“It wasn’t just big oil that knew about climate change decades ago”: New report reveals coal knew too

Stephan:  Like the tobacco industry, the carbon industries have known for more than a generation they were destroying earth's climate and killing its ecosystems. They didn't care, because they put profit above all other considerations. It is the American hallmark position.

“Exxon Knew” has become a chant, a tagline, and even a hashtag to highlight the fact that the fossil fuel corporation knew about climate change decades ago. Now a new report reveals that it wasn’t just big oil that knew, coal knew too.

The coal industry knew about the danger of rising greenhouse gas emissions as early as 1966, reveals Élan Young in an article published by HuffPost on Friday. The article tells the story of an unearthed journal discovered by Chris Cherry, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, that contains a passage from a coal research company discussing the evidence of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere:

“There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” wrote Garvey. “If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result.

Trump’s Fuel Economy Plan Will Cost Americans Almost Half A Trillion Dollars

Stephan:  Criminal Trump has created an economic environment that is proving to be a disaster for ordinary Americans. Everywhere I look I see these stories. Millions here, billions there, extra costs being borne by you, me, and our friends and families. You would think it would engender an enormous pushback by voters. But it does not, and I think it is important to ask why?

If you have been watching the impeachment hearings, you know Republicans are experts at floating all sorts of outrageous theories to protect their lying, cheating, loathsome, egomaniac president from getting kicked to the curb like he deserves. Absurd notions permeate everything they do. Take the current flap of fuel economy standards.

The rationale that professional jackasses like EPA head Andrew Wheeler and DOT head Elaine Chao put forth for rolling back those standards is that it costs automakers more money to make more efficient engines. Those costs are passed along to consumers in the form of higher sticker prices. Higher prices mean fewer people can afford new cars, so they buy older cars instead. Older cars by definition were not built to the highest safety and crash test standards so that means more people will be injured or killed in traffic accidents and it’s all the fault of higher fuel economy standards!

[Vehicle prices are not rising as a result of everyone and their cousin wanting the latest and greatest computer technology in the automobiles according to the Trumpies. Every penny in […]

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Republicans tried to rig the vote in Michigan – but ‘political novices’ just defeated them

Stephan:  Here is some excellent news and an example of what citizen action can accomplish. Republicans don't like democracy and they do everything in their power to undermine it. But motivated citizens can stop this christofascist sabotage and protect America's democracy.

Katie Fahey started with a Facebook post.
Credit: Participant Media

In 2016, Katie Fahey, a Michigan woman with no political experience, put up a Facebook post asking if anyone she knew wanted to do something about gerrymandering, a pervasive practice of lawmakers drawing district lines to benefit their own party.

Michigan is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country. At that time, Republicans held majorities in the state legislature and congressional delegation, even though Democrats earned a significant share of the statewide vote, and the state is considered politically competitive. And the GOP lawmakers were not subtle: emails made public last year revealed a Republican aide bragging about cramming “Dem garbage” into certain Michigan districts in 2011, as they drew the current electoral boundaries.

But Fahey’s post would create a movement that could provide a roadmap for making US elections fairer. Coordinating over Google Docs and fanning out across the state, her effort grew into a group called Voters Not Politicians that would eventually […]

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After 240 Years and 7 Generations, Forced to Sell the Family Farm

Stephan:  This is the story of one farm family but also the shared-saga of thousands of American farm families.  The network of family farms that has fed us for generations is collapsing, yet another facet of what is happening in rural America. The effect this is going have on your life will be seen in much higher food prices, as well as less availability.

Seven generations of Frank Hull’s family have lived and been buried on their farm in Durham, N.Y.
Credit…Sara Naomi Lewkowicz/The New York Times

DURHAM, N.Y. — Farmer Frank hobbled into the house, cane in hand.

“Sow got out of her pen, had to chase her down,” said Farmer Frank — Frank Hull, 71 — whose body, ravaged from decades of heavy manual work, is no longer built for chasing sows.

For half a century, he and his wife, Sherry, 67, have run their 260-acre farm here in the upper Catskills, some two hours north of New York City.

Known as Hull-O Farms, it has been in Mr. Hull’s family since his forebear, John Hull, founded it some 240 years and seven generations ago.

It is one of the oldest farms in the country continuously owned and run by the same family. But that lineage is about to end.

The Army Built to Fight ‘Medicare for All’

Stephan:  An overwhelming majority -- 64% -- of Americans have never experienced what it is like to live in a real healthcare system where everyone rich or poor has high-quality healthcare, in which illness or injury are not potentially bankrupting, where the outcome data for their recovery is orders of magnitude better, and the cost of pharmaceuticals is a fraction of what it is in the U.S. A surprising number of Americans are actually against universal healthcare. It is a form of willful ignorance, and it is what keeps the American illness profit system viable. I follow the healthcare debate very closely and my main take away is that almost all of what you read, see, and hear is crap. Either based on ignorance, or deliberate and calculated misinformation. If you hear someone say that we can't afford universal single-payer healthcare as a birthright, you can be sure they are willfully ignorant, lying, or serving some other priority. In fact, a universal single-payer system would save the nation, by the best estimates, about $1.3 trillion a year, and completely eliminate the nearly 500,000 American medical bankruptcies that occur each year. The only thing that is going to eliminate the illness profit system replacing it with real healthcare is citizen action, and the profiteers in the current system, as this article describes, are pouring billions of dollars into misleading and misinforming Americans. Democracy requires an educated and politically active population dedicated to fostering wellbeing. Do you think we have that in America? I am no longer sure.    

Credit: Illustration by David Senior

Chip Kahn took one look at the scene playing out inside the stately Hart Senate Office Building and knew he needed to do something about it.

It was mid-September 2017 and Sen. Bernie Sanders had just ascended a stage to the cheers of more than a hundred health care activists, grassroots organizers and political supporters. The packed hearing room had played host to some of the most solemn moments in Washington’s modern history: the crafting of a landmark missile treaty with the Soviet Union, the investigation of the 9/11 terror attacks, the consideration of at least five Supreme Court nominees.

On this day, it had been transformed into a staging ground for the first stop in Sanders’ latest political crusade. Standing in front of a bright blue HEALTHCARE IS A RIGHT banner tacked to the back wall, Sanders heralded the renewal of a “long and […]

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