Before we get to the good stuff, there’s some housekeeping to get out of the way. Today’s post marks my return to the stable of GNRU regulars. I’ll be taking over for arhpdx on the third Thursdays of the month from here on out. I know that I cannot adequately fill the big shoes that they are vacating, but I promise you’ll always get my best.
But you didn’t come here for me. You came for the good news, and we gots it.
Today I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the content of the impeachment hearings. Every day is worse news for Trump, which is good news for the country, and other, better writers are doing a great job explaining that every day. As for the pathetic Republican defense of their Dear Leader, that’s more hilarious than anything and I’ll leave that to the Tweets of the Week.
I worry a little bit that some folks are pinning all their hopes on the impeachment process. I remember the overly high expectations people had for the Mueller investigation. We were told (and many of us were convinced) that it would mean the end of the Trump regime. We all know how that turned out. It seems unlikely that impeachment hearings will have a different result in the short term.
So we must, as we have done for the last three years, stay focused on the very many positive things that are happening all around us everyday. Good people all over the country and around the world are working hard to make things better, and they are succeeding.
We will prevail over the forces of darkness that have attempted to bring down our country. And we can take heart in the knowledge that it is taking less time and causing less destruction than the last time fascists took over a major national government. I believe that Trump would be every bit as bad as Hitler if he could. But I also believe there is a distinct shortage of “good Nazis” in America.
So let’s take a look at some of the good that’s happening outside the impeachment hearings.
If you’re new here, be sure to take time for the comments section. The Good News Roundup is a community effort, and many comments are excellent Roundups of their own. And if any of y’all want to add some good impeachment news I don’t think anyone will mind.
It’s good to be back. I’ll try to live up to the high standards set by the other GNR writers and commenters.
More evidence that the NRA is rapidly becoming a spent force in American politics.
A gun-control lobbying group funded largely by billionaire Michael Bloomberg just helped Democrats take over the state government in Virginia – right in the National Rifle Association’s backyard.
In Tuesday’s elections, the Democrats tipped the Virginia House and Senate in their favor, giving them full control of the state government for the first time since 1994. The election had stronger-than-usual turnout in the suburbs, according to media reports.
While the results could be a good omen for Democrats’ chances in 2020, it may also be a tipping point in the money battle over gun rights. Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control advocacy group that the former New York mayor helps fund, spent $2.5 million this year to influence voters in Virginia versus approximately $300,000 by the NRA, which has its headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.
If the NRA can’t do any better than that in their home state, I think we can safely say that their time is past. We can finally look forward to a Congress and to state legislatures willing to finally take action on gun violence, free of the corrupting influence of gun nut money.
This Result From The Nov 5 Election Was Especially Delicious
And every vote matters.
And next year, if each of us votes and works to get everyone else to vote, a lot of Republicans’ hometowns are going to be Democratic.
The United States may still be lagging behind (for now), but the rest of the world continues to look to green methods of producing energy.
A major milestone was reached in Australia's biggest electricity market this week when renewable energy supplied more than half of the grid's power.
Green energy sources — mostly solar and wind — met most of the demand for the national electricity market (NEM) just before lunchtime on Wednesday, surpassing 50 per cent of supply for the first time.
The NEM provides power to all jurisdictions except Western Australia and the Northern Territory, which have separate grids.
Angus Gemmell, the founder and head of renewable energy firm Solar Choice, hailed the achievement, saying it showed Australia was rapidly reducing its reliance on fossil fuels such as coal.
One of the things that “everyone knows” is that people working in the Justice Department, Homeland Security, the State Department, and especially the military are in the tank for Trump. The data, however, tell a different story.
Foreign Policy examined how much money was donated to campaign committees from employees of the State Department, the military, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department, drawing on data from the Center for Responsive Politics. When combining contribution amounts together, Sanders is the biggest beneficiary of national security support, followed by Buttigieg and Warren. Democratic front-runner Biden and President Donald Trump trail behind those candidates, ranking no higher than third for any one department.
Perhaps most surprising are the contributions from military personnel, who are often though of as Trump’s people.
This is evidence that those who know the most about our national security and are most responsible for defending it are no friends of Trump. And the good news about that, besides its obvious implications for the 2020 election, is that what few checks do exist on Trump are probably due to those responsible, sane people working in the national security sector.
America took a step towards a rational policy on marijuana yesterday.
The House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill Wednesday that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2019, or MORE Act, passed 24-10 after more than two hours of debate. It now heads to the full House.
The bill would remove marijuana from the list of federally controlled substances, allow states to set their own marijuana policy and require federal courts to expunge prior convictions for marijuana offenses. A 5% tax on marijuana products would also establish a trust fund for programs designed to help people disproportionately impacted by the "war on drugs," including job training and treatment for substance abuse.
…
Removing marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances — the same category as heroin and ecstasy — could provide access for veterans through the Department of Veterans Affairs. Doctors at the VA are allowed to discuss marijuana use with patients, but can't recommend it, even in states where it's legal.
But, there has been growing bipartisan support for access to medical marijuana for veterans. Advocates have also been asking for more research into the impact of medical marijuana.
Let’s take a little musical break before we get into some more of the good news.
One thing I’ve noticed about the Good News Roundup over the past few weeks is the lack of stories out of Texas. Let’s fix that right now.
Ever since Republicans took over state government in Texas in the 1990’s, the Democratic party has pretty much given up on the state Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals, offering only token opposition (and sometimes not even that) to the GOP. Now, thanks to the 2018 blue wave and especially to Beto O’Rourke’s strong run against Ted Cruz, Democrats are eager to run for the state’s two highest courts.
For Brandon Birmingham, a state district judge in Dallas, the 2020 race for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals started on election night 2018.
As he watched Beto O’Rourke win more votes than any Texas Democrat ever had in a statewide race, Birmingham — who won reelection that night with 100% of the vote in his countywide district — began to mull his own chances at winning Texas. Within weeks, he’d reached out to the state Democratic Party. By December, he’d sat down with party officials over breakfast in Dallas to discuss a possible run.
Now, as the 2020 election season begins in earnest after the start of the filing period Nov. 9, Birmingham is one of 14 Democrats seeking one of seven seats on the state’s two high courts — an unusually crowded and unusually qualified field for races that have, over the past two decades plus, proved suicide missions for Democrats. This year, with a controversial Republican president on the ballot and sky-high stakes for Texas Democrats, candidates are hoping the races look more like heroes’ journeys.
“In 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012, the last four cycles, the month of October was spent talking and begging people to come to us, to run for these kinds of offices,” said Glen Maxey, a former Texas House member who is coordinating statewide judicial races for the Texas Democratic Party. “That’s what’s different about 2020. We did not make a single phone call. … We have not twisted a single arm about doing this.”
Democrats have not run a contested primary for the state’s high courts since 2008. As recently as last year, Democrats failed even to field a candidate in one race for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
But “2020 is going to be the year when the blue tide overtakes the state,” said Chrysta Castañeda, a Democratic Dallas attorney seeking a seat on the Railroad Commission. “Our numbers are increasing. They were phenomenal in 2018, even over 2016 — all the movement is in that direction.”
The party is hoping to replicate a 2018 election cycle during which modest Democratic gains had outsized impacts on the judiciary. Democrats lost races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, but they won majorities on seven of the state’s 14 appeals courts; before the election, Democrats held seats on just three of those courts.
This story hits close to home, since the events in the case and the trial happened in my home county.
In 1998, Rodney Reed was convicted of murder and sentenced to die. The conviction was primarily because Mr. Reed’s semen was found inside the victim’s body, and the jury (and subsequent appellate judges) refused to believe that Reed, a black man, could have been having a consensual affair with the victim, who was white.
After tireless efforts by Reed’s family which slowly grew into an international movement, and faced with voluminous evidence of Reed’s innocence, Texas’ Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday issued an indefinite stay of execution and ordered examination of three points of appeal.
IN A DRAMATIC TURN of events, Texas’s Court of Criminal Appeals issued an indefinite stay of execution for Rodney Reed, pending further court action on three points of appeal — including whether Reed is actually innocent of the murder that sent him to death row more than 20 years ago.
On November 15, the state’s highest criminal court concluded that questions about whether prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence and sponsored false testimony at Reed’s trial, along with the question of Reed’s innocence, should be kicked back to the trial court for further vetting.
Reed, now 51, has been on Texas’s death row since 1998, when he was sentenced to die for the murder of a 19-year-old woman named Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas, a small town about 30 miles east of Austin.
In granting the stay of execution, the court is questioning whether the state violated Reed’s rights by withholding information from his defense lawyers. While the state had an obligation to turn over case-related information from all local law enforcement officers, the accounts of Derleth and others suggest that did not happen.
The second question raised by the court is whether Fennell lied at Reed’s trial when he testified that he and Stites had a loving, conflict-free relationship. Numerous witnesses, now including the Sappingtons, have called that claim into question.
Looming over it all is the question of whether Reed is actually innocent of the murder for which he was condemned to die, which the court is also apparently interested in, despite its long and complicated history with that question.
Like many people here in Bastrop county, I have met and spoken with members of the Reed family. Their strength and perseverance in the face of a criminal justice system that is more criminal than justice is amazing and inspiring. It’s good to see it finally paying off.
One of the more subtle ways of illegitimately manipulating the vote is to manipulate the census. Without a concerted effort to ensure an accurate census, minority groups are often undercounted, which effects redistricting as well as federal aid. Anyone who knows anything about Texas government will be unsurprised to learn that the state is making no effort towards an accurate census. Fortunately, the people are stepping in to do what the government won’t.
In lieu of state support to ensure accurate census numbers, advocates and local government officials from across Texas announced Wednesday morning their own plans to reach all parts of the vast and notoriously hard-to-count state.
A coalition of dozens of nonprofit and philanthropy organizations as well as local governments launched Texas Counts, a centralized hub for the 2020 census that already has more than $3 million to help local communities with outreach. Next year's decennial census begins April 1 and must be submitted to the president by Dec. 31.
Ann Beeson, the CEO of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, one of the organizations heading up Texas Counts, said 25% of Texans are considered hard to count because they live in Spanish-speaking or immigrant communities, reside in sparse rural areas or are experiencing homelessness.
"While we have wonderful get-out-the-count efforts underway in major metropolitan areas and other areas of the state, way too many communities across our state lack the resources and support that they need to ensure a complete count," Beeson said. As a result, CPPP and others formed the two-pronged Texas Counts. One focus is on engagement with local groups across the state like health clinics, businesses and faith-based organizations. The other is on issuing grants to communities from a statewide fund for things like outreach to hard-to-reach communities and workers to support understaffed complete count committees.
"You don't have to be a part of any party to care about an accurate count of Texans," Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape said. "It's important because we're all Americans, and we're all Texans, and we want what's rightfully ours, and we can't get it if we don't know how many of us there are and where we live."
Before we move beyond the borders of the Lone Star State, how’s about a little Texas music for y’all.
So here’s a few odds and ends of good news from all over.
The Navajo Generating Station has long been a major source of air pollution in the Four Corners area and a major cause of decreased air quality at the Grand Canyon. On Monday, the plant shut down for good, another casualty of the dying coal industry.
A massive coal-fired power plant that served customers in the West for nearly 50 years shut down Monday, the latest closure in a shift away from coal and toward renewable energy and cheaper power.
The Navajo Generating Station near the Arizona-Utah line was expected to shutter by the end of the year, but the exact day hadn’t been certain as the plant worked to deplete a stockpile of coal
The 2,250-megawatt, three-unit plant was one of the largest in the U.S. West and had long been a target of environmentalists, who argued it polluted the air and contributed to health problems. Cheaper prices for power produced by natural gas, rather than environmental regulations, led the owners to decide in 2017 to close it.
Trump has long promised to promote the coal industry despite its terrible effect on the environment. But as we all know, everything Trump touches dies.
In 2015 North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature made it illegal to remove public monuments to the Confederacy, because no one defends anti-American traitors as vigorously as the GOP. But Tuesday, a statue of a Confederate soldier was removed from the Chatham County courthouse for a perfectly wonderful reason.
Preparations began Tuesday night to carefully dismantle the statue of a soldier outside the historic Chatham County courthouse, where it had stood since 1907, and continued for hours overnight, said county spokeswoman Kara Lusk Dudley. By dawn, even the base was gone.
As it turns out, the statue was no longer a public monument, having been gifted to a private organization some time ago.
It has been rare for public officials to take down Confederate statues in North Carolina since the enactment of a 2015 state historic monuments law restricting the removal of public monuments.
But county officials argued in court that the monument was private property, owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and a judge hearing the group's challenge declined to block the removal. (italics mine)
After the massive voter participation in the 2018 Blue Wave and the equally large numbers in elections earlier this month, states are preparing for what could be a historic level of voter enthusiasm next November.
State elections officials are preparing for a massive surge in voter turnout in 2020 after elections this year broke participation records across the country.
In interviews, secretaries of state said they paid close attention to elections in Kentucky, Louisiana and Virginia this year, all states where more voters than ever showed up for what are usually sleepy off-year contests. Several said they had seen a sharp increase in turnout in their own backyards, even in nonpartisan school board elections.
Those results, coupled with higher-than-expected turnout in the 2018 midterms and polls that show voters are extremely enthusiastic about next year’s presidential election, are stark warnings to elections administrators who are already making preparations for what could be record-breaking turnout.
“We know there’s a fire that’s been lit out there, and we definitely saw [it] in Louisiana and Kentucky, some of the trends there,” said Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate (R), who is also president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. “We’re going to see an increase again from previous years, and we know we’d better be ready.”
As we’ve seen again and again, when voters come out, Democrats win.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
In what could possibly be the last court case of its kind, a former Nazi concentration camp guard is on trial in Hamburg.
Bruno Dey, who joined the SS in his teens, covered his face on his recent arrival at court in a wheelchair, on the third day of a 23-day trial, scheduled to run until late February. As a result of the ages of those involved, each trial day is limited to two hours a day and there are a maximum of two trial days per week.
Facing 5,230 counts of accessory to murder, Dey claimed in a statement he had no knowledge of the mass murders under way at the Stutthof concentration camp, despite admitting seeing prisoners led into the gas chambers, hearing their screams and noting the rattling of the steel door.
Justice prevails, no matter how long it may take, as long as good people are determined to seek it out.
Finally, it must be noted that there has been an appalling lack of goat videos around here lately. Someone has to do something about that, and I guess it has to be me.
Finally, one last thing to be glad about.
That’s all I got today, but I know there’s a lot more that will show up in the comments thread. And if you don’t see enough good news here, go out and make some of your own.
I want to give a heartfelt thanks to those of you who have expressed your support during my absence. I especially want to thank Goodie, the goddess of the GNRU, for the Box of Rain and all of those who helped fill it. Today’s Roundup, and all the Roundups I do in the future, are because of you.
Play us out, Jerry.