| New Yahoo News/YouGov July 4 poll: A staggering 62 percent of Americans no longer see America as Ronald Reagan's 'shining city on a hill' Posted: 02 Jul 2020 01:29 PM PDT  This Fourth of July, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that no matter how polarized they might be politically, Americans finally seem to agree on one thing: America itself is getting worse.
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| As coronavirus surges, Fox News shifts its message on masks Posted: 02 Jul 2020 01:08 PM PDT  However haltingly and incompletely, the president's favorite news outlet has started to acknowledge that the coronavirus is a far graver threat than even Trump will acknowledge.
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| Watch Florida police laugh after shooting protesters with rubber bullets Posted: 02 Jul 2020 09:53 AM PDT  The department said it is conducting a review of 8,000 minutes of body camera footage, but it is defending the officers involved in the video, first published by the Miami Herald.
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| ‘We’ll be waiting on you.’ Florida sheriff wants to deputize gun owners against protesters Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:49 PM PDT  A Florida sheriff warned people protesting police brutality that he would call on individual gun owners to defend themselves if peaceful demonstrations got out of hand.
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| Catholic priest suspended from church for calling Black Lives Matter protesters ‘maggots and parasites’ Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:35 PM PDT  A Catholic priest in Indiana has been suspended from his public ministry, after he called Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters "maggots and parasites".Reverend Theodore Rothrock, assigned to St Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, Indiana, was suspended on Wednesday, after he disparaged BLM protesters in a bulletin published on Sunday, according to Huffpost.
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| Kim Jong Un says North Korea prevented coronavirus from making inroads Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:40 PM PDT  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told a meeting of the politburo of the ruling Workers Party the North had stopped the novel coronavirus from making inroads in the country, state news agency KCNA said on Friday. "We have thoroughly prevented the inroad of the malignant virus and maintained a stable anti-epidemic situation despite the worldwide health crisis, which is a shining success achieved," Kim Jong Un said in a statement carried by KCNA.
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| The killing of 26 people at a drug rehab center in Mexico thought to be part of a gang war Posted: 02 Jul 2020 05:57 PM PDT  Authorities suspect the assault was part of a fierce turf battle that has transformed industrial Guanajuato into one of Mexico's deadliest states.
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| Afghan Contractor Handed Out Russian Cash to Kill Americans, Officials Say Posted: 02 Jul 2020 05:11 AM PDT  KABUL, Afghanistan -- He was a lowly drug smuggler, neighbors and relatives say, then ventured into contracting, seeking a slice of the billions of dollars the U.S.-led coalition was funneling into construction projects in Afghanistan.But he really began to show off his wealth in recent years, after establishing a base in Russia, though how he earned those riches remained mysterious. On his regular trips home to northern Afghanistan, he drove the latest model cars, protected by bodyguards, and his house was recently upgraded to a four-story villa.Now Rahmatullah Azizi stands as a central piece of a puzzle rocking Washington, named in U.S. intelligence reports and confirmed by Afghan officials as a key middleman who for years handed out money from a Russian military intelligence unit to reward Taliban-linked fighters for targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to American and Afghan officials.As security agencies connected the dots of the bounty scheme and narrowed in on him, they carried out sweeping raids to arrest dozens of his relatives and associates about six months ago but discovered that Azizi had sneaked out of Afghanistan and was likely back in Russia. What they did find in one of his homes, in Kabul, was about half a million dollars in cash.American and Afghan officials for years have maintained that Russia was running clandestine operations to undermine the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and aid the Taliban.But U.S. officials only recently concluded that a Russian spy agency was paying bounties for killing coalition troops, including Americans, which the Kremlin and the Taliban have denied.According to officials briefed on the matter, U.S. intelligence officials believe the program is run by Unit 29155, an arm of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU that has carried out assassinations and other operations overseas.That a conduit for the payments would be someone like Azizi -- tied to the U.S. reconstruction effort, enmeshed in the regional netherworld but not prominent enough to attract outside attention -- speaks to the depth of Russia's reach into the increasingly complicated Afghan battlefield, exploiting a nexus of crime and terror to strike blows with years of deniability.The public revelation last week of that conclusion has touched off a political firestorm in Washington. White House officials said at first that President Donald Trump was never briefed on the matter, but it emerged that the intelligence assessment was included in a written briefing to the president in late February, if not earlier.As Democratic and Republican officials have expressed alarm at the news, and the administration's lack of action in response, the White House has insisted that the information was uncertain.Details of Azizi's role in the bounty scheme were confirmed through a dozen interviews that included U.S. and Afghan officials aware of the intelligence and the raids that led to it; his neighbors and friends; and business associates of the middle men arrested on suspicion of involvement. All spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.U.S. intelligence reports named Azizi as a key middleman between the GRU and militants linked to the Taliban who carried out the attacks. He was among those who collected the cash in Russia, which intelligence files described as multiple payments of "hundreds of thousands of dollars." Those files were among the materials provided to Congress this week.Through a layered and complex Hawala system -- an informal way to transfer money -- he delivered it to Afghanistan for the missions, the files say. The transfers were often sliced into smaller amounts that routed through several regional countries before arriving in Afghanistan, associates of the arrested businessmen said.Afghan officials said prizes of as much as $100,000 per killed soldier were offered for American and coalition targets.Just how the money was dispersed to militants carrying out attacks for the Taliban, and at what level the coordination occurred, remains unclear. But officials say the network had grown increasingly ambitious and was in communication with more senior levels in Taliban military ranks to discuss potential targets.About six months ago, Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, raided the offices of several Hawala businessmen both in Kabul, the capital, and in Kunduz, in the north, who were believed to be associated with the bounty scheme, making more than a dozen arrests."The target of the operation was Rahmat, who was going back-and-forth to Russia for a long time and said he worked there, but no one knew what he did," said Safiullah Amiry, deputy head of Kunduz provincial council, referring to Azizi. But by the time the raid took place, "Rahmat had fled.""From what I heard from security officials, the money had come from Russia through Rahmat," he added.Russia was initially seen as cooperating with U.S. efforts after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as its interests in defeating al-Qaida, an international Islamic terror group, aligned with those of the United States.But in recent years, as the two powers clashed elsewhere, the Kremlin grew wary of the prolonged U.S. presence and moved closer to the Taliban, hedging its bets on who would take power in a post-American Afghanistan.The Russians also saw an opportunity for long-awaited payback for the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Red Army withdrew after being unable to defeat a U.S.-backed insurgency.Russia has walked a fine balance in recent years, eager to bloody the American nose but wary of Afghanistan collapsing into a chaos that could spill over its borders. Publicly, Russia has admitted only to information-sharing with the Taliban in fighting the Islamic State in Afghanistan, a common foe.The U.S. conclusion in 2019 that the Russians were sending bounty money to the Taliban came at a delicate time in the conflict, just as the United States was deep into negotiations with the insurgents over a deal to withdraw the remaining American troops from the country.Some of the attacks believed to be part of the bounty scheme were carried out around the time the Trump administration was actively reaching out to Russia for cooperation on those peace talks. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy leading the talks, repeatedly met with Russian officials to build consensus around the U.S. endgame.The Afghan battlefield is saturated with smaller terrorist groups in addition to the Taliban, who are still responsible for the majority of the violence. Criminal networks, profiteers and terror training experts also freelance their services -- often to several groups at the same time.Azizi, who neighbors and relatives said is in his 40s, thrived in that convoluted, murky environment.A friend who has known him since his early days in Kunduz, as well as later in Russia, said he had started off with smuggling small shipments of drugs into Iran in his 20s, but that venture was not very successful. He had returned to northern Afghanistan, and somehow won contracts from the U.S.-led coalition forces to build stretches of a couple roads in Kunduz, before making his way to Russia.None of those interviewed who know Azizi were surprised when his associates were raided about six months ago and one of his brothers taken into custody with the half-million dollars in cash. As one of his friends put it, he had gone from "not even having a blanket" to having multiple houses, fancy cars, and security escorts.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Coronavirus: Brazil's Bolsonaro waters down law requiring face masks Posted: 03 Jul 2020 01:29 PM PDT  Brazil's president vetoes articles making masks obligatory in shops, churches and schools.
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| The surgeon general refused to give a yes or no answer when asked if he would advise people to attend large gatherings for the 4th of July Posted: 03 Jul 2020 10:37 AM PDT  During an appearance on the "Today" show, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams didn't advise people not to attend large gatherings for the 4th of July.
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| Court record shows St. Louis couple pulled gun before Posted: 02 Jul 2020 11:44 AM PDT  O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) — The white St. Louis couple who became internationally famous for standing guard with guns outside their mansion during a protest have pulled a gun before in defense of their property, according to an affidavit in an ongoing case. As demonstrators marched near the Renaissance palazzo-style home of Mark and Patricia McCloskey on Sunday, video posted online showed him wielding a long-barreled gun and her with a small handgun. The protesters, estimated at around 500 racially mixed people, were passing the house on the way to the nearby home of Mayor Lyda Krewson.
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| Black Lives Matter: Florida police officers laugh and brag on video about shooting rubber bullets at protesters Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:45 PM PDT  Florida police officers responding to a George Floyd protest have been caught on camera laughing and bragging about shooting protesters with rubber bullets.The video shows police forming a line against a group of protesters in Fort Lauderdale on 31 May and eventually tossing tear gas to drive them away. When protesters began throwing the cannisters back at the police, they responded by shooting at demonstrators with rubber bullets.
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| The world's largest Confederate monument faces renewed calls for removal Posted: 03 Jul 2020 04:05 AM PDT  Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial, a nine-story-high bas-relief sculpture carved into a sprawling rock face northeast of Atlanta, is perhaps the South's most audacious monument to its pro-slavery legacy still intact. Despite long-standing demands for the removal of what many consider a shrine to racism, the giant depiction of three Confederate heroes on horseback still towers ominously over the Georgia countryside, protected by state law. The monument - which reopens on Independence Day weekend after the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to close for weeks - has faced renewed calls for removal since the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died during an arrest by a white police officer who pinned his neck to the ground with a knee.
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| An Iranian nuclear facility was apparently sabotaged, and a mysterious dissident group called the Homeland Cheetahs claimed responsibility Posted: 02 Jul 2020 02:22 PM PDT  The incident at Iran's largest uranium-enrichment facility occurred amid historic tensions between Washington and Tehran over Iran's nuclear program.
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| India Kanpur: Eight policemen killed in clash with gang members Posted: 03 Jul 2020 01:11 AM PDT  Gang members fired at the officers during a raid in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
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| We’re so damaged that even if it ends well in November, all will not be well | Opinion Posted: 03 Jul 2020 11:00 AM PDT  Even if this ends well, it will not end well.
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| Supreme Court declines to hear Equal Pay Act case Posted: 02 Jul 2020 06:55 AM PDT |
| Huge bird of prey catches shark-like fish and flies off in viral video Posted: 03 Jul 2020 05:14 AM PDT  Visitors to a beach last week would have seen a shark-like fish soaring above their heads thanks to one bird's actions.A video shared online showed one huge predatory bird seen with what appeared to be a shark suspended in its claws above crowds at South Carolina's Myrtle Beach.
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| Drone Footage Shows Luxurious New Hampshire Retreat Where Ghislaine Maxwell Arrested Posted: 03 Jul 2020 03:03 AM PDT 
Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and one-time associate of Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested by the FBI on Thursday, July 2, on charges that she assisted Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors and helped him groom young girls. She was arrested at a luxurious New Hampshire home that was sold in December 2019 for approximately $1 million via Four Seasons Sotheby’s Realty. The listing has since been removed from the Sotheby’s site. Maxwell purchased the house using cash through a “carefully anonymized LLC,” according to authorities. The indictment of Maxwell alleges that, between 1994 and 1997, she “facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s access to minor victims by… inducing and enticing, and aiding and abetting the inducement and enticement of, multiple minor victims.” Maxwell has denied any wrongdoing. This drone footage shows the spectacular property, near the small town of Bradford. Credit: Gaba Shakour via Storyful
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| One sole Russian region says 'nyet' to Putin, defying the Kremlin Posted: 02 Jul 2020 11:41 AM PDT  Only one of Russia's 85 regions, a sparsely-populated patch of the Arctic known for reindeer herders, defied the Kremlin and voted against changes granting President Vladimir Putin the right to stay in power until 2036, results on Thursday showed. Discontent there has been brewing for some time and its rejection appeared to be a protest vote designed to signal anger over a local issue. Specifically, residents object to a plan put forward earlier this year by authorities to merge with neighbouring region Arkhangelsk, a move they believe would leave them poorer by stripping them of special financial support.
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| Op-Ed: Could the racist past of Mt. Rushmore's creator bring down the monument? Posted: 03 Jul 2020 03:00 AM PDT  What should be done with an accomplishment that features problematic men carved in a problematic location by a problematic sculptor?
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| Yes, World War II Is Still Killing People (This Picture Is Proof) Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:30 AM PDT  Unexploded bombs are a lasting danger in Europe.
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| Airbnb is banning some users under 25 from renting certain listings to help crack down on party houses Posted: 02 Jul 2020 06:51 AM PDT  The changes to Airbnb's platform come after a mass shooting at an Airbnb house party last Halloween left five people dead.
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| Former Bush officials unite to support Biden over Trump Posted: 02 Jul 2020 11:31 AM PDT  "Our democracy is at stake," the group says.
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| US victims of FARC rebels win claim to Venezuelan's fortune Posted: 02 Jul 2020 09:12 PM PDT  Three American defense contractors held for five years by leftist rebels in Colombia moved closer to collecting on a $318 million judgment against their former captors when a U.S. Supreme Court justice rebuffed an appeal by a sanctioned Venezuelan businessman whose assets they seek to claim. Justice Clarence Thomas refused to hear an emergency appeal by Samark López, letting stand an order by a federal appeals court immediately turning over $53 million from the businessman's previously seized U.S. bank accounts, though the appeals court judgment is being contested.
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| Woman calls police on black couple building patio at their own home Posted: 03 Jul 2020 11:37 AM PDT  A video of a New Jersey woman calling the police on her black neighbours went viral and eventually spawned a protest outside the woman's home.The incident occurred on Monday when Fareed Nassor Hayat, an attorney and a professor of law at City University of New York, and his wife, Norrinda, were in the backyard building a stone patio.
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| WHO Quietly Changes COVID Timeline following Republican Questioning Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:43 AM PDT  The World Health Organization quietly changed its timeline of the coronavirus pandemic's first days on Tuesday, clarifying that the Chinese Communist Party never informed the organization of the pandemic on December 31, despite previous claims to the contrary.In the new timeline, which the WHO says has been updated "in light of evolving events and new information," the organization reveals that its Chinese Office "picked up" an online statement — which has since been deleted — made by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission describing cases of "viral pneumonia." The WHO says it also received open-source intelligence suggesting there was "pneumonia of unknown cause" in Wuhan.The additions clarify the WHO's previous timeline, which simply stated that on December 31, "Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, China, reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan" — implying the report was made to the WHO. In its initial report on the outbreak, the WHO said its China office "was informed" of the unknown pneumonia cases, without clarifying that the information was not provided by the Chinese Communist Party.The lack of clarity led multiple outlets — including Axios, the Washington Post, and the BBC — to report that Chinese authorities told the WHO's China office about the outbreak on December 31. But an interim report released last month by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee scrutinized that claim, and argued the CCP never actually told the WHO about the outbreak."I'm glad to see the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party have both read my interim report on the origins of the pandemic and are finally admitting to the world the truth — the CCP never reported the virus outbreak to the WHO in violation of WHO regulations," HFAC Lead Republican and China Task Force Chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) told National Review. "The question now is whether the CCP will continue their false propaganda campaign that continues to claim they warned the world, or whether they will come clean and begin to work with the world health community to get to the bottom of this deadly pandemic."The WHO did not respond to a request for comment.McCaul, along with China Task Force member Jim Banks (R., Ind.), have argued that China violated the WHO's International Health Regulations by failing to be transparent about the origins of the pandemic.
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| A Black woman questioned her hotel bill — and an employee called police, NC suit says Posted: 02 Jul 2020 05:22 PM PDT  The suit comes days after a video showed a worker at another hotel in North Carolina call police on Black guests at the hotel pool.
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| The Nigerian Email Scammer Who Stole Millions From Premier League Club, NY Law Firm, Banks Posted: 03 Jul 2020 02:15 PM PDT  Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, who went by the name Ray Hushpuppi, made no secret of his extraordinary wealth. On an Instagram account with 2.3 million followers, he posted photos of himself dripping in high-end watches, wearing robes with his name emblazoned on the back, and driving a $300,000 Mercedes or a white Rolls Royce Cullinan with the hashtag AllMine.He took private jets to Paris, shopped at Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and indulged in cakes depicting himself surrounded by Fendi bags. His address was 1706 Palazzo Versace in Dubai.On Snapchat, under the username "hushpuppi5," he called himself "The Billionaire Gucci Master!!!"Abbas claimed to be a real estate developer. But his wealth was instead the result of running elaborate email scams and hacking schemes, U.S. federal prosecutors argue—a rare example of a Nigerian email scam that actually fooled major companies into handing over millions. "The FBI's investigation has revealed that Abbas finances this opulent lifestyle through crime," FBI Special Agent Andrew Innocenti wrote in a lengthy arrest affidavit, filed in the District Court for the Central District of California on Thursday.Abbas, 37, was arrested when he arrived in Chicago from Dubai on Thursday night. He faces criminal charges for being the leader of a transnational network that allegedly conspired to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through email scams and other schemes, some of which targeted a New York law firm, a foreign bank and an English Premier League soccer club.Abbas and a small group of co-conspirators allegedly had a network of "money mules" that they used to carry out the email scams and then launder money through a slew of foreign bank accounts. The group would usually hack into a business' email account and either block or redirect emails, according to the FBI. They would then use the hacked email account to trick a victim or a company into sending money to them, often changing bank transfer information by just one or two numbers.However, when one member was arrested in October, 2019, shortly after a New York law firm was duped into wiring almost $1 million, investigators obtained a search warrant to go through his iPhone and found messages that blew open the inner workings of the group.Abbas had allegedly tricked one of the law firm's paralegals into wiring $922,857, intended for a client's real estate refinancing, to a Chase Bank account controlled by Abbas. The paralegal emailed a Citizens Bank email address to verify instructions for the wire transfer but it was a spoof email address set up by Abbas. About half the amount was instantly wired to a Canadian bank account and images of the wire transfer were shared between the group. "Did the big hit?" one group member texted, according to excerpts in the affidavit. "Yessir," another replied. In another instance, a foreign bank was defrauded $14.7 million in Feb. 2019 when the group gained access to the bank's computer network and sent fake SWIFT messages—utilizing software used by financial institutions to sends payment orders to each other. One co-conspirator texted Abbas to ask if he had any bank accounts that could take large amounts of the stolen money. Abbas responded with the details for Romanian, Bulgarian and U.S. bank accounts.In one text message, the co-conspirator wrote: "my guy also deleted history logs at the bank so they won't even c the transaction."But the following day, the cyber-heist hit the news and the transfers didn't reach Abbas' Romanian account."Today they noticed and pressed a recall on it , it might show and block or never show," the co-conspirator texted Abbas. "Look it hit the news." Abbas replied: "damn."The pair appeared undeterred. "Next one is in few weeks will let U know when it's ready. to bad they caught on or it would been a nice payout," he wrote to Abbas.In March, the group discussed how they could launder £100 million (about $124 million) from an unnamed English Premier League Club but it's not clear what happened to the money.At one point, the group were making $1 million to $5 million through a scam once or twice a week."This was a challenging case, one that spanned international boundaries, traditional financial systems and the digital sphere," said Jesse Baker, a Secret Service agent in the Los Angles Field Office.Abbas was expelled from the United Arab Emirates, for reasons that were unclear, and is expected to be transferred from Chicago to Los Angeles in the coming weeks. He did not yet have a lawyer appointed.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| School districts pushed to reopen say there isn't enough money to do it safely Posted: 03 Jul 2020 02:00 AM PDT  "They're caught between a rock and a hard place, and the biggest fear is they're going to be forced to open schools without the safety guidelines."
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| Did Russia Give Us a Sneak Peak of Its New Nuclear Hunter-Killer Attack Submarine? Posted: 03 Jul 2020 01:00 PM PDT  Russia has one of the largest submarine fleets in the world, but it is aging.
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| Carlos Ghosn: Japan ask US to extradite ex-Green Beret and son over Japan escape Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:21 PM PDT  The ex-soldier and his son are held in the US for allegedly helping the ex-Nissan boss flee Japan.
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| Biden pulls together hundreds of lawyers as a bulwark against election trickery Posted: 01 Jul 2020 06:17 PM PDT  "We put together 600 lawyers and a group of people throughout the country who are going into every single state to try to figure out whether chicanery is likely to take place," Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said on a video conference with donors to his campaign. Biden's remarks come as the candidate offers dire warnings about efforts by Republicans to cheat in the Nov. 3 election while also criticizing his election opponent, Republican President Donald Trump, for undermining confidence in the vote. A senior political adviser and top lawyer for Trump's campaign, Justin Clark, said Biden is lying and stoking fear while Democrats are trying to "fundamentally change" how elections are conducted, an apparent reference to their support for widespread mail-in voting.
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| Portland Police Retreat Into Precinct Building as Riot Declared Posted: 03 Jul 2020 07:16 AM PDT 
Portland Police declared a riot on July 2 after a number of flash-points between police and protesters were reported around the Multnomah County Justice Center and an adjacent courthouse. Video here shows several officers retreating back inside the central precinct police building as they are confronted and shouted at by protesters. Police said a riot was declared shortly before midnight after “large rocks, full cans, and bottles” were thrown at officers. Police said fireworks were also launched towards officers, and that a fire broke out inside the courthouse after its doors were broken. “Because of the violent nature of the demonstrators while officers cleared the area, crowd control munitions were used and several arrests were made,” police said. Credit: Garrison Davis via Storyful
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| Police officer filmed punching black woman at Miami International Airport Posted: 02 Jul 2020 04:20 AM PDT  The police department in Miami-Dade has dismissed two officers after one punched a black woman at Miami International Airport.The department ordered an investigation into the incident on Wednesday night when a video – dated 1 July – was shared online.
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| Letters to the Editor: If the Golden State Killer doesn't deserve the death penalty, no one does Posted: 02 Jul 2020 03:00 AM PDT  If a man who admits to 13 murders and dozens of kidnappings and burglaries doesn't get the death penalty, why should anyone?
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| Tucker Carlson 2024? The GOP is buzzing Posted: 02 Jul 2020 03:49 PM PDT  The Fox News host's ratings have gone gangbusters, and many Republicans think he'd be a force in a Republican primary.
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| Universities Sowing the Seeds of Their Own Obsolescence Posted: 02 Jul 2020 06:21 AM PDT  When mobs tore down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant and defaced a monument to African-American veterans of the Civil War, many people wondered whether the protesters had ever learned anything in high school or college.Did any of these iconoclasts know the difference between Grant and Robert E. Lee? Could they recognize the name "Gettysburg"? Could they even identify the decade in which the Civil War was fought?Universities are certainly teaching our youth to be confident, loud, and self-righteous. But the media blitz during these last several weeks of protests, riots, and looting also revealed a generation that is poorly educated and yet petulant and self-assured without justification.Many of the young people on the televised front lines of the protests are in their 20s. But most appear juvenile, at least in comparison to their grandparents — survivors of the Great Depression and World War II.How can so many so sheltered and prolonged adolescents claim to be all-knowing?Ask questions like these, and the answers ultimately lead back to the university.Millions of those who graduate from college or drop out do so in arrears. There is some $1.5 trillion in aggregate student debt in the U.S. Such burdens sometimes delay marriage. They discourage child-rearing. They make home ownership hard — along with all the other experiences we associate with the transition to adulthood.The universities, some with multibillion-dollar endowments, will accept no moral responsibility. They are not overly worried that many of their indebted graduates discover their majors don't translate into well-paid jobs or guarantee employers that grads can write, speak, or think cogently.One unintended consequence of the chaotic response to the COVID-19 epidemic and the violence that followed the police killing of George Floyd is a growing re-examination of the circumstances that birthed the mass protests.There would be far less college debt if higher education, rather than the federal government, guaranteed its own students' loans. If universities backed loans with their endowments and infrastructure, college presidents could be slashing costs. They would ensure that graduates were more likely to get good-paying jobs thanks to rigorous coursework and faculty accountability.Taxpayers who are hectored about their supposed racism, homophobia, and sexism don't enjoy such finger-wagging from loud, sheltered, 20-something moralists. Perhaps taxpayers will no longer have to subsidize the abuse if higher education is deemed to be a politicized institution and thus its endowment income ruled to be fully taxable.If socialism has become a campus creed, maybe Ivy League schools can be hit with an annual "wealth tax" on their massive endowments in order to redistribute revenue to poorer colleges.It is hard to square the circle of angry graduates having no jobs with their unaccountable professors who so poorly trained students while enjoying lifelong tenure. Why does academia guarantee lifetime employment to those who cannot guarantee that a graduate gets a decent job?The epidemic and lockdown required distance learning, but at full price. The idea that universities can still charge regular rates when students are forced to stay home is not just an unsustainable practice, but veritable suicide. If one can supposedly learn well enough from downloads, Zoom talks, and Skype lectures, then why pay $50,000 or more for that service from your basement?Universities are renaming buildings and encouraging statue removal and cancel culture. But they assume they will always have a red line to the frenzied trajectory of the mob they helped birth. If the slaveholder and the robber baron from the distant past deserve no statue, no eponymous hallway or plaza, then why should the names Yale and Stanford be exempt from the frenzied name-changing and iconoclasm? Are they seen as billion-dollar brands, akin to Windex or Coke, that stamp their investor students as elite "winners"?The current chaos has posed existential questions of fairness and transparency that the university cannot answer because to do so would reveal utter hypocrisy.Instead, the university's defense has been to virtue-signal left-wing social activism to hide or protect its traditional self-interested mode of profitable business for everyone — staff, faculty, administration, contractors — except the students who borrow to pay for a lot of it.How strange that higher education's monotonous embrace of virtue signaling, political proselytizing, and loud social-justice activism is now sowing the seeds of its own obsolescence and replacement.If being "woke" means that the broke and unemployed are graduating to ignorantly smashing statues, denying free speech to others, and institutionalizing cancel culture, then the public would rather pass on what spawned all of that in the first place.Taxpayers do not yet know what to replace the university with — wholly online courses and lectures, apolitical new campuses, or broad-based vocational education — only that a once hallowed institution is becoming McCarthyite, malignant, and, in the end, just a bad deal.© 2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
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| Texas Republicans to host in-person convention despite coronavirus surge Posted: 02 Jul 2020 01:57 PM PDT  The committee voted 40 to 20 to host the meeting that about 6,000 people are expected to attend in Houston's George R. Brown convention center in just over two weeks. During a lengthy virtual meeting, those opposed to hosting the convention in person said it would endanger older delegates and would disenfranchise many people who would not go out of fear of the virus. "Texas maintained our in-person convention process through World War Two, we met together after our 9/11 terrorist attacks despite the danger in the air," said executive committee member David Covey.
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| Police arrest armed man on the grounds where Trudeau lives Posted: 02 Jul 2020 07:15 AM PDT  An armed man crashed his truck through a gate on the grounds where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lives Thursday before being arrested two hours later. Police identified the suspect as a member of Canada's armed forces. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement that Trudeau was not present at the time of the incident in Ottawa.
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