The majority of voters did not vote for Donald Trump for president; the majority of voters did not vote for Republican candidates for the Senate; and fewer than 51% of voters cast their ballots for Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The Republican Party now controls the White House, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, no matter how that came to be. I believe it is worth bearing in mind that a majority of U.S. citizens did not support the Republican winners.   read more

From 2000 to 2011, the median household net worth for the bottom 20% plunged by $5,124—while the richest 20%, the highest quintile, enjoyed a jump of $61,379. Those aged 35 to 44 had the largest percentage decrease in net worth, 41.4%. The ages 65 to 69 really are the golden years; these seniors saw the largest percentage increase in net worth, going up by 25.9%.   read more

One ambassador snuck in under the wire before the State Department made its decision. Daniel Shapiro, the U.S. envoy to Israel, took the challenge and was drenched. He then challenged U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, but she didn’t get a chance to participate before State sent its cable to U.S. missions. As of August 22, more than $53 million had been donated toward ALS research as a result of the Ice Bucket Challenge, according to the ALS Association.   read more

Hart returned to the NTSB as a member in 2009 and was named the board’s vice chairman the same year and has served there since. He has represented the board on investigations including the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, a casino bus crash, and recently was the face of the NTSB during the investigation into the 2013 Asiana airliner crash in San Francisco and several oil tank car accidents.   read more

On July 22, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Jonodev Osceola Chaudhuri to be chairman of the three-member National Indian Gaming Commission. Chaudhuri has been a member of the commission since September 2013 and its acting chairman since October. In 2012, Chaudhuri was named senior counselor to the assistant secretary for Indian affairs in the Department of the Interior, where he served for a year before moving to the gaming board.   read more

In June, when ISIS claimed to have taken charge of five U.S.-made helicopters, the group tweeted that they expected Americans to honor their warranty and service the copters. Jeremy Binnie told The Center for Public Integrity that the M1117 fighting vehicle, manufactured by Textron Marine and Land Systems, has become a favorite of ISIS forces. “I’m sure Textron will be very happy,” Binnie said. “Their vehicle has the thumbs up from the Islamic State.”   read more

In 75 of the biggest cities in the country 60% or more of the police officers live outside the city in which they work. Overall, 49% of black officers, 47% of Hispanic officers and only 35% of white officers live and work in the same city.   read more

A landfill in Wayne County, near Detroit, is one of the few places in the eastern United States with a license to take such waste. As such, drillers and other producers of radioactive materials from nearby states with tougher environmental laws send their waste there.   read more

In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Among its provisions was the order that “the Attorney General shall, through appropriate means, acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers.” The Justice Department was also required to publish an annual report on the data collected. And…that’s pretty much the last anyone heard of that.   read more

UltraViolet says the ads aren’t political. They’re “designed to elevate issues like paycheck fairness, minimum wage increases, and paid family leave and to expose the ongoing attacks on women’s health and economic security,” Karin Roland of UltraViolet, told ThinkProgress. “The goal is to shame and pressure candidates with industries that rely on tourism to make them champions for these causes.”   read more

But many of the Americans with a database entry are in the system only because they were arrested, even though they were never charged or convicted of a crime. Records are often not updated to reflect that an individual was found not guilty or guilty of a minor offense, such as trespassing while exercising free speech rights during a demonstration.   read more

One big problem with the Lone Star State is its requirement of those seeking information to reveal who they are and to provide credit card information in order to access Texas’s corporate registry. In other words, Texas puts more emphasis on personal disclosure in the course of supposedly facilitating corporate disclosure.   read more

Sometimes even a six-figure salary isn’t enough. Ron Packard, who until early this year was CEO of charter school operator K12, made $4.1 million in 2013, according to Conniff. K12 has been accused by the state of Florida of attempting to falsify records, using unqualified teachers, and booking classes of more than 100 students.   read more

Some invoices billed the Army for employees working more than 24 hours a day and DynCorp also is said to have charged the Army for workers unqualified for the positions they were supposed to be filling. The earlier IG investigation showed the Army being billed for one employee working 1,208 hours over 12 days. That’s a lot of multi-tasking considering there are only 288 hours in 12 days.   read more

In Yemen, where a U.S. drone strike last year killed 12 members of a wedding party on December 12, 2013, families of those killed or injured collectively received more than $1 million. That’s more money than the U.S. gave to survivors of similar attacks in Afghanistan over an entire year. The disclosures about the Yemeni blood-money payouts also indicated that those targeted in the attack had nothing to do with terrorism, which the U.S. previously insisted.   read more

Although the population of Ferguson is 67% African-American, the mayor is a white Republican and five of the six members of the city council are white, as are 50 of Ferguson’s 53 police officers. One of the main reasons for this disparity is that the city holds its local elections separate from state and federal balloting. Residents vote for governor or president in even-numbered years, but Ferguson residents go to the polls to elect the mayor and city council in April of odd-numbered years.   read more

Regionally, organic foods rated the highest in the West (54%), followed by 47% in the Midwest, 43% in the South and 39% in the East. Half of urbanities say they try to eat organic foods, while 46% of those in the suburbs said the same thing. Only 37% of rural and small-town residents try to include organic foods in their diets.   read more