03 December 19
Think You've Seen Peak GOP Crazy? Watch This.
Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
Tomasky writes: "So you think we've seen peak Republican crazy? I mean, surely we have, right? Shit can't get any weirder than Devin Nunes. Honey, buckle up."
Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
Tomasky writes: "So you think we've seen peak Republican crazy? I mean, surely we have, right? Shit can't get any weirder than Devin Nunes. Honey, buckle up."
EXCERPT:
So it tends to draw two kinds of people. One, people serious about constitutional and legal issues. Two, showboats who know that once in a blue moon, Judiciary is, as it were, the hottest ticket in town. And it wouldn’t have been too hard for someone like Gaetz, elected to Congress the same night Trump won the presidency, to place a bet on the possibility that all this might one day come to pass.
So there we are, with the curtain about to rise on an assemblage of sycophants and bootlickers who undoubtedly have a few parliamentary tricks up their sleeve to try and turn everything into as big a circus as possible. Jerry Nadler has to be as emotionless as Schiff in not letting these clowns turn the hearings into a shitshow, which is the only way Trump can win. Jerry, the legislative gods gave you a gavel. Use it.
Sen. Kamala Harris. (photo: KamalaHarris.org)
Kamala Harris Ends Her Presidential Bid
Ed O'Keefe, Tim Perry and Caitlin Huey-Burns, CBS News
Excerpt: "Kamala Harris is ending her presidential bid, according to a campaign aide and a source familiar with her decision."
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Ed O'Keefe, Tim Perry and Caitlin Huey-Burns, CBS News
Excerpt: "Kamala Harris is ending her presidential bid, according to a campaign aide and a source familiar with her decision."
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Power lines rest on cars that were burned by the Camp Fire in November 2018, in Paradise, California. (photo: Getty)
PG&E Neglected Power Lines for Years Before Deadly California Wildfire, Report Finds
Russell Gold and Katherine Blunt, The Wall Street Journal
Excerpt: "PG&E Corp. failed to adequately inspect and maintain its transmission lines for years before a faulty line started the deadliest fire in California history, a state investigation has found."
Russell Gold and Katherine Blunt, The Wall Street Journal
Excerpt: "PG&E Corp. failed to adequately inspect and maintain its transmission lines for years before a faulty line started the deadliest fire in California history, a state investigation has found."
EXCERPT:
“The identified shortcomings in PG&E’s inspection and maintenance of the incident tower were not isolated, but rather indicative of an overall pattern of inadequate inspection and maintenance of PG&E’s transmission facilities,” the report by the commission’s safety and enforcement division found.
Fisher Industries workers drop pieces of border barrier into place in May in Sunland Park, New Mexico, on private land that borders Mexico. (photo: Jordyn Rozensky and Justin Hamel/The Washington Post)
Trump Border Wall $400 Million Contract Handed to Company Owned by Republican Donor Who Promoted Firm on Fox News
Conrad Duncan, The Independent
Duncan writes: "A construction company owned by a Republican donor has been given a $400m (£308.5m) contract to build sections of Donald Trump's border wall."
Conrad Duncan, The Independent
Duncan writes: "A construction company owned by a Republican donor has been given a $400m (£308.5m) contract to build sections of Donald Trump's border wall."
The Department of Defence has announced Fisher Sand and Gravel Co, from North Dakota, will build new barriers in Arizona following reports that Mr Trump repeatedly pushed for the company to be given the contract, despite concerns from engineering officials.
Mr Trump had urged officials from the Army Corps of Engineers to pick the company, according to Washington Post reports, and is a fan of the company’s CEO, Tommy Fisher, who has appeared on Fox News to promote the firm.
However, he was apparently told that Fisher Sand and Gravel’s bid did not meet the standards required for the project.
The company has also been supported by senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, who was given $10,000 by the Fisher family for his Senate campaign in 2018.
Mr Cramer said he was “glad to see more progress being made” on the border wall and “grateful” that Fisher Sand and Gravel had been awarded the contract.
“I know they will do very well, performing high quality work at a good bargain, all for the security of the people of the United States,” he said in a statement.
The Republican senator took Mr Fisher as his guest to the 2018 State of the Union address but said he has not pushed Mr Trump to pick the firm, even though he welcomed the idea of a North Dakota company winning the contract.
Mr Cramer said in May that the president “always brings [the company] up” in conversations and Mr Trump likes Mr Fisher because he has seen him advocating for his firm’s plan on TV.
Fisher Sand and Gravel has claimed it can build the wall faster and cheaper than other companies.
It also has a record of more than $1m in fines for environmental and tax violations, according to CNN, and its former co-owner pleaded guilty to tax fraud and was sentenced to 37 months in prison in 2009.
When asked by CNN about these violations and legal problems, the company said the issues were “resolved years ago” and had “nothing to do with the excellent product and work that Fisher is proposing with regard to protecting America’s southern border”.
In April, Mr Trump mentioned Mr Fisher on Fox News after the company offered to build 234 miles of the border wall for $1.4bn – a fraction of the $8bn cost projected for the project.
When Fox News host Sean Hannity asked about the bid, the president replied that his administration was “dealing with him [Mr Fisher]” and said the company was “recommended strongly by a great new senator, Kevin Cramer”.
Fisher Sand and Gravel has worked with a number of Trump allies, including former adviser Steve Bannon, to build border fences on private land using donations.
Mr Trump has pledged to build 450 to 500 miles of new border barriers by the end of 2020 but so far his administration has only built about 85 miles of new fencing, which has mostly replaced smaller old structures that existed before he took office in 2017.
Sen. Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Could Save Bernie Sanders' Campaign
Addy Baird, BuzzFeed
Baird writes: "Democrats in Congress are rushing to impeach President Donald Trump by Christmas, setting up a Senate trial that could bleed into 2020's first presidential contests."
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Addy Baird, BuzzFeed
Baird writes: "Democrats in Congress are rushing to impeach President Donald Trump by Christmas, setting up a Senate trial that could bleed into 2020's first presidential contests."
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U.S. soldiers in Iraq. (photo: Alex Majoli/Newsweek)
Arnold R. Isaacs | Moral Injury and America's Endless Conflicts: A Legacy of a New Kind of War
Arnold R. Isaacs, TomDispatch
Isaacs writes: "When an announcement of a 'Moral Injury Symposium' turned up in my email, I was a bit startled to see that it came from the U.S. Special Operations Command."
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Arnold R. Isaacs, TomDispatch
Isaacs writes: "When an announcement of a 'Moral Injury Symposium' turned up in my email, I was a bit startled to see that it came from the U.S. Special Operations Command."
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An abandoned smelter chimney, a legacy of what once was the world's largest copper mining operation, looms over the Anaconda valley in southwest Montana. (photo: Louise Johns/The Washington Post)
A Tiny Town's Long Struggle to Rid Itself of Toxic Waste Reaches the Supreme Court
Kathleen McLaughlin, The Washington Post
McLaughlin writes: "For a century, this tiny town has breathed beneath the long shadow of a colossal chimney. In fact, a mining behemoth created Opportunity specifically to prove it was safe to live in the path of the dark plume of smoke that billowed from the company's copper smelter."
Kathleen McLaughlin, The Washington Post
McLaughlin writes: "For a century, this tiny town has breathed beneath the long shadow of a colossal chimney. In fact, a mining behemoth created Opportunity specifically to prove it was safe to live in the path of the dark plume of smoke that billowed from the company's copper smelter."
EXCERPT:
The plant is long shuttered, but the big stack looms 585 feet tall, the largest free-standing masonry structure in the world. Studies long ago shattered the company’s safety claims by linking high levels of arsenic and lead to serious health threats. These days, Opportunity is defined by its struggle to force powerful corporate and government interests to clean up the dangerous waste left behind.
After more than a decade of court battles, the Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear residents’ case against the property’s current owner. Theirs is more than just a David vs. Goliath confrontation — a rural community of 700 against Arco, a subsidiary of the oil giant BP — because of its potential for upending one of the nation’s key environmental laws.
Opportunity and its even smaller neighbor, Crackerville, want the justices to uphold a Montana Supreme Court ruling that found federal Superfund law does not override this state’s constitutionally guaranteed right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Arco, which appealed the decision, says it has already spent $470 million to reduce arsenic levels in the area. The towns say an additional $58 million is needed to lower those levels far more drastically.
The outcome of Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian holds significance well beyond this scenic valley in southwest Montana. Arco, as it is now known, argues that allowing individuals to sue in state court for greater cleanup than federal regulators require would nullify a key component of the Superfund program.
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