Trump announced that from now on the NFL will be known as the NTL: The National Trump League. The Super Bowl will be renamed the Trump Bowl, and professional players must be called Trumpball Players. Anyone, on any level, who refuses to comply with Trump’s orders will be arrested and charged with being a threat to national security.   read more

Navi Pillay, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, singled out the ongoing detentions of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, as well as international kidnappings (aka renditions) and the use of drones, as troubling threats to laws and principles intended to protect individuals from abuse.   read more

Of the 54% who responded to a CNN/ORC International poll (pdf) saying they oppose the Affordable Care Act (pdf), 16% explained that their beef stems from the law not going far enough, the highest percentage since polling began. Another 35% of critics feel the law is too liberal. Other polls have shown widespread confusion about what the law actually includes, even among those who would benefit from it.   read more

Kiger used data obtained from IRS programs that allow previous U.S. tax evaders to voluntarily disclose details of their crime in exchange for receiving reduced penalties and no jail time. To date, more than 39,000 tax evaders have fessed up through those programs, resulting in a recoupment of $5.5 billion by the IRS. Of those cases, there are at least 129 that involved FCIB and its Caribbean predecessors.   read more

Citigroup (2012 revenues: $70.17 billion), for example, got one of its favorite bills to exempt many trades from new regulation through the House Financial Services Committee this month over Treasury Department objections, with 71 of the 80 lines in the bill written by lobbyists for major banks. Two critical paragraphs written by Citigroup were copied word for word, with the sole exception of two words that Congress changed from singular to plural.   read more

The per capita national debt rose by 75.2% during Bush’s presidency, a rate surpassed only by the presidency of Ronald Reagan, when the per capita debt skyrocketed by 168.2%. By comparison, the per capita debt grew by only 22.5% during Bill Clinton’s presidency and by 48.4% during Barack Obama’s first term.   read more

Rawls writes that “charter schools may be discriminating,” citing a 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office that found charter schools enrolled fewer students with disabilities, compared to those at public schools. There is also evidence that charter schools may not be achieving racial equality or helping low-income students.   read more

Duc Tan, a refugee and school teacher, was labeled a communist and an undercover Viet Cong agent by five Vietnamese-Americans in an August 7, 2003, public notice and local community news stories because they said that a Santa Claus apron found near a booth run by Tan’s organization at a community fair included gold stars resembling those used on the Vietnamese communist flag.   read more

The Association of German Breweries says fracking’s potential impact on groundwater supplies could jeopardize the country’s 497-year-old legal tradition of producing pure beer. German beer is allowed to be made only from malt, hops, yeast and water. Chancellor Angela Merkel is backing legislation in her coalition that would outlaw fracking in some areas of the country.   read more

Actually, the decision is easy to explain…from a political point of view. Republican Party leaders have taken the position that if any good comes out of Obamacare, the Democrats will get the credit, so it is better to sabotage it whenever possible. In addition, poor people rarely vote for Republicans anyway, so helping them is not an electoral priority.   read more

Treasury's projections for the second half of FY 2013 show additional receipts of $1.108 trillion vs. additional spending of $1.594 trillion, for total FY revenues of $2.712 trillion, total spending of $3.684 trillion, and a total deficit of $972.9 billion. Although Denninger does the math differently to come up with a deficit of $1.069 trillion, neither number demonstrates a substantial drop from the 2012 deficit of $1.089 trillion.   read more

federal energy statistics show Alabamans and Tennesseans pay considerably less for power than the national average—earning TVA “the ‘mother love’ of a politically conservative region,” according to former TVA Chairman S. David Freeman. That would explain why free-marketers like Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) called Obama’s proposal “one more bad idea in a budget full of bad ideas,” saying privatization could lead to higher energy costs for his constituents.   read more

On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced for the first time that it wouldn’t prosecute a wind farm developer if a condor dies in the blades of one its turbines. But it only gets to kill one condor over the project’s expected 30-year life. In giving one free pass to Alta Windpower Development, a subsidiary of Terra-Gen Power, it set a standard for what constitutes reasonable measures to protect the birds that has alarmed their protectors.   read more

Dissatisfied with litigation work, Werfel returned to OMB in April 2002 to work as a budget examiner in the Education Branch until late 2003, as chief of the Financial Integrity and Analysis Branch from late 2003 to 2006, and as deputy controller from 2006 to July 2009. As controller of OMB, Werfel was largely responsible for establishing Recovery.gov, a federal Web site that tracked how the 2009 economic stimulus program was distributing billions of dollars to jump-start the economy.   read more

The ambitious and costly program, dubbed “Star Wars,” is now in its fourth decade, having consumed $209 billion while never being tested, even on a limited scale, in the heat of battle. Lewis and Postol expressed concerns because in each U.S. test, the trajectory, timing of the launch and the type of missile being fired were all known in advance.   read more

The benefits of decriminalization or legalization would be greater than their costs, pointing out that the “available evidence suggests that reducing penalties for possession of small quantities has little effect on the number of users but retains the benefit of reducing judicial case loads and incarceration rates.” Legalization would save money on enforcement costs, reducing rates of disease, death associated with drug use and violent crime..   read more

At the Contra Costa West County Detention Facility (WCDF) in Richmond, California, a call costs $3.25 for the initial connection, with charges up to 25 cents a minute for in-state calls and 30 cents a minute for out-of-state. Calls are often dropped, requiring a reconnection charge.   read more