What Do You Do If You are Contacted by an IRS Criminal Investigator?

From [JD Supra] The IRS investigates criminal violations of federal tax laws, including tax evasion, tax fraud, and not filing tax returns. Many people do not realize that simply not filing a tax return when it is due is a crime under federal law.

The IRS analyzes criminal violations of federal tax laws through its “Criminal Investigation Division,” or “CID.” CID agents are referred to as “Special Agents.”

The CID examines individuals and businesses for potential criminal tax violations. CID receives information about possible criminal tax violations from a broad range of sources, including publically-reported information, and information from ex-spouses, former employees, and former business associates.

CID may initiate an investigation without informing a taxpayer that he/she/it is under investigation. By the time CID contacts a taxpayer and notifies the taxpayer that it is under criminal investigation, the investigation may have already been ongoing for some time, and CID has already developed a substantial amount of information. CID often does not seek to initiate contact with the “target” of the investigation until CID already has firm evidence of a potential tax crime.

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"The End of Policing:" Solving Problems Without Police, Courts, or Prisons

So far this year, 773 people have been fatally shot by police, according to the Washington Post, while independent databases that include other causes of death by police report tolls above 900. In the three years since the flashpoint of Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, pushes for reform have reverberated through all levels of government, most notably from former President Barack Obama’s policing task force. And yet, much like gun violence itself, police brutality in the United States remains stuck on repeat. A new book published last week goes beyond the rhetoric of reform to interrogate why we need police at all.

In “The End of Policing,” Alex S. Vitale argues that police reforms implemented in the wake of Brown’s death — from diversity initiatives to community policing to body cameras — fail to acknowledge that policing as an institution reinforces race and class inequalities by design.

“The suppression of workers and the tight surveillance and micromanagement of black and brown lives have always been at the center of policing,” writes Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.

Vitale calls for an ideological reframing of policing as an inherently punitive practice that criminalizes the most vulnerable and marginalized people in the U.S. in order to maintain the status quo for white elites. Instead, he writes, people should be given the programs and resources they need to solve problems within communities in ways that do not involve police, courts, or prisons — a path to materializing justice.

Starting with the “original police force,” the London Metropolitan Police, Vitale provides a succinct historical framework to understand how police in the U.S. were created to control poor and nonwhite people and communities. The modern war on drugs can be traced back to “political opportunism and managing ‘suspect populations’” in the 20th century. The increasingly intensified policing of the U.S.-Mexico border today stems from nativist sentiment and economic exploitation of migrant workers starting in the 1800s. Surveillance and suppression of political movements takes root in imperialist Europe, when ruling powers used secret police to infiltrate and eliminate the opposition.

“The End of Policing” maps how law enforcement has become an omnipresent specter in American society over the last four decades. Police are deployed to monitor and manage a sprawling range of issues: drugs, homelessness, mental health, immigration, school safety, sex work, youth violence, and political resistance. Across this spectrum, current liberal reforms are intertwined with upholding the legitimacy of police, courts, and incarceration as conduits to receive access to resources and care. Vitale’s approach goes beyond working within the carceral system to propose non-punitive alternatives that would eventually render policing obsolete. He convincingly argues that a combination of community-based programs, support services, regulation, economic investment, and political representation for poor communities of color can significantly shrink the impact of policing in exchange for justice and community empowerment.

In a time when the president of the United States openly supports and facilitates aggressive policing, and police officers continue to kill black Americans with impunity, “The End of Policing” is an essential primer to unpack the innate brutality of policing and begin to envision an America free from police violence and control.

The Intercept’s interview with Vitale has been condensed and edited for clarity.

There have been a host of reforms proposed in reaction to the shootings of black Americans by police in the last three years. How does your book address the shortcomings of these reforms?

The bad news is that at the national level, any hope of the federal government bringing about some kind of progressive reform has largely evaporated. The reforms that existed under the Obama administration were pretty limited in scope and their effectiveness is open to question. The good news is that the vast majority of decision-making about police reform happens at the local level, and local political pressure can really make a difference. But the bad news about that is that the kinds of reforms most people are advocating for I don’t think are going to make a substantial difference. Some improvements in training, policy, and accountability may lead to a reduction in deaths, but it won’t address the larger question of overpolicing.

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Cyrus Vance & the Myth of the Progressive White Prosecutor

From [NYTimes] This month, it was reported that the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., chose not to prosecute Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. for fraud when he had the chance in 2012. Similarly, Mr. Vance declined to bring sexual abuse charges against the now-disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in 2015, even though he had an audiotape of Mr. Weinstein admitting to groping the victim.

Mr. Vance’s willingness to ignore wrongdoing by powerful people is a serious issue. But his biggest failures have not been the cases he won’t prosecute, but rather the ones he does.

Mr. Vance is considered one of America’s most progressive prosecutors and has the accolades to prove it. In 2015, he helped create the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Two years earlier, Attorney General Eric Holder gave him an award for having developed a partnership between local youths and law enforcement aimed at reducing violence.

Sure, he often says the right thing, as when he told New York Law School’s graduating class in 2015 that he had recognized racism in the criminal justice system “long before the term ‘mass incarceration’ entered the general conversation,” or when he wrote in the black-owned Amsterdam News last month that he has helped to reduce “unnecessary contact with the criminal justice system” among Manhattanites.

However, like many prosecutors across the country who get credit for changing the game while continuing draconian practices, Mr. Vance simply isn’t the reformer he paints himself as.

Look at the data. Manhattan holds less than 20 percent of the city’s population, but on an average day, almost 40 percent of Rikers Island inmates are from the borough. This disparity has been attributed in part to his office’s zealous prosecution of misdemeanors. As of 2015, Mr. Vance was more likely to prosecute a misdemeanor charge than any other district attorney in New York City.

And despite lamenting racism in the criminal justice system, Mr. Vance perpetuates l worrisome racial disparities. A 2014 Vera Institute of Justice study found that black and Latino defendants prosecuted by Mr. Vance’s office were more likely to be detained at booking, compared with similarly situated white defendants. And last year, 51 percent of marijuana cases involving black defendants in Manhattan ended in conviction, while only 23 percent involving whites did.

Nor is Mr. Vance the only faux reformer.

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Fomer WH Communications Director's Company Asked Twitter to vote on the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust

Genocide as Trivia to Racist Suspects. From [HERE] Anthony Scaramucci, Trunp's former WH communications director, is now a media entrepreneur, in case you didn't know, and his Scaramucci Post on Tuesday asked the Twitterverse to weigh in on the following question: How many Jews were killed in the Holocaust?

The poll offered four options.

The @ScaramucciPost Twitter account removed the poll after about 90 minutes and said the account manager, Lance Laifer, had posted it without consulting Scaramucci. Laifer said the poll was meant as a simple trivia question.

“The intent of the poll was to highlight ignorance of the basic facts of the Holocaust,” he wrote on Twitter. [MORE]

Grade Failure: 'Genocidal President Systematically Denying Food, Water & Medication to Puerto Ricans'

From [HERE] An elderly woman in Puerto Rico is helpless as her husband's body becomes a patchwork of ulcers and sores from Parkinson's disease. Another woman risks respiratory disease from a mold-infested bedroom and destroyed roof.

The snapshots come from American volunteers on the devastated island who are working with the American Federation of Teachers. The union has sent 40 nurses to Puerto Rico, where the natural disaster of Hurricane Maria and neglect from the Trump administration has created a perfect storm of death, disease and decay across an island of 3.4 million American citizens.

"This disaster is caused by neglect by the federal government," union president Randi Weingarten told Newsweek. "That's why this is such a tragedy. For President Trump to say they're safe is cruel and an abstention of responsibility."

Puerto Ricans are fighting to live with that failure. The elderly woman is in her 70s and caring for her grandchildren while also trying to relieve her wheelchair-bound husband’s pain. There are wounds covering his body and an infection that's festering on his foot. The couple lives in Yabucoa, on the southeast edge of Puerto Rico, and hopes to join family on the U.S. mainland soon. 

“He’s got pressure ulcers on his back and feet, and she can barely lift him,” Maureen Upton, a 12-year nurse practitioner, told Newsweek. “She was just in tears. She didn’t know what she was going to do.”

Misty Richards, a registered nurse with the American Federation of Teachers, said Puerto Ricans are living in mold-infested rooms, which will cause respiratory problems after prolonged exposure.

'There is no help' for Puerto Rico

Misty Richards, a registered nurse from Oregon who volunteered with the teachers union, worries there will be a slow increase in deaths, as people in rural communities lack medicine and nutrition.

Those with the money and resources to leave are able to head to the U.S. mainland, but not everyone is so fortunate. As well-off citizens leave the destruction behind, that leaves fewer people in the community to aid those who have nothing, creating a resource drain, Richards said.

“I wish I could say that I thought it wasn’t a socioeconomic caste system, but it absolutely is,” Richards told Newsweek. “These Puerto Ricans are being treated like they are disposable. It's been inhumane.”

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Black Man Wrongly Imprisoned for 23 yrs for Double Murder Set Free but No Compensation from Kansas

From [HERE] The Kansas City Star details the 23-year struggle Rosie McIntyre endured to clear her son Lamonte, who was exonerated on Friday.  Lamonte McIntyre was just 17 when he was arrested for the murders of Donie Quinn and Donald Ewing.  His mother knew all along that he was innocent.  She told the Star, “It tore me apart.  I knew my son.  There was never (any) doubt  . . . I knew he was innocent.  No one believed it.  No one cared.  It was like I was all along with the situation.”

According to the Star, Rosie McIntyre kept a notebook with detailed notes about her more than two-decade struggle to get help for Lamonte. Over the years, she contacted countless legal organizations, innocence organizations and journalists.  Early on, dressed as a man (for safety) and armed with a tape recorder, she even conducted her own investigation, canvassing the street where the murders occurred and asking about the crime.  This took a toll on her emotionally.

Her pleas were finally answered by Centurion Ministries which agreed to take on Lamont’s case.  With the help of Kansas City lawyer Cheryl Pilate and the Midwest Innocence Project, the lawyers conducted an investigation that revealed that even the victim’s family members believed that police had arrested the wrong person.

On Friday afternoon, just two days into what was expected to be a week-long hearing to consider McIntyre’s exoneration, Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree Sr. flabbergasted the courtroom when he said the county would no longer contest the facts of McIntyre’s innocence.

McIntyre, arrested at age 17, had spent the past 23 years behind bars as part of two life sentences on two counts of murder. He is now 41.

The 17-year-old McIntyre was arrested on April 15, 1994, in Kansas City, Kan.

In a four-day trial — held when he was 18 and thus trying him as an adult — he was given two life terms for the double murders of two individuals, Doniel Quinn, 21, and Donald Ewing, 34. The men had been sitting in a powder blue Cadillac on Hutchings Street when a killer with a shotgun blasted them inside.

McIntyre not only has resolutely maintained his innocence but also has consistently maintained that he never knew either Quinn or Ewing, who many believe were murdered by someone else as part of a drug-related killing.

The case against McIntyre, chronicled in 2016 by The Star, included no gun, no motive, no physical evidence whatsoever that tied him to the crime, and no evidence that he knew either victim. Nor was there evidence that the Kansas City, Kan., police at the time had searched for such evidence.

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Diseased Water in Puerto Rico Has Caused 10 Confirmed Cases of Leptospirosis

From [HERE] and [HERE] Three weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, killing at least 44 people, Jose Vargas surveyed street after street lined with mounds of soaking garbage mixed with mud, trees and sometimes dead animals.

You couldn't make a better breeding ground for rats, roaches and all sorts of nasty diseases, the public health volunteer said. And every day the fetid piles stay there, the risk of an epidemic grows.

Maria turned life for many of Puerto Rico's 3.4 million residents into a nightmarish scramble for food and water as overtaxed authorities struggle to deliver supplies, save lives and restore basic services. An estimated 80 percent of the island still doesn't have power and 40 percent have no running water.

Beyond the deaths directly attributed to the storm, officials say four other fatalities may have been caused by leptospirosis — a bacterial infection caused by rodent urine tainting the water from springs.

The are 10 confirmed cases of Leptospirosis in Puerto Rico. In both Puerto Rico and teh USVI, the disease was contracted following Hurricane Maria.

Six more people are being evaluated for the disease, which can lead to kidney damage, liver failure and meningitis.

In one Puerto Rico incident, Jorge Antonio Sanyet Morales, a 61-year-old bus driver, took a drink from a stream near his concrete home on a hillside in Canovanas a week after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island commonwealth of 3.5 million people. He then developed a fever, his skin turned yellow and within a week, he died at a hospital in Carolina, according to his widow, Maritza Rivera.

Dr. Juan Santiago said Mr. Sanyet was among five patients who came in his emergency clinic earlier this month with similar symptoms after drinking from streams in Canovanas and Loiza.

Leptospirosis is an infection caused by corkscrew-shaped bacteria called Leptospira. Signs and symptoms can range from none to mild such as headaches, muscle pains, and fevers; to severe with bleeding from the lungs or meningitis.

If the infection causes the person to turn yellow, have kidney failure and bleed, it is then known as Weil’s disease. If it causes a lot of bleeding into the lungs, it is known as severe pulmonary hemorrhage syndrome.

The disease is not uncommon in the tropics, particularly after heavy rain and flooding, and its symptoms may sometimes be confused with other illnesses such as dengue.

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Raw Sewage Contaminating Waters in Puerto Rico after Maria

From [HERE] and [HERE] Raw sewage is pouring into the rivers and reservoirs of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. People without running water bathe and wash their clothes in contaminated streams, and some islanders have been drinking water from condemned wells.

Nearly a month after the hurricane made landfall, Puerto Rico is only beginning to come to grips with a massive environmental emergency that has no clear end in sight.

"I think this will be the most challenging environmental response after a hurricane that our country has ever seen," said Judith Enck, who served as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency region that includes Puerto Rico under President Barack Obama.

With hundreds of thousands of people still without running water, and 20 of the island's 51 sewage treatment plants out of service, there are growing concerns about contamination and disease.

"People in the U.S. can't comprehend the scale and scope of what's needed," said Drew Koslow, an ecologist with the nonprofit Ridge to Reefs who recently spent a week in Puerto Rico working with a portable water purification system.

EPA officials said that of last week they still had not been unable to inspect five of the island's 18 Superfund sites — highly contaminated toxic sites targeted for cleanup because of risks to human health and the environment — including the former U.S. Navy bombing range on the island of Vieques.

"I just wish we had more resources to deal with it," said Catherine McCabe, the EPA deputy regional administrator.

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Harvard Study: Police Related Deaths are Being Woefully Underreported. Coroners Misclassifying the Cause of Death

From [HERE] In a study released this week, researchers at Harvard found that police-related deaths are woefully underreported.

The study’s authors came to their conclusion by examining reports issued by the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and comparing those numbers to media collected by The Counted, an online database run by The Guardian that compiles news stories of police-related deaths.

While the NVSS reported a total of 530 deaths that were police-related in 2015, The Counted had collected 1,086 stories that fit the correct definition for a “legal intervention” cause of death.

When the Harvard team looked into the reason for this discrepancy, they found the disparity came from coroners and medical examiners misreporting on hundreds of death certificates the cause of death as “assault” rather than “legal intervention,” the term used by the NVSS to designate a police-related fatality. The report states:

Misclassification primarily occurs because the coroner or medical examiner certifying the death fails to mention police involvement in the literal text fields of the death certificate’s cause of death section (e.g., the field labeled “Describe how the injury occurred” does not state “killed by police”), although mistakes in the process of assigning ICD codes may still occur even when the death certificate indicates police involvement [15]. To our knowledge, there have been no prior national estimates of the misclassification rate for legal intervention deaths in the NVSS, nor has any research investigated factors associated with misclassification. [MORE]

Notably, a cause of death labeled “legal intervention” does not entail any implication of wrongdoing or unlawful use of force. It’s the term used in all deaths that occur as a result of a police officer’s actions, regardless of the details surrounding any particular altercation. Still, in hundreds of cases, coroners and medical examiners listed “assault” rather than “legal intervention” as the cause of death.

The study concluded that the real number of deaths that should have been labeled “legal intervention” was 1,086, far higher than the 530 reported by the NVSS. Examining death certificates, the research team found 599 of the deaths tracked by The Counted had been mislabeled, which explains the substantial gap between the two numbers.

It wasn’t the only jarring finding for the Harvard team. Doctoral candidate Justin Feldman, one of the study’s authors, tells Bustle:

It was also surprising that some states did a much worse job counting killings by police, while others did better. In Oklahoma, where more than 30 people were killed by police in 2015, none of these deaths were counted. But other states such as Washington properly counted a large majority of these deaths.

In other words, according to the NVVS, Oklahoma would appear to have a 2015 record of no police killings. As Feldman points out, that’s an egregious factual error.

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Is Census Being Underfunded to Undercount Growing Non-White Populations? Billions Short for a Competent 2020 Survey

From [HERE] and [HERE] Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the House Oversight Committee Thursday completing the 2020 census will require a budget of $15.6 billion, which represents a $3.3 billion, or 27 percent, increase over previous estimates.

Ross also told the committee they would have the proper funding needed for the immediate future and would have the next year "pretty well within hand," with an additional $187 million in funding for fiscal year 2018 for the Census Bureau. If that funding is received, it would allay numerous concerns about the amount of progress made or lack thereof on technology improvements meant to have been implemented over the past few years.

"We believe the 187 [million] will cover us through the fiscal year 2018, we're reasonably comfortable with that," Ross told the ranking Democrat on the committee, Elijah Cummings of Maryland. "The bigger risk comes after 2018 because that's when 80-plus percent of the money will be spent."

Ross said the Office of Management and Budget was on-board with the $187 million in increased funding for fiscal year 2018. Budgeting for the census has become increasingly complex and increasingly political.

A Thursday report by the Washington Post illustrated what's at stake, showing a state like Alabama could lose congressional representation if even just a few thousand citizens are not counted. 

More likely, however is that the Census is being purposefully underfunded to undercount Black, Latino and Asian populations which are expanding and growing rapidly. The white population is declining. 

Demographic data collected by the Census Bureau are used to distribute more than $600 billion a year in federal funds and to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. But there are worries that the 2020 Census will produce a less accurate count than in decades past.

Underfunding already has forced the bureau to delay an advertising campaign and cancel some field tests. Any scaling back of outreach efforts could impact how immigrants, communities of color and rural communities are counted, census watchers say.

The results of the U.S. census are far more important than most Americans realize. Census data are the starting point for redistricting and reapportionment – adding and removing House districts from states as population changes dictate – not to mention the distribution of billions of dollars in federal funding. Housing assistance, highway maintenance and Medicare/Medicaid are just three examples of programs that distribute federal dollars to states in the form of grants based on census results. Undercounting populations guarantees that over the next decade, states will be strapped for funding in these areas.

"This would lead to a result that deprives population groups of equal political representation and access to their fair share of public and private resources," wrote Vanita Gupta — a former Obama administration official who now heads The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — in statement submitted to the House committee.

And that is likely to happen if Republicans in Congress get their way. Under cover of the non-stop Trump circus, they are quietly working behind the scenes to ensure that the 2020 census fails – and fails to their advantage.

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One Third of all Black Men Have a Felony Conviction

From [Sentencing Project] In “Growth in the U.S. Ex-Felon and Ex-Prisoner Population, 1948 to 2010,” Sarah Shannon and colleagues estimate that one-third of black men had a felony conviction in 2010—a significant increase over the past 30 years and far above the rate for white men. Published in Demography, the study develops national and state-level estimates for the frequency of both felony convictions and incarceration.

The researchers found that the percentage of black men with a felony conviction increased from 13% in 1980 to 33% in 2010 (compared to 5% and 13% for all adult men during these periods, respectively). They also estimate that the percentage of black men who had experienced imprisonment increased from 6% in 1980 to 15% in 2010 (compared to 2% and 6% for all adult men during these periods, respectively). These estimates are “the first attempt to provide state-level demographic information about people with felony convictions in the United States, a population defined by incomplete citizenship and the temporary or permanent suspension of many rights and privileges.”

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NFL Collusion Trumps Winning: 0-6 Browns Qb's Have a Qb Rating of 60 with 14 Ints - Kaepernick Files Grievance

Fuck a Loss. Kevin Hogan above is no Kaepernick. He got the start in a 17- 33 losing effort against the Texans on Sunday. The Browns are a winless 0-6 and their starting quarterbacks Hogan & Deshone Kizer [started the first 5] have combined qb rating of 60.5 and have thrown 14 interceptions already. [MORE] The Browns have been historically unstable at the qb position. In fact, from 1999 through the end of the 2016 season, the team had 26 different players start at quarterback. [MORE] If winning is all that matters, is Hogan -- who spent much of the team's training camp as its fourth-string quarterback -- really the best answer? [MORE]

Kaepernick has led the 49ers to a Super Bowl and two NFC championship games and he threw 16 touchdown passes with four interceptions for them last season. [MORE] Like so many other teams the Browns also passed over Kaepernick - b/c in winning is not everything in the NFL. It is secondary to the system of racism/white supremacy, a global, white over Black system of unequal conditions & vast unequal power that functions in all areas of people activity, including sports & entertainment. Racism is not merely a pattern of individual and/or institutional practice; it is a universal operating "system" of white supremacy and domination in which the majority of the world's white people participate. [MORE]

Kaepernick Rule. Let's be clear. Speaking out against acts of bigotry or the already unlawful use of excessive force by police is really not a radical thing to do. Kaepernick spoke about a system that refuses to punish white cops who murder Blacks in broad daylight and rewards them for doing so. He took it to work because the NFL is apart of that system. That same system has now dissapeared or filtered him out. Consequently, YOUR chains should be more visible to you. A re-emerging rule here is: any act or attitude on the part of Blacks which appears to White Americans to defy White American authority, control or dominance will trigger this reaction from elite whites. Any non-white person who works for a Government, a big media outlet, major corporation, utility, learning institution, court system, major non-profit etc., who names and challenges the system of racism/white supremacy will also be filtered out. Conversely, this is the exact opposite to "Showcase Blacks" who are handsomely rewarded & showcased by their masters for their obedience & SNiggering, mentacidal activities in all areas of people activity. [MORE] and [MORE]

Collusion = Agreeing to Support White Supremacy. From [HERE] Quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who remains unemployed after a 2016 season in which he began the movement of players protesting during the national anthem, has filed a grievance accusing NFL teams of colluding to keep him out of the league, his legal representatives said.

Kaepernick retained Los Angeles-based attorney Mark J. Geragos to pursue the collusion claim and, according to a person with knowledge of the filing, it will be Kaepernick’s outside legal representation and not the NFL Players Association primarily in charge of preparing and presenting his case.

Geragos’s firm confirmed the filing of the grievance, saying it “was done only after pursuing every possible avenue with all NFL teams and their executives.”

The law firm’s statement also said: “If the NFL … is to remain a meritocracy, then principled and peaceful political protest — which the owners themselves made great theater imitating weeks ago—should not be punished and athletes should not be denied employment based on partisan political provocation by the executive branch of our government. … Protecting all athletes from such collusive conduct is what compelled Mr. Kaepernick to file his grievance.”

The collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players’ union prohibits teams from conspiring to make decisions about signing a player. But the CBA also says the mere fact that a player is unsigned and evidence about the player’s qualifications to be on an NFL roster do not constitute proof of collusion.

For that reason, such cases are difficult to prove, according to legal experts.

“There has to be some evidence of an agreement between multiple teams not to sign a player,” said Gabriel Feldman, the director of the sports law program at Tulane University. “Disagreement over personnel decisions, as obvious as it may seem to someone looking at this, does not provide evidence of collusion. There has to be some evidence of an explicit or implied agreement. There has to be proof of a conspiracy.” [MORE]

Media [Presents Facts in Accord w/the Appetite of the Racist Viewer] Ignores Foiled White Male Terrorist in NC

From [MintPress] and [NPR] On October 6, a narrowly foiled terror plot failed to capture national media coverage despite the attack’s clear intent to kill innocent Americans. According to reports, the alleged perpetrator, 46-year-old Michael Christopher Estes, planted in the Asheville Regional Airport an improvised explosive device — which was later rendered safe by bomb technicians from the local police department, several minutes after it was scheduled to detonate. The bomb, filled with shrapnel, was reportedly part of Estes’ plan to “fight a war on U.S. soil” of which the bomb was but the first blow. Estes waived his Miranda rights and admitted his guilt in front a federal judge this past Tuesday.

Though the story was largely ignored by corporate media for much of the past week, it gained renewed attention following an article written by Shaun King and published in the Intercept. In the article, King argues that the lack of attention given to the terror plot was due to the fact that Estes is a white man. King may have been on the right track. Certainly, as King points out, had Estes been a Muslim the reaction would have been quite different and most likely would have included a swift response from the president.

A problem with this narrative emerged when it was revealed that local jail records indicate that Estes is not white, but rather a Native American. However, King’s argument still stands to a significant degree, given that Estes appears “white” in his mugshot and does not fit the stereotype of the “typical” terrorist. But, in addition to the politics of race and religion in instances of terrorism, there seem to be additional factors at work that led to the lack of coverage of this attempted terrorist attack.

If a tree falls in the forest and the FBI was nowhere near it . . .

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Moronic President Obsessed w/ Obama's Skin Color Tells Lies to Destroy Healthcare for Poor People

Fuck the Rat Race. From [ThinkProgress] In the last 24 hours, Trump has clearly undercut the Affordable Care Act, sending insurers and millions of Americans into uncertainty.

At 10:47 p.m. on Thursday, the Trump administration released a press statement saying it would stop paying insurance companies for subsidizing health care to low-income people, breaking an agreement between the White House and insurers. Just a few hours earlier that day, he had signed an executive order aimed to hobble the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, where about 22 million people buy private health plans.

Prior to Thursday’s late news, Trump had begrudgingly paid insurers for subsidies month-to-month, putting insurers and the public more broadly on edge. People who earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid but are still low-income — up to 250 percent of the federal poverty line (FPL) or about $30,000 for one person — receive the subsidy known as cost-sharing reductions (CSR).

Now, thanks to Trump’s actions, ACA enrollees could now see steep premium prices and potential insurer pullouts. The rest of the United States will see more federal dollars spent to clean up this mess. Fourteen states, who did not account for CSR cuts, could see premium hikes or insurer pullouts to account for the loss.

CSRs help many low-income people pay for out-of-pocket costs. The vast majority of people who enroll in the ACA also qualify for premium tax credits, another subsidy offered under current health law. They will be safeguarded by hikes because when premiums go up, so do subsidies. And despite Trump’s decision to end payments, people who receive CSRs will continue to get subsidized care. But it could end up costing the federal government a lot more.

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[Lying to Congress is a Crime] Did Governor Impeach Himself w/ Prior Testimony on Diseased Water in Flint?

From [HERE] and [MORE] Michigan’s governor insisted Thursday that his congressional testimony regarding the Flint water crisis “was truthful and I stand by it,” shortly after a committee pointed out a potential discrepancy and warned him about committing perjury.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder sent the letter to Reps. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina and Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Earlier Thursday, they had given Snyder until Oct. 25 to address when he first learned of a fatal Legionnaires’ disease outbreak.

Harvey Hollins, the governor’s director of urban affairs, testified in a Michigan courtroom last week that he told Snyder about Legionnaires’ during a phone call before Christmas 2015. Snyder told the congressional panel under oath in March 2016 that when he became aware of the Legionnaires’ cases, he held a news conference the next day, which was Jan. 13.

“In order to resolve this discrepancy in recollection, please supply the Committee with any additional relevant information you have concerning the date upon which you first learned” of the Legionnaires’ disease, Gowdy and Cummings wrote in a letter to Snyder. “If necessary, you may also choose to amend or supplement your testimony.”

They then noted that it is a crime for a witness to commit perjury, to “knowingly and willfully” make any false statement or to “corruptly” influence, obstruct or impede a congressional investigation.

Snyder responded that he reviewed the testimony in question, which came in response to Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg’s question on when he first learned of instances of Legionnaires’.

“While you have offered for me to clarify my sworn testimony, I do not believe there is any reason to do so,” Snyder wrote.

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