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Friday, September 20, 2024
Georgia poll workers must hand count ballots
Five Questions with Elections Expert Ari Berman
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Ari Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center. He’s the author of the new book “Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It” and two earlier books:
“Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America”
“Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics”
Ari has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic, and is a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR. All that to say, he’s an expert on election subversion, and more importantly, what can be done about it. You can learn more about Ari’s work on his website.
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We know that there is a new face to voter suppression and election interference in 2024. Republicans are making it harder for people who they think will vote for the Democrats to vote. What does that look like, and what can we do about it? That’s the topic that is up for discussion tonight.
The election is getting close. Some of the first ballots will go out this Saturday to members of the military and Americans abroad. It’s time to arm ourselves with the best information, and Ari is one of the essential people for us to have that conversation with.
“Five Questions” is a feature for paid subscribers, my way of thanking people who are able to support this work so that I can devote the necessary time and resources to it. I appreciate having all of you here. Free subscriptions, with access to my other posts, will always be available. Thank you for reading the newsletter and engaging in the hard but essential work of civil discourse.
REPUBLICAN MATTHEW MURATORE RUNNING FOR STATE SENATE
THERE'S A SECTION OF BROOKLINE WE PERIODICALLY DRIVE THROUGH IN
WHICH MCMANSIONS ARE CRAMMED INTO ESTATES OF OLDER HOMES....
NEVER AFFORDABLE...
REPUBLICAN MATTHEW MURATORE, JUST ANOTHER REPUBLICAN WHINER
OFFERING NO SOLUTIONS & IGNORING THE CAUSES....
REPUBLICANS NEVER OFFER SOLUTIONS!
‘That’s a house someone was living in’: Mass. tries to rein in teardowns of smaller, older homes
NEWTON, Mass. — It’s becoming an increasingly common sight in many neighborhoods: a so-called McMansion crammed onto a small lot and surrounded by smaller homes.
Now there is a growing backlash against the trend of tearing down a small ranch or Cape and replacing it with a structure that has two to three times the square footage.
“Around 8,000-9,000 of the lots which should have smaller homes, probably 1,000 have been converted to much larger houses via this teardown phenomenon,” said Joe Matthews, a Needham town meeting member.
“That’s continuing at a rate of 70 to 100 houses per year.”
Matthews doesn’t like the impact this is trend is having on his hometown. “I think really what you’ve seen with these teardowns is an explosion of property values. That’s really shifted Needham decidedly out of having any middle-class presence.”
Needham isn’t the only community where developers think bigger is better.
Boston 25 News found a lot in West Roxbury where a small ranch has been replaced with a huge modern house.
In Brookline, a Cape was torn down and a much larger house is now under construction.
Mike Chavez, an architect with Social Impact Collective in Dorchester, said the trend for bigger homes has been happening over the last several decades.
“In the 1960s, the average home size was about 1,500 sq ft. Now it’s about 2,500 sq ft. The interesting thing is that household size is actually getting smaller.”
Newton City Councilor David Micley wants his city “to be a place where people of diverse incomes and diverse occupations can afford to live.”
He says Newton recently adopted measures to tap the brakes on teardowns.
“The key tool that the council has is about what we allow to be built by right and what is built by special permit.”
Those special permits are now required for structures that would exceed 2 ½ stories and retaining walls over 4 feet.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a number of big homes go up with really big retaining walls that allow them to build even bigger,” Micley explained.
In 2017, Needham put policies in place to limit the size of a home after a teardown.
Matthews is pushing to toughen them up.
“What is happening? That’s a split house that someone was living in a month ago and now you’re destroying it just to make money when the state is suffering because of a lack of affordable housing. We’re losing people to North Carolina, Virginia, Florida.”
He adds that many of his friends are getting married and looking to buy homes. “No one is looking in Needham.”
Chavez believes it’s important to have a healthy mix of housing in a community.
Still, he says sometimes replacement ends up making sense.
“From a teardown perspective, there’s a lot of homes that were built very poorly a long time ago. So, there’s this balance of trying to find out what to do.”
He says that often leads to the conclusion that a house can’t be reused and needs to be knocked down.
“A lot of communities are trying to find the balance.”
Affordable housing advocates aren’t just concerned about inflating prices will these bigger homes.
They also say all the labor and materials that are put towards building big houses means fewer resources are spent creating more modestly priced homes.
It’s time to build homes designed for people, not profit.
RECENTLY, STATE REP. MATTHEW MURATORE RUNNING FOR STATE SENATE
WAS ASKED HIS 3 PRIORITIES AND BABBLED UNINFORMED COMMENTS
AMONG THEM HOUSING, BLAMING ASYLUM SEEKERS EVEN THOUGH THE
HOUSING SHORTAGE PRE-DATES THAT ISSUE. THERE'S A GREAT DEAL OF
INFORMATION AVAILABLE THAT MATTHEW MURATORE IGNORED.
THE SUPREME COURT CRIMINALIZED HOMLESSNESS - THE MAGA DIM WITS
WANT TO AMEND THE 'RIGHT TO SHELTER' ?
MASSACHUSETTS: ELECT PEOPLE WHO ARE INFORMED & WILL WORK FOR
SOLUTIONS, NOT WHINERS WHO DON'T EVEN COMPREHEND THE ISSUES!
"R" CANDIDATES.....STATE REP. MATTHEW MURATORE....MAKING FALSE & UNINFORMED STATEMENTS!
Fact check: 12 completely fictional stories Trump has told in the last month CORPORATE MEDIA IS IGNORING TRUMP'S IRRATIONAL RANTS!
THIS IS JUST SOME OF THE IRRATIONAL CLAIMS TRUMP HAS MADE...
THIS IS A PREVIOUS ARTICLE:
Trump is drowning in the misinformation swamp he helped create
Fact check: 12 completely fictional stories Trump has told in the last month
Former President Donald Trump is littering his public remarks with fictional stories.
This isn’t run-of-the-mill political spin, the kind of statistic-twisting and accomplishment-exaggerating that political candidates of all stripes engage in. Rather, the Republican presidential nominee is telling colorful lies that are completely untethered to reality.
Trump’s inflammatory assertion about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he baselessly accused at the September presidential debate of eating people’s dogs and cats, has received the most attention. But Trump’s lower-profile recent public appearances, like rallies and interviews, have also featured wholly imaginary tales.
Here are 11 additional examples from the past month alone.
Harris and the military draft
At a rally in Las Vegas last week, Trump claimed his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is talking about forcing Americans to serve in the military: “She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, and draft your child, and put them in a war that should never have happened.”
That’s absolute bunk. Harris is not talking at all about bringing back the draft.
Harris’ CNN interview
Trump claimed during a Fox News event in Pennsylvania in early September that Harris “had notes” to assist her during the television interview she did with CNN in late August. He even performed an impression in which he portrayed Harris supposedly looking down at these notes.
She didn’t actually have any notes.
Transgender children and schools
At an event held by a conservative group in late August, Trump claimed that schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ knowledge. He said, “The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”
Trump’s campaign subsequently made clear to CNN that it could not find a single example of such a thing having happened anywhere in the United States. Parental consent is required for gender-affirming operations; schools have not performed or approved these surgeries for minors behind their parents’ backs.
Even after Trump’s campaign demonstrated that it couldn’t substantiate the story, he repeated it days later at a Wisconsin rally in early September.
Harris and the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Trump told a vivid story on Fox News in late August about how President Joe Biden supposedly sent Harris to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 in an effort to prevent an invasion of Ukraine. Trump claimed Harris was sent “to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went. She said – she gave her case. He attacked three days later. He attacked three days later. He laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.” Trump also told a version of the story at the September debate.
But this story, too, is wholly false.
Biden never sent Harris to negotiate with Putin – in fact, the Kremlin said in July that Harris and Putin have never spoken – and Harris did not travel to Russia just prior to the invasion. Rather, Harris traveled to a conference in Germany to meet with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky.
Harris’ identity
Trump claimed at a convention of Black journalists in late July that Harris used to “only” promote her Indian heritage, then “all of a sudden” made a “turn” and “became a Black person.” Defending the claim, Trump reiterated at the September debate that Harris had “put out” at some point that “she was not Black.”
None of that is true.
Harris – who was raised in a Black community and graduated from a historically Black university – has embraced her Black identity since her youth. While she has also fondly discussed her South Asian heritage, she never “put out” that she wasn’t Black.
Harris’ 2020 primary performance
Trump has repeatedly claimed during the last month that Harris was so unpopular when she previously ran for the presidency, in 2019, that she was the very first candidate to drop out of the crowded Democratic primary. “She was one of 22 people that ran. She was the first one to quit,” he said at a Pennsylvania rally in late August.
In fact, 13 other Democratic candidates dropped out of the race before Harris did – including the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City; and sitting or former members of the House of Representatives and Senate.
Opinions of Roe v. Wade
Facing heavy criticism from Harris and others for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision in 2022, Trump concocted a tale that this unpopular decision fulfilled the wishes of “everybody” – including “every Democrat.”
“Every Democrat, every Republican, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated and brought back to the states,” Trump said on Fox News in late August.
This is not even remotely accurate.
Roe was consistently supported by a majority of the American public, and it was overwhelmingly popular among Democrats – with 80% support or better among Democrats in many polls.
Elections in California
At a September press conference in California, Trump claimed that “if I ran with an honest vote counter in California I would win California, but the votes are not counted honestly.” He had delivered an even more colorful version of the claim in an interview in late August, saying, “If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay?”
More rubbish.
The votes are counted honestly in California, as they are in every other state; Trump loses California because it is an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has not chosen a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. He lost the state in 2020, fair and square, by more five million votes and more than 29 percentage points.
A ‘Man of the Year’ award in Michigan
Since 2016, Trump has told a lie that he was named “Man of the Year” in Michigan before he entered politics. Media outlets including CNN have repeatedly noted that Trump never got such an award and that the award doesn’t even appear to exist. But Trump claimed at a Michigan event on Tuesday that he has now been vindicated.
“The press said, ‘Oh, it never happened.’ Well, then it did happen. They found out where it was,” Trump said. “But it was like 15 years ago, a beautiful area, but nobody remembered it; nobody remembered it all. All of a sudden, like through a miracle, they found out it did exist.”
That’s a lie on top of a lie. The media has not discovered proof that Trump got a Michigan Man of the Year award.
His campaign didn’t respond Wednesday to a request to explain what he was talking about.
Migrants, prisons and ‘the Congo’
For months, Trump has told a story about how “the Congo” has deliberately emptied prisons to somehow get its criminals to come to the United States as migrants. “Many prisoners let go from the Congo in Africa, rough prisoners,” he said at an August event in Arizona. At an August rally in Pennsylvania the week after, he said, “In the Congo, in Africa: 22 people deposited into our country. ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘The Congo.’ ‘Where in the Congo?’ ‘Jail.’”
But Trump has presented zero evidence that “the Congo” has actually emptied any prisons for migration purposes. Representatives for the governments of both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN on the record that the claim is fiction, experts on the two countries say they have seen no evidence it is true, and Trump’s campaign has ignored requests to offer any substantiation.
The jobs revision
After the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in August that its annual revision of jobs data found that the economy added about 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported for the 12 months ending in March, Trump told a story about how the government had been planning to announce this downward revision “after November 5th,” Election Day, but was forced to do so before the election because of “a whistleblower” – “a patriot leaker.”
Another fabrication. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly releases the preliminary revised data in August, and it had disclosed the precise date of this particular data release – August 21 – weeks in advance.
William Beach, a conservative economist who was appointed by Trump to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wrote on social media: “For those who think the big revision to the BLS jobs numbers ‘leaked’ and was meant to come out after the election, remember that BLS always announces its draft revisions in August and announced this year’s date, August 21, many months ago. It is important to check your facts.”
Georgia poll workers must hand count ballots
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