What’s coming up on Sunday Kos:
- Trump wants to make 2020 about 'socialism'? Please proceed, by Ian Reifowitz
- Green New Deal rollout renews battle in Congress over climate change, by Sher Watts Spooner
- Defying Trump's false dichotomy of "Vengeance or Vision," by Frank Vyan Walton
- There is absolutely no doubt that we can pay for Medicare for All and we better! by Egberto Willies
- Black History Month. Gloria Hayes Richardson led a movement, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Trump accidentally gets it right on expanding legal immigration, by Jon Perr
- Fear and loathing in America, by Mark E Andersen
• An adviser to Ocasio-Cortez fact-checked Tucker Carlson over Green New Deal on his own show:
Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor, explained how a claim repeated in the conservative media that the deal ― which aims to render fossil fuels obsolete by 2030 ― wanted to completely replace air travel with rail travel was incorrect.
Carlson noted that the deal proposes “building out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel would stop becoming necessary.” Hockett replied it was “apparently being misunderstood, right? We are really talking about expanding optionality here, we are not talking about getting rid of anything, right?”
“We are talking about basically making it cost-effective to move into more modern forms of technology, more modern forms of production, which would then enable people actually cost-effectively to transition to that stuff,” Hockett added. “We are not talking about requiring anything or prohibiting anything. That’s sort of 1980s-style environmentalism.”
• Americans seeing a 8.4 percent drop in their average tax refunds:
The Internal Revenue Service reports that the average refunds last week were down 8.4 percent for the first week of the tax season. The average tax refund check paid out this year has been $1,865, down almost $200 from this same time last year. Changes to the tax code also complicated payroll withholding, meaning many employers did not withhold enough and their employees now owe more taxes.
• Trump announces that second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will take place in Hanoi at the end of this month: Although a U.S. negotiator said progress is being made in talks laying the groundwork for the coming meeting, other observers are skeptical. Eager to deflect from his domestic troubles, Trump has gone from tweet-threats of “fire and fury” against “little rocket man” Kim in 2017 to this embarrassing tweet that sounds like an awestruck fanboy that he posted less than 20 minutes after his tweeted announcement that Hanoi would be the venue for the second summit.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Larry Beinart provides some laughs amid the serious stuff at “To Tax or Not Tax the Rich More, That Is the Question:
[Howard] Schultz also felt personally insulted by Elizabeth Warren.
She tried to criticise him "for being a billionaire". His umbrage was not for himself, it was on behalf of the American Dream. "I'm self-made. I grew up in the projects in Brooklyn, New York. I thought that was the American Dream?"
Warren's actual proposal was that the first $50m in assets would not be taxed. Assets above that would be taxed at two percent. Assets above one billion dollars would be taxed at three percent.
It would affect just 75,000 households.
• TSA found more guns in carry-on luggage than ever in 2018:
The Transportation Security Administration discovered a record 4,239 guns in travelers’ carry-on luggage in 2018, according to annual figures released by the agency Thursday. The majority of the firearms, about 10 per day on average, were loaded. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, the nation’s second-busiest airport, topped the list for most guns seized with a total of 298. (August was a particularly busy month there, with 32 guns removed.) America’s busiest airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International, didn’t make the top 10 list. [...]
A CBS News investigation of the TSA data from 2017 revealed that nearly two-thirds of the people responsible for attempting to carry guns onto planes were white men.
• Got local news? Not if Alden Capital has its way and snatches up Gannett:
The vultures are circling again. The same hedge-fund investors at Alden Global Capital who sucked the life from scores of US newspapers to buy themselves mansions in Palm Beach now want to buy the Gannett company, owner of the country’s largest newspaper chain. If Alden’s hostile takeover succeeds, the hedge fund’s Digital First Media company would gain control of Gannett’s 100-plus local newspapers as well as Gannett’s flagship publication, USA Today. Digital First, which has a long record of stripping the staff and assets of newspapers, would become the largest newspaper chain in the country. And journalism—enabling the informed public that democratic governance requires—would suffer another grievous blow.
Ironically, Gannett has a reputation for doing the same thing, gobbling up newspapers, reducing staffs, and in so many instances draining anything but the most prosaic shallow coverage.
Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in here, or you can download the Stitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio.” |