By Delaying Chemical Safety Rule, Pruitt Endangers First Responders and Refinery Towns

Stephan:  Scott Pruitt is a carbon energy zombie whom Donald Trump has empowered. Like all the other Trump zombies he is a creature of industry, with no long range vision. As a result of these zombies safety regulations are being pushed back depending on the sector anywhere from 20 to 70 years. The result will be increased deaths, and suffering -- but also increased profits.

The ExxonMobil Torrance refinery in Southern California, after an explosion on February 18, 2015 had ripped through the facility, dislodging a hulking 40-ton chunk of debris that narrowly avoided a tank containing tens of thousands of pounds of highly toxic modified hydrofluoric acid.
Credit: Chemical Safety Board

At 8:48 a.m. on the morning of February 18, 2015, an explosion at the ExxonMobil Torrance refinery in Southern California ripped through the facility with such ferocity, the resulting shockwaves registered on the Richter scale. Dust was scattered over the densely populated neighborhood up to a mile away from the blast. Four workers suffered minor injuries. A hulking 40-ton chunk of debris from the refinery’s Electrostatic Precipitator narrowly avoided hitting a tank containing tens of thousands of pounds of highly toxic modified hydrofluoric acid.

The damning findings of a Chemical Safety Board (CSB) review of the accident were made public earlier this month. Among some of the problems identified in the report: the refinery repeatedly violated ExxonMobil’s corporate safety standards leading up to the incident, while multiple […]

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Trump to propose big cuts to safety net in new budget, slashing Medicaid and opening door to other limits

Stephan:  Here are more details about the Trump budget. Of course virtually everything he has told America about his budget up to this date has been a lie. If this budget were to pass, the poor, the young, and the elderly will endure massive diminishment in the quality of their lives.

President Trump’s first major budget proposal on Tuesday will include massive cuts to Medicaid and call for changes to anti-poverty programs that would give states new power to limit a range of benefits, people familiar with the planning said, despite growing unease in Congress about cutting the safety net.

For Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health care to low-income Americans, Trump’s budget plan would follow through on a bill passed by House Republicans to cut more than $800 billion over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that this could cut off Medicaid benefits for about 10 million people over the next decade.

The White House also will call for giving states more flexibility to impose work requirements for people in different kinds of anti-poverty programs, people familiar with the budget plan said, potentially leading to a flood of changes in states led by conservative governors. Many anti-poverty programs have elements that are run by both the states and federal government, and a federal order allowing states to stiffen work requirements “for able-bodied Americans” could […]

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Trump Effect Inspires Radical Christians in Military

Stephan:  When we changed the U.S. military from an elitist conscription model to an all-volunteer meritocracy we did not anticipate that only one percent of the population would be involved, nor that fundamentalist Christians would take over the Chaplin corps in all service branches. This is a very alarming trend, that is getting almost no attention. When you read this piece think also of the White Supremacist Theocratic Rightist self-styled militias. America is getting very closes to civil strife.

Donald Trump’s election has led to such a steep rise in fundamentalist Christian evangelizing and religious bigotry in the U.S. armed forces that the matter is reaching the level of a “national security threat,” according to information shared exclusively with Newsweek by an organization that represents and advocates for secular and minority religious views in the military.

Related: Christian sex advice websites reveal evangelical political agenda

The number of complaints from servicemen and -women in the Army, Air Force, Marines and other service branches to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has doubled in number since November 2016, according to lawyer Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, a former Air Force officer who founded the organization.

Many of the recent charges are coming from members of minority religions, including Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims, and from atheists. Among the complaints: military family and marital therapy programs are being infused with Protestant Christianity, which would go against the U.S. Constitution; open anti-Semitism; anti-LGBT statements, posters, symbols and bullying; openly anti-Muslim teachers and Islamophobic attacks; a rise in on-base evangelizing; and increased pressure on recruits […]

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Want To See How School Choice Leads to Segregation? Visit Betsy DeVos’ Hometown

Stephan:  I have been studying the charter school trend since it began, and many hours of outcome research has convinced me that while charter schools can be successful, mostly those who are proponents of this approach are driven by one of three hidden agendas, or all three of them:  racism, "Christianity," and an overweening greed for profit. In most instances charter schools get down to a system where students are valves used to tap into and drain out public money. No where is this more evident than in Betsy DeVos' home town, Holland, Michigan, where the reality of charter schools is made very clear.

President-elect Donald Trump stands with Betsy DeVos after their meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Saturday.
Credit: Mike Segar/Reuters

To see for yourself how school choice leads to segregation, I recommend a visit to Betsy DeVos’ hometown of Holland, MI.

Here, two decades of the policies that the Trump/DeVos education budget now wants to take national, have resulted in white flight and school closures, leaving Holland’s poor and minority students segregated in the few schools that remain open. I traveled to Holland last week for the annual Tulip Time festival, a celebration of the city’s Dutch heritage. But along with Dutch shoes and swagger, the legacy of Michigan’s now two decade-long experiment with school choice was on vivid display as well, and it wasn’t pretty.

First, some background. During the endless runup to DeVos’ confirmation hearing last year, it was the Wild West-style school choice she’d pushed in Detroit that garnered most of the attention. But DeVos was also behind Michigan’s inter-district choice policies that, starting in 2000, *disrupted* neighborhood attendance zones, just as the Trump […]

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In US, Belief in Creationist View of Humans at New Low

Stephan:  Here is what I would consider a good news/bad news research study. On the good side it shows that the number of willfully ignorant people in the U.S. appears to be going down. On the negative side 38% of Americans are still so disconnected from a fact based reality that they live in a kind of "Christian" fantasy. Note also that the number of people who believe the world is 6,000 years old is about the same number as the people who voted for Trump -- and there is a powerful correlation connecting the two cohorts. As we are seeing play out before our eyes when you have such a large willfully ignorant demographic democracy does not function well.  
Story Highlights

  • 38% say God created man in present form, lowest in 35 years
  • Same percentage say humans evolved, but God guided the process
  • Less-educated Americans more likely to believe in creationism

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The percentage of U.S. adults who believe that God created humans in their present form at some time within the last 10,000 years or so — the strict creationist view — has reached a new low. Thirty-eight percent of U.S. adults now accept creationism, while 57% believe in some form of evolution — either God-guided or not — saying man developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life.

This is the first time since 1982 — when Gallup began asking this question using this wording — that belief in God’s direct creation of man has not been the outright most-common response. Overall, roughly three-quarters of Americans believe God was involved in man’s creation — whether that be the creationist view based on the Bible or the view that God guided the evolutionary process, outlined by scientist Charles Darwin and others. Since 1982, agreement with the “secular” […]

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