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A UH-1Y Venom, top, and a AH-1W Super Cobra, bottom, both with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 369, land at a forward area refueling point during Operation Desert Tantrum outside of El Centro, Calif., March, 14. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Christopher Johns.
Mother Jones
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Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who is running for governor this year, has a knack for controversy. He told state colleges they couldn’t include “sexual orientation” in their anti-discrimination policies. (Current Gov. Bob McDonnell assured the academy that no discrimination was tolerated.) He led a witch hunt against prominent climate scientist Michael Mann. (Cuccinelli is a climate change denier.) He requested that the exposed left breast of Virtus, the Roman goddess adorning the state’s two-century-old seal, be brought in from the cold. (“Breastgate,” the affair was called.)
And now, the latest addition to the Cuccinelli canon. On Tuesday, Virginia Democrats released a video of Cuccinelli comparing the fight to end slavery to the anti-abortion movement. “Over time, the truth demonstrates its own rightness, and its own righteousness,” he said. “Our experience as a country has demonstrated that on one issue after another. Start right at the beginning: slavery. Today, abortion.”
Here’s the video, taken by a Democratic tracker in June 2012:
Cuccinelli added: “History has shown us what the right position was, and those were issues that were attacked by people of faith aggressively to change the course of this country. We need to fight for the respect for life, not just for life but for respect for life. One leads to the other.”
A Cuccinelli spokeswoman told the Associated Press the release of the video was an effort by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, to “run a contentious campaign that divides Virginia.”
Mother Jones
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I’ve actually made this point twice today already, but both times it’s been buried in a longer post. So here’s a post that just says one thing:
Yes, it’s a dumb idea for the sequester to make equal, across-the-board cuts to every single agency in the U.S. government. But those dumb cuts are only for this fiscal year, which ends in September. For the following years, the cuts will be made mostly through the normal appropriations process. Congress and the president will have lots of freedom to make the cuts exactly where they want to, and to spare whatever programs they can agree on.
Just keep this in mind. It’s dumb to cut R&D spending, for example, but it’s only being cut for seven months. After that, normal funding will be restored if Congress can figure out someplace else to make the cuts instead. They can even do this in a limited way via the continuing resolution scheduled for a vote later this month. The sequester is dumb, but it’s slightly less dumb than people are making it out to be.
NOTE: Of course, the main reason the sequester is dumb is because we shouldn’t be cutting spending at all right now. We should be spending more. But that’s a whole different issue.
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Al Qaeda says the United States has another crime to add to its litany of atrocities: support for same-sex marriage.
In the latest issue of Inspire, the Al Qaeda-produced English-language magazine that teaches readers how to cause traffic accidents, torch parked cars, and “make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom,” the terrorist group goes after President Barack Obama for “evolving” on marriage equality. In an infographic titled “The Nation Standing on ‘No Values,” the magazine also goes after “gay congressman” Barney Frank, who is no longer a congressman. It also cites statistics showing American Catholics are less likely to attend Mass and are increasingly supportive of same-sex marriage.
Here it is:
Al Qaeda is a strict “traditional marriage” outfit.
The image calls Frank a “symbol of the American dream,” which appears meant to be insulting. Let us all tremble at the thought of the infinite masses who never thought about being a terrorist before they stopped to consider Obama shifting his position on same-sex marriage.
Why bring this up at all? Al Qaeda “fundamentally believes there is a moral decay because of Western cultural and social norms,” says Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The issues of Western policy in the region loom larger for sure, but the socio-cultural issues are also important when one goes beyond the surface rhetoric.”
There’s no way to know if Al Qaeda is following the legal developments over same-sex marriage, but it’s certainly fortuitous timing. On Thursday the Obama administration filed a brief to the Supreme Court urging the justices to strike down California’s ban on same-sex marriage.
Hat tip: Will McCants
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Pirate fishing is an entertainingly named but actually terrible scourge of the oceans.
“It leaves communities without much needed food and income and the marine environment smashed and empty,” according to Greenpeace, which has estimated that there are upwards of 1,000 illegal industrial-scale fishing ships at sea. “Pirate fishing compounds the global environmental damage from other destructive fisheries. Because they operate, quite literally, off the radar of any enforcement, the fishing techniques they use are destroying ocean life.” The practice is rampant in Central America and parts of Europe and Africa.
But now the super-intimidating international policing ubergroup INTERPOL is convening for the first time ever to talk about policing these pirates at next week’s International Fisheries Enforcement Conference in Lyon, France. “High-level Chiefs in the field of fisheries law enforcement are invited to join together with the aim of sharing expertise and strategies to prevent and combat fisheries crime,” says INTERPOL.
This high level gathering will address questions like “What are the challenges of transnational organized fisheries crime and how can we fight it?” Fisheries managers from all over the world will collaborate and share strategies and information to build a future where reprehensible illegal fishing must answer to the law. INTERPOL will outline a program of National Environmental Security Security Task Forces that have real teeth to identify, apprehend and prosecute criminal activity on our high seas.
Great news for the oceans! And for the Discovery Network, because you know it’s like T minus a year or two until it finds extra-charismatic INTERPOL ocean cops to star in a high-stakes documentary series.
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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The Wall Street Journal sat down with Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant in what were probably some very nice chairs for this comfy little edited Q&A. The global agriculture giant is “battered, bruised, and still growing,” according to the WSJ, whose cup runneth over with pathos for poor Hugh. The interview kicks off with: “What’s the harm in disclosing genetically modified ingredients to consumers?” Yes, Hugh, please tell us about the harm.
Grant says California’s Proposition 37 — which would have required GMO foods to be labeled, and which Monsanto spent millions to defeat (weird, WSJ, y’all left that bit out!) — “befuddled the issue.” But Grant says he’s personally “up for the dialogue around labeling.” Why? Because he thinks GMOs are so great of course! (Come on, you knew that answer.)
They’re the most-tested food product that the world has ever seen. Europe set up its own Food Standards Agency, which has now spent €300 million ($403.7 million), and has concluded that these technologies are safe. [Recently] France determined there’s no safety issue on a corn line we submitted there. So there’s always a great deal of political noise and turmoil. If you strip that back and you get to the science, the science is very strong around these technologies.
GMO haters gonna GMO hate! And Grant would rather be in the future than in the past. “I think some of the criticism comes with being first in a lot of these spaces. I’d rather be there than at the back of the pack.” On the whole, Monsanto has “mended a lot of fences” and “turned things around” recently with the general public, according to Grant, in part because of “consistent messaging.” I will give him that!
One of Grant’s and Monsanto’s messages, apparently: Vegetables taste crappy. This should definitely help the company with the 18-and-under crowd, at least.
Fresh fruit and high quality vegetables are becoming more important than they ever were. So we see an opportunity there, but the opportunity in veggies is going to be driven by where we are spending our money. We are spending our money on nutrition and taste. A lot of veggies look great, but they don’t taste like much. We think the consumer will pay a premium for improved nutrition and improved taste.
Grant says Monsanto spends a billion-and-a-quarter dollars a year on research and development but only “took a look at” climate change a couple years ago (!!), asking scientists if it was “fact or fiction?”
The conclusions that came back were, ‘There’s definitely something there. This isn’t an anomaly. There’s enough evidence to suggest that it’s getting warmer.’ For agriculture that’s going to absolutely present challenges, at the very time we need to produce more, it’s an environment that’s heated. In the much longer term, we’re going to have to focus on breeding to accommodate those temperature shifts.
Climate change: It’s bad for business. That’s actually not a terrible slogan to reach right-wing climate deniers. Thanks, Monsanto.
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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Monsanto CEO acknowledges climate change, open to GMO labels, thinks veggies suck
Right now on Capitol Hill, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is being grilled by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as it considers his nomination to be secretary of state. Well, not grilled exactly. Smiled at, mostly. So far, the most contentious issue has been the 9/11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, in part because the Republican members who failed to unsettle Hillary Clinton on the topic yesterday are trying to save face.
Kerry appears before the Senate committee.
The next secretary of state — who will 100 percent certainly be Kerry unless he suddenly moves to Canada or is photographed giving nuclear waste to terrorists and even then the odds only drop to 80 percent — will be responsible for signing off on the permit that will allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The topic has come up during today’s confirmation hearing. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) raised it, as did Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.). Each time, Kerry punted, suggesting that he needed to study the issue more. This is probably the most we’re going to hear on the issue during this hearing.
But Kerry went long on climate change and clean energy in response to another question from Barrasso. Here’s the exchange:
Barrasso: Climate change has been a big issue that you’ve been considered about, focused on. It seems over the next 25 years the global energy needs are going to increase about 50 percent, that emissions are going to go up significantly primarily because of China and India, and we could do significant harm to the U.S. economy by putting additional rules and regulations with very little impact on the global climate.
So in this tight budget environment with so many competing American priorities I would ask you to give considerable thought into limiting significantly resources that would not help us as an economy, not help us as a country, and not help us globally in perhaps the efforts you might be pursuing. I don’t know if you have specific thoughts.
Kerry: I do. I have a lot of specific thoughts on it, Senator. …
The solution to climate change is energy policy. And the opportunities of energy policy so vastly outweigh the downsides that you’re expressing concern about. I will spend a lot of time trying to persuade you and other colleagues of this. You want to do business and do well in America? You’ve got to get into the energy race.
Other countries are in it. I could tell you that Massachusetts, the fastest growing sector of our economy is clean energy and energy efficiency companies. They’re growing faster than any other sector. The same is true in California. This is a job creator. I can’t emphasize that strongly enough. …
The market that made [America] richer in the 1990s was the technology market. It was a $1 trillion market with one billion users. We created greater wealth in America than has been created in the raging time of no income tax and the Pierponts, Morgans, Carnegies, and Rockefellers. Every single quintile of American workers went up! Everyone!
So we can do this recognizing that the energy market is a $6 trillion market, compared to one, with four billion, five billion users today going up to nine billion over the course of the next 20 to 30 years. This is a place for us to recognize what other countries are doing and what our states that are growing are doing.
There’s an extraordinary amount of opportunity in modernizing America’s energy grid. We don’t even have a grid in America! We have a great, big, open gap in the middle of America. … We can’t sell energy from Minnesota to Arizona or from Arizona to Massachusetts or to the cold states, and so forth. It doesn’t make sense. We can’t be a modern country if we don’t fix that infrastructure.
So I would respectfully say to you that climate change is not something to be feared in response to — but it’s to be feared if we don’t. 3,500 communities in our nation last year broke records for heat. We had a rail that because of the heat bent, and we had a derailment as a result of it. We had record fires. We had record levels of damage from Sandy, $70 billion.
If we can’t see the downside of spending that money and risking lives — for all the changes that are taking place; agriculture, our communities, the ocean — then we’re just ignoring what science is telling us. I will be a passionate advocate on this, but not based on ideology. Based on facts. Based on science. And I hope to with all of you and convince you that this $6 trillion market is worth millions of American jobs and we better go after it.
This is a critical, underplayed argument. America is a capitalist nation. We consistently argue that competition is the key to success, that it provides economic growth. Yet fossil fuel interests and their allies insist that we abandon the race for clean energy, that we not compete there. Kerry’s point is that there’s a huge market we give up on if we don’t argue for clean energy. That alone is a reason to engage strongly with clean energy, even — if I may put words in his mouth — ensuring the government invest in clean energy systems to allow America to dominate the sector.
It’s not a carbon tax, but it’s important. And it’s almost impossible to argue with. Barrasso didn’t.
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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Kerry comes out strong for clean energy in nomination hearing
A new, green future awaits the concrete drainage ditch that we know as the Los Angeles River. But it may have to wait for quite a while.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which originally poured all that concrete about 80 years ago (thanks for nothing, dudes), is teaming up with city engineers on a $10 million study of the potential for restoring the river’s ecosystem, creating wetlands for animals and hang-outs for people. From The Wall Street Journal:
The study examines an 11-mile stretch of the river on the city’s east side, where some resilient plants have survived in a narrow, muddy strip of so-called soft bottom at the center of the channel.
Efforts to manipulate the river’s concrete form without losing its flood-control function will be a “delicate balancing act,” said Josephine Axt, the Corps’ local planning chief who is leading the study, known as Alternative with Restoration Benefits and Opportunities for Revitalization, or Arbor.
It’s like “setting the table,” said Omar Brownson, executive director of the L.A. River Revitalization Corp., which coordinates economic-development projects along the river. “We’re creating a more attractive destination for investment.”
Yes, well, what’s a revitalized habitat without the business it attracts? I guess?
The Corps is expected to present the results of the study to the public in June. But that public might not take so kindly to the Corps and their master plans by then. Just last month, the Corps razed dozens of acres of the river’s wildlife habitat along the Sepulveda Basin, seriously pissed off the local water agency, violated the Clean Water Act, and potentially also violated endangered species protections.
State Sen. Kevin de León, one of several local officials who has demanded an explanation from the Corps, said the Sepulveda project “doesn’t bode well” for the future of efforts to revitalize the Los Angeles River’s natural landscape.
The Journal plays down the “Sepulveda incident” with this weird statement: “The federal interest, the public’s desires and a noticeable change in recent years in the way Los Angelenos view the river have cushioned the blow of the Sepulveda Basin shearing.”
If anything, the wetlands razing may just motivate the public to push the Army Corps harder to get this one right.
But even if the Corps cleans up its act, Los Angeles has a long way to go to clean up its river, which watchdog groups have found is periodically contaminated by mercury, arsenic, cyanide, lead, and fecal bacteria.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that L.A. area governments were not responsible for the polluted water that flows through storm drains and into the Los Angeles and nearby San Gabriel Rivers. But, fearing further litigation and fines (lead! fecal bacteria!), the county is looking at less painful ways to fund the clean-up. It is now considering an “ambitious” property tax to pay for pollution remediation, at about $54 per house, and up to $11,000 per big box store, per year. Not surprisingly, it is not terribly popular with the locals.
Without the cash to pay for the infrastructure to filter the water, these are going to be some dirty, dirty wetlands indeed.
Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for
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