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Cops and Firefighters Could Soon Be Charged for Disclosing Fracking Chemicals in North Carolina

by ZeldaCarney Posted on June 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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North Carolina lawmakers have softened a controversial bill that would have made it a felony to disclose the chemicals used in fracking. Under the version of the law that passed the state legislature on Thursday, the offense has been knocked down to a misdemeanor. But legal experts say the language may still allow companies to press criminal charges against individuals who disclose what they learn about fracking chemicals—including doctors or fire chiefs.

Known as the “Energy Modernization Act,” the legislation is partly meant to establish protocols for firefighters and health care providers to access information about chemicals during emergencies. However, it also gives oil and gas companies the right to require emergency responders to sign confidentiality agreements. The previous version of the bill, which was introduced on May 15 by three Republican state senators—â&#128;&#139;including a member of North Carolian GOP leadership—called for fines and prison time as punishment for disclosing proprietary chemical formulas.

Following widespread public outcry, lawmakers have reduced the penalty to community service. But they failed to clarify confusing language from an earlier draft that might subject fire chiefs and health care providers to criminal charges. This provision could prevent emergency responders from speaking about their experiences with chemical accidents to colleagues—even when the information is relevant to emergency planning or patient care.

How much the public is entitled to know about chemicals injected into the ground during the fracking process to break up natural gas-rich shale formations is one of the hottest issues surrounding fracking. Most energy companies maintain that the information should be proprietary. Public health advocates counter that they can’t monitor the environmental and health impacts without knowing what chemicals are involved.

Many North Carolina officials have come down hard on the side of industry. As Mother Jones has reported, the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission, which is writing fracking regulations to complement the Energy Modernization Act, put off approving a near-final chemical disclosure rule because Haliburton—a major player in the fracking industryâ&#128;&#139;—complained that the proposal was too strict.

The current version of the act sailed through the North Carolina legislature with no debate. Following the bill’s passage last Thursday, Gov. Pat McCrory told reporters that he “absolutely” supports the legislation. This week, he’s expected to sign the measure into law.

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Cops and Firefighters Could Soon Be Charged for Disclosing Fracking Chemicals in North Carolina

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Someone Just Spent $1.5 Million on a GOP Senate Candidate. We’ll Probably Never Know Who.

by ValentiPorter Posted on May 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Arkansas is witnessing what may be the most expensive political ad campaign in state history: $1.5 million-worth of glowing TV spots hailing Tom Cotton, a Republican congressman who’s running against Democrat Sen. Mark Pryor.

The race could decide which party controls the Senate. But no one knows who’s paying for this giant ad buy—and that’s partly because the group behind those ads may have flaunted IRS law in order to conceal the identities of its donors.

A super PAC called the Government Integrity Fund Action Network is footing the bill for the six-week ad campaign, which is airing in three different television markets. But that group has reported only one source of funds in 2014—$1 million that a separate organization, the Government Integrity Fund, donated to it in mid-April. The Government Integrity Fund is based in Ohio and is registered with the IRS as a social welfare group, also known as a 501(c)(4). Its purpose, according to papers it filed with the Ohio secretary of state in 2011, is to “promote the social welfare of the citizens of Ohio.”

Political groups frequently organize as 501(c)(4)s because this type of tax-exempt organization is not required to disclose its donors. So no one in the public knows who gave the $1 million to the Government Integrity Fund that it passed to the Government Integrity Fund Action Network to underwrite these pro-Cotton ads.

If this seems complicated, it’s supposed to be. Political operatives on both sides raise and spend money through 501(c)(4)s and other tax-exempt groups with vague-sounding names to avoid disclosure. Watchdog groups maintain that this is a violation of IRS law. And the Government Integrity Fund already has a spotty record.

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Someone Just Spent $1.5 Million on a GOP Senate Candidate. We’ll Probably Never Know Who.

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We Don’t Know How Many Americans Are Shot Each Year. This Bill Could Help Us Find Out.

by LouisaWilbanks Posted on May 21, 2014

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

Updated 05/21/2014 1:56 p.m.: This story has been updated to include comments from the National Rifle Association and Rep. Maloney.

Two Congressional Democrats are unveiling legislation this morning that would restart the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s gun violence research efforts.

Since 1996, when a small CDC-funded study on the risks of owning a firearm ignited opposition from Republicans, the CDC’s budget for research on firearms injuries has shrunk to zero.

The result, as we’ve detailed, is that many basic questions about gun violence—such as how many Americans are shot each year—remain unanswered.

The new legislation, which will be introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in the House, and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the Senate, would give the CDC $10 million a year “for the purpose of conducting or supporting research on firearms safety or gun violence prevention.”

“In America, gun violence kills twice as many children as cancer, and yet political grandstanding has halted funding for public health research to understand this crisis,” Maloney said in a statement.

A National Rifle Association spokeswoman called the push for new CDC funding “unethical.”

“The abuse of taxpayer funds for anti-gun political propaganda under the guise of ‘research’ is unethical,” spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said in a statement to ProPublica. “That is why Congress should stand firm against President Obama’s scheme to undermine a fundamental constitutional right.”

Maloney, who co-sponsored the 1994 assault weapons ban, is a long-time gun control advocate. Earlier this year, she and Markey encouraged President Obama to include CDC funding in his proposed 2015 budget, which he did.

Obama’s proposal has been opposed by key Republicans, and so far, Markey and Maloney’s legislation has not attracted any Republican support. “On the House side, we have over 20 co-sponsors already. We do not have a Republican,” Maloney said at a press conference this morning.

“The President’s request to fund propaganda for his gun-grabbing initiatives though the CDC will not be included in the FY2015 appropriations bill,” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that traditionally sets CDC funding, told ProPublica last month.

The CDC sponsors a wide variety of disease and injury prevention programs, focusing on everything from HIV/AIDS to averting falls by elderly people. Since 2007, the CDC has spent less than $100,000 a year on firearms-focused work, according to a CDC spokeswoman. The money goes not for research but for a very rough, annual estimate of the number of Americans injured by shootings.

The NRA’s director of public affairs told CNN last year that more government-funded gun research is not needed.

“What works to reduce gun violence is to make sure that criminals are prosecuted and those who have been found to be a danger to themselves or others don’t have access to firearms,” Andrew Arulanandam said. “Not to carry out more studies.”

Professional groups that represent doctors, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, support the push for more research funding. In a letter last summer, the associations wrote that “the dearth of gun violence research has contributed to the lack of meaningful progress in reducing firearm injuries,” and noted that “firearm injuries are one of the top three causes of death among youth.”

The CDC is not the only source of federal funding for gun violence research. The Justice Department—which has funded gun violence prevention studies since the 1980s—gave nearly $2 million to firearms violence projects last year, and is offering as much as $1.5 million in research funding this year.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which invests $30 billion in medical research each year, put out a call last fall for new research projects on gun violence prevention. It’s not yet clear how much money the NIH will devote to the research. The NIH will announce the gun violence projects it will fund in September and December, a spokeswoman said.

A report last year from experts convened by the federally funded Institute of Medicine outlined the current priorities for research on reducing gun violence. Among the questions that need answers, according to the report: How often do Americans successfully use guns to protect themselves each year? Could improved “smart gun” technologies reduce gun deaths and injuries, and will consumers be willing to adopt them? And would universal background checks—the most popular and prominent gun control policy proposal—actually reduce gun violence?

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We Don’t Know How Many Americans Are Shot Each Year. This Bill Could Help Us Find Out.

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North Carolina GOP Pushes Unprecedented Bill to Jail Anyone Who Discloses Fracking Chemicals

by VanA79ngqbcu Posted on May 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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As hydraulic fracturing ramps up around the country, so do concerns about its health impacts. These concerns have led 20 states to require the disclosure of industrial chemicals used in the fracking process.

North Carolina isn’t on that list of states yet—and it may be hurtling in the opposite direction.

On Thursday, three Republican state senators introduced a bill that would slap a felony charge on individuals who disclosed confidential information about fracking chemicals. The bill, whose sponsors include a member of Republican party leadership, establishes procedures for fire chiefs and health care providers to obtain chemical information during emergencies. But as the trade publication Energywire noted Friday, individuals who leak information outside of emergency settings could be penalized with fines and several months in prison.

“The felony provision is far stricter than most states’ provisions in terms of the penalty for violating trade secrets,” says Hannah Wiseman, a Florida State University assistant law professor who studies fracking regulations.

The bill also allows companies that own the chemical information to require emergency responders to sign a confidentiality agreement. And it’s not clear what the penalty would be for a health care worker or fire chief who spoke about their experiences with chemical accidents to colleagues.

“I think the only penalties to fire chiefs and doctors, if they talked about it at their annual conference, would be the penalties contained in the confidentiality agreement,” says Wiseman. “But the bill is so poorly worded, I cannot confirm that if an emergency responder or fire chief discloses that confidential information, they too would not be subject to a felony.” In some sections, she says, “That appears to be the case.”

The disclosure of the chemicals used to break up shale formations and release natural gas is one of the most heated issues surrounding fracking. Many energy companies argue that the information should be proprietary, while public health advocates counter that they can’t monitor for environmental and health impacts without it. Under public pressure, a few companies have begun to report chemicals voluntarily.

North Carolina has banned fracking until the state can approve regulations. The bill introduced Thursday, titled the Energy Modernization Act, is meant to complement the rules currently being written by the North Carolina Mining & Energy Commission.

Wiseman adds that, other than the felony provision, the bill proposes disclosure laws similar to those in many other states: “It allows for trade secrets to remain trade secrets, it provides only limited exceptions for reasons of emergency and health problems, and provides penalties for failure to honor the trade secret.”

Draft regulations from the North Carolina commission have been praised as some of the strongest fracking rules in the country. But observers already worry that the final regulations will be significantly weaker. In early May, the commission put off approving a near-final chemical disclosure rule because Haliburton, which has huge stakes in the fracking industry, complained the proposal was too strict, the News & Observer reported.

For portions of the Republican-controlled North Carolina government to kowtow to the energy industry is not surprising. In February, the Associated Press reported that under Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, North Carolina’s top environmental regulators previously thwarted three separate Clean Water Act lawsuits aimed at forcing Duke Energy, the largest electricity utility in the country, to clean up its toxic coal ash pits in the state. Had those lawsuits been allowed to progress, they may have prevented the February rupture of a coal ash storage pond, which poured some 80,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River.

“Environmental groups say they favor some of the provisions in the Energy Modernization Act,” Energywire reported Friday. “It would put the state geologist in charge of maintaining the chemical information and would allow the state’s emergency management office to use it for planning. It also would allow the state to turn over the information immediately to medical providers and fire chiefs.”

However, environmentalists point out that the bill would also prevent local governments from passing any rules on fracking and limit water testing that precedes a new drilling operation.

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North Carolina GOP Pushes Unprecedented Bill to Jail Anyone Who Discloses Fracking Chemicals

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Meet the Doctor Who Gave $1 Million of His Own Money to Keep His Research on Gun Violence Going

by ShastaSnoddy Posted on April 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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UC Davis

This story was originally published in ProPublica.

Federal funding for research on gun violence has been restricted for nearly two decades. President Obama urged Congress to allocate $10 million for new research after the Newtown school shooting. But House Republicans say they won’t approve it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget still lists zero dollars for research on gun violence prevention.

One of the researchers who lost funding in the political battle over studying firearms was Dr. Garen Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine who runs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. Wintemute is, by his own count, one of only a dozen researchers across the country who have continued to focus full-time on firearms violence.

To keep his research going, Wintemute has donated his own money, as the science journal Nature noted in a profile of him last year. As of the end of 2013, he has donated about $1.1 million, according to Kathryn Keyes, a fundraiser at UC Davis’ development office. His work has also continued to get funding from some foundations and the state of California.

We contacted Wintemute to talk about his research, the politics of studying firearms, and how much we really know about whether gun control laws work.

At the end of one of our conversations, Wintemute volunteered that he is also a donor to ProPublica, something the editorial staff had not known. (He and his family’s foundation have donated less than $1,500 over four years.)

Here is the condensed version of our conversations, edited for length and clarity.

What research were you doing when the CDC ended your funding?

We were looking at risk factors for criminal activity among people who had legally purchased handguns. A person can have a misdemeanor rap sheet as long as his arm and still be able to purchase firearms legally in most parts of the country.

In California, there is an archive of handgun transfers. You could draw a random sample of people who purchased handguns and see their overall risk of committing crimes later. We found people who had misdemeanor convictions for nonviolent offenses were five times as likely to commit violence in the future than people with no criminal records. People who had multiple prior misdemeanor convictions for violent crimes like simple assault and battery or brandishing a firearm were 15 times as likely to be arrested down the road for crimes like murder and rape and robbery and aggravated assault.

What happened when the CDC cut off your funding?

As I recall, we were in the middle of our project period. We had the expectation that we would be continuing the funds according to the initial award.

When CDC’s funding went away, some private foundations stepped up. But there was a growing sense that little or nothing was going to be done about the problem, at least at the federal level. Why put your money into this one when Congress won’t be doing anything about it?

When did you start donating your own money to keep your research going, and what does the money support?

There came a point when I decided that the work we do is as important as the work of the other nonprofits to which I gave donations. I decided, I’m going to keep the lights on. I told our small staff—three people besides me—I will make that happen personally if need be.

A million dollars is a lot of money. Where does it come from?

Some of it is gifts from stock that was given to me by my father. He’s a businessman. He ran a small company that did well and that’s done well in his retirement. I didn’t earn that. I’ve always seen myself as the steward of that resource.

Some of it is my cash. It boils down to this: I earn an ER doc’s salary. I lead a very simple life. I’m not married, I don’t have kids, I don’t have a television. My rent is $840 a month. It’s easy to save. I don’t drive a fancy car. I don’t go out to eat.

One recent study from Harvard researchers found that there were lower gun death rates in states with more restrictive gun laws. The study got a lot of press. But you’ve been very critical of its conclusions. What’s wrong with this kind of analysis?

Almost all the effects they had seen from mortality in the study had to do with suicide. But the laws were largely intended to prevent homicide.

Number two: Correlation is not causation. Rates of gun deaths are lower where rates of gun ownership are lower. That’s true. We know that. It’s also easier to pass laws like this where the rates of gun ownership are lower. There aren’t that many guns around, there isn’t that large a constituency of gun owners.

States with lots of laws have lower firearm death rates, but the fact that two things occur at the same time does not mean that one of those things caused the other.

So is there any evidence that denying people the right to legally purchase guns has an impact on crime?

In 1991 California began denying people who had been convicted of violent misdemeanors. Our group took advantage of this natural experiment. Everyone in the study tried to buy a handgun from a licensed seller. One group tried to do it under the terms of the new policy, and their purchases were denied. The other group tried it in the two years before the policy, and their purchases were approved.

The people who got their guns were 25 to 30 percent more likely to be arrested for crimes involving firearms or violence. There was no difference in arrests for crimes that did not involve violence. The difference was specific to the types of crimes the law was supposed to affect.

We also looked at denial for felons and found the same effect. Felons who were denied had a lower risk of being arrested for crimes of violence down the road than were people with felony arrests who were able to purchase their guns.

So do we know whether background checks for all purchases—as President Obama has proposed—would actually prevent violence?

There are not hard data on whether universal background checks work better than what we have at the moment. But there’s lots of suggestive evidence.

One piece of that evidence we have comes from the state of Missouri, a new study by Daniel Webster. Missouri had universal background checks and repealed them. In very short order, there was evidence of increasing gun trafficking. The guns that were recovered after use in crime were getting newer. The inference was it was much easier for people to acquire guns for criminal purposes.

You are planning a broad study about whether comprehensive background checks work. What will that research look like?

Six states—Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois and New York—have just adopted comprehensive background checks, and they’ve all taken effect already. The provisions of their laws vary, and they started from different places.

The intent of our study is to come as close as possible to determining whether there is a causal relationship between comprehensive background check policies and important measures like crime and mortality.

Do you think there’s any chance the CDC will get new funding to resume gun violence research?

I think hell will freeze over before this Congress gives them money. The good news is that funding from other sources is starting to pick up. The National Institute of Health—it’s the first time in their history that they have issued a formal program announcement, a request for proposals on firearms violence.

The NRA has been critical of your work, and says you’re funded by anti-gun groups.

I won’t take money from advocacy organizations.

So, what groups would be on that list?

The National Rifle Association, The Second Amendment Foundation, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Brady Campaign, Moms Demand Actions, Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Have you ever accepted funding from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg?

I have not.

How do you draw the line between nonprofits whose funding you do accept, and “advocacy organizations”?

I’ve been offered money to do studies where the conclusion was basically determined from the design of the study. It wasn’t really science. The organization that was offering to fund the study was also going to control the interpretation of what the analysis meant. They were going to make the decision of whether or not the study got published. As a scientist, I just can’t enter into such an agreement. We have to let people know what the truth is, even if the truth makes someone uncomfortable.

Has your research ever made gun control advocates uncomfortable?

I did a gun show study. When I started crunching numbers on gun show sales, and looking at the surveys, I came to realize—as interesting as this is, gun shows themselves are not a big part of the problem. I felt obligated to add this into my report.

Before we released the study, I had a conference call with a bunch of organizations that I knew were interested in working to close the gun show loophole, and I told them what we were saying. That was a very uncomfortable conversation. People got very angry. It was going to make it more difficult for them to do what they wanted, which was to close the gun show loophole.

You recently did a large survey of federal firearms dealers. What was the most interesting finding?

We learned that a majority—not a large majority, but a majority—of gun dealers and pawn brokers are in favor of comprehensive background checks.

Do you know why some dealers supported background checks and others didn’t?

There is a sense in the country that retailers who have lots of traced guns i.e. guns that show up at crime scenes are themselves bad guys, and I just don’t believe that is always the case.

Retailers who had higher frequencies of attempted straw purchases, higher frequencies of attempted off-the-books-purchases, were more in favor of comprehensive background checks. They’re in the business. They know that when they say “no” to somebody, that guy is just going to go somewhere else to someone who says, “yes,” and they don’t want it to happen. They said “no,” so they want the system to say, “No.”

One of the policy proposals you’ve been looking at is whether people with a history of alcohol abuse should also be banned from purchasing firearms. Is this ever going to be a realistic policy — that two DUIs could mean that someone could lose their legal right to buy guns?

Yes. Last year, I floated the idea to the California legislature, and the legislature passed it. The governor vetoed it, or we’d have it now. His veto message said there’s not enough evidence. There’s tons of evidence of alcohol as a risk factor of violent activity. I think he meant evidence specific to gun owners. We’ve started one study, and are in the process of another. We’ll come back with the evidence.

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Meet the Doctor Who Gave $1 Million of His Own Money to Keep His Research on Gun Violence Going

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Here’s What Fracking Can Do to Your Health

by LakeshaBabin Posted on April 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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If you know one thing about fracking, it might be that the wells have been linked to explosive tap water. Of course, a tendency toward combustion isn’t the biggest problem with gas-infused water; it’s what could happen to you when you drink it.

Although the natural gas industry is notoriously tight-lipped about the ingredients of the chemical cocktails that get pumped down into wells, by now it’s widely known that the list often includes some pretty scary, dangerous stuff, including hydrochloric acid and ethylene glycol (a.k.a. antifreeze). It’s also no secret that well sites release hazardous gases like methane and benzene (a carcinogen) into the atmosphere.

So just how dangerous are fracking and other natural gas extraction processes for your health (not counting, for the sake of argument, explosions and earthquakes)? Is it true, as an activist-art campaign by Yoko Ono recently posited, that “fracking kills”?

The answer to that second question is probably not, especially in the short term and if you don’t work on or live across the street from a frack site (which, of course, some people in fact do). But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to start fracking away next to kindergartens and nursing homes: Gas extraction produces a range of potentially health-endangering pollutants at nearly every stage of the process, according to a new paper by the California nonprofit Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy, released today in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal published by the National Institutes of Health.

The study compiled existing, peer-reviewed literature on the health risks of shale gas drilling and found that leaks, poor wastewater management, and air emissions have released harmful chemicals into the air and water around fracking sites nationwide.

“It’s clear that the closer you are, the more elevated your risk,” said lead author Seth Shonkoff, a visiting public health scholar at the University of California-Berkeley. “We can conclude that this process has not been shown to be safe.”

Shonkoff cautioned that existing research has focused on cataloging risks, rather than linking specific instances of disease to particular drilling operations—primarily because the fracking boom is so new that long-term studies of, say, cancer rates, simply haven’t been done. But as the United States and the world double down on natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal (as this week’s UN climate change solutions report suggests), Shonkoff argues policymakers need to be aware of what a slew of fracked wells could mean for the health of those who live near them.

Even given the risks involved in producing natural gas, it’s still a much healthier fuel source than coal; particulate pollution from coal plants killed an estimated 13,000 Americans in 2010, while a recent World Health Organization study named air pollution (to which coal burning is a chief contributor) the single deadliest environmental hazard on earth.

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Here’s What Fracking Can Do to Your Health

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Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

by LeviCfiasgh Posted on April 3, 2014

Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

By

WCN 24/7

Could it be that frackers are die-hard Ravens fans? That might explain their cavalier attitude about the health of citizens in Steeler Country.

Kidding! Money is the motive, yinz – and if Pennsylvanians are exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals in the making of it, who cares?

An alarming new study by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, published in the journal Reviews on Environmental Health, finds that current methods and tools used to measure harmful emissions from fracking wells don’t accurately assess health threats – not even close, in fact.

Federal and state officials tend to measure and report emissions in big-picture terms – tons of methane released per year, for example. Another method is to track hourly emissions over a given day or week. These might not capture rapid and brief increases in chemical exposure, which can cause real harm to bodily systems. SPEHP reports that emissions near drilling sites can fluctuate wildly, and toxic chemical particles can reach high levels of concentration in the air in a very short period of time – as little as a minute or two – and then drop back down. This can occur repeatedly throughout drilling, but might not be captured by the tools or methods customarily used to measure emissions.

SPEHP researchers collected data on levels of four toxic chemicals in 14 households near fracking sites in southwestern Pennsylvania, and found that contamination was concentrated at peak levels – three times the median level of concentration – about 30 percent of the time, but in spurts. These short blasts of contamination can go undetected by tools customarily used to measure emissions.

Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene are all toxic substances released into the air from shale drilling. So, what can go wrong if one is exposed to peak levels of these chemicals? Glad you asked! The health effects can include “respiratory, neurologic, and dermal responses as well as vascular bleeding, abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting.”

If that weren’t bad enough, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has a flawed system for responding to citizen complaints about emissions, as ProPublica reports:

[T]he agency’s own manual for dealing with complaints is explicit about what to do if someone reports concerns about a noxious odor, but is not at that very moment experiencing the smell: “DO NOT REGISTER THE COMPLAINT.”

When a resident does report a real-time alarm about the air quality in or around their home, the agency typically has two weeks to conduct an investigation. If no odor is detected when investigators arrive on the scene, the case is closed.

In light of the SPEHP findings, this response falls very much short of what would be needed to accurately determine whether there’s a health threat, as it not only fails to address the issue immediately, but also doesn’t account for the intermittency of spikes in exposure.

ProPublica reports that the DEP has been criticized for bowing to energy company interests rather than serving Pennsylvania citizens.

Activists and environmental groups have accused the agency of being overly deferential to the gas industry, and defensive and slow moving in its dealings with the public.

“It was very top down, very secretive and paranoid about who the enemies were,” said [George] Jugovic, [a] former agency official, who left the department when Corbett succeeded Rendell as governor. “The control on information was significant.”

Gov. Tom Corbett (R) has an impressive history of wooing gas companies to Pennsylvania. Now, these companies have made themselves at home enough to dump all their shit in the air without so much as a “whoops!”, and sure enough, it’s making some of those unlucky enough to live near fracking sites sick. Maybe in between bouts of vomiting, Pennsylvanians can try to enjoy some complimentary pizza.


Source
In Fracking Fight, a Worry About How Best to Measure Health Threats, ProPublica

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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Pennsylvania officials have no idea how to assess health threats of fracking

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“This Is The Era of The Empowered ‘One Percenter'”

by RowenaFowles Posted on March 21, 2014

Mother Jones

The Koch brothers. Citizens United. “Dark money.” Billionaire sugardaddies. A Republican takeover of Congress.

These are a few of the 2014-themed issues that Mother Jones senior reporter Andy Kroll and ProPublica’s Kim Barker discuss on the latest episode of Moyers and Company, the popular weekly show hosted by the acclaimed journalist Bill Moyers. They talk about the 2014 midterms, which could be the most expensive off-year election cycle in history; the influence of big-money politics on Congress and the White House; and the upcoming Supreme Court decision that could obliterate yet another campaign law and send even more money rushing into our elections.

As Kroll says in the interview, this is a great time to be a fired-up millionaire or billionaire. Today, these individuals have the ability to pump unlimited sums of cash into our elections through super-PACs and anonymously funded nonprofit groups. As they do, the center of gravity in our political system shifts from the political parties to these mega-donors spending big on the Democratic and Republican side. “This is the era of the empowered ‘one percenter,'” Kroll notes. “They’re taking action and they’re becoming the new, headline players in this political system.”

What’s the effect of all that money on our democracy? Watch the entire episode above or over at BillMoyers.com to find out. Throughout the weekend, you can catch the interview on your local PBS affiliate.

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“This Is The Era of The Empowered ‘One Percenter'”

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Why There’s an Even Larger Racial Disparity in Private Prisons Than in Public Ones

by czeajanvsn Posted on February 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s well known that people of color are vastly overrepresented in US prisons. African Americans and Latinos constitute 30 percent of the US population and 60 percent of its prisoners. But a new study by University of California-Berkeley researcher Christopher Petrella addresses a fact of equal concern. Once sentenced, people of color are more likely than their white counterparts to serve time in private prisons, which have higher levels of violence and recidivism (PDF) and provide less sufficient health care and educational programming than equivalent public facilities.

The study compares the percentage of inmates identifying as black or Hispanic in public prisons and private prisons in nine states. It finds that there are higher rates of people of color in private facilities than public facilities in all nine states studied, ranging from 3 percent in Arizona and Georgia to 13 percent in California and Oklahoma. According to Petrella, this disparity casts doubt on cost-efficiency claims made by the private prison industry and demonstrates how ostensibly “colorblind” policies can have a very real effect on people of color.

The study points out an important link between inmate age and race. Not only do private prisons house high rates of people of color, they also house low rates of individuals over the age of 50—a subset that is more likely to be white than the general prison population. According to the study, “the states in which the private versus public racial disparities are the most pronounced also happen to be the states in which the private versus public age disparities are most salient.” (California, Mississippi, and Tennessee did not report data on inmate age.)

Private prisons have consistently lower rates of older inmates because they often contractually exempt themselves from housing medically expensive—which often means older—individuals (see excerpts from such exemptions in California, Oklahoma, and Vermont), which helps them keep costs low and profits high. This is just another example of the growing private prison industry’s prioritization of profit over rehabilitation, which activists say leads to inferior prison conditions and quotas requiring high levels of incarceration even as crime levels drop. The number of state and federal prisoners housed in private prisons grew by 37 percent from 2002 to 2009, reaching 8 percent of all inmates in 2010.

The high rate of incarceration among young people of color is partly due to the war on drugs, which introduced strict sentencing policies and mandatory minimums that have disproportionately affected non-white communities for the past 40 years. As a result, Bureau of Justice Statistics data shows that in 2009, only 33.2 percent of prisoners under 50 reported as white, as opposed to 44.2 percent of prisoners aged 50 and older.

So when private prisons avoid housing older inmates, they indirectly avoid housing white inmates as well. This may explain how private facilities end up with “a prisoner profile that is far younger and far ‘darker’… than in select counterpart public facilities.”

Private prisons claim to have more efficient practices, and thus lower operating costs, than public facilities. But the data suggest that private prisons don’t save money through efficiency, but by cherry-picking healthy inmates. According to a 2012 ACLU report, it costs $34,135 to house an “average” inmate and $68,270 to house an individual 50 or older. In Oklahoma, for example, the percentage of individuals over 50 in minimum and medium security public prisons is 3.3 times that of equivalent private facilities.

“Given the data, it’s difficult for private prisons to make the claim that they can incarcerate individuals more efficiently than their public counterparts,” Petrella tells Mother Jones. “We need to be comparing apples to apples. If we’re looking at different prisoner profiles, there is no basis to make the claim that private prisons are more efficient than publics.”

He compared private prisons to charter schools that accept only well-performing students and boast of their success relative to public schools.

David Shapiro, former staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, agrees. “The study is an example of the many ways in which for-profit prisons create an illusion of fiscal responsibility even though the actual evidence of cost savings, when apples are compared to apples, is doubtful at best,” he says. “Privatization gimmicks are a distraction from the serious business of addressing our addiction to mass incarceration.”

But in addition to casting doubt on the efficacy of private prison companies, Petrella says his results “shed light on the ways in which ostensibly colorblind policies and attitudes can actually have very racially explicit outcomes. Racial discrimination cannot exist legally, yet still manifests itself.”

Alex Friedmann, managing editor of Prison Legal News, calls the study a “compelling case” for a link between age disparities and race disparities in public and private prison facilities. “The modern private prison industry has its origins in the convict lease system that developed during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War, as a means of incarcerating freed slaves and leasing them to private companies,” he says. “Sadly, Mr. Petrella’s research indicates that the exploitation of minority prisoners continues, with convict chain gangs being replaced by privately-operated prisons and jails.”

*The study draws on data from nine states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas—selected because they house at least 3,000 individuals in private minimum and medium security facilities.

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Why There’s an Even Larger Racial Disparity in Private Prisons Than in Public Ones

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How Hackers and Software Companies are Beefing Up NSA Surveillance

by xf0ks040u Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Imagine that you could wander unseen through a city, sneaking into houses and offices of your choosing at any time, day or night. Imagine that, once inside, you could observe everything happening, unnoticed by others—from the combinations used to secure bank safes to the clandestine rendezvous of lovers. Imagine also that you have the ability to silently record everybody’s actions, whether they are at work or play without leaving a trace. Such omniscience could, of course, make you rich, but perhaps more important, it could make you very powerful.

That scenario out of some futuristic sci-fi novel is, in fact, almost reality right now. After all, globalization and the Internet have connected all our lives in a single, seamless virtual city where everything is accessible at the tap of a finger. We store our money in online vaults; we conduct most of our conversations and often get from place to place with the help of our mobile devices. Almost everything that we do in the digital realm is recorded and lives on forever in a computer memory that, with the right software and the correct passwords, can be accessed by others, whether you want them to or not.

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How Hackers and Software Companies are Beefing Up NSA Surveillance

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