Bryce Covert, Economic Editor - Think Progress
Stephan: I don't know whether you have noticed it, but one of the outstanding hallmarks of the Trump administration, with a few exceptions like General Mattis, is how compromised their resumes all are. Sessions, an identified racist who failed Congressional approval as a judge on that point, and who had a dreadful senatorial record, if wellbeing is your criterion. Tillerson, head of a carbon corporation that has done unspeakable damage to the biosphere. Scott Pruitt, paid climate change denialist, Betsy DeVos, and on and on.
Never in my memory has such an assemblage come into power, and my calibration is Nixon. I was in government, knew most of the players, so saw it from the inside. Trump is much much worse, and I cannot imagine what it must be like to work in the White House now.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin shaking hands with President Donald Trump.
Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
The reverse mortgage subsidiary of OneWest, the bank founded and formerly run by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin that was later bought by CIT Group, agreed to an $89 million settlement with the United States on Tuesday over claims that it defrauded a government program out of money it didn’t qualify for. (emphasis added)
Financial Freedom, the reverse mortgage unit, allegedly got mortgage insurance payments from the Federal Housing Administration between March 2011 and August 2016 despite failing to meet deadlines and other requirements.
Although the settlement doesn’t amount to the unit admitting to wrongdoing, government officials noted that it took financial responsibility. “Today’s settlement agreement resolves allegations that this lender failed to comply with FHA servicing requirements and sought to receive financial gains that it was not legally entitled to,” Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Inspector General David A. […]
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John Nichols, - The Nation
Stephan: Here's another Trump zombie.
When I first saw Sheriff Dave with his fake medals, and bully boy affect, I just thought him sad. I could not imagine anyone seriously considering him for a significant post. And that was reinforced when, a little later, I read that he plagiarized much of his master's thesis. Of course he did, he's one of those pious, sanctimonious bullies who think they are above the law.
Lo and behold he is about to take a senior position in the Trump administration. As if that were not bad enough, he doesn't like the most fundamental principle of the American legal system, Habeas Corpus, and wants to change it, jail journalists, and more or less put the Bill of Rights aside. Here's the story.
David Clarke Jr. at an NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky.
Credit: Mark Humphrey
Donald Trump is shredding the Constitution. But he can’t do it on his own. He needs a lot of help to advance an agenda that aggressively assaults the rule of law, the separation of powers, freedom of the press, and the basic liberties of Americans.
Trump’s got Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the job of attacking voting-rights and civil-rights protections. He’s got House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell shutting down the system of checks and balances. But the work of undermining basic liberties is a big task, even for an authoritarian president, so Trump is reportedly calling in reinforcements.
Meet Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr., an ardent ally of President Trump and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who announced on Wednesday that he would leave his elected post to become an assistant secretary in the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security. Though DHS officials have so far declined to confirm the move, Clarke says, “I’m looking forward […]
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Gretchen Livingston and Anna Brown, - Pew Research Center
Stephan: Here is some good news. In spite of the growing racism in certain quarters, the rest of American society is going in the other direction. It has only been since 1967 that racial intermarriage became legal throughout the nation. Up until then miscegenation was a crime that rated prison time. I say this to make it clear just how much change has occurred, and how deeply racist the country was just a few decades ago. Now, as this report describes, "one-in-six newlyweds are married to someone of a different race or ethnicity."
Terminology
In 2015, 17% of all U.S. newlyweds had a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, marking more than a fivefold increase since 1967, when 3% of newlyweds were intermarried, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.2 In that year, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Loving v. Virginia case ruled that marriage across racial lines was legal throughout the country. Until this ruling, interracial marriages were forbidden in many states.
More broadly, one-in-ten married people in 2015 – not just those who recently married – had a spouse of a different race or ethnicity. This translates into 11 million people who were intermarried. The growth in intermarriage has coincided with shifting societal norms as Americans have become more accepting of marriages involving spouses of different races and ethnicities, even within their own families.
The most dramatic increases in intermarriage have occurred among black newlyweds. Since 1980, the share who married someone […]
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Stephan: Here's some more good news. Solar technology is moving faster than anyone predicted. We are moving to non-carbon energy in spite of everything Trump and others committed to carbon energy are attempting.
Credit: University of Newcastle
Solar panels have become increasingly inexpensive in the past months. However, while a number of large-scale energy producers are shifting towards solar power, there is still a lack of homes that have adopted the technology. In Australia, a place bathed in seemingly constant direct sunlight, price is still a major stumbling block for homeowners considering switching to solar. Things may be about to change, however, thanks to a new variety of solar tile developed by researchers from the University of Newcastle (UON).
Instead of the photovoltaics (PVs) that traditional panels use, UON’s Paul Dastoor and his team are testing printable solar tiles. “It’s completely different from a traditional solar cell. They tend to be large, heavy, encased in glass — tens of millimeters thick,” Dastoor told Mashable. “We’re printing them on plastic film that’s less than 0.1 of a millimeter thick.”
Currently, UON is one of only three sites that are testing printed solar. “We’ve […]
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Ian Johnston, Environment Correspondent - The Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: As anyone who reads SR knows the Arctic is melting faster than the rest of the world. Melting is not a constant across the globe but the Arctic melt is warming at approximately two to three times faster than elsewhere. I say this first because I want you to keep in mind as you read this report. The official United States position under the Trump Administration, and a Republican Congress is actively seeking to subvert the wellbeing of humanity, and the biosphere in which we live.
I believe history will see this as a tactic, part of a crime against humanity, an act of genocide. We are actively and aggressively, as a matter of foreign policy, engaging in a kind of war. One which will produce millions of deaths, and destroy for human habitation vast areas of the globe. In essence an outcome even worse than explosive warfare. Here is why I say this, on the basis of outcome data, not political polemic.
The United States managed to remove references to the alarming rate at which Arctic sea ice is being lost from an international declaration, it has been revealed, in one of the first signs that the Trump administration will attempt to water down action on climate change by the rest of the world. (emphasis added)
The Arctic Council is an intergovernmental body which represents eight countries with an interest in the region, including the US, Canada, Russia and the Scandinavian states.
Earlier this month it published the ‘Fairbanks Declaration’ which, to the surprise of some, did actually recognise that climate change was happening and twice as fast in the Arctic.
While they were not all accepted in their entirety, the US largely got its way.
There is concern that Trump administration will withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
But it is also thought some US officials believe it is better to remain a signatory in order to have a seat at the table during further international negotiations […]
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