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Read Elizabeth Warren’s Heartfelt Email in Support of Syrian Refugees

by King6726zyd Posted on November 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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As more Republicans declare their opposition to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday sent out an email to her supporters, passionately urging them to stand with her in pushing back against calls for rejecting those fleeing violence in Syria and the Middle East.

Here’s an excerpt:

In the wake of the murders in Paris and Beirut last week, people in America, in Europe, and throughout the world, are fearful. Millions of Syrians are fearful as well—terrified by the reality of their daily lives, terrified that their last avenue of escape from the horrors of ISIS will be closed, terrified that the world will turn its back on them and on their children.

Some politicians have already moved in that direction, proposing to close our country to people fleeing the massacre in Syria. That is not who we are. We are a country of immigrants and refugees, a country made strong by our diversity, a country founded by those crossing the sea fleeing religious persecution and seeking religious freedom.

We are not a nation that delivers children back into the hands of ISIS murderers because some politician dislikes their religion. And we are not a nation that backs down out of fear.

Warren’s letter was sent out by her Senate campaign, but it made no request for donations (which is rare when a politician zaps out an email to her list of supporters). The note follows a similar plea she made to her fellow lawmakers in the Senate on Tuesday. Warren is among but a handful of politicians who publicly support accepting a limited number of refugees in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday.

“It is easy to proclaim that we are tough and brave and good-hearted when threats feel far away,” Warren said in that speech. “But when those threats loom large and close by, our actions will strip away our tough talk and reveal who we really are. We face a choice, a choice either to lead the world by example, or to turn our backs to the threats and suffering around us.”

Here’s the full email:

Over the past four years, millions of people have fled their homes in Syria, running for their lives. In recent months, the steady stream of refugees has been a flood that has swept across Europe.

Every day, refugees set out on a journey hundreds of miles, from Syria to the Turkish coast. When they arrive, human smugglers charge them $1000 a head for a place on a shoddy, overloaded, plastic raft that is given a big push and floated out to sea, hopefully toward one of the Greek islands.

Last month, I visited the Greek island of Lesvos to see the Syrian refugee crisis up close. Lesvos is only a few miles away from the Turkish coast, but the risks of crossing are immense. This is a really rocky, complicated shoreline – in and out, in and out. The overcrowded, paper-thin smuggler rafts are tremendously unsafe, especially in choppy waters or when a storm picks up.

Parents try their hardest to protect their children. They really do. Little ones are outfitted with blow up pool floaties as a substitute for life jackets, in the hope that if the rafts go down, a $1.99 pool toy will be enough to save the life of a small child.

And the rafts do go down. According to some estimates, more than 500 people have died crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece so far this year. But despite the clear risks, thousands make the trip every day.

I met with the mayor of Lesvos, who described how his tiny island of 80,000 people has struggled to cope with those refugees who wash ashore – more than 100,000 people in October alone. Refugees pile into the reception centers, overflowing the facilities, sleeping in parks, or at the side of the road. Recently, the mayor told a local radio program that the island had run out of room to bury the dead.

On my visit, I met a young girl – younger than my own granddaughters – sent out on this perilous journey alone. I asked her how old she was, and she shyly held up seven fingers.

I wondered what could possibly possess parents to hand a seven-year-old girl and a wad of cash to human smugglers. What could possibly possess them to send a beloved child across the treacherous seas with nothing more than a pool floatie. What could make them send a child knowing that crime rings of sex slavery and organ harvesting prey on these children.

Send a little girl out alone. With only the wildest, vaguest, most wishful hope that she might make it through alive and find something – anything – better for her on the other side.

This week, we all know why parents would send a child on that journey. Last week’s massacres in Paris and Beirut made it clear. The terrorists of ISIS – enemies of Islam and of all modern civilization, butchers who rape, torture and execute women and children, who blow themselves up in a lunatic effort to kill as many people as possible – these terrorists have spent years torturing the people of Syria. Day after day, month after month, year after year, mothers, fathers, children and grandparents are slaughtered.

In the wake of the murders in Paris and Beirut last week, people in America, in Europe, and throughout the world, are fearful. Millions of Syrians are fearful as well – terrified by the reality of their daily lives, terrified that their last avenue of escape from the horrors of ISIS will be closed, terrified that the world will turn its back on them and on their children.

Some politicians have already moved in that direction, proposing to close our country to people fleeing the massacre in Syria. That is not who we are. We are a country of immigrants and refugees, a country made strong by our diversity, a country founded by those crossing the sea fleeing religious persecution and seeking religious freedom.

We are not a nation that delivers children back into the hands of ISIS murderers because some politician dislikes their religion. And we are not a nation that backs down out of fear.

Our first responsibility is to protect this country. We must embrace that fundamental obligation. But we do not make ourselves safer by ignoring our common humanity and turning away from our moral obligation.

ISIS has shown itself to the world. We cannot – and we will not – abandon the people of France to this butchery. We cannot – and we will not – abandon the people of Lebanon to this butchery. And we cannot – and we must not – abandon the people of Syria to this butchery.

Thank you for being a part of this,

Elizabeth

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Read Elizabeth Warren’s Heartfelt Email in Support of Syrian Refugees

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Could Obama Have Prevented the Rise of ISIS in 2012?

by MoniqueBonney90 Posted on November 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back in 2012, Fred Hof was President Obama’s advisor for Syria. Today, Zack Beauchamp asks him if there was anything we could have done back then to prevent the rise of ISIS:

In mid-2012, President Obama’s key national security officials — Clinton, Panetta, Petraeus, and Dempsey — all recommended a robust training and equipping effort designed to unite and strengthen nationalist anti-Assad rebels. One of the justifications for the recommendation was that they were beginning to see the rise of al-Qaeda-related elements in Syria.

Had that recommendation been accepted and then implemented properly, the ISIS presence in Syria would not be what it is today. Had the US been able to offer Syrian civilians a modicum of protection from Assad regime collective punishment — barrel bombs and all the rest — a major ISIS recruiting tool around the world and inside Syria could have been diluted and even neutralized.

That bolded phrase is doing a helluva lot of heavy lifting here. I wish Beauchamp had followed up and asked Hof if he thinks the US intelligence and military communities could, in fact, have implemented this policy effectively. Their recent efforts, which produced something like five trained rebels, don’t inspire a ton of confidence. My guess is that Obama listened to their recommendations but concluded that in the real world, it wouldn’t have worked. I suspect he was right.

We’ll never know, of course, which means this can be a subject of debate pretty much forever. But there’s sure nothing in the recent historical record to inspire a lot of faith in our ability to carry out a plan like this.

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Could Obama Have Prevented the Rise of ISIS in 2012?

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Bernie Sanders: Yes, Climate Change Is Still Our Biggest National Security Threat

by LinoMortlock7 Posted on November 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Bernie Sanders opened Saturday night’s Democratic debate by vowing to rid the world of ISIS, the terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for killing more than 100 people in Paris Friday. In a follow-up question, moderator John Dickerson pointed out that during a debate last month, Sanders had identified “climate change” as the greatest threat to national security. “Do you still believe that?” asked Dickerson.

“Absolutely,” replied Sanders. He added that “of course international terrorism is a major issue that we have got to address today,” but argued that “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.” Sanders warned that global warming could cause international conflicts “over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to…grow crops.” You can watch the full exchange above.

Sanders isn’t alone in arguing that climate change has the potential to make international conflicts worse. According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “Extreme weather, climate change, and public policies that affect food and water supplies will probably create or exacerbate humanitarian crises and instability risks.” The Department of Defense says that climate change “poses immediate risks to US national security” and has the potential to exacerbate terrorism. There’s also substantial evidence that drought linked to climate change helped spark Syria’s civil war.

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Bernie Sanders: Yes, Climate Change Is Still Our Biggest National Security Threat

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Ben Carson Just Dropped This Pretty Insane Immigration Policy on the Nation

by LouzConstant Posted on November 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a Wednesday press conference at Liberty University, a day after the GOP presidential candidates’ most recent debate, co-frontrunner Ben Carson aired his views on one of the race’s most contested topics: immigration. The former surgeon echoed Donald Trump on the magical powers of a heavily policed border fence and pushed back against his rival on the desirability of purging 11 million undocumented people, expressing concern for the plight of “farmers with multi-thousand acre farms” and hotel owners, who, he fretted, would have trouble finding workers to harvest crops and clean rooms.

Then he dropped a whopper. The answer to stemming the (alleged) tide of undocumented workers coming from the south is easy, he suggested: US companies simply need to set up shop in Central and South America and teach them how to farm. His model, he said, is Cameroon, where US agribusiness firms are “helping to develop millions of acres and incredibly fertile land, growing record crops, and getting big profits,” which, he added, “is great for them; I like business.”

These companies are doing well by doing good, he argued, “building the infrastructure of a nation, creating jobs there, and teaching them the ag business so they carry on themselves, while at the same time creating friends for the United States.” And if US firms repeat this feat south of the US border, “people won’t feel the necessity to come here.”

Whoa. First, Cameroon makes an odd model for foreign-led agriculture development. The nation has seen overall food production rise and malnutrition rates drop, but that’s the work of domestic smallholder farmers growing for the local market, not multinationals. Foreign firms have played a large role in converting forest into large palm oil plantations, but those efforts have generated at least as much controversy as “friends for the United States.” The Belgian-owned company Socapalm is locked in a “bitter land rights struggle” with villagers over expansion plans, The Guardian reports. And earlier this month, the government sentenced Cameroon environmental activist and NGO leader Nasako Besing to three years in prison for his role in opposing a hotly contested palm expansion/deforestation project by US firm Herakles Farm.

Then there’s the vexed history of US interventions in Mexican agriculture. The Green Revolution—the effort, funded by US foundations, to bring industrial-style agriculture to the global south—started in Mexico in the 1940s. As the historian Nick Cullather shows in his fantastic 2010 book The Hungry World (which I reviewed here), the Green Revolution did transform agriculture in Mexico’s north. The result: “narrowing of domestic agriculture’s genetic base, supplanting indigenous, sustainable practices; displacing small and communal farming with commercial agribusiness; and pushing millions of peasants into urban slums or across the border.”

Thus Mexico’s Green Revolution experience triggered what 1950s US policymakers would call the “wetback problem”—1.5 million migrants crossing the border each year in search of gainful work, Cullather shows. And that led directly to President Eisenhower’s infamous Operation Wetback, the very round-’em-up-and-purge-them scheme that Carson’s opponent Trump repeatedly trumpeted (though not by name) in Tuesday’s debate.

Of course, the last big wave of Mexican migration was also directly linked to US agribusiness. Implemented in 1994, NAFTA removed trade barriers and inspired Mexican policymakers to withdraw support for Mexican farmers. The result was a flood of subsidized US corn going south, a plunge in corn prices, and a tide of displaced Mexican smallholders heading north, as the Mexican analyst Ana de Ita and others have shown. US firms like Archer Daniels Midland profited handsomely.

In more recent years, though, immigration from Mexico has slowed dramatically, brought down by a variety of factors, from better corn prices in Mexico to less pull from the sluggish US economy. There’s strong evidence that net Mexico-to-US migration (the number of new arrivals minus the number who leave) is at or near zero. You won’t hear Carson or Trump talk about that, or the fact that current undocumented immigrants pay billions in annual taxes, both federal and state/local, in exchange for low-wage labor on farms, in restaurants, etc. On the immigration issue, Carson and his main rival to the GOP presidential throne are spewing noxious fumes about nothing in particular.

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Ben Carson Just Dropped This Pretty Insane Immigration Policy on the Nation

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Here’s Why Other Candidates Are Giving Ben Carson a Pass

by LupitaPrior Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Why didn’t any of the other candidates go after Ben Carson last night? He’s a frontrunner, isn’t he?

Yeah, he is. Here’s my guess: when you see a guy digging himself into a hole, why get in the way? More and more, as the stress of the campaign gets to him, Carson is freely exposing himself as an honest-to-God crackpot. Not just a hardcore conservative like Ted Cruz or an ego-driven windbag like Donald Trump, but a true Glenn Beck/Michele Bachmann/Alex Jones type who really and truly believes in fever swamp conspiracy theories. Criticize his past and he goes full frontal on every bit of listserv crankery about Barack Obama—and he does it pretty fluently, too. He obviously knows this stuff cold. Push him on his odd world view and he starts spouting off about how “secular progressives” are destroying America and probably trying to kill him. Ask him about his theory that the pyramids were built by Joseph to store grain, and he doesn’t blink. Sure he still believes that. Put him in a friendly setting and he’ll give you the full nine yards about how political correctness is responsible for everything from drug addiction to persecution of Christians to Marxist tyranny and gun confiscation.

This is a guy who’s set to implode all by himself, so why waste energy attacking him? Eventually he’ll suggest that the pope is actually Satan or something, and then he’ll be forced to slink back to the rubber-chicken circuit—with a higher speaking fee to soothe his pain. In the meantime, better to worry about the folks who might actually pose a real threat.

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Here’s Why Other Candidates Are Giving Ben Carson a Pass

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How to sell the gas tax to people who hate taxes and love driving

by ASDJonathan Posted on November 10, 2015

How to sell the gas tax to people who hate taxes and love driving

By on 10 Nov 2015commentsShare

Trying to get Americans to raise the gas tax is like trying to get kids to eat healthy. Deep down, both suburban car lovers and sticky little humans know that their respective standoffs are nothing more than ideological grandstanding, and that paying a bit more at the pump and knocking back those peas and carrots won’t actually be the worst thing ever. But here we are, cruising around crumbling infrastructure with our cheap gasoline. And there’s little Joey, starving to death at the kitchen table.

Here’s Grist’s own Ben Adler laying out the very real problems with this standoff — the tax one, not the peas and carrots one:

There is perhaps no more vicious, self-reinforcing cycle in American life today than our dependence on automobiles. We subsidize suburban sprawl through favorable tax treatment, we mandate it through zoning codes, and we socialize the costs of the pollution it causes. We then end up with communities segregated into shopping, offices, and homes, so spread out and car-oriented as to make walking impractical.

… With so much driving necessary to get anywhere, and far too many SUVs on the road, it’s no surprise that Americans are averse to raising taxes on gasoline.

Gas taxes are how we fund federal transportation spending. Currently, the gas tax is just 18.4 cents per gallon, the same as it was in 1993 — and one-third less once adjusted for inflation. Because we haven’t raised it for two decades, we have developed a shortfall for currently authorized spending — and that doesn’t even begin to address the considerably larger amount we should appropriate to fix our crumbling transportation infrastructure.

But a new study published in the journal Energy Policy has revealed a glimmer of hope. Through a series of online surveys conducted between 2012 and 2014, two sociologists at Michigan State University found that people were significantly more likely to support a gas tax hike if they were told that a) the money would go toward energy-efficient transportation, b) the money would go toward infrastructure repair that current taxes couldn’t cover, or c) the money would be refunded equally to all Americans, rather than given to the U.S. Treasury’s General Fund.

(Note to Joey’s parents: One thing that didn’t work was telling survey respondents how much other countries paid for gas. So, you know, maybe stop talking about how much the neighbor girl loves her broccoli.)

To design these surveys, the MSU researchers used what’s called “fear appeal literature.” This is mostly worth pointing out because the world should know that such a thing exists. But also, it’s kind of important. According to the researchers, the findings of such literature show that: “for people to take action against a threat, it is not sufficient that they believe that the threat is severe and that they are susceptible to its consequences. They also must believe that there are practical ways of protecting themselves against the threat.”

Makes sense. People want to know that their sacrifices actually matter. That’s why if I ever have kids, I plan to convince them that we’re all constantly on the verge of spontaneous combustion and that a healthy diet is the only thing keeping the flames at bay. I’ll practically have to pry those Brussels sprouts out of their terrified little hands!

Source:

How voters would accept higher gas tax

, MSU Today.

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How to sell the gas tax to people who hate taxes and love driving

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The Press Needs to Fight Back on Republican Tax Lunacy

by StunoJVGwo Posted on November 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Steve Benen on the Rubio-Lee tax plan:

At first blush, it’s tempting to see Marco Rubio’s economic plan as a dog-bites-man story: Republican presidential campaign proposes massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, even while saying the opposite.

Benen goes on to manfully make the case that Rubio’s tax crankery actually does deserve extra special attention, but I’m not sure he does the job. Sure, Rubio’s deficit would be humongous, but so would everyone else’s. And Rubio has a helluva mountain to climb to take the top spot in the tax craziness derby. Let’s roll the tape:

The “sensible” candidate says his tax plan will boost growth to 4 percent a year. His advisors have basically admitted that this number was pulled out of thin air.
A second candidate, not to be outdone on the absurd growth front, says his plan will cause the economy to take off like a rocket, producing growth as high as 6 percent. How will he manage this? “I just will.”
Another candidate suggests we adopt a tax plan based on the Biblical practice of tithing.
Yet another candidate, apparently thinking that tithing isn’t quite crazy enough, proposes an even lower flat tax.

This is all fantasyland stuff. So why doesn’t the media hammer them more on it? Why do debate moderators let them get away with such lunacy? Good question. John Harwood tried the only honest approach in the last debate, suggesting that Donald Trump was running a “comic book” campaign—and it was Harwood who got hammered. Harwood gamely tried a second time with Trump, telling him that “you have as chance of cutting taxes that much without increasing the deficit as you would of flying away from that podium by flapping your arms.” Trump brushed him off. Harwood tried yet again with Rubio, this time citing numbers from the Tax Foundation, and Rubio brushed him off. That’s a couple of tries at mockery and one try at arithmetic, and they both had the same effect.

There’s not much left to do. If candidates want to say that brass is gold, and people choose to believe them despite piles of evidence to the contrary, you’re stuck. Eventually you feel like you have to move on to something else.

But maybe you don’t. Maybe you just keep asking, over and over. Maybe you ask every candidate the same question. Republicans will scream about how the liberal media hates them, and then they’ll trot out their pet economists to insist that tax cuts really do hypercharge the economy. The moderators will take a lot of heat over this. But it might actually turn supply-side nuttiness into a real topic that gets its 15 minutes of fame. That’s better than nothing.

Taken from – 

The Press Needs to Fight Back on Republican Tax Lunacy

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How Science is Used For Good Around the World

by MerryCalloway Posted on November 9, 2015

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How Science is Used For Good Around the World

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Here’s the Latest in the GOP Horserace

by FranCarranza Posted on November 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Apropos of nothing in particular, here’s the latest Pollster aggregate for the Republican nomination. It looks to me like Trump is finally sliding, while Carson seems to have plateaued around 20 percent or so. Rubio and Cruz are up over the past few weeks, but it’s too soon to tell if this just a blip, or the start of something real. Jeb Bush is declining slightly, but not out of it yet.

So who gets all the Trump and Carson votes when those two inevitably implode? And is it really inevitable? Beats me. This is just the weirdest Republican race ever. Ever since Scott Walker, my early favorite, displayed such awesome ineptitude that he literally dropped to 0 percent in the polls, I’ve been reluctant to utter a peep about who seems likely to win this year. Who knows? Maybe it will all come down to a savage brawl between the two Floridians.

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Here’s the Latest in the GOP Horserace

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New Suitcase Offers Nothing New, Gets Big Writeup in Slate

by LukeSackett Posted on November 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, in what is apparently not an ad, Slate is running an ad for Away, a fabulous new carry-on suitcase designed by two former Warby Parker executives. Here’s the skinny:

To create their carry-on, Rubio and Korey spoke with thousands of people to determine what travelers look for most. They found that many consumers want attractive, well-constructed luggage that provides organization and….

With that in mind, they created a carry-on that has four durable double wheels—a design detail that alone took 20 designs iterations to get right—plus a laundry separation system that keeps belongings organized, YKK zippers that provide stability, and a….

Hmmm. So far that sounds like pretty much every other carry-on suitcase in the galaxy. But wait! What’s behind those ellipses? This:

….and a built-in 10,000 mAh battery that can be charged beforehand and power a smartphone up to five times during a trip.

So let me get this straight. The big selling point of this suitcase is that it includes a built-in battery that’s a lot less convenient than a standalone battery you can put anywhere you want? Or is it just that it has a special pocket for a battery? Either way, who cares? Buy a suitcase and a 10,000 mAh battery (about 20 bucks on Amazon) and you’ll have the same thing the Warby Parker execs are hawking. And probably pay less.

What am I missing? Why did Slate run this?

This article:  

New Suitcase Offers Nothing New, Gets Big Writeup in Slate

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