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Race and Republicans in Mississippi’s Senate Primary

by LaneGanttl Posted on June 25, 2014

Mother Jones

In yesterday’s primary election in Mississippi, incumbent Thad Cochran appealed to black voters in his race against Chris McDaniel. This is from a New York Times companion piece to their main reporting on the election:

The former mayor of Belzoni, an early focal point of the civil rights movement was not surprised by African-Americans’ enthusiasm for Mr. Cochran. The returns showed that Humphreys County, a predominantly African-American area, went for the senator, 811 to 214. “Cochran has been very responsive to the community, to the constituency and the state regardless of race,” he said.

….Race relations have improved over the last 45 years, and African-Americans made a coordinated effort to keep Mr. Cochran in office out of concern that his challenger, Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party favorite, would be less inclusive.

McDaniels is crying foul because he thinks Cochran won with the help of liberal Democratic voters—as he’s allowed to do in Mississippi’s open primary system. Ed Kilgore is unimpressed:

The kvetching from the Right last night sounded an awful lot like southern seggies during the civil rights era complaning about “The Bloc Vote”….For all the talk last night of “liberal Democrats” being allowed to determine a Republican primary, there’s actually no way to know the partisan or ideological identity of voters in a state with no party registration (as David Nir pointedly asked this morning, why hasn’t Chris McDaniel sponsored a bill to change that in his years in the state legislature?). So what these birds are really complaining about is black participation in a “white primary.” This is certainly not an argument consistent with broadening the appeal of the GOP or the conservative movement.

I don’t doubt for a second that race played a role here, but I think this is a mite unfair. In 2012, Mississippi blacks voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by 96-4 percent. In 2008, they voted for Democrat Ronnie Musgrove over Republican Roger Wicker 92-8 percent and for Democrat Erik Fleming over Thad Cochran 94-6 percent. (Mississippi had two senate races that year.)

Cochran did nothing wrong in yesterday’s election, and if blacks showed up to support him because they disliked McDaniels’ racially-charged past, that’s democracy for you. Still, I think it’s pretty clear that most of these voters really were Democrats. Race may be an underlying motivation for the complaints from McDaniels’ supporters, but conservative dislike of Democrats voting in a Republican primary is also a motivation. (And, in my view, a legitimate one. I’m not a fan of open primaries.)

That said, if tea party types want to avoid accusations of racism, they should steer clear of things like loudly announcing an Election Day program to send teams of “poll watchers” to majority black precincts. Especially in a state with a history like Mississippi’s, it’s pretty hard to interpret that as anything other than a deliberate racial provocation.

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Race and Republicans in Mississippi’s Senate Primary

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This Is Where the Government Houses the Tens of Thousands of Kids Who Get Caught Crossing the Border

by FletcheDriscoll Posted on June 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yesterday, the Obama administration announced that it was creating a multiagency taskforce to oversee the recent surge of unaccompanied child migrants coming primarily from Central America and Mexico. The announcement included plans to move some 600 kids from holding cells at the border to an emergency shelter at Naval Base Ventura County in Southern California.

As the number of unaccompanied children entering the United States has more than doubled since 2011, the Office of Refugee Resettlement—the part of the Department of Health and Human Services charged with caring for unaccompanied minors in US custody—has brought more and more shelters online to accommodate the influx. (Kids are typically housed in these shelters until ORR can reunify kids with US-based family, with whom they stay pending their immigration hearings.) Here’s what the increase has looked like:

So where, exactly, are these shelters? Fifty of the 80 shelters in 2013 were in states along the Southwest border; Texas alone had 33 shelters. The rest, however, are spread out throughout the country. As Maria Woltjen, director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, told me in an interview: “Nobody in Chicago knows there are 400 kids detained in our midst. You walk by, and you think it’s just an old nursing home, and it’s actually all these immigrant kids who are detained inside.”

Check out our map of ORR’s 2013 shelters, data I obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request:

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This Is Where the Government Houses the Tens of Thousands of Kids Who Get Caught Crossing the Border

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San Francisco considers banning exports of coal and petcoke

by FrancinXYAO Posted on May 19, 2014

San Francisco considers banning exports of coal and petcoke

By

Chris Chabot

The city that kicked off a gay-marriage revolution, cracked down on Happy Meal toys, and battled bottled water is gunning for a new first. San Francisco wants to lead the nation in limiting fossil fuel exports.

At a hearing scheduled for Thursday, the San Francisco Environment Commission will consider a proposal to ban the bulk transportation of “hazardous fossil fuel materials,” such as coal and petroleum coke, within city limits. If the commission agrees, the proposal will be passed up to city and/or port leaders for further consideration. The proposed ban would also apply to crude oil, though crude exports are currently banned nationally — a ban that industry is fighting to overturn.

San Francisco isn’t acting alone in trying to stymie exports of coal and other fossil fuels to Asia. In February, the city’s lower-income neighbor, Oakland, rejected a bid by Bowie Resource Partners to use its port as a coal export terminal. And residents throughout the Pacific Northwest have been successfully campaigning against proposals to build hulking new coal terminals along their waterfronts.

Joshua Arce, president of the San Francisco Environment Commission, which advises city lawmakers, said West Coast cities and ports can work together to help bottle up the nation’s coal supplies and keep them in the ground, where they can do the climate and the environment no harm. He said they can also work to prevent petcoke, which is left behind after tar-sands oil from Canada is refined, from reaching export markets, where it can be burned to produce a filthy form of energy.

“There’s a widespread consensus that this is the right thing to do — to lay down a marker for the environment, and ban these hazardous fossil fuel materials forever in the City and County of San Francisco,” Arce said. “It’s not like we’re saying anything that’s not already the practice informally. Our port staff has said, time and time again, ‘no’ to coal. It’s time to make it an official policy.”

San Francisco’s port is perhaps best known for its cruise ship terminal along the city’s Disney Land-like northern waterfront, but the city’s southeastern waterfront has a long and heavy industrial history. A new bulk marine cargo terminal is included in southeastern neighborhood redevelopment plans. And the city is just a bay away from Richmond, which is home to Chevron’s explosion- and pollution-prone oil refinery. All of which makes city leaders nervous that their waterfront assets could one day be exploited by the nation’s fossil fuel merchants.

“The fossil fuel industry is never sleeping,” Arce said. “We never want there to be a day when a company that’s engaged in this aspect of the carbon economy makes an offer here that someone can’t refuse.”

—–

[Correction: This post originally reported that the Port of Oakland rejected a coal export proposal last week. In fact, it rejected it in February.]

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.

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The Next Cliven Bundy Showdown

by ShannaNeedham Posted on May 9, 2014

Mother Jones

It looks like a new front has opened up in Cliven Bundy‘s war against the US government.

This Saturday, angry residents of San Juan County, Utah, plan to illegally ride their ATVs through Utah’s Recapture Canyon—an 11 mile-long stretch of federal land that is home to Native American archeological sites—because they don’t think that the federal Bureau of Land Management should have designated that land off-limits to motor vehicles. The protest was meant to be a local affair. But on Thursday, Bundy, the rancher who wouldn’t pay the feds grazing fees and sparked a gun-drenched showdown in Nevada, called on his supporters to join the anti-government off-roading event, E&E Publishing’s Phil Taylor reported. Bundy, whose crusade against the federal government became tainted by his racist comments, is looking to spread the cause from cattle to cross-country cruising.

“We don’t expect any violence,” San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge told the Denver Post last week. Others aren’t so sure, especially since the out-of-staters in attendance could help rile things up—which is what happened during the Bundy stand-off. “This may blow up to be significantly more than they thought,” Bill Boyle, a resident of San Juan and publisher of the San Juan Record newspaper told the Post. “I think there are those who would like everyone with an AK-47 to be here.”

San Juan County residents who plan to attend Saturday’s event are Bundy supporters and Ted Nugent fans, according to an analysis of their Facebook pages by the Denver Post. They also hate President Barack Obama and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, according to the newspaper, which reports that “BLM employees in San Juan County have had windows shot out of their homes and their yards torn up by ATVs in the middle of the night.”

The BLM made the Recapture Canyon land off limits in 2007 because ATVs were damaging the land and folks were vandalizing Native American sites. San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, who is organizing Saturday’s protest, does not believe the feds have the authority to protect cultural resources. He says the goal of the ride is to reassert county jurisdiction in the face of federal “overreach,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Federal overreach was the theme that Bundy’s champions in the national conservative media repeatedly pressed—until Bundy’s racist comments became news.

Local officials do not have a good estimate of how many mad-as-hell ATV riders will show up to zoom through sacred Native American land on Saturday. But the BLM has decided to stand back and avoid a conflict for now, as it did several weeks ago on the Bundy ranch in Nevada. Utah’s BLM director Juan Palma, however, said there will nonetheless be consequences for the anti-government activists. “The BLM-Utah has not and will not authorize the proposed ride and will seek all appropriate civil and criminal penalties against anyone who uses a motorized vehicle within the closed area,” he said in a statement.

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The Next Cliven Bundy Showdown

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Tom’s Kitchen: Fried-Egg Taco With Fried Snap Peas and Radish Flowers

by LaurenMussen Posted on May 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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To garden is to accept chaos. Soil, seeds, weather, fauna—these are just a few factors that interact in complex and unpredictable ways, generating results we can influence but ultimately can’t control. Add the frailty of human judgment to the mix, and gardening is a kind of crapshoot. For the kitchen gardener, when the harvest disappoints, you have to react creatively—in short, to turn your errata into something delicious to eat.

This spring here in Austin, we planted snap peas too late. The tendrils gamely snaked their way up their trellises, but by the time the plants flowered, the weather had become too hot for the buds to set much in the way of fruit. Something similar happened with the radishes, planted on the same late date: They grew robust tops, but very few of them had sufficient time to develop full root bulbs before the heat set in. Harvesting them became a low-odds gamble: for every four you picked, just one presented a crunchy, spicy red orb. The other three showed a spindly root, earning a trip straight to the compost pile.

Well, not always. For a couple of weeks, the radish tops have been so green and healthy that I’ve been sautéing them like I do kale or chard. They cook fast and have a pungent flavor, easing the sting of the largely failed root harvest. Then the remaining radish tops went to seed and sprouted pretty purple flowers. When I snapped off a bud and tasted it (in the garden as in the kitchen, one should Always Be Tasting), I found it peppery, reminiscent of mustard greens (a related plant) and tender. And so, another unexpected harvest—for several days, I’d go out to snip a few to add, chopped, to salads.

Finally this weekend, the time came to pull out the lingering spring garden, removing the pea and radish plants from the garden to make way for new crops. (I put in a second round of tomatoes, hot peppers, melons, and cucumbers.) As I uprooted the pea shoots, I noticed a few more remaining snap peas than I expected. I tasted one. It delivered a burst of sweetness and the bright flavor that I can only describe as “green”—the thing that makes sugar snap peas maybe the most beloved spring vegetable. The problem: The pod had become slightly wizened in the hot sun, a bit too fibrous and impossible to chew all the way. Nothing that a bit of cooking won’t fix, I noted as I snatched a couple of handfuls worth of delicious-but-tough snap peas out of the foliage.

Then I snipped all the remaining flowers from the radish plants before yanking them, too. Among the roots, I collected more keepers than I had expected. I immediately brought my motley treasure into the kitchen for a quick breakfast. (Note: these ingredients would also work well in a stir fry or a pasta.) Of course, you probably don’t have access to aged snap peas or radish flowers; but if you garden, I bet there are some exciting flavors lurking out there in odd places, waiting to be liberated.

Fried-Egg Taco With Fried Snap Peas and Radish Flowers

Makes 1 taco

1 radish, chopped (garnish)

1 clove of garlic, crushed, peeled, and chopped fine
A good handful of slightly tough sugar snap peas, stem ends removed, and chopped coarsely
A good handful of radish (or other brassica) flowers, chopped coarsely
Olive oil
Sea salt
A pinch of crushed chili pepper
Black pepper
Red chili pepper

1 quarter-inch slice of butter (cut from a stick of it)
1 egg
Sea salt
Black pepper
A pinch of crushed chili pepper

1 tortilla (I use whole-what ones from Margarita’s Tortilla Factory of Austin)

Heat a cast-iron or other heavy-bottomed skillet over medium flame. Add enough olive oil to cover the bottom and stir in the garlic, the chili pepper, a pinch of salt, and a grind of pepper. Stir for a minute, being careful not to let the garlic burn. Add the snap peas and toss, cooking them for a minute or two. Add the radish flowers. Cook, tossing and stirring, until the snap peas are tender (they should retain a decent crunch). Marvel at the interplay between the sweet peas and the mustardy radish flowers.

Meanwhile, place a small skillet over medium heat and add the butter. When it has melted, swirl the pan to coat. Let the pan get good and hot. Crack an egg and add it to the pan. Give it a dusting of salt, black pepper, and chile pepper. Turn heat to low and cook until whites are fully set. Flip the egg and cook to desired doneness (I like the yolk to be a little runny.

Meanwhile, heat the tortilla in yet another small skillet or comal (or over the open flame of a gas burner) over medium heat, flipping it to brown on both sides.

Assemble the taco: Slip the fried egg into the folded tortilla and enough of the radish-flower/snap pea mixture to fill it. Serve the remainder on the side. Garnish with the chopped radish.

P.S.: Happy 40th Anniversary to my beloved Watauga County Farmers’ Market on the opening of the new market season. I’m delighted the two young landless farmers who have joined Maverick Farms’ FIG Program were able to sell edible brassica flowers at their very first market—here’s hoping for a great 2014 season to all the High Country farmers, and welcome aboard Kathleen Petermann with Waxwing Farm and Caroline Hampton with Octopus Gardens!

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Tom’s Kitchen: Fried-Egg Taco With Fried Snap Peas and Radish Flowers

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Four Commercial Scale Cellulosic Ethanol Biorefineries to Enter Production This Year

by Posted on April 29, 2014

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Four Commercial Scale Cellulosic Ethanol Biorefineries to Enter Production This Year

Posted 29 April 2014 in

National

During an event at the National Press Club today, representatives of DuPont, POET-DSM, Abengoa Bioenergy and Quad County Corn detailed their progress toward launching commercial scale production of cellulosic ethanol this year, but also warned that the continued growth of this industry is at significant risk because of the U.S. EPA’s proposal to gut the renewable fuel standard and increase the amount of oil in gasoline.

“Cellulosic ethanol is no longer the fuel of the future, it’s a fuel that will be produced at commercial scale this year – a fuel that will be increasingly important to meeting our transportation needs unless the EPA or Congress gives in to the demands of the oil industry,” said Aaron J. Whitesel, Senior Manager for Government Affairs at DuPont.

Listen to Audio of the National Press Club Event:

“Producing biofuels from crop residue is an enormous opportunity for U.S. consumers to have access to even more clean, renewable ethanol,” said POET Vice President of Corporate Affairs Doug Berven. “In addition, this process provides farmers with a new revenue crop from land that is already in production. If the EPA allows this industry access to the fuel market, there will be enormous benefits for America’s economy, environment and national security.”

“The innovative process we are pioneering in Galva, Iowa can be a model for the rest of the country as we build a whole new cellulosic ethanol industry in America,” said DelayneJohnson, CEO of Quad County Corn Processors. “Gutting the Renewable Fuel Standard, however, could derail the momentum we have achieved and create uncertainty that will dramatically slow the adoption of this important technology.”

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Nat’l Press Club | Cellulosic Ethanol | 2014.04.29

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“Producing fuel from corn stalks or agricultural waste means a dramatic reduction in carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants in traditional gasoline, and it opens up an almost limitless source of potential feedstock for clean, renewable fuel,” said Chris Standlee, Executive Vice President for Global Affairs of Abengoa Bioenergy. “The EPA’s proposal to lower the amount of renewable fuel in gasoline, however, will make it far harder for companies to invest in the next phases of cellulosic ethanol production and leave us more dependent on imported oil.”

DuPont — Nevada Site Cellulosic Ethanol Facility

Location: Nevada, Iowa
Operational Date: Q4 2014
Total investment: Over $200 million
Feedstock: Corn Stover
Capacity: 30 million gallons /year

DuPont is investing over $200 million to construct a commercial scale cellulosic biorefineryin Nevada, Iowa, that will be fueled by agricultural residue harvested from a 30 mile radius around the facility. It will be one of the first and largest advancedbiorefineries in the world, helping to secure U.S. leadership in this innovative new technology while spurring additional private investment in the industry.

To supply this 30 million gallon per year facility, DuPont is also building an entirely new, fully sustainable supply chain for corn stover, the stalks and leaves left over after corn harvest. DuPont’s stover harvest program is a highly collaborative endeavor, involving experts in the field of agronomy from DuPont’s Pioneer division, Iowa State University and the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) working in conjunction with custom harvest equipment manufacturers and hundreds of local farmers.

DuPont remains committed to the sector, but has indicated that the uncertainty created by the EPA’s proposed changes in the Renewable Fuel Standard – or any future Congressional action to undermine the RFS – has already slowed investor interest here in the US and worries that regulatory uncertainty will push future investment overseas.

Abengoa — Bioenergy Hugoton Cellulosic Ethanol Facility

Location: Hugoton, Kansas
Operational Date: Q2 2014
Total investment: $500 million
Feedstock: Corn stover, wheat straw, milo stubble and prairie grasses
Capacity: 25 million gallons/year plus 21 Megawatts of renewable electricity

Abengoa’s Hugoton plant has the capacity to convert 300,000 dry tons of agricultural residues such as corn stover and wheat straw into 25 million gallons of ethanol and 21 Megawatts of renewable electricity. The biomass boiler and electric generation system successfully commenced operation and transferred power to the grid in December of 2013, and the ethanol portion of the facility is beginning the commissioning process now, with first production expected in May or June 2014. Abengoa’s same proprietary technology is also being used to produce cellulosic ethanol from municipal solid waste at a pilot plant in Spain which started operations in July 2013.

Abengoa intends to offer licenses and contracts to interested parties covering the full range of construction and operation of cellulosic ethanol facilities, utilizing Abengoa’s unique capabilities and expertise in all aspects of this new industry. Abengoa can provide every aspect from process design and engineering to EPC construction, and from supply of proprietary enzymes and specialized harvest techniques to operations and marketing of the completed products from the facility.

The market certainty originally provided by the RFS has resulted in commercial scale deployment of the cellulosic ethanol industry that will be experienced this year. Abengoa is hopeful that the EPA avoids any regulatory actions that will unnecessarily dampen the market enthusiasm and job creation that should follow this pivotal year of commercialization.

POET-DSM Project Liberty

Location: Emmetsburg, Iowa
Operational Date: June 2014
Total investment: $250 million
Feedstock: Corn cobs, leaves, husk and stalks
Capacity: 25 million gallons/year

POET-DSM’s Advanced Biofuels’ Project LIBERTY is a $250 million cellulosic bioethanol plant that will use corn cobs, leaves, husk and some stalk to produce 25 million gallons of ethanol per year at full operation. The plant, which is scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2014, is sited next to a grain ethanol plant – POET Biorefining – Emmetsburg – in order to take advantage of synergies in staff, infrastructure and experience. It will draw its feedstock from a 30-40-mile radius and use approximately 25% of the available crop residue.

At the event, Berven announced that POET-DSM has begun aggressively marketing their process and technology package for licensing by other ethanol producers in the U.S. and around the world.

Quad County Corn Adding Cellulosic Ethanol, or ACE

Location: Galva, Iowa
Operational Date: June 2014
Total investment: $9 Million
Feedstock: Corn Kernel Fiber
Phase I Capacity: 2 million gallons/year (Cellulose)
Phase II Capacity: 1.75 million gallons/year (Hemi-Cellulose)
Total Capacity: 3.75 million gallons/year

Quad County Corn Processors (QCCP) is in the final stages of construction of its Adding Cellulosic Ethanol (ACE) bolt on facility in Galva, Iowa. Construction is anticipated to be complete in May 2014 with production beginning in June 2014.

ACE is a bolt on technology that converts corn kernel fiber into cellulosic ethanol. The process also increases an ethanol processing facilities distillers oil yield by 250% and creates a higher protein feed product for the livestock industry.

QCCP recently announced that Syngenta has an exclusive license to market the ACE technology to ethanol plants in the United States and Canada. The existing dry grind ethanol facilities in the United States have the potential to create over 1.5 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol and 2 billion gallons of biodiesel from corn by adopting the ACE technology.

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John Boehner Speaks Up For Main Street Republicanism

by Sybil0169hkc Posted on April 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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I’ve always felt a little sorry for John Boehner. In another era—a non-tea party era—he would have been your basic Main Street Republican, willing to cut compromises to keep the country moving along in a tolerably orderly way. The kind of guy who would have taken his cues from the Middletown Rotary Club.

Speaking of which, Boehner spoke to the Middletown Rotary Club yesterday and let his hair down. For most Republicans, this would have meant getting caught making some kind of incendiary remarks about Obama thuggery and class warfare against job creators. In Boehner’s case, it meant some incendiary remarks about the, um, unrealistic attitudes of the more excitable members of his caucus:

On immigration: “Here’s the attitude. Ohhhh. Don’t make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard,” Boehner whined before a luncheon crowd at Brown’s Run County Club in Madison Township. “We get elected to make choices. We get elected to solve problems and it’s remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don’t want to … They’ll take the path of least resistance.”

On Obamacare: “(To) repeal Obamacare … isn’t the answer. The answer is repeal and replace. The challenge is that Obamacare is the law of the land. It is there and it has driven all types of changes in our health care delivery system. You can’t recreate an insurance market over night.”

On the tea party: “I don’t have any issue with the tea party. I have issues with organizations in Washington who raise money purporting to represent the tea party, those organizations who are against a budget deal the president and I cut that will save $2.4 trillion over 10 years….I made it pretty clear I’ll stand with the tea party but I’m not standing with these three or four groups in Washington who are using the tea party for their own personal benefit.”

This is all about pragmatism, a cri de coeur against the Foxification of the Republican Party. And I guess it means one of two things. Either Boehner doesn’t really care much about holding onto his leadership position anymore, or else he’s sensed that there’s a burgeoning Main Street backlash against the radicalism of the tea party wing of the modern GOP.

Boehner has always wanted to govern, and he’s never believed that compromise was surrender. That’s not the kind of pol he is. But he’s been hemmed in by the demands of the tea party, and now maybe he’s starting to think it’s time to bust out. The Middletown Rotary Club is probably more interested in keeping things on an even keel than in endless confrontation and hostage taking that does nothing except hurt the economy. They think immigration reform is good for business, and even if they don’t like Obamacare, they probably understand by now that it’s not a catastrophe and it’s time to make the best of it. Maybe they’re finally starting to find their voice.

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John Boehner Speaks Up For Main Street Republicanism

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Pony up, frackers: Texas family wins $3 million in contamination lawsuit

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on April 23, 2014

Pony up, frackers: Texas family wins $3 million in contamination lawsuit

By

Shutterstock

What should you do when a fracking company sets up a drilling site right in your backyard? After you stock up on extra-strength Tylenol and Kleenex for the forthcoming chronic headaches and copious nosebleeds, you might want to call a good lawyer.

Yesterday, a jury in a Texas county court issued a landmark ruling against Aruba Petroleum for contaminating a family’s property and making them sick. The company has been ordered to pay $2.925 million in damages to Lisa and Bob Parr of Wise County, Texas.

In March 2011, the Parrs filed a lawsuit against Aruba Petroleum, alleging that air and water contamination from the company’s 22 drilling sites within two miles of their ranch had devastating effects on the family’s property and health.

“My daughter was experiencing nosebleeds, rashes,” said Ms. Parr in a 2011 press conference. “There were mornings she would wake up about 6:00 … covered in blood, screaming, crying.”

Before filing the lawsuit, the Parrs had been forced to sell their ranch and move due to fracking-related contamination to both their land and their animals — oh, and also the small matter of regularly waking up soaked in blood pouring from their nasal cavities.

Parr v. Aruba Petroleum, Inc. is being called the first case in which a jury has awarded compensation for fracking-related contamination. Most such cases are settled out of court. Like the suit filed in 2010 by Stephanie and Rich Hallowich of the ironically named Mount Pleasant, Penn., who were forced to relocate after shale drilling in the area polluted the air and water near their home, resulting in serious health problems. They sued Range Resources and ended up settling their case for $750,000. The terms of the settlement famously included a highly restrictive lifelong gag order that prohibits the Hallowich family, including their children, from ever discussing their case or fracking in general.

The Parrs’ lead attorney, David Matthews, praised the family for persisting in its fight: “It takes guts to say, ‘I’m going to stand here and protect my family from an invasion of our right to enjoy our property.’ It’s not easy to go through a lawsuit and have your personal life uncovered and exposed to the extent this family went through.”

Julia Roberts, are you listening? Erin Brockovich 2: Get Off My Shale is guaranteed box office gold!


Source
$3 million verdict for ‘first fracking trial’, MSNBC
In Landmark Ruling, Jury Says Fracking Company Must Pay $3 Million To Sickened Family, ClimateProgress

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

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Rick Perry Dismantled Texas’ Public Integrity Unit. Now He’s Facing a Grand Jury.

by EdmundHinson Posted on April 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Rick Perry—Republican Texas governor, failed 2012 presidential candidate, and potential 2016 retread contender—is battling legal trouble at home, thanks to his controversial veto that demolished the state office tasked with investigating political scandals. On Monday, a Texas judge convened a grand jury to probe Perry’s decision last year to axe funding for the state’s Public Integrity Unit. The special prosecutor investigating the case, Michael McCrum, has not filed any charges. But earlier this month he said, “I cannot elaborate on what exactly is concerning me, but I can tell you I am very concerned about certain aspects of what happened here.”

Perry’s troubles started when he attempted to to displace the government official in charge of the Public Integrity Unit, a state-funded watchdog agency that investigates charges of public corruption. The unit is led by whoever is serving as the Travis County district attorney, who is based in Austin. The Current DA is Rosemary Lehmberg, a Democrat. Last April, she was arrested for drunk driving.

After Lehmberg’s arrest, Perry called for her resignation, claiming that the public could no longer place its trust in an official who herself ran afoul of the law. But the governor has no direct control over her job, a locally-elected position, and a grand jury rejected a former opponent’s attempt to have Lehmberg removed from office. For her part, Lehmberg refused to resign, though she said she won’t run for reelection in 2016. That wasn’t enough for Perry. With Lehmberg holding on to her job, the governor decided to cut off the two-year $7.5 million in state funding for the watchdog unit with a line-item veto. “Despite the otherwise good work the Public Integrity Unit’s employees,” a Perry statement said after the veto, “I cannot in good conscience support continued State funding for an office with statewide jurisdiction at a time when the person charged with ultimate responsibility of that unit has lost the public’s confidence.”

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Rick Perry Dismantled Texas’ Public Integrity Unit. Now He’s Facing a Grand Jury.

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In a Radical Shift, California Police Chiefs Push for Regulation of Medical Marijuana

by Georgeysm Posted on March 13, 2014

Mother Jones


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Welcome to the Amsterdam of the Rockies

California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana, but like the pimply-faced stoner dude you may have known in high school, it hasn’t had the healthiest of relationships with Mary Jane. The Golden State differs from most others with medical pot laws in that it doesn’t actually regulate production and sale of the herb. Instead, it lets cities and counties enact their own laws—though in practice most haven’t. The result has been the Wild West of weed: Almost any adult can score a scrip and some bud from a local dispensary, assuming, of course, that it hasn’t yet been raided and shut down by the feds.

But all of that might be about to change. The California Police Chiefs Association (CPCA) recently announced support for a bill that would put the state in the business of regulating the medical pot trade. Though you’d think cops would have pushed for such a thing decades ago, the reality is quite the opposite: The CPCA and other law enforcement organizations have, until now, opposed pretty much every reform to California’s medical marijuana system for fear that anything short of completely abolishing it would legitimize it.

The CPCA’s change of heart “is a huge for us,” says Nate Bradley, executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Association, the state’s marijuana industry trade group. Bradley agrees with his police adversaries that tighter regs would legitimize medical marijuana, which is why the CCIA has pushed for them since the group’s inception four years ago. Bolstering his case, the US Department of Justice last year announced that it would no longer raid dispensaries in states that it believes are regulating them adequately—a formulation that seemed to exclude California. New rules issued last month by the Obama administration allow banks to accept funds from pot dealers, but only if they’re licensed in the state where they operate.

So why are California’s drug warriors reversing course? “We could no longer ignore that the political landscape on this issue was shifting,” the CPCA explained in a letter written jointly with the League of California Cities. Polls and changing federal policies suggest that medical pot reform “could be enacted,” and that “without our proactive intervention, it could take a form that was severely damaging to our interests.”

The bill that law enforcement groups are backing, SB 1262, is flawed, but it’s something that “we can work with,” says Bradley, who previously worked as a cop in California’s Yuba County. Advocates of medical pot don’t like how the bill constrains the ability of doctors to recommend marijuana, outlaws potent pot concentrates such as hash oil, and puts regulation in the hands of the Department of Public Health, rather than the Department of Alcoholic Beverages Control.

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In a Radical Shift, California Police Chiefs Push for Regulation of Medical Marijuana

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