Did you ever stop to wonder why you get weather forecasts for free? The National Weather Service is a federal agency that provides this information to the public, and we pay for it with our taxes.
Bad news, Peter Greene reports. A commercial weather service called Accuweather, which sells advertising, thinks it is unfair that the National Weather Service gives the weather forecasts for free. Donald Trump has nominated the brother of the owner of Accuweather to head NOAA, which supervises the NWS. His goal is to eliminate the free competition. Fortunately, he has not yet been confirmed.
Read Greene’s account. Will this theft of a valuable public service go forward?
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2019/09/privatization-and-weather.html
Greene writes:
“Barry Myers was the top lawyer for Accuweather, the weather service founded by his brother Joel. This article from Bloomberg Businessweek chronicles the thirty or so years that Myers spent fighting with the National Weather Service. He had a variety of complaints, not the least of which was that while Accuweather was charging clients to get weather reports, NWS was giving away that stuff for free.
“It’s going to be a bad day for somebody.
There are two things wrong with that argument. One is that one of the people that the NWS gives it away free to is– Accuweather. NWS has 120 Doppler Radar positions around the country, plus the computer power to process all that information that comes in, and they do, in fact, give it away. Even if your local tv station has its own Super Eye On The Weather Sky Place weather product, chances are good that it depends on NWS data. At one point in his years of kvetching, Myers argued that it was like the US Postal Service vs. FedEx, only with the USPS delivering for free. While his analogy is a bit off, it’s self-defeating in one respect– when FedEx doesn’t want to deliver your package to some remote address, it hands the package off to the USPS. Their entire business model depends on using the federally funded service to fill in the less profitable holes, because their business is built on only serving the profitable customers. Not unlike the basic business model for a charter or voucher system.
“The other problem is that the NWS stuff is not free. Yes, they don’t charge the users of the information, but we taxpayers have already paid for the whole operation. That is our information– to collect it and then charge us for it again would be like, well, those times when taxpayers pay for a school building twice (once to build it and once to finance a charter buying it) and still don’t own it.
“If you clicked through to the article, you already know the other parallel here to education– Myers was the Trump nominee to head up NOAA (the agency under which NWS falls) in fall of 2017. That has not gone particularly well; in the meantime, the agency is just one more that is operating without a permanent chief. They come under the purview of Wilbur Ross, another swamp dweller.
“Oh, and fun trivia. Rick Santorum once tried to float a bill to force the NWS to charge for their stuff, thereby helping Accuweather compete.
“So the plan was (or still is– who knows) to have the government agency that provides an important service for all citizens headed by somebody whose allegiance is with private businesses that want to compete with the taxpayer-funded agency that provides essentially the identical service. Barry Myers, meet Betsy DeVos.“
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have done two(2) contracts with the NWS. Most people do not know that the NWS is operated by the US Department of Commerce, and it consumes 80% of the Commerce Department’s budget.
And NASA launches the satellites used to garner information. And your point being? Why should we have to pay for weather forecasts when we have already paid for it with our tax dollars.
No real point here. Just an “FYI”. I am proud of the work that I did for the NWS. The work that the NWS does for the American people is excellent. The NWS saves lives, with their forecasts of severe weather: Tornados, hurricanes,etc. And the NWS helps save billions of dollars for agriculture, etc.
A fine organization, and a credit to the American people.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – unknown.
You’re still full of it Chuck. NWS has NEVER been 80% of the Commerce budget. Again, there are TWELVE magor agencies under Commerce and NWS is one subagency of one of those agencies.
In any case, your article is out of date. Trump just cut the NWS budget, thereby killing hundres of jobs.
Oh FFS, you are so full of it! The National Weather Service is overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is one of TWELVE agencies overseen by the Department of Commerce, which has a budget of about $9 billion. So you’re telling me that the National Weather Service takes up nearly $8 billion of that, while the Patent and Trademark Office, the Census Bureau, and nine other agencies share the remaining $1 billion?
Do you even take yourself seriously, Chuck?
https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-department-of-commerce-3306000
The entire NOAA budget is about $1 billion, and not all of that is NWS.
You do realize these things can be easily looked up before you embarrass yourself, right?
No reason to get into an argument. When I worked at the NWS headquarters (some years ago), the figure that I was told, was that the NWS( and associated functions, like NOAA) were about 80% of the Commerce Department’s budget (at that time).
Spending rises and falls over time. The exact percentage that a particular agency spends also fluctuates over time. see
https://qz.com/1204034/noaa-trump-signed-a-bill-that-gives-millions-to-agency-in-charge-of-climate-and-weather-science/
Peoples’s lives depend upon an accurate forecast. Nobody should bend to the will of our Orange Ignoramus. This is crazy. Fire Ross and then fire Trump. How close to a dictatorship is this country coming. Give out inaccurate reports to please whomever is in power? Nonsense.
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Commerce Chief Threatened Firings at NOAA After Trump’s Hurricane Tweets, Sources Say
Wilbur L. Ross Jr. made the threat after the agency’s Alabama office contradicted the president’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit the state.
Mr. Trump persisted in saying that Alabama was at risk and a few days later, on Sept. 4, he displayed a NOAA map that appeared to have been altered with a black Sharpie to include Alabama in the area potentially affected by Dorian.
Mr. Ross, the Commerce Secretary, intervened two days later, early last Friday, according to the three people familiar with his actions. Mr. Ross phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency’s perceived contradiction of the president.
I LOVE Borowitz. [Remember this is satire.] Hard to tell fact from fiction these days with a full grown lunatic in power.
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From newyorker.com: Trump Signs Executive Order Giving Him Control of Weather
After signing the order, a beaming Trump pronounced “total victory” over the weather, which he called “the enemy of the people.”
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what some congressional Democrats are calling a flagrant example of Presidential overreach, Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order giving him total control of the weather.
Under the terms of the order, Trump would assume the unilateral power to create all meteorological conditions, including but not limited to hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, hail, sleet, and wintry mix.
After signing the order, a beaming Trump pronounced “total victory” over the weather, which he called “the enemy of the people.”
“I have been treated very unfairly by the weather,” Trump said. “The weather is a horrible person.”…
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-signs-executive-order-giving-him-control-of-weather
Love him too, Carol. & agree w/you–what’s happening these days used to be headlines in The Onion. Really–can’t even watch Colbert or Meyers anymore, because the everyday idiocy & lunatic behaviors are being normalized &, as such, just aren’t funny anymore. Inane & relentless distraction from someone who may, in fact, get yet another 4 years.
For some relief, watch Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who is America?” segments on YouTube. There’s a very funny, 3:51 “Bernie Sanders vs. the 1%.” You’ll laugh happily! (My husband saw it & said he felt sorry for Bernie that SBC had pranked him, but I said, “No, when Bernie saw it, he, too, probably got a good laugh. He stayed his usual course, wasn’t inane (like other politicians SBC has pranked, such as the ones in “Kinder Guardians” {also a must-see}) &–most importantly–is so not narcissistic that he can laugh at himself.”)
A not-self-important leader in the spirit that America needs now.
retiredbutmissthekids: I loved the look on Bernie’s face.
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Sacha Baron Cohen interviews Bernie Sanders WHO IS AMERICA
Organized Speech
Published on Jul 16, 2018
This is a clip from Sacha Baron Cohen’s new show WHO IS AMERICA. Featured on Showtime
Diane Here is but another example of hyper-capitalist thinking–EVERYTHING is understood as competitive, private, and profit-making. And so anything PUBLIC or regarded as a PUBLIC SERVICE becomes the enemy–because, from that distorted view, they COMPETE from a privileged position.
I’ve heard this same argument about public schools.
Capitalism is not bad; but blind, predatory capitalism IS a sickness on the body of anything democratic and COMMONWEALTH. CBK
Given Trump’s ability to forecast hurricane paths on the fly -with a sharpie — I think NOAA,should just make him Forecaster in Chief.
Why don’t a few of these business people come up with an actual new idea or product instead of spending all their time, energy and money privatizing everything that isn’t nailed down?
All they’re doing is replacing formerly public services with a private one. It isn’t a net gain. It isn’t “growth”.
Privatization of public agencies that people depend on is a poor idea. I have always said that privatization of anything that entails the health, safety, well-being of individuals should be rejected. Privatization creates winners and losers, and the public would be the loser in a privatized weather service. Do we really believe a private company would pay to fly a plane into to the eye of a hurricane to extract accurate atmospheric data? They would most likely come up with an algorithm based on information from previous hurricanes which would be much cheaper and potentially a whole lot less accurate.
Most corporations would not hesitate to fly members of the public into a hurricane if they thought they could get saleable data out of it.
Into the Eye
Into the Eye
The CEOs fly
Their customer base
The lucre to chase
& then, SDP, IQ 45 could nuke it, thus ridding the pesky people of the U.S.!
Don the Con’s IQ is not 45. It is minus 45. Everyone that has been alleging his IQ is 45, please correct to – 45 or minus 45. There is no way that the Orange Turd for a Head is that intelligent.
“We seek some relief in the law; to consider the needs of students both in charter schools and in other public schools within our district,” he wrote.
Ed reformers object to this, apparently. How dare a “public school district” consider the needs of public school students!
Wow. For some reason it isn’t a GIVEN that public school students should be considered. That’s controversial in the echo chamber. THAT’S how crazily skewed this “debate” has gotten.
https://edsource.org/2019/californias-charter-schools-face-uncertain-future-under-a-new-state-law/617320
Just think! If this keeps up some of our public employees and politicians might actually put forth some effort on behalf of public school students! We’re really making progress.
The disfavored “public” sector schools and students had to fight even to be recognized as existing.
“Their entire business model depends on using the federally funded service to fill in the less profitable holes, because their business is built on only serving the profitable customers. Not unlike the basic business model for a charter or voucher system.”
Nailed it. Until this is understood by the American public, we will continue to have bad public policy.
I believe the American public understands this when it comes to Medicare. They haven’t brought into the idea that Medicare should be eliminated because private insurance will do it better. Most senior citizens get that private insurance will be useful only as long as they remain healthy. After all, that is pretty much how many insurance companies worked in the days before Obamacare. The healthiest seniors are not advocating for privatizing Medicare believing they will benefit. Because they understand that even if they are healthy now, they could very well get sick in the future and easily find themselves (or their loved one) among the people who are screwed over and suffering tremendously with no recourse.
How to get the public to understand that this is true when you privatize all public goods — including education?
Private insurance has demonstrated that it is not better than Medicare for all. On yesterday’s Dr Oz, Bernie mentioned the the main goal of private insurance is profit, not patient care. He also said that roughly 500,000 Americans go bankrupt due to a health crisis each year. How can this be acceptable? Bernie’s statement was fact checked and was found to be accurate. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bernie-sanders-medical-bankruptcy-washington-post-fact-check-878120/
Unfortunately, what the public probably wants for non-senior citizens is Medicare for all AND private insurance. The people with good health insurance want to keep it even as they support having Medicare for all for those who don’t.
The problem arises when one has to choose. I know some retired teachers’ benefits include health insurance. Would the membership of the teachers’ union members strongly support giving up their healthcare and supporting Medicare for all instead?
I actually think that would go a long way. If union members en masse said they supported Bernie’s Medicare for All program even though they already have good private insurance, it would probably go a long way to convincing the public that Bernie’s plan is a good one.
Kamala Harris seems to be offering some hybrid so there would be Medicare for all while allowing people with good company-provided health insurance to keep it. But Bernie’s policy is what we need because otherwise private insurance companies just cherry pick the healthiest patients. But it’s complicated.
And even though union members might agree with Bernie that the main goal of private insurance is profit, it does not mean they are willing to fight for a policy that means they give that up. But if they do, I think it would go a long way to helping Bernie’s position be more embraced.
I really think Bernie is wise enough to accept compromise. The reason he supports Medicare for all because it gives the public the biggest bargaining chip against the insurance industry and Big Pharma. He knows there are some hybrid plans in Europe. He also knows that when he went to Canada to buy insulin, he paid 10% of what Americans are charged for the same drug!
“Unfortunately, what the public probably wants for non-senior citizens is Medicare for all AND private insurance.”
Far fewer than you’d think based on the propaganda the insurance companies are spreading. What people really want is for Medicare (whether for seniors or All) to be good enough that no one would need private insurance. And there’s no reason that couldn’t happen, except for “political will”, which is simply code for “politicians bought off by the insurance industry”.
No matter how good one’s employer health insurance is (and few are any good any more – most are high deductible/HSA hybrids), no one really wants to be tied to their job in order to afford medical treatment. No one wants to change plans nearly every year (which is a little game the insurance companies like to play, despite all the talk about “keeping your doctor”). No one wants to be under threat of not getting coverage for a needed treatment because some bean counter doesn’t want to cut into his employer’s profit (and his bonus).
Medicare for All really should be modeled on Congresscare. I bet no Congresscritter has ever had to weigh the need for treatment against the sticker price and ended up begging bystanders NOT to call 911. https://www.theweek.co.uk/94790/woman-trapped-by-boston-subway-train-says-i-can-t-afford-an-ambulance
I can guarantee members of congress do not go bankrupt if they get seriously ill.
Members of Congress receive gold-plated medical insurance for themselves and their families. After a certain point, they get it for life, even after they leave Congress.
Most senior citizens on Medicare carry a secondary insurance so that they aren’t bankrupted from an illness. These are lucky people who worked their whole lives and retired with health benefits and a pension. If you only have Medicare, you are still SOL if you have an expensive medical problem. Medicare is NOT all it’s cracked up to be…..it has been eaten alive by government.
Is the cost of that secondary insurance the same for all people for the same coverage or do sick or older people get charged more than healthy and relatively young (i.e. 66 or 67) people?
NYC public school parent:
I get UnitedHealthcare Medicare Solutions that is only available to retirees in Illinois. I am retired from the Teachers’ Retirement System of Illinois. The state partially funds our insurance. People in this plan can only pay $1000 out of their pockets. The rest is covered by insurance. My deductible is $250 and I have a co-pay since I live in Indiana and use local doctors.
It is a good plan. There is one card for everything and no supplemental insurance in needed as is required by normal Medicare.
The State of Illinois keeps trying to take away our health insurance. So far, they haven’t been successful.
NYC PSP….the costs are all different. It depends on the company you have retired from. Some people who don’t have the retirement benefits have to purchase secondary insurance policies and they differ in costs and have exclusions and pre existing condition riders. Medicare really stinks on the amount of hospital recovery days and rehab/PT visits it allows. The secondary insurance makes up the difference with some of this. The hoops we would have to jump through to get patients the care they needed was incredible (when I worked in healthcare). When my mother was alive, it was always a ton of phone calls to get the billing correct (and she had Medicare with a really good supplemental).
The opportunities for profiteers when false predictions are issued… gains for insurance companies, for unnecessary, preventive fixes with supplies from Home Depot and Menards (both conveniently owned by right wingers), for media that trades in fear, gas for evacuations, …
The bulk of new profit schemes, have an element of fear that drives people to buy.
Middle class demand evaporated with the middle class so, the result is feeding off of fear (and, taking community-owned services from the 99%.)
“Watch out Alabama, the big one’s coming.” -Trump
Colonialism- relying on the unmercifulness of the richest 0.1% for everything.
The profiteers are looking for any way to undermine a public service to create a revenue stream. It usually ends with the public paying more for an inferior service. We have many private parasites that feed on the military budget. When Chicago privatized its public parking. the people had to pay a lot more for the same parking. https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/5/7/18619170/companies-raked-in-nearly-266m-from-parking-meters-other-city-assets-last-year
Privatization is not generally anything new or innovative, Like private charter schools, it is about transferring public money into private pockets for profit. It often cannabalizes an effective public service for no real benefit to the public The US post office works well for most people, although profiteers have privatized some of its functions.
Back when Ma Bell was a government regulated monopoly, typical telephone bills were $5-10 per month. Competition was supposed to lower prices. It didn’t.
Diane,
Are you sure that is true that phone bills were $5-$10 per month?
Because back when I was in college in the good old days of Ma Bell, we paid a lot of money for a shared phone in our shared house and the rates for long distance were extraordinary. I remember even with 10 people sharing a phone, it cost anywhere from $30 – $35 month for local calls (with message rates being charged for longer calls) plus the cost of long distance calls was extraordinary. I probably only called him 2 or 3x/month and our long distance charges were often over $100 for a group phone.
Does anyone here wait until after 11 to make a “long distance call”? That was the norm in the good old days. NYCPSP is correct that the cost of a phone call is a small fraction of what is was in Ma Bell’s era.
TE – Right, phone calls are cheap. It’s the phone itself that’s ridiculous, along with the plan, both of which are now billed per person rather than per household (because g-d forbid we don’t all have our own phones these days). And then if you have landline service on top of that….
The US should just send all these privatizers on a one way trip to the moon and let them battle for ownership.
That way, they would be out of our hair for good.
If you think privatizing the publicly-funded weather service, so another greedy SOB can rob more money from the public, wait until you read this:
I had lunch with a friend yesterday and she was listening to FOX news on her TV when I arrived at her house. To be fair, she hates Fox News but watches so she knows what the “enemy” is saying. She has said more than once that sometimes she can’t watch because some of the lies they spout makes her sick to her stomach.
As I waited for my friend to get ready to leave for lunch downtown, I watched in shock as I heard one of the Faux collaborators of real fake news announce that the Trump family is now a political “dynasty’ that will be around for decades. The the Faux collaborate started to rave about DT’s children and how great and smart they were.
“President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is predicting that the Trump family would be a political dynasty for “decades” to come.
“The Trumps will be a dynasty that will last for decades, propelling the Republican Party into a new party,” Parscale said Saturday while speaking to a convention of Republican Party delegates in Indian Wells, Calif., according to The Associated Press. “One that will adapt to changing cultures. One must continue to adapt while keeping the conservative values that we believe in.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/460413-trump-campaign-manager-says-trump-family-will-be-political-dynasty-for
Hey, anyone, tell me that Trump is not planning to take over the country and become America’s first leader for life?
If the 400 richest families got behind the idea and got religions’ congregants to agree….
Yeah…I heard that yesterday and it made me throw up a little. The Trumps will never have “class ” like the Kennedy clan.
I believe that would be spelled Don nasty
Lloyd Lofthouse Knowing what you know, do you really think a complete takeover is NOT on the agenda? both Russia’s and the Trump’s? CBK
I think it is on Trump’s agenda and it looks like everything he is doing is what Maduro did in Venezuela before he took over that country and flushed its troubled democracy down the drain. It is as if Trump had someone come up with a very simple outline of what Maduro did so he could copy it.
Bernie’s Medicare for All is the perfect healthcare plan. CEO’s, hospitals that run for profits and some doctors wouldn’t like it. It is cheaper in the long run than private insurance that costs an arm and a leg and doesn’t cover everything. I now pay out of pocket every time I need new glasses or any dental work. Hearing aids are also expensive and currently isn’t covered by Medicare.
………….
Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan, explained
The Vermont senator’s plan has lots of details about what single-payer would cover. It has less information on how to pay for it.
Sanders’s single-payer proposal would create a universal Medicare program that covers all American residents in one government-run health plan.
It would bar employers from offering separate plans that compete with this new, government-run option. It would largely sunset Medicare and Medicaid, transitioning their enrollees into the new universal plan. It would, however, allow two existing health systems to continue to operate as they do now: the Veterans Affairs health system and the Indian Health Services.
Those who qualify for the new universal Medicare plan would get four years to transition into the new coverage. In the interim, they would have the option to buy into Medicare or another publicly run option that does not currently exist.
Eventually, though, they would all end up in the same plan, which includes an especially robust set of benefits. It would cover hospital visits, primary care, medical devices, lab services, maternity care, and prescription drugs as well as vision and dental benefits.
The biggest difference between this plan and the version Sanders introduced in 2017 is the addition of a long-term care benefit that would cover care for Americans with disability at home or in community settings. This benefit was also added into the House version of the Medicare-for-all bill earlier this year…
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/10/18304448/bernie-sanders-medicare-for-all
NYCPSP: Like Carol Malaysia, I am a retired teacher in IL. My not-wealthy suburban school district (& not all do) offers its retirees Blue Cross-Blue Shield of IL M.A.P. (Medicare Advantage Plan, which is the supplementary insurance Medicare recipients need, as Carol explained above). It’s not free (&, retired teachers, please disabuse the public that teachers receive free health insurance for life!). One chooses from an HMO (< money) or a PPO (higher cost). Every year (in fact, just received a heads-up from BCBS)
one receives plan revisions for that year (usually involving higher co-pays, doctors/hospitals off the “preferred providers” list, etc.–generally not GOOD plan changes). The monthly cost–right now–of our PPO M.A.P. is $240 + change.
I had opted out (& the rule used to be–but was recently changed) of the T.R.S./U.H.C. plan that Carol has because, as she’d written, so many problems w/the state; they’re still intent on demolishing teachers’ pensions.
Just today, Fred Klonsky has a post on this very subject–read it!! (Fred Klonsky’s Blog)
Thanks to you and others for replying.
I like Bernie’s plan. I was just pointing out that what carolmalaysia posts: “It would bar employers from offering separate plans that compete with this new, government-run option” can be a hard sell, especially to people whose unions or jobs provide pretty good health insurance all through retirement (even if it is at some cost).
If Bernie is the nominee, we all know there is going to a massive propaganda effort about how Bernie will “take away” people’s health insurance. I think that propaganda effort can be mitigated with a strong effort by unions to make it clear that union members who have (relatively) good health insurance are embracing Bernie’s policy because they believe it is better, rather than trying to fight to keep theirs. But all the stories about the problems with Medicare coverage are probably going to be replayed and it will be hard to counter the fear of the unknown.
You’re very welcome, NYCPSP!
& what SDP says below (esp. last paragraph) &, in speaking w/some Canadians we would, of course, be paying higher taxes, but these would not supercede what we are already having to pay for premiums, co-pay or pay outright (that which the insurance co. refuses to pay for, & you are then in for insurmountable paperwork & large chunks of time refuting claim refusals).
“Bernie’s Medicare for All is the perfect healthcare plan. CEO’s, hospitals that run for profits and some doctors wouldn’t like it. It is cheaper in the long run than private insurance that costs”
The largest doctor organization n the US, the AMA, opposes a single payer system. They just voted against (albeit by a narrow margin) an amendment that would have removed their opposition
Our medical system is good for the hospitals, the doctors, those who have good insurance and pretty much sucks for everyone else (despite what Barack Obama and his lackey Joe Biden will tell you)
I thought Alabama was wiped out by a hurricane. This news comes from the WH.
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The Alabama “success story” under President Trump is remarkable, Ms. Trump tweeted. Since Election Day 2016, the state’s unemployment rate has reached an all-time low of 3.3 percent. In that time, more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been added, compared to 7,000 lost in 2016. “We’re just getting started,” she wrote.
Today’s visit comes as part of President Trump’s Pledge to America’s Workers, a nationwide effort to get private-sector companies to commit to better training and reskilling opportunities for our country’s great workforce.
This is interesting:
Elliot Hannon, Slate
Hannon writes: “The National Rifle Association filed suit against the city of San Francisco Monday after the city declared the gun rights group a ‘domestic terrorist organization.'”
Ooohh yes–I read that too, Carol. Proud to say offspring is a very happy denizen of San Francisco (for 6 years).
Oh, &, Lloyd–your 8 PM comment is spot-on.
I guess IQ -45 thinks (?) that if we have to pay to get weather reports & can’t afford it, we’ll never know about daily weather occurrences amounting to the continuing climate crisis.
In other words, what we don’t know won’t hurt him.
& he & his family (well, maybe he’d only take Ivanka, Jared & Don Jr.) will take off for “Elysium.” (Or whatever the place was called that all the oligarchs escaped to after the Earth was destroyed; I still haven’t seen that movie.)
retiredbutmissthekids: “Elysium.” is creepy. These elite do not create a world any sane person would want to live in.
The film takes place on both a ravaged Earth, and a luxurious space habitat (Stanford torus design, one of the proposed NASA designs) called Elysium.The film itself offers deliberate social commentary which explores political and sociological themes such as immigration, overpopulation, transhumanism, health care, worker exploitation, the justice system, and social class issues]
In 2154, Earth citizens live in poverty, and with inadequate medical care. The rich and powerful live on Elysium—a gigantic space habitat in Earth’s orbit. Elysium is technologically advanced, with devices like Med-Bays that can cure all diseases, reverse the aging process, and regenerate body parts. A long-running feud exists between Elysium and Earth, whose residents want Elysian technology to cure their illnesses.
IQ-45 is all about lies and coverups.
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The Myths of the “Genius” Behind Trump’s Reelection Campaign
Brad Parscale has said he’s taking a relative pittance to run the president’s reelection operation. But as with much of what Parscale has claimed about his work and life, that’s not the full story. This is.
by Peter Elkind with Doris Burke Sept. 11, 5 a.m. EDT
…In the speech, Parscale painted his own life story as a testament to the need for Trump. He served up a vivid account of facing crushing personal and professional setbacks (“I was down and out”) before launching a business on a shoestring, then prospering through hard work and self-reliance. He is evidence of the American dream, Parscale declared. His life, he said, shows “why we all need to go out and fight for the president. So that all of our kids can have that same possibility to have that dream happen for them.”
In fact, Parscale’s accounts of his life and his work for the president comprise a classic Trumpian tale: They’re a combination of hyperbole, half-truths and the occasional fiction. Indeed, Parscale shares more than one trait with his most important client. He has embraced political beliefs not in evidence before the 2016 campaign…
One previously unreported example: Since Trump’s election in 2016, critical “voter scores” — sophisticated polling-based analytics that the RNC provides to party committees and candidates — have conspicuously omitted an essential detail for any down-ballot race: how voters in specific states and congressional districts feel about Trump. Republican insiders believe these analytics are being withheld to try and prevent GOP candidates from publicly distancing themselves from the president or leaking unfavorable results that embarrass Trump.
“They don’t want you to know if it isn’t good,” says former RNC chairman Michael Steele, a vocal Trump critic. “There’s a lot of data they’re sitting on that they’re not sharing.” Steele adds that today, “the RNC is not an independent actor; the RNC is now a part of the Trump campaign. The question now isn’t, ‘What do you need?’ The question is, ‘Do you support Donald Trump?’”
In both power and money, the 2020 Trump campaign dwarfs the 2016 incarnation. “You have less than a handful of people who now control the entire ecosystem” of the Republican Party, says one prominent former RNC official, and Parscale is one of that handful…
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-myths-of-the-genius-behind-trumps-reelection-campaign
Trump keeps joking about serving more than two terms as president
Video: On multiple occasions, President Trump has floated the possibility of staying in office longer than two terms.
https://wapo.st/2HYYefs
I’m grateful for anyone who speaks out against the horrors that IQ-45, the Orange Swamp Monster, embodies.
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Condoleezza Rice blasts Trump: He’s brought the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” to America
SEPTEMBER 10, 2019
…“I’ve seen the return of what I’ve called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Rice said, evoking the biblical symbols of evil that will herald the end of the world according to the book of Revelations. “Populism, I’ll say nativism, not nationalism, isolationism and protectionism.”
“We did that before. It was the period between World War I and World War II. It led to a Great Depression. It led to a war. And the system we put in place after World War II, of free markets and free trade and kind of global commons that we talk about here, that system worked awfully well. It’s under challenge now,” Rice warned.
It was not just the apocalyptic principles that the Trump administration uses as its political lodestar that former Secretary Rice was concerned about. The harshly divided state of the body politic and the polarization between the main governing parties was equally disturbing to the pre-Trump era Republican luminary.
“I’m also worried that we’re tearing ourselves apart, and that’s something we have to deal with,” Rice lamented…
https://occupydemocrats.com/2019/09/10/condoleezza-rice-blasts-trump-hes-brought-the-four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse-to-america/