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President Trump Touts GOP Tax Bill as Companies Continue to Dish Out Bonuses

President Trump is once again touting the achievements of the GOP tax bill and says more successes are still to come.
The president praised the fact more than four million Americans have received bonuses or pay increases because of the Republican tax legislation, he wrote in a tweet Sunday.

Several companies have dished out bonuses to their employees, citing the tax bill as their motivation.
Chipotle became the latest major company to give their employees added income, serving up a one time cash bonus of up to one thousand dollars and broadening parental leave benefits.
Other companies making similar actions include Walmart, Starbucks and Disney.

CNN slammed for glowing puff piece about Kim Jong Un's sister at Olympics

CNN is getting dragged online for writing a glowing puff piece about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister appearing at the Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea — with a headline claiming she was “stealing the show.”

The article, published Saturday afternoon, began with these cooing words about the woman who gave South Korean President Moon Jae-in an invite to visit North Korea:

“If ‘diplomatic dance’ were an event at the Winter Olympics, Kim Jong Un’s younger sister would be favored to win gold. With a smile, a handshake and a warm message in South Korea’s presidential guest book, Kim Yo Jong has struck a chord with the public just one day into the PyeongChang Games.”
It barely referenced the North Korean regime's murderous ways -- and critics called out CNN for it. Still, despite the almost-immediate backlash from people on both sides of the political aisle, CNN has not taken down its story.
When Fox News reached out for comment, CNN would not say whether it would remove the story or discipline any editors over the controversial article.
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo defended his left-leaning network by throwing in a dig at President Donald Trump. He tweeted to one reader, “You don’t think having a President who lies about what is ‘fake’ and actively maligns the free press out of convenience is a bigger reason for animosity toward us than how some decide to cover this?”
He also bashed a Reuters story on Kim Yo Jong, writing, “This is a murderous regime that is stifling a population. Progress has to be evidenced by a lot more than this no?”
Jonathan Chait, writer for New York magazine, mockingly cheered the CNN piece: “Also stealing her country’s meager wealth to live in opulence while they starve. But doing it in style. You go, girl!”
Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin chimed in, tweeting: “Next up: An EXCLUSIVE @CNN investigative report on Kim Jong Un’s sister’s workout playlist, favorite boba tea flavors, and nighttime skin care routine. #SLAYGIRLFRIEND”
Fox News’ Brit Hume tweeted: “Does this puff piece mean she’s gotten over her dictator brother’s murder of her other brother?”
Speaking for the millennial audience, David Mack of BuzzFeed tweeted: “yasss kweeen! werk it as you oppress your people! gettttt that crime against humanity, gurlllll!”
The CNN piece did mention at one point that Kim Yo Jong's brother, the North Korean Supreme Leader, “has ruled with an iron fist since coming to power,” running prison camps and killing senior officers to preserve his power.
The article did not mention the reign of terror brought about by their father, Kim Jong Il.
CNN is getting dragged online for writing a glowing puff piece about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, 30, who sat among world dignitaries at the Olympics in Pyeongchang. Other news outlets including The Washington Post had their own articles.
The New York Times put out a story of its own about Kim Yo Jong on Sunday. It included quotes from multiple critics slamming the dictatorship.
Kim Yo Jong, 30, is an increasingly prominent figure in her brother’s government and the first member of the North’s ruling family to visit the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The North Korean delegation to the Olympics in Pyeongchang also included the country’s 90-year-old head of state, Kim Yong Nam.
In dispatching the highest level of government officials the North has ever sent to the South, Kim Jong Un revealed a sense of urgency to break out of deep diplomatic isolation in the face of toughening sanctions over his nuclear program.
“Honestly, I didn’t know I would come here so suddenly. I thought things would be strange and very different, but I found a lot of things being similar,” Kim said while proposing a toast at Sunday’s dinner, according to the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in. “Here’s to hoping that we could see the pleasant people (of the South) again in Pyeongchang and bring closer the future where we are one again.”

NBC fires Olympic analyst after comment on Japan's role in South Korea's development: report

Joshua Cooper Ramo was benched after NBC said his on-air remarks Friday were seen to have 'insulted' Koreans.

NBC reportedly fired one of its Olympic analysts who praised Japan’s role in South Korea’s economic development, and disregarding Tokyo’s rule with an iron first from 1940 to 1945, which is still a sensitive subject to many in Seoul.

MarketWatch, citing The Korea Times, reported that an NBC official said it is no longer possible for Joshua  Cooper Ramo to work with the network.

Ramo made the remark during NBC's prime-time telecast of Friday's opening ceremony in pointing out the presence of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“Every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural and technical and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation,” Ramo said.
An online petition quickly circulated demanding an apology, and NBC did on its NBCSN cable network Saturday and formally to the Pyeongchang Olympic organizing committee.
Japan occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945. Petitioners said anyone familiar with Japanese treatment of Koreans during that time would be deeply hurt by Ramo’s remark. They also criticized the accuracy of giving Japan credit for South Korea’s resurgence.
The petition had more than 10,000 supporters on Sunday.
"During our coverage of the Parade of Nations on Friday we said it was notable that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the trip to Korea for the Olympics, 'representing Japan, a country which occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945 but every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation,'" Manno said. "We understand the Korean people were insulted by these comments and we apologize."
Ramo is reportedly sits  on the board of several companies, including  Starbucks and FedEx.

West Virginia woman dragged out of capitol for reading list of corporate donors

Lissa Lucas pictured on the left.

Lissa Lucas, a candidate in this year’s Democratic primary for West Virginia delegates, was escorted out of the Charleston state house because she read a list of House members and how much they pocketed from oil and gas companies.

Newsweek reported that the meeting was about a proposal, the Co-Tenancy and Majority Protection Act, or H.B. 4268, that would allow these companies to drill on “minority mineral owners’ land without their consent.”

The report said that some landowners worry that the bill will allow these companies to drill on their properties for the minerals located below.
The West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association tweeted a poll that showed the majority of Republicans and Democrats in the state approve the bill.
Lucas approached the rostrum Friday and, right off the bat, she corrected the person who introduced who mispronounced “Lissa.”
Lucas went on to claim that there would be no jobs created by the proposal and the only delegates in favor are in the oil companies’ pockets.
“I have to keep this short, because the public only gets a minute 45, while lobbyists can throw a gala at the Marriot with whiskey and wine and talk for hours with the delegates,” she said.

Lissa Lucas, left, pictured with businesswoman Charlotte Pritt.  (LissaLucas.com)

Common Dreams, a progressive website, reported that Lucas said she was dragged out of the room simply because she was defending the community’s “constitutional property rights.”
While Lucas was rattling off names, John Shott, the chairman, could reportedly be heard telling her that personal comments are not allowed and told her to address the merits of the bill. She insisted that she was not making personal comments and she was eventually ordered to be removed.
Newsweek reported that the bill passed and will likely be signed into law. Lucas reportedly believes that, by and large, oil and gas firms have done more damage in the state than create jobs.

Amtrak Cartoons

In secret deal, tax-backed Amtrak pays for private railroads' screwups: report

A CSX coal train, right, moves past an idling CSX engine at the switchyard in Brunswick, Md., Oct. 16, 2012.

The Amtrak passenger rail line receives more than $1 billion in annual federal subsidies, but private railroads own 97 percent of the tracks upon which Amtrak trains travel.

As part of the relationship between the publicly financed passenger rail service and the private carriers, it’s the tax-supported railroad that will typically foot the legal bill when accidents happen – even when a private railroad is at fault, the Associated Press reported.

So as federal investigators look at how crews from privately owned CSX routed an Amtrak train into a parked freight train in Cayce, S.C., last weekend, tax-supported Amtrak will likely end up paying crash victims' legal claims with public money -- even if CSX should bear sole responsibility for the accident, AP reported.
Both Amtrak and freight railroads fight to keep their contracts secret in legal proceedings, AP reported. But whatever the precise legal language, plaintiffs' lawyers and former Amtrak officials say Amtrak generally bears the full cost of damages to its trains, passengers, employees and other crash victims -- even in instances where crashes occurred as the result of a freight rail company's negligence or misconduct.
Railroad industry advocates say that freight railways have ample incentive to keep their tracks safe for their employees, customers and investors. But the Surface Transportation Board and even some federal courts have long concluded that allowing railroads to escape liability for gross negligence is bad public policy.
“The freight railroads don't have an iron in the fire when it comes to making the safety improvements necessary to protect members of the public," said Bob Pottroff, a Manhattan, Kan., rail injury attorney who has sued CSX on behalf of an injured passenger from the Cayce crash. "They're not paying the damages."

"The freight railroads don't have an iron in the fire when it comes to making the safety improvements necessary to protect members of the public. They're not paying the damages."

- Bob Pottroff, rail injury attorney, Manhattan, Kan.

Beyond CSX's specific activities in the hours before the accident, the company's safety record has deteriorated in recent years, according to a standard metric provided by the Federal Railroad Administration. Since 2013, CSX's rate of major accidents per million miles traveled has jumped by more than half, from 2 to 3.08 -- significantly worse than the industry average. And rail passenger advocates raised concerns after the CSX CEO at the time pushed hard last year to route freight more directly by altering its routes.
CSX denied that safety had slipped at the company, blaming the change in the major accident index on a reduction of total miles traveled combined with changes in its cargo and train length.
"Our goal remains zero accidents," CSX spokesman Bryan Tucker wrote in a statement provided to the AP. CSX's new system of train routing "will create a safer, more efficient railroad resulting in a better service product for our customers," he wrote.
Amtrak's ability to offer national rail service is governed by separately negotiated track usage agreements with 30 different railroads. All the deals share a common trait: They're "no fault," according to a September 2017 presentation delivered by Amtrak executive Jim Blair as part of a Federal Highway Administration seminar.
No fault means Amtrak takes full responsibility for its property and passengers and the injuries of anyone hit by a train. The "host railroad" that operates the tracks must only be responsible for its property and employees. Blair called the decades-long arrangement "a good way for Amtrak and the host partners to work together to get things resolved quickly and not fight over issues of responsibility."
Amtrak declined to comment on Blair's presentation. But Amtrak's history of not pursuing liability claims against freight railroads doesn't fit well with federal officials and courts' past declarations that the railroads should be held accountable for gross negligence and willful misconduct.

After a 1987 crash in Chase, Md., in which a Conrail train crew smoked marijuana then drove a train with disabled safety features past multiple stop signals and into an Amtrak train -- killing 16 -- a federal judge ruled that forcing Amtrak to take financial responsibility for "reckless, wanton, willful, or grossly negligent acts by Conrail" was contrary to good public policy.
Conrail paid. But instead of taking on more responsibility going forward, railroads went in the opposite direction, recalls a former Amtrak board member who spoke to the AP. After Conrail was held responsible in the Chase crash, he said, Amtrak got "a lot of threats from the other railroads."
The former board member requested anonymity because he said that Amtrak's internal legal discussions were supposed to remain confidential and he did not wish to harm his own business relationships by airing a contentious issue.
Because Amtrak operates on the freight railroads' tracks and relies on the railroads' dispatchers to get passenger trains to their destinations on time, Amtrak executives concluded they couldn't afford to pick a fight, the former Amtrak board member said.
"The law says that Amtrak is guaranteed access" to freights' tracks, he said. "But it's up to the goodwill of the railroad as to whether they'll put you ahead or behind a long freight train."
A 2004 New York Times series on train crossing safety drew attention to avoidable accidents at railroad crossings and involving passenger trains -- and to railroads' ability to shirk financial responsibility for passenger accidents. In the wake of the reporting, the Surface Transportation Board ruled that railroads "cannot be indemnified for its own gross negligence, recklessness, willful or wanton misconduct," according to a 2010 letter by then-Surface Transportation Board chairman Dan Elliott to members of Congress.
That ruling gives Amtrak grounds to pursue gross negligence claims against freight railroads-- if it wanted to.
"If Amtrak felt that if they didn't want to pay, they'd have to litigate it," said Elliott, now an attorney at Conner & Winters.
The AP was unable to find an instance where the railroad has brought such a claim against a freight railroad since the 1987 Chase, Md., disaster. The AP also asked Amtrak, CSX and the Association of American Railroads to identify any example within the last decade of a railroad contributing to a settlement or judgment in a passenger rail accident that occurred on its track. All entities declined to provide such an example.
Even in court cases where establishing gross negligence by a freight railroad is possible, said Potrroff, the plaintiff's attorney, he has never seen any indication that the railroad and Amtrak are at odds.
"You'll frequently see Amtrak hire the same lawyers the freight railroads use," he said.
Ron Goldman, a California plaintiff attorney who has also represented passenger rail accident victims, agreed. While Goldman's sole duty is to get the best possible settlement for his client, he said he'd long been curious about whether it was Amtrak or freight railroads which ended up paying for settlements and judgments.
"The question of how they share that liability is cloaked in secrecy," he said, adding: "The money is coming from Amtrak when our clients get the check."

"The question of how they share that liability is cloaked in secrecy. The money is coming from Amtrak when our clients get the check."

- Ron Goldman, California plaintiff attorney

Pottroff said he has long wanted Amtrak to stand up to the freight railroads on liability matters. Not only would it make safety a bigger financial consideration for railroads, he said, it would simply be fair.
"Amtrak has a beautiful defense -- the freight railroad is in control of all the infrastructure," he said. But he's not expecting Amtrak to use it during litigation over the Cayce crash.
"Amtrak always pays," he said.

Former Obama campaign manager says 'all public pollsters should be shot'

Jim Messina, a former campaign manager for Barack Obama, apparently isn't one to mince words.

During an appearance Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Messina spoke about the irrelevance of public polls so early in an election year, Mediaite reported.

Then he underscored the point to host Joe Scarborough.
"Joe, you know how I feel about public polls," he said. "I think all public pollsters should be shot.”
Messina said there were other, more important yardsticks at this point to determine a candidate's viability.
“What you care more about is passion and intensity,” he said. “When I ran President Obama’s campaign, the number I looked at every day was intensity. Are my voters more motivated than Republican voters?”
He said in the interview that “our voters are more intense,” the report said.
Messina said recent Democratic electoral performances in Missouri, New Jersey and Virginia demonstrate that intensity levels are in the Democrats,' the Washington Times reported.
A recent column by Fox News contributor Jen Kerns, however, may have revealed the source of Messina's frustration.
According to Kerns, new polling shows that Democrats have lost a recent 15-point lead over Republicans, dropping to only a 2-point lead heading toward the 2018 midterms.

California school science project that connected race and IQ is pulled after complaints

A science fair project at a California high school faced criticism earlier this week after it compared race and IQ levels in connection to participation in an elite program at the school, The Sacramento Bee reported Saturday.

The project, titled “Race and IQ,” was put together by a C.K. McClatchy High School student who is part of the school’s elite Humanities and International Studies Program. It was displayed in the fair on Monday, the outlet said.

In comparing intelligence levels, the project reportedly questioned whether particular races were smart enough for the school’s magnet program and whether a racial disparity was justified.

High school science fair project questioning African American intelligence sparks outragehttps://t.co/qYbrMDqYAG

— diana lambert (@dianalambert) February 10, 2018

“If the average IQs of blacks, Southeast Asians, and Hispanics are lower than the average IQs of non-Hispanic whites and Northeast Asians, then the racial disproportionality in (HISP) is justified,” the hypothesis said, according to the outlet.
HISP, according to The Bee, is a separate program at the school that is meant to encourage cultural awareness and helps to provide students with different perspectives on historic moments.
Of about 500 students, there are a dozen African-Americans, 80 Latino students and about 100 Asian-American students, according to data from the school district that was obtained by the outlet. The program has reportedly been criticized for its lack of racial and ethnic diversity.
The student who conducted the experiment was not spoken to or identified by The Bee.
To test the proposed theory, the student had a variety of unidentified teenagers with different racial backgrounds take an internet IQ test, the outlet said.
The project’s final conclusion reportedly found that “the lower average IQs of blacks, Southeast Asians, and nonwhite Hispanics means that they are not as likely as non-Hispanic whites and Northeast Asians to be accepted into a more academically rigorous program such as HISP,” the report said. “Therefore the racial disproportionality of HISP is justified.”
After complaints from students, parents and faculty, the project was removed from the science fair on Wednesday, the outlet said, and the district is currently investigating the incident, Alex Barrios, said the spokesman for Sacramento Unified district.
“We are looking into the appropriate response to a situation like this,” Barrios told The Bee. “We understand it concerns a lot of people and doesn’t reflect our culture here.”
In a Thursday email to parents, the school’s principal Peter Lambert said they were taking the “incident very seriously” and noted that the school strived to “promote and embrace an inclusive environment and way of thinking which excludes any form of discrimination.”
Chrysanthe Vidal, a senior high school student in the program, told The Bee, “I think that a lot of people, especially of color, are really hurt and upset by this.”

College Republicans' Patriot Prayer rally disrupted by counter-protesters

Torn pieces of an American flag lie on the ground at the University of Washington, Feb. 10, 2018.

Five people were arrested as fights broke out and at least one American flag was burned Saturday after a college Republican rally in Seattle drew counter-protesters.

College Republicans at the University of Washington had invited members of Patriot Prayer, a group in Vancouver, Wash., to speak in the university's Red Square for a "freedom rally," the Seattle Times reported.

The goals were to bring conservatives together and promote free-speech rights, College Republicans President Chevy Swanson told the Times. As the event got underway, supporters chanted "U-S-A!, U-S-A!," and signs included one that read, "We died for liberty not socialism."
But more than 1,000 counter-protesters showed up to oppose the event.
"I learned that they thought my vote was a hate crime,” Kathryn Townsend, who said she voted for Donald Trump in 2016, told Seattle's Q13 Fox.

"I learned that they thought my vote was a hate crime."

Some counter-protesters voiced their goals.
“We’re here to fight back against the far right and fascism on our campus,” one counter-protester said.
Added another: “I’m not a fan of the president, and these people are fans. So I want to come out here and say this is not OK. And what you’re doing is not OK.”
After several skirmishes broke out, police responded with pepper spray. University of Washington police said those arrested were charged with disorderly conduct.
No officers were injured, they said.
University officials were worried about the potential for violence at the rally, and the school's president had warned students to avoid the area.