Lawrence Norden, Shyamala Ramakrishna, Sidni Frederick, - Brennan Center for Justice
Stephan: History will record, I believe, that five men, deliberately destroyed the American Republic in order to implement their conservative ideology. It is one of the most heinous acts in our history, and may be the end of us. Here's the story.
On the officeholder side, to take but one example, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) told the Hill newspaper, “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’” And Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund and former chief of staff to Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell noted “[Donors] would be mortified if we didn’t live up to what we’ve committed to […]
Stephan: Remember the carbon market? The media has kind of lost the bubble on that story, but while American international policy has been lost in a miasma of Tweets, and Donald Trump's diseased ego, China has been methodically moving along setting itself up to be the dominant national power in the last half of the 21st century, and this is one of the ways they are doing it. Here's the report.
On Tuesday, China officially announced that it would create the world’s largest carbon trading system, meant to help the country meet its ambitious climate change and clean energy targets. (The country wants to get 20 percent of its energy from renewables, and peak its emissions, by 2030.)
It can be difficult for Americans, most of whom don’t track China’s carbon policy very closely, to understand the significance of such developments, so let’s try to put it in context.
To make a long story short: Yes, a comprehensive carbon trading system covering the world’s largest emitter will, eventually, be a Very Big Deal. But Tuesday’s announcement was neither the beginning nor the completion of that effort, only a signpost on a path that the country is navigating with great care.
It’s an exciting signpost, though!
Debating the finer points of climate policy. Thomas Peter – Pool/Getty Images
China is building its carbon trading system slowly and deliberately
Back in 2011, China’s government laid out a plan to gradually create a national carbon market. (It appeared in the country’s 12th Five-Year Plan, covering 2011-’15.) The key word here is gradually.
Abraham Lustgarten, Senior Environmental Reporter - Propublica
Stephan: Here is another horror story from the dark side of science. This is what happens to a country that places the military industrial complex, about which President Eisenhower warned us, above law and humanity. It is a story made all the grimmer by Trump and Pruitt gutting the EPA.
It was a secret wartime project, with a code name and an urgent mission: develop a more powerful bomb, one that could be mass produced in time to fend off the German forces ravaging Europe. It was 1940.
British chemists toiled with a tripod-shaped bond of nitrogen and oxygen molecules linked by carbon and hydrogen they referred to as “research department explosive” — a substance one and a half times as powerful as TNT, but so delicate it had to be mixed with beeswax to be stable and pliable enough to fit into warheads. Even then, it wasn’t good enough. Only 70 tons could be made in a week. Defeating the Nazis would require more.
BOMBS IN OUR BACKYARD
This story is part of a series examining the Pentagon’s oversight of thousands of toxic sites on American soil, and years of stewardship marked by defiance and delay. Read more.
In 1941, American chemists accomplished what their British counterparts could not. John Sheehan and Werner Bachman, University of Michigan researchers, worked with a […]
Stephan: More fundamental damage to the integrity and infrastructure of the country by Republicans. The more I see these stories the more I become convinced that the last chance we will have to save the country we have known will be the 2018 elections. Only a massive turnout voting Democratic and flipping both the House and the Senate can do it. Do we have the guts to do it? Do we care enough to do it? Right now I would say we have about a 60-40 chance.
Republican Attorney General Jeff Sessions
Civil rights advocates accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of “turning back the clock” on criminal justice reforms after the Department of Justice rescinded Obama-era guidance that protected low-income defendants from being forced to pay gratuitous fees to local courts.
“Profit-minded court policies targeting the most economically vulnerable Americans have resulted in a resurgence of unconstitutional but widespread practices penalizing the poor and people of color,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. “Attorney General Jeff Session’s decision to retract guidance from the Justice Department rooting out practices resulting in a perpetual cycle of fines, debt and jail of America’s poor is a horrifying step backwards in ongoing efforts to reform the criminal justice system.”
Under President Barack Obama, the DOJ issued a warning to local courts in May 2016 regarding the common practice of handing fines to poor defendants in order to boost their own revenues.
“Individuals may confront escalating debt; face repeated, unnecessary incarceration for nonpayment despite posing no danger to the […]
Stephan: To all my readers around the world I wish you and those you love my best wishes for a wonderful winter holiday, whichever version you celebrate. Let each of us, give the other readers, and the world itself, the gift of making the Quotidian Choice Pledge: Everyday I make hundreds of choices. I commit to being aware when I am making a choice, and I pledge that I will always chose the option available to me that is the most compassionate, life-affirming, and fostering of wellbeing. If all of us do this, we can change the world for the better.
-- Stephan
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It was a secret wartime project, with a code name and an urgent mission: develop a more powerful bomb, one that could be mass produced in time to fend off the German forces ravaging Europe. It was 1940.
