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WATCH: Anti-Gay Evangelical Calls Protesters "Homo-Fascists"

by Gwenn Record Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Friday, hard-line anti-gay activists gathered at the National Press Club in Washington to announce the formation of a new organization to fight what they call the “global LGBT agenda.” Known as the Coalition for Family Values, the group is the brainchild of two extreme anti-gay advocates: Scott Lively, a Massachusetts-based pastor who is running for governor of the Bay State, and Peter LaBarbera, the founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. The coalition’s aim is to spread Russian-style anti-gay legislation throughout the world. Lively kicked off the event by praising Russia’s “much needed leadership in restoring family values,” and urged other countries to follow its “excellent example” by passing laws against gay-rights “propaganda” and banning adoption by gay parents. But the event did not go as planned.

About 20 minutes into the program, a young gay Russian man named Slava Revin stood up and yelled, “Vladimir Putin is a dictator!” After that, the conference dissolved into chaos, with Revin and the speakers shouting over each other. “Stop killing us,” cried a Lively supporter. “Stop killing speech. Stop killing freedom.” Eventually, Lively launched into a diatribe about “homo-fascists,” and Press Club staffers ushered Revin and another activist named Ellen Sturtz out of the room. Below is video of the exchange:

This kind of rhetoric is not unusual for Lively. The anti-gay crusader co-authored a book called The Pink Swastika, which argues that homosexuals were the driving force behind the Holocaust. In the United States, Lively’s ideas haven’t gotten much traction. But he has forged deep ties to religious and political leaders in Uganda and former Russian republics, where he has helped pave the way for anti-gay bills. Uganda’s main gay-rights organization is suing him for crimes against humanity for allegedly fostering anti-gay sentiment and legislation in that country. (Last week, President Yoweri Museveniâ&#128;&#139; of Uganda declared that he would sign a bill that makes homosexuality a crime punishable by life in prison.)

Through the Coalition for Family Values, Lively and LaBarbera intend to promote other types of legislation, including a bill to protect discrimination based on sexual orientation. (Lively casts it as a matter of religious freedom.) So far, they say, 75 pro-family organizations around the globe have signed on. Those listed in press materials are mostly obscure groups, but a few prominent social conservative outfits have joined, including Liberty Counsel Action and the American Family Association. “Other nations, including the United States, could learn form Russia and stop the homosexualization of our nation,” Diane Gramley, a representative of the AFA’s Pennsylvania affiliate told the crowd at Friday’s event. “It’s time for the United States to stop using our children as lab rats to see how they react to homosexual propaganda.”

Lively noted at the press conference that he considers most family-values crusaders too timid and said that he believes strong laws, such as the recently-passed Russian measure that criminalizes public support of same-sex relationships, are the only way to keep gay activists from “tearing down the fabric of society.”

After the event, the crowd spilled out onto the sidewalk. Revin, the gay Russian activist, was standing in the rain, holding a rainbow banner, and reciting the speech he had intended to give inside. “Putin is corrupted thief who invents scapegoats and deflects attention from his crimes” he declared. “His latest invention is the anti-gay law, so gays in modern Russia feel like Jews back in the USSR.” Then Sturtz handed Lively a miniature rainbow flag.

Lively tucked the flag into his pocket.

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Defend The Family statement (PDF)

Defend The Family statement (Text)

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American Family Association of Pennsylvania statement (PDF)

American Family Association of Pennsylvania statement (Text)

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WATCH: Anti-Gay Evangelical Calls Protesters "Homo-Fascists"

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New Report Suggests Wedding Procession Drone Strike May Have Violated Laws of War

by LavondaLedesma Posted on February 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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A new report from Human Rights Watch outlines conflicting accounts surrounding a drone strike on a Yemeni wedding convoy that killed 12 people and injured at least 15 others.

While the US government has not officially acknowledged any role in the December 12, 2013 attack, anonymous officials later told the AP that the operation targeted Shawqi Ali Ahmad al-Badani, an Al Qaeda leader, and maintained that the dead were militants.

But after interviewing witnesses and relatives of the dead and wounded, Human Rights Watch determined that the 11 cars were in a wedding procession. Although the organization concedes the convoy may have included members of Al Qaeda, the report concluded that there is evidence suggesting “that some, if not all those killed and wounded were civilians.”

The report, titled “A Wedding That Became a Funeral,” has renewed calls for the Obama administration to carry out a transparent, impartial investigation into the incident—and to explain how such a strike is consistent with both international laws of war and Obama’s own rules governing drone strikes. Announced last May, the procedures limit the use of drones to targeting those who pose a continuing, imminent threat to the United States, where capture is not feasible, and there is a “near certainty” of no civilian casualties.

The report suggests the strike may have violated the laws of war by “failing to discriminate between combatants and civilians, or by causing civilian loss disproportionate to the expected military advantage.”

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New Report Suggests Wedding Procession Drone Strike May Have Violated Laws of War

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Did Congress Just Kill Regulation of Spending By Political Groups?

by EstelaPalfreyma Posted on January 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last week’s budget bill was hurried through before anyone really had a chance to read the hundreds of riders and amendments that got tacked onto it. This was a very deliberate decision. John Boehner may have said that he wished Congress had more time to review the bill, but he knew perfectly well that the main reason for the rush was the fact that the House passed a 3-day continuing resolution after the final text was first posted. There were only three days to look at the bill because that’s what the Republican leadership wanted.

This means that we’ll be discovering cute little buried acorns in this bill for a while, and today Patrick Caldwell digs one up:

One small section could upend the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to regulate political organizations hoping to become nonprofits. Tacked on as a symbolic effort to mollify conservatives’ anti-IRS mania, the text is so overly vague that it could mean the dissolution of longstanding rules. Or nothing at all. No one’s really sure.

….The relevant section is buried on page 439 of the gigantic bill. Just nine lines long and 68 words, the two clauses say money designated for the IRS cannot be used to “target citizens of the United States for exercising any right guaranteed under the first Amendment” or to target “groups for regulatory scrutiny based on their ideological beliefs.”

….All of the tax experts reached by Mother Jones were mystified by the use of the word “target,” an unusual term to be applied to the IRS. “I’m not even sure what targeting means,” says Owens.

This is obviously a sop to tea partiers, who continue to be obsessed by the idea that the IRS “targeted” them unfairly in 2010. The real scandal, of course, wasn’t the fact that tea party groups got some scrutiny, but the fact that more groups don’t get scrutiny. The law pretty clearly limits the tax exemption of groups that are directly engaged in political activity, and it ought to be applied to far more groups than it is now. That includes tea party groups, virtually all of which were created specifically to engage in political activity.

But now that law is in conflict with a hastily written provision that forbids “targeting” any groups for engaging in free speech. If courts interpret that as forbidding the IRS from going after groups engaged in political advocacy, it could upend campaign finance law in the United States.

Or maybe not. But you can rest assured that this will be coming to a court near you sometime soon.

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Map of the Day: The High Cost of Vaccine Hysteria

by Seymour89E Posted on January 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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This map shows outbreaks of measles and mumps over the past five years:

It’s no surprise that Africa has been heavily hit, but why are the United States and Europe seeing so many outbreaks? Aaron Carroll explains:

All of that red, which seems to dominate? It’s measles. It’s even peeking through in the United States, and it’s smothering the United Kingdom.
If you get rid of the measles, you can start to see mumps. Again, crushing the UK and popping up in the US.
Both measles and mumps are part of the MMR vaccine.

Use of the MMR vaccine plummeted during the aughts, as vaccine-autism hysteria was spread by charlatans and the ignorati. Needless to say, this did nothing to affect the incidence of autism, but it sure had an effect on measles and mumps. To this day, though, I don’t think any of the vectors of this hysteria have so much as apologized. It’s shameful.

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Map of the Day: The High Cost of Vaccine Hysteria

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America is the Stingiest Rich Country in the World

by JosephFinsch Posted on November 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over at the Economist, Steven Mazie directs me to a recent New Yorker piece on income inequality by John Cassidy. Its most revealing chart, Mazie says, is one that compares raw income inequality in various rich countries (as calculated by GINI scores) to income inequality after taxes and government transfers. In other words, it helps us see which countries do the most to fight the relentless rise in income inequality over the past three decades.

But I wanted to see that more directly, so I re-charted the data. All I did was calculate how much taxes and transfers reduced inequality in every country that had high inequality to begin with. Unsurprisingly, whether you use raw number or percentages, the United States is #1:

The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, with a top 1 percent that’s seen its income triple or more in the past three decades. And yet, we also do the least to fight the rising tide of income inequality. Government programs in America reduce the level of inequality by only 26 percent. Nobody else is so stingy.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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America is the Stingiest Rich Country in the World

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Obama moves to block new coal plants abroad

by ncf01r Posted on October 30, 2013

Obama moves to block new coal plants abroad

By

gynti_46

The U.S. is set to virtually stamp out construction of new coal-fired power plants domestically, thanks to proposed climate regulations. And now it’s setting its sights internationally.

The Obama administration said Tuesday it plans to use its influence with international lending bodies like the World Bank to curtail financial support for new coal power plants overseas. From Reuters:

The U.S. Treasury said it would only support funding for coal plants in the world’s poorest countries if they have no other efficient or economical alternative for their energy needs.

For richer countries, it would only support coal plants that deploy carbon capture and sequestration, an advanced technology for reducing emissions that is not yet commercially viable. That essentially means the United States would limit coal funding to only the world’s poorest for now.

The announcement follows the president’s pledge in June that he would call for an “end to public financing for new coal plants overseas unless they deploy carbon-capture technologies, or there’s no other viable way for the poorest countries to generate electricity.”

The New York Times, however, raises questions about America’s ability to actually sway decisions about coal-plant construction abroad:

The United States does not have a veto over which projects in other countries get financed through organizations, and the number of coal plants built overseas with public money is small relative to the number that are likely to be built with private investment.

By leading a coalition of like-minded countries — including several European ones that have already announced similar intentions — officials said the administration would be able to influence the direction of power plant construction.

“We believe that if public financing points the way, it will then facilitate private investment,” [said Lael Brainard, the under secretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department]. …

Treasury officials said the United States would also seek to push private investors to favor energy technologies that are better for the environment.

A test of the new policy is expected next year. That’s when the World Bank, which recently announced it will finance coal power plants only in rare circumstances, is set to decide whether to support a 600-megawatt coal-fired plant in Kosovo.


Source
U.S. Says It Won’t Back New International Coal-Fired Power Plants, New York Times
U.S. lays out strict limits on coal funding abroad, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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White House calls for more grid spending as climate changes

by wojciechrak75 Posted on August 12, 2013

White House calls for more grid spending as climate changes

By John Upton

Vilseskogen

Superstorm Sandy got the better of this power pole in New Jersey last year.

An era of ferocious storms and wildfires is not mixing well with America’s aging electrical grid.

The White House published a report Monday calling for a substantial amount of money to be spent fortifying the country’s electrical grid, better protecting transmission lines and other infrastructure from storms, floods, and other severe weather events. From the report [PDF]:

Severe weather is the number one cause of power outages in the United States and costs the economy billions of dollars a year in lost output and wages, spoiled inventory, delayed production, inconvenience and damage to grid infrastructure. Moreover, the aging nature of the grid — much of which was constructed over a period of more than one hundred years — has made Americans more susceptible to outages caused by severe weather. Between 2003 and 2012, roughly 679 power outages, each affecting at least 50,000 customers, occurred due to weather events.

The number of outages caused by severe weather is expected to rise as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, blizzards, floods and other extreme weather events. In 2012, the United States suffered eleven billion-dollar weather disasters — the second-most for any year on record, behind only 2011. The U.S. energy sector in general, and the grid in particular, is vulnerable to the increasingly severe weather expected as the climate changes.

The study, by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Department of Energy, concludes that weather-related power outages cost America between $18 billion and $33 billion per year. What would it take to substantially reduce that figure? The Obama administration doesn’t offer specifics, as the AP reports:

The White House report says increased spending in recent years has still not matched the level of investment between 1960 and 1990. It suggests new spending should be focused on a few main areas, including “hardening” the system by installing stronger equipment, building more transmission wires and energy storage systems to make the grid better able to absorb shocks, and installing more sophisticated technology.

The report does not suggest how much new spending was needed, where that spending would come from, or how much money would be saved by preventing some outages and making others less severe.

The following map, taken from the new report, shows last year’s billion-dollar disasters and makes the point that lots of different kinds of weather events could plunge areas into darkness:

White HouseClick to embiggen.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Op-Ed Contributors: A Republican Case for Climate Action

by Myrna Posted on August 1, 2013

The United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally. Source article –  Op-Ed Contributors: A Republican Case for Climate Action ; ;Related ArticlesClimate Study Predicts a Watery Future for New York, Boston and MiamiMilestone Claimed in Creating Fuel From WasteNational Briefing | Washington: President Orders Review of Chemical Plant Safety ;

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Op-Ed Contributors: A Republican Case for Climate Action

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Republicans say Obama’s climate plan is a war on America

by Traci B. Jackson Posted on June 27, 2013

Republicans say Obama’s climate plan is a war on America

By John Upton

Shutterstock

By announcing that his administration will tackle climate change by curbing power plant emissions, Barack Obama isn’t just waging a war on coal. He’s waging a war on the United States of freakin’ America.

We know that because Republicans told us so.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Leading Republicans were using phrases like “anti-American” and “war on American energy” to describe President Obama’s new plan to combat climate change, escalating the rhetoric even before the President’s Georgetown University speech outlining his program.

“President Obama’s anti-American energy plan will increase the price of energy and hurt job creation,” Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., tweeted. Bachmann is a longtime climate change denier who has defended the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

And it isn’t just Republicans. Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — he of the notorious shoot-the-cap-and-trade-bill ad — is also escalating the martial rhetoric. (As it happens, Manchin has earned millions from a coal brokerage he used to help run, and coal-dependent energy companies are among his biggest campaign contributors.) From Climate Progress:

Manchin (D-WV) went on Fox News on Wednesday to slam President Obama’s renewed push to take action on climate change. However, returning to the refrain that Obama has declared a “war on coal” appears not to be enough this time. Now, the coal-backed senator has upgraded his rhetoric to a “war on America.” …

STEVE DOOCY (HOST): The President of the United States declared a war on coal and a war on jobs and essentially a war on West Virginia.

MANCHIN: Well, really a war on America.

Obviously, the president is not waging a war on his own country. He’s taking steps to address a global environmental calamity, steps that are in fact likely to boost America’s economy.

So why would Obama’s critics be saying such extreme things? Perhaps because their “war on coal” rhetoric isn’t resonating with Americans, so they think they need to step it up a notch.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Charts: The Smart Money is on Renewable Energy

by Grover Nusom Posted on April 23, 2013

green4us

Investments in solar and green power are on track to blow away fossil fuels by 2030. Fossil fuel cheerleaders take note: Renewable energy ain’t going nowhere—and it may prove to be the better bet in the long run. By 2030, renewables will account for 70 percent of new power supply worldwide, according to projections released today from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Bloomberg analysts examined gas prices, carbon prices, the dwindling price of green energy technology, and overall energy demand (which, in the US at least, is on a massive decline), and found solar and wind beating fossil fuels like coal and natural gas by 2030. The chart below shows annual installations of new power sources, in gigawatts; over time, more and more of the new energy supply being built each year comes from renewable sources (like wind turbines and solar panels), by 2030 representing $630 billion worth of investment, while new fossil fuel sources (like coal- or gas-burning power plants) become increasingly rare. Courtesy BNEF The effect of this projected growth, BNEF CEO Michael Liebreich told Climate Desk at a gathering of clean energy investors today in New York, is that damage to the climate from the electricity sector is likely to taper off even as worldwide electricity use grows. “I believe we’re in a phase of change where renewables are going to take the sting out of growth in energy demand,” he said. Signs of this transformation are already appearing: Solar power workers now outnumber coal miners nationwide, wind power was the United States’ leading source of new power in 2012, and financial analysts warn that fossil fuel investments are poised to become a very bad bet. But that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet: Fossil fuels have such a historic grip on the power market that even this projected massive growth isn’t enough to tip the scales fully towards sustainability. By 2030, non-renewable sources will still account for half of the world’s total power supply, according to the analysis. The chart below shows the world’s total energy use, again in gigawatts; while total use grows, more comes from renewable sources: Courtesy BNEF Liebreich cautioned that the accuracy of BNEF’s projection will hinge on China, which may have up to 50 percent more natural gas than the United States and seems to be on the brink of a fracking gold rush. The question, Liebreich said, is how renewables investors might react if China is able to exploit its gas resources cheaply. For now, he said the renewable renaissance is driven mainly by the bottom line: High returns and ever-cheaper technology make putting money into renewables good business. “If it’s attractive to the investors,” he said, “they invest.”

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Charts: The Smart Money is on Renewable Energy

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