value the pretense that this is a measure to prevent fraud, and disregarding the question of what effect it will really have. That gives officials a free hand to oppress people: just fabricate a motive that would have been legitimate, no matter how absurd. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/13/stacked-trump-appointees-federal-appeals-court-upholds-texas-gops-rule-restricting -- Stacked With Trump Appointees, Federal Appeals Court Upholds Texas GOP's Rule Restricting Ballot Drop-Off Sites to One Per County -- Tuesday, October 13, 2020 -- "Three Trump appointees upholding voter >>372,420 suppression."
An ongoing battle in Texas over voters' access to absentee ballot drop-off locations illustrates the consequences of President Donald Trump's relentless focus on stacking the judicial branch with conservative appointees, as a federal appeals court late Monday night upheld Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's limit on voting locations across the state. A panel of three Trump appointees on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued [ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.statesman.com/news/20201013/appeals-court-allows-abbott-to-close-multiple-ballot-drop-off-sites ] a temporary stay on a District Court's earlier ruling, in which Judge Robert Pitman had said Abbott was unfairly cutting off access to voting for people across the state by limiting ballot drop-off locations to one per county. Following Monday night's ruling, Texas voters are likely to face hours-long lines to drop off their absentee ballots, like those that reporters have recorded in Harris County in recent days.
Trump named [ https://apnews.com/article/4d4cb7d5b1e07e357324539ec0bc8098 ] his 200th judicial appointee to the federal court system in June, and is working with Senate Majority Leader Mitch [ https://dis.tinychan.net/read/anarchy/1587122567#reply_8 ] McConnell (R-Ky.) to push through the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court after appointing Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh earlier in his term. On Monday, Democratic strategist Emmy Bengston tweeted, three of Trump's chosen judges upheld "voter suppression." Abbott and other Republicans claim allowing more than one drop-off location per county would invite so-called "voter fraud"—which multiple studies have found to be extremely rare whether a voter casts a ballot in person, by mail, or by dropping it off.
A record number of Americans have requested absentee ballots this year amid the coronavirus pandemic. Abbott's attempt to make voting more difficult for people who aim to avoid spreading Covid-19 caught international attention this month, with Spanish politician Alfons López Tena denouncing the move as a "travesty" intended to disenfranchise voters of color in Texas. In his ruling last week, Pitman sided with a coalition of civil rights groups, including the Texas League of United Latin American Citizens, who filed suit against the state arguing that voters particularly vulnerable to severe cases of Covid-19 would be disenfranchised by Abbott's restrictions.
"Older and disabled voters living in Texas' largest and most populous counties must travel further distances to more crowded ballot return centers where they would be at an increased risk of being infected by the coronavirus in order to exercise their right to vote and have it counted," Pitman wrote in his ruling. The ruling on Monday, journalist Adam Serwer sarcastically tweeted, illustrates the Republican Party's view that "the constitution very clearly says 'Republicans win every time, especially when disenfranchising millions of voters they think won't support them.'" "Democracy is ok as long as you vote Republican. If you don't, well, that freedom can be taken away from you because it's not as important as 'liberty,'" wrote Serwer. "What's liberty? It's when one party runs things because it successfully disenfranchises the other party's voters. Any questions?"
Why in the world would tinychan posts have any influence on who wins?Tinychan isn't magically isolated from rest of the internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#15_October_2020_(Voter_suppression) -- After Republicans stacked the appeals court, it approved the Texas voter-suppression measure of allowing only one ballot drop-off per county. I am curious to see their rationale, but I suspect it is based on taking at face value the pretense that this is a measure to prevent fraud, and disregarding the question of what effect it will really have. That gives officials a free hand to oppress people: just fabricate a motive that would have been legitimate, no matter how absurd. -- https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/13/stacked-trump-appointees-federal-appeals-court-upholds-texas-gops-rule-restricting -- Stacked With Trump Appointees, Federal Appeals Court Upholds Texas GOP's Rule Restricting Ballot Drop-Off Sites to One Per County -- Tuesday, October 13, 2020 -- "Three Trump appointees upholding voter >>372,420 suppression." -- >>427
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2020-jul-oct.html#13_October_2020_(Political_officials_alter_the_CDC's_weekly_reports) -- Political officials alter the CDC's weekly reports for political purposes. They are pushing the head of the CDC to modify old reports too. Dr. Rick Bright resigned from the National Institute of Health after he was sidelined for insisting on doing what was scientifically and medically called for. -- https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/11/exclusive-trump-officials-interfered-with-cdc-reports-on-covid-19-412809 -- Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19 -- 09/11/2020 -- The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC’s scientific reports to health professionals.
The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals. In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation. CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides’ efforts to change the language in the CDC’s reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon. The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports [ https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html ] are authored by career scientists and serve as the main vehicle for the agency to inform doctors, researchers and the general public about how Covid-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Such reports have historically been published with little fanfare and no political interference, said several longtime health department officials, and have been viewed as a cornerstone of the nation's public health work for decades.
But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the Health and Human Services department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether. Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO. Caputo's team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports, including delaying a report that addressed how doctors were prescribing hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump as a coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence. The report, which was held for about a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings, was finally published last week. It said that "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks." In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to "hurt the President" in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.
"CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump's push to reopen schools. "CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear." Alexander also called on Redfield to halt all future MMWR reports until the agency modified its years-old publication process so he could personally review the entire report prior to publication, rather than a brief synopsis. Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at McMaster University near Toronto whom Caputo recruited this spring to be his scientific adviser, added that CDC needed to allow him to make line edits — and demanded an "immediate stop" to the reports in the meantime. "The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy," Alexander told Redfield and other officials. "Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'" CDC officials have fought the efforts to retroactively change reports but have increasingly allowed Caputo and his team to review them before publication, according to the three individuals with knowledge of the situation. Caputo also helped install CDC’s interim chief of staff last month, two individuals added, ensuring that Caputo himself would have more visibility into an agency that has often been at odds with HHS political officials during the pandemic.
Asked by POLITICO about why he and his team were demanding changes to CDC reports, Caputo praised Alexander as "an Oxford-educated epidemiologist" who specializes "in analyzing the work of other scientists," although he did not make him available for an interview. "Dr. Alexander advises me on pandemic policy and he has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists. Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers," Caputo said in a statement. Caputo also said that HHS was appropriately reviewing the CDC's reports. “Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic—not ulterior deep state motives >>411 in the bowels of CDC," he said. Caputo's team has spent months clashing with scientific experts across the administration. Alexander this week tried to muzzle infectious-disease expert [ https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/09/emails-show-hhs-muzzle-fauci-410861 ] Anthony Fauci [ https://dis.tinychan.net/read/anarchy/1587122567#reply_155 ] from speaking about the risks of the coronavirus to children, and The Washington Post reported in July that Alexander had criticized the CDC's methods and findings.
But public health experts told POLITICO that they were particularly alarmed that the CDC's reports could face political interference, praising the MMWRs as essential to fighting the pandemic. "It's the go-to place for the public health community to get information that's scientifically vetted," said Jennifer Kates, who leads the Kaiser Family Foundation's global health work. In an interview with POLITICO, Kates rattled off nearly a dozen examples of MMWR reports that she and other researchers have relied on to determine how Covid-19 has spread and who's at highest risk, including reports on how the virus has been transmitted in nursing homes, at churches and among children. "They're so important, and CDC has done so many," Kates said. The efforts to modify the CDC reports began in earnest after a May report [ https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6918e2.htm ] authored by senior CDC official Anne Schuchat, which reviewed the spread of Covid-19 in the United States and caused significant strife within the health department. HHS officials, including Secretary Alex Azar, believed that Schuchat was implying that the Trump administration moved too slowly to respond to the outbreak, said two individuals familiar with the situation.
The HHS criticism was mystifying to CDC officials, who believed that Schuchat was merely recounting the state of affairs and not rendering judgment on the response, the individuals familiar with the situation said. Schuchat has made few public appearances since authoring the report. CDC did not respond to a request for comment about Schuchat’s report and the response within the department. The close scrutiny continued across the summer with numerous flashpoints, the individuals added, with Caputo and other HHS officials particularly bristling about a CDC report that found the coronavirus spread among young attendees at an overnight camp in Georgia. Caputo, Alexander and others claimed that the timing of the August report was a deliberate effort to undermine the president's push on children returning to schools in the fall. Most recently, Alexander on Friday asked CDC to change its definition of “pediatric population” for a report on coronavirus-related deaths among young Americans slated for next week, according to an email that Caputo shared with POLITICO.
“[D]esignating persons aged 18-20 as ‘pediatric’ by the CDC is misleading,” Alexander wrote, arguing that the report needed to better distinguish between Americans of different ages. “These are legal adults, albeit young.” Caputo defended his team’s interventions as necessary to the coronavirus response. “Buried in this good [CDC] work are sometimes stories which seem to purposefully mislead and undermine the President’s Covid response with what some scientists label as poor scholarship — and others call politics disguised in science,” Caputo told POLITICO. The battles over delaying or modifying the reports have weighed on CDC officials and been a distraction in the middle of the pandemic response, said three individuals familiar with the situation. "Dr. Redfield has pushed back on this," said one individual. "These are scientifically driven articles. He's worked to shake some of them loose."
Kates, the Kaiser Family Foundation's global health expert, defended the CDC's process as rigorous and said that there was no reason for politically appointed officials to review the work of scientists. “MMWRs are famously known for being very clear about their limitations as well as being clear for what they've found," she said. Kates also said that the CDC reports have played an essential role in combating epidemics for decades, pointing to an MMWR posted in 1981 — the first published report on what became the HIV epidemic. “Physicians recognized there was some kind of pattern and disseminated it around the country and the world,” Kates said. “We can now see how important it was to have that publication, in that moment.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection -- Psychological projection is a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target. It incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[2] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[3]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/end-child-marriage-u-s-you-might-be-surprised-who-n1050471 ✞🐘✞ End child marriage in the U.S.? You might be surprised at who's opposed ✞🐘✞ Sept. 8, 2019 ✞🐘✞ Conservatives have found some surprising allies as they fight efforts to raise the marriage age. ✞🐘✞ A bill that would have ended child marriage in Idaho — which has no minimum age for couples who want to wed — died in the Statehouse this year. Republican lawmakers, who control the Legislature, opposed it, including state Rep. Bryan Zollinger, who said it "went too far." ✞🐘✞ >>328
Here's what the FBI labels your crowd. https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories-terrorism-160000507.html -- http://archive.is/c5Sy1 -- The FBI document is from "May 30, 2019". Some highlights from the article: "The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News." -- "The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant (which didn’t actually have a basement)." -- "It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle." -- >>411