 09 December 19 Yesterday 11 Reader-Supporters Kept RSN Going
Sunday we served 21,820 readers. 11 of those people said “yes I will help.” Though their numbers were small, their impact was huge.
We are working as hard as we can to close the September funding gap.
Who can help?
Marc Ash
Sure, I'll make a donation!Founder, Reader Supported News Update My Monthly Donation
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08 December 19
Bernie Sanders' Broadband Plan Is Comcast's Worst Nightmare
Karl Bode, VICE
Bode writes: "Sanders promises to break up media monopolies, restore net neutrality, and embrace the countless towns and cities that are building their own broadband networks."
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Jerry Nadler listens as constitutional scholars testify before the House judiciary committee. (photo: Reuters)
Karl Bode, VICE
Bode writes: "Sanders promises to break up media monopolies, restore net neutrality, and embrace the countless towns and cities that are building their own broadband networks."
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Jerry Nadler listens as constitutional scholars testify before the House judiciary committee. (photo: Reuters)
Nadler May Add Mueller Counts Against Trump
Oliver Laughland, Guardian UK
Laughland writes: "The Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee, Jerry Nadler, has not ruled out including evidence from the Mueller report in articles of impeachment against Donald Trump that could be published as early as next week."
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) takes the stage before speaking at the Climate Crisis Summit at Drake University on November 9, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa. (photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Oliver Laughland, Guardian UK
Laughland writes: "The Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee, Jerry Nadler, has not ruled out including evidence from the Mueller report in articles of impeachment against Donald Trump that could be published as early as next week."
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) takes the stage before speaking at the Climate Crisis Summit at Drake University on November 9, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa. (photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is 'waiting on the haters to apologize' after Amazon said it would open up corporate offices in New York City to house more than 1,500 employees."
The announcement from the internet giant came less than a year after it abruptly dropped plans to build a second headquarters in the city following backlash to the some $3 billion in financial incentives that the government had offered to woo the company. Ocasio-Cortez quickly celebrated the announcement in a series of tweets.
“Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway - *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families.” She then tweeted a photo of herself sitting on a couch saying she was waiting for apologies .
Me waiting on the haters to apologize after we were proven right on Amazon and saved the public billions twitter.com/jordanuhl/stat…
75.4K people are talking about this
The lawmaker’s tweets came shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon had signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet in New York City. Unlike earlier expansions, the company is setting up shop without any special tax incentives. Some had worried that when Amazon pulled out of setting up its second headquarters in New York it would scare away other large businesses. “Instead, Amazon’s continued expansion marks the latest sign that tech companies are scrambling for prime Manhattan real estate to attract the city’s large and well-educated talent pool,” reports the Journal.
Some though were quick to criticize Ocasio-Cortez, saying her claiming victory on the issue was a bit misleading considering that the new office space is far smaller than what the online giant had vowed to set up in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City as part of its second headquarters. The company had pledged to create 25,000 new jobs as part of that expansion.
From left, Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan, University of North Carolina Law School professor Michael Gerhardt and George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley appear for a hearing on the constitutional grounds for the impeachment of President Trump. (photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
Four Ways Democratic Presidential Candidates Can Use Impeachment to Their Advantage
Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post
Rubin writes: "Whether that is true now, they are likely to get a 2020 gift never before handed to the party out of the White House: a month-long impeachment trial in which Trump's wrongdoing, recklessness and corruption are aired every day, all day, on every news channel. To quote Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), they better not screw this up."
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Gabrielle Union. (photo: Getty Images)
Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post
Rubin writes: "Whether that is true now, they are likely to get a 2020 gift never before handed to the party out of the White House: a month-long impeachment trial in which Trump's wrongdoing, recklessness and corruption are aired every day, all day, on every news channel. To quote Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), they better not screw this up."
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Gabrielle Union. (photo: Getty Images)
The Power and Danger of Being a Difficult Woman
Rachel Sklar, Medium
Sklar writes: "In the appalling case of Gabrielle Union's removal from America's Got Talent by NBC, 'A source close to the production disputes that Union was fired,' reports Yashar Ali at Vulture, 'and specifically that she was fired for being perceived as 'difficult.'"
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A rally near Place de la République in support of the national strike in France, one of the largest nationwide strike in years, on December 5, 2019 in Paris, France. (photo: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images)
Rachel Sklar, Medium
Sklar writes: "In the appalling case of Gabrielle Union's removal from America's Got Talent by NBC, 'A source close to the production disputes that Union was fired,' reports Yashar Ali at Vulture, 'and specifically that she was fired for being perceived as 'difficult.'"
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A rally near Place de la République in support of the national strike in France, one of the largest nationwide strike in years, on December 5, 2019 in Paris, France. (photo: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images)
Emmanuel Macron Wants to End France's Welfare State
Stathis Kouvelakis, Jacobin
Kouvelakis writes: "France was paralyzed by strikes on Friday, as workers from train drivers to teachers revolted against Emmanuel Macron's attack on pensions. While the liberal president fancies himself as a French 'Thatcher,' his bid to tear up France's welfare state now faces its most powerful opposition yet."
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Stathis Kouvelakis, Jacobin
Kouvelakis writes: "France was paralyzed by strikes on Friday, as workers from train drivers to teachers revolted against Emmanuel Macron's attack on pensions. While the liberal president fancies himself as a French 'Thatcher,' his bid to tear up France's welfare state now faces its most powerful opposition yet."
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Air pollution. (photo: Robyn Beck/Getty Images)
Getting Rid of Pollution Improves Public Health Almost Immediately
Emily Pontecorvo, Grist
Pontecorvo writes: "After decades of steadily declining, air pollution is once again on the rise in the United States. Between 2016 and 2018, pollution of fine particulate matter - tiny particles that are emitted whenever we burn anything - rose by more than 5 percent."
Emily Pontecorvo, Grist
Pontecorvo writes: "After decades of steadily declining, air pollution is once again on the rise in the United States. Between 2016 and 2018, pollution of fine particulate matter - tiny particles that are emitted whenever we burn anything - rose by more than 5 percent."
That’s terrible news for Americans’ health. The researchers who identified the increase in pollution calculated that it was linked to 9,700 additional premature deaths in 2018. Worldwide, outdoor air pollution is responsible for an estimated 4.2 million deaths per year. It affects nearly every organ in the body, and can cause or contribute to stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and chronic respiratory diseases.
The good news is that scientists have repeatedly found that improving air quality has quick and significant benefits for public health. A new analysis of the literature on pollution reduction published this week in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society shows that as soon as two weeks after a source of pollution is removed, many respiratory symptoms experienced by the surrounding community disappear and hospital visits are reduced. Within as little as two months, mortality drops as well.
The paper looks at several cases where a temporary reduction in pollution was the only change in a community that could account for major differences in health outcomes. For example, when a steel mill in the Utah Valley closed for just 13 months from 1986 to 1987, hospitalizations for pneumonia, bronchitis, and asthma went down, especially for children. School absences were reduced by 40 percent. Women who were pregnant during the year the mill was closed were less likely to have premature births than those who were pregnant before or after. And there was a 16 percent decrease in overall mortality.
When the Summer Olympics were held in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996, the city closed the downtown area to private vehicles and upped its public transportation system to run 24 hours a day, with additional bus services. The closure lasted only 17 days, but peak daily ozone concentrations went down 28 percent. Over the next month, children sought care for their asthma 42 percent less frequently, pediatric emergency room visits went down by 11 percent, and overall hospitalizations for asthma went down by 19 percent.
These numbers make a powerful case for reducing air pollution — especially because there’s next to nothing people can do personally to avoid it. That’s especially true for vulnerable populations who live near industrial zones, highways, and power plants because the real estate is affordable there, or because those big polluters set up shop in their neighborhoods because of structural racism.
There’s a range of interventions that can help, and some of them are already being implemented on a local scale, like car-free streets. San Francisco recently voted to shut down the central artery of Market Street to private cars. New York City is experimenting with doing the same to Manhattan’s 14th Street. In Oslo, Norway, the entire downtown is now basically car-free. Smoking bans, cleaner fuels for school buses, and switching out fossil-fuel burning home heating systems for electric ones have also been proven to improve health outcomes.
The federal government could help by enforcing the Clean Air Act stringently (instead of, you know, rolling parts of it back). The researchers who identified the recent reversal in air pollution found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s actions against polluters have been falling since 2009. They also attribute the increase in pollution to the rise of natural gas and an increase in driving. So developing a national climate policy to use more renewable energy and electrify buildings and cars won’t just slow global warming, it will literally save lives — and fast.
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