Category: Veterans – Patriotism

You don’t need to walk 10,000 steps a day — walking faster is what counts to protect you from heart disease and cancer

Insider

You don’t need to walk 10,000 steps a day — walking faster is what counts to protect you from heart disease and cancer

Gabby Landsverk – September 14, 2022

a person with dark curly hair wearing black pants and a white T shirt, walking on a brightly lit sidewalk in front of a stone building during the day
Walking at least 3,800 steps a day may help prevent dementia, and hitting up to 9,800 steps at a brisk pace is ideal, according to a new study. 
  • There’s even more research that daily walking can help prevent early death and dementia. 
  • As few as 3,800 daily steps may stave off illness, with more benefits for every 2,000 extra steps you take.
  • Walking faster, at about 2.7 to 3 miles an hour, may be even better for health, according to data.  

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Walking is a great way to improve your health and stave off cognitive decline and other age-related ailments, even if you only do a moderate amount each day, new research suggests. 

While 10,000 steps a day is considered the ideal to improve health, as few as 3,800 steps per day has benefits, and walking at a faster pace is even better for you, according to a study published September 6 in JAMA Neurology.

Researchers from the University of Sydney looked at data from 78,430 mostly white UK adults aged 40 to 70, comparing step counts, average speed, and health outcomes over about seven years of follow-up. 

They found that for every 2,000 steps participants took per day, on average, their risk of early death was 8-11 percent lower, up to 10,000 steps a day. 

But walking just 3,800 steps a day had benefits, specifically for brain health, reducing the risk of dementia by 25 percent, according to data. People who walked about 9,800 steps per day had a 50 percent lower risk of dementia. 

Walking pace and intensity also made a difference for health outcomes, with faster walkers showing greater benefits for cognitive health and prevention of illnesses like heart disease and cancer, according to data.

The optimal speed for a 30 minute walk was about 112 steps per minute, slightly faster than what previous research has identified as a healthy, brisk walking speed of 2.7 miles an hour, or 100 steps per minute.

Participants got more benefits in fewer steps if they were purposeful with their walking, and did it with the intention of exercising rather than simply moving from room to room during their day. Researchers found the ideal amount of purposeful walking was around 6,000 steps a day. 

The findings suggest that both walking distance and speed could be helpful tools for improving health and reducing risk of illness, according to the researchers. 

“The take-home message here is that for protective health benefits, people could not only ideally aim for 10,000 steps a day but also aim to walk faster,” Dr Matthew Ahmadi, co-lead author of the study and research fellow at the University of Sydney, said in a press release. 

Previous research supports the idea that vigorous walking is good for you, even if you get less than 10,000 steps

Earlier studies have also found a fast walking pace and shorter step count may have benefits. 

A 2022 study found a brisk walking pace, more than three miles an hour, was most effective for slowing signs of biological aging, potentially leading to a longer, healthier life by as much as 16 years. 

And one 2019 study found that walking seemed to reduce the risk of early death in as few as 4,400 steps per day.

The idea that walking 10,000 steps per day is optimal may be as much based in marketing as in science, Daniel Lieberman, a Harvard paleoanthropologist who has studied the evolution of exercise, previously told Insider.

The number was popularized by a Japanese company to help sell the first commercial pedometer, and 10,000 was chosen because it was both catchy and easy to remember. 

Aiming for 10,000 steps can be overly ambitious, since it’s a total of about five miles, but having a convenient goal may be helpful if it motivates you to be active. 

“We all have deep fundamental instincts to avoid unnecessary activity, so we need those nudges to help people get started,” he said.

Complaints about inaccurate credit reports are soaring

MoneyWatch

Complaints about inaccurate credit reports are soaring

Khristopher J. Brooks – September 14, 2022

Americans are on pace to set a record this year for the most complaints about credit report inaccuracies filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to Consumer Reports. 

Credit score concerns accounted for slightly more than half of all complaints sent to the federal agency in 2020 and 2021, the nonprofit consumer advocacy group found. But during the first half of this year, that number has ballooned to three-quarters of all complaints.

“Mistakes on credit reports are all too common and can have serious consequences, especially for those who are already struggling to make ends meet,” Consumer Reports policy analyst Syed Ejaz said in a statement. “No one should have to pay to access their own financial information.”

Consumer Reports urged the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — to take action to ensure that people’s credit reports are accurate. One way to accomplish this, it said, is to stop making consumers pay for their report. Equifax and TransUnion charge between $20 and $30 a month for unlimited access to personal credit reports. Experian’s reports are free.

Under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, consumers can get a free, complete credit report once a year at the site annualcreditreport.com. Experian and TransUnion charge consumers for repeated access to their reports.

Free access

Seeing your credit report once a year isn’t enough, Ejaz said in a letter to the credit bureaus. Consumers need constant and free access to their report so they can quickly spot and dispute errors, he argued. “[C]onsumers should be able to access their credit reports securely and for free at any time, as frequently as they deem necessary,” Ejaz said.

Companies use credit scores for employment decisions, while landlords use them to assess new tenants, and insurance companies use them to set prices. So a person’s financial history shouldn’t be locked behind a paywall, Ejaz said. 

The push for unlimited free access to credit reports comes a few months after Equifax accidentally sent the wrong credit score out for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Equifax now faces a class-action lawsuit over the credit scores, which were sent out between March 17 and April 6. Federal lawmakers also have called on Equifax to explain what caused the error and how consumers will be compensated for the mistake. 

 Aside from free reports, said Ejaz in the letter, credit bureaus can also improve accuracy by:

  • Double-checking a consumer’s full name, date of birth and full Social Security number before placing a mark on someone’s credit report;
  • Letting a consumer dispute the investigation findings of a previously submitted inaccuracy dispute;
  • Mot locking a consumer out of their credit report if the person cannot answer identity questions.

Consumer Reports has launched an online petition further urging the credit bureaus to make their reports free always. 

Inaccurate credit reports have become a growing national problem in recent years, with many consumers reporting difficulty inn getting Equifax, Experian or TransUnion to delete mistakes from their file. 

An analysis from the CFPB found that the three credit bureaus collectively resolved less than 2% of credit report complaints they received in 2021, down sharply from 25% in 2019.  The number of complaints Americans sent to the CFPB about inaccurate credit reports more than doubled between 2018 and 2021, Consumer Reports said. 

California’s drought touches everyone, but water restrictions play out unevenly across communities

Los Angeles Times

California’s drought touches everyone, but water restrictions play out unevenly across communities

Soudi Jiménez – September 13, 2022

LINCOLN HEIGHTS, CA-MAY 11, 2022: Benita Perez, 55, teaches her grandson Nevaeh Perez, 1 and 1/2, how to walk at their apartment building on Thomas St. in Lincoln Heights. Area at right, below used to be all grass until a year ago, due to the drought. It's going to be a summer of brown grass and hard choices for Southern California lawn owners facing the Metropolitan Water District's one day a week watering restrictions starting June. 1. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Benita Perez teaches her grandson, Nevaeh Perez, 1, how to walk at their apartment building in Lincoln Heights. Area at right, below used to be all grass until a year ago, because of the drought. (Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

Raúl Monterroso of San Fernando knows that he can do little to help the struggling garden patio in front of his house. After all, he takes the new water restrictions seriously.

“Here, everything is dry, we have the entire irrigation system closed, my poor wife is crying over her plants,” said the Guatemala native, who stopped watering the grass on June 1 when instructions to cut outdoor watering to once a week were issued.

Further restrictions went into effect Sept. 6, when a 15-day ban through Sept. 20 was mandated by an emergency repair that shut down the 36-mile Upper Feeder pipeline that brings water from the Colorado River to Southern California. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California said that more than 4 million people are being affected by the shutdown across the region, including Beverly Hills and Malibu, Burbank and Glendale, Long Beach, the city of Inglewood and a large swathe of the South Bay, and other areas stretching as far east as Pomona.

Also under the ban is the city of San Fernando, at the northern edge of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, 92% of whose 24,000 residents are Latino.

“The reality is that when they give you the alert, you have to be aware. The measures must be followed, there is no other option,” Monterroso said.

In Long Beach, an hour’s drive south of San Fernando, businesswoman Sandy Cajas said that urgent measures are needed to maintain a steady flow of water and find new sources of it.

“We are experiencing the worst drought in decades,” she said. “What is going to happen here is that we are going to have to recycle the water due to the scarcity that exists.”

That’s one item, among many, on the state capital’s agenda. Last month, a 16-page document released by Gov. Gavin Newsom, “California’s Water Supply Strategy — Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future,” indicated that California’s water supply will shrink 10% by 2040.

Among other measures, the plan, backed by billions of dollars in investment, calls for recycling more wastewater and desalinating seawater and salty groundwater, as well as speeding up infrastructure development and pushing conservation, in hopes of providing enough water for more than 8.4 million homes by 2040.

According to Newsom, this “aggressive plan” will guarantee that future generations “continue to call California home in this hotter, drier climate.”

“The best science tells us that we need to act now to adapt to California’s water future. Climate change means drought won’t just stick around for two years at a time like it historically has — extreme weather is the new normal here in the American West and California will adapt to this new reality,” Newsom said in an Aug. 11 statement.

Yet the drought is playing out unevenly across different communities and among different households. Since June 1, about 6 million residents in Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties have had to limit outdoor water use to once a week. But not everyone is complying.

Every day since 2003, Álex Guzmán has driven a truck for work from the San Fernando Valley to Beverly Hills. The Mexican immigrant labors for a landscaping company. His task is to maintain the trees and lawns of the mansions. But, above all, to water lots and lots of plants.

Hearing that additional restrictions on water use have been implemented, Guzmán just smiles.

“We have never stopped working in Beverly Hills, we have never stopped watering mansion gardens because of the restrictions,” he said.

“We are working normally, the bosses have not told us anything about lowering the use of water,” Guzmán added.

As reported by The Times, celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Hart, Kim and Kourtney Kardashian are among the more than 2,000 customers who have received “notices of exceedance” for surpassing 150% of their monthly water budgets at least four times since the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District declared a drought emergency in late 2021.

That disparity in following restrictions shows up in many public spaces, said Patty López, a former Assemblywoman for District 39, pointing for example to the contrast between the independent city of San Fernando and Sylmar, which is part of the city of Los Angeles.

“If you look at the Veterans Memorial Community Regional Park in Sylmar it is completely green, but in the parks in our area the grass is dead,” said López, a San Fernando resident, lamenting that there is no clear, consistent application of policies, or rigorous follow-up and enforcement, throughout the region.

Under current conditions, if the use of water is not controlled, worse consequences won’t be long in coming.

Samuel Sandoval Solís, professor of water resources management at UC Davis, said that California has 30% of its water stored in dams, meaning that, because of the drought’s effects, 70% of its capacity is gone. Water level in the subsoil has dropped 25 feet since 2016.

“Everything is looking very bad,” said the academic, who has been researching, monitoring and teaching on the subject of water for 20 years.

According to a UC Berkeley study, as temperatures in California rose between 1960 and 1980, rainfall also diminished, based on climatological records and analyzing the cores of trees.

Given the current scarcities of water, and recent extreme heatwaves across the Golden State, even downpours in the upcoming rainy season wouldn’t be enough to compensate, Sandoval Solís said.

“It’s not enough to make it to the next year,” he said.

Sandoval Solís said that if Californians don’t do more to conserve water, the authorities will have to implement restrictions such as those imposed on some municipalities during a previous drought phase between 2014 and 2016. Those restrictions limited the amount of gallons per person to between 12 and 15 daily.

According to the California Dept. of Water Resources, the “current statewide median indoor residential water use is 48 gallons per capita per day, and that a quarter of California households already use less than 42 gallons per capita per day.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website states that each American uses an average of 82 gallons per day at home, including consumption.

“We need to raise awareness that we must all enter this equally,” Sandoval Solís said, “regardless of whether you live in a luxury house or in an apartment, we all have to reduce water consumption.”

Panel: Archives still not certain it has all Trump records

Associated Press

Panel: Archives still not certain it has all Trump records

Farnoush Amirit – September 13, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Archives is still not certain that it has custody of all Donald Trump’s presidential records even after the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago club, a congressional committee said in a letter Tuesday.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform revealed that staff at the Archives on an Aug. 24 call could not provide assurances that they have all of Trump’s presidential records. The committee in the letter asked the Archives to conduct an assessment of whether any Trump records remain unaccounted for and potentially in his possession.

“In light of revelations that Mr. Trump’s representatives misled investigators about his continued possession of government property and that material found at his club included dozens of ‘empty folders’ for classified material, I am deeply concerned that sensitive presidential records may remain out of the control and custody of the U.S. Government,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, wrote in the letter.

The House committee has jurisdiction over the Presidential Records Act, a 1978 law that requires the preservation of White House documents as property of the U.S. government. The request is the latest development in a months long back-and-forth between the agency and the committee, which has been investigating Trump’s handling of records.

Trump wants his White House records back so he can add them to his presidential library

Donald Trump asked for all documents taken from his Mar-a-Lago home to be returned so that he can give the files to the National Archives and Records Administration, while also claiming they will be needed again later for his presidential library.

The request also comes weeks after the FBI recovered more than 100 documents with classified markings and even more than 10,000 other government documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The search came after lawyers for Trump provided a sworn certification that all government records had been returned.

Maloney and other Democratic lawmakers on the panel have been seeking a briefing from the National Archives, but haven’t received one due to the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigation into the matter.

But the letter notes a call between Archives staff and the committee on Aug. 24, where lawmakers were informed that documents could still be missing.

As a result, Maloney wrote, the committee is asking the agency to conduct an “urgent review” of all of the government records that have been recorded from the Trump White House to determine whether any additional records remain unaccounted for and potentially in the possession of the former president.

In addition, the committee also asked for the Archives to get a personal certification from Trump “that he has surrendered all presidential records that he illegally removed from the White House after leaving office.”

The committee is asking the Archives to provide an initial assessment of this review by Sept. 27.

For Trump’s Lawyers, Legal Exposure Comes With the Job

The New York Times

For Trump’s Lawyers, Legal Exposure Comes With the Job

Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater – September 11, 2022

A dark joke has begun circulating among lawyers following the many legal travails of former President Donald Trump: MAGA actually stands for “making attorneys get attorneys.”

Over six years and nine major investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and local prosecutors, as Trump has managed to avoid removal from the presidency and indictment, it has become clear that serving as one of his lawyers is a remarkably risky job — and one that can involve considerable legal exposure. Time after time, his attorneys have been asked to testify as witnesses to potential crimes — or evaluated as possible criminal conspirators themselves.

While the consequences his lawyers faced were extraordinary when Trump was in the White House, the dangers have only intensified since he left office and have become increasingly acute in recent weeks, as the former president has come under scrutiny in two different Justice Department investigations and has been forced yet again to find lawyers willing to represent him.

Last week, a Justice Department filing revealed that Trump’s lawyers had misled federal investigators about whether he had handed over to the Justice Department all the classified documents he took from the White House when he left office. That raised questions about whether the lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, could be prosecuted themselves and might ultimately be forced to become witnesses against their client. (Bobb recently retained a lawyer, according to a person familiar with the situation.)

The revelation capped a summer in which a team of lawyers that had been advising Trump as he tried to overturn the 2020 election faced a range of repercussions across the country from federal investigators, local prosecutors, state bar associations and government accountability groups.

One of Trump’s highest-profile lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, was named as a target in a state criminal investigation in Georgia. Conservative lawyer John Eastman, who came up with what he conceded privately was an unlawful strategy to help Trump overturn the election, said he believed he was a target in that same investigation and declined to answer questions while being deposed before a grand jury. Giuliani and Eastman have also been named as subjects of interest in a flurry of federal grand jury subpoenas seeking evidence about attempts by Trump’s allies to create fake slates of electors to help keep him in office.

Two others who worked for Trump in the White House — White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone and his deputy Patrick F. Philbin — were subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in Washington investigating the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the roles that Giuliani and Eastman had played in helping Trump.

Cipollone, Philbin and at least nine other lawyers who worked for Trump have testified before the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Earlier this year, Cipollone and Philbin also were interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation into the classified documents investigation.

And 17 mostly lesser-known lawyers who represented Trump in battleground states as he tried to overturn the election are facing ethics complaints, putting them at risk of being disciplined or disbarred by bar associations or the courts.

Vigorously defending the client — even one known for unscrupulous behavior or accused of an egregious crime — is part of a lawyer’s basic job description. But attorneys are bound by a code of professional conduct that forbids them from crossing certain lines, including knowingly making false claims, filing frivolous lawsuits or motions, and doing anything to further a crime.

The adage for lawyers representing clients accused of criminality, said Fritz Scheller, a longtime Florida defense lawyer, is that at the end of the day, no matter how bad it may have been for the client, the lawyer still gets to walk out the front door of the courthouse without any personal legal issues.

“That bad day for the criminal defense attorney becomes his worst day when he leaves through the courthouse door used for defendants on their way to jail,” Scheller said.

Long before he became president, Trump viewed lawyers as tools to carry out whatever unsavory errand he required. As president, his disdain for institutional norms and demand for unswerving loyalty meant that Trump expected White House lawyers to act in his personal interest, whether or not doing so was within the bounds of the law or in the interest of the country.

He is also known for refusing to pay his lawyers for their work; last year, the Republican National Committee agreed to settle up to $1.6 million of Trump’s personal legal bills.

Six weeks after taking office, Trump made clear to his aides what he expected of his lawyers when he raged about Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, for recusing himself from the inquiry into whether Russia had meddled in the 2016 election.

“I don’t have a lawyer,” Trump said to aides in the Oval Office, including White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

Trump was referring to the notorious New York fixer who had represented and mentored Trump in the 1970s when he was an up-and-coming real estate investor. Cohn, who was chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings investigating suspected communists, was disbarred by a New York court in 1986 for unethical conduct.

Trump’s quest for such a lawyer fueled a destructive cycle: As his legal difficulties mounted, he hired more lawyers, who in turn faced problems for their work on his behalf, leading established lawyers concerned about their reputations to balk at representing him.

“There’s no way to adhere to your ethical integrity and keep your job,” Kimberly Wehle, a University of Baltimore law professor who has closely tracked the investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said of the dilemma Trump’s lawyers have faced. “There’s just no way to not step into a mess.”

The personal ramifications of doing legal work for Trump became painfully apparent to lawyers around him four months into his administration when McGahn and several of his lieutenants — fearing they could be held responsible for Trump’s conduct — retained a high-powered Washington lawyer to represent them in an investigation into whether the president had obstructed justice.

Within two years, McGahn had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills, and prosecutors had turned him into a chief witness against Trump.

Around the same time, Trump’s longtime New York lawyer, Michael Cohen, began a three-year prison sentence for his role in paying off a woman in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign to ensure she did not disclose an affair with Trump.

More recently, a long list of lawyers who have represented Trump have found themselves on the receiving end of ethics complaints and disciplinary action.

“Ultimately, we want to demonstrate to all the lawyers that the next time that Sidney Powell or Rudy Giuliani calls and says, ‘Hey, will you sign your name to this?’ they’ll say no because they’ll realize that there are professional consequences,” said Michael Teter, the director of the 65 Project, which has filed complaints against 40 lawyers who took part in suits challenging the 2020 results, including 17 last month.

Teter’s group has identified more than 110 lawyers across 26 states who agreed to participate in various plots by Trump and his allies as they sought to overturn the 2020 election. Thus far, at least 10 of them have been fined or sanctioned.

“This is part of a well-funded effort to attack every attorney who participated in any of the 2020 election challenges,” Eastman said in a statement in response to a bar complaint filed against him, adding that the goal of the 65 Project was to “shame them and make them toxic in their communities and their firms.”

The most serious repercussions have come for four lawyers who acted as ringleaders in the effort. Giuliani’s licenses to practice law in the District of Columbia and New York were suspended, while Powell has been sanctioned in Detroit and faces a disciplinary action brought by the state bar of Texas. Both are also facing separate defamation lawsuits by Dominion, a voting machine company that claims that the two acted recklessly in falsely asserting that Dominion machines had helped flip votes from Trump to Biden. The suits each seek more than $1 billion in damages.

Lin Wood is under investigation by the bar association in his home state of Georgia and was sanctioned in Michigan. Eastman, who has said he could also be a target of the Georgia inquiry, may face additional legal jeopardy; federal agents have seized his phone, and a federal judge said in March that he and Trump likely committed felonies while attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

Among the 40 lawyers whom Teter’s group has singled out for ethics complaints are James Bopp; Kenneth Chesebro; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Joseph diGenova; Jenna Ellis; Boris Epshteyn; Cleta Mitchell; and William Olson.

The House investigation into Jan. 6 has also focused on potential wrongdoing by Trump’s lawyers, particularly their role in the scheme to put forward slates of pro-Trump electors in states won by Joe Biden.

Giuliani also faced a federal investigation in New York by prosecutors who are said to be looking into his dealings in Ukraine to help Trump dig up dirt on Biden’s son. As part of that investigation, federal agents seized cellphones and computers from Giuliani in April during searches of his apartment on Madison Avenue and his Park Avenue office in Manhattan. The investigation is unlikely to result in charges.

Powell’s nonprofit organization, Defending the Republic, which raised millions of dollars by spreading lies about election fraud, is under investigation by a federal grand jury in Washington, according to two people with direct knowledge of the inquiry.

Ellis was also accused of professional misconduct in an ethics complaint in Colorado by the bipartisan legal watchdog group the States United Democracy Center. It said that Ellis assisted Trump in an “unsuccessful and potentially criminal effort” to stave off his electoral defeat.

Some lawyers who worked for Trump have managed to emerge with their careers intact, including Emmet T. Flood, who took the lead at the White House dealing with the Russia investigation, and two other lawyers who represented the president around that time: Jane Raskin and Joanna C. Hendon.

Now two of them are among the lawyers being hired by Trump’s former attorneys to represent them as they deal with the fallout from their work for Trump.

Flood is now representing Cipollone, the former White House counsel, who is facing federal investigators’ questions about Trump’s conduct. And Raskin is helping to represent Ellis.

Visa, Mastercard, AmEx to start categorizing gun shop sales

Associated Press

Visa, Mastercard, AmEx to start categorizing gun shop sales

Ken Sweet- September 10, 2022

FILE – Visa credit cards are seen on Aug. 11, 2019, in New Orleans. Payment processor Visa Inc. said late Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022, that it plans to start separately categorizing sales at gun shops. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

NEW YORK (AP) — Payment processor Visa Inc. said Saturday that it plans to start separately categorizing sales at gun shops, a major win for gun control advocates who say it will help better track suspicious surges of gun sales that could be a prelude to a mass shooting.

But the decision by Visa, the world’s largest payment processor, will likely provoke the ire of gun rights advocates and gun lobbyists, who have argued that categorizing gun sales would unfairly flag an industry when most sales do not lead to mass shootings. It joins Mastercard and American Express, which also said they plan to move forward with categorizing gun shop sales.

Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”

“Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” the payment processor said in a statement.

Visa’s adoption is significant as the largest payment network, and with Mastercard and AmeEx, will likely put pressure on the banks as the card issuers to adopt the standard as well. Visa acts as a middleman between merchants and banks, and it will be up to banks to decide whether they will allow sales at gun stores to happen on their issued cards.

Gun control advocates had gained significant wins on this front in recent weeks. New York City officials and pension funds had pressured the ISO and banks to adopt this code.

Two of the country’s largest public pension funds, in California and New York, have been pressing the country’s largest credit card firms to establish sales codes specifically for firearm-related sales that could flag suspicious purchases or more easily trace how guns and ammunition are sold.

Merchant category codes now exist for almost every kind of purchase, including those made at supermarkets, clothing stores, coffee shops and many other retailers.

“When you buy an airline ticket or pay for your groceries, your credit card company has a special code for those retailers. It’s just common sense that we have the same policies in place for gun and ammunition stores,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who blames the proliferation of guns for his city’s deadly violence.

The city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, said it made moral and financial sense as a tool to push back against gun violence.

“Unfortunately, the credit card companies have failed to support this simple, practical, potentially lifesaving tool. The time has come for them to do so,” Lander said recently, before Visa and others had adopted the move.

Lander is a trustee of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System and Board of Education Retirement System — which together own 667,200 shares in American Express valued at approximately $92.49 million; 1.1 million shares in MasterCard valued at approximately $347.59 million; and 1.85 million shares in Visa valued at approximately $363.86 million.

The pension funds and gun control advocates argue that creating a merchant category code for standalone firearm and ammunition stores could aid in the battle against gun violence. A week before the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people died after a shooter opened fire in 2016, the assailant used credit cards to buy more than $26,000 worth of guns and ammunition, including purchases at a stand-alone gun retailer.

Gun rights advocates argue that tracking sales at gun stores would unfairly target legal gun purchases, since merchant codes just track the type of merchant where the credit or debit card is used, not the actual items purchased. A sale of a gun safe, worth thousands of dollars and an item considered part of responsible gun ownership, could be seen as a just a large purchase at a gun shop.

“The (industry’s) decision to create a firearm specific code is nothing more than a capitulation to anti-gun politicians and activists bent on eroding the rights of law-abiding Americans one transaction at a time,” said Lars Dalseide, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.

Over the years, public pension funds have used their extensive investment portfolios to influence public policy and the market place.

The California teacher’s fund, the second largest pension fund in the country, has long taken aim on the gun industry. It has divested its holdings from gun manufacturers and has sought to persuade some retailers from selling guns.

Four years ago, the teacher’s fund made guns a key initiative. It called for background checks and called on retailers “monitor irregularities at the point of sale, to record all firearm sales, to audit firearms inventory on a regular basis, and to proactively assist law enforcement.”

Democrats Didn’t Conjure Up the Demand for MAGA Candidates

By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist – September 10, 2022

Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

In my column this week, I tackled some of the major objections to President Biden’s Philadelphia speech on MAGA Republicans and the threat they pose to democracy, including the view that it was too divisive.

Even if it was, most Americans land on Biden’s side of the argument — in a Reuters poll conducted just a few days after the speech, 58 percent of respondents, including a quarter of Republicans, said that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement is “threatening America’s democratic foundations.”

What I didn’t address was the charge that Biden, and Democrats in general, are acting in bad faith when they condemn Trump and his allies. If Democrats truly believe that MAGA Republicans are a threat to democracy, goes the argument, why are they spending tens of millions of dollars to elevate them in Republican primaries? My colleagues Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens both made a version of this point in their respective columns this week.

They are keyed into something real: that it is a bit unsavory, if not outright hypocritical, for Democrats to spend huge sums to help nominate MAGA Republicans at the expense of their more moderate, pro-democracy colleagues while condemning those same candidates, and the movement they represent, as a threat to the constitutional order.

Where I part ways with my colleagues is in their conclusion that Democrats are therefore crying alligator tears when they condemn MAGA extremists. If the top priority is depriving the Republican Party of power and influence, then the most important thing for Democrats to do, right now, is win elections. And if the most Trump-aligned candidates tend to be the weakest challengers in a general election, then it is entirely consistent with the argument in Biden’s speech to want to elevate those candidates over more moderate alternatives.

At the end of the day, a more moderate Republican in Congress is still a vote for Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House or Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader. It is still a vote, in other words, for a coalition that includes MAGA Republicans.

I could leave it there, except that I think that this answer concedes too much to the premise. Implicit in the question is the factual claim that Democratic spending in Republican primaries is either responsible for — or a significant factor in — the success of MAGA candidates with Republican voters. Otherwise, why would Democrats spend the money and why would conservatives complain about the outcome?

I think it is true that Democratic spending has had an effect. But I think the more significant reason that Republican voters keep nominating MAGA candidates is that Republican voters like MAGA candidates. All you have to do is look at the results of the Republican primaries in question and ask if Democratic money really mattered that much.

Did Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, spend millions to give a boost to Darren Bailey, the Trumpiest candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary? Yes. But Bailey led the Republican field before Pritzker’s intervention, swamping his opponents in an October 2021 poll. Democrats may have nudged some undecided voters into Bailey’s camp, but that alone does not explain how the hard-right Republican won more than 57 percent of the vote in a six-way primary. The more likely answer, given his early lead, is that Republican voters liked what Bailey was selling.

The same goes for Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, the pro-insurrection Republican candidate for governor. Democrats gave him a boost as well. But he led the Republican pack for much of the race and his final tally — nearly 44 percent of the vote in an eight-way contest — reflects his very real popularity with Republican voters in the state.

The other thing to consider is the actual content of Democratic ads on behalf of MAGA Republican candidates. The ad meant to support Mastriano, for example, simply stated his conservative views and emphasized his support for Trump. The ad said that Mastriano wanted to “outlaw abortion” and is “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters.” It also points out that Mastriano “wants to end vote by mail, and he led the fight to audit the 2020 election. If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.”

It is not the Democratic Party’s fault that Republicans are attracted to this message, and nothing forced Republicans in Pennsylvania or Illinois (or Michigan or Arizona) to nominate the most MAGA candidates in the field. Republicans voters like Trump and they want Trumpist candidates, and where there’s demand, supply usually follows.

Which is to say that even with Democratic intervention in Republican primaries, the thrust of Biden’s story about the Republican Party still holds up. The party has been captured by extremists, and it’s up to the rest of us to ensure that it doesn’t win more power than it already has.

My Friday column was on President Biden’s Philadelphia speech, why I think the objections to it are misguided, and what, if anything, was missing from his argument that the MAGA movement is a threat to American democracy.

To divide against a radical minority that would attack and undermine democratic self-government is to divide along the most inclusive lines possible. It is to do a version of what Franklin Roosevelt did when he condemned“organized money,” “economic royalists” and the “forces of selfishness and lust for power.”

Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry

The New York Times

‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry

Charlie Savage – September 6, 2022

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge’s extraordinary decision Monday to interject in the criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents at his Florida residence showed unusual solicitude to him, legal specialists said.

This was “an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas.

Siding with Trump, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, ordered the appointment of an independent arbiter to review the more than 11,000 government records the FBI seized in its search of Mar-a-Lago last month. She granted the arbiter, known as a special master, broad powers that extended beyond filtering materials that were potentially subject to attorney-client privilege to also include executive privilege.

Cannon, a Trump appointee who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, also blocked federal prosecutors from further examining the seized materials for the investigation until the special master had completed a review.

In reaching that result, Cannon took several steps that specialists said were vulnerable to being overturned if the government files an appeal, as most agreed was likely. Any appeal would be heard by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, where Trump appointed six of its 11 active judges.

Paul Rosenzweig, a former homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration and prosecutor in the independent counsel investigation of Bill Clinton, said it was egregious to block the Justice Department from steps like asking witnesses about government files, many marked as classified, that agents had already reviewed.

“This would seem to me to be a genuinely unprecedented decision by a judge,” Rosenzweig said. “Enjoining the ongoing criminal investigation is simply untenable.”

Born in Colombia in 1981, Cannon graduated from Duke University in 2003 and the University of Michigan Law School in 2007. After clerking for a Republican-appointed appeals court judge in Iowa, she worked as an associate for a corporate law firm for three years before becoming an assistant federal prosecutor in Florida.

In her Senate questionnaire, she described herself as having been a member of the conservative Federalist Society since 2005. Trump nominated her in May 2020, and the Senate confirmed her on Nov. 12, nine days after he lost reelection.

After Cannon was assigned to Trump’s special master lawsuit, she made the unusual move of publicly declaring that she was inclined to instate one even before hearing arguments from the Justice Department. But she could have done so in a far more modest fashion.

“Judge Cannon had a reasonable path she could have taken — to appoint a special master to review documents for attorney-client privilege and allow the criminal investigation to continue otherwise,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor. “Instead, she chose a radical path.”

A specialist in separation of powers, Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at NYU, said there was no basis for Cannon to expand a special master’s authority to screen materials that were also potentially subject to executive privilege. That tool is normally thought of as protecting internal executive branch deliberations from disclosure to outsiders like Congress.

“The opinion seems oblivious to the nature of executive privilege,” he said.

The Justice Department is itself part of the executive branch, and a court has never held that a former president can invoke the privilege to keep records from his time in office away from the executive branch itself.

The department had argued that even if a special master were appointed, there would be no legal basis for that person to examine issues of executive privilege. It cited a 1977 Supreme Court case involving the papers of former President Richard Nixon, who had tried to use executive privilege to shield them even though the sitting president disagreed.

But Cannon wrote that she was not convinced and believed the Justice Department’s stance “arguably overstates the law.” In that case, she said, the Supreme Court also stated that former presidents retained some residual power to invoke executive privilege.

The Supreme Court also said the incumbent officeholder is in the best position to assess such issues. But Cannon wrote that the justices had not “ruled out the possibility” that a former president could ever prevail over the current one.

“Even if any assertion of executive privilege by plaintiff ultimately fails in this context,” she wrote, “that possibility, even if likely, does not negate a former president’s ability to raise the privilege as an initial matter.”

She did not address a 1974 Supreme Court case that upheld the Watergate prosecutor’s demand for White House tapes as part of a criminal investigation despite the attempt by Nixon, then the sitting president, to block it by asserting executive privilege.

“Even if there is some hypothetical situation in which a former president could shield his or her communications from the current executive branch,” Shane said, “they would not be able to do so in the context of a criminal investigation — and certainly not after the material has been seized pursuant to a lawful search warrant.”

Cannon allowed a separate review of the documents, by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to continue. It is assessing the risk to national security that the insecure holding of sensitive documents at Mar-Lago may have caused.

David Alan Sklansky, a Stanford University law professor, said he was glad that work had been allowed to continue given its importance. But he said there was an inherent contradiction in allowing the executive branch to use the files for that purpose while blocking it from using them for an active criminal investigation.

“There is this odd situation where one part of the executive branch can use the materials and another not,” he said.

In reasoning that she had a basis to install a special master, Cannon relied heavily on a 1975 appeals court ruling. It held that courts had jurisdiction to decide whether to order the IRS to return a businessman’s records that he claimed had been taken unlawfully, and laid out a multipronged test for such situations.

One part of the test is whether the government had displayed a “callous disregard” for the constitutional rights of the person subjected to the search. On that issue, she sided with the Justice Department, which had obtained a warrant from a magistrate judge.

But she said the other parts of the test favored Trump. They included whether he had an individual interest in and need for the seized property, would be “irreparably harmed” by a denial of that request and lacked any other remedy.

While Trump does not own the government documents he repeatedly failed to return, the warrant permitted the FBI to take anything else of his that he had left in the same containers as evidence of how he stored sensitive information.

Cannon noted that a department report said this had included “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes and accounting information.”

“In addition to being deprived of potentially significant personal documents, which alone creates a real harm,” she wrote, Trump faced “an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public.” A footnote insinuated that the Justice Department might leak those files to reporters.

In weighing such factors, she emphasized Trump’s status as a former president.

“As a function of plaintiff’s former position as president of the United States, the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own,” she wrote. “A future indictment, based to any degree on property that ought to be returned, would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude.”

Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law School professor, said anyone targeted by a search warrant fears reputational harm, but that does not mean they can get special masters appointed. He called Cannon’s reasoning “thin at best” and giving “undue weight” to the fact that Trump is a former president.

“I find that deeply problematic,” he said, emphasizing that the criminal justice system was supposed to treat everyone equally. “This court is giving special considerations to the former president that ordinary, everyday citizens do not receive.”

Samuel W. Buell, a Duke University law professor, agreed.

“To any lawyer with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad, and the written justification is even flimsier,” he wrote in an email. “Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets in federal court, he’s getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted, when he is being privileged.”

9 signs you’re having a heart attack that you probably don’t know, including those more likely to affect women

Insider

9 signs you’re having a heart attack that you probably don’t know, including those more likely to affect women

Rachel Hosie – September 2, 2022

A woman lying on a sofa.
Fatigue, lightheadedness, and nausea can be symptoms of a heart attack.Getty
  • The most common symptom of a heart attack for both men and women is chest pain.
  • However, women are more likely to experience additional symptoms, a new report states.
  • These include nausea, indigestion, shortness of breath, and palpitations, a cardiologist said.

Common and lesser-known heart attack symptoms, including those more likely to affect women, have been highlighted in a report by the American Heart Association (AHA).

The review, published in the journal Circulation, outlines the latest knowledge on the symptoms of cardiovascular diseases, including strokes and heart failure, as Insider’s Catherine Schuster-Bruce reported.

A heart attack is when the supply of blood to the heart is suddenly blocked, usually by a blood clot, and can be life-threatening.

In the US, about 805,000 people have a heart attack every year, with one happening every 40 seconds, according to the CDC. One in five people are unaware they’re having a heart attack, the organization states. However, knowing the signs can help people get treatment faster.

Chest pain is the most common symptom of a heart attack

Chest pain is the most common and recognizable symptom of a heart attack, according to the review, and is often felt as pressure or discomfort behind or below the sternum (breastbone), and may radiate to the jaw, shoulder, arm, or upper back.

Other co-occuring symptoms include shortness of breath, fatigue, unusual sweating, nausea, and lightheadedness.

Some people have muscle aches during a heart attack

Although chest pain is “the most common presenting sign,” some people experience other pain, Dr. Stacey Rosen, cardiologist and senior vice president for the Katz Institute for Women’s Health at Northwell Health, told Insider.

Less common symptoms of a heart attack include muscle aches around the back and shoulders, indigestion or heartburn, fainting spells, and confusion, Rosen said.

According to a review of seven studies cited in the report on the early stages of acute coronary syndrome — which is a group of conditions that heart attacks fall under — early symptoms also include disturbed sleep, headaches, anxiety, and gastrointestinal problems.

Women are more likely to experience symptoms other than chest pain, such as nausea

There are differences in how men and women experience heart attacks.

“Historically, it was believed that women do not experience chest pain in the setting of a heart attack but we now know that this is the most common symptom for men and women, but that women are more likely to have additional symptoms,” Rosen said.

Symptoms more common to women include nausea, back and shoulder pain, indigestion, shortness of breath, fatigue, and palpitations, she said.

One study cited in the review found that younger women who had heart attacks were more likely to have three or more symptoms including pain below the ribs, palpitations, and pain or discomfort in the jaw, neck, arms or shoulders when compared with men.

Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them

MoneyWise

Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them

Vishesh Raisinghani – August 30, 2022

Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them
Corporate landlords are gobbling up mobile home parks and rapidly driving up rents — here’s why the space is so attractive to them

The hunt for yield has pushed private equity firms and professional investors into new segments of the real estate market.

In recent years, sophisticated investors have snapped up multi-family units and single-family homes. Now, corporate landlords are targeting the most cost-effective segment of the real estate market: mobile home parks.

The most affordable housing available

Manufactured homes or mobile homes are considered the most affordable non-subsidized housing option in America. That’s because the owners own only the prefabricated unit and not the land under the home. The land is usually leased from the landlord of a trailer park.

The average monthly rent for a mobile home in 2021 was $593. That’s significantly lower than the average one-bedroom condo rental rate of $1,450. The mobile park rental also often includes utilities and insurance.

Rents typically rise 4% to 6% annually and renters have the flexibility to move their housing unit to another park. These factors make the manufactured home highly attractive to low-income households.

As of 2020, nearly 22 million Americans lived in mobile homes. That’s 6.7% of the total population or about one in 15 people across the country. However, the economic inefficiencies that make these manufactured homes affordable also make them attractive to professional investors.

Investing in mobile home parks

Factors such as below-market rents and disrepair make mobile home parks attractive for investors seeking to add value. The typical mobile home park lot costs $10,000, which means 80 lots would be worth $800,000 on average.

Put simply, the entry price for these parks is much lower than multi-family apartments and condo buildings across the country.

Professional investors can also raise rents significantly to improve the valuation of the property. Attracting tenants with higher incomes or improving the park’s amenities and infrastructure are other value-add strategies that make this asset class appealing.

The fact that moving a typical mobile home costs between $3,000 to $10,000 also means that most tenants are unable to afford the move. This gives landlords immense pricing power.

Meanwhile, the yield is much higher. The capitalization rate (the ratio of net operating income to market price) could be as high as 9%, according to real estate partners Dave Reynolds and Frank Rolfe, who together are the fifth-largest owner of mobile home parks in the U.S.

The largest mobile park landlord is real estate veteran Sam Zell. Zell’s Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) owns 165,000 units across the country and the asset is a key element of his $5.4 billion fortune.

In recent years, larger investors such as Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and private equity firms such as The Carlyle Group, Brookfield, Blackstone, and Apollo have also added exposure to this asset class.

Even Warren Buffett is involved. His firm’s subsidiary, Clayton Homes, is the largest manufacturer of mobile homes in the U.S., and also operates two of the biggest mobile home lenders, 21st Mortgage Corp. and Vanderbilt Mortgage.

You can invest too

Retail investors looking for exposure to mobile home parks have plenty of options. Acquiring a park is, perhaps, the most straightforward way to access this asset class. However, publicly-listed stocks and real estate investment trusts offer exposure too.

Sam Zell’s Equity LifeStyle Properties is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ELS. Sun Communities Inc. (SUI) owns 146,000 units across the U.S. and some in Canada, while Legacy Housing Corp. (LEGH) builds, sells, and finances manufactured homes.

Retail and institutional investors could see more upside from this segment as the economic inefficiencies are ironed out.