turbinetree
turbinetree's JournalNot just Hill interns: Public office pays so little, it's the realm of the rich and retired
"Part-time" state legislators, school board members, and even mayors struggle to make ends meets with elected positions that pay a pittance.
JOSH ISRAEL
DEC 13, 2018, 8:00 AM
When Arnie Arnesen was elected to the New Hampshire state House of Representatives in 1984, she was 31 years old and pregnant. “I couldn’t afford infant daycare,” she remembers, “so I showed up and breastfed on the floor of the House.”
Her district was well northwest of the state capitol, so the combination of the commute and her legislative duties kept her more than a little busy: “How do you have a job where you’re traveling down to Concord — an hour and a half each way, three days a week — and think you could have a life? I took it as an opportunity even though it was a financial liability.”
For her hard work, Arnesen received a $100 salary from the state’s treasury — per year.
The state’s lawmakers have never gotten a pay raise. Since 1889, the New Hampshire constitution has set the salary for its state legislators at $200 per two-year term (about $5,500 in today’s money). “When they put the $200 in the constitution,” Arnesen said, “that was half the average wage of a New Hampshire worker. It reflected a reasonable salary, but that’s never changed. And the question is why not? They don’t want young people [or] diversity.” The result, she says, is that over her four terms in the House and in the decades since, the state legislature has been almost exclusively “made up of the rich, the retired, and the remunerated — because they don’t need the cash.”
Last month, after becoming the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) opened up to the New York Times about the financial challenges she was facing as a newly-elected but not-yet-sworn-in lawmaker. With meager savings and no income until January, she found she was unable to even rent an apartment in Washington, D.C. “There are many little ways in which our electoral system isn’t even designed (nor prepared) for working-class people to lead,” she tweeted. For her transparency, she faced a firestorm of conservative mockery.
https://thinkprogress.org/not-just-hill-interns-public-office-pays-so-little-its-the-realm-of-the-rich-and-retired-ac7681aff16e/
What struck me is that IT costs between 2 to 5 million to gain access to a federal office.......................fuck you john roberts and your Citizen United bull shit..............................
Trevor Noah is Proud of Donald Trump.............Finally
They don't care': Facebook fact-checking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties
Journalists paid to help fix Facebook’s fake news problem say they have lost trust in the platform
Journalists working as fact-checkers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation.
Current and former Facebook fact-checkers told the Guardian that the tech platform’s collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they’ve lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook’s hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics – fueling the same kind of propaganda fact-checkers regularly debunk – should be a deal-breaker.
“They’ve essentially used us for crisis PR,” said Brooke Binkowski, former managing editor of Snopes, a fact-checking site that has partnered with Facebook for two years. “They’re not taking anything seriously. They are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck … They clearly don’t care.”
Facebook began building its partnerships with news outlets after the 2016 presidential election, during which fake stories and political propaganda reached hundreds of millions of users on the platform. The goal was to rely on journalists to flag false news and limit its spread, but research and anecdotal evidence have repeatedly suggested that the debunking work has struggled to make a difference.
Facebook now has more than 40 media partners across the globe, including the Associated Press, PolitiFact and the Weekly Standard, and has said false news on the platform is “trending downward”.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/13/they-dont-care-facebook-fact-checking-in-disarray-as-journalists-push-to-cut-ties
Snopes......................
'Death sentence': butterfly sanctuary to be bulldozed for Trump's border wall
More than 200 species make their homes at America’s most diverse sanctuary, but construction through the reserve could begin in February
On any given day at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, visitors can to see more than 60 varieties of butterflies. In the spring and fall, monarchs and other species can blanket the center’s 100 acres of subtropical bushlands that extend from the visitor center to to the banks of the Rio Grande river, where their property, and US sovereignty, end.
“It’s like something from Fantasia,” said the center’s director, Marianna Wright. “When you walk you have to cover your mouth so you don’t suck in a butterfly.”
Today the most diverse butterfly sanctuary in the country, and other protected areas in the lower Rio Grande Valley along the US-Mexico border, are under threat. Last week, the US supreme court issued a ruling allowing the Trump administration to waive 28 federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act, and begin construction on 33 new miles of border wall in the heart of the valley – and right through the butterfly center.
“Environmental tourism contributes more than $450m to Hidalgo and Starr counties,” said Wright, referring to the adjacent counties in the valley. “Many of the properties people choose to visit to see birds, butterflies and threatened and endangered species are all going to be behind the border wall. For us, the economic impact is potentially catastrophic.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/13/butterfly-sanctuary-border-wall-mission-texas
Jared And Ivanka Poised To Profit From Developer Tax Cut They Pushed
By STEPHEN BRAUN, Jeff Horowitz and BERNARD CONDON
December 12, 2018 7:19 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — At an Oval Office gathering earlier this year, President Donald Trump began touting his administration’s new real estate investment program, which offers massive tax breaks to developers who invest in downtrodden American communities. He then turned to one of the plan’s strongest supporters.
“Ivanka, would you like to say something?” Trump asked his daughter. “You’ve been pushing this very hard.”
The Opportunity Zone program promoted by Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner — both senior White House advisers — could also benefit them financially, an Associated Press investigation found.
Government watchdogs say the case underscores the ethical minefield they created two years ago when they became two of the closest advisers to the president without divesting from their extensive real estate investments.
Trump and Kushner jointly own a big stake in a real estate investment firm, Cadre, that recently announced it is launching a series of Opportunity Zone funds that seek to build major projects under the program from Miami to Los Angeles. Separately, the couple owns interests in at least 13 properties held by Kushner’s family firm that could qualify for the tax breaks because they are in Opportunity Zones in New Jersey, New York and Maryland — all of which, a study found, were already coming back.
Six of the Kushner Cos. buildings are in New York City’s Brooklyn Heights area, with views of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan skyline, where a five-bedroom apartment recently listed for $8 million. Two more are in the beach town of Long Branch, N.J., where some oceanfront condos within steps of a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant and a Lululemon yoga shop list for as much as $2.7 million.
There’s no evidence the couple had a hand in selecting any of the nation’s 8,700 Opportunity Zones, and the company has not indicated it plans to seek tax breaks under the new program. But the Kushners could profit even if they don’t do anything — by potentially benefiting from a recent surge in Opportunity Zone property values amid a gold rush of interest from developers and investors.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jared-ivanka-profit-off-tax-cut
I really do hate criminal enterprises.......................And after all is said and done I hope that the american public demands and gets that they forfeit everything from the crime syndicate...........And I really can't wait for them to have to testify in hearings.........................and fuck that executive privilege bull shit...they are all traitors every fucking last one of them...........................
Ohio Senate passes 'heartbeat bill,' hoping abortion ban will be used to overturn Roe
Source: Think Progress
"We literally crafted this legislation to be the arrow in the heart of Roe v. Wade."
AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ
DEC 12, 2018, 3:57 PM
The anti-abortion movement has become more emboldened since the Trump administration was able to appoint two Supreme Court justices, paving the way for the new conservative federal bench to potentially overturn Roe v. Wade.
Indeed, in an 18-13 vote Wednesday, the Ohio Senate passed the so-called "heartbeat bill," banning abortions after providers can detect a fetal heartbeat -- which could be as early as six weeks, before many people even know they're pregnant.
The House first passed the "heartbeat bill" in November, but a Senate committee amended the measure to clarify that officials would not be required to use a trans-vaginal ultrasound to detect the heartbeat. Providers could instead use an abdominal ultrasound, which detects the fetal heartbeat a few weeks later, usually around 11 weeks. Either way, the bill is a clear attempt by Ohio lawmakers to ban abortions before the fetus is viable. When talking about a fetus, the word "heartbeat" isn't medically accurate, as it's not a fully formed heart.
The measure now heads back to the House before heading to the desk of Gov. John Kasich (R). Kasich vetoed the measure before in 2016, but the lame-duck legislature is unfazed. Legislators have enough votes to override a veto, and they could always vote on the bill again next year after Gov.-elect Mike DeWine (R) takes office, as he said he supports the ban.
Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/ohio-senate-passes-heartbeat-bill-hoping-abortion-ban-will-be-used-to-overturn-roe-b3cd3940513f/
While the state faces a crises in it's GM manufacturing base, communities that will be in crises in the very near future, because of the 1.5 trillion tax cut....................these assholes don't even give shit about the people that are alive now and their heartbeats .....................
Korean border troops verify removal of each other's posts
Source: AP News
INSIDE THE DEMILITARIZED ZONE (AP) — Dozens of North and South Korean soldiers crossed over the world’s most heavily armed border Wednesday as they inspected the sites of their rival’s front-line guard posts to verify they’d been removed, part of inter-Korean engagement efforts that come amid stalled U.S.-North Korea nuclear disarmament talks.
Soldiers from the two Koreas exchanged cigarettes and chatted as they inspected the dismantlement or disarmament of 22 guard posts — 11 from each country — inside the Demilitarized Zone that forms their 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border.
The inspections Wednesday were mostly symbolic — the removals will leave South Korea with about 50 other DMZ posts and North Korea with 150, according to defense experts in South Korea — but they mark an extraordinary change in ties from last year, when North Korea tested a series of increasingly powerful weapons and threatened Seoul and Washington with war.
A small group of journalists was allowed to enter the zone to watch a South Korean team leave for a North Korean guard post Wednesday morning and a North Korean team come to a South Korean guard post later in the day.
Read more: https://www.apnews.com/955d1db2ad1b4788b77d00d5a56bc273
Michigan GOP Advances Bill That Toughens Ballot Drive Requirements
Source: Talking Points Memo
By DAVID EGGERT
December 12, 2018 3:57 pm
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Republicans moved Wednesday to curtail ballot initiatives by advancing a measure limiting how many signatures could come from any one region of the state, the latest proposal assailed by critics as an unconstitutional, lame-duck power grab from incoming Democratic officeholders or voters.
The House Elections and Ethics Committee passed the bill 6-3 along party lines on a day when hundreds of protesters again demonstrated at the Capitol. The new legislation could clear the Republican-led House later Wednesday before moving to the GOP-controlled Senate.
Republican lawmakers are trying to make it harder to mount ballot drives after voters last month legalized marijuana for recreational use, overhauled the process of redrawing district lines that the GOP dominated in recent decades and expanded voting options.
The move also comes a week after they maneuvered to significantly scale back minimum wage and paid sick time laws that began as ballot initiatives. At the behest of the business lobby, the Legislature preemptively adopted the wage and leave measures before the election, rather than let them go to a public vote, so it would be easier to change them after — an unprecedented strategy that is sure to spark lawsuits if Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signs the bills. GOP legislators also have advanced Wisconsin-like bills that would strip or dilute the powers of Democrats taking over the governor, attorney general and secretary of state offices.
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/michigan-gop-advance-ballot-drive-requirement-bill
And if anyone thinks these assholes aren't fucking fascist libertarian assholes..........
November 3, 2020 cannot get here fast enough..................
Trump Energy Adviser Sprints Away From Amy Goodman's Questions On Climate
By Matt Shuham
December 12, 2018 4:04 pm
He’s running.
Wells Griffith, the Republican consultant and President Donald Trump’s international energy and climate adviser, spent several minutes running away from Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman on Tuesday, as the journalist sought to ask Griffith basic questions about climate change and the President’s denials of climate science.
Griffith made global headlines Monday when he was laughed at while hosting the United States’ only public event at this year’s global climate change conference in Poland — one promoting fossil fuel use.
After the planned disruption Monday, Griffith scolded protesters. “All too often, we can’t have an open and honest discussion about the realities,” he said, before returning to prepared remarks.
But the next day, the Trump adviser seemed unwilling to engage in an “open and honest discussion” about the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, or about its refusal to “welcome” — along with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to the frustration of climate scientists and attendee nations eager to address the effects of climate change.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-energy-adviser-sprints-away-from-amy-goodmans-questions-on-climate
WE are coming asshole..........................you can run, but you can't hide from a Congressional hearing......................WE are coming...................chickenshit.................... 
Good on Amy Goodman....................
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