Tag Archives: major

Even Anti-Gay Activists Predict Victory for Same-Sex Marriage at the Supreme Court

by MarcyHamblin Posted on April 28, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

As oral arguments in the highly anticipated gay-marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges got underway on Tuesday morning, hundreds of same-sex-marriage supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court to celebrate what they were convinced would be a major victory. A few dozen gay-marriage foes showed up as well, including members of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, but even they seemed resigned to the fact that their pro-marriage-equality opponents would prevail.

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court is considering the legality of same-sex-marriage bans; the case turns on the question of whether the 14th Amendment guarantees the right to same-sex marriage and whether states are required to recognize same-sex unions from other states. After the oral arguments, the New York Times reported that the justices were closely divided on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. A decision is expected at the end of June.

Ben Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church

“I know it’s a fait accompli,” said an unhappy-looking Ben Phelps, 39, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, the Kansas-based group known for its anti-gay activism and categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Phelps and a small group from his church were protesting on the outskirts of the rally. He held two signs, one that read “God Hates Fags” and the other “Same-Sex Parents Doom Kids.” Phelps predicted the court will rule in favor of same-sex marriage “because we’re in the days of Sodom.”

David Grisham of Repent Amarillo

About 30 yards away, David Grisham, the leader of an anti-gay-marriage group called Repent Amarillo (an outfit the Texas Observer described as a “militant evangelical group that advertises itself as ‘the Special Forces of spiritual warfare'”), shouted into a microphone: “Folks, I’m telling you right now, you’re going to lose your rights if you don’t wake up.”

“I believe the Supreme Court will rule in favor of gay marriage,” Grisham told me after passing the mic to another member of his group. The result, he predicted, would be “persecution for Christians.” He added, “The structure of the family will continue to break down” and “society” will unravel with it.

Gay marriage supporters surround anti-gay protesters.

Grisham and Phelps were in the minority. The overwhelming majority of the crowd had gathered at the court to support marriage equality. “I’m confident,” said Maria Mascaro, 34, who drove down from Philadelphia to attend the rally. “There’s going to be a cocktail after this.”

Albino Periera, 50, and his husband, Joe Kowalcheck, 36, as well as their two dogs, Lola and Nero, made the trip to DC by car from Ormond Beach, Florida. “We’re all very optimistic,” Kowalcheck said. “It would be hard to go backward.”

Nero, gay marriage supporter

Many supporters were optimistic that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the 2013 opinion striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, would be the swing vote in favor of marriage equality. “Public opinion is so in favor” of same-sex marriage, said Barbara Stussman, 48, of Maryland, whose daughter is a lesbian. “I think Justice Kennedy takes that into account.” During oral arguments, however, Kennedy expressed concern about changing the conception of marriage that “has been with us for millennia,” according to the New York Times.

“I think if Kennedy found DOMA to be discriminatory…he’ll find state bans to be discriminatory too,” said Jeremy Cerutti, 35, a lawyer from Philadelphia. “This is our 1960s moment.”

Opponents of gay marriage likewise see this case as a watershed moment.

“This is the case,” said Grisham of Repent Amarillo. “This is like a Roe v. Wade moment.”

Visit source: 

Even Anti-Gay Activists Predict Victory for Same-Sex Marriage at the Supreme Court

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Even Anti-Gay Activists Predict Victory for Same-Sex Marriage at the Supreme Court

Republicans Painting Hillary Clinton As a Tool of the Superrich Forget One Little Thing

by RoxanaWelsh Posted on April 27, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to present a post from New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, whose writing on politics has been published by the New Republic, the American Prospect, and the Los Angeles Times.

Barack Obama was raised by a financially struggling single mother, and Mitt Romney was the son of an auto executive turned governor who grew up to be a gazillionaire in the financial industry. This made biographical populism an unfruitful subject for the right in 2012. But circumstances have changed a bit. Hillary Clinton and her husband have grown extremely rich in their post–White House years, and the Republican Party is cultivating at least a couple of potential candidates, like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, who boast of their modest backgrounds. Republicans are licking their lips for a year and a half of Hillary-as–Leona Helmsley, flying around in private jets, luxuriating in wealth, and disingenuously pretending to care about the struggles of average Americans. There is, however, one wee problem in the Republican populist plot. That is the policy agenda.

Conservative writer Jay Cost is already looking ahead to this problem, which he presents as a kind of dodge. After flaying Clinton for her wealth, he fumes, “Really, the only claim Clinton can make to understanding the travails of everyday Americans is her party’s platform,” writes Cost, “Endorsement of that document is a kind of sacrament that bestows the power of empathy upon every Democratic pol. This is perhaps the most absurd premise of the Clinton candidacy.”

This is a strange and revealing passage. He argues that Clinton is a tool of the rich, and the only possible fact undermining this otherwise obvious reality is her party’s platform, i.e., the stuff she would do as president. This is an “absurd” premise upon which to cast her as a populist if you think of elections as a soap opera drama between two individuals. It makes a lot of sense if you think about the presidency as a vehicle to change public policy.

And the cardinal fact of the modern political age is that the two parties are primarily fighting over redistribution. Democrats want the government to tax the rich at higher levels and spend more to support the poor, and Republicans want the opposite. The major political fights of the last three decades, from the Reagan tax cuts to the Clinton tax hikes to Clintoncare to the Bush tax cuts to Obamacare to the Ryan budget, have all been centered on the redistributionary principle.

And yet some conservatives don’t want the Republican Party to invest its political capital so heavily in this fight. Maybe they don’t care that much about overtaxing the rich. Or maybe they believe, accurately, that the political price of having to defend tax cuts for the 1 percent crowds out policies that appeal to the 99 percent, who have a lot more votes.

One of the distinctive qualities of this group of populist conservatives is that they seem unable to distinguish between the hope that the Republican Party will adopt their policy vision and the belief that it already has. They have a habit of invoking the GOP they wish existed as though it were the real thing.

Cost falls into this category. In the same piece, he describes a different kind of political debate, one which pits the Republicans against the economic elite, rather than on its side. He describes this alternative debate is if it were the real one:

The GOP ostensibly stands for smaller, more efficient government—but it allows the Democrats to define just what sort of government we are talking about. The debate always seems to be about Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment insurance, Pell grants and Head Start. In other words, by the very terms of the conversation, big government works for the benefit of the downtrodden. Even as they defend big government, the Democrats identify themselves as the champions of the downtrodden and the GOP as their hardhearted assailants.

But what about corporate tax payouts? Or farm subsidies for the largest agribusinesses?

The debate “seems” to be about Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Pell grants, and Head Start because the Republican platform is to slash those programs deeply. Those are not things Democrats have defined as the “sort of government we are talking about.” Those are programs Republicans have decided to make the focal point of their economic program (along with deep cuts in taxes for the highest earning Americans, a point Cost is too embarrassed to raise in this context).

What about corporate tax payouts and subsidies for the largest agribusinesses? Well, that would be a great debate for our hypothetical populist Republicans. The actual Republicans defend corporate tax loopholes. They will sometimes invoke them in general, as an argument for a generalized reform that lowers tax rates, but when faced with proposals to eliminate even completely egregious corporate loopholes (like the faster depreciations rate for private jets), they refuse. When Dave Camp went off the reservation before his retirement and designed a tax reform that did not give rich people a huge tax cut, his party abandoned him en masse and never mentioned his plan again.

Farm subsidies are an issue that somewhat divides the parties, since rural members tend to support them regardless of their affiliation. Neither party will forthrightly eliminate them altogether, which is the position I’d favor. But the actual political divide in Washington confounds Cost’s idealized one. It is the Obama administration that wants to reduce agriculture subsidies, and House Republicans fighting to keep them at a higher level.

So, “what about corporate tax payouts? Or farm subsidies for the largest agribusinesses”? Well, those issues underscore the same conclusion as the issues Cost doesn’t want to talk about. It would be wonderful if Republicans stopped being a party whose most despised spending programs benefit the poor and whose most acceptable spending programs benefit the middle class or even the affluent. It would likewise be nice if the Republican Party wasn’t most determined to reduce (or, if possible, eliminate) the taxes paid most heavily by the rich, while also being most willing to raise the taxes heavily paid by the poor. The world would be a much better place. It is not, however, the world we inhabit.

More:  

Republicans Painting Hillary Clinton As a Tool of the Superrich Forget One Little Thing

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Republicans Painting Hillary Clinton As a Tool of the Superrich Forget One Little Thing

There’s a Fight Brewing Over Who Profits From Solar Power

by HilarioBaccarin Posted on April 23, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In the ongoing wars over solar energy, one power company is consistently painted as the archetypal, mustache-twirling nemesis of clean electricity: Arizona Public Service. So you might be surprised to learn that this same company is about to become a big new producer of rooftop solar power.

APS is an unlikely solar patron: In the summer of 2013, the Phoenix-area utility launched a campaign to weaken Arizona’s net metering rule, which requires utilities to buy the extra solar power their customers generate and provides a major incentive for homeowners to install rooftop panels. A few months later, APS admitted giving cash to two nonprofits that ran an anti-solar ad blitz in the state. Early this year, the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that a letter criticizing the solar industry’s business practices, sent by members of Congress to federal regulators, was originally authored by an employee of APS. And a couple weeks ago, APS asked state regulators to let the company quadruple the fees it tacks on to the monthly bills of solar-equipped homeowners.

It makes sense that the company would be worried about solar’s epic takeoff. In many ways, the solar boom poses an unprecedented threat to big electric utilities, which have done business for a century with essentially zero competition. In the first quarter of this year, applications for solar permits in APS’s service area were 112 percent higher than the same period last year, and every one of those is one less customer for APS’s regular power supply, 40 percent of which comes from coal. Now the company thinks it has found a solution to the problem: It wants to start owning its own rooftop solar.

In December, the Arizona Corporation Commission gave a green light to APS to plunk down $28.5 million on 10 megawatts of solar panels, enough to cover about 2,000 of its customers’ roofs. (Tucson Electric Power, another utility in the state, was also approved for a smaller but similar plan.) The idea is that APS will target specific rooftops it wants to make use of—in areas where the grid needs more support, for example, or west-facing roofs, which produce the most power in the late afternoon, when demand is the highest. APS would offer homeowners a $30 credit on their monthly bill, according to Jeff Guldner, an APS vice president for public policy.

The credit essentially serves as rent for the roof, where an APS-contracted local installer will set up a solar array. APS owns the panels, can use the power however it wants, and gets to improve its clean energy portfolio without losing customers to third-party solar companies. Meanwhile, the homeowner gets a lower bill.

Continue Reading »

Original source – 

There’s a Fight Brewing Over Who Profits From Solar Power

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, Everyone, FF, GE, Green Light, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar panels, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s a Fight Brewing Over Who Profits From Solar Power

Obama Has a Plan to Expand Medicaid in Red States—by Weakening It

by HattieEdmiston Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

One of the Affordable Care Act’s major provisions sought to expand the number of people covered by Medicaid by allowing people earning up to 138 percent of the poverty line to enroll.

But in many parts of the country, it hasn’t worked out that way. Individual states are largely responsible for running Medicaid, and despite the act’s generous terms—the federal government promised to initially cover 100 percent of the cost, then 90 percent after 2016—only 29 states have taken the deal. Of the holdouts, most are conservative states with Republican governors where Obama is unpopular.

Some red states have been coming around, lured by of the enormous infusion of federal funds they’ll receive by expanding Medicaid. And without participating, states soon stand to lose billions in other payments designed to compensate hospitals for care for the uninsured. (Florida could lose more than $2 billion on account of leaving 800,000 residents uninsured who could otherwise be covered under Medicaid.)

Despite that carrot and stick, Republican-controlled states have demanded additional concessions from the Obama administration before taking part in the expansion—and in many cases, as a new paper from the National Health Law Program suggests, the administration has agreed to changes that undermine its own goal of expanding coverage.

These changes have made some states’ Medicaid programs more, well, Republican—not to mention punitive. Take Arkansas, which in 2013 was allowed to use its Medicaid funds to let poor residents buy private insurance on the state health exchange—policies that may not have the same protections or coverage as traditional Medicaid. Iowa and New Hampshire have followed suit. According to the NHLP, these initial waivers emboldened states to seek even greater concessions. An example is Indiana, where, in exchange for agreeing to expand Medicaid, officials not only won the right to charge poor people premiums and co-payments, but also to lock people out of the program for at least six months if they fail to pay those premiums.

The administration has granted such waivers through its authority to authorize so-called demonstration projects to encourage policy innovation in the states. But NHLP contends that waivers like Indiana’s violate the law, which “requires demonstrations to actually demonstrate something.” As NHLP points out, reams of research have long showed that such premiums dramatically reduce health coverage for low-income people. After the Obama administration granted Indiana’s request, Arkansas went back to ask for permission to charge premiums, too. And it prevailed.

And yet some states still want more. Florida, for instance, is considering a bill that would use billions of dollars of Medicaid money to provide vouchers to poor people to buy private insurance. But anyone getting a voucher would have to pay mandatory premiums, and also either have a job or be in school. Childless adults need not apply. (The administration hasn’t signed off on this one—yet.)

NHLP suggests that the Obama administration is undercutting its very strong bargaining position by allowing states to dismantle Medicaid through waivers, at the expense of the very poor and sick. Its white paper notes that Medicaid’s history proves even the most ardent opponents of government health care eventually come around: In 1965, when the program was first created, only 26 states joined in. Five years later, though, almost all had.

Read the article: 

Obama Has a Plan to Expand Medicaid in Red States—by Weakening It

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama Has a Plan to Expand Medicaid in Red States—by Weakening It

Washington State Is So Screwed

by ThaddeusChifley Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

California’s been getting all the attention, but it isn’t the only agriculture-centric western state dealing with brutal drought. Washington, a major producer of wheat and wine grapes and the source of nearly 70 percent of US apples grown for fresh consumption, also endured an usually warm and snow-bereft winter.

The state’s Department of Ecology has declared “drought emergencies” in 24 of the state’s 62 watersheds, an area comprising 44 percent of the state. Here’s more from the agency’s advisory:

Snowpack statewide has declined to 24 percent of normal, worse than when the last statewide drought was declared in 2005. Snowpack is like a frozen reservoir for river basins, in a typical year accumulating over the winter and slowly melting through the spring and summer providing a water supply for rivers and streams. This year run-off from snowmelt for the period April through September is projected to be the lowest on record in the past 64 years.

The drought regions include apple-heavy areas like Yakima Valley and the Okanogan region. Given that warmer winters—and thus less snow—are consistent with the predictions of climate change models, the Washington drought delivers yet more reason to consider expanding fruit and vegetable production somewhere far from the west coast. That’s an idea I’ve called de-Californication (see here and here). But we’ll need a new term to encompass the northwest. De-westernization? Doesn’t have quite the same ring.

Source article: 

Washington State Is So Screwed

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Washington State Is So Screwed

Beijing’s Air: Now Slightly Less Deadly

by MayaCoy245660 Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Finally, there might be some good news for people inhaling Beijing’s famously filthy air: It’s getting a bit cleaner, according to a new analysis released by Greenpeace today. Pollution levels in the Chinese capital have shown significant improvements, due in part to strict new pollution controls, says the environmental group, which based its analysis on new government numbers.

Beijing’s concentration of the fine airborne particles known as PM2.5—the toxic brew of industrial exhaust and chemicals that contribute to smog—declined by more than 13 percent in the first quarter of 2015 compared to the same period last year, according to the study. Cities in the neighboring province of Hebei, home to extensive heavy industries like steel production, saw their PM2.5 concentrations decrease by an average of 31 percent. Xi’an, the capital of a major coal-producing province, slashed its concentrations by 48 percent, according to the figures supplied by Greenpeace.

Why such steep declines in pollution over the past year? It’s important to keep in mind how awful the starting point was. 2014 was an especially terrible period for skies across China’s northeastern provinces, resulting in unfavorable comparisons to a nuclear winter. The air got so bad that in March 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared “war” on smog. A year earlier, my colleague Jaeah Lee and I traveled to China to investigate its push to develop natural gas, and we saw for ourselves the extent of the environmental catastrophe playing out across the country:

While there’s room for some optimism in the new numbers, the picture painted is still pretty grim: 90 percent of the 360 Chinese cities studied by Greenpeace failed to meet the national air quality standard (that number hasn’t shifted since Greenpeace analyzed similar data from 2014). Forty percent of the cities registered air pollution levels that were twice the national standard. And even in Beijing, there’s a long way to go. The World Health Organization recommends a maximum daily concentration of 25 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5. That makes Beijing’s average concentrations of more than 90 micrograms per cubic meter alarmingly high.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction. “I think these trends are very positive,” said Angel Hsu, an assistant professor at Yale University who studies China’s environmental performance. But she warned that any statistics emanating from the Chinese government—the source of the pollution data analyzed by Greenpeace—should be taken with a grain of salt. “When you talk about any Chinese data, you’re always a little bit suspicious,” said Hsu, who was not involved in the Greenpeace study.

Hsu attributes the drop in Beijing’s pollution in part to the new air quality controls—the “most comprehensive to date,” she said—enacted by the city’s government, which placed curbs on vehicle use as part of a $21 billion effort to slash pollution levels 25 percent by 2017. “On the vehicle side, I think that has been potentially driving air improvement in Beijing,” Hsu said.

Last month, Beijing shut down the third of four coal-fired power plants inside the city in an effort to clear the air, though Hsu is more doubtful that the drop in pollution levels can be directly tied to reduced coal use: “Perhaps that could also be a source of the drop in PM2.5, but I’m very, very cautious about the coal consumption numbers,” she said, referring to China’s official numbers.

While Hsu said Beijing “can serve as a model for what other cities can do,” she also warned that marginal improvements in one big city could simply be pushing the problem further out into the country, as industry seeks other cities in which to set up shop.

It’s a concern Greenpeace shares. “Armed with this information, the government must now ensure that pollution is not simply relocated to other regions, and that the same strict measures enacted in cities like Beijing are actually enforced across the country,” said Zhang Kai, a Greenpeace climate and energy official, in an emailed statement.

Clean air will continue to be a crucial matter for China’s image on the world stage, as Beijing once again pitches itself as a great place to host an Olympic games—this time, the 2022 winter games. Organizers of the bid recently said $7.6 billion will be spent to fight smog.

Beijing’s reported improvement in air quality comes amid a well-publicized efforts to tackle the problem, directed from the upper echelons of the Communist Party, which sees the pall of smog across the county as a threat to the economy and to social stability for a population increasingly anxious about the environment. Awareness of the problem is on the rise: Under the Dome, a searing documentary about China’s pollution crisis, went viral in March. It attracted hundreds of millions of views before China’s official censors began playing a cat-and-mouse game of trying to ban its various online incarnations.

There’s good news elsewhere, too. Bloomberg reported over the weekend that China has recently scrapped a number of small coal plants, avoiding the release of 11.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That has helped the country cut its emissions for the first time in a decade, according to Bloomberg.

See the article here: 

Beijing’s Air: Now Slightly Less Deadly

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LG, Northeastern, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Beijing’s Air: Now Slightly Less Deadly

Hillary Clinton May Ruin Pundits’ Weekend, Announce Campaign Sunday

by RandellEbden Posted on April 10, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Hillary Clinton is set to announce her run for president this Sunday, The Guardian, CNN, and other outlets are reporting. She reportedly plans to release a video with the news on Twitter and follow up with campaigns stops in Iowa.

If she secures the Democratic nomination, Clinton will become the first woman from either major party on the presidential ballot. For a deeper dive into the key players inside her campaign, read our inside look at the man tasked to guide her to the White House.

Link to article: 

Hillary Clinton May Ruin Pundits’ Weekend, Announce Campaign Sunday

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hillary Clinton May Ruin Pundits’ Weekend, Announce Campaign Sunday

7 Key Facts About the Drought

by GrazynaGuffey Posted on April 6, 2015

Mother Jones

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the drought in California, especially since this past week, when Gov. Jerry Brown introduced mandatory water cuts for the first time in the state’s history. So what exactly makes this drought so bad? And what are people doing about it? Here are a few important points to keep in mind:

Drought is the norm in California. How bad is this one? There are always wet years and dry years, but the past three years have been among the driest on record—and state officials worry that 2015 will be even drier. Last week, for the first time in the state’s history, Brown imposed mandatory water restrictions, requiring all cities and towns to cut their water usage by 25 percent. Though agriculture uses more than 80 percent of the state’s water, the regulations merely require farmers to submit “water management plans.”

California’s reservoirs have about a year’s worth of water left. Groundwater levels, seen as a “savings account” that the state can draw from in dry times, are at an all-time low. The US Drought Monitor comes out with weekly drought maps based on satellite imagery, precipitation, and water flow data; the Central Valley—America’s bread basket—is covered in dark red, “exceptional drought.”

What exactly is groundwater, and why are people in California freaking out about it? Groundwater is the water that seeps through the ground when it rains. Over the centuries, it accumulates in vast underground aquifers, with older water found deeper in the earth’s crust. Accessed through wells, groundwater is often compared to a savings account in California—good to have in dry times but difficult to refill. The issue now is that with reservoirs (above ground) so depleted, groundwater use is spiking. Farmers are drilling deeper and deeper for water—using water that fell 20,000 years ago. Usually, groundwater makes up about 40 percent of the state’s freshwater usage, but with the recent drought, that number has leapt to 65 percent. This year, it may rise to 75 percent.

What are the state’s biggest water users? Farming in general, and alfalfa (used to feed cows) and almonds in particular. California grows half of the fruits and veggies produced in the States, including more than 90 percent of the country’s grapes, broccoli, almonds, and walnuts. Here are some of the state’s most thirsty crops:

Alfalfa is a superfood of sorts for cows, and it’s in high demand in the Golden State, which leads the country in dairy production and is also a major beef producer. (Fun fact: It takes nearly 700 gallons of water to grow the alfalfa necessary to produce one gallon of milk, and 425 gallons of water to produce 4 ounces of beef.) Almonds are second from the top, both because it takes a lot of water to produce nuts (a single almond takes a gallon of water) but also because the crunchy snack is in vogue in the United States and abroad. The water that’s used to grow the California almonds that are exported overseas in one year would be enough to fuel Los Angeles for nearly three years.

What about fracking? Fracking uses a lot of water, since the process involves injecting water and chemicals into the earth to release oil and gas. According to a recent Reuters article, California oil producers used about 70 million gallons of water in 2014—about the amount that San Francisco homes use collectively in two days. But that’s just the water from fracking. The amount of water that was produced by California’s oil and gas production in 2014—which is to say, the groundwater that bubbled up during production and wasn’t returned to the original aquifers—was about 42 billion gallons. That’s enough to fuel San Francisco homes for 3 years.

Will we get back the water we lose? Your elementary school teachers didn’t lie to you—the water cycle is really a thing. But as Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute, explained, the water that California is losing “is still falling—it’s just falling somewhere else.” It’s impossible to know exactly where the water that would normally fall in California is going, but there are plenty of places, especially in the North and Northeast, that have been having abnormally wet years. Scientists are also concerned that climate change is both increasing the likelihood of drought and accelerating its effects: As the earth warms, water evaporates more easily from reservoirs, rivers, and soil.

California is on the coast. Can’t we desalinize the ocean? Because desalinization technology is so expensive and energy-intensive, most water officials—and taxpayers—don’t see it as a viable option. The latest attempt is the Carlsbad desalinization plant, just outside of San Diego, which will be complete in 2016. The project will cost taxpayers $1 billion and produce 50 million gallons of water per day—the largest desalinization plant in the Western Hemisphere—and it will provide just 7 percent of the county’s total water needs.

Well, this is depressing. What are viable solutions? There’s no silver bullet, but the good news is that there are some good solutions. This chart, part of a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pacific Institute, sums up some of the options. California could reduce its water use by 17 to 22 percent with more efficient agricultural water use, including fixes like scheduling irrigation when plants need it and expanding drip and sprinkler irrigation. Urban water use could be reduced by 40 to 60 percent if residents replaced lawns with drought-tolerant plants, fixed water leaks, and replaced old toilets and showerheads with more water-efficient technology. And instead of channeling used water into the ocean, the state could treat it and reuse it—a practice that tends to gross some people out (because of the “drinking pee” factor) but has long been used in Orange County and is becoming more popular as the drought continues.

This article has been updated.

Taken from – 

7 Key Facts About the Drought

Posted in Anchor, FF, For Dummies, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 7 Key Facts About the Drought

Obama Just Announced a Historic Nuclear Agreement With Iran

by RaymundMeekin Posted on April 2, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Speaking from the Rose Garden on Thursday, President Obama addressed a preliminary agreement reached earlier in the day that seeks to limit Iran’s controversial nuclear program. The deal, which includes the participation of European allies, is expected to lead to a final phase of negotiations before a set June 30 deadline.

“I am convinced that if this framework leads to a final compromise deal, it will make our country, our allies, and our world safer,” Obama said on Thursday. “This has been a long time coming.”

Obama said that any “backsliding” on Iran’s part would lead to the deal’s collapse. In the press conference, the president also reaffirmed his commitment to protecting peaceful interests in Israel and the Middle East. Prior to Obama’s address, both sides, although optimistic, noted key differences still remained.

Watch the full press conference below:

For the text on the preliminary agreement, read the document here. Here’s the transcript of Obama’s press conference courtesy of the Washington Post below:

Today, the United States, together with our allies and partners, has reached a historic understanding with Iran, which, if fully implemented, will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

As president and commander in chief, I have no greater responsibility than the security of the American people, and I am convinced that if this framework leads to a final, comprehensive deal, it will make our country, our allies, and our world safer. This has been a long time coming.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been advancing its nuclear program for decades. By the time I took office, Iran was operating thousands of centrifuges, which can produce the materials for a nuclear bomb. And Iran was concealing a covert nuclear facility.

I made clear that we were prepared to resolve this issue diplomatically, but only if Iran came to the table in a serious way.

When that did not happen, we rallied the world to impose the toughest sanctions in history, sanctions which had a profound impact on the Iranian economy.

Now, sanctions alone could not stop Iran’s nuclear program, but they did help bring Iran to the negotiating table. Because of our diplomatic efforts, the world stood with us, and we were joined at the negotiating table by the world’s major powers: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China as well as the European Union.

Over a year ago, we took the first step towards today’s framework with a deal to stop the progress of Iran’s nuclear program and roll it back in key areas.

And recall that at the time, skeptics argued that Iran would cheat, that we could not verify their compliance, and the interim agreement would fail. Instead, it has succeeded exactly as intended. Iran has met all of its obligations.

It eliminated its stockpile of dangerous nuclear material, inspections of Iran’s program increased, and we continued negotiations to see if we could achieve a more comprehensive deal.

Today, after many months of tough principle diplomacy, we have achieved the framework for that deal. And it is a good deal, a deal that meets our core objectives.

This framework would cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran will face strict limitations on its program, and Iran has also agreed to the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history. So this deal is not based on trust. It’s based on unprecedented verification.

Many key details will be finalized over the next three months. And nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed. But here are the basic outlines of the deal that we are working to finalize.

First, Iran will not be able to pursue a bomb using plutonium because it will not develop weapons grade plutonium. The core of its reactor at Arak will be dismantled and replaced. The spent fuel from that facility will be shipped out of Iran for the life of the reactor. Iran will not build a new heavy water reactor. And Iran will not reprocess fuel from its existing reactors, ever.

Second, this deal shuts down Iran’s path to a bomb using enriched uranium. Iran has agreed that its installed centrifuges will be reduced by two thirds. Iran will no longer enrich uranium at its Fordo facility. Iran will not enrich uranium with its advanced centrifuges for at least the next 10 years. The vast majority of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium will be neutralized.

Today, estimates indicate that Iran is only two or three months away from potentially acquiring the raw materials that could be used for a single nuclear bomb. Under this deal, Iran has agreed that it will not stockpile the materials needed to build a weapon. Even if it violated the deal, for the next decade at least, Iran would be a minimum of a year away from acquiring enough material for a bomb. And the strict limitations on Iran’s stockpile will last for 15 years.

Third, this deal provides the best possible defense against Iran’s ability to pursue a nuclear weapon covertly, that is in secret. International inspectors will have unprecedented access not only to Iranian nuclear facilities, but to the entire supply chain that supports Iran’s nuclear program, from uranium mills that provide the raw materials to the centrifuge production and storage facilities that support the program.

If Iran cheats, the world will know it. If we see something suspicious, we will inspect it. Iran’s past efforts to weaponize its program will be addressed.

With this deal, Iran will face more inspections than any other country in the world. So, this will be a long-term deal that addresses each path to a potential Iranian nuclear bomb.

There will be strict limits on Iran’s program for a decade. Additional restrictions on building new facilities or stockpiling materials will last for 15 years. The unprecedented transparency measures will last for 20 years or more. Indeed, some will be permanent. And as a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran will never be permitted to develop a nuclear weapon.

In return for Iran’s actions, the international community has agreed to provide Iran with relief from certain sanctions. Our own sanctions and international sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. This relief will be phased, as Iran takes steps to adhere to the deal. If Iran violates the deal, sanctions can be snapped back into place.

Meanwhile, other American sanctions on Iran for its support of terrorism, its human rights abuses, its ballistic missile program, will continue to be fully enforced.

Now let me re-emphasize, our work is not yet done. The deal has not been signed. Between now and the end of June, the negotiators will continue to work through the details of how this framework will be fully implemented and those details matter.

If there is backsliding on the part of the Iranians, if the verification and inspection mechanisms don’t meet the specifications of our nuclear and security experts, there will be no deal.

But if we can get this done and Iran follows through on the framework that our negotiators agreed to, we will be able to resolve one of the greatest threats to our security and to do so peacefully.

Given the importance of this issue, I have instructed my negotiators to fully brief Congress and the American people on the substance the deal. And I welcome a robust debate in the weeks and months to come.

I am confident that we can show that this deal is good for the security of the United States, for our allies and for the world.

But the fact is we only have three options for addressing Iran’s nuclear program. First, we can reach a robust and verifiable deal, like this one, and peacefully prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The second option is we can bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, thereby starting another war in the Middle East and setting back Iran’s program by a few years. In other words, setting it back by a fraction of the time that this deal will set it back. Meanwhile, we’d ensure that Iran would raise their head to try and build a bomb.

Third, we could pull out of negotiations, try to get other countries to go along and continue sanctions that are currently in place or add additional ones and hope for the best. Knowing that every time we have done so, Iran has not capitulated, but instead has advanced its program. And that in very short order, the breakout timeline would be eliminated and a nuclear arms race in the region could be triggered because of that uncertainty.

In other words, the third option leads us very quickly back to a decision about whether or not to take military action because we’d have no idea what was going on inside of Iran. Iran is not going to simply dismantle its program because we demand it to do so.

That’s not how the world works. And that’s not what history shows us. Iran has shown no willingness to eliminate those aspects of their program that they maintain are for peaceful purposes, even in the face of unprecedented sanctions.

Should negotiations collapse because we, the United States, rejected what the majority of the world considers a fair deal, what our scientists and nuclear experts suggest would give us confidence that they are not developing a nuclear weapon, it’s doubtful that we could even keep our current international sanctions in place.

So when you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them a simple question: Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented, backed by the world’s major powers, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East? Is it worse than doing what we’ve done for almost two decades with Iran moving forward with its nuclear program and without robust inspections?

I think the answer will be clear. Remember, I have always insisted that I will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and I will.

But I also know that a diplomatic solution is the best way to get this done and offers a more comprehensive and lasting solution. It is our best option by far. And while it is always a possibility that Iran may try to cheat on the deal in the future, this framework of inspections and transparency makes it far more likely that we’ll know about it if they try to cheat, and I or future presidents will have preserved all of the options that are currently available to deal with it.

To the Iranian people, I want to reaffirm what I’ve said since the beginning of my presidency. We are willing to engage you on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect.

This deal offers the prospect of relief from sanctions that were imposed because of Iran’s violation of international law. Since Iran’s supreme leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, this framework gives Iran the opportunity to verify that it’s program is, in fact, peaceful. It demonstrates that if Iran complies with its international obligations, then it can fully rejoin the community of nations, thereby fulfilling the extraordinary talent and aspirations of the Iranian people. That would be good for Iran, and it would be good for the world.

Of course, this deal alone, even if fully implemented, will not end the deep divisions and mistrust between our two countries. We have a difficult history between us.

And our concerns will remain with respect to Iranian behavior so long as Iran continues its sponsorship of terrorism, its support for proxies who destabilize the Middle East, its threats against America’s friends and allies, like Israel.

So make no mistake, we will remain vigilant in countering those actions and standing with our allies.

It’s no secret that the Israeli prime minister and I don’t agree about whether the United States should move forward with a peaceful resolution to the Iranian issue. If in fact Prime Minister Netanyahu is looking for the most effective way to ensure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon, this is the best option.

And I believe our nuclear experts can confirm that.

More importantly, I will be speaking with the prime minister today to make clear that there will be no daylight, there is no daylight when it comes to our support for Israel’s security and our concerns about Iran’s destabilizing policies and threats towards Israel.

That’s why I’ve directed my national security team to consult closely with the new Israeli government in the coming weeks and months about how we can further strengthen our long-term security cooperation with Israel and make clear our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s defense.

Today, I also spoke with the king of Saudi Arabia, to reaffirm our commitment to the security of our partners in the Gulf. And I am inviting the leaders of the six countries who make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain to meet me at Camp David this spring to discuss how we can further strengthen our security cooperation while resolving the multiple conflicts that have caused so much hardship and instability throughout the Middle East.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that Congress has, on a bipartisan basis, played a critical role in our current Iran policy, helping to shape the sanctions regime that applied so much pressure on Iran and ultimately forced them to the table.

In the coming days and weeks, my administration will engage Congress once again about how we can play — how it can play a constructive oversight role. I’ll begin that effort by speaking to the leaders of the House and the Senate today.

In those conversations, I will underscore that the issues at stake here are bigger than politics. These are matters of war and peace. And they should be evaluated based on the facts, and what is ultimately best for the American people and for our national security. For, this is not simply a deal between my administration and Iran. This is a deal between Iran, the United States of America and the major powers in the world, including some of our closest allies.

If Congress kills this deal not based on expert analysis, and without offering any reasonable alternative, then it’s the United States that will be blamed for the failure of diplomacy. International unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen.

The American people understand this, which is why a solid majority support a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue. They understand instinctively the words of President Kennedy, who faced down the far greater threat of Communism, and said, “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” The American people remembered that at the height of the Cold War.

Presidents like Nixon and Reagan struck historic arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, a far more dangerous adversary, despite the fact that that adversary not only threatened to destroy our country and our way of life, but had the means to do so.

Those agreements were not perfect. They did not end all threats. But they made our world safer. A good deal with Iran will do the same. Today I’d like to express my thanks to our international partners for their steadfastness, their cooperation.

I was able to speak earlier today with our close allies, Prime Minister Cameron and President Holland and Chancellor Merkel, to reaffirm that we stand shoulder-to-shoulder in this effort. And most of all, on behalf of our nation, I want to express my thanks to our tireless — and I mean tireless — Secretary of State John Kerry and our entire negotiating team. They have worked so hard to make this progress. They represent the best tradition of American diplomacy.

Their work, our work, is not yet done and success is not guaranteed. But we have a historic opportunity to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in Iran and to do so peacefully, with the international community firmly behind us. We should seize that chance. Thank you. God bless you. And god bless the United States of America.

See original: 

Obama Just Announced a Historic Nuclear Agreement With Iran

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Safer, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama Just Announced a Historic Nuclear Agreement With Iran

Eventually, Two Billionaires Will Duke It Out For President Every Four Years

by AdaSloneypet Posted on March 26, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This is from yesterday, but I really can’t pass it up. Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger write in the Washington Post that presidential candidates are no longer much interested in “bundlers” who can raise a paltry million dollars or so for their campaigns. Terry Neese, a successful bundler for George W. Bush, is their poster child:

This year, no potential White House contender has called — not even Bush’s brother, Jeb. As of early Wednesday, the only contacts she had received were e-mails from staffers for two other likely candidates; both went to her spam folder.

“They are only going to people who are multi-multimillionaires and billionaires and raising big money first,” said Neese, who founded a successful employment agency. “Most of the people I talk to are kind of rolling their eyes and saying, ‘You know, we just don’t count anymore.’ ”

….In the words of one veteran GOP fundraiser, traditional bundlers have been sent down to the “minor leagues,” while mega-donors are “the major league players.”

The old-school fundraisers have been temporarily displaced in the early money chase because of the rise of super PACs, which can accept unlimited donations. This year, White House hopefuls are rushing to raise money for the groups before they declare their candidacies and have to keep their distance.

So does this matter? Does it matter whether candidates get contributions from a thousand millionaires vs. a hundred billionaires? Are their political views really very different?

In a way, I suppose not. Rich is rich. One difference, though, might be in the way specific industries get treated. If you take a ton of money from Sheldon Adelson or the Koch Brothers, you’re more likely to oppose internet gambling and specific energy-related regulations than you might be if you were simply taking money from a whole bunch of different gambling and energy millionaires.

On a broader note, though, it has the potential to alienate the electorate even more. Things are bad enough already, but when it becomes clear that presidential candidates are practically being bought and sold by a literal handful of the ultra-rich, how hard is to remain uncynical about politics? Pretty hard.

In the end, maybe this doesn’t matter so much. Big money is big money, and most people are already convinced that big money controls things in Washington DC. Still, as bad as things are, they can always get worse. Eventually, perhaps each successful candidate will be fully funded by a single billionaire willing to take a flyer with pocket money to see if they can get their guy elected. This is not a healthy world we’re building.

More: 

Eventually, Two Billionaires Will Duke It Out For President Every Four Years

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Oster, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Eventually, Two Billionaires Will Duke It Out For President Every Four Years