Growing bipartisan anger over a lack of transparency about healthcare prices, private insurers' denial of claims, and the huge profits raked in by insurance companies while an estimated 98 million American adults skip or delay medical appointments to avoid an unaffordable bill are all pushing people to demand change, according to Richter, who gave a presentation about efforts to bring government-funded healthcare to Vermont.
I thought that was a meaningful quote. I also liked the historical reference by Walter Cronkite about the U.S. healthcare system being neither healthy, caring, or even a system to begin with.
I hope things change sometime soon so that all families have healthcare. I believe we can do this.
Henry Kissinger’s death has brought out some bitter epitaphs from Latin America where the legacy of US intervention helped saddle the region with some of the most brutal military regimes of the 20th century....
Nowhere has been the reaction been more damning than in Chile, where Kissinger was instrumental in the 1973 coup that led to the death of a democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende and the installation of a dictator, Gen Augusto Pinochet, and his military junta.
If I wanted to give a clue regarding the month and day in 1973 when this terrorist attack occurred, I would say the following:
Osama Bin Kissinger
Kissinger even boycotted efforts during Jimmy Carter’s 1977-81 pro-human rights presidency to stop the killing in Argentina.
Because of course he did.
Many of the soldiers involved in the putsch had been paid by the CIA.
Donald Trump has been on a prolific Truth Social tear, calling for the execution of a top US military general, vowing revenge on NBC Networks and demanding that Republican leaders take action against automatic voter registration to protect him from once again losing the popular vote. All of that was over the weekend. On Monday,...
A New York judge has found Donald Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud, saying the Trumps provided false financial statements for roughly a decade....
The article has since been updated - though I wonder if it will be updated further still:
A New York judge has found Donald Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud, saying the Trumps provided false financial statements for roughly a decade.
Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling came days before the civil case involving the New York attorney general’s office and the former president was set to go to trial.
Engoron granted Attorney General Letitia James’ motion for summary judgment, finding Trump, his sons, and others “to be liable as a matter of law for persistent violations” of New York state law. He found the financial statements the Trumps provided to lenders and insurers for about a decade to be false and said they repeatedly engaged in fraud.
The decision is a blow to Trump and a complete rejection of his arguments that he didn’t inflate the values of his golf courses, hotels, homes at Mar-a-Lago and Seven Springs on financial statements that were repeatedly used in business.
The attorney general has sought $250 million in damages, a ban on the Trumps from serving as officers of a business in New York, and to stop the company from engaging in business transaction for five years.
Among other things, Trump is accused of inflating the value of his triplex apartment at Trump Tower by three times its size, resulting in an overvaluation of between $114 million to $207 million, Engoron wrote.
“A discrepancy of this order of magnified, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.
“Exacerbating defendants’ obstreperous conduct is their continued reliance on bogus arguments, in papers and oral argument,” Engoron wrote. “In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies …”
The judge added: “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
Trump attorneys have not responded to requests for comment.
James has alleged that Trump, three of his children, his companies and his business executives defrauded lenders, insurers and other entities. (An appeals court dismissed Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, as a co-defendant from the case in June.)
In the lawsuit, James claims that Trump reaped a “substantial” financial benefit by putting forward faulty information in his financial statements, including $150 million in the form of favorable interest rates he obtained from the banks that the attorney general said his team misled.
In the order, the judge rejected Trump’s deposition testimony in which the former president said that the financial statements were not fraudulent because they contained disclaimers. Trump said the statements contained a “worthless clause” in them warning lenders and others that they shouldn’t be relied on.
Tuesday, the judge said that “the defendants’ reliance on these ‘worthless’ disclaimers is worthless.”
The ruling means the attorney general’s office won on its first two claims and will receive some amount of disgorgement to be determined at trial. The case will still proceed to trial but the attorney general’s office won’t need to prove the financial statements are false as they seek to hold him and his sons liable for insurance fraud and false business records.
On a damp and windy day, members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) picketed outside a sprawling Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan, burning logs in barrels for warmth....
Donald Trump said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year....
Mark Meadows burned so many papers in his office fireplace as Donald Trump’s presidency came to its chaotic end that the then White House chief of staff’s wife complained about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the “bonfire” smell, Cassidy Hutchinson writes in her eagerly awaited memoir....
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent member of Congress and leading voice of the American left, has called on the US government to issue an apology to Latin American countries for decades of meddling in their affairs and causing instability in the region....
“I believe that we owe Chile, and not just Chile but many aspects of that region, an apology,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Guardian in an interview at her campaign headquarters in the Bronx. “I don’t think that apology indicates weakness; I think it indicates a desire to meet our hemispheric partners with respect.
“It’s very hard for us to move forward when there is this huge elephant in the room and a lack of trust due to that elephant in the room. The first step around that is acknowledgement and saying we want to approach this region in the spirit of mutual respect, and I think that’s new and it’s historic.”
Yes, it’s hard to build relationships with victims when we do not address our wrong-doings. She’s so right.
And in what became known as Operation Condor, eight US-backed military dictatorships – Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador – jointly plotted the cross-border kidnap, torture and murder of hundreds of their political opponents.
Imagine, this is the policy we thought was right back then. Crazy.
In Chile, the group visited the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which remembers the victims of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Ocasio-Cortez has introduced legislation to declassify documents that could shed light on the CIA’s involvement in the coup.
Good on AOC - this is how the healing begins. We’re long overdue on this. I’m so grateful for her and the many other like-minded politicians that are acknowledging past wrongs.
Two members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group who took part in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol with the intention of keeping Donald Trump in the White House were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday....
Kelly reportedly told Nordean that he wished there was an “alternative history” where he did something other than lead the Proud Boys, complimenting him as a smart and articulate man. Nordean – of Auburn, Washington – said: “I would like to apologize for my lack of leadership that day,” according to Jordan Fischer of the WUSA television news outlet.
Sentencing Pezzola, Kelly said: “You were the one who smashed that window and let people begin to stream into that Capitol building and threaten the lives of our lawmakers. It’s not something I would have ever dreamed I would have seen in our country.”
The last page on the Wikipedia article is also sobering, with his father (restaurant owner) quoted thusly:
In June 2020, Nordean’s father issued a statement calling his son’s beliefs “misguided” and reported, “Ethan no longer works for our restaurants.” Following the storming of the Capitol and his son’s arrest, he issued another statement that said, “We have tried for a long while to get our son off the path which led to his arrest today — to no avail. Ethan will be held accountable for his actions.”
What the judge said is true, he could have done so much better with his life. He’ll be coming out of jail at 50+ with a destroyed reputation and nothing. He won’t be there to raise his only child. He threw it all away for Trump and fascism.
It all started with a straightforward question. In June, when DeSantis stopped for a town hall event in Hollis, Mitchell raised his hand in the crowd.
“Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power,” the teenager asked the governor, “a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?”
DeSantis dodged the question and said Americans shouldn’t get stuck in the past, but not before remarking—in a somewhat impressed, incredulous tone—on Mitchell’s age. “Are you in high school?” the governor asked.
Trump is the gift that keeps on giving as he takes the gop down with him.
Toward the end of the parade, Mitchell’s mother reunited with her son and then demanded an explanation from DeSantis for why his security detail was putting their hands on her boy, an interaction that was observed by a Boston Globe reporter on the scene.
These people are sick.
Ahead of their August 19 event, a staffer for Never Back Down reached out to Mitchell. USA Today let the PAC know that a photographer wanted to come photograph Mitchell for the upcoming profile. The staffer just wanted to confirm he would be in attendance.
The teenager obliged. But after walking into the event, held in a firearm factory in Newport, he noticed something odd.
It wasn’t just that he saw a pair of security guards flanking him as he made his way to the far side of the venue. The weird part was that Never Back Down staffers were taking photos of him. It was notable to Mitchell, even before he learned of the ominous caption—“got our kid”—that one staffer was seen attaching to a Snapchat photo.
Wow, just wow…
This teenager is great, smart, courageous, and I wish him the very best. I just wish we were handing off a better world to our children, instead of leaning on them to correct our mistakes.
WASHINGTON — Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy who smashed a Capitol window with a stolen police riot shield, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on Friday....
Extensive video evidence documented Pezzola’s actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, including a video he filmed inside after leading the breach. He was found guilty of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers, as well as stealing the police shield and other charges in May.
Special kind of stupid.
“Knew we could take this motherf----- over if we just tried hard enough,” he said in his own Jan. 6 video.
Making the prosecutor’s job so easy, it’s pathetic.
“Pezzola’s actions showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct,” prosecutors wrote. “While sparring with police who were trying to quell the mob’s advance, Pezzola robbed an officer of his riot shield. Rather than taking actions consistent with his self-professed motive of self-defense, Pezzola celebrated, posing with the shield while flashing the Proud Boys hand gesture, and chanting ‘USA! USA!’ While holding the shield above his head triumphantly.”
“It boggles my mind,” Kelly said of Pezzola’s actions during the riot, including smashing the window and filming a video of himself taking a “victory smoke” in the Capitol crypt.
Truly a very special kind of stupid.
During Friday’s hearing, Pezzola’s longtime partner, Lisa Magee, reiterated what she said on the stand at trial: that Pezzola was “a f—ing idiot.”
I respect that about her.
Magee, who testified that Pezzola was getting drunk and watching Fox News before Jan. 6, said that she’d already canceled cable news at their home. “I truly believe if he could go back and change … that day that he would," she said.
Alcohol, Faux News, and an admiration for Trump. Each alone is an obvious recipe for disaster. But at least his girlfriend tried to help him.
Magee and Pezzola’s mother both spoke before the court through tears and Pezzola could be seen holding his head in his hands and wiping away tears with a tissue while they spoke.
I feel bad for the women/daughters in his life.
He bares humility before the judge:
Prior to his sentencing, Pezzola told the judge, “I stand before you today as a changed and humble man. I have never denied what I did on J6.”
“This was the worst, most regrettable decision in my life and I’m truly sorry,” he said, promising that he would never again do anything that would land him in a courtroom.
But on his way out, he shouts his lie in anger:
While being led out of the courtroom after Kelly had departed, Pezzola turned towards the audience, raised one fist and shouted, “Trump won!”
You know what? Fuck this fascist. Three years served, now throw in another 10. Good!
Two of the most visible members of the Proud Boys, one who helped lead the far-right group’s march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and one who enabled the first breach of the building by smashing a window with a stolen police shield, are set to be sentenced Friday morning by the federal judge who presided over the nearly...
Four of the five defendants were acquitted of assaulting police, except Pezzola. He was also convicted of robbery for stealing a police shield. Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode testified at trial that as he was trying to help another officer who was being assaulted, Pezzola and other rioters “violently and forcefully grabbed” his shield and pulled him to the ground. The officer said he was sprayed with a chemical substance, multiple people fell on top of him, and someone used his helmet strap to try to choke him. Ode testified he struggled to breathe and thought he would not get out of the pile alive.
I’m so glad these terrorists are going to jail.
Prosecutors noted that Pezzola lied to the FBI and falsely accused Biggs of having a gun on Jan. 6, and did so again when he testified in his own defense at trial.
And I love how the fascists are eating each other alive, everywhere, as this mere example shows.
Please sit alongside me, even if only virtually, and let’s enjoy the popcorn together.
Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed Thursday that Republican megadonor Harlan Crow paid for private jet trips for Thomas in 2022 to attend a speech in Texas and a vacation at Crow’s luxurious New York estate, as ethics questions continue to rock the Supreme Court....
The judge’s order means Giuliani will have to pay damages for spreading false vote-rigging claims against the pair while he was acting as former U.S. president Donald Trump’s lawyer. Giuliani previously admitted in a court filing that his statements were false and defamatory, but claimed he was protected in making them by the First Amendment.
Giuliani, ostensibly knowledgeable in matters of law, claimed he had First Amendment protection to victimize the election workers with the spreading of inflammatory lies and by defaming them. Let this sink in for a moment, please.
In press conferences and before the Georgia legislature, Giuliani repeatedly pushed debunked claims based on selective video from Atlanta’s State Farm Arena that Freeman and Moss pulled out suitcases of illegal ballots and committed other acts of fraud to try to alter the outcome of the race.
Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, said shortly after those claims emerged that the full surveillance video from the venue indicated those ballot carriers were accounted for earlier in the day.
In summary, they fabricated horrible lies.
Giuliani, Trump, and their fascist associates are all despicable traitors.
Lauren Handy, the anti-abortion activist who kept five fetuses in her Washington DC home, was on Tuesday found guilty of breaking federal law by blockading an abortion clinic....
Abortion rights advocates in Ohio filed a lawsuit on Monday, claiming that state Republican leaders are trying to confuse voters on a ballot measure about access to reproductive healthcare....
The new lawsuit accuses the ballot board’s Republican majority of presenting voters with a confusing summary of Issue 1 in an attempt “to mislead Ohioans and persuade them to oppose the amendment”.
According to the lawsuit filed with the Ohio supreme court, the ballot board was asked to “put the clear, simple 194-word text of the Amendment itself on the ballot, so that voters could see exactly what they were being asked to approve”.
Instead, the board approved a summary of the amendment that is longer than the amendment itself, replacing the term “fetus” with “unborn child”. The summary also does not mention the other forms of reproductive healthcare guaranteed by the amendment, like access to contraception and fertility treatments.
So…
they wrote more, the “summary” made longer than the actual amendment
to say less, omitting important treatments
used alarmist language
and were deceitfully ambiguous.
These Taliban fascists are very special incel idiots indeed.
Donald Trump has “the moral compass of an axe murderer”, a Republican opponent in Georgia said, discussing the former president’s legal predicament in the southern US state and elsewhere but also his continuing dominance of the presidential primary....
Ugandan prosecutors have charged a man with “aggravated homosexuality” under anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced this year that makes the offence punishable by death....
Obama won – and Wurzelbacher’s brush with fame soured with revelations that he was both not a fully licensed plumber and owed more than $1,000 in taxes.
My condolences to the Wurzelbacher family, but I feel compelled to ask:
Why is it that all these selfish right-wingers are integrity challenged? This pattern is remarkable, and Joe the Plumber Who Was Not a Licensed Plumber is but one mere example.
Even under the prior Republican administration, this “plumber” did not fulfill his tax obligations.
**Lawyers for Eminem have sent a letter to aspiring Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy asking that he stop rapping to his songs. ** The letter comes more than a week after the biotech entrepreneur delivered an impromptu performance of “Lose Yourself” at the Iowa State Fair....
For years the mayor in Newburn was appointed, not elected. When Patrick Braxton won the election, the outgoing mayor and his cronies refused to accept it...
'We Can Get There': Medicare for All Advocates See Resurgence in National Movement | Common Dreams ( www.commondreams.org )
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/17826424...
Latin America remembers Kissinger’s ‘profound moral wretchedness’ ( www.theguardian.com )
Henry Kissinger’s death has brought out some bitter epitaphs from Latin America where the legacy of US intervention helped saddle the region with some of the most brutal military regimes of the 20th century....
"I call for help from the highest courts": Trump cries out in fear of “Trump-hating" prosecutor ( www.salon.com )
Donald Trump has been on a prolific Truth Social tear, calling for the execution of a top US military general, vowing revenge on NBC Networks and demanding that Republican leaders take action against automatic voter registration to protect him from once again losing the popular vote. All of that was over the weekend. On Monday,...
President Drink Bleach says he beat George W. Bush and Barack Obama ( www.salon.com )
Trump was already dumb, but he’s getting worse — yet MAGA doesn’t care. The press should cover his decline anyway...
New York judge finds Donald Trump liable for fraud | CNN Politics ( www.cnn.com )
A New York judge has found Donald Trump and his adult sons liable for fraud, saying the Trumps provided false financial statements for roughly a decade....
‘The support feels good’: UAW members embrace Biden and shrug off Trump ( www.theguardian.com )
On a damp and windy day, members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) picketed outside a sprawling Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan, burning logs in barrels for warmth....
‘Full fascist’ Trump condemned after ‘treason’ rant against NBC and MSNBC ( www.theguardian.com )
Donald Trump said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year....
Top Trump aide burned so many papers wife noticed ‘bonfire’ smell, book says ( www.theguardian.com )
Mark Meadows burned so many papers in his office fireplace as Donald Trump’s presidency came to its chaotic end that the then White House chief of staff’s wife complained about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the “bonfire” smell, Cassidy Hutchinson writes in her eagerly awaited memoir....
AOC urges US to apologize for meddling in Latin America: ‘We’re here to reset relationships’ ( www.theguardian.com )
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent member of Congress and leading voice of the American left, has called on the US government to issue an apology to Latin American countries for decades of meddling in their affairs and causing instability in the region....
Two Proud Boys members get lengthy prison terms for Capitol attack ( www.theguardian.com )
Two members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group who took part in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol with the intention of keeping Donald Trump in the White House were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday....
Ron DeSantis Is Afraid of Questions From a 15-Year-Old ( www.thedailybeast.com )
Not a single one of them had ever treated the now-15-year-old as if he were a threat—until Ron DeSantis came to town....
Proud Boy who smashed Capitol window with police shield sentenced to 10 years ( www.nbcnews.com )
WASHINGTON — Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy who smashed a Capitol window with a stolen police riot shield, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on Friday....
Proud Boys leader, Capitol window smasher set to be sentenced ( www.washingtonpost.com )
Two of the most visible members of the Proud Boys, one who helped lead the far-right group’s march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and one who enabled the first breach of the building by smashing a window with a stolen police shield, are set to be sentenced Friday morning by the federal judge who presided over the nearly...
Clarence Thomas officially discloses private trips on GOP donor Harlan Crow's plane | CNN Politics ( www.cnn.com )
Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed Thursday that Republican megadonor Harlan Crow paid for private jet trips for Thomas in 2022 to attend a speech in Texas and a vacation at Crow’s luxurious New York estate, as ethics questions continue to rock the Supreme Court....
Giuliani found liable for defaming Georgia election workers after 2020 vote ( www.cbc.ca )
Giuliani, 79, will face a civil trial in Washington to determine punitive damages...
US anti-abortion activist who kept fetal remains convicted of blockading clinic ( www.theguardian.com )
Lauren Handy, the anti-abortion activist who kept five fetuses in her Washington DC home, was on Tuesday found guilty of breaking federal law by blockading an abortion clinic....
Ohio Republicans accused of trying to mislead voters with abortion ballot wording ( www.theguardian.com )
Abortion rights advocates in Ohio filed a lawsuit on Monday, claiming that state Republican leaders are trying to confuse voters on a ballot measure about access to reproductive healthcare....
Trump has ‘moral compass of an axe murderer,’ says Georgia Republican ( www.theguardian.com )
Donald Trump has “the moral compass of an axe murderer”, a Republican opponent in Georgia said, discussing the former president’s legal predicament in the southern US state and elsewhere but also his continuing dominance of the presidential primary....
Ugandan man charged with ‘aggravated homosexuality’ under new law ( www.theguardian.com )
Ugandan prosecutors have charged a man with “aggravated homosexuality” under anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced this year that makes the offence punishable by death....
US state department declassifies more documents about Pinochet’s 1973 coup ( www.theguardian.com )
(This was actually published three days ago - sorry.)...
Syrian protests enter second week with calls for Assad to go ( www.theguardian.com )
Demonstrations have grown steadily throughout the south, centring around the province of Suwayda...
‘Joe the Plumber’, who challenged Obama on taxes in 2008, dies aged 49 ( www.theguardian.com )
Select quotes follow:...
Eminem tells Republican Vivek Ramaswamy to stop rapping his songs ( www.bbc.com )
**Lawyers for Eminem have sent a letter to aspiring Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy asking that he stop rapping to his songs. ** The letter comes more than a week after the biotech entrepreneur delivered an impromptu performance of “Lose Yourself” at the Iowa State Fair....
Bernie Sanders urges left to back Biden to stop ‘very dangerous’ Trump ( www.theguardian.com )
Leftwing senator advises ‘unification of progressive people in general’ because threat from Republican ex-president is too great...
‘Bring them to justice’: Georgia town residents demand answers in Trump election plot ( www.theguardian.com )
People from Douglas say accountability is lacking for local officials involved in election machine data breach in 2021...
He became the first Black mayor of a rural Alabama town. Then a white minority locked him out ( www.theguardian.com )
For years the mayor in Newburn was appointed, not elected. When Patrick Braxton won the election, the outgoing mayor and his cronies refused to accept it...
US thinktank linked to billionaires behind supreme court wealth tax case lobbying ( www.theguardian.com )
(The subtitle and first few paragraphs follow.)...