The B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber While the federal deficit expands, cities go bankrupt and folks are forced to drink lead ladened water - The Pentagon Parasites get a new ultra-expensive toy.
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Air Force reveals first image of B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber
By Thom Patterson
It's an image that is being picked apart by military aviation experts around the world. The first official drawing of the U.S. Air Force's B-21 bomber.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James unveiled the artist rendering Friday based on the initial design concept.
Black, sleek, with swept-back wings and stealthy design make this aircraft look a lot like another famous bomber — the B-2 Spirit.
James seemed to hint at that during her announcement. "The B-21 has been designed from the beginning based on a set of requirements that allows the use of existing and mature technology," she said at the Air Force Association Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Florida.
At first glance, the drawing seems basic. But make no mistake, aviation geeks and America's military competitors will be picking it apart for clues to learn more about this very expensive and powerful weapons system. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and just about anyone in the world involved in developing advanced stealth technology will look at this drawing for any indication of where U.S. design is headed.
Officer Edwin Raymond: He was forced to sue the NYPD over quotas in arrests and summonses of blacks.
By David Love
What if rotten, corrupt and racist police departments are working as they were designed to?
When the callous white police officer responds to the Black Lives Matter movement with the retort that “Blue lives matter,” is that a heartfelt sentiment? What of the Black cop? Although certainly there are African-American police officers who have internalized the racial oppression of a career that originated with the slave patrols, others have refused to betray their Blackness and have challenged the system instead.
There is a reason Black police officers have Black police associations. Obviously, the dominant law enforcement associations and unions fail to address the needs of Black officers. But for that badge, hat and gun, Black officer, you are one of the multitude of Black faces you patrol — the folks who get stopped and harassed for doing nothing, and who may even find themselves brutalized and shot dead if they aren’t careful.
The police culture is all about the blue mentality, but it is also a white mentality, where a culture of racism and brutality have been ingrained since the plantation days. Like a gang, it is an indoctrination process, with punishment and retaliation for those who fight against the system and refuse to abide by the rules. Changing the institution from the inside is laudable, though a hard sell. Consider the case of Edwin Raymond, a Black NYPD officer who was the subject of a New York Times Magazine story by Saki Knafo.
Raymond — the son of a Haitian immigrant family and a racially- and socially-conscious Black man — believed he could reform “New York’s Finest” internally. And he was in for a rude awakening. Ultimately, he joined a lawsuit of a dozen Black officers who sued their own department for racism, even secretly recording conversations he had with his superiors. Raymond and others refused to follow the NYPD policy of quotas for arrests and summonses, a race-based practice in which officers were pressured to boost arrests of Blacks and Latinos but stay away from whites and Asians.
An award-winning officer who placed at number eight on the sergeant’s exam, Raymond was passed over for promotions and given abysmal performance reviews because he would not toe the line and make a sufficient number of arrests. Raymond was a Black man in a police force that is only 16 percent Black and whose top ranks are less than 7 percent Black, according to the Marshall Project. The population of New York City is only one third white, but a mostly white police force patrols over an overwhelmingly Black, Latino and Asian population.
Here is a conversation Raymond secretly taped with his supervisor, Sgt. Martin Campbell, also Black, over a bad performance review that Campbell was ordered to write by his own boss:
What is the issue with me?’’ he asked Campbell. ‘‘Just the activity, the quota?’’
Campbell laughed. ‘‘What do you think, bro?’’
‘‘Man,’’ Raymond said.
‘‘Honestly, what do you think?’’
‘‘But it has to be more,’’ Raymond said, “because technically, when it comes to numbers—”
‘‘No, no, no,’’ Campbell said. ‘‘There’s not more. That’s it.’’
And yet that wasn’t it — at least, Raymond didn’t think so. There were other officers in the district, not many, but some, whose numbers were even lower than his.
‘‘You really want me to tell you what I think it is?’’ Campbell asked.
‘‘Of course, because I need to understand this.’’
‘‘You’re a young black man with dreads. Very smart, very intelligent, have a loud say, meaning your words is loud. You understand what I’m saying by that?’’
‘‘Yeah.’’
‘‘I never seen anything like this, bro,’’ Campbell said.
I
reached Mckesson by phone soon after he announced his candidacy for
mayor. When I asked him how he funded all of his travel despite not
having a job, he initially replied, “I don’t have an answer to that.
There’s an answer in the New York Times article.”
After
being informed that the Times offered no such answer, Mckesson stated,
“You know, people ask me this, and I haven’t even had to answer this. I,
you know, me and you don’t have a relationship. You know, you’re a
reporter to me, you know—I’ve answered it many times. I will put that on
my list of things and try to double back with you.” Several hours later, Mckesson texted me the link to a Tweet from last spring claiming that his excursions were funded by unnamed “family and friends.”—Drew Franklin
DeRay Mckesson (Screen capture from YouTube video)
By Drew Franklin
For those who’ve never paid much attention, Teach For America sounds like a benevolent and benign idea: recruit bright college grads, give them some teacher-training and place them in some of the nation’s neediest schools for a two-year commitment to teach kids.
The reality behind TFA’s sunny exterior is somewhat more sinister. Education policy experts today consider the nonprofit founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990 to be at the vanguard of the school privatization movement. TFA is also a media juggernaut in its own right, known for deploying a sophisticated public relations arsenal to advance an agenda focused on crushing teachers’ unions and privatizing public school systems. TFA's funders, including the Waltons, Bill and Melinda Gates and top Fortune 500 corporations, all have plenty to gain from the commodification of public goods and the destruction of public service unions, and its 11,000 corps members provide a valuable service to that end.
Teach for America’s peculiar brand of social justice was on bold display at its 25th Anniversary Summit the weekend of February 5. The confab drew 15,000 corps members, alumni and supporters to Washington for three days of seminars on lofty issues like, “Allies, Co-Conspirators and Coalition Building: Showing Up for Justice Across Lines of Power.” But one of the biggest draws was the discussion on “The New Civil Rights Agenda and Education,” co-headlined by DeRay Mckesson, the TFA alum and 30-year-old Black Lives Matter activist who received a $10,000 award from TFA last year.
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The Cory Booker Effect
How A Republican Operative Turned Black Democrats Into Shills for School Vouchers, Charter Schools and Public School Privatization An exposé by activist and journalist Glenn Ford
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When Mckesson announced his campaign for mayor of Baltimore this month, his name topped the list of trending topics on Twitter for several hours. Even without outlining a strategy to defeat better-known, more entrenched candidates, Mckesson received nearly $130,000 in online donations, met with President Barack Obama (who said Mckesson and associates “were better organizers than I was”), and secured his status as one of the country’s most closely watched political outsiders. Headlines appeared across national media, from Slate to the Guardian to the Washington Post, with the progressive online magazine Truthdig proclaiming Mckesson "Truthdigger of the Week."
With his candidacy for a city whose public schools are a key target of the education reform movement, the time seems right to scrutinize Mckesson’s relationship with Teach for America more closely. His high-profile appearance at the TFA gala only days after filing his last-minute bid to enter the race was only the latest collaboration with the organization spearheading a sustained attack on teacher's unions and traditional public schools.
Promotion From TFA, Shade From Local Organizers
DeRay Mckesson is a prolific Twitter personality who first came to national prominence during the uprising of 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. His live-tweeting of protests in the wake of Michael Brown’s death quickly garnered a massive following, and as a wave of protests swept the United States, Mckesson was consistently among the first on the scene, making him and his Twitter feed an invaluable source of information for journalists.
With his rapid emergence, Mckesson developed a well-tailored image as a media darling, known in equal measure for his ubiquitous blue Patagonia vest and composed attitude, holding his own in interviews with the most confrontational cable news hosts. The name “DeRay” became synonymous with the Black Lives Matter protest movement, boosted by features in mainstream news magazines and promotion from international celebrities like Beyonce. His influence emanates from Twitter, where he maintains over 300,000 followers, mixing live updates from demonstrations against police brutality with commercial-style promotions of corporations like McDonald's and Spotify.
As Mckesson rose to prominence, TFA was there to provide promotion through its powerful PR apparatus.
Mckesson had no connection to Ferguson when he first arrived on Aug. 16, 2014, according to an interview he gave Huffington Post later the same year. But it didn’t take him long to connect with another protester named Brittany Packnett, with whom he began working the same day. The fact that Packnett is executive director of TFA’s St. Louis chapter likely contributed to their immediate rapport.
At the time, Mckesson was senior director of human capital for Minneapolis Public Schools. He says he commuted to Ferguson on weekends before eventually quitting his job to protest full-time.
A Twitter search query produces a clear timeline of Mckesson's subsequent transition from human resources manager to social justice talent, aided by promotion from Teach For America. It begins with a post to TFA’s official blog, in which Mckesson pontificates on his activities in Ferguson. TFA tweeted a link to that post on Aug. 21, 2014, at which point Mckesson would have been in the besieged midwestern town for five days.
The next item on the timeline, dated October 29, is an advertisement for a “national conference call featuring TFA alumni @MsPackyetti [Packnett] and @deray.” Two weeks after that, the Washington Post published a profile of McKesson and TFA promoted it on social media, identifying him again as a “TFA alumnus.” On Dec. 10, Time Magazine named him along with a handful of peers, collectively referred to as the “Ferguson protesters,” as runners-up to its 2014 Person of the Year, and TFApromoted that too.
Mckesson’s big break, however, was a cover story for the May 4 issue of the New York Times Magazine, with the headline "Our Demand Is Simple: Stop Killing Us." The
6700-word article profiles McKesson and fellow overnight celebrity
Ferguson protester Johnetta Elzie, as they drop in to demonstrations in
cities across the United States over the course of nine months.
I
reached Mckesson by phone soon after he announced his candidacy for
mayor. When I asked him how he funded all of his travel despite not
having a job, he initially replied, “I don’t have an answer to that.
There’s an answer in the New York Times article.”
After
being informed that the Times offered no such answer, Mckesson stated,
“You know, people ask me this, and I haven’t even had to answer this. I,
you know, me and you don’t have a relationship. You know, you’re a
reporter to me, you know—I’ve answered it many times. I will put that on
my list of things and try to double back with you.” Several hours later, Mckesson texted me the link to a Tweet from last spring claiming that his excursions were funded by unnamed “family and friends.”
None of the $3.2 Billion will come out of the pocket of any of the crooked millionaire executives at Morgan Stanley. That money will be paid by the corporation.
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman: If you got rich crashing the economy and didn't have to go to prison
you would be grinning too. None of the $3.2 Billion will come out of the pocket of any of the crooked
millionaire executives at Morgan Stanley. That money will be paid by the corporation.
_____________
Morgan Stanley to Pay $3.2 Billion Over Flawed Mortgage Bonds
By NATHANIEL POPPER Morgan Stanley will pay $3.2 billion to strike a settlement with state and federal authorities over the Wall Street firm’s creation of mortgage-backed bonds before the financial crisis.
Nearly a year ago, Morgan Stanley announced that it expected to pay $2.6 billion to federal authorities in the settlement. Since then, though, Morgan Stanley was pushed to offer more money. Much of the additional money will go to New York State.
The settlement, which was announced Thursday morning, is one of the last that is expected to come out of a working group that President Obama helped form in 2012 to deal with the flawed mortgaged-backed bonds that banks put together before the financial crisis. In the go-go years that preceded the crisis, Wall Street banks purchased subprime mortgages and packaged them into bonds that ended up suffering significant losses.
Because Morgan Stanley did not originate mortgages itself, its settlement is much smaller than those struck by large consumer banks like Bank of America, which paid $16.6 billion in its 2014 settlement.
Morgan Stanley said on Thursday that it had set aside legal reserves to cover the agreement and would not take any additional charges in its coming financial results.
“We are pleased to have finalized these settlements involving legacy residential mortgage-backed securities matters,” a spokesman for the firm, Mark Lake, said in a statement.
Governor Chris Christie's bullying ways may have led to his undoing when members of his staff
punished a local mayor for not endorsing Christie: his staff closed traffic lanes to that mayor's city, causing huge traffic jams and endangering lives. An investigation of Christie over the incident continues.
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Chris Christie suspends his presidential campaign
By Robert Costa and David A. Fahrenthold
Chris Christie — the brash New Jersey governor whose fast rise in Republican politics was undone by a petty scheme to clog traffic on a bridge — has decided to suspend his presidential campaign, according to two Republicans briefed on his deliberations.
Christie held a meeting and conference call with campaign staff at 4 p.m. to inform them of his decision, the Republicans said.
Christie finished sixth in Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire, the state on which he had pinned his last presidential hopes. Christie spent 71 days campaigning in the Granite State, and he had his best debate here just days before the primary — flustering rival Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) into robotic repetition by criticizing his lack of experience in office.
After all that, Christie garnered only 7 percent of the vote.
“I have both won elections that I was supposed to lose, and I’ve lost elections I was supposed to win. And what that means is you never know,” Christie told supporters in Nashua, N.H., on Tuesday night. He said then that he would return to New Jersey before making a decision about his future.
Christie’s short-lived run for the presidency was a remarkable turnabout for a corruption-busting federal prosecutor who was elected governor in 2009. He quickly made a name by battling the state’s public-sector unions and engaging in well-publicized shouting matches at public meetings that became YouTube sensations.
The corrupt and brutal ex-Sheriff gets a "sweetheart deal" from prosecutors — "other charges" will not be pursued and the brutal cover up artist faces only six months in jail.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca (Photo by Scott L.)
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Ex-L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca to plead guilty in jail scandal, his attorney says
By Joel Rubin, Cindy Chang and Harriet Ryan
Retired Los Angeles County SheriffLee Baca will plead guilty in a downtown courtroom Wednesday to making false statements, marking a dramatic turn in the ongoing federal investigation into corruption in the Sheriff's Department.
According to a charging document filed by federal prosecutors on Wednesday morning, Baca lied twice about his involvement in hiding an inmate from FBI agents who were investigating brutality and corruption by sheriff's deputies in the county jails.
Baca also lied when he said he was unaware that his subordinates planned to approach an FBI special agent at her home, the document said.
Baca's attorney, Michael Zweibeck, said his client has agreed to plead guilty to a single count as part of a deal with prosecutors that will see him spend no more than six months in prison and possibly no time at all.
The U.S. Attorney's office has agreed not pursue other charges against the former sheriff, and a federal judge must sign off on the deal, Zweibeck said.
The parasitic bankers at Wells Fargo deliberately provided home loans without credit or income checks to people they knew couldn't afford them. It then foisted these toxic loans on the Federal Housing Administration and then collected insurance on thousands of loans that it knew would fail. Not a single Wells Fargo executive will spend a single day in jail for this ripoff which helped crash the global economy.—Ronald David Jackson
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Wells Fargo to Pay $1.2 Billion Over Bad Government-Backed Mortgages
By James Rufus Koren Wells Fargo & Co. will pay $1.2 billion to settle claims that it duped the federal government into insuring thousands of risky mortgages in the years leading up to the housing crash, the San Francisco banking giant said Wednesday.
If approved by a federal judge, the settlement would close the books on a 2012 lawsuit that the government filed against the bank over bad loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration. It's one of the biggest fines paid by Wells Fargo related to the crash.
Prosecutors alleged that the bank “engaged in a regular practice of reckless origination and underwriting” of FHA loans backed by federal insurance and intended to help first-time home buyers.
Between 2001 and 2005, prosecutors said, the bank issued thousands of FHA loans that did not meet the program's requirements, which include minimum incomes and credit scores for borrowers. They also said that from 2002 to 2010, the bank violated federal reporting requirements by keeping problem loans under wraps and collecting insurance payouts when loans went bad.
Banks are required to report loans if they find problems in their underwriting — for instance, if a loan officer approved an FHA-backed mortgage even though the borrower did not meet criteria or provided fraudulent information when applying.
Prosecutors said Wells Fargo internal reviews found more than 6,500 problem FHA loans from 2002 through 2010, but the bank reported only 238 of them. Prosecutors said the lax underwriting was partly the result of incentives that encouraged employees to approve more loans.
The loan defaults caused the FHA to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in insurance claims to Wells Fargo to cover the bank's losses, even though those loans should not have been insured, according to the suit.
By Tom Boggioni
The director of a small nonprofit dedicated to serving New Hampshire veterans turned down a $100,000 check — which would have covered a third of their budget –from Donald Trump because he didn’t want his organization to be a prop for the billionaire’s campaign.
The Trump campaign has taken heat for staging an event at the same time as a GOP debate the candidate was boycotting –with the ostensible reason of raising money for veteran organizations. Veterans groups called it a “political stunt,” with some claiming they wouldn’t accept any donations from the campaign or the Trump Foundation.
In an interview with the Daily Beast, Liberty House executive director Keith Howard claimed he received a call from a Trump campaign staffer on Friday stating the candidate would like to present the Manchester charity with a big check at a Monday rally — hours before New Hampshire primary voters went to the polls.
Howard told the campaign: “No.”
According to the director, he doesn’t believe that his charity — which provides housing, food and clothing to vets in need — should be bribed with money by candidates to become a prop at a political rally.
“This is not directed at the Trump campaign,” Howard explained. “This is about any campaign.”
Howard also stated that appearing at the political rally could jeopardize his group’s nonprofit status, while noting that the call came from Trump’s campaign and not from the candidate’s charitable foundation.
A political campaign legal expert confirmed the risk of appearing in return for cash.
By Tom Boggioni
ppearing on ABC’s This Week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she is willing to release transcripts of her private speeches just as soon as everyone else who has given a paid speech releases theirs.
The Democratic presidential candidate has been under heavy fire from critics and surrogates from rival Bernie Sanders’ campaign over speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs that netted her over $600,000. During the last Democratic debate, Clinton said she would look into releasing transcripts from those speeches.
Pressed by host George Stephanopoulos if she had made a decision, Clinton gave a blunt reply.
“Yes, you know, here’s another thing I want to say. Let everybody who’s ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances release them. We’ll all release them at the same time,” Clinton stated. “You know, I don’t mind being the subject in Republican debates, the subject in the Democratic primary. That kind of goes with the territory. I’ve been around long enough.”
“But at some point, you know, these rules need to apply to everybody,” she continued. “And there are a bunch of folks, including, you know, my opponent, who’s given speeches to groups, and people on the other side who’ve given speeches to groups. Let’s — if this is now going to be a new standard, then it should apply to everybody and then I’ll be happy to look into it further.”
The morning of May 4, 2011, Jameelah El-Shabazz watched out the window of her Bronx apartment as a team of police officers fanned across the rooftop of Banana Kelly High School. The 43-year-old mother of five said she didn’t think much of the scene — drug raids were common in her neighborhood. As she did most…
The District Attorney, the Judge and the Media engaged in a drug planting cover up right before your eyes...
"Officer" William Melendez was recorded beating an innocent motorist and then planting drugs in his car. He had a past record of brutality and planting evidence but was only cited for brutality when his mere 13-month prison sentence (with an alleged possibility of up to 10 years) was announced. It seems a good bet that the drug planting was not mentioned because to do so would have called into question every drug arrest Melendez and his corrupt cop cronies were involved in.—Ronald David Jackson
Floyd Dent, the victim of the beating, arrest and attempting drug framing, passed a lie detector test and his fingerprints weren’t found on the baggie of white powder that was found in his car.
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Ex-Cop William Melendez Gets Up to 10 Years for Beating of Michigan Driver Floyd Dent
By Erik Ortiz
The ex-Michigan cop convicted in the beating of an unarmed driver during a traffic stop last year was sentenced Tuesday to 13 months to 10 years in prison.
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Melendez and His Accomplices Beat a Motorist for No Reason, then Melendez Plants Drugs in the Victim's Car
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William Melendez, 47, was caught on police dashboard camera in the January 2015 assault against driver Floyd Dent, who was hit 16 times and choked so hard that he testified he passed out.
Melendez during his hearing was also sentenced to 90 days on a misconduct in office charge. He was already given 85 days credit for time served, reported NBC affiliate WDIV.
From the bench Tuesday, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Vonda Evans admonished Melendez for an incident that seemed to spiral out of control from a simple traffic stop.
"You were so into your bravado that you forgot the eye of justice was recording you," Evans said. "You knew better. You were better trained than any of those officers out there. You were more experienced."
Meledenz, who was fired from the Inkster Police Department last April, was found guilty in November of misconduct in office and assault with intent to do great bodily harm.
The jury, however, found him not guilty of a separate count of strangulation. The jury had nine black jurors and seven white jurors — four of those jurors were selected as alternates, although it was unclear which ones.
Dent, a 58-year-old Ford Motor Co. worker, was initially charged with driving on a suspended license, possession of cocaine and assaulting or resisting a police officer. But those charges were later dropped.
Dent has maintained police planted the cocaine on him.
By Mark Konkol and Paul Biasco Chicago Police Department officers stashed microphones in their squad car glove boxes. They pulled out batteries. Microphone antennas got busted or went missing. And sometimes, dashcam systems didn’t have any microphones at all, DNAinfo Chicago has learned.
Police officials last month blamed the absence of audio in 80 percent of dashcam videos on officer error and “intentional destruction.”
A DNAinfo Chicago review of more than 1,800 police maintenance logs sheds light on the no-sound syndrome plaguing Police Department videos — including its most notorious dashcam case.
Maintenance records of the squad car used by Jason Van Dyke, who shot and killed Laquan McDonald, and his partner, Joseph Walsh, show monthslong delays for two dashcam repairs, including a long wait to fix “intentional damage.”
On June 17, 2014, police technicians reported fixing a dashcam wiring issue in police vehicle No. 6412, the squad shared by Van Dyke and Walsh, about three months after it was reported broken, records show.
A day later, the same vehicle's dashcam system was reported busted again. It took until Oct. 8, 2014, to complete repairs of what technicians deemed “intentional damage,” according to reports.
Just 12 days later, on Oct. 20, 2014, dashcam video recorded from squad car No. 6412 on the night Van Dyke shot and killed McDonald did not record audio. The video that went viral showing Van Dyke killing Laquan was taken from a different squad car, but it, too, had no audio.
By Carey Gillam
Former University of Illinois food science professor Bruce Chassy is known for his academic gravitas. Now retired nearly four years, Chassy still writes and speaks often about food safety issues, identifying himself with the full weight of the decades of experience earned at the public university and as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. Chassy tells audiences that before he retired in 2012, he worked “full time” doing research and teaching.
What Chassy doesn’t talk much about is the other work he did while at the University of Illinois — promoting the interests of Monsanto Co., which has been trying to overcome mounting public concerns about the genetically engineered crops and chemicals the company sells. He also doesn’t talk much about the hundreds of thousands of dollars Monsanto donated to the university as Chassy was helping promote GMOs, or Monsanto’s secretive role in helping Chassy set up a nonprofit group and website to criticize individuals and organizations who raise questions about GMOs.
But emails released through Freedom of Information Act requests show that Chassy was an active member of a group of U.S. academics who have been quietly collaborating with Monsanto on strategies aimed at not just promoting biotech crop products, but also rolling back regulation of these products and fending off industry critics. The emails show money flowing into the university from Monsanto as Chassy collaborated on multiple projects with Monsanto to counter public concerns about genetically modified crops (GMOs) – all while representing himself as an independent academic for a public institution.
A New York Times article by Eric Lipton published last September laid bare the campaign crafted by Monsanto and other industry players to use the credibility of prominent academics to push the industry’s political agenda. That Times article focused primarily on University of Florida academic Kevin Folta, chairman of the university’s Horticultural Sciences Department, and Folta’s work on behalf of Monsanto. But an examination of recently released email exchanges between Monsanto and Chassy show new depths to the industry efforts.[...]
Chassy has said he did nothing unethical or improper in his work supporting Monsanto and the biotech crop industry. “As a public-sector research scientist, it was expected... that I collaborate with and solicit the engagement of those working in my field of expertise,” Chassy has stated.
[...]
In a November 2010 email, Monsanto chief of global scientific affairs Eric Sachs tells Chassy that Monsanto has just sent a “gift of $10,000” to the university “so the funds should be there.” He then tells Chassy he is working on a plan for Monsanto and others in the agribusiness industry to support an “academics review” website that Chassy can use to counter concerns and allegations raised by critics of GMOs. “From my perspective the problem is one of expert engagement and that could be solved by paying experts to provide responses,” Sachs wrote. “The key will be keeping Monsanto in the background so as not to harm the credibility of the information.”
In a separate 2010 exchange, Jay Byrne, president of the v-Fluence public relations firm and former head of corporate communications for Monsanto, tells Chassy he is trying to move the Academics Review project forward. He suggests “we work on the money (for all of us).” Byrne says that he has a list of GMO critics for Academics Review to target. He tells Chassy that the topic areas “mean money for a range of well-heeled corporations.”
By Bethania Palma Markus
Donald Trump admitted that he brings up the implausible idea of building an even bigger “wall” between the United States and Mexico than the one that already exists just to get applause from a sleepy audience.diss
The GOP front runner, real estate tycoon and television reality star told the New York Times‘ editorial board he uses the line to wake up an audience that starts looking a little bored. The Times slammed Trump in a Saturday editorial that called Trump and his main rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, “objectionable for different reasons.”
“You know,” he told the Times writers, “if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ and they go nuts.”
Trump’s candid admission is yet another in which he seems to allude that his supporters are, at best, uncritical.
Last week, Trump said he could murder someone in cold blood and not lose any of his loyal followers.
“They say I have the most loyal people,” Trump at a rally in Iowa, “Where I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like incredible.”
While the Times notes that Trump’s supporters don’t care what he says, “[w]hat they may not know is how deliberately he is currying their favor.”
This week, Trump supporter Karen Bruno said that she is so angry with politics in this country that no matter what Trump says, she will support him.
By AP
San Francisco police officers are being asked to combat racism in the ranks and take a pledge to turn in colleagues displaying intolerant behavior, such as slurs and jokes targeting people of color, gays and women.
The pledge is part of a broader public relations campaign by the embattled police department to repair frayed relations with minority neighborhoods and community activists.
The campaign comes amid growing tensions between police and black communities that are shaking up departments across the country and have led to the dismissal of top brass in some cities, including Chicago. Politically progressive San Francisco is not immune from the unrest. The Dec. 2 shooting of a young black man clutching a kitchen knife by five officers has increased racial tensions and sparked calls for the police chief's removal.
So far, San Francisco's mayor has stood behind the chief amid the emergence of racist text messages exchanged among several officers and a judge's decision that he failed to punish the officers in timely fashion.
Police say Mario Woods, 26, had stabbed a stranger earlier that day, ignored commands to drop the knife and shook off blasts of tear gas and shots from a bean bag gun before officers opened fire.
Police say only one of the five officers involved was white, but protests over the shooting persists. Mayor Ed Lee has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.
Chief Greg Suhr said the pledge and the "Not on My Watch" campaign had been in the works long before the Woods shooting, but the incident gave the project new urgency. Several angry protests were organized in the rough neighborhood where Woods died. And people demanding the chief's dismissal disrupted the mayor's inauguration on Jan. 8 and briefly shut down the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 18.
Yulanda Williams, who leads a minority police officers group, helped initiate the pledge after she found that a white colleague used a black slur in text messages to other officers complaining about her promotion to sergeant. Other text messages exchanged among Williams' colleagues contained racist and homophobic insults and slurs.
"I will not tolerate hate or bigotry in our community or from my fellow officers," the seven-sentence pledge states in part. "I will confront intolerance and report any such conduct without question or pause."
"While residents were being told to relax and
not worry about the water, the Snyder administration was taking steps to
limit exposure in its own building." —Lonnie Scott, Progress Michigan
Following release of new document and emails, Gov. Snyder told he must 'explain to the people of Flint why his administration trucked water into a state building while allowing residents to drink unsafe water'
By Jon Queally
A newly obtained document and related emails released on Thursday show that while the residents of Flint, Michigan were slowly being poisoned by lead-contaminated water last year, the offices of state officials in the city were "quietly" outfitted with water coolers by Gov. Rick Snyder's administration.
The emails—obtained by Progress Michigan and posted online here (pdf)—reveal an exchange between employees of the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget (DTMB) and other state officials regarding in-house "concern about Flint's WQ [water quality]" that occurred at a time in 2015 when many residents still had no idea there was a problem with the city's public water and more than ten months before Gov. Rick Snyder ultimately declared a state of emergency over the crisis. The document at issue—dated January 7, 2015—is an administrative order showing the state had decided to provide bottled-water coolers "positioned near water fountains" in state offices so that workers could "choose which water to drink."
Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, said the emails and document offer new evidence of the Snyder administration's indifference towards the people of Flint.
"It appears the state wasn’t as slow as we first thought in responding the Flint Water Crisis," said Scott in a statement. "Sadly, the only response was to protect the Snyder administration from future liability and not to protect the children of Flint from lead poisoning. While residents were being told to relax and not worry about the water, the Snyder administration was taking steps to limit exposure in its own building."
The governor, continued Scott, should immediately "explain to the people of Flint why his administration trucked water into a state building while allowing residents to drink unsafe water."
In addition to adding to the enormous available evidence revealing the Snyder's administration lackluster (if not criminal) response to the water crisis in Flint, Scott said the documents also make it plain just "ineffective" and "unequal" the state's handling of the situation has been.
The Haitian people’s furious resistance to yet another fraudulent presidential election has scuttled U.S. plans to replace “Sweet Mickey” Martelly with another flunky named the “Banana Man.” The aborted fraud is a reminder that Secretary of State Clinton was an imperial bully who rigged the previous presidential election in Haiti and stole the country blind, along with her accomplice and husband, Bill. Those chickens may yet come home to roost.
“The discrediting of the elections would also reflect very badly on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.”
The island nation of Haiti is on the verge of finally ejecting the criminal President Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly, the dance hall performer and gangster who was foisted on the Haitian people by the United States through the bullying of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, back in 2011. Martelly’s term is up, and he is constitutionally required to leave office by February 7. Martelly and his American, French and Canadian backers had hoped to use rigged elections and strong-arm tactics to install another puppet politician, Jovenel “The Banana Man” Moise, in the presidential palace. The “Banana Man” – who wants to turn Haiti into a real banana-exporting republic, to the further impoverishment of its small farmers – came in first in an October election that was so blatantly stolen, even the thoroughly corrupt Haitian elite could not endorse the outcome.
In fact, virtually no one in Haitian society except the “Banana Man” and “Sweet Mickey” and the tens thousands of Haitians who were paid to vote, repeatedly, at different polling places in October, considered the election to be valid. Jude Célestin, the candidate that came in second in the October electoral farce – and who was also cheated of victory by “Sweet Mickey” Martelly in the election five years ago – refused to go along with the travesty. Célestin said he would not take part in the bogus run-off election that was scheduled for this past Sunday – meaning, the “Banana Man” would have been the only candidate.
“Hillary and Bill were the Bonnie and Clyde of Haiti.”
But, even the prospect of a one-man contest could not stop the Americans from insisting on going ahead with the run-off. The U.S., which pays for the Haitian elections and, therefore, believes it has the right to decide who wins and who loses, growled that Haiti should go along with the fraudulent process. The Americans were upset that they might have no reliable replacement for their loyal puppet, “Sweet Mickey.” Plus, the discrediting of the elections would also reflect very badly on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who claims to have brought stability to Haiti when she was at the State Department but, in fact, is culpable for all of the Haitians who were murdered by the Martelly regime. The truth is that Hillary and Bill were the Bonnie and Clyde of Haiti, robbing the country for their own and other corporate criminals’ benefit. The teams of FBI agents that are now matching Hillary’s emails with contributions to the Clinton Foundation are tapping a Mother Lode of corruption that may yet bring her down before Election Day in the United States.
If that happens, the Haitian people will deserve some of the credit for saving the U.S. from another period of rule by the Crooked Clintons, in the process of saving Haiti’s sovereignty and self-respect. The Haitians’ furious grassroots resistance forced the cancellation of Sunday’s run-off election; “Sweet Mickey” is slated to leave office in less than two weeks; and negotiations are underway to form an interim government that would hold clean elections. The struggle now is for Haiti’s poor majority to make its voice heard above the growling of the U.S. imperialist occupiers and their hired Haitian flunkies – some of whom are real killers, whose names aren’t funny at all.
Rather than going directly to veterans groups, 100% of online donations on Trump's pro-veterans site will go directly to Trump's personal foundation. Trump’s non-profit donated more money to the Clinton Foundation than it did to veterans causes.
“Honor their valor,” the website, donaldtrumpforvets.com, states. “Donate now to help our Veterans.”
The website, which is nothing more than a single page with stock photos and a credit card donation form, claims that “100% of your donations will go directly to Veterans needs.”
There’s only one problem: 100% of the money raised on the site goes directly to Donald Trump’s personal non-profit foundation, accor[...]
ding to a disclosure listed at the bottom of the page.
“The Donald J Trump Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization,” the disclosure reads. “An email confirmation with a summary of your donation will be sent to the email address provided above.”
Trump’s personal non-profit foundation, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, does not have a history of donating much money to veterans or to veterans’ causes. According to a recent analysis of the organization’s spending history by the Weekly Standard, Trump’s non-profit donated more money to the Clinton Foundation than it did to veterans causes.
By Stacy Malkan
The founders of Cornell University, Andrew D. White and Ezra Cornell, dreamed of creating a great university that took a radical approach to learning. Their revolutionary spirit, and the promise to pursue knowledge for the greater good, is said to be at the heart of the Ivy League school their dream became.
It is difficult to understand how these ideals are served by a unit of Cornell operating as a public relations arm for the agrichemical industry.
Yet that is what seems to be going on at the Cornell Alliance for Science (CAS), a program launched in 2014 with a $5.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a goal to “depolarize the charged debate” about GMOs.
A review of the group’s materials and programs suggests that beneath its promise to “restore the importance of scientific evidence in decision making,” CAS is promoting GMOs using dishonest messaging and PR tactics developed by agrichemical corporations with a long history of misleading the public about science.
Communicating science or propaganda?
CAS is a communications campaign devoted to promoting genetically engineered foods (also known as GMOs) around the world. This is made clear in the group’s promotional video.
CAS Director Sarah Evanega, PhD, describes her group as a “communications-based nonprofit organization represented by scientists, farmers, NGOs, journalists and concerned citizens” who will use “interactive online platforms, multimedia resources and communication training programs to build a global movement to advocate for access to biotechnology.”
In this way, they say they will help alleviate malnourishment and hunger in developing countries, according to the video.
Dr. Evanega said her group has no connections to industry and receives no resources from industry. “We do not write for industry, and we do not advocate for or promote industry-owned products,” she wrote in a blog post titled “A Right to Be Known (Accurately)" in which she pushed back against criticisms from my group, U.S. Right to Know.
Yet the flagship programs of CAS – a 12-week course for Global Leadership Fellows and two-day intensive communications courses – teach communication skills to people who are “committed to advocating for increased access to biotechnology” specifically so they can “lead advocacy efforts in their local contexts.”
The group also has unusual dealings with journalists. What does it mean, as the CAS video states, that it is “represented by” journalists?
CAS offers journalism fellowships with cash awards for select journalists to “promote in-depth contextualized reporting” about issues related to food security, crop production, biotechnology and sustainable agricultural.
Are these journalists also GMO advocates? How ethical is it for journalists to represent the policy positions of a pro-agrichemical-industry group?
