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"Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy."

-- Edmund Burke

News and Opinion

Covid relief bill deal agreed, says Mitch McConnell

Top congressional leaders have announced agreement on a $900bn coronavirus aid package after late-night discussions on Sunday. ... McConnell said lawmakers needed to “promptly finalize text” and avoid any last-minute obstacles.

Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said the package should have enough support to pass both chambers of Congress. “Finally we have some good news to deliver to the American people,” he said on the Senate floor. The package will be tied to a funding bill to avert a government shutdown.

The coronavirus aid deal includes $600 direct payments to individuals and a $300 per week unemployment compensation supplement. The second-largest economic stimulus in US history, following the $2.3tn Cares Act passed in March, it will be tied to a $1.4tn spending bill that funds government programs through September 2021.

The House was due to meet at noon on Sunday in order to take up the bill. “I do have optimism that it’ll pass,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told Fox Business. “I am very hopeful that we get this done today.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the chamber’s top Democrat, told reporters she wanted to give members some time to review the package before calling a vote. “I think we’re close, we’re very close,” Pelosi said. “But we want to have members have enough time to review it all.”

Donald Trump, whose administration has largely left negotiations to congressional leaders, used Twitter to complain. “Why isn’t Congress giving our people a Stimulus Bill? [The pandemic] wasn’t their fault, it was the fault of China,” Trump wrote. “GET IT DONE, and give them more money in direct payments.”

Bernie Sanders: COVID Relief Package Is "Totally Inadequate" for "Unprecedented" Economic Crisis

As Congressional Leaders Strike Relief Deal, AOC Slams Democrats for Trying to 'Lock Their Left Flank in the Basement'

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday voiced frustration with what she characterized as Democratic leaders' efforts to shut progressives out of key policy negotiations, a message that came as the details of a roughly $900 billion coronavirus relief package began to slowly trickle out just ahead of an expected vote.

"One major difference between GOP and Dems is that [Republicans] leverage their right flank to gain policy concessions and generate enthusiasm, while Dems lock their left flank in the basement [because] they think that will make Republicans be nicer to them," the New York Democrat tweeted, referencing Republican leaders' decision to rally around Sen. Pat Toomey's (R-Pa.) last-minute push to curtail the Federal Reserve's emergency lending powers in the relief bill.

Toomey's original provision—which Democrats slammed as an effort to sabotage the incoming Biden administration—was narrowed significantly in negotiations late Saturday, but the Pennsylvania Republican said Sunday that he is "very pleased" with the outcome.

Under the compromise agreement, according to the Wall Street Journal, "$429 billion previously provided to the Treasury Department to backstop losses in Fed lending programs would be revoked, and the Fed wouldn't be able to replicate identical emergency lending programs next year without congressional approval. But the agreement wouldn't prevent the Fed from starting other similar programs."

As negotiations over much-needed coronavirus relief accelerated rapidly over the past week, Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives publicly aired their outrage at the exclusion of key priorities and the overall inadequacy of the package, which will ultimately be much smaller than even the pared-back version of the HEROES Act that the House passed in October. The total size of that package was around $2.2 trillion.

The relief legislation that's expected to be unveiled and potentially passed Sunday includes $600 direct payments to many Americans and a $300 weekly boost to unemployment benefits—both significantly smaller than what Democratic leaders have supported in the past. Progressive lawmakers have pushed for direct payments of at least $1,200 per adult—a proposal supported by 88% of likely voters—and an unemployment boost of $600 a week.

The final package is also expected to include billions of dollars for vaccine distribution, rental assistance, and nutrition aid. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced on the Senate floor Sunday evening that congressional leaders have reached an agreement on the legislation, but bill text has yet to be made public.

$600 Is Not Enough, And It Won’t Get Easier

Congressional leaders announced an agreement on a new $900 billion stimulus bill that will deliver a boost in unemployment benefits and provide $600 checks to some families. Democratic leaders are depicting this as a big win and are promising that these kinds of emergency spending bills will become “much easier” in a new Congress under Joe Biden. Both of those arguments are ridiculous.

Here’s the truth: Democrats had a rare opportunity to win on a wildly popular proposal for much bigger survival checks, but they chose to lose. Here’s some more truth: one-time means-tested checks of $600 is not a big victory, and not even the bare minimum that should be considered acceptable during an economic meltdown that has been punctuated by mass starvation and intensifying poverty.

Though the legislative language of the final package has not yet been released, it appears the meager checks come in a bill that will give new tax benefits to corporate executives to write off their meals and provide other tax breaks to businesses that used the Paycheck Protection Program — which will be a windfall for the wealthy. Will the bill change the law to similarly exempt emergency unemployment benefits from tax levies? We don’t yet know, but there’s no indication it will.

According to a bill summary circulating on Capitol Hill, the legislation provides a mere $286 billion for the survival checks and unemployment benefits, and an additional $51 billion for food aid and rental assistance. That’s not nothing, but it’s obviously inadequate. For comparison, only three years ago, Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that enriched the wealthiest 1 percent of households.  

Much of the blame for this debacle certainly goes to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who seems absolutely determined to starve the country. But much of it also goes to Democratic leaders who had one of the easiest political opportunities to forge a bipartisan coalition or a much bigger lifeline to Americans — and then decided to squander it.

Chris Hedges: The Great Delusion

Joe Biden and the systems managers of the deep state and empire are returning to power. Trump and his coterie of buffoons, racists, con artists and Christian fascists are sullenly preparing to leave office. U.S. pharmaceutical corporations are starting to disseminate vaccines to mitigate the globe’s worst outbreak of COVID-19 that has resulted in more than 2,600 deaths per day. America, as Biden says, is back, ready to take its place at the head of the table. In the battle for the soul of America, he assures us, democracy has prevailed. Progress, prosperity, civility and a reassertion of American prestige and power are, we are promised, weeks away.

But the real lesson we should learn from the rise of a demagogue such as Trump, who received 74 million votes, and a pandemic that our for-profit health care industry proved unable to contain, is that we are losing control as a nation and as a species. Far more dangerous demagogues will arise from the imperial and neoliberal policies the Biden administration will embrace. Far worse pandemics will sweep the globe with higher rates of infections and mortality, an inevitable result of our continued consumption of animals and animal products, and the wanton destruction of the ecosystem on which we and other species depend for life.

“One of the most pathetic aspects of human history,” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.” ...

After four years of lies, the stoking of racist violence, stunning ineptitude, rampant corruption and an abject failure to cope with a national health crisis, Trump expanded his base by 11 million votes. This should be a huge, flashing red light. Worse, 70 percent of Trump voters, 51 million Americans, believe that “radical Left Democrats” and the deep state rigged the elections through “voter fraud,” including the importation of Venezuelan voting software, illegitimate mail-in ballots and the wholesale destruction of Trump ballots by election officials. One hundred and twenty-six Republican House members joined a lawsuit filed by 18 Republican state attorneys general asking the Supreme Court to overturn Biden’s victory. The vast majority of Republican senators refused to acknowledge the election results following the November vote. Electors from the Electoral College were forced in several states to deliver their votes to state legislatures under armed guard. Some two dozen armed protesters carrying American flags and chanting “Stop the Steal” descended on the home of Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Seven hundred members of the white nationalist group the Proud Boys took over streets in Washington last weekend to protest the alleged theft of the election, leading to more than three dozen arrests, four stabbings, the vandalizing of four Black churches, and Black Lives Matter banners and signs ripped down and burned.

Trump may be gone soon, but he leaves behind a party that is openly authoritarian, dismissive of democratic norms, an enemy to science and fact-based discourse and which attempted a coup d’état. The next time around they won’t be so disorganized and inept. This hostility to democracy by one of the two ruling parties, supported by millions of Americans, many of whom were betrayed by Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party, will not dissipate but grow, especially as the hammer of economic dislocation, including the looming evictions of millions of Americans, pummels the country.

With a new administration coming in, Big Money can't wait to get its war on.

Biden mulls punishments for Russia over suspected role in government hack

As president-elect Joe Biden weighed options to punish Russia for its suspected hacking of US government agencies and companies, one leading Republican accused Moscow of “acting with impunity” and others called for retaliatory strikes.

Biden’s choices once he assumes office on 20 January range from financial sanctions to revenge cyberattacks on Russian interests, according to transition team sources. Donald Trump, meanwhile, maintains the hacking could be the work of China, despite the certainty of his own secretary of state, Mike Pompeo that Russia was behind the attacks.

On Sunday, Republican senator Mitt Romney – a frequent Trump critic – said Vladimir Putin’s government had effectively invaded America. “What this invasion underscores is that Russia acted with impunity,” Romney told NBC’s Meet the Press. “They didn’t fear what we would be able to do from a cyber capacity. They didn’t think that our defence systems were particularly adequate. And they apparently didn’t think that we would respond in a very aggressive way.

“This demands a response, and the response you’d expect to occur would be a cyber response. I don’t know if we have the capacity to do that in a way that would be of the same scale or even greater scale than what Russia has applied to us, but this is something we have to address as soon as possible.”

CIA-Backed Afghan Death Squads Massacred Children Inside Religious Schools in Campaign of Terror

Trump to CIA: Say Goodbye to Your War on Terror

Last week, news broke that Trump’s acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, sent a letter to the CIA notifying the agency that the Pentagon would review the terms of its military support to CIA operations. News reports suggested that the Pentagon was planning to strip the CIA of its support for counterterrorism missions around the world almost immediately. Drones, elite soldiers, fuel, and medical evacuation of casualties, for example, would disappear almost overnight. CNN reported that the Pentagon was “planning to withdraw most support for CIA counter-terror missions by the beginning of next year.” The New York Times suggested that the purpose was to “make it difficult” for the CIA to conduct its covert war in Afghanistan as Trump reduces the number of U.S. troops there. ABC News described the decision as “unprecedented.” The cuts would leave CIA paramilitary officers to die should they suffer casualties, former officers told the press.

But interviews with six current and former national security officials, including some directly involved in the Pentagon’s review, suggest it is neither immediate nor controversial. Instead, the review serves as a coda for the Trump administration’s chaos — and as an unintentional gift to the incoming Biden administration.

Miller’s letter to CIA Director Gina Haspel informed her that the Pentagon would update a classified 2005 memorandum of understanding outlining the terms of Defense Department support to CIA missions. The Donald Rumsfeld-led Pentagon wrote the memo in the early years of what the George W. Bush administration called the global war on terror. ... As the Pentagon and CIA footprints grew in war zones, defense officials grew concerned about how soldiers and resources slipped into CIA operations without the department’s notification. The two sides struck a deal and the memorandum of understanding was born. ... In the ensuing years, the CIA and the Pentagon developed a close working relationship on and off foreign battlefields as two consecutive administrations spent at least tens of billions of dollars on a secret ecosystem — tools, weapons, and people — for killing.

Fast forward to Donald Trump. He campaigned in 2016 on pulling out U.S. troops from the wars which began after 9/11 and later, as president, declared victory over the Islamic State. ... It was clear that Trump wanted to end America’s forever wars, not out of some secret humanitarianism or morality, but rather to save money and make U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, much more transactional. Trump reportedly tried several times to pull troops out of Afghanistan but was said to have been blocked or slow-rolled by the national security establishment. After he lost the November election, Trump fired Esper because he was said to have resisted the move. As a result, Miller replaced Esper and quickly went about announcing that troops were indeed coming home. As almost an afterthought, Miller and the acting undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, also pushed to update the 2005 sharing agreement to fall in line with the change in national security policy, several defense officials told The Intercept. They said that fears of resource cuts to the CIA are unfounded overall. ...

For military officials, the support to the CIA has become just like any other part of the Pentagon’s self-licking ice cream cone: one with no end. The agreement has persisted for 15 years, even as national security priorities have changed. Two military officials who spoke with The Intercept said the Pentagon couldn’t answer congressional committees’ questions about how the CIA used the Pentagon’s resources. As a result, the new memo will insist that the CIA provide more information to the Pentagon on where and how their support, including forces, is used. “If you want our huge amount of resources which we provide you — [and] it is a good partnership — you need to tell us what our people are being used for, on a real-time basis, so we can assess whether or not it is legal, whether or not it’s a good budgetary decision, whether it is a good use of resources,” the senior Pentagon official said. “We don’t have any of that.”

Biden Seeks Negotiated Solution in Venezuela to End Crisis

President-elect Joe Biden’s advisers are preparing for potential negotiations with Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela in an effort to end the Western Hemisphere’s worst economic and humanitarian crisis, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The Biden administration intends to push for free and fair elections, offering sanctions relief in return, said the people, who requested anonymity because the new team is forming. In a departure from the Trump administration, which insisted it would only negotiate the terms of Maduro’s surrender, Biden’s advisers aren’t setting that as a precondition.

The president-elect’s team will review existing sanctions to determine where to expand restrictions with the help of international allies and what measures might get lifted if Maduro moves toward the democratic objective, the people said. Maduro’s foreign backers, including Russia, China and Iran, are expected to play a role, as will Cuba, which is keen to improve relations with the U.S.

Vaccine For ELITES But Not For NURSES!

Hospital CEOs Have Gotten Rich Cutting Staff and Supplies. Now They’re Not Ready for the Next Wave.

The executives who typically make the decisions at the United States’s hospitals, whether for-profit or ostensibly nonprofit, are uniquely unprepared for the coming deluge, experts say. A decadeslong failure to recruit and retain health care workers like nurses, technicians, and nurse’s aides has made U.S. hospitals less able to manage the scope of a pandemic, and makes it much more likely that hospitals will break down, as they did in the spring in Wuhan, Italy, and New York City.

“Even before the pandemic hit us so hard hospitals were using a policy called ‘Lean,’ which is just-in-time staffing and supplies,” said Linda Aiken, a professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania who has long studied the relationship between nurse staffing and patient care. The concept of lean hospitals was developed by management consultant Mark Graban in 2009, but business practices imported from manufacturing based on lean staffing began to be introduced in health care starting in the early ’90s. “All of our research shows those policies were a failure well before Covid and now they are a disaster during this national emergency,” said Aiken.

Bonnie Castillo, executive director of National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the U.S., lambasted “Lean” in a statement at the beginning of December, saying, “Lean industry practices slashed preparedness. They treat safe staffing and needed supplies as a drag on budget goals and profit margins, rather than the prerequisite for a humane, fully prepared patient-oriented health care system.”

Lean policy has had concrete results on the ground. “During the current surge, nurses are seeing patients die who could have been saved, if they had the proper staffing and supplies,” National Nurses United said in a recent statement. Staffing shortages at hospitals have been reported in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Maryland, Texas, Alabama, Idaho, Massachusetts, Arizona, Louisiana, Oregon, and Nevada in just the past two weeks. While the staffing crisis at this point is similar to the spring, it was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime event, and now it’s happening again. The result, Raymond says, is that “the older nurses are retiring out and the younger nurses aren’t staying” at a pace more rapid than pre-pandemic.

Force The Vote is Trending! Pressure Campaign on Politicians Getting Stronger.

Experts Anticipate Surprise Medical Bills for Covid-19 Vaccines

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who authored the Medicare for All Act of 2019 in the House and gathered 118 cosponsors for the legislation, said Friday that new reporting about surprise medical bills associated with coronavirus vaccinations provide the latest evidence that everyone in the U.S. should be covered under the popular, decades-old Medicare program.

As the New York Times reported Thursday, despite several federal rules put in place this year to ensure patients won't be charged for treatments, testing, and vaccines for the coronavirus, millions of Americans may not be protected.

"It is the American healthcare system, so there are bound to be loopholes we can't anticipate right now,” Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, told the Times.

Responding to the article, Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote on social media that coronavirus vaccines like the one developed by Pfizer, which was rolled out this week and has been administered to thousands of frontline healthcare workers, "must be free and available for everyone."

To ensure all patients, during and after the pandemic, can get the care they need without worrying about unexpected costs, Jayapal said, "It's time for Medicare for All."

As Common Dreams reported in March, in the early days of the public health crisis it was already evident that people were being charged exorbitant, unexpected fees when they got government-mandated coronavirus tests. One Pennsylvania man was charged nearly $4,000 after being tested following his evacuation from Wuhan, China.

Even after Congress passed the CARES Act in March, including rules mandating that insurance companies cover all the costs of coronavirus tests—even if they are administered by out-of-network providers—insurers have still hit patients with bills for thousands of dollars, likely preventing many from pursuing testing and treatment and putting public health at greater risk.

The CARES Act required insurance companies to fully cover federally recommended preventative care within 15 days of recommendations being released, strengthening existing protections under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The CDC has also barred vaccine providers from billing patients for the vaccine, with out-of-network doctors facing caps of $16.94 for the first dose and $28.39 for the second.

But as the Times reported, millions of Americans are covered by insurance companies that are exempt from the ACA's rules. Those companies could charge administrative fees, holding patients accountable for "visit fees" which some providers charge for all in-person visits, or "facility fees."

For 28.9 million uninsured Americans, there are no rules in place to make sure their vaccinations are covered. As the Times reported:

The United States does not have a national program to cover vaccination costs for them. For coronavirus, it is instructing health providers to submit costs associated with vaccination to a $175 billion Provider Relief Fund created last spring. The fund had $30 billion remaining as of November 10. There's no backup source of funding for the uninsured to get covered if it's depleted.

"Millions of uninsured people could fall through the cracks," tweeted TalkPoverty.org, part of the Center for American Progress.

Trump Admin Reportedly Slashing Vaccine Allocations to States While Millions of Doses Sit on Shelves

Officials from more than a dozen states say the Trump administration has informed them that next week's Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine allotments to their jurisdictions are being substantially reduced, prompting confusion and outrage. The development comes even as Pfizer insists that it has millions of doses ready to ship if given instructions by the federal government.

Coronavirus inoculation in the U.S. began Monday as the country's pandemic death toll surpassed 300,000. Hundreds of thousands of people—mostly frontline healthcare workers and nursing home residents whom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agreed to prioritize—have already received their first dose of the vaccine.

But Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) tweeted Thursday that the CDC "has informed us that [Washington's] vaccine allocation will be cut by 40% next week—and that all states are seeing similar cuts."

"This is disruptive and frustrating," Inslee added. "We need accurate, predictable numbers to plan and ensure on-the-ground success. No explanation was given."

The Associated Press reported Friday that "California, where an explosion in cases is straining intensive care units to the breaking point, will receive 160,000 fewer vaccine doses than state officials had anticipated next week—a roughly 40% reduction."

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said his state was also told it would receive a smaller shipment than expected, The Hill reported Thursday. In addition, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) on Wednesday said he "anticipates about half as many doses as was originally promised."

Other affected states, AP reported, include Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

Adding to the chorus of governors expressing concern was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who said Wednesday that "new shipments were 'on hold,' and that if they arrive, he is anticipating fewer doses than he was previously told," The Hill reported. But unlike his colleagues in other states, DeSantis blamed unspecified "production issues."

Pfizer on Thursday denied that underproduction is the cause of diminished vaccine distributions, instead assigning fault to the lack of direction provided by the Trump administration.

In a statement, the company said that it "successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that we were asked to ship by the U.S. government to the locations specified by them."

"We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses," Pfizer added.

Dozens of Al Jazeera journalists allegedly hacked using Israeli firm's spyware

Spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence firm was allegedly used to hack the phones of dozens of Al Jazeera journalists in an unprecedented cyber-attack that is likely to have been ordered by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to leading researchers. In a stunning new report, researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said they discovered what appears to be a major espionage campaign against one of the world’s leading media organisations, which is based in Qatar and has long been a thorn in the side of many of the region’s autocratic regimes.

The report, written by some of the world’s top digital surveillance researchers, also raises troubling new questions about the apparent vulnerability of the Apple iPhone, which has sought to promote a reputation for security and commitment to privacy. Researchers at Citizen Lab said the apparent malicious code they discovered, which they claim is used by clients of Israel’s NSO Group, made “almost all” iPhone devices vulnerable if users were using an operating system that pre-dated Apple’s iOS 14 system, which appears to have fixed the vulnerability.

NSO Group, whose spyware is alleged to have been used in previous surveillance campaigns in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has said that its software is only meant to be used by government clients to track down terrorists and criminals. But the new allegation by Citizen Lab marks the latest in a long line of alleged human rights violations involving the company’s software on behalf of its clients, including the alleged targeting of journalists in Morocco, political dissidents from Rwanda, politicians in Spain, and pro-democracy clergy in Togo.

Top Chicago city lawyer resigns over Anjanette Young wrongful police raid

The city of Chicago’s top attorney resigned on Sunday, in the fallout from a botched and wrongful police raid on the home of a Black woman who was not allowed to put on clothes before being handcuffed.

Corporation counsel Mark Flessner announced the move in an email to employees, saying he was only recently involved with the legal case connected to police video of the February 2019 raid, made in error on the home of social worker Anjanette Young. Flessner did not say if he was asked to resign.

Footage of the raid, first reported by WBBM-TV, has prompted uproar. Civil rights groups, city aldermen, pastors and Black state legislators have called the incident racist, gendered violence and a violation of a Black woman’s dignity. ...

Body camera video shows police officers breaking down Young’s door and ignoring her repeated pleas that they have the wrong home. The social worker said she did not have time to dress before officers stormed her apartment. An officer eventually put a blanket over her shoulders but because she was handcuffed it slipped off, leaving her exposed again.

Young was denied a Freedom of Information Act request for footage of the incident but later obtained it through a lawsuit. However, Lightfoot’s administration recently admitted that it did not give Young’s attorney all the body camera footage.

Interesting piece:

The Trump Administration Has Planted a Land Mine in Federal Agencies

The outgoing administration has set a ticking time bomb for the incoming one, and planted it into every federal agency the president-elect is about to take over. Through executive action, President Donald Trump has gutted civil service protections, a four-year process that was undertaken to allow him to sweep out federal workers in his second term. Now that such a term isn’t in the cards for Trump, his lieutenants are busy making big changes in federal agencies, potentially upending the work lives of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and sowing chaos in Joe Biden’s first 100 days.

A race is on between those Trump die-hards and the incoming administration, as the Trump team looks to execute on powers they’ve aggregated before the Biden administration can act to stop them.

Beginning in 2017, the Trump administration began to discuss creating a new federal worker classification, called Schedule F. It was finally implemented by executive order on October 21. The new classification would allow Trump’s deputies to effectively hire and fire at will. At the end of every administration, some appointees attempt to “burrow in”: government-speak for converting their appointed roles into a career category, allowing them to stay despite the new regime. The changes under Schedule F could make that process much easier by removing requirements for individuals applying for federal government jobs. And once those officials have successfully burrowed in, they’d have new powers at their disposal. The changes that the Trump administration has already sought under Schedule F would, for instance, remove protections for 88 percent of the employees in the critical Office of Management and Budget, and potentially many more agencies. The OMB, which crafts policy and budgeting across the federal government, is critical to Biden being able to implement much of his executive agenda.

The question, then, is how much damage the Trump appointees can do quickly — and how much of that can be undone. If Biden doesn’t make reversing the order an immediate priority, it’s easy to envision it getting lost amid the chaotic first few months and then forgotten, as Trump’s burrowed employees slash through the ranks of federal employees, replacing them with cronies.

The order was crafted by James Sherk, a longtime former employee at the Heritage Foundation who currently works for Trump’s Domestic Policy Council. It’s being implemented by Michael Rigas, a top official at the Office of Management and Budget and another Heritage alumni. An Intercept review of news stories shows that Heritage is one of the only organizations going on the record supporting Schedule F. The Trump administration has partnered closely with the conservative think tank in the moves, which could benefit government contractors associated with Heritage.

Fox News retracts Smartmatic voting machine fraud claim in staged video

Fox News has taken a further step back from Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of election fraud with a bizarre apparent legal retraction aired during shows hosted by some of the president’s most fervent supporters.

First broadcast on Fox Business on Friday, on Lou Dobbs Tonight, and repeated over the weekend on shows hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, the segment was presented as a news interview with election technology expert Eddie Perez.

In the three-minute video, described as “a closer look at claims about Smartmatic”, Perez answers questions posed by an unidentified interviewer about a Florida company that provided voting systems for the November election. Perez is asked questions such as “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the US in this election?” and “Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending US votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?”

He says he has not seen any such evidence.

Earlier this week, Antonio Mugica, chief executive of Smartmatic, sent legal notices to Fox News and two other networks promoted by Trump, One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax, assailing them for spreading “false and defamatory claims” in a “disinformation campaign”.

Trump Reportedly Floated Michael Flynn's "Martial Law" Suggestion During White House Meeting

During a meeting at the White House on Friday, President Donald Trump reportedly asked his advisers about retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's recent suggestion that the administration impose martial law and use the military to conduct a "rerun" of the November presidential election.

According to the New York Times, which first reported the discussion Saturday, Trump's advisers pushed back against Flynn's proposal and other ideas the president floated during the meeting, including his suggestion that notorious right-wing attorney Sidney Powell be named special counsel for an investigation into baseless allegations of widespread "voter fraud." Flynn, who Trump pardoned last month, was reportedly present at the White House meeting.

In a tweet early Sunday morning, Trump—who is set to leave office in a month—denied that he raised Flynn's call for martial law, dismissing the Times story as "fake news" and "knowingly bad reporting."

The Associated Press reported that during the Friday meeting, the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani "pushed Trump to seize voting machines in his hunt for evidence of fraud."

JD Scholten: Why The Democratic Party Became TOXIC In Rural America

Biden Taps Climate Team Focused on Environmental Racism & Science to Replace Industry Lobbyists

'Folks, we're in crisis': Joe Biden introduces environmental advisers

President-elect Joe Biden announced a racially diverse slate of environmental advisers on Saturday, to help his administration confront what he called “the existential threat of our time, climate change”. Biden touted his selection of Deb Haaland as the first Native American secretary of the interior, which has wielded influence over the nation’s tribes for generations.

North Carolina official Michael Regan is slated to be the first African American man to run the Environmental Protection Agency. A state environmental head since 2017, he has made his name pursuing clean-ups of industrial toxins and helping low-income and minority communities significantly affected by pollution. ...

“We literally have no time to waste,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, citing out-of-control wildfires that have devastated the western states, tropical storms that “pummelled” the south, and record floods and droughts that have ravaged the agricultural midwest. “Folks, we’re in a crisis,” Biden said. “Just like we need a unified national response to Covid-19, we need a unified national response to climate change. We need to meet the moment with the urgency it demands, as we would during any national emergency.” ...

The former two-term Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm is in line to be energy secretary. Biden’s nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality is Brenda Mallory. The CEQ oversees environmental reviews for virtually all major infrastructure projects and advises the president on major environmental issues. If confirmed, Mallory would be the first African American to hold the position since it was created more than 50 years ago.

Two members of the team do not require Senate confirmation. They are Gina McCarthy, as national climate adviser, and Ali Zaidi, her deputy. McCarthy was EPA administrator from 2013 to 2017, during Barack Obama’s second term.

Longtime Head of EPA's Environmental Justice Program: Biden's Climate Picks Show Power of Movements

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

The CIA’s Afghan Death Squads:
A U.S.-Backed Militia That Kills Children May Be America’s Exit Strategy From Its Longest War

A Pandemic of ‘Russian Hacking’

Caitlin Johnstone: The Washington Post Can’t Stop Babbling About Russians ‘Hacking Our Minds’

Biden Goes To Bat For BlackRock, Stays Vague On Direct Aid To Struggling Americans

'$600 Is Not Enough,' Say Progressives as Congressional Leaders Reach Covid Relief Deal

Caitlin Johnstone: Why They’re Denying You Healthcare And Financial Support During A Pandemic

Race to Control U.S. Senate: “Georgians for Kelly Loeffler” Campaign Committee Packed with NY and CA Trading Firm Billionaires

Puerto Ricans Voted for Statehood (Again). What Happens Now?

‘Nothing under our tree’: millions in US cope with financial misery during holiday season

Deploying 5G will lead to spike in CO2 emissions, French climate council warns

Jimmy Dore: AOC Interview Signals She's Unwilling to Fight Pelosi For Medicare 4 All

Matt Taibbi: 2020 in Review: Media and the Left

Jimmy Dore: Even 'progressive' Democrats abandoned workers, while bailing out rich

New Survey REVEALS Class Divide In Mental Health Crisis

A Little Night Music

Floyd Jones - Stockyard Blues

Floyd Jones - Playhouse

Floyd Jones - Dark Road

Floyd Jones - You Can't Live Long

Floyd Jones, Eddie Taylor & Big Walter Horton - Big Town Playboy

Little Walter, Floyd Jones - Big World

Floyd Jones - Floyd's Blue

Floyd Jones and Eddie Taylor - Hard Times

Floyd Jones, Eddie Taylor & Big Walter Horton - Train Fare Home