Bernie's Wellesley fan club

At Hillary Clinton's alma mater, a small band of Sanders supporters is up against a well-organized machine.
By Annie Karni

WELLESLEY, Mass. -- It’s hard not to be aware of Hillary Clinton’s presence on the rolling lakeside campus of Wellesley College, even 46 years after the college's most famous alum graduated. Her portrait hangs here in the political science department, alongside letters she sent to her former professors. At the campus archives, librarians are happy to cart out a stack of yellowed newspaper clippings and worn-out yearbooks documenting Clinton’s four active years on campus. The bookstore sells a Hillary Clinton action figure.

If the students who currently attend didn’t expressly choose Wellesley because of its Clinton connection, they’re keenly aware of the school’s strong tie to the Democratic frontrunner seeking to make history as the first woman president – the buzz among students is that a Clinton White House will greatly increase the prestige of a Wellesley degree. The love is requited – Clinton has credited her alma mater as the “all-women’s college [that] prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics.” It was at Wellesley, after all, that Clinton first became a star, using her 1969 commencement speech to challenge the speaker invited by the administration, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke, for being out of touch with her generation. The bold move landed her on the cover of Time Magazine, making her famous before she even arrived at Yale Law School.

For politically active Wellesley women, it doesn’t feel like a duty to vote Clinton, but it can feel like bucking the trend not to. But on a chilly Monday afternoon before Thanksgiving break, a loosely organized group of about half-a-dozen students gathered in the empty basement of the campus student center to discuss their against-the-grain support for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

They didn’t all know each other socially – the women quietly found each other through the Wellesley Students for Bernie Facebook page, which now has 275 members and counting (compared to 815 in the pro-Clinton student Facebook group). Many said their support for Sanders put them in the minority in their social circles, but they did not feel moved by the former secretary of state, despite living in the dormitories she once resided in and studying in the classrooms where she learned.

“My dad thinks my support for Bernie is totally misguided because I go to Wellesley,” admitted sophomore Claire Devlin. “He keeps saying it’s bad for the brand not to vote for Hillary, which I just think is the most absurd thing.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bernie-sanders-wellesley-hillary-clinton-216203

Marco Rubio Is Using a Convicted Felon to Help Him Win Florida

Earlier this month, when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) named his top campaign representatives across Florida, he tapped a conservative activist named Clyde Fabretti as one of the leaders of his presidential effort in Orange County, a key district that includes Orlando. But Fabretti, the co-founder of the West Orlando Tea Party, has a sketchy background that might not reflect well on Rubio's campaign: He is a convicted white-collar criminal with a history of questionable business dealings and associations with fraudsters. Most recently, Fabretti's name surfaced in an ongoing lawsuit by investors in a tea-party-related media startup who claim he played a role in a company that allegedly defrauded them. And records show that the 67-year-old activist may have committed voter fraud by registering to vote and casting ballots in Florida elections when his criminal record rendered him ineligible to do so.

In 1997, Fabretti pleaded guilty to a single federal felony count of conspiracy to commit income tax evasion, bank fraud, mail fraud, and failing to file tax returns. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison and three years of probation. He was also ordered to pay more than $200,000 in restitution.

According to the federal indictment, Fabretti used his then-wife Susan, who worked for him, to execute an elaborate scheme to defraud First Union Corporation, the banking giant that eventually merged with Wachovia and later Wells Fargo. Prosecutors charged that in 1990 Fabretti provided his wife with false documents inflating her income and assets, which she then used to obtain a loan to buy a five-bedroom, eight-bathroom mansion in Oakton, Virginia.

The indictment also charged that Fabretti attempted to hide his assets by putting them in his wife's name and masked his income by using corporate accounts he controlled to pay his rent, child support from a previous marriage, and living expenses. Susan pleaded guilty to bank fraud and tax evasion charges and was sentenced to three months in prison. Fabretti received a far harsher punishment.

more

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/11/marco-rubio-convicted-felon-clyde-fabretti

Wednesday Toon Roundup 5- The Rest

Terror








War









The Issue







Have a safe holiday, folks!

Wednesday Toon Roundup 4-Gobble Gobble

Wednesday Toon Roundup 3- Refugees and Values

Wednesday Toon Roundup 2- Economy and Mergers

Wednesday Toon Roundup 1- When Clowns turn scary

Rise in Early Cervical Cancer Detection Is Linked to Affordable Care Act

WASHINGTON — Cancer researchers say there has been a substantial increase in women under the age of 26 who have received a diagnosis of early-stage cervical cancer, a pattern that they say is most likely an effect of the Affordable Care Act.

Starting in 2010, a provision of the health law allowed dependents to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26. The number of uninsured young adults fell substantially in the years that followed. The share of 19- to 25-year-olds without health insurance declined to 21 percent in the first quarter of 2014 from 34 percent in 2010 — a decrease of about four million people, federal data show.

Researchers from the American Cancer Society wanted to examine whether the expansion of health insurance among young American women was leading to more early-stage diagnoses. Early diagnosis improves the prospects for survival because treatment is more effective and the chance of remission is higher. It also bolsters women’s chances for preserving their fertility during treatment. And women with health insurance are far more likely to get a screening that can identify cancer early.

Researchers used the National Cancer Data Base, a hospital-based registry of about 70 percent of all cancer cases in the United States. They compared diagnoses for women ages 21 to 25 who had cervical cancer with those for women ages 26 to 34, before and after the health law provision began in 2010. Early-stage diagnoses rose substantially among the younger group — the one covered by the law — and stayed flat among the older group.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/health/rise-in-early-cervical-cancer-detection-is-linked-to-affordable-care-act.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1

Washington D.C. pot arrests at near zero after legalization

After one full year of legalizing cannabis in the nation’s capital, arrests for marijuana possession have dropped to single digits.

Data provided by the Metropolitan Police Department shows that they have conducted only seven arrests for marijuana possession this year, dropping a staggering 99.2 percent from 895 in 2014, the Washington City Paper reports.

“I’m not policing the city as a mom, I’m policing it as the police chief—and 70 percent of the public supported [Initiative 71],” Police Chief Cathy Lanier said in February, according to the Daily Beast. “All those arrests do is make people hate us.”

Despite the uncommonly small number of pot arrests in D.C., public consumption of marijuana is still considered illegal.

http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2015/11/23/washington-d-c-pot-arrests-at-near-zero-after-legalization/

Home, Sweet Kleptocracy

By Rebecca Gordon

A top government official with energy industry holdings huddles in secret with oil company executives to work out the details of a potentially lucrative “national energy policy.” Later, that same official steers billions of government dollars to his former oil-field services company. Well-paid elected representatives act with impunity, routinely trading government contracts and other favors for millions of dollars. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens live in fear of venal police forces that suck them dry by charging fees for services, throwing them in jail when they can’t pay arbitrary fines or selling their court “debts” to private companies. Sometimes the police just take people’s life savings leaving them with no recourse whatsoever. Sometimes they steal and deal drugs on the side. Meanwhile, the country’s infrastructure crumbles. Bridges collapse, or take a quarter-century to fix after a natural disaster, or (despite millions spent) turn out not to be fixed at all. Many citizens regard their government at all levels with a weary combination of cynicism and contempt. Fundamentalist groups respond by calling for a return to religious values and the imposition of religious law.

What country is this? Could it be Nigeria or some other kleptocratic developing state? Or post-invasion Afghanistan where Ahmed Wali Karzai, CIA asset and brother of the U.S.-installed president Hamid Karzai, made many millions on the opium trade (which the U.S. was ostensibly trying to suppress), while his brother Mahmoud raked in millions more from the fraud-ridden Bank of Kabul? Or could it be Mexico, where the actions of both the government and drug cartels have created perhaps the world’s first narco-terrorist state?

In fact, everything in this list happened (and much of it is still happening) in the United States, the world leader -- or so we like to think -- in clean government. These days, however, according to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International (TI), our country comes in only 17th in the least-corrupt sweepstakes, trailing European and Scandinavian countries as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In fact, TI considers us on a par with Caribbean island nations like Barbados and the Bahamas. In the U.S., TI says, “from fraud and embezzlement charges to the failure to uphold ethical standards, there are multiple cases of corruption at the federal, state and local level.”

And here’s a reasonable bet: it’s not going to get better any time soon and it could get a lot worse. When it comes to the growth of American corruption, one of TI’s key concerns is the how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the pay-to-play floodgates of the political system, allowing Super PACs to pour billions of private and corporate money into it, sometimes in complete secrecy. Citizens United undammed the wealth of the super-rich and their enablers, allowing big donors like casino capitalist -- a description that couldn’t be more literal -- Sheldon Adelson to use their millions to influence government policy.


more

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176073/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_corruption_u.s.a./