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If anyone ever notices its past 9 central and I dont have a post up… you will not hurt my feelings by starting one!? Hell you wont hurt my feelings by posting a minute after I post this one… one of the things we need more of is content/interaction in said content. Glad to see more and more lurkers coming our ways… and a few of them even speaking up :). Any chance you get to send someone our way, to introduce them to a candidate or a news article… please do!

Bernie Sanders Sets His Sights On The Foreign Policy Establishment

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will use a major foreign policy address Thursday to set out his view of how politicians on the left should discuss the U.S role in the world and why voters at home should pay close attention to America’s actions abroad.

Even as the popular lawmaker built a national reputation and attracted millions of fans during his unsuccessful candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, he frequently faced criticism for talking too little about how he would tackle global affairs as president. Now seen as a leader among liberals and a strong 2020 candidate, Sanders is poised to show that he can be a leader in the foreign policy conversation as well.

“He wants to start this debate, in some ways similar to Medicare-for-all, in which he really wanted to broaden the debate on what is possible… and say, here’s some basic progressive values that should guide our thinking about foreign policy,” an aide told HuffPost on Wednesday, referencing Sanders’s move earlier this month to propose expanding Medicare. The senator will focus on the value of international cooperation and less U.S. reliance on hard military power to pursue its goals around the world, rather than going into specific policy recommendations for hot spots like Syria, North Korea and elsewhere.

Developments in the health care policy world have demonstrated the power Sanders and his progressive movement now have over the Democratic Party. Sanders’s idea of government-provided health insurance for all Americans was viewed as a pipe dream even by the Democrats’ last presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, and he received no support from his colleagues when he introduced a similar bill in 2013. This year, he already has more than a third of the Senate Democratic caucus on board.

Bernie Sanders leads in 2020 Democratic primary poll

A new Zogby Analytics poll puts Hillary Clinton’s former primary rival ahead of other key Democrats to face Donald Trump in 2020.

The survey found that Bernie Sanders is the number one favourite among Democratic primary and caucus voters.

Poll respondents were presented with a hypothetical range of candidates and were asked to pick who they would vote for.

Progressive giant and independent senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders came out best, with 28% of respondents choosing him.

In second place, came Elizabeth Warren on 12% followed by former Vice President Joe Biden.

Mark Zuckerberg, who has been talked about as a future presidential candidate, was chosen by 7% of the respondents, and is followed by Kamala Harris, a new senator from California. CNN reports that Harris has co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’ progressive single-payer healthcare plan.

How Bernie Sanders is cultivating California for 2020

Bernie Sanders can’t get enough of California.

Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, barnstormed the Golden State ahead of the June 2016 primary like no presidential candidate in recent memory. The front-runner in the party’s nascent 2020 field has returned regularly to campaign for a drug price initiative and to urge support for a universal health care bill similar to one he’s proposed in Washington. His next public event comes Friday in San Francisco at the invitation of the nurses union, among his most vocal supporters.

Sanders’ persistent appearances in the nation’s most populous state – a deep-blue bastion whose leaders bill it as the crucible of the resistance to President Donald Trump – underscores California’s possible significance in the party’s upcoming presidential winnowing process that begins with Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

While California has long served as the largest watering hole for Democrats in search of campaign contributions, the increasing possibility that its primary will be moved up to March from June, combined with a new generation of homegrown potential contenders such as U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, further raise its significance for Sanders.

“California could be outcome-determinant in 2020,” said Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist and publisher of the California Target Book, a data-driven compendium on elections. “If you are thinking about running for president, you should operate on the strong assumption that what happens here is going to matter a whole lot.”

With Popular Single-Payer Plan, Bernie Sanders Enters New Territory: A Wealth Tax

When he introduced his Medicare-for-all bill last week, Bernie Sanders also put down on paper the idea he’s been talking about, sometimes loudly, sometimes with caution, other times not publicly at all, for more than 20 years: a “wealth tax” in the United States.

In 1997, in his book, Outsider in the House, he declared it “high time to establish a tax on wealth similar to those that exist in most European countries.” Nine years later, during his first race for U.S. Senate, his opponent quoted the passage online, printed it on brochures, and pushed it in statements: “Sanders’ European-style wealth tax,” on “everything they own every year. Every tractor, cow, and acre.” In response, the Sanders campaign argued that he had never formally proposed a wealth tax, just floated the idea.

During the Democratic primary in 2016, the Sanders campaign did consider an official wealth tax, two former officials said, but the idea died over concerns about the reality of implementation and that the tax plan would be perceived as far out of the mainstream.

Now, nearly a year after the election, the 76-year-old Vermont senator is one of the most popular politicians in America. Ahead of his Medicare-for-all announcement last week, a total of 16 senators backed the bill, putting about one third of the chamber’s Democrats behind single-payer health care, an almost real-time shift in the party’s baseline.

But few American lawmakers have embraced a wealth tax — an annual federal tax on the net assets of the very rich — though economists and academics, both liberal and conservative, have made the case for one before. Others have argued that any wealth tax would be dauntingly complicated, and potentially unconstitutional. Sanders has described it as one way to spread the concentration of wealth.

Last week, he outlined a wealth tax policy for the first time in a white paper released alongside the single-payer bill, with a list of 10 ideas for how to pay for such a program.

The benefits of Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’ plan

Bernie Sanders is right. Given the growing costs and shrinking benefits of Obamacare, and the flame-out of “repeal and replace,” America should transition to Medicare for All. Last week he introduced his Medicare for All Act of 2017, which would do exactly that, while retaining and improving Obamacare during a four-year transition.

Medicare, the current program for Americans over age 65, is a single-payer system, which means it is financed and overseen by the government, even though most providers are private. It is by far the most popular and efficient part of our health care system. In fact, many 64-year-olds can hardly wait to be 65 so they are eligible for it. Unlike private insurers, it doesn’t pick and choose which patients it will cover and for what medical conditions. All seniors are covered for the same package of benefits.

But Medicare isn’t perfect. Benefits aren’t comprehensive (for example, there is no dental coverage), copayments are rising, and there is profiteering by providers. Sanders’ plan would introduce reforms that would help with those problems. It would expand benefits greatly, and out-of-pocket costs would be eliminated except for a small copay for prescription drugs.

Republicans tweak Sanders over health care, but Cassidy-Graham could open a path for his bill

The momentum for Graham’s bill, and the surprise reanimation of a repeal effort that has been declared dead twice before, has sparked one of the Capitol’s most cherished traditions: panicky Democrats taking shots at each other. Egged on by Graham, and by a snarky Republican National Committee, a few liberal analysts and Democratic pols have asked whether Sanders bears some responsibility for the 11th hour repeal fight.

“I thought that anyone who believed that you should take your eye off the ball before Sept. 30 wasn’t being smart,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), one of 30 Democrats who did not endorse the Sanders bill, told Politico.

Sanders, who since his presidential bid has become judicious about talking to reporters in Senate hallways, was particularly tight-lipped at Tuesday’s lunches, saying only that single-payer was “where the American people want to go.” He had, after all, delayed the release of his bill several times, partially to get more input from Democrats, but largely to avoid confusing the Democratic caucus’s united stance against repeal.

But did he crack the door open for Republicans this time? Most of his colleagues say no; those who don’t reject the idea outright acknowledge that the GOP was never going to let the Sept. 30 reconciliation deadline pass without another run at health care. One pointed out that the Sept. 30 deadline itself came after Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Budget committee, got the Senate parliamentarian to clarify that Republicans could not drag the issue out forever — a development that Democrats considered to be a win.

“As soon as the parliamentarian’s ruling came down, they were going to do something,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

As Warren and Sanders Jockey for Support, One Takes a Road More Traveled

The two liberal senators are often spoken of in the same breath as if there is scarcely any difference between them. But as Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders work to expand their constituencies ahead of possible runs in the Democratic presidential primary in 2020, they are making very different wagers about the electorate.

Ms. Warren has taken steps that reflect a traditional and practical course. She joined the Senate Armed Services Committee to attain national security credentials. She is privately hosting monthly dinner seminars with policy experts to expand her command of the issues (last week was on Afghanistan and Pakistan and featured Barnett R. Rubin, a New York University-based scholar on the region).
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And, as she demonstrated here with a reminder to King’s old congregation that “there’s Jesus in every one of us,” she is opening up about herself to satisfy the electorate’s hunger for personal connection. Maybe even more striking than invoking Scripture, the scourge of Wall Street is spending some time with bankers: She attended a party fund-raiser in July at the summer residence of a former UBS executive, and also this summer she met privately in Washington with JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon.

Mr. Sanders, however, appears to believe that no such nods toward pragmatism or convention are necessary in today’s Democratic Party. He is still surrounded by the same coterie of advisers, is remaining a political independent and is as convinced as ever that people will respond to his well-honed pleas to confront the billionaire class, provide health care for all and offer tuition-free access to college.

To the frustration of some of his advisers, Mr. Sanders has shown no willingness to veer from his social justice catechism to tell voters the personal details of his life’s journey, banking that an electorate that could elect Donald J. Trump to the White House no longer needs such political rituals.

Is Centrism A Viable Political Strategy? It Sure Doesn’t Look Like It

While this relative handful of election results does support the contention that there’s no reason we can’t have a viable third-party, the fact that none of these movements lasted much beyond a single election, and that most of them were built around a single issue or individual, does demonstrate the institutional barriers that exist in our political system that make the rise of any third-party, much less a “centrist” one, highly unlikely. There’ very little history, for example, of a viable third-party movement at the state level, and only a handful of times that we’ve seen members of Congress who represent a true third party rather than being nominal independents who end up voting predominantly with one party or the other. In no small part, of course, this is because Congress itself is structured in such a way that encourages the existence of just two major parties. The rules of both the House and the Senate basically presume the existence of a majority party and a single minority party, for example, meaning that anyone who is elected to Congress as an independent or a member of a third-party has to choose between caucusing with either Republicans or Democrats if they’re going to get access to things such as committee assignments that would actually allow them to get anything done. Finally, as OTB’s own Steven Taylor has noted on several occasions over the years, the structure of our political system, which includes everything from the Electoral College to our first past the post voting system, encourages the existence of only two major parties. Unless that changes, we’re unlikely to see the rise of a truly viable third party of any kind.

Beyond the structural issues, though, there’s the question of whether or not the kind of “centrism” that the No Labels movement is championing could really form the basis of a viable national political movement in today’s environment. The sad conclusion I must reach is that, notwithstanding polling that continues to show that Americans want more centrist results from their government, the answer to this question is a pretty firm “no.”

Howard Dean: Both Parties Driving Younger Voters to Be Independents

Dr. Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, and a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, recently had some sobering words for the two major political parties in the United States.

On a Washington Post podcast, Dean said, “The most reliable demographic of our voters are the young people across the board, across racial and ethnic lines,” but added that this is a major problem for the DNC, because: “These people are not Democrats.”

Dean went on to explain:

“They’re very independent-minded. They don’t like politics. And they mistrust institutions. I think our problem as Democrats is, we’re the head of the oldest party in the West, and this party is an institution that looks incredibly unattractive; not because of our ideology, ’cause that is attractive, and that is why they always vote for Democrats. But the Democratic Party means nothing to them because it’s an institution built by people like me who’s 40 years older than them.

”

Dean, who Democratic Party primary voters and caucus goers admired for his fierce anti-establishment rhetoric and independent streak in 2004, went on to essentially affirm support for independent voters and independent candidates for office in response to a question about Bernie Sanders’ affiliation:

“Who cares if he’s in the Democratic Party or not? Bernie can call himself whatever he wants, but functionally, he is a Democrat.”

Just two days after the podcast, the Citizen Times reported that unaffiliated voters in North Carolina have surpassed the number of registered Republicans in the state for the first time.

Meanwhile, he Bashes Bernie every chance he gets.

Far away from any witnesses, my small town is being poisoned by fracking waste

In a tiny south-eastern Ohio town in the Appalachian foothills, the Hazel Ginsburg Well is holding waste from out-of-state fracking operations – a sludge of toxic chemicals and undrinkable water

Gun Stocks Surge as Trump Pushes to Ease Export Regulations for Assault Weapons

The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to ease export rules to allow American arms manufacturers to sell more weapons, including assault rifles, to foreign buyers, despite concerns that weakened oversight will fuel global conflict and threaten national security.

Aides to President Donald Trump are completing a plan to shift oversight of international non-military firearms sales from the State Department to the Commerce Department,” Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing four U.S. senior officials at various agencies. The plan is part of a broader revision of the nation’s weapons export rules that officials said is nearly finalized.

Currently, the State Department treats civilian arms exports as military sales, subjecting them to the same scrutiny as weapons like fighter jets. Under Trump’s plan, handguns and assault rifles would be moved from the State Department’s Munitions List to the Commerce Control List, which would enable quicker licensing for sales to foreign buyers.

Because the Commerce Department focuses on increasing trade, the shift is expected to significantly boost firearms and ammunition sales. Notably, following the Reuters report on Tuesday, gun stocks surged, with multiple arms companies posting their best days in several months.

“There will be more leeway to do arms sales,” an anonymous official said. “You could really turn the spigot on if you do it the right way.”

New Poll Shows Nearly Half of Americans and 2/3 of Democrats Back Single Payer

As Senate Republicans launch a last-ditch attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Democrats flock to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, new polling reveals nearly half of the country wants a national single-payer healthcare plan.

While 49 percent of voters surveyed by Politico/Morning Consult said they supported “a single-payer healthcare system, where all Americans would get their health insurance from one government plan,” only 35 percent opposed it and 17 percent had no opinion.

A government-run plan is even more popular among Democrats, with two-thirds supporting a single-payer system.

The poll also found that healthcare is an influential topic when Americans consider casting votes for representatives in Congress. Among those polled, 58 percent said passing healthcare reform should be “a top priority” for Congress, and healthcare was the second-most popular topic when respondents were asked which issues were on their minds when heading to the ballot box for federal elections.

This new data comes just a week after Sanders, supported by 16 Senate Democrats, introduced a bill that would guarantee healthcare for all Americans by expanding the Medicare program to every U.S. resident.

Covering All People With Single Payer, Says GOP Senator, Is Not Money ‘Properly Spent’

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) announced his intention Tuesday to introduce four amendments to the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), one of which would forbid states from using the law’s block grants to provide residents with a state-run single payer healthcare system—provoking some to question his commitment to the perennial Republican issue of “states’ rights.”

@SenJohnKennedy, if you care so much about states' rights, why does your amendment block states from enacting single-payer health care?

— i go by fig (@shannonholman) September 19, 2017

Latest GOP Plan ‘Is Even Worse for Women’s Health Than Previous Repeal Bills’

Surprise! Bill written completely by male Republicans would strip basic reproductive care from millions of women

Afghanistan: A Military Mission That Never Fails to Fail

How the U.S.-backed media masks the abject failures of American occupation.

The Political Genius of Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’ Bill

Single-payer health care is not a new idea, not even here in the United States, the only wealthy Western nation without universal coverage. In 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights that included “the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and

enjoy good health.” Roosevelt, of course, spoke at a heady moment, when Democrats were signing up as co-sponsors for sweeping national health-care legislation. After Roosevelt’s death, Harry Truman embraced the cause and agitated for it more aggressively than any president since, only to be blocked by a Red Scare that presaged McCarthyism, as well as a vicious campaign funded by the American Medical Association.

President Lyndon Johnson used his 1964 landslide election to enact Medicare and Medicaid, but the Democratic presidents who came after him have pulled their punches on health care—mostly promoting schemes to better organize the intersection of private and public care that mirrored those once advanced by a dying breed of moderate Republicans.

And here Democrats have paid a political price, not for compromising on any eventual legislation, but for failing from the outset to put forward a clear and simple vision of health care as a fundamental right. In 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton produced a byzantine and dispiriting plan that blended new regulations, subsidies, mandates, and free-market competition in a stew they called “managed care.” “We have no pride of authorship” over any aspect of the bill, they both conceded during the rollout. Lacking a moral center, the proposal died quickly under a withering attack from the right and the insurance industry.

Elizabeth Warren Met With Longtime Wall Street Foe Jamie Dimon

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts met with Jamie Dimon this summer after repeatedly targeting the J.P. Morgan CEO in recent years as part of her crusade against the perceived excesses of Wall Street.

Warren met privately with Dimon in Washington, D.C., early this summer and attended a Democratic fundraiser held at the summer home of a former UBS executive in July, according to The New York Times.

While the purpose of Warren’s meeting with Dimon remains unclear, her recent engagement with Wall Street represents a surprising departure from the oppositional stance she has long maintained toward financial executives generally, and Dimon specifically.

Robert Wolf, the former UBS executive who hosted Warren at his Martha’s Vineyard home implied the disconnect between Warren’s recent Wall Street engagement and her public rhetoric was the result of political posturing.

“I think Senator Warren’s views are more pragmatic; I think she is very different in a conversation than when she’s on the stump,” told NYT.

Gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed brings campaign to CMU

A more just, equitable and sustainable society is the mission of Abdul El-Sayed.

The gubernatorial candidate spoke to a crowd of about 30 people Wednesday night at an event hosted by the College Democrats at Central Michigan University. El-Sayed is the second 2018 Democratic candidate to speak at CMU this month — Gretchen Whitmer addressed students and community members on Sept. 9.

El-Sayed opened the event with an outline of his background and views.

He described his family as uncommon but “entirely American.” His father, an Imam, was raised in Egypt. His stepmother, who raised him since the age of 3, hails from Gratiot County.

The 32-year-old doctor and former executive director of the Detroit Health Department knows he faces demographic challenges in Michigan. However, the man who wants to be America’s first Muslim governor said he can appeal to Michiganders, specifically those who voted for President Donald Trump.

“We’re watching as our politics are being paralyzed by a culture of fear that tells us we cannot see eye-to-eye with people who see the world differently than we do,” El-Sayed said. “If we are willing to stand up and have the courage to see beyond the differences — to see the things that unite us — we can solve our problems.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/20/mexico-earthquake-volunteers-survivors-rescue

Rescue workers backed by an army of untrained volunteers searched for survivors buried under mounds of rubble as the death toll from Tuesday’s powerful earthquake climbed to at least 237 across central Mexico.

Rescue workers backed by an army of untrained volunteers searched for survivors buried under mounds of rubble as the death toll from Tuesday’s powerful earthquake climbed to at least 237 across central Mexico.

America gives $700bn to the military – but says healthcare is a luxury (See Subir’s great post on this topic)

When Bernie Sanders released his much anticipated healthcare plan last week, countless pundits and members of Congress asked why the government should pass such a bill given its potential cost. Now that Congress on the verge of sending a record-setting $700bn Pentagon spending bill to Trump’s desk, you can bet those deficit scolds will be nowhere to be found.

On Monday evening, the Senate passed – in bipartisan fashion – a policy bill that set the parameters for military spending in 2018 that tops $700bn, including tens of billions in spending for wars Trump has been expanding in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Amazingly, the bill far exceeds even the increase in spending that the Trump administration was asking for, and as the Associated Press reported, it would put “the US armed forces on track for a budget greater than at any time during the decade-plus wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Only eight senators voted against the bill – three Republicans and five Democrats. It passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. Even in a time of hyper-partisanship, you can always count on Congress to come together and spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build weapons and bombs for killing people overseas, even as our infrastructure crumbles at home and thousands of people die each year without healthcare.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/20/end-of-white-christian-america

merica is a Christian nation: this much has always been a political axiom, especially for conservatives. Even someone as godless and immoral as the 45th president feels the need to pay lip service to the idea. On the Christian Broadcasting Network last year, he summarized his own theological position with the phrase: “God is the ultimate.”

And in the conservative mind, American Christianity has long been hitched to whiteness. The right learned, over the second half of the 20th century, to talk about this connection using abstractions like “Judeo-Christian values”, alongside coded racial talk, to let voters know which side they were on.

But change is afoot, and US demographics are morphing with potentially far-reaching consequences. Last week, in a report entitled America’s Changing Religious Identity, the nonpartisan research organization Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) concluded that white Christians were now a minority in the US population.

Soon, white people as a whole will be, too.

The survey is no ordinary one. It was based on a huge sample of 101,000 Americans from all 50 states, and concluded that just 43% of the population were white Christians. To put that in perspective, in 1976, eight in 10 Americans were identified as such, and a full 55% were white Protestants. Even as recently as 1996, white Christians were two-thirds of the population.

14 States On Track to Meet Paris Targets

Fourteen states and Puerto Rico are on track to meet and potentially exceed their portion of the U.S. commitment under the Paris agreement.

The report shows that the member states of the U.S. Climate Alliance (USCA), which has grown to represent 36 percent of the U.S. population and more than $7 trillion of America’s GDP, are collectively on track to reach a 24 to 29 percent reduction below 2005 emissions levels by 2025.

USCA founders Gov. Jerry Brown (CA), Gov. Jay Inslee (WA) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (NY) were joined by former Secretary of State John Kerry at the report’s release Wednesday in New York City. “Together, we are a political and economic force, and we will drive the change that needs to happen nationwide,” Gov. Brown told reporters at the event.

Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation Awards $20M in Largest-Ever Portfolio of Environmental Grants

Environmental activist and Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio announced that his foundation has awarded $20 million to more than 100 organizations supporting environmental causes.

This is the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s (LDF) largest-ever portfolio of environmental grants to date. The organization has now offered more than $80 million in total direct financial impact since its founding in 1998.

DiCaprio announced the news Tuesday at a John Kerry-hosted climate change conference at Yale University.

“We are proud to support the work of over 100 organizations at home and abroad,” DiCaprio said. “These grantees are active on the ground, protecting our oceans, forests and endangered species for future generations—and tackling the urgent, existential challenges of climate change.”

Devastated Island Leaders: Climate Change ‘A Truth Which Hits Us’

As residents in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands prepared to take cover from Hurricane Maria, representatives of island nations devastated by hurricanes made a plea to the UN for recovery funding.

In a hastily-convened special session, leaders of Barbuda, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas and other nations detailed the billions of dollars needed to rebuild after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and argued that the increasing impacts of climate change on island nations required a rethinking of how the UN provides humanitarian aid.

The intense hurricane season and climate change were top talking points for several officials at the UN yesterday. While criticizing President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, French President Emmanuel Macron said the hurricanes were “the direct result of carbon dioxide emissions,” while UN Secretary-General António Guterres said reducing emissions “must clearly be part” of responding to the hurricanes.

“There are lives being destroyed,” Dominican Republic President Danilo Medina said. “Irma is not a phenomenon in isolation, but an extreme symptom of a greater problem … Climate change and its consequences should not be the subject of speculation or debate. It’s a truth which hits us and which causes great uncertainty.”

Peter Gleick.
‘No Results Found’: Thousands of Climate Science Links Purged From USGS Online Database

Yet another U.S. agency has deleted climate change information from its website. This time, the U.S. Geological Survey’s “Science Explorer” website—a tax-payer funded online database for the public to browse USGS science programs and activities—has been purged of thousands of formerly searchable climate science links.

The startling discovery was made by Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and member of the U.S. National Academy of Science.

“I didn’t realize how badly Trump has eviscerated access to federal #climate data, so I went and looked at the USGS site,” he tweeted Sunday.

In a series of tweets, Gleick noted the extent to which climate-related links have been expunged from the site a month after Donald Trump took over the White House:

* In December, there were 5,932 climate science items linked there (9 were just pictures). Today there are 416 and 292 are just pictures.
*In December 2016, 320 of those items were links to #climate data. Today, 0 links to data. 5,271 were web links. Now, 0 web links. “And the USGS “Effects of #Climate Change” webpage had 2,825 items in December. Today, that page has zero items.
* And the USGS “Effects of #Climate Change” webpage had 2,825 items in December. Today, that page has zero items.

Pelosi, Feinstein facing challengers amid protests from their left

It’s not a good time to be Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein. After a combined six-plus decades in Washington, they have become “the Man,” at least to a growing number of progressives who see them as embodiments of a Democratic Party taken over by “corporatists.”

Start with how immigration rights activists shouted Pelosi off the stage and called her a “liar” at her own manicured press conference in San Francisco this week, saying she isn’t liberal enough on immigration.

Feinstein’s star is even more tarnished after saying President Trump still had the potential to be a good president, causing progressives to rip her for being less than California-grade resistant to Trump. When the Berkeley IGS Poll last week asked California voters if they would back Feinstein for re-election next year, they responded with a rousing, “meh.” Only 45 percent wanted six more years of DiFi. More alarming for Feinstein: Only 30 percent of those under 30 would vote for her.

So what are the alternatives? Who is stepping up to take on two of the wealthiest members of Congress, women with near-100 percent name recognition?

..

“I am running for U.S. Senate as a working-class representative for the people,” David Hildebrand, a 39-year-old policy analyst who lives in Sacramento, told the audience. He also pointed out that he’s been unemployed at times and paid his way through college over nearly a decade while working multiple jobs.

“I’m not interested in corporations, their money and what they think,” Hildebrand said. “I am a Democratic socialist.”

Maine gubernatorial candidates on York County casino: Vote it down

They may not agree on much, but the pantheon of candidates now hoping to replace Gov. Paul LePage in 2018 seem to agree that a ballot question that would give one person an exclusive chance to build Maine’s third casino is a bad idea.

..

Former state Rep. Diane Russell, a Portland Democrat, said she would vote against the casino referendum.

“If the Legislature had created a comprehensive, statewide approach to gaming, we could have avoided the kind of clear corruption we have seen with this casino drive,” Russell said. “It would have been a significantly fairer process, too, benefiting our Native American tribes and harness racing horsemen.”

Charlottesville City Council votes to observe Indigenous Peoples Day

A city council in Virginia has voted to commemorate Indigenous Peoples Day on the same day that Columbus Day has been traditionally observed.

The Daily Progress reports the Charlottesville City Council voted Monday to mark the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day. That date has traditionally been celebrated as Columbus Day, though the city does not currently observe the holiday.

Indigenous protesters seize oil wells in Peruvian Amazon: chief

Villagers in the Peruvian Amazon have shut down at least 50 oil wells operated by Frontera Energy Corp to protest talks over a new contract even as past pollution lingers, the leader of an indigenous federation said on Wednesday.

Some 600 members of native Achuar communities in the Corrientes River basin seized the wells on Monday along with an electric plant and oil tanks used by the Canadian company in Block 192, the country’s biggest oilfield, said Carlos Sandi, president of the Feconacor federation.

The latest protest in a region long plagued by complaints of oil pollution came after the center-right government of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski declined to apply an indigenous rights law as it negotiates with Frontera.

The so-called prior consultation law, passed in 2011, requires the government to seek input from indigenous people before approving development plans that might affect them.

The growing indigenous anger threatens to disrupt Frontera’s plans to keep operating in Peru after its two-year contract expires.

Harper: Training for judges should include Indigenous perspectives

In Canada, all judges and those applying to be judges must soon take additional training to address sexual assault cases.

The Judicial Accountability through Sexual Assault Law Training Bill is intended to correct the overt deficiencies within the criminal justice system regarding sexual violence against women and girls. However, one conspicuous area not being addressed by Bill C-337, which the Senate will be discussing in a second reading this fall, is the fact that Indigenous women are often targets of judicial bias in sexual assault cases.

More and more Indigenous women will become entangled in the criminal justice system, according to demographics projections; at 36 per cent of the federal prison population, they are highly over-represented. All attempts at adjusting the judicial system must therefore take into account the blatantly tragic status quo regarding Indigenous women.

Several cases across the country have brought the extent of the issue to the forefront, most notably Alberta’s then-judge Robin Camp, who asked a sexual assault complainant why she could not just keep her “knees together” to ward off the assault, and advised her that “sex and pain sometimes go together.”

Manitoba offers land to Indigenous community forced to relocate in 1950s

A northern Manitoba Indigenous community that was forced to relocate 61 years ago will be getting some of its traditional land back.

The provincial government has signed an agreement to transfer 52 square kilometres of Crown land near Little Duck Lake to the federal government, so that it can be converted to a reserve for the Sayisi Dene First Nation.

The community’s 250 residents were forced to move to Churchill in 1956 after they were blamed for a steep decline in the caribou herd — an idea later proven untrue.

In their new location on Hudson Bay, food was scarce, housing was inadequate and many residents died prematurely.

The Manitoba government apologized for its role in 2010 and, last year, the federal government apologized and offered $33.6 million in compensation.

Native American Journalists Debate Future of Media in Indian Country

The collapse of a prominent Native American media network has triggered debate over how Native media can best serve the interests of communities across Indian Country and counter stereotypes and misinformation in the mainstream press.

Native American journalism dates back to the Cherokee Phoenix, founded in 1828 to advocate against the U.S. government policy of assimilation and forced removal. Many newspapers have since come and gone, victims of high costs and low revenue.

The most recent casualty was Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN), whose publisher, Ray Halbritter of the Oneida Indian Nation, this month announced that after 36 years in business, the network would take a break to explore “alternative business models.”

The news disappointed many, who surmised that the venture was too costly to support.

“This is a really tough environment for anyone that’s in the advertising side, and Indian Country Today was selling advertising,” said independent journalist and blogger Mark Trahant.

Others suggest ICTMN failed because it lost touch with the audience it intended to serve.

North Dakota settles with Dakota Access pipeline builder

North Dakota regulators on Wednesday approved an agreement settling allegations that the Texas-based builder of the Dakota Access pipeline violated state rules during construction.

The agreement worked out by attorneys for the Public Service Commission and Energy Transfer Partners calls for development of a “how-to” manual and the planting of more than 100,000 trees, but it doesn’t include either a $15,000 fine or a $15,000 “payment” proposed earlier by regulators. ETP also is not required to admit to any liability under the deal.

“This really is not as much about the monetary amount as it is about awareness and influencing future behavior,” Commissioner Brian Kroshus said, adding that he believes the provisions of the settlement will cost ETP in excess of $100,000.

The company didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment. PSC attorney Zachary Pelham said the company had given verbal agreement and was to officially sign the deal later Wednesday.

Proposed pipeline worries grow

As protests were staged in Washington Wednesday against natural gas pipelines across the country, concerns about one proposed pipeline that would go through Monroe County in West Virginia and Giles County in Virginia continue to mount.

Called the Mountain Valley Pipeline, it would begin in the Wetzel County W.Va. fracking operations and end in Chat-ham, Va., traversing a total of more than 300 miles at a cost of about $3.5 billion. The 42-inch diameter line would carry natural gas as a transmission line only, with limited, if any, distribution points along the way as proposed.

But cutting through mountainous terrain, including Peters Mountain that borders Monroe and Giles counties, has raised concerns among residents and legislators alike.

“I have been torn on the issue,” Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-9th District, said. “I know we need gas pipelines on the (energy) grid and a redundancy for power sources. But it (the MVP) causes me great concern. If I were on FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) I would not approve it at this time.”

Residents File Motion to Stop Sunoco Pipeline Project

A Pennsylvania homeowners’ association group has filed a motion to stop work on a pipeline project over environmental concerns.

The Delaware County Daily Times reports (http://bit.ly/2xhnLtR ) the Andover homeowners’ association filed a motion in Commonwealth Court seeking to end work on the Sunoco Logistics L.P. Mariner East 2 project. The 350-mile pipeline will bring natural gas liquids to the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex.

Soil beneath Andover contains leftover lead and arsenic pesticide agents that were used by an old apple orchard.

Residents of the Thornbury development say Sunoco isn’t doing enough to contain the harmful agents from spreading through dust and runoff. Homeowners’ association president Eric Friedman says Sunoco has “blighted and destroyed the private, preserved open space.”

Ohio increases fines to $2.3M against pipeline developer

Ohio’s environmental regulators have more than doubled the proposed fines against a company building a natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Michigan, saying Wednesday the two sides are at an impasse.

The fines now stand at $2.3 million and stem from what the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency says are numerous water and air pollution violations during construction of the $4.2 billion Rover Pipeline.

The twin pipelines are being built across Ohio to carry natural gas from Appalachian shale fields to Canada and states in the Midwest and the South.

Dallas-based developer Energy Transfer Partners, which also was behind the Dakota Access oil pipeline, has resisted attempts at resolving the fines, said Craig Butler, director of Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Butler said he is now asking the state’s attorney general to get involved.

Gas pipeline protesters turn up heat on FERC

nti-pipeline protesters disrupted the first open meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission since January on Wednesday, calling for changes in agency processes to allow it to more fully consider the environmental impacts of energy infrastructure projects.

More than two dozen protesters representing environmental groups from across the country​ rallied outside of FERC headquarters. A small number even interrupted the meeting — shouting that FERC was enabling natural gas developers to seize private land — but were then escorted from the room.

“People are against [FERC] rubber-stamping pipeline upon pipeline upon pipeline,” Rev. Lennox Yearwood, climate activist and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, said at a rally before the meeting. “We as the people, we must stand up.”

Pipeline leak troublesome (troublesom?… wow)

A yellow collection boom designed to contain a spill of diesel fuel lies on the water of a dead loop of the Souris River. The fuel leak was first noticed about noon Tuesday in the area where the county’s new jail in being constructed. Kim Fundingsland/MDN

A yellow collection boom designed to contain a spill of diesel fuel lies on the water of a dead loop of the Souris River. The fuel leak was first noticed about noon Tuesday in the area where the county’s new jail in being constructed. Kim Fundingsland/MDN

Any leak of diesel fuel is not good but at least the spill discovered in Minot Tuesday didn’t appear to be significant. However, as of late Wednesday, the exact source of the spill was still being sought.

The City of Minot notified Ward County on Tuesday of diesel fuel that had entered a storm water drain at the northeast corner of the new jail construction area. Although the amount of diesel fuel involved in the spill is not believed to be a very large, there was a slight sheen on the water where the storm drain empties into a dead loop of the Souris River immediately north of the Minot Daily News.

The source of the diesel fuel is believed to be a leak in a small pipeline that runs from an underground storage tank near the old Ward County Jail to the new county office building. The pipeline delivers diesel fuel to a back-up generator at the new county office building. The tank supplying the diesel was installed near the old jail in 1984.

“The leak could be anywhere. We won’t know where until they find it,” said Leona Lochthowe, facility management supervisor.

4 years later, cleanup nears end for big North Dakota spill

Cleanup is finally in sight four years after a pipeline break sent more than 20,000 barrels of oil oozing across a wheat field in northwestern North Dakota, state regulators said Friday.

Excavation of the affected site is scheduled for completion by the end of the month, with the land ready for replanting next spring, North Dakota Health Department environmental scientist Bill Suess said.

The massive spill from the Tesoro pipeline was discovered by a Tioga farmer in September 2013 and has been called one of the largest onshore spills in U.S. history, covering 13 acres of land — or about the size of 10 football fields.

Suess said about 1 million tons has been excavated from the site, and crews working round-the-clock over the years have had to dig as deep as 60 feet to remove oil-tainted soil.

Tesoro, now known as Andeavor, would not confirm the state’s completion timeline. “The excavation of the site is nearing completion and treatment of impacted soil is ongoing,” the company said in a statement.

Sanders’s bill electrifies growing single-payer movement

Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Act has injected a remarkable jolt of energy into a movement for health care.

https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-democrats-stand-single-payer-health-care/

About 4.5 million Texans would get coverage under the single-payer health care legislation that’s gaining traction in Congress. Texas, with the highest uninsured rate in the country — nearly twice the national rate — has a lot of catching up to do. But many Democrats still see single-payer health care as a risky political move, especially as Republicans continue attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Only six of the 11 Texas Democrats in Congress have signed on as co-sponsors.

The legislation won’t pass anytime soon. But growing support, in part thanks to Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign, is a big shift. For Texas Democrats who are on board, single-payer health care is a way to bridge the insurance gap with other states and sidestep Texas Republicans’ decision to decline Medicaid expansion and otherwise limit health care access. But others are more wary.

Well this is is a good start of where to start my phone calling while Im out sick.

Liberal unrest threatens Dem immigration strategy

Democratic leaders fighting to enact the DREAM Act this year are taking fire from a surprising group: liberal immigrant-rights activists.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus sounded off last week after top Democrats cut a tentative agreement with President Trump to pair a version of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act with tougher immigration enforcement measures.

More recently, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was heckled in her own district over the deal, with a group of young advocates urging Democrats to pass a “clean” Dream Act while protecting the other 10 million undocumented immigrants living in the country.

The episodes suggest the coming debate over immigration reform — a perennial headache for Republican leaders — will also be no small challenge for the Democrats.

Trump hires campaign workers instead of farm experts at USDA

President Donald Trump’s appointees to jobs at Agriculture Department headquarters include a long-haul truck driver, a country club cabana attendant and the owner of a scented-candle company.

A POLITICO review of dozens of résumés from political appointees to USDA shows the agency has been stocked with Trump campaign staff and volunteers who in many cases demonstrated little to no experience with federal policy, let alone deep roots in agriculture. But of the 42 résumés POLITICO reviewed, 22 cited Trump campaign experience. And based on their résumés, some of those appointees appear to lack credentials, such as a college degree, required to qualify for higher government salaries.