Laurel Raymond, - Think Progress
Stephan: What kind of country have we become when the professional hired to oversee government ethics resigns because his President is so corrupt he can no longer serve?
The director of the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, announced on Thursday that he would be resigning effective July 19th.
In his resignation letter, which he posted to Twitter, Shaub reiterated his support for his staff at OGE and to “the principle that the public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws, and ethical principles above private gain.”
Shaub has repeatedly clashed with the President Donald Trump and his White House team, who have ignored the OGE’s recommendations that President Trump meet the standard of every other modern president and fully divest from his businesses.
Speaking to NPR on Thursday morning, Shaub said that he was dissatisfied with the current strength of the government’s ethics program, and was leaving to go to a role where he could advocate to strengthen it.
“The current situation has made it clear that the ethics program needs to be stronger than it is,” he said.
The OGE is tasked with advising the executive branch on ethical matters, such as how […]
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Samantha Page, Climate Reporter - Think Progress
Stephan: When you add this to the news of what India plans, The Netherlands plan, Norway plans, and other countries as well, it is easy to see the world trend. Then consider Trump and his band of carbon zombies going in the opposite direction. Who do you think will prevail, and what do you see this doing to tens of thousands of automotive jobs in the U.S.? How many Trump voters do you think will lose their jobs?
Volvo electric
Credit: Volvo
Swedish auto company Volvo announced Wednesday that all of the new cars it produces will be either all-electric or hybrid by 2019. (emphasis added)
“This is about the customer,” Håkan Samuelsson, president and CEO of Volvo said in a statement. “People increasingly demand electrified cars, and we want to respond to our customers’ current and future needs.”
The transition to electric is going even faster than the car maker anticipated just last year, when it announced that all its new cars would be available in a hybrid version. Its original pledge was to offer its first all-electric car by 2019. Now, the company expects to have five electric vehicles (EVs) on the market by 2021.
“We are convinced that the future of Volvo is electric,” Samuelsson said in a video ad marking the announcement. The video says the announcement marks “the end of an era […]
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Stephan: I think Bernie Sanders is correct. He should have been the Democratic nominee and if he had been he would have been elected, and America would be on a completely different and life-affirming path. But the Democratic Party is almost as corrupt as the Republican Party, albeit more wellness oriented, and not quite as stupid, because the preponderance of Democrats still believe in facts, as do most Democratic Voters.
Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Last month more than 4,000 people gathered in Chicago for the People’s Summit. Independent senator, former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders delivered the keynote speech. During his speech, he repeatedly criticized the Democratic Party, calling it an “absolute failure,” and blaming it for the election of President Trump. “I’m often asked by the media and others: How did it come about that Donald Trump, the most unpopular presidential candidate in the modern history of our country, won the election?” Sanders said. “And my answer is that Trump didn’t win the election; the Democratic Party lost the election. Let us be very, very clear: The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Over 4,000 people gathered in Chicago in June for the three-day People’s Summit, organized in part by National Nurses United. Former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders gave a major speech, where he attacked both President Trump and the Democratic Party. Senator Sanders spoke at a time […]
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HANNAH OSBORNE, - Newsweek
Stephan: The activities of the sun play a large role in the behavior of the Earth's geomagnetic field, which in turn affects the behavior of every living organism on the planet -- including humans. It's effects are subtle but profound. See my paper
The Unseen Force that Shapes the World.
Here is important information about its behavior.
The sun is about to enter a period of quiet, known as a solar minimum. This cycle happens every 11 years and is characterized of decreased activity—when sunspots fade away and produce fewer solar flares. With this latest period of inactivity approaching, scientists have been monitoring the sun to better understand some of the unusual activity observed over recent years.
In a study published in May the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of scientists from the U.S., U.K. and Denmark analyzed 31 years’ worth of data from the Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON)—a group of six ground-based telescopes that provide constant monitoring of the sun’s oscillations. In the study, Yvonne Elsworth and colleagues studied the sound waves from the sun over the last three solar minimums to see how they have changed during different periods of activity. Elsworth will present the findings at the National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Hull, U.K., on Tuesday.
“The sun is very much like a musical instrument except that its typical notes are at a very low frequency—some 100,000 times lower than middle C,” she said […]
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Stephan: This report is so revealing. It is a tale of hypocrisy, absence of moral values, and pious self-righteousness. Just to remind you Hobby Lobby is the big box retailer owned by a family that went to court, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, proposing that a corporation should not have to cover the cost of an employee's contraception choice. The conservative court ruled for them saying closely held for-profit corporations need not have to pay for things to which the owners had a religious objection. In my view, it is a major breach of the wall between church and state. But to return to the report.
We don't want to pay for contraception but we're down with buying looted antiquities stolen from a war ravaged country where hundreds of thousands died, and whole cities were ravaged, and left in rubble. Many of these objects were almost certainly taken and sold by ISIS.
Anyone buying in the antiquities market knows that anything from Iraq is suspect, its provenance in question. Buying at the scale the Greens were buying, and through agents; their apology is absurd.
Could we all please just stop buying anything from Hobby Lobby.
Credit: U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York
The arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby will pay $3 million to settle a federal case over smuggled Iraqi antiquities it bought to demonstrate its “passion for the Bible.”
The Oklahoma-based retailer also agreed to forfeit thousands of clay artifacts it bought in 2010 — an acquisition that prosecutors said was “fraught with red flags” the company didn’t heed.
n a statement, Hobby Lobby President Steve Green acknowledged “regrettable mistakes” that he chalked up to inexperience.
“We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled,” Green said, adding that the firm fully cooperated with the investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Hobby Lobby is perhaps best known for its Supreme Court victory in a 2014 religious freedom case over contraception. The family that owns the company is also bankrolling a $500 million Museum of the Bible slated to open in Washington in the fall.
In 2009, the company decided to amass a collection of books […]
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