Friday Open Thread | Don’t call it grifting..that’s too mild. Call it PRUITTING.

In a Cabinet full of thieves, lowlifes, and people who think

their God-given right to live large on the taxpayer’s dime, Scott Pruitt has distinguished himself.

Was going back and forth on another blog, and a poster said,
” you know, grifting doesn’t adequately fit Pruitt – he’s so corrupt.”

I had to agree.
Grift is too mild a word for Pruitt.

So, let’s call it PRUITTING – an endless, bottomless cesspool of corruption and improper practices for someone who is supposed to be working for the public.

Let’s catch you up on a list of what qualifies Pruitt to get a verb named for him.

 

 

Scott Pruitt’s Corruption Is So Vast It’s Becoming Impossible to Keep Up With

Paul Blest
4/06/18 8:44am

It’s not often that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency finds themselves in the news so often, but then again, most EPA administrators aren’t wildly corrupt creations of incompetent energy lobbyists. Scott Pruitt, on the other hand, is—and reports of his corruption are coming so thick and fast that they’re nearly impossible to keep up with.

Pruitt has had an extremely bad week. On Wednesday, he went on Fox News to defend himself about his decision to bypass the White House and give huge raises to staffers and promptly got wrecked by Ed Henry, which made the White House mad. Then, the Daily Beast reported that chief of staff John Kelly had specifically asked Pruitt to stop doing scandals, and Pruitt could not abide by that request for even a single afternoon.

Thursday was, if anything, worse. According a Thursday night report from the Washington Post, Pruitt was, in fact, involved in the pay raises, contrary to what he told Ed Henry on Fox News, as two EPA officials told the Post that “Pruitt endorsed the idea last month of giving substantial raises” to two of his top aides.

Scott Pruitt’s ethics problems are conservative ideology in action
Republicans like him because of the scandals, not despite them.
By Matthew Yglesias
@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com
Apr 11, 2018, 9:30am EDT

Scott Pruitt is corrupt in ways that are practically too numerous to detail. He’s pushed to misuse agency funds on over-investing in his own personal security. He’s inappropriately demoted or reassigned career agency personnel who objected to his misuse of funds. He’s hired unqualified cronies for highly paid positions. And he’s accepted inappropriate gifts from lobbyists with business before the agency he leads. And conservatives are, overwhelmingly, okay with it.

As Sen. Mike Rounds (R-ID) said on Sunday’s Meet The Press, they aren’t even interested in the particulars of the accusations against Pruitt.

“I don’t know how much of it is overblown and how much of it is accurate, to be honest,” Rounds said. “I’m not going to call it fake news. I’ll say in some cases we’ll overblow something, but in this particular case Mr. Pruitt has been doing a good job as the secretary of the EPA. He is moving forward exactly as this president said he would.”

And Rounds is right — from the standpoint of mainstream conservative Republicans, Pruitt is doing a great job. Not despite his corruption, but because of it. Wasting resources and unjustly derailing professional staffers’ careers, even at some cost to his personal reputation and possible future career prospects, is exactly what conservatives want an Environmental Protection Agency administrator to do.

Under conservative rule, conduct in regulatory agencies is not a barnacle attached to the ship of state — it’s a core governing philosophy.

Fired whistleblower details corruption at EPA
Whistleblower Kevin Chmielewski says Pruitt fired him for raising questions about Pruitt’s activity.

by Leigh Ann Caldwell / Apr.12.2018 / 2:06 PM ET

WASHINGTON — Senate and House Democrats Thursday laid out a litany of accusations against EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, including new details of careless spending habits with taxpayers’ dollars and a disregard for government policy by violating limits on official travel.

The allegations stem from a meeting Democrats had with Kevin Chmielewski, a former campaign aide to President Donald Trump and a political appointee to the EPA before Pruitt fired him earlier this year.

Those Democrats sent a letter to Pruitt outlining the details Chmielewski provided, and they asked Pruitt to hand over emails, meeting minutes and any relevant documents surrounding each instance. It comes as pressure is building on Capitol Hill for Pruitt to step down.

Scott Pruitt has four different EPA email addresses. Lawmakers want to know why.
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis
April 12 at 11:39 AM

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has used four separate agency email addresses since taking office, according to Senate Democrats and an EPA official, prompting concerns among agency lawyers that the EPA has not disclosed all the documents it would normally release to the public under federal records requests.

Two Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Tom Carper (Del.) — sent a letter Tuesday to the EPA’s inspector general asking the office to probe the matter.

“We write to share our deep concern over Administrator Pruitt’s reported use of multiple email accounts,” they wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “It is imperative that there be an investigation into whether the agency has properly searched these email addresses for responsive documents in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.”

Pruitt’s four email addresses include one in the conventional agency format, pruitt.scott@epa.gov, as well as three others: esp7@epa.gov, adm14pruitt@epa.gov and sooners7@epa.gov, an apparent reference to the University of Oklahoma, whose football team Pruitt follows closely.

Another EPA staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said that Pruitt’s use of different emails has raised concern among agency lawyers responsible for scouring the administrator’s official correspondence in the course of responding to FOIA requests from journalists and outside groups. If there is an email account that was not searched for records in response to a FOIA inquiry, the official said, that “would be an enormous breach of the public trust.”

This entry was posted in Corruption, Open Thread, Politics and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

86 Responses to Friday Open Thread | Don’t call it grifting..that’s too mild. Call it PRUITTING.

  1. Liza says:

    Look at this. Starbucks employee calls cops because two black men (who were waiting for a friend to arrive) waited too long without ordering. The white guy is asking the cop what they did as they were taken away in hand cuffs. Someone is heard saying, “They didn’t do anything, I saw the whole thing”.

    Starbucks better fire that employees stupid ass and publish the mother of all apologies. This is outrageous, beyond outrageous.

    https://twitter.com/TIA_EWING/status/984937412257353728

    • Liza says:

      This is how @Starbucks describes itself on Twitter:

      Starbucks CoffeeVerified account
      @Starbucks
      Inspiring and nurturing the human spirit—one person, one cup, one neighborhood at a time.

  2. eliihass says:

    And just like that, military games preempt what would have been a doozy of a Friday night recap and weekend of Libby pardon, Cohen seized incriminating tapes, criminal investigation and confirmation of trip to Prague.. And an unraveling buffoon ..

    Gaslighting Theater… A Vlad and Buffoon production …starring the complicit media, the ‘generals’, including those resurrected from their iceboxes …And silly Americans are once again suckered by a corrupt treasonous buffoon and his various benefactors and enablers…

  3. eliihass says:

    And like clockwork, 5 prong tongued Joe Scarborough et al are back on board praising their useful idiot..

  4. This sob is using Syria to distract from the breaking news from McClatchy about Mueller having evidence Michael Cohen was in Prague in 2016. My God, we have no Secretary of State.

  5. rikyrah says:

    You should be watching Hayes.
    Betrand said that Cohen was there to meet hackers, and the look on Hayes’ face😄😄😄

  6. Liza says:

    Yeah, that’s been my question, what would happen next?

    https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/984922996925259777

  7. rikyrah says:

    This is no longer about Democrats & Republicans. It’s about those who value the rule of law; and those who seek to destroy it to save themselves. Liberty’s last line of defense is the law’s check on political power.

    Opposing tyrants is in America’s DNA. We got this, patriots.

    — Counterchekist (@counterchekist) April 12, 2018

  8. rikyrah says:

    For 27 years, I was privileged to work with the thousands of career DOJ lawyers and FBI agents who work hard every day to keep our country safe, our rights protected, and the rule of law intact. They deserve better than this. https://t.co/PORoGaCm5n

    — Sally Yates (@SallyQYates) April 2, 2018

  9. rikyrah says:

    Robert Mueller is now taking down the National Enquirer for its criminal ties to Donald Trump. Everything Trump touches dies. And if it doesn’t die, Mueller kills it.

    — Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) April 12, 2018

  10. rikyrah says:

    It’s All Connected
    By Josh Marshall | April 13, 2018 1:17 pm

    The Wall Street Journal just published a stunning scoop. In 2017 Michael Cohen negotiated a $1.6 million hush deal for a major GOP fundraiser named Elliott Broidy, deputy finance chairman of the RNC. If that name rings a bell, it should. Broidy is at the center of the part of the Russia probe involving the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and international fixer and convicted pedophile George Nader.

    Nader, in turn, is the guy who set up those meetings in the Seychelles which brought together Erik Prince and that Russian banker. Both Nader and Broidy have been frequent visitors to the White House during Trump’s presidency and involved in ways that are still not totally clear in the mix of money negotiations, geopolitics and Russia back channels with a series of Gulf emirates.

    Also notable, the woman in question became pregnant and ended her pregnancy in an abortion, though in a statement to the Journal Broidy says that decision was solely hers.

    We’re still putting together the details here. But this is significant in that it seems to tightly bind together Cohen the hush money fixer and key persons at the heart of the Russia probe.

  11. rikyrah says:

    This is who they are:

    Ever since Marjory Stoneman Douglas senior David Hogg began pushing for gun control in the wake of the massacre at his high school, he’s been a target for conservatives. An aide to Republican state Rep. Shawn Harrison called Hogg a crisis actor. Laura Ingraham blasted him for “whining” after being rejected from several California colleges. Talk-show host Jamie Allman said he had been “hanging out getting ready to ram a hot poker up David’s Hogg’s ass.”

    Now, a member of Parkland’s Education Advisory Board, which makes recommendations to that city’s commission about its schools, apparently shared multiple memes depicting Hogg as a Nazi. An account that appears to belong to Wayne Alder, who is critical of the #NeverAgain movement’s gun-control message, also tweeted an image of Hogg with his fist raised. “Parkland. Here is your future. I won’t be wearing the Broward Brown Shirt,” he wrote, referencing the shirts worn by Adolf Hitler’s stormtroopers.

    In a phone call with New Times Thursday, Alder oddly claimed he’d never posted about Hogg. He didn’t deny the account was his, though, and after New Times shared screenshots of his Twitter account with the Nazi-related tweets and retweets, the account’s settings were soon changed to private.

  12. Ametia says:

    Try as you might, 45 POS, YOU ARE GOING DOWN.

  13. yahtzeebutterfly says:

    Memo to myself during these deeply difficult times in our country…

    Drink deeply of each moment. Enjoy family and friends. Be in joyful community. Add to the good and to the positive with smiles and helpfulness. Appreciate the wonders of nature.

    https://www.wishafriend.com/poems/uploads/9035-nature-poems.jpg

    https://youtu.be/tQKIWwzfK-A&rel=0

  14. Trump bamboozled his supporters and the media about him being the ‘law and order’ candidate. He played y’all like a fiddle. Are y’all embarrassed yet? How do y’all feel about this Constitutional Crisis? So much winning, right?!

  15. rikyrah says:

    Kanye shrug

    A man with white supremacist literature in his home accidentally killed himself while building bombs so powerful, authorities decided to burn down his entire apartment building rather than let people reenter: https://t.co/BQ4Eor77Cy

    — Kelly Weill (@KELLYWEILL) April 13, 2018

  16. rikyrah says:

    National Enquirer pay-off eyed as ‘catch and kill’ to help Trump

    Jeff Horwitz, reporter for the Associated Press, talks with Rachel Maddow about the befuddling story of the National Enquirer paying a source $30,000 apparently to quash a rumor about Donald Trump, and the role of Michael Cohen in that transaction.
    Apr.12.2018

  17. rikyrah says:

    On the day the President wrongly attacks Comey for being a “leaker and liar” he considers pardoning a convicted leaker and liar, Scooter Libby. This is the President’s way of sending a message to those implicated in the Russia investigation: You have my back and I‘ll have yours.

    — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 13, 2018

  18. rikyrah says:

    Pain is the reward: Here’s what pundits keep getting wrong about Trump and his supporters
    Trump’s voters are suffering. They still love him. Mainstream journalists lack any understanding of this pathology
    CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
    04.13.2018•4:00 AM

    Donald Trump is not a real populist. His plans and those of his Republican allies–both already enacted and in the future–will further hollow out the social safety net, give even more money to the rich, damage the environment, reduce public education to ruins, remove corporate regulations and gut the Affordable Care Act. This will hurt most Americans, especially Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters among the so-called “white working class.” Yet these same voters continue to support Trump and the Republican Party.

    This dynamic befuddles many journalists, reporters, pundits and other professional observers of politics. Why? Because they lack political vision and are extremely naive — and overly hopeful — about the true nature of today’s conservative movement.

    Moreover, the truth is simply too frightening for many people to accept: The Republican Party and movement conservatism are now fully sociopathic.

    ……………………..

    Here the Republican Party, its leaders, and media enablers use fear in conjunction with physical, emotional and financial pain to manipulate Republican voters and many independents into supporting policies that cause them harm. Instead of attributing the cause of this distress correctly, Trump’s voters and other members of the American right-wing want to retaliate against and thus hurt those individuals and groups they view as the Other. This is the primary psychological wage that today’s Republican Party and conservative movement pays its supporters.

    In his new book “The Road to Unfreedom,” Timothy Snyder, the Yale historian and bestselling author, describes this feedback loop as sadopopulism:

    Trump was called a “populist.” A populist, however, is someone who proposes policies to increase opportunities for the masses, as opposed to the financial elites. Trump was something else: a sado-populist, whose policies were designed to hurt the most vulnerable part of his electorate.

    Encouraged by presidential racism, such people could understand their own pain as a sign of still greater pain inflicted upon others. … [S]uch a voter is changing the currency of politics from achievement to suffering, from pain to gain, helping a leader of their choice establish a regime of sadopopulism. Such a voter can believe that he or she has chosen who administers their pain, and can fantasize that this leader will hurt enemies still more. … If people who support the government expect their reward to be pain, then a democracy based upon policy competition between parties is endangered.

  19. rikyrah says:

    Wallace: Trump conditioning public with pardon of Scooter Libby

    Nicolle Wallace talks with Rachel Maddow about breaking news that Donald Trump intends to pardon former Dick Cheney chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and her belief that Trump and his media cohorts are conditioning the public for more pardons to come.

  20. rikyrah says:

    Republicans coordinate smear of FBI ahead of Comey book release

    Rachel Maddow shows how the Republican Party with Fox News is coordinating its effort to smear the FBI, its top officials, Robert Mueller, and James Comey as Comey’s book is set for release and the Mueller investigation is coming together.

  21. rikyrah says:

    Confidants Say Trump Will Soon Fire Sessions, Rosenstein
    April 13, 2018 at 10:55 am EDT

    Wall Street Journal: “Two people who spoke to Mr. Trump during the week said they came away thinking both Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Mr. Mueller, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions would soon be gone, potentially sparking a political and constitutional crisis.”

    Said one: “It’s a matter of when, not if.”

  22. rikyrah says:

    James Comey book leaks early, Rachel Maddow shares highlights

    Rachel Maddow reads passages from “A Higher Loyalty,” the not-yet-released book by James Comey, including Comey’s likening of the nascent Trump administration to a mafia family, and Donald Trump’s reaction to being informed of the Steele dossier.

  23. rikyrah says:

    Update: There is no petition seeking a pardon for Scooter Libby on file with the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney, a DOJ spokesperson tells me. This means that if it is being considered, it is not going through the normal process.

    — Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) April 13, 2018

  24. rikyrah says:

    FYI:

    bella2758
    April 13, 2018 at 10:55 am

    President Obama’s niece Leslie Robinson of Princeton was drafted by the WNBA New York Liberty. Leslie is the daughter of Craig Robinson, who is the brother of Michelle Obama.

    • eliihass says:

      President and Mrs Obama’s niece… Daughter of Craig Robinson, Mrs Obama’s brother..

      Holding out hope that one day folks will finally get it – especially so-called ‘proponents of women’ and feminists who somehow always manage to minimize, exclude, relegate or cast as incidental to the story ..including those that are in fact really hers, this great woman and historic first black First Lady..

  25. rikyrah says:

    Mueller report on Trump obstruction takes shape ahead of schedule

    Rachel Maddow shares new NBC News reporting that because Donald Trump has backed out of the idea submitting to an interview with Robert Mueller, the investigation can procede to the next phase, closing the obstruction part of their inquiry with a focus on four key findings findings in Trump’s attempt to obstruct justice.

  26. rikyrah says:

    Coal lobbyist takes over key leadership post at Trump’s EPA
    04/13/18 09:20 AM
    By Steve Benen

    …………………….

    The fossil fuel industry now has yet another ally at the Environmental Protection Agency – one who would almost certainly take over as head of the agency if Scott Pruitt is forced to resign. In a 53-45 vote on Thursday, the Senate confirmed Andrew Wheeler – a coal lobbyist who once worked for DC’s most notorious climate change denier – for the EPA’s second-most powerful position. […]

    As deputy administrator – a powerful, if somewhat low-profile position – Wheeler will be responsible for implementing Pruitt’s vision. Wheeler is likely to have a hand in making appointments, overseeing operations, and working with regional and state agencies.

    I realize that when it comes to this White House’s personnel decisions, we’ve seen a staggering number of tough-to-defend moves, but Wheeler is especially egregious.

  27. rikyrah says:

    Trump says Comey is a ‘slime ball,’ calls for his criminal prosecution
    04/13/18 10:02 AM
    By Steve Benen

    …………………………

    The president doesn’t appear to be taking the news well, as evidenced by a pair of tweets this morning.

    “James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH.

    “He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst ‘botch jobs’ of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!”

    If I didn’t know better, I might think Comey has gotten under the president’s skin a bit.

    What I find especially entertaining about Trump’s little tirade, though isn’t just how factually inaccurate it is, but the degree to which his lack of impulse control has upended the White House’s plan.

  28. rikyrah says:

    After creating historic deficits, Republicans move to outlaw deficits
    04/13/18 11:23 AM
    By Steve Benen

    They’re sometimes called “messaging votes.” Congressional leaders will bring measures to the floor that they have no intention of passing, purely for symbolic and electoral reasons. These pointless votes are generally a waste of time, though they tend to make assorted partisans feel better.

    Some messaging votes, however, are more offensive than others.

    The House failed on Thursday to advance a constitutional amendment that would require Congress not spend more than the nation collects in revenue. Some conservative lawmakers had hoped a vote on the bill would calm grassroots conservatives who had been fuming about recent high levels of spending.

    On a mostly party line vote, Republicans failed to advance the bill, 233-184. Normally, legislation requires 218 votes to win approval in the House and can be passed with just Republican votes. The balanced budget amendment, however, required bipartisan support with a two-thirds majority vote because it was a constitutional amendment.

    GOP leaders knew, of course, that this constitutional amendment would fail. More to the point, they voted for it despite the fact that they wanted it to fail.

    Indeed, what made yesterday’s vote so exasperating was the backdrop against which it came. It was just a few months ago that Republicans approved massive tax breaks the nation can’t afford, and the Congressional Budget Office reported this week that those tax cuts will wreak havoc on the nation’s finances for many years to come. More recently, Republicans also approved a $1.3 trillion omnibus package that, among other things, increased government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars.

    All of which led up to yesterday’s vote, in which Republicans said they want a constitutional gimmick to stop Republicans from passing the kinds of bills Republicans just voted for. The people who are creating trillion-dollar deficits are the same people who are saying deficits should be outlawed.

    The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell added last night, “A balanced-budget amendment is pretty much always a stupid idea. But you know when it’s stupidest? When you’ve just blown a multitrillion-dollar hole in the deficit, and also, umm, don’t even really plan to pass a budget.”

  29. rikyrah says:

    American mainstream rejects Trump’s condemnation of Mueller probe
    04/13/18 10:40 AM
    By Steve Benen

    At a certain level, public-opinion polls on federal criminal investigations seem unimportant. After all, law-enforcement officials are not politicians, and while they serve the public’s interests, they also have a job to do that has little to do with popular will.

    That said, I tend to keep an eye on polling related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, not because public attitudes should shape the direction of the investigation, but because I’m interested in whether the Republican campaign to undermine public confidence in the probe is working.

    Donald Trump, for example, has characterized the investigation itself as “illegal” and “corrupt.” His allies in Congress and conservative media have mounted a spirited campaign against Mueller, the FBI, and the Justice Department, which collectively have become a bete noire for the right.

    The American mainstream isn’t buying it.

    A clear majority of Americans support special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged collusion with President Trump’s campaign, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

    The results show backing for inquiries into Trump’s orbit on several fronts.

    Nearly 7 in 10 adults say they support Mueller’s focus on possible collusion with Russia. Sixty-four percent say they want the special counsel investigating Trump’s business activities. And a 58 percent majority supports investigating alleged payments by Trump associates to silence women who say they had affairs with him.

  30. Lord Jesus! Shot asking for help in black skin.

    https://twitter.com/deray/status/984784565762973698

  31. rikyrah says:

    Can’t ask directions…
    Another thing to add to the list that Black people can’t do without risking their lives.

    …………………….

    Black teen nearly shot and killed by homeowner for asking directions after missing his bus
    Travis Gettys
    13 APR 2018 AT 10:10 ET

    A black teenager was nearly shot and killed by a racist homeowner after missing his bus and trying to ask a neighbor for directions.

    Brennan Walker overslept Thursday morning and missed his bus, so he started walking the bus route from his family’s home to Rochester High School, reported WJBK-TV.

    The 14-year-old’s mom had taken his phone away, so he wasn’t able to check it for directions — so the boy knocked on a stranger’s door to ask for help.

    “I got to the house, and I knocked on the lady’s door,” Brennan told the TV station. “Then she started yelling at me and she was like, ‘Why are you trying to break into my house?’ I was trying to explain to her that I was trying to get directions to Rochester High, and she kept yelling at me.”

    “Then the guy came downstairs, and he grabbed the gun,” the teen added. “I saw it and started to run — and that’s when I heard the gunshot.”

    The shot missed the fleeing teen, and Brennan said he kept running until he found a hiding place, and that’s when he broke down crying.

    “My mom says that black boys get shot because sometimes they don’t look their age, and I don’t look my age,” he said. “I’m 14, but I don’t look 14. I’m kind of happy that, like, I didn’t become a statistic.

    • majiir says:

      Some Caucasians are needlessly killing our young boys because they’ve been led to view them as threats to their lives. The case of Brennan Walker proves it, and so does the Ring Security videotape. This makes me very angry. Our young kids have the same right to be seen as children just like their kids, and the reason they aren’t is due to the constant drumbeat that encourages some Americans to view them as threats at first sight.

  32. rikyrah says:

    Classless
    A libertarian economist calls for ending public education as we know it. It’s a radical proposal—and deeply wrong.

    by Kevin Carey

    ………………………………….

    What if that story had a different ending? What if nobody listened, and the ruse continued, and the child grew up to become a libertarian economics professor at George Mason University? He might well have written Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money.

    These kinds of books often lack the courage of their title’s provocations. Not this one. Caplan, a career educator, really is a staunch skeptic of most of the personal, social, and economic benefits of education. He calls for no less than ending public education as we know it and massively reducing the number of people with high school and college degrees. To prosecute his case, he has assembled a pile of academic studies, including some showing alarmingly subpar literacy and mathematics skills among college graduates. Most people would see these statistics as a reason to make education better. But to Caplan they’re a reason to make education disappear.

    Caplan’s main critique is that most formal education is ineffective and alienated from the skills and knowledge that typical jobs require. Reading, math, and some sciences are worthwhile, he concedes, but everything else is a waste. “There really is no need for K–12 to teach history, social studies, art, music, or foreign languages,” he writes. “The class clown who snarks, ‘What does this have to do with real life?,’ is on to something.” If you can’t easily match a subject with a marketable job skill, he believes, it shouldn’t be taught in school.

    Yet despite all that irrelevant and ineffective learning, people with degrees still get paid a premium by the labor market. And market signals are a central source of capital-T truth for any committed libertarian. If education is so useless, why do employers continue to reward it?

    • majiir says:

      Caplan is stupid because he seems to have never thought of the fact that having fewer high school graduates could cause him to lose his own d@mn job as a college professor. I detest stupidity in any form.

  33. rikyrah says:

    I know we have posted this before, but still…

    WATCH: During her confirmation hearing this morning (yes, this morning – in 2018), judicial nominee Wendy Vitter refused to say whether she agreed with the result in Brown v. Board of Education. #UnfitToJudge pic.twitter.com/RWroh0XUIC

    — The Leadership Conference (@civilrightsorg) April 11, 2018

    Charles Pierce had some words about that.

    This is a very cute answer, particularly for a white person from the state that gave us Plessy v. Ferguson. But Brown is not something with which to get cute. It materially fulfilled the basic promises of the Constitution for a good chunk of the country’s citizens. It redeemed the moral failures of Reconstruction. It fulfilled the sacrifices made during the Civil War. It helped make the Civil Rights Movement possible.

    Not just the Civil Rights Movement.
    EVERY advance in American Society over the past 50 years can point its genesis back to Brown v Board.
    PERIOD.
    And, THAT is the reason why the GOP has despised Brown v. Board from the beginning.

  34. rikyrah says:

    Mueller’s Four Findings on Trump’s Obstruction of Justice
    by Nancy LeTourneau
    April 13, 2018

    According to a report from NBC News, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has collected four findings on Donald Trump’s attempt to obstruct justice.

    His intent to fire former FBI Director James Comey;
    His role in the crafting of a misleading public statement on the nature of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his son and Russians;
    Trump’s dangling of pardons before grand jury witnesses who might testify against him; and
    Pressuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

    The use of the word “intent” in that first one could be significant, as explained by Renato Mariatti.

    Impeding or influencing an FBI investigation is a crime only if it is done with “corrupt” intent—in other words, the intent to wrongfully impede the administration of justice.

  35. rikyrah says:

    BREAKING: Good news. Maryland passed plan to outlaw junk insurance. New Jersey passed a plan to restore individual mandate.

    What states do today, the country will do beginning 2021. 1/

    — Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) April 13, 2018

  36. rikyrah says:

    This is a GOP up-and-comer, remember?

    NEW ACCUSATIONS: Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens is facing growing calls to resign, with a former mistress accusing him of assault and blackmail, claiming she was bound, blindfolded and photographed in a basement. @perezreports. https://t.co/0wvohFCPqv pic.twitter.com/YJiSjFrFyD

    — World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) April 13, 2018

  37. rikyrah says:

    @JohnJHarwood
    55m55 minutes ago
    More
    from @stephenfhayes in Weekly Standard: “As Trump consolidates his hold on the party, he’s losing his grip on the presidency. WH staffers whisper their boss appears increasingly unhinged. As prominent Trump supporter recently put it: ‘It’s falling apart’“

  38. rikyrah says:

    About Cohen now trying to take the ‘ Fifth’:

    From a Lawyer at BJ:

    Immanentize says:
    April 13, 2018 at 8:57 am

    But the real reason I stopped by now was just to put this thought out here — Michael Cohen has asked the Judge in the Stormy D. case to suspend the civil suit because he intends to plead the fifth — WRONG! The self-incrimination clause applies only to criminal matters– and those can certainly go forward when a defendant claims the privilege. In fact. this comes up a lot in wrongful death actions. The Supreme Court has said that although juries can make NO inference in a criminal trial regarding the defendant’s exercise of the right to remain silent, in a CIVIL trial, the jury (or the judge) can think what they want to think about it.

    the Fifth Amendment does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify in response to probative evidence offered against them. Baxter v. Palmigiano, 425 U.S. 308, 318 (1976).

  39. rikyrah says:

    Trump says he’s ‘draining the swamp,’ even if ‘it may not look like it’
    04/13/18 08:40 AM—UPDATED 04/13/18 09:21 AM
    By Steve Benen

    One of the signature lines of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was “drain the swamp.” Through the Republican was always a little vague about the meaning of the phrase, it was widely seen as an outsider’s vow to clean up the nation’s capital.

    The Republican told NBC’s “Meet the Press” during the campaign that he’s tired of everybody in the nation’s capital “being controlled by the special interests and the lobbyists.” Trump went so far as to say he’d have “no problem” banning lobbyists from his administration altogether.

    The promise has since become the punch-line to a sad joke, though at a White House event yesterday, the president made the case that he’s honoring his commitment – even if reality suggests otherwise.

    “From the day I took the oath of office, I’ve been fighting to drain the swamp. And sometimes it may not look like it, but, believe me, we are draining the swamp. And there are a lot of unhappy people. You can see that every day. All you have to do is turn on the news. Every time you see me hit, you know that I’m draining the swamp. And people don’t like it.”

    As a rule, when Trump says, “Believe me,” the public’s first instinct should be to not believe him.

  40. https://twitter.com/Blavity/status/984785883839819776

    #GrowingUpBlack Mom: If you fall out of that tree and break your leg, don’t come running to me.

    Kid: 😳But if my leg broke, I can’t run, Mama

    Mom: What did you say?

    Kid: Nuttin……

  41. Ametia says:

    Ooops!

  42. Ametia says:

    The GOP, they are who we thought they were, full of greedy, petty, lying, thieving, selfish, white male mediocrity

  43. vitaminlover says:

    Good morning, rikyrah. Where do they find these creeps?

  44. yahtzeebutterfly says:

    Congratulations Ieshia Champs on your graduation from law school. You and your family are amazing and inspiring!

    Video: “Single mom of five goes viral with law school graduation photo”

    https://youtu.be/lNYinxIwAJs&rel=0

  45. rikyrah says:

    Good Morning,Everyone 😄😄😄

Leave a Reply to rikyrahCancel reply