Re: USA News and Discussions
Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2021 7:19 pm
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(Politico) Divorce usually isn’t a good idea, and that’s especially true of a nearly 250-year-old continental nation.
The notion of a national breakup has long simmered as a fringe argument, but it is increasingly popular in certain precincts of the political right and has gained at least some traction with partisans of both sides. A recent survey by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia found that about 50 percent of Donald Trump voters and 40 percent of Joe Biden voters agreed to some extent with the proposition that the country should split up, with either red or blue states seceding.
Last year, there were dueling secession books. From the right, George Mason University's F.H. Buckley published American Secession, arguing that “the United States is ripe for secession” and “there’s much to be said for an American breakup” (although Buckley favors what he calls “home rule” for the states, a new constitutional compact giving them much more authority). From the left, The Nation’s Richard Kreitner wrote Break It Up, contending that “we must finally finish the work of Reconstruction or give up on the Union entirely.”
But a cadre of apocalyptic writers on the right, who believe the country is too far gone to save, has become obsessed with a Secession 2.0 that would cleave red America from blue and allow the former to escape the ever-rising tide of woke insanity.
Substacker David Reaboi wrote a post the other day titled, “National Divorce Is Expensive, But It’s Worth Every Penny,” urging “Red America to think about economic and cultural autonomy for itself, and what it would take to get there.” Texas state Rep. Kyle Biedermann has been agitating for so-called Texit, and Allen West, the former chair of the Texas GOP and now a candidate for governor, has talked of secession.
Major goods carriers Walmart, FedEx and UPS will move to working 24 hours a day, seven days a week in order to address the global supply chain bottlenecks, the White House announced on Wednesday.
The White House announced the update ahead of President Biden’s meeting with stakeholders, including Walmart CEO John Furner, FedEx Logistics CEO Udo Lange and UPS President of U.S. Operations Nando Cesarone, to discuss collective efforts to address global transportation supply chain bottlenecks on Wednesday.
UPS and FedEx combined shipped 40 percent of American packages by volume in 2020, according to the White House. “By taking these steps, they’re saying to the rest of the supply chain, you need to move too, let’s step it up,” the official said, adding that Target, Samsung and Home Depot are also moving in the 24/7 direction.
Additionally, the Port of Los Angeles will move into 24/7 service. The port of Long Beach has been working 24/7 for the past three weeks, the official said. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has made a commitment to staffing 24/7, and the terminal operators in the port will be responsible for booking the cargo movements in the off-hours.
The Social Security Administration announced Wednesday that its beneficiaries will see a 5.9 percent increase in their benefit checks starting next year — the largest boost to benefits in close to four decades. The adjustment will be made for 64 million Social Security beneficiaries as well as 8 million Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries. Some Americans receive both benefits.
The cost-of-living increase, which will impact roughly 70 million people starting in late December and January, is tied to a measure of inflation that has surged this year as prices rise in a U.S. economy emerging from the coronavirus pandemic. Experts caution that millions of seniors will in reality see substantially less than a 6 percent bump, because Medicare Part B premiums are deducted from Social Security beneficiaries’ checks and are tied to seniors’ income.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday that prices rose 0.4 percent in September compared to August. Overall, prices are up 5.4 percent are up over the last year. The “cost of living adjustment” that determines Social Security payment hikes is based on a different measure of inflation, but they both capture similar phenomenon in the economy.
The Social Security benefit increase has averaged about 1.7 percent over the last 10 years. This year’s increase amounts to the biggest since 1982, experts say. “This is welcome but inadequate — healthcare and prescription drug costs have been going up way faster than seniors’ cost of living. People’s Social Security benefits have been eroding," Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, a nonprofit group.
(Mother Jones) Arizona Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema has spent the last six weeks under increasing pressure from progressives to stop obstructing President Joe Biden’s agenda. Along with fellow Democratic moderate Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Sinema has all but halted the passage of Biden’s budget complaining about the price-tag for the wide-ranging piece of legislation publicly. And, according to reports, swiping at the prescription drug price provisions behind closed doors.
But angering progressives might not be a problem for Sinema. According to newly filed campaign finance reports, Sinema has found a fresh source of support in recent weeks: GOP rainmakers.
On Friday, Sinema’s campaign filed a fundraising report with the Federal Election Commission indicating that she had raised $1.1 million from July 1 through Sept. 30—about equal to the amount she raised in the previous three months. But included on the list of her max donors—donors who gave up to the legal limit of $2,900 per election, with a maximum of $5,800 every two years—were some huge names from Republican fundraising circles.
Stan Hubbard, a Minnesota billionaire who since at least 2000 has regularly written six-figure checks to the RNC and who supported GOP presidential hopefuls like Scott Walker (before giving to a pro-Trump super-PAC) wrote Sinema a $2,900 check on Sept. 29. And both Jimmy Haslam, the owner of the Pilot truck stop chain and the NFL’s Cleveland Brown’s, and his wife Susan gave Sinema’s campaign $2,900 a piece on Septemeber 30. Haslam is a reliable GOP donor who has given at least $425,000 to the Senate Leadership Fund—a super-PAC set up by allies of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to help the GOP take control of the Senate—as well as regular maximum donations to the GOP’s House and Senate party committees.
Another recent Sinema donor who also has previously supported the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, is Marc Rowan, the billionaire CEO of private-equity giant Apollo. Rowan and his wife, Carolyn, both each wrote two $2,900 checks to Sinema’s campaign on September 29. Previously, Rowan has written $250,000 checks to the Senate Leadership Fund and to a secretive super-PAC that backed Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
WASHINGTON (CN) — With the warning that self-representation will lead to spectacular and imminent failure, a federal judge granted permission Thursday to a California police chief turned yogi turned Three Percenter to do just that as he goes on trial for storming the U.S. Capitol.
“I will tell you up front: I’ve never seen a pro se defendant actually succeed,” U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said, relaying to Alan Hostetter that in 2020 he had two defendants represent themselves, and both were convicted and sentenced to decades in prison. They were both in their 40s.
“I would never represent myself if I was charged with a crime,” Lamberth continued, telling Hostetter that he always tells defendants the adage, “If you represent yourself, you have a fool for a client.”
Hostetter faces a felony criminal indictment alleging that he conspired with Three Percenters, a far-right militia group, to obstruct Congress from certifying the electoral count by creating a violent mob at the U.S. Capitol. He is one of six California men associated with the Three Percenters to be charged with conspiracy related to Jan. 6.
The indictment also claims that Hostetter used his nonprofit, the American Phoenix Project, which he founded to oppose government-mandated Covid-19 restrictions, as a platform to advocate for violence against groups that supported Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
(The Hollywood Reporter) MSNBC executives aren’t sweating Rachel Maddow’s future at the cable news channel.
Maddow in August signed a new long-term deal with NBCUniversal, one that will see her develop other types of content and programming for MSNBC and other NBCU channels and platforms. Critically, it also means that at some point, perhaps within the next year, Maddow will step aside from her 9 p.m. primetime show (6 p.m. on the West Coast - caltrek) in favor of a less-intense TV on-air schedule.
Interviewed at The Information’s WTF conference Wednesday, MSNBC president Rashida Jones said that while “it is something we are working through, there is no immediate rush here.”
“One of our goals, and more importantly her goal, is how to take the content that she and her team is doing and find a way to bring it across our entire portfolio,” Jones added. “How do we get exposure in more of those places?”
Still, Jones says she thinks more ink will be spilled about the channel’s primetime plans. “I expect the speculation to continue, I expect the rumors to continue. It comes with the territory,” she said, adding that “those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know.”