A.C. Thompson and Jeff Ernsthausen, Reporters - Pro Publica
Stephan: In every authoritarian country semi-official corruption becomes the norm. From 1981 to 1993, when I was spending several months a year working on citizen diplomacy, and then with the businesses I started in the old Soviet Union, it was an accepted fact that grifting and bribery were just part of life for the average Soviet citizen. And it is now happening here, perhaps because Trump and the people he picks to surround him are all mostly crooks and grifters. And from the top down it is spreading through federal agencies particularly those involved with police powers. When you hire thugs willing to do nasty things to their fellows under color of authority that's what you get. Read and weep.
U.S. Border Patrol
The FBI is investigating the disappearance of some $500,000 from the coffers of the powerful union representing the country’s roughly 20,000 Border Patrol agents, said the organization’s national president, Brandon Judd.
Judd said the probe is focused on identifying the individuals responsible for siphoning the money from the bank accounts of the union’s El Paso branch in recent years.
“We know the FBI is looking at it,” said Judd, head of the National Border Patrol Council, which has forged a close alliance with President Donald Trump.
Under the Trump administration, the Border Patrol, a once obscure federal agency, has been thrust into the center of a rancorous debate over immigration policy, facing intense criticism over the squalid conditions in the agency’s overcrowded detention facilities, a string of migrant deaths and revelations that some 9,500 current and former agents were part of a private Facebook group that included vulgar and misogynistic content.
Equally troubling has been evidence of ongoing lawlessness in the agency’s ranks. Over the past five […]
Stephan: When you have an authoritarian government that doesn't tell the truth from the leader down, conspiracy theories abound and citizen trust in what the government says declines, further degrading democracy and supporting authoritarianism. And that is exactly what the Trumplican Party is doing.
Your country is disappearing my fellow Americans and the response to that is pathetic.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein, right, speaks at a news conference in Baltimore, Wednesday, March 1, 2017, to announce that seven Baltimore police officers who worked on a firearms crime task force are facing charges of stealing money, property and narcotics from people over two years. Standing alongside Rosenstein is Baltimore Police Department Commissioner Kevin Davis. Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky/AP
Conservatives have spread a baseless coronavirus conspiracy theory alleging that a top official at the Centers for Disease Control could be part of a “deep state” plot to “bring down” President Donald Trump, because her brother is former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Trump was reportedly “furious” after Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, undercut his attempts to downplay the risk posed by the coronavirus by issuing a public warning that an outbreak in the U.S. now appears inevitable.
“She never should have said that,” a senior administration official told CNBC. “It’s bad.”
Messonnier is the sister of Rosenstein, who appointed former special counsel […]
Stephan: The Republican Party like something out of a horror movie has morphed from being a healthy political party to becoming an authoritarian christofascist White supremacist cult. As with all cults, theology and ideology are more important now than facts. And quite predictably this is how the Trumplican cult is behaving from the federal to the state level.
Republicans in Oregon again fled the State Senate to block a vote on a climate bill despite getting extensive concessions. Credit: Jimmy Emerson/Flickr
Republican state senators in Oregon fled the state capitol on Monday in a stunt intended to derail the passage of a climate change bill supported by a majority of lawmakers for the second time in eight months.
Oregon requires two-thirds of the state Senate’s members to be present for a quorum, without which the chamber cannot vote on bills. Eleven of the 12 Republican senators fled the state capitol in Salem on Monday to deny the Democratic supermajority a quorum to prevent a vote on a bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions that was approved by the budget committee earlier in the day, The Oregonian reported. The 11 Republicans who walked out represent just 36% of the state’s population, according to the outlet.
The cap-and-trade bill would impose a cap on carbon dioxide emissions and require certain industries to obtain “emissions allowances” for every metric ton of emissions. The bill seeks to […]
Stephan: The Colorado River provides 40 million people, and the most productive farmland in America with water. Sixteen million jobs are directly linked to the river and that water.
Recent well-conducted studies show not only the declining water level of the river but a massive onrushing depletion crisis for which we are not prepared. Seven states and 17 miles of shared border with Mexico are going to be severely impacted.
The Colorado river at Horseshoe Bend, Page, Arizona. Credit: Getty
Potential future drops in the volume of water flowing in the Colorado River due to climate change could have catastrophic consequences, an expert has warned Newsweek.
Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, made the comments regarding a paper published in the journal Science.
The study highlighted that climate change appears to have led to the loss of snow in the Colorado River Basin, which in turn is thought to have caused the body of water to absorb more solar energy, meaning more water evaporates.
The Colorado River has been suffering a drought due to higher temperatures since 2000, and researchers warn if trends of its flow dwindling continue there is a risk of severe water shortages for the around 40 million people and 16 million jobs it supports.
Stephan: We must, absolutely must, stop using carbon energy. We cannot do it soon enough. Yet criminal Trump is taking America in the opposite direction; creating greater dependence on carbon and greater tolerance of its poisons. Here is the latest; it confirms once again what I am saying.
Among greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is the most significant contributor to global warming and therefore, public enemy No. 1 when it comes to stopping the climate crisis.
But methane — the main component in natural gas and an even more effective heat-trapping gas — is a close second. Scientists say that atmospheric methane is now responsible for about 25 percent of the human-caused warming we see today.
Now, a new study finds that methane emissions from fossil fuels are between 25% and 40% larger than past research had estimated, revealing that oil and gas production is contributing far more to warming the planet than previously thought.
