Tips, Comments, Complaints, Etc!

Any questions, issues, etc can be sent to the tpwhelpdesk[at]gmail.com.

Why Maryland Needs Medicare for All by Ben Jealous

Right now in 2017, we live in the state with the highest median income in the richest country in the history of the world. At the same time, more than 350,000 of us lack health insurance and total healthcare spending has increased by more than a trillion dollars in the last decade, choking small businesses and pushing our neighbors into poverty.

The current system isn’t working, and we have a moral and economic imperative to act.

Marylanders deserve a better deal on healthcare and if Washington won’t act, we will. There is no structural reason for hundreds of thousands of Marylanders being unable to afford healthcare. We know how to fix our current system and we have the resources available to do it.

But we haven’t. That is unconscionable.

It is long past time for change. A true Medicare for All system that extends affordable and quality healthcare to every Marylander – and saves countless lives in the process – is well within our grasp. Getting it done requires the courage to stand up to both the special interests who profit off our current system’s shortcomings and to those whose lack of political will continues to hold us back.

Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer say Al Franken should resign

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Chuck Schumer said their colleague Al Franken’s announcement scheduled for Thursday should include his resignation following accusations of sexual harassment from more than a half dozen women.

“Sen. Franken has said that he will be making an announcement about his political future tomorrow. The right thing is for him to resign,” Sanders, I-Vt., who ran for president as a Democrat in the 2016 elections, said in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon.

“We are now at a crossroads in American culture. And it is an important one. The way we treat women in our country has been abysmal in almost every way. We are finally addressing the issue of sexual harassment, and we need to get it right.”

Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, told the New York Times in a statement that “I consider Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments, but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately.”

A short recap of the inauguration for those who were unable to attend. It is the greatest honor of my life to serve as your mayor. Thank you Birmingham! pic.twitter.com/SeTNTLf3FS

— Randall Woodfin (@randallwoodfin) December 6, 2017

Disabled Americans Lost Voting Rights Under Trump Election Fraud Commissioner’s Law

The head of President Donald Trump’s election fraud commission drafted a law as a Kansas official that led to 23 disabled people not having their votes counted in a recent local election.

The disenfranchisement occurred in Sedgwick County and was a direct result of a law pushed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a member of Trump’s voter fraud commission, which requires disabled voters’ signatures on their ballot envelopes. Until Kobach’s Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act passed in 2011, ballots were not tossed if a disabled person’s signature did not exactly match one on file or if someone else signed on behalf of a physically unable voter.

As a result, 23 unsigned ballots from disabled people were tossed in a local election where only 24,120 votes were cast according to deputy elections commissioner Laura Bianco. Some of the races in the county were decided by far fewer than 23 votes.

“If you’re a person with quadriplegia or a senior and don’t have the same ability to mark a ballot as you did when you were younger,” the ballot would be thrown out, Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, told Newsweek. “It’s really a problem for people with disabilities. We need to get it fixed.”

Dems worry: Were we too slow on sex assault response?

John Conyers resigned. Ruben Kihuen faces intense pressure to do the same. And Al Franken’s own colleagues expect him to step aside Thursday.

Democratic leaders think they have finally found the right response to accusations of sexual assault and harassment against their own lawmakers, after weeks of half-measures and ill-timed gaffes.

But now they must assess the political fallout, knowing that the party’s initially slow-footed response might have undermined its credibility amid a transformative national movement of women revealing their stories of sexual abuse.

It’s an important question as Democrats look to the 2018 midterm elections — especially coming just as President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee decided to once again help elect Roy Moore, a Senate candidate in Alabama who has been accused, by multiple people, on the record, of sexually assaulting children.

“When you’re faced with a situation like the Democratic Party faces right now, then you have to act swiftly and make it known to the public that this is not acceptable,” said Nina Turner, president of the liberal group Our Revolution.

Democrats can’t afford to be hypocrites, Turner said, not after “the tide has turned” on how the public treats allegations of sexual harassment.

Two Months After Nation’s Deadliest Mass Shooting, GOP House Passes ‘Dangerous’ Bill to Undermine Local Gun Control Laws

Gun control advocates denounced a House vote on Wednesday approving major legislation which would allow gun owners to carry licensed concealed weapons across state laws—effectively voiding gun control laws that prohibit hidden firearms in certain states.

The House passed the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 in a 231-198 vote. The Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote that the law is “clearly aimed at undermining gun control efforts nationally,” while the National Rifle Association (NRA) called the measure its “highest legislative priority” for the year.

Kristen Rand, Legislative Director of the Violence Policy Center, said after the bill passed, “Today’s winners are the NRA and the gun industry, the losers are public safety and law enforcement. If this bill become law, the body count of innocent victims killed by concealed carry permit holders will only rise.”

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 38) would make a gun owner’s concealed carry permit issued in states like Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, and others—including 19 states where permit-holders are not required to complete any safety training to qualify for concealed carry—valid in states that have passed more stringent gun control laws.

“In other words, Georgia and other states would have more say than New York in determining how many guns are safe to have on the streets of Manhattan,” wrote the New York Times editorial board on Wednesday.

Hundreds Arrested in Peaceful Protest as Thousands March Demanding ‘Clean’ Dream Act

As undocumented young people lose their temporary protected status and Republican lawmakers push for legislation that would ramp up deportations, an estimated 15,000 people marched on Capitol Hill Wednesday while hundreds—including two lawmakers—were arrested in a peaceful protest to demand that Congress pass a clean Dream Act.

..

The protesters also called for the administration to stop its rollback of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is offered to citizens of certain countries impacted by war and violence or natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes. Last month, the Trump administration ended TPS protections for Haitians and Nicaraguans displaced by natural disasters, forcing thousands of legal residents to either leave the United States before their status expires or face deportation.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) addressed the crowd on Wednesday, with Gutiérrez vowing to not vote for the budget unless it includes a clean Dream Act.

Gutiérrez, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), and national leaders of United Farm Workers were reportedly among the hundreds who were arrested for peacefully demonstrating on the steps of the Capitol building.

The GOP Tax Plan Is Igniting a Movement for a Moral Economy

While Republicans may succeed in scoring a short-term win for their donors, their tax plan is sparking a new moral movement against inequality.

Israel: UN security council to discuss US recognition of Jerusalem

The UN security council is expected to meet on Friday to discuss Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a decision against which condemnation continues to mount across the Middle East and internationally.

Eight countries on the 15-member council requested the meeting, including the UK, Italy and France, amid claims from Palestine and Turkey that Trump’s recognition is in breach of both international law and UN resolutions.

The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the bloc had united position that Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state. The Russian foreign ministry said US recognition risked “dangerous and uncontrollable consequences.”

As Palestinians held protests in several cities across the West Bank, most key US allies in the Middle East also joined criticism of the move.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hailed Trump’s recognition as “historic” and claimed other countries were in contact about following the US’s lead, but was alone among regional leaders in praising the move.

Saudi Arabia’s royal court called it “unjustified and irresponsible” in a rare rebuke of the US, and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Trump had thrown the Middle East into a “ring of fire”.

California wildfires: winds pose ‘extreme danger’ for Los Angeles

Wildfires blazing through California have entered the heart of Los Angeles as authorities warned of an “extreme fire danger” across the city.

Firefighters in the affluent Bel-Air neighbourhood battled to save multimillion-dollar estates in the path of the flames, which have destroyed homes near the Getty museum in America’s second-largest city.

Video and photographs posted on social media showed hillsides above busy roads covered in flames, rows of houses reduced to ash, and firefighters spraying water on walls of fire.

The largest blaze, the Thomas fire, has covered more than 90,000 acres (36,000 hectares), destroying more than 150 homes and threatening thousands more in Ventura, about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of Los Angeles.

With winds forecast to reach 80mph, officials have warned the worst could be yet to come.

“We are in the beginning of a protracted wind event,” Ken Pimlott, the director of the California department of forestry and fire protection, told the Los Angeles Times. “There will be no ability to fight fire in these kinds of winds.”

‘We’re fighting for our way of life’: Republican tax bill presents grave threat to Alaska’s tribal groups

For tribal people in northern Alaska, a Republican tax overhaul that was hastily cobbled together in congressional backrooms 3,000 miles away has raised fears that their entire way of life could be erased from this frigid corner of the US.

The Senate’s tax bill may land a decisive blow in a 30-year environmental battle over the Arctic national wildlife refuge, a vast untrammeled area hailed as America’s Serengeti by conservationists, by finally prising open the wilderness to oil and gas drilling. The region’s Gwich’in people fret that their primary food source, caribou, may be lost, and with it the future of the tribe itself.

“We are fighting for our way of life right now,” said Bernadette Demientieff, the executive director of the Gwich’in steering committee, who is spending the week in Washington DC to frantically plea the tribe’s case to Congress.

“Caribou provide 80% of our food, as well as our clothing. This is a sacred place and we will be wiped out if there is drilling there. We live off the land and this is our garden. Take that away and we starve.”

The reliance on hunted food like caribou is practical in an isolated place where a store-bought box of cereal can cost $24. But it is also deeply cultural – the Gwich’in, a community of 9,000 people spread across 15 settlements in Alaska and Canada, revere the animal in song and dance dating back as long as anyone can remember.