Volunteers step in to keep asylum seekers healthy on border
hmmm
Category: Money, Class, and Poverty,
NH Supreme Court: Cash bail OK for suspects with flight risk
Proponents of bail reform argue the changes have halved the detainee population in the county jails, which save counties roughly $2,500 per month, per prisoner, by forcing prosecutors to prove a specific suspect poses a threat to the community if they were to be released.
…Law enforcement has been vocally critical of bail reform, providing numerous anecdotal examples of individuals arrested given a personal reconnaissance (PR) bail, not showing up to their court date, getting arrested on a warrant for failing to appear (FTA), receiving another PR bail and failing to appear again, and in some instances, multiple times. Toussaint calls the current bail situation “catch and release.”
…Police departments and prosecutors critical of the new law have been unable to provide adequate data that quantifies how many suspects charged with Class A misdemeanors, versus Class B misdemeanors, versus civil violations are not appearing in court.
hmmmm
Farmers Are Using Food Waste To Make Electricity
Dairy farmers in Massachusetts are using food waste to create electricity. They feed waste into anaerobic digesters, built and operated by Vanguard Renewables, which capture the methane emissions and make renewable energy.
…The machine will grind up all kinds of food waste — “everything from bones, we put whole fish in here, to vegetables to dry items like rice or grains,” Franczyk says as the grinder is loaded. It also takes frying fats and greases.
…While Whole Foods donates a lot of surplus food to food banks, there’s a lot waste left over. Much of it is generated from prepping prepared foods. Just as when you cook in your own kitchen, there are lots of bits that remain, such as onion or carrot peel, rinds, stalks or meat scraps.
…In the digester, he combines all of this waste with manure from his cows. The mixture cooks at about 105 degrees Fahrenheit. As the methane is released, it rises to the top of a large red tank with a black bubble-shaped dome.
“We capture the gas in that bubble. Then we suck it into a big motor,” Melnik explains. Unlike other engines that run on diesel or gasoline, this engine runs on methane.
“This turns a big generator, which is creating one megawatt of electricity” continuously, Melnik says — enough to power more than just his farm. “We only use about 10 percent of what we make, and the rest is fed onto the [electricity] grid,” Melnik explains. It’s enough to power about 1,500 homes.
He says times are tough for dairy farmers, so this gives him a new stream of revenue. Vanguard pays him rental fees for having the anaerobic digester on his farm. In addition, he’s able to use the liquids left over from the process as fertilizer on his fields.
Chew On This: Farmers Are Using Food Waste To Make Electricity : The Salt : NPR
cool!
Economists and climate change: Building castles in the sky
The problem with Nordhaus’ thinking (and that of many others like him) is that he cannot conceive of abrupt discontinuities in the workings of the planet or the workings of human society. In short, he cannot conceive that climate change could alter our environment so thoroughly and disrupt our agriculture so completely that it would lead to catastrophic results.
It is for this failure of imagination that economist Steven Keen recently took Nordhaus to task, showing through a careful critique of Nordhaus’ equations, that even those equations demonstrate catastrophe ahead when provisioned with the proper numbers and understanding. When Keen adds in what we know about tipping points in the climate system, he finds that Nordhaus’ own equations reveal that “[a]t 3 degrees, damages are 8 times as high. At 4 degrees, the ratio doesn’t matter, because the tipping point function says there would be no economy.” What a difference understanding the nonlinearity of the climate system makes!
Economists and climate change: Building castles in the sky – Resilience
hmmm
Palantir Wins New Pentagon Deal With $111 Million From the Army
The Silicon Valley company will provide software to connect human resources, supply chains and other Army operations systems into a single dashboard.
…The Palo Alto, California-based company, which was co-founded and partly bankrolled by Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and adviser to President Donald Trump has chastised other technology companies, in particular Alphabet Inc.’s Google, for their reluctance to work with the Defense Department.
Palantir Wins New Pentagon Deal With $111 Million From the Army – Bloomberg
hmmm
90-year-old Florida man arrested for second time in a week after feeding the homeless again
When 90-year-old Florida resident Arnold Abbott said following his arrest on Sunday that police couldn’t stop him from feeding the homeless, he apparently meant it.
Abbott was charged again on Wednesday night for violating a new city law in Ft. Lauderdale that essentially prevents people from feeding the homeless.
…The laws regarding food sharing where ironically enacted on Halloween when millions of people were out sharing candy.
…Four police cruisers and approximately a half dozen officers with the Ft. Lauderdale Police Department descended upon an area in the city where Abbott, charity representatives and church members were handing out hot meals to local homeless people.
One officer demanded that he “drop that plate right now” as others picked up the trays off food and inserted them directly into the garbage with lines of homeless people looking on.
The officers involved in the first arrest should be the ones facing charges.
Monsanto pleads guilty to illegally spraying banned pesticide on Maui
[Monsanto] plead guilty to spraying a banned pesticide on research crops in Maui, Hawaii, the US Department of Justice said.
Monsanto Co., also the maker of weedkiller Roundup, will pay the fines for storing the pesticide Penncap-M, an “acute hazardous waste” at sites [on] Maui and Molokai.
…The company knew that its use was prohibited after 2013. Penncap-M is considered an “acute hazardous waste.” The company also told employees to reenter the area only seven days after the spraying, when it knew that years earlier, 31 days was set as the required amount of time.
Monsanto pleads guilty to illegally spraying banned pesticide in Maui – CNN
Consequences for willful and flagrant endangerment of employees, locals, and the environment should include criminal prosecution for the decision makers involved.
Carnival to pay $20 million after admitting to violating settlement
Princess Cruises, a Carnival subsidiary, admitted to violating the terms of its probation from a 2017 conviction for improper waste disposal.
…In 2017, Princess Cruises pleaded guilty to illegally releasing oil into the ocean and deliberately hiding the practice
…Carnival released food waste and plastic into the ocean, failed to accurately record waste disposals, created false training records, and secretly examined ships to fix environmental-compliance issues before third-party inspections without reporting its findings to the inspectors.
Carnival to pay $20 million after admitting to violating settlement – Business Insider
hmmm
Supreme Court refuses case about using criminal law against homeless
The court’s refusal to take up the issue is a setback to some states and cities [looking to criminalize] homelessness. They had hoped a federal appeals court ruling would be overturned, allowing them to prosecute people who sleep on streets when they claim shelter beds are unavailable. Boise had appealed the ruling, hoping to enforce its ban on camping in public.
…The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled last year that prosecuting homeless individuals violated the Constitution because their situation was an “unavoidable consequence of one’s status or being.”
…”A city that criminalizes both sleeping on private property and public property when no alternative shelter is available leaves a homeless individual who cannot obtain shelter with no capacity to comply with the law.”
…The notion of recriminalizing homelessness at a time when shelters are bulging enrages advocates.
…A 15% increase over three years in the number of cities that punish homeless people for sleeping in public, even as the number of unsheltered homeless rose by 10%.
Advocates for the homeless say citations or …[having] police clear the streets of homeless people who have nowhere else to go [by arresting them for the crime of poverty] amounts to “arresting exhausted, deeply poor and vulnerable Americans struggling to meet the most basic human need for sleep.”
Supreme Court refuses case about using criminal law against homeless
hmmm
McKinsey proposed ICE cut spending on food and medical care for detained migrants to reduce costs.
McKinsey was brought into the deportation game by the Obama administration, according to the report, which used the firm to carry out an “organizational transformation” in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division grappling with processing and deporting a surge in undocumented migrants. “Organizational transformation,” in consultant speak, roughly translates as: This is too expensive; somebody’s about to get screwed. Could be the workers, and it usually is. Could be anyone. Could be migrant families. And in this case, it was.
…“They proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees.”
…After its ICE contract ran out, McKinsey slid over and is working on a $10 million gig with Customs and Border Protection that will run at least through September 2020.
McKinsey proposed ICE cut spending on food and medical care for detained migrants to reduce costs.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Flint weighs school closures as it grapples with special ed costs
Fueling the district’s economic problems is the fact that 24% of the 3,750 students in Flint Community Schools are designated as special education, a number that is nearly twice as high as the 13.2% statewide average.
…Flint’s water was contaminated with lead when officials used corrosive river water from April 2014 to October 2015 that wasn’t properly treated. In children, lead exposure can result in serious effects on IQ, ability to pay attention and academic achievement.
Flint weighs school closures as it grapples with special ed costs
hmmm
A Federal Judge Orders Sweeping Changes To Bond Hearings In Boston Immigration Court
Saris ruled that asking an undocumented immigrant who is eligible for bond to prove why they are neither a flight risk nor a threat to the community violates the individual’s due process.
Moving forward, the burden of proof will be placed instead on federal immigration officials, similar to how bond hearings are decided in criminal court proceedings.
Saris additionally ordered immigration judges to consider alternative conditions to detention, like GPS monitoring and orders of supervision that require regular check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A Federal Judge Orders Sweeping Changes To Bond Hearings In Boston Immigration Court | WBUR News
hmmm
Trump-China trade war: The industries hurt by US tariffs
Farmers in some US states are being forced into plowing their crops under — effectively burying them under soil in fields — as there is not enough room to store them in storage facilities, and they are unable to sell their products thanks to Chinese tariffs, Reuters reported last week.
All grain depots and silos are almost full, meaning farmers have to find their own storage solutions or allow their crops to rot. Neither option is particularly palatable.
…Manufacturing activity in the US slowed to a six-month low in October, with industry figures citing future protectionism and widespread uncertainty as major reasons for the slowdown.
“For the consumer, the tariffs are for the most part still an abstract idea, but for manufacturers they are real, and a big problem.”
Trump-China trade war: The industries hurt by US tariffs – Business Insider
hmmm
Errrr… Senator?
It is the accepted truth of Silicon Valley that every problem has a technological solution.
Most importantly, in the eyes of the Valley, every problem can be solved exclusively through technology without requiring society to do anything on its own. A few algorithmic tweaks, a few extra lines of code and all the world’s problems can be simply coded out of existence.
Sadly for the Valley’s technological determinists, this is far from the truth.
A Reminder That ‘Fake News’ Is An Information Literacy Problem – Not A Technology Problem
I’m just going to park this here to refer to when the desire to give a certain Senator shit for simplistic solutions to complex problems (that require actual humans to solve!) comes up.
Harris Policy Proposals That Got Lost in that Shitshow of a Campaign
Under Harris’ proposal, homebuyers who rent or live in historically redlined communities can apply for a federal grant of up to $25,000 to assist with down payments or closing costs. Harris’ campaign estimates that this will help up to 4 million families.
Redlining is the discriminatory practice of denying financial or other services for low-income and minority communities.
Harris’ policy proposal also aims to prevent discrimination in home sales, rentals and loans by promising to strengthen and strictly enforce anti-discrimination laws.
…In May, Harris reintroduced her 2018 bill to tackle racial disparities in maternal health and rolled out her proposal to fine companies that don’t achieve pay equity
Harris’ education proposal — her first major policy as a presidential candidate — would boost teacher pay, make additional investments in public schools and support programs dedicated to teacher recruitment, training and professional development, particularly at historically black colleges and universities.
Kamala Harris unveils $100 billion black homeownership plan – CNNPolitics
sigh…
Rep. Duncan Hunter to plead guilty in case alleging misuse of campaign funds
Hunter’s forthcoming guilty plea comes months after his wife, Margaret, pleaded guilty in June to conspiring with her husband to “knowingly and willingly” convert campaign funds for personal use and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Hunter had initially blamed his wife for the alleged campaign fund abuses, saying she was the one handling his finances. “She was also the campaign manager, so whatever she did that’ll be looked at too, I’m sure,” he said on Fox News in August 2018.
“But I didn’t do it,” Duncan Hunter said. “I didn’t spend any money illegally.”
But in response to the judge at the time, Margaret Hunter acknowledged that Duncan Hunter had attempted to set up a one-day tour of a naval base in Italy to justify their Italian vacation — one of the examples prosecutors have cited as evidence that the congressman used his position of power for personal gain.
Rep. Duncan Hunter to plead guilty in case alleging misuse of campaign funds – CNNPolitics
hmmm
Senator Warner: Let Users Freely Move Their Data From One Social Media Platform to Another
“So if you get tired of Facebook, and you want to move all your data, including your cat videos, to a new site, you should be able to do that easily and transparently,” Warner explains.
…The legislation requires social media companies to maintain apps and interfaces to let you transfer your stuff anywhere you want.
Senator Warner: Let Users Freely Move Their Data From One Social Media Platform to Another | WVTF
hmm
To Make Sense of Lebanon’s Protests, Follow the Garbage
The government’s inability to provide basic services, including 24-hour electricity and garbage collection, is rooted in an agreement that ended Lebanon’s civil war nearly 30 years ago. The deal divided power between the nation’s 18 recognized religious sects, effectively institutionalizing corruption, with each group able to dole out government jobs, contracts, favors and social services to its followers.
…The perpetual garbage crisis is only the most pungent example. It last exploded into public view in 2015, when the country’s political elite squabbled over a lucrative waste-management contract as mountains of uncollected trash fouled the streets of Beirut. A wave of protests ensued.
The stopgap solution was to build two new landfills. Three years after they opened, the landfills have only relocated the garbage crisis to the coast, and they are fast threatening to hit capacity.
…Employees dumped trash and toxic waste directly into the Mediterranean.
…Mr. Khoury’s company was dumping trash into the landfill without sorting it, despite a contractual requirement that recyclables be separated and hazardous material be removed.
Moreover, she found, the landfill’s breakwaters in the Mediterranean were not keeping the trash out of the water. Garbage and the toxic liquid oozing from it were going straight into the sea.
…For several years, the government has promoted incineration as a long-term solution, despite objections from environmentalists and scientists.
In June, the environment minister, Fadi Jreissati, told The Daily Star, a local newspaper, that he did not think Lebanon was “qualified” to regulate the incinerators.
…A major reason that Lebanon does not produce enough electricity for its four million people, experts say, is the powerful lobby of generator owners, whose machines provide power during daily blackouts, as well as the $1.2 billion-a-year diesel industry that fuels them.
..Hospitals, roads, schools and other projects are distributed to favored contractors according to sectarian quotas that ensure every group benefits, regardless of necessity.
To Make Sense of Lebanon’s Protests, Follow the Garbage – The New York Times
hmmm
Kamala Harris Says She’s Still ‘in This Fight,’ but Out of the 2020 Race – The New York Times
Throughout her candidacy, Ms. Harris faced concerns about her political strategy and her campaign’s organizational structure. She relied on a stable of California political strategists, led by the longtime political operative Averell Smith, who did not heed warnings from grass-roots organizers to invest more heavily in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead, the campaign focused on later primaries in states with more nonwhite voters, including South Carolina and California.
Her campaign miscalculated.
…Mr. Biden, campaigning in Iowa, called Ms. Harris “a first-rate intellect, first-rate candidate, real competitor.” He walked away when a reporter asked whether he would consider Ms. Harris as a running mate.
Kamala Harris Says She’s Still ‘in This Fight,’ but Out of the 2020 Race – The New York Times
Did she or her campaign take all of the next/female Obama hype she had been generating since before she ran for Senate too seriously? Because there was a certain arrogance behind some of her bad decisions on the campaign trail….
A lot of talk about where she fell on the ideological spectrum but did she &/or anyone on the campaign ever sit down and plot it out?
If she did a review of the finances this late in the game and made her decision on this where was she in the past six months? Did she even check her spending or have a skeleton budget she adhered to? (Thinking about that private plane the Peanut Gallery saw taking off after one her events…)
What did unifying goals mean to her? This was the woman who spent most of 2019 not bothering to talk to voters in NH and Iowa because they were too white.
Can’t speak for Iowa but NH is full not only a white state state, it is a gray state, full of successful professional women in their sixties and seventies who were (by virtue of when they started their careers) barrier breakers themselves. …Women who naturally felt a kinship and empathy towards her as another barrier breaker. She blew those women off and their interest in her and they went from dying to hear from her to, “Oh, Well, I guess she doesn’t want my vote.” Not exactly the stuff of a unifier….
Did she not realize she was vulnerable to candidates too her in California? How could she possibly have put together a campaign plan without accounting for that? (Oh, that’s right. Her campaign had no plan!)
As for her breakout moment calling Biden not quite a racist… What kind of politician attacks someone for supporting a position they themselves also hold? (Hint: a total frigging idiot who doesn’t think things through. That’s who!)
Also, Democrats have a tendency to eat their own and attack those on their own side who came before them. Fair or not, attacking Biden was also attack the Obama administration. Candidates who do this might as well be pulling the rug out from under their own feet.
Oy…. what a waste!
Girlfriend of Philando Castile Diamond Reynolds Sues Minnesota Mayor for Defamation – Black Enterprise
Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of the late Philando Castile, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Elysian, Minnesota, Mayor Tom McBroom over a 2017 tweet where he wrote that a settlement she won from the city would be spent on “crack cocaine.”
hmmm
Kamala Harris Drops Out of the 2020 Presidential Race
Ms. Harris also faced questions about her political strategy and her campaign’s organizational structure. She relied on a stable of California political strategists, led by the longtime political operative Averell Smith, who did not heed warnings from grass-roots organizers to invest more heavily in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead, the campaign focused on later primaries in states with more nonwhite voters, including South Carolina and California.
…“Sometimes campaigns can tear friendships apart but we have grown closer,” Ms. Klobuchar tweeted. “Her good work will continue.”
“Her campaign broke barriers and did it with joy,” Mr. Booker tweeted. “Love you, sister.”
Mr. Biden, campaigning in Iowa, called Ms. Harris “a first-rate intellect, first-rate candidate, real competitor.” He walked away when a reporter asked whether he would consider Ms. Harris as a running mate.
Kamala Harris Drops Out of the 2020 Presidential Race – The New York Times
Yes, there were fund-raising issues but they only manifested because of all of the other issues in her once promising campaign. The lessons?
1.) POC and women candidates need to be better than their white/male counterparts. It’s an ugly truth but it is the truth.
2.) Iowa and NH are very white. They are also smaller populations which make retail politics easier and more effective to pull off. Both states like to go their own way though so there is a huge opening for new faces to succeed there. The media markets are so inexpensive it is staggering. The Peanut Gallery’s point here is that although they are very white states there are definite (and relatively inexpensive) paths to success for “outsiders” and “newcomers” who are WILLING TO PLAY BALL with retail-style campaigning. For all of those reasons and more, blowing them off isn’t just poor strategy, it’s just plain stupid.
3.) Sticking to the message is how campaigns win. Changing up the message every other day is how candidates lose. Period.
4.) California is a big state. It is not the entire country though. Banking on a California campaign strategy while employing a tightly knit, closed circle of California-only consultants and leadership is, well, naive and a bit arrogant.
5.) If you can’t campaign in all of the different regions of the country, what does that say about your ability to conduct yourself among the varied cultures across the globe? Don’t answer that. Because it doesn’t say anything good.
6.) She picked a poor cycle to run as America’s “top cop.” We don’t need a law and order prosecutor. We need a reformer.
7.) Outside of La-la-la land donations dry up when candidates don’t do retail politics. Anyone who couldn’t see her war-chest drying up has never campaigned outside a major media market.
The Peanut Gallery doesn’t really see itself ever willingly voting for a prosecutor in a primary but it still wanted to see her do better than this.
It’s not the press, it’s not white men telling her sit down and be quiet, and it’s not ‘electability’ (whatever that means) that sunk her. It was piss-poor decision making that did her in.
The Peanut Gallery is secretly breathing a sigh of relief she finally dropped out. The country needs someone with more savvy and leadership skills than she showed.
Comments From The Peanut Gallery 