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GOP Hauling Out Tired Old Weapons to Sink Iran Deal

by DarylPolanco Posted on August 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Wall Street Journal reports that as the Iran deal looks increasingly impossible for Republicans to defeat, they’re thinking of new ways to undermine it after it goes into effect:

As their chances dim, they are preparing to push a rash of new legislation for the fall to increase sanctions on Tehran for its role in supporting terrorist organizations and militant groups active across the Mideast, which could cause Iran to back out of the deal. These politicians also are devising new ways to target the finances of Tehran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

….The fresh sanctions push has the potential to put the White House and leading Democrats, such as the party’s presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, in a quandary. Those supporters of the deal could later face a tough decision over whether to back increased sanctions against Iran.

It’s possible that Republicans can scrounge up enough Democratic support to overcome a filibuster and force an Obama veto on some of these measures. But I assume they don’t really care about that. Obama’s coming up on his last year in office and probably doesn’t care much if he has to veto a few bills. Rather, as the Journal suggests, this is just normal election-year game-playing. Republicans want to introduce bills that will force Hillary Clinton to take a stand that will hurt her no matter how she responds. Oppose the sanctions and she’s a Hezbollah lover. Support the sanctions and she’s an AIPAC stooge.

There’s nothing very original about this. Both parties do it whenever they can, and if Hillary Clinton is even a half-decent politician she’ll be able to maneuver her way through without any big problems. As long as Republicans don’t threaten to shut down the government over this, it probably won’t be a very big deal.

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GOP Hauling Out Tired Old Weapons to Sink Iran Deal

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"Crash" vs. "Accident" Doesn’t Seem Like It Matters Very Much

by ThomasSaxton Posted on August 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Emily Badger passes along news of a group trying to get us all to stop talking about traffic “accidents”:

An “accident” is, by definition, unintentional. We accidentally drop dinner plates, or send e-mails before we’re done writing them. The word also suggests something of the unforeseen — an event that couldn’t have been anticipated, for which no one can be blamed. That second connotation is what irks transportation advocates who want to change how we talk about traffic collisions. When one vehicle careens into another or rounds a corner into a pedestrian — call it a “crash,” they say, not an “accident.”

“Our children did not die in ‘accidents,'” says Amy Cohen, a co-founder of the New York-based group Families for Safe Streets. Her 12-year-old son was hit and killed by a van on the street in front of their home in 2013. “An ‘accident,'” she says, “implies that nothing could have been done to prevent their deaths.”

I remember this from my driver’s ed class 40 years ago. Our instructor told us endlessly that they were “collisions,” not accidents. But we’re still talking about accidents 40 years later, so apparently this is a tough habit to break.

And the truth is that I didn’t really get it back then. I still don’t. “Accident” doesn’t imply that something is unforeseeable, or that no one can be blamed, or that nothing could possibly have been done to prevent it. Here’s the definition:

noun. an undesirable or unfortunate happening that occurs unintentionally and usually results in harm, injury, damage, or loss; casualty; mishap.

“Unintentional” is the key word here. If you drop the dinner dishes, it’s unintentional unless you’re pissed off at your family and deliberately threw the dishes at them. Then it’s not an accident. Ditto for cars. If you deliberately run over someone, it’s not an accident. If it’s not deliberate, it is.

Nearly all “accidents” are foreseeable (lots of people drop dinner dishes); have someone to blame (probably the person who dropped the dishes); and can be prevented (stop carrying the dishes with one hand). The same is true of automobile collisions. Driving while drunk, or texting, or speeding are all things that make accidents more likely. We can work to prevent those things and we can assign blame when accidents happen—and we do.

I have a tendency to use the word “collision” because I was brainwashed 40 years ago, but it’s hard to see that it makes much difference. Here is Caroline Samponaro, deputy director at Transportation Alternatives:

“If we stopped using that word, as individuals, as a city, in a national context, what questions do we have to start asking ourselves about these crashes?” says Caroline Samponaro, deputy director at Transportation Alternatives. How did they happen? Who was to blame? An erratic driver? A faulty vehicle? A perpetually dangerous intersection?

I’m mystified. We already do all that stuff. Collisions are routinely investigated. Fault is determined. The NTSA tracks potential safety problems in vehicles. Municipal traffic departments make changes to intersections. We pass drunk driving laws. We suspend the licenses of dangerous drivers.

So it doesn’t seem to me that use of the word “accident” is either wrong or perilous. If we had a history of ignoring automobile safety because is was common to just shrug and ask “whaddaya gonna do?” you could make a case for this. But we don’t.

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"Crash" vs. "Accident" Doesn’t Seem Like It Matters Very Much

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Black Lives Matter Comes Through With a Plan

by bimfwc5k Posted on August 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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A few weeks ago, after the disruption at Netroots Nation, I wondered aloud what the Black Lives Matter movement actually wanted. What were their demands? What did they want from candidates for president? I found a list of items on their website, but they were vague enough and broad enough to keep me a little puzzled. What sort of concrete initiatives were they interested in?

I’m happy to see that they’ve now come up with exactly what everyone’s been asking for. It’s called Campaign Zero, and it even comes with its own nifty graphic:

Some of these are easy: police body cams, for example, have become widely supported on both right and left, and by both activists and police. Others are a little harder: independent investigations of police shootings and better representation of minorities on police forces aren’t universally supported, but they do have fairly wide backing already. And some are more difficult: it will be tough to wean police forces off their up-armored humvees and challenging to end the vogue for broken-windows policing.

That said, these are all specific and achievable goals. They even have a fact sheet here that tracks some of the presidential candidates and where they stand on each issue. Ironically, Bernie Sanders has positions that at least partly address eight of the ten items—more than anyone else. Martin O’Malley has seven and Hillary Clinton has two so far.

This is good stuff. BLM won’t get everything it wants—nobody ever does—but Campaign Zero should allow them to avoid the fate of Occupy Wall Street, which generated a ton of passion but never really offered any place to channel it. BLM has now done both, and has a good shot at making their issues important ones during the upcoming presidential campaign.

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Black Lives Matter Comes Through With a Plan

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Falling Stock Markets? Blame China.

by NealThrelkeld2 Posted on August 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over at Wonkblog, Ylan Mui writes about the plummeting stock market:

Is this the beginning of “Rate Rage”?

You could be forgiven for thinking so, judging by all the blame that’s been heaped on the Federal Reserve for the selloff in stock markets over the past three days. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average has plunged 500 points, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index erased its gains for the year. Markets Friday morning were already beginning to edge down.

We must read wildly different stuff. I haven’t noticed anyone blaming the Fed for falling stock markets. The headlines have all been like this one in the Wall Street Journal: markets are dropping because investors are afraid that China is about to go belly up. As Mui points out, the Fed’s actions have been widely anticipated, and the timing of the market drop doesn’t really match up with anything new from the Fed anyway. It does match up with investors finally getting nervous after weeks of increasingly bad news from China.

In any case, this is yet another reason the Fed might want to rethink a rate rise later this year. The global economy is not looking especially robust at the moment, with Europe barely growing and China possibly entering a serious slowdown. We don’t really need to add to these problems.

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Falling Stock Markets? Blame China.

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3 Times Sesame Street Has Hilariously Parodied an HBO Series

by ConsuelCyril Posted on August 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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HBO just announced that it has struck a deal to air Sesame Street for the next five years on the network. The iconic show, which has aired on PBS for 45 years, will start running on HBO later this fall. Don’t worry: The show will continue airing on PBS following a nine-month window during which HBO has exclusive rights to run it. Big Bird and co. have have had an ongoing relationship of sorts with the premium cable network, producing amusing spoofs of some of HBO’s most popular shows under the moniker “GrouchBO.” Expect more hilarious send-ups like these when Sesame Street officially joins the HBO lineup.

True Mud

Birdwalk Empire

Game of Chairs

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3 Times Sesame Street Has Hilariously Parodied an HBO Series

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The St. Louis County Police Department Just Released Video Of The Guy They Shot On Monday

by WallaceSkeats Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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The St. Louis County Police Department released surveillance footage Tuesday that they say shows Tyrone Harris pulling a gun out of his waistband. Harris, 18, was shot by police in Ferguson on the night of August 9 after he allegedly fired at undercover officers.

The day marked the first anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and demonstrations throughout the day were peaceful. That evening violence erupted.

“The video shows Harris grab a handgun out of his waistband once shots are fired during the protest in the W. Florissant corridor seconds prior to the officer involved shooting,” says Shawn McGuire, media relations officer for the St. Louis County Police Department. Harris was in critical condition after the shooting, and was subsequently charged with several felonies, including 1st degree assault on law enforcement officers. McGuire says police are still investigating the incident.

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The St. Louis County Police Department Just Released Video Of The Guy They Shot On Monday

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Donald Trump Explained in Four Words

by WadeMccollum Posted on July 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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If you want to understand Donald Trump—and I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t—this paragraph from the Post should do it:

“Finally, I can attack!” Trump said at a packed rally at Oskaloosa High School. “Wisconsin’s doing terribly. It’s in turmoil. The roads are a disaster because they don’t have any money to rebuild them. They’re borrowing money like crazy. They projected a $1 billion surplus, and it turns out to be a deficit of $2.2 billion. The schools are a disaster. The hospitals and education was a disaster. And he was totally in favor of Common Core!”

In a private email, Walker supporter Gregory Slayton wrote, “As you’ve seen Gov Walker is now well ahead of everyone not named DumbDumb (aka Trump) in the national polls.” The Wall Street Journal made the email public, and that was that. Finally, Trump could attack.

This is what he lives for. But only if he can pretend that the other guy started it. John McCain called his supporters crazies. Lindsey Graham called Trump a jackass. And now a Walker fundraiser called him DumbDumb. Finally! It must have been killing Trump to hold back on Walker until he had the appropriate casus belli.

That’s Trump. He lives for the fight. And despite being worth $10 billion (or whatever) he always manages to feel like he’s the aggrieved party. If this reminds you of any particular bloc of voters, now you know why he’s doing so well in the polls.

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Donald Trump Explained in Four Words

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Jeb Bush’s Lobbying Reform Plan Probably Won’t Rein In K Street

by Irene86Ggqr Posted on July 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush says he wants to curb the influence of lobbyists in Washington—starting with stanching the flow of lawmakers who leave Congress to cash in on K Street as influence peddlers. “We need to help politicians discover life outside of Washington,” he said during a speech on Monday, during which he proposed an array of lobbying reforms. The centerpiece is a six-year ban on ex-members of Congress going into the lobbying business. (Currently, House members can officially start lobbying one year after leaving office and ex-senators must wait two years.) Government transparency advocates were heartened by Bush’s remarks, but they say the moratorium alone won’t solve the problem.

The issue is that the six-year ban would only prevent former members of Congress from taking part in “official” lobbying—a very specifically defined set of activities. Avoid those activities—or earn less than 20 percent of your income from lobbying activities—and you can avoid registering as a lobbyist. There’s no shortage of high-profile ex-lawmakers who have used this loophole to sell their insider expertise and thick Rolodexes to the highest bidder without ever registering as a lobbyist. Former Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle has worked for three lobbying firms since his departure from Congress 10 years ago, never once officially registering as a lobbyist. Instead, Daschle has served as a “senior policy advisor.” Similarly, upon leaving Congress in 1999, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich immediately went to work for a number of private interests offering “quasi-lobbying” services, but called his work anything but lobbying. Notably, Gingrich was paid $1.65 million for his work as a “historian” for mortgage lender Freddie Mac.

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Jeb Bush’s Lobbying Reform Plan Probably Won’t Rein In K Street

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Clinton Has Two Economic Messages: She’s Not Jeb Bush, and She’s a Lot Like Elizabeth Warren

by PatsySummerfield Posted on July 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton’s first major economic speech of the 2016 campaign had one clear target: Jeb Bush. The former Florida governor and top Republican fundraiser has pledged that, if elected president, he’d ensure 4 percent annual growth for the country. Clinton acknowledged the importance of growth but, without directly naming Bush, said that wasn’t enough. “I believe we have to build a growth and fairness economy,” she said. “You can’t have one without the other.”

In a speech at the New School in New York City Monday morning, Clinton laid out a broad vision of what she’d do to make the economy fairer should she win next year—though it was scant on policy details, with many promises of specific proposals to come in the next few weeks. “The defining economic challenge of our time is clear,” she said. “We must raise incomes for hard-working Americans so they can afford a middle-class life.” Clinton promised to bring more women into the workforce with family-friendly policies, amend the tax code that lets the rich pay lower rates, end the misclassification of employees and contractors, and fix business incentives to focus on the long term rather than quarterly reports.

Clinton avoided discussing her Democratic primary rivals in a speech that appeared tailored to the general election. Clinton painted Republicans as obsessed with trickle-down economics and accused Marco Rubio of promoting a tax plan that would channel money to the rich.

But Bush got the most attention. “You may have heard Gov. Bush say last week that Americans just need to work longer hours,” Clinton said. “Well, he must not have met very many American workers.” Clinton ticked off a list of professions where full-time work no longer guarantees people a sufficient livelihood. “They don’t need a lecture, they need a raise.” Clinton also defended the economic legacies of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama with a dig at the past two Bush presidencies. “Twice now in the past 20 years,” she said, “a Democratic president has had to come in and clean up the mess left behind.”

Though she didn’t discuss Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley, the anti-Wall Street crusader Sen. Elizabeth Warren—a liberal favorite who declined to mount a primary challenge against Clinton—was clearly on Clinton’s mind. Clinton’s remarks came into sharpest focus when she discussed the need for Wall Street reform. “Too big to fail is still too big a problem,” Clinton said, vowing to appoint regulators who would keep the banks in check.

She borrowed one of Warren’s favorite attacks: that the Obama administration has been too deferential to banks by being unwilling to use prosecutorial powers against specific Wall Street executives. “We will prosecute individuals as well as firms when they commit fraud or other wrongdoing,” Clinton promised.

It’s not just the major banks, Clinton said, but the hedge funds and nebulous financial firms that constitute the shadow-banking sector that need to be regulated. “We have to go beyond Dodd-Frank,” she said, referring to the financial regulation law. “Too many of our major financial institutions are still too complex and too risky.”

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Clinton Has Two Economic Messages: She’s Not Jeb Bush, and She’s a Lot Like Elizabeth Warren

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Climate change leaves trees out to dry

by Stacey2648 Posted on July 6, 2015

spoiler alert

Climate change leaves trees out to dry

By on 6 Jul 2015commentsShare

The drought may be killing lawns, but whatever — they’re useless. When drought starts going after trees, however, that’s another matter. As year four of California’s drought rolls around, the magical, shade-providing carbon sinks are starting to perish, thanks to a lack of rain and a more recent lack of lawn irrigation.

It turns out all that profligate sprinkling was feeding California’s trees — and when cities cracked down on turf, they inadvertently starved out the more useful urban greenery. And while this one’s partly on us — maybe we should have realized that all those trees need to drink, too — we can give climate change (which is ultimately on us as well) a lot of the credit for this fun development. Climate change, you’ve done it again! Everyone else: Welcome back to Spoiler Alerts.

Here’s the story from Al Jazeera:

Nature has already killed an estimated 12 million trees in California’s forests since the drought began four years ago — most falling victim to an outbreak of the bark beetle pests that attack trees weakened by drought.

Now, trees in city parks, along boulevards and in residential neighborhoods are dying because homeowners, businesses and municipalities have stopped watering.

“The reaction was to turn off irrigation in many locations,” said John Melvin, urban forester at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “If you do that, you lose a long-lived community asset. A tree is not something that can be easily replaced.”

Trees are a big part of what makes a city green — literally, but also figuratively, thanks to the energy they save on AC:

A recent report by the U.S Department of Agriculture Forest Service show that the number of street trees in California have not kept up with population growth. The 9.1 million street trees make up 10 percent to 20 percent of the state’s total urban forest. The report also found that tree density has declined 30 percent since 1988 “as cities added more streets than trees.” Tree density fell from 105.5 trees per mile to 75 trees per mile in that period.

Despite that, the agency estimates that California street trees save the amount of electricity equivalent to what’s required to air condition 530,000 households every year.

The conclusion? Radically simple, says Melvin:

“It’s OK to appropriately water trees.”

Source:
Trees are latest victims of California’s four-year drought

, Al Jazeera America.

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Climate change leaves trees out to dry

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