Claims And Issues

MANNY DIAZ, IT'S NOT ABOUT THEIR CHOICE.

IT'S ABOUT MAKING ME PAY FOR IT.

Manny Diaz, the Chair of the Florida Senate Education Committee, reportedly says he does not want to change the system. Schools discriminate in Florida with taxpayer money, but Senator Diaz defends their choice. See Gray Rohrer and Skyler Swisher, Diaz: No Voucher Program Changes, ORLANDO SENTINEL, Friday, Jan. 31, 2020 (online access behind a paywall).

My choice would be not to pay for discrimination. What about my choice? Florida's choice? America's choice?

 

No, Manny Diaz, it's not about their choice. It's about making me pay for it.

 

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"JUSTICE WITHOUT MERCY IS REVENGE."

Elie Wiesel, in a speech to the American Bar Association in Orlando, Florida.

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NOTRE DAME, MOM WANTS TO KNOW: WHO MADE THE UNDERWEAR DEAL?

Who made the deal to put Under Armour logos on Fightin' Irish football jerseys?  See Julie Creswell and Kevin Draper, How Under Armour Lost Its Way / Once Heralded as the Next Nike, the Company Has Been Hurt by Dropping Sales and Unflattering Revelations About Its Corporate Culture, NEW YORK TIMES, Wed., Jan. 29, 2020, at B1 (the New York Times may charge for online access).

Image via Fighting Irish Wire.

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THEY WANT YOUR MONEY FOR THEIR PERSONAL AGENDA.

Don't try to conform our programs into something they're not established to provide.

Executive Director Howard Burke, Florida Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, quoted by Leslie Postal and Annie Martin, Anti-LGBTQ Schools Receive State Vouchers / More Than $129M in Florida Scholarships Went to Students Who Attended Private Schools Where Gays Are Condemned or Unwelcome, ORLANDO SENTINEL, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020, p. A1 (online behind a paywall).

(Gridview_imagefull / Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services)

In what looks like nothing less than an outbreak of public funding for private purposes, reportedly $129 Million of Florida taxpayer money was sent in 2019 to religious institutions that discriminate. The institutions say that God commanded them to discriminate the way they do.

    In the past these arguments were reserved for discrimination against Black people, Jewish people, and Catholics. Now they are being used against gay and lesbian children and, in many cases, their families. See Leslie Postal and Annie Martin, Anti-LGBTQ Schools Receive State Vouchers / More Than $129M in Florida Scholarships Went to Students Who Attended Private Schools Where Gays Are Condemned or Unwelcome, ORLANDO SENTINEL, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020, p. A1 (online behind a paywall).

    Think that these private claims glomming onto public money are unique to Florida? If only. Think again. See also Annie Martin and Leslie Postal, Gay-Friendly Companies Support Anti-LGBTQ Private Schools, ORLANDO SENTINEL, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020, p. A1 (also online behind a paywall).

  It's 2020. Do you know where your taxes go?

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FINALLY FOUND THE VIDEO. HERE IT IS.

I searched a long time for the video released by Lev Parnas's attorney. It was first reported by ABC News, apparently. That TV news organization reported it in print. They are a visual news organization, not a print news organization. ABC News did not link to the visual news. They did not link to the video.

I also searched print news organizations including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press websites. I did not find a link to the video on any of them.

I remember that a video surfaced during Mitt Romney's campaign for President of the United States not that long ago. It seems now to me that the Romney video was everywhere. What a contrast to 2020.

Continuing with the recap of my searches, I found snippets of the video on CNN's website and on The Guardian newspaper online. Snippets. Meaning just a few seconds or minutes of what they wanted me to hear and see.

At the end of a long search, I found a link to the complete unedited video, here at the website of United Press International (UPI). I knew that UPI is a fierce competitor of Associated Press (AP), which you will recall was one of the original reporters, in print only so far, that the video existed. Here is the UPI site for the complete unedited video: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/01/25/Video-Take-her-out-Trump-appears-to-say-about-Ukraine-ambassadors-removal/8161579993544/.

It is not Hollywood issue, so to speak. It was taken on a cellphone by a person, like most of us, whose talents clearly do not include filming videos. But it is jaw-dropping nonetheless. Substance over form. Not very 2020 I guess.

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FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, "CALL THEM BY THEIR TRUE NAMES" ALREADY.

Newspaper reporters and editors practice prejudice when it's quicker than reporting the truth.  Not all of them. But specifically, the ones who call people "devout Catholics" that you would not want to tell your mother about.  Using shorthand without reporting, these newspapers call them "devout Catholics."  See, e.g., "'CALL THEM BY THEIR TRUE NAMES.'  Rebecca Solnit," an article blogged here on September 8, 2019; "NYT, AGAIN:  'CALL THEM BY THEIR TRUE NAMES.'  Rebecca Solnit," December 11, 2019.

This past week the Orlando Sentinel did it again, using the "devout Catholic" shorthand to describe a person who behaved badly.  I would link to their article here too, but the Orlando Sentinel is behind a paywall and they may charge you for that 'privilege.'

To these newspapers I say:  Knock it off.  The truth is that "devout Catholics" get that label just because they give more money to the Church than other people do.  They are louder about it too.

It is in no way the behavior of any "devout Catholic" to separate children from their parents, to inflict cruelty because you can, or to say rotten things about people because you can get away with it.  These behaviors may be "devout" all right, but these behaviors are in so way Catholic and they  are not the results of good will, period.  Instead, you will find devout people helping out in places like this food pantry:

               (Desiree Rios / New York Times)

In the words of Rebecca Solnit, "Call them by their true names."

 

TODAY IS THE OBSERVANCE OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.'S BIRTHDAY.   HOPE.  BELIEVE.  PRACTICE FREEDOM FROM FEAR TODAY AND EVERY DAY!

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WOMEN'S MARCH 2020 ORLANDO.

This sign from today's Women's March in Orlando speaks for truth:

Copyright 2020 Dennis J. Wall.
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NO, actually, THEY are TAKING YOUR HEALTHCARE COVERAGE AWAY.

Before the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, this country and the availability of healthcare in it looked very different from the way it looks now.  Then, health insurance coverage was almost totally unavailable without excluding pre-existing conditions, placing limits on benefits every year and over a lifetime, and setting premiums so high that most people simply could not afford to pay them and so they famously visited hospital emergency rooms instead.

    The Affordable Care Act expanded access to health insurance in a number of important ways, including:
• Inventing and shaping marketplaces for private health insurance ;
• Stretching both the extent and the financial accessibility of health insurance coverage with a new requirement that health insurance plans offered to individuals and small groups include a minimum level of “essential health benefits” including emergency care, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, outpatient services, mental health treatment, rehabilitative services and devices, prescription drugs, preventive services, and pediatric care, and
• Barring discrimination against individuals based on their health status, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions, and mandating through a "guaranteed-issue provision" that health-insurance providers "must accept every employer and individual in the State that applies for such coverage."

    Congress has considered many bills since 2010 when the ACA was first enacted, which would "repeal, defund, delay, or otherwise amend the ACA—including legislation that would have repealed the entire Act." Although many bills were introduced during that time to repeal the individual mandate and even to repeal the entire ACA, they never had the votes. The substance remains unchanged through the time of this writing in 2020.

    And now it's on to the U.S. Supreme Court once again, and let's see if they have the votes there to "repeal, defund, delay, or otherwise amend the ACA."

To be continued tomorrow on Claims and Bad Faith Law Blog.  Adapted by the author from his new Chapter 18E forthcoming in the Spring of 2020 in the book, CATASTROPHE CLAIMS:  INSURANCE COVERAGE FOR NATURAL AND MAN-MADE DISASTERS (Thomson Reuters).  Please Read The Disclaimer. ©2020 Dennis J. Wall.  All Rights Reserved.

FOR SHAME, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION. STAND PROUD, TEACHERS.

There is a rally for Florida schools in Tallahassee today, Monday.

                   Notebook Workplace Desk Courtesy of FreePhotos

The name of the rally is "Take On Tallahassee."  The goal is to march for education funding, for better pay for teachers in a State that barely gets by on the bottom rungs, and for the end of Tallahassee controls over local School Districts.

Frightened that many teachers in Polk County (think Lakeland) Florida might take their own Personal Time to march, the Superintendent of the Polk School District asked a lawyer to weigh in.  The General Counsel of the Florida Department of Education did indeed weigh in, in an Email he sent to the Superintendent on Friday night.

He said that if teachers got together to go to march in Tallahassee for money for students and books and classrooms, let alone for better pay for teachers, "children suffer as learning slows or even stops altogether."  Quoted by Leslie Postal, Lawyer:  Polk Teachers at Rally Could be Fired, ORLANDO SENTINEL, p. B1, Monday, January 13, 2020 (paywall for online access).

That was before he wrote that teachers could be fired for this.  The Polk Superintendent took the lawyer's Email and apparently posted it on her Facebook account later Friday night.  She says that she did not intend to threaten any employees, just to let them know that she could fire them if she wanted.  She makes it seem like kind of a public service, what she did.  Then she stepped back.

Mr. Lawyer, children are already suffering in Florida schools.  Your Education Department is satisfied with your salary, true, but it is also satisfied with what amount to starvation budgets for the minds of children in school.  Teachers and students cannot work with the proper equipment or enough of it when they do get it.  School buildings are unfit for education in many places in Florida.  Those are the things that make children suffer in Florida schools.

Rallying on your own Personal Time to march in Tallahassee to correct these wrongs is not among the things that make children suffer in Florida schools.

You should be ashamed of what you are doing and proud of what the teachers are doing.

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'MR. SCHIFF, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!'

It seems clear as of this writing that the U.S. Senate will not subpoena John Bolton to testify in an Impeachment Trial.

It is already clear that Mr. Bolton will not testify voluntarily.  For whatever reason (some suggest that the reason lies in hyping sales once his book is finished), Mr. Bolton will not testify  under oath without a subpoena.

  (White House Photographic Office - Ronald Reagan

Presidential Library, ID C12449)

Cut through it.  Adam Schiff, subpoena him.  He needs to testify under oath and in  his own words. Adam Schiff, stop the posturing and get to it.  At least take his deposition in closed session away from any opportunity for a TV performance.

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KNOWN SUICIDE RISK LEFT ALONE UNCHECKED, NOW NO VIDEO EITHER.

Oh, please.  We're supposed to believe this? Reis Thebault, Video From Epstein’s First Apparent Suicide Attempt Lost Due to ‘Technical Errors,’ Prosecutors Say, WASHINGTON POST ONLINE (posted January 9, 2020).

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THE CENSUS, THE STATES, AND THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.

The constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is on appeal.  Again.

Twenty States are suing to declare all of the ACA unconstitutional because Congress in 2017 reduced a tax to zero dollars.  (Seriously.)  The 20 States contain a collective population of 135,928,851 according to U.S. Census 2019 Population Estimates.

Twenty States plus the District of Columbia are on the other side defending the ACA.  They have a collective population of 158,550,088.

To put the difference in perspective, it is greater than the population of the entire State of Florida.  So even if everyone in Florida was accounted for, and even if all the people in all the States were all for or all against the ACA depending on whether their own States were suing or defending the ACA's constitutionality, there would still be 2 Million more people left over who want the Affordable Care Act's provisions to continue.

And that's the way it is.

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SO WHAT WERE WE TALKING ABOUT? THE UNREDACTED EMAILS?

So what were we talking about before the drone exploded?

It is hard to recall, which is a measure of distraction in itself.

As best I recall, we were talking about the unredacted emails. An online blog or zine or whatever called Just Security published some totally redacted emails which the current regime had filed in a court file in response to a court order to release those emails. Just Security says that it "viewed" many of those emails, unredacted, and it published them along with the redacted version.

The emails evidenced communications between political appointees in the current regime, and officers in the Department of Defense and in the Department of State, over the illegality of impounding funds which Congress had already appropriated and ordered spent, and over who ordered this action.

One of the more significant emails, which the regime had blacked out, revealed that the head of our government directed it.

That is what we were talking about before the drone exploded.

Since the drone exploded, it is hard to find any reporting in any medium anywhere about the message in the unredacted emails. Keep your eyes on the ball, media. Keep your focus, publishers and editors and reporters. The people could use your help and we are not getting it.

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"WAG THE DOG" MAY BE MUCH CLOSER THAN WE THOUGHT.

"In May, the United States weighed plans for a force of as many as 120,000 soldiers in bases around the Middle East.  That's approaching the number of soldiers who participated in the invasion of Iraq in 2003."  Editorial, 'The Game Has Changed,' NEW YORK TIMES, Saturday, January 4, 2020, p. A22 (online on January 3, 2020; the New York Times may charge for online access).

If this was reported at the time, I missed it.  For those who do not know, "Wag the Dog" refers to a movie about an enormously disliked leader who pretends to start and win a war that existed entirely on videos in order to distract attention away from his poor standing in the polls.

Since January 2017, the number of American military personnel in the Middle East has already increased by 15,000 to 20,000, depending on whose estimates you are looking at. 

(Chris Seward / Associated Press)

"Wag the Dog" may be much closer than anyone thought.  Except that this time it's closer to existing entirely in reality, with real loss of life and limb.

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