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Mayor Plans To Remove Baltimore’s Confederate Monuments « CBS Baltimore
BALTIMORE (WJZ/AP) — After violence erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend in response to the city’s plan to remove a Robert E. Lee statue from a park there, Mayor Catherine Pugh has renewed efforts to remove similar confederate imagery from Baltimore.

A white nationalist group gathered in the central Virginia college town Saturday to protest the statue removal, and others arrived to counter-protest. A car plowed into a crowd of the counter-protesters, killing one person and hurting more than a dozen others.


Confederate Monuments at Kentucky Courthouse Will Be Moved, Lexington Mayor Says - The New York Times
Hours after a protest organized by white nationalists against the removal of a Confederate monument erupted into violence and chaos in Charlottesville, Va., the mayor of Lexington, Ky., said he would speed up plans to relocate similar statues from the city’s former courthouse.

The mayor, Jim Gray, said in a statement that plans to move the statues were planned before the violence in Charlottesville, which killed a 32-year-old woman and injured at least 34 others. He said what happened there “accelerated the announcement I intended to make next week.”

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Silicon Valley Tightens Its Grip on Free Speech | LifeZette
Political totalitarianism is coming to America, and it is being ushered in not by government thugs in jackboots but by progressive activists and their allies in Silicon Valley.

In a chilling oped published in The New York Times on July 14, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, argued that so-called “hate speech” is the same thing as physical violence because it may possibly cause emotionally fragile individuals stress — and should be made illegal.

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Violent crime rises in big cities; Chicago leads in homicide rate - Washington Times
Violent crime is on the rise this year in some of the country’s biggest cities, according to statistics, which find Chicago still leads as the deadliest city while homicide cases have spiked in Baltimore and New Orleans.

The 62 police departments that provided data for the Major Cities Chiefs Association’s midyear crime survey reported 3,081 homicides in the first six months of the year, an increase of 3 percent over the same time last year.

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Right-Wing Rally Goes Ahead in Seattle Despite Violence in Virginia - NBC News
Police and protesters clashed during a right-wing rally and counter-demonstration in Seattle on Sunday, but there were no immediate reports of serious injuries.

The dueling events came one day after a woman was killed and 19 other people were injured in a white nationalist protest and counter-protest in Virginia.

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NBC News on Twitter: "Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler was chased away by protesters during a press conference in Charlottesville https://t.co/5HOnoc0yal"
Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler was chased away by protesters during a press conference in Charlottesville

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Military pushes back on Trump's transgender ban | TheHill
op members of the military are openly opposing President Trump’s move to ban transgender troops, breaking with their commander-in-chief on whether the policy is necessary.

Trump said on Thursday that he's doing the military “a great favor” by instituting the ban, but several service leaders don't see it that way.

Hours after Trump’s comments, recently confirmed Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer said he will follow any order the president gives on transgender troops, but that “any patriot” should be allowed to serve.

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Bernie Sanders Plans to Introduce 'Medicare for All' Plan Soon | Vermont News | US News
ST. ALBANS, Vt. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders told a group of seniors that the solution to the country's health care crisis is to make Medicare available to all, a proposal he plans to introduce shortly after Congress reconvenes in September.

The Vermont independent visited the Franklin County Senior Center in St. Albans on Monday answering questions about health care, social security and President Donald Trump's budget before heading to an East Fairfield dairy farm to hear from several dairy farmers about the challenges facing the industry, as well their health care concerns.

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Feds Collect Record Income and Payroll Taxes Through July
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government collected record amounts of both individual income taxes and payroll taxes through the first ten months of fiscal 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016 through the end of July), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Through July, the federal government collected approximately $1,312,691,000,000 in individual income taxes.

At the same time, it collected $976,278,000,000 in Social Security and other payroll taxes.

Prior to this year, fiscal 2015 held the record for individual income tax collections through July. That year, the Treasury collected $1,309,431,860,000 (in constant 2017 dollars) in individual income taxes in the first ten months of the fiscal  year.

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Americans' debt level notches a new record high
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Americans' debt level notched another record high in the second quarter, after having earlier in the year surpassed its pre-crisis peak, on the back of modest rises in mortgage, auto and credit card debt, where delinquencies jumped.

Total U.S. household debt was $12.84 trillion in the three months to June, up $552 billion from a year ago, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York report published on Tuesday.

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China's debt on a 'dangerous trajectory': IMF
Beijing (AFP) - China's massive debt is on a "dangerous" path, raising the risk of a sharp slowdown in growth, the IMF warned on Tuesday, urging Beijing to speed up structural reforms.

The International Monetary Fund, which has repeatedly warned China over its ballooning debt, said in a new report that the world's second largest economy must turn toward a sustainable growth path.

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Mostly Black Dallas Group Forms To Protect Confederate Monuments « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The debate about Confederate statues in Dallas intensified on Monday as a group made up of predominantly African Americans called for the monuments to remain standing.

Several cities across America have now begun to remove or talk about removing Confederate markers shortly after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville turned deadly.

Former city council member Sandra Crenshaw thinks removing the statues won’t help.

“I’m not intimidated by Robert E. Lee’s statue. I’m not intimidated by it. It doesn’t scare me,” said Crenshaw. “We don’t want America to think that all African Americans are supportive of this.”

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Record Number Of Fund Managers Say "Stocks Are Overvalued" As They Rush To Buy Nasdaq | Zero Hedge
Another month, another paradox emerges in the latest Bank of America Fund Managers Survey, which on one hand reveals that a record number, or 46%, of Wall Street respondents say stocks are "overvalued"...

‘Ominous’ Sign for Stocks Seen by Bank of America in Fund Survey - Bloomberg
Money managers who’ve watched the surge in corporate profits take U.S. equities to records are starting to fret about earnings growth, and that’s an “ominous” sign, Bank of America says.

Just 33 percent of managers in the bank’s latest survey say corporate profits profits will improve, down from 58 percent at the start of the year.

The drop represents a “warning sign for equities over bonds, high yield over investment grade, and cyclical sectors over defensive ones,” chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett wrote in a note Tuesday. “Further deterioration is likely to cause risk-off trades.”

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I owe my soul to the company store!

Amazon opens 'Instant Pickup' points in U.S. brick-and-mortar push
BERKELEY, Ca (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is rolling out pickup points in the United States where shoppers can retrieve items immediately after ordering them, shortening delivery times from hours to minutes, the company said on Tuesday.

The world's largest online retailer has launched 'Instant Pickup' points around five college campuses, such as the University of California at Berkeley, it said. Amazon has plans to open more sites by the end of the year including one in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood.

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Durham protesters topple Confederate soldier statue on Main Street on Monday, August 14, 2017. | The Herald Sun
DURHAM
A protest in downtown Durham on Monday night left a statue of a Confederate soldier erected nearly a century ago crumpled on the ground.

Sheriff’s deputies recorded the event but did not intervene as a protester climbed a ladder and slipped a yellow, bungie-like cord around the soldier’s head and arm and a group pulled the cord.

The statue did a somersault, collapsing against the stone pedestal in front of the old county courthouse on East Main Street.

Protesters cheered and started to kick the crumpled mass.

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University of San Francisco to host blacks-only student orientation - The College Fix
Program will ‘address the specific needs’ of black students

The University of San Francisco this week is scheduled to host a segregated orientation dedicated to black students, a program that takes place in addition to its standard welcoming activities for all students.

The Black Student Orientation is slated for  Aug. 18, the day prior to the university’s New Student Orientation.

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BREAKING: Texas permanently bans taxpayer funding of abortion | News | LifeSite
AUSTIN, Texas, August 15, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed today a bill to restrict state funding for abortion insurance.

The new law will keep Texans from having to pay for elective abortions through their insurance plans.

"As a firm believer in Texas values I am proud to sign legislation that ensures no Texan is ever required to pay for a procedure that ends the life of an unborn child,” Gov. Abbott said. “This bill prohibits insurance providers from forcing Texas policy holders to subsidize elective abortions. I am grateful to the Texas legislature for getting this bill to my desk, and working to protect innocent life this special session.”

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Abrams calls for removal of Confederate faces off Stone Mountain | Political Insider blog
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams called for the removal of the giant carving that depicts three Confederate war leaders on the face of state-owned Stone Mountain, saying it “remains a blight on our state and should be removed.”

“We must never celebrate those who defended slavery and tried to destroy the union,” Abrams said in a series of tweets posted early Tuesday, a response to the deadly violence sparked by white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Va.

Removing the faces of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson would take a monster of a sandblaster and require a change in state law. The Georgia code has a clear mandate for the memorial, saying it should be “preserved and protected for all time as a tribute to the bravery and heroism of the citizens of this state who suffered and died in their cause.”

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Corporations New Arbiters Of Morality | The Daily Caller
Major corporations are increasingly expected to play a societal role beyond just providing goods or services: more and more often, they’re expected to weigh in on issues of public morality.

In the most instance, the CEOs of Merck and UnderArmor stepped down from the White House manufacturing council following Trump’s initial response to the Charlottesville violence that was widely panned in the media as insufficiently tough on white nationalists. Both CEOs’ decisions to step down received applause from public figures, including in the media. “I’m going out to buy Under Armour,” declared MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.

Domain hosting company GoDaddy.com booted neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer from from its servers late Sunday night, citing violations of its terms of service after the website posted an article trashing the 32-year-old woman who died on Saturday.

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Women kicked out organized crime in this Mexican town - San Antonio Express-News
More than 180,000 people have been killed in Mexico since then-President Felipe Calderon sent the army to fight organized crime groups in his native state of Michoacan in 2006. But one small town in that state says it hasn't had a homicide since 2011 because its residents - led by women - took up arms to kick out groups who had expanded from drug trafficking into illegal logging. While overall in Michoacán, federal authorities say 614 people have been killed this year, a 16 percent increase from 2016, the people of Cherán say they've become immune to serious crime. They expelled the politicians and local police, and community members now patrol the area wearing uniforms emblazoned with the slogan "For Justice, Security and the Restoration of Our Territory."

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Armed Venezuelan soldiers caught in Guyana begging for food | Miami Herald
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA
A handful of Venezuelan soldiers — armed and in uniform — were caught in neighboring Guyana last week begging for food, local police reported, another sign of Venezuela’s deepening hunger crisis.

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End of the checkout line: the looming crisis for American cashiers | Technology | The Guardian
The day before a fully automated grocery store opened its doors in 1939, the inventor Clarence Saunders took out a full page advertisement in the Memphis Press-Scimitar warning “old duds” with “cobwebby brains” to keep away. The Keedoozle, with its glass cases of merchandise and high-tech system of circuitry and conveyer belts, was cutting edge for the era and only those “of spirit, of understanding” should dare enter.

Inside the gleaming Tennessee store, shoppers inserted a key into a slot below their chosen items, producing a ticker tape list that, when fed into a machine, sent the goods traveling down a conveyer belt and into the hands of the customer. “People could just get what they want – boom, it comes out – and move on,” recalled Jim Riot, 75, who visited the store as a child. “It felt like it was The Jetsons.”

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Billionaire Richard Branson weighs in on free cash handouts
Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson is the latest in a string of iconic businessmen to talk about cash handouts, or universal basic income, as a solution to jobs being replaced by technology.

"With the acceleration of [artificial intelligence] and other new technology ... the world is changing fast," Branson writes in a post published this week.

"A lot of exciting new innovations are going to be created, which will generate a lot of opportunities and a lot of wealth, but there is a real danger it could also reduce the amount of jobs," he says.

"This will make experimenting with ideas like basic income even more important in the years to come."

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Yale University censors ‘hostile’ historic artwork - The College Fix
Committee on Art in Public Spaces deems image ‘not appropriate’

Officials at Yale University recently censored a stone work of art on campus depicting an armed Native American and Puritan side by side, which has been described as a “hostile” image by the Ivy League institution’s alumni magazine.

The stone carving was edited to cover up the Puritan’s musket, while the Native American’s bow was left as is, reports Yale Alumni Magazine.

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Proposed Legislation Would Outlaw ‘Distracted Walking’ In Stamford « CBS New York
STAMFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) — Drivers aren’t the only ones who could be fined for texting or talking.

Now, there’s a proposal to keep pedestrians safe that could set off a national trend.

Crossing busy Broad Street in downtown Stamford can be a challenge, even if you’re not staring down at text messages on your cell phone.

“I see mothers pushing their babies, they’re texting and I’m like how do y’all do all this at this intersection? That scares me,” Dawn Thompson said.

“There been many times where I looked down on my phone and then notice that there’s a car coming right at me, and I feel like a moron whenever that happens,” Nicole Neurohr said.

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Dem to introduce impeachment articles over Charlottesville | TheHill
Rep. Steve Cohen (D), a Tennessee liberal, announced Thursday that he will introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump based on his defense of the white supremacists who participated in a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend. 

“Instead of unequivocally condemning hateful actions by neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Klansmen following a national tragedy, the President said 'there were very fine people on both sides.' There are no good Nazis. There are no good Klansmen,” Cohen said in a statement. 

“President Trump has failed the presidential test of moral leadership.”

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