Chris Hedges's Blog, page 308

Robert Reich: The GOP Is Lying Through Its Teeth About the Deficit

When asked about America’s soaring debt and deficits, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lamented  “It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” and he blames Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Rubbish. It’s not social spending that’s causing the federal deficit to soar. It’s Republican tax cuts, especially on corporations and the wealthy.

Look at the evidence. Of all 35 advanced economies, America’s spending on social programs like Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid is among the lowest, as you can see.

Also, Americans pay into Social Security and Medicare throughout their entire working lives.

The biggest reason America has the highest deficit relative to our total economy among all 35 advanced economies is because of a shortage of tax revenue. Of all these countries, we’re bringing in the fifth-lowest total revenue as a share of GDP.

And why is that? Mainly because of Republican tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy. The big Trump Republican tax cut is already breaking the bank. It will cost us 1.9 trillion dollars over the next decade. Let me repeat that: 1.9 trillion dollars.

Remember, Trump and Republicans in Congress claimed that their tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations would pay for themselves by boosting economic growth. It’s the same trickle-down fairy tale they’ve been telling for decades. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, they haven’t paid for themselves, and the deficit continues to balloon.

If there’s one area where America spends too much, it’s the military. Since taking office, Trump has increased military spending by more than $200 billion a year, straining the federal budget even further. The United States already spends more on the military than the next 10 nations combined.

Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and other Republicans in Washington want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. That’s been the Republican goal for decades. And they want to use the deficit to justify these cuts.

They also argue that we can’t afford a comprehensive healthcare system that the rest of the advanced world has figured out how to afford.

Baloney. If the rich and corporations pay their fair share and we rein in defense spending, America can afford what we need.

Know the truth. Spread the truth about the deficit.

Could This Be the End of the Electoral College?

There’s new momentum around the National Popular Vote movement, where states will award Electoral College votes to elect the president based on which candidate has won the most votes nationwide—instead of today’s state-by-state winner-take-all system.

“It does have new momentum, because there was a [recent] period starting with the second Obama election when Democrats bought into this blue-wall theory” that their political party had a lock on the White House, said John Koza, a former Stanford University scientist who co-founded the National Popular Vote project in 2006.

The reform is based on states joining an interstate compact, a legally binding vehicle where states make agreements among themselves despite a national federal government. In this case, states, which the U.S. Constitution empowers to oversee its Electoral College process, agree to award their presidential votes to the national popular vote winner. As of early 2019, the project was two-thirds of the way toward reaching the threshold needed for a 270-vote Electoral College majority, but more states are poised to join.

Last week, Delaware’s Senate passed legislation to join the compact, and sent that bill to its House where it has passed twice before. In Colorado, where one legislative chamber was first to pass National Popular Vote (NPV) legislation in 2006, a compact bill recently passed both chambers and is heading to a governor ready to sign it. New Mexico’s Senate just passed the bill and sent it to its House. A bill currently has bipartisan support in Michigan and Oregon.

Currently, 12 states with 172 Electoral College votes have joined the compact (CA, CT, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA). Another 10 states with 89 Electoral College votes have bills in the legislative process (AR, AZ, DE, ME, MI, NC, NM, NV, OK, OR). This first group of states is politically blue, while the second group, which until recently included Colorado, has some purple states—meaning both major parties are vying for governing power—and some red states.

The movement is not just borne of the frustration that national popular vote winners—such as 2016’s Hillary Clinton—are not being elected president. The Electoral College’s winner-take-all system of selecting presidential electors (who meet in mid-December to cast the votes electing the next president) has created a pattern where campaigns focus on a few swing states to the exclusion of most of the nation. Thus, Republicans in blue California and Democrats in red Texas do not cast presidential votes that count. In a popular vote system, every vote in every state and territory would matter.

There is a narrative in commentary circles that the National Popular Vote system would benefit Democrats, as evidenced by states that first adopted the reform—mostly coastal blue states—and noting that Colorado’s recent passage was on a Democratic party-line vote. However, Koza counters that perspective not really the full picture or correct, because state legislative chambers ruled by both parties have gravitated to the measure when the president was from the opposing party—just as those same parties took no action on the reform when they believed that their side would hold the presidency into the foreseeable future.

“The only reason it’s possible is that neither party can come up with a convincing explanation as to why it’s a systemic advantage or disadvantage,” he said, reflecting on the varying waves of support during the past 13 years. “There’s a lot of hand waving that goes on. But if you really press people, the Democrats, they got swept up on this blue wall theory [after Barack Obama won]. The truth is the Republicans in ’89 coined the term ‘Electoral College lock,’ because they were convinced they had a permanent lock on the presidency. Of course, the next two elections went to Bill Clinton. This is part of the self-delusion that both political parties engage in.”

Koza points out that legislative chambers in blue states took no action when Obama was president—whereas some GOP-controlled chambers did pass NPV legislation, or there were bipartisan majorities in single chambers sponsoring legislation to join the compact. However, single-chamber support didn’t necessarily lead to passage of the bill, leading some analysts to overly conclude that an NPV system would benefit Democrats.

“The attitudes of both parties have flip-flopped during the 13 years we’ve been working on this,” he said. “When we started, George W. Bush was still in office. Then, when there was the 2008 election, the very first roll call [votes] after that, we started getting a third of the Republicans [supporting NPV]. There was a roll call in Michigan, and there was one like it in Oregon and a couple of other places. Then after Obama won twice, the Democrats got into this notion that they had a lock on the White House.”

“None of these people [legislators] like to think that they are thinking about politics, but the fact is we couldn’t get it through the New York Assembly, which was Democratically controlled, couldn’t get it through Connecticut, and a couple of other places that were Democratic,” he said, citing the Obama years. “And then Republicans started getting interested, such as in Oklahoma. In Georgia, we had 47 of the 56 senators sponsor our bill, a supermajority of both parties, and it got out of committee unanimously in Georgia and Missouri. That’s obviously bipartisan, obviously Republican-controlled places.”

“And then the Trump election came along and then a lot of Republicans said, ‘Gee, this is working pretty good for us,’” Koza continued. “As you see now, more Democratic places are picking up on it. So parties have gone through three different phases of the moon.”

The main attraction of a national popular vote system is that it would change the way that presidential campaigns are conducted—moving them onto more of a national stage—and emphasize that every vote counted, no matter where it was cast.

“That is what we think is the single most important feature of this,” Koza said. “There would be no battleground states. Every voter would count equally across the country, and every voter’s vote would directly count toward his presidential candidate getting the most votes—or failing to get the most votes. But every voter’s vote would directly count toward his candidate. Right now, because of these state-winner-take-all rules, it not only creates this distortion where only a dozen states are battleground states, but it suppresses the minority’s vote in every state.”

The National Popular Vote compact is not the only measure seeking to address the nation’s founding documents and foundational strictures.

There are red-state-centered movements calling for a federal constitutional convention, which, if convened, could end up reframing elections, spending, reproductive rights and other major issues. Harvard University professor and former presidential candidate Larry Lessig has sued over the Electoral College’s voting rights inequities. TV commentator Cenk Uygur’s Wolf-PAC has called for a convention to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 campaign finance ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, prompting five states’ support.

However, the National Popular Vote compact is seen as the most expedient way to reform the Electoral College system—as opposed to passing a federal constitutional amendment or convening a constitutional convention.

In recent years, there have been notable developments concerning constitutional conventions; however, the momentum in these efforts has reversed course. The most successful campaign peaked a few years ago when 32 out of the 34 states needed passed legislation calling for a constitutional convention to write a balanced budget amendment. However, after scholars and others argued that a modern constitutional convention would likely spin out of control—and broach topics of interest to select donors and narrow partisan lobbies—four of those states have since rescinded their convention applications.

One can wonder if the National Popular Vote’s new momentum will be met by renewed vigor on the Article V front. While that scenario remains to be seen, the only certain thing that can be said about the prospect of using an interstate compact to bypass the Electoral College is should sufficient states join, the plan would be challenged in federal court.

Patrick Valencia previewed that challenge in a Harvard Journal on Legislation article, writing, “It is true that the Constitution allows state legislatures to bind their own slate of electors, but such action still must be compatible with the historical understanding of the electoral procedures in the Constitution, and thus must be consistent with the principles of process and product federalism.”

Koza, nonetheless, is optimistic that the country is edging toward a national popular vote presidential system, saying the reform’s legal language has not changed, has been widely vetted by legislators and legal counsel, and has come a long way in 13 years.

“It’s the exact bill it was for 13 years,” he said. “I don’t know that 13 years is a long time in terms of taking a totally new idea and getting it passed on the national level. I don’t know how many other things have moved quicker. Obamacare arguably took 100 years from when Teddy Roosevelt proposed health care for everybody, and even Obamacare didn’t get there. So in the context of the legislative and deliberative process, I think we are moving along nicely.”

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Senate Passes Historic War Powers Resolution on Yemen

In a major step toward ending U.S. complicity in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the Senate on Wednesday passed a War Powers resolution to cut off American military support for the Saudi-led coalition’s assault on Yemen.

The final vote count was 54-46.

“This is historic. For the first time in 45 years, Congress is one step closer to withdrawing U.S. forces from an unauthorized war,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the lead sponsor of the resolution, declared following the vote. “We must end the war in Yemen.”

Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) also played key roles in advocating for and passing the resolution.

Kate Gould, legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, applauded the grassroots activists who have been working tirelessly to end America’s disastrous role in Yemen.

“The Senate has now taken a decisive step in ending the American facilitation of the Yemen war and the world’s largest humanitarian crises,” Gould said. “Millions of grassroots activists, who helped make this vote a reality, want their lawmakers to end this unconscionable war.”

Passage of the resolution comes as the Saudis continue to launch deadly airstrikes in Yemen with U.S. backing, worsening a crisis that has already resulted in mass suffering and tens of thousands of deaths. Earlier this week, dozens of civilians—including women and young children—were killed by Saudi airstrikes in Yemen’s Kushar district.

According to the United Nations, 14 million Yemenis could soon be on the brink of starvation if the bombing continues. Save the Children, a London-based human rights organization, estimated in a report last November that 85,000 Yemenis under the age of five have starved to death since the Saudi-led coalition began bombing the country.

We won!

EU Official Says ‘No-Deal’ Vote Won’t Halt Brexit

STRASBOURG, France — The Latest on Brexit (all times local):

9:10 p.m.

The European Commission is warning Britain’s Parliament that voting against Brexit happening without a withdrawal deal in place isn’t enough and lawmakers must approve the deal, too.

An official from the EU’s executive branch noted Wednesday that the bloc already reached a divorce deal with Prime Minister Theresa May and the House of Commons rejected it – twice.

The official asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the unresolved situation.

Parliament voted Wednesday night to reject leaving the EU as scheduled on March 29 if it hasn’t approved an agreement.

The EU official said: “There are only two ways to leave the EU: with or without a deal. The EU is prepared for both. To take no deal off the table, it is not enough to vote against no deal – you have to agree to a deal.”

—By Raf Casert.

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9 p.m.

British Prime Minister Theresa May says Parliament will vote Thursday on whether to seek a delay to Britain’s March 29 departure from the European Union.

May said lawmakers are at the point where they must approve a withdrawal agreement in coming days and request a short postponement to Brexit day or request a “much longer” extension from the EU to negotiate a new arrangement.

The prime minister warned that a long extension would mean Britain would have to take part in European Parliament elections in late May.

She says this is not her preferred outcome and urged Parliament to “face up” to the consequences of the decisions it has made.

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8:20 p.m.

Britain’s Parliament has voted to reject having the country leave the European Union without a divorce agreement, a decision that lessens but does not remove the chance of a chaotic “no-deal” Brexit.

The vote Wednesday night also increases the chances that Britain’s exit from the bloc will be delayed.

British lawmakers voted 312 to 308 for a motion that “rejects the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a Withdrawal Agreement and a Framework for the Future relationship.”

The vote has political but not legal force. A no-deal Brexit could still happen unless Britain and the EU ratify a divorce agreement or Britain decides to cancel its departure.

British lawmakers now plan to vote Thursday on whether to ask the EU to delay the country’s March 29 departure day.

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6:20 p.m.

Dutch authorities have demonstrated a digital system for completing customs forms that ferry terminals in the Netherlands are mandating to try to minimize disruptions following Brexit.

The system, called Portbase, was designed so freight haulers could fill out the forms online before they get to ferry terminals for trips to the U.K.

Managing Director Iwan van der Wolf said the system already is being used for destinations outside the European Union and now will be applied to the short trip between the Netherlands and the U.K.

He said Wednesday the online system “is already proven. It’s in use, works very well and everybody’s happy with it.”

Dutch Overseas Trade Minister Sigrid Kaag says the Netherlands is well prepared for Brexit, but urged foreign transport companies to be ready for changes at Dutch ports.

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6:00 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron says the British Parliament’s second rejection of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit agreement with the European Union is “regrettable.”

Macron, who was in Kenya’s capital on Wednesday, said during a news conference that the EU spent months negotiating the deal and now only Britain can steer a course for leaving the bloc since “the solution to the current impasse is in London.”

The French leader said EU negotiators would look at any request from the U.K. to postpone Brexit, which is set for March 29.

But Macron warned that the 27 remaining member countries wouldn’t automatically agree to an extension.

He said the British government has “to explain to us what the point of it is, and in particular whether it adds anything.”

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4:05 p.m.

The European Union has adopted contingency measures in case Britain leaves the bloc as scheduled on March 29 without a withdrawal deal in place, and the procedures would bring changes overnight to both sides of the English Channel.

The EU parliament approved the last of 11 such measures on Wednesday. They cover everything from air, port and road traffic to the status of foreign students. Some would require reciprocal measures in Britain.

Catherine Bearder, who represents southeast England in the European Parliament, used airline passengers as an example of the confusion a no-deal Brexit could create.

Bearder said: “If we’re going to leave at midnight, they need to know: ‘Can the planes take off the next day?’ Whether their pilot’s recognition is valid….That all of these things that actually make an airplane fly have to be recognized.”

Belgian EU legislator Tom Vandenkendelaere described the alternate procedures as “the typical measures you would take in a state of emergency, and that are also only taken for a temporary, for a strict period in time with strict conditions as well.”

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3:25 p.m.

British expats on Spain’s Costa del Sol are fretting about what Brexit might entail for them, now that the U.K. Parliament has rejected the deal negotiated on their country’s departure from the European Union.

Sitting in the sun outside a cafe in the town of La Cala de Mijas on Wednesday, 66-year-old retiree Kevin Fox said he was worried about his future public health care entitlements in the EU and how much his U.K. old-age pension would be worth.

When he moved to Spain 12 years ago, one pound sterling was worth 1.47 euros, he said. Now, he gets around 1.12 euros for each pound.

“I can’t afford to stay here if they’re not paying for my health care,” Fox says, referring to a possible end of the current reciprocal care system between the U.K. and other EU countries.

Mick Robinson, an apartment owner in Spain for the past 13 years, says the current situation is “very worrying.”

He says after the deal’s defeat Tuesday, “It’s even worse. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The Spanish government says some 300,000 Britons are legally resident in Spain.

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3 p.m.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz says any delay to Britain’s departure from the European Union should be as short as possible, though he isn’t specifying any date.

The Austria Press Agency reported that Kurz said he doesn’t expect British lawmakers to vote Wednesday to leave without a deal March 29. He added that “if they do that, then there’s no way to help them,” but the damage to Britain would be much bigger than to Europe.

If a no-deal Brexit is voted down, British lawmakers will decide Thursday whether to request a delay to Brexit. Kurz wouldn’t specify the length of any extension but said that “the shorter the phase by which we extend, the better.” He said that, ideally, it would be a question of weeks and not months.

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2 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel isn’t saying how long she thinks a possible delay to Brexit should be, arguing that it’s up to the British Parliament first to provide direction on what happens next.

U.K. lawmakers are to vote Wednesday on whether Britain should leave the European Union March 29 with no deal. If it rejects that idea, it will vote Thursday on whether to delay its departure.

Merkel stressed Wednesday that “it is in our mutual interest that we achieve an orderly departure,” though “the options have of course become fewer” after British lawmakers rejected the painstakingly negotiated EU divorce deal.

But she wouldn’t be drawn on details of the next move. She said: “I will only say be able to say exactly what will happen next when I have seen the next two days with the British votes, which will perhaps give us a bit of direction on what direction we can think in.”

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11:25 a.m.

The European Parliament’s chief Brexit official says he wants to limit any Brexit deadline extension to a few months at best, fearing it will take over the whole European election campaign.

Guy Verhofstadt warned that the May 23-26 polls across the 27 remaining EU nations “will be hijacked by the Brexiteers and the whole Brexit issue” if the extension spills over past those days.

“We will talk only about that,” he said.

The EU Commission has warned that if Britain were still a member at the time of the elections, it would be forced to organize polls to fill its seats in the European legislature.

Verhofstadt said that “the only thing we will do is give a new mandate to Mr. (Nigel) Farage,” the UK lawmaker who has long campaigned in the European Parliament for Britain to leave.

Farage said that “I don’t want me coming back here” and called for the EU to reject an extension and make sure the U.K. leaves on time.

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10:20 a.m.

The British prime minister who set the Brexit process in motion is warning that leaving the European Union without a deal would be disastrous for the U.K.

David Cameron told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he fully supports Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempts to maintain a “close partnership” with Europe after Britain leaves the EU.

He says Parliament should vote to “rule out no-deal” and seek an extension to the March 29 deadline for Britain’s departure.

Cameron resigned after failing to convince British voters to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum. He called the referendum to settle an internal Conservative Party dispute but ended up losing his office.

He advises the prime minister to seek “partnership deals” within Parliament that might lead to a solution of the Brexit impasse.

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10:10 a.m.

Germany’s economy minister says a decisive rejection of a no-deal Brexit by British lawmakers could be a “turning point” and create hope for millions.

The British Parliament will vote Wednesday on whether to leave the European Union without a deal March 29 after lawmakers on Tuesday voted down Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU divorce agreement.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier tweeted: “After divisive debates & votes, today can become a turning point: Rejecting No-deal-Brexit by a large cross-party majority will unite millions in the U.K. & in Europe. Will create hope & solidarity.”

He added: “Whatever you finally decide. Good luck dear friends!”

If a no-deal Brexit is rejected, lawmakers are due to vote Thursday on whether to delay Brexit.

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9 a.m.

Britain’s government says it won’t impose new checks and controls on goods at the Northern Ireland-Republic of Ireland border if the U.K. leaves the European Union without an agreement on future relations.

The policy is part of temporary tariff regime unveiled Wednesday to inform lawmakers who will vote later on whether to eliminate the possibility of a no-deal exit from the EU. The regime will last for up to 12 months.

As part of the plan, the government says there would be no tariffs on 87 percent of imports by value, a “modest liberalization” compared with current trade rules.

A mixture of tariffs and quotas will apply to beef, lamb, pork, poultry and some dairy “to support farmers and producers who have historically been protected through high EU tariffs.”

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8:55 a.m.

The European Parliament’s chief Brexit official has questioned whether a short extension of the March 29 Brexit deadline can be given if Britain doesn’t emerge from its political chaos on the issue.

Guy Verhofstadt said that in the wake of the U.K. parliament’s rejection of the Brexit deal, the European legislature had no reason to act on pushing back the deadline to avoid a chaotic British exit from the bloc.

Verhofstadt said that “I don’t see reason to give any extension if first of all we don’t know what the majority position is of the House of Commons.”

He said that “we are waiting now for a proposal coming from London. It is now in London that they have to find a way out of this and break the deadlock.”

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8:45 a.m.

The European Union’s economic commissioner says the British parliament has squandered its last chance to secure a deal smoothing the way for Brexit.

Pierre Moscovici has told France-2 television that the EU has “done everything we could do” to reassure British lawmakers, who rejected British Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU divorce deal for a second time Tuesday.

Moscovici said “the train has passed two times” and the EU will not renegotiate the deal before the scheduled Brexit date of March 29.

He left the door open to an eventual delay if the British request it, but only if there’s a clear justification. He said the British have already said what they don’t want, and now “it’s up to the British to say what they want.”

Moscovici said Tuesday’s vote increases chances of a British departure that is “disorderly, brutal, like a cliff,” including sudden new customs rules and trade chaos.

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8:20 a.m.

Germany’s foreign minister says the U.K. Parliament’s rejection of the Brexit deal negotiated on Britain’s departure from the European Union was “reckless.”

Heiko Maas says the EU made “far-reaching additional offers and assurances” at Britain’s request this week.

In remarks released late Tuesday, Maas said the U.K. Parliament’s decision to reject the deal “brings a no-deal scenario ever closer.”

He added that “whoever rejects the agreement plays with the welfare of their citizens and the economy in a reckless way.”

Maas said Germany is prepared “as best as possible for this worst possible case,” though Germany hopes a disorderly Brexit can still be avoided in the coming 17 days.

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8:10 a.m.

The European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator says Britain must finally get its act together as a chaotic no-deal departure from the bloc is little more than two weeks away.

Michel Barnier said Wednesday it was time for Westminster to change tack, after the U.K. parliament handed Prime Minister Theresa May another huge defeat on her freshly renegotiated Brexit deal.

Barnier said that “again the House of Commons says what it does not want. Now this impasse can only be solved in the U.K.”

The EU parliament’s Brexit group was meeting to assess the situation in Strasbourg, France before a plenary debate on the impasse.

British lawmakers rejected May’s Brexit deal in a 391-242 vote on Tuesday night. Parliament will vote Wednesday on whether to leave the EU without a deal.

8 Dead, 37 Rescued in Nigeria School Collapse

LAGOS, Nigeria — The Latest on Nigeria building collapse (all times local):

8:45 p.m.

A Nigerian emergency official says eight people are dead in a collapsed school building and 37 people have been rescued alive.

The statement by National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ibrahim Farinloye does not say how many of the dead or rescued are children.

Witnesses have said up to 100 children could have been in the primary school when the three-story building in Lagos collapsed.

Rescue efforts are expected to continue into the night as hundreds of anxious people watch an excavator work under floodlights.

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7:50 p.m.

An emergency official confirms deaths in the collapse of a three-story school building in Nigeria but refuses to give a toll as search and rescue efforts continue.

Witnesses have said as many as 100 children could have been inside the building.

Official Shina Tiamiyu says the emphasis is on finding survivors. Workers have pulled more than 40 people, dead and alive, from the ruins.

Signs of life remain as night falls hours after the collapse in Lagos. Rescue efforts are expected to continue throughout the night.

The watching crowd was jubilant when searchers found a man alive. An hour later, the crowd stilled when a body was carried by.

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7:15 p.m.

Night is falling at the site of a collapsed school building in Nigeria as search and rescue workers make frantic efforts to find what could be scores of children in the ruins.

The evening call to prayer has been heard as hundreds of anxious people watch in the heart of the country’s commercial capital, Lagos.

An emergency official has said more than 40 people have been found but it is not known how many are dead.

Workers have carried several dust-covered children, some moving and some still, to waiting ambulances.

Nigeria’s president says that “it touches one to lose precious lives in any kind of mishap, particularly those so young and tender.”

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5:45 p.m.

The general manager of the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency says more than 40 people have been rescued from a Nigeria school building collapse.

Shina Tiamiyu tells the Associated Press that a death toll cannot yet be determined as rescue efforts continue.

Some witnesses estimated that as many as 100 children were in the primary school on the top floor of the building that collapsed in Lagos.

Rescue efforts are expected to go into the night as sunset nears.

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5 p.m.

Lagos governor Akinwunmi Ambode says at least 25 children have been rescued after a three-story school building collapsed in Nigeria.

It is not known how many students were in the primary school on the top floor, or how many have died.

The collapse occurred in the heart of Nigeria’s commercial capital, setting off frantic rescue efforts.

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4 p.m.

Witnesses say nearly two dozen children have been pulled from a collapsed building in Lagos, Nigeria.

It is not known how many students may have been at a primary school that was located on the top floor of the three-story building.

The school could have had as many as 100 children there at the time of the collapse.

It is not immediately known what caused the structure to collapse, leaving piles of dusty concrete slabs and exposed metal.

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2:25 p.m.

There are cheers as a small child is pulled from the ruins of a collapsed three-story building in Lagos, Nigeria. But the crowd quiets as another child is freed but does not move.

It is not yet clear how many children have been pulled from the rubble, and how many have survived. Scores were thought to be inside when the three-story building containing a school went down.

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1:35 p.m.

Rescue efforts are underway in Nigeria after a three-story building school building collapsed while classes were in session. Scores of children are thought to be inside.

Associated Press video from the scene on Wednesday shows at least one dust-covered child being carried out of the rubble. Onlookers crowd around in the densely populated neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.

They cheered as the child was lifted out.

Building collapses are all too common in Nigeria, where new construction often goes up without regulatory oversight.

Manafort Now Faces 7 Years in Prison, Fresh New York Charges

WASHINGTON — Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison Wednesday after a federal judge rejected his appeal for no additional time and rebuked him for his crimes and years of lies.

Within minutes of the sentencing, prosecutors in New York brought state charges against Manafort — a move that appeared at least partly designed to guard against the possibility that President Donald Trump could pardon him. The president can pardon federal crimes, but not state offenses.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Manafort to nearly three-and-a-half years in prison on charges that he misled the U.S. government about his foreign lobbying work and encouraged witnesses to lie on his behalf. That punishment is on top of a roughly four-year sentence he received last week in a separate case in Virginia. He is expected to get credit for the nine months of jail time he’s done already.

The sentencing hearing was a milestone moment in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election campaign. Manafort was among the first people charged in the investigation, and though the allegations did not relate to his work for Trump, his foreign entanglements and business relationship with a man the U.S. says has ties to Russian intelligence have made him a pivotal figure in the probe.

Though the judge made clear that the case against Manafort had nothing to do with Russian election interference, she also scolded Manafort’s lawyers for asserting that their client was only charged because prosecutors couldn’t get him on crimes related to potential collusion with the Trump campaign.

“The no-collusion mantra is simply a non sequitur,” she said, suggesting that those arguments were meant for an audience outside the courtroom — presumably a reference to the president, who has expressed sympathy for Manafort and not ruled out a pardon.

Jackson also harshly criticized Manafort for years of deception that extended even into her own courtroom and the grand jury. She said much of the information he provided to prosecutors after pleading guilty couldn’t be used because of his history of deceit.

“It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved” in the federal conspiracy charges related to his foreign lobbying work and witness tampering.

Reading from a three-page statement, Manafort asked for mercy and said the criminal charges against him have “taken everything from me already.” He pleaded with the judge not to impose any additional time beyond the sentence he had received last week in a separate case in Virginia.

“I am sorry for what I have done and all the activities that have gotten us here today,” Manafort said in a steady voice. “While I cannot undo the past, I will ensure that the future will be very different.”

The 69-year-old, who arrived in court in a wheelchair, said he was the primary caregiver of his wife and wanted the chance for them to resume their life together.

“She needs me and I need her. I ask you to think of this and our need for each other as you deliberate,” Manafort said. “This case has taken everything from me already — my properties, my cash, my life insurance, my trust accounts for my children and my grandchildren, and more.”

His plea for leniency followed prosecutor Andrew Weissmann’s scathing characterization of crimes that the government said spanned more than a decade and continued even while Manafort was awaiting trial. The prosecutor said Manafort took steps to conceal his foreign lobbying work, laundered millions of dollars to fund a lavish lifestyle and then, while on house arrest, coached other witnesses to lie on his behalf.

“I believe that is not reflective of someone who has learned a harsh lesson. It is not a reflection of remorse,” Weissmann said. “It is evidence that something is wrong with sort of a moral compass, that someone in that position would choose to make that decision at that moment.”

Defense lawyer Kevin Downing suggested Manafort was being unduly punished because of the “media frenzy” generated by the appointment of a special counsel.

“That results in a very harsh process for the defendant,” Downing said.

After the hearing, Downing criticized Jackson’s sentencing as “callous”, “hostile” and “totally unnecessary” as he was shouted down by protesters.

“I think the judge showed that she is incredibly hostile toward Mr. Manafort and exhibited a level of callousness that I’ve not seen in a white-collar case in over 15 years of prosecutions,” Downing told reporters, noting that he was “disappointed” by the sentence.

Wednesday’s sentencing comes in a week of activity for the investigation. Mueller’s prosecutors on Tuesday night updated a judge on the status of cooperation provided by one defendant, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and are expected to do the same later in the week for another.

Mueller’s investigation has shown signs of coming to a close and he is expected to soon deliver a report to the Justice Department.

Ralph Nader: Ground the Boeing Jets Now

I called Boeing’s office in Washington, D.C. about the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, with over 300 fatalities, to give them some advice. They were too busy to call back, so I’m conveying some measures they should take fast in this open letter.

Dear Boeing Executives:

You don’t seem to see the writing on the Wall. Your Boeing 737 MAX 8 is being grounded by more and more countries and foreign airlines. Airline passengers in the U.S. are switching away their reservations on this plane and there are signs of an organized boycott of this aircraft which is used by the major U.S. airlines.

It is only a matter of time before the bereaved families organize, before members of Congress start forcefully speaking out, as Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal just did. Both Senators are on the Senate’s Aviation Subcommittee.

Soon the technical dissenters in the reported “heated discussions” with FAA, the airline industry, the pilot unions and your company will see some internal e-mails, memos, and whistleblowers go public. Technical dissent cannot be repressed indefinitely.

Your own lawyers should be counselling you that Boeing is on public notice and that, heaven forbid, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash in this country, the arrogance of your algorithms overpowering the pilots, can move law enforcement to investigate potential personal criminal negligence.

Clearly, you run a company used to having its way. Used to having a patsy FAA, with its “tombstone mentality,” used to delaying airworthiness directives that should be put out immediately, and not diluted and delayed, used to getting free government R&D and used to avoiding state and federal taxes.

Stop digging in your heels. Tell the airlines to stop digging in their heels. Public trust in your Boeing 737 MAX 8 is eroding fast. Get ahead of the curve that is surely heading your way.

You see the Boeing 737 MAX 8 as being a large part of your passenger aircraft business. You’ve delivered over 300 planes and reportedly have over 3000 orders. Over the years, your engineers have solved many technical problems brilliantly. The domestic safety record of the major airlines, using your equipment, has been very commendable for more than a decade. A lot of the credit goes to Boeing as well as to the airline pilots, flight attendants, traffic controllers, and mechanics.

But there is always a time when commercial dictates and a rush to get ahead of Airbus result in too many corners being cut. There is always a time when the proverbial rubber band, being stretched suddenly snaps. This aircraft is not an old DC-9 being phased out. The stakes involved in your erring on the side of safety and letting your engineers exercise their “options for revision,” affect the future of a good part of Boeing.

Tell the U.S. airlines and other recalcitrant airlines overseas to ground their 737 MAX 8 planes and then you do what is necessary to restore the engineering integrity of your company. You did this before with the Boeing 787 in 2013.

Once an aircraft starts to carry a stigma in the minds of passengers, time is of the essence. You know all about branding’s pluses and minuses. It is better to act now before being forced to act, whether by Congress, the FAA, a prosecution or another aircraft disaster that could have been avoided.

For safety,

Ralph Nader

Co-author of Collision Course:

The Truth About Airline Safety

While Warren Fights Facebook, O’Rourke Embraces It

Following Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s announcement that she would seek to break up Facebook, Amazon and Google if elected president, Facebook removed an advertisement run by Warren’s page that was critical of big tech. The ad was restored Tuesday, but it essentially supported her argument and put further pressure on potential Democratic hopefuls to revisit their relationships with Silicon Valley.

“Thanks for restoring my posts,” Warren tweeted in regard to the story, “But I want a social media marketplace that isn’t dominated by a single censor.” A spokesperson for Facebook said the ad was removed because it violated policy by using Facebook’s logo.

You shouldn't have to contact Facebook's publicists in order for them to decide to "allow robust debate" about Facebook. They shouldn’t have that much power. https://t.co/yPi57RHozf

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 12, 2019

Another potential Democratic contender, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, has a closer relationship with Facebook. Its employees gave him $68,000 in 2017-18, according to campaign finance data. The social network’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has commended O’Rourke on his use of the live-streaming program, Facebook Live, for “civic engagement.”

Facebook employees who have donated to O’Rourke include Paul Beddoe-Stephens, the head of platform strategy at Facebook; David Fischer, Facebook’s vice president of business and marketing partnerships; and Margaret Gould Stewart, the vice president of product design at Facebook, according to data compiled by MapLight, a nonpartisan research organization. O’Rourke has also received top contributions from employees at Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

The group Beto for Texas has spent more than $8 million on Facebook ads in the past 12 months. The page has more than 300 active ads prompting users to sign up on a mailing list to learn whether or not O’Rourke will run for president. By contrast, two groups representing Warren’s presidential run have spent about $300,000 in the past year.

The only politician who outspent O’Rourke on Facebook ads is Donald Trump, whose presidential campaign and joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee have spent more than $10 million combined this year. Other top Facebook spenders have paid out between $3 and $4 million, including oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil, philanthropist and liberal activist Tom Steyer, the progressive political group MoveOn, and Concealed Online, a company offering online concealed firearm certifications.

Facebook collects data on people regardless of whether or not they have an account and has in-depth metrics about users that can be appealing for advertisers.

“Facebook can learn almost anything about you by using artificial intelligence to analyze your behavior,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Peter Eckersley. “That knowledge turns out to be perfect both for advertising and propaganda. Will Facebook ever prevent itself from learning people’s political views, or other sensitive facts about them?”

Warren’s proposal is a possible way to regulate major tech companies that are resistant to transparency and often, user input.

“I personally don’t believe that very many people would like to pay to not have ads,” Zuckerberg said last month. He added that “the ads, in a lot of places, are not even that different from the organic content in terms of the quality of what people are being able to see.”

The Rich Have Bought Their Way Into Elite Colleges for Decades

This story was co-published with The Washington Post.

My 2006 book, “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” was intended as a work of investigative journalism.

But many of its more affluent readers embraced it as a “how to” guide. For years afterward, they inundated me with questions like, “How much do I have to donate to get my son (or daughter) into Harvard (or Yale, or Stanford)?” Some even offered me significant sums, which I declined, to serve as an admissions consultant.

They may have been motivated by a tale I told in the book about a youth whose admission to Harvard appears to have been cemented by a $2.5 million pledge from his wealthy developer father. The then-obscure Harvardian would later vault to prominence in public life; his name was Jared Kushner.

Those requests from people who misunderstood my aim in writing the book came back to mind on Tuesday when I heard about the latest and most brazen scandal involving upper-crust parents — including chief executives, real estate investors, a fashion designer and two prominent actresses — manipulating college admissions.

One would think that the rich and famous would care less than the rest of us about foisting their children on elite colleges. After all, their kids are likely to be financially secure no matter where, or if, they go to college. Yet they seem even more desperate — to the extent, according to a complaint, that dozens of well-heeled parents ponied up six or seven figures for bogus SAT scores and athletic profiles for their children to increase their chances at Yale, Stanford and other brand-name universities.

The parents allegedly paid anywhere between $200,000 and $6.5 million to William Rick Singer, who ran a college counseling business in Newport Beach, California. Singer in turn bribed standardized test administrators and college coaches in upper-class sports like crew, sailing and water polo, even staging photos of the applicants playing various sports, prosecutors said.

The parents “chose to corrupt and illegally manipulate the system,” Andrew Lelling, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said at a press conference Tuesday. “There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy.”

Perhaps these parents were pining to boast at Hollywood cocktail parties about their Ivy League imprimatur. Possibly their offspring, like those of many successful families, lacked the motivation to strive and excel academically, and without a substantial boost would have been consigned to colleges of lesser repute.

In any event, such allegedly criminal tactics represent the logical, if extreme, outgrowth of practices that have long been prevalent under the surface of college admissions, and that undermine the American credos of upward mobility and equal opportunity. Although top college administrators and admissions officials were apparently unaware of the deception, their institutions do bear some responsibility for developing and perpetuating the system that made it possible.

I began looking into this issue in 2003, at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the fairness of affirmative action for minorities. I documented another form of affirmative action — for the white and privileged.

According to one poll after another, most Americans believe that college admissions should be based on merit, rather than wealth or lineage. Through their own intelligence and hard work, students with the best grades, the highest test scores, the most compelling recommendations and other hard-earned credentials achieve a coveted ticket to higher education — and with it, enhanced prospects for career success and social status. So goes the legend perpetuated by elite colleges, anyway.

But decades of investigating college admissions have led me to conclude that, for rich and famous families, it’s more like a television game show, “Who Wants to Be an Ivy Leaguer?” complete with lifelines for those who might otherwise be rejected. Instead of phoning a friend or asking the audience, the wealthy benefit from advantages largely unavailable to middle-class and poor Americans — what I described in my book as “the preferences of privilege.”

The best-known and most widespread of those preferences is conferred on alumni children, known as “legacies,” who tend as a group to be disproportionately white and well-off. But rich applicants whose parents didn’t attend the target university, like Kushner, still have a leg up.

Rich candidates can enhance their standardized test scores with test-prep and tutoring. They don’t have to rely for college recommendations and advice on an overburdened public high school guidance counselor with a caseload of hundreds of students. Instead, their parents can afford a private counselor who discreetly advises the desired university that the family has a history of philanthropy and, in case of acceptance, would be inclined to be especially generous.

Similarly, inner-city schools often don’t field teams in patrician sports like crew, squash, fencing and the like. But prep and suburban schools do, giving their affluent students an opportunity for the significant edge given to recruited athletes, even in upper-class sports limited to a relative few. Colleges favor recruits in these sports at least partly for fundraising reasons; they’re important to wealthy alumni and donors who played them in college or enjoy them as leisure activities.

So the parents charged in the current case followed customary practices of the entitled: hiring a private counselor, getting test help and participating in a patrician sport. The difference is that they allegedly took blatant short cuts: The counselor was unscrupulous, a stand-in secretly took the tests and the applicants didn’t actually play those sports. But, without the tilted system of preferences already in place, the parents would have had to choose a different route — or actually let merit determine their children’s college destiny.

Watch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Grill the CEO of Wells Fargo

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Ocasio (D-NY) proved once again her verbal interrogation skills on Tuesday as she grilled Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan over the financial giant’s dubious investments and won applause for holding his feet to the fire.

The freshman congresswoman questioned bank CEO Timothy Sloan about two issues for which corporations are rarely directly held accountable—the bank’s financing of human rights abuses as well as environmental disasters.

On the issue of Wells Fargo’s relationship with the private prison industry and the Trump administration’s child detention policy, Ocasio-Cortez asked sharply: “Mr. Sloan, why was the bank involved in the caging of children?”

.@RepAOC: “Mr. Sloan, why was the bank involved in the caging of children?” @AOC to #WellsFargo CEO pic.twitter.com/Pvfuv2wfXe

— Alexis Goldstein (@alexisgoldstein) March 12, 2019

In his response, Sloan announced that the bank is in the process of cutting ties with one group and has already stopped financing another—information that wasn’t publicly known before the hearing.

So @AOC gets some news out of Wells Fargo CEO Sloan: asking about its investments in private prisons, Sloan says Wells has fully exited debt financing for one company (he doesn’t remember which) and will exit the other when the debt matures.

— David Dayen (@ddayen) March 12, 2019

The congresswoman refused to accept Sloan’s claim that despite Wells Fargo’s financing and debt-financing of GEO Group and CoreCivic, “we weren’t directly involved in that,” before moving on to the bank’s investments in fossil fuel-extracting companies which have worsened the climate crisis, trampled human rights, and endangered the country’s drinking water supply.

Questioning Sloan about its financing of companies that build pipelines including the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in South Dakota and the Keystone XL Pipeline, Ocasio-Cortez asked whether his bank should be held responsible for the environmental havoc wreaked by its investments.

Despite warnings from the Lakota Sioux about the danger of building DAPL, Ocasio-Cortez said, “it was built anyway, and has leaked at least five times.”

“The Keystone XL in particular had one leak that sent 210,000 gallons across South Dakota,” she added. “Why shouldn’t the bank be held responsible for the clean-up of disasters of these projects?”

And then @RepAOC shifts to asking about #WellsFargo‘s role in the Dakota Access Pipeline#NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/pCYTYZHOZx

— Alexis Goldstein (@alexisgoldstein) March 12, 2019

When Sloan attempted to deny that the leaks have happened—despite easily accessible information to the contrary—Ocasio-Cortez humored him.

“So hypothetically, if there was a leak from the Dakota Access Pipline, why shouldn’t Wells Fargo pay for the clean-up of it if it paid for the construction of the pipeline itself?” she asked.

.@RepAOC: “So, hypothetically, if there was a leak from the Dakota Access Pipeline, why shouldn’t #WellsFargo pay for the cleanup of it, since it paid for the construction of the pipeline itself?”#NoDAPL @AOC pic.twitter.com/ZdxcQWYSjT

— Alexis Goldstein (@alexisgoldstein) March 12, 2019

On social media, the progressive lawmaker’s supporters wrote that Ocasio-Cortez’s work on the House Financial Services and Oversight Committees has helped bring the experiences and struggles of marginalized groups—like immigrants and the indigenous activists who led the fight against DAPL—to the forefront in Congress.

Watching @AOC watch questions of #WellsFargo CEO that people like me have dreamed of being asked from a Congressional hearing. From their culpability in caging children to their role in financing the Dakota Access pipeline.

Clip coming next…

— Alexis Goldstein (@alexisgoldstein) March 12, 2019

Want to know why @AOC‘s popularity keeps climbing?

Because she amplifies questions that MOVEMENTS of people, like the #NoDAPL movement, have been shouting to the powers that be for ages. https://t.co/Rtiv2KpKIp

— Alexis Goldstein (@alexisgoldstein) March 12, 2019

AOC: “Should Wells Fargo be held responsible for the damages incurred by climate change due to the financing of fossil fuels?”

It’s incredibly satisfying to watch @AOC hold banking execs accountable for their outsized role in the climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/BQ8BAt9Y41

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) March 12, 2019