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Why Maryland Needs Medicare for All by Ben Jealous

Right now in 2017, we live in the state with the highest median income in the richest country in the history of the world. At the same time, more than 350,000 of us lack health insurance and total healthcare spending has increased by more than a trillion dollars in the last decade, choking small businesses and pushing our neighbors into poverty.

The current system isn’t working, and we have a moral and economic imperative to act.

Marylanders deserve a better deal on healthcare and if Washington won’t act, we will. There is no structural reason for hundreds of thousands of Marylanders being unable to afford healthcare. We know how to fix our current system and we have the resources available to do it.

But we haven’t. That is unconscionable.

It is long past time for change. A true Medicare for All system that extends affordable and quality healthcare to every Marylander – and saves countless lives in the process – is well within our grasp. Getting it done requires the courage to stand up to both the special interests who profit off our current system’s shortcomings and to those whose lack of political will continues to hold us back.

Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer say Al Franken should resign

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Chuck Schumer said their colleague Al Franken’s announcement scheduled for Thursday should include his resignation following accusations of sexual harassment from more than a half dozen women.

“Sen. Franken has said that he will be making an announcement about his political future tomorrow. The right thing is for him to resign,” Sanders, I-Vt., who ran for president as a Democrat in the 2016 elections, said in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon.

“We are now at a crossroads in American culture. And it is an important one. The way we treat women in our country has been abysmal in almost every way. We are finally addressing the issue of sexual harassment, and we need to get it right.”

Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, told the New York Times in a statement that “I consider Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments, but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately.”

A short recap of the inauguration for those who were unable to attend. It is the greatest honor of my life to serve as your mayor. Thank you Birmingham! pic.twitter.com/SeTNTLf3FS

— Randall Woodfin (@randallwoodfin) December 6, 2017

Disabled Americans Lost Voting Rights Under Trump Election Fraud Commissioner’s Law

The head of President Donald Trump’s election fraud commission drafted a law as a Kansas official that led to 23 disabled people not having their votes counted in a recent local election.

The disenfranchisement occurred in Sedgwick County and was a direct result of a law pushed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a member of Trump’s voter fraud commission, which requires disabled voters’ signatures on their ballot envelopes. Until Kobach’s Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act passed in 2011, ballots were not tossed if a disabled person’s signature did not exactly match one on file or if someone else signed on behalf of a physically unable voter.

As a result, 23 unsigned ballots from disabled people were tossed in a local election where only 24,120 votes were cast according to deputy elections commissioner Laura Bianco. Some of the races in the county were decided by far fewer than 23 votes.

“If you’re a person with quadriplegia or a senior and don’t have the same ability to mark a ballot as you did when you were younger,” the ballot would be thrown out, Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, told Newsweek. “It’s really a problem for people with disabilities. We need to get it fixed.”

Dems worry: Were we too slow on sex assault response?

John Conyers resigned. Ruben Kihuen faces intense pressure to do the same. And Al Franken’s own colleagues expect him to step aside Thursday.

Democratic leaders think they have finally found the right response to accusations of sexual assault and harassment against their own lawmakers, after weeks of half-measures and ill-timed gaffes.

But now they must assess the political fallout, knowing that the party’s initially slow-footed response might have undermined its credibility amid a transformative national movement of women revealing their stories of sexual abuse.

It’s an important question as Democrats look to the 2018 midterm elections — especially coming just as President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee decided to once again help elect Roy Moore, a Senate candidate in Alabama who has been accused, by multiple people, on the record, of sexually assaulting children.

“When you’re faced with a situation like the Democratic Party faces right now, then you have to act swiftly and make it known to the public that this is not acceptable,” said Nina Turner, president of the liberal group Our Revolution.

Democrats can’t afford to be hypocrites, Turner said, not after “the tide has turned” on how the public treats allegations of sexual harassment.

Two Months After Nation’s Deadliest Mass Shooting, GOP House Passes ‘Dangerous’ Bill to Undermine Local Gun Control Laws

Gun control advocates denounced a House vote on Wednesday approving major legislation which would allow gun owners to carry licensed concealed weapons across state laws—effectively voiding gun control laws that prohibit hidden firearms in certain states.

The House passed the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 in a 231-198 vote. The Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote that the law is “clearly aimed at undermining gun control efforts nationally,” while the National Rifle Association (NRA) called the measure its “highest legislative priority” for the year.

Kristen Rand, Legislative Director of the Violence Policy Center, said after the bill passed, “Today’s winners are the NRA and the gun industry, the losers are public safety and law enforcement. If this bill become law, the body count of innocent victims killed by concealed carry permit holders will only rise.”

The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act (H.R. 38) would make a gun owner’s concealed carry permit issued in states like Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, and others—including 19 states where permit-holders are not required to complete any safety training to qualify for concealed carry—valid in states that have passed more stringent gun control laws.

“In other words, Georgia and other states would have more say than New York in determining how many guns are safe to have on the streets of Manhattan,” wrote the New York Times editorial board on Wednesday.

Hundreds Arrested in Peaceful Protest as Thousands March Demanding ‘Clean’ Dream Act

As undocumented young people lose their temporary protected status and Republican lawmakers push for legislation that would ramp up deportations, an estimated 15,000 people marched on Capitol Hill Wednesday while hundreds—including two lawmakers—were arrested in a peaceful protest to demand that Congress pass a clean Dream Act.

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The protesters also called for the administration to stop its rollback of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is offered to citizens of certain countries impacted by war and violence or natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes. Last month, the Trump administration ended TPS protections for Haitians and Nicaraguans displaced by natural disasters, forcing thousands of legal residents to either leave the United States before their status expires or face deportation.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) addressed the crowd on Wednesday, with Gutiérrez vowing to not vote for the budget unless it includes a clean Dream Act.

Gutiérrez, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), and national leaders of United Farm Workers were reportedly among the hundreds who were arrested for peacefully demonstrating on the steps of the Capitol building.

The GOP Tax Plan Is Igniting a Movement for a Moral Economy

While Republicans may succeed in scoring a short-term win for their donors, their tax plan is sparking a new moral movement against inequality.

Israel: UN security council to discuss US recognition of Jerusalem

The UN security council is expected to meet on Friday to discuss Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a decision against which condemnation continues to mount across the Middle East and internationally.

Eight countries on the 15-member council requested the meeting, including the UK, Italy and France, amid claims from Palestine and Turkey that Trump’s recognition is in breach of both international law and UN resolutions.

The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said the bloc had united position that Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state. The Russian foreign ministry said US recognition risked “dangerous and uncontrollable consequences.”

As Palestinians held protests in several cities across the West Bank, most key US allies in the Middle East also joined criticism of the move.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hailed Trump’s recognition as “historic” and claimed other countries were in contact about following the US’s lead, but was alone among regional leaders in praising the move.

Saudi Arabia’s royal court called it “unjustified and irresponsible” in a rare rebuke of the US, and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Trump had thrown the Middle East into a “ring of fire”.

California wildfires: winds pose ‘extreme danger’ for Los Angeles

Wildfires blazing through California have entered the heart of Los Angeles as authorities warned of an “extreme fire danger” across the city.

Firefighters in the affluent Bel-Air neighbourhood battled to save multimillion-dollar estates in the path of the flames, which have destroyed homes near the Getty museum in America’s second-largest city.

Video and photographs posted on social media showed hillsides above busy roads covered in flames, rows of houses reduced to ash, and firefighters spraying water on walls of fire.

The largest blaze, the Thomas fire, has covered more than 90,000 acres (36,000 hectares), destroying more than 150 homes and threatening thousands more in Ventura, about 50 miles (80 km) north-west of Los Angeles.

With winds forecast to reach 80mph, officials have warned the worst could be yet to come.

“We are in the beginning of a protracted wind event,” Ken Pimlott, the director of the California department of forestry and fire protection, told the Los Angeles Times. “There will be no ability to fight fire in these kinds of winds.”

‘We’re fighting for our way of life’: Republican tax bill presents grave threat to Alaska’s tribal groups

For tribal people in northern Alaska, a Republican tax overhaul that was hastily cobbled together in congressional backrooms 3,000 miles away has raised fears that their entire way of life could be erased from this frigid corner of the US.

The Senate’s tax bill may land a decisive blow in a 30-year environmental battle over the Arctic national wildlife refuge, a vast untrammeled area hailed as America’s Serengeti by conservationists, by finally prising open the wilderness to oil and gas drilling. The region’s Gwich’in people fret that their primary food source, caribou, may be lost, and with it the future of the tribe itself.

“We are fighting for our way of life right now,” said Bernadette Demientieff, the executive director of the Gwich’in steering committee, who is spending the week in Washington DC to frantically plea the tribe’s case to Congress.

“Caribou provide 80% of our food, as well as our clothing. This is a sacred place and we will be wiped out if there is drilling there. We live off the land and this is our garden. Take that away and we starve.”

The reliance on hunted food like caribou is practical in an isolated place where a store-bought box of cereal can cost $24. But it is also deeply cultural – the Gwich’in, a community of 9,000 people spread across 15 settlements in Alaska and Canada, revere the animal in song and dance dating back as long as anyone can remember.

How Trump’s Dismemberment of Bears Ears Was Driven by Racism, Grave Robbery and Mormon Beliefs

President Trump’s visit to Salt Lake City Monday to sign two orders slashing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments also included a meeting with Mormon religious leaders who shared “Church doctrine” with the president before he signed the controversial proclamations.

Trump’s unprecedented, two-million-acre cut in public land protection was spurred by Mormon political leaders, including Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, and supported by the entire Utah congressional delegation, Utah governor and Utah legislature.

But if Trump had also chosen to sit down with experts such as Thomas Murphy and Angelo Baca, two scholars of American Indian descent who were raised Mormon, he surely would have heard a different perspective on Mormon doctrine from the one offered by church leaders.

Trump would have heard how latent racism, a history of grave robbery beginning with LDS founder Joseph Smith, disrespect of tribal sovereignty and a belief in divine right to the land are at the heart Utah’s relentless drive to seize control of federal public lands, particularly Bears Ears.

Murphy and Baca co-authored a 2016 academic paper, “Rejecting Racism in Any Form: Latter-day Saint Rhetoric, Religion and Repatriation,” on the history of Mormon theology and its impact on indigenous people.

The paper provides an indigenous interpretation of Mormon history and details how religious scripture has been used to marginalize American Indians, justify the looting of artifacts, and reject tribal sovereignty and rights to petition the federal government to create national monuments such as Bears Ears.

The man who could doom net neutrality: Ajit Pai ignores outcry from all sides

Over the last few weeks, critics have attacked Ajit Pai online, protesters have covered his house in cardboard signs and he has publicly squabbled with celebrities including Alyssa Milano, Mark Ruffalo and Cher.

Why? Because Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and former Verizon lawyer, plans to scrap Obama-era net neutrality protections and is ignoring widespread outcry against it.

According to multiple polls, members of the public across the political spectrum support the net neutrality rules, which are designed to ensure that internet service providers treat all websites equally and aren’t allowed to block, throttle or prioritise some content in return for payment.

In fact, the main support Pai has for the rollback comes from the handful of powerful broadband companies that stand to benefit, including Comcast and his former employer Verizon, who argue that the rules stand in the way of innovation.

“He seems to be under the thrall of very powerful business interests in Washington to the extent that he is dismissive of all other arguments,” said Timothy Karr, campaign director at Free Press. “Any input that would in any way upset his entrenched views about helping these powerful cable companies.”

New DHS Numbers Show Trump is Deporting Longtime U.S. Residents, Ripping Families Apart

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security released its end-of-year immigration enforcement numbers — “the results of a year-long return to enforcing the law, upholding the integrity of our lawful immigration system, and keeping America safe,” the agency said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch found that the number of people detained inside the U.S. rather than at the border — meaning that they were not new arrivals — increased by 42 percent over last year, while immigration arrests of people with no criminal convictions nearly tripled.

As The Intercept reported earlier this year, the Trump administration has gone out of its way to portray its immigration crackdown as a matter of public safety. Former Secretary of Homeland Security and current White House Chief of Staff John Kelly at one point directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials across the country to highlight to the media the “most egregious cases” of criminal apprehensions. From Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day to the end of this fiscal year, 110,568 people were arrested inside the U.S., compared to 77,806 during the same time period in 2016. Among those, 31,888 had no criminal convictions, compared with 11,500 during the same period in 2016.

The Human Rights Watch review, confirmed by the figures released by the DHS on Tuesday, shows that the arrest and deportation of immigrants with deep ties to the U.S. and minor or no criminal history was not an exception — or a matter of “collateral apprehensions,” as ICE has sometimes dubbed arrests of immigrants who are not targets of enforcement actions — but the norm.

Three ways to remake the American economy for all by Elizabeth Warren

The central question America faces today is this: who does our government work for? Does it work only for giant corporations, for the rich and the powerful? Or does it work for everyone?

This isn’t hard to understand. Americans don’t need to review the complexities of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index to get what’s going on in this country. Folks at the top are getting more and more and everyone else is left to fight over the scraps. Powerful interests have invested eye-popping amounts of cash into making sure it stays that way – tilting the playing field against small businesses, against entrepreneurs, against innovators, against workers, and against just about everyone else.

To keep us distracted, those in power tell lies built on fear – fear of people who look different than we do or worship differently than we do or come from a different nationality. All the while, those powerful interests have been locking down their control over our economic system.

Strong, healthy markets are the key to a strong, healthy America. But today, in every corner of our economy, big, powerful corporations are killing off competition. Airlines, banking, healthcare, pharma, agriculture, telecom and tech – in industry after industry, monopolies, duopolies, and oligopolies are calling all of the shots –exerting alarming control over markets.

The results are devastating.

Crisis of Honduras democracy has roots in US tacit support for 2009 coup

Eleven days after its general election, Honduras still has no president.

Since the 26 November vote, at least 11 people have died in clashes with security forces, and tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in protests over an electoral process marked by suspicious delays, inexplicable irregularities – and opposition claims that the ruling party is trying to steal the election.

The stand-off pits opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla against the rightwing incumbent Juan Orlando Hernández, but Hondurans say the race isn’t just about who will run the country for the next four years.

For many, what is at stake is the credibility of Honduran democracy, which is still reeling from a 2009 military coup against populist president Manuel Zelaya.

The political turmoil will likely have far-reaching consequences, and the United States, which wields considerable influence in the country, shares some responsibility for creating the political landscape that laid the ground for the crisis.

No city dollars used for Birmingham mayoral inauguration

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin didn’t use any city funds to pay for his Nov. 28 swearing in and inauguration festivities, members of his team confirmed.

Private dollars were raised to pay for the noon swearing-in event at Linn Park and an evening reception at the Birmingham Museum of Art, said Ed Fields, senior advisor to the mayor.

“When we started to think about what an inauguration would look like for Mayor Woodfin, one thing (Woodfin) did was call every city councilor and let them know what he was thinking the inauguration would look like,” he said. “He said he wasn’t going to tap into city dollars.”

On Sept. 13, which was before Woodfin was elected to office, the Birmingham City Council approved spending up to $35,000 on the council and mayor’s joint inaugural event.

Fields said a foundation was set up in order to raise funds for the inauguration, called the Woodfin Transition and Inauguration Foundation. The foundation is led by retired Gen. Charles Krulak.

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Donations largely came from private individuals and ranged from $25 to a couple hundred dollars, Krulak said. He said donations continue to roll in.

“It has been funded by people, large and small, who care about the mayor and care about what (Woodfin) is doing,” he said.

Activists worry Doug Jones isn’t doing enough to turn out the black vote

Alabama Democrats will soon have their first real shot at a statewide win in more than a decade when former U.S. attorney Doug Jones faces off against accused pedophile Roy Moore in a special election to fill Jeff Sessions’ Senate seat next week.

But in the special election, where the Alabama Secretary of State is predicting just 20 percent of registered voters will head to the polls, base voters will be key to victory for either candidate. So Jones will need African American voters, who number more than one in four of Alabama’s registered voters, to win.

But some black voters in Alabama say decades of being taken for granted by Democrats have them wondering why they should bother. Some, like T. Marie King, a community activist in Birmingham, are frustrated by the feeling that Democratic politicians seemed to only come into black communities at election time.

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Randall Woodfin, the new Birmingham mayor who rode a wave of grassroots support to an unexpected win over his entrenched incumbent opponent, said he was supportive of Jones — and optimistic — but concerned that Jones hasn’t given black voters a reason to vote for him.

“We need to push Doug Jones’ candidacy as hard as we can. But Doug Jones needs to tell us that he’s still fighting for our vote, so we can get out here and be motivated to vote for him. And I think he has enough time to do that,” Woodfin said in an interview two weeks before election day.

Democrats hoping to challenge Faso discuss opioid abuse, harassment at forum

The topics of opioid abuse, sexual harassment, the environment and education could very likely frame the campaign for the Democratic nomination to challenge Rep. John Faso, R-Kinderhook, in 2018.

Those were among the topics discussed Wednesday night at a forum held at the State University of New York at New Paltz for Democrats seeking the nomination to run against Faso, who represents the 19th Congressional District.

The Democratic candidates vying for the nomination are Jeff Beals of Woodstock; Dave Clegg of Woodstock; Antonio Delgado of Rhinebeck; Brian Flynn of Hunter, Greene County; Gareth Rhodes of Kerhonkson; and Pat Ryan of Gardiner.

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The candidates criticized Faso and his fellow Republican, President Donald Trump, and discussed climate change, immigration, health care, jobs and the hope of Democrats to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives in 2018. Attempts to reach Faso were unsuccessful.

Sen. Reggie Thomas Pre-Files Bill To Bring Early Voting To Kentucky

Senator Reginald Thomas of Lexington has pre-filed legislation that, if approved in the 2018 Regular Session, would allow in-person early voting three Saturdays preceding any primary, general, or special election.

Bill Request 49 (BR 49) would allow qualified Kentucky voters in their county of residence to cast their ballot in-person any time between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., three Saturdays prior to the election date. Under this legislation, county clerks will designate a location within his or her office where the early voting ballots shall be cast privately and secretly. The county board of elections, with approval of the State Board of Elections, may establish other locations in which the voters may execute their early voting ballots with approval and public notice.

“Kentucky voters are hard-working and dedicated people. Many work long hours, have lengthy commutes, or are college students fearful of missing classes, which can make it difficult to cast their ballot in-person on Election Day,” Sen. Thomas said. “Implementing an in-person early voting system in Kentucky will give all Kentuckians the opportunity to have their voice heard at the ballot box.”

Dakota Access Pipeline Company Tries to Sue Environmental Groups Out of Existence

If you want to experience 2017 in a nutshell, check out the billion-dollar lawsuit filed by an oil and gas company against Greenpeace and other environmental groups for their roles in the Standing Rock protests.

In a 231-page complaint filed by Donald Trump’s old law firm, Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, claims that Greenpeace and its partners are engaged in a criminal network of fraud and misinformation. The paranoiac complaint, which includes references to “wolfpacks of corrupt” environmental nongovernmental organizations and describes Greenpeace as a “putative Dutch not-for-profit foundation,” would be amusing if it weren’t so dangerous.

It leverages the RICO Act, a statute that was meant for mob prosecutions, and defamation law to wage a scorched-earth campaign against nonprofits that spoke out against the pipeline’s construction near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Fortunately, as we argue in a friend-of-the-court brief filed yesterday with a coalition of public interest groups, the First Amendment prohibits companies from suing their critics out of existence.

WV DEP waives Clean Water Act authority over Atlantic Coast Pipeline

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection on Wednesday waived the state’s authority under the federal Clean Water Act to determine if another major natural gas pipeline proposal would harm rivers and streams.

The DEP announced in a news release that the agency had waived its legal authority to decide if the Atlantic Coast Pipeline would violate West Virginia’s water quality standards. Agency officials also released copies of letters to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers informing those agencies of the DEP’s waiver decision.

The announcement is the second time in a little more than a month that the Gov. Jim Justice administration has waived the state’s authority to certify — or refuse to certify or add conditions — that a natural gas pipeline proposal would comply with the state’s water quality standards. On Nov. 1, the DEP announced a similar waiver decision regarding the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

TransCanada Plans Pipeline Meetings in 3 Nebraska Cities

The TransCanada pipeline company plans to hold meetings in three Nebraska cities to discuss its Keystone XL project.

The Norfolk Daily News reports that company spokeswoman Robynn Tysver says TransCanada knows that many landowners have questions about the pipeline and the alternative route approved by the Nebraska Public Service Commission last month.

The company is arranging what it’s calling Landowner Engagement Centers in Columbus, Norfolk and Seward starting Monday and running through Thursday. They will open at noon and close at 8 p.m. each day. Landowners are invited to visit with company representatives at the informal gatherings.

Father, son killed in Dixon area pipeline explosion

Authorities in northern Illinois say a father and son were killed in a natural gas pipeline explosion while working on a farm field.

Officials on Wednesday said 59-year-old father Rory Miller of Amboy and 30-year-old son Ryan Miller of Oregon died in the Tuesday morning explosion near Nachusa. Lee County Coroner Jesse Partington said autopsies were performed Wednesday morning but official causes of death were pending pathology results.

According to the Lee County Sheriff’s Department farm workers had been installing field tile when a tractor pulling a tiling plow got stuck. A second tractor was then used to try and free the first tractor, but when it lost traction it hit the pipeline “resulting in fire engulfing the scene.”

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The pipeline was owned by energy company Kinder Morgan. A statement from the company indicated that they did not receive a call before the work began.

“Unfortunately, a required one call notification was not provided to the company prior to the work being performed,” read a statement from Kinder Morgan.

Wells Fargo Bank in DL closed briefly due to protest

Wells Fargo Bank in Detroit Lakes was shut down for a brief time Tuesday afternoon after a protester locked herself to a table in the lobby.

Disabled veteran Jessie Campbell left after about 20 minutes of negotiation with local law enforcement and bank officials. She was not arrested.

She was one of a dozen or so protesters who picketed outside Wells Fargo after arriving from Camp Turtle Island – Water Protector Sanctuary, located at the intersection of County Road 4 and Highway 113 in the center of the White Earth Reservation.

The protesters want Wells Fargo to divest itself from funding oil pipeline projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline, the site of a long, bitter protest near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota that drew international attention last year.

“Wells Fargo funds these oil companies, they fund the oil pipeline, which shot rubber bullets at peaceful protesters last year,” Campbell said in an interview after leaving the bank.

‘Largest ever’ drilling lease sale in Alaska yields few bids

A lease sale for oil and gas drilling rights in Alaska — deemed the largest-ever there by the Trump administration — produced bids for only 7 tracts of land and garnered only $1.16 million in revenue, officials announced late Wednesday.

The Bureau of Land Management auctioned 900 tracts of land in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A), totaling 10.3 million acres, for oil and gas drilling rights this week.

But only two companies bid, securing drilling rights for 7 tracts of land — or less than 1 percent of that offered — for only $1.16 million, Reuters reports.

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A GOP tax proposal is paid for, in part, by lease sales in the ANWR region. Republican supporters of that proposal, including the Alaska congressional delegation, hope drilling in the region will produce $1 billion in revenue for the federal government, though opponents of the plan say the economic analysis is too optimistic about oil industry demand for ANWR drilling.

Why does Canada spy on its own indigenous communities?

Researchers and journalists have begun to reveal the extent to which Indigenous activists and organisations in Canada are subject to surveillance by police, military, national security intelligence agencies and other government bodies. While security agencies have long looked beyond ‘traditional’ national security threats and set their sights on activists – even in the absence of evidence linking these individuals or organisations to any violent criminal activity – this reality is increasingly the subject of media and public scrutiny. As Jeffrey Monaghan and Kevin Walby have written, the language of “aboriginal and multi-issue extremists” in security discourse blurs the line between threats to national security, matters of ordinary law enforcement, and lawful, democratic advocacy.

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Indigenous nations and peoples have emerged, worldwide, as vocal defenders of land and water, organising to protect ancestral territories and ways of life. In Canada, while aboriginal and treaty rights are constitutionally recognised and affirmed, the interpretation of those rights is highly contested and a matter frequently before the country’s highest court. Indigenous activists and organisations in Canada have led popular resistance to the development of new oil and gas pipelines, hydroelectric dams, mining operations, and other extractive industries that have significant environmental impact and which frequently encroach on Indigenous territories.

This resistance – with tactics ranging from peaceful protest and strategic litigation to the establishment of creative action camps and blockades – has frequently been met with a forceful police response. Through diligent research and investigative reporting, a pattern of extensive surveillance of these activities has also emerged – implicating law enforcement, intelligence agencies and numerous other government bodies.

These indigenous communities are models for how to adapt to climate change

When the poisoned river ran red with heavy metals, people from nearby communities didn’t believe at first that climate change was to blame. In this small village nestled in the Cordillera Blanca, a majestic mountain range that contains several of the highest peaks in South America, the glaciers melted and metal-rich rocks were exposed to the air for the first time in thousands of years.

The glacial meltwater washing over the exposed rocks carried metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium and iron into area waterways, turning rivers like the Rio Negro a rust red. This contaminated both soil and water and posed a significant health risk. Over time, people, wildlife and livestock who drank the water became sick, and crop productivity plummeted.

As headlines of global climate change become more alarming, it’s easy to forget that climate change is also an intensely local problem. Startling statistics announcing that the snowcaps of the Andes or Alps will disappear before the end of this century conceal the fact that hundreds of smaller glaciers in these mountain ranges have already melted away, leaving a trail of devastation and threatening thousands of families’ way of life.

In Peru, the government conducted a national inventory in 2013 and found that between 1970 and 2003, the 19 Peruvian mountain ranges with glaciers lost around 40 percent of their total ice surface. Some very large glacier ranges have already lost a third of their perennial ice, and some smaller glaciers no longer exist at all.

Silently, climate change has started to leave a trail of disasters in these mountains, and that has consequences for major lowland cities that rely, knowingly or not, on mountain ecosystems for food and water, agriculture and livelihoods. In a place like Peru, climate change adaptation begins in the mountains. And alpine communities are scrambling to find ways of adjusting to a new reality.

Ian Campeau on Leaving A Tribe Called Red for a Life of Advocacy

Ian Campeau, formerly the most outspoken member of Indigenous electronic trio A Tribe Called Red, is now the most outspoken former member. Despite Tribe’s outsize success—or rather because of it, given their exhausting tour schedule—the Nippising Anishinaabe artist also known as DJ NDN left the award-winning group to focus more on changing minds than moving bodies.

Not that he wasn’t already one of Canada’s highest-profile social-justice activists, online and off. Campeau weaponized his Twitter feed against racists, misogynists and other hatemongers long before we had a name for the alt-right. He got the Nepean Redskins, a suburban Ottawa youth football club, to change their name to the Nepean Eagles by filing a human rights complaint in 2013. And he made his presence felt during the Canada 150 “re-occupation” protest on Parliament Hill, calling it a “mausoleum” and asking a Mountie if he was proud to be Canadian. (“No comment.”)

Now Campeau’s stepping up his fight. He’s using his celebrity platform to advocate directly to politicians and policymakers and launched a public speaking career on topics like toxic masculinity and how to be an ally. (“Step One: Be Quiet.”) After discovering medical marijuana light during his wife’s breast cancer battle, he’s become an ambassador for cannabis site Leafly to influence legalization legislation. He still occasionally DJs but to fundraiser for women’s shelters. And when not trying to save the world, he’s busy chopping wood to heat his home and farming to feed his family.

Ryan pledges ‘entitlement reform’ in 2018

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday said House Republicans will aim to cut spending on Medicare, Medicaid and welfare programs next year as a way to trim the federal deficit.

“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” Ryan said during an interview on Ross Kaminsky’s talk radio show.

Health-care entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid “are the big drivers of debt,” Ryan said, “so we spend more time on the health-care entitlements, because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

Ryan said he’s been speaking privately with President Trump, who is beginning to warm to the idea of slowing the spending growth in entitlements.

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised not to cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security.

MSNBC to bring back Sam Seder after cutting ties over Polanski rape joke: report

MSNBC is reportedly planning to bring back contributor Sam Seder, according to The Intercept.

The move comes after the network previously opted not to renew its contract with Seder after one of his old tweets resurfaced in which he made a joke about director Roman Polanski raping his daughter.

“I appreciate MSNBC’s thoughtful reconsideration and willingness to understand the cynical motives of those who intentionally misrepresented my tweet for their own toxic, political purposes,” Seder said in a statement, according to The Intercept.

“We are experiencing an important and long overdue moment of empowerment for the victims of sexual assault and of reckoning for their perpetrators. I’m proud that MSNBC and its staff have set a clear example of the need to get it right.”

Volkswagen executive sentenced to maximum prison term, fine under plea deal

On Wednesday, a US District judge in Detroit sentenced Oliver Schmidt, a former Volkswagen executive, to seven years in prison for his role in the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal of 2015. Schmidt was also ordered to pay a criminal penalty of $400,000, according to a US Department of Justice (DOJ) press release. The prison term and the fine together represent the maximum sentence that Schmidt could have received under the plea deal he signed in August.

Schmidt, a German citizen who lived in Detroit as an emissions compliance executive for VW, was arrested in Miami on vacation last January. In August, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and to making a false statement under the Clean Air Act. Schmidt’s plea deal stated that the former executive could face up to seven years in prison and between $40,000 and $400,000 in fines.

Last week, Schmidt’s attorneys made a last-minute bid requesting a lighter sentence for Schmidt: 40 months of supervised release and a $100,000 fine. Schmidt also wrote a letter to the judge, which surfaced over the weekend, in which the executive said he felt “misused” by his own company and claimed that higher-ranked VW executives coached him on a script to help him lie to a California Air Resources Board (CARB) official.

Instead, Schmidt was sentenced to the maximum penalties outlined in the plea deal. Only one other VW employee has been sentenced in connection with the emissions scandal: former engineer James Liang, who received 40 months in prison and two years of supervised release as the result of his plea deal. Although six other VW Group executives have been indicted, none is in US custody.