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Friday, November 29th, 2019

A gun is fired on US school grounds twice a week, database reveals

Lois Beckett,    -  The Guardian (U.K.)

Stephan:  There is no other Western democracy in the world where little children and teenagers routinely do emergency shooter drills, because they may need those skills to survive. Just look at the headline of this report.

Police officers take part in active shooter response training exercise at Fountain middle school in Fountain, Colorado, in June 2017.
Credit: Dougal Brownlie/AP

A gun is fired on a school campus in America nearly twice a week. Suicide, homicides, a police shooting, attacks on students by other students: more than once a month this past year, gunfire on American school and university campuses has turned deadly, according to a database of school gunfire incidents compiled by advocates.

In the latest in a series of brutal shootings in California, and 11-year-old boy and a 16-year-old boy were shot to death in the parking lot of an elementary school in Union City, California, in the early hours of Saturday morning. Police had no immediate motive for the shooting, but said that a suspect or suspects had fired into the van the boys were sitting in multiple times.

Schools are one of the safest places for kids in the United States, and shootings in and around schools represent only a tiny fraction of the violence that […]

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Friday, November 29th, 2019

Rural America’s banking problem

Courtenay Brown,    -  Axos

Stephan:  Except for the people who live in rural America few in the country seem to realize the degree to which life in those areas is becoming more difficult, more dangerous, and less comfortable.  Hospital are closing by the score because they aren't profitable enough or, as a result of criminal Trump's immigration policies, because the foreign-born physicians and nurses that staffed rural hospitals are no longer coming to America. A rural American who has a heart attack may not be able to get to a hospital in the "golden hour" thus putting their survival at risk. A rural pregnant woman whose water breaks may live more than 100 miles from a hospital and end up delivering her baby in a car before she can get to a facility where she can get the care she needs, and this is just the beginning. Now banking for rural Americans is being degraded in a massive way, as this story describes. The factual reality is that because everything in the United States is calibrated to profit, and rural areas aren't that profitable, the quality of life for those who live there, particularly in Red value states, is becoming problematic.

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Add one more thing to the list of rural America’s ails: diminished access to banks.

Driving the news: The shuttering of branches across the U.S. had a disproportionate negative effect in certain areas, according to new research from the Federal Reserve.

  • Underbanked rural communities were left with even fewer banks in the span of five years.
  • Urban communities didn’t see the same substantial declines.

Why it matters: Lack of banking services could help propel the issues plaguing rural America — including population declines (as more people move to urban areas) and economic malaise — and exacerbate the rural-urban divide.

  • Access to banking services is crucial to “build a cushion of wealth that can provide stability and support economic opportunity and mobility over the long term,” per the Fed.

The latest: The Fed identified 44 counties that had 10 or fewer branches in 2012 and then lost at least half of those banks by 2017. 89% of those counties are rural, including places like Cochran County in Texas […]

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Friday, November 29th, 2019

Trump Tax Records Reveal New Inconsistencies — This Time for Trump Tower

Heather Vogell,  Reporter  -  ProPublica

Stephan:  It's fascinating don't you think? Trump is so obviously a grifter and a criminal, and has been one his entire life. No person remotely like Trump has ever occupied the White House, and the Founders would be horrified that such a person was president.  Yet his blatant criminality, racism, obvious ignorance, and psychopathic personality makes not the slightest difference to, according to FiveThirtyEight today, 41.8% of Americans who approve of him. That I think is the most telling thing to be said about America today.

Trump Tower in New York City
Credit: spencer Platt/Getty

Donald Trump’s business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.

In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Tower’s commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.

For example, as of December 2011 and June 2012, respectively, Trump’s business told the lender that 99% and 98.7% of the tower’s commercial space was occupied, according to a prospectus for the loan. The figures were taken from “borrower financials,” the prospectus stated.

In tax filings, however, Trump’s business said the building’s occupancy was 83% in January 2012 […]

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Thursday, November 28th, 2019

WMO: Carbon dioxide levels hit the highest recorded in human history

Rebeccas Falconer,    -  Coyote Gulch/Axios

Stephan:  The temperature is going to go up 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, a cataclysmic change, Yet, no one will ever be able to say we weren't warned. Humanity is going to condemn criminal Trump and his spineless Congressional moral perverts, and his base as well. If you are a Republican be prepared for your grandchildren to hate you.

Air pollution
Credit: Axios

Atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) reached the highest ever recorded in human history in 2018, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced in a new report Monday. (emphasis added)

Why it matters: If the trend continues, as predicted, the impact of climate change will become even more severe, the intergovernmental organization warns. “The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement accompanying the report.

  • “Carbon dioxide is the most important long-lived greenhouse gas, with a single molecule lasting in the air for hundreds to around 1,000 years,” science journalist Andrew Freedman has noted for Axios. “The continued buildup of carbon dioxide due to human activities, such as burning fossil fuels for energy, is driving global temperatures up and instigating harmful impacts worldwide.”

By the numbers: The WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports that globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 407.8 parts per million last year. That means for every 1 million molecules […]

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