Month: May 2018

Floridas Loses $385 Million a Year by Not Restoring Voting Rights to Felons

Buck Banks

$385 million

Seven years after Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet voted to end the state policy that automatically restored the civil rights of nonviolent offenders after they complete their sentences, a price tag has emerged, according to the Miami Herald. Florida lost an estimated $385 million a year in economic impact, spent millions on court and prison costs, had 3,500 more offenders return to prison, and lost the opportunity to create about 3,800 new jobs.

Wannabe Dictator Trump Pressured Post Office to Hike Rates on Amazon As Political Retribution against Its Owner

Jon Ponder

Trump has been lying to his base for months about Amazon – saying it doesn’t pay taxes, that its rate structure causes a loss to the US Postal Service, and on and on. He has also made it clear that he hates Amazon because it is owned by Jeff Bezos, an actual billionaire, who also owns the Washington Post. Trump hates the Post for the obvious reason that it reports the truth about him and his racist, autocratic agenda.

Now we learn that, in a move that mimics Pres. Richard Nixon’s pressuring the IRS to go after his enemies, Trump he has been demanding that the US Postmaster General double shipping rates for Amazon — a move that would raise costs for millions of Amazon’s American users. The story was broken by the Washington Post, but it has even gotten coverage in the New York Post, which is part of the Rupert Murdoch-owned pro-Trump propaganda empire:

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Brooks: Rocks, Silt Creating Sea-Level Rise

Buck Banks

“Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up.”

— Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), claiming in a congressional hearing that land erosion plays a significant role in sea-level rise and not climate change, Science Magazine reports.

Ecuador has Spent Millions Protecting Assange

Buck Banks

$5 million

“Ecuador bankrolled a multimillion-dollar spy operation to protect and support Julian Assange in its central London embassy, employing an international security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and even the British police,” according to documents seen by the Guardian. “Over more than five years, Ecuador put at least $5m into a secret intelligence budget that protected the WikiLeaks founder while he had visits from Nigel Farage, members of European nationalist groups and individuals linked to the Kremlin.”

Trump’s Data Plan for 2020

Buck Banks

18 million

Jonathan Swan: “Trump reelection campaign manager Brad Parscale starts with 18 million email addresses and phone numbers (‘hard contacts’) of likely Trump voters, and has a goal of doubling that to 30 to 40 million by Election Day 2020 — roughly half of the votes Trump needs. (He got 63 million in 2016.) … Parscale plans to spend $1 million per month for the rest of ’18 on digital prospecting, with hopes to increase that next year. The campaign says it has had great success recruiting Trump supporters with ads on AOL (an older, Trump-friendly demographic), Bing, Facebook, Google and conservative news sites.”

Suspicious Timing: China Loans Trump-Related Project $500 Mil Days after Trump Orders Sanctions Lifted on Chinese Telecom Giant

Jon Ponder

According to a report in the National Review, just 72 hours after Donald Trump ordered his government to reverse sanctions on Chinese telecom giant ZTE, the Chinese government announced it would lend half a billion dollars to a Trump-related project in Indonesia.

The Chinese government is extending a $500 million loan to a state-owned construction company to build an Indonesian theme park that will feature a Trump-branded golf course and hotels…

While the $500 million loan will not be directly allocated to any of the Trump-branded features, Beijing’s contribution of half the project’s total operating budget ensures the success of the broader theme-park venture.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted out the news that he had ordered the Commerce Department to lift severe sanctions on ZTE because, he said, “Too many jobs in China lost.”

Just last month the Trump administration had accused ZTE of espionage and of doing business with Iran and North Korea.

Trump’s reversal even shocked a Republican.

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