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The Government Buried Some Really Important Herbicide News Right Before Thanksgiving

by JohnBorowski Posted on November 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked its controversial approval of a novel herbicide mix, sending shares of its maker, chemical giant Dow, down nearly 3 percent in Wednesday trading.

The product, Enlist Duo, is the signature weed-killing cocktail of Dow AgroScience, Dow’s ag subsidiary. It’s composed of two endocrine-disrupting chemicals, 2-4-D and glypohosate, that have landed on the World Health Organization’s lists of “possible” and “probable” carcinogens, respectively. Dow markets it for use alongside corn and soybean varieties that have been genetically engineered to withstand the combined herbicides, to counter the rapid rise of weeds that have evolved to resist glyphosate alone. Approved by the EPA last year, Enlist Duo is the company’s “crown jewel,” a Wall Street analyst recently told The Wall Street Journal. The US Department of Agriculture thinks farmers will embrace it rapidly—it will boost 2,4-D use by as much as 600 percent by 2020, the agency projects.

How inconvenient for Dow’s shareholders, then, that the EPA has changed its mind. Last Tuesday, the agency petitioned the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals to revoke its approval of Enlist Duo, temporarily barring farmers from using it.

The reason for the reversal is fascinating. The decision hinges on the so-called “synergistic” effects of combined pesticides. When you combine two or more herbicides, do you merely get the weed-slaying properties of each—or do you also get something new and greater than the sum of the parts? There’s not a lot of data on that. Generally, pesticides are tested for safety in isolation, even though farmers tend to use several at once in the field. Yet studies have repeatedly shown—see here and here—that chemical combinations can be much more toxic than you’d expect from analyzing each of their components.

When the EPA reviewed safety data supplied by Dow, it found “no indication of synergism between the two Enlist Duo ingredients for mammals, freshwater fish, and freshwater invertebrates,” its court petition states, and thus it concluded that the “mixture of the two ingredients does not show a greater toxicity compared to either parent compound alone.”

But later, agency officials looked at Dow’s application to the US Patent Office for Enlist Duo, originally filed in 2013, and found something quite different: “claims of ‘synergistic herbicidal weed control.'” The EPA was not amused. “Specifically, Dow did not submit to EPA during the registration process the extensive information relating to potential synergism it cited to the Patent Office,” the agency complained to the court. “EPA only learned of the existence of that information after the registrations were issued and only recently obtained the information.”

In others words, Dow was assuring the EPA that its proposed cocktail was really nothing new—just the combination of two already-approved agrichemicals—while simultaneously telling the patent office that Enlist did indeed bring new and different weed-leveling properties to the farm field. In short, two different messages for two different audiences—the EPA sees potentially heightened toxicity from synergistic effects, while the investors who pore over patents might see a potential blockbuster in an herbicide mix that’s more than just the sum of its two components.

Dow has now handed that “extensive information” on Enlist Duo’s synergistic effects to the EPA. In a press release, Dow AgroSciences President and CEO Tim Hassinger vowed to resolve the EPA’s issues “in the next few months, in time for the 2016 crop use season.” Given that the EPA relies on company-supplied data to make these decisions, he’s probably right—the EPA’s action last week will amount to a speed bump on the road to Enlist Duo’s conquering of the nation’s vast corn/soybean belt. But considering the confusion so far, now might be the time for the EPA to demand independent testing of this powerful and potentially soon-to-be ubiquitous mix.

Meanwhile, last Wednesday’s action marks the second time in November the EPA has seen fit to revoke registration of a would-be blockbuster Dow pesticide. Just a week before, the agency nixed its approval of the insecticide sulfoxaflor, months after a federal appeals court found that Dow had delivered the agency “flawed and limited data” about the chemical’s impact on honeybees.

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The Government Buried Some Really Important Herbicide News Right Before Thanksgiving

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The Fabulous Memory of Donald Trump

by AngieHerxjuipf Posted on November 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump on the reporter he mocked a few days ago:

Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago — if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did.

Serge Kovaleski on Donald Trump:

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Kovaleski said that he met with Mr. Trump repeatedly when he was a reporter for The Daily News covering the developer’s business career in the late 1980s, before joining The Post. “Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years,” Mr. Kovaleski said. “I’ve interviewed him in his office,” he added. “I’ve talked to him at press conferences. All in all, I would say around a dozen times, I’ve interacted with him as a reporter while I was at The Daily News.”

Donald Trump again:

I have the world’s greatest memory. It’s one thing everyone agrees on.

Donald Trump yet again, during the third Republican debate on October 28:

BECKY QUICK: You had talked a little bit about Marco Rubio. I think you called him “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator” because he was in favor of the H-1B visas.

DONALD TRUMP: I never said that. I never said that.

In fact, Trump had said exactly that in his own immigration plan six weeks earlier. There are legions of examples like this. Perhaps Trump’s memory isn’t quite as infallible as he thinks? Or maybe his memory is great but he’s a serial liar? Decisions, decisions.

Link:  

The Fabulous Memory of Donald Trump

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Indiana Managed to Keep One Syrian Refugee Family Out. Here’s Why That Won’t Happen Again.

by OlenMcgehee Posted on November 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Earlier this week, a Syrian family of three on their way to the United States received an unexpected surprise: their long-awaited resettlement to Indiana was, with less than 24 hours to go, being shifted to Connecticut, because Indiana Gov. Mike Pence had demanded that no Syrian refugees be allowed into his state.

The case got widespread national attention as a symbol of the backlash against Syrian refugees following last week’s terror attacks in Paris. But nonprofit groups that help resettle refugees across the country say the case wasn’t a sign of things to come, but a one-off that won’t be repeated.

“We’re not going to capitulate to this,” says Carleen Miller, executive director of Exodus Refugee Immigration, the Indianapolis resettlement organization that was handling the Syrian family’s case. “We intend to resettle Syrians.” Wendy Johnson, the communications director for Episcopal Migration Ministries, the national group that works with Exodus, was equally firm. “The case in Indiana was a one-time occurrence,” she remarks.

Miller says Pence’s gambit worked because of short notice. Her office received a letter from the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration on Tuesday saying the state wouldn’t provide resettlement funds for Syrian refugees. Those dollars help pay for a variety of services, including English classes, counseling, and food assistance. By the time the letter arrived, the family was on its way to the United States, and Miller says she didn’t have time to scramble for other resources. “The decision I made to redirect the family to Connecticut was because the family was coming in less than 24 hours and all this had erupted, and nobody told me what the governor could or couldn’t do that would disrupt services or benefits to the client,” she says. Rather than giving the family an uncertain welcome, she chose to send them to another destination where resources were fully available.

If a resettlement group has more time to prepare, it can find private money to make up for state aid that is taken away, Miller explains. She adds, “That’s what we need to know, that families will be welcomed by us and that we’ll have the resources to provide what they need.”

Officials at resettlement agencies haven’t yet received definitive word on what state governors can actually do to prevent refugees, but they insist that moves by Pence and other governors who have refused Syrian refugees are illegal on several counts. “If this was to be implemented, we’re going to be in default of our international covenants,” says Erol Kekic of Church World Service, a resettlement agency. “Article 31 in the UN refugee convention basically says we can’t discriminate based on nationality or membership in a particular religious group, and this is exactly what we’re doing.”

Even the supposed state refugee funds that governors control aren’t strictly theirs to manage: States receive that money from the federal government. The cash is typically doled out by a state refugee coordinator, but that’s not mandatory. “It’s actually at the discretion of the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services to decide who administers these funds,” Kekic says. “They’re not state funds.”

This Syrian family’s quick shift to Connecticut was motivated by logistics and not a fear of local backlash, according to refugee advocates, but that doesn’t mean refugees feel safe. Resettlement agencies say their local offices have fielded numerous calls from nervous refugee families and have also received reports of harassment. Carleen Miller of Exodus reports that one Syrian refugee family in Indiana expressed concern about the signal conveyed by Pence’s move. At school, the couple’s child was confronted by another student. “The classmate said, ‘Are you a supporter of ISIS?’…It’s really disturbing on a variety of levels.” Another refugee in Louisville, Kentucky, reported a death threat. “We have had one report of a Middle Eastern client…getting off the bus and somebody yelling, ‘I will kill you!'” says Kekic, from Church World Service. “So the guy went home and shaved his beard and cried, and then called the agency to say, ‘I don’t know what to think anymore. I didn’t do anything to anyone. Here I am, what do I do next?'” Local resettlement offices have also received threats, Kekic points out.

Many refugee families now live in a constant state of tension, according to resettlement officials. “They feel afraid, they’re not sure what to do, they don’t know if they belong there anymore, how should they behave,” Johnson say. But refugee assistance groups also note that local communities have mostly been welcoming.

In Connecticut, the Syrian family of three—they have so far declined to give their names to media outlets—arrived in New Haven on Wednesday and was greeted by Democratic Gov. Daniel Malloy, one of the few politicians to publicly welcome Syrian refugees in the past week. “Americans sometimes overreact to issues, but in the end they come back and find center,” he reassured the family, according to Chris George, the executive director of Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, the group that inherited the case from Exodus.

Then, after Malloy left, the family prepared for their first night in their new homeland.

Excerpt from: 

Indiana Managed to Keep One Syrian Refugee Family Out. Here’s Why That Won’t Happen Again.

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Ben Carson Just Made a Completely Bogus Argument for Not Raising the Minimum Wage

by CarmonRoy Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Flying in the face of what most economists believe, GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson announced that raising the minimum wage would cost America jobs.

“Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases,” the retired neurosurgeon said during the fourth televised GOP debate. “If you lower those wages, that comes down,”

Only one problem: this claim is seriously contested. More than 600 economists signed a letter to President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders last year urging the government to raise the federal minimum wage.

“The weight of evidence now shows that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market,” the economists wrote.

There are some forecasts that support Carson’s view: the Congressional Budget Office last year said that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 would cost the US economy 500,000 jobs.

But many economists disagree with these estimates and so does the US Department of Labor. State-by-state hiring data released last year by the Department of Labor showed that the 13 states that raised their minimum wages at the start of the year gained jobs faster than their peers.

The federal minimum wage was last raised in 2009.

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Ben Carson Just Made a Completely Bogus Argument for Not Raising the Minimum Wage

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WikiLeaks Releases What It Says Are the CIA Director’s Personal Emails

by MikkiDjrtbodb Posted on October 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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WikiLeaks released its latest document dump on Wednesday afternoon: a collection of files allegedly taken from the personal email of CIA director John Brennan, whose AOL account was allegedly hacked by a teenager and his friends.

The most sensitive of the documents is a draft version of Brennan’s SF-86, the lengthy form that people must fill out when applying for a security clearance. The form requests years’ worth of employment and personal history, allowing government investigators to delve deep into the backgrounds of applicants—and providing foreign intelligence services or hackers with a treasure trove of potential information for blackmail. That threat is why members of Congress, security professionals, and others freaked out when millions of SF-86s were stolen in the hacks on the Office of Personnel Management, exposing the personal data of a vast number of government employees. Those records are now presumed to be in Chinese hands.

Brennan’s alleged form is now out in public, so his exposure may be even worse. The form released by WikiLeaks isn’t complete, but it does include the personal information of both Brennan and his wife.

The exposure also highlights the government’s ongoing problems with securing sensitive information and using it in unofficial channels. Such documents are supposed to be kept on secure government systems, but officials from Brennan to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former CIA director David Petraeus have run afoul of classification rules or used unsecured systems for sensitive data. Part of that may come down to aging, inefficient government computer systems that make using personal email attractive, but overclassification may also play a role. “It’s inevitable, because the classified systems are often cumbersome and lots of people have access to the classified e-mails or cables,” former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith told the Washington Post in August.

Other documents in the Brennan leak are much less interesting, including the 2007 draft of a memo on Iran that Brennan eventually published in 2008. The Department of Homeland Security says the FBI and the Secret Service are investigating the incident.

Source – 

WikiLeaks Releases What It Says Are the CIA Director’s Personal Emails

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A Closer Look At Alabama’s Driver License Office Closures

by GilbertoBkr Posted on October 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the outrage over Alabama’s closure of 31 driver license offices in 30 of its counties, but Bob Somerby says the prevailing liberal wisdom is a crock. The story is that Alabama closed offices in predominantly black counties as a way of making it harder for blacks to get driver licenses and thus making it harder for them to vote. (Alabama, naturally, has a photo ID requirement to vote.) But is that true?

Well, at great expense, the hardworking staff here totted up the black population of all 30 counties with closed offices. Here are the numbers:

Total population: 826,000
Total black population: 196,000
Percentage black population: 23.8%

For Alabama as a whole, the population is 26.2 percent black. So it looks like Somerby is right. The black population of the affected counties is actually lower than it is for the whole state. If Alabama was deliberately trying to target blacks, they sure seem to have made a hash of it.

Data here.

POSTSCRIPT: There are other criticisms you can make, of course. Closing offices in small rural counties—many of which are majority black—makes it really hard to get a driver license since the nearest open office might be quite far away. At the same time, closing offices in places with very few people is also obviously sensible just in terms of constituent service. In any case, the overall impact doesn’t appear to be much heavier—if at all—on blacks than it is on whites.

Link to article – 

A Closer Look At Alabama’s Driver License Office Closures

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The Biggest Cyberattack Against the US in Recent History Just Keeps Getting Worse

by CaseyYZQswynlze Posted on September 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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On the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to Washington, DC, the Obama administration released alarming new numbers about one of the biggest computer hacks in American history—traceable, officials say, to China—a move that could potentially heighten tension ahead of the historic meeting.

The Office of Personnel Management announced that it had substantially underestimated the number of people whose fingerprints were stolen during the attack earlier this year. About 5.6 million of 21.5 million federal employees, contractors, applicants, and others had their fingerprints stolen during a hack of the OPM’s background check databases, the agency reported Wednesday morning. That figure is higher than the 1.1 million previously reported.

An interagency group including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense are reviewing how the fingerprint information could be used in nefarious ways, but it downplayed the immediate impact. “Federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited,” the agency said in a statement issued Wednesday morning, as President Barack Obama and a host of dignitaries hosted Pope Francis at the White House. “However, this probability could change over time as technology evolves.”

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The Biggest Cyberattack Against the US in Recent History Just Keeps Getting Worse

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We’re Obliterating Global Temperature Records, and There’s No End in Sight

by MalcolmSpell Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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One after another, each of 2015’s summer months have been among the hottest ever recorded on Earth. And a trio of new studies out this week, from three different countries, confirms that temperature records just keep tumbling—falling victim to an unusually massive El Niño climate event gathering strength in the Pacific, as well as unrelenting man-made climate change, which is cooking the entire system.

On Monday, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said that this August was the hottest August worldwide since 1891, when its records begin. August was 0.81 degrees above the 1981-2010 average, smashing 2014’s record.

Data from Japan’s Meteorological Agency shows 2015’s August was the hottest August in more than 120 years. JMA

Also on Monday, NASA confirmed that scientists have never recorded a hotter summer than this year’s. When taken together, temperatures for June, July, and August were 1.4 degrees hotter than the long-term average, passing the previous hottest summer, 1998. Unlike Japan’s study, NASA says this August was very narrowly the second hottest August on record (behind 2014).

And finally, major research from the United Kingdom’s Met Office released this week concluded that 2015’s overall temperatures are running at or near record levels (at about 0.684 degrees above the 1981-2010 average)—which suggests the next two years could be the hottest on record around the world.

“We know natural patterns contribute to global temperatures in any given year, but the very warm temperatures so far this year indicate the continued impact of (manmade) greenhouse gases,” said Stephen Belcher from the Met Office, in a news release. “With the potential that next year could be similarly warm, it’s clear that our climate continues to change.”

The Met Office says this year’s El Niño— the global climate event that occurs every five to seven years, bringing drought to places like Australia while heaping rain on the western United States—is likely contributing to record temperatures. (Sadly, it’s unlikely to help quench California enough to break the drought.)

The El Niño itself could break records. “Recent oceanic and atmospheric indicators are at levels not seen since the 1997–98 El Niño,” Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said on Tuesday, adding that the big climate event is unlikely to subside before early 2016.

El Niño is also probably contributing to the unusually active hurricane season in the Pacific. The Met Office says tropical cyclone activity across the northern hemisphere this year is about 200 percent above normal. Six hurricanes have crossed the central Pacific, more than in any other year on record.

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We’re Obliterating Global Temperature Records, and There’s No End in Sight

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Kim Davis Is Either Big Winner or Big Loser, Depending on Your Perspective

by TabathaMcVicars Posted on September 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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It looks like I have my answer about what will happen when Kim Davis reports back to work in the Rowan County clerk’s office:

One of Davis’ deputy clerks, Brian Mason, said he will continue to issue licenses even if Davis instructs him to not do so. “Because of the federal court order,” Mason said when asked why he might buck his boss when she returns to work.

….Mason patiently answered a dozen reporters’ questions Wednesday when the clerk’s office opened for business, displaying the license he and five other deputy clerks have used since they assured Bunning they would comply with his order. Those revised licenses do not include Davis’ name, instead indicating the license is authorized by “the office of the Rowan County Clerk,” where it once indicated “the office of Kim Davis, Rowan County Clerk.”

….“It was an office decision,” Mason said when asked who authorized the change.

Davis will not have to personally issue marriage licenses to any gay couples, and the licenses themselves no longer have her name on them. This is what she asked for in the first place, so she ought to be satisfied. Right?

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Kim Davis Is Either Big Winner or Big Loser, Depending on Your Perspective

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Inside the Landmark Court Case That Will End Indefinite Solitary Confinement in California

by JustinKrauss Posted on September 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, 10 California inmates succeeded in stopping the decades-long use of indefinite solitary confinement in the state’s prison system. In a landmark settlement to a class-action suit they filed in 2012, California must now institute widespread reforms—which advocates hope will be a catalyst for change across the nation.


Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons.


Interactive: Inside a Solitary Cell


What Extreme Isolation Does to Your Mind


Documents: 7 Surprising Items That Get Prisoners Thrown Into Solitary


Maps: Solitary Confinement, State by State


VIDEO: Shane Bauer Goes Back Behind Bars at Pelican Bay

See more MoJo coverage of solitary confinement.

As part of the settlement, prison officials can isolate an inmate only if he or she commits a serious or violent infraction. Any perceived rule violation must be then proven in a hearing. Even those who do end up housed in the so-called Secure Housing Unit (SHU) will have different living quarters. The “high-security but nonisolation environment” will allow prisoners movement without restraints, the same amount of time away from their cells as the general prison population, access to educational and recreational programs, and physical contact with their visitors.

The settlement also bars the prison from housing inmates in these units for more than 10 years and will officially put an end to indeterminate stays. Instead, there will be a two-year program that provides incremental steps with increasing privileges to return to the general population.

Most inmates currently serving time in solitary are expected to qualify for removal under the settlement agreement—including all who have served more than 10 years—and they will be transitioned out over the next year.

“It is a remarkable feat of political organizing. This whole movement and the result is because of their collective action,” said Alexis Agathocleous, counsel on the suit and the deputy legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “It’s a huge step forward, in terms of how solitary confinement is used in California, but I really think it also sets up the model for how reform can occur around the country.”

As my colleague Shane Bauer wrote in an award-winning 2012 feature, thousands of inmates idle alone inside small concrete cells within the Security Housing Unit at California’s notorious Pelican Bay State Prison. Confined to the windowless rooms for 22.5 hours a day, prisoners in solitary are allowed only a short daily reprieve from their cells for exercise, inside another small cement room that is equipped with a camera to monitor their activities.

Gabriel Reyes spent more than 17 years living this way, without access to direct sunlight, physical contact with another person, rehabilitation and education programs, and even phone calls from his family. “Unless you have lived it, you cannot imagine what it feels like to be by yourself,” he wrote in 2011, “between four cold walls, with little concept of time, no one to confide in, and only a pillow for comfort—for years on end. It is a living tomb.”

Reyes ended up at Pelican Bay after burglarizing an empty house in 1995. It was his third conviction, and, under California’s “three strikes” law, it landed him 25 years to life. But it wasn’t this crime—or any other—that got him thrown into the SHU. Like many of the more than 1,100 prisoners housed there, Reyes was put in solitary simply for being suspected of being part of a gang.

Using the “Predictive Behavior Model,” prison officials could isolate inmates for just about anything they thought showed signs of gang involvement: associating with the wrong person, having certain kinds of tattoos, or even reading books and poetry that officials deemed suspect was enough to land a prisoner “in the hole.” And, at Pelican Bay, you could stay there for the rest of your life.

Researchers have documented the devastating and permanent mental- and physical health detriments caused by isolation, and, according to a 2013 Government Accountability Office report, there’s no evidence that the use of solitary confinement makes prisons safer. Still, around 80,000 inmates are currently housed in solitary units around the country, costing tax payers in the process: Pelican Bay spends an additional $12,300 per inmate per year.

Reyes has been fighting to change the system for years, along with many other inmates who have endured long stints in the SHU. After coordinating by talking through pipes or yelling from cell to cell, he and nine other inmates—who have each spent more than a decade in solitary—launched two hunger strikes and were eventually joined by more than 12,000 inmates across California.

Finally, in 2012, with the help of a legal team that included support from the Center for Constitutional Rights and California Prison Focus, the group of inmates decided to take legislative action—and now indefinite solitary confinement may be done with for good.

The prisoners themselves, including many of those whose suit brought about this settlement, will now be able to oversee its implementation. As inmate representatives they will also regularly meet with California prison officials to offer insights into prison conditions and programs.

While this settlement is a huge win in the fight to put an end to solitary confinement, advocates emphasize the battle is not over.

“It is a really big deal—and something that we hope will act as a tipping point,” said attorney Charles Carbone, co-counsel on the suit. “I am hoping what we did here in California not only cures the issue of solitary confinement and the practice of isolating prisoners, but also starts or leads a larger conversation about the prison epidemic.”

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Inside the Landmark Court Case That Will End Indefinite Solitary Confinement in California

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