“Since the 2020 election, millions of Republican voters have accepted former President Donald Trump’s false claim that the presidential election was stolen from him. And now, here in 2022, many Republican politicians have capitalized on this lie and have won elections of their own.
This election cycle, FiveThirtyEight is tracking the views of every Republican candidate for Senate, House, governor, attorney general and secretary of state on the legitimacy of the 2020 election. And now that we’re halfway through the primary season, we can say definitively that at least 120 election deniers have won their party’s nomination and will be on the ballot in the fall.”
“Every taxpayer earning less than $75,000, or joint-filers earning less than $150,000, will receive a $350 check, plus another $350 if they have children, reports CBS. A married couple with children would qualify for the maximum of $1,050. Higher-income people would receive smaller refunds.
The checks are the most advertised portion of a budget deal totaling some $300 billion. They help dispense with a $97 billion budget surplus buoyed by unexpectedly high tax returns from the highest-income Californians.
It should almost go without saying that giving out individual stimulus checks is more likely to exacerbate inflation than cure it. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, which included $1,400 stimulus checks, is estimated by one Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco analysis to have raised inflation by 3 percentage points.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/21/jan-6-committee-justice-department-transcripts-00040986
“The White House announced..it will commit to limiting the use of anti-personnel land mines in most places around the world, putting an end to a Trump-era expansion of the policy that President Joe Biden had vowed to reverse.
Anti-personnel land mines, designed for use against humans, have a “disproportionate impact on civilians, including children, long after fighting has stopped,” the White House said in a statement ”
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“The Biden administration noted that the use of anti-personnel land mines will continue on the Korean Peninsula because of the “unique circumstances” there and the United States’ commitment to defend South Korea against North Korea.”
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“The policy is “in sharp contrast” to Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, where there’s evidence that the country has used anti-personnel landmines that have caused “extensive damage” to civilians and infrastructure, Brown said. He declined to say whether the war in Ukraine provided the impetus for the administration’s move, emphasizing that the policy has been under review since January 2021 and was recently concluded.
The policy change aims to “bring U.S. practice in closer alignment with a global humanitarian movement that has had a demonstrated positive impact in reducing civilian casualties” from land mines, the statement said.”
“Cyberattacks on health systems are on a steady rise, and their costs are mushrooming. Experts said there are a variety of reasons for the increase, including that criminals are getting more advanced and more aspects of health care are online.
When a cyberattack struck Sky Lakes Medical Center, a community hospital in southern Oregon, in late October 2020, its computers were down for three weeks. The most mundane tasks became arduous. Nurses had to check on critical patients every 15 minutes in case their vital signs changed. Doctors scribbled down their orders and the swelling mounds of paper took over whole rooms. In three weeks, the hospital ran through 60,000 sheets of paper.
Sky Lakes had to rebuild or replace 2,500 computers and clean its network to get back online. Even after it hired extra staff, it took six months to input all the paper records into the system. In total, John Gaede, Sky Lakes director of information services, says his organization spent $10 million — a big expense for a nonprofit with roughly $4.4 million in annual operating income (the organization did not pay a ransom).
For hospitals with limited budgets, there are questions about how well they can protect themselves. The attack on Sky Lakes was part of a wave of attacks in 2020 and 2021 connected to a criminal group in Eastern Europe.
“Our budgets typically have a margin of maybe 3 percent a year,” Gaede said, “but we’re supposed to compete with nation-state actors?”
Health data is lucrative on the black market, making hospitals a popular target. Plus, if a health system has ransomware insurance, criminals may think they’re guaranteed a payout. Ransomware ties up hospital records in encrypted files until a fee is paid.
“Back when ransoms were $50,000, it was cheaper to pay them than to deal with a lawsuit that would have cost far more,” says Omid Rahmani, associate director at Fitch Ratings, a credit rating agency, adding that ransoms now cost millions. “The landscape’s changed and because of that the cyber insurance side has changed — and that’s really connected to the rise of ransomware.”
In its annual cost of a data breach report, IBM writes the global average cost of an attack on a health system rose from about $7 million to over $9 million in 2021. But remediating these violations in the U.S. can be far more expensive.”
“Nearly every component of Trump’s plan revolved around then-Vice President Mike Pence succumbing to pressure. In Trump’s view, Pence — who presided over the counting of state electors on Jan. 6, 2021 — could single-handedly reject Biden’s electors or postpone the count altogether and let GOP state legislatures approve pro-Trump electors instead.
Pence, relying on the advice of his counsel Greg Jacob, balked at Trump’s strategy. Jacob and other White House lawyers repeatedly told Trump the scheme was illegal.
Even that could’ve gone differently. Jacob has also made clear that there was one scenario in which Pence might have been obligated to flip the outcome: if any state legislatures had actually pulled the trigger and adopted Trump electors. In that scenario — where a state legislature and governor have certified competing slates, with one saying Biden won and the other declaring the state for Trump — Jacob said it would be reasonable to defer to the text of the Constitution, which gives state legislatures the ultimate power to choose electors.
“A reasonable argument might further be made that when resolving a dispute between competing electoral slates … the Constitution places a firm thumb on the scale on the side of the State legislature,” Jacob wrote.
That’s why John Eastman, an attorney who designed much of Trump’s plans to stay in power, spent the final hours before the riot on Jan. 6 pushing Pence to delay — contending that Pennsylvania’s legislature appeared on the verge of reconvening to appoint Trump electors. Had Pence or Jacob agreed to a delay — particularly as the Capitol recovered — Trump, Eastman and lawyer Rudy Giuliani intended to use the time to bring legislatures back into season.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fighting-ukraine-shows-vulnerability-one-223300682.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-limits-reach-federal-180911056.html
“The decline of motor vehicle deaths in America over the past two decades is part of a broader trend that began in the 1960s. Ralph Nader’s seminal 1965 exposé, Unsafe at Any Speed, catalyzed an auto safety movement that culminated in the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which set up the infrastructure for automobile safety.
From the 1970s onward, the NHTSA would maintained a database on motor vehicle-related deaths, make research investments, and provide safety certifications for cars on the market, incentivizing auto companies to adopt safety procedures. The work of the NHTSA and civil society groups like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety helped usher in a new era where safety features like seat belts and airbags became standardized. All of this, along with measures like universal state licensing of drivers and registration of cars, led to the decline in youth and overall American motor vehicle mortality. The CDC would eventually tout this decline as one of the country’s biggest public health achievements of the 20th century.
And as Lee recounts in the NEJM article, that progress continued into the 21st century. In 1998, frontal airbags became mandatory in all cars and trucks sold in the US. Other improvements like automatic emergency braking, blind-spot detection, side airbags, and rear-facing cameras also contributed to an improved auto safety landscape. “What we’ve seen is more than a half-century of efforts to make the automobile safer,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning and director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at New York University.
If cars went one way with safety, guns went the other. Guns are one of the only consumer goods whose safety is not regulated by any government agency. Gun manufacturers are also very insulated from lawsuits, and perhaps consequently, have little incentive to design safer guns, such as “smart guns” that would only be operable by the users they are registered to. As Moss said, “We really have a Wild West approach to the manufacture of weapons in this country.””