 25 January 20
We are really struggling for the bare-bones budget that we need to function. The reason, the ratio of readers to donors is 1000 to 1.
Many people are helping. Many, many more are not.
Have to break through that barrier.
Situation growing unnecessarily dire, again.
In earnest.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts, CA 95611 |
 25 January 20
Garrison Keillor | Some New York Thoughts on Solitude
 Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website Keillor writes: "I stood around looking at J.D. Salinger stuff last Friday, his old black Royal typewriter, family snapshots, and typewritten letters, at the New York Public Library, and it was a wonder to see. I'm one of the many millions for whom The Catcher in the Rye was an important book back in my teens and back then, Salinger was famous for guarding his privacy." READ MORE  The House impeachment managers. (photo: USA TODAY)
Democrats Close Their Case With a Warning: Trump Will Continue to Endanger American Democracy If He Is Not Removed
Lisa Mascaro, Eric Tucker and Zeke Miller, Associated Press Excerpt: "Closing out their case, House Democrats warned Friday in Donald Trump's impeachment trial that the president will persist in abusing his power and endangering American democracy unless Congress intervenes to remove him before the 2020 election." READ MORE  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks as a surrogate for Bernie Sanders Friday in Iowa City, Iowa. (photo: Sue Ogrocki/AP)
'I Really Hope She Is the Future': AOC's Support of Sanders Fuels 2024 Speculation
Chris McGreal, Guardian UK McGreal writes: "It was billed as a rally for Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. But the only aging white man on the platform was the film-maker Michael Moore, and attendee Brittany Springmeier wasn't there to see him."
She was in Iowa City for real star of the show, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“She’s speaking for us. She’s speaking for the people. She has a passion for the millennials. She’s speaking for everyone in America who doesn’t have a voice,” said Springmeier, a millennial herself who is unable to work because of a disability.
With the Vermont senator trapped in Washington DC by the impeachment hearings, Ocasio-Cortez was fronting for him at the University of Iowa on Friday evening in the last days before the Iowa Democratic caucuses.
Much of the crowd had already made up its mind to back Sanders, which was just as well because the New York congresswoman gave a 26-minute speech without once mentioning the man she was ostensibly there to promote. A passionate discourse on healthcare and the case for comprehensive public insurance, a cause at the heart of Sanders campaign, then gave way to a rousing appeal to build a movement to transform “a nation in decline”.
Ocasio-Cortez disparaged the Democratic leadership in Congress as fearful of any radical policies that might cost votes and called on supporters to “come together and organise” to repeated cheers.
But through it all, even as Sanders picture stared down on her, his name did not once cross the congresswoman’s lips.
Ocasio-Cortez has been unstinting in her support of Sanders’ presidential bid but Friday’s rally will only reinforce the perception that his campaign also provides her with a platform to push a more visionary agenda. That in turn has fueled media speculation about the extent of the 30 year-old’s ambitions, and the possibility she might run for the White House herself in 2024 – should Trump win a second term.
Whatever her plans, the congresswoman will not have been discouraged by the reception in Iowa City, where she was greeted with an enthusiasm bordering on adulation.
Jonathan Katz, a high school math teacher from New York City who travelled to Iowa to canvass for Sanders, was at the rally specifically to see Ocasio-Cortez.
“When she showed the courage after Bernie’s heart attack to say ‘I’m going to be supporting Bernie’, my respect went up 1,000%. Because here’s someone at Bernie’s most difficult moment in the campaign saying ‘I’m with you Bernie’,” said Katz.
Ocasio-Cortez’s backing has meant more than throwing her weight behind Sanders’ positions. She has amplified some of them, not least on the environment with her push for a Green New Deal, and injected a much greater diversity of voices into the Vermont senator’s campaign, which he has frankly admitted were lacking in his 2016 run.
“She’s been very important to Bernie, bringing people in, especially young people,” said Springmeier. “She’s helped bring in minorities, bring some light to the fact that they don’t really have a voice. I think a lot of people are drawn to her who may not otherwise have been interested in politics, and that helps Bernie.
“I really hope she continues on the politics. She’s a force to be reckoned with. I really think she’s going to do great things for the people, for we the people. She’s working in the establishment but I think she’s going to be speaking for us.”
If Ocasio-Cortez has reinforced the Sanders campaign, it’s clear she can also draw from that enhanced strength. For some of Sanders supporters, she offers a vision beyond his presidential campaign.
Wendy Stevenson, a librarian who caucused for Sanders four years ago, came to the rally with her 11-year-old daughter, Estelle, who wanted to see Ocasio-Cortez after watching a Netflix documentary about her.
“I love her vision. I love her guts to go in first term as a representative and propose the Green New Deal. It changes the way our economy will work. It’s exciting. You need that kind of energy and ideas out there. And she’s not scared to challenge the establishment. Even the Democrats, she’s pushing them further than they feel comfortable going. I love having that voice,” she said.
But for all that, Stevenson is not sure on where Ocasio-Cortez should set her sights. For now she wants to see her remain in Congress, where she thinks she could rise to great heights and have real power and influence over the policies that matter most.
“I hope she’ll be a powerful future politician that can change the way things are done. I feel like she really feels strongly about representing her people in her district. She’s still young. I’m excited that things are moving further to the left with a lot more fresh ideas. I really hope she is the future.”
 American troops surveying the damage to a building at Al Asad Air Base this month in Anbar, Iraq. (photo: Sergey Ponomarev/NYT)
Veterans Group Demands Apology After Trump Said Traumatic Brain Injuries From Iranian Attack Are 'Not Very Serious'
Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN Stracqualursi writes: "The Veterans of Foreign Wars is demanding that President Donald Trump apologize for downplaying traumatic brain injuries sustained by US service members in Iraq after Iranian missile strikes on American troops earlier this month." READ MORE  Pro-choice activists rally in support of Planned Parenthood. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Trump 'Opens Floodgate' for Wave of Anti-Abortion Policies by Blocking Planned Parenthood in Texas
Maya Oppenheim, The Independent Oppenheim writes: "The Trump administration has 'opened the floodgates' for a wave of anti-abortion policies across America by allowing Texas to introduce a scheme which blocks patients from getting care at healthcare services which provide abortion, service providers warned."
Texas will be able to impose a Medicaid family planning programme which prohibits women from getting care at Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health care services which also offer abortion.
Planned Parenthood argued the move overturns established federal law and sets a “dangerous precedent” for other states to push for similar measures.
US federal law necessitates states to allow Medicaid patients their choice of “any willing provider” and this includes services which allow women to have their pregnancy terminated.
Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said: “This move is reckless and repugnant. The Trump administration is willfully bending the rules to allow Texas to block patients from getting care at Planned Parenthood and is funding a failed program designed to limit access to reproductive health care.
“This dangerous decision opens the floodgates for other anti-abortion politicians to follow suit, putting health care at risk for people across the country. When Texas first barred Planned Parenthood from serving patients, nearly 40 per cent fewer women got the health care they needed. Is that what the Trump administration wants to replicate across the country?
“Access to quality health care shouldn’t depend on who you are, how much you earn, or where you live. Yet, that’s the future the Trump administration is working to create.”
Planned Parenthood would not stop fighting until everyone has the “right to control their own bodies” and receive the “care they need”, he added.
Campaigners warn the Department of Health and Human Services’ decision could inspire other states to bar Planned Parenthood which could, in turn, have major consequences for access to abortion across the US.
Texas barred Planned Parenthood from its low-income Medicaid women’s health program back in 2013 but the Obama administration found this breached federal law. The decision to block Planned Parenthood in the wake of budget cuts in 2011 led to dozens of family planning clinics shutting their doors and tens of thousands of people losing access to reproductive health care.
Dyana Limon-Mercado, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said: “The Lone Star State is once again in partnership with the Trump administration to drastically slash meaningful family planning and health services while fostering a culture that is anti-women, anti-choice and anti-healthcare.”
While Texas has the highest rate of uninsured women of childbearing age in the whole of the US, at least 60 per cent of Planned Parenthood patients across America access care via the Medicaid program.
Alice Huling, a lawyer for the Campaign for Accountability public interest watchdog, said: “Planned Parenthood does a lot more than just providing abortion. It helps with other sorts of reproductive healthcare such as access to contraception, STI testing and treatment and cancer screenings. They provide basic healthcare. For some people, their Planned Parenthood doctor is their main doctor.
“A lot of Planned Parenthood funding has to come from private donors now federal funding is being attacked.”
 A protest for indigenous rights in Colombia. (photo: Journal.ie)
Colombia's Indigenous Demand Justice After 20 Leaders Killed
teleSUR Excerpt: "Colombia's Indigenous people are outraged at the death of more than 20 social leaders inside South American country, the counselor of the Indigenous Youth of Colombia , Eliel Castillo, said this week."
"The Indigenous peoples deserve a guarantee of life in this society, for the defense of the territory, of life, for our economic and social rights, that is why today the original peoples are present in this World Encounter against Imperialism," he said.
Castillo recalled that for 500 years, the Indigenous peoples seek balance and harmony, which was taken from them as native peoples.
 A winter sanctuary for monarch butterflies, in Sierra Chincua, Mexico. (photo: Joel Sartore/CBS)
California's Monarch Butterfly Population at Critically Low Levels for 2nd Year in a Row
Sophie Lewis, CBS News Lewis writes: "The number of monarch butterflies spending the winter along California's coast is at critically low levels - for the second year in a row. An environmental group said Thursday that the migration is at risk of collapsing."
Between 1994 and 2016, the eastern monarch population plunged more than 80% and a federal review found "a substantial probability" of collapse in the next two decades.
According to Xerces Society, a non-profit environmental organization focusing on invertebrate conservation, the monarch population during the 2018-19 winter was at an all-time low. This year's numbers were no better.
The organization counted 29,418 monarchs this year. While it is a few thousand more than 2018, volunteers visited more sites this year — meaning the number has functionally remained the same year-over-year.
In 1980, an estimated 4.5 million monarch butterflies wintered along the California coast. That number has plummeted, and 30,000 butterflies is the threshold below which the migration may collapse, Xerces said.
"We are disappointed by the numbers of year's Western Monarch Thanksgiving count," said Emma Pelton, the Xerces Society's western monarch lead. "We had hoped that the western monarch population would have rebounded at least modestly, but unfortunately it has not. The silver lining is that the population didn't shrink any further. There are still thousands of monarchs overwintering along the coast, so we can take heart that it's not too late to act."
Between 1994 and 2016, the eastern monarch population plunged more than 80% and a federal review found "a substantial probability" of collapse in the next two decades.
The monarch has been pushed to the brink of extinction by habitat loss and pesticide use, Tierra Curry, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, told CBS News last March. She fears climate change could finish the job.
Monarchs return to the same sites — and sometimes even the same trees — each year, so protecting their overwintering habitat is crucial for their survival.
"We must protect all remaining overwintering sites in order to save our monarchs," said Sarina Jepsen, director of the Xerces Society's Endangered Species and Aquatics Program. "This is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed by federal, as well as state and local government in California."
"In the United States, monarchs are threatened by climate change because of more severe storms when they're migrating in the spring and in the fall," she said.
The bigger storms, Jepsen said, "Blow them out of the air. Disrupt the migration. Cause them to get stuck in places. Or, if it's too warm, then they stay north too long and then it gets cold and then they die."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently considering adding the monarch butterfly to the Endangered Species Act. It will issue its decision in December.
Xerces Society has worked with researchers to identify two strategies to improve the butterflies' odds of recovery: protection and restoration of their winter habitat and increasing the availability of early emerging native milkweeds, where they breed.
"Without immediate action I fear we will lose these animals from the western landscape," said Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society. "With them, California will also lose out on tourism in places like Pacific Grove and, across the West, we will lose the ability for our children to experience the majesty of the monarch migration."
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