Tag Archives: citizen

Cyclists are the happiest of us all

by gerdi Posted on February 1, 2013

Cyclists are the happiest of us all

By Susie Cagle

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Wheeeeee!

Despite getting run over, doored, harassed, and generally being treated as second-class citizens of the road, bicyclists are the happiest of all commuters. Go figure!

The finding comes via an Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium study released this month. Those who walk to work, the study found, are nearly as happy as cyclists, who are about three times happier than solo car-drivers.

Of course, your commute happiness is improved if you’re on your way to a good job that makes you a lot of money, but income gap aside, even rich workaholic bikers still had safety concerns that chipped away at their smile scores.

New York Daily News columnist Denis Hamill sees your safety concerns, cyclists, and he raises you a head injury, because that’s the only explanation I have for Hamil’s ragey column on New York’s bike lanes that, he says, have “disfigured the city in a logistical and aesthetic way.”

Writes Hamil: “News flash: Life ain’t a smooth sail, kiddos! There’s a big crash just waiting at the end of every bike lane.”

Don’t let this grump get you down, bikers, especially if you live in New York and enjoy those protected bike lanes (jealous!). It’s evening rush hour in the city right now, and something tells me Hamil is road-raging all alone in his car.

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

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Cyclists are the happiest of us all

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Butterflies Booking It North as Climate Warms

by f45 Posted on January 31, 2013

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Giant swallowtail, normally a butterfly of the southern US, now increasingly appearing in the northeast: Thomas Bresson via Wikimedia Commons

Butterflies from the southern US that used to be rare in the northeast are now appearing there on a regular basis. The trend correlates to a warming climate report the authors of a paper in Nature Climate Change.

Subtropical and warm-climate butterflies—including the giant swallowtail (photo above) and the zabulon skipper (photo below)—showed the sharpest population shift to the north. As recently as the late 1980s these species were rare or absent in Massachusetts.

At the same time southern butterflies are moving north, more than 75 percent of northern species—with a range centered north of Boston—are rapidly declining in Massachusetts now. Disappearing fastest are the species that overwinter as eggs or larvae. Which suggests that changes in the winter climate (like more drought or less snow cover) may be harming nonadult butterflies.

Southern species like the zabulon skipper are replacing northern species in Massachusetts: Kenneth Dwain Harrelson via Wikimedia Commons

“For most butterfly species, climate change seems to be a stronger change-agent than habitat loss,” lead author Greg Breed tells the Harvard Gazette. “Protecting habitat remains a key management strategy, and that may help some butterfly species. However for many others habitat protection will not mitigate the impacts of warming.”

Breed points to the frosted elfin (photo above), a species that receives formal habitat protection from Massachusetts, and has increased 1,000 percent there since 1992. Meanwhile common summer butterflies that have no protection in Massachusetts (atlantis and aphrodite fritillaries) have declined by nearly 90 percent. From the paper:

Conservation agencies should not use our results to infer that all southern species are safe nor that all northern species are doomed to extinction. However, understanding mechanisms of population decline could improve management practices and limit potentially costly efforts that will have little influence on species conservation.

The frosted elfin is one of the most rapidly increasing butterfly species in Massachusetts with an estimated 1,000 percent increase since 1992: Geoff Gallice via Wikimedia Commons

What’s extra cool about this research is that the data come from citizen scientists at the Massachusetts Butterfly Club. Over the last 19 years members have logged butterfly species and numbers on some 20,000 expeditions through Massachusetts. Their records fill a crucial gap in the scientific record.

Butterflies are turning out to be the canaries in the coal mine of climate warming:

This study in Biology Letters found that Australia’s common brown butterfly emerged from their pupae on average 1.6 days earlier each decade between 1941 and 2005, when average air temperature increased by 0.14°C per decade.
Butterflies and other species living in the mountains suffer from the “escalator effect“… i.e., when there’s no higher “latitude” for them to shift to beyond the summit.
MoJo’s Kiera Butler wrote here about the Karner blue butterfly and the problem of what to do when conditions force them northward but they can’t make it past urban roadblocks.
I reported here about populations of Apollo butterflies in the Rocky Mountains so fragmented by the escalator effect that they could be wiped out by one particularly bad weather event.
Check out this Google Scholar search page for just how many papers are being published on butterflies feeling the heat.

The Nature Climate Change paper:

Greg A. Breed, Sharon Stichter Elizabeth E. Crone. Climate-driven changes in northeastern US butterfly communities. Nature Climate Change (2013). DOI:10.1038/nclimate1663

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Butterflies Booking It North as Climate Warms

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10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down

by MayeskiLatouf679 Posted on January 31, 2013

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By cutting off federal funding for research and stymieing data collection and sharing, the National Rifle Association has tried to do to the study of gun violence what climate deniers have done to the science of global warming. No wonder: When it comes to hard numbers, some of the gun lobby’s favorite arguments are full of holes.

Myth #1: They’re coming for your guns.
Fact-check: No one knows the exact number of guns in America, but it’s clear there’s no practical way to round them all up (never mind that no one in Washington is proposing this). Yet if you fantasize about rifle-toting citizens facing down the government, you’ll rest easy knowing that America’s roughly 80 million gun owners already have the feds and cops outgunned by a factor of around 79 to 1.

Sources: Congressional Research Service (PDF), Small Arms Survey

Myth #2: Guns don’t kill people—people kill people.
Fact-check: People with more guns tend to kill more people—with guns. The states with the highest gun ownership rates have a gun murder rate 114% higher than those with the lowest gun ownership rates. Also, gun death rates tend to be higher in states with higher rates of gun ownership.

Sources: Pediatrics, Centers for Disease Control

Myth #3: An armed society is a polite society.
Fact-check: Drivers who carry guns are 44% more likely than unarmed drivers to make obscene gestures at other motorists, and 77% more likely to follow them aggressively.
• Among Texans convicted of serious crimes, those with concealed-handgun licenses were sentenced for threatening someone with a firearm 4.8 times more than those without.
• In states with Stand Your Ground and other laws making it easier to shoot in self-defense, those policies have been linked to a 7 to 10% increase in homicides.

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10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down

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Obama Lays Out His Pitch for Immigration Reform

by donnajansen Posted on January 29, 2013

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Speaking to an audience in Las Vegas, President Barack Obama made his case for immigration reform Tuesday, invoking the idea of America as a nation of immigrants and saying he believed Republicans were truly committed to getting reform done.

“It’s easy for the discussion to take on a feeling of ‘us’ versus ‘them,'” Obama said. “A lot of folks forget that most of ‘us’ used to be ‘them.'”

Obama’s proposal resembles, to a large degree, the one put forth by the bipartisan Senate “Gang of Eight” Monday. It proposes adding more resources for immigration enforcement and border security, a mandatory employment verification system, and a path to citizenship—what critics will call “amnesty,” but that the White House has referred to as “earned citizenship.” Like the Senate bill, undocumented immigrants on temporary legal status while they are “going to the back of the line” to apply for citizenship would not be eligible for federal benefits.

On these broad principles, the Senate and the White House are in agreement; but of course, the details matter, and there are key differences:

No Security requirement for the path to citizenship: While the Senate plan describes border security requirements that may have to be met before undocumented immigrants already in the US can complete the legalization process, the White House plan has no such requirement. The dispute over what, if any, border security requirements must be met could endanger the passage of any bill. (To be eligible for legal status or citizenship under both plans, undocumented immigrants still have to pay fines and pass background checks).

Nothing resembling a guest worker program: While the Senate proposal calls for a “humane and effective system” for “immigrant workers to enter the country and find employment without seeking the aid of human traffickers or drug cartels,” the White House fact sheet provided to reporters does not address this issue. That’s a problem, because some kind of system for foreign workers is necessary to deter illegal immigration in the future.

Families headed by same-sex couples are treated as other families: The White House’s proposal “treats same-sex families as families by giving U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents the ability to seek a visa on the basis of a permanent relationship with a same-sex partner.” Republicans on the Gang of Eight have treated this issue as unimportant. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said same-sex couples are “not of paramount importance,” while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked sarcastically, “Why don’t we just put legalized abortion in there and round it all out?”

DREAMers get an expedited citizenship process, agricultural workers do not: The Senate proposal exempted not just “DREAM Act” undocumented immigrants, who were brought here as children and are poised to go to college or join the military, but agricultural workers “because of the role they play in ensuring that Americans have safe and secure agricultural products to sell and consume.” The White House plan only expedites “earned citizenship” for DREAM Act-eligible undocumented immigrants, presumably because they’re slightly less fond of Big Ag than the upper chamber of Congress.

The two variables that are likeliest to cause friction between the White House and Congress are security requirements on the path to citizenship and the length of the path to citizenship itself. This afternoon on the Senate floor, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the Republican members of the “Gang of Eight,” warned Obama: “If this endeavor becomes a bidding war to see who can come up with the easiest, quickest, and cheapest pathway to a green card possible, this thing is not going to go well.” The clear implication is that despite bipartisan agreement on a path to citizenship, Rubio— and by extension, other Republicans currently supporting a reform push—could easily withdraw their support, based on how that path is paved.

Obama made it clear that if the Senate bill fails, he won’t simply be giving up. “If Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion,” Obama said. “I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.”

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Obama Lays Out His Pitch for Immigration Reform

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Top Conservatives Run PAC That Funded White Nationalists

by HarralGeidl697 Posted on January 29, 2013

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Two prominent conservative movement officials who hold leadership positions for several right-wing groups—Ron Robinson and James B. Taylor—run a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to a white nationalist organization, according to public records. And for several years Taylor was vice president of another white nationalist organization.

Robinson and Taylor are each board members of Young America’s Foundation (YAF), which cofounded the annual Conservative Political Action Conference and runs the conservative youth group Young Americans for Freedom. (YAF owns and manages the Ronald Reagan Ranch, trains conservative journalists, and calls itself “the principle outreach organization of the Conservative Movement.”) And Robinson, YAF’s president, is on the board of two other conservative groups: Citizens United, which brought the landmark Supreme Court case of the same name, and the American Conservative Union, which operates CPAC.

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Top Conservatives Run PAC That Funded White Nationalists

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America Lost in Afghanistan. What Happens Next?

by biglermyrta910 Posted on January 28, 2013

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Kabul, Afghanistan—Compromise, conflict, or collapse: ask an Afghan what to expect in 2014 and you’re likely to get a scenario that falls under one of those three headings. 2014, of course, is the year of the double whammy in Afghanistan: the next presidential election coupled with the departure of most American and other foreign forces. Many Afghans fear a turn for the worse, while others are no less afraid that everything will stay the same. Some even think things will get better when the occupying forces leave. Most predict a more conservative climate, but everyone is quick to say that it’s anybody’s guess.

Only one thing is certain in 2014: it will be a year of American military defeat. For more than a decade, US forces have fought many types of wars in Afghanistan, from a low-footprint invasion, to multiple surges, to a flirtation with Vietnam-style counterinsurgency, to a ramped-up, gloves-off air war. And yet, despite all the experiments in styles of war-making, the American military and its coalition partners have ended up in the same place: stalemate, which in a battle with guerrillas means defeat. For years, a modest-sized, generally unpopular, ragtag set of insurgents has fought the planet’s most heavily armed, technologically advanced military to a standstill, leaving the country shaken and its citizens anxiously imagining the outcome of unpalatable scenarios.

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America Lost in Afghanistan. What Happens Next?

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The Senate Immigration Plan Isn’t Terrible—It’s Just Unworkable

by MalenMajure469 Posted on January 28, 2013

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The bipartisan Senate “Gang of Eight” released their framework for comprehensive immigration reform today. As expected, the plan includes increased enforcement and a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already in the US. It also contains several tripwires that, if triggered, could destroy the entire effort. The “Gang of Eight” includes Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).

Citizenship

The plan includes a path to citizenship, which excludes those with criminal backgrounds and those who have committed crimes since entering the US. Undocumented immigrants would have to register with the government and go through a background check, and would be allowed to stay under “probationary legal status,” after which they would have to “go to the back of the line” before eventually qualifying for citizenship. They will not be eligible for federal benefits during their “probationary legal status.”

Interestingly, the plan makes the “path to citizenship” easier for two groups of immigrants: Those eligibile for the DREAM Act, which means they were brought to the US as children prepared to go to college or join the military, and agricultural workers. A cynical person might point out that in doing so, the plan goes out of its way to help the most sympathetic immigrants, and those most essential to powerful business interests. Or as the plan puts it, workers who “who commit to the long term stability of our nation’s agricultural industries.” The plan also states that immigrants who have “received a PhD or Master’s degree in science, technology, engineering, or math from an American university” will automatically get a green card, but doesn’t state whether that applies even if the individual is undocumented.

Enforcement

The framework makes reform contingent on things that can’t happen until the immigration system is reformed. While perhaps politically necessary, the plan throws more personnel and flying robots at the border, despite the fact that the US already spends more on immigration forcement than on all other aspects of federal law enforcement combined. The plan implies that undocumented immigrants can only be legalized after a commission “comprised of governors, attorneys general, and community leaders living along the Southwest border” certify that the measures have worked, which puts final legalization of the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants in the hands of Republican officials like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer who don’t want it to happen.

Beyond that however, the fact is that enforcement can only do so much to deter illegal immigration, because those seeking a better life will brave ever more dangerous obstacles to get here. What’s needed is an immigration system that allows enough people in to work so that people think they have a decent enough chance to get here that risking their life to do so isn’t worth it. The framework is incredibly vague on this point, hinting at a “guest worker program” but never using the phrase, and simply stating that the plan will “provide businesses with the ability to hire lower-skilled workers in a timely manner when Americans are unavailable or unwilling to fill those jobs.” This, not more drones at the border, is arguably the most important aspect of deterring illegal immigration, and the plan gives it short shrift.

Bottom Line

The Gang of Eight’s framework isn’t all terrible, it’s just unworkable. It places conditions it’s unlikely to meet, and then further compounds the problem by putting a veto in the hands of people who are likely to oppose the plan even if those conditions were met. Immigration reform advocates will be wary of the employment verification requirements, (particularly given the error-prone nature of the current system) while the immigration restrictionist right will be completely opposed to any plan that offers undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship rather than “self-deportation.”

Politically, the immediate question is whether the presence of Senators like Rubio and Flake can limit the backlash on the right, since any immigration reform bill still has to get through the Republican controlled-House of Representatives. But even if the entire plan were written, passed and signed by the president tomorrow, much of it—legalization in particular—could be prevented from ever happening.

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The Senate Immigration Plan Isn’t Terrible—It’s Just Unworkable

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New Arizona Bill Wants Hospitals Policing Immigration

by oks23po Posted on January 28, 2013

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The state that brought you SB 1070, perhaps the harshest immigration law in the nation, is at it again with a bill that could bring illegal immigrant-hunting into new territory: hospitals.

Proposed last week by Republican state Rep. Steve Smith, HB 2293 would require hospital workers to verify the immigration status of uninsured people seeking care. They’d have to make note of any undocumented patient, and then call the police.

Speaking outside the Arizona capitol on Thursday, Rep. Smith called it simply “a data-collection bill” to figure out how much Arizona is spending on illegal immigrant care, promising that no one would be denied treatment or deported once their status is disclosed.

Neither of these guarantees is mentioned anywhere in the bill, but co-sponsor Rep. Carl Seel told Arizona’s KPHO that hospitals wouldn’t deny treatment, since “we’re a benevolent nation.”

If enacted, the bill could scare immigrants away from getting medical attention. Nationwide, the undocumented are already far less likely to seek health care. Advocates say the low rate is partially explained by a fear that they’ll be reported to authorities. This law would do little to lighten such distrust: It doesn’t explain what police should or can do with the data flowing in from hospitals. When he was asked whether law enforcement would show up to hospitals when notified, Smith’s response was: “We have no clue.”

Ostensibly, doctors wouldn’t have to juggle providing care and phoning the cops; the bill makes it clear that other hospital employees should handle the bill’s requirements. Still, the state’s hospitals are pushing back. Pete Wertheim, a spokesman for the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, says that with more than 3 million patients each year, the rules would be impossible to implement with current budgets and staffing. He also points out that if the law deterred immigrants with communicable diseases—think tuberculosis—from seeking treatment, it could endanger everyone in the state.

The bill is still in early stages, and hasn’t yet made it to committee. And if precedent is any indicator, it’s not likely to pass: Rep. Smith has introduced similar bills before, with little success. Laws he proposed last year that would have implemented immigration checks at schools and hospitals both failed in the Senate.

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New Arizona Bill Wants Hospitals Policing Immigration

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The Silly Conservative Freak-Out Over Women in Combat

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on January 24, 2013

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Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced Wednesday that the Pentagon plans to lift a 1994 prohibition on women serving in combat roles. The announcement prompted an ill-informed outcry from conservatives, who were perhaps unaware that American servicewomen are already in the line of fire, serving in combat though not doing so in what the Defense Department defines as “combat roles.”

Late Wednesday night, Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson tweeted, “The administration boasts about sending women to the front lines on the same day Democrats push the Violence Against Women Act,” suggesting an equivalence between choosing to serve on the front lines and being targeted for domestic assault. Carlson followed up: “Feminism’s latest victory: the right to get your limbs blown off in war. Congratulations.”

Carlson is a political journalist, so he might be expected to know that there is a woman US Army veteran amputee named Tammy Duckworth currently serving in Congress. Duckworth, who represents Illinois’ 8th District, lost her legs after an attack brought down the helicopter she was piloting in Baghdad.

In the US military, a woman’s service is not recognized, professionally or financially, the same way as a man’s. Because women have not been eligible for “combat role” positions—even though they were shooting and being shot at—they were denied access to certain career opportunities. The plaintiffs in a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the Department of Defense over the exclusion of women from combat roles offer great examples of this discrimination. Two of the plaintiffs in that case have received Purple Hearts, and two have received combat medals. One of the plaintiffs, Air Force Major Mary Jennings Hegar, a helicopter pilot, was shot down in Afghanistan attempting to evacuate wounded US service members. She engaged in a firefight with enemy forces and was shot before escaping. Women are already “getting their limbs blown off in war.” Panetta’s announcement will ensure they are recognized for it.

The Daily Beast‘s David Frum, appearing on CNN, also raised a misguided objection to the new policy. Frum claimed that servicewomen will face sexual violence from America’s enemies and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to serve on the front lines:

The people we are likely to meet on the next battlefield are people who use rape and sexual abuse as actual tools of politics. In Iranian prisons, rape is a frequent practice. Women are raped before they are executed. In Iran, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan rape is a conscious tool of subjugation and it is something women will be exposed to. In the name of equal opportunity they will face unequal risk.

It’s true that women face the danger of sexual assault if captured. The same could be said of men. Frum’s objection seems somewhat selective; women in the US military are more likely to face sexual assault from their comrades in the service than they are to be killed by enemy fire. Perhaps that’s less sensational than the thought of scary foreigners violating American women, but it’s a more urgent threat.

Most men cannot meet the necessary mental and physical requirements for service in combat. Any woman who can meet those standards should not be denied the opportunity because of an arbitrary gender restriction. Moreover, removing the restriction is not about celebrating militarism. The military has long been a path for historically disfavored groups to claim the full benefits of citizenship. Justifying discrimination against blacks, gays and lesbians, or women becomes much more difficult when they’re giving their lives for their country.

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The Silly Conservative Freak-Out Over Women in Combat

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Why An Unknown Senator Named CeCe Is a Breakthrough in the Campaign Money Wars

by gerdi Posted on January 23, 2013

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You probably haven’t heard of Cecilia Tkaczyk—CeCe to her friends. But the nation’s leading activists fighting to get big money out of politics want you to hear her story. After months in court, Tkacyzk squeaked out the second-narrowest win in the history of New York’s state Senate, a win progressives are hailing as a potential turning point in the fight to clean up Albany’s noxious politics. And if they can pass reform in New York, the front line of the campaign finance wars, activists believe they can pressure other states to do the same.

Liberals love Tkaczyk because she made the public financing of elections a central issue, if not the issue, in her campaign. The underdog in a race against GOP state Assemblyman George Amedore, Tkaczyk proposed replacing New York State’s lax campaign finance system with a voluntary program that matches small-dollar donations with taxpayer money. The idea: nudge candidates to court lots of less wealthy individual donors instead of wooing a handful of rich ones. Throughout the campaign, Tkaczyk pressed Amedore on the campaign cash issue, and in the final weeks of the campaign, Amedore turned around and attacked her specifically over public financing, ripping it as too costly and unnecessary.

Strange, right? Two candidates locking horns over…campaign finance? Yet in the Amedore-Tkaczyk race, the dry, unsexy issue of money in politics was front and center.

After the ballots had been counted, and a few dozen votes separated Amedore and Tkacyzk, the election headed to the courts. The two sides fought over which ballots to count and which to exclude, Amedore briefly took a 37-vote lead, but then, more than two months after the election, the court’s decision to count a few more ballots tipped the race to Tkacyzk. According to the current count, she won by 19 votes. Campaign reformers point to her victory as proof, albeit on a small scale, that corruption and the influence of money in politics resonates with voters, and that an anti-big-money candidate can win by running on this specific issue. “Her victory shows that voters will support candidates who champion real campaign finance reform, including citizen-funded elections,” says Jonathan Soros, who runs Friends of Democracy, which he calls an anti-super-PAC super-PAC.

Yes, Tkaczyk had lots of help. Progressive groups such as Citizen Action of New York and the Working Families Partner phone-banked and knocked on doors. Soros’ super-PAC spent $265,000 on polling, TV ads, and phone calls to elect Tkaczyk, focusing on the campaign finance issue. And Protect Our Democracy, another pro-reform super-PAC started by investor Sean Eldridge, the husband of Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes, spent thousands more to back Tkaczyk while highlighting the campaign money issue. If all that spending sounds a tad ironic to you—outside groups spending big to support an anti-big-money candidate—that’s because it is.

But Soros and Eldridge say they want to build a coalition of pro-campaign-reform candidates in New York State, and they argue that it takes money to do so. They focused on New York State Senate races because Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly signaled his support for public financing—but he needs the legislature to send him a bill. Tkaczyk’s win adds another pro-reform Democrat to the state Senate. Now, in a divided state Senate, the hard work begins. “It’s now up to Ms. Tkaczyk,” the Albany Times-Union wrote in an recent editorial, “and all those politicians from Gov. Andrew Cuomo on down who say they stand for campaign reform to live up to their promises to do it.”

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Why An Unknown Senator Named CeCe Is a Breakthrough in the Campaign Money Wars

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