Tag Archives: dakota

The Supreme Court Just Rejected the Country’s Most Extreme Abortion Ban

by LoisCropper Posted on January 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the US Supreme Court permanently laid to rest North Dakota’s controversial “fetal heartbeat” law that would have banned abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

The law, approved by North Dakota’s state Legislature in 2013, was widely cited as the strictest abortion ban in the country because it would have effectively outlawed abortion after the first detection of a fetal heartbeat, which often occurs at six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant. Six-week bans are so extreme that in many conservative states, which have passed large numbers of abortion restrictions, they have failed to gain traction.

In 2013, after the measure was passed, North Dakota’s sole abortion clinic, the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, sued the state, and a judge blocked the law just a month before it was set to take effect that summer. After a series of appeals, a federal judge again ruled the law unconstitutional in July. Once more the state appealed the ruling and it went to the Supreme Court. But the court on Monday refused to review the lower court’s ruling, effectively overturning the ban.

Arkansas is the only other state that has banned abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. That ban, which outlawed abortion after 12 weeks, was also struck down in court last year. The Supreme Court last week decided not to hear the state’s appeal.

Abortion rights advocates are now turning their attention back to the Texas case headed to the Supreme Court this spring. “This utterly cruel and unconstitutional ban would have made North Dakota the first state since Roe v. Wade to effectively ban abortion—with countless women left to pay the price,” said Nancy Northup, whose group the Center for Reproductive Rights is behind both the North Dakota and Texas cases. “We continue to look to the nation’s highest court to protect the rights, health, and dignity of millions of women and now strike down Texas’ clinic shutdown law.”

Oral arguments for the Texas case are scheduled to take place on March 2.

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The Supreme Court Just Rejected the Country’s Most Extreme Abortion Ban

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Exploding Oil Trains Could Become a Horrifying New Normal

by GuadaluG81 Posted on February 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last week, a train carrying oil from North Dakota derailed in West Virginia, spilled oil into a river, and sent a horrifying fireball shooting into the sky. The incident came only a few days after another oil train spill in Ontario. In fact, in the last few years the number of oil train accidents has skyrocketed, thanks to booming production in the northern US and Canada that has overwhelmed the existing pipeline network.

Oil train accidents like those could become a regular fixture in headlines across the US, according to a Department of Transportation analysis uncovered by the Associated Press over the weekend:

The federal government predicts that trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades, causing more than $4 billion in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people if an accident happens in a densely populated part of the U.S.…

If just one of those more severe accidents occurred in a high-population area, it could kill more than 200 people and cause roughly $6 billion in damage.

The report blamed the projections on the drastic uptick in oil-by-rail traffic, as well as on severely lagging safety standards for rail cars (check out our in-depth multimedia story on the latter here).

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Exploding Oil Trains Could Become a Horrifying New Normal

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TransCanada has big new plans for moving oil around, and you won’t like them

by MontySchleinitz Posted on February 20, 2015

Since Keystone is stalled out …

TransCanada has big new plans for moving oil around, and you won’t like them

By on 20 Feb 2015commentsShare

TransCanada, the company pushing the Keystone XL plan, is cooking up some new projects. Watch out.

First: A pipeline going in the other direction. This one would move oil from North Dakota, where drilling is booming, up to Canada. The company hopes it will be particularly appealing since the alternative method of moving that volatile crude is by rail — and, unfortunately, the trains keep blowing up. From the Associated Press:

TransCanada Corp.’s proposed $600 million Upland Pipeline would begin near the northwestern North Dakota oil hub of Williston and go north into Canada about 200 miles. At peak operation it would transport up to 300,000 barrels of oil daily, connecting with other pipelines including the Energy East pipeline across Canada. …

TransCanada hopes to have the Upland Pipeline operating in 2018, pending approval from the U.S. State Department, North Dakota’s Public Service Commission and Canada’s National Energy Board. The company plans to submit an application to the State Department in the second quarter of this year. …

TransCanada spokesman Davis Sheremata on Thursday said the company can’t speculate on whether it might run into similar problems with Upland [as it has with Keystone]. Company President and CEO Russ Girling last week told analysts and reporters that he hopes the drawn-out Keystone XL process is “an anomaly.”

And though the pipelines-are-safer-than-trains angle is a major selling point for this new project, the company is hedging its bets: TransCanada “will probably enter the rail business in some form or fashion in the coming months,” said its CEO, Russ Girling, in a speech earlier this month. From the Canadian Financial Post:

Facing increased pressure from rail cutting into its business, while the Keystone XL pipeline remains under unending American review, TransCanada Corp. said it is planning to diversify into the oil-by-rail business within months, improving its customers’ ability to connect to its sprawling North American pipeline and storage network. …

TransCanada’s move to include rail in its arsenal has become necessary as rail companies Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. enjoy a windfall from the oil transportation business. TransCanada’s competitors, including Kinder Morgan Inc. and Enbridge Energy Inc., are also building rail capacity to get around pipeline infrastructure constraints.

That oil-by-rail side business would just be a temporary solution until Keystone gets built, Girling said.

Both new efforts could face heavy opposition. Environmental activists are getting good at making big oil infrastructure projects into political sinkholes, and oil trains are coming in for particularly virulent criticism these days. Opposition to Keystone might no longer be an “anomaly,” as Girling described it; try the new normal.

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TransCanada has big new plans for moving oil around, and you won’t like them

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Film Review: "The Overnighters"

by CharoleBlohm Posted on October 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Overnighters

MILE END FILMS

This engrossing film is set in Williston, North Dakota, where locals are freaking out about the hordes of desperate men in need of cash and a fresh start who pour into their tiny town in search of fracking jobs. A local pastor takes pity on them, converting his Concordia Lutheran Church into an ad hoc shelter. He’s resolute, even as his family reels from the criticism of angry neighbors and congregants who want him to be a little less Christian. But he risks losing everything when the local paper reports that sex offenders are among the visitors. Up through its devastating reveal, The Overnighters questions the motivations behind (and consequences of) our choices and convictions.

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Film Review: "The Overnighters"

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North Dakota Is the Deadliest State to Work In

by AlissaVigna Posted on May 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Fracking has done some incredible things for North Dakota: It has the fastest-growing economy and lowest unemployment in the nation, and it is second only to Texas in churning out oil. But as with any gold rush, the boom comes with a human cost for those involved—illness, injury, and fatalities. (For a first-hand view of conditions in North Dakota’s fracking fields, watch the video above, which we produced in 2012.)

In fact, across all industries, North Dakota has the least safe working conditions of any state in the country, according to federal data compiled in a new report from the AFL-CIO. The report ranked North Dakota dead last for workplace safety. (Massachusetts ranked the most safe.) North Dakota had by far the highest overall workplace fatality rate, 17.7 deaths per 100,000 workers—about five times higher than the national average. According to the report, that’s one of the highest fatality rates ever reported in any state.

The rise in fatality rates coincides with the state’s oil and gas boom: In 2007, before the boom was really underway, the rate was 7 deaths per 100,000 workers, still on the high end but not exceptional. The chart below shows how that rate began to skyrocket in 2010-2011, just as oil production began to surge as well.

Of the 65 people killed on the job in North Dakota in 2012, 15 worked in the mining and oil and gas industry. Another 25 worked in construction. Some jobs that are classified as construction are in fact linked directly to oil and gas operations, like the workers who build well pad sites and roads before the actual drilling begins. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics records aren’t granular enough to know exactly how many construction workers were killed doing jobs related to the oil and gas boom.)

A spokesperson for the North Dakota Petroleum Council pointed to a slight drop in premium rates for the state’s worker’s comp program as evidence that “workplace safety has improved,” but the BLS data compiled in the AFL-CIO report tell a different story.

As blue-collar workers flooded the state for an essentially limitless number of high-paying, risky jobs driving trucks and working on fracking rigs at a breakneck pace, the energy industry’s fatality rate in North Dakota climbed to unbelievable heights. According to the report, in 2012 the mining and oil-and-gas sector rate was 104 deaths per 100,000 workers, six times the national average; in the construction sector, the rate was 97.4 per 100,000, almost 10 times the national average.

Tim McDonnell

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North Dakota Is the Deadliest State to Work In

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Federal Court Rules North Dakota’s Extreme Abortion Ban Unconstitutional

by LatonyaEALL Posted on April 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked a North Dakota law that would have banned all abortions after a heartbeat is detectable in the fetus, which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The judge, Daniel Hovland, called the ban—which passed last year and was immediately challenged by the Red River Women’s Clinic, the only abortion provider in the state—”invalid and unconstitutional,” and said it would impose an “undue burden on women seeking to obtain an abortion.”

The North Dakota law is one of the most far-reaching abortion bans in the country. Many women aren’t aware that they are pregnant until well after six weeks into a pregnancy. Under the North Dakota law, those women wouldn’t be able to seek abortions at all.

North Dakota is one of several states that have pushed laws banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. In March, a federal judge struck down a similar ban Arkansas had passed last year. But losses in the courts haven’t stopped these efforts from spreading—the Alabama House passed a fetal heartbeat bill last month, and state legislatures in Wyoming, Mississippi, and Ohio have considered similar legislation in the past year.

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Federal Court Rules North Dakota’s Extreme Abortion Ban Unconstitutional

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The Fifth Ring: How Conspiracy Theories are Born

by Curtis Tangredi Posted on February 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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As we all know, there was a glitch in the Olympic opening ceremonies yesterday. But not everyone saw it:

Somehow it seemed fitting when a set of floating snowflakes suddenly transformed themselves into Olympic rings — but only four of them. The fifth snowflake never changed.

Russian television viewers, however, saw all five rings, as the show’s producer Konstantin Ernst recognized the malfunction shortly before it occurred and immediately ordered an image from rehearsals to be transmitted in its place. “It would be ridiculous to focus on the ring that would not open,” said Ernst later. “It would be silly.”

That’s quick thinking! But I suspect it’s going to give birth to a thousand conspiracy theories. After all, millions of Russians saw all five rings, so why are all the Americans and Europeans saying there were only four? It must be Photoshop trickery from westerners designed to make Russia the butt of jokes. Right?

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The Fifth Ring: How Conspiracy Theories are Born

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In Rare Break With Tradition, Congress Might Actually Do Something Constructive Soon

by ArlenUAVqa Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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In 1997, in an effort to rein in rising Medicare spending, Congress created a formula for paying doctors called the “sustainable growth rate” (SGR). Unfortunately, a few years later, this formula started calling not for sustainable growth, but for actual pay cuts. Doctors went ballistic, and Congress hastily passed a “doc fix” that deferred the scheduled cuts. Then they did the same thing the next year, and the year after that—and then in every year since then. At this point, the SGR is obviously deader than the proverbial doornail, but officially killing it would also officially count as a spending increase, which would officially increase the deficit by a lot. Nobody wants to face up to that, so every year Congress just passes a temporary extension to the doc fix and calls it a day.

But wait! In a rare display of constructive bipartisanship, Congress might actually do something about this. Sarah Kliff explains:

The problem with the sustainable growth rate is it isn’t sustainable at all….But because the doc-fix could cost as much as $300 billion to fix, legislators have stuck with [] short-term patches, which cost significantly less and are a whole lot easier to find offsets to pay for. The math changed this year, however, as health care cost growth has slowed, and the Congressional Budget Office has essentially cut in half the amount it thinks fixing the doc-fix would cost. Now, the CBO says it will cost $153 billion to repeal the sustainable growth rate, and legislators see that lower price tag as making it easier — although by no means certain — to pass legislation.

The proposal released Thursday is a thorough outline of the policies that would replace the doc-fix. What Congress wants to do differently this time around is, by 2021, put as much as nine percent of doctors’ reimbursements at stake if providers can’t hit certain quality standards. It would also include a bonus pool of $500 million for the doctors who do provide really great care.

This is no slam dunk. Congress still has to find $153 billion in offsets, after all. And it’s certainly possible to put a cynical spin on this: there’s no money available for the long-term unemployed, but for doctors? No problem! But I’d be less cynical. After all, it’s not as if doctors won’t get their current pay rates one way or another. This is just a matter of facing up to reality and admitting that SGR didn’t work and never will. That’s basic good governance, and we can use all of that we can get.

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In Rare Break With Tradition, Congress Might Actually Do Something Constructive Soon

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Rick Santorum is Still the Same Creepy Guy He Was in 2012

by JosefHueber Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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A quick note on the Republican presidential field. In the course of making the case for Paul Ryan as the front runner a few days ago, I failed to mention Rick Santorum as a possible challenger. That was a mistake. He’s going to run, and he belongs on the list.

That said, come on. Is anyone taking him seriously? Yes, he won a few primaries in 2012, but only as the last man standing in the Anyone But Romney marathon. That doesn’t demonstrate an ability to win, it just demonstrates an unusual level of pigheadedness. Santorum was willing to stay in the race for months even though he never polled more than a few percent and was obviously widely disliked. Only when everyone else was gone did conservative voters reluctantly turn to him as their final, forlorn hope of stopping the Romney juggernaut.

So sure, Santorum is going to run. He might do better this time around because his name recognition is higher. But he’s still the same creepy dude he was last time and he still has the charisma of a sea slug. Even the Christian Right obviously finds him a little too self-righteous and a little too shudder inducing. I wouldn’t put him even in the top five of possible 2016 contenders.

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Rick Santorum is Still the Same Creepy Guy He Was in 2012

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Friday Afternoon News Dumps: Myth or Reality?

by JeffreyVov Posted on February 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here is Jeremiah Goulka on the Obama administration’s announcement last week that the Keystone XL pipeline won’t increase greenhouse gas emissions:

Chances are that you missed the State Department releasing the final environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline last week. You were meant to: it came out on 4pm on the Friday before Super Bowl Sunday. The mainstream media only had a few moments to glance at the executive summary—the report itself is an un-skimmable eleven volumes long—before the news cycle moved onto the big game.

I’m just curious: does anyone really believe this anymore? I’m talking about the infamous Friday afternoon news dump. It’s an article of faith that bad news is always released on Friday afternoon, where it will get lost in the weekend news cycle, but isn’t the evidence pretty strong that this doesn’t work? Maybe for small stuff it does, but it sure doesn’t seem to be the case for anything that people would otherwise care about. The Keystone XL report is a pretty good example. It seems to me that it got about as much attention as it was ever likely to get no matter when it was released.

I think some enterprising graduate student needs to write a dissertation about this. Create a metric that predicts how much attention a piece of news “deserves”—we can call it DQ—and then check to see if news dumps on Friday underperform the DQ metric over, say, the next 30 days. Let’s find out if this is myth or reality.

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Friday Afternoon News Dumps: Myth or Reality?

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