Turning The Ballot Box Against Republicans

Tiffany Trump, Steve Bannon, Steven Mnuchin Registered to Vote in Multiple States

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP called for an investigation into alleged voter fraud, including whether citizens are registered to vote in more than one state, but at least one member of his family, one of his senior aides, and a Cabinet nominee have been found to be registered in at least two states.

"I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time)," Trump tweeted Wednesday. "Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedure."

Trump's nominee to be the secretary of the Treasury, former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin, is registered to vote in both New York and California, according to a review of documents by CNN.

Steve Bannon, a senior adviser to the president and the former executive director of Breitbart News, a media outlet the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as "embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right," registered to vote in New York before the election last year at the same time as he was registered to vote in Florida. Bannon is still registered to vote in Florida.

And Tiffany Trump, the president's younger daughter with his second wife, Marla Maples, is registered to vote in both Pennsylvania and New York.

Although it is not illegal to be registered to vote in multiple places – unlike voting twice in the same election, which is against the law – proponents of theories of voter fraud point to multiple registrations as proof that illegal voting takes place.

Mnuchin is registered at a Park Avenue home in Manhattan, where he last voted in 2008. Records in California show he is registered at an address in Bel Air, and he voted in

California's Republican primary last year. A Los Angeles county election official told CNN that files have not been updated for November's general election.

During the election, it was revealed by The Guardian that Bannon was registered in Florida at a vacant house in Miami-Dade County. The owner of the property said at the time he had never lived at the address where he was registered, a possible violation of Florida election law that prohibits "willful misrepresentation" of residency and bars registering some place that is not a primary residence. Bannon changed his Florida registration to the home of a friend after The Guardian's report in August; it's not clear if he ever lived at that home either.

Tiffany Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in May. Public records reviewed by Heat Street confirmed that she voted in New York but not in Pennsylvania in November.

I forgot Benghazi...

Mock trials are the way republicans operate; they persecute the innocent and obstruct justice and give their generous pardons so the guilty go free.

Study: No One Could Have Seen Pandemic Coming Except People Capable of Reading

MINNEAPOLIS —No one could have seen the coronavirus pandemic coming except for people who are capable of reading, a new study indicates.

The study, published by the University of Minnesota, is highly critical of the current early-warning system for global pandemics, which requires that a person have the literacy necessary to read, comprehend, and digest a memo.

“In order to see a pandemic coming, one would have to read and also understand the words, sentences, and paragraphs that compose a typical memo,” Professor Davis Logsdon, the author of the study, said. “And some of these memos can run two, three, even four pages in length.”

For someone who does not typically read, and instead spends ten or twelve hours a day watching television, “A memo like that is doomed to fall through the cracks.”

Logsdon believes that the abject failure of the current “reading-centric” early-warning system can teach us valuable lessons about how to combat future pandemics.

“Right now, the lives of millions depend upon one person not being illiterate,” he said. “That’s setting the bar awfully high.”

The Borowitz Report

Why don't you post how many people were being employed by each program and how much they were all making as well?

Then post how they were spending their money and what industries they were supporting with their personal consumption habits and investments, and how all those habits and investments were affecting the things they were supposed to be protecting with their jobs?

What people don't seem to understand is that we have a systemic environmental/sustainability problem built into our economic norms of how much money we make and how we spend/invest it.

So when government creates high-paying jobs, just as when corporations create high-paying jobs, those jobs facilitate and normalize the lifestyle patterns that are bad for the environment and climate.

You have people all over working in minimum wage jobs part-time and not traveling at all for the most part, who mostly just buy groceries and eat at home; and they are not doing as much to harm the environment and climate as other people who are making/spending/investing more money and thus creating more of an environmental/climate footprint.

So even if the current administration isn't eliminating these programs specifically with the intent of doing so to stimulate environmental/climate reforms in how people live, the austerity that results when people have to seek lower-paying jobs and travel less and shrink their economic footprint is the only way that sustainability reform can actually happen, because otherwise people get paid to monitor things, but those things never actually cut back their operations because there's lots of money coming in as revenue that they have to serve by keeping their operations running at full steam.

be my guest...

I don't have that information, but the exact details aren't important.

What's important is that you see the horrible paradox that the government tries to address environmental problems by creating programs that stimulate the economic activities that do the very environmental/climate harm they are supposed to be fixing.

This is a prefect example of someone pathetically searching for a silver lining in a turd. It is shaped like an ear of corn and corn is good for you...

We, the richest country in the world holding 99% of the world's wealth need austerity?

What an idiotic response and a feeble attempt at rational thought.

You talk of footprints, cancel the programs of those who are allowing the fossil fuel companies to run amok, poisoning our air and waterways so republican senators can get filthy stinking rich.

How about we start with austerity there???

Your credibility stinks.

It does not smell near as bad as yours. You say ridiculous things. You attach Republican to things that have nothing to do with any political party.

I don't know what the solution is, but I can see the problem and you should acknowledge it.

The problem is the industrial-consumer culture is deeply rooted in the global economy, in which the US government plays a major role by stimulating stock market growth.

The US government pays lots of people and generates lots of government projects that stimulate private investments, and then people take all that money and buy cars and flights and stimulate lots of economic growth that causes land to get cleared and developed and paved so all these other people and businesses can cash in on the trickle-down from the government spending projects.

The Democrats do this because they want everyone to get paid, which is kind of them; but they don't acknowledge that when everyone is getting paid and working for the stimulus money, they don't want to reform the economy because that's how they are passing the money around.

So they talk about change but then they undermine the very possibility of change by stimulating the economic status quo.

Why can't you acknowledge that is the problem and the reason reforms never work?

Once again your logic is daft...

Republicans are the problem.

They have sold our healthcare, environment, government, loyal allies to the highest bidder without any concern whatsoever for the consequences.

The republicans and their fake news have filled you full of crap, so you blame anyone but them.

The status quo is not your greedy party, full of polluters and thieves stealing from the US taxpayers and buying judges to look the other way while they abolish the checks and balances put in place to preserve our planet.

Every time you post your opinion it just show how truly gullible you are.

The solution is get the republican crooks out of office asap, restore regulation and oversight checks and balances... literacy, decency and public trust.

The problem is not consumers. it is lack of ethical leadership due to years of crooked republican corruption.

You belch their bilge here and expect it to fly and all it does is attract flies due to the stench of the GOP's criminal activity and constant attacks perpetrated against the American people and our Constitutional rule of law.

The Indian agencies were closed so republicans can steal their land and exploit it for all it is worth. The historical agencies were closed so they can try and hide the hideous past of racism that should NEVER be forgotten. The protection of air, water, nuclear safety, pandemic prevention are all so they can kill off people and steal public lands, dirty our air, rivers without regulation and oversight and lawsuits for negligence. Attack schools so they can keep kids dumb and force them into a lifetime of servitude. Hunt and kill endangered species for "sport". Avoid paying taxes and the consequences for oil spills and practices that put people in danger including cataclysmic events like global extinction of all life! So they can continue their unregulated dirty energy exploits of this planet for their filthy greedy profit.

And you are worried about people getting a stimulus check to help them pay their bills while granny chokes to death on her own lungs in the nursing home?

What sheer and utter indifference you show to all that is called decent and prudent.

What a twisted and perverse person you are.

I actually saw this problem with Democrat stimulus when I was still supporting the 'hope and change' I truly expected to work. I thought they really wanted to solve the climate and environmental problems as well as social problems, and I thought the economy/people would respond to the initiatives in things like alternative transportation and infrastructure by shifting economic norms to achieve sustainability.

That's not what happened, though. What happened was that they kept putting through stimulus bills and quantitative easing, etc. to keep stock markets inflated and growing; and the more the economy recovered and grew, the more people dismissed the responsibility to make sacrifices that come with reform.

So when the economy is being stimulated and the people are failing to change because it doesn't suit their everyday routines, it doesn't make sense to go on supporting the party that lies about change in order to keep growing the economy.


That's what they do with these protection programs, which are basically just a way for the industry to regulate itself through government. Policing industry doesn't change it, it just puts more personnel on their payroll, either directly or through them paying taxes to support government jobs.

You are right about lobbying government to cooperate with business interests, but the Democratic programs are just another product of that, on a larger and deeper scale even.


I felt gullible after celebrating the 2012 Democratic Convention using pedicabs and thinking alternative transportation was going to save the economy from itself. The Democrats might put a little money into reforms and alternatives, but then they put a lot more into maintaining all the high-paying union jobs in the status quo industries.


If the problem isn't consumers, why did the 2012 pedicab industry fail?


All your insults can't change the fact that under Democratic rule, the public exercises their liberty to spend the stimulus money how they please, and when they spend it on cars instead of pedicabs, the status quo gets stimulated and the alternatives are choked off by the competition. If both Democrats and Republicans would stop stimulating growth, how many people would be able to afford cars instead of pedicabs?


How is anything you're talking about here solved by creating a bureacratic job that makes that many more people dependent on keeping that industry strong and paying their taxes?


Maybe if the Democrats had created a cash4ventilators program instead of cash4clunkers, the automakers would have started making ventilators back then instead of waiting for Trump to order them.

And maybe if they would have done more with pedicabs than just used them as a marketing ploy at the 2012 convention, the air would have gotten cleaner and more people would be healthier now and thus less vulnerable to COVID19 infection.

Chicago regulation didn’t kill pedicabs — they’re literally bigger than ever. But the business has changed, and some drivers say people are breaking the rules.
Five years ago, Chicago regulated pedicabs, banning the human-powered taxis from Michigan Avenue and State Street entirely and from the Loop during rush hour, and requiring operators to be licensed and insured.

Some drivers predicted the rules would kill the business.

Instead, the industry is thriving, with almost 200 pedicabs in operation, carrying tourists, concertgoers and sports fans to and from Wrigley Field, Soldier Field, Northerly Island, the United Center and around the Museum Campus.

But the business has changed character in recent years, according to operators. Instead of using pure muscle power, most operators now use electric-assist motors to aid in pedaling.

PAID POSTWhat Is This?
Join Marie On Nutrisystem & Get Healthy Meals Delivered To Your Door!
Join Marie On Nutrisystem & Get Healthy Meals Delivered To Your Door!
SEE MORESponsored Content by   Topdust
The cabs also have gotten bigger, and may seat up to six people instead of two. Trying to compete with each other and with ride-share companies like Uber, pedicab operators are tricking out their rides with lights, decorations and sound.

“There’s an arms race,” said Ryan Riedel, who is planning a new canopy for his cab in the shape of a sea turtle. “If you go to Buckingham Fountain, you see five-seater cabs blasting music. People are getting increasingly creative to attract attention.”

A pedicab driver talks with a potential rider Aug. 15, 2019, while another pedicab transports customers after a John Mayer concert at the United Center in Chicago. Many pedicabs charge $10 to $15 per person per mile.
A pedicab driver talks with a potential rider Aug. 15, 2019, while another pedicab transports customers after a John Mayer concert at the United Center in Chicago. Many pedicabs charge $10 to $15 per person per mile.

Some operators say they wish there were a little more oversight to crack down on operators who overcharge, have poorly maintained cabs or use cabs operated entirely by motors, making the devices more like golf carts. Fully motorized vehicles are not considered pedicabs and fall outside of the city ordinance, making them not allowed.

“I don’t know why there isn’t more enforcement and the city isn’t looking at the pedicabs more closely,” said Dan Farace, co-owner of Second City Tuk Tuks. Farace said he sees a “new breed” of pedicab operators who don’t pedal at all. He also sees problems with operators swapping around license plates, and attaching them to different cabs, and not posting their prices.

“I’m worried when I see a motorized pedicab going 30 miles per hour in a crowd of drunken people," said Richard Sammartino, who works year-round, without a motor. Sammartino said he doesn’t think the city needs more rules for pedicabs, but should better enforce the ordinance.

The city passed its pedicab ordinance in June 2014. At the time, the city was the “Wild West” for pedicabs, said Bennett Lawson, chief of staff for Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, a supporter of the ordinance whose ward includes Wrigley Field.

“Now you have plates, better accountability and better behavior. It legitimized the industry too,” Lawson said.

Besides banning pedicabs from certain areas, the city required operators to obtain a $250 license, undergo background checks and have a chauffeur’s license. Operators who want to work in the Chicago Park District need a special permit.

In the first months after the ordinance passed, many pedicabs stopped operating. But then the numbers began to climb, and there are now 198 licenses, with a cap of 200, according to Isaac Reichman, spokesman for the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.

A big operator is Austin, Texas-based Easy Rider Pedicab, which expanded to Chicago three years ago and has 32 cabs here, said manager Steven Lucas.

Electric-assist pedicabs have increased in popularity all over the country in the last five years, not just in Chicago. “What happened is that the technology became affordable enough, and accessible enough,” Lucas said.

Driver Johnny Mei pedals Suysan Yu, 6, and Jimmy Chen, 9, along the 2300 block of Wentworth Avenue during a demonstration ahead of the July 2004 introduction of pedicabs in Chicago's Chinatown neighborhood.
Driver Johnny Mei pedals Suysan Yu, 6, and Jimmy Chen, 9, along the 2300 block of Wentworth Avenue during a demonstration ahead of the July 2004 introduction of pedicabs in Chicago's Chinatown neighborhood.(Charles Osgood / Chicago Tribune)
In small cities like Nashville or Austin, where pedicabs are popular, motors are nice, but in Chicago they seem necessary because operators cover longer distances, he said.

“It’s a matter of endurance, having longer days and multiple days in a row and being able to say ‘yes’ to rides,” Lucas said.

Lucas said electric-assist pedicabs makes for a smoother ride, and customers are happy to learn the operator is getting some help. “They’re so glad they don’t have to feel guilty,” he said.

Operators said they switched to electric-assist because they can go with the flow of traffic and make more money.

If a pedicab is solely human-powered, it is allowed in bike lanes, said Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman Michael Claffey. Under the city’s e-bike ordinance, electric-assist bikes that weigh up to 125 pounds are allowed in bike lanes, but electric-assist pedicabs are too heavy, Claffey said. That means most pedicabs have to be on the streets.

Farace said he got into pedicab work because it was a green industry and he loves bikes, but he got a simple motor last year after he turned 50. He cautioned that some operators have had trouble with older lithium-ion batteries catching on fire.

Bobby Lentell, owner of JBL Pedicab Management, said that bigger cabs have become popular for the same reason SUVs and big houses are popular — people want more room, whether they need it or not. “It’s a very American thing,” Lentell said.

A pedicab driver waits for customers after a United Center concert on Aug. 15, 2019. There are 198 licensed pedicabs in Chicago, just shy of the city's 200-license cap.
A pedicab driver waits for customers after a United Center concert on Aug. 15, 2019. There are 198 licensed pedicabs in Chicago, just shy of the city's 200-license cap.(Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)
Reichman said that the city conducts special enforcement missions targeting pedicabs and responds to specific complaints. The Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection has issued 158 citations to pedicabs since 2017 — 43 so far this year, Reichman said.

Lawson, Tunney’s chief of staff, said an operator has asked if the city can raise the cap on pedicabs to allow more licenses.

The prices for pedicab rides vary. Many charge $10 to $15 per person per mile. Some operators specialize in charter trips and special occasions and charge by the hour.

Despite occasional problems from other drivers, bad weather and Chicago Police giving conflicting instructions about where pedicabs can park, operators say they enjoy their work, because it involves being outside and talking with people who are having a good time.

“In the best of times, I drive a joy machine,” Riedel said. “That’s what I try to share with people. It can be pretty awesome.”

Transportation song quiz
The song for our last quiz may or may not refer to a rail pass to a seaside town. The song is “Ticket to Ride,” by the Beatles. Glen Lochmueller in Elburn was the first with the right answer.

This melancholy song, about vehicles that no longer work and were left to rust, was featured in a film about a Las Vegas love affair. September reminds July. What’s the song, and who’s the artist? The first person with the right answer gets a Tribune pen, and glory.

[email protected]

Comment:
Why do you have all of these "fake news" stories about how bad corporate regulation is for consumers?

Answer, your news comes from republican supported "corporations".

Pedicab is bigger than ever and thriving "with" regulation and now needs even more regulation as a good business model should always employ for long-term success....

Every point you make evades and ignores the real problem... "crooked Trump" and the republicans... Trump the menace...

How about you point your criticism there? Then you will see the real problem.

The democrat stimulus was definitely not necessary... if only we had a competent leader in the White House who could lead, avert disaster and protect our economy and people from these kinds of foreseeable problems. The stimulus would not have been necessary indeed. Just like the Bush stimulus was due to republican corruption that almost landed us in an economic depression.

And why are the republican corporate hand-outs stipulated in the stimulus package necessary when the corporations have bought back huge amounts of their own stock and have offshore bank accounts that total in the millions 0f billions?

Where is your criticism of that? Nope you only parrot your right-wing fake news about pedicabs as if it equals the corruption your party is perpetrating all in the name of self enrichment at the expense of REAL taxpayers.

Should the taxpayers not get a stimulus check out of their own tax money but the corporations who pay no taxes get one out of taxpayer money?

Get a brain...

"Bureaucratic" government jobs paid for by middle class taxpayers to protect public land from corporate exploitation, safeguard the health of the general public, protect the environment from dirty energy. Can't the people who actually pay taxes hire the most skilled people in the business at a good wage to protect their own interests? Is that really an unrealistic expectation?

Closing down the office to protect Indian religion... Which party is attacking religious freedom here?

Taxpayers (you know the people who actually pay them?) would rather their money go to protect the clean air they breath than go to bail out dirty energy and republican cash cow, money tree giveaways to filthy rich billionaires.

And why don't corporations pay taxes anyway?

Well they can pay the crooked republicans much less to stab American taxpayers in the heart instead with their rob the poor tax bill.

The republicans walk off with a bag of cash and once again the middle class foots the bill.

So deny the middle class person who pays more taxes than Trump a stimulus package from their own money why don you? (cynical)

You have got to be dumber than a board to pedal the crap you try and sell here.

Maybe if the Democrats had created a cash4ventilators program? Democrats already have a cash for ventilators program.. Do you think ventilators are free?

Once again you demonstrate a supreme level of ignorance.

Now the republican, cash for new golf carts program, that is one to really examine more closely...

Turn your focus on the real problem of republican corruption instead of demonizing the public for expecting their tax dollars to actually be spent on improving their standard of life. A standard of life that is continuously under attack by traitorous and criminal republicans using their public office to literally "make a killing"...

Trump announces defunding of World Health Organization after criticism of U.S. virus response
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/trump-announces-defunding-of-world-health-organization-after-criticism-of-u-s-virus-response-82044485783

Comment:
Why would the WHO need funding in a critical time like this? (cynical)

Defunding them would ultimately insure that even more Americans die who reach out to the agency for help...

The list of jail-able indictments against Trump is growing rapidly...

Now presumptive nominee, Biden backed by Graham challenger
https://apnews.com/d82f2e11bc2e2d041ee4f178b5e7d098