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There’s a 25 percent chance your water system violated the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Kait Parker grew up the daughter of a math teacher and a storm-spotting firefighter, which likely explains her spitfire approach to explaining atmospheric science. Last year, when Breitbart attempted to disprove climate change by misleadingly poaching only a portion of her Weather Channel segment on La Niña, Parker fired back. She called out the alt-right site for its dubious methods in an online video. “Next time you’re thinking about publishing a cherry-picked article, try consulting a scientist first,” she zinged. The response brought a wave of social-media support and shout-outs from mainstream media like Elle.

Parker is currently doubling down on reaching her fellow millennials, producing and hosting shows on digital-only outlets like the Weather Channel app and Snapchat. Her YouTube series, “Science Is Real,” examines the consequences of a warming planet. And later this spring she’ll launch “The United States of Climate Change,” a massive 50-part series that will chart climate impacts in every state through short videos, written pieces, and even graphic novels.

“If 97 doctors told you you were dying of cancer, would you believe them, or the three that didn’t?” she says of climate change. “The more lives I can help save and communicate the risk, the better.”


Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

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There’s a 25 percent chance your water system violated the Safe Drinking Water Act.

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This Is What Trump’s Deportation Campaign Really Looks Like

Mother Jones

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Since February, dozens of deportation raids have been carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as Donald Trump has kicked his immigration crackdown into high gear. Immigrants—many of whom have lived and worked in the country for decades—have been arrested at home, at work, and at routine check-ins with ICE officials. Some arrests have sparked protests, while others have gone relatively unnoticed.

Here are some of the most outrageous arrests ICE has made so far this year:

The DACA recipient arrested after speaking out against ICE

Twenty-two-year-old Daniela Vargas was arrested by ICE officers in Jackson, Mississippi, earlier this month—shortly after giving a speech in which she publicly criticized ICE for detaining her brother and father. Vargas, who arrived in the United States from Argentina with her family when she was seven, was one of thousands of young immigrants protected from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was started by President Obama in 2012. (Trump has been reluctant to criticize the program or so-called Dreamers, leading to criticism from immigration hardliners.)

Vargas was granted DACA status in 2014, but her status expired in November. In February, she applied to renew her status, and not long after her father and brother were detained at their home. Weeks later, Vargas spoke out about her relatives’ arrest at a news conference. Shortly afterward, ICE agents pulled over the car Vargas was riding in. “What we know they said is, ‘You know who we are, you know why we’re here,'” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, the director of United We Dream, an immigrants’ rights group. They arrested Vargas. “Because her DACA was expired,” Martinez Rosas said, “ICE agents played a game of ‘gotcha’ with her life.” Vargas was released from ICE custody last Friday, after a week in detention.

The brain tumor patient detained at the hospital

There are several places that immigration officials consider sensitive—schools, churches, hospitals, and ceremonies like funerals and weddings—where they typically refrain from conducting enforcement actions. In the case of Sara Beltrán Hernández, ICE agents skirted this informal policy in late February by arresting her in the Texas hospital where she was receiving treatment for a brain tumor. Beltrán Hernández was transferred to a detention facility in Alvardo, Texas, where she had previously been held after spending 16 months while waiting for a judge to rule on her asylum request. Beltrán Hernández claimed she had fled El Salvador in late 2015 to escape domestic abuse and the gang violence that has devastated the country.

Earlier this month, after a petition from her attorney and a social-media campaign led by Amnesty International, she was granted bond, allowing her to reunite with her family and seek medical attention while her case is resolved.

The transgender woman detained at her domestic-abuse court hearing

Ervin Gonzalez, an undocumented transgender woman from Mexico, was arrested in a courthouse in El Paso, Texas, in mid-February, just minutes after leaving a hearing in her domestic-violence case. Gonzalez, who had filed police reports for three incidents of alleged abuse, had been granted a protective order against her accused abuser. “We were stunned that ICE would go to these lengths for someone that is not a violent criminal,” Jo Anne Bernal, the county attorney, told a local news station after the arrest. “I cannot recall an instance where ICE agents have gone into the domestic-violence court, specifically looking for a victim of domestic violence.” An ICE spokesperson said the agency had been tipped off about the woman’s whereabouts by another law enforcement agency, and that she had already been deported six times. She is currently being held in a local detention facility under a federal ICE detainer.

The father whose arrest was filmed by his sobbing daughter

In another side step of ICE’s sensitive-location policy, immigration officials arrested Rómulo Avelica-González just a block away from his daughter’s school in Los Angeles. Avelica-González and his wife were headed there to drop off their daughter for the day when ICE officials pulled over their car. His 13-year-old daughter, who cried through the ordeal, captured the arrest on video. Avelica-González came to the United States from Mexico in the early 1990s and has since raised four daughters here, all US citizens. He is the sole financial provider for his family, according to his supporters. His family has attained a stay on his deportation from an appeals court.

In a statement, the union that represents teachers in Los Angeles slammed ICE for the arrest, saying it would “lead to students staying home, disrupting their education,” and that children had a right to an education “free from fear and intimidation.” Avelica-González was detained because he had “multiple prior criminal convictions,” ICE officials said, including a DUI from 2009, and an outstanding order of removal from 2011.

The Phoenix mother deported for working illegally

Guadalupe García de Rayos, a 35-year-old mother of two US citizens, was deported in early February. She had been detained during her annual check-in with ICE officials, which she was required to attend because of a years-old conviction for using a fake Social Security number to work. Because her felony conviction was nonviolent, García de Rayos was considered low priority for deportation under the Obama administration. But under ICE’s new prioritization guidelines, García de Rayos’ criminal record made her a priority for deportation. She was taken into custody at her check-in February and deported days later.

The Akron father who was forced to deport himself

Leonardo Valbuena, 43, was arrested at his regular check-in with immigration officials in Akron, Ohio, in February. He had traveled to the United States from Colombia with his wife and two children on a temporary visitor’s visa in 2006 and told local reporters that he had subsequently applied for political asylum. Valbuena, who worked as a carpenter in Cleveland, had been issued a Social Security number for tax purposes, a work permit, and a driver’s license as he awaited a decision—but in the meantime, he claimed, his visa expired. At his check-in in February, Valbuena was arrested and given the option to leave the country voluntarily in exchange for not being criminally prosecuted for overstaying his visa. He was given a few weeks to gather himself to go back to Colombia, and his wife and children decided to leave with him. In an interview with a local news station before he left for Colombia, Valbuena said, “It’s hard to explain how my life changed on that day.”

The pregnant mother of four

Lilian Cardona-Pérez, 33, came to the United States legally from Guatemala in 1997 at age 13. She seured a work permit, has been employed since—currently at a Mexican restaurant and as a housekeeper—and has raised four children with her husband. The couple is expecting a fifth. But earlier this month, Cardona-Pérez attended her regular check-in with ICE officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she was told she would be deported in 30 days. Cardona-Pérez’s family has not made public why she is being deported, but they said ICE made an allegation against her that, they claim, is untrue. She has an immigration hearing scheduled this week, but if deported, she’d leave behind her family and be left to raise her fifth child alone. “I have no family there. I have no home,” Cardona-Perez said of Guatemala at a prayer vigil last weekend. “There is no place I could go.”

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This Is What Trump’s Deportation Campaign Really Looks Like

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The President Is Determined to Be Presidential

Mother Jones

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The New York Times tells us about President Trump’s TV strategy:

One West Wing official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about strategy, said the administration craved the split-screen television images of Mr. Trump at round-table discussions with business executives every few days on one side, and the vehement protesters of his administration on the other.

This sounds right. Trump seems to believe that sitting around a table with powerful business executives is “presidential.” It’s basically a child’s idea of what a president looks like. So that’s what he does. I don’t think it’s even cynical image manipulation on his part. He really does think this is what makes a president presidential.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we have this:

A day before delivering a high-stakes address on Tuesday to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Trump will demand a budget with tens of billions of dollars in reductions to the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department, according to four senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the plan. Social safety net programs, aside from the big entitlement programs for retirees, would also be hit hard.

This is obviously the work of Mike Pence and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney more than it is of Trump himself, but Trump will nonetheless be the master showman selling this plan. It’s also more symbolic than anything else, but it’s symbolism that matters since it means Trump is signaling that he’s willing to go along with Paul Ryan’s feverish devotion to cutting spending on the poor. We already know that Trump is also eager to cut taxes on the rich, so it appears he and Ryan are entirely on the same page. The next few months promise to be bloody.

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The President Is Determined to Be Presidential

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Obama’s Back

Mother Jones

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Barack Obama had to hand his @POTUS Twitter handle to Donald Trump Friday afternoon. But the now ex-president isn’t ditching the social media platform. After he’d taken off from DC in a helicopter, Obama revved up his old Twitter handle to reassure people that (after a brief vacation) he’d be back.

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Obama’s Back

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How the "Trump Effect" Could Undermine Germany’s Clean Energy Revolution

Mother Jones

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The world’s most advanced energy revolution has hit an obstacle: the Trump effect.

Germany has long been a clean energy pioneer. Despite the fact that the sun hardly shines there, the country was the world leader in installed solar capacity until it was finally overtaken last year by China, a vastly larger and sunnier country. By 2050, Germany aims to get 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources and to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 95 percent. It currently derives about one-fifth of its power from wind and solar (and one-third from total renewables), compared to just 5 percent in the United States. Even though this dramatic energy transition—known as the Energiewende—has contributed to higher household electricity costs, 90 percent of Germans say they support it.

For years, Germany’s mainstream political parties have supported clean energy, too. But that broad consensus could soon face a significant test, another possible casualty of the resurgence of right-wing, nativist politics across the Western world. Unlike many of its neighbors, Germany hasn’t had a far-right party represented in its parliament since the Second World War. But that’s almost certain to change next year, when national elections could make the Alternative for Germany party (known by its German acronym, AfD) the second- or third-strongest faction in the government, if polling trends continue. The party, which began as a euro-skeptic movement, has built its success on stringent opposition to immigration and admission of refugees—and on inflammatory rhetoric that echoes the campaign of Donald Trump.

The AfD also opposes Germany’s clean energy policies. It’s calling for an end to the law behind the Energiewende and even questions the existence of human-induced climate change, stating on its website, “Scientific research on the long-term development of the climate because of man-made CO2 emissions is fraught with uncertainty.” Now, in an effort to slow the AfD’s rapid rise, the country’s mainstream parties could be poised for a step back in the fight against global warming.


It’s hard to overstate the importance of Germany’s energy transition. Several countries get a higher percentage of their electricity from renewables, but Germany’s economy and manufacturing industry are far larger, making the Energiewende a model for a cleaner future among economic superpowers.

“If it succeeds, it could be a great case study for the world,” says Sven Egenter, executive director of Clean Energy Wire, which provides information about the Energiewende to journalists in Germany. “And if it fails, it could be a great case study for the world.”

But Germany will almost certainly fall short of its emissions reduction target for 2020, for one reason: It can’t kick its coal habit. Germany still gets more than 40 percent of its electricity from coal—a higher share than in the United States or any other major Western economy. That’s in part because Chancellor Angela Merkel doubled down on the country’s commitment to abandoning nuclear power after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster, shutting down eight plants virtually overnight and pledging to take all the others offline by 2022. Something had to fill the void, and renewable energy production wasn’t adequate to the task, so the reliance on coal continued.

If Germany is to have any chance of meeting its longer-term targets, it will have to find a way to move off coal almost as quickly as it’s ditching nuclear. But there are several impediments to doing so. One is that wind and solar aren’t quite ready to take over. Even if their production numbers were sufficient, electricity storage and transmission would require major advances to make renewables the country’s primary electricity source.

And then there are the political hurdles—what Katharina Umpfenbach of the Ecologic Institute, an environmental think tank based in Berlin, calls “the Trump effect.”

During the US presidential campaign, Trump promised to bring coal-mining jobs back to Appalachia (and bashed alternative energy sources like wind). Voters in the region—parts of which were once Democratic strongholds—responded enthusiastically. They waved “Trump Digs Coal” signs at rallies and voted for him by overwhelming margins. Market forces will make Trump’s coal promises nearly impossible to keep, but his victory is already having a very real impact in Germany. Politicians there are looking at Trump’s success among disaffected voters in coal country and seeing similar fears among their own constituencies in areas where coal production is being phased out.

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Trump’s election capped a year of successes for the populist right that has left mainstream politicians scrambling to shore up their support. There was the British vote to exit the European Union, the resignation of Italy’s prime minister, the near-victory of a right-wing extremist in Austria, and the growing strength of the far right in France. Merkel, dubbed the “liberal West’s last defender” by the New York Times, is now facing her own insurgency in the form of the AfD. And so she and her coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, are tacking to the right to bolster their eroding support.

The biggest effect is likely to be on immigration and refugee policy: Earlier this month, Merkel proposed a ban on the face veils worn by some Muslim women. Anti-refugee sentiment has only climbed since then with the attack on a Berlin holiday market last week; the chief suspect is a Tunisian asylum seeker.

But clean energy advocates worry that the Energiewende could suffer as well. “My biggest fear is that the conservatives in Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union get so nervous that they also move to the right,” says Annalena Baerbock, a member of the German parliament and the Green Party’s parliamentary spokeswoman on climate policy.

Few lawmakers in Germany’s longstanding political parties—Merkel’s Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, and the Greens, as well as smaller parties like the pro-business Free Democrats—would deny that the country ultimately has to move away from coal. That’s particularly true when it comes to lignite, a type of coal that is less efficient and burns dirtier than hard coal. Lignite alone accounts for half of the country’s carbon emissions in the electricity sector.

Just 20,000 Germans work in lignite mining, compared with at least 300,000 in renewable energy, according to Christian Redl of the think tank Agora Energiewende. (The coal industry says its figure is more like 100,000, according to Baerbock, if you include associated roles such as delivery workers.) “The issue is that it’s very concentrated in specific regions,” Redl says. “In those regions, huge numbers of people work in that sector, and there’s no renewables industry there yet.”

These regions are similar to Appalachia: economically distressed and reliant on a dying coal industry, but with an outsized influence on the political debate. One of the main regions is Brandenburg, just outside of Berlin, a portion of which Baerbock represents in the parliament. The center-left Social Democrats are doing all they can to maintain their strength in these coal regions as the AfD attempts to attract discontented voters by campaigning for the continued use of lignite to generate electricity. Already struggling to remain relevant as Merkel has established herself as the bulwark against the rising right, the Social Democrats can hardly afford to lose support among coal workers, a heavily unionized group that has historically backed them.

The political situation has created an incentive for the Social Democrats to drag their feet on the transition away from coal. It’s an uncomfortable development for Baerbock’s Greens, who laid the groundwork for the Energiewende while in a ruling coalition with the Social Democrats in the late 1990s and early 2000s

“The Social Democrats in Brandenburg, they want to keep lignite running for decades,” says Philip Alexander Hiersemenzel, a spokesman for Younicos, which is working to develop large-scale battery storage for renewable electricity, while giving a tour to journalists of the company’s industrial facility on the outskirts of Berlin.

Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s economy and energy minister and the Social Democrats’ party chairman, rejected calls this summer for a rapid phaseout of coal. In October, he said he expects Germany to continue burning lignite into the 2040s. (“That’s absolutely hilarious,” responds Umpfenbach, “because how will we reduce emissions by 95 percent if we still have coal?”)

Hubertus Heil, vice chairman of the Social Democrats’ parliamentary group, said recently that if people in coal-producing regions were presented with an end date for the use of coal without a plan for economic assistance, “you might as well send them to the AfD right away.” (The Social Democrats’ press spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.)

A lignite mine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Tim McDonnell/Climate Desk

As Mother Jones reported in 2014, open-pit lignite mining has destroyed the landscapes of large swaths of Germany and has even threatened to swallow villages that stand in its way. But the devastation caused by mining could actually present an opportunity for the country to phase out coal without killing too many jobs. In the aftermath of the abrupt nuclear phaseout, I visited a small town in northern Germany whose nuclear plant had employed as many people as the town had residents. Workers there were upset at the sudden shutdown of the plant, but their frustration was mitigated by the knowledge that many of them would remain employed decommissioning the plant, a process that can take up to 15 years. Similarly, clean energy advocates suggest, some lignite miners could get jobs repairing and rebuilding the decimated landscapes of the former mines.

“It will take centuries to reconstruct the whole area,” says Baerbock, speaking in a conference room in the parliamentary office building, with a wide bay window looking out over rows of bicycle racks in the government quarter. Looming over that view is a towering smokestack from a gas-powered plant two kilometers to the north, a reminder of the work still to be done.

Residents of Appalachia have been turned off by what they see as decades of empty promises from politicians pledging to preserve coal jobs. Baerbock is determined to avoid the same fate. “We have to be very honest,” she says. “So I would never say this will not cost a single job, because I don’t believe this is true.”

The key is to manage the coal phaseout in a “socially inclusive” way, says Umpfenbach. For Germany’s mainstream parties, that means being more successful than US Democrats have been in both retaining the support of voters in mining regions and sharply cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, it means finding a way to sidestep the Trump effect by coming up with a concrete solution for coal regions that has evaded American politicians.

“In my point of view,” says Baerbock, “if we find a good solution for the workers, then it’s not so hard to have the discussion of the coal phaseout.”

Success or failure, the world is watching.

Reporting for this story was supported by the International Center for Journalists.

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How the "Trump Effect" Could Undermine Germany’s Clean Energy Revolution

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How Trump’s Deportation Plans Could Damage Our Economy

Mother Jones

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In 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order establishing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to apply for two-year work permits and exemptions from deportation. They initially were able to renew their DACA status for a second two-year period, which was later expanded to three years. The immigration plan that President-elect Donald Trump issued during his campaign for presidency calls for ending DACA, describing it as “illegal executive amnesty.” Now, a new report by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center outlines the possible economic effects that could occur if the Trump administration follows through on its proposed elimination of DACA.

As of June 2016, DACA has granted thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children the ability to get jobs legally, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Of the 741,546 people in the program, 87 percent are currently employed. A June 2015 survey of the economic and educational effects of DACA by a political scientist from the University of California-San Diego and the National Immigration Law Center showed that DACA both improved the lives of recipients and was good for the US economy. The higher wages that DACA recipients earn have translated into increased tax revenue and economic growth for the United States. According to a September 2016 study by the Center for American Progress, ending DACA would mean a $433 billion reduction of the nation’s GDP over a decade.

This week, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a national nonprofit resource center that provides legal trainings and other resources for immigrant rights, has published a report using data on the program until June, 2016 that outlines the possible economic effects on Social Security and Medicare, and the costs to employers, if DACA is completely abolished.

The total contributions to Social Security and Medicare would be reduced by a little more than $24 billion over a decade—$19.9 billion would be lost to Social Security and there would be a $4.6 billion drop to the overall contributions to the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. (FICA requires contributions from both employees and employers for Social Security and Medicare, so the reduction of a significant number of employees overall would also mean a drastic drop in contributions.) Also, employers could potentially suffer. About 645,145 DACA recipients would lose their employment authorization, and those layoffs would cost employers at least $3.4 billion in recruitment and training costs for replacing those employees.

Trump has not backed off the idea of ending DACA. But he told Time that he would have a plan for undocumented immigrants “that’s going to make people happy and proud.”

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How Trump’s Deportation Plans Could Damage Our Economy

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For Neil Young, the Trump Era Feels a Lot Like the ’60s

Mother Jones

Legendary rocker Neil Young continues to add to his 50-plus-year recording career with his just-released studio album Peace Trail. A shrewd collection of new songs, written and recorded quickly this past summer, the album is one of immediacy, with kinetic playing from a spare crew of Jim Keltner on drums and Paul Bushnell on bass. With bits of processed vocals added to the folk-rock core, and an amplified harmonica that sounds like Little Walter after a Marvel-esque dose of radiation, Young employs strategies meant to throw the whole thing off kilter and make you listen closer.

The songs cover the things on the singer’s mind right now, both within—old dreams broken and those newly forming—and in the world around him: Standing Rock, xenophobia, immigration, and technology. For an artist at 71, it’s beautifully charged, invigorated, and present work. While the call is urgent, Young doesn’t beat you over the head with the message so much as inject you with it. I spoke with Young over the phone while he was at his home in Colorado.

Mother Jones: Overall, it feels very much like this is an album about being present with things happening in the world, as well as with your own feelings. Tell us a bit about the emergence of this record.

Neil Young: I started writing “Peace Trail” here in Colorado, then I went back to California. I had a few other tunes going around in my head, so I had a couple of them finished after a few days and then I wanted to go into the studio. I like to go in right away as soon as I have things. I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I’ve been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I’m going, “Hey, I can’t wait. I should be doing this now!” My experience tells me that when it’s there, it’s there, and you can’t make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record.

MJ: Both of those guys, obviously, are experienced session musicians. Did you relate specific things to them or did you all kind of feel things out together?

NY: I would play all the parts of the song, show them the way it went together. Then I’d basically break down an arrangement—I wouldn’t plan endings or beginnings—so they knew everything that was going on. I had the lyrics on a prompter so that I could remember everything I’d written, and I was able to just get into the groove and play with them. Most cases it’s Take 1 or Take 2 on that record. I think “Peace Trail” is one of the exceptions, where it’s a later take. It just happened really quickly. It’s the way I like to work for these kinds of songs. It was the right time of the month; everything was looking good.

MJ: I felt like the immediacy of the playing on this particular album, and some of the disruptive things you introduce, like the sound processing on the harmonica and vocals in places, make the listener pay more attention.

NY: The songs were written to have a certain simple form. Everything is minimal, and if it’s over, it’s over. We’re abrupt with things: in and out. Especially if it’s an overdub—it’s gone. It does something that’s not real. It’s not trying to be like it was there. I think the ultimate result of it is you can get inside the record. I do one take; I never overdubbed twice. I know there’s stuff that isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t matter: Nothing is perfect, and there is a magic there that is undeniable because of the fact that we don’t care about those things. We’re really more interested in what we’re saying than how we’re saying it.

MJ: On the song “Peace Trail,” you express a commitment to moving forward and a sense of optimism with the refrain, “Something new is growing.” Did the November election alter that outlook?

NY: Not really. I still feel the same about everything in there. There’s nothing I said that I would change or make different now. I’ve already gotten into the next record, so I started that on the 6th of November.

MJ: In the song “Can’t Stop Workin’,” you sing that work is “bad for the body but good for the soul.” What’s hard for you?

NY: I think it’s the constant work; performing and traveling. It gets to be a bit of a strain. But if you pace yourself, which I’ve managed to do, you can go pretty well. And now I’m at a point where I decided I’m going to be in the studio for a while, at least until I finish this record I’m working on now. I should have two, three, four of the sessions that I had that were similar to the sessions for Peace Trail before I have a complete record. But I’m off to a good start and it may happen faster. Who knows?

MJ: I had an unsettling feeling that the purpose of my own work as an artist should maybe change after this election, but I’m unsure how. You’ve lived through really turbulent times and have written some very powerful protest songs—”Ohio” and “Southern Man,” for example. So how do you view the responsibilities of being an artist in the years to come?

NY: This time is very similar to the ’60s, as far as I can tell. The artists always reflect the times, so there’s a lot to think about, a lot of unknowns, a lot of things that are describable. This is the closest I’ve seen to the kind of ambience that made the ’60s happen. It’s not about the artist having a responsibility to do anything. They have to be artists and express themselves and everything will work out fine. It’s all going to be great. The youth of this country are not behind what is going on. We all know that. If you looked at a political map of the United States 25 and under, it’s all-revealing. It’s a unified map.

MJ: What scares me is this rift in our understanding of one another. You have viewpoints so far apart, so colored by anger and frustration, that it’s very hard to find common ground. Do you have thoughts for how we might connect?

NY: It’s gonna happen. We had the Vietnam War in the ’60s, and there was a draft. The students didn’t believe in it, and it unified them. That brought the people together and made the ’60s like they were. The youth were very unified against the status quo—against the old line and the new old line. It’s the same exact thing today. Social media and young people, art, music, all communications make this one of the most active times for activism. It will be a time of change.

MJ: Speaking of activism, there’s your new song “Indian Giver,” about Standing Rock. What’s your view on the standoff?

NY: It’s injustice. It’s wrong. The pipeline companies didn’t get the permission. They didn’t do the things they should have done in the first place. They tried to just bully their way through there and they got stopped. But they’re not really stopping.

MJ: It’s become a new point of reckoning in the history of how Native Americans are treated.

NY: Five hundred years later we’re still doing it. This is a moment where we’re either going to reaffirm that’s what we do, that’s who we are, or we’re going to start moving toward change. A change won’t come easy, because there’s a lot of big money that doesn’t care about any of this. Standing Rock is the beginning of something. It’s a moment in history. We really have to grab it and go with it. We may only be halfway through the actual “Standing Rock” part, but it’s more than that—it’s the lessons of Standing Rock, of what you can do. How much can you make change happen? How long can you slow things down? How much attention can you bring to things that are unjust, unfair, in many cases illegal? Just exposing it, that’s the job of the social media, the musicians, the people who care, the real protectors around the world. They don’t have to be at Standing Rock. They just have to say they’re with the people at Standing Rock, and tell other people that what’s going on there is wrong. Learn about it. See what happened. See what they actually did. You won’t see it on corporate media, you have to go to social media.

MJ: So, it looks like we’re out of time here. Is there anything else you’d like to say?

NY: We love Mother Jones. That’d be the last thing to say.

MJ: We love you, too.

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For Neil Young, the Trump Era Feels a Lot Like the ’60s

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Sam Johnson Wants to Cut Your Social Security Benefits By a Third

Mother Jones

For reasons that are a little unclear, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) has decided to introduce a shiny new plan to reform Social Security when Congress meets next year. Johnson’s idea of “reform” is to slash everyone’s benefits, so this idea seems slightly suicidal—not to mention pointless, since Donald Trump campaigned very loudly on a promise not to touch anyone’s Social Security.

But Johnson is a very conservative guy, and maybe he just wants to lay down a marker. So what would his plan do? It has 15 components, all of them crammed full of Social Security’s usual alphabet soup of acronyms—AWI, PIA, AIME, MAGI, bend points, etc.—but it turns out that only six of them are big enough to be meaningful. Here is the Social Security actuary’s estimate of how much money they’d save:

Basically, there are four big proposals that would cut benefits by 5.76 percent of payroll, and two proposals that would increase benefits by 1.37 percent of payroll. I assure you that this chart is far simpler to understand than the actual analysis, but it probably still leaves you a little baffled. Whose benefits would be cut? And by how much? I’m here to help:

Roughly speaking, people with extremely low average earnings over their working lives would see their benefits rise. That’s good! Unfortunately, everyone with an average lifetime income over $22,000 would see their benefits slashed—in some cases by a lot. An income of $60,000 is not exactly a king’s ransom, but nonetheless Johnson would cut benefits for these folks by a third.

As usual with these plans, a lot of its provisions are phased in gradually over time. But unlike most of these plans, some of them start to kick in right away. This means that even people who are already retired would suffer benefit cuts. For example, Johnson’s plan reduces the annual cost-of-living increase—and eliminates it entirely for anyone earning over $85,000—beginning in 2018.

Anyway, since I tortured myself by reading this plan, I figured I should torture all the rest of you by blogging about it. Happy Holidays!

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Sam Johnson Wants to Cut Your Social Security Benefits By a Third

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The House GOP Just Revealed Its Plan To Cut Social Security

Mother Jones

Late Thursday, Congressman Sam Johnson (R-TX), the Chairman of the House Social Security subcommittee, introduced a bill to “reform” (i.e. cut) Social Security.

Josh Marshall warns, “Republicans apparently aren’t going to be satisfied with phasing out Medicare. They’re going to try to pass huge cuts to Social Security this year too. Not Bush-style partial phaseout but just big, big cuts. And you’re out of luck even if you’re a current beneficiary. “

The Washington Examiner describes it thusly:

The bill…would reduce costs by changing the benefits formula to reduce payments progressively for high earners. It would also gradually raise the full retirement age from 67 to 69 for people who are today 49 or younger. Lastly, it would change the inflation metric used to calculate benefits to one that shows lower inflation, essentially slowing the growth in benefits, and eliminate cost of living adjustments for high earners.

You can read the full bill below. Democrats are not pleased.

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The House GOP Just Revealed Its Plan To Cut Social Security

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Forget the Wall. If You Want Less Illegal Immigration, Go After Employers.

Mother Jones

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Controlling illegal immigration has never seemed all that hard to me. The vast majority of those who are in the United States illegally—either by crossing the border or overstaying their visas—are here to find jobs. So if you want to reduce illegal immigration, you need to make it hard for employers to hire anyone who’s not authorized to work. But in the LA Times today, Wayne Cornelius says that’s not in the cards:

There has never been much public or congressional appetite for a harsh crackdown on employers, especially the small businesses that depend most heavily on workers in the U.S. illegally. They are pillars of their communities and campaign contributors. Besides, immigration agents have had higher enforcement priorities — tracking down immigrants who committed serious crimes or pose national security threats.

President-elect Trump has called for full implementation of an electronic employment eligibility verification system called E-Verify….E-Verify, however, is no panacea. It does not prevent immigrants who are ineligible to work from getting jobs by providing valid information pertaining to other people (borrowed documents). And as long as penalties are weak, requiring employers to use E-Verify will not significantly reduce violations.

Will Congress approve crippling fines or even prison sentences for business owners who ignore E-Verify rules? Will lawmakers direct the Justice Department to make these scofflaws a top priority? Unless and until that happens, many employers will continue to view hiring those in the U.S. illegally as a low-risk, high-reward crime. In 2014, the probability that one of the nation’s 6 million employers would be investigated for violating immigration laws was 0.03%.

I don’t personally care all that much about the level of illegal immigration. The current numbers strike me as reasonable. But obviously a lot of people do care, and most of them are Republicans. They talk tough, they build walls and fences, and they promise to hire lots of border enforcement agents. But this is all a sham. If the economic incentives continue to exist, so will illegal immigration.

The problem is that Republicans can’t come to grips with their two main constituencies. Social conservatives generally hate undocumented workers and want to deport them all. Business conservatives want no such thing. So Republicans thunder on TV that borders are borders, and by God we need to control them. Then they quietly go back to their jobs and do nothing.

The obvious way to cut down on illegal immigration has always been to go after employers. Not only does this attack the root of the problem, but it’s practically self-funding. You hire lots of ICE auditors and then pay for them by levying big fines on employers who break the law. As the problem diminishes, you collect less money but you also need fewer auditors.

E-Verify isn’t perfect. Nothing is. But it could be made good enough. And once that’s done, enforcement could be made pretty widespread and the fines could be made pretty high. If you do that, you can forget about the wall. It’s just a distraction.

Bottom line: Anyone who claims to be fiercely opposed to illegal immigration but doesn’t support strong employer sanctions is just lying to you.

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Forget the Wall. If You Want Less Illegal Immigration, Go After Employers.

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