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The Koch Brothers Just Launched a Lobbying Campaign to Eliminate an Obscure Government Agency. Here’s Why.

Mother Jones

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Koch Industries has officially entered the contentious fight over the fate of the Export-Import Bank, the independent government agency that guarantees loans and provides financing to companies doing business overseas and foreign businesses buying American products—and that has recently become a target for conservatives and libertarians who decry big-government crony capitalism.

On Tuesday, the industrial conglomerate run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to oppose the reauthorization of this obscure, 80-year-old institution, which otherwise will expire at the end of June. Signed by Philip Ellender, the president of Koch’s government affairs arm, the letter signals the start of a Koch lobbying effort aimed at shuttering the New Deal-era agency. The Ex-Im Bank has been living on borrowed time since September, when Congress temporarily extended its charter. But now Koch Industries wants Congress to eradicate the agency for good.

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The Koch Brothers Just Launched a Lobbying Campaign to Eliminate an Obscure Government Agency. Here’s Why.

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Q&A: How GreenYrLife Is Changing the App Landscape

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Music Review: "SLC" from Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs’ All Her Fault

Mother Jones

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TRACK 1

“SLC”

from Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs’ All Her Fault

TRANSDREAMER

Liner notes: “Don’t get your hopes up in Salt Lake City/’Cause you ain’t gonna have a good time,” sing Holly Golightly and Lawyer Dave (a.k.a. the Brokeoffs) on this jaunty country-blues shuffle, adding that you “can’t get fucked up, can’t get shitty” there in the heart of Mormon country.

Behind the music: The British-born Golightly, a former member of Thee Headcoatees and onetime Jack White duet partner, has 20 solo albums to her name. She recorded All Her Fault at home outside Athens, Georgia, where she shelters rescue horses.

Check it out if you like: Rootsy acts such as Pokey LaFarge and Alabama Shakes.

This review originally appeared in our March/April 2014 issue of Mother Jones.

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Music Review: "SLC" from Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs’ All Her Fault

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Republican solution to wildfires: Sell the trees!

Republican solution to wildfires: Sell the trees!

House Republicans have a cunning plan for tackling the wildfires that have been ravaging the American West this fire season: They want to allow loggers to haul away the trees before they burn.

No forests means no forest fires, see?

Chris Roberts

The charred aftermath of California’s Rim Fire is as vacant as the minds responsible for Congress’s new wildfire bill.

The Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act was approved mostly along party lines by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Friday. The bill would more than double logging nationwide and turn some forestlands into pasturelands.

But the bill will never become law. President Obama has vowed to veto it if it ever reaches his desk.

It’s not that it’s a bad idea to reduce fuel in the nation’s forests to help preempt wildfires. By taking a hard-line approach to fighting every wildfire, Americans have inadvertently created unnaturally incendiary conditions. Leaf litter, woody detritus, and dense stands of trees that would be cleared out by frequent fires build up, then explode into infernos. Meanwhile, scores of small trees that flourish in the absence of regular fires can damage ecosystems and hog water.

But this bill is a public giveaway to private logging interests masquerading as a fire-prevention effort. From the L.A. Times:

Republicans portrayed the bill as a jobs measure that would prop up the economies of rural counties, which would receive a fourth of the money from timber sales to help fund schools and other services.

Democrats said the bill would allow logging and road building in areas now without roads and sharply curtail public review of proposed timber-cutting projects.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., called the measure “overreaching,” saying it would impose mandatory production quotas for timber.

“I wish our Republican friends were more serious about funding the Forest Service and its fuel load reduction programs,” he said in an interview. “They have slashed funding year after year, even as we’ve had more severe wildfires every year.”

The National Wildlife Federation Action Fund warned that the bill would “prioritize cutting down trees above everything else – including the black bears and other wildlife that depend on forests for their food, shelter and clean water to drink.”

If Republicans were serious about taking a proactive approach to addressing the burning issue of wildfires in America, they would do something about global warming, which is helping to stoke the flames.


Source
House OKs more logging in national forests, including in California, L.A. Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Canadian PM to Obama: Let’s make a deal on Keystone!

Canadian PM to Obama: Let’s make a deal on Keystone!

Jason Ransom / US embassy – Canada

Harper says, “Let’s make a deal, eh”? Obama laughs inscrutably.

Looks like Canada is getting desperate.

The country’s leaders and its oil industry really, really want the Keystone XL pipeline built so they can ship tar-sands oil from Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast. But the Obama administration keeps postponing its decision on the pipeline.

In his big climate speech in June, President Obama said he would approve Keystone only “if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” And in an interview with The New York Times in July, Obama said, “there is no doubt that Canada at the source in those tar sands could potentially be doing more to mitigate carbon release.”

So now Canada is trying a new approach, offering to make a deal with Obama on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. CBC broke the story:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama formally proposing “joint action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector,” if that is what’s needed to gain approval of the Keystone XL pipeline through America’s heartland, CBC News has learned.

Sources told CBC News the prime minister is willing to accept targets proposed by the United States for reducing the climate-changing emissions and is prepared to work in concert with Obama to provide whatever political cover he needs to approve the project.

The letter, sent in late August, is a clear signal Canada is prepared to make concessions to get the presidential permit for TransCanada Corp.’s controversial $7-billion pipeline …

[T]he White House has yet to respond to the letter.

Enviros, of course, are not impressed. Just last week, the Sierra Club and other green groups put out a new report: “FAIL: How the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline Flunks the Climate Test” [PDF].

News of Harper’s letter did not change activists’ minds. Expansion of tar-sands operations “is a recipe for climate failure and the Obama administration should reject any deal from the Harper government,” said Danielle Droitsch of the Natural Resources Defense Council. 350.org made the same point more colorfully:

350.org


Source
Harper offers Obama climate plan to win Keystone approval, CBC

Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.

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Canadian PM to Obama: Let’s make a deal on Keystone!

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Unpaid Intern? You Probably Aren’t Protected Against Sexual Harassment

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on ProPublica.

In 1994, Bridget O’Connor began an internship at Rockland Psychiatric Center, where one of the doctors allegedly began to refer to her as Miss Sexual Harassment, told her that she should participate in an orgy, and suggested that she remove her clothing before meeting with him. Other women in the office made similar claims.

Yet when O’Connor filed a lawsuit, her sexual harassment claims were dismissed because she was an unpaid intern. A federal appeals court affirmed the decision to throw out the claim.

Unpaid interns miss out on wages and employment benefits, but they can also find themselves in “legal limbo” when it comes to civil rights, according to law professor and intern labor rights advocate David Yamada. The O’Connor decision (the leading ruling on the matter, according to Yamada) held that because they don’t get a paycheck, unpaid interns are not “employees” under the Civil Rights Act—and thus, they’re not protected.

Federal policies echo court rulings. The laws enforced by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including the Civil Rights Act, don’t cover interns unless they receive “significant remuneration,” according to commission spokesperson Joseph Olivares.

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Unpaid Intern? You Probably Aren’t Protected Against Sexual Harassment

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Massive Montana mine has tribes fighting over coal exports

Massive Montana mine has tribes fighting over coal exports

A huge new coal-mining project just approved by the federal government pits a Montana tribe against native communities in the Pacific Northwest.

Lance Fisher

They may soon have a lot more than litter to worry about.

The Crow Nation in southern Montana overlaps the coal-rich Powder River Basin. The tribe is sitting on a deposit of up to 1.4 billion tons of coal — more than the United States produces in a year — and on Thursday, the federal government approved the lease of that coal to mining company Cloud Peak Energy. The company has begun preliminary work on a mine that could eventually produce up to 10 million tons of coal every year, much of which it hopes to move through three proposed export terminals in Washington and Oregon to sell to Asian markets.

As demand for coal in the U.S. fizzles thanks to the natural-gas boom, the coal industry is banking on a growing Asian appetite for cheap power to keep it afloat. And the Crow Nation is banking on the deal with Cloud Peak to turn its fortunes around. The Associated Press details what’s in it for the tribe:

Cloud Peak paid the tribe $1.5 million upon Thursday’s [Bureau of Indian Affairs] approval, bringing its total payments to the tribe so far to $3.75 million.

Future payments during an initial five-year option period could total up to $10 million. Cloud Peak would pay royalties on any coal extracted and has agreed to give tribal members hiring preference for mining jobs.

The company also will provide $75,000 a year in scholarships for the tribe.

It would have been tough for tribal leaders to turn down such a deal. The New York Times describes bleak life on the reservation:

While coal mining is the largest private sector provider of jobs, half the adult population is unemployed. Homelessness would be pandemic if it were not customary for three or four families to cram into small trailers so crowded that couples sometimes go to motels for moments of privacy and children struggle to do homework through a blare of television.

Three bright days a year come when families receive small bonuses from the tribe, thanks to one coal mine that operates on the reservation, to buy presents for Christmas and beads and tepee canvas for the tribe’s annual powwow. …

The Crow Nation chairman, Darrin Old Coyote, insisted that coal was a gift to his community that goes back to the tribe’s creation story. “Coal is life,” he said. “It feeds families and pays the bills.”

But tribal leaders in western Washington and Oregon feel differently about coal. They’ve been some of the most vocal opponents of the proposed export terminals, warning of the harm that would be done to fisheries, human health, the natural environment, and sacred cultural sites if more and more coal trains start rumbling through the region toward coastal ports. The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission have come out against coal exports. The Crow reportedly lobbied other tribes while trying to win federal approval for the Cloud Peak deal, but it doesn’t look like any officially expressed support.

Cloud Peak says it will take about five years to get the new mine up and running. But if coal opponents succeed in blocking proposed terminals, the whole deal could fall through.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Flashback: Virginia Gov. Candidate Cuccinelli Investigated "Sextravaganza"

Mother Jones

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Controversial Virginia Republican lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson, as I reported last week, began his career as a social conservative crusader as an anti-anti-AIDS activist in Boston, where he fought against public health initiatives that promoted condom use and sterilized needles. And Jackson’s extreme views on such issues as LGBT rights (“If we need a gay rights bill, then we need an adulterers’ rights bill, we need a cohabitators’ rights bill, a pedophiles’ rights bill, and a sadomasochists’ rights bill”) and Islam (he’s against it) have launched a flurry of stories on the potential impact of Jackson’s extremism on Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican running for governor. Cuccinelli has tried to distance himself from Jackson, but he has a problem: his own past as a social conservative activist is not that different from Jackson’s.

In 2005, for example, Cuccinelli, then a state senator, sent a volunteer to investigate a mostly-female planning meeting for an event to be held at George Mason University by “Pro-Choice Patriots,” a student group, and dubbed the “Sextravaganza.” This gathering was designed to promote healthy sexual activity—dispensing information on date rape, AIDS, and contraception. But Cuccinelli condemned the plan to hold such an event at a public school, warning that “Sextravaganza” would promote “every type of sexual promiscuity you can imagine.”

“This whole thing is really just designed to push sex and sexual libertine behavior as far, fast and furiously as possible,” he told the Washington Post at the time, adding, “Do we need to establish some statewide standards here? It’s pathetic we even need to have this discussion, but apparently we do.”

Cuccinelli, like Jackson, was a fierce fighter for what they called traditional family values. In 2004, the Washington Times reported that Cuccinelli was leading the fight against, in his words, “homosexuals and AIDS education.” He was doing so by pushing a resolution asking Congress to pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman:

“The resolution would enshrine in the Constitution effectively what is Virginia law today, and that is that marriage is between one man and one woman and that there are no analogous relationships under law,” said Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, Fairfax County Republican and the bill’s sponsor.

Mr. Cuccinelli and others worry recent protests on the topic are part of an overall strategy by homosexuals, who he thinks plan to “dismantle sodomy laws” and “get education about homosexuals and AIDS in public schools.” On Friday in a 79-18 vote, the House passed a bill that affirms the state’s ban on homosexual “marriage.” It is expected to pass the Senate.

Cuccinelli may find it tough to separate himself from Jackson, given that the two were both fierce leaders in the culture war fights of the 1990s and 2000s.

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Flashback: Virginia Gov. Candidate Cuccinelli Investigated "Sextravaganza"

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