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Trump is about to make the pork industry responsible for inspecting itself

by ElinorO62bp Posted on April 6, 2019

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Next time you tuck into a pork chop or a carnitas-filled burrito, spare a thought for the people who work the kill line at hog slaughterhouses. Meatpacking workers incur injury and illness at 2.5 times the national average; and repetitive-motion conditions at a rate nearly seven times as high as that of other private industries. Much has to do with the speed at which they work: Hog carcasses weighing as much as 270 pounds come at workers at an average rate of 977 per hour, or about 16 per minute.

President Donald Trump’s U.S. Department of Agriculture is close to finalizing a plan that would allow those lines to move even faster, reports the Washington Post’s Kimberly Kindy. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is currently responsible for overseeing the kill line, making sure that tainted meat doesn’t enter the food supply. The plan would partially privatize federal oversight of pork facilities, cutting the number of federal inspectors by about 40 percent and replacing them with plant employees, Kindy adds. In other words, the task of ensuring the safety of the meat supply will largely shift from people paid by the public to people being paid by the meat industry.

Deregulation is on brand for the Trump team, but the idea of semi-privatizing the USDA’s meat inspection dates to former President Bill Clinton, who launched pilot programs for both chicken and pork plants. President Barack Obama was an enthusiast — his USDA approved a similar plan for chicken slaughterhouses in 2014, but declined in the end to let all poultry companies speed up the kill line after fierce pushback by workplace and food safety advocates. In its waning days in 2016, the Obama USDA was close enough to finalizing hog slaughterhouse deregulation that a bipartisan group of 60 Congress members sent a letter to then-USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack urging the the department not to make the move.

The Trump administration appears to be bringing new zeal to the task of reshaping meat inspection. Once it finalizes the new pork inspection, the USDA plans to roll out a similar scheme for the beef industry, Kindy reports. And last fall, the agency announced it would would let some chicken slaughterhouses speed up their kill lines from 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute.

The USDA has long insisted pulling inspectors off the kill line—while also speeding it up—is about “modernization.” “Advances in animal science, market hog production systems, biosecurity, and veterinary medicine have eliminated the vast majority of diseases inspected for under traditional inspection,” the agency claimed in a 2018 explainer.

What does this deregulation mean for the safety of our meat? We already have a sneak preview. For years, a USDA pilot program has allowed five large hog slaughterhouses to operate at higher line speeds with fewer inspectors. A 2013 audit by the USDA’s Office of Inspector General found that the USDA “did not provide adequate oversight” of the pilot facilities over its first 15 years, and as a result, the plants “may have a higher potential for food safety risks.”

According to the OIG report, there are 616 USDA inspected hog plants in the United States, meaning that just 0.8 percent of them are in the pilot program. Yet of the top 10 US hog plants earning the most food safety and animal welfare citations in the period of fiscal years 2008 to 2011, three were enrolled in the pilot program. By far the most-cited slaughterhouse in the United States over that period was a pilot plant — it drew “nearly 50 percent more [citations] than the plant with the next highest number.”

And in 2015, the Government Accountability Project released affidavits from four USDA federal inspectors working in the pilot hog plants. Their reports from the sped-up line, which I wrote about here, don’t make for appetizing reading. Here’s an excerpt.

“Not only are plant supervisors not trained, the employees taking over USDA’s inspection duties have no idea what they are doing. Most of them come into the plant with no knowledge of pathology or the industry in general.”

“Food safety has gone down the drain under HIMP [the acronym for the pilot program]. Even though fecal contamination has increased under the program (though the company does a good job of hiding it), USDA inspectors are encouraged not to stop the line for fecal contamination.”

In Kindy’s recent Washington Post report, Pat Basu, chief veterinarian for the USDA inspection service from 2016 to 2018, makes similar observations. He “refused to sign off on the new pork system because of concerns about safety for both consumers and livestock,” Kindy reports. “The USDA sent the proposed regulations to the Federal Register about a week after Basu left, and they were published less than a month later, according to records and interviews.”

The Trump USDA first announced plans to finalize the new system in February of 2018, but has made no public comments on it since. Kindy reports the changes are imminent, and could be rolled out “as early as May.” The agency did not respond to my request for comment.

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Trump is about to make the pork industry responsible for inspecting itself

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What’s the ‘Green New Deal’? The surprising origins behind a progressive rallying cry.

by TeresitJ23 Posted on June 30, 2018

This story was originally published by Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The man who popularized the phrase that left-leaning Democrats now use to describe a vision for a radical government spending plan to combat climate change is a self-described centrist “free-market guy” with a New York Times column.

It was Thomas Friedman who in 2007 started calling for a “Green New Deal” to end fossil fuel subsidies, tax carbon dioxide emissions, and create lasting incentives for wind and solar energy. At the dawn of the global financial crisis, the “New Deal” concept that Franklin D. Roosevelt coined 76 years earlier to describe the labor reforms and historic spending on infrastructure and armaments that pulled the United States out of the Great Depression proved attractive.

Friedman’s ideas made it into the mainstream the following year when presidential candidate Barack Obama added a Green New Deal to his platform. In 2009, the United Nations drafted a report calling for a Global Green New Deal to focus government stimulus on renewable energy projects. A month later, Democrats’ landmark cap-and-trade bill — meant to set up a market where companies could buy and sell pollution permits and take a conservative first step toward limiting carbon dioxide emissions — passed in the House with the promise of spurring $150 billion in clean energy investments and creating 1.7 million good-paying jobs.

But, by 2010, austerity politics hit. The cap-and-trade bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, died in the Senate. In Britain, the Labor Party, acting on a proposal that a team of economists calling themselves the Green New Deal Group drafted, established a government-run green investment bank to bolster renewable energy — only for the conservative Tories to sweep into office months later and begin the process of privatizing the nascent institution. Balanced budgets and deficit hysteria became the dogma of governments across the developed world. Talk of a Green New Deal withered on the vine.

Today the phrase is making a comeback among the ranks of Democratic insurgents running on left-leaning platforms in 2018 primaries across the country. Far from serving as shorthand for middle-of-the-road climate policies, the decade-old slogan is being reborn as the kind of progressive platform that increasingly looks like the only policy approach capable of slowing the nation’s output of planet-warming gases and adapting to a hotter world.

Progressive activists have long complained that there is no climate change version of a “Medicare for all” bill — legislation that serves both as a vehicle for sweeping reform and a litmus test for how far a Democratic candidate is willing to go on an issue. Yet the Green New Deal seems to be filling that three-word void.

Defining a ‘Green New Deal’

From the beginning, there were competing definitions of what “Green New Deal” meant.

Friedman’s version focused on policies that compelled the “big players to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.” He liked a lot of what Obama enacted — including $51 billion in “green stimulus” and a $2.3 billion tax credit to clean energy manufacturing — even after the administration shelved the Green New Deal rhetoric after the midterm election.

Sure, big-ticket policies like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system and sunsetting the $20 billion in subsidies to oil, gas, and coal each year never came to fruition. Even the regulations the administration did achieve — like tightening fuel economy standards and incentivizing utilities to produce more renewable energy — disintegrated as soon as the Trump administration took over.

Subsidies for wind, solar, and battery technology managed to survive proposed cuts in the tax bill Congress passed last year because Republicans in states that have come to rely on those burgeoning industries saved them. For Friedman, that is proof that lasting climate policies are ones that make private renewable energy companies powerful enough to sway politics.

“The more the market does on its own, the more sustainable it is,” he said. Even as the Trump administration dismantles Obama’s climate legacy, Friedman feels the battle shouldn’t be for more aggressive government intervention to wean the economy off fossil fuels, but on messaging that focuses on the patriotic, nation-building aspects of greening the economy.

“We are the true patriots on this,” said Friedman. “We’re talking about American economic power, American moral power, American geopolitical power. Green is geostrategic, geoeconomic, patriotic, capitalistic.”

But then there’s Richard Murphy, a British tax scholar who also claims to have coined the phrase “Green New Deal” around the same time as Friedman. “I don’t even know who Tom Friedman is. If he used the term, it’s complete coincidence,” he says.

In 2007, Murphy, a political economy professor and founder of the London-based Tax Justice Network, started meeting with a cadre of newspaper editors, economists, and environmentalists to discuss the coming financial crisis and how any fiscal stimulus issued in response could be used to tackle the ecological crisis already underway.

This “two-birds-one-stone” approach proposed an aggressive spending plan that called for investing public funds in renewable energy, building a zero-emission transportation infrastructure, insulating homes to conserve energy, and establishing training programs to educate a national corps of workers to carry out the jobs.

Murphy’s cadre, which named itself the Green New Deal Group, was more ambiguous on how to fund all this green development. He said they supported “straightforward deficit spending” — meaning government money that’s borrowed rather than already raised through taxes — as well as quantitative easing, a strategy in which the government buys bonds to inject money straight into the economy. Rather than buying bank bonds to prop up private financial institutions, Murphy suggested instead establishing a green infrastructure bank that would issue bonds the government could then buy back — a policy with enough leftist bona fides to be nicknamed the “people’s quantitative easing.” He also proposed closing tax loopholes.

The ideas caught on, and in 2010 the ruling Labour Party established a green infrastructure bank. But later that year the conservative Tories swept into office, sold the bank and scaled back renewable and energy-efficiency subsidies.

“The austerity narrative took over,” Murphy said by phone. “This is the polar opposite of the austerity narrative.”

Revival of an idea

Talk of a Green New Deal went quiet for years in the U.S. and Britain. But a new wave of progressive candidates, spurred by the organizing that went into Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Democratic presidential bid, began reviving the term in the past year.

It could be a winning strategy. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly support efforts to reduce climate pollution and increase renewable energy capacity, even if it comes with a cost. Sixty-one percent of Americans who voted for Obama in 2012 and then for Trump in 2016 supported requiring a minimum amount of renewable fuels even if it increased electricity prices, according to Cooperative Congressional Election Study’s 2016 survey results analyzed for HuffPost by Data for Progress, a left-leaning think tank. That increased to 76 percent among voters who picked Obama in 2012 but sat out the 2016 race, and it surged to 85 percent among those who voted for both Obama and, in 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The data showed similar support for strengthening enforcement of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, even if it cost U.S. jobs. Fifty percent of Obama-Trump voters said they would support such regulations, increasing to 77 percent among voters who picked Obama then sat out the 2016 election, and 83 percent for Obama-and-Clinton voters.

Some have called for federal spending plans similar to the World War II economic mobilization to bolster renewable energy and rebuild roads and bridges to make them more resilient in extreme weather.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialists of America-backed challenger who trounced Democratic Representative Joe Crowley Tuesday night in a working-class Bronx and Queens district in New York City, outlined a similar vision. She called the Green New Deal proposed in Obama’s 2008 platform a “half measure” that “will not work.”

“The Green New Deal we are proposing will be similar in scale to the mobilization efforts seen in World War II or the Marshall Plan,” she said by email. “It will require the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of millions of high-wage jobs. We must again invest in the development, manufacturing, deployment, and distribution of energy but this time green energy.”

Others suggested tying such a plan to a federal jobs guarantee, a policy that has recently gained traction among a similar cadre of candidates.

“Our infrastructure is crumbling,” said Democratic candidate Randy Bryce, a union ironworker and Army veteran running to succeed House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. “We need to reinvest in our country. I can’t think of a better way than to have that be a future that’s reliant on renewable sources.”

At the heart of this policy is a call for 100 percent renewable energy. Among this group, Kaniela Ing, a state representative running in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District, stands out as a candidate from the only state so far to adopt a 100 percent renewable energy mandate. To him, a Green New Deal provides a mechanism for meeting that goal.

“The backbone of this proposal will be a jobs guarantee, something like what FDR proposed in the Second Bill of Rights,” he said by phone. “There’s so many jobs out there that the private sector won’t create that would literally help protect our planet and save us from impending climate doom.”

Other candidates were more vague. Kevin de Leon, the California state senator and union-backed progressive who is facing off against U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat, did not identify specific proposals for federal spending policies on climate. But he hinted that he would support large-scale federal spending to bolster a renewable infrastructure push, agreeing that Republican concerns over the deficit — the wellspring of austerity politics — proved bogus as the GOP-controlled Congress passed a massive tax cut law last year.

Left-leaning visions for a Green New Deal have even gained traction in state-level races. Abdul El-Sayed, the underdog progressive running in Michigan’s gubernatorial race, proposed a green infrastructure bank to start building renewable energy projects across the state, and he said he’d use his bully pulpit to push for federal action.

“We’re thinking about it at the state level, which both gives us a level of concreteness that is helpful and also allows us to be very specific about solving these challenges encapsulated under the umbrella of Green New Deal,” he said.

“We’ve watched as our infrastructure has crumbled,” he added. “We understand the responsibility to stand up against climate change, create jobs, and rebuild that infrastructure — it’s a clear, crystalline opportunity.”

Still, some climate activists see the term as trite and ineffective. Some climate organizers say it’s time to abandon the phrase “new deal” and embrace something newer and more forward-facing.

But for others, the phrase offers a helpful entry point to a policy program that would, in essence, buck with the last 40 years of neoliberal market-based solutionism and government spendthrift.

“The Green New Deal is a great framing, and I’m glad it’s catching on, but this whole thing needs to be at least as comprehensive as the New Deal,” said Ashik Siddique, who serves on the Democratic Socialists of America’s climate working group. “We are talking about the need to transform the physical infrastructure of every sector of the economy.”

“It’s very clear that something possibly even bigger scale than that is necessary now. Getting people used to thinking of it in those terms is welcome,” he said, then he laughed. “Even Tom Friedman is talking about it.”

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What’s the ‘Green New Deal’? The surprising origins behind a progressive rallying cry.

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Remember the legacy of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Florida environmentalist

by Charles1308 Posted on February 16, 2018

The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has thrust Douglas’ name into the headlines this week as the nation grapples with the tragic and violent deaths of 17 people. But the events now bearing her name are the antithesis of Douglas’ legacy of protecting the life and landscape of Florida.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, “Grandmother of the ’Glades,” was a fierce conservationist, feminist, journalist, and author. Her seminal book, The Everglades: River of Grass, was published in 1947, the same year the Everglades became a national park.

As part of efforts to stop the construction of a jetport in Florida’s wetlands, Douglas founded the Friends of the Everglades in 1969 — when she was 79 years old. The nonprofit successfully halted development of the jetport after just one runway was completed.

In 1993, Douglas received the highest honor given to civilians in the U.S. — the Presidential Medal of Freedom — for her work defending Florida’s wetlands. “The next time I hear someone mention the timeless wonders and powers of Mother Nature, I’ll be thinking about you,” then-President Bill Clinton told her during the ceremony.

Douglas died in 1998 at the age of 108. She was older than the city of Miami, and had been alive for two-thirds of Florida’s existence as a state. In nearly a century of environmental activism, she also fought for women’s suffrage after WWI and is recognized as a trailblazing female journalist for her work as a a reporter for the Miami Herald. Her name still graces the headquarters of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

“She is one of the pioneer environmentalists. She was a woman. She was fiesty. And she wouldn’t give up,” says Connie Washburn, president of Friends of the Everglades’ Board of Directors.

Friends of the Everglades continues Douglas’ fight to preserve and protect Florida’s wetlands. It is also advocating for Douglas to represent Florida in Washington, D.C.’s National Statuary Hall Collection — where just nine of the 100 people depicted are women.

Theodora Long is the executive director of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center, another organization Douglas helped found in 1985. Long recalls storming City Hall with Douglas to defend a hardwood hammock that was in danger of being turned into a shopping mall. Douglas told the women gathered that day, “Ladies, when you know you are right, there is no need for compromise.”

These days, the Douglas Biscayne Nature Center works with Miami-Dade County public schools to promote environmental education. “She was interested in what you loved and what inspired you, she wanted you to fight for it and preserve it and make it better,” Long says of Douglas. “That’s what we try to instill in the children every day.”

It’s a reminder we could use right now.

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Remember the legacy of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Florida environmentalist

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Scott Pruitt doesn’t want to politicize science.

by TiffaniHarper Posted on August 11, 2017

According to a new study from the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, the current presidential administration has collected fewer civil penalties and filed fewer environmental enforcement suits against polluting companies than the Obama, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations did at the same point in office.

The analysis assesses agreements made in the Environmental Protection Agency’s civil enforcement cases. For abuses under laws like the Clean Air Act, the Trump administration has collected just $12 million in civil penalties, a drop of 60 percent from the average of the other administrations. Trump’s EPA has lodged 26 environmental lawsuits compared to 31, 34, and 45 by Bush, Obama, and Clinton, respectively.

The marked decrease in enforcement likely has to do with the EPA’s deregulatory agenda. Since confirmed, administrator Scott Pruitt has systematically tried to knock out key environmental regulations, especially those created during Obama’s tenure.

The Project notes that its assessment is only of a six-month period, so future enforcement could catch Trump up to his predecessors. Or he’ll continue to look the other way.

“I’ve seen the pendulum swing,” said Bruce Buckheit, who worked in EPA enforcement under Clinton and then Bush, “but never as far as what appears to be going on today.”

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Scott Pruitt doesn’t want to politicize science.

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Why Are Former Presidents Supposed to Shut Up About Their Successors?

by YettaPreiss Posted on June 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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Since leaving office, Barack Obama has made a few veiled criticisms of Donald Trump. Conservatives are pretty unhappy about this. It’s tradition for ex-presidents to maintain a dignified silence about their successors, after all.

This is mostly true, but when did it become a tradition? It certainly hasn’t been one forever. Herbert Hoover was a constant presence on the radio blasting FDR during the Depression, and Harry Truman remained a gadfly after he left office.

Eisenhower changed things up. After beating Hitler and serving two terms as president, he decided to adopt the elder statesman role. Then Kennedy died before leaving office, LBJ slunk back to Texas a broken man, and Nixon resigned in disgrace. By hook or by crook, the “tradition” of ex-presidential silence was two decades old by the time Reagan became president. It’s mostly held ever since.

Is there a good reason for this? The pretense seems kind of precious to me. Why treat sitting presidents like china dolls who can’t take some heat from their predecessors? Ex-presidents are among the greatest politicians alive, and usually the effective leaders of their party, at least for a while. They typically command a throng of admirers. The most natural thing in the world would be for them to maintain a robust political presence if they want to. Why shouldn’t they?

Ditto for losing presidential candidates. This is usually less of an issue, since most people don’t really want to listen to losers. But not always. Hillary Clinton should never run for office again—and she’s said she won’t—but why shouldn’t she stay loudly involved in politics if she can help lead the loyal opposition until Democrats coalesce around a new party leader?

Does anyone know the answer about this tradition? Is it really just an Eisenhower thing that somehow congealed into conventional wisdom? Do other countries have anything similar?

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Why Are Former Presidents Supposed to Shut Up About Their Successors?

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Pittsburgher to Trump: You got me all wrong

by JennieFerrari Posted on June 2, 2017

There are truly too many things to denounce in President Trump’s Thursday speech that pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement. There’s the utter disregard for future generations, the blatant lack of understanding of the modern economy, the failure to grasp what climate change is — and then, the part where he forgot that Pittsburgh is the Paris of Appalachia! It’s like, where even to begin?

Yes, we’re here to discuss the much-trumpeted “I was elected to represent the people of Pittsburgh, not Paris” line of Trump’s Rose Garden speech. Like many Trump lines, it’s so baffling that it takes a few moments and several hard cigarette drags to process, but it actually touches on the president’s crucial misunderstanding of the rift between rural and urban America. Let’s break it down.

Many, many people — including Pittsburgh’s Mayor Bill Peduto — have rushed to tell Trump that he was not elected to represent the people of Pittsburgh, because the city of Pittsburgh voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton. But the electoral college did elect Donald J. Trump as president of the United States, of which Pittsburgh is a strange, small, but critical member — much like Steve Buscemi pre-Boardwalk Empire. Therefore, Trump was elected to represent the people of Pittsburgh, because that’s how federal elections work. He said a true thing!

Trump’s actions, however, are no representation of what Pittsburghers truly want. According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 70 percent of Allegheny County residents (which includes Pittsburgh) say they want 20 percent of their electricity to be renewably sourced; 80 percent support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant; 74 percent support setting strict limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants.

These policies would be more ambitious than what was called for in the United States’ proposed commitments in the Paris Agreement. In other words, many Pittsburghers think that the climate pact Trump just scrapped was too lax.

After Trump’s talk, Mayor Peduto held a press conference on the subject of his Tweet heard ’round the world, which promised that Pittsburgh would continue to commit to the Paris Agreement. The room — because it was in Pittsburgh — was basically empty. That’s unfortunate, because Peduto addressed an essential misstep in Trump’s alliteration of two cities: That urban centers tend not to share beliefs, values, or even needs with the rural areas that surround them.

“There’s the city of Pittsburgh, which I represent, and then there are the surrounding areas,” Peduto said. “Maybe he should have a speechwriter that understands difference between ‘city’ and ‘region’ … This city doesn’t support his initiatives. For him to then use this city as an example of who he is elected to represent — he’s not representing us at all.”

Peduto then added that he was “offended” by the mischaracterization, an assertion that was quickly broadcast by local conservative media.

Pittsburgh is a deep blue city in a very red state. Those unfamiliar with the city would be surprised by how suddenly upon exiting its limits that one enters into Trump territory. Pittsburgh is surrounded by old coal and steel mill towns, long-dormant and depressed, where support for Trump runs high. Peduto addressed the disparity between the two poignantly:

“The areas that voted for him, the areas in the Rust Belt that see an opportunity in the past as the only opportunity for the future — he is giving them false hope.”

The stereotypical impression of Pittsburgh — and one that I encounter frequently as a proud but expatriated native — is that it’s a filthy, dark, depressed steel town. This impression is so outdated that it describes a place I’ve never seen. Pittsburgh’s primary industries have long been education and healthcare. More recently, and controversially, it’s become a bit of a tech hub. There’s not a speck of coal dust to be found — in fact, anyone with the privilege of visiting Pittsburgh notes that the city is uniquely lush and verdant.

Peduto said that Trump “used us as an example of a stereotype in order to make a point, and it missed completely.”

Pittsburgh’s success, Peduto emphasized, is a result of the city slowly weaning itself off a fossil fuel-based economy. Peduto himself attended COP21 in 2015 as part of an international coalition of mayors, and said he still plans on trying to hit the targets laid out in the Paris Agreement. (Peduto released an executive order this morning to this end.)

And yet the outlying, fading towns threaten to be left even further behind, as even the economic forces behind a fossil fuel-driven economy show signs of faltering.

Who would have thought that a president given to graceless, often indecipherable public statements could capture such a delicate facet of a split America in a single sentence! It’s been a very weird week.

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Pittsburgher to Trump: You got me all wrong

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Let’s Cut the Crap About Why Hillary Clinton Lost

by BOYSamanth Posted on June 2, 2017

Mother Jones

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The latest thing for the caterwauling classes to caterwaul about is Hillary Clinton’s recent interview with ReCode. Basically, she said that the big reasons she lost the election were Russia, the Comey letter, and the media’s infatuation with her email server. Everyone is outraged that she refuses to admit that she herself made gigantic mistakes that led to her loss.

Bah. Let’s run the tape:

Hillary Clinton was running for a third Democratic term with an OK but not great economy. Most models predicted a roughly 50-50 race.
In the end, despite everything, she still outperformed the models and won the popular vote by 2 percent.
The Comey letter cost her 2-3 percent, and the other stuff probably cost her another couple of points. Without those things, she wins in a landslide and cruises into the White House.

So she’s right. I guess everyone wants her to be the captain going down with her ship, but that’s stupid. She accurately described why she lost. Why shouldn’t she?

But still, what about all the stuff she screwed up? There wasn’t that much, really, but sure, there are a few things:

The Goldman Sachs speeches were dumb.
The private email server was dumb.
The “deplorables” comment was dumb

But look: no candidate is perfect and every campaign has stuff like that. It comes with the territory. And despite all that, Clinton had a comfortable 7-point lead by the end of September. Those things couldn’t have been the reason for her loss since they were all well known by then. After that, she crushed Trump in all three debates and was all set to win.

So why didn’t she? The answer is pretty simple: despite running a pretty good campaign, she got walloped by things that decidedly don’t come with the territory: Russian interference via the WikiLeaks drip; an indefensible letter released by the FBI director; and a press corps that treated the Comey letter like the OJ trial. She got slammed late in the game, and had no time to recover.

That’s just what happened. Denying that reality because we like losers to wear hair shirts is dumb.

Now, there is one thing I’m still curious about: did her data analytics team blow it in the (now) infamous states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania? In most recent campaigns, there’s at least one embedded reporter who promises to embargo everything until after the election, and then gives us the inside dope when it’s all over. But I guess Clinton didn’t allow that, so we don’t really have an inside view. Supposedly, though, internal polling is far more accurate than the stuff we plebs see, and it should have alerted her that something was going on in her firewall states.

Did the analytics fail? Or did they work just fine, but she ignored them? To this day, does anyone know?

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Let’s Cut the Crap About Why Hillary Clinton Lost

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Elon Musk just quit presidential councils over Paris climate treaty rejection.

by AlexisRaposo Posted on June 1, 2017

Some highlights:

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Pittsburgh’s votes went mostly to Hillary Clinton. She won 55.9 percent of votes in Allegheny County. Note that the Paris Agreement encompasses people from nearly 200 countries, not just the city where it was drafted.

“The bottom line is the Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States.”

Other countries think U.S. involvement is extremely fair. The United States blows every other country away in terms of per capita emissions.

“This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining an economic advantage over the United States.”

Actually, the economic advantages of combating climate change are well documented. Companies like Exxon, Google, and even Tiffany & Co. asked Trump to stay in the agreement.

And, just for fun, a comment from Scott Pruitt:

“America finally has a leader who answers only to the people.”

Nearly 70 percent of Americans were on board with the Paris Agreement. Only 45 percent voted for Trump.

This story has been updated.

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Elon Musk just quit presidential councils over Paris climate treaty rejection.

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A crucial crack in an Antarctic ice sheet grew 11 miles in only 6 days.

by JanisMir82 Posted on June 1, 2017

Some highlights:

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Pittsburgh’s votes went mostly to Hillary Clinton. She won 55.9 percent of votes in Allegheny County. Note that the Paris Agreement encompasses people from nearly 200 countries, not just the city where it was drafted.

“The bottom line is the Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States.”

Other countries think U.S. involvement is extremely fair. The United States blows every other country away in terms of per capita emissions.

“This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining an economic advantage over the United States.”

Actually, the economic advantages of combating climate change are well documented. Companies like Exxon, Google, and even Tiffany & Co. asked Trump to stay in the agreement.

And, just for fun, a comment from Scott Pruitt:

“America finally has a leader who answers only to the people.”

Nearly 70 percent of Americans were on board with the Paris Agreement. Only 45 percent voted for Trump.

This story has been updated.

Read this article: 

A crucial crack in an Antarctic ice sheet grew 11 miles in only 6 days.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Landmark, ONA, Ringer, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A crucial crack in an Antarctic ice sheet grew 11 miles in only 6 days.

President Trump finally did what he kept threatening to do.

by RobE44lfjcz Posted on June 1, 2017

Some highlights:

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Pittsburgh’s votes went mostly to Hillary Clinton. She won 55.9 percent of votes in Allegheny County. Note that the Paris Agreement encompasses people from nearly 200 countries, not just the city where it was drafted.

“The bottom line is the Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States.”

Other countries think U.S. involvement is extremely fair. The United States blows every other country away in terms of per capita emissions.

“This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining an economic advantage over the United States.”

Actually, the economic advantages of combating climate change are well documented. Companies like Exxon, Google, and even Tiffany & Co. asked Trump to stay in the agreement.

And, just for fun, a comment from Scott Pruitt:

“America finally has a leader who answers only to the people.”

Nearly 70 percent of Americans were on board with the Paris Agreement. Only 45 percent voted for Trump.

This story has been updated.

Visit link: 

President Trump finally did what he kept threatening to do.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Landmark, ONA, Ringer, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on President Trump finally did what he kept threatening to do.