Today’s comic by Jen Sorensen is Tips for getting along with Trump voters:
• A.G. Sessions repeats discredited drug-war talking points:
“I believe it’s an unhealthy practice, and current levels of THC in marijuana are very high compared to what they were a few years ago, and we’re seeing real violence around that,” Sessions said. “Experts are telling me there’s more violence around marijuana than one would think and there’s big money involved.”
In reality, violent crime rates tend to decrease where marijuana is legalized. [...]
Sessions isn’t operating entirely by his lonesome in claiming pot liberalization begets violence. A handful of Colorado politicians insist that crime there is going up in acute response to legalization — a claim that others including the Denver police department reject.
• These colleges are better than Harvard at giving poor kids a leg up.
• Second report on 4th quarter GDP returns same result as first report: Seasonally adjusted, inflation-adjusted, annualized growth in gross domestic product for the October-December period was 1.9 percent, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Tuesday. That was the same calculation made in the first report issues last month. The BEA provides three monthly reports on GDP growth for every quarter. Third-quarter 2016 growth was 3.5 percent. For all of 2016, the GDP grew a paltry 1.6 percent, the worst showing since 2011. It grew 2.6 percent in 2015. Economic data for the first two months of the 1st quarter of 2017 has been mixed. Earlier this month 42 forecasters surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia predicted the GDP would grow 2.2 percent in the first quarter on an annual basis.
• Some survival suggestions for Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, who doesn’t like criticism:
1) Develop a thicker skin. I can get why you’re upset. If Google Scholar is any guide, there’s a good reason you never had to deal with criticism from strangers. Until you took a position with the White House, no one had bothered to take your work seriously.
In occupying a position of power, however, you’ve opened yourself up to critical scrutiny. The results have been … not pretty. [...]
• Trump says Pentagon budget could be $30 billion more than the $54 billion increase he announced would be in his 2018 budget proposal. In a taped interview, the pr*sident told “Fox and Friends” Tuesday that "We're going to upgrade our military substantially." He also said that on top of the increase he’s already announced, another $30 billion could be budgeted for the Defense Department. When he’s done, he said, the United States will have the greatest military ever. Presumably, if another $30 billion is budgeted for the military, another $30 billion will have to hacked out of the social programs, foreign aid, the Environmental Protection Agency, climate programs and other discretionary spending. An $84 billion increase would be more than a 13 percent boost over the 2017 budget.
• Survey on retirement security shows most Americans dread possibility of living out their golden years in poverty. And they have good reason to worry, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security:
“If current trends continue, the U.S. soon will face rates of poverty among senior citizens not seen since the Great Depression. Of the 18 million workers between the ages of 55 and 64 in 2012, more than four million will be poor or near poor at age 65. This includes 2.6 million Americans considered middle-class prior to retirement.”
More than 25,000 forest elephants killed in a decade for their ivory in key wildlife reserve: The killings in Gabon's Minkébé National Park between 2004 and 2014 reduced the park’s forest elephant population between 78 and 81 percent during that period. Researchers published in the journal Current Biology found that the killings were mostly the result of poachers crossing the border from Gabon’s northern neighbor, Cameroon. "To save Central Africa's forest elephants, we need to create new multinational protected areas and coordinate international law enforcement to ensure the prosecution of foreign nationals who commit or encourage wildlife crimes in other countries," said John Poulsen, the lead researcher of the journal report and assistant professor of tropical ecology at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
• Big Corn joins with foe Big Oil to fight electric car: Bob Dinneen, president of the U.S. biofuels lobbying group, Renewable Fuels Association, thinks corn growers can make common cause on regulatory issues with the oil industry. He says that he wants a “level playing field,” code for cutting government subsidies for electric car buyers. Corn growers received heavy ethanol subsidies until 2011. "(We) think we should be working to promote the longevity of the internal combustion engine," said Chet Thompson, president of American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), in a presentation on Tuesday.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Trump preps for his non-SOTU by claiming all credit & denying all blame. Armando calls in to vent. Still more of the cabinet turn out to be damaged goods. DOJ flips on its first voting rights case. Has Bannon ever done anything the Mercers didn’t pay for?
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