From the moment he waded into the 2016 presidential race, Donald Trump has behaved like a pro-Russia agent.
— Read on www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/trump-russia-putin-ukraine-rcna68247
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Republican Scott Perry won a temporary battle to keep his cell phone data — out of the reach of the Department of Justice.
— Read on occupydemocrats.com/2023/01/31/shady-perry-we-cant-imagine-what-this-republican-has-on-his-cell-phone/ -
The West should give Ukraine the weapons and assistance it needs to win in all the territories north of Crimea—and to credibly threaten to take the peninsula militarily.
— Read on www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/what-ukraine-needs-to-liberate-crimea-alexander-vindman -
A GOP lawmaker’s bill might give some survivors a second chance.
— Read on www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2023/02/oklahoma-jailed-women-who-couldnt-stop-their-abusers-will-a-new-law-help/ -
Tuesday 1 February 2023
Expansion of the Fascist Republican Christian Nationalist State
- 12% of the population of Florida (2.6 million people) has no insurance. That’s well above the national average. It’s also more than all but four other states.
- Huff Post: “Floridians without insurance suffer because when they can’t pay for their medical care, they end up in debt or go without needed treatment or both. The state suffers, too, because it ends up with a sicker, less productive workforce as well as a higher charity care load for its hospitals, clinics and other pieces of the medical safety net.”
- “The simple, straightforward reason so many Floridians have no health insurance is that its elected officials won’t sign on to the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, which offers states extra federal matching funds if they make the program available to everybody with incomes below or just above the poverty line.”
- Childless adults can’t even get Medicaid in Florida unless they have a disability.
- The income guidelines are so low (about 30% of the poverty line). The Affordable Care Act would widen that income category.
- The non-expansion states all have Repubican governors or legislatures or both.
- When a House member, DeSantis opposed one bill AGAINST the ACA because it didn’t go far enough in dismantling protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
- If DeSantis accepted federal aid in the form of Medicaid expansion, several hundred thousand people could become eligible for insurance.
- Florida is likely to cause 1.75 MILLION people to lose insurance coverage.
- A disproportionate number of those on Medicaid in Florida are children.
- Many people will lose coverage because they are unaware of the changes in state law about eligibility. Others will lose coverage because they are unable to make their way through cumbersome process and paperwork.
- The refusal to take the federal assistance for Medicaid is causing rural hospitals to close.
- “…in Tallahassee, where Republicans have had nearly uninterrupted control of the Florida’s lawmaking process since 1999.”
- DeSantis’ position about providing access to health care for poor people “…as fundamentally incompatible with American principles of freedom and private property.”
- The process for people to get approval for the ACA through a ballot initiative has become more cumbersome (surprise, surprise)
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Russia’s refusal to allow on-the-ground inspections to resume is endangering the New START nuclear treaty and U.S.-Russian arms control overall, the Biden administration charged on Tuesday.
— Read on www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-accuses-russia-endangering-nuclear-arms-control-treaty-rcna68536 -
View of Russia’s Role in the Far-Right Truck Convoy | The Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare
— Read on journals.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/jicw/article/view/5101/4385 -
Elie Honig joins to discuss his new book and the way the criminal justice system works differently for those with wealth …
— Read on www.wnyc.org/story/legal-system-rich-powerful-different/ -
www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/world/europe/wagner-convict-ukraine-russia.html
Thousands of convicts have been killed, many within days or even hours of arriving at the front, Russian rights advocates and Ukrainian officials say. Those who live and return home largely remain silent, wary of retribution if they speak out.
The policy circumvents Russian legal precedent and, by returning some brutalized criminals to their homes with pardons, risks triggering greater violence throughout society, underlining the cost Mr. Putin is prepared to pay to avoid defeat.
records from one penal colony seen by The New York Times show that the recruits also included men convicted of aggravated rape and multiple murders.
There are no more crimes, and no more punishments,” said Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars. “Anything is permissible now, and this brings very far-reaching consequences for any country.”
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More than six months ago, Russia’s largest private military company, Wagner, and its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, began systematically recruiting convicts on a scale not seen since World War II to bolster a bloody assault on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Yet the operation remains largely cloaked in secrecy and propaganda.
Wagner has been able to avoid oversight by exploiting the most marginalized Russian citizens, the 350,000 male inmates of its harsh penal colonies, said human rights activists and lawyers.
potentially confronting Russian society with the challenge of reintegrating thousands of traumatized men with military training, a history of crime and few job prospects.
These are psychologically broken people who are returning with a sense of righteousness, a belief that they have killed to defend the Motherland,” said Yana Gelmel, a Russian prisoner rights lawyer who works with enlisted inmates. “These can be very dangerous people.”
A former inmate himself, Mr. Prigozhin understood prison culture, skillfully combining a threat of punishment with a promise of a new, dignified life, according to rights activists and families.
Mercenary recruitment is illegal in Russia, and until last year Mr. Prigozhin had denied that Wagner even existed.
Mr. Matyukhin described a climate of fear instilled by Wagner to keep convicts fighting. He said they were threatened with summary executions, and at least one man in his unit was taken away after disobeying orders and never returned.
In some videos, the inmates are given papers described as pardons or annulments of convictions. However, none of these documents have been made public, raising questions about their legitimacy. Rights advocates say pardons are rare, time-consuming and complex legal procedures that have never been issued in Russia on anywhere near the scale advertised by Wagner.
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Putin removed the general in charge of the war in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, whom he had appointed just a few months earlier. Wartime leaders change their top generals only when they know they are losing.
— Read on www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/how-get-breakthrough-ukrainePutin has shown no signs of wanting to end it. Instead, he is planning a major counteroffensive this year. “The Russians are preparing some 200,000 fresh troops
At this stage, incrementally expanding military and economic assistance is likely to only prolong the war indefinitely. Instead, in 2023, the United States, NATO, and the democratic world more broadly should aim to support a breakthrough. This means more advanced weapons, more sanctions against Russia, and more economic aid to Ukraine.
But now that the House of Representatives is under Republican control, future appropriations could be less forthcoming. If the war drags through the end of the year without major Ukrainian victories, the Biden administration will struggle to obtain congressional renewal for a new military and economic assistance package, especially as the presidential election heats up with at least one major candidate, Donald Trump, who is not a fan of aid to Ukraine. Debate
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Iranian foreign minister criticised the drone attack as ‘cowardly’ and aimed at creating ‘insecurity’.
— Read on www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/29/iran-calls-drones-attack-on-its-defense-plant-cowardly -
McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America
— Read on snyder.substack.com/p/the-specter-of-2016
Law, Power, and Justice 