Its that time once again friends, for the Monday Good News Roundup, where our intrepid GNR Newsroom (Myself, Killer300 and Bhu) gather you up good news articles to get your week started right.
I got nothing else to say this week, so lets just get right to the good stuff.
Because God knows haters gonna hate, the sorry likes of neo-Nazis and The Goyim Defense League declared Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, a National Day of Hate, per orders to, "Shock the masses with banner drops, stickers, fliers, and graffiti." Instead, law enforcement and faith leaders prepped to confront brown-shirted storm-troopers improbably met only with glad defiant crowds proclaiming "Love Not Hate," "A Day of Resolve," "We Are Here." So okay. Maybe there's a sliver of hope for us.
News of the planned "Day of Hate" reportedly came from a tiny neo-Nazi group in Iowa, which distributed pep-talks and flyers online to white-supremacist fan-boys like the National Socialist Movement and the guys with the hilarious goyim name urging them to target Jews on their day of rest to mark the last Saturday of Black History Month, because, c'mon, Jews and blacks, pretty much the same, right? In America in the year 2023, with one major political party daily preaching hate, fear, bigotry and wariness of the "other," any other at all, this is unsurprising, if deeply distressing. Still, if you're wondering how we got here, look no further than the malignant cretins at Fox News, who it turns out ran at least one racist, hate-spewing piece of toxic drivel every day of Black History Month - from Tucker ranting about "white genocide" to Roseanne Barr explaining "white racism" means "Jewish control" to Mark Levin whining about a "top-down woke revolution" in the military tragically hunting down "supposed white rage and white supremacy in the ranks."
So in short, a bunch of fashy little twits decided to try and scare everyone by puffing their chests and talking big, and then found out once again they were severely outnumbered. What a surprise (Its not a surprise).
Resisting fracking by celebrating the positives about Leitrim life was a conscious strategic decision and became the group’s hallmark. In LL’s constitution, campaigners asserted that Leitrim is “a vibrant, creative, inclusive and diverse community,” challenging the underlying assumptions of the fracking project that Leitrim was a marginal place worth sacrificing for gas. The group developed a twin strategy of local organizing — which rooted them in the community — and political campaigning, which enabled them to reach from the margins to the center of Irish politics. This combination of “rooting” and “reaching” was crucial to the campaign’s success.
The war against fossil fuels continue. Its a war we will win eventually, but we still aren’t winning it fast enough, so we have to go harder.
Ever since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, many analysts have worried about the durability of Western support for Kyiv. Not a week goes by without new reports of weakening resolve, war fatigue, or cracks in the coalition. Yet a year into the conflict, the West’s commitment to Ukraine is undiminished—and, measured by aid delivered, stronger than ever.
This unity is unprecedented and underappreciated, and it far surpasses the strongest periods of transatlantic cohesion during the Cold War. It runs across states, societies, and companies. Every EU and NATO member state except Hungary has rallied behind Ukraine, despite deep divisions that preceded the war—over Poland’s authoritarian drift, for instance, and the United Kingdom’s ill-tempered exit from the European Union. Troubled economies roiled by war-fueled inflation have not led any major political party to argue that the costs of backing Ukraine are too high or that it is time to accommodate Russia’s demands. Pro-Ukraine policies have passed electoral tests in Italy and Sweden, where governments have turned over but support for Kyiv has endured. French President Emmanuel Macron beat off a challenge from far-right opposition leader Marine Le Pen, who came to see her long-standing ties to the Kremlin as a liability and destroyed thousands of leaflets picturing her with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The fact is no one likes a bully, so Putin painted a target on his back when he decided to pick on Ukraine (and he embarrassed himself even further by continually losing against Ukraine).
The question for today’s new unions—as well as for workers hoping to rebuild established ones—is: Can they learn the lessons that most legacy unions have failed to understand? The most important of these is that the high-energy organizing work never stops, from the first conversations among workers considering a union all the way to winning the hard fight for a first contract. Until last year’s revival, the most recent reform movement among unions (the “New Voice” program that began in the mid-1990s) blundered big-time on this front: Not only did the unions fail to continue the high-participation approach that won their unionization elections, but they often explicitly deprioritized the fight to secure a first contract. Instead, they left that effort to inexperienced, newly organized rank-and-file workers—or to less-than-competent staff representatives who weren’t intent on teaching workers what it takes to win and how to build workplace power and organization during the campaign for a first contract.
The Unionization efforts lately have been inspiring, but they are far from over. Lets keep it up.
In a sweeping step earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed a rule that would void noncompete clauses and ban their use in future contracts. The agency said the move would affect 30 million Americans, roughly one out of every five workers.
"This would say not only are all of those clauses unenforceable, but employers have to tell their workers, you no longer have a noncompete, you're free to leave," FTC Director of Policy Planning Elizabeth Wilkins told ABC News. "Effectively, that would mean that all of a sudden those 30 million workers could leave their jobs and find a better one for them tomorrow."
Of course some help from the Government is also good on that front. Thank you FTC!
A majority of Americans in a new poll have a positive association with the term “woke,” understanding it to mean “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.”
The USA Today-Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 56 percent agreed with the more positive definition, while 39 percent had a negative association with the word and understood it to mean “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.”
Yeah, it turns out most people consider being compassionate and caring about others feelings to be a good thing. Only in the mean spirited and wrong headed GOP could being “woke” be a bad thing.
Anyway, hear that rumble in the distance? Get away from the trees and anything metal, its time for a GNR LIGHTNING ROUND!
The Wollemi pine survival proves we can save more trees
Studies show asteroid bashing spacecraft was phenomenally successful
restoring voting rights to felons a rare bipartisan voting change
Memphis approves police reforms after beating death of Tyre Nichols
Donna’s law: A new suicide prevention tool
That does it for this weeks lightning round, back to our normal good news stories.
onservative attacks on ESG investing have spread to statehouses across the country.
Now business groups are fighting back.
From North Dakota to Mississippi, state lawmakers have defeated proposals that would bar state governments or pension funds from doing business with financial institutions that follow ESG – environmental, social and governance – principles, making way for weakened versions of legislation.
"We’re starting to see a backlash in the states to measures that would restrict investors from taking into account long-term business risk in their portfolios,” Republican strategist Ron Bonjean told USA TODAY. “There is a clear business and financial case to these measures’ failures: the free market depends on investment decisions that take material risks into account.”
Ugh, Desantis. This guy is gonna be trouble mark my words. Hopefully this time we get out in front of him before he becomes another Trump.
The Missouri Senate this week adjourned a day early for a scheduled spring break in disarray after a group of Democratic legislators spent days filibustering a bill that would ban gender-affirming health care for minors.
State Republican leadership made the decision to abruptly end the first half of the legislative session after hours of closed-door debate on the bill, the Springfield News-Leader reported.
Floor action had slowed to a crawl throughout Tuesday and Wednesday as the chamber’s 10 Democrats sought to reach a compromise with Republicans on the measure, which is only one of nine transgender health care-related bills under consideration this year.
The bill’s sponsor, Missouri Sen. Mike Moon (R) wrote on Twitter that the legislature had spent at least 10 hours over the two days debating the proposed legislation.
“To adjourn one day early Is unbelievable,” he wrote.
The two-day Democratic filibuster was led by state Sen. Greg Razer, Missouri’s only openly gay state senator.
All over the country the GOP is attacking Trans people because they consider them an easy target, but good people aren’t gonna stand for it. We at the GNR Say Trans rights.
Once the exclusive topic of poorly attended planning meetings in local town halls, parking requirements have now become the unlikeliest of national issues. Nolan Gray, author of the zoning book Arbitrary Lines, says that parking has become “an incredibly influential policy area that no one thought was important.”
The New York Times wrote a substantial article on parking reform on Tuesday, reporting that San Jose, California, with one million residents, became the largest city in the US to eliminate minimum parking requirements in December of 2022. The Times described the problem:
Why do we need so many parking spaces when no one can afford a car?
Under the duress of blight, Detroit is studying a solution that might curb the raging decline of the city: a split-rate tax, where land will be taxed higher than the buildings or improvements made on it.
Detroit has been referred to as a “lost city,” a place whose early embrace of auto-centric development undermined the resiliency of the city in the face of the multiple crises that befell it in the late 20th century, tearing down social, political, and financial strength that had once made Detroit a great place to be. Now, it’s a place where many property owners sit on vacant or poorly maintained property. With property tax rates among the highest in the country for commercial buildings and apartments, allowing a property to fall into decline can be a rational strategy for landlords to save on their taxes, according to Strong Towns President Charles Marohn.
Lot of good news out of Michigan this week. Hope this helps Detroit.
The Michigan state Senate on Wednesday voted to repeal the state’s 1931 abortion ban as well as its sentencing guidelines.
The bills were passed 20-18, along party lines in the Democratic-controlled Senate after passing the House last week and were sent to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her signature. Democrats control the governor’s office and the state legislature for the first time in four decades.
See? Told you Michigan is crushing it this week. Also the specter of Roe Vs. Wade continues to haunt the GOP.
Fossil-fueled plants are expected to make up just 16 percent of new capacity additions completed in 2023, based on January data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Carbon-free power plants are on track to deliver 84 percent of new capacity — that includes solar, wind, nuclear and battery storage. That’s a larger share than last year, when clean power plants made up 78 percent of new capacity.
We’re doing good on clean energy it seems, but we can do better. Lets get up to 100%.
A test flight over central Washington state marked the second significant, if early, milestone for hydrogen-powered aviation so far this year.
Universal Hydrogen said it successfully flew a 40-passenger aircraft using primarily hydrogen during part of the 15-minute flight early on Thursday morning. The Los Angeles–based startup replaced one of the plane’s two turbine engines with a fuel-cell electric powertrain. The other conventional engine remained in place, though the pilot said he was able to reduce its use.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love living in the future.
Speaking of the future, that’s where I will see you, until next week my friends, me and the entire GNR Newsroom say have a good Monday.