Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018
Stephan: Do you have a parent, a grandparent, or a sibling in a nursing home? Well you better monitor their care with increasing attention because, thanks to the Trump administration, regulatory oversight of such facilities has been significantly degraded. Here's the story.
The nursing home industry, which has long been awash in claims of health violations and neglect, may soon be freed from the kinds of penalties it has paid in the past. A new Trump administration policy will roll back fines against nursing homes cited for mistreatment or abuse.
The American Health Care Association and the nursing home industry are largely in favor of the move, having requested the change to Medicare’s penalty protocols in 2016. The Hill reports:
The American Health Care Association had argued that inspectors were too focused on finding wrongdoings at nursing homes instead of assisting the facilities.
“It is critical that we have relief,” Mark Parkinson, the group’s president, wrote in a letter to Donald Trump, then president-elect, in December 2016.
According to the [New York] Times, nearly 6,500 nursing homes have received at least one citation for a serious violation since 2013 and about two-thirds of those have been fined by Medicare.
Under the new rules, regulators are now discouraged from giving nursing homes fines, in some cases. Fines for some homes may also be decreased as a result of the new […]
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Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018
Peter Montgomery, - Right Wing Watch
Stephan: Here is the latest about the devil's bargain between the christofascist cult and the Trump administration. This is a partnership in direct contradiction to what the Founders planned for America, and it has dangerous and serious implications for our democracy and politics.
Ralph Drollinger
Ralph Drollinger’s Capitol Ministries is out with its first-of-the-year Bible study for public officials. Capitol Ministries runs weekly Bible studies for members of the Trump administration Cabinet and dozens of members of Congress, and has aggressive plans to expand its already significant reach at local, state and international levels.
Drollinger pretends that his group does not push a particular policy agenda, but the Bible study guides he publishes make it clear that his particular worldview and interpretation of the Bible is directly tied to right-wing economic and social policies, such as his portrayal of social welfare programs as unbiblical and his insistence that only righteous Christians can make righteous lawmakers and judges.
Drollinger’s first Bible study of 2018 focuses on the importance of public officials understanding sin the way he does—not only as individuals’ failure to conform to the moral law of God, but also the fallenness and sinfulness of the world itself. He tells public officials that “a proper biblical understanding” of sin should influence their “thinking and formation regarding public policy.”
“This study is integral to […]
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Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018
Evans Osnos, Staff Writer - The New Yorker
Stephan: I believe that history will conclude that Donald Trump and the Republican Party destroyed America's stature in the world, and began a massive geopolitical shift, rather like the shift that occurred after the end of the Second World War when European, particularly British colonialism came to an end. We are a diminished country increasingly seen as a national bully led by a deranged man, and his band of zombies.
In an unfamiliar moment, China’s pursuit of a larger role in the world coincides with America’s pursuit of a smaller one.
Illustration by Paul Rogers
When the Chinese action movie “Wolf Warrior II” arrived in theatres, in July, it looked like a standard shoot-’em-up, with a lonesome hero and frequent explosions. Within two weeks, however, “Wolf Warrior II” had become the highest-grossing Chinese movie of all time. Some crowds gave it standing ovations; others sang the national anthem. In October, China selected it as its official entry in the foreign-language category of the Academy Awards.
The hero, Leng Feng, played by the action star Wu Jing (who also directed the film), is a veteran of the “wolf warriors,” special forces of the People’s Liberation Army. In retirement, he works as a guard in a fictional African country, on the frontier of China’s ventures abroad. A rebel army, backed by Western mercenaries, attempts to seize power, and the country is engulfed in civil war. Leng shepherds civilians to […]
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Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018
Stephan: The United States is a very sick country, a sickness based on the fact that American society has only one social priority, profit. Nowhere is the evil experiment of this profit first capitalism more apparent than in Appalachia.
Here is one of the best assessments of this cancer capitalism that I have read.
Nick Mullins didn’t plan on working in the mines. But the industry was nearly impossible to escape.
Credit: Roger May for Quartz
The first time Nick Mullins entered Deep Mine 26, a coal mine in southwestern Virginia, the irony hit him hard. Once, his ancestors had owned the coal-seamed cavern that he was now descending into, his trainee miner hard-hat secure.
His people had settled the Clintwood and George’s Fork area, along the Appalachian edge of southern Virginia, in the early 17th century. Around the turn of the 1900s, smooth-talking land agents from back east swept through the area, coaxing mountain people into selling the rights to the ground beneath them for cheap. One of Mullins’ ancestors received 12 rifles and 13 hogs—one apiece for each of his children, plus a hog for himself—in exchange for the rights to land that has since produced billions of dollars worth of coal.
“I probably ended up mining a lot of that coal,” says Mullins, a broad-shouldered, bearded 38-year-old with an easy smile.
There were other […]
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Tuesday, January 2nd, 2018
Benjamin Hart, - New York Magazine
Stephan: Trump is irrefutably a compulsive liar, nothing he says can be taken at face value. So why did anyone believe he would do what he said he would, and get out of direct involvement with his business interests? He certainly has not done so, as this report lays out, and it is plain to anyone who looks that he is treating the presidency like a cash cow to be milked to his benefit.
Trump in his Penthouse, a stunning example of Dictator Chic
Credit: Ben Baker/Redux
In a piece centered on President Trump’s special relationship with Mar-a-Lago, his opulent Florida club and preferred golfing destination, the Washington Post reports that President Trump not only solicits advice from the moneyed members of the place but also takes their opinions seriously.
“At Mar-a-Lago, anyone who can get within eyesight changes the game,” said a former White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss a sensitive subject, and referring to club members and guests who sometimes try the influence the president on policy, share an opinion on his administration or simply say hello. “Everyone who is angling for something knows to be there.
And later:
Trump often asks guests about foreign affairs or legislative accomplishments and solicits their opinions on certain aides or how the White House is doing. Earlier this year, Trump quizzed club members about the Paris climate accord and North Korea, one person familiar with his […]
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