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American Farmers Need a Strong RFS

by Posted on October 20, 2015

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American Farmers Need a Strong RFS

Posted 20 October 2015 in

National

Earlier this month, the National Farmers Union and the National Corn Growers Association released a white paper detailing the dramatic toll that uncertainty over the Renewable Fuel Standard has taken on rural economies. Projections for American farmers’ net cash income in 2015 show a 26 percent decrease from peak levels in 2013.

The RFS, which is the only federal law on the books combating climate change, has driven sustainable growth in renewable fuel for a decade. The renewable fuel industry sparked an economic revolution that raised farm incomes across sectors while creating jobs in rural communities. U.S. farmers increased their production by investing in better technology and sustainable acreage expansion.

But the EPA’s failure to release the rules for 2013, 2014, and 2015 has caused net farm income to likely fall more than 50 percent in only two years. When the farm community loses, the whole country loses.

By sidestepping its responsibilities on the RFS, the EPA is putting American jobs, investments, and innovations at risk.

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American Farmers Need a Strong RFS

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The Head of a Major Law Enforcement Group Described Nonviolent Drug Offenders As "Peddlers of Death"

by PiperThornton Posted on August 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last month, President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders detained in federal prisons. Given that 35,000 nonviolent inmates had applied for reduced sentences, some activists said the clemency grant did not go far enough. Apparently, not everyone agrees.

In an opinion piece Thursday, Jon Adler, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), blasted Obama’s decision by describing these nonviolent offenders as “peddlers of death.” Arguing that Obama ignored the risks of drug traffickers and instead chose to “perpetuate a narrative that these felons are harmless hippies,” Adler went so far as to compare the offenders to lions in an overcrowded zoo:

With limited space, rising labor, and lodging costs, which animals would the president let go? Using the president’s methodology, the lions would likely be set free. Why? They eat the most food and therefore cost the most to maintain. During the 10 years of their captivity, they haven’t eaten anyone or attacked their handlers. They have no known affiliation to any violent lion groups. They are totally safe to release into the public. The president’s rationale for release of these federal prisoners does not benefit the American public, nor keep it safe.

Adler’s FLEOA provides testimony at congressional hearings and represents more than 25,000 federal law enforcement officers from some 65 agencies. But his description of nonviolent drug offenders seems unfair for people like Antonio Bascaro, an octogenarian grandfather in a wheelchair who has been incarcerated for 35 years because he worked on a fishing boat used by Cubans to smuggle cannabis to Florida. Or what about John Knock, a first-time offender serving life in prison for conspiracy to traffic large quantities of weed that the government never even seized? (Neither man was granted clemency.)

In an investigation of weed lifers, my colleague Bryan Schatz writes:

Every year, more people are arrested for pot possession than violent crimes. Around 40,000 people are currently serving time for offenses involving a drug that has been decriminalized or legalized in 27 states and Washington, DC. Even as Americans’ attitudes toward pot have mellowed, the law has yet to catch up, leaving pot offenders subject to draconian sentences born out of the war on drugs. As David Holland, a criminal-defense attorney in New York City who filed a presidential clemency petition for marijuana lifers in 2012, puts it: “The world has changed, but these poor bastards are still sitting in jail.”

It’s important to note that the war on drugs has disproportionately affected black and Latino men. And Obama’s clemency last month went to a group of nonviolent inmates who had served more than 10 years in prison with good behavior, and who would not have received such severe sentences under today’s sentencing rules. “These men and women were not hardened criminals,” the president said, adding that 14 of the 46 nonviolent offenders had been given life sentences. “So their punishments didn’t fit the crime.”

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The Head of a Major Law Enforcement Group Described Nonviolent Drug Offenders As "Peddlers of Death"

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Maryland Official: Lead Poisoning Is the Royal Road to Riches

by TanjaMarston Posted on August 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Technically this has nothing to do with lead and crime, but since I’m Mother Jones’ senior lead correspondent it’s up to me to put up this outlandish little item from Maryland:

Gov. Larry Hogan’s top housing official said Friday that he wants to look at loosening state lead paint poisoning laws, saying they could motivate a mother to deliberately poison her child to obtain free housing.

Kenneth C. Holt, secretary of Housing, Community and Development, told an audience at the Maryland Association of Counties summer convention here that a mother could just put a lead fishing weight in her child’s mouth, then take the child in for testing and a landlord would be liable for providing the child with housing until the age of 18.

Pressed afterward, Holt said he had no evidence of this happening but said a developer had told him it was possible. “This is an anecdotal story that was described to me as something that could possibly happen,” Holt said.

I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t actually work, but that hardly matters. It’s just another example of the peculiar Republican penchant for governance via anecdote. They’re all convinced that someone, somewhere, is trying to rip them off, but they can never find quite enough real examples of this. So instead we get Reaganesque fables about stuff they heard from some guy who heard it from some other guy who said, you know, it could happen.

By the way, if you’re tempted to do this, please don’t. Licking a lead fishing weight once probably won’t actually cause a detectable rise in blood lead levels, but it’s still a really bad idea.

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Maryland Official: Lead Poisoning Is the Royal Road to Riches

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Soon You Might Actually Be Able to Tell How Much Added Sugar Is in Your Food

by DemetriIra Posted on July 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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When the popular news quiz show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! hosted the country’s Surgeon General, Vicek Murthy, last weekend, he was confronted with the question: What’s your one weakness? “Sweets,” he answered, “I like bread pudding and cheesecake, in particular.”

Many of us can identify with the hankering for the occasional piece of cheesecake after dinner. But lots of the added sugar you inhale probably doesn’t come in the form of dessert. Rather, Americans get much of their sweetening in the form of beverages—especially soda—and packaged foods that at first glance seem snacky or savory (yep, one serving of hoisin sauce has two whole teaspoons; barbecue sauce one and a half). While the World Health Organization has suggested that adults should get no more than 5 percent of their daily calories from added sweeteners—that’s about 6 teaspoons—the average American ingests roughly five times that amount every day.

For decades, researchers and doctors have been sounding the alarm about the negative health risks associated with a diet too rich in added sugars—from obesity, poor nutrition, diabetes, and even heart disease. But as I’ve written about in the past, even if you’re concerned about your levels of added sugar intake, it’s nearly impossible to tell how much you might be eating: Current food labels don’t require added sugar to be listed. There’s even indication that food companies have gone to great lengths to keep that information hidden from the public’s eyes. The US Department of Agriculture used to list added sugars for popular products in online, but the database was removed in 2012 after companies claimed that added sugar amounts should be considered trade secrets.

So in March, the Food and Drug Administration proposed revising nutrition labels to include added sugars on packaged foods. And on Friday, the agency went even further by proposing to require that packaged food companies must also include a percent daily value of added sugar on the nutrition label. (The daily value would be based on the recommendation that added sugar not exceed 10 percent of total calories, or roughly 12 teaspoons of sugar a day).

The FDA has already received pushback from industry groups about the attempt to make added sugar quantities more transparent; the Corn Refiner’s Association questioned the agency’s “statutory authority to do so” and complained of a lack of “credible scientific evidence.” Meanwhile, Kellogg argued that the proposal “to distinguish added sugars…may confuse consumers.” Of course, Kellogg happens to be the world’s “second largest producer of cookies, crackers, and savory snacks.”

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Soon You Might Actually Be Able to Tell How Much Added Sugar Is in Your Food

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Louisiana Has Some of the Weakest Gun Laws in the Country

by MariMacDonnell Posted on July 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday night, 59-year-old John Russell Houser of Alabama walked into the Grand Theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, with a handgun and shot into a crowd, killing two and injuring nine more. At a press conference Friday, Democratic state Rep. Terry Landry Sr. called for stricter gun laws in Louisiana, saying, “It’s our job as legislators to close the loopholes in these gun laws.” Indeed, according to the National Rife Association, Louisiana has one of the most open gun policies around—from its unabashedly pro-gun governor to its concealed carry law. A 2014 report by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence rated the state as having “the weakest gun laws in the country.”

Here’s what you need to know about gun law in Louisiana:

Gun owners don’t have to obtain a permit to purchase guns. Buyers don’t have to register their firearms, and they don’t need a license to possess them. State law requires a concealed carry permit for handguns, but there is no permit required to carry rifles or shotguns.
State law only restricts two kinds of people from possessing guns: those 17 and under, or those convicted of certain violent crimes (until a decade has passed since the completion of the sentence, probation, parole, or suspension of a sentence).
The state has enacted “castle doctrine”, meaning deadly force is considered justifiable in a court of law to defend against an intruder in a person’s home. The Louisiana state legislature also passed a “Stand Your Ground” law in 2006, stating that anyone in a place “where he or she has a right,” including public spaces, is not obligated “to retreat” if faced with a threat and “may stand his or her ground and meet force with force.” (Check out our map of how quickly “Stand Your Ground” laws spread across the United States).
Firearms may be stored in locked, privately owned motor vehicles. Louisiana is one of 22 states with similar policies that allow guns to be left in the office parking lot.
Gun owners have the right to carry in restaurants.
According to a 2012 state constitutional amendment, “the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms is fundamental and shall not be infringed” and “any restriction on this right” will be met with maximum skepticism from the courts. The amendment, which was heavily backed by Gov. Jindal, also removed language that would allow the legislature to “prohibit the carrying of weapons concealed on a person.” In a written statement, Jindal argued: “We are adopting the strongest, most iron-clad, constitutional protection for law-abiding gun owners. It’s our own Second Amendment, if you will.”

Given these laws, it’s no surprise that nearly half of Louisiana households own a gun. Unfortunately, the state also sees high levels of armed violence: According to a Mother Jones investigation, the state has the country’s highest gun homicide rate—9.4 per 100,000 residents. And that gun violence has cost each Louisiana resident at least $1,333 a year.

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Louisiana Has Some of the Weakest Gun Laws in the Country

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Cops Raid California Pot Farm, Find Bowe Bergdahl

by WendyCrutcher Posted on July 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the former captive of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network in Afghanistan, was at a remote marijuana farm in Mendocino County when a local dope team raided the property on Tuesday. Sherriff Tom Allman told The Anderson Valley Advertiser, which first reported the story, that Bergdahl “was not involved” in the marijuana operation, and authorities later confirmed to NBC Bay Area that he was not arrested during the raid and is not facing any charges.

Held captive since 2009, Bergdahl was freed in May 2014 in a controversial prisoner swap in return for five Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo Bay. While still on active duty, Bergdahl is currently awaiting a military court martial for allegations of desertion. He was on authorized leave from his post at Texas’ Fort Sam Houston and was visiting old friends at the pot farm when the drug task force showed up. Sherriff Allman told the Advertiser that Bergdahl was “above politeness” and readily produced his military ID for officers at the raid as several people were taken into custody.

As Talking Points Memo highlighted this morning, the outspoken critics of the so-called “prisoner swap” that led to Bergdahl’s release at Fox News unsurprisingly harangued Bergdahl as the news of his association with the raid broke. “Do they give him a drug test when he returns?” asked “Fox and Friends” host Steve Doocy. “Shouldn’t they give him a drug test when he returns? He’s active duty. Remember, he’s protecting us right now.” And Andrea Tantaros, co-host of “Outnumbered,” had this to say:

According to the Advertiser, military authorities were notified, and once calls were made “all the way up to the Pentagon,” Bergdahl was escorted to Santa Rosa and later to his duty station at the Defense Department’s request.

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Cops Raid California Pot Farm, Find Bowe Bergdahl

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Martin O’Malley Tries to One-Up Bernie Sanders With Promise to End College Debt

by AlannahVarghese Posted on July 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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As they vie to emerge as the progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley are racing to stake out territory to Clinton’s political left.

In April, O’Malley endorsed a $15 minimum wage. Sanders did the same within days. On a recent swing through Iowa, Sanders went beyond Clinton’s support of paid sick leave to endorse guaranteed vacation time. O’Malley, meanwhile, stumped on his opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership, an enormous trade deal that has become a bête noire for liberals and labor groups. Clinton supported the deal as secretary of state, but has hedged on the deal as a presidential candidate.

Now, O’Malley has an answer to Sanders’ plan for tuition-free public college: a series of proposals to eliminate debt for students at all colleges, public and private.

The dueling proposals come after an aggressive push to place student loan debt at the center of the Democratic primary agenda by liberal advocacy groups, notably the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. The effort received a boost when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed an unspecified path to debt-free college earlier this year. Clinton intends to roll out a student loan plan later this month.

O’Malley outlined his proposal Wednesday at Saint Anselm College, a Catholic liberal-arts school in New Hampshire. Under his proposal, all graduates with federal loans would automatically have their loan repayment schedules tied to their incomes, giving lower-income graduates more time to pay back the loans. (Currently, graduates must opt into income-based repayment and meet certain requirements.) Graduates with debt would be able to refinance their loans at lower rates, and students with private loans would be able to refinance into federal loans with lower rates. The plan also calls for states to tie tuition rates at public colleges and universities to the state’s median income.

The pitch comes several weeks after Sanders argued for taxing certain Wall Street transactions and using the profits to eliminate $70 billion of tuition and fees at state-funded colleges.

O’Malley’s student debt plan is in line with his stated strategy to show up Sanders with a more detailed liberal platform. (In June, O’Malley called Sanders a “protest candidate.”) Their contest has also led to sparring among several outside groups. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee called Sanders’ plan for student debt “narrower” than O’Malley’s, which closely follows the group’s vision for debt-free college. And in June, a super-PAC supportive of O’Malley paid for ads directed at voters in Iowa that hammered Sanders’ record on guns. One ad spotlights Sanders’ vote against the 1993 Brady Bill, which required federal background checks of gun purchasers. Sanders shot back that the National Rifle Association has given a D- to his voting record.

Still, early polling shows Sanders winning the majority of likely Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers who aren’t backing Clinton. In New Hampshire, where O’Malley released his college plan, Sanders trails Clinton by an average of 15 points, a margin that keeps shrinking. O’Malley, meanwhile, is hovering around 2 percent in Iowa and New Hampshire.

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Martin O’Malley Tries to One-Up Bernie Sanders With Promise to End College Debt

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Jim Webb Just Announced He’s Running for President. Here’s What You Need to Know About Him.

by IdaMauerjyzm Posted on July 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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At long last, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb (D) is officially a candidate for president. After weeks of supposedly imminent announcements—including ones his staff may not have known about—he declared on Thursday afternoon that he’s running, with a long statement on his website that blended a prudent hawkishness with economic populism. ” I understand the odds,” Webb notes, “particularly in today’s political climate where fair debate is so often drowned out by huge sums of money. I know that more than one candidate in this process intends to raise at least a billion dollars—some estimates run as high as two billion dollars—in direct and indirect financial support…We need to shake the hold of these shadow elites on our political process.”

Webb, as he concedes, is a huge underdog, polling at just 2 percent in nationwide polls. Here’s what you should know about the latest Democratic contender.

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Jim Webb Just Announced He’s Running for President. Here’s What You Need to Know About Him.

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America’s BBQ Grills Create as Much Carbon as a Big Coal Plant

by LucilleMickle Posted on July 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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As your neighbors fire up their barbecues this Independence Day, the most popular day in America to grill, they won’t just send the scent of tri-tip or grilled corn over the fence in your direction—they’ll also send smoke. As my colleague Kiera Butler wrote about here, even the “cleanest” gas grills emit pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every hour they’re used. So how many emissions can we expect from dinner barbecues on the 4th?

Roughly eighty percent of American households own barbecues or smokers, according to the Hearth, Patio, and Barbecue Association. Let’s say all 92.5 million of them decide to grill on Saturday. A 2013 study by HPBA found that 61 percent of users opted for gas grills, 42 percent for charcoal, and 10 percent for electric (some respondents had multiple grills). If that reflected all households across the United States, and each household used its grill for an hour on the 4th of July, then we’d get a calculation like this:

(56.425M gas grills*5.6 pounds of CO2) + (38.85M charcoal grills*11 pounds CO2) + (9.25M electric grills*15 pounds CO2 ) = 882 million pounds of CO2

That’s roughly as many emissions as burning 2145 railcars of coal, or running one coal-fired power plant for a month.

But let’s be honest—no one wants to give up summer grilling, and these emissions stats probably won’t convince your neighbor to turn off the barbecue. You might instead offer up ideas on recipes with ingredients that are friendlier to the planet—like these 4 veggie burgers that don’t suck.

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America’s BBQ Grills Create as Much Carbon as a Big Coal Plant

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Rick Perry: Don’t Blame Guns for Charleston Attack. But Maybe Blame Drugs.

by AshliHartq Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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The killing of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston Wednesday night has reignited the conversation about access to guns in the US, drawing the predictable refrain that this wouldn’t have happened had the people at the Bible study been armed. A board member of the National Rifle Association went so far as to blame one of the victims for the shooting because of his political position on concealed-carry laws. So when President Obama talked about Charleston and how easy it was for someone like 21-year-old Dylann Roof to get a gun, the critics pushed back.

One of them was former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who told Newsmax that the massacre, which he called an “accident,” might have had more to do with drugs than with guns. Watch:

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Rick Perry: Don’t Blame Guns for Charleston Attack. But Maybe Blame Drugs.

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