|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:18:05 GMT -8
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) revealed that even some Republican lawmakers agreed with Hunter Biden that Jared Kushner was probably more worthy of investigation than him.
President Joe Biden's son testified for more than six hours this week in a closed-door deposition, where he denied his father's involvement in his foreign business dealings and then, Goldman told MSNBC's "Morning Joe," offered a comparison of what he's accused of doing as a private citizen and the actions Donald Trump's son-in-law took while serving as a White House official.
"When Hunter Biden asked the Republican members of Congress, 'Do you have any problem with that?' there were a couple who said yes," Goldman said. "It is not in the transcript, but they said yes. Others were nodding, because he did a very good job of confronting them with the difference between what he did, which was dealing in international business with non-government officials, non-government entities, versus Jared Kushner, who received $2 billion from the Saudi Arabian government right after he was the point person on Middle East policy for the Trump administration, and after the advisory board of the Saudi government's investment arm recommended not investing in him because he had never done what he was starting to do."
"The contrast is so stark because it is so obvious that what Jared Kushner did deserves investigation, and what Hunter Biden did, at this point, is just purely punitive and purely attacking someone who has made mistakes and admitted to that, but who is not a public official and never has been," Goldman added. "It's purely being done right now just to provide election fodder for Donald Trump."
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:20:33 GMT -8
SCOTUS Ignores the Law
Former senior prosecutor for the Justice Department, Andrew Weissmann, warned that the Supreme Court isn't following the law when it comes to the stay in the Donald Trump election case.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Thursday, the NYU law professor compared it to Bush v. Gore, but not being slapped in the face with the verdict that picks the president. Instead, he said, it's now only a glimmer of hope that the case will happen at all.
"Everything has to come into play for there to be a trial where the facts will actually matter, and we don't have Donald Trump just spinning the public," Weissmann said. "Which is an extra extraordinary position. The Supreme Court has sided with Donald Trump on this case. It's obviously going to side with him in the Colorado case. And to the point that Liz Cheney was asked about what we could expect, obviously, Joe Biden won the election, and Donald Trump could still win, but I really don't have hope as to who would endorse the constitutional mechanism that there are only two terms."
Cheney posted on social media, “Delaying the January 6 trial suppresses critical evidence that Americans deserve to hear."
It was supposed to be at the Supreme Court, Weissmann explained, but they issued a "stay" in the case without "actually reaching any legal conclusions that you need to reach a stay. They basically kept the judge's case on ice, but they didn't do any of the things that the law requires to find that a stay is appropriate."
He said that a judge is "supposed to go through all sorts of factors," such as "that you would have a likelihood of success and there would be damage. They didn't do any of that. They just issued it."
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:24:09 GMT -8
"Gesundheit" means "good health". Kleenex May Not Mean Good Health for these People.
Kimberly-Clark has been hit with a proposed class action filed by Connecticut residents living near a facility where it makes Kleenex accusing the consumer goods company of contaminating their properties and drinking water with toxic “forever chemicals.”
The lawsuit filed in Connecticut federal court on Wednesday alleges the company has used per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, to make tissues at its plant in New Milford. PFAS are released into the air via smokestacks, and may seep into the ground via paper sludge dumped at a nearby landfill, the lawsuit said.
A spokesperson for Kimberly-Clark said the company believes the lawsuit is “unfounded.” They said Kimberly-Clark does not use PFAS in its U.S. consumer products, and plans to “vigorously” defend itself against the allegations.
PFAS are a group of thousands of related chemicals used in hundreds of consumer and commercial products, including to make water resistant diaper linings, paper products, stain-resistant clothing and cosmetics. PFAS have been linked to cancer and hormonal dysfunction, and are often called forever chemicals because they do not easily break down in nature or the human body.
The residents say PFAS emitted from the facility’s smokestacks attaches to air particles or rain before landing on their property, and that can seep through soil into groundwater. They claim contamination on their properties has led to a drop in property values and increased their risk of disease from drinking polluted water.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:26:48 GMT -8
No Good Health Here.
Fallout from a ransomware attack on the country’s largest health care payment processor is “the most serious incident of its kind leveled against a U.S. health care organization,” American Hospital Association CEO Rick Pollack said Thursday evening.
The attack has crippled Change Healthcare, a company that provides a widely used program for health care providers to manage customer payments and insurance claims. The company has taken most of its systems offline to prevent the attack from spreading, a common countermeasure.
“Nine days into the attack on Change Healthcare, a health care technology company that is part of Optum and owned by UnitedHealth Group, effects are continuing to be felt throughout the entire health care system,” Pollack said in a news release. The American Hospital Association is the country’s largest health care industry group.
That outage has been devastating for small and midsize health care providers. Doctors told CNBC that the outage has prevented them from being able to electronically fill prescriptions and has kept insurance providers from reimbursing providers.
Change says it processes 15 billion health care transactions each year and is involved in a third of all American patient records.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:30:26 GMT -8
Offense Wins Elections
Being Offensive Doesn't Win Elections
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:32:22 GMT -8
Gov DeathSentence Wanted to Do For the US What He Did to Florida.
Gov. Ron DeSantis is telling the nation that people in his state shouldn’t rely on the state-run insurer of last resort, raising new questions about Citizens Property Insurance ahead of what is expected to be an active hurricane season.
“It is not solvent and we can’t have millions of people on that because if a storm hits, it’s going to cause problems for the state,” the second-term Republican Governor said on CNBC’s “Last Call.”
The Governor’s comments are particularly interesting as they were in the middle of a rumination about private insurers bringing new capital into the state, in which he claimed that “about 30% of those policies from Citizens” taken out by “new private insurance (companies) will actually be able to offer lower rates to those people.” That suggests roughly 70% of people are paying more since the take out of Citizens’ policies.
Measles and An Insurance Crisis
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:34:23 GMT -8
Joe Built That
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:36:24 GMT -8
Here a Heir, There a Heir, Everywhere a Heir, Heir.
The Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos have all the rights of a born person is about to meet the Law of Unintended Consequences. If an embryo is a person, shouldn’t that mean it gets to inherit, especially if its parents die without a will?
Consider this scenario: A couple has a child through IVF. That process requires fertilizing multiple eggs and selecting one; the remaining eggs are now frozen. Tragically, the parents die in a car accident, and it turns out they are intestate (they never made a will). Under the various state laws, their estate is divided among their heirs according to some specified formula. In all states, the couple’s children are among those heirs.
In a sane world, the child already born, even if started via IVF, would be the only child to inherit. But the Alabama court has decreed that all those other embryos enjoy equal rights to the born child. Shouldn’t that mean they count equally as heirs? That the estate must be now be shared with them? Must a court now appoint a guardian for them, ensure that estate funds are allocated to maintain the freezer? Who inherits from the embryos when they are no longer viable?
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:38:09 GMT -8
We Keep Getting In Hotter Water
The thick orangey-red line that runs the length of the chart and hovers above nearly all the others is from 2023. The North Atlantic started breaking heat temperature records in March of last year. Even more alarming is the departure that the new, shorter line from 2024 represents. It’s far above the rest, indicating this extreme, anomalous increase has continued into this year. A McNoldy But a GoodyFrom his office at the University of Miami, Brian McNoldy, an expert in hurricane formation, is tracking the latest temperature data from the North Atlantic with a mixture of concern and bewilderment. For the past year, oceans around the world have been substantially warmer than usual. Last month was the hottest January on record in the world’s oceans, and temperatures have continued to rise since then. The heat wave has been especially pronounced in the North Atlantic. “The North Atlantic has been record-breakingly warm for almost a year now,” McNoldy said. “It’s just astonishing. Like, it doesn’t seem real.”
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:47:09 GMT -8
Biden Their Time
Leslie Dellinger, a 41-year-old entrepreneur from York, South Carolina, wants to see Donald Trump defeat the Democratic presidential nominee this November — she’s just not convinced the nominee will be Joe Biden.
Instead, Dellinger — one of the few thousand people who showed up to a Donald Trump rally the day before the South Carolina primary — believes Democrats may swap Biden for Vice President Kamala Harris, who Dellinger says is “not even a little bit qualified” to be president.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to remove him and put in Kamala Harris and have her run,” she said.
Talk to almost any Republican at a grassroots event and you’ll hear some version of this theory: that Democrats will end up nominating someone besides Biden at their August national convention. Some believe there’s even a nominee-in-waiting to replace the 81-year-old president — who hasn’t suggested he intends to step aside, despite mounting concerns about his age and health. Their predictions for who this person might be range from the plausible — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who many see as a likely candidate in 2028 — to the totally ridiculous, like former President Barack Obama.
This conspiracy, though, has some grounding in the real concerns that Democrats whisper about in private, and the grim warnings beginning to surface in polls of the election eight months away. A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll released Thursday found Trump beating Biden in seven key swing states that helped Biden defeat Trump in 2020. Respondents largely found Biden to be too old, while many considered Trump, the likely GOP nominee, to be dangerous.
Biden’s possible replacement has become the subject of wild speculation on the right. Organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) surveyed attendees at its annual confab last weekend about who they think will be the eventual Democratic nominee. A majority named former first lady Michelle Obama, who famously hates politicking in all its forms. Others cited Harris, Newsom and ex-Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:50:27 GMT -8
Oprah Abandons a Sinking Ship. Weight Watchers Stock Price Has Been Tanking for Months.
Oprah Winfrey has parted ways with WeightWatchers after revealing her use of an unspecified weight loss medication as part of her wellness routine.
On Wednesday, WeightWatchers confirmed that Winfrey would not be standing for reelection on its board of directors in May, thus concluding her nine-year tenure with the company.
In a statement on WeightWatchers’ website, Winfrey said she planned to donate her shares in the company to the National Museum of African American History and Culture while remaining “a vocal advocate in advancing [the] conversation” around weight management.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:52:53 GMT -8
No Wonder the QOP Wants to Defund the IRS. The IRS is Going after Their Real Base.
The Internal Revenue Service is stepping up its campaign against wealthy tax cheats, dispatching letters this week in more than 125,000 cases involving high-income taxpayers who failed to file returns since 2017.
Tax authorities said the cases collectively involve hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. More than 25,000 compliance letters are going to delinquent taxpayers with more than $1 million in income.
“At this time of year when millions of hard-working people are doing the right thing paying their taxes, we cannot tolerate those with higher incomes failing to do a basic civic duty of filing a tax return,” said Danny Werfel, the IRS commissioner, in a statement released Thursday.
“The IRS is taking this step to address this most basic form of non-compliance, which includes many who are engaged in tax evasion.”
The IRS is ramping up audits of wealthy tax evaders The initiative marks the latest move in a federal campaign to ramp up tax audits of high-income Americans and businesses, aided by billions of dollars in new funding from Congress.
President Joe Biden added nearly $80 billion in new IRS funds to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, money earmarked for collecting unpaid taxes from the wealthy and improving the agency’s customer service and office technology, among other uses.
Congressional Republicans have been chipping away at the windfall, alleging that the effort will use the funds to harass ordinary taxpayers and small business owners.
The IRS has pledged that audit rates will not increase for taxpayers earning less than $400,000 a year, a threshold that roughly corresponds to the top 2% of earners. All, or nearly all, of the new compliance letters are going to people with at least that much income. The latest initiative involves cases in which the IRS received third-party information, such as W-2 or 1099 forms, suggesting that taxpayers received large sums of income but failed to file returns.
Tax authorities will begin sending compliance letters this week, at a rate of at least 20,000 per week, starting with filers in the highest income categories.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:54:41 GMT -8
I Prefer My Zero-Day Work Week.
Do fewer working hours boost a company's overall productivity? A recent study out of the United Kingdom suggests the four-day workweek model benefits businesses and employees alike.
One year after 61 U.K. companies opted to participate in a four-day week pilot study, 89% of the companies continued to keep the structure in place.
More efficiency, happier employees and lower turnover rates are among the positive results found by the study, announced this week.
MORE: The 4-day workweek is gaining momentum. Could the US adopt it nationwide? The 2022 study, conducted by the think tank Autonomy alongside the 4-Day Week Campaign and 4-Day Week Global, began as a six-month trial that has extended to the one-year mark and, in some cases, made permanent.
Forgoing the standard five-day workweek model, the participating organizations agreed to complete 100% of the usual workload in 80% of the time worked -- with no reduction of pay.
After one year, 51% of the companies have decided to implement the four-day workweek permanently and 89% have decided to continue the structure through the year.
In a follow-up survey with the participating companies' managers and CEOs, 100% reported that the four-day week had a "positive" or "very positive" impact on their organization, according to the study.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 9:57:32 GMT -8
When Asked When he Would Return to the Job, Quoth the Old Ravenmaster, "Nevermore"
If an ancient prophecy is right, Michael “Barney” Chandler has just got the most important job in England.
The 56-year-old former Royal Marine is the new ravenmaster at the Tower of London, responsible for looking after the feathered protectors of the 1,000-year-old fortress.
According to legend, if the ravens leave the 11th-century tower beside the River Thames, its White Tower will crumble and the Kingdom of England will fall. In the 17th century, King Charles II was told of the prophecy and decreed that there must always be six ravens at the tower.
“We take that responsibility very seriously,” said Chandler. “And now that I’m ravenmaster, there’s that extra responsibility on my shoulders.”
As for the prophecy, he said “we don’t know if it’s true or not, because we’ve never let the number drop below six — and it’s not going to happen while I’m here.”
Chandler, who officially takes up the post on Friday, is one of the tower’s famous Yeoman Warders, part of a corps founded in the 15th century. Also known as Beefeaters, the warders are all military veterans who dress in distinctive black and scarlet Tudor-style uniforms and perform a hybrid role: providing security, leading tours of the tower, and performing ceremonial duties.
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on Mar 1, 2024 10:02:12 GMT -8
West Virginia Score: Disease 1, Kids 0
West Virginia’s Republicans passed a bill through the House of Delegates on Monday that would allow religious exemptions for vaccines required for school attendance. The bill comes as dozens of measles cases across 15 states have been reported. The bill will now head to the state Senate for debate. If the bill passes, it would be the first nonmedical vaccine exemption allowed in West Virginia.
The bill began as a proposal to eliminate vaccine requirements for public virtual schooling, but it has expanded to allow private schools the right to decide whether to require vaccinations for their students. Whether the bill would allow parents to exempt their child from a public school’s vaccine mandate remains unclear at this time, according to analysis from ABC News.
|
|