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Donald Trump’s Newest Adviser Says Global Warming Is a Huge Threat to National Security

by WillieSchulthei Posted on September 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has signed on as a senior adviser to Donald Trump—even though the two men’s views are oceans apart on an issue very close to Woolsey’s heart: climate change.

For years, the former CIA director has been an advocate for cleaner energy and has called for addressing global warming from a national security perspective. He argues that our current energy sources put us at “the whims of OPEC’s despots” and make us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. He wants the United States to shift from its reliance on coal and oil to renewables and natural gas. “There’s enough consensus that human-generated global warming gas emissions are beginning to have an effect,” he said in an interview in 2010. “Next year might be cooler than this year but that doesn’t mean the trend isn’t there.” (Indeed, the world keeps getting warmer.)

In 2013, Woolsey was one of dozens of national security experts who signed a statement declaring that climate change represents a “serious threat to American national security interests.” The “potential consequences are undeniable, and the cost of inaction, paid for in lives and valuable US resources, will be staggering,” read the statement. “Washington must lead on this issue now.”

Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in global warming, having called it a Chinese hoax. He’s even pointed to cold winter weather in an attempt to debunk this “GLOBAL WARMING bullshit.” Trump wants to scrap President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan and back out of the Paris climate accord. Rather than move toward renewable energy, he wants to make the United States energy independent by resuscitating the coal industry.

Mother Jones reached out to Woolsey to ask how he feels about Trump’s climate change denialism. He did not immediately respond. In a statement distributed by the Trump campaign, Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, criticized Hillary Clinton for how she ran the State Department. Trump, Woolsey insisted, “understands the magnitude of the threats we face and is holding his cards close to the vest.” So does he think Trump is a secret believer in climate change after all?

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Donald Trump’s Newest Adviser Says Global Warming Is a Huge Threat to National Security

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Confessions of a Gun Range Worker

by MarkusChappel Posted on September 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Editor’s note: Americans today aren’t just stockpiling guns in record numbers; they are also shooting them at upward of 2,100 gun ranges across the country. In February, the pseudonymous author of this piece—a former employee at a gun range in Orange County, California—contacted Mother Jones reporter Josh Harkinson, who interviewed the author and corroborated his account (as told to Harkinson below) through official documents, news reports, and interviews with two other former employees of the gun range. The management and owner of the gun range did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

I’ve worked in the firearms industry for decades, including at a range in Orange County, California. It’s inside an industrial park, in your standard warehouse type of building. People come in and say, “Oh, I never knew this place existed.” Once you check in, there are two entryways and 16 lanes. The lanes are monitored by video cameras, and there are also large double-paned windows, which, it turns out, are not made of bulletproof glass.

I later worked as a contractor at ranges all over the region. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve witnessed multiple suicides. Three rampage shooters practiced at the Orange County range. The general vibe at the ranges has gotten much more extreme and paranoid. I don’t think this is unique to where I worked. The gun industry is really changing for the worse.

I was attracted to guns as a teenager because my family had been victims of violent crime. My dad had been mugged and my family has been held up in their store at least a couple of times at gunpoint. I guess you could say it’s a way of reclaiming some sense of power over a powerless situation.

My first gun was a military surplus bolt-action, a Lee Enfield. The ATF has a category for these things: curio and relic weapons. It was the only gun that at 18 years old I could legally purchase and walk out the door with. It was fully capable of punching through a car or a cinder block. I started buying and fixing up other relic firearms. At the time I was a college student; I’d sell a gun and use the money to pay for my books. I can’t even remember all the guns I’ve owned. That’s part of what attracted me to working at the range. You would see all sorts of different guns come through. I also came to enjoy the camaraderie. In some ways it’s not just a range so much as a gathering place for a certain type of crotchety old man. You sit there on the bench and drink your nasty cup of coffee and trade lies and war stories. For me, it was something that I kind of didn’t have growing up, because my dad wasn’t always there.

But there were certain people who were difficult. At some point during the day, you would have a gun pointed at you. I had a guy with Parkinson’s, and he had severe muscle tremors. He can’t hold the gun properly, and it jams. He walks off the range, he’s pointing the gun at me, and he’s saying, “Hey, hey, my gun is jammed!” I sidestep the muzzle and say, “Let’s have a look, shall we?” All the while that I am handling it I am saying, “You really shouldn’t be doing that.” And the guy, without missing a beat, says, “It’s all right, the safety’s on the gun.” I pull the slide back and there’s a live round that ejects from the chamber. And I’m thinking, okay, I was a three-pound trigger pull away from getting shot.

The ranges make a lot of their money from renting guns to people—those are the people you really have to watch out for. Like the time we rented a Ruger handgun to this woman. After I turned my back to her, she put the gun behind her ear and blew a nice, clean, round hole through the center of her head. I didn’t really feel anything at the time. At first it was disbelief, and then I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to take care of stuff.” Different guys handle it differently. I know a guy who quit right after something like this happened.

Our standard operating procedure when this happens is to call a cease-fire. Then we clear the range so that nobody is in any danger. Then sometimes you’d go up and, if it’s safe to do so, you’d kick the gun out. I still remember this: The manager at the time wound up putting gloves on and plugging the side of her head with his fingers. I’m thinking, “This isn’t going to do a whole lot. She’s toast, dude.” Not to be callous about it, but she was dead. Her eyes were flapping, there was nothing there.

Gun ranges often have policies that require anyone who rents a gun to be accompanied by a friend. It’s supposed to be a way to prevent suicides, but it doesn’t always work very well. Eventually the range started paying a service to come pick up the bodies and scrub everything. But before that happened, Christ, what was it? Bleach and kitty litter. I remember one time I had come in for a shift change and there was a pool of blood. We didn’t have any bleach but we did have some kitty litter. I remember using that to soak up the blood. And because we didn’t have the bleach, some of my members were kind enough to go across the street to the grocery store and buy some. In hindsight, we had no protocols, we had no protective suits. I could have exposed myself to blood-borne pathogens.

Another one was a father who was getting divorced. He was a pretty big guy. I felt the impact, and when I turned around there was pandemonium. Some of my members came rushing out the door yelling at me to call the police, and we did. The guy had sent suicidal text messages to his family. It made the paper because he was a beloved figure in the community, big into Little League. He was totally normal acting. And the next thing you know, you have 300 pounds hitting the floor.

I feel sorry for the families. Anybody who is that depressed for the most part has my sympathy. I do get a little bit irritated that they have to do it while I’m on duty. I think it’s kind of—I don’t know if you’d say inconsiderate—but almost that. You can’t really ask these people, “Hey, if you are going to kill yourself, why don’t you do it out in the desert or something like that?”

Around 2002, a middle-aged guy named Hesham Hadayet came into the range. He’d purchased a gun at a store. He asked me, “Hey, can you show me how to load and operate this gun?” I am thinking, “Wait a minute, didn’t you just take a class?” I’m like, “Fine, not a problem.” I think he came in two or three more times. I didn’t pay any attention to it. Well, a few months later, I turn on the TV and I see this guy’s face. He’d shot up a ticket counter at LAX. He killed two people and injured two more before being fatally shot by a security guard.

The second guy, Phong Thuc Tran, also shot at the range. He worked for the gas company and had been forced to resign. After he killed his supervisor and his co-worker, he was running around for like a day or two before he parked his car in front of a police station. That’s where he shot himself. We only found out about it when the local cops walked in. The guy, he was a little off, but he was very quiet, respectful. No outward signs of anger. You never would’ve known.

The third one, Scott Dekraai, practiced at the range in 2011 and after that he goes on a shooting rampage. He shot nine people at the Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, including his ex-wife. Only one of them survived.

We talked about them amongst ourselves, but if a member of the shooting public comes in and wants to, we pretty much dummy up. Because who wants to say, “Hey, yeah, there was a mass murderer here at the range?”

There are some good bosses that run these ranges, but for the most part they willingly overlook the fact that this stuff is dangerous. And I’m not just talking about the guns. They’re supposed to properly train people for handling lead, which gets released in large quantities by spent bullets. There’s not really a safe level for lead in your body once you get above five micrograms per deciliter of blood. At the end of the day, you’ve got various things that you have to clean up: the brass shells, paper from the targets, un-burnt powder from the ammunition, little bits of atomized lead. Anything with high enough concentrations of lead is supposed to be put into a canister and treated as hazardous material, but that didn’t always happen.

We’d get tested for lead in our bodies maybe once or twice a year. They would kind of look sideways at you if you asked for the test results. I knew better than that. I just said, “The hell with it.” But the last test that I had, it came back high. I was contacted by the California Department of Public Health, and the guy said, “Uh, why is your lead level so high?”

I started noticing a difference in the type of people coming to the range when Bill Clinton was president. It was the first time I had actually seen somebody post a picture of the president as a target. I told them, “Look, you can’t do that.” Now there’s a company that sells targets with images of Obama, and they put apelike features on him.

You never would have seen something like that 20 years ago when I started. It’s an echo chamber. It’s a place where people feel safe because they feel that people are of like mind. A few months ago, this woman wanted to know about getting her license. I asked her, “What do you need the gun for, if you don’t mind my asking? Was there a crime?” She said, “No, I think there’s going to be an influx of Muslims coming in from our southern border and then they are going to start killing people.” I’ve had people come up to me and say, “I don’t like it that you show these ragheads how to shoot.”

Paranoid? What would you call it when people have six months worth of food? What would you call it when people have 30-plus guns? What would you call it when they are stockpiling ammunition? The gun industry is making a killing, and it’s doing its best to fan the flames. You see stuff in internet gun forums like, “Hey, FEMA is purchasing a million and a half rounds of ammunition.” It’s supposedly because the government is preparing to come around and knock on your door and round you up into camps.

It all plays into people’s paranoid fantasies, and guns are always the solution. They give people a sense of control in a world that is out of control. You go into the NRA convention and look around at the sea of faces— I’m sorry, it’s a bunch of paranoid white guys who see their country slipping away from them. They think people like Trump, or the gun industry, are the “real” Americans. The gun industry could give a rat’s ass. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

I’m leaving the industry to make better money. Dude, I will still be into guns. I like working on ’em. My friends and I still shoot. But the other motivation, just as strong perhaps, is that I don’t want to have to be around a bunch of crazy people.

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Confessions of a Gun Range Worker

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Obama will continue his war on carbon emissions once his lease at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is up.

by MargheritaApq Posted on September 2, 2016

Former ACLU attorney Laura Murphy reviewed the company’s policies and platform after allegations from non-white customers that they were denied housing based on race.

Those include Kristin Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who wrote in the New York Times about being denied three Airbnb reservations in a row when planning a trip to Buenos Aires: “Because Airbnb strongly recommends display of a profile picture … it was hard to believe that race didn’t come into play.”

In an email to users, co-founder Brian Chesky outlined the steps Airbnb plans to take to address discrimination. As of Nov. 1, Airbnb users must agree to a “stronger, more detailed nondiscrimination policy.” That includes “Open Doors,” a procedure by which the company will find alternate accommodations for anyone who feels they’ve been discriminated against.

But not everyone believes Airbnb’s policy change will fully address the problem.

Rohan Gilkes, who was also denied lodging on Airbnb, says the new changes don’t go far enough. Instead, he told Grist, they need to remove users’ names and photos entirely: “It’s the only fix.”

Meanwhile, Gilkes is working to accommodate people of color and other marginalized groups: His new venture, a home-sharing platform called Innclusive, is set to launch soon.

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Obama will continue his war on carbon emissions once his lease at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is up.

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Donald Trump Plans to Parachute Criminals Into Other Countries Whether They Like It Or Not

by LandonHotham1 Posted on September 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump’s big immigration speech contained few surprises. He spent a lot of time on illegal immigrants who are criminals, but his solution was pretty simple: Get rid of them. Period. End of story. And not just over the border, either. Way over the border so they can’t come back. And if their home countries don’t want them back, tough. Apparently planes full of murderous illegal immigrants are going to be landing all over the world whether anyone likes it or not.

But how about everyone else? Are we going to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, even the “good” ones? Here’s what he said:

Importantly, in several years when we have accomplished all of our enforcement and deportation goals and truly ended illegal immigration for good, including the construction of a great wall…and the establishment of our new lawful immigration system, then and only then will we be in a position to consider the appropriate disposition of those individuals who remain.

That discussion can take place only in an atmosphere in which illegal immigration is a memory of the past, no longer with us, allowing us to weigh the different options available based on the new circumstances at the time.

But no amnesty! So no amnesty and no legal status, but we’ll weigh all the other options someday in the far future. I’m not sure what other options there are, but I guess that’s an issue for our grandkids. Aside from this, the waffling Trump was gone, replaced by the hardline Trump we’ve all come to love over the past year.

Anyway, if you’re curious, here’s the nickel version of Trump’s 10-point immigration plan:

  1. Build a wall. Mexico will pay for it. It will be a physical wall, with drones and sensors as supplements.
  2. No more catch and release. If you cross the border, we’ll send you back. Way, way back.
  3. Triple the ICE deportation force. Deport all criminals instantly. The police know who they are. We’ll round them up and deport them on Day 1.
  4. Defund sanctuary cities.
  5. Cancel all of Obama’s executive orders.
  6. Suspend visas for visitors from undesirable countries. Send ’em to safe zones in their own countries instead and make the Gulf states pay for it.
  7. Force other countries to take back deported immigrants whether they like it or not.
  8. Complete the biometric entry-exit visa tracking system.
  9. Strengthen E-Verify and end all welfare benefits. “Those who abuse our welfare system will be priorities for immediate removal.”
  10. Reform legal immigration.

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Donald Trump Plans to Parachute Criminals Into Other Countries Whether They Like It Or Not

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Here’s the Transcript of Trump’s Meeting With the President of Mexico

by robinjsk7726156 Posted on September 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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I can’t reveal my sources, but I have gotten hold of a transcript of Donald Trump’s meeting today with Enrique Peña Nieto. Here it is:

EPN: Mr. Trump, Mexico will never pay for a border wall. The idea is insulting and demeaning to the Mexican people and we resent it. You must stop telling the American people this ridiculous fantasy.

DJT: That’s a nice tie you’re wearing. Is it silk? I’ve always loved silk. Melania does too, and she always makes sure that all our sheets are 100 percent silk. Even Barron’s. You can’t start too young when it comes to quality, you know. When I get to the White House, I’m going to change out all the sheets in the guest rooms. You should come for a visit. It’ll be great. They probably have cotton sheets now because Obama doesn’t know quality the way I do. I mean, the guy is obviously in way over his head, don’t you agree? He just doesn’t understand how to negotiate with a head of state. But you and I are going to get along. We’ll be friends. I just know it. Many of my best friends are Hispanic, you know. It’s something people don’t give me credit for. But that’s the press for you. Is it the same here? How does the press treat you? When you do something great, like inviting me for this meeting, do they give you any credit or do they just publish the most horrible lies about you? When I’m president that’s going to stop. They shouldn’t be able to publish lies and get away with it. They said I wanted to use nuclear weapons on Syria! I mean nuclear, that’s where….

2,385 words omitted

So I told him that was impossible, and he said “Not for you, Trump-san!” The Japanese are great kidders. But he was right. We got it done on time and under budget. It was….

Aide: Sir, the press is waiting. We need to make our way out to the portico.

DJT: And I’ve got a plane to catch. It’s been great talking with you, Enrique. I can call you Enrique, can’t I?

So you see, both sides have told the truth about this meeting. Peña Nieto did tell Trump that Mexico wouldn’t pay for the wall, and Trump didn’t discuss it with him.

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Here’s the Transcript of Trump’s Meeting With the President of Mexico

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These People Now Hold Puerto Rico’s Purse Strings

by AimeeBergmann Posted on August 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama announced the appointment on Tuesday of seven people to the financial review board established by Congress to control Puerto Rico’s finances as the island attempts to manage $70 billion in outstanding debt. The board, made up of three Democrats and four Republicans, will not only approve any budgets created by the island’s politicians, but also attempt to negotiate with the island’s nearly 20 creditors.

The board’s Republican members are Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Carlos Garcia, former president of Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank; David Skeel, a University of Pennsylvania law professor; and Jose Carrión, an insurance broker. The Democrats are Arthur Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the New York University School of law and a former US bankruptcy judge; Jose Ramon González, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York; and Ana Matosantos, California’s budget director from 2009 to 2013, according to Bloomberg.

Obama selected the names from a list presented by Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress. It’s unclear when the board will begin its work.

“With a broad range of skills and experiences, these officials have the breadth and depth of knowledge that is needed to tackle this complex challenge and put the future of the Puerto Rican people first,” Obama said in a statement released with the names. “In order to be successful, the Financial Oversight and Management Board will need to establish an open process for working with the people and Government of Puerto Rico, and the members will have to work collaboratively to build consensus for their decisions.”

The announcement of the board members came the same day hundreds of protesters blocked a street in front of a San Juan hotel, which was hosting a Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce conference for business executives and the financial industry about how to “be a part of Puerto Rico’s recovery” under the new financial control board. At least one person was arrested.

Congress created the board in the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), a measure passed in late June to stave off more than a dozen separate lawsuits against the island’s government and public entities that had taken out billions of dollars in debt over the years to fund operations. Puerto Rico’s colonial status prevented its government from restructuring debt using US bankruptcy courts, and multiple efforts by the Puerto Rican government to negotiate with its lenders failed. Earlier this week, the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (the Center for Investigative Journalism) in San Juan released a report listing 275 hedge funds and other financial groups that own Puerto Rican debt. The news organization only received the records after battling the government of Puerto Rico for more than a year.

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), an opponent of an independent review board, issued a statement calling for the board to conduct as much of its work in public as possible. Referring to the board as the “federal Junta“—a reference to a group put in control after a seizure of power—Gutiérrez called for all votes, meetings, and statements to be made public, in Spanish and English, so Puerto Ricans can keep tabs on their actions.

“We expect nothing less in a democracy and last I checked, Puerto Rico is a colony, but still a democracy of U.S. citizens who deserve respect and the trust of this appointed body,” he wrote in his statement. “This is especially important because the body skews towards appointees from financial institutions and those inclined to be sympathetic to bond-holders at the expense of the Puerto Rican people…My message is simple, if you join the Junta, promise to respect the Puerto Rican people, otherwise you are no better than an occupying force.”

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These People Now Hold Puerto Rico’s Purse Strings

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Watch Trump Desperately Pander to Farmers

by MartyMulkey Posted on August 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Like a jittery upstart on The Apprentice, Donald Trump is looking like an unlikely contender for the prize he’s groping for. To beat the long odds stacked against him in the presidential election, the mercurial reality TV star will have to conquer a chunk of real estate quite distinct from the vast gambling dens and condo castles he’s used to: Iowa.

While the US corn, soybean, and hog capital isn’t a big enough prize on its own to push the GOP nominee to victory, “there is no realistic path to the presidency for Trump without Iowa’s six electoral votes,” as the Washington Post recently reported. Ohio, too, has emerged as a necessary but insufficient piece of the electoral map for Trump.

So the lifelong urbanite is plunging those famous fingers of his into the muck of farm-state politics. Trump reportedly declined to mount a Harley and participate in the ride portion of Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst’s “Roast and Ride” event at the state fairgrounds in Des Moines last week, but he did deliver a red-meat speech pandering to some of the baser urges of the Corn Belt’s agribusiness interests.

Here are some highlights:

• He thundered against government regulation of farming practices—a highly contentious topic in a state where waterways and drinking water are routinely polluted by runoff from farms. “We are going to end the EPA intrusion into your family homes and into your family farms, for no reason—what they’re doing to you is a disgrace,” he declared, adding without citing evidence the unlikely claim that “many” Iowans have lost their farms to overzealous enforcement of environmental standards.

• To the crowd’s delight, Trump vowed to revoke the Obama administration’s Waters of the US Rule, which gives the Environmental Protection Agency greater authority to regulate water pollution. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, “wants to shut down family farms just like she wants to shut down the miners and the steelworkers… through radical regulation,” he warned.

• Yet Trump pledged support for an infamous federal government boondoggle: a 2007 law that mandates that a huge portion of the US corn crop be diverted into ethanol production. “President Obama lied to you about his support for the Renewable Fuel Standard, and you can trust Hillary Clinton even less,” he said. In reality, Obama has never wavered in his support for the corn-ethanol mandate, and Clinton, too, supports it—as does one of her main ag policy advisers, USDA chief Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa.

• Trump promised to “end double taxation of family farms at death”—a reference to the estate tax. Repealing the so-called death tax is a perennial applause line for GOP politicians, and Trump’s proclamation drew an enthusiastic response. It’s hard to figure out why the issue still resonates with farm audiences—after years of rollbacks, the tax now applies only to estates valued at $5.45 million or higher, and affects fewer than 1 percent of US family-owned farm operations, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

On two other issues, Trump declined to pander to the ag crowd during his Iowa speech. On immigration, the candidate has maneuvered himself into a tight corner. Anti-migrant rants fueled Trump’s blitz through the primaries, appealing to the nativist impulses of the GOP base. But Big Ag relies heavily on immigrants for labor, from the fruit and vegetable fields of California and Florida to Iowa’s industrial-scale hog slaughterhouses. Perhaps in deference to such business interests, Trump has on some recent occasions softened his stance on immigration. Underlining these tensions, several members of Trumps 64-person ag policy committee support a much softer stance on migration, the Washington Post recently reported. But in his Iowa speech, Trump for some reason reverted to old ways, fulminating against “criminal illegal immigrants” and vowing yet again to “build a great border wall.”

The other issue is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the controversial trade deal championed by President Barack Obama and prized by Big Ag because it pries open Asian markets for US-grown seeds, grain, and meat. Trump has been denouncing the TPP on nativist grounds since he launched his campaign. Perhaps because Iowa stands second only to California in agricultural exports, Trump held his tongue on the TPP during his speech, declining to mention trade at all.

Perhaps to smooth over those immigration and trade rough spots with the Big Ag community, the Trump campaign deployed the chairman of its Rural Advisory Committee, Charles Herbster, to address the Ohio Cattlemen’s Association’s annual roundup in Jackson, Ohio, last Saturday. Herbster, a Nebraska rancher and multilevel-marketing magnate, did not return calls asking for details of his presentation. According to Elizabeth Harsh, executive director of the OCA, Herbster “answered many questions from OCA members,” ranging from “trade and TPP to health care and immigration.” She added, “OCA’s members were very interested and engaged in the discussion,” but she declined to say more.

In a brief interview a month ago, Herbster acknowledged that he’d been getting calls from farmers concerned about Trump’s crusade against the TPP, and insisted that a President Trump would renegotiate trade deals in a way that keeps ag exports booming.

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Watch Trump Desperately Pander to Farmers

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Obama designates world’s largest protected area — it’s underwater

by DorisNewhouse Posted on August 26, 2016

Obama designates world’s largest protected area — it’s underwater

By on Aug 26, 2016Share

President Obama, who marked the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service by designating a whole new land monument in Maine, is giving oceans some love, too.

On Friday, he expanded the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, also known as Papahānaumokuākea, to 582,578 square miles. At nearly three-and-a-half times the size of California, the monument is now the world’s largest protected area.

Papahānaumokuākea encompasses 10 islands and atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which supports over 7,000 species — a quarter of which are unique to Hawaii.

Native Hawaiians urged for the monument’s expansion back in January and consider the place a “the boundary between Ao, the world of light and the living, and Pō, the world of the gods and spirits from which all life is born and to which ancestors return after death,” according to the White House.

Protecting this area means it will be closed for the extraction of oil, gas, minerals, and other energy development. You can learn more about it from this video by Pew:

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Obama designates world’s largest protected area — it’s underwater

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Is the Louisiana Flooding More Devastating Than Hurricane Sandy?

by BeckySoria Posted on August 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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The relief effort in Louisiana is ramping up after 10 days of monumental flooding. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will visit Baton Rouge to survey the damage and find out how the federal government can help. The Red Cross has repeatedly described the flooding as “the worst natural disaster to strike the United States” since Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012.

But for those who aren’t on the ground in Louisiana, it can be difficult to understand what that really means. Here are some numbers that compare the two disasters.

Deaths and damaged homes: Thirteen people have died and about 60,000 homes have been damaged in the flooding that began in Louisiana on August 12. As of Friday, the Obama administration listed 20 parishes in the state as disaster areas, making federal funding available to assist those communities. Hurricane Sandy had a bigger death toll, claiming 72 lives in the United States and damaging 200,000 homes. But that storm hit a much wider swath of land, including metropolitan centers like New York City, whose population is nearly double that of the entire state of Louisiana.

People in shelters: When you compare the storms in terms of the numbers of people in shelters, the situation is similar.

“The Red Cross has mobilized our largest sheltering and feeding effort since Superstorm Sandy with the flooding in Louisiana,” said Molly Dalton, a spokeswoman for the humanitarian organization. “It’s the largest volume of people in need of emergency shelter in the last four years…In addition, FEMA has reported really high numbers of people registering for emergency assistance, which is another indicator we’re going by.”

About five days after Hurricane Sandy, she said, the Red Cross had 11,000 people in 250 shelters across 16 states. One week into that relief effort, it had about 7,000 people in shelters, “and we’re seeing about the same over the last week” in Louisiana, Dalton said on Friday. “Thursday night we had 3,900 people in 28 shelters, but at the peak of the response we had 10,000 people in 50 shelters in Louisiana. So it’s going down, but there are still a lot of people in shelters.” Sunday night, the Red Cross had nearly 3,000 people in 19 shelters across the state.

Looking at the big picture, the Red Cross and partners have provided more than 40,000 overnight stays since flooding began in Louisiana. That compares with 74,000 overnight stays during the entire relief effort for Hurricane Sandy, and 3.8 million overnight stays for Hurricane Katrina victims who where spread across 27 states.

“It’s not possible to estimate the full impact of the Louisiana floods this early in the response, and every disaster is different, so it would be difficult to make any comparison to past disasters,” another Red Cross spokesperson told Mother Jones on Monday. “But we do know that this is going to be a massive response.”

Meals served: “So far in Louisiana in the first week, we’ve served 158,000 meals, and if you look at the same point in Sandy, we had served 164 thousand,” Dalton said Friday. “So as far as what we’re seeing then and what we’re seeing now, it’s very, very similar.”

It’s important to remember, she said, that Hurricane Sandy struck many more states, stretching from New England as far south as the District of Columbia. “This is just one area of Louisiana,” she added. “So if you look at it that way…it’s a very devastating disaster.”

At the peak of the deluge, Louisiana was hit by 6.9 trillion gallons of rain between August 8 and August 14, or roughly 10.4 million Olympic-size swimming pools‘ worth of water. The flooding is receding now, particularly in the northern reaches of the state, though some areas in the south will take longer to dry out, says Gavin Phillips, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “It’s going down everywhere now,” he says. “There’s nothing worsening at this point.”

The Red Cross estimates the relief effort in Louisiana could cost at least $30 million, though that number may grow as relief workers learn more about the scope of the disaster. As of Monday, the humanitarian organization had received about $7.8 million in donations and pledges.

While Hurricane Sandy and the recent Louisiana flooding were devastating, they pale in comparison to Louisiana’s other famous disaster, Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast 10 years ago, killing at least 1,833 people.

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Is the Louisiana Flooding More Devastating Than Hurricane Sandy?

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These Migrant Moms Are on Hunger Strike to Protest Being Locked Up Indefinitely

by NedHMTKiuufr Posted on August 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Nearly two dozen migrant women at a family detention center outside Philadelphia have been on hunger strike for more than a week to protest their extended confinement—and, more broadly, what they claim is the Obama administration’s mischaracterization of the detention of Central American families.

Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that DHS has been detaining families for an average of no more than 20 days. This directly contradicted the experience of the hunger strikers, who say they have been held with their children in the Berks County Residential Center between six months and a year while awaiting their asylum claims to be appealed. So on August 8, 22 women began refusing all food and drinking only water, and two days later they sent a letter to Johnson asking to be released while they wait for their claims to be heard.

“All of us left our countries of origin fleeing violence, threats and corruption,” they wrote. “We are desperate and we have decided that we will get out alive or dead.”

Bridget Cambria, one of the attorneys representing the women, says most of them have lost between 6 and 10 pounds over the last 11 days. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman said the agency fully respects the hunger strikers’ right to express their opinions and said that health personnel are actively monitoring their well-being. The spokesman also said that ICE only recognizes 18 hunger strikers; previously, it acknowledged just four. (Last year, a wave of similar hunger strikes took hold at immigration detention centers across the country—including at one family detention center in Karnes City, Texas.)

The Berks County Residential Center is the smallest of three family detention centers in the United States. It currently houses 75 detainees, 34 of whom are adult women. The country’s other two (much larger) family detention centers are located in Texas. In 2014, when increasing volatility in Central America led to a surge in women and children fleeing for the US border, the Obama administration responded by increasing the federal government’s capacity to detain families.

However, those detention centers soon came under scrutiny for poor medical care, allegations of sexual abuse, lack of access to counsel, and unaffordable bonds that make it difficult, if not impossible, for families to obtain their release. Last summer, Johnson announced a series of family detention reforms meant to reduce the length of confinement, including setting bonds at a more realistic level. The following month, a district court in California ruled that the government must release migrant children within three to five days, or within 20 days under extreme circumstances. Otherwise, the court said, the administration would be in violation of an 18-year-old court settlement dictating the proper treatment of migrant children in detention.

Earlier this month, Johnson told reporters that the government is in compliance with those standards, having limited the average length of stay at family detention centers to 20 days or less. But advocates point to the prolonged detention of children in Berks as a clear violation. “It’s 100 percent violating the settlement,” Cambria said. “There is a right for the children to be released. I don’t even get it. I don’t…We should be caring for the best interests of the child.”

In their letter to Johnson, the hunger strikers stressed their concern for their children’s mental health. They said their sons and daughters have even expressed suicidal thoughts. Human Rights First, which has been making periodic visits to the Berks facility, issued a new report Friday documenting the poor state of mental health at the facility. For example, the report claims that one preteen girl wet the bed so frequently that she had to wear diapers at night. An independent psychological evaluation determined that she had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and that her bed-wetting, though it started well before her incarceration, was “exacerbated by her continued experience of heightened stress and hypervigilance while being detained.” The girl told her therapist that the thought of leaving her mother even briefly in the middle of the night filled her with so much fear that she often wouldn’t make the trip to the bathroom.

Numerous studies have shown that even short periods of detention can affect children’s mental and physical health. In a letter to Johnson in July 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics warned that incarcerating Central American families could lead to “poorer health outcomes, higher rates of psychological distress, and suicidality.”

The ICE spokesman said he is prohibited from commenting on specific cases for privacy reasons but noted that the agency takes these allegations seriously and will review them. He also emphasized that comprehensive medical care, including from licensed mental-health providers, is available throughout a migrant’s detention, along with 24-hour emergency care.

Cambria and other immigrants’ rights advocates say that families seeking asylum shouldn’t be detained at all, let alone for months at a time. They would rather see women transferred out of detention into the care of their relatives in the United States or community-based programs while their asylum cases are processed.

“We’re not dealing with people who are violent. We’re not dealing with people who are a danger,” Cambria said. “They’re children and vulnerable women.”

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These Migrant Moms Are on Hunger Strike to Protest Being Locked Up Indefinitely

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