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President Trump Is Not “Above the Law”: John Bonifaz Warns Against Normalizing Imp eachable Offenses

Democracy Now!

Published on May 22, 2018

https://democracynow.org – Top FBI and Justice Department officials have confirmed they will meet with congressional leaders to review classified information on the handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. This comes after President Trump demanded an investigation into whether the FBI infiltrated his presidential campaign. Trump has claimed for months, without evidence, that the Obama administration spied on his campaign. Legal experts say his tweet Sunday crossed a line by applying overt presidential pressure on the Justice Department, which could possibly set up a clash similar to the one between President Nixon and the Justice Department during the Watergate scandal. The finding of wrongdoing by Trump could ultimately be referred to Congress and make impeachment a topic of debate among candidates in the midterm elections, though few Democratic leaders have openly supported it. This comes as Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green doubled down on his effort to impeach Trump, a year after he first announced he was drafting articles of impeachment. We get an update from John Bonifaz, an attorney and president of Free Speech For People, one of the organizations that launched the “Impeach Donald Trump Now” campaign.

India’s struggling farmers find seeds of hope in heritage crops

PBS NewsHour

Published on May 22, 2018

About two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people live on small subsistence farms, struggling to eke out a living. Many farmers have felt left behind as crops have failed or diminished due to disease, degraded soil and drought. Not thousands are returning to traditional seeds that went out fashion decades ago — an approach that’s gaining attention. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.

Food-matters,

How The Top 9.9 Percent Is Leaving The Rest In The Dust | On Point

22 May 2018     With Ray Suarez    

Forget the top one-percenters, it’s the top 9.9 percenters who are holding everyone else down. We’ll look at the argument.

Guests:

Matthew Stewart, philosopher, author of several books and former management consultant.

From The Reading List:

The Atlantic: “The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy” — “One of the hazards of life in the 9.9 percent is that our necks get stuck in the upward position. We gaze upon the 0.1 percent with a mixture of awe, envy, and eagerness to obey. As a consequence, we are missing the other big story of our time. We have left the 90 percent in the dust—and we’ve been quietly tossing down roadblocks behind us to make sure that they never catch up.

Let’s suppose that you start off right in the middle of the American wealth distribution. How high would you have to jump to make it into the 9.9 percent? In financial terms, the measurement is easy and the trend is unmistakable. In 1963, you would have needed to multiply your wealth six times. By 2016, you would have needed to leap twice as high—increasing your wealth 12-fold—to scrape into our group. If you boldly aspired to reach the middle of our group rather than its lower edge, you’d have needed to multiply your wealth by a factor of 25. On this measure, the 2010s look much like the 1920s.”

The New York Times: “Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60. Find Yours.” (From 2017) — “Students at elite colleges are even richer than experts realized, according to a new study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records.

At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League – Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown – more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent.

Roughly one in four of the richest students attend an elite college – universities that typically cluster toward the top of annual rankings.

In contrast, less than one-half of 1 percent of children from the bottom fifth of American families attend an elite college; less than half attend any college at all.”

Remember when Occupy demonstrators split America in two? The one percent and… everybody else? Do the millions of families making a solid six-figure income, angling to get their kids into the best school districts and colleges really share the challenges of families struggling to keep a roof over their heads? Our guest says it’s time to worry about the 9.9 percent, who aren’t worried about all boats rising, just their own.

This hour, On Point: A new American aristocracy?

– Ray Suarez

See also:

Noam Chomsky – A Perfect Storm

The 99% Is a Myth—Here’s How It Really Breaks Down

The Atlantic

Published on May 16, 2018

When it comes to the division of wealth, many Americans believe that the country is split between the 1%, which possesses a significant share of the country’s money, and the 99%, or “the people.” In reality, The Atlantic writer Matthew Stewart argues, 9.9% of the population comprises America’s new aristocracy, which often “takes wealth out of productive activities and invests it in walls.” But this group of people is rich in more than mere money, and its constancy poses an insidious threat to the promise of American democracy.

See related:

On Our Watch – The Hijacking of America

as well as:Read Stewart’s article inn The Atlantic (June 2018).

• The Birth of the New American Aristocracy: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy – The Atlantic

See also:

Noam Chomsky – A Perfect Storm

 

“…entangled in webs of endless deceit:” Part 2- Lying – A State Strategy of Distraction | EV & N 279 | CCTV

http://ecoethics.net/2014-ENVRE120/201805222-EV&N-279-Link.html

https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/563167

https://www.cctvcambridge.org/user/3723/history

YouTube Version

Lying has become a strategy of the state in order to amuse, befuddle and distract the public from seeing what is occurring to them and confuse them about how they might act to protect themselves..

See also:

• “…entangled in webs of endless deceit:” Part 1-The “Big Stick” and t he “Big Lie” | EV & N 278 | CCTV
  and
  

Perpetual War For Permanent Peace

and

On Our Watch – The Hijacking of America

as well as:

Noam Chomsky – A Perfect Storm

and

Scientist openly talks 2.5 meter Sea Level Rise by 2100

Climate State
Published on Mar 23, 2018

Excerpts from the AGU 2017 Fall Meeting summary presentation of the Climate Science Special Report, the Fourth National Climate Assessment. First part on U.S. xtremes, second part discusses sea level rise. Speakers David R Easterling, NOAA Asheville Robert E Kopp, Rutgers University, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences Full summary presentation 2017 Fall Meeting – U23A:
Climate Science Special Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDJP5…
Teaser photo by Tim Marshall https://unsplash.com/photos/yEOCA6oiVqg