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Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and the credibility of a woman scientist

by KristianNeff Posted on October 5, 2018

Christine Blasey Ford is a woman. She is a prolifically published expert in psychological statistics. She is a conventionally attractive natural blonde. She is the product of an elite private school education. She is a mother of two. She is a scientist.

All of these traits together contributed to the public’s impression of Dr. Ford as she testified to Congress that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Much has already been said about the Ford’s testimony as a survivor. But rereading her words, what struck me anew was the way she described the assault in clinical terms — the vulnerable state of the adolescent brain and the well-documented impact of childhood trauma — without evading an ounce of her own humanity. It’s a remarkable feat in a time when science itself is undergoing aggressive interrogation.

“I think that it was extra courageous for her to put in the effort to recognize that the science was important and her way of explaining it would be important,” says Kelly Ramirez, co-founder of the group 500 Women Scientists.

Neurological science tells us that a sexual assault at a young age will impact most victims for the rest of his or her life. Millions know the lasting impact of an assault from experience, but are not able to identify why they feel this way.

Throughout her testimony, Ford simply and carefully explained the different biological processes that contribute to the sharp memory of certain details and the blurriness of others; the surge in hormones that enabled her to escape; the varied and complicated pathology of sexual assault survivors. It was a relief to hear this in such relatively straightforward terms: You feel this way because this is what your body is doing. It is not a failure of your own will.

It is difficult to imagine a more impressive testimony on sexual assault — even as acknowledged by her detractors. Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor hired to interrogate Ford in Congress, acknowledged at the conclusion of her questioning that she had been “really impressed” by Ford’s expertise.

But it was not simply the statement of those anatomical facts that made Ford’s testimony powerful. The humanity in Ford’s testimony was where she exposed the lasting scars of (depressingly) shared experiences, which so many observers were able to recognize.

We also like to see scientists as humans, Ramirez says, and we trust them more when we see them show emotion. Isn’t that ironic! We understand climate science better, for example, when we can empathize with its personal impact on the scientist explaining the theory. Renowned climate scientist James Hansen has made his fight about the uncertain lives his grandchildren face.

The public’s reaction to Ford’s testimony was largely positive. Before the hearings, a poll found that 26 percent of respondents believed Kavanaugh and 32 believed Ford. After they testified, those who believe Kavanaugh bumped slightly to 33 while a remarkable 45 percent believed Ford.

Many comparisons have been drawn between the impassioned testimony of Ford and the cooler one of Anita Hill, the black civil rights attorney who accused Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his own confirmation hearings. “African-American women have routinely been challenged in their efforts to tell a story about sexual abuse,” one of Hill’s attorneys said about the race and gender dynamics of the two hearings. (Hill, who graduated from Yale, was infamously depicted as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” by a Republican operative.)

“I really hope that it’s not because of Ford’s position as a scientist that people find her credible,” says Maryam Zaringhalam, another senior leader of 500 Women Scientists. “I hope it’s because people are starting to understand that this is something that happens to all women, from all backgrounds, of all ethnicities, with all educational experiences.”

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Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony and the credibility of a woman scientist

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When disaster hits, solar power beats coal

by KarlaMelancon31 Posted on September 24, 2018

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

Within two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Richard Birt, a Las Vegas fire captain, flew to San Juan on what would be the first of many missions to try to get the island’s 96 fire stations up and running — not by fixing the problematical grid but by using solar power.

With the encouragement of San Juan fire chief Alberto Cruz Albarrán, logistical help from San Juan firefighters, and donated equipment from the company Sunrun, within a day-and-a-half a team outfitted the flat roofs of the fire department in Barrio Obrero — one of the poorer neighborhoods in San Juan — with solar panels. The panels and connected battery meant the station could be taken off the downed grid to run the most critical equipment including its 24-hour watch office that fielded calls, and its radio, lights, and doors.

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“When we got there the generator was broken, so there was no lights, no watch office, no radio, no anything,” Birt tells me in between his shifts at the Las Vegas fire station. “The idea [was] getting the watch office up so when someone walked up and said they had an emergency, they could respond.” With solar, the fire station had a backup option when the hastily repaired grid went down again — as it would repeatedly over the last 12 months. When Birt returned a few months later, he found that the crew had never unplugged the solar equipment. “With the grid going down, the firefighters felt they needed this up and running 24-hours a day and not have any gaps,” Birt recalls. “They said, ‘this works and the grid doesn’t.’”

Through the nonprofits Empowered By Light and Givepower, 10 fire stations in Puerto Rico have set up similar microgrids, and Birt hopes to raise millions more to finish the job. Other emergency responders have installed solar power as well. Solar panels filled the parking lot of a children’s hospital in San Juan, after Tesla made a donation to replace the hospital’s diesel generators.

Ensuring power for first responders in the wake of a disaster is a matter of life or death. “People died because of the lack of power,” Sunrun’s director of public policy in Puerto Rico Javier Rúa-Jovet said — 2,975 people in total. But the experiences of the children’s hospital in San Juan and the Barrio Obrero fire department are exceptions, because very few people in Puerto Rico have the option and resources to go solar.

Renewables account for just 2 percent of Puerto Rico’s electricity supply, making it among the most fossil-fuel reliant of nations and territories in the Caribbean. Which is to say, Puerto Rico is far from recognizing the vision solar companies had for a robust and self-reliant solar market. The reasons for this are a complicated mix of the lack of political will, legal obstacles, and the absence of enough federal assistance.

Maria, and the more recent storms like Hurricane Florence, tell a story about reliable power that’s quite different from what President Trump has claimed — which boils down to his usual support of fossil fuels. In a bid to subsidize the coal and nuclear plants that have struggled to compete economically against cheap gas and renewables, the Trump administration has floated a variety of plans — including stalling the retirements of coal plants for national security reasons and creating a strategic reserve for coal — that would allow it to subsidize these sources. One of the administration’s favorite arguments confuses the largely accurate observation that solar and wind are intermittent sources for energy (as in, the sun doesn’t always shine) with the more dubious logic that renewables are somehow more susceptible to security threats than a physical stockpile of coal.

It’s “a tremendous form of energy in the sense that in a military way — think of it — coal is indestructible,” Trump said at an August fundraiser on Long Island. “You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the windmills, boom, boom, boom, bing, that’s the end of that one.”

But that’s not what we’ve been seeing after catastrophic hurricanes. After Maria, solar power became a symbol for more reliable power, even if few had access to it. And more recently, Hurricane Florence tested the most solar-powered state after California. In North Carolina 4.6 percent of the state’s electricity comes from the sun. InsideClimate News reports that large solar farms and even rooftop solar (which face more variable conditions and are more susceptible to damage) remained intact following the storm. At the same time, those who live in North Carolina still saw massive power outages — at one point more than 300,000 residents were without power.

The upside of solar is that it easily lends itself to decentralized power and micro-grids that could maintain the power for more people in the wake of a disaster. Solar is “an easy distributed resource and obviously a clean one,” Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment Director Kevin Jones says. But the downside is that on its own it doesn’t lead to a more resilient a power grid, unless it is combined with advanced battery technology that allows people to disconnect from the grid to become self-reliant. Consider those fire stations: For a microgrid, panels on the roof had to be hooked up to long-lasting storage options. The combination of battery storage and solar could mean that “you have additional resilience when the grid goes down,” Jones notes.

An investigation by Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism conducted after Hurricane Maria backs that up: “Most of the more than 10,362 renewable energy units installed by Puerto Ricans ended up as a roof ornaments,” they concluded. These units were connected to the grid; if they were microgrids with storage attached, things might have been different.

There are other barriers for more hurricane-resilient power. One is money. “You can have solar panels in a parking lot serving a children’s hospital in the short term, but in the longer term you have to put them in a place where you can have them permanently,” Jones says. “Those things take time and money and effort.” The second is public policy priorities. Supplying power to community members in a microgrid gets complicated, legally, because solar customers and companies must get permission from monopoly utilities. The uncertain future for Puerto Rico’s monopoly utility PREPA means an uncertain future for microgrids as well.

For now, multiple solar and storage companies are eyeing markets in Puerto Rico, and both companies and some residents have some hope for the future. Sunrun’s Javier Rúa-Jovet fits into both categories. He considers himself one of the lucky few who was able to take out a loan to buy a diesel generator after the storm, but remembers the frustration of dealing with maintaining and keeping the generator stocked with fuel, sometimes in the middle of a rainy night. “The costs aren’t only economical, there’s the psychological toll,” he said. But a switch to maintenance solar promises to be “a positive experience, not a stressful experience.”

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When disaster hits, solar power beats coal

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‘It’s hyped up’: Climate deniers in the path of Hurricane Florence

by ShaniceLieberma Posted on September 22, 2018

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

Scientists warn that human-induced climate change is responsible for an increase in the number and severity of storms — such as Hurricane Florence, which has engulfed the Carolinas in the last week.

But many who weathered the tempest, deep in Trump country, don’t believe global warming fueled it and don’t think humans are the problem — or the solution.

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As the world’s oceans warm at a faster rate, hurricanes become more likely, and there has been an increase in storms since the start of the 20th century. Experts warn more numerous and even more ferocious hurricanes are on the way, and the U.S. government is not addressing the central issue even as America’s coasts get battered and inland areas inundated.

But based on the evidence in North Carolina on Wednesday, the random man and woman in the street is still not convinced about the science — even those who have faced two major storms in two years.

“We live on the coast. It’s cyclical,” said Bob Slattery.

“We may get two or three in a year, then go four or five years with nothing,” he added.

Slattery, 74, and his wife Gerda, 73, were sitting in the pretty downtown area of Fayetteville on Wednesday. The couple live six miles southwest of Fayetteville and weren’t hit too badly by the storm, but much of the city was, as the Cape Fear river reached record flood levels, spilling over its banks into neighborhoods and roads.

While miles of North Carolina is inundated, downtown Fayetteville had been fortunate enough to avoid flooding this week, although locals said a wine bar roof had partly caved in.

“There’s a group of people that want to control things, and they’re using climate change to control things, and they want to put a tax on things,” Bob said.

There is scant evidence for a shady group using the concept of climate change to control and tax society — but it appears there is wider support for the theory in these parts.

“That’s our opinion,” Gerda said.

“And many other people I speak to think that, too,” Bob said.

Florence hit North Carolina just two years after Hurricane Matthew blew through the state. Matthew set a slew of unwanted flooding records in October 2016 and at the time was described as a “once in a 500 year event.” But just 23 months later, Florence has shattered that prediction, surpassing Matthew’s flooding totals and in many places having a worse impact.

Despite the proximity of the storms, and expert views, some believe the science is overblown and it’s no more than natural global rhythms.

“It comes down to cyclical climate change,” said Matthew Coe. “I don’t think we play as big a factor in climate change as people say we do — when you think of the fact that the sea level rises naturally anyways.”

Coe 37, originally from Florida, is studying for an associate’s degree, alongside working at a downtown Fayetteville cafe. He lost power for three days after Florence roared in.

“Mother Nature is its own entity,” he said. “Whatever happens, it’ll fix itself eventually.” He pointed out that there had been fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature before, and predicted there could be another “ice age” which would correct the current trajectory of the climate.

“I think everything is hyped up a bit,” he said. In his opinion, there are “scientists on both sides” of the climate change argument.

There is actually a 97 percent expert consensus among climate scientists that humans are responsible for global warming, although Coe and the Slatterys are far from alone in their beliefs: A 2016 Pew Research Center study found that 51 percent of Americans do not believe global climate change is due to human activity. Donald Trump is among the 51 percent — or at least was in 2015. That year he wrote in his book Crippled America that climate change was not human-caused, although he did not explain the reasoning behind his belief. During the 2016 presidential election, he called it a Chinese hoax. On Wednesday he was in North Carolina and South Carolina, promising “100 percent support” to displaced residents and those with flooded neighborhoods and power outages, but not mentioning measures to deal with climate change, different impacts on rich and poor, or coastal over-development.

Further along Hay Street, the thoroughfare through downtown Fayetteville, the retired air force member Andre Altman was sitting in the Huske Hardware House bar.

“Ask Mother Nature,” said Altman, 57. He echoed Coe’s belief that Earth’s capricious matriarch could be responsible for climate change and the ensuing increase in the number and force of storms.

“Really the Earth goes through cycles. So it’s just we’re on that particular cycle where we’re grabbing more storms,” Altman said. “Back in the industrial age we were burning coal and it didn’t get hotter then.”

Despite his belief that climate change was mostly a natural phenomenon, Altman accepted some of the science that said humans were also to blame. He recycles, he said, but believes his own actions are likely to have little impact.

“I try to worry about what I can affect. If I could actually do something about it, I would,” Altman said.

“But I’m not in politics.”

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‘It’s hyped up’: Climate deniers in the path of Hurricane Florence

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A year after an environmental disaster in Texas, chemical company executives face charges

by PennyQuimby58 Posted on September 5, 2018

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

Hurricane Harvey struck southeast Texas last August with 130 mph winds and dumped more than 50 inches of rain across the region. In the aftermath of the second-costliest storm in recent American history, a Category 4 nightmare that left at least 88 Texans dead and forced thousands to flee into shelters, government agencies have finally begun reckoning with Harvey’s environmental cost. The storm contributed to the release of more than 8 million pounds of air pollution and more than 150 million gallons of wastewater.

Arguably no city was hit harder by the environmental devastation during the storm than Crosby, a 2.26-square-mile satellite of Houston with fewer than 3,000 residents. Chemicals left in refrigeration trailers at a plant owned by the multinational chemical manufacturer Arkema Inc. in the northeast part of town caught fire on August 31 and September 1, sending toxic clouds of smoke billowing into the air. More than 200 neighbors evacuated their homes, and 21 first responders sought medical treatment for the nausea, vomiting, and dizziness they experienced after exposure to the chemicals.

Along with hundreds of residents, those first responders have sued Arkema in a pair of class-action lawsuits for negligence, charging that the company did not properly safeguard its chemicals or inform the community of the “unreasonably dangerous condition” created by their release. Harris and Liberty counties have separately sued the company. Arkema has fiercely denied any wrongdoing, but now, a year after the disaster, its leaders may have more to worry about than fronting a huge payday for disgruntled residents.

On August 3, a Harris County grand jury indicted the company’s chief executive, Richard Rowe, and the Crosby plant’s manager, Leslie Comardelle, for “recklessly” releasing chemicals into the air and putting residents and emergency workers at risk. “Companies don’t make decisions, people do,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “Responsibility for pursuing profit over the health of innocent people rests with the leadership of Arkema.”

“These criminal charges are astonishing,” Arkema responded in a statement. “At the end of its eight-month investigation, the Chemical Safety Board noted that Hurricane Harvey was the most significant rainfall event in U.S. history, an Act of God that never before has been seen in this country.”

The series of fires at Arkema’s plant were far from the only environmental disasters to hit southeast Texas in Harvey’s wake. Matt Tresaugue, who studies air quality issues at the Environmental Defense Fund, says Arkema barely even cracked his top 10 list. More serious, he argued, was the cumulative impact of several lesser-known incidents across the region. But fairly or not, Arkema remains, for many people, the most public example of executive malfeasance in the face of environmental calamity during Harvey. Companies like Valero and Chevron, among many others, were sued over their actions during the hurricane, but only Arkema’s executives face possible criminal penalties.

Arkema was certainly not the only entity at fault during the storm, but in its lack of preparedness and defiant defense of its actions, the company struck residents — and Harris County prosecutors — as eager to prioritize its profits over safety. The firm’s history did not help.

The year before Harvey, Arkema was slapped with a nearly $92,000 fine after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found 10 violations at the Crosby plant related to its handling of hazardous materials. Previous incidents, including the release of sulfuric acid in 1994 that left a 5-year-old girl with severe burns, led one Crosby resident to tell the Houston Chronicle she had “a bitter taste in [her] mouth about Arkema.”

Perhaps most troubling, Arkema has twice before faced civil penalties for improperly storing organic peroxides, the same chemicals that caught fire during Harvey. In 2006, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality cited the Crosby plant for releasing 3,200 pounds of pollutants because a “pallet of organic peroxide was stored inappropriately” and burned up. The state imposed a $20,300 penalty five years later, after finding that Arkema was not maintaining the proper temperature in the devices it used to decompose dangerous gases.

Arkema’s passionate defense of its behavior has led its representatives to quibble over relatively minor concerns. Janet Smith, a company spokesperson, responded to a request for comment from Mother Jones by first criticizing other media companies, such as the New York Times and CNN, for using the term “explosion” to describe what happened last August at the Crosby plant.“The flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey led to a series of short-lived fires at our Crosby plant, but there was no explosion,” she wrote in an email. “We have repeatedly pointed this out to news media covering the incident, but the inaccurate coverage persists.”

Even as residents have begun the process of returning home and paying off storm-related debts, many neighbors still do not know the long-term health effects of exposure to the toxic cloud, because federal investigators could not figure them out, according to a lengthy U.S. Chemical Safety Board report published in May.

The models Environmental Protection Agency staffers used to track how local air and water quality were being affected by the Arkema fires “did not reflect the nature of actual dispersions that occurred,” the CSB found. Combined with “other practical difficulties,” the EPA was unable to draw any firm conclusions about the health threats brought about by Arkema’s plant.

In its public statements soon after the disaster, the EPA was also not clear about the risks posed to residents who were soon forced to evacuate. After testing water samples near the Crosby plant, the EPA announced that the results “were less than the screening levels that would warrant further investigation.” The agency’s inspector general’s office said on August 2 it would investigate how the EPA responded to accidents during Harvey.

The Trump administration played a role, too. Under President Barack Obama, the EPA proposed a series of rules designed to strengthen industry’s reporting requirements to mitigate future chemical disasters. Known as the Chemical Disaster Rule, the proposal was opposed by companies like Arkema and indefinitely delayed once President Donald Trump’s first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, took office. Pruitt defended his reasoning after the Arkema fires by claiming that terrorists could have exploited the information chemical companies would have been forced to give up under the rule.“What you’ve got to do is strike the balance,” he said, “so that you’re not informing terrorists and helping them have data that they shouldn’t have.”

For now, at least, that rule has been restored. On August 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the EPA’s decision to delay the rule. Calling the agency’s actions “arbitrary and capricious,” the court ordered the EPA to let the rule remain until the agency amends its requirements by standard regulatory action. That ruling may only prove temporary given the Trump administration’s commitment to rolling back dozens of Obama-era environmental regulations.

Whether the Chemical Safety Board even exists the next time another environmental disaster occurs is an open question. Embattled former chair Rafael Moure-Eraso was the target of a series of congressional probes into his workplace conduct during a five-year tenure that ended in 2015. Since taking office, Trump has tried to eliminate the agency twice in the White House’s budget proposals, but Congress has restored full funding both times. The resulting uncertainty has impeded “the CSB’s ability to attract, hire, and retain staff,” according to a report from the EPA inspector general’s office in June.

Stopping the next Arkema disaster will require more stringent oversight from federal regulators and a willingness by industry leaders to pony up the cash for frequent safety evaluations and up-to-date equipment. With industry-friendly leaders at the helm of the EPA and a CSB clinging to life, those reforms do not appear likely anytime soon.

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A year after an environmental disaster in Texas, chemical company executives face charges

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A mental health crisis continues to unfold in Puerto Rico

by LorenzoTrz Posted on August 8, 2018

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

For the first 36 hours after Hurricane Maria, 5-year-old Keydiel and his mother Shaina were trapped by the toppled trees that blocked the doors to their home in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico.

Eventually, neighbors cleared the sturdy tamarind trees, cutting by hand because there was no electricity. The mother and son emerged to find an island devoured by 155 mph winds and harsh rains.

Their immediate concerns were physical — finding food and water — but bubbling below were anxieties and trauma that would endure for months.

“It was difficult to find himself [Keydiel] in a situation where he didn’t have a way out. It was difficult for me,” Shaina told the Guardian through an interpreter, while sitting at a table outside her son’s classroom. “As a mom, I was very stressed out and I got anxious because I wasn’t able to solve things so quickly. I felt impotent.”

Keydiel’s school sits just below hillside forests that are finally a dense, dark green after Maria twisted them into a tangling mess of trees stripped of leaves and bark. This sign of recovery — one Puerto Ricans craved after their green island turned brown in the storm — is betrayed by house-sized patches of mud from landslides and the remains of pulverized structures.

Down in the valley, where crisp, salt-flecked coastal air drifts in from the Caribbean Sea just over the hills, Keydiel’s school had survived the storm. It was closed for months but eventually provided refuge for children desperate for everything to be like it was before.

Ten months after Maria, Shaina and other Puerto Ricans face a mental health crisis that stems from something frighteningly simple: One powerful hurricane robbed millions of Americans of reliable access to drinkable water, food, medical care, electricity, phones, and internet.

These basic necessities are still luxuries in the hardest-hit parts of the island and took longer than expected to return to the rest of the island, but nowhere is life the same. This disruption to daily life has exacerbated feelings of despair, anxiety, and hopelessness.

Gary Shaye, Save the Children’s interim director in Puerto Rico who also responded to the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal, said this daily impact distinguishes Maria from other natural disasters because it is a “living emergency.”

“The only other thing like this would be some conflict situations,” Shaye said, alluding to the agency’s work in the Middle East with Syrians “when you see people in a camp and they have a cellphone and every day they don’t know what’s happening to their house, their family, who died — and they live with it every day. Whereas other types of emergencies don’t wipe out an entire island.”

Walking around ‘zombie-eyed’

Mental healthcare was an issue in Puerto Rico well before Maria made landfall on Sept. 20, 2017.

The island’s decade-long recession provoked high unemployment rates and migration that separated families, a distressing mix for Puerto Ricans — especially those underserved by the island’s strained healthcare system.

All these issues were exacerbated by Maria, which robbed every person on the island of their daily routine for weeks, if not months.

Pharmacy closures deprived people of access to prescription antidepressants and antipsychotics. Veterans of the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Korea reported that the sounds of the storm and scenes of destruction triggered post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms that had been managed.

From November 2017 through January 2018, the island’s suicide hotline, Línea PAS, saw a 246 percent increase in calls from people who said they had attempted suicide compared with the same time a year earlier. There was also an 83 percent jump in people who said they had thought about attempting suicide.

The hurricane left a landscape of flattened homes, broken glass, downed trees, snapped cables languishing in water, and streams of people in shock searching for food, water, or loved ones. Those who were there in the weeks after the storm recall seeing people walking around “zombie-eyed.”

RICARDO ARDUENGO / AFP / Getty Images

The unsafe conditions kept children across the island largely indoors, where they couldn’t do activities that needed light or electricity. Because so many people had moved in with extended families for the hurricane, children removed from their neighborhoods were surrounded by strangers. Streets clogged with debris and crushed glass posed a long-term hazard.

Schools were closed for months, and even when they reopened, classes didn’t immediately begin and not every teacher had returned.

It was a recipe for trauma that can have long-lasting effects, according to Barbara Ammirati, Save the Children’s deputy director of Puerto Rico programs. She has led the implementation of psychosocial programs for children in U.S. disaster zones since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Shaina said Keydiel “went a little bit into a crisis” after the hurricane. He had no one to play with until late November, when school returned. Back in class, he was abnormally aggressive.

Shaina, meanwhile, hesitated every morning at 7:30 a.m. when she dropped him off at school, worried about how his food would be prepared because two months after the hurricane, drinkable water was still scarce. Rumors that rats drinking from a local river had later died petrified those who had been cooking and cleaning in the stream.

Hypervigilance is normal for parents after a natural disaster because of the parents’ own stress, explained Ammirati.

By late June, Keydiel and Shaina had shown signs of improvement, something Shaina credits to Save the Children, which deployed child protection programs to 32 municipalities, including Yabucoa.

Keydiel participated in programs that seek to mitigate trauma by improving children’s coping abilities and bringing out their inner resilience. The nonprofit also hosts workshops to train and support caregivers, who are often just as severely affected by the disaster as children.

‘She’d cry every morning, she’d cry every night’

Yabucoa was the site of the hurricane’s first landfall, where at least 1,500 homes were damaged and 60 percent still lacked electricity in May.

At least 19 students said they had considered suicide, according to Yabucoa city council. In May, a man climbed an electricity tower there and threatened to throw himself off in protest at the lack of power. And a preliminary study of 34 families in Yabucoa showed 74 percent of participants would like to receive psychological services.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) awarded $6.7 million to Puerto Rico for its emergency mental health services assistance and training program, which it usually provides for one to two months, but was in place in Puerto Rico until March. FEMA also provided more than $12.6 million for a similar mental health program to run until December that includes services for people who need long-term counseling, children and the elderly.

The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration also loosened restrictions on existing block grants, offered technical assistance, and provided materials including 300 disaster kits and 5,000 suicide prevention wallet cards.

But places like Yabucoa are also getting significant support from the island’s mental health professionals and international nonprofits, including Save the Children, who pay regular visits to the area.

A woman in Yabucoa after Hurricane Maria. HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP / Getty Images

It was a Save the Children course where Alejandra, a cheery 9-year-old, said she and her classmates discussed what they were afraid of and how to help each other if they were mad or upset. “We were all sad it was ending because it was a lot of fun,” she said through an interpreter in an interview at her school.

Alejandra was chatty, and danced around her school’s outdoor hallways after the interview. The warm, thick air warned of an incoming tropical rainstorm that would cause electric outages throughout the afternoon — the new normal across Puerto Rico.

Her parents, Yeliza and Juan, said her bubbly attitude was a dramatic turn from how she was in the winter, when the family fled Puerto Rico for Florida.

More than two months after the hurricane, they did not have electricity and drinkable water was difficult to come by. Alejandra had been a dedicated student who took pride in her good grades, but school was closed through late November.

Juan said in a state of “complete desperation” they left for Florida.

They returned to Puerto Rico less than three weeks later because Alejandra was struggling at her school, which had other newly transported Puerto Rican students but no teachers who could speak Spanish. Alejandra said she didn’t feel safe at school and was very sad because she spent most of her time indoors with her older cousin.

“She’d cry every morning, she’d cry every night,” Yeliza said. “She didn’t want to go to school.”

Juan had found work and the family was living with relatives, but they still couldn’t get used to the new place, so they came back. “Now we’re here, battling it out,” Juan said.

Power returned to their home in April, though Alejandra pointed out that the electricity still goes out “now and then.” Her mother added: “But at least we can watch TV every day,” prompting claps from her young daughter.

Providers need psychological support, too

Ammirati said the existing network of mental health professionals in Puerto Rico was strong, but because the scope of devastation was so enormous, those providers needed psychological support too, like on an airplane when passengers are instructed to put an oxygen mask on themselves before helping children.

At one school in Yabucoa, a Save the Children caregivers workshop for teachers had the entire staff in tears. A course instructor, Tina Tirado, said teachers there told her they despaired at the lack of electricity, were distressed about not having their normal lives back and had a lack of hope about the future.

To address this issue, the island’s existing network of mental health professionals and educators made alliances with local universities, clinicians across the globe, NGOs, and city governments.

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene sent clinicians to train nearly 1,000 people, mostly school staff, in psychological first aid. The department’s deputy commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said city workers heard “bone-chilling stories about people losing family members to suicide.”

“Teachers having to act on behalf of students to prevent parents from killing themselves in front of their kids,” Barbot said. “Just really traumatic events that even hearing them recounted by individuals months later, you can see how emotionally affected they are by the ongoing devastation of Hurricane Maria.

“This situation has brought into stark relief for me, that in this modern age, in the United States, we have to talk about the basicness of electricity and clean water and essential public health needs of a community,” Barbot said. “I never thought six months after a disaster, I would still have to focus on that.”

A sense of community remains strong

Despite this, Barbot and other mental health professional see signs of hope.

“Part of what we learned in addition to the hunger that there was for the basic skills was also about the resiliency of the human spirit,” Barbot said. “Even though they had gone through this tremendous devastation, they still had a sense of community and connectedness and commitment to their jobs as educators, to their calling as protectors of children to kind of show up for them and create a semblance of normalcy.”

This was on display at a school in Yabucoa for children between 18 months and 14 years. While showing off student-grown watermelon, pepper, and tomato plants and newly cleaned classrooms, Principal Maraida spoke about the army of parents who had helped her rebuild the campus, which was closed to its 150 students for 103 days.

She ignored tables and chairs in a classroom for toddlers and instead told her story while sitting on the classroom floor, which she said “is where everything begins.”

One of the school’s parent helpers, Melissa, had moved her husband, daughter, and niece into her parent’s house ahead of the hurricane because their property was sturdier. It was clearly the right decision, as pictures of her own home after the hurricane show a building that looks like it was picked up and smashed into the hill it was built on. She later found the family’s mattresses down the hill from their home.

Along with losing everything she owns, Melissa’s house had only got electricity back in late June — 290 days after it first went out.

But Maraida said Melissa had done everything possible to help the school, even after giving birth to her now 3-month-old baby. “She’ll slaughter pigs if you want her to,” Maraida said.

Melissa explained that the school was important for her daughter, Sonielys, who requires special education courses. Sonielys, 10, also went through Save the Children programs and was calm when power went out in a classroom during an interview.

She made an eerie, undulating “wooooh” noise to describe what the hurricane sounded like and showed no signs of fear as she recalled nonstop rain and not being allowed to go to school for weeks. “I learned that we’re all the same but some things are different,” Sonielys said through an interpreter.

Maraida was proud as she spoke of the work Melissa and other enthusiastic parents accomplished, but when asked about mental health issues in the community, she crumbled.

“We all have that friction sometimes, because the situation is not simple, it is a little bit complicated,” she said, crying. “I myself have a lot of trouble because I’m in charge. Because I am the leader, when I see that things don’t function I want them to function. I try to think positive but it’s a little bit hard.”

She described working as a contractor, lobbying the island and federal governments for help, while also caring for her daughter as a single mom, and for her father, who is in chemotherapy for cancer. She said: “I am staying here and I’m giving it to the end.”

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Bribery trial reveals Jeff Sessions’ role in blocking EPA action targeting major donor

by Jamie01L805961 Posted on August 3, 2018

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

When a coal executive and two lawyers stood trial in Alabama last month for bribery and related crimes, it was clear from the start that things might get uncomfortable for Jeff Sessions. The attorney general’s name, after all, appeared on a list of possible witnesses.

Though he was never called to the stand, detailed references to Sessions and key members of his staff thread their way through the record of the four-week trial, which concluded on July 20 when David Roberson, vice president of Drummond Coal, and Joel Gilbert, a partner in the Birmingham-based law firm Balch & Bingham, were found guilty of paying off an Alabama lawmaker to oppose a federal environmental cleanup effort that could have cost Drummond millions. (The judge dismissed the charges against a second Balch lawyer, Steve McKinney.)

Sessions has long had close ties to Balch and Drummond — the companies respectively ranked as his second- and third-biggest contributors during his Senate career, collectively donating nearly a quarter of a million dollars to his campaigns. And as Mother Jones and the Project on Government Oversight have previously reported, then-Senator Sessions directly intervened with the Environmental Protection Agency to block the cleanup at the center of the federal bribery case.

Upon becoming attorney general, Sessions had a glaring conflict of interest in a criminal prosecution that he was technically overseeing as the nation’s top law enforcement official. Yet despite questions from Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont,  and others, he repeatedly refused to say whether he had recused himself from the matter. His silence seems even more questionable given evidence introduced as part of the case.

Billing statements, meeting minutes, and other records briefly made public during the trial — and quickly placed under seal by the judge presiding over the case, but not before Alabama columnist Kyle Whitmire saved copies — reveal that Sessions and his Senate staff coordinated more closely with the defendants than previously known. The documents indicate extensive contact on the EPA action between Sessions’ office and Roberson, Gilbert, and McKinney, including at least 13 phone calls and two in-person meetings in Washington, D.C. And they show that Drummond’s attorneys at Balch & Bingham coached Sessions’ staff on how to attack the EPA’s position and that Sessions’ staff reported back to the lawyers about their interactions with the agency.

The backdrop for the bribery case is North Birmingham’s 35th Avenue neighborhood — an impoverished, largely black enclave sandwiched between the city’s airport and various industrial sites, including a Drummond plant. For years, residents have reported unusually high levels of cancer and respiratory illness, and they have complained about the dark soot that coats their homes. In 2013, the EPA found such high levels of toxins in the area that it designated a 400-acre section of the neighborhood a Superfund site; federal health authorities warned parents not to allow their children to play outside in their own yards. The EPA determined that Drummond was one of the companies potentially responsible for the pollution, and thus possibly on the hook for some of the cleanup costs.

When, in 2014, EPA officials tried to elevate the neighborhood to the National Priorities List — a select group of highly polluted sites picked for accelerated and more extensive cleanups — they hit a brick wall of resistance from Alabama’s mostly Republican political establishment. But to the surprise of EPA officials, a local Democratic state lawmaker, Oliver Robinson, also joined the opposition, sending a February 2015 letter to Alabama environmental authorities decrying the EPA effort.

It would later turn out that this letter was ghostwritten by Balch & Bingham’s Joel Gilbert, who, on behalf of Drummond, was funneling money to Robinson’s personal foundation in order to secure the lawmaker’s cooperation in blocking the EPA cleanup. Last summer, Robinson pleaded guilty to accepting $360,000 in bribes. He then began cooperating with prosecutors as they built their case against the Drummond and Balch officials he said were at the heart of it: Roberson, Gilbert, and McKinney (lawyers for all three men declined to comment for this article.)

Like Robinson, Sessions also sent a letter ghostwritten by Balch lawyers, this one to the EPA. Records released during the trial shed light on how this letter, sent a year after Robinson’s, came to be, as well as the extensive actions Sessions took on behalf of his top political donors to thwart EPA action in North Birmingham. Sessions’ office did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

On Feb. 4, 2015, Balch lawyers convened to discuss their plan to derail the 35th Avenue site’s inclusion on the National Priorities List. According to notes of that meeting released at trial, Balch had prepared a draft “letter but no signatures” for Alabama’s congressional delegation that disputed the methods the EPA had used to determine responsibility for the pollution (and thus potential liability for the cleanup). The Balch meeting notes list a Sessions staffer named Brandon Middleton as the only lobbying contact for Alabama’s congressional delegation on the matter. The day after the meeting, internal Balch records show that Gilbert reached out to Sessions’ office. And they note that on Feb. 18, McKinney spoke with Middleton “regarding North Birmingham.”

The next month, Drummond and Balch’s political action committees contributed a combined $10,000 to a political action committee controlled by Sessions — and run in part by a former Sessions staffer named Ed Haden,who is now a senior partner at Balch.

During the rest of 2015 and into early 2016, Sessions staffers communicated extensively with representatives of Balch and Drummond over the letter, sending drafts back and forth. On September 15, 2015, Drummond’s Roberson and Balch’s Gilbert flew from Birmingham to Washington, D.C., for meetings with staffers for Sessions, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), and Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Alabama). In an “Environmental Update” subsequently posted on Balch & Bingham’s website (and since removed), the firm said its attorneys “met with Senator Jeff Sessions” and predicted that a letter issued “shortly” from “key members of the Alabama congressional delegation” would make the case for opposing the effort to make Drummond and other companies pay for cleaning up the polluted site in Birmingham. Two months later, on Feb. 26, 2016, Middleton delivered a letter signed by Sessions, Shelby, and Palmer to the EPA. The letter also summoned top EPA officials to a meeting “to discuss the concerns.”

“Any information given to Senator Shelby’s office would have been one of many tools used to help inform the senator,” said a spokesperson. Palmer’s office did not respond to questions.

After the letter was delivered, Sessions’ office continued to work in close coordination with the Balch attorneys at the center of the bribery case to aggressively undermine the possibility of a cleanup. In March 2016, the EPA responded to Sessions’ letter, expressing disagreement but offering to meet. According to an email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Middleton told an EPA official that he was “waiting to hear back from our folks and boss on how they’d like to approach meeting.” But Sessions’ staffers weren’t just looking for feedback from Sessions. Balch records show that over the course of several months, Balch attorneys and Middleton exchanged emails and spoke over the phone about how to deal with the EPA’s response and prepare for the meeting with EPA officials.

Meanwhile, Balch’s political action committee continued contributing to Sessions’ campaign coffers. On June 30, 2016, Balch donated $1,000 to Sessions’ political action committee. That day, according to another email obtained under FOIA, Middleton sent the EPA a message setting the agenda for a July 7 sit-down in Sessions’ office to discuss why the proposed Birmingham cleanup should not go forward.

The day before the meeting, McKinney met Sessions staffers to prep them, according to the firm’s billing records.

On July 7, two high-level EPA officials met with members of Sessions’ staff, who grilled them on the Birmingham cleanup and attacked the methods the agency had used to measure toxins in the neighborhood. Sessions himself was scheduled to attend, but at the last minute he backed out to spend the day with then-candidate Donald Trump, who had decided to make a round of visits to Republican senators on Capitol Hill.

One of the EPA officials who attended the meeting told Mother Jones that he was surprised by the stridency with which Sessions staffers opposed the EPA’s actions in North Birmingham, especially considering the situation on the ground. “For residents, there was an immediate threat,”said Mathy Stanislaus, who was then an assistant EPA administrator, but “the public health risk didn’t seem to be a prominent concern from those who opposed it.”

During his confirmation process to become attorney general, Sessions was asked how he would handle an investigation involving campaign donors. Sessions said he would consult with Justice Department ethics officials on any investigation where a possible conflict might exist, but his office has repeatedly refused to discuss whether he insulated himself from the Drummond bribery case.

And he isn’t the only Justice Department official linked to matters involving the 35th Avenue Superfund site. When Sessions became attorney general, he installed in key positions at least two people involved in the conversations his office had on the subject. Among them was Brandon Middleton, who served as the liaison between Sessions’ office and the Balch lawyers working to undermine the 35th Avenue cleanup. Sessions appointed Middleton as a top deputy in the Justice Department’s environmental and natural resources division — the office responsible for bringing cases against corporate polluters, such as Drummond, to force them to fund environmental remediation. (Middleton has since moved on to a position at the Interior Department.) And Sessions named Jeff Wood, a Balch & Bingham partner who was part of the firm’s 35th Avenue lobbying effort, to the top job in that division. (Wood recused himself from the matter.) Middleton and a spokesman for Wood did not respond to questions.

With the convictions of Gilbert and Roberson, the lead prosecutor in the case claimed victory for the people of North Birmingham. “We’re happy for the citizens of Birmingham that someone is finally speaking on their behalf,” prosecutor George Martin told reporters after the trial ended. “This is a righteous verdict.”

Balch’s managing partner Stan Blanton said in statement, “Although our firm was not a party to the case, I and the rest of our partners, associates and staff are deeply disappointed in any conduct that does not adhere to our commitment to the rule of law and to the communities in which we are fortunate to live and work.” Yet Drummond blamed Balch for Roberson’s legal troubles. “We consider David to be a man of integrity who would not knowingly engage in wrongdoing,” according to a company statement, “When an environmentalist group raised allegations regarding our operations in the Birmingham area, Drummond responded by hiring one of Alabama’s most well-respected environmental law firms … We were assured the firm’s community outreach efforts on our behalf were legal and proper.”

If anything, what the trial exposed was just how intricate the ties were between powerful corporate interests such as Drummond and Balch and members of the Alabama political establishment, notably Sessions.

If justice was delivered for North Birmingham, it still may not feel that way to the people who continue to live there. Roberson and Gilbert may have been convicted on bribery charges, but the plan they carried out has worked so far. With the help of Sessions and other Alabama lawmakers, they blocked the EPA from mounting a large-scale cleanup — and Drummond has yet to pay a dime for any role it might have played in turning an impoverished neighborhood into a Superfund site.

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Bribery trial reveals Jeff Sessions’ role in blocking EPA action targeting major donor

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How to Grow Your Own Dry Beans

by RichLindquist Posted on July 14, 2018

Growing your own dry beans is a great way to have fresh and organic dry beans on hand year-round. Beans are an easy crop to grow and there are numerous varieties you can experiment with. Let?s take a look at how to get started.

Choosing a Variety

Beans come in hundreds of different heirloom and modern varieties, all with unique flavors, colors and shapes. One of the best ways to find good varieties is to visit your local farmers? market, seed swap or garden center and ask which types of seeds work well in your area. Seed catalogs and online suppliers should also have a selection of beans appropriate for drying. In addition, chat with other gardeners to find out what?s been working for them, and maybe ask if they could share a handful of their favorite beans you can plant.

1. Bush Beans

If you live in a colder climate, bush beans are often your best choice because they have a shorter time to maturity compared to pole beans. The plants typically only grow around two to three feet (60 to 90 centimeters) tall and can stand on their own without support.

Some fast-maturing varieties to watch out for include ?Jacob?s Cattle?, ?Vermont Cranberry? or ?Black Valentine?. In climates with a longer season, ?Calypso?, ?Anasazi? or Soldier beans are classic varieties that produce well.

2. Pole Beans

Pole beans typically have a longer growing season than bush beans. They will also continue to produce beans for a longer time, unlike bush beans that often mature all at once. Pole beans require some form of support, such as a trellis, a classic pole ?teepee? or a fence. Another option is to grow your pole beans on the stalks of neighboring corn or sunflowers.

The varieties ?Good Mother Stallard?, ?Czar? or Romano-type pole beans all make excellent dry crops.

Related: How & Why to Participate in a Seed Swap

Planting Your Seeds

If your growing season is fairly short, it?s best to plant your beans soon after the risk of frost has passed in spring. If you have a longer season, you can plant beans after your spring crops are harvested and the weather has warmed up. A sunny location is ideal.

It can be beneficial to cover your seeds with Rhizobium bacteria before planting them. You can buy Rhizobium at most garden centers, and the bacteria will help the developing bean plants fix nitrogen in the soil.

All beans prefer direct sowing in the soil. In colder climates, you can plant your seeds on raised beds to capture more heat. Plant seeds one inch (2.5 centimeters) deep in your soil with one to two inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) between the seeds, giving larger seeds more space. Then, space additional rows at least one foot (30 centimeters) apart.

If you?re growing pole beans on corn or sunflowers, plant the bean seeds directly at the base of the support plants when they?re about one foot (30 centimeters) tall.

Mulch the soil after sowing to retain moisture.

Care Tips

Beans do best in a moderately rich soil, but they can also grow in fairly degraded soils due to their ability to fix their own nitrogen. This also means they do not need extra fertilizer while growing.

Water the developing plants regularly, especially as they?re forming pods. Make sure the plants dry out in between waterings to prevent mold and bacteria problems. As the plants mature, they become more drought tolerant and you can cut back on water.

Remove weeds as the seedlings are growing, although the bean plants effectively shade out any weeds as they get bigger.

Related: How to Make Beans and Grains More Digestible

Harvesting

Your beans are ready to harvest when the pods look dry. You?ll also likely be able hear the beans rattling inside when you shake them.

Keep in mind that beans are very sensitive to frost, so make sure you harvest them well before a potential frost date. If your beans aren?t ready yet and frost is expected, you can cut the plants early, hang them in a protected area, and let the pods continue to mature.

If your pods have matured well on the plants, you should be able to simply pull up the plants and harvest the beans. When you only have a small patch of beans, the easiest way to get the beans out of the pods is by hand. You can squeeze open the pods as you?re harvesting the plants and collect the beans in a container, or you can pick the pods off the plants and set them aside to open later.

Another option is to hold the plant inside a barrel and bang it against the sides to get the beans out. If you grow a large area of beans, you may want to invest in professional threshing equipment.

To clean the beans, you can either run the beans over a screen or use a hair dryer to blow off any debris.

Storage

Check that your beans are completely dry before packing them for storage. When you bite a bean, it should feel hard. If the beans still have some softness, spread them out in a warm area and let them dry longer until they?ve hardened.

When the beans are ready, pack them into airtight containers and store them in a dark place. They?re best used within a year. You can keep them longer, but they may become too dry and difficult to cook.

Related: 7 Ways to Avoid Gas from Beans

Bean Recipes

Looking for ideas on how to enjoy your harvest? Check out some of these delicious recipes.

Hearty 4-Bean Stew
Tuscan White Bean Soup
Simple and Delicious Black Bean Chili
Herbed Bean Salad
Beans and Greens with Herbed Polenta
Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas
Jamaican Rice and Beans

Related on Care2

How to Grow Your Own Goji Berries
12 Ways to Get Rid of Aggressive Weeds Without Resorting to Roundup
Do Marigolds Really Repel Garden Pests?

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How to Grow Your Own Dry Beans

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Scott Pruitt can’t escape his investigations just because he resigned

by AntonetMVNZ Posted on July 13, 2018

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

Scott Pruitt may be out at the EPA, but he left in the midst of more than a dozen federal investigations into his conduct. The bulk of these investigations are audits that the EPA’s Office of Inspector General agreed to take on. A week after Pruitt’s resignation, the OIG confirmed that these investigations won’t be ending just because Pruitt is no longer in office.

The independent EPA office will continue work on at least five audits, “all of which focus on programmatic, systemic, and/or operational agency issues,” Kentia Elbaum, a spokesperson for the OIG office, wrote in an email to reporters. Some of these audits were already examining issues that predated Pruitt’s arrival, but they have all expanded in scope to include revelations about how Pruitt deployed EPA resources. That includes whether the EPA adhered to its policies on Pruitt’s first-class flights and travel through December 2017; Pruitt’s approval of raises for two employees using the Safe Drinking Water Act; and reports of his staff deleting records that should be preserved under the Freedom of Information Act. And the two others pertain to his 24/7 protective security detail.

Three of these audits could be completed as soon as August, according to Elbaum.

Now, audits are not the same as criminal investigations. Once the office issues its findings, Pruitt would only face public embarrassment since he’s no longer employed by the agency and can’t be directly reprimanded. But a number of Pruitt’s critics have said that he is worthy of a criminal probe, given the reports that he used his public office to find a job for his wife. OIG would not comment on whether Pruitt faces a criminal investigation. “While the EPA OIG announces nearly all of our audit work, we cannot confirm or deny the existence of criminal investigations, which look for violations of law,” Elbaum said. “We can say that any criminal investigations that may have existed at the time of Mr. Pruitt’s resignation will continue.”

In May, Pruitt confirmed that he established a legal defense fund to help him through his investigations. As head of the EPA, he would have had to walk a fine line to not run afoul of ethics law in collecting his donations. Now, he’s free from those restraints.

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Scott Pruitt can’t escape his investigations just because he resigned

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What the Eyes Don’t See – Mona Hanna-Attisha

by Myrna Posted on June 19, 2018

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

What the Eyes Don’t See

A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City

Mona Hanna-Attisha

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $13.99

Publish Date: June 19, 2018

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


The dramatic story of the Flint water crisis, told “with the gripping intrigue of a Grisham thriller” ( O: The Oprah Magazine )—an inspiring tale of scientific resistance by a relentless physician who stood up to power. Flint was already a troubled city in 2014 when the state of Michigan—in the name of austerity—shifted the source of its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Soon after, citizens began complaining about the water that flowed from their taps—but officials rebuffed them, insisting that the water was fine. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician at the city’s public hospital, took state officials at their word and encouraged the parents and children in her care to continue drinking the water—after all, it was American tap water, blessed with the state’s seal of approval. But a conversation at a cookout with an old friend, leaked documents from a rogue environmental inspector, and the activism of a concerned mother raised red flags about lead—a neurotoxin whose irreversible effects fall most heavily on children. Even as circumstantial evidence mounted and protests grew, Dr. Mona knew that the only thing that could stop the lead poisoning was undeniable proof— and that to get it, she’d have to enter the fight of her life.  What the Eyes Don’t See is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona—accompanied by an idiosyncratic team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders—proved that Flint’s kids were exposed to lead and then fought her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, this book shows how misguided austerity policies, the withdrawal of democratic government, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself—an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family’s activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice.  What the Eyes Don’t See is a riveting, beautifully rendered account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their—and all of our—children. “Flint is a public health disaster. But it was Dr. Mona, this caring, tough pediatrician turned detective, who cracked the case.”—Rachel Maddow   “It’s one thing to point out a problem. It is another thing altogether to step up and work to fix it. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a true American hero.”—Erin Brockovich 

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What the Eyes Don’t See – Mona Hanna-Attisha

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House Democrats call on the FBI to investigate Scott Pruitt

by AlinaJunkins Posted on June 9, 2018

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

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt already faces at least 12 federal inquiries from the EPA’s Inspector General, Government Accountability Office, and House Oversight committee.

Could a criminal probe be next?

Six House Democrats led by Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, sent a letter on Friday to the FBI and Department of Justice requesting a criminal investigation into Pruitt. “At the very least, we know that federal ethics laws bar public officials from using their position or staff for private gain,” they write in the letter. “Administrator Pruitt has certainly done just that. Further, his actions related to his wife’s employment and the quid-pro-quo condo situation with industry lobbyists may have crossed a line into criminal conduct punishable by fines or even by time in prison.”

The letter cites recent revelations about how Pruitt used his position to find a job for his wife and his staff to obtain a “well below market value” rental in a Capitol Hill townhouse owned by an energy lobbyist. There have been additional stories this week about how Pruitt directed an aide to hunt for a used Trump hotel mattress and his security detail to find him a certain lotion only available at Ritz-Carlton hotels, presumably inspired by the time he spoke to the National Mining Association at the hotel in April of last year.

In May, Pruitt confirmed in a Senate budget hearing that he has set up a legal defense fund to potentially address the expanding number of investigations into his behavior. Although the fund would be useful if he faced a criminal investigation, ethics experts see it as potentially another ethical minefield, because federal law says he cannot accept donations from donors whose business interests involve the EPA.

Read the letter from the House Democrats.

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House Democrats call on the FBI to investigate Scott Pruitt

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