The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times argues that the Feinstein-Boxer water bill offers real drought relief:
It's in many ways a pleasant surprise: The latest water bill introduced by California's two U.S. senators, Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, offers the state some serious help as the Sierra snowpack becomes a less reliable source of fresh water. If the bill were to advance on its own, it would be a good base from which to work.
Unfortunately for California, the ultimate shape of legislation will likely be determined by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Murkowski is seeking a broader package with presumably much less of the environmental sensitivity that makes the current Feinstein-Boxer proposal an improvement over a Republican House bill, and even over Feinstein's own effort last year. The test will come with committee hearings next month.
The problem with most so-called drought relief bills is that they can't fill the wells or make the snow fall. Too often their real purpose is to reallocate water so that the powerful agriculture industry can get more. And in California, more for agriculture usually means less for the complex hydrologic system that sustains native species and supplies urban areas from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles and farther south.
Steven W. Thrasher at
The Guardian writes—
Black lives tend to be five years shorter. That's why we interrupt you:
White men live about five years longer than black men, and white women live about four years longer than black women—that’s including but beyond the crisis of police killings. The way I see it, white dudes have got to listen to a brother tell them why this is messed up for about five years before they can even think about saying their precious time is being wasted. They’ve got it to spare compared to us: they’re going to be smelling the roses in their golden years while we’re already pushing up the daisies.
Meanwhile, white ladies might be entitled to a year less of listening to black ladies before they start braying, since they “only” outlive them by four years. Still, remember that they earn an average of 78 cents to the dollar white men take home, while black women earn only 64, and that they have about 99 white men for every 100 white women to bolster their communities, while there are only 83 black men per 100 black women in ours. Given these are but a few of the unearned advantages of being a white woman, they might just want to listen to their sisters about their economic, social and literal states of death as much as they demand—and maybe buy them a cup of coffee before they beat them to the pearly gates.
Why are white people in such a hurry when black folks speak up about this?
More excerpts from the pundits below the fold.
Eric Jaffe at CityLab writes—This Democrat Wants to Double the Gas Tax:
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here for larger version.
The federal gas tax that pays for America’s highways hasn’t been raised in decades, but that doesn’t stop some determined lawmakers from trying. The latest effort comes via Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, who has introduced a plan to raise the tax four cents a year for four years then index it to inflation so it remains effective over time. The move would ultimately bring the fuel tax to 34 cents a gallon—nearly double the existing rate of 18.4 cents.
That might seem like a big bump, but even a gas tax twice as high the current one would be incredibly low by global standards. A U.S. Department of Energy review of fuel taxes among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in 2011 placed the U.S. just about at the bottom of the pack. Kyle Pomerleau of the Tax Foundation recently updated these figures to reflect 2013 tax rates via OECD data—and found very little change.
The U.S. rate of 53 cents a gallon reflects the federal gas tax as well as the average state tax. Adding Carper’s 16 cents wouldn’t budge the U.S. position way back of the pack—nor would doubling the entire 53 cent average. As the numbers stand, lawmakers would have to raise the average gas tax at least eight-fold for Americans to pay the steepest rate in the world.
Kamil Ahsan at
In These Times writes—
How the Government Fast-Tracked Shell’s Arctic Drilling:
“When Obama took office,” explains Subhankar Banerjee, environmental activist and author of Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point, “he made opening of the Arctic Ocean to oil interests a top priority of his energy policy, which of course was immensely inconsistent with his positions. He has not backed off on that.”
“What the administration, in essence, has done,” says Banerjee, “is something the Bush administration would have done, but perhaps worse.”
On close inspection, a long and sordid tale of collusion emerges between Shell executives and federal regulatory agencies in the Obama administration, in charge of approving exploratory drilling plans on Shell’s leases in the Chukchi Sea. This relationship, it seems, relied on avoiding any comprehensive review of the environmental and wildlife impacts of offshore drilling in the harsh climate of the Arctic.
Gwyneth Kelly at
The New Republic writes—
Jimmy Carter's Most Important Legacy: Female Judges:
Often cited as an exemplar of post-presidency productivity, one significant aspect of his in-office legacy stands out: Carter appointed 41 female judges—five times as many as all his predecessors combined.
Carter set a precedent for those who followed him: Since his presidency, with the notable exception of Reagan, every president has surpassed Carter’s record. As of August this year President Obama has appointed a record 131 female judges, including two female Supreme Court justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Carter’s increase in female judicial appointments was not accidental. He said in a 1980 speech that he was “determined to see that women and minorities, whose destinies have so often depended upon the kind of justice that our courts can provide, should be included in those judgeships.”
Bruce Melton at
TruthOut writes—
The Clean Power Plan Is Barely Better Than Kyoto; IPPC Says: We Must Remove CO2 From the Atmosphere:
The EPA's Clean Power Plan is 12 percent more stringent than the Kyoto Protocol, yet since 1978, the US has emitted as much carbon dioxide as we emitted in the previous 228 years. Globally, since 1984, our civilization has emitted as much carbon dioxide as in the previous 236 years. [...]
The grand contradiction between the latest climate science and current climate policy is that since about the beginning of the Kyoto Era, we have emitted as much climate pollution as we emitted since mankind first began altering the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere to a noticeable degree in the mid-1700s.
The new EPA carbon regulations are a fabulously wonderful thing, but they have been a generation in the making, and the emissions reduction requirements have hardly changed during this time. Are these new regulations an appropriate solution today? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seems to think not.
Clive Stafford Smith at
The Guardian writes—
The military ignores Obama's order to release Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo:
Recent history demonstrates that if President Barack Obama, arguably the most powerful person on planet Earth, wants to prioritize almost anything – from pardoning 46 convicted drug felons to bombing a foreign country without the consent of Congress – little can stand in his way. Why, then, is Shaker Aamer not home in London with his wife and four children? [...]
On Thursday, we came a little closer to understanding the reason that Aamer’s youngest child, Faris – who was born on Valentine’s Day 2002, the day that Aamer was rendered to the detention center at Guantánamo Bay – has never even met his father. The Guardian revealed that “the Pentagon [is] blocking Guantánamo deals to return Shaker Aamer and other cleared detainees.” President Obama, it seems, has personally ordered Aamer’s release, and his subordinates have ignored and thwarted his order.
Jordan Flaherty at
The Nation writes—
A Movement Lab in New Orleans—The 10-year fight for a just recovery from Hurricane Katrina has driven a surge in innovative, progressive organizing:
This is New Orleans 10 years after Hurricane Katrina—a town of ferment and possibility, open wounds and agitation. It is whiter, wealthier, and smaller than it was on August 28, 2005. Around 100,000 black residents are still displaced, scattered to places unknown; housing prices continue to rise rapidly, pushing out those trying to get by on jobs in the city’s low-paying tourism economy. But despite the violence represented by these changes, or perhaps because of them, New Orleans has also seen a rise in coordinated resistance. More people have been organizing, taking to the streets, and risking arrest than at any other time in recent history.
There’s a longstanding myth that people
in New Orleans spend their nights—and days—partying too hard to protest. Yet it’s far closer to the truth to say that many observers have been too enamored of the city’s festive culture to notice the undercurrent of resistance it’s always had.
The history of New Orleans is, in many ways, a story of resistance—of music born against a backdrop of slavery and Jim Crow, dancing alongside death, community in the face of assault, and a general refusal to conform to the bias, hierarchies, and even temporal demands of the rest of the country.
Ruth Marcus at
The Washington Post writes—
Carly Fiorina’s conversion from Hillary Clinton fan to fervent critic:
...in the makeup room at ABC’s “This Week” with me, [Carly] Fiorina said something that, at the time, was mildly interesting, but is now revelatory. It was May 2008, close to the end of the long primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and we were discussing the two Democratic contenders.
At which point Fiorina, then a campaign surrogate for presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, offered some unprompted praise for Clinton: If Fiorina hadn’t been backing McCain, she told me, she would have been for Clinton. [...]
Compare that with Fiorina today. “Throughout this campaign, I have repeatedly asked Hillary Clinton to name an accomplishment,” she wrote in a commentary published on CNN.com. “She has yet to name one.” [...]
Fiorina’s shifting stance on Clinton is striking: She has gone from stealth fan to Public Enemy No. 1 — the (not coincidentally female) face in the crowd who is willing to slam Clinton most ferociously as a lightweight and a liar.
Chris Hedges at
TruthDig writes—
Amnesty International: Protecting the ‘Human Rights’ of Johns, Pimps and Human Traffickers:
The decision by Amnesty International’s decision-making forum, the International Council Meeting, to call for the decriminalization of prostitution is another in a long line of triumphs for heartless neoliberal economics and the grotesque commodification of human beings that defines predatory capitalism.
Salil Shetty, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said: “Sex workers are one of the most marginalized groups in the world who in most instances face constant risk of discrimination, violence and abuse. Our global movement paved the way for adopting a policy for the protection of the human rights of sex workers which will help shape Amnesty International’s future work on this important issue.”
In the sickness of modern culture, the ability to exploit with impunity is distorted into a human right even by a renowned and respected humanitarian organization. That is quite a card trick. We live in a global culture where the wretched of the earth are chattel and where sexual slavery—which is what most prostituted women and girls around the globe endure—is sanctified by market forces. These women and girls are among our most vulnerable. After being crushed by poverty, racism and sexism, they are unable to find other ways to make a sustainable income. They are treated little better than livestock transported to markets for consumption. That a so-called human rights organization parrots vile justifications is emblematic of the depth of our moral degeneration and the triumph of misogyny.
Ben Adler at
Grist writes—
How suburban sprawl causes segregation and isolates the poor:
As any sharp sociology major could tell you, a lot of the problems we associate with poverty are not actually caused by being impoverished but by being in an area where the impoverished are isolated from the middle class. Decades of social science data back that up. An elevated risk of being arrested, for example, comes not so much from growing up poor as from growing up poor and in a poor neighborhood.
This, in turn, explains a lot of racial inequality in the U.S. Non-poor white people, who are the vast majority of non-poor people in most metro areas, have been willing to live with poor whites but not with poor African-Americans or Latinos. So while poor whites are often dispersed throughout economically diverse neighborhoods, a much higher share of poor African-Americans and Latinos are stuck in neighborhoods with only other poor people. That, in turn, means they live in communities with higher crime, worse schools, and other disadvantages.