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this is u
this is u andresr/Getty

Bad News:

The Tax Bill Adds $1 Trillion to the Deficit: And gives most benefits to corporations. While most Americans will initially see a tax cut, those breaks will expire, and the longterm benefits go to the wealthy. The legislation also eliminates the individual mandate for health insurance, which will likely boost the number of uninsured people by 13 million.

Ivanka Has No Idea What She’s Talking About: Do not look directly into her vacant eyes.

UN Poverty Investigator Says American Dream Is an “American Illusion”: Philip Alston just issued the conclusions of his study, which asked (according to KNKX):

“Are those in poverty able to live with dignity? What does a government do to protect those who are most vulnerable?” To gather information, he traveled to Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Alabama; Puerto Rico; and West Virginia. He talked to poverty experts, civil society organizations, government officials and regular people born or thrust into poverty.

Alston said he was shocked by what he found.

“I saw sewage-filled yards in states where governments don’t consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility.” And “people who had lost all of their teeth” because dental care wasn’t covered by their health insurance plans. And homeless people who were told to move by a police officer who had “no answer when asked where they could move to.”

And: “People in the U.S. seem particularly unable to stomach the sight of homeless,” Alston said, “yet are unwilling to enact policies to help them.”

Can You Break Your Lease Over a Beetle Infestation? This question, and many more, will be answered in Heidi’s new column for confounding questions from renters.

Six Amtrak Derailment Survivors Give Lawsuit Notice: Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson said Wednesday his company would pay for the medical and incidental expenses of crash victims, but there also may be a legal cap on what Amtrak shells out.

ICE Director Says There Was “No Retaliation” Against Immigrant Who Spoke to the Seattle Times: Baltazar “Rosas” Aburto Gutierrez, who had been living in the US for two decades, spoke to the Seattle Times about his girlfriend’s arrest in June, after which he was arrested. He said the agent who took him into custody said, “You are Rosas. You are the one from the newspaper.” ICE is now telling Governor Jay Inslee that one event had nothing to do with the other. “To me it’s clearly spin,” Aburto Gutierrez’s lawyer said. “This is not normal behavior on the part of ICE in my experience.”

The Circle of Contamination Is Growing at Hanford: Fourteen cars are now reported as contaminated with radioactive waste from a leak at the Plutonium Finishing Plant—one of them on the inside. KNKX reports that investigators are now starting to check out houses in the Tri-Cities that may have been impacted.

Five Women Accuse Alternet Executive Editor of Harassing Them: The allegations against Don Hazen include unwanted touching, making unwanted advances, showing a photo of his erect penis, sending explicit e-mails, and “mandatory sexual harassment meetings.”

Some Possibly Good News: A federal judge in Seattle is considering a request to lift the ban on refugee families from mostly Muslim countries entering the US. Judge James Robart said he would make his decision before Christmas.

Port of Seattle Becomes First in Country to Set Up 10 Year Transition to Sustainable Aviation Fuels: At the last Port Commission meeting, port commissioners passed a motion for a minimum of 10 percent of aviation fuels used at the port to be produced locally from sustainable sources by 2028. The same motion called for 50 percent of fuel to be sustainable by 2050.

Papa John Lost His Papa Job: The guy who claimed NFL protests against racial injustice were impacting his pizza sales is out. 🍕🍕🍕

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