Attorney General Sessions announces that Trump Administration will lift limits on military equipment going to local police departments. It is a bit rich that Mr. Sessions grandstands about "not allow(ing) criminal activity, violence and lawlessness to become the new normal," given that he works for a man who enables violence and clearly thinks law and order is only for little people. Suggesting police brutality is a "superficial concern" is a bit rich, too, when at least one out of every 10 Americans worry that their next police contact will be their last.
You won't be surprised to learn that ProPublica and the Texas Tribune told us almost a year and a half ago that Houston would be "a sitting duck for the next hurricane." Very often, local officials in Texas say it's our federal government's job to fix the problem -- a statement with which I wouldn't necessarily disagree, particularly given the Houston Ship Channel's importance to our economy, but also a statement which sounds odd coming from politicians who've long been ideologically predisposed to cripple the governments for which they work.
Dean Baker at TruthOut performs an enormous public service by instructing us that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a pro-growth agency. Right-wingers have drummed it into our heads that Big Gummint always strangles economic growth in its crib, but if the CFPB's new forced arbitration ban "costs" banksters $1 billion annually, that billion dollars comes from ordinary consumers like you and I, and that's not just a cost to us, but to the economy, which could use the extra $1 billion in stimulus. Also, the money banksters spend concocting ways to rip consumers off (rather than ways to provide better services than their competitors) comprises a drag on economic growth.
Illinois becomes the 10th American state (that was quick!) to pass an automatic voter registration law. Getting registered to vote whenever you renew a driver's license or a state ID should counter the nefarious effects of the Interstate Crosscheck database somewhat, but most folks aren't going to think to get new IDs done on Election Day, or have time to do it once they find out they've been mysteriously "de-registered" -- or, ah, have the ability to get to a DMV in a state that's closed as many of them as it can get away with!. Also, very few red or swing states have implemented automatic voter registration. I suspect the best solution to Interstate Crosscheck is a very good lawsuit striking it down as a violation of a citizen's due process rights.
Finally, the incomparable Matt Taibbi blames the media for creating "A World Dumb Enough for Trump." His article is a good tonic if you've been at all impressed with the "liberal" media's tough-on-the-surface coverage of Mr. Trump's Presidency -- after all, "(t)he Trump presidency is like a diabolical combination of every schlock eyeball-grabbing formula the networks have ever deployed," the creation of media that constantly push "(b)ig headlines, cartoonish morality, scary criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad" because "they all sell." Amen.
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