Category: Domestic Affairs,

Trump Administration Dismantles Clean Water Rule Days After Gutting National Environmental Policy Act, Putting Park Waters Further at Risk

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Environment,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

The revised water rule eliminates protections for more than half of America’s wetlands, along with many rivers and streams that were once protected under the Clean Water Act — threatening drinking water for millions of people and national park waterways across the country.

The administration’s revised water rule paves the way for more pollution from mining, manufacturing and large farms to flow into waterways, which will ultimately impact water that we all depend on for drinking, fishing and swimming. Today’s announcement comes just two weeks after the administration’s rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that requires government agencies to carefully consider public health and our environment before permitting proposed projects on federal lands, while also giving the public a voice in the process. 

Trump Administration Dismantles Clean Water Rule Days After Gutting National Environmental Policy Act, Putting Park Waters Further at Risk · National Parks Conservation Association

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Hackers may have gained ‘almost total control’ of an election server in Georgia, report says

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Privacy,Leave a comment

The alleged attack on a Georgia election server was first discovered by Logan Lamb, an election security expert who suggested that hackers may have been able to significantly interfere with state voting data.

If the hackers successfully broke into the server, Mr Lamb said in his report that they likely obtained “almost total control of the server, including abilities to modify files, delete data, and install malware”.

….“What Logan’s findings show us,” she added, “is that vulnerabilities were not just hypothetical as the state had been claiming. Now we know that it was a very real risk, but what we don’t know is just how bad did it get. And the public deserves to know.”

….The alleged attack has added fuel to an ongoing debate about the integrity of Georgia’s elections. The state uses paperless voting machines, a process the activist groups behind the lawsuit are hoping to put an end to, and the election server had previously faced security issues before the 2016 elections.

The Centre for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University, which was tasked with overseeing the programming of Georgia’s elections, then erased all of the data on the server in question. Mr Lamb was later able to assess a copy of the server collected by the FBI in March 2017 after state officials lost a years-long battle to prevent it from being examined in 2019.

“I can think of no legitimate reason why records from that critical period of time should have been deleted”, Mr Lamb wrote in the affidavit.

Hackers may have gained ‘almost total control’ of an election server in Georgia, report says | The Independent

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Trump Impeachment: A Ukraine Smoking Gun Exposes Republicans

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

John Bolton has written in his upcoming book that Trump made explicit the quid pro quo that his lawyers are denying: that Trump told him directly that he wanted to keep the military aid frozen until the Ukrainian government agreed to help with investigations of Democrats. Not only that, but apparently the White House has had Bolton’s manuscript all month. Trump’s team knew this was coming.

…Nixon knew what was on the tapes, but until the Supreme Court ruled against him he might at least have hoped that he could keep them secret. Apparently in the Trump case, at least some people in the White House have known for weeks that Bolton was going to release this book, and yet they still encouraged their allies to say things that were about to be shown to be false.

Trump Impeachment: A Ukraine Smoking Gun Exposes Republicans – Bloomberg

hmmm

Trump and the closed loop of news in the GOP

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Asked to name media companies in which they have trust, 65% of Republicans named Fox News. One in 3 named ABC. And that’s it. Not a single other news source was trusted by even 33% of self-identified Republicans in the Pew poll.

…A majority of Republicans (and Republican-leaning independents) don’t trust ANY media company other than Fox News. And two thirds don’t trust ANY media companies other than Fox News and ABC.

…Combine those numbers with Fox News’s overwhelming viewership numbers among Republicans (60% get their election news from Fox; no other outlet gets above 30%), and the marked difference between its content and that of all the other mainstream media outlets, and you see a major reason for why we are where we are, politically speaking.

If you only trust one news outlet and that news outlet is telling a very different …version of current events, a massive disconnect is created.

…And it is into that disconnect, that information void, that Trump has leaped — and now resides. …Trump regularly tweets and retweets Fox News segments to his 71+ million Twitter followers. He often directly quotes from Fox personalities. He works to create a totally closed information ecosystem for his supporters — and largely succeeds.

This 1 chart explains how bad Fox News is for our politics – CNNPolitics

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John Roberts comes face to face with the mess he made

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

Roberts’s captivity is entirely fitting: He is forced to witness, with his own eyes, the mess he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court have made of the U.S. political system. As representatives of all three branches of government attend this unhappy family reunion, the living consequences of the Roberts Court’s decisions, and their corrosive effect on democracy, are plain to see.

Ten years to the day before Trump’s impeachment trial began, the Supreme Court released its Citizens United decision, plunging the country into the era of super PACs and unlimited, unregulated, secret campaign money from billionaires and foreign interests. Citizens United, and the resulting rise of the super PAC, led directly to this impeachment. The two Rudy Giuliani associates engaged in key abuses …gained access to Trump by funneling money from a Ukrainian oligarch to the president’s super PAC.

…The court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County gutted the Voting Rights Act and spurred a new wave of voter suppression. The decision in 2014′s McCutcheon further surrendered campaign finance to the wealthiest. 

…The new dominance of ideologically extreme outside groups and donors led lawmakers on both sides to give their patrons what they wanted: conflict over collaboration and purity at the cost of paralysis. The various decisions also suppress the influence of poorer and non-white Americans.

…Roberts had been warned about this sort of thing.

…Justice Stephen Breyer, in his McCutcheon dissent, warned that the new campaign finance system would be “incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy.”

Now, we are in a crisis of democratic legitimacy: A president who has plainly abused his office and broken the law, a legislature too paralyzed to do anything about it — and a chief justice coming face to face with the system he broke.

John Roberts comes face to face with the mess he made – The Washington Post

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Reporter says Mike Pompeo cursed and demanded she find Ukraine on a map after interview

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,Leave a comment

“That same staffer who stopped the interview reappeared, asked me to come with her — just me, no recorder — though she did not say we were off the record, nor would I have agreed.”

…[Pompeo]  asked her, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” Kelly said, adding that “he used the F-word in that sentence and many others.”

Pompeo then asked Kelly if she could find Ukraine on a map. …”He called out for aides to bring us a map of the world with no writing.”

“I pointed to Ukraine. He put the map away.”

Reporter says Mike Pompeo cursed and demanded she find Ukraine on a map after interview – CNNPolitics

oy…

Trump impeachment trial: Will Democrats get their witnesses?

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US public opinion on Trump’s impeachment is sharply divided between Democrats and Republicans with a slight tilt in favour of removing the president from office.

A new Emerson College national poll showed 51 percent of respondents favour Trump’s conviction and removal from office while 49 percent oppose impeachment.

A strong majority of 59 percent of voters want the Senate to call witnesses in the trial, according to the survey conducted January 21-23 with a 4.1 percent margin of confidence.

Trump impeachment trial: Will Democrats get their witnesses? | USA News | Al Jazeera

hmmm

Rep. Garcia explains Democrats believe Biden did nothing wrong because there is zero evidence to suggest otherwise

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“Every witness with knowledge of this issue testified that Biden was following official U.S. policy in calling for Shokin’s removal,” said Garcia, who noted that the move was supported by a bipartisan group of senators, including Republicans Rob Portman and Ron Johnson.

She added that there is “Simply no evidence…in the record to support” the “baseless allegation” that Biden did anything wrong by pressing for Shokin’s removal.

…“President Trump asked Ukraine for something that benefited only himself,” said Garcia, D-Texas. “In putting himself above our country, he put his country at risk, and that is why his actions are so dangerous,” she added.

WATCH: Rep. Garcia explains why Democrats believe Biden did nothing wrong | PBS NewsHour

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Why a conservative columnist thinks Republicans’ impeachment strategy will blow up in their faces

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“The impeachment trial will not result in President Trump’s removal,” [conservative Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer] Rubin writes, “but it could well result in Republicans’ removal from the Senate majority.”

The Never Trump conservative notes that a “slew of Republican incumbents,” according to Morning Consult, “were below 45% approval even before the trial began….. In their refusal to allow new witnesses and documents, their determination to acquit even before the trial began and their conduct during the trial, they are creating a plethora of opportunities for opponents’ ad makers.”

The incumbent GOP senators Rubin specifically mentions include Maine’s Susan Collins, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Arizona’s Martha McSally, Colorado’s Cory Gardner and Texas’ John Cornyn.

…“In behaving as they have, Republicans are managing not only to deprive the president of a legitimate acquittal in the eyes of Americans — who overwhelmingly want a real trial — but also, to convince voters that Republicans should not be entrusted with power.”

Why a conservative columnist thinks Republicans’ impeachment strategy will blow up in their faces – Alternet.org

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This is why the US still doesn’t have high-speed trains

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Infrastructure and Transportation,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

The FRA should never have been asked to oversee the project, said Thomas Hart Jr, president of the pro-rail consulting group Rail Forward. It was inexperienced, needlessly bureaucratic, and had “neither the experience, the staff, nor the regulations” in place to make high-speed rail work. To Hart’s mind, the largest problems were strategic: The FRA “tried to do too much with too little” by spreading the money across the nation rather than targeting the best possible projects, while simultaneously shutting out small or minority-owned businesses. He also believes the federal government made a fatal misstep in allowing Amtrak to run the projects, rather than opening it up to more experienced foreign competitors. 

…“The question really is, for us as an industry and as a company, in being pragmatic,” he said. All over the country, there are underserved segments of around 300 miles which are ripe for high-quality rail, he added. “We don’t even need to spend money on necessarily expensive high-speed trains—just getting what we have today working well at a hundred miles an hour, which is very feasible, is really viable.” 

Europe might have some of the world’s best high-speed rail, but it also had a great network of slower, 80-mile-per-hour trains, said Harris. “We should aspire to that first. We can deliver that and make a lot of people happy, without spending $100 million.”

This is why the US still doesn’t have high-speed trains — Quartz

hmm

The Senator Who Stood Up to Joseph McCarthy When No One Else Would

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Only four months earlier, McCarthy had delivered an inflammatory speech claiming 205 people working in the State Department were secretly communists. Since then, Smith had been closely following his words and actions, meant to undermine the Democratic party and seed suspicion everywhere.

…“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” Smith said, in another thinly veiled jab at McCarthy’s tactics.

…“It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life,” said Smith.

It was a remarkable moment, not only because Smith was a woman, or the first person to speak out against McCarthy, but because she was willing to speak out against her fellow Republicans.

The Senator Who Stood Up to Joseph McCarthy When No One Else Would | History | Smithsonian Magazine

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Trump Brags on Hiding Evidence: ‘We Have All the Material, They Don’t’

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President Trump said he’s happy with the way the impeachment trial is going thus far because his administration has not released “materials” that would hurt his cause.

“When we released that conversation all hell broke out with the Democrats,” Trump said. “Because they said, ‘Wait a minute, this is much different than [what Adam Schiff] told us.’ ”

The president continued, “So, we’re doing very well. I got to watch [the impeachment trial] enough. I thought our team did a very good job. But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.”

Trump Brags on Hiding Evidence: ‘We Have All the Material, They Don’t’ – Rolling Stone

jesus-facepalm1

 

Scientists move Doomsday Clock closer to midnight

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Media and Culture,, Military,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of its symbolic Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, indicating that the likeliness of a human-caused apocalypse has increased since last year.

The Bulletin adjusted the clock to reflect looming threats from nuclear weapons and accelerated global warming.

The clock is now set at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to symbolic doom and the first time the hands have been within the two-minute mark.

Scientists move Doomsday Clock closer to midnight

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‘They Sprayed Her Blood All Over Her Fellow Students’: Cops Assault Teen In Viral Video

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Race,, Schools,Leave a comment

Attorney Paul Jubas has been retained by the girls family to take legal action.

“Sergeant Christopher Mordaunt and Officer Tommy Trieu committed a crime when they brutally assaulted this tiny girl,” he said in a December Instagram post. “They sprayed her blood all over her fellow students and incited riot-like conditions on a school bus. Everything was calm on this bus until these officers began their vicious assault. To make matters worse, other videos prove they lied in their affidavit of probable cause.”

‘They Sprayed Her Blood All Over Her Fellow Students’: Cops Assault Teen In Viral Video | News One

daaa faaa?!

Trump Removes Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Environment,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

The Trump administration on Thursday will finalize a rule to strip away environmental protections for streams, wetlands and other water bodies.

…The Obama rule protected about 60 percent of the nation’s waterways, including large bodies of water such as the Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi River and Puget Sound, and smaller headwaters, wetlands, seasonal streams and streams that run temporarily underground. It limited the discharge of pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides and industrial chemicals into those waters.

…This is not just undoing the Obama rule. This is stripping away protections that were put in place in the ’70s and ’80s that Americans have relied on for their health.”

…The new water rule will remove federal protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands, and hundreds of thousands of small waterways. That would for the first time in decades allow landowners and property developers to dump pollutants such as pesticides and fertilizers directly into many of those waterways, and to destroy or fill in wetlands for construction projects.

…[The changes] on Thursday will complete the process, not only rolling back 2015 rules that guaranteed protections under the 1972 Clean Water Act to certain wetlands and streams that run intermittently or run temporarily underground, but also relieves landowners of the need to seek permits that the Environmental Protection Agency had considered on a case-by-case basis before the Obama rule.

…That could open millions of acres of pristine wetlands to pollution or destruction, and allow chemicals and other pollutants to be discharged into smaller headland waters that eventually drain into larger water bodies, experts in water management said. Wetlands play key roles in filtering surface water and protecting against floods, while also providing wildlife habitat.

… The E.P.A.’s Scientific Advisory Board, a panel of 41 scientists responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, concluded that the new Trump water rule ignores science by “failing to acknowledge watershed systems.” They found “no scientific justification” for excluding certain bodies of water from protection under the new regulations, concluding that pollutants from those smaller and seasonal bodies of water can still have a significant impact on the health of larger water systems.

Trump Removes Pollution Controls on Streams and Wetlands – The New York Times

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US drinking water contamination with ‘forever chemicals’ far worse than scientists thought

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Environment,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

The contamination of US drinking water with manmade “forever chemicals” is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.

…The chemicals were used in products like Teflon and Scotchguard and in firefighting foam. Some are used in a variety of other products and industrial processes, and their replacements also pose risks.

…The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Some have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems.

…Of tap water samples taken by EWG from 44 sites in 31 states and Washington DC, only one location, Meridian, Mississippi, which relies on 700ft (215m) deep wells, had no detectable PFAS. Only Seattle and Tuscaloosa, Alabama had levels below 1 part per trillion (PPT), the limit EWG recommends.

In addition, EWG found that on average six to seven PFAS compounds were found at the tested sites.

US drinking water contamination with ‘forever chemicals’ far worse than scientists thought | Environment | The Guardian

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