18 February 20
Thank YOU for all you do. There is so much going on, and most of it is bad. And you bring hope and connection as well as the most important articles you guys send.
Sadly I still work full time at 76 years old. I have to keep my level the same next year, but would love to do more.
Best,
Justin A Frank, MD
Author, Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President
Author, Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President
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17 February 20
Trump Just Comes Out and Admits to Entire Ukraine Scam
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "Years after O.J. Simpson was found not guilty for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, he wrote a book called If I Did It. Now that Donald Trump has been acquitted by Republicans for extorting Ukraine for personal gain, he's kind of doing the same thing."
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Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "Years after O.J. Simpson was found not guilty for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, he wrote a book called If I Did It. Now that Donald Trump has been acquitted by Republicans for extorting Ukraine for personal gain, he's kind of doing the same thing."
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Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg addresses the press from his newly opened Philadelphia field office on Dec. 21, 2019. (photo: Mark Makela/Getty)
Michael Bloomberg Dogged by More Past Controversial Remarks
Richard Luscombe, Guardian UK
Luscombe writes: "More past comments emerged on Monday to further dog media mogul and billionaire Michael Bloomberg's chase for the Democratic presidential nomination, including an apparent attack on the intelligence of factory and farm workers in the US."
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Richard Luscombe, Guardian UK
Luscombe writes: "More past comments emerged on Monday to further dog media mogul and billionaire Michael Bloomberg's chase for the Democratic presidential nomination, including an apparent attack on the intelligence of factory and farm workers in the US."
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Archbishop Theodore McCarrick is assisted by alter servers Urbana Vazquez, left, and Gustavo Chinchilla before celebrating Mass at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Washington in January 2001. (photo: Juana Arias/WP)
Cardinal McCarrick Secretly Gave Nearly $1 Million to Group Led by Cleric Accused of Sexual Misconduct
Shawn Boburg and Robert O'Harrow Jr., The Washington Post
Excerpt: "In the years before his removal from ministry, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick secretly gave nearly $1 million to a controversial group of Catholic missionaries and supported leniency for its founder after the Vatican punished him for sexual wrongdoing, internal church documents show."
Shawn Boburg and Robert O'Harrow Jr., The Washington Post
Excerpt: "In the years before his removal from ministry, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick secretly gave nearly $1 million to a controversial group of Catholic missionaries and supported leniency for its founder after the Vatican punished him for sexual wrongdoing, internal church documents show."
EXCERPT:
McCarrick, who was once one of the most recognizable figures in the U.S. Catholic Church, last year became the first cardinal known to be defrocked for sexual abuse, over incidents that occurred decades earlier. The Vatican is finalizing a long-promised report examining how he rose to the highest levels of the U.S. Catholic Church and remained there despite complaints of misconduct that reached the Vatican as early as 2000.
In December, The Post reported that over nearly two decades McCarrick sent more than $600,000 from the “Archbishop’s Special Fund” to senior clerics in Rome and elsewhere, including Vatican bureaucrats, papal advisers and two popes. Some of the recipients were responsible for assessing sexual abuse claims against him.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. (photo: Mac Snyder/MLive.com)
GAO to Investigate Trump's Farm Bailout Program
Alan Rappeport, The New York Times
Rappeport writes: "The U.S. Government Accountability Office is opening a review of President Donald Trump's billion bailout for farmers harmed by his trade war amid allegations that the money was mismanaged and allocated unfairly."
Alan Rappeport, The New York Times
Rappeport writes: "The U.S. Government Accountability Office is opening a review of President Donald Trump's billion bailout for farmers harmed by his trade war amid allegations that the money was mismanaged and allocated unfairly."
EXCERPT:
The investigation came at the request of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who has been vocal in her concern that the aid program was biased, providing more funds to southern states that voted for Trump and favoring large and foreign agriculture companies over small farms.
The Trump administration, which signed an initial trade deal with China last month, said the farm subsidies would end this year. The program began in 2018 as a $12 billion effort to mitigate losses for farmers who lost sales or faced retaliatory tariffs from China, the European Union, Canada and Mexico as a result of the trade war. The program grew to $28 billion last year as Trump’s conflict with China festered.
First-time congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros, a human rights lawyer, canvasses in Laredo, Texas, on Oct. 8, 2019. (photo: Verónica G. Cárdenas/Reuters)
In Final Weeks of Heated Texas Congressional Primary, Unions and Progressive Groups Throw $350,000 Behind Jessica Cisneros
Rachel M. Cohen, The Intercept
Cohen writes: "A coalition of progressive groups and labor unions announced on Monday they'll be spending at least $350,000 in support of Texas congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros, ratcheting up the momentum in the final two weeks ahead of her high-stakes primary against Rep. Henry Cuellar, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress."
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Rachel M. Cohen, The Intercept
Cohen writes: "A coalition of progressive groups and labor unions announced on Monday they'll be spending at least $350,000 in support of Texas congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros, ratcheting up the momentum in the final two weeks ahead of her high-stakes primary against Rep. Henry Cuellar, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress."
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One of ta moko artist Clyde Peri's forefathers used a skin-carving technique to create ta moko. (photo: Supplied/Al Jazeera)
'My Culture on My Face': New Zealand's Maori Assert Identity
Tracey Shelton, Al Jazeera
Shelton writes: "Gary Harding's body is a living testimony to his Indigenous New Zealand heritage."
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Tracey Shelton, Al Jazeera
Shelton writes: "Gary Harding's body is a living testimony to his Indigenous New Zealand heritage."
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Women sort cocoa beans in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. (photo: Sia Kambou/AFP/Getty Images)
The Challenge of Sustainable Chocolate
Melody Schreiber, The New Republic
Excerpt: "Chocolate is one of the worst foods you can buy, in terms of the industry's greenhouse gas emissions. But some people are trying to change that."
Melody Schreiber, The New Republic
Excerpt: "Chocolate is one of the worst foods you can buy, in terms of the industry's greenhouse gas emissions. But some people are trying to change that."
EXCERPTS:
Farmers in this community were skeptical at first, but pruning the branches at the start of the season can increase the cocoa yield—sometimes dramatically. The tree produces more fruit on the branches that remain. “Also, by taking away unproductive branches, we limit or eliminate plagues or diseases,” Ricardo Zapata, a coordinator for the cacao-pruning initiative in Ecuador, told me. It’s one of several innovations experts say could make an infamously environmentally destructive crop more sustainable.
Chocolate has gotten a bad rap for its environmental impacts—particularly deforestation, as farmers cut down older trees in order to clear room for cacao plants. The Ivory Coast, which is the largest exporter of cocoa at 2.2 million tons every year, has lost 80 percent of its forests in the past five decades. And the forests being cleared for cacao farming are exactly the ones that tend to be the best carbon sinks and sources of biodiversity: Cacao trees thrive in rain forests, where there’s plenty of humidity and rain, stable temperatures, rich soil, and protection from strong winds. All of this combines to make chocolate one of the worst foods one can eat in terms of greenhouse gas emissions—by some calculations, the single worst nonmeat food.
The problem has proven tough to solve at scale. In October, The Washington Post published a feature exploring why, 10 years after pledging a switch to 100 percent sustainable cocoa, candy giant Mars Inc., which sources mainly from West Africa, is far from realizing that dream. Certification schemes are unreliable in an industry dominated by thousands of smallholder farmers, often in countries with uneven governmental regulation or infrastructure.
In the meantime, consumers and candy companies eager to make their chocolate habits more sustainable have another option—one much easier for them to control: reducing waste, whether in the factory or in restaurants and homes. One study found that it takes about 1,200 gallons of water to produce one pound of chocolate. Chocolate packaging could also be made eco-friendlier. And in the United Kingdom alone, where chocolate-lovers eat about 500,000 tons of chocolate each year, about 18,000 tons of sweets go to waste. “Traditionally, this has been a pretty high-carbon luxury for us all. But it doesn’t have to be,” Reay said.
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