05 December 20
Need to Focus on Our Larger Donors
Last month was a down month for donations and funding. We got the same number of donations, but the average donation was significantly lower.
It’s the matching donations that make the smaller donations work. With just a few more larger donors coming through we can strengthen RSN this month.
With cautious optimism.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
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05 December 20
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Reader Supported News
Robert Reich | David Perdue's Corruption Reaches Far Beyond the Suspicious Stock Trades
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
Reich writes: "David Perdue's corruption reaches far beyond the suspicious stock trades that have previously been reported."
Aside from being the Senate’s most prolific stock trader, making a staggering 2,596 trades during his term, a deep dive into his trading indicates he has been making suspiciously well-timed trades long before the pandemic — often in industries that he oversees as a senator. Among them:
— Perdue bought and sold FireEye stock — a federal contractor that provides malware detection and threat-intelligence services — 61 times, beginning in 2016. Nearly half of those trades were made when he sat on the cybersecurity panel, and during that time FireEye secured a $30 million subcontract with the Army Cyber Command, which happens to be located in Perdue’s home state of Georgia. Perdue reported $15,000 in capital gains from FireEye trades in 2018.
— Perdue began buying stock in BWX Technologies, a company that supplies nuclear components for Navy submarines, about a month before he took over as chairman of the seapower subcommittee. As chairman, he added a multibillion-dollar nuclear submarine to the nation’s defenses — exactly the type that BWX Technologies provides components for. He earned as much as $50,000 in capital gains when he sold the company’s stock.
— Perdue began buying stock in Regions Financial, a mid-size regional lender in Alabama, in May 2017. Four months later, Perdue co-sponsored a Senate bill proposing to loosen regulations governing banks like Regions, and a version of his bill was signed into law by Trump in May 2018. Between Perdue’s first purchase of Regions stock and the time Trump signed his bill into law, the bank’s shares increased by 35 percent. Regions’ CEO has contributed to Perdue’s re-election campaign.
Those are just the highlights of his suspicious stock trades. One thing is clear: David Perdue is in the Senate to enrich himself at the expense of everyone else — not to serve the people of Georgia. Meanwhile, Jon Ossoff has dedicated his career to fighting and exposing corruption. Let’s elect him and Raphael Warnock to the Senate, and send Perdue and his fellow self-dealer Kelly Loeffler packing.
Anthony Fauci. (photo: Jabin Botsford/Getty Images)
Fauci Accepts Offer of Chief Medical Adviser Role in Biden Administration
Bart Jansen, USA TODAY
Jansen writes: "Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a leader in the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, will join President-elect Joe Biden's administration."
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A woman looks at signs at a store closed due to COVID-19. (photo: Nam Y. Huh/AP)
More Than Half of Emergency Small-Business Funds Went to Larger Businesses, New Data Shows
Jonathan O'Connell, Andrew Van Dam, Aaron Gregg and Alyssa Fowers, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "More than half of the money from the Treasury Department's coronavirus emergency fund for small businesses went to just 5 percent of the recipients, according to data on more than 5 million loans that was released by the government Tuesday evening in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit."
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Crystal Mason. (photo: Leslie Boorhem-Stephenson/Texas Tribune)
Crystal Mason, ACLU File Appeal of Texas 5 Year Illegal Voting Sentence
Black Christian News
Excerpt: "A Fort Worth woman jailed for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election while on supervised release for a federal conviction is asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn her conviction on illegal voting charges, according to legal documents filed Monday."
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents make an arrest. (photo: Charles Reed/AP)
The Student Sting: The Troubling Inside Story of ICE's Fake University
Amanda Holpuch, Guardian UK
Holpuch writes: "Ramesh used to talk to his friends in Michigan a lot on the phone."
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The sanctions fall most heavily on the poorest people in society, causing death through food and medicine shortages. (photo: AP
Venezuela Loses 99 Percent of Its Income Due to US Sanctions
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro held a meeting with journalists on Thursday at the Miraflores Palace, where he denounced that the U.S. arbitrary sanctions have caused a loss of 99 percent in the country's income."
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A sea turtle. (photo: Lee Gillinwater/Pew Charitable Trusts
Countries Fall Short of UN Pledge to Protect 10% of the Ocean by 2020
Chris Arsenault, Mongabay
Arsenault writes: "Covering a swath of ocean larger than Peru around coral reefs, golden beaches and rocky atolls in north Hawai'i, Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument is one of the world's largest marine protected areas - and the biggest in North America."
This UNESCO World Heritage Site is home to endangered Hawaiian monk seals (Monachus schauinslandi), two dozen species of whales and dolphins, and green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas), among thousands of other creatures.
Even as countries fall well short of meeting a U.N. goal to protect 10% of the world’s oceans by the end of this year, marine protected areas (MPAs) like Papahānaumokuākea show what effective conservation can look like, said Aulani Wilhelm, who worked to build and manage the MPA as an official with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The stability of the ocean drives the stability of all living systems on the planet,” Wilhelm, now a senior official with the NGO Conservation International, based in Hawaiʻi, told Mongabay. “It’s about making enough of the ocean function as close to its natural state as possible to lend resiliency to the ocean — and planet. That’s why MPAs are a critical point of the conversations countries need to be having about the future.”
Created in 2006 and then expanded in 2016, Papahānaumokuākea prohibits large-scale extractive activities within its waters, such as industrial fishing and deep-sea mining. Some recreational fishing is allowed, along with Indigenous Hawaiian cultural practices and scientific research.
These protections should allow coral reefs to regenerate and increase the amount and diversity of fish and birds in the MPA and surrounding waters, while still allowing some local people to make a living from small-scale fishing or ecotourism, conservationists said.
As the COVID-19 pandemic underscores the need to better manage humans’ relationships with the natural world, and climate change accelerates ocean habitat loss, the urgency to build new and more effective MPAs has never been higher, said Liz Karan, who directs a project to promote establishing MPAs in international waters for the U.S.-based Pew Charitable Trusts.
“It’s actually in a country’s best interest to invest in conservation efforts to ensure long-term sustainability, food security and livelihoods,” Karan said.
The target
In 2010, the international community pledged to protect 10% of the oceans by the end of 2020, under the auspices of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The convention now has 196 parties; notably the U.S. is not among them.
About 7.6% of the oceans, an area the size of North America, is now covered by MPAs, according to the U.N.’s Protected Planet database.
Other research paints a more conservative picture. The Marine Protection Atlas, an initiative of the Seattle-based nonprofit Marine Conservation Institute, puts the figure at just 6.4%, counting only MPAs that have been legally designated and not just proposed or pledged.
It also points out that not all MPAs are created equal: Fully or highly protected parks that permit little or no fishing and other human impacts cover just 2.6% of the world’s oceans, and lightly or minimally protected parks cover 3.2%. These less-protected MPAs sometimes allow disruptive activities like mining, hydrocarbon extraction and industrial fishing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the atlas notes that stronger protections tend to yield greater conservation benefits.
This article was originally published on Mongabay..
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