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The power and patterns of pipeline protests

More than 5,000 placard-waving activists gathered Saturday in Burnaby, B.C., to voice their opposition to the federally approved expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline.

The protest comes on the heels of an Alberta-imposed ban on B.C. wine, which was later rescinded, after B.C. said it would restrict the flow of bitumen though the pipeline until more research was completed into pipeline safety and spill response.

But what fuels a mass gathering like Saturday’s — and what gets people so riled up about bitumen transport, anyway?

UBC sociology professor David Tindall, an expert on social movements, met CBC’s On the Coast host Gloria Macarenko to try to answer these questions.

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How did the weekend’s events stand out?

I think this was one of the biggest recent protests, at least on the anti-pipeline side.

In the social movements literature there’s a scholar named Charles Tilley who has talked about a concept called “WUNC” — which is kind of a funny name, but it refers to worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment.

To some extent what happened on Saturday is a reflection of that.

Worthiness, such as who was involved in the protest, like Aboriginal leaders. Unity, [as in] the types of songs and signs. Numbers, [meaning] the 5,000 people who showed up, and commitment — this is something that’s been going on for some time, in all kinds of weather.

Against Trans Mountain, Indigenous peoples are rising up to protect their land

In Standing Rock and Elsipogtog First Nation, a sense of duty to protect the land has morphed into a heated conflict with those who would rather build at the expense of the environment.

This graphic shows 30 yrs of oil & gas accidents from 1986-2016 that resulted in 548 dead & 8.5 billion in damageshttps://t.co/ljiFW6OYIE

— Ruth H. Hopkins (@RuthHHopkins) March 13, 2018

Texas Dems worry bigger rifts ahead with national party

Texas Democrats are imploring their party to send national money to Texas — but leave the national strategists home.

Three candidates national Democrats sought to help in key races this month failed to advance from the first round of Democratic primaries. A fourth candidate, who the party committee attacked, saw a late surge of support from the grassroots and made it into a runoff.

“The challenge for any party in Texas is the sheer scale of the state,” said Cliff Walker, Democratic Party of Texas political director. “We’re happy to have any investment of resources, whether it’s doors knocked, mail, digital, any sort of voter communication — that’s a net benefit to everybody.”

But, he said, “Even among candidates and activists that were critical of the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee], the overwhelming sentiment has been: ‘Bring your resources, not your attacks.’”

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The DCCC is already exploring subtle ways to help candidates there and other states without sounding alarm bells about its influence. Those moves could include digital ads, field staff, and cash transfers to the state committee – all tactics it’s recently deployed to help a special election candidate in a conservative district in Pennsylvania.

Three candidates the committee quietly sought to help in top tier races, Jay Hulings in Texas’s 23rd district, Ed Meier in Texas’s 32nd district, and Alex Triantaphyllis in Texas’s 7th district, failed to advance to their party’s runoff elections.

Meier and Hulings both led most of their opponents in fundraising —usually a sign of the blessing of party leaders — but finished fourth in their primaries.

National Democrats aren’t backing down on their strategy, including helping runoff candidates they think give them the best shot of winning in November.

2018: The year progressives won't have to justify voting for a Democratic candidate just because they're "better than the alternative". We deserve candidates who stand for what we stand for.

— Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) March 14, 2018

Can You Beat a Billionaire by Mobilizing Young Voters?

On a mid-February morning, Illinois gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss hit the road at 6:15 to begin an 18-hour day of driving. The 40-year-old Democratic state senator was on the last leg of his “Road Forward College Tour,” an eight-day trip to 14 of the state’s college campuses, and the final push was ambitious. He began the day in Champaign, home to the University of Illinois’ flagship campus, and traveled 140 miles to Western Illinois University, a smaller public college near the Iowa and Missouri borders. After hosting a town hall, he drove another 250 miles down to Southern Illinois University, where he spent the evening with students before making it back to his home in Chicago’s northern suburbs at midnight.

College tours are typical campaign fare, and Biss’ top rivals in the Democratic primary, businessmen J.B. Pritzker and Chris Kennedy, have done their share. But “college tour” understates what Biss has been doing since declaring his candidacy a year ago. The former University of Chicago math professor has visited 53 of the state’s colleges and universities, many more than once, to pitch a platform that seems designed to appeal to young voters, pledging free public college education and universal government-provided health care.

Biss is at the forefront of a national push by progressive—and often underdog—Democratic candidates to see if they can replay Bernie Sanders’ 2016 insurgency by getting young voters to turn out for them in 2018. Organizers across the country will look to Biss’ performance in next Tuesday’s primary—just the second contest in the 2018 midterm election season—to see whether a direct appeal to the youth vote and the support of millennial-driven progressive organizations can be stronger assets than massive campaign spending and establishment backing. There are signs that the strategy has boosted Biss, who moved from a distant third place to within 10 points of frontrunner Pritzker in two February polls.

Other than Chicago, Biss is getting little airtime (news wise ) . I hope his strategy is successful. Chris Kennedy though is the sucking noise that will likely enable Pritzker to eak out a win.

How A Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders Revealed A Network Of Fake Accounts

When Russians at the Internet Research Agency interfered in U.S. politics, they created false online personas and fake political groups to amplify divisive messages that already had a homegrown American audience. It’s not too far from what some U.S. political consultants are doing themselves.

Take Sally Albright, a Democratic Party communications consultant who backed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unsurprisingly, Albright is vocally opposed to President Donald Trump and a big supporter of the resistance to his administration. She is also one of the loudest, most divisive voices attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s onetime Democratic primary opponent, and his left-wing supporters.

Well after the primary, Albright continues to claim that Sanders is a fraud, a liar, racist and corrupt, among many other things. In one instance she declared that the policy idea of free college, as promoted by Sanders, was racist. This provoked Sanders supporters to argue back.

Trevor, a Sanders supporter who declined to provide his last name for fear of being doxxed, but goes by @likingonline on Twitter, noticed a strange pattern of behavior when Albright responded to him. Her tweets addressing him were rapidly retweeted by the same series of accounts. This created a barrage of notifications making it look as though there was an avalanche of opposition to everything he said.

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Albright told HuffPost that the accounts were voluntarily handed over by their original users to an unnamed client of hers to be automated in “an analytics program.” She said she was bound by a non-disclosure agreement and could not disclose who was collecting and automating these accounts or for what purpose.

But like her, these accounts were all pro-Clinton, anti-Trump and anti-Sanders.

Sky-high prices of everything make US healthcare the world’s most expensive

The United States spends twice as much on healthcare as 10 other high-income nations, driven by the high price of everything from prescription drugs to doctors’ salaries, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds.

Recent attempts to reform American healthcare have assigned blame for the high cost of care to nearly every sector – from drug companies to hospitals to health insurers.

However, a co-author of the new study said those arguments ignore the “800-pound gorilla”: sky-high prices everywhere.

“Most countries get to lower prices one of two ways: they either have a very strong price setter, usually a government agency, or more efficient markets,” said Dr Ashish Jha, co-author of the study by researchers at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health. “The US has figured out how to do the worst of both.”

Medicare for Y’all: Meet the Socialist Metalhead Stumping for Single-Payer

Timothy Faust, a 29-year-old socialist metalhead, isn’t your typical health care policy wonk. Sporting shoulder-length hair, a bandana and a Lone Star flag tattoo on his arm, Faust is neither a medical professional, a lawmaker nor an academic. But the Wisconsin native, who spent stretches in Houston and Austin, has made a name for himself in recent months touring the country promoting single-payer health care with an unusual mix of impassioned f-bombs and unrepentant eggheadedness.

On a Friday evening in December, about 100 people packed into an Austin union hall to hear Faust speak at an event hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Wearing a paint-stained jean jacket, Faust began his talk with a warm “Howdy, y’all.” A few weeks earlier, he’d concluded a 22-city tour, the first of multiple trips he hopes will carry him to all 50 states by summer.

Faust’s interests are eclectic: He studies health policy at NYU and runs a theatrical wrestling league called Party World Rasslin’. Faust also works in data science for the tech startup Oscar Health Insurance, a job he says convinces him even more that the industry must be nationalized. “Our fragmented, commodified health care model sees health care as a transaction,” he told the Austin audience. “That’s perverted. We have mistaken the profit motives of insurers for health care.” And he ridicules Obamacare as a “plaintive wail” — a mendicant subsidy to convince private industry to stop kicking the chronically ill off coverage.

“This big, dumb Rube Goldberg machine of American health care is going to fail,” he said. “And when it fails, it will be remade or replaced; we demand a federal, universal single-payer.”

For those who believe a single-payer system would be outrageously expensive, Faust points out that around 64 percent of health care costs already fall on the government, money that’s largely wasted on overpriced procedures and medicines. The money is already being spent, he says, just “really stupidly.” Single-payer, he argues, would reduce costs by combining everyone into one risk pool and giving the government leverage to negotiate lower prices.

One common dominator, Large obscene salaries for their exec’s.

Stephen Hawking, physicist and inspiration to millions, dies aged 76

Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions, has died aged 76.

His family released a statement in the early hours of Wednesday morning confirming his death at his home in Cambridge.

Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.

“He once said: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him for ever.”

For fellow scientists and loved ones, it was Hawking’s intuition and wicked sense of humour that marked him out as much as the fierce intellect that, coupled with his illness, came to symbolise the unbounded possibilities of the human mind.

‘Remember to look up at the stars’: the best Stephen Hawking quotes

orlbucfan

Waxing philosophical here: what a testament to the strength of the human will. Hawking could have given up as he experienced the disease slowly crippling his body. There was no cure. He willed himself to live and think as his brain was not affected. RIP beyond the stars, Professor Hawking. T and R to the usual TPW suspects!!

More poignant that he died on Pi Day and Albert Einstein’s b-day.

‘I haven’t achieved much recently’: Albert Einstein’s private fears revealed in sister’s archive

In 1924, nine years after he completed the general theory of relativity in 1915, Einstein would write to Maja that “scientifically I haven’t achieved much recently – the brain gradually goes off with age, although that’s not so unpleasant. It also means that you’re not so answerable for your later years.” Ten years later, he would write to her: “I am happy in my work, even if in this and in other matters I am starting to feel that the brilliance of younger years is past.”

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Tackling topics from his hobbies of sailing and playing the violin, to his difficult relationship with his first wife, the letters are “unpublished snapshots of Einstein, his private face”, according to Venning. In one from 1935, Einstein makes a rare acknowledgement of his achievements, writing to Maja: “In our main avenues of research in physics we are in a situation of groping in the dark, where each is completely sceptical about what another is pursuing with the highest hopes. One is in a constant state of tension until the end. At least I have the comfort that my main achievements have become part of the foundations of our science.”

His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP 1942-2018. pic.twitter.com/nAanMySqkt

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 14, 2018

Stephen Hawking’s Final Warnings Urged World to Halt Climate Change

Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest minds on Earth, died peacefully at his home in Cambridge on Wednesday at the age of 76.

As well as being a renowned physicist whose groundbreaking theories helped us understand the complexities of space, time and the universe, the British professor also taught us about our home planet.

In his last years, Hawking used his platform to warn that human activity is causing irreversible planetary damage and that we must take action to halt climate change.

“Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it’s one we can prevent,” Hawking said in May.

Hawking frequently denounced climate change deniers, and even offered to pay their trip to Venus to illustrate the impact of greenhouse gases on a habitable planet. The global thinker also warned that the Brexit vote would damage scientific research in Britain and criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement.

To me, that is the essential legacy he leaves.

polarbear4

He also had a sense of humor, such a joy in an accomplished and brilliant man. And it wasn’t beneath him to make appearances in sci-fi shows. He will be missed.

Stephen Hawking in popular culture

This one–The next gen poker game

‘Recipe for War’: Experts Warn Pick of Pompeo Intensifies Risk of US Attack on Iran

Appointing CIA director to lead State Department “furthers a dangerous trend in which Trump is increasingly surrounding himself with foreign policy hawks who fully support his erratic and belligerent foreign policy”

Mike Pompeo: what will the US state department look like under his control?

Tillerson Out and Pompeo In: ‘From Exxon’s CEO to the Koch Brothers’ Most Loyal Lapdog’

While applauding the end of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson’s tenure as Secretary of State, green groups and government watchdogs on Tuesday denounced President Donald Trump’s pick to replace him—current CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

“Donald Trump has now somehow picked someone even worse than Rex Tillerson to run the State Department,” said Greenpeace USA Climate Director Naomi Ages in a statement. “In addition to being a climate denier, like his predecessor, Pompeo is the Koch brothers’ shill who will denigrate the United States’ reputation abroad and make us vulnerable to threats at home.”

May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, agreed that Pompeo’s potential confirmation offers little relief to green groups with concerns over Tillerson’s oil and gas industry ties.

“We’ve gone from Exxon’s CEO to the Koch Brothers’ most loyal lapdog,” said Boeve in a statement. “Pompeo received over a million oil and gas dollars during his political career, has deep ties to the Kochs, and is a climate denier to the core. Trump’s State Department is a vehicle for big oil and billionaires, regardless of whether Tillerson or Pompeo are at the helm.”

What could go wrong with the state dept. having a direct connection to the Koch Bros. whose daddy founded The John Birch Society.

WV DEP Orders Rover Pipeline To Halt Construction

State regulators have slapped a cease-and-desist order on a natural gas pipeline, citing multiple water pollution violations, according to a letter made public by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

The 713-mile-long Rover Pipeline, which would transport 3.25 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from processing plants in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, received the order on March 5 from Scott Mandirola, director of the Division of Water and Waste Management, documents show.

According to the order, DEP officials conducted inspections on four days in February, during which they said they found 14 violations in Doddridge, Tyler and Wetzel counties. The alleged offenses include leaving trash and construction debris partially buried on site, improperly installing perimeter control and failing to inspect or clean public and private roads around the construction site.

The pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer Partners, has been ordered to halt construction until state regulators inspect the site and determine that Rover Pipeline LLC is complying with the Water Pollution Control Permit issued Dec. 15, 2016. Rover also is tasked with submitting a plan of “corrective action,” due March 25, and installing devices to control erosion and sediment-water release.

Energy Transfer Partners also owns the Dakota Access Pipeline — the subject of protests in North Dakota last year.

GOP Now Wants Federal Prosecutors to Probe Pipeline Deal

North Carolina Republicans continue to attack Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper over a $57.8 million agreement his office reached with utilities poised to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Now, the GOP hopes that criticism will garner the attention of federal prosecutors.

State Republican Party leaders asked Tuesday for a federal investigation of whether Cooper broke the law with the memorandum of understanding, calling it possible extortion by the governor for his personal or political benefit.

GOP lawmakers and their allies have been persistent in going after Cooper over the agreement, saying it put the governor in control of funds that should be expended by the General Assembly. The legislature passed a law last month taking effect later this week that would intercept money coming from the agreement and earmark it for school districts along the route of the natural gas pipeline.

Cooper and his office have defended the agreement and said that nothing unlawful was done. He and other Democrats have dismissed the new law redirecting the funds as a partisan power grab by Republicans.

The money in the memo would have gone to environmental mitigation, economic development and renewable energy, but it lacked many details on how the funds would be distributed. Cooper’s office announced the agreement the same day as state regulators approved a key permit, leading critics to suggest the permit was conditional upon the agreement

While I do not like the ‘payoff’ its obvious the Republicans are playing politics and eventually shut up when its shown that quite a few Republican officials have signed similar agreements in other states.

The relationship between environmental regulators and the corporations they are tasked with overseeing should not be cozy. We’ve got to cut the ties. That’s why our campaign takes ZERO dollars from corporations. We won’t be bought and sold like the others. https://t.co/fSzzfeayuT

— Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) March 13, 2018

Here's the good news: since November 2012, more than 20 states and 40 cities and counties have raised their minimum wages. We're winning the fight for a living wage. pic.twitter.com/ll7c2k27QO

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 13, 2018

Many Americans are unaware that the people of Yemen are suffering today in a devastating civil war, or that U.S. forces have been actively engaged in support of the Saudi coalition in this war.https://t.co/hcOGRJGaAS pic.twitter.com/rr5BcyITta

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 13, 2018

A Bogus ‘Compromise’ Senate Bill Would Prolong Atrocities in Yemen

The Young/Shaheen measure would allow continued US participation in Saudi war crimes. Support the Sanders/Lee/Murphy bill instead.

Pennsylvania special election: Democrats declare victory in setback for Trump

Democrat Conor Lamb has claimed victory in a very tight special election race for Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, where his surprisingly strong showing in a Republican stronghold dealt a blow to Donald Trump.

After midnight, with all precincts reporting, unofficial results had Lamb leading Republican Rick Saccone by fewer than 600 votes. But more than 1,000 absentee ballots were still being tabulated as the count carried into Wednesday, and regardless of the outcome a recount was possible.

Saccone, who ran as an extension of Trump in a district the US president won by 20 points in 2016, said he would be “Trump’s wingman” in Washington and touted himself as “Trump before Trump”.

He appeared with Trump in a rally only days before the election and held campaign events with two of the president’s children as well as a number of administration officials.

The photo finish in such a deep red district made clear how much Trump’s standing has fallen since 2016 and gives Democrats increased optimism for November’s midterm elections. In a race this close, either candidate’s supporters can ask for a recount. However there are stiff requirements, including requiring three voters in the same precinct who can attest that error or fraud was committed.

Democrat Leading in District Trump Won by 20 Points

Most news outlets are still saying the race is to close to call, but Lamb declared victory early Wednesday morning. “It took a little longer than we thoughts,” he told cheering supporters. “But we did it.”

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-election-republicans-20180314-story.html

The most dangerous outcome for Republicans in Tuesday’s special House election is not the prospect of a Democrat taking over one of their seats.

It was the shrugging off by voters of the party’s biggest legislative achievement: the tax cut measure that Republicans hoped would be their major campaign message as they head toward a turbulent midterm election.

Though the popularity of Trump’s tax plan has grown since it was passed last year, it seemed to have stalled as an election issue in Pennsylvania, leading Republicans to shift away from it late in the campaign in search of another topic to energize supporters of state legislator Rick Saccone.

“It looks like it just petered out,” pollster Patrick Murray of the nonpartisan Monmouth University Polling Institute said of the tax plan’s impact on the election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/03/14/daily-202-pennsylvania-special-election-shows-gop-still-hasn-t-found-a-winning-midterms-message/5aa869a730fb047655a06c49/?utm_term=.387eadee9c18

National Republicans threw the kitchen sink to hold a House seat in Pennsylvania that President Trump won by 20 points. But while the special election remains too close to call, Democrat Conor Lamb clings to a narrow lead and declared victory early this morning.

The media will focus today on what an embarrassment it is for Trump to lose in the heart of his geographic base of support. He went to Pittsburgh twice in the closing weeks to boost Republican Rick Saccone, including on Saturday, and tweeted his support again on Tuesday. The White House also deployed Don Jr., Ivanka, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pence and even Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to help.

The bigger reason that the savviest GOP operatives in town are freaking out right now, though, is that the results underscore the degree to which the party has been unable to hone in on a message that can reliably win races in this environment.

Republican groups carpet bombed Lamb with commercials linking him to Nancy Pelosi, but Lamb largely defused these hits by running a response ad saying that he wouldn’t support her for leader.

Trump administration officials told reporters that they thought the tariffs could tip the race their way. Eighteen thousand members of the United Steelworkers union live in the district. But both candidates embraced the new levies, and the unions backed the Democrat because Saccone supports right-to-work legislation. So the issue was a wash.

Republicans tried to run on the tax cuts, which they’ve promised for months will be the centerpiece of their 2018 messaging. Commercials highlighted Lamb’s opposition to reform and relief for the middle class.

When these spots didn’t move the needle, GOP groups stopped talking about them. Politico’s Kevin Robillard pulled the data to show what was on the airwaves: “For the weeks of Feb. 4 and Feb. 11, roughly two-thirds of the broadcast television ads from Saccone’s campaign, the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC and the National Republican Congressional Committee mentioned taxes … For the week of Feb. 18, that dropped to 36 percent, and to 14 percent the week after. … Since the beginning of March, tax ads have been essentially nonexistent.”

These groups then hammered Lamb, a Marine Corps veteran and former prosecutor, as pro-sanctuary cities. Then they accused him of letting dangerous drug dealers get off the hook for their crimes with lenient sentences. (The dark turn the ads took in the final weeks foreshadows a particularly nasty fall campaign. If you live in a battleground and have young children, you might want to keep them away from the tube.)

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/14/conor-lamb-trump-supporters-461720

Maybe certain Dems who enthuse over this victory will hede this message? Not all Trump voters are unreachable.

Democratic Congressional candidate Conor Lamb said Wednesday that his claimed victory in Tuesday’s special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional district came, at least in part, thanks to supporters of President Donald Trump who voted for him.

“Look, I was at a lot of polling places yesterday with cars parked outside of them that had president Trump’s bumper sticker on them. So he’s a popular person here,” Lamb told CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday. “But I think that what happens when you campaign in real life as much as possible is that those divisions go away. Everyone gave me a fair shake and I know that there are people that voted for the president who also voted for me. And, you know, I thank them for hearing me out.”

polarbear4

And MFA is popular with many, although Lamb didn’t support going that far, iirc.

No. But I bet he is al least persuadable.

https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PA18PostElectionSurvey.pdf

The exit poll shows that health care was a top priority issue to voters in this district and that voters believed Democrat Conor Lamb’s views were more in step with theirs.

In 2016, voters in this district backed Donald Trump by 20 points, but last night they backed a Democrat for Congress in a referendum on the health care plans of the Republican Congress:

-Health care was a top issue to voters. Health care was ranked as a top issue for 52% of voters (15% saying it was the most important issue and another 37% saying it was very important). Only 19% said it was not that important or not important at all.

– Conor Lamb won big especially among voters for whom health care was a top priority. Among voters who said health care was the most important issue for them, Lamb beat Rick Saccone 64-36 and among the broader group of voters who said it was either the most important or a very important issue Lamb beat Saccone 62-38.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/13/democrats-nancy-pelosi-congress

Trump tried to use Nancy Pelosi as an albatross around Lamb’s neck. Here was Lamb’s response in an ad:

Now I will follow that with a Guardian op-ed from yesterday.

hen you are running as a Democrat in Donald Trump country, the name Nancy Pelosi is even more toxic than the letters CNN.

In one of the more powerful TV ads in the run-up to Tuesday’s special House election in western Pennsylvania, the Democrat Conor Lamb earnestly declares: “My opponent wants you to believe that the biggest issue in this campaign is Nancy Pelosi. It’s all a big lie. I’ve already said … that I don’t support Nancy Pelosi.”

The Pennsylvania contest is largely symbolic since the district (which Trump carried by nearly 20% points in 2016) will disappear into the mists like Brigadoon when a new statewide redistricting plan takes effect. But from a splenetic Trump rally on Saturday night to a recent appearance by Joe Biden on behalf of Lamb, both parties are treating this race as if it were a dry run for November.

Which brings us back to the Democrats’ Nancy Pelosi problem.

As the House Democratic leader since 2005, Pelosi is unpopular (her approval rating was 29% in a national Quinnipiac University poll in February) and extremely well known (83% of voters in the Quinnipiac survey knew who she was). That twofer of familiarity and voter fatigue is why the demonization of Pelosi remains a staple of Republican attack ads.

I’m aware there is likely some misogyny with Pelosi, but I think folks are fed up with her weathervane stances, just as they didn’t like Hillary being unprincipled either.

orlbucfan

Agree 100%. Plus, we old wrinkles recall when Pelosi was first elected. She was a liberal firebrand and NOT senile.

Democrats ‘Fooling Themselves’ to Think Wall Street Giveaway Will Bolster 2018 Chances, Progressives Warn

Do Democrats actually believe that rewarding Wall Street will help them win re-election?

That key question has been asked with growing frequency in recent days as a relatively large faction of centrist Democrats—led by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.)—has partnered with Republicans in the Senate to advance a deregulatory bill denounced by progressive lawmakers and independent commentators as a giveaway to massive banks and a possible catalyst for the next financial meltdown.

Robert Borasage, co-founder of Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), argued in an interview with The Hill Tuesday that the final vote this week on the bank measure (S.2155) will be a “very significant thing, both symbolically and in substance.”

As the GOP-crafted bill has sailed through the Senate, much of the media coverage has framed Democratic support for the legislation as pragmatism on the part of red-state senators facing tough re-election bids in 2018.

But progressives argue that any vote to relieve Wall Street will harm, not help, Democrats’ chances—and new polling data (pdf) bolsters this view.

“There’s no way that any vote in a red state or a blue state that supports Wall Street like this is a benefit at the polls,” Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, told The Hill. “When you have a [Democratic Sen.] Jon Tester in Montana that votes in the wrong way on an issue like this, he’s hurting his chances for reelection, he’s not helping.”

Well they think they will fool the voters about the purpose of the bill (those poor community banks) and then tout how they are so bipartisan. That’s why they are furious with Warren for shining the light on the true purpose of the bill. Dems like the ones in Dem Delaware are just doing the bidding of their banker masters.

The $$$$$$ donations from Wall street, that was the underlying reason for the Neolibs that voted to cut the regs, What other reason would their be?

A video put together by Garcia’s campaign:

Across 90 cities and 45 counties in Michigan I’ve visited, Michiganders are asking the same questions: "How do we rebuild an economy that doesn’t lock people like me out? How do we rebuild schools worthy of our kids?"

— Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) March 13, 2018

The party and press continue to amp up Kennedy as a new Dem hero for some reason, even despite the failings of his SOTU response.

He is so out of step on this. Did he have an allergic reaction after smoking his first joint?

I understand the addiction issues in his family history, but to me that’s all the more reason to separate marijuana from the harder drugs, not to mention alcohol.

polarbear4

Exactly. Alcohol is “insidious” as the Big Book says and can wreak so, so much havoc in many lives, and yet it is celebrated. Drinking and smoking are making a comeback in movies, too. If anything, alcohol is the gateway drug, not mj.

Activists plan protest of ‘Potomac Pipeline’ ahead of key deadline

Clean-water activists plan to protest a natural gas pipeline on Wednesday, demanding from the steps of the Maryland statehouse that Gov. Larry Hogan (R) halt the project before the state loses the power to intervene.

But a spokeswoman for the governor says the issue is for the federal Army Corps of Engineers to decide.

Environmentalists spent much of last year trying to block construction of the 3.5-mile pipeline beneath the Potomac River and C & O Canal in Western Maryland. They say the pipeline could jeopardize the drinking water supply of about 6 million people, many of them in the Washington metropolitan area.

Their last chance appears to be convincing Hogan to direct the Maryland Department of the Environment to initiate its own review of what activists are calling the Potomac Pipeline. Hogan would have to act before Thursday, said Denise Robbins, communications director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

“It’s been unbelievably frustrating,” Robbins said. “All the concerns that people have about the quality of their drinking water are being completely ignored.”

World’s great forests could lose half of all wildlife as planet warms – report

The world’s greatest forests could lose more than half of their plant species by the end of the century unless nations ramp up efforts to tackle climate change, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming on biodiversity hotspots.

Mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds are also likely to disappear on a catastrophic scale in the Amazon and other naturally rich ecosysterms in Africa, Asia, North America and Australia if temperatures rise by more than 1.5C, concludes the study by WWF, the University of East Anglia and the James Cook University.

The research in the journal Climate Change examined the impact of three different levels of warming – 2C (the upper target in the 2015 Paris agreement), 3.2C (the likely rise given existing national commitments) and 4.5C (the forecast outcome if emissions trends remain unchanged) on nearly 80,000 plant and animal species in 35 of the world’s most biodiverse regions.

If governments fail to set more ambitious commitments than those currently on the table, the report projects devastating losses of more than 60% of plant species and almost 50% of animal species in the Amazon at a temperature rise of 3.2C.

If countries lift their efforts sufficiently to reach the 2C goal, the outlook is improved – but still grim – with more than 35% of species at risk of local extinction in the region. If no actions are taken, the picture is apocalyptic, with a likely loss of more than 70% of plant and reptile species and a more than 60% decline of mammal, reptile and bird species in the Amazon.

A New Report Has Some Grim News About Black Babies

For decades, the number of American babies born too small was on the decline. But new data suggests the rate may be ticking up again—especially among African Americans.

The World Health Organization defines an underweight newborn as weighing less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces. In 2016, according to new joint report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute’s annual county health rankings, 8.2 percent of new babies failed to exceed the threshold. That’s a 2 percent increase in underweight births since 2014.

Babies can be born too small for a number of reasons: Most commonly, it’s because they are premature or because the mother’s placenta isn’t providing enough nutrients. Low birth weight is associated with a range of health problems, from infections and brain bleeds in infancy to a higher risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease later in life. Birth weights are a good general indicator of the health of a community, says Julia A. Willems Van Dijk, a University of Wisconsin public health scientist and a lead researcher on the report. “It’s very useful because it not only talks about infants but it’s also a reflection of maternal health.”

The researchers found that low birth weights were especially pronounced in the Southeast and parts of the Southwest. In some states, the rates varied widely by county—take Colorado, where rates ranged from 7 percent in some counties to more than 12 percent in others.

But even more striking were the racial disparities. The low birth weight rate for black babies was 13 percent, compared with 7 percent for white and Hispanic babies and 8 percent for Asian and Native American babies.

Study: Low birth weights linked to fracking sites

Infants born to mothers who live very close to natural gas fracking sites have a higher risk of low birth weight, according to a new peer-reviewed study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The study is the largest of its kind, and was conducted by researchers from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and Princeton University. It builds on previous research that also found health impacts to infants born near gas wells in Pennsylvania.

The report, “Hydraulic Fracturing and Infant Health: New Evidence from Pennsylvania” used data from 1.1 million births in all Pennsylvania counties during a ten year period between 2004 and 2013. The time frame begins before fracking for natural gas took off in the state, and includes the height of the gas boom. Researchers were able to know addresses of mothers as well as the birth weight of their babies, and combine that information with data that included the location and dates of fracked gas wells.

Extreme winter weather becoming more common as Arctic warms, study finds

The sort of severe winter weather that has rattled parts of the US and UK is becoming more common as the Arctic warms, with scientists finding a strong link between high temperatures near the pole and unusually heavy snowfall and frigid weather further south.

A sharp increase in temperatures across the Arctic since the early 1990s has coincided with an uptick in abnormally cold snaps in winter, particularly in the eastern US, according to new research that analyzed temperature data from 1950 onwards.

Extreme cold winter weather is up to four times more likely when temperatures in the Arctic are unusually high, the study found. Researchers compared daily temperatures from across the Arctic region with something called the accumulated winter season severity index, which grades winter weather based on temperature, snow fall and snow depth, across 12 US cities.

“There’s a remarkably strong correlation between a warm Arctic and cold winter weather further south,” said Judah Cohen, a climatologist at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. “It’s a complex story – global warming is contributing to milder temperatures but is also having unforeseen consequences such as this.”

New Zealand diplomat tells US Democrats to organise against Trump or ‘we all die’

A senior New Zealand diplomat based in Washington is in hot water over a series of tweets directed at the US Democratic party saying “please get your shit together or we will all die”.

Caroline Beresford, New Zealand’s deputy head of mission to the US and ambassador to Haiti, sent the tweet in response to a post by US politics website the Hill detailing the Democratic party’s plans for the 2020 election and the possible pairing of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as running mates. “A Sanders-Warren ticket could win big in 2020” declared the headline.
“No it couldn’t” responded Beresford in a tweet that was later deleted. “Please get your shit together or we will all die.”

In another tweet on the same article, Beresford added “They’ve learned nothing.”

A spokesperson for the New Zealand ministry of foreign affairs and trade said they were aware of Beresford’s tweets and were taking “appropriate action”.

Tower residents told to pay £500,000 to replace Grenfell-style cladding

Leaseholders in an apartment block covered in Grenfell-style cladding have been ordered to pay £500,000 to make their building safe after a tribunal ruled that they, rather than the management company, were obliged to cover the costs.

The ruling, which could be challenged, means leaseholders of the 95-apartment Citiscape complex in Croydon, south London, may face a £2m bill, which some have said would force them into financial ruin.

The building is owned by the family trust of the multimillionaire property mogul Vincent Tchenguiz, but the case was brought by FirstPort Property Services property management company, seeking clarification on who should pay.

..

One resident, Richard Low-Foon, told the tribunal he needed “a miracle” to fund the works as his father was ill and could not sell his flat because of the risk the building carried for any future investor. “He is in hospital because of all this. It got too much for him,” he said.

However, the chairman of the London residential property first tier tribunal, Angus Andrew, ruled against the leaseholders, insisting they should pay because “if the manager is obliged to do work … the tenants are obliged to contribute to the cost although they remain entitled to dispute the reasonableness of the cost”.

Michael Hari: Minnesota Mosque Bombing Suspect Wanted to Build Trump’s Border Wall for $10bn

Three men from rural Illinois have been charged in connection with the 2017 bombing of a mosque in Minnesota and the attempted bombing of an abortion clinic.

Michael Hari, 47, Joe Morris, 22, and Michael McWhorter, 29, are accused of carrying out the attack on the Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, just before morning prayers on August 5 2017. The building was damaged, but no one was killed or injured during the attack.

The three men are also charged with the attempted bombing of the Women’s Health Practice abortion clinic in Champaign, Illinois, on November 7 2017, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Springfield, Illinois.

The Associated Press reports that McWhorter allegedly told an FBI agent following his arrest the group planned to bomb a mosque to let Muslims know they are not welcome in the U.S. and to “scare them out of the country.”

Fellow suspect Hari also previously told the Chicago Tribune in April 2017 how he planned to build President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico for around $10 billion.

Judge agrees to issue injunction against tree sitters protesting pipeline

Opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline are continuing their tree-sitting protest on Peters Mountain. But how long they will stay is unclear, after a ruling in a West Virginia courtroom Tuesday afternoon.

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Pipeline opponents from West Virginia and Virginia crowded into the Monroe County courthouse Tuesday afternoon to support them.

During a lengthy hearing, MVP ‘s lawyer argued that the company has the property rights and the legal authority to move forward.

Project Manager Robert Cooper testified that the protest could delay the project and add millions of dollars to the cost.

But an attorney representing protestors questioned whether MVP had actually established that the tree sitters are in West Virginia, and whether they have received proper legal notice. He said the delay was of little consequence to a multi-billion dollar company.

“The young people in the trees are trying to shine a light on the fact that this process has been unfair,” said Monroe County resident Nancy Bouldin.

“These two trees and the people sitting in ’em hold a big message for our communities and that is that they have a future in which they are invested,” said Roanoke County resident Roberta Bondurant.

The judge said he would grant the injunction after the company submits additional documentation from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Keystone XL pipeline gets another delay as Appeals Court OKs one-month extension

The much-delayed Keystone XL pipeline has hit another delay, this time to allow attorneys another month to prepare legal briefs.

But the Nebraska Court of Appeals, in a ruling Monday, warned that it would be unlikely to allow another postponement.

“Neither the stipulation of the parties nor the press of other business” will justify another delay, the court wrote, after granting a request to push back the deadline for a written brief to April 16.

Dozens of landowners are contesting the decision last year by the Nebraska Public Service Commission to approve an alternative route across the state for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. They argue that the commission had the authority to approve only the preferred route submitted by pipeline developer TransCanada, and not the alternative route that was given the OK.

The initial, written arguments from the landowners were due this Friday, but their attorneys, Dave Domina and Brian Jorde of Omaha, asked for a 30-day extension of the deadline because of the complexity of the issues, and the volume of the exhibits, which exceeded 20,000 pages.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/5th-Circuit-upholds-Texas-sanctuary-cities-law-12751213.php

Of course, the three judges were all appointed by Republicans

A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday leaves in place almost all of a Texas law banning so-called sanctuary cities.

The law, Senate Bill 4, punishes local officials who limit immigration enforcement by local police or prevent officers from questioning the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest. It also requires county jails to honor requests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold detainees suspected of being eligible for deportation.

Tuesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturns an injunction by a San Antonio federal judge that had found portions of the law unconstitutional.

The appeals court upheld almost all of the law except for civil penalties for local officials who “endorse a policy under which the entity or department prohibits or materially limits the enforcement of immigration laws.” They found that use of the word “endorse” could violate the First Amendment and result in penalties against local officials who speak out on immigration policies.

Single-payer bill all but dead this year as California lawmakers craft new health package

California Democratic lawmakers are quietly working on a package of up to 20 health care bills that would soften the political blow from the all-but-certain death of a single-payer universal care bill this year.

Senate Bill 562 cleared the Senate last year but stalled in the Assembly when Speaker Anthony Rendon blasted it as “woefully incomplete.” The legislation still lacks a plan to cover its $400 billion price tag, a way to control rising health care costs and a strategy to secure federal waivers needed from the Trump administration.

Rendon has not formally killed the bill, but he told The Sacramento Bee earlier this month that a fresh health care package is in the works – the clearest sign yet that Senate Bill 562 is dead.

Democratic Assemblymen Jim Wood of Healdsburg and Joaquin Arambula of Fresno, who chair a special health committee formed by Rendon last year after the single-payer bill passed the Senate, said Tuesday they are eying legislation this year that seeks to improve quality, expand access and lower rising health care costs.

Both expressed doubt, however, that single-payer bill could move forward this year.

“I would say single-payer is not a reality this year because of the complexity of the steps that we need to go through,” Wood said.

ELECTIONS U.S. Congress, 6th Dist. Amanda Howland making another bid for office

Civil rights attorney Amanda Howland, who in 2016 unsuccessfully challenged Republican incumbent for his post as 6th District U.S. Representative, is making another try for Roskam’s office. Defining herself as “unapologetically progressive,” she’s facing the large field of contenders in the March 20 Democratic primary. Those opponents include Becky Anderson Wilkins, Sean Casten, Jennifer Zordani, Ryan Huffman, Carole Cheney and Kelly Mazeski.

Windy City Times: What prompted your run?

Amanda Howland: I ran last cycle. I was asked to run because they wanted someone with name recognition, but they really didn’t think I would do anything. They never saw it as a viable seat. Roskam spent $3 million. I spent $130,000 and I didn’t have any full-paid staff until June 2016. I got 41 percent of the vote. So we mobilized a big group of progressives and grassroots people to make sure I got on the ballot and got on the vote, and I thought I di exceptionally well, given the limited resources.

Shortly after that race, I found out that I had a malignant kidney. I was in the hospital December 19, had the kidney removed the next day and, at that point, I was not thinking of running, except that I saw what was happening with the Trump wave. The more my husband and I talked about it, the more we realized that you need to run more than once to get the name recognition to win. So we decided to that I was going to throw my hat in the ring again. Since then, in Washington, things have only gotten worse.

WCT: What do you perceive attitudes towards Roskam as being like in the district? Why do you think so many people feel compelled to challenge him?

AH: What he’s been able to do in the past is [play off the fact that] people don’t look at his voting record; they look at him as a person because he grew up there. He went to high school there. His family’s there, so everybody knows him. Now that people are people are starting to scrutinize voting records, they saw what he did with the Planned Parenthood issue over and over. They saw him with the Hillary-bashing. They saw him stand with Trump on various things that outraged people, and he helped write the tax bill that they jammed down everybody’s throat. People are looking at him in a different light; people are saying, “He’s not the moderate guy I thought he was. We better start paying attention to the votes.” … The thing that’s most different is, I’ve had many moderate Republican women that I know come up to me and say, “We are so sorry we did not vote for you last time. We will not vote for Roskam this time.”

Rashida Tlaib keeping it real

Ask your average candidate why they want to go to Congress, and you are likely to hear them gas on about making a difference.

When I ask Rashida Tlaib for the No. 1 reason she is running, she doesn’t hesitate. “I think this is about electing the jury that will impeach him, and I would be a heck of a juror!”

No need to ask who “him” is. Tlaib is running in the Democratic primary in the 13th district, which takes in, roughly, the bottom half of Detroit and then twists up, down, and hooks to the west — a successfully gerrymandered Republican creation designed to corral as many Democrats into one place as possible.

No Democrat ever needs to campaign here in the fall; whoever wins the primary on Aug. 7 will be the next member of Congress. This district is unique in several ways. It is not only the poorest (by far) congressional district in Michigan, it is the third poorest in the nation, or was at the time of the last census eight years ago.

It is also the only Congressional district in the state that is contained entirely within one county (Wayne) and the only one that doesn’t have a congressman — not since the disgraced John Conyers quit, allegedly because of his health, on Dec. 5.

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Tlaib, who is openly proud of her heritage as a Muslim (potentially the first Muslim woman in Congress) and prouder of her heritage as a Detroiter, and she vows to stay one.

“I’ve been looking at the schedule, and I found out I’d only have to be in Washington nine days out of each month,” she tells me.

Not only is she promising not to “go Washington,” she clearly doesn’t want to. “These are my people. They are who I care about. This is where I belong,” she tells me.

Oklahoma should prioritize students, teachers — not oil, gas companies

On March 5, the superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools district, Deborah Gist, presided over what became a less than typical school board meeting. Gist rallied school board members to vote for a resolution supporting the thousands of Oklahoma teachers threatening a strike over low pay. In a written statement, the district mentioned “joining school districts … to advocate for a proposal to restore funding to education and increase teacher salaries.”

Pinning the entire blame of Oklahoma’s current circumstances on one event or one person is difficult. But the most blame sits at the desks of Mary Fallin, governor of Oklahoma and the state legislators who have protected the oil and gas industry. Now, the state’s budget cannot accommodate for basic services like adequate education funding and decent teacher pay.

Gov. Fallin, and her colleagues in the state legislature have intentionally left revenue-generating opportunities on the table. Chief among them is more appropriately taxing energy companies.

From Asthma to Cancer, ‘Blistering’ New Report Details Human Cost of Fracking

A team of researchers on Tuesday released a “blistering” report on the serious public health threats—from headaches to asthma to cancer—posed by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process of injecting a mix of water and chemicals into rocks to release oil and natural gas.

The study—described as “the most authoritative” of its kind—was published by Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Physicians for Social Responsibility. Researchers found that “by several measures, evidence for fracking-related health problems is emerging across the United States and Canada.”

Looking to Pennsylvania—a hotbed for fracking—as an example, the report says that “as the number of gas wells increase in a community, so do rates of hospitalization, and community members experience sleep disturbance, headache, throat irritation, stress/anxiety, cough, shortness of breath, sinus, fatigue, wheezing and nausea.”

“Drilling and fracking operations are also correlated with increased rates of asthma, elevated motor vehicle fatalities, ambulance runs and emergency room visits and gonorrhea incidence,” according to the report, for which researchers analyzed thousands of journalistic investigations, government research and peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Democratic gubernatorial primary is one to watch

In case you haven’t heard, there is a Democratic primary race for governor, and A.J. Balukoff — the presumptive frontrunner — is happy to see it.

“I was telling people what I was hoping that we were going to have a (Democratic) primary,” he said. “I was trying to recruit people to run against me, and no one wanted to do that.”

Then, along came former Rep. Paulette Jordan of Plummer, and the Boise millionaire’s wish was granted.

Perhaps Balukoff should be more careful about what he wishes for, because from what I hear, Jordan has a good chance of winning this race. There are good reasons she has a reasonable shot at winning.

Jordan is 38, and the future is in the hands of people of her generation. Balukoff is 72 and perhaps a decade or two away from assisted living. Her experience in the Legislature gives her some background in state government and working with legislators. His main government experience is 21 years on the Boise School Board. She appears comfortable while posing atop a horse; he has the look of an elderly man who likes bow ties.

The voter turnout should be low, with at least some Democrats being more inspired to register for the Republican primary. But members of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, and other Native Americans, no doubt will be motivated to vote for Jordan – and that’s a huge voting bloc. Jordan doesn’t advertise the fact that she would be the first woman, and the first Native American of any state, to win the governorship. But she doesn’t need to.

Chelsea Manning says software developers need a code of ethics

Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower who gave diplomatic and military documents to WikiLeaks, took the stage at SXSW this morning to talk about what life has been like for her post-prison, the current political landscape, and the misuse of technology and data.

In Iraq, Manning said she had gone in with the mindset that algorithms could make things better. But during her service, Manning said she noticed people would pick and choose the data they would and wouldn’t believe.

“The algorithms themselves are not unbiased,” she said. “We put our biases in there when we write it.”

It’s also possible that engineers feed it biased data, she said, and pointed to predictive policing. With predictive policing, if a police department is already over-policing a neighborhood due to racism and biases, for example, the data they put into it will already be tainted.

“It’s a feedback loop,” Manning said.

In systems that affect millions of people, technologists and developers have a responsibility to be aware of the potential consequences of the tools they develop. Manning, herself, said she’s been in the “hot seat” to ship code quickly and has gotten caught up in the development process without thinking too much about the bigger picture.

“There’s also dangers in writing software for one thing and expecting it to only be used for one thing,” she said.

Chelsea Manning On Life After Prison, Advocacy, And Coder Ethics — SXSW

Everything you need to know about the 1st potential Muslim woman in Congress

“In Arabic, my name means ‘precious stone.’ In English, it means 17 different spellings on my Starbucks cup.” This is how the campaign video for 34-year-old Congress-hopeful Fayrouz Saad begins.

Saad, a “proud progressive,” announced her candidacy in July 2017, and if she’s elected into the seat for Michigan’s 11th District — now filled by Republican Dave Trott — she’ll be making history as the first Muslim congresswoman.

“I say quite simply that I am the product of the American Dream,” Saad told Amna Nawaz on ABC’s “Uncomfortable” series.

Her parents came to the U.S. from Lebanon over 40 years ago and started a small meat wholesale business in Detroit’s Eastern Market. “I watched them be successful. I watched them integrate into America,” Saad, one of six siblings, said. “They really inspired me, and seeing the success that they were able to have, I entered into a career in public service because of that.”

Local schools, universities on board with today’s planned student walkout

Higher-education officials across the state took to Twitter in recent days to reassure students who choose to leave school for today’s national walkout that any punishment received won’t affect college admissions.

The University of Illinois, Eastern Illinois, Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan joined institutions across the nation in letting students know their admissions packets would not be viewed any differently should they be disciplined for protesting peacefully.

“Future Illini: We support students engaging in dialogue that further informs their worldview,” the UI said in a tweet. “Non-academic disciplinary action as a result of participating in peaceful protest won’t affect a student’s admission decision.”

The statements came after students across the nation — including many in Champaign, Urbana and surrounding communities — pledged to walk out of their schools at 10 a.m. today and remain outside and protest peacefully for 17 minutes. They’ll do so in memoriam of the 17 people who died in the Feb. 14 shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school and in protest of congressional inaction regarding gun laws.

I hope schools will not discipline students at all for wanting to walk out to protest lax gun regulations espoused in various state legislatures and by the NRA.

As Bernie said last Friday, “Enough is Enough”.

http://go.cnn.com/?stream=cnn%3Fsr

@Emma4Change @JaclynCorin @cameron_kasky @davidhogg111 @delaneytarr @KenidraRWoods_
My 8 year old wanted 2 find a way 2 participate 2day 2 honor ALL those young lives lost 2 gun violence. She wanted this shirt & wore it 2day. No voice is 2 young. #NeverAgain #ProtectKidsNotGuns pic.twitter.com/QqpjLcIcoE

— Super Woman (@mawanji13) March 14, 2018

CNN just showed a rally in Brooklyn and one of the reporters spoke with Georgia, a 14 year old, wearing a bulletproof vest with the list of companies affiliated with the NRA.

#Studentswalkout #solidarity

Bernie weighs in:

Thank you to the young people throughout this country who are walking out today and who have the courage to do what the United States Congress is not doing: lead us forward to stop the slaughter that we have seen from coast to coast due to gun violence. #NationalWalkoutDay pic.twitter.com/JfdcCc0Ifk

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 14, 2018

Those of you with FB accounts, jump on. Bernie is with the students outside of Capitol Hill and WH. They are surrounding him like a rock star!

Yep. Saw that!

Bernie tells the students that “they are leading the nation and Congress to do whatever we (Congress) can to protect the American people. All over the country people are sick and tired of the NRA. ”

Bernie gets out in the masses to talk about issues immediately impacting our students (and public safety), thanks them and lets them know he is so proud of them.

Contrast to the baroness, who sneers at the working class in the middle of the country.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/fiscal-conservative-social-services-austerity-save-money

Supporting social programs reduces government spending in the long run. Nevertheless, fiscal conservatives and neoliberals continue to insist on implementing austerity policies that harm us all.

This isn’t because they aren’t aware of how social spending budget cuts shake out over the long term. They’re less concerned with which policies are ideologically consistent or financially sound, and more concerned with preventing the kind of redistribution of wealth and power from the top to the bottom which increased social spending provides.

If it costs a bit more over time to structure budgets this way, so be it: spending extra on pair after pair of cheap shoes is worth it if the shoes are so shoddy that the working class can’t kick your ass with them.

The issue is recurring costs and most administrators want one-time expenditures because they are more predictable. What’s not good is that the tax cut enacted this year is also recurring and revenues for the coffers are unpredictable, hence austerity measures are next.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-jb-pritzker-bahama-offshore-shell-company-20180313-story.html

Politicians In States Who Have 2/3 of the GDP in the US Often Have Offshore Accounts–Like in Hillary’s Home State of Illinois (note: the byline is by me, not the newpaper)

In Paradise Papers records reviewed by the Tribune, the Appleby firm labeled J.B. Pritzker as “PEP N-R,” a designation meaning he’s directly related to someone in a national government. The law firm declined to discuss its relationship with Pritzker or explain why it had applied the label to him. At the time, Pritzker’s sister, Penny Pritzker, served as commerce secretary for President Barack Obama. She has had her own offshore dealings revealed by the Paradise Papers.

J.B. Pritzker’s campaign confirmed the accuracy of reports in Forbes and Bloomberg News setting the candidate’s personal wealth at $3.5 billion. So far, he has pumped more than $63 million of his own money into his campaign in hopes of winning Tuesday’s Democratic governor primary against five others.

Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago securities lawyer, said the sparse financial information that wealthy candidates like Pritzker release and the use of offshore trusts and holding companies allows them to keep their wealth from scrutiny.

“It’s byzantine. It’s complicated. And that’s just the way they like it,” Stoltmann said. “That’s why Pritzker running for governor is so fascinating. We should know more about his finances. But my guess is that (Republican Bruce) Rauner’s probably not any more forthcoming.”

Rauner is a wealthy businessman and was chairman of the private equity firm GTCR before becoming governor in 2014. Economic disclosure forms when he first ran for governor showed Rauner was an investor in several of GTCR’s offshore investment pools registered in the Cayman Islands. The records did not reveal the value of his stake.

This is from the Hill, so consider the source…I’m changing the byline slightly as I don’t think people are angry…

Dems Frustrated Over Hillary Clinton’s Comments Last Weekend

During a conference in India this weekend, Clinton called states that supported her in the election more economically advanced than the states that backed Trump.
The remarks reminded many of the former secretary of State’s comments in 2016 that some of Trump’s supporters fit in a “basket of deplorables,” a line the Republican then used against her repeatedly during the final stretch of the campaign.

She also insinuated that women who voted for Trump were motivated by “ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

In interviews with The Hill on Tuesday, even the staunchest Clinton allies as well as longtime advisers say the comments were cringeworthy and ultimately detrimental to Democrats.

“She put herself in a position where [Democrats] from states that Trump won will have to distance themselves from her even more,” said one former senior Clinton aide. “That’s a lot of states.”

Another Clinton surrogate questioned the decisionmaking behind Clinton’s remarks. For months, some Democrats have been arguing that Clinton’s sentiments have been counterproductive to the party’s rebuilding efforts. And some have told her she should emulate former President Obama’s model to only make statements when it’s essential.

If course, if you say Clinton ought to be making comments only when essential like Obama does, the squirrels at TOP come out of their dreys and tell you how sexist that would be.

That’s why Obama was president and Clinton failed. His political instincts are much better.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-bot-network-sally-albright_us_5aa2f548e4b07047bec68023

How A Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders Revealed A Network Of Fake Accounts

When Russians at the Internet Research Agency interfered in U.S. politics, they created false online personas and fake political groups to amplify divisive messages that already had a homegrown American audience. It’s not too far from what some U.S. political consultants are doing themselves.

Take Sally Albright, a Democratic Party communications consultant who backed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unsurprisingly, Albright is vocally opposed to President Donald Trump and a big supporter of the resistance to his administration. She is also one of the loudest, most divisive voices attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s onetime Democratic primary opponent, and his left-wing supporters.

Well after the primary, Albright continues to claim that Sanders is a fraud, a liar, racist and corrupt, among many other things. In one instance she declared that the policy idea of free college, as promoted by Sanders, was racist. This provoked Sanders supporters to argue back.

Trevor, a Sanders supporter who declined to provide his last name for fear of being doxxed, but goes by @likingonline on Twitter, noticed a strange pattern of behavior when Albright responded to him. Her tweets addressing him were rapidly retweeted by the same series of accounts. This created a barrage of notifications making it look as though there was an avalanche of opposition to everything he said.

But as Trevor discovered, after an extensive amount of research that he posted online, these were not normal accounts. They appeared to be bots ― automated accounts masked as real people being used to amplify a particular political message. Who is really pulling the strings, however, remains a mystery.

Albright told HuffPost that the accounts were voluntarily handed over by their original users to an unnamed client of hers to be automated in “an analytics program.” She said she was bound by a non-disclosure agreement and could not disclose who was collecting and automating these accounts or for what purpose.

h/t Lee Fang

Establishment Democratic accounts here on Twitter making absurd arguments against broad social democratic reforms are using a bot network to amplify their voices and attacks on Bernie Sanders. Interesting piece via @likingonline & @PaulBlu https://t.co/rsN2Thdqt4

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) March 14, 2018

Dan Lipinski Raked in Rail Industry Campaign Dollars While Delaying Safety Standards

Chicago-area Rep. Dan Lipinski has a significant cash advantage over his rival in an upcoming Democratic primary, activist Marie Newman. The war chest is thanks in significant part to Lipinski’s friendly relationship with the railroad industry.

Nearly one out of every six dollars Lipinski raised to accumulate a $1.2 million campaign war chest over the last decade came from rail company PACs, a review of Federal Election Commission reports reveals.

But his push on behalf of the industry has put him at the center of one of most heated public-safety controversies of our time, the railroad industry’s resistance to installing the automatic braking technology known as Positive Train Control. Lipinski helped lead a push in 2015 to delay the requirement that railways install the technology that experts say will save lives when finally implemented.

Lipinski, one of the most conservative Democrats facing a serious progressive primary challenge this year, won his seat when his father, longtime Rep. William Lipinski, announced his retirement after the primary in 2004, allowing his son to ease his way onto the ballot and effectively face no competition. The senior Lipinski, long backed by the Illinois Democratic machine, went on to become a rail-industry lobbyist.