Today, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) blasted pro-amnesty billionaires whose fondness for open borders ends at the doors of their "gated compounds and fenced-off communities," noting how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought other four houses surrounding his own just because he wanted "a little privacy."
Sessions began by rebuking Zuckerberg - one of the billionaire elites he has dubbed "Masters of the Universe" - for going to Mexico City and giving a speech claiming that America's immigration policy is "strange" and "unfit for today's world."
"Well, the 'masters of the universe' are very fond of open borders as long as these open borders don't extend to their gated compounds and fenced-off estates," Sessions said.
As an example of the hypocrisy of these "Masters," Sessions then recalled how Zuckerberg bought four houses surrounding his own to keep people from crossing his borders and secure "a little privacy":
"I have another article from late last fall that was printed in Business Insider about Mr. Zuckerberg's actions. The headline is 'Mark Zuckerberg Just Spent More Than $30 Million Buying 4 Neighboring Houses For Privacy.'
The article says: 'Mark Zuckerberg just made an unusual purchase. Well, four purchases. Facebook's billionaire founder bought four homes surrounding his current home near Palo Alto, Mercury News Reports. The houses cost him more than $30 million, including one 2,600 square-foot home that cost $14 million. (His own home is twice as large at 5,000 square-feet and cost half as much.) Larry Page made a similar move a few years ago so he could build a 6,000-square-foot mansion.
But Zuckerberg's reason is different. He doesn't want to live in excess, he just wants a little privacy.'"
"That is a world the average American doesn't live in," Sen. Sessions said.
CANTON, Ga. (September 11, 2014) - Students at a public high school outside Atlanta are rallying behind a teacher who says he's standing up for his Christian beliefs and what he views as his right to talk about Jesus in the classroom.
Hundreds of students poured into hallways at Sequoyah High School Tuesday, holding signs and chanting in support of history teacher John Osborne.
Osborne told WXIA-TV that he didn't feel supported by administrators, so he decided to take a few days off. He said he's talked about God at school for years.
Students mistakenly thought the teacher had been terminated, and staged the protest, according to Cherokee County Schools. They say he remains employed.
Osborne said he's using sick days to take time off and he isn't sure when or if he will return. He told WXIA that he'll "pray about it."
UNDATED (Wisconsin Radio Network-WSAU) - A federal appeal court has cleared the way for Wisconsin's long-stalled voter ID law to be in place for the November elections.
Just hours after hearing arguments in a case challenging the requirement for voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday issued an order lifting an injunction that has kept the law from being enforced.
A federal judge ruled earlier this year that the law was unconstitutional...but the appeals court noted in its order that the state has since worked to address issues highlighted in that decision, including a new system that allows people verify their birth information at no charge to obtain a photo I-D. That's expected to address concerns about people being forced to pay for documents needed to vote.With the election less than two months away, the state Government Accountability Board says it will work quickly to fully implement the voter ID law in time.
There were plenty of reactions after the court made its ruling. Governor Scott Walker said, “This ruling is a win for the electoral process and voters of Wisconsin. Voter ID is a common sense reform that protects the integrity of our voting process. It’s important that voters have confidence in the system. Today’s ruling makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen was pleased with the ruling by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago which stays the injunction issued by the District Courts in April in the League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin, David Deininger, & Ruthelle Frank vs. Scott Walker. He said, “Today’s decision is a victory for common sense, fair elections, and the right of every eligible voter to cast a vote that will count. This ruling vindicates the law and our efforts to ensure the policy of this state will be in effect for November’s election. My staff and I will work with the Government Accountability Board to ensure every eligible voter will be able to cast a ballot,” Van Hollen said.
As expected, Democrats and the unions are not pleased with the decision from the Court of Appeals. Democratic State Representative Katrina Shankland from Stevens Point is disappointed in the court’s ruling. She says, “With less than two months away from the mid-term election and thousands of absentee ballots already sent out, it is shocking that the court would rule to implement the photo ID requirement before November. This decision will cause confusion at the polls, disarray at the DMV, and will disenfranchise eligible voters. Of course, that was Wisconsin Republican legislators’ intent when they authored and passed the most restrictive voter ID law in the country.” She adds, “It is a right, not a privilege, to vote. I will do everything I can to help every eligible voter get the information they need to exercise their fundamental democratic right to participate in their government. It’s a pity not everyone believes in ensuring access to that right. “Under a new state policy, all citizens can get a free state ID from their local DMV for voting purposes. I encourage everyone who needs an ID to obtain one, and to help spread the word to anyone else who may need one.”
AFL-CIO union President Phil Neuenfeldt said, “The 7th Circuit Court just turned back the clock on democracy by giving the green light to the voter suppressing VoterID law. This law will disenfranchise countless Wisconsinites and block citizens from freely participating in our democracy. This is a desperate attempt by Gov. Walker to rig elections. In Wisconsin, we should be encouraging people to get involved and take part in elections, not putting up roadblocks and barriers for people to cast their ballot.” Neuenfeldt declared, “No matter what, the union movement is working hard every day to educate and inform voters about this crucial election.”
Neuenfeldt will have lots of help, so expect to see a lot of campaigning and spending by Democrats in an attempt to erase the past four years. On Thursday, the largest public sector union in America named Scott Walker their top national target this fall. Lee Saunders is the President of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. He said, “We have a score to settle with Scott Walker” adding, “He took collective bargaining away from us” and, “He stole our voices in a state where we were born.”
Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation’s Division of Motor Vehicles is working with the Department of Health Services to make sure everyone that needs a valid ID card to vote can get one at no cost. DMV offices will start validating documents for the new process beginning Monday.
Kevin Kennedy is the Director and General Counsel of the Government Accountability Board. After the Court of Appeals ruling, he issued a statement saying, “We are taking every step to fully implement the voter photo ID law for the November General Election. We are now focused on communicating with local election officials and voters, and will have more information about the details next week.”
Health clinics in Washington that largely serve low-income and minority residents will receive nearly $7.5 million in federal grants to increase access to primary care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is awarding more than $295 million to community clinics nationwide, according to anannouncement made Friday.
In Washington, the money will go to 25 community health centers that treat medically underserved communities. The grants will help pay for an estimated 104 full-time health-care providers and benefit roughly 40,000 new patients (see full list of recipients below). The Affordable Care Act and its expansion of health-care coverage has increased the number of people seeking medical care, putting added strain on a primary care system that was already stretched thin in places.
“It’s clearly primary care where the drastic shortages occur,” said Dr. Roger Rosenblatt, professor and vice chair of the University of Washington’s Department of Family Medicine. “They’re the foundation.”
Many of the largest grant recipients are in Seattle and the Puget Sound area, including SeaMar Community Health Centers, which was awarded more than $715,000, and HealthPoint, which gets more than $448,000. But grant money is also being spread to numerous clinics in rural areas, which face the greatest challenges in recruiting skilled doctors to their facilities. The largest rural recipient is Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, which is based in Toppenish, and will received more than $568,000.
Yakima is one of the spots state experts routinely cite as suffering from a chronic shortage of primary care medical providers. There and in other rural communities, residents go without care, wind up in emergency rooms, or make the long drive to urban doctors.
The grants should help ease those shortages. A press release from Health and Human Services states that the money will allow clinics to improve access by hiring “new staff including new health care providers, staying open for longer hours, and expanding the care they provide to include new services such as oral health, behavioral health, pharmacy, and vision services.”
Washington is one of the states that opted to expand the definition of who is eligible for free health care through Medicaid. Since October 2013, more than 350,000 newly eligible adults have signed up for the program, which locally goes by the name Apple Health. And nearly 200,000 adults who previously qualified for Medicaid but had not enrolled have now joined, according to data through the end of July.
The number of people receiving Medicaid in Washington grew by more than 25 percent in the first six months of expanded coverage. The number of residents with individual insurance plans has increased by about 30 percent, though it’s not known how many of those were previously uninsured.
Here’s a list of all of the Washington grant recipients:
For more information about health-care access in Washington in the wake of the ACA, see this article on urban access and this article on rural care.
9/13/2014 Taxi drivers object to body odor test by San Diego airport authority Inspectors check 52 criteria to evaluate taxis but drivers protest that some checks spring from prejudice and discrimination
Cab driver Daniel Afeweki looks out from his Toyota Prius cab as he waits in line for his turn to pick up fares at the San Diego airport.Photograph: Gregory Bull/AP
Body odor is among 52 criteria that officials at San Diego International Airport use to judge taxi drivers. Taxi drivers say that smacks of prejudice and discrimination.
For years, inspectors with the San Diego regional airport authority run down their checklist for each cabbie proof of insurance, functioning windshield wipers, adequate tire treads, good brakes. Drivers are graded pass, fail or needs fixing.
Anyone who flunks the smell test is told to change before picking up another customer.
Leaders of the United Taxi Workers of San Diego union say the litmus perpetuates a stereotype that predominantly foreign-born taxi drivers smell bad.
A 2013 survey of 331 drivers by San Diego State University and Center on Policy Initiatives found 94% were immigrants and 65% were from East Africa.
Drivers wonder how inspectors determine who reeks. Driver Abel Seifu, 36, from Ethiopia, suspects they sniff inconspicuously during friendly conversations in the staging area. Airport authority spokeswoman Rebecca Bloomfield said there is “no standard process” to testing.
Others drivers question how inspectors distinguish between them and their cars. The checklist has a separate item for a vehicle’s “foul interior odors”, which Bloomfield says may include gasoline, vomit or mildew.
“If they want to bring their smell detector, they can use it to test the customers and the drivers,” said driver Negus Gebrenarian, 39, from Ethiopia. He, like other drivers, said the stench is just as likely to come from the back seat as it is from the front.
The airport authority says it is enforcing a policy of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, which regulates taxis throughout the region, that prohibits foul-smelling drivers and promotes regular bathing. It also says the practice is about satisfying customers.
A cab driver waits near his car in line at a depot near the airport in San Diego.Photograph: Gregory Bull/AP
“Taxi drivers are often the first impression that travelers receive when arriving into San Diego and we want to encourage a positive experience,” Bloomfield said.
Only about three drivers fail to get a passing grade each year, she said. Inspectors have been smelling drivers for years. There was no controversy until a union employee waded through a 568-page airport board agenda and noticed the checklist, which had been approved in July for revisions unrelated to the body odor test. KPBS reported on the practice last week.
San Diego’s policy appears to be unusually explicit about sniffing out smelly cabbies. Chicago requires that drivers be “clean and neat in their appearance”. New York City’s wording is similarly broad.
Seattle long evaluated cabbies for body odor associated with infrequent bathing and not washing clothes but dropped that test last month for a more general requirement on cleanliness.
“The industry didn’t like it and they felt that we were kind of overstepping: Why are we dictating to them? We don’t tell city employees that you’ve got to shower more often,” said Denise Movius, Seattle’s deputy director of finance and administrative services.
Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the 18,000-member New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said her face reddened with anger and dismay when she learned about the San Diego practice. She suggested the airport leave it to customers to complain about body odor.
“What a dehumanizing way to treat your workers,” she said. Travelers arriving in San Diego on Wednesday were mixed. Sue Beneventi, 70, thinks cabbies are getting picked on.
“If you’re going to say cab drivers, shouldn’t you also say waitresses and anyone else who deals with the public?” she said after returning from San Antonio.
Daniel Johnson, an 18-year-old Marine who came from Flint, Michigan, said it’s fair to grade on body odor, especially considering the $70 fare to get to his base.
He has felt trapped in smelly cabs in other cities.
“The smell puts a sour expression on your face and you’re thinking I just don’t want to be in here,” he said.
No Peshmerga casualties were reported in the fighting. Photo: Rudaw
DUHOK, Kurdistan Region—Kurdish forces have killed the commander of the Islamic State (IS) forces near Rabia in an ambush Thursday evening, said a Peshmerga leader.
“We destroyed two IS vehicles and when we checked the corpses we found that one of them was Ammar al-Hassan who was the most prominent IS leader west of the Tigris River,” Qasim Shesho, commander of the Peshmerga forces on Mount Shingal told Rudaw.
Shesho said that his forces ambushed the IS convoy at Guhbal town near the Rabia border crossing with Syria.
“Al-Hassan is a member of the Jiheshi tribe,” said Shesho. “He was in the Al-Qaeda for many years and later join the IS.”
Shesho who also leads new units of Yezidi fighters in the region said that Al-Hassan’s killing “would demoralize the Islamist fighters in the area.”
No Peshmerga casualties were reported in the fighting.
According to Shesho, three Yezidi girls had also escaped IS captivity on Thursday and reached the safety of Mount Shingal.
“Kurdish special forces picked up the girls and took them to Duhok,” he said.
The Yezidi girls, aged between 12 and 20, were captured by Islamist militants at Kucho village last month.
Unofficial sources in Kurdistan say that around 1,800 Yezidi women and young girls are currently held captive by the IS in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq and Syria.
Harry Reid, may I present the American Civil Liberties Union. I am sure you two have met before.
Writing in June that the nonprofit “strongly opposes” the so-called Udall amendment, the ACLU’s Laura Murphy and Gabriel Rottman called the Democratic proposal “deceptively complex,” “unnecessary,” “redundant of existing law,” “dangerous for liberties,” “vague,” “overbroad,” “exceedingly dangerous to democratic processes,” and “the first time the amendatory process has been used to directly limit specifically enumerated rights and freedoms.” Reid’s baby, the ACLU said, would “‘break’ the Constitution” by “amending the First Amendment.”
Two levels of government would be permitted “to criminalize and censor all issue advocacy that mentions or refers to a candidate under the argument that it supports or opposes that candidate.” Recall that Citizens United, which the Udall amendment is supposed to address, was not about Tea Party Astroturf. It was about the FEC’s attempt to censor a film critical of her royal highness.
The mandarins at the FEC and IRS, as well as their counterparts at the state level, would be responsible for distinguishing political communications that “support or oppose” a candidate from those that do not. They would penalize the individuals and groups they subjectively deem violators of administrative diktat. If this is not about “limiting free speech,” what is?
I am not speaking abstractly. Want an image of a post-Udall world? Think Lois Lerner on Spring Break—after a bottle of tequila.
“My Democratic colleagues and I,” Reid says, “are trying to address the special interest money that threatens to create a government of elected officials who are beholden to a few wealthy individuals.” But we can dismiss this rationalization outright. It is an example of what the Freudians callprojection: the denial of immoral urges by transferring them to another. Projection is a disorder.
Special interest money and super-wealthy individuals are two of the most prominent features of today’s bourgeois liberalism. The unions, the foundations, the colleges, the liberal-leaning or rent-seeking corporations, the residents of Manhattan and Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills and Ward 3,Warren Buffett, George Soros, Tom Steyer, Marc Lasry, Steve Mostyn, Michael Bloomberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Chris Hughes—these groups, these men, they are not misshapen appendages of the Democratic Party. They are its innards. Its guts.
Indeed, one of the reasons that Reid scheduled a vote on a measure that was sure to be defeated was, in the first place, to curry favor with, and solicit checks from, rich donors to progressive causes who have a sentimental and moralistic aversion to money in politics. It is part of Reid’s plan to smear Republican candidates as instruments of the wealthy brothers Charles and David Koch, and thereby prevent a GOP takeover of the Senate.
The scale of the progressive infrastructure is staggering. It is coordinated and funded by theDemocracy Alliance, a secretive group of millionaires and billionaires that plots strategy and giving at meetings in fancy resorts. Documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon reveal that there are at least 172 groups inside the Democracy Alliance network. “113 of them have attacked us,” Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden said recently, noting that far fewer groups—31—make up Koch world. The Kochs may spend up to $290 million in the 2014 election. Sounds like a lot. But Holden says the progressives may spend “somewhere in the ballpark” of $2.2 billion.
These numbers make clear that the goal of Reid and Udall is not to expunge money from politics. Their goal is to expunge conservative money from politics—money that could be used against incumbents, money that could be used against them, money that could be used to organize and promote alternatives to the Hegelian god-state coming into being before our eyes. Their goal is no less than a silent coup, a renegotiation of the American social contract and the structure of the constitutional order, performed outside the public’s notice and without the public’s direct consent.
The Udall amendment subverts freedom in two ways. First, by exempting media from regulation, the government would determine who or what “the media” are. Certified institutions would become the few remaining outlets for free expression. Perhaps you have noticed that the press tends to favor a certain ideological standpoint. In a post-Udall world, the influence of press barons such as Buffett and Bloomberg and Mexican oligarch Carlos Slim would increase. Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine would silence conservatives further.
There is only one Rupert Murdoch. If someone of like mind as the Koch brothers tried to build a press operation of their own, we know what would happen. The liberal media would revolt.
Second, by endowing governments with the power to ban anonymous political giving, the Udall amendment would usher in an era of witch-hunts and public shaming, with the media using their new powers to condemn and malign and stigmatize and penalize the advocates of unfashionable causes.
We have already seen that a years-old, small donation to a judicially overturned plebiscite can cost a man his job. But the fight over disclosure is about more than the same-sex marriage debate. “During the civil rights era,” the ACLU notes in its letter, “southern states often tried to use laws forcing groups exercising First Amendment rights to disclose their membership, in a bid to run them out of town.”
In a post-Udall world, legislative bodies would be arenas where members of one party criminalize the speech of the other. Religious liberty groups would be exiled from, say, New York; gun control groups from Texas. Says the ACLU: “Congress would, for instance, be free to pass laws targeting only ‘political’ speech by groups like ACORN.” Or like Americans for Prosperity.
Media power and disclosure work together to undermine the adversaries of the caste, the twenty-first century oligarchy of tech entrepreneurs and media executives, lawyers and administrators, professors and foundation officers, journalists and actors, studio executives and museum officials, heirs and heiresses and progressive and politically connected bankers and investors. This is the plutocracy that dominates the presidency and the Senate and the bureaucracy and the academy and philanthropy and print and electronic media, that determines the contours of elite opinion, that decides what is “reality-based” and “empirical,” what is “faith-based” and “ideological.” This is the educated class that writes our laws and newspapers and screenplays and late-night comedy routines, that fashions itself the guardian of equality and progress and diversity and all that is true and good even as it profits off the regulations it imposes, the industries it subsidizes, the cheap labor it imports, the racial and sexual controversies it sensationalizes.
What we saw in Harry Reid’s Senate this week, when the Udall amendment failed a cloture vote, when 54 Democrats voted to refashion the First Amendment to serve the interests of incumbency and power, was not a noble cause. It was not good government. It was not an example of altruistic intentions stifled by Wall Street.
What we saw in Harry Reid’s Senate this week was an attempt by the ascendant part of the elite, the part that makes its living from abstraction, to vanquish the declining part, the part that makes its living from extraction. And this sorry excuse for a legislative week did more than reveal, in real time, the structure and nature of class struggle in America today. It also occasioned a sentence I never thought I would write. If only Harry Reid listened to the ACLU.
WELFARE payments will be stripped from people within Australia suspected of supporting terrorism under a crackdown on funding for Islamic State fighters in Iraq and other terror groups.
And the Federal Government may also be considering forcibly relocating terrorism suspects away from fellow extremists.
“The Government will introduce legislation to ensure welfare payments can be terminated for people who have been assessed as a serious threat to Australia’s national security,” Attorney-General George Brandis’s departmental spokeswoman said.
“This measure will ensure Australian taxpayers are not financing people known to be members of, or working with, terrorist organisations or otherwise engaged in activity that would be prejudicial to the security of Australia or a foreign country.”
Controversial “relocation” laws — now being considered in the UK — enable authorities to force terrorism suspects to live in other areas of the country to remove them from radicalised associates.
Australian government legal advisers will closely watch the rollout of British laws banning dual-national jihadists from returning home from Iraq and Syrian conflict zones.
