Biden Boots 'Union Busters and Anti-Government Ideologues' From Key Labor Panel

Labor leaders called for replacements "with a background in labor-management relations who are not hostile toward unions."

by

Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 Published on Wednesday, February 03, 2021 

by

Common Dreams

A sculpted bust of Cesar Chavez oversees a collection of personal framed photos on a table behind President Joe Biden's desk in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

In another early win for organized labor, President Joe Biden on Tuesday requested that all 10 members of a key federal panel—who were appointed by his predecessor—immediately resign, and then fired the two appointees who refused to do so.

As Government Executive noted, former President Donald Trump had stacked the Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP), which handles disputes between agencies and unions during collective bargaining negotiations, "with anti-labor partisans, most of whom lacked experience in labor-management relations or conflict resolution."

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees—which represents over 700,000 government workers and had accused the Trump appointees of improperly favoring agencies—told Bloomberg Law that "FSIP is a critical component in the federal negotiating process, and we look forward to President Biden's future picks issuing just decisions, unencumbered by political interference."

Although presidents have previously replaced all panel members, Bloomberg Law pointed out that Biden acted more quickly than his predecessors:

Trump dismissed all members of the FSIP in May 2017—about four months after he took office—and then moved that summer to begin installing a new panel. Former President Barack Obama dismissed the panel in March 2009 and began naming new members that September.

FSIP members are appointed by the White House and serve at the pleasure of the president; they don't require Senate confirmation and don't have defined terms.

National Treasury Employees Union national president Tony Reardon called Biden's overhaul of the panel "an extremely positive development."

Reardon expressed hope that "an FSIP made up of individuals with a background in labor-management relations who are not hostile toward unions or workers will help put federal employee unions and agency leadership back on equal footing, where disagreements can be resolved fairly and in a way that serves the interests of employees, agencies and taxpayers."

"The Trump-appointed panel was none of those things," he told Government Executive, "and its record of nearly always siding with agency management, notwithstanding the record before it, proved its bias."

Thank you! @POTUS https://t.co/y8ApnZbp4a

— AFGE District 3 (@3Afge) February 3, 2021

International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers secretary-treasurer Matt Biggs also welcomed the development, saying in a statement Tuesday that "the FSIP members unilaterally installed by President Trump can best be described as a 'who's who' of union busters and anti-government ideologues."

"They spent the better part of the last four years unilaterally imposing draconian contracts on federal unions and their members," Biggs said. "These are contracts that were not the result of good faith bargaining and compromise. Rather, they were intended to pull the rug out from under the union from any realistic ability to represent their members."

The Senate Democratic Caucus backed union complaints about bad-faith negotiations "in a furious letter" to Andrew Saul, the Trump-appointed commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) who has not yet been removed by Biden, Mark Joseph Stern reported for Slate on Wednesday. He continued:

Employees at agencies throughout the executive branch have been scorched by Trump's impasses panel. Its treatment of employees at the Social Security Administration, which oversees the country's largest government program and operates the largest judicial system in the nation, provides a case in point. Shortly before the pandemic, the impasses panel rewrote the SSA union's contract to roll back the agency's teleworking program, which had increased employee efficiency. (Managers partially restored telework in 2020 several weeks after many other agencies switched to remote work.) It slashed the amount of time that workers could spend on union activities far beyond what management requested. And it abolished the agency's responsibility to inform union members of their right to representation. To lock in these anti-union changes, the panel also extended the agreement by four years—though Biden's new appointees should be able to reopen negotiations after overturning their predecessors' policies.

The panel's assault on the SSA union has implications for millions of Americans. Administrative law judges at the SSA hear claims for disability benefits, and because they exercise judicial powers, they are meant to be independent. Their union contract safeguards this independence from political interference. At the bargaining table, however, the SSA's leaders stripped these safeguards from the contract—and the impasses panel backed their decision. Melissa McIntosh, president of the agency's administrative law judge union, told me that the panel "took away our ability to protect our independence through the contract," thereby depriving disabled Americans of their due process right to a neutral arbiter.

"Biden's work is not yet finished: The Federal Labor Relations Authority, which houses the impasses panel, remains in Republican control," Stern added, while also pointing out that the FSIP overhaul is not the president's first action applauded by organized labor.

Shortly after taking office, Biden sacked Peter Robb, the Trump-appointed general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board blasted by critics as an "extreme, anti-union ideologue" and a "uniquely destructive figure."

Stern noted in addition to appointing "a labor-friendly replacement" to the NLRB post, the president "reversed executive orders that had severely limited federal unions' ability to organize and bargain."

After 412 Years and 1,391 Executions, Virginia Poised to Abolish Death Penalty as Senate Passes Historic Bill

"We're going to look back 50 years from now, and that electric chair and that lethal injection table, they're going be sitting in a museum," predicted Sen. Scott A. Surovell.

by

Brett Wilkins, staff writer

 Published on Wednesday, February 03, 2021

by

Common Dreams

Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia is home to the state's death row and execution chamber. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Death penalty abolitionists on Wednesday applauded the passage of a bill by the Virginia Senate that—if passed by the Democrat-controlled House and signed by the Democratic governor as expected—will end capital punishment in the commonwealth after a more than 400-year history. 

"Virginia has executed more people than any other state. The practice is fundamentally inequitable. It is inhumane. It is ineffective. And we know that in some cases, people on death row have been found innocent."
—Gov. Ralph Northam

The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports the Senate voted 21-17 along party lines to approve S.B. 1165, introduced by Sen. Scott A. Surovell (D-Mount Vernon), after a prolonged and charged floor debate. 

"We're going to look back 50 years from now, and that electric chair and that lethal injection table, they're going be sitting in a museum," Surovell predicted. "They're gonna be sitting next to the stocks in Jamestown and Williamsburg. They're going to be sitting next to the slave auctioneer block."

"This thing is going to be a museum piece, and people are going to look back and wonder how it was that we ever used these things," he added. 

BREAKING: Sen. @ssurovell's SB 1165 to abolish the death penalty passed the Virginia Senate.

Virginia has executed more people than any other state throughout its history. It's long overdue to end the death penalty once and for all. pic.twitter.com/0Yp47TO2as

— ACLU of Virginia (@ACLUVA) February 3, 2021

During the floor debate, Sen. Mamie Locke (D-Hampton) spoke of the days of Black people were lynched while white spectators picnicked nearby.

"Lynchings were the precursor of the death penalty," said Locke. "In the 1940s and 1950s, they simply moved from outside to the inside—legal violence instead of vigilante justice. It is not lost on anyone—it's those states that have a high number of lynchings correlate with their support of the death penalty, including here in Virginia."

In fact, the very first execution to occur in the English colonies that became the United States happened in Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1608 when Capt. George Kendall was killed by a firing squad for treason. Four years later, colonial Gov. Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral, and Martial Laws, under which execution was the punishment for crimes including such minor offenses such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indigenous people.

BREAKING: Virginia's Senate just voted to pass legislation abolishing the death penalty, 21 to 17 votes.

Virginia has been one of most pro-death penalty states in U.S. history. So this would be a historic development. Next up: the House still has to vote on it.

— Taniel (@Taniel) February 3, 2021

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Virginia has executed nearly 1,400 people since then—more than any other state in the union. As in other states, there are troubling racial disparities in the application of capital punishment. While Virginia's population is about 20% Black, Black people make up nearly half of the people executed there since 1976. 

That was the year when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gregg v. Georgia, reinstated the death penalty four years after it was deemed a violation of the Constitution's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" in Furman v. Georgia.

Since resinstatement, Virginia has trailed only Texas, which has put 567 people to death. 

Today, there are only two people on Virginia's death row, and the state has not executed anyone in nearly four years. If the House of Delegates—the state legislature's lower chamber—passes its version of the S.B. 1165 as expected, and if Gov. Ralph Northam signs the measure into law as he has promised, there will be no more executions in Virginia and the two death sentences will be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

Virginia will then become the first Southern state and the 23rd in the nation to end capital punishment. 

Northam led abolitionists in Virginia and across the nation in hailing S.B. 1165's passage. 

"Today's vote in the Virginia Senate is a tremendous step toward ending the death penalty in our commonwealth," he said in a statement. "Virginia has executed more people than any other state. The practice is fundamentally inequitable. It is inhumane. It is ineffective. And we know that in some cases, people on death row have been found innocent."

It’s time for our Commonwealth to join 22 other states and abolish the death penalty. I applaud every Senator who cast a courageous vote today, and I look forward to signing this bill into law.

Read my full statement: https://t.co/5VKXO6UtPj

— Ralph Northam (@GovernorVA) February 4, 2021

"It's time for Virginia to join 22 other states and abolish the death penalty," Northam asserted. "I applaud every senator who cast a courageous vote today, and I look forward to signing this bill into law."

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'A Desperate Smear': Ilhan Omar Slams GOP Over Attempt to Distract From Bigotry of Marjorie Taylor Greene

"Republicans will do anything to distract from the fact that they have not only allowed but elevated members of their own caucus who encourage violence."

by

Jake Johnson, staff writer

 Published on Wednesday, February 03, 2021

by

Common Dreams

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) speaks during a press conference outside the DFL Headquarters on August 5, 2020 in St Paul, Minnesota. (Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota on Wednesday forcefully denounced House Republicans' effort to strip her of committee assignments as part of a bigoted smear campaign aimed at distracting attention from GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who Democrats are attempting to remove from congressional panels for promoting violence against lawmakers and peddling vile conspiracy theories.

"It's time to stop whitewashing the actions of the violent conspiracy theorists, who pose a direct and immediate threat to their fellow Members of Congress and our most fundamental democratic processes."
—Rep. Ilhan Omar

"Let's be clear: this is a desperate smear rooted in racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia," Omar said in a statement responding to an amendment by House Republicans, which seeks to replace Greene's name with Omar's in the Democratic resolution calling for removal of the freshman Georgia Republican from the budget and education committees.

Led by Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) and co-sponsored by Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Ronny Jackson (Texas), Jody Hice (Ga.), and Jeff Duncan (S.C.), the GOP amendment accuses Omar of making "anti-Semitic comments"—alluding to a 2019 tweet in which the Minnesota Democrat said unwavering support for Israel in Congress is "all about the Benjamins," a reference to AIPAC's political influence.

Omar apologized for the tweet, while Greene has shown no regret for endorsing conspiracy theories about mass school shootings being staged or supporting the execution of Democratic lawmakers. The Georgia Republican is currently attempting to raise money off the efforts to remove her from congressional committees.

"Marjorie Taylor Greene has incited violence against her fellow members of Congress, repeatedly singling out prominent women of color," Omar said Wednesday. "She actively encouraged the insurrection on the Capitol that threatened my life and the life of every member of Congress, and resulted in multiple deaths. She ran a campaign ad holding an assault rifle next to my face. She came to the Capitol demanding that me and Rep. [Rashida] Tlaib swear in on the Christian bible instead of the Quran."

"The House Republican Caucus, instead of holding her accountable, is now fanning the flames," Omar continued. "Republicans will do anything to distract from the fact that they have not only allowed but elevated members of their own caucus who encourage violence. It's time to stop whitewashing the actions of the violent conspiracy theorists, who pose a direct and immediate threat to their fellow Members of Congress and our most fundamental democratic processes."

Republicans desperate bad faith ploy to justify bigotry must be defeated.

They can not succeed in bullying their way out of accountability.

That’s why this vote matters. https://t.co/UHTveanYwf

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 3, 2021

Tlaib (D-Mich.) voiced a similar message Wednesday, calling the Republican amendment a "false equivalency" and "a pathetically desperate smear."

"Marjorie Taylor Greene has incited violence against her fellow members of Congress," said Tlaib. "She's unfit to serve, even by today's GOP standards."

 "We applaud efforts to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from House committees, but that is not enough. She should be expelled from Congress."
—Scott Simpson, Muslim Advocates

Earlier Wednesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that after speaking to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), "it is clear there is no alternative to holding a floor vote on the resolution to remove Rep. Greene from her committee assignments."

"The Rules Committee will meet this afternoon, and the House will vote on the resolution tomorrow," added Hoyer.

During Wednesday's call with Hoyer, according to Politico, McCarthy "sought a commitment" from the House majority leader "to yank the resolution from the floor if Republicans agreed to move Greene from the House Education and Labor Committee to another panel." Hoyer refused the offer.

This is disgusting. A bad faith attack on a progressive woman of color designed to distract from Marjorie Taylor Greene's reprehensible actions.

We join in solidarity with @Ilhan against the smear campaign. https://t.co/ypVqqs6Bd0

— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) February 3, 2021

In a statement Wednesday, the rights group Muslim Advocates slammed the Republican "effort led by several anti-Muslim members of Congress" to strip Omar of her committee assignments and demanded that Greene be held fully accountable.

"Muslim members of Congress are facing legitimate threats on their lives because of the bigotry espoused by Rep. Greene and her allies in Congress," said Scott Simpson, the group's public advocacy director. "She has repeatedly singled out Muslim members of Congress because of their faith and broadcast multiple false, dangerous conspiracy theories about Muslims."

"Now that there is a chance that Rep. Greene may face some small consequence for her actions, she is hoping that bigotry will save her. Members of Congress must not let that happen," Simpson added. "We applaud efforts to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from House committees, but that is not enough. She should be expelled from Congress."

'This Is Just the Beginning': Why Poland's War on Abortion Should Scare You

This is not just 'Poland being Poland.' These actions are illegal, inhumane and could spread across Europe.

by

Neil Datta

People demonstrate against restrictions on abortion law in Poland. Krakow, Poland on January 29, 2021. The protest was organized by Women Strike after Poland's highest court has officially published today the law that states that all abortions in Poland will now be banned except in cases of rape and incest and when the mother's life or health are considered to be at risk. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Poland’s near-total abortion ban came into effect last week when it was published in the country’s official government gazette. Polish hospitals and medical practitioners are no longer allowed to carry out an abortion in the case of a foetal anomaly. Such cases made up the great majority of terminations performed in the country, which, even before the new ban, already had the harshest abortion law in Europe—now, abortions are only permitted in cases of rape and incest and when the mother’s life or health are endangered.  

What’s happening in Poland right now shouldn’t be seen as merely typical behaviour by the Polish state. This is not just ‘Poland being Poland’. These actions are illegal, inhumane and could infiltrate the rest of Europe—and this is just the beginning. 

It’s illegal

Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, which issued the anti-abortion ruling is itself of highly contested legitimacy. Putting aside the substance of the ruling, the current tribunal is the result of a political power play by the ruling PiS (Law and Justice) party that evicted the previous judges and replaced them with judges more amenable to the party’s political agenda. The former judges have not recognised their eviction nor their newly installed replacements. 

Thus, the Constitutional Tribunal itself is the subject of fundamental democratic contestation in Poland, and the European Commission has raised concerns about it in its ongoing proceedings about infringement of the rule of law in Poland. 

As for the recent anti-abortion decision, one of the newly appointed judges on the tribunal was herself, prior to being appointed, one of the parliamentarians who signed the parliamentary motion asking the Constitutional Tribunal to judge on the matter of the constitutionality of abortion in the case of foetal anomaly. 

It’s inhumane

The provisions of the judgement go beyond the philosophical question of ‘right to choose’ versus ‘right to life’. By banning abortion for foetal anomaly, the Constitutional Tribunal is interfering in medical decisions that should be left to a woman and her loved ones, in consultation with her medical provider. 

The blanket ban just enacted will force Polish women to carry a non-viable pregnancy to term, thereby creating untold physical and psychological damage. Other provisions of Poland’s draconian abortion law impose prison sentences on those assisting women who terminate their pregnancy, including doctors, partners and family members. 

There is already a case of a woman’s boyfriend being sentenced to six months in prison for having driven his girlfriend to hospital after she started bleeding heavily from taking an abortion pill at home. 

It’s just the beginning

The current abortion ruling is not the result of popular will, it is the result of an illegitimate Constitutional Tribunal that did what the PiS government failed to achieve in 2016 with its legislative proposal to ban abortion. The government shelved that legislation after massive protests. 

Behind these initiatives hides a powerful outfit called the Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture. Ordo Iuris styles itself an independent conservative think tank; in reality, it is an extremist religious organisation and its leaders have created a web of reactionary organisations in Poland and beyond. 

Ordo Iuris lawyers drafted the text of the 2016 bill to ban abortion, as well as other legal texts, including arguments for leaving the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, and bills that criminalised comprehensive sexuality education, and restrict in-vitro fertilisation and a charter that created Poland’s now infamous ‘LGBT-free zones’. 

Ordo Iuris is able to make such progress because it has infiltrated the inner workings of the Polish state. For example, Ordo Iuris’s founder now sits on the Polish Supreme Court and other Ordo Iuris alumni occupy important positions in government ministries, academia, the judiciary and other public institutions including advising the Polish president.

It could spread to the rest of Europe

Poland is serving as a test bed for reactionary ideas to be exported to other countries. Investigative journalists have revealed how organisations under Ordo Iuris’s control have established tentacles in many EU member states. These organisations have started testing the waters in their own countries with the same ultra-conservative agendas. In Croatia, it was the Istanbul Convention, in Estonia it was a referendum on LGBT rights and in Lithuania abortion. 

The same investigative journalists found that Ordo Iuris spent millions of euros to set up these foreign affiliates—and each one will try to emulate what they see as accomplishments in Poland. And Ordo Iuris has further ambitions. On 29 January, the Polish government formally submitted Aleksander Stępkowski, the founder of Ordo Iuris, as one of Poland’s candidates for the European Court of Human Rights. 

What we are seeing in Poland is just the beginning. The beginning of the erosion of fundamental rights through pseudo-legal processes; first targeting women, then sexual minorities. Soon everybody will be concerned. 

It is also the beginning of exporting Poland’s ultra-conservatism beyond its borders. Thanks to Ordo Iuris’s international network, what happens in Poland will not stay in Poland. 

Unless Europeans take heed of the dramatic changes occuring in Poland and use all the tools at their disposal to uphold democracy and the rule of law—including by supporting the courageous movement within Poland that is fighting back against this democratic backsliding—then the same fate looms for many European countries.

Neil Datta is the secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual & Reproductive Rights.

US Supreme Court sides with Germany

 in Nazi-era art dispute

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court's ruling Wednesday in a multimillion-dollar dispute over a collection of religious artworks will make it harder for some lawsuits to be tried in U.S. courts over claims that property was taken from Jews during the Nazi era.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The justices sided with Germany in a dispute involving the heirs of Jewish art dealers and the 1935 sale of a collection of medieval Christian artwork called the Guelph Treasure. The collection, called the Welfenschatz in German, is said to now be worth at least $250 million.

The heirs argued that their relatives were forced to sell the collection of gold and silver artworks, including elaborate containers used to store Christian relics, intricate altars and ornate crosses, for below market value.

The heirs originally pressed their claims in Germany, but a German commission found the artworks’ sale was made voluntarily and for fair market value. A suit was then filed in the United States. Germany and the state-run foundation that owns the collection, which is on display in Berlin’s Museum of Decorative Arts, argued the case did not belong in American courts.

Foreign nations generally cannot be sued in U.S. courts, although there are exceptions spelled out in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

“The heirs have not shown that the FSIA allows them to bring their claims against Germany. We cannot permit them to bypass its design,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in an opinion for a unanimous court

Germany argued that an exception permitting certain suits against foreign countries in the U.S. does not cover those countries' disputes with their own citizens over property. The Supreme Court agreed.

Roberts wrote that Americans would be “surprised ... if a court in Germany adjudicated claims by Americans that they were entitled to hundreds of millions of dollars because of human rights violations committed by the United States Government years ago.” He said Germans' reaction to this case might be expected to be the same.

In a statement, Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation that owns the collection, welcomed the decision. He said it was the foundation's “long-held belief that this case should not be heard in U.S. court."

Nick O’Donnell, who represented the heirs of the art dealers, said in a statement that his clients were “obviously disappointed.” The case now goes back to a lower court for additional arguments on remaining issues, and O'Donnell said the heirs are considering their next steps.

Because of the decision in the Guelph Treasure case, the justices also sent a different dispute involving a suit against Hungary back to a lower court for further consideration. That case was filed in 2010 by 14 survivors of the Hungarian Holocaust, including some who survived being sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. They are seeking to be compensated for property taken from them and their families when they were forced to board trains to concentration camps.

Both cases were argued in December. At the time, the Trump administration urged the justices to side with Germany and Hungary.

The cases are Hungary v. Simon, 18-1447, and Germany v. Philipp, 19-351.

Jessica Gresko, The Associated Press

Feds ramp up efforts to help residents of Hong Kong immigrate to, stay in Canada


OTTAWA — The federal government is moving forward on efforts to help citizens of Hong Kong remain in Canada rather than return home amid China's clampdown on democracy.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

One of several new immigration programs designed to give Hong Kong residents a safe haven in Canada will open for applications on Monday.

The program is open to Hong Kong residents who've graduated with a Canadian post-secondary diploma or degree in the last five years or hold an equivalent foreign credential.

They'll be eligible to receive a work permit for up to three years, which could in turn open up the option for them to remain in Canada permanently.

While the program is available both to people living in Hong Kong and those already in Canada, given COVID-19 travel restrictions, it's expected the majority of those who will benefit initially are already here.

"With flexible open work permits and a fast-track to permanent residency, skilled Hong Kong residents will have a unique opportunity to develop their careers and help accelerate Canada’s economic recovery," Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said in a statement.

Details of the other two programs — one targeting residents with one year of work experience in Canada and the second for recent graduates coming directly from Hong Kong — are still being worked out.

All were announced last fall as demands grew for the Canadian government to do more in response to the Chinese government's move to implement new laws and measures in Hong Kong understood as efforts to suppress the freedom of people living there.

Word that the open work permit program will open on Feb. 8 comes as the Chinese government appears to be putting pressure on Canadians in Hong Kong.

China doesn't legally recognize dual nationality in Hong Kong, but as many as 300,000 people living there are believed to hold both Chinese and Canadian permanent residency.

Concerns are now rising that China will start enforcing the law on dual nationality more broadly which could cut Canadians off, for example, from consular access.

In recent weeks, reports have surfaced of people who hold both Chinese and Canadian passports being detained and forced to pick a nationality.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 4, 2021.

Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press

UCP co-founder urges Alberta premier to 'fire yourself' from intergovernmental post

EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is getting some unsolicited advice from the co-founder of the United Conservative Party: fire yourself as the intergovernmental affairs minister.

© Provided by The Canadian Press
Brian Jean says Kenney’s “fight everyone” approach is not getting the job done for Albertans on critical issues, including energy and federal relations.


“Fire yourself as intergovernmental affairs minister and appoint a new one,” Jean wrote in a guest column published Wednesday by Postmedia.

“Ideally, we would use a ‘good cop, bad cop’ approach, and this (new) minister could be the good cop to assist you in negotiations.

“We are currently without a good cop, and we are missing out on co-operation from other governments.”

While Kenney is at it, said Jean, he could impart a softer diplomatic tone throughout his government.

“Those in your government too often pick fights with Albertans and others rather than asking them to help solve problems," he wrote.

“Albertans want the premier’s and ministers’ offices to be staffed by grown-ups who can be trusted to maturely address the issues facing Albertans.”

Jean helped create the UCP by joining his Wildrose party with Kenney's Progressive Conservatives. Jean ran against Kenney for the UCP leadership and lost.

Asked about Jean’s comments, Kenney said he hadn’t read the article, but noted: “It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and be an armchair quarterback as we make our way through these multiple crises at the same time.”

In answer to a similar question on CHED radio Kenney said: “We were elected to fight for this province’s best interests, not to sit back passively and let others determine our future for us.”

Kenney often has a combative rhetorical style in pursuing Alberta’s vital interests, most recently on the Keystone XL oil pipeline expansion.

U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled the trans-border line last month on his first day in office in keeping with a campaign promise. The decision cost Alberta $1.5-billion in direct investment, perhaps more given Kenney's government also pledged another $6 billion in loan guarantees.

The premier -- who once publicly dismissed Justin Trudeau as “an empty trust-fund millionaire who has the political depth of a finger bowl” -- accused the prime minister of not fighting hard enough to change Biden’s mind and urged Ottawa to issue retaliatory trade sanctions.

He accused Biden of "insulting” Canada on his first day in office.

Kenney is also battling Michigan’s environmentally focused opposition to Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline under the Great Lakes. He has called Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer “brain dead.” Whitmer was national co-chair of Biden’s presidential campaign.

Kenney's government has also focused on what he has called shadowy global foes and environmentalists who he says are seeking to undermine Alberta's oil industry. He set up a $30-million-a-year "war room" and struck a public inquiry into foreign funding of oil opponents. Critics say both endeavours have been undermined by self-generated mistakes and controversies.

The government has been publicly tangling with doctors, teachers, academics and organized labour as it seeks to reform everything from pensions to to health care to public-sector wages.

Also Wednesday, Kenney responded to a call from UCP caucus member Drew Barnes for Alberta to hold a referendum on independence as a message to Ottawa to take seriously the province's concerns about energy development and revenue-sharing.

“Ottawa has to be 100 per cent aware of the consequences of not giving Albertans resource movement and a fair deal,” Barnes said in an interview.

“Albertans everywhere, every day, are telling me the desire to stand up to Ottawa is stronger than ever.”

Kenney said UCP founding documents make it clear the party is loyal to a united Canada.

“MLAs have a right to speak their mind, but this government will continue to fight for a strong Alberta within the Canadian Confederation,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 3, 2021

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

ONTARIO

Ten years ago the province was asked a question about old quarries and drinking water. Water authorities are still waiting for an answer


WATERLOO REGION — The organization in charge of protecting Waterloo Region’s drinking water has been waiting 10 years for the province to address the risk old aggregate pits and quarries pose to local drinking water.

When an aggregate pit that was operating below the water table is no longer active, ground water can fill up the pit. This body of water acts as a direct conduit between the surface and ground water, according to local experts.

The Lake Erie Region Source Protection Committee is concerned that if these ponds are close to wells taking in ground water for municipal supply, they represent a risk as the ponds are open to any kind of contamination from sources such as bacteria, salt, or fertilizer, and more.

The Lake Erie Region Source Protection Committee is one of 19 watershed organizations designated by the province to protect public drinking water. Waterloo Region is located within the Grand River watershed which is included in the Lake Erie region jurisdiction.

The committee asked the government to add aggregate mining in general to the Clean Water Act in 2010 as part of the act’s list of potential threats. They were told no.

In February 2011, the source committee sent a second, more specific request. They asked that ponding of ground water in old below-water-table aggregate mines be included as a local threat applying solely to the Lake Erie region. The committee feels such ponds could be a direct risk to drinking water if they are located near a public well.

Ten years later, they are still waiting for an answer.

Over the 10 years, the Aggregate Resources Act has undergone multiple adjustments. As well, the provincial government has changed leadership over the decade.

“I think the committee has been patient with recognizing that there’s been a lot of activities at the provincial level with regards to those changes with the Aggregate Resources Act regulations,” says Martin Keller, the source protection program manager with the Grand River Conservation Authority.

“It is something that the committee feels pretty strongly about. They feel that it is something that they would like to get an answer back. In October 2020, the issue of ponding in closed below-water-table aggregate mining pits was still a standing agenda item.”

The committee’s chair, Wendy Wright, made mention of the long-standing agenda item last month. “I just noticed that it’s coming up to 10 years since we made that first request for that information and by the time we get to the next meeting that clock will have ticked over. I can hardly believe it’s been that length of time that this has been on the agenda.”

If ponding in old below-water-table quarries is added as a local threat, the committee can create a plan to address it, request changes in provincial or municipal regulation, and alter activities that relate to ponding if they pose a risk to a source of public drinking water.

The province’s latest update on the issue was delivered in October by its representative, Olga Yudina. She says the ministry was waiting to respond until the updates to Aggregate Resources Act were complete. Now that the changes to the act are complete, Yudina says the province is revisiting the discussion.

Keller says groundwater typically has some sort of protection provided by the land on top of it. But this is not the case with a pond formed in a decommissioned quarry.

“Contamination can get in there, potentially,” says Keller. “It doesn’t mean it has to, but the potential is there and the committee comes from the point of view that those things should be addressed proactively so that things can be prevented or measures can be put in place to minimize impact.”

People should know that “the committee is taking its job seriously and identifying things that they think need to be addressed and looked after,” says Keller.

Keller did not list any specific pits he is concerned about.

Leah Gerber’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows her to report on stories about the Grand River Watershed. Email lgerber@therecord.com

Leah Gerber, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Waterloo Region Record

IT IS NORTH KOREA PUNKIN THE USA

The SolarWinds Hack Just Keeps Getting More Wild

Now the Chinese are involved. That’s one of the newest allegations to emerge in the SolarWinds scandal, the supply chain “cyber Pearl Harbor” that seems to have enveloped the entire U.S. government, as well as the private sector.

© Photo: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP (Getty Images)

While officials had previously stated Russian hackers were “likely” behind the extensive penetration into federal networks, a new story now claims hackers from China may have exploited a different vulnerability in the same software to gain entry to a payroll agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to Reuters, anonymous sources are saying a different threat actor managed to exploit SolarWinds software to worm its way into the National Finance Center, a federal payroll agency with USDA. The news organization reports:

The software flaw exploited by the suspected Chinese group is separate from the one the United States has accused Russian government operatives of using to compromise up to 18,000 SolarWinds customers, including sensitive federal agencies, by hijacking the company’s Orion network monitoring software.

It’s just the latest in a seemingly endless flood of news involving the massive cyber intrusion scandal. Investigators have sought to understand the extent of the breach, but they are struggling. Case in point: the recent discovery that nearly a third of the victims of the so-called “SolarWinds” scandal were not actually SolarWinds customers and, therefore, had been compromised by other (so far unknown) means.

The whole debacle was initially discovered in December. If you’ve been asleep since then, here’s the run-down: Investigators discovered that hackers had infiltrated networks throughout the government, Fortune 500 companies, and other entities using trojanized malware that had been affixed to software updates for SolarWinds’ Orion, a popular IT management program.

Other recent updates include:

The new CEO of SolarWinds, Sudhakar Ramakrishna, claims hackers were potentially reading the company’s emails for at least nine months. “Some email accounts were compromised. That led them to compromise other email accounts and as a result our broader [Office] 365 environment was compromised,” the CEO told the Wall Street Journal.

The floundering company has also announced it has recently patched three newly discovered vulnerabilities. Two of those were in the original Orion software that led to the network break-ins at federal agencies; the other was in a different product, the SolarWinds Serv-U FTP. This Serv-U vulnerability would’ve allowed “trivial remote code execution with high privileges,” Threatpost writes.

The newly confirmed head of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has said that he will thoroughly investigate the hack. He also promised to enhance the government’s overall defensive capabilities through “a review of the government’s Einstein incident detection program and CISA’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program to assess if they’re truly effective in addressing cyberthreats.”

Chemists create and capture einsteinium, 

the elusive 99th element
Harry Baker 

Scientists have successfully studied einsteinium — one of the most elusive and heaviest elements on the periodic table — for the first time in decades. The achievement brings chemists closer to discovering the so-called "island of stability," where some of the heftiest and shortest-lived elements are thought to reside

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© Provided by Live Science An illustration showing the atomic structure of the chemical element einsteinium, which has 99 electrons in its shells.

The U.S. Department of Energy first discovered einsteinium in 1952 in the fall-out of the first hydrogen bomb test. The element does not occur naturally on Earth and can only be produced in microscopic quantities using specialized nuclear reactors. It is also hard to separate from other elements, is highly radioactive and rapidly decays, making it extremely difficult to study.

Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) at the University of California, recently created a 233-nanogram sample of pure einsteinium and carried out the first experiments on the element since the 1970s. In doing so they were able to uncover some of the element's fundamental chemical properties for the first time.

Related: Elementary, my dear: 8 elements you never heard of
Very hard to study

Physicists know almost nothing about einsteinium.

"It is hard to make just because of where it is in the periodic table," co-author Korey Carter, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa and former scientist at Berkeley Lab, told Live Science.

Like other elements in the actinide series — a group of 15 metallic elements found at the bottom of the periodic table — einsteinium is made by bombarding a target element, in this case curium, with neutrons and protons to create heavier elements. The team used a specialized nuclear reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, one of the few places in the world where einsteinium can be made.

However, the reaction is designed to make californium — a commercially important element used in nuclear power plants — and so it makes only a very small amount of einsteinium as a byproduct. Extracting a pure sample of einsteinium from californium is challenging because of similarities between the two elements, which meant the researchers ended up with only a tiny sample of einsteinium-254, one of the most stable isotopes, or versions, of the elusive element.

"It is a very small amount of material," Carter said. "You can't see it, and the only way you can tell it is there is from its radioactive signal."

However, getting the einsteinium is only half the battle. The next problem is finding a place to keep it.

Einsteinium-254 has a half-life of 276 days — the time for half of the material to decay — and breaks down into berkelium-250, which emits highly damaging gamma radiation. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico designed a special 3D-printed sample holder to contain the einsteinium and protect the Berkeley Lab scientists from this radiation.

However, the element's decay also created other problems for the researchers.

"It's decaying consistently, so you lose 7.2% of your mass every month when studying it," Carter said. "You have to take this into account when you are planning your experiments."

The team at Berkeley Lab was used to dealing with other elements with short half-lives. Even so, the team began their work just before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant that they lost valuable time and were unable to complete all the planned experiments.
Surprising results

The main finding from the study was the measurement of the einsteinium bond length — the average distance between two bonded atoms — a fundamental chemical property that helps scientists predict how it will interact with other elements. They found that einsteinium's bond length goes against the general trend of the actinides. This is something that had been theoretically predicted in the past, but has never been experimentally proved before.

Compared with the rest of the actinide series, einsteinium also luminesces very differently when exposed to light, which Carter describes as "an unprecedented physical phenomenon." Further experiments are needed to determine why.

The new study "lays the groundwork for being able to do chemistry on really small quantities," Carter said. "Our methods will allow others to push boundaries studying other elements in the same way."

The team's research could also make it easier to create einsteinium in the future. In that case, einsteinium could potentially be used as a target element for the creation of even heavier elements, including undiscovered ones like the hypothetical element 119, also called ununennium. One of the ultimate goals for some chemists would be to then discover hypothetical superheavy elements that have half-lives of minutes or even days — meaning they "live" on this island of stability — compared with the microseconds at most for the half-lives of other heavy elements.

The study was published online Feb. 3 in the journal Nature.

Originally published on Live Science