{"id":32431,"date":"2018-05-14T13:24:51","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T20:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=32431"},"modified":"2018-05-14T13:24:51","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T20:24:51","slug":"open-thread-5-14-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/14\/open-thread-5-14-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread &#8211; 5\/14\/2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It is sweltering.&#160; At least I am well shorn.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&#8217;s took me 3:58 (average 5:02).&#160; To do it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2018-05-14-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RPLILOMH71I\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/msnbcleanforward\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">MSNBC Channel<\/a>): <\/font>White House leakers leak about leaking<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/RPLILOMH71I?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Now, we all know that Trump loves to be the \u2026umm\u2026 subject of leaks, and since Putin cut off his Russian hooker ration, I bet he makes do with this. <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alternet.org\/trumps-new-drug-pricing-plan-just-another-nonsensical-scam-designed-blame-foreigners\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Trump promised to rein in drug prices. It was his only sensible campaign promise.<\/p>\n<p>But the plan he announced Friday does little but add another battering ram to his ongoing economic war against America\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n<p>He calls it \u201cAmerican patients first,\u201d and takes aim at what he calls \u201cforeign freeloading.\u201d The plan will pressure foreign countries to relax their drug price controls.<\/p>\n<p>America\u2019s trading partners \u201cneed to pay more because they\u2019re using socialist price controls, market access controls, to get unfair pricing,\u201d said Alex Azar, Trump\u2019s Secretary of Health and Human Services, who, perhaps not incidentally, was a former top executive at the drug maker Eli Lilly and Company.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Nations that are social democracies do not allow greedy drug companies to overcharge, so their people get affordable meds. The Republican solution is for Social Democracies to screw their citizens, claiming it would reduce US consumer drug costs. That&#8217;s a lie. It would just increase greedy drug company profit.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/05\/13\/business\/education-department-for-profit-colleges.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Members of a special team at the Education Department that had been investigating widespread abuses by for-profit colleges have been marginalized, reassigned or instructed to focus on other matters, according to current and former employees.<\/p>\n<p>The unwinding of the team has effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges where top hires of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had previously worked.<\/p>\n<p>During the final months of the Obama administration, the team had expanded to include a dozen or so lawyers and investigators who were looking into advertising, recruitment practices and job placement claims at several institutions, including DeVry Education Group.<\/p>\n<p>The investigation into DeVry ground to a halt early last year.<strong> Later, in the summer, Ms. DeVos named Julian Schmoke, a former dean at DeVry, as the team\u2019s new supervisor<\/strong>. [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">For-profit fraud is an educational goal of the Republican Reich.&#160; <strong>RESIST<\/strong>!! <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/0514Cartoon.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Fat chance! \ud83d\ude41<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is sweltering.&#160; At least I am well shorn. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&#8217;s took me 3:58 (average 5:02).&#160; To do it click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): White House leakers leak about leaking &#160; Now, we all know that Trump loves to be the \u2026umm\u2026 subject of leaks, and <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/14\/open-thread-5-14-2018\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}