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Middleboro Review 2

NEW CONTENT MOVED TO MIDDLEBORO REVIEW 2

Toyota

Since the Dilly, Dally, Delay & Stall Law Firms are adding their billable hours, the Toyota U.S.A. and Route 44 Toyota posts have been separated here:

Route 44 Toyota Sold Me A Lemon



Saturday, July 1, 2017

Time to Inform Yourselves! Trumpcare: 32 million LOOSE COVERAGE



Every other Industrialized Nation offers SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE....except the US!

The Dirty Energy Koch Brothers and their WEALTHY ilk convinced poorly educated Americans that somehow they didn't need of deserve HEALTH CARE, much as their THINK TANK PROPAGANDA has caused voters to vote against their best interests.






There's NOTHING worse than GOP PERPETUATING IGNORANCE!
Religious Zealots have you focused on those 'BAD' LGBT folks and other inflammatory issues so that you're not paying attention to REPUBLICAN EXTREMIST ACTIONS.

GOD gave you a BRAIN and SHE expects you to use it!

Was anyone paying attention?

The rolls of Uninsured Americans continued to increase with REPUBLICANS ignoring Abandoned Americans who were denied HEALTH CARE while the WEALTHY got ever richer.

Marco Rubio & Other Republicans SABOTAGED OBAMACARE!


Paul Ryan Proves GOP Sabotaged Obamacare To Get Trump Elected

Most people don't know much about the ACA, and the GOPers are desperate to repeal it before it is fully implemented. Failing to repeal it would make them look pretty foolish for trying so hard to repeal it 40 times so far.

BTW--Let's add that you cannot be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition, and families can carry their children on their policies until age 25.

5 'Obamacare' facts to counter any conservative argument against the ACA



The most controversial piece of legislation passed since President Obama came into office in January of 2009 has been theAffordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." Some support it, some are against and many find themselves in the middle as a shade of gray.
 
No matter where you stand, it has become common place to hear two people argue over the positives and negatives of "Obamacare." Many on the "political left" find themselves in a constant battle with those on the "political right" who demonize the health care law simply because President Obama's name is attached to it. For those who want to defend the positives, here are five facts that can be thrown out to counter a conservative argument.

1. Obamacare's '80/20' rule has led to nearly $4 billion in savings:
One of the least talked about provisions in the Affordable Care Act is the "80/20" rule. The rule mandates that 80 percent of an insurance companies earning must be put back into medical services and not the paid back to the company or share holders.
"According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the new "80/20" rule, which requires insurers to spend 80 percent of every dollar earned on medical services, helped saved American consumers $3.9 billion in 2012.
The savings were divided into two areas. About $3.4 billion was saved by insurers keeping their premiums lower in order to comply with the new law and $500 million came in the form of rebates being sent back to consumers who overpaid for their premiums."
2. 'Obamacare' has extended the life of Medicare by 10 years:
Medicare was created nearly 50 years ago and was considered a lifeline and safety net for seniors who needed health care after they retired. Once considered to be broke in the year 2016, a new report released earlier this shows that due to "Obamacare," Medicare will be fully solvent for an additional decade.
"According to the "2013 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds," Medicare will be solvent for two years longer than reported in the previous years report, and 10 years longer than reported back in 2009.
The Affordable Care Act saves $716 billion over the next decade from Medicare spending by reducing payments made to private insurers, hospitals and other providers."
3. Number of uninsured Americans down to 4 year low due to 'Obamacare':
When President Obama originally spoke of his new health care reform, one of the main talking points he used was that there were nearly 50 million Americans currently uninsured. A report was released in 2012 that showed that because of "Obamacare," the number of uninsured had dropped by over two million.
"A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the number of uninsured Americans dropped in 2011 for the first time in four years. The largest increase in coverage comes from one of the highlighted provisions of "Obamacare," college-age adults under the age of 26 being able to stay on their parent's insurance."
During the summer of 2012, a survey done by the Center for Disease Control which showed exactly how many more Americans were covered.
"NHIS data indicate that the number of Americans without health insurance coverage declined in 2011 by 2.3 million people to 46.3 million uninsured Americans. The share of all people without health insurance coverage also dropped — by nearly 1 percentage point, from 16.0 percent in 2010 to 15.1 percent in 2011. This is the largest decline in a single year in the percentage of people without insurance since CDC began collecting these data in 1997."
4. The Affordable Care Act, 'Obamacare,' has saved seniors $4.5 billion:
After the financial crisis of 2008, senior citizens were hit harder than most. Struggling not just with their finances, but also with their health. Wondering if their Medicare would still hold up through the economic roller caster, older Americans questioned their future more than anyone else. A report was released in 2012 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services which stated that over five million seniors have saved, and will save millions of dollars because of the Affordable Care Act.
"Because of the health care law – the Affordable Care Act – the average person with traditional Medicare will save $5,000 from 2010 to 2022, according to a report today from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. People with Medicare who have high prescription drug costs will save much more – more than $18,000 – over the same period.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius also announced that, because of the health care law, more than 5.5 million seniors and people with disabilities saved nearly $4.5 billion on prescription drugs since the law was enacted. Seniors in the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap known as the donut hole have saved an average of $641 in the first eight months of 2012 alone. This includes $195 million in savings on prescriptions for diabetes, over $140 million on drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and $75 million on cancer drugs so far this year. Also in the first eight months of 2012, more than 19 million people with original Medicare received at least one preventive service at no cost to them."
5. States that refuse to expand Medicaid will lose over $8 billion:

When the conservative dominated Supreme Court upheld "Obamacare" by a 5-4 vote, supporters released a sigh of relief. While the landmark health care reform was still standing, not everything was staying in place. One of the mandates of the health care law was that all states would have to expand their Medicaid problem, letting more low-income families into the enrollment. Though the federal government is set to cover 100 percent of the costs for the first few years, as time goes on states will have to chip in, but no more than 10 percent coming out of their own pocket.

Many conservative "red states" have balked at the idea, standing by their opposition to "Obamacare". Despite their stubborn stance, a new report from the Rand Corporation has shown that the states who refuse to expand Medicaid will lose billions of dollars.
"If 14 states decide not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act as intended by their governors, those state governments collectively will spend $1 billion more on uncompensated care in 2016 than they would if Medicaid is expanded.
In addition, those 14 state governments would forego $8.4 billion annually in federal payments and an additional 3.6 million people will be left uninsured, according to findings published in the June edition of the journal Health Affairs."



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CBO Latest Estimate: Trumpcare Would Cost 32 Million Coverage 
Tami Luhby, CNN Money 
Luhby writes: "Republican senators are skittish enough that their health care bill would leave 22 million people more without health insurance by 2026, compared to Obamacare." 
READ MORE


A patient in Colorado looks over paperwork with a doctor. (photo: Craig F. Walker/Denver Post)
A patient in Colorado looks over paperwork with a doctor. (photo: Craig F. Walker/Denver Post)

Republican senators are skittish enough that their health care bill would leave 22 million people more without health insurance by 2026, compared to Obamacare.

hey likely won't be too keen on President Trump's suggestion to just repeal Obamacare immediately and replace it later if they can't get enough support to pass their bill.
That move would probably leave 18 million more people without coverage in the first year after its enactment and 32 million more by 2026, according to a Congressional Budget Office report that looked at an earlier GOP bill to repeal Obamacare.
It would also cause premiums on individual market policies to increase by up to 25% the first year and to nearly double by 2026.
All this would happen mainly because the individual mandate -- which requires nearly all Americans to get coverage or pay a penalty -- would be repealed. But some insurers would also likely pull out of the market, the CBO said. The remaining carriers would likely raise rates dramatically because the remaining enrollees would tend to be older and sicker.
This is one reason why Republican lawmakers in both the House and the Senate moved away from a straight repeal of Obamacare without a replacement bill. That left insurers, consumers and other Republican members in a tizzy. Only 19% of Americans supported repealing Obamacare first and replacing later, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released in March.
That hasn't stopped some conservative GOP members from pushing for a full repeal. Both Senators Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Rand Paul of Kentucky have recently broached the topic with Trump, likely leading to his tweet Friday morning.
While senators are expected to ignore Trump's suggestion, it does inject more uncertainty into the future of Obamacare and the individual market. And that's the last thing insurers need.
Already, many are raising rates or even dropping out of the individual market completely for 2018. Some 36 counties in Nevada, Ohio and Indiana are at risk of having no carrier on their exchanges next year, according to Kaiser.
Their main concerns: the mandate that everyone have insurance and the cost-sharing subsidies for lower-income Americans.
Insurers are brushing off the president's comments, saying they are moving forward with the efforts in Congress.
"We're focused on making recommendations to improve the [Senate bill], and on ensuring a stable 2018," said Kristine Grow, a spokeswoman for America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry trade group.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/44435-cbo-latest-estimate-trumpcare-would-cost-32-million-coverage






RSN: Naomi Klein: The Worst Is Yet to Come With Trump, so We Must Be Ready for Shock Politics




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Naomi Klein: The Worst Is Yet to Come With Trump, so We Must Be Ready for Shock Politics
Naomi Klein. (photo: Ed Kashi)
Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein, Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Now, I've spent a lot of time thinking about shock. Ten years ago, I published The Shock Doctrine, an investigation that spanned four decades, from Pinochet's U.S.-backed coup in 1970s Chile to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I noticed a brutal and recurring tactic by right-wing governments."
READ MORE






CBO Latest Estimate: Trumpcare Would Cost 32 Million Coverage
Tami Luhby, CNN Money
Luhby writes: "Republican senators are skittish enough that their health care bill would leave 22 million people more without health insurance by 2026, compared to Obamacare."
READ MORE
Were Voting Machines Actually Breached? DHS Would Rather Not Know
Sam Thielman, Talking Points Memo
Thielman writes: "Pressure to examine voting machines used in the 2016 election grows daily as evidence builds that Russian hacking attacks were broader and deeper than previously known. And the Department of Homeland Security has a simple response."
READ MORE
At Least 25 States Resist Trump Commission's Effort to Gather Voters' Personal Data
Mark Berman and David Weigel, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "President Trump's voting commission stumbled into public view this week, issuing a sweeping request for nationwide voter data that drew sharp condemnation from election experts and resistance from more than two dozen states that said they cannot or will not hand over all of the data."
READ MORE
All the Police Have to Do Is Utter Those Five Magic Words: I Feared for My Life
Janine Jackson, FAIR
Jackson writes: "If there is a word for being stunned and stunned again, and yet unable to become numb, it would go some way towards describing how people - especially black people - felt as we heard the verdict in the case of the murder of Philando Castile."
READ MORE
Canada's Indigenous Resist 150 Years of Colonization, Genocide
teleSUR
Excerpt: "While the Canadian government spends a half-billion dollars on celebrations for 'Canada 150,' Indigenous organized events and protests are standing in steadfast rejection of Canada's legacy of colonization and dispossession."
READ MORE
Trump Approves US-Mexico Pipeline 'That'll Go Right Under the Wall'
Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch
Chow writes: "President Donald Trump has approved the construction of a new U.S.-Mexico pipeline that will go 'right under' the controversial border wall."
READ MORE

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Is the census heading for a crisis?










Is the census heading for a crisis?


The director resigns just as the $1.5 billion agency heads into its biggest test. Next in command may be a weather forecaster.

By DANNY VINIK

05/13/2017


The FBI wasn’t the only agency that lost its boss on Tuesday: John Thompson, director of the Census Bureau, abruptly announced he was resigning at the end of June. His surprise exit leaves the bureau not only without a leader in the middle of the run-up to the 2020 census, but also without a permanent deputy director to step in for him—and no direct supervisor in place at the Department of Commerce, the agency that oversees the Bureau and its massive once-a-decade national survey.

The triple gap in leadership, along with a funding shortfall that has already forced the cancellation of multiple field tests, leaves observers worried about an impending crisis in the biggest civic project that Washington regularly undertakes—a population count that has profound effects on American business and politics.

Thompson’s departure comes after a rocky week in which he was grilled by legislators at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing and had to explain why a new electronic system was nearly 50 percent over budget. And it leaves the agency without a head at a crucial moment in its 10-year cycle, with 10,000 employees ramping up for a dry-run test of their capacity to run the 2020 census. Lawmakers had tried to ensure that the census wouldn’t face a leadership gap during this specific period—something all but certain to happen after Thompson steps down on June 30. The Trump Administration hasn't forwarded a nominee to replace him.

“This administration is at best guilty of neglect,” said a former congressional staffer who worked on census issues. “The Director’s term was up in January, and they have failed to recruit qualified scientists to lead the Bureau.”

The Commerce Department did not respond to questions on who would run the bureau, and said in a statement, “The Department of Commerce is reviewing the Census Bureau’s recent miscalculations and remains confident that the right team will be in place to conduct a complete and accurate 2020 Census.”

The census is enshrined in the Constitution, and unlike most government programs, has an inflexible and exacting schedule: The official count begins on April 1, 2020—not a day later. Its results direct the destination of hundreds of billions of federal dollars each year and determine which states gain and lose House seats during reapportionment.

The results of the Census, and the picture it draws of America’s population, can be highly dependent on what questions it asks and how hard it tries to find everyone—an issue even more fraught in 2020, given the profound debates the Trump campaign raised about American identity. Many census-watchers have also been airing fears that the administration could install a partisan at the agency to influence the count for political purposes. “At worst,” said the former staffer, “this is a deliberate act to sabotage the constitutionally mandated 2020 count and the fair distribution of political power for the next decade.”

Experts are hopeful that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will quickly nominate a replacement for Thompson. During his confirmation hearing, Ross—who actually worked as a census enumerator when he was younger—spoke of the importance of government data in general, and called the census and other government data-collection projects “essential functions” of the agency.

It’s unclear why, exactly, Thompson, a trained statistician who has been at the agency for almost 30 years and led it since 2013, submitted his resignation without a replacement in the wings. Ken Prewitt, a former director of the Census Bureau who has known him for decades, said that if Thompson lost the confidence of Ross, he would step aside so that the secretary could install his own director as the agency enters such a critical period. “From a distance, I just know the man very, very well,” Prewitt said. “He would think the census is likely to be in better hands if the director has the confidence of the secretary.”

The Census Bureau has already had a difficult year. First, the 2017 spending bill funded the agency 10 percent below its budget request, which some census observers say will prevent the agency from fully preparing for the 2020 count. The Bureau canceled multiple field tests and delayed opening three field offices as a result of multiple continuing resolutions since October that funded the agency at 2016 levels. (Traditionally, Congress ramps up census funding during the last few years of the decade.)

Then came Thompson’s difficult appearance before the House Appropriations subcommittee. The cost overrun was particularly frustrating for lawmakers who have pressured the Bureau to keep costs down after a costly tech snafu in the 2010 census led to $3 billion in additional costs. “We want to hear from you today what happened and why, and what is being done about it to hold people accountable in order to ensure that this doesn't happen again,” said Rep. John Culberson, the subcommittee chair. This cycle, lawmakers have told the agency not to exceed the total cost for the 2010 cycle, $12 billion, which Thompson said the agency was still on track to meet.

Thompson’s term had actually expired at the end of 2016, but under a 2011 law, he is allowed to stay on for an additional year. Census watchers had hoped that President Donald Trump would nominate a replacement in time for the Senate to vet and confirm that person before Thompson’s departure, avoiding a leadership gap. That will not happen. The Trump administration has announced nominations for only 96 of 557 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, and with gaps still in top-level jobs such as the director of the Office of Personnel Management and a top position at the White House budget office, it’s not clear whether replacing the Census director will be a priority. Experts hope that Ross’s commitment to the census will drive Trump to name a replacement soon. But even if he does that, the Senate Homeland Security Committee still needs to hold a hearing before the full Senate takes up the nomination.

If the Bureau had an experienced deputy—a civil service position, not a political appointee—the consequences of Thompson’s departure would likely be mitigated, said census-watchers. But in January, the agency’s deputy director, Nancy Potok, left to become the government’s chief statistician and has yet to be replaced. Asked who was temporarily filling the role, the Census Bureau declined to provide a name, instead saying, “The deputy director and director positions at the U.S. Census Bureau will be filled in due course and an acting director position will be filled shortly.” Two sources who track the agency closely told POLITICO that the acting deputy director is Laura Furgione, who joined the bureau only in December. Prior to that, she had been at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for more than a decade, rising up to become the acting director of the National Weather Service—also known as the nation’s top weather forecaster.

The agency has been mum about her role as acting deputy director, not listing it on its website and not responding to follow-up questions from POLITICO. It’s possible that Ross will choose someone else at the agency to become the acting director, leaving Furgione in her current position, or that the agency will hire a permanent deputy director in the next seven weeks. But the prospect of Furgione temporarily leading the agency has worried some census-watchers, who are uncertain about whether her skills as a meteorologist would translate into overseeing the Census Bureau, especially the decennial census.

“Having observed these things for decades, it just says to me that she is a placeholder,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, the former co-director of the Census Project, an organization that tracks the census. “She is certainly a qualified individual in her previous capacity but whether she has the experience and skills necessary to be in that position, especially at this point in the decade, are probably open to question.”

Howard Fienberg, a lobbyist at the Insights Association, a trade group that represents the research industry, said that he wanted a director with experience and skills in managing a large bureaucracy and dealing with logistical nightmares. “My fantasy would be you bring in someone like the person who runs Fed-Ex,” he said, although he admitted that was unlikely to happen.

Furgione, as head of the NWS, which has 5,000 employees and a budget over $1 billion, has experience in managing a bureaucracy. The Census Bureau is larger—the 2017 budget is around $1.5 billion and it has around 10,000 employees—but not that much larger. Still, the decennial itself is a massive mobilization, involving the short-term hiring of hundreds of thousands of enumerators, and billions of dollars in additional spending as Census Day approaches. It’s a role that even experienced bureaucrats have struggled with.

“You need to be able to run a bureaucracy and make it work at top speed and peak performance at a very tight schedule and be able to liaise with the rest of the government and especially Congress,” said Fienberg. “Not an easy position to be in.”

An additional complication is the relationship of the census to the Commerce Department, its parent agency. Former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker elevated the Census Bureau so that its director reports to the deputy director of commerce, bypassing the under secretary of economic affairs who used to oversee the census. It’s unclear if Ross has retained that organizational structure. But if so, the Census is missing that figure too: the deputy secretary of commerce role also remains unfilled after Trump’s initial selection, Chicago Cubs owner Todd Ricketts, withdrew in April. Trump has not nominated anyone for the under secretary of economic affairs role either and the Commerce website lists Brad Burke, a civil servant who formerly worked in the finance industry, as temporarily filling the job.

Because census management is so time-sensitive, lawmakers passed a law in 2011 to prevent situations like the one in which the Bureau now finds itself, standardizing a renewable five-year term of the director so it would start on the second and seventh year of each decade. “In large part, [the law was] designed to avoid the situation we now face,” said Lowenthal. “Congress wanted to promote continuity of leadership throughout the 10 year cycle. And instead less than three years before the 2020 census starts, and less than a year before the critical dry-run of the full process, there will be a leadership vacuum that will be hard to fill quickly. I’m quite worried.”


http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/05/13/head-of-census-bureau-resigns-2020-problems-000441




GOP VOTER SUPPRESSION



In the upper left hand corner of the screen is a SEARCH feature.
If you search for GOP RIGGED ELECTIONS, there are many articles available for review.

In addition, Republicans are neglecting the Census Bureau that should be preparing for the 2020 Census.

Is the census heading for a crisis?



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How Trump's Nationwide Voter Data Request Could Lead to Voter Suppression 
Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post 
Ingraham writes: "President Trump's Election Integrity Commission is asking all 50 states to turn over all publicly available voter registration data, including highly sensitive information. Voting rights groups immediately pushed state governors to reject the request, saying it would put a massive trove of information in the hands of people who couldn't be trusted with it." 
READ MORE

Secretary of State Kris Kobach of Kansas. (photo: Getty)
Secretary of State Kris Kobach of Kansas. (photo: Getty)

ALSO SEE: White House Panel Asks States for
Voter Rolls and California Says 'No'


resident Trump's Election Integrity Commission is asking all 50 states to turn over all publicly available voter registration data, including highly sensitive information about voters' political affiliation, Social Security numbers, criminal history and military status.
Voting rights groups immediately pushed state governors to reject the request, saying it would put a massive trove of information in the hands of people who couldn't be trusted with it. The request was initiated by commission co-chair Kris Kobach, the secretary of state in Kansas and a fervent believer that voter fraud is widespread despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
In Kansas, Kobach championed the use of Crosscheck, a multistate database of voter registration information that authorities use to check whether voters are registered in two states. The system works primarily by matching voters' names and dates of birth — if the same name and date of birth show up for voters in two different states, the system flags them as possible double registrations.
Kobach has said he's interested in using a similar process to compare state voter roll data to a federal database of legal immigrants, creating what Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, calls “Crosscheck on steroids.”
Researchers have found that Crosscheck's matching algorithms are highly inaccurate. A recent working paper by researchers at Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Microsoft found that Crosscheck's algorithm returns about 200 false positives for every one legitimate instance of double registration it finds.
“We're concerned about unlawful voter purging, which has been something that Kris Kobach has been leading the charge,” said Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and former head of the Justice Department's civil rights division.
“It's a real concern that he'd be building a nationwide database of voters,” Gupta added. “The question is: How does this data get used?”
An expansion of the Crosscheck system would be “a recipe for massive amounts of error,” according to elections expert Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School. “When you've got hundreds of millions of records, and thousands of John Smiths, trying to figure out which of them are your John Smith without making a mistake is well nigh impossible.”
The commission has not made any public statements about what it intends to do with the voter roll data it receives from states. A representative for Kobach in the Kansas Secretary of State's office referred all inquires to the commission, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Trump created the commission in May after he claimed, without evidence, that 3 million to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally in the 2016 election. Kobach has appeared on cable news outletsmaking similar claims.
“This commission has been, from the beginning, an effort to sell Trump's lie that he won the popular vote,” Ho said. “Kobach's echoed that sentiment himself on camera. Now they've set up this commission that's going to create phony findings to support that lie.”
Some of Kobach's voter ID requirements have been struck down in federal court, with one federal judge ruling that they constituted “mass denial of a fundamental constitutional right.” And earlier this month, a federal judge fined Kobach $1,000 for “presenting misleading arguments in a voting-related lawsuit,”according to Politico.
“It's crazy that the administration would now expect every voter in the country to turn over their personal data to this person,” Ho said.
Levitt said he is concerned that the commission has "not thoroughly thought through" the implications of what it's asking for. He notes that the letter invited states to send sensitive voter roll information over email, which is highly insecure.
Levitt also calls the commission's July 14 deadline for sending the data "ludicrous," adding "there is no national system of records with hundreds of millions of datapoints that anyone has built reliably in two weeks."
One final red flag in the commission's request, according to Levitt, is the inclusion of data on voters' party affiliation. While states are allowed to maintain this information, the federal Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits the federal government from keeping records of voters' party affiliation except in rare circumstances, Levitt said.
Levitt said the Privacy Act was enacted following the Watergate scandal and concerns about Richard Nixon collecting personal information on American voters.
“Whether someone is eligible to vote or not does not depend on what party they are registered with,” Levitt said. “It is difficult for me to understand what legitimate use there might be” for that data.
However, he added, “It's not difficult to imagine the propaganda value behind it.”

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RSN: Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough | Donald Trump Is Not Well




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30 June 17 PM
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Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough | Donald Trump Is Not Well 
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski arrive for the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington in 2015. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) 
Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, The Washington Post 
Excerpt: "President Trump launched personal attacks against us Thursday, but our concerns about his unmoored behavior go far beyond the personal. America's leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president." 
READ MORE
How Trump's Nationwide Voter Data Request Could Lead to Voter Suppression 
Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post 
Ingraham writes: "President Trump's Election Integrity Commission is asking all 50 states to turn over all publicly available voter registration data, including highly sensitive information. Voting rights groups immediately pushed state governors to reject the request, saying it would put a massive trove of information in the hands of people who couldn't be trusted with it." 
READ MORE
US House Passes Anti-Immigrant Bills, Cracks Down on 'Sanctuary Cities' 
teleSUR 
Excerpt: "The United States House of Representatives passed two bills which will crack down on illegal immigration, withholding federal funding from 'sanctuary cities,' and increasing legal penalties for immigrants who return to the United States after being deported." 
READ MORE
Thousands of Victims in Potential Hate Crimes Never Notify Police 
Joe Sexton, ProPublica 
Sexton writes: "More than half of the people who said they were the victim of a hate crime in recent years did not report the incidents to police. When victims did report to the police, their assailants were arrested in just 10 percent of the cases." 
READ MORE
Republicans Have Trifecta Control of 25 States and Need 6 More to Call for a Constitutional Convention 
Democracy Now! 
Excerpt: "Historian Nancy MacLean says much of the radical right's agenda is being pursued at the state level. Republicans already have 'trifecta control' in 25 states - control of the governor's seat and both chambers of their legislative bodies - compared to six states for Democrats." 
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Dispatches From "Baby Jail" in South Texas 
Nara Milanich, NACLA 
Milanich writes: "The facility in Dilley, Texas is the largest of three family detention centers. Its official name, the South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC), obscures what it actually is: a prison for mothers and children who are seeking asylum." 
READ MORE
Rush Limbaugh Claims BP Oil Spill Didn't Harm the Environment 
Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch 
Chow writes: "Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to alternative fact the BP oil spill, claiming on his radio show this week that it 'didn't do any damage' to the environment." 
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