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How to Negotiate With a Contractor for Green Building Projects

by optimizareseositero Posted on August 22, 2019

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If you’re planning a green renovation or remodeling project, you now have more green-friendly products and contractors available than ever before.

Although there are many important details to consider, finding the right contractor for completing the project is essential. Contractors with experience in making energy efficiency upgrades, using natural and local materials, and conserving resources will bring a lot to the table. Ideally, they will add synergy to your green home project and to make it a reality. Here are some tips for negotiating with contractors for green home projects.

Dream Green From the Start

To achieve the best results, we recommend you keep green features in mind from the project’s beginning, not merely as an afterthought. Look for contractors with an established track record of building using sustainable and recyclable materials, deep awareness of the insulation and natural lighting opportunities when remodeling, and the customer roster to prove they deliver. When you need to hire an architect or other design professionals for your project, make sure they are aware of your green project goals and that they are experienced.

If you are building an addition to your home, for example, strategically placing windows and doors can help save energy. If this isn’t planned early on, it can drive up project costs and create delays. During your walk-through with the contractor, listen to whether they make these suggestions or have to be asked. Make clear from the start you want a healthy and environmentally friendly outcome.

Do Your Homework

Although many experienced contractors will have ideas and suggestions, it is also helpful to conceptualize your project before meeting with them. Conduct research about the type of project and the materials, such as doors, window frames, or appliances involved before even the first planning session. This will help you bring specific goals to the table for the first meeting, making it more productive.

Take the time to meet several contractors, no matter how good the first one appears. Asking three contractors about the same project will produce three different approaches that may bring important issues to the surface. With those meetings behind you, pick the contractor with the best reputation who provides the most complete estimate and covers all, or at least most, of the concerns raised by the other contractors.

Consider the Long-Term Costs

Keep in mind that the upfront cost may be greater for green projects but will often save you money over time. For example, if you add insulation to the attic when finishing it out, it can reduce your heating and cooling costs for decades. Metal roofs cost more than their asphalt counterparts but are far more durable.

Consider both the project cost and potential cost savings to understand the big picture financially.

Find a Contractor With Green Renovation Experience

There are now many builders, electricians, carpenters, and even plumbers with vast knowledge and experience in completing green projects. Find a building professional with experience in the given type of project.

For example, if you want to add a graywater system to your home, find a plumber who has done this work before. Look at examples or at least photos of their work; speak with past clients and read online reviews to learn about their experience. Make sure they are licensed and insured to complete the work and that they will take care of any needed permits. There are several national certification programs that can be helpful in your search:

National Association of Home Builders (NAHB): — Certified Green Professional (CGP)
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) — LEED Accredited Professional
Green Advantage (GA) — Green Advantage Certified Practitioner (GACP)

Always Get Multiple Bids

It is typically recommended to get at least three bids for your project. It is hard to know if you are getting a fair price without shopping around. Some contractors will take different approaches to the same project, resulting in a different finished product.

The initial meeting is a great opportunity to pick their brains and get ideas. If your preferred contractor has a higher bid than others, you can ask him or her to match the price of a lower bid. Your goal is to get the best result for you, the planet, and your wallet.

Flesh Out the Details

The details can be extremely important, especially for green products.

Ask the contractor to specify what materials they will use. Whenever possible, use formaldehyde-free and recycled materials, locally and sustainably harvested wood products, nontoxic insulation, and low or no VOC finishes and adhesives. Buying these products yourself is a possible way to cut costs and ensure they have the green features you want.

Also, find out if the contractor will subcontract out some of the work. If so, research the reputation of the subcontractors as well. It’s the person doing the work who has to live up the the environmental expectations you set.

Have a Clear Contract

Make sure that the contract specifies all the important details, starting with a clear project description. Hold your contractor to their estimate, requiring they ask you before over-spending on materials or labor. The final cost of your project is your responsibility to manage and the contractor’s business to increase as much as you will allow.

Here are a few of the common questions to answer in the contract:

Who will purchase the materials and apply for needed permits?
What products will be used?
How long will it take the complete the project and is there a penalty if the project goes past the deadline?
What is the payment schedule and terms?
Is there a warranty on the work and for how long?

Make sure you get any promises the contractor makes in writing and don’t just rely on just a firm handshake. Keep your estimates, contract, and any receipts provided together both for your security and to share with a future home buyer.

 

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How to Negotiate With a Contractor for Green Building Projects

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How to watch the eclipse without trashing the Earth

by RandolphRagsdale Posted on August 18, 2017

The moon will pass in front of the sun on Aug. 21, cutting a swath of shadow across the country and blocking our nearest star for about two minutes in the middle of the day. Millions of Americans are traveling just to stand in the passing darkness.

The problem is, all those humans (as many as 7 million by one estimate) could do a lot of damage. The official eclipse website compares the event to “20 Woodstock festivals occurring simultaneously across the nation,” which sounds rambunctious indeed. Max Yasger’s farm took more than a month to clean up.

So here are some tips for making your Great American Eclipse as low-impact and environmentally friendly as possible.

Watch out for cars

As small towns prepare for a once-in-a-lifetime level of crowding, the potential for real emergency is high. Traffic jams are predicted for Charleston, South Carolina, and Salem, Oregon, which could make it harder for emergency services to respond to accidents in the hours surrounding the solar eclipse. Plus, hours of inhaling all those exhaust fumes take a toll on your health.

Taking a plane, train, or automobile? Looks like it’s time to research some carbon offset plans. If not, consider giving yourself and the planet a break by taking a bike or bus to your viewing site.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire

It’s wildfire season in the West, which means popular eclipse viewing sites in Oregon — where as many as a million visitors are headed — could be near an active blaze. Multiple wildfires are burning in the state.

Officials expect small fires from eclipse enthusiasts, whether from careless campers or from cars pulling over into tall, dry grass at the edge of the road. The long, wet winter has given way to a hot, dry summer, which means conditions are prime for wildfire. Even a few small fires could get out of control quickly, and evacuation routes will be clogged with tourist traffic.

All of this means officials have placed the risk of a major wildfire emergency at “moderate to high.” One fire scientist wrote: “In short, I fear a disaster; an eclipse apocalypse. I really hope I’m wrong.”

Yikes. You should check wildfire conditions near you before you head to your viewing site. And if you’re camping out for the eclipse, abide by any fire bans and make sure to put out all fires completely. For more information, the Oregon Department of Transportation has a complete guide on how to avoid starting a fire here.

Don’t be trashy

With so many eclipse chasers flocking to small towns and campgrounds along the eclipse route, a lot of garbage will be left behind. Residents of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, are already calling for volunteers to help tidy up. Some towns are putting trash cans and port-a-potties near major access routes, but even these emergency facilities are sure to be overwhelmed. Pro tip: Take your trash with you; bonus points for separating out the recyclables. Basically, don’t make a mess wherever you are. You know, just like any other day.

Be remote

Of course, the lowest-impact way to watch the solar eclipse is from afar. Even though only 14 states will experience the total eclipse of the sun, all of the lower 48 will see some degree of partial eclipse. So pick up some eclipse glasses (even more important if you’re not in the path of totality) and go stand outside on Monday.

NASA will also live-stream the entire event from multiple space crafts and weather balloons, ensuring you get a prime view, minus the traffic jams and carbon emissions. Just pretend you planned it this way all along.

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How to watch the eclipse without trashing the Earth

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These Republicans Want to Put Ankle Monitors on the Sponsors of Undocumented Children

by DesireeCheesman Posted on May 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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Two top Texas Republican lawmakers have been working on a border security and immigration enforcement bill with input from the Trump administration, according to multiple reports—and it pulls few punches.

Most notably, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul’s bill would force the sponsors of undocumented immigrants between the ages of 15 to 17 who show up unaccompanied at the border to wear ankle monitors so that the teens don’t skip out on deportation hearings. The sponsors are typically parents or other family members—many of whom are legal residents or citizens.

The use of ankle monitors on migrants themselves is already controversial. Mother Jones has previously reported that through for-profit companies, and at the cost of thousands of dollars, ankle monitors are offered as alternatives to long-term detention for migrants who can’t afford the lump sum of their bail, even though the monthly payments can eventually overshadow the original bail amounts. Requiring the sponsors, instead of the migrants, to wear the ankle bracelets appears to be an unprecedented step further.

The early “discussion draft” of the bill also calls to increase criminal prosecutions for immigrants who cross the border illegally, including establishing a five-year minimum prison sentence for those who re-enter the country after being deported. It would expand the use of mandatory detention for immigrants arrested within 100 miles of a border who are from countries other than Mexico or Canada—the overwhelming majority of migrants entering the United States come from Central America. It seeks an increase in detention space, allows for financial reimbursement to states that deploy their National Guard to the border, and calls for more immigration judges to speed up deportations. It calls for various border wall upgrades, but stops short of providing for Trump’s long-promised “big, beautiful” border wall.

On Tuesday, a congressional aide told Politico that the bill circulating is “really old” and “nowhere near the current draft.” But it’s unclear what has changed. While the bill is aimed at avoiding the pitfalls of the far right, hardline anti-immigrant groups have come out against it, arguing that because it lacks imposing sanctions on businesses that hire undocumented immigrants and does not provide for Trump’s border wall, it is toothless. “There’s not a single thing about worksite enforcement or anything at all against employers,” Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Washington Post. “It’s tinkering around the margins.”

Both the offices of Cornyn and McCaul declined to comment on the bill, including whether the latest draft still includes a mandate forcing undocumented children’s sponsors to wear ankle monitors.

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These Republicans Want to Put Ankle Monitors on the Sponsors of Undocumented Children

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The White House Won’t Deny the Facts of Latest Russia Scandal But Says It’s False Anyway

by RaulBrooks Posted on May 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Washington Post set off a political firestorm when it reported that President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in their White House meeting on May 10. Current and former US officials told the Post that the disclosure jeopardized a valuable source of intelligence on ISIS. The paper quoted one official as saying that Trump had “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

On Monday evening, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster read a confusing statement to the press that appeared to deny the Post’s report. “The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false,” he said, adding that “at no time—at no time—were intelligence sources or methods discussed.” Multiple news outlets soon pointed out that McMaster’s verbal gymnastics seemed to be a classic “nondenial denial.” That is, McMaster appeared to be denying information that wasn’t actually reported by the Post in the first place. The Post had not claimed that “intelligence sources or methods” were discussed; the paper had simply reported that the information discussed could be used to discern intelligence sources or methods.

Trump, for his part, appeared to muddy the waters further Tuesday morning when he took to Twitter to defend his actions. Unlike McMaster, Trump didn’t even purport to dispute the Post‘s reporting:

Later Tuesday, McMaster appeared before the press yet again in an attempt to clear up the situation. Asked about his Monday claim that the Post story was “false,” McMaster said, “I stand by my statement that I made yesterday.” But he then went on to suggest that he wasn’t actually claiming the facts in the story were wrong. Rather, he said it was the “premise” of the article that was false. According to McMaster, “What I’m saying is really the premise of that article is false—that in any way the president had a conversation that was inappropriate or that resulted in any kind of lapse in national security.”

In other words, McMaster wasn’t disputing any of the details in the Post‘s report; he was simply saying the president’s actions were somehow appropriate. McMaster refused to say whether or not the information the president shared with Lavrov and Kislyak was classified. But he repeated several times that Trump’s decision to share the material was “wholly appropriate.”

And why does McMaster think Trump’s statements to the Russians were appropriate? Because, McMaster seemed to imply, the president can decide to share whatever he wants. “As you know,” he said, “it is wholly appropriate for the president to share whatever information he thinks is necessary to advance the security of the American people. That’s what he did…He made the decision in the context of the conversation, which was wholly appropriate.”

McMaster added that Trump wasn’t even aware that the information apparently came from a sensitive intelligence source:

So there you have it: The Post story is “false” because Trump’s statement’s were “appropriate,” and Trump’s statement’s were “appropriate” because he’s the president.

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The White House Won’t Deny the Facts of Latest Russia Scandal But Says It’s False Anyway

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We fact-checked what Trump and Clinton said about energy at the debate

by gjrrkjujp Posted on October 10, 2016

Donald Trump told a few lies about energy during the debate Sunday night, while Hillary Clinton reiterated her warm feelings for natural gas.

In the last substantive question of the town hall–style debate, an audience member asked how the candidates’ energy policies would “meet our energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?”

Trump

Trump went first, cramming an impressive number of false and nonsensical statements into his two-minute answer. (On the upside, he demonstrated that he now knows what EPA stands for, correctly referring to it as the Environmental Protection Agency instead of “Department of Environmental.”) Here are the highlights:

• Trump: “[E]nergy is under siege by the Obama administration. … We are killing, absolutely killing, our energy business in this country.”

In fact: Total U.S. energy production has increased for the last six years in a row. The oil and gas sector has been booming during the Obama presidency, as have the solar and wind industries. Coal companies have been struggling — but that is largely not the fault of President Obama, just as the oil boom is largely not something he can take credit for.

• Trump: “I will bring our energy companies back. … They will make money. They will pay off our national debt. They will pay off our tremendous budget deficits.”

In fact: There is no remotely credible economic analysis to suggest that Trump’s proposals for expanded domestic fossil fuel extraction would generate enough additional tax revenue to close the budget deficit, much less pay off the existing national debt. It’s particularly implausible when you consider Trump’s massive tax-cut plans that would make both the deficit and debt considerably larger.

• Trump: “I’m all for alternative forms of energy, including wind, including solar, etc.”

In fact: Trump’s energy plan offers nothing to increase solar or wind energy production, but instead focuses on boosting fossil fuels.

• Trump: “There is a thing called clean coal.”

In fact: The hope that coal plants’ carbon emissions can be drastically reduced — either through technology that captures and sequesters the emissions or that converts coal to synthetic gas — burns eternal for the coal industry’s cheerleaders. But no one has actually significantly cut emissions at an economically viable coal plant. The promises of “clean coal” projects have not been fulfilled.

• Trump: “Foreign companies are now coming in and buying so many of our different plants, and then rejiggering the plant so they can take care of their oil.”

In fact: What is Trump trying to say with this gibberish? We have no idea.

Clinton

Clinton’s answer was, as one would expect, more cautious and tempered. She said, among other things, that she supports “moving toward more clean, renewable energy as quickly as we can, because I think we can be the 21st century clean-energy superpower and create millions of new jobs and businesses.” And her climate and energy plan would indeed promote renewable power.

But she also made some dubious statements herself:

• Clinton: “We are … producing a lot of natural gas, which serves as a bridge to more renewable fuels, and I think that’s an important transition.”

In fact: This comment surely set many climate activists’ teeth on edge — and not for the first time, as Clinton has been saying similar things for years. Many activists strongly disagree that natural gas should be part of a plan to shift to renewables and fight climate change. Multiple studies have indicated that natural gas is no better for the climate than coal when you consider the high rates of methane leakage in natural gas production and transport. 350.org, the aggressive anti–fossil fuel group, swiftly issued a statement criticizing that comment while praising the rest of Clinton’s response.

• Clinton: “[W]e are now, for the first time ever, energy independent. We are not dependent upon the Middle East. But the Middle East still controls a lot of the prices.”

In fact: Clinton was pandering to voter ignorance with her claim that the U.S. has become “energy independent.” Though U.S. oil production is up and oil imports are down, the country is still a net importer of crude oil and petroleum products. And as Clinton herself acknowledged, global oil prices are set by global supply and demand, so we will not be disentangled from the Middle East until we stop using so much oil, regardless of where it is drilled.

Climate?

Clinton, unlike Trump, did say that her energy plan includes “fighting climate change, because I think that’s a serious problem.” That was the entirety of either candidate’s nod to the “environmentally friendly” portion of the question.

Political discussion of energy still revolves mainly around how to produce more of it rather than how to produce it without burning up the planet.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this election

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We fact-checked what Trump and Clinton said about energy at the debate

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Oregon explosion reminds us that oil trains are “weapons of mass destruction”

by RoccoKroemer Posted on June 6, 2016

Oregon explosion reminds us that oil trains are “weapons of mass destruction”

By on Jun 6, 2016Share

An oil train that went off the tracks and burst into flames in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon last week hasn’t been cleaned up yet, but the railroad is already back to business as usual. And many North Americans are feeling renewed anxieties about the danger of what activists call “bomb trains.”

On Friday, 16 Union Pacific train cars filled with highly combustible fracked oil from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota derailed outside Mosier, Ore. Multiple cars caught fire, and about 100 people were evacuated from nearby homes. Elizabeth Sanchey, one of the first responders, told Oregon Public Broadcasting that the scene “looked like the apocalypse.” This weekend, a sheen of oil was spotted on the Columbia River nearby.

Mosier city officials quickly passed an emergency motion calling on Union Pacific to remove all oil from the damaged cars before the line was reopened, but Union Pacific just pushed the disabled cars to the side of the track and restarted operations. As of this writing, the cars are still filled with oil.

Oil train derailment in Mosier, Ore.Columbia Riverkeeper

“Restarting trains before the high-risk carnage of their last accident is even cleared from the tracks is telling Mosier they are going to play a second round of Russian roulette without our town,” said Mayor Alrene Burns in a statement. “It’s totally unacceptable.”

Mosier’s citizens agree. Dozens of locals — including city officials, tribal representatives, faith leaders, and members of environmental groups — gathered in nearby Hood River, Ore., over the weekend to protest the oil trains moving through their communities.

Protesters gathered after Mosier oil-train explosion.Columbia Riverkeeper

Mosier, of course, isn’t the only town at risk.

Crude oil from the Bakken shale is especially flammable, and it is transported all across the U.S. and Canada. In 2013, a train moving Bakken crude derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing 47 people and destroying much of the town center. It was the most deadly oil-train derailment in recent history, but it was far from the only one. In the past few years, more than a dozen derailments and explosions have occurred, leading to evacuations, oil spills, and, in some cases, fires that burned for days.

The 2013 oil-train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. Public Herald

Though oil transport by rail is increasingly common, many residents have no idea that these trains are passing through their communities. (This map shows some rail lines that transport oil, as well as sites where accidents have occurred.) In 2014, national railroad operators agreed to eight voluntary measures to lower the risk of derailments, including reducing speed in some cities and increasing inspections, but communities still aren’t getting the information they would need to effectively respond to disasters, let alone prevent them.

Mosier has about 400 residents, but these oil trains aren’t only going through rural areas and small towns. They go through major American cities as well.

In Seattle, an oil train carrying nearly 100 cars derailed underneath a bridge in 2014. While all the cars were left intact and there was no public safety risk, according to officials, the incident underscored the potential for disaster. And that potential is huge: Last year, a KOMO News investigation captured video of more than a hundred train cars filled with oil rolling past the Seattle Seahawks football stadium as 32,000 fans watched a game inside. The Seattle City Council has called for railroads to curb oil train shipments through the city, but the companies have refused to comply, or even to release train schedules. And there’s no law that requires them to.

“The railroads are bringing weapons of mass destruction through our cities,” Fred Millar, oil safety and hazardous materials expert, tells Grist, and the only thing firefighters can do in the event of an explosion is to back off and let it burn.

As for Mosier, all evacuees have been allowed to return home, but their ordeal is far from over. The city’s wastewater treatment plant is offline, residents have a boil advisory for drinking water, and the full oil cars are still sitting there beside the tracks.

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Oregon explosion reminds us that oil trains are “weapons of mass destruction”

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Yep, Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law Is All About Suppressing the Vote

by Martha8879 Posted on April 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Let’s be clear here: it’s not exactly breaking news that photo ID laws are designed not to fight voter fraud—which is all but nonexistent—but primarily to make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote. Still, it’s nice to hear it from the horse’s mouth sometimes. The location, once again, is Wisconsin:

You wanna know why I left the Republican Party as it exists today? Here it is; this was the last straw: I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters.

Think about that for a minute….A vigorous debate on the ideas wasn’t good enough. Inspiring the electorate and relying on their agenda being better to get people to vote for them wasn’t good enough. No, they had to take the coward’s way out and come up with a plan to suppress the vote under the guise of ‘voter fraud.’ The truth? There was almost none.

That’s from Todd Allbaugh, former chief of staff for Wisconsin state Sen. Dale Schultz (R). TPM’s Tierney Sneed gave him a call:

Once he left politics, Allbaugh opened a Madison, Wisconsin, coffee shop, where TPM reached him over the phone and he elaborated on those claims.

“It just really incensed me that they started talking about this particular bill, and one of the senators got up and said, ‘We really need to think about the ramifications on certain neighborhoods in Milwaukee and on our college campuses and what this could do for us,’” Allbaugh said.

….According to Allbaugh, at this point in the point of meeting, Schultz brought up his own concerns with the voter ID legislation. “He was immediately shot down by another senator who said, ‘What I am interested in is getting results here and using the power while we have it, because if the Democrats were in control they would do they same thing to us, so I want to use it while we have it.’”

I wonder how many cases we need of legislators and aides either admitting this outright (like Allbaugh) or accidentally telling the truth about it (like Pennsylvania’s Mike Turzai) before the Supreme Court is willing to take a fresh look at its naive 2008 ruling upholding voter ID laws. At the time, the court wrote that concerns about voter fraud “should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators.” Since then, evidence has continued to pile up that voter fraud is an entirely fake concern and partisan interests are the only motivation for voter ID laws. It’s time to overturn Crawford.

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Yep, Wisconsin’s Voter ID Law Is All About Suppressing the Vote

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The Feds Are Now Investigating Chipotle Over That Nasty Norovirus Outbreak

by eG8kJ4fQ7z Posted on January 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Its plummeting stock price wasn’t the only dismal year-end news for Chipotle in 2015.

The once hugely popular burrito chain revealed on Wednesday that the company was also served with a grand jury subpoena last month to investigate the nasty norovirus outbreak that started at a Simi Valley, California, restaurant in August.

That outbreak caused about 100 people to suffer gastrointestinal distress—with everything from diarrhea to vomiting.

According to a company memo released on Wednesday, Chipotle said the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, along with the Federal Drug Administration’s criminal investigation’s office, has requested the company “produce a broad range of documents” related to the California incident. Chipotle said it intended to fully cooperate in the probe.

News of the subpoena comes on the heels of multiple similar outbreaks all linked to restaurants in the chain around the country, including an E. coli outbreak that affected more than 50 people in the Midwest and another norovirus outbreak that sickened 80 people in Boston.

In the same company memo, Chipotle said the company’s stocks were down a staggering 30 percent in December.

“Future sales trends may be significantly influenced by further developments,” the company added.

For more on burrito safety and how to avoid potential outbreaks, check out our helpful charts here.

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The Feds Are Now Investigating Chipotle Over That Nasty Norovirus Outbreak

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Shooting at Oregon Community College Leaves at Least 13 Dead, 20 Wounded

by ThereseFornacho Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update, 8:15 p.m. EDT: Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin says the fatalities are less than originally reported by the attorney general— there are 10 fatalities and 7 injured. There are still no details on the shooter.

Update, 5:03 p.m. EDT: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown confirms that the shooter was a 20-year-old male. “I know I am joined by my fellow Oregonians and Americans in profound dismay and heartbreak at this tragedy at Umpqua Community College,” Brown said.

Update, 4:52 p.m. EDT: Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin confirms that the shooter is dead. “I couldn’t be happier with the officer response today,” Hanlin said.

Hanlin said the scene is still active and being investigated.

Update, 4:08 p.m. EDT: Oregon’s attorney general confirms that at least 13 people were killed and 20 people wounded in today’s shooting.

In response to the shooting, the White House repeated its call for increased gun control laws. “The issue of sensible steps that can be taken to protect our communities from gun violence continues to be a top priority of this administration,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Thursday.

Previously:

Multiple media outlets are reporting a shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.

On MSNBC, Brian Williams interviewed a local firefighter who said he had been on the scene and witnessed “multiple deceased” and “multiple” injured people who were transported for emergency care. He said the campus had been evacuated.

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Emergency responders are in the process of clearing buildings at Umpqua Community College now. Students are being escorted now to get off campus. Wayne Crooch building has just been secured.

Posted by

As news of the shooting first broke, a student tweeted the following:

According to the gun safety coalition Everytown, today’s shooting marks the 45th school shooting in 2015 alone.

This is a breaking news post. We will update as more news becomes available.

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Do Republicans Really Want to Scuttle the Iran Deal?

by ShoshanBeavers Posted on July 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent reports that Republicans are gearing up to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal:

Republicans are very, very confident that they have the political advantage in the coming battle in Congress over the historic Iran deal announced yesterday. Multiple news reports today tell us that Republicans are gearing up their “attack plan,” and those reports are overflowing with GOP bravado.

Well, of course they are. That’s just smart politics. If you want to build a bandwagon, you have to act like a winner.

In fact, though, Republicans have very little chance of blocking the deal. To do so they have to vote to disapprove the agreement, which President Obama will veto. Then they have round up a two-thirds vote to override the veto. That’s very, very unlikely.

(And why this odd procedure where the deal takes effect unless Congress disapproves it? They can thank one of their own, Sen. Bob Corker, for proposing this unusual procedure. And anyway, his legislation passed 98-1, so it was pretty unanimously the will of the Senate. The theory behind it was that Obama could simply enact any deal as an executive order without involving Congress at all, and this was at least better than that.)

But then Sargent brings up another one of those 11-dimensional chess conundrums:

But here’s the question: Once all the procedural smoke clears, do Republicans really want an endgame in which they succeeded in blocking the deal? Do they actually want to scuttle it?

Perhaps many of them genuinely do want that. But here’s a prediction: as this battle develops, some Republicans may privately conclude that it would be better for them politically if they fail to stop it. The Iran debate may come to resemble the one over the anti-Obamacare lawsuit that also recently fell short.

The idea here is that if Congress kills the deal, several things will happen. First, the rest of the signatories (UK, France, Germany, EU, China, Russia) will still lift their sanctions if Iran meets its end of the bargain. So that means the sanctions regime will effectively disintegrate. Second, our allies will blame us for tanking the deal. Third, Iran will have an excuse for pushing the boundaries of the agreement and remaining closer to nuclear breakout than they would be if the deal were intact.

And Republicans would take the bulk of the blame for all this. Do they really want that? This is an international agreement, after all. Conservatives like Angela Merkel, David Cameron, and Vladimir Putin have approved it. If we don’t, will they conclude that the US is no longer a partner worth negotiating with? These are things worth pondering, especially if Republicans expect one of their own to be president 18 months from now.

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Do Republicans Really Want to Scuttle the Iran Deal?

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