Net Neutrality II with John Oliver

7 Things To Know About Ajit Pai, The Man Trump Tasked With Killing Net Neutrality

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

Ajit Pais is chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the government agency that regulates radio and television airwaves, cable TV, and internet. In other words, he has immense power.

President Trump appointed Pai to serve as chairman in January and Pai has quickly moved to advance the interests of big broadcasting companies and internet service providers at the expense of the public. Next month, the five-member FCC will vote on Pai’s proposal to roll back FCC rules limiting cable and internet service providers from charging more for their services.

Even Trump supporters should be appalled, says the reliably conservative Forbes magazine.

Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the protocols of the World Wide Web, is blunt: “The FCC under Ajit Pai has consistently chosen to sell out Americans for the profit of corporations.”

So who is this guy?

http://www.nationalmemo.com/7-things-know-ajit-pai-man-trump-tasked-killing-net-neutrality/

He is an asshole

Clarence Thomas Must Resign

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.

November 28, 2017 2:28 am

Utah Republican Orrin Hatch called “bullcrap” on Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown last week. The Senate Finance Committee lion tore into Brown for “spewing” that the Republican tax plan to transfer a trillion dollars to the rich was in reality a Republican tax plan to transfer a trillion dollars to the rich.

I got my first dose of Hatch during the wall-to-wall coverage of the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, George H.W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominee. Hatch was the Republicans’ designated questioner of Anita Hill. She was called to testify because she’d told the FBI that Thomas had sexually harassed her 10 years earlier, when he was her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education.

Sitting behind her were her mother, Erma (“who is going to be celebrating her 80th birthday”); her father, Albert; her sisters, Elreathea, Jo Ann, Coleen and Joyce; and her brother, Ray. No way she was going to lie to the committee, or to us, in front of them.

Hill testified that Thomas had repeatedly asked her out, and that she repeatedly refused. So he demeaned her. He told her someone had once “put a pubic hair” on his Coke can. He said porn star Long Dong Silver had nothing on him in the endowment department.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/clarence-thomas-must-resign/


He should never had been put on the bench in the first place

Alex Baldwin gives Iowa Democrats a Crash Course in Trumpology

Orrin Hatchs Bullcrap on Taxes Is Exactly That

“Bullcrap!”

That’s the epithet Orrin Hatch threw at his fellow senator, Sherrod Brown, during a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee. Brown’s offense? He pointed out that Republicans aren’t shooting straight when they say their tax cuts for the rich will help the middle class.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) had called the GOP’s bluff with an amendment to their bill that would have cancelled tax cuts for corporations if middle-class wages don’t rise – something Republicans have promised their tax plan will deliver.

Republicans promptly blocked it.

Stating the Obvious
As he spoke for Wyden’s doomed amendment, Brown commented upon the obvious. “I just think,” he said, “it would be nice, just tonight, before we go home, to just acknowledge, well, this tax cut really is not for the middle class, it’s for the rich.”

https://ourfuture.org/20171126/orrin-hatchs-bullcrap

FUCK YOU ---------------Hatch

Federal prosecutors show jury Project Veritas videos in trial of Trump inauguration protesters

Source: Think Progress

The trial continues this week in the federal government’s unprecedented prosecution of the first of some 200 protesters arrested in a dragnet for protesting President Trump’s inauguration. One piece of evidence being used in the case is undercover video of an organizing meeting produced by Project Veritas, the propaganda group known for deceptive editing and other unethical practices.

Though it has repeatedly been discredited, this week Project Veritas was particularly humiliated when the Washington Post caught one of the organization’s employees trying to pose as a victim of rape by Alabama candidate Roy Moore. The newspaper’s reporters turned the tables, filming the woman as she struggled to legitimize her story. The Washington Post also filmed a subsequent encounter with James O’Keefe, the head of the organization. Project Veritas was also caught by the post deceptively editing that video to make O’Keefe look better.

Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/project-veritas-j20-trial-3a4aae97c5a0/

Chicago bakery loses 800 workers after immigration raid

Source: Think Progress

An immigration raid at a Chicago bakery lost one-third of its workers earlier this year, with roughly 800 workers who didn’t have “sufficient documentation,” Bloomberg News reported Monday.

Aryzta AG Chief Executive Officer Kevin Toland said the company faces pressure to raise wages and has a long process ahead to replace the 35 percent of workers lost during the raids at Cloverhill Bakery, the publication reported. The company supplies hamburger buns for the McDonald’s Corporation and single-package products for vending machines.

“It’s proceeding very, very slowly because it’s like having a brand new factory and a brand new workforce,” Chief Executive Officer Kevin Toland said on the call, according to Bloomberg News. “That’s presenting a lot of challenges, as you can imagine.”

Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/chicago-bakery-800-immigration-raid-90c8b049eea1/

Tens of thousands of newly registered felons could swing Alabama Senate election

DOTHAN, ALABAMA — “Today is the last day to register to vote in the state of Alabama,” Pastor Kenneth Glasgow said into a microphone, his energy lighting up the radio studio in the office of a community group he runs. “Those of you listening in the prison cells right now: You can vote if you don’t have a murder charge or any kind of sex charge.”

For 90 minutes on Monday morning, Glasgow and his co-host spoke on the air about the importance of registering before the midnight deadline. Through The Ordinary People Society, the non-profit community organization he founded in 1999 after he served more than a decade in prison on drug charges, Glasgow says he has helped hundreds of thousands of people register to vote. In 2008, he won a lawsuit allowing him to register people inside prisons, but most people inside were still disenfranchised — until this year.

In May, Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed into law a bill, the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act, championed by Glasgow and other voting advocates. Under Alabama’s 1901 constitution, anyone convicted of a “crime of moral turpitude” was prohibited from voting, but the state never defined what moral turpitude was. For decades, county registrars would all use different criteria and provide voters with conflicting information. The new law, however, clarifies the crimes that permanently disenfranchise a former felon, opening the doors for tens of thousands of people with drug charges and other lower level felonies to register to vote.

https://thinkprogress.org/voter-registration-former-felons-alabama-election-aa3ba5ecb020/

Newsweek and their cover

Workers rights are being abused as they rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Harvey

Day laborers, many of them undocumented, are reportedly being exploited as they rebuild after Hurricane Harvey, and their health and economic well-being are are stake.

According to a report from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and University of Illinois Chicago that surveyed 360 workers, 26 percent of workers have experienced wage theft in their post-Harvey work and 85 percent did not receive health and safety training. Sixty-one percent of workers did not have the necessary respiratory equipment to protect them from mold and chemicals, 40 percent did not have protective eyewear, and 87 percent were not informed about the risks of working in these unsafe buildings.

Workers have been exposed to mold and contamination on a regular basis, and regardless of whether workers are undocumented, they often aren’t aware of their legal protections, according to the report. To make matters worse, Texas is the only state that lets employers opt out of workers’ compensation for work injuries.

-snip-

Advocates for undocumented workers in Houston are also concerned about Senate Bill 4 (SB4), a Texas law that lets local law enforcement ask people they detain or arrest about their immigration status and hits local government officials with jail time and large financial penalties if they refuse to comply with federal detainer requests. The law is currently being held up in the courts, but that hasn’t completely erased fears among immigrant communities in Texas.

https://thinkprogress.org/workers-rights-are-being-abused-as-they-rebuild-in-the-wake-of-hurricane-harvey-c89dec948a1d/


Fuck You Holiday Inn