Mass Deportations Would ‘Decimate’ the Food Supply

Stephan: 

Fascist Trump is using immigrants for the same psychological purpose that Hitler used Jews. If you listen to what this loathsome man actually says and visualize it in your mind what it would look like. Imagine this. Armed military marching down your street slamming into houses and apartments with battering rams. Frequent gunfire as people resist, and dragging men, women, and children out of their homes dragging them to a truck or security van, throwing them in and taking them to concentration camps, excuse me, detention facilities, then loading them into ships, trains, and planes taking them back to wherever they came from and just dumping them there. This is what a campaigning Republican, excuse me, Fascist Party, Presidential candidate is proposing. That’s the America Trump is proposing. Putting aside this is Just what Hitler did to the Jews in Germany, Fascist Party voters might consider a few other things that might occur. Imagine all the democracies in the world breaking diplomatic relations with the United States. Imagine the countries that those immigrants came from not allowing those trains, ships, or planes to land and discharge those people. What then? Do we go to war with those countries? And, oh, how about this. You starve because the U.S. agricultural system collapses as this article describes.

Mexican migrant workers on a Colorado farm in 2011 load boxes of organic cilantro onto a truck.  Credit: Getty Images North America via Grist

As Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump campaigns for a second term in the White House, the former president has repeatedly promised to enact the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history. It’s a bold threat that legal experts say should be taken seriously, despite the significant technical and logistical challenges posed by deporting 11 million people from the United States. 

Even if only somewhat successful, Trump’s hard-line approach to immigration — with its laser focus on removing immigrants who live in the United States without permanent legal status — has the potential to uproot countless communities and families by conducting sweeping raids and placing people in detention centers.

Mass deportation would also, according to economists, labor groups and immigration advocates, threaten the economy and disrupt the U.S. food supply chain, which is reliant on many forms of migrant labor.

The ramifications of a mass deportation operation would be “huge” given “immigrant participation in our labor force,” […]

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Los Angeles Times editorials editor resigns after owner blocks presidential endorsement

Stephan: 

Part of what fascists always do in elections is threaten revenge on business owners who oppose them, and fascist Trump is openly doing exactly that.  To their historic shame two billionaires each of whom owns one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the United States, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, frightened that Trump might seek vengeance against their business interests are behaving exactly the way fascists want them to. Neither paper is endorsing a presidential candidate. As a result editors with integrity are resigning. Bravo to them.

Mariel Garza Credit: Columbia Journalism Review

Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told me in a phone conversation. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

On October 11, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper for $500 million in 2018, informed the paper’s editorial board that the Times would not be making an endorsement for president. The message was conveyed to Garza by Terry Tang, the paper’s editor.

The board had intended to endorse Harris, Garza told me, and she had drafted the outline of a proposed editorial. She had hoped to get feedback on the outline and was taken aback upon being told that the newspaper would not take a position.

“I didn’t think we […]

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Washington Post won’t endorse candidate in 2024 presidential election after Bezos decision

Stephan: 

I have written for both The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times when they were owned by different families. The Graham family owned the Post when I published with them, and Ben Bradley was the Editor. With endless courage and the highest ethics, the owners and the editor supported Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein through the whole Watergate crisis that ended in Nixon’s resignation. After that, The Washington Post took as its ethical logo statement: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. Well, today weakling billionaire Jeff Bezos, fearing that if fascist Trump wins his business interests would be impacted by Trump’s revenge turned out the Post’s lights leaving his newspaper in darkness. Both Woodward and Bernstein have joined to make a public statement condemning Bezos’ decision to block the endorsement of Harris his editorial staff had prepared. It is the first time in decades the Post has not endorsed a Presidential candidate.

Credit: CNN

For the first time in decades, The Washington Post will not endorse a candidate in this year’s presidential election, the newspaper’s publisher announced Friday, a decision that sparked widespread outrage among the paper’s staffers.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election,” Post publisher Will Lewis said in a statement. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

The Post reported the decision not to endorse was made by the newspaper’s billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, citing two sources briefed on the matter.

The Post’s editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris and it was ready to be approved by its board, but the draft was never presented, a person with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

“Many on the editorial board are surprised and angry,” the person said.

The Post has endorsed a presidential candidate in every election since the 1980s. In his statement, Lewis referred to the Editorial Board’s past decisions to not […]

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“Not Medically Necessary”: Inside the Company Helping America’s Biggest Health Insurers Deny Coverage for Care

Stephan: 

This is how the American illness profit system works. As this story lays out U.S. healthcare has nothing to do with fostering wellbeing for Americans. It is entirely about profit, and it is evil and the worst-ranked healthcare system in the developed world. If Harris and Walz win, and the Democrats win a majority in the House and Senate there is some hope that this awful system may finally be changed. If fascist Trump and his minions win, and the Fascist (formerly Republican) Party wins and take the majorities in Congress there is a good chance even Obamacare will be ended and healthcare in the United States will get even worse than it already is.

Reporting Highlights

  • Dialing for Dollars: America’s largest insurers hire EviCore to make decisions on whether to pay for care for more than 100 million people.
  • “The Dial”: EviCore uses an algorithm that allows it to adjust the chances that company doctors will screen prior authorization requests, increasing the possibility of denials.
  • Lucrative Deals: Some EviCore contracts are based on how deeply the company can reduce spending on medical procedures. It tells insurers that it can provide a 3-to-1 return on investment.

Every day, patients across America crack open envelopes with bad news. Yet another health insurer has decided not to pay for a treatment that their doctor has recommended. Sometimes it’s a no for an MRI for a high school wrestler with a strained back. Sometimes for a cancer procedure that will help a grandmother with a throat tumor. Sometimes for a heart scan for a truck driver feeling short of breath.

But the insurance companies don’t always make these decisions. Instead, they often outsource medical reviews to a largely hidden industry that makes money by turning down doctors’ requests for payments, known as prior authorizations. Call it the denials for dollars business.

The biggest player is a […]

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Arrest made after Phoenix USPS collection mailbox fire damages ballots overnight

Stephan: 

The MAGAt election violence has already started, as this story from Arizona describes. There is a large cohort of American voters, particularly men with no college education, who want to see fascists take control of the government because they think they will gain power and status if Trump and other fascists come to power. They don’t understand that they are the ones whose lives will suffer the greatest degradation, and so they are organizing and preparing for violence.

Mailbox fire ballots damaged
Phoenix Fire Department and police officials are investigating after a United States Postal Service mailbox was believed to have been set on fire overnight, damaging a number of mailed-in ballots.

PHOENIX — An arrest was reportedly been made after a Phoenix United States Postal Service mailbox was believed to have been set on fire overnight, damaging a number of mailed-in ballots.

Emergency crews were called to the USPS Osborn Station, near 7th Avenue and Indian School Road, around 1:30 a.m. where a drove-up mail collection box was on fire.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer released the following statement:

“We are waiting for details from law enforcement. We encourage all voters who used that mail box in the last 36 hours to check the status of their ballots at https://BeBallotReady.Vote. Successful delivery is usually reflected on that website within 72 hours. Voters should be aware that tomorrow, October 25 is the last day to request a replacement ballot. If a voter believes they were impacted by this incident they can learn more about how to make that request at https://Request.Maricopa.Vote.”

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes released the following statement about the incident:

I have been alerted to […]

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