Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is
Colorado: Nov. 8 in person, Oct. 31 on line and by mail; Connecticut: Nov. 8 in person, Nov. 1 on line and by mail; Idaho: Nov. 8 in person; Illinois: Nov. 8 in person; Iowa: Nov. 8 in person, Oct. 29 on line; Maine: Nov. 8 in person; Maryland: Nov. 3 in person; Minnesota: Nov. 8 in person; Montana: Nov. 8 in person; Nebraska: Oct. 28 in person; New Hampshire: Nov. 8 in person, Oct. 29 by mail; North Carolina: Nov. 5 in person; North Dakota: No registration required; Utah: Nov. 1 on line and in person; Vermont: Nov. 2 on line, by mail, and in person; Washington: Oct. 31 in person; Washington, DC: Nov. 8 in person; Wisconsin: Nov. 8 in person; Wyoming: Nov. 8 in person.
• Wage growth finally took off in 2014. The liberal Economic Policy Institute notes:
Annual inflation-adjusted earnings of the top 1.0 percent of wage earners grew 2.9 percent in 2015, and the top 0.1 percent’s earnings grew 3.4 percent, according to our analysis of the latest Social Security Administration wage data. What is relatively unique about 2015 was that the 3.4 percent wage growth for the bottom 90 percent matched that of the top 0.1 percent. This strong wage growth for the bottom 90 percent reflects both the lull in inflation (up just 0.1 percent) and the failure of wage inequality to continue its growth in 2015. Annual wages of the bottom 90 percent now stand 3.5 percent above what they were pre-recession in 2007, with all of that growth essentially occurring in 2015.
• Cleveland Indians racist “Chief Wahoo” makes his appearance in Game 2:
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred plans to meet with Indians owner Paul Dolan following the World Series to discuss the team's continued use of the controversial Chief Wahoo logo.
The smiling, red-faced symbol has stirred strong opinions for years. Manfred said he understands "that particular logo is offensive to some people, and all of us at Major League Baseball understand why."
• The Yale Record non-endorses: The editors made note that in the humor magazine’s 144-year history, it had never endorsed any candidate for president. To maintain its federal tax-exempt status, they didn’t endorse again this year either. Instead:
In particular, we do not endorse Hillary Clinton’s exemplary leadership during her 30 years in the public eye. We do not support her impressive commitment to serving and improving this country—a commitment to which she has dedicated her entire professional career. Because of unambiguous tax law, we do not encourage you to support the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history, nor do we encourage all citizens to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all by electing Secretary Clinton on November 8.
• What the actual hell? A Janesville, Wisconsin, elementary school teacher who showed up seriously drunk to chaperone students at a bowling alley sued the city and won a $75,000 settlement. She disappeared during her chaperoning duties and was found by fellow teachers passed out in the restroom. She was taken to a local hospital and found to have blood alcohol content level three times the limit the state considers to be too impaired to drive. She was not charged or convicted of anything. But her BAC found its way into the local newspaper and she claimed that this private medical information should not have been released.
• Chattanooga did itself a big favor with a municipally owned fast internet that should be a model for others: Of course, the lobbyists and lawyers for private companies have opposed this approach elsewhere and done all they can to make it illegal:
Chattanooga and many of the other 82 other cities and towns in the United States that have thus far built their own government-owned, fiber-based internet are held up as examples for the rest of the country to follow. Like the presence of well-paved roads, good internet access doesn’t guarantee that a city will be successful. But the lack of it guarantees that a community will get left behind as the economy increasingly demands that companies compete not just with their neighbors next door, but with the entire world.
• NY Supreme Court orders Exxon Mobil to produce climate documents:
In a loss for ExxonMobil, the New York State Supreme Court has ordered the oil giant and its accounting firm to produce documents subpoenaed in a highly charged investigation of whether the company concealed from investors and the public what it knew about climate change as long as four decades ago.
The case stems from an investigation by the Pulitzer-winning InsideClimate News website that found evidence that the oil giant’s own scientists had warned company executives about the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels in the 1970s. Exxon paid millions of dollars to shills who smeared climate scientists and spread propaganda claiming human-caused climate change was not a thing.
• 10,000 files on Chicago Police Dept.’s torture now online:
The Chicago Torture Archive will open this month at the University of Chicago. The massive collection comes from efforts by the People’s Law Office, a civil-rights organization, to gather interrogations, criminal-trial files, civil-litigation documents, works of journalism, and records of activism spurred by the CPD torture cases documented between 1972 and 1991.
Briefly stated, over 100 black men were tortured by officers in order to force confessions, drive them to incriminate co-defendants, or to intimidate possible witnesses to police brutality.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, first thing’s first: setting Morning Joe straight on the Trump Foundation. Greg Dworkin keeps us apprised of the latest polls, and how the Trump Bunker is working to undo them. If Mos Eisley went condo and had a triplex penthouse, it’d be Trump Tower.
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