Prole life and MiniPlenty with MiniTrue

Fox News wonders whether we should cancel food stamps because 0.09% of spending is fraudulent

www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/28/fox-news-wonders-if-we-should-cancel-food-stamps-since-0-09-percent-of-spending-is-fraudulent/?utm_term=.4a708a54ee16&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1

A bit over 44 million Americans participate in the government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly referred to as food stamps. That's a higher number than in most years past, representing about 13.7 percent of the U.S. population, but it's down from the high of 47.6 million in 2013, 14.9 percent of the population that year.

What's incensing Fox News, though, is that 2016 saw a record-high level of fraud in the system, with $70 million wasted. The network hosted a discussion Tuesday morning with a simple conceit: Should the program therefore be ended?

In December 2013, a poll conducted by United Technologies with the National Journal asked Americans whether they thought that changing the rules to limit food stamp availability should be approved, even if it kicked 4 million people off the support system. Two-thirds of Americans said that was acceptable. How many would accept booting all 44 million isn't clear.

thought crime:Retired Army Colonel Says Her Social Security Checks Were Garnished to 'Curtail Dissent'

http://www.alternet.org/activism/retired-army-colonel-says-her-social-security-checks-were-garnished-curtail-dissent?akid=15055.55372.Jgept1&rd=1&src=newsletter1069596&t=14

The prominent anti-war activist Ann Wright says that, after being arrested for protesting at a U.S. drone base, she stopped receiving her monthly social security checks, in what she believes was a deliberate attempt “to curtail dissent of seniors.”

According to an op-ed she wrote about the ordeal, Wright says she was arrested in March, along with members of Veterans for Peace and the Granny Peace Brigade, for participating in an annual protest against “assassin drones” at Creech drone base in Nevada. “We spent five hours in the Clark County Jail as our arrests were processed and then were released,” she wrote. “Our cases of being charged with ‘failure to disperse’ were eventually dropped by the Clark County court.”

However, that would not be the end of Wright’s punishment. According to her account, “someone submitted my name and social security number to SSA as a person who has been confined in a jail since September 2016”—a claim she says amounts to falsification. It was not immediately clear who she suspects is behind the alleged maneuver.

“Without any notification to me of this allegation that would disrupt for months my Social Security benefits, SSA ordered that for my ‘criminal conviction and confinement in a correctional institution for more than 30 days, we cannot pay your monthly Social Security payment,’” Wright continued.

minipeace:Navy repeatedly dismissed evidence that ‘Fat Leonard’ was cheating the 7th Fleet

www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/navy-repeatedly-dismissed-evidence-that-fat-leonard-was-cheating-the-7th-fleet/2016/12/27/0afb2738-c5ab-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.

For Fat Leonard, conning the U.S. Navy was a big piece of cake.

The Navy allowed the worst corruption scandal in its history to fester for several years by dismissing a flood of evidence that the rotund Asian defense contractor was cheating the service out of millions of dollars and bribing officers with booze, sex and lavish dinners, newly released ­documents show.

The Singapore-based contractor, Leonard Glenn Francis, found it especially easy to outwit the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), the renowned law enforcement agency that has inspired one of the longest-running cop shows on television.

Starting in 2006, in response to a multitude of fraud complaints, NCIS opened 27 separate investigations into Francis’s company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia. In each of those instances, however, NCIS closed the case after failing to dig up sufficient evidence to take action against the firm, according to hundreds of pages of law enforcement records ­obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of ­Information Act.

What truth? George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and the Trumpified political reality of 2016

minitrue 2017

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/24/what-truth-george-orwell-aldous-huxley-and-the-trumpified-political-reality-of-2016/

"In a diary he kept in 1942, the novelist and essayist George Orwell recorded the disgust he felt for his contemporaries and the political discourse of his day, which was pervaded by intellectual dishonesty and callous partisanship:

We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. … Everyone is dishonest, and everyone is utterly heartless towards people who are outside the immediate range of his own interests. What is most striking of all is the way sympathy can be turned on and off like a tap according to political expediency.

For anyone who has just lived through the 2016 election, these words may feel like they could have been written today. More than 70 years after Orwell recorded this entry in his diary, intellectual dishonesty and partisan hackery seem to be just as pervasive in contemporary America as in mid-20th century Europe. Consequently, it can be difficult at times to know what to believe or who to trust."

"....... In our increasingly tribalistic political landscape, each side or faction lives in its own separate reality, where it feels not merely entitled to its own opinions, but increasingly to its own facts as well."

Charged a Fee for Getting Arrested, Whether Guilty or Not

Kentucky bills people held in its jails for the costs of incarcerating them, even if all charges are later dismissed. In Colorado, five towns raise more than 30 percent of their revenue from traffic tickets and fines. In Ferguson, Mo., “city officials have consistently set maximizing revenue as the priority for Ferguson’s law enforcement activity,” a Justice Department report found last year.

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An unusual coalition of civil rights organizations, criminal defense lawyers and conservative and libertarian groups have challenged these sorts of policies, saying they confiscate private property without constitutional protections and lock poor people into a cycle of fines, debts and jail.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/charged-a-fee-for-getting-arrested-whether-guilty-or-not/ar-BBxzmo6?li=BBnbcA1

RNC dismisses controversy over Christmas press release some interpreted as calling Donald Trump a ‘king’ Tweet email

a new king....

1776?

""Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King,"

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/rnc-dismisses-controversy-christmas-press-release-article-1.2923547?cid=msn

White Donald Trump Supporters Are More Likely to Oppose Public Policies When They’re Made to Think About Black People

psmag.com/trump-supporters-are-more-likely-to-oppose-public-policies-when-they-think-about-black-people-b94883884a16#.vjhosxo78

What’s new here is the difference between Trump supporters and opponents. For opponents of Trump, priming made them more sympathetic toward mortgage holders; for supporters, priming made them less. This speaks to a real divide among Americans. Some of us feel real hostility toward African Americans. Others definitely do not.

National Security Cybersecurity firm finds evidence that Russian military unit was behind DNC hack

Russian Mini Peace
Launches attack against US and no one calls it war....

"www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cybersecurity-firm-finds-a-link-between-dnc-hack-and-ukrainian-artillery/2016/12/21/47bf1f5a-c7e3-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.19cc95041880&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

While CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate the intrusions and whose findings are described in a new report, had always suspected that one of the two hacker groups that struck the DNC was the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, it had only medium confidence.

Now, said CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, “we have high confidence” it was a unit of the GRU. CrowdStrike had dubbed that unit “Fancy Bear.”

The FBI, which has been investigating Russia’s hacks of political, government, academic and other organizations for several years, privately has concluded the same."

Drug industry hired dozens of officials from the DEA as the agency tried to curb opioid abuse

mini love and mini plenty creating plenty of deaths

"“The number of employees recruited from that division points to a deliberate strategy by the pharmaceutical industry to hire people who are the biggest headaches for them,” said John Carnevale, former director of planning for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, who now runs a consulting firm. “These people understand how DEA operates, the culture around diversion and DEA’s goals, and they can advise their clients how to stay within the guidelines.”

The DEA’s Diversion Control Division, tasked with preventing prescription drugs from reaching the black market, wields enormous power within the pharmaceutical world. The small division, with about 300 employees at its Arlington, Va., headquarters, can suspend or revoke the licenses of doctors, pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies that fail to comply with federal law.

From 2000 to 2015, nearly 180,000 people died of overdoses from prescription painkillers ..."

See that number: 180,000 killed...and this is not called corporate terrorism?

Why our presidents are elected by a cabal of elites

Let's look back to 1787. The United States of America consists of 13 newly independent states that are bound together by the troubled Articles of Confederation. There are big states like Virginia and small states like Delaware. Some of them have slavery; some don't.

At that summer's constitutional convention, white men from those 13 states fussed over how to make a new federal government where everybody (everybody like them, anyway) got an equal slice of the pie.

The debate over how to pick the president actually started with how to create Congress. The congressional puzzle was this: If each state got an equal number of lawmakers in Congress, the small states would wield disproportionate power over the big states. But if states were given seats in Congress according to population alone, the big states' huge delegations could just ignore the smaller states.

The founders split the difference by splitting Congress. The big states got more power in the population-based House of Representatives, and the small states got more power in the Senate, where each state got two votes. (The Southern slave states struck their own deal with the notorious Three-Fifths Compromise: Slaves would count as three-fifths of a person for the sake of political representation.)

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/why-our-presidents-are-elected-by-a-cabal-of-elites/ar-AAlIBec?li=BBnb7Kz

Here’s what Plato had to say about someone like Donald Trump

Here’s what Plato had to say about someone like Donald Trump

"Thrasymachus defends the life of the unjust over that of the just because it is more profitable and pleasurable. Specifically, he cites two instances where the unjust life proves superior — and in ways strikingly similar to Trump’s own habits. First, “when there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.” And second, “in private contracts . . . wherever the unjust is the partner of the just you will find that, when the partnership is dissolved, the unjust man has always more and the just less.” Thus the “smart” person, as Trump might have it, would be wise to avoid paying taxes and fulfilling contractual agreements wherever it is possible to do so with impunity. It is not difficult to recognize the Thrasymachian echoes in last week’s debate.

Thrasymachus’s arguments in Plato’s “Republic” are part of a larger worldview that individuals ought to disregard any pretense of moral or political obligation, objectively understood, if they inhibit our own success. Rather, the priority should always be to acquire as much as possible, maximizing one’s own personal happiness."

Plato predicted ‘Pizzagate’ (or rather, fake news more generally)

Plato predicted ‘Pizzagate’ (or rather, fake news more generally)


minitrue:

"In a culture where speech is free and all “opinions” are equal, it gets harder and harder for citizens to tell reputable from disreputable sources of news.

Distressingly, Plato tells us that this is a natural result of mature democracies."

There’s a bitter new battle over whether slave torture was the foundation of the American economy

There’s a bitter new battle over whether slave torture was the foundation of the American economy

What does the new federal water bill mean for California? For one, a big win for farmers

What does the new federal water bill mean for California? For one, a big win for farmers


corporate AG loves socialism!

"The bill is designed to route more of the Sacramento River’s flows to the giant government-run pumping stations near Tracy, which deliver water to California’s dry interior and southern expanse via the State Water Project and Central Valley Project."

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article120528073.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Constitutional Law Professor Drops Bombshell on 'Forgotten Americans' at Democrats' Electoral College Meeting

Constitutional Law Professor Drops Bombshell on 'Forgotten Americans' at Democrats' Electoral College Meeting

Protect Yourself in These Orwellian Times: A Hacker's Guide to Being Cyber-Safe

Protect Yourself in These Orwellian Times: A Hacker's Guide to Being Cyber-Safe

A key reason the founders wanted the electoral college: To keep out demagogues and bullies

A key reason the founders wanted the electoral college: To keep out demagogues and bullies

C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence

C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence

The poorest 10% of Vietnamese students performed better on an international exam than the average American teen

The poorest 10% of Vietnamese students performed better on an international exam than the average American teen


"Today the 10% of the most disadvantaged children in Vietnam — and they grow up in very poor households — those children do better than the average American child," Schleicher said."

Forget Big Brother. Fear Little Brother. This is who he is.

Forget Big Brother. Fear Little Brother. This is who he is.

the new big Brother:

This is Little Brother — millions of irrational people spreading lies, sowing doubt and fomenting violence. Thanks to Little Brother, the government — Trump and his incoming administration, in this case — doesn’t have to directly threaten the political opposition or spread propaganda on its own. Leaders only need to find indirect ways to validate supporters’ most vile emotions and make lying acceptable, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) did recently when he said it was all right for Trump to spread falsehoods. Little Brother and his NRA-protected guns can take it from there.

Congress sends major California water policy to President Obama, despite Sen. Barbara Boxer's objections

Congress sends major California water policy to President Obama, despite Sen. Barbara Boxer's objections

Trump’s Threat to the Constitution

Trump’s Threat to the Constitution

We can no longer assume that all Americans understand the origins of their rights and the importance of liberal democracy. We need a new era of civic engagement that will reawaken us to the cause of liberty and equality. That engagement must extend to ensuring that our elected representatives uphold the Constitution, in deed and discourse — even if doing so puts them at odds with their party.

We cannot allow Mr. Trump to normalize the idea that he is the ultimate arbiter of our rights. Those who can will need to speak out boldly and suffer possible retaliation. Others will need to offer hands of kindness and friendship across the traditional political divide, as well as to those who may become targets because of who they are or what they believe. Those who understand the cause are called to the work, which I hope will unify and bless our nation in time.

Evan McMullin, a former C.I.A. officer, was a conservative independent presidential candidate in 2016.

L.A. prosecutors are accusing four big retailers — JC Penney, Sears, Kohl’s and Macy’s — of tricking shoppers

L.A. prosecutors are accusing four big retailers — JC Penney, Sears, Kohl’s and Macy’s — of tricking shoppers

miniplenty of lies

chocolate raions are up!

Democrats can stop Trump via the electoral college. But not how you think.

Democrats can stop Trump via the electoral college. But not how you think.

this is exactly what Humboldt activist were working on ...weeks ago!

" Democrats’ best chance to prevent Donald Trump from assuming the presidency is instead to do the unthinkable: Throw their support behind another Republican, such as Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 GOP presidential nominee."

Trump Campaign and GOP Allies in Full Legal Panic as Recounts Could Create Electoral College Crisis

Trump Campaign and GOP Allies in Full Legal Panic as Recounts Could Create Electoral College Crisis

Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA

Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA

miniplenty of warming...

"Pruitt has spent much of his energy as attorney general fighting against the agency he will now lead.

Pruit, who has written that the debate on climate change is “far from settled,” joined a coalition of state attorneys general in suing the agency’s Clean Power Plan, the principal Obama-era policy aimed at reducing the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. He has also sued, with fellow state attorneys general, over the EPA’s recently announced regulations trying to curtail the emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas sector."

Paper Owned by Trump's Son-In-Law Runs Alarming Op-Ed Calling for FBI Crackdown on Anti-Trump Protests

Paper Owned by Trump's Son-In-Law Runs Alarming Op-Ed Calling for FBI Crackdown on Anti-Trump Protests

minitrue and minilove in the new America:



Bay’s opinion piece appeals to FBI director James Comey to “conduct a detailed investigation into the violence and political thuggery that continue to mar the presidential election’s aftermath,” including a “thorough probe of the protests—to include possible ties to organizations demanding vote recounts.”

A Bigger Economic Pie, but a Smaller Slice for Half of the U.S.

A Bigger Economic Pie, but a Smaller Slice for Half of the U.S.


miniplenty:

Yet for half of all Americans, their share of the total economic pie has shrunk significantly, new research has found.

This group — the approximately 117 million adults stuck on the lower half of the income ladder — “has been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s,” the team of economists found. “Even after taxes and transfers, there has been close to zero growth for working-age adults in the bottom 50 percent.”

Saudis Bankroll Taliban, Even as King Officially Supports Afghan Government

Saudis Bankroll Taliban, Even as King Officially Supports Afghan Government

At a D.C. pizzeria, the dangers of fake news just got all too real

At a D.C. pizzeria, the dangers of fake news just got all too real


minitrue

Lies have consequences when people believe them.....

Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste

Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste


minipeace:

The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.

Edward Snowden: David Petraeus Disclosed More Sensitive Information Than I Did

Edward Snowden: David Petraeus Disclosed More Sensitive Information Than I Did

thought police
minipeace
thought crime

the crime was not intel, the crime was being a thought criminal....

MATTIS: The Iraq war was a 'strategic mistake'

MATTIS: The Iraq war was a 'strategic mistake'

minipeace

U.S. Denies Entry to Canadian Photojournalist Covering Standing Rock

U.S. Denies Entry to Canadian Photojournalist Covering Standing Rock

miinitrue

Why Blue States Are the Real ‘Tea Party’

Why Blue States Are the Real ‘Tea Party’

Start with the Electoral College. It has always deviated from the one-person-one-vote system that most Americans imagine they live in, but demographic shifts in recent years have made its prejudices more conspicuous, culminating in the striking gap between Hillary Clinton’s decisive popular vote victory and her Electoral College loss. Thanks to the two extra votes delivered to each state for its two senators, the Electoral College gives less populated states a higher weight, per capita, than it gives more populated states in the decision of who should be the next president.

Slavoj Zizek: The Left’s Fidelity to Castro-ation

Slavoj Zizek: The Left’s Fidelity to Castro-ation

1984:
Zizek is the Orwell of the Cuban Castroization:

"All of the above mentioned stories do not change the sad fact that the Cuban revolution did not produce a social model relevant for the eventual Communist future. I visited Cuba a decade ago, and on that visit I found people who proudly showed me houses in decay as a proof of their fidelity to the revolutionary “Event”: “Look, everything is falling apart, we live in poverty, but we are ready to endure it rather than to betray the Revolution!” When renunciations themselves are experienced as proof of authenticity, we get what in psychoanalysis is called the logic of castration. The whole Cuban politico-ideological identity rests on the fidelity to castration—no wonder that the Leader is called Fidel Castro!

The true tragedy is that the very remaining authenticity of the Cuban revolution made it possible for the Castro brothers' government to drag on endlessly and meaninglessly, deprived of the last vestiges of an emancipatory potential. The image of Cuba one gets from someone like Pedro Juan Gutierrez (in his “dirty Havana trilogy”) is telltale. The Cuban common reality is the truth of the revolutionary Sublime: the daily life of struggle for survival, of the escape into violent promiscuous sex, of seizing the day without any future-oriented projects."

Fidel Castro (1926-2016) ( an expression of Orwell's fears of one party rule)

Fidel Castro (1926-2016)

Batista took power in a coup d’etat on March 10, 1952, to prevent the general election that was supposed to take place—and which he was certain to lose—on June 1 of the same year. By late 1956, a little over two years before Batista was overthrown, Castro’s 26th of July Movement, named after the day of his failed armed attack in 1953, had begun to emerge as the hegemonic pole of opposition to the dictatorship.

In the first couple of years after the revolution, Fidel Castro cemented his overwhelming popular support with a radical redistribution of wealth that later turned into a wholesale nationalization of the economy that included even the smallest retail establishments. This highly bureaucratic economy led to very poor performance which was greatly aggravated by the criminal economic blockade that the United States imposed on Cuba as early as 1960. It was the massive Soviet aid that Cuba received that made it possible for the regime to maintain an austere standard of living that guaranteed the satisfaction of the most basic needs of the population, especially education and health.

Under his leadership, the Cuban one-party state was established in the early 1960s and was legally sanctioned by the Constitution adopted in 1976. The ruling Communist Party uses the “mass organizations” as transmission belts for the party’s “orientations.” When these “mass organizations” were originally established in 1960, all the previously existing independent organizations that could have potentially competed with the official institutions were eliminated.

'Hamilton Electors' Declare War on Trump

'Hamilton Electors' Declare War on Trump

CIA Analyst to Iraq Tribunal: Wolfowitz Pushed Multiple Investigations of “Pure Fiction”

CIA Analyst to Iraq Tribunal: Wolfowitz Pushed Multiple Investigations of “Pure Fiction”

minitrue and minipeace....

So I asked Wolfowitz’s office where they had heard that a meeting between al-Qa’ida and Iraqi officials had taken place - in the hopes that this might aid our search. However, I never received a response to my request.

Of course, we now know that these allegations were pure fiction, as were the allegations that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

By 2006 - three years into the war on Iraq — the Bush administration officially admitted it had no evidence of any Iraqi role in the 9-11 attacks. Nevertheless, the US continues to devastate that country, to this very day.

It is time to face the truth and hold our leaders to account for the terrible war crimes committed against the Iraqi people. And it is time for the United States to withdraw from Iraq and allow the Iraqi people to rebuild their country free of foreign interference.

The post-truth world of the Trump administration is scarier than you think

The post-truth world of the Trump administration is scarier than you think

mini true

Sarah Palin calls Trump’s deal with Carrier ‘crony capitalism’

Sarah Palin calls Trump’s deal with Carrier ‘crony capitalism’

Jeff Sessions’s comments on race: For the record ( context)!

Jeff Sessions’s comments on race: For the record