Stephan: Last night during the Presidential debate you heard Trump push carbon energy. It was the statement of one of history's losers. Whether Trump likes it or not we are leaving, the world is leaving, the carbon energy era, and here is the proof of that statement. However, the closing of oil and gas companies, as this report explains, is far from the end of carbon pollution and poisoning. And who do you think is going to pay for the cleanup. Why you will unless the Biden administration and the Democratic Congress passes legislation to anticipate and remediate this. It is my view that carbon energy corporations should be required by law to put aside sufficient resources to pay for the clean-up of the mess they leave.
Amid a record wave of bankruptcies, the U.S. oil and gas industry is on the verge of defaulting on billions of dollars in environmental cleanup obligations.
Even the largest companies in the industry appear to have few plans to properly clean up and plug oil and gas wells after the wells stop producing — despite being legally required to do so. While the bankruptcy process could be an opportunity to hold accountable either these firms, or the firms acquiring the assets via bankruptcy, it instead has offered more opportunities for companies to walk away from cleanup responsibilities — while often rewarding the same executives who bankrupted them.
The results may be publicly funded cleanups of the millions of oil and gas wells that these companies have left behind. In a new report, Carbon Tracker, an independent climate-focused financial think tank, has estimated the costs to plug the 2.6 million documented onshore wells in the U.S. at $280 billion. This estimate does not include the costs to address an estimated 1.2 million undocumented wells.
Greg Rogers, a former Big Oil advisor, and co-author of
Stephan: The deliberate sabotage of the US Post Office by Louis DeJoy, a grifter appointed by Trump, is the most blatant manifestation of the criminality of the Trump administration, and the Republican Party.
My wife and I voted last week, and took our ballots to one of the secure ballot boxes we have here on the island. Under Democratic Governor Jay Inslee in spite of attempts by Republicans in the Washington state legislature to sabotage mail-in ballots, the voting process has remained secure.
My personal recommendation to my readers is that you get a ballot and either put it in a secure official ballot box, or vote in person, or take your ballot to the clerk responsible for collecting ballots. Skip the post office.
If Biden is elected I also think Louis DeJoy should be fired, arrested, indicted, tried, and sent to prison for what he has done.
Two weeks before the election, there are signs that delays continue to plague the U.S. mail, a tracking effort by the USA TODAY Network and the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found.
Of 64 letters and packages sent short distances within battleground states since mid-September, 14 took longer than the U.S. Postal Service’s own three-day service standard for first-class local mail. Most of the problems arose in Michigan, although Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida each had at least one late arrival.
Eight of the shipments took a week or more to get to their cross-town destinations, including one letter that still has not arrived, according to the post office’s online tracking system. The missing letter was put in the mail two weeks ago, on Oct. 6.
Although the mailings were too small in number to determine whether widespread delays are occurring, the erratic results make it hard to know whether or not your ballot will arrive at the elections office […]
Stephan: It's hard to keep track of all the lies, so here is the fact checking
The stage of the presidential debate in Nashville. Credit: Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
In their final debate, President Trump unleashed an unrelenting series of false, misleading and exaggerated statements as he sought to distort former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s record and positions and boost his own re-election hopes. The president once again relied heavily on well-worn talking points that have long been shown to be false.
The president appeared determined to reinvent the reality of the last four years — and the history of the pandemic in 2020 — as he faces judgment on his actions in just 12 days. He once again falsely dismissed the Russia investigations as a “phony witch hunt.” He insisted that aside from Abraham Lincoln, “nobody has done more for the Black community,” an assertion that people in both parties find laughable. And he tried again to wish away the pandemic, saying “we are rounding the turn” even as daily cases of the virus this week topped 70,000 in the United States for the first time since July.
Stephan: Trump is not only trying to deny American women the right to control their own bodies, he and his administration are trying to do this throughout the world.
Think about that for a minute. A coordinated international effort to make women subordinate. A minority religious conviction advanced by people who are notably absent when it comes to supporting childcare, and medical support for pregnant women.
A reproductive rights supporter holds clothes hangers during a demonstration in front of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal on October 22, 2020 in Warsaw, Poland. The court prepared to issue a decision regarding the constitutionality of access to abortion, as the U.S. joined 32 other countries, including Poland, in declaring there is no “international right” to abortion care. Credit: Aleksander Kalka/NurPhoto/Getty
Further distancing itself from longtime U.S. allies regarding reproductive rights, the Trump administration on Thursday joined 32 countries in signing a declaration claiming that pregnant people have “no international right to abortion.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the virtual signing ceremony for the so-called “Geneva Consensus Declaration” after the administration formed an international coalition comprised of countries where abortion care is banned or severely restricted, to counter the United Nations’ support for reproductive rights.
“It carries no legitimacy within the U.N. system―but the sentiments it represents are dangerous nonetheless. In contrast to what this declaration states, there is broad international consensus on the critical need for access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, including […]
Michael Balsamo and Geoff Mulvihill, - Associated Press
Stephan: The OxyContin crisis which destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives seems an age ago, but it is not over. Here is the latest. There is an enormous fine, but notice that no one in the Sackler family is going to prison.
WASHINGTON — Drugmaker Purdue Pharma, the company behind the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin that experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, will plead guilty to federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
Purdue Pharmacy
The deal does not release any of the company’s executives or owners — members of the wealthy Sackler family — from criminal liability, and a criminal investigation is ongoing. Family members said they acted “ethically and lawfully,” but some state attorneys general said the agreement fails to hold the Sacklers accountable.
The company will plead guilty to three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal anti-kickback laws, the officials said, and the agreement will be detailed in a bankruptcy court filing in federal court.
The Sacklers will lose all control over their company, a move already in the works, and Purdue will become a public benefit company, meaning it will be governed by a trust that has to balance the trust’s interests against those of the American public […]
