Chicago - A message from the station manager

By Simon Haeder/The Conversation

Despite many assertions to the contrary, U.S. Senate leaders are now saying they want to vote on the replacement bill for Obamacare before the month is out.
Front and center is the planned transformation of America’s Medicaid program, which covers 20 percent of Americans and provides the backbone of America’s health care system.
As a professor of public policy, I have written extensively about the American health care system and the Affordable Care Act.

Living in West Virginia, perhaps the nation’s poorest state, I have also seen the benefits of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion since 2014.
To understand how the ACHA’s proposed changes to Medicaid would affect people and our health care system, let’s look more closely at the program.

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Posted on July 17, 2017

What We Know – And Don’t Know – About Hate Crimes In America

By Rachel Glickhouse/ProPublica

“Go home. We need Americans here!” white supremacist Jeremy Joseph Christian yelled at two black women – one wearing a hijab – on a train in Portland, Oregon, in May. According to news reports, when several commuters tried to intervene, he went on a rampage, stabbing three people. Two of them died.
If the fatal stabbing was the worst racist attack in Portland this year, it was by no means the only one. In March, BuzzFeed reported on hate incidents in Oregon and the state’s long history as a haven for white supremacists. Some of the incidents they found were gathered by Documenting Hate, a collaborative journalism project we launched earlier this year.
Documenting Hate is an attempt to overcome the inadequate data collection on hate crimes and bias incidents in America. We’ve been compiling incident reports from civil rights groups, as well as news reports, social media and law enforcement records. We’ve also asked people to tell us their personal stories of witnessing or being the victim of hate.
It’s been about six months since the project launched. Since then, we’ve been joined by more than 100 newsrooms around the country. Together, we’re verifying the incidents that have been reported to us – and telling people’s stories.

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Posted on July 14, 2017

Destroying Mosul To Save It: Possible U.S.-Backed War Crimes In Iraq Exposed

By Julia Conley/Common Dreams

As Iraqi forces celebrate their victory over the Islamic State (ISIS) in Mosul, a damning new report by Amnesty International sheds light on the killing of Iraqi civilians at the hands of the U.S.-led coalition which “may constitute war crimes” – and demands that the coalition acknowledge the loss of civilian life and take steps to lessen non-military casualties.
Thousands of civilians have been killed in Mosul and millions have been displaced since ISIS took control of the city in June 2014. The crimes of the group have been well-documented by Amnesty International and other human rights groups. The report notes that ISIS deliberately put thousands of civilians in harm’s way, using them as human shields in the city’s conflict zones, and killing people who attempted to escape.
The report also focuses on the human cost of the U.S.-led coalition’s actions in Mosul. Amnesty interviewed 150 witnesses, experts and analysts about dozens of attacks, and focused on a pattern of attacks that took place between January and July 2017.

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Posted on July 12, 2017

Who Has Your Back 2017

By The Electronic Frontier Foundation

While many technology companies continue to step up their privacy game by adopting best practices to protect sensitive customer information when the government demands user data, telecommunications companies are failing to prioritize user privacy when the government comes knocking, an EFF annual survey shows. Even tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, and Google can do more to fully stand behind their users.
EFF’s seventh annual “Who Has Your Back” report, released Monday, digs into the ways many technology companies are getting the message about user privacy in this era of unprecedented digital surveillance. The data stored on our mobile phones, laptops, and especially our online services can, when aggregated, paint a detailed picture of our lives – where we go, who we see, what we say, our political affiliations, our religion, and more.

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Posted on July 11, 2017

Elite Public Schools That Rely On Entry Exams Fail The Diversity Test

By Jake Murray/The Conversation

The jewels in many an urban school district’s crown are their exam schools, competitive public schools that base enrollment on test scores. With a school like New York’s Stuyvesant, Boston Latin or Walter Payton (in Chicago) on their transcript, students are grouped with other, high-achieving peers, receive rigorous instruction and complete several Advanced Placement courses – all helping to clear a straight path to college and career success.
Hailed as promoting meritocracy, exam schools in fact promote inequity, especially for black and Latino students.

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Posted on July 7, 2017

WTF, Democrats

By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams

In a move already being denounced by progressives as “tone deaf” and “literally the stupidest fucking idea” ever, tech billionaires Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman have launched an initiative titled Win the Future (WTF) with the goal of bringing the Democratic Party back from the political wilderness.
Recode’s Tony Romm first reported on the billionaires’ plans and lofty objectives, which include pushing Democrats to “rewire their philosophical core” and recruiting candidates to challenge Democratic incumbents. The recruits, according to Romm, will be called “WTF Democrats.”
(Editor’s Note: As much as I can determine, this isn’t a joke.)

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Posted on July 5, 2017

A Wisconsin Republican Looks Back With Regret At Voter ID And Redistricting Fights

By Topher Sanders/ProPublica

Dale Schultz, a Republican, served in the Wisconsin Legislature for more than 30 years, from 1983 to 2015. His Senate district is located in south Wisconsin, much of it rural farmland. Schultz was considered a moderate, and so much of what happened in state politics near the end of his tenure dismayed him: partisan fights over the rights of unions, a gubernatorial recall election, and claims of partisan Republican gerrymandering that will now be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
And then there was the prolonged entanglement over voting rights in the state – who could vote, when they could vote, how they could vote. In the face of years of political combat and federal court fights, the legislature ultimately adopted a vast array of changes to election laws. Among them:

  • Voters would have to produce certain types of identification.
  • Early voting was reduced.
  • Restrictions on absentee balloting were implemented.
  • Time frames for how long people had to be residing in the state before they could vote were lengthened.

Republicans hailed the moves as overdue steps toward improving the integrity of state voting. Democrats cried foul, alleging a conspiracy to suppress votes among people of color and others inclined to vote Democratic.
Schulz was in office for the birth of the efforts to tighten voting procedures and often present for the Republican deliberations about their aims. Schultz, before leaving office, voted for the initial voting measures, a decision he came to regret. He opposed some of the subsequent measures as litigation over the issues made their way through the courts and his career wound down.
ProPublica had a rare interview with Schultz recently about the issue of voting in Wisconsin. The Q&A follows. It has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
ProPublica: You were initially in favor of Republican efforts to tighten voting and reconfigure districts. What first appealed to you about those ideas?

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Posted on July 5, 2017

The Cynical Opposition Of Some Democrats To Universal Health Care

By Joshua Cho/Common Dreams

After strong opposition from Americans concerned with the potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act and opposition from Senate Republicans forced Mitch McConnell to delay the Senate vote on the American Health Care Act, and growing support across the country for a single-payer health care system, the time is ripe for a push towards truly universal health care.
Despite the opportunities afforded amidst the current situation and the Trump administration’s plummeting approval ratings, as well as more than half of House Democrats co-sponsoring Rep. John Conyer’s (MI) single-payer bill, many high-profile Democrats continue to employ cynical rhetoric in their subtle refusal to endorse a truly universal health care system.

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Posted on July 3, 2017

Bruce Bartlett: Why I’m Not A Democrat

‘I Am Part Of The Reason Why Democrats Have Not Been Successful In The Trump Era’

Note: Economist Bruce Bartlett is a man of fierce intellectual independence – and courage, too. Telling the truth about Republican economic policies during the George W. Bush presidency got him fired as a senior fellow at a conservative think tank and brought to an end his long career as an esteemed GOP “insider.”
On the right he could boast a gold-standard resume as an architect of supply-side economics and “trickle-down” taxes with Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY); a central figure in the “Reagan Revolution” as a White House aide; a director of the Joint Economic Committee; and a senior Treasury Department official in the days of George H.W. Bush.
But then he rocked Republican elites and movement conservatives alike with a book that went, in their eyes, beyond truancy to treason: Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.
He next revised his own earlier ideas with some second opinions in The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward.
Cast now into outer darkness beyond the Beltway, Bartlett became become a prolific writer and commentator.

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Posted on June 28, 2017

Psychopath CEOs Destroy Value

By James Saft/Reuters

Some enterprising manager ought to look into a Long Nice CEOs/Short Jerks hedge fund.
A new UK study finds that companies with leaders who show “psychopathic characteristics” destroy shareholder value, tending to have poor future returns on equity.
This, coming just a year after a study finding better operating results at companies with nice leaders, suggests there may be a viable investment strategy in buying the one and betting against the other.
Let’s talk about the bad apples first; they are always so much more interesting.

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Posted on June 26, 2017

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