Brian Palmer, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: This is the best explanation I have seen explaining why christofascists are so dismissive and disdainful of climate change. Essentially a 21st century potentially catastrophic problem is being seen through the prism of a more than 2,000 year old early Iron Age political maneuver made by early Christians.
It is my opinion that christofascism is the most dangerous Fifth Column movement in the United States today.
In 2007, the Rev. Joel Hunter formed a creation care team at his Northland evangelical megachurch in central Florida. “Creation care” describes a movement within the U.S. Christian community to better steward God’s creation, aka the Earth—it is, in short, environmentalism for the faithful. Many embraced Hunter’s initiative. Many did not.
“What are you doing? Are you going liberal on us?” Hunter remembers some of his congregants complaining.
Ten years later, Hunter left Northland. His gentle push toward environmental responsibility wasn’t the only factor in his departure—Hunter also urged his congregation to consider its views on racism, gun violence, and homophobia, especially in light of the Pulse nightclub shooting that killed 49 people not far from the church’s campus. But his environmentalist nudge certainly contributed to the overall perception that Hunter no longer held the same views as his congregants.
Environmentalism and American evangelicals are like oil and water. Joel Hunter was one of a small number of high-profile leaders who worked, over decades, to try to mix the two. The effort has yielded minimal results: Just 20 percent of committed Christians […]
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Stephan: As predictable as the sun setting every night, now that Trump has sabotaged the G7 network we are going to go into a trade war. This report describes the EU response, and then we will get Trump's response to the Canadian, Mexican, EU response, and the ordinary people of the world will pay the price, and we are just at the beginning of this process.
European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom gives a press conference on the US restrictions on steel and aluminium affecting the EU at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium on June 1, 2018.
Credit: Stephanie Lecocq / EPA
President Donald Trump’s tit-for-tat trade war keeps heating up. The European Union announced Wednesday it will in July start imposing a sweeping round of tariffs on $3 billion worth of U.S. products in retaliation for the White House’s decision to hit European steel and aluminum products with duties.
“This is a measured and proportionate response to the unilateral and illegal decision taken by the United States to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum exports,” EU Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström said in a statement.
The commission cited WTO rules that it said allow for proportional counter-tariffs, and endorsed a list of goods it had previously submitted to the organization.
“We regret that the United States left us with no other option than to safeguard EU interests,” said Malmström.
The list includes a 25 percent tariff on imported […]
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KYLA MANDEL, - Think Progress
Stephan: Scott Pruitt is so clownishly corrupt, and such a crude grifter that I take him as a measure of corruption of the Republican majority in Congress and the ineptitude of the Democratic members. There has been no other administration in American history that a man this slimy could hold high public office, and I think we should see him as a benchmark. A kind of test strip to reveal the state of American government.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt arrives to testify during a Senate Appropriations Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing in Dirksen Building on the proposed FY2019 budget for the EPA on May 16, 2018.
Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
House Republicans on Wednesday afternoon blocked an effort by Democrats to increase funding for the agency’s watchdog, which is tasked with investigating the many scandals surrounding agency administrator Scott Pruitt.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has in recent months seen an increased workload due to the more than a dozen investigations launched into Pruitt’s spending and management decisions during his first year as administrator.
But voting along party-lines 21-26, Republicans rejected an amendment introduced by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) to increase the OIG’s funding for 2019. “It’s hard to imagine that there is a more overworked inspector general than at the EPA these days,” Pocan said. “This is not a Democrat/Republican thing, this should be a good government thing.”
The vote comes after it was reported in February that the […]
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Edward Helmore, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Yesterday I ran a piece about how Trump's tariffs are negatively impacting local newspapers, and commented on why that matters. Today here is a proof of those comments, based on data not speculation, as to what happens when local papers close.
Local newspapers for sale in newspaper dispensers in the town of Salina, Utah.
Credit: Dan Chung for the Guardian
When a local newspaper closes, the cost of government increases. That’s the conclusion of new survey from Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, which draws a direct line between loss of the watchful eyes of local newspapers and a decline in government efficiency. (emphasis added)
Paul Gao, a professor of finance at the college, said he got the idea for the study while watching John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight about the decline of local newspapers almost two years ago.
The result of that study, Financing Dies in Darkness? The Impact of Newspaper Closures on Public Finance, argues there is a direct correlation between the loss of a local paper and higher costing – or less efficient – government.
Dozens of local newspapers have closed, reduced their printing schedule or gone online in recent years. Circulation numbers have fallen approximately 27% from 2003 to 2014, according to the Pew Research Center […]
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Stephan: The grotesqueries of the Trump White House, from the President's porn watching, to the big Macs to this ought to make it clear to anyone how far we are off the rails. This story tells us something important about the American electorate, and it's not pretty.
Credit: Mike Segar/Reuters
White House records management employees say they have spent months taping together papers for President Trump, who reportedly has the habit of “ripping up papers when he’s done with them” in contradiction of the Presidential Records Act. Politico spoke to Solomon Lartey and Reginald Young Jr., both former records management analysts and career civil servants who were paid more than $60,000 a year to Scotch-tape the president’s papers together.
Lartey described how disposed pieces of paper were taken from the Oval Office and residence for reconstruction, after aides tried and failed to get the president to stop ripping them up. Torn-up papers included newspaper articles with “scribbled notes, or circled words; invitations; and letters” from constituents and members of Congress. “I had a letter from [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer—he tore it up,” Lartey said. “It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces.” While Lartey and Young were both terminated from their positions without explanation, they claim that staffers have been taping Trump’s […]
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