Stop fertilizing your lawn

On January 30, the Massachusetts Senate approved a net-zero carbon emissions limit for the year 2050. That means the amount of carbon we emit does not exceed the amount of carbon we capture from the air. To quell the Climate Crisis, we must take more CO2 out of the air than is being emitted — a whole lot more because carbon stays in the atmosphere for a very long time.  Our living planet is quite complicated. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 in the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20-200 years. Much is removed by slower geologic processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years. And then there is the natural process of photosynthesis on land, taking in carbon dioxide, creating plant matter (black carbon), and releasing oxygen. Most remarkable is that with only about 7.5% of the Earth's surface covered with soil suitable for healthy plant growth, more carbon is stored than the 40 trillion tons in the world's atmosphere. Remove from the atmosphere ten trillion tons CO2, and the carbon load will fall from more than 400 parts per million to close to 300 parts per million. Suffer extreme weather events no more when dissipated with the energy inputs from the greenhouse effect. Massachusetts residents are instructed to fertilize their lawns, according to what's printed on the bag, on Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and in the Fall. We are told to spread one pound per thousand square feet of lawn. Any more than that will burn the grass. But we must stop the spread of fertilizer on established lawns – and we can fight the Climate Crisis from home. When we stop using fertilizer, our lawns are no longer swimming in nitrogen and phosphorus, meaning our grassroots go deeper into the soil. When grass goes deeper, it comes out greener. It becomes more resilient and the soil becomes healthier. Meanwhile, we are instructed to apply herbicides and pesticides. However, a non-fertilized lawn is healthier with deeper roots, thicker stems, and more blades, capturing more carbon. Your lawn is now much more resistant to weeds and pests. For the wayward weed, there are eco-friendly herbicides.  Simply stopping the use of Roundup, will increase the carbon sequestered by fungal mycorrhizae during the growing season by a third! In Greenland, when the abandoned Viking settlements were rediscovered 400 years after they had been abandoned by people and their livestock, the carefully built grass fields were still green. What's good for the grass in Greenland is good for the lawns of Massachusetts For your lawn to capture more carbon from the air, do not spread quick-release fertilizer.  Let nature do the capturing work of photosynthesis. You may even save money on lawn care while saving the planet. Rob

Paid for and authorized by Global Warming Solutions IE PAC  Global Warming Solutions P.O. Box 380349 Cambridge, MA 02238.

FOCUS: Nathan Robinson | After Bernie Sanders' Landslide Nevada Win, It's Time for Democrats to Unite Behind Him

24 February 20

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FOCUS: Nathan Robinson | After Bernie Sanders' Landslide Nevada Win, It's Time for Democrats to Unite Behind Him

Nathan Robinson, Guardian UK
Robinson writes: "Sanders has now won the popular vote in all of the first three states, and is currently leading in the polls almost everywhere else in the country."

No other Democrats can beat him at this point. Sill, the liberal establishment is still struggling to come to terms with Sanders’ inevitable nomination

t was a landslide. Bernie Sanders had been expected to win the Nevada caucuses, but not like this. With just 4% of the vote in, news organizations called the race for Sanders, since his margin of victory was so large. Sanders has now won the popular vote in all of the first three states, and is currently leading in the polls almost everywhere else in the country. He was already the favorite to take the nomination before the Nevada contest, with Democratic party insiders worrying he was “unstoppable.” His campaign will only grow more powerful now.

Importantly, Sanders’ Nevada victory definitively disproved one of the most enduring myths about his campaign: that it could attract left-leaning young white people, but was incapable of drawing in a diverse coalition. In fact, voters of color were a primary source of Sanders’ strength in Nevada; he received the majority of Latino votes. Entrance polls showed Sanders winning “men and women, whites and Latinos, voters 17-29, 30-44 and 45-65, those with college degrees and those without, liberal Democrats (by a lot) and moderate/conservatives (narrowly), union and non-union households.” The poisonous concept of the white “Bernie Bro” as the “typical” Sanders supporter should be dead.

Some members of the media establishment had no idea what to make of Sanders’ Nevada victory. On MSNBC, James Carville said that “Putin” had won Nevada, and Chris Matthews declared the primary “over” (ill-advisedly comparing Sanders’ victory to the Nazi invasion of France). Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post admitted that Sanders had been stronger with nonwhite voters than she expected, and it might now be “too late” to do anything about him.

The other candidates and their supporters did their best to spin a humiliating defeat. Amy Klobuchar said her sixth-place finish “exceeded expectations”—if sixth place is better than you expected, you’re probably not a viable candidate. Biden vowed, implausibly (and for the third time) that he would bounce back. Pete Buttigieg took to the stage to denounce Sanders, who he said “believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans.” A Warren supporter rather charmingly said that while Sanders had won, Warren had the “momentum,” and the Warren campaign itself said the Nevada “debate” mattered more than the Nevada “result.”

Let’s be clear: the other candidates were crushed, and Nevada was yet more evidence that there is no longer much serious opposition to Sanders. Michael Bloomberg fizzled completely in his big debut, and Democrats would be out of their minds to enrage every Sanders supporter by nominating a Republican billionaire. Joe Biden has lost badly in all of the first three contests, and it’s very clear that he can’t run an effective campaign. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign has nearly gone broke and in desperation she has resorted to relying on the Super PACs that she previously shunned. Pete Buttigieg can’t win voters of color or young people (and has accurately been described as sounding like “a neural network trained on West Wing episodes”). As Matthews says: it’s over. Bernie is dominating the fundraising, dominating the polls, and winning every primary. I am not sure Jacobin is right that “it’s Bernie’s party now”—for one thing, virtually the entire Congressional Democratic party is still opposed to Bernie. But it’s certainly Bernie’s nomination. There is simply no other credible candidate.

Democrats shouldn’t worry, though: Bernie has a strong organization and a lot of money, and can mobilize millions of people to support him in November. He’s exactly the kind of candidate you should want your party to have. And for all the fear of his “radicalism,” he’s really a moderate: his signature policies are a national health insurance program, a living wage, free public higher education, and a serious green energy investment plan. It’s shocking that there is such opposition to such sensible plans. On what planet are these things so politically toxic that Democrats are afraid to run on them? Voters like these ideas, and so long as Democrats unify behind Bernie rather than continuing to try to tear him down, they will have a very good shot at defeating a radical and unhinged president like Donald Trump. The polling looks good for Bernie in November, so now we just need to get this primary over with and focus on the real fight. The other candidates had their shot: they lost. They need to accept it.

One other takeaway from Nevada is that no future election should occur without significant reform to the caucus process. Nevada wasn’t an outright catastrophe like Iowa was—at least we got results on election night. But it was still plagued with “voting rules confusion, calculation glitches and delays in reporting tallies.” And the caucus process can be downright bizarre: tied results in the Las Vegas caucuses are resolved with a card game, and at one point Sanders lost a delegate to Pete Buttigieg because the Sanders team pulled an Ace and Buttigieg pulled a 3. (Aces were low.) From the electoral college to the Iowa caucus, American elections desperately need to reworked from the bottom up according to the simple principle “the person with the most votes ought to win.”

And yet caucuses also produce some truly inspiring on-the-ground stories, from the cab driver who spoke up for Bernie and kept billionaire Tom Steyer from being viable to the guy who switched from Trump to Bernie because he was convinced socialists were good people. Ordinary people gave incredible speeches as part of the caucus process—one reason why it should be fixed rather than ditched entirely. Members of the Culinary Union, whose leadership had prominently opposed Sanders over Medicare For All, ended up defying their leaders and pushing Sanders to victory at a number of caucus sites.

All in all, Nevada was an inspiring moment for American democracy, proof that ordinary working people of all races and incomes and genders can come together around a robust progressive agenda. Democrats need not worry: this is a good thing. It’s a night to be celebrated. The primary is not completely over, but hopefully it is now clear to every sensible observer that Bernie is cruising toward the nomination and needs to be supported rather than torn down.

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Harvey Weinstein. (photo: Mark Lennihan/AP)

Harvey Weinstein Found Guilty at Rape Trial
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK
Pilkington writes: "Harvey Weinstein, the fallen titan of Hollywood whose sexual abuse of aspiring young female actors sparked the #MeToo movement, has finally been brought to justice after a New York jury found him guilty."
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Push for better storage of spent Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station fuel

Push for better storage of spent Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station fuel



By Christine Legere

Posted Feb 23, 2020


Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station was permanently shut down in May, but more than 4,000 radioactive spent fuel assemblies will continue to be stored at the Plymouth site for the foreseeable future.

Citizen activists in Barnstable County communities will ask voters at spring town meetings, or via local election ballots, to support an advisory question that would direct Gov. Charlie Baker and state legislators to require that the radioactive waste is stored in “better quality” dry casks than those planned for use, and that the casks are protected by earthen berms or within enclosures with heightened security.

Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and president of Cape Downwinders, said radioactive spent fuel is a national problem, not just a local issue.

The Cape Downwinders wrote the advisory question.

“Fifty percent of Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant,” Turco said. “Safety is a right. Our petition is to raise consciousness: educate the public about ongoing issues at Pilgrim.”

The selectmen in Orleans and Brewster voted to put the advisory question on their respective spring election ballots, Turco said. In Bourne, the question will go on the town meeting warrant.

Other Barnstable County communities will be presented with the advisory in the coming weeks.

Entergy Corp., Pilgrim’s longtime owner, sold the plant to Holtec International, a New Jersey-based company that will handle decommissioning, spent fuel management and site cleanup.

Turco and other Pilgrim critics have complained that Holtec has a conflict of interest since the company uses dry casks that it manufactures. The Holtec Hi-Storm 100s the company uses are concrete-encased stainless steel canisters that are a little over a half-inch thick.

“That’s just three-eighths of an inch thicker than a Yeti cup,” Turco said.

There is no way to monitor the steel canisters once they are sealed, critics say, and there is no aging management plan.

Concern also has been expressed over Holtec’s plan to store spent fuel on a concrete pad just a short distance from a well-traveled road. A vanity fence, rather than earth berms or enclosures, will block the view from the street.

“In this day and age, Pilgrim is an open door for any bad actors who want to cause serious damage to our country,” Turco said. “Nuclear waste is a predeployed nuclear weapon. Its safe storage is being ignored.”

Patrick O’Brien, a Holtec spokesman, defended the company’s commitment to safety.

“Holtec is a worldwide leader in used nuclear fuel storage,” O’Brien said via email. “Holtec’s dry cask storage technology is mature in use, safely storing nuclear fuel at over 25% of the world’s 440 nuclear plants. With 1,375 Holtec dry cask systems safely storing used fuel around the world as of February 21, 2020, including 17 at Pilgrim which are visually inspected daily during operator rounds and monthly with a camera, Holtec, and arguably the nuclear industry, is confident in the robust design of Holtec dry storage systems.”

O’Brien said the fuel will be protected by “a highly trained security force and a fortified security perimeter” for as long as it remains onsite.

State Attorney General Maura Healey filed a motion to intervene in the license transfer several months ago, but the motion remains under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Frustrated by the lack of action, Healey sued the NRC last fall in U.S. District Court for approving the transfer of Pilgrim’s license from Entergy Corp. to Holtec International without first listening to what state officials and the public had to say about it. The case is pending.

Healey contends that Holtec is inexperienced in decommissioning and will likely run out of money before the job is done. Holtec will use the plant’s decommissioning trust fund, which contains $1.1 billion in ratepayer money.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, which is made up of local officials, representatives from state agencies and members of the public, has been frustrated by Holtec’s lack of response during monthly meetings regarding decommissioning and spent fuel.

“Holtec’s continuing refusal to answer the advisory panel and the public’s questions about the safety and expected longevity of the company’s dry cask storage technology is not only disturbing, it’s outrageous,” Sean Mullin, chairman of the advisory panel, wrote in an email. “The citizens of the Commonwealth have a right to know how, for example, Holtec can accurately monitor the sealed casks for problems and, if detected, how these can be repaired.”

The NRC director of the Division of Nuclear Materials Safety, a senior health physicist, senior materials engineer and chief of the NRC’s Storage and Transportation Licensing Branch will attend an advisory panel meeting set for 6:30 p.m. Monday in Plymouth Town Hall to discuss the region’s concerns.

Frank Rich | The Intelligence Community's Bill Barr Moment

24 February 20 Who Cares About the Truth this Election Cycle? You do. As does everyone in the country - one way or another. But who will tell the truth about what common, working people need and think? Who will tell the truth about what is happening across the country. RSN: You know what we will do. Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts CA 95611

24 February 20

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NEED A FEW HEROES THIS MORNING - Bad day for donations yesterday, need to make a compact today. Need a few donations to get today rolling. Be the one. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Frank Rich | The Intelligence Community's Bill Barr Moment

Frank Rich, New York Magazine
Rich writes: "This is another Barr moment, with the new acting intelligence director, the utterly unqualified loyalist hack Richard Grenell, serving as a placeholder in that job, much as the utterly unqualified loyalist hack Matthew Whitaker did as acting attorney general until Trump recruited Barr."
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Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Sanders Leads in 3 Key Battleground States, MI, PA and WI
Reader Supported News
Excerpt: "The Sanders campaign loves to say that his status as an Independent gives him a leg up in the battleground states. These numbers seem to bear that out."
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a campaign rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders at Venice Beach, Calif. (photo: Monica Almeida/Reuters)

Ocasio-Cortez's Progressive PAC Makes First Round of Endorsements
Christopher Wilson, Yahoo! News
Wilson writes: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced Friday her political action committee's first round of endorsements, which will include two progressive candidates challenging sitting Democratic members of Congress."

“It’s time to elect a progressive majority in Congress accountable to strong, grassroots movements that push support for issues like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, racial justice and more,” said Ocasio-Cortez Friday, announcing the support of seven women via her Courage to Change PAC.

When the freshman lawmaker from New York announced in January she was starting her own PAC dedicated to electing progressive legislators, she said it would refuse to pay dues to the House’s campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The congresswoman also said the PAC would support incumbents who vote for progressive causes, although the first round of seven endorsements all went to challengers.

Contributions will be used to make early investments in progressive challengers that can even the playing field against established incumbents, and bolster progressive leaders in Congress who take difficult but righteous stands,” reads the PAC’s website. Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign told the New York Times the organization had raised more than $300,000 in January.

Ocasio-Cortez won her seat representing parts of Queens and the Bronx by successfully downing Joe Crowley, a member of the Democratic leadership, in a 2018 primary. In her first year in office she proved an adept fundraiser, bringing in over $5 million to her campaign through grassroots donations aided by her massive online following, with more than 6 million Twitter followers. 

The PAC could cause conflict with Democratic leadership, who went as far as creating a blacklist of campaign staffers who work for primary challengers to Democratic incumbents. One name on the Ocasio-Cortez PAC’s list of initial endorsements is Jessica Cisneros, a 26-year-old attorney challenging Rep. Henry Cuellar, a conservative Democrat, in southeast Texas. 

Cisneros has earned the endorsements of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and DCCC Chairwoman Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois have supported Cuellar. That primary will be decided on March 3 as part of the massive Super Tuesday slate.

Another Courage to Change endorsement that could butt against Democratic leadership is of Marie Newman, who’s challenging Rep. Dan Lipinski for a Chicago-area seat. Lipinski is the only remaining anti-abortion Democrat left in the party’s congressional caucus, and Newman came within 2,200 votes of unseating him in 2018. Pelosi endorsed Lipinski in 2018, but the leadership support might be shifting in advance of the March 17 primary, as Bustos pulled out of a Lipinski fundraiser last year. Newman earned the endorsement of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot earlier this month.

Also in the first round of endorsements is Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, who is running in a Senate primary in Texas against the establishment choice of M.J. Hegar. The winner of that contest will face off against Sen. John Cornyn in November. 

The PAC also backed Kara Eastman for Congress in Nebraska, where she defeated the DCCC-backed candidate in the 2018 primary before losing narrowly in the general election to GOP Rep. Don Bacon.

Her other endorsements were all for House races: Teresa Fernandez in New Mexico, Georgette Gómez in California and Samelys López in New York. In this first round of support, Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse the challengers attempting to primary Reps. Richard Neal of Massachusetts or Jerry Nadler and Eliot Engel of New York, all chairmen of powerful House committees.

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Judge Amy Berman Jackson attends a 2016 awards breakfast in Washington for pro bono counsel. (photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Judge Swats Down Roger Stone's Effort to Disqualify Her as Publicity Stunt
Rachel Weiner, The Washington Post
Weiner writes: "The federal judge who oversaw Roger Stone's trial and sentenced him last week to 40 months in prison dismissed his demand that she be taken off the case as a baseless smear on Sunday."
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Scout carries a campaign sign following the closing of the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. (photo: Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images)

Let the Boy Scouts Die Out, Already
Matt Farwell, The New Republic
Farwell writes: "I was an active Boy Scout as a teenager because I had strong motivation: getting myself the hell out of the Scouting movement. It was a cultural rite and a family thing, one I hated-but the rule was that I couldn't leave until I'd reached the highest rank."

EXCERPT:

The whole Scouting organization was rotten, that’s been crystal clear to me since then; it seemed confirmed when disaster artist Robert Gates left the BSA presidency in 2016. When your outfit is abandoned by a Beltway maven who failed to predict the Soviet Union’s fall as an intel analyst, palled around with Iran-Contra conspirators as a CIA deputy director, and oversaw America’s post-9/11 wars of choice as the secretary of defense—twice—you know there’s some sinister shit afoot. Rats are always the first ones off a sinking ship.

The Boy Scouts have long known about the predators within their midst: Their own closely guarded “Perversion Files” tracked sexual abuse cases from 1944 to 2016. The numbers are staggering: 12,000 alleged victims—all children and teenagers—abused by 7,800 separately identified Scoutmasters. Think about those numbers, coming from an organization that held itself up as a pillar of American morality. That’s at least 72 years of horrifying, intimate abuse, hidden and concealed by an organization that taught its charges to “Do a good turn daily” while producing enough victims to fill an Army division. Many of these victims had no safe place to turn—as the new documentary The Church and the First Estate painfully shows. The film follows the story of Adam Steed, who was told by both his Scout and church leaders to forgive his abuser and forget the abuse but went to the police instead. The Scoutmaster accused by Steed admitted to molesting 24 other boys, ultimately receiving five months in jail and 15 years’ parole. It boggles the mind.

All this was going on while the Scouts fought unsuccessful battles in court to keep barring openly gay men from serving in their ranks. Meanwhile, the adult Scouting executives were making out like bandits—in 2009, a Charity Navigator report showed that the CEO of BSA was one of the top five earners in the nonprofit space, taking home a cool $1,577,600 in annual salary. The long con of Scouting paid off, until it didn’t. The glut of allegations and evidence is overwhelming—by the BSA’s count, it faces 275 abuse lawsuits across the U.S., plus thousands more additional claims, above and beyond the ones it’s already settled to the tune of $150 million it has paid in settlements since 2017. Even with $1.4 billion in assets, the organization faces so many credible abuse claims that its insurance policies are refusing to pay out.

Though I didn’t have the language to express it in my youth, I discovered that the Boy Scouts of America was full of men like Bob Gates: self-righteous, well-scrubbed creeps who kept their external aura of civic virtue shiny, obscuring the grubby evil in the institutions and traditions they oversaw. Reading through the lawsuits against the organization, it becomes clear that the BSA was an organization by predators for predators, optimized to groom and produce more predators. We should learn lessons from the victimized children’s stories, about accountability and justice: Judging from this preemptive bankruptcy, I doubt we ever will.

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Malaysia's Prime Minister has also reportedly resigned from his party, Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia. (photo: Lim Huey Teng/Reuters)

Malaysia's Mahathir Submits Resignation to King
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has announced his resignation but was asked to stay on as interim leader by the country's monarch."
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The Rio San Antonio, in the headwaters basin of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, will lose federal protections under a new rule. (photo: Bob Wick/BLM California)

Trump Admin's Clean Water Rollback Will Hit Some States Hard
Tara Lohan, The Revelator
Lohan writes: "The Santa Fe River starts high in the forests of New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo mountains and flows 46 miles to the Rio Grande. Along the way it plays important roles for wildlife, irrigation, recreation and other cultural uses, and provides 40 percent of the water supply for the city of Santa Fe's 85,000 residents."
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