Tuesday, January 12, 2021

These 63 Billionaires Who Bankrolled Trump All the Way to Insurrection Have 'No Right to Feel Shocked'

"Will there be any accountability for these recent billionaire enablers of Donald Trump, who saw what damage he caused and still stood by him?"

by Jon Queally, staff writer
Published on Tuesday, January 12, 2021
by Common Dreams


U.S. President Donald Trump stands on stage with billionaire GOP donor Sheldon Adelson ahead of his address to the Israeli American Council National Summit 2019 at the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, Florida on December 7, 2019. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

"Will there be any accountability for these recent billionaire enablers of Donald Trump, who saw what damage he caused and still stood by him?"

"Among the most steadfast enablers of this insurrection: Billionaires."
—Institute for Policy Studies

That's the question asked Tuesday by Chuck Collins, director of the Project on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, following the release of a new analysis that identified 63 U.S. billionaires—worth a combined $243 billion—who collectively gave $33 million to the Trump Victory Fund over the last two years leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

In the wake of last week's insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building by a pro-Trump mob incited by the president himself, Collins said these "titans of our economy have no right to feel shocked" over what happened.

"They enabled Donald Trump. They bankrolled his campaigns. And they cheered as Trump cut their taxes, swept away regulations that pinched their profits, and packed the courts with judges eager to wink at their transgressions," said Collins.

The Trump Victory Fund through which these individuals showed their support to the president and bankrolled the wider pro-Trump movement was created as a joint fundraising account for the Trump 2020 campaign and the Republican National Committee. In a statement on Tuesday, IPS detailed the top ten billionaires who gave to the fund as:

Gas pipeline magnate Kelcy Lee Warren, worth $2.9 billion, gave eight donations totaling $2,248,906.
Retired CEO of Marvel Entertainment, Isaac Perlmutter, is worth $5.8 billion and donated $1,871,200.
Telecommunications mogul Kenny Troutt, worth $1.5 billion, donated $1,849,000.
Biotech investor Robert Duggan, worth $2.6 billion, donated $1,638,200 to the Trump Victory Fund. In the final days of the campaign, Duggan gave $4.6 million to various Trump campaign groups, according to Forbes.
Casino magnate Steve Wynn, worth $3 billion, contributed over $1,523,500.
Casino owner, Phillip Gene Ruffin, worth $2.3 billion, donated $1,375,000.
Owner of ABC Supply, the giant home supplier, Diane Hendricks $8 billion (Forbes), donated $1,175,000.
Casino megadonor Sheldon Adelson, and his wife Miriam Adelson, worth over $35.9 billion (Forbes), contributed $1.16 million, along with massive donations to other Republican PACs and candidates.
Texas Banker Daniel Andrew Beal, worth $7.5 billion, gave $1,161,200.
Software entrepreneur David Duffield, worth $13.3 billion, donated $1,151,600.

Included in that list is Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnet and far-right supporter of Israel's apartheid policies, who died Tuesday. Other notable billionaires in the total list include: Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, worth $20.9 billion, who gave $355,000; Hedge fund manager John Paulson, worth $4.2 billion, who donated $831,372; and Johnson & Johnson heir Robert Wood Johnson IV, worth $2.5 billion, who contributed $575,000.

Among the most steadfast enablers of this insurrection:

Billionaires.

Our @Chuck99to1 & Omar Ocampo expose names—and dollar amounts—in @inequalityorg:https://t.co/1gxvh2vFdd— Institute for Policy Studies (@IPS_DC) January 11, 2021

"Unlike those who gave to the 2016 campaign but distanced themselves from Trump after seeing him in action," lamented Collins, "these billionaires and plenty of others gave substantial donations in 2019 and 2020, when it was clear that Trump was causing a crisis in our democracy."
Posted by at No comments:
DOWNSTREAM FROM ALBERTA
As Enbridge races to build Line 3 Pipeline, resistance ramps up in the courts and on the ground

Meanwhile, the fight against Line 3 in Minnesota is continuing on the ground as Enbridge plows ahead with construction.

By Dana Drugmand
-January 11, 2021
SOURCE DeSmogBlog
Image Credit: Amelia Diehl/In These Times

On January 2, 2021, during the first weekend of the New Year, dozens of water protectors gathered to demonstrate and pray along Great River Road near Palisade, Minnesota. They joined in song, protesting a controversial tar sands oil pipeline called Line 3, which is currently being constructed through northern Minnesota and traditional Anishinaabe lands. Ojibwe tribes have helped spearhead the opposition to this pipeline, alongside Indigenous and environmental groups.

A clash with police hours later resulted in the arrest of 14 demonstrators. As one water protector, Shanai Matteson, described the confrontation: “There were more police, and fewer Water Protectors, in an unreasonable show of force by officers … who escalated the situation.”

Footage from the January 2 demonstration. Credit: Kevin Whelan.

This Indigenous-led resistance to the Line 3 pipeline is reminiscent of Standing Rock in North Dakota, where, since 2015, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has led fellow Native and non-Native water protectors in taking a stand against the Dakota Access pipeline, which ultimately went into operation in 2017. Both of these battles over new tar sands pipelines also have featured direct action demonstrations and legal challenges, all with significant stakes for Native rights and sovereignty, the integrity of impacted water bodies and land, and the global climate.

In Minnesota, the fight over Line 3 has dragged on for over six years. Now, with the Canadian-based energy pipeline giant Enbridge Corporation commencing construction, opponents are continuing their resistance on the ground and in the courts.

Longstanding opposition

Pipeline opponents have been battling Enbridge since the company first proposed the Line 3 project in 2014. Enbridge has pitched it as a replacement of an older, corroding pipe built in the 1960s, though the new pipeline will be larger and much of it traverses through a different area compared to the older pipeline. Opponents therefore describe it as a new pipeline rather than a replacement. This new Line 3 project would nearly double the capacity to carry heavy crude, almost a million barrels per day, from the Alberta tar sands fields in Hardisty to the end point over a thousand miles away in Superior, Wisconsin.

The majority of the nearly $3 billion U.S. portion of the pipeline, around 337 miles of it, would run through Minnesota. State regulators like the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission have issued key permits for the pipeline, despite expert studies — including a review by the Minnesota Department of Commerce — showing the project is unnecessary and would have harmful and costly impacts, particularly to the environment and to tribal communities.

According to a Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) issued by the state last year, the social cost of the project over a 30-year life cycle is estimated at $287 billion — far greater than the roughly $2 billion Enbridge says will flow to the Minnesota economy during construction. This “social cost” is based on the social cost of carbon, or an estimate of societal damages occurring from carbon emissions that drive the climate crisis.

And with a capacity to carry 760,000 barrels per day of heavy crude, the Line 3 pipeline could result in an annual increase of 193 million tons of carbon emissions. “The potential increased [greenhouse gas] emissions associated with the Project would contribute incrementally to global climate change,” the EIS acknowledges.

Experts have crunched the numbers and estimated that the annual carbon intensity of this pipeline is equivalent to the emissions from 50 coal-fired power plants, or to 38 million vehicles on the roads. Indeed, the globe-warming emissions associated with Line 3 would be greater than the emissions from the entire state of Minnesota.

“This is not just another pipeline. It is a tar sands climate bomb,” Minnesota writer Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed voicing opposition to the Line 3 project. Another prominent Indigenous leader in the Line 3 opposition, Winona LaDuke of the White Earth Nation and executive director of Indigenous environmental justice group Honor the Earth, has called the Line 3 fight “ground zero” in the battle over climate change.

Besides climate impacts, some of the main points of opposition to the massive Enbridge project — the largest in the company’s history — include violations of Indigenous sovereignty and treaty rights, ecological destruction including to wetlands and wild rice beds, concerns over oil spills, and extending a lifeline to the dying tar sands industry.

Some of the world’s largest banks and insurers are turning away from Canadian tar sands, for example, and major tar sands pipelines like Keystone XL have faced considerable opposition and delays. In November 2020, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced she is ordering Enbridge to shut down another of its oil pipelines, Line 5, citing repeated violations of Enbridge’s easement (or permit) that threaten the Great Lakes.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has faced criticism for failing to take similar action opposing Line 3 and for allowing the controversial project to advance under approvals from his administration. Governor Walz’s office did not immediately return DeSmog’s call requesting comment.

Enbridge opponents point to the company’s track record of spills and accidents as a major concern. The company is responsible for the 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill that leaked nearly one million gallons from a tar sands pipeline, as well as a 1991 pipeline rupture in Grand Rapids, Minnesota that released 1.7 million gallons of oil. Enbridge has had many safety violations over the years, and just a few months ago in Massachusetts, there were two accidents leading to emergency shutdowns of a newly constructed, Enbridge-owned gas compressor station in the town of Weymouth. Even on the new Line 3 project in Minnesota, one worker has already died during a construction accident in December.

In response to a request for comment on safety concerns, Enbridge pointed to the “thorough” review and permitting process for Line 3, as well as its COVID-19 safety protocols for workers. According to Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner, “Safety is Enbridge’s top priority and is at the core of the replacement of Line 3,” which she described as “an essential maintenance and safety project and a $2.6-billion private investment in Minnesota.”

It is in this context that Minnesota regulators have issued approvals for the embattled Line 3 project. The state’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) granted Enbridge a Certificate of Need and routing permit in 2018; in February last year the state agency reaffirmed its approval and has since rejected requests by project opponents that construction be halted while courts resolve outstanding legal challenges. And in November 2020, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency approved a water quality certification, which was quickly followed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granting a federal Clean Water Act permit that same month.

New legal challenges

These state and federal approvals have allowed Enbridge to undertake construction, which began in December. But pipeline opponents and Ojibwe tribes have launched new legal challenges seeking to overturn the permits and halt Line 3 construction.

At the state level, Line 3 opponents are challenging both the PUC’s approval and refusal to pause the project, as well as the Pollution Control Agency’s certification. Two recent petitions before the Minnesota Court of Appeals, brought by the Red Lake and White Earth Bands of Ojibwe, Honor the Earth, and Friends of the Headwaters, aim to halt construction while other legal challenges resolve. These lawsuits could stretch on for another six or nine months, by which time the pipeline construction is expected to be complete.

Andy Pearson, Midwest Tar Sands Coordinator at Minnesota 350 — one of the groups fighting Line 3 — told DeSmog that Enbridge has accelerated its construction schedule in a race against the court challenges, noting that Enbridge knows it is unusual for a court to order the disassembly of a pipeline that is already in the ground.

“It’s a clear play by Enbridge to do an end-run around the process playing out here,” Pearson said. “And the Governor is enabling them by not insisting they halt construction while these legal challenges are pending.”

Groups and tribes fighting Enbridge permits in court include the Red Lake Band, White Earth Band, Mille Lacs Band, Honor the Earth, Friends of the Headwaters, the Sierra Club, the Youth Climate Intervenors, and the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Pearson said it is unusual that a state agency like the Department of Commerce has to go to court against the state, but commented that that is where the situation is at.

Another new lawsuit was filed on Christmas Eve, December 24, against the Army Corps of Engineers challenging the federal agency’s approval of Clean Water Act permits. Environmental law firm Earthjustice filed that lawsuit on behalf of the Red Lake and White Earth tribal nations, Honor the Earth, and Sierra Club. The lawsuit brings claims under multiple environmental laws and alleges the Army Corps failed to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and to evaluate the pipeline project’s cumulative impacts.

"The Corps' issuance of the permit authorizing [Line 3] violates multiple federal laws and treaties, harming plaintiffs & their members."

Red Lake & White Earth Bands, @HonorTheEarth & @SierraClubMN sue Army Corps in US court.#StopLine3 @Earthjusticehttps://t.co/73OW5Q1VV2— MN350 (@MN_350) December 29, 2020

A new federal administration under President-elect Joe Biden could aid Line 3 opponents by finding Enbridge’s federal permits to be inadequate given lack of consideration to issues like tribal concerns and climate impacts. “We need Biden to be responsible here and to revoke or suspend the [Clean Water Act] permits,” Pearson said, adding: “this pipeline is functionally the same as Keystone XL,” which Biden has opposed.

“Destruction is brutal”

Meanwhile, the fight against Line 3 in Minnesota is continuing on the ground as Enbridge plows ahead with construction.

A coalition of Indigenous and environmental groups — including Honor the Earth, RISE Coalition, Giniw Collective, Gitchigumi Scouts, Indigenous Environmental Network, and Red Lake Treaty Camp — is amplifying the grassroots resistance.

In addition to the demonstration on January 2 that resulted in 14 arrests, multiple demonstrations have occurred in recent weeks, including one in mid-December when 22 water protectors were arrested. Another demonstration was held on January 5 in Superior, Wisconsin (the proposed end point of Line 3), and one is scheduled for Saturday, January 9, again at Great River Road just north of Palisade, Minnesota.

Enbridge is progressing at the rivers. It is time. Rally for the Rivers: #StopLine3 this Saturday, Jan 9th – Join us to protect our water and pray for the rivers at the Mississippi in Palisade MN #WaterProtectors https://t.co/Bt1o6qfknr— Honor the Earth (@HonorTheEarth) January 8, 2021

According to a firsthand account of the Line 3 resistance camp from Winona LaDuke on January 7: “Lots of people [are] stopping by and dropping off wood, food, warm clothes, Christmas cookies and cash.” She described the people engaged on the ground as “Volunteers of all walks of life — ex-DNR [Department of Natural Resources] officers, Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, delegations of state representatives, and then lots of police.”

“There’s a huge frustration with the state and some righteous anger, as people watch the 4,200 out-of-state workers come into our territory,” LaDuke explained in a statement emailed to DeSmog. “The destruction is brutal … Heavier and heavier equipment comes and the devastation of the project becomes clear — from the right-of-way given to Enbridge to the 630 million gallons of water Enbridge is allowed to discharge from wetlands and through pipes. People are very determined and so far 44 have been arrested.”

LaDuke notes that in a new article published Thursday, January 7 in The Nation, she describes the construction process as akin to rape.

“Let us shove this pipeline through. We will brutalize your village, we will drive our equipment over your medicines and then we will bring in the drill and drill under your rivers. The company is gunning for the 22 river crossings, with seven crews,” she told DeSmog. “It’s brutal.”

Tell Congress to stop the expansion of a dying tar sands industry and #StopLine3 construction immediately.

Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline company, began construction on Line 3, a pipeline that will transport 760,000 barrels of tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin. As the proposed pipeline runs through untouched wetlands and Indigenous communities, it’s time Congress stops the construction of Line 3 and the devastation it will cause to the environment and the communities along its path.

“It’s well-past time to end the legacy of theft from and destruction of indigenous peoples and territories.”

Line 3 would also “violate the treaty rights of Anishinaabe peoples and nations in its path—wild rice is a centerpiece of Anishinaabe culture, it grows in numerous watersheds Line 3 seeks to cross.”

Enbridge, who has a terrible track record of oik spills, is responsible for more than 800 pipeline spills between 1999 and 2010. With tar sands oil being labeled the dirtiest oil on the planet, risking yet another oil spill will cost billions of dollars in cleanup costs all while damaging the environment and making people sick.

Congress must stop the expansion of a dying tar sands industry and #StopLine3 construction immediately. It’s time they take the health of the environment and the people into their own hands.

Posted by at No comments:

 

Native Americans on police response to Capitol insurrection

“No way would Black or Brown people be treated that way had they attacked a symbol of our democracy.”

By
 Stephanie Woodard
 -

SOURCEYES! Magazine
Image Credit: Joseph Zuma

On Jan. 6, while Congress was certifying the 2020 election results, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. They smashed windows, broke through doors, breached the building, and ran through it, snapping photos of themselves carting off documents and artifacts. No attacking force has rampaged through the Capitol since 1814, when British soldiers torched it during the War of 1812.

Tasked with protecting lawmakers and the building, the Capitol Police’s response was wildly disorganized. Their actions ranged from shooting a woman dead to taking a selfie with a rioter. Officers were pepper-sprayed and hit with projectiles; one has died of his injuries. The Capitol Police force detained no insurgents that day, though efforts are now underway to identify and charge the rioters, along with those who incited them, including the president. The FBI has offered $50,000 for information leading to the conviction of anyone who placed pipe bombs, now defused, around the city. In response to calls from both Democratic and Republican Congressional leadership, the chief of the Capitol Police and the House and Senate sergeant-at-arms are resigning.

Pro-Donald Trump rioters interact with Capitol Police inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

“I felt anger and disgust at the display of privilege showed by—and to—rioters in the Capitol,” says OJ Semans, an enrolled citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and co-executive director of the voting-rights group Four Directions. “No way would Black or Brown people be treated that way had they attacked a symbol of our democracy. … We all can recall the extreme force applied in Washington, D.C., during Black Lives Matter demonstrations this past summer.”

Semans, who is also a former captain of his Nation’s police force in South Dakota, says he is horrified at the unprofessional activities of the Capitol Police and calls the Jan. 6 event a chaotic display of White privilege and its relationship to the country’s dual system of justice.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris wrote on Twitter that the country has two systems of justice—“one that let extremists storm the U.S. Capitol yesterday, and another that released tear gas on peaceful [Black Lives Matters] protesters last summer.”

“Blood has been spilled in the U.S. Capitol!” exclaims attorney Chase Iron Eyes, citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and lead counsel for the Lakota People’s Law Project, with offices in Bismarck, North Dakota. “Indigenous people or any person of color would never dream of doing that.”

A brutal history

Native people have long experienced the rough side of American justice—from the massacres that started in the 15th century and continued for hundreds of years to the disproportionate police violence and incarceration they are subject to today. “In the nonviolent Standing Rock demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016,” Semans recalls, “law enforcement used water cannons in sub-freezing weather, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, and flash bangs powerful enough to blow off one young woman’s arm and blind another young woman.”

Iron Eyes says the stark contrast between law enforcement responses to people of color at Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter gatherings versus that to the White people trashing the Capitol Building shows us “who we are.” He says, “Genocide and racism are worked into the fabric of this country.”

Attorney and Four Directions legal director Greg Lembrich posted on Facebook: “Anyone saying ‘this is not who we are’ hasn’t been paying attention. This is exactly who we have become, and we know exactly how we got here and who is responsible. This president and these ‘protesters’ are not patriots; they are traitors and should be handled accordingly. And to those who have supported this up until now because they wanted their judges and their tax cuts: Your cowardice has brought shame on our country. And we won’t forget.”

Iron Eyes describes the disparities among classes and races in this country as painful. At the same time, he expresses hope that we will work together to move the country in a positive direction. As for the events of Jan. 6, he says, the struggle to protect White supremacy is nothing more than “fighting for first-class seats on the Titanic.”

“We are unarmed”

The Standing Rock demonstrations were held to protest an oil pipeline being built to cross, and thus jeopardize, the tribe’s water supply. They lasted about a year, starting in early 2016. Thousands of Native people and supporters came from around the country and the world to join members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in a prayerful action.

A protester watches as police adjust barbed wire set up on Turtle Island a day after protesters built a bridge to access it in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, near Standing Rock on Nov. 25, 2016, during an ongoing dispute over the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Photos by Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe/Getty Images.

“We are unarmed,” was a repeated, but often futile, cry. During just one 10-hour period on Nov. 19, volunteer physicians and medics attending to the protesters logged about 300 serious injuries resulting from police measures, including severe lacerations, fractures, and internal bleeding.

“If Native people or any people of color had done what those White supremacists did at the Capitol, we’d be filling body bags today,” says Joe Holley, chairman of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians, a coalition of four federally recognized tribes in Nevada. “We are shown an astronomically higher level of brutality.”

Joe Holley, chairman of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians, looks over Nevada land sacred to his tribe. Photo by Joseph Zummo.

The devastating concussion grenades used at Standing Rock were banned in Iraq for fear of harming civilians, U.S. Army veteran Griz Grzywa told Yes! in an interview at Standing Rock in 2016. After multiple tours in Iraq, he joined the many veterans who went to Standing Rock to help protect the demonstrators. He was shocked to see police using weapons the U.S. military would not.

Rubber bullets were never intended for demonstrations, adds Semans. “They are hardened rubber projectiles intended to be used to confront armed hostiles who you want to incapacitate long enough to save a life or stop a hostage situation. They are called ‘nonlethal’ but can create serious injuries.”

Semans, Iron Eyes, and Holley make clear that they would never wish that the Capitol Police had attacked Trump’s mob with the weapons used against Native people. “Native American, Black, Latino, and Asian American people don’t want anyone to suffer the way we have,” Semans says. “Not in any manner, in any situation. We want equal rights. We don’t ask for more. We ask for equality.”

Unequal justice

The gathering of violent Trump supporters in the nation’s capital couldn’t have been a surprise, despite the Capitol Police’s apparent lack of preparation. For days, pro-Trump fanatics were known to have been streaming into town to disrupt Congress’ ceremonial certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win. A Washington, D.C., hotel previously frequented by members of far-right groups closed for a period to avoid housing unruly guests. Trump’s plans for a nearby rally the day of Congress’ election certification had been known for weeks, according to CNN.

Trump’s White supremacist followers felt safe storming the Capitol because he has long encouraged them, including at a rally that very day, Semans says: “The president has destroyed so much of the progress we have made since the ’60s. What he has done is so detrimental to our country. He has so badly damaged America. It is a crime.

Supporters of Donald Trump clash with police and security forces as they push barricades to storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo by Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images.

“The silver lining is that many Americans have now seen how unequal justice is and how the justice you get depends on the color of your skin. Many are saying heartfelt things about the need for change, and I have patience and will wait for those changes. But I’m not holding my breath.”

“Nor am I,” Holley agrees. “I foresee that White supremacists will keep crawling back out of the gutter they’ve fallen into for a very long time.”

Iron Eyes says he sees the United States as a work in progress. He says what happened on Jan. 6 was the dying gasp of long-term, corrupt, systemic, race- and class-based oppression. And he predicts that positive change will develop in a cyclical fashion.

“More people will work for a country we can be proud of. We’ll address the common foundations of our prosperity—clean water, healthy land, a stable climate, surviving the pandemic.” The radical-right fringe will reappear occasionally, even calling for extremes like civil war, Iron Eyes concedes, but adds that overall the United States will see forward motion.

“We claim we are exceptional. We are not. But we have the potential to be.”


https://www.nationofchange.org/2021/01/11/native-americans-on-police-response-to-capitol-insurrection/

Posted by at No comments:

BC

Action required! Stop Site C; save 1000s of acres of prime farmland!


Hi everyone,

In solidarity with BC farmers and Northern communities, NFU members across the country recently voted to pass a resolution to stop the Site C dam.

Pushing forward on Site C risks costly geotechnical catastrophe, dramatically violates indigenous Treaty 8 rights, and will flood 9,000+ acres of precious arable BC farmland. 

This week, the BC cabinet is meeting to re-evaluate the project’s viability. Our NFU Women’s President and Peace Region farmer, Bess Legault, has written to BC Agriculture Minister Hon. Lana Popham asking her to stand with farmers nationwide in opposing Site C.

Now is the time to add your voice. 

The provincial government can still course correct away from Site C in favour of a thriving and climate-compatible agricultural future in the Peace Region. 

Please take a moment to participate in the NFU’s campaign in partnership with Dogwood BC to send a message asking Premier Horgan, Minister Ralston and Minister Popham to #StopSiteC. 

Power has alternatives, agriculture does not.  

Share on social media!


Stop Site C, save thousands of acres of prime farmland

The rich soil of B.C.’s Peace River valley could grow enough fruit and vegetables for one million people. But if Premier Horgan builds the Site C dam, all that land will be flooded forever.

B.C. imports more than half the food we eat. That food is getting more expensive because of climate change and disruptions caused by COVID-19. Our province urgently needs to protect what little farmland we have left.

We know the construction of the Site C dam will jack up our electricity bills. Building it would flood Indigenous burial grounds and hunting areas, violating Treaty 8. Filling the reservoir will also destroy more than 9,000 acres of prime farmland, permanently undermining our ability to guarantee fresh fruits and vegetables for Northern British Columbians.

It’s not too late to turn back. Farmers across the country have passed a formal resolution with the National Farmers Union to put a stop to Site C. Thanks to plummeting costs in wind and solar, we can generate more energy for less money than it would cost to finish the dam. And we can grow nutritious produce for a million people every year, rescuing the government’s failing plan to feed Northern Canada at a time when food security is more important than ever.

This action is a collaboration between Dogwood and the National Farmers Union.

https://dogwoodbc.ca/petitions/defend-farmland-site-c-nfu/?mc_cid=47856e5f30&mc_eid=8d5df66164

Posted by at No comments:

 

As Pandemic Rages, Trump Admin. Approves Tennessee's "Reckless" Plan to Slash Medicaid

 The eleventh-hour safety net attack is being met with outrage from advocates of strengthening the healthcare program.


by
Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, speaks as President Donald Trump listens during an event on lowering prescription drug prices on November 20, 2020, in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C.

Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, speaks as President Donald Trump listens during an event on lowering prescription drug prices on November 20, 2020, in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Healthcare advocates are criticizing the Trump administration's approval—amid overwhelming opposition, a global pandemic, and as the number of uninsured Americans grows—of Tennessee's plan to overhaul funding of its Medicaid program, calling the decision "reckless" and "irresponsible."

Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, called it "a radical waiver that puts Tennessee's Medicaid beneficiaries at risk."

The state's Medicaid program, TennCare, covers 1.5 million people, or about one in five of the state's residents. The proposal would "fundamentally" transform how TennCare is managed and funded, The Tennessean reported. When Republican Gov. Bill Lee rolled out the plan in fall, the outlet added, the state received 1,800 written comments, of which just 11 were in support.

Kaiser Health News reported:

With just a dozen days left in power, the Trump administration on Friday approved a radically different Medicaid financing system in Tennessee that for the first time would give the state broader authority in running the health insurance program for the poor in exchange for capping its annual federal funding.

The approval is a 10-year "experiment." Instead of the open-ended federal funding that rises with higher enrollment and health costs, Tennessee will instead get an annual block grant. The approach has been pushed for decades by conservatives who say states too often chafe under strict federal guidelines about enrollment and coverage and can find ways to provide care more efficiently.

But under the agreement, Tennessee's annual funding cap will increase if enrollment grows. What's different is that unlike other states, federal Medicaid funding in Tennessee won't automatically keep up with rising per-person Medicaid expenses.

The approval, however, faces an uncertain future because the incoming Biden administration is likely to oppose such a move. But to unravel it, officials would need to set up a review that includes a public hearing.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the approval Friday. "It's no exaggeration to say that this carefully crafted demonstration could be a national model moving forward," said CMS Administrator Seema Verma—a Trump appointed official who's pushed attacks on Medicaid and has been described as "the architect of Indiana's punitive restrictions on Medicaid patients."

Michele Johnson, executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, said in response to the approval that "no other state has sought a block grant, and for good reason," and warned of its impacts to those "in nursing homes, those struggling with mental illness, diabetes, cancer, and countless other complex conditions."

"Tennessee is one of a handful of states still denying Medicaid to its working uninsured, and the block grant is just another example of putting politics ahead of healthcare during this pandemic," said Johnson. "It's a political gimmick that jeopardizes access to healthcare for hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans by creating a state budget booby trap."

"State officials have an abysmal record of mismanaging programs that help those in need. The block grant will allow these same state officials to inflict further damage on Tennessee's healthcare system," she said.

The approval also drew outrage from a coalition of 21 patient and consumer groups including the American Lung Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, and National Alliance on Mental Illness. They called the plan's approval "a reckless move that would reduce Tennesseans' ability to get needed healthcare" and urged the incoming Biden administration to halt its implementation.

"The approval specifically includes authority to limit prescription drug coverage, a dangerous proposal for patients."
—21 Patient Groups"Our organizations have clearly and repeatedly voiced our deep concerns with Tennessee's proposal, as well as our strong opposition to block grants in Medicaid in general," the groups said Friday in a joint statement. "Per capita caps and block grants are designed to cap or limit the amount of federal funding provided to states, forcing them to either make up the difference with their own funds or make cuts to their programs reducing access to care for the patients we represent."

Such cuts, they warned, "will likely result in enrollment limits, benefit reductions, reductions in provider payments, or increased out-of-pocket cost-sharing for Medicaid enrollees. The approval specifically includes authority to limit prescription drug coverage, a dangerous proposal for patients."

Referencing the coronavirus pandemic, the groups added, "It is irresponsible to approve this waiver during this public health crisis, and especially to do so for an unprecedented 10-year period." Implementation of the plan stands to "limit Tennessee's flexibility in responding to recessions, pandemics, new treatments, and natural disasters," and thus "moves in the opposite direction of the lessons learned from 2020."

The Tennessean further noted:

The block grant approval, negotiated over about a year with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, still must get final approval from state lawmakers before it can be implemented. Lee now intends to present a joint resolution on the plan for the General Assembly's "immediate consideration," according to a news release.

The Tennessee Justice Center is urging its supporters to pressure lawmakers to block the plan. 

"We are not surprised but are unsettled by this eleventh-hour action by the federal government during the height of the pandemic," said Jane Perkins, legal director for the National Health Law Program. "The approval raises so many issues," she said, "from the process the government used to approve this project to the specifics of how the government has cut into the healthcare safety net. Our legal team is investigating the enforcement and litigation options at this time."

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, also sounded alarm.

"This is an illegal move that could threaten access to healthcare for vulnerable people in the middle of a pandemic," Pallone tweeted Friday. He also expressed hope the incoming Biden administration would "move quickly to roll back this harmful policy as soon as possible."

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.



Posted by at No comments:
Social scientist on failed pro-Trump coup: 
'People are mistaking ridiculous with not serious'

Image via Screengrab / Fox News.
Lauren Floyd and Daily Kos January 10, 2021

If anyone is still asking if it's fair to classify Wednesday's attack at the Capitol as an attempted coup, the short answer is yes. But Atlantic magazine contributor Zeynep Tufekci, who has lived through four coups in Turkey, told NPR the public needs to focus less on how to classify what happened and start paying attention to just how close rioters came to achieving their goal.

President Donald Trump called for his supporters to march to the Capitol to block Congress from certifying President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. "We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen," he said at a Save America rally Wednesday in Washington D.C. "You don't concede when there's theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about."

Trump incited a mob that stormed the legislature, where the election was being certified, Tufekci told NPR. "So that is absolutely some sort of coup attempt," she said. Tufekci said that moments of the insurrection Wednesday felt "intimately familiar" and that she's been describing Trump's actions since the election as attempts at a coup.

She said as an academic, she can appreciate Americans debating the best technical term to classify Trump's attempt to overthrow election results. "You know there is some value in the precision there, but that shouldn't overshadow what was coming our way, as I was writing, what is being attempted" she said. "The president of the United States was attempting to steal the election by falsely asserting that he won it and trying to mobilize all the extralegal forces he could muster from his office to try to get them to overturn the election in his favor."

By Merriam-Webster's definition, a coup, short for coup d'état, is defined as "a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics especially: the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group."

"I think people are mistaking ridiculous with not serious," Tufekci said. Protesters looked ridiculous, angry mobs of people punctuated with those wearing horns and flag capes, "but it's not unserious," Tufekci said. After the mob disrupted the certification process, the majority of the GOP caucus, 138 of 211 Republican representatives, voted to overthrow the results of the Pennsylvania election, "even the Pennsylvania representative who was just elected with those votes," Tufekci said.

"These are not normal hiccups of a transition," she added. "These are attempts to steal an election." Tufekci said there are a lot of ridiculous coup attempts around the world that fail "the first time or the second time, or the third time and then they succeed." GOP legislators voting to throw out legitimate votes even after an attempted coup, "that should scare us," Tufekci said.

Rioters crossed a line in storming the Capitol and so did 65% of Republican legislators who voted to throw out legitimate votes. "It's how we react to that line being crossed that will determine whether they'll try again," Tufekci said. "And there's no reason to assume the next time will be similarly ridiculous or incompetant because this time was very serious.
Posted by at No comments:

 


Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)