Lori Vallow Doesn’t Turn Over Missing Kids | Law & Crime
whoa, the movie about all of this is going to be something else…
What goes through my my mind when I read the news with my morning coffee. …Or for the Simon's Rockers in the group, this is my response journal.
Lori Vallow Doesn’t Turn Over Missing Kids | Law & Crime
whoa, the movie about all of this is going to be something else…
Trains may once have accelerated life but in our digital world they have the opposite effect: they slow one down. To see the landscape rolling by, or at night to see the lights passing and feel the wheels turning beneath one, is to travel consciously, mindful of the distance one is covering.
…Trains can be fast, but there is nonetheless a meditative quality to travelling by them. Not always, of course: a train laden with boozy commuters is no one’s idea of a sanctuary. But take a long-distance train. …Wait for the hubbub of people finding their seats and storing their luggage to die down. Gaze out of the window as the landscape, dull or beautiful, moves by and you will find yourself in a tranquil middle space: the hills, roads and fields outside stimulating enough to provoke thought without being so distracting as to interrupt it.
The consolations of rail travel
hmmm
hmmm
Flatiron Books, publisher of the controversial new novel American Dirt, has cancelled the remainder of author Jeanine Cummins’ book tour after what it called “specific threats to booksellers and the author.” This follows several individual event cancellations.
Cummins received a hefty advance and a big promotional push for American Dirt, which follows a Mexican mother and son fleeing drug cartel violence. Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club, and prominent authors showered it with praise. But critics have called the book inaccurate and full of harmful stereotypes, and questioned whether Cummins was the right person to tell that story..
…Miller also addressed specific concerns around the promotion of American Dirt, saying “we made serious mistakes in the way we rolled out this book. We should never have claimed that it was a novel that defined the migrant experience; we should not have said that Jeanine’s husband was an undocumented immigrant while not specifying that he was from Ireland. …We can now see how insensitive those and other decisions were, and we regret them.”
Miller said “we wish to listen, learn and do better,” but called for “a two-way dialogue characterized by respect,” saying that “while there are valid criticisms around our promotion of this book that is no excuse for the fact that in some cases there have been threats of physical violence.
Publisher Cancels ‘American Dirt’ Book Tour After Threats : NPR
oy….
Amittedly, as a self-avowed criminal justice voter(s) who is less than in love with Kamala’s record in Law Enforment the Senator had a tough road to haul if she was ever going to earn the Peanut Gallery’s primary vote. …But for many reasons (liking her as a person, not to mention how important it is that our representative government actually looks likes our population) the Peanut Gallery was really rooting for her to go further into the process than she did. I think that’s why the Peanut Gallery was so pissed about about how awful her campaign was. Her ground staff deserved better, she deserved better, and the public deserved a better chance to get to know her than any of us got.
#1 – There never is a “next” anybody. Never ever ever. It’s just not real. Plus, it hampers the new persons ability to define themselves.
#2 – If they were better than what came before, attacking previous administrations of ones own party will always come back to bite you or the party i the ass. (Like say, a bruising primary that labelled a candidate destined to become the nominee in following contests as untrustworthy and dishonest. Ahem) Every. Single. Time.
#3 – There is no denying the difficulties presented to a candidate who is a woman or a POC. There is also no other way to surmount those challenges than a good organization. She had some good people but her organization was amateur-ish, unrealistic, and generally ill-suited to run for anything anywhere but California.
She. Never. Had. A. Shot. A better organization, one that was realistic about the different ways one must campaign in different parts of the country, could have given her one but in the absence of that? She never had a shot.
And quite frankly? If one can’t even field an organization that is able to speak to people in different regions, how could one ever hope to carrying on foreign affairs?
“Elizabeth Warren has the best ground game in the state right now. She’s been building that up for a year,” says Sean Bagniewski, chair of the Democratic Party in Polk County, who hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate. “She has the most staff who are the most ingrained in the most Democratic communities in Iowa.”
…Warren’s campaign has been notable for the depth of its engagement in local communities.
When a local animal shelter needed a boost, Gomez brought Warren volunteers to help. When a neighborhood in Des Moines needed help with their community garden, Hines organized Warren volunteers to pull weeds and till the soil. “I said, ‘Great, we’ll be there every Saturday,’” he recalls. “We fed folks in the community where there are no grocery stores around. We went door-to-door handing out vegetables to people.” Hines says the area near the garden now has several Warren signs that weren’t there before.
…Hines and Gomez say they tell their volunteers never to bash Warren’s opponents when they encounter a supporter of a different candidate. “We say, ‘That’s fine, I like them too, what do you like about them?” says Hines. “We never speak negatively about another candidate.” That’s especially important in Iowa, where the caucus process allows supporters of less popular candidates to switch to another as the caucus goes on if their first choice flops.
“We know that we’re a lot of people’s second choice, and we know that if we start playing divisive politics that’s not going to help us,” Gomez says. “No matter who you’re caucusing for, we’re always going to be polite, respectful, kind. We know that’s going to win us delegates on caucus night for sure.”
…Schumann started off knocking doors twice a week, Gomez says, then graduated to four times a week.
“I’m very impressed with his dedication,” says Gomez. “He thinks it’s the last campaign he’ll be able to knock doors for, and what better way to end his canvassing experiences than by trying to elect the first woman president.”
Can Elizabeth Warren’s Ground Game Lift Her to Victory in Iowa? | Time
We’ll see on caucus/election day how much but approach and organization does matter.
Well, he did get rid of Livingston.
Plus the whole, “No, you resign!!” thing…
NPR stations see bump in donations following Pompeo controversy – The Washington Post
Silver lining to having a fascist wannabe dictator in the White House?
The Trump family business received approval from a local government in Scotland for a major expansion of its golf resort near Aberdeen, marking the largest real estate development financed by the Trump Organization since the 2016 election.
…Both sons have operated and promoted the Trump family business overseas during their father’s presidency, even as he retains ownership. And while the Trump and Biden father-son relationships differ in many ways, the business dealings have set up a simple parallel.
“They are criticizing the vice president’s son for doing exactly what they are doing themselves,” said Martin Ford, a member of the Aberdeenshire Council in Scotland, which voted last month to approve a proposal by the Trumps to build a 500-unit housing development. “They are conducting international business here in Scotland.”
…International dealings have become far more complicated since Mr. Trump took office and his sons took leadership of the business, especially when foreign governments have been involved to the company’s benefit.
…When the Trump Organization tangled with the majority owner of a property in Panama, for example, its local lawyers at one point called on the Panamanian president for an assist.
In Indonesia, the government is helping to build a major new highway that will make a new Trump development more accessible.
…Revenues coming to the Trump family in the United States have drawn scrutiny too, including at the Trump International Hotel in Washington — a property, opened in the final stages of the 2016 campaign, that has flourished while Donald Trump Jr. and Eric have run the company.
The hotel has been a magnet for Republican lobbyists and political fund-raisers, and companies and foreign officials with business before the Trump administration have thrown parties there, including the Kuwait embassy and the government of Azerbaijan.
…In 2017, Mr. Kushner met privately at the White House with top executives from Citibank and the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Those meetings came as the firms were contemplating sizable loans to his family’s business, Kushner Companies, which they did eventually make.
And since Mr. Kushner entered the White House, his family has courted state-connected investors in China and the Middle East — both regions that were in Mr. Kushner’s government portfolio — to bail out the firm’s headquarters at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Those Foreign Business Ties? The Trump Sons Have Plenty Too – The New York Times
hmm
During their father’s tenure as president, Don Jr. and Eric have repeatedly managed to cash in on their newfound positions of political privilege in their business dealings. So, too, have their sister Ivanka and brother-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom hold senior positions in the administration and whose companies and investment portfolios netted them anywhere between $29 million and $135 million last year, per their financial disclosure forms.
…“No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office,” [trump] promised.
Since then, Forbes says, the brothers have sold off more than $100 million worth of Trump Organization real estate. That figure includes a $33 million sale of the company’s stake in a federally subsidized housing complex—a transaction Secretary of House & Urban Development Ben Carson had to approve—and a $3.2 million sale of land in the Dominican Republic last year, which Forbes called “the clearest violation of their father’s pledge to do no new foreign deals while in office.” Taxpayers cover the security costs of each business trip the pair makes—in the first two months of 2017 alone that included $97,830 for a trip to Uruguay, $53,155.25 for a trip to Vancouver, and $16,738.36 for a trip to Dubai, according to NBC News.
In February 2017, the Trump Organization unloaded a $15.8 million Trump Park Avenue penthouse—a home formerly occupied by Jared and Ivanka—to Angela Chen, who runs a consulting firm with ties to Chinese government officials and (allegedly) Chinese military intelligence, says Mother Jones. A Forbes analysis found that this price was 13 percent more than that paid for a comparable unit a year earlier, and that it sold at a time when the building’s other units, on average, were selling for 25 percent less.
…Both Jared and Ivanka, who took a “formal leave of absence” from her eponymous fashion label to serve in her father’s White House, have taken full advantage of the benefits of their new jobs. In April, on the same day she and Kushner sat next to Chinese president Xi Jinping at a White House state dinner, the Chinese government gave its conditional approval for three trademarks granting Ivanka what the AP called “monopoly rights” to sell Ivanka-branded jewelry, bags, and spa services. China approved two more rounds of trademarks in May and June, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan government watchdog.
…Last fall, in the midst of her father’s trade war with China and his efforts to strike a new trade agreement between the two global superpowers, she won initial approval for 16 trademarks, and added five more to her portfolio earlier this year.
…For years, 666 Fifth Avenue was the most vexing line-item on the Kushner real estate ledger—a Midtown skyscraper purchased for $1.8 billion, most of which the family borrowed, right before the 2008 recession. A mammoth mortgage of about $1.4 billion was due in February of this year. …Multiple foreign governments seized on this uncertainty, privately discussing ways to take advantage of his business entanglements and financial difficulties when dealing with the United States, the Washington Post reported.
…In April 2017, a real estate firm tied to the Kushner family made a direct appeal to the government of Qatar to invest in the troubled building.
…Brookfield Asset Management, which acquired a 99-year lease on 666 Fifth Avenue for about $1 billion in April 2018. This miraculous timing allowed the Kushners to pay off its existing mortgage and buy out its partner in the venture, Vornado Realty Trust. The buyer was a semi-familiar face in this drama: One of Brookfield Asset Management’s largest investors is the government of Qatar.
…Cadre, a real estate investment company owned in part by Kushner, has taken in some $90 million in offshore funding via an ominously-described “opaque offshore vehicle” in the Cayman Islands since he joined the White House. Some of the money, the Guardian says, came from other tax shelters; some of it came from unidentified sources in—you guessed it—Saudi Arabia.
…The president’s daughter was instrumental in the effort to include in the 2017 tax reform bill an “Opportunity Zones” program, which extends lucrative tax breaks to rich people who invest capital in designated less-developed areas. According to the AP, Cadre is raising funds from investors to build Opportunity Zone projects, and the Kushner family already owns at least 13 properties in opportunity zones that could qualify for special tax treatment.
…Trump International Hotel, located in D.C.’s Old Post Office building leased in 2013 to one of Donald Trump’s holding companies for development as a luxury hotel….The property has become notorious for attracting members of Congress, lobbyists, Cabinet officials, interest groups, foreign heads of state, and anyone else looking to curry [Trump]’s favor.
…Each of the three eldest Trump kids, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, owns a 7.425-percent interest in the holding company that leases the building. Because Ivanka Trump fills out an annual financial disclosure as a White House employee, we know a bit more about how the that stake is paying off these days: Her most recent filing listed almost $4 million in annual revenue from the hotel.
…In February 2018, Don Jr. traveled to India in an effort to sell more than $1 billion worth of luxury residential units built there by the Trump Organization and its partners.
How the Trump Kids Have Profited Off Their Dad’s Presidency | GQ
hmmm
In cae you were wondering whether or not Putin and Ci’s take on the Harry & Meghan story is dripping with toxic racism and sexism…
Let’s start with the actual results in the 2016 primary. It was not remotely close. Sanders lost by 3.8 million votes, 57-43%. She won 34 states and territories to his 23.
… Sanders lost to Clinton by more than 200,000 votes in the nine states of the Midwest. In the three onetime Blue Wall battleground states, she topped him by over 45,000 votes, though he beat her in Wisconsin and edged her by a point in Michigan. In Ohio, Clinton won by 14 points and nearly 166,000 votes. The best you can say about this Sanders argument is that he didn’t lose as badly in the Midwest as he did elsewhere.
Indeed, in the Sunbelt, the other area that Democrats hope to make a general election battleground in 2020, Sanders got absolutely crushed. He lost Florida 64-33%, Arizona 58-40%, North Carolina 55-41% and Texas 65-33%. Taken together, Clinton trounced Sanders in those four states by more than 1.2 million votes.
…On the very day in 2017 that The New York Times published an op-ed he wrote entitled, “How Democrats Can Stop Losing Elections,” his favored candidate in the Virginia gubernatorial primary got blown out by moderate Ralph Northam, who went on to trounce the Republican in the general election.
In 2018, Sanders waded into the Michigan governor’s race and backed Abdul El-Sayed, a young, far-left candidate. El-Sayed lost every county in the state to the more mainstream Gretchen Whitmer. She went on to soundly beat the Republican by promising not a “revolution” but rather to “fix the damn roads.”
This pattern repeated itself throughout the country. Sanders and his political organization backed candidates at every level, to little or no avail. Their endorsees did not flip House seats from red to blue in 2018, proving that his ideas work only in safely Democratic places.
…In the past, when Bernie Sanders has declared himself and his ideas to be “winners” in red and purple areas, it has turned out to be demonstrably false.
Donald Trump will brand Bernie Sanders a socialist, and he’ll be right
hmmm
The New York Times reports on Sanders’s swarm of online supporters, who have waged vicious and personal attacks on his critics, often focusing on feminist women. “Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring online harassment. Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats,” the Times explains. “A state party chairwoman changed her phone number.
…Sanders hired one of social media’s most aggressive trolls, David Sirota.
…His team’s baseless claim (for which he had to apologize) that former vice president Joe Biden is corrupt was positively Trumpian. The out-of-context clip that Sanders distributed on social media falsely suggesting Biden favored Social Security cuts was slapped down by fact-checkers, but Sanders continued to insist that Biden supported cuts.
…A nominee who insists on personally attacking all doubters and the media might be a model for the Republican Party, but Democrats are not going to win with their own Donald Trump, especially one who has burned bridges and stirred resentment in his own party.
Bernie Sanders’s Trump-like campaign is a disaster for Democrats – The Washington Post
Solid points but at best Buttigieg is a propped up, carefully calibrated, Stepford child of the Truman Project. At worst? Divisively lacking in intersectionality.
The fact that many of the names on the list aren’t traditional Democrats ― or self-identified Democrats at all ― makes it all the more valuable.
And yet, since he dropped out of the primary, Sanders has steadfastly refused to hand over his list to the Democratic Party, much to the chagrin of those who say it could be crucial to help build opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency.
Bernie Sanders’ Team Explains Why He Won’t Hand Over His Donor List | HuffPost
Also, the tone his team uses is one reason people don’t like them.
Appearance Search can find people based on their age, gender, clothing, and facial characteristics, and it scans through videos like facial recognition tech — though the company that makes it, Avigilon, says it doesn’t technically count as a full-fledged facial recognition tool.
Even so, privacy experts told Recode that, for students, the distinction doesn’t necessarily matter. Appearance Search allows school administrators to review where a person has traveled throughout campus — anywhere there’s a camera — using data the system collects about that person’s clothing, shape, size, and potentially their facial characteristics, among other factors. It also allows security officials to search through camera feeds using certain physical descriptions, like a person’s age, gender, and hair color.
…“People don’t behave the same when they’re being watched,” warns Brenda Leong, the director of AI and ethics at the Future of Privacy Forum. “Do we really want both young students and high schoolers, and anybody else, feeling like they’re operating in that environment all the time?”
Adding to privacy concerns surrounding a tool like Appearance Search is the fact that it’s not exclusively being used to address violence in schools. School administrators are already using the system to try to intercept bullying, to deter code of conduct violations, and to assist in investigations of school employees.
…Avigilon would not share how many schools are using Appearance Search. While Recode identified at least nine public school districts that have acquired or have access to the software, it’s likely many more schools are using the tool.
For instance, the New York Civil Liberties Union says that more than a dozen school districts in New York State have purchased Avigilon equipment. While the NYCLU doesn’t know for certain how many have access to or have used the Appearance Search tool, technology strategist Daniel Schwarz said in an email that “given its inclusion into the main [Avigilon Control Center] software it is likely that a high percentage of schools will have the feature at their fingertips.”
At the schools that have gotten the tool, we already have a sense of how it can be used.
…Appearance Search has been used to locate children lost in schools, to investigate complaints against staff, and to deter violations of codes of conduct. He says the software has also made the school security staff aware of disciplinary infractions they otherwise would not have known about.
…As Kai Koerber, a recent graduate of MSD, told Recode about the technology: “I don’t think [students] should have to — by going to school — volunteer to accept this kind of new social contract where you’re going to be recorded and traced through your every move. I do think people have the right to be able to walk to the next class without being identified.”
…“Yes, it may work in terms of, ‘we can identify people who don’t belong on the campus.’ At the same time, we are invading the privacy of each and every student,” he said.
Koerber’s concerns are echoed by student privacy advocates, who say the tool could be used to track and surveil students. “It is surveillance technology, and it is tracking technology, and any school implementing any variation of those is potentially creating more harms and risks than they’re solving,” said Leong.
Avigilon’s appearance search tool isn’t facial recognition, but it still has privacy risks. – Vox
hmmm
In 1830, the moment in time Mr. Hopkins is fond of using for many of his creations, free Creoles of color in New Orleans owned some $15 million of property in the city. Mostly French speaking, these artisans, shopkeepers and artists were in no small part responsible for the look of the French Quarter — its ironwork, decorative plaster, its architecture and fashionable shops. Like white Creoles, some owned slaves, and some later fought for the Confederacy. Despite many laws restricting their rights they played a significant role in civic life.
…Creole is a long-embattled term, perhaps best defined now as a person whose background and identity is traceable to colonial French Louisiana and/or its Franco-African culture.
…The city of New Orleans historically demanded detailed inventories of the possessions of deceased citizens, and he studied these lists to ground his rooms, from their locally made armoires and Campeche chairs to neo-Classical French porcelain and wall clocks. The furniture is as important as the people, whether it appears in the cottage of the powerful voodoo queen Marie Laveau or in the salon of John James Audubon, the white Creole naturalist renowned for his “Birds of America.”
A Painter Resurrects Louisiana’s Vanished Creole Culture – The New York Times
hmmmm
Last year, a group of progressive nonprofits reported that of the 14 largest retail bankruptcies since 2012, 10 had involved companies owned by private equity. The thud of corporate failures has become so constant that it’s essentially become a meme in the financial press.
…Private equity investors have a reputation for being corporate looters that buy and pillage businesses for profit before moving on to raid the next unsuspecting office park. Sometimes, it’s undeserved. But often, it’s entirely earned.
…They’re often criticized for laying off workers and even cutting pay in the name of improving efficiency. But the much bigger problem is that they sometimes cripple previously functioning businesses by loading them up with unsustainable amounts of debt. They do this in a few ways.
First, the industry revolves around deals known as leveraged buyouts, where investors put up a small amount of their own money to purchase a company and borrow the rest. The business being acquired then becomes responsible for paying the debt, which increases its risk of going bust. Private equity shops are also notorious for extracting cash using “dividend recapitalizations,” a charming tactic in which they force companies to borrow even more money and use it to pay investors. Beyond that, they often charge the businesses they own millions in management fees.
Thanks to all of these tactics, private equity can often make money off a company even if its business fails.
… Sometimes, firms just dial up investment in the businesses they acquire and try to expand them. Recent research has shown, for instance, that consumer product companies that get bought out tend to increase their sales by jumping into new product lines and markets.
…Economists debate how often private equity deals actually end with businesses filing for bankruptcy, but one recent paper looking at public companies taken private pegged it at 20 percent, compared with just 2 percent for similar businesses that weren’t targeted for buyouts. Sometimes, even well-intentioned deals devolve into the high-finance version of shoplifting. When Sterling Investment Partners bought out Fairway in 2007, it intended to turn the local, family-owned chain into a national brand. But it badly botched the effort, in part because it picked terrible locations for expansion and loaded it with debt in the process. Eventually, it resorted to taking the unsteady company public and extracting a giant dividend payment in the process. A few years later, Fairway would enter bankruptcy.
…Take Toys R Us, which ended up shouldering billions of dollars in new debt after it was poached by a group including KKR. The company was stuck paying hundreds of millions every year toward interest, which insiders say made it impossible to invest properly in the business and compete as Jeff Bezos’ kraken devoured the toy business.
… for the most part, mixing private equity and troubled industries like retail seems to be a recipe for trouble. (For another sad example of what happens when private equity shops invade a sector with a fundamentally dying business model, see metro journalism.)
…Private equity has boomed over the past couple of decades in large part because borrowing has been incredibly inexpensive. More deals are inevitably going to lead to more disasters. But free-flowing credit may also be encouraging the industry’s worst habits.
Why private equity keeps wrecking retail chains like Fairway.
hmm
The professor shouldn’t have called and university police shouldn’t have come.
NPR is asking the State Department to explain its decision to deny an NPR reporter press credentials to travel with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on an upcoming trip to Europe, NPR President and CEO John Lansing announced Tuesday.
…Saying the State Department has not responded to NPR’s initial attempts to communicate, Lansing added, “Our SVP of News Nancy Barnes and I are now sending the attached letter to the State Department demanding answers.”
NPR will continue to pursue the issue, Lansing said, adding that access to people in power is fundamental to “the role of journalism in America.”
…On Saturday, Pompeo issued a statement accusing Kelly of violating “the basic rules of journalism and decency.”
NPR’s senior vice president for news, Nancy Barnes, responded to Pompeo’s statement by stating, “Mary Louise Kelly has always conducted herself with the utmost integrity, and we stand behind this report.”
…Pompeo has said Kelly had agreed to discuss only Iran – a claim he has not offered any evidence to support. Kelly says she confirmed with Pompeo’s press secretary that she intended to ask Pompeo about both Iran and Ukraine, a country that is key to Trump’s impeachment trial. Kelly has produced emails that reflect those conversations.
…”The State Department press corps has a long tradition of accompanying secretaries of state on their travels and we find it unacceptable to punish an individual member of our association,” [State Department Correspondents’ Association president Shaun] Tandon added.
Noting that in the past, the State Department has “courageously defended journalists around the world through statements under its seal,” Tandon said, “We are committed to do our part to preserve a respectful, professional relationship with the institution we cover.”
NPR Seeks ‘Clarification’ From State Department About Reporter Dropped From Trip : NPR
mmmhmm
Joe Biden on Tuesday called out Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst(R) for suggesting that the former vice president would be hurt politically at next week’s caucuses due to …the Senate impeachment trial.
“She spilled the beans,” Biden said at a campaign event in Muscatine, Iowa, a day after Ernst made her remarks about the Democratic presidential candidate while speaking to reporters at the Capitol.
“She just came out and flat said it. You know, the whole impeachment trial for Trump is just a political hit job to try to smear me, because he is scared to death to run against me, and he has good reason to be concerned,” Biden added.
Biden calls out Iowa GOP senator’s impeachment comments: ‘She spilled the beans’ | TheHill
hmmmm