20 September 20
‘Record Shattering’ Donations for Democrats, a Slashed Budget for RSN
Multiple media reports are saying in the 24 hours after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death the Democratic Party raked in at least 50 million dollars in donations. In that same period RSN raised $535.
Who actually believes the Democrats will really fight? It’s been decades since they have. In fairness RSN does not need 50 million dollars, or anything like it. Had we raised $1,500 dollars in that same timeframe, our outlook would be a lot rosier.
We’re getting beat-down here financially.
Remember how we go here.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
20 September 20
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Robert Reich | Every Day, Trump and His Goons Chip Away at Our Democracy
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
Reich writes: "Federal officials looked into obtaining a heat ray that makes one's skin feel like it's burning in preparation to clear a crowd of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square in June."
The officials also amassed an estimated 7,000 rounds of ammunition prior to the protest, which was violently cleared so Trump could stage a photo op with a Bible in front of a church in the square. The heat ray, called the "Active Denial Systems,” directs an energy beam that “provides sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin.”
A heat ray and 7,000 rounds of ammunition, to be used on fellow Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. This is not how a democracy is supposed to operate. We are dangerously close to succumbing to full-blown autocracy from which there is no return. Every day, Trump and his goons chip away at our democracy, but we still have a chance to save what’s left and rebuild our country from the ground up. We can’t waste a second.
What do you think?
Supporters of President Trump gathered outside the Fairfax County Government Center with flags and banners, chanting near residents who were waiting in line for early voting. (photo: Kenny Holston/NYT)
Trump Supporters Disrupt Early Voting in Virginia
Nick Corasaniti and Stephanie Saul, The New York Times
Excerpt: "A group of Trump supporters waving campaign flags disrupted the second day of early voting in Fairfax, Va., on Saturday, chanting 'four more years' as voters entered a polling location and, at one point, forming a line that voters had to walk around outside the site."
A group waving Trump flags and chanting “four more years” created a commotion at a polling location in Fairfax, Va. A county official said some voters and staff members felt intimidated.
County election officials eventually were forced to open up a larger portion of the Fairfax County Government Center to allow voters to wait inside away from the Trump enthusiasts.
Election officials said that the group stayed about 100 feet from the entrance to the building and, contrary to posts on social media, were not directly blocking access to the building. But they acknowledged that some voters and polling staff members felt intimidated by what some saw as protesters.
The flag flies at half-mast and visitors examine remembrances left in front of the Supreme Court on the morning after the announcement of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (photo: Bill O'Leary/TWP)
The Tortured Logic From Right-Wing Media About Replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post
Sullivan writes: "Back in 2016 and early 2017, Fox News was the self-satisfied home to a great deal of principled thinking about the importance of the American people's will."
Here, for example, was Laura Ingraham, voicing her approval of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s machinations to bypass Obama nominee Merrick Garland and get conservative justice Neil M. Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court bench after Trump’s election:
“The last 70 years, a Supreme Court justice was not confirmed in the final year of a president’s term,” preached the future Fox host, then a frequent guest on “Hannity.” She fretted that it “doesn’t matter” to left-leaning partisans. This was lofty-sounding but wrong: To pick just one of many examples to the contrary, the Democratic-controlled Senate unanimously confirmed President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Anthony M. Kennedy in early 1988, an election year.
Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Dana Perino, too, signaled their approval of stonewalling Obama’s nomination pick.
“You know, it’s interesting — what goes around, comes around,” Hannity opined, mentioning McConnell’s citation of the supposed “Biden rule” to justify the move. “Why should the Republicans act any different?”
There was no such rule, though: Joe Biden, as a senator from Delaware in 1992, had been discussing, in a 1992 speech, “a hypothetical situation involving a voluntary resignation, not a death, that never came to pass,” as Matt Gertz of Media Matters pointed out.
Such high-mindedness was in short supply during Fox’s popular opinion segments on Friday evening. While Fox’s news team gave ample attention to the life and career of the just-deceased Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and TV news across the spectrum discussed the likely next maneuvers in filling her vacancy, nothing was as raw as the comments by conservative activist Ned Ryun.
“This is an opportunity, and I say they seize the moment,” urged Ryun, founder of the grass-roots candidate-training factory American Majority, in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, barely an hour after news broke of Ginsburg’s death.
For his part, Carlson did have the grace to suggest it might be well to tone things down in those initial hours and wait a bit to respect Ginsburg’s memory. But he also threw doubt on a credible report that Ginsburg had expressed her “most fervent wish” that the next president would appoint her replacement.
“It’s hard to believe, and I’m going to choose not to believe that she said that, because I don’t think that people on their deathbeds are thinking about who’s president. You hope not — that’s a pretty limited way to think as you die. But certainly this will be used as a cudgel by the left.”
The problem is that her words, according to NPR’s reporting, were not uttered in her final hours but a few days earlier in a conversation with her grandchild.
Fox News, though, wasn’t the only place to find tortured logic and misrepresentations.
“Ted Cruz with an excellent point,” tweeted Marc Thiessen, the American Enterprise Institute fellow and Washington Post columnist. “If election is litigated can’t risk having just 8 justices and the possibility of a deadlocked court. Could cause a constitutional crisis.”
There were thousands of retweets and likes, but a number of people who pointed out that Cruz and Thiessen seem to have short memories. After all, there was an ideologically split eight-member court in November of 2016 — for the very reasons discussed above. (Also, if you’re worried about a constitutional crisis, how about an election settled with the help of a justice Trump just appointed?)
In coming days, you can be sure to hear and read about such things as the “Thurmond rule,” the “McConnell Rule,” the “Biden rule” — none of which exist in law, and sometimes not even in writing. At most, they are conventions, not rules.
(According to the Brookings Institution, Strom Thurmond, the longtime senator from South Carolina who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, is credited with an “unwritten admonition” that “in presidential election years, the Senate should stop processing judicial nominations around the time of its summer recess, perhaps with limited exceptions for clearly non-controversial nominees.”)
There’s no reason to think that the pro-Trump media and right-wing politicians will have a monopoly on self-serving justification in coming days. It’s likely to be a dysfunctional circus.
The media — of all stripes — could keep from making it worse by maintaining a level tone, by not twisting the facts for the sake of partisanship, and by pushing back against misrepresentations.
Based on the initial hours after Justice Ginsburg’s death, that’s going to be an unreasonably high bar.
An ICE detainee sits in a holding cell at the Stewart Detention Center in 2019. (photo: David Goldman/AP)
ICE Is Planning to Expand DNA Collection of Detained Immigrants Nationwide
Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News
Aleaziz writes: "Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are expected to begin collecting the DNA samples of people arrested across the country later this year, according to two former Department of Homeland Security officials with knowledge of the program."
READ MORE
Senator Cory Gardner. (photo: Sarah Silbiger/NYT)
Republican Senators in Tough Races Are Lying About Their Position on Pre-Existing Conditions
Sahil Kapur, NBC News
Kapur writes: "Republican senators facing tough re-election fights this fall are expressing support for insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, running ads at odds with their own recent votes and policy positions."
Sens. Gardner, Perdue, McSally and Daines are all running ads proclaiming support for the protections despite voting to repeal Obamacare and weaken them.
epublican senators facing tough re-election fights this fall are expressing support for insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, running ads at odds with their own recent votes and policy positions.
The latest example came Tuesday when Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who has voted repeatedly to repeal the Obamacare law that established those federal protections, released an emotional ad in which he sits with his mother and discusses her successful battle with cancer.
"Cory wrote the bill to guarantee coverage to people with pre-existing conditions — forever," she says, looking directly at the camera.
"No matter what happens to Obamacare," the senator adds.
But experts say the bill he cites doesn't do that.
Gardner is one of several Republicans to obscure their record on pre-existing conditions as rising public support for Obamacare turns the issue into a liability for senators who have voted to repeal it.
Republican senators are fighting to maintain control of the chamber, and that has left many telling voters they favor the most popular provisions after they backed legislation that would have chipped away at the protections in the 2010 law. The replacement plans they've supported fall short of fully restoring those rules, say health policy experts.
"When you're in retreat it's best to do it slowly and not make it look like a complete spin around," said Tom Miller, a health policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Gardner’s 117-word-long legislation would require insurers "not impose any pre-existing condition exclusion" or "factor health status into premiums or charges.” The bill was introduced in August and has never received a hearing or a vote.
Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said Gardner's bill "contains a giant loophole" because insurance companies can simply "deny coverage altogether to people with pre-existing conditions."
The current rules, created through the Affordable Care Act, include “guaranteed issue,” meaning insurance companies have to sell policies to people regardless of health status, Levitt said in an email.
"The Gardner bill leaves out that requirement, meaning that insurers could deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, as they commonly did in the individual insurance market before the ACA," he said.
Gardner campaign spokesman Meghan Graf didn't respond when asked if Gardner still favors ACA repeal, or why his bill doesn't include the guaranteed issue provision. She wouldn’t say whether Gardner supports a lawsuit backed by the Trump administration to invalidate the ACA.
Miller said GOP senators are running these ads because they can read polls that show pre-existing condition rules are popular and "don't want to get crosswise" with voters. He said there are other ways to protect sick people, but each come with some downsides.
"I don't think a lot of Republicans have thought deeply and consistently about how to do that because that takes work. It's heavy lifting and it requires trade-offs," Miller said.
Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., who also faces a difficult re-election, released an ad in June rebutting her Democratic opponent's criticisms of her health care record.
"Mark Kelly's attacks on me are false. And they're shameful. Of course I will always protect those with preexisting conditions. Always," she said to the camera.
But as a member of the House in 2017, McSally voted for legislation that would unwind much of the ACA and allow states to apply for an exemption from rules that prohibit insurers from charging people more if they have a pre-existing condition.
Experts noted at the time that the waivers could pave the way for insurance companies to jack up costs and price sick people out of the market. (It passed the House but died in the Senate.)
Several Republicans who voted to advance that effort in the Senate have also released ads proclaiming their support for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
And they are making their statements deeply personal, with several including family members who have overcome health challenges.
In an ad released in August, Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who is also in a tight battle for re-election, says: "Health insurance should always cover pre-existing conditions. For anyone. Period." The spot includes his sister, a cancer survivor, who says she is defending "my big brother's heart" on the issue.
In Montana, Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican who is facing a strong Democratic opponent in Gov. Steve Bullock, ran an ad in July featuring a woman who said, "Steve Daines will protect Montanans with pre-existing conditions."
Perdue and Daines voted to advance the Senate repeal-and-replace measure in 2017. Daines also voted to repeal the ACA without a replacement as a member of the House in 2013.
On his official website, Daines says, "I support full repeal of Obamacare," and adds that "we must always protect those with preexisting conditions," without getting specific.
Miller, of AEI, thinks Republicans are doing what in military terms is known as "advance to the rear," suggesting they are retreating while claiming otherwise.
"A lot has changed since the rhetorical barking in opposition [to Obamacare] from 2009 to 2016, and even in the ambitions of what they'd do legislatively since 2017," Miller said.
Sunday Song: Bob Marley | Redemption Song
Bob Marley, YouTube
Excerpt: "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds."
Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the 'and of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Won't you help to sing
This songs of freedom
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fullfil the book.
Won't you help to sing
This songs of freedom-
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind.
Wo! Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them-a can-a stop-a the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Yes, some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fullfil the book.
Won't you have to sing
This songs of freedom? -
'Cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs -
All I ever had:
Redemption songs:
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom.
Forest fires and carbon emissions. (image: Getty Images)
This Oregon Forest Was Supposed to Store Carbon for 100 Years. Now It's on Fire.
Emily Pontecorvo and Shannon Osaka, Grist
Excerpt: "As fires ripped through the West this month, displacing families and releasing a thick, choking cloud of smoke that reached all the way to Europe, some scientists began to worry about yet another loss. Thousands of acres of forest, maintained to offset greenhouse gas emissions, might be going up in smoke."
s fires ripped through the West this month, displacing families and releasing a thick, choking cloud of smoke that reached all the way to Europe, some scientists began to worry about yet another loss. Thousands of acres of forest, maintained to offset greenhouse gas emissions, might be going up in smoke.Claudia Herbert, a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, who is studying risks to forest carbon offsets, noticed that the Lionshead Fire — which tore through 190,000 acres of forest in Central Oregon and forced a terrifying evacuation of the nearby town of Detroit — appeared to have almost completely engulfed the largest forest dedicated to sequestering carbon dioxide in the state.
The project, owned by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, spans 24,000 acres. Before the fires, the state of California had issued more than 2.6 million offset credits based on the carbon stored in its trees. That translates to 2.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — or the equivalent of driving 560,000 cars around for one year.
California has a cap-and-trade law that limits greenhouse gas emissions from major emitters like power plants. Those companies, however, have a little bit of leeway — in order to meet the law’s requirements, instead of fully reducing their emissions, they can buy “carbon offsets.” Those often take the form of paying a forest manager to boost growth so the trees will suck up, and store, more carbon dioxide over the long term: in theory, at least 100 years. Those offsets are supposed to counterbalance any extra emissions, so the climate is no worse off than before.
Runaway wildfires, however, throw a wrench in that plan — and as climate change intensifies fires around the world, forest carbon offsets are only going to get riskier.
“If a forest burns down, you didn’t keep carbon out of the atmosphere,” said Danny Cullenward, an energy economist at Stanford University. “So if you let a refinery pollute more because they bought an offset premised on those trees, you have a problem.”
Luckily, California anticipated this problem. The California Air Resources Board, or CARB, which oversees the offset program, built in a type of insurance that accounts for risks like fire, disease, and drought.
This is how it works: Land owners that manage forests under California’s program only get paid for between 80 and 90 percent of the carbon they store. This means all of the forests in the program are storing an extra 10 to 20 percent more carbon than California actually sells as credits on the offset market. CARB keeps track of this “buffer pool” of extra carbon, and can tap into it if any of the forests with existing credits get destroyed.
For example, back in 2015, a fire wiped out Trinity Timberlands, a forest management project in Northern California worth about 850,000 credits. In response, CARB pulled 850,000 credits out of the buffer pool to compensate for all that lost carbon storage. The system worked.
But right now, the buffer pool has about 25 million credits — and some scientists are worried that won’t be enough. William Anderegg, a researcher at the University of Utah, thinks there’s a strong case that current policies around forest carbon offsets, including California’s, underestimate the risks from climate change. Studies show that fire frequency, size, and severity will continue to get worse due to climate change, especially if the world doesn’t start seriously cutting emissions. Anderegg also pointed out that California’s program assigns the same risk to forest carbon offset projects around the country, even though fire risk in Maine is really different than in California.
The Lionshead fire is still burning, and it’s hard to say how bad the damage to the Warm Springs project will be. In the absolute worst case scenario, however, the damage could be devastating: If all of the 2.6 million tons of stored carbon is unleashed into the atmosphere, that means that as much as 10 percent of the entire buffer pool would be wiped out by just one fire.
“This doesn’t mean we should give up on offsets, but we need to be clear-eyed about this,” Anderegg said. “If we don’t have the risks priced correctly, we’re basically investing in a bunch of climate policy that may turn out to be worthless.”
The possibility of underestimating insurance doesn’t just affect California’s climate goals. Tons of companies voluntarily purchase forest carbon offsets through other markets in order to claim they are reducing their emissions or are “carbon neutral.” Anderegg’s lab group is currently working on calculating the risk of fires, droughts, and insects for forests in different regions of the country, and plans to make that data available for California and other carbon offset programs.
Jason Gray, chief of the cap-and-trade program at CARB, said that after a fire or some other kind of disturbance, a project manager has 30 days to notify the agency. That kickstarts a two-year process to vet the remaining forest and see how many offsets were saved — and how many need to be taken out of the buffer pool. He said that once the agency gathers more information about what happened this fire season, it will inform future amendments to the program, in addition to the latest science and public input.
For Herbert, the PhD student, it’s hard to separate her academic interest in carbon offsets and what happened in Oregon with her personal feelings of grief. “You do this work because you want to inform and make things change,” she said. “But seeing pictures of this happening isn’t necessarily the type of relief or validation you might hope for.”
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