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Who Said It: Donald Sterling or Donald Trump?

Mother Jones

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On Fox & Friends today, Donald Trump stood up for fellow aggrieved billionaire Republican Donald Sterling, claiming that the Los Angeles Clippers owner was “set up by a very, very bad girlfriend.” Sterling, of course, is under fire for the recently released audio recording in which he tells onetime girlfriend V. Stiviano to, among other things, stop associating publicly with black people, including Lakers great Magic Johnson. With sponsors rushing to drop the Clippers, it must be a great relief for Sterling to know that he’s got The Donald on his side.

Trump’s comments made us wonder, though: Could you tell the two Donalds apart by the wacky (and creepy) things they’ve said over the years? Try your luck with our Which Donald Is It? quiz below:

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Original post: 

Who Said It: Donald Sterling or Donald Trump?

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Sterling, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Who Said It: Donald Sterling or Donald Trump?

WATCH: Cliven Bundy’s Anti-Government Beliefs, Animated Fiore Cartoon

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

Link – 

WATCH: Cliven Bundy’s Anti-Government Beliefs, Animated Fiore Cartoon

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Sterling, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on WATCH: Cliven Bundy’s Anti-Government Beliefs, Animated Fiore Cartoon

Openly Gay NBA Player Jason Collins Signed by Brooklyn Nets

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The NBA will have its first openly gay active player. Jason Collins, who came out in Sports Illustrated last April, signed a 10-day contract Sunday with the Brooklyn Nets. When Collins steps on to the court, it will be the first time an athlete who is widely known to be gay will have played in an NBA, NFL, NHL, or MLB game.

Collins announced he was gay when, after a slew of injuries, he wasn’t on any team’s roster and he remained unsigned until the Nets recently reached out to him. Collins will likely make his first appearance in the Nets’ Sunday night game against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Collins’ NBA return comes as former University of Missouri football player Michael Sam is working out at the NFL Combine and preparing for the league’s May draft. Sam, who came out in February, is looking to be the first openly gay player in the NFL. John Amaechi became the first former NBA player to come out in 2007, though he did so after his five-season career was over. Glenn Burke, who played baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland Athletics from 1976 to 1979, may have been the first openly gay player in any major American professional sport—though reporters at the time kept Burke’s sexuality under wraps and the Dodgers even tried paying him to take part in a sham marriage. (Burke refused.)

Collins received the public backing of many NBA stars when he came out last year. That support continued during the signing process, with new teammate Kevin Garnett telling reporters, “I think it’s important that anybody who has the capabilities and skill level gets a chance to do something he’s great at. I think it would be bias, and in a sense, racist, if you were to keep that opportunity from a person.” Collins will wear jersey number 98 with the Nets in honor of Matthew Shepard, the University of Wyoming student whose brutal 1998 beating and death made him a gay rights martyr.

Continued: 

Openly Gay NBA Player Jason Collins Signed by Brooklyn Nets

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Openly Gay NBA Player Jason Collins Signed by Brooklyn Nets

WATCH: Is Obamacare Really a Job Killer? Fiore Cartoon

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

Link:  

WATCH: Is Obamacare Really a Job Killer? Fiore Cartoon

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on WATCH: Is Obamacare Really a Job Killer? Fiore Cartoon

We don’t need no stinking permits: California frackers get their way

We don’t need no stinking permits: California frackers get their way

Senator Fran Pavley

on Facebook

Calif. Sen. Fran Pavley lost her spine. Will Gov. Jerry Brown protect his state?

Until last week, the days of unbridled fracking in California appeared to be drawing to a close. But then legislation that would require drillers to obtain permits before work could begin was abruptly watered down, potentially handing the oil and gas industry a significant lobbying victory.

Senate Bill 4 passed the state senate last week following its approval by the assembly – but not before its author, a Democrat from Los Angeles, watered down her own legislation. The bill will now head back to the lower house for another vote there.

Environmentalists who had cautiously supported the bill, which many described as flawed, have turned into vociferous opponents. The East Bay Express explains:

Last week, after intense backroom lobbying, the powerful oil and gas industry convinced state Senator Fran Pavley of Los Angeles, the sponsor of SB 4, to further weaken her legislation and include poison-pill amendments. If enacted, it promises to do more harm than good.

Under the eleventh-hour changes, SB 4 would require state regulators to green-light all fracking requests by oil and gas companies in California until at least July 1, 2015, when the state is scheduled to complete an environmental review of fracking in California. You read that right. Before the environmental review is complete, the bill says that state regulators “shall” approve all requests to shoot toxic chemicals and water into the earth to release otherwise trapped fossil fuels.

In exchange, oil and gas companies would have to disclose to state regulators what chemicals they’re using in hydraulic fracturing. And while there currently is no specific requirement for such disclosure in California, the trade-off is not worth it for the state. After all, SB 4, as now written, could block state regulators from trying to halt fracking during the next two years, even after they learn what chemicals are being shot into the ground.

The brouhaha that preceded the changes centered around the effects of the California Environmental Quality Act, which is a rigid and perennially controversial law that was signed in 1970 — by Gov. Ronald Reagan, of all people. If drillers are required to obtain permits before they frack (or before they inject acid into the ground to loosen fossil fuel reserves — as horrified Californian lawmakers recently discovered has become a common practice), then CEQA would require them to complete an environmental impact report. And that would require that they propose measures to offset the environmental damage they would cause.

You can imagine how unpopular that idea has been with the gas and oil industry. After their lobbyists’ intervention, the amended legislation would now provide ample ways for drillers to weasel out of normal CEQA requirements. From a press release issued by the Center for Biological Diversity, CREDO, Food & Water Watch, and Friends of the Earth:

New language added to the bill specifies that “no additional review or mitigation shall be required” if the supervisor of the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources “determines” that the proposed fracking activities have met the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act. This provision could be used by DOGGR to bypass CEQA’s bedrock environmental review and mitigation requirements. This language could also prevent air and water boards, local land use jurisdictions and other agencies from carrying out their own CEQA reviews of fracking.

CEQA was defended against ruthless attacks for decades. But then Gov. Jerry Brown (D) came back into power in 2011. Within his first year in office, Brown signed legislation that exempted a football stadium planned in Los Angeles from normal CEQA rules. Last year he said, “I have never seen a CEQA exemption I don’t like.” And this year he led a hitherto failed effort to water down the historic law (although some proposed CEQA reforms are supported by environmentalists).

Brown will presumably have the final say on whether SB 4 becomes law. Time will tell whether he favors the frackers or the environment.

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.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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This article: 

We don’t need no stinking permits: California frackers get their way

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Green Light, LAI, ONA, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We don’t need no stinking permits: California frackers get their way

Los Angeles to ditch coal by 2025

Los Angeles to ditch coal by 2025

Coal currently powers almost 40 percent of sprawling and thirsty Los Angeles, Calif. But the “era of coal” is sunsetting.

By 2025, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will phase out all coal-fired power, putting it slightly ahead of the 2027 deadline imposed by the state. The LADWP is the country’s biggest municipal utility.

“By divesting from coal and investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency, we reduce our carbon footprint and set a precedent for the national power market,” L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) said in a press release.

The mayor’s office said the switch will reduce Los Angeles’ greenhouse gas emissions to 60 percent of 1990 levels. The fashion’s back, but the epic smog might be gone forever. Dumping coal: Even hotter than flannel.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

On Tuesday, commissioners at the Department of Water and Power moved forward with plans to dump the utility’s interest in a coal-burning plant in Arizona and convert another one in Utah to natural gas. …

Villaraigosa declared victory Tuesday, calling the coal divestment plan “game-changing” even though it won’t meet the timeline he set. “I believe the only way to get the goal is to set aggressive timetables,” he said. “Climbing mountains that have never been climbed before [isn’t] easy.” …

The DWP is in negotiations to sell its 21% share of the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Ariz., which will allow the utility to stop receiving power from the plant by 2015, four years before its current contract is up. Getting free of coal at the Intermountain Power Project in Delta, Utah, is more complicated because the DWP does not own the plant and is bound by contract to buy its power through 2027.

On Tuesday the Board of Water and Power Commissioners approved an amendment to its contract with Intermountain Power to allow the plant to transform its power supply to cleaner natural gas. …

A report released by the utility last year estimated that ending coal-power consumption at the Utah plant four years ahead of schedule would cost nearly $1 billion over four years in higher replacement fuel costs and other expenditures.

The whole plan “envisions clean energy and efficiency first, with natural gas fitting in as needed,” according to Take Part.

The move puts Los Angeles on track with Washington state, which is also set to end coal power by 2025, though both are a little behind Oregon, which aims to dump coal by 2020.

It’s not the whole U.S. by any means, but all that soon-to-be-ditched coal power is way more than Finland will get rid of when it dumps the dirtiest fossil fuel by 2025 too.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Los Angeles to ditch coal by 2025

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So much hope and so many problems for the L.A. river

So much hope and so many problems for the L.A. river

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.

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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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So much hope and so many problems for the L.A. river

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Judge reverses course, lets Keystone XL construction continue

Judge reverses course, lets Keystone XL construction continue

Keystone XL pipeline injunction, we hardly knew ye.

MCLA

Yesterday, the Texas judge who ordered TransCanada to stop work on Keystone XL pipeline construction in East Texas lifted the injunction. The Los Angeles Times reports:

[Texas County Court Judge Jack] Sinz had signed the temporary restraining order, which took effect Tuesday, after finding sufficient cause to stop work on the pipeline for two weeks. But he changed his mind after hearing from TransCanada’s attorneys, who argued that [plaintiff Michael] Bishop understood what he was doing when he signed off on an easement agreement [permitting pipeline construction on his land] with the company three weeks ago.

“TransCanada has been open, honest and transparent with Mr. Bishop at all times. We recognize that not everyone will support the construction of a pipeline or other facilities, but we work hard to reach voluntary agreements and maintain good relationships with landowners,” Shawn Howard, a TransCanada spokesman, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “If we didn’t have a good relationship with more than 60,000 landowners across our energy infrastructure network, we wouldn’t be in business.”

Howard added: “Since Mr. Bishop signed his agreement with TransCanada, nothing about the pipeline or the product it will carry has changed. While professional activists and others have made the same claims Mr. Bishop did today, oil is oil.”

Oil is oil: This was precisely the logic Judge Sinz had initially rejected. And on the heels of the initial injunction, the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial to the effect of: Uh no it’s not.

At the heart of Bishop’s case is the fact that although TransCanada considers bitumen and crude oil to be essentially the same, the IRS disagrees. In fact, it exempts companies that transport bitumen derived from tar sands from an 8-cents-a-barrel tax levied on transporters of crude. TransCanada can’t reasonably claim this tax exemption while pretending it’s moving crude oil. More important, we’d like to see the State Department, which is conducting an environmental study of the northern portion of the Keystone XL route, include some analysis of any heightened risks posed by transporting dilbit.

Bishop was undeterred but perhaps sobered — there were no righteous gonna-make-’em-hurt quotes this time out of the former Marine.

“I’m disappointed, but by the same token a lot of ground was gained today,” Bishop told The Times, adding that the lawsuit drew public attention to the pipeline project.

Bishop is right, though — not all is lost in his case just yet. Next Wednesday, Bishop and TransCanada will have their day in court again before Judge Sinz, who could decide to issue another injunction.

Next Wednesday both sides are scheduled to return to the Nacogdoches courthouse for a hearing before Judge Sinz. TransCanada will argue that Bishop should abide by the easement agreement, Howard said. Bishop will argue once more for an injunction to halt construction.

“If I stop them on my property, other landowners are going to sit up and take notice. I look for landowners to start rebelling,” Bishop said.

Bishop may be looking, but will he find them? Some Texas landowners have stood up against the pipeline, while others have also thrown up their hands in defeat.

But while the fight muddles along in the courts, it’s still raging in the trees. Blockading activists show no sign of abandoning their posts, and will only grow their numbers following a training camp in early January.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Judge reverses course, lets Keystone XL construction continue

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Nearly half of Los Angeles car accidents are hit-and-runs

Nearly half of Los Angeles car accidents are hit-and-runs

In one sense, this is a bit of good news about Los Angeles and its car-heavy transportation culture: More than half of the time people are involved in car accidents, they actually stick around and take responsibility for it. Slightly more than half.

From LA Weekly:

About 20,000 hit-and-run crashes, from fender benders to multiple fatalities, are recorded by the Los Angeles Police Department each year.

That’s huge, even in a city of 3.8 million people. In the United States, 11 percent of vehicle collisions are hit-and-runs. But in Los Angeles, L.A. Weekly has learned, an incredible 48 percent of crashes were hit-and-runs in 2009, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available. According to data collected by the state, some 4,000 hit-and-run crashes a year inside L.A. city limits, including cases handled by LAPD, California Highway Patrol and the L.A. County Sheriff, resulted in injury and/or death. Of those, according to a federal study, about 100 pedestrians died; the number of motorists and bicyclists who die would push that toll even higher.

In other words, Los Angeles drivers are four-and-a-half times more likely to bail after an accident than the country on the whole.

An accident scene near Long Beach.

LA Weekly credits a perhaps-predictable source for the data.

In fact, it appears that the best data on the massive scope of L.A. felony hit-and-runs — “felony” generally meaning somebody was seriously injured or killed — were dug up not by city leaders or law enforcement but by well-known bicycling advocate Alex Thompson, founder of the now-defunct website Bikeside L.A.

According to the blog Biking in LA, 24 riders were killed in traffic-related accidents in Los Angeles County in 2011 — 71 in Southern California. While the figure for LA is relatively consistent, it’s growing in the surrounding area.

Ito World took data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to create this map of fatalities in the greater Los Angeles area from 2001-2009.

It’s a staggering picture of a decade of injury. And according to LA Weekly, a massive percentage of the people responsible for those accidents may have suffered no consequence at all for doing so.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Nearly half of Los Angeles car accidents are hit-and-runs

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Supreme Court takes on dirty water

Supreme Court takes on dirty water

Nobody wants to take responsibility for nasty, polluted storm-water runoff. But the Supreme Court might soon force a few somebodies to do just that.

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Today the court is hearing two cases on runoff from logging roads in the Pacific Northwest, which environmentalists say can threaten fish.

And tomorrow the court will hear a case on Los Angeles’ filthy storm water, which contains “high levels of aluminum, copper, cyanide, fecal coliform bacteria and zinc,” the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said last year. That water flows into the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers and ultimately pollutes the area’s beaches.

The fight over L.A.’s dirty water began back in 2008, when the Natural Resources Defense Council brought suit against the county flood control district, hoping to force stricter measures to prevent water pollution. But the county doesn’t acknowledge that the water is its responsibility. From the Los Angeles Times:

County officials agree storm water is polluting the rivers but disagree on who is responsible. Its one monitoring station along the Los Angeles River is in Long Beach, near where it empties into the ocean.

“Yes, there are pollutants in the water, but dozens of municipalities are upstream from there. It’s a collective runoff. It doesn’t point to a particular source,” Gary Hildebrand, assistant deputy director of the L.A. County Flood Control District, said in an interview.

In court, the flood control district’s lawyers have argued that because the Clean Water Act regulates only “discharges” of pollutants, the county is not responsible for discharges that come from the thousands of drains in the county’s 84 cities.

The dispute, if nothing else, illustrates the difficulty of regulating storm water. The Clean Water Act of 1972 first targeted “point sources” of pollution, such as an industrial plant putting toxic chemicals into a creek, or a sewage plant that was leaking sewage into a river. Violators could be identified and forced to stop the pollution.

By contrast, a heavy storm sends water flowing from across a vast area, picking up pollutants along the way. There is no obvious point source.

Who will win: Clean water or municipal fiefdoms that buck collective responsibility?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Supreme Court takes on dirty water

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