Sometimes Democracy Now really scores a bulls-eye. Today they had on Henry Giroux, author of American at War With Itself. He's an early Boomer-war baby cusper born Sept. 18, 1943 (but still has great hair    )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Giroux

I wish I was as articulate an author and speaker as he; who knows? But I'm glad to discover another spokesman for the real Awakening with its legacy still going on; another visionary for our times. An author who understands what's going on and what our needs are. Bravo!

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/14/i..._result_of

He says we are sliding toward authoritarianism because we are living in a state of imposed ignorance. We can't have a democracy if our people have no civic knowledge and literacy, and if our imagination is schooled out of us. The rise of Trump is a sign of our times.

America has declared war on itself in the war on education and dissent. Schools are modeled on prisons, he says. Dress code violations are criminalized. How do we understand what's happening? The punishing state is taking over. Ours is a culture of the immediate and celebrity, which paralyze us and kill the radical imagination. Trump is a symptom of a decline of a culture that can form thoughtfulness about justice. Money has corrupted politics, and we can't equate capitalism with democracy. If the ethical imagination dies, then we live in a state of terrorism.

Today younger people are mobilizing and linking issues together. Violence and militarism are linked; modes of repression are global. Politics is local and power is global. Schools should be places where children learn to imagine a world that's a better place. Our schools instead teach to the test and see students as the work force; a place to make kids boring and ignorant. Schools can't take education seriously when they are under assault with charter schools and school choice as Trump and Republicans want, and Obama goes along with.

Was "America great" as Trump proclaims? Camus wrote that democracy and freedom depend on memory. We forget about the ways America was not great. The progressive left has failed in some ways, especially about schooling. School is about changing consciousness, to make what we learn relevant to our lives. We need to see how issues are related.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...CMP=twt_gu

Quote:Mies van der Rohe was born first, in 1886, in Aachen, Germany. Le Corbusier arrived the following year, and 250 miles to the south, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Mies went on to become the godfather of the steel-and-glass international style; Corbu, enamored with the possibilities of concrete, essentially created brutalism. Which means that not only were the two architects great builders in their own right; they were also responsible for creating the greatest sibling rivalry in the history of architecture.

Le Corbusier’s brutalism took an early lead, not least because of concrete’s cost advantage: it is cheap and abundant, the second most consumed material in the world, after water. Brutalism also had the art-historical advantage of fitting easily into a centuries-long narrative. The monumental brutalist vaulting of the Washington Metro, for instance, is uncannily similar to that found in largest concrete dome in the world – the 2,000-year-old Pantheon, in Rome...



https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...CMP=twt_gu

Donald Trump used more than a quarter of a million dollars donated to the Trump Foundation to settle lawsuits against his for-profit businesses, among other ventures. This is, needless to say, highly illegal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...story.html

Quote:Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents.

Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against “self-dealing” — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.

In one case, from 2007, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club faced $120,000 in unpaid fines from the town of Palm Beach, Fla., resulting from a dispute over the height of a flagpole.

In a settlement, Palm Beach agreed to waive those fines — if Trump’s club made a $100,000 donation to a specific charity for veterans. Instead, Trump sent a check from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charity funded almost entirely by other people’s money, according to tax records.

In another case, court papers say one of Trump’s golf courses in New York agreed to settle a lawsuit by making a donation to the plaintiff’s chosen charity. A $158,000 donation was made by the Trump Foundation, according to tax records.

The other expenditures involved smaller amounts. In 2013, Trump used $5,000 from the foundation to buy advertisements touting his chain of hotels in programs for three events organized by a D.C. preservation group. And in 2014, Trump spent $10,000 of the foundation’s money on a portrait of himself bought at a charity fundraiser.

Or, rather, another portrait of himself.

Several years earlier, Trump used $20,000 from the Trump Foundation to buy a different, six-foot-tall portrait.

If the Internal Revenue Service were to find that Trump violated self-dealing rules, the agency could require him to pay penalty taxes or to reimburse the foundation for all the money it spent on his behalf. Trump is also facing scrutiny from the New York attorney general’s office, which is examining whether the foundation broke state charity laws.

More broadly, these cases* also provide new evidence that Trump ran his charity in a way that may have violated U.S. tax law and gone against the moral conventions of philanthropy.

“I represent 700 nonprofits a year, and I’ve never encountered anything so brazen,” said Jeffrey Tenenbaum, who advises charities at the Venable law firm in Washington. After The Washington Post described the details of these Trump Foundation gifts, Tenenbaum described them as “really shocking.”

“If he’s using other people’s money — run through his foundation — to satisfy his personal obligations, then that’s about as blatant an example of self-dealing [as] I’ve seen in awhile,” Tenenbaum said.

The Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about the four cases but received no response.

The Trump campaign released a statement about this story late Tuesday that said it was “peppered with inaccuracies and omissions,” though the statement cited none and the campaign has still not responded to repeated requests for comment.

The New York attorney general’s office declined to comment when asked whether its inquiry would cover these new cases* of possible self-dealing.

What we know about Trump's charitable giving  Play Video1:24
Trump founded his charity in 1987 and for years was its only donor. But in 2006, Trump gave away almost all the money he had donated to the foundation, leaving it with just $4,238 at year’s end, according to tax records.

Then, he transformed the Trump Foundation into something rarely seen in the world of philanthropy: a name-branded foundation whose namesake provides none of its money. Trump gave relatively small donations in 2007 and 2008, and afterward, nothing. The foundation’s tax records show no donations from Trump since 2009.

[In 2007, Trump had to face his own falsehoods. And he did, 30 times.]

Its money has come from other donors, most notably pro-wrestling executives Vince and Linda McMahon, who gave a total of $5 million from 2007 to 2009, tax records show. Trump remains the foundation’s president, and he told the IRS in his latest public filings that he works half an hour per week on the charity.

The Post has previously detailed other cases in which Trump used the charity’s money in a way that appeared to violate the law.

In 2013, for instance, the foundation gave $25,000 to a political group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi ®. That gift was made about the same time that Bondi’s office was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. It didn’t.

Tax laws say nonprofit groups such as the Trump Foundation may not make political gifts. Trump staffers blamed the gift on a clerical error. After The Post reported on the gift to Bondi’s group this spring, Trump paid a $2,500 penalty tax and reimbursed the Trump Foundation for the $25,000 donation.

In other instances, it appeared that Trump may have violated rules against self-dealing.

In 2012, for instance, Trump spent $12,000 of the foundation’s money to buy a football helmet signed by then-NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

And in 2007, Trump’s wife, Melania, bid $20,000 for the six-foot-tall portrait of Trump, done by a “speed painter” during a charity gala at Mar-a-Lago. Later, Trump paid for the painting with $20,000 from the foundation.

In those cases, tax experts said, Trump was not allowed to simply keep these items and display them in a home or business. They had to be put to a charitable use.

Trump’s campaign has not responded to questions about what became of the helmet or the portrait.

 
After the settlement, Trump put a slightly smaller flag farther from the road and mounted it on a 70-foot pole as seen in this Nov. 1, 2015, photo. (Rosalind Helderman/The Washington Post)
The four new cases of possible self-dealing were discovered in the Trump Foundation’s tax filings. While Trump has refused to release his personal tax returns, the foundation’s filings are required to be public.

The case involving the flagpole at Trump’s oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club began in 2006, when the club put up a giant American flag on the 80-foot pole. Town rules said flagpoles should be 42 feet high at most. Trump’s contention, according to news reports, was: “You don’t need a permit to put up the American flag.”

The town began to fine Trump, $1,250 a day.

Trump’s club sued in federal court, saying that a smaller flag “would fail to appropriately express the magnitude of Donald J. Trump’s . . . patriotism.”

They settled.

The town waived the $120,000 in fines. In September 2007, Trump wrote the town a letter, saying he had done his part as well.

“I have sent a check for $100,000 to Fisher House,” he wrote. The town had chosen Fisher House, which runs a network of comfort homes for the families of veterans and military personnel receiving medical treatment, as the recipient of the money. Trump added that, for good measure, “I have sent a check for $25,000” to another charity, the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial.

Trump provided the town with copies of the checks, which show that they came from the Trump Foundation.

In Palm Beach, nobody seems to have objected to the fines assessed on Trump’s business being erased by a donation from a charity.

“I don’t know that there was any attention paid to that at the time. We just saw two checks signed by Donald J. Trump,” said John Randolph, the Palm Beach town attorney. “I’m sure we were satisfied with it.”

 
Excerpt from a settlement filed in federal court in 2007.
In the other case in which a Trump Foundation payment seemed to help settle a legal dispute, the trouble began with a hole-in-one.

In 2010, a man named Martin Greenberg hit a hole-in-one on the 13th hole while playing in a charity golf tournament at Trump’s course in Westchester County, N.Y.

Greenberg won a $1 million prize. Briefly.

Later, Greenberg was told that he had won nothing. The prize’s rules required that the shot had to go 150 yards. But Trump’s course had allegedly made the hole too short.

Greenberg sued.

Eventually, court papers show, Trump’s golf course signed off on a settlement that required it to make a donation to a group of Greenberg’s choosing. Then, on the day that the parties informed the court they had settled their case, a $158,000 donation was sent to the Martin Greenberg Foundation.

That money came from the Trump Foundation, according to the tax filings of both Trump’s and Greenberg’s foundations.

Greenberg’s foundation reported getting nothing that year from Trump personally or from his golf club.

Both Greenberg and Trump have declined to comment.

Several tax experts said that the two cases* appeared to be clear examples of self-dealing, as defined by the tax code.

The Trump Foundation had made a donation, it seemed, so that a Trump business did not have to.

Rosemary E. Fei, a lawyer in San Francisco who advises nonprofit groups, said both cases* clearly fit the definition of self-dealing.

“Yes, Trump pledged as part of the settlement to make a payment to a charity, and yes, the foundation is writing a check to a charity,” Fei said. “But the obligation was Trump’s. And you can’t have a charitable foundation paying off Trump’s personal obligations. That would be classic self-dealing.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-br...-grows-up/

Quote: Writers beware: Marketing categories can be destiny. Few people in America know this better than the handful of writers gathered under the banner of the “Brat Pack.” The membership is now middle age and frankly a little testy about still having to deal with the label. “That whole ‘brat pack’ thing—Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz and Bret Easton Ellis and whoever else was supposed to be a part of it—was a myth,” Ellis told The Paris Review in 2010. “It never existed...



https://www.thenation.com/article/the-br...-grows-up/

These people are fucking fascists and must be stopped.

http://www.salon.com/2016/10/13/fox-busi...t-accuser/

Quote:Jessica Leeds, the 74-year-old former traveling businesswoman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her three decades ago on a first-class flight to New York, is now the target of a high-reaching doxing campaign.


Fox Business host Lou Dobbs on Thursday retweeted Leeds’ phone number and address as indication of her ties to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign, according to Business Insider.

Some Trump supporters want to repeal the 19the Amendment to the Constitution - the one that gave women the right to vote.

http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37639738

Quote:Calls for women to be denied their right to vote have trended on Twitter as polls suggested Donald Trump would win if only men could cast ballots in next month's White House election.

The Republican nominee's supporters were accused of tweeting #repealthe19th - a reference to the US constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage less than 100 years ago.

The hashtag went viral after polls suggested Mr Trump would win election if only men cast ballots.

Mr Trump has struggled to win over female voters, especially since a recent tape emerged of his sexually aggressive boasts.

The hashtag began trending after FiveThirtyEight, a political number-crunching blog, tweeted two polls which showed what the outcome of the presidential election would be if only women voted, and if only men voted.

He found that if the election only counted the female vote, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would win the presidency with 458 electoral votes and Mr Trump a meagre 80.

If only men voted in the presidential election, Mr Trump would win the election with 350 electoral votes and Mrs Clinton only 188.

A candidate must win 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Some of the tweets calling for a woman's right to vote to be repealed seemed in earnest.

How Does It Feel? Bob Dylan Wins the Nobel in Literature
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSOCT. 13, 2016, 12:10 P.M. E.D.T.
Continue reading the main story


STOCKHOLM — Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for expanding the poetic possibilities of music with a body of work that includes "Like a Rolling Stone," ''Blowin' in the Wind" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" — a stunning announcement that marked the first time the award has gone to a musician.

Reporters and others who had gathered at the Swedish Academy's headquarters reacted with a loud cheer as the name of the singer and songwriter was read out.

Dylan, 75, is widely regarded as the most influential poet-musician of his generation.

His protest songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'" became anthems for the U.S. anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. His densely poetic and image-rich "Mr. Tambourine Man" helped usher in the folk-rock movement. And his 1965 "Like a Rolling Stone," about a rich and pampered young woman forced to fend for herself, was pronounced the greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.

Dylan is the first American winner of the Nobel literature prize since Toni Morrison in 1993.

The academy commended him for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

Dylan rarely gives interviews, and a representative said the musician had no immediate comment. He is on tour and was scheduled to play in Las Vegas on Thursday night.

The announcement angered some literary figures but seemed to please far more.

Dylan's impact on popular culture has been immense, his influence as a lyricist extending to nearly every major music figure and songwriter of the last 50 years, from the Beatles to Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Ed Sheeran and beyond.

Generally described as a rock musician, Dylan has employed numerous musical styles, including country, gospel, blues, folk and pop. He pursued them all, sometimes separately and other times simultaneously, sometimes baffling and even angering his fans.

His songs can be snarling and accusatory ("Idiot Wind," ''Positively 4th Street"); apocalyptic ("A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"); dense and hallucinatory ("Desolation Row"); tender and wistful ("Visions of Johanna"); bracingly political ("Hurricane" and "Only a Pawn in their Game"); and enigmatic and absurdist ("Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again").

Some of his songs are studded with historical, literary or political references (Jack the Ripper, Captain Ahab, Shakespeare, Paul Revere, T.S. Eliot and Fidel Castro) and laced with sly humor. ("Highway 61 Revisited" opens with the line, "Oh, God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son.' Abe said, 'Man, you must be puttin' me on.'" "Blowin' in the Wind" captured the hopes of the '60s civil rights movement, yet sounded as if it had been handed down through the oral tradition from another century, with lines like: "How many times must the cannon balls fly before they're forever banned?".........

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-12/putin-ally-warns-americans-vote-trump-or-face-nuclear-war

The name of what is arguably Russia's most flamboyant, ultra-nationalist politician, and according to some the local incarnation of Donald Trump, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a deputy in the state Duma and leader of the nationalist LDPR party, is familiar to frequent readers: he most recently made an appearance on these pages two months ago, when he warned Germany that it risks utter destruction if it continued on its present track of operating Bundeswehr forces in the Baltics. Zhirinovsky also shares another feature with Donald Trump: both are outspoken to a fault. Which is why we were not surprised to read that asReuters reported earlier, Zhirinovsky urged Americans to vote for Donald Trump as president or "risk being dragged into a nuclear war

The following article has helped me to further crystallize some ideas I've had brewing:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2...ews-214314


I have a hope. My hope is that there will arise a Millennial dominated, new, anti-Fascist force. It will be a private-public partnership. It will proactively root out Fascists, Nazis, and all other strains of anti-American, anti-Democratic, anti-Humanistic totalitarianism. It will lead to a healthier HUAC. HUAC 2.0.

This HUAC will not prosecute mere notions and will not encroach on the 1st Amendment. However, it will, with extreme efficiency, root out actual plotters, perpetrators and traitors, who plan the destruction of all we hold dear.

I believe that the presence of war veterans among this new force will provide an aspect that was missing from anti-Fascist forces who tried but failed to stop the totalitarian monsters of the 20th Century. A robust, confident force, backed at times by appropriate security apparatus and weaponry, which can credibly smoke out, apprehend, and, deter, those who wish destruction upon liberal, Western, developed society, be they domestic or foreign.

This is my call to arms.

Zerohedge Wrote:A new research note from Moody's found that State pension funds were underfunded by $1.3 trillion at the end of FY15 but was expected to grow to $1.8 trillion at the end of FY17 as pensions continue to struggle with low returns.  We've discussed the unintended consequences of the Central Bank's low-rate polices on pension funds multiples times (see "Pension Duration Dilemma - Why Pension Funds Are Driving The Biggest Bond Bubble In History")...with the two most likely outcomes being benefits cuts for pensioners and/or crippling tax hikes for citizens.

Quote:Total US state aggregate adjusted net pension liabilities (ANPL) totaled $1.25 trillion, or 119% of revenue in fiscal 2015, Moody's Investors Service says in a new report. The results, based on compliance with new GASB 68 accounting rules, set a new ANPL baseline and are poised to rise for the next two fiscal years as market returns fall below annual targets.
 
"The median return for public pension plans in FY 2016 was 0.52% compared to an average assumed investment return of 7.5%," Moody's Vice President -- Senior Credit Officer Marcia Van Wagner says. "We project that aggregate state ANPL will grow to $1.75 trillion in FY 2017 audits."
 
The states with the highest pension burdens -- measured as the largest three-year average ANPL as a percent of state governmental revenue -- were consistent with previous years. Illinois topped the list with pension liabilities at 280% of total governmental revenue, followed by Connecticut (Aa3 negative) at 209%, Alaska (Aa2 negative) at 179%, Kentucky at 162%, and New Jersey at 157%.

Given that pretty much every state pension is now underfunded, Moody's introduced a new metric which they referred to as the "Tread Water" benchmark.  The largest underfunded plans in Kentucky, Illinois and New Jersey would require an incremental 7 - 7.5% of annual state revenue for contributions in order to simply stop unfunded liabilities from growing further.

Quote:Moody's new report also introduces a new "Tread Water" benchmark, which measures whether states' annual contributions to their pensions are enough to keep the unfunded net liability from growing. For FY 2015, states were evenly divided between falling short and exceeding the benchmark.
 
The report "States -- US: Medians - Low Returns, Weak Contributions Drive Continued Growth of State Pension Liabilities," says there were several states whose pension contributions were notably below the Tread Water mark, including Kentucky (Aa2 stable), New Jersey (A2 negative), Illinois (Baa2 negative), and Texas (Aaa stable).
 
To tread water, Kentucky would have had to contribute an additional 7.5% of revenue to its pension plans; the figure for Illinois is 6.8% of revenue and 6.9% for New Jersey. A tread water contribution plus debt service and retiree health care costs would result in total fixed costs of 33.5% for fiscally stressed Illinois and almost 31% of revenues for Connecticut.

Meanwhile, the CATO Institute points out that wages and benefits for state employees totaled $1.4 trillion in 2015 or 53% of total state and local spending.  Moreover, the report highlights that retirement benefits for state and local workers are substantially higher than the private sector at roughly $4.80 per hour compared to $1.23 per hour for private-sector workers. 

Quote:The largest component of state and local government spending is compensation for 16 million employees.  Total wages and benefits for state and local workers was $1.4 trillion in 2015, which accounted for 53 percent of all state and local spending.
 
State and local workers typically receive more generous benefit packages than do private-sector workers.  On average, retirement benefits for state and local workers cost $4.80 per hour, compared to $1.23 per hour for  private-sector workers. Insurance benefits (mainly  health  insurance)  for state  and  local  workers cost $5.43 per hour, compared to $2.59 per hour for the private sector.  Most state and local workers receive retirement health benefits, whereas most private-sector workers do not.
 
The costs of government pension and retirement health benefits are expected to rise rapidly in coming years.  Governments have promised their  workers generous retirement benefits, but most states have not put enough money aside to pay for them.  As a consequence, state and local governments will either have to cut benefits in coming years or impose higher taxes. 

Per the following chart, many states have racked up over $20,000 of liabilities per capita, a level from which it will be very difficult to recover absent benefit cuts, massive tax hikes and/or a federal bailout.

Zerohedge Wrote:But, as the CATO Institute points out, the pension crisis is likely much worse than what most auditor reports would suggest because discount rates of 7.4% are unreasonably high.  CATO estimates that reducing the discount rate from 7.4% to 2.7% would increase state pension underfunded liabilities from $1.2 trillion to $3.4 trillion. 

Quote:Pension shortfalls are actually larger than these figures indicate.  Those are the officially reported figures, but financial experts think that the discount rates used to report pension liabilities are too high.  Higher discount rates reduce reported liabilities and create an overly optimistic picture of pension plan health.
 
In his study, Rauh recalculated pension plan funding using a 2.7 percent discount rate, rather than the official average rate of 7.4 percent.  His    recalculated  unfunded  liability jumps from $1.2 trillion to $3.4 trillion.  Similarly, Munnell and Aubry found that their unfunded pension liabilities  jumped to $4.1 trillion if plans are estimated using a 4 percent discount rate.  Under that assumption, the funding level of state and local pension plans averages just 45 percent.

Unfortunately, the pension ponzi becomes more and more unsustainable each year with funds simply borrowing from future benefit payments, which are almost certainly impaired in many states, while paying current benefit recipients in full.  While these types of "kick the can down the road" games can be played for a long time, eventually the massive underfundings will have to be addressed...and that will not be a pretty day.