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Critics of Gay Ban Battle Boy Scouts Over Results of Internal Survey

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on March 25, 2013

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In the fall of 2012, months before the Boy Scouts of America announced it would consider overturning its decades-old ban on gay Scouts and scout leaders, the group sent a survey to Boy Scouts, parents, and scout leaders. The survey did not include a question about the ban, but it did ask respondents to explain what impacted their decision to recommend the Boy Scouts to their friends and families. Despite the open-ended nature of the question, around 5,500 (about 8 percent) of the 68,441 respondents volunteered that the gay ban negatively affected their “customer loyalty” to the Boy Scouts. Only a tiny fraction of the respondents—a few hundred—expressed explicit support for the gay ban. Now a fight over how to interpret those results is brewing between the Boy Scouts and Scouts for Equality, an independent organization pushing for an end to the gay ban.

“The biggest takeaway from the survey is that there is a ton of energy in the scouting community for changing the policy,” says Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout raised by two lesbian mothers, and founder of Scouts for Equality.

But Deron Smith, director of public relations for the Boy Scouts of America, tells Mother Jones that since the survey didn’t include any specific questions about the ban, and only 9 percent of respondents brought it up in an open-ended question about why they would or wouldn’t recommend the Boy Scouts, “it is insufficient to accurately predict the beliefs of our membership as a whole.” The Boy Scouts’ summary of the survey also noted that people who were happy with Boy Scouts were less likely to comment on the ban, “perhaps since the reinforcement of the policy did not put the current status at risk.” In other words, because the Scouts hadn’t yet considered ending the ban when the survey went out, the Scouts and parents who back it didn’t feel they needed to express their support.

The politics of the gay ban have changed significantly since the fall survey. Several major funders, including UPS, United Way, Merck, and Intel dropped their support for the organization late last year, and in January, the Boy Scouts announced it would reconsider the policy. Since then, pop stars and Tex Mex fast food chains alike have joined the fight against the gay ban. What Scouts, leaders, and parents think about the ban should be clearer soon. A 2013 spring survey specifically addressing the ban was sent to about 1.1 million scouts and their families earlier this month. It includes questions like, “David, a Boy Scout, believes that homosexuality is wrong… Steve, an openly gay youth, applies to be a member. Is it acceptable or unacceptable for this troop to deny Steve membership in their troop?” The results of that survey are expectedâ&#128;&#139; April 4, just over a month before 1,400 members of the group’s national council will vote on whether to end the ban.

Boy Scouts of America

Even if the national ban on gay scouts and scoutmasters is lifted however, local troops could still decide for themselves whether or not to discriminate.

Wahls says that the fall 2012 survey indicates that even conservative areas, there is still some support for overturning the ban. “I think we’ll see at least one inclusive unit in each state, and when people see that the unit is going to the same jamborees, it’s fundraising, it’s flourishing, they will realize that including gay youth and their parents makes the most sense… I had a lesbian den mother* one of Wahl’s mothers, and she was great. It was the most fun unit.”

But just because the certain members support inclusive scouting, doesn’t mean that the ban is going to go down without a fight. On Saturday, Boy Scouts leaders and parents launched a national coalition to “keep sex and politics out of scouting” and “influence the resolution committee.”

“That’s the problem with folks who are intervening on the other side of this issue,” says Wahls. “This isn’t about scouting to them, this about their problem with gay people.”

*A “den mother” is a term for the supervisor of a den of Cub Scouts. Wahl’s “den mother” was also one of his mothers.

Mother Jones
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Critics of Gay Ban Battle Boy Scouts Over Results of Internal Survey

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Beaver dams block Chevron oil spill in Utah

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on March 20, 2013

Beaver dams block Chevron oil spill in Utah

By John Upton

Brian Yeung

Beaver dams prevented diesel from reaching Willard Bay.

Chevron’s third pipeline spill in Utah in as many years on Monday released hundreds of barrels of diesel, polluting a river, coating beavers with the slick, and leading to the closure of a state park and the evacuation of campers.

Dozens of cleanup workers are mopping up the fuel along the northeastern edge of the Great Salt Lake. An estimated 4,200 to 6,300 gallons of fuel leaked after a pipeline laid in 1950 ruptured.

The pipeline was shut down after the leak was detected. Diesel was blocked from flowing into the wildlife-rich waters of Willard Bay by a series of beaver dams.

Two hero beavers covered with diesel were rescued. The dam where they lived will be torn out.

From The Salt Lake Tribune:

“From the wildlife perspective,” said Utah Division of Wildlife official Phil Douglass, “we are obviously very concerned about how this will impact the wildlife and the fishery that exists in that area.”

Willard Bay comprises nearly 10,000 acres of fresh water that is located atop the Great Salt Lake flood plain north and west of Ogden. In addition to wildlife, it supports populations of crappie, walleye, wiper and catfish in its popular fishery. The area is also popular with boaters.

The newspaper also noted that Chevron’s pipelines leaked oil into Utah less than three years ago — twice:

The two 2010 leaks spilled 54,600 gallons of crude oil near Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake City’s eastern foothills, and cost the company an estimated $43 million in cleanup costs, fines and other spill-related expenses. Monitoring is expected for years to come.

Lynn de Freitas, executive director of the Friends of the Great Salt Lake, said the latest spill raises broader questions about the cumulative impacts of all the pipelines snaking through Utah — not just this one, but all the others, including the 250-mile one that carries crude between Wyoming and the refineries on the lake’s edge and another along the south edge of the Great Salt Lake that transports fuel to Las Vegas.

“It’s part of a tapestry of habitats, and all of the habitats matter because they fill the needs of the wildlife and the birds that use it,” she said.

“When is the next big one going to occur?”

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Beaver dams block Chevron oil spill in Utah

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No, Republicans Never Intended to Cut Back on Filibusters. Why Do You Ask?

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on March 6, 2013

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Here is Sen. Jeff Merkley (D–OR), describing the mood of the Senate right now:

Many of my colleagues are absolutely beside themselves with frustration, and that frustration is rapidly turning to fury.

So what’s the reason for this growing fury? Well, Merkley tried to convince his fellow Democrats to pass real filibuster reform earlier this year, but it got watered down to almost nothing in negotiations with Mitch McConnell. Democrats apparently thought that McConnell had tacitly agreed to ease up on filibustering everything that moves in return for their agreement to weaken Merkley’s reforms, but today Republicans filibustered Caitlin Halligan, an Obama nominee to fill a vacancy on the DC Circuit Court. And that’s not all:

Senate Republicans have unleashed a string of filibusters since the bipartisan rules change deal, which did not change the 60-vote threshold, was enacted in January. They include the first-ever filibuster of a secretary of defense nominee (Chuck Hagel), a letter by 43 senators vowing to filibuster any nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the filibuster of a bill to avoid sequestration, and the filibuster of judicial nominee Caitlin Halligan. It was the Halligan filibuster Wednesday morning that set off Durbin and Merkley.

We’ll see what happens. My guess is that McConnell agreed to nothing, tacit or otherwise, and any Democrats who thought otherwise were just fooling themselves. Republicans, for their part, have convinced themselves (as usual) that this is a special case: Halligan, they say, is a dangerous radical because of a single gun-related case she pursued years ago that earned the ire of the NRA. They’ve filibustered her before over this, and they’ll do it again. Ditto for other nominees. They’ve given every indication that they just flatly won’t confirm anyone for the prestigious DC Court.

But are Democrats really working themselved into a fury over this? I’ll believe it when I see it.

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No, Republicans Never Intended to Cut Back on Filibusters. Why Do You Ask?

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Fort Collins, Colo., passes fracking ban; state and gas industry threaten to sue

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on March 6, 2013

Fort Collins, Colo., passes fracking ban; state and gas industry threaten to sue

By John Upton

Shutterstock /

Barbara Tripp

Lovely Fort Collins, where frackers are not welcome.

The city council of Fort Collins, Colo., voted Tuesday to ban fracking within city limits. The move has strong support from residents, but it makes the city the target of lawsuits from the state government and the oil and gas industry.

The new regulations [PDF] will block gas and oil exploration and ban the storage of hazardous fracking chemicals within the city, which is 65 miles north of Denver and home to 150,000 people.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) said last week that the fracking ban would constitute an illegal “taking” of mineral rights. He said he doesn’t want to sue Fort Collins, but that his principled approach to his job obliges him to do so. “Bans like the one under consideration in Fort Collins violate state law,” his spokesman said. “The governor takes no joy in suing local government. He respects local planning and control.”

The council voted to keep frackers away from the city anyway. From the Fort Collins Coloradoan:

Mayor pro tem Kelly Ohlson said state regulators have no credibility with him, nor does Gov. John Hickenlooper, who said last week the state would sue the city if it passed a ban.

“I believe the governor should spend his time protecting the health and safety and welfare of citizens of Colorado rather than acting like the chief lobbyist for the oil and gas industry,” he said. “In fact, I think he should literally quit drinking the fracking Kool-Aid.”

That was a reference to Hickenlooper drinking a cup of fracking fluid given to him by none other than Halliburton.

Also planning to sue Fort Collins: the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. This same organization submitted a petition to the city council two weeks ago with signatures showing 55 local businesses opposed the ban. But many of the signatures were apparently faked, and the association attempted to retract the petition after the deception was revealed by the Coloradoan.

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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, posts articles to

Facebook

, and

blogs about ecology

. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants:

johnupton@gmail.com

.

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Fort Collins, Colo., passes fracking ban; state and gas industry threaten to sue

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Teju Cole on the "Empathy Gap" and Tweeting Drone Strikes

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on March 6, 2013

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“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist’s.” Thus begins a series of tweets from the writer Teju Cole, each one a famous novel’s opening line rudely interrupted by drones. He calls them “drone short stories.”

Discursive, allusive, and always thought-provoking, @tejucole stands out in a Twitterverse crowded by hashtags and throw-away jokes. The Nigerian-American writer published his debut novel, Open City, to great acclaim in 2011, but Cole may be best known (online, at least) for his “small fates” tweets about Lagos. Small Fates is inspired by the French journalistic tradition of fait divers, roughly equivalent to “news briefs.” Perfunctory accounts of crime from Nigerian newspapers are transformed with a literary, humanizing twist: “Love is so restless. When T. Dafe’s girlfriend dumped him in Surulere, he went at her with a pen knife until she was no more.â&#128;&#139;”

His drone vignettes also breathe empathy into anonymous killings that happen far away. And Cole, also an occasional Twitter essayist, previously posted a a series of tweets linking drones, Downton Abbey, the IMF, and Virgin America. It’s easy to ignore drone strikes quietly happening halfway across the world; it’s harder to ignore them when they invade our familiar cultural turf.

1. Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist’s.

2. Call me Ishmael. I was a young man of military age. I was immolated at my wedding. My parents are inconsolable.

3. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather. A bomb whistled in. Blood on the walls. Fire from heaven.

4. I am an invisible man. My name is unknown. My loves are a mystery. But an unmanned aerial vehicle from a secret location has come for me.

5. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was killed by a Predator drone.

6. Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His torso was found, not his head.

7. Mother died today. The program saves American lives.

Intrigued by all of the above, I telephoned Cole to ask him what it means to be a writer in the 140-character era.

Mother Jones: What was the inspiration for your drone stories?

Teju Cole: I had been thinking so intensely so much about the global war on terror, especially the heavy silence that has surrounded the use of drones to assassinate people outside this country. I just realized that we’re facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at. The weird way that things come together is that when I wrote those drone tweets, the subject was not on the front page of papers. Two, three weeks later, it’s on the front page of the New York Times and everybody is talking in a very direct way because the release of this white paper.

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Teju Cole on the "Empathy Gap" and Tweeting Drone Strikes

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Jack Lew’s Deal Explained

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on February 26, 2013

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Yesterday I asked for an innocent explanation of Jack Lew’s deal with Citi, which guaranteed him a bonus if he left the company for a senior position with the federal government. Mark Kleiman, who says Lew is an old friend, suggests that it all has to do with the fact that bonuses are normally deferred (paid at the end of the year or even further out), which puts firms in a quandary if someone like Lew leaves for public service. Do they risk looking miserly by refusing to pay out a bonus that’s already been earned, or do they make a decision to pay it, which would look a bit like a bribe?

So if a firm hires someone with a public-service background and ambitions to go back into government, it makes sense to negotiate a severance bonus up front, specifically in case the person leaves to take a senior Federal job. That way the person is protected against a big financial hit if such a job comes through….while the firm avoids the problem of voluntarily either paying or not paying a big bonus to someone who will exercise power over it in the future.

That’s the deal Jack Lew negotiated with CitiGroup, and that Rupert Mudoch’s character assassins at the Wall Street Journal want to make a scandal out of. And yet Kevin Drum wonders what the innocent explanation for such a deal might be.

In fact, what would be hard would be inventing a guilty explanation. If Citi wanted to grease the palm of someone departing throug sic the revolving door, there would have been no need to make the deal in advance, or in writing. The only purpose of doing so would have been to avoid what otherwise would have been a confict of interest.

That makes sense. And I’d add something to this: if this is the explanation, then it’s obviously standard practice on Wall Street, something that the, ahem, Wall Street Journal would know perfectly well. But that didn’t stop them.

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Jack Lew’s Deal Explained

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A "Sequester" Is Not the Same Thing as a "Substitute for the Sequester"

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on February 24, 2013

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Whose idea was the sequester? Bob Woodward wrote an op-ed yesterday that says it came from the White House. Apparently, in return for raising the debt ceiling, Republicans wanted some kind of automatic trigger that would force everyone to negotiate a future reduction in the deficit, and the only thing Obama’s budget wonks could come up with was the sequester. So they suggested that, and both parties then overwhelmingly voted for it.

Fine. But then there’s this:

The final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester….So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

This is just damn peculiar. Even phrased the way Woodward did, it’s obvious that these aren’t the same things. The fact that there were no tax increases in the sequester—i.e., in the mechanism used to goad both sides into a future deal—has nothing to do with what the two sides agreed would be in the substitute for the sequester. The details of the substitute were obviously a subject for future negotiation. For chapter and verse on the fact that both sides knew perfectly well that Democrats would propose tax increases as part of the substitute, see Ezra Klein, Brian Beutler, and Dave Weigel.

I’m perplexed by Woodward these days. He really seems to have some kind of weird jones against the Obama White House. I can’t quite figure out where it comes from.

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A "Sequester" Is Not the Same Thing as a "Substitute for the Sequester"

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Biggest US Climate Rally Ever Pushes Obama to Reject Keystone Pipeline

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on February 18, 2013

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This story first appeared in The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Tens of thousands of protesters descended on Washington DC on Sunday demanding Barack Obama shut down the Keystone XL pipeline project to show he is serious about taking action on climate change.

A crowd that organizers put at 35,000, carrying placards in the shape of bright red stop signs, gathered at the Washington Monument on a bright, bitterly cold day for the march on the White House.

The event, billed as the largest climate protest in US history, was intended as a show of force before Obama renders his decision on the pipeline project in the next few months.

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Biggest US Climate Rally Ever Pushes Obama to Reject Keystone Pipeline

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When it Comes to Chuck Hagel, It’s Not Business, It’s Personal

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on February 15, 2013

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I haven’t seen a lot of acknowledgment of this in the blogosphere, so it’s probably worth passing along this piece about Chuck Hagel in today’s LA Times:

The persistent opposition by Senate Republicans to Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Defense secretary isn’t just about his national security views. It’s also deeply personal.

President Obama’s choice of the former Republican senator, whose nomination received another setback Thursday, looked, on the surface, like a gesture of bipartisanship. But to many of his former colleagues, it’s anything but.

Hagel was seen as a tacit supporter of Obama in 2008 rather than Republican nominee John McCain — one of the senators key to his chances of confirmation. Just last year, Hagel endorsed the Democratic candidate for Senate in his home state of Nebraska against Deb Fischer, who went on to win and is now a vote against him.

In Washington’s highly polarized environment, the Hagel nomination has become an object lesson in the dangers of crossing the partisan divide. Hagel “was anti his own party and people. People don’t forget that,” McCain said in a Fox News interview. “You can disagree, but if you’re disagreeable, people don’t forget that.”

“In the name of bipartisanship, the president selected a nominee who really stuck a finger in the eyes of a number of Republicans,” said William Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar and former aide to President Clinton. “If you’re seen as a turncoat or an apostate or a traitor, then that’s bound to have an effect on the mood of the proceedings.”

I bow to no one in my belief that Republicans have gone off the rails in their opposition to Hagel. I don’t buy for a second the argument that, hey, maybe Republicans have some legitimate questions about Hagel’s role in drone warfare. There might be legitimate questions about his role, but the actual Senate hearings have made crystal clear that among Republican ranks, they couldn’t care less about that. They love drones. They’ve asked no substantive questions about that at all. It’s all Israel, Benghazi, Israel, Iran, Israel, “Friends of Hamas,” and Israel.

At the same time, I’ve read a few too many people claiming that the real craziness here is that Republicans are objecting to a fellow Republican! But they’re not. Hagel is an apostate, which makes him even worse than a Democrat. As near as I can tell, most Rs feel about Hagel roughly the same way Dems feel about Joe Lieberman.

So yeah, this is personal. It’s crazy and off the rails, but it’s also personal.

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When it Comes to Chuck Hagel, It’s Not Business, It’s Personal

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North Carolina Moves to Toss Out Regulators

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on February 8, 2013

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The North Carolina state senate has approved a bill to fire all the members of the states’ regulatory bodies, including all the members of the Utilities Commission, the Coastal Resources Commission, the Environmental Management Commission, and the Wildlife Resources Commission.

The bill, which would affect 131 regulators, will now be considered in the state house. Dumping all the current members of the commissions would allow the newly instated Republican governor, Pat McCrory, to replace them. The Charlotte Observer has more on the plan. As you might imagine, Democrats are livid:

“I think it is a breathtaking and unprecedented power grab â&#128;&#148; there’s no other way to describe it,” said Senate Minority Whip Josh Stein, D-Wake, adding that removing everyone at once means the panels lose expertise in things such as regulating power companies and coastal issues.
“Look, they won. I understand that Gov. McCrory gets to make appointments,” Stein said, “but their throwing the entire thing out so they can put their folks on is just wrong.”

While trying to deny that it’s a political play, Republican lawmakers basically said that yes, that’s what it is:

The new “administration may see fit to have the people on boards and commissions that, let’s say, are more like minded and who are willing to carry out the desires, if you will, or the philosophy of the new administration,” Sen. Bill Rabon told committee members.

The Observer editorialized against the bill on Friday, calling it a “dangerous power grab.” The paper also points out how the bill would affect some of the state’s most important environmental regulatory bodies:

In some instances, it strips requirements that have been seen as protecting the publicâ&#128;&#153;s interest. At the Coastal Resources Commission, for instance, the governor would no longer have to appoint at least one person associated with a conservation organization. He would, however, have to appoint two experienced in land development. At the Environmental Management Commission, the governor would no longer have to appoint a doctor with experience in the health effects of environmental pollution; he would still be required to appoint a person who is employed by or recently retired from an industrial manufacturing facility.

Ousting all the regulators could dramatically affect coastal planning. North Carolina is among the states that are already seeing effects from sea level rise. But last year, the legislature decided to pretend climate change doesn’t exist rather than let it interfere in their coastal development plans, voting to bar state scientists from factoring sea level rise into coastal projections.

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North Carolina Moves to Toss Out Regulators

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