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The President Breaks the Ice With Republicans

by ansonsten Posted on March 7, 2013

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The presidential charm offensive is in full swing:

Obama invited 12 GOP senators to dinner Wednesday at the Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington, where they dined for two hours. Obama picked up the tab personally, and two of his guests, Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.), emerged flashing a thumbs-up.

“I think what he is really trying to do is just start a discussion and break the ice, and that was appreciated,” Mike Johanns (Neb.) told reporters as he left the dinner. “His goal is ours — we want to stop careening from crisis to crisis and solving every problem by meeting a crisis deadline.”

Obama picked up the tab personally! I don’t quite get that, but whatever.

This will be an interesting experiment. It certainly can’t do any harm, and in any case, it’s obviously something Obama should have been doing all along. Just part of the job, you know. At the same time, I doubt very much that it will accomplish anything. LBJ’s legendary schmoozing, the touchstone for this kind of thing, has always been overhyped, but even at the height of his powers he would have had little luck with the kind of Congress Obama has to deal with. It’s true that there have long been a few Republican senators willing to break ranks on taxes, but there’s little reason to think the rest of them will be swayed by any kind of sweet talk or detailed white papers. And that goes double for the House. It’s just not in the cards. This stuff is driven by policy and ideology, not by personalities.

But we’ll see. If this works, I’ll be gobsmacked, and all the pundits who kept demanding that Obama “lead” will be proven right. Anybody want to take bets?

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The President Breaks the Ice With Republicans

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Notoriously polluting Carnival Cruise Lines faces legal troubles

by Edbre23ne Posted on February 26, 2013

Notoriously polluting Carnival Cruise Lines faces legal troubles

By Susie Cagle

Sometimes when you float massive (and massively polluting) multimillion-dollar resort hotels on the high seas, you run into problems. As it happens, Carnival Cruise Lines has bumped up against a couple of big problems recently, ones that have migrated from the oceans to the courts.

Roberto Vongher

Passengers stranded on the Carnival cruise ship that was stuck in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this month have filed a lawsuit seeking damages for “mental and emotional anguish” sustained on their ill-fated trip. (Next time, might I humbly recommend a staycation?)

Meanwhile, in Italy, prosecutors are seeking to indict the captain and five other crew members who drove the massive Costa Concordia cruise ship into a marine sanctuary and killed 32 people in January 2012. The Costa Concordia is also owned by Carnival. Chief prosecutor Francesco Verusio told The Guardian that an investigation has proven “the determining cause of the events of the shipwreck, deaths and injuries, is, unfortunately, dramatically due to the human factor.”

Speaking of dramatically due to the human factor: Yes, the ship is still stuck on that delicate protected coral reef.

And that’s not even the reason Carnival got a D+ on Friends of the Earth’s recent Cruise Report Card.

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Notoriously polluting Carnival Cruise Lines faces legal troubles

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Why We Should Be Scared for Our Coastlines, in 55 Acronyms

by rakil23 Posted on January 31, 2013

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This story first appeared on the Atlantic website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This week, a group of 78 representatives from American government agencies, universities, non-governmental organizations, and the insurance industry published a report on the threat climate change poses to U.S. coastlines. The document—formal title: “Coastal Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerabilities: A Technical Input to the National Climate Assessment”—clocks in at nearly 200 pages, and functions as a lengthy addendum to the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s National Climate Assessment.

The report’s findings are unsurprising: Our coastlines are particularly vulnerable to climate change’s impacts—a fact that we have had proven to us anecdotally so many sad times in the recent past. Still, though, the document is worth reading—or, perhaps, skimming—in its entirety.

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Why We Should Be Scared for Our Coastlines, in 55 Acronyms

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The Obama Administration Wants States to Grab Your Personal Data

by pitery Posted on January 25, 2013

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Real ID: Stopping your cat from stealing your identity? Tiny Banquet Committee, Flickr

Last year, when I tried to use my (perfectly legal, thank you) Montana state driver’s license to enter a bar in Washington, DC, the bouncer rejected it on the basis that “no real ID would have bear holograms.” Actually, in the Big Sky state we do—but the guy was on to something: Montana is one of 37 states still defying the Real ID Act of 2005, a Bush-era law intended to fight terrorism by standardizing security requirements for state IDs. The Department of Homeland Security was forced to grant yet another extension last month for states that haven’t complied with the law. But experts say the delay doesn’t mean the Obama administration is backing off the controversial security requirements.

In order to comply with the Real ID Act, states must obtain from you, at minimum, photo identification, your birth certificate (or other date of birth verification), your social security number, documentation of legal status, and proof of your home address. State IDs that don’t comply with these security requirements are supposed to be barred from airports and federal buildings, although DHS hasn’t enforced that yet. More controversially, the law requires that states make this personal information sharable to other states, in a de facto database that could be easily accessed by the federal government. But as Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, explains: “That hasn’t really happened, the database never got built. But the federal government still has the legal tools to access this information.”

“The Real ID Act is a loser every way you slice it,” Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the CATO Institute, tells Mother Jones. “But this is the first time DHS is only extending its deadline for certain states. They could be positioning themselves to actually start enforcing this against states like Montana that don’t have a lot of people and don’t have a big airline industry.”

But Homeland Security Janet Napolitano—who herself was was critical of the law as Arizona governor—might have a fight on her hands. At least sixteen states have actually passed legislation rejecting the law, and DHS estimates it will cost states a minimum of $3.9 billion to implement over ten years.

Calabrese tells Mother Jones that though some of the privacy advocates’ worst fears about REAL ID—like a giant database of personal information—haven’t been realized, other concerns remain. States following the law must require home addresses on your license, “which can be a nightmare for victims of abuse.” States that scan and store personal documents online as required by the law (although in 2008 an exception was made for birth certificates), are also “leaving personal information floating around for identity theft,” Calabrese adds.

The law does have its defenders, who argue that these security requirements make US borders more secure from foreign terrorists and undocumented immigrants (which are not infrequently lumped together in discussions of the Act.) Jessica Zuckerman, research associate at the Heritage Foundation, argues that “the Real ID Act is enhancing security at the DMVs and secure databases prevent fraud.” My colleague Kevin Drum has written about how a national ID could help end the voter fraud controversy, but points out that Real ID still leaves us with “50 different cards managed by 50 different bureaucracies.”

For Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the key concern is that “because of Real ID, states are collecting far more information about you than they have in the past.” That information is sometimes shared with commercial data-miners. EPIC has also submitted a friend of the court brief to the Supreme Court in a case challenging lawyers’ use of personal information obtained from DMVs to find potential clients for group action lawsuits. EPIC is arguing that the court should limit states from disclosing such information.

But even though Real ID has proven unpopular with Democrats and Republicans alike, don’t expect it to disappear. “No politician is going to step up and say we need to get rid of this loser because they don’t want to look bad on security,” says Harper. So, if you’re dead set on keeping your information to yourself, you might do what my bear-hologram license has forced me to do: Don’t drive, and bring your passport to happy hour.

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Tom’s Kitchen: Wine-Braised Beef Short Ribs

by Larissaiyb Posted on January 19, 2013

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Braising—cooking something, usually meat, at low temperature in a covered pot with a little liquid—is a fundamental technique. Demanding a little preparation and a lot of patience, braising ever-so-slowly transforms tough, inexpensive cuts of meat into something sublime—and conveniently napped in its own luscious sauce (i.e., the cooking liquid). If you’re a meat eater and you haven’t braised before, now is the time. It’s not something you’ll be tempted to do in the summer.

I got the braising bug recently through the confluence of two factors: a cold snap here in Austin and the arrival of an advanced copy of Michael Pollan’s new book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, due out in April. I’ll have more to say about it soon—expect a review around publication date—but let it suffice to say for now that it contains an entire, very evocative chapter on the act of slow cooking meat in a little liquid.

Pollan’s prose made me crave the smell of beef, mirepoix vegetables—onions, carrots, and celery—and red wine gurgling gently on the stovetop. That is the essence of a French-style braise—you can also use the flavor palates of other cuisines. (In fact, for a Tom’s Kitchen last year, I braised pork ribs in a Mexican-style chile-pepper sauce; and you could certainly do the same for beef ribs.)

To me, the most attractive candidates for the braising pot are tough, bone-in cuts like ribs. Tough cuts are tough because they’re full of collagen, and braising works by melting the collagen into gelatin, giving rise to fork-tender meat. And bones are good because they enrich the cooking liquid, essentially turning it into a full-bodied sauce. The result is supposedly really good for you—the radical whole-foods group Weston A. Price Foundation ascribes great nutritional value to bone-enriched stocks:

Stock contains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily—not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons–stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glucosamine, now sold as expensive supplements for arthritis and joint pain.

Braises tend to taste even better the the day after cooking, but there’s another reason to cook beef short ribs a day in advance: if you can let the cooking liquid cool overnight, the fat can be easily skimmed away. Beef ribs are a fatty cut, and too much fat in the final sauce makes the dish overrich. You can also serve them the same day—just carefully skim the cooking liquid of fat before reducing it in the recipe’s final step.

Wine-Braised Beef Short Ribs
Serves 4, with a little leftover

Olive oil
Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 pounds beef short ribs from grass-fed cows
1 large onion, diced (here’s a great video for a simple, effective onion-dicing technique)
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 bottle inexpensive but drinkable red wine, preferably not aged in oak
1 bay leaf, plus some fresh or dried thyme

Pat the beef ribs dry with a towel, and liberally season them with salt and pepper on all sides. Place a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven or a brazier (a shallow version of a Dutch oven) over medium heat, and add just enough oil to coat the bottom. When it’s hot, brown the ribs on all sides. Be patient and allow for a nice caramelization—it will add big flavor to the dish.

Remove the ribs to a plate and add the diced veggies to the pot. Saute them, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until they’re very soft. As you stir, try to scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan into the sizzling veggies. If they the veggies to scorch before they’ve turned soft, turn the heat down a bit.

Wine + mirepoix veggies = magic

Now add the wine and herbs and turn the heat to high. Again, stir with a wooden spoon, liberating any brown bits that might still be clinging to the bottom. Bring to a boil, and let the wine reduce by about a third. Now turn the heat to the lowest setting on your stovetop, and place the ribs, bone side down, along with any juices that have accumulated under them, into the pot. Cover and let them simmer gently, checking every half an hour or so, until the meat is very tender (a butter knife should easily penetrate it). This will take about three hours.

Remove the cooked ribs to a plate, and pour the cooking liquid into a wide-mouthed jar. Cover both and store in the fridge overnight. Clean the pot. The next day, about an hour before you plan to eat,, skim the hardened fat from the top of the cooking liquid, and then dump the cooking liquid into the cooking pot. (Actually, the “liquid” may retain the shape of the jar—the gelatin from the bones will have given it considerable body.) Turn the heat to medium to melt the liquid. When it is fully melted, turn the heat to high and let it boil until it has reduced by about half. Taste for salt and pepper. Turn heat to low, and return the ribs, bone side down, to the pot. Cover, and let them simmer gently until heated through. Serve the ribs napped in their sauce, with a hearty seasonal vegetable, such as roasted turnips, as well as something green, like sauteed kale.

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Keystone will be even worse for the climate than you thought, says futile new report

by sreg2 Posted on January 17, 2013

Keystone will be even worse for the climate than you thought, says futile new report

By Philip Bump

At some point, the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline will be resolved. Either President Obama will allow the State Department to approve it, or he will not. Either it will be built, or it won’t. One of these days we’ll finally find out the state of Schrodinger’s poor little cat.

In the meantime, pipeline opponents and advocates are battling furiously for attention. Press releases and events and reports and letters and protests and panels and all of the strained tools of our semi-evolved persuasion society are thrown around in Washington, D.C., hoping to finally crack open that little cat’s box.

Here’s what has been thrown around today:

Oil Change International (working with the Natural Resources Defense Council) unveiled a new study, suggesting that petroleum coke, a solid byproduct of the tar-sands oil extraction process, is worse for the climate than coal. And since that petcoke (as it is known) will be sold and burned if tar-sands production is ginned up following approval of Keystone XL, its climate effects should be considered in the government’s environmental impact statement on Keystone. The Washington Post reports:

“The proven tar sands reserves of Canada will yield roughly 5 billion tons of petcoke — enough to fully fuel 111 U.S. coal plants to 2050,” the report says. It asserts that counting petroleum coke use would raise estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands development by 13 percent beyond earlier estimates used by the State Department.

The report said that “the climate impact of oil production is being consistently undercounted.” It calculated that petroleum coke byproduct from oil carried by the Keystone XL alone would be enough to fuel five coal plants and emit 16.6 million tons of carbon dioxide every year.

Counterpoint from the American Petroleum Institute’s Jack Gerard: The pipeline “is clearly is in the national interest, and that’s the only decision the president needs to make.” Considerations of carbon output are “tangential.”

Well, now I don’t know what to think!

usmcarchives

Marines during World War I emerge from the trenches to survey the futile conflict.

Meanwhile, Gerard and his tar-covered allies are busting out their own data, including a claim that building the pipeline could create 5,500 direct — and indirect — jobs. (This is a smidge lower than the tens of thousands of jobs advocates like to tout.) Even before that report finished hitting inboxes, a group of Republican governors and the premier of Saskatchewan wrote a letter to Obama urging approval. If Premier Brad Wall can’t move this ball forward, who can?

As we’ve noted in the past, and as suggested again in a recent Wall Street Journal report, the delay in approving the Keystone pipeline is itself doing damage to the prospect that it will be built. As tar-sands oil sits in Alberta with no effective means of transport, it becomes harder to sell, causing prices to plummet. The lower prices go, the less sense selling it makes. And as the United States continues to frack massive amounts of easier-to-refine oil, there’s less demand still. This is why the issue is urgent for both sides: Proponents are desperately injecting adrenaline shots into that poor, metaphorical kitty’s heart, while opponents, sensing vulnerability, are trying to wring its neck. (Sorry for these analogies, animal lovers.)

The cacophony of pro- and anti-Keystone arguments — reports, assessments, papers, exhortations — isn’t likely to change anything. If Obama is going to oppose Keystone XL because of the damage it would do to the climate, he doesn’t need this petcoke data to convince him. If he is going to approve the pipeline, it won’t be because of Gerard’s latest jobs claims or the persuasive powers of the good Premier Wall. Another day of furious arguing becomes just background noise for a president who right now is more worried about the budget and the murder of schoolchildren.

But we all have jobs to do: Jack Gerard has a job to do and Oil Change International has a job to do and I have a job to do. So we do them. And in a year, this hyperactive day will just be Jan. 17, 2013, a day we barely remember. Was it a Thursday? It was a Thursday.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Community health centers rise up from toxic brownfields

by Myrna Posted on December 12, 2012

Community health centers rise up from toxic brownfields

By Susie Cagle

If poor communities aren’t living in the shadow of active industrial pollution, they’re often living in its graveyard. Industrial polluted brownfields are fenced and festering from California to Maine, frequently situated near low-income residents. When developers come to clean up and build on the sites, too often they plan projects that will push out rather than benefit the people who live nearby.

Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection

A brownfield in Worcester, Mass.

But today The New York Times points to a different kind of trend in brownfields development: building health centers for low-income local residents on sites formerly occupied by meatpacking plants, gas stations, and factories. These kinds of projects stand to bolster communities, not just property values, and they’re still serious investment opportunities for health-care companies.

[There’s] a nationwide trend to replace contaminated tracts in distressed neighborhoods with health centers , in essence taking a potential source of health problems for a community and turning it into a place for health care. In recent years, health care facilities have been built on cleaned-up sites in Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oregon and California.

“These health care providers are getting good at it,” said Elizabeth Schilling, policy manager for Smart Growth America, an advocacy group. “They have internalized the idea that this is an opportunity for them.”

Because these sites are contaminated, many qualify for government tax credits and grants, providing health centers with vital seed money to build. Community health centers, by design, exist to serve populations in poor neighborhoods, where there also tend to be available but contaminated properties like old gas stations, repair shops and industrial sites.

In fact, many of the country’s 450,000 contaminated sites, known as brownfields, are in poor neighborhoods, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. These tracts are disproportionately concentrated in poor communities because contaminated sites are more difficult to redevelop if property values are depressed. Banks are often reluctant to finance construction on a property that might require a costly cleanup.

Brownfields projects can qualify for redevelopment grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development plus tied-in HUD loans and state grants. Florida in particular has promoted the construction of health centers on brownfields with tax credits of up to $500,000.

“The concept in Florida has proven to be not only needed, but viable,” said Michael R. Goldstein, an environmental lawyer in Florida who specializes in brownfield redevelopment. “We are just at the beginning of the journey here. I predict that in the next two years we’ll have close to two dozen across the state.”

How do you improve an impoverished, troubled community for the people who live there now and not the people who would move there if it were less impoverished, less troubled? (Coughgentrificationcough.) This is a question that governments ask almost as infrequently as developers. Grant-qualifying brownfields development projects can be anything from pricey restaurants and mixed-income condominiums to these health centers. If this health-center trend continues, especially in unlikely Florida, it might encourage other communities to redevelop around the needs of their actual residents.

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Community health centers rise up from toxic brownfields

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