Wednesday, June 14th, 2017
Jimmy Tobias, - The Nation
Stephan: The difference between city and town mayors and members of Congress or those who are part of a Presidential administration, as the Trump zombies explicitly demonstrate, is that mayors actually have to do the work of government.
Whilst most Republicans in congress claim to not believe in climate change, and the entire Trump administration claims it's a hoax, and they spend hours bloviating about that, in the process showing their moral turpitude and lack of character, mayors have to actually deal with flooded sewer systems, or water filled basements and houses. They have to govern. And Democrats and Republicans alike are being forced to deal with climate change as their cities and towns face its effects. This report tells the story.
On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, protesters march for action on climate change.
Credit: AP / Sipa USA
Greg Lemons is the staunchly Republican mayor of Abita Springs, a bite-size town in rural Louisiana that both draws its water and gets its name from the famous and pristine aquifer that flows beneath its soil. A chatty and cheerful fellow, Lemons like to think of himself as a pragmatic leader, the sort of person who strives to fix problems instead of fight about them. Nevertheless, in late 2014, he found himself in a legal brawl.
It was autumn of that year when he first heard that the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources had approved an exploratory drilling permit for a proposed fracking project just outside of town. The project, which had been approved despite the mayor’s protests, didn’t sit well with him. He feared it would degrade the community’s environment, disrupt its quality of life, and ruin its reputation.
“We are very sensitive about our water here,” says Lemons, adding that much of […]
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Wednesday, June 14th, 2017
Umair Irfan, - Scientific American
Stephan: Every day brings yet another story of how the Trump administration and the Republican congress, through their energy and climate change positions are condemning America to be unprepared for what climate change is bringing. For me this is not a political issue. It is a moral issue and it can continue only because over a third of Americans either don't care or think what the Republicans are doing is right.
That these people will be amongst those who will suffer the most gives me no comfort. But it does tell me that the 2018 election is going to determine the fate of the nation.
Credit: sportsblogs.star-telegram.com
Energy Secretary Rick Perry entrenched himself as an opponent of the Paris climate agreement yesterday, reversing his earlier position.
At a White House Cabinet meeting, Perry told President Trump that he defended the United States’ withdrawal from the global accord while meeting with energy ministers last week in China and Japan.
“They needed to hear why America was stepping away from the Paris accord, and they did,” Perry said. “And how America is not stepping back, but we’re stepping into place and sending some messages.”
Before Trump’s decision to quit the accord earlier this month, Perry said it would be better to stay in.
“I’m not going to tell the president of the United States to walk away from the Paris accord,” Perry said at Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Future of Energy Summit in New York City in April. “I think we probably need to renegotiate it.”
Perry’s acquiescence to Trump is part of a trend. Since his confirmation hearing in January, Perry pledged support for many initiatives at DOE, but has also lauded White House budget proposals that slash these programs (Climatewire, May 31).
In a […]
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Wednesday, June 14th, 2017
Stephan: Here is the latest ugly chapter about the growing American police state and its gulag. One in three Americans now has a police record, and over six million of us are involved in the gulag.
Credit: Robin Beck/AFP
As a candidate and now as President, Donald Trump has promised to lock more people up. Undocumented immigrants. Drug dealers. Gang members in Chicago. But the tough on crime approach favored by President Trump won’t just hurt people in cities he’s painted as urban hellscapes. New research finds that the areas helping drive America’s rapidly rising incarceration rates are in rural America—areas, in other words, that voted for Trump.
A new report based on data that until recently remained siloed across the country shows that even as cities like New York and Los Angeles have been reducing their jail populations, jails in rural counties—think Campbell County, Tennessee or Boone County, Arkansas—are growing exponentially.
“These places, as we saw in the election, felt overlooked and forgotten,” says study co-author Ram Subramanian, editorial director of the Vera Institute of Justice. “There are a lot of states engaged in criminal justice reform. They have to cater to these places and pay attention.”
Subramanian and co-author Jacob Kang-Brown owe their discovery to […]
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Wednesday, June 14th, 2017
Paul Buchheit, - Alternet
Stephan: Here is the latest on the Neo-feudalism Trend. Unless you are making at least $250,000 a year, I hope you are comfortable being a peasant in the new order.
Mark Zuckerberg
Credit: Frederic Legrand
Last year it was eight men, then down to six, and now almost five.
While Americans fixate on Trump, the super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of June 8, 2017, the world’s richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people.
Why Do We Let a Few People Shift Great Portions of the World’s Wealth to Themselves?
Most of the super-super-rich are Americans. We the American people created the internet, developed and funded artificial intelligence, and built a massive transportation infrastructure, yet we let just a few individuals take almost all the credit, along with hundreds of billions of dollars.
Defenders of the out-of-control wealth gap insist that […]
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Stephan: The sad truth is as a species we just may be too greedy and too short sighted to survive, at least as a coherent civilization. The only antidote is to make wellbeing our first priority. Can we do it? It's up to you.
Octopus examining human equipment at great depth
Imagine sinking into the deepest parts of the Central Pacific Ocean, somewhere between Mexico and Hawaii. Watch as the water turns from clear to blue to dark blue to black. And then continue on for another 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) to the seafloor — roughly the distance from the peak of California’s Mount Whitney to the bottom of nearby Death Valley.
“As soon as you start to descend, all of the wave action and bouncing goes away and it’s like you’re just floating and then you sink really slowly and watch the light fade out through the windows and then you really are in another world,” says Erik Cordes, a researcher at Temple University and frequent visitor to the deep ocean.
Finally, you come to a stop 12,000 feet (3,700 meters) below the last bits of light from the surface. The water here is strangely viscous yet remarkably transparent, and the light from your flashlight extends for hundreds of yards. You are in […]
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