Slumlord Kushner’s companies get reprimanded by judge

ProPublica’s investigative reporter Alec McGillis has been following the predatory practices of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner that have earned him the label of being a slumlord. Kushner’s real-estate company would engage in deceptive practices, provide shoddy apartments, fail to make urgent repairs, and harass tenants with debt collection and eviction lawsuits even during the pandemic. ( I wrote about this last year. )

McGillis has a new report out that a judge has ruled that the Kushner companies violated multiple laws with their practices. The Maryland attorney general brought the lawsuit as a result of increased awareness created by ProPublica’s reporting.
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Avoiding confronting capitalism’s predatory nature

When a social affliction affects only the poor or people of color, it tends to be either ignored or treated cursorily. But as soon as the same affliction hits white people, it suddenly becomes worthy of study by social scientists and lead to calls for finding solutions. We saw this with the drug epidemic. As long as the problem of drug abuse was seen as mainly in the black community in the form of marijuana or crack cocaine, the reaction was harsh policing and punitive jail sentences, leading to the massive overcrowding of prisons and the ruination of lives and families, not to mention the numerous killings of black men by police where the initial interaction was caused by the police stopping and searching them for drugs. But when the opioid epidemic hit that largely affected white people, we have seen more humane approaches being taken, with an understanding that drug use is more a health problem than a criminal problem.
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A side effect of color-blind casting

I have discussed before the increased trend towards color-blind casting of films and TV shows, which I see more in British productions than in American ones, along with the related issue of cultural appropriation.

In general, I favor color-blind casting and have got used to it. To see people of color playing roles where they would not normally be seen in such positions, such as the aristocracy in costume dramas of a bygone period, seems increasingly unexceptional to me.

But I started to wonder if by having such portrayals, we might be inadvertently downplaying the racist repression that existed in those times. For example, in the TV series Bridgerton, people of color play lords and ladies in England a couple of centuries ago which is not even remotely close to reality. Would some viewers leave with the impression that this was the reality of those days?

It would seem that one would have to be massively ignorant of history to fall into such a way of thinking but given that there are reportedly people who think that humans lived alongside dinosaurs because they are portrayed that way in the cartoon show The Flintstones, one cannot totally discount the possibility.

Never believe the initial police reports of shootings

Take a moment to read this initial police report filed immediately after an incident.

On Monday evening, shortly after 8:00 pm, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department responded to the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South on a report of a forgery in progress. Officers were advised that the suspect was sitting on top of a blue car and appeared to be under the influence.

Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.

At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been called in to investigate this incident at the request of the Minneapolis Police Department.

No officers were injured in the incident.

Body worn cameras were on and activated during this incident.

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Newsmax apologizes for election fraud allegations

The right-wing media organization that is owned and run Christopher Ruddy, a close friend of Trump, has withdrawn its claim that Dominion Voting System’s head of product strategy and security Eric Coomer colluded with Antifa to rig the elections results so that Trump would lose. Coomer has been subjected to death threats as a result and had for a while gone into hiding. He had sued Newsmax for defamation.

Coomer sued Newsmax in December in state court in Colorado over false claims that he took part in an “Antifa conference call” to rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. He revised his lawsuit in February to bolster his claims against Newsmax, as Insider previously reported.
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Coomer first became the subject of conspiracy theories after Joe Oltmann, a right-wing political operative, claimed without evidence that he was a member of “Antifa” — a loosely linked group of left-wing activists who oppose fascist movements — and worked to rig the 2020 election.

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Trump’s predictions were all wrong

In Trump’s final days in office, he seemed to relish the idea that things would fall apart in the US after he was out of office. He must be seething that none of his dire warnings have come true.

In October 2020, he had warned that the stock market, the only economic indicator that he cares about, would crash if Biden were elected, wiping out people’s wealth. But that has not happened. The stock market keeps rising to record levels. This does not mean that most people are doing well, but just that the investor class and the very wealthy are doing just fine.
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Boris Johnson’s sleaze catches up with him

It never ceases to amaze me when politicians who are by no means poor, get caught doing sleazy things in order to get luxuries that, in the grand scheme of things, seem quite petty. As someone once wisely said, what is astonishing is not that politicians can be bought, it is that they can be bought so cheaply.

In the UK, prime minister Boris Johnson seems to have got caught getting people to give him money to redecorate the apartment that he lives in in Downing Street, an episode now referred to as ‘Cash for Curtains’. (In the US, this would have been given the label ‘Curtaingate’, a tiresome practice that really should be retired.)
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Samantha Bee blasts Biden’s handling of refugees at the border

While Biden’s policies at the border are not as bad as Trump’s, that is an appallingly low bar and cannot by any means be trotted out as an excuse for the conditions that continue to exist at the southern border. Bee is to be commended for calling out the administration for its lack of swift action to correct the conditions under which children are still being held.

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Racist, and proud of it

Kiauna Larkins was delivering food in Akron, OH as part of her job with DoorDash. She was with her two-year old son in the car when she encountered James Rhodes who apparently did not like the presence of a black woman near his apartment building and let loose a threatening, racist, and profanity-laced tirade in the presence of the child.

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