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It’s only June, and Arctic sea ice already hit a new low

by InesDowling3 Posted on July 9, 2016

It’s only June, and Arctic sea ice already hit a new low

By on Jul 9, 2016 7:08 amShare

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

The summer sea-ice cover over the Arctic raced towards oblivion in June, crashing through previous records to reach a new all-time low.

The Arctic sea-ice extent was a staggering 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) below the previous record for June, set in 2010. And it was 1.36 million square kilometers (525,000 square miles) below the 1981-2010 long-term average, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

That means a vast expanse of ice — an area about twice the size of Texas — has vanished over the past 30 years, and the rate of that retreat has accelerated.

Aside from March, each month in 2016 has set a grim new low for sea-ice cover, after a record warm winter.

NSIDC

January and February obliterated global temperature records, setting up conditions for the further retreat of the Arctic summer ice cover, scientists have warned.

Researchers did not go so far as to predict a new low for the entire 2016 season. But they said the ice pack over the Beaufort Sea was studded with newer, thinner ice, which is more vulnerable to melting. Ice cover along the Alaska coast was very thin, less than 0.5 meters (1.6 feet).

The loss of the reflective white ice cover in the polar regions exposes more of the absorptive dark ocean to solar heat, causing the water to warm up. This goes on to raise air temperatures, and melt more ice — reinforcing the warming trend.

Scientists have warned the extra heat is the equivalent of 20 years of carbon emissions.

From mid-June onwards, ice cover disappeared at an average rate of 74,000 square kilometers (29,000 square miles) a day, about 70 percent faster than the typical rate of ice loss, the NSIDC said.

Sea ice loss in the first half of the month proceeded at a lower pace, only 37,000 square kilometers (14,000 square miles) a day.

The overall Arctic sea-ice cover during June averaged 10.60 million square kilometers (4.09 million square miles), the lowest in the satellite record for the month, according to the NSIDC.

There was more open water than average in the Kara and Barents seas as well as in the Beaufort Sea, despite below average temperatures, the NSIDC said.

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It’s only June, and Arctic sea ice already hit a new low

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Arctic sea ice hits a new low in June

by LateshaDhy Posted on July 9, 2016

Arctic sea ice hits a new low in June

By on Jul 9, 2016Share

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

The summer sea-ice cover over the Arctic raced towards oblivion in June, crashing through previous records to reach a new all-time low.

The Arctic sea-ice extent was a staggering 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) below the previous record for June, set in 2010. And it was 1.36 million square kilometers (525,000 square miles) below the 1981-2010 long-term average, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

That means a vast expanse of ice — an area about twice the size of Texas — has vanished over the past 30 years, and the rate of that retreat has accelerated.

Aside from March, each month in 2016 has set a grim new low for sea-ice cover, after a record warm winter.

NSIDC

January and February obliterated global temperature records, setting up conditions for the further retreat of the Arctic summer ice cover, scientists have warned.

Researchers did not go so far as to predict a new low for the entire 2016 season. But they said the ice pack over the Beaufort Sea was studded with newer, thinner ice, which is more vulnerable to melting. Ice cover along the Alaska coast was very thin, less than 0.5 meters (1.6 feet).

The loss of the reflective white ice cover in the polar regions exposes more of the absorptive dark ocean to solar heat, causing the water to warm up. This goes on to raise air temperatures, and melt more ice — reinforcing the warming trend.

Scientists have warned the extra heat is the equivalent of 20 years of carbon emissions.

From mid-June onwards, ice cover disappeared at an average rate of 74,000 square kilometers (29,000 square miles) a day, about 70 percent faster than the typical rate of ice loss, the NSIDC said.

Sea ice loss in the first half of the month proceeded at a lower pace, only 37,000 square kilometers (14,000 square miles) a day.

The overall Arctic sea-ice cover during June averaged 10.60 million square kilometers (4.09 million square miles), the lowest in the satellite record for the month, according to the NSIDC.

There was more open water than average in the Kara and Barents seas as well as in the Beaufort Sea, despite below average temperatures, the NSIDC said.

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Arctic sea ice hits a new low in June

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Celebrate America by avoiding our national embarrassment: Hot dogs

by FreyaWop772 Posted on July 3, 2016

Don’t be a wiener

Celebrate America by avoiding our national embarrassment: Hot dogs

By on Jul 3, 2016Share

Independence Day has historically been a time to remember our forbears, to consider the spectacular achievements this country has made, and to shove approximately 155 million hot dogs down our collective throats. But, this year, I’m begging you: Say no to the weenie, the worst meat of them all.

To be clear, we’re talking about the intestine-colored, colon-shaped sticks of blended gristle that shine in the sun and slide out of the package like a wet worm, not the visually appealing pet of the same name. This is a perfect day to remember that mass-produced processed meats — besides being grotesque amalgams of unwanted animal chunks — are products of an unsustainable and harmful industry.

First things first: What’s in a hot dog? The backyard BBQ staple can contain pretty much any type of meat, but are mainly comprised of pork, chicken, and beef. Specifically, they’re made up of “trimmings”, a word vaguely defined by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to encompass “lower-grade muscle trimmings, fatty tissues, head meat, animal feet, animal skin, blood, liver, and other edible slaughter by-products.”

But meat is only the half of what’s in a hot dog. Here’s what the ingredient list for Oscar Meyer’s “Classic Weiner” looks like:

INGREDIENTS: MECHANICALLY SEPARATED CHICKEN, MECHANICALLY SEPARATED TURKEY, WATER, PORK, CORN SYRUP, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, SALT, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, SODIUM DIACETATE, SODIUM BENZOATE, SODIUM ASCORBATE, FLAVOR, SODIUM NITRITE.

Some of other ingredients frequently added to hot dogs include: meat “extenders”, or non-meat substances containing protein, phosphates, bread crumbs, rusk, and boiled rice.

After the bits of meat cast-offs are ground into a flesh-colored paste, these additives are blended in and the mixture is piped into grillable portions. And voila! What was once a humble salad of pig head and cow foot is now an inscrutable, tubular frankenstein.

Looks aside, hot dogs simply aren’t that good for you. According to the American Cancer Society, “high consumption of processed meats like hot dogs [is] associated with increased risk of colon cancer.” One 2013 study found that participants who ate more than 20 grams of processed meats a day (about half a hot dog), were more likely to die of heart attack or stroke. And earlier this year, the World Health Organization announced that eating processed meats is directly linked with cancer, with a similar risk to cigarettes and asbestos.

Most of the 9 billion hot dogs Americans purchase each year are produced in massive factory farms. In the U.S., about 97 percent of pork — some 65 million pigs — are reared and slaughtered in factory farms. While strides have been made to improve sanitation and animal welfare at these farms in recent years, the industry is known for cramped conditions, overuse of antibiotics, and inhumane conditions. Not to mention factory farming’s contribution to climate change: According to the FAO, animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions — more than all the emissions from transportation.

So this Fourth of July, take a moment to consider the hot dog — that coral-colored pipette of entrails — and maybe think twice. And if none of this convinces you, well, I leave you with this gif of hot dogs being made:

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Celebrate America by avoiding our national embarrassment: Hot dogs

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Hacker Reveals New Trove of DNC Documents and Answers a Few Personal Questions

by BellaMaughan6 Posted on June 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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The hacker using the handle “Guccifer 2.0” posted another set of internal Democratic National Committee documents Thursday, along with a series of answers to questions posed to him by journalists and others via Twitter. The hacker claims to be a male, working alone, and said “none of the US candidates has my sympathies.”

The new set of documents includes memos about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, details of attacks on Hillary Clinton posted on Twitter by Republicans, spreadsheets with political action committee financial commitments (along with the email and phone numbers for the PAC lobbyists), and other DNC materials.

This is the third release from the hack. The first went public on June 15 in response to a Washington Post story from the previous day in which it was announced that the DNC, and perhaps Hillary Clinton’s campaign itself, had been hacked. The hacker released an alleged DNC opposition research file on presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump on June 15 and also posted a batch of other internal DNC files concerning notes, research on opponents (from both parties), positions on various issues, and information related to DNC donors to a WordPress blog site. In that post, the hacker claimed he was working alone and had been within the DNC’s computer system for a year before getting booted on June 12. He then claimed to have downloaded thousands of documents and passed them to WikiLeaks.

He also mocked the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which had been brought in to handle the DNC hack and analyze its source. CrowdStrike said the hack was likely the work of hackers working with, for, or in collusion with the Russian government, a claim the Russian government denied to the Post. The paper reported that the hack appeared to be Russian, based on tools used in the attack, and that the Russians might be using this to help Trump.

The DNC has never confirmed the authenticity of the documents, but metadata associated with them, and some of the information within them, points to their authenticity. The DNC declined to comment on Thursday but said in a statement sent to Mother Jones after the hack was first revealed that it was all the work of the Russian government.

“Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April, and we believe it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians,” a senior DNC official said.

In an interview with Vice News’ Motherboard on June 21, the hacker claimed he was working alone and was Romanian, not Russian. That same day, the hacker posted 261 new documents, including research on presidential candidates and talking points on Clinton controversies such as Benghazi.

On June 22, the hacker modified his Twitter account to allow questions to be sent via Twitter’s direct message system, saying he would answer them all at once. The hacker posted those answers Thursday in a post titled “FAQ FROM GUCCIFER 2.0”:

On where he’s from: “I can only tell you that I was born in Eastern Europe. I won’t answer where I am now.”
On suspected links to Russian intelligence: “I’ll tell you that everything I do, I do at my own risk. This is my personal project and I’m proud of it. Yes, I risk my life. But I know it’s worth it. No one knew about me several weeks ago. Nowadays the whole world’s talking about me. It’s really cool!” The hacker added that he’d never be able to prove he wasn’t affiliated with Russian intelligence, and he said cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike have “no other way to justify their incompetence and failure” than to accuse Russia. “They just fucked up! They can prove nothing!”
On his gender: “I’m a man. I’ve never met a female hacker of the highest level. Girls, don’t get offended. I love you.”
About his political views and possible Trump support: “I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but none of the candidates has my sympathies. Each of them has skeletons in the closet.” He says he views Clinton and Trump differently: “Hillary seems so much false to me, she got all her money from political activities and lobbying, she is a slave of moguls, she is bought and sold;” Trump “has earned his money himself” and “at least he is sincere in what he says.” But, he added, he doesn’t support Trump: “I’m totally against his ideas about closing borders and deportation policy. It’s nonsense, absolute bullshit.”
On Bernie Sanders: “I have nothing to say about Bernie Sanders. It seems he never had a chance to win the nomination as the Democratic Party itself stood against him!”

The hacker also said he hopes he doesn’t get caught by the FBI, “but it won’t be that easy to catch me.” The FBI hasn’t responded to a request for comment on Thursday.

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Hacker Reveals New Trove of DNC Documents and Answers a Few Personal Questions

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Before Trump University, There Was the Trump Institute. Here’s How Donald Trump Learned the Hustle.

by Marquis52T Posted on June 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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A couple of months ago Ars Technica ran a story about one of Donald Trump’s penny-ante moneymakers from the aughts: the Trump Institute. It all started when a pair of journalism grad students, Joe Mullin and Jonathan Kaminsky, became fixated on a late-night infomercial for the National Grant Conferences:

Why did the NGC infomercial captivate us?…It wasn’t the enthusiastic couple who founded NGC, Mike and Irene Milin, proclaiming that numerous government grants were there for the taking. No, we couldn’t stop watching because NGC just felt so sleazy.

….Intrigued, we spent the better part of a year researching NGC, its claims, and its founders’ pasts. We ultimately found that NGC—with several seminar teams circling the country and clearing tens of millions of dollars each year in sales—and its memberships produced no money for any of the customers we interviewed.

….Trump wanted a piece of the action, so he struck a licensing deal with the Milins in 2006. The couple created the “Trump Institute,” using much of the same pitch material and some of the same pitchmen.

Today the New York Times picks up on the story:

As with Trump University, the Trump Institute promised falsely that its teachers would be handpicked by Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump did little, interviews show, besides appear in an infomercial — one that promised customers access to his vast accumulated knowledge. “I put all of my concepts that have worked so well for me, new and old, into our seminar,” he said in the 2005 video, adding, “I’m teaching what I’ve learned.”

Reality fell far short. In fact…extensive portions of the materials that students received after forking over their seminar fees, supposedly containing Mr. Trump’s special wisdom, had been plagiarized from an obscure real estate manual published a decade earlier.

Together, the exaggerated claims about his own role, the checkered pasts of the people with whom he went into business and the theft of intellectual property at the venture’s heart all illustrate the fiction underpinning so many of Mr. Trump’s licensing businesses: Putting his name on products and services — and collecting fees — was often where his actual involvement began and ended.

….Asked about the plagiarism, which was discovered by the Democratic “super PAC” American Bridge, the editor of the Trump Institute publication, Susan G. Parker, denied responsibility….Ms. Parker, a lawyer and legal writer in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., said that far from being handpicked by Mr. Trump, she had been hired to write the book after responding to a Craigslist ad. She said she never spoke to Mr. Trump, let alone received guidance from him on what to write. She said she drew on her own knowledge of real estate and a speed-reading of Mr. Trump’s books.

In a nutshell, Trump sought out a couple of late-night hustlers who had already been in trouble with the law, taped an infomercial for them, and then pocketed the licensing fee. (They were the “best in the business,” said the Trump executive who brokered the deal.) Later, having learned the hustle, Trump ended his contract with the Milins and opened up Trump University. He had learned all he needed and was ready to start pushing the hard-sell conference business on his own. Seven years later, he’s perfected the hustle even further, so now he’s running for president. You’re welcome.

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Before Trump University, There Was the Trump Institute. Here’s How Donald Trump Learned the Hustle.

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Deadline Looming, Senate Rescues Puerto Rico From Default

by DesmondBosisto Posted on June 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Two days before Puerto Rico was set to default on $2 billion in debt payments, the Senate staved off calamity by advancing a measure Wednesday that will allow the island to restructure its debts.

The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, known as PROMESA, now heads to President Barack Obama for his signature. It will create an independent financial oversight board that will oversee the island’s budgets and allow the Puerto Rican government to restructure its nearly $70 billion in debts with 18 different creditors. A key provision would halt all pending litigation related to the debt—there are currently 14 different lawsuits—and allow for continued funding of essential public health and safety services for the island’s 3.5 million residents.

The measure was tacked on to a bill in the Senate that will reauthorize the National Sea Grant Program through fiscal year 2021.

“Obviously, the bill isn’t perfect,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after its passage, according to the Washington Post. “But here’s why we should support it: It won’t cost taxpayers a dime; it prevents a bailout; and it offers Puerto Rico the best chance to return to financial stability and economic growth over the long term so we can help prevent another financial crisis like this in the future.”

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent a letter to McConnell arguing that failure to pass the bill by July 1 could lead to Puerto Rico defaulting on a $2 billion debt and interest payment and a possible court order forcing the island’s government to pay creditors before providing essential services for its people. The result could have been that Puerto Rico would have stopped paying police officers and firefighters, shut down public transit, and even closed medical facilities.

The next day, Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla wrote an op-ed for CNBC and argued that there was no choice but to pass this bill. He noted that the island’s government has already cut millions in spending, eliminated thousands of public jobs, raised taxes, and withheld tax returns, and is currently $2 billion behind in payments to suppliers (in addition to the $2 billion debt payment due July 1).

“The emergency measures we have taken are unsustainable, harm our economy, reduce revenues and diminish our capacity to repay our debts,” he wrote. “Puerto Rico cannot endure any more austerity.”

The governor’s op-ed echoed many Democrats, Puerto Ricans, and observers and said the independent financial review board—which has broad powers over the island’s budget decisions and is not accountable to any local elected leaders—”unnecessarily undercuts the democratic institution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.” Democracy Now’s Juan González noted Wednesday that a majority of Puerto Ricans oppose the bill and even the concept of an independent review board.

On Tuesday, as the Senate debated the bill, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders railed against the bill, urging his colleagues not to support it, according to the Washington Post. Sanders has opposed the bill since it was proposed in the House.

“Is this legislation smacking of the worst form of colonialism, in the sense that it takes away all of the important democratic rights of the American citizens of Puerto Rico?” he asked Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who was speaking against the bill at the time. “That basically, four Republicans who likely believe in strong austerity programs will essentially be running that island for the indefinite future?”

Here’s how the financial review board works: The president will appoint the seven-member board by September 1, choosing the members from a list of names submitted by congressional leadership. â&#128;&#139;A nominee must have a background in finance, municipal bond markets, management, law, or government operations and cannot have a primary residence or business interest on the island. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) will nominate three members; McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and Obama will each nominate one. The governor of Puerto Rico, or his designee, will have a non-voting spot on the board.

The cash-strapped Puerto Rican government is responsible for coming up with the initial $2 million to establish the board—which will operate without any local oversight— and then will also be responsible figuring out its budget and permanently funding it to cover salaries for an executive director, other staff members, and overhead. The board will continue to be in charge of Puerto Rico’s financial existence until the island’s government has “adequate” access to short-term and long-term credit markets at reasonable interest rates and develops and maintains four consecutive years of on-target, board-determined budgets.

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Deadline Looming, Senate Rescues Puerto Rico From Default

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A Huge Chicken Company Wants its Birds to Play More Before They’re Slaughtered

by LannyIsabel51 Posted on June 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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“Do the birds get what they want?” Perdue executive Bruce Stewart-Brown asked. We were surrounded by 20,000 squawking chickens in a vast indoor facility in Maryland. I was in the midst of reporting a Mother Jones deep-dive on the meat industry’s over-use of antibiotics crucial to human medicine, and how Perdue had moved decisively away from that practice.

At the time, Stewart-Brown’s rhetorical question sounded a bit silly, coming from a company that slaughters and packs 650 million chickens per year, making it the nation’s fourth-largest poultry company. Yet as I found during my reporting, Perdue isn’t just any chicken producer. Unlike all of the other industry giants, the company had quietly begun to move away from antibiotics around a decade ago.

Now Perdue has announced an animal welfare program that seems as ambitious as its move away from drugs. The company has committed itself to following the Farm Animal Welfare Council’s “five freedoms” for farm livestock, the most notable of which are the “freedom from discomfort,” “freedom to express (most) normal behavior by providing sufficient space, proper facilities and company of the animal’s own kind,” and “freedom from fear and distress.”

“Our goal is to double the rate of play/activity by our chickens in the next three years,” the company states in a newly released “Commitment to Animal Welfare.” Moreover, acknowledging that modern chickens have been bred to grow rapidly, causing leg injuries and making it very difficult to walk late in their lives, Perdue says it’s considering moving to “breeds of birds that grow slower.”

In concrete terms, the facilities that house Perdue’s birds will eventually be outfitted with windows, giving them access to sunlight, and be less densely stocked, giving the birds more room. The company so far hasn’t released details on how much more space birds will get (the current industry standard is eight-tenths of a square foot per bird). As for the windows, the company plans to install windows in 200 of the 6,000 existing poultry houses that supply it. They’ll be used as a kind of controlled experiment, to “compare bird health and activity to enclosed housing.” If the windows prove effective in increasing activity among the flock, “we will establish annual targets for retrofitting houses with windows,” Perdue states. All new chicken houses will be required to have windows.

New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom got a look at one of the the window-equipped chicken houses, run by an operation that contracts for Perdue:

Sunlight floods the floor at one end of the chicken house here at Ash-O-Ley Acres, and spry little Cornish game hens flap their wings and chase one another. At the other end of the barn, where the windows are covered as part of a compare-and-contrast demonstration, the flock is largely somnolent and slow to move.

In addition to responding to long-simmering animal-welfare complaints about factory-scale farming, Perdue is also openly discussing another highly controversial topic: Big Poultry’s reliance on nominally independent farmers to grow their chickens, under contract terms that largely favor giant processing companies like Perdue. (See my piece on a particularly presumptuous contract term that Perdue quickly nixed when I exposed it.)

Normally, when a big chicken company decides it wants to change something about the enormous barns where its birds are grown, it merely changes the terms of its contracts, forcing farmers to upgrade their facilities or risk losing their market. In this case, Perdue will pick up the cost of retro-fitting the 200 pilot houses, a company spokeswoman told me. As the windows program expands, the company says it will continue to pick up at least part of the cost. “We’ll determine how it will get paid for,” the spokeswoman said, “whether we will pay for it directly or compensate the grower through a premium for upgraded housing or…a cost-share or financing approach.”

And the company’s “Commitment to Animal Welfare” document even includes a pledge to “do a better job listening to farmers and communicating with them.” Rather than set pay solely based on factors like efficiency and output, contracts will include incentives for “care of the birds and welfare performance,” the document states. A Perdue spokeswoman added that the company is consulting with farmers to figure out the best way to compensate them for making the birds’ lives better.

Of course, as with all voluntary corporate initiatives, Perdue sets the terms of the program and controls the information that emerges from it. As Maryn McKenna notes on the National Geographic website, “For most of its initiatives, the company has not disclosed a timeline.” But as I discovered in my reporting, Perdue’s anti-antibiotics effort proved to be the real deal, and it has pulled the bulk of the poultry industry in the same direction. Perhaps its animal-welfare reforms will do the same.

Leah Garces, executive director of Compassion in World Farming, which released a video in 2014 exposing harsh welfare conditions on a Perdue-contracted farm, thinks they just might. “Just as Perdue led the way on antibiotics, they are laying out the inevitable direction of the market,” she said. “I’m confident every poultry company today is thinking hard about steps they also need to take to improve the lives of chickens in order to keep up.”

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A Huge Chicken Company Wants its Birds to Play More Before They’re Slaughtered

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Why Is It So Hard for Inmates to Sue Prisons?

by KFMWilbert Posted on June 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Read Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer’s firsthand account of his four months spent working as a guard at a corporate-run prison in Louisiana.

It began with a complaint about salad.

Since he started serving time in the ’70s, Melvin Leroy Tyler has filed dozens of lawsuits advocating better conditions in Missouri prisons, earning himself the nickname King of the Writs. One newspaper dubbed him one of the “finest jailhouse lawyers this state has ever produced.” In 1994, Tyler filed a case a case about dangerous conditions at Farmington Correctional Center, including allegations of overcrowding and food contamination. But his complaints would become infamous for a passing mention that the prison cafeteria’s salad bar was only available to guards.

Read more: Reporter Shane Bauer’s four months as a private prison guard

Tyler’s salad bar protest was held up as exhibit A in the campaign to stem the supposed flood of frivolous prison lawsuits clogging up the nation’s courts. Jay Nixon, then Missouri’s attorney general (and now its governor), singled out Tyler and sneered that “these recreational litigators can be very creative when it comes to constitutional rights.” Other examples of outrageous cases cited by Nixon and 23 of his fellow AGs included an inmate’s $1 million suit “because his ice cream had melted,” and a demand for LA Gear or Reebok sneakers instead of prison-issued Converse.

Shutting down these lawsuits became a pillar of the tough-on-crime agenda then sweeping Capitol Hill. Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 1996, prisoners who seek to file federal civil rights cases must first jump through several hoops, like exhausting all internal grievance procedures and paying $350 to file a case.

Yet much of the evidence cited in support of the law was thin. As the bill was making its way through Congress, Jon O. Newman, a federal appeals judge, found that tales of ridiculous lawsuits “were at best highly misleading and, sometimes, simply false.” Tyler’s complaint had been ripped without context from a case that, Newman wrote, “concerned dangerously unhealthy prison conditions, not the lack of a salad bar.”

The law’s backers claimed it would protect inmates with legitimate complaints. Instead, it established a labyrinth of red tape. Between 1995 and 2012, as prison populations swelled 40 percent, the number of federal civil rights cases filed by prisoners dropped by more than 70 percent. About one-tenth of those cases resulted in an outcome favoring inmates, a slight decrease from the 1990s. If the PLRA was meant to filter out flimsy lawsuits, we should see more prisoners winning their cases, notes University of Michigan law professor Margo Schlanger. But now, she says, “each success is harder fought.”

Human Rights Watch has found that the law is often invoked to throw out cases on technicalities, even suits involving sexual assault, juveniles, or prisoners who are illiterate, deaf, or mentally ill. “This is a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse,” says David Fathi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “What we have done is dismantle the only oversight system that we had for prisons, which was litigation,” adds Schlanger.

Most inmates have little recourse but to represent themselves. The law further discourages lawyers from taking their suits by capping damages and recoverable costs. “There were never a whole lot of lawyers doing this in the first place,” says David Rudovsky, a civil rights attorney in Philadelphia. Suing prisons, he says, “is even more difficult than suing police officers.”

Now 73, Melvin Tyler lives in Missouri’s Jefferson City Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison located on No More Victims Road, where he is serving a 185-year sentence for rape, assault, and robbery. (He says he was wrongfully convicted; in 2009, the Innocence Project took up his case.) “I picked up a lot of enemies” due to the salad bar case, he tells me. “But if I hadn’t intervened, there would have been hundreds of people that would have died.”

The Prison Litigation Reform Act, Tyler explains, “destroys the ability of prisoners to seek and pursue legitimate claims.” The most unforgiving part of the law, he says, is its filing fee requirement. Sometimes the only way to fund a new lawsuit is to round up a bunch of guys to pool their money. Even though the Supreme Court unanimously shot down a prisoner’s challenge to part of the PRLA earlier this year, Tyler is working on a class-action suit questioning the constitutionality of the filing fee—one of more than 45 cases currently on his plate.

Originally posted here: 

Why Is It So Hard for Inmates to Sue Prisons?

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After mega-heatwave, Los Angeles faces mega-wildfire

by CandidaFulkerson Posted on June 22, 2016

A Los Angeles County fire helicopter makes a night drop while battling the Fish Fire. REUTERS/Gene Blevins

After mega-heatwave, Los Angeles faces mega-wildfire

By on Jun 22, 2016Share

Two fires erupted just a few miles apart near Southern California’s Angeles National Forest on Monday, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of Los Angeles County residents. The fires, collectively dubbed the San Gabriel Complex Fire, raged unchecked across more than 5,000 acres of parched canyons and foothills throughout Monday night and Tuesday.

The first of the twin blazes, named the Reservoir Fire, was ignited on Monday morning around 11 a.m., when a car went off the road and plummeted to the bottom of a canyon near the Morris Reservoir, where it ignited. The second fire, the Fish Fire, erupted about an hour later a few miles away, cause unknown.

As of Wednesday morning, 48 hours after the first fire erupted, the San Gabriel Complex Fire has been just 10 percent contained, local news sources report. Smoke from the San Gabriel Complex Fire was visible across Los Angeles, as far as south L.A. Local authorities issued air pollution warnings throughout the San Gabriel and San Bernadino areas.

Meanwhile, two hours north of L.A., firefighters continued battling a weeklong, 8,000-acre wildfire near Santa Barbara. To the south, San Diego’s Border Fire is entering its fourth day. Years of drought and a scorching heatwave throughout the region early this week created a veritable tinderbox for the blazes, and climate change is only making things worse. In total, Cal Fire reported on Tuesday that 4,700 firefighters were battling six wildfires across the state.

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Original article: 

After mega-heatwave, Los Angeles faces mega-wildfire

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Samantha Bee Tears Into Republicans, "Puppets of the NRA," for Blocking Gun Control

by WinfredGetz5121 Posted on June 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Senate failed to move forward two gun control measures aimed at expanding background checks and blocking individuals listed on terrorist watch lists from obtaining weapons. This outcome was widely expected, even after a 15-hour marathon filibuster staged by Senate Democrats urging their fellow lawmakers to act on gun control in the wake of the worst mass shooting in American history.

As Samantha Bee noted on the latest Full Frontal on Monday, Republicans including “rodent-faced soup sponge” Sen. Ted Cruz, have dismissed calls for increased gun control since the Orlando mass shooting as nothing more than a political game and political correctness staged by Democrats. Much of this, as Bee explained, is the result of the strong grip the National Rifle Association has on Republican lawmakers. Watch above as she slams the GOP, or as Bee calls the party “puppets of the NRA,” in the segment above.

Original article:

Samantha Bee Tears Into Republicans, "Puppets of the NRA," for Blocking Gun Control

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