Mississippi immigration raid: Koch Foods hit with ICE sting
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Category: Money, Class, and Poverty,
Sawdust Might Be One Answer to the World’s Plastic Problem – Bloomberg
Origin Materials is getting ready to pay sawmills in the area $20 a ton for the scraps left over in the process of turning logs into lumber, which it will use to make recyclable plastic bottles that remove carbon-dioxide from the sky because they’re made from sustainably sourced wood waste.
…Other so-called bio-based plastics are being developed from sugar, corn, algae, seaweed, sewage and even dead beetles.
…However ingenious the techniques to make plant-based bottles may get, though, they’re still plastic. Not all varieties are recyclable or biodegradable. And ultimately unless they are recycled — and worldwide only one out of every five bottles is — plastic bottles inevitably end up in landfills where they may spew pollutants into the air, or worse, find their way into the oceans where most could take hundreds of years to degrade, killing birds, fish and whales in the process. When incinerating, bio-based plastics may be little better than oil-based ones because the carbon stored in them is released.
…Phasing out petroleum-based plastics will be an uphill battle. Use of the material has become so ingrained for societies around the world that about half of all new oil demand through 2040 will come from petrochemicals, an industry that relies on plastics for most of its business, according to BloombergNEF. The $500 billion global plastics market is responsible for 5% of greenhouse gas emissions.
…Nestle alone produces 1.7 million tons of plastic packaging a year. …Beverage makers like Coca-Cola Co. and Pepsi use a lot more than that. Coca-Cola rolled out its so-called plantbottle in 2009, but it’s still 70% petroleum based.
Sawdust Might Be One Answer to the World’s Plastic Problem – Bloomberg
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In the mafia, there is a name for what Pence and Barr did
The mafia uses a practice known as “kicking up” or “paying tribute” to the boss. Essentially, all members of a mafia family must make sure that some of their earnings end up in the boss’ pocket. From the member’s point of view, “kicking up” is a way to show respect, curry favor, and reinforce the hierarchical power structure. From the boss’s point of view, it’s a way to get rich.
…Apologists can nibble at the margins, but there is no escaping that Barr’s choice to patronize a Trump property, like Pence’s, will put thousands of dollars in Trump’s pocket.
…This trend of high-ranking federal officials choosing to pay thousands of dollars to use Trump’s private properties is problematic on two levels. First, the payments could violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits federal government officials from accepting (1) “any present, emoluments, title or office” from any foreign country or (2) any income beyond official salary from any American state or the federal government. There already is pending litigation under the Emoluments Clause over Trump’s receipt of revenue from foreign leaders who have stayed at Trump properties. Trump’s receipt of income directly from the federal government to cover Pence’s stay at the hotel presents another potential violation of the Emoluments Clause.
…Second, the decisions by Pence and Barr to patronize Trump’s private business raise vexing precedent and serious ethical questions. Do other high-ranking federal officials need to take notice and follow suit? Will they be punished or disfavored if they don’t throw a couple bucks Trump’s way? Is there some implicit understanding that Trump will favor those who pay? Even if the answer to all of these questions is “no,” the appearance itself is terrible; the American public rightly will wonder if ethical lines have been blurred, and that in itself is problematic.
In the mafia, there is a name for what Pence and Barr did (Opinion) – CNN
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You’re not helping, you’re on holiday – the problem with ‘voluntourism’
The global poor don’t need entitled, middle-class (almost half of private school pupils take gap years, compared to 1 in 5 overall), Westerners coming over to lay a few bricks and pose for a few photos. If you genuinely want to help, donate some money and let the experts and locals do their jobs. Otherwise, keep schtum.
Volun-tourism isn’t just irritating, it can also be harmful. Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) has described charity tourism as a new form of colonialism. Judith Brodie, who was once UK director, suggested students travelling to developing countries can in fact end up doing more harm than good. In particular, she has criticised the emphasis on volunteer enjoyment over how to help the communities they work in.
…Popping in to teach baffled children English, or to harvest a couple of plants, is inefficient, ineffective, and won’t help impoverished communities around the world to prosper. What these communities want and deserve are the tools, resources, and opportunities to learn and to do that work themselves. They require financial support, not unskilled volunteer labour.
You’re not helping, you’re on holiday – the problem with ‘voluntourism’
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Hurricane Dorian:U.S. Sows Confusion Over How Bahamas Residents May Enter
Hurricane Dorian:U.S. Sows Confusion Over How Bahamas Residents May Enter : NPR
Using the bureaucracy and regulation as tool of systematic racial discrimination. How very American of us,
South Dakota Democratic Party offices closing
According to the Federal Election Commission, the South Dakota Democratic Party started the most recent reporting period in July with $31,267 but ended the month with just $3,181; which is a trend the party has seen during the past year.
Additionally, the SDDP receives at least $10,000 per month from the Democratic National Party, according to FEC reports.
South Dakota Democrat Chair Paula Hawks said that the decreased funds are caused by “extreme mismanagement and lack of oversight.”
South Dakota Democratic Party offices closing
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The richest American family hired terrorists to shoot machine guns at sleeping women and children
The company towns, writes historian Philip Foner, were “feudal domains with the company acting as lord and master. The ‘law’ consisted of company rules. Curfews were imposed, company guards — brutal thugs armed with machine guns and rifles loaded with soft-point bullets — would not admit any ‘suspicious stranger’ into the camp.” CF&I was the most restrictive of all, and its employees often lived 20 to a shack, in houses owned by the company itself.
…In September, after the company refused demands for an eight-hour workday and the elimination of company guards, the workers went on strike. The labor organizer Mother Jones gave a rousing speech in support of the strike, for which she was imprisoned for 20 days.
…When she was released, she saw that the miners had been evicted from their shacks for attempting to strike. They were now living in tent colonies outside the towns of boarded-up shanties they had once called home. Not only that, but the company guards were arresting the newly homeless miners for vagrancy and forcing them to work for no pay as punishment. The miners were regularly beaten by the guards.
…In response to the terrorism of the agents, the miners and their families dug pits in the earth under their tents, in which they hid at night to avoid being sprayed by bullets. They endured this violence, living in their tents with their pits, all through the winter and spring. The few occasions they fired back at agents were used as justification for calling in the Colorado National Guard.
…President Woodrow Wilson, having been informed that the situation in Colorado was out of control and the Colorado Guardsmen were defeated, dispatched federal troops to the region.
…More than 400 miners were arrested and charged on nearly as many counts of murder, but only one was convicted, and the verdict was eventually overturned by the Colorado Supreme Court. It turned out that the State of Colorado, while waging war with guerrilla fighters within its own borders, had never declared martial law.
The richest American family hired terrorists to shoot machine guns at sleeping women and children
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She fled North Korea for a better life. How her lonely, impoverished death became political
But their demands run deeper than Han’s case. They say newly arriving refugees should receive better job training and more financial and other support.
The Unification Ministry has acknowledged there have been “blind spots” and said it was examining its policies and procedures. The ministry announced last week it would conduct a wholesale survey of vulnerable North Korean refugee households across the country.
City officials also came by the memorial saying they intended to clear it because the structure wasn’t properly permitted.
The city backed off after one of the refugees doused himself with gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire.
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Pentagon pulls funds for military schools to pay for Trump’s border wall
The Pentagon said on Wednesday it would pull funding from 127 Defense Department projects, including schools and daycare centers for military families, as it diverts $3.6 billion to fund President Donald Trump’s wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
…Trump declared a national emergency earlier this year to access the funds from the military construction budget.
…A Pentagon official said in a briefing that the department was given a “lawful order” by Trump to divert the funds. She said the Pentagon is working closely with Congress and its allies abroad to find funding to replace money diverted for the wall, but that there are not any guarantees that those funds will come.
…Pelosi said in a call with fellow Democrats on Tuesday that the diversion of military funds “will undermine our national security, quality of life and morale of our troops, and that indeed makes America less safe.”
Pentagon pulls funds for military schools to pay for Trump’s border wall
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Pence lands in controversy with stay at Trump hotel
Pence stayed at Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg on Ireland’s west coast despite his meetings the same day in Dublin, which is on Ireland’s east side and 182 miles away.
The curious decision also came with a shifting story about why Pence ended up at Trump’s property in Doonbeg.
The vice president’s chief of staff said Trump had suggested Pence stay at the Doonbeg golf club.
…“This may not technically be illegal, but it’s an atrocious abuse of power to line the president’s pockets, and it’s a continuation of two years of profiteering by President Trump,” said Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics who resigned in July 2017.
…Critics questioned the logistics of utilizing the Trump property given it necessitated a roughly 90-minute commute via plane to Dublin for meetings with Ireland’s president and prime minister when Pence could have stayed in the Irish capital.
Pence lands in controversy with stay at Trump hotel | TheHill
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Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery System Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets — But The World’s Biggest Retailer Has A System To Escape The Blame
Amazon drivers say they often have to deliver upwards of 250 packages a day — and sometimes far more than that — which works out to a dizzying pace of less than two minutes per package based on an eight-hour shift.
The system sheds costs and liability, even as it grows at lightning speed, by using stand-alone-companies such as Inpax to pick up packages directly from Amazon facilities and deliver them to the consumer — covering what’s known in the industry as “the last mile.”
Amazon still relies on UPS and the US Postal Service for many deliveries. And it has captured the public imagination with press releases about futuristic drone delivery, which does not yet exist. But it’s this homegrown network that makes it possible to offer the amazing convenience of next-day and even same-day delivery that has become a cornerstone of its market dominance. By some estimates, nearly half of Amazon’s packages in the U.S. are now delivered this way. And the Seattle-based giant dictates almost every aspect of that operation, down to what drivers wear, what vans they use, what routes they follow, and how many packages they must deliver each day.
…UPS and FedEx, the traditional powers of the logistics world, are deeply invested in safety. UPS, which spends $175 million a year on safety training alone, even has a policy prohibiting drivers from taking unnecessary left turns to reduce exposure to oncoming traffic, finish routes faster, and save fuel. Both firms are also heavily regulated by the government, and many of their trucks are subject to regular federal safety inspections and can be put out of service at any time by the Department of Transportation.
But Amazon’s ingenious system has allowed it to avoid that kind of scrutiny. There is no public listing of which firms are part of its delivery network, and the ubiquitous cargo vans their drivers use are not subject to DOT oversight. But by interviewing drivers as well as reviewing job boards, classified listings, online forums, lawsuits, and media reports, BuzzFeed News identified at least 250 companies that appear to work or have worked as contracted delivery providers for Amazon. The company said it has enabled the creation of at least 200 new delivery firms in the past year, a third of which are owned and run by military veterans. Inpax gets fully 70% of its business from Amazon; some companies depend on the retail giant for all of their income.
…Amazon denies any responsibility for the conditions in which drivers work, but it has continued to contract with at least a dozen companies that have been repeatedly sued or cited by regulators for alleged labor violations, including failing to pay overtime, denying workers breaks, discrimination, sexual harassment, and other forms of employee mistreatment.
And when one group in Michigan voted to join the teamsters in protest against shoddy conditions and punishing hours without overtime pay, Amazon officials acted swiftly to counter further unionization efforts.
…Not long after the successful unionization vote, a team of Amazon officials paid a visit to Chicago, where they gathered top management from delivery firms operating in the city at a hotel west of town, according to two people who attended the meeting. The topic: how to ensure that what happened to Silverstar would never happen to them.
“The whole purpose of the meeting was to say to you, ‘Here’s how not get unionized. Because if you do, we pretty much don’t want anything to do with a union,’” said one attendee.
…Two drivers for a different delivery company operating in the Los Angeles area said they were forced to skip meals, ordered to urinate in bottles rather than stop for bathroom breaks, and advised to speed and not wear seatbelts to ensure they delivered more packages in less time.
…Even though the Sprinter-style vans Amazon requires its delivery providers to use weigh several times more than most passenger cars, they fall just under the weight limit that would subject them and their drivers to Department of Transportation oversight, unlike most FedEx and UPS trucks.
In a sign of how business is booming, Amazon last summer bought 20,000 of these vans from Mercedes-Benz to be leased, through fleet managers, to its dedicated delivery companies around the country.
… Job postings by firms delivering Amazon packages, however, say commercial drivers licenses and prior experience aren’t necessary. Drivers are paid either a flat day rate or an hourly wage — which generally works out to between $15 and $18 an hour, with scant perks or benefits. With constant alternation between driving and loading and unloading packages, the job is physically demanding.
…Not all of Amazon’s packages are carried by its network of small providers; it continues to rely on UPS and the US Postal Service for many of its deliveries, particularly for bulky packages or for rural, harder-to-reach destinations. But with FedEx recently canceling its contract to deliver Amazon packages, a growing share of the huge delivery load is being carried by the network of tiny, lightly regulated firms in its vast national network.
Delivering billions of packages a year is by far one of the company’s top expenditures. But Amazon can better control those costs by squeezing its own delivery network. It not only can track every package, but also monitor payroll, insurance, and even van leasing costs for many of its delivery companies. That allows it to keep an eye on companies’ profit margins and adjust accordingly. Early this year, for example, Amazon stopped paying delivery companies extra money to cover the cost of a dispatcher in each delivery station, requiring the companies to pay that salary out of already thin margins or operate without them.
Amazon pays many of its delivery firms a flat fee per route, so when package volumes increase, and drivers need to be out on the road for longer, racking up more overtime, their margins are squeezed even tighter. One contract for a route in San Francisco reviewed by BuzzFeed News, for example, called for a fee of $279.50 per day. That money must cover the cost of the van, insurance, and any other overhead, plus the driver’s wages.
…“Please take these unprofessional driver mistakes seriously,” she wrote. “They may cost you life.”
“This is about shitty driving, yes,” she added. “But this is about low-paid, inexperienced, and untrained delivery drivers operating gigantic vans they don’t know how to drive, under enormous pressure to deliver quickly. This is profit driven, corporate greed behavior without consideration for anyone else’s humanity.”
Jeezus…
Purdue Pharma ‘offers up to $12bn’ to settle opioid cases – BBC News
Purdue Pharma, the opioid drug-maker owned by the billionaire Sackler family, is reported to be offering between $10bn and $12bn to settle thousands of lawsuits against it.
The firm is facing over 2,000 lawsuits linked to its painkiller OxyContin.
…Purdue is one of 22 opioid makers, distributors and pharmacies named in over 2,000 cases which are due to go to trial in October.
The cases, which have been brought by states, cities and counties, allege the company used deceptive practices to sell opioids and is responsible for fuelling an opioid addiction crisis in the US.
Purdue Pharma ‘offers up to $12bn’ to settle opioid cases – BBC News
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Italy passes law to send unsold food to charities instead of dumpsters
Other countries such as France are nudging businesses in the form of a steep fine.
Italy is taking a different approach. Instead of imposing penalties, the country will give garbage collection tax breaks to businesses that take part in the initiative. All food donated by businesses has to be recorded so the tax break will be easy to implement.
…Giving away “food waste” might strike some as denigrating to the poor and homeless, because it suggests that they don’t deserve quality food. But the vast majority of “food waste” around the world is perfectly edible by the time it hits a dumpster.
For instance, if white rice is mis-labeled basmati rice, it’s food waste. If a vegetable is misshapen it’s food waste. If a cereal box has a tear, food waste. A can with a ripped label also food waste. A bruised fruit, yup, food waste.
…Each part of the supply chain calls for a different approach to reducing waste, but the lowest hanging fruit is clearly distribution to consumers. This food has arrived at an organized location and is constantly monitored and prevented from going bad. Encouraging businesses to mark excess food for delivery to charities instead of dumpsters is an easy fix.
Italy passes law to send unsold food to charities instead of dumpsters
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Microplastics found in the Sargasso Sea – CNN
Embedded in most of the sargassum are the easily visible pieces of trash: shampoo bottles, fishing gear, thick hard containers or thin soft bags amongst many other types of plastic. One of the scientists points out fish bite marks in a small plastic sheet we pull out. But what is really jarring is when you dive down and look into the blue and realize you are surrounded by tiny glittering pieces of broken up plastic.
…Greenpeace scientists say they found “extreme” concentrations of microplastic pollution in the Sargasso Sea, although they are still reviewing their findings. In one sample, they discovered almost 1,300 fragments of microplastic — more than the levels found last year in the notorious Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
…A study off the shore of Bermuda back in the early 1970s found 3,500 pieces of plastic per square kilometer. A more recent, as yet unpublished study by the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo found that nearly 42% of fish samples had ingested microplastics.
…Only around 9% of plastic produced has ever been recycled. [A lot] single-use plastics end up in landfills or are burned in huge toxic fires. Some finds its way into our rivers or the oceans.
“This goes into the food chain.” Ojeda explains. “The fish and shrimps eat the plastic, we are eating them or the fish that eat them, and this will end up in our bodies.”
…The weight of evidence that humans are contaminating one of our major food sources is overwhelming — not only introducing potential toxins into our own bodies, but also polluting whole ecosystems.
…Few of us witness what is out in the open oceans far from our homes, which is one of the many challenges for ocean protection and why few truly understand how dire the situation is. Out of sight, out of mind.
But in reality, it’s ending up right back in front of us — and inside us — even though we may not see it.
…”We need to look at the types of plastic we are using and eliminate the ones that can’t be recycled. We need to tidy up land-based sources (landfills and the like).”
…”If you as a consumer are going to the supermarket and you are unable to buy something which is not wrapped in plastic it’s not your fault. …It’s companies; companies need to take the step, need to lead the change — and governments need to push the companies.
For the oceans to recover to we need to stop them (plastics) now. If we are thinking we can stop them in 10 years, we can phase them out, no: we need to stop single-use plastic. Then the seas will have time to clean up.”
Microplastics found in the Sargasso Sea – CNN
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Sanders releases media plan: Press shouldn’t be controlled by corporations, ‘benevolent’ billionaires
Sanders proposes policies to better protect both local and national independent journalism. The plan includes undoing moves by the Trump administration that have made corporate media mergers easier to complete and an immediate freeze on major media mergers until their effects on the free press can be studied.
“In the spirit of existing federal laws, we will start requiring major media corporations to disclose whether or not their corporate transactions and merger proposals will involve significant journalism layoffs,” Sanders writes.
“We will also require that, before any future mergers can take place, employees must be given the opportunity to purchase media outlets through employee stock-ownership plans—an innovative business model that was first pioneered in the newspaper industry,” he adds.
Sanders would also bar mergers or deregulatory actions that would disproportionately affect people of color and women.
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David Koch reshaped America for the worse. His life’s work was the destruction of others
“villain”
…Indeed, such is the appropriate term for a profoundly wealthy man who relies on a shadowy network of political advocacy groups to sell unpopular, detrimental policies to unsuspecting voters for the purposes of personal gain.
…David and Charles, colloquially known as the infamous “Koch Brothers,” poured money into causes like climate change denial to ensure their fossil fuel empire remained profitable for as long possible. ….They went after unions through proxies like former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. They targeted Social Security for privatization. According to one report, they even tried to hamper cleanup efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
And these are just some of the worthy causes David Koch and his brother used their vast fortunes to pursue. The reality is, given the porous nature of America’s campaign finance laws, there is no way of truly knowing the complete extent of their political ventures.
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