News from June 12-19, 2022

Killings with guns in the U.S.—including mass shootings—are happening more frequently. Recent ones around the nation include three people killed outside an Episcopalian church near Birmingham (AL) at a senior potluck by a 71-year-old gun dealer who had received a warning letter from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 2018 related to missing gun inventory. Smith “failed to the record the disposition” of multiple firearms, and “failed to record” necessary information like addresses and license numbers in records as required by law.

Mass shootings: June 16, 2022 – One man and another four men and women were wounded outside an Oakland (CA) sports bar. Surveillance cameras caught the shootings on video.

June 18, 2022 – Five people were injured in a Pensacola (FL) nightclub.

June 19, 2922 – At least two people were killed and five others injured in a shooting at a family gathering in San Antonio. A 15-year-old boy was killed and three adults including a police officer injured in Washington, D.C.

The rosy projection of a bipartisan “gun reform” bill has greatly dimmed. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) responsible for the negotiation. He followed his usual MO—pretend a breakthrough while scuttling progress. He clearly stated that restricting guns was “not gonna happen” and supposedly targeted “the problem, mental illness and school safety.” Yet boos were so loud at his speech last week in his home state that he couldn’t continue. Cornyn originally promised ten GOP votes in the Senate for the proposed bill framework, but the ten Republicans on the bill are reneging on two parts of it: closing the boyfriend loophole allowing violent partners to have guns and giving money to states that incorporate the “red flag” law to remove guns from people through a court process if the firearms are a danger to themselves or others. Cornyn complained his own state won’t get money because they will refuse the red flag law, and he can’t figure out what partners will be of danger.

Cornyn also moved the goalposts: now he requires 20 GOP senators to sign off on any gun bill instead of ten. The Juneteenth holiday shortens this week’s schedule before the Senate heads out for a two-week vacation for the July 4^th recess. Again Republicans hope that people will forget about ten people killed in Buffalo and another 21 in Uvalde (TX), 19 of them under 11 years old, so they can drop any gun reform ideas. and they can go back to satisfying all the gun-clutchers.

The communications director of the far-right, GOP-funded Moms for Liberty, was caught on tape declaring that her school district’s librarians should “all be plowed down with a freaking gun by now.” She declared the recording was illegally made and edited, but Media Matters maintains her claims are false. A losing U.S. House GOP candidate and DDT’s former “top pastor,” Mark Burns, also wants to execute LGBTQ people for “grooming” children.

Sunday, June 19, is the first annual anniversary of the federal holiday of Juneteenth, the date in 1865 when the last Blacks  were told that they were free although the Emancipation Proclamation freed them 30 months earlier.  One year since Congress established the federal holiday, only 18 states allow state employees a paid state holiday for the event. Some legislators said a day off is not worthwhile because not enough people know about the holiday. Almost 60 percent of people say they know about the holiday, and Blacks have celebrated the day since the late 1800s. This resistance is similar to state objections to the holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday after a federal holiday was passed in 1983. Beginning with Texas in 1980, nine states made Juneteenth a paid state holiday before President Joe Biden signed the bill on June 17, 2021, making it a federal holiday. Legislation passed 148 to 1 in the House and 35 to 1 in the Senate.

June 19, 2022 is also the 50^th anniversary of Father’s Day as a national U.S. holiday on the third Sunday of June. First celebrated with a sermon in 1908, the day struggled with popularity because men ridiculed the day’s sentimental celebration for masculinity through flowers and gifts. Efforts to combine Mother’s and Father’s days disappeared in the Great Depression because retailers wanted to commercialize two different days. By the end of World War II, it was used to support the war effort; by now people spent over $1 billion on Father’s Day gifts.

Arizona’s AG Mark Brnovich, a candidate for U.S. Senate, lost his case to lead other states in defending the changes in the “public charge” rule by Dictator Donald Trump (DDT). The U.S. Supreme Court supported the 9^th Circuit Court blocking states the lawsuit. The rule changes had made it easier to deny green cards to working immigrant families if they are “more likely than not” to use public benefits in the future such food stamps, housing and rental assistance, and Medicaid in 12 months of 36 months. Two of these forms of assistance for one month would count toward two months.

Brnovich also lost his case to order a major rewrite of an almost 300-page document telling Arizona county election officials how to manage the 2022 elections. He had refused an update Election Procedures Manual from Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, but a judge said his complaints were unsupported. The judge ruled that the manual approved by Brnovich, Hobbs, and Gov. Doug Ducey in 2019 would be in effect for the upcoming election. Hobbs provided county officials with guidance on changes on new laws and court rulings that affect that set of rules.

Glyphosate, found in the world’s most widely used herbicide Roundup, may pose a health risk for people exposed to it on farms, yards, roadsides, or food crop residue. The 9^th Circuit Court ordered the EPA to reexamine its 2020 finding under DDT that found it to be no danger. Acquiring Roundup in 2018, the pharmaceutical company Bayer faces thousands of lawsuits about its causing cancer. EPA will review the court ruling and determine the “next steps,” and the Supreme Court may hear an appeal from Bayer to close the lawsuits against them. The three-judge panel ruled that EPA’s determination of no risk to human health “was not supported by substantial evidence.”

Parents won its lawsuit against a North Carolina charter school where girls were required to wear skirts because of the co-founder’s belief in “chivalry.” With a vote of 10-6, the entire 4^th Circuit Court overturned the dress code—and a three-judge panel of the court—declaring the school violates female students’ constitutional rights. The two DDT-appointed judges on the panel had earlier ruled that the school was not a “state actor” although it receives public funds, is subject to state educational requirements and is called a “public school” in state statutes. Female students between kindergarten and eighth grade said that the dress code kept them from participating in recess and made them uncomfortable in such situations as emergency drills when they had to crawl on the floor. The judge wrote that chivalry is “a code of conduct where women are treated, they’re regarded as a fragile vessel that men are supposed to take care of and honor” and intended to ensure that girls are treated “courteously and more gently than boys,” an impermissible gender stereotype.

Police are receiving death threats after they arrested members of the neo-Nazi Patriot Front heading to an attack on an LGBTQ Pride event in Coeur d’Alene on June 11. Members of the group were charged and then released on bail. Calls to the agency came from as far away as Norway. Threats included publishing personal information of police offices such as their home addresses and telephone numbers. Details about the Patriot Front. More about the Patriot Front, an offshoot of the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America.

One Patriot Front member won’t be going home: his mother, Karen Amsden, kicked the 27-year-old out of her house. Karen Amsden, the mother of a 27-year-old Utah resident, kicked him out of the house. Divorced after her husband defined himself as gay, she said she told her son he could “choose between Patriot Front and your family.” He picked Patriot Front, and she told him to pack and leave. Her son had told him that he was just going camping for the weekend in Idaho and later used the false excuse for the attack that LGBTQ people are “grooming kids.”

A group of five Proud Boys traumatized children attending a Drag Queen Story House at the San Lorenzo library, 25 miles southeast of San Francisco, when the hate group stormed the facility yelling homophobic and transphobic threats. They also accused adult participants of “grooming kids.” State Sen. Scott Wiener received a death threat with hate language and sexual obscenities after he called the incident the “direct result of political attacks on LGBTQ people.”

At the Faith & Freedom conference where DDT attacked Mike Pence—again!—Sen. Lindsey Graham announced, to much applause, the GOP philosophy: “You know what I like about Trump. Everybody was afraid of him.”

The goal of the Republicans is to make everyone afraid of them. Allow everyone to keep guns to terrify people. Use bullying to destroy diplomacy. Employ vigilantes to take away people’s constitutional rights such as voting. Create tantrums accusing people of evidence-free wrong-doing. And never admit you’ve lost—make up lies to get your own way, repeat them over and over, and cheat people to win. It’s the GOP playbook.

Hopeful Environmental News

 

GOP presumptive heir has campaigned on the position that he will let his advisors tell him what to do, and his newest advisor in helping him draft energy policy is climate change skeptic and drilling advocate Rep. Kevin Cramer from North Dakota, a major oil drilling state. Cramer stated that his white paper will show the dangers of burdensome taxes and over-regulation. Trump will present these ideas at an energy summit in Bismarck (ND) later this month. According to Cramer, the earth is cooling, not warming.

While Trump’s train chugs on, environmentalists have recently received good news.

Methane gas: The EPA announced new rules to significantly reduce methane emissions from new oil and gas facilities as well as those undergoing modifications. It’s a first step in this area because the direction, finalized later this year, is only for these wells on federal lands and not for existing ones. The regulations will cover only 25 percent of the oil and gas equipment. Methane gas worsens smog, asthma iin children, and cardiovascular disease while increasing premature death.

Fracking: The industry has suffered a $4.2 million jury award over alleged groundwater contamination from fracking. Cabot Oil and Gas Co. is supposed to give the money to families in Dimock (PA). Popular support for fracking is also shrinking to 36 percent of people in the nation last March from 40 percent the prior March. Federal regulators are also working on new environmental rules for the industry that has experienced a long price slump. The oil and gas industry is under much greater scrutiny that at the beginning of its boom ten years ago.

Renewable energy: Last Sunday morning Germany got 90 percent of its electricity demand from renewable power. Obviously, this doesn’t happen all the time: the country averages 30 percent of the country’s power from solar, wind, hydropower, and biomass. Yet that average is over 230 percent higher than in the United States that gets only 13 percent of its electricity from these energy sources. At the fourth-largest economy in the world, Germany’s $3.7 trillion GDP is higher than any European country or US state. As clean energy grew in Germany so did its economy. The country, with about as much sunshine as Alaska, outpaces the U.S. in solar although the U.S. has four times the population of Germany. German individuals drive the “energy transition” because the government opened the market to utilities, businesses, and homeowners. In contrast, the U.S. restricts clean energy through high taxes and fees on its installation and use, much of these restrictions from control on solar energy by fossil-fuel owning Koch brothers. Florida is just one example.

Coal terminals: A five-year struggle between coal and Native Americans has resulted in denial of federal permits for the biggest proposed coal terminal in North America at Cherry Point (WA). The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that the project would violate the nation’s treaty obligations to protect Lummi fisheries and ancestral lands. The project would have overloaded the capacity of BNSF railways by adding 16 trains per day and increase the possibility of rail collisions by 22 percent through Cowlitz County and Washington. The increase in train activity would cause road delays at between four to six crossings. The company behind the project, Millennium Bulk Terminals, is still hoping to have a terminal at Longview (WA), but it had to pull its proposal when it was discovered that the company planned to ship 60 million tons of coal annual instead of the 5.7 million tons on the applications. Since Millennium applied for permits in 2012, Arch Coal, a minority shareholder, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

New clean electric generation in the United States: Last year, wind turbines and solar panels accounted for more than two-thirds of all new electric generation capacity added to the nation’s grid in 2015. The other third was natural gas fueled by natural gas. It was the second year that U.S. investment in renewable energy outpaced that of fossil fuels. The cost of emissions-free wind energy, the cheapest energy source, has dropped by two-thirds in the last six years. Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas—home states to GOP lawmakers fighting the curtailment of climate-warming carbon emissions—benefited the most from clean energy. In the past ten years, coal has dropped from providing half the nation’s electricity to one-third, and large banks will no longer finance new coal mines or coal-fired power plants. U.S. coal mines not employ only 56,700 people down from a peak of times that many employees; solar employs more than 210,000 workers, and wind energy has another 77,000 employees.

This week, the EPA issued a report that Monsanto’s Roundup, made with glyphosate, doesn’t cause cancer, but it pulled the report, marked FINAL, with the excuse that they weren’t finished. The question is whether they were being pressured by business because evidence is growing that the product is carcinogenic, as the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies the product.  Four Nebraska farmers agree with WHO and are suing Monsanto, claiming that its project gave them non-Hodkin’s lymphoma. Monsanto made $4.8 billion from Roundup sales last year, and more than 85 million pounds of glyphosate was applied to U.S. crops in 2007, more than double the 85 million pounds in 2001. Glyphosate is applied to “Roundup-ready” crops that are genetically modified to resist it and used on more than 100 varieties of crops in commercial agriculture. The complaint states:

 “Glyphosate is found in rivers, streams, and groundwater in agricultural areas where Roundup is used. It has been found in food, the urine of exposed persons, and in the urine of urban dwellers without direct contact with glyphosate.”

Last year California was the first state to label Roundup as a carcinogen, and Monsanto sued the state to fight this designation. Cancers most associated with glyphosate exposure are non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other blood cancers, including lymphocytic lymphoma/chronic lymphocytic leukemia, B-cell lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. The farmers’ lawsuit isn’t the first: Monsanto faces at least 700 lawsuits against Monsanto or Monsanto-related entities regarding cancer caused by PCBs that the company manufactured until the late 1970s. California federal judge Vince Chhabria has also refused to dismiss a lawsuit about Monsanto’s causing cancer with Roundup.

More and more media sources no longer have journalists but instead rely on press releases from companies who benefit from lying about science. Even most existing journalists aren’t well enough trained in science to spot misinformation.  In an attempt to disseminate accurate scientific information, a group of scientists are now fact-checking scientific information in the media through a new project called Climate Feedback. They started on a small scale over a year ago and are now crowdfunding $30,000 to build the project’s capacity with new weekly feedbacks. Associate Editor Daniel Nethery said:

“Several aspects of the online media environment make it particularly conducive to the spread of misinformation. In the race to attract the most clicks, editorial standards may suffer, qualified journalists who carry out rigorous research may become cost-ineffective, and eye-catching headlines — ‘click bait’ — can trump more sober reporting of the facts.”

Nethery and co-founder Emmanuel Vincent plan to hire a dedicated editor and encourage accurate science writing through a Scientific Trust Tracker to guide readers sources with “journalists with integrity.” An example of their work can be found in their analysis of James Taylor’s article in Forbes, “2015 Was Not Even Close To Hottest Year On Record.”

Climate Feedback will need a lot more money in this election cycle!

Zombie Monsanto Law Must Be Stopped

A piece of good news hiding among the lack of Cruz Control antics this week is the Senate’s decision to drop the Monsanto Protection Rider. Last March Monsanto paid Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) $64,000 to put a rider into the must-pass farm bill to protect companies that sell GMOs from any lawsuits. The Secretary of Agriculture was instructed to allow the cultivation and sale of GMO crops even though they posed a potential risk to farmers of nearby crops, the environment, and human health. Monsanto wrote the language for the rider and then gave it to Blunt. That exemption for companies such as Monsanto, however, disappears in just four days.

The House put the Monsanto Protection Rider back into the House version of the short-term appropriations bill, the Continuing Resolution (CR) that also including the defunding of  Obamacare. But that rider was stripped from the appropriations bill that the Senate returned to the House.  Some of the Democrats who voted against the rider may be hurt in their upcoming elections. For example, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), appointed to the Senate in 2012, knows the danger that genetically-modified crops present to his state.

A new group, the New Democrat Coalition, may be more supportive of protecting Monsanto and GMOs. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) knows how bad GMOs are for his state agriculture. A member of the New Dems, Colleen Hanabusa, plans to primary Schatz and follow the group’s support of big business through lowering their tax rates, eliminating regulations, and establishing the Trans Pacific Partnership described as “the wish list of the top 1 percent.” In their advocacy of big corporations, the New Dems see biotech as the “future of the U.S.,” pushing to extend patents and give corporate welfare to the companies.

GMO companies want to keep people ignorant of the contents of their food. don’t even want to let people know what is in their food. Here’s what many people don’t know:

• Labeling genetically engineered foods (GMOs) will not cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
• Buying certified organic products does not let consumers avoid GMOs because food companies are permitted to use the term “natural” for products with GMOs.
• Labeling laws will not result in new lawsuits against farmers, food producers, and store owners about food label terminology. It’s actually Monsanto that continually sues farmers across the country for growing their own seeds.
• Labeling GMOs will not create a “bureaucratic nightmare” for grocers and retailers.
• Genetically engineered do pose health safety risks. A study showed that GMO corn sprayed with Monsanto’s Round Up herbicide resulted in massive tumors, organ failure, and premature death in rats. Other studies link these foods to allergies, organ toxicity, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disorders, birth defects, high infant mortality rates, fertility problems, and sterility.
• GE foods are not as, or more, nutritious than organic foods that contain higher levels of beta carotene, vitamins C, D and E, health-promoting polyphenols, cancer-fighting antioxidants, flavonoids that help ward off heart disease, essential fatty acids, and essential minerals. GMO corn has 14 parts-per-million (ppm) of calcium while non-GMO corn has 6130 ppm, or 437 times more. Non-GMO corn also has 56 times more magnesium and seven times more manganese than GMO corn.
• The World Health Organization, American Medical Association, National Academy of Sciences and other respected medical and health organizations do not conclude that GE foods are safe.
• We do not need GMOs to feed the world because GE crops don’t lead to greater crop yields. Conventional plant breeding, not genetic engineering, is responsible for yield increases in major U.S. crops.
• The creation of GE seeds is not comparable to the cross-breeding that our ancestors did to create hardier versions of heritage crops. Cross breeding is the product of guided natural reproduction, while GMOs are created in a laboratory using high-tech and sophisticated techniques. One of these techniques involves gene-splicing which is used to cross a virus or a bacteria with a plant. These untested, unnatural creations are the antithesis to what our ancestors did, and what responsible farmers do: cross-pollinate different varieties of the same plant to help naturally bring forth desirable characteristics.
• GE crops do not reduce the need for pesticides and herbicides. In fact GE crops greatly increase the use of these toxic chemicals. According to a new study by Food and Water Watch, the “total volume of glyphosate applied to the three biggest GE crops — corn, cotton and soybeans — increased 10-fold from 15 million pounds in 1996 to 159 million pounds in 2012” with the overall pesticide use rising by 26 percent from 2001 to 2010. The use of GE crops are now driving up the volume of toxic herbicides needed each year by about 25 percent.
• GE crops are harmful to the environment. In addition to polluting the environment with herbicides and pesticides, GE crops lead to biodiversity loss and the emergence of “super bugs” and  “super weeds” that threaten millions of acres of farmland, thus requiring the need for even more dangerous and toxic herbicides. GMO use endangers many critical species, including the honey bee, frogs, birds, fish and the Monarch Butterfly. The island of Molokai in Hawaii has had its air and water quality destroyed by Monsanto’s almost-2000-acre test facility. Worldwide, people in areas around GMO farms report horrific bloody skin rashes, an uptick in asthma, and toxic pesticides that leach into the groundwater.

A recent study shows that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, may be “the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment” because it damages cellular systems throughout the body. It’s also the most popular herbicide on the planet and therefore likely to be pervasive in the world’s food supply. Scientists reported “signature of sarin” in Syrians who died several weeks ago, the same signature as the contents of Roundup.

A 2012 study published in the journal Archives of Toxicology shows Roundup to be toxic to human DNA even when diluted to concentrations 450-fold lower than used in agricultural applications. Industry regulators and long-term studies look at glyphosate in isolation, instead of looking at Roundup’s full formulation, which includes secret added ingredients. These “confidential” and unlabeled ingredients, when measured as a whole, affect all living cells, including human cells.

Genetically-engineered seeds are available for three of the four major crops in the U.S.: corn, soybeans and alfalfa. Planting GE wheat seeds is illegal, but an Oregonian farmer found GE wheat growing in his fields last June, 12 years after Monsanto stopped its field trials. That one discovery risked the possibility of wheat farmers in Oregon not being able to export any of its crops because other countries such as Japan and China don’t want GE crops. The farmers could lose up to $3 million.

This month, a broker rejected an alfalfa crop in Washington state after testing positive for the genetic presence of Roundup Ready. The fourth-most widely grown crop in the United States, alfalfa has a value of about $8 billion; exports hit a record high of $1.25 billion last year. Washington is one of the nation’s biggest export alfalfa producers. In addition to being unable to export alfalfa to many countries, farmers may not be able to sell the crop for feed to domestic livestock because of GM contaminants.

Jack Heinemann, a New Zealand scientists, thinks that people may not be able to contain GE crops. A GE rice variety never commercialized was exported to France in 2006, and GE corn unapproved for human consumption showed up in Taco Bell taco shells.

The FDA reported that Monsanto concluded the wheat it tested was safe. With the reemergence of the wheat, Monsanto assures consumers that the FDA declared the safety of this wheat over a decade ago. In essence, Monsanto told FDA that the wheat is just fine so they are now saying that the FDA says that the wheat is safe.

Another danger comes from pharma crops, those engineered to produce pharmaceuticals or a toxic industrial compound. The USDA approved almost 400 field tests of these crops starting in 1991. In 2002, stalks of corn designed to produce a pig vaccine were mixed with $2.7 million worth of Nebraska soya beans for human consumption.

Large GMO companies such as Monsanto don’t want people to know that rat poison is an ingredient in their food products, and they don’t want people to file lawsuits against them if someone accidentally finds out. The House has voted to let Monsanto put poison in their seeds with impunity. Tomorrow they will probably hold the country hostage so that GOP House members will continue to be paid for their GMO support. Monsanto also spent $4.5 million to defeat an initiative to require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods—in just one state.

For the past six months, no farmer could sue Monsanto for the damage to their crops, but Monsanto was able to sue farmers if seeds accidentally migrated into their fields. This has to stop. Zombie bills are those that seem to have a life of their own, that keep rising up. The zombie bill of the Monsanto Protection Rider needs to be eviscerated–permanently.