Independent News

This post was originally published on this site

The House is still full-steam ahead on attempting to pass President Joe Biden’s hard and soft infrastructure programs this week, possibly, now that they’ve overcome the logjam that was Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. The strategy for dealing with Sen. Joe Manchin, the other problem, seems to be passing them and daring him to ruin everything, a risky bet. 

The House Rules committee now has updated text (still subject to change) of the reconciliation bill for Build Back Better (BBB), the social and climate bill that could move out of House Rules and to the floor sometime in the next 72 hours. Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear Thursday morning that it will go to the floor along with the hard infrastructure bill (nicknamed BIF) negotiated and passed by a bipartisan Senate team. When that happens is still not clear. Pelosi told her caucus in a meeting before the press conference that the bills could be voted on Thursday night and Friday morning, but was less definitive when talking to reporters. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is officially suggesting votes on both could come as early as Thursday.

There are, however, still obstacles among House Democrats. One big issue still to work out is immigration; Pelosi made some news there, suggesting that the Senate needs to overrule the parliamentarian to get the best solution possible for undocumented immigrants. She and her colleagues are advocating for a registry system. “We would like to have registry in there, because we think it is the easiest, most efficient fair way to deal with people who are here so that they can work, and their families feel safe, and that they won’t be exploited,” she told reporters Thursday. “If the Senate [wants it], though, and I urge them—put it forth,” she said, “It would involve overruling the […] parliamentarian, perhaps, not getting bogged down in their rules. It’s up to to them, but if they want to do that, we want to do that.”

At this point, lawmakers have reduced the promised path to citizenship for the immigrant workforce to “parole” protections for undocumented immigrants who have been in the country since before 2011. It would allow them two five-year waivers to live and work in the United States. Pelosi’s preference, and the preference of the three Democratic House members who have been holding out their votes—Reps. Jesús García (Illinois), Lou Correa (California), and Adriano Espaillat (New York)—is to have the broader registry provision that would provide more certainty, creating a registry for immigrants who have been in the country since 2010 and allowing them to become permanent residents. It has already been presented to the parliamentarian, and rejected. As Pelosi reminded the Senate, there’s something they can do about that.

Campaign Action

The Senate remains uncertain on that, but the discussion is happening. A group of Senate Democrats has been pushing the House to put the maximum on immigration in their bill. “I do think it is important that the House include really all the pathway to citizenship […] It is important that we have that in there,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. Leaders Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin have so far demurred, with Durbin indicating that he’s not sure they wouldn’t lose Manchin that way. Schumer just said he hopes the parliamentarian “will see things in the way that we want them to.”

Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey is also asking the House to go big. Just because the parliamentarian had rejected ideas, “that doesn’t mean the House can’t exert its will and express itself in terms of what it wants to see,” he said. “That’s probably why they are having options, too,” Menendez said. “And then, you know, you can always appeal the ruling of the chair.” It’s at least talked about as an option among Senate Democrats, which is a sign of some progress.

Back on the House side, the conservative crew, still trying to push for delays on BBB and an immediate vote on BIF (which is not happening), is also demanding they wait until the Congressional Budget Office has scored the bill before they’ll vote. The Joint Committee on Taxation released its analysis Thursday morning, finding the the bill would raise $1.476 trillion in revenue.

Another bit of positive economic justification for the legislation came from Moody’s Analytics Thursday morning. BBB would “strengthen long-term economic growth, the benefits of which would mostly accrue to lower- and middle/income Americans,” Moody’s analysts say. And answering one of Manchin’s regular excuses for not wanting to do it: “Concerns that the plan will ignite undesirably high inflation and an overheating economy are overdone.”

“The reconciliation package … meaningfully lifts economic growth and jobs and lowers unemployment,” the analysts conclude. “The economy performs best in the final scenario, in which both the bipartisan infrastructure deal and the reconciliation package become law.”

This post was originally published on this site

After more than two weeks of proceedings, a jury was seated on Wednesday in the trial of three white men accused of hunting down and murdering Ahmaud Arbery after they saw him jogging on property under construction in South Georgia. Only one juror out of 12 is Black, The New York Times reported of the case centering former Georgia cop and prosecutorial investigator Gregory McMichael, his son Travis, and local resident William “Roddie” Bryan.

“This court has found that there appears to be intentional discrimination on the panel,” Glynn County Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley said, “but that doesn’t mean the court has the authority to reseat simply because we have this prima facie case.” And even though Walmsley admitted that “quite a few African American jurors were excused through peremptory strikes executed by the defense,” he ultimately decided to allow the imbalance, parting ways with a special prosecutor who challenged the removal of eight Black people from the potential jury pool.

Linda Dunikoski, of the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office, cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that makes it illegal to remove potential jurors exclusively based on race, the Times reported. “African American jurors made up one-quarter of the jury panel, but the actual jury that was selected has only one African American male on it,” Dunikoski said during court.

In a case already mired in injustice, Walmsley said the defense had applied a “legitimate, nondiscriminatory, clear, reasonably specific, and related reason” to strike each Black juror. The judge said the court doesn’t have the authority to “reseat, simply, again, because there’s this prima facie case.”

Defense attorneys have said that they struck 13 white potential jurors from the case for the same reasons they other potential Black jurors: a strong bias about the case. “We are stuck between a rock and a hard place, given the fact that the majority of the African American jurors that came in here were struck for cause immediately because of their strong opinions,” Laura Hogue, Gregory McMichael’s attorney, said.

Jason Sheffield, Travis McMichael’s attorney, added: “Never before have we had a case where so many people have entered into the courtroom for jury selection already having an opinion about the guilt of the men charged.”

Not without reason.

It took a full 74 days after Arbery’s death on Feb. 23, 2020, for an arrest to be made. Former Glynn County District Attorney Jackie Johnson has been charged with obstruction and violating her oath of office in her handling of Arbery’s case following his death. The McMichaels weren’t arrested until May 7, 2020, and Bryan, who recorded the moments leading up to Arbery’s death, was arrested on May 21, 2020.

Gregory and Travis McMichael accused Arbery of trying to burglarize a house—where he stopped and peeked through the window—during a jog in coastal Georgia’s Satilla Shores community. On a 911 call, Travis can be heard describing Arbery as “a Black male, red shirt, white shorts.” Travis told a dispatcher he was sitting across the street in his red Ford F-150 “watching the house” and he didn’t know if Arbery was armed “but he was acting like he was.” The home, owned by Larry English, was under construction and occasionally attracted curious pedestrians, according to surveillance video released to the media. Only Arbery was shot and killed for doing so, and he was unarmed at the time of his death, Arbery’s family attorney Lee Merritt has maintained.

Merritt told The New York Times jury selection in the case has been “the strangest jury selection process” he’s ever seen. “We understand there are some unique circumstances,” the attorney said. “There’s very few people who wouldn’t have heard about this case. Most have developed an opinion about the case. So I understand that the attorneys, in general, will have some questions that we’re not used to.” Merritt, however, added that some of the defense’s questioning was “badgering.”

CK Hoffler, chief executive officer of the Atlanta-based CK Hoffler Firm, told journalist Mehdi Hasan those observing the trial have commented about biased questioning during jury selection. Their observations reported that Black potential jurors were asked “more probing” questions than other prospective jurors, and that some may have been stricken for cause in error. “So those could be appealable issues, but the bottom line is there’s one African American on the jury,” Hoffler, who isn’t involved in the case, said. “And out of the thousand people that were initially called to potentially serve for this jury, (…) it is quite a travesty, I think, that only one African American was selected, given the demographics of that community.”

Brunswick, the city in which Satilla Shores is located, has a population that is about 55% Black and 40% white. 

Scott Hechinger, a Brooklyn public defender, tweeted that Black jurors in the case could be released if they answered truthfully that they believed the Confederate flag was a racist symbol. “Unbelievable the question was even allowed to be asked,” the attorney, who isn’t involved in the case, said in the tweet. “Unbelievable that this was considered a ‘race-neutral’ reason to strike.”

Through their attorneys, the McMichaels have sought to ban from the trial a photo of a vanity plate with a Confederate emblem that was on Travis McMichael’s truck when Arbery was killed. The McMichaels claimed in their motion filed Sept. 30 that the state’s goal is to “draw the conclusion the Mr. Arbery saw the vanity plate, that he interpreted its meaning, and that he feared the occupants in the truck because of this vanity plate, which is why he ran away from the truck.” The McMichaels also claimed through their attorneys that the state intends to “create the inference that Travis McMichael placed the vanity plate on his truck in order to telegraph some reprehensible motive, bias, or prejudice, which is not true.”

Prosecutors responded in a motion that “the State will present the facts of this case, and one of those facts is that Travis McMichael purchased a new truck sometime after January 1, 2020, and put this vanity plate on it.”

They additionally wrote:

“The vanity plate was on the truck at the time of the homicide. The jury may interpret that evidence in any way they deem appropriate and the State may make reasonable inferences, in closing argument, drawn from the evidence.”

Arbery’s mother Wanda Cooper-Jones said in an interview with ABC News the jury’s makeup is “very, very discouraging. (…) I have my concerns about getting a guilty verdict,” she said.

Opening statements in the case are set to begin Friday. 

RELATED: Travis McMichael is actively trying to keep his Confederate vanity plate out of his murder trial

RELATED: It took Ahmaud Arbery’s mother’s push for justice to bring charges against her son’s alleged killers

RELATED: ‘Cheap and blatant’: Accused murderers of Ahmaud Arbery try to make sure jury knows about probation

RELATED: Murder trial in Ahmaud Arbery case is not about Arbery’s past, judge rules in vital decision

This post was originally published on this site

The cycle repeats itself. Last year, hundreds of Muslim Americans made history as the firsts in their respected towns and states. This year more join with historic wins as elected officials. Michigan specifically makes history with not one but three firsts for the Muslim community. Three Michigan towns—Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck—elected their first Muslim mayors Tuesday.

While both Dearborn and Dearborn Heights have a high Muslim population, neither town has seen a Muslim mayor before. Tuesday’s results now reflect the towns’ demographics and show the reality of a change in demographics in Hamtramck as well.

In Dearborn, state legislator Abdullah Hammoud has become the city’s first Arab mayor.

“While the night marks the first of many, we never ran to be the first, we ran to be the best,” Hammoud said during his victory speech acknowledging his historic win but noting his candidacy was not just about diversity.

Hammoud defeated Gary Woronchak, a former state representative and former Wayne County commissioner, with 54.6% of the vote, the Detroit Free Press reported. The 31-year-old succeeds John “Jack” O’Reilly Jr., mayor since 2007, whose administration faced criticism over its handling of flooding last summer. 

When Hammoud takes office early next year, the House lawmaker will become the first Muslim and the first person of color to lead the city’s 110,000 residents as their seventh mayor.

Hammoud’s win is historic not only because of his identity, and the fact that it reflects the demographic of the community he will be representing, but also in light of the town’s history of racism. 

According to Al-Jazeera, Dearborn’s longest-serving mayor, Orville Hubbard, was known nationally for his racism against minority groups. While the town is now heavily Arab populated and houses one of the largest Arab American communities in the nation, the census does not reflect this because Arab Americans are classified as white. 

“We finally have Arab Americans speaking for themselves, being elected to office, representing their communities, gaining recognition for this population, gaining a voice for them,” Sally Howell said, director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

“To the young girls and boys who have ever been ridiculed for their faith or ethnicity. To those of you who were ever made to feel that their names were unwelcome and to our parents and to our elders and to others who are humiliated for their broken English and yet still persistent, today is proof that you are as American as anyone else, and there is a new era in Dearborn,”  Hammoud said during his victory speech.

In Dearborn Heights, Mayor Bill Bazzi was elected to continue to serve as mayor.

Bazzi was appointed in January to serve following the death of Mayor Daniel Paletko.

While already known as the town’s first Muslim mayor, on Tuesday he became the town’s first elected Muslim mayor after beating Council Chair Denise Malinowski Maxwell. A Marine Corps veteran and immigrant from Lebanon, as the town’s mayor, he is not only the first Muslim but the first Arab American to serve.

According to the Detroit Free Press, about one-third of Dearborn Heights is Arab American, making Bazzi’s historic win an accurate representation of the community.

During his campaign, Bazzi frequently clashed with Malinowski-Maxwell—who once accused Bazzi of faking his 21 years of service with the Marines. But despite the hate he received and the conflicts with other politicians, Bazzi succeed in his reelection and made history once again.

When asked about his historic win, he acknowledged it but shared similar sentiments with other “firsts,” who noted it was not about them.

“It feels great,” he said. “But I don’t look at any of this as making history. I’m looking at it as I’m serving the people and serving Dearborn Heights. I’m here for the residents and I have an open-door policy always to residents, staff, everyone. My goal and mission is for the residents and for the city of Dearborn Heights.”

In a message to students who supposed him and even countered at the polls, Bazzi not only thanked them but noted he was proud.

“The sky’s the limit,” he said. “If you work hard and do the right thing and stay focused, you can achieve anything, you just need a dream and a passion. If I can do everything in my life that I’ve done, including this, then anyone can. I am grateful when I see youth involved in civic duties and serving the community, as it serves as an inspiration to even younger generations and comes full circle. I’m proud of them and there’s a good process of caring about each other and about our community. This really brings us all together and shows that we are and have one strong community.”

In Hamtramck, Amer Ghalib defeated Mayor Karen Majewski to become not only the city’s first Muslim mayor, but the city’s first non-Polish mayor in a century.

According to the Detroit Metro Times, Ghalib, a health care worker and immigrant from Yemen, defeated opponent Majewski by a landslide.

Hamtramck has historically, for the last 100 years, always had a mayor of Polish descent. While it used to be dominantly Polish, Polish-Americans today make up less than 7% of the city, according to census reports.

As mayor, Galib will be the first Arab American and the first Muslim to serve, in a town that has the highest percentage of immigrants among cities in metro Detroit. Approximately half of the city’s population identifies as Muslim.

Advocacy groups, including the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), acknowledged the historic wins in Michigan. “We congratulate Mr. Hammoud and Mr. Ghalib on their historic victories in Dearborn and Hamtramck and for becoming the first Muslims to hold mayoral office in those cities,” CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid said in a press release. “Their victories are signs of not only the increased political engagement of Muslims in our region but also the comfort fellow Michiganians of other faiths have in supporting Muslim candidates.”        

While he was campaigning, many criticized Ghalib for opposing flying an LGBTQ Pride Flag in the city and for his disapproved of marijuana dispensaries. But Ghalib told the Detroit Free Press that he would not impose his beliefs on others.

“People think because of my background and my religious beliefs that I will be anti-LGBT or something, but we are in America,” Ghalib said. “The same Constitution that allowed me to practice my religion here, to pray the way I want, it gives others the same freedom to practice their beliefs and express their values the way they want.”

Congratulations to Michigan’s three firsts— here’s to more to come!

This post was originally published on this site

Rudy Giuliani hasn’t been in the news much over the last few weeks. On the one hand, it’s a relief to be spared his spittle-producing histrionics, his endless repetitions of the Big Lie, and contemplation of just what kind of liquid is dripping down his face. On the other hand, Giuliani’s absence from the headlines is honestly a shame. Because for some months now, there’s been the expectation that his name would next appear in association with the word “indicted.”

It’s been over six months since Giuliani’s home and office were raided by federal officers. From the information available at the time, it seemed that Giuliani was being investigated in connection with his actions in Ukraine. The list of potential crimes is … not short, including dozens of instances in which Giuliani appears to have engaged in unregistered foreign lobbying, his efforts to remove a trusted U.S. ambassador because she inconveniently told the truth, and his connections to multiple unsavory oligarchs. There is absolutely no doubt that Giuliani engaged in a multiyear effort to deceive, defame, and manipulate on behalf of Donald Trump, but it’s less clear how much of that plan was actually illegal.

On Thursday, The Guardian revealed new information about the investigation into Giuliani’s scheme, how it extends back months before Trump’s arm-twisting called to the Ukrainian president, and how it included additional members of Trump’s legal team—Fox favorites Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova. What all of this seems to show is not just that Giuliani sold out two nations, suborned lies from foreign nationals, and created an elaborate scheme to smear Joe Biden … but he did it all for money.

For most people, Giuliani’s scheme became visible on May 1, 2019 when The New York Times* devoted sizable chunks of both the front page and the interior to transcribing the disgraced former mayor’s claims about Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Six days later, Bloomberg did what the Times did not and actually checked into Giuliani’s claims. What they found was that the whole basis of Giuliani’s assertions—that Ukraine was launching an investigation into the Bidens—had absolutely no basis in fact. In fact, almost everything in the story the Times had printed had been a total fiction.

What the article in The Guardian makes clear is that the May 1 article came after months of work on the part of Giuliani, Toensing, and DiGenova. Not work in the sense of investigating the truth of the situation in Ukraine—work in terms of lining up people who were willing to lie in order to create a controversy designed to help Donald Trump.

While Toensing and DiGenova may also be facing federal charges, Giuliani’s real partner in crime appears to be Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko. According to The Guardian, federal investigators have unearthed “extensive, detailed plans” that were devised by Lutsenko and executed by Giuliani. Those plans called for Giuliani to feed the U.S. press on the idea that Biden was corrupt, which Lutsenko would then support by announcing an investigation in Ukraine.

The problem for Giuliani and crew was that before Lutsenko could follow through on his end of the deal, Ukraine had an election in which Volodymyr Zelensky was the surprise winner. Under Zelensky, Lutsenko didn’t have the influence necessary to give Giuliani the fake announcement that he wanted. That didn’t please Trump, who insisted that Giuliani and Lutsenko follow through. 

Which is how Trump ended up on the telephone with President Zelensky, threatening to withhold $400 million in U.S. assistance unless someone in Zelensky’s government would back Giuliani’s play. Which, in turn, led to Trump’s first impeachment.

It wasn’t just Lutsenko who Guiliani worked to get in Trump’s corner. Two other former prosecutors —including the very justifiably fired Viktor Shokin—agreed to fill in the details according to the script that Giuliani provided to The New York Times. The full scheme would go like this:

• Lutsenko would announce he was “reopening” an investigation of Burisma that included an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden.
• One of Lutsenko’s assistants, Konstantin Kulyk, would officially be in charge of investigating the Bidens, and would make a public announcement that they had committed a crime.
• Former prosecutor Shokin would claim that he had been investigating Burisma after all, and that Biden fired him to shut him up.

In exchange for all this, a cadre of Ukrainians would get preferred treatment from the Trump White House, with expectations that they could tap a nearly unlimited stream of both business opportunities and U.S. assistance payments. Trump would, of course, get the scandal he wanted. And Giuliani … well, Giuliani’s needs were even simpler.

Giuliani and Lutsenko reached a preliminary agreement in March 2019… Various drafts of the contract called for Giuliani to receive either $300,000 or $500,000 for his work.

Toensing and DiGenova were to get “at least $250,000.” That started with a $125,000 “retainer” bill that Toensing and DiGenova sent to Lutsenko a month before Giuliani’s first Times article ran.  But Zelensky’s election came just one week later, throwing a wrench into the plan—and the billing cycle of Giuliani and friends. 

What happens to Giuliani, Toensing, and DeGenova from here is still unclear. While all three clearly attempted to solicit lies from foreign officials in support of generating a scandal in the U.S., it’s not clear whether or not that action was technically illegal. Slimy, yes. Destructive, certainly. But illegal? Unclear.

It’s more likely the trio will face charges of illegal lobbying for assistance they provided to Lutsenko, Shokin, and others. Even though the contracts don’t appear to have been executed in the end, lobbying for foreign interests requires registration, even if it’s done for free. 

Speaking of which …

Even though Giuliani was engaged by then president Trump as his personal attorney, Trump did not pay him, a frustration that Giuliani expressed to the Ukrainians.

Why Giuliani signed up to be kicked by Trump over and over and over says something deep—and ugly—about both men.

*The story currently in place at the Times site contains significant revisions to the one that originally appeared on May 1, including an altered headline. But that story still contains claims such as this:

Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.

That statement is utterly untrue. The prosecutor was not investigating Biden, the company Burisma, or its owner. In fact, he was dismissed because he refused to engage in that investigation. But the Times, both then and now, represents this fabrication from Giuliani as if it is fact.

This post was originally published on this site

On Wednesday, at a campaign rally event which was billed as a “press conference” (sans the press), speaking to an audience filled with people that chanted “Let’s Go Brandon,” Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that he wants to create a statewide law enforcement apparatus whose only job would be to enforce “election integrity.” This would mean going after “election crimes.” The man best known as the architect of a public health policy that has led to the deaths of nearly 60,000 Floridians and counting, who deprived predominantly Black districts of representation for almost a year, would entrust creating an office of election crimes and security to “legal experts” and others tasked with ways of uncovering and investigating election fraud.

Burping out drivel like, “People know that Florida stands for freedom,” DeSantis unveiled his (and the rest of his political party’s) only policy idea: voter suppression laws and activities. DeSantis, who has already signed draconian anti-democratic elections legislation cutting down the number of drop boxes available to citizens for voting, along with disallowing people to bring water to Floridians standing in long lines waiting to vote, is promising even more oppressive voting restrictions. Considering that DeSantis is up for reelection and has no policies to run on other than being one of the more popular death cult leaders in the GOP, adding more targeted restrictions to voting against Ron DeSantis is clearly his best chance at remaining in power.

“We are going to create a separate office at the state level solely dedicated to investigating and prosecuting election crimes in the state of Florida. We’ll [have] sworn law enforcement officers as part of this, we’ll have investigators, we’ll have the statewide prosecutor that’s able to bring the cases,” DeSantis told the deluded audience. DeSantis, making sure to truly walk in the dog-pooped footsteps of his master Donald Trump, really topped himself, explaining that “Personally, I don’t like drop boxes,” and saying the practice of “ballot harvesting” (collecting a bunch of ballots to drop off at the same time) would be made a felony.

As Politico reporter Gary Fineout points out, Gov. DeSantis signed the bill that first authorized the use of drop boxes in his state two years ago. DeSantis’ call for wasting taxpayer money on creating what would amount to a secret police force to investigate elections comes after he fought against GOP operatives and other Big Lie proponents like Roger Stone, saying that there was no reason to audit the state’s elections as they were secure and safe and free of election fraud. In fact, DeSantis had told reporters that Florida had finally “vanquished the ghost” of the 2000 Bush v. Gore elections.

The idea that DeSantis would supply experts in election law to investigate and prosecute election “crimes” would be laughable if it wasn’t such a transparent display of fascism. Most recently, three University of Florida professors were muzzled in their attempts to testify about issues of voter integrity (real voter integrity) via a new state Senate bill.

The Sunshine State’s worst elected official also did a few laps on the reality-defying claims that he has handled COVID-19 super bigly great, as well as the crowd-pleasing promise to fight public health measures that have been proven to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. What this means is that Florida will likely see more machinations on the part of DeSantis and his administration to hide the number of deaths and the rate of infection his terrible policies have wrought on the people of his state, all while still having some of the worst COVID-19 numbers in the country.

If you would like to, you can watch this disaster unfold in the video below.

This post was originally published on this site

There are good ways to cover how supply chain problems accompanied by inflation lead to rising prices on many products. CNN took another path with a human interest story on a middle-class family’s grocery budget. They took the fearmongering, sensationalist, we’re-not-gonna-offer-context-or-reliable-information path.

The Stotler family is pure media-bait. They’re white (because of course they are), they live in Texas (again, of course), and they have a whole bunch of kids, most of them adopted. CNN’s Evan McMorris-Santoro interviewed them about their grocery budget, accompanied by lots of footage of the family—including five or six kids who I am so sure are included on every supermarket run—going shopping. 

The week’s grocery total: $310. Krista Stotler estimates that they would have spent only $150 to $200 on a week’s groceries in March. That’s an astonishing amount! It’s also way out of line with data on rising grocery prices. It’s absolutely true that grocery prices have risen in recent months, but meat has risen the most—by 15.7% between August 2019 and September 2021. Dairy had gone up by 5.2% in that time. It’s a significant amount, but it’s hard to see how it’s doubling anyone’s grocery bills based on the available data. It would have been nice to see CNN dig into that.

One specific offered: “A gallon of milk was $1.99,” according to Krista Stotler, in a line tweeted by CNN’s Brianna Keilar. “Now it’s $2.79. Well, when you buy 12 gallons a week times four weeks, that’s a lot of money.”

Okay, first of all, hold up now. TWELVE GALLONS of milk every week? This is a large family but that is more than a gallon of milk per person. At that rate, maybe they should look into just buying a cow.

But there are issues more serious than this family’s milk-guzzling preferences. There are big questions about the numbers here. Nationally, even if you do not adjust for inflation, the average price of a gallon of milk has not been as low as $1.99 in more than 25 years. Milk prices may be well below the national average in the specific part of Texas where the Stotlers live, but even so, in January 2021, the average milk price in Dallas was $2.86 a gallon, and has now risen to $3.22. In Wichita, Kansas, the lowest average price for a gallon of milk across the cities the USDA tracks was $2.52. The average price for a gallon of milk in Wichita is $2.79. So Wichita went to the $2.79 a gallon Krista Stotler lamented—but it was an increase of just about one-third the increase she cited. Whatever the milk prices the Stotlers were paying in March, the increase they are claiming to have seen is well above the increases being seen most places.

CNN could also have gotten into the question of how milk prices are set. Milk pricing is highly regulated. Dairy farming is heavily subsidized by the government. Milk prices don’t just happen, and in general, in recent years, the “problem” for dairy farmers has been too much milk. If milk prices are rising, the question of why would be an interesting one, and people might learn a lot about how food gets to their tables and about how the economy works. Apparently that’s not as interesting as a family walking around a supermarket.

So, you know, choices were made here by CNN to uncritically air the Stotlers’ reported increases in pricing even though those were much, much higher than the available market data would suggest, and to leave off any context about pricing. And by talking about the price increase across 12 gallons per week for four weeks, it’s inflated yet again.

But choices were also made here by CNN to feature this family, a family that, sure, is looking for deals, but looking for deals at a Kroger, not at a discount store. They appear to drive a very large SUV and live in a house with a kitchen large enough to accommodate their large family, with a patio and a big old gas grill. It is relevant that middle-class families are feeling the pinch, but the fact that CNN presents this particular family’s struggles as a major story reflects so many heavily racialized assumptions about who deserves our sympathy and about whose grocery budgeting woes are evidence of a serious problem in the economy.

The federal minimum wage—which is the minimum wage in Texas—has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for more than a decade. I’m going to go ahead and guess that CNN could have found people in Texas for whom grocery price increases (even if they’re not actually 80 cents per gallon of milk) would be significantly more of a hardship. But those people are not seen as the ones whose stories are the relatable family-being-squeezed stories. When the media tells their stories, it’s more likely to be about policies like the minimum wage or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or about charity. The pure “this is our relatable struggle” reporting goes to families like the Stotlers, who are presumed to speak directly to CNN’s audience and to be generally above reproach (a large Black family, even with adopted children, would be much more likely to draw “if you can’t afford that many kids you shouldn’t have them” type of criticism).

CNN took just about the shallowest possible approach to the issue of grocery prices and the economic squeeze on families. It’s nothing against the Stotlers (however questionable their characterizations of price increases may be), but this story does not increase our knowledge or understanding of what’s going on in the U.S. economy today.

This post was originally published on this site

While the judge presiding over the case of vigilante and little buddy of white supremacists Kyle Rittenhouse should be focused on the trial, he appears to be more interested in what CNN’s Jeffery Toobin has to say. 

Let’s get to the important thing here: Rittenhouse is a teenage wanna-be cop who drove himself from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, with an AR-15-style .223 rifle in his car, wearing a backward baseball cap and harboring an intention to act as citizen police.

Videos from the night of the shooting show that several protesters attempted to disarm Rittenhouse, who fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, then Anthony Huber, 26, and seconds later Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, who was wounded.

]During a sidebar Wednesday, Judge Bruce Schroeder told the prosecution and defense he was concerned about the characterization of the trial by the media—particularly Toobin. 

“There are people on the media, on reputable sites, that are saying things that are totally bizarre,” the judge said Wednesday.

It’s presumed that Schroeder is referring to the media’s outrage and confusion over his ruling that the prosecution could not use the word “victim” in describing the three men Rittenhouse shot on the night of a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The judge also ruled the defense could use the words “arsonists,” “looters,” or “rioters.” 

“It is a very weird … ruling,” Toobin said. “What’s very weird is allowing this extremely pejorative, assuming the conclusion, words of ‘rioters’ and ‘looters,’ which all in all should help Rittenhouse’s defense a great deal.”

He added, “And, remember, it is not the — it is not the victims who are on trial here, it is Rittenhouse. So you can see why a lot of people are upset about this preliminary ruling, and we’ll see if the judge revisits it as the trial progresses.” 

Whether or not the word “victim” can be used varies from “from courtroom to courtroom at the judge’s discretion,” University of Wisconsin Law School Professor Keith Findley told CBS. But, Schroeder wasn’t happy about Toobin’s coverage of his decision, and instead of focusing on the task at hand and helping the jury do their jobs and hear testimony, Schoeder instead spent his time bashing the media. 

The judge erupted after prosecutors tried to play a video for the jury. The video was recorded by someone from The Rundown Live, who narrated the events the night of the Rittenhouse shooting. Rittenhouse’s attorney, Mark Richards, the same man who claimed self-defense for his client because one of the victims had a skateboard that could be used to decapitate someone and that Rittenhouse’s gun charge should be thrown out because he had a hunting license, objected to the narration of the video. 

Schroeder agreed with Richards and framed the issue as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s confrontation clause. Then he went on a rampage about CNN’s Toobin. 

“This was on CNN, Jeffrey Toobin and another attorney there, and a comment was made that the ruling was incomprehensible, and I think they obviously are not familiar with this rule,” the judge said.

“I’m going to comment about the media again because there was a gentleman on TV night before last who said this is the most divisive case in the country to date. So anything that undermines public confidence in what happens here is very important.”

“It’s important for this town,” Schroeder said, “it’s important for this country, to have people have confidence in the result of this trial, whatever it is. And I don’t care what it is.”

Schroeder went on to defend his ruling by bringing the bible into the issue, discussing St. Paul and the Romans. Not sure how any of these bizarre rantings are connected to this trial, but I’m sure the defense attornies are thrilled by the distraction and diversions. 

You can hear the arguments in Rittenhouse’s trial in the video below. 

This post was originally published on this site

It’s been weird enough to see anti-mask, anti-vax Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis attempting to copy Donald Trump’s mannerisms during his speeches—evidently because just praising Trump’s every word just wasn’t doing the trick—but the man’s obsession with getting involved with seemingly every new trend the deplorables stumble into is getting downright ridiculous.

In a press conference ostensibly about “election integrity,” aka how do we stop all these people from voting nowadays, Desantis tongue-in-cheekily referred to the Joe Biden administration as “the Brandon administration.” Yeah, that’s a news event now.

Get it? Get it? He was “playing into the popular meme that has liberals in a tizzy,” reports the Fox News website. And the crowd evidently went a bit nuts, because duh.

For those of you who don’t get hourly updates on each new “conservative” invention meant to “stick it to the libs,” whether it be retooling your truck to pollute more visibly to own the libs or dying horribly with a tube down your throat to own the libs, a NASCAR crowd at one point was chanting “fuck Joe Biden” and a broadcaster misheard it as “let’s go Brandon” because he was interviewing Brandon, um, Sportsguy, and the goofiness of the moment turned it into a meme, and conservatives adopted it because their mommies don’t like it when they swear but if you say that then mom will never know, tee-hee, look at us we’re all naughty and stickin’ it to the man or whatever. There, you’re caught up.

Okay, with that all out of the way: Fuck Ron DeSantis. We are all grownups here, and we get to use the rude words if we feel like it and don’t need to do these weird pubescent tics of pretendin’ we’re gonna swear but coding it in a way so nearby authority figures won’t find out. Go nuts with that.

Also, I swear I will never understand the Fox and/or deplorable obsession with thinking that oh, we’ve got the libs this time, they’re gonna be in a real “tizzy” now. Huh? Over swear words? Maybe down in the bowels of Team Bullshit they’re real convinced that fake-swearing at a president is going to cause decent people to have all the vapors but buddy, liberals invented swearing at presidents. Or at least we invented not giving a damn about people swearing at presidents. We probably invented both, and I strongly suspect Ben Franklin was neck-deep in all of it.

You want to say “fuck Joe Biden,” go for it! You’ll have to do a lot better than that to even get anyone’s attention. In a movement in which the ostensible conservative punditry calls insufficiently conservative Supreme Court justices “goat-fucking child molesters,” you’re going to have to do better than that just to get attention from your fellow conservatives.

Calling someone Brandon won’t put anyone in a “tizzy.” You want to put someone in a tizzy, say “happy holidays” when they were expecting a “merry Christmas.” That shit will end up with someone writing a 1,000-word Facebook post ranting about the collapse of society, a post that manages to find six new euphemisms for “the Jews” when attempting to assign proper blame. Tell a conservative gun owner that they should put a trigger lock on their damn gun so their possibly inbred toddler offspring doesn’t paint the bedroom ceiling with their good Christian brains, and by the end of the week several thousand Fox News viewers will have purchased new flag-sized banners sporting a new, spur-of-the-moment catchphrase declaring that any government official who tries to keep their kids alive is gonna find themselves riddled with bullets from one of the other 30 guns kept down in the basement.

Buddy, suggesting that a prominent political figure commit a reproductive act isn’t going to do it.

Here, let me give a demonstration: Ron DeSantis? Fuck Ron DeSantis. Seriously, fuck that guy, fuck everyone who’s ever shaken his hand, fuck everyone who voted for the shitheaded syphilis infection turned Real Boy, and fuck every voter who would have voted for him but were too busy sucking a shit-brand beer pulled out of their shit-brand minifridge to get off their ass and bother. Ron DeSantis is a shitbrained fuckweasel. The Trump-parroting virusfucker is a fuckmurderous iguanaplower and he looks like the offspring between Rick Perry’s third favorite necktie and a Bill O’Reilly paternity lawsuit. He can go fuck himself with a 55-centimeter fuckstick calibrated at 37.5 kilofucks, and he’s not allowed to convert any of that into American fucking units because he doesn’t fucking deserve it.

There, go nuts with that, you weird-headed outrage-scraping cultureklowns. Tizzy. Who the hell cares if someone fake-swears at a politician? Are you, like, 8? This isn’t the damn Vatican, and I can all but promise you worse words have rattled Vatican hallways at various points anyway. If it’ll take valuable time away from you paint-licking assholes inventing new ways to be racist, I’ll help you lobby Hallmark to get it put on greeting cards so that you can send them to your moms and your moms can put them up on the mantle next to an old clock, a plastic Jesus, and that clay “pencil holder” you made in Mrs. Hilliwiggins’ class. Then when you visit mom you can remember that you’ve accomplished something in your life twice now.

Sigh. Even the lib-owning has degraded to pathetic levels. Maybe the real lib-owning is backed up at the Port of Los Angeles, another victim of supply-chain woes as America dips and dives through each new not-gonna-wear-masks pandemic surge. Maybe Fox and Ron have been waiting for months for their new lib-owning campaign to come in from China and this is them attempting cobble something together while they wait.

Seriously, though? Fuck Ron DeSantis. The guy saw Donald Trump bumblefuck his way through murdering a half a million Americans and said to himself, “Wow, the base is really loving this stuff.” Can’t possibly emphasize enough how much that guy needs to fuck all the way off and then some.