Extreme Poverty Skyrocketing - But Why?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h1SCfgUTNg&ab_channel=MomentOfClaritywithLeeCamp

Trump Goes on INSANELY Bigoted Rant Against Ilhan Omar at Campaign Rally

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FILoOQvXfhk&ab_channel=TheHumanistReport

Glen Greenwald Quits, Police SUES Breonna Taylor's BF, Corbyn Gone From Labour

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqOLfSRrlqA&ab_channel=HardLensMedia

We May Have Found a New Organ, Thanks to Cancer Therapy

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVDyPdhj3U&ab_channel=SciShow

Under Trump, Households Making $30 Million Nine Times Less Likely to Face IRS Audit Than Working Poor Making Less Than $25,000

If U.S. police detected murders at the same .03% rate that America's richest families are audited, writes journalist David Cay Johnson, "they would become aware of just five of the 16,214 reported homicides."


Brett Wilkins, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/30/under-trump-households-making-30-million-nine-times-less-likely-face-irs-audit




How exactly does President Donald Trump get away with paying such low—or no—taxes?

It's a question many people are asking in the wake of bombshell New York Times reporting showing the president paid just $750 in annual federal income tax in two recent years, and in a stunning new report published Friday, DCReport editor-in-chief David Cay Johnston examined Internal Revenue Service audits of the very richest Americans to find out how people like Trump manage to keep tax collectors at bay.

Johnston looked at 2018 IRS audits of the wealthiest 23,400 U.S. households—their average income was about $30 million—and found that the administration audited just seven of them. Not 7%, but seven households. That's an audit rate of 0.03%.


In contrast, in 2015 under President Barack Obama, the wealthiest Americans were 270 times more likely to be audited than they were in 2018 under Trump. "If American police detected murders at the same rate it would mean that they would become aware of just five of the 16,214 reported homicides that year," writes Johnston.


It doesn't bode well for tax enforcement when the president himself is a known tax cheat, according to Johnston. He writes:





There's no question Trump is a tax cheat because he has done it again and again. He cheated on New York City sales taxes in 1983, for which Mayor Ed Koch said Trump should have served 15 days in jail. He went to extreme, even farcical lengths to evade $3 million of payments he owed in lieu of taxes to New York City.

Trump has been tried twice for civil tax fraud. He lost both times, a story I broke four years ago but you may not know about because America's major news organizations have not reported it except for one passing mention in the wedding announcement section of The New York Times. Two years ago, however, that newspaper did an exhaustive report showing years of calculated gift tax cheating by two generations of Trumps. In recent weeks income tax information that newspaper reported revealed many badges of tax fraud.

So why hasn't Trump been held accountable for his expansive tax cheating? It has to do with who the IRS audits, says Johnston. He notes that the working poor—defined as people earning less than $25,000 annually—were the target of one-third of all IRS audits in 2018, even thought their average income was just $12,600. The audit rate for poor households was 0.28%, or nine times that of the richest households.


"Now add to all this Trump's powers as president," writes Johnston, which include being able to appoint—and fire—the heads of the Treasury Department, IRS, Justice Department, and other important posts."The cold hard truth," writes Johnston, "is that the richest Americans today face a teensy-weensy risk of being detected if they cheat," mostly due to the dizzying complexity and intricacies of their business operations and property holdings.

Over the past 13 months of the Trump administration, the IRS has referred just 231 cases for prosecution. In 2016, Obama's final year in office, there were 2,744 referrals for prosecution—over 1,100% more than Trump during a similar period. Additionally, around 70% of those cases under Trump were dismissed due to "insufficient evidence."

In the end, "the costs of these favor-the-rich policies even when they cheat are borne by the other 99% of taxpayers," writes Johnston.

'This Is Trump's Failure': US Reports Record 90,400+ Covid Cases in Just 24 Hours—Equivalent to One New Infection Every Second

"Another record day of Covid cases. Not because of testing—but because President Trump has given up on controlling the virus and his administration has failed the American people."


Jake Johnson, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/30/trumps-failure-us-reports-record-90400-covid-cases-just-24-hours-equivalent-one-new




As President Donald Trump stuck to his falsehood-riddled closing message in the final stretch of the 2020 campaign—the U.S. is "rounding the turn" on the pandemic, the economy is roaring back, and public health measures are politically motivated ploys to harm his reelection chances—the U.S. on Thursday reported a daily record of 90,400-plus new coronavirus infections, the equivalent of more than one case every second.

Coronvirus cases are on the rise in nearly every U.S. state including Florida, where Trump on Thursday held an in-person campaign rally during which he paid lip service to basic precautions, such as wearing a mask and social distancing, as a crowd of his largely maskless supporters stood inches apart from each other.

"You know the bottom line, though? You're going to get better. You're going to get better. If I can get better, anybody can get better. And I got better fast," Trump said, neglecting to mention that he had access to a level of high-quality government healthcare that is unavailable to most Americans after he contracted Covid-19.

The president's remarks came hours before the U.S. reported 90,446 new coronavirus cases and around 1,000 deaths Thursday, bringing the nation's infection total to more than nine million as the death toll surpassed 228,700. Hospitalizations are also trending upward at an alarming rate.

"This is Trump's failure," tweeted Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in response to the staggering new figures.


In its weekly update on the pandemic published Thursday, the Covid Tracking Project pointed out that "unlike the spring and summer outbreaks, the third surge is geographically dispersed, and counts are up in every region of the country. An increase in testing is not sufficient to explain the numbers."




"The country reported a record number of tests at 8.2 million, but case growth (24 percent) far outpaced test growth (9 percent), as we explained earlier this week," the organization noted. "That's also true for the entire month of October: Forty-seven of the 50 states, along with the District of Columbia, have seen cases rise faster than reported tests since October 1."


As the Washington Post reported late Thursday, "coronavirus cases are surging in every competitive state before Election Day, offering irrefutable evidence against President Trump's closing argument that the pandemic is nearly over and restrictions are no longer necessary."

"In the 13 states deemed competitive by the Cook Political Report," the Post noted, "the weekly average of new cases reported daily has jumped 45 percent over the past two weeks, from fewer than 21,000 on October 14 to more than 30,000 on October 28."

With the president and members of his administration continuing to publicly downplay the pandemic and indicate the White House has given up trying to control the spread, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers—whose state has been hit hard by the coronavirus in recent days with more than 200 deaths reported over the past week—said Thursday that "there is no way to sugarcoat it: We are facing an urgent crisis."

"There is an imminent risk to you, your family members, your friends, your neighbors," Evers warned.

Minnesota Democrats Implore Voters to 'Drop Off Your Ballot' in Person After Last-Minute Court Ruling

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon called the court's decision a "tremendous and unnecessary disruption to Minnesota's election, just days before Election Day."


Jake Johnson, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/30/minnesota-democrats-implore-voters-drop-your-ballot-person-after-last-minute-court




Minnesota lawmakers and election officials urged voters in their state to avoid the mail and drop off their absentee ballots in person if possible after a panel of federal judges on Thursday issued a last-minute ruling ordering the separation of absentee ballots that arrive after 8:00 pm on November 3 from those received earlier, leaving open the possibility that late-arriving ballots could be invalidated.

"DROP OFF YOUR BALLOT IF YOU HAVEN'T MAILED IT YET," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted late Thursday, linking to a website designed to help voters find nearby ballot drop-off locations.

In its 2-1 decision just days out from the election, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon's mandate that ballots postmarked by November 3 and received within seven days of Election Day must be counted stands "in direct contradiction to Minnesota election law governing presidential elections."


Simon, a Democrat, said state officials are considering appealing the ruling to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court and implored Minnesota voters to drop their ballots off in person at their local county election office instead of mailing them."There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution," wrote Judges L. Steven Grasz and Bobby Shepherd, respectively appointed by President Donald Trump and former President George W. Bush.

While ruling in favor of the pair of Trump Electoral College electors who brought the case, the appellate judges acknowledged their decision would likely cause "voter confusion" and "election administration issues" and potentially further undermine "public confidence in the election."

"With that said," the judges added, "we conclude the challenges that will stem from this ruling are preferable to a postelection scenario where mail-in votes, received after the statutory deadline, are either intermingled with ballots received on time or invalidated without prior warning."

In her lone dissent, Judge Jane Kelly warned that the court's decision "has the effect of telling voters—who, until now, had been under the impression that they had until November 3 to mail their ballots—that they should have mailed their ballots yesterday (or, more accurately, several days ago)."

"With the court's injunction in place," Kelly wrote, "fewer eligible Minnesotans will be able to exercise their fundamental right to vote. That, in and of itself, should give us significant pause before granting injunctive relief."




As Reuters explained, "the 8th Circuit sent the case back to a lower court and instructed it to require Minnesota election officials to identify and 'segregate' absentee ballots received after November 3. The litigation is in a preliminarily stage and those ballots would not be counted if a final judgment is entered in the Republicans' favor."

Following the court's ruling, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said voters should "NOT put ballots in the mail any more" and instead drop them off in person to ensure they're received on time.


In a statement late Thursday, Simon denounced the court's dismissal of his deadline extension as "a tremendous and unnecessary disruption to Minnesota's election, just days before Election Day."

"This last-minute change could disenfranchise Minnesotans who were relying on settled rules for the 2020 election—rules that were in place before the August 11 primary and were accepted by all political parties," Simon added. "I won't let any Minnesota voter be silenced. My mission is now to make sure all voters know that a federal court has suddenly changed the rules, and that their ballot needs to be received by Election Day."

The secretary of state's office provided a list of steps voters should take to ensure their ballots are counted:
Voters who have already put their ballot in the mail can track their ballot at http://www.mnvotes.org/track. If their ballot has not yet been received the voter can vote in-person either by absentee, or at their polling place on Election Day.
Voters can deliver their ballots to their county election office by hand (or have someone they trust hand-deliver it for them).
Voters can cast their vote in person with an absentee ballot at their local election office up until November 2, 2020.
Voters can cast their votes in person on Election Day. Use our Pollfinder Tool to find out where to vote.

"The right to vote is fundamental," said Simon. "The court's decision is a step in the direction of restricting the exercise of that right, during a pandemic that has altered everything about our daily lives. But Minnesotans always find a way to vote, and they'll do so again this year. The spirit that has fueled Minnesota's nation-leading voter turnout will continue."