Leid Stories

Leid Stories—Thuggery As Diplomacy; The Budget Bill ‘Nothing Short of Wholesale Looting’—12.20.17

In her first act as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley in January warned member-states of the international body that the Trump administration will be “taking names” of all countries ever daring to vote against it. The former governor of South Carolina this week repeated the threat in a letter to representatives of several member-states, ahead of a controversial vote tomorrow on the U.S.’s unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate the U.S. embassy there. Leid Stories notes that Haley and Trump both seem to believe that thuggery is diplomacy.

 

When the House votes again today on new changes to the massive tax-overhaul plan, President Donald Trump and the Republican leadership will claim a stunning victory. The tax overhaul, the centerpiece of the Republicans’ $1.5-trillion budget, was long overdue, they say, and will greatly energize the economy, bringing across-the-board benefits. But Trump’s triumph is not sitting well with a wide swath of experts. Josh Bivens, director of research at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, is one of them. The tax-overhaul and budget bill, he says, are “nothing short of wholesale looting.”

Leid Stories—Budget Process Points Up Limitations of the Two-Party System; [Re-]Organize Now!—12.19.17

Turns out that Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a Trump critic who had vowed to vote against the Republicans’ spending bill because its estimated cost of $1.5 trillion is unconscionable, likes it now. Fellow Republicans discovered that a tax-deduction measure that could benefit Corker—and Trump—personally as real estate moguls found its way into the budget package sent to the House for a final vote yesterday.  Corker says he doesn’t know how the provision got included in the Senate bill.

Leid Stories amplifies yesterday’s commentary (about the opaque, undemocratic and corrupt nature of the budget process), contending that it also points up the limitations of the two-party system.

 

In light of current political realities, says Leid Stories, it is time to [re-]organize. 

Leid Stories—The Budget: The Republicans’ (and Democrats’) Nifty Holiday Gift; U.S. Slammed for Still-Woeful Conditions in Puerto Rico —12.18.17

On Friday evening, a delirious President Donald Trump and a coterie of Republican leaders delivered tidings of great joy (Trump announced it was a “Christmas gift” to the nation): There is, at last, a budget, and all that’s needed now is a final vote in both houses of Congress to put the new budget into effect. That process begins today, and with Republicans controlling all branches of government, it is unlikely that the Democrats will succeed in making significant changes to the $1.5-trillion budget.

Leid Stories says that the budget process, being exceedingly undemocratic, opaque and corrupt, must be scrapped.

 

Gov. Ricardo Rosseló of Puerto Rico, conceding that “official” counts of deaths due to Hurricane Maria are extremely inaccurate, today ordered a review of every death attributed to the Category 4 storm that devastated the island three months ago. Independent media analyses found that more than 1,000 people died in addition to the 64 officially listed.

Meanwhile, Refugees International, which recently toured the U.S. territory, has issued a report decrying the woeful conditions under which Puerto Ricans are living.

The Trump administration seems not to care that Puerto Ricans—fellow Americans—are refugees in their own country.

Leid Stories—FBI Releases Damaging Info on Clinton Probe; Is #MeToo Fervor Linked to Lawmaker’s Suicide?—12.15.17

The FBI yesterday released from its electronic “vault” a trove of files related to Bill and Hillary Clinton and others who played key roles in the Clintons’ political and business endeavors.

Charles Ortel, a retired Wall Street banker turned financial investigator who has been probing the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation for two years, reveals damaging information the latest FBI files contain.

 

A county coroner in Kentucky yesterday ruled that State Rep. Dan Johnson, found Wednesday night on the side of a road with a gunshot wound to the head, died by “probable suicide.” Johnson, also a pastor of a local church, died two days after the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published a story alleging that he sexually abused a 17-year-old friend of his daughter after a New Year’s party in 2012. The young woman reported the alleged incident to the police. It was investigated, but was closed with no charges filed against Johnson.

Leid Stories asks: Was Dan Johnson a victim of #MeToo fervor?

Leid Stories—What Was Blacks’ Voting Strategy in Alabama’s Senate Race?; Kwame Turé Warned About the Perils of Undirected Political Action—12.14.17

Roy Moore, who lost the U.S. Senate race in Alabama to Democrat Doug Jones in a special election Tuesday, says he’s not conceding until the vote is fully tallied to include military and write-in ballots. With 99 percent of the votes counted, those votes (an estimated 20,000) won’t be enough to put Moore over the top, even if they all went to him, officials said. Besides, under Alabama law, the difference between the final votes in an election must be smaller than 0.5 percent to trigger an automatic recount.

African Americans delivered victory for Jones. But as Leid Stories asked yesterday: Of what benefit will that be to them?

The late Kwame Turé, presciently addressing University of Chicago students in 1989, stresses that strategy and purpose should inform political action. If not, we will only be enabling our own oppression.

Leid Stories—Major Nuclear Disasters That Governments Have Been Hiding; Blacks Deliver Victory for Underdog in Alabama Senate Race—12.13.17

Investigative reporter, author, educator and activist Paul DeRienzo has been reporting on Leid Stories about the scary state of nuclear programs and facilities in the United States.

He now turns his attention toward Europe’s missteps with malfunctioning nuclear systems and the devastating challenges and consequences they are having way beyond their borders.

Black voters in Alabama yesterday helped deliver a stunning victory for Democrat Doug Jones in a special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat Jeff Sessions held before joining the Trump administration as U.S. attorney general. With a higher turnout than when President Obama ran in 2008 and 2012, their bloc votes helped the longshot Jones triumph over the Trump-endorsed Roy Moore in one of the nastiest political contests in recent memory. Moore, though, has not conceded; he says he may challenge the results.

Leid Stories takes a preliminary look at the race in terms of the potentiality of Black political power in the Age of Trump.

Leid Stories—Is It Still ‘Terrorism,” Or Is It Something Else?; Lots of ‘Calling’ for Impeachment in Congress, But Few Dare Do It—12.12.17

Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant living in Brooklyn, allegedly intended to be a suicide bomber, targeting the heavily trafficked Port Authority bus terminal in New York City. But a pipe bomb he strapped to his body apparently malfunctioned and instead seriously wounded him and injured five others, police said. Ullah’s attempted attack follows that of Oct. 31 by Uzbekistani immigrant Sayfullo Saipov, who used a rented truck to kill eight people and injured 12 others on a bike path in Lower Manhattan.

Leid Stories had said after the Oct. 31 attack that calling these and other such acts “terrorism” is a deliberate effort by the government to deny that they really are acts of warfare.

Several members of Congress, following the hallowed tradition of laying very low on controversial issues until they sense a groundswell, are “calling” on President Donald Trump to resign. As if he’ll grant their requests. As if that’s how it gets done.

Yet when their colleague, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), last week awaited a resolution vote on articles of impeachment that he formally introduced against Trump on Oct.11, he found himself a very lonely man. It was a crushing 364-58, with many of those “calling” for Trump’s resignation not among those approving.

Leid Stories—In Frenzied Pursuit of Alleged Sexual Attackers, Justice Seems to Mean Running Roughshod Over the Law—12.06.17

John Conyers, who represented Michigan’s 13^th congressional district for 53 years, unceremoniously ended his political career yesterday. Conyers, 88, had been battling a staffer’s sexual-harassment allegations against him and buckled under pressure from party leader Nancy Pelosi and others to quit (he had planned to run for reelection next year). Additionally, new sexual-harassment claims from another staffer surfaced on Monday.

Conyers became the biggest fish caught so far in a wide net that self-identified victims of sex crimes, most of them women, have cast to bring their alleged attackers, almost all of them men, to justice. But in pursuit of that justice, Leid Stories says, it seems that lawyers for accusers are playing fast and loose with the law.

Leid Stories—Charity Fraud Nets Ex-Congresswoman Corrine Brown 5 Years. Word to the Clintons?—12.05.17

A federal judge yesterday sentenced former Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Jacksonville), a 24-year congressional veteran, to five years in prison for creating a bogus charity that was to provide scholarships for poor students but instead turned it into an $800,000 slush fund for herself.

If stealing $800,000 from a so-called charity gets a former member of Congress five years in a federal prison, what would be the penalty for conviction of similar charges against a former president and a former senator/secretary of state/presidential candidate who together ran a bogus foundation that solicited and got billions of dollars allegedly to fund “charitable” projects all over the world?

Charles Ortel, a retired Wall Street banker turned financial investigator and our guide through his independent investigation of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation for two years, files his latest report on what he has concluded is “the largest unprosecuted charity fraud in U.S. history.”

Leid Stories—Behind Europe’s ‘Refugee’ Problem; Notes From the Margins—12.04.17

The European Union since 2015 has seen a huge increase in the number of people breaking through its borders, fleeing wretched conditions in their countries of origin. In previous years, those flocking to Western Europe were mostly refugees from repressive Eastern Bloc countries. But now, they are mostly West Africans fleeing war-ravaged countries. The EU wants to stop the illegal flow of Africans into several its 28 member-states.

Gilbert Mercier, cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of News Junkie Post and author of The Orwellian Empire, explains what’s behind the mass from West Africa. 

Leid Stories updates a few topics recently discussed on the program.