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"The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don't mind admitting it."

-- Hunter S. Thompson

News and Opinion

Congress Stalls on Stimulus Checks for Families While Corporations Continue to Reap Millions from CARES Act

Tax provisions nested into the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March are still paying dividends for major corporations, including a rule that has allowed tens of millions of dollars in tax rebates in recent months. The continued benefits for the wealthy stand in stark contrast to the meager funds provided to working and middle-class families. Recent negotiations in Congress suggest lawmakers are unlikely to provide another wave of $1,200 stimulus checks, and political gridlock has stalled any hope for a dramatic aid package for those in need of direct assistance before the end of the year.

But, with little fanfare, the government is still mailing out coronavirus stimulus checks: The recipients are just large corporations, many of which have thrived during the pandemic. The Internal Revenue Service is one of the many agencies tapped to process economic relief during the crisis, with a change that allows the government to issue generous retroactive business tax refunds for income taxes paid in previous years. ...

The tax refunds relate to changes to IRS rules on “net operating loss” accounting rules, which refer to the amount a company deducts from its taxable income. The CARES Act included a provision that lifts the cap on the amount of losses that can be deducted and allows companies to carry back losses for five years, applying losses to pre-pandemic years with a higher income tax rate, before President Donald Trump’s corporate tax cuts. In other words, a profitable corporation can claim business expenses against years in which it paid a higher tax rate, resulting in a refund.

Unlike other economic rescue programs, this tax provision has no strings attached. Any corporation, even companies that did not suffer from the pandemic, can utilize this change to the tax code and request automatic refunds from the IRS. The money does not need to be used for maintaining employment. Any refund received through the program can be spent on dividends or stock repurchasing plans, or other giveaways to management and investors.

Earlier this year, shortly after the passage of the CARES Act, the Orlando Sentinel analyzed the impact of the “carry back” loss provision, finding that corporations immediately claimed as much as $7 billion in benefits from the change.

Tucked into the Covid-19 stimulus package? Protection for corporations

In early October, Harvard researchers sounded an alarm: they released a report showing a pattern of coronavirus deaths surging soon after workers filed requests for workplace safety assistance from the US labor department. The takeaway was clear: workers are desperately begging the government to help protect them from a deadly pandemic, the government has been unresponsive, and lots of workers have subsequently died preventable deaths.

Today, a little more than a month after the study came out, the federal government is finally responding: a bipartisan group of Senate and House lawmakers have announced legislation to shield corporations from lawsuits when their lax safety standards kill more workers.

In practice, the legislation, which is being tucked into a larger Covid relief package, is a holiday-season gift for corporate donors: it would strip frontline workers of their last remaining legal tool to protect themselves in the workplace – at the same time the unemployment system is designed to financially punish those workers if they refuse to return to unsafe workplaces during the pandemic. ...

Unable to pass that federal liability shield legislation on its own, lawmakers from both parties have now come together in a grand show of post-election bipartisan unity to help their corporate donors create a hostage situation that’s something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie: their proposal predicates long-overdue and desperately needed unemployment assistance on the condition that corporations are given a get-out-of-jail free card when their profit-maximizing business practices extinguish the lives of employees. ...

The party, though, doesn’t seem to want its own voters to know the details of the deal it is cutting with the Republican party: in a comically on-the-nose attempt at a bait-and-switch, the Democratic senator Joe Manchin touted the legislation as only financial aid for communities – leaving out the fact that it includes a liability shield for corporations.

Quite the political party that responds to a new grant of power by asking for less of what it claims to want. https://t.co/d0UwaunLGx

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) December 4, 2020

We could have had a $1.8 trillion COVID relief bill in October with direct payments to the working class to help pay the rent and food.

It is shameful that we’re being asked to support a $900 billion bill with corporate immunity and nothing for the working class. Disgusting.

— Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) December 5, 2020

Nancy Pelosi's FAILED Leadership During National Crisis

Outrage as GOP Tries to Adjourn House With Millions Going Hungry, Covid Surging

With mass layoffs persisting at an unprecedented clip, coronavirus deaths surging, and hunger on the rise nationwide, a group of House Republicans on Thursday attempted to pass a motion to adjourn the chamber in what Democratic lawmakers denounced as an "outrageous" stunt by members of a party that continues to stand in the way of desperately needed economic relief.

Though the motion, introduced by House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), was ultimately defeated by the Democrat-controlled House, the attempt to adjourn was viewed as another telling example of the GOP's refusal to take seriously the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis.

"People are going hungry and they're treating this like a game," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted in response to the motion, which Republicans used to complain about House rules allowing proxy voting to prevent the spread of Covid-19 on Capitol Hill. "Leaders don't abandon people in their time of greatest need."

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) called the GOP ploy "batty" and noted that "Americans are in dire need of food and paychecks."

Over the opposition of the chamber's Republicans, House Democrats in October passed legislation that would send another stimulus check to most Americans, restore the lapsed $600-per-week federal unemployment boost, and provide aid to cash-strapped state and local governments. The Republican-controlled Senate, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has refused to consider the measure.

"More people died yesterday from Covid-19 than any day since," Swalwell said Thursday. "We have work to do. Yet, the House GOP just motioned to adjourn Congress. What the hell are they doing?" ...

The House GOP's procedural maneuver came as coronavirus relief negotiations showed signs of life for the first time in weeks, with a possible government shutdown just seven days away and the end of the year rapidly approaching. Failure to approve additional Covid-19 relief before year's end would be disastrous, economists have warned, particularly given that more than 13 million Americans are set to lose unemployment benefits as emergency federal programs expire on December 26.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and President-elect Joe Biden have expressed support for using a $908 billion bipartisan compromise proposal unveiled earlier this week as a framework for talks going forward, while acknowledging that the plan—which lacks direct payments and provides just $300 per week in additional unemployment benefits—is nowhere near sufficient.

"Of course, we and others will offer improvements, but the need to act is immediate and we believe that with good-faith negotiations we could come to an agreement," Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement Wednesday. "In light of the urgency of meeting the needs of the American people and the hope that the vaccine presents, it's time for Leader McConnell to sit down with Democrats to finally begin a true, bipartisan effort to meet the needs of the country."

McConnell and Pelosi spoke by phone Thursday afternoon for the first time since the presidential election and, according to the Kentucky Republican, had a "good conversation" about coronavirus relief and an end-of-year spending package to avert a government shutdown.

"Compromise is within reach," McConnell said in a floor speech Thursday. "We know where we agree. We can do this."

The Republican leader's remarks came just days after he circulated a relief proposal of his own that was immediately dismissed as a non-starter by many Senate Democrats and progressive critics, who lambasted the plan's sweeping liability shield for corporations and exclusion of additional weekly unemployment benefits.

Jeremy Funk, spokesperson for government watchdog group Accountable.US, slammed McConnell for "shilling for special interests" instead of offering real relief to the tens of millions of Americans struggling to afford basic necessities and possibly facing eviction in the near future.

"The McConnell Senate enabled the Trump administration's mismanagement of the health crisis and still insists on doing as little as possible to contain the economic fallout," said Funk. "McConnell's big idea of giving corporations permission to mistreat workers with impunity during a pandemic and giving more handouts to coal CEOs means absolutely nothing to the millions of families who face hunger and homelessness in the Trump recession."

WEAK EXCUSES From "Progressive" NOT To Leverage POWER

Hawley, AOC, Bernie Vow To Work Together For Stimulus Checks

US Arms Sales Soar and Bipartisan Militarism Thrives Amid Covid-19 Pandemic

The United States sold more than $175 billion in military equipment to foreign governments in the fiscal year that ended September 30, Pentagon and State Department officials announced Friday—a 2.8% increase compared to 2019, when weapons exports totaled just over $170 billion.

The latest figures on arms transfers were released one day before President Donald Trump said that "military offense... is the most important thing a president can do," during his meandering speech at the Republican Party's Saturday night rally on behalf of Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia who are facing Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively, in runoff elections next month that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Although he spent most of the evening repeating unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the November election and baselessly asserting that Democrats will "cheat" again, Trump on Saturday still encouraged rallygoers to support the two GOP lawmakers at the polls on January 5 to avenge his loss in the "rigged" presidential contest. 

"At stake in this election is control of the U.S. Senate and that really means control of this country," the president said. "The voters of Georgia will determine which party runs every committee, writes every piece of legislation, controls every single taxpayer dollar."

Trump's rationale for backing Loeffler and Perdue came in the form of a warning: "If the radical Democrats... get power, they will... ram through the most extreme left-wing agenda ever conceived while at the same time, destroying our military through a lack of funding."

Whereas Trump portrayed congressional Democrats as eager to pursue "draconian military cuts," journalist Sarah Lazare argued last week that "the annual approval of the gargantuan U.S. military budget," which she called "one of the most reliable rituals in Congress... is so ordinary and overwhelmingly bipartisan, it's barely considered newsworthy."

The U.S. "has by far the biggest military budget on the planet, spending more than the next 10& countries combined," Lazare continued. "There is no indication that U.S. law­mak­ers plan to reverse this trend anytime soon: For six consecutive years the military budget has either increased or stayed rough­ly the same, taking inflation into account. As the National Priorities Project pointed out in June, the military budget in 2019 accounted for 53% of the federal discretionary budget."

While millions of the country's working-class households—battered by the Covid-19 pandemic and corresponding economic crisis—await a new relief package that ameliorates widespread hardship, "Congress had no problem passing legislation to continue U.S. military violence," Lazare added.

Always Money For WAR -- Congress Won't Help People, But Passes War Budget

COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in the US

Since the week ending November 22, the seven-day total number of deaths related to COVID-19 has exceeded 11,000 in the United States. This makes it the leading cause of death three weeks running, surpassing heart disease, which claims approximately 10,700 people each week.

February 29, 2020 marked the first death in the US from COVID-19. On that date, a Washington state man in his 50s with underlying health conditions succumbed to the viral infection. Nine months later, the US death toll is rapidly approaching 290,000.

According to current projections based on estimates by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the death toll will surpass half a million by March 1—that is, by the one-year anniversary of the first reported death. This means the US will see another 215,000 people die from the virus in less than three months—an average rate of 17,900 deaths per week for the next 12 weeks.

If the rolling out of vaccines is factored in, as of April 1 the projected death toll will have declined by only 10,000. In what is being described by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a historic public health crisis, the vaccine is not the Hollywood scenario of the cavalry come to the rescue that it is being made out to be in the media.

In fact, as the Washington Post reported Sunday: “Federal officials have slashed the amount of coronavirus vaccine they plan to ship to states in December because of constraints on supply. … Instead of the delivery of 300 million or so doses of vaccine immediately after emergency-use approval and before the end of 2020 as the Trump administration had originally promised, current plans call for availability of around a tenth of that, or 35 million doses.”

America Closes Down -- People Get Shafted As Monopolies Take Over!

California heads for Covid lockdown as US records 200,000 cases a day

As large parts of California went back into lockdown and healthcare systems in many states began to waver under the strain, new cases of Covid-19 in the US remained above 200,000 on Saturday, with more than 2,000 deaths. Members of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force heralded the imminence and efficacy of vaccines, but asked Americans to keep their guard up.

Johns Hopkins University recorded 213,875 new cases, down from nearly 228,000 on Friday in a week of surging figures after a Thanksgiving lull in record-keeping. Amid figures worsened by holiday travel and gatherings whose full impact experts say is not yet apparent, there were 2,254 new deaths, making the full death toll 280,979 from nearly 14.6m cases.

There were 101,190 hospitalisations, according to the Covid Tracking Project, slightly down on Friday’s record. The seven-day rolling average of deaths has passed 2,000 for the first time since spring. Two weeks ago, it was 1,448.

A vast region of southern California, much of the San Francisco Bay area and a large swath of the Central Valley were set to be placed under a sweeping new lockdown from Sunday night.

The state public health department said intensive care capacity in southern California and Central Valley fell below a 15% threshold that triggers the new measures, which include strict closures for businesses and a ban on gathering with anyone outside of your own household. The new measures will remain in place for at least three weeks, covering the Christmas holiday.

AUSTRALIA did a way better job than us. my god ahahahahah. how do you not just drive every senator directly into the sea after seeing this https://t.co/DLGsbWkW6o

— 63 Years Young (@ByYourLogic) December 6, 2020

Rudy Giuliani has coronavirus, Donald Trump says

Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has tested positive for Covid-19, the president tweeted on Sunday.

.@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2020

Trump did not specify when Giuliani tested positive or if he was experiencing symptoms. Giuliani did not immediately comment. It was not immediately clear if he was in hospital but the New York Times reported on Sunday night that he was in Georgetown University medical center in Washington DC, citing a person who was aware of Giuliani’s condition. ABC News and CNN also reported that the lawyer was in hospital.

Hours before Trump made the announcement, Giuliani was interviewed on Fox News. He appeared in good spirits while sharing baseless claims of election fraud during the 10-minute interview. Though Giuliani is at high risk of complications from the virus because of his age, he has been traveling frequently in the aftermath of the election, often appearing in public without a mask.

Tear gas fired as thousands protest in Paris against security bill

Thousands march over police violence and security bill in Paris

The French government’s attempts to calm growing public fury over new legislation deemed a danger to civil liberties was challenged with a new wave of protests across the country on Saturday.

A largely peaceful march against the contested global security law and police violence in Paris degenerated after hooded and black-clad casseurs – vandals – disrupted the demonstration for the second weekend in a row. Clusters of hooded youths set fire to vehicles, smashed shop windows and hurled stones and molotov cocktails at police, who responded with water cannons and teargas.

About 90 demonstrations were organised across the rest of France, most of which passed off without major incident.

France is facing a number of explosive factors – a bitterly contested law, a debate over police violence, fears of terrorism after the beheading of a school teacher and the ongoing Covid-19 crisis – combining to provide what one commentator called “the wood, the petrol and the matches” to set the country alight. ...

The government has promised to completely rewrite article 24, but a report by United Nations experts last week expressed concern about other parts of the legislation that has already been passed by MPs in the Assemblée Nationale, describing it as “incompatible” with international law and human rights. The report expressed particular concern about giving police powers to monitor crowds with drones and facial recognition.

At the centre of the current conflagration, President Emmanuel Macron and his hardline interior minister Gérald Darmanin have engaged in a classic good-cop-bad-cop routine.

Iran nuclear deal: Saudi Arabia says Gulf states must be consulted if US revives accord

Saudi Arabia says the Gulf states must be consulted if a US nuclear agreement with Iran is revived, warning it is the only path towards a sustainable agreement. President-elect Joe Biden has signalled he will return the US to a nuclear accord with Iran and that he still backed the 2015 deal negotiated under Barack Obama, from which Donald Trump withdrew. ...

Biden has indicated he will bring Iran’s US-allied Arab neighbours, such as Saudi Arabia, which sees Iran as its arch-rival, into the process. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan,said on Saturday: “Primarily what we expect is that we are fully consulted, that we and our other regional friends are fully consulted in what goes on vis a vis the negotiations with Iran.

Could sombody check to make sure that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead? He was moved recently and the stake may have fallen out.

Spain marks 42 years since return of democracy as retired officers dissent

Spain has celebrated the 42nd anniversary of the constitution that ushered the country back to democracy following the end of the Franco dictatorship, as some former members of the armed forces made inflammatory declarations. ... A group of 271 former military personnel [...] marked the anniversary by publishing a manifesto attacking the Socialist-led coalition government, complaining that Spain’s unity was under threat from Catalan separatists and bemoaning what they termed the “deterioration of democracy”.

The letter came a few days after it emerged that a group of retired air force officers who graduated during the dictatorship had used a WhatsApp group to talk about firing on Catalan independence supporters, “shooting 26 million sons of bitches”, and describing Franco as the “irreplaceable one”. Some of those in the chat group were among the 73 former officers who wrote to King Felipe last month to express their hatred of the coalition between the Spanish Socialist party and the far-left, anti-austerity Unidas Podemos party.

Spain’s defence minister, Margarita Robles, has sent details of the WhatsApp group chat to prosecutors to see whether a crime had been committed by “individuals who additionally may have posed as members of the military on active service duty without being so”.

The deputy prime minister and Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, played down the threat posed by the WhatsApp group and their allies, and said their nostalgia for the dictatorship would prove counterproductive. “What these already retired gentlemen of a certain age say doesn’t represent a threat of any kind,” he told Spanish TV on Thursday.

Why do people listen to this concern troll tone policeman?

Obama: Democrats need 'universal language' to appeal to moderate voters

Barack Obama has underlined his belief that Democrats should moderate campaign messaging in order to reach voters turned off by slogans including “Defund the Police”, telling a literary group: “If I spoke the language of James Baldwin as he speaks it on the campaign stump, I’m probably not gonna get a lot of votes in Iowa.”

Baldwin, a leading 20th-century African American intellectual and the subject of the Oscar-nominated 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, “didn’t have to go out and get votes”, Obama said in interview extracts released by PEN America, which will give the former president its 2020 Voice of Influence award next week.

Obama also said he thinks there is an opportunity for more expansive racial dialogue in the US. But his remarks may add to controversy which welled up this week when he said candidates using “snappy” slogans such as Defund the Police risked alienating voters otherwise broadly sympathetic to liberal aims. ...

In his remarks to PEN America, which will be streamed on Tuesday, Obama contrasted discussions of race in the context of “politics and getting votes” with “truth-telling and the prophetic voice”. Politicians, he said, often need to speak a “universal language” as a way to reach voters resistant to more pointed discourse about racial injustice. But he also allowed that the racial upheavals of 2020, coupled with generational change, may herald an era in which race can be discussed in the political realm in less nuanced terms.

“What I think has changed – and we saw this this summer – is, because of people’s witness of George Floyd, because of what seems like a constant stream of irrefutable evidence of excessive force against unarmed Black folks, that I think white America has awakened to certain realities that even 20 years ago they were still resistant to.

“That creates a new opening for a different kind of political conversation.”

A recent poll by political strategist Douglas Schoen, previously an adviser to Michael Bloomberg, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, found that Democrats should drop references to Defund the Police if they want to be competitive in the next midterm elections, in 2022.

Biden HHS Pick Backed Medicare for All, Pressed Obama For Tough Action Against Pharma

To run the Department of Health and Human Services, Joe Biden has selected a Democrat who has touted his support for Medicare for All and previously demanded the Obama administration take tough action against the pharmaceutical industry to lower the price of prescription drugs. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Biden is nominating former Congressman and current California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to run HHS. The announcement follows Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo abruptly dropping out of consideration for the job, following The Daily Poster’s report on her agreeing to health care lobbyists’ demands that she provide legal immunity to nursing home corporations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As recently as 2017, Becerra declared, “I've been a supporter of Medicare for all for the 24 years that I was in Congress,” and he said he would fight to create such a system in California, where it was considered in the legislature. As HHS Secretary, Becerra would be in a position to facilitate states waivers to make it easier for states to create Medicare for All systems.

If confirmed to the job, Becerra would also be in a position to take the action on drug prices that he previously urged the Obama administration to take — though it remains unclear whether Biden would support such a move. Back in 2016, Becerra was one of the 51 House Democratic lawmakers who signed a letter calling on Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary to use so-called “march-in rights” to effectively rescind exclusive patents for medicines whose research and development was originally funded by government agencies. ...

Between 2010 and 2016, the federal government invested more than $100 billion in research that led to new medicines, according to Bentley University researchers -- but the Clinton administration gave a huge gift to pharmaceutical lobbyists in 1996 when it repealed a rule requiring that those medicines be offered to consumers at a reasonable price. The federal government, however, still has “march in rights” to produce patented medicines when prices become exorbitant, according to the Congressional Research Service.

That’s exactly what Becerra and his colleagues were asking Obama’s administration to do -- but Obama’s administration delivered yet another win for the pharmaceutical industry by rejecting the initiative.

Federal Judge Delivers 'Huge Victory' for Immigrants, Ordering Trump Administration to Fully Restore DACA

Immigrant rights defenders celebrated Friday after a federal judge delivered yet another blow to the Trump administration's drawn-out effort to kill Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that protects certain undocumented residents who were brought to the United States as children from deportation.

Building on his November ruling that was similarly welcomed by right groups, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis of Brooklyn ordered (pdf) the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to post a public notice by Monday that it is accepting new applications for DACA, which enables Dreamers to legally live and work in the country.

Garaufis, a Clinton appointee, also reiterated a determination he made in his ruling last month: Chad Wolf was not legally serving as acting secretary of DHS when he issued a July memo restricting DACA to those already enrolled in the program and limiting renewals and work permits to just a year rather than two.

Wolf's memo had come after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in June that the Trump administration cannot end DACA, which has benefited about 800,000 young undocumented immigrants. According to advocates, Garaufis' order to fully restore the program could soon benefit hundreds of thousands of people across the country.

"This is a really big day for DACA recipients and immigrant young people," Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center, who litigated the class-action case, told the New York Times. "It opens the door for more than a million immigrant youth who have been unfairly denied their chance to apply for DACA."

However, Dreamers "are not necessarily in the clear," the Washington Post reported Friday. "Attorneys general in Texas and other states have asked a federal judge to declare DACA unlawful and to provide for an orderly wind-down of it. A hearing in that case is scheduled for later this month."

Despite the ongoing right-wing attacks on DACA, Veronica Garcia, staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), also applauded the judge's order.

"The ruling is a huge victory for people who have been waiting to apply for DACA for the first time," she said in a statement. "Wolf's decision to suspend the program was just another attempt by the Trump administration to wield its extremely racist and anti-immigrant views and policies."

Democrats Waited Until After the Election but Finally Voted to Legalize Marijuana

In 2019, American police made 545,602 arrests for marijuana alone, according to data collected by the FBI. By contrast, just 495,871 arrests were made for violent crime. Black Americans were 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana, despite very similar usage rates between Black and white Americans. Some of this yawning inequity could be addressed on day one of a Biden administration, if the new president directs his health and human services secretary and U.S. attorney general to reclassify marijuana away from Schedule I, the tightest federal drug category which, in addition to marijuana, includes heroin and LSD. President-elect Joe Biden could also choose to use his clemency and pardon powers to transform the lives of those convicted on marijuana charges.

The House of Representatives today sent a clear message that they want Biden to take action without delay by passing the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act. ... In another sign of how far the movement has come, the top Democrat in the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, immediately lauded passage of the House bill and pushed the Senate to follow suit. ...

But the measure faces long odds in the Senate. Even if Democrats win the two Georgia Senate seats in the January runoff elections, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has pledged to keep the filibuster in place, which would require 60 votes to pass the measure in the Senate. The effect of the MORE Act vote, insiders say, is to put pressure on the Biden administration to take executive action to limit the war on drugs, a war whose chief advocate in the Senate for many years was Biden himself.

“For decades, Biden was a senator and led the charge to implement harsh and punitive drug laws during his time as [Senate] judiciary chairman,” from 1987 to 1995, said Tom Angell, the editor of Marijuana Moment, a publication focusing on marijuana policy. “During his 2020 presidential campaign, he started to evolve his position; he called for decriminalizing possession and expunging past records. That’s one reason why it’s important for Congress to pass a bill like this: The vast majority of Democrats want to see this done. The hope among advocates is that it will help speed his evolution to embracing legalization.”

"Worst Possible Outcome" 2020 Election According to Yanis Varoufakis

Trump press secretary appears to acknowledge Biden election victory

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Sunday to admit Donald Trump lost the presidential election, a concession the president refuses to make. In an interview on Fox News, McEnany discussed runoff elections in Georgia in January which will decide control of the Senate.

“If we lose these two Senate seats,” she said, “guess who’s casting the deciding vote in this country for our government? It will be Kamala Harris.”

Trump refuses to concede defeat by Joe Biden, despite losing the electoral college 306-232 and trailing in the popular vote by more than 7m. He is not alone: only 27 of 249 Republicans in Congress have acknowledged Biden’s victory, according to the Washington Post.

Georgia Runoffs: Democrats Aim to Take Senate as Republicans Back Trump Attack on Election Integrity

Trump's attacks on election integrity 'disgust me', says senior Georgia Republican

Donald Trump’s attacks on Republican officials in Georgia and insistence his defeat by Joe Biden must be overturned are disgusting, the Republican lieutenant governor of the southern state said on Sunday. “It’s not American,” Geoff Duncan told CNN’s State of the Union. “It’s not what democracy is all about. But it’s reality right now.”

The president staged a rally in Valdosta, Georgia on Saturday night. He began his speech, which lasted more than 90 minutes, by falsely claiming he won the state, which in fact he lost by around 12,000 votes in a result certified by Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger more than two weeks ago.

“They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it,” Trump falsely insisted. “And they’re going to try and rig this [Senate] election too.” ...

In Valdosta, the president invited Perdue and Loeffler on to the stage. Neither reiterated his baseless claims about election fraud, Perdue coming closest by saying: “We’re going to fight and win those seats and make sure you get a fair and square deal in Georgia.” As Perdue spoke, the crowd chanted: “Fight for Trump!”

Black Voters Matter: Group Sues Georgia for Purging 200,000 Voters Ahead of 2020 Election

Indigenous Water Protectors Take Direct Action Against Minnesota Tar Sands Pipeline

Indigenous-led water protectors on Friday engaged in multiple direct actions against Enbridge's highly controversial Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota, on the same day that state regulators denied a request from two tribes to stop the Canadian company from proceeding with the project.

Water protectors blocked pipeline traffic and climbed and occupied trees as part of Friday's actions. Urging other Indigenous peoples and allies to "take a stand," the Anishinaabe activists at one of the protests told other Native Americans that "your ancestors are here too."

"Take a moment to speak to her, our Mother Earth is crying out for the warriors to rise again," they said. "Strong hearts to the front!"

In a statement, Line 3 Media Collective said that the pipeline "violates the treaty rights of Anishinaabe peoples by endangering critical natural resources in the 1854, 1855, and 1867 treaty areas, where the Ojibwe have the right to hunt, fish, gather medicinal plants, harvest wild rice, and preserve sacred sites."

"The state of Minnesota does not have the consent of many tribes that will be impacted by construction and spills," the group added. "Last week, the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and the White Earth Band petitioned the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to pause its approval of Line 3 construction while challenges to the permits are considered by the Minnesota Court of Appeals."

On Friday, the MPUC voted 4-1 to reject the tribes' request. According to the Washington Post, the commissioners said that further delays would hurt workers who had traveled to northern Minnesota. They also cited Democratic Gov. Tim Walz's designation of the project as "critical" during the coronavirus pandemic.

On Thursday, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (MCT) appealed directly to Walz:

Indian people have lived along the lakes, rivers, and streams of northern Minnesota since time immemorial. The people of the MCT have flourished in the area for centuries due to the careful conservation of our resources. Clean water and unpolluted land capable of providing sustenance is essential to our survival... [and] Line 3 poses an existential threat to our well-being. 

The vote and the water protectors' latest act of resistance come just two days after construction began on the $2.9 billion, 1,100-mile extension. 

According to Indigenous-led environmental group Honor the Earth, the pipeline will have the daily capacity to transport 760,000 barrels of tar sands oil—known as the world's dirtiest fuel—from Alberta, Canada to a port in Superior, Wisconsin. Stop Line 3 says the pipeline will run "through untouched wetlands and the treaty territory of Anishinaabe peoples."

"We have the right to practice our treaty rights," stressed Gitchigumi Scout member Taysha Martineau, one of the Indigenous leaders at the Friday action. "We ask you to bear witness and protect our right to do so."

A wind-powered vertical farm: Giant urban farm opens in Denmark

UN Report Says We Must Protect and Restore Biodiversity of World's Soil

While nutritious diets, healthy populations, pollution remediation, and even climate change mitigation all depend, at least in part, on soil biodiversity, society is not doing enough to protect "the variety of life below ground."

That's according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which published a new report (pdf) Friday on "The State of Knowledge of Soil Biodiversity" in anticipation of World Soil Day this weekend.

"Soil biodiversity and sustainable soil management is a prerequisite for the achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals," said FAO deputy director-general Maria Helena Semedo. "Therefore, data and information on soil biodiversity, from the national to the global level, are necessary in order to efficiently plan management strategies on a subject that is still poorly known."

The loss of "above-ground biodiversity" is a well-understood problem, researchers say, but the loss of "biodiversity beneath our feet" is equally important and a crisis on par with the climate emergency, considering how soil forms the basis for food production, medical breakthroughs, carbon retention, and thus the foundation for human well-being.

The report, compiled by 300 scientists, notes that soil is home to more than 25% of the world's biological diversity, and more than 40% of living organisms in terrestrial ecosystems are connected to soils during their life cycle.

Biodiverse organisms in the soil are essential to the creation and maintenance of the conditions for sustainable agri-food systems, researchers point out. "Few things matter more to humans [than the] vast reservoir of biodiversity living in the soil that is out of sight and is generally out of mind," Richard Bardgett, a professor at the University of Manchester and a lead author of the report, told The Guardian.

Despite the critical role played by healthy soil in improving food production, dominant patterns of agricultural intensification—including the overuse and misuse of pesticides and fertilizers—are major drivers of biodiversity loss, thus undermining soil's potential contributions.

Also of Interest

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

Glenn Greenwald: After the Deep State Sabotaged His Presidential Bid, Bernie Sanders Mocks Those Who Believe it Exists

Loophole Allows Biden Nominees to Avoid Disclosures. Will They Use It?

Thomas Frank: How the Democratic Party Became a Vehicle of Aristocracy

Israel kills child and then lies

Caitlin Johnstone: So We’re Already At The ‘Chinese Super Soldiers’ Part Of The Propaganda Campaign

OCC Says JPMorgan Chase Has $29.1 Trillion of Custody Assets; That’s $8 Trillion More than the Assets of All Banks in the U.S.

Havana syndrome: 'directed' radio frequency likely cause of illness – report

A Utah monolith enchanted millions and then it was gone, leaving mysteries behind

Establishment HYPOCRITE Attacks Anti-War Congressman's Fox News Appearance

Saagar Enjeti: Pelosi ADMITS She Held Up Stimulus Before Election To Help Biden

Krystal and Saagar: Trump Tries To BAILOUT GA Senate As GIULIANI Hospitalized For COVID

A Little Night Music

Casey Bill Weldon - We Gonna Move to the Outskirts of the Town

Casey Bill Weldon - Blues Everywere I Go

Casey Bill Weldon - You Just As Well Let Her Go

Casey Bill Weldon - Back Door Blues

Casey Bill Weldon & Memphis Minnie - New Orleans Stop Time

Casey Bill Weldon - Big Bill Blues (These Blues Are Doggin' Me)

Casey Bill Weldon - You Shouldn't Do That

Casey Bill Weldon - As The Clock Struck Four

Casey Bill Weldon - Go Ahead, Buddy