Donald Trump; NRA President Wayne LaPierre
Credit: Jim Watson
After claiming in a recent televised meeting with congressional leaders that he supports expanded background checks and an assault weapons ban, Donald Trump has predictably reversed course and embraced a platform on school safety that seems as if it had been written by the NRA. The pro-gun organization spent more than $30 million to get Trump elected, after all, and clearly intends to get its money’s worth.
But while Trump’s public flip-flop on the gun safety issue garnered major headlines, what’s less well covered is the quiet but crucial step the president is taking to protect the gun industry’s profits: Stacking the courts with rabidly pro-gun federal judges, who pose a real threat to the integrity of state and local gun regulations. With the recent escalation of pressure on politicians to pass meaningful legislation controlling who can buy guns and what kinds of guns they can buy, it’s more important than ever to focus on […]
Merton Mann, mugshot
Credit: the Dunbarton Police Department
A Republican Party operative was arrested on Friday for felony indecent exposure following a task force investigation, the Union Leaderreported Saturday.
Merton Mann, 74, is being held Merrimack County Jail after being charged with felony Indecent Exposure and Lewdness and Certain Uses of Computer Services Prohibited.
“Dunbarton Police in conjunction with the New Hampshire Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce, comprised of members of the Bedford Police Department, Portsmouth Police Department, and Homeland Security Investigation’s executed a search warrant at Mr. Mann’s School Street apartment this morning,” Dunbarton Police stated.
This is not Mann’s first encounter with the law.
“A former selectman, Mann in 2013 was indicted and later convicted on a felony theft charge regarding money that was taken over a 4-year period from the Dunbarton Historical Society,” the Union Leader explained. “Earlier this week, Mann was re-elected to a 3-year term on the Dunbarton Cemetery Board of Trustees. He ran unopposed.”
Mann had served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives and as […]
Mike Pompeo
Credit: Alex Wong
President Donald Trump has officially fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and intends to nominate current CIA director Mike Pompeo in his place.
Tillerson was the former CEO of ExxonMobil, which for decades was the number one funder of climate science disinformation until they were surpassed by the Koch brothers starting in 2005. But before Pompeo became CIA Director in 2017, he had for six years been a GOP House member from Kansas — and “the #1 all time recipient of #KOCH Industries $$$,” as the nonprofit research group OpenSecrets.org tweeted at the time:
In just four election […]
Arizona desert
Credit: Kevin E. Schmidt/Zuma
The Southwest United States is wrapping up an abnormally dry winter. Nearly all of Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California are facing drought conditions in 2018. About a quarter of the West’s drinking water relies on melting snow, which has been in short supply this year, to fill up reservoirs.
While it’s unlikely that the Southwest United States is headed for a full-scale disaster like in Cape Town, South Africa, where residents have severely restricted water usage after three years of drought. But thanks to climate-changed linked droughts in the Southwest, water will become a precious commodity in this part of the US. “There’s a general sense that there will be less water in the future,” says Michael Cohen, a senior research associate at the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank.
Within the next several decades, states in the Southwest will receive considerably less rain than they do now. The region is naturally dry, but over the last 100 years developers have turned sprawling deserts into communities with lush green grass […]
U.S. Postal Service truck.
Credit:Alexander Marks
The U.S. banking establishment has been at war with the post office since at least 1910, when the Postal Savings Bank Act established a public savings alternative to a private banking system that had crashed the economy in the Bank Panic of 1907. The American Bankers Association was quick to respond, forming a Special Committee on Postal Savings Legislation to block any extension of the new service. According to a September 2017 article in The Journal of Social History titled “ ‘Banks of the People’: The Life and Death of the U.S. Postal Savings System,” the banking fraternity would maintain its enmity toward the government savings bank for the next 50 years.
As far back as the late 19th century, support for postal savings had united a nationwide coalition of workers and farmers who believed that government policy should prioritize their welfare over private business interests. Advocates noted that most of the civilized nations of the world maintained postal savings banks, providing depositors with a safe haven […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
