NY’s attorney general claims she can prove Trump fraud; Appeals court sides with Justice Dept on classified document case

"New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Wednesday that she is suing former president Donald Trump for fraud after her investigation found at least 200 instances when his company either inflated the value of his assets to secure better business loans and aid personal branding or lowered them to avoid taxes.

None of the civil allegations were related to Trump’s presidency, although James said in a news conference that it was unclear whether he personally signed off on fraudulent paperwork while president. On this matter, Trump reportedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 400 times when he was under oath this summer."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required) ->

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/09/21/nation/donald-trump-has-been-called-fraud-his-entire-life-nys-attorney-general-claims-she-can-prove-it/

"An appeals court sided with the Justice Department in a legal fight over classified documents seized in a court-authorized search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, ruling Wednesday that the FBI may use the documents in its ongoing criminal investigation.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the appeals court marks a victory, at least temporarily, for the Justice Department in its legal battle with Trump over access to the evidence in a high-stakes investigation to determine if the former president or his advisers mishandled national security secrets, or hid or destroyed government records.

It was the second legal setback of the day for Trump, who was sued Wednesday morning by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The lawsuit said Trump and his company flagrantly manipulated property and other asset valuations to deceive lenders, insurance brokers and tax authorities to get better rates and lower tax liability."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required) ->
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/21/mar-a-lago-appeal-court-ruling/

An image provided by the Department of Justice shows partially redacted documents with classified markings, including colored cover sheets indicating their status, that FBI agents reported finding at Trump's office in Mar-a-Lago. (Courtesy of Department of Justice)

On the Health front: life expectancy drops again; polio returns to the US

"Life expectancy in the United States fell in 2021 for the second year in a row, reflecting the merciless toll exacted by covid-19 on the nation’s health, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

This is the biggest continuous decline in life expectancy at birth since the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. Americans can now expect to live as long as they did in 1996, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, life expectancy dropped from 77 years in 2020 to 76.1 years in 2021."

Continue reading the Washington Post article online (subscription maybe required) 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08/31/life-expectancy-drops-again/

"Polio’s return to the US resulted from the confluence of a complicated set of scientific and societal factors that allowed a mutated version of the virus to start circulating in a susceptible community. This is the story of a life-saving vaccine with an unfortunate loophole that produced that version of the virus, and a calculated anti-vaccine campaign that created a vulnerable population."

Continue reading The Guardian article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/29/polio-us-vaccines-new-york-rockland-county

A decline in life expectancy during the coronavirus pandemic marked the biggest continuous decline since the 1920s. (Brandon Dill for The Washington Post)

If the latest COVID variant is evading defenses, what will schools look like in September?

"The pandemic is a relentless race against Mother Nature. Waves of infection took millions of lives, and only highly effective vaccines prevented even more deaths. Now, the coronavirus is speeding up once again, mutating, evading immunity and still on the march. The arrival of subvariant BA.5 should be a reminder that the finish line in this race is nowhere to be seen.

What’s BA.5? This is the latest subvariant of omicron, which stormed the planet late last year and caused a huge wave of infection. As of now, BA.5 and a closely related variant, BA.4, account for about 70 percent of all infections in the United States, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in part on modeling. These two newcomers are easing out an earlier variant, BA.2."

Continue reading the Washington Post article online (subscription maybe required) ->  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/07/worst-virus-variant-just-arrived-pandemic-is-not-over/

 

"In September 2020, I knew lots of kids who went back to school full-time. And others who didn’t return to a normal, in-person schedule until April 2021.

Some schools allowed parents to bring kids into classrooms. Others prohibited it. Weekly testing was required at some schools, but not all.

Which is pretty much how the pandemic has been for parents and kids: filled with uncertainty and unpredictability.

Even now, after two and a half years, rules around preschool and school feel like a random pastiche that varies wildly from town to town and school to school. Is quarantine required if you’re exposed to COVID? Do you need to test? Can extracurriculars proceed normally?"

Continue reading the Boston Globe article online (subscription maybe required) ->  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/11/business/covid-will-be-schools-this-fall-its-time-make-plans/

 

First-grade student Ashley Emmanuel, 6, does a spelling test behind a temporary privacy wall in Stacy Boyd's first grade classroom at the Parlin School in Everett.DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF

"Beware partisan ‘pink slime’ sites that pose as local news"

Jon Keller, writes at CBS Boston on June 1 about sites touting fake news.

"The headline was shocking - a public school in Illinois implementing race-based grading.

It went viral - fast. Perhaps you saw it being denounced on YouTube or read about it on popular right-wing websites like Red State, Breitbart or The National Review.

One problem: The story is a fake."

Continue reading online -> https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/keller-large-beware-of-pink-slime-masquerading-as-news/ 

Margaret Sullivan writes at the Washington Post on June 5

"It’s always tempting to share news that comes across our social media feeds when it not only seems outrageous but also confirms our biases, fears or suspicions. 

“See?!” we seem to say, as we retweet or post, this latest exciting development is just what we knew could happen all along! 

But there’s a question we need to ask these days before sharing one of these scintillating stories with friends and followers: Is it true? 

Increasingly, “articles” that look like news may be something entirely different — false or misleading information grounded not in evidence but in partisan politics, produced not by reporters for a local newspaper but by inexperienced writers who are paid, in essence, to spread propaganda."

Continue reading the Washington Post article online

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/05/pink-slime-west-cook-news-school-race-grading/

With stories, as with hot dogs, you may want to ask what’s inside and where it comes from. The beef product often criticized as “pink slime” as seen in a Nebraska factory in 2012. (Nati Harnik/AP)

1 million is a big number

The info graphic tells the story of the progression of COVID deaths as the pandemic started and proceeded along (thus far). 

One million is a big number. They attempt to put it in perspective to help us understand the impact.

Consider also that studies show a single death has an impact on an average of 9 other people; immediate family, etc. So the 1 million milestone is really an impact on 9 million.

And we are seeing the secondary effects of this with the great resignation, supply chain issues, etc.

Scroll to see the info graphic from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/how-many-people-died-covid-united-states-1-million-graphic/

1 million is a big number

Washington Post: "Five charts explaining why inflation is at a 40-year high"

"The bumpy economic recovery has had policymakers, economists and Americans households grappling with greater price hikes for groceries, cars, rent and other essentials.

The latest inflation data, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed that prices in March climbed 8.5 percent compared with the year before, the highest measure in over 40 years.

The Federal Reserve has launched a major series of interest rate increases to get inflation under control, penciling in seven hikes by the end of the year. But it’s unclear how quickly that action will be able to bring down the rising cost of living, or if the Fed will be spurred to even more aggressive action that risks thrusting the economy into a recession

Persistent supply chain backlogs and high consumer demand for goods have kept prices elevated. And more recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has strained global energy markets and triggered higher gasoline prices. There is no clear answer for when that will change, leaving Americans to feel the strain in their pocketbooks in the meantime. This is a breakdown of how we got here."

Continue reading the article (subscription may be required)   https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/inflation-charts/ 

"Five charts explaining why inflation is at a 40-year high"

"We are two months into the outbreak now, and the safety protocols haven’t worked"

"The price of eggs has soared in recent weeks in part because of a huge bird flu wave that has infected nearly 27 million chickens and turkeys in the United States, forcing many farmers to “depopulate” or destroy their animals to prevent a further spread.

The virus has impacted many different bird species, including penguins and bald eagles. But its spread among poultry has been tremendous, particularly among chickens raised for their eggs.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced yet another outbreak, this one in two flocks in Idaho, making that the 27th state in which the virus has been found since February. 

The illness affects commercial birds, hobbyists’ backyard chicken flocks and wild birds, and is spread via secretions and leads to paralysis, swelling and diminished egg production. There have been no human cases of these avian influenza viruses detected in the United States."

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/04/16/bird-flu-egg-prices/ 

Weekly average price for a dozen large eggs, Grade A

“In the year 2022, this doesn’t just seem crazy. It is crazy."

"Here, at last, is the real reason your tax return is delayed: It’s not the pandemic. It’s that the IRS handles too much paper and has failed to adopt scanning technology that could have significantly reduced the current backlog of returns.

The way the agency processes paper is “archaic” and was a problem that was fixable long before the coronavirus shut things down, National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins wrote in her latest blog about the 2022 tax season.

Last year, the IRS received nearly 17 million paper 1040 forms, more than 4 million individual amended returns and millions of paper business returns, according to Collins.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around it: Employees transcribe all of those millions of paper tax returns manually."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/04/01/irs-backlog-scanning-technology/ 

Please consider filing your taxes online, it will help get them processed quicker than if you print the forms and mail them in.

Erin M. Collins, the national taxpayer advocate, in 2020. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

"COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are highly effective in preventing the most severe forms of COVID-19"

"The coronavirus vaccines most widely used in the United States remained highly effective at preventing the worst outcomes from infections even in the face of the highly transmissible omicron variant in January, a report released Friday by federal disease trackers shows.

While protection against mild illness waned over time, the mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech provided a robust shield against death and needing mechanical ventilation, the study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

The study bolsters confidence in the vaccines to prevent the most serious outcomes for covid-19 patients, even after the omicron variant fueled an increase in cases, hospitalizations and deaths this winter, said William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who did not participate in the study."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/18/coronavirus-vaccine-worked-against-omicron/

Original study report -> https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7112e1.htm

"COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are highly effective in preventing the most severe forms of COVID-19"

Gee, masks really work. Good to know in advance of when the next wave comes!

"School districts that required masks this fall saw significantly fewer coronavirus cases than those where masks were optional, according to a large study of Arkansas schools by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC looked at 233 school districts and found those with mask requirements saw a 23 percent lower incidence of coronavirus cases. Rates in districts with partial requirements — for instance, places that required them in hallways but not classrooms — were in between.

“Masks remain an important part of a multicomponent approach to preventing Covid-19 in K-12 settings, especially in communities with high Covid-19 community levels,” concluded the study, which published Tuesday."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/08/school-mask-cdc-covid-transmission/

CDC study referenced -> https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7110e1.htm?s_cid=mm7110e1_w
 

Many school districts across the country are dropping mask requirements in classrooms. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)

"These roles will be critical in a time of recovery"

Brenda Cassellius, superintendent of Boston Public Schools writes:

"Last month, I returned to teaching in a classroom after two decades. As the superintendent of schools in Boston, I got a lot of media coverage for working as a fourth-grade substitute teacher at Nathan Hale Elementary School on a day when more than 1,000 Boston school employees called in sick. Yet I was just one of hundreds of district staffers who pitched in to help.

Like school districts and employers across industries, Boston Public Schools has faced intense staffing challenges for the better part of two years, challenges made worse by the pandemic.

Now, as we enter the pandemic’s third year, America’s public schools are at risk of defaulting on their moral obligation to millions of children. Teachers, aides, principals, bus drivers, school lunch workers, custodians and other school staff are leaving in droves or are out of service due to illness. A dearth of substitutes and backup workers means day-to-day decisions about whether a school can remain open are the norm."

Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/09/pandemic-teacher-burnout-hurts-kids/?s=03

National Guard Specialist Austin Alt fills in as a substitute teacher at Pojoaque Valley Middle School in Pojoaque, N.M., on Jan. 28. (Adria Malcolm/Reuters)

Washington Post: "Corporate America is coming around to remote work"

"Nearly two years after millions of Americans became abruptly acquainted with Zoom, questions about what the post-pandemic office will look like can be answered with a quick look around: It’s already here.

The case for the functionality of remote work has largely been settled: The wheels of productivity continued to hum on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley and other corporate strongholds even as their sprawling offices lay vacant. Employees stayed home and learned how to live at work. And throughout 2021, profits rolled in.

Corporate leaders attempting to coax employees back to the office have largely accepted the inevitability of the hybrid work model — a strategy buttressed by the reality of raging coronavirus rates, a tight labor market and the nation’s more than 10 million job openings. Now they are learning to leverage its benefits, according to Adam Galinsky, a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School in New York. That includes more flexibility and less time commuting for employees, and lower real estate and operating costs for companies."

Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/01/15/remote-work-omicron/

Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York on Jan. 4. Wall Street’s push to refill office towers across the country was recently derailed by the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus. (Amir Hamja/Bloomberg)

Add this to the worry list: IRS "warns of ‘enormous challenges’ this tax-filing season"

"Treasury Department officials on Monday said that the Internal Revenue Service will face “enormous challenges” during this year’s tax filing season, warning of delays to refunds and other taxpayer services.

In a phone call with reporters, Treasury officials predicted a “frustrating season” for taxpayers and tax preparers as a result of delays caused by the pandemic, years of budget cuts to the IRS and the federal stimulus measures that have added to the tax agency’s workload.

Typically, IRS officials enter filing season with an unaddressed backlog of roughly 1 million returns. This year, however, the IRS will enter the filing season facing “several times” that, Treasury officials said, although they declined to give a more precise estimate. The IRS website says that as of Dec. 23, 2021, it still had 6 million unprocessed individual returns, and as of the start of this month it still had more than 2 million unprocessed amended tax returns, a separate category."

Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/01/10/treasury-irs-filing-season/

FYI - For 2020, I filed in February and didn't get a return status until July.  I had a very minor miscalculation in my return that held it up.  Only thing to do is file early, and file accurately.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig appears before a House panel last year. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

Washington Post: Fact Checker - what we now know about Jan 6, 2021

Fact Checker | The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol: A guide to what we now know https://t.co/diNdP9aSym

Shared from Twitter: https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1479105586583138312

or directly to the Washington Post page (subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/06/january-6-attack-capitol-guide-what-we-now-know/

Washington Post: Fact Checker  - what we now know about Jan 6, 2021

In our triadic water world, which will we choose

"Every winter, de-icing salts — sodium chloride, calcium chloride and magnesium chloride — battle icy roads nationwide. The effort is epic in scope: Hundreds of millions of gallons of salty substances are sprayed on roads and billions of pounds of rock salt are spread on their surfaces each year. That may lead to safer roads, but it has a real effect on the planet. In a review in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, a group of environmental scientists looked at the hazards of salts that make driving safer.

De-icing salts end up in bodies of fresh water, contaminating lakes and streams and building up in wetlands. The Environmental Protection Agency’s thresholds are not high enough to protect life in freshwater, the scientists write, and “there is also an urgent need to understand how freshwater organisms respond to novel chemical cocktails generated from road salt salinization.”

Then there’s drinking water."

Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/road-salt-environment-lakes/2021/12/31/2c7a333a-6651-11ec-96f3-b8d3be309b6e_story.html

DPW Director Robert "Brutus" Cantoreggi has talked of the salt issue before. Drinking water is critical to Franklin as all our water supply comes from the aquifer in the ground, hence the 'triadic' approach Director Cantoreggi frequently talks of.

You can find the details in the water works overview for 2017

https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/uploads/council_water_presentation_feb_15_update.pdf

Or in the storm water utility presentation from 2019

https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/uploads/stormwater_town_council_presentation_spring_2019.pdf

triadic approach to water

Washington Post: "Five charts explaining why inflation is at a near 40-year high" (3 min video)

"The bumpy economic recovery has had policymakers, economists and American households grappling with greater price hikes for groceries, gas, cars, rent and just about everything else we need.

The latest inflation data, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed prices in November rose to a nearly 40-year high, climbing 6.8 percent compared with the year before.

For months, officials at the Federal Reserve and White House argued that pandemic-era inflation will be temporary. But they’ve had to back away from that message, which was increasingly hard to square with what was happening in the economy — and the way Americans experience it.

Persistent supply chain backlogs and high consumer demand for goods have kept prices elevated. There is no clear answer for when that will change, leaving Americans to feel the strain in their pocketbooks in the meantime. This is a breakdown of how we got here."

Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/14/inflation-prices-supply-chain/

Year-over-year changes in overall consumer price index, seasonally adjusted

"Vaccines have already shown to be tremendously effective"

"The new coronavirus variant is a genuine cause for unease. Omicron appears to be highly transmissible, and it will most likely swamp the world in the months ahead. It is too early to know whether it will be more virulent than the delta variant or more evasive of vaccine immunity. But it is not too early to decide what to do about it. The tools to respond exist, if we will only be serious about wearing masks and getting vaccinated.

Even with the unknowns, vaccines work. They can protect against the delta variant raging everywhere. Boosters create a high level of immunity against delta and may help fend off omicron, too. The vaccines are a lifesaver to people who might otherwise die. Why hesitate to get vaccinated, refuse to wear a mask or deride mandates for both at this stage of the pandemic? Why is a quarter of the U.S. population without at least one vaccine dose — essentially driving at high speed without a seat belt? How many more of the unvaccinated will be hospitalized, intubated and die? Anyone in the United States who can easily get a free vaccine and refuses to do so is leaving themselves vulnerable to a killer disease that has already taken more lives than were lost in the line of duty during the Civil War. "

Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/04/covid-19-life-threatening-vaccines-tests-masks-work/

A covid-19 testing site is seen in Times Square in New York on Dec. 3. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

Washington Post: "Be on guard for free-shipping deals that could end up being fake"

"It wasn’t just the pandemic that pushed more people online. Long before COVID, more shoppers decided to skip the crowds and simply click for their holiday gifts.

And I get it. I hate shopping — especially during the holidays. There’s the hunt for a parking space, the throngs of customers, the long checkout line at stores with 10 lanes but only three cashiers working the registers.

The old phrase “Shop till you drop” has become more like “Shop till you want to scream.”

So it makes sense that for the first time in Gallup’s look at holiday spending trends, a majority of Americans — 56 percent — say they are very likely to do their Christmas shopping online. That’s up eight percentage points from 2017."

Continue reading the article online. (Subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/11/24/safe-online-holiday-shopping-tips/

(Wilfredo Lee/AP)

"You Are the Object of a Secret Extraction Operation"

As part of the run up to Nov 30, there'll be a series of articles on Facebook and its technology. I have made my decision. Maybe the information will help inform you.

"You Are the Object of a Secret Extraction Operation" 

- By Shoshana Zuboff 

Dr. Zuboff is a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School and the author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.”

"Facebook is not just any corporation. It reached trillion-dollar status in a single decade by applying the logic of what I call surveillance capitalism — an economic system built on the secret extraction and manipulation of human data — to its vision of connecting the entire world. Facebook and other leading surveillance capitalist corporations now control information flows and communication infrastructures across the world.

These infrastructures are critical to the possibility of a democratic society, yet our democracies have allowed these companies to own, operate and mediate our information spaces unconstrained by public law. The result has been a hidden revolution in how information is produced, circulated and acted upon. A parade of revelations since 2016, amplified by the whistle-blower Frances Haugen’s documentation and personal testimony, bears witness to the consequences of this revolution."

Continue reading the article online. (Subscription maybe required)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/opinion/facebook-privacy.html

"Why Facebook won’t let you control your own news feed"

"In at least two experiments over the years, Facebook has explored what happens when it turns off its controversial news feed ranking system — the software that decides for each user which posts they’ll see and in what order, internal documents show. That leaves users to see all the posts from all of their friends in simple, chronological order.

Both tests appear to have taught Facebook’s researchers the same lesson: Users are better off with Facebook’s software calling the shots.

The internal research documents, some previously unreported, help to explain why Facebook seems so wedded to its automated ranking system, known as the news feed algorithm. That system is under intense public scrutiny."

Continue reading the article online. (Subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/11/13/facebook-news-feed-algorithm-how-to-turn-it-off/

https://www.franklinmatters.org/2021/11/happy-anniversary-franklin-matters.html

"Could long COVID unlock clues to chronic fatigue and other poorly understood conditions?"

Via The Washington Post: 

"In early 2020, Alison Sbrana watched the coronavirus skip from China across continents with a sense of impending doom. Sbrana, plagued by fatigue and brain fog since being diagnosed with mononucleosis six years earlier, was convinced that the pernicious new virus would wreak similar havoc in some of those who contracted it.

Her intuition proved prescient. Some people who had suffered even mild cases of covid-19 began complaining of problems that Sbrana knew too well, including muscle pain and drop-dead exhaustion. Now, as millions of people nationwide are suffering from long-haul COVID, Sbrana and an army of patient advocates are cautiously hopeful that new research may unlock clues to other conditions that appear to crop up after infections, including myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, known as ME/CFS.

“I think there is potential,” said Sbrana, who suffers from ME/CFS.

COVID long-haulers inherited many of the challenges that have faced people like Sbrana for years, including a lack of understanding of the mechanisms that triggered their disabilities — leaving some doctors to view their symptoms as largely psychosomatic."

Continue reading the article online. (Subscription maybe required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/07/long-covid-fatigue-research/

Alison Sbrana, who struggles with fatigue and brain fog after having mono several years ago, sits on a screened-in patio at her home in Fort Collins, Colo., on Nov. 3. (Stephen Speranza/for The Washington Post)