Leid Stories

If the 2016 presidential election proved nothing else, it surely proved how proved how tenaciously we hang on to the notion that two is quite enough, thank you—two political parties, that is—and that need not change.

So, today on Leid Stories we try to understand why we seem to believe this, and why we’re unwilling to explore other political systems that might more directly speak to our aggregate needs and visions for the common good.

We’ve had far too many clues that as a nation we must debate—and definitively answer—this question: Is it time to dump the two-party system?

 

 

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Call 888-874-4888 and join the best open forum in Radioland.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are on edge, waiting for the proverbial axe to fall. It surely will, says financial expert and former banker Charles Ortel, who has been paying close attention to the political and economic landscape for unusual moves by the Clintons.

Ortell digs deeper into the Clinton quagmire and shares new information about the Clinton Foundation’s domestic and global operations.

Almost three years after the shooting death of a college-bound black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., plunged the city and nation into explosive debates and protests about excessive police, a settlement in the case was announced yesterday.

Lawyers for Lesly McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr., the parents of Michael Brown, announced that a settlement had been reached on their clients’ wrongful-death civil lawsuit against the city, former police chief Thomas Jackson and former police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed their 18-year-old son. But the lawyers did not discuss the terms of settlement or amount approved by U.S. District Judge Richard Webber, who ordered the settlement sealed.

Leid Stories had discussed several troubling aspects to the case and had predicted that the parents would be pressured into settling rather than pursuing justice to the end.

Sidney Powell’s decades-long experience as a noted litigator in the U.S. Department of Justice and as a lawyer in private practice has taught her one very important thing about the American justice system: Justice is not “for all.”

Powell, a prolific writer of tomes that expose and sharply attack the often oppressive nature of the relationship between the justice system and society, is appalled not only by the level and extent of its dysfunction, but its resistance to change.

In her visit with Leid Stories today, Powell will draw from her recent book, Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice, to discuss the justice system under the Trump administration.

Barely a week after five Flint, Mich., officials criminally were charged with involuntary manslaughter for knowingly allowing toxic, lead-laced water to be distributed throughout the city’s water system, Leid Stories has learned that the city is soon to be bombarded with individual and class-action lawsuits seeking compensation for those harmed by the city’s negligence.

Curt Guyette, an investigative reporter with the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, broke the story of the Flint toxic-water scandal and has been updating Leid Stories ever since. He files his latest report.

On Friday (June 16), when Officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of all charges in the shooting death of Philando Castile, 32, during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minn., just outside St. Paul, he was fired.

But that is of no consolation to Castile’s family and the larger community, who question the integrity of the trial and want a Department of Justice review.

Leis Stories listeners react to the verdict.

A practice baseball game yesterday in Alexandria, Va., was to have been a warmup for the real thing today at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. The bipartisan charity event will go on as scheduled, even though James Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old Illinois man, could have scuttled the game entirely. Hodgkins, said to be an avowed Trump critic, turned up at the practice session yesterday and shot at several people, wounding them. Capitol Police officers returned fire, killing him.

In San Francisco yesterday, United Parcel Service employee Jimmy Lam, 38, went to the UPS warehouse armed with an assault pistol and killed three coworkers and wounded two others before turning the gun on himself. Three months ago, Lam filed a complaint that he was being made to work an excessive amount of overtime.

These two cases may seem to be totally different and disconnected from each other, but in fact are not, says Leid Stories. 

In an op-ed piece appearing yesterday in nytimes.com, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the longest-serving Independent in Congress (although he caucuses with the Senate’s Democrats), took on the Democrats’ losing streak. The piece, titled “How Democrats Can Stop Losing Elections,” argued that the 2016 elections were “a clear manifestation of a failed political strategy by the party,” and that “for the sake of our country and the world, the Democratic Party in a very fundamental way must change direction.”

Sanders points to several heard-many-times-before reasons the party could bolster its appeal to voters if it acted aggressively on critical issues —including widespread disappointment with President Trump, income inequality, an unfair tax system, health-care coverage for all, criminal-justice reform, immigration, student debt, and climate change. But the party’s lackluster effort at pushing such issues is pushing people away, Sanders says.

Leid Stories questions why Sanders won’t say why the Democrats really are losing elections.

Leid Stories continues yesterday’s discussion on President Donald Trump’s approaches to governing that are anything but “normal” in our experience. In the chaos- and crisis-driven Age of Trump, how do we cope?