Kimberly M.S. Cartier, - Reader Supported News/The Revelator
Stephan: Yet another proof, as if for an intelligent person such were needed, that fostering wellbeing of the earth itself is always the correct choice; one that benefits all living organisms. And yet, it seems to be such a hard lesson to learn.
Orlando Wetlands Park in central Florida. Credit: Bkamprath/iStock/Getty
Mangrove forests, marshes and seagrass beds protect inland areas from storm surges and strong winds. Over long periods, coastal wetlands like these build up sediment that mitigates sea level rise and local land subsidence.
A new analysis of property damage from Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal storms has shown that counties with larger wetlands suffered lower property damage costs than did counties with smaller wetlands.
“Starting in 1996, the U.S. government started to produce damage estimates for each tropical cyclone in a consistent manner,” explained coauthor Richard Carson, an economist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla. Before that, the data were collected only for hurricanes, which hindered past attempts to put a price on the marginal value, or price per unit, of wetlands, he said.
With the complete data set, the researchers examined all 88 tropical cyclones and hurricanes that affected the U.S. starting in 1996. That time period includes Hurricanes […]
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Stephan: As with everything they touch with the Trumps it is always a grift; there isn't an honest thought in any of their heads. And the silence of Moscow Mitch and the Senate Trumplicans reverberates through the land. In the middle of this international health crisis, the first thought of Criminal Trump is how to work a grift.
The Trump grifters. You are financing their greed
President Donald Trump’s properties have charged taxpayers nearly eight times more than previously claimed for Secret Service stays, according to new documents obtained by the watchdog group Public Citizen.
Eric Trump has claimed that Secret Service agents “stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping.” He insisted last year that “we charge them, like, 50 bucks.”
But receipts obtained by Public Citizen and first reported by The Washington Post show that Trump’s properties have charged the Secret Service $396 per night for 177 rentals at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort since he took office.
The Post previously reported that some Trump properties charge taxpayers as much as $650 per room. The president’s Bedminster, N.J. golf club also charged $17,000 per month for Secret Service agents to rent a cottage on the property. The Secret Service continued to pay for the cottage even after he left.
The report found that taxpayers spent more than $471,000 on Trump properties, but the new receipts show that […]
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Stephan: This is the best factual profile of the Coronavirus pandemic I have seen. That is all I need to say.
The outbreak of Covid-19, a coronavirus-caused illness that originated in Wuhan, China, and has since spread to most of the world, is one of the most serious public health crises in decades. It has spread far wider than Ebola did in 2014, and the World Health Organization has designated it a pandemic.
As of March 11, there have been more than 125,000 reported cases, more than 4,600 deaths worldwide, and more than 1,200 reported cases and 29 deaths in the US, according to Johns Hopkins’s tracker; its count is usually up to date and worth bookmarking as the crisis progresses.
The situation on the ground is evolving incredibly quickly, and it’s impossible to synthesize everything we know into clean, intelligible charts. But we do know a fair bit about how bad the outbreak is, what the disease does, and what controlling and ultimately ending the outbreak will look like.
With that in mind, here are nine charts that help explain the Covid-19 coronavirus crisis.
1) The virus is spreading rapidly
As of this writing, the Covid-19 caseload is rising […]
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Rebecca R. Ruiz, Robert Gebeloff, Steve Eder and Ben Protess, - The New York Times
Stephan: Covid-19 is only one of the crises impacting America. I have been writing about another one for four years, and it is now so advanced and evident that it cannot be denied. The Republican now Trumplican Party led in the Senate by Moscow Mitch, and captained by criminal Trump does not support representative democracy or an apolitical judiciary. That is the factual reality and we are going to have to live with this for a generation.
Credit: New York Times
As a Republican candidate for the Texas Supreme Court, Don R. Willett flaunted his uncompromising conservatism, boasting of endorsements from groups with “pro-life, pro-faith, pro-family” credentials.
“I intend to build such a fiercely conservative record on the court that I will be unconfirmable for any future federal judicial post — and proudly so,” a Republican rival quoted him telling party leaders.
Judge Willett served a dozen years on the Texas bench. But rather than disqualifying him, his record there propelled him to the very job he had deemed beyond reach. President Trump nominated him to a federal appeals court, and Republicans in the Senate narrowly confirmed him on a party-line vote.
As Mr. Trump seeks re-election, his rightward overhaul of the federal judiciary — in particular, the highly influential appeals courts — has been invoked as one of his most enduring accomplishments. While individual nominees have drawn scrutiny, The New York Times conducted a deep examination of all […]
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Stephan: Even judges whose careers have been within the judicial system recognize what I have been saying. Example A:
Credit: Getty
James Dannenberg is a retired Hawaii state judge. He sat on the District Court of the 1st Circuit of the state judiciary for 27 years. Before that, he served as the deputy attorney general of Hawaii. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law, teaching federal jurisdiction for more than a decade. He has appeared on briefs and petitions as part of the most prestigious association of attorneys in the country: the Supreme Court Bar. The lawyers admitted to practice before the high court enjoy preferred seating at arguments and access to the court library, and are deemed members of the legal elite. Above all, the bar stands as a sprawling national signifier that the work of the court, the legitimacy of the institution, and the business of justice is bolstered by tens of thousands of lawyers across the nation.
On Wednesday, Dannenberg tendered a letter of resignation from the Supreme Court Bar to Chief Justice John Roberts. He has […]
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