FirstCircle @ FirstCircle @lemmy.ml

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161

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388

Joined

2 yr. ago

Some might be surprised to learn that this kind of exploitation on tribal lands didn't only happen in the Southwest. For example, there's the Midnite Mine on the Spokane rez in E.WA.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? People have been locked-away for treason after lesser acts than Jan 6. Treason laws in the United States . If the feds won't prosecute, I'd hope the state AGs would start to look into these kind of public displays of insurrection.

There were always religious nutters (Xians naturally) on AM, as long as I can remember, but they used to be a minority. AM was mostly pop music and C&W and talk shows. One thing I now look back on nostalgically was Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM show that aired really late at night. I used to listen to it on my long drive home from work and he'd have all kinds of crazy conspiracy theorists (UFOs, aliens, Area51 activities) and paranormal "researchers" &etc &etc on the show. Great fun, and despite the conspiracy stuff, largely non-political. Everyone understood it was "entertainment". You can probably find recorded episodes online. Satan knows what kind of horrible garbage is on AM these days, but I'm not about to go find out either.

It's not a flap (back of the wing), it's a slat (front of the wing), says so right in TFA.

Yeah, and I've gotta wonder if the women this pathetic loser was preying on got any say on the deal and on the faux-punishment that was handed out? If I was a victim and the AG came to me and said "hey we can skip the trial, the dirtbag will get a slap on the wrist, but he'll never work as a cop around here again, whatddya say?" I imagine I'd say "duck no, I want to see this bastard do time and pay six-figure restitution, preferably to us victims".

The AG's press release is an infuriating read.

[WA attorney general]Ferguson filed a lawsuit in February 2022, accusing Providence of billing and aggressively collecting money from low-income Washingtonians without determining if they qualified for financial assistance.

Ferguson’s Consumer Protection investigation started in 2020, following complaints about collection practices at Swedish. It revealed Providence engaged in numerous practices between 2018 and 2022 that prevented patients from accessing financial assistance. Providence trained employees on aggressive and deceptive collection tactics. Their script included:

• “Ask every patient every time” to pay outstanding medical costs;
• “Don’t accept the first no;”
• "If a patient declines the first request, ask for partial payment;"
• "Use phrasing that signals to patients “payment is expected.”

The lawsuit asserted that Providence knew many of its patients were likely eligible for financial assistance and not only failed to inform them, but also kept collecting payments from them. In fact, Providence sent thousands of patients it identified as “presumptively” qualified for financial assistance to debt collectors. Internal emails revealed Providence did this because it knew those patients were more likely to pay their bills if collection attempts continued.

Moreover, starting in 2019, Providence sent thousands of Medicaid patients to debt collectors. Medicaid enrollees are among the lowest income Washingtonians, and are deemed eligible for financial assistance under Providence’s own policies. Providence staff caught the issue early and raised concerns to leadership. In fact, according to internal records, one employee warned: “We are sending the poor to bad debt and not treating them the same as other patients.” Providence did not correct the problem for more than two years.

Also this article (NPR).

Here, the local gov't collects all of our plastic/paper recyclables, burns them in a gas-fired incinerator, and then claims that they're turning "waste to energy". There's zero recycling happening locally AFAIK despite all the consumer-focused marketing (prominently-labeled curb-side "recycling bins" for example, not "incinerator bins").

Long-time Bitwarden customer, and I did the exact same thing. Prior to that I hadn't even been aware of the OTP functionality in the BW desktop app. Glad I made the move early and don't have to scramble now. This new deadline is going to be a real pain for a lot of Authy desktop users. Weird that the company didn't even feel the need to explain to users the reason for the drastic EOL change. I've used some of their voice/sms services in the past but if I need that kind of thing in the future I'm going to have a good look around at the competitors before I write a line of code or open my wallet again.

When I read that part I immediately felt terrible for that kid. Can you imagine the kind of gawd-awful BS she has to listen to and play along with, day in, day out, year after year.

No, no, it's the "boarder" patrol.

(2019)

U.S. gov't support for the mass murder of civilians to further its political goals? Why, who would ever have thought ...?

Good catch. Bad on Biden. Many would argue that "Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans" includes Biden of course.

Oh I believe you, I block aggressively and lots of sites break because of it. Not so much YT though, oddly enuf, and I'm a dedicated freeloader there. Mostly I encounter IP-based blocking due to the VPN and using European IPs (I'm in the States).

That's curious, I use UBlock Origin and Cookie Autodelete on Firefox and I'm not getting blocked, with or without my VPN connected. The CNN page loads via Tor and the Tor browser too.

Portland, so get ready for the internet trolls to start carping about the homelessness problem there and trying to blame this, somehow, some way, on the unhoused. Pay no attention to AKA or Boeing, it's the shareholders who are the victims here after all!

many Americans riding the benefits of higher wagers

Ah, the Casino Economy.

https://ipleak.net/ is one that I use.

Thanks for the well-written, thoughtful reply.

I'm not convinced by the "poor representation" argument though. Every democracy I've ever heard of has some kind of "proportional representation" baked-in to it which rather naturally means that regions with gazillions of people in them will get more legislative attention than regions that are sparsely populated. How else would one organize it that would give farmers and other rural dwellers an equal voice as all those city folk? Allocation of representation by square mileage? Maybe there are tweaks that are being done, or that could be done, but I haven't given the issue a lot of thought, maybe because I come from a tiny little state (both pop. & land area) and it's pretty much understood we wouldn't have the clout in D.C. that, say, MA would have, and that always seemed like "well of course, how else would it work and still be fair?" even if we were overlooked or, as you say "got the shaft" intermittently.

If people in E. WA were so concerned about not getting represented, maybe they could look to the kind of people they consistently elect. For example, CMR, who never met an orange ass she didn't want to kiss but has done virtually nothing of note over her long time in office. Then there's the premium Christofascist and domestic terrorist Matt Shea.

An investigative report commissioned by the House, issued on December 1, 2019, found that Shea "participated in an act of domestic terrorism against the United States", organized and supported "three armed conflicts of political violence", and advocated replacing the government with a theocracy and "the killing of all males who do not agree." A former ally of Shea provided documents showing that Shea and his supporters were planning to seize control of the region after the outbreak of civil war, installing Shea as governmental leader in order to institute "constitutional changes" to "sanctify to Jesus Christ".

And finally, off the top of my head, there's the soon-to-be-former-mayor of Spokane Nadine Woodward who's done fuck-all in office but is happy to cozy up on stage in public with the likes of Shea and others of his ilk. You're saying that E. WA is wanting "good" representation, but look at who voters are electing, over and over again. Are they electing them for promising to go up against Big Ag Tech on behalf of farmers? I think not.

I'd love to find out that it was true that these right-wing secessionist-type fantasies were motivated mostly by sensible economic concerns (like right-to-repair, which I'm totally in favor of from what (little) I know of it) and environmental protection concerns (i.e. scientific management of water supplies with the good of the people and not corporate profits in mind, and with an front-and-center acknowledgment of anthropogenic global warming, including global warming contributed to, potentially, by farming practices - again not my area of expertise). I'd love to hear that, in the eyes of the aggrieved secessionists in the PNW, it's 110% fine for old Tim and Jim to hook up down in, say, Rockford, and live happy lives together, but instead what we get is domestic terrorism at "gay friendly" churches.

As you say, the secessionists are primarily, as far as I can tell, E.OR/E.WA/ID Christofascists looking to establish a theocracy. If they were just regular, non-theocratic, non-totalitarian, anti-book-ban, pro-science, thoughtful people who weren't dripping with hatred about Those (other) People, I might be be able to listen to them and reason with them and those allegedly-"over represented" people in the west might be happy to do the same. As it stands now though, they're just seditionists who are hoping to "get ahead" through violence and intimidation.

Notes:

• The very idea of re-drawing these state boundaries seems unworkable in a great many ways, but if one were to think about it, I wonder how the seditionists would propose to treat all the Natives and their lands? What if the tribes were to give the new state idea a thumbs-down, which I could easily imagine happening. Would the seditionists advocate taking tribal lands by force (again)?
• I've lived in WA state since 1990 and E. WA for the last 20 yrs.

I take issue with there being "merit" to the idea. That would depend on what you consider meritorious. Is there more (or less?) merit to lumping all yer hillbillies and rednecks and racists and Christian fascists into fewer and larger geographically contiguous regions/governments? Why? Efficiency? What kind of efficiency? W/o all the tax dollars generated along the I-5 corridor this hypothetical state would have an economy running on fumes from the very start. Efficiency in achieving that elsewhere-mentioned Handmaid's Tale perfect society? OK I'll give you that maybe.

It might be meritorious in my view (though highly debatable) for the crazy backwards eastern PNW (namely ID) to be brought under the control of Olympia and/or Salem and thereby civilized, but, funny, this crowd I'm referring to isn't talking about that, at all.

See also: the proposed State of Jefferson