December 31, 2016
The media spent a LOT more time this election writing about Trump than Hillary Clinton. The Washington Post tracked the headlines on Google News throughout the election and found that basically, on any given day that wasn't dominated by news about Clinton's emails, the media was writing about Trump. In fact, Trump appeared prominently on the Google News homepage about two times more often than Clinton did.
Trump and his supporters are also correct in assuming much of that coverage was negative. A Harvard study after the election found Trump received negative coverage over positive coverage by a ratio as much as 8-to-1 at some outlets.
December 30, 2016
UNNATURAL CAUSES | SICK AND DYING IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA:.
Chillicothe, Ohio, isn’t one of those Rust Belt towns where the economy collapsed. People point out that you can still get a decent job here. But the city is seeing opioid addiction rise — and more white working-class lives cut short.
WASHINGTON POST
December 29, 2016
December 28, 2016
December 25, 2016
The Tunisian national suspected of driving a truck into a Berlin Christmas market was shot dead in Milan, Italy.
From Anthony Faiola, Souad Mekhennet and Stefano Pitrelli: "Anis Amri was killed following a dramatic encounter in the Piazza I Maggio in the Sesto San Giovanni area outside Milan, after a two-man patrol stopped him for questioning around after 3 a.m. on suspicion of burglary. One of the officers requested his identification. Amri responded by pulling a gun, shooting one officer in the shoulder. The second patrolmen — trainee Luca Scatà — fired back, killing Amri, according to Italian officials. ‘He was the most-wanted man in Europe,’ said Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti. ‘There is absolutely no doubt that the person killed is Anis Amri.’”
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December 23, 2016
Berlin police ‘seeking Tunisian man’ in connection with attack
Police are searching for a Tunisian man in connection with the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people on Monday, German media are reporting. Der Spiegel reported that police had found an identity document under the driver’s seat of the truck in the name of Anis A, born in Tataouine in 1992, and that the suspect was believed to use different names. The documents announced a stay of deportation, Der Spiegel, Allgemeine Zeitung and Bild reported. Checks are being made in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where the suspect was registered. Police sources have told German media that the suspect had applied for asylum and that his case was under review. He was reportedly known to police as a dangerous person with links to Salafist groups in western Germany. Authorities had previously said they had received more than 500 leads that could help them identify the suspect. A 23-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker who was arrested as a suspect was released on Tuesday evening after police acknowledged they had caught the wrong man.
Germany’s security services are facing mounting pressure to explain how Amri could have been able to carry out Monday’s attack despite being known to multiple intelligence agencies and being under covert surveillance for several months.
Germany’s security services are facing mounting pressure to explain how Amri could have been able to carry out Monday’s attack despite being known to multiple intelligence agencies and being under covert surveillance for several months.
December 22, 2016
Death penalty in decline
Judging by all the indicators, capital punishment is slowly disappearing from the US. The end of year report from the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonpartisan authority on the subject, reads like the final will and testimony of the practice. Among its findings: this year 20 prisoners have been judicially killed, down from 28 in 2015 and well below the peak of 98 in 1999. The slow decline seems poised to continue, as the power to terminate the practice rests with the supreme court and the president-elect is likely to nominate a hardline conservative to the bench. Despite the drop in executions, there was still a sufficient number to generate deep unease about the nature of the prisoners’ convictions and stomach-churning spectacles within the death chamber.
December 20, 2016
unreleased outtakes of Trump saying “every offensive, racist thing ever” on “The Apprentice,”
-- Actor Tom Arnold claims that he has unreleased outtakes of Trump saying “every offensive, racist thing ever” on “The Apprentice,” including footage of him calling his son a retard. The Hollywood Reporter’s Abid Rahman reports: “Asked [in a radio interview] why he was given the tapes in the first place and why he didn't release them before the election, Arnold said that the people who sent the clips to him worked on The Apprentice and put together a compilation of Trump saying controversial things as a ’funny’ ‘Christmas video,’ as they didn't expect the real estate mogul to win …. When it became clear that Trump had a realistic chance of taking the White House, Arnold claims [Clinton] as well as new Apprentice star Arnold Schwarzenegger's agent got involved and wanted the tapes released. ‘They said, ‘I need you to release him saying the N-word,’ [he recounted]. ‘I said, ‘Well, now these people – two editors and an associate producer — are scared to death. They’re scared of his people, they’re scared of they’ll never work again, there’s a $5 million confidentiality agreement.'”
-- Vanity Fair, “Inside the desperate, year-long hunt to find Trump’s rumored Apprentice outtakes,” by Nick Bilton: “Throughout the year, the tapes were a subject of almost mythical fascination within the media. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign would also obsessively try to find the tapes up until Election Day. In fact, one person close to the Clinton campaign told me that he had spoken to someone, on the Sunday before the election, who said he had a damaging clip of Trump. But The Apprentice outtakes, whatever they contained, were never made public. … Could the tapes have changed that outcome? In the aftermath of Trump’s victory, many journalists, political operatives, and even celebrities have told me that they aren’t sure. But they’ve also said that one force impeded their hunt. Curiously, it was just about the most liberal place on earth: Hollywood.”
Latest: Berlin Christmas market attack
At least 12 people are dead and 48 injured after a truck drove through a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday evening.
“For now we know little of this deed for certain,” the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said at a press conference. “But given the current information we have we have to assume we are dealing with a terrorist attack.”
A suspect was taken into custody shortly after the attack. Details of the suspect were given at a press conference by Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, but police officials later said they were unsure whether the man in custody had committed the attack. The man, a 23-year-old originally from Pakistan, was not known to security forces for any “suspicious activity” and denied involvement in the attack, De Maizière said.
The number of victims rose overnight from nine to 12, as doctors in clinics around Berlin worked to save lives and treat injuries. One of the dead was the lorry’s registered driver, a Polish national who police said was shot in Potsdam, about nine miles west of Berlin, before the market attack.
Six detained after Russian ambassador shot dead in Ankara
Turkish authorities have detained six people for questioning over the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Ankara, as a team of Russian investigators arrived in the country to help the investigation. Those detained include the parents, sister, roommate and three other relatives of the gunman, Mevlut Mert Altıntas, according to local media reports. Andrei Karlov was shot multiple times by the off-duty riot police officer on Monday during the opening of a photography exhibition at a gallery in the Turkish capital. Altıntas was shot by police at the scene. Officials from both countries have been quick to stress their desire for cooperation in the aftermath of the attack and insist the killing will not lead to a downward spiral in diplomatic relations. Footage of the attack showed Altıntas, dressed in a suit and tie, standing calmly behind the ambassador. He pulled out a gun, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and fired at least eight shots. He then shouted in Turkish: “Don’t forget Aleppo. Don’t forget Syria. Unless our towns are secure, you won’t enjoy security. Only death can take me from here. Everyone who is involved in this suffering will pay a price.”
December 17, 2016
How Google’s search algorithm spreads fake news
Google’s search algorithm appears to be systematically promoting information that is either false or slanted with an extreme rightwing bias. Following a recent investigation by the Observer, which found that Google’s search engine prominently suggests neo-Nazi websites and antisemitic writing, the Guardian has uncovered a dozen additional examples of biased search results. Google’s search algorithm and its autocomplete function prioritize websites that, for example, declare that climate change is a hoax, being gay is a sin, and the Sandy Hook mass shooting never happened. The increased scrutiny of Google comes at a time of tense debate surrounding the role of fake news in building support for conservative political leaders, particularly Trump.
The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.
NY TIMES
- A Times investigation reveals missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of a campaign of cyberespionage to disrupt the presidential race.
- A low-cost, high-impact weapon that Russia had test-fired in elections elsewhere was trained on the U.S., with devastating effectiveness.
The chain of ineptitude and institutional failure that facilitated Russia’s election interference
December 15, 2016
The stresses of poverty in the United States have grown so intense that they are harming the health of lower-income Americans — even prematurely leading to their death.
A report published Monday by the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution finds that stress levels have greatly increased for Americans at all income levels since the 1970s, but especially for low-income groups, as the chart below shows.
The report doesn’t measure stress as we typically think about it in daily life. Instead, the researchers track "stress load," an index of certain biological markers such as blood pressure, cholesterol level, and kidney and liver function, that they say are "associated with long-term physiological strain." These metrics are strong indicators of a person's health and mortality, according to the report.
“The poor have seen really striking increases in the stress load index,” said Diane Schanzenbach, one of the report’s authors and the director of the Hamilton Project.
The paper adds to a growing body of research demonstrating that widening inequality in the United States between the rich and the poor is not just an economic phenomenon.
December 13, 2016
December 12, 2016
December 10, 2016
Michigan Supreme Court Slams The Door On Jill Stein’s Recount Case.
The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday shot down Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein’s request to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that had halted the state’s election recount.
The decision effectively ends the Michigan recount ― and in so doing, ends any hope that Stein’s broader recount efforts would change the election result. Stein has sought recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well, but Hillary Clinton needed to be declared the winner in all three states to best Donald Trump in the Electoral College.
December 9, 2016
Small-time union leader receives threats 30 minutes after Trump attacks him on Twitter
Chuck Jones, the president of the local chapter of the United Steelworkers union that represents Carrier employees in Indianapolis, told The Post on Tuesday that the president-elect exaggerated the number of jobs he claims to have saved. It turns out that 550 of the union's members will lose their livelihoods, after all, because Trump was taking credit for keeping 350 engineering positions in the United States that were never going to leave. Yet the company will still collect millions in lucrative tax breaks.
Twenty minutes after his appearance, the man who will be the 45th president of the United States began attacking him on Twitter:
Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!
If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana. Spend more time working-less time talking. Reduce dues
Half an hour after Trump’s first tweet, the union leader's phone began to ring and kept ringing.“Nothing that says they’re gonna kill me, but, you know, ‘You better keep your eye on your kids. We know what car you drive.’ Things along those lines,” he explained.
“My first thought was, ‘Well, that’s not very nice.’ Then, 'Well, I might not sleep much tonight,’” he told our Danielle Paquette in between the threatening calls to his flip phone.
Obama under pressure to disclose Russia’s role in election
Barack Obama is facing increasing pressure from congressional Democrats demanding further disclosures regarding Russia’s role in the 2016 US elections. A group of senior House Democrats has written to the president seeking a classified briefing for colleagues on “Russian entities’ hacking of American political organizations; hacking and strategic release of emails from campaign officials; the WikiLeaks disclosures; fake news stories produced and distributed with the intent to mislead American voters; and any other Russian or Russian-related interference or involvement in our recent election.” Additionally, the White House has not responded to a week-old letter signed by every Democratic and Democratic-aligned member of the Senate intelligence committee seeking declassification of “additional information concerning the Russian government and the US election”.
Trump’s Labor Pick, Andrew Puzder, Is Critic of Minimum Wage Increases
NY TIMES
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday chose Andrew F. Puzder, chief executive of the company that franchises the fast-food outlets Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. and an outspoken critic of the worker protections enacted by the Obama administration, to be secretary of labor.
“Andy Puzder has created and boosted the careers of thousands of Americans, and his extensive record fighting for workers makes him the ideal candidate to lead the Department of Labor,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.
Mr. Puzder, 66, fits the profile of some of Mr. Trump’s other domestic cabinet appointments. He is a wealthy businessman and political donor and has a long record of promoting a conservative agenda that takes aim at President Obama’s legacy. And more than the other appointments, he resembles Mr. Trump in style.
On policy questions, he has argued that the Obama administration’s recent rule expanding eligibility for overtime pay diminishes opportunities for workers, and that significant minimum wage increases would hurt small businesses and lead to job losses.
He has criticized paid sick leave policies of the sort recently enacted for federal contractors and strongly supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, which he says has created a “government-mandated restaurant recession” because rising premiums have left people with less money to spend dining out.
Speaking to Business Insider this year, Mr. Puzder said that increased automation could be a welcome development because machines were “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall or an age, sex or race discrimination case.”
Trump picks climate change skeptic to lead EPA
Donald Trump selected Scott Pruit, attorney general of Oklahoma and a climate science skeptic, as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. “His nomination is a clear signal of Republicans’ desire to dismantle Obama’s climate legacy,” writes environment reporter Oliver Milman. Pruitt has called the EPA’s rule “unlawful and overreaching” and is part of legal action waged by 28 states against the EPA to halt the Clean Power Plan, an effort by Obama’s administration to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Within hours of Pruitt’s appointment, the president-elect, Ivanka Trump and advisers met with Leonardo DiCaprio and the head of his foundation to discuss job creation by renewable, clean energy.
December 7, 2016
December 6, 2016
Carson as HUD Pick Is New Sign Trump Plans to Govern From the Right
Carson gets the nod as housing secretary
Donald Trump’s transition team announced on Monday that former presidential candidate Ben Carson had been nominated as housing secretary. “Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a presidency representing all Americans,” the president-elect said in the statement. Carson had previously removed himself from the running for a cabinet position after his spokesperson said that he did not feel qualified to run a federal agency.
NY TIMES
TRUMP CHALLENGES CHINA WITH CALL TO TAIWAN
Trump aides: of course he knows about ‘one China’ policy
Aides and surrogates of President-elect Donald Trump were in damage control mode on Sunday as they attempted to calm nerves over a rift with China due to Trump’s unprecedented call with Taiwan’s president. Trump’s call was the first from a president or president-elect since 1979, when America adopted its so-called one-China policy. Vice President-elect Mike Pence downplayed the incident on several television shows on Sunday, while Kellyanne Conway told Fox that Trump was well aware of the one-China policy. On Sunday, Trump railed against China on Twitter: “Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the US doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea?” he tweeted. “I don’t think so!”
WASHINGTON POST
December 5, 2016
December 4, 2016
Trump over performed the most in counties with the highest drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates
WASHINGTON POST
A new study from Penn State University suggests a relationship between the opioid epidemic and support for Donald Trump.
The president-elect performed better than Mitt Romney in many places, but he fared best compared to the Republican nominee four years ago in the counties with the highest drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates.
Shannon M. Monnat, an assistant professor of rural sociology and demography, created a data set with numbers from 3,106 counties. She found this trend to be true nationally but especially so in two regions: In the industrial Midwest, which is how academics refer to the Rust Belt, Trump ran ahead of Romney by an average of 16.7 percent in the quarter of counties with the highest mortality, compared to 8.1 percent in the lowest quartile. In New England, Trump did worse than Romney by an average of 3.1 percent in the lowest mortality counties but better than the former Massachusetts governor by an average of 10 percent in the highest mortality counties.
-- Overdoses, alcoholism and suicide are known by experts collectively as “the diseases of despair.” People often (but not always) turn to pills, syringes, the bottle and other self-destructive behaviors when they lose hope, when they don’t have the means to live comfortably or when they don’t get the dignity that comes from work.
It is intuitive that the least economically distressed counties also tend to have the lowest mortality rates, and vice versa. In this way, alcoholism, overdoses and suicide are symptoms of the deeper social decay that was caused by deindustrialization. This decay led to the fears and anxieties which Trump so effectively capitalized on.
-- This really ought to be one of the biggest storylines that everyone takes away from 2016. One big reason that elites along the Acela Corridor were so caught off guard by Trump’s victory is that they’re so insulated from the stomach-churning scourge of addiction and cycle of brokenness. Washington has never been richer or further removed from the pain of everyday Americans, as Hillary Clinton called them in the video announcing her candidacy. Trump’s solutions may not actually help the “the forgotten man” that he talked so much about on the stump. In fact, his administration may very well push policies that ultimately only add to their pain. The tax cuts he wants will disproportionately benefit the most affluent people in the bluest states, for example. But the system has failed them. Trump promised to blow it up; Clinton represented more of the same.
December 2, 2016
TRUMP'S LATEST APPT'S & SIMILARITY W/BERLUSCONI IN ITALY.
- At a rally in Ohio, Donald J. Trump announced his selection of James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, calling him “the closest thing we have to Gen. George Patton.”
- General Mattis once led the U.S. Central Command, but his tour was cut short by the Obama administration, which believed he was too hawkish on Iran.
Trump’s Potential Conflicts Have a Precedent: Berlusconi’s Italy
By JAMES B. STEWART
As prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi kept majority ownership in his businesses. Scandals ensued as those businesses profited and his fortune grew.
With Wednesday’s nomination of Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman trader turned hedge fund manager and Hollywood financier, to be Treasury secretary, a new economic leadership is taking shape in Washington.
Mr. Mnuchin will join Wilbur L. Ross Jr., a billionaire investor in distressed assets, who has been chosen to run the Commerce Department, and Todd Ricketts, owner of the Chicago Cubs, who has been picked to be deputy commerce secretary. All are superwealthy and to be overseen by the first billionaire president in United States history.
That two investors — Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Ross — will occupy two major economic positions in the new administration is the most powerful signal yet that Mr. Trump plans to emphasize policies friendly to Wall Street, like tax cuts and a relaxation of regulation, in the early days of his administration.
While that approach has been cheered by investors (the stocks of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been on a tear since the election), it stands in stark contrast to the populist campaign that Mr. Trump ran and the support he received from working-class voters across the country.
So far, none of the nominees who will be shaping economic policy have any significant experience in government.
November 30, 2016
Trump makes jobs deal with Carrier
Carrier Corporation announced on Tuesday that it will keep nearly 1,000 jobs in Indiana that had been set to be moved to Mexico, after it came to a deal with Trump. The air-conditioning company announced on Twitter that it had to an agreement with the president-elect and Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor, and they will appear at Carrier’s Indiana factory to announce details of the deal on Thursday. Carrier came under the spotlight in February after a video of the company’s management announcing its plans to shut down two factories that employed 2,100 people and move them to Mexico went viral. Trump made the company a running theme throughout his campaign, which emphasized his promise to fight trade deals and prevent jobs leaving the country.
EXPERTS JOIN RECOUNT SUIT / OPPONENT OF OBAMACARE CHOSEN AS HLTH SEC.
Experts join Stein’s recount suit
Security experts have joined Jill Stein’s effort to force the state of Wisconsin to conduct a recount of the votes in that state by hand. Amid fears that there may have been foreign tampering with electronic voting systems, half a dozen academics and experts joined the suit to testify that recounting by hand would produce a “more correct result and change the outcome of the election,” the suit said.
The Green party presidential candidate has led a campaign, backed by crowdsourced fundraising, to have the votes in the crucial states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania recounted amid fears that electronic voting may have fallen victim to foreign tampering. Her campaign faced several roadblocks since she filed the first call for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday, as she may have missed the deadline for a recount in several counties in Pennsylvania and the state of Wisconsin is requesting $3.5m, more than the originally estimated $1m, by the end of Tuesday.
Security experts join Jill Stein’s ‘election changing’ recount campaign
Trump picks health secretary
Donald Trump has chosen a prominent critic of Obamacare as his secretary of health and human services, casting fresh doubt over the future of the Affordable Care Act. Congressman Tom Price of Georgia, an orthopedic surgeon who has long been a leading congressional voice in opposition to Barack Obama’s healthcare reform legislation, was confirmed on Tuesday as the president-elect’s pick.
November 29, 2016
November 27, 2016
ON RECOUNTS AND FAKE NEWS
The Green Party's presidential candidate, Jill Stein, is raising an impressive sum to ask for a recount in three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The $4.6 million she's raised so far is more than a million dollars more than she raised during her entire presidential campaign.
The reasons she wants a recount are kind of unclear; Stein has appeared to suggest the election may have been "hack-friendly."
Don't expect any recount (if it happens) to change who our 45th president is. It is true if Hillary Clinton won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and all other results held — she would be our next president. (The electoral vote count would go from 306 Donald Trump-232 Clinton to 278 Clinton-260 Trump.)
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON POST
| By Amber Phillips |
Happy Leftovers Day!
As I write this, all is (relatively*) quiet in the political world. (* Relatively, given that we're still less than three weeks past one of the most epic political upsets in modern memory.) Let's run down the three biggest political news stories right now.
1. A last-ditch recount
Green Patry presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks to pro-Bernie Sanders supporters outside City Hall in Philadelphia in July. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
The Green Party's presidential candidate, Jill Stein, is raising an impressive sum to ask for a recount in three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The $4.6 million she's raised so far is more than a million dollars more than she raised during her entire presidential campaign.
The reasons she wants a recount are kind of unclear; Stein has appeared to suggest the election may have been "hack-friendly."
Don't expect any recount (if it happens) to change who our 45th president is. It is true if Hillary Clinton won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and all other results held — she would be our next president. (The electoral vote count would go from 306 Donald Trump-232 Clinton to 278 Clinton-260 Trump.)
But there's no guarantee more votes for Clinton is what these recounts would find, because there's no evidence the votes were counted wrong in the first place. As Philip Bump and I explained earlier this year, it's virtually impossible to hack our actual voting system, and that seems to be what Stein is suggesting happened.
It's safe to conclude the support for a Green Party recount effort is less a reflection of support for the Green Party and more a reflection of something much broader — dissatisfaction with who actually won the presidential election. But not even a buzzy recount is likely to change those results.
More disturbing news about fake news. The Post's Craig Timberg reports that the flood of fake news got a boost during the campaign from Russia. Specifically, a Russian propaganda arm created and spread misleading articles online to make Clinton look bad, make Trump look good and generally undermine faith in our democracy.
Timberg:
How widespread was this? An independent research investigation on fake news estimates these Russian-promoted articles were seen on social media more than 213 million times throughout the campaign. (For reference, in The Washington Post's record-breaking October, nearly 100 million visitors came to our site.)
WASHINGTON POST |
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